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gojoyogurt · 3 years

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happy birthday gojo!! || chilhood friends to lovers au || short fic

pairing: gojo satoru x reader

summary: you spend the whole day together with gojo, your childhood friend. this birthday was special since you were the only one to celebrate it with him since all his other friends were overseas. on this day, it felt more like you were receiving a gift on your birthday rather than giving him a gift.

warnings: grammar and vocabulary may not be the best. also, i know gojo isnt 20 but... for the sake of this story i made him just reaching his 20s hope you guys dont mind. some spelling mistakes may not be noticed.

“hey gojo!” i screamed acrossed the road as i saw the tall, light haired man with a bandana covering his eyes leaning on the lamp post. he looked over and gave a small smile along with a wave. it was such a special day since he just turned 20, if he made my 20th birthday so memorable, i should only return the favour since the both of us have been together ( not in a romantic way ) for the longest time and we were always there for each other. “ayo happy birthday you overgrown man baby!” i jokingly congratulated him. “thanks you tiny tiger” he replies back with a smirk on his face while patting me on the head. i blushed slightly, i always had a crush on him but i never got the chance to say it to him. “should i say it today?” i thought to myself as my heart skipped a beat.

we walked down the street for a while and we stumbled across a cafe that seemed pretty quiet, the atmosphere it gave off was so simple yet it was drawing our attention to it. “hey do you-“ we both said simultaneously. “man... that single braincell energy tho amirite HAHA” i affirmed him as both of us were laughing our asses off right infront of the cafe door. after wasting our energy on cackling, we finally stepped into the cafe and ordered our drinks. “one cafe latte-“ we both said simultaneously AGAIN. “why are we so in sync today??” he questioned as we both started giggling uncontrollably at the register. “excuse me, are you guys going to order?” the staff asked us. “oops, sorry. we’ll get two cafe lattes please!” i cheerfully ordered. “two cafe lattes, anything else?” he reassured us. “nope!” i confirmed our order. “ok here’s your receipt, you guys make such a cute couple! you’re so lucky to find your soulmate that matches you perfectly!” the cashier said to us. we both just looked at each other and laughed it off.

it was nearly impossible for us to get to the table since gojos hands wouldnt stop shaking because he was giggling. luckily, we made it to the table without spilling the drinks. “here, its a small gift i made” i said as i handed over a brown wrapped package to him. the crumpling and tearing sound of the paper filled the area we were in, my heart was racing since i was worried that he wouldnt like it. “oh wow, y/n you made this??” he questioned me as if he couldn’t believe that i actually made the picture collage of the both of us. “yeah... do you not like it?” i asked quietly, scared that he actually hated it. “YO I LOVE THIS SO MUCH THANK YOU!!” he screamed in excitement. the collage was filled with memories of me and gojo from when we first met when we were 5 and uptil this day.

it felt like a heavy weight was just lifted off my shoulder. “thanks!! that took a while since i also added some pictures of us when we were still kids!” i replied back in relief. “hey! lets take a photo now so we can add it to the frame!” i suggested. i wriggled my chair over next to him and i took out my polaroid camera from my bag. we both smiled for the picture and i waited for the photo to come out.. “should i tell him now?” i reassured myself. i looked at him quietly, he was smiling while looking at the photos of our past selves, “i want to see that smile forever... ” i knew that it may seem greedy, but my heart always raced whenever i looked at him, even uptil now. “hey, y/n you ok? you seem a little flushed” he asked me with a concerned look on his face. “oh, uh, yeah just feeling a little warm...” i muttered. “lets go to my place so you can rest, ok?” you agreed to go over to his place after finishing your drinks.

during the walk back to his place, i couldnt control my heart, it was beating as if im about to go on stage and perform for millions of people. i stopped walking and i was shaking quietly in a small alleyway leading to his house. “y/n, are you ok??” he ran back after noticing that i wasnt by his side anymore. i dont know why but i suddenly started crying, it was supposed to be a happy day but... why am i like this??? am i scared? gojo hugged me and i cried into his chest while he was calming me down. / “y/n... talk to me, is there anything wrong?” he tried to ask me after i calmed down a little. “i-i- i li- like u b-buht i d-don whant to ru-ruin our fwe nd shipp” i somehow managed to get the words out in between breaths. at that point, my face looked like it was a tomato about to burst. i could hear my own heartbeat, i didnt even dare to take a glance at gojo. “man... how do i take care of you... you see, y/n, i also liked you for such a long time but i always thought that you would go off with some other man so i never confessed” he confessed while scratching the back of his head.

my heart felt like it just stopped, at that moment in time, i feel like the world was so serene and quiet. after snapping back into reality, “wh-what weally??” i sniffled as i looked up at him with my swollen eyes. “HAHAHA YOU SHOULD SEE YOUR FACE RIGHT NOW BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA” he teased me as i quickly wiped my snot and tears off my face. “you’re not joking with me right?” i tried to confirm with him. he suddenly let out a huge sigh and walked towards me. my heartbeat suddenly increased as he got closer and closer with every step. he leaned closer towards me and took off his black bandana, “do i look like im lying?” he questioned me as i stared into his beautiful blue eyes. this isnt the first time im seeing it but i always can never prepare myself to see it. his eyes looked so peaceful, like a quiet ocean that has no limits. it felt like you could clearly see the sky even though we were in a dark area.

he put his bandana back on and gave me a long, tight hug. “you are the meanest person i know did you know that” i jokingly said to him. “hey is that the first thing you say to your boyfriend? ouch” he joked back. he hugged me for a little while longer before staring at me. he leaned in closer next to my ear and whispered, “thank you, for making this the best birthday present i could ever ask for” he gave me a peck on the cheek before looking back at me. my face was once again about to explode and my heart was probably on the verge of exploding. “can you not do that i have a weak heart you know???” i scolded as i jumped on him to attack him. “ouch ouch ouch!1!1!1!1! okok im sorry geez, violent much” he teased me once again. “c’mon, lets go to your house already, i look embarrassing” i pushed him so that i don’t embarrass myself in public. i clinged onto his arm and kept my head down the whole way back so that people dont see my face. this day was honestly the best day of my life, i had a huge smile on my face for the rest of the day.

and the rest is left up to your imagination...

hello people! sorry if this seemed rushed because i’ve been quite busy recently but ill still try to post whenever i can. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO GOJO YAYYY. actually ive been on a hiatus off anime for a while and jujutsu kaisen is getting me back into the swing of things so im really into jujutsu kaisen atm HAHA. anywho hope you guys enjoyed this short fic and see yall in the next one byee!!!

also im so happy aot the final season came out today but since i read the manga, im really not prepared for whats going to happen... also can we talk about how the intro is just a whole gender reveal party??

#jjk #jujutsu kaisen #gojo saturo x reader #gojo satoru #happy birthday gojo!#jjk gojo

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liquifiedstars · 4 years

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rly excited about tmr.. well, a couple hours later today haha

itll be the first time ill be going out since quarantine started around the 15th of march for me! :] unfortunately i cant visit my bf bc.. strict asian parents... h.. but im really excited to go to the grocery store!! ive been craving musubi for a while now... also bibimbap with raw egg... yum teehee

so im probably going to purchase the ingredients for both dishes and see if i could make it at home! i made a list earlier of everything i want but im pretty sure that im bound to 4get something rip

ooh also ive been wanting sangaria’s milk so theres that too aaaaa..,. might get cheap store sushi too because for some reason ive been wanting that more than actual sushi? lol also eel bowls.. yay, but yeah really excited about later today! :-) might actually post irl pictures for once on here maybe haha but i usually do that on my ig..

school’s not over for me yet, i still have up until june 12th :-( my summer break is about two months long? its super short

idk why it makes me kind of sad because compared to other people i know outside of my school district and my online friends, their break is a lot longer.. i guess this is what happens when you’re attending a competitive school :-(

i feel like im one of the few people that genuinely want school uniforms at my school, i feel like it would make the environment here a lot more... idk easy? idk how to explain it, like.. yea just easier to be in and a lot less anxiety inducing idk

i don’t mind wearing blazers or skirts and button up tops tbh, those uniforms are cooliooo!! like the preppy schools over here lol..

