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ylojgtr · 3 months

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i just watched patrick willem's video from 2018 on the last jedi called "what do we want from a star wars movie?" and im going to share my thoughts because no one can stop me, im 6 years late and i don't care

i like his channel a lot and i think he did a good job explaining it, but i agree maybe 50% with his main point. he says that fans who were upset with tlj were looking for the Star Wars Feeling™️ from a star wars movie, the feeling of nostalgia essentially, and that the eu normalizing explications for everything made fans less open to new stuff. the main thing *i* want to say though is about one of his supporting points: that the prequels didnt feel like star wars in that they weren't relatable like the ot.

i love the prequels man. of course, i grew up with them in a way many didn't (as well as tcw which just serves to heighten the movies), so there's definitely bias, but one thing i love about the prequels *is* that vastly different feeling. looking back, the ot could be described as campy, but every person ive talked to who saw Star Wars in 1977 said the effects and presentation were beyond any immersion they'd ever experienced before. the same cannot be said for ep. 1, even people who got into star wars from that movie (at least that ive heard), despite also being on the cutting edge of movie technology, and obviously the dialogue is way cheesier than anything written by anyone other than george lucas, but all that just adds to the vibes, ya know? the galaxy was in a different time then too, and i can't explain how much fun it is to experience these completely separate times in such a visceral way, intentional or otherwise, when watching through the saga

i hate the sequels. of the 3, tlj is far and away my favourite. i would have LOVED to see what trilogy rian johnson and his team could have cooked up if they'd been given control over the whole thing. i love tfa visually, and introduces some great characters (ahem, KYLO...also finn i love him) but just *feels* like anh remastered. if that's what you wanted, great! but for me, i was just sooo stoked to see what a new era would feel like that it really disappointed me. the main thing i hear from people who like tlj is that it takes the story in a different direction. and while i really appreciate that, and do like the force dyad stuff and finn and roses subplot and the not-lightsaber fight at the end AND what all that stuff means for the saga, it still has that feeling of sameness, at least to me, because it's trying to be something so different. the way i see it, it's trying to be *opposite* of what everyone expects, which means it needs to have that same feel in order to subvert it. which, again, is fine by me! tfa was already done and it has to fit that aesthetic to fit into the trilogy, and im just one fan. of course everyone hates ros which i guess tried to do opposite of what they did opposite in tlj? i don't know what they were on making that movie

another thing i wanted to bring up was the whole interconnectedness of the franchise. patrick brought up the eu to show how fans were taught that every detail has an explanation. no second of the ot was without a dozen books detailing what every character was doing in the background and how they came to be there. his point was that, when new characters are doing new things in unexpected ways, people don't like it cause there isn't a wookiepedia article on it yet to explain it exactly, and that that ties into why people hated tlj. i don't doubt it, but i also want to point out that that eu is a source of a lot of enjoyment too. i don't think he was denying this, or saying it was bad at all, but i just wanted to share that the eu is basically the reason im as big a fan as i am. the idea that everything is connected is appealing to me, and the way that star wars does it, where expanded material takes place in all different times and settings with no correlation to publishing date, just really appealed to me in contrast to the marvel way or any other big franchise like that. in any other series, each new installment progresses time forward. in star wars, we have infinite time to explore any era we want...which brings me back to how much i love the completely different aesthetics from the ot and pt. the variety is so refreshing. the galaxy feels so different between eras where the sequels just make it rebels vs empire again. we already have a billion books on rebels vs empire so...what expanded stories can i look forward to thats different in the sequel era? im sure there are lots, but the difference just won't be as great. also, star wars *is* goofy. patrick says it himself, bringing up that there were a lot more jokes in the ot. id argue the prequels take themselves so seriously that the seriousness becomes the goofiness (and i love it). ive said many times on this blog that i LOVE the stupid part of star wars lore. like yes, the fact that it's explained who the stormtrooper is that han killed and stole armour from and that he's fucking tarkin is SUPER UNNECESSARY but it's FUNNY AS FUCK. no one needs to know palpatines name is sheev but that's the best name ever? the problem isn't the lore, it's when people take it too seriously and don't allow for that innovation to happen that leads to more fun lore and stories. which i think is exactly what patrick was saying, he just didn't emphasize how enjoyable the unnecessary-ness of it all is and how distinct feels in different star wars eras are imperative to all these diverse avenues for story and fun to arise. (now do i think people should be able to survive lightsaber wounds? only cause of how much i love qui-gon, i admit to being a bit angry about that...but at the end of the day i don't really care that much? im here to have fun and yeah ill complain about it sometimes but just cause complaining is also fun)

that's why i love tcw (it fleshes out this distinct time period and political setting) and rebels (again, fleshes out the distinct era of extremely fleeting hope between the empire's reign and the coming of the saviour) and the heir to the empire novels (they establish a new era with a different feel—much more similar to the ot than the prequels are to the ot but still) and kotor (same as with htte but more similar to prequels) and the new jedi order and legacy (although it's also basically rebels vs empire, it has enough of a divergent story and tone that i like it) and the high republic in the disney canon (although i haven't digested as much of it as id like cause fuck disney)

but my main point: the thing i want from new star wars is a mix of things patrick seems to love,l AND things he seems to hate. yes i want it to be star wars, so there's some sort of familiar feeling there that needs to present, but i also want a twist on it. the ot was a classic fairy tale. the prequels were political thrillers (sometimes not so thrilling, but still). other stories people really liked act completely differently again, like the mandalorian being a western and also a heartwarming family bonding adventure or andor being a spy thriller and also the best star wars show. each era or sub-franchise has their distinct aesthetics and feels that future artists can make feel even more distinct and special yet theyre all connected which is just fun don't you think? the sequels would have made me a lot happier if they gave us some new ground for new feels the same way the prequels did. anyway that's my official response no one cares about to a 6 year old video. yay!

#dont read all this ffs #just some rambling thoughts i had #star wars #patrick willems #not tagging all the star wars things i mentioned cause thats too many lmao

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productofnfld · 6 months

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What The Heck is Tibb’s Eve?

What is Tibb’s Eve?

In Newfoundland, Tibb’s Eve (or Tib’s Eve) is the name given to December 23rd. It’s sort of the unofficial start of the Christmas season.

The day is recognized in different ways by different people, but for many it is a day to party with friends. It has become (and probably always has been, to some degree) tied to drinking. These days bars have embraced the pseudo-holiday and compete to attract customers. I suspect finding patrons is not especially difficult.

By December 23rd many Newfoundlanders have returned to their home communities for Christmas — college and university students, people working ‘turn arounds’ and others who have left home are back. People are looking to reconnect with friends before attention shifts to family on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Tibb’s Eve isn’t a party for all Newfoundlanders, of course.

Tibb’s Eve customs vary from community-to-community and family-to-family; while for some it is one of the biggest party days of the year, for others it’s a time for family potlucks and, for others it’s a complete non-event.

The variation makes sense, really —

It’s a day that doesn’t exist.

The Mysterious Beginning of Tibb’s Eve

A Note on Tibb, Tib and Tip…

Tibb’s Eve goes by several names and spellings. It can be Tibb’s Eve, Tib’s Eve, Tip’s Eve, Tipsy Eve and more. Throughout this post, I will mostly use Tibb’s Eve, but occasionally I will use other names and spellings to match the source material I reference.

The phrase Tibb’s Eve has been used in Newfoundland for a long time but, for most of its history, it had nothing to do with December 23rd.

It was a mythical day; a day that didn’t exist. The phrase came to Newfoundland with European settlers.

Dr. George Storey wrote an article titled the Dialect of Newfoundland in which he referenced Tibb’s Eve. “We have,” he wrote “such Anglo-Irish terms as … Tibbs’ Eve.” He defined the phrase as meaning “neither before nor after Christmas.“

Not quite the current understanding.

‘Neither before nor after Christmas’ didn’t mean December 23, obviously. It meant never. If something was said to be happening on Tibb’s Eve, it was a way of saying it would not happen at all.

The origin of the phrase is disputed but one theory is that the name Tib referred to a woman of ‘ill-repute,’ sometimes associated with debauchery.

There is some literary evidence to back that up.

The name ‘Tib’ appears in Shakespeare’s Pericles (Act 4, Scene 6):

Marina: Thou art the damned doorkeeper to every Coistrel that comes inquiring for his Tib

The website LitCharts provides a less-than-elegant modern-day translation of the line:

Marina: You’re the damned doorman who lets in every vagabond that comes looking for his slut

Tib wasn’t seen as any kind of saint… and that, according to the theory, is where the phrase Tibb’s Eve is born.

If there was to be a Tibb’s Eve it would probably be because Tib had been made a saint, and had a festival day. Given her reputation, that seemed unlikely; so unlikely, that nobody thought it would ever come to pass. Saying something would happen on Tibb’s Eve was a joking way of saying something would happen when Tib was made a saint.

There are many instances of the phrase Tibb’s/Tib’s Eve (meaning ‘never’) in old Newfoundland writings. The following clip appeared in a letter published in the St. John’s Daily Star in 1920:

"There is a possibility that the oft quoted 'Tib's Eve' may breeze along one of these extra fine days... but there doesn't seem to be any conceivable prospect that the Newfoundland Football League will ever present the medals that have been won..." -- April 15, 1920, by 'A Fan,' St. John's Daily Star

I think the author clearly means that Tibb’s Eve doesn’t exist. It may come along, they write, hinting that in 1920 the term was not widely understood to mean December 23rd.

The Journey to December 23rd

So, how did a day that would never come, arrive? And why did it land on December 23rd? And why in Newfoundland?

Truthfully, no one really knows… but there are stories. The most common of them work their way back to alcohol.

Tipsy to Tibb’s

The following story was recorded from an informant in Port aux Basque in 1973. It was recorded on a word slip for the Dictionary of Newfoundland English:

"I have heard that it is called Tipps Eve because when men used to put up their own homebrew etc. they wouldn't drink it before Christmas but I guess most men would sneak a drink or two on this day because they felt that Christmas was close, and they probably got a bit tipsy, thus Tipps Eve."

If we were going to take this as the origin story, then it would appear Tib (and the original meaning of Tibb’s Eve) had very little to do with it; tipsy maybe became Tipps and eventually Tibb’s. Perhaps.

I don’t know.

We probably shouldn’t be too quick to adopt this version of events, in any case. The same story appeared in a the article by William Kirwin called Folk Etymology: Remarks on Linguistic Problem-Solving and who does it (Language and Lore, 1985).

Kerwin points out that lots of Newfoundland words have been ‘defined’ and given etymological origins without much evidence. Kirwin ends with the caution that we should be “on our guard when we have a sudden hunch and are prompted to write out of thin air an etymological source for an interesting term.”

I wonder if Tibb has falsely attributed to Tipp/Tipsy because it sounds plausible; it’s not hard to imagine Tipp turned into Tibb because people were familiar with the old Anglo-Irish term. That’s the thing, though: it’s just imagination without substance.

What cannot be debated is the fact that December 23rd still goes by the name Tipsy Eve in some parts of Newfoundland. Not, that that clarifies the issue — Tibb’s could have evolved into Tipsy just as easily as the reverse.

Neither Before Nor After

Earlier in this post, I pointed out that George Story defined Tibb’s Eve as a day that was “neither before nor after Christmas, i.e. never.” The fun, folksy definition created a sort of semantic link to the holidays. It doesn’t, in any way, explain how December 23rd became Tibb’s Eve but it does drop a tantalizing breadcrumb — if Tibb’s Eve were going to have a calendar date, by virtue of the definition the December holidays were already top of mind.

It’s a mystery.

When Did Tibb’s Eve Become ‘A Thing’?

Not only is the origin of Tibb’s Eve on December 23rd a mystery, it’s not clear when the belief began… though it seems it’s not an ancient tradition.

In my reading (which was hardly exhaustive, and mostly in the MUN Digital Archives) I’ve found no reference to December 23rd as Tibb’s Eve until the second half of the 20th century, after that references begin to appear.

Folklorists peg Tibb’s Eve as a post World War 2 invention.

Subjectively, I think the tradition has exploded in popularity over the last two decades. I’ve always known December 23rd as Tibb’s Eve, but it was not the pop cultural phenomenon in my youth that it is now.

More Tibb’s Questions than Tibb’s Answers

There is much mystery when it comes to the Tibb’s Eve tradition, and because of that, much room to define the day away from hard and fast customs. That may be one of the reasons people mark the day with such variation.

Personally, I like the idea that it’s a day to reconnect with friends, celebrate shared histories, and maybe have a drink or three.

I’m not saying December 23rd descends into debauchery but I can’t help but think that, here in Newfoundland, the ‘Never-Gonna-Be-Saint Tib’ may have gotten the last laugh.

Worthy of sainthood or not, she finds her name attached to a day, and it’s just the sort of day she might have enjoyed — one that’s marked with a party on George Street.

Tibb’s Eve Podcast

Check out the podcast for more Tibb’s Eve talk and a healthy dose of Newfoundland Christmas slush.

#christmas #tibb's eve

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carsonwesley · 2 years

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Why Should Your Business Invest in An End-To-End Custom Software Solution?

We recently came across a great article written by Josh Fung who runs the company Vocalize. He talks about the importance of having a custom software solution if you want to run a business successfully. We thought we’d share some of his content here!

Here's what he says:

There are many reasons why your business should invest in an end-to-end customized software application. But it doesn't really matter what the reason is. What matters is that you're getting value out of the investment.

So let's talk about three specific areas where the advantages of using a tailored application can make a big difference.

1. Better Customer Engagement

An end-to-end software solution provides a complete package of features specifically designed to help businesses manage their day-to-day operations. With the right software, you get access to all your information at once, reducing the chances of human error and missed opportunities. From customer service to sales to accounting, end-to-end solutions give your business the tools it needs to track everything in real time while providing customers with the best possible experience.

2. Easier Data Collection & Analysis

Customers expect businesses to have a streamlined and user-friendly way to collect data about them. To ensure a successful operation, it’s critical to make sure you’re collecting the right information throughout the customer lifecycle. With an end-to-end solution, you don’t need to worry about whether certain fields are missing – because they’ll all be automatically filled out based on the information you provide, making your data collection and analysis easier than ever!

3. Increased Productivity

By automating tasks and letting employees focus on what they do best, you create a much more effective workplace. By using custom software, you can streamline processes, reduce manual errors, and improve productivity. You can also use the system to easily automate repetitive tasks and free up time so you can spend it on higher-value activities.

4. Improved Security

Many people overlook the importance of security until something goes wrong. However, without proper security measures in place, you could lose sensitive data, miss out on potential revenue, and even face legal repercussions. When using a comprehensive software solution, you can rest assured knowing your company’s records, contacts, contracts, and finances are protected from unauthorized individuals.

