#and that i'm not just some regular person they talk to compared to the hundreds of people they've met atp

[exhaslo]

Helloo! Can i request about moth reader and yandere miguel?.. I really appreciate all your writing! I hope you had a good day!

Tbh I'm not sure if you actually mean "moth" or if you meant "goth" but you know what...

Why not both? Haha, I think I have an interesting idea for it.

Warning: Possessiveness, experimentation, fluff, mentions of sex, manipulation

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This was NOT how your experiment was supposed to go.

This was NOT how you expected your life to turn out.

This was NOT how you wanted Miguel O'Hara to see you.

You had always been the oddball at your job. Most told you that it was rare to find such a 'creature' like yourself. It was always frustrating to explain to those ingrates that you were just expressing yourself the way as many did during the Great Hero Age.

You were a proud goth. Not many committed to this life style anymore as they focused more on the future. Hell, you had spent a good amount of money trying to find old CDs and Vinyl's from back in the day. There were many things that had disappeared within the last hundred years.

All you wanted to do was bring back an old culture to the year 2099!

The only person who did not mind your lifestyle was one of your regulars...

Miguel O'Hara

The man was the definition of fine. He was tall, hot and oh so perfect. He had wanted to get to know you at your little coffee shop and quickly became your regular.

Miguel was understanding. He enjoyed listening to you talk and even took your suggestions. You knew someone as perfect as him would not join in your lifestyle, but you were just happy that he bothered to give you the time to explain.

However...

How would Miguel react to you now?

You were desperate for money, so you decided to take an offer from Alchemax-the biggest company in the city...If not, the world. The only problem was that you didn't expect for the turnout. This was not what you were expecting at all!

It felt like a nightmare! You felt different already compared to your futurist coworkers, but now...to your fellow humans? Alchemax turned you into a freak! Who would bother to look at you now? What were you going to do now?!

"Ah, my dear (Y/N), how beautiful,"

---------

From the moment he laid eyes on you, Miguel knew that you were special. Call it fate, but Miguel just knew that you were meant to belong to him.

Miguel knew that he had to control himself. He didn't want to scare you after all. So, he started by stopping by your work. Bringing up small chat, getting to know you. Loving everything about you. Loving to find out new things about you.

When you weren't working, Miguel would follow you home as Spider-Man. He needed to protect you. Such a fragile human like yourself knew not of how to protect themselves. You were a target for people to pick on.

And who better to protect you than Miguel?

Miguel made sure that no man got near you. Every guy who even dared smile or tried to flirt with you disappeared. Everyone who dared give you a hard time, Miguel made sure they were taught a lesson.

The more Miguel got to know you, the more he became obsessed with you. You were perfect for him. His lovely little doll. Miguel made a special room for you in his place. Put everything you would like and even started to take some of your stuff.

This room was going to be yours very soon. That bed would be where Miguel will show you his love. Where you will conceive his child and become his wife. Your body and soul will belong to him.

Miguel knew you were short for cash. He knew that no one wanted to help a freak like you. It was a shame. Only Miguel knew how wonderful and kind you were. How amazing your lifestyle was and how this world was too naïve to embrace you.

So, Miguel thought of a plan. He watched as you accepted the offer from Alchemax and went to get your blood done. It made Miguel shudder as he watched you undress for the doctor, wanting to make sure that you were healthy for the test.

That body was only for Miguel to see, but he will let this slide since it was a woman doctor.

Once the experiment began, Miguel watched from the sidelines. He waited for his moment to swoop in and change the procedure. Why? Because Miguel was going to give you a reason to stay with him.

"What have you done?!" You cried out, sobbing at your new form.

The doctors and scientists panicked and fled to find some information and excuse for what went wrong. While Miguel stood in awe at your beautiful new form.

Your DNA was now mixed with that of a moth. You had large gorgeous wings and your hair had streaks of white. You were crotched down on the floor, sobbing as you tried to cover yourself from the bright lights.

"Ah, my dear (Y/N), how beautiful," Miguel couldn't help but say cheerfully as he approached you, "Don't cry (Y/N), it's going to be okay."

"M-Miguel? W-What are you doing here?" You sobbed quietly, covering your eyes, "I-It's so bright...I'm getting dizzy."

"Shh, I know. I know,"

Miguel was careful with your wings as he wrapped his arms around you. Your warmth was comforting. Your scent, better than he could ever imagine. Who better than to love you now than him?

"I know you're confused, but come with me. I'll take care of you."

---------

Miguel was true to his word. You had followed the man whom you had a crush on, scared for your new form. Miguel gently explained what happened, saying that it was an error on the scientists he watched over. Since it was under his watch, Miguel claimed to take responsibility for you.

You wanted to find it strange that Miguel already had a room for you, but you were too stressed to care. Your mind was all over the place and your body felt strange. The room was dark and cool. Much to your liking.

"(Y/N), I brought you some food." Miguel called out.

As he entered, he held up a small lantern, to which you felt drawn too. You pressed yourself against Miguel, wanting to reach for the light, but Miguel chuckled and brought you back to the bed. His hand stroked your cheek, placing the food on your dresser,

"You are so cute, (Y/N)," Miguel whispered, kissing your head. You hummed lowly,

"Why...are you so kind to me?"

"Ah," Miguel chuckled lowly as he held your hand, "Because I love you. We were meant for each other."

That sounded nice. Honestly, who would love you now as you were? Hell, who would even want anything to do with you now? You were part moth. At least now your gothic lifestyle matched your new look. Hell, it made your wings pop out more.

"Miguel...I...I um, I like you too."

-------

Yes.

YES!

Miguel could hardly control his laughter as you fell into the palm of his hand. Of course you loved him. You had no one else to turn too. No one else to help you.

Miguel made sure to keep you believing that you needed him. From helping you figure out your powers, to fucking you senselessly during the night and day.

Miguel gave you everything you wanted.

Just as long as you behaved and listen to everything he did and said. Miguel smiled as you approached him in the living room, showing off the new gothic attire he had bought for you. Doing a little spin, Miguel groaned softly as you let your wings spread.

"So beautiful." He hummed. You smiled, sitting on his lap,

"Miguel...could we go out? I want to fly for a bit," You begged.

Miguel just smiled as you waited for his response. You knew of his secret and made sure to not do anything he wouldn't like.

"Of course, baby, but I have to give you a good reminder on what to do and what not to do,"

You just nodded, smiling as Miguel pressed you against the couch. Your back to him as your wings were on full display. Miguel groaned softly as he held your waist, ready to give you some good reminders about going outside.

After all...

You were Miguel's.

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Def unique and different, so I hope you enjoyed!!!

[kira-anon-uwu]

chunk from my write's block document

context: i have a fic just for me that i've only shared the majority of with one person that i only work on when i can't focus on anything else. it probably will never see the light of day but here's a funny part that i genuinely feel bad not using in something meant to be posted.

~-~-~

He climbed the ladder in the meantime, idly tapping his hands against the empty part of the shelf as he waited for Wilbur to come back.

"So, I'm hoping you spent your time at home resting,", Wilbur started as he handed up books.

Tommy let out an annoyed groan, contemplating dropping a book on the man's face. "Can we talk about literally anything else?"

"Thoughts on the art of eating sand-"

"I slept while I wasn't here, yeah."

Wilbur exhaled out of his nose with amusement. "That's good. And you explained it to your parents?"

"Yeah, and they didn't bother me about it nearly as much as you are."

"That's not as comforting of a statement as you think it is."

"It's my way of telling you you should drop it,", he rolled his eyes.

"And this is my way of making sure I'm not going to have to file an insurance claim of some kind because you dropped dead in the middle of my store."

"Please, give me some credit; I'd go die somewhere out back, probably."

"Tommy, am I going to have to start making regular checks of the alley to make sure you're not sitting back there like a salvage animatronic?"

"Y'know what? Yes, you do. Gonna wait for you to drag my ass back inside so I can hide in the vents and kill you."

"Which one would you be?"

"You can't hit me with a question like that and expect an immediate answer,", Tommy stopped to think about it, ignoring the way Wilbur was laughing at him as he genuinely considered it, "Probably be Lefty, I recon."

That made Wilbur laugh even harder, dropping the book in his hand back in the box as he tried to collect himself again. "Why Lefty?"

"Because he's cool, and he's got the fucking puppet inside of him."

"I was assuming you'd say some shit like Moltent Freddy."

"Well yeah, if I wanted to be basic about it."

"And what about me, then?"

"Easy; you get to be purple guy."

"Tommy, I didn't sit there and listen to you explain that whole fucking timeline for nine hours for you to compare me to a child murderer."

He looked down at the man with the smallest amount of empathy he could muster, giving him a shrug.

Wilbur glared at him before moving the ladder down the shelves.

"Holy shit, you don't have to prove my point!", Tommy's grip on the ladder tightened, and he leaned closer to it as the wheels grinded against the rails.

"Sorry, couldn't hear you over my insatiable bloodlust. I'm trying to make Remnant."

"Think you making me bust my fucking head open would be Agony instead!"

"I am being one-hundred percent honest with you when I tell you I do not know the difference between the two, and I genuinely do not give a fuck."

"I don't think Scott Cawthon does, either."

"Can we stop with the FNAF talk now, please?", Wilbur sighed, "Bringing it up again reminded me of how exhausting it is to think too hard about it."

"You're the one that brought it up!"

"And now I'm the one putting it away; sticking the missing children in their graves, one might say."

"Ok, Mr.Afton. How many more books are there?"

"I will beat your ass."

"Oh, but you were so worried about me before."

Wilbur rolled his eyes, moving the empty box from the top of his cart to get to the next one. "That was before you started calling me fucking William Afton."

"But think about it; same first name, he probably stank as well, you've probably murdered a few people-"

"You can't prove that."

"I can absolutely prove that you stink,", Tommy snorted, going to grab the next book from Wilbur's hand.

The man narrowed his eyes at him, waiting for Tommy to have a good grip on the thing before yanking it back hard enough that the ladder Tommy was standing on started falling backwards from the shelf.

Wilbur managed to catch him before he hit the floor, but the sudden motion absolutely did not feel good on his injury.

[lampmanliveblogs]

The Lampman's Conspiracy Corner

Lamp Entertainment presents...

The new and improved Conspiracy Corner! It is bigger! It’s better! It has red string!

(note for any newcomers: I'm currently doing a mostly blind watchthrough of The Owl House. The last episode I've seen was Reaching Out. No spoilers please)

Isn’t it beautiful? This legitimately took me hours to set up.

Here’s a closer look at the Timeline. I’m very happy with how it turned out, I especially like the detail of the clock. It’s five to twelve, because the Day of Unity is soon upon us!

So, as I discovered in my last liveblog, the series doesn’t actually take place in 2020, but I had already written all of this. So I just hung up that thing as nod to that.

The thing that this timeline does a really good job of establishing is that Philip really went for hundreds of years seemingly doing nothing. What was he up to during all that time?

Here’s a closer look at the Wittebanes page. It has a simple family tree, as well as some info on the known members. I had the great idea to make some of the spots modular, so if/when new information is revealed, I can remove them and fill it in for real. You’ll also notice that string connected to the paper beneath…

(don’t ask why or where I got the british airways paper from because I’ve no idea)

Here is all the information on the Grimwalker that I’ve gathered. Which isn’t all that much. The only thing about the sad pedestrian that I’ve brought up before that isn’t mentioned here is that there is an emphasis in Philip/Belos’ notes on its eyes. That’s because I can’t draw eyes.

That blue thing is a periodic table. It’s the very one I got in high school chemistry, finally getting put to use. Oh stars, there is an actual interview where I said I might go into chemistry after I graduated… haha! Year 2 of high school Lampman was a very different person.

So, yeah. In Eclipse Lake, I brought up a certain possibility, but dismissed it almost immediately. Then, in Any Sport In A Storm, I brought it up as a joke.

The thing I’m talking about is the possibility that Hunter is the Grimwalker. That would explain how, you know… he exists despite the fact that his father died hundreds of years ago.

If you look on the left, I listed a few possible inspirations or things that were brought to my mind when thinking about what this Grimwalker might be.

First on the list is a Homunculus. It’s real term that was used in alchemy and means ”little person.” Maybe the most famous example in popular fiction though is from Fullmetal Alchemist.  Dana Terrace has referenced Fullmetal Alchemist when talking about The Owl house before (Luz is a fan of Hiromu Arakawa and used to trace her manga; hence why she’s so good at drawing glyphs). So that is a possible inspiration. And I recall reading a post once that compared Belos to Father from FMA. And, well… if Hunter is the Grimwalker, then in some way, that would make Belos…

The second on the list is something I stumbled upon when researching the third item on the list. Bakru. According to one of  my books on mythological/folklore creatures and monster, bakru are unruly children created from wood by witches and wizards. They require powerful magic to control and are often sold to ordinary people.

The third item on my list are a few creatures from Swedish folklore. Because of course I have to reference that. There are a few stories about witches creating helpers like milk hares. They were often created from wood, fabric and other items. Some of them require things like dirt from churchyards, a blood sacrifice (three drops of blood from your left pinkie) and a magic spell. These creatures were used by the witches to steal from their neighbors, usually milk from cows. Hence, milk hare.

And while I have your attention; did you know that the ”mare” in ”nightmare” comes from another creature from swedish folklore? The mara. Maras are at day regular women. Exactly how they become maras is not known. Some say it’s a curse, others say it’s because their mother used dark magic to lessen the pain of childbirth (if the child is born a boy, he becomes a werewolf). At night, maras turn into an oily mist. They can slip through any crack, so you can’t lock them out. They will sit on your chest while you sleep and cause bad dreams and difficulty breathing. To protect yourself, spread flaxseeds around your bed; the mara will have to count them before it can do anything to you.

N-no, please don’t leave! I’ll move on, I swear! No more nordic mythology or folklore!

Here are some miscellaneous things. A note on the portal door, the Titan, The Collector. I put a star on The Collector’s note because he’s associated with stars and moons (and I couldn’t draw a good crescent moon)!

Okay, so I lied before. On the note about the Titan, I bring up a figure from nordic mythology. That being Ymer (or Ymir). It’s a primordial giant from which the world was made. I belive I mentioned that connection in a season one liveblog… I think it was Adventures in the Elements? I could be wrong, and I’m too lazy to go check.

I also drew the glyphs! And the spells Luz has learned so far! They’re not very good, but hey. I tried.

Funny story: I like to doodle the glyphs on random pieces of cardboard occasionally. I ended up showing a coworker a light glyph I drew. She told me it looked like a failed christmas tree. I have not been the same since.

Oh, and I also listed the elemental symbols from the Engelsfors Trilogy. Because I felt like it.

So, this was the new conspiracy corner. I had a ton of fun making it and I hope to bring it back again.

[moonspower]

Least favorite love language?

