#who became the exact thing they were protesting about

[cookinguptales]

So I’ve been enjoying the Disney vs. DeSantis memes as much as anyone, but like. I do feel like a lot of people who had normal childhoods are missing some context to all this.

I was raised in the Bible Belt in a fairly fundie environment. My parents were reasonably cool about some things, compared to the rest of my family, but they certainly had their issues. But they did let me watch Disney movies, which turned out to be a point of major contention between them and my other relatives.

See, I think some people think this weird fight between Disney and fundies is new. It is very not new. I know that Disney’s attempts at inclusion in their media have been the source of a lot of mockery, but what a lot of people don’t understand is that as far as actual company policy goes, Disney has actually been an industry leader for queer rights. They’ve had policies assuring equal healthcare and partner benefits for queer employees since the early 90s.

I’m not sure how many people reading this right now remember the early 90s, but that was very much not industry standard. It was a big deal when Disney announced that non-married queer partners would be getting the same benefits as the married heterosexual ones.

Like — it went further than just saying that any unmarried partners would be eligible for spousal benefits. It straight-up said that non-same-sex partners would still need to be married to receive spousal benefits, but because same-sex partners couldn’t do that, proof that they lived together as an established couple would be enough.

In other words, it put long-term same-sex partners on a higher level than opposite-sex partners who just weren’t married yet. It put them on the exact same level as heterosexual married partners.

They weren’t the first company ever to do this, but they were super early. And they were certainly the first mainstream “family-friendly” company to do it.

Conservatives lost their damn minds.

Protests, boycotts, sermons, the whole nine yards. I can’t tell you how many books about the evils of Disney my grandmother tried to get my parents to read when I was a kid.

When we later moved to Florida, I realized just how many queer people work at Disney — because historically speaking, it’s been a company that has guaranteed them safety, non-discrimination, and equal rights. That’s when I became aware of their unofficial “Gay Days” and how Christians would show up from all over the country to protest them every year. Apparently my grandmother had been upset about these days for years, but my parents had just kind of ignored her.

Out of curiosity, I ended up reading one of the books my grandmother kept leaving at our house. And friends — it’s amazing how similar that (terrible, poorly written) rhetoric was to what people are saying these days. Disney hires gay pedophiles who want to abuse your children. Disney is trying to normalize Satanism in our beautiful, Christian America. 

Just tons of conspiracy theories in there that ranged from “a few bad things happened that weren’t actually Disney’s fault, but they did happen” to “Pocahontas is an evil movie, not because it distorts history and misrepresents indigenous life, but because it might teach children respect for nature. Which, as we all know, would cause them all to become Wiccans who believe in climate change.”

Like — please, take it from someone who knows. This weird fight between fundies and Disney is not new. This is not Disney’s first (gay) rodeo. These people have always believed that Disney is full of evil gays who are trying to groom and sexually abuse children.

The main difference now is that these beliefs are becoming mainstream. It’s not just conservative pastors who are talking about this. It’s not just church groups showing up to boycott Gay Day. Disney is starting to (reluctantly) say the quiet part out loud, and so are the Republicans. Disney is publicly supporting queer rights and announcing company-supported queer events and the Republican Party is publicly calling them pedophiles and enacting politically driven revenge.

This is important, because while this fight has always been important in the history of queer rights, it is now being magnified. The precedent that a fight like this could set is staggering. For better or for worse, we live in a corporation-driven country. I don’t like it any more than you do, and I’m not about to defend most of Disney’s business practices. But we do live in a nation where rights are largely tied to corporate approval, and the fact that we might be entering an age where even the most powerful corporations in the country are being banned from speaking out in favor of rights for marginalized people… that’s genuinely scary.

Like… I’ll just ask you this. Where do you think we’d be now, in 2023, if Disney had been prevented from promising its employees equal benefits in 1994? That was almost thirty years ago, and look how far things have come. When I looked up news articles for this post from that era, even then journalists, activists, and fundie church leaders were all talking about how a company of Disney’s prominence throwing their weight behind this movement could lead to the normalization of equal protections in this country.

The idea of it scared and thrilled people in equal parts even then. It still scares and thrills them now.

I keep seeing people say “I need them both to lose!” and I get it, I do. Disney has for sure done a lot of shit over the years. But I am begging you as a queer exvangelical to understand that no. You need Disney to win. You need Disney to wipe the fucking floor with these people.

Right now, this isn’t just a fight between a giant corporation and Ron DeSantis. This is a fight about the right of corporations to support marginalized groups. It’s a fight that ensures that companies like Disney still can offer benefits that a discriminatory government does not provide. It ensures that businesses much smaller than Disney can support activism.

Hell, it ensures that you can support activism.

The fight between weird Christian conspiracy theorists and Disney is not new, because the fight to prevent any tiny victory for marginalized groups is not new. The fight against the normalization of othered groups is not new.

That’s what they’re most afraid of. That each incremental victory will start to make marginalized groups feel safer, that each incremental victory will start to turn the tide of public opinion, that each incremental victory will eventually lead to sweeping law reform.

They’re afraid that they won’t be able to legally discriminate against us anymore.

So guys! Please. This fight, while hilarious, is also so fucking important. I am begging you to understand how old this fight is. These people always play the long game. They did it with Roe and they’re doing it with Disney.

We have! To keep! Pushing back!

#disney #ron desantis #gay rights #lgbt #queer #lgbt history #queer history #homophobia #florida #us politics #religious fundamentalism #christianity #long post #god that should cover all the pertinent tags and content warnings phew

[niluffa]

tw : gambling, fem!reader, sfw | wc : 0,7k

��gambling again?”

when toji turns around, he meets eye-to-eye with his best friend─shiu kong. as usual, his tall frame towers over toji’s sitting pose, light up cigarette in his mouth.

“yeah,” toji huffs. realistically, even this week, luck was not exactly on his side─it never was, and toji always found himself losing more and more money.

“yo, toji─” shiu calls out.

“would you mind looking after my little sister? ‘need to buy a lighter,” only then toji noticed the smaller girl behind her big brother, almost impossible to see, “don’t worry, she’s a quiet type.”

“sure,” toji shrugs with a nod. a small pat on your shoulder by shiu is enough for you to sit down next to the raven male without a question or protest.

“thanks, man,” shiu grinned, sending a small wave to you.

once your big brother disappeared into the crowd, you were left in silence. there were some background noises, and a few people were chatting with each other, but toji didn’t mutter a single word.

one thing you did notice was the way toji’s eyes scanned over the small paper in his hand. from what you could tell from the matching numbers of the paper and the channel on tv, it was what shiu mentioned earlier─gambling.

“fuck this,” toji mutters under his breath, lowering down the small paper with a pen. confused, you look at the older man who just stood up from his seat and walked away.

“eh?” you whisper to yourself, looking at toji’s fading figure before back at the paper of numbers. the conversations of strangers became clearer; now that toji was gone. you took the hint, looking at the tv.

you get it now─the numbers on the paper were connected to the racing horses on the big bright screen. but why did toji leave out of a sudden?

your anxiety began to rise even more when you saw people stand up and walk towards the opposite way toji did. the tv was still on, and with shaky hands, you wrote down random numbers you thought looked pretty enough to win.

you followed the crowd outside but took an empty seat far away from them. totally ignoring the “don’t put your feet on the seat” sign, your foot placed itself at the edge of your seat; close enough for you to rest your chin on it.

the small paper made an appearance in your vision, sad eyes staring at the numbers in shame─if your guess wasn’t correct, you just wasted toji’s money.

to nobody’s surprise, toji was bold enough to bet on three horses at the same time as if he had money to throw spare.

the horses were already running, which you didn’t even notice due to your stressed-out state─your eyes running over the same three numbers.

seven, two, nine . . . if the horses finished in the exact order, toji would win─wait, seventy-five million yen.

“is he insane?!” you squeaked, luckily far enough for other people to notice. still, you couldn’t believe the amount of money he could have won.

oh, sorry─the money he did won.

wait, what?!

the numbers on your paper matched all three of the ones on the winning board, and your jaw dropped. never once in your life, you held a piece of paper so close to your chest.

you ran all the way up the stairs, muttering a small apology to people you bumped into due to them being in your way.

“i told you to look after her!” your brother’s deep voice rang through your ears as soon as you stepped into the room from earlier. there stood shiu, who was growling at toji.

“can’t stop me from taking a piss,” toji mocked.

“you little─”

“shiu!” you yelled to catch the attention of both toji and your brother; which worked and shiu wasted no time to run right to you.

“sweetheart, you scared the hell outta me!” shiu said, huge hands on your shoulders to ground you in your place; as if you were to disappear again.

“see? she’s fine,” toji waved the situation off, earning a low growl from your sickly worried brother who wasn’t happy about you being alone the whole time.

“i won─he won!” you corrected yourself, still panting from the amount of stairs you had to run up to meet them both.

“eh? i─i didn’t bet anything this time,” toji furrows his eyebrows, fast enough to snatch the little sheet of paper away from your shaky hands. looking at the screen and back at the numbers, your words were confirmed.

“we fucking won!” toji yelled, and you nodded.

“seriously?” your big brother rubbed the bridge of his nose to ignore the loud noises of yours and toji’s cheering in the background; and also the fact that toji was literally throwing you into the air.

maybe toji’s addition won’t end so soon now that he has a new gambling buddy─his best friend’s sister.

#niluffa #toji #toji fushiguro #toji x reader #toji fushiguro x reader #toji x you #toji fushiguro x you #jjk x reader #jjk x you

[woso-fan13]

Sicktember 2023: 18 (USWNT)

“Wear Your Coat, You’ll Catch a Cold”

It’s funny, really, how a refusal to admit a minor mistake can change everything. Because you had gotten cold during the team walk, but you couldn’t admit that. Everyone had warned you that it was freezing out, but you had insisted that you were okay in just a sweatshirt. 

Christen had fussed at you as soon as you appeared in the lobby, “why are you in just a sweatshirt? Wear your coat, you’ll catch a cold.”

You instantly corrected her, saying that being cold doesn’t cause you to get sick. You did omit the fact that being cold can significantly increase your risk of getting sick, but she didn’t need to know that. You just protested, saying that you would be fine. 

And if only one person had said something, you may have admitted to needing a coat when you stepped outside. But almost every one of your teammates had stopped you, asking about your lack of a coat. You couldn’t admit to being cold now, you just had to pretend to be fine. 

Really, though, maybe none of this has anything to do with not wearing your jacket that day. Maybe everything would have still happened the exact same way if you had worn the heaviest jacket you could find. There was no way to know now. 

You were grateful that camp had ended the day after the fateful walk, as you were able to make it home and hide from your teammates before you got sick. It wasn’t bad in the beginning, a basic cold. 

But you couldn’t admit to being sick, and you couldn’t explain to your teammates that you had become deconditioned because you didn’t practice while you were sick, so you ignored it. You ignored it until your symptoms progressed so far that you couldn’t ignore it any further. 

You had, it appears, ignored your symptoms so well that you didn’t notice your cold turn into pneumonia. You also didn’t notice this infection leach into your bloodstream. You didn’t really notice anything until you were admitted to the hospital for septic shock. 

So you stayed, alone, fielding every form of communication from your teammates besides text messages. You couldn’t answer any calls or video messages, in case they notice your surroundings. You simply texted them updates as if everything were fine at home. 

Your teammates were unaware as your kidneys failed. They got a little mad that you hadn’t responded to any text messages, unaware that you were fighting for your life in the hospital. 

They only became aware when Christen’s cell phone rang in the middle of the night, an unknown number. She almost didn’t answer, but something in her gut told her it was important. 

It was. He was calling to inform her that your condition had progressed to the point of you needing to be intubated, and, as your medical contact, they needed her consent for various treatments because you were unable to. 

Christen was, ironically, shocked. She woke Tobin quickly, explaining what the voice over the phone had told her. And, only then, she allowed herself to cry. 

She cried for the little girl that she thought of as a daughter. She cried for the little girl who had made her a medical contact without her knowledge. She had cried for the little girl who felt too scared to tell her that she was the closest thing to family that she had. 

She cried for the little girl, alone in the hospital, machines keeping her body alive. 

And she cried when the earliest flight wasn’t for 3 hours. 

—-

The news spread quickly through the team, and, thus, through the whole NWSL. Within the hour, it seemed that everyone knew that the funny, constantly happy young player who had wormed her way into everyone’s hearts was currently in the hospital, her own heart working to keep her alive. 

6 hours- a quarter of a day- later, Christen and Tobin rushed into your hospital room. This time, it was Tobin who broke down, crying for her surrogate daughter. 

—-

And the only thing that the two could do was sit and wait and pray to whoever may be listening that you would be okay. 

This time, they had to wait 3 days until the next change, as the doctors began weaning you off of your sedation, seeing if you would wake up. 

This time, it was 6 days before your eyes were opened and you were breathing on your own. You were still very out of it, but the presence of the two women comforted you and allowed you to rest. 

One week after Christen received that awful phone call, she was making a different phone call. She held the phone steady as familiar faces joined the call, your teammates anxiously waiting for Christen to update them. 

One week after Christen received that awful phone call, she sat on the edge of the hospital bed and tilted her phone screen. 

One week after Christen received that awful phone call, she couldn’t help but smile as she watched the relief wash over her teammates when you appeared on the screen. 

You were awake and sitting up. You were smiling and talking and alive. 

Two weeks after Christen received that awful phone call, you were walking out of the hospital tucked between Christen and Tobin. Your coat was on and tightly zipped. 

