#also it's almost like too... not everyone is a 20-something (at most) american

[3liza]

after meaning to get around to it for years i finally listened to almost the entirety of Sold a Story and it is as groundbreaking as everyone says it is. it's also the most confusing, to me, single event in American culture in my lifetime and my reasons for thinking that are pretty complex so im not sure theyre fully formed yet. there's a list of shit in this podcast that made me feel like i was going insane

i KNEW something was going on at a population level, i've been noticing it for years, people kept telling me i was imagining things, but i was RIGHT, two generations of kids have been reduced to barely-literate levels of language function because of this shit and you CAN see it and hear it while talking to people in the world!

the entire adoption of the Calkins programs in the first place were based on the majority of people responsible for American child education deciding basically overnight that "children don't need to learn phonics in order to become strong readers" which is literally and not figuratively equivalent to saying "children can learn algebra without learning what numbers are". it is so self-evidently false i dont even know how to respond to such an assertion. you have to be fundamentally devoid of common sense to think this is true. language is comprised of sounds (phonemes), sounds are represented by letters, letters make up the alphabet, the alphabet makes up words, and words make up sentences. you cant just skip over the parts of this you dont like, it's the basis of our entire civilization. "i dont need to learn individual notes i just want to play to saxophone" okay well. too bad? you cant

american primary education apparently has no communication whatsoever with the scientific fields of human behaviorism, pediatrics, neurology, linguistics, the science of learning generally, and there is next to zero communication between teachers who are actively responsible for educating children and the entire research field of educating children. they just dont talk to each other, at least in huge swaths of the country. in retrospect this is obvious, i just have been assuming incorrectly this entire time that maybe, surely, some aspect of how our public schools are administered is in some way being guided by scientific evidence and research. this has apparently not been the case for 20+ years. Lucy Calkins herself claims she "didn't know" that the research on how children acquire language had been essentially settled by the 1990s, she just wrote her stupid book based on her own self-assurance that what she THOUGHT children were doing when they learned language was correct. she ddin't check, she didnt ask about research or studies, she didn't test her hypothesis, she just told everyone she had figured out how to teach kids to read based on nothing but her own untested assumptions. and everyone was like "okay sounds good". every single person involved in this process is or was in a position of responsibility for educating american children. and almost none of them thought to ask "okay, but have you tested it? does it work?" because they didn't test it, and it doesnt work, and for some reason that was never even brought up

teachers kept being interviewed on this podcast who kept saying things like: "they never taught us how to teach children to read" and "they didn't teach us how children learn so i had no idea how it worked" and then explaining this was why they were so easily hoodwinked by the Calkins program. i don't understand this. what is actually taught during the two year degree programs at teaching colleges? if it's not child psychology, pedagogy, neurology, and actual techniques for teaching children, what are they teaching you to do there? one of my friends who went to a teaching college told me they mostly provided classes on lesson planning.

individual teachers apparently are not reading books or articles or papers on any of these subjects either. so having graduated from a teaching college knowing nothing about children, teaching, or even basic english literacy ("i didn't know how to teach phonics and no one told me" is another thing actual teachers kept saying on the podcast. girl, SESAME STREET can teach basic english phonics, and it does), almost none of them actually do any investigation on their own. they just show up to their workplace (the school) and "teach" whatever admin hands them. ?????????????? how is this possible?

i realized last night in a fugue of post-exertional malaise that the three-cueing method of teaching reading is training children to approach language very similarly to how a large language model does it. they laboriously instruct the children to guess what the next word in a sentence will be, often by actually covering the word with a post-it note and then cajoling and badgering the child until he guesses the word under the post-it, based on the vibes on the sentence he's reading. this doesnt teach you to read, it teaches you to act like youre reading

this isnt directly addressed in the podcast but we used to just teach everyone english like it was an actual system that has parts and rules and structures, because that's what a language is. everyone would start with phonics and the alphabet, then later do stuff like sentence diagramming and grammar, neither of which have been taught in primary schools in decades. i think i was probably the very last generation of kids to get ANY of that stuff unless they went to an exceptional school, and it was only because my 8th grade teacher knew it was important and went against school admin's instructions in order to teach it. the couple days of sentence diagramming and grammar he gave us, out of SPITE, have been more useful to me in reading and writing than the entire rest of primary english education i received in public school, and i didn't even go to a school that had adopted three-cueing stuff yet.

[bun-z-bakery]

(Repost from my abandoned account) these are just my personal head canons for dogday. this is a survivor au

(All characters are over 18 btw)

-dogday sometimes has dog like tendencies, like growling, barking etc.

-he doesn't remember a lot about his life as a worker but will share stories he remembers of his human life once you two become close.

-man is like a love sick puppy. First you save him? Give him legs? AND a home?! And his friends are here too?! You really are his angel.

-he's very protective of his angel. He can't have anyone take them away or even hurt them. Plus all those years locked away, he can't loose you, you're his hope.

-this man will most certainly plan his confession, script and all. Maybe you're away at work and this is something he's been working on for a while. He's always bringing you little gifts on his hunting trips (depending on if you like to collect rocks and such) but this dude went out of his way to find the best of the best. Even somehow found flowers beautiful enough to almost rival your beauty, keyword: almost.

-he enjoys spending time with you, poppy and kissy, he enjoys playing outside with you three, even if you guys have been out of the factory for years already. They still enjoy the outside world.

-I know bro is huge, like dude is taller than an American door way (according to some measurements fans have made, hes 9'5) if you're a shorty (like me 5 feet even😭) he will most definitely pick you up and carry you like a dogtoy. He likes the feeling of carrying his angel, it gives him a sense of pride doing so. Even if you accidentally hit the ceiling or he needs to really get down so you don't hit the top of the doorframe, he will always apologize or joke about it.

-he's a cuddler, he LOVES cuddling! He has his own giant dog bed in your shared room, but he prefers to sleep on your shared bed. If you're away from work and he's eepy, he'll pass out on your bed because it smells like you. Your scent keeps him at bay until you come home. Poor guy will shoot up and push anyone out of his way to be the first to get to you! He sits there on the floor waiting for his mandatory headpats and kisses as soon as he hears your keys.

-it takes his brain a few minutes to properly turn on. After all those years he finally gets proper sleep, I can imagine you waking up first and getting ready for the day to prepare breakfast for the group and you poke him, trying to wake him. He'll mumble some random stuff about not letting rats do taxes then fall back asleep only to be woken again by your pokes still talking nonsense. I can also see him sometimes waking up confused, you know like when you wake up your parents and they're mad for no reason asking what's wrong while gasping for air? (Just me?) I can see him being THAT dead asleep bhahsha

-my take on the survivor au is more of a modern take (as in yes the factory closed years also but reader is possibly in early to late 20s sometime in 20xx / non specified year) so they weren't an employee but probably knew someone like a family member who worked there or was dared to enter the factory (we'll see if I ever post my fanfic haha as these hcs kinda tie into that story) so dogday being alive in the 80s or 90s he probably has like the old school idea of love and attempts to swoon you as such. The flowers, cheesy pick up lines.

-I can imagine because he's not up to date with the newer terms and he might be confused while trying to seem cool haha. "Angel what does rizzler mean?" (Poor peepaw)

- Personally I love the theory that DogDay is an ex worker aka Rich. Which is probably why he was the leader of the smiling critters. Because he was mature enough to make sure everyone was in line/well behaved, I also think some other workers were turned into the mascots too (obviously) but maybe they trusted Rich more so they just threw him into the dance circle and hope that he'd be a good leader.

- this one ties into the first one btw! I like the think that maybe he was one of the mascots when he worked there. Like a guy in the costume who worked with the kids (hence the zipper, how else would the workers get into the bigger body suits?)

- I like to think DogDay likes when Angel calls him by his old human name. Maybe once he opens up more about his human life (or at least bringing up some of the memories he still has) he just randomly brings up his name when talking about a memory and hearing Angel repeat his name back, he'd probably like hearing it. It might make him feel like less of a monster in a sense. Granted I think he wouldn't care about what Angel calls him but he would most definitely prefer for them to alternate. Like you know when someone makes you mad and you use their real name instead of their nickname? He'd hate for his Angel to get mad, especially at him. But when living with 3 other people it can get a bit hectic.

"DogDay! Did you bring mud into the house?!"

"N-No!... "

*silence*

"RICH, WHERE ARE YOU?!"

*footsteps are heard and DogDay bolts out the door*

- Now this head canon I have can go either one of two ways, right? Hear me out. Listen up, listen carefully, and listen closely. (Lmk if you got that reference) ok so back to the zipper! I think the zipper just opens to his organs tbh like the zipper was just left functional in case he needed to be "repaired internally". BUT another thought, I also can see there being some sort of barrier! You know those stuff animals who have their stuffing blocked by a barrier so it doesn't fall out but the zipper opens to a compartment where you can store items? I kinda think that's whats there tbh, I mean it makes sense. What if one of the kids opened the zipper by mistake? Surely there would be a barrier just in case.

- as I mentioned in the last hc post, I can see him trying to swoon Angel in the old romantic type of way. I can see him pinning after Angel hard, at first they wouldn't get the hint, they'd probably think he's thinks he's indebted to them for rescuing them and giving the 3 of them a better and new life. But quickly they realize bro is in love. Of course poppy teases him about it too at some point lol. He doesn't really try to hide it either. I can see poppy and kissy thinking it's sweet and first then they get annoyed once you're the only thing he talk about lol.

- You're married. That's all! No but I can see in his mind you two are basically married. He'd probably want to have new custom star collars made for both of you or maybe even a ring for you and a matching collar or something for him to wear and propose. Of course it will bother him a bit because he can't go out with you, take you on dates or show you off but he trusts you (even though he gets jealous when you smell like someone else) he basically tries his best with what you guys have (If only there was a holiday that came once a year where you guys could go out dressed in customs without looking like freaks).

