#a long history of sheer fuckery
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Two Flint city council members are unopposed in re-election and one of them is the fucking crackhead. Is he the least fucked up person from his ward? Is that why no one runs against him? Does his ward just enjoy having a genuinely fucked up person in office to represent them?
#if you don't know about eric mays look him up#a long history of sheer fuckery#drunk driving the wrong direction on the highway with 4 flat tires kind of fuckery
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As the fossils of Avatar-verse Titanosaurs in mountains indicate:
The Avatar-verse operates on some elements much like the reality we know. It has a long geological and evolutionary history, with dinosaurs distant cousins of dragons (hence the existence of birds). Ironically in spite of the sheer size and powers of dragons, the fossils of the titanosaurs that dwarf them are considered fever-dreams as nothing so massive could have possibly existed. In all the AUs save the canon continuation-verse Ba Sing Se is built atop a vast chamber that has a partially exposed (and preserved by Earthbending) Titanosaur skeleton above the brainwashing elements.
This is very deliberate Life and Death ImageryTM.
Supercontinents and oceans are not fixed points in time, the Fire Nation's archipelago was at multiple points a single landmass, though the most recent Raava-Vaatu donnybrook 10,000 years before the story was set sunk large portions of that land mass and created the Twenty-Nine Islands (as I said, Rand and McNally map redrawing power at its most inhuman).
There aren't merely gorilla-goats, there are literal gorillas and chimpanzees in the southern Earth Kingdom (no orangutans, alas) and humanity's equivalent of 'Africa' in this world is the grasslands just beyond those jungles, from which their ancestors spread, became sapient, and jumped to the lion turtles for safety when the spirits became more and more hostile to them and Raava and Vaatu having the King Kong vs. Godzilla throwdowns casually brought multiple extinction-event threats.
Humanity's deep biological past is one thing, its connection to Bending started in the most recent 20,000 years of its existence, beginning with 10K years on lion-turtles and then furthered by the Avatar-cycle.
Animals *can* channel Bending but at least part of the various animal hybridizations and why they're not all the same across the different AUs is that the hybrids *aren't* natural. They're Color Out of Space-style mutations and mashups of once-separate species created by that same Raava-Vaatu fuckery that smashed the Fire Nation's original continent and reduced it to a 10th of its old landmass.
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Whitmore Guy gets all upset under the evening sky
whitmore guy masterlist
word count: 2284
warnings: language
notes: welcome back the Winchester brothers
music: lost without you by blink-182, PRINCESS by lil peep, articulate silences, pt 1 by stars of the lid
He had four hours before work so he dropped by at home, took a shower and changed. After that, he called the FBI guys and met with them at the coffee shop not far away from the college.
He was a bit unhappy about how badly those two pretended to be with the Bureau. They had no idea Mal Osbourne had been the one who tipped them off about the weird shit going on in Mystic Falls. But he still felt as if they’re set adamant on letting him down and had to work a lot not to snap at them. Kai was a good actor, these two hunters were not; but from what he’s heard, they’re good at killing things.
This whole section of the plan was sheer fucking circus.
“Wrestler”, who looked like a worried seal all the time, had his little notebook with him again. "Reddington”, crashed by the early hour, was swollen and unhappy as he consumed one cup of coffee after another. They both smelled of disappointment. One of the perks of being an extra-perceptive vampire was that you could smell all these things. For example, Kai could sense their blood running under skin, untasty for him, but still with a hint of familiar sweetness. And the way it was sweet told him they had the same blood. Which meant these two idiots were brothers. Kai was having fun as he watched them sit there, pulling their masks tightly on their miserable faces.
“Have you seen those poor people from yesterday?” he asked.
Reddington winced, swallowing a big sip of coffee, showing him it was way too early. Wrestler just nodded.
“I haven’t looked at them too closely, but I’m sure they were drained of blood, just like the first group of people”, Kai put his elbows on the table and gave them his concerned face.
“What bothers me the most though… is that, I think, if there were more people in the house, he’d kill more”.
Wrestler stopped his fidgeting with a pen and stared him down.
“He? Are you… do you have an idea about who did it?”
Kai shifted on his chair and brought his hand to his chin.
“Well, you guys… let’s come clean, right? As a newcomer, I’m not overly happy about this town. And I see things exactly the way you see them. You’re not FBI, are you?” he whispered, leaning forward a little and giving them both meaningful eye.
The brothers followed his thought like two hunting dogs. He could see their phantom sharp ears go up with caution. He was assessing how much fuckery would be allowed until they figure him out.
“Go on”.
“Why don’t you tell me first what you think about this place, and then I’ll give you a cold or a hot. I don’t wanna seem crazy”.
Reddington tapped the spoon on the table, and the two guys exchanged looks.
“Well, Mal, just tell us what you think. Believe us when we say we keep hearing crazy things every town we go to, there’s nothing you can surprise us with”.
“It’s adorable how you say ‘we’. Are you guys dating?”
Reddington threw himself back in the chair and pierced him with bright green eyes. Kai could tell that uptight dude hates him so much.
“We’re brothers”, the seal replied calmly.
“Ow. You don’t look alike at all”.
“Mister Osbourne, why don’t you tell us what you think?”
Kai sighed.
“I think this place is infiltrated with vampires”.
Their faces stayed stone calm. Homophobic one looked a bit annoyed.
“Who else knows about it?” Wrestler finally asked. Kai’s face lit up:
“I’m right? You believe me?”
The hunter interlocked his fingers and looked at his own hands before muttering,
“It’s kind of our job…”
“I knew you weren’t with FBI. You’re the worst FBI agents I’ve ever seen in my life”.
Reddington pouted and looked at his brother.
“Mal, how do you know about vampires?”
“I’ve been hanging out with Y/N, that girl who works at the welfare department…”
“Yeah, we remember her”.
“And she’s friends with these Salvatore brothers. Who are like, big thing for Mystic Falls”.
“It’s one of the founding families, right?” the seal helped, and started writing in his notebook again.
“I think so. Anyway, she’s really hooked up on them, she says they have history together… I don’t know much, but when we were at that bar… when people started going crazy… I think I saw several of them tear people’s like… bones and flesh apart. Damon Salvatore”, he fell on the table, plastering both his hands on the cold wood, “ripped the heart out of my girlfriend’s chest. That’s not what normal people do. And then I went to the library…”
He nearly cracked right then and there, and had to pretend there was something in his throat. LIBRARY. Kai coughed politely into his fist.
“And I found that book on the town’s history. They’re in pictures from 1864”.
There was a dramatic pause.
“Something tells me you’ve seen those pictures, too. Who are you?”
Kai started chewing on a toothpick vigorously, showing that he’s very anxious.
“Are you like, hunters? Can you kill these things?”
Reddington pushed his empty coffee cup away. He finally reached the stage in which he was able to work.
“How many vampires? Do you know their names?”
Kai licked his lips impatiently.
_______________________________________________
After their coffee-breakfast he still had two hours before work started. The morning was on, and the sky was very warm, so Kai walked to the college, looking around, enjoying the world, listening to birds and smiling at people. Several days ago he had a breakdown, so he was still in his energetic phase, the blissful alleviation that floods one’s mind after it realizes there’s nothing to lose.
Every morning he reminded himself of his own name, but it wasn’t his own oblivion he was afraid of. What he really feared was that he wouldn’t want, or wouldn’t need to be Kai Parker anymore. Kai Parker was everything he had for forty-three years, and then he met her. She stripped him away of his loneliness, of his agony. She took away and consumed all his pain. She was the pain consumer. She ate it like he eats vampires now. And everything that made him strong, together with everything that made him evil, died when he helped her survive, again and again. But when Damon threw him into Malivore… it returned. He was on his own, alone with Kai Parker again, trying to escape that guy, adopting a new name, and he kind of remembered he loved being Malachai. What now? Kai could laugh in his face, he could torture him, remind him of everything, and he couldn’t oppose him in any way. Mal didn’t have childhood, he didn’t have family. No past, no memories, no superpowers. No coven. Kai Parker held all his weight against Mal Osbourne knowing she won’t come to rescue this time. She won’t hold his head on her lap, caressing his hair, she won’t say, you are good, Kai. She doesn’t know any guys named Kai. And Damon Salvatore will pay for it even if it kills them both, even if it kills the whole town, even if it kills the whole world.
What’s his place then? Where is he supposed to be? He never had a place in the world before, and he doesn’t have it now. He can grow into Mal, give him history, but Y/N doesn’t believe him. She sheds Mal off him like he’s a snake, and soon she’ll know Mal doesn’t exist either.
So, what is he supposed to be?
Who is he?
Who is he?
From the times he showed his face on the camera of Mom’s recorder, he’s been trying to figure that out.
Wow, Mal, I mean, Kai, you gotta stop now, because you’re going to drive yourself crazy, he said to himself.
He realized he had no idea who he had been even before Malivore stripped him of all remains of humanity as he lay on the field under the lilac evening sky. Disgusting to admit that, but at that moment he really needed someone to hold his hand and say something. By ‘someone’ he, of course, meant Y/N, and by ‘something’ he meant what she used to say to him.
“I understand”.
She once took his palm, shaking and hot, a little wet (and she wasn’t grossed out! Wow!) in the last attempt to calm the storm of his rage, bright orange like a flame. Smart little thing, she figured out the way to open him like an antique locker. She didn’t yell anymore – although she liked that, generally. She stroke right into the core of his being, brave as fuck, reckless, he would say. Nobody ever tried that, of course, because nobody gave a shit about him and his salvation. But if, IF they tried, they’d stop breathing immediately. She said, hey, are you with me here? Listen, I know.
She didn’t specify what she knew exactly, but somehow Kai felt so exposed it made him horrified. It made him as scared as he used to get when Momma locked him in the broom-room, and banged on the other side of the door, imitating monsters coming for him. Malachai, she used to say, the monsters will come for you, and they will eat you alive if you don’t stop this. He waited and waited, wailing and sweating, clutching on his own hands, in complete darkness, aching all over because of that damn fever that lack of magic used to give him; the monsters never came. Took him a couple of years to realize his house has been filled with monsters ever since he was born.
His family, get it?
Anyway, she said that, and Kai thought, well, if she scares me as much as my Momma used to, then I need to have her. Vessel or not, she should me mine. He clicked the switch and found out he was hooked for life. Long, painful… soon to be eternal life.
Wait, did he say “crazy”? Ironic. Hahahahaha
He could get serious if he needed to. He could stop all the whirling that butchered his mind with a powerful will gesture. He just didn’t feel like it most of the time. Ever since he became the Master of Everything in the World, he felt pretty invincible, but this thing, this realization almost made him want to cry.
If he never had any idea who he was, Malivore couldn’t have changed anything in him. He’s still the freak, as Bonnie the Judgy Face puts it, the Malachai from Pearl Street in Portland. The siphoner who killed his family, the witch nobody cared about. The vampire who was unmade in a wrong way so that he can’t drink human blood, but instead, needs other vampires. If you think about it, everything is wrong. He returns to the circle one gradually, thinking about all that.
That’s what angered him the most about Damon’s little trick – to take away life from a creature who has so little; just a girl and a shitload of magical power, and charisma, is just vile. Kai was a flower in the wind, he believed that. He was so vulnerable to pain, it’s insane to think Damon would violate him even further like that. How many years more he needs, and all of them, too, to realize that the hurt from losing someone to murder is not a reason enough? Y/N took her father’s death like a champ. Kai never told her why he really killed him. He was a sleazy worm about it, giving her what he knew she would believe. Kai played along with the famous narrative that he can’t handle anybody else near her. Rolled his eyes, gave a couple of demonic laughs, and she bought it. She cursed him forever for killing her dad, with the anger that only Medea would be capable of. But she came round eventually. It was all better than telling her the truth – what Kai saw her dad was doing in his room. He was capable of mercy. Opposite to a popular misconception, he knew how to take care.
He watched the clouds, tender like fluffy jello. Once in the previous lifetime, when they were young and in love, they laid here like this, on the grass soaking with evening dew, and watched the pink clouds fade away slowly. Her hair was laying in waves on the green grass, and her hand was small and bony in his palm, and Kai felt complete. There was so much oxygen in his then human lungs he was finding it hard to breathe. He wanted to scream thank you for making me a teen again. How awesome it is to feel like you’re free again. Again? For the first time! He wasn’t hunted. He was consoled. He could float among those pink clouds, but he didn’t want to leave her, to undo their handlock even if it was for heavens. He told her everything about his childhood. Every-thing. From beginning to end, and watched her, with her big butterfly eyes as she memorized every detail of that bleak tale. She turned everything into a fairytale, attaching a song to it; there was a time Kai sincerely believed Y/N had some kind of disorder that wouldn’t let her take things seriously. She had a very strange system of priorities; once, when she got punched hard by a vampire, and Kai had honors of being present at the time, everybody thought she cracked her skull. She raised a ghastly shriek about breaking one of her nails though. Kai could relate on some levels, he just didn’t expect to find someone as disinterested in respecting logic as him.
For every tragedy, she had a song. For every word, she had a color. She said his name was red, like blood from throat. When she looked at him, she would say, a song would play so loud in her head she couldn’t hear what he was saying.
He loved that girl so much it hurt his ribcage. He couldn’t let go of her.
#kai parker#kai parker x reader#kai parker imagine#tvd imagine#winchesters#spn imagine#legacies#vampire diaries#whitmore guy
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Your heart pounded as you stared at the massive steaming gash in the earth, the abrupt silence almost deafening as the dust began to settle. Only an hour into being in the past, and you had already almost lost your life on three separate occasions, and been saved just as many.
Honestly, you were starting to wonder if you had somehow stumbled your way into some kind of anime, because this sheer level of fuckery in such a short amount of time, seemed far too convenient to some unknown plot, to be a coincidence.
.....Either that, or the past was a hell of a lot more hectic than you remembered from history class.
Suffice to say, you hadn’t expected to end up in a situation anything like the one you were in now, when you woke up this morning. All you had wanted, was to explore some old shrines and landmarks, not get hurled back into the past and have your life threatened at every turn.
How you’d ended up here, was anyone’s guess.
Luckily, the first person you'd met, had been another time traveller, who had very kindly explained to you what had happened and where you were. Though she too was just as confused as to how you’d actually gotten here, especially since you apparently hadn’t arrived in the same way that she had, nor were you "like her” what ever that meant.
Unfortunately, her dog eared companion hadn’t been so kind and understanding, and had almost taken your head off twice, before the girl had used some kind of command to subdue him, with rather entertaining results.
After calming the hothead down, the girl had introduced herself and her companion properly, and led you to the well that she used to travel, explaining everything about this time period and the youkai that inhabited it along the way. And wasn’t That a trip.
