#and demanded to know why i use it when it wasn't relevant to my visit AT ALL

[insipid-drivel]

"Biz, what would you like for your birthday this year?"

"For nobody to misgender me for a day."

Turned out too much to ask (:

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for breaking off a friendship without an explanation after a boundary has been crossed repeatedly?

This is one of those "happened a while ago, but still on my mind" stories. I (then 26F) had a long-term close friendship with a classmate from highschool (then 25F) in which we'd been really through a lot together, too much to recount here.

Relevant to the story is that I had just survived cancer a few months earlier, though. Also probably relevant is that we had started drifting apart a little bit recently anyway, because I wasn't as available for daily phone calls anymore due to a new job and a new relationship.

To get to the matter of the friendship break-up fight: I usually proofread her papers for university as a courtesy, she didn't proofread mine, which I didn't mind - orthography is a skill of mine and she showed up for me in different ways. Now it was time for her to write her graduation thesis and I had agreed to help her with it if (!) she managed to finish it a couple days before the deadline this time, because I knew I was gonna be busy on the weekend of the deadline (hand-in on Monday morning). She had a history of procrastination, so I made that clear beforehand.

Friday evening rolls around, she hasn't send me anything yet and I figure she has it covered or found someone else to help her out.

On Saturday evening I'm entertaining guests, two friends who were emigrating halfway across the globe for work the next week. I haven't looked at my phone in hours, as I find that really rude on such a special occasion. I get a call on the landline from my thesis friend, telling me she's done and demanding I get on it immediately. I tell her that I'm busy hosting friends, and that I don't know when I'll next see these two.

She gets nasty. Demands again that I get right on it and to throw my guests out now. I can only put this down to severe stress. I tell her that I'll do it Sunday morning, but not now, and hang up. I get back to my goodbye party. Sunday morning I do the proofreading, send it back to her, we talk a little on the phone and I can tell she's still mad at me for blowing her off.

When I probe a bit and ask what's wrong, she blows up at me and tells me that she had expected better of me, that she expected me to be there for her and not other people in her time of need because she was there for me when I had cancer. That I should count myself lucky because unlike some other friends, she didn't leave me over my illness. (Which did happen, other friends left.)

I get very upset and tell her how much that hurts, that I don't feel it's fair to have this brought up in this context and that if she uses my cancer against me again, friendship over. She hands in her thesis on Monday, gets an A- for it.

Fast forward a couple months, a common friend calls me and tells me my thesis friend had said some incredibly rude things about me and she worries. I have her tell me the story and lo and behold, it's the same complaints: I wasn't grateful enough, didn't value her sacrifice during my chemo enough (visiting me in the same city every two weeks to watch shows together), she expected more devotion etc.

I tell the shared friend and thank you and block the thesis friend on all social media and my phone. I get calls from a hidden number at an insane rate for a week, which I don't pick up, and then that stops too - I'm still not sure if that was her, but the timing was... weird.

The shared friend tells the thesis friend that she told me, so the thesis friend definitely knows what caused me to block her - but I wasn't the one who told her why. Some of our shared friends still feel like I was an asshole for cutting her out like this, so am I?

What are these acronyms?

[fakecrfan]

hey so I was thinking more about the Jongerry possesion (WHICH I LOVE) and, not to derail, but this would be such a funny setup for Jongerrymartin???

Picture: It's season three, Martin definitely has a crush on Jon and Jon probably has some sort of feelings for Martin that he refuses to think too much about. I get the sense that with their fusion, Gerry is the only one who speaks (with Gerry's voice, not Jon's) while Jon only communicates through his thoughts. What if Jon wasn't able to filter them so well? They're thoughts after all. So as Jon relays relevant information on people around the institute, Gerry can instantly tell that he's a bit sweet on Martin.

But Gerry is also a bit of a prick. And still pissed at Jon. So when their fusion finally meets Martin, Gerry's like "Ahh so this is the famous Martin, huh? I can see why you like him, Jon ;)"

Martin meanwhile, who naturally assumes that this is some circus bullshit, screams, pulls the knife he's started carrying since Peter's first visit, and stammers out a demand to tell him what the hell he is and what he did with Jon. It's oddly charming. Gerry was mostly just trying to aggravate Jon earlier, but Martin is actually quite cute, isn't he? Hm...