- He looks like the type of guy who would love pasta. I'm not sure why or how this even came into mind but I just feel like that's what he often wants for dinner. Poppy would probably eat fruit for dinner, kissy isn't really picky, but Dogday would probably be asking for either pasta or meat. Also I think Angel would be hesitant to feed certain foods to Dogday because you know, he's a dog (not really but hear me out) but because he acts like one at times I could see Angel being like haha nope you can't eat this!

*Angel eating chocolate cookies*

"May I have some?" *cutely pouts*

"I don't want you dying, love."

"You know I'm not actually a dog...right?"

ok ok you got me there" (they just really didn't wanna share lol)

- tbh this is more of a general head canon for the toys but I seeing as they had to resort to c*nnibalism. They clearly need food and water to survive. I think catcap was probably keep Dogday alive as a "lol now look at you now, look at me" (yes that's a BP reference) moment but only feeds him when he felt like it, since food is basically scarce in that place. I think that their human organs were transferred over but little things like veins, teeth, tongue, blood vessels basically anything that's not a major organ was made artificially and connected in a sense to those major organs making them function as such.

Yeah that's kinda it lol, there might be some more parts to this if I can think of anything else! But yeahhh that's kinda my hc and rambles lol (I tend to ramble a lot especially when I have to give context, I apologize!)

[alpaca-clouds]

Public Transport COULD Be Great

Americans visiting Europe, especially those more left-leaning Americans, will always be so impressed when it comes to our public transport. And it does not matter where they visit here. Netherlands? "Amazing Public Transport!" France? "Amazing!" Germany? "Amazing!" Even in the UK they will be impressed.

And I kinda get it. While once upon a time the US made a conserted effort to get people moving via train, that has been almost two centuries ago and by now they just decided that people having cars is making more companies more money, so who needs cheap public transport? And while I personally actually kinda liked the public transport on the east coast while I was visiting the US... Yeah, I am well aware that the east coast (especially the area between New York City and DC) is not quite representative for the US.

However, here is the thing: If you ask most Europeans about their public transport... Well, we'll complain as well.

Because they fucking ruined it!

See, here is the issue, in a lot of parts in Europe, at some point or another the government privatized some or all of the public transport. This hit some countries like the UK especially hard, but Germany was hit also quite a lot.

Because of that a lot of things happened that happened when you try to use capitalist logic onto something that cannot work under capitalism.

For example a lot of rails have been removed in areas where it was not "cost efficient" to run trains. Or if they have not been removed, they are at least no longer used. In Germany you will find that in the area where I am living (North-Rhine-Westfelia) we have somewhat good running public transport. Meanwhile a friend of mine is living in former East Germany. And something you gotta understand about former East Germany: After the reunification a lot of people from East Germany tried to move away from there, thinking they would do better in "West Germany". So you will find a lot of mostly empty villages and towns there. And you know what does not pay under capitalism? Right: Running trains to fairly depopulated villages and towns. So... This friend is forced to use a car all the time. Because the next train station that is actually still in use is 45 minutes by car away.

Sure, technically there is a bus running through her village... It comes 3 times a day mondays to fridays, 2 times a day on Saturday and not at all on Sunday. Also to reach the aforementioned train station, the bus connection would take her almost two hours.

Now mind you: There is a train station about 10 minutes by car from her. But that one has not been in use for almost 20 years. Because, again: It just does not pay. It is not profitable for the company, so it is no longer in use.

And here we get to the issue: Public transport is an amazing thing... But we see again and again, that it really only works in those cases where it is state-run and paid for with taxes. As soon as it is privatized it will just not work. Because, well... In general public transport really is not a thing that will be paying for itself. It is fairly expensive, and to keep it profitable you need to keep raising the prices. (As a German: Believe me, I know!)

Not to mention that company policies will lead to weird stuff happening with the trains. Here in Germany? Well, the biggest train company (that is kinda partly state-owned, but not state-run, so it is run under capitalist ideas) has promised their investors that the trains will not be as delayed as before. But given the piss-poor state in which the rail network is, this is just not feasible. So, what will they do? Simple! If a train gets too delayed they will just cancel it. Will that fuck everyone travelling over way more than letting the train delay for 20 minutes? Yeah. But they do not care. They only care about the investors.

And this is the general issue.

For public transit to work, you need to design the transit network to serve the people - and not to make money. Because it does not matter that there are only some old people left in some depopulated little town in eastern Germany or western England... Those old people deserve to be able to get from their depopulated little town to the next big shopping center and cultural center as well.

As long as you do not design the stuff with those people in mind...

Sure, it is better than no public transport. But it still sucks.

[dear-ao3]

who are the 20 f1 meow meows?

max verstappen (fast but an asshole on the track. lives in fear of his cats. winning everything.)

checo perez (might lose his spot. had two separate did not finishes in the same race. kissed another car at the hairpin)

sir lewis hamilton (fashion icon, classiest mother fucker you’ll ever see, knighted, just wants a comeback and to win his 8th world championship)

george russell (walking meme, looks like he belongs in the window of a tommy bahama, says crikey and blimey unironically, the most british person ever)

charles leclerc (the poorest little meow meow, is a millionaire but has a cracked back of his phone, either is fighting for the podium or crashes on the first lap, please dear god let this man win something he has the worst luck i’ve ever seen)

carlos sainz (smooth operator, dunks on everyone’s golf game especially landos, aparently doesn’t eat his pancakes with toppings, drives a volkswagen golf at least sometimes)

lando norris (usually getting told by carlos he sucks at golf, chronically online, has a blanket with george russell’s face on it, gets in trouble for being too sarcastic, please give him a win it’s been 5 years)

oscar piastri (has never once looked like he’s having a good time but almost did once while building a house of cards, hates horoscopes, almost got sued by alpine when he said he wasn’t signing with them after alpine announced he was signing with them, has an iconic mom)

fernando alonso (old man, retired and then came back for some reason, tad villain and he knows it, don’t mention taylor swift around him)

lance stroll (still waiting for his tennis career tbh, his dad bought aston martin to guarantee him a seat, rage monster)

esteban ocon (french, monster of a teammate aparently, once got beat up in the garage by max verstappen, besties with stroll and mick schumacher)

pierre gasley (also french, terrible awful haircut, did i mention he’s french, had his brain chemistry permanently altered by being teammates with yuki, photo dump king)

nico hulkenberg (looks like that one penguin with the weird hair from penguins of madagascar, dad, has raced in over 200 races and never been on the podium)

kevin magnussen (was kicked off haas because they wanted younger drivers only to reappear the next year after they fired one of the drivers for probably funding the russian ukrainian war, once fok smashed a door, has the cutest child)

valtteri bottas (unproblematic king, cyclist, makes his own alcohol, is ass out on netflix and has his own naked calendar called bott ass, mullet mustache man)

zhou guanyu (baby fashion icon, trying his best in a medium shit car, first chinese driver ever in f1)

daniel ricciardo (class clown, made the worst career mistake of leaving red bull and is now trying to get back in, from australia but is a texas cowboy, usually fucking shit up, just wants to tickle his scrotum and touch his nutsack)

yuki tsunoda (wants to chef, was forcibly moved to italy by his team cause he didn’t want to work out with his trainer, short king, usually gets sacrificed to the luck gods, cursed radios)

alex albon (so insanely barbie coded, filmed a cereve commercial in his hotel room with his girlfriend, definitely dyes his own hair with box dye, incredible oldest sibling energy, single-handedly carrying williams)

logan sargeant (what the fuck is a kilometer!!!! only american in f1, usually found in dead last or kissing walls, one of his essential items is heinz burger sauce, says mate with an american accent)

[creatortools]

Intern’s siblings :D

Of course, the Intern having siblings is probably not canon, this is just my version of Intern and their siblings. So here is Mark and Lily

No separate pictures just because I’m too lazy I’m sorry. Also probably most of my traditional art I’m posting here is drawings I’ve done partially at school. Idk man my hyper fixation on my listeners is crazy lol.

An extra art (with my pookie Intern) + full photo + Mark and Lily’s info will be added after the cut.

Mark:

-He/Him (Male)

-Mark is his nickname. His name is Asanuma Yìchén (Last name, First name). Yìchén means Universe or something like that.

-Mid to Late 20s, maybe even early 30s (I found out just after my Intern redesign post that the canon age of the Intern is 23, but I'm still keeping the age the same in my version.)

-Chinese/Japanese American, family moved to America when he was 5 and was exposed to many criminal gangs.

-5'9

-Stone's (Intern) younger twin brother. Lily's younger brother.

-As you guys know, Stone and Mark had a falling out. Stone did or said something to piss Mark off and Mark is still mad about it. He might hate Stone now, who knows.

-Mark and Lily are okay? with each other. They also barely talk to each other, probably almost never actually. Once Mark became an adult, he started to talk to Lily less and less before fully cutting Lily and Stone when him and Stone had their falling out.

-Asshole tbh.

-Loves those fancy alcohol drinks, maybe a martini? idk I'm a minor I can't drink

-Also loves Ho Fan, like Stone. Somethings don't change.

-Also Multilingual, knows English, Cantonese and Japanese. Japanese and Cantonese being his first languages. He's trying to learn German.

-Also quite strong and capable, but hasn't been working out as much as Stone and dropped martial arts before Stone did.

-His birthday is also the 18th of November, but Mark is younger by a few minutes.

Lily/Blossom:

-She/Her (Female)

-Lily/Blossom is her nickname. Her name is Asanuma Lì Méi (Last name, First name). Lì Méi means Cherry Blossom I believe?

-In her late twenties or early thirties most likely. She's married and has a one year old child.

-Chinese/Japanese American, family moved to America when she was young and was exposed to many criminal gangs. She moved into her partner's home once they got married.

-5'1 (She's as tall as me. I'm so short man can someone make me taller.)

-Two younger brothers, of course, Mark and Stone.

-She's more focused on her life, family and job since both of her brothers are capable of providing for themselves.

-Very motherly to everyone she loves.

-Loves Ramen, miso soup based ones and dipping ramen (forgot the actual name.). She also loves ice tea.

-Also took martial arts, but dropped it when their parents died.

-Her birthday is the 3rd of July (LMAO THE GENERATOR GAVE ME THIS THIS IS CRAZY).