It was shortly after trying and failing to use the well yourself, that you were introduced to the rest of their group, including a ridiculously cute little kit who had instantly attached himself to you, and hadn’t let go since. Not that you were complaining.
The calm atmosphere had been quickly disturbed however, as, yet again, you found yourself almost dying at the hands of a youkai.
The crazed lizard like youkai had come thundering out of the forest with a rather impressive speed, heading straight for you in its panic. It likely would have trampled you and the small kit too, if not for the arrival of another youkai, who appeared seemingly out of nowhere, before promptly dispatching the creature, its head rolling to a grisly stop at your feet.
This new youkai and yourself, had stared at each other a little too long to be considered polite or normal, before Inuyasha, the hothead who had almost killed you when you arrived, abruptly started yelling at them, finally pulling the new youkai’s gaze away from you, and breaking the strange air that had settled over you both.
What had followed was a mostly one sided shouting match, which you paid very little attention to, focusing mainly on soothing the terrified kit in your arms, and sneaking glances at the strange but captivating newcomer.
It was because of this distraction, that you didn’t notice as Inuyasha readied an attack in the other youkai’s direction, only recognising the danger as Kagome let out a panicked shout for him to stop. You’d had barely a moment to recognise the attack headed your way, before you were suddenly wrapped in a strong but careful embrace, the softest fur you’d ever felt, pressed against your face.
The sight of you, safe from danger and wrapped in the other youkai’s embrace several metres away from the wound in the earth, was enough to send everyone into a stunned silence, including the wide eyed kit, still hiding against your chest.
From the look on the other youkai’s face, they were just as shocked by their decision to save you as everyone else was. Though they didn’t seem to have any plans of releasing you any time soon either.
#write-it-motherfuckers#writing prompt#writing prompts#writing#prompt#story prompt#story prompts#story#prompts#my prompt#original#fandom#inspiration#imagine#story time motherfucker#Is it corny as fuck? yes. Do I care? No.#this is really bad but I'm tired and this is what you're getting#so tropey#trope#I want to adopt shippou and rin so bad#sesshoumaru#sesshomaru#inuyasha#reader#self insert#sesshomaru x reader#sesshoumaru x reader
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Riverbound, Chapter 1
Your name is MSPA READER, and you are currently vibing outside of the known multiverse.
Well, you don’t really use that name anymore, on account of it not actually being a name. Names sound something like Emily, or Muhammad, or Patrick, or Shamita, or a million other put-together syllables and sounds.
Names are something personal. A title is anything but.
You do have a new title, though, one you like much better.
The Guardian.
Because that’s what you became when you yoinked the timeline away from the control of Ultimate Dirk and that Director lady, whoever she was. You looked Canon-With-A-Capital-C in its ugly face, spit on it, and then bent over to wipe your ass with the fabric of reality itself. Out of desperation, love, and most importantly sheer spite, you took it upon yourself to defy fate so that there is at least one timeline where everybody gets to live happy lives. This was victory at its finest. This is what it felt like to finally get everything you wanted. Your friends? Safe. Multiverse? Secure. Hotel? Trivago.
In the vast and rich history of pro-gamer moves, you believe you might have made the most powerful move of all.
After using the Green Sun- no, sorry, the Green Sun to make your own timeline, you did what any other person would do and took a big fuckin’ snooze, curling up around your universe like a mama cat protecting her kittens. You earned it.
And, if you were being completely honest with yourself, that’s how you would have spent the rest of time.
It’s not like you didn’t want to live. No, living was good. It’s just… you were so damn tired. You’re tired of always running from place to place, person to person, era to era. You’re tired of being injured, scared, and alone no matter how many friends you made. All the gods of the Furthest Rings know you’d gone through more in like a year than most people go through during their entire lives. Couldn’t a bitch just enjoy eternity in the void?
Apparently not.
The dreams began innocently enough. Playing video games with Dave, John, and Karkat. Exploring Jade’s island with Jake and Bec. Baking with Jane. Kanaya teaching you and Sollux how to sew. FLARP-ing with Vriska.
Laying side-by-side with Roxy as you two watched the sun rise. Role-playing with Nepeta. Movie night with Eridan. Getting high off your ass with Gamzee and scaring the shit out of some teal visiting their kismesis a few hives away. Discussing politics with Feferi.
Escaping that hellhouse the Soleil twins called their home. Watching those eerie lights in the corpsefield beside Fozzer. You and Remele beating a purpleblood to death.
You barely realize how nightmares had invaded your mind until you woke up with Karako’s yowls of terror in your ears. You didn’t have ears anymore, though, or a physical form, so it just sounded like your favorite clown son was screaming all around you in the abyss.
Okay. This was fine. This was fine, you kept telling yourself. After everything that’s happened to you, you were bound to develop PTSD at some point. That was completely natural.
Except this wasn’t just PTSD. This was something else entirely, because even when you were awake you saw the faces of your oldest friends burning in your mind’s eye. Something churned in your gut, ancient and primal. It was a feeling you knew well, and was usually accompanied by you launching yourself into whatever stupid shit you found next. The longer you tried to ignore it, the stronger it became, until you were permanently wrapped up around yourself like the most pathetic ball of Guardian that had to have ever existed.
You knew long before you actually put words to what was going on.
Of course. Of course it wasn’t over, because why would you ever get to have anything for yourself? Why would you ever get to just rest? For the first time in… who even knows how long, you sob hysterically into the sleeves of your hoodie.
A galaxy twinkles in the outer shell of your universe, lighting up the zig-zag sign on your chest. Mallek’s lazy smile fills your thoughts. If at all possible, everything hurts even more, until you can’t even cry to let out the pain.
Did he miss you? Did all of them miss you?
Oh, God, Daraya. You promised her you’d take her to Earth sometime, and then you just totally fucking vanished from the face of Alternia. What a fucking dick move. Granted, you hadn’t meant to do it, but still!
Your traitor-asshole brain reminds you of the fact that all of them are dead now. As in, Tyzias tried to lead a rebellion against the Alternian Empire, and then they all got killed. Your traitor-asshole brain also notes that it’s all your fault for encouraging those kinds of ideas.
Way to go, you absolute tool.
Except… they don’t have to be gone. You are the Guardian of your universe, and you make the rules. It feels so wrong to even think about it, but… yeah. You’re basically a god now. You can do what you want and nobody has the power to stop you.
Which brings about a whole new plethora of fuckery. If you were to go back, if you were to rewrite history… are you any better than Ultimate Dirk? Granted, you’d do it out of love, not because you’re a power-hungry bastard, but still. Shenanigans of this level are not to be taken lightly, even by sad Guardians with absolutely nothing better to do.
You sleep on it, which of course results in you waking up bawling like a baby as you remember the best roleplay sesh of your life, which was when Wanshi proudly gave your Soldier Purrbeasts OC her full name: Twinklemoon. You had a Soldier Purrbeasts OC named Twinklemoon. That’s why you were crying.
That’s it. You couldn’t stand it anymore.
You need advice, and you know exactly where to get it.
<>
You find her on the 8rigantine, furiously scribbling something down on a chart with a bunch of little figurines in the middle of it. You know better than to just haul your little friendslut ass up there while Vriska Serket is in the zone, so instead you knock on the hull and call up to her.
“Hello! Lady Spinneret, an old friend is in dire need of some advice!”
It takes about two seconds for a familiar spiky head to poke over the side of the deck. Vriska’s one dark eye lights up upon meeting your gaze, followed by a toothy grin that’s both menacing and completely genuine. She reaches back to grab something behind her. A rope ladder drops down and nearly nails you in the noggin, just like it did whenever you dropped by to FLARP with her.
“What the hell, bitch! I missed you!” she yells. Despite everything, you can’t help but smile. Vriska’s wild personality and no-bullshit attitude was just what you needed.
You’re very proud of yourself when you scale the ladder with ease and scramble up onto the deck without getting too much out of breath. With the amount of insane shit you’ve gotten yourself into during your travels, getting into shape came pretty easily. You’ve been told by several reliable sources that your legs are to die for.
“The 8-ball foretold your arrival. I brought snacks.” Vriska points to a bag next to her chart, not looking up from where she was drawing an impressively detailed kraken-looking thing. “Eat something before you start gabbing.”
That was sound logic, so you drag the back closer to you and start rooting around for something good. You find a bag of stinkroot chips, open that bad boy up, and start munching. Damn, did it feel good to eat something, and to also have a corporeal body to eat things with.
As you gather your thoughts, the hairs on the back of your neck prickle with the sensation of somebody’s eyes on you. You instantly look up to see Vriska staring at you. Her expression is blank, but her good eye held all the energy of a thunderstorm.
You swallow your chips. “What is it?”
“You look… different,” she says, setting down her pencil. “It’s like I can really see you now.”
“Huh?”
Vriska huffs, but she still doesn’t take her eye off you. “Before, you kinda looked like… I dunno, like somebody cut out a whole in reality and shoved the silhouette of a person inside? Like, I know what you looked like, but I couldn’t tell you the color of your hair, or what facial structure you have, or, like… dude, you have freckles.”
“I have freckles?” You reach up and touch your cheekbone, feeling the soft skin. Oh, hey, there’s some acne. Dammit. “Are they cute?”
“Sure? I think freckles are more of a human thing, so you’d have to ask John or Jade or whatever. Also you’re blonde, like Rose,” she tells you, thoughtfully scratching at her chin. “You’re still short as fuck, though. I could probably punt you off the poop deck.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Congrats on not looking like a hole in reality.”
You finish off your chips and flop back to stare at the night sky. With all the time you’ve spent on Alternia, you can now name a lot of the constellations. Right now, the Empress’s Trident poked up at a forty-five degree angle behind the pink moon. “I think I know how we can overthrow the Alternian Empire.”
Vriska’s pencil falls out of her hand.
You continue. “Have you read any records on a rebellion that occurred about… like, fifteen sweeps ago? I don’t know the exact date.”
Vriska’s mouth opens and closes a couple of times, and then she nods. “I sure fuckin’ did. Sollux did some of his mumbo-jumbo and got me some documents. He called it an early wriggling day present, but I know he wants to help my little… agenda. How do you even know…?”
“Because I helped encourage the right people to do it. I was there, Vriska. Those kids were my friends, and now they’re dead.”
She’s silent for a moment. “The leader was a teal named Tyzias.”
Your eyes are hot with tears. “I knew her. We met because she tripped on the sidewalk while carrying a shitload of her homework, and I helped her pick it all up when it went everywhere. She had a matesprit named-”
“Stelsa,” Vriska mutters. “Holy shit. She worked closely with some jades who lead their little army. They caused a hell of a lot of damage to the Empire before it all went down, I’ll give them that.”
Neither of you speak for a long moment, which you appreciate as you try and hold your messy self together. The longer you think about your old friends and all the good times you had with them, the more you’re certain about what you want to do.
They deserve to be here.
Your blood pressure spikes just thinking about it.
It’s Vriska who puts your thoughts into words. “You want to go back and help them win the rebellion.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s fucking crazy.”
“Yeah.”
She scooches over to you so she can stare down into your soul. “If we combine our resources and collaborate back and forth between the past and the future, we can make it so less people die. We could even take out that pathetic bitch of an Heiress they had back in the day. With your powers…”
“It’s possible I could compact time itself to create a world where we… where we can make things right. We could even help Feferi…”
You can’t bring yourself to say it in case you jinxed something, but by the look on Vriska’s face, she knows what you mean.
“It could work,” she breathes.
Slowly, you sit back up. Your heart was pounding so hard you felt it in your skull. “How do you think the others would feel about it?”
“Oh, they’d shit themselves,” Vriska snorts. “A full-scale rebellion across time and space?”
“True.”
“But it could work!” she repeats, staring into empty space.
“And they’d have a huge advantage they never had before. Me,” you say, talking to yourself more than to Vriska. You’d created this universe with your own power. It was time to protect it. “Vriska, I need to go before I chicken out. Tell the others what’s happening and that I’m sorry if this all goes to shit.”
“Wait!”
You look back at her as she grabs your arm, claws digging into the fabric of your hoodie. “I… you need supplies. No frickin’ way you’re going anywhere without at least a hydration flask.”
You know what she’s trying to say, and your chest fills up with all the warmth of a bonfire. God, you love this absolute bitch of a kid.
Vriska drags you to your feet, and then you’re both sprinting for her hive.
Amazingly, you don’t die trying to keep up with the cerulean as you charge up the stairs to her respiteblock together. You’re still out of breath by the time you reach the top, though, but Vriska’s already grabbing a backpack and tossing shit into it.
“Get me that jacket off the door,” she orders as she tosses in what looks like a small medical kit. You obey and throw her the jacket, the black leather one with the bright red hood.
She then waves you over, and you slip around her desk to see what’s up. In her hands is a black sheath, with a matching handle sticking out at the top.
Vriska pulls the sheath off to reveal the blade: a brilliant silver-blue metal that nearly glowed in the darkness. It’s incredibly beautiful and very scary to look at.
“I’ve had this thing forever, so I’m giving it to you, okay? Don’t fucking lose it. Press that little gray button at the top of the handle to heat up the blade. Good for starting fires and cauterizing wounds.” She shoves the jacket into the backpack and hands you the dagger.
“Vriska, I don’t know what to say,” you begin, but she smacks you.
“Shut up and strap it to your belt. You better come back soon. I want a detailed report on everything. Single-spaced,” she snaps.
You grin. “Yes, ma’am. I should be back, in like, ten nights. Maybe eleven.”
“Ten,” Vriska growls. “I’m coming for your ass otherwise.”
“Noted. Tell everybody I said hi.”
“Obviously.”
You reach into that little part of yourself, which in turn reaches back out into that chaotic river that is the flow of time. You throw the anchor down and wade upstream. It’s a little rougher than usual, but you won’t let that stop you. There was no turning back now.
Time travel is always like trying to hit a moving target, but you have great aim, and when you find what you’re looking for you feel your face split into another huge smile. There’s nothing different about this part of the river than any other, but you know. When it comes to the people you care about, you always know.
Everything feels more real to you than it has in years. Two moons shine even brighter in the sky, the chilly air stinging your face, and you’re no troll but it still feels like you’re going home.
You open your eyes.
“Ten nights,” you say to Vriska, and you let yourself fall through the current.
Your name is MSPA READER, and you are currently vibing outside of the known multiverse.
Well, you don’t really use that name anymore, on account of it not actually being a name. Names sound something like Emily, or Muhammad, or Patrick, or Shamita, or a million other put-together syllables and sounds.
Names are something personal. A title is anything but.
You do have a new title, though, one you like much better.
The Guardian.
