#((Also these are a bit random. Did you mean to send these to another blogger?

[perfectlyvalid49]

Hi, Australian Jew here.

Sending this anonymously because I'm not openly Jewish on Tumblr, however I am considering doing so in the short-term.

I'm sorry to bother you but I wanted to ask you a few questions, if you're open to it (feel free to ignore this if so). Just so you know, I'm asking the same questions of the Jewish bloggers I follow who post regularly - both those who blog about the current Israel/Palestine situation, and those who identify as Jewish but post mainly fandom/other content.

Do you or have you receive/d abuse for being Jewish, or for your stance on the war? If so, how often? How do you respond to any hateful messages? Do you post them publicly or answer them privately? How much would you say your mental health is/has been affected by any messages, or by the content you see on your feed? Have you developed any strategies for handling social media during this time?

Thank you for reading. :-)

Hi Anon,

I’m happy to answer your questions, and I hope that what I say is helpful to you. I’d actually be curious to read a compilation of the answers you get, if you’d be willing to share.

Do you/have you received abuse for being Jewish or for my stance on the war? Yes.

If so, how often? Frankly, not very often at all. I think it’s because I’m a really small blog and my followers seem to be mostly Jewish or Jew positive? Like I only have about 120 followers, and 2/3s of them have shown up in the last six months, which is when I started reblogging a lot about the war, so I’m assuming that’s what they’re all here for. Of posts I’ve made, most don’t get very many notes. I have one that’s over 1000, and another that’s at about 400, and those are huge numbers for me, so I think I’m mostly left alone because no one knows I exist.

Those two posts did get shared enough that some antisemites showed up and we argued a bit in the reblogs. Those folks were pretty abusive, and I have had one person send me hate directly in my inbox. I also know I’ve been blocked by some people. Most of them I don’t care about because I don’t know about it, but a few people that I was following have blocked me for having such hot takes as “JVP is non-representative of Jews and is often antisemitic in their advocacy” and “Al Jazeera is a biased news source, you can't take everything they say at face value” That’s been pretty frustrating.

I will say that I’ve also gotten some random Jew love on tumblr. People showing up in my messages or inbox with kind words or cute pictures to try to improve my day. And to be honest, it really works. I love it when it happens.

How do you respond to hateful messages? With open contempt.

Do you post them publicly or privately? Publicly. I’m of the opinion that if you’re going to say something, you need to be willing to stand behind it. There is no hiding in my inbox. If you’re going to be hateful I’m going to put you on blast.

How much would you say your mental health is/has been affected by any messages, or by the content you see on your feed? By messages, or arguments that I’ve gotten into? I’d say the effect on my mental health has been minimal. But, to be clear, I’m a terrible person who likes fighting online. I would do it more if I had more free time. When I see people being antisemitic, I know that I can’t do a lot about it, but I can give them a really frustrating online experience. I know it’s not right, but if you show up on my post being antisemitic, I will absolutely let my inner troll out and not feel bad at all.

I will also say that I was bullied mercilessly in middle school for years, and that when I said I'd seen meaner twelve year olds in the post I linked to above, I meant it. Between the bullying and the therapy I went through to get over the bullying, it takes a LOT more than a stranger I don't care about being mean on the internet to hurt my feelings.

As for what I see on my feed – yeah, I think that’s had a negative impact on my overall mental health. It’s incredibly difficult to see news articles posted every day about terrible things happening to my people and to get the sense that very few people actually care. The sense of being betrayed by the leftist community as a whole – watching as they abandon their supposed ideals in order to engage in rampant Judenhass is deeply upsetting to me. I’m a millennial, and there were enough Holocaust survivors in the community in which I was raised that it definitely has had an impact and when I see this stuff now, I can’t help but think of their warnings from when I was a kid. It’s…stressful.

Have you developed any strategies for handling social media during this time? I think the important stuff is the same as always – know when to block and know when to log off. I’ve unfollowed a lot of people since October. Some of them for being wildly antisemitic, and some because they were starting to be antisemitic, and I just didn’t want to watch it progress, so I left preemptively. That’s also been frustrating, as across platforms I’ve left behind people I’ve been following for years and I miss the things I’ve followed them for, but I also know that I’m not welcome in their spaces, and what they offer isn’t worth staying for.

Anyway, I hope this helps. And if you do decide to become openly Jewish on Tumblr and someone starts giving you a hard time over it, let me know. You can block them, and I’ll go harass them for fun.

[pufflocks]

Hello again Zen! First I just wanna say that you don’t need to apologize about what happened to the other fic. If you ever feel like you wanna reattempt it, just tell me and I’ll send it again. This request is also smut like the last one and I hope that’s ok!

So Bakugou, known by the public as the pro hero Dynamight, has been having it tough at work the past 2 weeks. He knew that technically it was partly his fault. You see, Bakugou is in a secret relationship with one of Japan’s most mischievous villains. Y/n L/n. (Male Reader) Y/n was in reality not necessarily a villain. He was seen as one, but he had never actually killed anybody. He was more the type to steal, start some fights/trouble and occasionally blow up some place. He was more mischievous than evil. Though Bakugou knew that Y/n wasn’t as bad as everyone thought, and he knew that Y/n did love him. He just had a bit of history.. With that being said: Bakugou had been having it rough lately because his secret boyfriend had been at it like crazy. He also knew that Y/n was intentionally making things difficult for him. So when he was on his patrol and got an emergency signal about trouble just a few blocks away, boy was he ready to hunt Y/n down! Once he saw him he immediately chased him into an alleyway. Y/n had escaped and ran into an abandoned apartment. He thought he was safe. But when he turned around, he wasn’t so lucky. Shit.. Bakugou was ready to completely ravage and take out all of his frustrations on Y/n, as he had him trapped with nowhere to run.

This one could be considered Revenge/Angry S*x. It’s not non-con since Y/n clearly knew what he was in for, and Bakugou wouldn’t do anything incase Y/n seriously stopped him. The request was kinda long, sorry about that lol. If you don’t feel like writing it then it’s fine, and if you’d like to switch some things up then feel free to do so! Also, don’t feel rushed and take your time. Have a nice day/night! :>

Summary: I'm not a dark blogger, but this req is honestly too amazing. I will change some things as to not make it exactly dark though— And thank you for being patient with me and the recent incident. 💛

Warnings: NFSW • proof read • Aged up • mild angst{?}

Cast: Villian!M!Reader x Pro hero!Bakugou

○●○●○●○●○●○●○●○●○●○●○

Y/N L/N. A name that was a hassle to spit out. Your name was spoke like a horrid sickness spreading west to east. All you were was some mildly lowlife starting cat fights on the streets of Japan. It usually happens at night, and that's also when you strike 24 hour open corner stores. Quite fun to be honest. Your skill being up to par of a spy since your original outing clothing you were seen with was mostly black. Your hair was dyed a certain way after a long past incident though, kinda making you stick out overall you camflouged into the night.

Your pro hero, hot headed, stress filled, boyfriend however, was gold spoon in it's prime. A pro hero who was rich with fame. Oh god he had it all in your eyes. You sometimes cried with tears of joyfulness just at the mere slick thought you were dating him. Not no female who just as good looking, like Creati. No, none of that. It's not like he would change that spite his efforts of frustration with your recent activities these part two years.

The streets are terrific to you for these two years though. Everything is nearly breakable and easily fixed with community money. You would think it was community money atleast. All is good since you made sure to leave your mark with explosives.

Hence your love and passion for your lover, you would smuggle cheap fireworks and set them off at random areas of the late hours. The most recent one being pulled off near a school and and anyone could imagine how the headlines went. The news was erratic with wow and terror of where the explosion even came from, who set it off. Little did they obviously not know —

It was pro hero, Katsuki Bakugous boyfriend.

--

On to other things. Bakugou was in a meeting. Apparently he was being caught up with some warning of a manic villain roaming the streets and city alone.

"So what ?" The room was silent as all eyes transferred front to the back where he sat. Eye bags slightly visible of how stressed he really was after the news confirmed he was.

A co-worker of his, Kirishima raised his hand in apparent anxiousness. "Um", he coughed into his fist before speaking again. "Well, Bakubro he has been going at it for nearly 2 years. No one even know what he looks like, hell man." Starting to get his voice back he finally said, "We probably don't even know if he is a he !" The rooms tension was held up to a few more minutes before Bakugou just got up and walked out.

Another co-worker of his, Mina sparked up and said, "Where are you going !" Her words fell on deaf ears as he was already gone.

Heavy weighted footsteps of his boots were heard along the agency's hallways as people made sure to step out of his way. Grabbing his stuff most important for his next move being his car keys. His brain hurt of how fucking frustrating it is to be held back from work because of his delinquent boyfriend wants to treat the world as a damn playground. He couldn't take it! The stress and anxiety he kept for 2 years was just high enough for him to fuck one out. And he might just.

Just because those assholes didn't know where to find you, doesn't mean he can't. You were always close to a rundown apartment in an alleyway doctoring up a new firework of your own or anything remotely for distruction.

And there you were. In a damn corner completely unaware of the 6 foot presence behind you. Horny and exhausted was a nasty mix for anyone and Bakugou is a worse case as he grabbed you by your arm turning you around.

Alert entered your mind as you nearly, by a measly hair burnt him with a match you had. Why was here was all you could ask yourself, feeling his dramatic hot pants near your neck.

"Why-" No time for speaking when he was highly eager to ravage your ass. You knew how he was from time time since you've met him and because of this you have gotten the worst and the best of him. Sex and life alone was hot and dangerous between the both of you.

His lips marked yours up with a grunt of his own making it seem as if he was feasting on your chapped ones. The dryness making it sting sweetly only adding to the arousal you now felt for yourself. Kissing him. Him not taking his time as he will easily swallow his food without chewing.

"I'm fucking pissed." He snapped. This version of him was the only version you couldn't take. No type of convincing could make an outsider believe your actions to one another was not non consensual. His slightly bigger form compared to your own was trifling as it was pressed up to your chest.

After minutes of searching eachothers mouths with fever and rush he finally stripped himself from his pants. You caught a rare glimpse of how hard he really was. Now this was irritating you at this point. You were no sore loser, but if someone ever took something from you like candy it would easily be endgame.

"Stop fucking pouting. I just got out of a meeting early", he adjusted his position a bit. "To fuck your meddling ass." He closed the space between you two as his cologne and natural scenticked your senses. A shiver went down your spine like a fresh cold drop of sweat as you backed away into the corner. He followed that and smirked. You couldn't be serious.

"Turn around. I wanna see it." He huffed, impatiently. You obviously did what you were told. No time in making him even more pissed. He admired your obedience when it came to your relationship. Only if you could follow that up in turning yourself in. Sadly you were too prideful, probably why you both have an odd ball bond with eachother.

Like lightning your pants were down just like his as he slapped your ass with a strikingly heavy hand. Watching your arse slightly move was guilty enjoyment of his own.

"Ah !" You covered your mouth quickly in fear of his scolding. Number 1 rule of him when frustrated was that on all accounts. Don't. Fucking. Make. A. Peep. That reminder did not fail to make you turn back with pleading eyes with him looking back at you with pliant disbelief.

"Yer' really trying to fuckin' test me, yeah ?" He asked. Not loud how he usually is, but a lower octave with a nonchalant expression. He was tired. Tired of your prideful denial of going to jail. Tired of these late damn meetings at the agency. Tired of his parents calling him because he was doing this to himself. He was fucking exhausted of it all. His top tier was you especially.

☆

That's completely fine though. He can sex all of this out on his handsome villain boyfriend.

Y/N fucking L/N.

I hope this is fine, again I'm not a dark blog so if I wrote this along with the req it would get a bit dark. { I love dark blogs so it would be a whole series 💀. }

[dinosaurtsukki]

haikyuu!! music idol au (nekoma and fukurodani vers.)

i haven’t actually posted some hc’s in a while because i’ve been reading the manga but i hope you guys enjoy this surprise !! also check out the karasuno vers. and seijoh and shiratorizawa vers. for more music idol au’s 

TOKYO IDOLS ENTERTAINMENT

(this may or may not be the last of this series, maybe I’ll make one for inarizaki and date tech who knows?)

Also I hope y’all are ready for me Badly Titling Things Again

Okay so they’re both under Tokyo Idols Entertainment

Hah that wasn’t so bad was it just wait for it

Stray Cats and OWL6

This blogger’s brain cells are so fried that they’ve now resorted to puns

sO THEY’RE BOTH UNDER TOKYO IDOLS AND THEY’RE REALLY AMAZING GROUPS AND THEIR TALENT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE SHITTY GROUP NAMES

anyway so it was set up by Nekomata and they’ve been pretty good at producing groups over the years but their biggest hits have been their two recent groups

both of them actually started at the same time but they work with quite different concepts and have different dynamics

but they tend to collab and interact with each other a lot which the fans love

so lets get into the groups

Stray Cats - Nekoma

their leader is Kuroo ofc and they work with a lot of bad boy/edgy concepts and their music is more on the hip-hop and R&B side

a lot of their music videos and outfits are in the black-and-white with pops of red, blue, and yellow

you think the fans would get tired of seeing them in matching suits and leather jackets but no

anyway, Kuroo’s they’re leader who’s also main rapper, dancer, and visuals

he actually started out as a vocalist but since Stray Cats was going to be more of a hip-hop group he eventually picked up rapping (although those who have Deeply Analyzed the backing vocals for some of their tracks claim that Kuroo’s vocals will save the world)

his dancing looks super fluid and natural because he also tried ballet dancing at one point

sometimes he films himself practicing and shows off by wearing stilettos and not once tripping over himself

kai and yaku were his fellow trainees and just like in the manga, kuroo and yaku did not get along and kai had to be there to make sure no one died

kuroo and yaku were quite competitive with their dancing but eventually they realized that the fans loved their dynamic during their dances and worked together for once

their choreos almost always involve someone carrying yaku on their shoulders

he’s also another main rapper and he’s really good at a variety of styles

he’s also the mom of the group and likes to check on everyone before going live

the one who trains the more inexperienced members with their choreography and while he’s very much a perfectionist, he’s also the one who reassures them when they make a mistake on a live stage

kai is actually the genius behind most of their songs because his producer skills are mad crazy he’s been invited to collab with so many other artists (including the wonderful Kiyoko-san)

kuroo and yaku have no idea what goes on in his head but it’s probably music

they always make sure that kai gets enough sleep and is eating right when he’s working on an album

his dancing is pretty solid but he’s more well-known for being a main rapper and his smooth, sultry voice during the chorus that gives everyone eargasms

next we have kenma who’s one of the few main vocalists of the group

his voice is a nice tenor and he can hit a good amount of the high notes

can harmonize like it’s nobody’s business

he and kuroo had been friends since they were practically born and while kuroo dreamed of becoming a music idol onstage, kenma was more interested in songwriting and producing music

he joined Tokyo Idols for the opportunity to be a producer but Nekomata was like ‘why not be an idol?’ and kenma was like ‘no, I’ll have to dance’

he was then persuaded by kuroo and kenma decided to do some vocal training to make up for not wanting to move around so much

so, most of the time, he’s in the back and during his turn in the chorus he’ll make a bit of an appearance

he has done a few live solo performances but he’s playing the piano in them so he doesn’t have to look at the audience so much

he loves working with kai in the studio more than anything

doesn’t have a social media account because he doesn’t want to see how the fans talk about him (they mostly say good stuff though!)

now we have taketora who’s the main rapper of the group as well

this guy is an expert beatboxer and he does a very good job of hyping up the crowd

his rap is the kind that even fires up his teammates and they always let him know that he did a good job after every performance

he actually has a good amount of tattoos on his arms and he used to cover them with long-sleeves but the fans love them arms and the tattoos even more so

#MakeTaketoraSleeveless movement on Twitter thus begins

Taketora was super flattered but okay with it

Fukunaga is another main vocalist and he has a very deep voice that blends really well with his fellow vocalists

His voice doesn’t stand out that much and he doesn’t have a lot of solos but Stray Cats’ specialty is really blending their vocals (aside from their rappers and dancers)

And you can also definitely notice a difference when Fukunaga isn’t singing a part

He’s also the kind of dancer who does a lot of cartwheel and flip-like stunts that come in during the dance breaks

Has this habit of staring blankly in the distance during group interviews and fans make memes using his face

He also likes messing with his senpai’s but they all blame lev and don’t suspect a thing with Fukunaga (well, that’s until he posts the video)

Lastly, we have lev who is the youngest among all of them and also main vocalist and visuals

He has a nice baritone voice and he does most of the singing in the chorus but tends to get a bit lost when Fukunaga and Kenma come in

A lot of his time is spent practicing how to not get lost when people are harmonizing with him, especially since that’s what Stray Cat’s known for

He actually came in a bit late, like after the group had its first debut since they felt like they needed another vocalist

Lev also has a natural talent when it comes to dancing so Nekomata added him to the group

It was a bit difficult integrating him into the group but he also added onto the overall chemistry as the baby of the group

As much as they know he makes mistakes, his senpais always congratulate Lev on how far he’s come

No one wants to admit that he gets handsomer by the day because it will add to his ego but the fans do enough of that

OWL6 - fukurodani

They only have four members (because idk a lot about all the members and I also wanted to have like a four-person group)

