#I couldn’t give less of a fuck about the haters he’s dumb and I love him with all my ass

[padawansuggest]

Can I say one thing in slight defense of yoda haters? I hate that they didn’t keep the consistency up in all the media, making him a hypocrite. They had a whole episode in clone wars where Ashoka keeps having visions of padme dying and he was like Ah yes go investigate and save her life but with Anakin, he was immediately like no fuck her move on with your life. Which, to me, just highlights how different the Jedi and specifically yoga treated Anakin. I completely understand that this was two different people and crew but like. If Anakin went to yoda and that was his answer, why wasn’t it with Ashoka? Why include that episode at all? I’m not blaming the character but like. I feel like they made him a hypocrite, even if it was to highlight how different the Jedi treated Anakin.

Also “do or do not there is no try” is literally the stupidest thing ever imo. That completely dismisses any effort put into a task, and the amount of effort matters especially when talking about behavior.

Y’all are so fucking stupid. I don’t care if he’s a secret Sith okay I just like the dumb lol mold cat shut up. I don’t care about how he’s written. In the books and media I like him in he’s a chill and cuddly cat okay. Just calm down. I don’t need to defend him I love the bullshit I think it makes him funny.

[ssruis]

14,17, 19? - sakitenmaenjoyer

14. Favorite vocals in the game

If this question is about which characters I think have the best vocals: I think rui is my favorite but I also really like akito/haruka/nene/mizuki/saki/ichika/an/ena.

If it’s about the best covers (not counting commissioned songs the list would get too long): ikanaide (<- PEAK. First pjsk song added to my music library. The versions on YouTube without miku are even better*), shoujo rei, At God’s mercy, mizuki’s Charles alt, rui’s as you like it alt (all of his alts are good that one’s just a favorite), nene’s racing into the night alt, ifuudoudou, akito’s airhead and fragile alts (his airhead alt is. So good.) are a few off the top of my head.

*I said no commissioned songs but I feel obligated to take this opportunity to say colopale was so evil for giving like half of salamander to miku when it would have been so much better w just akito/ena. I love miku but sometimes less is more. Look @ Cosmospice.

17. Songs you want added to the game/what unit would cover them

I have so many….

Unfriendly hater - meddmia? (Wxs specifically ruikasa. Surely they’ll put this in the game it works so well. It’s perfect.) (coping) (I genuinely think they’ll do it)

Popipo - lamazep (wxs)

Death should not have taken thee - Jesus- P (wxs) (not happening they probably would have done it with adventure log)

For dear life - NILFRUITS (vbs)

RPG - soramafuurasaka* (wxs) (far fetched but I can dream…it would be so good…)

Young girl A - siinamota (niigo)

So long - Tokyo Elvis (no idea) (not happening, small eng producer)

TAMAYA - chinozo (VBS?)

Tawagato Speaker - NEKOBOLO (idk)

Record Red - shr (niigo or wxs)

World of Wonder - daniwell (wxs or mmj)

Even though I loved you/rebirth/suck it up/mind brand/darling - MARETU (most would probably go to niigo but l/n and vbs could kill some of these)

That’s why I gave up on music/hitchcock/prostitution - yorushika* (L/N, L/N, VBS?)

Night is faint - eve* (l/n or vbs)

Luvoratorrrrry! - reol (vbs or maybe mmj)

Volt switch - deco*27 (no cover) (would be shocked if this happened)

Hito mania - sasuke haraguchi (idk)

Butcher Vanity/Lose your head - vane (eng so no cover)

Konton Boogie - jon-YAKITORY (idk)

Therefore you and me - si-o (idk. Niigo?)

You’re a useless child - kikuo (niigo probably)

Insanity - circus-P (niigo? Or vbs)

Better off worse - circus-P (eng no cover)

* not a vocaloid song but has connections to producers that are already in the game

19. Favorite cards

Constraining myself to just wxs bc of the image limit. And also I’m biased so most of them would have been wxs anyways.

Absolute favorite card. Emunene real. If I have to spark for this and destroy my savings for wxs world link I will be so mad but I will do it.

Emu cards are always so good… I don’t think I can pull for Sanrio emu though despite it being one of my favorites (devastating) (saving for wxs world link). A shout out to her untrained Phoenix card & Torpe card too… they’re so cute.

Rui also has rlly good cards I think his cyber punk card is probably in my top 10 (also can’t pull for it) and his white day card… ough the lighting/pose/composition (still mad I couldn’t pull for that)

These untraineds are favorites just because they make me giggle. Tsukasa in a crisis is Always Hysterical (also why I like his untrained Phoenix/3rd year/doll festival* cards) but I think I’ve said [insert untrained pandemonium card] while talking abt tsukasa 100 times (which I got from you) because it’s never not funny. The gokart card is just really cute I love rui’s dumb expression and the fact that he’s too goddamn tall for this ride/the pure joy on emu’s face as she turns her car directly into rui presumably in an attempt to run him off the road (I support it). But the best part of it is 100% nene being a girl failure in the back like how did you fuck up so badly. Do not let her behind the wheel of a car ever. The expression of gamer rage on her face… her mario kart skills did not transfer over… she’s pissed. 10/10.

*Doll festival card gets an extra shout out. Why is rui there. He’s not in the side stories at all. The implication that he either 1) saw tsukasa acting like the world was ending and just went “not my problem” and walked away or 2) went to go eat lunch with him and walked in on him with his head in his hands having a capital c Crisis & had to deal with that is so funny.

[nyahsaqueen]

Task 001: Character Playlist.

Death Becomes Her - a Nyah Queen playlist

Snippets of Lyrics below:

1. tipsy - Chloe x Halle

man just this entire song is her vibe, k bye

I've been crucified, darling Ghosts haunt me like New Orleans I've been charged with murder Need someone to push me further I'll hit you where it hurts, yeah If you don't put me first, yeah And I don't give no apologies If you lose a life, that's not on me, yeah

[Pre-Chorus] Better, baby, better treat me better Better than those other guys who change up like the weather, yeah It is such a shame that they went missing, they can't find 'em now Oh, I wonder how I accidentally put them in the ground, yeah

[Chorus] I might be a little tipsy on your love Makes me a little crazy, but so what? You're strumming on my heartstrings, don't be dumb If you love your little life, then don't fuck up

[Verse 2] I'll take you to the afterlife Boy, if you ain't actin' right Key your car and crash the lights Hit your head, I'm not polite Then I'll hunt down your family Let 'em know 'bout the tragedy Who did it? A mystery But you know that it, it was me, yeah

2. scream - Michael Jackson & Janet Jackson

 Tired of injustice Tired of the schemes The lies are disgusting So what does it mean, damn it? Kicking me down I got to get up As jacked as it sounds The whole system sucks, damn it

Peek in the shadow Come into the light You tell me I'm wrong Then you better prove you're right! You're selling out souls but I I care about mine I've got to get stronger And I won't give up the fight

3. girls like us - Zoe Wees

 It's hard for girls like us We don't know who we trust Not even the ones we love 'Cause they don't know

4. motive - Ariana Grande & Doja Cat

'Cause I see you tryin', subliminally tryin' To see if I'm gon' be the one that's in your arms I admit it's exciting, parts of me kinda like it But before I lead you on

Baby, tell me, what's your motive? (Motive)

You treat me like gold, baby Now you wanna spoil me Did you want a trophy or you wanna sport me, baby? Want me on your neck 'cause you wanted respect 'Cause you fightin' some war, baby Well, I had to bring the fists out, had to put a wall up But don't trust phonies, baby (Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah) You gotta tell me, what's your motive, baby?

5. boss bitch - Doja Cat

Yeah, ain't tryna be cool like you Wobblin' around in your high heel shoes I'm clumsy, made friends with the floor Two for one, you know a bitch buy four And two left feet, you know I always drop First thing a girl did was a bop I'm the whole damn cake and the cherry on top Shook up the bottle, made a good girl pop

I'm a bitch, I'm a boss I'm a bitch and a boss, I'ma shine like gloss

6. nightmare - Halsey

"Come on, little lady, give us a smile" No, I ain't got nothin' to smile about I got no one to smile for, I waited a while for A moment to say I don't owe you a goddamn thing

7. all the stars - Kendrick Lamar, SZA

Tell me what you gon' do to me Confrontation ain't nothin' new to me You can bring a bullet, bring a sword, bring a morgue But you can't bring the truth to me Fuck you and all your expectations I don't even want your congratulations I recognize your false confidence And calculated promises all in your conversation I hate people that feel entitled Look at me crazy 'cause I ain't invite you Oh, you important? You the moral to the story? You endorsin'? Mothafucka, I don't even like you Corrupted man's heart with a gift That's how you find out who you dealin' with A small percentage who I'm buildin' with I want the credit if I'm losin' or I'm winnin' On my momma, that's the realest shit

8. needed me - Rihanna

But baby, don't get it twisted You was just another n**** on the hit list Tryna fix your inner issues with a bad bitch Didn't they tell you that I was a savage? Fuck ya white horse and ya carriage Bet you never could imagine Never told you you could have it

You needed me Ooh, you needed me To feel a little more, and give a little less Know you hate to confess But baby ooh, you needed me 9. checklist - Normani, Calvin Harris feat. Wizkid

Come show me what the neck ’bout Might show you what the check ’bout Might show you what that net 'bout Give it all to you if you check out Way you moving it around me Make me feel like you wan’ drown me Make me feel like you wan' wet me Only you know how to get me up

10. truth hurts - Lizzo

You tried to break my heart? Oh, that breaks my heart That you thought you ever had it No, you ain't from the start Hey, I'm glad you're back with your bitch I mean, who would wanna hide this? I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever be your side chick I put the sing in single Ain't worried 'bout a ring on my finger So you can tell your friend, "Shoot your shot" when you see him It's okay, he already in my DMs

I'ma hit you back in a minute (Yeah, yeah) I don't play tag, bitch, I been it (One time) We don't fuck with lies (Two times), we don't do goodbyes (Woo) We just keep it pushing like ay-ay-ay

11. juice - Lizzo

If I'm shinin', everybody gonna shine (Yeah, I'm goals) I was born like this, don't even gotta try (Now you know) I'm like chardonnay, get better over time (So you know) Heard you say I’m not the baddest, bitch, you lie (Haha)

It ain’t my fault that I'm out here gettin’ loose Gotta blame it on the Goose Gotta blame it on my juice, baby It ain't my fault that I'm out here makin' news I’m the pudding in the proof Gotta blame it on my juice Ya-ya-ee, ya-ya-ee, ya-ya-ee, ya-ya-ee Blame it on my juice, blame it, blame it on my juice

12. motivation - normani

 Fallin'  into the bed Why would we ever do somethin' instead of Fallin' into the bed right now? Yeah

I'ma break you off, let me be your motivation To stay and give it tonight And, baby, turn around, let me give you innovation Hey, 'cause I do it so right Think about it, ooh, I think about it Think about it, ooh, take a look at me now Hey, a little motivation, alright

13. mi gente - J Balvin, Willy William

Esquina a esquina, de ahí no' vamo' El mundo es grande, pero lo tengo en mi' manos Estoy muy duro, sí, ok, ahí vamos Y con el tiempo nos seguimos elevando

English: i’m rusty, i had to get some google help

Corner on the corner, that’s where we go The world is big, but I have it in my hands I’m very tough, yes, okay, there we go And over time we keep going up

14. sorry not sorry - Demi Lovato

Now, I'm out here lookin' like revenge Feelin' like a ten, the best I've ever been And, yeah, I know how bad it must hurt to see me like this But it gets worse (Wait a minute) Now, you're out here lookin' like regret, ain't too proud to beg Second chance, you'll never get And, yeah, I know how bad it must hurt to see me like this But it gets worse (Wait a minute)

Now, payback is a bad bitch And baby, I'm the baddest You fuckin' with a savage Can't have this, can't have this (Ah) And it'd be nice of me to take it easy on ya, but nah

Baby, I'm sorry (I'm not sorry)

15. django jane - Janelle Monáe

And hit the mute button, let the vagina have a monologue Mansplaining, I fold 'em like origami What's a wave, baby? This a tsunami For the culture, I kamikaze, I put my life on a life line If she the G.O.A.T. now, would anybody doubt it?

16. perfect illusion - Lady Gaga

Tryin' to get control Pressure's takin' its toll Stuck in the middle zone I just want you alone My guessing game is strong Way too real to be wrong Caught up in your show Yeah, at least now I know

It wasn't love, it wasn't love It was a perfect illusion (Perfect illusion) Mistaken for love, it wasn't love It was a perfect illusion (Perfect illusion) You were a perfect illusion

17. formation - Beyoncé

I see it, I want it, I stunt; yellow bone-it I dream it, I work hard, I grind 'til I own it I twirl on them haters, albino alligators El Camino with the seat low, sippin' Cuervo with no chaser Sometimes I go off (I go off), I go hard (I go hard) Get what's mine (Take what's mine), I'm a star (I'm a star) 'Cause I slay (Slay), I slay (Hey), I slay (Okay), I slay (Okay) All day (Okay), I slay (Okay), I slay (Okay), I slay (Okay) We gon' slay (Slay), gon' slay (Okay), we slay (Okay), I slay (Okay) I slay (Okay), okay (Okay), I slay (Okay), okay, okay, okay, okay Okay, okay, ladies, now let's get in formation, 'cause I slay Okay, ladies, now let's get in formation, 'cause I slay Prove to me you got some coordination, 'cause I slay Slay trick, or you get eliminated

18. be careful - Cardi B

Be careful with me, do you know what you doin'? Whose feelings that you're hurtin' and bruisin'? You gon' gain the whole world But is it worth the girl that you're losin'? Be careful with me Yeah, it's not a threat, it's a warnin' Be careful with me Yeah, my heart is like a package with a fragile label on it Be careful with me

19. i like that - Janelle Monáe

I remember when you called me weird We was in math class, third row, I was sitting by you Right before Mr. Ammond’s class 'Cause my mama couldn’t afford new Js Polos, thrift store, thrift clothes that was all I knew Do you remember? Uh, I remember when you laughed when I cut my perm off And you rated me a six I was like, “Damn” But even back then with the tears in my eyes I always knew I was the shit 20. W - Koffee feat. Gunna

Everything we do, we give thanks, tell dem wah we do Lowe di L, take di W (Ayy, ayy) One thing deh out deh fi you (Ayy, ayy) And it nah come if you no go

