NM Atiny @nmatiny - Tumblr Blog

✦ THE EIGHT KINGDOMS ✦

Far beyond the known seas lie eight realms, each ruled by a different king, each guarding its own power, wealth, and secrets.

From storm-worn cliffs and frozen fjords to enchanted forests and kingdoms forged in fire, every realm has shaped the continent in its own image.

Which kingdom would earn your loyalty?

⚔️ Swipe to explore all eight kingdoms. 👑 Choose your ruler. 🏰 Tell me where you'd live.

#ATEEZ #ATEEZAU #FantasyAU #MedievalFantasy #KingdomAU #ATINY #Moodboard #FantasyWorldbuilding

Step right up and behold the Midnight Menagerie.

Marvel at creatures beyond imagination, performers beyond reason, and wonders best left unseen.

The show begins at dusk.

#ATEEZ #MidnightMenagerie #DarkFantasy #GothicAesthetic #FanEdit

Ateez as Resident Evil Characters (In my opinion) based off of personality, stage prescence, and overall vibes

#ateez #ateez mingi #ateez atiny #ateez jongho #ateez san #ateez hongjoong #ateez seonghwa #ateez wooyoung #ateez yeosang #ateez yunho #resident evil #leon kennedy #ada wong #jill valentine #carlos oliveira #ethan winters #jack krauser #albert wesker #chris redfield

BTS Wallpapers for the new Arirang album

#jin bts #suga bts #bts #bts jungkook #rm bts #bts jhope #bts jimin #v bts #wallpapers

ATEEZ and the Love & Deepspace Characters I think fit them most, along with songs that fit their vibe

#ateez #ateez mingi #ateez atiny #ateez hongjoong #ateez jongho #ateez san #ateez seonghwa #ateez yeosang #ateez yunho #ateez wooyoung #lads caleb #lads sylus #lads rafayel #lads zayne #loveanddeepspace #lads xavier #luke and kieran #lads mephisto

Love in the Time of Gift Giving

I wrote this years ago for an ethics class, but that was a compare and contrast paper. I went through it and rewrote everything to make it more about ethics rather than song lyrics. Let me know what you think

Love; Promised & Pressured

Romantic love is often not presented as possibility, but rather as expectation.

It is one reinforced by media, advertising, and ritualized social events. The promise is subtle but persistent: happiness will arrive on schedule, accompanied by flowers, cards, photographs. Undeniable Proof it existed. The opening lines of There’s No Love in February capture this kind of tension perfectly: “Where’s the life that was promised to me by my color T.V?” The question is not rhetorical, and it reflects a genuine dissonance between what individuals are told to expect with romantic love vs what they actually experience.

The loneliness described in the song is not abstract or internal, but rather it’s temporal: “How could I be alone again on this day?” Certain dates transform private emotions into public states. Holidays, school dances, birthdays, and many other seasonal milestones don’t merely mark time; they assign a value to relationship status and render absence visible. During these periods, romantic attachment becomes socially urgent, and affection is increasingly expressed through performative gestures and material exchange.

This paper argues that romantic desire intensifies around culturally significant moments; not because love itself increases, but because social comparison, scarcity anxiety, and ritualized gift giving amplify the fear of being alone. With these conditions, relationships are more likely to form under pressure, prioritizing validation and visibility over mutual intention. I don’t reject love; I reject moments when love is socially profitable.

Gift Giving as Social Currency

In this context, gift giving refers not only to material exchange, but to any socially rewarded gesture that signals romantic legitimacy. They can be material, digital, symbolic, and social. Anything that can be used as proof. Visibility during these times provides validation that “I was seen, I was loved”, and when there is an absence of that proof, it’s seen as failure. People measure their worth against others, especially when relationships are publicly displayed. On Valentine’s Day couples become performative; during Christmas relationships become transactional, and during New Year’s relationships become symbolic under the fear of “I don’t want to start the year alone”. Loneliness isn’t just felt now it’s broadcast.

There’s a subconscious belief that we see spike during these times; “If I don’t have love now, I won’t later” and “If everyone else has it, I must be failing” This leads to urgency without discernment. People don’t ask “Is this good?”, rather they ask “Is this better than being alone right now?” People don’t crave the person, they crave the proof. So when affection coincides with expected generosity, it becomes difficult to tell whether desire is directed toward the person or toward the performance of care.

Early Conditioning: School Dances as Proto-Holidays

School dances are essentially proto-holidays. They teach people how to perform romance long before adulthood. First we have ritualized pairing. Both dances and holidays create a deadline (“before the dance,” “before Valentine’s”), they elevate couplehood as the default, and mark singleness as visible absence. At a dance, not having a date is noticeable, and on Valentine’s Day, not having one is marketed as a problem. Then we have the public performance of affection. We see that affection is not private in either case. With dances we have slow songs the couples all gravitate towards during the dance, photos that are taken before, during, and after the dance, sometimes even provided by the venue with photo spots, and finally the public announcements. With Holidays we see posts of the couples together, gift giving at dinners, often with loud reactions, and visible gestures. With dances we see given out corsages, tickets, outfits, rides, and photos. Whereas during holidays we see flowers, chocolates, reservations, and gifts. These items act as symbols of legitimacy, the relationship is “real” if it produces objects. The interactions are no longer private, they are done loudly and out in public rather than in an intimate setting of one’s own home. Love becomes something that must be demonstrated, not merely felt.

