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joelsgreys · 1 year

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not a thing l part ii

Post Outbreak! Joel Miller x Female Reader

part i

summary: You fess up and tell Joel about how Ellie overheard the two of you during the private moment you two had in the woods; Ellie confronts Joel about you while you’re asleep in the truck.

warnings/tags: 18+ ONLY, MINORS DNI. IMPLIED AGED GAP (no specific age mentioned for reader, Joel is canon age) Joel is kind of an asshole, Ellie is a wiseass, mentions of Tess.

word count: 4.7k

a/n: decided to write a second part to the first Joel fic that i ever wrote! i am so, so stunned that one fic turned into more and that people actually want to read my stuff for Joel/TLOU. thank you all sm for everything and for interacting with me and my content. it means a ton!

“Think this might be a good time to stop?” Joel asked you, quietly.

You hummed, glancing back over at Ellie through the rearview mirror.

Even through the darkness inside the small cab of the pickup truck, it was almost too painfully obvious as to how fucking exhausted the girl was and how much this journey had already taken out of her after only just a few days on the road. Although she was on the smaller side and had an ample amount of space to stretch out her limbs, lay down, and get a decent night’s sleep in the backseat of the truck while you and Joel both took turns driving through the night, Ellie had expressed to you on more than one occasion that she’d rather stop to make temporary camp somewhere for a few hours and continue the drive in the morning once everyone had the chance to take a break. You honestly couldn’t blame her, not even if you tried—it was taking its toll on you too, a lot more than you let on to both Joel and especially to Ellie.

Being the adult, you kept your complaints to yourself, but the truth of the matter was that at the end of each day, you were also getting sick and tired, so damn sick and tired, of the ungodly amount of time that you were spending cooped up in the pickup, just sitting on your ass.

Sure, it may have been a little bit of extra work and it was keeping the three of you from reaching Wyoming as fast as Joel would have liked given the nature of the smartass, teenaged cargo you two had on your hands—but you also preferred to stop and make camp for the night.

After realizing that Joel was still waiting for a response, you nodded.

“Yeah, we should probably call it for the night,” You told him, glancing down at the map of the country in your hands. The three of you made it to the state of Indiana; Missouri was your next planned stop to find gas to siphon and refuel, and even though it was just a little less than six hours away, you figured an early morning wakeup call could have you all there by tomorrow afternoon. “Only problem about a state like Indiana is that it’s flat as fuck. There’s nothing but wide, open grassy fields around here.” You peered out of the window, then turned back to Joel, frowning. “Think we’ll find a safe enough spot?”

“We’re just gonna have to make do with what we got,” Joel stated as he carefully veered the vehicle off of the highway and to the left, onto the aforementioned grassy field. “You think about a mile out from the highway is decent enough? Mile and a half, maybe?”

“Let’s make it two,” You suggested. You neatly folded up the map and stuck it into the glove compartment in front of you. “I doubt we’ll run into anyone or anything out here in the middle of nowhere, but might be best not to risk being too close to the highway, just in case.”

He looked over at you, nodding his head in agreement. “Two it is.”

“Aww, teamwork,” Ellie teased from the backseat. “How fucking cute.”

“It’d be real cute if you’d shut up,” Joel quipped. Once he pulled the truck about a couple of miles out onto the field, he came to a stop and then cut the engine. “We’re gonna take a breather for a few hours,” he said to Ellie over his shoulder. “But only for a few hours, and not a minute more. Come sunrise, we need to get movin’ again, understood?”

She saluted him. “Aye aye, Captain. Whatever you say.”

The second that you hopped out of the pickup, you started shivering. The chilly evening breeze nipped at any patch of exposed skin it could find. The days had been pretty decent, but at night, the temperatures would drop drastically—it couldn’t have been warmer than forty or so degrees. Instinctively, you reached into the top of your pack, pulling a second jacket you carried for yourself out of it. You handed it over to Ellie and instructed her, “Put this on. Cordyceps infection might not have taken you out, but hypothermia will.”

She took it from you, shooting you a tiny, grateful smile. “Thanks.”

Joel eyed the interaction, his lips pursed together in displeasure.

He didn’t want you and Ellie getting attached to one another, but he feared it was too late. The girl had taken an instant liking to you and you seemed to have taken a liking to her too. “Here.” He tossed Ellie her blue sleeping bag. “Go lay down on the other side of the truck.”

“I’m already so fucking itchy just thinking we have to sleep here.” Ellie wrinkled her nose down at the grass under her shoes. Lifting her head, she took a glance around before turning her attention to you. It was written all over her face, evident in the way she started to shuffle nervously from foot to foot; she was afraid. “I feel so exposed. Are we really going to be safe? There’s fucking nothing out here, not even a single tree. What if someone finds us while we’re all sleeping?”

Before you could reassure her, Joel stepped in.

“No one is goin’ to find us out here,” he grouched. “We’ll be safe. Now quit your complainin’ and go get settled for the night. And don’t even think of askin’ me for a fire in the middle of a goddamn field. Got it?”

Ellie rolled her eyes at him. “Oh, it’s fine. You know, I’m actually kinda starting to get used to freezing my fucking ass off anyway.”

You lifted a hand to your mouth, trying to hide your snort of laughter.

She was too fucking quick for her own good.

Joel glared at you. “What? You think she’s funny?”

“Actually, I think she’s fucking hilarious,” You shrugged, causing him to let out an exasperated sigh. “What? It’s true! She’s made me laugh more in the last week than I have in the last two fucking decades.”

Ellie beamed at you. “At least someone still has a sense of humor.”

“Alright, that’s enough,” he snapped, irritably. “Both of you.”

She leaned over towards you, muttering the question right under her breath, “Jesus, has he always been this fucking crabby?” She nudged your shoulder with hers. “You must have the patience of a fucking saint to be able to deal with this on the daily. I would have killed him by now and then offed myself too with that fucking attitude.”

He stepped towards her. “What’d you just say—”

“Ellie.” Although you tried your hardest to reprimand her, instead, you found yourself fighting back another laugh. “Come on, let’s go before he strangles us both.” Taking her arm, you started leading her around to the other side of the truck. Dropping her arm, you reached for your own sleeping bag from the bed of it and started rolling it out. Though you were still fighting back a fit of giggles, you found it in you to offer her some words of advice. “Ellie, I know Joel is not the easiest person to deal with, but you really have to stop giving him so much shit, kid. The man has enough gray hair as it is. Take it easy on him, will you?”

“But I need to keep myself entertained somehow,” she replied with a small, innocent shrug of her shoulders. She unrolled her own sleeping bag, laying it out right beside where you had laid out yours; you saw a pensive look cross her face and after a second, she moved it closer to yours, leaving about a one inch gap of space between the two. For as scared shitless as you had been to take someone like her under yours and Joel’s care, the mere fact that Ellie seemed to feel safer being so close to you must have meant you were doing something right.

“Jacket,” You reminded her.

“I know, I know.” Ellie tugged on the spare jacket that you’d given her just minutes ago, zipping it up to her chin. She yawned, crawling into her sleeping bag. Before rolling over onto her side, she stopped and a tiny, tired smirk tugged at her lips as she looked up at you. “Wait. You and Joel aren’t going to bone each other tonight, are you? Because I might actually have to suffocate myself in this thing if you do.”

You sighed heavily. “And here I thought you were actually going to do me the favor of never bringing it up ever again.”

“What can I say? Giving you shit is almost as fun as giving it to Joel.”

You nudged her lightly with the toe of you worn, brown leather boot, chuckling as you told her, “Go to sleep, you little jerk.”

“Remember. Protection.” Ellie yawned again, rolling over. “G’night.”

“Goodnight, Ellie.”

The minute that you heard her soft snores coming from inside of the bag and you were certain she was asleep, you made your way back to the other side of the truck where you found Joel busy loading up and checking his rifle. Thankfully, hadn’t seemed to have heard what Ellie had just said to you. “I’ll take watch tonight,” You offered, holding out your hands and beckoning for the weapon. You instantly noticed the all too familiar look of protest on his face. “Joel, you were the last one to drive today and you’re fucking exhausted. Just let me take watch.”

“The whole damn point of me drivin’ all the way out here was so we can all get some rest without worryin’ about anyone findin’ us,” Joel reminded you. “And besides, I wasn’t plannin’ on standin’ watch. I was just makin’ sure this was ready to go, in case of an emergency.”

You chuckled softly, shaking your head. “Joel, please. I know you like I know the back of my own goddamn hand and I already know that I’m going to wake up in the middle of the night and I’m going to find you standing watch, regardless of how safe you say we are in the middle of bumfuck nowhere.” You continued holding your hands out for the rifle. “Look, my arms are getting tired here. Can you just give me the fucking gun please?”

“You need sleep—”

“We can swap places in a couple hours,” You compromised. “Deal?”

Knowing that you could be just as stubborn as he was, Joel grumbled something incoherently under his breath before finally shoving it into your waiting hands.

“Thank you. Now, was that really so hard?”

Joel scoffed, shoving past you. He reached into the bed of the truck and grabbed his own sleeping bag. “You really need to stop talkin’ to the kid so much. She’s startin’ to rub off on you and I don’t like it.”

“Sweet dreams, Joel,” You replied, watching as he stalked around to the other side of the Chevy where Ellie was fast asleep.

An hour later, you found yourself leaning against the cab of the truck, the sound of chirping crickets your only companion. You held the rifle gently, but still firmly in your grasp, your index finger gingerly resting on the trigger. You tilted your head backwards, gazing up at the stars in the velvet night sky—you tried not to let your mind wander off very far, but you couldn’t help thinking of what Ellie had said to you earlier that morning back in the woods.

He’s a guy who doesn’t seem to give a shit about too many things or too many people. But I know he does give a shit about you. He cares about you.

She was wrong. She had to be wrong. She was fourteen, she was just a kid, after all. Besides, what the fuck could she possibly know about you and Joel, especially after only having been with the two of you for about a week?

Ellie was sorely mistaken.

Joel only kept you around for his benefit.

And the meaningless sex wasn’t the benefit you were referring to.

Joel had always been the brawn, but both you and Tess had been the brains of the operation. That’s how it had always been, at least for the better part of the last few years. You might have been on the younger side in comparison to your smuggling partners, but for some reason, Tess had seen something in you—what it had been, you never had the opportunity to find out, but it made her take a chance on you.

Against Joel’s wishes, she decided that she would take you under her wing; at eighteen years old, you’d been closer to being a child than an adult, but that only meant your mind was still pliable, and she could work with it. By the time you reached your twenties, it was apparent that Tess had all but molded you into a miniature clone of herself—she’d shown you how to think outside the box, taught you how to be persuasive, how to keep trades or deals from going south, and most importantly, what to do if they somehow did go south.

Now that she was gone, you were all that Joel had left. You were what he was stuck with. After Tess died, there was a part of you that had to wonder if Joel felt the wrong person had been infected and killed. It’s not that you thought that Joel would rather it was you who were dead but the reality was that if he’d been given the choice between having you or Tess at his side for this, you were certain it wouldn’t be you.

But he hadn’t gotten a choice.

It was you he ended up with, and you were his only shot at getting to Tommy and getting Ellie to where she needed to be. He needed help, and now that Tess was no longer here, you were the next best thing.

That was it.

A rustling sound nearby pulled you out of your train of thought. You immediately lifted your head and pushed yourself away from the cab, readying your weapon. You took quiet, careful steps and then sharply turned the corner around the bed of the truck, aiming the rifle at the figure in front of you with your finger still on the trigger.

“Fuckin’ relax!” Joel hissed at you, holding his hands up. “It’s me!”

“Jesus Christ!” You exhaled a sharp breath, lowering the gun. You narrowed your eyes at him. “You scared the fucking shit out of me, Joel! I just about shot your head off of your shoulders!”

“Your aim ain’t all that good, darlin’,” Joel stated as he walked up to you, a slight hint of amusement in his Southern drawl. “You keepin’ watch or zonin’ out over here?”

You ignored his teasing remarks. “You’re supposed to be sleeping.”

Your heart squeezed tightly in your chest as Joel fell into step in front of you, an all too familiar lustful glimmer in his eyes.

“Couldn’t really sleep,” he stated with a shrug of his is shoulder. “Had somethin’ on my mind. But from the looks if it, I ain’t the only one lost in thought.” He peered down at you. “What were you thinkin’ about, anyhow?”

“Nothing,” You fibbed. “Just, uh, just how fucking cold it is.”

Joel reached for the rifle, taking it out of your hands. He leaned over and placed it in the bed of the truck behind you. “And you tell me that I’m a shitty liar?” he asked with a small scoff. “Let’s pretend that for a minute that I actually believe that’s what you were really thinkin’ about.” With every word that he spoke, his voice became lower, huskier. “If the cold is what’s on your mind, I know a couple different ways I can help get your mind off of it.”

“Joel—”

“C’mere.” He hooked his index fingers through two of the front belt loops of your blue jeans, yanking you forward until you came crashing against his chest. He dipped his head, his lips eagerly meeting an exposed patch of skin on your neck. As he kissed and nipped at the delicate flesh, he started to move his hands from the belt loops of your jeans over to the buttons instead.

“Joel, wait,” You mumbled weakly, cursing how your body just always seemed to melt right in his fucking hands. “Joel, stop.” You’d said it so softly into his failing right ear that he hadn’t heard you.

