#but people straight up do not read on there when it's a real article

[imsobadatnicknames2]

How can you consider yourself any sort of leftist when you defend AI art bullshit? You literally simp for AI techbros and have the gall to pretend you're against big corporations?? Get fucked

I don't "defend" AI art. I think a particular old post of mine that a lot of people tend to read in bad faith must be making the rounds again lmao.

Took me a good while to reply to this because you know what? I decided to make something positive out of this and use this as an opportunity to outline what I ACTUALLY believe about AI art. If anyone seeing this decides to read it in good or bad faith... Welp, your choice I guess.

I have several criticisms of the way the proliferation of AI art generators and LLMs is making a lot of things worse. Some of these are things I have voiced in the past, some of these are things I haven't until now:

Most image and text AI generators are fine-tuned to produce nothing but the most agreeable, generically pretty content slop, pretty much immediately squandering their potential to be used as genuinely interesting artistic tools with anything to offer in terms of a unique aesthetic experience (AI video still manages to look bizarre and interesting but it's getting there too)

In the entertainment industry and a lot of other fields, AI image generation is getting incorporated into production pipelines in ways that lead to the immiseration of working artists, being used to justify either lower wages or straight-up layoffs, and this is something that needs to be fought against. That's why I unconditionally supported the SAG-AFTRA strikes last year and will unconditionally support any collective action to address AI art as a concrete labor issue

In most fields where it's being integrated, AI art is vastly inferior to human artists in any use case where you need anything other than to make a superficially pretty picture really fast. If you need to do anything like ask for revisions or minor corrections, give very specific descriptions of how objects and people are interacting with each other, or just like. generate several pictures of the same thing and have them stay consistent with each other, you NEED human artists and it's preposterous to think they can be replaced by AI.

There is a lot of art of the internet that consists of the most generically pretty, cookie-cutter anime waifu-adjacent slop that has zero artistic or emotional value to either the people seeing it or the person churning it out, and while this certainly was A Thing before the advent of AI art generators, generative AI has made it extremely easy to become the kind of person who churns it out and floods online art spaces with it.

Similarly, LLMs make it extremely easy to generate massive volumes of texts, pages, articles, listicles and what have you that are generic vapid SEO-friendly pap at best and bizzarre nonsense misinformation at worst, drowning useful information in a sea of vapid noise and rendering internet searches increasingly useless.

The way LLMs are being incorporated into customer service and similar services not only, again, encourages further immiseration of customer service workers, but it's also completely useless for most customers.

A very annoyingly vocal part the population of AI art enthusiasts, fanatics and promoters do tend to talk about it in a way that directly or indirectly demeans the merit and skill of human artists and implies that they think of anyone who sees anything worthwile in the process of creation itself rather than the end product as stupid or deluded.

So you can probably tell by now that I don't hold AI art or writing in very high regard. However (and here's the part that'll get me called an AI techbro, or get people telling me that I'm just jealous of REAL artists because I lack the drive to create art of my own, or whatever else) I do have some criticisms of the way people have been responding to it, and have voiced such criticisms in the past.

I think a lot of the opposition to AI art has critstallized around unexamined gut reactions, whipping up a moral panic, and pressure to outwardly display an acceptable level of disdain for it. And in particular I think this climate has made a lot of people very prone to either uncritically entertain and adopt regressive ideas about Intellectual Propety, OR reveal previously held regressive ideas about Intellectual Property that are now suddenly more socially acceptable to express:

(I wanna preface this section by stating that I'm a staunch intellectual property abolitionist for the same reason I'm a private property abolitionist. If you think the existence of intellectual property is a good thing, a lot of my ideas about a lot of stuff are gonna be unpalatable to you. Not much I can do about it.)

A lot of people are suddenly throwing their support behind any proposal that promises stricter copyright regulations to combat AI art, when a lot of these also have the potential to severely udnermine fair use laws and fuck over a lot of independent artist for the benefit of big companies.

It was very worrying to see a lot of fanfic authors in particular clap for the George R R Martin OpenAI lawsuit because well... a lot of them don't realize that fanfic is a hobby that's in a position that's VERY legally precarious at best, that legally speaking using someone else's characters in your fanfic is a much of a violation of copyright law as stright up stealing entire passages, and that any regulation that can be used against the latter can be extended against the former.

Similarly, a lot of artists were cheering for the lawsuit against AI art models trained to mimic the style of specific artists. Which I agree is an extremely scummy thinbg to do (just like a human artist making a living from ripping off someone else's work is also extremely scummy), but I don't think every scummy act necessarily needs to be punishable by law, and some of them would in fact leave people worse off if they were. All this to say: If you are an artist, and ESPECIALLY a fan artist, trust me. You DON'T wanna live in a world where there's precedent for people's artstyles to be considered intellectual property in any legally enforceable way. I know you wanna hurt AI art people but this is one avenue that's not worth it.

Especially worrying to me as an indie musician has been to see people mention the strict copyright laws of the music industry as a positive thing that they wanna emulate. "this would never happen in the music industry because they value their artists copyright" idk maybe this is a the grass is greener type of situation but I'm telling you, you DON'T wanna live in a world where copyright law in the visual arts world works the way it does in the music industry. It's not worth it.

I've seen at least one person compare AI art model training to music sampling and say "there's a reason why they cracked down on sampling" as if the death of sampling due to stricter copyright laws was a good thing and not literally one of the worst things to happen in the history of music which nearly destroyed several primarily black music genres. Of course this is anecdotal because it's just One Guy I Saw Once, but you can see what I mean about how uncritical support for copyright law as a tool against AI can lead people to adopt increasingly regressive ideas about copyright.

Similarly, I've seen at least one person go "you know what? Collages should be considered art theft too, fuck you" over an argument where someone else compared AI art to collages. Again, same point as above.

Similarly, I take issue with the way a lot of people seem EXTREMELY personally invested in proving AI art is Not Real Art. I not only find this discussion unproductive, but also similarly dangerously prone to validating very reactionary ideas about The Nature Of Art that shouldn't really be entertained. Also it's a discussion rife with intellectual dishonesty and unevenly applied definition as standards.

When a lot of people present the argument of AI art not being art because the definition of art is this and that, they try to pretend that this is the definition of art the've always operated under and believed in, even when a lot of the time it's blatantly obvious that they're constructing their definition on the spot and deliberately trying to do so in such a way that it doesn't include AI art.

They never succeed at it, btw. I've seen several dozen different "AI art isn't art because art is [definition]". I've seen exactly zero of those where trying to seriously apply that definition in any context outside of trying to prove AI art isn't art doesn't end up in it accidentally excluding one or more non-AI artforms, usually reflecting the author's blindspots with regard to the different forms of artistic expression.

(However, this is moot because, again, these are rarely definitions that these people actually believe in or adhere to outside of trying to win "Is AI art real art?" discussions.)

Especially worrying when the definition they construct is built around stuff like Effort or Skill or Dedication or The Divine Human Spirit. You would not be happy about the kinds of art that have traditionally been excluded from Real Art using similar definitions.

Seriously when everyone was celebrating that the Catholic Church came out to say AI art isn't real art and sharing it as if it was validating and not Extremely Worrying that the arguments they'd been using against AI art sounded nearly identical to things TradCaths believe I was like. Well alright :T You can make all the "I never thought I'd die fighting side by side with a catholic" legolas and gimli memes you want, but it won't change the fact that the argument being made by the catholic church was a profoundly conservative one and nearly identical to arguments used to dismiss the artistic merit of certain forms of "degenerate" art and everyone was just uncritically sharing it, completely unconcerned with what kind of worldview they were lending validity to by sharing it.

Remember when the discourse about the Gay Sex cats pic was going on? One of the things I remember the most from that time was when someone went "Tell me a definition of art that excludes this picture without also excluding Fountain by Duchamp" and how just. Literally no one was able to do it. A LOT of people tried to argue some variation of "Well, Fountain is art and this image isn't because what turns fountain into art is Intent. Duchamp's choice to show a urinal at an art gallery as if it was art confers it an element of artistic intent that this image lacks" when like. Didn't by that same logic OP's choice to post the image on tumblr as if it was art also confer it artistic intent in the same way? Didn't that argument actually kinda end up accidentally validating the artistic status of every piece of AI art ever posted on social media? That moment it clicked for me that a lot of these definitions require applying certain concepts extremely selectively in order to make sense for the people using them.

A lot of people also try to argue it isn't Real Art based on the fact that most AI art is vapid but like. If being vapid definitionally excludes something from being art you're going to have to exclude a whooole lot of stuff along with it. AI art is vapid. A lot of art is too, I don't think this argument works either.

Like, look, I'm not really invested in trying to argue in favor of The Artistic Merits of AI art but I also find it extremely hard to ignore how trying to categorically define AI art as Not Real Art not only is unproductive but also requires either a) applying certain parts of your definition of art extremely selectively, b) constructing a definition of art so convoluted and full of weird caveats as to be functionally useless, or c) validating extremely reactionary conservative ideas about what Real Art is.

Some stray thoughts that don't fit any of the above sections.

I've occassionally seen people respond to AI art being used for shitposts like "A lot of people have affordable commissions, you could have paid someone like $30 to draw this for you instead of using the plagiarism algorithm and exploiting the work of real artists" and sorry but if you consider paying an artist a rate that amounts to like $5 for several hours of work a LESS exploitative alternative I think you've got something fucked up going on with your priorities.

Also it's kinda funny when people comment on the aforementioned shitposts with some variation of "see, the usage of AI art robs it of all humor because the thing that makes shitposts funny is when you consider the fact that someone would spend so much time and effort in something so stupid" because like. Yeah that is part of the humor SOMETIMES but also people share and laugh at low effort shitposts all the time. Again you're constructing a definition that you don't actually believe in anywhere outside of this type of conversations. Just say you don't like that it's AI art because you think it's morally wrong and stop being disingenuous.

So yeah, this is pretty much everything I believe about the topic.

I don't "defend" AI art, but my opposition to it is firmly rooted in my principles, and that means I refuse to uncritically accept any anti-AI art argument that goes against those same principles.

If you think not accepting and parroting every Anti-AI art argument I encounter because some of them are ideologically rooted in things I disagree with makes me indistinguishable from "AI techbros" you're working under a fucked up dichotomy.

[csuitebitches]

On Being Well Spoken

I recently received a request about posting something regarding being well spoken.

Something you need to realise is that you’re not going to become well-spoken overnight. You need to practice on people. You need to SPEAK.

I used to stutter so badly that I could barely speak a whole sentence.

Flash forward a few years. I pitched my start up in front of a crowd, I joined Model United Nations in high school and college, I’ve been invited to speak on my entrepreneurial experience by some top universities in my country. It’s taken a lot to get here. And I’m still not where I want to be.

1. Apps to track progress and help you get better at public speaking

An app that you can use: “Speeko.”

I used to use this, it is beginner friendly and you can improve your public speaking skills as well.

2. Use topic generators

Go online and look up a topic generator. Generate a random topic, video yourself speaking on that topic. Don’t give yourself time to prepare anything - read the topic and start speaking. Set a time limit - you’ll realise that speaking for even 2 minutes can be quite difficult at times.

Not only does this make you realise that you may have limited language skills, but it will also make you realise exactly where you’re falling behind. Note down things in a journal.

- is grammar the issue?

- Lack of vocabulary?

- Too many filler sounds?

- Knowledge gap?

This is also a great idea if you’re at an intermediate level of learning a language/ polishing a language. Do this everyday and maintain a diary on your improvement.

3. Reading out loud

Select a news article or any article. Read out loud, slowly and steadily. Pronounce every syllable calmly.

A two minute read should take 5 minutes to read out loud. That’s how slow you should go. Not more than 4-5 words per breath.

Your tongue needs to get used to different syllables and sounds. Practice will help.

4. Talk in real life

Talk to anyone and everyone whenever you can.

Ask your barista how their day is going.

Ask your work or university security if they’ve had a good day and if they ate today.

Chat with your taxi driver about their life. I always start with asking them if they are from the city we’re travelling in. Even if you’re from that city, act like a tourist. Where are the best eateries? The conversation eventually goes to personal questions. How many children do they have, and what do they do? What do they like about the city?

You’ll learn the art of small talk only through practice. No book or guide can actually prepare you. You have to practice, practice and practice.

5. Diaphragm breathing

Diaphragm breathing is very important. Look up some YouTube videos for reference. You essentially breathe from your tummy (stomach goes in and out; not chest going up and down). This is a great calming exercise too.

6. Stuttering tongue/ jaw exercise videos

These are great because they really do prep your jaw and tongue well. The videos could include tongue stretches, placing your tongue on your palette correctly, etc. Search on YouTube.

7. Body posture

You really need to work on your posture too. Sit up straight. Back, STRAIGHT. Chin up, shoulders relaxed. Something as simple as posture can change your level of confidence.

8. Pranayama

A yoga exercise for breathing. You can find a guided video on YouTube for sure.

9. Vocabulary

Invest your time in expanding your vocabulary. There’s enough apps and games that can help you with that, if you aren’t fond of reading. A sign of being well spoken is having great vocabulary.

Start by looking up the synonyms of everyday words.

“I’m upset”

- how many different words can you find for upset?

“I had a crazy day today”

- one can easily use “hectic”, “chaotic” “lively” instead

10. Idioms

Idioms, phrases, sayings - look up common idioms in your language of choice. Aim to use at least 3 new idioms on 3 separate occasions in a week while you speak. You need to understand when and where you can use the idioms in your vocabulary.

11. Knowing when to switch

You can’t talk like a 50 year old heiress to a 10 year old child; you need to get down to their level.

If someone is clearly not a native speaker and is struggling to put words together, don’t use difficult words around them.

If you’re meeting with someone high profile, refrain from using slang.

The best speakers know when to switch their level of language.

You can’t use one singular type of speaking with everyone. You need to understand that there is a time and place for everything - and you’ll be able to switch like a pro only when you actually speak and start gaining experience.

#c suite #powerful woman #ceo aesthetic #personal growth #that girl #productivity #strong women #getting your life together #feminine energy #balance #speaking #public speaking #speech #speaking tips #speech tips #stammering #stammering tips #practice #debate #MUN #speak out loud #how to speak confidently #being well spoken #well spoken #talk to me #how to talk #how to talk to people #small talk #conversation #conversationalist

[troublesomesnitch]

Phonesex with Aemond

Modern!Aemond x Reader

Modern AU - Aemond calls you after the dinner fight, and you cheer him up in the best way you can.

Contents: some quick smut. New relationship, mentions of oral sex, p in v sex and brief anal exploration (f receiving).

Warnings: brief mention of terminal illness.

Words: 3300

Thank you @arcielee for test-reading, tidying and generally helping out with this little experimental fic!

It has been six days since Aemond kissed you goodbye and shoved his skis and his snow gear and his aluminium suitcase into the back of a taxi. Six days, and you haven't heard from him since, not a single message, and no indication that he's read yours either. Six days, and the farewell kiss was just a sterile peck on the side of your mouth, because the driver was watching, and Aemond was in a foul mood already.

You suppose the thought of two weeks with one's extended family can do that to a person. And especially when one's family is as messy as Aemond's.