[yiangchen]

ok but literally what the fuck was s5? i have spent so much time trying to defend clarke and bellamy from people who hate one and prop up the other, but honestly, they were BOTH fucking IDIOTS in s5. they both had ooc moments. like,,,, i can kinda appreciate what the writers were trying to do a lot of the time, but it was not executed well. like AT ALL. 

yes, mothers are irrational sometimes about their kids’ safety, but what they are not (normally) is dumb, and i’m sorry, but clarke was dumb as fuck for like half of the season and her motivations were ALL over the place. bellamy is her best friend. she radioed him every day for over six years and ONLY him. she would NEVER just leave him to die like that. NEVER. no matter what he has done, she has always forgiven him. no matter what. that’s what made bellarke bellarke. her unwavering faith in him (and his in her). and yet, he does one (1) thing she disagrees with and she doesn’t even try and hear him out??? she thinks running is the best solution?? that she and madi won’t get hunted down and killed eventually??? that maybe she should not at least consider for one second that maybe staying and fighting while she has people to protect her and madi by their sides would be a smart move??? the answer to all of these is a fucking no. she doesn’t think, and that’s the problem. clarke is the HEAD. idc that she’s supposed to be the “heart” now. people don’t just change like that. it doesn’t matter than it’s been six years, you can’t just change THAT much. okay, i’m not gonna say it’s impossible, but if they wanted us to believe that clarke had changed, why did we not get to SEE that development? she’s supposed to be the heart as a parallel to how bellamy was the heart and how he handled his relationship with octavia back in s1, but we didn’t get to see HOW SHE GOT THERE. we got half an episode. that’s it. and it’s NOT enough!!! it’s fucking not. if you’re gonna have clarke griffin radio bellamy blake every single day for six years, never losing her faith in him for even a day--not even after over a year had passed since he was supposed to have been home already--then you’re gonna have to show me more of the trauma she endured. you’re gonna have to show me more of her relationship to madi--the one that has become more important than any other relationship. because how else do you explain her acting irrationally and leaving bellamy to die like that? it makes ZERO sense. we did not see enough of her development for that. you cannot have four seasons of clarke growing to care about bellamy in the most beautiful development i have ever seen and then just erase it all in one (1) episode, not to mention the fact that clarke REFUSES to destroy the chip!!! so,, this was something she left her best friend in the entire world for and yet she can’t destroy it because it contains the memories of her dead lover who she only spent less than a few weeks with in canon--a week in s2 and a week in s3? are you kidding??? that is not how you pay tribute to a dead character. you don’t fuck over the LIVING female lead and have her motivations make no sense at all to pay tribute to a DEAD guest character. and then they had the audacity to have clarke shock madi?????? everything she did was supposed to be for madi--to protect her--and now the writers had the audacity to have her abuse her??? are you fucking kidding me??? and please show me the parallel scene of bellamy physically harming octavia. because you know, clarke’s supposed to be him now, i guess. oh, wait?? it doesn’t exist!!! BELLAMY never physically harmed octavia so CLARKE also never should have physically harmed madi. i just...bellamy and madi are supposed to be the two most important people in her life and yet she slaps one of them and leaves him to die and then wrestles the other one to the ground and shocks her????? and she never even apologized for slapping bellamy or shocking madi?!?! add that to the fact that clarke hardly showed ANY emotion at all during the entire time she thought bellamy was dead to the point where we didn’t even know that she thought he was dead until she found out he wasn’t!!!!! we’ve already seen how clarke handles thinking she could be the reason that bellamy blake is dead and that was in s2 and she was literally a fucking control freak about his safety 24/7, and you’re telling me that same woman hardly felt anything at all until she found out he was still alive!?!? IDK WHO THAT WOMAN WAS THAT DID THOSE THINGS BUT IT WAS NOT CLARKE GRIFFIN !!!!

and bellamy??? trying to use a child because he thought it was the best way to save everyone? i’m sorry but in what fucking world--i repeat, in WHAT FUCKING WORLD--would bellamy blake, mother father of all children who have ever existed, think that the best way to save everyone would be to use a child as a pawn in a power struggle??? i don’t care that madi agreed. OF COURSE she agreed. she was told clarke would die if she didn’t ascend!! and this is the same child that joined a cult in order to save her mother. so like???? of course she was gonna agree to ascend?? and then i get that bellamy is mad that clarke left him (and slapped him--i was mad too!!), but you’re telling me that bellamy never even felt bad at all or even apologized for how things went down? madi told him clarke would never forgive him for this and he knew that and you could tell he hated that it had come to that, but then later at the end of the season and into s6, he never apologizes for that??? for breaking her trust?? bellamy blake NOT apologizing for causing a loved one harm?? again, IN WHAT FUCKING WORLD?!? and then there’s the fact that he was willing to take the rover and run to save raven, e.cho, murphy and emori but the second clarke suggests that plan because she doesn’t want madi to ascend, suddenly bellamy is all nope nope nope, we can’t do that! like....WHAT. literally what. the. fuck. it makes no sense!! and i swear to god, half the time, it felt like bellamy was just going through the motions with everything. it just didn’t seem like him. it didn’t matter that he was still doing things for clarke, like in 5x03. it didn’t matter because there was still something OFF. even the stuff with octavia i don’t think was handled well at all and i hate octavia!!!! me, a known octavia hater, a known advocate for wanting bellamy to tell his sister off, wasn’t happy with him doing just that???? and it’s because it didn’t feel like it was bellamy doing it!!!! i wanted to see the bellamy i knew and loved in s4. i wanted to see THAT bellamy telling her off. not this emotionally-repressed shell of a character that used to be him. which brings me to another thing: it’s not that who bellamy was after those six years was not realistic. it’s that we didn’t get to see him develop during those six years. there were ZERO flashbacks. Z E R O. for the male lead there were zero flashbacks to explain the man he became and we were just supposed to accept that he’s the kinda guy who jokes about his sister’s almost death now??? the kinda guy who would ever cross the line into dating territory with the girl that is quite literally the root cause of his trauma??? that he would trust her--the girl who got his girlfriend killed--just because “it’s been six years!!!” and “people change???” and you know, we just have to accept ALL of that. no explanation but bellamy running around polis in 5x06 with the sole purpose of being a mouth piece for the writers???? IDK WHO THAT MAN WAS BUT IT WAS NOT BELLAMY BLAKE !!!

jfc, s5 was seriously the WORST season of this show. HANDS DOWN. literally what the fuck was that??? bellamy and clarke, i’m so sorry, you didn’t deserve that complete and utter bullshit. both of them were ooc as fuck and they didn’t make sense half the time. i felt connected to clarke in s5a, but then 5x09 came around and she just fucking lost me!! and bellamy didn’t seem like himself the ENTIRE season. it wasn’t until s6 for me that he finally came back from the war. speaking of s6, oh my fucking god. the bellarke of it all was amazing. i loved josephine as a villain. but that was pretty much it!!! everything else was terrible. i hate that clarke was treated like complete and utter shit by the biggest hypocrites and then was forced to forgive them instantly by the writers. why is clarke not allowed to be mad?!?!?! i certainly still am!! and on another note, why did leaving bellamy in s5 have to be her biggest regret??? why couldn’t it have been leaving him in s2?? we went all the way back to s1 with things she regrets and yet we couldn’t go back to her leaving him at the end of s2???

honestly, i don’t understand why so much of this had to happen. you could literally remove s5 from the timeline of the show and just change a few things and it wouldn’t change anything!!! s5 was basically jroth acting like octavia had never mistreated bellamy before and needed to give him a reason to finally cut her out his life for a little bit. it was jroth acting like clarke had never regretted leaving bellamy before and needed her to leave him so that she could feel like shit about it and give her “friends” a reason to hate her. it was jroth acting like we couldn’t have had bellamy risk everyone for clarke and clarke only in the season directly after he’s forced to leave her to die. it was jroth acting like we couldn’t have had clarke and bellamy talk about her radioing him the season directly after the episode we found she radioed him for 2,199 days. it was jroth acting like s1-4, for the most part, just didn’t exist. it felt like we were watching the pilot of a new tv show. because clearly we weren’t supposed to care about anything that had happened in s1-4! certainly not the relationships that we had grown to love! and here’s the best part!!! we were supposed to forget all about s1-4 in s5, but ONLY in s5. and then we were supposed to remember it all again in s6 so that it made sense when clarke was the only one who had to be called out for nearly every wrong thing she ever did in those seasons. only...it still doesn’t make sense!!! because contrary to what raven reyes believes, other characters on this show have done horrible things, said they were sorry, and then done them again!!!!!!!! it’s like the main fucking theme of the show if you haven’t noticed, jason!!!

okay, i’m done. and wow, it feels good to finally let that out, especially the part about s5 bellamy and clarke both being morons lmfao. because they were!! they are my favorite characters and the only reason i still watch, but even i have to admit they were not themselves. 

[secondbalcony]

It’s time to read-again my bad but correct essay about Vampire Weekend’s lyrics from 2010:   ‘Just give it to us straight, Ezra Koenig. Are you saying rich girls deserve their money, or are you saying rich girls are dumb whores? Do you taunt the 57% of America that can’t take real summer vacations, or do you mock the 43% that go on holidays? Was “Mansard Roof” an endorsement of roofs or an anti-roof satire? The Vampire Weekend wars are about class, maybe, but they are also about classification: the lyrics in Contra keep trying to do things we don’t allow pop lyrics to do. We can all adore Jean Renoir (prepschool kid, Popular Front activist, had a rags-to-riches dad) for making films that treat the rich with worship, scorn, anger, affection and grief, but apparently we’re not gonna let a pop album get fancy on us like that. Books and films are supposed to confound us with layers of ideas and conflicting emotions; pop lyrics need to fess up or shut up. So Koenig pleading that his lyrics “aren’t ‘about’ anything but have levels of meaning” can come off like someone yelling “Checkmate!” in the middle of a poker game – obnoxious or confused or both at once.  There’s Ezra Pound and then there’s Ezra Koenig and the whole way that we talk about pop lyrics is about not getting these mixed up. But if I have to choose between Vampire Weekend and the logic of our pop-talk I choose the Vampires. Partly because Vampire Weekend can be kind of great, and mostly cause really I hate the logic of our pop-talk: outside pop-talk, in the actual reality of writing, listening to, and reading language set to popular music, artsy lyrics are as much a part of pop as the distortion pedal.

Since at least the ‘60’s (early Kinks, late Beatles, “The Velvet Underground And Nico’) pop songs have been awesomely and miserably Warhol-damaged, Joyce-Damaged, Brecht-damaged and Dada-damaged. If you love these damages you call them avant-garde and if you hate these damages you call them Art School, which is fair enough— people do become artsy in Art School. But the point is that the last 150 years of trying out new ways to make meanings in art made a big impression on a lot of kids, and a lot of these kids started bands. And other, younger kids who couldn’t care who Gertrude Stein was get the virus listening to Patti Smith and Bowie and the Pixies, and sometimes one of those kids turns out to be Kurt Cobain and then weird abstract lyrics infect the entire pop bloodstream. And the Wu-Tang Clan weren’t nothing to fuck with either. But the way that we talk about pop lyrics never caught up. Because pop-talk is lazy about lyrics, and discussing lifestyles takes a lot less effort than discussing writing styles. It’s easy to profile the Godard-affectations of liberal arts youths, and it’s harder to ask what a “Week End” fixation might say about a band’s approach to sense and nonsense and ideas and images. And if you hate Godard films in the first place, then the easy way is better—but I love Godard films so I’d love to find a little bit of “Week End” in my pop.

Most of what Contra is up to owes more to traditional novels (Waugh, Fitzgerald) than to weird films or experimental poetry, but the whole thing lives or dies on the natural liberties of avant-damaged lyrics: abstraction, collage, contradiction, self-reference. Koenig doesn’t string his crisp, descriptive sentences into narratives but stacks them in layers. Which is beautiful and resonant and complex, and also means that Contra can’t do anything to stop you if you want to believe it’s a country-club anthem. So music critics Googled for the price of Wolford Tights and compiled lists of vacation destinations, but never asked themselves why does this pool-party-album keep compulsively referring to The Clash. Or why do songs that start with “every dollar counts, and every morning hurts” end with a trust fund, and songs about holidays flash to Iraq. Or why it’s called “Contra.”

“Contra” talks about conflicts a lot—small and comfortable ones at first, like wanting to be rich so you can buy the modern art that you don’t want rich people owning (‘White Sky”), or loving your self-made-man father but hating the cultural myth that this kind of success represents (“Dad was a risk taker/ his was a shoemaker”). We also get all sorts of breakups between Koenig and rich girlfriends, and arguments with girls and music-critics about class, and a couple of political and sexual identity-crises. But what really puts the “contra” in Contra is the things that Koenig does with words: On “Horchata” it’s the way that Koenig rhymes “drinking horchata” (road trips, multicultural culture, left-liberal college kids) to “foot on Masada” (Birthright Israel trips where they tell Jewish kids to marry Jewish). On the break-uppy “I Think Ur a Contra,” it’s accusing the ex “you’re a contra” (you’re a hater), and then accusing the ex “you’re not a contra” (you’re not a revolutionary), and then defending —from the ex? from critics?—with “don’t call me a contra” (don’t call me anti-revolutionary). All throughout Contra words fight it out with each other or divide against themselves. Even the punk song “Cousins” is a hissy fit that self-destructs with wordplay: everything Koenig is yelping works both as a rant against posh music critics with self-righteous attitudes and as a hysterical caricature of the Vampires themselves. Koenig sings “You, greatest hits 2006, little listmaker” and you can’t tell if it’s an insult for a critic that made the list (wrote the list) or for a Vampire that made-the-list (got listed).

Which is kind of the point that the repeating chorus of “Me and my cousins and you and your   cousins…” is trying to make—that personal animosity requires a whole lot of common context. Vampire Weekend can get pretty bitchy when it comes to critics who demand to hear them tell rich people to go fuck themselves, but Contra is obsessed with punk and politics in its own terms. You don’t call an album “Contra” and then pack it up with references to The Clash unless you’re aching for a face-off with Joe Strummer’s angry ghost. And every time the shadow of The Clash shows up to haunt the lyrics (“Taxi Cab,” “Diplomat’s Son,” “I Think Ur a Contra’) Koenig gets dead serious and apologetic, and melancholically tries to explain why he can’t do heroic political anger. Koenig is in love with being in the middle— all “You’re not a victim, but neither am I” and “Never pick sides, never choose between two, but I just wanted you”—and honestly he’s doing a good job there. If you’re going to occupy a middle ground in life, then it’s a great idea to use it for creating nuanced, fragile songs about how politics and love and money interact while also constantly reminding us about The Clash.’