JUST BECAUSE THERE’S A NUMBER 6 IN THE NAME OF THE GROUP DOESN’T MEAN THAT’S HOW MANY MEMBERS THERE ARE *glares at SEVENTEEN* *also I ended up looking up how many members there are in Day6 and now I feel bad I’m sorry day6 fans*

aNYWAY

They’re a very small group since Tokyo Idol wanted to try out having a four-person group

They don’t really have a singular kind of aesthetic or style like Stray Cats does but work with a variety of them

They do a good number of lively pop songs as well as ballads for the b-side tracks

They’re also made up of four vocalists, two of which also know how to rap, and are overall pretty solid

Bokuto’s their leader (even though its mostly Akaashi who holds the group together) but he speaks a lot for the group during interviews

He’s main vocalist, main dancer, and also main visual

His stage presence is astounding especially with his natural talent for dancing and his stamina is endless

He can sing really well even busting out the hardest dance moves

Although he’s unquestionably talented, he does get hit hard by online haters and will shut himself in the dance studio to practice until everyone drags him out

He’s super endearing and sweet around his fans, he’ll remember a fan that he saw more than once and send letters in response to fanmail

Bokuto’s known for being super clumsy though and he has destroyed a mic or his clothes or someone else’s clothes more than once

Once tripped on the way when OWL6 was about to receive an award

Sarukui is another main vocalist and rapper

His voice is quite deep but it sounds really melodic and unique that anyone could tell when he’s singing

Also knows a thing or two about music production and has helped produce a few of their tracks

He’s the one assigned to saying ‘That’s our leader!’ to Bokuto when he’s feeling down

Also responsible for the ‘Bokuto and Akaashi are dating’ prank on Twitter that became a whole thing

A shitposter, basically

Konoha Akinori is once again our jack of all trades, especially since he’s rapper, dancer, vocalist, and visuals

I would say that his back hurts from carrying OWL6 but each member knows how to hold their own

His back just hurts from curling up like a shrimp when he’s asleep

He gets a lot of lines because of this and fans love it when he leads the dance breaks, that being said he’s also tired all the time

Konoha has fallen asleep in interviews more than once and Sarukui takes the pictures of him

Because of his jack of all trades nature he also has a lot of weird, random talents that he likes to showcase in variety shows

These weird talents range from being able to name all of the countries in Europe backwards to being able to make a slingshot using his feet and a rubber band

It’s always something new with him

Everyone cheers him on except for Akaashi who’s soul has left his body

And last but definitely not the least, we have the youngest in the group, Akaashi, who’s also main vocals and visual

Everyone in OWL6 agree that Akaashi is the prettiest among them  

He also has such a sweet and beautiful voice that gives everyone eargasms

Sometimes everyone has to stop dancing during practice whenever they hear Akaashi sing

He also does a lot of vocal covers that he posts online and has released a few solo albums since he’s always working on making new music

Although everyone knows that he’d also do really well as a solo artist, Akaashi knows that his members were the reason why he wanted to debut in the first place and it just wouldn’t be the same without them

Extra HC’s for Stray Cats and OWL6

Kuroo and Bokuto have been friends since their trainee years and even though they were disappointed about not debuting in the same group they agreed to collab on a lot of things

During award shows they like to have a performance together, most often a dance cover, until Akaashi and Kenma decided to help out by writing a song for the two of them to perform

The members of both groups like to sneak into each other’s dorms because the more the merrier and they share and order food

Yaku and Kai actually like staying in the OWL6 dorms more because its quieter (since Lev and Tora aren’t there) but change their mind when they see Bokuto

Eventually they divided the dorms into ‘the quiet people’ and ‘the noisy people’

Both of the groups love doing those Halloween performances and dressing up really scary with the same level of production and everything

None of those cutesy costumes, Fukunaga will straight up come in a headless man costume and Sarukui brings a fake chainsaw with him

Some of them like to do really weird costumes though like Lev dressing up as a bottle of vodka and Konoha coming in dressed as Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street

Sometimes the fans just don’t know what goes on in their heads

Kai tends to get a lot of awards for his producing skills but the first time he did Stray Cats came onstage with him and basically cried all around him while Kai tried to do his speech

They also like to mess around in the comments section when another group is doing a VLive

For example, Kuroo commented ‘send feet pics’ during one of OWL6’s lives and Bokuto retaliated by uploading the ugly selfies that Kuroo takes on his phone

They also either make up the fanchants or memorize each other’s fanchants for the songs

Yahaba, watching Stray Cats doing the fanchant for OWL6′s song: why can’t we be like that?

Iwaizumi: because we have Oikawa

Oikawa: IT’S NOT MY FAULT IT’S USHIWAKA 

[belphegorbillickin]

Okay, but I can definitely imagine Barb/Dia doing that. It seems like quite a possibility. But wasn't dying mc's own fault though? Like,, Barbatos did warn,,, unless he knew this was gonna happen and mc was DUMB AND STUPID enough to show up to everyone like: "hi." and possibly be dumb enough to get killed. Idk lol I forgot this part.

But what you said about Beel, I really like that. I think you even mentioned belphie guilt tripping you in your yandere hcs, and trying to make you completely depend on him?? I like those possibilities. Mammon though,, too soft. Like you said, they've robbed him a lot. He could have had so much potential to be a dark character. Similarly Levi omg.

The brothers are the embodiments of the 7 deadly sins, yet, tbh, I haven't seen too much of this side of them. At least, not like how'd I expect. Leviathan, for eg. Envy. I don't recall seeing his sin playing out anywhere except in the TSL Quiz thingy. I mean, it's been toned down a lot for someone who's the literal embodiment is envy. Idk I just don't feel he's like that? As from what I found: Envy (Latin:��invidia), like greed and lust, is characterized by an insatiable desire. It can be described as a sad or resentful covetousness towards the traits or possessions of someone else. The struggle aroused by envy has three stages: during the first stage, the envious person attempts to lower another's reputation; in the middle stage, the envious person receives either "joy at another's misfortune"(if he succeeds in defaming the other person) or "grief at another's prosperity" (if he fails); the third stage is hatred because "sorrow causes hatred".[38]

Envy is said to be the motivation behind Cain murdering his brother, Abel, as Cain envied Abel because God favored Abel's sacrifice over Cain's.

They toned him down a little too much?? If this game has actually been inspired by demons and the 7 deadly sins, they could at least make them similar to the demons, at least in some way. I'm not that far into the game yet, but so far that I've played, I haven't seen much. As for a demon who is the embodiment of envy... I wish to see more. Levi is capable of A LOT.

Similarly, Satan. I sometimes wonder why is he even called the Avatar of Wrath when we hardly see it?? The only time I remember is him losing his calm during the whole body swap event. The fact Satan got mad at us refusing a pact actually made me think that he was the sin "wrath", but idk now. And the way it was said that "every smile is an act", I really like that concept too. But I don't think I've paid much attention to see where it played out. Sigh now Satan simps for cats like,,, please show me your dark/evil side sir.

The way you said Barb and Dia took part in a torture dungeon, I want to see more of that too. If they're demons, wouldn't they have caused SOME sort of bloodshed in a way? Especially if they're the strongest demons. Killing humans, eating them, or I even like to think doing the same to their own race. Torturing... Seems like something that every demon's blood would contain lmao, I'm not answering questions bye.

And I believe so too. The human seems like a pawn... I feel the demons would use humans for entertainment and their own purposes, while keeping up the facade of loving them. It's easy, since demons are manipulative. In that case, losing the human whether by their own hands or not would go like: "Oh well, that's unfortunate. Time for another human."

But if they REALLY did love you, I feel they'd still be manipulative. Like you said. Corrupting/spoiling the human so much to the point that they'd just HAVE to depend on them. I feel they'd also have yandere tendencies, or be "protective". Like, then I feel they really wouldn't want to let you go, despite knowing how much it can ruin your innocence.

I also don't like how everyone is after mc like "uwuwu master". The human is still a weakling despite having pacts, plus, the pacts aren't even demanding the human's soul or anything. I don't get why they let mc walk over them when they are CLEARLY much stronger? If I were a demon I'd do the opposite lmao. Making the human seem as if they are controlling me, but it's the opposite. I don't think a mere pact can change the fact that the demon's stronger,,, esp if the pact didn't demand the human's soul/life/whatever.

Also, thank you! Things got better for me :)) and also,

💫✨💕send this to ten bloggers you think are wonderful. keep the game going 💕✨

Ofc you don't have to do this, but I got this, and it really made me happy, so here ^^

Oh btw in lesson...56 I think?? Just gonna tag this as a spoiler, but where for whatever reason Satan was "Sully" and the angel Lucifer asked him whether he liked books, let me just say I haven't even played it that far yet, but Satan going, "...Every book here is precious."

TOUCHED ME SO BAD LIKE. I DON'T KNOW IT REALLY MADE ME SOFT LMAO HE'S JUST SO okay I'll stop 🏃– 🍹

It's been a while since I've thought in-depth about the whole time traveling thing tbh, but couldn't Barbatos generally see the outcomes of the world?

We went back because they wanted to know who opened it, but considering Diavolo's the ruler of hell who turned Lilith human and Barbatos is basically the ruler of time & practically the universe I believe they already knew Lilith did it since it had to be "blood related" basically.

Barbatos also knows he can stitch together timelines and get of "extra" MCs essentially, so I believe he'd take that into account. I'm not saying MC getting killed was 100% part of the plan, but that they didn't care of MC was traumatized because they knew they could bring them back if necessary.

Imo the real goal wasn't to find out who did it, but to avoid breaking the family's bonds and devotion to Diavolo. The way it worked out was incredibly convenient and "coincidentally" a huge upgrade for Diavolo that kept the status quo and made him look good (or at least better) to Belphie and Beel without making Lucifer choose.

We see that kind of repeat later when Diavolo withdraws from the play because he was worried Lucifer wouldn't be as loyal. That's also why Lucifer gets that warning from Barbatos.

I think a huge part of why Levi's characterization is like that is because not enough people like him enough to tolerate it tbh. Even Mammon and Lucifer stans complain about the other characters hogging screen time and a lot of them admit to feeling bad for other fans. Levi is pretty much always second to last popularity wise.

I think he'd actually be more liked if they focused more on the jealously instead of making almost every interaction otaku/Ruri-chan related, but it's a bit too late now. I really, really hate how they just pretend otaku culture always existed and that's all Levi ever was. Like at least make him have an obsessive personality and be hyperfixated on novels instead of talking manga in an era before Japan even existed. It's so unbelievably lazy and really takes me out of the story.

Another problem is we only really see him interact with family or people that could enact severe consequences like Diavolo & Barbatos or people protected by the exchange program. He never gets a chance to shine or be cunning. The closest we get is things like him purposefully trying to ruin Christmas for random people online in his Christmas card. I think if he genuinely got jealous of MC and some random demon he would summon lotan almost instantly.

It's especially painful knowing what we had & being so excited to get more only for all of that to get dropped.

In an early devilgram, Be You, Satan gets jealous and feels bad about not having much unique to him and Lucifer comforts him in his own way when the others make it worse. Mammon is the most empathetic though ofc. They also talk about horror movies and Mammon says he doesn't find them scary (& the way it's framed sounds honest, idk if it's a retcon or a lie,) and Satan says "I'm sure we've all witnessed plenty of real-life horrors worse than anything in the movies."

Then when Lucifer asks for a time when he was really angry Satan first casually then gleefully talks about torturing a family to death because a kid set him up to get scolded by their parents. Meanwhile the brothers act wary of him and worry about him getting out of control while Lucifer tells everyone to take cover for their own safety with a smile. Satan happily talks about them begging for their lives and says he wishes they saw it too.

Levi also says he hates hearing about people being happy, but likes hearing about the negative things. While Asmo and Mammon are freaking out he also calls Satan cool. Which shows at least a little bit of his envy for once. Satan also says just the aura of his rage is usually too much for humans which is also interesting.

But back to Diavolo and Barbatos, I don't hate how the whole torture thing isn't super open, it makes sense imo, but I would like to see hints of them hiding it. Especially if Satan or even attic Belphie was the one you could go to to learn more about it. If anyone would defy Diavolo for that it'd be them trying to bring Lucifer down with them, or even just Satan rewarding the hunt for knowledge and not understanding the human psyche fully.

Imagine if instead of a paper thin lie about being human we got a Belphie manipulating us by pretending he was locked up because he was against hurting humans and the whole exchange program was a scam? Or at least if he told us things no one else would about Diavolo that were true so we wouldn't trust him and etc. That's the angle I'm going with in my fanfiction at least, the original story is just so lazy and boring imo.

Yeah I'm not a huge fan of how they handled pacts either, especially considering they don't even get MC's soul. It's way too one-sided to the point where I don't believe someone like Satan would ever offer it, even if the first offer was a trick and he'd get your soul or something. I agree on the whole manipulation thing too, like how is it partnership if one side has complete control over the other?

Even just making it so that demons can fight against if they really don't want to do something like harming each other and having it corrupt MC would make it a million times better.

And that's so sweet, thank you! You've made my days a lot brighter too. Not much makes me happier than infodumping and complaining about Obey Me rn lol.

I really liked Satan's line there too, although I did wish he had more a reaction to everything tbh. That whole section felt a bit too easy imo though, like I kept waiting for it to all go to shit or something. I am glad they went back into more story-based chapters too. I hope they keep that trend and expand on it.

[theparanormalperiodical]

The Real Story Behind Krampus (2017), And The 17 Other Terrifying Christmas Tales And Traditions You NEED To Know About

Christmas is a time for family, a time for laughter, and a time for drinking volumes of alcohol that make your cousins concerned about your emotional wellbeing.

But most importantly, it's a time for demons to hunt down children and stuff them full of straw and pebbles. No, I’m not talking about the Eastenders Christmas Special - I’m talking about the Christmas traditions they don’t put in Hallmark movies.

As Christmas has been celebrated for 2000 years, it has amassed a collation of equally terrifying traditions and monsters that only the dark corners of history could conjure up. 

Although confirmed by the Dickensian tradition of sharing ghost stories (see Matthew Mcconaughey movie - or failing that some old book about poverty in Victorian Britain), it seems we’ve forgotten the true terror behind the most wonderful time of the year!

So, as your favourite paranormal blogger, I’ve taken it upon myself to bring together everything creepy ‘bout Christmas. 

Today’s post is gonna take y’all through the mythical monsters you should be on the lookout for, plus the Christmas traditions that bare a dark, twisted backstory.  

Which is all of them.

Let’s get spooky! 

First, Let’s All About The Monsters Of Christmas

Hands up if you’ve watched Krampus (2017).

Here’s the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6cVyoMH4QE  

It might not be Love, Actually, nor will it ever score a set of great reviews, but it got everyone talking about the mythical creature titling the film. 

Need a summary?

This dark-comedy/horror film centres around a dysfunctional family at Christmas. When the youngest child loses faith in Santa, he rips up his letter to him, sending a signal to Krampus that he has lost his Christmas spirit and thus must be punished!

Okay, this film doesn’t fit the actual legend that well. But the kid does get dragged to hell - and unfortunately, that’s what sticks closest to the creature titling the film. 

On top of this, the movie features the classic mysterious European grandmother that has a story about the war (as a European I can confirm this). But her story isn’t about an air raid, or some long-gone past ruler; instead, it explains a twisted tale regarding the most famous companion of Father Christmas. 

That being said, it provides an introduction that only scratches the surface of the mythical creatures of Crimbo:

Krampus is the half-goat, half-demon creature that is often witnessed wandering ‘round with Santa Claus. Concieved in the pre-christian era in central europe, his aim of existence was to punish naughty children. 

“So, Santa provides for the nice kids, Krampus provides for the naughty kids? Got it.”

If only it was that simple.

Krampus’s family tree is more twisted than the British royal family - and has a similar collection of dodgy relatives:

Son of the Norse goddess, Hel (ruler of the underworld and the dead), Krampus is a Perchten, a race of beasts born to scare away Winter. Never heard of ‘em? Well, you’ve probably heard of his grandfather, then: Loki.

Given his famous hegemony, it follows that he is always believed to be the Horned God of the Witches, and sticks to a devilish image.

With a dark, hairy body, large fangs and a tongue hanging far below his bottom lip, beast-like is an understatement. Accessorising his frightful look is a grasp of birch branches or a whip, as well as a sack or basket (to put children in and take to hell or save for a quick drink and snack later), and chains.

However, the chains part is still subject to debate: some believe it is an attempt to bind the devil by the Catholic Church in attempt to control him, while others claim it is because Krampus is Santa’s slave.

This directly relates to the position of Krampus and his fellow monsters - they are all believed to be Santa’s companions. 

So, we know who Krampus is. But did you know he has a whole night devoted to him?

Krampusnacht falls on the 6th December, a day from which people put on masks and get drunk, scaring kids. Alternatively, you can dress up and hand out coal, mirroring the Krampus spirit! Nevertheless, both serve as a reminder to children not to be naughty, as does the bundle of golden birch branches you can have in your house. 

Now, who’s ready to get their feminist on?

Frau Perchta is the female counterpart of Krampus. 

This goddess-monster goes about giving good kids silver coins, and giving naughty kids, uh, well, death.

She’d slice ‘em open, and stuff ‘em full of straw and pebbles. But her backstory goes much further than simply murdering children: as she oversees spinning as a part of the 12 days of Christmas, she focuses on people that get their work done.

And if you slack? Then you gon’ get murdered. 

Given her name, it’s obvious that like Krampus, she’s a beast-like creature. But her animalistic tropes only go so far as her feet - just like Krampus’ single goat hoof, she has a swan foot. 