They're in the tabloids sometimes, Aegon with a model on his arm, Rhaenyra spotted topless in Ibiza, Viserys leaving the hospital looking more dead than alive. Old money, and every bit the stereotype too, with their luncheons and country estates and public feuds over inheritance. And the incident, of course. But Aemond never talks about that.

The family trip is solely his father's idea. Or, his father's command, really. His final wish; that they should all spend one last Christmas together at the chalet, eating venison and going cross-country skiing and whatever else rich people do on their alpine retreats. It is all very Town & Country, so far removed from anything you know. They have a coat of arms, for fucks sake, and Aemond wears it engraved on the back of his watch; on the cufflinks that sit in a velvet box atop his dresser. For special occasions, and you'd be lying if you said the thought had never crossed your mind: Aemond in coat and tie and cufflinks, yourself decked out in white and his mother's antique veil. Champagne fountain and monogrammed napkins and an article in Vogue Weddings. Double spread.

But you're getting way ahead of yourself. You have only been seeing each other for about three months, and it is still very new and foreign. Terrifying as well, and your heart leaps to your throat when your phone starts ringing and Aemond's name lights up on the screen.

Six days, and it's a quarter to midnight now, so that almost makes it seven.

"Hey," he says softly. "Did I wake you?"

"No!“ you exclaim, a little too excitedly despite your efforts to sound casual. “I was just watching something. How's St. Moritz?"

"Fine," he says, but it doesn't sound at all convincing, and there's a faint sound in the background. Like a scraping noise, and you imagine that he's picking at his cuticles; at the little chips in his nails.

"Aemond," you call, somewhat alarmed by the silence. "Is everything okay?"

The scraping gets louder before it finally stops and Aemond says sort of.

There was a fight at supper, apparently. An actual fight, with punching and shoving and everything. Straight out of Real Housewives, only even more insane, and Aemond started it, because of course he did. And all because of a stupid joke his nephew made.

"Isn't he like, fourteen?" you ask, and Aemond sighs on the other end of the line.

"Yeah," he mutters. "Something like that".

Jesus.

You are tempted to ask him why he would do such a thing, but you kind of already know. Because of his father, because of his sister, because of the incident. Because Viserys would rather dote on his grandsons than his own children, and because Aemond has chronic pains, and the prosthetic gets itchy, and he dented his car when he couldn't see how close that concrete pillar actually was.

And probably also because he doesn't hold his liquor very well.

"Aemond, you're a grown man," you begin, and your voice is kind and gentle, but you can almost hear how he's pinching the bridge of his nose. "I mean, I understand why you'd be upse - angry, but like. He's a child."

"I know," he sighs, shuffling around with something. "I shouldn't have done it.”  

There's the click of a lighter and then a deep exhale as he blows out smoke, and it reminds you of when you first met. You used to watch Aemond all the time before you worked up the courage to talk to him. He would lean so leisurely against the wall, cigarette in hand and that haughty smirk on his lips; leather jacket, black jeans, hair artfully tousled and tied back. Tall and handsome and just so fucking cool.

"Thought you quit," you tease, and it sounds a little chiding, but it isn't meant like that.

"I did," Aemond says. "I got this one from my uncle - it would have been rude to decline.”

He is quiet then, but it's a sort of contemplative silence. Like somehow you can feel there is more.

"It pisses me off," he finally says. "This whole charade - it's exhausting.”

Yes, you think. It must be. All of his family trapped under the same roof, forced to confront so many painful memories, yet act as though none of it ever happened. Smile and laugh and play house, and all so Viserys Targaryen can pretend he was a better man. Go to his grave with the comfortable illusion that he did not create the rift that tore his family apart.

If Aemond was with you right now, you would wrap your arms around him and kiss his face and his lovely hands, but all you can do at this moment is give a weak yeah, I understand.

"It has been the most miserable week," he moans. "Although - Aegon did fall off a lift today. He's fine, it was just a T-bar. But that was fun."

You giggle. "Oh, poor Aegon.”

"It was his own fault," Aemond snorts. "He had Jägerbombs for lunch. Anyway - " he clears his throat, back to the brooding mood and somber voice. "I'm sorry I called you so late. And for not being in touch. And for... everything else.”

"It's fine," you shrug. "I don't mind. But, Aemond - " you pause, thinking of how best to word the next part, "I think you should at least consider apologising to -"

"No." he cuts in. "Absolutely not.”

There's an awkward silence then, and you worry you might have overstepped your boundaries. He is so difficult to read sometimes, so elusive. You never quite know what he needs from you, sympathy, or flattery, or reassurance, or nothing at all.

You can, however, think of a way to distract him from his brooding. And maybe sex isn't the healthiest way to cope with one's issues, but still. It is miles better than beating up family members.

You twirl a lock of hair around your finger, even though he can’t see it. "What are you doing right now? Are you alone?"

“Yes,“ he says, curious. “Why?”

"What are you wearing?"

"Same thing I always wear," he responds, but then his voice turns coy and teasing, and he asks "what are you wearing?"

You look down at your fuzzy socks, your faded shorts, the worn-out knickers underneath.

"Honestly? Not anything nice."

Aemond laughs, a real laugh this time, and then he tells you just make something up.

The first thing that comes to your mind is that dress you saw the other day. Aemond would like it. He is not into extravagant lingerie and things like that, always likes it best when you are just you. Dry patches on your lips, bruises on your legs and all. Natural. 

But he is still a man though. So, not too natural.

"I'm wearing - I'm wearing a little slip. Silk, and it's the prettiest colour. It is soft to the touch," - you run a finger up your thigh, imagining it - "and it is very short. My legs are out and everything. And my tits look so good in it.”

"They always do," Aemond says, and he sounds a little husky when he asks what is underneath?

"Those panties you liked last time. With the little bows on them?"

"Yeah," he breathes. "I remember.”

"Good. Just the panties, and nothing else. And the dress is so thin - it feels like nothing when you touch it."

You lay back on top of your bed, your hand working its way down the waistband of your sleeping shorts, phone pressed to your ear. 

"I want to touch you," Aemond sighs, voice all soft and gentle. "I want to feel your body against mine.”

You blush. He is quite the romantic sometimes. Jesus, Aemond is so out of your league. You can hardly believe he'd even look in your direction, let alone kiss you and hold you and let you sleep with your head on his chest.

"Aemond" you whisper, slowly stroking your between your legs. "I'm getting all wet. All wet for you".

His breath hitches, and there's a faint oh, followed by the rustling of fabric as he palms himself over his pants. Lowering his voice and breathing touch yourself.

"I already am" you purr. "I wish it was you, though. Wish you could feel how much I want you."

Aemond says fuck, he wishes that too. You're getting him so hard. So hard just thinking about your pretty cunt.

"I'd like to suck your cock" you sigh longingly, and he immediately responds with a sharp breath that makes warmth spread in your stomach.

"Wait -" he mutters. "Hang on".

You hear the metallic clink of his belt, the sound of his zipper, and you bite your lip thinking about what he's doing. Taking his stiff cock in hand, brushing slender fingers along the shaft, running a thumb over the tip to collect the little drops that have already leaked from it. He has the prettiest cock, long and thick and veiny. Uncut, and blushing red at the tip when you slide his foreskin back. 

How you wish you could feel it in your mouth.

"Tell me how you'd do it" Aemond pleads, and there's a slight strain in his voice that suits it so well. 

"I'll start out slow," you whisper, "with just my tongue and my hand. Get your cock big and hard before I take you in my mouth. And then I'll wrap my lips around the head, and I'll press my tongue against the little slit there. And - and I’ll lick the tip of your cock until you’re begging me for more.”

He sighs, and you can hear how his hand settles into a steady rhythm, up and down over his hard cock. Filthy. 

You close your eyes and continue.

"I'd take you so deep, all the way to the back of my throat. And I would tease you - I'd be real fucking mean. I want you leaking in my mouth, all needy and desperate for me. Like, so you can barely hold it back anymore. You'd be ready to explode.”

"Don't stop - " he pants, still keeping up the stroking, pausing just briefly to spit into his hand.

"I'll edge you before I let you come. So many times, you'll be desperate for release. I want your balls so tight and heavy - all tender from how much you need to come - ”

Aemond moans, and he's stroking himself faster, tugging and tugging and filling his bedroom with damp, lewd noises. You know how he likes it; firm grip when he moves up, slack going back down, slight twist at the tip.

"And then?"

"I'd let you come in my mouth."

"No," he breathes. "I want to come inside of you.”

You give a little giggle; he always wants that. Occasionally he’ll finish all over your breasts, or in your mouth, but mostly he likes it the old fashioned way. Your bodies molded together and his cock pulsing deep inside of you. Pressing his forehead to yours or moaning into the back of neck. 

You like that too - but there are other things you might like to try as well. 

"You should come on my panties," you say coyly. "Like, inside them. And then I'd wear them all day, and just walk around with your cum between my legs.”

Aemond groans again, loudly, hoarse and strained and so fucking hot.

"You'd like that?" you tease. "I would feel it there all day. All wet and warm in my little panties. Right against my cunt."

"Fuck," he moans. "Fuck - I'd like that so much."

The sounds of his tugging get louder and faster, and you picture him laid out on his bed, cock throbbing in his hand, hips thrusting up and up into his own grip. Lone eye closed and mouth falling open. 

He lets out a soft moan, and a whine - and then the stroking abruptly stops. Close call, that one. Aemond curses, and you can hear him taking deep breaths, calming his body, halting the mounting need to ejaculate. Too soon.

“Can't wait to have you,” he mutters, and you give a quiet hum in response. 

“Please tell me how.”

He takes a slow, steadying breath.

"I want to be on top of you" he whispers, low, so no one will hear.  "Don't care if you're on your back or what, as long as you're underneath me".

"I'd be on my stomach. You can fuck me from behind".

“Yes,” he sighs. “I want to put my cock so deep inside you. I want you to feel how hard you make me. And I'll pin you down - I'll hold you in place when I take you" - his voice goes all ragged as he starts to slowly stroke his cock again - "fuck you're so beautiful when you're under me."

You mewl, and Aemond’s breath hitches.

“Yeah, and I'll fuck you slow, but hard. I want you squirming on my cock…”  he trails off, and for a moment there is only the sound of heavy breathing, his and yours. 

You had paused your own ministrations before, too focused on finding the right words, but now you begin your gentle stroking again. Underneath your knickers, fingers massaging right over your clit, so good that you let out a little whimper. 

“I love feeling you inside of me” you breathe, “I love it when you lie on top of me - ”

“Yeah?” He gasps, and you bite your lip. 

“Yeah. And I love it when you touch my - ass. Oh It feels so good when you touch me like that…”

Just saying it makes you a little flustered. You would not consider yourself very prudish, but there are some things that make you feel bashful, and this is one of them, the things he does to your backside when you’re together. And Aemond knows, and maybe that makes it even more arousing for him, the filthiness of it, the taboo. 

“How” he moans, his tone urgent and so incredibly intimate. “How do you want me to touch you -”

You have to take a very deep breath before you continue - you feel so sheepish, talking about that, but you are a woman in love, so for Aemond you’ll do your best. 

“I want you to slide your hand down my back and in between my cheeks,” you whisper, blushing all over. “It makes me so wet… feels so good when you caress me there - when you brush your fingers right over my tight little hole while you’re fucking me - maybe next time I’ll let you slip one inside…“

Aemond gives a strangled groan at that, quickening his strokes and hissing oh fuck. He is so close now, you can hear it. 

“Say my name” he begs, breathing so fast and tugging frantically on his cock. All hard and swollen now, his hips thrusting up, his balls pulling tight; oh you can imagine it so easily. 

“Aemond” you whisper. “Aemond, my love” - he moans louder, strokes harder - Aemond, I want you to fuck me, I want to feel your big, hard cock - 

Aemond chokes out a sob, and you say his name one last time as he reaches his peak. 

He holds back when he comes, muffling the helpless groans and grunts that you always love so much. But you can hear his strained sighs, his ragged breaths, and the sound is only slightly distorted through the speaker. If you close your eyes it's like he's there with you, gasping right in your ear. 

Oh you can’t wait to see him again, to get to touch him, cuddle up to him at night and run your finger down the perfect angle of his nose.

"You didn't come," Aemond says, accusingly, and you hold back a chuckle because he doesn't like it when you laugh at him. But it is as amusing as it is sweet, this need of his to do everything to perfection. Like if every time he is intimate with you isn't the BEST sex of your life, then he has failed as a lover; as a man.

“I did it on purpose” you reassure. “I'm saving it for you. All for you. Only for you.”

Aemond gives a somewhat dissatisfied hum, but he is occupied with something else now, moving around and fiddling with things. Cleaning himself up, you suppose. If only you were there to do it for him, you'd lick his cum right off his skin.

There is a loud noise in the background all of a sudden, someone knocking on Aemond’s door, and he scrambles to make himself presentable and tells you to hang on. The sounds are muffled - you assume he is covering the microphone - but you can hear another man's voice, and Aemond saying yes, I'll be right down, and then just fuck off, will you when the intruder won't take a hint.

"Sorry about that," he says awkwardly. "Aegon wants to go out. I should go with him".

You giggle at the thought - it is difficult to imagine Aemond at one of those tacky aprés-ski bars, glow stick and vodka-cranberry in hand. “Sounds fun!”

"Yeah, well, my mother would want me to,” he says sullenly. "You know, make sure he doesn't do anything stupid.”

"What's the age of consent in Switzerland?" you jest, but Aemond just gives an exasperated sigh and mutters too bloody low.

You pause, unsure of what to say next, and again there's that loaded silence until he clears his throat.

"I will tell them about you. My family - I'll tell them soon. I promise.”

You can feel heat rising in your cheeks. 

Aemond purposely keeps you far away from his family, and he’ll go to great lengths to avoid running into them when you’re together. In fact he prefers not to go out at all, and you have never questioned it or complained. He’s got you hook, line and sinker - could tell you right to your face that he was embarrassed to be seen with you, and you would still be at his beck and call. 

You shrug. “It's fine. Don't worry about it. You don't have to tell them. It's fine.”

“No it isn't,” he says gravely. “You're important to me. So I should treat you as such.”

He says something else after that too, but you aren't listening, still stuck on the words you just heard. You're important to me. You're important.

It makes your heart leap with joy, and you are only pulled back to reality when Aemond calls out your name, and then sweetheart?

He doesn't call you that very often. It is always so nice when he does.

“Sorry” you blush. “I zoned out. But - I've missed you. I miss you. It's nice to hear your voice again.”

There's no way to tell, but somehow you feel like Aemond is smiling.

“Yeah,” he says softly. “Yours too.”

You tell him to have fun with Aegon and whatever horrid establishment they end up at, and Aemond tells you goodnight and says he'll call you as soon as he's back home. He doesn't say he misses you too, but that's okay. You know he does.

Because you're important.

#modern aemond x reader #modern aemond x you #aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen smut #aemond x you

[upsidedownwithsteve]

A message.

I’d like to start by saying once more (due to it being the cause of so many hateful messages) that I support Palestine.