(Gerry probably takes too long to answer and Martin throws a nearby mug at their head. Ouch. But it's better than being stabbed and Martin even helps them ice it, later.)

-Lighthausen

Why do I even BOTHER making AUs I’m always gonna be shown up by the people in my inbox. That’s it. I’m retiring. Everyone go follow @lighthausen instead.

Okay, that aside, time for me to Expand on this. (cracks knuckles)

So Martin does pull out the knife and threaten him, but also this is season 3 Martin and something has happened to Jon so he’s also probably crying and shaking and his voice gets high pitches and he asks “What happened to Jon?” in a way that wrenches Jon’s heart, which is very annoying because Gerry also feels a pang in his chest as a result. To which Gerry grumpily decides to reach out to Comfort and goes “hey… Jon is alright. We’re planning to fix--”

But Martin takes advantage of his guard being down to grab him in a very amateur wrestling hold that Gerry nonetheless can’t get out of because Gerry is a weak bitch who never studied BJJ or anything, and Jon is like half Martin’s weight. 

“I’m going to bring you to the others and tell them!” he says. 

Jon immediately gets a pang of fear because we have a murdercop back in the Archives, worse than Julia and Trevor, we’re going to die. Gerry quickly tries to parse this panic and weaponize it

“Wait! I--urgh. If you tell them, your, um, Daisy? Definitely going to kill Jon along with me.”

Martin stops. Gerry coughs.

“But you know, I was already looking for ways to um, get out. This whole possession thing was an accident. Jon made a stupid mistake,” --I was SAVING you from them, ingrate!-- “And we’re looking to fix it. So, if you keep our secret and help out, you can still save Jon!” 

Martin lets go. He’s glowering way more fiercely than Jon believed was possible on him. “Fine. Let’s talk then.” 

Gerry shuffles around a bit, thinking before he smiles. “Why don’t we talk over, uh, coffee?”

The sensation Gerry gets from Jon is something akin to a record screech halt.

NO. 

“Coffee?” Martin asks, warily.

“Yeah, I could really use one right now,” Gerry says. 

YOU’VE NEVER LIKED COFFEE IN YOUR LIFE. I SEE YOU, LIAR.

“I mean, you know,” Gerry says, “It would help us cool off a bit, get to know each other in a nicer setting…”

“I don’t think we need to get to know each other,” Martin says. 

“I mean, you will have to know what the deal is and how this happened,” Gerry says, gesturing to the body he and Jon are currently timesharing. “But I mean, I guess Jon already has let me know a lot about you.”

DON’T YOU DARE TELL HIM ANY OF THAT! CEASE!

“Here, I’ll show you where Gertrude used to go for her morning brew,” Gerry says, gesturing. “We can talk all about you, me, and Jon there!”

NOOOOOOOOO

But Martin grudgingly follows, and that’s how he becomes the secret keeper and helper for the duo.

[the-river-person]

Any interesting world-building tidbit that wasn't included in your tales? This is a very interesting world you've got