5. Flexibility

When it comes to running a business, nothing beats flexibility. But if you plan to keep pace with changing market trends, having a flexible product that grows alongside your business is absolutely necessary. A comprehensive software solution lets you scale quickly and easily as your business changes – meaning you won’t have to constantly invest in new hardware, upgrade your software, or find a new provider just to stay current.

6. Scalable Solutions

While many companies struggle to keep up with demand, others thrive by expanding services and products. As your business grows, you can count on a scalable solution to meet your needs. If new projects arise, simply add additional servers and storage space to accommodate any excess workload. In addition, you can expand functionality to fit your specific needs as your organization expands.

7. Industry-Specific Features

In today’s dynamic environment, staying ahead of the competition requires a specialized approach to marketing, customer care, and automation. That’s where custom software comes in. By offering exclusive applications unique to your industry, you can set yourself apart and stand out above the rest. Plus, these features often become standard options after launch, making your investment worth its weight in gold over the long term.

Conclusion

Custom software is access to wealth in the expansion of a business. Through sales or licensing, it serves as an additional source of revenue for enterprises. But we're here to assist you with the right custom software solution if you're seeking a software solution.

#softwaresolution #mobile app design #app development

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hornime · 3 years

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watch and learn | iwaizumi hajime x f!reader x team japan

there were two things they all had in common: the growing bulges in their pants that they were urgently trying to distract themselves from, and the fact that their full attention was on you.

warnings: 18+, timeskip!everyone, BIG MANGA SPOILERS BASICALLY, exhibitionism, voyeurism, orgasm denial

w/c: 3.1k

a/n: now i don’t know if iwaizumi hajime (27) athletic trainer learned about female orgasms when he was studying sports science at irvine BUT he def knows how to show a girl a good time which is reason enough for me to write this. also, i read this article to prep for this piece and it was super enlightening, so i do recommend giving it a read if you’re interested!

in the middle of his morning run, iwaizumi slowed momentarily to check the repetitive buzzing of this phone, curious as to who was messaging him this early. when he’d left the apartment, you were sleeping, and you had the tendency to still be sleeping by the time he returned, so who else could it be?

he unlocked his phone, quickly finding the source of the notifications: the team japan group chat.

[06:43 AM] miya: hey @iwaizumi—you know stuff abt the human body right?

[06:43 AM] miya: cus like you studied it in college and shit??

iwaizumi rolled his eyes. i spent four years in america to earn my degree, came back home to support my country’s olympic team, and dealt with the biggest idiots of volleyball, only to get treated like this?

[06:44 AM] iwaizumi: yes, miya. i took many courses on the human body. in fact that’s the purpose of my job. to know the human body. because i am a fucking athletic trainer.

[06:44 AM] miya: okay okay i get it. dumb question

[06:44 AM] iwaizumi: why? is something up? you need help or anything?

[06:44 AM] miya: uhhh kinda

[06:44 AM] miya: @hinata i’m not fucking asking this

[06:44 AM] bokuto: bro just do it

[06:44 AM] miya: @hinata @hinata @hinata

iwaizumi cocked an eyebrow. what the hell are they going on about?

[06:45 AM] iwaizumi: so am i needed or...

[06:45 AM] hinata: YES

[06:45 AM] hinata: we had a question

[06:46 AM] sakusa: by “we” he means him, miya, and bokuto

[06:46 AM] suna: yeah don’t bring us into this

[06:46 AM] hinata: don’t listen to them! both suna and sakusa wanna know too

[06:46 AM] iwaizumi: okay. what’s up

[06:47 AM] hinata: we wanted to know how to make a girl cum

he chuckled in disbelief.

[06:47 AM] iwaizumi: you’re telling me that you guys are in your mid-20s, literal olympic athletes, and you don’t know how to make a girl cum

[06:47 AM] iwaizumi: have you never done it before??

[06:47 AM] miya: NO

[06:47 AM] miya: FOR THE RECORD IVE MADE MANY GIRLS CUM

[06:48 AM] bokuto: ME TOO

[06:48 AM] bokuto: i think

he laughed out loud, briefly startling another runner on the sidewalk.

[06:48 AM] iwaizumi: you guys are unbelievable

[06:48 AM] hinata: i mean she says she finished but idk what i did to make that happen

[06:48 AM] bokuto: ^^

[06:48 AM] hinata: so like i wanna know how to actually do it

[06:48 AM] suna: actually im kinda interested in this too

[06:48 AM] aran: i pray for your future girlfriends. this is painful to see. im out

[06:48 AM] kageyama: i’m with aran on this one. you guys are dumb

[06:48 AM] hinata: shut up. you suck.

[06:48 AM] miya: cmon iwaizumi, help a guy out

[06:48 AM] sakusa: it wouldnt hurt for you to give us some pointers at least

iwaizumi sighed.

[06:49 AM] iwaizumi: @miya @hinata @bokuto @suna @sakusa meet in the locker room after practice. ill give you guys a lesson in the art of pleasing a woman

to teach effectively, he needed a volunteer, though he was sure you wouldn’t need much convincing. you’d always loved the attention, and the biceps, of the pro athletes. he spun on his heel and jogged home.

you woke up to the sound of your apartment door opening, your boyfriend creeping inside, forehead damp with sweat.

“hey,” you said quietly, making your way towards him.

“hey, baby. sorry for waking you up, i was trying to be quiet.”

you giggled sleepily. “s’okay, haji. you spoil me too much anyway, always letting me sleep in for hours while you’re off doing god knows what.”

at that, his eyes crinkled in amusement, and as you tried to step into a hug, he shuffled back. “woah there, baby. i gotta shower, ‘m all gross from my run. and then,” he gave you a peculiar look that you couldn’t quite place, “i got a proposition for you.”

after his shower, he waltzed out of the bathroom, steam wafting out from behind the door. his tanned body made you feel things you definitely shouldn’t be barely an hour after the sun’s risen, and you reached out to massage the tension in his shoulders. “so, what’s your proposition?”

“well,” he hesitated. “it’s a bit... unconventional. the team asked me to show them how to make a girl cum,” he took in your intrigued expression. “and it’d be a lot easier to explain if i had someone to do a live demonstration with. so,” his eyes flicked up to you. “that’s where you’d come in.”

“a... live demonstration? like you’re gonna make me cum in front of them?”

“yeah, essentially.” he gave you a devilish grin. “you want that, baby? wanna show those boys how a real man treats a gorgeous woman like you?”

you rubbed your thighs at his words. “yeah,” you purred. “i do. wanna show them how good you are to me.”

and that’s how you found yourself nestled between iwaizumi’s muscled thighs, back pressed against his chest, completely naked, with five of japan’s best volleyball players staring at your body in awe.

practically an expert in his field, iwaizumi knew the human body inside and out. this had many benefits; of course it allowed him to catapult up the ranks and work with the country’s best athletes to keep them at the top of their game, but it also had a unique side effect: an overwhelming vault of knowledge on how to make a woman feel good anywhere.

you’d seen the proof firsthand; he knew exactly where to push, prod, stroke, and tease to have you cumming in seconds, over and over, as many times as you wanted. he was amazing, and you were well-aware just how lucky you were to have such a talented man in the sheets.

“oi,” iwaizumi snapped his fingers, drawing each of the players’ eyes away from your glistening cunt. “pay attention. i know more than anybody that she’s hot as fuck, but you gotta listen to what i’m saying or else there’s no point to this.”

he lightly pressed his lips against your collarbone, slowly tracing them against your jaw, the contact making you squirm. “if you wanna make a girl cum, first thing you gotta do is make her comfortable. if she’s worried about how she looks or sounds or smells she’s gonna be too stressed to let go.” he moved his hands to grope your tits, his calloused fingers brushing over your hardening nipples. “so reassure her, tell her how irresistible she is, how pretty her moans are, how tasty her pussy is. shit like that. the sexier she feels the better it’ll be.”

he leaned into you, whispering into your ear. “feeling good, baby? we can stop whenever.”

you nodded weakly, afraid to open your mouth, barely holding in your whines as his palms worked wonders on your chest and stomach, sending shocks of heat wherever they touched.

you craned your neck up to observe the men before you. atsumu was flushed red, wringing his hands as if he was worried they’d do something embarrassing if he didn’t keep them occupied. hinata was bouncing his leg up and down, wiping his palms on his shorts as he took in the plushness of your thighs. bokuto was basically drooling, greedily tracing your soft curves with his eyes. suna maintained his indifferent expression, but the reddening tips of his ears showed that he was a lot more hot and bothered than he let on. sakusa stood quietly to the side, leaning against the wall, mask tucked under his chin as if he’d just realized how much the temperature had gone up in the room.

there were two things they all had in common: the growing bulges in their pants that they were urgently trying to distract themselves from, and the fact that their full attention was on you.

"make sure to try different things; there’s multiple ways to make a woman cum. only like a quarter of women experience orgasms just from penetration,” someone made a sound of shock. “yes, the number is that small, bokuto.”

his fingertip slowly trailed past your belly button, dipping into the mess between your thighs, causing you to slightly arch your back into the solid chest supporting you. “foreplay with the clit is your best bet; even stupid fucks like you probably wouldn’t screw it up too bad.”

hinata opened his mouth to speak, but iwaizumi anticipated his question and continued.

“i know you’re wondering where the clit is. it’s around here, under this hood of skin,” he slid his digit between your labia. “s’not gonna come with a label so you gotta explore a little bit. i know where hers is like the back of my hand, but for you guys, with your girls, you’re gonna have to move your fingers around. slowly. and pay attention to her expressions.” he began to rub in a circular motion around your clit, causing you to make small whimpers of pleasure and shift your hips to meet his movements.

“if she clenches up or twitches when you feel a certain spot, like this,” your legs flexed as he increased the pressure, “that’s the clit. be kind, it’s not a volleyball. be gentle n’ make small circles, whether it’s with your fingers or your tongue.”

he thought for a second. “speaking of which, oral’s important. very important. most women cum when they’ve been eaten out, so use your mouths for something more useful than just dirty talk. suck on the clit, maybe tongue-fuck her a ‘lil, but your main focus should always be the clit.”

he removed his hands from your sopping pussy, and you made a pathetic noise of frustration. “’m sorry, baby,” he muttered seductively in your ear. “don’t wanna have you finishing too early. lesson’s barely started.”

he turned his attention back to your audience, his lustful tone being replaced by a more instructional one. “there’s other places that’ll help a woman orgasm, too: her nipples, her neck, her ears—”

“her ears?” sakusa questioned. he blushed profusely as everyone turned to look at him, surprised that he’d opened his mouth. “what? we were all thinking it.”

“s’a valid question,” iwaizumi said. “yeah, you can lick ‘em if they’re sensitive. hers are.” as if to prove his statement, he licked a stripe on the shell of you ear, making you wiggle helplessly at the stimulation. “‘n leave kisses everywhere else. feels good for them just like it does for us.” he wrapped an arm around your waist, pulling you closer to him and forcing your movements to stop as he traced patterns with his tongue all around your neck.

“something you should know about an orgasm is that it’s something called a positive feedback loop.” he looked up and was met with five blank stares. shouldn’t have expected anything from these dumb jocks, he lamented. “basically that means that, once you start releasing sexual tension, things will feel better and better until you climax.”

“oh!” atsumu chirped. “like how my sets get better and better throughout a game.”

“no, not really,” he quipped. “your sets suck throughout.” atsumu frowned at that.

iwaizumi exhaled exasperatedly. “the general idea is that the body gets more and more sensitive, muscle contractions become more and more frequent, and touches feel more and more stimulating until you cum. all right?”

they all made noises of understanding except for bokuto and hinata, whose eyes had glazed over at the first mention of an academic term. whatever, iwaizumi thought. they’ll get it through example.

"don’t worry about it too much if you don’t get it, that’s just an orgasm on paper. in practice, though, this is the crucial step: listen to her. she knows what feels good. never forget that you’re just an idiot with a cock.” he took a breath, gathering his thoughts before proceeding with his lecture.

“if she tells you to slow down, you slow down. if she tells you to go harder, you go harder. if she tells you to keep doing what you’re doing, you...”

“keep doing what you’re doing”, they all chimed in at staggered times.

“that’s right. don’t go faster or else you’ll mess up the rhythm and she won’t cum. and you wanna make her cum, don’t you?”

they nodded simultaneously.

“so if you keep up the tempo and force that feels good to her, you’ll be fine. questions?”

suna spoke up. “what about,” he choked on the word. “penetration?”

hinata hummed in agreement and bokuto jumped in. “yeah, what if i wanna make her cum on my cock?”

iwaizumi made a weird face. “that’s some pretty advanced stuff, but i guess i can go over it. when you try it, though, you have to be patient. with both of your bodies. s’not rocket science but s’not always easy. also it depends on the woman but sometimes she physically won’t be able to finish from penetration alone. just make sure you’re communicating.”

his swirled two fingers over your hole before shoving them in, your wetness making it easy for him to thrust in and out as your entrance stretched to accommodate him. “f—fuck!” your eyes flew open at the intrusion and you body lurched forward, but you were held back by his strong forearm. “ohmygod, oh my g—ah! feels s’good haji, s’good!”

“i know, baby, i know. you’re taking it so well.” he turned his attention back to the men, each of who were gulping heavily. if that didn’t signal to you that they were evidently affected by your moans, the way they shifted in their workout shorts did.

“boys, focus.” he curled his fingertips, brushing at the spongy spot at the top of your walls, ripping a pleasured wail from your throat and causing tears to prick at your eyelashes. “when you’re fingering her, you’ll feel an area inside that’s a bit soft and squishy. that’s the g-spot.”

you trembled in his arms as he mercilessly struck the same place over and over again with his fingers. “when you’re fucking her, try to keep the pressure building there, but it’ll be harder to make her finish since you can’t see what you’re doing.”

your breath hitched as iwaizumi’s incessant movements brought your body tantalizingly close to your release. he suddenly stopped and you almost sobbed in disappointment, until he plunged his fingers impossibly deeper.

a guttural scream of ecstasy came from within you, and your eyes rolled back as he began playing with another part of you, your body putty in his hands. “hngh, haji, ah! so good, s’good...” you threw your hands back around his neck, nails digging into the skin as you desperately tried to keep yourself grounded. your soft moans filled the air.

“stop clenching,” he hissed. “can barely move my hand.” you tried to relax but failed miserably as the tips of his fingers grazed your cervix.

“holy fuck,” suna muttered. “you’re a god.”

“she sounds so pretty,” atsumu said in amazement.

“i wanna make a girl feel good like that, too!” bokuto sulked.

“you can do it, bokuto!” hinata hit him on the arm. “just listen to iwaizumi. clearly he knows what he’s talking about.”

their eyes refocused on your figure, writhing in pleasure, prompting white hot waves of arousal to pool in their stomachs.

“yeah,” sakusa said. “clearly.”