#uswnt imagine #uswnt woso #uswnt x reader #uswnt players #woso imagines #reader insert #womens soccer #woso x reader #woso imagine #woso #uswntsoccer #uswnt imagines #uswnt fanfic #woso fanfics #uswnt reader

[vickdrake]

Do i know you?

Jake opened his eyes finding the annoying glow of his computer, with those codes that had been left undeciphered after he inexplicably fell asleep on the table.

He didn't remember the exact moment when he had fallen into the world of dreams, but he knew that it was due to an oversight that should not happen again. Tiredness took its toll on him after months without sleeping properly, or rather without sleeping at all.

He cracked his neck, letting out a grunt of relief before looking out the hotel room window. It was autumn, the leaves were falling withered from the trees, indicating that winter was approaching and that everything old had to disappear to make way for a new beginning.

His pursuers seemed to be getting closer, always straining his patience and making him change hiding places more often. When he woke up his first concern had been to check where they were, but he was surprised to see that they had not yet picked up his signal, that they were still quite far away from him.

“Strange” he thought.

He leaned back in his chair, arms crossed and staring into the corner of the room as he remembered a dream even stranger than the fact that his pursuers had not already knocked on the door (although they would never really knock, they would broke it).

Have you heard of people who don't dream? Jake was one of them. Dreams were not recurring in his life since he was little.

And I'll tell you something else, as a child, Jake feared his dreams because they were always too real.

This time it turned out to be a dream within a dream.

There he had also been sleeping as if he had no worries in the world other than rest, but the difference was that this time he was not alone.

A girl who radiated as much light as beauty caressed his hair as he opened his eyes.

—Good morning, sleepyhead. I've never seen you sleep as much as you do today —she said, smiling with amusement and tenderness as she tangled her fingers in the locks that covered Jake's eyes—. Do you want to tell me what you were dreaming? I almost thought you weren't going to wake up.

He himself had thought that it would be weird to find a strange woman at his side, speaking to him as if they had known each other for a long time, but his body, his mind, had reacted in a different way, ending up putting his arm around her waist and approaching to kiss her.

"Wait, wait, i haven't brushed my teeth yet," the woman protested, laughing as he left kisses on her neck and cheeks as he sought her lips.

"I don't care," Jake heard himself say at the same time he managed to make her stay still so he could kiss her hungrily.

She had complained that it was disgusting, but he didn't care at all.

In his dreams he had a life with her, they were both happy and Jake remembered laughing like he hadn't heard himself in years.

Through the tricks his head played on him, he managed to feel the human warmth of someone else for a period of time that felt like decades. It seemed to him that it was someone else's life, someone completely oblivious to him but at the same time had everything to do with himself.

He remembered her delicate fingers on his face, drawing paths across his chest, playfully running over his neck and tracing the shape of his eyebrows in a reassuring way.

He discovered that an engagement ring was on her ring finger and a feeling of pride, joy and overflowing love invaded him as soon as he saw that image. His girlfriend, his girl, his fiancee. Or rather, the fiancee of that Jake who did have a happy and free life.

His own mind playing with him, reminding him that he would never have a life like that, that he would rather end up rotting in prison or dead, buried and forgotten.

After a while he forgot the dream.

He completely forgot about the girl's face, the scent of her hair, and her smile that became Jake's favorite thing for at least five minutes after he woke up.

He continued to run away because it was what he knew how to do best, the only thing he could do, and he didn't allow himself to go back to sleep.

But... One afternoon, almost a year later.

A fragrance invaded his nostrils when the door of the Rainbow coffee opened.

An essence of roses, jasmine and… sea salt.

It seemed like a strange mix, although it made sense as he began to remember every detail of his dreams.

The rose petals that she put in her books so that they would be dissected, the jasmines that she loved so much and that Jake left next to her pillow every time he had to run away again, and the sea salt from that beach where he decided that he wanted to spend the rest of his life being by her side, that place where as soon as he saw her come out of the water with her clothes and hair wet, laughing and throwing water at him, he was so hypnotized that the words came out of his mouth on their own.

"Marry me".

It had been a while since the iron mine had caught fire with Richy Rogers and Jake inside, Hannah was slowly recovering after they had managed to rescue her and the rest of her friends were trying to be strong for her but at the same time they couldn't ignore the pain of Richy's death.

The woman, who had helped the group and the hacker, decided to distance herself although she did not lose contact with any of them. She didn't go where she wasn't called, she comforted those who came to her and one day she finally decided it was time to say goodbye.

Jake watched from a table as she entered the cafeteria, how everything about her seemed so incredibly familiar even though he had never seen her in his life and also how he could feel deep inside that he knew every mole, scar and mark from her body.

He didn't care about looking crazy as he looked at her, he had no interest in being careful as he found himself immersed in the lost expression on her face as she looked out the window, in how she drummed her fingers on the table and then how she took the cup of coffee to her lips.

He wanted to touch her, call her, say all those words that he had only spoken to her by message, discover if her hair was really as soft as in that dream, if her hands really radiated that comforting warmth.

Then he noticed that she was no longer looking at the cup of coffee or at the people passing by on the street but directly at him.

His heart began to accelerate and he felt the beat reach his ears, also causing his breathing to become agitated.

"I know you"

His legs moved on their own, making him get up to go after her as soon as he saw her grab her things and go to the cashier to pay. He didn't approach, not wanting to draw too much attention from her, but it was inevitable for the woman to get scared when she found him a few meters away from herself. Of course she must have guessed it was him at some point.

Jake heads toward the door to open it, but he turns his head in her direction just to let her know that he's waiting for her. He sees her doubt, observe him, analyze him, and he understands that she is wondering if she is wrong about who she is. She begins to approach, without taking her eyes off him, she watches him carefully, patiently, and Jake has to control the impulse to put his arms around her waist and press her against his body as soon as they face each other.

Nobody says anything. They communicate through looks. He thinks about what he wants to tell her and it seems to work, he seems to understand, because her frown softens.

“I love you,” a corner of his mind whispers and he smiles slightly.

No one else in the cafeteria is important, she overshadows anyone else and makes him forget that they've been looking at each other for a while, what wakes him up is her voice uttering a soft “thank you” before she walks through the door and leaves.

Jake watches her walk away, but he knows that she expects him to follow her so he doesn't waste time and with a more noticeable smile, he closes the door of the cafeteria and while he puts his hands in his pockets he decides that from the beginning she was always his destiny.

PS: This story is slightly linked to “With or without you”.

Just in case you want to continue reading and you haven't seen the other side of the story yet -> With or without you

#duskwood #duskwood jake #duskwood mc #duskwood game #everbyte game #jake duskwood #everbyte studios #everbyte duskwood #duskwood everbyte #duskwood jake x mc #jake donfort #duskwood jake x player #jake x mc #jake x reader

[iouinotes]

You're my dream | Alex Walter

pairing: Alex Walter x female!reader

genre: fluff word count: 3,4k

show: My life with the Walter boys

summary: Alex thinks you prefer Cole over him. You show him that he is the most important person in your life.

a/n: @bbr0wni3 and I had the same idea for a story, so I hope you like the final result :) and sorry for gatekeeping sooo long

Alex had been quiet for the entire walk home. It felt like the school day had passed painfully slow, without his sympathy, his jokes, or his comments in math class. I've tried to find out the reason for his silence, but each time I asked about it, he changed the topic and I was left clueless.

Of course, I thought about what could bother him so much, but none of my suggestions were that convincing. Maybe it was his bad history essay? Or did he have had another fight with Cole? Was it about Paige? She had become his black shadow over the last year and if I'm being honest, I never really liked her. I mean, as Alex's best friend, I have little say in his dating life, even though my opinion is important to him.

Because when Alex falls in love, no one can stop him. It happens quickly and is usually associated with a lot of pain afterwards.

But if I remember things correct, Alex has been acting a bit strange for a while now. I mean, I tried to get to the bottom of his sudden mood-changes, but understanding Alex's mind has never been an easy task.

Good thing for me, I've never liked things too easy. Then again, bad thing for me, that I'm in love with my best friend.

I didn´t notice it at first and I can't pinpoint the exact moment, when my feelings for him meant more than just friendship.

Alex has always been a special person in my life, someone I could open my heart to and who would never hurt me. Apparently, I opened the doors to my heart a little too wide for him, because on one warm spring day, when I couldn't stop looking at his smiling face, my feelings for him became very clear to me. I literally hung on every word he said and I didn't even know at that point, that you could see a light in his eyes, when he talked about something he liked, that shone as beautiful as the rays of the sun.

And then, without even paying attention to what he was saying anymore (I think it was something about a new video game, he was playing), I quickly wrote down a few phrases in my notebook. that came to my mind. Unfortunately, I probably acted a little bit too hectic, because he stopped talking mid-sentence, irritated but curious.

"What are you doing?" I heard him ask, a smile on his lips. He leaned towards me and before I could hide it, he read the words out loud.

"Looking at you is like having the sun right in front of me.

I´m blinded by your beauty."

I thought my heart would give out at that moment, but he just grinned at me with twinkling eyes and asked who these two poetic sentences were addressed to. I said back then that it was about a character from a movie, because he wouldn't have bought anything else. After all, he had known me for so long that he knew about every crush I ever had, so choosing a boy from school would have been out of question.

But he never found out that my inspiration was actually him.

However, when I clear my thoughts and turn to look at him now, a visible frown is attached all over his beautiful features. I decide to put my arm around his arm, the typical pose for a married couple, so he isn´t able to get away from me and I can convince him to hang out. With the aim that I can lighten up his sadness.

Unfortunately now, much to my discomfort, he's looking at me with raised eyebrows, which is why I finally bring up the sensitive topic.

"So, something is clearly bothering you and I will take it as my duty to change your miserable mood. Don´t protest, because we are going to my place and I will take care of you with lots of ice cream. How does that sound?" I see a smile tugging at the corner of his lips, he signs but then quietly nods. And when we arrive at my house, luckily my parents are still at work, I turn the key and let us in. He takes off his jacket, my eyes secretly wander to him and I notice, while my heart is pounding, that he wears my favorite sweater. A white one with a blue hood.

He fixes his hair, that always need to look perfect and I smile lightly, because I love every time that I can get on his nerves, when I ruffle through it. He throws himself on the sofa and while I turn on the heater and go into the kitchen to get the ice cream, he has already made himself comfortable with a blanket. When I see him hugging a pillow, still scowl on his face, I sit myself right next to him. But as he keeps his attention at the black TV, I notice his exhausted figure and decide to speak up.

"Alex, come on. Talk to me, something is obviously going on. I don´t like it, when you are sad. Plus, I really miss your smile." My hand rests on his shoulder, lightly stroking the hair on the back of his neck, because I know he has a weakness for physical touch. When I see him struggling to keep up his act, I approach him and whisper "you can tell me anything, you know that right? I would never judge you."

Again, he signs loudly, but finally looks at me. His eyes are searching for mine and now that his attention is focused completely on me, I suddenly feel uneasy.

"D-did I do something?" My nerves are getting thinner by the second. I hate to upset him. Probably because I love seeing him happy so much.

"No, it´s-" his hand brushes over his face. "It is complicated." I'm still trying to understand, why he can't tell me what's going on.

"You didn´t do something illegal, didn´t you? I mean, I would still be your best friend, but I would have to make up a story, why I'm visiting you in prison-" at that, he quietly laughs and shakes his head.

"It´s legal, even though I feel like it shouldnt be." Now I'm curious and scared at the same time.

"Please, tell me. I´m dying to know." I try to put on my best puppy dog look, even though it probably looks pretty stupid.

A few seconds later, he slowly raises his hand and places it on my cheek, gently stroking my skin, while still holding the eye contact. His gesture leaves me speechless. I mean we cuddled every now and then during a movie or I've fallen asleep on him. I've also kissed him on the cheek once while doing a chore, but otherwise we always kept a decent distance. The fact that he's coming so close to me now is catching me off guard.

"You...you would tell me if you like someone, right?" His question surprises me.

"Yeah, of course. You now, that I can barely keep something from you. You always know what I get you for your birthday, because I can´t resist, when you keep asking me about it." His hand slowly sneaks into mine. My eyes wander to our laps. I feel myself getting more and more confused.

"Alex, what´s going on? I don´t hide anything from? Do you think otherwise?" I feel a pang in my heart as I look into his eyes.

"I heard a rumor" he begins to say and I draw my eyebrows together at his words. He never considers any rumors, because most of the time they are false anyway.

"And?" I want him to continue.

"It was about you and-" hopefully not about the fact that I'm in love with you, just let it stay my secret.

"-Cole." What?

"What?" He signs, looking away from me.

"Someone said, he heard you talking about how in love you were with him or something. That you prefer him over me." He averts his eyes so he's no longer looking at me. I almost laugh at this ridiculous statement.

"Do you really believe that? That I would prefer Cole over you? My funny and kind, but sometimes very very stupid best friend? You really think, I hang out with you in every free second, that I have, because I like your brother? Who is by the way, not even close on my list of people I would visit in prison." I'm glad he didn't do anything illegal and it's just about a stupid rumor. But now, I still have to convince him, that it is in fact just a rumor.

He is quiet for a moment, but when he speaks up, I almost laugh at his question.

"Where am I on your list?" His eyes look into mine and now I'm the one taking his hands.

