#All choices made about them are based on functions of math

[fanaticsnail]

Snail important question;

Of any line-up of characters of your choice-

Who do you think is attracted to competency,

Who is attracted to stupidity,

Who can go either way,

And who is attracted to both at the same time (imagine;

Reader: sorry I'm late I had to fight off two different ships

Them: is that how you got that bruise on your face?

Reader: oh... Actually, I wasn't looking and pulled a push door off its' hinges into my face

Them, kicking off their pants: god you're so fucking stupid, sit on my face

)

Also, I feel like there are different versions of competency and stupidity. Street smarts vs social obliviousness. Book smarts vs functionally illiterate. Strategic/battle smarts vs what-do-you-mean-flashing-the-enemy-isn't-a-valid-distraction?

(Zoro is completely math smart and dumb in every other way)

I could imagine Luffy would be attracted to hyper specific competency. If you're really into a specific thing and good at it and it's your dream he would absolutely love it even if it sounds like you're speaking gibberish to him. He wouldn't even think of it as weird - I mean, no more weird than any other dream he doesn't personally understand - he's certainly not the type to judge based on societal norms. You could talk his ear off about the reproductive habits of different animals and he wouldn't get why everyone else doesn't like to hear it when they're eating but hey more food for him.

Snail. Your asks always know how to get the better of me. Have a series of little drabbles, dear.

Competency, Stupidity, Duality

Masterlist here

Word Count: 410+, 510+, 580+

Synopsis: They can't help what attracted them to you. No matter what you did, they simply couldn't get enough of you. Their emotions finally catch up with them, and they confess their adoration for you.

Themes: variety x gn!reader, feelings, injury, mentions of battles, finally giving in, all different 'reader' inserts, confessions of love, kid x reader, zoro x reader, killer x reader, angst, fluff, sweetness.

Notes: I wasn't expecting to write this today, but I've been thinking about the big boys lately and I needed to give them some love. Something about trios lately.

Tag List: @sordidmusings @nerium-lil @feral-artistry @since-im-already-here @writingmysanity @indydonuts @gingernut1314 @i-am-vita @carrotsunshine @mfreedomstuff @daydreamer-in-training

Competency: Eustass Kid

When Eustass Kid noticed how quick and sharp you were to react in life or death circumstances, he was immediately smitten with you. Being a Straw-Hat, your ambitions and dreams were fostered by your playful captain as you sailed aboard the Thousand Sunny. Your ability to interact flawlessly by balancing the combined efforts of the three crews had him intrigued by your charisma. 

Fighting by your side was something he didn’t expect to affect him so much. The way you researched the strengths and weaknesses of all three crews sailing and fighting together was admirable. Asserting yourself by asking Law to push and pull you closer to the fight with the Ope-Ope no Mi ability, while fighting side-by-side with Massacre Soldier Killer in close quarters, had him left wordless.

After the battle finishes, he watched as you hastily aided your crew of their injuries while disregarding your own; putting others first while adding pressure to your hand-gash, hovering it over your head to slow the bleeding. He couldn’t get enough of you. 

He needed you to know how he felt about you, but being in the presence of Luffy and Law always seemed to bring out the more juvenile side of attitude. His simple attraction and infatuation with you had to be revealed to you in due time, but he couldn’t risk sounding like an idiot in front of you. He would have to simply wait until you were alone and unoccupied before he made his move to take care of you after taking care of others. 

Slowly approaching you as you sat down against the tangerine grove aboard the Thousand Sunny, his shadow shrouded your form and prompted you to gaze up into his scarred, sheepish face. Your smile caused his heart to beat harder and his head to swirl with a variety of "what-ifs". Gulping back his insecurities, he knelt down in front of you.

“Let me take care of that for you,” he offered with a soft smirk, “You’ve done so much for others, and I think your hand needs some seeing to.” 

“If you say so, Captain Kid,” you shrug, offering your injured hand delicately to him and listening to his every instruction as he treats you, “I wasn’t aware you had any medical training.” He straps your hand in a bandage, placing down the final ties before holding your injured hand in his.

“I don’t,” he shrugged with a smile atop his painted lips, “But I’ve lost an arm before, and I don’t want to see that happen to you.” 

“You’re-...” he stuttered over his words, gazing at your hand before softly drifting his tired eyes up, “...-You amaze me. Truly, amaze me.” You place your other hand on his, never once removing your eyes from his face as he offers you such kindness. 

“Thank you, sir,” you nod to him with a soft smile, “You amaze me, too.”

Stupidity: Roronoa Zoro

“Why would you do that?” Zoro roared at you, hovering his body over yours and caging your face-down body within a shield of his own. The gashes on your back were deep, your body weeping out the red essence and staining your clothes with it.

“C-Couldn’t risk yours,” you stuttered out with a soft smile, “H’was gonna g-get yours. Didn’t want you to wear the shame.” His eyes widened, filling with a steam of glossy tears that threatened to spill over the moment you stuttered out your confession. “That’s what you said, wasn’t it? Mark on the back is a swordsman’s greatest shame?” 

Drip. 

Drip.

Drip.

One after one, soft tears spilt down his cheeks and mixed with the fluids pooling at your back. He leaned down towards you, the heat of battle dying down with the swift, flaming kick of the blonde cook and giggling chuckles of your captain, Luffy. 

“You’re a fucking idiot,” he sniffed his sobs back as he leaned down to cage you, “Can’t you see? None of that fucking matters without you here.” He softly, tenderly moved you from your position on the floor to not disturb your wounds. He sat you up, cradling you against his broad chest and openly sobbed for you. 

“When you get better,” he growled into your shoulder, “I will repay you for this. I will pay my debt to you.” His sobs got more desperate, not halting in the slightest when Trafalgar D Water-Law approached the two of you in your embrace. 

“Let me get ‘em to the infirmary,” Law offered, gesturing for Bepo to ready the aid kit, “I’ll treat the wounds there-.” 

“-I won’t leave them,” Zoro barked over your shoulder, your soft smile tugging at your cheeks in your hazy daze. “Let me go with you, Traffy. I won’t say a damn word to distract you, on my honor.” Law nods, raising his hand and spreading his fingers and offers the two words to switch positions within the infirmary: “Room, Shambles.” 

As you drifted in and out of consciousness, you laughed each time Zoro chastised you for your stupidity. Echos of: “There were so many other things you could’ve done instead,” and “You stumbled into that blade like a moron and took that hit for me, idiot.” You giggled through the pain, barely feeling it as Law worked to stitch you together again. 

Upon regaining consciousness, you looked to your moss-haired crewmate and offered out your hand to his bicep. His head was bowed, arms crossed over his chest, and was assumed to be napping by your bedside. Feeling your touch, he was roused from his sleep and immediately leaned forward to bring his face beside yours. 

“You’re a fucking moron,” he huffed, smiling in a melancholy grin. You laughed at his insult, squeezing his muscle before retracting your hand. As you nearly drew it away to your side, he caught your hand and brought your palm up to his lips. 

“My fucking moron,” he confirmed, placing a soft kiss to your palm before using it to cup his face. “I love you.”

Duality: Massacre Soldier Killer

Staring up into your face while remaining silent, resting his masked face on the heel of his palm, he listened to your recount of a very specific childhood injury that left you with an interesting scar on your thigh. Killer’s eyes never left your face, his cheeks beginning to glow warm and vibrant beneath the shroud of his mask.

“So, let me get this straight,” Captain Eustass Kid held his hand in front of his face and gave it a gentle wave to halt your words, “That sick-looking scar wasn’t from any time you served with Luffy, but because you set off a fucking harpoon and speared yourself in the leg with it?” 

Killer felt himself swoon at the melody your laugh thrust into the atmosphere. He was ever thankful his blue and white mask disguised how much he was smiling beneath the shroud. 

“Yep,” you popped the ‘P’ afterwards, nodding in confirmation as you sat beside Usopp and drew your tankard up to your lips, “But I learnt from it, and it hasn’t happened since.” Killer sighed, his voice almost coming out in a soft moan to reveal his growing infatuation for you. Kid barked out a harsh gaggle of laughter, clapping you on the shoulder with his right hand and gestured for you to reveal it to them.

“Let me see it again, go on,” he chuckled, removing his hand and sitting back on his seat, “Use Killer’s thigh as a prop so we can see it properly. You don’t mind do you, big guy?” Killer absentmindedly and slowly shook his head, tapping his thigh twice with his hand for you to reveal your injury to the captain of the Victoria Punk, himself and your crewmate beside you. 

“Alright,” you shrugged, standing beside Usopp and Killer and gently placed your foot atop Killer’s thigh and began hiking up your shorts to your hip, “Feast your eyes, Captain.” Sure enough, an interesting looking scar was revealed on your inner thigh, clear as day and sure as the sea is salty. 

“Oh, fucking hells!” Kid gave you a hearty laugh, “You seeing this, big guy?” Kid turned his attention to his first mate, his smile only growing as he noticed the angle of Killer’s mask never left your face. Surprise was immediately thrust into Kid’s eyes, noticing the unwavering resolve in Killer’s posture. 

You turned your attention down to the silent and broody first-mate, your face puzzled and eyes searching his mask for any further thought or action. He slowly drew his hands up to clasp around your ankle and calf, holding it firmly as he leaned forward. 

“You’re perfect,” he offered in a breathy whisper, stroking your leg and gazing lovingly into your face, “Don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise.” 

Your face flushed with a warmth at his words, eyes widening and looking down at his large hands as they held you so tenderly and delicately within his grasp. Smiling, you leaned forwards and placed your hand over his scarred left forearm with mischief in your eyes, asking him a simple question with a suggestive tone. 

“Like what you see then, big guy?” At your question, Usopp nearly choked on his drink. You had never been this bold before, and this came as a shock to your crew’s skilled sniper. He covered his choking with a soft cough, turning away with a downturned smile and stifling his growing laugh. 

“So much,” Killer confirmed, gently caressing your calf and looking up at you through half-hooded blonde lashes beneath his mask, “So, so much.”

[kohakhearts]

when people first meet me and inquire about my studies im generally hit with two different responses, being 1) “wow, that’s an unusual combination”/“you don’t see that often”/etc. and 2) “you must be SO smart!” (or its evil twin, “you must hate yourself ha-ha”), and while the first is obviously a better response than the second, both are kinda…awkward to react to.

like? IS it an unusual combination of interests, or is it actually that most institutions make it exceptionally difficult for people to pursue stem and arts concurrently? and that we don’t often talk about the heavy crossover between stem and the arts because we’re so culturally obsessed with this notion that the world is split into Art People and Science People (also known as English People and Math People)?

and how would my interest in a science make me any smarter than someone in my program who chose to pursue a minor in history instead of physics? also, NO, i don’t hate myself. obviously taking stem classes after spending years believing im “not a math person” has lowered my gpa, but that’s not really something i care about, because at the end of the day i find the subject endlessly fascinating and i enjoy my classes very much, and i get better at math every semester because i have no choice. because it’s just…a method of communication. it’s a language. you practice, you improve - but you have to be consistent and intentional about it. the same way you have to be consistent and intentional about analyzing fictional texts and historical documents.

which is to say that like. you are using the same skills. i tutored a high school student last year who looked at me like i was crazy for saying that close reading a short story is functionally the same as solving an algebra problem. you collect like terms. then you compare and contrast them to make a statement about them - it’s human nature to seek refuge in what is familiar even if it is simultaneously traumatic, or x = 2 and y = -2. you can chart it, you can graph it, you can draw it. listen, isn’t there something so inherently beautiful about the word integral? it’s something intrinsic, baked into a person or a thing - the fundamental values formed within you by tiny, infinitesimal pieces: moments, experiences - they coalesce into something completely different, but still. you can go back. you can find the pieces. define them, pick them apart, put them together again in new ways. expand them, contract them, equate them to something else just to understand them.

half the study of mathematics is called analysis, for god’s sake. what is the study of art if not analysis? is it not the goal of the artist, the writer, to make sense of our place in the world? and is this not what we do in physics, too? look at the world and try to find reason in it? as the poet spends their life trying to make the intangible tangible, the particle physicist attempts to study dark matter. when we form a sentence, we utilize a complex system of equations that are so second-nature to us we don’t even register that’s what we’re doing - but there’s a reason this branch of linguistics is called syntactic calculus.

like…believe me. if you told my teenage self i’d be taking calculus-based courses in university, i wouldn’t have believed it. i teach high school students now who tell me they know they aren’t good at english, but it doesn’t matter to them because they do so well in math. and i get it. i do. but it’s disappointing, too, because i think my knowledge of math has made me a better reader and writer. and it feels like most people are missing out on that connection, because they feel like it’s impossible to make. but any experimentalist can tell you there’s an art to the scientific process. any musician or poet can tell you that great art is dictated by numbers - rhythm, rhyme and metre, all of it. the only group of people as interested in conceptual symmetry as physicists are artists.

anyway, all i’m saying is like - one is not more essential than the other, these things are inextricably linked, these things are as fundamental to human existence as breathing. there’s a reason why astronomers defer to shakespeare to name newly discovered bodies in space, you know? we've all gotta learn to love the math in our art and the artistry behind math.

[vivianleighwishesshewasme]

The Devils Mate

The Devils Mate

Esme and Tommy- Modern dystopia

 World went to hell after another major world war. No electronics survived. Different groups developed into different tribes with tastes and towns. Some modern conveniences for those doing better than others.

My own personal work, your can of course reblog and share. 

Warning: mentions of abuse, almost rape and lots of swearing. You’ve been warned. Sex later in chapters. Don’t read if you are under 18!!

I'm serious. You've been warned.

_________________Tommy’s POV____________________________________________________

I’d seen the progression of the cult grow exponentially over the last year even. Their property that was ever expanding started encroaching on the Shelby brothers company limited property.  To be fair we’d basically bought all the property around them boxing them in. We also had access to the only creek and pond effectively cutting off their water resource minus the tiny well that wouldn’t sustain the fifty plus families on the six acres of land that they occupied. No, we were forcing their hand. Behind the property there was a dirt road that led to acres of trees and access to the creek and pond or if you headed north, to the town.

 My house was the first home you’d see, flanked by my Uncle Charlies and then the buildings where my posh brothers lived in townhouses. The town was built before the world went to shit. Meant to be a “historical outdoor museum” Now the lap of luxury. We had all kinds of buildings. Grocer, butcher, wagon maker and so on. It was a fully functional town and the Shelby family owned most of it.

 “The congregation of the city on a hill” was the official title of said cult. Some religious groups, interestingly enough, seemed to have gypsies in the camp. Most of the women dressed like Edwardians albeit working class, nothing wrong with it. A small group that seemed to mix in was definitely Romany like us. Lots of vibrant colors. We’ve been observing them for a while. We didn’t need another religious group dividing people. They’d have to fully disband and keep their word. We didn’t need more trouble in town. .  They loaded guns when we approached and most of the group seemed to be made up of men. More than what I had at the moment. I needed to figure out how they recruited so I could grow my town and base of men for expansion's sake. All I needed was to make contact and talk to someone. 

*********************ESME’S POV***********************************

I hated it. I loved the children, I loved the walk away from the compound and I loved the freedom from most of the cult. I hated being watched and kept in line. I don’t think I’ve warranted most of the punishments that have been heaped on me as the leader's daughter. If I rolled my eyes, spoke up and had an opinion about anything or even wandered off in my mind, a swift punishment would ensue. 

In the time before I had a normal life. 

Seven men ages 15-21 were following the children and I. A few other girls from the camp followed as well bringing us up to 27 people in total. I liked math. I remembered the time before “God’s wrath”, as they called it,  when I was in school, selling our family's vegetables by the road. I loved recording the sales, planning next year's garden by the trends I was seeing in my raggidy notebook. I wish I could have gone into business. We didn’t do any business with anyone anymore. Anything we wove, made or grew stayed within the community.  

Now my place is watching children and preparing for my engagement to a leader's son. God I hated that sniveling little guttersnipe. Pretended to be holy while breaking all the rules. He and his boys could do whatever with little to no consequence.  He may look handsome but he was a mean S.O.B. I had no choice really. My mother felt forced to accept and I was a woman…I was a vessel for a child. I didn’t mind children and wanted my own eventually. Not with Peter however. I couldn’t trust him with myself let alone kids.  When our dad stepped out a few months ago it had fractured the power base. My mum was forced to remarry, even though no proof was given that he’d died. 13 leaders now, all with different ideas on the future and deciding who is important at any given day. 

  I looked around as we came into the clearing near the pond. The soft sunlight was flickering over the tree line and warming the ground near me. This was my peace.  We had a favorite picnic spot.  We were out picking black berries for canning.  Everyone was busy talking, flirting, going off into the bushes for a romp or playing. I sat down near the creek's edge and grabbed my notebook. I was getting lost in my sketches for next year's garden. Truth be told we had to get creative. The property all  around us was being bought. We tried to buy a farm about half a mile away. It had been blocked by a sale to Shelby Company Limited. The church was so angry. Saying the devil blocked us. They wanted the  horses to spread the word and expand the cult, the land and resources. We were getting too big too quickly to sustain anything long term. 

“Beautiful morning.” I turned my head upwards and squinted into the tree line near the creek's edge. The man was on the other side of the creek. Territory I was forbidden to go on. The heathen town. I couldn’t see a town from here, perhaps it was a walk through the trees. He was well dressed in a tweed suit. Blues and browns. His gold pocket watch shined in the sun and his shoes were freshly polished for a walk in the woods. He had some gypsy in him I’d bet. Made me smile to think I still had something in common with someone. Even if we’d never meet again. . His voice was deep and rich, he had chiseled cheekbones and icy blue eyes. My brain wandered to what it would be like to lick the rain drops of his strong jaw line. I blushed, buried my head in my notebook. I often found people attractive enough to enjoy a glance but this man had the heat  pooling tightly in my belly like a snake ready to strike. My Omega knew instantly who he was…our mate. I wondered what he smelled like. 