[truemanblack]

A/N: ew I lied I ended up writing more, and I’ll probably have part two up tomorrow!

The Marriage: Part One prologue

Since agreeing the week has been harry running around at any chance asking me “Are you sure?” When brushing my teeth, eating my breakfast, or even dragging myself through the door. Today was rough, when studying film, a lot of the guys are “cock out” as if they’ve seen every movie on the planet. I spent my day fighting about how French films are way better than any American film – because it’s true. I was pooped, and I was hoping Harry would have had dinner ready by the time I got home.

He’s a goddamned mind reader. Harry was probably the most thoughtful person I knew. Dinner was already on the makeshift kitchen table (haters will say a coffee table). I kicked off my boots, threw my bag on the ground and ran towards the glass of wine on the table.

              “Hello to you too,” Harry laughed picking up my bags and hanging them on the hooks. I gave him a small wave and taking a long sip of the wine. Harry was a decent chef, maybe not the best, but he could make a good spaghetti and meat sauce – which is all he makes. Harry took a seat next to me and put on The Office – he was buttering me up.

              “What did you do?” He took a seat next to me and took a sip of his wine. Harry would always butter me up when needed something. Last time I had to call of a date with a girl for him since he didn’t have the heart. Or the time before that where I had to go do a return for him because he was in the store for too long and felt the need to impulse buy.

              “Hm?” He always does this, his eyebrows were up, he was slightly smirking, something was up. His lips were pursed on the wine glass as he glanced over at me. His stupid smug face, he wanted something from me.

              “Harry…” He laughed before turning to me whilst he raked his fingers through his hair. I continued to glare at him and his face softened as he turned his body towards me.

              “I’m just,”

              “If you fucking ask me if I’m sure again, I’m not going to marry you and I’ll ship your ass to Switzerland.”

              “Okay Meredith,” He laughed before switching the television to some food documentary. ‘I just don’t want you doing this because you know it’ll help me. You always put other before yourself.”

              “I proposed to you, so obviously I’m okay with it.” He sighed with an ‘okay’ and we sat in silence. I was fully engrossed about this guy explaining about how he built his restaurant from the ground up I hadn’t noticed that Harry was staring at me.

              “What?” I laughed as he knuckled at his eyes.

              “So how is this going to go down?” He paused Netflix and I sat back. “Like courtroom or Vegas?”

              “I feel like if we’re going to keep it on the downlow we could just go to Vegas, have a quick drive through Elvis wedding, then come back and spend months with immigration.”

              “But what would we say?”

              I cleared my throat before crossing my legs in front of Harry. I flipped my hair and put his hands mine. “Harry and I,” I pretended to tear up, “We have known each other for years and I couldn’t see my life without him. We just couldn’t go on living an ocean apart and I knew it was brash but – when you know you know.” I sniffled, and I could see Harry smirking.

              “Okay, but what about divorce?”

              “Wow not even a tear from my words and you want to divorce me.” I put my hands back in my lap and he moved closer into me.

              “Amelia, I’m serious. Like you can’t be married to me forever.”

              “Well we have to be married for at least a year,” I shrugged.

              “Really?”

              “Yeah, it’s too fucking obvious if we just divorce a week after you’ve cashed that green card.”

              “Okay, well, it’s expensive.”

              “We don’t have kids, nor a house, it’ll be cheap for us.”

The night went on with small things about getting married, we both agreed it’ll be hilarious to have an Elvis marry us. Since it was just a Monday night, and I tended to get home late due to the debates with the male’s in my class. My head was in Harry’s lap as we attempted to watch ‘You’ve Got Mail’ for the millionth time. His fingers are massaging my scalp, I could feel my eyes getting droopy. We were at the part where Meg Ryan’s character was telling Tom Hanks how she loved fall and freshly sharped pencils. I hummed as Harry talked about the first time he saw this movie with his mom and how he kept giving her sharped pencils (sounds just like him). He convinced me to go bed, which I hated since I had to be up early.

+++

I woke up to the sound of Harry starting the shower. The one thing I hated about living with Harry is that he was consistent. Every morning – on the dot – he would wake up at five thirty am and go out on a run. He would be back an hour later to shower. Our shower was loud, the pipes were old, and they creaked when you took the first shower. The pipes were at the back of my head, so I heard them rattle and screech every morning, I didn’t need an alarm clock. After his shower he would make a smoothie, and I would lay in bed until he would somehow drag me out of bed to eat something. The blender was louder than normal today, maybe it was the migraine I was getting for forcing myself to stay awake last night.

              “Pet, get up.” Harry opened my door and peaked in and I put my duvet over my head. I heard my door creak open more and I heard his heavy feet in my room. The weight of my bed shifted as I felt a tug on the blanket.

              “Don’t you dare.” I mumbled as Harry tried to make his way under the blanket.

              “Darling, I made you a smoothie.” He sang putting his weight on me. I laid on my stomach and he laid on my back.

              “What color is it?”

              “It’s like dark pink.”

              “Are their banana’s in it?”

              “No, I know you hate them.” I hated him, he made a good smoothie today which meant I had to get up. I pulled the blanket back and saw his big grin. He was so smug, he knew what he was doing.

              “I’m not gonna like it if you trick me and it’s green.” I pouted pulling the hair tie off his wrist and making a bun on my head.

              “You didn’t talk to me for three days after I did that.”

              “You loved it.”

              “You said it not me.” Harry quickly got up after his smart remark and I followed him. I never had classes on Tuesday since I had night classes on Monday. I knuckled at my eye as I took a seat on the stool at our breakfast bar. Harry was extra joyful this morning, and I had no idea how someone could be happy in the morning.

              “What do you have planned today?” Harry poured me a big glass of the smoothie then handed me a bagel. “Anything exciting?”

              “Why?” Once again, Harry was buttering me up. He shrugged while I squinted at him. “You’re just being super nice to me usually you’re out of the door by now.”

              “Exam day, I don’t need to be there.” Harry was a TA for an English professor on campus, so he usually was setting up the class or grading papers by now. Instead he’s standing shirtless in our kitchen with sweatpants that hung a bit too low on his hips. I’ve gotten used to seeing him like this and held back the constant blushing when we first moved in. Harry lived with a guy before me and didn’t care about his appearance. The first morning he walked out he was just in his boxers – hard none the less – and had no idea I was up. The next day he came out free balling in sweatpants and I could see the entire outline of his dick. I think after seeing me beet red for a week he learned to dress around me. Though, I got myself in through as well when the only pajama shorts I had left were ones that showed my entire ass. It was a learning process.

              “I have to write a paper, will you proof read it?”

              “I have a day off and you want me to work.”

              “Would you expect anything less of your fiancée?”

              “No, I wouldn’t,” He laughed then rested his forearms on the counter and leaning into me more. “I was reading into the immigration thing, we’re gonna need proof we’ve been together for quite some time.”

              “We have a lot of photos together, we live together, we practically are attached to the hip.” I shrugged taking a long swig of my smoothie. “I think that could be enough.”

              “I have a journal,” I smirked trying to shuffle back a laugh, “Shut it. I write about you sometimes.”

              “How dumb I am, and how much I annoy you?” I rose my eyebrow and he shook his head and sucked in a breath.

              “Yeah, and how happy you kinda of make me.”

              “Just kind of?”

              “Just a little.”

              “Damn, I thought I meant more to you. I’m your fiancée!!” I put my head in my hands for dramatics and I could hear Harry’s dry laugh.

              “Shut up, I think a few of the entries could count, I know you don’t write in a journal.”

              “I write in a journal! Just not as often as you.”

              “What do you write about?”

              “Food, mostly.” I admitted. And he smirked moving closer to me. His hand was on the counter in front of me and his nipples and I had eye contact. “Once I wrote about you, but I was drunk.”

              “What does it say?”

              “Harry is an idiot.”

              “I’m not shocked.”

              “What did you write about me?” I gazed up at him with a big grin hoping it would let him leak his dirty laundry.

              “How much I hate that shit eating grin of yours.”

[isroselalondebisexual]

What do you think Jade Lalonde, Rose Harley, and Dave Egbert would be like? I've already seen some analysis on John Strider so i don't wanna force you into rehasing anything ^^;

Jade Lalonde, my girl Jade raised by a Permissive parent, probably wouldn’t look toooooooo terribly different from canon Jade. Her interests are well financed, and she’s a good self-motivator, which is probably good because showing off her achievements to a drunken parent isn’t going to get the same response as a coherent parent. Of course, Mom is super proud of her brilliant daughter, and of COURSE she loves her super duper dearly and thinks Jade is the most intelligent girl alive, but it can get a little frustrating for Jade to explain her interests, and then ten minutes later realize her mom hasn’t retained a word. This Jade’s gonna be more acclimated to frustration and broken expectations, which is gonna manifest itself in two ways. She’s not gonna respond much at all when she’s disappointed, sometimes by really major things that she SHOULD get pissed off about, or she’s going to blow the fuck up over seemingly minor shit that most people would be able to brush off. But it’s more about the principle of the thing than the actual expectation that got broken, y’know? Probably gonna be sneakier than canon Jade, able to manipulate the situation to get her mom to actually DO stuff she needs her to, whether that be through passive aggression or batting her eyelids or setting up a situation so her mom “conveniently” will be reminded of certain things, and that’s gonna carry over into her other relationships as well, entirely unintentionally at first, that’s just sorta how she’s used to operating. Her role, then, as the Witch of Light, combined with that naturally honed ability to manipulate the situation with intelligence and a calculated amount of luck, is going to be one that comes naturally to her, and she’s going to be a HELLRAISER. She’s going to be UNPARALLELED. There will be no imp nor ogre nor time travelling demon who spits destruction from his maw that will be able to stand against her. She’s here, she’s brilliant, and she and her friends will be catching no unlucky breaks because she is the one whose will Luck bends to.

Rose Harley, raised by a dog and some chess people, alone on an island. Probably gets pretty entrenched in her know it all bossy phase pretty quick, but is less sure of herself. Doesn’t get a lot of positive feedback aside from her dog and some chess people who she’s pretty sure she’s smarter than, but that makes human interaction even harder for her, and she’s never really been good at interpersonal stuff to begin with. Lots of false confidence, I think, but suffers from impostor syndrome pretty badly. She WANTS to belong in the group, she really really wants to be involved and included and someone who BELONGS there, but can’t shake the nagging feeling that everyone else is a regular human being and she’s. Weird. And not in a good way. Gonna be more anxious than her canon counterpart, I think. Her favorite books she’s read 1000 times over and she’s got SUPER in-depth thoughts and analysis for the stuff she takes interest in, a very very brilliant girl who is never sure when “sharing” becomes “oversharing” and when “odd in a fun way” becomes “Rose that’s creepy.” Her role as the Seer of Space goes along well with being awake on Prospit prior to the Game even starting, as she has dealt with visions of the future all her life. Unfortunately, since space is all-encompassing, she’s not seeing what is fortuitous, or what WILL happen, or even what SHOULD happen, she’s seeing what happens in pretty much any timeline anywhere and it’s her task to sit down, think about what she’s Seen, and parse together whether they should or shouldn’t take that path. Her honed analytical skills will be pushed to their limits and brought to task over and over again, but through her smarts and what she has Foreseen, she is able to direct their group and conduct them in such a way that the new universe is spawned and they are able to win. The fact that she is SO CRUCIAL to their success helps her feel more like part of the group, but presents a NEW problem of wondering if maybe now they’re just pretending to be interested in her for her abilities. Her big hurdle is allowing herself to see that she is loved and wanted, and she truly does belong with them.

Dave Egbert is a kinda nerdy dude, he takes his camera with him everywhere and is always taking selfies or posting stuff to his instagram and did you hear? I heard someone say he has a collection of like, roadkill or something. Dave absolutely has a collection of dead shit. Also cicada shells that show up on the trees and bushes, because hey man cicada shells are cool. He’s super into his dumb nerd shit like video games and even reads that dumb gamebro magazine that he damn well KNOWS is dumb but he likes it and he’s not embarrassed about his interests! He knows the stuff he likes isn’t cool and doesn’t try to pass it off as cool, he just enjoys himself and fuck the haters. He ADORES his dad, was definitely one of those kids that began crying the MOMENT his dad dropped him off at daycare or smth, very attached but also complains about him sometimes, because kids complain about their parents, especially since Dad Egbert is the type of dude to walk up in front of his kid’s friends and use the embarrassing toddler nicknames like “sport” or “squirt” or smth and Dave’s friends are like “lmao your dad actually calls you ‘sport’ I thought that only happened in movies” and Dad also has like, a wallet full of Dave’s pictures and Dave is just like “daaaaaad” but also heck yes he was an ADORABLE baby so he sorta thrives off the attention. Has the biggest, dumbest crush on John imaginable. Dad found out Dave was queer not because Dave came out, but because Dave is just SO OBVIOUS about his stupid giant big dumb crush on John and Dad just sorta… quietly accepted this about his son and tries to be a good parent however he can. He’s not the most well-educated about queer stuff but he always tries his best to be respectful and that goes doubly now that he knows his kid isn’t straight. Dave having a supportive parent is a very good concept and one I am wholly behind in literally every way. His role as Knight of Breath is the defender of freedom, which probably means he must first liberate his consorts from his denizen, and then has to go a step further to protect his friends, probably from their own neuroses. Jade thinks she has to leap through all these mental hoops, but she doesn’t, Rose thinks she has to PROVE her worth, that she’s valuable, but Dave would love his sister even if she couldn’t do anything for them, John has been trapped in this toxically masculine, angry place for years and Dave can help him out of there, help him find peace and acceptance even within himself, Dave can pry back the dark gunk that’s been coating John’s soul and let him breathe freely, possibly for the first time in his life.