"Alex" I start to speak in a gentle voice "you will always be my number one, you hear me? I don´t think, I like another person in this world or in this universe as much as I like you. Sometimes, it feels like you are literally the reason, that the earth revolves. Because for me, my world revolves around you. I enjoy every second, I spent with you and I would never, ever trade this for even a minute with Cole. Okay? Never. I promise."

I finally see his shoulders relax and a genuine smile that spreads across his face. When I nudge him on the shoulder, he laughs.

"You, big dummy. I thought, you would tell me, you robbed a bank or something."

"Oh, I would never dare. You would kick my ass." We smile at each other in silence.

But I still want to know, how it comes, that he would believe something so ridiculous.

"So, why did you think, I would prefer Cole over you?" It hurts a little to think, that he believes he´s not that important for me.

"Because" he begins to say, gesturing with his hands "the Cole effect exits and all that. Every girl falls for his charm or whatever. I can´t compete with him." Something I will never understand. How he always makes himself look bad in comparison to his older brother.

"Well, for the matter, you affect me with your smart and kind soul. And I think my heart could bear it a lot better, if you would not look like a dream come true."

He's silent for a moment and I begin to panic, when he suddenly looks at me with a nervous expression.

"Can I- I mean, I think I´m going to say something really concerning. And it will affect our friendship, like a lot. So, just let me say it." Since that means, that he wants to talk about something important, I stay quiet. Nevertheless, still holding his hand for support.

He exhales heavily, but then looks directly at me. "I know you for as long as I can remember, you were by my site since the second I walked on this earth. You know, quite literally, because we were in the same kindergarden group. You were my first friend and I remember so many moments, that will forever exist in my memory. And...in my heart. Because you seem to have a say in what my heart wants and it feels like it wants you, for some time now. I know you are my best friend, but I cant imagine someone else being so connected in my life. In everything I do, everything I am. You support my decisions, even if you don´t like them. When you force me to watch rom-coms with you and the characters talk about finding their soulmate, doing all these cheesy things, I realize I want that too. With you. Since watching the Notebook three weeks ago, I wake up every day and wish that you would lay next to me. So, I could-"

He leans forward and with a shy smile, that makes my heart burst with happiness, he kisses me. It´s a feeling, I never want to miss again.

"-kiss you. It would be the first thing I would do in the morning."

He tucks a strand of hair behind my ears.

"I would-" his hands move to my waist and pull me onto his lap. "-make you sit right here and whisper all the things I adore about you. Like-" he kisses my forehead, I feel his lips across my face. I close my eyes and enjoy being so close to him. He leans further towards me, his lips brush over my neck and leaves a kiss there.

He mutters a few words, that I -much to my dislike- can´t understand. But I´m too caught up in his embrace to ask about it.

But then, he seems to get more confident and when he speaks again, I almost tear up.

"I love you. As my best friend, my heart, my love, my person. If you let me. I'll be yours, if you want to be mine."

I kiss him again, letting the tears flow, because I don´t know what else I could do to show my happiness. When we break apart, I look at him. A lovesick feeling inside my chest.

We're holding each other in our arms, but just a few seconds pass until his curiosity wins and he turns to me.

"That quote, that you wrote a few weeks ago, about someone being like the sun for you. Who was it about? Because you did not, just for once, talked about a fictional character. I would remember." Okay, I didn't expect that.

His beautiful eyes continue to look at me, encouraging me to come out with the truth. I nervously smile, tracing the lines in his hand.

"As you said, you ever looked at someone and just thought: This is my person? Someone, you want to have in your life, no matter, if it´s just a friend, a boyfriend or maybe even a best friend." I look at him, searching in his eyes, that he knows how I feel. Then I continue.

"Someone who makes you smile just by existing. Or someone who has a shitty humor, but he delivers his jokes so perfect, it makes you laugh anyway. Someone, who holds my heart and my mind in his hands, even if he doesnt know it."

"What´s he like?" His eyes are curious, but to my surprise, he seems irritated by the thought, that I could be in love with someone. Someone, who isnt him. You big, big, idiot.

"He's kind, has a fascination for fantasy books and for riding horses, playing baseball or fighting creatures in video games. He doesn't know, why I have a soft spot for sweet, gentle and caring characters, even though he is my inspiration for writing them."

His lips part in surprise.

"He's my everything. Sometimes it makes me sad, because I can´t love someone else, the same way. But then, I look at him and I feel like, why do I even want to love someone else, when he exits." I pause for a moment.

"When you exist."

My words make him speechless, but he continues to hold me close to his heart.

"For a long time, I didnt even know I had feelings for you too, Alex. You were always like a second home for me.

You are someone I trust the most and who I rely on in any kind of situation. You make me laugh and you´re always there for me. At first, I didnt notice my change of feelings. Because you kept being my safe place, but as I grew up, I realized that nothing mattered the way, you matter to me.

Sometimes, when I look at you, it feels like I have met my other soul or that maybe, we share the same. Nothing in this world is as important to me than you or your feelings. Maybe it wasnt clear enough for you to see, but I am in love with you.

Your existence in this world is so special and like nothing else, I could ever dream of. Because you are my dream, the most-dearest one."

#alex walter #my life with the walter boys #cole walter #love confessions #love #x reader #soulmates #fanfic

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Jon Haidt

Published: Mar 9, 2023

In May 2014, Greg Lukianoff invited me to lunch to talk about something he was seeing on college campuses that disturbed him. Greg is the president of FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression), and he has worked tirelessly since 2001 to defend the free speech rights of college students. That almost always meant pushing back against administrators who didn’t want students to cause trouble, and who justified their suppression of speech with appeals to the emotional “safety” of students—appeals that the students themselves didn’t buy. But in late 2013, Greg began to encounter new cases in which students were pushing to ban speakers, punish people for ordinary speech, or implement policies that would chill free speech. These students arrived on campus in the fall of 2013 already accepting the idea that books, words, and ideas could hurt them. Why did so many students in 2013 believe this, when there was little sign of such beliefs in 2011?

Greg is prone to depression, and after hospitalization for a serious episode in 2007, Greg learned CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy). In CBT you learn to recognize when your ruminations and automatic thinking patterns exemplify one or more of about a dozen “cognitive distortions,” such as catastrophizing, black-and-white thinking, fortune telling, or emotional reasoning. Thinking in these ways causes depression, as well as being a symptom of depression. Breaking out of these painful distortions is a cure for depression. 

What Greg saw in 2013 were students justifying the suppression of speech and the punishment of dissent using the exact distortions that Greg had learned to free himself from. Students were saying that an unorthodox speaker on campus would cause severe harm to vulnerable students (catastrophizing); they were using their emotions as proof that a text should be removed from a syllabus (emotional reasoning). Greg hypothesized that if colleges supported the use of these cognitive distortions, rather than teaching students skills of critical thinking (which is basically what CBT is), then this could cause students to become depressed. Greg feared that colleges were performing reverse CBT. 

I thought the idea was brilliant because I had just begun to see these new ways of thinking among some students at NYU. I volunteered to help Greg write it up, and in August 2015 our essay appeared in The Atlantic with the title: The Coddling of the American Mind. Greg did not like that title; his original suggestion was “Arguing Towards Misery: How Campuses Teach Cognitive Distortions.” He wanted to put the reverse CBT hypothesis in the title.

After our essay came out, things on campus got much worse. The fall of 2015 marked the beginning of a period of protests and high-profile conflicts on campus that led many or most universities to implement policies that embedded this new way of thinking into campus culture with administrative expansions such as “bias response teams” to investigate reports of “microaggressions.” Surveys began to show that most students and professors felt that they had to self-censor. The phrase “walking on eggshells” became common. Trust in higher ed plummeted, along with the joy of intellectual discovery and sense of goodwill that had marked university life throughout my career. 

Greg and I decided to expand our original essay into a book in which we delved into the many causes of the sudden change in campus culture. Our book focused on three “great untruths” that seemed to be widely believed by the students who were trying to shut down speech and prosecute dissent:

1. What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker 2. Always trust your feelings 3. Life is a battle between good people and evil people. 

Each of these untruths was the exact opposite of a chapter in my first book, The Happiness Hypothesis, which explored ten Great Truths passed down to us from ancient societies east and west. We published our book in 2018 with the title, once again, of The Coddling of the American Mind. Once again, Greg did not like the title. He wanted the book to be called “Disempowered,” to capture the way that students who embrace the three great untruths lose their sense of agency. He wanted to capture reverse CBT. 

The Discovery of the Gender-by-Politics Interaction

In September 2020, Zach Goldberg, who was then a graduate student at Georgia State University, discovered something interesting in a dataset made public by Pew Research. Pew surveyed about 12,000 people in March 2020, during the first month of the Covid shutdowns. The survey included this item: “Has a doctor or other healthcare provider EVER told you that you have a mental health condition?” Goldberg graphed the percentage of respondents who said “yes” to that item as a function of their self-placement on the liberal-conservative 5-point scale and found that white liberals were much more likely to say yes than white moderates and conservatives. (His analyses for non-white groups generally found small or inconsistent relationships with politics.) 

I wrote to Goldberg and asked him to redo it for men and women separately, and for young vs. old separately. He did, and he found that the relationship to politics was much stronger for young (white) women. You can see Goldberg’s graph here, but I find it hard to interpret a three-way interaction using bar charts, so I downloaded the Pew dataset and created line graphs, which make it easier to interpret. 

Here’s the same data, showing three main effects: gender (women higher), age (youngest groups higher), and politics (liberals higher). The graphs also show three two-way interactions (young women higher, liberal women higher, young liberals higher). And there’s an important three-way interaction: it is the young liberal women who are highest. They are so high that a majority of them said yes, they had been told that they have a mental health condition. 

Figure 1.  Data from Pew Research, American Trends Panel Wave 64. The survey was fielded March 19-24, 2020. Graphed by Jon Haidt.

In recent weeks—since the publication of the CDC’s report on the high and rising rates of depression and anxiety among teens—there has been a lot of attention to a different study that shows the gender-by-politics interaction: Gimbrone, Bates, Prins, & Keyes (2022), titled: “The politics of depression: Diverging trends in internalizing symptoms among US adolescents by political beliefs.” Gimbrone et al. examined trends in the Monitoring the Future dataset, which is the only major US survey of adolescents that asks high school students (seniors) to self-identify as liberal or conservative (using a 5-point scale). The survey asks four items about mood/depression. Gimbrone et al. found that prior to 2012 there were no sex differences and only a small difference between liberals and conservatives. But beginning in 2012, the liberal girls began to rise, and they rose the most. The other three groups followed suit, although none rose as much, in absolute terms, as did the liberal girls (who rose .73 points since 2010, on a 5-point scale where the standard deviation is .89). 

Figure 2. Data from Monitoring the Future, graphed by Gimbrone et al. (2022). The scale runs from 1 (minimum) to 5 (maximum).

The authors of the study try to explain the fact that liberals rise first and most in terms of the terrible things that conservatives were doing during Obama’s second term, e.g., 

Liberal adolescents may have therefore experienced alienation within a growing conservative political climate such that their mental health suffered in comparison to that of their conservative peers whose hegemonic views were flourishing.

The progressive New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg took up the question and wrote a superb essay making the argument that teen mental health is not and must not become a partisan issue. She dismissed Gimbrone et al.’s explanation as having a poor fit with their own data: 

Barack Obama was re-elected in 2012. In 2013, the Supreme Court extended gay marriage rights. It was hard to draw a direct link between that period’s political events and teenage depression, which in 2012 started an increase that has continued, unabated, until today.

After examining the evidence, including the fact that the same trends happened at the same time in Britain, Canada, and Australia, Goldberg concluded that “Technology, not politics, was what changed in all these countries around 2012. That was the year that Facebook bought Instagram and the word “selfie” entered the popular lexicon.”

Journalist Matt Yglesias also took up the puzzle of why liberal girls became more depressed than others, and in a long and self-reflective Substack post, he described what he has learned about depression from his own struggles involving many kinds of treatment. Like Michelle Goldberg, he briefly considered the hypothesis that liberals are depressed because they’re the only ones who see that “we’re living in a late-stage capitalist hellscape during an ongoing deadly pandemic w record wealth inequality, 0 social safety net/job security, as climate change cooks the world,” to quote a tweet from the Washington Post tech columnist Taylor Lorenz. Yglesias agreed with Goldberg and other writers that the Lorenz explanation—reality makes Gen Z depressed—doesn’t fit the data, and, because of his knowledge of depression, he focused on the reverse path: depression makes reality look terrible. As he put it: “Mentally processing ambiguous events with a negative spin is just what depression is.”

Yglesias tells us what he has learned from years of therapy, which clearly involved CBT:

It’s important to reframe your emotional response as something that’s under your control: • Stop saying “so-and-so made me angry by doing X.” • Instead say “so-and-so did X, and I reacted by becoming angry.” And the question you then ask yourself is whether becoming angry made things better? Did it solve the problem? 

Yglesias wrote that “part of helping people get out of their trap is teaching them not to catastrophize.” He then described an essay by progressive journalist Jill Filipovic that argued, in Yglesias’s words, that “progressive institutional leaders have specifically taught young progressives that catastrophizing is a good way to get what they want.”

Yglesias quoted a passage from Filipovic that expressed exactly the concern that Greg had expressed to me back in 2014: 

I am increasingly convinced that there are tremendously negative long-term consequences, especially to young people, coming from this reliance on the language of harm and accusations that things one finds offensive are “deeply problematic” or even violent. Just about everything researchers understand about resilience and mental well-being suggests that people who feel like they are the chief architects of their own life — to mix metaphors, that they captain their own ship, not that they are simply being tossed around by an uncontrollable ocean — are vastly better off than people whose default position is victimization, hurt, and a sense that life simply happens to them and they have no control over their response. 