Hope you like my silly silly characters because now I'm hyper fixated lol. I can't stop the grind...heh... I wanna make comic pages so bad but I've never made them before. Maybe, maybe not. I'll probably make another listener design before that though.

[gemsofgreece]

People are saying why are racists commenting on the live action of How to train your dragon because they race swapped a female lead.

It's always the same comments "it's a fantasy movie, chill" "stop hating on the characters". Well dear Karen i wouldn't mind if Disney wasn't so obviously greedy. They defend a corporation αν είναι δυνατόν-

The movies are supposed to be about Vikings myths so of course all the characters in the original animation looked like Vikings. They think people are hating on the actors? No the studios are the problem 😭

Same with the Witcher on Netflix. In which the series was based on a POLISH BOOK. And guess what? Zero Polands and the material was ruined to make it the next Game of thrones.

Some things like dragons and monsters existed and meant something to these cultures, but of course they always think progress is more skin colour than cultural heritage.

I don’t know what other ways I can come up to explain to them that I and all who agree would 100000 times over watch a show taking place in Africa with African characters about African heritage than one about a race bent Viking in which Nordic culture becomes like a pop culture pie anyone can take a piece from because ✨visibility✨🤡

Visibility is showing the heritage of those who are neglected and showing heritage accurately.

(Also you gotta love them calling everyone racist when they are almost certainly the ones who spend the most time thinking about skin colour globally. Fellows do I have news for you )

Another thing, many of these projects that based on the plot would need white / white-passing actors inexplicably race bend one character and the rest remain accurate. What does this tell you? That creators only do this to be “approved” and play the “look I got the diversity too!” card and not because this is the way they envision their work. Otherwise, they would have a cast where everyone is diverse, people from all the parts of the world, and not 20 north European looking actors and one inexplicable African-American, for example.

It’s really so hypocritical, I can’t believe people eat it up…

[bengiyo]

Theory of Love Romcom Rewatch Episode 4: Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011)

Once again I am watching Theory of Love because @lurkingshan gets specific pleasure out of making me change my mind about this show. This week we’re continuing with Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011), yet another American romcom (from the same year as Friends With Benefits) I watched for the first time this past Saturday. Shan wrote about this film’s belief in the earnest expression of love, despite the messes that causes, and how Third likely connected with Cal and Robbie. 

Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011)

I’m relieved that I finally genuinely liked a film in this project! I was also not expecting so many common gif reactions to have come from this film. In this film, successful American everyman Cal Weaver (Steve Carell)  falls apart after his teenage sweetheart wife, Emily (Julianne Moore) asks for a divorce after they’ve been together for almost three decades. A local player, Jacob (Ryan Gosling) gets tired of seeing Cal suck the life out of his local dating grounds, and decides to teach Cal how to be a womanizer like him. Cal finds some initial success, but can’t let go of his love of his wife. Jacob eventually falls for Hannah (Emma Stone) after she turns his bit back on him. Meanwhile, Cal and Emily’s son Robbe (Jonah Bobo) is dealing with an unrequited crush on his babysitter, Jessica (Lio Tipton), who in turn has a secret crush on Cal. Hijinks ensue.

I wasn’t sure I was going to enjoy this film when it started. I like Steve Carell’s brand of comedy, but I wasn’t too thrilled about the chain of crushes from the son to the babysitter to the father. However, this film succeeds because of genuinely great performances from everyone involved, especially Julianne Moore and Marisa Tomei. I loved the way this film showed how people can grow apart when they stop putting in the effort to maintain the relationship, but how the dedication and friendship doesn’t evaporate immediately in the face of betrayal and challenges. 

I completely understood Emily’s boredom with her life and desire to see something new after more than 20 years of marriage, especially when Cal’s first instinct in the face of challenges was to just roll over. I also get wanting to take an accountant that looks like Kevin Bacon for a spin. Julianne Moore is one of my favorite actresses, and she imbues Emily with such believably humanity as a wife who wants her husband to care about their relationship, as well as a very young mom now raising another set of young children. Her reactions to Cal’s promiscuity works so well because of how ugly things had gotten between them, something that Steve Carell has always been good at. 

One of my favorite developments in this show centers on Hannah. The late reveal that Hannah was Emily’s and Cal’s daughter works so well for me because we understood that Jacob’s issues were tied up with the way he thought his mom abused his dad (and possibly drove him to his death). We could see that Cal wasn’t happy living Jacob’s rude lifestyle, and it works so well that the daughter that Cal and Emily raised, who told a man who didn’t appreciate her that they were over, would be the one that turned things around for Jacob. Jacob has been playing in this dating pool in which women understand who and what he is; it didn’t surprise me that he was eager for a genuine connection and to stop playing the games. 

Despite how white and hetero this film is, I found myself really loving it. I have some notes (especially the final scene with Jessica), but I really loved how this film believed in the value of earnestness even in the face of its biggest messes. This is a film I could genuinely see myself watching again.

Theory of Love Episode 4

I will save more of my commentary for next week, because we have reached the most difficult part of the series for me. This week, Third and friends are running a booth for a competition, and he’s simultaneously dealing with Khai’s flirting with him. Third has wanted Khai to take his romantic interest seriously, but he didn’t know what to do when it seemed like Khai was finally ready to give it. 

Unfortunately, Bone has picked up on Third’s angst over Khai, and had conspired with Khai to test Third. Khai, who has already stressed that he likes the way things are with Third, doesn’t believe this and is certain that Third doesn’t like him. Third overheard their conversation in the bathroom (the worst place to discuss anything, honestly), and falls apart at the end of the episode. I am back to my Khai Hater Era.

That being said, I did like Shan’s point in her post that Bone conspiring with Khai is a great parallel to Two conspiring with Third to move in with Khai. I especially like this after watching Crazy, Stupid, Love. because that film stressed so sincerely how important being present and earnest with the people you care about is if you want to achieve anything meaningful with them. 

Thinking more about the film, I am certain Third empathized with Cal and Robbie on being let down in their relationships or crushes, and I just know his goofy ass wished he could be Hannah to Khai’s Jacob. That boy does not read films beyond the surface, and he continues to embarrass me every week. I’m looking forward to seeing Third be mad and cry a bunch in the next section. 

Tomorrow we’re doing 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), so I’ll cover yet another romance classic I’ve skipped. At least Heath Ledger and JGL will be there (and also David Krumholtz????).

[freezerbrldes]

A Long, Unfortunate while

PAIRING. Lucy Gray Baird x Coriolanus Snow

WARNINGS. Mentions of abuse and SA (not too in-depth but its still there)

AUTHOR'S NOTE. This is my first time writing and using Tumblr so please bear with me lol. This series is based on the album Preacher's Daughter by Ethel Cain. If you're unfamiliar with that album I highly recommend listening to it because it is honestly one of the greatest albums in the last decade. I changed some of the story up so it's not so predictable for people who know the lore behind the album. Also, I made Lucy Gray 18 years old and Coryo 20 years old for the sake of this story because it gets pretty dark towards the end (iykyk).

credit to @cafekitsune for dividers

now on ao3

Chapter One: American Teenager

I stand before the mirror, amazed at how the rainbow dress paired with the cream-colored corset and subtle makeup transformed my features. I’m not one to dress up, but since I’m attending the homecoming dance with Billy Taupe, I need to wear something other than my usual oversized t-shirts and baggy jeans. 

Never in a million years did I think he’d ever ask me out, let alone as his homecoming date. Billy and I grew up together in Shady Grove, a very small town in rural Alabama. We’ve never been close friends in school, but I always had a huge crush on him. He is the star player on the football team and is by far the most sought-after guy in school. 

Billy had been dating Arachne Crane, the captain of the cheer squad and the local bitch of Shady Grove High. He caught her making out with Fetus Creed under the bleachers after a game a few months ago, he broke up with her right on the spot. Since then he has talked to me more than he ever has. I didn’t think much of it until one day after chemistry class he stopped me in the hallway and asked me to homecoming. I was shocked but accepted anyway, hoping it would eventually lead us into a relationship.

I walked down the steps where my mother was ready with her Polaroid camera. 

“Oh my” she exclaimed, “You look beautiful.” She began snapping picture after picture, my eyes closed in almost every single one from how blinding the flash was. She grabbed my arms and tried to position me into a pose, taking even more pictures. After about 10 more photos, I had enough.

“Okay Mama, you got more than enough pictures, I need to go,” I say as I hear Billy pull into the driveway, honking the horn to let me know he’s here. 

“Let me go outside and say hi to the boy, I haven’t seen him in so long,” She says as she tries to open the door and walk outside. I immediately shut the door and blocked it with my body. 

“Please no, mama, he’s in a hurry and we gotta leave right now.” I began cracking open the door and inching my way through before my mother could get outside., not wanting her to embarrass men in front of Billy. 

Billy hops out of the truck and opens the passenger side door for me. 

“Wow, Lucy Gray, you look... stunning,” He says with a laugh as he looks me up and down. I blush at his words, not used to receiving compliments. 

“Thank you, Billy, you look great too” I replied. 

“Oh, Thanks,” Billy said. “It's the same suit I wore to your dad’s funeral.”

My heart sinks at his response.

My father passed away four years ago. He was the preacher at Shady Grove Baptist church for over 25 years. He was well respected around town. Everyone loved him and the services he led every Sunday. If only they knew what a monster that man was when he was not leading the congregation.

He and Mama did a good job of acting like they were happy together whenever they were at church or neighborhood cookouts, but no one could see the bruises that he would leave on my and Mama's bodies sometimes.

I shake myself out of my memories as Billy helps me into his truck and heads towards the school. The drive was mostly quiet. Every now and then he'll ask me about church or tell me about his recent football games, which I pretend to care about.

He parks the truck in the parking lot as I watch all the girls dressed in lavish ball gowns enter the school, they all make mine look insignificant in comparison. Billy helps me out of the truck and into the gymnasium. 