John Strider, we’ve touched on so I’ll just go over briefly here, but I like to keep these asks done in sets and now that I’ve set a pattern I’m not breaking it. John would end up one of those nasty, nasty, angry bullies. Bro is toxic, abusive, hypermasculine, and unpredictable, which means John winds up angry, lashing out, and hypermasculine as well. He goes way too far, way too often, and doesn’t apologize, total jock stereotype from oldtimey movies and shit, strong and athletic and attractive and just plain mean. Acts like he’s hot shit because whenever he’s at home he’s painfully reminded that he is small, and weak, and can’t actually do anything. Dave is his bro and he likes him plenty but he makes a lot of mean spirited gay jokes to start, probably as a cover for his own identity crisis that he has buried so deep deep down inside him you’re gonna need a shovel to unbury that shit, and is oblivious to Dave’s crush on him. Has a soft spot for Jade, who is kinda the only person who can get John to talk about his feelings frankly and honestly, and probably has a crush on Rose because he thinks that that’s what he’s supposed to do. She’s a girl, she’s his friend, that’s how heterosexuality works, right? His role as Heir of Time, I’m afraid, would be a deeply unpleasant one. What would likely happen is he directs the alpha timeline by having his offshoot timeline selves merge with his alpha self, like what Rose did from Davesprite’s timeline back in canon. But instead of just, like, ONE offshoot timeline self merging with the whole, it’s every single dead John. Every single time his friends die, he dies, every time something goes wrong, he gets to Experience that. He gets to have those memories seared into his brain, one with himself, one with every timeline that has ever existed, and it only further cements his belief that life is cruel, and uncaring, and doesn’t give a single solitary shit about him, or his loved ones, because he does love them. He’s broken inside, all warped and twisted wrong, but he does love them. It is only, and I do mean ONLY, once he and Dave manage to have their heart-to-heart, once John allows Dave in, that John is able to slowly pry out of the dark and hurting place that has stifled his soul for so long. Not to be stupidly, ridiculously cliche, but it is love that frees him, and the love between the two of them that helps him heal. John Strider and Dave Egbert would be a nigh-inevitable otp like that’s just the way this AU would work out my dudes.

*sticks m leggy out* I love getting long winded and these are fun, please share your thoughts with me my dudes. 

[kenrik]

Conflicted - that was what I felt after my first viewing of TLJ.

My journey from “???” to “WTF!!”. Comparing my insight from my first viewing of TLJ to my second. 

1. I am Reylo shit. But after watching TLJ, I couldn’t process what I’d just seen. I felt like there was nothing bridging the gap from “You’re a monster!” to “Let’s work together, Ben Solo~” So, I thought, initially, that their relationship was poorly constructed. And, I felt conflicted because - although I would love Reylo to happen, I didn’t want it to happen in a mucked up sort of way. 

2. The first scene - the bombing scene. I couldn’t understand it. Where the hell did those vessels come from? Who the hell was that woman. And why the hell do we care about the medallion around her neck? Just - who the faq? 

3. Poe is an idiot. A dolt. A trigger happy fool. (A stark contrast to his soundness from TFA.)

4. Then, after the first scene - I guess everything happened and my brain went haywire - thinking - W.T.F.????!!!??? My brain proceeded to shutdown afterwards, I think. And just let the images pass. 

5. Holdo’s sacrifice was very cliche. Best sacrifice scene for me was Lelouch’s. Going back to it, I guess anime’s sacrificial themes make western ones pale in comparison. Anyway, I didn’t appreciate this scene so much - even with the spectacular cinematography - because it was what it is - cliche. Also, there would be zero casualties other than herself. I mean, as far as logic went - anyone with half a brain would’ve done what she did. “It’s only logical.” lol

6. Too many jokes. Hux became a punchline which I found annoying. I felt it was forced (lol). Also, the recurring about Poe being trigger happy - wanting to bomb everything in sight. That was just, very cringeworthy. (And I understand why they did it, though. Curse you Marvel! And your many jokes! DAMN-IT.) 

7. Luke’s snarkiness. Maybe I need a refresher course on his character. Last we saw him, he’s been battling with incredible shit as a kid. Then now, we jump to his old master type guy who smirks a lot... BRIDGE. THE. GAP. 

8. Kylo Ren - the GIGANTIC. PAIN IN THE ASS. CRYBABY. One of the reasons I left the movie house utterly conflicted was this character. When I though he had progressed (somewhat) - he goes reverse psycho mode and losses all his shit - and with it, all that development he made in the middle part of the film. As a Kylo Ren buff - this was incredibly frustrating to say the least.

8.5 Rey’s constant rejection of Kylo Ren. But who can blame her?? That guy’s a mess! One of the reasons I left the movie house conflicted was Kylo’s flipflopping character development. By the end - I was like - of course she’d leave you - you’re an idiot! Two rejections in one movie plus that one rejection in TFA... how many times does Rey have to reject you before you clean your act up, stupid Ren?! I felt angry and sad for Kylo, for being conflicted, lost, close to something certain, solid, then all out batshit crazy and lost and conflicted again. It was a rollercoaster for me and my rooting for Ben Solo’s character. Damn did that guy take me for a ride. 

9. Phasma v Finn scene. Phasma is an incredible baddie. I loved their fight scene. My comment is, though, - that it was minute. Ever so tiny. And her “death” was so anticlimactic - I can’t even. It was cliche. The fight could have been longer. 

10. Finn and Rose - IDIOTS. What were those two thinking sharing their plans to an absolute stranger?? And they get shocked that the thief sold them out the first chance he got. Seriously - their whole subplot was like stepping on dogshit. I get the message the team wanted to bring across. But seriously, that same message could’ve been said with a better subplot. There was no answer as to who the man with the rose pin was - no recall to the past story, to any story in SW. Use the old characters for some substance! We have so many more of them at the team’s disposal. :/ 

Cookies (Parts I loved since the first viewing.)

1. Leia is kween. That force stunt she pulled was epic. It was incredible. I can’t even. (Proves to show you how strong she is with the force - and FU fanboys whining - “The force ain’t werq dat wei betch!”) 2. Luke and his liberal approach to the force. Preach!! 3. Rose’s message about weapon dealers (AKA AMERICA, RUSSIA, CHINA. H8CHU FUCKERS - fighting each other when you’re basically on the same fucking boat - HU U THINK UR FOOLING).  3.5 Rose hitting deserter Finn with a stunbaton/gun. 4. That immaculate contrast of white and red minerals.  5. BB8 DOING ALL THE WORK IN ROSE and FINN’S ARC. I mean - GIVE THE DAMN DROID/ROBOT AN OSCAR! 6. Rey’s druggy self-discovery scene. That was just crazy good.  7. The bitchy fish nuns.  8. Chewie roasting porgs while porgs watch in tearful horror.  9. Luke’s leap from one hill to the next.  10. Ben’s slide/glide when he first talks to Rey via force bond. 10.25 Rey’s incessant bitching to Ren via force bond about how Ben is a monster. How she beat him. How she found Luke before him. How she beat him. How he’s a loser. How he’s an idiot. How she hates him. (During that scene, I just can’t help but laugh at her intense lashing out at him HAHA) 10.5 Rey shooting Ren the first opportunity she got.  10.75 Ren standing in the bridge? looking at the platform thing? And Ren being all savage and unforgiving and shooting the fighter planes of the resistance.  11. Snoke’s labyrinth scene!!!!*#*#JMNFUWNF!!!*@(#*$ 12. Epic Yoda is epic. I watched the film with my blockmates, impromptu right after our last finals exam. His quote "Failure is the best teacher.” literally made us ball out in tears. DAMN IT. Yoda got us again! “Do or do not, there is no try.” is so good it’s unfair.  13. Kylo ren practically throwing a tantrum when he faced his uncle Luke.  14. “You came from nothing.You are nothing... But not to me.” 15. Luke’s deep backwards dip in his face off with his nephew Ben.  16. Hux’s screaming repeat of Ben’s order to proceed, earning a “dafuq” look from Kylo.  17!!! Kylo Ren and Anakin = obvious blatant parallels! The hair, the attire, the anger in their expressions! 

My SECOND VIEWING gave me clarity. So, here is my feedback after not having been taken by a shitload of surprise.  1. The scenes had okay pacing. Just unnoticeable because a lot was shoved to our face in less than three hours.  2. Finn/Rose subplot was meh, not exactly the worst thing in the world. And, it makes sense that they get that type of subplot. Rose was a low-ranking member, delegated to catching deserters. Finn knows next to nothing about the Resistance. And Poe is a loose canon. Of course the quest they’d end up in is only as good as what their character’s can make up. This is very realistic actually.  3. It’s a kid’s movie. Of course it would be riddled with cliches.  4. Vulnerability - that’s what bridged the gap between Rey and Ren.  5. Captain Phasma is coming back! *hopefully* She deserves a better send off!  6. Kylo Ren’s character development. I was devastated after my first viewing. I thought he had regressed to the point of no return. Man, I was so ready to throw all my Reylo hopes away because dammit if an idiot ends up with Rey. But, I failed to appreciate that last scene between them properly. 

Ren is kneeling, head bowing low in remorse.  And Rey were eyes hard and unforgiving, her expression, swelling in disappointment of him.  Wow. That said a lot. This is a huge step. After Rey left him (wow it’s like leaving a lover after having had sex), Ren just catapults himself into a raging fit. How could he not? How could he not lose all of his shit after having LOST ALL HIS SHIT. HAHA (Shit is such a good placeholder for the dumb.) I mean - he just killed his Supreme Leader. He offered his heart out to Rey - to this stranger. For once in his life, nothing had been clearer to him - he wanted to join forces with Rey. Forget everyone else. So long as she joined him, nothing would ever be unattainable. But she rejected him. And then - he lost all his shit. He was so certain for once - that Rey would join him. That she saw the same future he saw of her, of them, standing together towards the same goal.  With her rejection - he was thrown back to confusion. To that irrational conflict he could never make sense of. Everything that happened after was an intense blur that he could do nothing more but work in automatic mode. And his automatic mode is work like a bitch baby. Imagine this - everything happened so fast after than one moment of clarity - The resistance found a safe haven. The Millennium Falcon was shooting at them. And that one person he’s been searching for all his life resurfaces out of thin air. All the lies that Snoke told him, all the hatred that scum put in his mind, just exploded. 

Everything happened so quickly. He had no second to think straight. He went to what was natural - what Snoke taught him.  Which is why~ that moment of realization at the end, of regret, remorse, guilt - towards Rey, towards this person who seemed to genuinely believe in him - is so important. It makes me believe that he’ll be thinking of his actions more rationally. And this makes me happy for my favorite character. 

A lot have said this, but I think a year or a few will pass in the timeline before we rejoin the characters. We’ve seen their conflict. Now, we’ll see them in their fullest form - allowing for the ultimate battle. This, I’m really excited for. And I give zero fucks whether or not Kylo will be good or bad. I just want him to know who he is and what he is fighting for. And for the briefest moment, we saw it in TLJ - the death of the past - of the Republic and of the Jedi Order - and hopefully of the ashes of the Empire - the First Order. 

TLJ was a really good film. I can’t say it was a really good SW film, but it was an incredible film. You haters need to get your shit together and progress with everyone else. Also, I hate you all for crying Mary Sue on Rey. We women had to deal with countless Mary Sue men in our blockbusters. Now we have one of our own, you’re bitch crying at Disney. FU. 

Stay calm. Stay chill.  KenRik. 

[thank-you-for-the-vampire-money]

MORE THAN JUST A SPARK

Request: N/A

A/N:  I said I would write this for one of @bucky-plums-barnes fuffly Friday anons asking for a Lance x Plussize!reader.  So… here ya go!  Hope you enjoy!

Lance x plussize!reader

Word count: 2056

Summary:  You’re pretty much over not being thin, you’re beautiful just the way you are!  But words can still hurt…

Warnings:  Lance being a dick, accidental bullying (body shaming), insults, mentions bullying, mentions of sex, drunkenness, FLUFFY APOLOGY AND ENDING

(GIF not mine)

You were big.  You were big and you knew it, there was no getting around it.  You were always this way, that’s just how your body was. You had big shoulders, big thighs, big ass, big belly, big boobs, that’s how you were built, no denying it.  Thing is, you weren’t ashamed of it.

Yes, when you were younger, you were made fun of and bullied for your size, yes, there were many condescending comments thrown your way by various relatives, and yes, boys often treated you like pity projects.  When you were younger, you were ashamed of your voluptuous body and you tried to hide it. You always wore baggy clothing, sweatpants were your best friend, and hoodies were an addiction.

All your life you had been told you were fat. “Ugly!” “Fat!” “Pig!” were familiar words to your ears.  Every day, your mom or your aunt would passive-aggressively tell you to lose weight or eat healthier.  Everyday mean girls at school would whisper to each other as if you couldn't hear. It was normal, you were used to it. But, just because you were, used to it, didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.  A lot of the time, you would spend your days on the verge of tears, wishing you had a tub of feel-better-ice-cream.

All this was a waking nightmare… until you decided enough was enough.  You decided it was time to stop pitying yourself and start loving your rockin’ bod! Your body loves you, so you started loving it back.

You started exercising a bit more, you were eating healthier, and you were feeling much more confident!  But, even with all the healthy habits, you still had quite a bit of chub clinging to your body.

There’s wasn’t anything wrong with you, your bad health habits weren’t the whole cause of you being overweight, it was just how your wonderful body was built.

When you realized that, you started loving your body even more!  You weren’t fat, you were just big and beautiful, you were soft and cuddly, voluptuous and sexy, and just an overall dynamite gal!

A few years down the line, you started dating. It was just as you expected; men would be drawn in by your confidence, but, for some reason, their tiny, small-minded brains could not make it passed the fact that you weren’t a size negative seven.  Yeah, it hurt, but, if they couldn’t accept you, they didn’t deserve you.  Screw them and their impossible beauty standards!

After a string of disaster dates, you decided to take a break from dating for a while.  Which was good, because a month after that, you met him.  Yup!  You met Lance “the fucker” Tucker.

Now, most girls would have fallen at his feet with their legs spread and mouths open, but not you.  No, you decided this fuckboy had to work if he wanted a chance with you.

You would have thought Lance would have given up and moved on once he found you weren’t a swooning ditz waiting to be fucked by him.  But no, he actually put time and effort into you.  He’d bring you flowers, he’d take you on sweet dinner dates and picnics, and before you know, you two are in a happy, healthy relationship and you’ve been dating ever since.

He loved you so much!  He felt proud of himself that he was able to earn a girl’s heart, instead of having it thrown at him.  Because he worked so hard for you, he was always giving you love and affection. Lots of kisses, hugs, (sex), gifts, cuddling, and/ or date nights, were a daily occurrence.  But the best part was, he loved your body, possibly more than you did.  He thought you were Aphrodite herself he thought you were so beautiful!