“stop talking,” iwaizumi ordered. “and listen. beyond the g-spot is the cervix, which is basically the end of the vagina. if you’re long enough,” he briefly scanned each of their faces, “which i’m sure you are, you’ll be able to reach it if you bottom out.”

“haji—hajime, please.” the stimulation was coming absolutely unbearable, and you could tell he was sadistically holding you at the edge, refusing to give you the satisfaction of finishing. “lemme cum, please. please lemme cum, please, please, i can’t—i can’t take it ‘nymore!”

“what was that? you can’t take it anymore? gonna cum?” you helplessly bobbed your head up and down, hoping that he’d give you permission. “well,” he growled, “we can’t have that happening, can we?”

he abruptly halted his thrusts, pulling his fingers out of you with an embarrassing squelch and popping them into his mouth. pearly tears rolled down your cheeks as you grieved the loss of contact and relief.

your viewers looked on in horror, feeling immense sympathy for you; you just looked so dejected from being denied yet another orgasm.

“why didn’t you—why didn’t you let her cum?” bokuto asked.

“why do you think?” iwaizumi snapped. “don’t want you guys to see her when she does. that’s for me, and only me.”

“oh, okay,” he responded, disgruntlement clear in his voice.

iwaizumi’s glare could cut glass, it was so sharp. the possessiveness that had enveloped his mind made him hyperfocus on just one thought: being alone with you. “so, any other questions? if not, we’re done here.”

you pouted at that, not wanting the demonstration to be over. “but haji,” you mumbled into his collarbone. “i di’nt get to cum. and i wanna.” you looked up at him, eyes wide with want. “please make me cum.”

iwaizumi sent a harsh glance to the players that nonverbally communicated his message loud and clear: get out. they shuffled awkwardly out of the locker room due to the hardness between their legs that they would most definitely need to deal with soon.

your boyfriend turned his attention back to you. “’m sorry, i know i had to deny you a bunch of times. i just really hated the idea of anyone but me seeing the cute way you look when you cum.”

you made a small noise of acknowledgement and a little whisper of it’s okay, haji. he looked down, sensing the way your poor, desperate cunt was pulsing around nothing, the erotic sight injecting him with the pure need to ravage you.

he shifted his head to kiss you passionately. “why don’t i make it up to you?” he breathed between your parted lips before picking you up by the backs of your thighs, forcing you to lock your ankles around his waist.

he delicately situated you onto one of the recovery beds at the back of the room, before murmuring something that made your pussy throb in anticipation: “i’ll make you cum whichever way you want, however many times you want, all right? all you gotta do is lay back and take it.”

#kinky.inky #haikyū!!#haikyuu smut #hq smut #haikyuu iwaizumi #iwaizumi smut #iwaizumi x reader #atsumu smut #hinata smut #bokuto smut #suna smut #sakusa smut #iwaizumi #sakusa #bokuto #hinata #suna #atsumu

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reanimatedcourier · 4 years

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How to Write Indigenous Characters Without Looking like a Jackass:

Update as of December 26th, 2020: I have added a couple new sections about naming and legal terms, as well as a bit of reading on the Cherokee Princess phenomenon.

Boozhoo (hello) Fallout fandom! I'm a card-carrying Anishinaabe delivering this rough guide about writing Indigenous characters because wow, do I see a lot of shit.

Let's get something out of the way first: Fallout's portrayal of Indigenous people is racist. From a vague definition of "tribal" to the claims of them being "savage" and "uncivilized" mirror real-world stereotypes used to dehumanize us. Fallout New Vegas' narrated intro has Ron Perlman saying Mr. House "rehabilitated" tribals to create New Vegas' Three Families. You know. Rehabilitate. As if we are animals. Top it off with an erasure of Indigenous people in the American Southwest and no real tribe names, and you've got some pretty shitty representation. The absence of Native American as a race option in the GECK isn't too great, given that two Native characters are marked "Caucasian" despite being brown. Butch Deloria is a pretty well-known example of this effect. (Addendum: Indigenous people can have any mix of dominant and recessive traits, as well as present different phenotypes. What bothers me is it doesn't accommodate us or mixed people, which is another post entirely.)

As a precautionary warning: this post and the sources linked will discuss racism and genocide. There will also be discussion of multiple kinds of abuse.

Now, your best approach will be to pick a nation or tribe and research them. However, what follows will be general references.

Terms that may come up in your research include Aboriginal/Native Canadian, American Indian/Native American, Inuit, Métis, and Mestizo. The latter two refer to cultural groups created after the discovery of the so-called New World. (Addendum made September 5th, 2020: Mestizo has negative connotations and originally meant "half breed" so stick with referring to your mixed Latine and Indigenous characters as mixed Indigenous or simply by the name of their people [Maya, Nahua].)

As a note, not every mixed person is Métis or Mestizo. If you are, say, Serbian and Anishinaabe, you would be mixed, but not Métis (the big M is important here, as it refers to a specific culture). Even the most liberal definition caps off at French and British ancestry alongside Indigenous (some say Scottish and English). Mestizo works the same, since it refers to descendants of Spanish conquistadors/settlers and Indigenous people.

Trouble figuring out whose land is where? No problem, check out this map.

Drawing

Don't draw us with red skin. It's offensive and stereotypical.

Tutorial for Native Skintones

Tutorial for Mixed Native Skintones

Why Many Natives Have Long Hair (this would technically fit better under another category, but give your Native men long hair!)

If You're Including Traditional Wear, Research! It's Out There

Languages

Remember, there are a variety of languages spoken by Indigenous people today. No two tribes will speak the same language, though there are some that are close and may have loan words from each other (Cree and Anishinaabemowin come to mind). Make sure your Diné (you may know them as Navajo) character doesn't start dropping Cree words.

Here's a Site With a Map and Voice Clips

Here's an Extensive List of Amerindian Languages

Keep in mind there are some sounds that have no direct English equivalents. But while we're at it, remember a lot of us speak English, French, Spanish, or Portuguese. The languages of the countries that colonized us.

Words in Amerindian languages tend to be longer than English ones and are in the format of prefix + verb + suffix to get concepts across. Gaawiin miskwaasinoon is a complete sentence in Anishinaabemowin, for example (it is not red).

Names

Surprisingly, we don't have names like Passing Dawn or Two-Bears-High-Fiving in real life. A lot of us have, for lack of better phrasing, white people names. We may have family traditions of passing a name down from generation to generation (I am the fourth person in my maternal line to have my middle name), but not everyone is going to do that. If you do opt for a name from a specific tribe, make sure you haven't chosen a last name from another tribe.

Baby name sites aren't reliable, because most of the names on there will be made up by people who aren't Indigenous. That site does list some notable exceptions and debunks misconceptions.

Here's a list of last names from the American census.

Indian Names

You may also hear "spirit names" because that's what they are for. You know the sort of mystical nature-related name getting slapped on an Indigenous character? Let's dive into that for a moment.

The concept of a spirit name seems to have gotten mistranslated at some point in time. It is the name Creator calls you throughout all your time both here and in the spirit world. These names are given (note the word usage) to you in a ceremony performed by an elder. This is not done lightly.

A lot of imitations of this end up sounding strange because they don't follow traditional guidelines. (I realize this has spread out of the original circle, but Fallout fans may recall other characters in Honest Hearts and mods that do this. They have really weird and racist results.)

If you're not Indigenous: don't try this. You will be wrong.

Legal Terms

Now, sometimes the legal term (or terms) for a tribe may not be what they refer to themselves as. A really great example of this would be the Oceti Sakowin and "Sioux". How did that happen, you might be wondering. Smoky Mountain News has an article about this word and others, including the history of these terms.

For the most accurate information, you are best off having your character refer to themselves by the name their nation uses outside of legislation. A band name would be pretty good for this (Oglala Lakota, for example). I personally refer to myself by my band.

Cowboys

And something the Fallout New Vegas fans might be interested in, cowboys! Here's a link to a post with several books about Black and Indigenous cowboys in the Wild West.

Representation: Stereotypes and Critical Thought

Now, you'll need to think critically about why you want to write your Indigenous character a certain way. Here is a comprehensive post about stereotypes versus nuance.

Familiarize yourself with tropes. The Magical Indian is a pretty prominent one, with lots of shaman-type characters in movies and television shows. This post touches on its sister tropes (The Magical Asian and The Magical Negro), but is primarily about the latter.

Say you want to write an Indigenous woman. Awesome! Characters I love to see. Just make sure you're aware of the stereotypes surrounding her and other Women of Color.

Word to the wise: do not make your Indigenous character an alcoholic. "What, so they can't even drink?" You might be asking. That is not what I'm saying. There is a pervasive stereotype about Drunk Indians, painting a reaction to trauma as an inherent genetic failing, as stated in this piece about Indigenous social worker Jessica Elm's research. The same goes for drugs. Ellen Deloria is an example of this stereotype.

Familiarize yourself with and avoid the Noble Savage trope. This was used to dehumanize us and paint us as "childlike" for the sake of a plot device. It unfortunately persists today.

Casinos are one of the few ways for tribes to make money so they can build homes and maintain roads. However, some are planning on diversifying into other business ventures.

There's a stereotype where we all live off government handouts. Buddy, some of these long-term boil water advisories have been in place for over twenty years. The funding allocated to us as a percentage is 0.39%: less than half a percent to fight the coronavirus. They don't give us money.

"But what about people claiming to be descended from a Cherokee princess?" Cherokee don't and never had anything resembling princesses. White southerners made that up prior to the Civil War. As the article mentions, they fancied themselves "defending their lands as the Indians did".

Also, don't make your Indigenous character a cannibal. Cannibalism is a serious taboo in a lot of our cultures, particularly northern ones.

Our lands are not cursed. We don't have a litany of curses to cast on white people in found footage films. Seriously. We have better things to be doing. Why on earth would our ancestors be haunting you when they could be with their families? Very egotistical assumption.

Indigenous Ties and Blood Quantum

Blood quantum is a colonial system that was initially designed to "breed out the Indian" in people. To dilute our bloodlines until we assimilated properly into white society. NPR has an article on it here.

However, this isn't how a vast majority of us define our identities. What makes us Indigenous is our connections (or reconnection) to our families, tribes, bands, clans, and communities.

Blood quantum has also historically been used to exclude Black Natives from tribal enrollment, given that it was first based on appearance. So, if you looked Black and not the image of "Indian" the white census taker had in his brain, you were excluded and so were your descendants.

Here are two tumblrs that talk about Black Indigenous issues and their perspectives. They also talk about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia.

However, if you aren't Indigenous, don't bring up blood quantum. Don't. This is an issue you should not be speaking about.

Cherokee Princess Myth

"Princess" was not a real position in any tribe. The European idea of monarchy did not suddenly manifest somewhere else. The closest probable approximation may have been the daughter of a chief or other politically prominent person. But princess? No.

Here is an article talking about possible origins of this myth. Several things are of note here: women from other tribes may have bee shoved under this label and the idea of a "Cherokee Princess" had been brought up to explain the sudden appearance of a brown-skinned (read: half Black) family member.

For a somewhat more in depth discussion of why, specifically, this myth gets touted around so often, Timeline has this piece.

Religion

Our religions are closed. We are not going to tell you how we worship. Mostly because every little bit we choose to share gets appropriated. Smudging is the most recent example. If you aren't Indigenous, that's smoke cleansing. Smudging is done in a specific way with ceremonies and prayers.

Now, a lot of us were forcibly converted. Every residential school was run by Christians. So plenty of us are Catholic, Baptist, Anglican, Lutheran, etc. Catholicism in Latin America also has influence from the Indigenous religions in that region.

Having your Indigenous character pray or carry rosaries wouldn't be a bad thing, if that religion was important to them. Even if they are atheist, if they lived outside of a reserve or other Indigenous communities, they might have Christian influences due to its domination of the Western world.

Settler Colonialism and the White Savior Trope

Now we've come to our most painful section yet. Fallout unintentionally has an excellent agent of settler-colonialism, in particular the Western Christian European variety, in Caesar's Legion and Joshua Graham.

(Addendum: Honest Hearts is extremely offensive in its portrayal of Indigenous people, and egregiously shows a white man needing to "civilize" tribals and having to teach them basic skills. These skills include cooking, finding safe water, and defending themselves from other tribes.)

Before we dive in, here is a post explaining the concept of cultural Christianity, if you are unfamiliar with it.

We also need to familiarize ourselves with The White Man's Burden. While the poem was written regarding the American-Philippine war, it still captures the attitudes toward Indigenous folks all over the world at the time.

As this article in Teen Vogue points out, white people like to believe they need to save People of Color. You don't need to. People of Color can save themselves.

Now, cultural Christianity isn't alone on this side of the pond. Writer Teju Cole authored a piece on the White Savior Industrial Complex to describe mission trips undertaken by white missionaries to Africa to feed their egos.

Colonialism has always been about the acquisition of wealth. To share a quote from this paper about the ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples: "Negatively, [settler colonialism] strives for the dissolution of native societies. Positively, it erects a new colonial society on the expropriated land base—as I put it, settler colonizers come to stay: invasion is a structure not an event. In its positive aspect, elimination is an organizing principal of settler-colonial society rather than a one-off (and superseded) occurrence. The positive outcomes of the logic of elimination can include officially encouraged miscegenation, the breaking-down of native title into alienable individual freeholds, native citizenship, child abduction, religious conversion, resocialization in total institutions such as missions or boarding schools, and a whole range of cognate biocultural assimilations. All these strategies, including frontier homicide, are characteristic of settler colonialism. Some of them are more controversial in genocide studies than others." (Positive, here, is referring to "benefits" for the colonizers. Indigenous people don't consider colonization beneficial.)

An example of a non-benefit, the Church Rock disaster had Diné children playing in radioactive water so the company involved could avoid bad publicity.

Moving on, don't sterilize your Indigenous people. Sterilization, particularly when it is done without consent, has long been used as a tool by the white system to prevent "undesirables" (read, People of Color and disabled people) from having children. Somehow, as of 2018, it wasn't officially considered a crime.

The goal of colonization was to eliminate us entirely. Millions died because of exposure to European diseases. Settlers used to and still do separate our children from us for reasons so small as having a dirty dish in the sink. You read that right, a single dirty dish in your kitchen sink was enough to get your children taken and adopted out to white families. This information was told to me by an Indigenous social work student whose name I will keep anonymous.

It wasn't until recently they made amendments to the Indian Act that wouldn't automatically render Indigenous women non-status if they married someone not Indigenous. It also took much too long for Indigenous families to take priority in child placement over white ones. Canada used to adopt Indigenous out to white American families. The source for that statement is further down, but adoption has been used as a tool to destroy cultures.

I am also begging you to cast aside whatever colonialist systems have told you about us. We are alive. People with a past, not people of the past, which was wonderfully said here by Frank Waln.