im trying to get back into drawing but everything having to do with me, especially with waht i make i automatically hate it but i try not to? also i just feel like idk empty most of the time

maybe its just because i really miss my bf lol

i forgot, because of covid i wasnt able to give my gifts to him last month for our anniversary :[ but he said that its ok!! maybe icould have it be a welcome back to school giftinstead?? idk its a dumb idea i know LOL

i kind of want to get more into cosplay, but its really expensive and i just.. have better things to spend my money on. i want to cosplay as shouko nishimiya from a silent voice for this halloween though and at anime cons in my area :]

i dont think people would recognize her because her design isnt exactly super duper distinct but its ok! idm hehe

anyway thats all im gonna write about for now, im just kind of tired at the moment

i finally am starting to fix my sleep schedule though, ive been sleeping at about 2-4 am instead of pulling allnighters up until 12 pm lol... so thats cool i guess

but i mean my parents pretty much forced me to do that so blehh but its fine, at least im not burned out all the time whenever i have schoolwork to do

#diary

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amaloaf · 7 years

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All of them

3 Fears3 things I love2 turns on2 turns offMy best friendSexual orientationHow tall am IWhat do I miss right nowFavourite colorDo I have a crush ^ already answered these

Favourite place

my room of the senior lounge in my school

What am I listening to right now

a davenchurch playlist (current song: Something I Need- One Republic)

Shoe size

9-10 womens

Eye color

brown and gold

Hair color

ALSO brownish-gold

Meaning behind my URL

haha Fenton called me a walking paradox as a joke and it stuck!

Favourite song

literally dont have one but im currently loving “Waving Through a Window” from the dear evan hanson soundtrack

Favourite band

either panic! at the disco or fall out boy

How I feel right now

absolutely awful but you sending this completely boosted my mood!!

Someone I love

oh sweet jesus, Fenton and Ellie and Pear and Cade and Vinny and Dylan and Sydney and Daffy and Simon and Nico and Jayme and Kiwi and Arily and this is going overboard but i cannot hold all my love in

My current relationship status

painfully single and desperately needing to get laid

My relationship with my parents

Favourite season

fall

Tattoos and piercing i have

none, unfortunately

Tattoos and piercing i want

a septum piercing, 1mm gauges, a second piercing, an outer ear ring, sleeve tats of intertwining roses and dandelions, magnus’ railsplitter somewhere (im still deciding on where..)

The reasons I joined Tumblr

all my middle school friends had it

Do I ever get “good morning” or “good night ” texts?

not anymore

Have I ever kissed the last person you texted?

i kissed my dad before

How long does it take me to get ready in the morning?

cosmetically? five minutes max

Have you shaved your legs in the past three days?

unfortunately i did yesterday

Where am I right now?

at my desk, sitting on pile of laundry im neglecting

Do I like my music loud or at a reasonable level?

i like it quiet

Do I live with my Mom and Dad?

both, but unhappily

Am I excited for anything?

death, also graduation i guess

Do I have someone of the opposite sex I can tell everything to?

my friends Cade and Dylan are good buddies

How often do I wear a fake smile?

….. next question

If I could meet anyone on this earth, who would it be?

the mcelroys, specifically travis

What do I think about most?

not to be dark but death

Do I prefer to be behind the camera or in front of it?

neither, but behind if i have to be

What was the last lie I told?

“no mom i totally bought this”

Do I perfer talking on the phone or video chatting online?

i dont do either v much but i really like vids when i can get them

Do I believe in ghosts? How about aliens?

yes and yes (i saw three ghosts in my life)

Do I believe in magic?

hell yeah

Do I believe in luck?

mostly

What’s the weather like right now?

clear night skies with a slight fall nip in the air

What was the last book I’ve read?

animal farm by george orwell

Do I have any nicknames?

M.K., M, Loaf

Do I spend money or save it?

both?

Can I touch my nose with a tounge?

nope!

Favourite animal?

hgnnnnn cant choose, maybe sharks?

What was I doing last night at 12 AM?

sleeping

What’s a song that always makes me happy when I hear it?

Hips Dont Lie!

What is my favorite word?

bludgeoning because im a nerd

If the whole world were listening to me right now, what would I say?

CUT THE CRAP AND LEARN TO LIVE TOGETHER IN PEACE GOD DAMN IT

Do I have any relatives in jail?

i deadass dont talk to my family but im p sure one of my cousins was arrested last week

What is my current desktop picture?

that picture of the sloth photoshopped on a dolphin with the P!NK lyrics

Had sex?

Bought condoms?

Gotten pregnant?

oh god no

Have I ever kissed somebody in the rain?

no but my first kiss with a boy i got sprayed on at a waterpark

Had job?

im a partime paralegal

Smoked weed?

yep

Smoked cigarettes?

for a long ass time in middle school (if im bein real honest im going to pic it back up again probably)

Drank alcohol?

Am I a vegetarian/vegan?

definetly not

Been overweight?

currently am

Been underweight?

when i was born

Gotten my heart broken?

plenty of times

Been to prom?

yes

Been in airplane?

oh yeah, i love flying

Learned another language?

took spanish for 10+ years and dont know a damned word of it

Wore make up?

Dyed my hair?

no but i really want to

Had a surgery?

yes! some work on my ear after i fucked it up as a baby

Met someone famous?

a band called After Romeo

Stalked someone on a social network?

i tend to go through social media when i find new accounts i like but its never stalkerish

Been fishing?

got the license and everything

Been rejected by a crush?

yea, ive only ever had one crush where it panned out

What do I want for birthday?

a binder

Do I like my handwriting?

Where do I want to live when older?

idk, im praying i dont end up back in vegas

Have I ever got caught sneaking out or doing anything bad?

got caught reading awful porn once does that count

What I’m really bad at

ohh im really holding back on saying “everything” but if i had to choose wind instruments

What my greatest achievments are

my art, my relationships, my baby handling skills

The meanest thing somebody has ever said to me

ill give you the second worse: “ well at least being a fattass made you bouncy”

What I’d do if I won in a lottery

buy a house, get a super crazy nice computer, give some money to the friends listed up earlier on the list and draw for all eternity

What do I like about myself

my eyes and my good heart and my ability to fake good things

My closest Tumblr friend

oh definitely Fenton or @whyldkratts

Any question you’d like?

feel free to send in your own question!

Are you outgoing or shy?

yes

What kind of people are you attracted to?

soft bellies, thick legs and hips, nice pecs, soft long hair, nice lips

Do you think you’ll be in a relationship two months from now?

idk maybe? i hope so, yall can feel free to make the first move ;3

Does talking about sex make you uncomfortable?

no, i actually like it!

Who was the last person you had a deep conversation with?

my buddy Cade

What does the most recent text that you sent say?

What are your 5 favorite songs right now?

Something I Need, Michel in the Bathroom, For Forever, Waving Through a Window, and Freeze Your Brain

Do you like it when people play with your hair?

oh yes!! please play with my hair!!! ((and playing with OTHER peoples hair??? oh boy howdy dont even get me started!!!!))

Do you think there is life on other planets?

hell yes!

Do you like bubble baths?

sure, no real pref either way

Do you like your neighbors?

NOPE

Where would you like to travel?

yes!

Favorite part of your daily routine?

sleep

What part of your body are you most uncomfortable with?

*sweats* yes?? (probably my boobs and stomach, also my arms)

What do you do when you wake up?

stare at the ceiling and mentally prepare myself for the day

Do you wish your skin was lighter or darker?

darker, it lost a lot of melinin when i hit puberty for some reason??

Do you ever want to get married?

yes! even if its just a platonic life partner marriage!

