#'oh actually capitalism isnt that bad of a system'

[iiusia]

kind of baffling that so many people who identify with christianity ("the world without God is inherently sinful" central) keep insisting that the world isn't that evil actually

[chronicallyqueercoining]

Hey y'all this post includes a bit of discourse which I try to avoid but as I get more followers I would like to include this! So scroll if those sorts of topics make you uncomfy!

Also CW for: grooming, abliesm, trauma, injuries, abuse, bodily fluids, pedophilia, suibaiting, sa mentions

Hi, so I just. Need to address a couple things really quick!

(Scroll to the bottom for the discussion of transx/transid "identities" ,, in quotes bc they aren't valid)

1- sending death threats or doxxing someone is NEVER okay EVER. It puts people in danger and is downright illegal. Idc what your beliefs are in this instance, it's basic law and safety. I've been told to kms over being a Dissociative system aka formed by trauma. Not funny!

2- capitalism is corrupt and always will be. No exceptions. (I could go on and on all day.)

Few more things for now; it's fucking weird and messed up to:

-disclude a-spec identities from LGBTQIAP+

-tell a minority group that they aren't allowed to say how they feel about something affecting them.

-suibaiting anyone, ever. No. Exceptions.

-proship kids x adults,, dude that's pedophilia.

-assume that all cluster b folks are violent or bad (including the term narcissistic abuse)

-say you can become a system for fun/by intentionally willing it into existence

-using disorders as an excuse to be a shit person [Ex: "oh he has autism he doesn't know better.']

Or

-taking the ignorant stance of "radinclus" (we all know you are supporting identities that aren't in good faith. Things that harm people and/or put them in danger aren't good faith.)

Now for the transid/transx shit.

Trace, transage, transabled, transspecies, transheight, transweight, are. Very odd to me. (The exception being transspecies, however I think this would be the wrong term and something like otherkin/therian/etc would fit you better!) These terms are wrong and inherently abliest and dangerous. Most of the people using these terms feel like trolls, however after having met some before, I'm suddenly extremely aware of the fact that they aren't all trolls. Which is disappointing to say the very least!

I would first like to say that I can't speak in depth on trace(formerly transracial, however that has a double meaning, also means adoption into a family that is not your bio race) or include my own opinion, as I am white. I can say that it's messed up, from the fact that I've seen 100s of POC say it's racist and wrong.

Moving onto the others! Transage is a crappy term! I think if you age regress, then you're age regressing not transage and you aren't actually that age. I think role-playing another age doesn't make you that age. I also think that most instances I've seen of people using it is an excuse to be a shitty person. It isn't a trans identity.

Transabled. God. Why. I fully know there is a disorder called BIID but transabled isnt the disorder. The disorder is BIID. "Transabled" ppl are mocking actually disabled and mentally ill and hurting people. BIID is not transabled should have NEVER been associated. BIID is a disorder. "Transabled" is a mockery. There is genuine support and therapy, and that is why that should be the step taken. Not claiming to be "transabled" and coining terms like trans-trauma or trans-autistic or trans-POTS. This is HARMFUL. There is a validity to feeling like you want your *current* issues you actually have to be worse so you could get help or be "bad enough," however that is not the same as entirely just... wanting a disorder. Wanting your current disorder/trauma/condition to be WORSE is a symptom, not a new thing. Trans-grooming and trans-trauma are terms I've ACTUALLY seen. They both mean (respectively) Wanting or feeling like you should have been/should be groomed/traumatized. This is so incredibly HORRIFIC on so many levels. I have been repeatedly groomed/preyed on by over 15 people, there is NOTHING good that you get from these. I would not wish this on anyone. Grooming is horrific manipulation, mental controlling to a degree, gaslighting, trauma. It's not some fun identity. Transtrauma is awful. There are zero instances where identifying as this is valid/healthy in anyway. Again, wanting to have worse trauma is a symptom, not trans trauma and if you're confusing those two that doesn't make transtrauma valid! It means you're a bit confused. I would like to add in here(probably a few times), though, that healthy people do not fake/want disorders. If you feel like you're ANY of these identities I truly suggest you seek help for your own safety as well as everyone else's. You aren't ever just "meant to have been traumatized" that's not how it works. I do not think, in this instance, whatever divine being, angel, power, or lack thereof, you believe in impacts or changes this. If you were to be traumatized at a point in your past, you WOULD'VE been. It doesn't just, randomly not occur to cause you "trauma dysphoria."

Transabled in a physical sense also disgusts me. Again, not BIID, these are not the same thing. Wanting to aquire a disability isn't an aesthetic. Illnesses and disorders aren't an aesthetic. I am physically disabled and use a mobility aid and I wish, I wish so fucking badly, that I could just be healthy AND normal. /srs Does not wanting to be sick suddenly make me "Transcissick?" I'm "transcured?" (/satire.)

Again wanting to have a disorder or faking disorders is not something a healthy person does, this is important to be added. Regardless, these actions/terms are STILL HURTING people.

A recurring theme I've also noticed is that all of the disorders/trauma/illnesses people want are "trendy" or "controversial" or super extreme(not saying these aren't all horrific, by extreme I simply mean the cases tend to be more fatal/altering). Something that will make people ask questions and shower you with attention. (Healthy/stable people don't constantly use attention seeking behaviors.) You never see things like: Trans-STD, Trans-IBS, Trans-Anxiety, Trans-Concussion, or Trans-Nocturnal Enuresis(this one can actually TIE IN with trauma, but people using these terms only seem to want the popular symptoms, right?)

Strange, huh? Only choosing the popular things. Yall dont want to be trans-ibs? Shitting all the time because of your weird bowels and stress and emotion issues?

Transheight and transweight make no sense at all.

If u identify as transabled you're abliest.

That's all for right now. Have a good morning/day/afternoon/night. Be sure to (if you're able/if it applies:) Drink Eat something Clean yourself a little Do something you enjoy <3!

Tags to make sure ppl see this..

[elekinetic]

This is your opportunity to talk about your favorite things! Answer this ask whenever you have time to ramble about things you like. If you want, you can send this to other people so they can share as well.

oh. you don't even know the monster you've just unleashed.

buckle up y’all it’s time for some OC LORE.

have you ever thought, damn, i wish there was a show that combined begrudging found family tropes, sci-fi heists and criminal shenanigans, large scale political conflict and a thematic critique of modern liberal politics? that was also set in space? and super gay? well do i have the show for you!

welcome to alcmena.

(this post has two parts. World building & Characters. if you want to skip all the super cool awesome world building and go straight to the characters who are the heart of the story or whatever 🙄, feel free to scroll. its in bright purple.)

and because im extremely very nice and curteous, ill put the rest under a read more. It's a long one.

WORLD BUILDING

Alcmena, which hosts two main systems (System A, the "Rexian System" and System B, the "Regenai System"), is engaged in a centuries long conflict between the ruling "Sovereign Monocracy of Alcmena" and the rebellion faction, "Common People for the Liberation of Alcmena." Most people just call them the Monocracy and the Rebellion. The Monocracy is your pretty standard imperial bad guy government. Here's an excerpt from "A Complete History Of Alcmenan Colonization, From Discovery to Monocratic Liberty" by A.G. Helmber, Monocratic Chief of Education. (planets are labeled on the map above, click for quality.)

So....not great.

Here's an excerpt from a rebellion source.

Here's the thing though. This isn't the whole story. The Rebellion markets itself as a progressive group championing the rights of the people, but really its just interested in power and maintaining their own status quo (i swear to god this is explored subtly and elegantly in the actual story, ik it sounds very on the nose here).

some more geography/world lore:

like i said, two systems.

REXIAN SYSTEM

orbits a yellow star known as "rex"

capital planet is Vesta, which hosts a government based industry and houses the elite of the elite. It is the oldest of populated planets

The most populous planet is Proserpine, the cultural capital of the galaxy.

Other planets in system are artisan and trade planets. Proserpine has another planet on its orbit path, Tara, which functions as Rex’s “black market”. The Rebellion is eager to establish a presence here.

REGINAI SYSTEM

orbits a yellow star known as "regin"

this system is plagued by war. Intersettlement and interplanetary conflicts are aplenty. That means crime is too.

Lots of culture, lots of thieving.

Lockai and Kavtu were terraformed simultaneously. They are the most technologically advanced planets (after Vesta, of course). Technological research, development, and manufacturing. Lockai and Kavtu share the first wormhole portal (name pending). They have the most cultural exchange.

Nocturam is the planet closest to the sun (called “Regin”), but all of its civilization is cloaked in darkness. Nocturam settlements are just one long interconnected network of open air ships that chase darkness as the world turns. Daytime on Nocturam is scorching and deadly, but night is survivable. Nocturam cities rely on bright neon to light their lives. It’s rumored that on very clear nights, pink and green stars can be seen from Lockai.

We also have some rogue planets not in orbit (my best friend is an astrophysicist ik this isnt how it works but its my story so. shh.)

OUTER PLANETS

Saraneth

A once barren desert planet that was abandoned after the Vestian Civil War of the 3300s. A few settlers who had escaped Vesta managed to harness underground water streams and eventually built a kingdom protected by harsh weather and a dedicated military force.

A true monarchy whose line descends from the original settler family. Currently ruled by Empress Netra Zoras of Saraneth, known as “The Young Queen”, who inherited the throne from her father at age 15 after he died 5 years ago.

The monocracy has trouble navigating the sandstorms that circle around the country of Saraneth, which sits in a 300 kilometer eye of a storm. Only Sarenthian “sandcutters” know how to fly through the storms.

Because of this, Saraneth has remained independent through the last 500 years. They’ve dealt with their own political turmoil and internal conflict, but Saraneth’s political isolation means most details remain unknown.

Sandcutters are tasked with transporting imports and exports between Saraneth and and its trade ports—small villages outside the storm. These villages are heavily guarded and armed by Sarenthian military.

Karrigat

as mentioned before, the airtight fortress of the rebellion. the lore of this planet is in the excerpt from the rebellion source. that's abt all i have.

OK WORLD BUILDING DONE. LETS GET TO THE ACTUAL STORY.

We follow James Huong (F, 40s), the captain of a small crew locked in a contract with the Rebellion. They send her jobs, she gets them done. People used to say "she's got a fast wit and a faster draw," but these days she's just tired. Before she was stuck running dangerous errands with a bunch of goddamn kids, she had a wife and a whole other crew. They were traveling the galaxy, living the dream, but they ended up running jobs for some real nasty mobs. They got caught in the crossfire of a rebellion x monocracy battle during one of their runs, even after James' insisted to their boss that they hold off on the delivery cause it was too dangerous. The boss made them do it anyway and long story short, everyone but James died. She'd sent them into a shuttle to escape and left the ship to defend them, but the shuttle was bombed. This is why James is so weary of being in the rebellion's endless contract. Doesn't matter if you call yourself righteous or entrepreneurial, power is power.

Lets talk about those "goddamn kids."

Here's the crew of the [untitled space ship]:

James Huong - Captain

Aurora Keane - First Hand

Charlie Fairside - Engineer

Daya Marneth - Pilot

T'arin Thone - .....unknown

Aurora (F, 20s) mostly goes by Keane (tho Charlie can get away with "Rors" on occasion). Her life has not been easy. She's got distinct facial tattoos along her cheek and brow bones --- the markings of a Monocracy soldier. I'll let this outline tell the story.

she's deeply emotionally stunted (understandably). i love her. so much.

charlie (M, 20s) was raised on a manufacturing planet (think like industrial revolution) and is one of like 9 siblings. he left the planet to find work and sends almost all of his money back home. he's the engineer and keeps the ship running, but his family doesn't know that the ship he works on does some….less than legal things. he's a golden retriever but is holding a lot pent up inside.

he and aurora have an interesting relationship. aurora carries a lot of guilt (for obvious reasons) and charlie's the first person she opens up to about her past (after james, but that happened pretty soon after they met bc she was being arrested and questions were raised). charlie says he left his family to find work but really he just didn't want to live and die there. his dad was gonna retire and he was going to have to become the head of the household, so he runs. he feels extremely guilty about leaving his family and so he and aurora kind of bond over the fact that they both think they are the worst person in the universe. but also they think the other person is insane for thinking that because what the fuck you're literally the best person i know. it takes them a VERY LONG TIME TO GET TOGETHER. LIKE. SEASONS. we're slowburning friends to lovers babyyyyy. it's hard though. aurora is emotionally stunted (as previously stated) has issues communicating. charlie also is convinced aurora is gonna realize she deserves better and leave him, so he is often flexible to a fault and doesn't prioritize his needs at all. but once they sort their shit out their perfect for each other. yin & yang, good in the bad and bad in the good and all that. i love them so much.

daya....daya (F, 20s) is my babygirl. oh my god. so, charlie showed up on the ship around the same time as daya, who got there just a few months before. after finishing a job, aurora and james come back to find some random girl trying to steal their ship. and not just trying...succeeding. Daya gets the ship well in the air before aurora shoots down one of the ship's thrusters with a hand missile (don't ask me how that works. james starts yelling at aurora because now the ship's gonna crash and they dont have the kind of money to fix that kind of damage and what were you thinking?!?! but daya manages to pilot the ship down safely with literally no extra damage. so. now she's their pilot. She and charlie become fast friends. they have to work together a lot because they're in charge of keeping the ship running. somehow they both act like they're the other's little sibling.

here's the thing about daya, though.

no one knows it, but shes got a little sister. Netra. her full name is Princess Netr'ada of Saraneth---well, Empress now. Daya doesn't find out until an old newspaper shows up in a swapmeet a few years later, but their father has died and Netra has taken the throne. Saraneth is a desert planet, kind of like Arrakis in Dune, but its got an ever-present sandstorm engulfing most of the planet. Saraneth sits in the eye of the storm. The sky is heavily guarded by Saraneth's navy so the only way in or out is through the storm, a journey only the most highly trained Saranethians can lead. The storm, and the galaxy's dependence on Saraneth's exports, are why Saraneth remains one of the last planets independent of rebellion and monocracy rule. Daya Marneth (or Princess Dayamare of Saraneth, missing - presumed dead) snuck onto a naval ship when she was 19 and never looked back. She loves Saraneth, but it's not without issues. Daya couldn't stay. (Whether she is selfish for leaving is up for debate.) She tried to get Netra to come with her, but they fought and Netra refused. In a few months, Daya will find a paper that says Queen Netr'ada has birthed an heir. In a few years, she'll find out it was a baby boy.

remember how i mentioned Saraneth's exports? the planet of Saraneth holds rich vains of a mineral that activates most of the technology in the galaxy. Sort of equivalent to cobalt in our world, though i know jack shit about how tech irl works so dont @ me. Unfortunately this means the monocracy is highly dependent on Saraneth. Its a miniature cold war: we have the weapons to annihilate your entire planet, but you have a monopoly on tech so… And yeah, everyone assumes Daya is dead, but if she isn't….if the monocracy can track her down, make her divulge information about Saraneth's security…..maybe they can take Saraneth for themselves.

