#at least if i remember that interview quote i saw correctly

[transannabeth]

i never watched the witcher but it’ll always be so funny to me how many immortal/monster jaskier aus and theories came about because they forgot to age him in season one

[ectonurites]

do u have any thoughts on the whole “tim is zapped to time prison” storyline? bc i feel like it could have been pretty interesting and a good way to bring back young justice/tim’s memories more immediately if it hadn’t been such a blatant attempt to just get tim out of storylines bc they had no ideas for his character

sorry lol u don’t have to respond i just kind of wish people talked about this storyline more? and the fact that tim lowkey became one of the only people in dc with knowledge of the other timelines (i think so at least) and nobody really addressed it?? like going into the next phase where people learn about other timelines after death metal.... tim should already know some of this stuff right?

YES YES YES OKAY LETS TALK ABOUT THIS this got incredibly long because I just have a lot to say (and i included screenshots) and i prob got a little off topic but. but lets get started anyways:

i haven’t read that particular storyline in a few months so i might be missing/misremembering some details here, but that whole ‘time prison + future tim’ thing was like. a really really interesting concept and the implications/impacts it has are a big part of why i liked tynion’s detective comics run as much as i did even with it’s flaws in characterization (such as treating tim like he was jimmy neutron boy genius and making steph..... be all ready to quit/breakaway from the team like that. the steph quitting characterization really started i think in batgirl convergence and unfortunately has haunted her since, even though pre reboot never giving up was like...... one of her defining traits. dc i hate you sometimes) 

i think that one of the biggest things that bothers me about the situation is how little we saw most of the other characters in the batfamily grieve (aside from steph and some with bruce, but again the way steph was portrayed just... hhhhhh. it very much reduced her to ‘tims girlfriend’ more than i’d have preferred) but otherwise like...as far as I can remember there was maybe one line in that monsters crossover thing where dick mentioned tim was gone, jason had a single line about avoiding the funeral in rhato, i dont think they showed any reaction from babs at all until after he was back, and the most for damian I recall is at the end of the 2014 teen titans run (#24) where he looks at... a case with the old red robin uniform Tim wasn’t even wearing anymore when he died? and that just bugs me. Instead of getting to see the actual funeral we get one flashback to it way after the fact once Bruce already knows Tim’s not actually dead

But at the time when they all DID think he was dead? the closest thing we see was in that same teen titans issue (#24) there’s a memorial-type ‘sharing stories’ thing after the funeral with tim’s titans friends but.... we don’t see something like that with his family. tim is a major presence in these peoples’ lives, they are his family, when he gets sent into time prison its even SAID how loved he apparently is

its just... idk. they all thought he was dead, and if they had put more emphasis on showing not just telling how that effected EVERYONE (not just steph) in the batfam, it might have felt a lot less like they were just putting tim away until there was a story idea for him. (like obviously I know they can’t make everyone’s stories revolve around Tim, but I’d have way preferred a detective comics issue of the funeral/memorial with the family than having there only be a teen titans one, I think it would have... held more relevance & meaning... but instead they just went right into that monster crossover story instead of lingering on this)

but then the Tim story itself once it does pick up way later, with titans tomorrow/future tim coming along having that whole “tell conner you’re sorry” “who’s conner?” exchange with current tim... that opens up A LOT of things to think about, and I think was pretty interestingly done if i’m remembering correctly. future tim recognizes the timelines are different, and ya know goes off to try to change things further ("whaddaya got there?” “a gun to kill batwoman” “NO!!!!”), theres lots of fighting etc etc the good guys win as we expect, but once that’s all settled tim’s left there with this whole. thought process

which ya know is the big indicator there’s weird timeline/reality fuckery going on (or also the read here can be that tim and kon are so connected across all space and time that their bond can transcend anything even timelines and realities and reboots... “and they were soulmates” “oh my god they were soulmates”) 

ANYWAYS lets not forget that tim isnt the only one who learns about this other timeline stuff during this whole situation!