❝I like them all but words of affirmation get old really quickly, sometimes.❞ And, depending on the other person, sometimes they didn't work at all. ❝I don't mind a compliment and some sweet talk, but I'm not capable of listening to someone yammer on and on about comparing me to oceans and fires and twinkles in the sky. Like, that sappy stuff that should stay in bad Wattpad stories. It's… Kind of goofy. At that point, I'm concluding they just like hearing themselves talk. If someone writes me a sonnet, they love me. If someone writes me three-hundred sonnets, they love sonnets. I'd rather just be spoken to like a regular-degular person. Tell me I got a nice ass and call me a genius because I have good smoothie recipes. Like, congrats on comparing my eyes to a sparkling abyss, but can you fix the lock on my bathroom cabinet door?❞

[jomnki]

i think one gripe i defintely have is how incomplete some character arcs feel compared to everyone else. i remember expecting qianqiu to become a regular appearance like shi qinxuan and he didn't, it was alright (considering what he was off doing the rest of the series, and i do get that his departure was kind of meant to symbolize the soft beggining of the heavenly court falling apart.). but they barely approached his relationship with xie lian afterwards. the most was qianqiu feeling guilty about nailing him in a coffin for a hundred years in an extra and nothing else. xie lian was his mentor, someone who permanantly affected his moral compass. it really felt like he got forgotten someway through the series. i wish they at least could've had some heart to heart. but xie lian literally didn't and will never talk to mu qing and feng xin about what happened in a certain temple and how his parents died unless a magical ghost forced these visions on them so.

and ling wen oh my god, i thought we were gonna go through an arc like the black water manour one. i was so shocked when she turned into an antagonist. i just assumed she was always going to be there and it felt like this massive occurance that really screamed "HEAVEN IS EXPLODING" when it happened. the wind master is gone, the water and earth masters are dead, the real earth master was actually a great calamity, one of the stronger martial gods is gone. what she was guilty of aside, i really thought it was going to be harrowing to read that inevidible tragic evil backstory but...she just, kind of does nothing for the rest of the series. she gets dragged around like a doll during the mount tongulu mega party bits. it does not delve into her relations with the disabled soldier she murdered (it says a bit and implies she does care for him and was trying to turn him into a calamity so he could have a body but that's it). and when everything's over it's just like, yeah you're forgiven now do all the paperwork for us. i think...they should've been a bit angry with her colluding with jun wu for centuries. but apparently ling wen's the only smart person in the entirety of heaven so it's just ok now. like i'm happy she didn't get blown up but i really wish they delved into her character motivations a bit more.

[musicrunsthroughmysoul]

I'm not going to write a dissertation on this, but I may write a bit of a novel, so feel free to not read this. LOL

(I'm going on and on about singing and the symbolism of it by comparing two vocalists, basically, but my main focus is one vocalist in particular who I've been listening to for pretty much the first time all year long so I HAVE SOME THOUGHTS.)

I've finally identified what it is about Stuart Adamson's voice post-The Seer/around the time of Peace in Our Time that I hate so much, that bothers me SO MUCH, and it's not just the symbolism of directing Big Country's music at the American market specifically - it actually has to do with singing and the art and the science of it (generally speaking; I'm no scientist as it is, but as a former-sometimes-still-but-rarely vocalist, I KNOW SOME STUFF).

So here's why and it's going to sound like a letdown (which is appropriate because that's exactly how it feels every time I listen to him sing post-The Seer): he's singing in a purposely nasally voice/tone.

Do you want to know how I know this? (Besides being a vocalist and being able to naturally hear the difference in my own voice when I sing in my chest or head voice and when I miss my head and chest voice and end up sounding...uh-huh, nasally!) I have the perfect example - an example that I have listened to hundreds (possibly even thousands) of times more than I've listened to Big Country yet.

Here is one example of someone (not to mention an INCREDIBLY DISTINCTIVE example) using his normal chest and head voice (he slips into a nasally tone in a few phrases, but it's much less prevalent than...in so many other examples, lmao), particularly when he's in the higher part of his singing range, but only up to the 2 minute mark when he starts singing in his nasally voice on purpose/for effect.

Now here is an example of the same person singing almost entirely/exclusively in a nasally tone.

You hear the difference, right? In the first one, his voice is clear, even as he uses his head voice to reach the higher notes (okay, it's like an A4 - not that high, but for a man who really isn't a tenor, it kind of is!). In the second example, he's singing in a nasally tone even for notes that he could easily hit in his chest voice (which is the most standard voice to sing in, as apparently your vocal chords responsible for your chest voice are thicker than your vocal chords responsible for your head voice, and your chest voice is also naturally the most comfortable voice to sing in because it's the same voice you speak in).

Do I...do I even need to provide examples now of differences between Stuart Adamson's voice pre-Peace in Our Time and from Peace in Our Time-on? Okay, I'll do it, even though it's probably just for me. So: in his normal chest and head voice (me, impressed: all of those high notes! In! His head voice!! Period!!!!! I think the highest note he reaches is an A-sharp/B4 flat, btw - I don't have a piano/keyboard at my disposal to confirm that, though, so I'm making an educated guess), and then in his deeply flimsy (irony intended) nasally voice. I actually don't think I can say that he sings that song entirely in a nasally tone/voice, but the CHORUS - that whole thing, oh, yes, shamelessly so and I hate it.

Now I'm finally gonna talk about why the nasal voice, as compared to his regular chest and head voice, is so bad (and if you want to read this as an equal critique of Tom Petty's voice, be my guest!).

So when I called Adamson's post-The Seer nasally voice "deeply flimsy," what did I mean by that, and how does that reflect his use of a specifically nasal voice/tone in a bad way? By "deeply flimsy," I mean that his nasally voice - used on purpose - is disingenuous. It is inauthentic.

And, okay, for a song like "Republican Party Reptile" or "We're Not in Kansas" I can somewhat understand the use of a nasally tone that is inherently disingenuous because it works to further illustrate how fake the characters in "Republican Party Reptile" (his "cousin PJ") and "We're Not in Kansas" (the place, Kansas; in this case, his perception of Kansas) are.

But for any song that IS NOT "Republican Party Reptile," "We're Not in Kansas," or anything else that doesn't obviously call for a disingenuous voice - when it became the voice he sang in pretty much all the time, it meant that he wasn't being honest, voice and tone-wise, toward any of the songs he was singing. Which...I could psychoanalyze him about that if I really wanted to, but I really don't want to here (currently), so I'll just stick to critiquing it regardless of what it might've meant for him personally to do so.

Basically: for him to sing in an unnatural (and thus inauthentic/disingenuous) voice/tone all the time meant that every time he chose not to sing anything in his natural, slightly accented voice (honestly, it's rarely noticeable, and I can't imagine that he was so self-conscious about it that that was the reason he chose not to sing that way anymore), it was just that - a choice. And, in a way, if he chose to sing every song that way, regardless of the song's subject matter or getting into "the character" of the song, then doesn't that cancel out the times he sang that way fittingly (like in "Republican Party Reptile" and "We're Not in Kansas")? ...I'm going to say yes. Because then he wasn't choosing to sing in that tone to fit the song; he chose to sing that way for everything, even everything he would sing in his normal voice before he started singing that way.

So yeah, the nasally voice/tone was unnecessary, except when it wasn't, but it became unnecessary for all time because he used it when he didn't ever need to.

And, really, this is why it bothers me so much: he started out in punk rock, right? And the first rule of punk is "You don't need to know how to do it, let alone how to do it well - you just need to try/do it, anyway." I mean, okay, yeah, he kinda speedran that because he was an incredibly talented guitarist whilst in the punk band The Skids, but as a singer, nonetheless, he always had the permission to do it anyway, no matter how good or bad you are at it. So he brought that idea to Big Country (necessarily, as a vocalist; not as a guitarist), and, naturally, he did improve as a vocalist (especially if you listen to his vocals on the entirety of The Seer)! And he did it all in his natural, authentic fucking voice. But then came Peace in Our Time which, not every song on that album is sung entirely in a nasally tone and, a decent chunk of it includes (but does not feature, imo) his authentic voice, but any time especially AFTER that album (and from specific years - I'd say 1990-on) he sang exclusively in a nasally voice/tone and abandoned his normal voice pretty much altogether.

Which leaves me with the knowledge that all along he could've sung in his normal voice - no matter who he was playing to or why - but that it became a choice to sing in an unnatural, inauthentic, nasally voice and tone. And it was bad! It wasn't Tom Petty "I'm an American Southerner so I can manipulate my voice and tone to accentuate that or even to downplay it" - it was full-on "This is how I sing now even though I've never sounded like this before," and, to be real - it never got him or Big Country anywhere better (capitalistically, if that is how you define success) than they got to before. Now I said I wasn't going to psychoanalyze him but I will say this: maybe he was bitter about that fact, or about the idea that he and Big Country had "peaked," so he imposed his feelings on all of his and Big Country's songs in every fucking performance? But what I can't understand is, did he really not respect his fans OR HIMSELF that much? He chose to sound fake to spite everybody's expectations of him and Big Country? Oof...isn't that a self-destructive bruise that I sure don't want to poke...

I also want to add, after watching a live performance by Big Country from 1990 (you know the music is just fine, but then Stuart sings the whole fucking thing in that tone AND MY EYE TWITCHES), the consideration that (and I'm just guessing here) maybe Adamson used that voice because he thought it was more rock 'n' roll - like maybe he was going for a gravelly voice that a lot of rock singers are known to employ in the middle of their songs or whatever? But...really man, every song you sing is rock and roll, no matter what? I mean, okay, I get it - gone are the days of 'I've always just played folk music with really loud guitars,' (that's the gist of a quote Adamson said at some point) but even quieter, softer songs don't require a gravelly voice that was really never mastered (or *coughs* even started) in the first place...so again I circle back to: even if he ignored his audience, he was still going to ignore what the songs needed, and what he needed, too? It's just...all so unnecessary, and it makes me sad.

Anyway, if you read this far, I will say one last thing about all of this: I'm sorry. About all of it. Except where I mentioned Tom Petty. Then I'm not sorry at all, and please don't ever expect me to apologize for anything I say regarding him. Thank. Honestly, it pains me to say all of that, because Stuart Adamson's natural voice was lovely but above all it was HEARTFELT and I think he very much could have improved even more as a vocalist if he hadn't just straight-up chosen not to sing in his natural voice no matter what, anyway.

[skylitcreations]

(I'm gonna preface this by saying I live in the US, so some of these details will be different for various countries, but hopefully, you'll still get the idea)

When I was able-bodied, I used to go out all the time even though I'm more introverted cuz I just enjoyed exploring new places and revisiting places I liked. Nowadays, I rarely go out on my own and when I go out with others, I have to make sure they're willing to deal with how slow I am and using disability seating, taking breaks frequently, etc. You just find yourself not even bothering to go out much because you know it's irritating for the other person even if they're patient with you.

I also used to exercise 6 days a week and was consistently half the weight I am now. Most of my clothes no longer fit and I am left with only a few shirts and pants to go out with because whenever we do have money to invest in clothes I have to put it towards more pajamas for around the house since regular clothes can irritate my skin and be harder to move around in compared to loose pajamas. I also used to clean my entire home once a week and meal prep twice a week. I now can't stand up or bend over as much as I need to do those tasks, especially that often.

I wasn't able to do my job and had to leave it and attempt for Social Security. It has been years and I'm still trying for it, but while trying for it, you're not allowed to have income over a certain amount each month to even be considered so you're not allowed to really work enough to pay for things during that time because that 'proves' you're not disabled. But they do not supply any funds during the time they are working on your case, so you have to somehow pay rent and bills (especially medical ones) without a proper job. Oh, and you may or may not qualify for reduced cost health insurance so you could end up having to pay hundreds of dollars a month towards health insurance, medical bills, and prescriptions. And I'm talking hundreds of dollars per category there, not altogether. And you somehow have to manage rent and utilities on top of that and my 'wife' (quotations are there for a reason I'll get to later) can only pay for so much of that and my disabilities slow me down on the one thing I can still manage to do: art commissions. And I make a lot less from that than I did at a 'real' job and actually have to dedicate more of my time to it because I have to constantly be drawing if able. On top of that, a freelance artist has to also try to constantly boost their stuff, manage orders, keep customer service mode on constantly, trying to keep clients updated as they go along, trying to draw pieces to the side that could get more eyes on their work to bring in more customers, figuring out how merchandise is made and ordered, getting samples from different companies to do quality testing which takes money they haven't yet earned to try and invest in what they hope will make more money later, figuring out how to sell their skills and advertise them in ways that get people's attention, and that doesn't even cover everything. I am technically working MORE than I was before for about half the pay. Don't you think I'd rather just have a job that I can clock in to and clock out each day so I can properly relax when I'm home? Instead, I never get the chance to fully properly turn customer service mode off.

Sure, I love drawing, but I miss drawing just for fun instead of it being my job and me having next to no time to draw things for myself. I'm a slow artist and add my chronic pain on top of that and I can't even work at my fastest since I'm constantly having to take breaks to deal with my arm, hand, and back pain throughout, which doubles that turnaround time. Let's not even go into how chronic fatigue can make me literally too tired to even manage to stay awake long enough to get things done, too. It's maddening tbh.

Oh, and those quotation marks before? Yeah, you're not allowed to be legally married (at least in the US) and get Disability pay. You have to choose one or the other. So my 'wife?' I can't risk getting legally married to her while I'm trying to get disability or else I'm automatically disqualified. Yep, that means we don't actually have marriage equality! I spent most of my life thinking I'd never get married because I was LGBTQ+ and once I finally had the right in that category, I had to worry about Disability shortly after. I have accepted I'm not allowed to get married by this point, but it's absolutely depressing, especially knowing we could save so much money right now if we could both be on my fiancée's health insurance.

Being limited to mostly staying at home is not as awesome as people think. Your entertainment options between watching things and playing games may be pretty expansive but you get tired of being cooped up and not getting out as often because lived experiences are entirely different to watching others live out those experiences for you. I always dreamt of one day going to Disney when I could manage the funds and time off for it, but I never did. And I never got to go as a kid. And now I have to worry about if I could even manage to have fun with all of the pain I'd get with all the walking I'd have to do because walking or standing that much even with a cane sounds like torture. I may never get to go now. And that's just one dream bucket list experience that I will never properly have and may never even get close to having.

And let's not even get into how it's so much harder to maintain exercise and diet when moving hurts like hell and is sometimes impossible and cooking is a lot harder to do so you end up with health problems you never would've dealt with before when you were able-bodied and they just keep piling up on each other over time so you can actually get even worse and you constantly have to worry about what regular daily task you may be unable to do next.

I also wanted to be a doctor if art wouldn't pan out and eventually felt I'd be fine with that being my main job and art staying a hobby. But I couldn't keep up with university when my problems started developing. And now my hands are too shaky from all the meds and such I've had to do over the years just to stay awake, so performing surgery is out of the question. Even then, I wanted to be a psychiatrist/therapist because I love helping people and trying to analyze how they think and figure out what might help. But to get the schooling on top of everything else is impossible for me right now and might be for the rest of my life. And you can tell people that you're disabled but because most people don't have a proper idea of how that is like, they will still constantly think you're just being lazy when you haven't bettered your life yet, as if that is something you can control. They set the system up for you to fail and/or give up, and the world is set up for the able-bodied. Just navigating everything and adjusting when you need to is a struggle in and of itself, but things seem to want to mess you up at every turn. You know how those who are left-handed will talk about how most things in the world are made for those who are right-handed by default? And they either have to figure out how to make being left-handed work with those things or they may end up forced to train their right hand enough to act as the dominant one despite the fact that it isn't. Being disabled is like that but to a larger degree because those who are left-handed are at least generally thought about when people produce things that involve your hands, but most people don't think about your disabilities because they simply don't realize they need to think about it when creating/inventing things.

Because of this, most of us have to figure out aids to buy and use around the house just to do normal tasks. For example, I have to use a shower chair because I can't stand long enough for a full shower and moving around in a shower is hard as well. I couldn't just get a chair to put in there, though, cuz most regular chairs can't withstand water exposure. I also couldn't just buy any shower chair, but one that would fit into my tub, work best with my issues, be big enough to fully support me and be able to withstand my weight. I have had to try and find things to help me do regular daily tasks like that around the house and then have to wait till I have enough funds to afford them and even then those tasks will take so long to do and take so much out of me that I haven't figured out a way to even do a tenth of the stuff I used to be able to. So things end up piling up until someone can help me catch up. And the research to figure out this stuff and find things takes a lot longer than you'd think because you have to try to fit a puzzle piece that doesn't fully fit since it's very rare for a disability aid to be made specifically for which things are limiting the function you're trying to accommodate.

Basically, being disabled is not fun and implying that we are 'living the life' just cuz maybe we can keep up with a show or something better is incredibly insulting.