 Tonight, you and Lance were attending an after party with all his fellow teammates and gymnasts.  It was a real classy shebang, so you were both dressed to the nines, putting everyone else to shame.

He was in a classic tux, with a powder-blue tie and pocket square.  But you, you were in a sassy, classy blue dress of the same color.  It was a cute, off-the-shoulder number with a regal, flowing skirt and well-placed twists of fabric in the back.  You thought you looked quite sexy- a total jaw-dropper.

When you asked Lance how you looked, he couldn’t even speak.  He just babbled like a confused two-year-old.  You just laughed and said, “I’ll take that as a compliment,”.

 Now, you and he were just chatting with Lance’s friends, talking about menial things such as family life and training.  The entire time, Lance held you close to his side, subtly showing you off to the room.  You felt proud that Lance wanted to brag about you, it made you feel appreciated.

As you were all talking, getting a little tipsy, somehow the conversation took a turn to you and Lance’s relationship. “How did a girl like that end up with you?” Paul, one of Lance’s teammates slurred, nearly spilling his red wine all over his clean tux.  Lance just shrugged, giving a bouncing laugh, “I dunno, man” he lisped, hanging off you like a dizzy sloth, trying not to fall out of a tree.   He was being a bit embarrassing, to be honest, but, it wasn’t something to get too mad about.

Lance giggled drunkenly before speaking again, “I mean, I could have any girl I want!  A supermodel, a movie star, but I settle down for a chubby, fat chick,”. Okay, that was something to get mad about.  “Sometimes I think to myself, ‘Lance, is she even good enough for you?’”.  Okay, he was being really hurtful!  “Then I realize, I actually had to work for her fat ass!  So, I ain’t given this up for a while… get my work’s worth out of it,” Lance hiccuped, taking another gulp of Champaign.

You didn’t know how to react.  Yeah, you’ve learned how to deal with the haters, you’ve learned how to let insults roll off your shoulders, but you trusted Lance! You have been so open and vulnerable with him and he basically spit in your face!

You tried to hold back your tears as you pried yourself away from Lance.  “Well, if that’s what you really think,” you squeaked, pushing him away and running outside. As soon as you were out of view from the rest of the party-goers, you let your tears fall.  You cried and sobbed, feeling so betrayed.  Was that really what your boyfriend thought of you?  Were all those slow nights and ‘I love yous’ a lie?

You called and Uber and waited by the curb for them to arrive.  Lance came stumbling behind you after a few minutes.  “Wh-ah happened?” he slurred, trying to get his act together, “I thought we were having fun?”.  You didn’t even hesitate to slap him clear across the face, leaving a stinging red mark on his cheek.  “Did you not hear yourself back there, Mr. high and mighty?!” you cried, your face becoming red with anger as hot tears streamed down your face, “you just blatantly insulted me, in front of your friends no less!”

Lance had no idea what to do.  His eyes went wide and apologetic as he stuck his bottom lip out.  “B-but baby, (Y/N)-” “Don't ‘babe’ me, asshole!” you sassed, not letting his puppy-dog face make you cave.  “No, you can’t take back what you said back there,” you scolded, hearing your Uber pull up, “and if that’s what you really think, then so be it.  But I won't stand for it!”.

You stomped over to the car, letting your heels click away as Lance stood there, dumbfounded.  You settled yourself down in the car, making sure you had everything as you rolled down the window.  “By the way, I'll be staying with a friend tonight, so don’t expect me home… ever…” you spat, signaling the driver to get going.

 Opening the little door to the mailbox, you got the mail out for Livy.  After Lance’s little slip, you had been living with your friend, Livy.  She graciously let you stay, letting you cry on her shoulder and eat her ice cream to get over Lance and his stupidity.

Flipping through the mail as you walked back up the driveway to the house, you saw yet another letter from Lance.  “Ugh,” you groaned, placing the rest of the mail on the counter and shuffling into the living room.  Livy looked up from her book to see the familiar name on the pink envelope.  “Again!?” she shrieked, giving the most confused ‘wtf’ look, “that’s the fourth one this week!  When is he gonna realize it’s over?”.  You plopped down next to your friend you tore the envelope, and its contents, to pieces, throwing it away in the trash can by the couch.

It had been over two weeks since you and Lance were at that damn party, but he was still trying to get you to move back with him. He sent you flowers you left to die, candy you never ate, letters you never read, texts you never saw, and calls you never answered.  Surprisingly, he hadn’t tried Facebook messaging you yet.  Though, that probably wasn't too far off.

 The doorbell rang, and with a groan, you got up to get it.  It was probably another one of Lance’s dumb candygrams.  You opened the door and lo and behold, it was the asshole himself; Lance fucking Tucker.  You rolled your eyes.

“What the fuck do you want, Tucker?” you spat, slumping a little, showing him you were in no mood for him or his stupid shenanigans.  Lance shoved his hands in his pockets after he took off his dark, douchebag sunglasses. “I came here to apologize…” he sighed. You briefly raised your eyebrows in suspicion, as if to say ‘yeah right’.

Seeing that he wasn’t going to leave without talking to you, you stepped out of the house, onto the porch to speak with him privately.  “Continue…” you huffed, crossing your arms and jutting out your hip.

Lance took a deep breath before speaking. “(Y/N), I’m sorry.  I’m sorry I spoke about you the way I did, especially in front of my friends.  It was mean, it was disrespectful, it was very selfish of me, and I should not have spoken about you like that,” he started, trying to look you in the eye, but you refused, “but what I said back there I- I didn’t mean it, I really didn’t! That doesn’t excuse my poor behavior, but I truly do find you to be the most beautiful, wonderful, and sexiest woman alive!  Now, I don’t expect you to believe me right away, what I said was deplorable and it will take time for you to forgive me, and I am willing to wait and work for your forgiveness.  I was… I was being a pompous dick and I’m sorry… will you try to forgive me?”.

You were nearly in tears, you were feeling too much!  You were mad, you were relieved, you were insulted, you were so confused, it was very overwhelming.

Lance saw that you were about to cry and invited you into his arms.  You gladly accepted.  You leaned into his broad chest, letting yourself cry and get everything out. “what you said really hurt me, I trusted you!”  You sobbed, half-heartedly punching him in the chest.  

Lance kissed the top of your head.  “I know it was, and I’m so, so sorry!” he apologized, holding you closely, “but I love you and I want to work my way back to you and your forgiveness,”.

Hugging Lance closely, you nodded.  “I’ll try to forgive you, I want to forgive you,” you muttered, nuzzling into his chest, feeling safe in his arms again.

“I love you baby,”

“I love you too, asshole,”

TAGLIST:

@bitchy-tacos @buckyshattergirl @paranoid-borderline-insane

[hawkeyesquiver]

hello it’s been a while and i’m mostly just here to talk about my feelings about the cutest boy in the universe

so his name is cyrus and he is a hospital corpsman in the navy and he’s 6′ even and in good shape and has the cutest smile and loves game of thrones and harry potter and lord of the rings and 2/3 of our dates have just consisted of us eating out then going to my house and watching harry potter and us just making a lot of sarcastic comments and he absolutely loves it and thinks i’m amazing

our first date consisted of a revolving sushi bar where we ate too much and i got a keychain of an udon bowl and then eating dessert at this boba place and just talking and i had a great time and i texted him afterward saying i had a good time and he said “no thank you, i don’t remember the last time i enjoyed talking to someone that much” and that was such a nice thing to hear

so then both of us go on vacation so there are like two weeks in between dates #1 and #2 so #2 is us going to a taco place (i know my taco places) and him saying he hasn’t had enough tacos did i mention he deploys in 5 days from the day i’m writing this and will be gone for six months hahaaaaa so then we were going to see the kingsman sequel but it turns out he had not even seen the first one so he says something about me not being 21 (less than a month now!) and we could have gone to a bar or something so i suggest we just go back to my place and grab some drinks on the way so we drive to my house and get some beer/angry orchard and he suggests that we watch harry potter 7 pt. 2 and i just make really dumb comments the whole time which he just loves and i just shit on snape a lot (i turned him into a snape hater) and at the scene were (spoiler) tonks and lupin die, i teared up a little and wiped it and showed it to him and he started holding my hand which was just like the perfect thing and my heart screamed and then we finish the movie and then go up to my room and he looks at all my nerdy shit around and loves it and at one point we are siting on my bed and he says something like “are you going to kiss me or what?” so i did and we kissed and cuddled and talked until like 3am. at one point, he mentions that within five minutes of seeing/talking to me on the first date (combo of my adorable dress and me talking and my harry potter tattoo), he wanted to make me his. and his first thought when seeing me for the first time was “don’t fuck this up.” we talked a lot about other things and cuddled and then he had to leave because he had work at 5 (he’s crazy) EDIT: oh and while he was on vacation he bought me this candle that smells like butterbeer and i DIED 

so there is one week between dates #2 and #3 and he is not a big texter so that gives me a lot of anxiety bc i’m not used to it but i try to play it cool and i feel like i pulled it off but by the time date #3 comes around, i’m sitting at the pho restaurant freaking out while waiting for him bc i was convinced that he just was not interested so he shows up a little late (with prior warning) and we get food and talk and i just feel really awkward bc i don’t know how he stands on PDA or even if he likes me so i just eat pho and have the best egg rolls i’ve ever had in my life and then we decide to go back to my house to watch harry potter 7 pt. 1 but we take separate cars to he stops to get some alcohol while i go home and wait for him and we watch the movie on my laptop in my room and hold hands and cuddle a little during the movie and i make my dumb comments and he says he wishes he could record them so that he could relive them and i kiss him at some point during the movie and then we finish the movie and talk a little and make out a lot

we both comment on how natural and comfortable we feel around each other and so we met on okcupid right and started talking in june but didn’t go on a date until september and both of us are annoyed at ourselves for not going out earlier since he is leaving and he says that he loves holding me and i say that my brain shuts up when i’m around him and he says the exact same thing and the whole night consisted of me just saying things and him saying “i was literally about to just say that” to the point that it was creepy. we talk about how he wants to go to med school and become a doctor and he’s really passionate about medicine and i talk about aerospace engineering (my major) and school and my catering job and how i’m really looking forward to graduating in june but also low-key terrified and both of us just love how passionately we talk about our respective futures and i showed him my old notes at one point and he just thinks they look so cool and he really likes hearing me talk about college bc he always wanted to go but couldn’t afford it so he enlisted in the navy so they would pay for it. and i love hearing him talk about his medical stuff bc he is so smart and knows so much and just really loves it and i feel like it’s hard to find passionate people around anymore. he also tells me that he thinks i’m gonna go great places because of my intelligence and drive and positivity or something and it just made me feel really nice

backtrack to dinner and he gives me the address that i can send him letters to when he’s on deployment, which he had mentioned on the last date, without me bringing it up which means he does want to keep in contact while he’s gone which is cool. so i don’t remember exactly when we talked about this but i told him that i would send him dumb pictures of myself and keep him updated on the major memes and send him movie reviews of like Thor: Ragnarok And Star Wars Episode VII and anytime i mentioned this he just sounded so excited and i’m honestly looking forward to sending him cheesy little letters about nothing

and we kiss a lot and he calls me perfect a lot and beautiful a lot and i just feel so safe and comfortable around him and he says the same and he has the cutest smile and the nicest shoulders and he’s really gentle and did not pressure me into anything whatsoever and both of us voice that we really don’t care what time it is because we are just enjoying the moment. also, since he is deploying, he will return with a lot of money and I said something unrelated to that money about how I want to go to wizarding world in florida at some point in my life and he offers to take me as a graduation present and I am immediately like that's a lie don't lie to me but that offer is something straight out of my dreams. but at some point we do take our clothes off and we’re gonna have sex but then he says that he was so overwhelmed by how my body looked that he was just too nervous to do it and that was totally fine and we just made out and cuddled and i’ve literally never felt that comfortable naked around someone before and it was great and then he left at 6am (we slept for maybe 45 minutes) and he’s just so cute

and i’ve never gotten attached this quickly to a boy and i’m really annoyed that he’s leaving right after we meet and he’s really annoyed too, but both of us acknowledge that nothing would work out long distance since we’ve known each other for such a short amount of time and honestly we don’t really know each other very well but both of us intend to try again once he comes back in April and while i’m not going to close myself off to other opportunities (aka other boys), i’m not going to seek them out and i’m going to focus on school since i’m graduating in june and i really just feel like everything about him is right and i’m not gonna get my hopes up but i think he and i could make it work. he and i both agree that if he were staying, he and i would have been officially dating by now and i just really like him

and so i’m supposed to see him maybe one or two more times before he leaves but there aren’t any guarantees but he said he was going to try really hard and i think i’ll get to see him but i’m not gonna get my hopes up obviously

also i convinced him to save my number in his phone as “Nicole the Greatest Human in the Universe” (which i suggested as a joke) and he brought it up multiple times later in the night and kept saying how true it was and it was great

this turned out really long but whatever. my brain is still pretty quiet compared to how it usually is and that’s thanks to him. 

[yarrie-writes]

Thisness

Chapter 1: A Rose by any Other Name

They called it "sublimination," because there was always a nice way to describe terrible things.

Lance had never seen it happen before, but that was just a fluke, a stroke of luck, a - a sign from the universe that he was meant for something, maybe, because in a tiny brick elementary school of 128 students, he'd been the only one sick at home the day that a fifth grader went up in flames and brought the whole school down with her.

People said, afterward, that no one could've known that it would happen. That it could've been anyone. That she hadn't done anything wrong. That there hadn't been any signs of magical affinity in her or her family, much less fire affinity...until she exploded, anyway.

None of that sounded particularly reassuring when you lived five minutes away from a building that had been charred so horribly that the brick was scorched black and the windows were crystalline puddles on the ground. Lance remembered wandering over there once, just once, and getting the shit smacked out of his ass when his mama found out. But he'd had a reason for going. His neighbors had told him, soft and low like it was a secret to tuck into his pillow and sleep on, that somebody in town had been sneaking past the patrol and smuggling out handfuls of ashes for the families who'd lost somebody, and Lance had asked, soft and low because he was in awe, who would do that, but nobody knew, because they went when it was dark and they went fast and they didn't tell no one but God. So Lance had gone looking, and he probably would've kept going if his mama hadn't caught him.