________________Tommy_________________________________________________

I chuckled once I realized why she was ignoring me across the creek. She seemed odd at first. Face like a doll, rounded and soft, dark brown hair with piercing eyes.  Eyes as Poll would say that saw through your soul. Her hair was braided off to the side giving me a good view of her face. She dressed differently than them. Romany. She wore a white Edwardian dress but she had rings on all fingers, a red shawl obviously passed down since it was well made and older looking. She could wrap our children in that shawl.  She also lined her eyes shortly after she sat down. I was drawn to this girl. 

  The wind had gently picked up and I smelled her. Lavender and wild honey. She was my mate. I smiled broadly. I know she was aware of who I was to her. What did I smell like to her? Would she reject me? It was the woman's choice in our culture to accept or reject her mate. Most women didn’t due to the bond being able to kill if it was strong enough. I need to bide my time and be patient. Make her like me so she’ll accept the bond. This was going to be hard even for me. I turned as my brothers as they came crashing through the woods like 500 pound squirrels. I was annoyed when I turned back and she had moved away from the creek. She was in a heated discussion with one of the children by a black berry bush. She didn’t seem angry, just annoyed. She helped pick quickly sparing glances at the menfolk on her side. She was worried about something. I observed her for a while before she came back and sat by the creek again busying herself with her little book.

I bent down as far as I could on my side. I couldn’t raise my voice too high over the rushing water or her guards would come over and be noisy. If she was my mate then she could help me, maybe get me names or a way to get into the cult and draw people out of the town. 

“Girl, come closer eh, let me talk to you.” I spoke slowly and calmly like I would to a mare. She wasn’t budging but she was interested in me. Her eyes kept drawing to the side in little flickers letting me know she was aware of me.

“My name is not a girl.” She spat out. I hid my smile with a black gloved hand. God, she had fire in her. 

“No, that would be a silly name for a beautiful gypsy girl.” I nodded locking eyes with her. Green hazel eyes with bursts of gold. She was getting weary of my conversation, she kept looking at the men and then at me. She probably wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone outside of the cult. Most likely she’d be punished if they caught her. 

 “Romany eh, what's a good gypsy woman doing in a cult, huh?” She sat stock still as if not wanting a predator to know she was there. I swelled with pride. She was a smart one too.

 “ What's in your book?” Third question would be the one she answered right? I was getting annoyed sitting on my haunches. My shoes were cutting into my feet and my legs were aching. Give me something. 

“Just my math.” she answered softly, eyes not leaving her page. “Planning next year's garden and supply list.” She lifted it closer to her chest as if it was guarding her heart. My resolve was weakening quickly. I need to get to work, distract myself from her soothing scent. She looked worried. I bet I knew what it was. No matter how she worked it, they wouldn’t survive. 

“The farmer you went through for the horses sold his farm, yeah, that’s why your upset?  Miss….” I rolled my hand gently prompting her to answer.I wanted a name from her. She glanced at my hand and raised an eyebrow. She was a very cautious girl. She was covered head to toe even on a hot day. Something wasn’t right, she was too guarded. 

“ My point is your only supplier outside of the town is gone. You're all too far from any other town especially without horses, what's the plan? When do your resources run out?” Her face looked stunned but she recovered more quickly than even I anticipated. Blank doll face met me but the surprise was still in her eyes. 

“So that’s what happened to him.” she said flatly. “He’s gone and sold to you.” She was thinking.

“That's what happened to him.” I repeated. I wanted her looking at me. Mr. turner had fucked off to another town to be with his daughter and her husband. They had started a feed mill business but neither of them were good managers of people or finances. Mr. Turner however was a very successful man that wasn’t too affected when the modern world ended. He simply went on. 

 She glanced down at that damn book again and then to me. I was ready to throw it in the damn pond. I took a deep breath remembering who she was to us. I was trying to settle down with my Sigma who wanted to claim her. The scent wasn’t helping at all. He raged inside me demanding I claim her now as ours, protect her, mate and keep her. 

“Esme! Come here you stupid whore!” A man's voice rang out harshly causing her to slam her book shut and stomp away. She didn’t go to him, but she was so much closer to him  thenI wanted her to be. She stood a good distance away with the children back to her picking duties. 

I stood towering over the edge just waiting for an excuse to come over and cut him a smile, as John boy would say. I felt two strong hands on my chest grounding me. I could kill that boy for speaking to her like that. She wasn’t his to address in any fashion.

“Pretty little girl.” Arthur observed her and smiled. “Ease down, eh, brother.”  I sucked down my urge to hit him. I didn’t even look at Arthur. 

 It was just my Sigma not enjoying someone looking at my women. I nodded. John caught my eye and smirked. He knew, he refused to look at her which I appreciated. 

“ She’s one of those cult girls huh?” John laughed. “ Be an obedient little wife, huh Arther.” John sobered up quickly when my cold gaze met him. Suddenly the bare patch of ground was of interest to him. 

“No, Mrs. Shelby has a fire in her. I can tell.” We laughed, causing the boys across the creek to suddenly find interest in us. I explained who she was to us, softening my brothers up to the knowledge that she was family and should be treated as such. I didn’t need a first or second mark on her to claim she was mine. She was under the protection of the peaky blinders now. 

Feeling more settled we grabbed our tools as they all settled on their side and draped cloth blankets on the ground and brought out picnic baskets. We had everyone's attention. We were building a bridge to close the gap over the four foot wide gap between sides. We would be

forcing their hand very soon to come visit our town. Especially with my mate now having knowledge that their supplier was entirely cut off causing desperation. We stripped down to just our shirts and trousers and got to work. I kept my cap close by in case that fucker grabbed at Esme. Now I had a name to mutter tonight when I thought of her. 

********************Esme*********************************************

I could gut him like a fish! I hated when Peter talked to me like that. He may be my fiance in name but as far as I was concerned he didn’t have any reason to speak to me let alone call me names or even my name. I watch the mystery man across the creek react with cold blooded rage but he was stopped by two others. Family of some sort guessing by their faces. I wanted him to cross that creek. Come pick me up and haul me off to another life, hopefully a better one. He was handsome and intelligent enough. I’d be happy to mate with him.  I was staring. I caught one of them mention it which caused laughter on their side of the water. I blushed and looked down. I had caught a name before I glanced back and  my man winked at me. Tommy. 

“Esme, can you help me please.” A small little voice of one of my favorite little girls crept through my ears. I tossed my book. It was clear I wasn’t going to be working in it. I smiled at Britney. She was my sunshine. A little girl of 7 with wheat blonde hair always in a braid. Blue eyes like my mates and the sweetest smile which she always wore even in her sleep. 

I spread out the blanket for our lunch picnic. I had made my quilt so it was rich in fall colors of browns, golds,oranges and creams. I glanced at my mate who was shirtless, tattooed and smiling at me after he pounded in every nail on that bridge. I couldn’t wait to wrap our babies up in that quilt. Perhaps I’d have a girl with my hair color, his eyes and smile. A girl could dream right. 

[mell-the-dungeon-master]

Dicecloud V1 Guide, pt. 1

credit: 💉on pinterest

Hello to my wonderful players! This post is to serve as my go-to link when I have to run games and my players aren't familiar with Dicecloud.

Disclaimer: Everything I say is of my opinion and personal preference. I do not claim that one is objectively better over the other. If I do, assume that I mean it in a joking manner.

If you still decide to use D&DB after this, that's fine too! I just can't help if something goes terribly wrong.

🌼˗ˏˋ "Why not D&D Beyond?"

Because DC is free, supremely customizable with unlimited character slots and easy to implement homebrew. The catch is that its all manual (aside from the stat math) and at worst you would have to add a list of things in one by one.

Additionally, those who are experienced with Markdown / HTML can use their knowledge to automate some math or functions.

I think its a good thing to have new players learn to create a character from the scratch. D&DB gives you a handful of choices with short descriptions that can be skimmed over, the player won't really understand what the feature is or why they made that choice.

To give you an idea on what DC is like, here are some of my characters ranging from low levels (1-5) to level 30 (it was a heavily homebrewed campaign):

Momo, Level 3 Gestalt Character, Barbarian (Giants)/Druid (Wildfire)

Rowena Lillith Burnette Grey, Level 30 Gestalt Character, Blood Hunter (Mutant)/Ranger (Monster Slayer)

Whiff, Level 6 Character, Rogue (Arcane Trickster)

Lanie Colette Jacquét, Level 6 Character, Ranger (Fey Wanderer)/Warlock (Archfey)

🌼˗ˏˋ "What about sources?" / "How can I find X?"

5e Wikidot. Everything is literally right there for ✨F R E E✨ no subscription or content sharing needed.

🌼˗ˏˋ "How can I roll dice during games?"

I use Owlbear Rodeo and its dice rolling extensions. It just doesn't connect your sheet to the VTT like Beyond20.

I. Signing In to Dicecloud

If you don't already have an account, go ahead and make one (link below)

https://v1.dicecloud.com/

We will be using version 1 (V1) Dicecloud. Its the one I'm familar with and it's the easily customizable one. Version 2 massively overhauls the OGs systems, so I don't know how to use it (plus, no unli slots). If you decide to use V2, that's fine too!

II. Creating a New Character

Great! Now open up the sidebar (☰ on the top left if you're on mobile), click on "Characters", then the big red plus button (bottom right)

It will give you 3 options, select "New Character"

(Check picture below) You'll be greeted to this screen, at the very least fill in the character's name and race. But they will all be changeable later if you decide to change your mind.

One you click "Add" you will be greeted to your character's "Stats" page (keep in mind that I'll call them "Tabs" or "Pages")

From here, I'm assuming you already have a character in mind. If you don't, I have a separate post--a quick guide. Feel free to check it out then come back here.

III. Setting your Base Ability Scores

I have all the pictures below in order. On your character sheet, head to the "Features" page, you will then see the "Base Ability Scores" feature.

Click on that and you will be shown your ability scores, they are 10 by default. To edit them, click on the pencil on the top right of the pop up window.

The pencil puts you in, what I like to call, "editing mode." Earlier you were just in "viewing mode."

Anyways, you will see pencils on the right side. Each of them allows you to edit their corresponding ability score.

Clicking on then brings you here (look below) where you can change the value. Remember, this is your base ability score, that means before you receive any bonuses.

After editing each score, you should end up with something like this. Just hit the check mark (✔) at the top right corner or click outside the pop up window.

Once you've done that for every ability, you should end up with something like this:

This post is getting pretty long, so I'll continue this in another post. I'll update and leave links as I go.

[vignanonlinedegree]

What Exactly Is a Fintech Course?

What is a Fintech course?

What is Fintech? It is an inquiry that many individuals are posing, and understandably. The fintech business is quickly developing. There are numerous open doors for the people who need to work in this field. However, what is fintech, precisely? Furthermore, how might you dive deeper into it? This blog entry will address these inquiries and give an outline of this MBA course.

Let’s Start!

An outline of FinTech:

Fintech is a term that portrays the different imaginative innovations and applications utilized in the monetary administrations area. These advances can possibly disturb conventional money models and set out new open doors for organizations and customers the same.

Some well known fintech applications incorporate portable installments, shared loaning, Robo-consultants, and blockchain innovation. While every one of these applications has novel advantages, they all offer one shared objective: to make monetary administrations more available and productive.

The MBA Fintech course is intended for the people who need to find out about the most recent developments in the monetary area and how to apply them in a business setting. The course covers different points, including fintech applications, advanced change, and troublesome plans of action.

How might you begin your FinTech vocation?

There are a couple of ways you can begin your fintech profession. One way is to get a MBA in Fintech. It will give you the hypothetical information and system to comprehend how the monetary innovation industry functions. Another way is to take an online fintech course. It provides you with a functional comprehension of the business and how to apply its ideas. There are numerous alternate ways of beginning in fintech, however these are two of the most famous strategies. Whichever course you pick, ensure you do your exploration so you should rest assured it's an ideal choice for you.

Top vocations in FinTech

Here are the top vocations in FinTech:

Information Science and Examination

Information is the backbone of any business, however it is fundamental in monetary administrations. From client conduct to advertise patterns, information assists organizations with pursuing better choices quicker. To that end, information researchers are popular in FinTech.

As an information researcher in FinTech, you will utilize your measurements, math, and programming abilities to assist organizations with getting a handle on enormous informational indexes. You should convey your discoveries plainly to non-specialized staff and clients.

WealthTech and Robo-counselors

WealthTech and Robo-consultants are the two most well known utilizations of fintech. People and monetary foundations use them to deal with their funds and settle on speculation choices. WealthTech is a monetary innovation that assists people and associations with dealing with their riches. It incorporates instruments for resource allotment, portfolio the executives, and chance administration.

Robo-consultants are computerized speculation guides that give suggestions to putting away cash in light of your objectives, risk resilience, and time skyline. They use calculations to make and oversee the arrangement of speculations.

AI and Man-made reasoning

Man-made intelligence is both a unique advantage as well as an opponent for banks, or any organization besides. Right present, we have rule-based frameworks instead of real simulated intelligence. Organizations are making AI to empower simulated intelligence to comprehend those standards all alone, which can possibly obscure the limit between what is a standard based calculation and something basically the same as our thought process.

Later on, man-made intelligence could be a strong partner to banks. It can assist with recognizing risk and false conduct sooner, computerize dull cycles and give representatives prescient examinations that can assist them with pursuing choices quicker.

3. RegTech

RegTech, or Administrative Innovation, is a term used to depict the utilization of innovation to assist associations with conforming to guidelines. It incorporates all that from creating programming to follow administrative changes to information examination to recognize consistency gambles.

With the steadily changing scene of monetary guidelines, RegTech has turned into a fundamental piece of carrying on with work for the vast majority of monetary establishments. What's more, as the business keeps on developing, there is a rising interest for talented RegTech experts.

Blockchain and Cryptographic forms of money

Blockchain is the fundamental establishment that permits digital currencies to exist. Consider blockchain a center innovation, like the web, and digital forms of money are just a single utilization of that tech. Thus, when we pose the inquiry, "What is fintech?" It's vital to comprehend that blockchain is a major piece of the response.

HFT/Algorithmic Exchanging

Exchanging volumes have soared in the past couple of a very long time as machines assumed control over the snort work and could now execute a huge number of exchanges per sec. We have arrived where a solitary millisecond might represent the deciding moment at an exchanging stage, and exchanging organizations burn through such a lot of cash just to shave a couple of moments from their robotized online frameworks.

Calculations process gigantic measures of information and line up a great many arrangements. In any case, somebody should assemble, keep up with, improve, and update these calculations.

Application Improvement

Clients spend a normal of seven hours every day on the web, the vast majority of that time on cell phones. Is it amazing that organizations are placing billions of dollars into portable application improvement and appropriating them to however many buyers as could be expected under the circumstances? Consistently, more than 200 billion cell phone application downloads happen, the vast majority of which are for Android, followed by iOS. It is the business' size.

Furthermore, it isn't just about downloading; it's about the trillions of dollars spent on these applications for shopping, money, diversion, and administrations, in addition to other things. Banks and FinTech organizations are scrambling to areas of strength to foster tastefully engaging applications to draw in and keep clients.

The Conclusion

With the always changing scene of the money business, it's a higher priority than at any other time to remain on the ball. A MBA fintech course can give you the abilities and information you want to prevail in this quickly developing field.

Whether you're hoping to change professions or advance in your ongoing job, an online fintech course can give you the edge you really want to succeed. With an emphasis on arising innovations and patterns, you'll get ready to assume the difficulties of the fintech business.

#online mba in finance, #mba in finance, #masters in finance, #mba in banking and finance, #mba in finance and marketing, #mba in investment banking, #mba in banking

[ohabeeeeeee]

Subtraction (Negs, I don't care what anyone says I'm not changing their name to Sub) is kinda pathetic but also a thirteen-year-old willing to fight god for an animal/shape rubber band. They have such memorable and strangely shaped hair that you could confuse them for a pokemon character. Their gender is wouldn't you like to know weather boy. They tend to walk ahead of everyone, but always stick with whoever is right behind them. They are "friends" with the popular jock Addition (Plad, a pun on "plus the chad)(pronounced plaid) who, while being popular, is loved by everyone, but not really liked by anyone (sad musclehead stereotype) except for Negs, who will willingly spend time with him now and then. He also has a dog named buddy. If you even care. Negs (who is kind of the MC) has two older sibling figures, the seventeen-year-old Communitave Properties (Commu Tive), and his fifteen-year-old little sister Associative Properties (Ssocia/Ssoci)9I'm not naming her that, get over it) and the two of them juggle, meaning that there is something deeply wrong with them. Commu has a navy blue and periwinkle color scheme and Ssoci has a red and a light-ish orange color scheme, they both have a striking resemblance to a Picasso painting and their colors are split along their bodies right down the nose with the lighter side being on their left. Ssoci has a hoodie pocket only big enough to fit two of three of her juggling balls, which helps me remember how she works. (Commu picked up juggling because of a cheesy anti-smoking ad that called juggling cooler than smoking, and Ssoci picked it up to be like her big bro) The next two are goblins called Identity Properties (Iden) and Inverse Properties (Inver). They are both absolutely horrible creatures who lurk in the sewers. Iden is the lesser evil of the two, recognizing your house for one day, and then butting it back the same way the next. Inver will send you to the mirror world and back to make you a neutral version of yourself or sometimes just turn you into the most basic person alive (may also steal your livers. Yes both of them) Iden is dark grey with "phantom spots" appearing in a checkered patten throughout their whole body, which are a slightly desaturated purple in color and see through. Iven has half of them in navy blue and the other in bright orange. The next two are Symmetric Property (Symmy) and Multiplication Properties (Multi) are half-goblins who have the creepy twin dynamic (not actually siblings). Symmy will change the material of your pants and your shirt with no remorse. Multi will delete you or invert your colors. Both have the same desire for evil. Symmy is red in color and has countershading and Multi is yellow in color with countershading. They also wear clothes, that is more than the actual goblin sibs wear

Multiplication (Dotson) and Division (Samur) also exist btw. They're gay teachers and background characters. Multi is kind of like their daughter in a leaving a plate of food on the back porch for her kind of way.

me: *has a hard time understanding (subject)* me: *turns (subject) into fandom* me: *has an easy time understanding (subject)*

[just-doing-lesbian-things]

Jinx and Her Braids

Ik Jinx’s braids are a part of her LoL design from before Arcane was even a whisper on the Undercity’s streets, but I have to dig into this a bit

Because Jinx, this “free agent of chaos” runs around town, doing jump scares and seeming to be everywhere at once with braids that are the length of her gd body--and anyone who has chopped off even a foot of hair can tell you, hair can feel pretty heavy. She’s not just dodging hits and hoverboards with lightening speed--she’s doing it with weights attached to her skull. 

