It was just the usual, of course. They’d called him “braceface”, made fun of the bowl cut his mom insisted made him look adorable, the glasses too big for his face, but it was nothing he ever talked about it because, well, it was nothing. They were children.
He’d grown older, and even before his shoulders broadened, before he joined the football team, everyone was okay with him. Just like that, they’d grown out of it. Nobody gave a damn about braces or glasses in middle school. So Alfred had been bullied, yes, but it was never anything serious.
What it had been was a sort of revelation. It had given him insight into the minds of ex-attackers. The kids who’d made the rude comments when they were younger were always the ones that were nervous around him in class. They laughed at his jokes, they made good company, yes, but they were always so shifty. Alfred chalked it up to the fact that it meant they were guilty.
Applying a similar analysis to Arthur Kirkland, Alfred concluded that Arthur was the same. He was guilty.
It was either that or he had a very, very strong emotion of some different nature. That was as far as Alfred could tell.
“So, final thoughts?” Alfred asked, cautiously, seeing as Arthur looked just about ready to puke any moment now. “Still hate me?”
Arthur blinked. He took a controlled breath, parted his lips as if to say something, then furrowed his brows and shut his mouth. He didn’t speak.
“Hello everyone, welcome back to my channel.” The man said. “Yes, that’s right, you thought you’d be rid of me when I was quite literally hospitalized only a week ago, but if you didn’t already know, making shitty reaction videos is my job and it’s the only way to pay the bill, so here I am.”
Alfred cracked a smile at that. He scooted up in his bed, rubbing the grogginess out of his eyes as the man continued to assure his viewers that he was alright, “I’m healing very well, don’t worry, that’s all you need to know”, all the typical things. There was nothing special, it seemed. At least, nothing to warrant the swarm of Twitter mentions and messages he’d woken up to. He’d been too tired to read them, but a quick scan told him two things: It was some big British YouTuber called ‘Arthur Kirkland’, and it was imperative that Alfred watched his latest video.
“Now, most of you seemed to take what I had said in my last video seriously- mind you, one that I’d filmed on pain medication.” Arthur huffed out a smile, and Alfred watched, brows rising as screenshots of several different comments popped up on the screen next to Arthur’s head: Have you heard of Alfred Jones?; OMG you and Alfred!; Alfred would be PERFECT!; …
“Look, when I said I had a weird kink for loud Americans in my last video, I wasn’t really expecting you to set me up with the first gay American YouTuber out there-” Arthur then shrugged, “Listen, I’d never heard of this man before in my life, but I’ve checked him out and I have to say… of all the people you could’ve set me up with, you had to give me some obnoxious gamer, didn’t you?”
Arthur plans to fly to France with long time crush and possible soulmate Francis, though he may never make it off the ground. Usuk. Soulmate au. Based on the prompt from @dailyusuk //
In a world where the soulmate stamp on your forearm could be anything, Arthur considered himself to be pretty damn lucky. Stamp images were limitless after all. They were simply a piece of black lineart that correlated in some way to how you met your soulmate. They could be of photorealistic or cartoonish. They could even depict something vulgar or lewd if that happened to be the situation.
Arthur had gotten a good one. His right forearm was decorated with a photorealistic image of the Eiffel Tower, and there was little less romantic than that. Especially when the man he had feelings for was french.
Francis had been in Arthur’s life since his early teens when he moved from France and into Arthur’s neighborhood. They’d fought and hated each other at first, but they were also the only two boys in the neighborhood the same age. As a result, there weren’t a lot of options when Arthur wanted to go somewhere and didn’t want to go alone. By the time they graduated, they could actually be described as friends. Though, Arthur found himself wanting more. He found himself attracted to caramel brown hair and blue eyes, and Francis had both. Was it a coincidence? He’d had these preferences long before he liked or even met Francis. He also liked glasses, and Francis didn’t wear those, but he didn’t expect his soulmate to fit all his preferences anyway.