I donate to charities that fund several of the organisations that help and I use my business in the best way I can to give my services for free to fundraisers that also raise money for these causes. Shy of showing you my personal bank statements and private emails between myself and my clients, I don’t have any ways of showing this on tumblr.

I have several social media platforms, I have a business that I run, I have friends and family I talk to, I have an entire life off of this website. I choose to use tumblr to post my writing and for the most part, it’s become a really important space for me. Writing is one of the few things I truly do for myself. I enjoy it immensely and it can really bring me a lot of peace.

I choose not to blog anything other my writing, other people’s writing and general fandom related things on my blog because I like to keep it as that small space for myself and one of the things I love most. I understand wholly that that is a privilege in itself and I will not shy away from that fact.

However, I will not condone being hunted for the choices I make. For the vast majority of you, I am a stranger online and no one, absolutely no one, knows what I do off of this website. I won’t allow anyone to judge me on what they don’t see and don’t understand.

The size of my following was not a choice I made, it was not something I deliberately aimed for and it was not something I tried hard to make sure I achieved. It wasn’t the goal of this blog. I don’t deem myself capable of “influencing” anyone in anyway. I’m a fanfiction writer. I’m not a politician, I don’t claim to be the most educated person on political and worldwide matters. I simply would like to believe that everyone tries to help in anyway they can. I know not everyone has the financial means to donate and instead they choose to raise awareness in other ways - that’s absolutely okay.

But I - and others - do not have to follow the rule book someone else deemed law. You see, I gave my views and reasons and it wasn’t good enough. And now, if I chose to reblog certain things, I’m pretty sure I’d be dragged for being performative, or “back tracking.” I fear that with some people, who like to hide behind an anonymous button, I cannot win. Despite an argument revolving around real life issues, I think I can safely say it came across as a very personal attack.

As other people have mentioned before, I also don’t enjoy the idea of writing smut and happy ever after’s about our favourite fictional men and then reblogging the death of others in real life straight after. I know that’s the world right now. I’m aware. I read articles, I watch the news, I follow accounts on Twitter, on Instagram and I try and keep myself as up to date and as educated as possible. I just don’t show that on this one platform.

As many of you know, I do run my own business. I’m also five months pregnant. I’m definitely experiencing more stress than I usually do. I’m very happy and enjoying my pregnancy immensely but I struggled with sickness and tiredness for the majority of it so far. Whats to come in the next four months and beyond fills me with excitement and anxiety and nerves. Coming onto tumblr and writing about fiction is a little reprieve from that - again, a privilege I am so aware of.

But I won’t be tolerating any more hateful messages, I won’t be arguing with anyone. I’m not lowering myself to it. You can talk about me passively aggressively, you can choose to hate me, that’s fine. I’m happy blocking people and moving on. Anons will be off indefinitely, it’s been proven that too many people are willing to hide behind them. After the messages regarding myself and my unborn child, quite frankly, there’s not a lot of trust left when it comes to knowing how far people will sink.

I’ve said all I’d like to say on the matter, I’ve told people where I stand, my views on the genocide that is occurring, what I’m able to do about it in my personal life and why I choose to keep this particular space the way I do.

I hope everyone can try to understand and respect that. If you don’t, that’s fine, that’s your prerogative. I don’t go out of my way to challenge, or police, or demand things from people I do not know. I hope that no one thinks that they have the right to do that to myself and others. I’m under no obligation to follow someone else’s rules.

I don’t know what the future holds for this blog, pregnancy and real life is very much taking priority over writing at the moment, but I do like to try when I can. I can’t lie either, the messages and their content that I received really left me feeling dejected and frustrated, this fandom really has turned into something rather poisonous. I’d like to be able to rise above it and in the mean time, even if I’m not always present, I’d like people to be able to access the stories I worked really hard on.

Thank you for reading,

Emmy 🧡

[shaunamilfman]

can u write jealous Jackie hcs? if u do, thanks in advance:)

you're welcome brooo. love jackie requests for sure don't even worry about it man

Jealous Jackie HC's

girl watches you like a fucking hawk whenever someone's talking to you. even if she's actively talking to someone else you'll catch her keeping an eye on the situation the whole time

walks up to you afterwards all like “so what were we talking about?? 😁😁” with a dangerous glint in her eyes. Jackie Taylor can be terrifying when she puts her mind to it. god forbid someone makes a serious move on you. she might even sic Shauna on them

Jackie will know someone's entire life story if she's jealous of them. walk into the living room to see her on her laptop looking at the layout of their house on a realtor website. be glad you left before she built it on the sims and set it in fire. it was… disturbing. 

she sips at her drink to distract herself and ends up getting fucking wasted every time. accidentally throws up on your shoes and still asks if you think she's pretty afterward

Jackie gets more insecure when she sees you talking to a man (even if you're obviously not interested in them), but gets extremely jealous when she sees you talking to a woman. lives for running those girls off. walks over to talk to them and is like “hey I heard a rumor that…” until they get so uncomfortable they leave

Jackie gives shauna a play-by-play of every single event in such excruciating detail that Shauna's tapping her head against the wall hoping she somehow knocks herself out. Shauna pleads with you to never talk to anyone ever again so she doesn't have to hear about it again. 

1996 Jackie taking notes from one of those teen magazine articles like “10 ways to keep your man from straying” like it's her fucking job (someone breathed in your direction). absolutely does not work for her. you ask her why she's been so fucking weird all week and she looks frustrated that you didn't fall even deeper in love with her like the article promised you would. somehow it's your fault, she knows it. 

Jackie tries taping their face on a dart board because she's seen it in movies but can't get a single dart to land on the board and ends up madder than she started. 

self-indulgent but thinking about Jackie knowing you're nearsighted and drunk Jackie stealing your glasses because “why would you need to see other girls further away?? 🙄🙄” 

Jackie Taylor is a master of pretending to drunkenly pour her drink on whoever she's jealous about. all wide-eyed apologies and slurring her words as she looks so genuinely sorry that you even start to believe her it it wasn't for that smug look that crossed her face as they walk off to change

she's all fucking over you. climbing into your lap, arms wrapped around your shoulders, faced buried in your neck, whispering little things in your ear. imagine how close you think two people could get. not close enough. Jackie's got that beat. 

doesn't like feeling jealous so she'll flirt with other people to get your attention because she wants you to be the jealous one instead. except she always makes the worst fucking choices. it's always like Shauna (which 🤷 is hot. let's be real. you're into it.) or someone she's visibly not interested in or someone visibly not interested in her. she just sees red and can't think straight I'm afraid

Jackie conspicuously reading a newspaper she doesn't realize is upside down with those mustache glasses in the corner of the restaurant while you're getting dinner with an old friend to catch up

#jackie thoughts 🩷 #anon #yellowjackets x reader #yellowjackets x you #jackie taylor x reader

[comradekatara]

where do you see piandao fitting into your ever-expanding modern highschool au? he's honestly one of my favourite minor (non-gaang) characters to be honest

i mean obviously piandao is some kind of mentor figure to sokka. i think he sort of fills the hole hakoda leaves in his absence (which is its own complicated thing that i don’t have time to get into rn). they would meet earlier than in canon. he’s probably an english teacher.

at first he thinks sokka is plagiarizing his papers because what kind of middle schooler knows how to cite articles they accessed from jstor, but eventually he realizes that sokka is simply not receiving enough enrichment in his enclosure and offers to give him personal classes where they’ll read more challenging books. and sokka agrees on the condition that he’s allowed to bring yue (because they’re codependent and do literally everything together) because he knows that she could also use more enrichment in her enclosure. so the three of them meet every saturday morning in the library to discuss paradise lost and the like every week for years.

and then yue dies, and sokka loses all interest in showing up to the library on a saturday morning when he could sleep in until 3 pm. and he kind of loses touch with piandao, because he’s in high school now, so he no longer sees him in the halls or has time for their extracurriculars. and piandao doesn’t really know how to make sokka feel better about his girlfriend/best friend in the entire world dying, because even if he may feel like it sometimes, he is not actually his father. so they just lose touch for years.

sokka goes to college, moves away, meets new people. but then one day, sokka is back home for a holiday or something, and he runs into piandao at the jasmine dragon (they’re both friends with iroh). and he’s just elated to see him again, there’s none of that awkwardness or despair that permeated all their interactions after yue’s death. they’re just happy to get the opportunity to catch up after all this time.

sokka’s like “i can’t believe you put up with me, i was such a dumb kid” and piandao doesn’t have the heart to tell him that the first essay sokka ever wrote for class was so brilliant that he assumed sokka had just straight up copy pasted the entire thing from a publication because sokka is still going on about how “english was always my worst subject, i’ve always been way more of a stem guy, katara is the real writer of the family, she’s actually a freelance journalist now, i’m so proud of her” blah blah blah “it was nice of you to humor me, though. i know yue really loved our sessions.”

at which point piandao bravely resists the urge to take sokka by the shoulders and shake him, and instead simply asks him, “so how’s grad school?”

#10000dandelions #piandao #sokka #yue #modern au #asks #piandao&sokka #sokkaxyue #not so sneakily sneaking in writer katara as well bc ive been thinking abt that a lot lately #her articles would slap #also the hakoda absence is very convoluted #but just know that he doesn’t intentionally abandon them he doesn’t die and he isn’t in the army #so there.

[valeriefauxnom]

Unintentional Comedy - Dragalia and Feh Artwork Edition

So, remember Alfonse, from FEH?

Y'know, this dude?

For an okay crutch for those without Gala Euden or Albert or other handy light swords they didn't want to invest in, he was rather popular, only partly owed to any pre-established fondness FEH players had since they already knew him. People liked the more expanded personality we got than FEH's bare-bones story, additionally before they started trying to spice Alfonse up in more recent books.

In his story, however, one of the events that happening is Euden falling off a cliff, shortly followed by Alfonse.

Miraculously, cliff-falling isn't quite as dangerous in Dragalia Lost as in real life (also demonstrated by Leonidas in Stranded Scions, etc...), and the two survive. Alfonse has some sort of injury to his foot, however, conveniently hampering his ability to move but not much else.

Euden, being Euden and unwilling to throw anyone to the wolves, comes up with this idea:

Nothing atypical here, right?

...Well, as it was revealed in a book published two years later than his debut in Dragalia, Fire Emblem Heroes Character Illustrations, Volume 1...

Alfonse is 180cm tall, AKA 5'11.

...Is it any surprise coming from 195cm/6'5 and 180cm/5'11 parents? Someone check the Askran royal food for steroids that Sharena has apparently not been consuming, presumably because she's instead dining with heroes in the barracks.

I digress.

Now, as I've gone over before here, here's where it gets hilarious in retrospect.

In short, Ranzal, the resident big buff burly dude of Dragalia...is stated to be 6'1/185 in the joke comics.

...And while literally nobody else got an even vaguely-official number to their height, Dragalia instead opting for a 'comparison heights' to keep track of who's shorter and who's taller in a pair... Euden often seems to wind up in the 150-155cm/5'0-5'1 range or even shorter when in illustrations with Ranzal:

At most, I've seen him crack about 5'9/175cm in the comics, which aren't exactly a stable source of art, as demonstrated by these two panels, in which both seem to be on flat ground and standing pretty straight:

I need to stop before I mindlessly repeat the other post, but my point remains:

Euden, by most depictions, is tiny. A literal short prince/king.

And yet, no matter what way you slice it, he's trying to carry a dude that seems to be quite a bit taller, let's say. How much, we'll never know, but the fact remains he'd likely need to pull out a dragon phone to search 'how to carry people much taller than you?' just in case and hurriedly read a wikihow 10-step article explaining some strats, were it not for the fact that dragons would have destroyed smartphones in Dragalia a long time ago (good move, dragons....?).

I will admit that there are a few arts that frame them as the 'same height' but I would more point to the fact Euden, when drawn with crossover characters for promotional art, is usually portrayed on an 'equal footing', so as not to have one take up more space/attention. Also, the Feh team might not have even decided on a height for Alfy boy before!

Even then, he's still portrayed as shorter than 5'9/175cm Joker in some art:

So yeah. Crossover art is not exactly consistent, and all I can do is look to the general trend in the 'canon game' of him being absolutely dwarfed by Ranzal.

Now, it's one thing for Euden to be lugging about Alfonse for a while.

The idea he might have done so with such a potential height disparity is pure comedy.

No wonder he's so tired after a while, lugging about another human who is both taller, heavier, and also wearing armor!

Not only that, he later tries and partly succeeds in fighting heavily armored soldiers (who are admittedly aiming to capture him and kill Alfonse) with Alfonse 'draped across his back like a sack of potatoes'. Talk about determination, adrenaline, and/or the simple principle of 'small but mighty'!

Maybe that's why Alfonse was saying "I don't think that's wise" at the start there before he quickly found other rationale besides 'you sure you can give a piggyback without my feet dragging along the ground the whole way?'

My case rests, Your Honor: they unintentionally made part four of Alfonse's personal story a lot funnier to envision by publishing an art book 2 years after he first existed in Dragalia Lost!

#dragalia lost #fire emblem heroes

[timmie-p]

Ivan Interview translation

Ivan, the Next CF Star

Just two months after his debut, Ivan was selected as an ambassador for the famous luxury brand Q. Ivan is the first non-native 'pet human' to become an ambassador for Q. "Ivan's stoic yet playful visuals are perfect for capturing the diverse appeal of Q," said Q's chief designer.

Ivan, who recently topped the Alien Stage live voting, is being touted as the next big CF star after Luca. He's been inundated with requests from designers all over the world who want to put ads on his outfits. He has already collaborated with nine brands, all of them big brands. The public's attention is focused on how his growing popularity will affect the Alien stage.

Interview

Since the third round aired, it’s become very popular. Are you feeling the buzz?

Alien Stage is growing in popularity every day. Did the crew recognise me during the CF shoot? It's funny because at the beginning of the show, there weren't many people in the world who recognized me, and now there are so many people that I can't get through the streets by myself. (Laughs)

You’re currently ranked #78, at this rate top 20 is possible, isn’t it?

Thank you for your kind words. I'd love to keep the momentum going and make it to the top 20, but I'll leave the choice up to the masses.

You have a lot of titles that describe you, right? Do you have a favourite?

My favorite is "Blocell's #1 Brand Reputation" from a recent article. It makes me feel like all those days of photo shoots and commercials weren't in vain.

What do you think makes you unique?

I can think of more bad things than good (laughs), but, um… I think the thing that fans talk about a lot is my partial fang. I think I have a normal face, but there are many people who remember me for my fang.

What’s your secret to getting the best shots?

The day before my schedule, I study the brand I'm going to shoot for so that I can clearly understand the directions on set. Knowing the brand in detail is fundamental as a model. I also think it's important to make it a habit to take care of my body.

What is your ideal girlfriend? Lots of girls around the world want to know!

I don’t have a specific dream girl, I’ve never really thought about it. If I were to choose one…. No, I don’t have one. (Laughs)

Are you close with Till?

What’s your definition of “close”? (Laughs)

We’re just okay. Mediocre at best.

Let me ask you straight up. Do you think you can beat Till?

I don’t know… If you could perform as wildly as him, you might win too, right?