Joel’s mouth left your neck, finding your own mouth instead in a way that made every single nerve in your body light on fire. He started to walk you backwards until your back hit the bed of the pickup, a soft thud noise filling the air around you. He pinned you tightly between it and himself as he kissed you fiercely, hungrily. The physically intimate moments that you two shared over the years had always been relatively short due to never having the time nor the place, but maybe that’s why he kissed you the way that he did—with such urgency, with such desperation, as if his fucking life depended on it. Because it never lasted as long as he would have liked and he never knew when he would be able to get his hands on you again.

Breaking away from you slightly, Joel placed his hand on your hip, his index finger grazing the soft skin right above the waist of your jeans as he murmured breathlessly against your lips, “I want you. I gotta have you. Right fuckin’ now.”

It took just about every last ounce of strength that you had inside you to place both of your hands on his chest and gently push him back. “I don’t think we should do this, Joel. Not with Ellie being so close by.”

“She’s asleep.” He frowned, taking your hands off of his chest as he took several steps back from you looking dejected. “Unless you just don’t want—”

You were quick to stop him. “Of course I want you.” You swallowed, your throat having gone dry. “It’s just that—see, the thing is that—”

“Fuckin’ spit it out.”

So you do.

“Ellie knows, Joel.”

“What?” Even in the darkness, you could see the color draining from his face. “How?”

“Look, I really didn’t want to tell you about this. But last night in the woods when we were—” You trailed off, shifting your weight from one foot to the other almost anxiously.

“She saw us?”

“She heard us,” You corrected him. “She confronted me about it this morning before we left. I pretty much made her promise to keep her mouth shut because I didn’t want her saying anything to you about it. I didn’t want her giving you grief like she did to me.”

Joel ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “That little fucking shit—”

“It’s not her fault, Joel. And you know that. We shouldn’t have done it with her being so close by.”

You watched as he dropped his hand from his head, his jaw clenched.

“Joel, come on. Please don’t be mad about this.”

Joel fixed his eyes on the ground and tightly shook his head. “Go get some sleep. I’ll take over watch.”

“But Joel—”

“Just drop it,” he said, rigidly, his gaze refusing to meet yours. “Go.”

Knowing better than to push it, you simply nodded. “Okay.”

The moment you crawled into your sleeping bag next to Ellie, you’d tried your absolute hardest to get some shut eye, but what happened with Joel had you much too worried, and rightly so. Still, you prayed for sleep to come, but it never did and the rest of the night dragged on for what felt like a fucking eternity.

Hours later, when sunrise finally came around, you got up to find Joel had already been packing up the pickup truck, getting it ready for the long drive ahead. The second he saw you approaching him, he simply told you to wake Ellie because the three of you needed to get a move on sooner rather than later. After that, he’d hardly said another word to you.

He couldn’t even fucking look at you.

Halfway to Missouri, during a quick pitstop, Ellie had noticed the odd tension in the air between you and Joel. She’d also noticed how tired you looked. She offered to trade places and sit in as Joel’s copilot for the rest of the day, at least until you reached Kansas City.

“I think he’d actually prefer you as his copilot,” You’d muttered to her in reply, hopping into the backseat. Between the motion of the truck, the soft country music playing from another tape Ellie found, and the open windows bringing in fresh, crisp air, you’d curled up into a little ball in the backseat and passed out within minutes.

Ellie glanced over her shoulder at you, making sure you were actually asleep before turning to Joel. “She told you, didn’t she?”

“Zip it,” Joel ordered. “Ain’t none of your business.”

Ellie hummed. “Well, seeing as I had the absolute delightful pleasure of having to hear the two of you go at it like a couple of cats the other night, I think it actually is kind of my business now.” She paused. She could physically feel the way he was wincing beside her, though what was causing him to be so uncomfortable was left to be determined. Ellie would imagine that it was getting caught in the act itself, but for some reason, she sensed there was a lot more to this mess than met the eye and she wanted to get to the bottom of it. “She told me that you guys aren’t a thing—”

“We’re not a thing. We’re nothin’ at all, alright?”

Ellie blew a raspberry. “Yeah, alright. I see you’re both sticking to that story. That you’re not a thing.” She raised her fingers in quotations.

“It ain’t a story, it’s the truth. We’re nothin’ more than just a couple of smuggling partners tryin’ to get you to where the you need to be.” He glanced at her briefly, then turned back towards the road. “And if you want to make it there unscathed, I suggest you shut your mouth and focus on that map in your hands instead stickin’ your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

“I think I at least deserve an explanation after you two put me and my innocent little virgin ears through the wringer.”

“Ellie,” he warned.

It was almost kind of scary how she was already used him saying her name in that tone already. “You’ve been treating her shitty as fuck today, you know.”

Joel frowned. Even though he knew he didn’t need to defend himself to a fucking teenager, he found himself doing it anyway. “The hell are you talkin’ about? I haven’t said a single fuckin’ word to her today.”

“Exactly.” Ellie pointed her index finger at him. “It’s bothering her.”

“She’s a big girl, Ellie. If somethin’ is botherin’ her, then she can come and talk to me about it. She doesn’t need some kid helpin’ her out.”

“That’s the thing. She can’t talk to you about it.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Well, you’re not exactly the most approachable guy, dude.”

Joel gripped the steering wheel tightly. “Why the fuck do you care so much, anyway? You have other things to worry about. Like findin’ the fuckin’ Fireflies and helpin’ them create a vaccine that’s supposed to save the goddamn world.”

“Because,” Ellie said, refusing to allow him to change the subject, not when she felt like she was finally getting somewhere. “I like her. She’s a good person.”

Joel glanced up at the rearview mirror and looked at you as you slept soundly. He couldn’t deny that. Even in this shit world, even after the things you’d seen and all the people you’ve lost, you really were still a good person. You still hadn’t lost touch with your sense of humanity—that was one thing Tess never managed to change about you, the one thing that kept you from being identical to her, identical to Joel. You somehow hadn’t let this world turn you into stone, and maybe that is why you meshed well with them from the start. You brought this odd kind of balance that they hadn’t even known they needed.

That Joel didn’t know he needed.

“She likes you.” Ellie’s voice caused him to snap back to reality. “Lord fucking knows why.”

“The hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, did I offend?” Ellie quirked an eyebrow, feeling a teeny smirk tug at the corners of her mouth. “Listen. All I’m saying is that she’s really young. And she’s really pretty. She’s nice, and smart as fuck, too. I bet she could probably have any guy that she fucking wants.” Her smirk only grew noticing how her words had gotten a rise out of Joel. Ellie could tell by the way his fingers had the steering wheel in a death grip, his knuckles ghost white. “And yet for some reason, she chooses to stick with you, you old fucker.”

“Listen here you little shit—”

She quickly held her hands up. “I’m just saying. She’s a good one, Joel.”

The words left his mouth before he could stop them. “I know she is.”

Bingo! Ellie thought to herself. Now we’re making progress.

“So, then why not treat her the way she deserves? Why just—what’s that saying? Hit it and quit it?”

Joel tossed a glare at her. “Don’t ever say that again.”

“I’m not wrong though. That’s what it is, isn’t it?” Ellie prompted.

“No!”

“But just a minute ago you said you two were nothing. So if you two are boning, but you’re nothing, that’s like a hit it and quit it, isn’t it? Or is it a fuck it and chuck it? Hump it and dump it?” She scratched her head, wracking her brain as she tried to figure it out. Beside her, Joel was about ready to implode. “Wait a minute, that can’t be right because you guys do it all the time. You’re not actually quitting it. So, it’s hooking up, right?”

“I swear to Christ I’m gonna make you fuckin’ walk to Wyoming if you don’t shut—how the fuck do you know all that? That what they teach you kids in FEDRA school?”

“Don’t change the subject.” Ellie grinned, crossing her arms over her chest. “Level with me, old man. Do you like her or not?”

Joel’s teeth were gritted together, his sights fixed on the road ahead.

“Or do you love her?” She practically sang.

“Ellie.” He said her name warningly once again, his eyes flickering to the rearview mirror. The last thing he needed was for you to wake up and hear this conversation; thankfully you were still out cold.

Ellie waved a hand at him. “Oh relax, the woman’s sleeping like a bear in hibernation. Now, answer the fucking question.”

Joel didn’t respond. He couldn’t respond.

He willed himself to open his mouth and say something—anything.

But he just couldn’t. He’d been stumped by a fucking fourteen year old who was too damn smart for her own good.

“Interesting,” Ellie mused after a minute of silence, curiously rubbing her chin. “How you can’t even deny it. Very, very, interesting.”

Before Joel could even think, the sound of you moving around in the backseat caused him to jump, the internal panic flooding him in one single wave. As soon as he was certain you were still fast asleep, he let out a breath of relief and turned to Ellie. “Now, you listen here—”

“Ah, ah, ah.” She held up her finger to her lips. “Let’s not wake Sleeping Beauty back there.” She dropped her hand down into her lap and glanced out the window, grinning to herself. “Besides, I have the answer I was looking for anyway.”

#joel miller x you #joel miller imagine #joel miller x reader #joel miller #joel miller hbo #tlou imagine #tlou fanfiction #joel miller pedro pascal #joel miller x female reader #joel miller x f!reader #joel miller x y/n

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canmom · 6 months

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Hypothetical Decentralised Social Media Protocol Stack

if we were to dream up the Next Social Media from first principles we face three problems. one is scaling hosting, the second is discovery/aggregation, the third is moderation.

hosting

hosting for millions of users is very very expensive. you have to have a network of datacentres around the world and mechanisms to sync the data between them. you probably use something like AWS, and they will charge you an eye-watering amount of money for it. since it's so expensive, there's no way to break even except by either charging users to access your service (which people generally hate to do) or selling ads, the ability to intrude on their attention to the highest bidder (which people also hate, and go out of their way to filter out). unless you have a lot of money to burn, this is a major barrier.

the traditional internet hosts everything on different servers, and you use addresses that point you to that server. the problem with this is that it responds poorly to sudden spikes in attention. if you self-host your blog, you can get DDOSed entirely by accident. you can use a service like cloudflare to protect you but that's $$$. you can host a blog on a service like wordpress, or a static site on a service like Github Pages or Neocities, often for free, but that broadly limits interaction to people leaving comments on your blog and doesn't have the off-the-cuff passing-thought sort of interaction that social media does.

the middle ground is forums, which used to be the primary form of social interaction before social media eclipsed them, typically running on one or a few servers with a database + frontend. these are viable enough, often they can be run with fairly minimal ads or by user subscriptions (the SomethingAwful model), but they can't scale indefinitely, and each one is a separate bubble. mastodon is a semi-return to this model, with the addition of a means to use your account on one bubble to interact with another ('federation').

the issue with everything so far is that it's an all-eggs-in-one-basket approach. you depend on the forum, instance, or service paying its bills to stay up. if it goes down, it's just gone. and database-backend models often interact poorly with the internet archive's scraping, so huge chunks won't be preserved.

scaling hosting could theoretically be solved by a model like torrents or IPFS, in which every user becomes a 'server' for all the posts they download, and you look up files using hashes of the content. if a post gets popular, it also gets better seeded! an issue with that design is archival: there is no guarantee that stuff will stay on the network, so if nobody is downloading a post, it is likely to get flushed out by newer stuff. it's like link rot, but it happens automatically.

IPFS solves this by 'pinning': you order an IPFS node (e.g. your server) not to flush a certain file so it will always be available from at least one source. they've sadly mixed this up in cryptocurrency, with 'pinning services' which will take payment in crypto to pin your data. my distaste for a technology designed around red queen races aside, I don't know how pinning costs compare to regular hosting costs.

theoretically you could build a social network on a backbone of content-based addressing. it would come with some drawbacks (posts would be immutable, unless you use some indirection to a traditional address-based hosting) but i think you could make it work (a mix of location-based addressing for low-bandwidth stuff like text, and content-based addressing for inline media). in fact, IPFS has the ability to mix in a bit of address-based lookup into its content-based approach, used for hosting blogs and the like.

as for videos - well, BitTorrent is great for distributing video files. though I don't know how well that scales to something like Youtube. you'd need a lot of hard drive space to handle the amount of Youtube that people typically watch and continue seeding it.

aggregation/discovery

the next problem is aggregation/discovery. social media sites approach this problem in various ways. early social media sites like LiveJournal had a somewhat newsgroup-like approach, you'd join a 'community' and people would post stuff to that community. this got replaced by the subscription model of sites like Twitter and Tumblr, where every user is simultaneously an author and a curator, and you subscribe to someone to see what posts they want to share.

this in turn got replaced by neural network-driven algorithms which attempt to guess what you'll want to see and show you stuff that's popular with whatever it thinks your demographic is. that's gotta go, or at least not be an intrinsic part of the social network anymore.

it would be easy enough to replicate the 'subscribe to see someone's recommended stuff' model, you just need a protocol for pointing people at stuff. (getting analytics such as like/reblog counts would be more difficult!) it would probably look similar to RSS feeds: you upload a list of suitably formatted data, and programs which speak that protocol can download it.

the problem of discovery - ways to find strangers who are interested in the same stuff you are - is more tricky. if we're trying to design this as a fully decentralised, censorship-resistant network, we face the spam problem. any means you use to broadcast 'hi, i exist and i like to talk about this thing, come interact with me' can be subverted by spammers. either you restrict yourself entirely to spreading across a network of curated recommendations, or you have to have moderation.