Warning: I do math and then make sad conclusions about Jinx’s motives

Ok, so first things first, I looked up how much hair weighs. I found this video of of a woman weighing, what she claims to be, 4 feet of unbraided hair and when she braids it, the braid coming off her head weighs about 1/2 a pound. 

Based on that concept art that’s been circulating, Jinx is 5′3″ and her braided hair seems to reach about ankle length.

I’m 5′2″--not far off from Jinx’s height-- and my ankles are about 2 inches off of the ground, so the distance from my head to ankle is 5 feet. I’d then say that Jinx’s braided hair hits roughly 5 feet down her body. This would mean that her hair has to weigh at minimum .6-.7 lbs. 

But considering that unbraided hair is longer than braided hair, we can assume Jinx’s hair is even longer than 5 feet.

And in the video I found, the woman wasn’t using a hairtie, 1/2 a pound was the sheer weight of her braid, meanwhile Jinx is running around with either metal or leather bracelets in her hair. Either of which could bring the weight up to a solid 1 lb or even 2-4lbs depending on if they’re metal or not. (And I definitely think most of them are metal)

All to say, I think we’d be more than generous in merely rounding up to 1lb, and that we could easily say her hair weighs at least 2 lbs or more. So she’s running around, dodging hits and hoverboards with at least an extra pound of weight counterbalancing every turn she makes with her head. 

Talk about ow? Talk about headache? Talk about seeing red every time a door closes on your hair or you sit on your hair without enough slack so you have to shift and reposition yourself so your hair is out from under you just you can sit down but all the while your skull is throbbing because your hair is an unrelenting weight on your already really heavy skull?

So, as a Jinx character question, I have to ask why? 

Why have this super long hair that has to hurt more than it’s really worth (worth functionality wise)? Cause also it takes commitment to grow your hair that long. You really mean to tell me Jinx never had a breakdown and took a pair of scissors to her locks? (like what clearly happened with Powder’s bangs). Having hair that long is intentional. It takes a long time to grow hair that long. Like years and years and one snip would make for shorter hair when we see her later “all growed up.”

I’d bet Jinx hasn’t cut her hair since before Vi “left.”

The ends of her braids is probably the hair that was on her head when the Vander-family was still together. A possible, but probably out there theory could be that Jinx never cut her hair because it was a way to keep something of herself that she had when she was Powder. (Someone from a culture with a an emphasis on hair braiding could speak more to this than I)

But, knowing this little meow meow, it’s probably because she wants the pain on her skull. Some kind of physical manifestation of the pain happening inside her head from the extra voices her trauma crammed into her mind. 

Also, she went from one braid as Powder (copying their Mom’s one braid) to two as Jinx. And if she kept the length for the pain then I like to think she made it two braids because of Mylo and Claggor--the two “ghosts” we see on her backside, over her braids, in episode 6. The braids are the physical manifestations of the weights of their deaths and how it weighs on her psyche.

Thoughts welcome. It’s such an inefficient fashion choice that I’m fascinated. 

[skamenglishsubs]

Subtext and Culture, Young Royals, Season 1, Episode 2

Episode 2 picks up the morning day after the initiation party, the girls are having breakfast lunch at their dorm, the boys at theirs, and everyone wants the juicy details about what happened at the party...

Culture: Tell me more, tell me more, did you get very far? Although, it's pretty funny how the roles are reversed, Maddie is all "meh" about it, while Nils tells a different story. Then again, since when do you get together after a blowjob?

Culture: I actually have no idea why Simon is having breakfast at Skogsbacken, since regular schools only cover lunch for students, everyone eats breakfast at home, and then goes to school. Then again, it allows a scene where (Never mind, they're having lunch, thanks @kamand !) Blink and you miss it: Wilhelm casts some nervous glances at Simon after having been called out for disappearing at the party and almost forced to confess to making out with someone.

Culture: I know Felice is trying to put August down, but don't knock a proper Swedish pizza! As much as I like living in the US, they can't fucking make pizzas here, and the first thing I eat every time I go back to Sweden is always a real pizza. With pineapple and shrimp as God intended pizza to be made!

Culture: August is namedropping ski resorts in the Alps, which is where you go skiing in Europe if you have money, although Saint-Martin-de-Belleville is actually near Val Thorens in France, while Verbier is in Switzerland. It does have a three-star restaurant, though. Sweden and Norway have a couple of decent ski resorts, but the Scandinavian mountain chain is simply not as impressive as the Alps.

Subtext: Remember Wilhelm getting up and hurrying to math class in the beginning of the scene? It was so he could grab the other seat next to Simon, because he knows Simon is gonna sit next to Sara, since no-one else does.

Culture: Formally greeting your teacher before class is very uncommon in Sweden, but since Hillerska is all about discipline and tradition, of course they do it. Note that they're again using the formal Swedish title for male teachers, Magister, which in a regular school would be kind of a joke, since teachers and students are on a first-name basis with each other.

Subtext: Wilhelm is exposing how the world works if you have money. At Simon's old school, studying alone would result in good grades, but Hillerska is slightly corrupt and almost expects the students to essentially pay for getting a good grade.

Subtext: Simon is lying to his teacher, he absolutely hasn't talked to his parents about paying for private lessons.

Subtext: No, Sara absolutely does care about what other people think about her, and when she directly tells Felice that she would actually like some friends, that's when Felice gets it and starts making an effort to become real friends with her.

Culture: They're all bilingual at Simon's home, they're all speaking Spanish and Swedish, although Linda has a very noticeable accent to her Swedish. Based on demographics and statistics, the most likely scenario is that Linda immigrated to Sweden from Chile, met Micke, and started a family. In real life, Omar Rudberg was born in Venezuela and grew up in Sweden, while Carmen Gloria Pérez was born in New York, and grew up in Puerto Rico.

Subtext: Remember how I talked in the intro post about how distant social classes know nothing of each other? Ayub and Rosh are either working class or lower middle class like Simon, and since rowing is a typical upper class sport, they know nothing of it, they don't even think of it as a real sport. Unlike football, which is a proper working class sport, they know all about that!

Subtext: Scandinavia has Jantelagen, and everyone there thinks it's uniquely Scandinavian, but all countries have some form of Tall Poppy Syndrome. In this scene, Simon is starting to make a class journey, he started rowing, he started trying to fit in with the other upper-class kids, and getting into a relationship with someone as upper-class as Wilhelm would definitely move him all the way. But going on a journey means leaving things behind, which is why Rosh and Ayub are cutting him down and literally turning their backs on him. They like it in the small town of Bjärstad, why can't he be happy there too? Why is he betraying his roots?

Subtext: This comment from August nicely foreshadows a later episode when August does something traceable on a School computer...

Subtext: What August means is that he's not sure Wilhelm has the same desire to be accultured into the upper class, to play the part of a proper prince, in the same way that he and Erik have accepted their roles and are even enjoying them.

Culture: Although it's impossible to read the name of the medicine, the paper tag on the bottle indicates that it's some kind of prescription medicine. From the conversation with Vincent, we learn that it's some kind of ADHD medication, probably some kind of Dextroamphetamine since those improve athletic ability and cognitive functions in healthy people.

Culture: Birkenstock sandals are associated with hippies in Sweden as well as in many parts of the world, so August is actually saying that the school counselor isn't really part of the same upper-class society as the rest of the staff. And again, his use of the word sosse drives the point home.

Subtext: Consequently, the counselor sees right through August and refuses to immediately prescribe him the medication that he wants...

Subtext: ...even though August tries to both bribe him and threaten him into giving him the medication he wants.

Subtext: A big theme of this episode is class journeys, and in this scene and a previous exercise scene, August gushes about how good a thing that is, how proud he is of Simon for going on one, and spouts some crap about how everyone can make it if they really want to.

Subtext: Thankfully, Madison says what we're all thinking: August is full of shit, life isn't fair, and they're only at the school because they were born into privilege.

Blink and you miss it: After Wilhelm has nervously texted his crush for the first time, he starts to bite his fingernails, but quickly stops himself, because why would he be nervous? He's just texting another boy about rowing practice, there's nothing more to it!

Subtext: Simon's texting game is on point though, he knows exactly what he should write to get Wilhelm to go on a totally-not-a-date with him.

Subtext: In the same way that August couldn't convince the counselor about being sick, I don't think Wilhelm's atrocious acting here convinces August that he's sick either.

Culture: Public transport in the greater Stockholm area - or wherever we're supposed to be - is of course cash-less, and you pay by either charging a special card, or by signing up in their app and buying tickets through there. The point of this scene though is to drive home how Wilhelm has never ever had to take the bus before in his life, and therefore has no idea how it works.

Culture: The totally-not-a-date starts at a Circle K, which in Sweden is just another gas station, but it is actually a Canadian multi-national convenience store corporation. The price of gas is of course posted in kr/l, and 13.98kr/l corresponds to roughly $6/gal.

Subtext: Throughout the totally-not-a-date, Wilhelm is trying to reach for common ground with Simon, trying to show him how he's just a regular guy...

Subtext: ...but then real life intrudes, Wilhelm is recognized by some local girls, who call out to him and run away giggling, which shows how he's not a regular guy, he's going to get recognized wherever he goes.

Culture: Kokt eller grillat, boiled or grilled, are the two ways you can get your hot-dog at pretty much any hot-dog place in Sweden, and ketchup and mustard is always offered. The correct answer to this question is of course grilled, with ketchup and mustard, and this just shows that Wilhelm is a man of culture and good taste. Unfortunately, they were out grilled ones, so they all got boring soggy boiled hot-dogs instead. Is there a metaphor here? I don't know.

Subtext: Again, the show drives home the point that absolutely no-one has a problem with people being gay. Simon is clearly out to Ayub and the rest of his friends, and Ayub immediately picks up on the fact that this is totally a date.

Blink and you miss it: Ayub nudges Simon with his elbow to tell him that he should make a move on Wilhelm.

Culture: What we're looking at is just the local junior/high school football team, Bjärstad, playing a match against some other unnamed junior football team. Since the stakes are super low, the audience basically consists of whichever parents and friends of the players that could be bothered showing up.

Culture: Driving age is 18 in Sweden, and even then getting your own car at that age is extremely uncommon. However, you can easily get a license for a moped when you turn 15, so these are the vehicles of choice for teenagers to get around.

Subtext: August found out about Wilhelm's trip to town, but his main problem with it is that he wants Wilhelm to stop slumming it with lower class people, and to start hanging out with everyone at school instead, so that he can be properly accultured into the upper class. Again, sosse in this context means working class, not socialist.

Subtext: Although Simon felt really great about his first date with Wilhelm, the text message reminds him that Wilhelm isn't a regular person, and that even this innocent little trip generates interest and scrutiny, and can't be posted publicly.

Culture: As everyone should have noticed by now, Madison keeps speaking English, while everyone speaks to her in Swedish, so clearly she understands it. But here she gives her motivation for sticking to English, and that is that she doesn't feel she's good enough at speaking Swedish. Boarding schools like Hillerska attracts international students that have some kind of connection to the country, so a likely scenario is that Madison grew up in the US with a Swedish parent, and she's being sent here to experience Swedish culture and get immersed in the language to learn it better.

Cinematography: This shot of August drives really home all the pressure he is under, he's out of drugs, the headmistress just hinted that he's out of money, and he's literally being weighed down by books and work-out weights.

Subtext: Simon has kept his visits to Micke a secret from Sara, so here he has to intervene to make sure August doesn't accidentally reveal this to her. He also wants to protect his sister, so he's redirecting August's search for drugs onto himself.

Subtext: And on the flipside, Simon isn't really telling his dad that Sara still hates him and really doesn't want to see him, so he's vague when Micke asks about Sara and Linda.

Culture: Finally a bottle of medicine where we can read the label! Unfortunately for Simon, this is Tramadol, an opiate prescribed for pain relief, which is the complete opposite of the kind of drugs August wants.

Subtext: If you haven't figured out yet that this episode is about class journeys, August spells it out for us here. However, the reason he's "congratulating" Simon in front of everybody is because Simon just supplied him with more drugs, so this is his way of thanking him, since he can't really pay him.

Blink and you miss it: For a split second, Wilhelm grabs Simon's leg during the scary scene.

Subtext: The entire dialogue of the movie works as subtext for what's actually going on between Wilhelm and Simon at this point, and Wilhelm is getting a little freaked out by this sneaky display of affection.

Subtext: The movie also puts words on the implications of Wilhelm getting together with a boy, what about having kids in the future? Can you carry on your family name and traditions, or will they die with you?

Lost in translation: The plaque actually says "FEEL YOUR RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE HERITAGE". Even though the plaque means the heritage and legacy of the school itself, Wilhelm is thinking about his legacy, his heritage, and how getting together with Simon would threaten that.

Lost in translation: Wilhelm actually says "jag är inte en..." - "I'm not a..." before he stops himself. So it's not possible that he was trying to say "I'm not gay", because that doesn't work grammatically in Swedish either. He could be trying to say "I'm not a guy like that" or "I'm not a guy who likes guys", that would work.

Cinematography: The framing and silhouetting of this shot is just chef's kiss. The outline of their hair allows us to see who is who, and we can see from their poses that Simon is welcoming a kiss, while Wilhelm is still hesitating.

[letarasstuff]

Hold On

Summary: This is based on the song "Hold On" from Chord Overstreet. After weeks and months of arguments, hurtful words and pain Spencer's daughter is convinced that this is the only option for both's happiness.

Warnings: attempted suicide (not specified how), hospitals, angst, sad, hurtful words, mean Spencer in the beginning

Wordcount: 2k

✨Masterlist✨ _____________________________

Loving and fighting, accusing, denying I can't imagine a world with you gone

The last few weeks weren’t easy in the Reid household. There is not one day, where no loud screamed arguments are thrown through the entirety of the apartment.

“(Y/N), you have to see things from my point of view, too! My job is demanding and I can’t be there for every little competition you have”, Spencer tries to reason with his daughter.

“I have to see things from YOUR point?! Little competition?! DAD! This was the math olympics and, mind you and your busy schedule, it was not the ‘petty’ school round. I went against people from the WHOLE country! Just- I- Sometimes it would be nice to feel like I have a father caring for me for at least an hour. But I see, your job is more important than your child.”

Her father looks at her, speechless. He didn’t know how far she came in that competition. (Y/N) hasn’t said a thing, didn’t make a noise about it. How is he supposed to know all that then?

“Just because I’m a profiler doesn’t mean I’m able to read your mind. Just try and cut me some slack here, I- I need you to understand how important the things I do are. Can you try to be a little less ignorant, please?”

It feels like Spencer has punched her in the guts. For years (Y/N) backed down, knowing that her father’s work is in fact important. He is saving life for crying out loud, but is it really that selfish to ask for his attention every once in a while? Ever since she is basically able to be on her own it seems like he stopped caring for her.

“Ignorant? Oh Dad, you really are an amazing profiler”, the teenager says, her voice dripping with sarcasm, “You know what? Try and profile that!” She begins to walk out of the living room, showing him the bird. Seconds later her door smashes into the lock.

The joy and the chaos, the demons we're made of I'd be so lost if you left me alone

Is he really that bad of a father?

When (Y/N) was born, he swore to himself to be the opposite of his own. Spencer wanted to be there for his daughter any time she wanted him to. School dances, spelling competition, kindergarten graduation, the whole nine yards.

But when was the last time they did something as a family. From cooking and eating dinner together nearly every night they went to occasionally seeing the other at the breakfast table before heading out.

Spencer understands her now. He is not better than his father at the moment. He just missed a big event in his daughter’s life and blames it on her. He called her ignorant, even though he is the one that didn’t pay attention. The oh so amazing profiler forgot to show his child that he loves her. That she is more important to him than anything in his life. He needs her in order to function, her love is the only thing that motivates him to do anything.

He knows he has to talk to (Y/N) about it, he was wrong and mean. Spencer just wants to give her time to cool off.

Meanwhile the teenager sits on her bed, staring at the wall. He did it again. He said these hurtful words. Tears stream down her face, but she is numb to them.

Everytime he calls her something, (Y/N) memorizes it. She doesn’t have an eidetic one, but when it’s about mean things, everybody has an elephant’s memory.

Ignorant.

Selfish.

Egoistic.

Childish. And many more.

And her father is right. She is all of the above and so much more.

Maybe he is better off without her. Better off without having to act like he cares for her.

She is a burden, she knows that. Her mother knew that from the beginning, why else would she have left them? Left her? Nobody’s life wouldn’t be better, if she isn’t in it anymore.

(Y/N) thought long and hard about this. Tonight just confirms her thoughts and boostes her decision.

Quietly she makes her way over to the bathroom, locking the door without making a noise. Hidden under towels is her little box. The contents she complained about using for so long.

You locked yourself in the bathroom Lying on the floor when I break through I pull you in to feel your heartbeat Can you hear me screaming? Please don't leave me

Twenty minutes have passed since (Y/N) smashed her door. Spencer hopes it is enough time for a teenager to cool off. He knocks on her door, waiting for an answer.

Nothing.

He tries again.

Nothing.

“Sweetheart? May I come in?”

The silence is louder than any gunshot he heard.

“Sweetheart, I want to apologize. May I open the door?”

Still nothing.

Spencer enters the room, finding it vacant. Oh of course, the moment he wants to talk with her she is in the bathroom. The Reids always had a thing for timing.