“So, she’s a swan?”

Nope - she’s either regarded as a beautiful young woman, or an old crone. 

Classic Patriarchy. 

Next up is another animal, but this time, it comes in the form of a cat. Unfortunately, the Yule Cat is less Instagram, and more deadly. Yep - this Icelandic beast eats the kids that fail to complete their chores before Christmas. 

Just like Frau Perchta, it can be traced back to farmers attempting to scare their workers into getting shizz done. If they hadn’t processed the autumn wool, they’d be eaten by the cat. If they had, they’d receive new clothes.

You’d better be thankful for those socks, then!

But it turns out the Yule Cat isn’t the only monster from Iceland. In fact, he’s actually the pet of a family of ferocious Christmas beasts!

Gryla and Leppaludi are a couple hell-bent on detecting naughty children. Gryla, the matriarch of this famalam - is a Norse giantess, who wanders round each and every village in iceland. Once she’s found said children, she eats them. 

Often she is described as a beggar, asking for parents to turn over their disobedient children so she can chuck ‘em in her sack, and add them to her signature stew!

Her husband - well, third husband but who’s judging - Leppaludi, is what the Daily Mail would label a benefit-scrounger as he hangs about in their cave all day. On top of this is their 12 children: The Yule Lads.

(God, this has a Daily Mail story written all over it.)

Each lad has a different, um, quirk.

One harasses sheep. One steels tupperware - no, seriously, he makes a point of stealing pots with lids. And another steals candles from children.

So that’s Iceland covered - let’s head back to continental Europe!

Hans Trapp is our next contender for the ultimate creep of Christmas. Trapp is a resident of Alsace-Lorraine, and comes from near the border of France and Germany. But what’s really terrifying about this monster is that he once existed. 

Hans Von Trotha was a French Knight and man of particular political distinction. From his feuds with the church, to his ever-roaming spirit after he died, the following myth was by no means a random creation. However, the backstory to Hans Trapp took a bit of a detour from his past:

Trapp was reportedly a Satanist who would kill children. Yeah, you can see a theme here…

This rich, greedy man was excommunicated by the church, and then exiled to the forest where he would hunt children. Well, he would until struck by a bolt of lightning sent by God. But despite his rather dark past, his backstory is less really-demonic, more redemptive.

A bit like Krampus, he seeks to remind kids to be virtuous, teaming up with St. Nicholas to ensure children would be nice. 

Next is Romanian Werewolves. 

Yep, that’s plural. 

Sure, these man-beasts show up during the full moon, but also makes a point of unleashing their true forms at Christmas. This has merged with caroling in Romania - dressing up as animals and pissing off people busy having a cheeky Baileys rather than see their family is a common occurrence there.

Oh, and they go around and tell you not to have sex.

No, seriously, you aren’t allowed to have sex on Christmas Eve cause Jesus or somethin’. 

The other Christmas mythical creatures include:

Le Pere Fouettard, some fella who tags along with St. Nick, delivering lumps of coal to naughty kids. Well, when he’s not beating them up, that is!

Knecht Ruprecht joins Santa on his rounds too, but he isn’t like Pere, don’t worry! He kidnaps children, instead.

Next up is Zwarte Piet, one of Santa’s helpers who listens at the chimney of family homes to deduce if kids have been naughty or nice. Guys, we got a wholesome helper! Wait - people dress up in blackface to celebrate him?

I think we can all agree that racism is far scarier than anything else on this list…

Lastly, we have Belsnickel. And don’t worry, there’s no racism here. This bloke clad in fur and random clothes asks kids if they’ve been naughty or nice during the year.

Let’s Talk About The Terrifying Traditions

Well, we did it, guys! 

We made it through the monsters behind a Merry Christmas. 

And you can rest easy knowing these are all mythical creatures that can add a smidge of spook to your Christmas. But now it’s time to discuss the spooky side to the traditions we pull out of the attic year-upon-year.

So, no, these aren’t based on myths or religion - its based on historical fact!

Great.

Anyways:

If there’s one thing that defines Christmas - and is currently crippling my bank account - its gift giving.

Thinking of giving someone scissors for the most wonderful time of the year? It will literally cut your friendship or relationship in two. And shoes? The receiver of your gift will metaphorically walk away from your relationship. 

But if you’re looking for a more, uh, positive gift, a wallet or purse should be on your shopping list, instead. 

Wallets with money in them are believed to ward off demons, ghosts, and all other scary things.

Another creepy Christmas fact is the historical origins of mince pies. As a Brit, seeing Americans attempt to comprehend mince pies always figures as a solid meme. But the origin of it doesn’t steer too far from ‘Murican attempts to replicate this Christmas treat.

Back in the 16th century, cannibals would add human meat to pies, selling it off as actual meat. Oh, and this parallels some vague rumour of Santa being a cannibal. Basics, a holy man told him to give gifts to kids instead of eating them. 

In some strange and convoluted way this somehow chocks up to mincemeat now insinuating that there is no meat in there, instead.

*shrugs*

Speaking of tasty treats, why not make sure you stick to the rule of the Baker’s Dozen at Christmas?

When bakers would make batches, they would provide 13 of something instead of a dozen in case something turned out wrong. But they would also provide an extra roll, or a bun, at Christmas!

It’s for that reason that on the 12th day of Christmas, you have to take down your Christmas tree. Fail to do so? You’re gonna have to keep it up all year, then. It’s a mouldy pine tree, or its bad luck.

Our next tradition stakes it claim as the twisting of a Crimbo icon: it’s Santa Claus, himself.

But this time, he takes on an urban legend that I’m sure many actually believe: understandably, ‘santa’ can be traced to ‘satan’, as if it is the unholy being himself but in disguise. And ‘claus’? It can be translated to ‘hoof claws’, a running theme we see with the monsters like Krampus. 

So, could it be the devil in disguise?

Satan aside, who else likes trooping up to midnight mass and singing about the JC?

Well Christmas carols - and even carolling itself - actually sticks to a relatively dark past. Take Good King Wenceslas - this bloke let in peasants and encouraged them to join his bountiful feast! 

Unfortunately, his charitable efforts were not rewarded. He was stabbed with a lance repeatedly outside a church upon his own brother’s orders, and was then dismembered.

Yikes.

Historically, carollers would partake in similarly violent activities, demanding food and drink from their audience. Heck, they would even so so far as to start attacking, raping, and destroying their property! 

Guess it wasn’t a very Silent Night, then…

Our penultimate tradition is that of the Nutcracker: Whether you’re watching it, or using it to have a Christmas-specific nibble, there’s no doubt that this is pretty popular image of the festive season. 

But - and it’s a big ol’ ‘but’ - it’s based on a truly terrifying story.

No, there’s no ghosts, no ghouls, and certainly no demons. But there is a child marriage.

The story goes that a girl, Marie, sees a nutcracker come to life. Her Grandfather than launches into this story of how men can be cursed with the ugliness of a nutcracker. She replies by saying she’d marry one no matter how they looked.

She is then whisked away into a magical world from which she marries a nutcracker. 

This all goes down whilst she is 8 years old. 

Our final tradition of terror is less about the abuse of young girls, and more about evil beings breaking into your house. Merry Christmas?

See, you’d think that people coming down your chimney is reserved for one bloke in particular, but it turns out that European tales of malicious spirits taking the same route is a common tale frequently told. 

Belsnickel does the same, as do Greek goblins in order to terrorise the residents of the house.

So - What’s Your Verdict?

Which tradition left you shook?

And what Christmas film are you now going to watch to try and wipe this from your brain?

Be sure to hit follow to see a real spooky story tous les jours (everyday for the unsophisticated among us)!

At this point, I would tell you to have a Merry Christmas, but I think a safe one where, you know, you don’t get dragged to hell by Krampus, is best. 

[bronte-deserves-better]

For the 'send me a character' thing - Bronte, Terik, Fintan, Kenric, and Oralie (you don't have to do all of them).

I already did Oralie in another ask, but are you kidding me? I’d love to ramble about my headcanons for side characters any day! (Also I love that everyone sent me Councillors/minor characters because it really says a lot about my reputation as a blogger.)

Let’s start with Terik because I have the least about him and I want to save the rambling for a bit later.

Sexuality Headcanon: Gay

Gender Headcanon: nonbinary but mostly masc-presenting and considers himself at least partly male (demiboy, possibly.)

A ship I have with said character: I honestly don’t really ship him with anyone right now but he deserves a boyfriend so I’m open to suggestion.

A BROTP I have with said character: I really like the idea of him being friends with either Kenric (extra angst!) or Bronte (rare ability solidarity, much?).

A NOTP I have with said character: Any straight ship.

A random headcanon: Prefers tea over coffee. He and Bronte get in debates about it regularly.

General Opinion over said character: Great character overall and I wish we had gotten to see more of him in the series, he kinda disappeared after the first few books and it made me sad.

---

Kenric next because I love him.

Sexuality Headcanon: Bisexual.

Gender Headcanon: cis man

A ship I have with said character: Kenric/Oralie because I love to suffer.

A BROTP I have with said character: Like I said, Kenric and Terik should be friends because it would be cool and they seem like they would get along.

A NOTP I have with said character: Kenric x death or Kenric x everblaze. (He didn’t deserve to die change my mind.)

A random headcanon: Oldest sibling and used to being responsible for a whole gaggle of children.

General Opinion over said character: Would die for him, cried when he died, I wish he had been around for more than three books.

---

Now Fintan because he’s my disaster son.

Sexuality Headcanon: Also bisexual.

Gender Headcanon: cis man

A ship I have with said character: I don’t really ship either of the pyren bros with anyone tbh.

A BROTP I have with said character: Well I mean, I hc him as literally Bronte’s brother...but I also have an oc who becomes one of his best friends, named Thea.

A NOTP I have with said character: Fintan x Bronte for obvious reasons (it’s apparently a thing over on instagram?? No hate on people who do ship this, but given that I headcanon them as brothers I personally find it icky.)

A random headcanon: Can’t sit in chairs properly.

General Opinion over said character: He’s my disaster son and I’d die for him but I do acknowledge that he did a bunch of awful things.

---

And finally Bronte because he’s my favorite.

Sexuality Headcanon: Aroace

Gender Headcanon: trans ftm, he and Oralie are trans man/trans woman solidarity.

A ship I have with said character: I don’t ship him with anyone.

A BROTP I have with said character: To reiterate what I said on the Oralie ask: Bronte and Oralie are bffs you can’t change my mind.

A NOTP I have with said character: I honestly can’t decide which I ship least of the ships I’ve seen or been sent: Bronte x Fintan, Bronte x Alina, or Bronte x Vespera.

A random headcanon: Wears all black on a daily basis.

General Opinion over said character: *inhales* you all probably know that I love Bronte by now but I love Bronte. I don’t like everything Shannon did with his ‘redemption arc’, he needed to fully acknowledge that what he did in books 1-3 was wrong, but I still adore him. Implied to be repressing trauma even in canon, has some serious issues, and needs a hug. I love him.

(Send me a character and I’ll answer the following questions.)

[theuniversitychallengereview]

UC 49.28-32, QF Mega-Blog

What better thing to do, when forced to stay at home during the outbreak of a global virus that threatens not only millions of peoples lives but the very fabric of society as we know it, than catch up on watching and writing about the quiz show whose previous four episodes you had missed for various reasons, all of which seem frivolous following the outbreak of a global virus that threatens not only millions of peoples lives but the very fabric of society as we know it. Also, I kept seeing that Twitter meme about Shakespeare having written King Lear during the plague quarantine and fancied getting involved.

Its also the only sport of any kind that can be found on TV for love nor money (apart from the Turkish Superlig, which for some reason thinks itself immune). Maybe the Premier League should try out pre-recording like the Challenge, for precisely this kind of situation. Just get Salah, De Bruyne and all the boys together for a few kick-abouts, film a few goals and slide tackles and all that, and keep the footage for a rainy day. Or send a camera round Serena Williams’ gaff, log a couple of serves and forehands, cut it together - BOOM, there’s your Wimbledon final if Greta decides tennis is too carbon-heavy.

All I’m saying is, you’ve never seen University Challenge postponed due to a  global virus that threatens not only millions of peoples lives but the very fabric of society as we know it (although, as I write this I’m realising that the recordings of next years show will probably be delayed. Shit)

Episode 28 - Courtauld vs Imperial

Whenever I’ve not written one of these for a while it takes me a while to figure out what the heck it is I’m doing. Like, what do I usually write about? How have I managed to put out 118 of these? Do you reckon Shakespeare felt the same way when he was between plays - would he sit down with his quill and parchment and wonder aloud, ‘What the fuck is an iambic pentameter and how do I find one?’ (If I 1: knew the answer to that question; and 2: could be bothered, then I would have written that question in iambic pentameter, but you should know by now you’re dealing with one lazy blogger).

Anyway, Imperial had blazed aside all before them in the opening two rounds, thanks in no small part to the efforts of mercurial star Brandon, whose laconic style has drawn unfair criticism as arrogance. Thats how it always goes with the social media juries though - if a contestant displays any level of confidence above the bare minimum then they’re too big for their boots. But then if they grin and seem really happy when they get an answer that’ll probably annoy some people too. Almost as if they can’t win and there’s no point playing this game to appease the kind of people who get annoyed at kids on quiz shows.

The Courtauld side fall into the grinning category. They all four of them seem genuinely delighted to be on the show, and even more delighted that they managed to win two matches and make it to the quarter finals - their second round defeat of Glasgow a particularly impressive performance.

Glasgow were a good side, but Imperial are a different gravy, and Courtauld, after a neg on the opening question, seem like rabbits in the headlights (when they should have been at home, the whole country’s on lockdown, dammit Peter!) as Brandon sycthes down question after question, fearful to fall further below zero in case they can’t make it back up again.

For a while it looked as though that might end up being the case, as Imperial pranced into a hundred point lead within six questions, but Haigh finally stopped the rot, and Courtauld would add some respectability over the rest of the episode. In truth, it was clear from that point onwards that the race had been run, and Brandon seemed to relax from thereon out, and his teammates picked up the slack, though that seems like doing them a disservice, as they all seem very accomplished in their own right.

Final Score: Courtauld 75 - 240 Imperial

Episode 29 - Trinity, Cam vs Corpus Christi, Cam

Right, on to the next, and for Ep 29 we had our first Cam-Cam slugfest of the series. There had already been plenty of Ox-Cam derbies of course, you can’t move for them half the time, but no inter-collegiate battles thus far. Whoever won would become the first side to reach the semi-finals, with Trinity having beaten Manchester and Corpus Wolfson in their respective opening quarter final clashes.

Stewart, who doesn’t look like he would be out of place in the Byzantine Empire, gets Corpus off the mark with ‘Byzantine’ (I have basically no idea what this comparison would actually mean, or if it is in fact a sick burn, but I feel like he has an old-timey medieval look about him and felt like this should not go unaddressed. Like, he wouldn’t look strange wearing a tunic, would he?).

Russell and Wang increased the lead before Hughes got Trinity into the game with what looked like a semi-guess on a maths-y starter. Paxman, who clearly enjoys toying with the Corpus captain, then gets Wang for the second match in a row with a double serving of Boomer sarcasm. When Wang rather dejectedly says, ‘Its not Isaac Asimov, is it? No’, the quizmaster further interrogates him as to whether he was giving a question or an answer, much in the way an irritating geography teacher would parrot ‘Of course you can go to the toilet, the question is whether or not you may’. He’s right though, and Corpus gobble up two more bonuses on sci-fi writers.

Another starter went to Stewart, and a first for Gunasekera. Corpus were starting to look comfortable, but a brief flurry from Trinity around the music round looks like it might bring them into contention. But that’s all it was, the briefest of flurries, like that random day in April or October where someone says ‘is it snowing?, and you all look out of the window, but before you can actually work out if it really was snowing or if it was some sort of white rain, its stopped.

Corpus stretch their legs now, and find themselves beyond two hundred points before Trinity turn themselves back on, which they eventually do, building up to a not-disgraceful 80 before the gong.

Final Score: Trinity 80 - 245 Corpus

Episode 30 - Manchester vs Wolfson, Ox

Because I do this on Tumblr, one of the most annoying things about doing this (and I know its dumb), and something that I think might subconsciously play into me not doing these more regularly, is that when I try and add the pictures of the teams to the post it quite often takes ages and sometimes causes the page to freeze so that I can’t save/post it. This problem is exacerbated when there are multiple episodes to get through, which makes it one of those snowballing problems that only gets worse the longer you leave it - like when you put off repying to an email until it becomes almost a monolithic entitiy in your mind. 

It only takes a few minutes to fix this - you copy and paste the text and then add the images in a different window (though there is another annoying thing where the hashtags don’t save anyway, so you have to retype the hashtags - and for some reason I always add loads of hashtags, including #JeremyPaxman - which also feels like it takes an epoch) - but its one of those few minute periods that feel like fifteen minutes. So basically, what I’m saying is that I can’t be assed adding the pictures to the post at this point. I might add them later, but for now you’re just getting words, so, so many rambling words. 

Manchester are back in the last eight for the first time in donkeys, but they stand on the precipice following a trouncing by Trinity in their QF-opener (I’ve already mentioned this in the last review, which normally wouldn’t matter, but since its directly above this one then it might seem a bit repetitive, but I don’t know if I can rely on your having remembered). Wolfson were likewise (likewise were? Are both okay) baeten by Corpus Christi (which is also referenced above, sorry) so this one was an ELIMINATOR!