The room was filled to the brim with people, the DJ playing terrible remixes of various pop songs as people danced. I’m not a party girl, never even been to one other than birthday parties as a kid. The thought of the loud music mixed with sweaty bodies grinding against each other was enough to steer me far away from that lifestyle.

“I’m going to get us some punch, I’ll be right back,” Billy says as he maneuvers through the sea of people. 

I find an empty table in the corner away from all the commotion and make my way over to it. I take a seat and watch the crowd as everyone dances along to the music. Billy emerges from the crowd holding two glasses of red punch. 

“Thanks,” I say as I take the drink from him and have a sip. We sit in silence as the opening notes of Time After Time play. Billy looks over at me and places a hand over mine.

“Would you like to dance?” I look down at our hands and then look back at him. 

“Uh, sure, but I’ve never danced before,” I reply, my eyes avoiding his in embarrassment as I finish the last of my punch.

“That’s fine, I’ll teach ya” Billy stands from the table, his hand now holding mine, as he leads us to an empty spot on the dance floor. He places my hands on his shoulders before placing his on my hips. 

Billy began to sway us back and forth with the music and for a moment it felt like we were the only two people in the room. My confidence began to grow as I rested my head on his chest, listening to the beat of his heart instead of the music.

His grip on my waist got tighter as he pulled me closer to his body., my chest now flush against his. He begins kissing up the side of my neck as his hands move further down my waist and he grips my ass. I feel him snake a hand up my thigh and under my dress.

“Billy, what are you doing?” I muttered, trying to push his hands off of me, but his grip was too strong. At the same time, I began to feel a little dizzy, Did he put something in my punch?

"Just relax, baby," He whispers into my ear. He then grinds his crotch into my thigh as his hands search for the waistband of my panties.

"Billy, stop, let me go," I beg quietly, but he ignores my pleas.

Before he could get any further, a shrill voice spoke, causing Billy and I to both jump.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t Lucy Gray Baird, what a surprise! I wasn’t expecting Billy to bring you to homecoming. I see he’s almost won the bet.” Arachne laughed, and her cheerleader friends giggled along with her. “Arachne, leave her alone,” Billy muttered, getting in between her and me. 

“Bet? What bet?” I questioned. “Billy, what is she talking about?” 

“I-It’s nothing Lucy Gray really-” 

“Billy made a bet with Festus that he could get laid by the preacher’s daughter,” Arachne interrupted, grinning widely. 

My face heated up as I felt tears well up in my eyes. This was all part of a bet? I thought to myself. I glared at Billy as he desperately tried to talk his way out of this.

“I-I wasn’t being serious, We were just joking around, I would never try to pressure you into anything I swear.” He stutters, his hand scratching the back of his neck.

“Did you really think Billy would ever go for you willingly?” Arachne snickered, “You look like a circus clown in that dress, and besides, the only reason he came here tonight with you is to get a quick 50 bucks”

“That’s not true, I came here with you because I-” Billy is cut off by Arachne’s giggling once again.

“Oh my god Billy, you like her?”

“N-no, I didn’t say that-” Billy adds, before he finished his sentence I turned away and headed towards the door. Before I could get to the door, Arachne cut me off and threw her punch all over my dress, staining it a dark scarlet red. I felt all eyes on me as she began to laugh. Soon it sounded like everyone in the room was laughing at me.

I pushed my way through the crowd and ran out the door and through the parking lot, walking down the empty, dark road. The sound of cicadas chirping in the trees surrounded me as I made my way down the street.

I had no clue if it was whatever Billy slipped into my punch, but all I wanted to do was run into the forest and let the wildlife consume me alive. Anything at this point would be better than facing everyone in class on Monday, especially Billy and Acrachne, but the thought of leaving Mama all alone, not knowing what happened to me quickly sucked me right out of that thought.

About 30 minutes into my walk, Headlights illuminate the road as they head towards me. An old beat-up pickup truck pulls over on the side of the road a few feet in front of me. As I walk past the window is rolled down to reveal a young man with long blond hair behind the wheel.

“You know, it's not safe to walk on the side of the road when it's this dark,” he says with a friendly smile,  “Do you need a ride?” 

I took a moment to think. I hear a lot of horror stories about women getting kidnapped from hitchhiking like this, but this guy looks very nice and he seems to be worried about my safety. There’s no a way crazed serial killer would ever be in a town this small anyway. 

“Yeah, I’d love that,” I answered as I approached the truck, getting into the passenger seat. I got in and gave him directions to my house, which was about 25 minutes away from the school. 

“My name’s Coriolanus, what’s yours?” He asks, I notice his accent is a lot different from anyone around here, he must be from out of town. 

“Lucy Gray,” I replied as he began to drive.

“Lucy Gray.. That’s a pretty name,” He smiles at me. 

“You don’t sound like you’re from here, where are you from?” I asked, looking over at his large collection of cassette tapes on the dashboard. From the looks of it, he must really like Metallica.

“I’m from Florida, I’m just passing through here on my way to California.” He answers as he lights a cigarette. 

“You’re driving from Florida to California? Isn’t that like a 40-hour drive?” I inquired, this man has to be insane or something to wanna do that all by himself.

“Yes, it's a very long drive,” he laughed. “My father was a truck driver and would always come home talking about how therapeutic driving all across America was, I’m hoping I’ll find it just as therapeutic as he did,” Coriolanus mutters, he looked almost sad for a second but quickly snapped out of it. "And there are so many more opportunities for me out there than there are back home."

I could almost sense the sadness in the air as he spoke about his father, he must have lost his father too. Almost like he knew I was going to question him about his father, he spoke again.

“May I ask what you are dressed up for?” He asks, glancing at my dress.

“I was at the homecoming dance tonight at school, my date was a dick so I left,” I said, playing with my hands in my lap as I spoke.

“God, that sucks,” Coriolanus replied, “well, he’s missing out big time, you are a very beautiful girl” he looks over at me and smiles sweetly. “What’s all that red on your dress?”

“My date’s ex-girlfriend decided to throw her drink at me before I left, I guess she was jealous that I went to the dance with him instead of her,” I said as I laughed slightly, feeling comfortable around Coriolanus as I spoke about my humiliating experience.

“Yeah, I imagine,” He says as he looks over my dress once more.

I watched Coriolanus as he continued to drive down the dark highway. He notices and quickly looks over, his eyes meet mine for the first time. I’m taken aback by his blue eyes are, they're almost as blue as a clear sunny sky. He smiles as I blush and look back down at my lap nervously.

“I’ve always dreamed of leaving Shady Grove, starting a new life in a big city somewhere,” I confessed. 

Coriolanus looked at me as I stared out the window.

“I know we don’t know each other at all,” he started, “but if you were up for it, you could join me on my trip.”

I looked over at him again, my eyes lit up. 

“You want me to stay?” I asked, a smile forming on my lips.

“I won’t force you into anything of course, but I could really use the company,” Coriolanus smiled, “I feel like I might go insane driving all by myself,” He laughs as he waits for me to answer.

Living in a small town, you’re not really taught to not talk to strangers. Everyone knows everyone, a little too much sometimes. Coriolanus seems like a genuinely good person, and he’s offering me a chance to escape, one that may never come again. I know my Mama would miss me, but once I get to California I’ll be sure to write her to let her know I’m okay. This is my one shot at leaving the town, and I'm not about to pass it up.

“I’d love to join you, Coriolanus,” I replied, grinning at him once again.

He looks at me, returning a smile.

“Well then, let’s get out of here, Lucy Gray.”

[pixel-bloom]

OC Deep Dive Questionnaire Tag

Thanks for the tag @natolesims!!!

1. What uncommon/common fear do they have?

he has extreme anxiety and hates what people might think of him

2. Do they have any pet peeves?

chronic lateness. he hates waiting around for someone.

3. What are 3 items you can find in their bedroom?

"intellectual" books (is what his sisters call them), old figurines, composition books filled with thoughts

4. What do they notice first in a person?

Their voice, he's usually too nervous to look at people straight in the eyes.

5. On a scale of 1 to 10, how high is their pain tolerance?

Maybe a 5. He's no stranger to gym soreness, so he's used to pain here and there.

6. Do they go into fight or flight mode when under pressure?

Flight! In fact, he'll make a run for it even before pressure starts. Can't be stressed about a situation if you leave it before it gets stressful!

7. Do they come from a big family/are they a family person?

He has a mid-size family; two siblings, some aunts and uncles here and there. He loves his family and considers them his only friends. He's happy with that fact! They're the coolest people he knows--Mom is a lawyer, Dad builds furniture from scratch, sisters are artistic, his aunt is a musician/artist, and his uncles..uh they're kinda freeloaders in the city. Every kid's dream future 😎

8. What animal represents them best?

Hmmm that's a tough one. I'd love to say a grasshopper (haha) but let's go with a cheetah. Yeah I know you're thinking cool and collected, but cheetahs are actually SUPER anxious, expend a lot of energy with a task, and prefer to be alone. Also, he can run hella fast.

9. What is a smell that they dislike?

Burnt pancakes. Yuck.

10. Have they broken any bones?

No, he's pretty cautious. He's definitely gotten cuts and bruises galore though.

11. How would a stranger likely describe them?

Quiet (almost invisible) and soft-spoken. Just a kid that sits in the back of the class. He comes to school, then leaves. People would likely forget he was there.

12. Are they a night owl or a morning bird?

100% a morning bird. His parents are up at the crack of dawn and he's made it habit to get up early.

13. What is a flavor they hate and a flavor they love?

hate - artificial banana

love - matcha. mmmmm bitter.

14. Do they have any hobbies?

He's been told to write things down in notebooks (therapy) but he doesn't necessarily enjoy it--it's just something he does to regulate his emotions. He likes to watch bad movies, read old poetry, and hit the gym.

15. Boom, surprise birthday party!How do they react to surprises?

He hates surprises. If it's just his family, he won't be too upset. He'll put on a happy face and participate in any party things. If there's randos invited, he'll force himself to stay but he'll eventually wander back to his room. His parents have learned to not throw him parties.