For people who might not know – Wendy Carlos is a trans woman who was deeply influential in early electronic music and hugely involved with the push to have synthesizers seen as real instruments.
i never talk about these things but i can’t remain silent.
i know tumblr doesn’t give a SHIT when things happen in countries outside the “most popular ones” (such as the usa & england). it’s true, don’t lie to me. y’all don’t give A FUCK. not every issue and problem in said countries gets the appropriate exposure but in general shit shows up on the news WORLD FREAKING WIDE. you set up donations, you help out, your spread the word, you say “pray for x”……
southern europe is burning.
my country is burning.
people are dying – at home, on the road, trying to run away, in their cars.
yesterday my country had 300 active fires.
people are losing EVERYTHING they own.
i have a friend that is on a train right now passing through places that have been burnt to the ground and she says the smoke is so intense it’s getting inside the train and she can barely breathe.
and yet, even though several people (myself included) have been trying to bring awareness to what has been happening in southern europe… what we get from most of you, those not part of the countries suffering, is silence. we don’t ask for money, we don’t ask for shit other than a reblog to spread awareness… something you can delete in 24/48hrs if you wish.
i don’t know what to tell you. i’m angry. i’m frustrated. i’m disappointed. i feel like i’m screaming into the void. “a reblog does nothing” – you know that’s a damn lie, you know exposure always helps, you know people start paying attention when posts on social media become popular. my country in particular is a small one, we get ZERO exposure. y’all are only starting to figure out we even fucking exist bc of the shit we’ve been winning lately.
but hell, if the EU doesn’t give a shit, why should some user on tumblr dot com?
again, i don’t know what to tell you so i’ll let the images speak for themselves:
An image captured by a Nasa satellite shows a thick plume of smoke blowing southward from the Greek island of Chios over the island of Crete
Torneros de Jamuz, Spain
Duca, Croatia
A helicopter from Italy’s civil protection service drops water on a fire near the railway between Venice and Trieste
Residents take refuge on the beach as a wildfire burns on the mountain next to the village of Lithi, on the Greek island of Chios
Men gather cattle during a forest fire in Vieira de Leiria, Marinha Grande, Portugal.
Charred trees are seen on the hills above the Cloister of Thivaidas on Mount Athos, a World Heritage Site in Greece
Portugal
This is fucking important. I am glad someone fucking spoke about this and said what they had to say. The damage is terrible, and all the evergreen, stone, even the ground is black. I was fucking terrified when Croatia was burning. The fire was near a village where I like and I thought it will burn down. I thought the church will burn down. I thought the cemetery where my grandpa is buried will burn. I still remember the smell of smoke, and when I went to check how bad is fire, my clothes and hair and skin all stunk of smoke. It didn’t go away for weeks.
This is NASA’s picture of Croatia and Montenegro burning. My fucking country was burning. Fucking reblog this. I don’t care that it isn’t UK or US, or that it doesn’t go with your blog, fucking. Reblog. It.
Not my blog type, I dont care.
God please stay safe everyone, take care
A perfect example what is wrong with the media. I can’t recall hearing about it in the German news.
I had nightmares like this when I was little.
Dear gods this is horrible!
The world is on fire, literally and metaphorically.
Holy shit
Hello please don’t blame individuals for their country’s news outlets refusing to cover things. This is awful and we do care, we just need to be told it’s happening.
This shit is happening and our “news” outlets deign to report on such inconsequential things as the shenanigans of celebrities instead, and it is INFURIATING.
NORTHERN Europe is burning, too. There are major droughts and massive heat hitting all of Europe right now, and everything is in danger over there.
But global warming is just a myth right?
american media is focused on the daily life of donald trump, people handing money to the kardashians, and ariana grande’s bruised organs. it is not our fault that the media is corrupt. don’t be condescending and please just inform us.
Moving away from the topic of deVailer but onto a semi-related problem plaguing the fandom is what type of fics people consume?
Or, lemme rephrase that. The STATUS of the fics people consume.
Guys, you can’t wait until a fic is finished in order to give it support. I mean…theres nothing stopping you from doing so physically, however as someone who is friends with a writer who has poured her heart and soul into a fic where years and years of plotting and writing have gone into it, only to promote it and have it shoved back in her face that they’ll read it when its finished, I can see just how upsetting this kind if system is.
I’ve pushed this message before just like I will keep adamently pushing it, but I think that fanfic writers who are in the process of writing their chaptered stories need the MOST support. Now, I’m not saying that this means that finished works don’t deserve any love and support. Thats far from what I’m saying because we should CONSTANTLY be engaging with current writers, current artists, WIPs and drabbles and drafts and finished pieces and doodles and ask-blogs and comics. If we don’t our fandom, to put it simply, is going to die.
My message here, though, is to say that its very easy to enjoy finished writing. Its easy to get into it, to binge, to enjoy and then be done with it. And its hard to get into WIPs because each update leaves a new cliffhanger, each update may not come as often as we want it to, and with each update comes the very real possibility of a writer not wishing to continue a fic. But you know what is a surefire way to combat a lot of those fears?