This is where Mirene Cautsa (F 20s) comes in! She's a monocratic assassin who's hunting Daya down like her life depends on it because...it kind of does. She's always been top of her class, but the monocracy doesn't take kindly to failures. She's cutthroat, cunning, and totally doesn't have any kind of empathy for Daya who clearly is just a girl trying to find happiness and she's totally not jealous of how free Daya lets herself be or how she doesn't seem to hate Mirene even though she has every reason too and Mirene totally doesn't notice the way Daya's hair brushes the hollow of her collarbone and oh shit. that's right. we're doing enemies to lovers babyyyyyy. and they're LESBIANS.

on daya's end of this, shes extremely frustrated because mirene never communicates why shes hunting her. blah blah blah plot i havent written yet but eventually mirene ditches the monocracy for the rebellion (which honestly is worse) and they start…dating? they dont know what to call it. but then mirene gets called on a rebel mission and they fight because mirene thinks she needs to pay for the harm shes caused but daya thinks shes trading in one bad thing for another cause shes scared to be her own person! individual growth happens and then they meet again on a battlefield and before they can even have a conversation, they save each others lives wordlessly. mwah ofc happily ever after.

now. you're probably thinking. god. so its just james and these chaotic twenty-somethings. jesus christ. well, do not fear! Meet T'arin (M, 40s) . Him joining the crew is the first story we ever get. he's a monocratic aristocrat who's been working as a rebellion spy for years, but his cover is blown. it's the crew's responsibility to get him out. they save him and somehow he ends up a permanent part of the crew. he is the empathetic counterpart to james' weariness. They balance each other out. by the end of the story, they are life partners. Romantic, platonic, familial, its not really clear. But when the dust settles and they all have to part ways, T'arin stays by James' side.

i have. so much more. like. so much more. but i'll leave it there.

[onemillionvolts]

GM CYNO

what if i told you every single question in the ask game should be answered, that or WHO IS THE SEXUEST PERSIN THAT COMES TO MIND IMMEDIATELY

GOOD MORNING HI HI. BET. im gonna do all of them you bet i wont but i will. youre the best for this btw

IMMEDIATELY? PFFFF HOW LONG DO U HAVE LET ME GET MY LIST

0. height

i yam 5 foot 6 (and a half)

1. virgin?

what the fuck did you just call me? /lhj

anyways in my head yes i am and thats what matters isnt it

2. shoe size

i wear 11s and god i wish that thing people say about shoe size was true 🤙

3 + 4 + 5. do you smoke/drink/do drugs

no and i never plan to <33

6. age you get mistaken for

i.. honestly have no answer to this tbh

7 + 8. do you have (and/or want) any tattoos?

i don't have any, i'd like one/some but i'm not really sure what i'd get

9 + 10. do you have/want any piercings

no to both PFFFF i think like... a clip on lip piercing would probably be my personal limit

11. best friend

...ego stroker much, tumblr user wangshu? /t PFFFFF

12. relationship status

harem with fake 2d men single. yeah uh. single

13. biggest turn ons

tbh... i cant think of any off the top of my head that aren't painfully obvious

14. biggest turn offs

ducklips iykyk

15. favorite movie

i'm not kidding when i say step brothers. but if you want a more respectable answer, nightmare before christmas

16. i'll love you if

you aren't an asshole??? i mean ik it's hypocritical of me to say but cmon

17. someone you miss

i've lost a lot of family over the years so probably someone there tbh

18. most traumatic experience

when my ex lived with me and i wish i was joking it was that fucking bad

19. A fact about your personality

which one /hj

i do think.. i overcompensate a lot by trying to be funny bc i dont feel like i HAVE a personality so there's that about me

20. What i hate most about myself

mm thats a toughie it could be the appearance or the voice or the attachment issues or the codependency issues or the jealousy issues or the mood swings or the weak immune system or the several mental illnesses or holy shit this is turning into a pity party

21. what i love most about myself

im an alright writer i guess? and id like to think i'm a good friend

22. what i want to be when i get older

i just wanna write man idc what

23. my relationship with my sibling(s)

i have 0 of them

24. my relationship with my parents

my moms cool but the less said about my dad the better

25. my idea of the perfect date

literally just staying in and watching a movie with snacks and stuff... honestly never thought about it much

26. My biggest pet peeves

UM UM um people who think the world revolves around them people who don't know the difference between their there and they're um people who Unironically Capitalize Every Word Like This oh i could go on

27. a description of the person i like

big hat dumb bowlcut open kimono /j

28. description of the person i dislike the most

um literally jusr my dad so. narcissistic explosive annoying abusive etc etc

29. A reason i've lied to a friend

only time i'm lyin is when i say tiggy ain't best boy 💯

30. what i hate most about work/school

it kinda semi interferes w my night owl ways but otherwise i'm chill

31. what your last text message says

gonna use actual texts cause using disc is too easy 👹 it was just me asking my mom if she wanted a drink from mcdonalds from last sunday

32. what words upset me the most

does this mean like. just words you hate or a phrase/sentence that upsets u...

uh i'll do it both ways. the word bussin makes me want to fall down an abyss a la childe ajax tartaglia

and uh. i hate being told i don't do enough, specifically by people who don't do jack shit in the first place. AGAIN iykyk

33. what words make me feel best abt myself

oh it was the second thing. honestly don't hve an answer to this but i just hold onto any compliment i get for actual years so there's that about me

34. what i find attractive in women

eyes its eyes

35. what i find attractive in men

sense of humor tbh

36. where i would like to live

somewhere close to a big city so that it isn't massively crowded and loud and overwhelming all the time but i'm close enough to stores and hospitals and all that stuff

37. One of my insecurities

i feel like this has already been asked in like 6 different ways.. prolly my body tho

38. my childhood career choice

honestly i've.. always been kinda laughably indecisive about this type of thing. i never wanted to be like, an astronaut or fireman or any of the cliche stuff that kids talk about i.. don't think i ever thought of it actually

39. my favorite ice cream flavor

cookies n cream 👹 specifically like a cookies n cream cheesecake blizzard from like dq or culvers.. that shit is unmatched

40. Who i wish i could be

a mentally stable person or cyno genshin (real)

41. where i want to be right now

in bed <///3

42. the last thing i ate

leftover pizza <3

43. SEXIEST PERSON THAT COMES TO MIND IMMEDIATELY

TIGHNARI FINAL ANSWRR I DONT PERCEIVE REAL PEOPLE

44. a random fact about anything

all odd numbers contain the letter E

GOLLY THIS WAS SO FUN.

[hhawkeye]

Hold up, something didn't make sense, but, wasn't Javert the bad guy who was anti-revolution and hated Valjean and is the main cause of Valjean's suffering? Why are we shipping them? Is there something in the musical that I missed because I only watched the 2012 movie and that was once a long long time ago?

okay i mean. technically. i guess. but also javert isnt actually the bad guy in les mis, he's not... great, he's not a GOOD GUY but he's not the villain either and i mean a lot of the point of les mis is that yknow people are not wholly one thing or the other

anyway. valjean and javert are deliberate parallels and mirrors of one another and are compared, both in the book and in the musical, to one another over and over again, sometimes more explicitly than others -- for example their soliloquies in the musical have the same lyrics and music and themes, stars and bring him home are merged at points, their characters are entwined because they play off and complement one another

and anyway. in the musical specifically. the part where valjean frees javert at the barricade "i'm a man no worse than any man" and "there is nothing that i blame you for, you've done your duty nothing more" etc like. valjean isnt... ok i'm not saying he's not mad but he isn't dwelling on it like oh that javert. the bane of my existence that fucking asshole i hate him so bad. yknow? he does actually forgive javert and understand that. well. it's not javert that's tracking him really it's just... the entire penal system. which ok "i am the law" is there even a difference ? well. that's the question isnt it.

but javert is Complicated really and i mean. hes a fictional character so im allowed to say this but he straight up was basically just following the moral code he had upheld his entire life and yknow. when faced with the fact that that code is perhaps Wrong he deals with it in a way that is... not ideal. but he's not the actual cause of valjean's suffering. the cause of valjean's suffering is the law itself and yknow, poverty and capitalism and the monarchy and also napoleon and and and etc etc like. much of the point of les mis is there isnt actually one specific thing that damns people or ruins their lives yknow?

and i mean! the book is good! you should read it if you get a chance like it's long as fuck and there are a lot of digressions my god victor hugo was just like i will be writing every thought that comes into my head and then acting like im Not doing that, but it does provide a bit more insight into. The Whole Thing esp if all you've seen is the 2012 movie. it's good! and in a book where yknow there are literal awful people javert is really just some guy and also my best friend. like he's a fictional cop in 19th century france he's not a GOOD DUDE but he's my BEST FRIEND.

also

you know.

just sexy to have a nemesis who tracks you down for, like, decades, and you change his worldview so much he has to kill himself to deal with it. there's just something hot and kinda fun about that. is there not.

[olde-scratch]

So I watched LUCIDS 1-4 without any prior knowledge...

and here were my thoughts. I didn’t watch any backstory or anything so enjoy my suffering.

PART 1

“So what happens when the people inside of their dreams go to sleep?” They die

“What happens when we wake up? Do they go on living while we’re not there?” THEY DIE-

“Who are they anyway?” they’re faces that our brain catalogs and stores for later use, although it’s also arguable that every time we dream we go to an alternate reality and inhabit the body of another version of ourselves. Now, were you in a car accident and trapped underwater or-

Are they twins?

(Me tuning out to do something)

“-the squirrel in spongebob was your soulmate, making you a Sandy simp-”

Me, snapping back to the video: hold up-

[missed the part about the worksheet, realized it when i rewatched 10 mins later to make this post]

yall speakin gibberish idk what youre saying-

“I’m gonna go to bed.” bro it literally looks like morning-

“You should get some sleep you look terrible.” i get six hours of sleep a night minimum and i look worse than him shut up bro-

“jump into someone else’s dream” ah i know this con-

why they all got the same face-

haha funni meme

“--an interruptiion can create feedback and tear them apart.” Death. I long for thee.

Is that Karl Jacob’s jacket?

“a second grader” makes me think this is a different school system. [i was wrong? i think?]

“[get him to] eat your apple”

[in the dream sequence] weird dream, but ive had weirder. now, Why Pamper’s-

why does he suddenly have a knife-

“You put a filter on the Dreamscape feed?”

“Technically, you are seven years old.”

???????????

the second hand embarrassment is UGGGHHH

[reading the description] you mean like the guy who was knocked out for 2 minutes on a football field and woke to find he’d dreamt 17 years of his life? oh this shall be Fun

PART 2

[I check the description] “jasper cult” what the fu-

how many camp camp references can i make during this

Is the apple a reference to religion or does the creator just really ilke apples?

“meal.”

“meal?”

meal????

Wait why couldn’t that guy eat the apple? If he wanted it in the fruit bowl, wouldn’t there be a chance of the guy eating it anyways?? Why can’t the guy who brought the apple eat it?

well he’s Dead

[debating if I should read the backstory}

n a h h h h h -

Was he gonna feed the dead guy the apple or something? Why is he upset about the apple in this scene???

oooo the grownups are fightinnnngggg

Is he an antagonist?

HE WROTE A BOOK???

oh now i want food

ESTABLISH JUSTICE ENSURE DOMESTIC TRANQUILITYYYYYYYYYYYYY

“I watched all those aforementioned shows” what shows did i miss something what-

man why you gotta hate on her jane austen fanfic let her live bro

string theory! i can get behind that! sorta-

o no he found the memes-

BOY GOT KNOCKED OUT-

kim there’s people that are dying-

is SHE an antagonist?

quinn? calling himself jasper? u sure hes not just nonbinary? is this just a metaphor for transphobic parenting?

“He died... but somewhere, he grew up.” So is your plan to take a Quinn from a different universe and make him your own, thereby robbing another version of yourself from happiness? When does this ever go well?

Yknow most people, when they lose a kid,,,, kinda,,,,,,, dont go on a ceaseless quest to find another version of their kid that grew up without knowing that another version of his mother was invading other peoples’ dreams to find and kidnap him,,,,,,,, like aint u got a therapist-

“Once you get past the point of not knowing what’s real anymore, you realize it doesn’t matter.” Well, I Got Called Out-

PART 3

“you’re real, oliver.”

aRe yOu sUrE aBoUt tHaT-

“you’ve been infected by the anti-love parasite of Mandadon” the amatonormativity is strong

so anyways ive been infected since birth hbu-

“James Jasperson, creator of Japple” did you mean to Fancy Well-Educated Man in a Black Turtleneck? cause the only FWEMBT i allow near me is prof. hidgens

“are you winning?” says the capitalist

why did you rewind to see his face?? you have the same face????? is this just bc the creator doesnt like working with other people cause in that case same but???????

“it’s a bad idea. i’m not gonna do it.” we’ve all been there. and we’ve all done it.

looks like me trying to study. (i say, a person who has studied a total of five minutes throughout their entire life.)

your “Spartan trial” looks like a bunch of guys standing on a hill pretending to be something they’re not. Let The Man Bring His Snacks.

eat the apple.

is this your first existential crisis or something what a loser lets all point and laugh

“One of you should be spared, the other shall’nt.” did you mean shant or was that a choice-

yall gonna get called out for talking shut UP

“sorry if this is too personal, btw. are you okay?”

me, confused and half understanding what’s going on and also needing to sleep cause its almost one in the morning but wanting to finish what i can find of lucids which i only starting watching cause i saw an animatic of ranboo and dream w audio from it: i don’t know anymore

“i just want my life back... i was gonna get married-” AREN’T YOU LIKE SEVEN-

ay man if this is a sacrificial cult yall gotta get daniel-

UPDATE: I  H A V E  N O T  F O U N D  I T -

“oliver”

I  F O U N D   I  T -

WHICH ONE IS QUINN?? WHO’S JASPER???? WHICH ONE IS BENJAMIN???? I THOUGH BENJAMIN WAS SEVEN BUT I THOUGHT HE WAS THE ONE GETTING MARRIED WHAT-

oliver. eat the apple.