I have three major bits that I desperately wanted to include in the story but never could find the right moment for. 1. (This hilarious dialogue snippet from Gaster and Alphys that never made it into the story but I decided was too funny to not save.) Alphys: (laying on floor) I’m nothing. Not a scientist. Useless. I’m just garbage. Gaster: (glances down at her briefly, looking thoughtful).... you’re recyclable. Alphys: !?!?!?!?!?? 2. I wanted to better explore the area below Waterfall, the deep pits that all the falls plunge down into, where once Alphys stood and considered throwing herself down into. The concept of it was a sort of transformation for Alphys and Undyne. They return to this place that might have been a place of tragedy, and they make it the start of something amazing. The cliffs below were riddled with caves and openings, an entire city carved straight into the rock, with grand staircases that lead down, and elevators that see a lot of use for those who don't want to walk (or can't). Can you imagine the place? Beautiful caves where every window opens up to the underside of the cascading, thundering waterfalls. And because they had hundreds of years to develop it all, the Lower City had gardens and fascinating landmarks to visit, a gallery devoted entirely to the art of Alphys' favorite animes (and oh boy were there some truly gorgeous works there. For some reason there was also a portrait of Mettaton as God and Alphys as Adam in a lovely oil painting that is a sort of imitative transformation piece of Michelangelo's very famous "The Creation of Adam". Nobody really knows who painted it, nor why, but the gallery director informed the public that it was donated anonymously as a gift to commemorate the gallery's Grand Opening.) Because Undyne had a huge part in the City's inception, there ended up being several small schools for various physical activities such as: Wrestling, Ballet, Clogging, Modern Dance, Taekwondo, Spear fighting, Sword fighting, and Water Aerobics. Also one very tiny school for Piano that consisted of Undyne herself and whoever she was teaching to play at their lessons three times a week. Down below are the Depths, the deepest and darkest part of the Underground's caverns. A massive lake that the falls plunge into. Most of its life has been spent without light of any kind, and even now it's still very shadowy. The Lower City of the cliffs sort of spills out between waterfalls to drift around the shore of the lake. But even 300 hundred years later it hasn't all been explored and the Lower City hasn't expanded much more (even with the Underground populous trying their best to spread out, they can't possibly fill every space. I'm working with an upper limit of 1,400-2,000 monsters total in the Underground, with a lower limit of 322 for the souls visible coming from Asriel in the game when he breaks the barrier. Due to the fact that Ghost Monsters were excluded from the soul snatching event, and the fact that there is literally no way to estimate how many spiders are in the Underground, both have been excluded from this counting.) At the far end of the dark lake a lonely outpost sits, home to a very very few monsters who either prefer the total solitude and darkness, or have come there for reasons of science. To study the pools of super-heated water and geysers, or the aquatic life somehow managing to thrive in the pitch black lake that is swimming with garbage from humans and monsters alike, or even geological strata that possesses very interesting formations this far down. There are numerous guidelines in place that prevent Monsters from staying at the Outpost for more than two months at a time for Mental Health concerns. Both Royal Scientists tried (separately) to use their position to override this rule. Undyne was sent to retrieve Alphys and bodily carried her back despite protests, and Queen Toriel herself came to order Gaster back to the Upper Underground (there were fireballs thrown before he finally gave up). 3. And finally, I actually fully intended to have a scene in the story where Sans demanded that Gaster tell him exactly how long they spent trapped down there, after all, he's the only one who kept track of it if you recall. But I completely spaced it when it came to writing those last few scenes. So I'll tell you my final calculations here. We know that Determination had a strange effect on the magic of the Barrier. Whenever a Reset happened, time in the Underground would move a tiny bit slower than time outside. The time spent inside the Barrier, counting both the truly ridiculous amount of time wasted in resets by both the Human and by Flowey, as well as the 300 years afterward that this story covers, comes somewhere around the area of 51,967,952,715 years. Or Fifty One Billion, Nine Hundred and Sixty Seven Million, Nine Hundred and Fifty Two Thousand, Seven Hundred and Fifteen. An insane amount of time. What’s my explanation for how the minds of various characters remained intact? Well, Gaster spent long long periods of time sleeping. He wasn’t fully himself yet as his assistants hadn’t managed to collect enough pieces of him. So unstable and having a warped perception of time kept him from actually going insane, instead letting him sleep for centuries at a time. Sans actually didn’t start to become fully aware until quite a long ways into the resets, and then spent a while trying to figure out what was going on, fought with everything he could for a while in endless genocide routes, and then eventually lost hope entirely and sort of... went on automatic for a long time before he woke up enough to change something (a single question was all it took). And Flowey stayed in a similar state for thousands of years, quietly repeating the exact same conversations, the same actions, the same patterns. The only times he was even aware enough to notice the passage of time was when something new happened. These are not in any way realistic ways of reacting to such a vast period of time. From what science we understand about the brain, it would barely last more than a couple hundred years at the very most, but probably less than that. And that’s if you can keep it in perfect condition without any decay. Memories would begin to go long before that, only fragments remaining and the brain keeping only what is relevant to you now. But lots and lots of old stories depict supernatural and magical beings as sleeping for centuries in forgotten temples, under castles, in sealed magical caverns, in caves on beds of treasure, and a thousand other variances. So I wanted to explore that in the way of a part of the Monster Soul that would act as a self defense mechanism to the Mind of the Monster who was somehow living and living and living without possibility of dying and needed to be able to stay sane throughout that. So it either makes them sleep, or in severe circumstances it can put them on a sort of automatic mode where they repeat a sequence ad infinitum. Both have their roots in folklore, but the way it works is my own interpretation of the idea. Outside the barrier, however, is a different story. The full total of time that has  passed out there is 10,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000. Known as Duotrigintillion, or also as one Googol. While the Underground got slower and slower and slower, the rest of the Universe continued on at its usual pace. The planet earth was destroyed by the Sun going into its Red Giant Phase, and then it became a White Dwarf. Then a Black Dwarf. Galaxies and super-galaxies went slowly dark, matter was dissolved or eaten by black holes, even black holes eventually began to decay due to Hawking Radiation. And because the light, garbage, and air being let into the Underground were the exact same stuff that was being let in at the beginning and was just on repeat forever, the Monsters never noticed. It was only when a run went on a little longer than usual, when the Barrier started trying to correct itself by syncing up time again, when you could see the darkness beyond. A darkness without stars and without life. Only cold and shadow, forever. The absolute and inexorable Heat Death of the Universe. Is it the only Universe in the Multiverse that has lived its full possible lifetime from beginning to end? Possibly. Ink would know. Whatever the case, its certainly a very very old Universe indeed (It probably is one of several branches off the original Universe, a stray timeline become a Universe in its own right).

