#and that’s because nobody fucking teaches me!!!!

[thebluestbluewords]

swimming lessons

"You're not serious." Mal says, laughing. Her feet are solidly on her towel, nowhere near the water. "I'm not swimming." 

Ben flicks a handful of water at her anyway. He's been swimming since he was a kid. He knows just how far he can splash without hitting someone. "You don't want to learn how to swim?" 

"Uh, no." she jerks her feet further back. "Nobody really knows how to swim, some people can just fake it for a while before they fuck up and drown." 

"I know how to swim." Ben says, kicking his feet in demonstration. He's good at swimming. He's got this. "I could teach you." 

"You think you know how. It's only a matter of time until you get too cocky, and then you'll be the next body we have to fish out of the water." 

"You're wearing a swimsuit."

Mal looks down at herself. She's wearing an emerald green bikini top, a mesh sort-of-shirt over it with more zippers than looks entirely practical for something that's ostensibly swimwear, and a pair of her own cut off shorts. Her bare midriff and thighs are incandescently pale in the sunlight.  

"Evie made it." she says, as though that's all the explanation required. Knowing the two of them, it nearly is. Evie makes the clothes, and then the other three wear them. It's like a weird sort of isle mating ritual, as far as Ben can tell. He's been honored with an Evie's original leather jacket himself, and it certainly feels like there's a weight to the leather, and to their eyes on him, when he wears it. 

"Jay's in the water," Ben points out instead. "He hasn't drowned yet." 

Mal scoffs. "Jay's one of the morons who thinks he can swim, and also, his feet are on the ground." 

"The last time I asked him to jump in the enchanted lake with me, he made up an excuse about needing to wash his horse." Ben says slowly. It's not that he's doubting the story, exactly... 

Mal laughs. "The horse is named Denial. Or maybe Distraction. Next time he'll tell you he forgot his homework." 

"Jay doesn't do his--" Ben starts to say, before his brain catches up. "Oh. I get it. Why wouldn't he just tell me he can't swim?" 

Mal shrugs. "It's not exactly something we learned on the isle. Just one more way we stick out, and you know how much he cares about fitting in sometimes." 

Ben knows. 

He tries not to think about it, mostly. How much the VKs hide when they try to fit in. They don't do it around him very much anymore, and Mal hardly ever tries at all, but the others all hide pieces of themselves whenever they want to blend in with their classmates. Evie hides how brilliant she is, like playing dumb will make her more desirable. Carlos hides his tools like he's afraid they're going to be stolen from him. Jay smiles and jokes and says that he's not lying, that this is just who he is, like he just happens to be exactly the sort of friendly that Auradon eats right up, but Ben's seen how he acts when there's nobody around to impress. 

It's not a big leap to assume that his assurances that he can swim and he's just not in the mood right now are another lie. 

He flicks another handful of water at Mal's feet. "Do you really not want to learn? I could teach you." 

"I really don't want to risk my life, no. Besides, I'm watching from out here. I have an important job to do." 

"And that is?" 

She grins, and swoops a hand through the air like she's gathering a cobweb with a duster. "Magic." Her fingers glow green, poison-apple bright and shimmering just like the lake water in the sunlight. She points a finger at Jay, in the water up to his knees and leaning down to splash a handful at Carlos.  "Give me power, no more steps, lift him from these watery depths." 

Mal lifts her hand, and Jay's feet fly out from under him. 

Only they don't. 

Jay's feet go flying, but it's because the rest of him is flying too, just a few inches above the surface of the water. He's reclining, easy as anything, like he's being held by an invisible hand. 

"Hey!" 

Mal waves her free hand at her second-in-command, without shifting the shining green one, which, now that Ben's looking, is cradled in a similar position to the unseen one that Jay is cradled in.  "Hay is for horses, babe! Get more specific!" 

"Put me down so I can splash the nerds!" Jay shouts. "I was gonna sneak attack!" 

"And now you're not!" Evie chirps. She looks as gorgeous as ever in her swim clothes, which are a little red skirt with a ruffle, a red top that shows off the smooth golden span of her chest, and a giant sun hat. 

"I'm not the one keeping you here!" Mal shouts back. "If you wanna swim so bad you can get off the spell!" 

Jay rolls over until he's on the edge of whatever invisible force is keeping him up, feet dangling down to just brush the water."My spell now. Dump me off." 

Mal grins so wide that the pointed fey teeth behind her human ones show. "If that's what you want." 

"WAIT--" 

She flips her hand. 

Jay hits the water with a splash. 

[personallbest]

so the girl who doesn’t even prebus / bus her tables is allowed to skip being a trainee because she was already a server at a different location (THAT SHE GOT FIRED FROM!!!) but I’m not allowed to be a server because I’m “not ready yet”

[banefort]

im gonna be reallly annoying here for a second grrm shouldve added so much more linguistic diversity to westeros. especially the north and ESPECIALLY north of the wall. also there's no way daenerys's mothertongue would be high valyrian. thank you.

[evafhernee]

I love love love that the ccs will be forced to use the translator in order to communicate with the new ccs joining qsmp because that’s what it’s there for!!!!! it’s a translator!!! use it to translate, even if both of you are able to speak the same language!

I don’t see enough people use the translator, especially when the ccs are both able to speak (usually) english, and it’s still great that they can speak easier if they speak the same language, but the language barrier is one of the causes for the creation of the qsmp! Let the language barrier be a barrier in the first place, and let the translator do the work it was meant to do!