But aside from that one brave soul (and Lance), nobody in town would go near the place. A small colony of government workers migrated down for the summer to scrape charcoal and bone ash from the streets and rebuild the school, but it didn't do much good. Fear was a powerful thing.

In the meantime, Lance went to a school one hour away, and everyone even slightly related to him breathed a sigh of relief when he graduated from it before construction was done.

They called it "sublimination," because there was always a nice way to describe terrible things - and if there wasn't, somebody could always be hired to find one.

And for the last five years, Lance had been that somebody.

Maybe that was overstating his importance, a little bit.

In reality, Lance was a tiny gear in a huge machine. In reality, he was sort of a nobody, even if he was a nobody with a mouthpiece. In reality, his job could rightfully (if rudely) be summed up as propaganda-pushing.

And maybe in another reality, Lance would give a fuck about the ethics and morals of what he was doing. In this one, he didn't have any fucks left to give.

"Good mornin', Pasadena, how was your beauty sleep?" he crooned into his microphone, pulling his mouth into a smile because you fake it til you make it and he desperately wanted to make it. "This is Lance McClain speaking, here to remind you that the sky is blue, the earth is round, the stars are bright, and I'm free for dinner if you're lonely tonight, so hit me up, ladies and gentleman."

On the TV in the corner of the recording studio, he saw Pidge dropping his head onto the desk with a muffled groan, so he pointed finger guns at his techie coworker half-ironically. Pidge could use a fake-it-til-you-make-it smile, he thought. Pidge could use any expression that wasn't exasperation or homicidal rage.

He kept the finger guns up until Pidge gave him the middle finger, then he gave Pidge two middle fingers back, and not once did he stop talking during the entire exchange. "Now then, tonight's topic is the total catastrophe with the protesters at the Gates of Justice yesterday! I mean, seriously guys, if you haven't been following the news you better turn on your TVs. It was a madhouse. Lots of people fighting lots of other people, 'cause no better time to duke it out with security than when you're supposed to be protesting peacefully, right?"

He made a very exaggerated huffing sound. "Now, I'm the first to defend freedom of speech and all that. I love freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is my best girl. It just seems...kinda dumb to get so riled up about it that you go around punching people, y'know? Words don't have feelings, guys. People have feelings. People have lots of feelings. Play nice while you're flaunting your freedom of speech, that's all I'm asking.

"But this isn't just about me, guys. Hit me with your opinions, 'cause I know everyone and their mother has one about this stuff - my facebook feed tells me so. As always, the number to call is 626-555-5567! We'd love to hear from you."

In the corner of his eye, he spied Pidge and Hunk fielding the first callers of the day before he was even finished reciting the number.

Well, that didn't take long.

Seconds later, names and descriptions were scrolling down his screen, and he picked one at random, because he was a brave, brave man, the kind of brave that was often mistaken for stupidity but was actually closer to stubbornness.

"Man, you're chomping at the bit today, Pasadena, aren't you? Mr. Adam Smith, how are you doing?"

"Good." Mr. Adam Smith's voice was soft, and raspy, and absolutely not radio-friendly, which could be blamed on either the inherent quality of his voice or the obvious lack of quality in his phone. There were cars in the background, which helped not at all.

Lance winced a little. Just this once, couldn't his first caller be somebody with a good microphone? Whatever. Rolling with the punches. "You rolling in traffic, sir?"

"Not even rolling, unfortunately. But you know how it is."

A sense of humor, he could work with this. "Man alive, I wish I did know how it is. Maybe I'm lucky that this job forces me to wake up too early for rush hour, but I sure don't feel too lucky when my alarm sounds."

Mr. Smith uttered a dry, dry laugh.

Lance caught the annoyed undertone of that laugh and winced. It was an impersonal sort of annoyance, like Lance had simply nudged an underwater iceberg free and now it was floating to the surface of the sea and causing chaos in its wake. Impersonal, nothing to do with him, but that didn't mean it couldn't get ugly.

On paper, his job was actually pretty simple - all he had to do was talk, and piss the right people off, and not piss anybody else off. And Lance was good at talking, and really good at pissing people off. He might be a little shaky on choosing who to piss off and who to let go, but he was getting better at it. And right now, his hard-won instincts were telling him to bail.

"Alright, alright, while we've got you captive in traffic, my good sir, what's your take on the protests?"

"Well, actually, I think their hearts are in the right place. We all saw what happened in Kerberos, and given the...background...of the terrorists, you can see why people might think that there's something deeper going on."

"Sure, sure. But the question is, do you think that there's actually evidence that there's something deeper going on?"

"I'm not ruling it out."

"Of course not. There's no such thing as ruling it out, right? I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that I know what actually happened. That way madness lies. But what about actual evidence?"

"The tape - "

"Yeah, the tape." Lance sighed. "Not gonna lie, I've listened to it, and I am un-im-pressed. I keep trying to hear the screaming that everybody's talking about, but all I'm getting is feedback. And this is from a guy who talks into a microphone all day for a living. Thanks for talkin' back, though - good luck with traffic!"

The man tried to call back a few minutes later. Wanted to finish the conversation, Pidge's curt notes told him.

Lance sighed and picked someone else.

It would be easy to string his haters along until they stumbled. They always did, sooner or later. Lance wouldn't consider himself the smartest or cleverest or meanest person in existence - he wasn't even the smartest or cleverest or meanest radio personality on his channel - but he was incredibly good at dragging people down to his level, and that was all he needed to do, most of the time. People didn't judge arguments by how good the reasoning was. It was all in the delivery, and Lance was good at delivery.

It just...it would be easy to string his haters along, but he didn't like doing it. Didn't like shining a spotlight on people until they burned from it. Didn't like humiliation. It just wasn't in his blood, his bones, his too-soft heart.

"Today sucked," he said with feeling, curled around one of Hunk's glorious cookie-cake masterpieces.

"Tough topic," Hunk nodded. "Tougher crowd."

Pidge snorted and nibbled on his piece of cookie-cake without commenting.

Lance groaned. "Yeah, yeah, I know. I was there."

Pidge snorted again. It was an ugly, harsh little sound, like a high-dose injection of condescension.

Lance was pretty sure Pidge didn't like him. Then again, Pidge didn't seem to like anyone. Except Hunk, but everyone liked Hunk.

That was not precisely true, he reflected later, as all three of them were berated in Iverson's dusty office for 'gross negligence of their duties.' Lance had tuned him out after he realized that this was about the same old stuff. Iverson was ex-military, and it was written all over the squareness of his shoulders and the straight line of his back and the way he expected his employees to respond well to beration. He gave off this overwhelming sense of what he called patriotic dignity and what everyone else saw as overcompensation.

Plus, he didn't like Hunk, and everyone liked Hunk.

"Dismissed," Iverson barked suddenly, and the only reason Lance even heard it was that he'd been listening for it.

"Freedom," he whispered to Hunk and Pidge. Hunk smiled weakly at him, looking a little nauseous.

Pidge, being Pidge, just snorted again. "You might wanna actually pay attention when he goes off on you. He wants to fire you, you know."

"Okay, first of all, he wasn't just going off on me, he was going off on us."

"Pretty much only you, though."

"I heard Gunderson in there a couple of times."

Pidge scowled.

"And secondly, this is a government position. We're technically government employees. Nobody ever gets fired from the government. That's why Iverson's still here."

Hunk chuckled weakly, recovering a bit from his Iverson-induced panic.

Score.

Pidge opened and closed his mouth. "...you...okay. That's fair."

Score! Lance crossed his arms behind his neck and let his head rest there, soaking in his victory. "The worst thing that can happen is that I'll get promoted into a position where I can't do any more damage," he said conspiratorially.

"Oh how terrible for you," Pidge said, dry as sandpaper.

Lance grinned. "I know."

Hunk sighed and sighed, worry creasing his forehead, but it was a familiar worry that was no longer contagious, because he and Pidge were immune by now. "What do you want for dinner, Lance?"

"I was thinking burgers." Lance half-turned to Pidge. "You?"

Pidge blinked large owlish eyes at him. After a moment he realized why - ever since Pidge turned them down for dinner that first day, he hadn't asked. Maybe their lack of friendship wasn't entirely on Pidge.

"Pidge?" Hunk prodded gently.

"Oh," Pidge said, flushing ever so slightly. "Sorry. Not today, but...raincheck?"

"Sure, sure, Pidgeotto," Lance said cheerfully.

Pidge stared at him. "Was that supposed to be an insult? Pidgeotto's awesome."

"You're awesome," Lance fired back, on instinct, before he realized that yeah, that really wasn't an insult at all.

Pidge giggled, downright giggled. Behind him, Hunk threw him a thumbs up sign.

Lance groaned. "Let's pretend that didn't happen. You're Pidgey now."

"Too late," Pidge said.

"I canceled your evolution, you're Pidgey."

"Too late!" Pidge grabbed his bag and gave them a half-hearted backward wave. "Have a good dinner!"

"Thanks, see you tomorrow, Pidge," Hunk said.

Lance glared at Hunk.

"What?"

"Traitor."

"Pidge is cool, bro."

"Cooler than me?!"

"Lance, I love you, so I'm not answering that."

When he got home he put on the television. He always did, no matter how much shit the television was spewing about the state of the world. It was a horrible habit that he needed to kick, except it made him better at his job, while also making him better at hating his job.

Today the topic of choice was some gun-toting fool with the Remember Kerberos movement, which made him think about that stupid tape again, which made him listen to the stupid tape again, trying his damnedest to hear something in the background other than an increasingly sharp voice on the radio asking for someone, anyone to check in.

Some people listened to the static and heard screaming. Some people listened to the static and heard breathing.

Lance had been listening to this tape ever since it came out, and all he ever heard was static.

Wishing don't make a thing real, his mama always said.

The next day was more of the same. The protests up in Washington had escalated. Again. There were pictures of tear-gassing and water hosing. Again.

Lance was already sick of it, but he did his best not to show it, because he was a fucking professional, and it wouldn't be very professional to ask his listeners why they felt the need to express their opinions on the radio instead of taking those opinions up with people who actually mattered and could get something done.

"Mr. Tom Cain, what's your take on - "

"Madam Euphemia Lowe, how about you - "

"You're up next, Mrs. Efemena Ayodele - "

And so on, and so on.

Until - "Annnnnd here's Mr. Kitty Rose, here to pitch in his two cents!" Then Lance paused for a long moment, successfully pulled out of his own headspace for the first time all day. "Um, please tell me that's not your real name. Actually, no, wait! Please tell me that it is your real name, 'cause I love it."

"...Hello?" came the voice from the phoneline.

Lance nearly cooed at how confused the poor thing sounded. He'd bet an arm and a leg that this was the guy's first time ever calling in to a radio show. It was kinda flattering. Who was he kidding, it was really flattering. "Hello, Mr. Kitty Rose! You're on air right now. How you doin'?"

"...I'm...I guess I'm good?" He didn't sound any less confused.

This time, Lance did coo. "Awww, just good? Not great? Not dazzling? Not awespectacular?"

"What the hell is awespectacular?"

Lance grinned with wild abandon, because the setup was way too perfect, and he probably shouldn't push a new caller like this but what the heck. Being called by a guy named Kitty Rose was the best thing that had happened to him all day. "A lot of things are awespectacular! Me, for example. Specifically, certain parts of me."

There was silence...then the sharp, unmistakable click of a phone hanging up.

Lance pouted, even though no one could see him. He'd always believed in the power of making faces to give his voice that extra emotional oomph. "Well, guess he didn't wanna stay and chat, ladies and gents. Next!"

Awkward-cute or not, Mr. Kitty Rose (seriously, was that his name?) slipped out of his mind completely within half a minute. He was too busy with his other callers, some of whom agreed with him, some of whom didn't, and some of whom really didn't, but it was all in good fun - on Lance's side, anyways - and arguing was the best part of his job, so he wasn't exactly complaining.

So it was weird when Pidge came into the recording studio, afterward, and said with utmost casualness, "So. Mr. Kitty Rose?" like it was meaningful and shit.

"Dude, if that's actually his name..." Lance started laughing again.

Pidge grinned slightly - which was mindblowing to see on Pidge, King of Angry Scowly Faces - but it was a grin of the shit-eating variety. Lance braced himself, and good thing he did, because the next thing Pidge said was, "Didn't stop you from flirting with him. What, you aspiring to be Mr. Rose-Mclain?"

Lance laughed messily and ignored how his neck felt a little hot. He was never going to get used to the fact that batting for both teams was treated so casually here, but that didn't mean he didn't appreciate it. "No way, dude," he chirped out at last, "Mr. Mclain-Rose sounds way better." 

Pidge gave him the sharpest little grin he'd ever seen on a human being, and mockingly saluted him on his way out.

"I think Pidge and I are becoming friends," he mused out loud as he and Hunk sat in a sleazy bar with two orders of burgers with cheesy fries for the third time in a week. Who needed healthy arteries, anyways?

"Pidge is cool, I told you," Hunk said, around a mouthful of fries.

"You think everyone is cool."

"Pidge is actually super cool, though. Did I tell you that he managed to install some kind of internet radio app on our computers? I didn't even think they were capable of running anything more intense than Wordpad."

"Hey," Lance said, pouting.

Hunk blinked at him. "What?"

"You listen to radio stations other than mine? I'm feelin' betrayed, Hunk! Abandoned! Gutted! Hung out to dry!"

"Dude," Hunk said, snorting with laughter, "we gotta listen to something when there aren't any callers and we're waiting for commercials to pass."

"Hung out to dry, Hunk!"

Later at home, when his landline started ringing, Lance cursed wildly and had a battle of epic proportions with his remote to turn the TV off, because he knew who was calling and he knew what she would have to say about watching the news again, mijo?

"Hola, mama," he said, curling his tongue over the soft vowels of his native language.

"Hola, mi amor," his mother said warmly. "Two rings and you pick up, how punctual."

"I'm very punctual, mama," he protested, grinning. "I always do things exactly when I intend to do them."

"Does that mean that you haven't called me this week on purpose?" her voice turned gently chiding.

"Oooph, mama," he said, wincing a bit.

She laughed, forgiveness and love all in one bell-like sound. "I was listening to you the other day."

Oh shit. "Which day?" he asked, trying for lightness.