“Can you still have memories even when you’re dreaming?” One time I woke up to my alarm and fell back asleep and in my dream I remembered that I had class in a few minutes and my dream self woke my real self up so fast I thought I was gonna get whiplash. Anyways, I was late to class bc of my computer but that doesn’t matter.

NOPE I FOUND IT. HERE’S THE AUDIO. THE ANIMATIC ONE. FINALLY.

im thinking car crash. but also maybe murder. but also maybe both? is it raining or was he drowning? is he in a coma? hmmmmmm?

wait olivers the one with the apple does that mean he’s the one dreaming? is the ending gonna be him and jasper (quinn? idk) fighting against ben and mrs hills about jasper eating the apple to save oliver from the dream? hmmmmmmmmmm-

waitwaitwait i thought oliver was 7 how is benjamin 7 years younger than him if they look the same age what what what explain america explain what you mean arkansaw-

are the cuts on his nose plot-relevant or

“What if you hadn’t been driving?” So I was right about the car accident but Mrs. Hills still said he was seven so did i mishear her say that BENJAMIN was seven? but even then oliver would be 14 and that would still be illegal-

“How are you feeling?”

“Like you’re a pretty bad therapist.”

mood

“--it makes it all bearable to have power over the stories we write in our heads” that’s why i write fanfiction

HE’S GOT THE NOTEBOOK HE’S GONNA WRITE SOMETHING ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US

WHAT YOU MEAN AN EXPERIMENT THAT’S HIS NAME-

[upon reading the description] so i was right.

wait was that supposed to be the twist in part 2 about the apple in his pocket is that what the existential crisis was about i thought it was because he was introduced to the multiple worlds theory-

PART 4

wait wasnt the other one january 2018 why we going back to 2017-

appol

“--the future and the past all already exist” mhm yep figured this out long ago

there was simultaneously a point in time in which i hadn’t known about this, had been looking it up, had been watching it, and had been writing an ending to this post, and had been posting it the next morning before class. that time is both now and not now. Welcome To The Multiverse Theory or whatever its called-

“--my favorite scene of the movie is waking up next to you.” Mine is eating fast food as I listen to AJJ and play Minecraft. We are not the same.

Now I’m hungry but it’s 1 in the morning and i already put my retainer in god fu-

[reading description] what do you mean previously??? she did that in the first episode????????

[still on description] WHAT DO YOU MEAN WILL QUINN BITE THE APPLE AND GO TO BENJAMINS REALITY ISNT THIS OLIVERS REALITY AND HE HAS TO GET BEN TO BITE THE APPLE WHY IS APPLE CAPITALIZED IS THIS THE DOING OF THE FWEMBT

i should have watched the backstory i should have watched the backstory i should have watched the backstory i should have wa-

[description] oh ive been spelling quinn right the whole time nice

i hope she rejects you /j

WAIT BENJAMIN WAS THE ONE GETTING MARRIED TO ISABELLE

ISNT HE IN SECOND GRADE-

HE IS SEVEN YEARS OLD HOW IS HE GETTING MARRIED ARE THERE TWO BENJAMINS THAT WE’RE FOCUSING ON-

bro get out of the road ull get hit

how do you knOW WHICH ONE IS QUINN THEY ARE THE SAME PERSON-

so

wait

hills wants ben to feed quinn the apple bc in his mind, that will give hills and quinn a happy ending and she doesnt want ben to see the apple bc thats gonna mean ben will know that his reality isnt reality at all. so then oliver has to,,,, not let anyone eat his apple? he just has to wake up?

IS HILLS THE VILLAIN AFTER ALL ORRRRR

wait but if ben sees the apple wont he realize that his reality is wrong and his reality will change, making it so that hills doesnt get her son? or is there some time-based rule that says they’re only transported to the reality that the person believes at that moment? or is this another stab at the multiverse thing where an infinite amount of hills gets their happy endings while an infinite amount of hills doesnt and etc etc?

i should have watched the ba-

oooo dramatique

they’re in a time loop?

nope thats a new powerpoint

wait so theyre,,,, no-

wait-

nvm-

IS THE BEN WE KNOW AN ADULT GETTING MARRIED TO ISABELLE OR NOT-

“they were actually pretty nice” didnt they throw someone off a cliff-

oh so it got confusing THEN??? NOT BEFORE?????

“it all seemed so real.” is that Not the point of vivid REM sleep hallucinations-

is oliver gonna show ben the apple and ruin hills’ whole operation

WHO ARE ALEX AND RYAN-

“what’s 25-8″ bro dont do this to me-

yep hes gonna show the apple

ayyy the guy who stole karl jacobs jacket it back

the second hand embarrassment is back and I Hate It

all that happens in episode ONE??? bro get some better writers that is bad pacing

“it’s the best!” wait until season eight. no show has a good season eight.

quinn knows about the apple thing w the dreams and multiverse and realities dont he

YOU KILLED HIM

NOT KARL JACOBS NOOOOO HES ALREADY DIED ONCE

oliver is v relatable

wHaT iN tArNaTiOn-

lemme hear that explanaton again-

is bill cipher gonna show up? i hope bill cipher shows up. i miss gravity falls

“ah! a tree! ah! a tree! ah a tree!” moooooooood

did hills murder quinn

is your family the jasper cult

TOXXIICCCCCC get that lady out of your life quinn that is so toxic

“ ah! a tree! ah! a tree! ah a tree!  ah! a tree! ah! a tree! ah a tree!” mooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood

WHAT DO YOU MEAN THAT’S THE END NO WHAT WHY NO

The Adventures of Benjamin and Oliver

he is Not Good

ope-

wait so ben is equal parts an adult AND a child?? okay that clears a lot up

I MEAN HE WAS RIGHT THO BEN U CAN’T REALLY ARGUE ON THAT-

ew get off the floor

butterfly effect, multiverse theory, memory decay, and your imagination ALL exist yall gonna ignore that cause you wanna be famous?

“We already know what the future looks like!”

aRe yOu sUrE aBoUt tHaT-

to add to the list of bad things: Cats (2019)

YA BOI THINKS IT’S NOT ALREADY FIFTY YEARS TOO LATE TO START FIGHTING CLIMATE CHANGE FFFFF

BINGO BABYYYY

get what what

what mapped-

awwwww he thinks THEY’RE creating the multiverse

you gonna dismiss the multiverse theory bc of something you created in your current reality? loooserrrrrr

ABUSE YOUR GODLIKE POWERS

she draggin that seven year old

a lot makes sense now why didnt i do this first-

Jasper

the food shortages-

bro that calculators like 90 bucks at walmart

imagine meeting a stranger and they know Everything about your life like that’s gotta be so weird

what’s even weirder is them telling you you’re the deity of a cult that sacrifices animals

THAT FOURTH WALL BREAK WAS-

KARL JACOBS IS DEAD NOOOOOO

ooohhh there’s context for that

OOOOHHHH THERE’S CONTEXT FOR THIS TOOOO

w h a t -

w  h  a  t  -

W   H   A   T   -

Conclusion:

it’s 2 in the morning and i need sleep but hOOOOO MY GODS THAT WAS GOOD IS IT OVER OR NOT IDK ANYMORE IM TIRED THAT WAS CRAZY I HOPE QUINN AND JASPER GO ON TO BE VERY GOOD FRIENDS, AND I HOPE BENJAMIN AND OLIVER STAY VERY GOOD FRIENDS AND I HOPE HILLS FINDS A THERAPIST WAS A LITTLE CONFUSING BUT I ENJOYED IT

if i dream about apples im suing /j /lh

[semi-imaginary-place]

I started watching deca-dence

1: oh what was that called. there’s a name for this tech aesthetic.... also the city is floating on monster goo which is also their energy resource... is that really a good design?????? why is there open access to the monster goo i mean those kids are totally going to fall in. Oh boss dude’s a super secret agent thing. lots of reveals this ep. That action sequence at the end was really cool but wow i do not like those squishing sound effects. also, of all the livestock to raise, why cows??? per pound of protein, cows are horribly inefficient especially when land and resources like water are scare.

2. We have a post apocalyptic society and they kept bagpipes of all things??? I’ve noticed this in fiction and perhaps this is true of real life but sustained conflict coincides with the glorification of the warrior/soldier social class. oh god and now the creators are doing a post moderist take, yay capitalism. this is a good take on the isekai “transported to a game world”/mmo lightnovel genre (see past post). what makes something “real” I was playing of a ttrpg around that concept... mikey’s got all the flags to die horrifically and be part of kaburagi’s tragic backstory. lol kaburagi got turned into a mod. There’s also something dehumanizing and horrifying in managing a society like this all to maintain the status quo. so let’s see if I have this straight, the remnants of capitalism made deca-dence and then a bunch of little robot people who are incentivized via a game system to destroy the squishy monsters. the city design makes sense now it wasn’t made with things like safety or efficiency or any regard for the residents in mind, it was made to look cool. Living in a fuel tank is exactly the type of bullshit to expect from a videogame.

3: kurenai has the vibes of that one cool npc that the the main character out grows to show how strong you’ve become. (the trope is rife with misogyny. who was the one that talked about it? ... femfreq?), wonder what the show will do with it. good job deconstructing the instant expert trope. lit. unregulated capitalism. what is corporations replaced government but for little cyborg people. curious about this minato guy. the 175 years until decommission or whatever makes me wonder how long all of this has been going on. on the screen with the eurasia bubble, were other structures, so i wonder whats happening elsewhere in the world.

4. the game trailer style shots.... the juxtaposition of the tankers discussing battle strategy for a life or death situation, with the cyborgs excited for the next raid event and talking about the game’s story is real good. its a revolving door of mood whiplash. oof dramatic irony since the entertainment corp also seems to control gadoll numbers. Why do none of the Power wear armor? oh right aesthetics and game logic, i answered my own question. I was thinking about this for a little while but kaburagi really does have the set up to be an isekai/mmo light novel protag so I’m really glade we have natsume as well. If done improperly her character type can get kind of annoying, the show did a good job of humanizing her which is important since so much of the disconnect between a game world and a lived reality hinges on her. why isn’t altitude sickness a problem for anyone?

5. yikes. saved twice within the first 10 minutes. maybe dont charge in there natsume. and it was the cool lady too! oh shit limit release. now the stakes are up. isnt kaburagi totally going to get his little head chopped off and the his little green battery extracted.

...

...

...

6. I’ve always had a soft spot for the struggle against the inevitable and unmovable. i was wondering how they were managing the squishies population. just where is this lake? what weird ass hazing system has kaburagi ended up in... is this the slow part of the anime? where they save up frames for the finale?

7. i just realized that kaburagi purposefully chose dog faced characters twice in a row. like he can choose to look like whatever he wants and he good, i feel comfortable looking like this. good for him. How did they punch a hole in the wal anyways, mechanically? with gadoll? We’ve see that they can either change the projection surrounding deca-dence, or actually have full control of all material int he bubble. oh kabu-san you are finally starting to think. but its not the gadoll that are the root of the problem, its the deca-dence system. btw since cyborgs run on the green juice which i think is made from gadolls??? how does kabu plan on fueling everyone. he hasn’t thought about it has he. of course the gadoll have a kill switch. do the tankers have one...?

8. a setup episode. my heart was racing during the avatar retrieval part, so much tension. jill is great. not sure why kaburagi doesnt just tell natsume whats going on. i do think it’d be a shock and a lot to take in just like when the gadoll reset on the mountain, but it’d make coordinating much easier. as is taking her along while not telling her whats going on doesnt feel right. also the green slanty eyed cyborgs given me bad vibes from the start, after all he’s the one that told mikey about removing the limiter. I’m kinda sad we only have 12 episodes so we have to enter the finale already. i would have loved to see the tanker teams, natsume and fei, and minato and kaburagi relationships fleshed out.

9. YEAH YOU SHOULD HAVE TOLD HER EARLIER. so she would have time to process all that world shaking information not in the middle of the operation when it could cost her her life! also doesn’t this mean all the cyborgs still alive are now trapped in the waste disposal place.

10. i totally forgot about that tunnel. that said it looks kinda fragile, how’d it survive the explosion? And how did the robo crew get a hideout?? jill is amazing. she’s like a wizard. Natsume just doesn’t get a break, no ones explained to her the cyborg-avatar thing. I’m too invested in this show to analyze anything.

11. holy shit i wonder what the last few episodes were going to be about. they’re going to black hole the whole place. also we can finally hear pipopi! I thought it a bit funny pruple nose seemed to be taking advice for them but really eh was taking orders? so minato did the tremendously stupid thing of logging out and then hopping on a shuttle to get from orbit to deca-dence so he could talk to kaburagi face to face. even if they take out the gadoll, that doesn’t stop the deca0dence system from having a kill switch on the bubble.

12. POMDOROSA DID THE END SCENE ART. it really is 7 degrees of separation, they have a tumblr here. right as the natsume flashbacks started, I knew what was going to happen. Was it really safe inside the drill thing?? ah whatever. Kaburagi really went all out and busted himself huh. He probably didn’t actually need to use so much force that it’d break decadence. ah I’m rambling. I binged watched this show in 1 day. i started tearing up at the natsume flahsbacks... I dont remember what i just watched it was pure experience. I do wonder whats happening on other continents.. Jill! I can’t believe it took you 3 years to organize your files and find kaburagi’s backup! well i mean its realistic but still.

Deca-Dence is very good, like not even talking about the thematic stuff the execution in both animation and writing are both really good.