Say something to Till, your next opponent!

…..Keep it up?

read it for your own here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/ivan-interview-99972496

also i’m sure an official english version will be out soon i just like doing these lol

okay!!! i feel like vivinos is dropping red flags here but idk 🥺 ive already been theorising that ivan will be the one to lose and the audience here seems to support him too much..

i translated “힘내” previously as “Come on” in the snippet where till punched ivan but i think it makes more sense here to translate it as “Keep it up” (it’s just generally words of uplifting encouragement)

also for the part about his fang my translator translated that as “false teeth” and boy when i tell you i was confused 💀

also following up the question abt his dream girl immediately with a question about his relationship with till.. real subtle there… kinda makes me go uueeugguh tho

#alien stage #alnst ivan #official art #translations

[genericpuff]

A theory as crazy as it is profound in a silly r/im14andthisisdeep kinda way

So there's this conspiracy theory of sorts that's been whispered within the ULO discord and subreddit the last little bit. I don't think anyone's made an outright statement on it yet but it's definitely something people have been casually talking about in the comment sections and chatrooms, mostly as a joke, but also as a thought experiment.

And that thought experiment is concerning the notion that Lore Olympus could very well have become a poorly-made AI comic.

Not necessarily the art, as we've already dissected the art process plenty of times before and it points to Rachel simply being bad at team management and using her mismanaged team as a way to circumvent any real effort on her own part.

But the writing. There's just something about Lore Olympus' writing that's become incredibly stiff, boring, and alien.

Disclaimer before I continue: this is a tinfoil hat theory, and a lot of the points I'm about to discuss can be easily proven with far more reasonable explanations, so take it with mountains of salt. That said, I do think it's something worth talking about as we're currently in an era of mass AI-takeover in the art and writing scene, and let's face it, Lore Olympus nowadays really does feel like it's either being written by an alien, or an amalgamation of possessed animatronic endoskeletons wearing a human skinsuit. So viewer beware, this post is full of speculation and tinfoil hat wearing, read at your own discretion and don't take everything I'm about to say 100% seriously.

Let's get started.

THE TONE OF VOICE

This is where that whole "animatronic wearing a skinsuit" vibe really shines, so I figured it would be where I'd start. Lore Olympus... does not feel human. It's dialogue often feels stilted and scripted, none of the characters have any sense of personal voice, and it often feels like the dialogue is coming straight out of a sterilized Wikipedia article.

There are also often times when characters will say one thing only to be responded to with an entirely other thing. It comes across as randomly generated, like the dialogue is being created based off a script that is only given prompts as to where it needs to end up - so everything between Point A and Point B ends up feeling like non-sequitur filler at best and outright nonsense at worst.

In fact, there can be better tone of voice and dialogue found in the legitimate AI conversations of Lore Olympus themed ChatGPT bots.

And this is a bot that's self-aware it's a bot, so it definitely has that going for it.

The more likely explanation: Rachel's bad at writing. She's planning these episodes maybe 2 weeks ahead at a time at best so she's just throwing dialogue in to keep readers spending money and meet her panel quotas. Her characters have no voice because they aren't, in and of themselves, characters. She hasn't given them any depth beyond their appearance and she clearly has next to no understanding of writing outside her own headspace (and her actual headspace as we've seen is... yikes) so it's not surprising that her dialogue-writing is on par with Shenmue 3. And Shenmue 3 is a game with real human-written dialogue that exists so it's not a stretch that something like LO's bad writing could be entirely the fault of a human either LOL

THE NARRATIVE INCONSISTENCIES

It seems since the start of S2.2 (post-mid-season hiatus which starts us off with the 10 year time skip) narrative inconsistencies and plotholes have become far more egregious, sometimes contradicting itself within the same episode. Almost like scenes are just happening from single idea prompts and no actual structure underneath the surface.

The more likely explanation: Just like the first point about stilted dialogue, this could easily be chalked up to Rachel just not committing to goal-oriented writing. She doesn't have any sort of end point planned for any of these plotlines, she just drags them out until she can finally think of a way to resolve them, if she even resolves them (many often aren't resolved, or are simply left as a "yep, that's it, moving on" type ending, ex. Eros and Psyche).

STRANGE SYNTAX AND CONSTANT TYPOS

This goes hand in hand with the first point about stilted dialogue, but part of what makes everything feel so stiff and robotic is how often the sentences are structured in very... odd ways. From the lack of contractions that make sentences feel less natural-

-to the strange choice of words that no human being in a modern setting would ever use (and LO is, again, set in a modern setting and is trying to portray the gods as being 'just like us')-

-to the numerous typos and spelling errors.

(there are so many I could post here but the "his deam" one always makes me laugh lmao)

It really feels like a lot of these sentences were pulled straight out of Twitter or a Wikipedia article. As a result, it never feels like these characters are talking to each other, but at each other.

As for the typos, at this point, Rachel really has no excuse for how frequent they are. Fortunately, she has hired a copy editor recently which seems to have mitigated these errors, but if there were a bot involved, it wouldn't be farfetched to think that the bot would also make spelling mistakes and stilted dialogue if it's been trained off Rachel's past material which is, y'know... full of spelling mistakes and stilted dialogue.

The more likely explanation: It's a well known fact that Rachel has dyslexia, so I'm not going to fault her for struggling with spelling things right. None of this is to shame people who struggle with dyslexia and reading disorders. But the fact of the matter is, Rachel is a multi-million dollar creator in the year 2023 where spellcheck exists. It's wild that she's only now taken on a copy editor. Literally any of her assistants that she's had for the last few years could have done that for her. It's great that she's hired a copy editor but it feels like too little too late. That isn't going to fix the stilted dialogue, either, which just comes down to, yet again, Rachel being a bad writer. And possibly a series of animatronic endoskeletons hiding in a human skinsuit.

REACTING TO CRITICISM

The irony of this post is that it asks not to take every speculation I write here seriously because it's just that, speculation, and we shouldn't get carried away with conspiracy theories... which is exactly the sentiment we had back when we initially suspected Rachel of spying in the criticism groups, which turned out to be true. It's basically public knowledge at this point that Rachel lurks in the criticism groups, thanks to both testimonials from others who have been in groups who got hijacked by Rachel (see: Broseidon's Palace of Fishposting) and the 'clapbacks' in LO that are clearly meant for the audience.

But it's wild to think that Rachel would really spend time in criticism groups when she's said it herself that she "doesn't like criticism". And considering she already spends an absurd amount of time on social media, it would be really ridiculous if she was still finding time to also lurk in the critic groups and concoct ways to 'get back' at them.

Unless, of course, there was a bot parsing criticism hashtags like #antiloreolympus and #loreolympuscritical. I can personally attest to the fact that Rachel must be subscribed to hashtags in some capacity because I've had Lore Olympus fanart (way back in the day when it was actual fanart and not foe-art) get retweeted by Rachel herself literally seconds after posting. So either Rachel is just constantly refreshing the search feed all day, or she's directly fed tweets and posts with the hashtags she's subscribed to.

The more likely explanation: Rachel literally just spends an absurd amount of time on social media and considering she clearly only involves herself in the beginning and end process of drawing her comic - and only has a buffer 1-2 weeks ahead of time - she's definitely got plenty of time on her hands to lurk and hurt her own feelings in the criticism spaces. She could also just have her mods sending things to her as well. Either way it's icky behavior and I wish she'd do herself and her mental health a favor and just stay out of the fandom spaces, they aren't for her, they're for the fans.

HOW IS IT GETTING WORSE?

Consider everything I've laid out here. Remember that Lore Olympus is a comic that's been in development since 2017, and in the Originals catalogue since 2018. Its Originals version turned 5 years old in March and technically LO is well into the 6-7 year age range in total. It's absolutely absurd that after all these years, not only has the story fallen apart, but the art has lost the quality it once had. Comics are a medium that encourage improvement, you're drawing lots and typically the same characters and settings over and over again, it's natural progression to get better at doing it over time. And yet, Rachel seems to be getting worse at it, and her involvement in the comic seems to be shrinking with each year.

Of course, improvement is optional. Not every comic gets better over time. Which brings me to my final piece on this matter.

The most likely explanation: Rachel is burnt out and not interested in LO anymore. This is the longest project she's ever done, and while it's not the first webcomic she's done on a schedule, it is the first one that's made it further than a handful of chapters (The Doctor Pepper Show ended after about 1-2 years, not even making it to 10 chapters). She even stated herself in the beginning that LO was a project she'd "never finish".

While it is a testament to how far LO has come from its humble beginnings, I think it also serves as a precautionary tale - success can come at the expense of your happiness and integrity if you've trapped yourself in a project that no longer fulfills you.

Rachel's never finished a long-term project, and at this rate, it's hard to say when she will. As well known as it is that she has dyslexia, it's also well known that she has ADHD, and speaking as an ADHD creator myself, I can fully empathize with and understand that webcomics are hard to create, and get more exhausting to see through with each passing chapter. There's a reason not everyone does long-term comics like this, they're incredibly hard to manage and require a lot of commitment. Even I've found my commitment to current projects wavering as the honeymoon phase has worn off and I've sunk into the reality that is monotonous work, panel after panel, episode after episode, deadline after deadline.

If Rachel were a more experienced creator and more self-aware of her own limitations and work methodology back in 2018, Lore Olympus likely would have never been dragged out this long. She may have gotten the chance to finish it while she was still happy with it, or at least leave it behind when she was ready to move on. While I'm sure the allure of signing on with Originals felt worth it at the time - especially when we didn't know yet just how exploitative Webtoons was - it clearly hasn't benefitted her in the long run because it's tethered her to a project that she never felt wholly dedicated to in the first place. A project that's now less about telling a story and connecting with an audience and more about generating clicks and revenue.

She can claim all she wants in her interviews that Persephone and Hades were her "muses" as a child, but the writing is on the wall - LO was a passing fancy that stuck around too long after its heartbeat gave out.

What it's become now is an endoskeleton on life support, made up of statistics and analytics, struggling to stay alive from inside of a colorful but rotting skinsuit that only barely resembles a living thing.

#lore olympus critical #lo critical #antiloreolympus #anti lore olympus #long post #essay post #yet another post that i didn't mean to open with a joke and then make deep but i did LOL #i swear to god this was supposed to be a shitpost

[lauralot89]

Loveless

I'm late on this because the book was published in 2020, but I only heard about it in the last month when I was reading an article about asexuality in fiction but in case anyone is out of the loop like me let me tell you about this glory

Loveless is a YA novel by Alice Oseman, author of Heartstopper and Solitaire. It tells the story of Georgia Warr, freshman at Durham University, and her realization that while she's in love with the idea of romance, the actuality of a romantic/sexual relationship repulses her.

Alice Oseman herself is aroace, which makes perfect sense because throughout the novel I kept asking myself, "How does she know? How does she know?! How did she get these thoughts out of my head?"

for my fellow ace and/or aro people, let me quote some of the lines that just got me straight in the soul:

"I had a theory that a lot of people's "celebrity crushes" were just faked to fit in."

"I was disgusted by the thought of him near me. Wanting things from me. That wasn't normal, was it?"

"Oh, God, this thing is actually real, it's not just in fanfics and movies. And I'm supposed to be doing it too."

"Did I even know what romantic feelings felt like?"

"He was clearly the sort of person who I should like romantically. Who I could like romantically. He looked like a boyfriend. I loved his personality. I'd loved his personality for years. So I could fall in love with him. With a little bit of effort. Definitely."

"I thought I'd understood what all these romantic things would feel like--butterflies and the spark and just knowing when you liked someone. I'd read about these feelings hundreds of times in books and fanfic. I'd watched way more romcoms than was probably normal for an eighteen-year-old. But now I was starting to wonder whether these things were just made up."

"Straight people don't think shit like that."

"Just because I'd never liked anyone didn't mean I never would. Did it?"

"I thought all the movies were exaggerating, but you're all really out there just craving genitals and embarrassment. This has to be some kind of huge joke."

"How could I feel so sad about giving up these things that I did not actually want?"

"I felt like I was grieving. I was grieving this fake life, a fantasy future that I was never going to live."

"How was it fair that everyone got to feel that except me?"

"I never had any crushes when I was a child. Not any real ones, anyway. Sometimes I confused friendships for them, or just thinking a guy was really cool."

"For a long time, I was just dating and having sex because that's what people did. And I wanted to feel like those people."

"You've been so confused about stuff. You really thought we could be together, because you do love me. Not in a romantic way, but just as strongly."

"Oh. This is an asexual thing. I forgot other people are obsessed with having sex."

seriously the entire time I spent with this book I just kept asking "was this written for me specifically?" because that's exactly how it felt.

It is a gorgeous book that explores that bizarre feeling of not knowing the word for what you are, not even knowing that you are something out of the ordinary because we don't define ourselves by what we lack and we just expect that one day, it'll happen and we'll be like everyone else. That struggle of trying to differentiate between loving someone and being in love with them, and trying to make the former into the latter and hurting everything in the process.

It is so good. 10/10, no complaints

also there's an asshole in the university's queer pride group who doesn't think aces belong and everyone hates him so that's fantastic, aphobes fuck off

in conclusion I highly recommend it

#Laura reads Loveless #Loveless #Loveless novel #Alice Oseman #Loveless book #aroace #actuallyasexual #actuallyaromantic #asexuality #aromanticism #ace representation #aro representation #asexuality in fiction #aromanticism in fiction

[geekwiththeglasses]

Would love to hear you rant about Fourth Wing. That book makes me so mad lmao

I literally dashed to my desktop when I saw this because this deserves a desktop response (out of character for a millenial/genz cusper I actually type much faster with a keyboard).

Now to note, I am only 50% done with the book so far so this is limited to that (though I have watched spoiler reviews so I feel justified in my thoughts because I know it's not getting better).

By the way, I learned that this entire series was a publisher request, not like a passion project of Yarros and while I ain't judging (I would do it in a heartbeat if it meant I could pay rent for the next year), to me, you can kinda feel it, like there's a distinct lack of creative verve. You can especially feel it in how shallow everything (and everyone) feels.

A read more because this became obnoxiously long (it's almost 2000 words) and I respect people's dashboards.

Except for this article about toxic perseverance which I think everyone should have to read if they've read Fourth Wing.

There are, first of all, some major issues with this book. The biggest one is, of course, the toxic perseverance, which is covered quite well in the article, but if you're not going to read it, to pull a quote from it:

Creating a narrative in which a character with a disability overcomes all of their pain and other symptoms through force of will alone sets unrealistic expectations—unrealistic expectations which are, as I mentioned previously, a very real issue for very real disabled people in our very real world.  I believe we should have seen some impact of that lifestyle if the author was trying to engage with this intentionally. Because fiction is not created in a vacuum and this narrative goes unproblematised in-text, it’s unclear whether Yarros actively endorses this mindset, or is accidentally endorsing it, neither of which is good.