I have italicized Filipovic’s text about the benefits of feeling like you captain your own ship because it points to a psychological construct with a long history of research and measurement: Locus of control. As first laid out by Julian Rotter in the 1950s, this is a malleable personality trait referring to the fact that some people have an internal locus of control—they feel as if they have the power to choose a course of action and make it happen, while other people have an external locus of control—they have little sense of agency and they believe that strong forces or agents outside of themselves will determine what happens to them. Sixty years of research show that people with an internal locus of control are happier and achieve more. People with an external locus of control are more passive and more likely to become depressed.

How a Phone-Based Childhood Breeds Passivity

There are at least two ways to explain why liberal girls became depressed faster than other groups at the exact time (around 2012) when teens traded in their flip phones for smartphones and the girls joined Instagram en masse. The first and simplest explanation is that liberal girls simply used social media more than any other group. Jean Twenge’s forthcoming book, Generations, is full of amazing graphs and insightful explanations of generational differences. In her chapter on Gen Z, she shows that liberal teen girls are by far the most likely to report that they spend five or more hours a day on social media (31% in recent years, compared to 22% for conservative girls, 18% for liberal boys, and just 13% for conservative boys). Being an ultra-heavy user means that you have less time available for everything else, including time “in real life” with your friends. Twenge shows in another graph that from the 1970s through the early 2000s, liberal girls spent more time with friends than conservative girls. But after 2010 their time with friends drops so fast that by 2016 they are spending less time with friends than are conservative girls. So part of the story may be that social media took over the lives of liberal girls more than any other group, and it is now clear that heavy use of social media damages mental health, especially during early puberty. 

But I think there’s more going on here than the quantity of time on social media. Like Filipovic, Yglesias, Goldberg, and Lukianoff, I think there’s something about the messages liberal girls consume that is more damaging to mental health than those consumed by other groups. 

The Monitoring the Future dataset happens to have within it an 8-item Locus of Control scale. With Twenge’s permission, I reprint one such graph from Generations showing responses to one of the items: “Every time I try to get ahead, something or somebody stops me.” This item is a good proxy for Filipovic’s hypothesis about the disempowering effects of progressive institutions. If you agree with that item, you have a more external locus of control. As you can see in Figure 3, from the 1970s until the mid-2000s, boys were a bit more likely to agree with that item, but then girls rose to match boys, and then both sexes rose continuously throughout the 2010s—the era when teen social life became far more heavily phone-based. 

Figure 3. Percentage of boys and girls (high school seniors) who agree with (or are neutral about) the statement “Every time I try to get ahead, something or somebody stops me.” From Monitoring the Future, graphed by Jean Twenge in her forthcoming book Generations.

When the discussion of the gender-by-politics interaction broke out a few weeks ago, I thought back to Twenge’s graph and wondered what would happen if we broke up the sexes by politics. Would it give us the pattern in the Gimbrone et al. graphs, where the liberal girls rise first and most? Twenge sent me her data file (it’s a tricky one to assemble, across the many years), and Zach Rausch and I started looking for the interaction. We found some exciting hints, and I began writing this post on the assumption that we had a major discovery. For example, Figure 4 shows the item that Twenge analyzed. We see something like the Gimbrone et al. pattern in which it’s the liberal girls who depart from everyone else, in the unhealthy (external) direction, starting in the early 2000s. 

Figure 4. Percentage of liberal and conservative high school senior boys (left panel) and girls (right panel) who agree with the statement “Every time I try to get ahead, something or somebody stops me.” From Monitoring the Future, graphed by Zach Rausch.

It sure looks like the liberal girls are getting more external while the conservative girls are, if anything, trending slightly more internal in the last decade, and the boys are just bouncing around randomly. But that was just for this one item. We also found a similar pattern for a second item, “People like me don’t have much of a chance at a successful life.” (You can see graphs of all 8 items here.) 

We were excited to have found such clear evidence of the interaction, but when we plotted responses to the whole scale, we found only a hint of the predicted interaction, and only in the last few years, as you can see in Figure 5. After trying a few different graphing strategies, and after seeing if there was a good statistical justification for dropping any items, we reached the tentative conclusion that the big story about locus of control is not about liberal girls, it’s about Gen Z as a whole. Everyone—boys and girls, left and right—developed a more external locus of control gradually, beginning in the 1990s. I’ll come back to this finding in future posts as I explore the second strand of the After Babel Substack: the loss of “play-based childhood” which happened in the 1990s when American parents (and British, and Canadian) stopped letting their children out to play and explore, unsupervised. (See Frank Furedi’s important book Paranoid Parenting. I believe that the loss of free play and self-supervised risk-taking blocked the development of a healthy, normal, internal locus of control. That is the reason I teamed up with Lenore Skenazy, Peter Gray, and Daniel Shuchman to found LetGrow.org.) 

Figure 5. Locus of Control has shifted slightly but steadily toward external since the 1990s. Scores are on a 5-point scale from 1 = most internal to 5 = most external. 

We kept looking in the Monitoring the Future dataset and the Gimbrone et al. paper for other items that would allow us to test Filipovic’s hypothesis. We found an ideal second set of variables: The Monitoring the Future dataset has a set of items on “self derogation” which is closely related to disempowerment, as you can see from the four statements that comprise the scale:

I feel I do not have much to be proud of. Sometimes I think I am no good at all. I feel that I can't do anything right. I feel that my life is not very useful.

Gimbrone et al. had graphed the self-derogation scale, as you can see in their appendix (Figure  A.4). But Zach and I re-graphed the original data so that we could show a larger range of years, from 1977 through 2021. As you can see in Figure 6, we find the gender-by-politics interaction. Once again, and as with nearly all of the mental health indicators I examined in a previous post, there’s no sign of trouble before 2010. But right around 2012 the line for liberal girls starts to rise. It rises first, and it rises most, with liberal boys not far behind (as in Gimbrone et al.).

Figure 6. Self-derogation scale, averaging four items from the Monitoring the Future study. Graphed by Zach Rausch. The scale runs from 1 (strongly disagree with each statement) to 5 (strongly agree). 

In other words, we have support for Filipovic’s “captain their own ship” concern, and for Lukianoff’s disempowerment concern: Gen Z has become more external in its locus of control, and Gen Z liberals (of both sexes) have become more self-derogating. They are more likely to agree that they “can’t do anything right.” Furthermore, most of the young people in the progressive institutions that Filipovic mentioned are women, and that has become even more true since 2014 when, according to Gallup data, young women began to move to the left while young men did not move either way. As Gen Z women became more progressive and more involved in political activism in the 2010s, it seems to have changed them psychologically. It wasn’t just that their locus of control shifted toward external—that happened to all subsets of Gen Z.  Rather, young liberals (including young men) seem to have taken into themselves the specific depressive cognitions and distorted ways of thinking that CBT is designed to expunge.

But where did they learn to think this way? And why did it start so suddenly around 2012 or 2013, as Greg observed, and as Figures 2 and 6 confirm?

Tumblr Was the Petri Dish for Disempowering Beliefs

I recently listened to a brilliant podcast series, The Witch Trials of J. K. Rowling, hosted by Megan Phelps-Roper, created within Bari Weiss’s Free Press. Phelps-Roper interviews Rowling about her difficult years developing the Harry Potter stories in the early 1990s, before the internet; her rollout of the books in the late 90s and early 2000s, during the early years of the internet; and her observations about the Harry Potter superfan communities that the internet fostered. These groups had streaks of cruelty and exclusion in them from the beginning, along with a great deal of love, joy, and community. But in the stunning third episode, Phelps-Roper and Rowling take us through the dizzying events of the early 2010s as the social media site Tumblr exploded in popularity (reaching its peak in early 2014), and also in viciousness. Tumblr was different from Facebook and other sites because it was not based on anyone’s social network; it brought together people from anywhere in the world who shared an interest, and often an obsession.

Phelps-Roper interviewed several experts who all pointed to Tumblr as the main petri dish in which nascent ideas of identity, fragility, language, harm, and victimhood evolved and intermixed. Angela Nagle (author of Kill All Normies) described the culture that emerged among young activists on Tumblr, especially around gender identity, in this way:

There was a culture that was encouraged on Tumblr, which was to be able to describe your unique non-normative self… And that’s to some extent a feature of modern society anyway. But it was taken to such an extreme that people began to describe this as the snowflake [referring to the idea that each snowflake is unique], the person who constructs a totally kind of boutique identity for themselves, and then guards that identity in a very, very sensitive way and reacts in an enraged way when anyone does not respect the uniqueness of their identity. 

Nagle described how on the other side of the political spectrum, there was “the most insensitive culture imaginable, which was the culture of 4chan.” The communities involved in gender activism on Tumblr were mostly young progressive women while 4Chan was mostly used by right-leaning young men, so there was an increasingly gendered nature to the online conflict. The two communities supercharged each other with their mutual hatred, as often happens in a culture war. The young identity activists on Tumblr embraced their new notions of identity, fragility, and trauma all the more tightly, increasingly saying that words are a form of violence, while the young men on 4chan moved in the opposite direction: they brandished a rough and rude masculinity in which status was gained by using words more insensitively than the next guy. It was out of this reciprocal dynamic, the experts on the podcast suggest, that today’s cancel culture was born in the early 2010s. Then, in 2013, it escaped from Tumblr into the much larger Twitterverse. Once on Twitter, it went national and even global (at least within the English-speaking countries), producing the mess we all live with today.

I don’t want to tell that entire story here; please listen to the Witch Trials podcast for yourself. It is among the most enlightening things I’ve read or heard in all my years studying the American culture war (along with Jon Ronson’s podcast Things Fell Apart). I just want to note that this story fits perfectly with both the timing and the psychology of Greg’s reverse CBT hypothesis. 

Implications and Policy Changes

In conclusion, I believe that Greg Lukianoff was exactly right in the diagnosis he shared with me in 2014. Many young people had suddenly—around 2013—embraced three great untruths:

They came to believe that they were fragile and would be harmed by books, speakers, and words, which they learned were forms of violence (Great Untruth #1). 

They came to believe that their emotions—especially their anxieties—were reliable guides to reality (Great Untruth #2).

They came to see society as comprised of victims and oppressors—good people and bad people (Great Untruth #3).

Liberals embraced these beliefs more than conservatives. Young liberal women adopted them more than any other group due to their heavier use of social media and their participation in online communities that developed new disempowering ideas. These cognitive distortions then caused them to become more anxious and depressed than other groups. Just as Greg had feared, many universities and progressive institutions embraced these three untruths and implemented programs that performed reverse CBT on young people, in violation of their duty to care for them and educate them. 

I welcome challenges to this conclusion from scholars, journalists, and subscribers, and I will address such challenges in future posts. I must also repeat that I don’t blame everything on smartphones and social media; the other strand of my story is the loss of play-based childhood, with its free play and self-governed risk-taking. But if this conclusion stands (along with my conclusions in previous posts), then I think there are two big policy changes that should be implemented as soon as possible: 

1) Universities and other schools should stop performing reverse CBT on their students

As Greg and I showed in The Coddling of the American Mind, most of the programs put in place after the campus protests of 2015 are based on one or more of the three Great Untruths, and these programs have been imported into many K-12 schools. From mandatory diversity training to bias response teams and trigger warnings, there is little evidence that these programs do what they say they do, and there are some findings that they backfire. In any case, there are reasons, as I have shown, to worry that they teach children and adolescents to embrace harmful, depressogenic cognitive distortions.

One initiative that has become popular in the last few years is particularly suspect: efforts to tell college students to avoid common English words and phrases that are said to be “harmful.” Brandeis University took the lead in 2021 with its “oppressive language list.” Brandeis urged its students to stop saying that they would “take a stab at” something because it was unnecessarily violent. For the same reason, they urged that nobody ask for a “trigger warning” because, well, guns. Students should ask for “content warnings” instead, to keep themselves safe from violent words like “stab.” Many universities have followed suit, including Colorado State University, The University of British Columbia, The University of Washington, and Stanford, which eventually withdrew its “harmful language list” because of the adverse publicity. Stanford had urged students to avoid words like “American,” “Immigrant,” and “submit,” as in “submit your homework.” Why? because the word “submit” can “imply allowing others to have power over you.” The irony here is that it may be these very programs that are causing liberal students to feel disempowered, as if they are floating in a sea of harmful words and people when, in reality, they are living in some of the most welcoming and safe environments ever created.

2) The US Congress should raise the age of “internet adulthood” from 13 to 16 or 18

What do you think should be the minimum age at which children can sign a legally binding contract to give away their data and their rights,  and expose themselves to harmful content, without the consent or knowledge of their parents? I asked that question as a Twitter poll, and you can see the results here:

Image: See my original tweet.

Of course, this poll of my own Twitter followers is far from a valid survey, and I phrased my question in a leading way, but my phrasing was an accurate statement of today’s status quo. I think that most people now understand that the age of 13, which was set back in 1998 when we didn’t know what the internet would become, is just too low, and it is not even enforced. When my kids started 6th grade in NYC public schools, they each told me that “everyone” was on Instagram.