One of the clearest examples of how romance becomes performative rather than consensual appears in the public proposals often encouraged around school dances. These invitations are designed to be witnessed. The presence of peers transforms a private decision into a public test of politeness. In such moments, refusal does not simply decline an offer—it disrupts the performance. So when a question is asked publicly, the ability to answer honestly is compromised. Although framed as romantic, these gestures function as social leverage, making agreement easier than refusal. The recipient is no longer choosing whether they want to attend the dance, but whether they are willing to absorb the social consequences of saying no. This early conditioning teaches that love is something to be performed loudly and accepted graciously, even when the desire is not mutual. The same logic later reappears in public proposals, holiday gestures, and social media declarations, where scale replaces sincerity. A choice made under an audience is not freely made, even when it is enthusiastically applauded.

Finally, we see that cruelty is easier in rituals. These rituals diffuse responsibility, with things like “It was just a joke”, “It was just for the dance” and “It was just for Valentine’s” often being said during the (often public) breakups. That’s why bets, dares, and performative relationships cluster around these events.

From Dances to Holidays: Adult Rituals of Urgency

The same structural incentives present at school dances reappear later in romantic holidays, differing only in scale rather than intent. These relationships are often built to survive the event, not the future. The existence of lasting relationships formed during these periods does not negate the broader pattern; anomalies do not invalidate structural analysis, however holiday timing introduces incentives that increase the likelihood of misaligned intent.

When affection coincides with expected generosity, it becomes difficult to tell whether desire is directed toward the person or toward the performance of care. Gift-dense periods introduce signal noise, so we need to ask is the interest organic or amplified because generosity is socially rewarded right now? We have Valentine’s Day, Christmas/New Years, summer flings, and even birthdays as personalized pressure points. Valentine’s and the Christmas/New Years couples are fairly self explanatory. We see an influx in radio ads, commercials, and merchandise in stores, all advertised to couples. You see friends getting into these relationships and getting gifts, so the urgency rises. “If I don't have it now, I won’t have it later.” Summer flings are more interesting, but we do see an influx of relationships formed over the summer. Often in high school, we all saw those couples that formed at the end of the year and “broke up over the summer.” Or if someone went on an extended vacation, they found someone they liked spending time with, and before they went back home, they broke up to avoid having to maintain a long distance relationship.

Finally, the birthdays. This one is a little bit more complicated, but let’s say you’re on a first date, and the person sitting across from you mentions, “Yeah, so my birthday is actually next week.” Early on, it introduces immediate ambiguity. Are they seeking closeness? Inclusion? Demonstration to family or friends? Or are they testing generosity? Suddenly the stakes have changed, and once stakes change, behavior does too.

All these examples lead to one ruling out certain months as viable times to get into relationships if you wish to avoid having to question the person’s motives. The periods where external rewards contaminate intent, not because everyone has bad motives—but because motives become harder to distinguish. Love doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It exists inside calendars, wallets, family expectations, and social visibility. I’m not saying “no one can be genuine” but rather “I want fewer confounding variables.”

Cultural Reinforcement Beyond the West

This isn’t just a Western world thing we see either. We do often see it in Eastern cultures as well. In fact they have far more romantic holidays than the west, including Christmas, because that’s marketed as romantic rather than religious. Days like Pepero Day in South Korea which takes place on Nov. 11, where people exchange boxes of Pepero, chocolate-covered cookie sticks, to show affection, similar to Valentine's Day but for friends, family, and partners. Or we have the triad of days with Feb. 14 (Valentine's) which is for women giving gifts to men, March 14 (White Day) which is for men reciprocating with white gifts, and April 14 (Black Day) which is for singles to commiserate by eating black bean noodles (Jajangmyeon) and wearing black, celebrating their single status. These rituals formalize not only affection, but evaluation, hierarchy, and exclusion, so that even loneliness becomes commodified, offering consumption as consolation. Ads are put up, packages are redone to promote the upcoming holidays, and yes, relationships are formed around these times.

The Outsider Perspective: Seeing Without Rose-Colored Glasses

Critiquing the conditions under which relationships form is often misread as opposition to love itself. This interpretation mistakes caution for bitterness and analysis for avoidance. I am not resistant to love; I am resistant to incentives that distort it. Wanting to be in love does not require accepting every opportunity for attachment, particularly when those opportunities coincide with periods of heightened social pressure and expectation.