16. Do they like to wear jewelry?

Somewhat. His sister is always trying to get him to pierce his face, but he sticks to his grandmother's necklace. He's thought about wearing rings, but he doesn't feel like he fits that vibe.

17. Do they have neat or messy handwriting?

Pretty neat for a teenage boy. Not the best but you could make it out. He tried to learn cursive to copy the script he sees in old poetry books, but got frustrated.

18. What are two emotions they feel the most?

Anxious & Embarrassed.

19. Do they have a favorite fabric?

Flannel. It's comfortable.

20. What kind of accent do they have?

If we were comparing him to everyone else...a normal American accent. Maybe one with a low inflection/tone. tbh only Theo has an accent in my game lmao

I'd love to see an OC deep dive from @payte, @potential-fate, @mosneakers, @sparkiekong, @ashubii, & @nitrozem ✨

[ripplover]

Ripp Grunt headcanons reloaded

Yes, they are back 🙏

I have the full lore for my Ripp on sims wiki but I wanted to make this post too. I have so many headcanons for Ripp and as a significant character for me, he gets his own post lol

Birthday

Ripp Grunt was born on the 13th of December 1988. At the start of the game, he is around 16-17. In my Road to fucking Nowhere fic, it’s 2007 and he is 18. He’s in his early 20s in the PSP timeline. Ripp is a year and several months younger than Tank and 4 years older than Buck. Johnny and Ophelia are two years older than him.

Height

Ripp is kind of short. About 5,5 ft. Tank and Johnny are taller than him and he hates it.

Identity

Ripp is bisexual and attracted to all genders. He doesn’t really care about what gender someone is. Ripp is open to seeing multiple people at once so is polyamorous. That’s also one way I interpret the romance aspiration.

I also headcanon Ripp as transgender. Specifically transmasc and non binary. Ripp knew he was trans from a young age, and like a lot of transmasc people, went down the “tomboy” to trans pipeline. He didn’t really know what that was until he was 14, then he started presenting the way he wanted to. Also Ripp chose that name himself 💜

Johnny and Ophelia were very supportive of him being trans. He had them at school when the bullies had something new to pick on. His mum Lyla, who he was very close to, was also supportive of course. Buck was young and didn’t understand fully at first but I’d also fully supportive. (Also my Buck headcanon is she’s transfem and comes out later in life lol). Lyla helped Ripp to start HRT.

General Buzz is weird about Ripp being trans though. He’s not transphobic, in fact he accepted Ripp as a man almost immediately (though he still messes up pronouns). The idea of toxic masculinity and being a man in the “right” way is very prevalent in the Grunt family though, and that definitely affected Ripp and the way General Buzz sees him. Basically General Buzz is a trans ally but that doesn’t change the fact he sees Ripp as a disappointment. The same with being bi. General Buzz doesn’t care who Ripp dates, as long as they aren’t green or have a hint of alien DNA.

Tank got used to Ripp being trans but nothing changed his strained relationship with him. Ripp was still a younger sibling he could take his anger out on to hide his own insecurities (Tank is definitely also queer.)

Ripp took Lyla disappearing very hard, especially since she was the one helping with his transition, and Ripp did not like being in that house with General Buzz and Tank. He got top surgery by himself, which made his dad pretty mad at him.

Ethnicity

Ripp and his family are American (or Simerican) but I have headcanons for his heritage. Ripp is a quarter Vietnamese from Lyla’s side. I know the game presents him as just being white but I do not care lol, I will project my South East Asian heritage onto the Grunt family. Lyla is biracial and Dutch-Vietnamese. On General Buzz’s side, he has Scottish heritage. The idea that Grunt is a mispronunciation of Grant is funny to me.

Personality

He’s a very sweet person overall. He’s friendly with almost everyone and hates conflict, but if he is confronted by someone he loves taking the piss out of them. He’s very positive most of the time despite his terrible life, although he has moments of being really depressed. Very talkative and a yapper. Tries to joke about everything and lighten the mood, even if he goes too far sometimes and upsets someone (then he immediately feels sad about it). Definitely swears a lot which his dad hates, but he loves annoying his dad. It’s very hard to push Ripp to a point where he’s scared, hurt and traumatised, but in the PSP timeline, that’s happened 💔

Relationships

Ripp and General Buzz do not get along. In my gameplay though, they often make up at some point so there’s a happy ending. General Buzz does secretly love Ripp deep down I think (he was devastated when Ripp ran away.)

Ripp and Tank used to be really close when they were young. The more General Buzz shaped Tank into a version of himself though, they fell apart, and Tank was soon taking his anger out on his younger brother. Like with General Buzz, I like to make Ripp and Tank make up. The PSP timeline can be too much for me sometimes lol.

Ripp was very close with Lyla, probably the most out of all three of Lyla’s sons, so he was devastated when she left, and even more so when he found out she died. Ripp gets very depressed thinking about her.

Ripp and Buck are very close due to them both having a strained relationship with General Buzz. Also they end up both being trans which they end up joking about later.

Ripp has been friends with Johnny and Ophelia since middle school. He looks up to them as I headcanon him two years younger than them. He hangs out with them a lot and prefers being with them to being at home. He loves being an idiot with Johnny but is sweet with Ophelia. He is also crushing on them both, at the same time being a third wheel to them dating lol.

Ripp met Lilith after both running away from home, and he became close with her for that reason. They love poking fun at each other.

Music Career

This section could be a lot longer but I’ve already written his whole music career on sims wiki. So this is just the basic stuff lol.

Ripp becomes a rock star. He started playing guitar with Johnny in middle school and Ophelia played keys. Ripp gets his own guitar for his 15th birthday from Lyla. Ripp and Johnny have their own little band called “Fish Tank” and they uploaded songs to Simspace, and performed at small venues (something General Buzz did not approve of.)

At one point, Ripp runs away from home and gets himself a small trailer with the money he saved working at the gas station. Away from his father, he has a lot more freedom. He still works at the gas station whilst going to a lot of music labels and he eventually gets signed to one. He has his first major song released through them.

Ripp is the lead singer and guitarist in his rock band, named Vandermorgan in honour of his mum. The other members are Johnny, Ophelia Lilith, and Mercutio, a friend from Veronaville Ripp aquires. Johnny is the rhythm guitarist, Ophelia is on keys and sometimes the violin, Lilith is the bassist and Mercutio is the drummer.

Ripp’s music style is very diverse, ranging from grunge, to goth, to pop rock.

Ripp hasn’t seen his dad in a long time but now General Buzz can’t escape him, cause Ripp is everywhere.

Other Headcanons

Ripp was an unplanned child. Lyla was happy to have him but General Buzz, not so much.

General Buzz sees a lot of similarities with Ripp and Lyla and he probably dislikes him cause he hates being reminded of her.

Ripp has been to a lot of schools, due to being in a military family. I think different cultures would interest him and he would pick up some words of different languages.

Ripp had behavioural issues at school and General Buzz insisted there was something wrong with him made him see a psychologist. Ripp has ADHD and autism, and is still a disappointment to General Buzz.

Ripp gets really fixated on music (both certain artists and creating it) or certain tv shows. He loves Nirvana and the sitcom with Lilith and Angela. Also some things that could be uncomfortable. As a child, he liked drawing disturbing things and when he’s older, he literally fixates on woohoo. Philosophy also interests him, especially death and the purpose of life, which is something he likes writing music about.

Ripp shows affection through touch.

Ripp is kind of feminine. Ripp doesn’t identify entirely as a man, being non binary as well. He loves jewellery and painting his nails.

Ripp has a brown piercing and a septum.

He gets a sleeve tattoo.

Has rarely ever cut his hair in his life. He lets it grow really long and he doesn’t care. He would hate for all of his hair to just be chopped off.

Smokes, both cigarettes and weed. He loves getting stoned with Ophelia and Johnny.

Is very artistic, and takes art in college. (His one true hobby is arts and crafts.) He loves drawing animals and characters as well as disturbing concept art.

He loves cooking and trying to cook new things (he has 10 interest points in food.)

Ripp is left handed, and plays a left handed guitar (which is impossible in sims 2 lol but just imagine.)

He has a tooth gap.

Ripp is a cat person in a family of dog lovers (he loves maine coons)

Although he doesn’t like to admit it, Ripp does have deep insecurities and is very depressive and mentally fucked up from his bad relationship with General Buzz and Tank, and also Lyla’s death. It’s even worse in the PSP timeline, and he’s engaged in S/H and abused drugs. He often thinks about suicide. Ripp can be clingy and he fears abandonment. His harsh upbringing led him to develop an eating disorder too.

Ripp is a romance sim because he wants the love he doesn’t have at home. He feels undeserving of a real relationship but at the same time he wants that so much. He gets tired of having too much love to give, and getting none of it back. Ripp’s need for love has led him into some bad situations and given him further trauma from that.

I don’t think Ripp is a cheater, or someone to just abandon his partner, or just want woohoo out of them, he has too much nice points for that. If there was a soulmate version of the romance aspiration he would probably have that (although he’s still open for polyamory). Ripp also fits characteristics of the pleasure aspiration a lot more than the romance aspiration.

Ripp wouldn’t be a deadbeat father either. In fact he would love his kids. He doesn’t want to be like his dad after all. He really cares for his partner(s), and his kids. Ripp would be a really fun parent, maybe a little permissive. Something I also think is very similar to what Lyla was. Ripp also gives me the vibes of being a secondary family sim. He wants to have the loving family he couldn’t have as a child.

Ripp was bullied in his school years. Specifically by two Strangetown townies, Kendal Lawson (my headcanon Strangetown high mean girl) and Tina Roanigke (Kendal’s best friend). They played a part in Ripp’s canon fear of toilets from too many swirlies on the PSP (Tank also played a part in that but I don’t think it was just him). Ripp was picked on by both boys and girls. Girls thought he was weird and boys would try and hurt him for wanting to fit in with them. Later in life though he puts this experience into music (Kendal gets a very special shout out.)