Topics to Avoid if You Aren't Indigenous

Child Separation. Just don't. We deserve to remain with our families and our communities. Let us stay together and be happy that way.

Assimilation schools. Do not bring up a tool for cultural genocide that has left lasting trauma in our communities.

W/ndigos. I don't care that they're in Fallout 76. They shouldn't be. Besides, you never get them right anyway.

Sk/nwalkers. Absolutely do not. Diné stories are not your playthings either.

I've already talked about drugs and alcohol. Do your research with compassion and empathy in mind. Indigenous people have a lot of pain and generational trauma. You will need to be extremely careful having your Indigenous characters use drugs and alcohol. If your character can be reduced to their (possible) substance abuse issues, you need to step back and rework it. As mentioned in Jessica Elm's research, remember that it isn't inherent to us.

For our final note: remember that we're complex, autonomous human beings. Don't use our deaths to further the stories of your white characters. Don't reduce us to some childlike thing that needs to be raised and civilized by white characters. We interact with society a little differently than you do, but we interact nonetheless.

Meegwetch (thank you) for reading! Remember to do your research and portray us well, but also back off when you are told by an Indigenous person.

This may be updated in the future, it depends on what information I come across or, if other Indigenous people are so inclined, what is added to this post.

#fallout 3 #fallout 4 #fallout 76 #fallout new vegas #fallout 1 #fallout 2 #fallout: new vegas #ozhibii'ige

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heyyyharry · 3 years

Text

Happier

(inspired by happier by Olivia Rodrigo)

Word count: 2.4k

I'm selfish, I know, I can't let you go So find someone great, but don't find no one better I hope you're happy, but don't be happier

Part 1: Drivers License

Part 2: Deja Vu

A/N: I edited the original lyrics to match the POV :)

Harry had come up with a thousand scenarios of how this day would play out. Actually, he’d been thinking of this day since the moment he’d received the news. He didn’t dare to hope that she’d say yes to coming back for a sequel. He’d been sure that they would write her character off, give a lame excuse for how his love interest could not make a return and make his character forget about her completely to move on with a new girl in town. It would have been great if it was that easy in real life. Once someone was written off the script, they were gone for good. Real-life relationships were not that simple. Goodbye didn’t mean ‘never see you again’. You would still share the same friend circle and social bubbles, and it was worse when you two worked in the same industry. Harry didn’t know how he’d lasted a year without running into her, not since the Grammys.

“Didn’t you two date?”

“No.” Harry shook his head, but his eyes stayed glued on Y/N from across the room. She wasn’t looking his way, too busy saying hello to everyone else. “No,” he repeated, more to himself than to his co-star. “We didn’t.”

“But she wrote an entire album about you,” said the other twin. What was her name again? Lulu?

“Luna!” cried her sister, Lex. “You can’t ask him that!”

“No, it’s okay,” Harry said with a tight smile, slightly annoyed by the blonde twins, but he didn’t want to seem like an ass on the first day of filming. “And I don’t know if it was for me. You should ask Y/N.”

“Ask me what?”

Harry flinched when he looked up and saw Y/N padding towards them. She hugged the twins, who seemed way too excited. Harry guessed they were Y/N’s fans. They gave off crazy fangirl vibes, probably just pretending not to know the drama to interrogate him. He couldn’t blame them for assuming he was the villain and definitely could not blame Y/N for portraying him as one. It was more important that he knew who he was and how much he had changed since his last relationship. Maybe they could finally be friends.

“Were they bothering you?” Y/N asked him once the twins had left.

Harry nodded. “They’re your friends?”

“Oh, I met them last year on tour. I’m surprised you don’t know them. They were on Disney.”

“I don’t watch Disney,” Harry admitted with a smile. “Well, not today’s Disney.”

“Understandable.” Y/N nodded and bit her lip. She seemed guarded with her straight back and hands hidden behind her. She eyed him up and down, quite subtle yet noticeable. “How have you been?”

“Pretty good,” he said, nodding slowly. “You?”

“Yeah, but mostly tired because of tour.”

“You’re done?”

“Yup, last night was the last show.”

“Nice.”

Y/N raised an eyebrow. “Nice?”

Harry blinked. “Did I say something wrong?”

“No.” Y/N giggled. “You still sound very...you.”

“Well, shouldn’t I?”

“Yeah, you should. But it’s been a year so…I mean, you haven’t changed much.”

“Right,” he said lowly, his eyes falling to his feet. Harry supposed he should say something else, perhaps bringing up another random topic to discuss, but all he could think about was what had happened between them. Things had been messy, hadn’t they? How could they go back to before that? Before her first song about him. Before he’d chosen someone else over her.

Or he could talk about her new relationship. She’d been in a happy relationship for almost six months, right? No wait, hadn’t they broke up two weeks ago? He wasn’t sure because he hadn’t been catching up. If they’d broken up, he’d sound like an ass to even mention her ex’s name. He should just stay quiet.

“I’ll see you later?” she said, gesturing at her stylist who was waiting by the door.

Harry could ask her right now -- the reason she’d agreed to film the sequel to their first movie together. He’d heard from a very reliable source that she’d specifically asked her agent to decline any project that he was in. So did this mean they were good? That she didn’t hate him anymore? He could have gathered his courage and got the answer right then…

“Yeah, see you.”

...but he didn’t.

And so she gave him a smile and a little wave, then happily returned to her stylist.

“See you tomorrow, Y/N!”

“See you, Annie!” Y/N said as she put the rest of her things into her tote bag. Her new driver had got her schedule mixed up, and so she had to wait here for another half an hour. She was in no rush. It had been a light first day, and she’d had a fun time getting to know the new cast members and catching up with old friends.

She sat on the sofa in the lobby, legs crossed, texting her best friend about her day. She’d purposely left out the short off-screen conversation with Harry, and her best friend didn’t even bother to ask. In their world, he didn’t exist, and his name was censored in every conversation like a curse word that was even worse than ‘cunt’. Nevertheless, she didn’t hate him anymore. She was doing just fine on her own, being busy with her career, and she’d been in a happy relationship after her fall out with him.

She and the guy, a model, had broken up two weeks ago due to long distance and some differences that they could not change. They had ended on good terms and decided to stay friends. They said you could only stay friends with your ex when you still had feelings for each other, or you had never loved each other that much in the first place. For her, it was probably the latter. Her previous relationship had been more platonic than romantic, apparently. So she had nothing but the best to say about him.

As she was going through her camera roll, just reminiscing about the past, she heard footsteps approaching and looked up to find Harry. He offered a smile and gestured to the spot beside her on the sofa. “May I sit here? My ride is late.”

“Yeah, sure.” She hurriedly scooted over.

“Good job today,” he said. “You were great.”

“Thanks, so were you.” She smiled, and they both looked away at the same time. This was so awkward. She hated small talk. She’d never had to have small talk with Harry. Conversations with him used to be so easy and natural and silly. Whatever this was, it wasn’t them.

“Can we just be normal?”

At first, Y/N thought she’d been the one who’d said it, so when she realised it’d been Harry, she was speechless.

He swallowed and sat a bit straighter, still not looking at her. “I don’t want us to be weird and awkward.”

“Okay,” she said.

He cleared his throat. “Wanna try again?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Okay, not to sound like an ass but when Joey kept forgetting his lines, I was so pissed off, I could throw a chair at the wall.”

“Right?!” exclaimed Y/N, feeling free to have finally broken out of her shell. “Like, he doesn’t even have many lines. I know he’s new but damn...you can’t get far if you don’t learn your goddamn lines.”

Harry shook with laughter. “Oh God, we sound like dicks, don’t we?”

“Maybe.” Y/N laughed, covering her mouth. “But you know what? We can’t be nice in this industry. It’s impossible.”

“Shhh, if someone heard this, we would be into big trouble.”

“Oh please, I’ve had worse articles written about me than ‘Y/N speaks facts about her lazy co-star’.”

Harry tossed his head back and cackled. “The worst one I’ve got this week was ‘Harry Styles hates therapists.’”

“What?!” Y/N gasped. “No way! That’s so stupid!”

“Right?” Harry rolled his eyes. “I could get all my therapists to speak up for me but I’m kinda immune to bullshit now.”

“Therapists? Like plural?”

“Yeah, one in every city.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah.”

Y/N rubbed her hands onto her legs. “Rough year?”

Harry’s eyes rolled to the back of his head as he leaned back. “You have no idea.” Then he swept his hair out of his eyes, sucked in a breath, and finally looked at her. “I wish I could have talked to you, though.”

She bit her tongue, knowing what she was about to say next would disappoint her best friend so much, but she had to. “So do I.”

Harry looked taken aback before his lips curled into a smile. “It’s silly, isn’t it? I haven’t talked to you in a year, and I feel like I know everything that’s happened to you except that I don’t.”

What he’d just said might make no sense for most people, but Y/N knew exactly what he meant. She nodded and wetted her lip. “You only know as much as everyone else does.”

“Yeah, I got updates on you from the news and our friends.”

“Same.” Y/N smiled back. “I hate how they write articles about your new haircut but not mine.”

“I like your new hair colour.”

“Thanks. I like your new car.”

Then they both burst out laughing. It was fun and also a little bit strange that Y/N didn’t feel the same anxiety talking to him as she used to. It must be because they had grown and were now meeting again as better people.

“Damn, my ride's here,” Y/N said as she read the text from her driver. “I gotta go now.”

“Oh, okay.” Harry stood up and followed Y/N to the entrance. “Hey, just wondering--”

“Yeah?”

“Am I...am I still blocked?” He looked a bit flustered as she tilted her head and squinted her eyes. “On your phone. Because I remember you having my number blocked--”

“I unblocked you on your birthday.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah.” Y/N shrugged. “I should’ve sent you a happy birthday text but...I didn’t want your girlfriend to get the wrong ideas.”

“My ex.”

“Yeah, I know.”

They smiled at each other one last time before saying goodbye. Y/N knew it was silly, but she was hoping he would go after her.

Ding.

A notification popped up when she was in the car. She was almost home, and it was from Harry’s number. He’d sent her a link with a message that said, “Hope you like it :)”.

Curious, she tapped on it and was directed to an audio file titled ‘Track 5’. The upload date was last year. About two weeks after their short conversation at the Grammys.

Hurriedly, she fumbled inside her bag for her iPods and put it on before she pressed play.

“Hey, Jeff, I couldn’t sleep so I wrote this song. Listen and let me know if it should go on the album.”

Then came the piano intro. It sounded good, so Y/N wondered how it hadn’t ended up on his last album.

But when he started to sing...

We ended a while ago Your friends are mine, you know, I know You've moved on, found someone new One more guy who brings out the better in you

And I thought my heart was detached From all the sunlight of our past But he’s so nice, he’s so funny Does he mean you forgot about me?

Oh, I hope you're happy But not like how you were with me I'm selfish, I know, I can't let you go So find someone great, but don't find no one better I hope you're happy, but don't be happier

And does he tell you you’re the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen? An eternal love bullshit he might not even mean Remember when you were with me I meant it when you heard it first from me

And now I'm pickin' him apart Like cuttin' him down will make you miss my wretched heart But he’s charming, he looks kind He probably gives you butterflies

I hope you're happy But not like how you were with me I'm selfish, I know, I can't let you go So find someone great, but don't find no one better

I hope you're happy I wish you all the best, really Say you love him, baby Just not like you loved me And think of me fondly when your hands are on him I hope you're happy, but don't be happier

The song was for her. He’d written it when her new relationship had gone public. Y/N sat there, staring blankly ahead until the honking of a car tore open her inner peace, and reality came crashing back in. The driver dropped her off at her house. Instead of going inside, she stood on her front steps and replayed the song one more time. When it ended, she decided to text him: Why didn’t this make it to the album?

She didn’t know where he was now, but it showed ‘typing’ in less than a second, as if he’d been waiting in their chat since he’d sent that link.

You would’ve hated me, Y/N.

True, she replied. Still, I would’ve loved the song lowkey. And added, I love it btw.

He took so long to type that it was driving her crazy. She flopped down on the concrete stair with her phone clutched in her hands, her heart thundering against her ribcage. Anxiety popped like a balloon when his message appeared: Were you happier?

She reread it again and again.

No.

I wasn’t either, he responded. I kept getting deja vu.

Ha, nice reference.

That song is my guilty pleasure. Love listening to you roasting me on loop.

That last message made Y/N bury her face into her palm and giggle like a fool. She thought for a second and wrote: I could come roast you in person now if that’s what you prefer. I think we’ve never had a proper roasting.

Can we meet, Y/N? Or are you busy now?

No, not busy.

Great, I’ll pick you up.