Brother Eye has records of future tim’s timeline, and cass & steph see who they used to be! and as soon as steph finds out ‘holy shit i was ROBIN and BATGIRL?’ she also desperately wants to know more! which then a bit later leads into young justice 2019 where instead of going off to college like they told Bruce they were gonna, Steph and Tim go get the help of Zatanna to see what might be going on in their brains with these timelines and weird feelings (as we see in flashback form in yj 2019 #5)

and HOO BOY DOES SHE FIND THINGS! she gets in there and finds out that oh yeah, their brains had very much so been tampered with, and with her magic she undoes some of it, by unlocking memories, and Tim finally remembers Conner! (also in case u were wondering, that panel is specifically a callback to this one from yj 1998 #17 when Cissie quit the team)

one thing that I think is weird/interesting/idk if it gets... properly addressed even, was that Zatanna also poked around Steph’s brain too and she didn’t remember everything? Might have something to do even with how Tim had been in time prison, might have taken less work from Z to open things up because of that? Who knows

additionally i wanna call attention to how he said “That entire chapter of my life” which... leading into my next point a bit... strongly leads me to believe even though he’s remembering some things he definitely does not have ALL of his memories back (because theres a lot more than just the young justice ‘chapter’ of tim’s life that was drastically changed by the new 52 & rebirth) 

BUT moving on, i wanna bring up this part from later on (after they figured out that there was a crisis that caused things in the world to change, which is why their memories/brains were messed with) in issue #16

so yeah, I think it’s indicated even though Zatanna brought back some memories and opened up his brain a bit, there’s still many holes, and some things seem more like dreams rather than memories and he’s probably unable to tell which are which on his own to some extent. (also for reference the real thing that Tim thought was just a dream is... likely yj 1998 issue #1)

So based on the things i’ve brought up here (which are the things I remember off the top of my head, I could easily be accidentally leaving shit out LMAO i haven’t fully read through any of these books in at least 3 or more months now) I think it’s safe to assume that Tim definitely has a head start on getting back his memories before Death Metal happens, but that it was by no means a complete thing. So the after effects of Death Metal are probably just gonna... be a little less drastic for him vs most other people because it was already happening, but it’ll be kinda filling in the remaining gaps? 

And like you said he is absolutely one of the few people that already knew about about the timelines/the fact that these crises have happened and changed things, but pretty much all the other young justice characters are also aware that there was meddling in the timeline/that multiple timelines and alternate universes like this exist since they were all together as a group when it got explained (in like. yj 2019 #15 i believe is where most of the explaining happens) (and cass as well is aware of things to some extent because of her and steph’s interaction with Brother Eye) but the difference is that Zatanna didn’t go into everyone’s brains, so they aren’t dealing with the same memory things as Tim (and possibly Steph? because again Z DID go in her brain, she just wasn’t able to unlock all the same things as she did with Tim) 

but yeah in general i SO wish this was explored more, both in canon and in fanworks (fanworks tho... that can still happen >:3c). Memories hazily coming in for Tim while Kon and Bart are able to confirm or deny things, him dealing with conflicting memories and feelings about his past as they trickle in... like I think we’ll start to see these types of things moving forward across a lot of titles with Infinite Frontier (i BELIEVE dont quote me on this but I BELIEVE the person writing Damian’s upcoming solo had mentioned in an interview that the memories coming back of the other timeline aren’t going to be an all at once thing but will be more gradual for most characters) but the fact that it theoretically had already been happening for Tim for MONTHS and we only got that one crumb indicating it in #16 of it instead of any actual exploration makes me SAAAAAAD 

[jcisthebestfightme]

BJYX Song #15: Summer’s Wind

BJYX Song List

Disclaimer: This is all a dream. Actually though, I’ve procrastinated this song so much that it started haunting me in my dream as an overdue assignment for school so I definitely need to write this to get it out of my system.

The song I wanted to write about today is “Summer’s Wind (夏天的风)” by Landy Wen in 2004. This song’s melody was written by Jay Chou, one of dd’s favorite artist. This song wasn’t super famous back then but now is often seen in tiktok in China because of covers. I’m not sure if it was as widely popular when gg quoted in 2018. Gg knows a lot of songs and often dig up sorta obscured (at least not super popular) songs that he likes. 

An extensive backstory about gg’s post on this song and his trip in Japan can be found in this amazing post written by @twolonesomestars. The most important kadian about this post is that it was the 521th Weibo post and 18th Weibo video (he had to delete some stuff to get here.) Also, something that wasn’t mentioned was that his post kadian at the time “12:43″ and 2:43 in the song corresponds to the line “I look at your cool smile, yet there are times when it’s shy.” I think this line perfectly describes dd and also gg has said that his first impression of dd is shy, instead of the cold aloof description other people usually give him. This kadian further strengthens that this song is about dd. We have also seen gg kadian the time of his post to the lyrics of songs before, as seen in “Nan Hai” and a song from the album “Kepler” (not that song though). 