moderation

moderation is one of the hardest problems of social networks as they currently exist. it's both a problem of spam (the posts that users want to see getting swamped by porn bots or whatever) and legality (they're obliged to remove child porn, beheading videos and the like). the usual solution is a combination of AI shit - does the robot think this looks like a naked person - and outsourcing it to poorly paid workers in (typically) African countries, whose job is to look at reports of the most traumatic shit humans can come up with all day and confirm whether it's bad or not.

for our purposes, the hypothetical decentralised network is a protocol to help computers find stuff, not a platform. we can't control how people use it, and if we're not hosting any of the bad shit, it's not on us. but spam moderation is a problem any time that people can insert content you did not request into your feed.

possibly this is where you could have something like Mastodon instances, with their own moderation rules, but crucially, which don't host the content they aggregate. so instead of having 'an account on an instance', you have a stable address on the network, and you submit it to various directories so people can find you. by keeping each one limited in scale, it makes moderation more feasible. this is basically Reddit's model: you have topic-based hubs which people can subscribe to, and submit stuff to.

the other moderation issue is that there is no mechanism in this design to protect from mass harassment. if someone put you on the K*w*f*rms List of Degenerate Trannies To Suicidebait, there'd be fuck all you can do except refuse to receive contact from strangers. though... that's kind of already true of the internet as it stands. nobody has solved this problem.

to sum up

primarily static sites 'hosted' partly or fully on IPFS and BitTorrent

a protocol for sharing content you want to promote, similar to RSS, that you can aggregate into a 'feed'

directories you can submit posts to which handle their own moderation

no ads, nobody makes money off this

honestly, the biggest problem with all this is mostly just... getting it going in the first place. because let's be real, who but tech nerds is going to use a system that requires you to understand fuckin IPFS? until it's already up and running, this idea's got about as much hope as getting people to sign each others' GPG keys. it would have to have the sharp edges sanded down, so it's as easy to get on the Hypothetical Decentralised Social Network Protocol Stack as it is to register an account on tumblr.

but running over it like this... I don't think it's actually impossible in principle. a lot of the technical hurdles have already been solved. and that's what I want the Next Place to look like.

#i'm gonna hurry up and get my website on ipfs i think #tumblr

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queenimmadolla · 2 years

Text

𝐖𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈

(Eddie Munson x Fem!Reader)

summary: You cancel on your plans to hang out with your crush, Eddie, and your friends when you realize your competition for his affections will also be there. So, naturally, Eddie comes to you.

warnings: misunderstandings, little bit of hurt, little bit of angst, a lot of fluff and a lot of comforting,

a/n: little companion piece to In My Dreams. inspired by Hozier’s song Would That I, my re-watching of grey’s anatomy, my love for Lexie Grey who heavily inspires Reader’s personality in this, and that confession. for creative purposes we’re gonna pretend Halloween 5 came out before 1986, Eddie got held back like twice maximum, and everyone is alive/lives in Hawkins because this is an ideal world. probably won’t be able to post much in the coming weeks so enjoy and let me know what you think (don’t be a jerk)! mistakes will be fixed later.

You open the sliding door of the shower with a sigh, arm curling around your body at the slight temperature change as you yank the towel off the bathroom counter where you had set it and wrap it around your body, quickly drying off your limbs. Once you’re dry enough, you step out of the shower, towel now wrapped around your body as you grab a clean t-shirt to wrap around your drenched hair.

You swipe the condensation from the steam off the mirror, staring at your bare, disappointed face before the steam fogs it up again.

Your body heaves out another sigh as you prepare to go through your routine in a failed attempt to not think about all the fun your friends are having without you at that very moment.

It wasn’t like they hadn’t invited you, because they had. Heather had come bounding up to you during break on Tuesday to tell you about the group’s plans to hang out on Friday night, go to the mall, head to the movies then grab a bite to eat and probably hang out at someone’s house. You’d agreed immediately, loving nothing more than spending time with your friends. But then you had found out two things that had certainly rained on your parade before it even started:

1.) Roxy Campbell was going. Heather knew how much you two didn’t get along (a dislike that had been mutual since elementary school but had only spiked in animosity in recent years) and had hurriedly explained that it hadn’t been her that extended the invitation to Roxy, which lead you to reason number two.

2.) Chrissy Cunningham would be there. There wasn’t any bad blood between you and Chrissy, far from actually. You didn’t interact with her too much, she was more Heather’s friend than yours (and you sometimes wondered about that, they often cuddled up during big sleepovers, and disappeared at gatherings) but the common factor between Roxy, Chrissy and you was the real problem.

See, you wouldn’t have a problem being in the same place as Roxy on her own, and same goes for Chrissy, but together, they would just be too much for your insecurity, because Eddie was going.

You’d had a crush on Eddie since the fourth grade (he’d been a couple of grades ahead of you at the time, but now he was attainable, or you had thought he was) but it was when Heather had sucked you into their rag tag group consisting of a bunch of social misfits (Steve, Jonathan, Nancy, Argyle, Barb, Robin, Eden, Eddie and a partridge in a pear tree) during junior year that you actually fell in love with him.

He’d been the one you had bonded with the most, you had almost nothing in common—but it didn’t seem to matter because he made you feel like you mattered. He made you feel seen when you thought you were invisible, made you feel heard when you thought no one was listening, and you just. . .you really loved the way he made you feel.

And you were stupid enough to love him. Stupid enough to love his long curls, his smile (the crazed one was a favorite of yours, but it was topped by the shy one he’d always exchange with you when it was just the two of you in your own world—regardless of your friends surrounding you, or when you were in class and you’d turn in your seat to look back at Eddie and he’d already be watching you, he’d give you that same, beautiful smile), the way he’d doodle silly little things all over his hands (and you could go super into depth about your admiration for those hands), how he resembled a Gremlin when he ate, how he couldn’t seem to sit like a normal person in most public settings unless he was mentally exhausted, his dramatics and the stupid faces he’d make, the way he’d bark at Tommy H. when the jerk dared to try and approach Steve or if he was simply annoying Eddie, how much time and effort he put into campaigns, how he never seemed to get mad during the rare campaigns in which the Hellfire Club managed to breeze right through his monsters, mazes, and obstacles. You could go on forever and that was the problem.

Roxy started liking Eddie right around the time you fell in love with him—because she always has to have whatever you want—and Chrissy was the last girl you were aware he’d had a crush on. A crush he’d had since the seventh grade. Given the current strength of your feelings for a crush you’d had for far longer, you didn’t have any hopes that he’d moved on, since you—ya know hadn’t. Roxy didn’t really intimidate you, but if you were sandwiched between the two girls—or worse, if Eddie was, you’d be forced to watch either another girl flirt with him or watch him flirt with another girl. Both of those options sounded terrible to you and you were positive you’d just end up with a stomach ache that had you nearly bedridden like you always did when it came to heartbreak.

After three days of debating, you’d called Heather before you were all supposed to meet up at the mall and had used your mom not letting you go out because you had chores to do as an excuse. Your mom wouldn’t have appreciated being made the villain but they had all seen you looking perfectly fine at school only a couple of hours earlier, meaning you couldn’t play sick, so she’d just have to take one for the team.

Heather had sounded disappointed but understood and told you she’d let the rest of the group know.

Then you proceeded to have a breakdown, you’d cried and cried, crawled into your shower, cried so much and let the reality of not ever being able to love Eddie and be loved by him crash down on you, your chances of being the reason he smiles and feels loved circle the drain before washing away as your body shook with your sobs. At one point you had thought you might suffocate with it all, but you hadn’t. Once the hot water had begun to lower in temperature, you forced yourself to get up and get yourself together. Eddie should be able to be happy with whoever he wanted and if you were really his friend, you would have to be happy for him and stop feeling sorry for yourself.

So, here you were. All alone on a Friday night while the rest of the teenagers in Hawkins got to be, well, teenagers.

You try cheering yourself up by doing a full body shave since you have the time, moisturizing heavily with sweet smelling lotion, shaping your eyebrows, doing a ton of face masks—you may be feeling pathetic but your skin sure wasn’t—and painting your nails and toes. You’d gone with a metallic green this time in an effort to be daring. You even put your earrings back in, just to feel a little less naked.

Once the polish is dry and you have done all the self-care you can think of, you’re left with nothing to do and no one to keep you company. Even your mind is quiet and your thoughts are whispers, if anything. They’re not nice whispers, so you decide to watch a movie. You throw on one of your comfy sweaters and a pair of boy shorts before running downstairs to sort through the rentals your family still has. Normally, you wouldn’t go running out in your underwear regardless of how similar to shorts they appear, but even your parents had plans tonight, Fridays were date night. They’d come home sometime after 2 am, giggling and so in love as they tiptoed—incredibly loudly, somehow—past your room to try and not wake you up while you listened to them trip and stumble down the hall because you couldn’t help but like to listen and imagine it being you and Eddie one day; drunk, in love and without a care in the world because you’d have each other and maybe a slightly sleep deprived teenage daughter.

The movie selections aren’t too vast, most of yours had been returned on Wednesday—WAIT, SCORE!

You admire the VHS cover of The Last Unicorn with a smile before tucking it under your arm and disconnecting the VCR from the TV in the living room. You carry the bulky thing and its wires up to your room, quickly setting it up to your smaller tv and popping the tape in. While the previews play, you pull the soaked t-shirt off your head, your hair is still damp but as you look at yourself in your bedroom mirror, you can’t help but smile. Your face is glowing, you smell amazing, you hair—while still somewhat wet—looks promising to dry and set satisfactory. Hell, the damp look is working for you on its own. With a smile on your face, you feel and look beautiful.

The t-shirt is tossed into your hamper and you dig out a couple of your favorite snacks from your hoarding place under your bed before you settle on top of it, belly down and your comfiest pillow under your chin as the movie begins.

The movie is comforting and provides you a sense of nostalgia, though it hadn’t come out too long ago. You chalk it up to its dated terms and the general setting of it.

You’re completely invested in it, mind filled with nothing but commentary. You’re wondering why the animators made Celaeno the Harpy’s three titties so big and bouncy when the sound of knuckles rapping on your window surprises you. You push yourself up on your arms, craning your head to look even though you have an inkling who it is, the only person to regularly visit you via window pane.

Sure enough, Eddie is grinning at you from the other side, gesturing down to your window locks. You hadn’t been expecting him so you’d left it secured. It was only a little past 8 pm and hang outs nearly went on to 1 am, why wasn’t he with everyone else?

You move your snacks aside and abandon your pillow in favor of climbing off your bed to pause the movie before you make your way over, unlocking and opening the window for him.

“FINALLY!” Eddie grunts out as he tumbles in, rolling a little ways away before he jumps up and stretches his arms out so high he’s almost touching your ceiling. You roll your eyes, a small laugh slipping past your lips as your fondness for the silly boy quickly rises to the surface.

“Oh, quit it, you faker. You weren’t out there that long.”

Eddie scowls at you, eyes narrowed playfully. He won’t bother telling you that he’d been there for ten minutes (after he’d struggled to get on the roof for the same amount of time, Jesus H. Christ, it never got easier scaling your home, but he’d be damned if he stopped doing it, it was romantic and he was in the middle of wooing) watching you in a non-creepy manner, you’d looked so beautiful and peaceful; he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off of you or even consider making you aware of his presence until the overwhelming urge to hold you had taken over. He didn’t know if he’d finally be able to work up the courage to do so but the distance between you, and the physical separation started to give him anxiety so he’d knocked.

“You still took your sweet time getting off your butt to let me in,” Eddie teases as he makes himself comfortable, kicking off his shoes and shrugging off his jacket to hang on your desk chair. He even takes the chain off of his jeans, tucking it into one of the jacket pockets.

“I wasn’t expecting you!” You throw your hands up in defeat after you shut the window again.

Eddie’s grin turns sly, “Did I surprise you, kid?”

Now it’s your turn to narrow your eyes at him, because you know he doesn’t have the audacity to bring this up again. “Do. Not. Start.”

“It’s just pretty interesting for a guy whom you referred to as predictable today, at 10:06 in Mr. Bellow’s class, to surprise you in a manner that is evidently not so predictable.” He’s smug, so very smug as he crosses his arms and smirks.

You groan, though there’s no annoyance to it, in fact—you’re fighting off a smile. If you smile, he wins and that’s what he wants. You can’t give him that, it's the little teasing game you have going on. You will not break.

“You accuse me of holding onto grudges─”

“Because you do.”

“—yet here you are, bringing up something from the past!”

“It happened today!”

“Yeah, earlier today, as in not right now, meaning the past. Besides, I wasn't wrong. You always climb up to my window and you always try to be unexpected, so really, this was very much so an Eddie thing to do and I am—in fact—correct about you being predictable.” You state as you make your way back to your bed, climbing back on top and folding your legs criss cross style.

Eddie stares at you from where he’s standing, amusement clear in those big beautiful, Bambi eyes of his. The smirk is still there, but it’s not so sly or smug anymore, more gentle and you can tell he’s trying to not let it break into a grin but he’s smiling, nonetheless, so you win. And he knows it.

He shakes his head, turning to look at your poster and art covered walls so you can’t see just how big his grin is. When he finally composes himself, his body is relaxed, arms dropping to dangle by his sides as he stalks towards your bed.

“You’re delusional.”

“Am I wrong, though?” You beam up at him and he can’t say no to you, ever.

With a heavy sigh, he drops his weight onto your bed, falling onto his back. Your poor snacks go tumbling but you don’t care, leaning an elbow on your knee as you rest your chin in the palm of your hand while you peer down at him.