If your hair long enough for a pony tail?

yep

Would you rather live without TV or music?

telivision my man

Have you ever liked someone and never told them?

yep! one time it went to shit the other time it went fairly ok

What are your favorite stores to shop in?

target and hot topic

Do you believe everyone deserves a second chance?

normally yes but you gotta kno when to get the hell away from certain folks

Do you smile at strangers?

sometimes

Have you done anything recently that you hope nobody finds out about?

OH yeaaah

Ever wished you were someone else?

every god damned day

Favourite makeup brand?

cheap

Last thing you ate?

mashed potatoes

Ever won a competition? For what?

won a college science fair in middle school once

Ever been in love?

im always in love

Facebook or Twitter?

twitter always (pst mines @emiglody95

Twitter or Tumblr?

tumblr

Are you watching tv right now?

What colour are your towels?

beige and brown

Favourite ice cream flavour?

cookie dough or coffee

First person you talked to today?

my mother or Ellie i can remember

Last person you talked to today?

Pear or my day, again i cant remember

Name a person you hate?

Prestly, Kevin, Zoe, Mike

Name a person you love?

hmm ive already listed a lot of people already so lets go with: Wilson

Is there anyone you want to punch in the face right now?

remember Kevin from two asks ago?

Do you tan a lot?

im outside a lot but my tan is mostly natural

Have any pets?

my dog, Gus!

Do you type fast?

yes actually!!

Do you regret anything from your past?

im not lookin to type a paragraph so lets go with yes

Ever broken someone’s heart?

yeah,,

Have you ever liked someone so much it hurt?

every day

Is cheating ever okay?

no, but if your partner got seriously fucked up and it was a total accident and you trust them then MAYBE you can reconsider not throwing their asses out

Do you believe in true love?

to an extent

What your zodiac sign?

leo!

Do you believe in ghosts?

id better ive seen three of ‘em

Get the closest book next to you, open it to page 42, what’s the first line on that page?

“ Its fine”, she said primly as she turned back to the trays of jewelry.

#answered for me #hell yea love gettin these things

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krykir-blog · 7 years

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My Experience With Transitioning

fuck me im just copying and pasting what I’ve done up until now

Info already so right now i think im nonbinary but i think i might be completely trans idk (edit later in time: i can say for sure I am completely trans, not just nonbinary.), ive felt this way for a while and my bud sen helped me figure it all out bc i was hella confused and i felt very masculine. A year and a few months ago I cut my hair super short and realized that this was how I've always wanted it because oh my god if i ever grew long hair again id want to die, i hate it and i hated how I looked. So that was that and i was like that for a while and I think sometime during the summer of 2015 i figured out what I wanted to be called (ryan). I started out w/ having people on the internet call me that and it was awesome, but kinda weird having people in real life call me by my birth name and it was really odd. Then October came and my stepcousin was getting married- during that wedding was when i told my dad and stepmum i wanted to be called ryan so I consider that to be the time when I actually started transitioning. It took a painfully long time to get my mother on board to be honest, her boyfriend (who is now her ex) was actually down with it right away but of course he didn't call me or my brother that because it would've been awkward, but we had some late night talks about it frequently. When they broke up it was kinda iffy but I think it was soon after that happened that she started calling me and my brother by our preferred names. At a party my parents went to one night they told all their friends about me and my brother and we've been enrolled in a study, which is 6 MRI's total. I've already had 3 MRI's and let me tell you, they suck, but I think later next year I'm gonna have to get my next round- just basically contribution to help trans people or anyone taking hormones to transition. This year I got into high school and I'm going to a place that's pretty far away from where my last school was, so no one there knows me or that I'm female- I'm completely authentic and I think that's pretty cool, it's what I wanted. So far I think that's all you need to know lmao if I have more info to put down i probably will. Thank you guys for the support, i love you <3 8/29/16 First injection of testosterone. No changes yet ofc, but I found that I was hardly hurt by the needle so now I'm a lot more excited lmao. (Dose amount is currently 0.1 ML) 9/5/16 Second injection. Of course, no changes yet, so there's not much to say except this was my first time doing it at home. stepmum did it tbh, it still surprises me at how much it doesnt hurt lmao 9/12/16 Third injection bois. No really noticeable changes yet however i think i have a bit more hair growth from where the bellybutton is down to the nether areas which is still something and I'll take it xD I'm starting to think I prefer shots in the arm tho. Surprisingly they don't hurt as much as far as I can tell?? it's pretty neat lmao 9/19/16 Still no noticeable changes. I can now say for sure that shots hurt less in the arm than the leg, surprisingly enough at least for me lmao one month b o i s 9/26/16 (sorry for being super late with updating this one) still no noticeable changes yet, dosage is still small as all hell >> 10/3/16 No noticeable changes that I can identify, but I have a friend who told me that my voice is deeper. regardless of that, it's not at all by much at least to me and there's still nothing super noticeable and it's rather irritating. 10/7/16 Not a shot, but my first MRI after getting the three baseline scans before I got testosterone. I got my blood drawn more than I ever have and it got to the point where my vision became brightly dotted and my ears started ringing like mad, it was awful, i thought i was gonna pass out. But the MRI itself was actually a lot better than my last three scans, theyve made so many improvements to make it less anxiety inducing. 4/6 MRIs done, 1/3 blood draws done. 10/10/16 SEVENTH SHOT OF T I'VE BEEN OVER THE MOON TODAY THO 'CAUSE I'M GETTING MY DANK ASS FRIEND A BINDER AS fOR the actual T, I haven't noticed any super big changes but my friends are like "yeah jesus christ ur voice is deeper" so I GUESS THATS THAT I also started recording my voice after the sixth shot so ill keep up w/ that too as much as I can 10/17/16 Still no noticeable changes to me, however we got new needles and the measurements are different and it's weird but ye nothing super exciting to say I guess hhh sorry for being so slow at updating this rip 10/24/16 This time the needle really hurt and idk why but oh well. Still no noticeable changes besides more hair growth on my legs and the happy trail area. I compared my voice now to my 6th shot and there's no distinct difference >> i really wish my dosage was higherrrr Also for some reason I keep having dreams of me with longer hair?? it's really not okay :'D I don't recognize pictures of myself with long hair anymore tho so I guess that's something. 10/31/16 -ok so i dont remember getting a shot this day but w/e, im late to updating it- still no noticeable changes 11/7/16 SO I GAVE MYSELF A SHOT FOR THE FIRST TIME AND IT WAS AWFUL 1- I PRICKED MY FINGER AND IT STARTED BLEEDING A LOT AND IT STILL HURTS 2- WHEN I ACTUALLY PUT IT IN MY ARM I DIDNT PUT IT IN DEEP ENOUGH SO IT ALL STARTED COMING OUT AND I WAS BLEEDING A LOT IM SICK FROM SCHOOL TODAY AND I HAD DETERMINATION TO DO IT BUT I DIDNT DO WELL 11/14/16 soRRY FOR BEING AWFUL AT UPDATING i had a really shitty monday this most recent monday but its ok my friend brought their trans bf over and watched me and my borther put in our shots and it was chill no noticeable changes to report i dont think 11/21/16 Nothing special to report, the needle kinda stung tho oddly 11/28/16 AAAND MY DOSAGE IS NOW 0.2 BOIS I GO BACK IN 3 MONTHS AND ITLL PROBS BE UPPED TO 0.3 BUT IM EXCITED I loved the nurse who drew my blood lmao she was really cool, i love the people who work in that office so much. They're all so nice ;v; I have a bit more acne and my doctor said my voice sounded a bit deeper, so I guess I'll take it. Things should hopefully speed up at 0.2. 12/5/16 Second shot on 0.2! It didn't hurt as bad as the last one which is good~ I've been noticing more acne on my face nd shoulders which is also hella //well in progress terms it is 12/12/16 YOU GUYS MY VOICE IS GETTING MORE RASPY AND I CAN CRACK IT ALL OVER THE PLACE EASIER THAN I COULD BEFORE ITS NOT SUPER NOTICEABLE YET BUT IM GETTING THERE IM EXCITE SORRY FOR BEING SHITTY AT UPDATING THIS ITS OK 12/19/16 BREATHES NOTHING SUPER NOTEWORTHY BUt my voice iS noticeably going down- not a ton buT AGAIN ITS GETTING THERE ;V; My arm really hurts tho for the first time after and idk why 'cause the shot iddnt hurt at all 12/25/16 Not a shot but just a lil random update ;;v; MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ERRYONE BY THE WAY, I HOPE YOU ALL HAd a great day! sO onto the stuff Today I got an assload of money and I'm deciding to spend a lot of it on a packer and a packing harness. I already bought the harness but I'm gonna have my dad order the packer since there's no good ones on amazon hhhh buT YE IM PUMPED ILL HAVE A BULGE 12/30/16 HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS MY VOICE IS GETTING REALLY NOTICEABLY DEEP IM LITERALLY SCREAMING [link] 1/5/17 I GOT MY PACKER MOTHERFUCKERS ITS HUGE AND ITS GREAT AND IVE GOT A DICK NOW 1/9/17 This is the day I officially became male. This is the day I officially became Ryan. I never have to write my birth name ever again. I am so fucking happy. The judge was super super nice and I was anxious as fuck but it ended up super well. Voice is still getting deeper and im getting hairier in some places, it's great~