My oc x canon ship

Saving the best until last. I have an oc x canon ship with Ripp, the oc also being my self insert. I am completely insanely in love with Ripp and I also consider myself a selfshipper (my main blog is even a selfship blog just for him.) So here is Ripp and Lana 🙏

Ripp meets Lana at the gas station and he becomes completely in love. He’s really sweet and kind and patient around her. Ripp talks a lot and Lana barely talks at all due to their extreme shyness, but he doesn’t mind. He cares about them a lot, and Lana cares about him too, they comfort each other. He is the most calm and gentle to them, and loves listening to them on the rare occasions they ramble about their interests. Otherwise he’s just extremely happy to be around her. If the three bolts mean something, then they are soulmates 🙏

Lana also meets the extremely broken version of Ripp on the psp. He’s able to forget all his sadness when Lana gives him the love he needs and heals both his physical and psychological wounds. He’s also ready to kill Doctor Dominic Newlow lol (Lana has her own trauma too.) Lana makes Ripp’s life in the barracks a lot easier.

So anyways those are my Ripp headcanons (at least the ones I’ll put on Tumblr). Idk how to end this so I’ll just put a bunch gifs to show my love for him 🙏

[tubbytarchia]

Someone asked for other reasons I hate Estonia but there's a lot so I'm making it into a post instead lol

TLDR: very conservative (eg homophobic), expensive living rates and low pay, we get no good stuff, estonians are rude, russians in estonia are rude, domestic abuse rates, estonia is a lame country

I am not claiming that these are exclusive to Estonia, please fuck off if you think that makes my complaints invalid

Estonians are piss conservative (so majorly transphobic, homophobic, anti-abortion etc) (Also racist)

Estonians are fucking rude. There is extremely little common decency like respect for the elderly and junk. Estonians are so quirky because they're so introverted (Estonians very frequently describe Estonians as such) (and often easily aggravated) and then they're SOO introverted that they refuse to even help others. It's not a norm to tip ANYONE or thank workers like bus drivers. I sprained my knee at a store entrance and that shit hurts so I had to keel over for awhile, and yet I felt like I was being a bother by not getting out of the way enough for all the people who couldn't care less. I have so many personal examples but I'll give you my best: My pregnant sister passed out in the middle of a major grocery store only for NO ONE to call for an ambulance until she came to and had to do so herself.

Something I barely ever hear anyone talk about!!! But domestic abuse!! Casual domestic abuse is so normalized that no one ever says anything, a survey from a few years ago found that 1 in 6 Estonians are sexually abused in childhood alone. A survey from this year found that 41% of the women questioned experienced domestic abuse at the hands of their partner. I cannot understate how big of a problem it is that victims just DON'T TALK (and that's not their fault!!!! It's the country's!!!)

About 25% of our population is Russian, and I would not complain about this if 1. Russians living here weren't massive assholes a lot of the time, expecting everyone to speak Russian instead of them learning Estonian or just being fucking respectful (DISCALIMER MY EXPERIENCE AND WHAT I'VE HEARD FROM OTHERS and junk, I'm not generalizing everyone, is this really a racist comment? I seriously do have wayyy more negative experiences with Russians than pleasant, that doesn't mean there aren't decent or nice Russians living here) and 2. if Estonia DIDN'T ENFORCE Russian. I get it, the Russian occupation and whatever shit! But these days you can't even become a good paying DOCTOR with a doctor's degree if you don't also speak Russian

Minimum wage WAS recently increased but the increase was to 4.60USD. While Americans get 7.25USD and I've heard you can get paid like 10USD as a fast food worker too which is crazy to me. Not in Estonia you fucking can't. Wages in general are pretty piss poor and it's often more affordable to just work overseas

Estonia is quaint which is also a plus but to me mostly a minus because I feel so stuck here. Non-Estonians are like "but you have a lot of forests!" like lmao that's the highest possible praise that Estonia can be given. It is incredibly boring here and our highest "mountain" is 318m

The cities are boring. I feel that only two places here can even be called cities, the rest are more like big towns. The capital has some very cool and pretty places but that's about it (ofc Estonia has many cool and pretty locations but compared to other countries? Ughh. Barely any skyscrapers, not many elevated roads or tunnels... all that good stuff)

Our prices are set to become the most expensive in all of Europe!! Local prices have already in some cases doubled in the last year and continue to increase almost monthly, set to increase by another 20% at the start of 2024 lmaoo

Not many big brands. We get some fast food places but no Wendy's or Starbucks or whatever. Nobody wants to invest here, we got Subway recently and they left not even a year later

Not much geek stuff. Estonia has 2 anime stores TOTAL. 4 proper card game stores TOTAL. I'm frankly amazed we even get a singular convention, but we have absolutely no locals. Stores have started selling stuff like Pokemon toys very recently. Even in Finland (overseas neighbor), Pokemon/Digimon/Yugioh was everywhere. And here? Lmao no not ever. Not even ANY school clubs or anything. We get choirs and that's it

Shipping is abysmal. It costs like 10 bucks to send most stuff from Estonia to ANYWHERE in the world, yet it almost exclusively costs 30-50 bucks to ship anything from the US. And shipping fees from even the UK aren't very good either. (Which, again, abysmal accessibility to geek stuff, because people barely ever sell anything in Europe internationally. Mostly US and UK people do, esp because they are the only ones who get any cool stuff)

Local production is expensive as shit because there's little choices because we're still a tiny country. Ofc having your stuff produced in China is always cheaper but then you also gotta wait 3 months for shipping!! Unless you wanna pay 50EUR+ for it of course

Very strict gun laws so I can't go and buy a gun to off myself from this miserable country

[fostersffff]

*sidles over* so.....heard you got upset over ZTD......I'm something of a ZTD hater myself....idk if you have the mental RAM to really get into it rn considering your current projects but I'd love to hear you complain about it at length

So, granted, it's been... seven years (!!!) since I played it, so I don't remember every minor detail, but I can absolutely talk at length about The Fucking Stupid Thing That Fucking Sucks And Makes (Almost) Everything Bad In Retrospect

(big dumb spoilers for ZTD beneath the break)

Of the (admittedly few) VNs I've read, nothing has deflated me harder than getting to the Transporter Room. 999 did a really good job of building up to the idea of morphogenetic fields, and VLR then took that concept and slowly ramped up the "power level" with shifting, so the player could accept greater feats of psuedoscientific nonsense. But that was the universe, and the suspension of disbelief held.

Then, in a single fucking gameplay segment, Uchikoshi went "oh yeah ayylmaos are real and they left an Actual Time Machine that works in the exact specific way that I need for the plot to happen the way I want it to". It cheapened basically everything else that happened afterwards, too! Like, Sigma and Diana realizing Phi is their daughter should be an emotional megaton, and it felt like that at the time, but there something gnawing at me that has since widened out into a cavern because the way they got there was so unbelievably convoluted and unearned.

Delta also sucks in a way that is... kind of what I was expecting? Living up to the hype from VLR was always going to be a long-shot, but then he actually gets lamer as time goes on. On the subject of "shit not being introduced", he gets a set of powers that is effectively parallel to shifting called MIND HACKING because there's literally no other way that he could manipulate the events of the game into happening the way they needed to, so he just got a set of powers that could manipulate the events of the game into happening the way he needed to.

Another thing that jumps out at me is that 80% of how Mira was handled was actually Really Fucking Good, but the last 20% sucks so hard it, again, almost invalidates all of it. Smoking hot uninterested super babe dating The Biggest Loser On Earth who seems (to the player) like she's just there to have big titties for the player to look at is then revealed to be a violent serial killer who can only feel when she's murdering, which is the actual reason she's so uninterested and "dating" the loser is so she can murder him later. But then it turns out (checking the wiki real quick to refresh my memory) that one of her first victims was the loser's mom, which actually tied into everything else that ever happened in the series. And then they have the audacity to throw in the happy epilogue where they're like "BABE WE'RE MARRIED NOW AND WE'RE GONNA GO USE THE (fucking) AYYLMAO TRANSPORTER TO CURE YOU OF YOUR BRAIN PROBLEMS". Not everyone needs to have a happily ever after ending!

Carlos sucks too, but in a benign way for the most part? Like, he's there because they needed three people on a team, and he's a Main Character Man, and that's about it. It's very funny that the Grand Finale is him pointing a gun at Delta, like this has been his story all along, when it should probably be Akane beating him to death.

Also, the last and most obvious thing, the "style" of ZTD was always an annoying point, because even though the character artwork is gorgeous, they instead decided that they had to use some of the stiffest looking 3D models "to appeal to Americans" or something (even though the American fanbase evidently was cool with character portraits considering they bought 999 and VLR in the first place), made worse by the fact that it's originally a 3DS game, so even uprezzing doesn't help all that much.

I think that's all I can remember, but seriously: more than anything else, fuck that Ayylmao Transporter.

[airandangels]

1. I'm very fond of Waihi Beach. It's more of a summer holiday place than a live there place, though.

2. For a holiday that is actually about relaxing I prefer New Zealand, if I want to experience something I can't here and am willing to get very tired, I would want to go overseas.

3. My country has nothing BUT access to sea! Sea, sea, all around us and in between us!

4. mince and cheese pie

5. My first language is English, and I'm guessing this is more about non-English-speaking, non-American countries. If we're talking about the indigenous language here, I like "Poi E" by the Pātea Māori Club. (This is low-hanging fruit, everyone likes "Poi E.")

6. Not applicable

7. Don't feel qualified

8. Yes, Australians. Sometimes the English. On rare occasions, the South Africans. This mostly comes from Americans and the English themselves.

9. The neighbouring country I know best is Australia, but I'd like to visit the Cook Islands.

10. Bugger.

11. I'm just going to interpret native as "born here" for this one, Margaret Mahy. I love Margaret Mahy. Her books were very formative to my sense of magic and adventure; in my childhood she stands alongside Roald Dahl in that respect.

12. Not qualified to comment. I'm really noticing how much this meme is assuming "not American" means "not English-speaking," which is fair enough for many parts of the world but...