"The day you were talking about cereal," she said, and thank god, thank god, because he knew how sad she'd be if she'd been listening yesterday or the day before. Politics and laws were not up for discussion in the McClain household. His brothers and sisters would get fired up on their respective choices of social media, where his mama's sphere of influence did not extend, but Lance kept himself firmly, firmly out of those arguments, even when they tried to draw him in. Sometimes, when he came home for dinner and the table topic landed on how he was doing at work, he'd look up and his siblings would be looking at him plaintively, like they didn't understand how all the pieces that made up Lance McClain could possibly fit together into a cohesive whole. It sucked knowing that at least some of them were disappointed in him. It sucked, but he dealt with it, because he was disappointed in himself, too.

Small mercies, he reminded himself. Always be thankful for the small mercies, because you've already filled your quota for the big ones.

Things would get better, he thought, clenching his phone in his hand. Things had to get better.

Things did not get better.

He'd gone to work, spirits bolstered by his mother's warm, easy affection, and Iverson was waiting for him, and it was way too early for an Iverson lecture, fuck the universe. When it rains, it pours, he thought grimly.

"Look at this," Iverson said, thrusting a paper into his face.

Lance just barely managed to prevent himself from snapping back, "I am looking at it, but you might want to take it back a couple inches if you want me to actually read it." Instead, he said, "Yes?"

"Look at this, and read it!"

"Yes sir," Lance said cautiously, and that seemed to be what Iverson wanted, because he harrumphed irritably and stopped looming.

"This is your last warning to shape up," he said, because he only existed on a spectrum from upset to very upset. "You're not here because you're good at your job. You're here because the last man who had your job turned out to be a thief. Don't push it!"

Lance pulled the paper away and read it.

It was a fucking gag order.

When it rains, it pours, and pours, and pours.

"This sucks, man," Hunk murmured, looking over the stupid piece of paper with a critical eye.

"Yeah."

"I feel like - like we're doing everybody a disservice. This is basically self-censorship, right?"

Lance sighed. "Yeah. Yeah, but - hey, it's not like a random radio talk show in Pasadena is going to change the course of history."

Hunk frowned and looked sad.

Lance winced. "Look, I don't like it - but I don't wanna know what they do to me if I break rank, either."

Hunk chewed his lip. "You have to be careful, Lance. Maybe, this year - maybe you should try to get transferred to the tech side."

"The dark side, you mean?" Lance waggled his eyebrows.

"...we do have cookies."

Lance laughed. "Hunk, you already make me cookies all the time."

Hunk looked properly pensive. "If I stopped doing that, would you turn techie for the cookies?"

"Hunk, my man, I'd die without them. You don't want me to die, do you?"

"No, I really, really want you to stay alive," Hunk said, and wow, okay, this conversation was becoming Way Too Serious.

Pidge piped up, making them both jump, "I didn't know you could do any tech stuff. Aren't you always saying that you and computers have a mutually assured destruction thing going on?"

"Pidge, Pidge, Pidge," Lance wagged his finger at him, "I was a technician here before Hunk was."

"I mean, he wasn't a very good one, but - "

"Hush, Hunk, I'm trying to make a point."

Pidge snickered. "Consider your point unmade. And probably unmakeable."

"I'm feeling so attacked right now," Lance muttered.

"Good," Pidge said, and there was a grin on the little guy's face, and Lance felt weirdly better.

Then Hunk sighed and ran his hand through his hair, ending the moment. "We need a game plan. Pidge and I, maybe we need to screen the callers more? Make sure they're not gonna be trouble?"

"I don't mind trouble," Lance said, "s'long as they don't mention anything on the unmentionable list."

"It's gonna be hard finding someone who won't mention Kerberos or protests or anti-magic regs." Pidge wrinkled his nose.

"Give me an hour of Kitty Roses, then," Lance said, sighing.

Pidge snorted. "You sure you want that kind of trainwreck on your hands?"

Lance looked at Pidge, stern-faced and serene. "Bring it."

He should not have said that.

He should not have said anything.

Pidge was going to be insufferable.

Scratch that, Pidge was already insufferable: next to the little label with Kitty Rose's name, Pidge's note read, Ask and ye shall receive! With the next refresh, it also said, BTW I told him you were gonna answer his call, so if you don't, I guess he's just gonna think that you're a coward.

Pidge was going to suffer.

"So," he said, as sweetly as he could while simultaneously imagining a painful, humiliating death for his traitorous technician, "Mr. Kitty Rose, back again?"

"Hi," the other man said. "...I guess I am."

"You definitely are, my man. Do you actually have anything to say this time, or...?"

There was a pause. "Wow, you're kind of a jerk. Why do people take time out of their day to listen to you?"

"Heyyyy. I'm just gonna point out that you're calling in for the second time, which means that at the very least you've listened to me twice."

"And both times were a waste of my time."

Pidge was going down. Pidge was so going down. Lance leaned in and uttered in the cheesiest cartoon-villainiest voice he could manage, "How dare you."

"How dare I, indeed."

"Yeah, exactly. How dare you listen to my step by step instructions and call me."

"It's almost as though you don't want listeners."

"What, are you a listener now, Mr. Both-Times-Were-A-Waste-Of-My-Time?"

"You know that feeling you get when you pass a car accident on the road and you want to slow down to see what's going on?"

"Yeah?"

"Your radio show is the verbal equivalent."

Lance found himself laughing, hysterically, helplessly. Okay, so maybe Pidge didn't have to go down. "Seriously, man, did you call in just to tell me that I'm a jerk?"

"That's my story and I'm sticking with it."

"You don't have any pearlier pearls of wisdom? That's all you've got for me?"

"...okay, I got another one: cereal, then milk, is the only acceptable order to make cereal in."

Lance gasped. "You heathen."

"But I'm right."

"I'll have you know that I'm a cereal expert, buddy, and milk is always first."

"I bet all your cereal bowls are mushy at the bottom and dry at the top."

"You take that back, my cereal bowls are perfect, thank you, because I know how to treat my dates right."

"That sounds awfully pathetic."

"Why, why I oughta, you're pathetic!"

"What a comeback. I'm quivering in my boots."

"You should be!"

"Yes, yes. That doesn't change the fact that you're wrong."

"How could you possibly put milk over the cereal? You're just making it soggy faster!"

"It's too messy pouring cereal onto milk. Gets everywhere."

Lance narrowed his eyes. "I'll have you know that cereal is my second favorite thing to eat in bed, and unlike the first thing, I've never made a mess in my sheets with it!"

There was silence. Then, very quietly, "Um, what's your first favorite thing then?"

Oh. Oh my god. Oh my god.

He didn't get it.

This was the best day of Lance's life.

With a huge shit-eating grin, he settled down on his elbows and sing-songed, "Nothing, nothing at alllll. Hey, by the way, I'm thinking of having a cereal party soon, wanna come?"

"Uh, no, not if you're going to eat it wrong."

The best. Day. Of his life.

"Hey, man, if it matters to you that much, we can try it both ways." Lance wiggled his eyebrows. "I can bring the milk if you bring everything else."

"Er, no, I'm not drinking your milk."

Hook.

"Why? Don't you trusssst me?"

Line.

"No. Plus, I'm lactose intolerant, so double no."

And sinker.

"Oh, Kitty," Lance purred, "nobody's making you swallow."

Lance was floating on Cloud Nine, and counting, the rest of the day. He'd never been more disappointed to cut a caller short so that he could start music hour. Or more disappointed, in general. He'd already eaten four of Hunk's cookies to chase the high of that incredible call, and now he was eyeing the plate for his fifth.

Next to him, Hunk was shaking his head, the flush of secondhand embarrassment fading at last. "Dude. Dude. Did you have to?"

"Dude. It was necessary."

"So necessary," Pidge agreed.

Lance turned to Hunk. "See? Pidge agrees with me! And Pidge never agrees with me."

"Never," Pidge agreed.

Hunk sighed at both of them. "I guess we did a good job today, though."

"Good? Good? Hunk, my man, my bestie, my homie, that was more than just good. It was amazing, it was incredible, it was - it was - "

"Awespectacular?" Pidge suggested, rolling his eyes.

Lance pointed to Pidge emphatically. "YES."

Hunk looked resigned to his fate. "Right. That. Anyways, good job. I don't think anybody noticed that we didn't talk about the unmentionables."

"Thank you, Kitty Rose, savior of us all," Pidge said.

"Hey. I'm the savior here. Kitty Rose is, like, the DVD Disc 1 villain who helps out during the final battle against the actual villain."

"So not a villain at all," Pidge said.

"Well - "

"And also probably the most important person during the final battle."

"I - "

"So basically the savior."

Lance screeched. "Okay, whatever. What-ever. And here I was, wanting to invite you to our bro dinners, but I guess you don't wanna go - "

Pidge sucked on his soft drink. "Nope."

Hunk frowned. "Awww...."

Pidge flicked his eyes over to Hunk and heaved a sigh. "Yeah, sorry. Still need a raincheck."

"When's the end of your shift today?" Hunk asked.

"6 pm."

Lance wiggled his eyebrows. "And you don't have time to grab dinner with us? Does someone have a hoooot daaaaate?"

"Oh my god, Lance," Pidge muttered, smacking his head.

"That's not a no, Pidge!"

"I take it back, no raincheck."

Pidge, because he was a boring, boring person, turned out to be headed for the library at Caltech after his shift.

Lance, because he liked poking boring people until they lost their boringness, and because he still felt a little guilty about making Pidge the third wheel to his and Hunk's awesome bro relationship, tugged on Hunk's sleeve until Hunk agreed that they should accompany Pidge to the library because you know it's not a great idea to be walking around alone at night, Hunk!

"It's surprisingly quiet around here," Hunk said, warily, twisting his head this way and that, and Lance almost felt bad for appealing to his best friend's protective/paranoid instincts.

"Were you expecting it to be loud?" Pidge asked, raising an eyebrow. "This isn't exactly party central."

"Well, no, but I'm surprised you don't have protesters camping out anywhere."

Pidge snorted. "There were, for a while."

Lance raised an eyebrow. "What happened? Mace? Batons? Dogs?"

"Deadlines and exams," Pidge said flatly.

Hunk cracked a small, wry grin, while Lance outright laughed. "Oh, jesus. You serious?"

"Yep. There were We Will Never Stop Looking signs abandoned all over the courtyard as soon as Hell Week started."

"Ironic."

Pidge smiled at that, but it wasn't really a smile-smile, and it didn't even reach all corners of his mouth, much less his eyes. "Yeah. There are definitely better places to start a revolution than a school of engineers. Not enough of them care, and the ones who do care don't care enough." Was that bitterness? It sounded like bitterness. But maybe Lance was hearing things. It wasn't like Pidge to be bitter - or maybe it was, and they just didn't know Pidge well enough to know that.

"Maybe they have the right idea," Lance said cautiously.

Pidge looked really hard at him. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. I don't think most people are cut out for revolution."

Pidge looked even harder at him. "For such a loud, bossy guy, you're actually really cynical," he said finally.

Lance grinned at him. "Hey, gotta hope for the best but expect the worst, right?"

Pidge shrugged, quiet and blank-faced. He wasn't glaring at Lance, but he wasn't agreeing with him, either. Which was normal. Everybody in the information business talked big game about the moral imperative to inform the masses and change the world and shit, but it wasn't human nature to walk the walk unless you were already headed in that direction.

Lance was a coward, he'd be the first to admit it - but at least he wasn't a hypocrite.

Unbidden, the image of the wreckage at Kerberos Station popped into his head. He winced.

At least he wasn't dead.

Kitty Rose showed up the next day, too.

They had to table the cereal debate, though, because Kitty dropped a bombshell about not being able to cook, which derailed them for a solid fifteen minutes.

He also found out that Kitty liked running and kicking balls around but didn't like team sports because of the team part, and that his favorite color was the same red as canned cranberry sauce, and that he thought pineapple on pizza was disgusting, which was so, so wrong that Lance was compelled to inform him, "You're disgusting!" before hanging up.

Then Hunk and Pidge completely and utterly betrayed him by sending forward an endless line of callers who agreed with Kitty on the pineapple issue, and he vowed not to speak to them ever again.

Kitty Rose also, apparently, thought that Raisin Bran counted as a cereal.

Lance curtly informed him that this lost him the cereal debate by default.

He also, reluctantly, began speaking to Hunk and Pidge again, seeing as his silence didn't have a lot of emotional impact when the alternative was engaging in interpretative dance moves to get his message across.

Also, Hunk gave him more cookies, and those cookies made up for all kinds of shenanigans.

Two weeks after the gag order had been thrust upon him, Lance took inventory of how he was doing and thought that, all things considered, it could've been worse. Iverson was still yelling at him regularly but it was with his usual, baseline hostility. Pidge still wouldn't come to dinner with him and Hunk, but at least the awkwardness of their duo becoming a trio had mostly rubbed off. And Kitty was, weirdly, becoming something of a friend? Lance had no idea what was going on there, only that Hunk and Pidge thought that something was, and they kept making these faces whenever Kitty called and it was actually super embarrassing. And his mama was still checking on him and his siblings were still weird about his job and the McClain house was still a no-politics zone.

So life was - not good, but okay. Really, really okay.

Or, at least, that's what Lance had thought.

It turned out that there was a difference between thinking that things were settling down, and the actual process of things settling down. A small part of Lance's brain had solidified in early childhood and never really changed after that, and it was this part of his mind that fooled him into thinking that turning his eyes away from the world shifting on its axis would somehow make it stop.

So he was just doing his usual bedtime routine, his brushing and flossing and face mask and shampoo and conditioner, when the television noises in the background stopped sounding like weather report noises and started sounding like news report noises. It wasn't a big difference, but he felt it like a cold front crashing down, chilling him to the bone. Some animal instinct told him to pay attention, pay attention so he did, plodding slowly to the living room and sinking into the couch of his living room, staring glassily at the television screen.

" - currently receiving reports of a flash flood in Washington D.C., right at doorstep of the White House. At least forty civilians, many of them protesting the recent changes in the Magical User Registration Act, were caught in the flood - "

"Authorities suspect that the flood was caused by an act of magi-terrorism or a sublimination event...witnesses say that there was a white light before water came rushing from the steps of the White House. No suspects have been - "

"This just in, the flood has started rising again, still not a cloud in the sky - "

" - massive explosion at the White House. Authorities say that its blast radius was dampened significantly by the flood - "

" - White House Correspondent, on the line now - the prevailing theory we've heard tonight is that whoever raised the flood knew about the bomb, what are your thoughts?"