“No. What are we watching?”

“You didn’t answer my earlier question.”

“You didn’t ask a question.” You know he knows what you’re referring to.

“I could smother you right now.”

“Mm, but you won’t.”

You drop your hand from your chin to dart forward and tickle his side. Eddie yelps, letting out a loud laugh as he tries to wrangle your hand in his, securing your wrist in his grasp.

“Okay! Okay! Fine, what’s your question?”

“Why aren’t you with everyone else?” You exclaim, in your rush of adrenaline, rather than ask.

Eddie answers like it’s the most simple question in the world, blinking up at you as though the answer should have been obvious to you, “Because you’re not there.”

Your brows furrow, a confused smile crossing your lips and Eddie wants to lean up and kiss the spot between your eyebrows to ease them. You smell so good, too. He just wants to bury his face in your neck, your hair, suffocate himself with you ‘til his lungs refuse oxygen in favor of needing you to breathe.

“I’m hardly the life of the party, Eddie.”

Not when Roxy and Chrissy are around, you think to yourself. If you’re being honest, Chrissy seems more fun than Roxy, and so are you. Anyone is better than Roxy. You can’t help but briefly wonder how Roxy can be friends, acquaintances, whatever, with Chrissy—not that there’s anything wrong with the sweet blonde—but if it was obvious to you that Eddie liked Chrissy, it should have been obvious to Roxy. Roxy loathed you even more than she had before for being friends with Eddie, you figured she’d hate Chrissy since she was the object of his affections.

“You’re spacing’ out on me, kid.” You’re literally shaken from your thoughts when Eddie puts his giant freaking hand on the top of your damp head, giving it a gentle shake. He laughs at your expression when you swat his hand away.

“Sorry, was just thinking about something. Did you say something?”

“I said you’re the life of my party,” Eddie repeats, trying to maintain his cool, despite how fast his heart was racing. He’d do that a lot, drop little hints to see if you picked up on them with hopes you would. Then, he’d have the perfect opportunity to finally tell you how he feels; like how his heart had just about dropped out of his ass when Heather had come on her own and told them you wouldn’t be joining them. He’d been sullen and mostly quiet as they walked through the mall. Steve and Argyle had tried to cheer him up, but it was useless. Chrissy had even tried to strike up a conversation but he couldn’t think about anything but you, so that had dropped pretty fast and he was sure he’d come off as rude, only he couldn’t care right then but he’d apologize next week at school.

Eddie couldn’t even recall what movie they had ended up watching. Even if he had been trying to pay attention, Roxy was constantly trying to talk to him during the movie so he wouldn’t have been able to hear it anyways. The entire time he was trying to think of why you hadn’t shown up. Heather had mentioned something about your mom, but Eddie knew your parents had date nights on Fridays so you were pretty much free to do whatever you wanted. Were you sick? On your period? Suffering? And here he was, albeit not having an even decent time, hanging out with his friends when he could have been comforting you or just with you. He left before the movie hit the halfway point.

“Coolest person I know, kid.”

You smile, sinking back into your shoulders shyly, you may not have been the apple of his eye, but you were still cool in his, “Thanks, Eddie. You’re the coolest person I know, too. Maybe even the best person I know, in general. Don’t tell Robin or Eden I said that.”

Eddie chuckles, still hyper aware of your wrist in his hand, if he plays this right he could just slide it up ‘til he’s palm to palm with you and intertwine your fing─

“The Last Unicorn,” You announce, finally answering his question as you sit up only to lean back into your pillows, pulling your wrist out of his hold just as Eddie had been about to trail his hand higher. You pat the spot next to you as you pull your knees to your chest. “We lost the remote so you’ll have to go press ‘play’.”

“Oh, I’ll have to go press ‘play’, huh?” His amusement is back as he shifts onto his side to face you.

“Mhm,” You nod innocently, placing your finger on the tip of your nose. “Nose goes.”

He stares at you, incredulous, before he reluctantly pushes himself up even though you both know he would have done it regardless.

“That stupid game doesn’t even make sense, if it’s gonna be called ‘Nose Goes’ shouldn’t the first person that touches their nose fucking go?” He grumbles as he presses the button on the VCR before climbing onto the bed, making himself comfy next to you as the movie resumes.

You shush him, eyes fixated on the screen again, on Celaeno, “Look at her boobies.”

Eddie does as you say, guffawing once he notices. He’s more amused with your thought process than he is with the harpy, for obvious reasons. One being that he’s in love with you and how cute you are and the other being that the harpy is far from appealing to look at.

“Wait, does she have three tits?”

“Yeah.”

“Why, though?”

“Because Harpies have three titties, I don’t know, Eddie, I didn’t make the movie.”

“Well, like—does she need the extra one?” He never noticed it before.

“I don’t know, I’m more concerned about how human they look. I get that harpies are kinda supposed to look a little human, but she’s really fugly and not at all human in appearance. They really gave her three human boobs and called it a day. Could have at least given her a human head or some hair but no.”

Eddie’s focused on you, watching you from the corners of his eyes as you rant. One of the things that had broken the awkwardness when you first met was your love of fantasy. You weren’t as obvious about it as he was with his, but he’d seen you reading your copy of The Sword in the Stone after you’d finished a test early, in the English class he shared with you, right before the end of your sophomore year. He’d spent the whole summer wondering about you and he’d been grateful when Heather had been inducted in the group, bringing you with her in the fall. When he failed, he’d been bummed but knowing he got to spend more time with you, learn more about you eased the ache. Falling in love with you had just about healed it completely, and with your encouragement, he was on track to graduate alongside you this year.

When Eddie doesn’t respond, you turn your head to him, raising your brows when you notice his gaze is fixed on you, “You okay, Eddie?”

“Yeah, I’m fine, kid.”

He really is, he’s thinking about all the things he loves about you. How animated you get when you’re excited about something, the way you get all shy when you realize just how excited you’d been, how optimistic you were even when you were having the worst of days—you never lashed out at anyone because of it, how you always put others first (you always claimed to be selfish but the moment you realized you could help someone instead of yourself, you did it), how forgiving you were (Steve had been somewhat of a jerk to you when he was still King Steve but the moment you realized he was genuine in his redemption, you never brought it up and always made sure to mention how he’s grown as a person when someone else brings it up and yeah, Eddie was a little jealous about that). How unapologetically yourself you were, silliness and all (like how you’d gone as Jamie Lloyd in her clown costume with the red nose and mask, from the Halloween movie while everyone else was dressed as provocative as possible for Zoe’s halloween party—and then you’d gone to Tina’s party as an angel with very little covering you up, because you could do both, and Eddie had to spend the entire night hiding an erection). Or how you made the wall flower kids, that Steve and the others sometimes couldn’t see needed attention, feel seen; Lucas, Will and Jane loved it when you came around. They always referred to you and Jonathan as their play parents and yes, Eddie got incredibly jealous with that, too.

And then there was the way you made Eddie feel. Despite his growing friendships, he had still felt a sense of loneliness, still needed his alone time because they overwhelmed him a bit. But not you. You snuck up on him, came into his life so quietly you hadn’t disturbed any of the foundation he’d built around himself to keep the world away, yet still somehow ended up on the same side of the wall with him. When his head got loud, you were there to hush all the thoughts, bringing him a sense of peace. He hardly had to even defend himself to verbal lashings anymore because you were putting whoever it was in their place without even being mean about it, which made him feel like people really were just messing with him to be jerks, like he wasn’t actually a freak. You made him feel like they were the problem, not him. When you looked at him, he felt like you were actually seeing him. Not Eddie ‘The Freak’ Munson, not the frontman to a band everyone thought was going nowhere, not some high school repeat, not some drug dealer, not trailer trash, just Eddie.

God, and the way you said his name! You’d beam, sit up straighter while you flashed him that beautiful smile and Eddie felt like he somehow lit up the room for you, despite you already being the brightest thing in any room.

He’d had crushes before, on Chrissy Cunningham, on Ally Citronni, Tammy Thompson—she talked to him, okay? He was lucky if a girl didn’t walk away giggling with her friends and not in the ‘I just talked to a cute boy’ way and she was a nice girl—even the fucking counselor and yeah, he’d had one on you, had expected it to go away like it had with the others, but it hadn’t. Instead, it blossomed into something so intense he couldn’t eat, he couldn’t fucking sleep, he couldn’t think about anything that wasn’t related to you.

Love on the fucking brain.

He’d even been forced to talk to Wayne about you when Tommy H. had asked you out in an attempt to make Carol jealous during one of their break ups. Even though you’d flat out said no, it had been a reality check for Eddie. Someone could easily just steal you away. Eddie hadn’t been able to sleep right for a week, and he hadn’t even touched his guitars, prompting an Uncle Wayne intervention, that conversation led him here. And all of the other times he’d tried—failed—to tell you how he felt.

You went back to watching the movie, but not Eddie. He was ready for this, fuck the hints.

“I’m glad I’m not in this movie cause I would have started sprinting, then she’d kil─”

Eddie had placed a finger on the side of your chin, directing your face to his instead of the TV while you had been talking and you hadn’t been able to drag your eyes away from the action on screen but that didn’t stop him from kissing you, lips pressing firmly against yours.

That caught your attention.

Your eyes widen as you realize what’s happening and when it becomes clear Eddie won’t be pulling away, you melt into him, eyelids fluttering shut while you return the kiss with the same amount of fervor. The rest of his hand comes to cradle your jaw, thumb stroking your cheek as he licks at your lips. They part for him almost instantly and he moans at the first taste of you, tongue swiping against yours.

Eddie dominates the kiss and you’re helpless to do anything but respond as he explores your mouth, licking any chance of coherency right off your tongue. His other hand slips around your waist, pulling you flush against him, onto his lap and you can’t quite believe that he’s cradling you like this, as though you were something important to him. You can’t even believe he’s kissing you, let alone this thoroughly!

When Eddie finally—and very reluctantly—pulls away, there’s a string of spittle connecting your lips. You lick it up and Eddie nearly creams his pants right there.

You stare up at him, eyes wide and vulnerable as Eddie leans down to press a kiss to your forehead, thumb still stroking your cheek.

“I love you, kid. I’m in love with you. Messed me up the moment Heather dragged you over to the lunch table and you wouldn’t let go of the seat you’d been sitting on at your old table. Had a feeling it’d be you, I hoped it would.” He confesses, voice gentle and nearly a whisper into the charged air between the two of you.

You want to cry the happiest of tears as you finally confess during a moment you genuinely thought wouldn’t come, not after the circumstances of how the night had started for you, “I love you so much, Eddie. You’re all I think about; I can’t sleep, I-I can’t eat and when I didn’t think you could love me I couldn’t breathe. I love you, I love you so much and I wanted to tell you, I did but I was so scared you wouldn’t love me and I’d ruin it all but I do! I love you.”

Eddie’s on you in an instant, lips insistent against yours and you can’t help the few tears that slip out but Eddie’s quick to wipe them away, trying to convey just how much he loves you with his kisses. When he pulls away again, he rests his forehead against yours.

“I’ve tried to tell you so many times, baby. I just—I fucking suck. That’s it,” the way Eddie says it makes you laugh and he smiles at the sound, leaning forward to press another kiss to your lips. “I fucking suck. I have loved you for so long, and I should have told you a long ass time ago, a fucking year ago. You really are the life of my party—love of my life, actually. You’re it for me, like—fuck.”

He’s quiet for a few moments, but you can be patient now, you’re willing to wait for him forever.

When he speaks again, the playful edge is gone, “I want to marry you.”

Your breath hitches along with your heartbeat and Eddie continues, “Not yet, not while we’re in school, but I’m positive I want to marry you. Hell, if I didn’t think I’d distract the shit out of you, I’d carry you to the courthouse right now—don’t be a smart ass, I know what you’re gonna say and I’m very aware they’re not open right now—but I’d sit there and wait. That’s how sure I am. So when we’re ready, when you’re ready, if you’ll have me, I’m gonna marry you. But for now, would you—I don’t know, wanna be my girlfriend?”

You yank him down for another kiss, multiple before you’re pressing them all over his face and you’re sure he’s smiling, can feel his cheeks pull up when your lips pass over them.

“Yes, yes I want to marry you someday and yes, I want to be your girlfriend. I want you, Eddie, and I’ll take you anyway I can have you.”

Eddie pulls you even further to him, something you didn’t think was possible, as he hugs you, the hand on your cheek traveling up to cradle the back of your head.

You can’t see his face in this position, your face is pretty much pressed into the crook of his neck, but you’re sure he’s crying, can feel the wetness on the side of your forehead.

Your arms wrap around his middle, inching the fabric of his shirt up so your fingers can press into his back. Despite the seriousness of your conversation, Eddie lurches forward into the bed and you squeal as you go with him, back meeting your blankets.

“Eddie!” You’re pinned underneath him, and Eddie has no plans on moving.

“Hm?”

“Get off!”

“You just told me you’ll have me any way you want me and now you want me off of you? I am all for the chase, baby, but you really gotta make up your mind.”

“Ugh,” you groan, admitting defeat as your arms wrap around him once more to hold him and he lets out a content sigh, nose nudging your head. You turn your head in the direction and he presses another sweet kiss to your lips before nuzzling his nose against yours.

“I’m gonna run down the halls on monday and tell everyone you’re my girlfriend.”

“How predictable of you.”

“Kid, I swear to God.”