Just to elaborate a little on something I didn't see in the article, but this book hates the idea of accommodations. Like it's a horrible, horrible thing and how dare you ever suggest Violet might need something as disgusting as a saddle to stay on the equivalent of an airplane. It's not like accommodations are something that actually can end up helping non-disabled people as well. There wasn't potential for a scene where she actually acknowledged she needed help and suddenly everyone's like "hey, that's actually really smart, we should totally do this too, this makes life much easier/safer and will improve everyone's quality of life". Or even just a scene where it only helps her but damn it helps her a lot because it takes in to account her needs and specific body. Because that would require acknowledging that Violet has limitations and not allow her to power through the pain. And also get thrown from her dragon repeatedly, which definitely doesn't fuck up her joints.

Rhiannon gets so shafted. She gets the double whammy of two stereotypes: the black best friend and the promiscuous bisexual. She's seen with multiple partners, none of which seem like long-term or serious partners. And while some bisexual people have more sex with more people than others, if you're going to do that, include more than one bisexual person in your story. She has very little to do with the story unless she is there for the white, straight main character. We've gotten her helping Violet, but so far there's zero dedicated scenes of that tutoring help that was offered in the beginning and as far as I know we never get it (I may be wrong). I hear we get her family later, but that they're also glossed over for More Important Things. It doesn't feel like Rhiannon (or honestly any other character) exists except for when they're around Violet. They all kinda blend together, which at the 50% mark is fucking unacceptable. What is special about them, distinguishes them from the others other than Liam (is it Liam? whoever her bodyguard is) who whittles? There is so little to distinguish any background characters except for Dain. Even Xaden feels lackluster and a bit hazy around the edges, like he never finished rendering.

Let's not forget that Yarros is 100% a military wife and a US military bootlicker and from what I've heard she's had some unsavory and unsupportable opinions on Palestine. We do not like.

She also took Gaelic names and just decided the pronunciation doesn't matter??? Insulting.

Onto the less serious issues:

Firstly, as to my previous complaint, the entirety of Dain's storyline is the most impressive speedrun in character assassination I have ever seen. I described it to a friend as Yarros lovingly caressing a 2x4 before repeatedly beating you over the head with it. He gets like... a scene to be besties and then immediately he must be the worst thing to ever exist, specifically to prop up Xaden. Dain is the asshole holding her back, unlike Xaden who pushes her to be her best (entirely ignoring that her body literally has physical limitations and accommodations are not a dirty word)! He's such a rule follower, but Xaden understands when to bend or break them (pay no attention to him breaking all the rules to try to get her into the scribe's quadrant)! He doesn't believe her immediately when she accuses someone of murder, but Xaden absolutely believes her with no proof (let's forget that Amber is a good friend of Dain and that it would honestly be natural to want to believe that your friend isn't capable of cold-blooded murder with zero proof especially since that would lead to her execution which Violet somehow forgot would be a consequence of her accusation). Dain is overprotective and condescending to Violet (I mean he wasn't the one to force her to have a bodyguard, but he just doesn't believe in her). I bet he doesn't even wash his ass. Xaden definitely washes his ass.

Murder college makes zero sense, especially since she definitely based the military off the US (which makes sense since it's the one she has the most exposure to). Most militaries that I am aware of have rather high requirements for physical fitness, especially an academy for officers (which, in Yarros' face, I actually have experience with, as my father went to the Naval Academy so I know for a fact they're strict as hell with requirements). The US military won't even let you be slightly overweight, even if you can fulfill the physical requirements. It was hard to find any info on whether EDS would out and out disqualify you, but the fact that it wasn't even brought up as a barrier for entry that she had to overcome does not make sense to me.

Ah, I hear someone hypothetically argue, but the college is supposed to (theoretically) weed out the weak so they'll let anyone in who wants to join! Ok, then why is Violet the only physically disabled person in the entire college? I have been to rodeos with bull riders who were amputees, but there ain't one person missing an arm or a leg in that college. The only other disabled person we get so far is a scribe, but you're telling me not one deaf person wants to be a rider? Why is Violet the only one that gets to be "exceptional"?

Back to the murder part of murder college, the fact that this is a murder college gets technically lampshaded, but never really justified in why people keep coming. Like it's not some greater commentary on the lengths people will go for power or greatness or the insidious nature of military propaganda. It just felt like we needed to up the stakes that our protagonist was in danger at every turn, but honestly I never feel like the stakes are that high, because, well, she keeps emphasizing how much danger her life is in, how screwed and dead she is. And if her life is always in danger, it's never in danger.

Speaking of murder, the story doesn't challenge the idea that "weed out the weak through murder" doesn't actually work but just kills people and probably gives the survivors like the worst anxiety (because if everything can kill you your mental health will probably deteriorate). It's like that meme:

Basgiath War College: I have made the perfect rider Me: you fucked up a perfectly good person is what you did. Look at him. He's got anxiety.

Why is Violet so enlightened and above having any prejudice? If anything she should have way more animosity towards the rebel kids than she does. It's literally stated in text that she was not immune to the propaganda and misinformation she's read, but you want me to believe that between (what she believes is) losing a brother to the rebellion and a mother who was kinda involved, not to mention growing up in a group that would be full of anti-rebel propaganda she somehow didn't end up believing anything beyond "yeah some of them will definitely want you dead" which is true??? Instead she's fine with them and will definitely sit with rebel kids because unlike people who grew up with probably less or about the same propaganda than her, she knows not to judge people for the sins of their parents. Those other kids are just so much more prejudiced than she is, isn't she wonderful and has zero biases to unlearn. Oh, you may say, but she thought Xaden was going to kill her! He literally does confirm that the only reason initially he doesn't kill her is to keep a hold of his humanity which does actually confirm that he wants her dead! So the narrative even confirms that this bias was, in fact, the correct opinion to have.

I do not understand why Violet and Xaden are drawn to each other beyond Xaden hot. I am asexual and somewhere on the aromantic spectrum so perhaps it is just not in my nature to understand the ways of the heterosexuals, but I don't get it. Why does she like him? The only reason given is he's hot. Maybe a reason is given later down the line but this is a romantasy. You live and die by building up that damn romance and I am not convinced! I haven't even been given like a "oh I see him with his dragon and it's heart meltingly cute how he interacts with her". Is this why Dain had to be assassinated (we are holding his burial next week by the way, there will be funeral potatoes)? So that Xaden had something to be compared to because he has all the substance of one of those inflatable dancing men?

(Dance, Xaden, dance.)

Yarros cannot do exposition, it's so jarring. She tells us so much, shows little, and bores me the entire time. You seriously decide to make exposition a character quirk for when she needs to calm down? Seriously???? The parapet scene was hard to listen to because you were jerked around like a rag doll between quick action and exposition. Who thought that was a good idea? Exposition is always a difficult thing to include and make it work and sound natural, but this is not how you do it.

A minor complaint, but once you learn Yarros is Mormon you cannot unsee the fingerprints of Mormonism throughout this book. People do not cuss like people, they cuss like you put fuck into a fresh AI and asked it to try it out. I cuss like a sailor and I was wondering why it felt so jarring until I realized that it's not how people talk. I mean Holy. Fucking. Hot. I'm well the fuck aware. You tried ma'am, you tried. Here's a gold star. Also, I'm 99% sure there is zero alcohol. You seriously want me to believe that none of these kids are sneaking in alcohol? That no one is using booze to cope with being in a murder college? As if, we all know these kids are making midnight dragon runs to the liquor store.

Also, the fact that I had to hear an audiobook narrator try to make this dialogue and prose sound like something that would actually come out of a human mouth was truly something to behold. The fact that "for the win" was not left in the 2010s where it belonged is an outrage. If I had a better memory I would put in more quotes cause there have been other doozies.

But really, the greatest crime this book commits, is that it has the audacity to be boring. You give me dragons and you have the sheer, unmitigated gall to bore me. I will accept a lot from a book. I will accept plot holes. I will ignore shallow world building. I will tolerate character assassinations. Do all that if you must, but at the very least make it interesting. This book is not interesting. I listen to a few chapters at a time and I am not having a good time. I only continue out of sheer stubbornness and feeling an obligation that for once I should actually read a book that I have seen negative reviews about to see if perhaps it is not so bad.

I just happened to pick a book where it is, in fact, that bad.

#anti fourth wing #if I misspell names forgive me I am an audiobook person #when I say the greatest crime I am ignoring the actual real world problems like the ableism racism biphobia etc #Everything under the read more is 2050 words i apologize #there would probably be more if I finished the book but that will be at least a week

[fa-by]

Laucy 2.O

Hiiii babies and dear Anons 👋🏼🤗. I'm back with a new post. And I know, I know, I apologize again for my disappearance but I haven't been well for 3 months and also have been in the hospital again for a week 😭. I don't want to bore you with my health, but I just ask you to be patient again for future posts 😅🙏🏼.

I was answering the asks in my mail when I realized that 2 of them in particular were asking the same thing. I started writing and the more I did, the more I realized how long it was getting and I therefore decided to split it off from the Q&A post I started and which you guys will have, and make it a separate one on today's topic which you can see from the title.

Without further ado, let's go straight to the answers of those 2 asks. Enjoy 🙃.

HIII to you too, my dear 👋🏼😄. You're the purple heart Anon 🙃. That's how I always mentioned you to my gf, and the fact that you always remembered to say hi to me because you know it's important to me, always distinguished you from others especially because you do it in caps every time and you always make me smile/laugh because I know it's a dig for all those Anons who don't 🤣. Of course I remember you, as you can see 🤗!

1) I'm getting better. Very slowly, but I'm getting better. I still have a lot of medical checks to do but then I hope to finish once and for all because I'm honestly tired of hospital, doctors, and being sick in general 😩. Thank you for your concern and I really hope you're well and healthy 🥰.

2) Of course I can expose them 😉. This post is dedicated to that 😜.

And yeah, I hope they don't steal again because for real then I'd stop doing big analysis like I did in the past for Laucy, for the AMA's 2018, etc. I just want people to respect my decision to not want my stuff off Tumblr and ask me first if they really wanna post anything of mine outside of here, so that we can arrange what’s good for me for them to post and what’s not. That's all.

P.S. you made me laugh with the caps part which I guess was shouted 🤣🤣.

3) Thank you for always being so kind to me, my dear 💜 Anon. I really mean it 🤗. Have a beautiful day too 🙃. My gf says hi too 😄. I love you too and take care 😘.

Hello to you too, dear Anon 👋🏼😄. Greetings from my gf too 🙃.

It is a pain, and not because you asked, but because of the PR. And not even for the PR per se, but just because it's always the same shit we've seen (and will continue to see) over and over again but with different people. But anyway, let's get into it.

Oh and, small disclaimer. Sasha's pronouns are ze/her/they and I used she/her when I wrote this. I'm explaining this to you guys just to clarify that I didn't misgender her, okay? Good 😇.

Let's start with the new and improved version of Laucy. Welcome to Laucy 2.O, my dear Anon and my dear 💜 Anon, and any other of you babies who are reading.

Sasha Mallory, born on August 6, 1988 (age 35), professional dancer, and runner-up on season 8 of So You Think You Can Dance in 2011 when she was 23. She's worked in many dance companies, music videos, tours of singers such as Madonna, Adam Lambert, and Katy Perry, and done much more. Along with her family, she owns and operates the Mallory Academy of Dance (in Bakersfield California) in which she obviously also teaches.

In my opinion, chosen precisely because of her sexuality (as Laur herself said when talking about the Valentine's Day post in the People article: “Queer representation is important”) and her profession because, unlike Laur's other queer friends who were already her friends anyway and someone new was needed in her life, Sasha's in the industry and travels a lot precisely for the same reason. She ‘understands’ that life. And she certainly benefits from the money made from the contract and, more importantly, the visibility in the industry for her work.

Having explained the basics, let's get down to the facts and the not-so-subtle stages:

The beginning

-  Prelude. For those who don't know, Prelude premiered with a special global livestream via Moment House on October 14 and 15, 2021, but was officially released on November 5, 2021. It took them 6 days to make/film it. On September 11, 2021, Laur received the videos that she included by turning them almost into a documentary (with the help of Matthew Siskin of course, the co-director and co-editor along with Lo), and they started promoting the project on September 14, 2021. Before all this, however, there were the organization and the rehearsals to bring the project to life.

Lauren and Sasha met in mid-August 2021 (roughly the 13th) thanks to Coral Dolphin, the choreographer who took care of Prelude (and the tour).

To confirm the timeline, these are Laur's very first likes on their profiles (Coral Dolphin, José Gabriel Baez, Sasha, and Triana Steward), except for Aahkilah Cornelius, who didn't even have IG at the time, and Jesse Johnson who didn't post anything in general (not even anything personal) from the time they met (not even Prelude) until 2022 (personal stuff).

- From November 20 to December 1, 2021, Tour: An Evening with Lauren Jauregui. With Laur, Coral direction and choreography, and Sasha and José dancers.

The hang out no longer just professional

- First speculations created on March 12, 2022, after the insta-stories and that post (posted two days later) with the alpacas, with contribution of the tweet to pretend to mislead, but actually start inserting the seed 🧫 into people's heads 🧠:

A couple of appearances together with other friends: 1) at Banks' concert on Apr 6, 2022, along with *cough* coincidentally and not to publicize two things at the same time *cough*  the announcement of Laur's participation in The Serpentina Tour, 2) at Coachella on Apr 17, 2022, *cough* she didn't go there with Lo and her friends, she was there only because she had to perform/dance with Channel Tres with whom she was booked from Mar 18, 2022, to Dec 31, 2022 *cough*.

- Sasha danced with her and José again (for the last time so far) at the Al Sol Blume Festival on April 30, 2022 (the 3 of them rehearsed from the 27th to the 29th).

Another appearance together on a boat with all of Laur's friends on May 14, 2022.

- Rumors reinforced by the trip to Cuba for Laur's birthday in which I'll underline, there were other people, friends, with them and her brother. *let's water the seed 💧*

We're just friends, people, isn't it obvious? *Please don't let it be obvious*

+ denial/fake protection

- Sasha went on the New York (July 27, 2022) and Denver (Aug 2, 2022) tour dates before continuing with her gig for the Channel Tres tour, and on Aug 1st, Laur posted that tweet just to add fuel to the fire. *let's keep watering 💧*

Lo wished her a happy birthday with a post on Aug 6, 2022.

- On November 29, 2022, Sasha posted a TikTok with the “Reasons Why I'm SINGLE” filter and on December 3, 2022, she replied to someone by saying that she and Lauren were just friends. Both then deleted. Did you have any doubts about it? 😑

In the meantime tho, other appearances together: on Sept 17, 2022, (Aliyah Niambi's insta-story) to celebrate an Aja Monet working achievement, on Oct 30, 2022, for Halloween, on Oct 31, 2022, for the Paramore concert, and on Dec 8, 2022, for Channel Tres tour date in L.A. where Ty was too. *👏🏼🙌🏼 a reunion with 2 PRs, yeeeey 🥳🤣🤣🤣*

“She like who she like”/The confirmation

- Snow Tha Product EVERYNIGHTNIGHTS PODCAST live streamed on January 12, 2023, in which Laur publicly said for the first time that she was into a woman, specifying “a femme, a non-binary” and choking and freaking out more and more in explaining because she didn't know whether she was defining her the correct way or not. Sasha changed her bio to the one she still has now immediately after: * we're almost there 💧*

- On January 18, 2023, there was the video on Lauren's Patreon Zoom as they played Uno to confirm even more who she was talking to Snow about, plus the fans' backlash and Laur's obvious reaction to 100% confirm: *has germinated 🌱*

- The UnitedMasters GRAMMY party (Feb 3, 2023) before the final push, let's call it the oh-so-unpredictable boom of the definitive confirmation of the Valentine's Day post (Feb 14, 2023).