He knocks at the bathroom door. “Sweetheart, are you in there? Of course you are. Dumb question. I- I want to apologize. What I said wasn’t right and it was hurtful. Can- can you come out? There are a few things I have to make right.”

To his bewilderment there is no answer. No noises. A whole lot of nothing. This scares Spencer. “(Y/N), please say something. I care. I do. I love you, please answer me”, he desperately says.

Still no answer.

Spencer feels like he doesn’t have a different choice. He takes a step back and a deep breath, remembering what Derek taught him. With a loud crash he kicks the door open.

There she lies. His child. His daughte. The one human he promised to protect no matter what.

Her body lifeless, a small box next to her. Spencer identifies the contents immediately. His heart drops faster than he thought it to be possible.

In an instant he kneels next to (Y/N), pulling her in. His hands are shaking as he tries to take her pulse. “No no no no. NO! (Y/N), baby please open your eyes. Don’t leave me, no! You can’t do that, I love you, I love you so much. Don’t leave me, I need you!”

Hold on, I still want you Come back, I still need you Let me take your hand, I'll make it right I swear to love you all my life Hold on, I still need you

(Y/N) is in and out of consciousness. The dark seconds are terrifying to her. She regrets her choice.

In the seconds she is conscient, she hears a warm voice. The teenager feels safe now that it is there. At first the voice is quiet and blurry, but she is still able to catch a few words.

“Don’t” “Me” “Love you” “Much” “Need”

As her body finally slips away, she feels at ease. These words, it feels like lotion on her wounds. Because she also loves the voice and its person. She needs them like they need her.

Long endless highway, you're silent beside me Driving a nightmare I can't escape from Helplessly praying, the light isn't fading Hiding the shock and the chill in my bones

Spencer acts quickly. He knows his daughter doesn’t have much time left. He picks her up, trying to grab as many important things on his way out as possible. The genius runs to his car, hoping and praying to all the gods above that it will work after months of not using the vehicle. The motor does turn on to his relief.

The drive to the hospital feels longer than any roadtrip Spencer ever went on. The seconds tickle down and just like that (Y/N)’s chances. Chances of a happy ever after with him in her life, hopefully.

Not once does she move, her body looking more like a doll than a human being. Spencer just prays that it won’t be like this for long. He needs her, the light of his life. She can’t fade, she is not allowed to. It will break him. Darken his own light.

He has to be strong now. The glass is half full, the hospital only a few minutes away. (Y/N) will make it. Spencer doesn’t have any other option than that.

They took you away on a table I pace back and forth as you lay still They pull you in to feel your heartbeat Can you hear me screaming? Please don't leave me

“I need a doctor! A nurse! Somebody! My daughter, she-” Spencer screams, entering the ER with her lifeless body in his arms. He can’t end the sentence. But it’s also not necessary. A whole team of people crowd around the young man, one of them pulling a stretcher behind him.

Reluctantly Spencer lowers (Y/N) on it, knowing that he can’t do anything more. His child’s fate lies in the hands of the medical staff now. He has to trust them with her. With his lifeline.

One doctor takes her arm, trying to take a pulse. He shouts something, but Spencer’s ears are deaf to his words. Everything goes silent as they pull her away. Away from him.

He falls to his knees as reality hits him. He may not be a father any longer. And it’s his fault and his fault only.

“Please don’t leave me”, Spencer whispers.

Hold on, I still want you Come back, I still need you Let me take your hand, I'll make it right I swear to love you all my life Hold on, I still need you

Lights flash her. They hurt her eyes. But there is a greater pain (Y/N) can’t locate where it’s coming from. Where is her father? She needs him. She has to apologize. There are so many things she wants to say to him. To reassure him that she knows her decision was wrong.

As people continue to scramble around her, the pain intensifies. It becomes nearly unbearable and stops suddenly. The last thing she hears after a shrill high pitched tone is the voice of her father.

“I love you.”

I don't wanna let go I know I'm not that strong I just wanna hear you Saying, "Baby, let's go home" Let's go home Yeah, I just wanna take you home

“Family of (Y/N) Reid?” A doctor asks into the waiting room, looking exhausted. Spencer looks up from the floor. He memorized every little bump while pacing back and forth. He hasn’t called anybody. He doesn’t want to alarm then, not now. The young doctor needs time to understand what’s happening.

“Is she breathing?” is his first question. The doctor's face takes a pitiful look. “We stabilized her. But (Y/N) is still not through. We can’t say if she makes it through the night. If she does, we are sure she will be on a good way to a full recovery. Tonight will be critical for that. But (Y/N) showed us she is a fighter, maybe the chances aren’t that bad.”

Spencer is led through several halls to her room. He sits down in an uncomfortable hospital chair next to his daughter’s bed. Her hand is cold against his warm one. His are still shaking as he brushes a strand of her hair out of her face.

The only thing that Spencer wants right now is for (Y/N) to open her eyes and ask him to go home. He wants to take her there so desperately. But he can’t. Because he is the ignorant one.

“Hold on, I still want you Come back, I still need you, Sweetheart”, Spencer says, pressing a kiss onto her knuckles.

Taglist:

All works:

@dindjarinsspouse @big-galaxy-chaos

Criminal Minds:

@averyhotchner @mggsprettygirl @herecomesthewriterwitch @ash19871962

@ellyhotchner

[impostoradult]

Media Market Research (and why its undermining all the things you love)

Trying to understand what is dysfunctional about Hollywood is an epic task, and the answers are like the stars – arguably infinite. Hollywood is dysfunctional for literally more reasons than I could count.

But market research plays a fairly heavy role in its dysfunction (IMO) and the time has finally come for me to add my professional two cents about this issue. (This rant of mine has been building for a while, FYI. Hence why it is so...comprehensive. There is a tl;dr section towards the bottom, if you want the high level summary)

*** For the last 4+ years I’ve worked in the field of market research, almost exclusively with major media makers like Warner Bros., NBCU, AMC/BBCA, Viacom, FOX (before Disney acquired them), A+E, etc. (this past year I quit the job where I was doing this work for a variety of reasons, many of which will become clear as you keep reading, but I am still listed as a consultant on the company website):   https://www.kresnickaresearch.com/who/ (Rachel)

And just for comparison, here is a Halloween selfie I took 4 years ago and posted on my blog, so you can see I am who I say I am. 

I know a fair amount about how market research on major media franchises is conducted and how it influences production, and a lot of these choices can also be at least somewhat tied back to the massive flaws in the market research industry and its impact. *** First, at the highest level, you need to understand market research in general is not well-conducted much of the time. Even the people doing a reasonably good job at it are VERY limited in doing it well because of financial constraints (clients don’t want to spend more than they have to), time constraints (clients want everything done as fast as humanely possible) and just the inherent problems within the industry that are decades old and difficult to fix. For example, all market research ‘screens’ participants to make sure they qualify to participate (whether it is a mass survey, a focus group, a one-on-one interview, etc.). So, we screen people based on demographics like race, gender, age, household income, to get representative samples. But people are also screened based on their consumption habits. You don’t want to bring someone into a focus group about reality TV if they don’t watch reality TV. They aren’t going to have anything useful to say. 

However, a lot of the people who participate in market research have made a ‘side-gig’ out of it and they know how to finesse the process. Basically, they’ve learned how to lie to get into studies that they aren’t a good match for because most market research is paid, and they want the money. So, a lot of TV and film market research is being done on people who don’t actually (or at least don’t regularly) watch those shows or movies or whatever but have learned how to lie well enough in these screening processes to make it through. And because of the aforementioned time and money issue, clients don’t want to spend the time or money to actually find GOOD participants. They just accept that as an inevitable part of the market research process and decide not to let it bother them too much. So, a fair number of the people representing YOU as a media consumer are people who may not be watching Supernatural (for example) at all or who watch a rerun occasionally on TNT but haven’t been watching consistently or with ANY amount of investment whatsoever. You can see why that creates very skewed data. But that’s just the tip of the skewed iceberg. *** Second, media market research is conducted in line with the norms of market research more broadly, and this is a huge problem because media is a very atypical product. How people engage with media is far more complex and in depth than how they engage with a pair of jeans, a car, or a coffee maker. There are only so many things that matter to people when it comes to liking or not liking a coffee maker, for example. Is it easy/intuitive to use? How much space does it take it on my counter? How expensive is it? Does it brew the coffee well? Maybe does it match my décor/kitchen aesthetic? Can I make my preferred brand of coffee in it? The things you as a consumer are going to care about when it comes to a coffee maker are limited, fairly easy to anticipate in advance, and also easy to interpret (usually). How people mentally and emotionally approach MEDIA? Whole other universe of thing. Infinitely more complex. And yet it is studied (more or less) as if it is also a coffee maker. This is one of the many reasons I decided to leave the media market research field despite my desire to have some ability to positively influence the process. As so often seems to be the case, I fought the law and the law won. I could never make the other people I worked with in the industry understand that the questions they were asking were not all that useful a lot of the time and they weren’t getting to the heart of the matter. They were just following industry standards because they didn’t know any better and none of them want to admit they don’t REALLY know what they’re doing. Which leads me to point 3. *** Most of the people doing this research don’t have any expertise in media or storytelling specifically. They are typically trained as social scientists in the fields of psychology, anthropology, sociology, or math/statistics. And many of them do not have any kind of specialization or education in media/storytelling beyond the English classes they took in high school and the one Media Studies course they took as an elective in college. Most of them have a very unsophisticated understanding of narrative structure, thematics, tropes, subtext, etc. They mainly think in terms of genres at the VERY broadest level. Also, not infrequently, they don’t watch or have much knowledge of the shows they are supposed to be doing research on, beyond what they’ve read on IMDb or Wikipedia or what is generally common knowledge. Unless they by chance happen to watch the shows themselves (which often they don’t) they often know very little about the shows they are crafting these questions about. Again, partly because they think it is like the coffee maker, and you don’t need to understand it in any depth to research it. (I know this must sound insane to you as avid media consumers, but that is the general attitude among those who do market research) There is such a lack of sophistication in how people in the business side of the industry understand media and storytelling. Most of them are either MBAs or social scientists and their training has not prepared them to examine fictional works with the kind of depth that people in the Humanities (who are specifically trained to study texts) have. Somehow, despite the fact that the Humanities is all about understanding texts, that is the one discipline they make almost no use of in the business side of Hollywood. And boy howdy does it show. *** Point 4 – average consumers CANNOT ARTICULATE WHY THEY LIKE THINGS. Particularly media things. I know this sounds condescending, but it is my honest observation. It is unbelievably hard to get people to have enough self-awareness to explain why they actually like things, especially things as mentally and emotionally complex as media. What typically happens when you ask people why they like a TV show or movie, for example? They will tell you what they most NOTICE about the TV show or movie, or what is distinctive to them about it (which may or may not have anything to do with what they actually LIKE about it). They will say things like “I like the genre”, “I think it’s funny”, “The car chases are exciting”, “I want to see the detective solve the puzzle.” Sometimes you can get them to talk about what they find relatable about it, if you push them a little. But often they leave it at either the level of literal identity (young black woman), basic personality traits (she’s a social butterfly and so am I) or situations they’ve personally experienced (I relate to this story of a man losing his father to cancer because I lost a close family member to cancer). But the vast, vast, vast majority of them can’t go to the deeper level of: a) Why X representation of a young black woman feels accurate/authentic/relatable and Y representation doesn’t b) Why it matters to me that X,Y,Z aspects of my personality, identity, experience get reflected in media whereas I don’t really care about seeing A,B,C aspects of my personality, identity, or experience reflected in media c) How and why they are relating to characters when they can’t see the literal connection between their identity/experience and the character’s identity/experience. (For example, many people have argued that women often relate to Dean Winchester because a lot of his struggles and past negative experiences are more stereotypical of women – being forced to raise a younger sibling on behalf of an actual parent, being seen and treated as beautiful/sexually desirable but vacuous/unintelligent, his body being treated as an instrument for a more powerful group to quite literally possess, etc. Part of the reason Supernatural has always been such a mystery/problem for the CW and Warner Bros is they could never crack the code at this level. Never.) Part of the reason they can’t crack these codes is average people CANNOT give you that kind of feedback in a survey or a focus group, or even an in-depth interview (much of the time). They just don’t have the self-awareness or the vocabulary to get it at that level. Let alone asking them to articulate why Game of Thrones is compelling to them in an era where wealth disparity is creating a ruling class that is fundamentally incompetent at maintaining a just/functional society, which is especially concerning at this particular moment, given the existential threat we face due to climate change. And the truth is, that IS part of what people – even average people – are responding to in Game of Thrones. But what they’ll tell you when you do market research on it is: they like the dragons, they like the violence, they relate to Tyrion Lannister being a smart mouth, maybe they’ll say they like the moral ambiguity of many of the conflicts (if they are more sophisticated than average). But the ‘Dean Winchester is heavily female coded despite his veneer of ultra-masculinity’ or the ‘Game of Thrones is a prescient metaphor for the current political dynamics and fissures of modern western society’ is the level you ACTUALLY need to get to. And most market research can’t get you that because the people ASKING the questions don’t know what to ask to get to this level, and most of the respondents couldn’t give you the answers even IF you were asking them the right questions (which usually you are not) And I’m not saying average people are dumb because they can’t do this. But it requires practice, it requires giving the matter a great deal of in-depth thought, and most people just don’t care enough about it to do that while taking a market research survey. (I know this is going to feel counter-intuitive to people on Tumblr. But you have to remember, you are NOT average media consumers. You are highly atypical media consumers who have far more self-awareness and a much more sophisticated engagement with media than the average person watching TV. If you didn’t, you probably wouldn’t be here talking about it in the first place) Point 4.1 – People also lie/misrepresent their own experiences to market researchers because they want to maintain certain self-narratives. You have no idea how many people would get disqualified from our surveys for saying they watched less than 5 hours of TV a week. And sure, that might actually be true for a few of them. But if you watch TV with any regularity at all (which most people in modern America do) you probably watch more than 5 hours a week. The problem is, people think it makes them sound lazy to say they watch 15-20 hours a week, even though that’s about 2-3 hours a day (which actually isn’t THAT high). People lie and misrepresent their behaviors, thoughts and feelings because it can be socially uncomfortable to admit you do what you actually do or feel how you actually feel, even in the context of an anonymous survey, let alone a focus group or a one-on-one interview. People want to make themselves look good to THEMSELVES and to the researchers asking them questions. But that makes the market research data on media (and lots of other things) very questionable. For example, one finding we saw more than once in the surveys I was involved in conducting was people would radically downplay how much the romance elements of a story mattered to them, even large portions of female respondents. When we would ask people in surveys what parts of the story they were most invested in, romances ALWAYS came out among the lowest ranked elements. And yet, any passing familiarity with fandom would tell you that finding is just WRONG. It’s wrong. People are just flat out lying about how much that matters to them because of the negative connotations we have around being invested in romance. And never mind the issue of erotic/sexual content. (I don’t mean sexual identity here, I mean sexy content). The only people who will occasionally cop to wanting the erotic fan service is young men (and even they are hesitant to do so in market research) and women frequently REFUSE to admit that stuff in market research, or they radically downplay how much it matters to them and in what ways. There is still so much stigma towards women expressing sexuality in that way. Not to mention, you have to fight tooth and nail to even include question about erotic/sexual content because oftentimes the clients don’t even want to go there at all, partly because it is awkward for everyone involved to sit around crafting market research questions to interrogate what makes people hot and bothered. That’s socially awkward for the researchers doing the research and the businesspeople who have to sit in rooms and listen to presentations about why more women find Spock sexier than Kirk. (Which was a real thing that happened with the original Star Trek, and the network couldn’t figure out why) Aside from people not have enough deeper level self-awareness to get at what they really like about media content, they also will lie or misrepresent certain things to you because they are trying to maintain certain self-narratives and are socially performing that version of themselves to researchers. *** Point 5 – Qualitative data is way more useful for understanding people’s relationships to media. However, quantitative data is way more valued and relied upon both due to larger market research industry standards and because quantitative data is just seen as harder/more factual than qualitative data. A lot of media market research involves gathering both qualitative and quantitative data and reporting jointly on both. (Sometimes you only do one or the other, depending on your objectives, but doing both is considered ‘standard’ and higher quality). However, quantitative data is heavily prioritized in reporting and when there is a conflict between what they see in qualitative versus quantitative data, the quant data is usually relied upon to be the more accurate of the two. This is understandable to an extent, because quantitative surveys usually involve responses from a couple thousand participants, whereas qualitative data involves typically a few dozen participants at most, depending on whether you did focus groups, individual interviews, or ‘diaries’/ethnography. The larger sample is considered more reliable and more reflective of ‘the audience’ as a whole. However, quantitative surveys usually have the flattest, least nuanced data, and they can only ever reflect what questions and choices people in the survey were given. In something like focus groups or individual interviews or ethnographies, you still structure what you ask people, but they can go “off script.” They can say things you never anticipated (as a researcher) and can explain themselves and their answers with more depth. In a survey, participants can only “say” what they survey lets them say based on the questions and question responses that are pre-baked for them. And as I’ve already explained, a lot of times these quantitative surveys are written by people with no expertise in media, fiction, or textual analysis, and so they often are asking very basic, not very useful questions. In sum, the data that is the most relied upon is the least informative, least nuanced data. It is also the MOST likely to reflect the responses of people who don’t actually qualify for the research but have become good at scamming the system to make extra money. With qualitative research, they are usually a little more careful screening people (poorly qualified participants still make it through, but not as often as with mass surveys, where I suspect a good 35% of participants, at least, probably do not actually qualify for the research and are just working the system). 