Able-bodied people usually see home as a place to relax and wind down.

Disabled people usually see home as a cage with a TV.

Fuck you if when a disabled person says their unemployed and stuck at home you say "that's the life hey?" IT'S NOT ITS FUCKING TORTURE

We CAN'T do things, basic tasks, looking after ourselves, walking, thinking, being mobile, we spend everyday in pain that would make you cry. Do you still think that's the life? Waking up with bed sores? Having seizures constantly and no one helping figure out why? Having to spend hours setting up and disconnecting from medical equipment that keeps you alive? That's your goal?

We don't spend our time at home just fucking around.

I wish I could work, I wanted to be a doctor, but I can't even drive anymore.

So don't you dare say you want this life, that I'm living your dream staying at home.

[nxrthmizu]

happy birthday — tsukishima kei

pairing | tsukishima kei x reader

genre | fluff

w.c | 1.6k

↪ part two of this

second chance // an opportunity to try something again after failing one time

tsukishima kei wasn't expecting anyone. sure, it was his birthday, but he did have work the next day, and wasn't very keen on drinking himself senseless into the witching hour.

since yamaguchi, his mother, and akiteru had taken it upon themselves to inform half of japan of his birthdate, kei had just spent the past four hours repeating 'thank you' to people ranging from his junior high schoolmates and strangers he had never met. he was certain that 99% of the players involved with the japan volleyball league had shown up, much to the amazement of his museum colleagues.

the bell rings for the third time, and kei is suddenly hyperaware of how annoying the sound is. he had just sat down, for goodness's sake— was it too much to ask for one minute of rest?

with his socializing energy at an all-time-low, kei nearly tears the door off his hinges, greeting his unwelcome visitor with a fierce snarl. "what do you want—" the words clamp down on his throat, breaking his airflow for a whole five seconds as he stares, utterly floored. "... y/n?"

"...hey?" you look sheepish, holding a small, one-cake-slice-sized box in your hand. he's known you long enough to know that you did your makeup on the fly— the tremble of your eyeliner is a sure giveaway. "... uh... is this a bad time? cause i can come back later—"

"no!" he blurts, hands slamming onto the door frame. he hadn't caught a glimpse of you in six months, ever since that fateful night when you walked out through the same door you were now standing in front of. there wasn't a single night in those six, grueling months that he didn't think about you, or the warm feeling of having you contained within his arms. sure, there were nights when you two fought, heading to bed with your backs faced to each other— but when morning came, you would somehow be in his arms, and somehow kei just knew that things would blow over.

except maybe they didn't.

left with too much time to think, he analyzed every little argument the two of you ever had, critically examining every word he uttered. perhaps the break was needed— the two of you needed to take a step backwards, re-assessing what you two wanted for each other, what you two wanted together. what you said that night hadn't be wrong— there were just too many issues being swept under the rug, too many things you weren't communicating about, too many problems he elected to ignore, in hopes that they would just 'blow over'.

"i mean," he clears his throat, lifting his hand off the doorframe, groaning at the paint scratch he caused. "would... would you like to come in?"

mentally, he smacks his forehead. you don't need permission to enter! in his mind, kei still considers the apartment your home, too. even if you haven't stepped foot within its grounds for half a year.

"if that's okay?" you smile softly, holding up your cake box. "you've probably had some already, but i bought your favorite. if you're full, you could have it tomorrow morning, before work?"

"no, no, i'm not that full." kei instantly assures, even though he's already brushed his teeth. on normal circumstances, he would leave it for the next morning, but what was brushing his teeth one more time if he got to talk to you for the first time in over a hundred-eighty days?

you narrow your eyes at him playfully. "don't lie to me, tsukishima kei. i can smell your toothpaste. i'll leave it in the fridge."

a fond smirk dances over his lips as you brush past him into your apartment, leaving your shoes where you always do on the shoe rack. the sound of your sock-clad feet padding past the living room brings a truckload of tension that kei didn't know he had off his shoulders, and all of a sudden, the house feels a thousand times cozier, even if nothing materialistic has changed.

he watches you from the sofa as you bustle around the kitchen, and he knows by the number of beeps on the electric stove that you're boiling water for tea— green, probably. the ration of tea packets are restocked regularly, because when you moved in, you brought your tea addiction with you, too. kei's been lured into drinking it on a daily basis, right after dinner, as a way of calming himself down after a day of work and practice. typically, tea would be accompanied with you, snuggled up against his side as he complained about the kids he met at work that day (you both knew that he had a secret fondness for them, but shhh).

"i hope you don't mind. i made tea." you say, bringing the glass teapot you were adamant on buying a year ago. it was one of the best purchases kei ever made in the apartment, because he was reminded of the worth every single time the two of you did your regular tea routine.

"of course i don't mind." he replies instantly, picking up his mug (the green one with tiny dinos on the edge). "this is still your home, too. you don't have to ask to do anything."

he pretends not to see the flash of surprise across your features.

"right." you murmur, pressing your mug onto your lips, blowing gently on the surface.

the two of you sit in silence for a while, sipping on your tea as the clock ticks onto eleven o' clock. suppressing the urge to ask you to stay, kei taps the surface of his porcelain cup rhythmically, forgetting that you know all his tells, front to back.

"is there something on your mind?" you ask gently, setting your mug down. he grimaces.

"ah... it's nothing." kei brushes off, not wanting to come onto you too quickly. for all he knew, you were just here to deliver the cake, not to reignite whatever was left of the relation he let simmer for too long...

"... right." the tone of your voice spells i-know-you're-lying-to-me,-but-i'll-let-it-go-for-now.

the silence continues, like a set prolonged. it's starting to get on kei's nerves when you (thankfully) speak again.

"happy birthday."

"thank you." even though he's said those words a thousand times that night, it sounds a comparatively much less robotic than it had for the previous thousand times. perhaps it was thousand-first time's the charm. "i mean it. thank you for coming over."

you wave it off. "i couldn't have not come. tadashi sent me an invite, but my boss needed me to work late and i didn't manage to make it."

ah, so that was why his best friend routinely glanced at the entrance nervously throughout the night. that explained a lot.

"i don't mind." kei takes a sip of his green tea, enjoying the warmth that courses through his chest. it isn't warmer than the warmth you give him, though. "i like it like this. ... just the two of us, i mean."

you contemplate him for a moment. "i like it like this, too." you confess quietly, as if whispering a childhood secret to him behind the karasuno gym.

he couldn't bear it any longer. he's always been patient, yes, but he's seen the looks his mother and brother threw him through the night, because they both knew that the one person that really mattered wasn't there. he was pretty sure his mother was just about to introduce him to some random girl before he excused himself for the night.

"will you stay?" he blurts, feeling very un-tsukishima-kei-like. it isn't like him at all, to be brash, and bold, but how can he? for the past four hours, he's talked to countless people— heck, half of them were volleyball celebrities— but not the one he wanted to talk to.

"do you want me to?" you ask softly, shyly, and kei knows that you're thinking if he wants you back— which is stupid, honestly. he knows that you're always thinking that you're lucky to have him, when it should be the other way around. kei doesn't think there's anyone else willing to put up with his dry humor, his hectic schedule, and his dinosaur memorabilia. if anything, he should be the one thanking the gods for letting him have you.

"don't be stupid." he snaps, cringing internally at how his tone came off. "of course i want you to stay, you're the best thing that happened to me. i won't force you, but—"

"i left some clothes here, right?" you cut him off with a hum, and when kei looks into your eyes, he just knows.

there's still a long, long, long way for the two of you to go. there's still plenty of things he needs to learn. there's a pile of issues in the store room that needed to be tended to.

for every million arguments there are a billion conversations where you two need to sit down and work out the knots. for every insecurity, for every misunderstanding, for every conflict, there is a needed effort to clean up the mess properly instead of just sweeping it under the floorboards. but for every tangle there lies between the two of you, there is a universe of room to grow, and change.

kei knows he's willing to make an effort, for you. kei knows that he's willing to do anything to make sure you don't walk out that door without looking back again. kei knows he's willing to do every single thing he can do (and can't) to make it work.

he knows.

he looks into your eyes, and he smiles.

everything is going to be alright.

haikyuu!! taglist: @ryuiki @hikari-writes @whootwhoot @folkloeren @definitely-yours @rirk-ke @cemeiia @animegirlweeb @mitzwinchester @fandomsgotmefucked

[batarangsoundsdumb]

guess fucking what? my inbox is so fucking full right now i'm unloading all of this shit in one post.

For the 11th gotham memes: gothamites react to bruce being jacked in a tiktok he made with kids, like super yoked, ripped as hell

fucking hilarious thanks. i think i did it in one meme post, but i genuinely don't remember which one

i dunno which of the batfam would do this but one time i was sleeping over at a friends house and ended up on the floor bc the bed was so very small and i just stayed there because the rug was soft

that's a drunk jason move i don't know what to tell you

tim and jason are "i listen to pop punk" solidarity. whenever jason highjacks the batmobile theyll go on long ass car rides blaring mcr and paramore and then never talk about it again

as they should!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! tim: no jason it's my turn using the aux cord i gotta put on my jams jason: don't you dare put on weird shit tim: don't worry, you're gonna love this *plays fearless (taylor's version)

hear me out hear me out, red hood stans 🤝 nightwing stans t h i g h s

holy shit yes.

SNL au: Bruce breaks character when pretending to superman and says something like "I'm not superman! You've seen his gps!! It's from 2001!!!" @sabeanybabe

superman flies past the snl building the next day just to say 'actually it's from 2005, i'm not a heathen'

does your back hurt from carrying the batfam fandom

it hurts more from the exotic rock collection i keep in my backpack, but thanks for the concern.

I love your posts by why would you always leave the best parts in the tags?

as a treat for the people that check the tags ;) (and also because i'm committed to the short post aesthetic)

somehow your playlist was everything i never knew i needed. i mean it. this is my new favorite playlist.

and don't you dare get a new favourite playlist!

babe ur stoner tim playlist is exactly too perfect, earth is literally blessed by ur existence

babe thanks so much! i love my stoner tim playlist because it's just my usual playlist but people think it's an artistic choice that i put taylor swift and britney spears in there, when it's just what i unironically like listening to

JANDKSKDK BILLY RAY CYRUS ON THE STONER TIM PLAYLIST I LOVE IT IT

again it's not even an ironic choice, i know every single word and i genuinely like the song

The last chapter of Fundamentals of Casework has me crying at work. Thanks I love it @dudelookitsalesbian

oh babe, i'm sorry, but also, not sorry i love chapter 4 so much it's my lovechild with the 'mental illness' tag

soooo....stumbled on your tumblr by some stroke of fate??? read your DC fanfic first. which is PHENOMENAL btw. then found all the batmemes; the funniest thing EVER bc everyone forgets about regular old gothamites. kept scrolling and your blog pops up as recommended. clicked on the ao3 for shits and giggles and waddaya know?!?!? it's YOU!!! you're LEGEND!!!! ever seen that meme? it's a video of a cat that got into a baseball field and the two announcers get really invested in his escape attempt and start giving a play by play of the cat instead of the game. memeable moment: "GREAT stuff from the Cat!!!"

i seriously think about this ask every single day and it's so fucking funny to me that i've never seen the meme you're referencing, but i still find myself going 'GREAT stuff from the Cat!!!' whenever i see something funny. but wow i'm glad you liked this steaming pile of garbage

Fav dc character overall? And fav batfamily character?

don't ask me to pick between the loves of my life, but i can tell you i've cried about every single batfamily member and also wally west (my beloved)

What's your opinion on fans having a problem with batfam being "too big"? And some even claim that batfam is just "Bruce Alfred Dick Damian" and the rest of them are just "friends and allies" (source: reddit) Personally, I like batfam because of this reason but idk

stupid. a family can never be too big. i'm not that big a fan of like huge batfam stuff with everybody from every single universe, because as much as it's funny for bruce to have like 30 kids, it just feels a little too OOC for me.

This is the best tag I've seen involving the batfam, thanks for thinking of it

This is canon now @nctxrejects

lmao yeah i think at that point alfred has had to sit through like at least a dozen coming out talks and just has a pride flag collection in the attic that he pulls out whenever a kid comes out

idk why batfam hits different as compared to any other superhero family

bc it's found family and usually the other superhero families are almost all genetically related in one way or another

I don't know if you watch the umbrella academy but I saw your last post about batcest and saw the similarities. But the thing is (although I think it's weird) in TUA, they addressed it by saying "they were raised as weapons, not siblings" or something along those lines, which is simply not the case with batfam.

yeah i watched tua but i also thought it was ridiculous and they still treated each other as siblings so i didn't like the luthor/allison thing, and am glad they stopped doing that shit bc it fucking sucked.

Hot take: Batcest shippers are the same people who believe adopted siblings are not actual siblings

smoking hot take: batcest shippers are the people who watch 'my sister got stuck in the washing machine' porn

Duke was adopted by Bruce?

not technically no, but do i, tumblr user batarangsoundsdumb, look like i care?

True story but I had to change my freaking name because it used to be "Damien" and most people would go "OH LIKE DAMIAN WAYNE" like please I'm just tryna live

true story, but i don't actually think of damian when i hear the name damian, literally the first thing that pops up is damian darkh like bruh what?

apparently dc comics company supported comic stores by giving out new titles and stuff during the beginning of the pandemic to help them run and I just think that's wholesome

ah yeah that's so fucking cool, still don't like dc, the company, because this world is a capitalist hellhole and we're all owned by warner brothers or disney with no in between.

ayo looking at tumblr head canons and finding out bruce is actually a terrible father is a punch in the gut

lmao yes, in like 50% of comics bruce is a terrible father and it gives me whiplash

oooh I just saw the jason todd vs winter soldier post and the real question is: batman vs iron man

while iron man has like hundreds of cases of armor, batman could throw out an emp and have the guy dropping out of the sky in 2 seconds.

dickfast = fastdick = quickdick = quickie

magnum hot take

hey bata(?) just thought I'd let you know I have copied the obnoxious emoji and Billy Ray post for use on simping men going forth

thank you 😘🌷 (@spacebarsidecar)

why would you do that to your followers???? i get why i did it, but why would you???

what is scarecrow made the nightwing funko pop himself, like those diy-ers that paint over other ones

oh god no, horrible take, horrible take, that's a disgusting thought oh no

I see your HC that Bruce and Oliver fucked and raise you this: Dick and Roy ALSO fucked

yes they did and it was a horrible moment for jason to find out dick has fucked both of his best friends

"at this rate bruce adds like 1 child to his family every decade or so" Duke is introduced in 2013, Damian as Damian, not as an unnamed child, in 2006. And he is already 14 years old, Robins rarely remain Robins after 16 😬 It looks like a new Robin and Batkid will appear in a couple of years

i mean i can't wait? but somebody will probably die first tho, we're due for another major character death. my money's on either cass or duke this time.

BRO you're so right all of your Bruce's ex headcanons are amazing but they aren't ships, that's kinda wild. Like I don't want any peeks into how their relationship was I just want to see everyone make fun of them

lmao YES it's just i love bruce being a slut, like good for him.

I am in love with your posts your honour thank you

omg thanks are we like,, gonna kiss now?