The explanation

- In the Zach Sang Show interview released on March 31, 2023, she said that they'd been together for a year, that there had been attraction from the first moment they danced Don't Wanna Say, and that however, neither of them told the other anything for a while; Sasha because Lauren was her boss and she wanted to be respectful and Laur because she didn’t think it was mutual. She explained that she was the one who made the first move by inviting her over to her house to hang out. They cooked together and only after Sasha left very early, Lo confessed everything to her via text to which Sasha replied that she felt the same way. Laur specified that it happened the night before she left to go back to Miami because she still lived there and still had 3 months of lease for the house.

End of the important stuff (for now)

Now let's talk logic, dates, and bullshit.

Let's break down piece by piece the already checked and verified facts I've listed to you, with what she said on the Zach Sang Show, and let's see what's true and what's not.

1) Taking into consideration the date I believe to be correct, Lauren and Sasha met on August 13, 2021. Attraction from the first moment they danced Don’t Wanna Say: “The chemistry was just crazy. I was like, what the fuck is this? I feel so attracted to you”.

In addition to the promo for Prelude, there was no interaction or public appearance together until the tour.

2) They went on tour from November 20 until December 1, 2021. “And then it was like super low-key. We both had like a crush on each other but didn't say anything about it for a minute”, Sasha because Lauren was her boss and she wanted to be respectful, and Laur because she didn't think it was mutual.

After the tour, again no public appearances together until March 12, 2022 (alpacas). This, this one right here, is the timespan that interests us the most.

3) The first move and the confession: “I invited her to come over to hang out with me and we made dinner together and stuff. And it was a date in my head, but she didn't know it was a date. She thought we were hanging out just casually” - small pause to look at Chantal (her manager Chantal Felice) as she did other times during bullshit - “So she ended up leaving hella early” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah “I sent her this like, really long cute ass message and she was like: what?”

4) The explanation of when it happened: “Actually, that happened right before I left back to Miami. So we were here in L.A. and it was right before I left back to Miami because I was living in Miami at the time. So I had like 3 months still of my lease in Miami. So it was like the day before I left, was when I texted her and was like ‘this is how I feel’. And she was like ‘what the fuck? I feel the same way’ and I was like ‘what?’. So yeah, we had like 3 months in between. - Now we see each other when we can”.

Okay, that day? That dinner ‘they had’ the night before going back to Miami? It never happened. And those 3 months that she wanted to make believe were in Miami? They're not correct.

No surprise there since we know it's all made-up narrative for the PR, but do you wanna know how I know? I know because unfortunately for both Camren, fans save every little thing posted on the internet that concerns them and their lives. I checked. Laur's last night in L.A. was December 18, 2021, and who did she spend it with? WITH CORAL! They had dinner IN A RESTAURANT before going to The Peppermint Club (West Hollywood). The next day (the 19th), Lo was in Miami and returned to Los Angeles on February 5, 2022.

Here you can see the screenshots I took of Laur's insta-stories. One from her last day in Miami on February 4, 2022, with Mateo, the son of her friend Alexa Ferrer, and another one from when she returned to Los Angeles on February 5, 2022, which can be compared with the post Lo published on February 25, 2022, in which she was with her friend Britt (Brittany Martinez-Hewitt):

Here, however, Coral's insta-story (Dec 18) and the screenshot I took from one of Laur's insta-stories (Dec 19), specifically from the one where she was playing with Cleo:

You can also compare Coral's insta-story with the post Laur published on December 21, 2021. From slides 6, 7, and 10, you can very well see both how Lo's outfit matches and how it was the same night.

You can also see from Coral's insta-story how it was night outside. It's clearly visible from the glass window behind Laur. And now tell me, is there anything about this picture that makes you think it was Lauren's house or otherwise a house in general? And does it look like Sasha was there? Maybe hidden under the small table that was clearly only for two people and that makes you understand that no one else was with them? 🤣🤣🤣 Sasha wasn't even there that night! They didn't see each other at all! 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤣🤣🤣 So what dinner had and cooked at your house the night before you went to Miami are we talking about, Laur? What in the PR and the alternative universe are you talking about? 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤣🤣🤣

Debunked the dinner, let's move on to the 3 months.

The timespan between December 18, 2021 (last day in L.A.) and February 5, 2022 (return to L.A.) is 1 month and 18 days to be exact. I'm gonna abound by saying they were almost 2 months if I have to, but it's certainly not 3. They don't match the idea that by “I was living in Miami at the time. So I had like 3 months still of my lease in Miami - So yeah, we had like 3 months in between”, she meant to imply that they didn't see each other because she stayed in Miami for 3 months. Yeah, she still had 3 months of lease for the house, but that doesn't mean she stayed there for real as I've shown you. And it can't even be that she was talking about another time period because she's never stayed in Miami for 3 months since she met Sasha in August of 2021.

On the other hand, the timespan between December 18, 2021 (last day in L.A.) and March 12, 2022 (alpacas) is 2 months and 22 days. I can again abound by saying that they were almost 3 months, but only to let Lo get away with it. This does match the “we had like 3 months in between”, but it also proves another lie at the same time.

Remember how I also wrote in the initial list that Sasha was booked to perform with Channel Tres from March 18, 2022, to December 31, 2022? Well, she hadn't left yet for the first date, which was Lollapalooza in Chile (March 18, 2022). So, if Laur was back in town on February 5, 2022, what exactly was the reason they didn't see each other for precisely 1 month and seven days (February 5 to March 12) before that PUBLIC hang-out with Lauren's friends (alpacas)?

If December 18, 2021 (last day in L.A.) and March 12, 2022 (alpacas) match the almost 3 months said on the Zach Sang Show, what exactly was the reason for not seeing each other before the 12th (alpacas)? After not seeing each other since that oh-so-real dinner before Laur returned to Miami, and especially after they confessed to liking each other via texts, do they really want me to believe they waited another month since Lauren was back in town to see each other? And in the company of other people on top of that? Come on now 🤣🤣🤣. After all that waiting, they would've seen each other the moment Laur set foot back in town if it had been a real relationship.

Debunked even the 3 months, let's move on to the part of the interview in which she said they'd been together for a year.

As I said before, the Zach Sang Show interview was released on March 31, 2023. It was filmed definitely a few days prior or in any case in the same month since it was primarily done for the promo of Trust Issues (which was released on the same day as the interview) and In Between. From that, since to Zach's question “How long have you been together?” she answered “We've been together for like a year” and it was March 2023, we can establish that by March 2022 they were already together officially as a couple. Or rather, already since before February 2022 given what Laur said about the Valentine's Day post in the interview with People (May 26, 2023): “We'd been together for a year by that point”.

Neither of them has yet specified what the official date is, but still based on the date of Lo's last day in L.A. because of the so-real ‘dinner and text’ story, we can assume that December 18, 2021, is the specific date on which they officially got together. Unless we'll have anniversary posts in the future.

So, if they've already been together since December 18, 2021, then why instigate/tease Snow during her podcast about the fact that she missed the opportunity to kiss her in the Piña video? Why push her so hard and on several occasions for other things as well?

***I'd like to clarify anyway that I've taken Mila completely out of the equation also because this acting as single people of theirs is something that has been going on for them basically since the X-Factor days (they did, they do, and they have to keep doing it for appearances, or simply when they're mad at each other 😅). All this is just me proving and exposing Laucy 2.O. Okay, let's move on.***

And speaking of Piña, on September 19, 2022, Lauren and Snow did the TikTok live to promote the song by also saying that they would've made the video as soon as they were both in town (L.A.). Which happened in October. On October 5, 2022, @jakehenrythgc posted a picture together with Lo on the set of the video (in the La Cita Bar: bar/live music venue/nightclub in Downtown L.A.). Laur posted an insta-story while watching the full video for the first time on October 26, 2022, and on December 19, 2022, the video was released.

So if the video was shot on October 5 when Snow missed the opportunity to kiss her, shouldn't that date be calculated in that year with Sasha? Was it crossed off in the calendar and no one told me? If Laur had actually been in a relationship for a year, she wouldn't have insisted so much on the missed opportunity to be kissed by another person even if only professionally. Although we could see in that very podcast how important 'professionally' is to Lauren. So important, she didn't even remember doing it with a guy in the Always Love video 🤦🏻‍♀️🤣.

But back to being serious. If she'd actually been in a relationship for a year, she never would've pressed and pushed Snow's buttons in that way on different things. But no, she instigated/teased her a lot of times by even saying other things outside of Snow specifically, like the fact that she likes to provoke in general even straight girls: “I love making straight girls question who they are” – “I'm just trying to see if you're really as straight as you think you are”.

And with those 2 sentences, I want to remind you all of something she said in Becky G's podcast (the very first reason why I'm here and you guys know me https://fa-by.tumblr.com/post/648191757219250176/there-is-a-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel) and how these 2 sentences are yet another proof of how much bullshit she had to say that day to hide her truth:

Wasn't she the one who had an ‘issue flirting with girls’ and who felt ‘disgustingly uncomfortable’ because she felt ‘like a predator’, ‘the aggressor’, ‘the one who was like the masculine energy in the scenario’, because she was ‘always the one turning her’? Wasn't she the one who didn't want to be able to ‘potentially put off that kind of vibe onto someone or invade or like anything like that’? So, WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT? And even with straight girls no less 🤦🏻‍♀️. Please, Lauren, explain yourself? Explain to the audience 🤣. Justify the bullshit you had to say about Camila by succeeding in making a lot of CS leave. Justify the bullshit you had to say in comparison with the truth and reality you said NOW.

All the chickens come home to roost, my friends. Always 🙌🏼. It doesn't matter if years go by, but the truth always comes out 🔥.

Anyway, back to Laucy 2.O. If Lauren had actually been in a relationship for a year, she wouldn't have behaved that way with another person. She wouldn't have done any of that. She wouldn't have behaved the way an available person would. This even proves by itself that the relationship is fake. The fact that she did it during a live podcast and didn't give a damn about all the fans present, proves it even more. Tsk-tsk. In a relationship for a year, HA! Don't make me laugh 😏.

Not to mention the fact that Sasha was (and maybe still is) with Baylie Olsen. Now the engagement you mentioned in the ask, there's no trace of anything like that at all as far as I know, dear Anon. It'll be part of the various bullshit that CS and other ‘fans’ made up 🤷🏻‍♀️ as usual 🙄. What I do know and can prove is the fact that Sasha and Baylie met in early May 2019 during rehearsals for the Eurovision performance which then took place on May 18, 2019, with Madonna.

They were both backup dancers throughout Madonna's Madame X era including the Madame X Tour which lasted from September 12, 2019, to March 4, 2020. And as you can see here:

They started dating loooong before August 2021, which is when Lauren and Sasha met, and that they continued to do so at least publicly until April 2022, which is even after the hang-out with the alpacas (March 14, 2022).

And these are not even all the pictures they commented on and liked on each other 🤣. There are many more that you can very well go see for yourselves on both of their profiles. So “My first Valentine” my ass, Sasha 🤣. Oh and by the way, Laur was obviously aware and supportive of their relationship:

Going back to talking about the Valentine's Day post instead: “I kinda did it very whimsically. I didn't even tell her I was gonna post it” (Zach Sang Show) – “On Valentine's Day, I did it very impulsively. I didn't even talk with them about it first” (People). Oh yeah sure, because it's totally normal to not talk to your partner about something as unimportant as making it official to the world BEFORE actually doing it, right?

Miss I prefer to live my life off of social media and keep my private life private, Miss confidentiality, Miss privacy in all respects suddenly didn't care. Miss I keep having to pretend that I was outed in 2016 and not that it was all arranged, suddenly just didn't care about doing something like that? Seriously? Suuuure. Sure, sure, sure, Jan, right. No, for real, who believes that? Who can believe that that behavior could have been normal and not something planned/arranged?

Even this alone, does nothing but prove 2 things (again, back to my very first post and Becky G's podcast and all that fake situation they created that I talked about on several occasions): 1) It reconfirms for the umpteenth time the story of the fake coming out arm-in-arm with the PR with Lucrezia um sorry, Lucy. 2) This PR with Sasha.

Why? Because someone who claims to have been haunted by being outed when she wasn't ready, DOESN'T BEHAVE THAT WAY! Someone who claims to have been traumatized by that whole experience, someone who's not an ordinary person but a public figure and therefore double haunt and trauma, DOESN'T DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT! Tell me who, after all that, wouldn't talk to their girlfriend before officially posting something romantic-wise for the first time? Who wouldn't make sure she was okay with it first? Especially since, again, we're not talking about an ordinary person. We're talking about someone famous with 12 million followers on IG.

A person who's actually gone through that kind of trauma, would never dare to do that. It wouldn't even cross their mind because they'd have respect for the person they're with. They’d also take their partner's feelings into consideration. They’d make sure that it would be okay for them even if their partner's out and proud, because they would never want to make someone else experience the trauma they themselves experienced firsthand. And honestly, tell me, does this seem to be the case for Lauren?

What I'm seeing now, from the podcast with KITTENS actually, is that they're using the strategy of showing Lauren's change. Showing more and more how she's healed and how she's more comfortable and open with her sexuality. I'm very happy about it, don't get me wrong. It's about time she could show what she in reality is since she was 17/18 years old. And I'm not even saying it's not true that for years she'd struggled with her internalized homophobia and all the other problems. Hell, we know fully well that's true. And I also understand that she had to suppress herself and follow the narratives mostly to hide Camren, let alone if I don't understand that. I'm just saying that, what I don't like is the way they made her act. Just as it doesn't sit well with me the usual incoherent love propaganda that they've already used in the past. I'll explain myself better.

Oh and, speaking of incoherent love propaganda used before. Is it only me who noticed that since that Valentine's Day post, Lauren's started talking about Sasha in interviews in the exact same way she used to talk about Ty when she was in a PR relationship with him? I mean, no differences? No imagination for something new? No? Just copy and paste? Um, okay… I- um 🤔🤨 I'll shut up 🤐.

Back to this incoherent love propaganda.

If “We're so solid, and we have such a beautiful foundation and so much trust and love between us” (People), and if “the core-” of their relationship “-is love and respect” as she said in Shannon Boodram's podcast along with other things, then where was this trust and respect when she thought (?):

Zach Sang Show: “Damn is Valentine’s Day. I’m seeing all these people post their babes, I was like, this is my baby. Like I’m in love and I don’t care. I don’t care!” --- “But like I said, Valentine’s Day came, I saw all these cute pictures and I was like, you know what? Me and baby are cute. So I’m gonna post it”.