We are now 11 years into the largest epidemic of adolescent mental illness ever recorded. I know so many families that have been thrown into fear and turmoil by a child’s suicide attempt. You probably do too, given that the recent CDC report tells us that one in ten adolescents now say they have made an attempt to kill themselves. It is hitting all political and demographic groups. The evidence is abundant that social media is a major cause of the epidemic, and perhaps the major cause. It's time we started treating social media and other apps designed for “engagement” (i.e., addiction) like alcohol, tobacco, and gambling, or, because they can harm society as well as their users, perhaps like automobiles and firearms. Adults should have wide latitude to make their own choices, but legislators and governors who care about mental health, women’s health, or children’s health need to step up.

It’s not enough to find more money for mental health services, although that is sorely needed. In addition, we must shut down the conveyer belt so that today’s toddlers will not suffer the same fate in twelve years. Congress should set a reasonable minimum age for minors to sign contracts and open accounts without explicit parental consent, and the age needs to be after teens have progressed most of the way through puberty. (The harm caused by social media seems to be greatest during puberty.) If Congress won’t do it then state legislatures should act. There are many ways to rapidly verify people’s ages online, and I’ll discuss age verification processes in a future post. 

In conclusion: All of Gen Z got more anxious and depressed after 2012. But Lukianoff’s reverse CBT hypothesis is the best explanation I have found for Why the mental health of liberal girls sank first and fastest.

#Jonathan Haidt #Greg Lukianoff #Reverse CBT #reverse cognitive behavioral therapy #cognitive behavioral therapy #emotional fragility #fragility #emotional reasoning #external locus #internal locus #victimhood #victimhood culture #Generation Z #Gen Z #anxiety #depression #mental health #mental health issues #trauma #personal identity #hellsite #Tumblr culture #religion is a mental illness

[dasha-aibo]

A big rant about the Russian opposition

Well, you said you wanted it, so here it is.

Be warned: this will be long, rambly and unfocused. But I will try to split it into several parts.

Where it all began. The 90s.

Following the collapse of the USSR, Russian opposition was left in a weird state. Big Soviet-era opposition figures like Yeltsin now held all the power, yet, at the same time, the government was full of ex-Soviet party members. See, ol' Boris didn't want to do a lustration. I don't have his exact motivations, but, if I was put at a gunpoint and forced to guess, it was because Russia, even without all the states that left was a BIGHUGE country and needed people who knew how it all worked. And all of them happened to be party apparatchicks.

Yeltsin also left the KGB eseentially untouched. This is not well-known, but KGB were actually supportive of the fall of the USSR. Now, late-Gorby KGB is not the same as KGB during Stalin or even Khruschev. They were de-fanged and forced under too much supervision. Which they didn't like. So they were allowed to change their name, had some reshuffling and re-emerged as FSB. Ostensibly, just there to fight crime and protect the state, no disappearing people allowed anymore.

This is important to understand as we go forward.

90s were, overall, a time of terrible, terrible poverty and unimaginably, unprecedented freedom in Russia. If you knew what to do and was willing to do it, you could become a millionaire overnight. If you didn't have a particuarly marketable set of skills or was just unwilling to adapt, you'd be on the brink of starvation. And that's me not even touching the organized and disorganized crime which was absolutely rampant.

Then there was the privatization. Essentially, Yegor Gaidar, the prime minister during Yeltsin's first term decided that the best course of action was to take this lumbering 70-yo communist system and crash it head-first into capitalism. It was even called "shock therapy".

Now, in hindisght, we can say that his policies very much saved Russia and lead to economic prosperity later on. But man, shit was HARD for regular people. Especially hordes of state workers.

His most infamous project, however, was the privatization. Essentially, since EVERYTHING in USSR was state-owned and we were moving towards a capitalist system, someone needed to become the owner of all this state property. Privatize it, so to say. Of course, regular people could privatize their cars and apartments, which most everyone did. But the big bucks were in all the factories and natural resource mines. And this was done in the most ass-backwards way possible. People with connections got to bid on very lucrative property in the dead of the night with only one announcement in the local newspaper nobody read. Shit like that.

Everyone disliked that.

This is how Russia became saddled with it's giant oligarchy class.

I promise all of this is relevant.

Another really important thing happened in the 90s: the 1996 election. Yeltsin wanted a second term and he REALLY didn't want commies, his main opposition, to win. So he played dirty. Unlike what many later said, he didn't outright steal the elections. He did, however, do everything in his power as a prez to ensure a victory.

Everyone disliked that. Which is how we got Putin.

But 90s also saw the rise of several important opposition figures. And there really was actual freedom of speech and very little crackdown on opposition and protests. It still happened, don't get me wrong, but it was so minor compared to what's happening today, that it's barely worth mentioning. Anyway, back to opposition figures.

I will note three main one. Boris Nemtsov was the biggest - he was a favorite of Yeltsin's, was even a Deputy Prime Minister at one point and was considered as Yeltsin's heir at the same point. Things didn't work out. But he was the big face of liberals and democrats of the era. A guy who's "against everything bad and for everything good".

Then there was Mikhail Khodorkovsky. An oligarch and a philantropist, he was genuinely interested in the future of Russia and making it a big important country on the world stage through education and commerce.

Lastly, Gennady Kasparov. Yeah, the chess guy who lost to a computer. He wasn't really political in the 90s, but I still consider him part of the "old guard".

Part 2 in a reblog, because this is getting unreadable.

[fortuna-et-cataclysmos]

On Katara and feminism in NATLA

I grew up with ATLA. I was exactly Katara’s age when ATLA started to air in my country, and this cartoon has taught me more about life than I’d like to admit. Among them, was feminism.

I was absolutely obsessed with Katara as a kid: back then strong female characters - who were BOTH girlish and strong! – were still quite rare in mainstream media. I absolutely loved to see this girl who was raised in a patriarchal society similar to mine, who was both girly and an absolute badass even in days she didn’t know how to properly waterbend.

Back in those days, they were airing the episodes in order and I was super excited to see her FINALLY learn how to properly waterbend once they reach the North Pole. So when Paku refused to teach her for BEING A GIRL, as a preteen girl myself, I was ENRAGED.

Then Katara did something crazy. She freaking defied a waterbending master, knowing that she had no chance of winning whatsoever. And guys, I swear that fight became a core memory for me. On our crusty Windows XP’s desktop, there was a gif downloaded over several minutes of that exact fight. And I would watch it. On loop. When Katara defied Paku, I felt empowered, and that feeling never left.

Now that I am done with my lame ass backstory, back to NATLA.

You can imagine how EXCITED I was to finally see that fight in 4K. At that point, I was already pissed that they removed Sokka’s sexist flaws and subverted his dynamics with him, rather than Katara being “the parent” of the group (which was outrageous, if you ask me. One of the main character traits of Katara was her being a mother figure at an early age, which explained why she always felt like she HAD to be the responsible one, and why she had so much repressed rage).

But Katara’s struggle with the Northern Tribe over her right to learn how to use waterbending for fighting? That, in my opinion, was epic! Why?

Katara’s fight with Paku was a premediated act

In the original series, Paku says that girls can’t learn how to waterbend, and in a moment of rage, Katara whips him in the neck. I agree that it was a totally badass move, and it made especially sense given her drive to learn waterbending for fighting.

But I also really liked how NATLA approached that: in NATLA, when Katara learns that she cannot waterbend to fight, she doesn’t immediately attack Paku. No, she takes the time to think about it, talk about it with Aang, with Sokka. Then, she decides to defy Paku.

In a way, her action is a protest: she isn’t angry at Paku personally, she is angry at the sexist rules he perpetuates. In a way, this calculated way of deciding to fight shows a certain emotional maturity and dedication to the cause of feminism.

I really liked it.

The resolution of the fight

One thing that really disturbed me in the cartoon was how that fight scene was resolved. My preteen brain couldn’t make sense of why Paku suddenly decided to teach Katara how to fight after realising that her grandma was his ex-fiancé. Like, where is the connection??

My adult brain understands that Gran Gran had fled the Northern Water Tribe because of their sexist rules and hence Paku understood that him abiding to those sexist rules was wrong. But still, it feels so odd. Tell me which 60-70 year old boomer would suddenly change their mind about basically 90% of their world view because their ex happened to have fled from them because that world view? You tell me that Paku didn’t have enough time to rationalise in his wicked brain why Gran Gran left with a more nefarious motivation, or hell, just because she didn’t like him enough to get married?

Whereas in NATLA, we see that Paku’s approval doesn’t come all so easy: he does acknowledge Katara’s waterbending talents (a feat that also happens in the cartoon), but he still refuses to teach her. Because it isn’t about talent. It is about principle. And he is a dinosaur with sexist principles.

On the other hand, who is more open-minded to new ideas and social change? Who circles Katara following her defeat and admire her for her fight with Paku? It’s the youth! Social change is usually driven by the youth, and here we see that while the old rulers of the Northern Water Tribe are still sexist af, the young people are the ones who are ready to embrace a more equalitarian society.

Women in war

So then, when does Paku change his mind on letting women fight? During the attack on the Northern Water Tribe. They are outnumbered and they need more benders: lo and behold, Katara has the brilliant idea of bringing in the women. Now, I don’t say that that was actually a brilliant idea: strategically speaking, it is kinda stupid sending your HEALERS to the FRONTLINES to die while they could be much more useful saving the wounded. Nevertheless, I like the inclusion of the women into the battle in a symbolic level: in history, we see that most women’s rights were obtained during and in the aftermath of big conflicts. When men are fighting and there is a shortage of manpower, you employ women to work at the factories, or in the direst cases, you let women fight. This was a cool nod to that phenomenon happening. Also, if literally every man was already wounded or perished, it kinda makes sense that women take up the arms, so the “healers fighting isn’t strategically sound” argument doesn’t hold perfectly either.

Women of patriarchy

Lastly, one thing I really liked about NATLA is how not only Paku, but also the female healing master was sternly against women learning how to fight with waterbending. The healing master in the cartoon was softer, gentler, whereas here, she was even more vocal than Paku in grilling Katara for wanting to fight. This is such a great display of internalised sexism, but also how women in power in patriarchy may be vehement defenders of the status quo because it helps them to keep whatever power they have.

Oh, and in a final note, Katara’s reply to Zuko’s “you have found a waterbending master!” was absolutely horrendous. I may have liked how most of that arc was treated, but GOD, somebody give that girl a proper master to learn how to waterbend, because I don’t believe one second that a child with only ONE waterbending scroll can become a MASTER with self-study. The way Katara was managing to become a waterbending master in the span of weeks in the original series was already weird (and for those who weren’t fans before, it did attract quite some criticism in the fandom spheres back when it aired), but NATLA just took it and made it worse.

Nonetheless, I think that NATLA tried their best. And I appreciate that they tried to give ATLA a new twist, even though it didn’t land perfectly.

Everyone seems to be focusing on the bad of the show, so I felt compelled to share my two cents.

#atla #avatar the last airbender #natla #natla spoilers #atla analysis #katara #feminism

[hahafixon]

I Did It to Get You Flustered! ~ *Jung Wooyoung*

Summary: Deep Maroon Embarrassment

Pairing: Jung Wooyoung X Fem!Reader

Genre: Fluffy Oneshot

Word Count: 1146

Warning: Exhaustion

Lipstick Series Masterlist

Maroon is the color of risk and creativity

You have no idea how you always manage to get caught in these kinds of situations. All it took was a text from San telling you that Ateez wanted to have a sleepover at the dorms, since they had a day off tomorrow. Now here you are, swept up in their late-night game of truth or dare. Everyone was so tired they were acting like they were drunk, making you concerned for their mentality, but not enough that you’d say anything about it. At least you were still semi-aware of your surroundings, which made you the designated babysitter for the boys.

Hongjoong was sitting next to Mingi, giggling about something between the two of them. Seonghwa had Yunho’s head in his lap, stroking his hair absent-mindedly, and Jongho leaned against Seonghwa. Wooyoung was sandwiched between Yeosang and San who were laughing at some inside joke none of the rest of you were aware of. Then there was you, sort of away from the group, so you could keep an eye on them all at once. This was the exact moment when Yunho sleepily proposed a game of Truth or Dare, making everyone all excited.

The circle became more circle-ish and everyone nominated Yunho to go first since he suggested it. He sat up slowly before lazily looking around the room. “Hongjoong, truth or dare?”

“Truth.”

“Do you love me?” Yunho started winking, making finger hearts, and blowing kisses towards him, in an effort to sway his decision. Everyone started laughing, even you, at his flirtatious actions. Man they really must be tired. That or someone really did spike their drinks while you weren’t looking.

He thought for a moment before answering. “Sure. As a brother.”

“YOU JUST GOT BROTHER-ZONED!” Mingi teased Yunho loudly, high-fiving Hongjoong as he did so. Yunho started to pout, making everyone go crazy again.

When everyone settled down a bit, Hongjoong chose his victim. “Yeosang, truth or dare?”

Taking his time to think about it, he said, “Dare.”

“I dare you to kiss Wooyoung on the cheek to prove that you really are besties.”

Again, everyone went ballistic over the dare and Wooyoung tried to back away from him, though San held him from moving. Yeosang pressed a quick peck to his cheek, both boys’ cheeks a bright shade of red, and everyone falling over laughing hysterically. You couldn’t help but laugh as well at their crazy antics. They always knew how to make you laugh without fail.

“Okay, okay.” Yeosang muttered, pretending to wipe away some tears and sitting back up. “Y/n, truth or dare.”

You shrugged. “Truth.”

Ignoring the boy’s booing you, he asked, “Who’s your bias in Ateez?”

Rolling your eyes, you answered, “Easy. Wooyoung.”