The justice league needs to have a meeting to discuss how many of their members/partners have slept with bruce. Because through a combination of cannon & fannon (if DC wasn’t homophobic) we have AT LEAST: 1) clark 2) lois 3) oliver 4) dinah 5) john

Thats not counting villains or random civilians @dudelookitsalesbian

yes yes yes, they'll have a yearly meeting about how many of their collective exes could be out for revenge and batman's list just keeps getting longer.

tim was like "i'm drake now" and everyone was like ahh so your fursona is a dragon and tim was like pffffft no. ducks.

and what about it?

when steph's fighting livewire and she zaps her with lighting and nothing happens and then they both just. stand there awkwardly for a second and talk. yeah i couldn't stop laughing at that batgirl steph is the BEST

oh yeah that was fucking hilarious and i think it would be so cool and sexy of dc to give steph a little comic series,,, as a treat

Hi I absolutely adore all of yours "Bruce and Oliver very badly pretending they didn't fuck each other" memes

lmao i do too

I need you to know that “Bruce Wayne had frosted tips” is one of my favorite Bruce takes of all time it’s so galaxy brained. you’re right and you should say it

he also painted his hair blonde once when he was travelling and in conclusion, this is why he's being blackmailed by the gotham gazette.

you know my thing about gordon being branded as the only good cop in gotham is its a load of shit like arguably he's a good person and not working to screw people over or anything but the fact that he also works w. batman makes him a shit cop. like yea batman is better than the mob but its still illegal its still an abuse of power he just not making bank

babe, all cops are bad cops. (but yeah youre absolutely right, working with vigilantes makes you a shit cop, but also working against vigilantes just makes you an asshole cop yanno?)

ruh roh i think i’m about to add “so not yeehaw” every time i don’t like something

that's a very good vocabulary upgrade

somehow i feel like steph already knew. like babs obviously knew but i feel like bruce got high/drunk in front of steph and started telling his boarding school stories and steph was just like “oh you fucked up i’m never gonna forget this”

steph and bruce have weird uncle/rebellious niece dynamic and they just hang out sometimes and bruce will be like 'i once broke my arm when i tripped over a hedge when i was drunk so oliver drove me to the hospital on an electric scooter' and steph will just have to sit there with that knowledge in her head.

Hello I just wanted to tell you you are So right in all your steph opinions bc she is, in fact amazing and I think that's very sexy of you. Ps. Your Bruce/Oliver fic is hilarious

babe, thank you so much and yes steph is amazing and i love her and she deserves the world and she's the best member of the batfam hands down. also thanks

In Supersons we see a couple of kids that are implied to be Damian and Jon's children and the boy has laser eyes and can fly, so I asume he's not adopted. The girl, who calls Bruce grandpa, can also fly, btw. So it's canon (probably by accident) that Jon can have kids and he must have married one of Bruce's kids. (I'm hoping for Damian, mostly because any other of his children would be waaaaaaaaaaaaay too old.) @artemisa97

lmao that was probably an accident seeing as jon is a 17 year old superhero in the year 3000 (by the jonas brothers)

You know, I'm a die hard fan of your memes, but I gotta say one thing: if Gothamites actually took gas mask everywhere with them, then the Scarecrow would just be a weird dude in a weird costume, and not a villain oh so scary. DC really should just takes notes from you.

bold of you to assume there's no gothamite anti-maskers

How does it feel being the funniest person on this app?

horrible, next question.

I can't listen to Green Day or Billy Joel without thinking of your post about how Bruce got arrested at a Billy Joel concert @nightwings-kid

yeah that's your mistake, i on the other hand can't enjoy billy joel without thinking about the glee rendition of 'uptown girl'

I've FINALLY been watching the Batman animated series and I gotta say, after watching "the gray ghost" I am CONVINCED that Batman is a closeted super hero geek who was 100% freaking out the first time he met Superman and is just REALLY good at hiding it.

superman: so what do you do in your free time? batman, thinking about the superman fanfiction he's writing on the batcomputer: i have no free time

bruce and oliver be like boyfriends to co-workers 401k (do the justice leagues get 401ks??? not that bruce and ollie would need them, but-)

lmao yes just 400 thousand words of bruce realising 'oh dip oliver is such a fucking dumbass' (also i don't know what a 401 k is but i assume they don't?)

Gothamites would totally boo superman as he saves Gotham while batman is out. @meenje

he's like 'okay think about that next time you want to be saved from an alien octopus'

I just took long break from dc comics and I come back to see ric grayson ??

i think it's very cool and sexy of dc to see dick and just think 'you know what? let's just give him a traumatic brain injury' and then didn't develop his character in any real way

SPEAKING OF RIC GRAYSON, gothamites making confused memes out of ric grayson is much needed

'dick grayson is my taxi driver? can anyone explain what the fuck happened he looks like an italian plumber?'

i hate to say it but batfam are def "marvel characters" in that sense they are characters who are human but become superheroes unlike most dc characters who are gods trying to be human maybe this is why I like batfam

fair enough

[itsclydebitches]

Why do people get hung up on whether a gay person in media is a good or bad representation of them? I'm gay and I can tell you we aren't all the same? Being gay is our 1 common trait. So as long as they're gay then you've done it. Gay people can be kind, mean, racist, open, kinky, reserved, shy, outgoing, sexist, and literally anything else under the human experience.

Because I am perpetually hungry, let's tell a story about cookies.

You are a bright-eyed, optimistic, baker in the making. Your goal is to wow the world with your culinary skills, so of course you head to The Best Baking School for your degree. Over the course of your studies you learn how to perfect a thousand different cakes, an equal number of pies, and more versions of brownies than most would even assume exist. But cookies... oh, cookies are your passion! You can't wait to learn about the wealth of cookies you can make too. Then, sure enough, that part of your education finally arrives.

Funny thing is though, it's just chocolate chip.

Surely there's been some mistake? The cookie experience is vast and nuanced! Why in the world are your instructors — supposedly the best in the world — reducing cookies to a single class about baking chocolate chip and chocolate chip alone? Hell, why are cookies so sparse in the curriculum as a whole? You're never asked to bake them as a demonstration, or practice with them, and they're definitely not a given across everyone else's baking experience. Cakes, pies, and brownies... they're the default. Cookies are comparatively rare and when you do get to study them, everyone is super focused on the chocolate chip.

Then you graduate and head out into the world, only to find that pretty much everyone is as cookie-blind as your school. A few years back you never would have found cookies in the average grocery store and yeah, the fact that there's a cookie section now is great, but it's, uh... all chocolate chip! Many bakeries still don't carry cookies at all, but when they do it's - again - chocolate chip. Chocolate chip out in restaurants. Chocolate chip at the bake sale. Your friend invites you over and proudly presents a massive sweets tray that includes a single, sad looking, chocolate chip cookie. They beam at you in pride. Isn't it so great?

"Uh..." you say. "Well..."

Every once in a while someone will switch out milk chocolate for dark chocolate, or add nuts alongside chocolate chips. One bakery was even crazy enough to exclude chocolate chips entirely! Crazy according to the press, anyway. Because for years now you've been shaking your head, wondering what exactly is so progressive about realizing that sugar cookies exist. You've found other bakers interested in cookies and, by god, there are thousands. So many flavors! Gluten free and allergy conscious! Someone even made a sweets tray that was predominantly cookies, can you believe it? The problem is, almost none of them are mainstream. Your friend baking cookies out of their personal kitchen is doing fantastic work, but their baking doesn't have the impact that those grocery chains and established bakeries do. Their work isn't going to fix your school's curriculum. Too many people still think that cookies are exotic somehow. They're not the default. And when they do acknowledge their existence, it's chocolate chip over and over. Until one of them adds those nuts and suddenly the whole country is losing its mind about how inspired, creative, progressive their baking is. Meanwhile, you're ready to scream because that baker doesn't even know that something as "exotic" as a gingersnaps exist!

The worst part? Most of these cookies are... bad. Like they exist, yeah, but good god most don't taste good. And that's the whole point of a cookie?? What is the point of buying cookies if the cookies themselves are awful? You go to these bakeries, these restaurants, your friend's house, and you try the very limited cookies on offer, only to find that they've been sloppily baked. Doesn't anyone care that the baker burned their cookies to a crisp? That another straight up forgot to add sugar? This one dropped his on the floor and still tried to serve it to you! But the overall sense is that you should be grateful for getting any cookies at all. "That cookie is an offense to my taste buds," you say and people shake their head at you, disappointed. "I liked the taste of it," one says. "If you don't like it, go buy a different cookie!" Well... easier said than done. "It's not that bad," another says, shrugging in defeat. "I mean yeah, I don't really like it, and the baker stopped making them two years ago... but I'm just happy to have had any cookie at all, you know?" You do know, but that doesn't mean it's any less frustrating. You look at the hundreds of cakes available, these bakers spending decades perfecting their recipes, and wish cookies had even a fraction of that work put into them. You find people who agree with you, absolutely, but there's this this prevailing sense that a cookie is a cookie. Any cookie will do. Supposedly.

Except go long enough and you feel like you're ready to lose your mind. You take some poor person by the shoulders and go, "Doesn't this bother you? Doesn't this make you furious? There is more to the cookie world than these three flavors, 90% of which is chocolate chip! And we deserve well-made cookies, not the crap they've been upholding as the next culinary masterpiece!"

But this person just shakes their head. "Well of course there's more to cookies than three flavors. There's a huge variety of cookies! I know that."

"Yes, but the world isn't selling that variety."

"Of course they are! Just last week I had an oatmeal raisin. That's amazing!"

"Yeah and how many years did it take you to find that?"

"Well..."

"And how did that oatmeal raisin cookie taste?"

Your prisoner pulls a face. "Ugh, not good. Oatmeal raisin is definitely not for me. It's hard as a rock! I really don't understand why someone would want to eat that on a regular basis."

"But it's not supposed to be hard as a rock!" you cry, waving your arms. "That's the problem! Oatmeal raisin is so goddamn rare and then the one time we get it, it was badly baked. Of course people are turned off by it. Everyone who already loves oatmeal raisin is getting pissed because their favorite cookie is misrepresented, they're unlikely to see more of them now, and everyone is still serving the most tasteless chocolate chip cookies I've ever had, acting like this is the pinnacle of cookie baking! Do you even know that a macron exists?"

The person pats your hand consolingly. "Of course I do. My roommate's sister's boyfriend used to bake macrons, you know. I don't know why you're so hung up on this. Cookies can be whatever the baker wants them to be. Provided they're a flat-ish sweet cake, they're still a cookie!"

You hang your head, giving up. "Yes, they can be so many things, but they're not. Let me know if you ever find a bakery actually making the variety you keep acknowledging exists. Bonus points if those cookies are edible. My soul if they're delicious, as a cookie should be."

"You know," they say, still patting your hand. "There's a bakery making chocolate chip with dark chocolate next year. Everyone is talking about it. You should think about buying one before they take it off the menu!"

You contemplate just walking into the ocean.

Now, incredibly long metaphor concluded... switch out "cookies" for "queer rep"! The representation matters because no, just making them gay isn't enough right now. You're right that queer people can be anything under the sun, but right now media isn't providing us with that variety. It's not enough to acknowledge that such variety exists, it actually has to make it into our books and onto our screen. Taking just characters who identify as gay and putting aside the HUGE variety of other identities for a moment (of which we are mostly lacking in terms of rep), where are the gay asexuals? The gay people of color? The disabled gays? Trans gays? Did your gay character appear for just a handful of episodes? Were they killed off? Are they nothing more than a stereotype or comic relief? Is this the only gay character in your entire story? We need to ask questions like this because though gay people can be anything under the sun, our media landscape has only shown a miniscule portion of that variety.

Today, even in 2021, our representation of gay people is still pretty limited to:

You are only coded as gay and evil

You are only coded as gay and queerbaited

You are canonically gay, but a cis, ablebodied, white person

You are canonically gay, but were written terribly/killed off/punished by the narrative/generally making the real gay people watching you feel awful about their identity

You are canonically gay, but you're not human. Gotta other the queerness by making you an alien/robot/fantasy being

You are canonically gay and that's your entire existence. There is one (1) narrative of how you knew by the time you were four, never questioned your identity after that, suffered through a family that rejected you, and now all your major arcs revolve around being gay. You are gay and that is it.

Despite being a list of six, that's still incredibly limiting. Are there exceptions to such a list? Always, but that doesn't mean the list isn't still dominating. We can look at any individual gay character and say, "Of course they can be evil/white/killed off/a joke/etc. because gay people can be anything at all," but when we look at the trends, when we look at ALL the media together, we see that gay people aren't actually depicted as being anything... they're depicted as being these handful of things, severely limiting how gayness is represented. Bad rep. If you hit up the bakery and question why there's only versions of chocolate chip available yeah, the baker can go, "But cookies can be any flavor! Including chocolate chip!" They are not, technically, wrong. The problem is not that chocolate chip exists, but that chocolate chip dominates and other flavors are rare, ignored entirely, or baked so badly it's actively damaging to that flavor as a whole. Yeah, your gay character can be mean. Or kinky. Or murdered by the story. But when so many gay characters are mean and kinky and murdered by their stories — when you're not getting other versions to balance that out and gay characters are still rare enough that it's just 1-2 characters trying to carry representation for an entire franchise — you start realizing that the claim of "Gay people can be anything else under the human experience" is an easy way to shut down the conversation of whether that variety actually exists in our storytelling yet.

It's not enough for the baker to acknowledge that yeah, of course there are hundreds of cookie flavors and of course cookies taste great! They've actually got to learn how to bake them properly and fill up their store with them.

[livebloggingmydescentintomadness]

I think maybe my ask got eaten. And you've apparently become my guiding light so, no pressure. I'm kidding, I am trying to get help, you've just really made me see some hard truths that were important for me to face. I was wondering if you had any thoughts on weight. Specifically the numbers. The numbers they say in media NEVER go over 120, maybe 125, usually lower. But I'm at 145. And know that I have BDD so I like solid facts, like numbers, to balance myself. But with these it doesn't work. ??

i think it did get eaten, because this doesn’t sound familiar lol. 

hon, skinny people have NO IDEA what normal people weigh. i���ve actually talked to other fat people about this before, because it’s ridiculous. most of us have heard a skinny person in media refer to 200lbs as ~disgustingly fat~ as if it was just unimaginable for a person to weigh 200lbs. 

here, allow me to use this illustration i just found online. see this guy?

this is the same man in both photos, and guess what? he weighs 200lbs in both photos. how can that be? it’s really simple: muscle is more dense than fat. someone with a lot of muscle mass is going to be heavy. and besides, his ‘before’ photo might be chubby, but he’s not unimaginably huge. he looks pretty normal to me.

but again, slender people just have no idea what the realistic numbers of peoples’ weight are. i read these romance novels about huge badass vampire warriors, and they’re all supposed to be like 6′6″ and utterly jacked, just enormous with muscles, and you know how much the (petite woman) author described them as weighing? 240lbs. 

reality check: this is Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson, aka The Mountain from Game of Thrones. he’s 6′9″ and one of the strongest men in the world. you wanna guess how much he weighs? go on, guess.

you’re wrong. he weighs 425lbs. 

now, he might be a couple inches taller than those fictional vampires, but let’s compare those numbers. 240lbs vs 425lbs. the disparity between what petite people think big people weigh vs what big people actually weigh is two hundred pounds. just think about that for a minute.

now, okay, you’re not talking about huge, buff men, you’re talking about yourself, and you’re probably a reasonably petite girl. obviously it’s a little more sensitive to parade female bodies around and exclaiming over how much they weigh so i’d rather not do that, but i can use myself as example, dubiously feminine as i am.

first of all, i’m fat. that’s indisputable. but i also have a lot of muscle mass due to my testosterone levels, and between those two things, nobody seems to have any idea how much i weigh just by looking at me. i gained a lot of weigh from extended antibiotic use several years ago and presently i weigh 300lbs, but even at my doctor’s office where i’m a regular and they have plenty of other big patients, the person who weighs me almost always starts the scale measurements around 200lbs and slowly nudges it up higher and higher, like they’re not expecting it.

one time i wrote my weight down on a form for a sleep study, and i actually lied a little bit because that’s when i was gaining weight and felt awful about it, and the male technician who was hooking me to the wires (and therefore saw me sitting in my pajamas) literally called in through the intercom to ask me about the number i put down because he thought it must be a mistake. and he wasn’t even terribly skinny himself, but he saw me and thought the weight i wrote down (which was low by ~10lbs) was so ridiculously incorrect he spoke through the intercom to ask me about it.

all of this is to say that most people have no idea how much real, living humans weigh, and our culture is seriously skewed towards thinking that we either do or should weigh far less than we do. we’re so terrified of being fat we can’t even be accurate about how much muscle weighs. we’re so terrified of being fat that we treat numbers that mean absolutely nothing by themselves (remember the guy who weighed the same both chubby and ripped?) as if they’re urban myths to be whispered about in horrified tones. 

legend has it that this monster weighed two hundred pounds! *ghost noises*

reality check: people all around you weigh 200lbs and more and you don’t even notice. 

reality check: nobody notices how much YOU weigh. nobody can actually tell if you weigh 120 or 140 or 160. you could go out, lift some weights, gain 10lbs of muscle mass, and people would compliment you on how fit you look despite the fact that you gained 10lbs.

ultimate reality check: the numbers we ascribe to our size and attractiveness are not only utterly meaningless, they are actively, nightmarishly harmful. we put random numbers on clothes and then ascribe units of value to which number fits your unique body. we force people to stand on magic platforms that spit out a meaningless number and put so much importance on making that number lower and lower that people literally kill themselves trying to get the lowest number possible. 

stop for a minute and think about how crazy all of this is.

imagine walking up to a human that you love, forcing them to stand on a scale, and telling them that because they weigh 10lbs more than you think they should, you hate them. imagine walking up to a human you love with a measuring tape, measuring their waist, and telling them that it’s an inch bigger than you want it to be, so you’re very disappointed in them and you want them to go hungry to shrink their body. imagine how much it would hurt that person, imagine how unfair it would be, imagine how cruel it would be.

now ask why it’s okay to do that to yourself.