Most commonly, when market research gets reported to business decision-makers, it highlights the quantitative data, and uses the qualitative data to simply ‘color in’ the quantitative data. Give it a face, so to speak. Qualitative data is usually supplemental to quant data and used more to make the reports ‘fun’ and ‘warm’ because graphs and charts and stats by themselves are boring to look at in a meeting. (I’m not making this up, I can’t tell you how many times I was told to make adjustments on how things were reported on because they didn’t want to bore people in the meeting). (Sub-point – it is also worth noting that you can’t report on anything that doesn’t fit easily on a power point slide and isn’t easily digestible to any random person who might pick it up and read it. The amount of times I was told to simplify points and dumb things down so it could be made ‘digestible’ for a business audience, I can’t even tell you. It was soul crushing and another reason I stopped doing this job full time. I had to make things VERY dumb for these business audiences, which often meant losing a lot of the point I was actually trying to make) Point 5.1 – Because of the way that representative sampling works, quantitative data can be very misleading, particularly in understanding audience/fandom sentiments about media. As I’m sure most of you know, sampling is typically designed to be representative of the population, broadly speaking. So, unless a media company is specifically out to understand LGBTQ consumers or Hispanic/Latinx consumers, it will typically sample using census data as a template and represent populations that way. Roughly 50/50 male/female. Roughly even numbers in different age brackets, roughly representative samplings of the racial make-up of the country, etc. (FYI, they do often include a non-binary option in the gender category these days, but it usually ends up being like 5 people out of 2000, which is not enough of a sample to get statistical significance for them as a distinct group)   There is a good reason to do this, even when a show or movie has a disproportionately female audience, or young audience. Because they need enough sample in all of the “breaks” (gender, race, age, household income, etc.) to be able to make statistically sound statements about each subgroup. If you only have 35 African American people in your sample of 1000, you can’t make any statistically sound statements about that African American cohort. The sample is just too small. So, they force minimums/quotas in a lot of the samples, to ensure they can make statistically sound statements about all the subgroups they care about. They use ratings data to understand what their audience make up actually is. (Which also has major failings, but I’ll leave that alone for the minute) With market research, they are not usually looking to proportionately represent their audience, or their fandom; they are looking to have data they can break in the ways they want to break it and still have statistically significant subgroups represented. But that means that when you report on the data as a whole sample – which you often do – it can be very skewed towards groups who don’t make up as large a portion of the show’s actual audience, or even if they do, they don’t tend to be the most invested, loyal, active fans. Men get weighted equally to women, even when women make up 65% of the audience, and 80% of the active fandom. Granted, they DO break the data by gender, and race, and age, etc. and if there are major differences in how women versus men respond, or younger people versus older people, they want to know that...sometimes. But here’s where things get complex. So, if you are doing a sample of Supernatural viewers. And you do the standard (US census-based) sampling on a group of 2000 respondents (a pretty normal sample size in market research). ~1000 are going to be female. But with something they call “interlocking quotas” the female sample is going to be representative of the other groupings to a degree. So, the female sample will have roughly equal numbers of all the age brackets (13-17, 18-24, 25-34, etc.). And it will have roughly 10% non-heterosexual respondents, and so on. They do this to ensure that these breaks aren’t too conflated with each other. (For example, if your female sample is mostly younger and your male sample is mostly older, how do you know whether it is the gender or the age that is creating differences in their responses? You don’t. So, you have to make sure that all the individual breaks (gender, race, age) have a good mix of the other breaks within them, so groups aren’t getting conflated) But what that means is, Supernatural, whose core fandom is (at a conservative guess) 65% younger, queer, women, gets represented in a lot of statistical market research sampling as maybe 50-100 people, in a 2000-person survey. 50-100 people can barely move the needle on anything in a 2000-person survey. Furthermore, usually in the analysis of data like this, you don’t go beyond looking at 2 breaks simultaneously. So you may look at young female respondents as a group, or high income male respondents, or older white respondents, but you rarely do more than 2 breaks combined. And the reason for that is, by the time you get down to 3 breaks or more (young, Hispanic, women) you usually don’t have enough sample to make statistically significant claims. (It also just takes longer to do those analyses and as I explained in the beginning, they are always rushing this stuff). To do several breaks at a time you’d have to get MUCH larger samples, and that’s too expensive for them. And again, I want to stress, this type of sampling isn’t intended to sinisterly erase anyone. Kind of the opposite. It is intended to make sure most groups have enough representation in the data that you can make sound claims about them on the subgroup level. The problem is that it can create a very skewed sense of their overall audience sentiment when they take the data at ‘face value’ so to speak, and don’t weight segments based on viewership proportion, or fandom engagement, etc. Point 5.2 – Which leads me to my next point, which is that fandom activity that doesn’t have a dollar amount attached to it doesn’t make you a ‘valuable’ segment in their minds. One of the breaks they ALWAYS ask for in data like this is high income people, and people who spend a lot of MONEY on their media consumption. And they do prioritize those people’s responses and data quite a bit.   And guess what – young women aren’t usually high-income earners, and although some of them are high spenders on media, high spending on media and media related merch skews toward higher income people just because they HAVE more disposable income. Older white men are usually the highest income earners (absolutely no surprise) and they are more likely in a lot of cases to report spending a lot on the media they care about. Having expendable income makes you more important in the eyes of people doing market research than if you’ve spent every day for the last 10 years blogging excessively about Supernatural. They don’t (really) care about how much you care. They care about how much money you can generate for them. And given that young audiences don’t watch TV live anymore, and they give all their (minimal) expendable income to Netflix and Hulu, you with your Supernatural blog and your 101 essays about Destiel is all but meaningless to many of them (from a business standpoint) Now, some of them kind of understand that online fandom matters to the degree that fandom spreads. Fandom creates fandom. But if the fandom you are helping to create is other young, queer women with minimal income who only watch Supernatural via Netflix, well, that’s of very limited value to them as well. I don’t want to suggest they don’t care about you at ALL. Nor do I want to suggest that the “they” we are talking about is even a cohesive “they.” Different people in the industry have different approaches to thinking about fandom, consumer engagement and strategy, market research and how it ought to be understood/used, and so on. They aren’t a monolith. BUT, they are, at the end of the day, a business trying to make money. And they are never going to place the value of your blogging ahead of the concrete income you can generate for them. (Also, highly related to my point about people lying, men are more likely to SAY they have higher incomes than they do, because it’s an ego thing for them. And women are more likely to downplay how much money they spend on ‘frivolous’ things like fandom because of the social judgement involved. Some of the money gender disparity you see in media market research is real, but some of it is being generated by the gender norms people are falsely enacting in market research– men being breadwinners, women wanting to avoid the stereotype of being frivolous with money) *** In sum/tl;dr: Point 1 – Market research in general is not well conducted because of a variety of constraints including time, money, and the historical norms of how the industry operates (e.g., there being a large subsection of almost professionalized respondents who know how to game the system for the financial incentives) Point 2 – Media is a highly atypical kind of product being studied more or less as if it were equivalent to a coffeemaker or a pair of jeans. Point 3 – Most of the people studying media consumption in the market research field have no expertise or background in media, film, narrative, storytelling, etc. They are primarily people who were trained as social scientists and statisticians, and they aren’t well equipped to research media properties and people’s deeper emotional attachment and meaning-making processes related to media properties. Point 4(etc.) – Average consumers typically don’t have enough self-awareness or the vocabulary to explain the deep, underlying reasons they like pieces of media. Furthermore, when participating in market research, people lie and misrepresent their thoughts, behaviors, and emotional responses for a variety of reasons including social awkwardness and preserving certain self-narratives like “I’m above caring about dumb, low-brow things like romance.” Point 5 (etc.) – Quantitative data is treated as way more meaningful, valuable, and ‘accurate’ than qualitative data, and this is a particular problem with media market research because of how varied and complex people’s reactions to media can be. Also, the nature of statistical sampling, and how it is done, can massively misrepresent audience sentiments toward media and fail to apprehend deeper fandom sentiments and dynamics. There is also a strong bias towards the responses of high income/high spending segments, which tend to be older and male and white. Side but important point – Research reports are written to be as entertaining and digestible as possible, which sounds nice in theory, but in practice it often means you lose much of the substance you are trying to communicate for the sake of not boring people or making them feel stupid/out of their depth. (Because god forbid you make some high-level corporate suit feel stupid) *** What can be done about this? Well, the most primary thing I would recommend is for you to participate in market research, particularly if you are American (there’s a lot of American bias in researching these properties, even when they have large international fanbases). However, some international market research is done and I recommend looking into local resources for participation, where ever you are. If you are American, there are now several market research apps you can download to your smart phone and participate in paid market research through (typically paid via PayPal). Things like dscout and Surveys On the Go. And I know there are more. You should also look into becoming panelists for focus groups, particularly if you live near a large metropolitan area (another bias in market research). Just Google it and you should be able to figure it out fairly easily. Again, it is PAID, and your perspective will carry a lot more weight when it is communicated via a focus group or a dscout project, versus when it is shouted on Twitter. However, that’s merely a Band-Aid on the bigger issue, which I consider to be the fact that businesspeople think the Humanities is garbage, even when they make their living off it. There is virtually no respect for the expertise of fictional textual analysis, or how it could help Hollywood make better content. And I don’t know what the fix is for that. I spent 4 years of my life trying to get these people to understand what the Humanities has to offer them, and I got shouted down and dismissed so many times I stopped banging my head against that wall. I gave up. They don’t listen, mostly because conceding to the value of deep-reading textual analysis as a way to make better content would threaten the whole system of how they do business. And I mean that literally. So many people’s jobs, from the market researchers to the corporate strategists to the marketing departments to the writers/creatives to the C-level executives, would have to radically shift both their thinking and their modes of business operation and the inertia of ‘that’s the way it’s always been done’ is JUST SO POWERFUL. I have no earthly idea how to stop that train, let alone shift it to an entirely different track. BTW, if you want the deeper level of analysis of why I can’t stop rewatching Moneyball now that it’s been added to Netflix, the above paragraph should give you a good hint

[tomtenadia]

My knight in shining armour

Rowaelin month Day 2 - University AU

I literally just finished this. I wasn’t going to write for this prompt but then an idea finally hit me.

The title as usual is bad... sorry

2k words

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Aelin had days in which she hated men. That was one of those days. 

After finishing high school she decided to took a challenging course at the University of Terrasen. Her dad, before he retired, had been an airforce pilot. She had grown up going around his base, visiting him when he was back. In doing so, she had become obsessed with planes. As she grew up, her dad had let her get friendly with his engineer and the man had started teaching her all she needed to know about aircrafts. From the basic physics to the more obscure detail of how the jet worked. Aelin had been fascinated. She had started reading all the possible books, and as she got older, her dad’s engineer had also started having her to actually help her in the hangar. In the summer when school was out, she would actually get a part-time job as an apprentice at the base and she had loved every moment of it. She had also become very close with the two female pilots and together they had spent time talking about the life of a woman in a boys club. The two women had become her role models very quickly.

Terrasen was quite and open minded country but some ideas were still quite obsolete.

In high school at the question “what you want to be when you grow up?” She always answered an aircraft engineer for the airforce. She never faltered or never doubted. That’s what she wanted to, that was her path.

But when time for uni arrived and she applied for a degree in aeronautical engineering, that’s when she realised that the boys club extended far more than she expected.

She was basically the only woman in the class. None of the guys had approached her and on the first day she had walked in the classroom, one of them had the guts to tell her that the humanities department was in the annex c. She ignored the bastard and sat down at the front. She belonged in that room and she would prove it to every single one of them.

Day after day she had shown her knowledge and surprised her professor who was amazed at the fact that she could answer such in depth questions. Last time it happened, she had turned to Chaol - the asshole who had told her about the annex c, and gave him a smirk. That had removed his stupid grin from his face. It felt amazing.

During a private one-to-one with her professor she had confessed to him she had been working at the airbase as an apprentice during the past three summers. Her teacher had luckily been very supportive and encouraged her to keep up the good work.

Now, six months in, she still hated with a vengeance the arseholes she had to study with. Some of them even had the guts to ask her for some help after they realised she was actually good. She had answered that surely they didn’t want the help of a woman, and walked away.

After another class it was finally lunch time and she was meeting Rowan down at their spot on the grass. They were a couple. He had asked her out in the summer after high school was over and they had been together ever since. He was a med student and he knew her pain about choosing a challenging degree. Both their degrees were very intense and required a lot of time so they would just try and spend as much time together as they could. They had a flat together but the public library was were they spent most of their time.

And when their schedules allowed it, they would enjoy lunch together, venting about their academical choices.

“I fucking hate that bastard.” She raged, dropping her bag on the grass and sitting at his side, depositing a kiss on his lips. She felt better almost immediately, being in his arms was all she needed to feel okay again.

“What did he do now?” Asked Rowan knowing of her struggles in her classes.

Aelin grabbed her bag and pulled out her food, the dinner that Rowan had prepared the previous night and then packed away for both of them.

“The teacher gave us an exercise where we had to design an aircraft with what we had learned so far.” She told him, while munching away her food “He was up first and his project was a effing disaster. Seriously, I’d wouldn’t want to fly on a plane designed by him.” She took a sip of her water “the teacher asked us to say what was wrong and it took me ten minutes to stop. I mean, a two year old would have done a better job with lego bricks.”

Rowan giggled at her side “then my turn came and the bastard had the guts to tell me that the aerodynamics of my plane were off and that my ailerons where wrong as well and would not allow the plane to function properly. I took my laptop and shoved it in his face and told him to find the error in my math. He had no clue.” Her face turned smug “then the teacher took over and said that actually my project was, among all, the only one that could actually fly. I felt smug as fuck.”

Rowan pulled an arm around Aelin’s shoulder and pulled her to him. He was proud of her. Every damn day.

“Then after class, he threw me a paper plane and inside it had a message saying this is the only plane you will ever build or work on. I swear, the guy is still alive only because I am not looking forward to finishing my degree via distance learning from a prison.”

She calmed down “how was your day?”

Rowan leaned back against the tree “I had anatomy and physiology. Today we covered the endocrine system and it must be one most boring of them all.”

“Well,” she added with a big smile “when you cover the reproductive system you are welcome to practice with me…”

He laughed and squished her to her chest “I am a very big fan of your… bits.” She kissed him deeply not caring that they were in public, she wanted him and hated that they had more classes before being able to go home and then alas, study more. Maybe for one evening they could study something different.

“Aelin?”

“Yes, buzzard?”

His tongue gently teased her and she opened for him while his hand brushed off a rebel strand of hair.

He pulled back “Nothing, you had tomato sauce on you lips. I was just wiping it off. Did you think I wanted to kiss you?” 

Aelin gently punched him on the shoulder, in return he gave her a massive grin. Rowan was a very reserved man who struggled with stranger, but she had her own version, the goofy one, the one who made jokes and loved to cuddle with her. She would treasure that version forever. That was just for her.

They were busy chatting away and she was showing him on her laptop the exercise she had been working on and her plane prototype and although what she was saying was greek to him, he still listened to her in fascination.

She was telling him how a plane flew and the four forces when a figure stopped in front of them.

“It must be exciting to brag with your boyfriend about your hopeless projects.” Said the man.

Rowan raised his eyes and finally saw the face of the man that had been making Aelin’s life miserable.

“What did you just say?” Rowan stood and towered on the brown-haired man by twenty centimetres. Chaol also looked frail compared to Rowan’s muscular frame.

“Chaol, you’d better go.” Not that she cared about the man, she just didn’t want Rowan to get into trouble for a petty man.

“You’d better give up while you still can, Galathynius. Aeronautical engineering is not a field for a woman.” He crossed his arms at his chest trying to look intimidating but the look in Rowan’s eyes told her it was a useless attempt. Her boyfriend was ready to attack. She knew he had never hit anyone, but had a feeling that if Chaol didn’t stop it could be a first for Rowan.

“Chaol,” she stood as well and growled his name in warning.

“Oh, so you are one of those arseholes who believes that certain jobs can be done only by those who were born with a penis. It’s the fucking 21st century. Grow up, idiot.”

Rowan swore, alarm bells rang in Aelin’s head. He only swore when he was extremely mad, something that her unflappable boyfriend rarely was.

“Oh look, Galathynius, you have a knight in shining armour.”

Aelin moved between Rowan and Chaol, trying to separate them when her boyfriend moved a step closer to the other guy.

Chaol chuckled “Did you sleep with every professor—” but Chaol never finished his sentence. She saw the scene develop in slow motion in front of her. At those words Rowan’s face had turned feral and as on instinct his arm moved and a second later his fist found its target in Chaol’s face. 

Rowan then grabbed Chaol by the collar and lifted him up slightly “You take it back, immediately or I’ll smash all the twenty two bones in your skull.”

“Go on,” said Chaol, nursing a broken lips.

Aelin stopped in between and grasped Rowan’s hand gently “Put him down, Ro, he is not worth it.”

Her gaze then turned to Chaol “now you go back to whatever shithole you came from and perhaps go back working on your project and design a real aircraft.” She moved closer to him “I know what the fuck I am doing. And I know I will have a job in the airforce after this. You will just go back being daddy’s little spoiled boy.”

Chaol glared at her and Rowan finally let go of him, bur before he fully released him he pulled the man close enough that his mouth was near his ear “you disrespect her like that one more time and you’ll finish your degree from a hospital bed while sipping your food from a straw.” Rowan flashed his teeth in a threatening gesture “you leave her alone, because if I hear you have been a bastard to her one more time, I will make your life a living hell.” And eventually released him. Chaol shrugged his t-shirt back into place and walked away without adding another word.

Rowan sighed and then turned to her, his expression back being soft as soon as she looked back at him.

“You didn’t have to punch him,” she said while snuggling against his chest. His arms quickly around her.

“Yes I had to. What he said….” She felt him tense up again “he made me so mad, fireheart.”

“Seeing you thump him was very sexy,” she kissed him gently on the lips “my knight in shining armour.”

Rowan chuckled and looked into he blue eyes “you don’t need a knight. You are fierce, brave and strong and do not need any protection,” he added, his lips on her head. Nesting under his chin was her favourite position. They fit perfectly “I, on the other hand, as a male who is hopelessly in love with you, felt the desperate need to avenge the sullied honour of my amazing other half.”

Aelin giggled hard “you really sound like a knight.”

“Come on, Sir Rowan Whitethorn of Wendlyn, let’s finish our lunch, I have an hour of mechanics of flight coming up and I need sustenance.”