"These horrific events are the doings of terrorists - and I do not use that word lightly - aligned with the magi-militant group Remember Kerberos. We all know there is a time for tolerance, a time for patience, but we have been tolerant - we have been patient. There is also a time for action, and that time is now. I call upon every member of this group to surrender to the nearest authorities - "

It also turned out that both he and Pidge were a little wrong about engineers, because Caltech was on fire the next morning. Metaphorically.

They weren't the only ones, either - the news was full of footage from nearly every major city in the country. Pasadena fared better than most, but there were still riots happening, honest to god riots. Half of lanes on the highway were blocked off because someone had moved the road partitions. There was broken glass everywhere around the 7-11 across the street from the studio. Lance actively feared for his car's structural integrity if he parked it any lower than the roof of the garage. By then, he was almost forty minutes late. 

Hunk called him while he was running up the stairs, saying, "Dude, I packed you an extra sleeping bag. Have you seen the streets? We might not be going home tonight."

"Fuck," Lance said, blearily. "That's a good idea, thanks, I'm at the studio - "

"How is it over there? I'm gonna be late, tell me how it is - "

"It's..." Lance looked around, and was nearly run over. By the time he managed to find a safe spot, he laughed weakly. "It's a madhouse, man. There are papers all over the hallway - new carpeting, hey? I almost got run over by a super short lady. And she almost got run over by a slightly taller lady. People are everywhere, and it's - uh." He peered out the window and stared. And stared. And stared. Then, without moving his gaze one centimeter, he whispered, "Hunk?"

"Lance? You okay?"

"Yeah...yeah, I'm okay. Listen. I still have a change of clothes at your place, right?"

"Multiple changes of clothes, actually." Hunk, bless him, was still so Hunk through this mess.

"Can you bring them over? I think maybe the studio's safer than our apartments right now. Kind of. Maybe?"

"What do you mean? What's going on?"

"There's, like, twenty soldiers right outside the door."

"Is that..." Hunk said cautiously, "a good thing?"

"I don't know, man." Lance laughed, only a little hysterically, "I don't know anything anymore."

"Good morning, Pasadena," he said, a pale imitation of his usual cheer, "how was your beauty sleep?"

The words felt like cotton in his mouth.

He didn't ask for callers - no techs meant nobody to screen the callers, so it would've been a lost cause anyways. It was still depressing to look at the empty tech room and watch the phones flash, ringing into the void. He had the ridiculous thought that he should keep watching, regardless, because what if Pidge called in? What if Kitty did? Surely he'd know that it was them, even without sound, without anything but the telegraphed trill of an impersonal ringtone.

The studio felt deathly still, now. Pidge was still nowhere to be seen, and the other people in the building had been leaving - he tried not to think evacuating - one by one all morning until it was just him. He hadn't even seen Iverson all day, and this was probably the only day of his life that he'd feel happy catching a glimpse of the old grump. But no one was there, so Lance stayed huddled in the recording studio, talking about nothing at all, because he didn't know if Hunk would be able to find him otherwise, and he really, really didn't want to be alone.

Halfway past nine, Hunk finally showed up with their sleeping bags and bottles of water and a generous snack stash, and Lance could have cried, he was so glad to see him.

"Where's Pidge?" they both asked, at the same time. Then they looked at each other, and looked at Pidge's empty chair, and Hunk made this...noise of distress. "Okay. Okay. I think Pidge can take care of himself. So let's take care of ourselves, first."

After he was properly fed and watered and hugged within an inch of his life, Lance started taking callers.

Pidge wasn't one of them. Neither was Kitty.

He tried his best not to think about that.

The smoke alarm went off at 4 am and woke them up. Hunk couldn't find a way to shut it off completely, but he did manage to dismantle the one in the recording studio, and they were both tired enough to go back to sleep in spite of the distant ringing. By the time they woke up again, it was all quiet. The street outside didn't look any different from yesterday, which was comforting because it meant nothing big happened and not-so-comforting because no one had come to clean up the 7-11 and the glimmer of glass on the ground was like something out of a horror movie. 

"Okay," Hunk said after they ate a dry breakfast of granola bars, "Let's regroup."

"Hunk, buddy," Lance said, wincing, "two people does not a group make."

Hunk ignored him. "A, things are kinda going crazy out there."

"Yep." Lance resisted the urge to put his hand on his forehead. No facial cleansing routine meant he had to be extra careful -

"B, Pidge is missing."

"Yep." Lance put his hand on his forehead.

"C, Your radio boyfriend is also missing."

"Why is that C? That should be, like, X or something." He paused. Then, frantically, he added, "Also he's not my boyfriend, what the hell Hunk - "

"D," Hunk continued serenely, "I'm pretty sure Pidge knows him. Like, actually knows him."

Lance shut his mouth and stared.

Hunk huffed a bit. "C'mon, man. You said it yourself, Kitty Rose just can't be his real name. But he hasn't corrected you either, right?"

"No," he said slowly.

"Well," Hunk shrugged. "Pidge is the one who screened him. And, um, while we're at it?"

Lance made a go-on gesture.

"It seems way too coincidental that Pidge - like pigeon - and Kitty are both animal names, right?"

Lance stared at him. "Oh my god. Why did I not see that before??"

Hunk, ever humble, shrugged. "So it just makes sense that they actually know each other - but also, um. I tried to find Kitty Rose in the logs, and there's nothing. No phone numbers, no call records, just...nothing."

"Pidge?"

"Pidge. Probably." Hunk scratched his nose.

Lance nearly screeched. "Pidgeeeee. Whyyyyy."

"Don't worry, don't worry!" Hunk grinned at him, and held up a fifth finger. "E, I bet they're still listening to you."

[survivorelara]

Episode #6: “"NOT ANYMOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE" - Big Z

Even though I misplayed my idol, I cannot believe that my incessant need for wanting Toby gone actually fucking worked. Like. I will be taking the credit for this one because I just fed it to my peoples and had Loris know about it and just controlled his emotional vulnerability. I would have been good without having the idol either... so wig- I fucked up on that end but WOWZA it feels good to actually lead a vote, see the vote go the way you want, and have my target argue with someone who HE thinks started this revolution. Hehehehhehee

bruh im getting major Byzantium teas right now... where my og tribe gets decimated and only two of us actually make it to the merge. right now theres only 3 of us left and just like then if only 2 of us make merge we're gonna start off as swing votes, then everyone will target us.  please don't let that happen Byzantium wasn't my greatest org experience

LMAO SO DANI THINKS WE ARE DEAD TO HER BECAUSE WE BLINDSIDED HER AT THE LOUISE VOTE? poor girl. you're playing a vivor org, get over yourself. you better pray to GOD we don't lose or that you have an idol... because your ass is done otherwise. one way or another, like I said before, only 2 zosma's max are making merge lmao…

In the middle of the challenge, so this confessional will have to be brief. I can definitely WIN this challenge, but I do question if that's the best for my game. The other tribe had a unanimous 6-1 vote, so now it's an even 3-3 split over there.

If we win, it's possible that either they'll go to rocks, or one of the Revati's will flip to save themselves? (Because it's unlikely the Auva are dumb enough to flip on one-another since that'd give us majority in the merge.)

However our tribe is currently a 3-2-2 split, and while I don't THINK the two sets of two are working together, I can't eliminate the possibility that they'd gang up on us to eliminate one of us and evening the numbers for the merge.

It's difficult to say where this whole tribe will end up shaking down, but I'm hoping to avoid Tribal if I can help it. The less Tribal Councils I go to, the more options I have going into merge because I won't have necessarily hurt any feelings by voting a particular way.

Well, I crushed the challenge, scoring all 5 points on my tribe, everyone was talking about how I carried them... which already has me worried given my history of being labelled a challenge beast after only having one good challenge.

But at the very least no tribal, I'm curious if we'll be merging at 12 or if it'll be some other number. Guess I'll know soon enough, but it's nice to have a break for a bit, and I think I'm doing pretty well on bonding with others so as to better my position.

Dylan still never talks to me. So ideally he'll be gone soonish, either by us losing the next challenge or him serving as an early merge boot. But even if he sticks around I doubt it'll be a major problem.

MY HOPE, for the other tribe is to send home Drew or Roxy (preferably Drew since I know Roxy and can work with that I think), to split up that Power-Pair as Drew was a fool for spoiling that. I don't really care who goes so long as the Revati's stay, and if we DO lose

Now if I could just find a damn idol... or SOMETHING.

HELLO LITTLE MIX AND NICKI ARE COLLABING I REPREARJT  HHHHHH THEYRE COLLABBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jack Lawrence is so nice and so pretty. I would die for Jack. I would cry for Jsck. I will climb a mountain- and I hate walking. oh thats climbing I hate that too. Jack is nice Jack is kind. I shit on the Jack haters. He is just perfect. He could do nothing and still be thebest non-lead host. (Ya AJ shuttup) Anna Jane is PERFECTION. Erik is cutie she is cutie and I love AJ n Erik. She is hot and if I was gay i'd fuck. She is good listener and perfect and beautiful andeveryone get u a friend like AJ bc she is a BIG ASS MOOD in my life like stop being so perfect thanks

Sometimes I get confused about which day we’re on, so hopefully it’s day 14 lmao. The other tribe snatched Toby & I’m not surprised. Auva didn’t just make a mistake that will hinder themselves, but it will also affect what’s left of og Zosma. The Auvacados could’ve worked with Toby to start taking down Revati, but it would seem that they’re still out for vengeance. Toby was setup to be in a swing position, of course he’s gonna feel out both sides before choosing one. Now Auva is split with 3 on each side & I don’t see any of them flipping, unless og Auva is gullible again. Drew T. didn’t trust Revati either because he wasted an idol on himself even though Toby voted in favor of him. Flops.

Kori is legitimately a godsend. He c a r r i e d Revati in the challenge by scoring all 5 points that we needed to win. He says that he focused hard & waited for the messages to pop up which mind you were separated by intervals of several minutes in the span of 4 hours. Kori is a very humble dude & tries to downplay his capabilities, but he’s the GOAT. Maybe even the shield I needed. :O

I’m not too worried about Dani at this point in time. If Revati happens to lose then she would probably be the easiest to turn people against. Everyone participated in the music video challenge while she was the only one that did not, and she has a habit of sitting out. Sam told me that she hasn’t talked to him since the day we blindsided Louise & I’ve gotten the same treatment. Since I’m “dead to her”, I think that making a move against Dani pre-merge would benefit me in the long run. This would also change everyone’s perception of Sam and I to being non-threatening come merge as we don’t have the number

tea time sisters! toby was a king but was a threat and I have to see the benefits in him going. this tribal is going to be eventful I think... because I think I’m getting votes because roxy seems to really want me gone??? but i have a plan that I think will work :))))) I tell John to vote out drew t or roxy and I say that I know he doesn’t really want to vote out drew h so I’ll settle and sacrifice for drew t. if he’s fine with voting roxy then I tell him that I think I can get drew t to vote her too, and then we can vote him out next, when in reality we’ll vote out drew h next. if he wants to vote drew t now then I tell him me and z will do it too when hopefully z will vote out roxy with me and drew t instead because roxy is trying to get one of us out. ezpz . In fact we could even vote drew h. it’s all tea. I really hope z and John are loyal to me, I think z will be, and I think I can just play with me saying I trust you to John over and over. cute!!!! I stay winning... I can’t believe that I .. actually have a plan... that’s t it’s so easy idk why I couldn’t do this before my mind is just so powerful now? also auva idol is GONE and that’s fantastic and also I got legacy bitches!!!! only 7 more bitches need to go then I can use it :)

Soooooo half of this tribe is just completely inactive during the most important hours of this game prior to tribal. It’s SO FRUSTRATING because even if I want to make some sort of strategy with them it’ll take them at least 2-3 hours to reply to me. I cannot do this for too long. The other issue is that people are sooooo hesitant to throw names out, and when you do throw a name out literally EVERYONE hears that you started it and it gets turned on you. That happened to me when I said John’s name once to Roxy last tribal. I worry it’s about to happen to Loris suggesting Roxy too. We’ll see how it plays out, if I end up dying I’ll at least go on an active note rather than an inactive one.

THERE ARE TWO HOURS UNTIL TRIBAL AND LORIS IS THE ONLY ONE HERE

Whew another tribal and everyone is like absent again!? Wow we love productivity! Trademarked by the Celestial ORG! Please, come buy some productivity!

I hope we merge soon. My goal is to make it to merge without going to tribal. Idk how my tribe would pan out, we got a few inactive asf people. I dont have an idol but I really want one . tbh I'm so glad I took my break bc I'm not focused on winning im just focused on enjoying myself and my game while it lasts and I feel like its significantly improved my game.

Okay so Loris isn't talking to me but he's talking to other people so I'm being TOLD they're going for Roxy but I don't really believe it, I think if an idol is played, I'm dying courtesy of him and Z. Just gotta keep the faith in my people tbh

We doin big z vut doing loris kihhtve been better cause of her connections vut my nothing much I can do. I dint Rlly like the mrtge we r hesding into we r hella in minority

sometimes i forget im playing a org because all we do is win oh i got an idol btw hihihi

Honestly I am happy Toby went. HE WAS A BITCH! He wanted me out the the first round. Now to get Sam and Ciere out next. Expect Tea motherfuckers. Anyways, literally I have not talked a lot. I have gotten to know Kori. He is a shady fuck, I know that from past experience but I need him. I talked to Emma or Emmy or whatever the fuck her name is too. She seems really sweet.

ok so I think me and Ci'ere are bonding, which wow I never imagined that I would have a social game. I still haven't messaged Dani or Kori which is something I should do. The fact that they haven't messaged me, coupled with the fact that I'm alone on this tribe cements the fact that I am the obvious vote. Brb let me try to make connections.

SO we lost again, and my broken phone prevented me from participating in the challenge. Looking at this based on the challenge I should be leaving, buuuut I am going to be voting big Z out tonight, and because the auvas don't want rocks, they are going to do what I want. I have wanted this guy out from a game standpoint from the very beginning, but once you throw my name out there it's very hard to get back on my good side. Loris is going to be annoyed with me I am sure, he was trying to manipulate the situation between us but I could see right through the whole thing. I had a call with Roxy and she made an alliance with us and the two drews. She seemed to be worried that I would want to stick with loris and Z but I knew immediately what I wanted to do. I am really hoping that a merge will happen next, and that this move will not deeply affect me right away.

Big Z is voted out 4-2.