Approaching romantic situations with care is not the absence of desire, but the presence of discernment. When affection is expressed during moments that reward visibility—holidays, celebrations, or milestones—the motivations behind that affection become more difficult to evaluate. This does not imply malice or manipulation, but it does introduce uncertainty. As with any situation involving potential harm, minimizing confounding variables is a rational response.

Observing these cycles from the outside does not negate desire; it exposes how desire is shaped, rushed, and exploited by social timing. Distance allows patterns to emerge that are less visible from within the experience itself. In this sense, caution functions not as a barrier to intimacy, but as a safeguard for it. Love chosen without an audience, without a deadline, and without social reward may be rarer—but it is also less likely to be mistaken for something else.

I do not reject love; I reject moments when love is socially profitable.

Ethical Implications: Consent, Instrumentalization, & Disposibility

The ethical concerns surrounding contemporary romantic practices do not stem from love itself, but from the conditions under which love is increasingly expected to occur. At the center of these patterns lies an ethical concern not about romance itself, but about how and why romantic relationships are entered. When social rituals such as holidays, school dances, digital platforms, or optimization-driven dating practices introduce urgency and reward visibility, the conditions for genuine consent become compromised. Choice does not disappear, but it becomes constrained by social consequence. Saying “yes” is often easier than saying “no,” particularly when refusal carries embarrassment, exclusion, or judgment. Ethical consent is not defined solely by the absence of coercion, but by the presence of meaningful choice.

Ethically, this matters because relationships formed under pressure risk treating people as means rather than ends. When a partner is chosen to fulfill a function such as appearing at a holiday gathering, avoiding loneliness on a specific date, generating social media content, or proving desirability, the relationship now serves an external goal rather than mutual intention. This does not require malicious intent; it requires only a system that incentivizes outcomes over care. In such cases, affection becomes instrumental, even when it is sincerely felt in the moment.

These dynamics are further complicated by asymmetry of risk. One participant may experience the relationship as casual or experimental, while the other invests emotional credibility, social reputation, or hope for continuity. When timing-driven relationships dissolve, the harm is rarely distributed equally.

Public and performative gestures further complicate consent by transforming private decisions into social performances. Whether through public dance proposals, highly visible holiday gestures, or digitally broadcast relationship milestones, the presence of an audience alters the nature of agreement. A choice made under observation is not freely made in the same way as one made in private. Ethical clarity diminishes when refusal disrupts a performance rather than simply declining an invitation.

The increasing normalization of temporary attachment intensifies these concerns. Dating practices that encourage comparison, speed, and emotional hedging, with things such as simultaneous dating, optimization language, and portfolio-style approaches, frame people as interchangeable options. When connection is structured to be provisional, responsibility becomes negotiable. This disposability erodes the ethical weight of commitment, making it easier to justify withdrawal, replacement, or betrayal as circumstantial rather than consequential.

An ethical romantic relationship requires intention, reciprocity, and accountability. Intensity alone is insufficient. When timing replaces intention, visibility replaces intimacy, and novelty replaces care, relationships may feel meaningful while lacking ethical stability.

This erosion is most visible when harm is minimized through language. Phrases such as “it didn’t mean anything” or “it was just for the moment” function as moral shortcuts, absolving individuals of accountability by reframing impact as insignificance. Yet the ethical issue is not whether an encounter was temporary, but whether the person affected was treated as disposable. Temporariness does not negate responsibility; it often amplifies it.

Ultimately, the ethical concern is not that people desire connection, novelty, or affirmation. It is that contemporary structures increasingly reward connection without continuity and attention without obligation. When love is pursued primarily as a solution to social pressure rather than as a response to mutual recognition it loses its ethical grounding. The issue is not that relationships fail, but that many are never structured to succeed beyond the moment they are meant to serve.

The ethical failure, then, is not in wanting connection, but in allowing systems of reward and visibility to dictate how, and with whom, that connection is pursued. Love loses its ethical force when it becomes reactive rather than deliberate.

Conclusion: After the Gifts Are Gone

If love is shaped primarily by timing, visibility, and expectation, then it risks becoming reactive rather than intentional. Ethical connection cannot be rushed by calendars or justified by circumstance. Love does exist in the time of gift giving, but only when it is chosen for the person, not the moment.

#love #social commentary #valentines day

HOUSE OF HALAZIA — A CYBERPUNK ATEEZ CAMPAIGN AU

HALAZIA PRIME is a casino planet that never loses. ATEEZ are space pirates who decide to cheat it back.

HOUSE OF HALAZIA is a cyberpunk / space pirate campaign AU inspired by D&D, Borderlands-style casino worlds, and ATEEZ’s themes of rebellion, fate, and found family.

I don’t actually play D&D — I just love writing campaigns and worldbuilding — so this is meant to be read, reblogged, adapted, and daydreamed about, not gatekept.

Blank character page included for anyone who wants to make their own 💫 If you do, please tag me — I’d love to see them.