Because that’s what you became when you yoinked the timeline away from the control of Ultimate Dirk and that Director lady, whoever she was. You looked Canon-With-A-Capital-C in its ugly face, spit on it, and then bent over to wipe your ass with the fabric of reality itself. Out of desperation, love, and most importantly sheer spite, you took it upon yourself to defy fate so that there is at least one timeline where everybody gets to live happy lives. This was victory at its finest. This is what it felt like to finally get everything you wanted. Your friends? Safe. Multiverse? Secure. Hotel? Trivago.
In the vast and rich history of pro-gamer moves, you believe you might have made the most powerful move of all.
After using the Green Sun- no, sorry, the Green Sun to make your own timeline, you did what any other person would do and took a big fuckin’ snooze, curling up around your universe like a mama cat protecting her kittens. You earned it.
And, if you were being completely honest with yourself, that’s how you would have spent the rest of time.
It’s not like you didn’t want to live. No, living was good. It’s just… you were so damn tired. You’re tired of always running from place to place, person to person, era to era. You’re tired of being injured, scared, and alone no matter how many friends you made. All the gods of the Furthest Rings know you’d gone through more in like a year than most people go through during their entire lives. Couldn’t a bitch just enjoy eternity in the void?
Apparently not.
The dreams began innocently enough. Playing video games with Dave, John, and Karkat. Exploring Jade’s island with Jake and Bec. Baking with Jane. Kanaya teaching you and Sollux how to sew. FLARP-ing with Vriska.
Laying side-by-side with Roxy as you two watched the sun rise. Role-playing with Nepeta. Movie night with Eridan. Getting high off your ass with Gamzee and scaring the shit out of some teal visiting their kismesis a few hives away. Discussing politics with Feferi.
Escaping that hellhouse the Soleil twins called their home. Watching those eerie lights in the corpsefield beside Fozzer. You and Remele beating a purpleblood to death.
You barely realize how nightmares had invaded your mind until you woke up with Karako’s yowls of terror in your ears. You didn’t have ears anymore, though, or a physical form, so it just sounded like your favorite clown son was screaming all around you in the abyss.
Okay. This was fine. This was fine, you kept telling yourself. After everything that’s happened to you, you were bound to develop PTSD at some point. That was completely natural.
Except this wasn’t just PTSD. This was something else entirely, because even when you were awake you saw the faces of your oldest friends burning in your mind’s eye. Something churned in your gut, ancient and primal. It was a feeling you knew well, and was usually accompanied by you launching yourself into whatever stupid shit you found next. The longer you tried to ignore it, the stronger it became, until you were permanently wrapped up around yourself like the most pathetic ball of Guardian that had to have ever existed.
You knew long before you actually put words to what was going on.
Of course. Of course it wasn’t over, because why would you ever get to have anything for yourself? Why would you ever get to just rest? For the first time in… who even knows how long, you sob hysterically into the sleeves of your hoodie.
A galaxy twinkles in the outer shell of your universe, lighting up the zig-zag sign on your chest. Mallek’s lazy smile fills your thoughts. If at all possible, everything hurts even more, until you can’t even cry to let out the pain.
Did he miss you? Did all of them miss you?
Oh, God, Daraya. You promised her you’d take her to Earth sometime, and then you just totally fucking vanished from the face of Alternia. What a fucking dick move. Granted, you hadn’t meant to do it, but still!
Your traitor-asshole brain reminds you of the fact that all of them are dead now. As in, Tyzias tried to lead a rebellion against the Alternian Empire, and then they all got killed. Your traitor-asshole brain also notes that it’s all your fault for encouraging those kinds of ideas.
Way to go, you absolute tool.
Except… they don’t have to be gone. You are the Guardian of your universe, and you make the rules. It feels so wrong to even think about it, but… yeah. You’re basically a god now. You can do what you want and nobody has the power to stop you.
Which brings about a whole new plethora of fuckery. If you were to go back, if you were to rewrite history… are you any better than Ultimate Dirk? Granted, you’d do it out of love, not because you’re a power-hungry bastard, but still. Shenanigans of this level are not to be taken lightly, even by sad Guardians with absolutely nothing better to do.
You sleep on it, which of course results in you waking up bawling like a baby as you remember the best roleplay sesh of your life, which was when Wanshi proudly gave your Soldier Purrbeasts OC her full name: Twinklemoon. You had a Soldier Purrbeasts OC named Twinklemoon. That’s why you were crying.
That’s it. You couldn’t stand it anymore.
You need advice, and you know exactly where to get it.
<>
You find her on the 8rigantine, furiously scribbling something down on a chart with a bunch of little figurines in the middle of it. You know better than to just haul your little friendslut ass up there while Vriska Serket is in the zone, so instead you knock on the hull and call up to her.
“Hello! Lady Spinneret, an old friend is in dire need of some advice!”
It takes about two seconds for a familiar spiky head to poke over the side of the deck. Vriska’s one dark eye lights up upon meeting your gaze, followed by a toothy grin that’s both menacing and completely genuine. She reaches back to grab something behind her. A rope ladder drops down and nearly nails you in the noggin, just like it did whenever you dropped by to FLARP with her.
“What the hell, bitch! I missed you!” she yells. Despite everything, you can’t help but smile. Vriska’s wild personality and no-bullshit attitude was just what you needed.
You’re very proud of yourself when you scale the ladder with ease and scramble up onto the deck without getting too much out of breath. With the amount of insane shit you’ve gotten yourself into during your travels, getting into shape came pretty easily. You’ve been told by several reliable sources that your legs are to die for.
“The 8-ball foretold your arrival. I brought snacks.” Vriska points to a bag next to her chart, not looking up from where she was drawing an impressively detailed kraken-looking thing. “Eat something before you start gabbing.”
That was sound logic, so you drag the back closer to you and start rooting around for something good. You find a bag of stinkroot chips, open that bad boy up, and start munching. Damn, did it feel good to eat something, and to also have a corporeal body to eat things with.
As you gather your thoughts, the hairs on the back of your neck prickle with the sensation of somebody’s eyes on you. You instantly look up to see Vriska staring at you. Her expression is blank, but her good eye held all the energy of a thunderstorm.
You swallow your chips. “What is it?”
“You look… different,” she says, setting down her pencil. “It’s like I can really see you now.”
“Huh?”
Vriska huffs, but she still doesn’t take her eye off you. “Before, you kinda looked like… I dunno, like somebody cut out a whole in reality and shoved the silhouette of a person inside? Like, I know what you looked like, but I couldn’t tell you the color of your hair, or what facial structure you have, or, like… dude, you have freckles.”
“I have freckles?” You reach up and touch your cheekbone, feeling the soft skin. Oh, hey, there’s some acne. Dammit. “Are they cute?”
“Sure? I think freckles are more of a human thing, so you’d have to ask John or Jade or whatever. Also you’re blonde, like Rose,” she tells you, thoughtfully scratching at her chin. “You’re still short as fuck, though. I could probably punt you off the poop deck.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Congrats on not looking like a hole in reality.”
You finish off your chips and flop back to stare at the night sky. With all the time you’ve spent on Alternia, you can now name a lot of the constellations. Right now, the Empress’s Trident poked up at a forty-five degree angle behind the pink moon. “I think I know how we can overthrow the Alternian Empire.”
Vriska’s pencil falls out of her hand.
You continue. “Have you read any records on a rebellion that occurred about… like, fifteen sweeps ago? I don’t know the exact date.”
Vriska’s mouth opens and closes a couple of times, and then she nods. “I sure fuckin’ did. Sollux did some of his mumbo-jumbo and got me some documents. He called it an early wriggling day present, but I know he wants to help my little… agenda. How do you even know…?”
“Because I helped encourage the right people to do it. I was there, Vriska. Those kids were my friends, and now they’re dead.”
She’s silent for a moment. “The leader was a teal named Tyzias.”
Your eyes are hot with tears. “I knew her. We met because she tripped on the sidewalk while carrying a shitload of her homework, and I helped her pick it all up when it went everywhere. She had a matesprit named-”
“Stelsa,” Vriska mutters. “Holy shit. She worked closely with some jades who lead their little army. They caused a hell of a lot of damage to the Empire before it all went down, I’ll give them that.”
Neither of you speak for a long moment, which you appreciate as you try and hold your messy self together. The longer you think about your old friends and all the good times you had with them, the more you’re certain about what you want to do.
They deserve to be here.
Your blood pressure spikes just thinking about it.
It’s Vriska who puts your thoughts into words. “You want to go back and help them win the rebellion.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s fucking crazy.”
“Yeah.”
She scooches over to you so she can stare down into your soul. “If we combine our resources and collaborate back and forth between the past and the future, we can make it so less people die. We could even take out that pathetic bitch of an Heiress they had back in the day. With your powers…”
“It’s possible I could compact time itself to create a world where we… where we can make things right. We could even help Feferi…”
You can’t bring yourself to say it in case you jinxed something, but by the look on Vriska’s face, she knows what you mean.
“It could work,” she breathes.
Slowly, you sit back up. Your heart was pounding so hard you felt it in your skull. “How do you think the others would feel about it?”
“Oh, they’d shit themselves,” Vriska snorts. “A full-scale rebellion across time and space?”
“True.”
“But it could work!” she repeats, staring into empty space.
“And they’d have a huge advantage they never had before. Me,” you say, talking to yourself more than to Vriska. You’d created this universe with your own power. It was time to protect it. “Vriska, I need to go before I chicken out. Tell the others what’s happening and that I’m sorry if this all goes to shit.”
“Wait!”
You look back at her as she grabs your arm, claws digging into the fabric of your hoodie. “I… you need supplies. No frickin’ way you’re going anywhere without at least a hydration flask.”
You know what she’s trying to say, and your chest fills up with all the warmth of a bonfire. God, you love this absolute bitch of a kid.
Vriska drags you to your feet, and then you’re both sprinting for her hive.
Amazingly, you don’t die trying to keep up with the cerulean as you charge up the stairs to her respiteblock together. You’re still out of breath by the time you reach the top, though, but Vriska’s already grabbing a backpack and tossing shit into it.
“Get me that jacket off the door,” she orders as she tosses in what looks like a small medical kit. You obey and throw her the jacket, the black leather one with the bright red hood.
She then waves you over, and you slip around her desk to see what’s up. In her hands is a black sheath, with a matching handle sticking out at the top.
Vriska pulls the sheath off to reveal the blade: a brilliant silver-blue metal that nearly glowed in the darkness. It’s incredibly beautiful and very scary to look at.
“I’ve had this thing forever, so I’m giving it to you, okay? Don’t fucking lose it. Press that little gray button at the top of the handle to heat up the blade. Good for starting fires and cauterizing wounds.” She shoves the jacket into the backpack and hands you the dagger.
“Vriska, I don’t know what to say,” you begin, but she smacks you.
“Shut up and strap it to your belt. You better come back soon. I want a detailed report on everything. Single-spaced,” she snaps.
You grin. “Yes, ma’am. I should be back, in like, ten nights. Maybe eleven.”
“Ten,” Vriska growls. “I’m coming for your ass otherwise.”
“Noted. Tell everybody I said hi.”
“Obviously.”
You reach into that little part of yourself, which in turn reaches back out into that chaotic river that is the flow of time. You throw the anchor down and wade upstream. It’s a little rougher than usual, but you won’t let that stop you. There was no turning back now.
Time travel is always like trying to hit a moving target, but you have great aim, and when you find what you’re looking for you feel your face split into another huge smile. There’s nothing different about this part of the river than any other, but you know. When it comes to the people you care about, you always know.
Everything feels more real to you than it has in years. Two moons shine even brighter in the sky, the chilly air stinging your face, and you’re no troll but it still feels like you’re going home.
You open your eyes.
“Ten nights,” you say to Vriska, and you let yourself fall through the current.
Your name is MSPA READER, and you are currently vibing outside of the known multiverse.
Well, you don’t really use that name anymore, on account of it not actually being a name. Names sound something like Emily, or Muhammad, or Patrick, or Shamita, or a million other put-together syllables and sounds.
Names are something personal. A title is anything but.
You do have a new title, though, one you like much better.
The Guardian.
Because that’s what you became when you yoinked the timeline away from the control of Ultimate Dirk and that Director lady, whoever she was. You looked Canon-With-A-Capital-C in its ugly face, spit on it, and then bent over to wipe your ass with the fabric of reality itself. Out of desperation, love, and most importantly sheer spite, you took it upon yourself to defy fate so that there is at least one timeline where everybody gets to live happy lives. This was victory at its finest. This is what it felt like to finally get everything you wanted. Your friends? Safe. Multiverse? Secure. Hotel? Trivago.
In the vast and rich history of pro-gamer moves, you believe you might have made the most powerful move of all.
After using the Green Sun- no, sorry, the Green Sun to make your own timeline, you did what any other person would do and took a big fuckin’ snooze, curling up around your universe like a mama cat protecting her kittens. You earned it.
And, if you were being completely honest with yourself, that’s how you would have spent the rest of time.
It’s not like you didn’t want to live. No, living was good. It’s just… you were so damn tired. You’re tired of always running from place to place, person to person, era to era. You’re tired of being injured, scared, and alone no matter how many friends you made. All the gods of the Furthest Rings know you’d gone through more in like a year than most people go through during their entire lives. Couldn’t a bitch just enjoy eternity in the void?
Apparently not.
The dreams began innocently enough. Playing video games with Dave, John, and Karkat. Exploring Jade’s island with Jake and Bec. Baking with Jane. Kanaya teaching you and Sollux how to sew. FLARP-ing with Vriska.
Laying side-by-side with Roxy as you two watched the sun rise. Role-playing with Nepeta. Movie night with Eridan. Getting high off your ass with Gamzee and scaring the shit out of some teal visiting their kismesis a few hives away. Discussing politics with Feferi.
Escaping that hellhouse the Soleil twins called their home. Watching those eerie lights in the corpsefield beside Fozzer. You and Remele beating a purpleblood to death.
You barely realize how nightmares had invaded your mind until you woke up with Karako’s yowls of terror in your ears. You didn’t have ears anymore, though, or a physical form, so it just sounded like your favorite clown son was screaming all around you in the abyss.
Okay. This was fine. This was fine, you kept telling yourself. After everything that’s happened to you, you were bound to develop PTSD at some point. That was completely natural.
Except this wasn’t just PTSD. This was something else entirely, because even when you were awake you saw the faces of your oldest friends burning in your mind’s eye. Something churned in your gut, ancient and primal. It was a feeling you knew well, and was usually accompanied by you launching yourself into whatever stupid shit you found next. The longer you tried to ignore it, the stronger it became, until you were permanently wrapped up around yourself like the most pathetic ball of Guardian that had to have ever existed.
You knew long before you actually put words to what was going on.