[kittydog]

romac in terms of its ideas is kind of weird 2 me like....its kind of anti-capitalist/anti-corporation w/ the way it depicts g-directorate and its control of the world(?)... but at the same time it seems more interested in critiquing the symptoms of capitalism rather than the system itself. like the whole flower beard part, or that weird nutrition label cult(i think its supposed 2 be an allegory??). or the way that the peoples of eureka in general are portrayed as unthinking zombies. 1 line that stuck out 2 me was around the beginning of the story when pilot said something along the lines of "they shouldnt have put on their blue tiaras that day" (referring 2 g-directorate issued google glass) like of course you could write this off as pilot lamenting the fact that if ppl just hadnt put them on then they wouldnt have died BUT i also think that its indicative of this general attitude of placing the blame on2 the population at large/consumers rather than the corporation who makes the product. WHICH IS KIND OF WEIRD like it kind of reminds me of the "get off your phone go outside!!!" mentality....ok um wait...OH YOU KNOW WHAT ACTUALLY!!! a lot of romacs critique of uhhh everything kind of mirrors previous generations' feelings toward technology quite well......? top 10 romantically apocalyptic technophobic momence number one annet death ?????? hello?? ummmmmmmm....ok well anyway.....YEAH sorry it rlly isnt the ppl of eureka's (and also maybe da world idrk whats happening) fault that they bought annet glass ESPECIALLY considering how much control g-directorate had over basically everything...considering what blue tiaras are, it'd be like living w/out a phone/computer etc. in a world where EVERYTHING is done by internet access. like snippy is only where he is bc captain took a potion of liking him and g-directorate took pity on him(?) (very fuzzy on this part pls pls correct me) and the rest of the unconnectables arent doing too hot either. SPEAKING OF THEM i also think it's strange that the rebel guys or w/ever they were were antagonists despite the fact that they supposedly fighting against g-directorate? who is also supposed 2 be bad? its ummmmm...i dont get it❤🏳️‍🌈 g-directorate is kind of treated as this faceless force of nature, or at least thats how it came off 2 me, despite the fact that we KNOW who ran it....engie along w/ everything else is kind of strange bc....he is an absolute coward and hes pathetic but he isnt. BAD. he isnt rlly a villain like that 1 guy that was on the moon i think his name was like graham or gray or something idk he was in an ice cube...and i say this is strange bc he BLEW EVERYBODY UP...he created annet in the first place...as much as i like him, if romac is committed 2 the ideas it mentioned at the beginning, then wouldnt it make the most sense if he was some kind of antagonist??? i dont WANT him 2 be a villain or anything, not at all, but im saying that seeing as hes in the position that hes in, and seeing as the apparent themes are the way they are, then it would make the most sense...and like, its ok if romac doesnt have a theme or w/ever...i dont think stories need 2 say something 2 be enjoyable or analyzed...but like i said, its weird that it DOES try 2 say something. there ARE ideas there (theyre a little heavy-handed at some parts)you know what dont worry abt it i am simply babbling 2 myself like a baby...ok sorry this bload up while youre here check out my soundcloud https://youtu.be/s0o6_rKTIOc

[ultimaid]

“bluh bluh bluh stranger things 3 isnt capitalist propaganda bc they were scared of the russians in the 80s its just showing it like it was!!!” oh my god can yall please do some critical thinking for once??? can yall use your brains???

this show was not written in the 80s. this show was written in the 2010s, a decade which is notable for fostering increasingly hostile sentiments toward capitalism within large factions of the american population, especially poor and marginalized folks. to use an incredibly popular tv show to spout blantantly mccarthyist, pro-capitalist attitudes in a heavyhanded and obvious manner is not “showing it like it was”, it is to echo the sentiments of the 80s to a 2010s audience. 

if you’re gonna set your sci-fi horror show in 80′s small-town america, why not criticize the reagan administration and how corporate greed literally killed tens of thousands of low-income, marginalized people (and continues to do so today)? why not provide a new take on the decade without the rose-tinted nostalgic glasses? why not do something actually subversive and original for once instead of regurgitating the same old “commies bad” plot as every single western sci-fi horror of the cold war?

it’s honestly really fucking telling that none of the main characters are living in poverty. sure, none of them are rich, and it could be argued that some may be lower middle-class, but none of them are struggling to pay bills or buy groceries. that would force some commentary thats actually topical and controversial, and netflix cant have that in their cash cow.

you want an incisive and interesting sci-fi horror about 80s small-town america??? talk about AIDS. talk about the crack epidemic. talk about racism outside of passing comments. talk about the failings of the system for anyone who wasnt the picture-perfect all-american white middle-class male. dont just slap an evil russian on the screen and expect us to feel compelled.

[moth208]

you know for a very long time i considering being vegan (its kinda conveinent considering any dairy makes my entire immune system dropkick me in the face) because of the way i was told oh the dairy and meat industries (in the united states) are awful and horrible and theyre contributing to the death of our planet!!!1!

which like, is true, but the problem isnt actually eating meat. like... the problem in that case is capitalism. making a personal dietary choice isnt really going to fix the meat and dairy industries. i mean it might make YOU feel less guilty but in order to fix that you need to hold corporations accountable and idk like... im bad at articulating this i geuss its just. personal dietary choices will not fix capitalism

[tumblunni]

aaaaaugh that was a weird adventure of a normal thing seriously wtf how did I Almost Die from just trying to pay my electricity bills?? the electricity went out at midnight and I was having a WHOPPING GIANT MIGRAINE and seriously i suck at talking to cashiers on the best of days but now i have to call a taxi at midnight and sit there feeling awkward for like half an hour while the guy drives me several miles away to the only electricity place thats open 24/7 and like five minutes in i realized OH SHIT THIS MIGRAINE IS MORE SERIOUS THAN I EXPECTED but like i was trapped in a car and trapped in an awkward social situation! so i was here all dizzy and disassociating and like it felt like the window was a computer screen?? cos im nearsighted a lot and of course its gonna get even worse when i have a dizzy migraine of death doom. i was just so out of it with pain and tiredness and the car shaking me about and just it felt like i wasnt really there but i was still in my house just watching all this on the tv or something. i had to look down at my hands cos they were the only non blurry thing, i had to remind myself that i actually existed and wasnt somehow being erased from the world and replaced by a film reel of some guy sitting in a car?? So I am like Absolutely Fucking Nonfunctional here, and being acutely aware of how i forgot to wear my glasses and apparantly also my socks. Tho in my defense it would have been hard to put them on in the dark anyway! and seriously THIS POOR CAB GUY! like it seemed english wasnt his first language and i felt so bad cos like how can i make it clear that I am the one messing up here?? dude you didnt mishear me i really am slurring everything i say and forgetting half the dictionary. HE WAS SO NICE! I wish i could have like.. been able to register any of his individual faceparts as a coherant whole. I have problems with prosopagnosia even on a good day, but like whoa man i did not have the energy left to concentrate on what this guy even looked like. i feel bad cos i dont know his name either, im gonna remember him as just this big helpful shadow void with a nice accent. HOW DID YOU PUT UP WITH ME EMBARASSING MYSELF SO MUCH, YOU WONDERFUL CABMAN actaully wait do you call them cabs in america aa im sorry this post isnt very america translated i try and generally self-correct to america english cos i know like 90% of my followers seems to be america for some reason i do not understand HELLO AMERICDA FRIENDS TODAY okay so i was Dying in a taxi which is also called a cab, and the company was Capital Cabs which is very good and i love them and they have an automated system so you dont have to talk on the phone and seriously that cut like 50% of terror from this terror day SO ANYWAY I WAS DYING we go all over the place looking for the 24 hours electric place, and then for some reason they are closed?? there was a line outside and i think actually the doors got stuck and the cashiers couldnt get out??? what happened?? i guess i will never know cos i had to leave that mini story behind and find another electric hilariously we found one LITERALLY ACROSS THE ROAD there was THE SAME SHOP ACROSS THE ROAD FACING EACH OTHER MIRROR IMAGE WHAT like seriously fuck im already in a dizzy daze floating halfway out my own body like i didnt need any more evidence im currently in wonderland i want to know this story too, dammit! are those rival stores?? of the same brand?? somehow?? or are they owned by the same person?? because why?? is it like the area was so in-demand of small 24/7 shops that they had to make two within five metres of each other? or is it like they’re the same shop but they didnt have enough space to build the full size they wanted so they purchased two smaller land plots? or something? DID IT JUST EXIST FOR THIS SPECIFIC CIRCUMSTANCE OF ME NEEDING THE SHOP WHEN THE SHOP IS CLOSED “tumblr blogger tumblunni will show up fuckin migraine stoned on the 9th of november, as the prophecy foretold” omg i just mispelled prophecy as prophey and that sounds like a cute ass oc name holy shit ANYWAY im here dissacoiating my ass off and trying and failing to stick my debit card in the card machine and all the time im like FUCKIN OBSESSING over how sauboh is a really better name. Like faba is still a cute name but sauboh is a COOL name! no name is better than sauboh! and why u wanna this evil man have a cute name anyway?? when u be all cruel in the anime and sand off even the slightest non horrible edges he ever had, like seriously im unreasonably upset that everyone hates faba even more now. when will i get my sneaky science grandpa guy who is not evil for once but merely misunderstood and then i adopt him and hug him many and the all is resolved so yeah im fuckin haviung trouble focusing on what im actually doing jesus christ then i stumble into the store and i pay for my electric and im like ‘no no no fucking shit this migraine is WAY worse than i expected, im going to fucking die’ so i ask if they have any paracetamol but i cant remember the word for paracetamol and its all super embarassing. and like THE GUY LOOKS AT ME AS IF IM CRAZY. He’s all ‘ugh why would we have that, geez’. like wtf?? i mean i know i couldnt remember the name of it but i said ‘headache medicine’ so im sure he understood what i meant. i had a long rambling discussion with the taxi man about how weird that was, he was like ‘no, seriously EVERY 24 hour newsagent sells that stuff’ and i was like ‘no seriously he was rude to me for asking, like wtf’ and then i repeated the story about three more times cos i was currently in the throes of brain death in retrospect maybe the cashier thought i was drunk or something?? or high? i mean you cant get high from headache pills but i dunno maybe they mix badly with booze and he thought he was saving my life. i like to think the best of people! i wish i hadnt jumped to the grumpy conclusion during that moment and then whined like a lil bitch to this poor cab man and seriously he was SO NICE! he was like ‘dude seriously we’d have to drive anothr five miles to find another newsagent shop, im trying to save you money’ and he tried to give me some of the paracetamol he had in his wallet and i was like YOURE SO FUCKIN NICE IM DYING, I COULD NEVER ACCEPT THAT but also in retrospect probably that was a good decision cos even if the guy seemed super nice and trustable its like Good Life Policy to not take medicine from people you don’t know. I am 100% sure tho that he actually was genuine and wasnt gonna fuckin murder me with fakeacetamol HE WAS SO NICE! HIM AND HIS NONDESCRIPT FACIAL REGION! why cant i remember ANYTHING about this man oh and also I was able to give some money to a lady on the street!! i don’t know if she was actually homeless, she said that she had some trouble with a hotel booking or something so she was just stuck sleeping outside for the night. i cant remember if she had any luggage so i cant verify if the story is true, it just made me really sad wondering if it WASNT true and its like she needed to lie or people wouldnt give her money?? like seriously homeless people are the most vunerable yet theyre the ones people have the least sympathy for! wtf having to like like ‘i need the money less’... anyway i also couldnt remember her face and was kinda slurring my words to death and i didnt have much money to give but aaaa i hope i helped!! so yeah fuckin SMASH CUT to the next newsagent place and seriously i swear i blacked out for a minute cos it was just like wow we’re there in 48 seconds yet the clock says a bunch more miles and THEY HAD PARACETALMOL AND I WAS FUCKIN CRYING IN A SPAR MART thenk u cashier man who was probablyh very confused at this guy with no socks also for some reason my mind was wandering to the topic of what i’d do if i got misgendered in a cinema, like holding this fuckin entire fictional argument with this manifestation of my own self doubt WHAT EVEN INSPIRED THAT THOUGHT PROCESS so i’m nigh passing out and the nice cab man takes me home and he tries to make me pay less than the fee on the clock and im like NO DUDE IT WAS MY OWN CHOICE TO GO 2 PARACETAMOL SHOP seriously he was SO NICE why cant i remember his faaaaaace and i usually like to give a tip to the taxi guy even though tipping isnt really a thing in my country cos just i feel like Being Nice Is Nice and i want to thank them for their nice but i DIDNT HAVE ANY MORE MONEY LEFT so aaaa i was only able to give him an extra £0.50 but thank you taxi man i hope you have a good night and good life and the universe rewards you for helping a migraine fucked bunbun this eve and now ive shoved medicines in my fave and im just waiting for them to kick in and i know i should eat something but i feel so nauseous aaarglefargle also nice taxi man told me a story about how the same thing happened to him once except the electric went out while he was in the shower. So he just got blasted by cold water AND had to stumble down the stairs in the dark, and then friggin buy electric while his ears were still fulla soap. Whoa dude your bravery in face of embarassment exceeds my own! i love you platonically mr cab man thanks for making me feel less nervous and such while i was Die so yeah hopefully i will be less die soon ok bye also sauboh is a best name and i need to steal it for an oc or something NINTEND U LET IT SLIP AWAY

[vampire-pandas]

I'm sure people who are much more eloquent (and frankly much smarter) than myself have said this but

I think one of the more overlooked, but more actively harmful on a physiological level, aspects of capitalism is the fact that most people end up forced into a schedule that their body just isn't built to work within

I dont mean that in that we should work fewer days in the week (we should) or fewer hours (again we should) but in that 9-5 just isnt where a lot of people are meant to function at full capacity

Theres this whole idea that there are people who are "morning people" and people who aren't, but we treat that as "oh haha you're always grumpy in the mornings!" When we really should treat it as "oh you should work a later shift!"

Like I work 6 am - 2 pm, and aside from disability based reasons, I find it super difficult to work during my actual hours even on a full 8 hours of sleep, even just doing things at home during that time is unpleasant at best

But doing things between, say, 6 pm and 2 am? I can often actually get a lot done

And this clearly isnt just me being weird, often times very little gets done in the first half of the shift

Like we rarely get anything done and everyone is always tired and in a bad mood, wouldnt it work better if we just? Worked later instead?

I dont know it just seems like this system that's supposedly built on maximizing profits would put more thought into efficiency, but the people in power cant see past the next weeks profits and dont think about how much productivity would improve if workers weren't treated like shit all the time

[elem-entals]

undercover irid, crown prince  seb, elems academy marco, librarian knowledge nads au

Brent and I had some really good ideas in this whole rp Pt. 1

Undercover irid but seb is also there undercover

Maybe irid is from some far off kingdom secretly

And helps/recruited the elems

And surprise she’s actually an agent from the Eastern Kingdom

And the lovable seemingly dumbass refugee who’s been putting his blacksmithing skills to use since the academy changed hands to dm

He looks at irid; and tells her to cut the act, the mission has been accomplished

Irid:

Irid; >:| dammit, sire

Irid: there’s still more to acc- Seb holds up a hand: it’s high time we stop the charade and make things clear

Seb: we all know how cozy you’ve gotten here, Fire elemental Iridona c; Irid: >:| 😳 your Majesty

Marco: what

Irid: Seb: Crown Prince Sebastian Warbourne at your service c;

Irid as one of the palace guards and a close friend of the prince

Irid muttering: >:| we had more to get done

Marco, later: sam what the fuck

Marco: she’s some sort of highly trained palace guard warrior chick

Marco: no wonder she picked up on training so fast, common girl with secret powers my butt

Seb, walking around a corner: that was her original origin

Seb: she really was a commoner who learned to fight rather quickly

Seb: and I’d watch how you talk about her, especially in front of me c;

Sam: 😗🍷

Sam: just your type marco

Seb: 👀

Seb: she hasnt dated much, but you are quite her type as well, Marco.