#transgender #transitioning #ftm #femaletomale #testosterone #updates #lgbt

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nardaviel · 7 years

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For the fanfiction meme: 1, 8, 18, 26, 27, 28, 39, 46, 50, 51. :D

fanfiction questions meme

THANK U MYST !!!!!!! ive hit my 400-word minimum for today so im taking a break

this is lots of questions tho so heres a readmore but will it show up on my blog… no one knows……… how do i fix this problem…………… when will i fix it instead of just complaining about it all the time

1. What was the first fandom you got involved in?

harry potter. i have extremely, extremely vague memories of reading a sailor moon usagi/mamoru smut fic as like an 11-year-old before then, but really, the first fandom i got into was harry potter

8. How did you get involved in your latest fandom?

answered

18. What ship have you written the most about?

uhhhhhhh. probably kinatsuen. i didnt write much fanfic before boueibu so its definitely a boueibu ship. but ill go look

ok here are the word count totals rn, including char & char as well as char/char:

enkin 14754enatsu 14829kinatsu 16420ibukinatsuen 16503kinatsuen 54897

not counted “i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)”, 10506 words divided up among kinatsu, enkin, kinatsuen, and maybe like 200 words max of enatsu, but i wasnt gonna go in and get word counts for all 40 drabbles because i cbacounted twice despicable objects (2791), path to the stars (4758), warmth (7205) are all included in both the enkin and kinatsuen totals

yeah … there was no way kinatsuen could have lost. spindle has several thousand more words than all the kinatsu and ibukinatsuen combined. im kind of amused at how ive written one (1) ibukinatsuen fic but it still has the second highest word count

i guess you could also count in terms of fics though in which case ibukinatsuen would lose but kinatsuen would still win:

Kinugawa Atsushi/Kusatsu Kinshirou/Yufuin En (6)Kinugawa Atsushi/Kusatsu Kinshirou (5)Kusatsu Kinshirou/Yufuin En / Kusatsu Kinshirou & Yufuin En (4)Kinugawa Atsushi/Yufuin En / Kinugawa Atsushi & Yufuin En (4)Arima Ibushi/Kinugawa Atsushi/Kusatsu Kinshirou/Yufuin En (1)

this answer is way longer than necessary but i got interested ljkasdf

26. How do you come up with your fanfic titles?

i go to the post window on ao3 and realize that my scrivener doc is still titled “tower au” or “demon en” or whatever, and i cry. then i desperately try to think of something thematically appropriate and hopefully pretty. usually during this process i drift further and further away from whats in the fic and the ideas become more and more tenuously connected (e.g. spindle, which is very appropriate to the fic but only in an extremely symbolic, abstracted way) but by this point im frustrated so i just go with it anyway. or, very occasionally, a title presents itself to me from the text of the fic (grace, despicable objects).

i also make vashti help me im probably really annoying about it

27. What do you hate more: Coming up with titles or writing summaries?

BOTH ………………… IT IS THE WORST PART ABOUT FICWRITING because its fucken impossible and also because by that point the fic is done! and im excited to post it!! or maybe just excited to not have to stress about it anymore. but i cant post it because i have to think of ONE WORD to encapsulate the fic and then like THREE SENTENCES to encapsulate it in a different way and both of them have to be interesting but not spoilery and how tf do you do that and my brain is fried from editing and asjl;dkfasdf. honestly though i hate them both equally

28. If someone were to draw a piece of fanart for your story, which story would it be and what would the picture be of?

whatever they wanted i suppose?? i would be like :OOOOO no matter what tbh

but like if i was commissioning someone and could get whatever i wanted …… idk. maybe something from spindle but my image of ens uniform is very much based on someones art of a male homura so if i was specific about what it looked like, that would be stealing someones ideas, but if not, it wouldnt look right to me ???? i wouldnt care if the fanart was free but if i was commissioning i would want to have more say in what i got ;;

so um. not spindle. possibly a scene from the merman au, with merman en and merman kinshirou saving unconscious human prince atsushi from the shipwreck and bickering the whole time lmaooo “this is the worst idea youve ever had en” “you say that all the time” “each idea is worse than the last!!” “you can always go back home” “ugh ugh ugh just keep moving” meanwhile atsushi dazedly thinks he hears beautiful voices but they sound really annoyed with each other which is not quite in keeping with stories hes heard of sirens but then he passes out again

…….. yeah thatd be the basis for my commission. that scene

39. What is you greatest strength as a writer?

fuck idk. um. …i want to say dialogue but i feel like sometimes people in my fics talk for too long because i like writing it too much LMAO and i want to say angsty introspection but i have the same problem there. maybe i just think im best at those things bc theyre the things that come easiest to me?? and i think my characterization tends to be solid but everyone thinks that, right… no one writes poor characterization on purpose, do they… unless they have some other reason i guess. this question is smth for my readers to answer for themselves!!!! bc i dont know

46. If someone was to read one of your fanfics, which fic would you recommend to them and why?

well i mean .. it would depend on who was asking. i dont really know how to answer this bc i dont know this hypothetical someones likes and dislikes??? if it was an enkin shipper who liked pain, path to the stars. if it was an enatsu shipper who didnt want sad things in boueibu (im looking at u nicole), illuminations. if it was someone who would read any pairing but didnt have lots of time to read, i would edit i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) as ive been meaning to do and then tell them to read that. and so on. i really dont mean this as an evasive answer ;aljksdf but um if someone said “i like all pairings! i like all genres! i have plenty of time! i dont mind WIPs!” then i would rec veil or spindle bc im proudest of them and i think theyre good and i want more readers for my plotty multichaptered stuff

50. How did you get into reading and/or writing fanfiction?

honestly …. i have no idea how i got into reading fanfiction. literally no idea. i guess i was just poking around the internet as an 11yo and randomly found some and thought it was cool

and i guess writing was a natural extension of reading? ive been writing since before i could physically write. i would make up poems in the car as a smol smol child. i have no memories of this but my parents do bc they were like “wtf” and yeah anyway it continued from there although i like to think im better now than i was when i was like 8. and like. my first fanfiction was really bad. it was really bad yall. but i got what i now realize were the kindest, most encouraging reviews (on ff.net. i still have a hard time remembering that ao3 has “comments” and not “reviews” asdjkf) the same way my parents and teachers encouraged my often very awful writing over the years so !!! my confidence in my writing is fragile but i have confidence sometimes and its bc ppl were so nice to me when i was awful and that gave me a chance to become less awful. but that doesnt have much to do with the question im just really grateful whenever i think about it. i got into writing fanfiction bc i was already a writer basically

51. Rant or Gush about one thing you love or hate in the world of fanfiction! Go!

answered

#asks #mystofthestars #i talk so much holy shit #i blame my dad #its like literally impossible for him to answer a question w/o talking for 5 minutes #''so you guys didnt go hiking today'' i said once #and he went on for like no lie 15 minutes and told me among other things the life story of his new friend #and in the end he said ''so all that is to say.. we didnt go''#thanks dad #i might have told this story before but its just such a classic example of dad being dad #ANYWAY THANK U MYST #sorry for the tl;dr ;;#ask meme

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adambstingus · 7 years

Text

The age of banter

The long read: It used to be just a word now it is a way of life. But is it time to get off the banter bus?