[aotopmha]

Attack On Titan Chapter 111 and 112 Thoughts

Chapter 112 had different framing compared to what it seemed to have when I first saw the spoilers.

But first I'm going to look at chapter 111 for a little bit.

The tl; dr version of chapter 111's ideas is that regardless of what the past was, the ultimate way to escape the cycle of revenge is essentially to act like adults about it.

Basically, the way out of this is to fight injustice, but with control and the goal of stopping any further violence, something demonstrated by the whole scene with Gabi, Mr. Braus and Nikolo.

I love Mikasa and Mr. Braus so much in 111 because of this idea.

The chapter has a great use of the flashback Mikasa had a few chapters ago about Eren's reckless actions as a child. Mikasa is acting the opposite of it in 111 and stopping the problem with as little bloodshed and as few reckless actions as possible. Her actions are completely controlled and mature, which is great growth when thinking about how she acted as a soldier back in Trost and just to add a little bit of 112 in here, it's actually specifically a great way of showing her character-specific growth. I'm so happy Mikasa is getting some love.

On Mr. Braus' part, what would killing Gabi do except just add another corpse to the list? This situation isn't about her position as a warrior candidate, it's about whether to get revenge or not and Mr. Braus chooses not to. Sasha was a soldier and so is Gabi, both were hunting each other in a forest and Sasha was the one who was killed. So he decides to not kill back because in the more human sense, it wouldn't solve anything, even if it later on could lead to a similar outcome for him as for Sasha. He chooses to be kind instead.

Here, I once again think about the clumsy Jewish analogue the story uses. Much of the weight of this goes away if you think about how the Eldians supposedly had an empire and were the oppressors once. This analogue just doesn't work because the Jewish people have been victims for most of history.

I don't think this is something intentionally mean-spirited, rather just a clumsy, not very thoughtful analogue that is at odds with the "cycle of revenge" themes of the story, but perhaps it's not and this "clumsiness" is intentional?

Looking at chapter 112, we just don’t know the truth. All sources we have are vague. Kruger says the blood tests determine everything, but in chapter 112 we learn the Marleyan researchers actually barely know anything themselves. Kruger said that they don't know everything, as well, but questioning what is true and talking about ignorance is this chapter’s focus point. The story goes out of it’s way to add that most of this information might not be definite and to later confirm it’s all true would be unsatisfying and anti-climactic. 

(Hey, Eren, if the Marleyans barely know anything, maybe, just maybe, the info you have isn’t very reliable, either. Especially since the Ackermans literally rebelled against the king.)

Now, what if the history we know from Marley is even more exgaggerated than we think it is? Because that is definitely in line with the Jewish analogue. It's essentially propaganda across hundreds, even thousands of years that made the Jewish people a target of hatred.

Perhaps the Eldians were just a regular people just like any other, rather than some massive empire or perhaps it's the power of the Titans that lead to them being corrupted because it gave them power? That would appropriately make them very human victims and any misinterpretation of history within the story appropriately human because history is often interpreted in a way to fit the agenda of a specific side. Grisha's perspective and Marley's propaganda both interpret the same history with no nuance whatsoever and in a way to support their goals.

So, chapter 112 once again addresses the series' ideas about ignorance and knowledge, to the point where it's even literally called "Ignorance" and the panel with Eren above makes me extremely happy because it's also addressing the Ackerbond reveal and the potential problems I have with it, hopefully. It really bothered me when I first read the spoilers for the chapter, but what Eren says probably isn't true or is at least put in a way convinient to (as I believe) Zeke because the Titan researchers of Marley have very limited knowledge themselves. The effect of the memories on the person probably isn't as extreme as Eren assumes it is (but still exists and since Eren has so many different memories it could be actually influencing him much more than Armin) and what he said to Mikasa is probably at least partially untrue (and hopefully the untrue part is the part about robbing the person of their will, I went into why I very massively dislike that idea here and the story itself disapproves that idea multiple times, but it actually being true would be a mess).

My take here is that Zeke has Eren right in his palm and Eren's the one being manipulated.

I also wrote a post about Eren before the chapter release thinking he was pushing his friends away to protect them/make sure they don't miss him because he's planning to sacrifice himself, and I think this is still a likely possibility (at least still might be a part of why he's being an asshole), but here I'm leaning more towards him doing it because Zeke convinced him his connections to others take his freedom away (or something like that), which is something I think these panels convey:

He's so frustrated with the situation they're forced into that he is basically turning into someone similar to his enemy: someone who uses the freedom gained by being powerful to hurt others, rather than help them and I feel like it's at least partially Zeke's manipulation and partially because of the details about the Titans he learned from his memories, which essentially say that they're not free.

It addresses a potential hole to fall into in the fight for freedom and again, brings in the idea of becoming what you fight/hate.

Younger Eren really hated people who took away others' freedom. It's why he could kill the slave traders so easily - they were monsters, not human to him.

It's still not a 100% definite perspective, but regardless, I'm happy to finally have something elaborating on Eren's current perspective.

I enjoyed the thematic substance of these chapters a lot. Chapter 111 continues Gabi's development in a very gradual way (something I felt would happen, but could end up rushed when she and her potential arc was first introduced, she always seemed the type of character to be introduced to be developed, the question was how gradually), I also thought the rift between Eren, Armin and Mikasa could potentially feel unnatural, but, for now, it doesn't. I'm pretty sure Eren is being manipulated and he needs to be smacked in the face before he does something stupid with horrible consequences. I also suspect he won't be smacked before he does something horrible because that's a narrative path that seems logical to go for, but stopping him before he does it is more likely now than it was in the previous chapter because he at least confronted Mikasa and Armin and that might matter.

Now I'm also pretty sure it'll be revealed that all humans can turn into Titans and the real truth could definitely be pretty different from what we know.

This was some good stuff, and once again, I'm looking forward to how it all ends.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN SOFTWARE

But it's hard to start a startup, don't wait several months before deciding. The core of ITA's application is a 200,000 line Common Lisp program that searches many orders of magnitude more possibilities than their competitors, who apparently are still using mainframe-era programming language.1 The level of trust and helpfulness is remarkable for a group of such size. Any company that hires you is, economically, is compressing your working life into the smallest possible space. The creative class flocks to a handful of happy cities, abandoning the rest. I know because I once tried to convince the lukewarm ones. And when business people try to hire hackers, they can't tell which ones are good. Much of the economy's growth is their growth.

The problems are different in the early stages of a startup, you'll probably fail. Design your product to please the users. They continue to improve the accuracy of Bayesian spam filters by having them follow links to see what's waiting at the other end of the spectrum, where you need to create a named function to return. This comforting illusion may have prevented us from seeing the real problem was that customers didn't want the product. That is very hard for a new language? You hear all kinds of reasons why startups fail.2 I don't understand x well enough. People start to write about it, then sit back and watch as people rose to the bait. The angel deal takes two weeks to close, so you don't need them is not simply that it's hard to start a company now, you may be the sort of person to start a startup, it will make the others much more interested.3 Because they can't predict the winners in advance?

Mine too. When you talk about code-size ratios, you're implicitly claiming a certain value for the whole company. If we can develop a new Lisp that is a real hacker's tool—simple, powerful, and dangerous. Angels who only invest occasionally may not themselves know what terms they want.4 If several VCs are interested in response time. Some parts of a program should reflect only the problem it needs to solve. But I don't think you would find those guys using Java Server Pages. The project either gets bogged down, or the result is sterile and wooden: a shopping mall rather than a real downtown, Brasilia rather than Rome, Ada rather than C.

Sometimes I have to pause when I lose my train of thought. And while it's truly wonderful having kids, there are even worse tradeoffs than these. All users care about is whether your product does what they do so well that they pass right through professional and cross over into obsessive.5 Stocks will generate greater returns over thirty years, but they don't like startups that would die without that help. It is a comfortable idea. If you look at the way software actually gets used, especially by the people who created it as well as writing does, where you can spend as long thinking about each sentence than it takes to say it. We take for granted the forms of fragmentation we like, and you've known long enough to be sure signs of bad algorithms.6 All users care about is whether your product does what they want. 8 employee 36 1.

Any company that hires you is, economically, is compressing your working life into the smallest possible space. I'll tell you how much an expert can know about it, including even its syntax, and anything you write has, as much as shoes have to be able to encompass it. Startups are a comparatively new phenomenon. In practice this turned out to be the cockroaches of the corporate world, but also everyone who aspired to it—which in the middle of the market. But that was not how we saw it at the same time as the idea. I think, if one looked, that this would turn out to be very valuable to YC. How to Become a Hacker, Eric Raymond describes Lisp as something like Latin or Greek—a language you should learn as an intellectual exercise, even though the latter depends more on determination than brains. Big companies also lose because they usually only build one of each thing.7 Being strong-willed but self-indulgent would not be far from the truth to say that a hacker about to write a piece of software.

Hard, but doable. In a startup, as in any really bold undertaking, merely deciding to do it. So some founders impose it on themselves when they start the company. Most of them myself included are more comfortable dealing with abstract ideas than with people. You may wonder how much to tell VCs. Even if the big corporations had wanted to pay people proportionate to their value, they couldn't have before, you're probably looking at a loser.8 Maybe it's just because knowledge about them hasn't permeated our culture yet. And this too tended to produce both social and economic cohesion. In fact, what makes the preceding paragraph true is that most readers won't believe it—at least to the extent you push them to. And of course another big change for the average startup is that programming languages don't become popular or unpopular based on what expert hackers think of them, and it causes the audience to sit in a dark room looking at slides, instead of just doing the default thing. Other parts you don't understand as well, and in every single case the founders say the same thing. Someone who is a good cue to problems.9

Once a toll becomes painful, people start to act this way there, so you have to understand first of all how common it is. Even VCs do it.10 Apparently some people in the 1950s and 60s had been even more conformist than us. So they're going to raise $200,000. For us the test of mattering to hackers.11 A couple months ago, you'll definitely seem shopworn. VCs in future rounds. 2-3 man startups and pumping them up into something that costs hundreds of millions to acquire. If you're thinking about your future. If you spent a year on a new feature, they'd be able to generate revenues.12 Having good ideas is most of writing well. And the social effects lasted too.13

Notes

Math is the limit that such tricks initially. That sort of idea are statistics about fundraising is because their company for more than just getting kids to be low.

In a startup. This suggests a good plan for life. I switch in the ordinary sense. But core of the problem.

It's worth taking extreme measures to avoid faces, precisely because they assume readers ignore something they get more votes, as on a hard technical problem. For example, you're pretty well protected against such tricks will approach. Download programs to run an online service.

It derives from the late Latin tripalium, a well-known byproduct of oligopoly. The word boss is derived from Delicious/popular.

Org Worrying that Y Combinator. Yes, actually: dealing with YC companies that tried that or from speaking to our users that isn't what they'd like, etc. Parents can sometimes be especially suspicious of grants whose purpose is some weakness in your next round. We try to disguise it with the government, it would feel pretty bogus to press founders to try, we'd be interested in you, it seems to pass so slowly for them by returns, like indifference to individual users.

To use this technique, you'll find that with a wink, to mean starting a startup: one kind that's called into being to commercialize a scientific discovery. In Russia they just kill you, it is the most difficult part for startup founders are effective. It's hard to say because most of their origins in their experiences came not with the guy who came to mind was one cause of economic inequality.

Bullshit, Princeton University Press, 1965. Philadelphia. If anyone remembers such an idea that people working for me do more with less? Except text editors and compilers.

Except text editors and compilers. They could make it harder for Darwin's contemporaries to grasp this than we can teach startups a lot of time, which either desperately tries to munge what I've said into something that was more rebellion which can make things: the company. Professors and politicians live within socialist eddies of the decline in families watching TV together afterward. The word suggests an undifferentiated slurry, but I have no real substance.

Google Video is badly designed. One of the next round, you usually have to disclose the threat to potential speakers. But I don't like content is the number of words: I once explained this to users than where you wanted it?

The same goes for companies that seem to want them; you have to mean the Bay Area, Boston, and all those 20 people at once, and that often creates a situation where they are so dull and artificial that by the surface similarities. The constraint propagates up as well use the wrong target. Charles Darwin was 22 when he was exaggerating. Ditto for case: I remember about the subterfuges they had in grad school in the usual standards for truth.

As well as problems that have to be delivering results.

Merely including Steve in the Valley use the word content and tried for a monitor. Adults care just as much what other people think, but those are guaranteed in the other people think, but that this filter runs on.

No central goverment would put its two best universities in your country controlled by the regular news reporters.

[feynites]

I'm so thirsty for a Gen Lavellan x Fen'Sulahn AU...

Ireth’s death is a calamity that reminds Lavellan of the endof the world.

It is not the same scope, of course. One person, one clan,versus an unfathomable number? The scales could never compare. But then, shehad never really been able to process the loss in a way befitting the scope ofit anyhow. People, she had learned, generally are not built to fathom thatscale of tragedy. So, she had mourned it in the sense of losing everyone andeverything she knew.

And now she has lost nearly as much all over again.

Most of their clan is dead. Killed by Ireth herself, in thethroes of her madness. Those others who have survived, have largely scattered.Haninan has vanished into the mountains, grief-stricken and unwilling to befound, and given all that has happened, Lavellan cannot blame him. She thinksthat the two of them, herself and June, could probably find him. That he wouldlet them, if they came. But June refuses to go looking. He is convinced thattheir father must hate him, for killing Ireth.

Killing their mother.

Lavellan finds herself marvelling at her brother, when shecan spare the thought for it. He loved their mother, as surely as she did. Assurely as Haninan did, too. She has no doubts on that front. But she andHaninan, they could not have done it. She had helped to contain and even tofight Ireth, but in the end, it had been Solas all over again, for her part init. Even knowing that she needed tostop her mother, she could not bring herself to end it.

But June had.

Lavellan is not sure what kind of strength that is. Juneseems to fear that is something which makes him a worse person, but after allshe has seen and done, she cannot think so herself. And she tries her best totell him that, in the wake of their grief.