Sam: great, I love watching marco get his ass kicked

Seb: I do, as well 🍹

Marco: >:|

Sam: we ain't friends, guy

Marco: you get all fluttery whenever she’s near and you practically glow whenever she’s paying attention to you

Marco: me thinks she’s more than a bodyguard to you

Seb: Seb; 🍹

Seb: my interests are her happiness

Seb, picking lint off of his shirt: she is more than capable of being a mere palace guard

Sam: like a wife

Seb: if I can help her be more, find more of what could make her happy, live up to her potential, I will do nothing to stand in the way

Seb knocks back his drink

All of it

At once

Sam: impressive

Seb: no

Seb: its really not

Sam: I did like 3 at once one time during breeding season a few years back 😗

Seb:

Marco:

Marco: what

Sam: it was hard to position all three

Sam: without spilling it

Marco: OH drinks

Sam: I was already hammered so I dont think I would have noticed anyway

Sam: oh

Sam: yeah drinks

Marco: ...

Sam: and then maybe some very impressed ewes 😗🍷

Marco: what

Sam: anyway your kinglyness finish your ominous speech

Seb: 👀🍹no that was it

Sam: oh okay cool

Marco: will your guard terrier approve of another drink or does she need to test it

Sam: [takes a sip]

Seb: Seb punches Marco’s arm

Sam as a former party boy for this au I guess

Seb: maybe if its poisoned you should try it first 😒

Sam: oh damn I'll do it, I'd love to die

Seb:

Marco: 😕

Seb: yikes

Sam: jokes

Sam at some point to marco: y'know there's probably a few Samir jr.'s out there somewhere 🤔

Marco: wow

Sam: I know, weird to think about

Sam: I dont know if you wolves feel the same way but sometimes during breeding season some people just let loose

Sam: a lot of hatchlings are raised communally

Sam: dont know who their parents are, 's not really a big deal to us

Sam: sorry, there was just a hatchling that ran past a few hours ago and I got to thinking about it

Starling lore for this au

And maybe in general idk

This is a single dad Sam au now I guess

Marco: what if

Marco: what if you met a kid that was yours?

Is this assuming he doesnt have nadir with him yet?

Sam: I Sam: I don't know

Sam, elbowing him: maybe this upcoming season eh?

Whichever you think is more fun for this point im the au

Sam having a tryst with a starling from the eastern kingdom and he keeps the egg for himself

Lol she drops it on his desk

she's a badass warrior (maybe another palace guard?) And doesnt have the time/safe place to raise it

a starling version of iris

And is like "this is yours to do as you please"

"Wuh"

“Have fun byeee”

Warrior starling with a dry personality and a love of violence

Yes exactly

"This is soft cushy work, perfect for you"

"Uh"

Marco:

Marco: so you have a kid now?

Marco: mazel

Sam: one that I know about, yeah

Sam, with the egg: I could Sam: bring it to a hatchery

Marco: ...

Sam: this is the first time I've been face to shell with a product of a tryst

Sam: oh dont look at me like that, it's a normal starling cultural thing

Sam: it's not like your orphanages

Marco: yeah i know but

Marco: 👀 you were saying you could use a bit of something stable

Marco: company

Sam: 🌕🖊️ Sam: look [shows him the egg]

The egg has a face scrawled on it

Marco: you have a support system here too

Sam, egg voice: hi marco, it's me, Samir Jr.

Concept: Iris as a visiting consultant as a favor to Dm as he’s trying to set up the new Academy

Sam: 🤔 I am getting a bit long in the tooth

Iris: Samir, for the last time, I need those reports on-

Iris: 👀|

Iris: that’s an egg

Sam: it is

~

Someone asks Iris if she’s dating dm

Sam: very astute observation, I can see why you get paid the big bucks

“Not my type”

Dm: she likes twinks but like straight

Iris: >👀|

Sam: so like all starlings

Dm: mhm

Iris: >👀C

Sam: I know a buddy who's single

Sam: not afraid to mingle with those of the flesh

~

Iris: you’re about to see my foot up your ass

Marco: this is why I liked having you around

Sam: [cups his hands around his eyes]

Marco: Sam, seriously, it could be nice

Marco: having a little one around

Sam: hmm Sam: I'll give it a week to decide

Iris: ugh you and your father are so domestic

Sam: he's getting old iris

Sam: he wants to settle down

Sam: maybe with someone from out of town 👀

Sam: isnt that right eggbert Sam, egg voice: sure is

Iris: your dad met your mother and like a month later “oh she’s so wonderful, I could see us settling down in some house in the Valley or something”

Iris: [fake gags]

Sam: [sighs] I want that

Sam: marco is your dad into single dads

Sam: this could be your step sibling

Marco: dont even joke

Iris, in a bad dm impression; Samir, you’re claws are looking very pointy today

Iris: may I escort you to the Fall Ball in August?

*your

Sam: why thank you Marco, you're so kind~

Sam, bats his lashes: what a gentleman

Iris, pretending to be faint: Oh, Iris, he’s so lovely, we’ll have a June wedding

Iris: I’m assuming you’re the same way in love, Marc-y

Sam: I need a nice, strong man to help me raise my hatchling

Marco: >:| I hate having you around

Marco: No you dont

Marco: you are strong

Sam: not as strong as this little dude's ma

Sam: she could have bench pressed me

Iris: ooh👀

Sam: I think I pulled something when we were together

Iris: oooooh👀c

Iris: gimme the hot goss

^monotone lucretia voice

Sam, scooting closer: so she drops this on my desk, right?

Iris: ‼️

Sam: "here, you live a cushy, domestic life. Take this"

Sam: what am I supposed to do with this? I ask Sam: she snorts, patronizingly I might add Sam: "use your fancy academy education and figure it out"

Sam: >:T she must think I'm some kind of coddled highborn

Iris: she sounds cool

Marco: you would think that

Sam: she was that big tall starling his fancy pants-ness brought with him

Sam: look at me forging alliances

Sam: you're all welcome

Sam: you're next marco

Iris: oh, you mean

Eh?

Iris: Shabina?

Sam: is that her name? Huh 🤔

Iris: you didnt even know her name? 👀c

Sam: she doesnt know mine so I think we're square

Sam: she called me desk jockey at one point

Iris: oooh, she mentioned you

Sam: oh?

Iris: “the desk jockey had these soft hands, and knew how to use them”

Marco: uGH

Sam, leaning back: ha, totally me

Marco: what do you mean I’m next?

I like this iris dynamic with sam and marco tbh

Sam: maybe I can teach you sometime Marco, y'know, to get a leg up in his royal ominous-ness

Yeah same

Marco: what the fuck is that sentence

Iris: language, pup

Sam: I mean we're going to help you seduce iridona

Sam: get you a palace guard

Marco: what

Iris: now that you’ve got an egg you’re wanting to play matchmaker?

Sam: yes

Sam: I'm feeling domestic

Marco: oh please after you got Celi in your clutches you wouldnt leave me and Dad and Marse alone about “finding someone”

Sam: you're welcome btw, told you I'd find you a twink

Iris: my private life is not up for speculation

Iris: how did you find him for me?

Sam: oh you think you found him on accident?

Iris: I like to find my own beaus thank you very much

Sam: [snickers] okay

Iris: [narrows her eyes]

Marco: nice

Marco: maybe Sam can get you ankid too

Iris slaps his arm

Sam: yeah, maybe Sam: my cup runneth over with them, apparently

Sam: I'll keep doing a whirlwind tour of the willing starling ewes that could break me in half in the eastern kingdom and make everyone an egg

Sam: [sighs] Sam: I'm gonna go to the library to get some books on parenting I guess

Sam: who wants to come with?

Iris, winding her arm thru sam’s: there’s a section on combat training that could be useful for a growing young starling

Sam: just because my hatchling's mom was a meathead doesn't mean they have to be

Iris: oh no no

Iris: not a meathead per say. but a cool and collected young ewe or ram with the ability to defend themselves from enemies

Marco: should you decide to keep the hatchling, you’ll have so many people to help with the kid, they wont even need it

Iris: but they should know

Iris: maybe young master DeSantos can learn some seduction techniques

Marco: >:|

Sam: yeah I've got plenty of that

Marco; Irid has enough on her plate

Sam: what, some kid playing king?

Sam: if the other palace guard has enough time to waste with me I'm sure irid can stomach a date or two with you

Sam: c'mon, let's go to the library

Marco: maybe he was just looking to make friends

Sam: mostly because I don't remember how to get there :<

He was but also sam’s right

Iris: pfft

Iris tugs on his arm

Iris moved over to the capital after losing her first husband. She lost him awhile back when she was just friends with dm

Later when she struggles marco and dm and sam help comfort her

Iris and sam and marco at the fantasy baby store

Trying to figure out what to get a soon to be hatchling

this is a knowledge nads au also

Ooooooo

to prepare you for this variant

is Nads a librarian

nads is a librarian

Bookmage

Book battle mage

We gotta figure out how to incorporate some of this into one of our long standing au’s

Nads: Hi, welcome to Talondrop Library :DDD

Iris: 👀|c hello, young miss

Sam, muttering: it's way too early in the morning for this kind of pep

Iris quietly: I like her, hush

Marco nods

Iris: might we be directed to the section on baby care?

Nads: how can I help you all? c: Nads: unless you're part of that group that's been stealing books in which case I won't hesitate to use force >:c [pulls out an envelope opener]

Iris: 👀|c like a real life Bilbo

Nads who is probably as tall or taller than Iris

Nads: oh, sure! :DDD [she still doesn't put away the opener]

Nads: right this way

Nads: what kind of baby is it? I've organized the whole section by species

Iris: impressive

Iris: a hatchling, eventually

Nads: ✨✨✨

Nads: I see! Nads: that explains why you walked in with an egg 🤔

Nads: I didn't want to assume

Nads: what in particular are you looking for? feeding? education? c: Sam: uh...everything? Nads: first time parent? I got you c;

Nads grabs one of those book carts

Nads: I'll be back in just a second with a selection!

Sam: This vibe is weird

Sam: this is making it all so...realy

Sm@l iris befriending sam after she and celi visit to have their case looked at

Iris and sam gossiping

Iris: true, but we’re at the intel gathering stage

Iris: if you’re gonna decide, you should do it well as informed as possible

Sam: intel gath- Sam: iris I'm getting baby books, I'm not on a mission

Sam: marco, you've been awfully quiet

Marco: ... just taking it in

Marco: dont want to add more noise

Sam: more than our new "friend"? I'm sure you're fine

Sam: it is awfully quiet in here though

Sam: like more than a library usually is

Nads, with a pyramid of books: I'm back, hi c:

Sam: jeez, this is uh Nads: just a small selection, I know

Sam: wasn't what I was thinking tbh

Nads: I've got a small sampling of everything you'd ever want to know

Nads: feeding, bathing, teaching; the works

Sam, looking over a book: uuuuh

Nads: and, most important of all, hatching

Sam: Sam: oh shit I forgot that part

Marco leafs thru a book

Iris: thank you, Miss...?

Nads: Nadia~ c:

Nads: Talondrop Library's head librarian

Iris: Nadia c: I’m Iris

Iris: this is Marco and thats Sam

Nads: ...!!! :OOO Nads: you're from that academy aren't you?

Marco nods

Nads: I hear you guys are hosting the King of the Eastern Kingdom

Marco: pft

Marco: yeah now we are

Iris: always interesting, having visiting foreign entities

Nads: that's so neat, it must be exciting to swap stories c: Sam, muttering: and fluids c:', c: ', c:',

Sam: right marco

Marco: oh gross

Sam: marco

Sam: right

Nads: is there anything else I can help you all with today? c: Sam: yeah, you got any books on seduction so we can help my man over here? c:',

Marco: >:| stop this

Nads: 🤭 we have some romance books if he would be interested

Marco: I am not

Nads: of course! If you'll follow me to the counter

Nads: okay, so you have two weeks before you either have to return or renew them

Nads: I'll just need your signature right here Sam: alright

Nads: and right here Sam: 'kay Nads: and a drop of your blood Sam: ok- what

Nads: for the blood pact c: Nads: if you don't return the books on time there'll be a fee, and if you don't return it in a month's time I'll hunt you down

Sam:

Marco:

Iris: 👀

Sam, taking the pin: fine, I don't want to have to walk to the bookstore

sam pricks himself and a drop of blood falls onto the small magic circle on the counter

it evaporates into a cloud of pink smoke

Nads: the contract is sealed Nads, pushing the books towards him: have a lovely day :DDD

Sam@marco and iris: what, don't look at me like that

Sam: I need these books, I'm completely lost without them

Sam studying the books in his office while marco chills

maybe talking about how irid kicked his ass during training that day?

yes i love this

marco puts his feet up on sam's desk

what does sam do in this?

what if its the same gag

he does everything and nothing

and has an office

I like it

nobody knows what he does

but dm says he's invaluable

marco: so I look up she has the dumbest smirk on her face

marco: and decks me and I fall off the log and loose the whole ass challenge

Sam: HA, classic

marco, throwing the candy wrapper from the candy he nabbed from sam's candy dish on his desk in the wastebasket: stupid

Sam: was your love rival there

Marco: my what?