Its the most fucking ridiculous story, isnt it? We went to watch fucking dolphins, and we ended up in fucking Syria. Last summer in the Mediterranean party resort of Ayia Napa, Lewis Ellis was working as a club rep. I mean, it was fucking 8am, he told an Australian website soon afterwards, and the last fucking club had closed, and we thought, We can still go dolphin watching. Well blag our way on to a fucking boat and go dolphin watching.

But when the boat sailed so far that Cyprus disappeared from view, Ellis explained, they started to worry. Why are we so far from land? they asked the crew. Were fucking miles away and weve got no fucking wifi. Something, Ellis said, had been lost in translation; his exuberant season as a shepherd for the resorts party pilgrims had gone terribly awry. The crew wasnt taking them to watch dolphins: they were going to a Russian naval base in the city of Tartus, on Syrias Mediterranean coast. Yeah, it is a little ridiculous.

It was, nonetheless, a story that had legs. Hungover lads boat trip boob lands them in Syria, wahey-ed the Mirror; British holidaymakers board party boat in Ayia Napa and end up in war-torn SYRIA, guffawed the Express. If you saw these headlines at the time, you may dimly remember the rest. A stubborn trawler captain, chugging doggedly onwards to Tartus, where he turfed the friends out upon landing; interrogation at the hands of Russian intelligence officers; mutual hilarity as the Russians realised what had happened; and, after a hot meal, a quick tour of the area, and a good nights sleep, spots on the next fishing vessel headed back to Cyprus. It was never made clear why the captain had let them on the boat in the first place, but whatever. Everyone lapped it up.

Reflecting on the whole thing five months later, Ellis, a 26-year-old with a business degree and a marketing masters, couldnt totally wrap his head around it. I think I found 35 stories about us, he told me. I read about myself in the Hawaiian Express, do you know what I mean? (Notwithstanding that there doesnt appear to be any such newspaper, yes, I definitely do.)

What made it really weird to see the media pile in with such unstinting enthusiasm was that the story was total cobblers. I could not believe how gullible they were, Ellis said, a top note of glee still in his voice. We were just having a laugh! It was banter!

Lads: this is the age of banter. Its long been somewhat about the banter, but over the last few years, it has come to seem that its all about the banter an unabashedly bumptious attitude that took up a position on the outskirts of the culture in the early 90s and has been larging its way towards the centre ever since. There are hundreds of banter groups on Facebook, from Banter Britain (no memes insinuating child abuse/dead babies!!!) to Wanker Banter 18+ (Have a laugh and keep it sick) to the Premier League Banter Page (The only rule: keep it banter). You can buy an I banter mug on Amazon for 9, or an Archbishop of Banterbury T-shirt for 9.99.

There are now four branches of a restaurant called Scoff & Banter. When things were going badly at Chelsea FC under Jos Mourinho, it was reported the team had banned all banter in an attempt to focus their minds, and that terminology appeared in the newspapers, as if you would know exactly what it meant. Someone has created a banter map of London using a keyword search on the flatshare website SpareRoom, showing exactly where people are looking for a roommate with good banter (Clapham tends to feature prominently). When a 26-year-old man from Leeds posed for a selfie with a bemused aeroplane hijacker, Vice declared it the high-water mark of banter.

Lewis Ellis (left) and friends in Ayia Napa, pretending to be in Syria. Photograph: Lewis Ellis

If you are younger than about 35, you are likely to hear the term all the time. Either you have banter (if you are funny and can take a joke) or you dont (if you arent and cannot). The mainstream, in summary, is now drunk and asleep on the sofa, and banter is delightedly drawing a penis on its forehead.

As banter has risen, it has expanded. Long a word used to describe submerged expressions of fraternal love, it is now also a word used to excuse uninhibited displays of masculine bravado. Today, it is segregated by class, seized on by brands, picked over by psychologists, and deplored by cultural critics; it is dominant, hotly contested and only hazily understood.

And so, whether he intends it to or not, Ellis use of the term raises some questions. Is he throwing his lot in with the most pervasive branch of the blokeish mainstream, a sanitised and benevolent hilarity that stretches from lad-dad panel shows to your mates zinger about your terrible haircut? Or is he lining up with the misogynist imitators of the Bullingdon club, a sprinkling of racists, and, as we shall see, an actual murderer purveyors of a malicious and insidious masculinity that insists on its indivisible authority and calls you a slut if you object?

Ellis isnt preoccupied by these questions, but for what its worth, he does say that he and his friends never had the slightest intention of going to Syria. We werent really trying to fool anyone, he told me, although Im not sure thats entirely consistent with the facts. We were out for a stroll, and we came across this area that looked really run down, we thought it looked like Syria. So we put it on the club reps [Facebook] page that thats where we were. And everyone started liking it. And then one of the people who contacted us was from LADBible which is like the Bible, but for LADS so we said, well have a mess around here. Well tell a completely ridiculous story, see if the media believes it. See if we can become LADBible famous.

It did, they could. Eventually, the truth came out, not thanks to any especially determined investigative journalism, but because Ellis cheerily admitted on Facebook that his tale of magnificent idiocy was a fiction. Hahaha what a prank, he wrote, with some justification.

The confession only brought another cycle of attention. Publications that had picked up the story in the first place resurfaced it with new headlines to reflect the audacity of the invention; social media users adduced it as evidence for their views of young men, or the media, or both. The Russian embassys Twitter account called it a telling example of how many Syria (and Russia) stories are made up by UK papers, which was great geopolitical banter. The attention entertained Ellis, but he says it wasnt the point. We just thought it was funny, he said. People are too serious. I keep being told to grow up, but I still want to have a good time. Ive had the jobs, Ive got the education. But when Im off work, I want to escape.

Ellis is an enthusiast and an optimist. He is, he told me late last year, desperate to take every opportunity, just to say yes to everything I can. We were on a night out in Manchester with his friends Tyson, John and Chris. In the course of the evening, the following things found their way into my beer: fingers; salt; vinegar; mayonnaise; a chip; saliva; a 10 note; and, I hazily remember being told after the fact, at least two shots of vodka.

Everyones got a thing in the group, Ellis said, as we walked from one bar to the next. One guy, hes not even that ugly, we say he looks like a Peperami. Tysons got this mole on his face, its like a Coco Pop, so youve got a Coco Pop on your face. I looked like Harry Potter when I was a kid, so they call me Potter, thats my nickname. Every single one of us has something. So you youve got Chinese eyes. Youre Chinese.

For the record, I didnt think this was OK, but coming after such a harmless litany, it didnt seem malicious enough to confront. Of course, tacit endorsement is what makes such offensive epithets a commonplace, and so it troubles me that it made me feel mysteriously welcome, just as it had when John punched me lightly in the balls when I arrived. There was no doubting Elliss sincerity: as he spoke, the sheer daft beauty of male friendship seemed to amaze him, almost to the point of physical pain. We just take the piss out of each other, and thats how we show our love, he said. So many group chats on the phone, and you just take the piss until they cry. And its like, when youre really killing them, you go, Ill stop if you want, because you know they cant say yes, so you just keep going. Then we arrived at the next bar, where I was made to drink something called a Zombie.