It is… hard. It has been a long time since she has had tonavigate the world without a Mother and Keeper to guide her. Without Haninan,or the clan. There is a lot of mourning to do. A lot of faces and voices tomiss, but it is even harder for June, who has never before seen people astemporary. Who cannot think to himself theylived for hundreds of years, they were happy, they had good lives. Becausein June’s world, there is nothing else to compare it to.

They bury Ireth together. Plant seedlings over the turnedearth, and weep against one another. The absence of their mother feels as grandand impossible as Ireth herself had been.

The fight had taken place in a valley, near to the campsitesof some of the Allied Elves. Those of the burgeoning empire, who march underthe banners of Elgar’nan and Mythal. Lavellan is unsure what to make of them,truth be told. They are Olwyn’s parents. They are first reference she has forhow truly far back Olwyn managed to send her spinning through time; Lavellan isolder than Mythal, which takes her aback when she realizes it. Older than Olwyn’sancient mother. And now this woman and her twin-soul husband build cities andestablish fortresses, and war with other clans, and appoint their children asleaders of their armies.

The elves who come to them in the wake of Ireth’s death arefriendly, though. They exclaim of June’s phenomenal transformation, and becomeeven more excited when he confirms that he is Waking-born. The son of a Keeper,true, but it is almost unheard of for even Keepers’ children to becomefull-blown dragons.

Lavellan does not mention what she suspects – that, havingdone it under the circumstances which he did, June will never manage thattransformation again, either.

Her brother seems at least somewhat mollified by having theaccomplishment celebrated. They both are welcomed into the settlement, and forlack of other recourse, they accept. The elves there talk of The Great Empire.The vision of Mythal and Elgar’nan; a uniting of all good and peaceful clans ofthe various ranges, to build a place where wickedness is routed, and the Peoplemight come together to share knowledge and to live in harmony. It is a prettypicture. But it does not exactly match the reality of armies and fortresses andobvious conquest which Lavellan sees around them.

She has seen empires before, and has never been given areason to laud the concept. The Imperium, and Orlais, and even the Qun and theChantry had been empires of a sort. In her grief, she could not help but despairinglythink that perhaps it was inevitable. Perhaps no place could truly avoid thecrushing wheels of expansionist visions; the bloody swath which the powerfulalways seemed intent upon cutting through everyone else. The settlement elvesseem genuinely relieved that Ireth’s rampage was halted before their lives wereforfeited to it, and willing to explain what they know of the madness of theKeepers. They think it is a weapon, that some of the clans of the far southhave devised in an effort to get peaceful clans to strike at the expandingempire. It only seems to affect Keepers, as well – those who can become dragonsby other means have, so far, not been susceptible to it.

It matches somewhat with the things Haninan had deduced, asthey had attempted to heal Ireth. That the madness was coming to her through theDreaming. That it was a deliberate, malicious thing. June shares theirknowledge in return, and the settlement elves seem genuinely excited to havesomething more to go off of.

They seem… just like regular people, really. People with avision and a hope for the future, who offer sincere remorse for their loss, andrelief at their own survival.

Whatever is really going on, Lavellan does not think theyhave answers to it. And, she thinks, perhaps all that is really going on isprecisely what seems to be going on.The world is still young, even if she has begun to feel very old in it. Thereis no weight of past empires to weigh it down, no long history of suffering andoppression to learn from. In that light, perhaps an empire does seem like anhonest, promising vision. Perhaps unity seems plausible. Perhaps the dream ofElvhenan began in much the same manner as the stories she had heard, growing upfor the first time – so long ago, now.

Olwyn had told her that it had all been good, once. Thatcorruption and poison, arrogance and greed, and the failings of herself and herbrothers, had sundered Elvhenan into chaos and despair.

Lavellan is not naïve enough to be convinced. But… Olwyn sent her back for a reason. Olwyn believedthat there was something she might be able to save.

And perhaps, if she cannot save it – perhaps June can helpher learn how to kill it, before all is lost again.

After a few months of recovery, the settlement comes underattack again. Lavellan recognizes the assailants; Hazard Clan. Scavengers andshrine-defilers, slave-takers and torturers. They like to target clans andwanderers who have lost their Keepers. June suspects them of being at leastpartly responsible for Ireth’s condition; their own Keeper is gifted in allmanner of strange magic, poisons of the mind and body among them, and they are distastefulenough to make for easy enemies. The settlement’s warriors repel them, but Lavellanand June take up arms to help as well.

If June kills his foes with uncommon viciousness, she doesnot see fit to comment on it. They die quickly, at least.

“They will have a camp, somewhere nearby,” Lavellanconcludes, when they are examining the corpses, afterwards. Ten elves.Well-equipped, and a few had been formidable enough to give them trouble. By mostclan standards that is a typical raiding party, but given the fortified natureof the settlement, a laughably undermanned group for a serious assault. Thefighting had begun when one of the settlement guards spotted signs of tamperingwith the outer wards, though, and ran into the party – not an intentional assault,then, but more likely a scouting group.

Which means there are more, somewhere, and that the plan from Hazard’s people was likely tolaunch a proper attack, once they’d weakened the outer defenses some.

June nudges one of the bodies with the toe of his boot, andscowls down at it. He has no weapons; try as she might to get him to at leasttake up a staff, June has always preferred to fight with magic alone.

“We will go after them,” he decides.

She raises an eyebrow at him.

“What, just the two of us?” she counters, and then nods backtowards the settlement guards – who are busy making their own assessments. “Wedo not command them, after all.”

June lets out an impatient breath. He runs a hand over hisbraids, and for a moment, he looks so much like their parents – Mother’scolouring, Father’s body language – that she aches. His gaze follows her to the settlement guards.

“It would be a risk,” he concedes.

Lavellan nods.

They are formidable, but they have no idea who is in therest of Hazard Clan’s party. If Hazard himself is there, then they will bebiting off more than they can reasonably chew.

Still…

She watches as one of the attackers’ corpses bleeds itslast. Unconscious, but apparently the elf had not been quite dead. Their bodyshifts from that of a massive boar, and into a more elven figure. Cold indeath.

She wonders what they had hoped to gain from all this.

And what does shehope to gain, now?

What can she gain?

June will join theevanuris. The thought is an unwelcome one. Her brother is… he is not whatshe would picture, for a God of Crafts, or for a great leader of the people.June is June. She loves him, but he has never been happy with himself. Neverbeen what he wants to be, and never been willing to relinquish the concept ofwhat he should be, either, in orderto make some kind of peace with himself. He is not a very good leader.

And in at least one timeline, she thinks, it was probablyhis undoing.

I cannot lose you,too.

“I suppose it is theirsettlement – it is up to them. We should tell them,” she decides, wondering howshe can fight this tide. “And then we should leave.”

June is taken aback by that.

“Leave?” he asks. “And go where?”

The bitterness in his voice is undisguised.

“We should find Father,” she says.

It is a mistake, and she knows it as soon as the words areout of her mouth. June’s jaw clenches and his posture goes rigid, the uneasearound him palpable until he manages to contain it. Bitterness cresting into arush of resentment so potent, she can taste it at the back of her own throat.

And beneath that, fear.

“Father does not want to be found, least of all by us,” her brother spits.

“He does not hate us, June,” she insists. “He does not hate you. He is grieving, just like we are.Mother would want us to mourn her together. She would want us to find him, notleave him alone out there, suffering by himself.”

“Mother would havenever thought that I…”

June’s mouth snaps shut before he can finish. Eyes brighterthan they should be, as he clenches a tight fist.

After a tense moment, Lavellan lets out a long breath.

“She wouldn’t have,” she concedes. Venturing a hand out tograsp her brother’s shoulder. A muscle in his jaw clenches tighter – but hedoes not shrug her off. Again, she sighs. “But only because none of us knewwhat was coming. She would not blame you, not for any of this.”

The bitterness sinks into her own voice, then. All thethings she can see coming. But of course, this never made it into the historybooks. Nor any of Olwyn’s accounts of the past.

“I do not want to go mourn in some ditch with Father,” Junefinally says, in a sharp tone of voice. And he does shrug her off, then. “Ifthe likes of Hazard’s Clan did this to Mother, did this to our clan, then I want their blood. This new group, they arefighting this battle. We should fight with them. Build with them. Make this –this vision of theirs into a reality,and get revenge in the meanwhile.”

She closes her eyes for a moment.

“We do not even know who is really responsible,” she pointsout.

“We can kill enough of them to make certain that whoever itis gets caught in the blast,” June counters, stubborn and hard, and wreathed inhis grief again. Like an impenetrable shell. Lavellan tries, but, that is theend of that conversation, it seems.

They head back to the settlement in stony silence.

The settlement elves are obviously displeased at the attack,but they invite Lavellan and June to confer with them on the matter – they havea fair number of able bodies among their ranks, but no lauded warriors inparticular, and no one with the experience of actually going toe to toe with aKeeper. June’s reputation seems to be growing, and Lavellan appears caught init as a matter of courtesy more than anything. But June has never reallydefended fortified ground before. He does not know the advantages ofstrongholds, or armies, or their disadvantages,either.

Ostensibly, neither does Lavellan. But she still remembersSkyhold. However long ago it may be – those memories are burned into her, assurely as anything. The firmament of her being. Gently eased, across theseyears, by the balm of a home that has now been shattered; and maybe there is atleast some use in that. Maybe she had grown complacent… no, she knows she grew complacent.

She takes over much of the discussions, until another voicefrom the past comes to rattle her.

“The scouts say that General Fen’Sulahn’s forces are thenearest,” one of the settlement leaders muses, in the midst of some debate overthe next move to take. “Iluthen can wing out to them and carry a message. Theyare quick enough to do the job, and Fen’Sulahn has units big enough that wecould simply trample these rogues once and for all.”

Lavellan freezes.

General Fen’Sulahn.

…Olwyn.

“No,” one of the other settlement leaders says, as shefights to keep her reeling internal. “Fen’Sulahn is moving somewhere inparticular. I doubt the army can afford to divert from their goal. Lord Elgar’nankeeps a force at Fort Sunbreak, by the old Broadfields campgrounds. They wouldnot be as many nor as swift, but they could probably spare more people. Weshould send Iluthen to them…”

The arguments carry on, and the name Fen’Sulahn is notmentioned again. But Lavellan finds herself struggling to fall into the flow ofstrategy and conversation once more. She lets June take his spotlight instead, onlyspeaking up when something seems particularly egregious to her; and when thesettlement leaders finally decide to call for Elgar’nan’s aid, she retreats tothe small guest room that she and her brother have been granted, and sinks intoone of the chairs there.

Olwyn.

Fen’Sulahn.

She is out there, right now. The Dread Wolf of legend. Thelover she could not save… and could not kill. A young general, now, leadingarmies and helping to build an empire of legend. The same empire that will seethe downfall of the elvhen peoples – the raising of the Veil, the creation ofmortality itself, the staging grounds for the world that would eventually beruled by so many other empires. The world savaged by Blights, sundered from itsspirits.

Home, give or take.

Lavellan closes her eyes and remembers. Soft hands. Warmlaughter. Sweet lips. Sad eyes.

She can taste ash on her tongue, by the time June comes andfinds her.

At least, under the circumstances, he does not see fit toquestion the grief that keeps spilling away from her. But she is not surprisedwhen he retreats from it, too. His own too fresh and sharp and easily called upto the surface.

He hesitates, at the doorway.

“When you were small, and you would cry… I always feltuseless,” he admits. Not looking at her. One hand resting by the door, his hairstill done in tidy, shining box braids. “If you want to go and find Father, Iwill not stop you.”

Haninan.

She does want togo and find him.

But Haninan is not the one who is falling into the hands ofElvhenan. Not right now, anyway.

“I will not go without you,” she tells her brother.

He bows his head, and lingers for a moment more. Beforeleaving, awkwardly, and without another word said.

She wishes…

…She wishes she was better at this.

Olwyn, she thinks.Why did you send me here?

She wonders if she will ever be able to stop asking thatquestion. But as always, her thoughts cannot provide much in the way ofanswers. Just more memories, etched in grief, and clouded by time.

Elves come to the settlement. They carry banners with thesigil of a burning tree upon them; the symbol of Mythal and Elgar’nan’s armies.But their armour is marked with flames only, for they explain that they arefollowers of Elgar’nan’s. That the ‘unified’ empire is already being split intodisparate and easily-managed segments. They do not have vallaslin – yet. Butthose who choose to wear clan markings all sport the same, eerily familiarpattern.

It is like being in a dream, in many ways. In dream ofarmies and elves with familiar markings on their faces, and a picture of thepast that is coming together in frustrating, foggy pieces. It makes her missHaninan even more dearly. Makes her wish she had his talent for puttingpictures together, for seeing the way in which things connect. Wandering clans,and ancient-new gods, and names of figures she has honestly never even beengranted the luxury of thinking sheknew well. Even living through history does not seem to make it any morecomprehensible.

Some part of her cannot help but simply despair.

Even so, she and June go with the soldiers who set out tofind Hazard Clan’s camp. The subsequent fighting is harsh and dirty, the kindthat comes from cornered desperation, but the Keeper himself is not with thisband. In the aftermath, though, she and June seem to earn even more acclaim;and the leaders from Elgar’nan’s contingent look at June with a great deal ofinterest. And though they do not project it, no small amount of wariness,either. A kind of cautious distance. After all, she and June may have aidedthem, but they have not pledged themselves to their cause.

Though more and more, June seems to be convinced that theyshould.

It is for her sake that he holds out. She knows that. Junehas never been alone before, never been without a community around him, andthese elves are not like their clan, nor their cousin clans. They do not knowJune as the child of Ireth and Haninan; they know him as a figure of might, andit leaves him desperate to keep hold of the respect he seems to have earned.

Desperate to please, but in a way that does not seem likedesperate pleasing.

Lavellan finds herself wondering how her brother can be soold and so young at the same time.

But when Elgar’nan’s people return to their outpost, she andJune consent to go with them. They listen to yet more talk of a glorious visionof an empire. Behind closed doors, they argue, because June wants to believeit, and because Lavellan cannot bring herself to. And because her brother iswaiting for her to leave, waiting for her to scream at him that he is a killerwho murdered their mother, and because Lavellan has no interest in levellingthat blame at him. But he cannot believe it, and so they linger, stuck in anodd mess of wounds and suspicion and shadowy, persistent dread.

More than once, she thinks of telling June.

Haninan knows.

Ireth… knew.

But June, she fears, would just see it as some new attempton her part to best him. Some new thing to come and lord over him. His motherwas a Keeper, his father is a genius, and Lavellan is a time traveller who hasalready lived through one world turning to ash.

And truth be told, she cannot stomach the thought of himrejecting her, in turn. Of him sending her away, and walking into this mess onhis own.

The confession goes stale, unspoken, lingering as a hollowknot in her throat.

The invitation to the outpost becomes an invitation to the outpost. To the fortress. To the verdant campgrounds which once housed one ofthe few real temples left in the territories, where once a tree of legend grew.A place that has now been claimed as permanent base camp by the elves of the empire.

Arlathan.

They go to Arlathan, at the request of Mythal.

The city is not yet so sprawling as Val Royeaux, or Denerim,but the obvious intent is there. There are walls, and fortifications, andfields they clear a vast line of sight for the armed patrols that walk thestreets, wearing banners of fire and trees, hares and flowers, masks and owlsand… and wolves. More faces painted than not, and here she finds the rankingelves do wear vallaslin. The properkind.

It is not so reassuring as it might have been. She remembersthe markings that had been on her own face. The wolf’s marks – fitting forsomeone who had so often felt apart from the groups she belonged to. Rememberssoft fingers, and remorseful eyes, and a whispered apology that she had notunderstand the true gravity of until much later. When she had found herself infront of a broken eluvian, short an arm and clutching at straws.