Of course. Of course it wasn’t over, because why would you ever get to have anything for yourself? Why would you ever get to just rest? For the first time in… who even knows how long, you sob hysterically into the sleeves of your hoodie.
A galaxy twinkles in the outer shell of your universe, lighting up the zig-zag sign on your chest. Mallek’s lazy smile fills your thoughts. If at all possible, everything hurts even more, until you can’t even cry to let out the pain.
Did he miss you? Did all of them miss you?
Oh, God, Daraya. You promised her you’d take her to Earth sometime, and then you just totally fucking vanished from the face of Alternia. What a fucking dick move. Granted, you hadn’t meant to do it, but still!
Your traitor-asshole brain reminds you of the fact that all of them are dead now. As in, Tyzias tried to lead a rebellion against the Alternian Empire, and then they all got killed. Your traitor-asshole brain also notes that it’s all your fault for encouraging those kinds of ideas.
Way to go, you absolute tool.
Except… they don’t have to be gone. You are the Guardian of your universe, and you make the rules. It feels so wrong to even think about it, but… yeah. You’re basically a god now. You can do what you want and nobody has the power to stop you.
Which brings about a whole new plethora of fuckery. If you were to go back, if you were to rewrite history… are you any better than Ultimate Dirk? Granted, you’d do it out of love, not because you’re a power-hungry bastard, but still. Shenanigans of this level are not to be taken lightly, even by sad Guardians with absolutely nothing better to do.
You sleep on it, which of course results in you waking up bawling like a baby as you remember the best roleplay sesh of your life, which was when Wanshi proudly gave your Soldier Purrbeasts OC her full name: Twinklemoon. You had a Soldier Purrbeasts OC named Twinklemoon. That’s why you were crying.
That’s it. You couldn’t stand it anymore.
You need advice, and you know exactly where to get it.
<>
You find her on the 8rigantine, furiously scribbling something down on a chart with a bunch of little figurines in the middle of it. You know better than to just haul your little friendslut ass up there while Vriska Serket is in the zone, so instead you knock on the hull and call up to her.
“Hello! Lady Spinneret, an old friend is in dire need of some advice!”
It takes about two seconds for a familiar spiky head to poke over the side of the deck. Vriska’s one dark eye lights up upon meeting your gaze, followed by a toothy grin that’s both menacing and completely genuine. She reaches back to grab something behind her. A rope ladder drops down and nearly nails you in the noggin, just like it did whenever you dropped by to FLARP with her.
“What the hell, bitch! I missed you!” she yells. Despite everything, you can’t help but smile. Vriska’s wild personality and no-bullshit attitude was just what you needed.
You’re very proud of yourself when you scale the ladder with ease and scramble up onto the deck without getting too much out of breath. With the amount of insane shit you’ve gotten yourself into during your travels, getting into shape came pretty easily. You’ve been told by several reliable sources that your legs are to die for.
“The 8-ball foretold your arrival. I brought snacks.” Vriska points to a bag next to her chart, not looking up from where she was drawing an impressively detailed kraken-looking thing. “Eat something before you start gabbing.”
That was sound logic, so you drag the back closer to you and start rooting around for something good. You find a bag of stinkroot chips, open that bad boy up, and start munching. Damn, did it feel good to eat something, and to also have a corporeal body to eat things with.
As you gather your thoughts, the hairs on the back of your neck prickle with the sensation of somebody’s eyes on you. You instantly look up to see Vriska staring at you. Her expression is blank, but her good eye held all the energy of a thunderstorm.
You swallow your chips. “What is it?”
“You look… different,” she says, setting down her pencil. “It’s like I can really see you now.”
“Huh?”
Vriska huffs, but she still doesn’t take her eye off you. “Before, you kinda looked like… I dunno, like somebody cut out a whole in reality and shoved the silhouette of a person inside? Like, I know what you looked like, but I couldn’t tell you the color of your hair, or what facial structure you have, or, like… dude, you have freckles.”
“I have freckles?” You reach up and touch your cheekbone, feeling the soft skin. Oh, hey, there’s some acne. Dammit. “Are they cute?”
“Sure? I think freckles are more of a human thing, so you’d have to ask John or Jade or whatever. Also you’re blonde, like Rose,” she tells you, thoughtfully scratching at her chin. “You’re still short as fuck, though. I could probably punt you off the poop deck.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Congrats on not looking like a hole in reality.”
You finish off your chips and flop back to stare at the night sky. With all the time you’ve spent on Alternia, you can now name a lot of the constellations. Right now, the Empress’s Trident poked up at a forty-five degree angle behind the pink moon. “I think I know how we can overthrow the Alternian Empire.”
Vriska’s pencil falls out of her hand.
You continue. “Have you read any records on a rebellion that occurred about… like, fifteen sweeps ago? I don’t know the exact date.”
Vriska’s mouth opens and closes a couple of times, and then she nods. “I sure fuckin’ did. Sollux did some of his mumbo-jumbo and got me some documents. He called it an early wriggling day present, but I know he wants to help my little… agenda. How do you even know…?”
“Because I helped encourage the right people to do it. I was there, Vriska. Those kids were my friends, and now they’re dead.”
She’s silent for a moment. “The leader was a teal named Tyzias.”
Your eyes are hot with tears. “I knew her. We met because she tripped on the sidewalk while carrying a shitload of her homework, and I helped her pick it all up when it went everywhere. She had a matesprit named-”
“Stelsa,” Vriska mutters. “Holy shit. She worked closely with some jades who lead their little army. They caused a hell of a lot of damage to the Empire before it all went down, I’ll give them that.”
Neither of you speak for a long moment, which you appreciate as you try and hold your messy self together. The longer you think about your old friends and all the good times you had with them, the more you’re certain about what you want to do.
They deserve to be here.
Your blood pressure spikes just thinking about it.
It’s Vriska who puts your thoughts into words. “You want to go back and help them win the rebellion.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s fucking crazy.”
“Yeah.”
She scooches over to you so she can stare down into your soul. “If we combine our resources and collaborate back and forth between the past and the future, we can make it so less people die. We could even take out that pathetic bitch of an Heiress they had back in the day. With your powers…”
“It’s possible I could compact time itself to create a world where we… where we can make things right. We could even help Feferi…”
You can’t bring yourself to say it in case you jinxed something, but by the look on Vriska’s face, she knows what you mean.
“It could work,” she breathes.
Slowly, you sit back up. Your heart was pounding so hard you felt it in your skull. “How do you think the others would feel about it?”
“Oh, they’d shit themselves,” Vriska snorts. “A full-scale rebellion across time and space?”
“True.”
“But it could work!” she repeats, staring into empty space.
“And they’d have a huge advantage they never had before. Me,” you say, talking to yourself more than to Vriska. You’d created this universe with your own power. It was time to protect it. “Vriska, I need to go before I chicken out. Tell the others what’s happening and that I’m sorry if this all goes to shit.”
“Wait!”
You look back at her as she grabs your arm, claws digging into the fabric of your hoodie. “I… you need supplies. No frickin’ way you’re going anywhere without at least a hydration flask.”
You know what she’s trying to say, and your chest fills up with all the warmth of a bonfire. God, you love this absolute bitch of a kid.
Vriska drags you to your feet, and then you’re both sprinting for her hive.
Amazingly, you don’t die trying to keep up with the cerulean as you charge up the stairs to her respiteblock together. You’re still out of breath by the time you reach the top, though, but Vriska’s already grabbing a backpack and tossing shit into it.
“Get me that jacket off the door,” she orders as she tosses in what looks like a small medical kit. You obey and throw her the jacket, the black leather one with the bright red hood.
She then waves you over, and you slip around her desk to see what’s up. In her hands is a black sheath, with a matching handle sticking out at the top.
Vriska pulls the sheath off to reveal the blade: a brilliant silver-blue metal that nearly glowed in the darkness. It’s incredibly beautiful and very scary to look at.
“I’ve had this thing forever, so I’m giving it to you, okay? Don’t fucking lose it. Press that little gray button at the top of the handle to heat up the blade. Good for starting fires and cauterizing wounds.” She shoves the jacket into the backpack and hands you the dagger.
“Vriska, I don’t know what to say,” you begin, but she smacks you.
“Shut up and strap it to your belt. You better come back soon. I want a detailed report on everything. Single-spaced,” she snaps.
You grin. “Yes, ma’am. I should be back, in like, ten nights. Maybe eleven.”
“Ten,” Vriska growls. “I’m coming for your ass otherwise.”
“Noted. Tell everybody I said hi.”
“Obviously.”
You reach into that little part of yourself, which in turn reaches back out into that chaotic river that is the flow of time. You throw the anchor down and wade upstream. It’s a little rougher than usual, but you won’t let that stop you. There was no turning back now.
Time travel is always like trying to hit a moving target, but you have great aim, and when you find what you’re looking for you feel your face split into another huge smile. There’s nothing different about this part of the river than any other, but you know. When it comes to the people you care about, you always know.
Everything feels more real to you than it has in years. Two moons shine even brighter in the sky, the chilly air stinging your face, and you’re no troll but it still feels like you’re going home.
You open your eyes.
“Ten nights,” you say to Vriska, and you let yourself fall through the current.
#hiveswap#homestuck#riverbound#c1#MSPA reader#The Guardian#Vriska Serket#Hiveswap Friendsim trolls#pesterquest
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Ship History Meme
Embrace your past and get to know your friends’ fandom origins!
Rules: Post gifs of your fandoms / ships starting with your most current hyperfixation and work backwards. (Bonus points if you share any stories about how or when you got into that ship! But not necessary!!) Then tag anyone whose fandom history you’d like to learn about!
I was tagged by @dobetterbillyhargrove Hello!
Most Recent: Harringrove - Steve/Billy from Stranger Things
How Did I Get Into It? I was bored and fandomless and went browsing on a03 and thought, hmmm, I wonder if there's more fics for stranger things then there used to be? And found @granpappy-winchester 's "falling for you in hawkins, indi-fucking-ana" series and I was done for.
Next: Steter - Stiles/Peter from Teen Wolf
How Did I Get Into It? I accidentally stumbled upon The Steter Network Chatzy and got sucked in for a while.
Next: Sterek - Stiles/Derek from Teen Wolf
How Did I Get Into It? Again, by accident and for a show I wasn't even obsessed with. I just kept seeing gifs of Stiles and Derek on my dash and then went looking for fic and was like, "Ohhhhhh...."
Next: Stony, Darcy/Steve, Stucky... literally anything involving Steve Rogers - from the MCU
How Did I Get Into It? Mostly just from watching Avengers. This was not that deep for me but it was long lived, so.
Next: MaDi - Mac and Dick from Veronica Mars
How Did I Get Into It? I don't even know. Ffn and just... seeing fics and I was into it. I liked the sheer fuckery of it. That she could date the brother of the guy she dated who was that level of fucked.
Next: Eli Stone/Maggie Dekker from Eli Stone
How Did I Get Into It? The show ended abruptly and I read an interview with the creators saying what I really hoped was a joke, that they planned to split these two up and I needed fic to fix it.
God, that fandom was like ten people.
Next: Max/Alec from Dark Angel
How Did I Get Into It? So I went in looking for Max/Logan fics and there weren't any and I fell into this ship instead. Some of my favorite fics of all time are from this fandom.
Next: Chris Halliwell/Bianca from Charmed
How Did I Get Into It? She was in one episode in the show and died so of course I was immediately in love with her.
Honorable mentions:
Emmett/Edward, Rosalie/Bella - The Twilight Renaissance
Alec/Magnus - Shadowhunters
Jasper/Alice - Twilight
Clint Barton/Phil Coulson - the MCU
Connor/Hank - Detroit: Become Human
Geralt/Jaskier - The Witcher
Symbrock - Venom
And this doesn't entirely fit but way back when I was much, much younger I was really, REALLY into rping. I had some of them go on for years and I still think about them sometimes.
Some of the ships I still think about from these were from a Charmed one, with Wyatt Halliwell and an OC named Jenna. And two original characters named Talia and Mack.
(As well as lots of other characters. It was a next generation story and we came up with so many characters.)
And a Cowboy Bebop one with Spike Spiegel with an OC named Kitty. And two originals named Rose and Hunter.
tagging:
@immortalitylostandfound
@demi-don
@thinger-strang
@ummmm-no-thanks
@greyspilot
@hoegrove
@harringrovetrashrat
@harringrove-heart
@klayr-de-gall
@hartigays
@ihni
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Damn bitch U really went and named ur new baby silence huh? Fucking avox level fuckery right there fuck U that's so smart why are all my FRIENDS SO SMART AND TALENTED FUCK I'M SO MAD IT TOOK ME THIS LONG TO GOOGLE HER NAME
What's really funny is the irony that she gets made the Voice essentially of Capitol. It can also mean a kind of Reserved. Which is also funny considering her mother was the least reserved, most vapid Capitol-drunk old money gossip girl bitch in history lmao and if she hadn't taken herself out, she was on the fuckin clock for snow poisoning her outta sheer annoyance lmao. honestly the snow genes jumped right out, with a mother Like That and Aurelius being a bit of a weak flake, she easily could've been a vapid brat. good thing she took after The Worst Guy Ever in at least that respect
#tinyballofcanadianrage#ch: tacita#;;its a gd miracle she isnt a veruca salt#;;and thats likely all granddad makin damn sure This One Was Salvageable lmao
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You can call it w/e you want (I'm gonna stick w/ Rich's term), but the idea behind "compulsory heterosexuality" is that there exists social & economic pressures for women to enter relationships w/ men & to see sexuality w/ men as an inevitable part of life. Which is an accurate observation. The existence of those pressures is unjust & constraining, but it doesn't imply that no women 'really' like men. It's a (lesbian) feminist concept looking at women; hetnorm. is more LGBT Studies/Queer Theory.
Obviously there are pressures that exist, but those pressures are, quite literally, heteronormativity.
But okay, let’s come back to the part where you decided that radical feminist terminology designed to shame women for being too manly or too into men or whatever is still the terminology you want to use, regardless of its extensive history in being used to attack the very women you seem interested in protecting.
Let’s set that aside for now.
Let’s talk about the post that this ask was sent in response to. Let’s shift these goalposts right on back into position here.
The post says, and I quote, “a hell of a lot more women would realize they’re not actually attracted to men at all.”
In response to that quote, I said the post discussed, “the belief that many straight and bisexual women are actually lesbians.”
So, where’s the mismatch. Because it looks to me like the post said, “women who currently consider themselves attracted to men are not. In fact, they’re just confused by heteronormativity.”
Which is the sentiment I expressed.
I know that a great many people following and interacting with this blog don’t understand what a dogwhistle is. But the entire point of them is that they take statements that sound harmless, or even beneficial, and twist them to cause harm.