Marco: I have no such thing

Marco: Iridona is a colleague

Marco: who lied technically

Sam: we've all lied once or twice

So ya know how in older movies, a couple dancing in a big fancy number was like

Lowkey highkey hinting toward their chemistry in bed

That but its how irid and marco fight or fight together

Marco: Samir

Sam: like when you asked what happened to your piece of cake that day in third grade

Marco: excuse you

Sam: and I said your sister must have taken it

Sam: and Marco, you don't have to lie about that absolutely sizzling sexual chemistry you have with her

Sam: and don't let what's his face psyche you out

Marco:

Marco: 😳 n- no-

Marco: aw fuck it

Marco: It doesnt feel right to just up and

Sam: 👀

Marco: “hey so how about this thing I think is between us”

Sam: well sure if you wanna be all Sam: werewolf Sam: about it

Sam: take a starling approach

Sam: romance her

Sam: flirt

Sam: flash her that roguish smile

Sam: instead of ballroom dancing to express your feelings you two spar Sam: it's like its own dance, in a way

Marco: ugh dont remind me. If i was gonna go all werewolf, I’d tackle her during training and growl into her ear about all the stuff i’d love to do to her and see if she’s down

Sam: rhythmic, passionate

Marco: not cool

Marco:

Sam: hey now that's not werewolf Sam: werewolf is "hello milady, I would like to mount you, do I have thine permission?""

Marco: “would thou consent to be bred-eth?”

*wouldst

Sam: "I think you'll find I'm a suitable caretaker, watch me bench this deer carcass"

Marco: heheh

Marco: seriously, I dont even know if shes interested

Sam: well

Sam: test the waters

Sam: you don't have to be blunt about it

Sam: even though I know it's in your desantos dna

Sam: maybe we should have gotten you one of those seduction books

Sam: I've finished all these books and have to return them, I could pick one up c;

Marco: hatred

Marco: utter hatred

Sam: love you too

Marco: wait you read all of those books?

Sam: yes

Sam: Also I haven't slept

Sam: I'm sure it's fine

Marco: soo

Marco: have you come any closer to a decision?

Sam: mmm

Sam: I don't know

Sam: it's only been one day

Sam: Maybe once I get more books

Marco: I-

Marco: hold on

Sam: and return these before I get stabbed in my sleep or something 😒

Sam: what is it boy

marco: are you gonna chat up the cute head librarian

Sam: is celio stuck in a well

marco: utter loathing

Sam: what? I mean I guess I have to

marco: u t t e r  l o a t h i n g

Sam: I'm pretty sure she's the only librarian

Sam: cute eh? should I alert irid that she's lost her chance? 👀

Sam: anyway I need more books because honestly I'm starting to freak out

Marco: aw sami

Sam finding nads one day super depressed looking in the dark by herself

And when he gets her attention she's like "!!!" And tries to put on her customer service persona

He asks what's wrong and she tells him that the library's going to be shut down soon and it's all she has

Sam asking dm if there's any openings for the academy library

Dm: well

Dm: theres a lot of openings since part of every intellectual department was infested with Asrani loyalist so

Dm: yes

Sam: nice Sam: um Sam: can I ask for a favor

Dm: and poor Avalene is stretched thin between sorting out the archives and trying to sort out the library

Sam: nothing big this time, I promise

Dm:

Sam: look

Sam: the library in town is slated to be shut down

Sam: and the librarian there has really been helping out with the whole Sam: surprise fatherhood thing

Dm: ah yes

Dm: that aside, I hope you know you can count on me and Marco for support with that.

Sam: I mean granted loaning out books is a librarian's job

Sam: right, thank you sir

Sam: I'll...keep that in mind

Dm: >:| you mean isolate yourself eventually

Dm: anyway 😤

Dm: I’ll see what I can do

Sam: [bats his lashes]

Dm: the young woman in Talondrop? The enthusiastic one?

Sam: that's her

Dm: hm

Dm: I’ll get back to you

Sam: thanks

Dm dials the extension for the library where avilene has set up shop

The academy one

Dm: would you like to take on an experienced young librarian with enthusiasm for the jo- Avilene, loud enough for sam to hear thru the phone: yES

dm nods at sam

Sam: great, I'll let her know

Sam: see, I told you I'd be an asset

Sam: strengthening ties between our neighbors, finding new employees

Dm waves him away: yes yes

"So like I heard you knocked up one of my guards?"

Dm: tell my son to stop dancing around his very obvious crush on Ser Velezquez

Sam: I've tried

Dm: 😒

Sam: I promise I've tried

[cmcguirerealtor]

Renting Vs Buying A Home

Anyone can waste money by making bad spending decisions and relying too much on credit. But on its own, renting is a smart and flexible financial choice!

 When you rent an apartment, it's best to think of it as simply exchanging money for a place to live. Maybe that money isn't going into something you own, but you aren't making a losing bet, either. You don't have to make repairs or worry about housing bubbles, slowing home sales, or fluctuating neighborhood pricing.

 Sure, people who rent more space than they need or who live in a hot part of town and pay ridiculously high rent are wasting their money. Amenities in hip areas are more expensive, so they're paying more for rent and for everything else, too.

 Renting vs. buying a home is a big decision, and there are pros and cons to each option. A higher percentage of U.S. households are renting than at any point since 1965, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data released in 2016.

 For some people, renting comes down to what they can afford at the moment.

 Here are five questions to ask when considering renting vs. buying:

1.     What can you afford?

2.     How long do you plan to stay in the home?

3.     Do you want stability or flexibility?

4.     Can you afford to be responsible for home repairs/maintenance?

5.     What are your financial, career and family goals?

 Differences between renting vs. buying

Renting vs. buying a home isn’t a matter of ownership. Here are other key differences between the two options.

 General Statistics About Housing in the U.S.

·       The housing industry represents more than a quarter of our nation’s total investment dollars and about 5% of our total economy.

·       There are currently over 136.57 million housing units in the U.S.

·       930,000 of housing units in the U.S. are rentals.

·       In 2018, the total number of homeowner households hit an all-time high of 76.2 million.

·       36.6% of households rent their homes.

·       The rental vacancy rate is 7.2%; the homeowner vacancy rate is 1.6%. The national rental vacancy rate rose in 2018 for the first time since 2009, ticking up from 6.9% to 7.2%.

According to the 2018 census, the homeownership rate is 64.4%

 Cities Where Renters are the Majority

Toledo, OH

Memphis, TN

Tampa, FL

Hialeah, FL

Stockton, CA

Honolulu, HI

Anaheim, CA

Baton Rouge, LA

Santa Ana, CA

Columbus, OH

Detroit, MI

Clevalen, OH

Baltimore, MD

St. Louis, MO

Minneapolis, MN

San Bernadino

 Eviction in the United States

The procedure and rate of eviction in the United States vary by locality. Landlord-initiated expulsion of tenants is not officially tracked or monitored by the Federal government and has historically not been subject to comprehensive analysis.

 Most evictions in the United States occur because the tenant cannot or will not pay rent. Landlords can also expel tenants for breaking the law, damaging property, sub-leasing, or causing a disturbance. In most American municipalities, tenants who haven't violated their lease can be expelled, in what is known as "no-fault evictions."

 Most renting families under the poverty line spend more than 50% of their income on rent, with one in four such families spending over 70% of their income on rent and utilities. About one in four low-income renters receive housing assistance. Eviction rates are higher in communities with multiple aggravating factors, including high levels of poverty. These include local laws that give advantage to landowners and a lack of available affordable housing that would increase market pressures to keep rents low.

 When housing pressures are extreme, even middle-class and working-class renters are evicted by landlords eager to capitalize on the rising market rates, such as in San Francisco during the various tech booms. In such circumstances, landlords may seize upon minor violations that were previously tolerated, such as keeping a small pet or storing a bicycle in the hallway, to evict renters. The situation in California is aggravated by the Ellis Act, which allows landlords to evict tenants and immediately sell the vacant apartments as condominiums.

 Evictions disproportionately affect low-income women, in particular, women of color. Approximately one in five African-American women renters report being evicted at some point in their life, while the equivalent rate for white women renters is one in 15. Victims of domestic violence and families with children are also at high risk of eviction. Renters who appear in eviction court are three times more likely to actually be evicted if they live with children.

 Buying a house can build equity

Homebuyers can capitalize on the equity of their home accumulates over time. That means if the home’s value goes up, you’ll cash in on the higher value when you sell. Plus, with a fixed-rate mortgage, you won’t have to worry about rising rents.

Tax implications

Another factor for buyers to consider is whether you will be able to deduct the mortgage interest at tax time. Tax laws allow those who itemize their taxes to write off their mortgage interest payments. However, not everyone is eligible to itemize deductions, and changes to the tax laws in 2018 means that more people won’t be able to deduct as much of their mortgage interest and property taxes as they used to.

Home maintenance costs

Homes need repairs and maintenance over time, and when you’re renting, those costs are generally the landlord’s responsibility. For instance, in an apartment, if the HVAC system or refrigerator breaks, the landlord has to fix it. On the other hand, as a homeowner, you’ll be on the hook for those repairs and ongoing seasonal maintenance, and they can add up fast.

Want flexibility? Rent

If you’re moving to an unfamiliar city, have an unstable job situation or don’t know what neighborhood will feel like home, renting for a while can be a great option.

 Renting vs. buying a home: A comparison

 Buying

·       Advantages

May build equity and credit

No landlord to answer to

More stability (especially with schools)

Possible tax benefits

Can improve or upgrade home to your taste

·       Disadvantages

Requires substantial money, paperwork upfront

Could lose money if home values decline

Extra expenses beyond mortgage payments

Rising home prices and low inventory in many markets

Responsible for repairs, remodeling

  Renting

·       Advantages

Fewer upfront costs and paperwork

Freedom to be more mobile

Not responsible for maintenance, repairs

No need to worry about falling home values

Build credit (if your landlord reports rent payments to the credit bureaus)

No property tax bills

·       Disadvantages

The landlord can raise the rent or sell the property

Choices may be limited depending on vacancies

Might have to move multiple times

Don’t build equity

No tax benefits

 Bottom line: Choose what’s right for you

It will be very helpful to talk with a trusted real estate agent to help you think through the decision to rent vs. buy a home. Real estate agents are professionals who work on your behalf and advocate for your interests. In most cases, sellers have a real estate agent working for them so you want someone on your side who has your back in negotiations and can help you understand the complex lingo in contracts, for example.

  Stay tuned for my next blog!

I am your Wellness LifeStyle Real Estate Advisor.

Broker/ Owner: Cynthia McGuire

Real Estate License Number: 3279376

Office Address: 7000 W Palmetto Park Rd # 210

Boca Raton, FL 33433

Contact #: 561 - 542 - 2262

Email: GreenerGlobeRE@gmail.com

Website: http://greenergloberealtygroup.com

   Sources:

https://www.bankrate.com/real-estate/renting-vs-buying-a-home/

https://ipropertymanagement.com/renters-vs-homeowners-statistics/

https://moneywise.com/a/heres-why-paying-rent-isnt-throwing-away-money

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eviction_in_the_United_States

[apsbicepstraining]

The secret of savor: why we like which is something we like | Tom Vanderbilt

The Long Read: How does a anthem we detest at first discovering become a favourite? And when we try to look different, how come we end up looks a lot like everybody else?

If you had asked me, when I was 10, to forecast my life as an adult, I would probably have sketched out something like this: I would be driving a Trans Am, a Corvette, or some other muscle vehicle. My residence would boast a mammoth collecting of pinball machines. I would sip sophisticated alcohols( like Baileys Irish Cream ), read Robert Ludlum romances, and blast Van Halen while sitting in an easy chair wearing sunglasses. Now that I am at a point to actually be able to realise every one of these feverishly foreseen flavors, they view zero interest( well, perhaps the pinball machines in a weak minute ).

It was not just that my 10 -year-old self could not predict whom I would become but that I was incapable of suspecting that my flavors could experience such wholesale change. How could I know what I would want if I did not know who I would be?

One problem is that we do not apprehend the effect of experiencing situations. We may instinctively realise the authorities concerned will tire of our favourite meat if we gobble too much of it, but we might underestimate how much more we are to be able like something if only we consume it more often. Another issue is psychological salience, or the things we pay attention to. In the moment we buy a consumer good that offers cashback, the offer is claiming our courtesy; it is likely to be have influenced the buy. By the time we get home, the salience fades; the cashback croaks unclaimed. When I was 10, what mattered in a car to me was that it be cool and fast. What did not matter to me were monthly pays, side-impact crash shield, being able to fit a stroller in the back, and wanting to avoid the impression of is available on a midlife crisis.

Even when we look back and be seen to what extent much our flavors have changed, the idea that we will change evenly in the future seem to be mystify us. It is what remains tattoo removal practitioners in business. The psychologist Timothy Wilson and colleagues have identified the illusion that for numerous, the current is a watershed instant at which they have finally become the person or persons they will be for the rest of their lives.

In one venture, they found that people were willing to pay more money to check their favourite strap play-act 10 times from now than they were willing to pay to see their favourite banding from 10 years ago play now. It is reminiscent of the moment, looking through an old-time photo album, when you visualize an earlier picture of yourself and declare, Oh my God, that “hairs-breadth”! Or Those corduroys! Just as photographs of ourselves can appear jarring since we are do not ordinarily read ourselves as others encounter us, our previous appreciations, viewed to areas outside, from the perspective of what looks good now, come as a surprise. Your hairstyle per se was possibly not good or bad, simply a reflection of contemporary penchant. We say, with condescension, I cant believe parties actually dressed like that, without realising we ourselves are currently wearing what will be considered bad flavor in the future.

One of the reasons we cannot predict our future preferences is one of the things that stirs those very preferences change: novelty. In the social sciences of experience and likings , novelty is a rather elusive phenomenon. On the one side, we crave originality, which defines a arena such as manner( a battlefield of ugliness so perfectly unbearable, quipped Oscar Wilde, that we have to alter it every a period of six months ). As Ronald Frasch, the dapper president of Saks Fifth Avenue, once told me, on the status of women designer storey of the flagship store: The first thing “the consumers ” asks when they come into the accumulation is, Whats brand-new? They dont want to know what was; they want to know what is. How strong is this impulse? We will sell 60% of what were going to sell the firstly four weeks the very best are on the floor.

But we too adore intimacy. There are many who believe we like what we are used to. And yet if this were exclusively true , good-for-nothing “wouldve been” change. There would be no new prowes forms , no new musical genres , no new makes. The economist Joseph Schumpeter was contended that capitalisms character was in educating people to want( and buy) new situations. Makes drive economic change, he wrote, and buyers are taught to want brand-new happenings, or circumstances which differ in some respect or other from those which they have been in the habit of using.

A lot of days, people dont know what they crave until you demo it to them, as Steve Jobs gave it. And even then, they still might not miss it. Apples ill-fated Newton PDA device, as charming as it now examines in this era of smartphone as human prosthesis, was arguably more new at the time of its release, foreseeing the requirements and actions that were not yet amply realised. As Wired described it, it was a entirely new category of invention passing an entirely new building housed in a pattern part that represented a completely new and daring design language.