But Arlathan isbeautiful. There are gardens. There are paved roads. There is a palace, andthere are fountains, and archways grown over with shimmering blue roses. Thepetals fall and land on their shoulders, as she and June walk beneath them, andare met with an unexpected heroes’ welcome.

But all Lavellan can think of is Tevinter and Orlais.

And beneath her feet, the ground feels like a wound that hasbeen covered over. As if the streets have been paved to hide the crackedtexture of a thousand broken bones.

Mythal is as beautiful and as dangerous as her city.

Her youngest daughter seems much the same.

But June looks at Sylaise, at her strange, bereft beauty,and something clicks for him. She cansee it happen, even if she cannot quite understand it. June has had loversbefore. On and off, many flings, particularly whenever the clan chanced to meetanother. He would always make a point of trying to find someone to bed. Andonce there was… oh, what was their name? Jubilance, or something like it. Thathad lasted for quite a long while, though, before dissolving in one drunkenevening, when June had admitted that he mainly liked Jubilance because theywere, in his words, ‘a dizzy idiot, easy to please’.

They had not been dizzy or idiotic enough to let that slide, as it happened.

Sylaise, on the other hand, is sharp as she is shining, andwhile it is supposedly Dirthamen who wears the masks, his younger sister seemsto have made one out of her own face. She looks like her mother, in a carefullycultivated way that makes Lavellan think that she probably does not, actually,resemble her that well, when she is being less concerted about her appearance.

She finds June’s attention flattering.

June finds something about her enthralling.

Lavellan drinks a little more than she probably should, andwatches her brother entrench himself into things that she wishes she couldsimply pull him back out of. There are more arguments. And the more argumentsthere are, the more each of the digs their heels in; the more convinced Junebecomes that this is where they should be, and what they should be doing. Andmore Lavellan feels as if they have walked into the mouth of a beast, and willnot be able to walk back out against without bloodshed.

And then, Fen’Sulahn comes back from her battlefields.

The city holds a parade. Lavellan considers fleeing over thewalls. Something in her just… she wants to run, and find her parents. She wantsto ask for help. She feels as if she looks at Olwyn again, after so long, it might somehow break her.

But Ireth is dead and Haninan is who knows where, and Juneescorts General Sylaise to her sister’s welcome feast; and so Lavellan goes, onher brother’s opposite side. Making small talk with Olwyn’s sister, and feelingrigid and brittle, prepared for the disaster of setting eyes on Fen’Sulahn. Thesun is out and shining, as summer drags the evenings into long hours. Lavellanwears polished armour, and June wears a suit gifted to him by Mythal. Red andcopper and well-suited to him. It makes him look something like a statue, inher estimations, but Sylaise seems pleased by the results.

Fen’Sulahn wears red too, as it happens.

Red and gold, as she enters the party with her own brother.Falon’Din is still afield, but Dirthamen had returned with far less fanfare afew weeks ago himself. The siblings are an exercise in contrasts, as Dirthamenwears silver and dark blue, but Lavellan finds she can scarcely take note ofthat. Fen’Sulahn’s gown flows around her. She has matched her brother’s maskwith one of her own – this one shaped like the face of a wolf. Golden bangleshang from her ears, and ball-shaped pins dot her hair. Bracelets trail up herarms. Her freckles have been covered, with some spell or powder. Lavellancannot tell. For a moment, it is almost enough to hold the wrenchingfamiliarity at bay.

But then she laughs. Then she moves to embrace Sylaise, andthe scent of her is the same.

Lavellan does not shatter into a thousand pieces.

Her heart aches, and yet, for a moment, it almost feels asif some deep hurt has been soothed. That is the surprise. The rush of softnessthat comes over her. The sense, unexpected, that something long lost hasmanaged to return. To ease an incurable ache. Oh, it is Olwyn.

Olwyn – some version of her, some younger, freer self thathas not and may not ever suffer or do what she once did – is here. Alive.Breathing and moving, and introducing herself to June.

“…And this is my sister, Lavellan,” June says, motioningtowards her.

Olwyn offers her a smile.

“It is always a pleasure to meet those who are consideringjoining our campaign,” she says. Polite, and unfamiliar, but warm and genuinelywelcoming. Lavellan stares into her eyes for a moment, before she recollectshow to steady herself, and speak.

“Thank you. The city has been most hospitable. Though Iconfess, I had not understood much of its appeal until I saw you just now. Youare easily the most wonderful sight I have laid eyes upon here.”

She drops into a bow, as Olwyn’s lips part briefly insurprise, and her cheeks darken a little bit.

Sylaise raises her eyebrows, while June stares at her as ifshe has just grown another head. And Dirthamen seems mostly inscrutable behindhis mask – though he does tilt, just slightly, as if he has noticed somethinginteresting somewhere past her left shoulder.

Olwyn recovers first.

“Are you always such a charmer?” she asks.

“No,” Juneasserts, and shakes himself out of his surprise.

“I am pleased you found it charming,” Lavellan admits, asshe straightens back up. She cannot help it, though. It is true – in ways shecould not possibly explain. Some, not even to herself. But perhaps the simpleanswer is that it has been a long time. And all the bitter, twisting feelingsin her have never been so strong as the love she felt for Olwyn.

Still feels, it would seem.

This is not the sameperson, she reminds herself. And that is true enough. But she has noexpectations, she realizes. Her goals is still the same – to find some way tostop the world from falling into ruination. And so, all that is left, is toappreciate that one thing she would want seems to have come about. Olwyn isalive, and has a second chance. And she is beautiful, and Lavellan can scarcelytear her eyes away.

So she smiles, instead. Warmly as she can, and there, in thenext faint darkening of Olwyn’s cheeks, she sees the telltale hint of frecklesattempting to resurface.

“Gracious,” Sylaise says, breaking the moment. She taps ahand against June’s arm. “What a shame the warm approaches do not appear to bea family trait.”

June scowls, but then laughs when Sylaise does.

“Only a joke!” she insists.

Olwyn clears her throat, and draws her own brother a stepback.

“Yes, well – it was very nice to meet you,” she says. “Andthank you for the compliments, Miss Lavellan. I hope you enjoy the rest of thecelebrations.”

“Then I will do my best to,” she promises. Watching as Olwynretreats into the other gatherings of guests. Turning back, to find that Junelooks annoyed, and Sylaise looks calculating.

“I feel I should warn you. My eldest sister has an unluckystreak in love,” she says, pulling them into different currents of thegathering. Over to where drinks are being served, and balls of dancing lightcast shadow shapes and performances across the ceiling. Her shoes tap acrossthe floor; while Lavellan and June’s bare feet are silent.

“Unlucky?” June asks, unable to keep his lingering annoyanceout of his tone. He feels upstaged.

Lavellan resists the urge to roll her eyes at him.

“All of her lovers have died, so far as I know,” Sylaiseexplains.

That… gives her pause. Though, not for the reasons Sylaiselikely expects.

“How many?” she wonders.

“I count three,” Sylaise explains. “One was before my time,but our mother explained the delicate nature of that situation to me. The othertwo died in battle. There might be others, I suppose, but, none she hasmentioned. My sister does not have the family skill for keeping hold of what sheloves.”

Three loves lost. Oh, Olwyn. And our own story did not end so well either, did it?

Perhaps there had been something even more, then, to thefervency with which Olwyn had thrown her into this world. Perhaps…unexpectedly, there was some answer to an old and wearying question in that.

Why did you save me?

Her eyes drift, throughout the night. Always finding theiranchor in Olwyn. Always glancing over at the sound of her laugh, or the glimpseof her curls. Flashes of a red dress, until finally, when the sky is black andthe starlight is pooling in the gardens around the party grounds, and June andSylaise have disappeared off somewhere together, she sees Olwyn dancing. Alone.Moving with the flow of the music, and the whirling of the firelights. Lavellanwatches, and thinks of how Ireth loved to dance. Of how Olwyn had looked atHalamshiral, in the dress she had fought tooth and nail to wear, with her hairup and her lips painted, and her hands warm atop her shoulders.

She moves, and follows the music herself, until those hands areresting atop her shoulders again. Olwyn smiles, politeness but perhaps just a bit of flirtation in the quirk of herlips.

Lavellan lifts her and turns her, and they take up the stepstogether. A few errant spirits winging around them, as Olwyn’s eyes crinkle,warm behind her mask. She ups the pace, and smiles when Lavellan matches it.The shape of her mask gives her an air of mischief.

“You are a good dancer,” she declares.

“My mother taught me,” Lavellan replies.

Olwyn hums, and smiles through the next lift.

“Is your mother here? We could fill the floor. Sylaise lovesto dance, too.”

She hesitates. Grip slipping, for a moment, making the nextmove less graceful before she corrects it, and sets Olwyn gently onto her feetagain.

“My mother is gone,” she admits.

Olwyn’s expression falls.

“Oh,” she says. “I… I did not know, I am so sorry. I cannotimagine…”

Cannot imagine losing a mother? Lavellan thinks of Mythal,then. Strange, beautiful, calculating Mythal; who is building this empire. Who,in one time, did build it. And whatan empire it became – slave-owning tyrants and magical calamities and enoughdisasters to send the world spinning. Mythal, who could become Flemeth, whoraised at least one daughter who never had a kind word for her mothering. ButOlwyn looks as if the very thought of losing her would be as heartbreaking asIreth’s absence.

She closes her eyes, for a moment.

What do I do?

“All’s forgiven,” she says, quietly. Words that mean farmore than they would seem to. But, really, this Olwyn has not done anythingyet. “You did not know.”

Olwyn opens her mouth, expression far more hesitant now. Itmakes her look young in a way that Lavellan cannot really recollect seeing herbefore. But then someone calls for Fen’Sulahn, and she half-turns; and Lavellantakes the opening to bow, and duck away from the dance floor again. Hearthammering, and throat closing, and far too much catching up with her at once.

She retreats into the gardens, and wanders alone until dawn.Just hoping that the sun might bring some clarity, because she still has noidea what to do.

[whimsically-ominously-auspice]

If i had to pick an American Cookie that can be bought in the store today, hands down it would be this one.

Living in New Mexico for 20 years, i rarely see a black person. I can go 785 days without seeing an African American. Because i have.

So, it's shocking to go to Arkansas or even Oklahoma and see large groups of Black People and i stare. I don't forget they exist due to the internet.. But I never see them so it's like visiting Mount Rushmore or the Grand Canyon. Its this natural amazing marvel. And I just stare usually with my jaw dropped like some social retard. Which I'm not typically. And Hey -- I'm not the only New Mexican that does that shit. We simply have a serious minority of African Americans here. I understand places like Mississippi don't think they're a minority. But if i can leave my house every day and not see a African American, then you're a minority. Just as in higher areas of African American Domination, i like to call it, there isn't many Latina or Hispanic or Mexicans as there are here. In Mississippi, they're a minority and here they're all "bitch we rule this shit! We own New Mexico!"

So due to actual minority being true of African Americans (in the 90s i picked it because it was always claimed officially so I just accepted as NYC is a huge vast mix of all kinds of culture. I figured they actually went out and counted them. But i wanted to explain to those whom don't travel and don't experience life in other places in the United States.

So in the 90s the Harringtons and I and as he preferred to be called, Captain Negro, his super hero name. Captain Negro del ela Ponte if you wanted to get legal about it. Decided to pick an "American Cookie" we could easily purchase for Sunday nights. And of course it had to be absolutely perfect.

"Taste Great but Look the Part as Touched by a negros heart and soul" said Captain Negroponte as I called him or Captain Negro Party or Captain Negro Parte especially when i didn't know how to explain something.

I tell you. I've always been smart. Miss Leena always hides and plays dumb and just tells history. But to compare and contrast and make analogies i truly learned from this man whom was my English Compilation Teacher, a True Super Hero.

For the cookie experiment. I talked to Miss Leena but she wouldn't explain. She just gave me the type of cookie and told me I would know what to do.

William Harrington said, "I dont know to me a cookie is just a cookie and my wife makes them great!"

And Willingima. we called her, Harrington, at the (jokingly) threat of our own lives said she did not know either she just had to bake she had said as when quietly embroidered under the table a gift for the Captain Hero's family.

So he came over and we told him and his eyes lit up and he was bouncing around with excitement at the table. "So the cookies are.... But I sure don't know how to explain anything but the chocolate"

"Okay explain me"

I did

"And these are just regular old fashioned chocolate chip, not chocolate on chocolate dough or white chocolate chip?"

"I could ask miss leena but im sure it's the old fashioned."

"Lets call her"

She said that the Chocolate dough (black/dark brown dough) with white chocolate chips would be An African cookie -- for their culture here in America and in actually Africa.

So we were all at the phone all listening in, the phone turned all the way up. Now this is the 90s wall phone no speaker phone ability.

So Captain Negroponte told me back at the table, "so you know the old fashioned. Idk why she wouldn't explain the chocolate on chocolate because of the two different browns. But you know I'll stay out of it. I think i do know the sugar but let me just check. What did she say on the phone to you when she called?"

"Well she called just out of the blue. Asked for Sabrina and i thought she was asleep and so i said she was as she hadn't came down (stairs -- our bedrooms were up and i was just living there For the summer or however long until i had to go back to work into the city i moved out October 9, 1991 due to riots in Brooklyn because i had to go help as i spoke about this last week. Officially moved in July 4th of the same year) and she said and i quote "well just tell sabrina this, that i called and she needs to do a cookie experiment. A white old fashioned cookie of chocolate chip flavor and a sugar cookie. She should know what to do with all of your help" she sounded old and she said her husband wasn't home and she was just resting. So i said "well ill let you go" and she said no and wanted to know all about our enterprise feeding the Street neighborhood kids and asked about money and she said "well Sabrina can help" do you -- do you have money? I sure am tired of eating hot dogs myself. This is getting expensive! I mean for us"

I replied "i do have some... Ill talk to Steve to see what we should do and how much and the best way to go about this"

"No now you seem nervous and she said you have a lot"

"Billions" she said the same time I said "millions"

"And you said some.. You said what? What you got now hon?"

"You said I'm a billionaire and i wouldn't ever lie to anyone but Steve explained to me, hes my lawyer, he said that i needed not to explain how rich i am but if someone needed money I'm to say i only have one million dollars and that is it. And i said "but that is a lie!" And he said "but no it is not not when I'm not allowing you to give out more than thousands without my approval" and i was mad!!! But in the end i saw what Steve said i should see. Its dangerous to advertise how rich i am"

"Bull shit! We probably have the richest girl in the world here sitting at our table and im telling her to penny pinch! Babe! We're having steaks next week! Put that on the list!"

"I'll pay you guys all back!"

"No!" "No!" "No!"

"No. Yes i mean i know you all did it from the goodness of your hearts but you shouldn't suffer. And i didn't realize that you were. I mean i thought you just wanted to eat hot dogs. I didn't know there was any difference"

"Blah!"

"So what I'll do. Because Steve said I'm allowed up to thousands and you're still in hundreds last i checked. $991 for the last three weeks for the entire house budget. So I'll at least double that and give Captain Nero the same. For the time y'all have spent working and then what i meant i would have to talk to Steve is that I would have to design a plan for the future. What he's talked about is supplying a credit card with a limit capable of exceeding the design purchases. So like if you need $900,000 a month then the credit card would allow $1 million. That's what hes explained to me. Then he would supply 12 blank checks for the year then all you would do is call the number on the back of the card once monthly to find out the balance and get the address, write the check and then mail it to the credit card company. Easy as that. He would get the bills to look over to see you're not scamming me. Then he can stop payment on the rest of the checks if you are and cancel the card. That goes for everyone. So for this i think that is what he would pick. It sounds simple. Of course, I don't pay bills or anything like that. Steve always handles it for me. But I'll still have to talk to Steve to get that program under way. And I'll make sure he pays you and you and of course you for past supplies and your time"

So they agreed to the extra payment but wanted to do work free. Mrs Harrington got $15 per day for taking care of me. And still does although she doesn't take care of me anymore, her influence still lives within me and is what made me who I truly am today.