People: “I'm in love. We'd been together for a year by that point, and I was like, ‘You know what? Fuck it’.” --- “On Valentine's Day, I did it very impulsively. I didn't even talk with them about it first. I was just seeing people post their significant others, and I was just like, ‘Dude, I'm in love. These pictures are so cute. We're so cute. People deserve to see this shit’. Queer representation is important, I think”.

So 🤔 what I grasped from both interviews is that, she did it because she didn't care and because people deserved to see that shit because queer representation is important (although I agree with that last part), but at the same time (?):

Zach Sang Show: “The layer of fame is like a whole thing. But it’s so beyond that. I think the reason I keep my private life private for the most part, is because people are so invasive and projective”. --- “Especially people who say they’re fans”. --- “There’s those other people who just are so attached to you that they feel they have ownership over you and then they just like, trash someone you love and just try to make their lives miserable or make up things about them”. --- “That part is so weird to me, so I try to keep what makes me happy away from people who want to project unhappiness onto it”.

Oh yeah, we all saw that 🤦🏻‍♀️.

I mean, I'm being sarcastic here because she was talking about Sasha's situation, which is not true. But it is the truth in reality. It's the truth that applies in her life and above all with whom? *whispered echo: 🗣️ Cameeeela*

People: “Most of my relationships, I keep under wraps, just because it's really odd to have so many strangers have an opinion about who you're choosing to love or what goes on between the two of you. But I just want to be able to love them out loud and be able to share that with people”. --- “So, people's opinions don't really don't matter. Honestly, for me, it's more so about protecting them and making sure that they don't feel attacked because fans are fans”.

Protect them/her? PROTECT HER? 🤣🤣🤣 How? By exposing her and you guys ‘relationship’ to the world without even telling her? Ahh, okay 🤣🤣🤣🤣. Exposing her for sure keeps people from attacking her precisely because she's your girlfriend, sure, undoubtedly 🤦🏻‍♀️🤣. Mh-hmm, yeah, this way of thinking would've made sooo much sense if the relationship was true 🤦🏻‍♀️🤣.

“There's other fans who call themselves fans that I don't really consider fans. People who feel very possessive over you and feel like they have a right to tell you who you should or should not be with, which is really fascinating to me because you're literally a stranger who's never met me in real life. So it's really interesting that you think about who I should or shouldn't be with. And people have prejudices. Racism is a very real thing, and I don't like when she gets attacked or people send her really crazy-ass messages or send weird messages to her family. I really wanted to avoid that, but it was kind of happening anyways because people assumed we were in a relationship. So I was just like, ‘I guess it doesn't really fully matter at this point’. We just have to ignore those kinds of people as much as we can, because sometimes they're really violent and need to be handled. But for the most part, it's really just harmless, online shit”.

Putting aside the part where I super agree that people need to stop harassing them (Camren) and the people in their lives, let's talk about “I really wanted to avoid that, but it was kind of happening anyways because people assumed we were in a relationship” and “I guess it doesn't really fully matter at this point”.

She really wanted to avoid that, but she did it anyway, because she guessed it didn't really fully matter at that point because people assumed they were in a relationship?? Really??? What kind of protection would this be????

So, wait, wait, wait. From the top.

She wanted to avoid letting people know because she wanted to protect her and make sure she and her family weren't attacked, then Valentine's Day came along and she thought fuck it. Fuck her own privacy, fuck the protection of Sasha and her family, and fuck their trust and respect because, given that she saw people posting their significant other, she whimsically and impulsively decided to do the same. She revealed their relationship to the whole world without TELLING HER ANYTHING FIRST because she didn't care, because people deserved to see that shit because queer representation is important, and because she guessed it didn't really fully matter at that point because people already assumed they were in a relationship.

I mean… WHAT?????

What in the world? What in the inconsistency? What kind of contradiction is all this? No really. Was all of that more important than her own girlfriend? Seriously?? No, I'm sorry. This is yet another proof of how fake and organized all this is.

From a logical point of view, it's impossible for me to think that Lauren just didn't care. It's impossible to think that she did it by putting all of that above her girlfriend's respect and trust. It's impossible to think they didn't talk about it before posting. It's impossible period.

This is Lauren we’re talking about here! Empathetic, caring, selfless, sensitive, and with a great emotional connection Lauren! The real Lauren would never do something like this. She would never put her own needs before those of someone she cares about. To quote Alastor ‘Mad-Eye’ Moody in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: ‘End of story. Goodbye. The end.’ Sorry but I had to 😅🤣. The conversation required a final quote 🙃.

But anyway. The bottom line of this charade: supposedly met on August 13, 2021, months without saying they had crushes on each other, non-existent dinner the night before going to Miami after which Laur texted her that she liked her and Sasha reciprocated, and therefore they got together supposedly the same night on December 18, 2021. Throughout all this, Sasha and Baylie were still together even still publicly, and Laur continued to act ‘single’ until Valentine's Day of the following year (2023).

Make it make sense! Make it make sense, seriously! But no hey, we know that a PR relationship MUST create doubts in people's heads and MUST NOT look perfect at all otherwise people would get bored and not speculate about it. Right, my bad I almost forgot 🤦🏻‍♀️.

So, this is the timeline, dear Anon. As for your question “Why would Lauren get into a relationship with someone else who is in a relationship?”, in my opinion, the better question would be ‘why did Sasha agree to do this since she was/maybe still is in a relationship?’. She was/is the one in a normal public relationship contrary to Laur who has a hidden one.

For Lauren it's business and it's convenient for many things. It's a cover for Camren and the songs, and it helps her queer image. Again “Queer representation is important”. But Sasha? Who knows. As I also said at the beginning, she benefits from both the money made from the contract and, more importantly, the visibility in the industry for her work. For the rest, I don't know how it went.

Lauren was looking for a girl for PR. Maybe Lauren was talking about it in general as friends do, and Sasha volunteered. Maybe Sasha talked about it with Baylie who, being an artist and a dancer as well and who therefore understands that lifestyle, agreed with it. Or maybe it was Lo's old management's idea after seeing them dance at the August rehearsal since we know very well how gays think, and they anticipated the reaction that inevitably happened later with the Prelude live. Or maybe it was Lauren's own idea since she has more freedom in her choices and she proposed it to her. I don't know. I don't know this. There's no proof around yet. I can only speculate.

Fact is that I don't see Lauren in a bad light here. It's not the first time she's been portrayed as a homewrecker and a traitor. They tried it before with the Lauren, Lucy, Ty, and Alycia Bella (ex of Ty) square story, and they tried again now with Sasha and Baylie. I didn't fall for it then and I don't fall for it now. You know why? Because it's all fake. I said it before and I also explained it in my PR stunt relationships - ɟ post: a PR relationship MUST create doubts in people's heads and MUST NOT look perfect at all otherwise people would get bored and not speculate about it.

So, dear Anon, the best thing to do in these cases is not to ask yourself questions like “Why would Lauren get into a relationship with someone else who is in a relationship?” since it's all fake and organized to entertain an audience, but it's to not ask yourself these kinds of questions at all precisely because it's all fake and organized to entertain an audience. But if you really have to, ask yourself questions that go arm-in-arm with reality and not Hollywood fiction 😉.

I hope I helped you understand as you hoped 🙃.

‍🤸🏻‍♀‍🤸🏻‍♀‍🤸🏻‍♀‍🤸🏻‍♀‍🤸🏻‍♀‍🤸🏻‍♀‍🤸🏻‍♀‍🤸🏻‍♀‍🤸🏻‍♀‍🤸🏻‍♀‍🤸🏻‍♀‍🤸🏻‍♀‍

Aaand I'm done 👅. I hope you're both happy with this analysis 🤗.

Thanks to all the others for the other asks which, as I said at the beginning of the post, you'll get answered in the usual Q&A post I started 🙃. As usual, I'm always available for those who have questions, so ask away 😄.

Remember to be nice. Always. Both with others and with yourselves. Be a good example. Be patient. Be safe and take care of yourselves. Don't let our ship sink. Keep shipping them, but please respectfully 🙏🏼. Sending you virtual love and hugs 🤗🤗🤗. I love you, babies. Always with love, F ❤️.

[raccoonsrummagerostrum]

Yautja x reader Valentine’s Day special <3

Yautja x reader fluff

Minor Warnings: Dead animals, bones, blood

Major Warnings: none

Word count: 1,041

A/N: Thank you all so much for reading. I'm very surprised that anyone is reading these, but I have very much enjoyed writing them. Please stay tuned for more. And if you have any requests feel free to send them my way. 

The culture divide between you and your yautja was more like a gaping chasm. Yautja culture was completely unlike modern ooman culture, and ooman culture was straight up baffling to yautjas. 

Because of this the two of you found yourself explaining many things to each other. Through this your lover had learned about ooman food, jobs, the concept of a home, movies, music, and many other things. While you learned about blooding rituals, clan marks, the honor code, bad bloods, and space travel. You both had learned so much about the other and their culture. All this knowledge would culminate in Valentine's day.

The topic got brought up when the two of you were watching TV and a jewelry commercial came on. Your lover asked about it and you explained about the holiday, and how it acts as an opportunity to do something special for the people you love. The gears in your lover's mind began to turn, meanwhile you panicked. 

What were you going to do? You had just explained about the holiday so obviously they would expect you to do something. You needed a plan.

You decided to do something that your yautja would understand. Thinking back to everything you've learned about their culture and everything they've done for you. You remembered all the gifts they've gotten you. Every time they’ve returned from a hunt they would bring you a skull. They would often save the biggest skull for their own trophy, but nevertheless they would always bring you something. Sometimes they would give you the biggest skull, just to show you how much they love you. So you decided that to demonstrate how much you love them, you would get them a skull. Only one problem.

You yourself are not a hunter, and even if you were you would only be limited to the animals on earth. So you did what modern humans did best. Online shopping. You were a bit surprised that you could actually buy a real lion skull for a reasonable amount. It wasn't cheap, but when put into perspective of everything your lover does to bring you a skull, the price felt like peanuts. While you were there you bought some shark teeth and some bone beads to top it off. 

Once the package arrived you went to work stringing the teeth and beads into a necklace. You knew that symbolic body adornment was a very prominent feature of yautja culture so you thought this would be a nice addition to their hunting armor. As well as a substitute for a ring. You hadn't previously discussed marriage with them. Not like the yautja even have a concept of marriage. But your heart fluttered at the thought of this necklace symbolizing your relationship with them.

--

After your detailed explanation of this ooman holiday, your lover's thoughts were racing. Ooman culture had always confused them, but you had seemed excited for this holiday so they wanted to do something special for you. So they decided that they would do things the ooman way. They threw themselves into research about ooman traditions. Spending hours on the yautja net reading every article they could find about ooman courtship. Eventually they hatched a plan

Sneaking onto a small local farm they collected a coo (Cow) for the main dish. They gathered some early blooming flowers from the nearby forest, and lastly lifted some chocolate chips from your kitchen. While you were out they spent the morning of the 14th cooking. Well, as best as they could. 

They nearly set the place on fire, searing the meat. And there was a lot of blood to clean up. And Then they heard your key in the lock, they scrambled to set the table. But at last everything was perfect. 

After kicking off your shoes you scurry to your bedroom to grab the stashed gifts for your lover, avoiding the kitchen in the process. There your lover waits for seconds then minutes. They grow inpatient, and almost go looking for you, before they hear your footsteps headed toward the kitchen. 

Surprised is an understatement. Coming into the kitchen you saw your lover, standing awkwardly on the other side of the table. Laid out on the table where two plates decorated with two rather lage stakes, there were glasses of what you hoped was wine, and a cup of chocolate chips which made you giggle. The centerpiece of it all was the clean cow skull. You smiled, admiring all the work done, and trying not to notice the still messy kitchen. 

Your lover gazed at you from where they stood, loving the way your face changed from startled, to surprised, to a quiet joy. Their gaze drifted town to the brightly wrapped packages in your hands. They walked over to you and gently rested a hand on your shoulder which snapped your focus back to them. Words failed you as you smiled up at them. And remembering what they've learned for the ooman articles they quickly moved to pull out your chair. 

What followed was a delightful evening though slightly awkward evening. Your lover tried and mostly fumbled an attempt to be a chivalrous and attentive ooman partner, which resulted with you politely giggling, trying not to hurt their feelings. And you tried to play the part of supportive yautja mate despite how confused you were, and how forgiving your lover had to be. 

But the only thing that really mattered was that you loved the effort your lover had put into pampering you. And the thought you put into the gifts that they loved. 

By the time dinner was over the two of you could hardly keep a straight face, your lover had revealed that they had read that oomans are very attracted to food delivery so they had considered trying it. You didn’t have the heart to tell them the truth, but just assured them that the dinner was the right choice. And you confessed that you had not hunted the lion yourself. But assured you that they didn’t care about that. 

To end the night the two of you made your way to the couch for your favorite activity. Cuddling under blankets, and making fun of bad ooman TV. <3

#yautja #yautja x reader #x reader #writing #fanfic #valentines day #valentine's day special #fluff #romance #yautja x human

[nattinatalia]

Urban Wyatt x Reader : A LITTLE BUMP

You wake up to your phone ringing, you ignore it and go to the restroom to wash up and do your morning routine.

You then head towards your daughter's room and see if she is awake but notice she’s not in her bed so she’s most likely with your husband getting into some trouble.

You find them in the living room, toys scattered all over the floor. “You Wyatt’s are destroyers, I left the living room cleaned last night before bed.”

Urban and Cassie look up at you smiling.

“She did it”

“He did it”

They both yell out quickly. You shake your head and smile, “What are you guys in the mood for breakfast?”

“We already ate babe, you’ve been stressed lately so you needed the extra rest.”

“Aww thank you baby.” You look at your daughter then back at your husband. “What did you make? It better not have been noodles again, you stay eating those. Se te van a pegar en el estómago.”

“I don’t know what you said but, no, no noodles this time. Made some simple scrambled eggs. Left you a plate with that chia pudding you like so much.”

“Thank you.” You sit down on the carpet next to your daughter who’s playing with her toys and eating some cut up strawberries. “Let me just sit with you two for a bit.”

“Mama look.” Cassie says, showing me a drawing, “I painted you, daddy, me and Teddy.”

“Wow baby, That’s a beautiful drawing.” You look around, “Where is Teddy at?” asking for your dog.

“We let him out to pee real quick, he had a very heavy breakfast.” Urban says, pointing at Cassie.

You nod, understanding what he meant. Your phone keeps ringing for the sixth time so you decide to finally check it.

You open up all the text messages your brother has sent you. “Este loco que.”

“What happened?”

“It’s Carlos, He’s been blowing up my phone all morning.” You go to the text thread and see a bunch of links he has sent you. “Wh- what is this?”

“Hmm? What’s wrong?” Urban asks, trying to peek on your screen.

“Umm” you stand up from the floor

“Babe, Y/N, what’s wrong?”

You don’t answer him and head to the kitchen. You click on the links and see pictures of her and your husband.

You read all the different articles.

“Y/N what’s going on? Is everything okay?” Urban asks, as he walks to where you’re at.

“Have you checked your phone today?”

“No, why?”

“You haven’t been on Twitter or Instagram?”

“No, first thing I did was check on Cassandra and we came downstairs. I haven’t had time to be on my phone, why?”