Yeosang’s was the only mouth that didn’t pop open in complete and utter shock. Before anyone could start talking, a smug smile made its way onto his lips as he nonchalantly said, “Is that so? Well, I guess that means you should probably give him a kiss, yeah? Considering a bias is like a crush, wouldn’t you say?”

“Wait a second!”

“She didn’t choose dare!”

“You need to dare her to kiss him!”

“Yeosang, you’re cheating!”

“Why me?!”

Again, you ignored all of their shouts of protest as you crawled across the circle to press your lips to Wooyoung’s. Hey, in your defense, you’re still semi-coherent, so, of course, you were going to take a big risk and kiss your crush. People do crazy things when they’re in love and exhausted, mostly exhausted though. Besides, tonight was the night you were wearing your favorite maroon lipstick, since you didn’t take your makeup off after work. If you were lucky, not only would his face be red, but his lips too.

When you pulled back, ever so slowly to savor the buzzing sensation on your lips, you blushed when you both sighed in contentment. His eyes slowly fluttered open, his mouth slightly ajar, as if waiting for you to kiss him again but deeper. It was at that moment that he looked the most ethereal to you, like a true angel from heaven. His cheeks were glowing and his eyes were sparkling. But the best part was the maroon stain left on his lips, making you giggle at him.

“W-what?” He asked, sounding nervous.

“Nice lipstick, Wooyoung.” You teased, standing up abruptly. “Alright, guys. I don’t know about you, but I had a long day, so I’m turning in for the night. See you in the morning. I’ll make breakfast for you all, if you’d like.”

Everyone started whining and begging for you to stay as you made your way into the other room. Everything that had just happened rushed towards the forefront of your mind, making your stomach twist in uncomfortable knots. How could you do such a thing? He probably thinks you were just teasing him or leading him on or that this kiss wasn’t sincere at all. But that kiss, it felt so real, so special, so perfect. Was it selfish of you to want to kiss him again and again? Because you don’t think you could ever tire from the feeling of kissing him.

“Y/n, wait!” Your heart skipped a beat before it stopped. Wooyoung.

“Y-yeah?” You asked, not turning around. Your stomach kinked up even more, making nausea fill in, but you didn’t dare show it. “What’s up?”

“Are,” He started before trailing off. “Are you okay?”

You could hear him taking tentative steps closer as you  nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay.”

There was a long pause and you could feel his presence behind you. Your breath caught in your throat and you didn’t know how to react to the situation at hand. He whispered so softly, you almost couldn’t hear him, “Did you mean it? The kiss, I mean. Did you mean it when you kissed me?”

Not being able to trust your voice, you nodded softly. Eventually, you managed to reply, “Yes, I did. Of course, I did.”

When you felt him turn you around slowly, you took your next chance and kissed him again. He instantly responded, wrapping his arms around you and pulling you closer. You reciprocated his forwardness by entwining your arms around his neck. You smiled into the kiss and you felt him do the same, making you laugh yet again.

He pulled away, looking at you skeptically, “What’s so funny?”

You continued laughing like crazy, pointing at his lips. “Your lips are redder than your face.”

With a scoff, he shot back with, “Guess I’ll have to do the same to you,” before kissing you yet again. You were right, you could never tire from kissing him.

Now, if only the two of you realized you were being watched by the rest of Ateez.

#Ateez #Ateez Fanfiction #Ateez Oneshot #KPop #KPop Fanfiction #KPop Oneshot #Atiny #Jung Wooyoung #Jung Wooyoung X Reader #Jung Wooyoung Fanfiction #Jung Wooyoung Oneshot #Jung Wooyoung Fluff #Wooyoung #Wooyoung X Reader #Wooyoung Fanfiction #Wooyoung Oneshot #Wooyoung Fluff #Lipstick Series #Maroon Lipstick #Oneshot #Fluff

[gallifrey1sburning]

Musings on Another Life

“What’s up, spaceman?” Donna asked, setting a cup of tea in front of the Doctor where he sat at the wrought iron table in his back garden. He blinked, noticing for the first time that the sun was setting. It was odd that time could get away from him like that, now. An adjustment. So much of it was an adjustment, living like this. He’d thought that living linearly would make time feel so much more present, but it was the opposite, somehow. It ebbed and flowed and slipped away, like water.

“Oh, nothing,” he said, the answer still a reflex, before shaking his head. “No, sorry. Not nothing. A lot of things. I’ve been thinking about… a lot of things.”

Donna settled into the seat across from him, tapping her nails against the mug she’d kept for herself. “Care to share with the class?”

The Doctor took a slow sip of his tea—milky and sweet, just like he’d taken it the first time he’d worn a version of this face. He wondered if it was how the Other Him still took it. He swallowed. “I’ve been thinking about the Metacrisis,” he admitted.

“What about it?”

“Him,” the Doctor corrected. “The person. The Other Doctor. Well, the first Other-Doctor.”

“The part-human, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Right.” She studied him. “What about him, then?”

“I’ve always thought of him as a copy,” the Doctor admitted. “I told Rose that he was me, but… I don’t know that I really believed that. I thought of him as lesser. A facsimile of sorts. Oh, close enough for them to be happy together, sure, but not really me. But I…” he sighed and leaned back in his chair, setting his tea down. He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “I think I got it backward.”

Donna tilted her head to the side. “How d’you mean?”

“I think he was the real me, and I was what was left over.”

“Sorry, what?”

The Doctor met her puzzled gaze. “I don’t think it was a copy. I think it was a split.” When Donna just raised her eyebrows at him, he went on, “I mean, think about it. I was regenerating, but I didn’t want to, so I sent the energy into my old hand so that I could be what Rose wanted. And then I… I walked away into battle, and rather than being better now that she was back, I was worse. I was judgmental and cruel to my friends, and then to the Metacrisis, when all of you were doing the right thing. You were all doing what had to be done to save the multiverse, and I judged you for it. And then I… I just left them there. I abandoned Rose, the love of my lives, who I would have done anything to get back before then, whom I’d nearly killed myself over the loss of more than once, like what she wanted didn’t matter at all. I didn’t tell her I loved her, when it was all I’d thought of saying for years after I lost her. And then I became a monster. The Time Lord Victorious.”

Donna made a sound of protest, but he interrupted her. “No, I did. When I sacrificed myself to save your granddad? I’m sure he never said, even once we had you back and it was safe for you to remember, but I yelled at him. Called him a stupid old man who’d lived his life; told him, more or less, that my life was more important than his. That I was worth more than he was. Not in those exact words, but…” He shook his head. “And then I regenerated and I forgot. All of you, all of it. I went on like none of you had ever mattered. Barely thought of you. Never spoke of you. I was cold, disconnected. More alien than I’d been in centuries. I lost all of the lessons I’d learned in those past few bodies. Oh, sure, I came to love my new friends. Even River, in the end. But it was never the same. I was never the same. I think…” He wrapped his hands around his still-warm mug, letting the heat dispel the chill of the advancing evening. “I think that the parts of me that Rose healed went with her. I think that instead of staying the man she wanted, I became the man she wanted, and I saved the universe with you and then I told her I loved her and I gave her my forever. And I think that the person who stayed in this universe was what was left.”

“Oh, Doctor.” The Doctor felt Donna’s hand settle on his forearm. He blinked his eyes open. He couldn’t recall shutting them. The sky was darker now, and he could see stars shimmering into view in his peripheral vision. Donna’s eyes were damp in the reflected light shining through the sliding glass doors. He freed one hand from his mug and rested it over hers.

“It’s okay. It’s… I oddly feel more at peace with that than with the alternative. Is that weird?”

“Not really, I suppose. I mean, you wanted to give her everything, and you wanted to be with her more than anything. I can see how there would be peace in thinking that maybe you did, and you are.”

“But you don’t think it’s true?”

“I dunno. I wasn’t exactly there for the aftermath, was I? But I just saw you split in two in front of me not so long ago, and the next you clearly left a lot of his baggage behind—”

“Oi!”

“—so it wouldn’t be the strangest thing you’ve done even in the time I’ve known you, and it wouldn’t be terribly unbelievable, all things considered,” she finished, ignoring his protest.

He gave an aggrieved sigh. “I suppose that’s fair.”

“Do you think it’s true?”

The Doctor drummed his fingers against the back of her hand. “I don’t know, either. Considering that nothing I knew about myself or Gallifreyans or regeneration turned out to be true, it’s hard to say. It feels true. But it also feels like maybe I’ve finally grown it all back, in a way. Like maybe… maybe, after all those centuries, I’m finally me again.”

Donna smiled at him softly. “I think that’s all that matters then, don’t you?”

“Maybe so,” he agreed, smiling slightly back at her and squeezing her fingers. “Maybe so.”

On AO3

#doctor who #fourteenth doctor #donna noble #metacrisis doctor #rose tyler #my writing #tentoo #metacrisis doctor x rose Tyler

[mariaofdoranelle]

this absolutely screams you and your writing skills and i'm so excited to see what you do with it

you bought me a SWORD? OH MAN IM GONNA BE SO DANGEROUS 

we both know who's saying this to whom hehehehehe

CONGRATS ON 300 I'M SO HAPPY FOR YOU

You Bought Me a Sword!?

Written for my Drabblefest

THANK YOU SO MUCH. You and @elentiyawhitethorn both sent me this one, but I’ll see if I have another idea for this prompt heheh love you two so much ❤️❤️

Also I made it canonverse!! (Aelin’s birthday in HoF to be exact)

No warnings, 524 words

⨯ ⁺ ✦ ･ ｡ﾟ⨯ ﾟ♡ ✧* ･｡* ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆

The weight in Rowan’s sack was heavy, but not in a way that made his muscles burn, no. Instead, it felt heavy for the way it filled his heart with excitement and anticipation.

It was the princess’s birthday today, and a trip that would take one morning easily became an entire day of looking for something that’d light up her face. It had been easier than he anticipated since the merchants of the town she charmed were more than happy to see him, showing him all their goods before he could ask.

Still, Rowan felt an unusual twitch in his stomach every time he tried to anticipate what Aelin would look like when she first saw it.

Entering the kitchen, it was as full as usual.

“Price Rowan.” Malakai got up from a stool. “Any news on the murder?”

At the same time, Emrys said, “Want some porridge, Prince?”

“No,” he answered Malakai, then turned to Emrys to say the same, but stopped.

It was mid-afternoon, and Aelin almost burned out days ago.

He grabbed some porridge to take upstairs. Rowan found her lying in bed, reading a book she lent from another demi-Fae from the fortress.

The princess whipped her head towards him, the afternoon sun streaking into the room making her golden hair look like a halo. “How was it?”

“Predictable.” He opened his sack and grabbed one of the two packages. “Happy birthday.”

“You didn’t!” Aelin jumped off the bed. “I thought your gift was leaving me alone.”

“That’s insulting,” With Fae speed, he whisked the package away from her when she reached for it. “but I don’t think I could grant you such a gift, Princess.”

“Good.” Aelin gave him an adorable coy smile and extended her hands towards him, clenching them. “Now I want to see the gift you can give me.” She opened the package with a loud gasp, a thrilled gleam in her eyes. “Chocolate!”

Aelin sat up on the bed, tossing one into her full lips. And she moaned, the sound so unintentionally lascivious Rowan had to glance away in order to calm down the roaring in his blood.

“God, I missed those. Thank you.” She smiled at him, her eyes so content she looked intoxicated by the chocolate truffle.

“And…” he turned to grab the—

“You bought me a sword!?” When he handed it to her, Aelin’s jaw fell slack. “It’s so pretty!”

Rowan frowned at the overjoyed princess. Really, that was what she was thinking about? How the sword looked, not the first-rate steel or the easy grip of the hilt?

She was flailing the sword award, posing with it. “I’m going to be so dangerous now!”

“You like it?”

She bent her knees, side-thrusting the sword. “Fuck yes, I do!”

“Good.” As quick as his heartbeat, he took it from her hands. “I’ll keep it with your other blades.”

Her shoulders dropped. “Oh, come on!”

Rowan barely heard her protests, he was just swallowing his conflicted feelings down, repeating one thing to himself until he believed it.

Rowan was not, under any circumstance, physically attracted to that childish display of swordsmanship. Absolutely not.

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TAG LIST

I couldn’t tag the people in bold, sorry!

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#rowaelin #rowan whitethorn #throne of glass #rowaelin fanfiction #rowan x aelin #aelin x rowan #ask #rowaelin fanfic #throne of glass fanfic #rowaelin drabble #drabblefest #drabble #aelin fireheart

[purpleajisai]

Madara Week Day 2 - Christ/Antichrist

The Saviour of this World and the Christ: A comparative analysis of Madara Uchiha and Jesus Christ

It’s Christmas time. Christians all over the world are preparing themselves for what they consider one of the most joyful holidays in the year: the birth of the Messiah, He who came to redeem the world. Meanwhile, the Madara enthusiasts are making a countdown for the birthday of the man who tried to save the ninja world by sacrificing his very self. In this meta, I intend to explain the connections, similarities and differences between Madara Uchiha and Jesus Christ that I’ve found over the years. I would also recommend to read “Is Madara our Lord and Saviour?” by @al-hekima-madara-blog for another very interesting meta on the topic. This is my contribution to day 2 of Madara Week, hosted by @uchiha-event.

A quick note before I start my rambling: I will be using the Douay-Rheims translation of the Bible (Roman Catholic translation), but there shouldn’t be any problem for readers of Protestant background as the difference between the Bibles used by both denominations are in the Old Testament and our focus will be the New Testament.