You and Eddie will have to save The Last Unicorn and the harpy with three boobs for another time, too swept up in each other to pay it any mind.

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luna-rainbow · 10 days

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RE: People giving Bucky a hard time over his "I'm invisble, I'm turning into you.." line being "selfish" That whole scene is Bucky displaying behaviour consistent with depression or traumatic stress. He's drinking by himself in an isolated area, isolating himself from social situations by not sitting with the ohers - he doesn't initiate the convo with Steve and he's apparently smoking. Although a lot of people did that then we didn't see any sign of him smoking before? Not that I recall anyway. And I don't believe he was jealous of a woman paying attention to Steve instead of him or "taking" Steve from him. Bucky's a true friend (I'm not a shipper full stop): and true friends aren't possessive nor do they take issue with you spending time with others or flirting with the same person as them.

I think Bucky was simply testing himself. He wanted to see if he could still muster the confidence and charm to convince a lady to dance with him which he'd probably never had any problems doing before. Its the first time he initiates a conversation the entire scene.

When it didn't work was when he knew there was something wrong. I don't think it was just the super-soldier serum. It's interesting that after that Steve is really the only person he interacts/talks to having been very sociable and outgoing before. Some people have also noted that his tone of voice chances as well, he seems to speak less often, more softly and his tone is quieter. So maybe "I'm turning into you" is actually a kind of role-reversal. Bucky is now the quiet, less confident, introverted one and the one who has been victimized (and is about to be again by HYDRA). Kind of interesting as well that the serum now means Steve is taller than him too.

Poor Bucky. Cut him a break and give that man a hug. And a cookie. A cookie can't hurt.

Hey nonnie, I'm not sure who's been giving Bucky a hard time over the "I'm invisible" speech but I'm glad I haven't seen it XD

I had a meta a while ago about that particular line. It's not a fixed headcanon by any means, I was just running with the flow of Bucky's thoughts to see how he might have ended up in that moment.

And yeah, I agree, I think he was in a very vulnerable place at that time. Not just what he went through during imprisonment, but he's also traumatised by what he's seen so far in the war, and now someone who matters very much to him is in danger (Steve) and he can't do anything about it. I'm basing my projections on what Sebastian had said about Bucky in the "let's hear it for Captain America" scene -- that no, he wasn't jealous of Steve in that moment, he was just horrified he wouldn't be able to protect him anymore. He's torn between admiring Steve for the courage, and the very realistic fears of seeing Steve come to harm, but he also knows Steve too well to talk him out of it. So he's not in the best headspace in that moment.

I do want to gently disagree in that jealousy in a friendship doesn't make it less pure or less good, it's simply a very human response to what is at its heart a fear of abandonment. Even if you logically understand that you need to let your friend have other relationships, you can still feel jealous if that eats up time you'd normally have with your friend, and apprehensive about what else you might lose. It's what you do with those emotions that defines your morality. This is why a lot of fans say that Bucky has had a villain origin story but has come out the other end a hero -- he's gone through an arc of loss and fear and jealousy, but come out the other side still staunchly Steve's friend, and that's a heroic arc.

As always I think Sebastian did a fantastic job with Bucky. The change in Bucky pre-war and post-war is considerable.

His voice is lower and coarser, his mannerisms are much more "schooled" rather than boyish, it screams less bravado and more of a quiet assurance, and that frown never lifts from his brows. But yeah, a lot of that is battle-hardened professionalism, but I think a lot of that is also Sebastian factoring in Bucky's mental health. And his eyes are on Steve a lot more even when they're not conversing -- shipping angle aside, Steve is his commanding officer, and my other thought is that...his eyes are always on Steve because the danger to Steve is much higher now, and he's always made it his personal mission to make sure Steve's going to be okay.

(I mean there's also a lot we can say, or has been said, about that particular scene in terms of male writers writing female love interest badly, but that's an entirely different topic)

#bucky barnes #steve rogers #asks #sebastian stan

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russellsppttemplates · 9 months

Text

Spiders should be pink (Mick Schumacher)

Mick is more than happy to answer all of Mila's questions

Note: english is not my first language. this is a long piece that I hope will get the interactions back up (I love getting your requests and overall having you interact with the posts and having some random thoughts shared too!), so I hope you enjoy this piece that was mainly inspired by conversations I've had with my four year old cousin lately.

Thank you so much to everyone who likes and reblogs, your feedback is appreciated 🤍 and I'm taking requests so if you have any ideas or concepts you want to share, feel free to do so as I'll try to get to them the best I can!

Tw: mentions spiders

my masterlist

"It should be okay, but I'll talk to him just to be sure. And if for some reason there isn't a way, I can go to yours for the weekend", you said over the phone before bidding goodbye and ending the call.

Your cousin was going on a work trip with her husband, since they worked for the same company, and since your aunt and uncle were also our of town, she wanted to know if you were available to look after their daughter Mila for an overnight stay. It was all fine by you since you had the weekend free, but you still had to check in with your boyfriend since it was the place you shared with him and if he didn't mind having Mila, your four year second cousin.

"Mick", you called after looking inside the home gym and entering, seeing he was already stretching on the mat, "Liebling", he replied back, signalling you had his attention even though he was not looking at you, "my cousin needs me to watch Mila for the weekend, and I was wondering if it was okay if the came to stay with us", you began, "I can go and stay at their place, too. They leave on a saturday morning and come back by the end of Sunday", you explained.

Getting up and grabbing his towell, your sweaty boyfriend made his way to you, "of course she can come over and spend the weekend here. You think she'll be okay with it being a new space for her? For me it's fine, I have no problem having little Mila over", he smiled sweetly, "I think she'll be fine, I'll probably just need to keep some things away from her hands, and maybe check if there are any sharp corners that she can easily knock into", you mused, thinking about the way the furniture sat when you felt Mick's hands on your waist, "can we do that after we go for a shower?", he said, nipping on your neck before looking up at you for confirmation to go further, tapping your butt so you could jump and circle his waist with your legs, "I would like that very much, my love", you said, latching to him despite the sweaty clothes and letting him take you to the bathroom.

You and Mick wake up a little bit earlier than usual, just wanting to check if everything was fine and safe to have Mila over for her overnight say before you made breakfast for you and Mick while you waited for them to drop her off, "she must be so grown up, I remember the photos you showed me of her when she was little, and when we went to her birthday, was it last year? I think so, I remember the number three balloons", Mick mused, "she is, and she's very curious and witty too!".

"That must be them", you said getting up once you heard the bell ring, Mick following you as you headed to the door to meet them, "Hello, Mila! How are you, bug?", you asked once the little girl started running to you, arms open so you took the hint to catch her, "I'm good! Am I really going to spend some time with you?", she said before she noticed Mick, "hello", she waved her little hand, earning a wave back from your boyfriend when he was done greeting your cousin and her husband, "I remember you, you're Y/N's boyfriend!", she said excitedly, waving at him a lot more confidently now.

After sorting a few things with your cousin, she bid her parents goodbye with a small tear in her eye, not wanting you to see her sadness from being away from her parents.

"Mila, do you want to go see our dog?", Mick asked, thinking that maybe a distraction would do her some good. "You have a dog too?", she asked, looking up at Mick, "yes, have you not met Angie before?", your boyfriend replied, earning a shake from her head, figuring that all of the times you had been with her was either with your family or whenever the Australian Shepherd travelled with him. "Well, you can meet Angie now, she's probably asleep in the living room", you noted, guiding her by placing a hand on her back and heading to the room, seeing Angie indeed laid down by the sofa, ears alert at a new person in the house, "Angie, we want you to meet Mila", Mick, who was right behind you, said, going up to the dog just in case she had a different reaction than expected, being met instead with a happy Angie, looking at Mila and sniffing her hand.

"I have a dog, too. But he's not like her", Mila began, "he's really tall and white with some black spots!", she said, stretching her arms in hopes of showing you and Mick how big her dog really was, "and he's not fluffy like you, Angie, you're like a pillow!", she finished excitedly, stroking Angie's fur. "Do you have a dalmatian?", Mick asked, crouching down so he was at her eye level, "I don't know how he's called, I call him Alfred. But he's not like those on TV, you know the movie with many of them? Alfred has a spot here, here and here only, it's not all over him", she said, nor growing more comfortable with Mick as she pointed to a few spots on his arms and legs, smiling up at him to see him smiling at ther already.

You showed Mila the house, so she would feel more at ease at to know where everything was, Angie trailing right behind her, "Why do you have white hair?", Mila turned around to look at Mick, stunning you both with the question, "because my hair is very light like that", your boyfriend tried to explain to the best of his ability, "and can't you have brown hair like Y/N? Or a little yellow like me?", she pulled a curl from her head, the hair bouncing right back to its place once she let go of it, "but you look a lot like my grandpa, and he is cute too!", she said before looking at you, "I need to pee", Mila announced, "there is a bathroom right here", you opened the door, "do you need my help?", you asked, "I'm a big girl, I don't need it".

Opening and then closing the door for her, you waited for the little girl outside just in case she needed something from you, "she called you an old man", you chuckled at Mick before he giggled too, "what was I supposed to say to her? But at least I'm a cute old man to her", he nudged you, "that you certainly are, a very cute and handsome man", you smiled before kissing his lips, just in time to hear the little girl call for you, "Mick! Y/N! I'm too little to reach the sink to wash my hands!", she said, making you open the door, "can I climb on Angie to reach the sink?", she smiled hopefully at you, accepting her fate when you picked her up so she would be in line with the tap.

Deciding to go outside after a great lunch of pasta and tomato sauce, Mila's eyes sparkled when she saw a swing on the garden, "can we go on there, please?", she asked you both, kicking her legs so she could make her way to the swings, needing you to hold it still so she could climb, "hold your hands here for safety, okay?", you said before you started pushing her, Mick sitting in the bench that was near, noticing a spiderweb on the wooden part, grabbing a leaf to lead the spider to safety, "thank you, Mick, I don't like spiders", Mila said, "you're scared of them?", you asked while you pushed her swing, helping her go back and forth, "yes, they're brown and black and ew", she squirmed, making you two laugh, "would you like them another colour? Why aren't spiders pink?"

"I like purple too", she said, pointing to her swimsuit under her dress that she insisted on putting on right after lunch, "and blue too! Like your eyes? Why are they blue?", she questioned as she left the swing and moved to climb up the slide, going down on it and standing on its end so she could be a bit closer to Mick's face and inspect his eyes, "because my mom and my dad have blue eyes so I also have blue eyes", he said, "And my mama has blue eyes and my papa has brown eyes, so I have brown eyes, that fits", she mused, changing to another topic.

It was approaching evening time, and you were still all outside after a afternoon spent swimming, "Can I go on the pool now?", Mila asked and you looked at her, "you might get to cold going fully in", you reasoned with her, "how about I just wet my feet then?", she asked, tempting you to say yes to her, eventually nodding your head, "okay, let's go then", you said, getting up and holding her hand, "Mick, c'mon, I want you to come with us, too!", she urged, using her other hand to call him over to the wide tiled steps of the pool to join you two.

Sitting on the edge, the three of you had your feet in the water and Mila was behaving surprisingly well until she found out she was able to walk along the stairs, going between you and Mick, "I know what you're trying to do, missy", you tickled her once she sat down, cheeks pink as you called her out, "and what was I going to do?", she replied, "you're trying to get your legs wet above your knee, then your thigh and before we know it, you're going to be inside", you said, her smile faltering as she understood you had actually read her plan.

Moving next to Mick, she went to whisper in his ear, "how did she know I wanted to do that?", making your boyfriend giggle, "Y/N's really smart, you know?", he reasoned with her, making them both look at you, "I think it's time we head inside to go for a bath, hm?", you tried, Mick taking advantage of the fact that she was sitting in his lap, holding her as he got up so you could leave, heading inside for a bath to wash the day off while your boyfriend got dinner started.

"Mick! Me and Y/N had a bath with bubbles!", Mila said after she got down the last step of the stairs, announcing it to him as he checked the oven, "Oh, did you now? You smell really nice!", he complimented, "it's my princess bubbles, mama got them for me!", she pointed to you, "she smells like it too!", she smiled. Mick saw you walk down the stairs too, towells in hand so you could put them in the laundry room, "you smell like princesses too, liebling?", he asked, "Oh, like the most beautiful princesses, that's for sure", you chuckled, amused at their conversation, "you can be a princess too, Y/N, you're pretty like them", she reasoned, hugging your legs, "thank you, little one, you're very pretty too. I bet Belle is jealous of you", you smiled, combing her freshly washed curls with your fingers, "if you want to go have a shower now, I'll look after her and dinner, too", you said, noticing Mila running towards the living room and hearing her call for your dog.

"The food is in the oven, it should take a while", he said, kissing your forehead and making his way upstairs, "MICK! You can use my princess bubbles if you want to!", Mila yelled, making Mick chuckle at the little girl's energy, never faltering even after a full day of playing and swimming.

"Y/N, do you want to make bracelets with me?", she said, bringing out a kit with colourful beads and threads, "sure! Come here to the table so we can organise them here", you said, allowing her to sit on top of your crisscrossed legs while you measured and placed all the beads in the bracelet like you wanted.