I’m going to channel in gg’s circumstance after filming TU and Japan trip for this analysis.

七月的風懶懶的 (July’s wind is lazy)

連雲都變熱熱的 (Even the wind became hot)

不久後天悶悶的 (Soon, the weather is getting stuffy)

一陣雲後雨下過 (Rain came after a cloud went by)

Right off the bat, as with the title, there are a lot of motifs we’ve already seen before like “wind”, “cloud”, and the over theme of “summer.” To me, “wind” is something this is transient and can symbolize feelings that can come and go. This is probably something gg was struggling with, whether his feelings for dd or dd’s feelings for him is transient like “July’s wind”. The first stance also described the discomfort of summer’s heat, which we know they complained about when filming CQL. Metaphorically though, I think the heat and “stuffiness” represents stuffed-up emotions, and the “rain” that came washes away those feeling and brought some clarity, which may be what gg came to realized post-Japan.

氣溫 爬升到無法再忍受 (Temperature, has climbed to a point of unbearable)

索性閉上了雙眼 (I just closed my eyes)

讓想象任意改變 (Let imagination morph and change freely)

I think the “temperature” and “heat” described can be about the electrifying connection and feelings between two people. It’s almost like the sexual tension has climbed to a point of unbearable limit for them, but they don’t know what to do with it. With reality that is hitting them after filming, they can only imagine all the different scenarios and happy ending they can have. 

場景 兩個人一起散著步 (The scene is two people walking together)

我的臉也輕輕貼著你胸口 (My face softly rest against your chest)

聽到心跳 (I hear your heartbeat)

在乎我 和天氣一樣溫度 ([You] care about me, just like the weather’s temperature)

Doesn’t this entire part just sounds like a very vivid picture of the entire filming of TU, especially since the first line even said a “scene”? Two people walking together, one in white, one in black. While filming, gg often have to rest into dd’s arms. It’s all very pure and romantic. No wonder this song can remind gg of the summer in 2018.

夏天的風 我永遠記得 (Summer’s wind, I will always remember)

I think summer’s wind is something carries feelings for gg. He said he will always remember that summer and those feelings. After filming wrapped, I think he wasn’t sure how long this wind will carry. There was too much uncertainty at that moment. In the end of 2019, we know he sang a song about summer’s wind lasting throughout the year into other season so we received the answer that this wind, and thus love, will persist. But in end of summer in 2019, this certainty was not there. All gg can be sure of is that he will always remember that summer, those wind, those mountain, because it’s very precious to him. 

清清楚楚的說你愛我 (Clearly say you love me)

I can see dd being very honest about his feelings that summer. Dd is not the type to hide what he feels and he probably expressed to gg clearly how he felt. But I think gg needed some time to think so he went to Japan, also to shed the character of WWX and his love for LWJ. But I think this line is gg acknowledging that he knows of dd’s feelings and how candid, sincere, and unambiguous dd’s feelings are. It also juxtaposed gg’s possibly jumbled feelings. I don’t think it’s that gg love dd less or that he’s uncertain of his feelings. I personally think he was certain of his feelings on 6/22/18 when he posted “If I were a song”. But I think he has a lot of different emotions that is coming to him all at once and he need some time to sort them out one by one. I can relate to having overwhelming emotions and also thoughts due to too many concerns and I think gg is also the type to get in that state.

我看見你酷酷的笑容 (I saw your cool smile)

也有靦腆的時候 (There are also times when it’s shy)

This is the line that I think gg kadian to describe dd. “Cool smile” is a very good description of dd, and probably the way most people who don’t know him well will say that is their first impression of him. Dd seems aloof and is overall a cool guy but unapproachable. But gg was the only that said that dd was “shy” to him on first impression. He saw through dd right away, that dd is hiding behind a shell of ice because he’s scared. Dd is a very sensitive person and he’s afraid that others won’t like him or how others see him so he protect himself by acting cold. But like this line and also gg’d interview that he has said before, once dd opens up, he’s very warm and adorable, and that dd likes to laugh a lot. It’s such a precious relationship to have someone that truly understands you and see the best of you. 