Neither side seemed to realise this from the off though (I say though too much don’t I? If I had more time I’d probably edit a few down. But I’m doing a 5-episode mega-post so I don’t, though. Shit. Actually, that one was on purpose winky face) and sort of stumble through the first few questions with some atrocious work on the bonuses. 

Green thought he’d pulled a great answer out of the bag to kick start the match, but Fanny Burney Fanny Burnett is not, and Paxo decries the crowd for being amused at how close Green had come (they having let out a collective ‘oooh’, much in the same way their footballing equivalent may have done at a smashed crossbar). 

Even Jones, so electric in her previous appearances, was a bit slow off the mark tonight. On one occasion she even overruled her teammates conferred and agreed upon answer at the last moment, giving her own guess which they had dismissed, but fortunately for her they had both been wrong, so she did not look a fool.

Manchester were ahead, but couldn’t get far ahead. Wolfson were within touching distance, but couldn’t touch. Not until the very end that is. Caple took the final starter to draw them level and the gong sounded before th first bonus could be asked. DEADLOCK.

A #DEADLOCKELIMINATOR no less.

Paxman explains that a Neg on this question would hand victory to the other team without them lifting a buzzer-finger. He starts reading, no one buzzes. He continues to read. Everyone continues to not buzz. He carries on r- BUZZ. 

Manchester Rogers. Three words left on Paxo’s lips. He better be right. Kaiser Wilhelm. He isn’t. Otto Von Bismarck. An easy mistake to make, says Paxo. 

I reckon Wolfson would have picked up the drop anyway, but you can’t be sure.

My fellow UC blog, jacksonlinewritings, says that its the first time a neg has lost a tiebreak since 2002/03. 

Final Score: Manchester 125 - 130 Wolfson.

Episode 31 - Durham vs Imperial.

I don’t know if this is the first time I’ve written about the same team twice in one post before, but it may well be. Either way, you can (and probably already have) read everything I had to say about Imperial Brandon, my favourite contestant this series, further up this very page, so I don’t need to reiterate.

Durham’s Tams beats him to what I thought was a relatively easy starter on the Magna Carta (just spent a few minutes trying to come up with another word to rhyme with carta, thought it would be easy, but it was a bit harda). He gets the next one though (though) and his Captain Rich the third to give them the lead. Their opponents proved a tougher nut to crack than Courtauld though (though, and I’m not doing this on purpose. I’m just not removing them when I probably should be. They’re all coming up naturally. This is just how much I apparently use the word. If there are any others then please let me know) and cling on whenever Brandon threatens to zoom away.

Please forgive me for going on about Brandon, by the way. He’s just (I think ‘just’ is probably one, and probably ‘probably’ too) so captivating to watch. There were several times in this episode when I stopped watching the whole screen during a starter and focussed on him, expecting him to buzz in, which he duly did. Especially on the starters which are that bit more important, when Durham were (I need to do something about my tenses too, they’re all over the shop) threatening to make a comeback, you could feel certain that he was going to get it.

When the game has been won, he relaxes, so his personal scores haven’t been as high as those of others in past series, but he hasn’t needed to get more than he has done, so why would he bother? I expect if a team were to push Imperial close over a whole match then he’d easily post double figures.

Imperial join Corpus Christi in the semis. Durham live to fight another day.

Final Score: Durham 115 - 185 Imperial

Episode 32 - Jesus, Ox vs Courtauld

Phew! I’ve never written four in a night before. That was quite something. Wait, whats that, I have another one to go? Okay, lets do this - an advance warning, this one will probably (probably! Why do I feel the need to never be absolute about anything. I know for certain that this will be very short, so why must I try and placate some imaginary reader who might scold me for its being so?) be very short.

So, another ELIMINATOR. Courtauld were my favourite team of the series, but I harboured little hope for them, after such a crushing defeat by Imperial last time out, and Jesus were quick to crush what little I had left. Lucy Clarke, who absolutely relishes a buzz on the opening starter of a match, came in with an early buzz, as is her wont, and fortunately for the Oxonians she was right this time. She got the next one too, and Jesus were 45 up.

Three in a row for Courtauld captain Prance, who looks shocked every time he gets a starter correct, despite the fact that when he got the third of this hat-trick, he had quite clearly proved to himself that he knows how to answer starter questions by the fact that (the fact that Ducks, Newburyport) he had got the previous two. They were ahead now. Dare I dream?

No, I daren’t. Jesus quickly stole it back, and did not let it go. Courtauld stayed fairly close, but could never again broach the gap, struggling on the bonus questions whenever they got in. Perhaps on another night they might have stood a better chance (with a bonus set on collage art, which Paxman reckoned they would have knocked out of the park, going to Jesus), but tonight (its not tonight at all is it, not for me and not for you) was not their night.

And breathe...

Final Score: Jesus, Ox 135 - 90 Courtauld

If you’ve stuck with me through all of this, I’m frankly amazed. Thank you, and if you need something to do during self-isolation, there are like 6 whole series of the Challenge on YouTube. I haven’t reviewed them all, but thats probably for the best though.

[inceptionbigbang]

The complete list of fics available for the Inception Big Bang 2019 is here!

Works are numbered, without the authors names to preserve the mystery. Artists, when you're ready to make your decision send us an email or a tumblr message with your top 3 choices. Fics will be claimed depending on availability, on a first come first served basis. 

On this round we will only assign one artist per fic. Artists that wish to claim a second fic, or that wish to work on a fic that has already been claimed should check out the second round, on July 2nd. All fics will be open for all.

Without further delay, here they are:

1. Arthur and Eames meet as trust fund teens in a Manhattan private school. Eames is a new student who's just moved from overseas, and him and Arthur hit it off immediately. Friendship turns to a whirlwind summer romance, until Eames is forced to move back to London. They meet again many years later when Arthur has to kidnap Eames for a job.

Arthur/Eames

Teen and Up

No content warnings apply

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2. A songfic featuring Aubrey by Bread, studying Arthur and Eames and what their relationship might have been like before the Fischer job. The characters aren't going to resemble fanon (Arthur's closed-off persona and Eames's flirtiness). I'm going to try to expand more on what Nolan gave us during the movie (Arthur's straightforwardness and Eames's aloof/cold personality). Basically, Eames is distant and Arthur chases.

Arthur/Eames

Side: Dom/Mal

Teen and Up - Mature

Graphic Depictions of Violence*

* There might be a torture scene, but I'm still debating on whether or not I want that in the story.

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3. A fic about arthur and eames and their first meeting in the military to all their other meetings in the criminal underworld of dreamshare. not that long, i'm aiming for 2.5k or maybe 3k if i can. i wanted to focus on their totems and how eames could use forging as a totem (because if he can't forge then he must be awake, right?) but he has a totem just in case. and arthur has a totem (the die from the movie) that he uses a lot more except when he happens to be taken and tortured for some secret or another and the only thing that convinces his brain that he isn't dreaming is the way eames stands when arthur aims a gun at him? if that makes sense....

here's a little bit of what i have written so far:

he’s more surprised at the lack of surprise he feels when eames digs a poker chip out of his desk. its blood red with gold and white accents, worth five thousand dollars at the particular casino it came from, disregarding the fact that it was arthur’s shitty first and last attempt at a real world forge after he participated in a poker game eames held on base many years ago and realized half the chips in the set were fake, pocketing a one thousand dollar chip to use as a reference.

“our totems match,” eames murmurs, flipping the chip over his knuckles with a concentration a bit too intense for something he could do in his sleep (ha).

“match how?” he asks, sipping a glass of orange juice, freshly squeezed because eames wanted to use the electric juicer. he's tempted to pull out his die from his pocket and roll to see it land on five, even though he knows this isn’t a dream.

“i have something that you made, and you have something i made. also, there’s some significance with the number five.”

Arthur/Eames

Side: Dom/Mal

Mature

Graphic Depictions of Violence*

*I put the Graphic Depictions of Violence just to be safe but i think it's less than what's shown in the film? because it's supposed to be like an after-torture scene where arthur is like "ouch i'm super hurt and drugged and don't know if i'm dreaming" but again i don't think it's any more graphic than the film at least. might keep that tag just to be safe though idk

.

4. When dreamshare is first developed, no one has totems. They've always gone into dreams for short amounts of time and always with another person, so there's no chance of someone forgetting their reality. Mal's friend Pip has consistently been pushing the boundaries of dreaming, and one day she decides to go a later deeper without Mal. When Mal wakes up, she realizes that Pip is still asleep and she has to go down after her where she basically incepts Pip with the idea of totems.

Gen

General audiences

No content warnings apply

.

5. There was a small lake behind Arthur's house. The following night, he sat at its edge and stared at the moon's reflection in the water.

See something you like?

Arthur turned. A man was sitting next to him.

"Hello," Arthur said. "Thank you for helping me get home last night."

The moon smiled. "How did you know it was me?"

Arthur rolled his eyes. He picked up a pebble and tossed it into the water, watching the waves ripple the reflection. "How can you be here and there at the same time?"

The moon leaned back on his elbows and stared up at the sky. "Same way I can be in the lake and the sky at the same time."

Arthur frowned. "That's not the same thing. The lake's just reflecting the light from the moon. From you."

The moon turned to smile brightly at him. "Well aren't you a smart one, hm?" He leaned in and whispered, "I'm a reflection, too. We all are, at the end of the day."

Arthur thought about that. It didn't make sense, but that didn't mean it was wrong. He looked up at the moon in the sky, then at the moon sitting next to him.

"My name's Arthur," he offered. "What's your name?"

The moon looked at him strangely. "Eames. You can call me Eames."

"I'm going to be an astronaut, Eames," Arthur said. "Then I can come and visit you in the sky."

Eames smiled again. Arthur wouldn't have thought the moon liked to smile. "I would like that very much," Eames said. "Very much, indeed."

Arthur/Eames

General – Teen and Up

No content Warnings Apply

This fic is a canon AU and will ultimately include the events in Inception.

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6. Eames on vacation after inception and stumbling upon Arthur; floppy haired, tanned and just completely the opposite of how Eames has ever seen him before.

Hawaii looked good on him, no better than good...

Arthur/Eames

Teen and Up – Mature

No content warnings apply

.

7. It’s a follow up story to Cat Person.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/11040948

First story summary:

Arthur misses his cat and would very much like to get another. He gets Eames instead.

Arthur/Eames

Teen and Up

No content warnings apply

Set in the Star Trek Universe

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8. This is an academia AU! Arthur is a struggling young professor trying to find his niche, Eames is the mysterious colleague he keeps (inadvisedly!) hooking up with at conferences.

Arthur/Eames

Mature

No content warnings apply

.

9. When Eames first moved to America, he was at a loss for things to cook. He wasn’t used to the supermarkets and ingredients he needed were expensive. So he Googled food bloggers and found Arthur’s blog. The weekly updates keep Eames going in his boring office job. It takes him a few months before he gets the courage to comment but it’s all downhill from there. Eames is lost with Arthur’s sardonic commentary and when Arthur’s next recipe is one Eames requested, he knows he’s in bad.

Arthur/Eames

Teen and Up – Mature

No content warnings apply

.

10. Arthur is a flight attendant. Eames is a passenger.

Arthur/Eames

Teen and Up – Mature

No content warnings apply

.

11. Haunted House AU. Arthur’s working at a popular horror maze escape place to make some extra money over the summer. It’s far from his dream job—making minimum wage crouching behind dark trap doors and chasing random couples and tourists—but at least he gets to vent his frustrations about his coworkers (who are, frankly, driving him insane day by day) by literally screaming at customers. Then there’s Eames, who finds haunted houses boring, overrated, and not the least bit frightening, but is willing to humor a friend (Ariadne?) by accompanying her. But an encounter (and some painfully obvious flirting) with the cute guy under the ghoul mask is enough to make him want to come back again, and again, and again—

FEATURING:

- Cobb as the owner/boss and the only guy who actually takes his job seriously. He probably squints a lot because sunlight genuinely hurts his eyes lmao - Mal as his wife, who used to be an actress but left to start a business with Dom. Super sweet and kind of protective of their employees. Plays the main ghost. She’s terrifying. - Yusuf doing their costumes and makeup!!!!

- Arthur getting the job in the first place because his screams are so full of rage (let! him! rest!)

- Eames blowing all his cash on haunted house admission fees so he can flirt with Arthur (who plays different roles on different days, maybe? but Eames can always recognize him, even under the masks/makeup)

- he’s not trying to be creepy, he just wants to ask if he can see him outside of work/get his number—but something always goes wrong before he can

- Arthur being frustrated because Eames is a) distracting, and b) not easily scared, which doesn’t look good for his job. And it annoys him because he has a track record of being able to freak out anyone. He takes it upon himself to make him scream at least once (I haven’t decided how he does, but he does, eventually. Eames probably jokes about screaming with something other than fear, but i am too babey to write any sexytimes)

- maybe??? mild h/c?? Dumbass Drunk College Students coming in all wanting to prove to their friends that they're the Alpha Male, picking a fight and being super violent/rowdy/destructive, + arthur getting hurt/generally kind of shaken up; that’s the first night he lets eames really talk to him outside of the job, maybe even lets him take him home (i dont know if im including this scene for sure but..perhaps)

- Ariadne getting them banned from the haunted house after reflexively slapping Arthur in the face with a rubber snake (Cobb takes the ‘no touching the actors’ rule seriously—especially after what happened^). Eames thinks he’s lost his chance for good, but Arthur finds him outside and finally makes the first move :)

Arthur/Eames

General – Teen and Up

No content warnings apply

.

12. Arthur is in love with Eames, and he's pretty sure Eames is at least interested in him back. Only problem? Arthur is ace, and not at all sure how Eames is going to react to that. But Arthur's going to talk to him about it, because the alternative is to lose even his friendship with the forger, and that's just not on.

Only the team is also determined to set the two of them up. Will that end up being a wrecking ball to Arthur's fragile attempts at making things work with Eames?

STORY OUTLINE:

Arthur is ace, and no one knows. When Eames invites Arthur to join him for Christmas, Arthur panics and says no - and spends the whole of Christmas regretting it. The team comes back from Christmas break, and everything is awkward. Arthur knows he has to say something or ruin his relationship with Eames forever, and he's going to do that at the New Year's party where Eames will hopefully be in a good enough

But unbeknownst to him, he's not the only one who's realized something needs to happen. Cobb, Ariadne and Yusuf agree that an intervention is in order. And when better to set their two friends up than at New Years? Get them kissing and surely the tension between them will resolve itself.

What could possibly go wrong?

At the New Year's party, Ariadne suggests playing a game of spin the bottle. Arthur is less than enthused, but Cobb and Yusuf both back up the idea. They play a few rounds before it lands on Eames, whom Ariadne dares to make out with Arthur.

There's an awkward beat before Eames moves to do it. Arthur reacts by freezing and shying away physically. Eames takes this a rejection and leaves the room. Arthur sits there, frozen, and then leaves too.

He goes to the bathroom and breaks down, blaming himself for being so stupid and backwards. Eames hears him, and comes in and comforts him. Once Eames realizes what the problem is - that Arthur is ace - he promises Arthur that it doesn't matter to him, he just wants to be close to him. Cue happy end credits.

Arthur/Eames

General

No content warnings apply

.

13. Arthur learned a long time ago that he was special, and no else could see the strings.

Or, ‘everything is still the same, but Arthur can see Red Strings of Fate’ AU.

There are moments when Arthur thinks he needs to tell Eames about the strings. Owes him the truth, he thinks, Eames deserves to know. Other times – well.

Eames knows enough, and he has secrets of his own. Arthur is allowed this one.

Maybe someday it will come up on Sunday brunch, or something.

“Oh yeah, by the way, I can see red strings that I’m pretty sure are tied up to being literal soulmates and we have one. Get it? Tied up hehe. Anyway, no pressure or anything. Love the sex.”

Yeah, Arthur, that would go lovely.

Arthur/Eames

Teen and Up – Mature

No content warnings apply

.

Ok folks, the next fics are or may eventually get explicit. Minors, we love you guys! Stay safe. Don’t claim them.

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14. Arthur has a goldfish which, long story short, he has convinced himself he only needs to keep alive to prove he is not a hot mess. Except now it’s not looking so good and has a weird sore on its side and he doesn’t know what to do but he can’t just let it DIE. So he takes it to the vet and is scoffed at and told it is a feeder goldfish, they cost less than a dollar, just get a new one.

Two vets later and he’s at the end of his rope when he meets Dr Eames, whose dog is introduced as his PA and goes on all his rounds with him. Dr Eames doesn’t even question it, just starts the exam and tells Arthur to pet the dog and start at the beginning while he works.

Arthur/Eames

Teen and Up – Mature - Explicit

No Content warnings apply*

* Discussions of parental death.

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15. Eames is working with Arthur the first time in a long while, only now it seems that he has a huge crush on Arthur. He doesn't know how else to get rid of the crush and he really can't concentrate on the job when he's thinking about Arthur all the time, so he asks Arthur to have sex with him, to get the crush out of his system. Arthur agrees surprisingly easily and sex is great, but afterwards Arthur doesn't seem happy and Eames' crush is worse than ever. The more Eames tries to get rid of his crush, the more it sticks, and the less Arthur is talking to him. After the job, Eames has some time to think and he realises that maybe neither of them really wanted for him to get over Arthur. He goes to see Arthur to talk to him about it, but they end up kissing and stuff as well.