They take claims like, “we want to help women,” and twist them to say, “because women cannot be trusted to judge their own lives, so we must judge for them.”
Yes, those pressures exist, but the conversation surrounding those pressures is, consistently, “so we must create opposite pressures that force women to adhere to other labels instead,” rather than, “so we must eliminate any pressures and let people come into their identities in a supportive environment without coercion.”
But anyway, when you decided that you were going to pick the anti-trans term regardless of the fact that it serves no rhetorical purpose and signals that you do not care about trans lives or trans history, you really lost the high ground that you so clearly think you have.
Like.
You don’t get to pretend the whole, “I’m going to stick with the transphobe lingo,” statement is irrelevant or weightless. You don’t get to drop that little nugget and wander right on by.
I have played excruciatingly nicely with all of you, assuming genuine concern and confusion long past the point where it was reasonable.
But I draw the goddamn line at someone saying, “oh, but a woman instrumental in getting massive amounts of transgender people killed, passing extensive anti-trans laws, increasing the suicide and murder rates of trans people, who notoriously treated attraction to trans women as being the same thing as attraction to men, she certainly could not have had transphobic intentions behing creating this kind of terminology,” and then having the sheer, unmitigated fucking gall, the fucking temerity to pretend that claim is just a harmless little aside, unworthy of any additional consideration.
If you ever wander back into this inbox, it had best be to apologize for your fuckery.
Fuck off,
🔪 Yazminx 🔪
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can you rec some good spooky videos? i too would like to drown my sorrows in spookiness
oo fucking boy okay holy shit what to pick from...ive been watching spoopy videos since i was 11 and first got access to the internet so really ive got a pool to draw from, like some videos stick with me in particular from like 2011 but then theres newer ones and shit too?? like okay let me think here
disclaimer: some of these are ghost videos that have since been debunked, eh im not checking them all, just sticking in whatever stuck with me
shit that stuck with me from when i was 11 at the height of the slenderverse and late 2000s creepypasta era
-body of a pig
-the cat with hands
-there’s a man in the woods
-the Chonecom videos (these came to light in.....god, i want to say like 2007, by the youtube user Chonecom, who’s channel was taken down for reasons unknown. these have been circulated around various accounts since then, usually with clickbait bullshit titles. ive heard that it’s real, ive heard that it’s fake, but either way its pretty cool. i need to rewatch it tbh. the link is to one of the bullshit versions)
-no through road
-the notorious youtube channel/video Username666, which can be viewed either as a single video or as an ARG. this is long past our time now but here is a wonderful video taking it apart if you choose the latter.
-lights out (this eventually got adapted into a full film, although i havent seen it yet. it fucked me up good when i was like 13 tho)
-all the videos in the Creepy Gaming series by thestickypaddle. now i went back into my old middle school gmail account to find some of my old faves for this ask and this was in there, and i was like ‘o shit i loved those’, so i looked it up and found that he has done a full ass 6 MORE SEASONS of this. deadass when i was like 14 this was my SHIT but there were only like 5 videos so i remember just watching them on repeat and like....theres so many, literally HOURS of content i havent seen....i feel like ive abandoned something lmao
-now i would be absolutely REMISS if i did not mention my patron middle school horror fandom of youtube slenderverse series. you got ur marble hornets, ur everymanHYBRID (still my fave), ur tribetwelve, ur darkharvest00, and ur whisperedfaith. those are the five holy sects. if you must pick one, you are legally obligated to choose marble hornets, the series that birthed a genre that is held above all others in high quality and form. if you’re in for the whole squad of fuckery, u better sit the fuck down and settle in because ur in for a long haul of not only years of videos, but also years of painstaking ARG work and fantastic lore and worldbuilding. i would personally start with marble hornets and work from there
okay those are the ones that fucked me up as a young child. more recently i’ve been binge watching a lot of shitty youtube-published documentaries about serial killers and shit with a more informative overview of spooky events but there are a couple that have stuck with me in the past 6 months or so:
-twitch stream ghost. this is a more recent one that popped up last february. i remember discussing it with some friends because it seemed very genuine, and we agreed that it really, seriously looks like a genuine haunting, which is rare on youtube. like look at the sheer fear in this guy’s reactions. like this is seriously some crazy shit that really sticks out to me from all the other supposed ghost vids ive seen over the years
-/x/ Thread Simulator- this is absolutely 100% something that still fucks me up whenever i watch it. it came out in 2014 but somehow i never saw it until earlier this year and i genuinely could not sleep that night. it’s an animated archive of a particular 4chan thread revolving around a very active and wild poltergiest/demon/whatever the fuck. still dont know if its fake or real, still dont really care. ive seen a lot of horror films less impactful then this 10 minute video comprised of animated forum screenshots set to bouncy music like fuck man
-anything from the youtube channel Horror Stories. I found this really recently and have been binging everything on here. basically its a dude that does very neat, concise reports on fucked up things. these videos can range anywhere from 2 minutes to like, 10 minutes, and its seriously some wild shit. be aware that there can sometimes be irl gore on this channel. shoutout to this channel for giving me such high quality content as Man Falls in Meat Blender at Meat Processing Plant and Cavalese Cable Car Disaster. not so much classicly creepy as morbidly interesting, and you SERIOUSLY get exactly whats on the tin every single time.
-Mapping the Las Vegas Massacre (New York Times Visual Investigations). again, less creepy and more morbidly interesting, done by the really solid journalistic reporting ive come to respect from the outlet. this is over the las vegas massacre a couple months after the recent florida high school shooting, and it’s currently standing as the largest mass shooting in american history. this account pastes a ton of bystander footage together to give us a solid look as the chaos unfolds, like, as someone who enjoys true crime, this is absolutely chilling.
-leechnado. leechnado needs no introduction
uhhhh thats all the ones i can think of in recent memory have a rad ass time
#i went through my recent youtube history and it seems like ive been watching more memes and documentaries than spoopy things in the past wee#asks#creepy#vandal.txt#Anonymous
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Ok I knew I hadn’t posted Unions in forever but good lord. The screenshots after, not before, AFTER this.. are the previews for this. Like we’re literally talking ancient history here. Let’s dive right in and see if we can wrap this up sometime during a human’s natural lifespan. SO when we left off we were desperately trying to make friends for Wyatt’s final promotion, ‘desperately’ being the operative word. We’ve done some pathetic shit in our time but shittalking each other to Apartment Life nobodies is honestly peak gutter, so you know. our natural environment. Spoiler alert, the kids are teens now and Wyatt has still not gotten promoted! Truly the Picasso of incompetence.
Good ol’ uncle Gunther is also here for some reason which I’m guessing is ‘came over uninvited’ but at least someone is paying attention to Shajar for once. Beggars can’t be choosers and Gunther as a father figure is the equivalent of someone leaving a button and good vibes in your cup.
-So you see Shajar, life is nothing but a slow march towards our certain doom so who cares if your parents hate you?? My parents hated me till adulthood and I turned out amazing as you can surely tell by my stripes/plaid/indoor sunglasses combo!
-Think long and hard before procreating, brother, because there’s no guarantee you’ll even like your kids. Looking at you, Shajar.
-Um can I go now?
-Don’t know why you’re here in the first place and not in the crypt where we’ve set up your bed and everything! Kids these days.
Oh right, Brit Brit is also here so I guess I did invite these douchebags over. Way to go @ me.
-BRITTANY HOW COULD YOU TEAR THE MORAL FABRIC OF OUR WIFE-SWAPPING-BASED LIFE PARTNERSHIP LIKE THIS???? JUST STEAL ONE OF THEIR PETS LIKE AN UPSTANDING CITIZEN
DON’T YOU DARE BRIT-
Ugh nevermind, it’s Sophie aka Brittany in cat form. Take her!
And take Shajar too while you’re at it cause absolutely not @ Victoria dying but the gnome drama living on. ENOUGH. This almost makes me appreciate Cyneswith’s ridiculous 10 nice points for a split second..
..but then I turn around and see this. GOOD GRIEF. How did Jojo and Wyatt produce vegan Tinkerbell here not even god knows.
This alliance of obnoxiousness is but the first in what is gonna become a running theme of every annoying flop in this neighborhood looooooving Maxx. Can’t keep kindred spirits apart for long! Honestly this legacy is turning me from pet maniac to Captain Ahab, like on one hand you have fucking Maxx who hasn’t done anything yet but just you wait till he grows up-
-and on the other you have FUCKING VICTOR’S GHOST TRYING TO KILL US EVERY NIGHT. Apparently Victor + being a dick = a love not even death can tear asunder. Seriously tg kids can’t die cause these overactive freaks are up all night till the sun, are up all night to get some (entertainment), are up all night for good fun, are up all night to get lucky murdered.
This happens about 3000 times per night, I’m not even taking pics of it anymore, but it’s worth pointing out that everyone in this house, both alive/dead and human/non has a raging hate boner for Shajar in particular. It’s uncanny and depressing..
..and speaking of depressing, UGH. My poor, poor Shajar. I actually attempted to intervene and have them interact being the moron that I am:
JOJO WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM
.....................................WHERE IS VICTOR’S GHOST WHEN I NEED IT
Yea sure, waste your niceness reserves on fucking Goro here instead, who isn’t even the cat heir and is about to go live on the farm (not a euphemism, Daniel and Melody’s literal farm). This Jojo fuckery is seriously starting to bum me out on top of pissing me off, let me find something cute to look at to raise my spirits..
No.
No.
NO.
Disturbing stuff.
Seems about right.
Old habits die hard.
No.
Ugh.
Ugh.
UGH.
OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE
FINALLY. THANK YOU CATS. Now let’s get back to this nightmare..
..and I mean nightmare in the technical sense of something not real occurring when you’re asleep, because Wyatt maxing a skill is truly the stuff of Taylor Swift-Wildest Dreams.mp3. It’s official, the only thing standing between us and Wyatt’s LTW is social ineptitude. But what if we revolutionize the friend game by approaching someone who can’t leave..
..because she’s contractually obligated to be here?? Go for it Wyatt!
-So Kaylýnn, you have the français maid thing going, I’m French and in need of a hag, c’est match made in les paradis!
-Yea sorry, Henry III, but it’s my professional policy to not fraternize with married clients I have no chance of fucking.
-But..but you’re just a face template fiasco!
-..I have some bad news for you.
Kaylynn left Wyatt dick in hand and went to pet the cats, so I guess the day has arrived for me to go from being the leading Langerak hater of this community to being the leading stan-
-and apparently the leading Jitmakusol stan as well, which as we all know is a large and very competitive group. DOWN WITH JOJO
Well at least you still have this invaluable stamp of approval! All I see in this pic is 3 bags of trash.
Look at this trove, treasures untold, how many assholes can one photo hold? The reason there’s more awful people in our house than usual is the “exciting” occasion of the Shajar/Wulf double birthday and honestly even by our standards this party was especially terrible. Like it makes the one where Komei and Marissa happened look like Project X.
When this is the situation 10 seconds in you know you’re in for a good time. I don’t think a single positive interaction took place this entire party and I’ve subconsciously (?) forgotten every birthday since. What a loss!
Wulf is up first, and of course since this is Wyatt’s literal one and only parenting-related job, it took 3 cakes to happen and no one is paying attention by the time it does.
Wyatt makes one last-ditch effort to kill his child via decapitation and obviously he thinks it worked thus the wide smile. But Wulf is named after the spawn of Satan, head spinning comes with the territory-
-as do incredible looks. Gunther hair + tuxedo, and you think your little yellow blazer is subversive?? Step it up.
-If the sunglasses weren’t blocking the power of my stare this child would be dead by my sheer resentment.
Happy birthday, Wulf! 2/2 surviving murder attempts.
Wulf gets this Don Corleone makeover because a) he also survived murder attempts b) wedding tuxedo c) trying to avoid a Gunther mental breakdown. He looks exactly like Wyatt, like I don’t think there’s a drop of Jojo in there..
..BUT MAN IS THE PERSONALITY PURE UNION. Another nice little addition to our ever expanding freakshow.
Shajar time and no one is paying attention now either but there’s no cake malfunction, they just don’t care! And why should they? What is she, their child?
Wyatt can’t even be bothered to stay standing for literally 10 more seconds. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a parent do that before but you can always count on Wyatt for this sort of innovation.
And this is what Shajar grows up to: Wyatt half-asleep, Daniel waiting to beat him up and the rest reacting to Wulf having shit himself. I don’t think any further comment is needed.
Now, having lived through the experience that was Daniel and having marveled at Shajar’s seemingly genetic unlikability, I’m sure we can all tell which is the one aspiration she should under no circumstances roll because it’s going to make nails on a chalkboard seem like a fun musical break.. Yes, this is not a drill..
..we have another trainwreck firstborn who can’t get their own family not to hate them roll popularity. AND DANIEL WAS NICE. Shajar is bringing 1 nice point to the table so all I can say at this point is fml.
And of course because the above wasn’t bad enough on its own and we always need the overkill, gaze upon whatever the fuck this is-
-YE MIGHTY AND DESPAIR. GOOD GOD SHAJAR
LOL. Well with the custom sky this is an Under The Dome situation so technically you’re not wrong but still. fucking popularity? Leave the sky alone and aim for ‘slightly above ground’. Even that is pushing it.
Good, finally we return to reality and face the facts. Couldn’t agree more!
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It’s been something of an incredibly rough few weeks on my end.
I come into write this post and realize Im going to need to break it down and draw it out significantly to make it make sense, considering I’ve been skimming on the details when talking to people close to me. I keep meaning to do a write up. It’s easier to hand a person a link instead of trying to condense a heap of nonsense into a sentence.
So here it goes. This is what I’ve been dealing with lately.
I’ve... had trouble figuring out where to start. I’ve sat on this post for about an hour now, so I suppose I need some sort of methodology to sort this all out. Okay... lets start from least consequential to most.
For a while I’ve been dealing with some medical nonsense. It’s mostly minor, but I’ve had a series of dental procedures to get a series of tooth issues resolved. I need to get a root canal still, but money is tight and I still owe my dentist a little over $200 still. On top of dental, I’ve also been working on making sense of my depression/anxiety/ADHD (officially diagnosed now) and have been cycling a bit through meds and dosage changes.
Bloodwork was recently done to see if I had hypothyroid issues. Nope. In the clear. Not even pre-diabetic. Need to work on triglycerides a little bit though. Otherwise mostly okay.
Work has come to a grinding halt in the post-mothers day rush. Income is somewhat dried up outside of small commission related things I’m working on here and there. Thank god I can leave money in paypal indefinitely and move it to the bank when emergencies strike. It’s been my only saving grace financially the past few weeks.