"Do you like to share a house with Mick?", Mila asked you, "yes, I do. Why do you ask?", you questioned, wanting to know where her curiosity came from, "Well, bec- Mick! You're back! Do you like sharing a house with Y/N?", she asked him as soon as she saw him join you again in the living room. Mick sat next to you, "I do, yes", he said sweetly, "why?", Mila asked him like she had asked you, "because I like to spend time with her, because I can make things for her when she doesn't have the time, -", he began, "like when she doesn't know where her shoes are and you give her them? Or when she needs someone to get her cough syrup?", she reasoned, probable thinking about how her parents, the people she shares a house with, are with her, "yes, all of those things", Mick chuckled, grabbing a thread so he could too make some bracelets, "There, now you, me and Y/N have matching bracelets!", Mila announced, placing a bracelet in your wrist and one in Mick's, "you both have a heart, look! Because you live together!".

After dinner, while Mick offered to tidy the rest of the kitchen while you went up to change into pyjamas, "Mick, Mick, Mick!", Mila yelled as she ran to the living room, "Look!", she pointed to herself once she was in front of him, "my pyjamas have Minnie and Mickey on them!", she said, pointing to you once you reached them, sitting next to your boyfriend, "you can be Mickey, because your name is the same, and Y/N can be Minnie!", she said before she climbed up the sofa, sitting on your lap while she looked at the TV, "we're going to see a movie?", she asked, recognising the frames on the TV, "yes. Do you like any of these?", Mick asked her a he flipped through them.

You ended up watching the 101 Dalmatians, Mila claiming it was for Angie to get to know her friend Alfred until they could meet in real life, the little girl falling asleep holding onto you like a little koala, arms around your torso with her head snuggled on your chest, "the day tired her out, hm?", Mick said in a low voice.

Chuckling, you combed her curly hair before doing the same to your boyfriend's hair, "it did, and you? She didn't take up all your batteries with her insane questions?", you smiled, forever grateful of having him in your life, and especially to see your family get along nicely with him. "She's fine with that. It's so cool to see her be curious about everything, and she's a really sweet girl too", your boyfriend said.

#mick schumacher imagine #mick schumacher fanfic #mick schumacher x reader #f1 x reader #f1 fanfic #f1 imagine

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flickering-nightfall · 8 months

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So, your Infinity Train crossover got me to watch the show, and... woah. Woah. I would love to know if you had any more ideas, blurbs, thoughts, anything about that crossover, because now I can't get enough of imagining the viciously murderous cat and accidentally-fratricidal robot on the train.

I'm glad you liked Infinity Train too! (and thank you!) More on the crossover... I gotta admit I haven't thought of much other than the initial "haha what if" idea. Maybe I can speculate though:

Spoilers ahead!

There were many hilarious and thoughtful takes on how Pebbles could possibly end up on the train, in the notes of the initial post. I joked that it'd just tear a hole through his structure, but there are more (and less) sane options than that.

Since we only see human passengers on the train, a lot of people would probably mistake Pebbles and Arti as denizens. Simon and Grace would probably not take to them having numbers well. I feel like they'd most likely think it was a trick, but it could shake up their perspective too.

Man humans look kind of similar to ancients maybe. That doesn't mean much to Arti - and I think humans look dissimilar enough from scavs to be spared by her wrath. But to Pebbles...

Also, iterators haven't communicated with another civilization-era sapient species in a quite a while probably. Some interesting stuff can come out of that.

How many migraines do you think Pebbles gets from trying to figure out what the hell is up with denizens? Or the train itself? I feel like he'd have an aneurysm if he had to interact with Alan Dracula. If he goes home and tries to tell the others what happened without any proof, they'd think he'd had a rot-induced fever dream.

Numbers are dependent on how close a passenger is to solving their problem. Arti, having already killed the scav chieftain, according to Rain World has hit the point of no return. So her body is completely wrapped up in numbers. But like Amelia, with enough time and determination it might be possible. The main problem is... Arti has to want to fix her problem first. The setup for her to do that is there. She's with Pebbles, so she has less of a reason to go off on a rampage unless she's being threatened. The lack of scavs wouldn't stop her from resorting to violence at this point, but the pure strangeness and unfamiliarity of her surroundings should at least baffle her into a different mental state.

I think in order to get an exit, Arti needs to make peace with herself. She must acknowledge what she has become, and to truly believe that she needs to change. It has little to do with the death of her children at that point. She needs to escape the self-perpetuating circle of violence.

Pebbles' number is much smaller (but still huge) because he's entrenched in rage and isolation and frustration on a massive timescale, but we see him eventually come to a resolution in Rivulet's campaign. How would the train define his problem though? It could be his anger at Moon and Suns, blaming them for his current state (even if Suns is partially at fault). It could be his tendency to close himself off, his refusal to talk to others or accept help. It could be his denial, believing he can handle and fix everything by himself. It could be his overall arrogance or ego. There's a lot of options there. Ultimately I think whatever brings him to think similarly to how he does in Rivulet's campaign would do the trick.

The sad thing is that Pebbles would probably be better off staying on the train too. I'm not sure if he'd be affected by the rot there, but he'd at least he could (literally) get out of his own head. And he has no choice but to touch grass interact with new people and situations. But to deny his exit would be to deny responsibility for what he's done. If he's really gotten better, that means he knows he can't run away anymore.

If Pebbles went to the train without Arti there's a chance he'd get killed or ghom'd two days into the trip. We are assuming his puppet is capable of walking for this AU, but also I do not think he knows how to walk. Good luck pink guy!

On the flipside. Pebbles could... probably take over the train even more than Amelia ever did, especially as a (bio)mechanical being himself. The only thing that could limit him are taboos maybe. Any iterator could do this, really. Lots of potential paths with that one.

Something something, One-One and iterators both solving people's big problems with varying amounts of success, and both engineering weird organisms...

...does a RW character that gets ghom'd return to the great cycle? Their soul gets devoured, or their life essence, it's not clear. I guess which one could determine what happens. But also they are in another universe where there is probably no cycle. Are ghoms a triple affirmative? Is crossdimensional travel? The latter wouldn't fit the "portable and generally applicable" part but still. This is a whole rabbit hole and a half, isn't it!

The train is dangerous and all, but that just makes Rain World characters a hilarious fit for it. Like this is just their daily life. Honestly I think their home world is more dangerous than the train, just in less wacky ways.

Lastly: I haven't even touched upon what introducing other characters could do for this narrative, or how they would react. So many possibilities!

If anyone wants to do more with this, please feel free!

#rw spoilers #dp spoilers #infinity train spoilers #text #ask #thetroupemaster #anon #rambles #long post

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veliseraptor · 1 year

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>>> because Jiang Cheng never wants to force people to choose him, even 'for their own good' - this is actually one of the sharpest divergences I think between Wei Wuxian's approach to problems and Jiang Cheng's approach to problems, but that's another post.

I don’t suppose you’d be willing to make that other post? (Hopeful)

you know what, I feel like sticking my hand in a bear's mouth today, so sure.

one of the things that Wei Wuxian does kind of a lot, and most notably in the instance of his golden core (but also other places) is make decisions about what is best for other people. Wei Wuxian has the thing that many smart people do, where he has very definite ideas about what is the correct decision in given situations, and a belief in his capability to make the correct decision, and will make the choice to make that decision above somebody's head if he thinks they're not going to make the same choice as he would for reasons he thinks are bad. in the situation with Jiang Cheng, his reasoning (valid or not, and I'm not interested in adjuticating that) goes basically "Jiang Cheng can't die > if Jiang Cheng doesn't get his golden core back, he will die > I can give him my golden core > if I told him I was doing that, he wouldn't accept it > so I won't tell him about it and will give him my golden core and go from there.

I think you see it with the way he interacts with Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan, too - in his view Jin Zixuan is clearly undeserving and not good enough for Jiang Yanli, and could never make her happy, and therefore, regardless of the effect on Jiang Yanli, he acts according to that conviction. And also with what he chooses in novelverse specifically (with Lan Wangji) to tell/not tell Lan Xichen about Jin Guangyao, out of a conviction of what is best for Lan Xichen. Wei Wuxian is decisive and strong-willed and very confident in his skills of all kinds, and part of what comes with that self-confidence is the assurance that sometimes he knows better than the people around him, and maybe they don't realize that yet, but they will eventually, or else they just never need to know about the choice he made for them.

and then there's Jiang Cheng, who is...he's not conflict-avoidant, obviously, but what he won't do is interfere with somebody else's decision, or argue with them about it (past a certain point; the amount he argues with Wei Wuxian over his "defection" is, I think, unusual). when Jiang Yanli decides to marry Jin Zixuan, he accepts her leaving in a way Wei Wuxian struggles to do; when Wei Wuxian tells him to cut him off Jiang Cheng does it, as clearly as he doesn't really want to. when it's made clear to him that someone else, particularly someone he loves, has made a decision, even if he perceives it as harmful, even if he doesn't like it, he'll step back and let it go. obviously this has reams to do with his parents' relationship and the number it did on him watching their dynamic (and experiencing its consequences) - Jiang Cheng has internalized the message of "if you try to make decisions that other people don't like, even out of love, they will just end up hating you anyway."

(Wei Wuxian, I would argue, has the message of "regardless of whether people like your decisions or not, they might hate you anyway" which probably informs his thought process.)

I'm not saying this in a "Jiang Cheng respects peoples' agency, Wei Wuxian doesn't" sort of way (though I think that's kind of true, it's just not as 'this one good, this one bad' as that sounds), just in the sense of...if Wei Wuxian errs on the side of "I know best and can make decisions even if others don't like them" (to his detriment), Jiang Cheng errs on the side of "I have control over very specific things and will not overreach past those lines, even if it runs contrary to what I think is best."

#conversating #anonymous #i'm not sure this makes sense AT ALL but hey i tried #jiang cheng #wei wuxian #the sad queer cultivators show #thought about making this nonrebloggable but like i said. bear's mouth #maybe no one will notice me!#aggressively headcanons

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celestialscatterbrain · 5 months

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Hey babe can you do a composite / synastry observation on Pisces mars in the 5 h composite and 1st h Lilith synastry if you are familiar, I appreciate your posts .

Pisces Mars in 5th House of the Composite Chart and Synastry of Lilith in Partner’s First House

Do not interact if you are a minor. (18+)

Oooo I like this combo 👀 I’ve never experienced either, but I would like to!

For Pisces Mars in a composite chart, I feel like this is a placement where you two don’t have to talk too much to understand the other. Perhaps you’re not a very confrontational couple, and prefer to ignore the severity of certain issues to maintain the dreaminess of your relationship. In the 5th house, I’d say maybe you guys are always doing something fulfilling that you can submerse yourselves in. You probably both love to stay to yourselves and have more fun together than with others, so you two can become very introverted together. I imagine you guys come off as the “quiet” couple, but they just might not get the butterflies that can be felt with just so little words. I feel like this is also a couple that loves to watch movies together, probably likes to smoke or do drugs together, get involved in spirituality together and maybe do rituals almost as a date, and loves to transcend to music together. I think going out to art and science museums might be a great date together. Even if the sex is casual I feel like it can still feel very spiritual and you can just go straight into doing whatever else you need to do even though you just spiritually transcended LOL. I think you guys can try out a lot of things with little to no judgement with one another, because whatever flows just flows. Painting on the beach would be a nice date for you guys. I feel like you guys can also encourage mutable styles with one another, and can be known as a more alternative couple in some way. I feel like there’s a lot of sweetness and acceptance here.

For Lilith in 1st house synastry, i think one of you might have a personal style that is different than others, and this could’ve pulled the other one in like a magnet (I feel like Lilith is the one who loves how the house person expresses themselves). I feel like Lilith instantly found the house to be their ideal “bad girl/bad guy” match, or that they look like they could be even if they are sweet. I think Lilith would encourage the house person to express themselves in a way they never have before without caring about what other people think. The house person may not have understood the sexual appeal they naturally ooze, or the extent of it, until Lilith pointed it out. For some reason I feel like Lilith might encourage the house person to get more piercings and tattoos. I feel like Lilith would love to show off how they pulled the house person, and loves to present them to whoever. They might love how scandalous you guys might appear together, especially because of your appearances. I feel like this is a couple people can look at instantly just tell they get down like that. I would love to see the outfits you guys pull out when you guys are going out together. This is the couple that is NOTICED when you go out together and can look like you guys get into trouble together even if you don’t. I feel like Lilith likes the world to know the house person is THEIRS and theirs only. The house problem probably finds the stimulation from the Lilith person to be extremely motivating and liberating. I feel like the house person can undergo a lot of changes in this interaction and grow in ways they didn’t expect to, because with newfound freedom in expressions comes a lot of self discovery that they can keep with them even after the relationship. Lilith might teach the house person how to, subconsciously or not, to be more assertive and not come off as someone to be messed around with or walked all over. With a poorly aspected Lilith, i think maybe lilith can be perceived as the house person’s “downfall,” or someone who led them down a worse path than what was originally expected of the house person. The attraction to one another here sounds so enticing.

All in all, I feel like you two can find a lot of freedom in your self expressions together, and there is no judgment in exploring and changing how you express yourself on a day to day basis in whatever respect it may be. This sounds fun.

#synastry observations #synastry #astrology #5th house synastry #pisces #pisces mars #composite mars #composite observations #lilith #first house synastry #1h synastry #5h synastry #love astrology #sexstrology #relationship astrology

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peachfruitcake · 2 months

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did you hear about what Martin said about Susan and Linda on the Twitter space he hosted on the 27th? i thought of you instantly when he started talking about them and have been waiting for you to post your thoughts! :-)

HEHE YES IM THE ONE WHO’S QUESTION LED TO THAT!!!!!