Arthur/Eames

Mature – Explicit

No content warnings apply

.

16. Summary: Eames hasn't seen Arthur in almost four years.

Pseudo- Winter Soldier AU.

--

There's no response from Arthur, no recognition in his eyes. No banter, no teasing – a coldness that would leave any lesser man with severe frostbite.

"... Arthur?" The words sound so raw, so gutted in Eames’ mouth. "Are you-" are you alive? Are you dead? Am I dreaming?

He reaches for his poker chip.

But before he can trace the ridges for the familiar grooves, a shot rings out loud like a crack of lightning.

And the last thing that Eames sees is Arthur and how he always remembers him: in his whip-black suit and a smoking gun in his hand.

Bang.

A single bullet tears through Eames' temples, and he is ripped open, pain lighting every nerve in his body like a pinball machine – and he prays to god that this is merely a dream so he can finally wake up.

Arthur/Eames

Mature – Explicit

No content warnings apply

.

17. “Taxiing an injured delivery boy around the neighbourhood to help him complete his remaining orders had not been a contender on Eames’ list of potential scenarios for the night. Instead of the morose teenager bleeding onto the synthetic leather of the passenger seat, and the short stack of pizza boxes sliding to and fro across the backseat, the Brit had rather imagined his rental car would serve far more nefarious purposes tonight." -- Essentially, Pizza Delivery Porn Guy Crack A/E AU. Aim: comedic tone with bowchikkawowow.

*Arthur isn't the teenager. He is a customer who ordered pizza.

Arthur/Eames

Mature – Explicit

No content warnings apply*

*There is mention of a traffic accident - no detail, but it might not be someone's cup of tea. Also, not yet at the sexual scene so don't know whether I'll stop at M or go to E.

.

18. In the court of the vampire supreme Saito, ambitious human noblemen Eames and Arthur battle for the coveted position of favorite bestower. Winner takes life everlasting.

Arthur/Saito

Side: Arthur/Eames

Arthur/Dom Cobb

Eames/Saito

Explicit

Graphic Depictions of Violence

Bloodplay, Extreme Sadomasochism. Possible Necrophilia

.

19. Arthur is an undercover narcotics officer posing as a high school senior. Eames is his teacher, who is taken with Arthur and who feels terrible for lusting after a student. Arthur takes down the bad guys, saves Eames' life, then they smash (after Eames finds out he's a fully grown adult person).

Arthur/Eames

Explicit

No content warnings apply*

*Eames is (shamefully) interested in Arthur, who he thinks is 18 and also his student.

.

20. Pre-movie: Dom and Mal are a dominant/dominant couple who want to find a sub they can play with together. Arthur is interested in trying to fill that role.

Arthur/Dom Cobb/Mal Cobb

Mature – Explicit

No content warnings apply*

*BDSM, bondage, dominance/submission, spanking/flogging, roleplay.

[buttercupsfrocks]

Hey, Tumblr, did you know that there’s an Interior Design Police as well as a Fashion Police?! Strangely neither did I until I stumbled upon a listicle entitled 75 Things No Woman Over 50 Should Own on the delusionarily titled bestlifeonline.com. There, along with the usual arbitrary selections of sartorial crimes against humanity, (tracky bottoms, skinny scarves, bolero jackets), were the following:-

Tapestries. (What, even if one designed and made them oneself, comme ça?)

Neon signs.

A piggy bank.

Novelty salt and pepper shakers, (Oops!)

A vinyl tablecloth. 

Novelty pillows. (Dang!)

A rolodex.

Indoor wicker furniture.

A lava lamp. (Who doesn’t love a lava lamp? Not this fully paid up B52s fan, I can assure you).

A dish of seashells.  (D’oh! Missed the memo again).

Framed autographs (yep, got one of those too).

Talk about random. And there’s more; much more. It appears I should have jettisoned my giant pin boards at least twenty years ago, along with my magnifying mirror, stuffed animals, coloured pens, fairy lights, frameless posters, cheap mismatched silverware, decorations based on cartoon characters, mismatched towels, striped wallpaper, tassels, and elaborate keychains. (They’d have a blue fit if they knew that one of my keychains has both a twiddly fake key and a tassel on it). In fact the entire website is little more than an endless litany of stuff you should feel ashamed about owning, wearing, and in some cases, even saying. Like I totes can’t say “totes” – me, a writer, who loves slang so much she has at least a bookshelf-and-a-half dedicated to it. I also can’t say: “OMG”,  “humblebrag”, “talk to the hand”, “fauxpology”, “sorry not sorry”, “I can’t even”, “as if”, “sus”, (a term in common UK parlance among people of all age groups for the duration of my lifetime), “ship”, (fuck you; Spuffy forever), and…wait for it…”adulting”, even though I plainly know a good deal more about doing it than the embarrassingly embarassable twelve year old ninny who probably wrote the article.

And still on the subjects of lists that give me the right royal pip, there’s thelist.com. 

“If you are familiar with Dr Martens, you are too old to wear them.” 

I’m sorry, what now?! 

“We know those Crocs and orthopaedic shoes are super comfy, but they're not doing you any favours. There's something to be said for smart, sensible footwear, but you don't have to sacrifice your style and give away your age just to save yourself a few blisters”.

Unless of course you suffer with any kind of condition that dictates you  have to wear fugly orthopaedic footwear, as numerous older people do. And blisters are the least of my problems, bub. Believe me the bunting and party hats come out when I can persuade anything approaching normal-looking footwear to accommodate my orthotics. Doc Martens are one of the precious few options available to me. I am, incidentally, feeling especially “salty” (another word my age precludes me from using), about this right now as, having discovered I can sometimes wear sandals with a moulded orthotic-like sole, these Office sandals... 

...which I genuinely love and desperately wanted to rock this summer, damn near crippled me when I tried them on. 

For all the blather about older women being able to cast off the shackles of convention and wear what we please, (or whatever the expert du jour thinks is within reason), the same unspoken assumptions that prevail in mainstream ladymedia are present in spades on these websites. Nobody reading could possibly be fat, or if they are they’re assumed to be fighting their poor beleaguered bodies unto death. The only chub ever alluded to, (albeit soto voce), is “middle aged spread”, but only the vestigial kind that can be miraculously rendered  invisible by the belting of an “unflattering” oversized garment in the middle. 

“Show off your curves by adding a cute belt to that dress or coat. It will accentuate your shape and let you still wear those comfortable items in your wardrobe without looking like you're wearing a muumuu.”

Never mind that I quite like wearing a muumuu, far from showing off my curves, belting any of my coats would make me look like the Albert Hall, which while undoubtably a Look, is not one I’m after.  

“Balance is important when it comes to crafting a stylish look. Wearing oversized clothing disrupts that delicate equilibrium and unintentionally ages you.”  

What. Ever. 

The hectoring never lets up. 

“There really is no such thing as grown up glitter when it comes to apparel, so it's best to accept that fact and avoid glittery tops, bottoms, and everything else!” 

“Dressing like the '80s or '90s can be fun for a party, but being attached to a trend from your youth can look tired and disconnected and therefore can make one age themselves.” 

“Large prints, especially on a tight clothing item like leggings, are an avoid-at-all-costs look. They are just too loud and aren't a piece that helps you look your best”

Among the ten items everyday.health.com bans me from wearing on account of my encroaching dotage are “too trendy denim”. Apparently I’m “not in my element” with it so my hard work was all for nought. Also verboten are oversized, overly decorated hobo bags, cheap unflattering underwear; (fat chance of finding cheap underwear in plus-sizes anyway though apparently I should do like the Sainted Gwyneth and wear Spanx under everything. Because she totally needs to and I so enjoy colic); and…wait for it…wait for it...  

...“loud accessories”. This includes, horror of horrors, plastic earrings, which apparently I forfeited the right to wear at 35. (Do they count vintage phenolic, bakelite, and lucite as plastic I wonder? Because if enough rich older women get dissuaded from wearing it I might actually be able to afford some instead of faking it). Instead I’m exhorted to make a... 

“Stunning Substitute: think quality and quantity. Limit yourself to one funky accessory per outfit – as long as it’s well-made. Think a leopard-print scarf, thin silver bangles or a gold clutch to dress up nice jeans and a simple top”. 

Yeah, no. And, by the way here’s a picture of Helen Mirren in quite the loudest plastic necklace I’ve ever seen which, as you can plainly see, ages her terribly. 

*snort*

Which brings me neatly to the subject of role models. Dame Helen comes up a lot. Here’s Harper’s Bazaar with some more:

“Pay close attention to the way women like Robin Wright, Julianne Moore, and Kristin Scott Thomas dress. And revel in the moment when you can justify shopping for labels like Céline, Calvin Klein, Jil Sander, and the Row — because not all sweaters are created equal. The Perfect Length (not too long, not Rihanna short), with the just-tantalizing-enough neckline, is more than worth the extra zeros”.  

Wow. So much nope to pick apart in just three sentences! 

Firstly, while I’m sure they’re all perfectly charming, I look nothing at all like any of these women, so why would I aspire to their style? Secondly, they have allllllll the extra zeros in their bank accounts while I have zero zeros. Thirdly, even if I could afford any of those labels, (a sweater from The Row costs well over a thousand quid by the way), why the love of little fluffy kittens would anyone think I want to dress like this?

I mean I know I like an oversized garment but I’m good with Monki, thanks. If that lot doesn’t say, “this was the only shit I could find to fit me”, I don’t know what does. And quite what the tiny, terminally haggard looking Olsen twins, who dreamed up the wretched label, would look like in any of this eye-bleedingly expensive folderol I shudder to think. You’d probably need to send in the fire brigade to find them in all that fabric, poor loves.

At its root shaming-as-entertainment is a tool for capitalism, both simple and complex. Feel mortified for owning something age inappropriate? Buy something new and more grown up, preferably at enormous expense. Or, if pay day’s too far off, invest in some garbage gossip rag and bitch about the state of those richer and more famous than you are. It’ll make you feel great for all of five minutes, then you can fill the emptiness that follows in its wake with some cheap fast fashion or cake. Even though cake is naughty and unclean and fast fashion is killing the environment; but hey that’s what diet books (kerching!) and gym memberships (kerching!) and ethical fashion, (with a cut-off size of 16), are for, right? 

Ironically, in yet another catalogue of grievous mistakes to make once you’re over forty, bestlifemyarse.com includes “neglecting your mental health” and “basing yourself-worth on what other people think”. But how the hell are women expected to do that under a constant barrage of opprobrium, not least since also included in the aforementioned list is “avoiding the scale”?

Tumblr, I put it to you that people are just as likely to buy stuff if they’re feeling good about themselves than if they’re feeling shite. I fucking love stuff but there has to be an alternative way to sell it that’s less damaging to our sanity and self esteem. That’s in part why fat women created their own media. But, the more it edges into the mainstream, the more it it puts the wind up advertisers and those who rely on their sponsorship. So now our message – the one about self acceptance and being able to live unrepentantly in the bodies we have – has been appropriated, de-fanged, and rebranded as “Body Positivity”, an ersatz movement intended to reassure average-sized women fretful they might be a little bit fat, with the added proviso, “as long as you’re healthy”, (i.e not fat). And while the net abounds with token examples of older lady bloggers granted the status of fashion maven, they’re all slender as reeds, and most of them are ex-models. Big fucking whoop. Meanwhile anyone of any age who is objectively fat is “promoting obesity” simply by expressing our personal style in public.

My collection of shells incidentally, includes some my mum brought me back from the Channel Islands when I was a child; a conch a friend dove for  in the Virgin Islands and presented me for my 19th birthday; several beauties that held pride of place in a late family friend’s study for decades; an abalone shell from New Zealand plucked from the beach by my Kiwi pal Di; a sand dollar from Ocean Beach in San Francisco given to me by my dear friend Jude who died of secondary breast cancer a few months before Jane did; some pebbles gathered with my friend Lesley in literal sub-zero temperatures on a completely deserted beach one not-so-flaming June up north, both of us in hysterics over the utter bleakness of it all, and a load more shells from the Pembrokeshire coast contributed by my friend Steve’s departed mum back in the 1980s. Even the bowl itself was given to me by Karen, whose parents found it in the attic of their new house and thought I might like it. It’s a veritable a lifetime in shells; a celebration of love and friendship spanning decades. In short it has meaning, which is a damned sight more than you can say for any of these wretched lists.

Rise above the buzzkill, Tumblr.

[salexectrian-heir]

Loki: Chapter 9

Pairing: Solavellan Rating: E* (not every chapter is E, most are rated T. Chapters containing explicit content will be marked with an asterisk*) Summary: Lavellan rescued a mischievious sphynx kitten outside her work who loves her dearly. But his destructive habits start to get out of hand when he steals her attractive neighbor’s underwear… repeatedly. [Previous Chapter]      [Read on AO3]

“Honestly, I think you should quit your job and be a chef, or one of those stay at home hipster-food bloggers that instagrams all their meals and gets sponsored by food industry monopolies.”

This earned her one of those rare and coveted chuckle-snorts she had grown attached to. She peered at him from over her shoulder where she stood in front of his kitchen sink, cleaning up the dishes of their--once again brilliant--grilled shrimp taco dinner. It had been over two weeks, since they had their first formal dinner together, since they slept together. A make-up of sorts for missing out on celebrating the new year. Naturally, the E.R. was filled with those who had made not so wise choices, blown off parts of their bodies with fireworks they should not have been setting off...and thus Anise was other was preoccupied. Solas had agreed to feed Loki for her while she was called away. So at least that spoiled brat got a new year’s kiss. Her heart fluttered when he met her gaze, lips pulling into a smirk where he sat lounging on his couch.

“There is only one problem,” he said, pouring them each another glass of wine from a fresh bottle. They had already killed one during dinner. “I don’t have an instagram.”

She shifted her weight and placed a hand on her hip. “Then how do you post all your mundane life updates?”

“Facebook?” He shrugged as she let out a mocking hiss of disapproval, “I don’t use it that often. Not much occurs in my life that demands a social media update.”

“Well, you should friend request me anyway so I can post random updates on your wall for you.”

Another tipsy chuckle and a smile that reached his eyes. “I’m sure you would.”

Dropping the towel she had been using to dry the counter, she made her way over to settle on the couch beside him. She swiped her glass from his extended hand and tucked her feet beneath her.

“What you don’t want to be connected?” she teased as he glanced down at his wine. “Are you still friends with an ex that would stalk me or something?”

His whole body went still.

“I was joking,” she playfully shoved him with her foot, and it brought a small smile back on his face.

“Joking as it were, you are...not entirely wrong.”

She stared at him expectantly. “Go on.”

“It’s complicated.”

He made to stand but she caught him by the elbow. He send a sideways glance towards her, a hint of apprehension in his eyes behind the mirth.

“Oh no, you don’t get out of that so easily.”

He sighed and brought his fingers to steeple over his flushed face. “My life revolves around my work."

“I know."

“Literally. My social circle, including my previous romantic relationships…” He straightened, his hands knotting together in his lap. “One more reason I was hesitant to get involved with you. I do not want to subject you, or anyone, to the chaos that is my life. My last relationship was a mistake. One I never should have made.”

“As they often are.”

“But because we work together... “ he exhaled sharply, “that’s not accurate. Because I work for her, I am still in frequent contact. It’s a bit a of a mess.”

She choked on her wine. “ You’ve slept with your boss, too ?”

Surprise rippled over his face at her outburst. “What?”

“Oh we’ll delve into my romantic disaster history in a minute. Please continue, you have a lot to unpack here.” She smiled behind her glass of wine, and nudged him again with her foot. “Go on, I want to hear this story.”

“Oh, no I would love to hear anything you have to say this point,” he turned to face her, tucking one leg beneath him, mirroring her position, “because what I’m about to say next will make everything worse.”

She opened her mouth and closed it again. She decided putting wine in it was the best course of action and so she drained her glass. “Nope, you gotta finish embarrassing yourself first. Then I’ll layout my baggage.”

“I warned you,” his mouth split into a chagrined smile as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “I got involved with the Chief Operating Officer.”

Anise gasped and immediately clasped a hand over her mouth, “The C.O.O.? Solas!”

“I was young and stupid and it lasted far longer than it should have. And of course, like all things doomed to fail, it got out. Her husband found out--”

“ Her husband!?”

“The CEO.”

“You’re playing with me right now.”

“No, I am being honest.” The humor left his voice. “It’ not even a subject we should be laughing over… but…” He drug a hand over his face, wiping  away the fragment of a smile from the moment before. “For once I am able to talk about it without hating myself, so that must count for something.”

Anise said aside her empty wine glass and scooted closer to him on the couch.

“Sorry I pried. I didn’t mean to open up things better left--”

“It’s okay. I should talk about these things.” He allowed her to take his hand in her own. “The point was that we are all connected on social media as well. I would like to just keep this new part of my life, my life with you , private. Something I don’t have to share with the world that demands every second of my existence.”

“Is this why you choose to live here, and commute to Arlathan?”

He nodded. “Obviously there were repercussions for our actions. I was demoted. She was suspended from her position. And that caused a lot of unrest in the company. She was admired by many. I was blamed for her downfall. And in a way, I am directly responsible.”

“What were you before a rep?”