The shower door was broken recently. I don’t know all the details because I was out running errands at the time, but I’m still finding glass in the shower a week later. We’ve had to procure a curtain until I get the few hundred bucks to replace the thing. Needless to say showering has been a damned bit more difficult than usual. On top of that there’s still the hole in the ceiling that’s been there since around Christmas that’s steadily getting worse. The light is deteriorating, the sink is chipped, and... yeah. Despite all my efforts, getting any help from my family in getting a truck to transport the drywall needed to fix it is turning up... zero. So yeah. Bathroom renovations are a mess at the moment. It makes showering and various other hygiene things difficult, but I'm managing.
Part of the reason there’s been such a delay on the bathroom as well is the fact I’ve been tending to other renovation projects. For my uncle. A few towns away. He was diagnosed with cancer late last year and I thought I could do some good and help him with several home projects before his daughter moved across country this summer to live with him. It spiraled out of control. It turned into me dumping money and time and energy and all sorts of effort into renovating a small, nicotine stained house with little help aside from my partner @ironoverwine and the occasional assistance from my grandparents. It... has not gone well.
My cousin has moved back in the past week or two. Ever since I’ve been going full boar with the reno work, daily for over a week, making her a damned nice bedroom out of a mediocre hellhole and her son one too while I was at it. I‘ve cleaned the house. I’ve painted. I’ve torn out wallpaper. I’ve done impossibly complicated amounts of millwork installation. This is not me tooting my own horn here either. There has been a lot of work. And a lot of money. I’ve wracked up damned near $2k in credit card debt for the material and the traveling, probably much more.
And I’m not getting paid for this. In fact, I’ve recieved nothing but ire and callous cold shoulders for it. The sheer lack of a ‘thank you’ is getting to me. The expectancy for me to continue in spite of the lack of pay or gratitude or decency is... infuriating.
I suppose there’s a point where I need to take a break and segue into something more positive in terms of news. Nope. This ties to perfectly into the next round of fuckery going on recently.
Though I’m sure some people who follow me/read this are aware, I tend to keep relatively quiet (or try to) about how I’ve been taking care of my grandparents the last several months. I have been off and on since I was in school, but the past few years (minus the spell I spent in Oklahoma [god that was a mess] last year) it’s become more and more of a full time affair. Lately its been money and health issues dialed up and up... I’ve taken to managing finances and updating their banking info, keeping an eye on things and fending off phishing scams here and there. My grandmother had a heap of credit card debt because of a shitty doctor conning her a few years back.
Im trying to fix it. I’m trying to make sense of things for them because they have so damned little as it is and I am at least smart enough with money to allow them to start saving up money in the case of an emergency. For the first time in her life my grandmother has a proper savings account and money put away. She’s 79. (more on her specifically later.) I am an authorized user on her credit cards in order to help monitor and pay her bills, and also because piggybacking off of her credit history had helped me immensely with credit score ratings and whatnot. I mean, it’s not every day you can tell a credit firm you have thirty years of credit history.
Well, unfortunately, though I managed to reduce her debt by a significant amount, my mother decided to get involved.
Though I had used the credit to work on my uncle (her son’s) house and though she was aware of it, my mother convinced her, my grandmother, that I was ‘stealing’ money from her, via her credit cards. Despite me actually paying her bills. Despite me allowing her to cultivate savings for the first time in her life. Despite me clearing multiple cards for her for the first time in years and tackling intrest and keeping her from slipping into the red over and over and over...
She was convinced I was stealing from her. My mother convinced her of this and then convinced her to cancel out and close all of her accounts. Even though I was taking care of everything, my grandmother shuttered all but one (inconsequential) credit line she had. With $5k still owed to these companies.
My credit score has tanked. At least 150 points. For you youngins not in the know, that’s fucking awful. My grandmother is somewhat unscathed (though she did have near perfect credit and a long history of it) despite all this but... but me? I’ve only been building credit for two or three years now. I was barely doing well before this. My credit score has tanked hard and will continue to get worse. I won’t be able to get into an apartment or find a car at this rate...
Which leads me to more recent news. I tried to get a loan before the credit bureaus changed my score, some way to circumvent the fallout and get enough money to consolidate my debt and tuck some cash away into savings for an apartment or a car in the near future. It was denied. On multiple fronts. Because of what my mother did.
I am in something close to financial ruin, or at least the worst I’ve been in until now. Debt is climbing. I’m not going to be able to get any sort of loan for any sort of adult purposes for what is going to end up being years at this rate. This is exactly what happened that prevented me from going to college. My mother has ruined my finances to spite me and make me wholly dependent on my family.
I’m 25. There’s no damned escape. Though I planned to move out and get an apartment sometime early this summer, it’s near impossible at this rate because of what’s happened to my finances from this one incredibly underhanded move.
But it doesn’t stop there. No. It couldn’t.
This past week has been dominated by one major thing: My grandmother’s fall.
Despite me telling her to do precisely the opposite, my grandmother used a step stool on Monday, got up on the counter to clean something, and ended up falling on her back. I was at the doctor for aforementioned bloodwork at the time, and found out on my way home. She ended up being ambulanced out before I got home and... it’s been a whole ordeal since. I’ve had to travel extensively to visit her everyday since (twice yesterday) and... she’s been transported to a physical rehabilitation facility in order to get her back up on her feet and walking again. There was extensive internal bruising and her arthritis has advanced significantly in her back. Her hips are out of alignment. Her muscles have atrophied...
I’ve been taking my grandfather up their daily to see her and make sure she’s getting the care and rehabilitation she needs. It’s been tough. It’s been taking away a good half of my day for a week now. The other half has been flooded with errands and extensive housework.
I...
I don’t know when this is going to let up. Even despite my medications, there’s been significant flare ups in my depressive episodes because of all of this. I’ve been strategically offline in order to allow myself some time to ‘rest’ at night as best I can. But... I don’t know when I’m going to get back up on my feet in regards to all of this. I’m pouring all of my time and energy into... this nonsense.
There’s debt. There’s chores. There’s the elderly. There’s my mother. And through it all, I am trying. I really am. I am trying so damned hard to make progress with my nonsense.
Im tired. And Im tired of being tired.
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Another King
Another day, another example of the censorship of big tech. They are really going all out to suppress what is really going on.
There’s just not enough coffee in the world for this right now.
Holy crap sheeple, who’s paying attention? Better yet, does anyone really care?
If you haven’t been playing along since the insur-election, there’s much fuckery afoot. That’s likely an understatement, but you’d never know by the sheer lack of coverage by the MSM. Complicit by omission and commission. What is the tin foil hat wearing mostly black coffee drinking guy talking about? Why the Pennsylvania election hearings of course. The decision granted by Judge Patricia McCullough this week to stop the certification due to the constitutionality of the actions of the state Attorney General.
Have any of you even heard about this? Bueller? Bueller?
Of course you haven’t. (ed. Note – for the record, many of you likely do as you wouldn’t be reading this if you were peeking out from a safe space. That sentence was to make a point.) We, and I use the collective we here, have been lulled into a state of indifference, or as I’ve titled this blog spot, a state of confusion. We are not inundated with so much information, fake or otherwise that we can no longer discern for ourselves what is right and what is wrong. Add on the pandemic, information overload combined with rapidly changing conditions, mis-trust, isolation, desperation etc., and then cover all that over a highly corrupt political class and guess what? We are living in a history class for future students to be taught how not to repeat.
I shit-you-not. We are literally living through the start of collapse of western civilization. Cool right?
Ask the Roman’s how that worked out for them. Anyone heard about the Mayan’s? The average society lasts for 250-350 years before it collapses. The loss of cultural identity, failure of government, and a rise in violence has signaled the end of many societies throughout the century and history has taught us that organized human activity is doomed to fail every time. Always.
I’m going to quote what I feel is likely a great quote to make those who remember who said it and why understand completely where I’m coming from. “Why can’t we all just get along?”.
I’ll pause here for effect.
We can’t. Well, we can for awhile but eventually w will resort back to tribalism and start killing each other again. It happens time and time again. We are a predictable species and are arrogant enough to not learn from our mistakes. As a matter of fact we go out of our way to ensure our descendants future failures like we are today by erasing history in the name of political correctness. It’s not like this sort of thing hasn’t happened before, right?
I just didn’t think I’d live to see it. I mean I should have realized I’d experience some sort of mass calamity in my life time, humans aren’t that bright. World wars, famines, genocide, it’s a cycle and we aren’t intelligent enough to figure out how to get along for long periods of time. I just never thought it would happen HERE.
It’s really simple if you take a look at your community as a micro study in humanity. Look at the different people in your neighborhood (ed note – OMG, did that song just play in anyone elses head?) and consider what makes a community work.
We are all different. Different shapes, sizes, dreams, goals, abilities. Some people like to sing in choirs, and some don’t. Some people like to jog at five in the morning (what’s wrong with these people??) and some don’t. I could never be a butcher, but I love steak. My neighbor mows his lawn in late November. One of the kids I went to school with has a son who plays hockey at a high level while I can’t stand up on skates.
Get it yet?
Some people give up a good portion of their paycheck to take an annual trip to watch a sporting event of their liking, to see their hero’s play in person. Those hero’s spent their childhood perfecting their craft because of their passion for the game. Others’ build the stadiums that these people will enjoy their sport in, and yet others’ again will provide health care to those builders should they ever need it.
We can all get along. We all must get along. When we stop getting along, those who are most vunerable suffer most, and that truly is the most unfair thing our societies don’t consider when we allow ideology to run ruckshaw over common sense.
We are at that point now. They estimate over 100 million people will die next year because of the plandemic in 3rd world countries. We will soon see food shortages here in the western world, we are already seeing long food lines in states like Texas.
I get the desire to create a perfect world, but when we rush to find perfection we almost always hinder progress in the name of some lofty ideals.
I’m not sure if it’s too late to stop the momentum of what we are seeing, I can only hope we see the folly of our ways before we repreat the sins of those who came before us.
I’m cautiously optimistic that the story unfolding in Pennsylvania will continue and people will wake up and take a hard look at what is really going on, and stand up and say no.
That’s enough for today, I’m going to go throw balls for the beast of Regent. He’s getting impatient with my pontification and needs to run.
Me too. Happy Saturday!
J out.
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Let me assure you, Nyx, that Hoechlin's comments on Sterek (I think you're mainly referring to his comment about Sterek being disrespectful), has by no means been forgotten, and absolutely not in one week lol! Just yesterday there was a long discussion on it between many of my mutual Stereks. The difference about Hoechlin and Posey's comments, though, is the spiteful nature of Posey's comments. He also hasn't tried to apologize or explain his comments, not even to save face, like Hoechlin. 1/2
There are many of us who are very disappointed in Hoechlin, and who are now side-eyeing him. I think there’s a truth to the saying that you don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Lastly, another difference between Hoechlin’s and Posey’s statements is that Hoechlin replied to a question to him, while Posey hijacked a question not directed at him to take out his frustration on fans. 2/2
and
Do you have any links where I can read up on how Sterek fans harassed Posey into calling Sterek fans bizarre, weird and twisted?
I’m pretty sure you are two separate people, but since my response is mostly the same, I’m lumping you into one post.
A slice of what Posey had been dealing with:
People literally not knowing that that his character is the main character of the show, or sometimes not even knowing he’s in it at all.
Panels and cons about Teen Wolf getting constantly derailed by Sterek. There have been bans on Sterek fanart, and Hoechlin avoiding signing Sterek fanart, as a result.
And as someone on Reddit point out (on a post about how Tyler Hoechlin finds Sterek to be disrespectful), the cast and crew may appreciate the publicity and support, but that doesn’t mean the sheer prevalence of the fandom ship doesn’t burn, given, “…it is slightly insulting to the cast and crew. They’re pouring their efforts into doing X, and all they get asked about is Y. Also…people are practically leering at these guys when they ask about it usually.”
Literally cutting Posey out of gifs and pictures to make it about Hobrien (aka RPF Sterek).
Calling for the show to kill off Tyler Posey and make someone else the main character.
It’s not just “shitty people being shitty on the Internet” - this has had ripple effects on cons that Posey has absolutely noticed.
And it’s not just racism - there’s misogyny, too!
Complete with tremendous victim-blaming of Allison.
We don’t see it as much now, but Allison hate was extremely widespread, back then. And this absolutely hit the actress - such as being asked, in a con, “Is Allison going to dress like a slut this season?” So it’s not just Posey watching himself get marginalized - it’s watching a friend of his get mistreated, too, and that’s on top of the overall show getting drowned in a fanon/crackship.
Also, the fact that people claim Posey insulted or slammed on Sterek fans is one of the ways people twist him into something he’s not in order to justify hating him.
Posey never called Sterek fans “bizarre or twisted”. He called the ship that, which sucks - it hurts when someone you like looks down on something you like.
But as so many other Sterek shippers themselves have pointed out, he already had a really shitty history with Sterek fans and fandom.
Given how often Sterek fandom has overtaken everything else about the show, I don’t blame him for overtaking this single question.
Quoting from another Sterek shipper on Poseygate:
“It’s like going up to an actor playing Hamlet each night after the performance and asking him what it’s like playing… Macbeth. Eventually, the guy playing Hamlet isn’t going to want to talk about Macbeth any more… and will get a little pissy when you continue to badger him about it.
When fans and the press focus on the Sterek phenomenon and ignore almost every other aspect of the show, you are not only ignoring the incredible fact that a young Latino is the lead in a popular television show, you are also ignoring the story that everyone who works on Teen Wolf is trying to tell you.”
His word choice was terrible, but Posey was speaking out not against fans of Sterek, but, “anyone who pays more attention to Sterek than the show”. As some of the aforelinked Redditors have pointed out,
“if you’re only watching for Sterek, there’s a 99 percent chance it won’t happen, and you’re missing the rest of the show.”
As another one said,
“It’s okay to watch Teen Wolf for inspiration for Sterek. It’s not okay to demand that the creators include it or to insist the actors discuss fanart/fanfiction about their characters when they are at an interview/panel expecting to discuss the show.”
Yet after “Posey gate”, people were saying Posey needs to get raped (by Hoechlin, no less).
All of this is accompanied by a long history of hatred of Scott - the main character of the show, and Posey’s character - that was largely perpetuated by Sterek fandom. Things like:
Claiming that the show is all about Stiles.
Injecting Sterek-derived Scott hate onto non-Sterek fanart (Sterek derived in that the language, argument, and intent are all derived of Sterek fandom), and saying that Scott needs to die.
People trying to remove Scott from his own story by claiming it’s really about Derek and that everything is from Stiles’ POV, and if he isn’t actually in the scene, we should just assume it was “told” to him and may never have actually happened (which conveniently means you get to ignore quite a bit of Scott’s storyline and development, as well as many of the other characters’ evil and villainy).