“Yes, my queen,” he said kneeling in front of her.

Aelin laughed and kissed him deeply “maybe I can be your queen tonight in bed as well.”

His smirk grew wider and Aelin felt heat pool at her core at his expression.

“Whatever m’lady commands.”

They finished their lunch in peace without any more interruptions and eventually they parted ways, going to their respective classes.

Chaol did not bothered her anymore. He didn’t even met her gaze and him ignoring her was all she asked. She was there to learn, he could just go and sulk in the afterburner of a jet, perhaps while on, for all she cared.

Aelin texted Rowan a thank you and his reply was a simple To whatever end.

[mrsfrecklesmarauders]

The Magical Word of JKR

In this post, I want to point out all the inconsistencies of the world that JKR has created. Some of us had been worshiping her for so long. But JKR made mistakes, not only outside her world, but inside.

Owls for muggleborns. Sending a letter through an owl seems to be something common in The Wizarding World. But why do children with a muggle background need to go back in time and use them when they could use a phone? Why can't students use any muggle technology? I know wizards are anti muggle and magic does not allow these devices to function at Hogwarts, but why not?

Drunk portraits. How could portraits get drunk? Did artists paint vessels and digestive systems for them too? How can they bleed? They are portraits with voices and personality based on real people yeah. But they are not alive. They don’t bleed or get drunk.

The trace. Wizards under 17 aren’t supposed to do magic outside Hogwarts. But The Ministry doesn’t seem to control this by which wand did it. But by location. Since Dobby did magic in the Chamber of Secrets, and they blamed Harry for it. So, what happens with pureblood kids? They are allowed to use magic outside school because their families are supposed to, so they wouldn’t trace them. So it seems unfair for muggleborns not to be able to practice magic. Since they are the only members of their family that would do it.

Hogwarts being the only school. There is only one school in all Britain for magical people. Yet there seems to be very few students when there should be a lot. And it doesn’t make sense that Hogwarts is the only choice. Or Hogwarts, or homeschooling.

I don’t understand the population of Magical Folks. It seems little because most of the wizarding families are known. There are only 28 pureblood famous families. They even practise inbreeding, they are all related. But why is that, if the wizard gene is dominant? There are more half bloods and muggleborns than squibs. So the magical population should be as large as the muggle one, even more.

Hogwarts Houses are cool. But the way kids are sorted doesn’t make sense. They get sorted when they are eleven. Seems pretty young to me to form traits and criteria that might change as they grow. Also, let’s say 100 kids enter Hogwarts one year. They won’t be sorted equally 25/25/25/25. Because according to personalities and traits, there could be 60 Gryffindors and 10 Ravenclaws, and 4 Slyhterins, and 25 Hufflepuffs. What if one year, there are no Slytherins for example?

Also, sharing a dorm, common room and classes with people from your same house (same personality and traits) seems boring and unhealthy. Having friends with different personalities, traits and beliefs should help you grow and mature. Sometimes friendships are built between two opposite people. And separating houses, forces students to just hang out with people from their houses, not others.

Love potions. These are the wizarding equivalent of drugs. Think about it. Forcing someone to show love for you is very much like drugging someone and forcing them to do stuff against their will. Love potions can permit things like raping. Something that happened to Tom Sr. by Merope. It is horrible. Yet the wizarding world permits their selling and consumption without a problem. And what’s worse, they teach how to brew it in school to children! A potion like that shouldn’t be allowed or taught.

Azkaban being the only punishment. It seems whether you are a dangerous criminal like a mass murderer or just someone that stole something once, you get the same punishment. Azkaban. An inhumane place where dementors live, and make prisoners go insane, live their worst nightmares or suck their soul. Even characters who were under the imperius curse like Stanley Shunpike. Or even The Marauders would’ve gone to Azkaban if their animagus secret was discovered. No matter what your crime is, always the worst punishment: Azkaban.

Wizards hiding from muggles. The Statue of Secrecy in the Wizarding World seems to be important. But I may ask, how can wizards hide from muggles if they don’t know anything about them? Pureblood Wizards don’t have a clue how muggles live, behave, dress, talk. Not even Arthur Weasley who works in that Department. Yet they want to be unnoticed by muggles? For example, each time a wizard dresses like a muggle they do it wrong, using colorful clothes. Wouldn’t it be suspicious? Like even Vernon sees people in cloaks in book 1, celebrating. Also, if there are a lot of muggleborns, shouldn’t more muggles know about wizards?

It is totally inhumane to just obliviate muggles each time they see something. That spell should have some consequences in their brains. Like for example, Hermione’s parents must’ve had mayhem after their minds were modified.

Memories in pensieves are not supposed to be accurate. Memories are from our point of view. From the perspective of people who lived that memory. When Harry sees Snape’s memories or Bob Ogden’s memories, they seem to be clear. Harry can see Bob and Snape in those memories when they should be seen through their eyes, they are their memories. How could Snape remember himself, see himself. You get my point? Also, memories are subjective, not objective. We remember what impacted us the most, we forget about details we don’t care about. There are feelings involved.

Not having another education after Hogwarts. You graduate from Hogwarts at eighteen. Eighteen! And you're supposed to have figured out what you want to do for the rest of your life. Why aren’t there Wizard Universities? Wizards only have 7 years of education and that’s all. Nothing before, nothing after (unless you’re muggleborn). Seems that the wizard community doesn’t care about education that much. With only seven years of education, are you suddenly prepared for the rest of your life? I don’t think so.

Adding to the last point, wizards only teach about magic. What about math, wouldn’t they need it to count their money, or take care of their finances? What about English, spelling, grammar? Not every kid had the privilege to be homeschooled by their parents before. What about Sex Ed? I think it is important for teens that age to be careful with their sex lives.

Quidditch being the only sport in the wizarding world. Quidditch is cool, I get it. But it is not for everyone. Seems that if you want to be a sports person in the wizarding world, you only have that option. Either you like Quidditch or nothing.Shouldn’t there be other sports? In the muggle world we have tons: football, basquet, tennis, swimming, running, etc.

Love protection is not common. Lily sacrificed herself for Harry. She died for him and that love protection saved his life. Why is Harry the only one to experience it? Is it because of the prophecy? I mean Lily is not the only one who has sacrificed herself for love. Not in the story, not in History. Then why aren’t there more people with lighting scars walking around?

Why don’t wizards cure things with magic like eyesight? They have a potion that grows bones back. But they cannot cure Harry’s eyesight? And don’t say that it is because eyes are connected to the soul, that’s a lame excuse. In the muggle world, eyesight can be cured with surgery.

Hogwarts Express. Yeah, we all wanted to ride the train to Hogwarts. It is part of the experience right? But what if you live in Scotland already? Why bother traveling to London to King Cross Station to take a train if you already live there? It seems like a waste of time. Is there a provided transport for kids who live in Scotland? What about those who don't live in London? What if Scotland is nearer to them than King Cross?

Ghosts. They shouldn’t exist. It is not very well explained how you become a ghost. But it doesn’t make sense that they exist and yet many characters died and didn’t become one.

Discrimination against magical creatures. We know how magical creatures are seen in the Wizarding World. Discrimination exists. But the problem is that Jkr never does anything to fix this.Not with werewolves, not with half giants, surely not with house-elves. The only issue that the war solved was the discrimination against muggleborns.

And house-elves liking their slavery is problematic. It is saying that slavery is right as long as the victim accepts it. She created S.P.E.W and never properly addressed the issue.

The Forbidden Forest is dangerous, yet students have detention there. Dumbledore says at the beginning of each year that the Forest is out of bounds. So why would you send students to detention there, Dumbles? Also, building a school near a forest full of dangerous beasts: werewolves, acromantulas, centaurs, seems kind of risky for children. Not every child obeys the rules. Look at the Marauders spending every full moon there.

How did Hagrid come to be? Hagrid is half giant. Meaning that his father is human, his mother is a giant… Ehemm… Excuse me, but how do you have sex with a giant? That’s physically impossible. How does Hagrid exist?

Male veelas? We are only introduced to female veelas in the Wizarding World. Veelas are these beautiful women that men feel attracted to, they seem in trance by their beauty, and they are not responsible for their actions. It seems to me that JKR is saying that men should not be accountable for their actions when they see a pretty girl, because it is her fault? Pretty feminist, JKR. Also, veelas are dangerous creatures. How do humans procreate with them and have half veelas or a quarter of a veela? Are there male veelas too?

Teachers not having spouses or kids. It is a stupid stereotype that teachers are sad non social people, who are only teaching because they don’t have a choice. Like they are allowed to have social lives, date, get married and have children, right? Name one Hogwarts teacher who is married with kids. They all seem pretty single. And I get it, being single is not a bad thing. But all of them being single just because they are teachers in a boarding school? Just because it was convenient to the author? Only McGonagall married once, but her husband died a few years after.

Abusive teachers. Speaking of teachers, why would Hogwarts allow incompetent teachers that are abusive (Snape), and or are dangerous for kids. None DADA teacher had teaching experience before. And since there is no further education than Hogwarts, how do teachers get prepared for the job? Teaching is not about knowing a lot of stuff about the subject, but knowing how to treat children.

Muggle vs Wizard music. What is the difference between muggle and wizard music? I never understood that. Is it the fact that wizards play music with magic? If so, why would instruments exist? Why would they play instruments? If anyone can make a spell to produce music, then anyone can be a musician. The only difference that I find is that wizard music has wizard related lyrics. Which is a stupid difference. Wizards could write songs about muggles. Muggles could write songs about wizards.

Secret Keeper. The Fidelius Charm should be a spell to hide yourself from others if you are in danger. Period. There shouldn’t be such a thing as a secret keeper. Why? Why would someone else need to know the place you are hiding? James and Lily shouldn’t have trusted anyone with their location. Not even Sirius. Not even someone they trusted, because Sirius or anyone could’ve died and passed the secret to the others. Like, it doesn’t make any sense. And also, how could Bill and Arthur be their own secret keepers but not James and Lily?

Magical therapists. Healers seem to cure physical maladies or illness pretty fine, but what about mental health? And I am not talking about mental problems because of magic. Like Frank, Alice, Lockheart whose minds were affected by spells. I’m talking about mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, adhd, ptsd, trauma etc. Don’t tell me wizards don’t suffer that. What about Remus, Sirius, Harry? Who treats these things in the wizarding world?

Time Turner. Only exists for the plot. Otherwise it is useless, stupid and confusing. Time traveling confuses the mind. Also, we don’t exactly know how it works. Is it a domino effect? Do the things you do back in time affect the present? They should. Or does it create different timelines, like it is said in Cursed Child? Also, why not use time turners for important situations? For example, save important people from dying, go back to check events of a crime and see if they are true.

Veritaserum. Wizards have a truth potion and they won’t use it. They should use it on trials to take the truth out of criminals, to see if the accusants are innocent or not. They should’ve used it on each member of the Order to find out who the spy was. They should’ve used it to discover who was the Slytherin heir when the Chamber was opened. They should’ve used it on Harry when he came back from the Graveyard to prove Voldemort was back. Why would that shit exist anyway?

Incest families. Pureblood families, or at least some of them are supposed to practise inbreeding. But if you look at the Black Family Tree, the only Black-Black marriage is between Orion and Walburga. Just one. And even if this was the case, shouldn’t this inbreeding have consequences? I don’t know if it’s the magical gene or what but The Blacks and Malfoys seem pretty fine.

If you know more and you want to add them, feel free to do so. This is a critique to improve this word and fandom ourselves. Even JKR's world is cool and wonderful, it is full of flaws that we need to speak about.

[yodawgiherd]

End of an Era

It was fun while it lasted guys :)

>>>Read on AO3<<<

And one night, without any warning, the last piece of the puzzle came. The dream told her everything, ran over the entirety of her life, and when the old and wrinkled soldier Mikasa closed her eyes for the last time, she woke up with unshed tears brimming in the corners.

Next to her, the devil she decapitated slept peacefully, with no marks or scars under his eyes. She didn’t want to wake him yet, as there was another person Mikasa needed to talk to right now, so getting out of the bed carefully she located her phone.

“M-Mikasa?”, a yawn, “It’s four in the morning, why are you calling me?”

“I’m sorry Armin, I have to ask you something.”, Mikasa whispered, keeping her voice low not to wake Eren, “please…”

“Sure, just…” another yawn, this time even longer, “Give me a second so I can collect my brain from the dreamland.”

Mikasa could hear the phone being put down and then the rustling of bedding on the other side as Armin was most likely stretching and fully waking up. She waited patiently until he picked the device up again, speaking in a much clearer voice.

“Ok, I guess I’m functional now. What’s up?”

“In the book you are writing, does the main pairing gets a happy ending? Do they get together?”

“I… Uh… Is that why you woke me?”

“Armin, please. It’s important to me.”

In truth, the blond had no idea why Mikasa was suddenly so interested in the ending of his story. Sure, she read it during development and said that it was good, but there’s a difference between that and calling at four AM to grill him about the ending she didn’t get to see yet because Armin finished it about a week ago. Then again, her voice was completely serious and while Mikasa did like some fun pranks from time to time, this didn’t sound like one at all. So, following her wish, Armin gave her an honest answer.

“No, they don’t. The girl is forced to kill her love interest to save the world from him, but it's sort of bittersweet because their friends get to live a happy life after.”

There was a gasp on the other side as if he confirmed some of Mikasa’s suspicions.

“Why?”

“Well, people like angst, and giving everyone a happy ending is a bit of a cliché, no? I mean…”

“Why her though, wasn’t she the heroine?”

“Yes, but she can move on in time you know, forget about him and whatnot.”

There was a bit of silence on the other side before Mikasa spoke again, this time in a small and sad voice.

“Could you change it? Please, for me.”

“How?”

“Just make her happy…”

Running a hand through his sleep-tussled hair Armin puffed out air, turning the possibilities in his head. It wouldn’t be that hard to make Mikasa’s wish come true. He had a lot of supernatural going on in his book, monsters, and gods, a simple resurrection wouldn’t break the story. Plus it was rare to hear Mikasa beg like this, she was usually the “cool and stoic” type, and it tugged at Armin’s heart.

Hell, why not.

“All right, I’ll do it somehow.”

“You will?!”

“Yeah, but you’ll owe me one.”

There was happy and relieved laughter on the other side.

“Of course, I’ll do anything Ar, thank you so much!”

With a click, the call ended and Mikasa let out a long breath, rubbing the unshed tears from her eyes. It would seem that Armin wasn’t writing a story, more like remembering it, but unlike the one that happened this one would get a different ending.

Mikasa told Eren everything over breakfast, hugging a warm cup of coffee with both hands. He didn’t say anything while she spoke, just listened, his green eyes taking all of her in, both words and gestures. Only when she finished did he let out a long breath, one that felt like he was holding in for an eternity.

“This is a lot to take in.”, he said, “Especially at once.”

“I know…, you don’t have to believe me but…”

“I believe you. Every word.”

“Just like that?”

A firm nod.

“You believe it, and I see no reason why I should not. Past lives and other-universe memories can exist, it's not like the entire human psyche has been mapped.”

He looked away for a second.

“The Eren you described, he is so different than me, yet so terrifyingly similar in some aspects. I can sit here and say that I would never cause the apocalypse but in his place…? I just can’t know for sure.”

“I guess we are lucky that we don’t have to find out.”, Mikasa offered, “This life is so much better than whatever they went through...”

“For sure.”

“And that’s not all.”

“What do you mean?”

“I… I think I married someone… Jean maybe? Had kids with him too.”

“Oh my god.”, Eren threw an arm over his face dramatically, “Out of all people, why him?”

“I… I don’t know if it was him but….”

“Please Miki, I get that I died, and you wanted to move on, but didn’t your past life have any taste ?”

“Hey! Jean is nice.”

He peeked at her from under his arm.

“Nice huh?”

“Yea, nice. You know what, if you die I’m going to marry him here too.”

The fingers that were till now peacefully resting on her hip curved and dug into her flesh, a dangerous flash in the emerald that stared at her.

“You’re just trying to rile me, is that it?”

She fought the grin, not wanting it to reveal the joke.

“Maybe…”

However, Eren’s grip weakened as his face grew distant, the classic “philosophical” look entering his features.

“Would that be fair to him though? Jean is… okay I guess, and you treating him like an afterthought, a second choice? Not nice.”

Mikasa’s smile faltered when she realized that, and Eren was not even done with his speech.

“Then again, if I’ll be dead then I guess I have no agenda in telling you what to do. Plus I think I’d be happier if you moved on and had a family instead of mourning me forever. You are too young for that.”

These words hit way too close to Mikasa’s dream, and she could feel the sadness rising in the chest again. To battle it, she took hold of Eren’s chin and tugged it down until their lips were touching.

“Hey, not more talk about death, okay?”, she ordered, “I had enough of that while sleeping.”

“Yes ma’am.”

When she kissed him, Mikasa’s sadness melted away again, chased away by Eren’s warmth against her. Maybe her other self had to settle for something else, but not her. She was here and she had the love of her life right in her arms, in her bed, and she couldn’t be happier about it.

Eren mulled the facts over for a time, putting them together in his head. It was a nice day outside, and while he did all the math Mikasa simply watched him with a faint smile on her lips. It was almost noon when he came to her with a new question.

“So let me get this straight – I didn’t achieve anything In the end? My island was still nuked and the monsters…”

“Titans.”, Mikasa corrected him.

“Right, titans. Those are still around? Man, I guess I was turned into a clown at the end.”

She didn’t know how to disagree with any of those points.

“And the point of it all was nothing? That no matter how hard you struggle to save something you hold dear it will end up destroyed anyway?”

“It does sound hopeless when you put it like that.”

He snorted.

“Guess I was a certified clown then – oh well, now you see what zero pussy does to a motherfuc…”

“No, no, oh my god.”, Mikasa interrupted him, “Why do you keep making fun of it, I swear you are such a kid and…”

“W-What?”, Eren had trouble speaking because of the laughter, “It’s true! I died for nothing in your dream, I was a joke.”