夏天的風 正暖暖吹過 (Summer’s wind, is currently warmly blowing)

穿過頭髮 穿過耳朵 (Going through hair, going through ears)

The “summer’s wind”, which are the emotions from the summer is currently passing through the entirety of the body, so it’s enveloping all parts of gg and dd. “Hair” and “ears” also also parts of the body that ggdd like to touch each other often when filming, as we seen from the bts clips. If I remember correctly, gg’s ears are very sensitive and doesn’t really like other people touching them (I remember a clip of his X-Nine’s member either touching or blowing into his ears and he flinched away.) But we can see dd touching gg’s ears in the TU bts. This means that gg lets dd have these intimate touches, just like these summer’s wind.

你和我的夏天 (Yours and my summer)

風輕輕說著 (The wind is softly saying)

This line is probably the most straightforward part of the song. The “summer” that just ended in gg’s post in 2018, belongs to 2 people. This the message of “summer’s wind”. The wind is saying that this summer is love between 2 people, and these 2 people can only be ggdd. 

溫柔懶懶的海風 (Gentle and lazy ocean’s wind)

吹到高高的山峰 (Blow up high to the mountain’s peak)

溫的風 山的鋒 (The warmth of the wind, the peak of the mountain)

吹成了山風 (Has became mountain’s wind)

This part to me is signifying change in feelings. The “gentle” and “lazy” warm ocean’s wind is like the ambiguous, fun, but uncertain relationship they had in the summer. They’re in a warm and safe place for these feelings to be able to developed, since they were  pretty sheltered when filming. But once filming has ended, this warm “ocean’s wind” has converted into “mountain’s wind.” Mountain’s wind to me is much colder and harsher, and signifies the harshness of reality and the difficulties they will need to face going back to the real world. But it can also be that this warm, soft wind has now strengthened, that it can become sharper, and able to face the harsh climates of the mountains. 

為什麼你不在 (Why are you not here?)

問山風你會回來 (Asking the mountain’s wind if you will come back)

Gg went to Japan with his friends (I think friends from college. He did not go with wzc btw, I just found this out like 2 weeks ago lol.) But dd was not there. And I think part of gg’s reluctancy at this moment is that he wasn’t sure if dd will always be as certain of his love as they did that summer. I don’t think it has anything to do with dd’s age, character, or anything he said. Honestly for anyone that has ever been in love, especially when the relationship just started, there will be some insecurity and you worry if the other person will love you forever or if they will change their minds and abandon you. I think this is a feeling that we can all relate to. So right now, gg may feel like it’s just him and “mountain’s wind”, which is the converted version of his love form the summer, and he’s unsure if dd will come back for him but it seems to me like gg is waiting on the mountains if dd every come, just like how WWX waited at the end of TU on the mountain for LWJ to come get him.

Overall, I think this song “Summer’s Wind” represent an end of gg’s ambiguous feelings of flirtation in the summer of 2018 while filming TU. In this post, he said “Summer’s wind has ended.” But I don’t think this necessary means his feelings for dd has ended (Spoiler alert, it didn’t.) It’s just that that stage of their relationship has come to a close and they need to find a way to open up a new chapter of their life together. 

[babyboy-bangtan]

By Chance Chapters 5-8

A misunderstanding gone viral puts you on BTS’s radar, which leads to a series of events that finally culminate with you meeting them for the first time.

✚ Pairing: Sub!BTS/Female Reader ✚ Word Count: 4.9K ✚ Rating: M ✚ Warnings: Reader mentions having been told to kill herself on the internet. ✚ A/N: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of my imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Read on AO3 / Chapters 1-4

Chapter 5: Hoseok, Taehyung & Namjoon

To no one's surprise, Jungkook is once again watching one of your movies after they had dinner. It's almost begun to feel like a routine; unless it's his turn to clean up, Jungkook just plops down and starts watching with his earphones on, and very often it's a movie he's already seen. He says it's because he doesn't want to go through your movies too fast, and this way he can enjoy them as much as possible.

"I don't think he has that many things left to watch of her." Namjoon says, looking over his shoulder at Jungkook sitting cross legged on the couch staring attentively at his phone with his earphones on, completely oblivious to the fact that he's their topic of conversation.

"He'll be upset once he's done." Hoseok adds, cleaning the table with a rag as Taehyung picks up up the takeout containers. "He has a crush."

"Well, she's very pretty." Taehyung comments absentmindedly, throwing the containers in the trash. Namjoon shares a look with Hoseok, both rising their eyebrows with a smile. "I saw one of her movies last year."