Erasing all of Scott’s (and Derek’s!) character development.
All on top of a long history of erasing Derek’s abusive behavior while calling Scott a rapist and victim-blaming him.
Calling Scott selfish for making tough decisions to save as many lives as possible in really shitty circumstances, such as falsely accusing someone he thought to be dead of murder to protect his peers (and then still trying to help Derek anyway, even when Stiles didn’t want to); blaming Scott for Gerard’s villainy and making a choice to save as many people as possible (especially while ignoring some of the Hale mens’ own actions), and erasing Scott scenes to paint him as putting Stiles and Derek in danger so he can spend time with his girlfriend.
And the rest of us can’t avoid it.
For all that people claim Scott-stans and non-Sterek fans go into Sterek tags to bully them, most Sterek fans seem to have no idea just how much Sterek infects other fandoms/the rest of fandom.
People will make non-Sterek fanart, and it still gets tagged as Sterek - even when the post is captioned with Scott, or when there’s some pretty clear disparities in skin tone.
They turned a picture of Stiles and Scott into a post about Sterek. And somehow a Scerek fanart became a Sterek post.
And we’re all supposed to be grateful because turning non-Sterek fanworks into Sterek and getting reblogged by Sterek fans will give it more notes.
Yes, there were crazy fans from all ships sending hate to all the actors, for a variety of reasons.
But, something a lot of people fail to realize is the sheer scale of the Sterek fandom compared to all the rest of Teen Wolf fandom combined. The numbers may have been even worse back then.
The last two paragraphs of that link, neatly summarize why I side-eye a lot of the claims that Sterek fans were unfairly bullied, especially by Scott fans, and my sentiments on the matter overall:
And this is just a sampling of some of what this fandom throws in Scott’s direction (and not even bringing in the shit and the fuckery that they throw at Tyler Posey). So, yeah. In conclusion: you are not a special and unique snowflake because you hate Scott McCall; you are falling in line with about 90% of the rest of the fandom on this count (at least). It is not hard to be a Scott McCall hater in this fandom just because a handful of vocal people call you on your shit when the reasons you give for hating Scott are hot problematic nonsense; most of your fellow fans agree with you and think you’re being unfairly bullied when people criticize you.
No one is saying that you are required to like Scott McCall—but when the majority of the fandom hates him, demeans him, demonizes him, belittles him, flings ableist and racist shit at him on a regular basis, mischaracterizes him in order to valorize their faves, and actively wishes death on him (usually so Stiles or Derek can become the star of the show), and when this behavior and these attitudes are not only common but actively encouraged and supported, with an undercurrent that suggests, “but why would anyone ever like Scott, I don’t like Scott so clearly no one else would ever like him either”? Then yes, people have a right to be pissed off.
In conclusion, as I’ve literally already said before:
If my understanding of a ship was predominantly made up of people erasing me from my own TV show, saying I deserved to be raped and murdered, and making the rest of my friends uncomfortable or harassing them in the process? “Bizarre and twisted” would be the nicest way to say what I think of them.
(In my case, it really is.)
#tyler posey#scott mccall defense squad#teen wolf fandom problems#teen wolf fandom racism#racism in fandom#teen wolf fandom meta#anti teen wolf fandom#teen wolf fandom#anti sterek fandom#nyxie answers#long post#for the record i actually tried to put this under a cut#but that fucked up my paragraphs and with this many links i'm too tired to do it properly#so yeah#you just get a long post tag i'm sorry#Anonymous
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In what kind of God-forsaken universe did your ex-boyfriend’s newly minted girlfriend invite you to their housewarming party?
It wasn’t just insulting, it was-- it was-- absolute fuckery!
Who the hell?!
To say the least, you were spitting mad, stomping around in your work shoes with such aggression that the heel of one had snapped.
Thus, you found yourself pouting at the local cobbler’s shop. He was a friend of yours: Ilhoon, a fashionista to the core with a shamelessly dorky exterior.
Fiddling with the heel of your shoe as he allowed the glue to set, he nodded along as you explained the sheer outrage of your current situation.
“So?” He said finally. “Don’t go.”
“How can I not go?” You fretted. “I know they sent me this damned invitation just to see me chicken out and bury my head in the sand. How can I let them be right?”
“Why do you care? They aren’t a significant part of your life anymore-- they’re assholes.”
“They’re assholes who’re gloating about how happy they are and I don’t really care that they’re together anymore-- I don’t-- I’m totally over him, I would never want to be in a relationship with him again. I may not be in love, but that doesn’t mean I’m not angry!” Crossing your arms over your chest, you lean back with a huff.
Way back when, you’d been very much in love with your ex-boyfriend, Shin. He was good-looking, smooth, intelligent, and-- as a result-- a very successful businessman. In other words, he was everything your mother had ever wanted you to date. But you’d come home one evening to find him in bed with a pair of long, milky, unfamiliar legs slung around his hips and the smell of sex and sweat in the air.
You had promptly slammed the door and turned on your heel, walking out of Shin’s life.
The next morning, however, you had returned to your apartment after he’d left, put his shit into a trash bag, and tossed it out onto the street. Following that, you hadn’t heard from Shin, though you had spent many nights crying into the soft cashmere of Ilhoon’s designer sweaters, his comforting hugs your only solace for the duration of your post-breakup angst.
Well, maybe not entirely.
You’d partaken in a lot of vodka too.
“Don’t you think going is just going to make you feel worse in the long run?” Ilhoon pointed out worriedly.
“No. I want them to see how well I’m doing. That I’m really enjoying life and I’m better off, you know?”
“Well, you’re at least gonna have a bangin’ pair of shoes,” He grinned.
Ding!
Your phone chirped from inside your purse, prompting you to pull it out and unlock it. It was from an unknown number.
‘Hey, Y/N, this is Shin’s girlfriend. He said you blocked him on facebook so he couldn’t message you-- which is a little weird-- don’t you work together? I got your number from your LinkedIn to make sure you got our invite since I didn’t get your RSVP. Anyway, hope to see you at the party this Friday!’
Oh.
Oh.
Shin hadn’t even told the poor girl about your history with him? You were just the girl from work? This was too good. You were going to destroy this boy.
But there was the problem of the girlfriend… She seemed sweet. At the very least, you didn’t think she knew you’d been dating Shin when he’d taken her home. No one at the office had.
“It would look bad for you to be dating me when we work together,” Shin would say. He’d tried to excuse hiding your relationship; you’d chosen not to be suspicious.
Thus, you were left with a problem: you needed to make it clear you were not happy with Shin, but you also needed to protect his girlfriend from getting her feelings hurt-- you certainly had no intention of making a scene and embarrassing her.
“You’re gonna have to buy them a housewarming gift, you know…” Ilhoon handed you your repaired high heel.
Taking the proffered shoe, you grumbled, “What’s the point? He doesn’t want reminders of me in his home with her. He’ll just throw it out.”
“Why don’t you just bring something they’ll have to throw out anyway then? Like flowers?”
Something about his suggestion struck you.
You shot to your feet, hopping around as you slid on your sensible black pump. Grinning, you waved, already heading for the door, “Ilhoon, you’re a genius!”
His head cocked to the side and he blinked owlishly, watching you stride purposefully out of his shop and down the block of local businesses. “... What did I say?”
A cursory glance up and down the row of storefronts saw your gaze alighting on a little flower shop with a fully glass storefront, the panes painted sky blue, doors wide open. Baskets of flowers hung from the overhang of the porch and pre-prepared bouquets sat in metal buckets filled with water. ‘Miss Lee’s’ read the sign over the door. It was cute and the open doors immediately drew you in.
The interior walls were unpainted red brick, and iron wrought rods of industrial lighting were strategically placed around the room to the advantage of the flowers and the natural light streaming in from the front windows. Strings of colorful blown glass bubbles floated from fishing wire fastened to the beams of the high ceilings. The shelves were filled with all sorts of succulents and quirky vases. All different shades of carnations, roses, orchids, and lilies bloomed from buckets scattered around the room. Snapdragons, daisies, tulips, and sunflowers winked brightly at you, making the room seem to smile with their happy, summery hues. The shop was gorgeous.
Nevertheless, you were here on a mission. Marching right up to the counter, where an employee had his back turned as he worked on an arrangement, you pulled a twenty from your pocket, smacked it down on the lacquered wood, and asked determinedly, “How do I passive-aggressively say ‘fuck you’ in flower?”
Startled, the employee turned around, glancing down at the twenty then up at your face. “Um…”
Well, shit. You hadn’t thought this through at all, and now you were faced with, well, the human personification of beauty.
His eyes were sweet and almond-shaped, with lashes so thick and long you might have mistook him for a girl. Except for the muscles rippling beneath the tight shirt that strained over his chest.
Hooo boy.
You did your best not to stare-- really.
But when your request finally computed with him, he threw back his head with such a full-bodied laugh, how could you not?
His thin upper lip pulled back to reveal slightly large teeth, lending him a somewhat squirrely appearance. It certainly didn’t detract from his features. If anything, you were quite charmed by it.
“I’m sorry,” his laughter began to splutter out, “but what?”
Heat crept up your neck to leave a heavy flush on your cheeks. “... I need you to make me a bouquet for someone. My ex invited me to his housewarming party with his new girlfriend and she texted me to ask why I haven’t rsvp-ed and I’ve just realized that she isn’t a fake bitch, she really has no clue that the asshole cheated on me or that we ever even dated but now I feel obligated to go and I need to bring a gift because that’s polite but I know he’s gonna toss it so I shouldn’t spend a lot of money on it or anything but I still want to kill him and make a scene but that would be so rude and Yun Jae-- the new girlfriend-- doesn’t deserve that kind of humiliation and it isn’t my business--” Your mouth snapped shut as you realized that you’d just been rambling to this total stranger.
His brows inched towards his hairline; a thoughtful hum passed his lips, “So you need a… a hate bouquet?”
“Yes! Exactly!” Relief flooded your expression. Finally! Someone understood you.
He began writing on a small legal pad next to the register, taking your twenty from the counter and putting it in the register. “All right. And when do you need it by?”
“Friday evening.”
“Perfect,” he flashed you a gleaming smile, pushing the pad of paper towards you. “Could you leave your name, number, and preferred pick-up time here?”
“Of course!” You chirped, scribbling out the requested info.
“Great. So why don’t you drop by tomorrow and I’ll show you my design for the floral arrangement?”
Minhyuk had been a little surprised when he’d turned around and saw a fierce little thing like you. He’d never gotten a request for a hate bouquet before. Chuckling to himself as you nodded and promised to come back tomorrow, he glanced down at his notes for your request. What an odd way to express displeasure… With flowers. He got the feeling that you were the type of person who had trouble being impolite even at your own expense. And this would be at your expense-- he frowned to himself, thinking of the flowers he was likely to put into the arrangement. It would definitely be more than twenty dollars.
But he recalled the bright, righteous anger in your eyes and the rosy hue your cheeks had taken on and found himself drawn in. What a curious person. His eyes fell to the name you’d left for him.
Y/N…
How pretty.
The next day came more quickly than he’d anticipated, but either way he was prepared with a design for you.
He was not prepared, however, for you to walk into his shop in your office clothes looking like, well, like… Well, beautiful and soft.
Your feminine figure was sheathed in a peachy pink dress that cinched at the waist with a thin, tan belt and fell to your knees, hair falling around your face in loose, romantic curls. But his eyes weren’t fixed on your gorgeous sloping hips or your dainty feet encased in nude stilettos. They had caught on the pleasant shade of pink dusting your cheeks and the gloss coating your plump lips. And when you’d ended the conversation you’d been having over the phone, putting the device into your purse and finally looking up, Minhyuk was struck by the way your eyes caught the natural light streaming in from his front windows.
“Hi! I’m back!” Your mouth perked up in a smile that made your whole face glow.
And Minhyuk was smitten.
“Hello, Y/N,” he grinned in return, feeling his cheeks warm a bit, “I have the design for your arrangement ready. Wanna take a look?”
Eager, you stepped forward and leaned over the counter to look at the collection of sketched scattered over the surface of the counter.
From the stack, Minhyuk pulled a stunning design featuring many warm bright shades of pink and orange.
“Wow,” you breathed, eyes wide as you glanced back up at him, “He doesn’t deserve something this pretty.”
“No,” Minkyuk’s gaze connected pointedly with yours, “He really didn’t.”
“Oh,” you fidget, breaking eye contact out of sheer embarrassment.
The moment having passed, Minhyuk is back to business, relaying the meanings of all the flowers he’d included in the bouquet. “Geraniums for stupidity, foxglove for insincerity, meadowsweet for uselessness, yellow carnations meaning ‘you have disappointed me,’ and orange lilies for hatred to top it all off.”
You were amazed, “Minhyuk, really, this so striking,”
“And full of loathing!” He added cheerfully.
Shaking your head with bemusement, you snorted, “I can’t believe you took my completely asinine idea and made it something so beautiful. So how much more do I owe you for this? It looks pretty expensive.”
Subtly sliding his calculations for the cost under the other drawings (the math had come out to roughly $65 but why should you have to pay extra for inspiring him?), he responded, “Actually, it balanced to exactly $20.”
Skeptical, you folded your arms over your chest, “Did it?”
“Absolutely,” He nodded, seeming very certain.
“Okay…” You weren’t quite as certain.
“You know,” Minhyuk paused, “I do have a question, actually.”
Your head tilted to the side, encouraging him to go ahead.
“Don’t you think you’d drive your point home a lot better to this douchebag if you brought a date?”
You flinched a little. “I mean, yes. But I’m not dating anyone right now, so I don’t have anyone to bring.”
Somehow this response pleased him much more than it should have. Gathering his wits, Minhyuk leaned toward you with his cute little chipmunk smile, “And what if I offered to escort you?”
Flushing, you responded promptly, “I’d say yes and we’d have the weirdest first date I’ve ever heard of.”
And so that Friday, instead of picking up your hate bouquet at the shop, Minhyuk made a special delivery, closing up his store early to pick you up instead.
And yes, your ex-boyfriend-- whatever the hell his name had been-- Shu? Shannon? Cher?--had positively withered when you’d arrived on Minhyuk’s very, very muscular arm, flowers in hand.
Click to see our masterlist!