By SUPPORTING THE WRITER! Writing is hard! Writing is a struggle! I consider myself a borderline writer from my USUK side of the fandom bc of how hard it is for me to get motivation to open up a word doc. So to all you people out there, USUK fans or not, who are constantly typing away at those keyboards and producing new things, I want to say that I appreciate you so much. You deserve more likes, reblogs, comments, kudos, favorites, etc., and for every one of those that a finished work gets I believe a work in progress should get the same.
Its so heartbreaking to see how the motivation to continue writing leaves these writers due to the lack of interraction with their works because people would rather read something finished than something still currently being produced. This is why people leave the fandom, guys. Everytime a creator sees you interract with their creations, I 100% assure you they are more motivated to continue what it is they’re doing. They do this for free, and not only do they do it for themselves but they do it in hopes that other people will get enjoyment out of what it is they took time to produce. But if theres no feedback, if it looks like nobody is enjoying their work…its easy to see how the “why bother?” mentality may sink in and harden them to the fandom.
To sort of end things I guess, I’m going to reccomend a few writers that I know from MY little USUK/UKUS niche who still have ongoing works that I urge you to check out. Please feel free to reblog and add more writers/stories to this post; I’m always looking for new people to support.
@rantingfangirl ’s Cross-Life is an EXTREMELY well-written UKUS fic clocking in at about 15 (gloriously long) chapters. Here is the description:
“Given the choice to change his ways or face the consequences, Arthur is propelled from urban England to the American suburbs, putting up with all the drama, pettiness, and idiots that go with it.”
Its slow-burn, enemies-to-friends-to-lovers, and has all the delicious drama that comes with any punk-ass British kid in a cold and unloving household. Highly, HIGHLY reccomend checking this one out.
@gallifreyanlibertea ’s I Took My Hater Out On a Date is a witty YouTuber AU in which fan’s attempts at bringing Gamer!Alfred and Reaction-er(?)!Arthur evolves into good-natured publicity stunts, and maybe more? Mana is a very talented writer so if you haven’t already read their work pleaaaase do. Its so, so good.
@not-aph-england actually has 3 that I’d like to reccomend! The first seems to be a smaller but still chaptered fic called Royal Sh*t! Here is the description:
“Peasant Arthur meets Prince Alfred on Tinder. But of course it’s just a catfish. Or is it?” It’s cute, its witty, its everything you’d expect from a Tinder-sprouted romance.
The next is Plan B, an Omegaverse fic:
“Arthur Kirkland’s plan A was to graduate, find a good job, buy his dream house and, yeah, why not?, eventually get married. Unfortunately, once he got pregnant, this plan became a distant dream. He had to replan his life, and now, with a daughter, his Plan B includes making the best with what he has and, definitely, staying away from alphas.”
Last but not least is actually a collaboration RP-turned-fic with @mayumisatosan (I believe) called Life Goes On:
“Alfred and Arthur met at a social event and quickly realized they are quite compatible with each other. What makes their story complicated is the fact that the social event in question was a dinner party exclusively for widows. Oh, and the fact that Arthur is expecting a baby from his deceased mate.”
Finally, this list wouldn’t be complete without the mention of a good friend and writer who, I believe, goes underappreciated in all aspects- even in terms of her finished writings.
@drones-of-innocence ’s The Messenger is a fic three years in the making with plenty of plotting done in advance:
“When Heaven and Hell clash in a pointless war, the wish for a utopia stems from the middle. But since diplomacy would never work, a spy would have to be sent in, one to be a demon but to retain everything that makes him an angel. But what if in the middle of the war, the spy learnt of what’s really happening? What would he do to stop the supremacy and dominion? Angel Demon AU, USUK”
Last but not least, please tell your writers how much you appreciate them. They do this as a labor of love in hopes of making people happy. They truly deserve more support and encouragement because they are what keeps the ever-changing Hetalia fandom active.
Nakatsuji told police: “I wanted to see how much my computer programming skills had improved since the last time I was arrested.”
It’s not the first time that Nakatsuji has been arrested for virus creation. In 2008 he was convicted of violating copyright after coding malware that replaced data with an image from anime series Clannad. He told the police in this case that he didn’t think he’d be arrested again because he’d created the squid and octopus images himself, avoiding a breach of copyright.
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