“I worked in the labs. It’s where my true talent lies.” He shrugged. “But my clearances have been revoked and I was repurposed, as was she. Apparently we were still valuable enough to the company to be tethered and leashed for the last five years. Or perhaps it is a punishment.”

“Why don’t you just quit?” When he didn’t say anything she felt the need to add, “I’m being serious, Solas. If they’re treating you this badly, and it makes you this unhappy, walk away .”

“Could you walk away from your job after a major mistake knowing you might be able to fix , or make a difference?

Her heart dropped into her stomach. “No. I couldn’t.”

“Yes, the company itself is corrupt but the medicine they create saves lives. I used to be a part of that process.” He squeezed her hand. “I created this mess. My pride won’t just let me walk away from it.”

He may be a stubborn fool, but now he’s my stubborn fool.

“I want you to know that I’ll support you--no matter what you stubbornly choose to do.”

“You may regret that.”

A brief moment of silence enveloped them, each lost in their own thoughts.

“I also, have made some… less than wise decisions. And that is saying it nicely.” His thumb began idly tracing designs on the back of her hand as she spoke, and it gave her courage.

Here goes nothing.

She took a deep breath. “I was engaged, once.”

He sat up a little straighter, giving her his full attention. “You were?”

“Yeah,” with her free hand she tucked a strand of loose hair behind her ear, “clearly didn’t end well.”

“Otherwise we wouldn’t be here.”

They shared a quiet laugh. “Hah, exactly.”

“Was it to your boss…?”

“Oh creators, no.” she shook her head vehemently. “A man from my clan. Arranged marriage type thing.” He stared at her sympathetically. “We wanted to start a family... but I…. we had a falling out and he cheated, I didn’t handle it well, I decided to go to med school instead, something that would take a long time and basically give me an excuse to never go home and...”

Face reality. Face the loss of a child, of a family. Too much, too painful. Change the subject, this is one for another time.

“The boss story though, that was more recent.” She changed the subject, adjusting her legs so she was sitting cross legged.  “ I got involved with one of the attendings when I was just starting out as an intern. Not my brightest moment. It was messy, and I quickly realized he was entangled with many other people, and not just me. It was a shock but once I figured it out I ended my part in it.”

If he noticed the abrupt topic switch, he made no comment. “Which attending did you sleep with?”

She cocked her head to the side. “Do you think you know him?”

“I might,” he gave a small smile.

“Anders is a remarkable doctor. I swear the entirety of his personal life puts your sleeping with your boss story to shame.”

That made Solas laugh, a real one this time. “I do know him.”

Anise blanched. “Oh, gods.”

Solas’ mouth curved into a teasing smile as one brow arched. “I’m surprised to hear the hospital staff fraternize so… frequently.”

“We’re not supposed to, but when you spend a sixteen hour high stress shift literally inside someone together...well…” she gestured with her free hand. “It happens. It’s a cesspool honestly. Every week I’m trying to figure out who’s sleeping with who so I don’t step on toes or accidentally out a relationship. It’s tiring.”

“I can imagine. No wonder you always look so wiped when you come home, avoiding all those bleeding hearts.” He leaned forward and pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead. “Admirable.”

She shoved him with her shoulder, a blush beginning to color her cheeks. “Stop.”

Leaning his elbow on the back of the couch, he propped his head up with his hand. “I just divulged a secret that would have sent any sensible person running from my apartment. And yet, you’re still here.”

“I pretend to have my life together, but it’s a mess.” A soft smile formed on her lips. “And yet you keep inviting me back.”

He gave a small shake of his head before he reached for her face, cupping her jaw in the palm of his hand as he leaned towards her. “As is mine, and yet you keep staying.”

His lips brushed her own.  She unfurled her limbs and slid her arms around his neck, pulling him gently down over her on the couch. He shifted to lay between her legs that wrapped around his hips once he had settled.

Pressing her mouth to his she whispered, “I never claimed to be sensible.” His tongue darted between her lips, coaxing a moan from her. “I don’t plan on starting to be now, either.”

[herdeepesthoughtsblog]

Life Lately

Its the last Sunday for the month of February! And it only means one thing. Another entry post for my The Sunday Currently! Can you believe it? We’re on to Vol. 5! Yey!

So it kinda feel odd that 27 days have passed just like that. There are many things that happened, at least for me, in my life. And, I want to share my thoughts about current events worldwide. I think I forgot to write it out earlier when I do my morning pages. So yeah, here I am, I’ll be rambling on and on about whatever thoughts cross my mind. Bear with me!

CURRENTLY

READING: A blog post. This is from my favorite kdrama blogger, @kfangurl. Let me share it with you. Here’s a link to the current post I’m reading. This is the perfect blog to go if you want to see some solid KDrama reviews, ask questions about fangirling and more. Hit the follow and subscribe button to send some loves!

WRITING: This TSC and also outlining my due article for The Finance Boost site.

LISTENING: The perfect music for when you’re typing on laptop and spewing random thoughts whilst oversharing what’s going on in your life: 

Easy by Camila Cabello 

I mean, the lyrics are so damn good! What an eargasm. It just hits you right into your heart! I love love love it, esp this one that goes:

All I know is you, heal me when I'm broken Heal me when I'm broken, oh All I know is you, saved me and you know it Saved me and you know it

THINKING: About what to write? LOL! Maybe I’ll start by sharing my account for the last three days.

SMELLING: Honestly, I can’t use my olfactory sense. Feelin’ I might have started a mild cold or something. Oh no!

WISHING: To make up for the lost time. Well, I’m 3 articles due and here I am stressing out about it because, I supposed to be in sync with my writing calendar schedule. 

I mean, for sure. There are many things that happened, just for this week alone. I trade time for money, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t go out there and have some fun, right? I was just a bit worried because I don’t want unending piles of unfinished business. 

But then, great things take time, right? Hence, although I’m stressing over my due articles, well, I can’t blame the lack of time. These articles top up 3k+ words and more, depending on the complexity of topic. I’m also out of words, most of the time.

My pomodoro method is like 20 mins of work and typing 500+ words then 2 hours or more of watching, eating, and doing personal stuff. LOL.

HOPING: For the Ukraine vs. Russia’s conflict to resolved. Nobody wants war. It scares the shit out of me; with all these potential WWIII that circulating over the internet. It got me thinking about the borrowed and temporary life and peace we enjoy today. I mean, our country may be far away from these lands, but isn’t the first world war started at that region as well,? Just the thought of these war going on makes me depressed and overthink about what other potential things could happen. What if China go berserk and go against us? I mean, what are the odds? 

Praying for Ukraine. For the innocent people affected by this adversity. For the leaders to unite, and for Putin to wake up and realized his actions. Hoping for everything to go back to how it used to be.

What the hell did Putin even want? Only he knows. 

I hope and pray for world peace. It’s something I’ve taken for granted for awhile now. All those war theme and The Diary of Young Girl, Anne Frank- comes back to me. I just hope that this war ends and everything will go back to normal.

We can’t afford it right now, esp us living in the third world country. We’ve barely even survived the pandemic and just starting out to recover and this upcoming worldwide crisis? We are at a huge disadvantage. 

WEARING: PJ’s brown checkered partnered with green basic tee. 

NEEDING: Extra time. I need more time to do all my stuff esp to catch up on my writings. Btw, I think I have shared already that I FINALLY GOT MY DREAM JOB! (can’t wait to update my LinkedIn profile hahaha!) And now I’m on the process of accomplishing the pre-employment requirements. What a blessing in disguise that my official program won’t start until later than next month. This means, more time to prepare and do all my stuff.

Finally! I’ve secured the job and this March, I’m looking forward to my month long preparation and coming to terms into peace for all those hobbies I neglect, must fix, and ditch. 

For sure, I’m going to miss the freelance work-from-home life and I’ve learned so much. But it’s also time for me to go and see the outside world, I’m missing working onsite and I’m all ready for that.

Actually, I’m going to disappear for a month and I’ll plan my March with an intention of MINDFULNESS. Now I know what areas to improve and I must fix, I’m going to make it right once more. We were given another new chances in life everyday, and all we can do is make the most out of it.

FEELING: Sick. Remember how I didn’t have a sense of smell? Well, I can confirm that I now have a cold. I also feel tired for no reason at all. I took a nap for two hours this afternoon and I still feel sleepy. My body wants to lay down. I hope this is nothing sort of serious. Maybe the stress kicking in.

Did I mention that Zuko get lost for almost 24 hours last Thursday? As the curious cat that she is, she forgot her way home. I thought Mama and Papa were just kidding, but then when we got home that day, she really wasn’t there.

All sorts of negative feelings came rushing through. Now I understand and realized, this must be what parent’s feels like when their child get lost or go away without words at all.

I was worried sick the whole night, I barely get sleep. I was wondering where Zuko went and how is she. Did someone took her, abuse her, or whatever. How did she eat- all that stuff. My heart just started to break down into tiny little pieces.

Thankfully, the morning after, she came back. Thanks to Papa’s extra effort to climb the roof, shout her name, and search for her. Zuko was just at a faraway neighbor’s roof, just standing still. 

I wonder if cats feel afraid too if they get lost? One thing is for sure. We’re keeping tabs on Zuko and we won’t allow her to wander again just like that. Although, it’s really part of her, you know, in heat phase, I can’t risk losing her. I’m so attached with my furry friends and I just felt enormous love and care for them. They’re like my practice child? HAHAHAHHA. But, kidding aside, I do love and care for my feline pets.

Another noteworthy to share is that we ate Kimchi Fried Rice! The idea was mine and I made at least 25% of the effort while Wendell did all the cooking part. Hahahah! Nevertheless, it tasted so good, we ate much to our heart’s content.

We also went on a carnival date with our friends. It was just fine. I didn’t enjoy much as I thought I would be. Its because of all these stupid Final Destination jokes and all that ridiculous stuff. It scared the shit out of me again! Of course, who wouldn’t? Not long after when I watched the recent incident in a theme park that week. 

So I was really you know, trying to enjoy, have a good time, but also getting too worried sick and cautious about all that “what-if’s.”

Wendell and I got henna tattoos! Mine was heavenly bodies alignment and his were a tree with full on branches and leaves.

It was romantic, noisy, exhausting, fun, all at the same time. I can’t wait to have more dates with my Pi.

So that’s all for me for this week. I did have a great time and life’s good.

I hope you had a great week too! Just keep swimming!

Always remember that your labor is not in vain.

Have a beautiful week ahead my friends!

[gadgetgirl71]

January 2021 Reading List

This year I’m going to do things slightly differently, as last year most of my reading lists were full of ARC’s and I felt as though I was ignoring books from my favourite authors. So this year every month I will list two or three ARC’s and two books from my TBR List along with the Random Book of the Month.

I also hope that in doing things this way, that I will actually end up reading more books instead of finding it a chore, as reading is for enjoyment and escape.

January ARC Books

Friends & Strangers by J Courtney-Sullivan, Pages: 416, Publication Date: 18 February 2021

Sanatorium, The by Sarah Pearse, Pages: 368, Publication Date: 18 February 2021

Madam by Phoebe Wynne, Pages: 400, Publication Date: 18 February 2021

January TBR Books

Dangerous in Love (Ageis Group Alpha Team #1) by Sidney Bristol, Pages: 230, Publication Date: 22 August 2017

Pink Bits (Awkward #1) by J B Heller, Pages: 134, Publication Date: 26 March 2019

Synopsis: An insightful, hilarious, and compulsively readable novel about a complicated friendship between two women who are at two very different stages in life, from the best-selling author of Maine and Saints for All Occasions (named one of the Washington Post’s Ten Best Books of the Year and a New York Times Critics’ Pick).

Elisabeth, an accomplished journalist and new mother, is struggling to adjust to life in a small town after nearly twenty years in New York City. Alone in the house with her infant son all day (and awake with him much of the night), she feels uneasy, adrift. She neglects her work, losing untold hours to her Brooklyn moms’ Facebook group, her “influencer” sister’s Instagram feed, and text messages with the best friend she never sees anymore.

Enter Sam, a senior at the local women’s college, whom Elisabeth hires to babysit. Sam is struggling to decide between the path she’s always planned on and a romantic entanglement that threatens her ambition. She’s worried about student loan debt and what the future holds. In short order, they grow close. But when Sam finds an unlikely kindred spirit in Elisabeth’s father-in-law, the true differences between the women’s lives become starkly revealed and a betrayal has devastating consequences.

A masterful exploration of motherhood, power dynamics, and privilege in its many forms, Friends and Strangers reveals how a single year can shape the course of a life.

Synopsis: ‘At first glance they’re magnificent, yet the more she looks, the more she realizes how sinister the mountains appear: raw, jagged spikes. It’s not hard to imagine, she thinks, looking out; this place somehow consuming someone, swallowing them whole.’ An imposing, isolated hotel, high up in the Swiss Alps, is the last place Elin Warner wants to be. But she’s taken time off from her job as a detective, so when she receives an invitation out of the blue to celebrate her estranged brother’s recent engagement, she has no choice but to accept. Arriving in the midst of a threatening storm, Elin immediately feels on edge. Though it’s beautiful, something about the hotel, recently converted from an abandoned sanatorium, makes her nervous – as does her brother, Isaac. And when they wake the following morning to discover his fiancée Laure has vanished without a trace, Elin’s unease grows. With the storm cutting off access to and from the hotel, the longer Laure stays missing, the more the remaining guests start to panic. But no-one has realized yet that another woman has gone missing. And she’s the only one who could have warned them just how much danger they’re all in . . .

Synopsis: Light a fire they can’t put out… For 150 years, above the Scottish cliffs, Caldonbrae Hall has sat as a beacon of excellence in the ancestral castle of Lord William Hope. A boarding school for girls, it promises a future where its pupils will emerge ‘resilient and ready to serve society’. Rose Christie, a 26-year-old Classics teacher, is the first new hire for the school in over a decade. At first, Rose feels overwhelmed in the face of this elite establishment, but soon after her arrival she begins to understand that she may have more to fear than her own ineptitude. When Rose stumbles across the secret circumstances surrounding the abrupt departure of her predecessor – a woman whose ghost lingers over everything and who no one will discuss – she realises that there is much more to this institution than she has been led to believe. As she uncovers the darkness that beats at the heart of Caldonbrae, Rose becomes embroiled in a battle that will threaten her sanity as well as her safety…

A brooding, mesmeric novel with a feminist kick, perfect for fans of Naomi Alderman, Madeleine Miller and Margaret Atwood.

Synopsis: He follows orders: A good SEAL, Shane York values chain of command. Following the rules means staying alive. All of that is wrecked when his team is sent to Jamaica on a hostage rescue. She’s not the mission, but they leave no one behind.

She breaks the rules: Travel blogger Lacey Miles lives for today. Thanks to her unexpected rescue from certain death, she has a shot at tomorrow. She wants her mercenary captors to pay, and she has the evidence to ensure it—if she lives long enough to deliver it.

Opposites spark an unlikely romance in the heat of danger: Delivering the intel and keeping the hostages alive becomes priority one for the Aegis Group Alpha Team. The last thing Shane and Lacey have time for is love. As the team races home and bullets fly, rules fall by the wayside and lines begin to blur. With a traitor in their midst, will love be a distraction or a strength?

Synopsis: Did you know the medical term for a butt crack is intergluteal cleft?

My name is Reagan, and spouting random facts like this one at inopportune moments is my affliction. I’m chronically awkward, socially inept and completely lack a filter. Believe it or not, men do not find these attractive traits.

When my sexy-as-sin neighbour barges into my apartment at the arse crack of dawn, everything changes. For some strange reason, my brand of crazy doesn’t send him running for the hills. Instead, he settles in for a nap on my couch…

Oh, and did I mention he was completely naked?

*** Let me know if you’ve read or reviewed any of these book, and tell me what you think of them. Or just let me know what books are on your January 2021 reading list. ***

#ARC, #BookBlogger, #Books, #Bookshelf, #GoodReads, #January, #January2021, #January2021ReadingList, #NetGalley, #NetGalleyuk, #ReadingChallenge, #ReadingList, #TBR

[elizabethrobertajones]

Hey Lizzy I want to apologize. I really respect you, but unfortunately in the past that lead to me thinking you could be asked about any SPN opinion and were obligated to answer, no matter if it was wanky or not your ballpark, because you 'obviously knew everything'. That wasn't cool of me. You being a smart person who chooses to share your insights doesn't mean we're entitled to your time and I'm sorry. I hope fandom starts remembering we're all just people soon and you get the chance to relax.

Thank you, sincerely. 

At least for me, though, it’s not been a problem… I have a very quiet inbox compared to some friends here, and I barely get wanky stuff. And so I’m happy to answer a lot of things, basically anything non-wanky, and serious questions about the wanky stuff rather than just people coming to spew their misery at me. Which I rarely get, tbh, since I often don’t answer it, or also I think because I consistently avoid the initial post-episode rush when everyone’s most panicked and urgently needs to yell about everything, I’m more under the radar as a panic response blog because in the 18 hours between the episode and me returning to my dash, people get it out their systems. :P 

I think the problem with anons, though, is waaay more with a mob mentality that once someone is answering a lot of asks they beget more asks either tangential or just because they seem like a blog that answers a lot of asks quickly and efficiently (I think “efficiently” is another reason I don’t get a lot of anons :P), and often the anons start to get very impatient just to ask, rather than to check and see if it’s been asked before. Which is no one individual person’s problem but an issue with the entire system they’re just not helping with. I’m glad people are starting to check themselves because a volley of anons, meant well or not, is a great way to exhaust a blogger and get them defensive or despairing or just feeling like they have no time left to do the stuff they actually enjoy about fandom. (At which point I have wished I COULD take some of that burden off since I have a bunch of free time while I’m in exile from my kingdom or whatever this is) But the emotional burden is waaay worse for others so I absolutely can’t complain about getting the few odd anons. 