Early in the evening, before any of this had undermined my ability to take useful notes, Ellis broke off from talking as we walked down the street and sidled into a window display at Next Home, where he Tracey Emined a carefully made bed by climbing into it and rolling around. Everyone cracked up. Give the world a laugh, Ellis tends to think, and the world will smile back at you. Jump on a boat, and youll end up somewhere great; make the boat up, and youll get there faster. Its all about having fun, its all about the banter, he said, after hed rejoined us outside. Banter is about making the world a more exciting place.

If nobody can agree on what banter is, thats hardly a new problem. The first usage of the word recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary comes from noted Restoration lad Thomas dUrfey, also known for his hit song The Fart, in a satirical 1677 play called Madam Fickle. Banter him, banter him, Toby, a character called Zechiel urges, which may be the first time that someone called Toby was so instructed, but certainly wasnt the last.

The OED also notes early attempts at a definition by Jonathan Swift and Samuel Johnson. (Swift mentions a banter upon transubstantiation, in which a cork is turned into a horse, and fair enough, turning a cork into a horse would be classic banter.) Both are a little disgusted by the word, and neither unearths much of an origin story: by their accounts, banter is so coarse that it emerged, fully formed and without antecedent, out of the mouths of oafs.

As it turns out, though, the OED is not at present fully able to handle the banter. According to Eleanor Maier, an associate editor on the dictionary, a search of earlier English texts reveals that a number of previous examples are missing from the dictionarys definition, which was first drafted in 1885 including a quote from a 1657 translation of Don Quixote. (After examining the history, Maier told me that she would be adding banter to the list of entries that are up for review.)

dougie stew (@DougieStew)

Welcome to London #BagelGate pic.twitter.com/KcJoz0ycZU

February 26, 2017

In recent years, banter has barged into our lives at a remarkable clip. Googles Ngram Viewer, a tool that assesses (with some limitations) the frequency with which a term appears in a large database of written sources, finds that banter popped up about twice as often in 2008, the most recent year covered, as it did in 1980.

But banter plugged away for a long time before it became an overnight success. In the 19th century, it often denoted a kind of formal sparring. Even as the term evolved over the 20th, it continued to seem a little prim. In the House of Commons in 1936, Ramsay MacDonald, the former Labour prime minister who had returned in a new seat after losing his old one, was subjected to a good deal of banter Dear old Granny MacDonald!, among other witticisms.In 1981, a Guardian report that chess champion Anatoly Karpov and his handlers had successfully protested at his challenger Viktor Korchnois constant cross-board talk ran under the unlikely headline: Chess banter banned.

Such stories do little to prepare us for what banter has become. Consider the viral video that became known as #bagelgate earlier this year. In the recording, a minor scuffle broke out on the 00.54 train from Kings Cross to Huntingdon, and then for no obviously related reason a woman who had a large bag of bagels decided to put one on the head of the guy sitting in front of her, and then another after he took it off and threw it out of the window, and another and another, and then everyone in the carriage started chanting hes got a bagel on his head, and eventually the slightly spoddy victim who is me when I was 13 and someone filled my pencil case with Mr Kipling apple pies (squashed, oozing) because I was fat lost it and screamed Get the fuck out of my face!, and then another fight broke out on the platform, and then the police got on to the train, and every single person fell into not-me-guv silence: this is not Granny MacDonalds banter any more.

If it is hard to understand how these activities can fall under the same umbrella, it should be noted that a phenomenon may predate our choice of term to describe it its just that the act of definition makes it more visible, and perhaps more likely to be imitated. At some point, though, banter became the name for what British men already regarded as their natural tone of voice. There is a very deeply embedded folk culture in the UK of public ribaldry, extreme sarcasm, facetiousness in other words, of laddishness, says Tony Thorne, a linguist and cultural historian. What you might think of as banter now is rooted in that tradition.

That tradition first lashed itself to banters mast in the early 1990s, and controversy soon followed. In June 1992, a Guardian story headlined Police fire sex banter officer, about the dismissal of a sergeant for sexual harassment, recorded an early skirmish in the modern banter wars, and an important new layer to its meaning in the wild: The move is seen as part of the Metropolitan polices desire to reassure women officers that what has previously been tolerated as banter is no longer acceptable. Two years later, the lads mags arrived.

The first edition of Loaded magazine appeared in May 1994, with a picture of Gary Oldman on the front smoking a dog-end, under a banner that declared him a super lad. What fresh lunacy is this? the editors note read. Loaded is a new magazine dedicated to life, liberty and the pursuit of sex, drink, football and less serious matters Loaded is for the man who believes he can do anything, if only he wasnt hungover.

If banter dismays you, James Brown, the magazines first editor, is quite an easy bogeyman. As he acknowledges himself, he created a title that defined a genre. Loaded was swiftly recognised as a foundational text for a resurgent and ebullient masculinity that had been searching for public expression. While it was always overtly horny, the magazine was initially more interested in a forlorn, slackjawed and self-ironising appreciation of A-listers (one reversible poster had Cindy Crawford on one side and a steam train on the other) than the grot-plus-football formula that successors and imitators like Maxim, Zoo and Nuts milked to destruction. But it also flirted with something murkier.

To its critics, Loaded and its imitators aimed to sanitise a certain hooliganistic worldview with a strategic disclaimer. Banter emerges as this relentless gloss of irony over everything, said Bethan Benwell, senior lecturer in language and linguistics at the University of Stirling and the author of several papers on mens magazines. The constant excusing of sexist or homophobic sentiments with this wink that says you dont really mean it. Benwell pointed to Loadeds emblematic strapline: For men who should know better.

Brown denies that his magazine invented banter. Instead, he says, it captured a zeitgeist that the media had previously failed to acknowledge; the folk culture that Tony Thorne refers to, brought out into the open. Before Browns intervention, GQ had run John Major and Michael Heseltine as cover stars, for Gods sake. I took the interests and the outlook of the young men that I knew, and I put them in a magazine, Brown said. Im not responsible for the tone of the later entrants to the market. We were criticised because we fancied women, not because we belittled them.

The thing about Loaded was that the way we wrote reflected the way we were with our mates, he went on. Theres definitely a thing that exists in the male outlook: you take the piss out of the people you like, and you ignore the people you dont.

Accept this as your starting point, and objections become exhausting to sustain: what youre objecting to is an act of affection. Of course, this is what makes it insidious. Because Browns account rests on the intention behind the magazine, and Benwells on the effect it had, they are impossible to reconcile. Its a very difficult thing to resist or challenge without looking like the stereotypical humourless feminist, said Benwell. But by laughing, you become complicit.

Loaded gave this new kind of banter escape velocity, and it began to colonise other worlds. On BBC2, for example, David Baddiel and Frank Skinner were staking out their own territory with Fantasy Football League, a mixture of sketches and celebrity chat that managed to be enthusiastic and satirical at the same time, and reached its peak when the pair became national icons, thanks to their Euro 96 anthem, Three Lions. While a long-running joke about the Nottingham Forest striker Jason Lees pineapple haircut seems flatly racist in retrospect Baddiel did an impression of him in blackface by and large, the tone was milder and more conventional than the magazines were: this was the sensibility of the university graduate slumming it before embarking on grown-up life.

Baddiel implied that laddism could easily occupy a spectrum from ogling to literature, drawing a line to Nick Hornbys memoir of life as an Arsenal fan, Fever Pitch. Hornby once said to me that all this stuff you know, fantasy football and his book is men talking about things that they like and for a while in the mid-80s they werent allowed to, he said in 1995. Ive always liked football and Ive always liked naked women, and its easier to talk about that now than it was eight years ago. Those comments reflect a kind of sneer at its critics that you could often detect in Fantasy Football League, even as its hosts protested that they were just having a laugh though Baddiel himself denies that view. Twenty years on, he, like Brown, is at pains to draw a line between the approach that he and Skinner popularised, and the forms that came later. I guess me and Frank did specialise in banter, he said in an email. In a time before it was known as bantz.

Over the next 10 years, two things happened that ushered in the age of banter. (You might call it mature banter, except that its also the opposite.) First, instead of just being a thing that happened, it became a thing that people talked about. Then, as it became a more tangible cultural product, everyone started trying to make money out of it. The watershed moment, the forms equivalent to Dylan going electric, was the invention of Dave.