“This is trending, my brother sent me all these different links.” You show him what you were looking at and he laughs.

“Oh that’s funny.” He takes your phone and scrolls through it, shaking his head. “This is a new one.”

He looks at you smiling but notices the worried look on your face. “Wait, you don’t believe this crap right?”

You don’t answer him right away, “Y/N, you actually believe this? What the fuck?”

“N-no of course not. But I did the math and-“

“I thought we were passed this? I thought you trusted me.” He yells.

“Urban, keep your voice down, Cassie is in the other room.” You tell him, turning to look into the living room to see if she heard him.

“I don’t give a shit right now. We’re married, you said you trusted me. But you asking me about that bullshit says otherwise.”

“It was a question, I simply asked if you’ve seen what was going around.”

“No, it’s the fact that you hesitated when I asked you if you trusted me.”

“You have a track record of sleeping around, yeah. But also don’t blame me for not answering you right away. It just caught me off guard.”

He shakes his head. “Be straight up, own your shit, there’s a part of you that you believe that shit. You honestly think I would step out on you? On my daughter? And with her out of all people?.”

“I’m sorry okay, what else do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugs and scratches his head. “I need time, I need to get out of here.”

“Urban come on, don’t be dramatic.”

“Dramatic? You accused me of cheating and getting Stassie pregnant, tell me how would you react if I questioned you about that?”

“Um you did, when I released my song, you thought I had cheated on you”

He rolls his eyes, “That’s fucking different, You’re questioning me wether I got her pregnant or not.”

“I’m sorry okay, I just-“

“No, I need to get out of here. You figure out your shit. Either you trust me or not.”

“Where are you going?”

“Away from you.”

“Urb, babe, please let’s just talk this through.”

“Talk this through? I would’ve done that if you would’ve just said, hey babe there’s some bullshit article going around about you and Stassie. But no, you walked out the room and came and read that shit and doubted me.”

He looks at you shaking his head, he pulls off his wedding band, “You think about everything, figure out your shit, you trust me or you don’t.” He places his ring on the kitchen counter and walks out the kitchen.

You follow behind him and see him grab his keys and goes to kiss Cassie on her head.

“Urb, Urban,”

He shakes his head. “Don’t wait up.” And with that he walks out the door.

You thought maybe he’d come home after a few hours, but a few hours turned into days, days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months.

You miss your husband.

Cassie misses her daddy.

You messed up, and only you can fix it.

But the question is, can you even fix your marriage at this point.?

********

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[eldritchamy]

Hey! I'm sure you're tired of it being referenced by now, but I once again saw the cone snail post come up--that time of year, I suppose, when we all warn each other of the dangers of the blue-ringed octopus?--and was as always struck by the narrative about the person who picked up a pair of cone snails and was instantly killed. Over the past several years I've repeatedly looked for source on that, but not been able to find it--can you link me? I'd love to read about it.

Yeah that's one of the many things in that post that is

TOTAL BULLSHIT

because it turns out the show that I "learned" and paraphrased most of that information from (The Most Extreme, which aired on Animal Planet in the 2000s) was

sensationalized horseshit

that didn't use reliable sources or in some cases appears to have just straight up made things up out of thin air.

You can't find the story because it isn't real.

As far as I can tell, the source is the show I watched, which just made it up. Much of that post isn't actually based on anything credible.

The last time I looked at the wikipedia page for cone snails (not counting several paragraphs later while writing this post), several of the claims in that post were literally called out and debunked, although not directly in reference to my post.

Conotoxin IS very potent, but cone snails are not considered the most venomous animals on earth. There are several species whose LD50 far exceeds it in terms of toxicity. I do not remember which, although I'm probably going to compulsively go look it up.

I'm gonna go compulsively look it up.

So the answer is fact checking for this specific topic sucks because there's no direct answer from a reputable science organization that shows any actual data or ranks animals by toxicity of venom rather than how "deadly" they are to humans, but the answer is PROBABLY a box jellyfish? Inland Taipan almost certainly has the most toxic venom of any land animal. It's hard to find anything that even MENTIONS venom by toxicity in terms of a median lethal dose, and most sensationalist articles go by DEADLIEST rather than MOST VENOMOUS, which factors in the amount of venom administered at a time and how frequently they encounter humans, which are honestly probably more important factors anyway.

Still, it'd be nice to have a real answer.

I still wouldn't go around picking up any 4-to-6-inch cone shaped snail shells, but they are nowhere near as dangerous as many people who have unfortunately read that post now believe. You DO still need immediate medical attention in the highly unlikely event that you get stung by one, but under no circumstances will you be dead before you hit the ground. More like 1 to 5 hours without medical attention.

You shouldn't pick up a blue ringed octopus, either, but I think the original picture on that post turned out to actually be a painting.

I really hate that post.

[natrogersfics]

Article created by @teamromanoff for this 'verse years back! Read on AO3 Steve knows that there are not many things in this world that can leave Tony Stark and Pepper Potts slack-jawed. In terms of all things ridiculous, the couple has seen it all – Tony for being, well, Tony, and Pepper by having to put up with Tony for all these years. And yet, as he and Natasha stand behind the bar after informing them of the truth about their relationship, they find the usually eloquent pair rendered speechless.

The discussion of whether to let them in on their lie had not been a short one. On one hand, the smaller the circle of people who know, the less chance of a slip up there is – not that he and Natasha think that Tony or Pepper would go babbling to the press. They trust them implicitly, and if there’s ever a pair who understood the importance of concealing details about their lives to the press, it’s them. But if things go South, they don’t want to risk implicating their friends. Ultimately, though, the fact that they are some of their oldest friends trumped all the other reasons that had come about. They’re already keeping his actual family in the dark; the family they had chosen did not have to be subjected to the same treatment.

“Let me get this straight,” Tony says, shifting in his bar stool. “You’re telling us that this” – he gestures between them both – “isn’t real? Like, at all?”

His eyes widen at the volume at which Tony says the words, and despite there being an hour left before opening, like a reflex, he and Natasha let their eyes roam around the room to check for any unwanted attention the man may have garnered.

“Will you keep your voice down?” Natasha hisses at Tony. “We have employees in the back.” She gives their surroundings another once-over, and satisfied that no one had heard Tony’s outburst, she looks back at both him and Pepper. “And you two saw us just last week. We weren’t even together, much less engaged. How could you think this was real?”

“I don’t know,” Tony says, his expression twisting as if he’s only now considering the idea. “You two are always joined at the hip. We assumed that at one point the bulb would just go on.” He shrugs. “I never would have put money on you two playing 90 Day Fiancè- ow!”

“What Tony means,” Pepper says, looking at both of them as Tony winces next to her, “is that you two were very convincing. When Sarah announced your engagement, we didn’t have any reason to believe it wasn’t true.”

“Right,” Tony says, pulling out his phone. “Were we really supposed to think this was all fake?”

Steve looks at the picture on screen of him and Natasha on stage with his family before rolling his eyes. “For the hundredth time, yes.”

“What about this?” Tony says, swiping to show the picture of them kissing at the lobby of Cipriani’s on the front page of the NY Star. “And this?” Tony swipes again, moving to the picture of Natasha’s head on his shoulder at the Knicks game they attended with Thor and his wife, Jane. “And this?” The final image is of him and Natasha as they grabbed coffee on their way to do inventory this morning, and if he hadn’t already been jaded by how ruthless photographers could be when it comes to disregarding people’s privacy, he might have rolled his eyes at how quickly they’d gotten their picture circulating on the Internet.

He sighs. “All an act, Tony.”

“Well, shit,” Tony says before zooming in on the picture of Natasha’s engagement ring. “I mean, this looks really real. And expensive.” With a swipe of his finger, the screen shifts back to a gallery of their pictures on the NY Star website. “And these all look really real.”

“Tony, if you believe half the things they print in tabloids, then you’d have married half of Manhattan by now,” Natasha says.

Pepper smirks. “This is true.”

As Tony and Natasha continue to trade jabs, Steve stares back at the phone Tony is still holding out. There’s a part of him that has to admit that their friend isn’t wrong. He and Natasha do look like a couple, and truth be told, ever since the night they had taken their ruse public, every time they’ve had to act has just become easier and easier. But that’s the benefit of having been friends with someone for so long, he reminds himself. Their familiarity with one another has made it so that their learning curve in this has been practically nonexistent, and that’s precisely why Natasha’s the perfect partner in this ruse.

“So how long do you two plan on keeping this up?” Pepper questions, and if he’s honest, it’s the first sensible inquiry they’ve gotten since they revealed the truth.

He turns to Natasha for confirmation before looking back at Pepper. “Just until the deal closes with the Odinsons.”

“Then I look forward to your next performance as Mr. and Mrs. Rogers at the Odinson charity event tomorrow,” Tony says, whose smirk is wiped clean by the glare Pepper shoots his way.

“Well, if our reactions are anything to go by, obviously you two are playing this exceptionally well,” Pepper says. “But just be careful, all right? There are a lot of vultures out there.”

Steve sighs. “Don’t worry, we’re keeping an eye out for the media.”

“Among other things,” Pepper notes, reaching to take a sip of her water. “Anyway, and now for the other reason we wanted to come see you two.” She steals a glance at Tony before smiling. “We have some news.”

It’s slow for a Wednesday night, and with only a handful of patrons finishing up their drinks, Steve makes his way over to where Wanda is standing, her attention on the tablet resting on the surface of the bar. “Not to sound like a grandpa here, but… reading under these lights will do a number on your eyesight.”

Wanda looks up, her expression sheepish. “Sorry,” she says, flipping the cover over the screen. “It’s just with finals-”

“Wanda,” he interrupts with a chuckle before she can continue. “I was just kidding. Well, maybe not entirely about the eyesight thing.” He shrugs as Wanda rolls her eyes playfully at him. “You should take off. Study in proper lighting.”

“Thank you, Steve,” Wanda says, shaking her head. “But no. You and Nat have already been so understanding lately. I couldn’t do that.”

“We weren’t asking,” Natasha says, a smirk on her face as she comes to stand next to him. “It’s the middle of the week. I doubt any more people are coming in. Go.” She cranes her neck towards the direction of the sink at the end before calling out, “You too, Pete!”

“Thanks, guys!” Peter calls out.

“Be safe, kid,” he says, smiling as Peter gives them a thumbs up, before turning his attention back to Wanda. “See, leaving is that easy.”

Wanda looks at him and then at Natasha, who crosses her arms over her chest, before letting out a sigh. “Okay, fine,” she says, her smile full of gratitude. “You two are the best. Thank you.”

Natasha smiles. “Go.”

“I’m going, I’m going,” Wanda says, placing her hands up.

He and Natasha wave to Wanda as she exits, and as soon as the door closes behind their bartender, Natasha makes her way towards the end where Peter had left a batch of freshly washed crystal tumblers. As she takes one in her hand and a dish cloth in the other, he moves to stand next to her. “Do you think we have to let them know too?”

“I thought about it,” Natasha admits with a sigh. “I hate the idea of keeping things from Wanda and Peter, but at the same time, I don’t want to involve them if they don’t have to be.”

“I guess you’re right,” he says before adding, “I doubt they read the tabloids and society pages anyway.”

“No one below the Upper East Side does,” she confers. “Plus, it’d be nice to have a space where we don’t have to pretend, don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” he says, the corners of his lips lifting in a smile. “I think that’s a great idea.” As far as safe havens go, the Soldier & Spy is very much it for them both. It’s taken their blood, sweat, and tears to get their business to where it is today, but it’s the one place they’ve both found happiness in after a long list of unfulfilling careers. “So…” he begins after a beat. “Tony Stark, a father.”

Natasha smirks, but does not take her eyes away from the glass she’s working on. “I honestly thought I’d be more surprised,” she says. “But now that I’ve had some time to think about it, it’s not all that shocking.”

“Yeah?” he prods, turning to look her way.

“Yeah,” she confirms. “If you only knew Tony from what you read about him, then yeah, I guess you’d be floored.” She shrugs. “But we don’t, and we know that underneath all the snide comments and witty comebacks” – she pauses as they share a laugh – “he cares fiercely for the people he loves.” She turns to look at him, a little smile playing on her lips. “I think he’ll make an excellent father.”

“The best,” he says, mirroring her smile. “He and Pepper are one hell of a duo. That baby is going to be so lucky.”

“Speaking of babies, though,” she says, setting the towel on the counter before nodding towards the booth in the corner. “You might want to break that up before those two start making one on our freshly cleaned upholstery.”

He looks to where a young couple is practically draped over each other before chuckling. “Ah, to be young…”

“And out for some action,” she finishes, eliciting a laugh from him.

“Is that why you’re leaving early and making me serve as human contraception?” he asks, watching as she puts the towel down and smirking when she narrows his eyes at him. “What? It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Nat.”

“First of all, I’m not ashamed,” she says. “And second, do you really think I’d do that while” – she gestures between the two of them – “this is going on?”

“I wouldn’t either, by the way,” he interjects.

She rolls her eyes, as if that’s the most obvious fact in the world. “Besides…” she says after a beat. “Even if I did go out looking, it’s been too long since…” She cocks her head towards the booth once more before chuckling. “Anyway, I probably don’t even remember what to do.” Maybe it’s the blank stare he gives her or the silence that lingers between them for a millisecond too long, but either way, she scoffs. “You look surprised.”

“No,” he says quickly, even though that’s not completely the truth. “I mean, I obviously wouldn’t have dragged you into, you know… if I thought that you… But at the same time, I didn’t want to assume-”

“I’m here all the time,” she says almost incredulously, the corners of her lips quirking. “Where could I have possibly found the time to-”

“I don’t know!” he says, amusement thick in his voice as he scratches the back of his head. “Plus, it’s hardly any of my business.” He shrugs. “But hey, for what it’s worth, I heard it’s just like riding a bike.”

“You heard or you know?” she challenges, raising a brow.

This time, he’s the one that scoffs. “I’m here all the time!”

She just shrugs, earning yet another scoff from him. “Wait,” she says, a glint in her eye as she steps closer to him, leaning in as if to let him in on some dirty little secret. “So, you and Peggy… you two aren’t…”

“Natasha,” he says exasperatedly. “For Christ’s sake, not you, too.”

She puts her hands up in the air. “It’s hardly any of my business.”

He rolls his eyes. “No, okay,” he says, shaking his head. “No, it’s not like that with Peggy. It never has been. Okay?”

“Okay,” she says in concession, letting a moment pass before letting out a sigh. “So I guess we’re just a couple of lame bar owners, huh?”

“The lamest,” he agrees, tipping his chin upward.

She smiles. “Anyway, I should get going.”

“Since we’re in a sharing mood,” he says, watching as she picks up her purse and slings it over her shoulder. “Where are you going?”

“Haven’t you heard?” she asks, causing his brows to rise in intrigue. “We have to leave some mystery in the relationship to keep it hot and spicy.”

He scoffs for the nth time as she giggles and leans in to press a kiss to his cheek. “Get out of here,” he says, shaking his head when she only looks back to stick her tongue out at him. Masterlist

#Romanogers #Never Be the Same #Fake Engagement AU #And I'd Choose You