Now for those who didn’t listen to that space, Martin said that Linda called her to say goodbye but never specified how it went of course. Besides “hey Susan I’m leaving sorry this is really impacting my mental health” “gaaaaaaaaaaey”/j

This is all a personal headcanon but I like to think that their friendship grew incredibly distant ever since Linda married Felix, Susan probably stopped talking to her altogether for a while and it would leave Linda very confused and upset. They might’ve started talking to eachother again a little bit as the series of events began to approach but only very brief small talk, maybe Linda complaining a little and giving Susan a few life updates and them both talking about stuff they’ve been noticing with others lately (especially Felix’s drinking), but nothing deeper than that.

I see Susan being extremely emotionally closed off to most people except maybe a select few that she knows very closely, so if you were to ask her what’s going on in her life she’d give you a very vaguely watered down version and not what’s actually going on or how she’s really managing herself emotionally.

So basically she used to be more open with Linda, but during that period she sort of just started treating her like a stranger.

So when Linda called her first to tell her that she’s finally leaving, Susan acted how she usually would, keeping it calm, understanding and respectful and wishing her luck, but she won’t really show any more than that. Or that she cried later and felt pretty bad that they couldn’t be so close anymore and that she’ll probably never be able to make up for herself acting so distant for the past many years again.

Of course this all comes from how I view Susan as a character myself though and also the fact that I refuse to pass up the idea that she has feelings for Linda. I like to think that she introduced her to Felix cuz Linda was getting more desperate to find a relationship and Susan was getting weird thoughts so in a panic she shoved her off to him so she could avoid the urges. They’ve been boiling within her since highschool and she always was able to push them aside or excuse them as “she’s just my very close friend I don’t have many close friends so she feels extra special” and as the years went by they began distracting her a lot from her work and were growing stronger and more unavoidable aaand they were really beginning to affect how she’d interact with Linda and you see Susan hates feeling like another has any control over her and Linda just wouldn’t shut up about hooooow badly she wants a relationship and hoooow many dates keep failing and Susan was at the point to where she was starting to get the kind of dreams that make you stare up at the ceiling in horror when you open your eyes in the morning so one day when she overheard Felix speaking about being single and wanting to start looking around, she decided to introduce her to him. Susan allegedly never finds a problem she can’t fix in some way so that was her solution.

They hit it off, Susan’s solution isn’t working for some reason cuz she doesn’t feel any relief at all and in fact feels worse but just sucks it up and just focuses on her work and looks the other way. Linda and Felix get married, Susan feels like throwing up the entire day and now feels somehow even more worse by now and suddenly whenever Linda wants to chat she’s suddenly always “busy” every time. Susan’s often busy anyways but you know yourself when there’s a difference between “shit I’m busy that day, let’s do Sunday instead” and “Sorry I can’t, I’m busy”, “I don’t know when I’ll be available.”

While Linda and Felix were dating, Susan probably assumed that she was just jealous that she couldn’t have a little fun at her age herself. When they got married, Susan told herself that she’s probably so depressed over it cuz it’s making her feel like she’s fallen behind others her age and that maybe she feels bitter that all of these people are moving on and going through these important life stages while she remains behind. Which made no sense otherwise cuz Susan couldn’t give any less of a fuck about starting any sort of family or going out. But that’s what Susan would tell herself that she feels so she wouldn’t have to think about it any further. By the time Susan thinks she’s over whatever it was, she begins having brief talks with Linda occasionally. Not often and still a bit distant, but way better than before.

So yeah can you imagine how shitty and guilty Susan felt that whole time of her weird bitterness toward Linda being in a relationship and not being able to approach her much anymore or how Felix turned out to be such a shitty husband.

If this headcanon is aligned with twf’s canon, she’d probably be dead before she even gets to actually acknowledge and accept her feelings as they are. Such is life though. Not like she could’ve done anything about it.

#tldr Susan is emotionally stunted as fuck and has no idea how to identify her emotions and struggles a lot with strong emotions. she’s the #poor bastard type to stand there light a deer in headlights whenever someone cries around her #you ask her how she feels and she doesn’t react on the outside and is like ‘it’s cool’ but deep down she’s falling to her knees and crying #plus she’s a busy woman and got no time for gay shit like pining #idk if u wanted that whole hc ramble but take it anyways (˘◡˘)#it’s cool that you thought of me though!!! means a lot I like it when I’m the first someone thinks of when it comes to susan Woodings :^)#now if you’ll excuse me my sleep gummy is kicking in #the walten files #twf #sulinda #twf sulinda #twf susan x linda #the walten files susan x linda #linda thompson #susan Woodings #headcanons #I remember after Martin announced them being school friends and that Susan introduced her to Felix I made a post mentioning how I see her #haven done that to push Linda away so she could avoid her attraction fo her and how that blew up in her face lol #and he liked the post heehee obv I know that that doesn’t mean it’s canon but it is to me 😁😁😁😁🌼#i stg if this is incomprehensible to read #I’m too tired to proofread and I just wanna post this lol

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elvenbeard · 11 months

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Maybe the biggest gift is the friends we made along the way 🎂

Happy Birthday, V!

Was staying up way too late and getting way too emotional over these fictional gonks last night, but yes... I've wanted to do a bigger scene like this for so long, and what better occasion than male V's canon birthday today!

These aren't all my favourites from the game (the sofa wouldn't be big enough for it xD), but the people Vince would like to invite over for the occasion for sure, let it be a year or two down the line when they all actually are in the same area at the right time and come together like this (and uuuhhh... obvious problems with one certain ex-bodyguard set aside and solved because I said so!). It would really be a special thing to have everyone there that's been with him during one of the worst times of his life. Thanks to them (amongst many others) he even gets the chance to celebrate another birthday.

Some more ramblings about some of the interactions I'm picturing here and why I placed everyone the way I did under the cut xD And some more pics to come in a separate post later :3

Front and center obviously Vince and Kerry and Judy, my faves, my loves <3 I think this would probably be one of only a handful of times Kerry ever meets Judy in person. He only ever hears her over the holo and knows her from what V told him, because she left Night City before they got a chance to meet prior to the game's endings. I think they would go along so well though, and besides Kerry, Judy is the person Vince feels closest to out of the group pictured here, and he'd be so excited to know Kerry and her get along as well.

Then Judy and Panam... I lowkey ship it so hard, and I mean, they would make one power couple, but at the very least I think they'd become good friends, maybe Judy even travels with the Aldecaldos for a while or joins them, like in the Star ending when she's romanced.

I put River in the back and center cause he's the biggest of the bunch and I think he'd love being there, watching over everyone in a way (and keeping an eye on Takemura, cause he doesn't trust him xD). I'd like to think him and Viktor get talking about boxing, workouts, maybe make plans for a friendly sparring match. Maybe they've even met before on some occasion, only just realizing it now. Viktor is btw out of the whole bunch the person Vince has know the longest, almost as long as he knew Jackie in my background story for him.

Goro keeps himself in the back because he definitely is the odd one out of the bunch (probably didn't wanna come in the first place), but maybe he's starting to realize this moment that a life without Arasaka is not the end of the world after all. That there's always room for new beginnings, no matter how unlikely it seems (but he's still gonna give V shit, and V is gonna give him shit, obviously XD they're bickering like an old couple probably, much to Judy's and Panam's amusement who previously were rather wary of Goro).

Then a pair I only really got thinking about when I set this up were Misty and Kerry because... It does kinda make sense, and I think they'd get along really well? Like, Vince and Misty have known each other for a few years, and he likes her a lot, but he's not as close to her as he was to Jackie for example. She was definitely a positive guidance throughout the whole mess in 2077, and he really appreciates her for always seeing the good in everything. And I think Kerry would be a bit confused about her in the beginning, but since he also has spiritual leanings I think they'd find a lot of common ground. I also think Misty would just treat him as Vince's partner, some guy, not be all in awe about him being famous - aware of it, but ignoring it, because it does not matter in the grand scheme of things how rich and famous you are but whether or not you're a decent human being.

And Nibbles is there because she lives there, obviously, this is her penthouse, her sofa xD Needs to make sure everyone behaves!

I had been thinking about including Rogue in the scene, but then I also thought... she probably wouldn't come xD Be like "nah kid, thanks, but you do you", and she's not that close with Vince on a personal level. Same goes for Claire, I love her so much, and while I think she and Vince get along very well, they're not as close (or maybe she just didn't have time).

I was pondering also if I wanted to include Jackie and Johnny in some way, because they can't be there physically for known reasons (and even though Vince wouldn't have invited Johnny just to annoy him, Johny would have come anyway to annoy him back, so there's that XD). Decided against it in the end because the ideas I had would have meant more editing than what I was ready to do just now, but I have some more ideas with Vince and Jackie and Johnny that work better in a different setting anyway.

if you've read this far, here's a piece of birthday cake 🍰

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greenerteacups · 3 months

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also just read your favorite weasley post and !! love that Ron is your favorite he gets so much bashing in dramione works im like grrggr he’s not so horrible omg! he has his shortcomings but if you’re literally diving deep into draco as a character who in canon is overtly an ass then why are we destroying Ron’s character to justify the dramione relationship TT poor story building imo, but to each their own!

love your work, excited for what’s to come!!

I think Ron would've had better reception in the D/H fandom if — I mean, for one, if he wasn't a major obstacle to their ship going canon, which is like, not his fault, but also means he's never gonna be the most popular dude on the block — but also if the later books hadn't done him a bit dirty. Without even getting into how their characters change, Hermione becomes a lot more likable in later books when her enduring flaws of bossiness, paranoia, and know-it-all-ing become incredibly useful and appropriate in a literal war. Ron, in contrast, starts as an almost idealized "hero's best friend" archetype, friendly and witty and loyal, and then gets his flaws uncovered slowly. Whereas Hermione wears her faults on her sleeve from day one, Ron's self-esteem issues and empathy problems emerge realistically over time as the plot brings them to the fore. But because JKR doesn't conclude emotional arcs, he doesn't get an actual moment to overcome those flaws and triumph, restoring audience faith and making himself more likable by having overcome struggle.

Draco canonically exists to be a bully and antagonist. The stories are not terribly interested in him beyond that role. But there's something honest about that, since the reader never feels like the text expects you to like him. Draco is awful and owns it. He's narcissistic, cruel, and mean from the first interaction, so he has nowhere to go but up. If you like him, you like him because (probably) you're interested in where he could go in the future or in alternate universes, and how he could overcome his faults (making him extremely likable, because we love characters who struggle and win). He's not a three-dimensional character so much as he is the possibility of a three-dimensional character, and all that potential is really easy to like. Meanwhile, Ron is a three-dimensional character, full-stop. He fucks up sometimes, but in general, the text wants you to like him — problem being, the text doesn't always know how to make that happen, and sometimes it fails. Which can be doubly annoying, because then you feel like you're watching a character getting rewarded for bad behavior.

Now, me? I'm a consistent bitch. Blond or ginger, I'm equal-opportunity: give me a witty asshole with empathy problems and a fanatical devotion to the people they love, I'm locked in. I like Ron and Draco for a lot of the same reasons. I think they're very similar in a lot of ways that get overlooked. And if you ship Draco/Hermione, that should be great news, because you might suppose Hermione has a type.

#greenteacup asks #meta?

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clara-maybe-ontheroad · 7 months

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Little musings on Gap (Drake), Only Friends ep 1 & 7

It's probably been said by someone already, but I'm appreciating the fact that the superposition between Boston sleeping with Gap in the first episode and Nick jerking off to his phone was such an announcement of what was to come.

-> The voyeurism of Nick going through Boston's phone for his sexual pleasure while (we now know) Boston was being filmed against his consent for Gap's sexual pleasure.

-> The revelation that this isn't just a one off and that Gap actually has a career with filming guys he has sex with and putting it on the Internet as porn.

Which begs the question though : was any of that first interaction between Boston and Gap real ? In episode 1, Gap says he has a boyfriend but that boyfriend lets him play with strangers sometimes. It's entirely possible that it's true, but in episode 7 we also learn that Gap has put so many sex tapes online that he isn't surprised that someone like Mew might recognize him from "his work".

(as an aside, I've talked in previous posts about how much "work" and "services" seem to almost exclusively refer to sex in this show, the trend continues)

Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if Gap lied to Boston in that first encounter, because everybody in this show and in real life lies, and also because he probably saw what would make him more exciting to Boston : being taken, unavailable, technically belonging to someone else yet wanting him. We all know that's Boston's type, and maybe Gap could tell. Gap was putting the ground work to see if Boston was daring enough and would make a good subject for his videos.

Edit : turns out I was misremembering and potential threesome guy wasn't Gap, so no lying on Gap's part there. Still though, the rest of the lying stands since Boston didn't know about the camera ; and maybe Gap justifies it to himself thinking that since he has a presence online, if people approach him it's their responsibility to know ? Or not his problem

Does Gap know who is going to put on the Internet and who he's going to keep for himself ? I don't know, but it seems like he didn't actually release the video with Boston, he tried to use the fact that he had it to get more sex out of him.

The show treats it as a bit of a bleep in Mew's revenge scheme, but we do see how many folders Gap has on his computer of sex tapes. A lot.

Btw love how P'Jojo has to insert himself into everything haha, after the Twitter account now the sex tape folder

How many of these people knew they were being filmed ? How many didn't ? How many that didn't had their faces hidden in the shadow ? The example of Boston Vs Mew seems to suggest that when they do know, Gap's partners often prefer to have their face hidden in the shadows, while someone like Boston who is in the dark (ah) about what's happening will show their face on camera unknowingly.