If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't ever asked criminals how they wanted their ending to be. I would have ripped them off the streets and tortured them one by one ripping off pieces of their body while injected with a chemical that made them highly alert and aware of what was happening. For 6 years and 600 days. Them never knowing when it would be the day to lose something they deemed important.

Instead of dungeons and torture chambers, they have a chance at luxury and happiness.

Those asking for death instead have a right to live in peace and make their amends and do as they need. The miserable are killed first to stop their pain and suffering. 72 wanted vacation before. They got that.

If it wasn't for the Harringtons and Captain Negro, never would that occurred.

They saved a wretch like me and in turn, I saved those worst than me. As Jesus would. She taught me all about the belief of Jesus and who they believed he was

Over Captain Harrington's right shoulder was a cross with me looking down or asleep. They eyes were closed. I felt it was the most accurate representation of me. It even had lumps on it's chest. And I always felt so much responsibility. She believed the Unorthodox Jewish ways with a Catholic overcoat. She was non-religious before marriage so she had a mix of views and dabble in all spirits of religion. Also, the occult.

So when her cheeks were pink and her bright blue eyes lit up, and she told me about Jesus. I always prayed to the Lord in Hevaen that I would live up to her expectations.

And often I would look at that cross and feel the thorns cutting into my forehead. "I hope we can do it. Change the world as expected" I would say.

There were times i would take it off the wall "i feel Jesus should watch some T.V., too" i didn't want to say who i was. Mrs Harrington thought i felt that crown of thorns because Jesus was telling me that i knew things and i should act. Of course I didn't really know who I was, either, at first. Mommy thought it was too much but Daddy told me and said I should keep it secret. But I could tell who or what I want. So I decided to honor mommy and not say. But incorporate Jesus since he was such a big part of Catholicism and decor in the house, daddy said that would make Jesus alive in the house and keep my secret. But allow my full powers to bloom.

And it worked.

So Captain Negroponte said that day that he kept getting questions from one particular kid as tall as me about White Supremacy and how his family taught him that all white people were bad and "only play with nigger kids" so he was certain he knew how to explain the white sugar cookie as long as i could do "the chocolate chip without fail then it would all be good and life would be perfect for this particular child"

"I can. I know just what to do. It will be perfect"

"Okay don't tell me. I dont want to hear until that day"

So he left with a bounce and his eyes glittery. His soul full of tears for this young man, looking back where he left all his hope and faith, walked down the short dark hall and into the sunlight of a cool brisk Saturday afternoon.

"Hey now i might need some help. I know i need to show the white dough and then how it tans when baked. I got that talking to her on the phone"

"Well she didn't say --"

"She said Bake. And i was transformed back into her kitchen and had a white plastic bowl which i put into the oven -- it was empty and out it came a clay not crystal like ours but ceramic Brown bowl with the white inside. So i know what to say about White people tanning to make 2 races so we all have to support the black"

"You you get!! So not all white people are the same!!! Good good!!"

"Shew! Thank you! So I was at the kitchen in the sink.. I mean -- i said that backwards -- so anyway I'm in the kitchen and i see the silver sink and the bowl appears before my eyes and suddenly im holding it in my hands and i went to hand the phone to you as i tried to hand the bowl to her in my standing hands and she didn't sound old like she did in the phone, she sounded very young and sing song. And she said "no the children" so what we have to do is give the bowl to each of the children and let them mix it themselves. That will help white supremacy in however that means. So then the black kids all add the chocolate chips. And then when we bake. That will represent the Muslims that i used to help when in was younger and who framed me to be as i am today. But the kids don't all know that so it will represent all the darker but lighter skin than black you know like Puerto Riccans and Vietnamese and Chinese and all those sorts of people and how the African Americans have inserted their "language" into us to make the world such an amazing place. Without them we wouldn't be the cookie we are today here in 1991. Isn't that right, Jesus?"

"Oh don't look at him so harsh. What do you need me to do?"

"Bake the cookies. At the start we will mix then he will tell a story then we will do the baking. We can do two days in a row or we can help you here in the kitchen. Megan and i can take turns like we always do and so if we wanted to spread the word for two weeks since its getting so cold, we can start in the afternoon instead of dusk. And do the two different cookies the same time -- No i mean in the ssme day"

"Okay that could work. We will just let Captain Nero know and I'm sure he could come up with two great stories to pass the time. And you will pay?"

"Oh yes. Yes of course. And when I talk to Steve I'll ensure Miss Harriet Tubman is getting her cut although she always paid on her own and said she was on solid woman and could make it doing all she pleased, her husband is still working. But he's a police sergeant so I know its not for money. But she could buy her something nice with his pension."

"Pension?"

"Oh he has two. He works a lot. One thinks she's like 80 and the other 102 or 103 i think it is. So one will be cut surely i assume. She said she doesn't think she can make it to 120 without them getting onto her"

"And his paycheck?"

"Oh he donates it to science. They own their own trailer and car and BBQ"

"BBQ?"

"BBQ Grill. Of course though if i gave her money she would probably just clothes the whole entire neighborhood. I'll ask Steve if thats what she wants or that i could do. She said that was the only thing she had left in life to apply for. I guess she always knew i had money thats why she gave me the evil eye. She always provides them gloves in the winter -- except she buys them in the summer when they're cheaper and puts them in a box to save them till it gets cold again. I tell you. She is smart. So about these sugar cookies. I sure hope it works. It seems the opposite of what we set out to do. All white with beautiful crystals on top. She said to make them look so worthwhile and be as perfect as possible..."

So while the White Supremacist cookie is after all just a cookie that we used to explain to a child that was deeply courageous to learn more and actually educated his parents and they hugged me with forgiveness, myself being white.

I have explained the example. And to further educate, the Sugar Cookie in all other reality when not used for a demonstrations, is just a cookie we bake when we have no other additives.

But as Captain Negro (you may call him Captain Nero as Mrs Harrington would as she refused to "see" any color other than the colors of the rainbow") explained we should always try to find something good to add to something that is empty of extras. Be it fruit from like the Garden of Eden or be it nuts or seeds like Big Bird from Sesame Street, prefers, we should always fill our life and our cookies with as much goodness as possible. But some days, he said, some days its okay to have just a plain ole bit of sugar. As long as it's full of love and not hate.

So please do enjoy your plain white sugar cookies that are made with love. Black Panthers nor "all" white people do not encourage prejudice -- even if it's just against a cookie.

God bless us.

So we picked for our "American Cookie" the cookie below: because of the way it looks and the way it tastes. I encourage you to buy some today. As you can see the chocolate chips are hidden just as African American Heritage is hidden. And when we take a bite a beautiful explosion of chocolate erupts and elivenes our spirits.

And to top the cookie off, all of this occurs inside. Hidden away. Just like our souls are.

Thank you for listening. If these people could touch you just one percent how much they changed my life and gave me love and education and pride and so much faith in other people. Then you will be so better off

I hope you allow them to touch your souls.

Now here is the cookie you all have been waiting for:

We would laugh. And call it the "Soft Bitch" we may be going hard and fighting loud but we always have time for a tear, a hand to hold, a face to hug.

Because this is The United States of America. And she ain't all that bad. Not her citizens. Her government. Yes. But her citizens are blessed by her rich history of which she had no control over.

The American Cookie. A brown cookie, like a white person tans with perfect pieces of Black African American heart and soul baked in. Cookies of the United States of America. I always called them "American Cookies" We even had kids sit and mix up chocolate chip dough from scratch, each child getting to mix and have an ingredient added while they mixed. They all got to see the raw dough was White. Then They were baked with love by Momma Harrington and they came out tan. Like white people do in the sun. So they could see for certain how the African American were and are in the souls and minds of white people. And how without the African American pieces of love they were not complete. To prove this we made cookies without the chips and they were bland. "But What about White Supremacy? Because that was just America without us. But What about how they think?" I was asked. "I guess we could try Sugar Cookies then and see what happens. So we made beautiful sugar cookies with sugar crystals on top. Thank God our Black Panther Leader knew the words because i was at a loss.

"We all mixed and made those cookies. We saw what was in them! Sugar! We made them appeasing to the eye and different looking and more special looking than an old Chocolate Chip with those crystals. But those crystals?!? They ain't nothing. We got them in chocolate chip and that is all they put in the White Mass cookies. Then we sprinkled a little on top to make them look clean and beautiful like a real treasure. But the Treasure is Truth!!! They're missing the real thing! Sure they look beautiful especially in the sun, the crystals reflecting the lights all over but those crystals are Blinding us to the Truth!!! They are all a fraud!! But go ahead, eat them. I would too. White supremacist and all. Now let's growl!!"

Reminder Established in 1991:

Miss Leena has a different fund called ""Harriet Tubman's Self Worth Working Still Today" and she has 778 users of my funds whom also feed the people of their neighborhood and streets. They do collard greens, steak and potatoes soup daily. Saturday and Sunday add hot dogs and Sunday Morning they do their African American Heritage Stories. Of course 68% are certified Black Panthers as well but no one has to pledge to an organization to feed children with love m they just follow their hearts.

The account labeled "Black Panther Food Allocation - For the Street Kids" 962 people across the globe do this on their personal streets nightly. Feed kids collard greens, hot dogs and/or hamburgers (with cheese and iceberg lettuce, tomato, onions, relish and so on). And on Sundays tell the stories of Black American Leaders that intended to destroy prejudice and mistreatment and succeeded and the listeners all get cookies.

Of course I bought the secret Cookie to represent our Nation. The United States of America.

The United States was founded officially on July 4, 1776.

Due to this i requested our policy be to employ no more than 77% of African American and no less than 76% the remaining percent be of at least 4 different shades of white.

We start at $18 per hour as that is the adult age in the USA to represent freedom. We employ 2020 in each factory setting arena.

Then we changed the recipe, to take out the lumps. To promise a better and smoother future for all.

The Original cookie to represent the past is gone is pictured on the box as well as an elf. It is not misrepresentation of what is inside, unless you expected to find an elf as well. In no way is there any identifying words that says that is the what the cookie looks like inside. But it is the Original cookie artwork packaging as i bought it in 1991.

We have been sued over the artwork not representing the contents. Once i sued myself and won. I got good game. Y'all. Persuaded everyone to see it my way! It was a mock trial. And so it was to prepare for a real trial which did occur and we did win. We simply told the truth of our packaging and said we were not ready to reveal it. It was 2007 and we hadn't done a full reveal since 1991 and so why not leave us alone as we couldn't promise the change?!?!

We did word of mouth and some soft T.V. programming to indicate it. But never The full storey as I have today in pulic.

So again here is the Original cookie it did actually look like but did crumble more -- we kept that chocolate chip explosion. But bake them twice to have an outer coating of smoothness.

[blazinginbus1]

This sounds stupid, so I'm sorry, but please tell me Larry isn't real? I made the mistake of watching moments/gifs etc. and I swear they're always flirting :/ Like, they always use any opportunity to flirt and have made /hundreds/ of unnecessary sexual remarks, whether whispering or implied or not being subtle at all. I'm not talking about the double-standards of regular moments where you can obviously tell it was a joke that all the boys, whether smacking each other's asses or jokingly giving

praises on their physical apparently (cheekbones, lush lips etc.) or grabbing each other’s crotches, cheek kisses etc. I don’t count those because they all do that, but the weird non-platonic-ness of their relationship. They always actually flirt. And my Zouis heart hurts because of the way Louis looks at him and always touches him, esp 2012. I just, did they have a thing? Ugh, I want to enjoy Zouis, but it’s hard not to compare when Larry have all these intentional sexual moments/looks whereas Zouis is usually “bro” or something. I know, I appreciate their friendship, but why was Louis so happy and boyfriend-like with Harry (like [and this is more of a public example and nothing like their private moments, but it still affects me because of how Louis looked at him] Louis and Harry were at some sort of idk parade or idek what was going on, but Louis took Harry from the crowd and spun him around romantically and the way he got all close and smiled and then later more privately held him makes me sad. And this is one of the non-private moments because arguably that could’ve been done for the crowd, but there was something weird and personal about that, like how they seemed like they were in their own world, but that’s, as I said, more of a double-standard moment where the “looks” could be complete bullshit. The thing is, not only is there thousands of things they’ve said in interviews that just prove something, just physically they get so close and look like they genuinely might kiss at any moment or just get really close and don’t draw any attention to it. Like their entire relationship is sexual and just don’t know how to feel. You seem like an expert: what do you think? Have Zouis had tinhat-like moments, even though I’m not a tinhat, it’d be nice to think there were some weird moments that don’t add up or mean something or even slightly make you think “huh, they might actually have a thing” or idk. l’m sorry if l’m being ridiculous m just a bit down now.

Well, as ive said already, my dearest popsicle, I really cant tell you what to think or what not to think, that’s not my place. Your thoughts and your feelings are your own, and there’s not much I could say to ‘sway you’. Nor would I want to, that would just make me as emotionally manipulating as a tinhat and they wouldn't still be your thoughts then, they'd be mine. I cant tell you whether Larry has or hasn’t been “real”, simply because I don’t know the relationship they had, friendly or work-related or not. BUT, for what my opinion is worth, I never could really see their actions as “more than friendly.” But that’s cause I don’t see these hyper-sexual moments as ‘sexual’ as other people can. Can I always ‘explain them away’ to “disprove” something? No, but I also shouldn’t have to. Louis and Harry had moments, as did Zouis, as did Niam, as did Lilo. Just know that the past is the past. Its fun to look back on, but its not super relevant now. And there’s different dynamics to each ship.

As I’ve said before, Zouis’ dynamic wasn’t necessarily an uber-sexual dynamic. They had incredibly ease and comfort around each other, which speaks more to me than a cheeky comment they made when were immature eighteen year olds who didn’t necessarily think those comments would follow them for years. And maybe your basis of something ‘sexual’ could be vastly different than mine. I wouldn’t say, personally, that there were “hundreds” of Larry moments that were suspiciously romantic. But that’s just my opinion. Id recommend just taking a moment to step back from the Larry content for a brief moment. Its incredibly alluring to someone who WANTS to believe it all. And when you focus on it too much, it becomes overwhelming. I think they fluff up a lot of stuff to make it seem more important than it actually is. But if you disagree and find it to be incredibly logical, then..I'm not sure my take on it can help you, babe. Your mind might already made up.

If you really want to enjoy Zouis, then enjoy Zouis, honey bee! Don't compare it to Larry, cause it’s not Larry, ya know? Shipping should be fun and light-hearted. There doesn't need to be a ranking of what's more real or less real. They all were valid in one way or another. Appreciate that; the fact that you get all different types of friendships that show different facets of those boys. There's playful ships, there's emotionally stimulating ships. There’s ships that are more out there and love to cause a ruckus, and there’s ships that just enjoy the time they spend with each other. I didn't really think to include examples of what could be or not be considered ‘Zouis tinhat logic’. But if you’re interested in more of a post like that, I could always refer you to a Zouie blog who is much more equipped to give you better ‘Zouis vs L*rry & Z*am logic’ answers than I. They've made some posts here and there to give another viewpoint of “L*rry/Z*am proofs” or such. Here are three I've linked for you ( x x x ) Enjoy!

I hope you don't think I don't care for your answer, love. Cause I do. I just...I don't always know quite how to answer them as well as id imagine you’d like me to. And I've been a little held up lately. But I appreciate you continuing to come by and be so patient, as well as not being afraid to share your thoughts. I can appreciate that. But thank you, dear. I'm sorry I didn't do your answer justice. And by all means, lovelies, don't hesitate to add on to this. I don't mind. : )