Like most good ideas, it looks simple enough in retrospect. Before Dave was Dave, it was UKTV Gold 2. The predecessor channels audience share was 0.761%, and no one could tell who on earth it was supposed to be for. But we had the content, says Steve North, the channels brand manager in 2007 and content of a particular kind that the existing name did very little to communicate: Have I Got News for You, They Think Its All Over, Top Gear. Viewers said they loved the repartee, the humour. It reminded them of spending time with their funniest friends.

The first issue of Loaded magazine, from May 1994

The target audience was highly specific. It was men married or in relationships, maybe with young children, not going to the pub as much as they used to, says Andy Bryant, managing director of Red Bee, the agency brought in to work on the rebrand. And they missed that camaraderie.

Their purpose thus fixed, North started to run brainstorming sessions at which people would shout out suggestions for the name. One of the ones we collected was Dave, he says. We thought, great, but we cant call it that. But then we thought, Its a surrogate friend. If the audience really sees it as that, if they see it as genuinely providing the banter, maybe we can really give it a name.

They put their hunch through its paces. The market research company YouGov was commissioned to test Dave alongside a bunch of other names (Matthew and Kevin were also on the shortlist), but nothing else had the same everyman resonance. For us, Dave is a sensibility, a place, an emotion, a feeling, said North, his tone thoughtful, almost gnomic. Everyone has their own sense of who Dave is, thats the important thing. Its hard to find anyone who doesnt know someone called Dave.

Now the channel had a brand, it needed a slogan. Lots of people claim they played a part in the naming, says Bryant. But it was just as important to encapsulate what the channel was all about. And at some point someone, I dont know who, wrote it on a board: The home of witty banter. The rebrand added 8m new viewers in six months; Dave saw a 71% increase in its target audience of affluent young men.

Conceived by the first generation of senior professionals to have grown up with banter as an unremarkable part of their demographics cultural mix, the channel crystallised a change, and accelerated it. In 2006, The Ricky Gervais Show, in which Gervais and Stephen Merchant relentlessly poked fun at their in-house idiot savant Karl Pilkington, became the most popular podcast of all time. In 2007, the year of Daves rebrand, Top Gears ratings shot from below 5m to a record high of 8m. The following year, QI moved from BBC4 to BBC2. (A tie-in book published the same year, QI: Advanced Banter, sold more than 125,000 copies.)

North saw the kind of fraternal teasing that was being monetised by his channel, and the panel shows that were its lifeblood, as fundamentally benign. The key thing is that its two-way, he said. Its about two people riffing off each other.

But like his 20th-century forebears, he can see that something ugly has evolved, and he wants to keep his brand well away from it. Bants, he said with distaste. That thing of cover for dubious behaviour we hate and despise it massively. When we launched, it was about fun, being light-hearted, maybe pushing each other without being disrespectful. When people talk about Ive had a go at that person, great banter no, thats just nasty.

By the turn of the decade,as other branding agencies mimicked the success of Dave, banter was everywhere, a folk tradition that had acquired a peculiar sort of respectability. The men who celebrated it werent just lads in the pub any more: they had spending power and establishment allies on their side. But they were, by the same token, more visible to critics. Aggression from an underdog can be overlooked; aggression from the establishment is serious enough to become a matter of public concern.

Take Richard Keys and Andy Gray, Sky Sports brand-defining football presenters, who got themselves up to their necks in some extremely bad banter in 2011. Keys blamed dark forces, but everyone else blamed him and Gray for being misogynists. We knew this because there was footage.

The firestorm, as Keys called it, centred on claims that the two men had said and done heinously sexist things off-air. Most memorable, at least for its phrase-making, was the clip in which Keys eagerly asked his fellow pundit Jamie Redknapp if hed smashed it it being a woman and asserted that he could often be found hanging out the back of it.

Gray went quickly. In the days before he followed, Keys burned hot with injustice in a series of mea-sorta-culpas, particularly focused on the tape in which he expressed his derision at the idea that a woman, Sian Massey-Ellis, could be an assistant referee in the Premier League.

It was just banter, he said. Or, more exactly, just a bit of banter, as he said Massey-Ellis had assured him she understood in a later telephone conversation in which, he added, much banter passed between us. She and I enjoyed some banter, he protested. It was lads-mag banter, he insisted. It was stone-age banter, he admitted. We liked to have banter, he explained. Richard Keys was sorry if you were offended, but also, it wasnt his fault if you didnt get it. It was just banter, for goodness sake!

Up to their necks in some extremely bad banter Andy Gray and Richard Keys in 2011. Photograph: Richard Saker/Rex

Keys insistence that his mistake was simply a failure to move with the times was nothing new: banter has always seemed to carry a longing for the past, for an imagined era before male friendship was so cramped by the tiresome obligations of feminist scrutiny. But while his underlying views were painfully dated, his conception of banter was entirely modern: a sly expansion of the words meaning, and a self-conscious contention that it provided an impregnable defence.

The Keys variation understood banter, first, as a catch-all means of denying responsibility if anyone was hurt; and, second, as a means of reinforcing a bond between two people by being cruel about a third. The comparison wouldnt please a couple of alphas like Keys and Gray, but both strategies brought it closer to a style of communication with classically feminine associations: gossip. Deborah Cameron, the Rupert Murdoch (lol) Professor in Language and Communication at Oxford University, argues that the two modes of interaction follow basically the same structure. People gossip as a trust game, she said. You tell someone your unsayable private secret, and it bonds you closer together. Theyre supposed to reciprocate with a confidence of their own. Well, banter works in the same way now. You say something outrageous, and you see if the other person dares to top your remark.

The trust game in banter was traditionally supposed to be: do you trust me when I say were friends in spite of the mean things Im saying about you? But now theres a second version of the game: do I trust you not to tell anyone the mean things Im saying about other people? I think originally it was a harmless thing, said Cameron, whose analysis is rooted in an archive of male group conversation, mostly recorded by her students, that goes back to the 1980s. But then it started to be used as an excuse when men were caught out engaging in forms of it that werent so harmless.

It comes down to context and intent, says the comedian Bridget Christie. The gentler form of banter is still knocking around, she suggested, but now it exists alongside something darker: I found The Inbetweeners adolescent banter hilarious, because it was equal and unthreatening. But there is obviously a world of difference between a group of teenage boys benignly taking the piss out of each other, and a bigot being racist or misogynist and trying to pass it off as a joke.

Trace the rise of banter, and you will find that it corresponds to the rise of political correctness or, anyway, to the backlash against political correctness gone mad. That phrase and just banter mirror each other perfectly: one denoting a priggish culture that is deemed to have overreached, the other a laid-back culture that is deemed to have been unfairly reined in. Ironically enough, just banter does exactly what it accuses political correctness of, seeking to close down discussion by telling you that meaning is settled by category rather than content. Political correctness asserts that a racist joke is primarily racist, whereas banter asserts that a racist joke is primarily a joke. In the past, the men who used it rarely had to define it, or to explain themselves to anybody else. Today, in contrast, it is named all the time. The biggest change isnt the banter itself, says Bethan Benwell. Its the explicit use of the word as a disclaimer.

By sheer repetition and by its use as an unanswerable defence, banter has turned from an abstraction into a vast and calcified description of actions as well as words: gone from a way of talking to a way of life, a style that accidentally became a worldview. He bantered you, people sometimes say: you always used to banter with your mates, but now it often sounds like something you do to them. Once it was directionless, inconclusive chatter with wit as the engine that drove it, said the comedian Russell Kane. Now, if I trip you up, thats banter.