Let people who physically can’t speak the same language interact! It’s part of what makes qsmp qsmp, and even though it has impacted hugely just from adding people who generally create content and talk in different languages, I do think it somewhat lacks in the people speaking different languages category, because while that is true, it is also somewhat untrue in that all of the ccs can speak one of the same language (usually english), even if they’re not a natural at it!

Now, that’s not a bad thing at all! But, it does blur the speaking different languages problem that was meant to occur in qsmp. They speak different languages! Let them speak whatever language they want and let the translator do the work! Again, that is what it is there for! It is a translator! (I’m looking at you twitter)

And even if it takes a million repeats of the same sentence for someone to finally get what another person is trying to say, a hundred fuck-ups of the translation or a thousand language barrier/cultural miscommunications, again, qsmp was made for this to happen! It was made so people who come from different backgrounds and are usually unable to interact because of cultural/language barriers can interact, whether it start out negative or positive!

And I trust them (the ccs and fans) to communicate if controversy/confusion happens culturally and language-wise, and (hopefully) for the fans to not turn anything minor** into a huge drama, so I am extremely excited to see the ccs be forced into using the translator!

[blue-eli]

Ink October day ten: Dichotomy

A division into two contrasting things or parts.

The phase of the moon, Mercury, or Venus when half of the disk is illuminated.

Branching characterized by successive forking into two approximately equal divisions.

[unnonexistence]

they should invent an applying for jobs that doesnt make you feel like this

[queencvbra]

I am. So so scared about that they're doing with Tory this season lol.

[variousqueerthings]

started just telling job'n'benefits related stuff that i'm disabled. used to tiptoe around it and talk about how certain work-spaces "might" be a bit much, because I get too tired and overwhelmed (because they kept saying I should go work in hotels, hotels!!!!), and they'd give me some of this odd modern "oh we just need a good change of attitude, believe in yourself" nonsense that's really just repackaged "stop being a lazy cashdrain" rhetoric.

so now I tell them straight: if I work for 4 hours on one day in a stressful environment, then I will need the whole of that day to prepare for it and the whole of next day to recover because I will be too exhausted, so I will have lost out on two days for four hours of work and then I make them agree with me that that isn't sustainable for a good deal of employment (the simplest version ofc, I know it varies depending on how supportive the environment is, how many breaks I can take, how interesting the work is etc. but they don't need all of that. they don't get it, so I don't tell them).

it's not going to change anything in their systems, because they're all only tuned in to two kinds of work (high physical continuous effort or calling a million people on the phone per day to get yelled at by), but it's at least a little victory watching the job people do a double-take on that piece of information. yeah I'm not just tired like everyone else. I am measurably too tired to do the work you're trying to push on me. now what? nothing? cool, good talk. until in two weeks when we will have the exact same talk.

[possuminabathtub]

I don’t know how to smile.

Not properly at least. I always smile too wide, show too many teeth, my eyes close too much and my cheeks crease and wrinkle. A big smile means joy, right? Until it turns garish

Imagine being told that, Imagine knowing that you can’t smile properly, because you hold too much joy, too much excitement, showing too many teeth and too much too much too much, always just a little bit too much

But nobody will teach you how to smile

[rubenesque-as-fuck]

The painting I've been working on for way too long has started to look like shit and all I want to do is punch it to death and then burn the remains

[fragglerockopinions]

.

[lago-morpha]

what happened to all the shit you can buy in the duolingo store

this is all I can buy now... I have over 4k gems but sure I'll double 50. why not.

[justanotherfanartist]

.

[thethingything]

local man discovers he's gotten into the habit of using DBT techniques without actually being taught them because at some point he realised that the things we get the urge to do when we have strong emotions often aren't healthy and that he doesn't like how he feels afterwards so he started noticing when that was happening and going "fuck that shit" and doing the opposite instead

[nexus-nebulae]

i. hate feeling like im so starved for social interaction that I'm forgetting how to speak to anyone at all. but because im forgetting how to speak im too scared to reach out to literally anyone

[kingflups]

I've been stuck thinking about when I asked my mom to teach me to play the guitar lately. It's a bit of a bummer

My mom plays guitar. Has ever since she was little. My grandfather was quite the musician and taught her how to play. He went dancing all the time with my grandmother, sang in bands, loved live music and was super supportive of music in general. Or so I'm told. I didn't see my extended family often. One time he found a crazy cheap trumpet at an auction and gave it to me because I played the trombone and he thought I'd like it (I did, even if the thing was in too bad of shape to really play) My mom was the same way. In theory.

I asked my mom all the time to teach me guitar, and each time she blew it off or told me later until I physically sat her down one day, put a guitar in her hand and grabbed one of her spares. And she just. refused to teach me.

She taught me one chord, one she said didn't know the name of because she taught herself. I could read her notes. That wasn't true. And then she left me in the room for what must have been an hour, alone, after explaining all of the guitar to me for maybe a minute. I knew she didn't show me anything, not really. I was in music classes at the time; I played trombone and sang in choir. This was the one thing I kept asking my mom because she loved music and I wanted to be able to play it with her, and she didn't even spare me a minute

I don't know. She plays professionally now. Quit her job and now she plays at local venues, typically for older folks. I don't know if she's hyping up how big of venues- I moved far away from home as soon as I could. But I know she's making money.

Sometimes she asks if I'll come sing with her