So , novelty or acquaintance? As is often the instance, the answer lies somewhere in between, on the midway spot of some optimal U-shaped curve storying the new and the known. The noted industrial designer Raymond Loewy sensed this optimum in what he worded the MAYA stage, for most advanced, yet acceptable. This was the moment in a product design repetition when, Loewy quarrelled, defiance to the unfamiliar contacts the threshold of a shock-zone and fighting to buying changes in. We like the new as long as it reminds us in some way of the old.

Anticipating how much our flavors will change is hard-boiled because we cannot find past our intrinsic resist to the unfamiliar. Or how much we will change when we do and how each change will open the door to another change. We forget just how fleeting even the most jarring novelty is also possible. When you had your firstly swallow of beer( or whisky ), you probably did not slap your knee and exclaim, Where has this been all my life? It was, Beings like this?

We come to like beer, but it is arguably incorrect to bawl brew an acquired feeling, as the philosopher Daniel Dennett indicates, because it is not that first taste that people are coming to like. If beer gone on savor to me the room the first sip tasted, he writes, I would never have gone on drinking brew. Place of the problem is that booze is a scandalize to the system: it savours like nothing that has come before, or at least good-for-nothing delightful. New music or prowes can have the same effects. In a New Yorker profile, the music farmer Rick Rubin recounted that when he firstly sounded Pretty Hate Machine, the album by Nine Inch Nails, he did not care for it. But it soon became his favourite. Faced with something discordantly novel, we dont ever have the reference points to absorb and digest it, Rubin alleged. Its a bit like memorizing a new expression. The album, like the brew, was not an acquired savour, because he was not hearing the same album.

Looking back, we can find it hard to believe we did not like something we are today do. Current popularity gets projected backwards: we forget that a now ubiquitous hymn such as the Romantics What I Like About You was never a make or that recently in vogue antique babe identifies such as Isabella or Chloe, which seem to speak to some once-flourishing habit, were never popular.

It now seems impossible to imagine, a few decades ago, the gossip provoked by the now widely cherished Sydney Opera House. The Danish inventor, Jrn Utzon, was essentially driven from the country, his mention extended unuttered at the ceremony, the sense of national gossip was palpable towards this harbourside monstrosity. Not exclusively did the building not fit the traditional anatomy of an opera house; it did not fit the conventional word of private buildings. It was as foreign as its architect.

The truth is, most people perhaps did not know what to shape of it, and our default setting, faced with an insecure unknown, is detesting. Frank Gehry, talking about his iconic, widely admired Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, admitted that it took a couple of years for me to start to like it, actually. The inventor Mark Wigley suggests that maybe we only ever learn something when some structure we think of as foreign causes us and we withstand. But sometimes, many times, in the middle of the fighting, we end up loving this thing that has elicited us.

Fluency begets liking. When shown personas of buildings, designers have rated them as least complex than laypersons did; in other words, they read them more fluently, and the buildings seem less foreign. The role of the inventor, shows Wigley, is not to give the client exactly what he was asking for in other words, to cater to current taste but to change the notion of what one can ask for, or to project future delicacies no one knew they had. No one supposed an opera house could look like the Sydney Opera House until Utzon, taking his idea from a peeled orange, said it could. The nature changed around the building, in response to it, which is why, in the strange messages of one architecture commentator, Utzons breathtaking build appears better today than ever.

A few decades from now, person will inevitably look with dread upon a new house and answer, The Sydney Opera House , now theres a build. Why cant we construct acts like that any more?

This argument for example, Why isnt music as good as it used to be? manifests an historic collection bias, one colourfully described by the designer Frank Chimero. Make me let you in on a little secret, he writes. If you are hearing about something age-old, it is almost certainly good. Why? Because nobody wants to talk about shitty old-time stuff, but lots of parties still talking here shitty brand-new material, because they are still trying to figure out if it is shitty or not. The past wasnt better, we just forgot about all the shitty shit.

The only guarantee we have of savour is the fact that it will change.

In a 2011 sketch on the substantiate Portlandia , the obsessive sardonic catalogue of the hipster mores of the Oregon city, an exaggeratedly posturing persona known as Spyke with chin whisker, lobe-stretching saucer earrings, and a fixed-gear bike is evidence treading past a prohibit. He pictures some people inside, equally adorned with the trappings of a certain kind of cool, and establishes an supporting nod. A few days later, he agent a clean-shaven guy wearing khakis and a dress shirt at the bar. Aw, cmon! he hollers. Guy like that is hanging out here? That barroom is so over ! It exclusively gets worse: he ensure his straight-man nemesis astride a fixed-gear bicycle, partaking in shell artistry, and wearing a kuki-chins beard all of which, he churlishly warns, is over. A year later, we check Spyke, freshly shorn of whisker, wearing business casual, and having a banal gossip, roosted in the very same barroom that produced off the whole cycles/second. The nemesis? He procrastinates outside, scornfully swearing the bar to be over.

The sketch wonderfully encapsulates the notion of savour as a kind of ceaseless action machine. This machine is driven in part by the oscillations of originality and knowledge, of hunger and satiation, that strange internal calculus that effects us to tire of food, music, the colouring orange. But it also represents driven in part by the subtle the two movements of parties trying to be like one another and beings trying to be different from each other. There is a second-guessing various kinds of skirmish here , not unknown to strategists of cold warera game theory( in which players are rarely behaving on perfect information ). Or, indeed, to readers familiar with Dr Seusss Sneetches, the mythical star-adorned mortals who abruptly trench their decorations when they detect their challenger plain-bellied counterparts have idols upon thars.

That taste might move in the kind of never-ending repetition that Portlandia hypothesised is not so far-fetched. A French mathematician named Jonathan Touboul identified a phenomenon of searching alike trying to look different, or what he called the hipster influence. Unlike cooperative systems, in which everyone might concur in a coordinated fashion on what decisions to build, the hipster result follows, he hints, where individuals try to make decisions in opposition to the majority.

Because no one knows exactly what other people are going to do next, and information is also possible noisy or retarded, there can also be the times of brief synchronisation, in which non-conformists are inadvertently aligned with the majority. Spyke, in reality, might have had to see several people doing shell art maybe it even suddenly appeared at a store in the mall before soon jam-pack it in. And because there are varying degrees of hipness, person or persons may choose to wade into current trends later than another, that person is followed by another, and so on, until, like an astronomical adventurer chasing a dead whiz, there is nothing actually there any more. The quest for distinctiveness are also welcome to generate conformity.

The Portlandia sketch actually goes well beyond appreciation and illuminates two central, if seemingly contradictory, strands of human behaviour. The first is that we want to be like other parties. The social being, in the degree that he is social, is virtually imitative, wrote the French sociologist Gabriel Tarde, in his 1890 notebook The Laws of Imitation. Imitating others, what is known as social learn, is an evolutionary adaptive strategy; that is, it helps you exist, even prosper. While it is considered to be in other species, there are no better social learners than humen , none that take that knowledge and continue to build upon it, through consecutive generations.

The sum of this social learning culture is what draws humans so unique, and so uniquely successful. As the anthropologist Joseph Henrich documents, humans have foraged in the Arctic, reaped cultivates in the tropics, and lived pastorally in deserts. This is not because we were “ve been meaning to”, but because we learned to.

In their journal Not by Genes Alone, the anthropologists Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson use the sample of a bitter flower that turns out to have medicinal value. Our sensory structure would understand the fierce as potentially harmful and thus inedible. Instinctively, “theres no reason” we should want to eat it. But someone eats it regardless and experiences some curiously beneficial make. Someone else assures this and imparts it a try. We take our medicine in spite of its bitter experience, they write , not because our sensory psychology has progressed to make it less bitter, but because the idea that it has therapeutical quality has spread through the population.

People imitate, and cultural activities becomes adaptive, they insist, because learning from others is more efficient than trying everything out on your own through costly and time-consuming trial and error. The same is as true for people now speaking Netflix or TripAdvisor evaluates as it was for primitive foragers trying to figure out which nutrients were poison or where to find irrigate. When there are too many alternatives, or the answer does not seem obvious, it seems better to go with the flow; after all, you are able to miss out on something good.

But if social reading is so easy and effective, it creates the question of why anyone does anything different to begin with. Or indeed why someone might vacate innovative activities. It is an issue asked of evolution itself: why is there so much substance for natural selection to sieve through? The master or innovator who was attacked in his daytime seems like some kind of genetic altruist, sacrificing his own immediate fitness for some future payoff at high levels of the group.

Boyd and Richerson hint there is an optimal balance between social and individual learning in any group. Too many social learners, and the ability to innovate is lost: people know how to catch that one fish since they are learned it, but what happens when that fish dies out? Too few social learners, and beings might be so busy trying to learn situations on their own that national societies does not thrive; while people were busily fabricating their own better bow and arrow, person forgot to actually get food.

Perhaps some ingrained sense of the evolutionary utility of this differentiation is one reason why humans are so snapped between wanting to belong to a group and wanting to be distinct mortals. Parties want to feel that their feelings are not unique, hitherto they experience anxiety when told they are exactly like another person. Think of the giddy anxiety you feel when a co-worker is demonstrated by wearing a similar clothe. We try some happy medium, like the Miss America player in Woody Allens Bananas who responds to a reporters interrogate, Differences of mind should be tolerated, but not when theyre extremely different.

If all we did was conform, there would be no delicacy; nor would there be penchant if no one conformed. We try to select the right-sized group or, that the working group is too large, we elect a subgroup. Be not just a Democrat but a centrist Democrat. Do not just like the Beatles; be a fan of Johns.

Illustration by Aart-Jan Venema

When discriminating yourself from the mainstream is becoming too wearying, you can always ape some version of the mainstream. This was the premise behind the normcore anti-fashion tendency, in which formerly forcefully fashionable beings were said to be downshifting, out of sheer tirednes, into humdrum New Balance sneakers and unremarkable denim. Normcore was more conceptual skill activity than business case study, but one whose premise the most different stuff to do is to reject being different altogether, moved the manifesto seemed so probable it was practically wish fulfilled into existence by a media that feasts upon novelty. As new as normcore seemed, Georg Simmel spoke about it a century ago: If obedience to fashion consists in impersonation of an example, conscious inattention of pattern represents same mimicry, but under an inverse sign.

And so back to Spyke. When he felt his drive for peculiarity( which he shared with others who were like him) threatened by someone to areas outside the group, he moved on. But all the things he experienced were threatened the chin beard, the shell arts and that he was willing to walk away from, were no longer practical. We signal our identity simply in certain regions: Spyke is not likely to change his label of toilet paper or toothbrush merely because he hears it is shared by his nemesis. When everyone listened to records on vinyl, the latter are a commodity material that allowed one be interested to hear music; it was not until they were nearly driven to extinction as a technology that they became a mode to signal ones identity and as I write, there are stimulates of a cassette revival.

In a revealing experimentation carried out within Stanford University, Berger and Heath sold Lance Armstrong Foundation Livestrong wristbands( at a time when they were becoming increasingly popular) in a target dormitory. The next week, they sold them in a dorm knows we being somewhat geeky. A week afterwards, the number of target dorm circle wearers dropped by 32%. It was not that people from the specific objectives dorm detested the geeks or so they said it was that they thought they were not like them. And so the yellow segment of rubber, tattered for a good stimulate, became a means of signalling identity, or savour. The only path the target group could avoid being symbolically linked with the geeks was to abandon the feeling and move on to something else. As much a sought for novelty, brand-new experiences can be a conscious rejection of what has come before and a distancing from those now enjoying that penchant. I liked that stripe before they got big-hearted, becomes the common refrain.

What our flavours say about us is primarily that we want to be like other people whom we like and who have those appreciations up to a extent and unlike others who have other savors. This is where the idea of simply socially reading what everyone else is do, get complicated. Sometimes we read what others are doing and then stop doing that act ourselves.

Then there is the question of whether we are conscious of picking up a practice from someone else. When someone knows he is being influenced by another and that other person to know each other very, the hell is exhortation; when someone is unaware he is being influenced, and the influencer is unaware of his influence, that is contagion. In delicacy, we are rarely presumed to be picking up happenings haphazardly. Through prestige bias, for example, we learn from people who are regarded socially substantial. The classic rationale in sociology was always trickle-down: upper-class people hugged some preference, beings lower down followed, then upper-class people scorned the taste and cuddled some brand-new taste.

Tastes can change when people aspire to be different from other parties; they can change when we are trying to be like other people. Groups transmit experiences to other groups, but savor themselves can help create groups. Small, apparently insignificant differences what kind of coffee one boozes become real spots of culture bicker. Witness the varieties of mark now available in things that were once preferably homogeneous merchandises, like coffee and blue jeans; who had even heard of single ancestry or selvage a few decades ago?

There is an virtually incongruous cycles/second: private individuals, such as Spyke in Portland, wants to be different. But in wanting to express that difference, he seeks out other persons who share those changes. He conforms to the group, but the conformings of these working groups, in being alike, increase their gumption of change from other groups, just as the Livestrong bracelet wearers took them off when they accompanied other groups wearing them. The be adopted by delicacies is driven in part by this social jockeying. But this is no longer the whole picture.

In a famed 2006 venture , an organization of people were given the chance to download anthems for free from an internet site after they had listened to and ranked the hymns. When the participants could see what previous downloaders had chosen, they were more likely to follow that behaviour so popular songs became more popular, less popular songs became less so.

When parties established selects on their own, the choices were more predictable; beings were more likely to simply pick the sungs they said were best. Knowing what other listeners did was not enough to completely reorder publics musical penchant. As the scientist Duncan Watts and his co-author Matthew Salganik wrote: The best carols never do very badly, and the most difficult anthems never do extremely well. But when others alternatives are evident, there was greater risk for the less good to do better, and vice versa. The pop chart, like delicacy itself, does not operate in a vacuum.

The route to the top of the charts has in theory get more democratic, less top-down, more unpredictable: it took a viral video to assistants induce Pharrells Happy a pop a year after its liberate. But the hierarchy of popularity at the top, formerly launched, is steeper than ever. In 2013, it was estimated that the top 1% of music acts took residence 77% of all music income.