Like… I didn’t mind answering 2 asks about where the longing retcon came from in the same week because they were fairly widely spaced, but if I made that post with a link to the tag that would explain everything, and then got 3 anons demanding to know and then there were 5 more by the time i was done answering one, my inbox would feel way worse than it currently does, and as a bonus, answering one would still leave 7 people feeling like I never answered them even when answering stuff that’s literally their question - by not giving their specific ask the attention it feels like they’ve been ignored. 

If you give someone a little while and they still haven’t answered or explained, and there’s no easy to find explanation on their blog, then yeah it’s fine to ask just about anything about their content. Going away and remembering to come back and ask also will clarify to the asker if they actually care enough to do it >.> I have asked one (1) anon question to a meta blog in the entire time I’ve been on tumblr because it was something they kept alluding to and I could not for the life of me find the reason why they did and their tag didn’t have an explanation, just more allusions to it and it was such a specific thing I didn’t know any other blog that would care about it. And I asked after seeing them allude to it about 3 times so I was getting desperate but didn’t want to look silly so I asked on anon :P Anything else I cared enough to ask, I just snooped their blog and saw what else they had to say about the subject, or if it was a fresh hot subject, scrolled my dash and inevitably found someone else talking about it. Or just asked a friend if they knew what was up.

Anyways, anon, I’m glad you’re questioning how asks affect people, and I hope more people at least take some time to remember that this isn’t an instant question and answer service all the meta writers automatically opt into, because people are getting hurt and burned out, but you don’t have to worry about me specifically :) 

I’m still happy to answer most messages. At the moment most of the unanswered stuff I have is actually stuff I just don’t have a clue how to answer except the anons were sharing some idea with me and I’m a terrible person, but I don’t know how to do one line replies where I don’t engage with it beyond like “cool” and “you do you” rather than actually wanky stuff :P Other people here are much better at that than me >.> Maybe I should clear some of that out of my inbox right now tbh. It’s mostly stuff that arrived in the middle of busy inbox days and I just put off answering in favour of stuff that was real questions… THAT’s the burden that weighs me down, not the wank :P 

I really hope that others are starting to at least think about the specific emotional burden they’re asking people for when they bring wank to their inboxes though, because it’s great you’ve started to think about it but as I said it’s a systematic problem of people not thinking about the blogger behind the inbox, and fandoms are wanky places. Choosing not to answer and spread the negativity, or to reply and try and smooth it down a bit, are the only options we have for managing things and I don’t think anyone starts writing meta thinking oh goodie I can’t wait to be responsible for the mood of the fandom. While accidentally putting ourselves in the place of seeming like we know what’s going on. It’s completely unmanageable and I’m looking at it as someone whose entire adolescence was spent as a top of the ladder moderator on a fairly large forum, but it’s completely untranslatable experience. Every single one of us is just another random person in fandom and we ALL have to be responsible for our own behaviour and how we affect others. And even among people you care about or bloggers you admire, you can hurt them just by having a bad day or asking too many anon questions or whatever. 

Anyway I’m gratified you’d send this, and please don’t be scared to send more anons, just read your audience :P If someone seems stressed, try another inbox.

[wineanddinosaur]

Bar Tab Venmo May Ease the Sting of Media Layoffs, But It’s Far From a Safety Net

Push alerts are the scourge of our #mobilefirst existence, so it makes sense that Megan Greenwell had turned them off for all her most used apps. It also makes sense that Venmo, the ubiquitous platform that allows strangers to seamlessly transfer one another funds by phone, was not one of those apps.

After all, who walks the earth expecting strangers to simultaneously begin sending them funds with little to no warning? In this economy?! And yet, one fateful late-October afternoon last year, that’s exactly what happened to the editor of Wired, who had helmed the sports blog Deadspin for 18 months before resigning in protest of what she saw as improper editorial meddling by the executives running the site’s parent company.

“All of a sudden like my phone was like too hot to touch because of all the Venmos coming in,” Greenwell told me in a recent phone interview. The money wasn’t for her, not all of it at least. In fall 2019, 20 of the editor’s former Deadspin colleagues began walking off the job in a principled stand against the firing of one of their own, and the site’s fans (who included millions of regular readers per month and many NYC media insiders) wanted to show their support. Greenwell had stepped up as a digital bagwoman on Twitter, posting her Venmo handle and offering to run point on disbursement of any funds collected.

And lo, did the funds roll in. To buy the erstwhile Deadspinners drinks, strangers on the internet ultimately pooled together a “healthy five figures,” says Greenwell. (This went to more than drinks; we’ll get to that in a moment.) “I was like, ‘Holy fuck, I have to figure out how to turn off my notifications!’”

‘In lieu of a better safety net’

Such is the power and majesty of the “bar tab Venmo,” a digital-age rite borne of journalistic tribalism, smartphone connectivity, and the excruciating death shudders of an ever-collapsing American media ecosystem. It’s a fairly simple exercise: When journalists find themselves out of work, other journalists — plus rank-and-file subscribers, fans of a free press, and so forth — toss a few bucks into a digital bucket as consolation beer money for the newly unemployed.

Unfortunately, layoffs have been a nearly omnipresent specter in the media business for the entire decade I’ve been in it. (This story, in fact, is expanding on an essay I wrote for my drinking culture newsletter after being laid off, for the first time, from a media gig of my own. Fun!) In that time, as shop after shop has shed writers and editors, hard-nosed reporters and soft-handed listicle jockeys, the bar tab Venmo routine has become a bit of a funeral rite.

(Apparently this is a thing that people also did with former staffers of failed Democratic presidential campaigns, which is different and honestly a little weird to me in ways that I can’t quite put my finger on right now. Anyway!)

Given how often journalists get laid off, it’s impossible to say how many of these booze-focused fundraisers have hit the timeline since Venmo was created in 2009. But in the past few years, as the digital-media balloon has deflated in an atmosphere of impossible growth goals, video pivots, and impatient, inept venture-capitalism and private-equity opportunism, they’ve gotten bigger. Due to the site’s stature and its writers’ popularity, the drive for former Deadspinners was arguably the highest-profile of the bunch. The last year and a half alone seen has similar ad-hoc efforts for journalists at BuzzFeed News, Sports Illustrated, The New York Times en Espanol, Outside Magazine … and on and on.

“I’ve spent a lot of time over the past four years or so specifically … donating to bar tab Venmos,” says Maya Kosoff, a freelance writer and editor who, back in the Before Times, wrote movingly for GEN on “the human toll of the 2019 media apocalypse” that put 3,000 journalists out of work. (Smash cut to 2020 and that number looks downright adorable next to the toll taken by pandemic-related media layoffs, which The New York Times ballparked at 36,000 back in April. And uh, folks, things have not gotten better since April!)

“It feels like you’re trying to help your fellow peers get back on their feet at a time when there’s complete instability in the industry, and no guarantee that you’re gonna find another staff job in journalism,” she added. Bar tab Venmo “is kind of in lieu of there being like a better safety net — for reporters, writers, editors, and freelancers.”

“I don’t know where I first saw people doing this,” says Amanda Mull, a staff writer for The Atlantic whose tweet about the Deadspin walkout was among those that prompted Greenwell to offer up her Venmo handle last fall. “Maybe it was an early round of BuzzFeed layoffs? I saw people doing it, so I sent some money. It seemed like just a nice thing to do, people who are losing their jobs or who are in an unstable employment situation.”

Mutual Aid in the Modern Era

Speaking of which: As the coronavirus pandemic continues its literal and figurative death march through the American economy, rolling layoffs and gobsmacking unemployment numbers have become a de rigeur part of the national discourse. There are a lot more workers (both in the media and beyond) in unstable employment situations than ever before.

As such, new conversation has sprung forth about the shortcomings of America’s dismal system of meat-grinder capitalism and what average folks — buried in student loan, perpetually renting, and/or clinging to garbage jobs they hate because the bad health benefits they get are still better than the obscenely expensive alternatives in our cartoonishly corrupt privatized healthcare industry — can do to help each other survive. Like, beyond buying each other drinks, I mean.

Workers, neighbors, marginalized groups, and more have been passing the hat to help their own cover the costs of sickness, death, and bad luck for centuries. That’s neither new (it was a staple of 19th-century fraternal lodges), nor particularly mainstream, in the United States at least. But things are shifting, according to Max Haiven, an author and professor at Lakehead University in Ontario, Canada. Rank-and-file attitudes toward mutual aid were “changing already very quickly before the pandemic, [and they’re] changing even faster right now. … What we’ve actually begun to see is that since Covid, a lot of workers who previously were not unionized are now taking forms of collective action.”

At the very least, people seem more aware of the idea. Google Trends indicates that interest in the phrase “mutual aid” has been higher than normal for virtually the entire duration of the coronavirus pandemic. That tool also suggests searches spiked directly after a police officer killed George Floyd in the street this past spring, which makes sense because American capitalism and American racism are “different” in the sense that Bud Light and Miller Lite are “different,” which is to say sort of but also not really.

What’s the connection between neighborhood grocery deliveries and strangers paying each other’s medical bills, and random Twitter avatars throwing beer money at unemployed bloggers? Ah, so glad you asked, my dear rhetorical device!

Drinks Do Not a Union Organize

To Haiven, journalism’s money-for-booze routine isn’t quite a pure expression of solidarity — it’s long on symbol, but short on substance, and is probably predicated a bit too much on journalism’s romanticized “brand” and the popularity of individual outlets and writers to constitute real movement-building action.

On that, all the journalists I spoke with for this story agreed emphatically. “Part of me is a little unsettled by the popularity aspect of it,” says Greenwell. The success or failure of a bar tab Venmo is “not determined by who needs it the most, and it’s not determined by whose circumstances were the worst in terms of their layoff or firing or whatever, it’s determined by popularity on Twitter.”

Kosoff, who received some Venmo dough herself after leaving “new Gawker” over ethical concerns regarding the site’s leadership, echoed that reservation, warning that the practice is potentially exclusionary and even “clique-y” — words more or less incompatible with true solidarity.

Another aspect of bar tab Venmo that makes it more a “solidaristic” behavior than a true form of solidarity is that the stakes are relatively low. With the exception of alcoholics who’d be wracked with delirium tremens in the absence of drink, buying rounds for writers online is not really in the same category as, say, passing the hat to help the family of a union brother slain on the job to cover funeral costs.

And contrary to what you’ve heard, not every journalist unwinds at the end of the day with several glasses of Scotch. “Sending money for booze is a heartwarming gesture and a good expression of love and solidarity for people who have been laid off,” says Hamilton Nolan, a labor reporter for In These Times and a former staffer of the various companies that have owned Deadspin. “But speaking as someone who doesn’t drink, I would suggest that an even better practice would be just donating cash to laid off workers. They can buy their own drinks, or pay the rent.”

Still, Haiven says, if labor activism occurs on a spectrum, with strikes and solidarity actions between different unions or workers organizations on one end, “on the other end of the spectrum are these like small almost seemingly insignificant acts of mutual aid, where people say ‘actually, our fates are connected.’”

“It’s kind of a culture of solidarity that could then turn into the structures of solidarity,” he adds.

Beyond the Bar Tab

Those structures, it should be noted, are already being built both outside media — and within it. After five decades of declining union density in the United States, the digital-media industry was a bright spot in the second half of the 2010s, with a wave of successful union drives, with workers at publications like Vox, New York Magazine, Deadspin, Vice, HuffPost, Salon, and many more organizing themselves to bargain for better conditions and more stability. (Disclosure: I organized at Thrillist, another digital shop that went union in that wave. We won, but it took awhile.)

So while bar tab Venmo is an imperfect vessel for building coalition across the industry, it might act as sort of a gateway drug to more substantive acts of solidarity. For one thing, it’s more for newly activated workers to send fallen coworkers beer money with a few taps on an iPhone, than to, say, write them a check for a portion of their rent, or baby formula, or whatever.

“It’s a perfect way to say like, ‘Hey, I’m thinking about you, when we’re not close enough to say “I’m thinking about you,” so here’s 20 bucks,’” muses Greenwell. Under the guise of sending a round of send-off shots, contributors were able to offer financial support that could cover actual necessities. And it did: The Deadspin fund fueled several outings with Greenwell’s former staff, but also went toward paying months of rent and buying half a dozen laptops for those writers who had previously relied on their company-issue machines. Many of those workers went on to launch Defector, one of several promising new worker-owned media co-ops seeking to reinvent a broken business with good blogs. (Maybe the drinks helped!)

Greenwell imagines mutual aid in an ideal world simply as money doled out to people who need it most, donated by those with common cause who weren’t swayed by individual popularity or, as Kosoff put it, “the stereotype of journalists as miserable sad sacks want to drink together at the bar.” Something less like a bar tab Venmo, and more like the Journalist Furlough Fund.

Launched in late March by Seattle Times reporter Paige Cornwell as a GoFundMe, the JFF is a by-journalists, for-journalists effort to plug the gaping holes in both the media industry’s broken model and the United States’ shredded social safety net. The fundraising target was $60,000, but to date the campaign has raised over $96,000 from journalists, local businesses, public-relations pros … you name it.

Speaking on the phone while coordinating wildfire coverage in Seattle, Cornwell was intent to note two things. First: “I do this independent of my employer,” she says, noting that, though the Seattle Times has been supportive of the effort, it is not a company initiative. (The Times, for what it’s worth, is a partly union newsroom; its digital journalists are currently fighting for their right to join their already-organized colleagues, of which Cornwell is one.)

The second thing Cornwell was adamant about was something every other journalist I interviewed also brought up: The sheer deficiency of crowdfunded mutual aid, even $100,000 of it, when compared to the scope of the problem at hand. Even though the JFF is much more explicitly oriented around aid than a bar tab Venmo, it pales in comparison to the broad, systematic dysfunction of the media industry.

“This isn’t a way to make up for [a laid-off journalist’s] loss,” says Cromwell. “It’s for keeping someone from the edge.” As the administrator of the fund, she’s disbursed cash to journalists across the country for daycare tuition fees, medical bills, equipment, and more. The JFF can help some journalists in a pinch, but still, “it’s not enough,” she says.

That doesn’t mean she plans to wind it down anytime soon, though. After surging in the spring, contributions to the fund have slowed, but considering that things are only getting worse in the American media business, she’s hopeful that people will contribute again if they can — if not to “fix” the media, then at least to keep more writers and editors from the meat grinder. “Someone else can figure out how to save journalism as a whole, [the JFF] will just make sure that someone will be able to buy their daughter school supplies,” she quips.

“It’s just so ridiculous that we even have to have those conversations.”

I’ll drink to that. (Please Venmo me.)

The article Bar Tab Venmo May Ease the Sting of Media Layoffs, But It’s Far From a Safety Net appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/bar-tab-venmo-layoffs/

[johnboothus]

Bar Tab Venmo May Ease the Sting of Media Layoffs But Its Far From a Safety Net

Push alerts are the scourge of our #mobilefirst existence, so it makes sense that Megan Greenwell had turned them off for all her most used apps. It also makes sense that Venmo, the ubiquitous platform that allows strangers to seamlessly transfer one another funds by phone, was not one of those apps.

After all, who walks the earth expecting strangers to simultaneously begin sending them funds with little to no warning? In this economy?! And yet, one fateful late-October afternoon last year, that’s exactly what happened to the editor of Wired, who had helmed the sports blog Deadspin for 18 months before resigning in protest of what she saw as improper editorial meddling by the executives running the site’s parent company.

“All of a sudden like my phone was like too hot to touch because of all the Venmos coming in,” Greenwell told me in a recent phone interview. The money wasn’t for her, not all of it at least. In fall 2019, 20 of the editor’s former Deadspin colleagues began walking off the job in a principled stand against the firing of one of their own, and the site’s fans (who included millions of regular readers per month and many NYC media insiders) wanted to show their support. Greenwell had stepped up as a digital bagwoman on Twitter, posting her Venmo handle and offering to run point on disbursement of any funds collected.

And lo, did the funds roll in. To buy the erstwhile Deadspinners drinks, strangers on the internet ultimately pooled together a “healthy five figures,” says Greenwell. (This went to more than drinks; we’ll get to that in a moment.) “I was like, ‘Holy fuck, I have to figure out how to turn off my notifications!’”

‘In lieu of a better safety net’

Such is the power and majesty of the “bar tab Venmo,” a digital-age rite borne of journalistic tribalism, smartphone connectivity, and the excruciating death shudders of an ever-collapsing American media ecosystem. It’s a fairly simple exercise: When journalists find themselves out of work, other journalists — plus rank-and-file subscribers, fans of a free press, and so forth — toss a few bucks into a digital bucket as consolation beer money for the newly unemployed.

Unfortunately, layoffs have been a nearly omnipresent specter in the media business for the entire decade I’ve been in it. (This story, in fact, is expanding on an essay I wrote for my drinking culture newsletter after being laid off, for the first time, from a media gig of my own. Fun!) In that time, as shop after shop has shed writers and editors, hard-nosed reporters and soft-handed listicle jockeys, the bar tab Venmo routine has become a bit of a funeral rite.