Just tell me where, she responded with a smile on her face. I got my drivers license now :)

#harry styles #harry styles fanfic #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles writing #harry styles fluff #harry styles imagine #harry styles imagines #harry styles angst #harry styles one shot #harry styles x you #harry styles x y/n #harry styles x reader #harry styles fic

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blackstarising · 3 years

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coming back to this post i made again to elaborate - especially as the ted lasso fandom is discussing sam/rebecca and fandom racism in general. there are takes that are important to make that i had failed to previously, but there's also a growing amount of takes that i have to, As A Black Person™, respectfully disagree with.

tl;dr for the essay below sam being infantilized and the sam/rebecca relationship are not the same issue and discussing the former one doesn't mean excusing the latter. and we've reached the glen of the Dark Forest where we sit down and talk about fandom racism.

i should have elaborated this in my last post about sam/rebecca, but i didn't. i'll say it now - i personally don't support sam and rebecca getting together for real. i believe what people are saying is entirely correct, even though sam is an adult legally, he and rebecca are, at the very least, two wildly different stages of life. for americans, he's at the equivalent of being a junior in college. there are things he hasn't gotten the chance to experience and there are areas he needs to grow in. when i was younger, i didn't understand the significance of these age gaps, i just thought it would be fine if it was legal, but as someone who is now a little older than sam in universe, i understand fully. we can't downplay this. whether or not you think sam works for rebecca or not, even despite the gender inversion of the Older Man Younger Woman trope, whether or not he is a legal adult, i don't think at this point in time, their relationship would work. i think it's an interesting narrative device, but i don't want to see it play out in reality.

that being said!

what's worrying me is that two discussions are being conflated here that shouldn't be. sam having agency and being a little more grown™ than he's perceived to be does not suddenly make his relationship with rebecca justified. i had decided to bring it up because sam was being brought into the spotlight again and i was starting to realizing that his infantilization was more common than i felt comfortable with.

sam's infantilization (and i will continue to call it that), is a microaggression. it's is in the range of microaggressions that i would categorize as 'fandom overcompensation'. we have a prominent character of color that exhibits traits that aren't stereotypical, and we don't want to appear racist or stereotypical, so we lean hard in the other direction. they're not aggressive, they're a Sweet Baby, they're not world weary, they're now a little naive. they're not cold and distant, they're so nice and sweet that there's no one that wouldn't want approach them, and yeah, on their face, these new traits are a departure and, on their face, they seem they look really good.

but at a certain point, it reaches an inflection point, and, like the aftertaste of a diet coke, that alleged sweetness veers into something a lot less sweet. it veers into a lack of agency for the character. it veers into an innocence that appears to indicate that the person can't even take care of themselves. it veers into a one-dimensional characterization that doesn't allow for any depth or negative emotion.

it's not kind anymore. it's not a nice departure from negative stereotypes. it's not compensating for anything.

it's patronizing.

it is important that we emphasize that characters of color are more than the toxic stereotypes we lay on them, yes, but we make a mistake in thinking that the solution is overcorrection. for one thing, people of color can usually tell. don't get it twisted, it's actually pretty obvious. for another, it just shifts from one dimension to another. people of color are still supposed to be Only One Character Trait while white people can contain multitudes. ted, who is pretty much as pollyanna as they come, can be at once innocent and naive and deep and troubled and funny and scared. jamie can be a prick and sexy and also lonely and also a victim of abuse. sam, however, even though he was bullied (by jamie, no less), is thousands of miles away from home, and has led a protest on his team, is usually just characterized as human sunshine with much less acknowledgement of any other traits beyond that.

and that's why i cringe when fandom calls sam a Sweet Baby Boy without any sense of irony. is that all we're taking away? after all this time? even for a comedy, sam has received a substantive of screen time over two whole seasons, and we've seen a range of emotions from him. so as a black person it's hurtful that it's boiled down to Sweet Baby Boy.

that's the problem. we need to subvert stereotypes, but more importantly, we need to understand that people of color are not props, or pieces of cardboard for their white counterparts. they are full and actualized and have agency in their own right and they can have other emotions than Angry and Mean or Sweet and Bubbly without any nuance between the two. i think the show actually does a relatively good job of giving sam depth (relatively, always room for improvement, mind you), especially holding it in tension with his youth, but the fandom, i worry, does not.

it's the same reason why finn from star wars started out as the next male protagonist in the sequel trilogy but by the third movie was just running around yelling for REY!! it's the same reason why when people make Phase 4 Is the Phase For Therapy gifsets for the mcu and show wanda maximoff, loki, and bucky barnes crying and being sad but purposefully exclude sam wilson who had an entire show to tell us how difficult his life is, because people find out if pee oh sees are also complex, they'll tell the church.

and the reason why i picked up on this very early on is because i am an organic, certified fresh, 100% homegrown, non-gmo, a little ashy, indigenous sub saharan African black person. the ghanaian tribes i'm descended from have told me so, my black ass parents have told me so, and the nurses at the hospital in [insert asian country here] that started freaking out about how curly my hair was as my mother was mid pushing me out told me so!

and this stuff has real life implications. listen: being patronized as a black person sucks. do you know how many times i was patted on the back for doing quite honestly, the bare minimum in school? do you know how many times i was told how 'well spoken' or 'eloquent' i was because i just happen to have a white accent or use three syllable words? do you know how many times i've been cooed over by white women who couldn't get over how sweet i was just because i wasn't confrontational or rude like they wrongly expected me to be?

that's why they're called microaggressions. it's not a cross on your lawn or having the n-word spat in your face, but it cuts you down little by little until you're completely drained.

so that's the nuance. that's the subversion. the overcompensation is not a good thing. and people of color (and i suspect, even white people) have picked up on, in general, the different ways fandom treats sam and dani and even nate. what all of these discussions are converging on is fandom racism, which is not the diet form of racism, but another place for racism to reveal itself. and yeah, it's uncomfortable. it can seem out of left field. you may want to defend yourself. you may want to explain it away. but let me tap the sign on the proverbial bus:

if you are a white person, or a person of color who is not part of that racial group, even, you do not get to decide what is not racist for someone. full stop. there are no exceptions. there is no exit clause for you. there is no 'but, actually-'. that right wasn't even yours to cede or waive.

(it's also important to note that people of color also have the right to disagree on whether something is racist, but that doesn't necessarily negate the racism - it just means there's more to discuss and they can still leave with different interpretations)

people don't just whip out accusations of racism like a blue eyes white dragon in a yu-gi-oh duel. it's not fun for us. it's not something we like to do to muzzle people we don't want to engage with. and we're not concerned with making someone feel bad or ashamed. we're exposing something painful that we have to live with and, even worse, process literally everything we experience through. we can't turn it off. we can't be 'less sensitive' or 'less nitpicky'. we are literally the primary resources, we are the proverbial wikipedia articles with 3,000 sources when it comes to racism. who else would know more than us?

what 2020 has shown us very clearly is that racism is systemic. it's not always a bunch of Evil White Men rubbing their hands together in a dark room wondering how they're going to use the 'n-word' today. it's systemic. it's the way you call that one neighborhood 'sketchy'. it's how you use 'ratchet' and 'ghetto' when describing something bad. it's how you implicitly the assume the intelligence of your friend of color. it's the way you turned up your nose and your friend's food and bullied them for it in middle school but go to restaurants run by white people who have 'uplifted' it with inauthentic ingredients. it's telling someone how Well Spoken and Eloquent they are even though you've both gone to the same schools and work at the same workplace. it's the way you look down at some people of color for having a different body type than you because they've been redlined to neighborhoods where certain foods and resources are inaccessible, and yet mock up the racial features that appeal to you either through makeup or plastic surgery.

it's how when a person of color behaves badly, they're irredeemable, but a white person performing the same act or something similar is 'having a bad day' or 'isn't normally like this' or 'has room to grow' and we can't 'wait for their redemption arc', and yes, i'm not going to cover it in detail in this post but yes this is very much about nate. other people have also brought up the nuances in his arc and compared them to other white characters so i won't do it here.

these behaviors and reactions aren't planned. they aren't orchestrated. they're quite literally unconscious because they've been lovingly baked into western society for centuries. you can't wake up and be rid of it. whether you intended it or not, it can still be racist.

and it's actually quite hurtful and unfair to imply that concerns about racism in the TL fandom are unfounded or lacking any depth or simply meant to be sensational because you simply don't agree with it. i wish it was different, but it doesn't work that way. i'm not raising this up to 'call out' or shame people, but i'm adding to this discussion because, through how we talk about sam, and even dani and nate, i'm yet again seeing a pattern that has shortchanged people of color and made them feel unwelcome in fandom for far too long.

coach beard said it best: we need to do better.

#ted lasso #sam obisanya #ted lasso spoilers #fandom racism

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snifflesthemouse · 3 years

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Harry’s the Problem. His wife is the symptom. He is the real Diana 2.0 Wannabe...

Since the Oprah interview aired, my whole perspective regarding the spare and his spouse has shifted. It would seem that I’m not alone in my thought process as more and more media outlets start reporting similar stances. Just recently, there was an article suggesting Harry didn’t change; but rather, he is only finally revealing his true self. The more I think about it all, the more I’ve come to the realization #6 is the real culprit behind everything.

I’m not saying that his wife doesn’t have her own agenda or shares responsibility for her part in all this. Her hands are far from clean. What I am saying is it’s finally time for all of us to consider the cold, hard truth. Harry is his mother’s child. Harry is the bad egg, and his wife is only a side effect of the real problem here.

Had it not been for the Oprah interview, I would have never put it all together. The problem with oversharing is too much information gets put out in the public. Most assume PR firms would worry about oversaturation in the press, but the real problem comes from personal interviews they cannot control in real-time. Puff pieces can be edited before publishing so facts and statements align; live interviews cannot. Over time, one of two patterns form from this oversaturation. Consistencies, repetitions, and similarities can be found in oversaturated truth-telling. Inconsistencies, changes, and huge differences result from those like Harry who prefer their trousers scorching hot from bursting into flames from deception. When you consistently lie, the only constant is the inconsistencies.

Now, those of us who have been following these two already know by now inconsistencies and changing stories should be expected. But the Oprah interview really highlighted some interesting things I had previously missed. The interview with Dax Shephard only solidifies my theories. Up until lately, those two have been together through most everything. Very seldom have we seen Harry alone in an interview or speech. There’s never a time where the missus isn’t popping up. James Corden proved that. Then we have the Oprah interview where she was supposed to be the star of the show. But, that was the moment it all changed. That interview was the moment she became the understudy.

Think about it. Who is the one being used in the media lately? Most people would suggest that the impending delivery of child number dos is why the missus is absent. One would then argue the Apple + special with Oprah started production well before the second child was a topic for discussion. The missus is being used less and less on camera or in the media. Everything is all about Harry. Forget about when Harry met Sally; Harry Met Hollywood!

Harry is the one doing the interviews, dropping projects, and talking with big Hollywood names. Even their announced Netflix projects are focused on one of Harry’s pre-married concepts. All the wife has going for her is a book that’s only number one in the “Books written by ex-Royals who couldn’t hack it” category. Seriously though, as of this posting the Bench is #2130 on the Amazon Books list, #12 in Children’s Black and African American Story Books, #73 in Children’s Emotions Books, and #167 in Children’s Family Life Books. Being pregnant isn’t a disqualifier for being interviewed. But, apparently being just the wife is.

So, if it was his wife’s plan from the beginning to marry Harry, get him to abandon his family, move to California, and become a big star with a Prince for a husband, her plans have been ruined. And if you think about what she said in the interview with Oprah, you can actually see the moments she told us all exactly that. She clearly tells Oprah Harry was her direct link and source to the Royal Family and everything she needed to know. She didn’t misspeak or misunderstand a thing; she was telling us that Harry’s next to be markled. In every weird answer or revelation where she gave her versions for why their child(ren) were without title, saying they wed three days before the chapel, or having to cry out to HR since Harry failed to help her while she was so depressed she wanted to kill herself and her unborn child... all of it. It was all just the beginning. It may seem like she is attacking her husband’s family, but Harry’s the real target now.

In just a couple sentences, she managed to reveal who Harry really was. Harry, of all people, should (and does) know how to navigate the press. Clearly, he failed to not only help her acclimate to Royal life, but it could also even be argued he set her up for failure for the get go. Let me give you an example. When my husband introduced me to his family for the first time, he told me little tidbits of information he found important for me to know. He essentially prepped me for the meeting so things went well. He wanted his family to like me because he loved me. I wanted them to like me because I loved him, too. So, I took to heart everything he told me. Yet, Harry’s wife shared with the world how little Harry cared about that. She credits Fergie with teaching her to curtsey, google for teaching her the National Anthem, and even said Her Majesty made her feel especially welcomed. So how did Harry not do more? If they started seeing one another in the early Summer of 2016, how is it Harry failed to teach or explain anything to her prior to meeting his grandmother, the Queen, when he had months and months of time to do so? How is it he failed his wife so miserably, she didn’t even understand basic UK custom, laws, or protocols? Why might you ask?

Simply put, Harry is so much like his mother, all he knows is how to play the victim narrative while using the link to the Royal family as a nonstop ATM machine. Many people aren’t honest with themselves when it comes to Diana. She wasn’t the Mother Theresa everyone makes her out to be. Mother Theresa wasn’t a Mother Theresa either, though. Did Diana do some great things? Absolutely. Did she do them only because they were nice or great? Absolutely… not. Diana’s PR team would even have her switch up her charity causes whenever they felt it was getting to martyrdom level. They’d refer to her PR stunts as flavors. Does that sound like an innocent woman?

Not to me. This whole time we all have seen his wife as the root of all issues, but she’s the side effect. It’s becoming more clear by the day that Harry searched out her. He wanted someone with the basic Hollywood connections that he could capitalize. Someone that seemed so controlling and ambitious it would be easy to believe they were controlling him, too. Of course he knew she would invite all the celebs she did. He probably inspired that guest list. Instead of guiding her in the press and in British society, he leads her to slaughter. He hides behind her repeated gaffes and wokeness to keep on his own mission.

You see, Harry is obsessed with his brother eventually becoming king, being the “Second Son of Diana” and being the misfit. He is obsessed with his brother and father. They are all he talks about. When you obsess on something like that, it is more revealing than anything you say. Harry’s true motives aren’t protecting his wife and children. His real motive is making a name for himself like his mother did. If he can manage to get some revenge by making the Firm feel some backlash, hey that’s a bonus.

While his wife may think in her mind she will be the next Diana 2.0, the truth is we all missed who really will be. Harry is the one wanting to be Diana 2.0. If that’s the case, then that means the much older spouse for whom there are two children with, aka the wife, would be his Charles. Remember, Diana lost her HRH and titles. And we have Harry being very aggressive and pushy, to the point it seems he is trying to get ahead of a Palace announcement of them losing their titles. But it makes sense now.

They aren’t trying to lose anything, but instead Harry keeps opening his mouth to create pressure in the media. He knows his wife does not want to give those titles back. But if he himself keeps saying outrageous things, then it would put everyone in ultimatum mode. Either Harry will push hard enough that Parliament and the Queen will have enough, or the press will get so critical of the two, Harry will push his wife to agree to returning the titles.

Harry is following the Diana business model. While in the Royal Family, they both were seen as rock stars who had more star power the the Sovereign, which was an issue. Then, they couldn’t take all the abuse, coldness, and inhumanity, so they bolted for freedom. Instead of putting the past behind them, they use the past to monetize grief and trauma in such a way, they become their own brand. Right now, the trauma being monetized comes from the past, but the problem will soon come when that trauma is tapped out. He will need a source of new pain or victimhood. Enters the wife stage left.

The wife is a tool. She of course has her own plans and thinks she is the one in control or the genius. She thinks she is the one everyone wants to work with. But it’s becoming clear to her that isn’t the case and she’s been played by her elite buddies. They all want him, not her. They all duped her for him. If I can see it, and I can see her already finger pointing that Harry is the failure here, then she can see it. And that means paradise will soon be lost in those Montecito hills. His wife won’t go down without a serious fight here. I wouldn’t even be surprised if she eventually causes him to lose his special visa.

Overall, Harry hides behind his wife like a beard or shield protecting him from the press’s glaring lens. He lets her do and say whatever she thinks is great so he can keep plotting his own plans. He allows her to take the fall, look stupid, pull stunts people can see through, etc. for a reason. He isn’t completely sure he can make it in his new California life. He knows he can’t if he keeps her for too long, but he also knows he needs an exit strategy in case it blows up. So, he pins the press to attack her as the true culprit. If they split and he has to, he can return home and play the victim of her. If they split and he is doing okay in Hollywood, she can be the reason he plays victim to big named people like Oprah and Gayle.

I can see it now. An Oprah Special with Harry tonight on Apple +. Something cheesy or corny that is almost plagiarism. Like Narcissus and the Prince or something. Watch. Mark my words. Oprah talking to Harry about surviving the marriage while trying to rescue two small kids, being in the spotlight as a Royal while being gaslit by a narcissistic wife… yes I can see the green screen set up now.