#AW YISS Imagines#aw yiss!#Minhyuk#BtoB#Imagine Asking Minhyuk to Make You a Hate Bouquet#a minty bias#Florist AU
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#personal
I always try to write these with a bit of optimism but lately it’s not really the truth. I’ve been working. That much is true. I would say I’ve been busy and productive and what that looks like in reality differs from the perception. I imagine famous people in Chicago are too busy being famous and throwing that around to care about reality. I understand somewhat that after the years I’ve spent at the edge of what hipsters think is cool here that it’s almost better to stay away from it. Success in those circles is mostly a consensual hallucination. Groupthink is weird here and I’m sure if you mapped it all out on paper it will look absolutely horrifying. It’s even worse when you get too close to the center of it. And with music, art, clothing or whatever it is I do to keep sane, there seems to be a growing trend of people who have been absent from my life reappearing conveniently. I’ve tried to explain it to friends and no one has the heart to listen to my concerns. They mostly feel like I’m crazy or don’t want to admit that intimidation exists here. It could be that it’s just peer pressure. And what peer pressure looks like these days is normalized to be pretty ugly in my eyes. Long story short is this. I tried to be social in this town. It gets incredibly lonely being on your own this much is true. I’m sure we all feel much safer in our bedrooms at the end of the day than in a club. There are choices I made in the last eight years that people would never believe. Mostly because they weren’t there. They didn’t have to walk away from the sheer level of heinous bullshit this city gets people into. It’s not like I’ve been walking away from it just this year. Ever since I broke up with my girlfriend years ago I’ve been trying to ignore repeating that mistake. There’s a freedom in being your own person and getting to know yourself. That freedom isn’t really all that easy.
The truth is pretty much this. Everybody has their opinion about who I am or what it is I do. I never really hear these things upfront. I have to read through subtext, back channel communication, and the lack of any real honesty or upfront admission of problems. After years of typing away randomly on the Internet, I’ve met new people all over the world who took me at face value. I think it’s easier to trust people on the Internet sometimes because the physicality isn’t there to threaten you. That’s not always a wise decision. But years later people have been following however transparently I live my life. I’ve connected with people that I think genuinely understand what it is I’m trying to say. And then I have people in my city that try to interpret that without asking for my input. Even worse I have those people translate their theories about me through other people. People that were never my friends. Sure I’ve made a lot of aquaintances over the years being nice. I’m always reminded of this picture a friend has on their instagram. It’s a note that says something like “How am I going to get rid of 5000 fake friends?” People can say your name over and over. And eventually that name will stick. But it doesn’t mean they know what you are about. It doesn’t even mean they know your history. How painful it’s been to try to take the high road in everything with people criticizing you every step of the way. No one will believe it. Not even if you stood me up on stage and asked me to repeat it over and over again. I’ve been single for eight years. Yeah I went out on some platonic dates. Yeah most of those people were incompatible. None of it was intimate at all. Some of them were emotional. I liked people sure. I’ve never been one to force anything. I know better. The city doesn’t.
So let me clear the air. I like somebody. Who that person is isn’t anybody’s business. People seem to think they know everything there is to know about me lately. People actively dig in my past and ask people about me. They never ask me directly. They’re not there as your friend. They’re not confidential about anything. They have a narrative about you and it’s usually something about being “problematic.” And if they do it’s always the people who don’t lead by example. Nobody and I repeat no one has treated me with any respect here in Chicago for a minute. I came to learn that the city just doesn’t have the capacity. I learned that pretty quickly after spending a short time in New York City twice this year. I gave up on Chicago. And if it wasn’t clear then let me spell it out for everyone right now. I have absolutely no interest in this city whatsoever. It lies. It cheats. It stabs people in the back. Probably like New York. Except New York feels like a place that leaves you alone after awhile. Or at least it understands your need to be yourself enough to let you grow and be yourself. Maybe it’s just bigger. Chicago definitely has designs on what it thinks you “ought to be.” But New York seems to understand the context more. Maybe it understands that all those years I spent in Korea and Japan had an effect on me. It didn’t turn me into a weeb. I am probably still a weeb I guess. Guilty as charged. But what I am not is a person who made easy choices to be myself. And part of the pain of it is you have to own it. And Chicago is an easy city to do so because it’s so suspicious. It’s a city that breeds a special kind of loner I guess. I ran six miles this morning before work. I wake up at five in the morning and blog weird shit on the internet. I make coffee. I pay my rent. I keep to myself. I subtweet cats to somebody out of state. That’s none of anybody’s business. But it’s the truth and it’s why I ignore most of the fuckery people try to drag me into in this town. The time for that fuckery to have stopped was back when I visited NYC. It’s nice to know people in this city still think it’s above them to believe me.
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World building, characters, and the DA Fandom’s propensity to ignore nuance.
I have borne witness to both some serious Cullen Critical posts and Pro Anders posts in the last twenty-four hours and...ugh. I feel the need to put something out there.
As people who have played the protagonists of the Dragon Age games, we are skewed to be more magic-leaning and forgiving than the normal, average joe of Thedas, and it’s disheartening and irritating that a lot of the fandom seems to have a very basic issue with noticing this and applying that mindset when they look at issues in the game, particularly with certain characters.
Under a Read More for length, and there’s a TL;DR at the bottom.
We started off as a member of a very misunderstood sect of warriors that dealt with a very vague threat that most people do not understand and were recruited into that militia/army/whatever 70% of the time due to committing crimes or somehow acting against an authority that forced us into the ultimatum between choosing the Wardens or death/imprisonment/banishment. In other words, we were Wardens only because we already were unsatisfied with the way things were, whether we were a City Elf murdering an entire estate of corrupt rapist humans or a Noble Human dealing with the politics and uncovered atrocities of their fellow countrymen. Or, you know, we could have started as a mage going through the Right of Passage and starting in the Circle to witness all that fuckery first hand. Basically, none of us were average by circumstance, otherwise we would never have become Wardens to begin with. Even then, the wealth of very diverse people we meet and fantastical circumstances we encounter educate us and change our mindsets regardless of our starting point.
Then we go to DA2 where we are just another run away Ferelden trying to escape the Blight. Again, luck and circumstance elevate us to extraordinary, and we are pitted firmly between fighting powers of protection and freedom, between Templars and Mages, among plenty of other shit. We, by that point if they had played Origins, are already predisposed to the plight of mages, we know to some extent what they can go through thanks to Wynne and Morrigan as our previous companions, doubly so if you play Awakening and meet Anders pre-Justice. Although Origins was decently framed as morally ambiguous between helping or hurting mages for various crimes (killing/helping the Circle mages or Keeper Zathrian or Jowain, etc.) we are forced to pick a side in DA2 and, not for nothing, but mages were the very clearly oppressed people in that game. It was a lot less ambiguous, despite the rampant blood magic because it was clear that most cases went to it out of desperation and not the pure desire for power over others. Meredith, no matter how she’s framed, is wrong with flexibly “good intentions” and Orsino is the only thing stemming the incoming tidal wave by Act 3. Origins is not ambiguous about the plight of elves, or the urgency of the darkspawn threat, or the danger presented in Ferelden’s political arena, but it leaves magic more or less up to you. DA2 does not.
In Inquisition, the civil war is in full swing and, if you were hot on the heels of it after DA2 like I was, the image of the Chantry exploding is one of the freshest things in your mind. By then, you understand at the very least the sheer power of magic when concentrated into one place, and you also understand that fighting magic with non-magic, by and large, does not work. You must use magic to curb magic. If you start Inquisition without playing the others, the prologue only further demonstrates this with your magic mark being the only thing that cures magic tears. In the beginning, most long term players go to help Redcliffe because of our nostalgia for it from Origins, or because we’ve known since Origins that Tevinter Magisters are shit and that’s only been reinforced for the last two games. If you’re new, Alexius is basically painted with a “Evil Bad Guy” brush and also time magic is terrifying; fuck the Templars, whatever their issue is isn’t nearly as bad. It’s a no-brainer. The only thing that really tests our understanding of things in Inquisition is nearly 90% about the Fade and magic and Elvhen history, a little less if you have Descent and you played it, then a bit about Dwarven history, but it turns out that just relates to Elves too, in the end. Magic is acceptable in Inquisition, as far as the narrative is concerned, and there is really no room for those that contest its merit or the use of it that can break that idea. The only character who comes close to being persuasive about Circles is Vivienne, and she harbors the middle ground and comes from a place of being a mage, but she has a high social status, so if you weren’t interested in playing the middle ground or being challenged, you can easily dismiss her.
Throughout the games, no matter where you start, the narrative increasingly treats magic as not only something that is normal for someone to accept but is harbored by people who are seen and generally treated as lower class, and thus are the most sympathetic and in need of assistance. Tevinter is an exception, but being a nation that uses people for sacrifices and slave labor can make it hard for people to find redeeming qualities in other practices. Before Dorian, all we saw of Tevinter were magisters that manipulated for power and elven slaves, so whatever their progressive stance on magic is gets covered under the oily grime of awful practices and racism. Dorian is an exception to his countrymen, even in Inquisition, and he’s framed that way in the narrative.
It’s easy to forget when we’ve been surrounded by magic and the Fade and spirits and shit for three games that mages make up just a fraction of the population of Thedas, and the Circle is just a concept to most of the people that live there. The average person in Thedas doesn’t encounter magic on a daily basis and isn’t educated or experienced in what mages are like or what the Fade does or how spirits work. In Ferelden, Orlais, and much of the Free Marches, the average citizen is educated through history and the Chantry which tells them that magic is dangerous and that Circles are to benefit mages by teaching them control and protecting them from hurting themselves or others. We have only seen the absolute worst case scenario for Circles, the one at Lake Calenhad and the one in Kirkwall, the former which fell apart and most only saw it in that state and the latter fucked up the second you reach the shores of the island. We’ve never seen a Circle function as its intended unless you played a mage origin in Origins, and that goes to shit real quick, so most players when proposed with the idea to reinstate them will obviously reject it.
Pro-Anders posts and Anti-Cullen posts seem to all stem from this predisposition about magic, both in terms of forgiving Anders for his terrorism and condemning Cullen for his words and mindset in DA2 and thus using it to dismiss his character arc in Inquisition. It is apparently very difficult to keep in mind what the normal, average, standard Thedasian thinks about mages and magic and I get that it’s stupid to dismiss what we’ve learned in the meta narrative, but it’s important to contextualize where characters are coming from and the application of their actions in the world they live in. Anders came from a place of oppression, pain, and fear due to his capabilities. Cullen came from a place of mental torture, pain, and fear due to the misuse of those capabilities. That helps to explain their actions, but it does not excuse them, and people like to excuse one and explain the other when they’re only showing their bias by doing so.
Let’s break down the viewpoints:
- Anders blew up a large facility that housed hundreds of people, including Chantry affiliates and leaders as well as low ranking sisters and other members of the faithful. These were people who had not contributed to the pain mages experienced in Kirkwall. Yes, they didn’t help them, but they didn’t help Meredith either, and remained neutral until their demise before Meredith or Orsino could argue their case to the Grand Cleric. Anders killed these people to make a statement, costing the lives of everyone inside that building for a political and social idea. In doing so, not only did he plunge the continent into civil war, he helped bolster the Andrastian narrative to the uneducated masses: that mages are dangerous, that magic can result in massive loss of life, and that people who wield it cannot be trusted at face value. An average citizen isn’t going to care about the oppression or tensions or abuse on either side, and they’re likely never going to hear about Anders’s good deeds in having that clinic in Darktown for all those years either; they’re going to care that their livelihood and their families are in danger as a direct result of his actions. That is why Varric speaks ill of Anders and why people do not forgive him for his actions en masse. No matter his agenda, murdering innocent people and thus causing the deaths of so many more due to some upheaval is not worth his intangible ideas.
- Cullen facilitated and assisted Meredith in the capture, torture, and deaths of mages and his fellow templars during his station in Kirkwall. No matter how you dice his conversations, particularly in Act 1 where he’s pretty fresh from the Calenhad Circle, he is terrified, severe, and staunch in his distrust toward mages and easily sanctions death as a punishment for blood magic. Meredith wants order, and he wants order, so he does what he’s told in eradicating rebel groups and assisting in keeping his men in line. Players seem to forget that Cullen gradually over the course of the decade starts to question Meredith more and more. When it becomes clear to him that she’s unhinged he tries to lie to himself about it until it’s far far too late. Normal Kirkwall citizens are going to see his actions as a good thing, despite the fear of Meredith. Once she uses her status to usurp control of the Viscount station is when they start to feel uncomfortable or afraid. The average person is either going to see Cullen as just another templar or recognize his services, and only a few will consider his actions to be against the common good. When he finally turns against Meredith, his loyal men follow him. He leaves the Order not long after that due to his disillusionment in what the organization stands for and what it actually does, including his own actions.
Thus, due to his previous ideas and oft-quoted “Mages aren’t people like you and me,” any chance that Cullen has for redemption is scoffed at despite his obvious change and his struggle to be a better person than he believes he’s ever been. Does his redeeming himself and being better excuse his actions? Of course not. Should his struggle to be better count for something? Yes, it should. Leaving behind his PTSD, his trauma, his lyrium addiction, the basic fact that he is doing better or attempting to be a force for positive change for the future of Thedas is a great thing and should at least be recognized, even if you don’t like him as a character for his past actions or his personality. Likewise, people can actively give Anders a pass in agreement or a chance to redeem himself as Hawke, but so far in the story we have not seen Anders or heard of him attempting to redeem his actions or reconsidering whether he did the right thing or not. By the end of DA2 and from what a romanced Hawke says in Inquisition, Anders assists Circles in disbanding to join the rebellion and aid the conflict in the civil war. At least for the foreseeable future, Anders continues to support his decision and assist in freedom despite the consequences to his fellows and to others.
Jesus this has gone on far too long. Let’s just...try and summarize whatever the fuck is in my head before this becomes a dissertation:
tl;dr - The average person of Thedas is told to be weary and distrustful of magic and mages and anyone who grows up in any place that isn’t Tevinter or a wandering tribe of Elves or Avaar is predisposed to think this way. We as players are in a unique position to see Thedas from many angles and thus experience and see things in the world that most people would never have the chance to encounter or understand. People don’t dislike mages because they’re unjustifiably prejudiced: they do it because there is a cultural and social predisposition to do so. Anders does not understand this, and thus only exacerbated the problem by committing terrorism, and continues to do so due to his continued assistance in the war effort without offering a proper solution. Cullen does understand this, but also learns that mages are not creatures to leash, and thus attempts to rectify not only his transgressions but help those that are being hurt.
Feel free to like/dislike either of these characters; I’m not here to police anyone’s opinions or their rights to have them. Just make sure that when you make an opinion and decide to stick to your guns that you’ve attempted to consider everything that goes into it. Thedas has a lot of layers to it, just like any culture does, and no action from any character is as simple as “He hurt those people” or “It’s what needed to be done.” You don’t have to participate in character discussions or discourse either, but when you write something like that, expect criticism or responses. I always do.
#da fandom#fandom critical#anders#cullen rutherford#dragon age#/rant#long post#da2#da:i#discussion#da meta
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