(Apparently this is a thing that people also did with former staffers of failed Democratic presidential campaigns, which is different and honestly a little weird to me in ways that I can’t quite put my finger on right now. Anyway!)

Given how often journalists get laid off, it’s impossible to say how many of these booze-focused fundraisers have hit the timeline since Venmo was created in 2009. But in the past few years, as the digital-media balloon has deflated in an atmosphere of impossible growth goals, video pivots, and impatient, inept venture-capitalism and private-equity opportunism, they’ve gotten bigger. Due to the site’s stature and its writers’ popularity, the drive for former Deadspinners was arguably the highest-profile of the bunch. The last year and a half alone seen has similar ad-hoc efforts for journalists at BuzzFeed News, Sports Illustrated, The New York Times en Espanol, Outside Magazine … and on and on.

“I’ve spent a lot of time over the past four years or so specifically … donating to bar tab Venmos,” says Maya Kosoff, a freelance writer and editor who, back in the Before Times, wrote movingly for GEN on “the human toll of the 2019 media apocalypse” that put 3,000 journalists out of work. (Smash cut to 2020 and that number looks downright adorable next to the toll taken by pandemic-related media layoffs, which The New York Times ballparked at 36,000 back in April. And uh, folks, things have not gotten better since April!)

“It feels like you’re trying to help your fellow peers get back on their feet at a time when there’s complete instability in the industry, and no guarantee that you’re gonna find another staff job in journalism,” she added. Bar tab Venmo “is kind of in lieu of there being like a better safety net — for reporters, writers, editors, and freelancers.”

“I don’t know where I first saw people doing this,” says Amanda Mull, a staff writer for The Atlantic whose tweet about the Deadspin walkout was among those that prompted Greenwell to offer up her Venmo handle last fall. “Maybe it was an early round of BuzzFeed layoffs? I saw people doing it, so I sent some money. It seemed like just a nice thing to do, people who are losing their jobs or who are in an unstable employment situation.”

Mutual Aid in the Modern Era

Speaking of which: As the coronavirus pandemic continues its literal and figurative death march through the American economy, rolling layoffs and gobsmacking unemployment numbers have become a de rigeur part of the national discourse. There are a lot more workers (both in the media and beyond) in unstable employment situations than ever before.

As such, new conversation has sprung forth about the shortcomings of America’s dismal system of meat-grinder capitalism and what average folks — buried in student loan, perpetually renting, and/or clinging to garbage jobs they hate because the bad health benefits they get are still better than the obscenely expensive alternatives in our cartoonishly corrupt privatized healthcare industry — can do to help each other survive. Like, beyond buying each other drinks, I mean.

Workers, neighbors, marginalized groups, and more have been passing the hat to help their own cover the costs of sickness, death, and bad luck for centuries. That’s neither new (it was a staple of 19th-century fraternal lodges), nor particularly mainstream, in the United States at least. But things are shifting, according to Max Haiven, an author and professor at Lakehead University in Ontario, Canada. Rank-and-file attitudes toward mutual aid were “changing already very quickly before the pandemic, [and they’re] changing even faster right now. … What we’ve actually begun to see is that since Covid, a lot of workers who previously were not unionized are now taking forms of collective action.”

At the very least, people seem more aware of the idea. Google Trends indicates that interest in the phrase “mutual aid” has been higher than normal for virtually the entire duration of the coronavirus pandemic. That tool also suggests searches spiked directly after a police officer killed George Floyd in the street this past spring, which makes sense because American capitalism and American racism are “different” in the sense that Bud Light and Miller Lite are “different,” which is to say sort of but also not really.

What’s the connection between neighborhood grocery deliveries and strangers paying each other’s medical bills, and random Twitter avatars throwing beer money at unemployed bloggers? Ah, so glad you asked, my dear rhetorical device!

Drinks Do Not a Union Organize

To Haiven, journalism’s money-for-booze routine isn’t quite a pure expression of solidarity — it’s long on symbol, but short on substance, and is probably predicated a bit too much on journalism’s romanticized “brand” and the popularity of individual outlets and writers to constitute real movement-building action.

On that, all the journalists I spoke with for this story agreed emphatically. “Part of me is a little unsettled by the popularity aspect of it,” says Greenwell. The success or failure of a bar tab Venmo is “not determined by who needs it the most, and it’s not determined by whose circumstances were the worst in terms of their layoff or firing or whatever, it’s determined by popularity on Twitter.”

Kosoff, who received some Venmo dough herself after leaving “new Gawker” over ethical concerns regarding the site’s leadership, echoed that reservation, warning that the practice is potentially exclusionary and even “clique-y” — words more or less incompatible with true solidarity.

Another aspect of bar tab Venmo that makes it more a “solidaristic” behavior than a true form of solidarity is that the stakes are relatively low. With the exception of alcoholics who’d be wracked with delirium tremens in the absence of drink, buying rounds for writers online is not really in the same category as, say, passing the hat to help the family of a union brother slain on the job to cover funeral costs.

And contrary to what you’ve heard, not every journalist unwinds at the end of the day with several glasses of Scotch. “Sending money for booze is a heartwarming gesture and a good expression of love and solidarity for people who have been laid off,” says Hamilton Nolan, a labor reporter for In These Times and a former staffer of the various companies that have owned Deadspin. “But speaking as someone who doesn’t drink, I would suggest that an even better practice would be just donating cash to laid off workers. They can buy their own drinks, or pay the rent.”

Still, Haiven says, if labor activism occurs on a spectrum, with strikes and solidarity actions between different unions or workers organizations on one end, “on the other end of the spectrum are these like small almost seemingly insignificant acts of mutual aid, where people say ‘actually, our fates are connected.’”

“It’s kind of a culture of solidarity that could then turn into the structures of solidarity,” he adds.

Beyond the Bar Tab

Those structures, it should be noted, are already being built both outside media — and within it. After five decades of declining union density in the United States, the digital-media industry was a bright spot in the second half of the 2010s, with a wave of successful union drives, with workers at publications like Vox, New York Magazine, Deadspin, Vice, HuffPost, Salon, and many more organizing themselves to bargain for better conditions and more stability. (Disclosure: I organized at Thrillist, another digital shop that went union in that wave. We won, but it took awhile.)

So while bar tab Venmo is an imperfect vessel for building coalition across the industry, it might act as sort of a gateway drug to more substantive acts of solidarity. For one thing, it’s more for newly activated workers to send fallen coworkers beer money with a few taps on an iPhone, than to, say, write them a check for a portion of their rent, or baby formula, or whatever.

“It’s a perfect way to say like, ‘Hey, I’m thinking about you, when we’re not close enough to say “I’m thinking about you,” so here’s 20 bucks,’” muses Greenwell. Under the guise of sending a round of send-off shots, contributors were able to offer financial support that could cover actual necessities. And it did: The Deadspin fund fueled several outings with Greenwell’s former staff, but also went toward paying months of rent and buying half a dozen laptops for those writers who had previously relied on their company-issue machines. Many of those workers went on to launch Defector, one of several promising new worker-owned media co-ops seeking to reinvent a broken business with good blogs. (Maybe the drinks helped!)

Greenwell imagines mutual aid in an ideal world simply as money doled out to people who need it most, donated by those with common cause who weren’t swayed by individual popularity or, as Kosoff put it, “the stereotype of journalists as miserable sad sacks want to drink together at the bar.” Something less like a bar tab Venmo, and more like the Journalist Furlough Fund.

Launched in late March by Seattle Times reporter Paige Cornwell as a GoFundMe, the JFF is a by-journalists, for-journalists effort to plug the gaping holes in both the media industry’s broken model and the United States’ shredded social safety net. The fundraising target was $60,000, but to date the campaign has raised over $96,000 from journalists, local businesses, public-relations pros … you name it.

Speaking on the phone while coordinating wildfire coverage in Seattle, Cornwell was intent to note two things. First: “I do this independent of my employer,” she says, noting that, though the Seattle Times has been supportive of the effort, it is not a company initiative. (The Times, for what it’s worth, is a partly union newsroom; its digital journalists are currently fighting for their right to join their already-organized colleagues, of which Cornwell is one.)

The second thing Cornwell was adamant about was something every other journalist I interviewed also brought up: The sheer deficiency of crowdfunded mutual aid, even $100,000 of it, when compared to the scope of the problem at hand. Even though the JFF is much more explicitly oriented around aid than a bar tab Venmo, it pales in comparison to the broad, systematic dysfunction of the media industry.

“This isn’t a way to make up for [a laid-off journalist’s] loss,” says Cromwell. “It’s for keeping someone from the edge.” As the administrator of the fund, she��s disbursed cash to journalists across the country for daycare tuition fees, medical bills, equipment, and more. The JFF can help some journalists in a pinch, but still, “it’s not enough,” she says.

That doesn’t mean she plans to wind it down anytime soon, though. After surging in the spring, contributions to the fund have slowed, but considering that things are only getting worse in the American media business, she’s hopeful that people will contribute again if they can — if not to “fix” the media, then at least to keep more writers and editors from the meat grinder. “Someone else can figure out how to save journalism as a whole, [the JFF] will just make sure that someone will be able to buy their daughter school supplies,” she quips.

“It’s just so ridiculous that we even have to have those conversations.”

I’ll drink to that. (Please Venmo me.)

The article Bar Tab Venmo May Ease the Sting of Media Layoffs, But It’s Far From a Safety Net appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/bar-tab-venmo-layoffs/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/bar-tab-venmo-may-ease-the-sting-of-media-layoffs-but-its-far-from-a-safety-net

[pokefreakguide]

Competitive Battle Team ; Pretext: IVs and EVs

I’ve never studied Competitive Battling before, despite having played Pokémon for years on end. It always confused me, but with the addition of the IV Checker and Ally Chaining in Sun and Moon, building a competitive team is now easier than ever.

As most of you know, to build a competitive team, you’ll need to breed (and breed and bREED AND BREED) pokémon to finally, by chance, spawn one with appropriate IVs. However, there are some ways to cut down on the randomness of it all (per usual). I’ll give a quick overview of what I did to get my pokémon ready to breed, but first we’ll need to explain IVs.

I never understood IVs. It drove me crazy, was WAY too complicated, and frankly, I’ve cared more about the looks of a pokémon (shinies) and filling the pokédex, to ever look into competition. I’ve filled the pokédex (minus Marshadow, obviously) so I figured I’d give it another try, and luckily for me, IVs are now easier to understand in Gen VII than they ever have been before.

When a pokémon hatches from its egg, there’re a set of stats it’s born with. These stats range from the numbers 0-31 and cover Attack, Defense, Sp. Atk., Sp. Def., Speed, and HP. To my understanding, a pokémon with a higher number IV, has a higher base in that criteria, and therefore, can be stronger than a pokémon with a lower IV. For example, a pokémon with an IV of 23 in Attack has more base Attack than a pokémon of the same breed with an Attack IV of 6. When you hear people referring to a pokémon with “perfect IVs”, that means all 6 stats are IVs of 31 and that pokémon is, genetically, stronger than any other of its kind. It’s maxed out.

However, our first shortcut to breeding the “perfect pokémon” lies in semantics. For example, a pokémon knowing no special moves will need no Special Attack. That stat will remain mostly unused. Therefore a “perfect pokémon”, in this case, only needs 5 perfect IVs to be “maxed out”, but, with all the random game mechanics, how do you get to a good starting point?

First, you’ll need to get to the postgame content in Sun and Moon. Go to the Battle Tree on Poni Island and talk to the Ace Trainer beside the computer. You must have hatched at least 20 eggs, but if you fit the bill, he’ll add the IV Checker to your computer. With this, you can check the IVs of ANY pokémon in your boxes via a “judge” button on the bottom right screen. There’re a list of codes ranging from “no good” to “best” to let you know what range the IV is in (best is obviously maxed, 31).

Before breeding, the chance is still WAY too low to quickly pop out a 6 IV pokémon. When breeding, the offspring will have 3 IVs chosen at random from the pool of 12 IVs between the parents. The other 3 will be randomly decided from the ether. To cut these chances, you’ll need the Destiny Knot. When a pokémon holds the Destiny Knot, 5 out of the 12 IVs will be passed on.

Keep in mind that a pokémon’s nature has a lot to do with what stats are increased and what’s held back as it levels up. Nature dictates that one stat is increased above others by 10% and one stat is decreased by 10% when leveling up. All stats are affected except for HP. There’re also 5 natures that cancel themselves out and therefore do nothing. You’ll want one of the two parents to have a nature that benefits the important stuff and neglects the unimportant (again, a pokémon that doesn’t use Sp. Atk. will be fine with a nature that uplifts another stat at the expense of Sp. Atk.). When a pokémon holds an Everstone it passes the nature down to it’s child, so once you’ve gotten a specimen with the nature you want, give it the Everstone.

So far you have one pokémon with the Everstone and one pokémon with the Destiny Knot. The Everstone parent is the desired pokémon with the desired nature and the other? That’s where Ally Chaining comes in. The real gold is hidden here.

Ally Chaining is a wonderful addition for competitive breeders. Just like past games, chaining pokémon leads to stronger, rarer, and/or pokémon with a higher shiny rate. However, in Sun and Moon, this chain is held by pokémon Allies. I thought I was clever for finding my own way to chain Dittos, but there’re countless YouTubers and bloggers who’ve already solidified this method, and so I used a watered down version of this method. You’ll need three notable pokémon to chain Dittos, but once you’ve got them it will only take you about 20 minutes to find your first 4 IV Ditto.

The pokémon you’ll need are:

Munchlax, or other pokémon that knows ONLY the move Recycle. Take him to the Move Deleter (in Hau’oli pokécenter) and delete all other moves

Hypno, or other pokémon that knows Switcheroo

A pokémon that knows False Swipe and another damage dealing move and is leveled up decently (the Ditto should range from Level 25-28 so maybe Level 60+, up to you)

You will also need to gather a decent amount of Leppa Berries which should take no more than a few days to plant in the Poké Pelago, in addition, you’ll want a few Adrenaline Orbs. Make sure you give a Leppa Berry to your Switcheroo pokémon. Once you’ve found a Ditto (10% in Mount Hokulani grass) send out your Muchlax and let Ditto transform into it. Next, send in your Switcheroo and give Ditto the Leppa Berry. Lastly, send in your false-swipes pokémon and get Ditto to 1 HP, then use your Adrenaline Orb. Next, faint every Ally Ditto that the original Ditto calls. If there are turns where Ditto doesn’t call an Ally, use a Revive on an already healthy pokémon and it won’t be used, but will waste a turn. You’ll need to faint 31 Dittos. After number 31, every Ally that Ditto calls will be guaranteed 4 IVs.

The reason this method is “watered down” is because Ditto’s hidden ability is Imposter which allows Ditto to transform into your pokémon upon entering battle. This means Ditto transforms into your heavy hitter pokémon, which you then must defeat, adding a few turns to the process. This wasn’t an issue for me, but if you’d like to avoid it, your hitter should know the move Substitute, which you’ll want to use at the beginning, rendering Ditto’s Imposter useless.

You’ll want Leppa Berries to replenish your PP.

Once you get past chain number 31, catch the Ditto and see what you’ve caught! After catching a satisfactory 4 IV Ditto, give it the Destiny Knot and put it in the daycare with your correct-natured, Everstone holding, breeding machine- and you’re, at last, at step 1. The corresponding steps are simple: Every time your setup yields an offspring stronger than either of the parents, replace that parent with the stronger offspring. () This way, your chances of breeding a perfect IV pokémon are heightened, because the gene pool, so to speak, is stronger. After many eggs, you will happen upon one with the needed IVs (5 or 6, whatever you prefer) and the correct nature. Once you’ve accomplished this feat, it’s on to EV training.

I’m not gonna explain EVs in total (mostly because I do not currently fully understand them), but they’re a second, extremely complex, game mechanic that determines what stats your pokémon increases most throughout training. If you battle a lot of a certain type of pokémon you can earn a lot of EVs in a certain stat. It takes 4 EVs to level up a stat by one point and you can earn a total of 252 EVs per stat (63 points). You can’t level up everything though, because you can only earn a total of 510 EVs over a pokémon’s life. Therefore, when in competition, a trainer will normally max out two pokémon stats (504 EVs at 252 EVs each stat) and boost another stat with the remaining 4 EVs. (The last 2 are not significant.)

Like IVs and Nature, EV training is a “forsake-the-unimportant and build-the-important” model. Serebii will have a list of what EVs fainting certain pokémon yield, but fainting pokémon isn’t the only way to EV train. Vitamins such as Carbos and Iron add to your EV total but have their own caps and become useless once a certain stat accumulates 100 EVs. The Poké Pelago is another way to train in EVs.

In summary, IVs are a pokémon’s genetics, they determine how strong your pokémon STARTS. Nature is a pokémon’s personality, it determines how your pokémon PROGRESSES. EVs are NOT a part of your pokémon, but instead are essentially your pokémon’s diet, determining how strong your pokémon ENDS UP.

I hope this was helpful for someone out there because for years I’ve had trouble understanding it, and even still, I’m not entirely sure how EVs work and will be studying more on my own.

For the next few articles I’ll be tracking my Competitive team progress and the stats and decisions I make on each pokémon I breed. I’ve already bred my first competitive battler, so I’ll be making a little infograph and short writing bit about that next.