I know this is difficult to digest, but I do ask you to try. While his wife is not innocent, she clearly is guilty for her own part indeed, his wife isn’t the true problem. The true problem here is a man who has a serious issue with living in the shadow of his future-King father and future-King brother, and his future-King nephew, that he has chosen to use the same exact attack model his own mother used to merch and marginally disrupt the institution that made her a star. Harry and his mother both wanted the entire spotlight, but both knew they could never have it the way they wanted it. So, they wrote their own victimhood narrative.

And here we are now. Mark my words. Harry will keep pushing until those remaining titles are removed by them forcing the hands of Parliament and the Queen. Or, they’ll push and push in the press so much the outrage and hypocrisy will leave them no other option but to renounce and re-gift those titles and rights to the line of succession. That is what he wants, even if his missus doesn’t. Also make no mistake about it. Harry is the real Diana 2.0 wannabe, not his wife. Keep an eye out. I have this gnawing feeling that soon enough, there will be plenty leaks from the wife about the husband. She won’t go quietly into the Beverly Hills… but neither will he.

#megxit #6 #harryswife #yankeewally #murky meg #diana2.0

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letarasstuff · 3 years

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Making the Voice quieter

(A/N): This was requested by an anon. I hope you like it!

Summary: Spencer finds out about his daughter's eating disorder, he will he react?

Warnings: Angst, discription of an eating disorder (bulemia to be more specific), discription of (binge) eating, bad body image, self hatred, abuse of pills (diet pills)

Wordcount: 2.2k

✨Masterlist✨

______________________________

Prison. Cat. Diana. All those things happened close to each other. Luckily a few months have passed since then and slowly everything settles down. Spencer is able to get his feelings sorted through, processing the events.

Ever since his imprisonment he follows a more or less strict routine, given the uncertainty coming with his job. Spencer still tries to keep it up. So is every Friday dedicated to buying the majority of groceries and needed non food articles.

Sometimes (Y/N) tags along, other days she already has plans with her friends. Her father doesn’t mind it much, he is happy to see her socializing with people her age. The two of them have one father-daughter-night in the week anyways.

“Sweetheart, I’m heading out! Did you put everything you need on the list?” He shouts into the apartment. A faint “Yes! Love you!” echoes back to him. A smile forms on the doctor’s face. Oh how he longed to hear those words from her every night while he laid in his bed, locked up for a crime he didn’t commit. “Alright, love you, too!”

Meanwhile her father has to deal with Karens being their ignorant selfs, (Y/N) is under the biggest stress she has ever been. The end of her sophomore year and suddenly every teacher thinks it’s alright to give the students a load of work in every single class.

It’s beginning to get to her head. Four essays, three projects and studying for two tests and everything is due next week. She can see herself sitting at that very desk for the whole weekend, trying to contain control of her current situation.

As (Y/N) begins to read the page in front of her again to pull any information from it, it feels like her brain shuts down. Only one thought possesses her. One thing that can assure her, make her happy again.

Her body moves automatically, into the kitchen to the fridge. Her hands grab what they can. Puddings, yogurts, bananas, apples, last night’s dinner, everything that she can carry. Then the teenager sits down at the floor and devours everything she just got out. (Y/N) doesn’t stop until she gets to this intense feeling of being full.

It seems like she snaps out of a trance. Upon seeing what she ate in the shortest time, the girl feels even worse. Quickly she tries to destroy any kind of evidence, getting the trash out, making the fridge appear more full than it is, anything.

In her panicked state she remembers the small container of pills in her room. Relief washes over (Y/N), thinking everything will be better. She takes two of them for good measurement.

With the relief also guilt takes over. What just happened wasn’t normal. But (Y/N) tells herself that she can stop any time she wants. It’s not like she is sick or something, everything is fine. It’s just her way to copy stress. A way she discovered while her father was in prison. The diet pills help her to undo her mistakes. Someone from her friend group, who is already 18, got her them from the doctor for a fair price.

Feeling calmer now, the teenager sits back at her desk. A new perception of control helps her to continue her school work. She has to get done as much as possible, because in not even half an hour (Y/N)’s best friend will be the toilet.

Spencer is completely obvious to it. Sure, he is a profiler and he noticed his daughter’s new view on eating healthy food and working out. He just assumes that (Y/N) and her friends are on a healthy trip and he doesn’t see a problem in this. On the contrary, he is happy that she wants to be good to herself and her body.

But as the weeks go on, a suspicious feeling captures him. “(Y/N)? Why is the fridge nearly empty? We got groceries last Friday and it’s only Tuesday. Did you have a party over here while I was away on the case?” Spencer enters his daughter’s room, trying to joke about it.

(Y/N) freezes. Of course she isn’t able to say that the food went bad and she threw them away, her father is meticulous regarding this subject, always checking the best before day date. “Uhm, please don’t be mad. But Alex, you know her, the short one with red hair, uhm her parents are on a business trip and she is not the best cook. So I brought her lunch and dinner over. I’m sorry for not telling you.” She looks down at the floor, not only to feign sadness but also to avoid his eyes.

The second the teenager talks Spencer knows there is something fishy. Her voice is higher and she fidget with her hands. But he writes it off as being nervous for not telling him. Ever since he is out of prison, it feels like his daughter is withholding something.

“It’s fine, Sweetheart. Just give me a heads-up beforehand, so I know to buy more groceries. What do you think about ordering something tonight? I heard from Luke that a small Chinese restaurant opened a few streets down. We can celebrate the end of the stressful phase in Sophomore year.”

It seems like (Y/N) is calculating something in her head. Spencer knows exactly what she thinks about. “You can forget about your calorie intake for one night. I see how much time you invest in living healthy, but we can let loose for a night together. Just some noodles with chicken or spring rolls and us trying to use chopsticks and giving up after two minutes and resorting to forks. How does that sound?”

The teenager would love to sigh, but it would only alarm her father further. “Yeah, you are right. Let us let loose. But only if I can choose the movie we watch after dinner!” (Y/N) feels bad for eating unhealthy food again. Her last binge was only yesterday and usually she tries to consume lighter things. But she has to bite into the sour apple, else her father will be more suspicious. After all, she can just stop. (Y/N) promises herself to not think about her weight, her shape or the calories she will eat.

Well yeah, no. Just after the first noodle hits her tongue, intrusive thoughts take a seat in her mind, getting settled.

‘You already look like a potato.’

‘Are you sure this is the right thing to eat?’

‘Can you really stop?’

‘Dad is going to hate you when he finds out.’

All of them and more enter her head. (Y/N) is unable to shake them off. She is fine. She doesn’t have a problem. She just doesn’t feel like eating now, that’s fine, right?

“Uhm Dad. I’m full and really tired from the day. Is it ok if I go to bed? Maybe we can rain check on that movie?” The girl asks, feeling even worse for ditching her father. Usually it’s the other way around.

“Are you feeling ok? You look a little pale. Are you sick?” Spencer fires his question canone being the borderline helicopter father he always is. “Yes, just really exhausted from all the assignment and school work. A good night's rest and I will be good as new.” (Y/N) attempts a small smile, but fails miserably at it.

“Ok, sleep tight baby. I’ll put the leftovers in the fridge for you tomorrow.” Quickly she goes into her room. The thoughts in her head scream louder and louder with each step she takes. Can she really stop? Maybe she should come clean to her father.

‘And risking him hating you? Look at you, thinking you are sane is the only thing keeping him from abandoning you. How would you explain him keeping you otherwise? It’s definitely not for your looks.’

Later that night, (Y/N) hasn’t gotten a wink of sleep because of the voices, she makes her way back to the kitchen. In an attempt to distract herself, the teenager scrolled through her social media sites. There she was met by pictures of perfect people.

Perfect bodies. Perfect lives. Perfect smiles. Perfect family. Perfect friends. Everything about them is perfect.

And then there is her. Her body is unperfect. Her life is a mess. Her smile is not that of a model. Her family is just her, her father and the people he works with. Her friends aren’t always the best associates.

The stress of not feeling enough is getting to (Y/N)’s head. Like several times before that her body goes into auto. She doesn’t control her movements, though she tells herself all of this is willently.

Like so many times before the girl goes through the fridge and eats everything up she can get her fingers on. But this time one thing is different. Her father is at home. And he isn’t a heavy sleeper.

The movement in the kitchen wakes him up. Immediately his brain jumps to a burglar or even worse, an UnSub they once arrested coming after him. Quickly he gets his revolver and sneaks through the hallway to the source of the noises. As Spencer only sees his daughter sitting there, he instantly relaxes.

“Hey Sweetheart, what are you doing up? It’s a school night”, he softly asks in order to not scare her. Still, (Y/N) gets startled at the sudden voice.

“Uhm, nothing much. Just hungry. Probably because I didn’t eat dinner”, she explains, looking at her father like he caught her with her hand stuck in the cookie jar. Spencer watches her closely. “This is it? Because from what it looks like you not only ate your dinner but also tomorrow’s breakfast and right now lunch.”

(Y/N) swallows her bite, feeling that sinking reality in her stomach. The pills. She needs the pills fast before her body begins to digest the food. “Uhm, yeah. I probably should go to bed. I need my sleep. Just let me tidy up. Good night, Dad.” But he is quick to stop her.

“(Y/N), I want you to sit down. There is something we have to talk about.” Hesitantly (Y/N) takes a seat. “What is it Dad? Are you reprimanding me for eating? I thought you wanted me to let loose for a night.”

Spencer sits, leaning against the kitchen counter. “Baby, I want you to be alright. But I think you are not.” His eyes get a sad look. “I’m alright. I am fine, Dad. What do you think is wrong with me?”

“Look, (Y/N), I don’t need to be a profiler to see that you are struggling with something. Do you want to tell me about it?” Her answer is a tight lipped smile and a “I’m fine. There is nothing to talk about.”

The father sighs. She is not leaving him much of a choice. “And what about them?” Spencer asks after getting something from the highest shelf in the kitchen, the one (Y/N) barely reaches by stepping on a stool. He sets a little container down on the table.

“Dad I-” “No (Y/N). You don’t need to explain anything. It’s my turn to talk. I found those in your room yesterday while I was looking for a book. At first I thought nothing of it, I mean you are trying to live healthy, so I thought this is part of the process. But then I saw that they have to be prescribed and I know that these aren’t yours.

“I wanted to talk about it with you anyway. But now I know that I caught you binge eating and I see all the signs. I see them and I’m sorry for not acting sooner. (Y/N), you need help and I’m here for you. I know the last few months were especially hard on you. I can’t change what was and what happened, but I will be here for you now." Tears stream down on boths their faces.

(Y/N) is stammering for words. “I-I am fine. I can stop anytime I want. Th-this was a conscious d-decision.” Her father envelops her in a hug, cradling her head to his chest. She begins to sob.

“I know, Sweetheart. It’s hard and it won’t get easier from here on, but I’m here. You know you can’t stop, it’s only an illusion your eating disorder wants you to believe. But we get through it together. You, I and the team if you want to. We take it at your pace.” By now the two are crying loudly.

“I want it to stop, Dad. Please make the voice go away.”

He can’t make it go away. No one can. But Spencer helps to quiet it. Together they tackle the disorder, through the good and the bad times. He takes off from work for a time and (Y/N) out of school for a few weeks to be able to work on it together, to make the voice quieter and her life better.

Taglist:

All works:

@dindjarinsspouse

Criminal Minds:

@averyhotchner @mggsprettygirl @herecomesthewriterwitch @ash19871962

#spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x daughter!reader #spencer reid #spencer reid x teen!reader #criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #fanfiction #x reader #reader insert #x daughter!reader #x teen!reader #tw: eating disorder

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aspoonfuloffiction · 2 years

Note

I’m tired of the book changes and now according to Charitra and Jonathan they’re making it a love triangle? I’m so angry they’re ruining this series

Did you see the EW interview? The side plot and love triangle comment are worrying-Are they going to ruin the Kathony?

Are you worried about the EW cover story?

Sigh….

Alrighty lets talk about that article.

(If you are panicking like so many people in the fandom thats ok!!! You are totally valid! But if you’ll allow me, please read the whole thing and consider letting me try to temper your fears just a bit???)

This EW story and the conversation surrounding it has been quite a case study in internet discourse

EW does this incredibly infuriating thing where they break one story over 3-4 individual articles for traffic so admittedly it is easy for things to be misinterpreted and then in the age of social media a single misinformation becomes the consensus. So lets try to piece together this story as much as can be done.

Also a blanket reminder that there is a devastating pandemic happening not everyone on the cast can be everywhere. Have a bit of grace and don’t hold someone’s absence over someone else’s presence. This press tour is going to look different unfortunately this is the period we are in right now.

The love triangle

"You can understand why he's drawn to both," teases Bailey. "And they're both drawn to him in turn. It's an interesting love triangle; it's dangerous when it's siblings. It's bestial between them in a way season 1 wasn't. They're all animals with each other."

Both JB and EW are trying to sell a product-Jonathan the show and EW the article so they’re going to lots of buzzy words and attention grabbing pull quotes. Calling it a “love triangle” which it is in the source material as well is an easier way to draw in fans than explaining the the complicated premise of the story to the average fan. (A reminder that articles like these are not written for fandom they’re for the average audience member).

But the ironic thing is that numerous times in this story and the other articles they actually do dive into Anthony’s mindset heading into the season but this line is just further up because the article sells better that way it sounds enticing.

"Edwina and Kate are the embodiment of his approaches to love — one is head, one is heart," says Bailey. "The push and pull [illustrates] how intense it is to fall in love in a society that is so rigid, where the gender roles are so specific, and how much those roles can be completely counterproductive to happiness, progression, and to love."

“It spurs Anthony on to propose to who he would believe is the most suitable diamond rather than who he’s in love with” -Claudia Jessie

"We meet Anthony at a time where we can understand his decision to find a suitable lady who will be able to serve the purpose of being a viscountess as opposed to someone who he is falling in love with or has any sense of emotion towards." -Jonathan Bailey

(Any sense of emotion towards? Thats quite a repudiation of Edwina😳 lol)

And then there’s this quote:

Chandran views [Anthony and Edwina’s] relationship as one built on mutual understanding of their responsibilities and place in life. "Both Anthony and Edwina have been brought up to fulfill a role," she adds. "In her case, it's to be [the perfect wife]. In his case, it's to be the viscount. And that is something they connect to each other with and understand each other in a way a lot of other people wouldn't. Edwina genuinely falls in love with the viscount. It's a naive love, but her feelings are very genuine."

I get its this is a scary one and I also momentarily was like ummm? What? But put this quote in context with other lines and it feels increasingly innocuous.