"I knew her only from the perfume commercials. She looked beautiful in them." Hoseok says, washing the rag on the sink. "I can't remember if it was Dior or Givenchy... I think it was Dior..." He whispers mostly to himself as Jin walks into the kitchen, freshly showered and dressed for bed already.

"Who do you know from the perfume commercials?" He asks, opening the fridge.

"[Y/N]." Hoseok replies casually as he washes his hands. "Jungkook is watching another one of her movies." He points to the couch where Jungkook has shifted positions, wrapping a blanket around himself that makes him look like a human tent. "Aww, so cute." Hoseok says, smiling at the youngest.

"Ah." Jin replies, grabbing a bottle and leaving without saying anything else.

"What's gotten into him?" Taehyung asks, staring at the place where Jin was a moment ago suspiciously. 

"Who knows?" Namjoon replies, shrugging his shoulders.

Jin is known for having his moments, so he's pretty sure it’s not a big deal. It's likely he's a bit fed up with Jungkook's crush on you; he keeps bringing you up whenever he has a chance, and sharing little fun facts about you he's picked up from all the interviews he's watched. To Namjoon it's very cute, but he wouldn't be surprised if Jin is tired of it already— mainly because Jungkook's attention has been diverted almost entirely to you, and Jin doesn't particularly enjoy when that happens.

There's probably nothing to worry about, but just in case he'll wait a bit to see if this passes. And if it doesn't, Jin will have to open up about what he's feeling and talk to them, eventually.

Chapter 6: Yoongi

Even though he tries, Yoongi can't hold back a smile as he watches Jungkook get everything ready for his movie marathon. Yoongi can't remember which movies he's going to see, but he does remember you starred in the sequel of something and Jungkook never watched the first part, because you weren't it. But a couple days ago, he saw in an old interview that you said watching the first one was important to understand your character, so he decided to correct that and watch the first part once and for all. And then rewatch the second part, again.

He explained this situation to everyone in great detail. 

"Hyung, do you want to watch with me?" Jungkook yells at him, still preparing his snacks and drinks on the table. Yoongi smiles at him but shakes his head.

"Another day. I have some work to do." He ruffles Jungkook's hair teasingly as he walks past him on his way to his room.

Most of the reason he refused is that he has to work, that wasn't a lie— but another reason is that Yoongi knows very well what Jungkook is like when he gets someone to watch one of your movies that he's already watched himself. If he hasn't watched it yet, there's no problem; he'll be laser-focused on the movie and most likely won't say a word until it's done. But if he has watched it already, he'll constantly tell whoever has joined him to pay attention when a scene he likes is coming, or he'll scold them if they're not being as attentive as he thinks they should be.

Yoongi likes to enjoy movies peacefully, so that particular environment isn't his favorite. He'll watch one of your movies with Jungkook when it's one he hasn't seen beforehand, which might take a little while to happen considering Jungkook has bulldozed through your entire filmography already.

As he closes the door to his room, he hears Jungkook calling for Jimin to join him, which Yoongi is sure he will do. Jimin seems to be the most likely to agree to watch any content related to you, so he's not worried about Jungkook being upset at him for refusing his request.

To tell the truth, Yoongi is still a bit perplexed about Jungkook's sudden fascination with you. After the thing where people thought you'd met them went viral, Jungkook watched one video of you and then another and then another, and soon enough he made his way through everything you've ever been in.

Now he's just rewatching all your movies, while he awaits the upcoming Netflix movie you recently finished shooting. A couple days ago, if he remembers correctly. Jungkook likes keep them all updated.

Jungkook insists you're sweet and kind and so beautiful and nice, and Yoongi simply can't tell him that what he has a crush on is just an idealized version of yourself, that he can't truly know you through videos and interviews. At least he can't tell him yet; because if this infatuation persists Yoongi will bring him back to reality. Jungkook knows very well what it's like to have people crush on you and decide you're perfect because you're only showing them your likeable side, and he has to understand that's what he's doing with you, too.

After hitting an annoying slump in his work, Yoongi spins around in his chair, feeling the stress starting to build up. He can hear the very faint sound of Jungkook watching his movie and after giving it a moment of thought, he pulls out his phone out of his pocket.

Youtube.

He quickly types “[Y/N] interview” and hits search.

He scrolls a little until one catches his eye, because it says it was uploaded just 8 hours ago. He wonders if Jungkook already watched it, which is very likely, but it’s also possible he didn’t because he tends to inform everyone when there’s a new interview you did for him to watch. He puts his earphones on and thinks "fuck it" because he wants to see for himself what Jungkook has been so obsessed with.