You might think the humiliation suffered by Keys and Gray would have made banter less appealing as a get-out, but not a bit of it. Banter, increasingly, seems like the first refuge of the inexcusable. In 2014, Malky Mackay, who had been fired as manager of Cardiff City Football Club a year earlier, was caught having sent texts that referred to Chinese people eating dogs, black people being criminals, Jewish people being avaricious, and gay people being snakes all of which were initially optimistically defended by the League Managers Association as letting off steam to a friend during some friendly text message banter. The comedian Dapper Laughs, whose real name is Daniel OReilly, established himself as banters rat king, with his very own ITV2 show, and then lost it after he suggested that an audience member at one of his gigs was gagging for a rape. A man was convicted of murder after he crushed his friend against a wall with a Jeep Cherokee after an argument over badger-baiting, a course of action that he said had been intended as banter. Another slashed the throat of someone he had met in a pub and described the incident as a moment of banter after 14 or 15 pints. Both are now in prison.

By any sane measure,banter was falling into disrepute, as often a disguise for malice as a word for the ribaldry of lads on the lash. Still it did not go away: instead, the worst of it has mutated again, asserting its authority in public and saving its creepiest tendencies for the shadows or, at least, for the company of five, or 10, or 20 of your closest mates.

At the London School of Economics, it started with a leaflet. Each year at the universitys freshers fair, LSE Rugby Football Club distributed a banterous primer on rugby culture. In October 2014, says the then-president of the student union, Nona Buckley-Irvine, a student came to her in tears with a copy in her hand. The leaflet talked about trollops, slags, crumpet, mingers, and the desirability of misogyny; there were passing references to the horrors of homosexual humiliation and outright homosexual debauchery. Anyone charmed by all this was invited to sign up for the club and join the banter list, entitling them to participate in the exchange of chappish email conversation.

To anyone with a passing knowledge of university laddism, it was hard to imagine a more ordinary iteration. Still, after the unreconstructed chappishness of the leaflet came to light, the club knew it had a problem. It issued a collective apology acknowledging that we have a lot to learn about the pernicious effects of banter, and promised to organise a workshop. But there was reason to be sceptical about the depth of that commitment.

When Buckley-Irvine and her colleagues published a report on the incident, they noted a string of others, including an antisemitic assault on a university ski trip to Val dIsere in 2011. And there were other indiscretions it didnt mention. According to two people who were present, one club dinner at an Indian restaurant on Brick Lane ended with a stripper having bottles thrown at her when, already intimidated, she refused to take her clothes off. She hid in the toilet, and had to be escorted out by a member of staff as the team vandalised the restaurant.

Photograph: Alamy

According to five people who were either members of the rugby club or closely associated with it, one notorious senior member was widely thought to be responsible for the leaflet. (He did not respond to requests for comment.) But when they came to defend themselves to the student union, members of the club fell back on one of the most revered pillars of laddism: all for one, one for all. Theyd clearly worked out a line, says Nona Buckley-Irvine. No one individual was responsible. They were sorry. It was just banter. Thats what they all said.

The accountancy firm KPMG, which sponsored the universitys wider Athletics Union, decided that banter was not an especially helpful brand association, and withdrew funding worth 22,000. The students union decided to disband the club for the academic year. The decision moved some observers to disgust. It was a gross overreaction, a former team member told me. We were the best-behaved team when it came to actually playing rugby but they banned that bit and they couldnt ban any of the rest.

Others took a less measured tone. I had old members emailing me and calling me a fascist, says Buckley-Irvine. Asking me if I didnt understand that it was just banter. Rugby players chanted abuse at her on nights out, she told me. They shoulder-barged her, and called her a cunt.

These kinds of interactions would tend to take place on Wednesdays, also known as sports night, at a bar in Leicester Square. Sports night was the apotheosis of the rugby clubs bleak solidarity. In deference to what you might call the wingers-before-mingers code, for instance, members of the club who were expected to dress in suits werent allowed to speak to women before 9pm. So they would just shout abuse instead, one female former student, who Ill call Anna, remembered. One chant, she said, went, Nine nos and a yes is a yes. At the time, Anna thought that it was all a joke. People would say, Its just banter all the time. After everything. Absolutely everything, she said, sitting in a cafe in south London. If you were meeting someone new, saying they had good banter, that was a pretty high compliment. Whereas if you dont go along with that stuff, its seen as, you cant take the chat, you cant take the banter. And its not seen as having a stance against it. Its seen as not being able to keep up.

After the rugby club was disbanded, nothing much changed in sports night social life. Many members of the club still went on the same nights out; they just colonised other teams. They still addressed girls as Sarah 2 or Sarah 8 depending on how attractive they considered them out of 10; they still had shouted conversations about their sex lives in front of the women they had slept with but refused to acknowledge.

That culture was not confined to Wednesday nights. Anna remembers a guy who took her picture as she slept, naked, in the bed they were sharing, and circulated it to another non-university sports team via WhatsApp. She wasnt meant to see it on his phone.

Ask anyone well-informed where banter resides now, and theyll give the same answer: WhatsApp groups and email threads, the safe spaces of the lad class. What youd get out of those WhatsApp threads, its another world of drama, one former member of the football club said. The details of girls bodies that youd read, a few funny jibes, that was the limit for me. But when it moved on to, like, really, really bad stuff, always about sex it was too much. Those threads are the source of everything.

If the threads were an outlet, they were by no means the limit. Banter, by common consent, wasnt confined to mocking each other: it was about action. If you dressed up for a night out, one female student remembered, it was just kind of status quo that you could have your arse grabbed. It was just like, Oh, that was kind of weird, but OK, thatll happen. Like everyone else willing to speak about it, her view of that culture was perplexingly nuanced, sometimes contradictory. It sounds scary, she said, but that being said, some of my best nights were there, and like it was fun. But then she said: What was defined as serious just got so pushed. I think for someone to lodge a complaint they would have to be actually hurt.

Anna remembers lots of sketchy incidents. She recalls nights when her choices faded into a blur, and she wondered if she had really been in control. But at the time, I would never call it out, she said. And then, youre all living in halls together, and the next day, its like: What did you do last night? Thats hilarious. Thats banter.

When Anna thinks about the behaviour of some of the men she knew at university, she finds it hard to pin down exactly what she thinks of them. Theres one in particular who sticks in her mind. On a Wednesday night, he was a banter guy, she said. He was a Wednesday animal. But the rest of the time, he was my friend.

Controversial though all this was at the time, no one seems to think that it will have cost the perpetrators much. Ive tried so hard to leave all that behind, said the former member of the football team. But those guys theyre all going on to run banks, or the country, or whatever. The senior rugby man who many held responsible, by the way, has landed on his feet. Today, he has a job at KPMG.

In 2017, every new instance of banter is immediately spotted and put through the journalistic wringer. (Vices Joel Golby, who wrote the definitive text on the bagel thing, has made a career from his exquisite close readings of the form.) But when each new absolute legend emerges, we dont usually have the context to make the essential judgment: do the proponents tend towards the harmless warmth of Ellis and his mates, or the frank hostility of the LSE rugby boys? Is their love of irony straightforward, or a mask for something else?

As Richard Keys and Dapper Laughs and their cohorts have polluted the idea of banter, the commercial entities that endorsed its rise have become uneasy with the label. They wanted it to go viral; they hadnt expected it to go postal. Dave, for example, has dropped the home of witty banter slogan. Its not about classic male humour any more, its a little bit smarter, says UKTVs Steve North. We definitely say it less than we used to.

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from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/08/02/the-age-of-banter/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/163730951422

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samanthasroberts · 7 years

Text

The age of banter

The long read: It used to be just a word now it is a way of life. But is it time to get off the banter bus?

Lewis Ellis (left) and friends in Ayia Napa, pretending to be in Syria. Photograph: Lewis Ellis

dougie stew (@DougieStew)

Welcome to London #BagelGate pic.twitter.com/KcJoz0ycZU

February 26, 2017

The first issue of Loaded magazine, from May 1994

Up to their necks in some extremely bad banter Andy Gray and Richard Keys in 2011. Photograph: Richard Saker/Rex

Photograph: Alamy

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Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/08/02/the-age-of-banter/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/08/02/the-age-of-banter/

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