“No… It wasn’t like that.”

“Take it as you will, but all my nightmares became reality and…”

Eren tapped the table a few times, most likely trying to wrap his head around it all.

“…you married Jean.”

“Well… yea, that was a bit weird.”

“Was it? I mean, the guy had a crush on you.”

She blinked at him.

“It was just a tiny one if there even was one at all.”

“Oh c’mon Miki,”, Eren’s grin was wide, “You couldn’t be that dense.”

“I-I mean…”

Jean? A crush? It reminded her of that night, not that long ago when she found out that most if not all of her female friends would like to have some sort of intimate experiments with her.

“Doesn’t matter.”, she blurted, “He’s a good friend, and I like him a lot, but not romantically!”

“He will be heartbroken…”

“He will?”

“Nah,”, Eren chuckled, “Jean got over it, he and Hitch are happy together, as far as I know.”

“That’s good, a crush is hardly a good base for a real-life relationship.”

“Then I guess we can be happy that you guys married in a dream only.”

“Indeed.”, she reached over the table to gently touch his face, “Here I have you.”

Eren mirrored her gesture, letting his thumb stroke the scar on Mikasa’s cheek.

“And I have you.”

“Forever.”

“Sadly.”

“What was that?”

“Oh nothing baby…”, a devilish grin, “Yes, forever.”

With her dreams done and finished it was time to return to civilization, to leave the cabin life behind. Eren told her that he got this, very courteously, most likely still worried about her mental state.

“Just take it easy,”, he said, kissing the top of her head, “I’ll pack.”

He did as he said, fighting with the baggage to the best of his ability. Mikasa was left to wander around aimlessly, and for whatever reason her steps took her to the big tree sitting there, overlooking a vast plain of grass. Taking a deep breath of the fresh air she leaned on the tree, but then her eyes caught sight of something that almost made her jump out of her skin.

There was a ghost sitting there, a ghost of her, dressed in a simple skirt and shirt, the scarf still around her neck. The apparition was about the same age Mikasa was, maybe a bit younger, but they looked almost the same. Her hair wasn’t short, it was long and pulled into a ponytail and there was no red highlight decorating it. The ghost looked up, her eyes meeting Mikasa’s, and a faint smile crossed her lips.

It was her perfect copy, down to the scar on the cheek - albeit the ghost’s was even more faded than hers, long years washing over it. She must have gotten her cut as a teenager. And there was also something about the eyes – it would be a lie to say that Mikasa had an easy life, but what she saw in the ghost’s eyes was something different altogether. The sitting girl saw hell and more, and it showed in her face.

“You are me.”, Mikasa finally pushed out.

The ghost looked at her curiously, tilting her head to the side.

“You… you can’t speak, can you?”

The ghost shook her head.

“I wonder why….”

The sitting girl shrugged, not understanding this any more than Mikasa did. She was just about to question her further when something else caught her attention. The ghost wasn’t sitting there on her own, there was something next to her – a tombstone with a very familiar name written on it.

Eren Yeager

Mikasa already had a suspicion, but this confirmed it – the sitting girl was the other Mikasa, the one she had dreams about, her past life. Following her eyes the ghost saw what she was looking at, her smile replaced by a look of deep longing. Gently, she caressed the stone, her eyes shining with tears.

“So the dreams were right, huh? You had to kill him.”

The ghost nodded solemnly.

“You saved the world, everyone, but you had to give the love of your life up.”

The apparition didn’t react, eyes trained at the cold tombstone.

“They say that if you love something, you should let it go.”, she told the ghost, “But I can’t do that….”

Looking over her shoulder at the man she loved so much, Mikasa let the words spill freely.

“I guess I’m selfish but I don’t want to lose this love we have, no matter what kind of symbolism it is. I want to wake up next to him every morning and spend ten minutes getting out of his hands because he holds me so tightly when we sleep. I want to see him yawn and wish him good morning and share a cup of coffee. I want him to be there for me when I come back so we can talk about our days and cuddle on the couch together…”

Her hands intertwined on the abdomen, gently stroking the fabric of her shirt.

“I want to have children with him, family, kids that will combine my and his looks and attitude. Is that selfish? Is that too much to ask? Is that…”

Lost in her speech Mikasa stumbled over the words and fell silent, letting out a short laugh after.

“I’m selfish and I don’t care. I’m never letting go simply because I don’t want to and damn everyone who disagrees with me. I deserve this, I deserve to be loved.”

As soon as those words left Mikasa’s lips she realized how insensitive those were towards her other self, the poor girl who, for all her bravery, for the act of saving the world itself – got nothing.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you feel bad.”, she apologized to the sitting copy of herself, “I know that you never got to experience any of that with him.”

The ghost’s face fell and she buried her face to the scarf, eyes moving towards the headstone next to her. Seeing the longing written in her features, Mikasa couldn’t help but wonder.

“Did you… did you learn to let him go? Did you come to terms with his death?”

The pain in the girl’s eyes was all the answer Mikasa needed. It resonated within her, the suffering because she could imagine how it would feel. Maybe it was because she experienced it in her past life, maybe it was because of all these strange visions but she could do it and the pain and emptiness were terrible.

“This is not fair,”, she blurted, “You did everything you could, you saved the world and this was your reward? You’ve sacrificed… everything… and….”

She was crying now, Mikasa realized, her tears matching the ghost’s. Falling to her knees next to the girl she tried embracing her only to realize that she can’t touch a figment of her imagination.

“I’m so sorry for how the universe treated you, you deserved more, so, so much more….

More flashes- this time of a child, a faceless husband, grandkids too.

“This, all that… Did it make you happy?”

The ghost girl gave her a small enigmatic smile, and Mikasa realized one thing. It wasn’t for her to know – maybe she was happy with the other family, maybe she wasn’t, that would remain an enigma.

“But still, you kept visiting his grave,”, Mikasa’s eyes moved over to the headstone and the flowers there, “You never let his memory fade.”

A nod from the other girl.

“Still, it wasn’t fair to you. You could have been, no, should have been so much more…”, this time the raven’s eyes moved to where her Eren was, “You deserved to have a happy future with him too.”

“Yet you didn’t, and I did – you got the pain and I have the rewards you fought for. I swear, I will not let it go to waste.”

Standing up, she offered her hand to the ghost.

“Please, come with me, experience all that you bled for, struggled for so much. Let me show you how the love you wanted feels in full bloom.”

But the girl didn’t move, simply looking at her. And that was when Mikasa realized….

“… you don’t have to come with me because you are already here. You are me, I am you, we are the same person.”

It was strange, realizing that this was her- this old, tired soldier, a woman broken by a war Mikasa couldn’t even comprehend. A tragic hero who sacrificed her greatest love for the greater good, being left with nothing but a memory. A girl who was thrust into a cruel world and treated unfairly, no matter how hard she tried to change it, to save those she held dear. Tears in the corners of her eyes, Mikasa clenched her fists.

Not anymore.

Now there was no war, no titans, no apocalypse over their heads. Eren wouldn’t go to commit a global genocide to save his country, only to have it destroyed anyway. She wouldn’t marry another man and have children with him, bring her family to his grave, and plant flowers with pain in her heart. No.

Mikasa wasn’t a soldier anymore – she was an MMA fighter, a professional athlete, a model. Her life wasn’t filled with a constant struggle for survival. It was dreamy- filled with everything she could wish for, whatever it was spending her time with friends, goofing around with Eren, or training her pole dancing. She didn’t care for horses or sharpen her blades.

Eren wasn’t a hopeless maniac, driven to war by the sheer necessity of survival – he was a doctor, a surgeon, helping people in need not killing them.

Most importantly they were together – an engaged couple that loved each other so much that they couldn’t put it into words correctly. No tragedy would befall them.

Keeping her hand outstretched, Mikasa talked to the ghost again.

“We are one, but I am the lucky part of us, of me. I am love, I am the nights and lazy mornings spent in bed, I am all the kisses and hugs. You are my sadness, my sacrifice, my longing and pain, my unfulfilled and tragic fate.”

She stretched her fingers closer to the girl.

“Please, take my hand and experience it all with me, learn that there is beauty in this cruel world.”

Not hesitant anymore, the ghost held her hand towards Mikasa.

When their fingers made contact a chill ran down her spine and she gasped, blinking several times. The girl was gone, so was the grave, only the tree remained and gently swayed in the wind. And in her heart, in her soul, Mikasa felt different – different yet same because now she knew everything and the pain in her heart resonated.

It would always be a part of her, or rather it always was, but Mikasa wasn’t feeling down because of it. Now she knew that she had to feel everything, every touch and happy emotion that she experienced with him because it was what her past died for. If anything the full realization of her suffering made Mikasa appreciate it even more – she was living this life not only now but for the past too.

He was her Eren, she was his Mikasa, and in this world, nothing would tear them apart. And the tears the began to appear in her eyes did nothing to deny that fact.

“Miki? Why are you crying, what’s wrong?”

Refusing to answer Mikasa crossed the distance and hugged him, burying her face into Eren’s chest. Understanding that she didn’t want words now he stroked her back patiently, waiting for her to come back to him.

“Eren, you won’t ever leave me, will you?”

“Never.”

“I mean, I couldn’t do it even if wanted to.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t think I love you anymore, it’s more like fascination, adoration maybe.”

“…Eren…”

“Hell, I’d do anything to stay with you, you want me to bark for you? Cause I will..”

Despite her sad mood, Mikasa felt the smile tugging at the corners of her lips.

“Stop, come on.”

Ignoring that, he pressed his face into her hair, a quiet bark leaving his lips.

“Woof.”, he nuzzled her gently, “There, I did it.”

She giggled at that and Eren smirked, glad that he made her smile because that was his mission in life – making the beautiful angel he was, for some reason blessed by, happy.

It made her reflect on the whole story, now that she had it whole. Eren kept silent while Mikasa was deep in thought, his fingers gently stroking her hipbone in small soothing circles. In her mind, she recalled as much as she could, brought it together and….

Mikasa took a shuddering breath.

“It makes no god damn sense.”

“What doesn’t?”

“The whole story, It… it doesn’t add up at all. You dying for nothing, me moving on so quickly I… The whole world….”

She was pouting now, that adorable expression that made Eren want to kiss it right off of her face, but he held himself back. Mikasa was talking.

“It had such a nice build-up, but in the end, it collapsed completely. I don’t understand why….”

“Well, that is the thing with dreams.”, he mumbled next to her, “They often don’t make much sense once we wake up.”

“But still..”

“Mikiiiiiiiiii…”, unable to resist her cuteness anymore, he pressed a string of soft kisses all over her face, turning that pout into a breathless giggle, “Stop overthinking dreams so much.”

Grabbing her hand he intertwined their fingers, raising it so the sun slid over their skin. It highlighted the contrast between them, how his tanned shade complimented her pale one, just as perfectly as they completed one another in life.

“This. This is important.”, he said, “This is real. You may be a broken titan slayer in your dreams, but here you are… well, still a titan slayer but one that is happy… I think.”

His voice got even deeper when he directed his question right at her.

“Are you happy with me?”

Mikasa was nodding her head before she even realized what was happening.

“Yes. Gods yes, I couldn’t be happier.”

“See?”, the flash of white teeth revealed his grin, “Then focus on that. Here, in this world, I’m not going anywhere, and I’ll stay with you as long as you’ll have me.”

“That might be a very long time Yeager, are you sure that you want to do that to yourself?”

“As if I had a choice.”, his fingers danced over her hip, “You bound me to yourself with black magic, remember?”

“Good to see that you remember that. My Dark Knight.”

The kiss Eren gave her was interlaced with a smile, and it was one of the sweetest Mikasa ever got in her life. He was right, after all, her dreams, past self, it was a tragedy that befell her, but it was so jumbled at the end that she had a hard time taking it seriously. The “ending” of her past didn’t make sense, no matter how much she tried to see the point of it. It all looked like such a tragedy, but in the end…. was it maybe a comedy? A twisted image where all the sacrifice and pain they went through amounted to nothing? Where several characters were made to be worthless, and their struggle amounted to nothing? A parody of a terrible conflict that couldn’t be solved by anything else by an annihilation?

But... why dwell on it?

She had this- this life, this Eren, and this happiness that they built together, and she loved every second of it.

And there was nothing else that the past could show her anymore.

“Let’s get out of here.”

“You sure? Didn’t forget anything?”

Mikasa looked at the tree where the conversation with the ghost took place, smiling. Tightening her hold on Eren’s hand, she felt more content than ever before, finally having an explanation and ending for her nightmares. It all made sense, and she would live her life to the fullest with the love of her life – not only for herself but for the other Mikasa too. She deserved to experience it, every second of it. After all, they were one and the same.

“Yes. I have all I need right here with me.”

[story-collector]

The Family We Chose

Part 5

So I just realized I fucked up the ages...like I didn’t calculate something correctly because Damian is 9 when he leaves them...and he’s supposed to be 13 when they see him again but they were 16 when he left and they are supposed to be 17/18 and it doesn’t line up....

Change Damian to 10 when he leaves, they will stay 16....they will be 18 when he sees them next and he will be 12 almost 13.Fixed

???....timeskip I guess

Two years ago I left them, leaving Wayzz behind with Marinette. I glanced to the sketchbook on my desk, almost full, of drawings of my old...and new family.

When I was first brought to my father I hated every single one of his sons and him. I wanted nothing to do with them, I wanted my family, the one I chose.

Unfortunately I knew that wasn’t possible. I knew that the league wouldn’t attack them anymore with my grandfather being dead but I had no idea what my father would try to do. So I left them alone, I stayed away. They had wonderful and successful lives, they didn’t need me to get in the way.

When I became Robin I felt like I was betraying my family, like I was betraying Marinette. They had kept me from the fighting, despite how I had been raised, but they had kept me occupied and gave me things to do. My father didn’t seem like he really cared what happened and he had swept us all into his little mission against crime.

Now two years later I could see he really did love us but he just didn’t know how to express that at all. My brothers were surprisingly better at it than him and I had grown fairly close to them. Now I held them to almost the same esteem as the miraculous team. In the end I think, if given the choice, I would still chose to follow Ladybug. She was the first person that really showed me real love and real care. She had treated me as my age but still as an equal. She had been a big sister, almost like a mother to me.

I missed all of them. Sparring with the boys and patrolling with the girls. I missed their cuddles, their hugs. I missed when Max would show me things on his laptop, whether it was a funny cat video or when he taught me how to hack I still enjoyed my time with him. Adrien had taught me fencing. It had been very similar to a katana but it was more for show. He also taught me a lot about modeling. Kim loved to soar with me and taught me how to really push my personal limits in training, I still used his techniques today. Nathaniel was a fellow artists and they could have spent hours drawing together. Nath had shown him plenty of tips for drawing and I had become better with them. He had also shown me how to fully operate our tech system, from the communication system to the cameras that he had hacked into. The Batcave was actually fairly similar and I had learned the computer functions easily.

Chloe had been someone I had become suprisingly close to. Our personalities were very system but I had learned that she cared deeply from the bottom of her heart about people. When she was hurt, she would be broken for days untill she pulled herself together. I felt especially bad for leaving when I thought of her. She had taught me how to find all the good gossip and how to seem almost all knowing. I still used her technics today and because of that I was always the most informed person in the manor. Kagami really was like an older sister. She taught me sword technics I didn’t know and would spar with me. Secretly she was also a genius about animals. We bonded over that. I still carried that live for animals now. Alix was crazy. I had loved skating with her. Together we had figured out I was a natural skateboarder and she had gotten me one. Unfortunately I had to leave it behind but when I came here I got another one and had designed it similar to her hero uniform.

The two people I was probably closest to had been Luka and Marinette. Luka had taught me how to sing and play guitar. Other times he had just let me curl up next to him and he would play the guitar and sing to me for hours. He was a big brother to me and I missed him so much. I still played the guitar, but very rarely and only in private. No one in my new family knew I could play.

Marinette had been mom, or big sister. She had always been there for me. As I had lived alone in the base we had grown close. She had been the one to find me, the one to help heal me, and she was the one who came every day in the morning to see me and the one who would tuck me in at night. She had always been on call for me whenever I needed her. She was more reliable than my new family all together. I felt the worst about leaving her.

I stared out my window to the manor grounds. They were empty and it was dark, my one night off patrol a week. The sky was clear and as I looked at the moon I imagined my family was looking at it to.

In Paris

In the two years that Damian had been gone we had worked harder to finish Hawkmoth off for good but we couldn’t find out who he was. We spent hours pouring over ever single scrap of what could even be slightly considered evidence and we found nothing. Some days I found myself looking for Damian to see if he wanted to help.

Damian was brilliant, he was probably even smarter now in the years he had been away. Two years...it seemed like yesterday where he would be at the table with me as I looked over the Akumas map. I sighed and looked over it again. Still nothing.

A rattle in the ceiling made me look up to see me partner in crime, the one who was there with me when this it all started. He came down to my level and purred into the hug he gave me.

“We’ll find him one day”

I couldn’t tell If he was talking about Damian or Hawkmoth but I agreed with him fully. Chat Noir returning meant that Alix and Kim would be coming by soon to start the night patrol. That meant it was time for me to go home.

I groaned thinking about the essays I had to write and the math I needed to do at home...and the two dresses I need to make for Penny and the suit for Jagged. Oh well, coffee was a hero’s best friend after all. I said goodbye to the other hero’s, my family, and sent my yo-yo out to a nearby chimney. The sound of Chat Noirs staffed extending joined me moments later.

We traveled in silence till we made it to my parents bakery. We landed on my balcony and detransformed. We sat on the chair and just talked for another hour. We had been partners for almost 5 years now. I had just turned 18 and the others were close behind me. My business had skyrocketed and I was already looking at new places to live in and colleges to got to....after I defeated Hawkmoth.

We also talked about the school trip that we had won recently. I remember the countless hours slaving away to win this opportunity for a class who didn’t even know that I had done it. Lie-la was the apparent savior of the class for this. Whatever.