13. Always blow on the pie.

14. Yes.

15. Togs, togs, togs, undies! togs.

16. That we're boring and that we're boring.

17. Yep.

18. I'm a Pākehā who speaks English, that's all I can really say about that.

19. Our flag sucks. It looks too much like Australia's and is generally British Empire Blah. We should've changed it to Red Peak but people couldn't agree. Lazer Kiwi would also have been grouse though. The national anthem's okay.

20. Inescapably rugby.

21. David Seymour and Winston Peters. Oh wait, do you mean as some sort of gift or message to aliens, not just to get rid of them?

22. I'm proud of our history of progressive milestones, like the first country to give all adult citizens the vote, and the country with the first openly transgender mayor and later member of parliament. I'm proud of us for banning sexuality/gender conversion therapy. I'm proud of our humour and our music and our strangeness. I'm proud of our Space New Zealanders. I'm proud that we made The Lord of the Rings (embarrassed that we made the latter two Hobbits, I enjoyed the first). I'm ashamed that we lead the OECD in youth suicide. I'm ashamed that we had the biggest increase in income disparity in the developed world between 1985 and 2005. I'm ashamed that our politics have been so captured by neoliberalism that only the Greens and Te Pāti Māori seem to believe anything else is possible. I'm ashamed that we're still not properly honouring the Treaty of Waitangi. I'm ashamed of the Mowbray family and all the plastic crap they make.

23. Beer. If not beer, bourbon and cola RTDs.

24. Traditionally Straya. We make fun of the Americans a lot too but recently it's not such fun anymore. Either they're too nasty or we just feel sorry for them.

25. No, I'm glad I'm from here.

26. Actors from New Zealand almost always play other nationalities in Hollywood movies. I actually can't think offhand of a big movie from overseas where a New Zealander played a New Zealander. Kiwis play Mandalorians and Martians and elves and/or just learn to do an American accent. Probably the New Zealand actor currently/recently getting the most acclaim for playing their actual ethnicity if not nationality is Anna Sawai from Monarch: Legacy of Monsters and Shōgun.

27. Karen O'Leary.

28. My country has absolutely oodles of mountains, lakes and rivers! We're fairly riddled with them. Here's a fun fact, a standard part of formally introducing yourself in te reo Māori is to name the mountain and river to which you have the closest personal connection. I don't claim that sort of connection but I'm quite fond of Lake Taupō.

29. I'm from Auckland, everyone else has beef with us.

30. My dad is English. My cousin David's partner Lin is Chinese, but I don't know her well.

“hi, I’m not from the US” ask set

given how Americanised this site is, it’s important to celebrate all our countries and nationalities - with all their quirks and vices and ridiculousness, and all that might seem strange to outsiders.

1. favourite place in your country?

2. do you prefer spending your holidays in your country or travel abroad?

3. does your country have access to sea?

4. favourite dish specific for your country?

5. favourite song in your native language?

6. most hated song in your native language?

7. three words from your native language that you like the most?

8. do you get confused with other nationalities? if so, which ones and by whom?

9. which of your neighbouring countries would you like to visit most/know best?

10. most enjoyable swear word in your native language?

11. favourite native writer/poet?

12. what do you think about English translations of your favourite native prose/poem?

13. does your country (or family) have any specific superstitions or traditions that might seem strange to outsiders?

14. do you enjoy your country’s cinema and/or TV?

15. a saying, joke, or hermetic meme that only people from your country will get?

16. which stereotype about your country you hate the most and which one you somewhat agree with?

17. are you interested in your country’s history?

18. do you speak with a dialect of your native language?

19. do you like your country’s flag and/or emblem? what about the national anthem?

20. which sport is The Sport in your country?

21. if you could send two things from your country into space, what would they be?

22. what makes you proud about your country? what makes you ashamed?

23. which alcoholic beverage is the favoured one in your country?

24. what other nation is joked about most often in your country?

25. would you like to come from another place, be born in another country?

26. does your nationality get portrayed in Hollywood/American media? what do you think about the portrayal?

27. favourite national celebrity?

28. does your country have a lot of lakes, mountains, rivers? do you have favourites?

29. does your region/city have a beef with another place in your country?

30. do you have people of different nationalities in your family?

[bookmuseum]

[REVIEW] In the Miso Soup by Ryū Murakami

4/5 stars (★★★★)

"After listening to a lot of these stories, I began to think that American loneliness is a completely different creature from anything we experience in this country, and it made me glad I was born Japanese. The type of loneliness where you need to keep struggling to accept a situation is fundamentally different from the sort you know you'll get through if you just hang in there. I don't think I could stand the sort of loneliness Americans feel."

The choice of having a 20-year-old male Japanese sex tour guide and an essentially lobotomized white American murderer-psychopath as the novel’s main protagonists was pretty brilliant. Murakami managed to encapsulate almost everything I find eerie about Japan as a non-Japanese who’s also been colonized by them. (I've been colonized by America too so it was like a double whammy). I know Kenji's not a universal Japanese narrator, but I found his point of view really fascinating and insightful: "Very few people of our generation or the next will reach adulthood without experiencing the sort of unhappiness you can't really deal with on your own." He's not paralyzingly cynical or totally pragmatic. There's just something about how he thinks (and Murakami's writing style) that makes you want to keep turning the page. I could really feel for him and sympathize with where he was coming from, even though I didn't necessarily agree with most of the things he did, said, or believed in.

First off, I’ve never been to Japan and a small part of me doesn't want to ever go. When I say that, people’re always surprised because 1. "Your research is on Japanese literature and you love a lot of Japanese media!" and 2. To so many people, Japan’s this ideal vacation spot slash perfect getaway paradise, but it’s always been plain freaky to me. I don't know how to explain it, but Murakami summed it up really well: "But people in this country don't know how to relate to outsiders because they haven't had any real contact with then. That's why they're so insular." (Murakami says some stuff I disagree with in this passage that I didn't fully quote, like how everyone else in the world has been colonized/invaded except for Japan ergo it's an outlier, which is objectively untrue, but I digress). Basically, Kenji's correct: Japan is insular, it’s a no-man’s land for the Japanese, and in essence -- even in the wake of modernity -- it's still cut off from everywhere else. It's even cut off from a large portion of Asia, which even Kenji points out as ironic since Japan tried to take over the continent yet felt nothing for the people it wanted to conquer. That cold Pan-Asianist mentality still lingers, even today. That creeps me out. Of course, I'm all too aware that since I've never actually been to Japan and haven't really interacted much with Japanese people (I have, and some agree with me, but you can never be too general) to form a substantial opinion, I still can't shake this feeling of emotional disconnect that Kenji managed to put into words.

Ironically, according to Murakami, even though Japan is so self-centered, its also so out of touch with its own inner and outer reality. As the book vividly illustrates, Japan is opened up to the rest of the globalized world, but the country has simultaneously clung so hard to that old world policy of Sakoku traditionalism and history whilst also trying to catch up with the West after Meiji that its become so unrecognizably absorbed by its own modernization, but only because of a matter of time, not principle. Japan’s both futuristic but colossally stuck in a past it can’t even recognize, and it's intrinsically tied to its emergence as a dominating economic world power after World War II:

"You can’t change the grownup world to suit your idea of how things should be, so you have to learn to press the right buttons, and kids growing up find themselves constantly in situations just like that cat’s. There’s no consistency to the way your parents and other adults respond to you when you’re a kid. It’s especially inconsistent in this country, because there aren��t any solid, standard criteria for judging what’s important. The grownups live only for pronouncements by adults that make it clear that all they really want or care money and things with established monetary value, like designer goods. The media -- TV, newspapers, magazines, radio, whatever -- are full of about is money and material goods. From politicians and bureaucrats to the lowliest office drudge drinking cheap saké at some outdoor stall, they all show by the way they live that money is the only thing they aspire to. They’ll puff themselves up and say 'Money isn’t everything,' but all you have to do is watch their behavior to see where their real priorities lie."

Sidenote: Kenji touches on a vast intergenerational gap riddled with mutual animosity: "We don’t live the way you tell us to because we’re afraid that if we do we’ll grow up to be like you, and the thought of that is unbearable. It’s all right for you because you’ll be dead soon anyway, but we’ve still got another fifty or sixty years to live in this stinking country." (Even though he's specifically talking about Japanese youth, I felt his sentiments were relatable to anyone who's young now in the postmodern world. Things are just so fast and unnatural with the way everything's structured; adults can't be trusted anymore).

Anyway, I loved Murakami's portrayal of postmodern Japan worshipping money, material, soaplands, meaningless pleasure, greed, and capital. I loved how Kenji, who takes on the reluctant voice of a disillusioned youth, just accepts the fact that Japanese people love all things Western at the cost of their own cultural erasure and sensitivity. I loved the deadness of it all: ". . . [A]pparently none of the Japanese knew anything, which made her wonder if people here never came up against the kind of suffering where you can't do anything but turn to your god for help." While the image is interesting and holds some truth, Murakami suggesting Japan's neo-capitalism and gross over-consumerism is because the country, unlike North America and Christianity, lacks an overarching God to pray to in times of hardship didn’t seem like a fair comparison to me since it prioritizes monotheism and unfairly disregards the richness of Japan's religious practices and history. In general, I think the world itself has become more godless than ever.

I don't wanna talk about "the Great Omiai Pub Massacre" scene. I liked it, but I think people focus too much on it to the point they mistake the novel's themes being centered on that instant. It's definitely the most visceral and shocking part in the book, -- really well written and psychologically terrifying -- but Kenji's thoughts and actions after the massacre were the most interesting to me -- more compelling than the actual scene itself:

"They were like automatons programmed to portray certain stereotypes, those people. The truth is it had bugged the hell out of me just to be around them, and I'd begun to wonder if they weren't all filled with sawdust and scraps of vinyl, like stuffed animals, rather than flesh and blood. Even when I saw their throats slit and the gore oozing out, it hadn't seemed real to me. I remembered thinking, as I watched the blood drip down from Lady #5's throat, that it looked like soy sauce. Imitation human beings, that's what they were . . . . What did I have in common with the victims? Just that we were all human trash. I couldn't kid myself -- I wasn't so different from them. That's why I understood then, and that's why they bugged me so much."