For example:

“The show is about all the different types of love that you have. And I would say for Edwina and Kate, although yeah it is a love story, they are each other’s soulmates” -Charithra Chandran

I would not be surprised if the two quotes were pulled from Charithra responding to the same question. Not all love is romantic and I think we tend to forget that but clearly Charithra doesn’t so she could be using love in a familial camaraderie sense.

Which makes total sense by the way. The books treat Edwina as a means to an end-She is Anthony’s reason for knowing Kate. She is Kate’s reason for hating Anthony. Then she is Anthony’s way to needle at Kate. After she is Kate’s reason for being self sacrificial. And it doesn’t even stop once they’re married because Edwina’s plotline with Bagwell is truly just to have Kate fall deeper in love with her husband and to set up the carriage scene.

Julia Quinn briefly touches on how Edwina had felt trapped in her life but there’s no deeper follow up into it. That story is told through Kate’s perspective because such are the rules of a book but such rules don’t exist in a TV show and it would be a disservice to the character and the story to treat Edwina as a roadblock or as a catalyst for Kate and Anthony.

I like that the show is going to give Edwina some agency. Anthony courting her is no longer a unilateral decision he doesn’t just get to decide by himself she gets to be an active participant in this choice. Because to her as well on paper this is the best match for her family-and that is something two people can bond over.

But lets say Charithra is referring to romantic love she’s notes that it’s quite naive, and in other places she underlines several times that Edwina is watching her sister fall deeply in love. To me that implies that any romantic “love” that Edwina has for Anthony is not an accurate representation of the idea. Kind of like a girl who thinks she can convince herself that kind compliments and pleasing words can be enough for love. Someone who believes she could convince herself to fall in love with a man who hasn’t “any sense of emotion towards” her.

Am I just now discovering that Edwina Sheffield/Sharma is the real victim of TVWLM…?

Also between JQ’s Instagram post about the core of the sister relationship being one of the things she’s most proud of and it being preserved in the show and that both Charithra and Simone talk about a lot and how important that is to them I do not think they are going drive something as banal as relationship jealousy into it.

Secondary characters & Show only creations:

So I’ll be honest my favorite parts of season one were largely show only creations. And that’s because I hate the book Duke and I. There is nothing remotely interesting about Simon and Daphne to me. (That said Regé Jean Page and Phoebe Dyvenor did a lot to make me like the characters to a certain degree).

And Shondaland famous for its ensemble pieces knows that. They know you can’t tell a story on tv about a singular person or couple because if the audience doesn’t connect to that one person or a couple, they are not going to watch the end and once again they’re selling a product so they’re going to appeal to as many people as possible.

And so they create characters fill out the Ton and give non book plot lines to the other siblings—which in my opinion enriches the story. If we went by strictly book text we wouldn’t get any build out in season 1 for Anthony’s rakish history or Benedict’s distrust in himself, or Eloise’s rebellion towards societal norms… all of this is just told to us in the novels but here we actually see it. Its infinitely better writing. It increases audience investment in the characters so that when you get to their season your extra excited for their HEA.

And I like that CVD and Shondaland have brought shades to the Ton- Portia has always been a character but her expansion has made her a whole new force to be reckoned with and is a real gift in the show. Both Delacroix and Will are a look inside Londan outside of Mayfair. Henry forces people to face the less savory truths of the regency romance genre.

The London that Julia Quinn wrote is deceptively small it seemingly starts and ends with the Bridgertons but thats not accurate. The Ton is supposed to this force that weighs on the principle cast all the time but because of the confines of a book we never really get to see why. Personally I think having the Ton feel like an actual presence raises the stakes for the decisions these characters makr.

But I truly do not think that they’re going to dramatically alter the core stories of the books and I think because Chris Van Dusen said so:

"There's always going to be differences from source material, but the fans of the books are going to see that the elements they love of the books on screen too: the way the siblings banter, the way Violet loves her children, and the love stories at the hearts of each book - these moving, sweeping romances with all the twists and turns, and their steaminess."

Also I’ve been seeing some fear induced vitriol around Theo’s character descriptions so lets look at it.

A printer's assistant dedicated to intellectual pursuits and the fight for equal rights. Hmm, sounds perfect for a certain Bridgerton. "Theo is an original character to the series," says Van Dusen. "Bridgerton is about a whole world. It's always been interesting to me to see what happens outside the confines of Mayfair and Theo is very much not a part of Mayfair."

The line regarding him perfect for a certain Bridgerton (I think they mean Eloise?) is an aside from the author of the article not CVD. Y’all I truly do not think this character will be noticeably more than Will in S1…

Could I be totally wrong? Absolutely!!! But my philosophy is always try to go into anything hoping for the best. If you go into S2 disappointed I think you start at a disadvantage in your viewing experience!! So friends breathe!!! I think we’re gonna be ok!

And if its not you know I’ll be here talking about that too!!! But till then we’ve got just under 50 days to ride the wait out💜

#bridgerton #anthony bridgerton #kate sheffield #kate sharma #benedict bridgerton #daphne bridgerton #eloise bridgerton #edwina sheffield #edwina sharma #asks

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spiltscribbles · 3 years

Note

Prompt: Pro Athlete Sirius because that my and Remus' kink

~Notes: OMFG VICTOrIA!!!! I FUCKING SCREECHED!!!! lkadfjlaksdgjoiaejfalskdgjioeugisfkldshg Yes tis my kink as well!!! And then I saw this from Nonny and worlds collided and BOOM! I hope you like this my love<3<3 You incredibly talented sugarplum!!! TBH I want to write a thousand more things in this AU XD

FROM THIS LIST | Send Me A Prompt!💜 | A REBLOG MEANS THE GALAXY!!💜

When Remus was young— surrounded by the light breeze of the Welsh coast and the harmony of birds chirping in the distance— he would follow his mother to their small garden behind their cottage at the cusp of twilight as his father cooked their supper, and he’d watch as she laid flat all sorts of newspapers written in French and Arabic and English, watch as she brought her red pen against the ink and marked the articles with underlines and shorthand he wouldn’t understand for years still.

He asked her once, when he was barely eight years old, why she bothered to keep up with so many different publications, why she read the same story penned by countless perspectives when all the facts stayed the same at the end of the day. And he remembers how she had let out a quick, shrill of a laugh, tossing back her golden head while sucking in a puff from the bubbling hookah she had set up besides her— a habit she acquired from her Algerian, refugee parents, and one that became synonymous to those late nights in Remus’s eyes.

“Facts can be wielded to someone’s personal vendettas, Remus John,” she had crooned in that adoring way of hers whenever she spoke to him— honey eyes that were the same color and shape to Remus’s own flashing alight and their matching smiles going crooked in her stunningly beautiful face.

“Oh.” Remus had replied, still confused as all get out but was perfectly fine with just holding his small vigil, watching her beneath moonlight and the soft glow of their outdoors lamps, as he listened to the shuffling of papers while she commenced this odd quirk.

It’s a decade and a half later— as his editor for the Phoenix, a small, but bustling online editorial that plans on dethroning the likes of Politico and Vox in only a matter of years, scans his latest findings on the corrupt boosters linked to MP Avery from Leeds— when Remus thinks he suddenly understands what his mother, with her keen eyes and pixelated air, had meant by facts in how they can be colored differently simply by the words surrounding them. And he wonders if one day soon, one of his bylines will join her little stack of stories, if she’ll be proud of him even if she says as much even now, when he’s a lost twenty-something stumbling through life in the capitol and barely making it as is, between his actual job and the gig he has at the coffee shop nearest his dingy flat he shares with three other blokes.

“Mmm, this is good, Lupin,” Dorcas declares after what feels like an eon, dropping her long, dark legs from where they were lounging leisurely on her desk and scuffs out her cigarette in a pretty, glass ashtray. “Send it over to Flores to look into deeper, maybe it’ll corroborate the info she’s already gotten from her sources.”

Remus feels himself bristle, hopes that it doesn’t show, that his face stays passive as he contends, “I think I should at least help her write the expose, I’m the one who got this bombshell.”

“That’s not how it works, sweets,” Dorcas toots, tossing back her dark head of curls as she rises, perching on the corner of her desk delicately and looking down, straight into his gaze. “I know it’s frustrating, but you’re fresh blood. barely six months here, but Alice has been with us for years. This is her baby, and we’re just here to nurture it.”

“So I’ll have to wait another ten months, at least, to get the same treatment?” He argues in an admittedly petulant way, making Dorcas laugh endearingly, and Remus is suddenly, searingly reminded of his age, and how he’s the youngest staffer that this London based news outlet has on hand.

“C’mon, love, it won’t be that long for someone as sharp as you, just be patient, and don’t try to pull a Zoe Barnes on us, yeah? You’re far too pretty to clean up on the rails of the tube.” Dorcas tousles a hand into his dark tawny curls, and Remus holds back the roll to his eyes that he feels willing up inside of him as he stands fully.

“Thanks Cas.”

She smiles beatifically, and throws him a wink. “You’re joining Emmy for the report tomorrow on those United footballers and their fundraiser for the hospital, yeah?”

“Bright and early,” Remus replies, still feels a bit miffed that he was chosen to write up the charity function, considering he doesn’t know a lick about football and doesn’t really get on with anyone who does. But Caradoc— their typical sports reporter— is out sick with the flew, so it’s on him. “I’ll have it on your desk early enough so it’ll be published by tea time.”

“Good man,” Dorcas says in thanks, picking up her crowing cellphone before waving him off.

Remus isn’t all that surprised when he strides out of the office only to find Benjy Fenwick sitting against the opposite wall, knees pressed to his chest and quickly scrambling up when he catches sight of Remus. Sometimes it’s impossible to believe that the bespectacled man in front of him is one of the top editors for the Phoenix, that he’s a regular corespondent for places like the BBC or CNN— that his rebukes against the piss poor inquiries waged during PMQs have become more anticipated than the sessions themselves. Remus tends to forget all of that when he sees him like this, messy haired and wearing a graphic T-shirt with some marvel superhero embossed on the front. “Wotcher Remus.”

“Hiya Remus says, smiling softly and rocking back on his heels. “You wanted to talk to the sergeant then?”

“Huh? Oh, no, no. I didn’t want to talk to Dorcas, I just— Erm, I know you were showing her that stuff you got from that intern, Pettigrew, and i know you were chafed about not getting any opportunity here so—“ He trails off, scratching the back of his head and studying a point over Remus’s shoulder, and it’s all too endearing, and Remus is so beyond thankful he’s made such a good friend here.

“No cigar,” he says in answer to the unspoken question, shrugging noncommittally even if he feels like shit over it.

Benjy nods, face contrite in a way that tells Remus he never thought it would’ve went otherwise. “I’m sorry, that’s bollocks.”

“’S whatever,” Remus shrugs off the apology, begins walking down the hall and straightening his report to hand over to Alice.

“Ah,, erm. We can get a drink, yeah? In commiseration,” Benjy offers, and Remus stilts only for a beat before continuing the twisting trail to where Alice is set up with the more senior members on staff. And he feels only sorta bad about wanting to refuse. He knows that if he says yes, it’ll mean something different to Benjy than it does him, that he’ll probably take it as Remus finally giving into his pestering and deciding to actually go out with him, even if he’s refuted the other four times he’s asked as much. Remus’s simply just too busy trying to get a footing in this city, and trying to figure out where he’s suppose to go from here, and what he’s suppose to do. And yes, Benjy is cute— a complete Seth Cohen archetype. And he’s sweet and smart and funny enough. But Remus is really not in the mood for doing the whole flowers and wine and candle lit dinners shtick, had gotten enough of that while still with his university boyfriend. And yeah, he’s only just turned 24, but he already feels too old and too jaded for that sort of puppy love— even if Benjy’s got a good decade and some change on him.

Probably sensing his hesitation, Benjy is quick to rectify the offer. “I’ll ask Mary, and Fabian too, and a few others. We can make a night of it, just some drinks on a Friday after work.”

Stalling by the last turn to Alice’s desk, Remus looks at him from over his shoulder, and sort of hates himself for being such a soft hearted fuck sometimes. “Yeah Benj, sounds nice. Just let me know on the group chat, yeah?”

Benjy grins, much more genuine than his awkward quirk of the lips from earlier. “Yeah, good call, I’ll let the others know pronto.”

“Aces,” Remus says, tosses him a obligatory thumbs-up before finding an expectant looking Alice who’s tapping her foot impatiently.

Yeah, today is so bloody shit.

Surprisingly, the round of drinks turns to another and then a third and fourth and Remus is currently nursing his fifth mango margarita on Benjy’s tab, and he actually feels lighter than he has since taking the job at Phoenix, feels bright and bubbling and like absolutely nothing could be wrong as long as he’s got this drink in his grasp and he’s sitting with the handful of reporters and photographers from the office that don’t all have sticks up their asses. It’s fun, it’s good. So obviously it couldn’t have lasted.

Mary is currently cackling about her Uber driver from last night who asked her all sorts of well meaning, but incredibly dense questions about her hijab— a freshly poured glass of coke in one hand, while the other is tangled into her girlfriend Emmy’s. And From his left Remus can hear Fabian ribbing Frank on his crush on Alice, while Benjy scoots intermittently closer as they watch Kingsley and Marlene sparring over something to do with a Kardashian or TikTok trend or whatever the fuck else— The guy has resilience, Remus has to give Benjy that.

“Right, who’s buying next?” Marlene asks, abrasive as ever while scrolling through her phone, ostensively finding something to prove her point against the managing editor.

“Reckon it’s my turn,” Benjy crows, standing up smoothly and glancing down at Remus with a nervous sort of half grin.

“Just a water for me, ta. I need to sober up,” Remus tells him, feels proud that he didn’t even slur slightly. Benjy bobs his head understandingly, and Remus turns to ask Marlene about her latest tinder hookup which always is a good laugh, but then he catches on it. On the sound of the pub’s doors flinging open, followed by a raucous crowd of athletic looking guys probably only a bit older than he is, clambering indoors.

They’re all so very sixth-form, broad grins and slapping each other’s shoulders with jeers, topped off with loud, bark like laughter that makes it obvious to Remus that these wankers think that they’re some sort of group of gods amongst men, roaming around like everyone should fall to their feet and offer everything they have. It makes Remus roll his eyes so far back that it feels like he might’ve sprained them. They just give off this exhausting aura that reminds him of a past boyfriend in tenth year who was on the footie team and who’s favorite activity was either making Remus feel lucky enough to go out with someone so popular, or dragging him around like some sort of bloody trophy.

To put it nicely, Remus sorta hates them on sight. So when he sees one of the tossers— regrettably the brightest of the lot who’s all pearly teeth, and glittering eyes and incredibly impressive shoulders that tape off to a narrow waste in an objectively infuriating matter— swivels up to the barkeep and jostles Benjy on his way, well Remus doesn’t hesitate to dart forwards to tell him off.