“I am here to save the world”

Naruto Shippuden, chapter 677

For God sent not his Son into the world, to judge the world, but that the world may be saved by him.

John 3:17

What is the purpose of Madara in this story? One would be tempted to say “because every shonen needs a villain”, but I think his purpose as a character was to expose the flaws within the shinobi system that ultimately corrupted a man who desired peace into someone whose sense of reality became so warped by the situations in his life that he started a war to achieve said peace. Madara didn’t make the Eye of the Moon plan to be evil and act dramatic, he made it with the final objective of launching an eternal dream that would guarantee no more conflict and the ideal life for anyone within it. He’s already been past judging the world, he wants to save it at the expense of himself. This is similar to how God is presented in the Old Testament compared to the New Testament: we first see a God who insists that his law is followed and that chastises those who trespass and disobey in several ocassions. But once we reach the New Testament, he becomes a loving figure that intends to save people from eternal doom in hell (”reality is hell”, anyone?). The point is that we have a man whose purpose in the world is to cleanse all forms of evil thorugh his being and who wants to bring salvation to anyone, regardless if the world agrees or not.

“I come here to bring you light and joy in a life that’s beyond this reality”

Naruto Shippuden, chapter 626

Jesus said to her: I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, although he be dead, shall live.

John 11:25

What does Madara mean when he says that “you can’t see it”? After following the storyline we conclude that he’s talking about the Eye of the Moon plan. Let’s add some tangents here, the people who were directly involved in the plan and helped Madara one way or another. They had no clue about what would happen exactly but they were convinced by the prospect of a peaceful life free of their struggles. In a certain way, they believed in Madara. The exact same thing can be seen with Jesus, who promises eternal life beyond the death of the physical body. Nobody knows how Heaven looks like but the believers trust him on that promise.

“I bring peace”

Naruto Shippuden, chapter 661

These things I have spoken to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you shall have distress: but have confidence, I have overcome the world

John 16:33

Notice how Madara refers to the current state of the shinobi world as “Hashirama’s world”? In Christianity and the Bible, it is a common practice to separate “the world” and “the believers” as entities with entirely different mindsets and values. Madara sees the world as direct consequence of his nemesis, Hashirama, just as Christians see the evil in the world as the direct consequence of the sins of Lucifer. To “overcome the world”, when applied to Madara, refers to how he intends to use a power whose source is unknown (the power of the Sage of Six Paths) in order to end the paradox of Hashirama’s world. He is going to achieve peace to overwrite the current world and install his own world where the paradox is solved.

“I intend for you to acquire new identity within me”

Naruto Shippuden, chapter 665

If then any be in Christ a new creature, the old things are passed away, behold all things are made new.

2 Corinthians 5:17

And I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me. And that I live now in the flesh: I live in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered himself for me.

Galatians 2:20

I picked two of the letters in the New Testament in purpose, you may have noticed that the previous quotes come from the Gospel of John. Because the Gospel of John is a retelling of what Jesus did and said, whereas the letters (mostly from the apostle Paul) are reflections of the lives of the apostles after Jesus was gone. Similarly, Obito becomes Madara once Madara dies in the cave and walks in his shoes. Yesterday, I wrote a bit more about how Madara decomposed his humanity for the sake of his dream of peace. Here, we have Madara giving up his identity to anyone who embraces his goal, similarly to how Jesus signifies a brotherhood of believers. Madara also never writes down his autobiography or gets a space to present his POV, just as how all of what we know from Jesus is from the people close to him, not by his own word. In a sense, both become an entity for like-minded people to work towards a certain goal.

Thank you for reading this far, if you have any questions please use the ask box. It’s always a pleasure to have discussions and to talk about my favourite anime emo man.

#madara #madara uchiha #uchiha madara #naruto meta #purple's meta #madara week 2023 #madaraweek2023

[lajulie24]

It Had to Be You

Han/Leia Appreciation Week 2023 - Day 1: Anniversary / Memory

Inspired by When Harry Met Sally… (companion playlist here)

__

The first thing that General Han Solo and former Chief of State Princess Leia Organa did after entering the room for the interview was request that the documentary team dispense with their formal titles. Well, that, and give the crew a taste of the playful banter that apparently is a hallmark of their marriage.

“Just Leia, please,” the Princess said, shaking Selsama’s hand warmly. “No need for formalities for us.”

“Speak for yourself, Sweetheart,” Solo countered, giving his wife a sly grin and then turning to Selsama. “You can call me General Prince Consort Grand Real Important His Worshipfulness Han Solo,” he said, as Leia rolled her eyes.

“You think you’re funny, but you’re not,” she admonished him as they sat down, though she was doing a poor job of concealing her smile.

“I’m hilarious, and you love it,” her husband insisted.

Before they began, Selsama went over the basic of the project again – “Love and War,” a retrospective on the Galactic Civil War from the perspective of love and romance, produced in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the Alliance’s decisive victory at the Battle of Endor. This would be one of several interviews with committed mates who had been involved with the Rebellion.

Selsama smiled as the couple settled in close to one another on the small loveseat. Though their gray hair and wrinkled features definitely showed the four decades since the war, their expressions and manner towards one another immediately brought to her mind the candid holos of them from the war archives. Which, impossibly, seemed to have mostly been taken before they were officially together.

“So, let’s get started with something basic. Tell us about how you met,” Selsama said.

Now Leia was the one who had a bit of a mischievous look in her eyes. “The first time we met, we hated each other,” she began.

“You didn’t hate me, you ordered me into a trash compactor!” Han protested.

“You broke into an Imperial detention area with no plan to get out! And then you nearly got us killed.”

“Well, we both did that. We almost got smashed in that trash compactor, remember?”

“Oh, I remember,” Leia replied. “You helped me stay on top of the garbage.”

Han and Leia paused and smiled at each other, as if there were more to that memory than what they were saying. Well, it was Selsama’s job to capture that, so she was going to do her damnedest to do so.

“What were your impressions of each other, during that first meeting?”

“Bossy,” Han blurted out, and Leia scowled at him. “I know, I know, I didn’t like being told what to do, and you decided you were the boss of me five seconds in.” He grinned at his wife. “I did tell Luke you had a lot of spirit. Always liked that.”

Leia smiled back. “I thought he had a lot of courage,” she told Selsama. “We were in a tough situation, and he didn’t back down. We were going to escape or die trying.”

More shared looks between them, a conversation all of its own.

“Tell us a little bit about how you got together. When did that happen?” Selsama asked.

Han and Leia looked at each other for a beat, and then Han turned toward the camera again and shrugged. “‘S hard to pick an exact moment. We met, we escaped the Death Star, I left…”

“And then you came back,” Leia added. “And helped destroy it.” She had a rather smug look on her face for some reason.

“You knew I would.”

“I had a good feeling,” Leia continued, “that you were more than you seemed. And you stayed.”

“Right,” Han continued. “And then we became friends. We were friends for a long time.”

“And then we weren’t.”

“And then we fell in love.”

#hanleiaweek2023 #myfic #hanleia #han x leia #star wars #leia organa #han solo #when harry met sally #i can picture leia saying ‘I knew the way you know about a good melon’ can’t you? #hanleiacelebration

[fcbfemeni-11]

What are we doing?

Patri Guijarro

Relationships are messy, and i guess that’s one way to describe mine. But love concurs all, that’s what they say, right? Well, i’m not too sure anymore.

After another night sleeping on the couch in my shared apartment with my girlfriend, i really started to rethink this whole relationship. I’m not blaming her. I can’t blame her. Not when i’m hurting her too. We fight, more than we should.

“Good morning” I said to Patri this morning but, as expected, she gave me the cold shoulder.

“Okay. Do you know what? Fine! Be like that! I’ll make my own way to training” I snapped, and regretted it immediately.

“What? No, y/n, i’m sorry” Patri said sadly, and i felt guilty immediately.

“Me too. I’m sorry” I said softly, kissing her lightly.

The next morning was the exact same. But this time i was mad at her, for no reason, well not a good reason anyway.

“Go away, Patri!” I snapped as soon as she entered the kitchen.

“I’m just getting my shoes” She protested back, but i wasn’t having it.

“I don’t care. Go away!” I yelled again, but she stood her ground.

“Make me” She said.

“Don’t push me, Guijarro!!”

“Why? What are you going to do about it?” She asked with a smirk.

“More than you think” I said before walking away.

This trend never stopped. It was as if we were living the same morning over and over. It was as if the morning fights became apart of our morning routines. Argue in the morning, fall back in before training, argue and night. It was a never ending cycle. A cycle that i knew had to end. I was tired. She was tired. We were tired. Not of each other, but of whatever love we were showcasing. Neither of us admitted this, but it was clear to us as well as our teammates who have continuously pointed out how tired we look. The next day the same thing happened, with me sleeping on the couch, yet again. However, this morning i went into our room as Patri was getting ready and i stood, leaning against the wall.

“What’s up?” Patri asked suspiciously, as i never done this.

“How many times do we need to hurt each other before realising we’re no good at this?” I asked the Spaniard who immediately looked at the ground.

“We are good at this” She said, but she didn’t sound like she believed what she was saying.

“No we’re not. All we do is hurt each other, and it’s exhausting. I love you, Patri, more than i probably should. But we’re not good at this.”

“What does this mean then? Is this it?” She asked sadly.

“Not if you don’t want it to be. I don’t want this to be over. But something has to change. I think we should go on a break”

“For how long?”

“Until we know we won’t hurt each other”

“Where will you stay?”

“I’ll stay with Ale. I’m sorry, mi amor, but this needs to be done”

Our break lasted for about two days. We couldn’t stay away from each other. We ever tried breaking up, but that only led to us hooking up every other night. We had many conversations. Alexia had many conversations with me and Patri, too. But our habits never changed. We “broke up” for about two months, until we both met at the beach.

“I cannot bare to be apart from you anymore..” Patri said, starting the conversation off.

“If we are to do this again we need to make a promise” I said and Patri nodded.

“We must promise not to hurt each other anymore, not to constantly fight and to love each other with everything we have”

“I promise”

“And are you ready to give this another go?”

“With you? I’m ready for anything?”

“Te quiero, Patri Guijarro” As soon as these words left my mouth i felt Patri’s lips crash with mine.

This promise went a long way. And may have even saved our relationship.

#patri guijarro x reader #woso x reader #woso soccer #fcb femeni

[nanagoswife]

Nanami’s birthday

A/N: in honour of our favourite ex-salaryman’s birthday, this now exists😂 enjoy whatever the hell this is! (Also, paragraphs in italics are flashbacks)

Warnings: slight angst, not edited

- - -

Birthdays have never really been a big occasion for Nanami. The most he’s done to celebrate is maybe buying a cake along with his usual stuffed bread on his way home. However, there were always two people who dragged him along to celebrate. Well, two people he could tolerate, anyways. Haibara and you.

The two of you would always drag him out to do something. It didn’t matter if he tried to protest, he would always lose the battle. Especially if you gave him that pleading look that he never could refuse.

In those days, he never regretted going out. Not when Haibara would call it an early night leaving you and Nanami alone. Even if being alone with you made him slightly nervous, he would never trade it. Not when, during his birthday when you were all still relatively freshly third years, something happened after Haibara called it a night.

“Where are you taking me?” Nanami questioned, sounding as if he were annoyed. He really isn’t. Not when he’s relishing in your presence and grateful the two of you are finally alone. So, if anything, he’s enjoying the way your hand is grabbing his as you pull him along.

“You’ll see. Be patient,” you retort, giving him a mock look of annoyance.

A small chuckle escapes him before you’re suddenly tugging him into a park. Yoyogi Park to be exact. It pulls you away from the crowds of Shibuya into an almost silence. There’s the the occasional person walking through but, for this time of night, most areas are empty.

You don’t stop until you’re at the edge of the water. Nanami watches the way you tilt your head to the clear sky, watching the way the stars twinkle. While you admire the sky, he can’t help but look at you in the light of the bright moon. The sight of you like this, eyes bright as a small smile curved your lips, had his heart skipping a beat. The fact that your hand is still holding his doesn’t help the matter. It definitely doesn’t help when he’s now thinking he should finally tell you how he feels.

Before he can even think of speaking, though, you’re tugging him closely, pointing to the sky with your free hand as you excitedly call out, “Kento, look!”

As soon as he looks up, he sees what it is you’re so excited about. A shooting star.

When he looks back at you, he finds you already meeting his gaze. If his heart wasn’t threatening to beat its way out of his chest before, it definitely is now. Mainly because, now, you’re looking at him with those beautiful eyes, pulling him a little closer by his hand.

“Are you going to make a wish?” you ask in a near whisper.

With that, he smiles, moving his hand so he can intertwine your fingers with his as he takes the last step of space between you. Your free hand comes up to his face, brushing away the hair falling in front of his one eye and tucking it back. You were about to pull your hand away but he caught it, pressing it to his cheek instead as he leans into it.

“I don’t need to,” he finally mutters back. “I already have you.”

After that year, his birthdays haven’t been the same. Instead of it being a party of three, it became just you and him. Even when he left, nothing changed between the two of you. Well, nothing except for a silent agreement that being in a relationship wouldn’t work. Not when he left due to the uncertainty of the job. That didn’t mean the feelings you had for each other stopped. It was just that the progression merely… paused. Not only that, but the two of you never actually ended things.