Luka would be the only one staying behind, Kagami having grabbed a spot with our class for the trip. So much planning would need to be done for this trip. We need to figure out patrols with the time difference. We had the app to alert us but other than that and Luka we would be completely blind to Paris, the news of Hawkmoth having been blocked from the rest of the world.

We had a long few months ahead of us.

Taglist:

@buginetye @mysteriouslyswimmingfan-blo-blog @dood-space @silvergold-swirl @toodaloo-kangaroo @moonlightstar64 @greatcatblaze



[ppangjae]

made to fall in love | one

SERIES MASTERLIST

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SUMMARY. Seoul’s finest 30 under 30. The country’s youngest billionaire. 2019’s richest bachelor. But of all the women he could go after, he goes after.. her?

GENRE. fluff and angst + ceo!jaehyun (someone stop me) + nerd!reader + enemies to lovers!au + long lost friend!au

WORD COUNT. 2.2k+ words

warnings. tooth-rotting fluff, swearing, and tons of bickering!

author’s note. a new day, a new update! here she is! also i just wanted to let you know that this series is inspired and based off of the kdrama she was pretty! so if you come across a part in the series that reminds you of this kdrama, it’s because it’s inspired by it :-)

ONE. gold • it feels so gold, so gold

Sixteen year old Jaehyun ran so that present day Jaehyun could walk. If present day Jaehyun told sixteen year old Jaehyun what his life would be in the future, little Jaehyun would never believe him. Even until this day, he still can’t believe it.

Seoul’s finest 30 under 30. The country’s youngest billionaire. 2019′s richest bachelor. Jaehyun is all of those things and he worked hard for them. Those things didn’t come to him on a gold plate nor was it fed to him with a gold spoon. They came to him as products of his hard work.

His eyes flutter open at the sound of the pilot’s voice, announcing that the private jet will be landing soon. As he gets up, he rubs his eyes and opens the blinds to look out the window. The skies are a bright blue on this lovely morning, he thinks to himself. He overlooks the city of Seoul and lets out a groan. Just the sight of office and corporate buildings make him wish his vacation was a bit longer.

“I know, I miss Singapore too.” He glances to his right to see Johnny waking up from his nap. He chuckles, chucking his neck pillow straight into his face. Johnny blocks the attack right on time.

“Do we really have a choice?” Jaehyun sighs. “We have to go back to our busy lives and build a bigger empire.”

“You make it seem like you’re the king of a huge city.” Johnny rolls his eyes. “Please don’t ever say that again. It doesn’t make you look cool. It doesn’t make us look cool.”

“You know what’s cool?” Jaehyun quirks an eyebrow at Johnny. He points at a huge building in the middle of the city. Surrounding the huge building are small company buildings, entertainment companies, law firms, etc. Johnny looks out the window and spots what his best friend is pointing at. “We own that.”

“No,” Johnny shakes his head. “You own that.”

BREAKING NEWS: Jung Jaehyun tops richest bachelor for a third consecutive year.

“Wow. You’re telling me that he’s your childhood friend?”

You and your roommate, Mark, are sitting in front of the TV. You’re both huddled around the coffee table, eating breakfast together. As you’re shoving a mouthful of cereal into your mouth, you nod your head. “Don’t believe me?”

“Pictures or it didn’t happen,” Mark squints his eyes at you suspiciously. 

You dust your hands off and get up from the floor. As you walk into your room, you rummage through your closet to take out a memory box covered in dust. You blow the dust off the lid of the box and erupt into soft coughs. Mark watches you as you come back into the living room with a box.

“Where’s the receipts?” Mark asks.

“Someone’s impatient.” You mumble.

As you’re looking through your memory box, you can hear the reporter speak more about Jung Jaehyun. You finally find the graduation book and pull it out before handing it to Mark.

“Page eighty-seven, fourth row, second picture on the right.” 

You fold your arms and quirk an eyebrow. Mark’s eyes scan through the page and once he finds it, he looks back at the TV screen. His eyebrows raise.

“So you weren’t lying to me,” Mark says with an astonished look on his face. “Damn, you must secure the bag, then. The guy’s hella rich, he could pay off our student debts combined.”

“I just hope he remembers me,” you rest your chin against the palm of your hand. “He went to college abroad. He came back home rich. He moved out of our neighbourhood. The chances of him remembering me get slimmer and slimmer.”

“I’m pretty sure he remembers you. He should remember you. You’re a part of his childhood. You both graduated elementary and high school together.” Mark tries to convince you. He shoves another mouthful of cereal into his mouth.

“Do you think he would remember me? Me? When I look like this?” You ask, pointing at yourself. 

“You kind of have a point.” He shrugs his shoulders. “You lost your sense of fashion ever since you started university.”

Mark yelps in pain when your spoon hits him in the arm. You glare at him as if he had earned himself a death wish. He rubs the spot, glaring back at you. You pout, breaking your gaze from Mark to stare at Jaehyun’s picture on your TV screen.

Jung Jaehyun is your childhood friend. The two of you lived in the same neighbourhood, went to the same elementary school, and graduated from the same high school. He’s not what he is like now. The Jaehyun you met and befriended was a quiet boy who barely had any friends. He had two friends, you and Johnny. He loved to play the piano and if you were lucky enough, you would hear him sing or hum a soft melody. He had a dream of becoming an architect, someone who drew buildings and watch them come to life. The Jaehyun you met and befriended was always picked on. He was mainly picked on for two things: for being too quiet and for being the chubby one. You and Johnny were the only ones that defended him from the bullies. 

The Jaehyun you see on your TV screen is far from the Jaehyun you met. You never saw him or Johnny ever since your high school graduation. You’d often wonder if he’s doing alright, if he’s making friends, if he’s pursuing his future of being an architect. But once he came back to Seoul after studying abroad, all of your wishes for him were answered. Jaehyun is doing alright and he’s pursuing his future, he runs and owns a successful architecture company. He’s making friends, in fact, everyone wants to be friends with him. Sometimes, it makes you doubt that he’ll ever remember you.

You doubt that he’ll ever remember his childhood friend who grew up with him, who defended him from the bullies, who stuck with him no matter who he was. 

“I guess we’ll just have to find out on your first day at work,” Mark says as he brings up the bowl of cereal-flavoured milk to his lips. He gulps down the milk and sets down the empty bowl back onto the coffee table. “We’ll have to find out whether he remembers you or not.”

“This is all you guys prepared?”

Everyone seated in the meeting room gawk at Jaehyun. He sighs, folding his arms and takes one last look at the PowerPoint presentation. The project manager nervously fiddles with his fingers before nodding his head in reply.

Jaehyun gets up from his seat and walks towards the front of the room. He points at the 3D plan of a building. The building looks poorly made, almost as if it was done last minute. “How long did it take for you to do this?”

“Well―”

“You don’t need to answer my question because I can see it.” He cuts him off. “Just from how it looks, from how the lines are crooked, I know this took you less than half an hour.”

“Sir―”

“I was gone on vacation for two weeks. Even though I was gone on vacation for two weeks, I still did work during my downtime. What did you all do during those two weeks? Did you all have a good time?” Jaehyun shakes his head in disbelief. “I expected you to do a good job with this project. But after I go on vacation for two weeks, you all suddenly get lazy?”

“We tried our best, sir.” The project manager mutters softly and Jaehyun’s head snaps in his direction. 

He raises an eyebrow and scoffs. “You tried your best? Sure, let’s say you tried your best. But your best wasn’t good enough.”

Everyone falls silent in the meeting room. They have guilt written all over their faces. 

“Let me remind you that you’re working at Jung Architects,” he tells them. “I hate looking at poorly made projects because they don’t reflect our company values. We build and create buildings and structures to the best of our ability. They have to be functional and safe. They have to be perfect. They have to be economical.”

“We’ll try again, sir.” The project manager mumbles. “Sorry, sir.”

“You don’t need to apologize to me.” He sighs. “You have to apologize to all of your coworkers in this room for wasting their time.”

“Sir―”

“The new interns and engineers are coming in tomorrow.” Jaehyun announces and everyone’s eyebrows raise in surprise.

“T-Tomorrow? Since when did we hire new employees―”

“Don’t be surprised if you lose your jobs because of them. The moment I find them more competent than this?” Jaehyun gestures to the presentation. He chucks the folder away from his hands. “I’ll be firing you from the company.”

They all bow their heads. Jaehyun grabs his coat and exits the meeting room, making sure that he slams the door shut. The moment he’s out of the room, everyone erupts into whispered complaints about how rude their boss was, if he woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, or if someone spoiled his daily coffee.

Ever since you started to hate working at your previous job, it drove you to start searching and applying for other jobs. It was just a huge coincidence that Jung Architects was looking for a structural engineer. 

For most of your life, you’ve dreamed of becoming an engineer. It didn’t matter what kind of engineer, you just wanted to be one. It was either an engineer or a mathematician ― it was your last resort only if your dreams of being an engineer were crushed. You have a gift in math. And so when you got accepted into a structural engineering program, it was all just meant to be.

Getting hired as a structural engineer at Jung Architects made your dreams even more real. It just seems too good to be true. But here you are.

Here you are, sitting in front of your laptop, deleting all the emails you’ve gotten from other companies and jobs. You didn’t need to respond to them anymore. Deleting them felt theurapeutic.

Just as you’re deleting your emails, you stumble across an email you’ve sent to Jaehyun a couple of years ago. You laugh in disbelief. Did you really keep an old email in your inbox? Why? You click on it anyway.

to: breadjaehyun@kmails.net from: lastname_firstname@kmails.net

SUBJECT: jaehyun!!

hey jae! you’ve probably landed by now. i hope you got my email. i wasn’t able to say a proper goodbye to you because johnny was too busy crying and i had to comfort him. well, i hope you do great in university! i wish you nothing but the best on all your endeavours. always stay true to yourself and don’t let anyone step on you! let me know if someone does because i will be ready to fly over and beat them up! also i hope you always remember your two best friends waiting for you and cheering you on here in seoul. you can always email me back! or text me. or call me, even.

until we meet again, ____.

You clench your tummy as you burst out into laughter. You vividly remember typing this email out while bawling your eyes out. On the day that Jaehyun flew out for university, you didn’t give him a proper goodbye because Johnny was crying like a whale swimming in the ocean. After that day, you and Johnny kept in touch. But that didn’t last long until Johnny found himself new friends. Ever since you sent that email, you sent him another email every now and then. But you never got a reply.

You sigh. That was the start of your separation from the two of them.

Just as you’re about to delete the email, you see a new email in the thread. The email is dated today and was sent a couple of hours ago. You quirk an eyebrow, adjusting your glasses to get a better look at the email. You click on it and your mouth falls open in shock.

It’s an email from Jaehyun.

“It comes in rose gold, gold, and sterling silver.”

Jaehyun picks up each necklace and analyzes them carefully. The jeweler waits for his decision, but he’s not sure if he could hardly wait anymore. Jaehyun has been looking around the jewelry shop for heaven knows how long. It’s getting quite dark outside and the shop is nearing it’s closure for the remainder of the day. Before the jeweler could let out a sigh, Jaehyun places down the silver necklace and points at the gold one.

“I’ll take the gold one, please.” He smiles.

He steps out of the shop with a new purchase and heads home. Once he arrives home, he goes straight to his home office. He plops down onto the chair and places the jewelry box onto the table. He glances at his computer and decides to check his email before heading to bed.

He clicks on his inbox and the smile on his face gets wider when he sees two new emails. One of them is from a client. The other... well, the other email comes from someone special. 

email delivered. email read. from: lastname_firstname@kmails.net to: breadjaehyun@kmails.net

SUBJECT: you replied?? omg??? hi????

author’s note. the first couple of chapters are going to be short but they will be longer soon! just sit tight some more lmao. anyways i hope you liked this short update! 

send me a message! let’s be friends!

[adapembroke]

Jupiter/Saturn Conjunction: Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition

I recently had the opportunity to attend Astrology University’s Astrology + World Events Summit. Three of the talks I attended were on the Jupiter/Saturn conjunction thats happening on 21 December 2020. I walked away from the summit convinced that this transit isn’t getting nearly the attention it deserves.

I shared my thoughts on the event with my patrons on Patreon, and this is how I described the astrological significance of the transit:

The Jupiter/Saturn conjunction isn't usually an especially huge deal. It happens every 20 years or once a generation. The conjunction in December 2020 will be a big deal because it marks a transition point that happens every 200 years or so.

For the last ~200 years, Jupiter and Saturn have made all of their conjunctions in earth signs, which means that we have been in an earthy age. Our values (Jupiter) and structures (Saturn) have been material, tangible, practical, unmoving, and financial.

For the next ~200 years, we will be in an air age. Our values and structures will be light, intellectual, and mobile.

A transition from 200 years of earth to 200 years of air is not a bad thing, but it is a significant change. Any change of elemental emphasis is significant, but earth and air don’t naturally get along easily with each other. Earth is an introverted element. Air is an extroverted element. Air values freedom above all else. Earth values stability. Earth signs and air signs form tense aspects with each other—squares and semi-sextiles.

Don’t panic.

At the conference Christof Niederwieser talked about the last time we went from an earth age to an air age (in 1188), and he pointed out that this was a time that was wonderful for knowledge in Europe. Many of the most illustrious colleges in Europe opened during this time. The church stopped being the gatekeeper of knowledge, and education became accessible to people who were not clergy for the first time since the fall of Rome. Literacy rates soared. Cities boomed. Europe dropped roman numerals in favor of Arabic numerals making math much less cumbersome.

If Niederwieser is right—and that is a big “if.” He began his talk by talking about the hazards of prediction—we can expect to move into an age that values education, communication, and ease of movement.

We can see these predictions play out already with the rise of the internet, the urbanization of society, and the transportation-oriented gig economy. Gatekeepers are being put out of business, and calculators have become so ubiquitous there is serious debate about whether it’s worthwhile to teach children to do math by hand anymore.

There is, however, a downside to the new age of air.

Well, maybe panic a little.

One of the most striking cultural developments during the last age of air was the rise of the Inquisition. The Inquisition was a judicial branch of the Catholic Church tasked with trying and prosecuting heretics.

The Inquisition belongs to the theme of air because air corresponds to the wind of thought, and the Inquisition was concerned with thought crimes. People were not put on trial for things they did but for things they believed.

One of the more famous victims of the Inquisition was Galileo who was put on trial twice for the crime of believing in heliocentrism (that the earth orbits the sun). The first time, he was forced to recant and was released on the condition that he promised not to talk about heliocentrism anymore. The second time, he was threatened with torture during interrogation and was sentenced to house arrest. All of his works were banned, even works that he might write in the future. He lived under house arrest until he died nine years after his second trial.

Intellectual freedom matters.

The idea of living in a society that criminalizes heretical thought is distressing on many levels to me. As a person with an Aquarius moon, I have an emotional need to swim up stream and think for myself. A society that punishes divergent thought has the potential to be deadly for me. Astrology has been criminal before. There is very little stopping it from being criminal again.

Intellectual freedom is, also, the cornerstone of a free society. It’s not an accident that totalitarian regimes are infamous for banning books. Writing tends to make people better thinkers. Journaling is such a powerful practice because physically seeing your thoughts on paper (or screen) forces you to confront and evaluate them in the physical world.

Reading the thoughts of others challenges your assumptions. A well-formed argument (or an emotionally impactful one) can change people’s minds. It can even help them to be better people.

As the critical theorist Hannah Arendt pointed out in her analysis of the rise of totalitarianism in Nazi Germany, the inability to think allowed ordinary human beings to commit crimes against humanity at a gigantic scale. Without the ability to reflect on the reasons for their actions, they had no need to justify their actions to themselves. They functionally lacked the ability to tell right from wrong.

There is value in reading ideas that are uncomfortable, or even problematic. Developing critical thinking, or the ability to evaluate arguments, necessarily requires you to engage with ideas you don’t like. The brain is like a muscle. It needs to be exercised in order to be at its best. If you are surrounded exclusively by people you agree with, it is easy to become intellectually lazy. Problematic ideas are like resistance training for the mind. They give you the opportunity to think hard, to wrestle with nuanced arguments, and (most importantly) articulate exactly why you think the ideas in question are right or wrong.

This isn’t just important for people who want to think of themselves as intelligent. The ability to evaluate ideas and articulate why certain ideas are right and wrong is necessary if you are going to have a consistent moral system. Feelings are flighty and group-think is easily mistaken for intuition. Evaluating morality based on feelings alone is not enough.

Even if you are certain that you’re right and have weighed the arguments carefully, the choice to use violence or intimidation to force your will on people is problematic. The Inquisition used those techniques, too. It also canceled people.

Ultimately, intimidation isn’t even effective. Punching Nazis in the face isn’t enough. If it was, World War II would have settled the issue. The only way to kill an idea is to slay it with a better argument.

What are we going to do about this?

At this point, you may be panicking. When I realized the implications of potentially living through another Inquisition, I was not at my emotional best.

However, one of the reasons astrology is worth studying is because it gives us the ability to choose how we are going to respond consciously to the issues of our time.

Not many of us have the power to overthrow despots single-handedly, but we can still make choices about the types of behavior we will put up with in the communities we belong to.

These are some of the things I’m doing to make sure that I don’t contribute to the problems in the age of air:

Learn (and practice) critical thinking. Having a college degree (or even a graduate degree) does not guarantee that you learned critical thinking, even if you studied the liberal arts. I know many people with graduate degrees whose preferred way to solve arguments is with verbal intimidation and social violence. There are better ways to fight bad ideas. If you don’t know how, learn.

When you disagree with someone, fight fair. If you are too emotional to fight fair, walk away. Fighting fair means engaging with ideas, not insulting people.

Cancel ideas, not people. The enemy that fights the fiercest is the enemy that is trapped and has no path to retreat. I have seen more people become extremists because they were humiliated by people who thought they were wrong than for any other reason. People can change their minds. They should always be given the opportunity to do so without losing their dignity or social standing. Even the Inquisition gave people that right (occasionally).

This post was originally published on adapembroke.com in October 2020.