While record firms still try to engineer notoriety, Chris Molanphy, a music critic and obsessive analyst of the pa maps, disagrees it is the general public fouling one another who now decide if something is a reach. The viral wizard Gangnam Style, he notes, was virtually coerced on to radio. Nobody operated that into being; that was clearly the general public being charmed by this goofy video and telling one another, Youve got to watch this video.

Todays ever-sharper, real-time data about people actual listening action strongly fortifies the feedback loop-the-loop. We always knew that people liked the familiar, Molanphy responds. Now we know exactly when they flip the depot and, wow, if they dont already know a lyric, they truly throw the station. For the industry, there is an almost hopeless is making an effort to alter, as fast as possible, the brand-new into the familiar.

Simply to live in a large city is to dwell among a maelstrom of options: there are seemed like it was gonna be by numerous guilds of importance more choices of things to buy in New York than there are preserved species on countries around the world. R Alexander Bentley is an anthropologist at the University of Durham in the UK. As he applied it to me: By my recent count there were 3,500 different laptops on the market. How does anyone make a utility-maximising alternative among all those? The costs of reading which one is truly better is nearly beyond the individual; there may, in fact, actually be little that scatters them in terms of quality, so any one acquire over another might simply manifest random copying.

For the Spanish philosopher Jos Ortega y Gasset, columnist of the 1930 pamphlet The Revolt of the Masses, journalistic shipments from adventurers seems to thrust one into a vertiginous global gyre. What would he stimulate of the current situation, where a spurt of tweets comes even before the interrupting report proclamations, which then turn into wall-to-wall coverage, followed by a recall piece in the next days newspaper? He would have to factor in social media, one has a peripheral, real-time awareness of any number of people whereabouts, achievements, status updates, via any number of platforms.

Ortega announced this the increase of life. If media( large broadcasters creating audiences) helped define an era of mass society, social media( audiences establishing ever more gatherings) help define our age of mass individualism. The internet is exponential social discover: you have ever more ways to learn what other parties are doing; how many of the more than 13,000 reviews of the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas do you need to read on TripAdvisor before making a decision? There are ever more ways to learn that what you are doing is not good enough or was already done last week by someone else, that what you like or even who you like is also liked by some random being you have never met. This is social learning by proxy.

People have always wanted to be around other people and to learn from them. Metropolis have long been dynamos of social alternative, foundries of art, music, and manner. Slang has always beginning in metropolitans an upshot of all those different, densely jam-packed people so often exposed to one another. Cities drive taste change because they furnish the greatest showing to other parties, who not amazingly are often the innovative parties metropolitans seem to attract.

With the internet, we have a kind of metropolitan of the sentiment, a medium that people do not just exhaust but inhabit, even if it often seem to be repeat and increase prevailing municipalities( New Yorkers, already physically exposed to so many other parties, use Twitter “the worlds largest” ). As Bentley has argued, Living and working online, people have perhaps never imitation each other so profusely( because it typically costs good-for-nothing ), so accurately, and so indiscriminately.

But how do we know what to copy and from whom? The age-old ways of knowing what we should like everything from radio station programmers to restaurant steers to volume critics to label themselves have been substituted by a mass of individuals, connected but apart, federated but disparate.

Whom to follow? What to prefer? Whom can you trust? In an infinite realm of selection, our options often seem to cluster towards those we can see others representing( but away from those we feel too many are preferring ). When there is too much social affect, people start to think more like one another. They take less information into account to make their decisions, yet are more confident that what they are thinking is the truth because more beings seem to think that way.

Social imitation has gone easier, faster, and most volatile; all those micro-motives of trying to be like others and hitherto different can intensify into explosive erupts of macro-behaviour. The big-hearted ripples have got bigger, and we know that they will come, but it is harder to tell from where, in the vast and random ocean face, they will swell.

This is an edited extract from You May Too Like, published on 30 June by Simon& Schuster( 12.99 ). To ordering a transcript for 10.39, going to see bookshop.theguardian.com or announce 0330 333 6846. Free UK p& p over 15, online guilds only.

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The post The secret of savor: why we like which is something we like | Tom Vanderbilt appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

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MIA: This is a white country, you dont have to spell it out to me

Maya Arulpragasam is bringing dancehall, hip-hop and grime to this years Meltdown. Is the outspoken British Sri Lankan the best argument for positive cultural appropriation?

The Guardian said that you couldnt shag to my record. As conversational openers go, MIAs beats the banal niceties of, say, Hello, how are you doing?. Its no surprise that she charges straight into a chat about why her last album was considered too confrontational for the bedroom by this paper. Its an icebreaker moulded to MIAs very own design: abrasive, compelling, underpinned by sex. Yeah, she finally concedes with a grin when I suggest we move past it, you cant have it all, can you?

Its a theme she warms up to when we talk about her edition of Meltdown at the Southbank Centre, which were ostensibly here to discuss. Usually, I wouldnt do something like this, she says, slouched under an oversized khaki coat dress. [But the organisers] were like: Hey, you can do whatever you want. Still, putting on the South Banks annual festival, curated in previous years by the likes of David Bowie, David Byrne and Patti Smith, has turned out to be a fairly arduous affair for MIA who says she doesnt do computers at the moment.

They didnt tell me it was nine days long. I thought it was a weekend. And then all my lists were, like, Well, this person wont be in London and that person is doing Glastonbury. Organising festivals is actually really complicated, she stresses. It wasnt just about dreaming something and then it appeared. Programming literally means, like, programming.

For all that Maya Arulpragasam didnt quite know what she was letting herself in for, one suspects the Southbank Centre didnt either; logistics aside, the mornings photoshoot has already been met with some flapping from the press officer made nervous by MIA climbing on the roof without safety clearance. Still, her lineup dancehall, Brooklyn hip-hop, depressive Swedish rap and Nigerian grime is perhaps the most underground the festival has seen in its 24 years. How much is she expecting to shake up its comfortable concert halls, cafe bars and conference-room spaces?

Click here to watch the video for last years Go Off.

When I was a teenager in London, I would just get a Travelcard and go somewhere, explore the city and go to weird places, she says. I would never judge the place, like, This is middle class and white. This is a white country, you dont have to spell it out to me, but there wasnt ever a limit on where I could go or what I could do.

A long, elliptical digression on London then and now follows, which takes in the optimistic multiculturalism of the 90s, Tamil house parties, empire and British identity. Its the bento box of an MIA interview: individually contained ideas that dont obviously bleed into one another and yet, overall, make a collective sense if youre prepared to go with it. Thats the key thing about MIA: you have to be willing to go with her to properly get her. Given that she still looks and sounds like a beautiful, bratty, art-school upstart and is prone to labyrinthine tangents, its easy to portray her as inarticulate or unhinged. But MIAs intelligence is instinctive rather than intellectual, and fuelled by the political.

The Mehrabian maxim that reckons that only 7% of communication is verbal is one that might best be proven by the transcript of a chat with MIA removed of all tone, attitude, context and body language. Take, for instance, her explanation of why only the future remains relevant:

As humans, we dont use our past and our history to work out the importance of what our role is in the present, she says. And if you cant use the past to define your present, then it should not be an element that holds back the future. Greece is a perfect example. More than Britain, they were brought to their knees, and not a single white country thought about saving them. And it was part of their heritage. Its where their mythology comes from or their concept of capitalism and democracy comes from. Nobody cared, everybody cared about the modern. Right?

Kim Kardashian is actually more powerful than Greece. She has more money than the whole of Greece, she continues. Therefore, thats where the power lies. If you then define it that way, then you kind of just have to live with that. And maybe whats happening in modern society: that if youre going to judge it by that, then other countries are gonna come in and define the future.

In print, its a statement that seems lacking in logic and coherence. In the moment, Im fairly sure Im able to follow her and we go on to consider how and where this future is being defined (for the record: You cant ignore the fact that China is going to be doing their thing in the next 50 years) and how Arulpragasam believes the immigration issue has become a red herring covering up a truth that can explain the American and British swing to conservative populism.

With Brexit, the idea was to get away from Europe and reinvent our identity, she says. And really, that identity was going to be American, but then they gave us Trump! So, everyone now is like, Oh shit, what is Britain? Are we going to rewind back to the 1800s? We cant. Its too late for that. So, going forward, we need a charismatic leader who then va va vooms the British identity. And we dont have that either.

People thinking that Im a bitch is totally unwarranted … MIA. Photograph: Stephanie Sian Smith/The Guide

The prime minister has called a snap election on the day we meet. Does MIA have any faith in our political system? Or in the left?

Everyone keeps going, Corbyn cant do this, but its, like, well, who else is there? she says. If people just left him alone to actually do the job and actually gave him some support, maybe hed be different. Treating him with so much contempt fighting that takes all his energy. How the fuck do you expect him to do interesting things? In any case insists the estranged daughter of a Tamil revolutionary, politicians are people who couldnt get jobs somewhere else.

MIAs politics, unwieldy and unslick though they may be, have often made her an easy target for tedious sneering in the press; the most insistent narrative is that, like Banksy, shes big on arch, subversive statement but lacks substance. Or that she is a hypocrite for making herself the poster girl for the worlds most marginalised people. And yet, shes one of the best pop stars Britain has ever produced. For all the ear-clanging experimentation of her five albums, MIA has always kept a sleeve full of pop bangers Bucky Done Gun, Paper Planes, Bad Girls, Finally that have sounded like little that came before or since her. Even if she didnt have the tunes, here is an art-school refugee Sri Lankan single mother with a visual aesthetic co-opted by everyone from Vetements to Versace who was born into political rebellion and revels in controversy. Gleefully gauche and carefree, MIA is the best argument for when cultural appropriation works. Bland singer-songstress beloved of Radio 2 playlists she isnt. So how much has the criticism bothered her?

People thinking that Im a bitch is totally unwarranted because Im not, she ays. I just had to fight for shit, and I still do. I just dont care any more. I dont know. She stops and starts. What I deal with as an artist, the media, the public persona, its a walk in the fucking park, compared to how confusing the universe really fucking is. Theres so much beauty in it and theres so much mystery, theres so much confusing shit in it. That is way more interesting to think about than why, like, Patricia hates me. You know what I mean? I laugh. Its like, Who the fuck is Patricia? and How can Patricia say this shit about me?. It just does not matter to me at all.As it is, she says shes most preoccupied with how to be a functioning grown up, an adult and a mother to an eight-year-old son (whose father Benjamin Bronfman is son to the billionaire heir of the Seagram fortune) born into immense privilege.

When the war came to an end in Sri Lanka in 2009, it actually did affect me, she explains. Everyone was, like, What the fuck does she know? Shes, like, a pop star, but that was my life. It was 50% of who I was, it was my identity. I didnt know what to do with myself. So I had a kid. Its the year the cause died, but the year my personal cause my son was born. And then, OK, I have to figure out what to do in very small parameters: I have a son, how is he going to see his grandma, am I going to make it there on Saturday? Can I make sure that I dont mess up his head by being depressed about certain things?

She struggles to reconcile her upbringing poor and living in Sri Lanka for her childhood to poor and living on a council estate in Mitcham, south London, in her adolescence with her sons. Im not very straightforward as an immigrant. That whole My kids would never see the pain that I saw; Im not like that. Im totally up for reintroducing him to the pain. I dont have any qualms about that. Her problems havent changed, she says, because of money or better circumstances. Whether Im in a mansion or a council flat, I would feel the same anxiety waking up going: I need to write this thing in a scrapbook, wheres my notepad? I would still have all those problems. I might still overcook the fish fingers. Those things are not going to magically transform because your house has changed. At the beginning I thought that money couldve saved my family. Very quickly I realised that money is not the thing.

Her conflict in wanting to being huge and commercial versus credible and ahead of the curve has been a persistent tension threaded through MIAs career. When I got into the music game, it was never an option to shut up and make lots of money. she says. To be a huge pop star, I would have to be, like, Yes, I think bombing Afghanistan was a great idea, I love our democracy and what it has achieved. I love the American flag and Im going to make a jumpsuit out of it. I just think it was important to have all of those Arab Springs, and its great and lets drink Coca-Cola. I had to do that, and do it all in a thong. Could I have done that if it meant that my mum had the nicest house in Chiswick by the river?

Click here to se the video for MIAs Bad Girls.

Does she worry about money now? If youre preaching living within your means, you have to, to some extent. But I also know that if youre someone in society that speaks out about injustice or political issues, one of the things that happens is that you get economically punished, 100%. I take that hit all the time.

The most recent, obvious example was MIA being forced to quit her headline slot at Afropunk last year, following a contentious quote in which she asked in an interview why Beyonc and Kendrick Lamar might not discuss why Muslim lives matter or Syrian lives matter. I dont regret [raising the issue], she says, with triumphant chutzpah. You saw how bad it was. And the Muslim ban didnt happen just with Trump, it was already happening under Obama. But you couldnt say that about him, you couldnt say that he introduced the Muslim ban, or banned seven different countries, or was already monitoring people, or dropped more bombs than Trump has. In truth, Obamas administration did identify the seven countries on Trumps list for additional screening measures, but it didnt bar their nationals. Shes already skipped ahead. The quantity of damage cant be quantified right now, she insists. Well have to wait the four years. After eight years of Obama, we kind of knew [his failings], but we just werent allowed to say them because he was so great. He was better than any person in Hollywood that I wouldve watched. He was really likable and just had loads of swag. That doesnt mean that you have to deny the truth, though.

This (and much more) comes moments after she tells me she has no time for opinions these days. She claims she doesnt read the news any more and that her primary sources for information are customers at the local kebab shop, taxi drivers and then sort of figuring it out. What about the state of the world? MIAs moment as an agitprop pop activist has never seemed more potent. Politics? I have no time for these things because Im so stuck in the zone. Ive become a hermit. [Meltdown] is actually giving me the chance to actually go out and meet people again. Ive gone for weeks without talking to a person, I do that happily. I tell her I dont believe her, as I suspect it would be a recipe for her to go fully barmy.

Im actually quite an extreme person, so I dont see that as madness. I see that as, like, solitude, doing a phase of solitude is not that bad. After declaring her fifth album AIM to be her final one, shes also trying to find new ways to channel her creativity. Im trying to write a film. I havent stepped into it yet because I want it to be good. Once you hit the start button you cant really stop it. She has, she tells me, the added complication of ADD to contend with. When was that diagnosed? I just have it. Dont even need diagnosis, its a waste of time, its a waste of the NHS. In truly blithe MIA style, she adds: Its just when you have too many ideas and not enough ways to get them out.

MIAs Meltdown is at the Southbank Centre, SE1, 9-18 June

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