[magister-christophe]

First, hyperbole isn't a strawman. Saying you were "gobbling up" photos isn't a strawman. You unquestioningly accepted (at the very least in this post) what was shown in a select few photos, of a detention facility that doesn't normally allow cameras, as proof against claims of unethical treatment.

Secondly, you refer to their bias:

Although I didn't mention why you brought their bias into question, the point of my mockery wasn't to say "everyone has bias so this is silly", but to juxtapose your mistrust in the magazine with your blind trust in government when they're both guilty of the same crime of spreading misinformation. This is just nitpicking at that point. Even in this post you say there's "no evidence" to doubt these photos, but Rolling Stones' one false accusation is evidence to doubt them. As if our government hasn't engaged in fabrication on a massive scale repeatedly throughout history.

I don't care if it's considered hearsay. If several eyewitnesses are providing testimonials that implicate our own government in unethical practices, your priority as a citizen and a patriot should be to demand evidence to the contrary - not blindly defend the fucking government. The legal system and the values it's built off of are there to defend us as citizens, not the U.S. government.

On top of all that, this isn't even hearsay. It's been confirmed by the DHS that the conditions are terrible. So this whole point is moot.

"It's certainly not for a deterrent against illegal immigration"

Skip to 7:28 if the time stamp doesn't work. This is straight from the horses mouth, so I'm not sure why you're selectively choosing to ignore it.

You have plenty of reasons to believe the standards are unacceptably low, you're just choosing to ignore them. The rhetoric used by the administration to describe these people since Trump's original campaign, where the adminstration has chosen to concentrate their efforts to fix the problem, the change in relevant statistics from the last adminstration to this one, and now interviews from parties either visiting or currently inside these facilities, up to and including that official report I linked that verifies what people have been saying - it all adds up to being compelling evidence that you're on the wrong side of history here. The only reasons you have not to believe it are a couple staged pictures and willful ignorance.

This "tin foil blanket" shit you keep bringing up is literally over a year old. I don't know why you keep regurgitating it as if it's some crux of the claims you're arguing against. Your "correcting" of misinformation was done by CNN and every other major news outlet left and right over a year ago. "Correcting" these claims isn't important when the issue is far greater than the material used for their blankets.

So this narrative thing. There's two definitions here, the first being a very diluted definition that basically just means "the telling a series of events". In the context of a political discussion this isn't how it's used. The second more specific definition is the relevant one. It implies that I'm spinning the details in a way that reflects my bias, in order to better suit my argument. I'm telling you that I'm not doing that. I'm not representing this situation in such a way as to conform to a specific aim or overarching set of values. I'm merely stating what I believe is happening based on the evidence we've seen come out.

"Point out where I did that fam"

Gladly:

Who is "you guys"? Exactly none of this applies to me. You just assumed it did. You assumed that, because I disagreed with you, I must hold all the views you think are common amongst "the other side" (however you perceive that). Every single thing I've said is in response to words you've written, except for the quotes obviously written to mock you, which you seem to have understood from the very first post. If you understand it to be mockery then calling it a strawman is a waste of time. If you can't constrain your logic to tolerate a bit of mockery then just don't acknowledge it or ask me to stop.

Trump has not even grown into being a 3rd grader.