What a great inner monologue. Perfectly encapsulates what Murakami's trying to say about urbanized consumer culture and postmodern society. From the fact that we never really know what most of the victims' names were (Yuko and Maki might've been using stage names), to how the stuffed animal metaphor foreshadows what Frank later says about how he feels detached from his own body, I thought this part was very evocative and penultimate. Kenji's observations about his life and the people he interacts with were just the right amount of self-deprecating whilst also externalized outward loathing that ironically still translates to a hurt ego. Murakami didn't lean in too far on the edginess aspect, which I appreciated: "I wasn't sure I knew any longer what was right and what was wrong. It was a very precarious feeling, but it hinted at a sense of liberation like I'd never experienced. Liberation from the countless little hassles of everyday life. It was as if the border between 'me' and 'not me' was dissolving, leaving me in a sort of slush . . . I was going somewhere I'd never been before."

The miso soup metaphor kind of fell flat for me, but the more I thought about it the more it fit. I just think Murakami could've developed it a bit better from earlier on in the novel. The scene where Kenji and Frank go to his extremely frozen ex-hospital hideout ("What a weird place this was, I thought. It felt completely isolated and, partly because of the cold, like being on another planet") hideout share a cup of instant noodles was interesting: You have to put in a powder mixture with the hot water to make the noodles themselves, which relates well to when the two eventually eat the buckwheat noodles once New Year's arrives. All the noodle-eating and connecting it to one's life and raison d'être foreshadows Frank dropping the unhinged miso soup line at the novel's close.

What I think Murakami's saying is that Japan’s like miso soup because, even if you try to mix it, the paste clumps will always settle at the middle after a while and leave the rest of the broth sort of transparent and filmy, which is what makes miso soup so discernable. It's a metaphor for globalization and how Japan can’t be totally mixed with its surroundings due to its own paradoxically self-perpetuated isolation complex, which Frank as a foreigner manages to highlight really well: You can be in the miso soup (the belly of Japan and all its multilayered complexities -- which Frank also notes smells like human sweat to represent Japan’s exhausted middle working class), but you're never the soup itself; Frank and non-Japanese will always be gaijin.

I think that's why Murakami decided that Frank never hears those bells (at least we as the reader never see it happening) because they’re not meant for an outsider like him, which is sorta tragic in its own way (if you disregard the murder part) because he was looking to release himself from his inner despair by coming to Japan, but instead he ended up in a country that matched it tenfold and he got swallowed up in all of it. Frank was out of his league in Japan, funnily enough. And Kenji taking the swan feather at the end, which was mucky, is a symbol of Japan being “given” worldly goods and outside influences wrapped up in bows, strings, and enclosed envelopes, but in the end they’re impure offerings, like souvenirs from somewhere else that’ll never assimilate with the country itself. Swans aren’t native to Japan either, but they migrate there, as Frank points out. They’re not native to where Frank lived in America either, and I'd say there’s a strong chance that the “swan” he mentions seeing as a kid is a Canadian goose since its feathers are gray, but then again you can't exactly take Frank's word too literally because, as we all know, all he does it lie and kill people.

In the Miso Soup was a good read. More thought-provoking than I expected, which was a nice surprise. I look forward to reading more of Murakami's work in the future.

[jc-lambert]

Harley Davidson Motors

To be perfectly honest with you...

I just had a big fat series of seizures which resulted again in nuclearly driven thunderstorms and me waking up dead under the Amidon Bridge. Too: I am sort of off my medication so let me check my blog from yesterday to see what, when, and where my mind was prior to contacting you.

I am sort of dead set on a Cooper Clubman, but have always been told to buy from Elway.

Which are sold somewhere in this region. However it occurs to me that there is this big huge giant issue that is most likely to pop up called "Civic & Business Competition and competative markets" (which are truly the reason I am to be kept in a mental institution. I would rather kill someone and engage in racist and regionalist genocidal war tactics when such markets pop up. Especially those that would strip one of their speech and religious rights) In most cases: I would rather kill someone for the suggestion that I spend my money or credit on any form of combustion engine technology or even waste my time speaking to those who do use combustion engines in their daily lives.

However there is this moment, when my feet are unable to walk more than 20 miles a day and when a car is needed due to everyone being at class war with the Greyhound Consumer and corporate war with Greyhound Inc. The last time I tried to ride to Kansas from Vancouver, it took the purchase of 2 tickets, the station was full of body bags containing dead people, and I didnt make it to my final destination. Instead I found myself kidnapped and hostage again by the same business networks who have ALWAYS demanded that I eat meat and drive a fucking goddamn automobile made by slave driven American corporations, and perfectly of human fucking goddamn design.

It's truly like that when my siblings or educators are given any voice or audience in whatever part of the world I live in.

When you mention "Harley-Davidson" I would be more interested in discussing classified patents with the engineers at the factory.

You know, as a Wichitan. Motor bikes are truly moreso my mother's bag. I am moreso to be kept on a pedal trike with a basket or vendor's fridge. It's because she finds combustion engine technologies to be more agreeable whereas I cannot be near them. Too: since that woman likes to call me a monkey and gank my "human/mohawk" cards from me (while being an abusive psychotic senile cunt), it becomes I am disallowed any form of rights and it becomes I am disallowed any form of anything with a wheel or a gear.

So...

My people and I have sat down and put together a little something something in design but lack resources. It would basically be the truest meaning of a violation of the Quantum Initiative, however it would take care of problems for those who are forced to live outside the Human Demographic while ostracized by the Capitalist and Communist Communities. (Do remember, almost everyone has a fascist communist dictator, her name is "Mom". If you have one of those, you are a capitolist or a communist.)

Here: we have the Spirit factory as well as you know the Cessna-Raetheon-Boeing history and goings on....

Which people in my scene could use a bike capable of a tri county hop for the purpose of quick entry and escape.

Authorities have become quite a problem for any and all bikers in this area.

Local biker gangs have finally learned to use the riverwalk and nature trails to elude authorities, especially durring and after raids on gas stations.

The same way all persons and non-persons with interdimensional capabilities and states of being have done for years.

See Also: Hendo Board. Anti-Gravity technologies are expected to remain classified until the year 2075 while AFM technologies are officially declassified (I think). Any and all technologies and patents involving the manipulation of time or the passing of information retrograde to dates expired, are to always remain classified information as per the Quantum Initiative.

So: I would have to be working with a felon to get anything of that nature done. 

You know, getting everything everyone seems to want.

Then there is also this moment...

When many people illegally gambled and maintained that "hoverboards" do not exist and "put it on everything".

Which means many people are at a loss of everything and their everythings are not yet collected.

So, may I borrow your debt collectors and just go get the set of wheels I would rather have? Which truly are in Delano (Del Ano) district of Wichita.

Too: I am worried about counterfeit merchandise. I am currently wearing a pair of boots from the cannibal demographic that were made in Asia, and are marked "Harley Davidson". The boots are perfectly wonderful, I love them: but I would hate to be wearing something overpriced, made by slaves, and sitting here just being a ho dontchya know in Kansas yo perfectly kidnapped and wearing fishnet...

and that something has the name "Harley" on it.

Naturally speaking...

I would be wearing Doc Martens or Birkenstock out of protest of American Authority....

However combat boots designed by Asian Slaves kept by the United States Military and sold only on the Gambino Counterfeit market....

those work and yes they are comfortable and wonderful, but most likely counterfeit merch.

Should they not be counterfeit merch: all corporations could collect "corporate criminal charges" which could reverberate all the way through even to the sales team.

So hopefully theyre not sold by your store.

[finnothehimbo]

I work on a trauma unit. ICU is more intense care the stuff you don’t go straight home from. You get transferred to us when you’re more stable then we transfer you home, to rehab or to a long term care facility. We get all the severe cases that you will almost definitely survive.

I’ve seen teen age girls get paralyzed while being driven to a highschool dance.

I’ve seen a healthy dude in his 30s year old slip going down three stairs from his porch to the sidewalk (as we all do how many times a day?).

He tried to grab the rail and like some final destination shit that swinging C shaped motion while grabbing the rail and still hitting the ground cracked the back base of his head on step. Paralyzed from the neck down. He was on our unit do to caregiver neglect. He had pressure wounds to the point you could see bone.

I’ve seen a women get rag dolled by a car while pushing a stroller through the cross walk. Her baby was miraculously fine. But the rag doll pulled her legs in opposite directions paralyzed from the low back down.

There was no divine plan. There was no neglect. There was no signs. Something very normal went wrong. In the comfort of their own home, on walks, at work, doing normal things we all do.

The thing is denial is one hell of a drug. It says no *I’m* the medical provider. No I’m not dumb like them. It would never happen to me. When all of these people were living life then things outside everyones control went wrong. If I can tell you anything it’s that One day we will all be disabled.

Statistics are not in your favor to be fully functional past 60. Most Americans live to 78. That’s 20 years of disability. I’m terrified to be in a nursing home and you should be too. I’ve also worked in nursing homes. Staff will absolutely make you feel like a burden for asking for your burnt grilled cheese to be remade. Currently nearly all of us are all looking at cafeteria food at best. We’re looking at 17 years olds with no licensing taking care of us because they’re some of the few people in the work force who aren’t burnt out and willing to be underpaid for “experience”. We’re looking at care home staff declaring what your allowed to wear in your own home until you die.

Disability rights aren’t a *them* thing. There’s no way you can guarantee you won’t be disabled. Some of our most severe disabilities are progressive so you can stay in the safety of your own home exercising eating right and never talking to strangers and your own body can betray you.

That’s a process we have to have therapists come in for on the trauma unit. Your body is supposed to protect you. Then one day it can’t. One day it’s outside of everyone’s control. We’re not gonna un-paralyze you. We’ll teach you how to live again yes. That won’t un paralyze you though. Seeing how people abandon disabled folks is traumatizing in and of itself. Not having the ability to drive in America can leave you stranded.

We need community. We need rights. We need to make sure caregivers doing their best are protected and disabled folks are too.