“Oi, watch where you’re going, yeah?”

Benjy and the bloke who looks like he might moonlight as a model for Calvin briefs for when he’s not lounging in a yacht off the Tuscany coast, both turn to him at the same time. Benjy looking abashed, and the aforementioned tosser preening like the cat who’s just caught a canary.

“Sorry, love. Didn’t see you there,” he says in a delightfully deep tenner, giving Remus an appreciative once over, and Remus absolutely despises how the action makes him feel both thrilled and irritated. “Trust and believe, I wouldn’t have looked away if I saw you.”

“Not me, arse.” Remus spits back, refuses to pay any credence to how his cheeks have begun to flush. “You bumped into my mate right there, the one with the tray of loggers.”

The tosser darts his almost molten gray eyes over to Benjy for a sparing second before he laser focusses back onto Remus, the most phony expression of contrition all over his face. “Sorry to your friend,” he says the descriptor like a joke that no one else is in on. “Let me buy you a drink in sorry for the one I made slim here spill.”

Remus is officially unimpressed, hopes that his flat tone gets it across. “You’re an arse.”

“You’re mouthy,” he retorts, looks like it’s something he greatly appreciates— delights over even.

“Ah, ’s fine Remus, really. I’ll just bring these back and get us a new glass.”

“Listen to slim, Remus, he’s got the right idea.” The tosser hurriedly interjects, strutting close enough to him that he makes it so Remus has to tip his head back just slightly so not to drop his gaze. “I’m Black, Sirius Black, just to get the pleasantries out of the way.” His leer tells Remus that the name should probably evoke some response of aw into Remus, but all it does is make him sound so egregiously pretentious that Remus wants to smack his own bloody head against a dry wall and stay in the hole until this ruddy Sirius bloke leaves him the hell alone.

“Good for you,” he says instead of all of that, and spots Sirius’s friends from behind Sirius chuckling and elbowing one another. Evidently this is a line the tosser uses frequently, and Remus is pleased that he might be one of the first who aren’t at all impressed by the grandiose way he introduced himself.

“Hah, you know I’m use to the pretty ones playing hard to get, but I’m really feeling here that you’re not exactly liking my company, love.”

Remus sucks in a frustrated breath through his nose, shouldering past Sirius and taking the tray of drinks from Benjy before storming back to their table where the others have begun openly gawping at the scene— Marlene outright squawking with Fabian just as Remus takes his seat.

“Don’t,” Remus warns them all as he silently says fuck off to the water and instead gargles down one of the loggers. And if he has to steadfastly not turn around for the rest of the night towards where he can feel Sirius’s gaze burning into his back— well then so be it.

The next morning, Remus has to puke twice into the toilet, and gulps down three aspirins just to stave off his bloody hangover from the night before where he decided that getting properly sloshed would prove as a good technique to not end up making out with Sirius in some dark corner— or regrettably the backseat of his car. And if he does still remember flashes of ranting to him about how insufferable preppy, rich boys actually are while Sirius gazed at him endeared— well Remus just decides to purge it out along with the stomach acid. It’s not like he’ll ever see the douche again.

He meets Arthur— one of the accountants who also helps out by taking photos for more low key news stories— outside the hospital where the conference will be taking place with the Manchester United team. There was a scrimmage that they all played with some of the kids in the cancer ward that occurred at around eight in the ruddy morning, but thankfully Remus didn’t have to show up until an hour later when the team presented their big shiny check, to the big, shiny hospital.

However, Arthur has been here for hours, so he’s beyond chirpy and looks like he’s downed three cups of espresso as he chatters on about his son Percy starting secondary school, and his eldest, Bill, getting an award for his reading prowess, and all the strange craving his wife has been having throughout her pregnancy with the twins they’re expecting any week now. And Remus loves Arthur, he does— one of the sweetest folks he’s ever met— but God, his head is still thrumming from those misguided tequila shots and he really just wants to get his three quotes, and write up the story so he can find refuge back in his sheets.

While Arthur has moved to talking about his wife, Molly’s, plans to open up a daycare in their refurnished garage, Remus scans his eyes over the familiar face of reporters from other outlets who look just as bored as him, and then to the stage where a woman in a sharply pressed suit is ushering for the group of football stars to join her, so that the conference can finally fucking begin.

And Remus thinks that their faces are sorta familiar, probably from all the publicity they get on the telly— but then he freezes as he stops at one of them with dark brown skin, and thick rimmed spectacles— and he suddenly can hear him chatting about his redheaded girlfriend and drunkenly declaring that she’ll be the mother of his children some day soon. So he completely expects it when his stomach drops as he moves his glance just a bit to the right, being struck by pearly teeth, and glittering eyes and incredibly impressive shoulders that tape off to a narrow waste, made all the more infuriating by the tight kit he’s got on and the blazing number twelve splayed against his chest.

And fuck.

Remus runs through about a dozen scenarios in which he can make a discrete, or not so discrete exit before he notices him, but in tandem to his spiraling thoughts, the wanker actually looks forwards, and like a creepy metal detector, his quick silver gaze pinpoints onto Remus.

They stare at one another for a beat before his smirk goes wolfish, and he runs a hand through his artfully tousled hair in a way that practically screams, fancy meeting you here. And holy fuck he looks so mouth watteringly attractive with that faint film of sweat running down his neck, and how his smile pulls slightly more to the left, and how he’s looking at Remus like he’s his birthday and Christmas presents all rolled into one.

Remus suddenly hates everything— but most of all hates Sirius, and how bloody fit he is.

“Oh, you’re a fan then?”

Starting, Remus shifts around slightly so that he’s facing Arthur completely. “Pardon?”

“Sirius Black I mean, you’re a fan?” Arthur asks in that abrasively congenial and intensely scrutinizing way that he treats everything. “I mean he’s a great player, but I know you don’t really watch. So I bet it’s all that charity work he does, yeah?”

“Charity work?” Remus echos, feeling like a floundering fish.

“Truly some amazing stuff.” Arthur pontificates, rubbing a hand against his jaw as he tips his head back. “I mean obviously I’m partial to the fundraising for Reporters Without Borders, but of course the things he does with the more impoverished kids is great. And I know Molly likes his very outspoken posts about being anti war and his annual live streams to earn money for refugees in those war torn nations, like the last one he did for Syria?”

“Oh—“ Remus says, feeling like his head is being overrun by a fountain of new information.

“Yes well, you don’t usually see athletes get into the thick of it with political issues, but I reckon he never really minded. I mean the fact he’s the first football star from United to have come out without any fanfare really proved that. Oh, I think they’re starting, I should probably get some photos before Dorcas gives me a tongue lashing.”

And as quick as the flash of his camera’s lends, Arthur is using his considerable height to get to a more advantageous spot towards the front, and leaves Remus in the dust, as if he hasn’t just obliterated his every assumption of Sirius from after that initial meeting.

And unbidden, the words his mother had told him so many years ago, about facts and how they can color a situation just simply based off the person who’s speaking them— flood to the forefront of his mind.

“Fucking hell,” Remus mutters lowly, gets jostled by Greengrass, a hawkish reporter from a rivaling publication who always has on the most wickedly sharp acrylic nails, and perfectly quaffed curls— as she waves around her certification to speak her inquiry.

“My question is for Potter,” she announces when the woman leading the event, McGonagall, points her way. “And I was wondering how early you boys have to rise for training during the season? And how intense the sessions are that Coach Hooch puts you guys through?”

Potter, the one with the redheaded girlfriend that Remus heard so much about last night between his ranting at Sirius, parts his lips, but it’s not his voice that ends up reverberating through the outdoors space. Instead, it’s Sirius, who’s shouldering him with a goading air, obviously expecting his comment to have only ended up in Potter’s ear and not caught by the mike.

“I wonder if Lupin will let me wake up with’m so he can let me get some real training done before practices, eh?”

And just as soon as his words pitter off, the entire crowd drops to a hush— quiet enough so that they could probably hear it if a pen dropped.

Sirius’s handsome face— strong jawline, and broad but sharp cheekbones, and a long, narrow nose— goes suddenly ashen, and he flashes over to Remus as if he’s terrified that he’ll bite his face off.

God, what an idiot.

With a long suffering sigh, Remus plucks out the microphone from a slack faced Greengrass’s hand. “We can discuss the regimen afterwards, Black. Just meet me by the front doors and let your mate answer the bloody question.”

Everyone around them falls into laughter that’s caught between uncomfortable chuckles and amazingly amused cackling, but the only person Remus is paying any mind is Sirius, and how he seems to have gone absolutely incandescent, nodding electrically before miming the zip of his lips and gesturing for Potter to carry on.

Jesus help him, Remus has no idea what he’s gotten himself into.

~My Wolfstar FIC Masterlist

~Buy Me A Coffee

#WOLFSTAR #REMUS LUPIN #SIRIUS BLACK #SIRIUSXREMUS #REMUSXSIRIUS #WOLFSTAR FLUFF #THE HARRY POTTER SERIES #MARAUDERS #HARRY POTTER SERIES #ILU Victoria!!!#also to anyone side eyeing the buy me a coffee plz do not judge me #i am so searing embarrassed about it #rip #just it's there i guess #calls;jalksdgjaeowifjsadlkgh #look away from me #!!!#lmfao #spilt ink

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felassan · 3 years

Link

Article: ‘Mass Effect 3 Could Have Had A Completely Different Ending’

The Mass Effect 3 ending has been a controversial subject for nine years. As it turns out, it could have been completely different.

This article is part of TheGamer’s Mass Effect week.

Highlights:

This [the RGB endings] wasn’t always the case. According to Mass Effect 3 writer Chris Hepler, the end of Shepard’s story could have been radically different.

Hepler started working on Mass Effect right at the beginning. Although he wasn’t formally part of the team yet, he did additional design, chipped in for playtesting, and offered a fair amount of writing feedback during development of the first game. He had a much more active role on Mass Effect 2, writing the Codex entries, the Galaxy Map, and spearheading the Cerberus Daily News initiative. By the time Mass Effect 3 rolled around, Hepler was writing EDI, Thane, Citadel missions, and was generally considered to be the project’s “loremaster.”

“The ending relies on space magic, and the lead writer, lead gameplay designer, and executive producer all just embraced that and owned it from the get-go,” Hepler tells me. “‘Any sufficiently advanced technology’ and all that. They wanted and got a really big decision that affects the whole galaxy. If you give it a moment's thought, none of the three options are perfectly moral or the ‘right’ answer for everyone. Destroy may not solve the problem of AI and organics; Control rewards the Reapers; even Synthesis, which is harder to get than the other two and sounds like it'd be permanent peace, basically violates the entire galaxy's bodily autonomy without consent. So that part, I think, works.

“Did it satisfy the fans? Hell, no, not at first, and I found a lot of the criticism to be legitimate. The Extended Cut gave us a second chance to make an ending that acknowledged many more of the players' choices, and was about as good as we could reasonably make given the decisions we'd already made. I felt a lot better about myself and us as a team after the EC came out.”

Hepler explains that fans had observed several hints throughout the trilogy that pointed in completely different directions. For example, there are aspects of the lore that actually lean towards the Citadel species allying with the Reapers in order to collectively tackle a dark energy anomaly, as opposed to the Reapers remaining as the Big Bad right up until credits roll. Hepler confirms that there are explicit lore details that lean into this idea, but that he never personally heard about capitalizing on them. Remember, this is coming from the Mass Effect loremaster - if he says there is lore to back up a dark energy anomaly that only the Reapers can save us from, it certainly exists.

“Now, what would I have done?” Hepler asks. “I wouldn't have done space magic at all. I planned to write three Codex entries on the Crucible rather than one, reflecting on what scientists think it is at first, what it appears to be once construction has really made progress, and a third detailing how it will kill the Reapers, readable right before you return to Earth.”

Hepler explains that he wanted to take inspiration from Nancy Kress’ novel, Probability Moon, in order to have the Crucible use a strong nuclear force as a weapon. Kress’ superweapon is designed to create a massive burst of energy that is completely harmless for objects that have a low atomic weight, like organic flesh made of carbon chains. This means that the vast majority of Citadel species would be virtually unaffected by a blast from this weapon.

Objects with a much higher atomic number, however, would be annihilated by the beam. This weapon is constructed in such a way that it emits life-killing radiation for anything made up of heavy metals. “So cybernetic creatures like the Reapers and husks would have their organic parts fried because they're right next to the heavy metals, but the organic creatures a safe distance away, like a civilian population, would be just fine,” Hepler says.

“The rebuilt Shepard, who had a fair bit of cybernetics, would die heroically, but that was always likely to be on the cards. In talking with Ann Lemay, another writer on the project, we theorized that the metal most likely to be the atomic weight cut-off-point was niobium, which today is used in piercings and surgical implants because it doesn't rust and you can embed it in flesh without ill effects. It's even blue when exposed to oxygen, like the glowing blue husks we've been fighting since [the first] Mass Effect. So it would make sense as a building block for the Reapers and their ultimate weakness.”

So, what happened? Unfortunately, Hepler never got to pitch his ending. The design leads moved lightning quick with their Destroy/Control/Synthesis trifecta, to the point that the whole premise had been approved before Hepler even got around to finishing his second Codex entry. As a result, he hadn’t got a full description of how this pertained to the entire galaxy yet - although looking at it now, it could have borrowed from the best bits of each ending. The Reapers would be neutralized, but the tech would be there. Given that Mass Effect is largely about the coexistence of humans and cybernetic creatures, it would also have had an impact on other aspects of the universe - what would happen to EDI?

“I [also] had some concern that Nancy Kress might notice and sue us if I didn't do my homework,” Hepler says. “And there was no time to do that homework, which would be me telling all the leads to hold off for a week while I exchanged a crap-ton of emails with my subject matter experts. ‘Sufficiently advanced technology indistinguishable from magic’ was far easier and had much more project momentum. “I recycled some of the strong-force-as-a-weapon tech into the Reaper infantry weapon, the Blackstar. In retrospect, I wish I'd spoken up more, or thought it all out faster, but them's the breaks.”

As well as Hepler’s own ending - which obviously never made it into the final game, despite sounding as if it had a lot more hard science behind it - Hepler is a big fan of the popular Indoctrination Theory. However, he was pretty open about the fact that this wasn’t something BioWare consciously designed.

“The Indoctrination Theory is a really interesting theory, but it's entirely created by the fans,” Hepler says. “While we made some of the ending a little trippy because Shepard is a breath away from dying and it's entirely possible there's some subconscious power to the kid's words, we never had the sort of meetings you'd need to have to properly seed it through the game.

“We weren't that smart. By all means, make mods and write fanfic about it, and enjoy whatever floats your boat, because it's a cool way to interpret the game. But it wasn't our intention. We didn't write that.”

[source]

#bioware #mass effect #video games #long post #longpost

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