With that fact in mind, it still didn’t stop the nerves he felt as he waited for you. This will be the first birthday he’ll be spending with you since he’s come back to the jujutsu world. There’s an excitement for what this night could hold but also disappointed knowing that Gojo is coming along. Shoko is as well, thankfully so maybe it’ll be a bit more toned down. He’s just hoping that he’ll get some time alone with you. Well, it’s more like he’s hoping maybe the pause that’s been going on between the two of you would instead play.

So, as he leans against the post of the Jujutsu High entryway, he starts thinking about how it used to be. How the two of you had only officially been together for a few months before everything went… well, wrong.

“Kento!” you call out suddenly, breaking him from his thoughts. “Sorry I’m late,” you huff out, halting in front of him from running all the way here.

“You didn’t have to run here.”

“But it’s your birthday,” you retort without any hesitation. “I’ve never kept you waiting before.”

Even though he knows you’re only talking about these celebrations, he can’t help but inwardly doubt that. Sure, you’ve never kept him waiting when it comes to these outings but you have kept him waiting in a lot of other ways. It’s not your fault. He’s the one that distanced himself but you were the one that decided to put on the pause. Your reasoning? So he could worry less and find the exact person he wanted to be. However, he wanted to be with you. At the same time, he knew you saw things in him that he couldn’t see himself. It’s one of the many things about you that he loves.

“It’s alright,” he mutters with a pat to your head. “After all, it gives me more time away from Gojo.”

That earns a laugh from you that makes him smile.

“If this is how you’re acting now, I’m scared you won’t make it through tonight,” you tease.

“I will as long as I can get time alone with you tonight.”

The sincerity in his tone has you momentarily pausing as your eyes meet his. There’s a glint there that you’ve known for years. It’s a glint that you’ve wanted to see every single time you see him and he gives it to you without hesitation. Mainly, it’s a glint that has you restraining from kissing him. It’s a glint that no one else would know because no one else, other than you, knows how in love he is with you. No one else knows that these birthdays are your own way of showing him how much you love him.

Now, though, isn’t the time. Not when you have a plan for tonight. So, you settle with taking his hand in yours as you pull him along with you.

“You’ll just have to wait and see.”

-

“Oi, Nanamin,” Gojo whispers, nudging him with an elbow to the ribs, “we should go over there!”

Before Nanami can fully register what Gojo is pointing out, he’s practically running off with Shoko in tow. Nanami just sighs as he follows, you following suit.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so excited about something,” you mutter as your arm brushes against his.

Nanami sighs again, watching the man child order cotton candy before practically swallowing it whole. “I do all the time unfortunately.”

You chuckle while he can’t focus on anything but the way your hand keeps brushing against his. He had been considering whether or not he should hold your hand on not for the last half hour. Both between Gojo being there and whether or not you’d allow it, he wasn’t sure if he should. So, as a happy medium, he finally allows himself to connect your pinky with his.

The action causes you to look up at him who’s currently watching Gojo try to convince Shoko to let him buy more sweets. Nanami isn’t sure whether or not he wants to see your expression. Are you smiling? Or are you upset with him for doing this?

Those thoughts are quickly disregarded as you’re suddenly taking his hand and pulling him along with you. It brings back memories as you do this. Partially because this isn’t the first time Gojo has been here for a birthday. Partially because, when he thinks about it, before he left you would always drag him off somewhere. Always.

However, that was always after it was just the two of you left.

“Gojo was taking too long,” you say suddenly. “I couldn’t wait any longer.”

Before he knows it, you’re now entering a park. A park that Nanami has always associated with you. A park where this whole thing started. The park that he first got to kiss you. And, just like that night when you were third years, you don’t stop until you’re at the edge of the water.

Just like that night, you never drop your hand from his. Just like that night, you start by looking up at the stars. Just like that night, Nanami finds himself unable to look at anything except you in the moonlight. Just like that night, he wants there to be more between the two of you. Just like that night, he wants to pull you into his embrace and never let go.

However, there’s new things. Both of you are older. The two of you know how you feel about one another. There’s no hair hanging over one side of his face. There’s no school uniforms and no more need to make a wish with a shooting star. There’s light music playing from afar, drifting across the park instead of the silence there was all of those years ago.

Slowly, Nanami turns you to face him. That glint in his eyes is back as he softly smiles. It has your heart pounding even harder.

“I.. I, uh, bought you present,” you force out as you can’t break eye contact with him. You can’t, not when he’s looking at you like this. There’s so much love clear in his eyes and it makes you feel cruel every time you see it. You’re the one that technically put the hold on going any further with this man. You can’t help but regret ever doing that no matter how much you knew it would be good for him.

Before you can let him reply, you’re digging into your pocket. You’re silently grateful you decided not to keep it in your bag. Especially since Shoko was the one who insisted on carrying it.

Pulling out of your pocket was a watch. By the looks of it, it’s expensive. Very expensive. He can tell even in the limited light of the night.

“So that you can go off of your overtime pact precisely. I had them set the hands to the exact second of the day,” you say in practically a whisper as you hand it to him.

“Would you put it on for me?”

The question surprises you but the way he’s looking at you doesn’t. You nod slowly, swallowing past your dry throat and ignoring the way your heart pounds in your chest. Slipping the watch already on his wrist off, you carefully put on the new one. You let yourself intentionally graze your fingers across his skin and you notice the goosebumps that rise from it.

When you’re done, Nanami catches your hand in his and pulls you against him. You immediately melt into his embrace, wrapping your arms around him as he begins to slowly sway. That’s when you noticed what song was playing. It’s the one that you first forced him to dance with you to. That was before you even realized you liked Nanami in this way. You were just fooling around, causing Haibara to laugh at the sight of Nanami dancing.

Now, though, there’s more to it than that. There’s the warmth you feel from the way Nanami’s one hand rest on your waist. There’s the way you feel safe in his arms. There’s the way you can feel his heart beating against his chest just as hard as yours. Most of all, there’s the way he leans his forehead against yours when you look up at him.

The two of you stay this way until the song ends. Even then, Nanami doesn’t pull away and neither do you. Instead, you find yourself pressing closer to him.

“Happy birthday, Kento,” you mumble as you close your eyes, taking in the warmth he gives you.

Instead of answering, Nanami instead shifts until his lips are pressing against yours. The feeling of his soft lips is a relief. It’s almost like a weight from the past years has been lifted from your shoulders as you slot your lips with his. An overwhelming feeling crashes through you as your hands find his hair, a feeling that you know is home. He’s your home and you were an idiot for ever making both of you wait.

All of that aside, of all the birthdays of Nanami Kento you’ve shared, you know that this one will be the most memorable of all. More memorable than the one when you were third years.

- - -

@fiona782 @where-fantasy-meets-reality @thereluctantherosrose

#nanami kento fluff #nanami x reader #nanami fluff #nanami kento x reader #jjk nanami #jujutsu nanami #jujutsu kaisen nanami #nanami imagine #nanami kento #kento nanami #nanamin #nanami #nanami x y/n #nanami x you #kento nanami x y/n #kento nanami x you #nanami scenarios #nanami kento jjk #nanami kento fic #jjk nanami kento #nanami kento x reader fluff #jjk nanami kento x reader #jjk kento

[inamindfarfaraway]

Tails in Sonic Underground Headcanons

Companion piece to this.

It’s the anniversary of Robotnik’s takeover of Mobius. He’s increased and upgraded security measures to finally capture and roboticize the Hedgehog triplets, and preferably Queen Aleena too, because what could be better than taking their minds and souls on the exact date he took everything else from them, with his great big celebration of that being the last thing they ever see? The triplets try to be careful, but reveal themselves to stop Robotnik doing something awful, like executing protesters or crushing a homeless person beneath his giant parade tank. They’ve been distracted with grief and anger the whole day, so they’re just uncoordinated enough to give the SWATbots an edge and are quickly overwhelmed by their sheer numbers.

Suddenly another SWATbot approaches from a different direction and starts attacking the ones that have got them. They don’t know what’s going on, but aren’t gonna complain. The chaos and confusion allows several other civilians and protesters to leave the scene too. After escaping, the triplets wonder who reprogrammed the SWATbot. If it were a fellow Resistance member they would have heard about it in advance, as Robotnik’s coding are notoriously difficult to mess with - so difficult that Manic and Cyrus combined haven’t been able to manage it.

The answer appears out of an alleyway: an eight-year-old yellowish orange fox boy clutching a tablet, with… two tails? He assumes responsibility for repurposing the SWATbot and sending it to rescue them, though modestly and bashfully, being more excited to meet the triplets, his idols, and wanting to know if they’re okay. He introduces himself as Miles Prower. Sonic recognizes that last name, to Sonia and Manic’s further confusion. Miles explains the story of his parents.

Amadeus and Rosemary Prower were perhaps the greatest engineers in the country, friends of the royal family and Cyrus’s father Lionel, using their technology for the betterment of the people. Robotnik stole many of their concepts and devices when he took the throne. They opposed his coup and were among the founding members and leaders of the Resistance, which led Robotnik to erase all public data on them and give himself credit for everything they did. Hence why only Sonic knows of them - Uncle Chuck taught him. But he never knew they had a kid. Miles was born and raised in secret. When he was just four, his parents were captured and roboticized. They had barely enough time to leave him at an inconspicuous children’s home and give him a tablet, named the Miles Electric in his honour, that contained a complete database of both their research and inventions; and the family’s personal records, e.g. Rosemary and Amadeus’s wedding photos, Miles’s sonogram photos, birth certificate and baby pictures, voice recordings they left for him, etc.. The Miles Electric was its namesake’s closest friend. It was almost like his parents were still there with him... almost.

Unfortunately, most of the other kids scorned and bullied him for his mutant second tail, prodigious intelligence and shy disposition. So much so that by the age of seven he decided he’d be better off alone and ran away, living on the streets, stealing food and money to survive and overall doing his best to stay out of people’s way. His parents had been heroes, and they’d fallen. He could never hope to be like them. There was no point he could see in trying to be brave, since in his experience it would only get you punished. He was similar to Nine in Sonic Prime, but less hostile and more plain sad.

The Sonic Underground pulled him out of that misery. These new heroes brought the Resistance unprecedented success and support, and as the true heirs to Aleena’s throne, embodied the hope that Mobius could be saved. That things could get better. Miles became their devoted fan and has been following their progress for months. But chronically insecure, he wanted to prove that he was worth their time before meeting them. Last week he got a chance. In the aftermath of one of the triplets’ battles, he figured out how to reprogram a SWATbot Sonia had wrecked to think him its master and Robotnik’s forces enemies. He finished working on it it that day and unleashed it upon seeing the triplets in danger.

The triplets adopt him as their fourth sibling in their heads on the spot. Queen Aleena, who’s spent the day fighting through Robotnik’s forces to reach her children to comfort them and tell them that they haven’t lost everything, arrives shortly afterward and also internally adopts him as her fourth child within their first conversation, remembering his parents fondly. Miles nearly faints because the queen likes him.

The fugitive queen and her heirs can’t be in one place for long, and Robotnik gleefully interrupts the family bonding. A battle breaks out. Miles discovers his ability to fly in order to save Sonic’s life. Sonic starts calling him Tails, which delights him. Aleena even stays the night. It’s the best night Tails can remember; not a bad end to the anniversary of the worst day of the kingdom’s history. Before she reluctantly departs the next morning, she assures Tails he doesn’t need to earn his place in the family - he already has it.

The triplets shower Tails with lots of love and praise and encourage him to respect himself more, slowly building his confidence. They each know the agony it is to lose your parents, especially Sonic, and help him process it.

His relationship with Sonic is much the same as in the games.

He and Manic exchange street kid stories and deeply empathize with each other over the experiences they’ve shared that the others haven’t. Manic wants to mentor Tails in engineering, but the little prodigy is already his equal and even teaches him a few things. They also have flying races, comparing Manic’s hoverboard with Tails’s propulsion. Training and fun!

Sonia gushes about how adorable Tails’s soft, fluffy tails are when they first meet. She then regularly washes and brushes them and teaches him how to, since she’s the only sibling with any idea of thorough fur care. She even gives him decorations for them (primarily blue to match his eyes). He loves this. He’d often been told that his mutation made him an unlovable freak, and coming to consider it beautiful is a different kind of self-esteem to just realizing it can be useful. Her advanced education, unique among the triplets, lets her have more intellectual conversations with him too.

Due to his love of technology; head for plans, details and precision; and supportiveness of his older siblings, he frequently finds himself managing the logistics of the Sonic Underground’s performances, especially electronic elements like lighting design and sound system configuration and operation. His mindful personality makes him great at it, and he’s just fine not being in the spotlight. Soon theatrical technician is his official role in the band.

He bonds with Cyrus over their common interest in science. They can talk technobabble and work on some machine or software together for hours.

He had never left the inner city before he started travelling with the Resistance, so experiencing the wonders of nature fills him with awe. He is afraid of thunder and lightning, though.

He diligently keeps a multimedia log of his time in the Resistance on the Miles Electric, in the hopes that when his parents are themselves again he can tell and show them what he’s been up to and accomplished in their absences.

He eventually invents the deroboticizer, which hugely hastens Robotnik's overthrow. Aleena gives him a special medal for it. He's as humble as ever and doesn't wear the medal in public, instead framing it in his new bedroom in the palace, but everyone else is more than happy to brag about his accomplishments on his behalf. Especially Amadeus and Rosemary. Who also catch up with him on all their missed quality time, and hugs.

#sonic underground #sonic the hedgehog #miles prower #miles tails prower #tails prower #sonia the hedgehog #manic the hedgehog