Would that make those videos more valuable to Gap ? Collecting faces of men who didn't consent ?

The show does treat what Gap did as something had, but it's mostly there so Mew can have its revenge moment of threatening to Boston but keeping the moral high ground, showing he's better than everyone.

But the show is telling us everyone's moral standards are in the gutter. No one is truly shocked at Gap's behaviours, and it doesn't seem like there's going to be any consequences to that. It's just going to be a bump on the road, because there are shitty people everywhere like that.

And as said in other posts, the low level to high key shittiness of absolutely everyone in this show is what's making it gold.

(this is not high degree meta so I don't know if it's worthy of the ephemerality squad but I'd love to hear more thoughts on the Gap situation or to be pointed to more posts already written about him so tagging @waitmyturtles @lurkingshan @ranchthoughts @twig-tea @slayerkitty @distant-screaming @neuroticbookworm @chickenstrangers @thatgirl4815 @wen-kexing-apologist )

#only friends the series #ofts meta #ofts gap

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rhube · 8 months

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The Problem with Gentle Critiques

This deserves a longer, more interesting post than I have the spoons to write, but:

I have been reflecting a lot lately on the fact that Pretty Woman offers huge and insightful critiques of capitalism that I Did Not Get as a child, and have completely missed until very recently.

It's a problem a lot of 80s movies have, where capitalists legitimately do bad things and are critiqued about it, but so much of the movie is spent wallowing in the luxuries rich people have that audiences do not absorb the critique.

One of the crucial plot arcs in Pretty Woman is about how the Richard Gere character is deeply unhappy until he meets Vivian (Julia Roberts) because he is *angry* at his father, and has been taking out that anger on others by buying up their businesses, breaking them up, and selling the 'valuable' remains for profit.

Vivian makes the insightful point that his company doesn't make anything, it only destroys, and that this is partly why Edward (Gere) remains deeply unhappy, and all the therapy in the world hasn't solved that. Just recognising that you're angry at your father changes nothing. You have to change the behaviours that perpetuate that damage as well.

Vivian is a force of socialist disruption wherever she goes.

Perhaps the most memorable moment of the movie is not the romance or the business plot or the sex work, but Vivian returning to the snooty shop where the women dismissed her because she looked 'cheap' (and probably they recognised her as a sex worker). These are women who work (unfairly) on commission. They're dismissive because they don't want to waste their time helping someone they've been trained to judge won't buy anything. So these are women who won't help another woman. They're women who want to keep as far away from sex workers as they can lest they be damaged by association. But if they had co-operated, they would have all raised each other up.

But I didn't get that.

I didn't get the point about big business and the fact that extracting capital actually destroys productivity because shareholders only care about their price going up, not about funding enterprises that benefit us all. Because the business plot is boring. Even though the business men in the movie are the most grotesque and easy to hate, because of how they treat Vivian, the critique of them as business men doesn't register, because what Edward's money buys is a lot more fun: the beautiful red dress, the fabulous hotel, 'rescuing' Vivian from her life of poverty and sex work.

I also didn't get the socialist undertones of the shopping interaction. What I felt - and what I think most of us feel when we watch that moment, where Vivian comes back in with her many bags and says 'Big mistake! Big! Huge!' isn't 'Workers should unite to protect each other' or 'Women must unite in solidarity with sex workers', instead, what we feel is visceral triumph over bullies and snobs. And what enables Vivian to triumph in that way is Edward's money, and how good and expensive she looks in the clothes his money enabled her to buy.

Because she does look good (in a very 80s way). So even though the film is really well made (it's a classic for a reason) and is doing all this subtle shit with how much more free and comfortable Vivian looks in her street clothes than either she or the shop workers look in their expensive, 'smart' clothes - even though there's this beautiful thematic work going on with how Vivian's character's sex work and free spirit embody actually living life and enjoying it sensuously, and how often the rich-people environments feel sterile and unwelcoming to us as well as her - it all gets lost, because she's also Cinderella.

And don't make the mistake of thinking I'm critiquing Cinderella, because I'm not. I *get* that we all need stories about being rescued sometimes. We shouldn't have to do it all ourselves. We can't. We need stories where the people with resources make the time to see us in our struggles and lift us up out of poverty and pain. I GET IT.

The point I'm making is that a film can do all this good work - it can work hard and skilfully to critique capitalism and say your feminism must include sex workers or it will be bullshit - and it can ALL GET LOST. Because subtle points don't register when the escapism is too inviting.

People will defend Lord of the Flies and Fight Club until the cows come home for having 'real' messages that are important and get missed under the emotional impact of how the story makes you feel, but they won't make the time to do the same for Pretty Woman or The Little Mermaid (another post I should make some time) because they're 'fairytales' and 'for women' and 'feel good'. So I definitely don't want to drag the film down.

It's more that I am, 30 years too late, having an 'OH, THAT'S what you were doing!' about a movie that was making some pretty great points, and I didn't get them until I experienced a company being destroyed to extract capital from the inside.

I didn't get it because, I think, we don't see the perspectives of the workers. The only suffering we see is Vivian's, and she's wrapped up in a fairytale where she's going to be rescued and live a life of luxury at the end. We don't see what made those sales assistants behave like dicks, even though the movie shows how working on commission in a luxury store *sucks*.

We don't get the perspective of the ordinary workers in the companies Edward destroys - only their CEO, who at the end of the day would actually be fine. The idea of losing a 'family' business that 'makes something' is abstract. The CEO never made anything with his own hands, even if he 'cares' about his workers.

And yeah, a single film can only do so much, but the issue is that it's a paradigmatic example of a wider problem - also seen in Lord of the Flies and Fight Club. Which is that if your message is overtaken by revelling in the thing you want to critique, all the audience will take away is that they enjoyed the revels.

We want to be Edward and Vivian, not the shop workers. We want to burn it all down, not critique toxic masculinity.

In a world where most people know the way capitalism operates is bad, Pretty Woman makes a powerful critique. In a world where we're constantly urged to worship money... it makes it look like having money is really nice. Like you get beautiful dresses and jewellery and to get back at your bullies.

I think too often, as writers (and I am speaking of myself here) we allow ourselves to be persuaded to hold back, because we don't think people will accept what we have to say if we say it too bluntly. But actually, there are people out there who need you to scream.

And I'm not saying that Fury Road is a better movie than Pretty Woman because it confronts the issues head on and screams them in your face. We do need both. We just get a lot more of one than the other; which sadly makes the more dominant kind of film less effective.

I guess I'm saying that if you want to make a point, subtlety doesn't cut it. If you want to change minds, to go against the grain, you have to be careful not to enjoy too much that which you critique.

If you want to critique billionaires, you can't make their lives look fun.

People remember Iron Man's gadgets and fabulous home, not the critique of arms dealing.

People remember Vivian's red dress and the defeat of bullies with money, not the importance of worker solidarity.

If you want people to remember your critique, you can't be subtle.

(OK, maybe I failed at writing the short version of this post.)

#pretty woman #fury road #iron man #fight club #anti-capitalism #capitalism #venture capitalists #gifs #film theory #writing

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ewingstan · 7 months

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We sort of touched on it in a prior post, but you’ve gotten a fair few details on how Mark and Carol raised Victoria by this point.

From what details you recall, how does her handling/raising of Kenzie fall into compare and contrast with those details?

Wooh. Hm. Well, I think she has Kenzie's ultimate wellbeing in mind more than Carol probably did while raising her and Amy. At the same time, when Victoria's first reaction to Kenzie getting publicly pilloried was "lets get you in front of cameras to argue your case, and also while we're at it lets keep our cape-network plan from falling through by jumping on the public-Scion-reveal grenade" I thought well. Yeah that's something Carol's daughter would think to do huh.

Its a dangerous relationship they're in. Victoria legitimately wants to keep Kenzie safe and stop her from overworking herself. She also really wants this cape group thing to work. She'd probably not consciously let the latter get in the way of the former, but she will let Kenzie fight as a hero if it seems like that's what Kenzie wants. The problem, of course, is that Kenzie wants what Victoria wants. Kenzie will act in whatever way will make the people around her happy, and so if she thinks Victoria wants her to be a hero (which you don't exactly need to be an observation tinker to notice), she's gonna make being a hero her whole thing. Not to mention that Kenzie also knows Ashley wants her to be an active cape, Sveta enjoys being on a hero team, etc....

I'll also say that the way Victoria's treating Chris.... kind of reminds me of how Carol treated Amy growing up? Victoria sees him as her responsibility: he's a member of the group Dr. Yamada asked her to shepherd, and he's a kid, and now that Dr. Yamada's gone that responsibility is even greater. Victoria is burdened with Chris in the same way Marquis burdens Carol with Amy; sure, Victoria does it a lot more voluntarily.... but she's also doing it more because she agreed to care for "the group," not for Chris. Chris is a responsibility that came packaged with what she wanted to do. And while the care she has for Kenzie seems to come from a place of genuine concern and affection, her keeping tabs on Chris feels strictly procedural. She's responsible for him, she'll keep tabs on him, nothing more to it. There's a lot of resentment and some frustration that boils into how Victoria treats Chris as a result. Insert your arrested development "I don't care for Chris" image here.

Hell, despite otherwise having pretty wildly different viewpoints when interacting with people, Victoria ends up resembling Taylor a lot in how she thinks about Chris, because it matches up so well with how Taylor thought about Regent. Its another case of "That guy I'm not as close to as the others, the dangerous one, the one whose probably a sociopath waiting to be let loose." I remember thinking that Chris seemed like "the Regent of the group" in my early reading, but they're really not so alike personality-wise, or even in terms of their place in the team dynamic; they're just positioned the same way in the mind of each text's narrator.

I read Taylor's reaction to Alec as one part fear-response to people who seem to delight in other's pain for no obvious reason, and one part a reaction to all the stuff she doesn't like about herself projected onto some twink in leggings. Her fixation on the idea that Regent must just like hurting people, that its just the kind of person he is, comes from the same scared confusion about why her best friend and the whole of the school started torturing her for no apparent reason. Its a reaction from a person who still categorizes everyone as bullies or victims, and is distressed about whether there's more to that and where she is on the spectrum. In her mind, he's a kinda evil dude that likes to hurt people because hes a bully and that's what bullies are, but actually maybe he's fine to hang around with? Which is getting churned in her head alongside her pledging to protect people by becoming a horrifying warlord and making long arguments to Pariah and Flechette about how villains can be helpful and heroes can be bullies. Taylor's relationship to Alec and her distance from him is symptomatic of her evolving views about who people can be, what power can be used for, and why people act the way they do.

Of course, Taylor conversely forms one of her strongest emotional bonds with someone who reminds her of her bullies even more than Alec does. But I think this makes sense for the same reason Chris and Kenzie could both remind Victoria of Amy but inspire such differing treatment. Bitch's first encounter with Taylor was a seemingly random attack that Taylor directly compares to the trio's assaults: she instinctively looks for a reason to hold back like she did for them, and then finds freedom in not having one. But while Rachel at first seems to directly fit the "bullies because she's a bully" model, Taylor learns pretty early on that Rachel has perfectly understandable reasons for her behavior, and that she can be predicted and made into a close ally if she just pays attention and puts in the work. Taylor's relationship with Alec is her sticking to the idea that the world is bullies and victims, and you have to find your place in it without understanding it because there's nothing more to understand. Taylor's relationship with Rachel, meanwhile, is her finding out the world isn't just bullies doing bad things because they're bad people. Rachel is the possibility of understanding the world, bringing it to heel, learning to love it and make it love you.

Similarly, Victoria's relationship with Chris is a reflection of everything she internalized from the Wretchening, while her relationship with Kenzie is her reacting against those internalized lessons towards something more hopeful. Chris is a medical freak who becomes a horrible misshapen monster on a regular basis and who suffers horribly for it, yet keeps choosing to do so. He's wretchening himself at the slightest provocation—he's impatient to wretchen himself! Add to that how his emotions rule him to the degree that they physically transform him, and that he shows absolutely no desire to reign them in, and its pretty clear why Victoria is often so negative to him. He's a powderkeg waiting to go off in a horrible way like his sister was, filled with strange and offputting desires turned into strange and offputting flesh, and unlike Amy he doesn't even have the decency to shamefully repress it. Chris is Amy as the deviant who qua deviancy will inevitably be a danger to everyone around him. Kenzie, meanwhile, is Amy as the sister who gave too much of herself. Victoria's shown at times that she hasn't forgotten how she loved Amy as a sister, how she wasn't inherently evil. She spoke with regret about not listening to Amy when she begged Victoria not to hug her. And she's pretty much said in-text "I don't want Kenzie, who I love as I once loved my sister, to exhaust herself to the point that she becomes lost in the way my sister did." Victoria looks at Chris and is reminded of all her fears of what strange and dangerous people will do, of her belief that bad people do bad things because their bad people. Victoria looks at Kenzie and remembers that's not true, and that she can do something about it.

#parahumans #chris elman #alec vasil #kenzie martin #rachel lindt #taylor hebert #victoria dallon #wildbow #leo reads ward #leo says #victoriadallonfan #man this got way longer than I expected and I didn't even really talk about the carol relationship that much #it just became yet another leo-goes-on-about-chris #plus another 'this too is wolfspider'

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