It's a 19 minutes long filmed radio interview, but Yoongi figures he only needs to listen to a couple minutes of it to get a feel of what you're about. If it starts out boring, he'll just skip until there’s something interesting. It's even possible that people in the comments have already put on the timestamps of the best moments, and he won't even have to do any work for himself.

“[Y/N], welcome! I’m so happy you could join us this morning.” The host says, and Yoongi quickly notices he has an amazing voice.

“Thank you.” You say politely, smiling. “I’m happy to be here.” “So, you have a new movie coming to Netflix soon—” Yoongi fast forwards a few minutes, because he does not need to know more about that movie than he already does. Jungkook is so excited about it, he’s shared every single detail there is to know about it with him and the others.

“—around 2014, right?” The hosts says, looking a bit more serious.

“Yeah, around the end of the year. It was my first big—” You make quotes with your fingers and roll your eyes, even though the people listening wouldn’t be able to see you. “—movie role and I got like 800 thousand new followers on Instagram in 2 days. At first it felt amazing, it really did, but when a lot of good comes your way, bad is bound to come as well.” You sigh, and Yoongi notices you suddenly look tired. He goes back around 1 minute, trying to find when you started talking about this. He wants to know where what you’re saying comes from.

“They do! You can see some videos of me on the official Instagram account for the movie.” You say with a smile.

“Because you’re not on social media anymore.” The host adds, like it’s a well-known fact. Jungkook has probably mentioned it before but Yoongi truly doesn't remember, so that caught him by surprise.

“Yup. Been clean for a few years now.” You joke, and all the people at the table laugh. Even Yoongi cracks a tiny smile.

“You’ve talked about this in the past, how you quit because it got too toxic. So, that was around 2014, right?” Someone else asks, and you nod.

Yoongi ponders for a second if he should fast forward what he’s already seen, but ultimately decides not to. It’s different to watch it now that he knows where the conversation is coming from. He patiently waits for you to say everything he’s already heard, paying more attention this time.

“There were a lot of negative comments at the time, was that it?” The host asks, and you raise your eyebrows, huffing.

“You could say that.” You say sarcastically. “A group of people were very, very angry when I was cast for my second movie. Since it was based on a book, they said I wasn’t what they had imagined and they made sure to let me know it.” You shake your head. “It was bad when I was cast, but when the first trailer came out it got worse. It was hard to deal with because I’d never gone through something similar before. I had only done one indie film and one episode of CSI. That was it. And all of a sudden I have comments on every single thing I post saying that my acting sucks and I should just quit. Some people even told me I should kill myself.” You pause for a second as the people around you shake their heads, visibly disappointed. “Those were the least, but it’s still jarring to see people wishing that on you.”

Yoongi gasps, pausing the video. For some reason he hadn’t considered something like that happening to you, at all. That’s not the kind of thing about you Jungkook shares; he shares your favorite things, stories you’ve told about your costars or meeting other famous people, but not this. He never shares anything negative like this. He wonders why, even though part of him thinks it’s because Jungkook doesn’t feel comfortable sharing something that feels this personal. 

He takes a couple seconds before hitting play again.

“So one day I just said screw this, and decided to delete all my social media. I posted a goodbye letter to my fans first explaining the situation and left it up for like an hour before I deleted everything. The only way you’ll see me on social media is through promotional stuff or on some friends’ accounts.” Your tone shifts on this part; it becomes more cheerful, but Yoongi has been on your side of the story enough times to know you’re just deflecting, and this is something that still bothers you.

He gets it.

It bothers him, too.

“And then you won several awards for that role.” The host says with a laugh, successfully lightening the mood.

“Yep, I did.” You say, laughing as well.

The interview moves on to other topics, much more light-hearted than the previous one, but even though Yoongi ends up watching the entire video, that one thing manages to stick to his mind like a magnet. He feels a bit ashamed that he dismissed you, that he didn’t consider that you’re a celebrity too and your life is bound to be hard as well, even if the ways you deal with that status are different from the ways he and the others have to deal with their own. Jungkook always being so happy when he shares things about you made Yoongi make the mistake of thinking he had you figured out, but now he realizes he actually doesn’t really know anything about you.

He sighs, covering his face with his hands before moving them up and running them through his hair, messing it up completely.

As of right now, there's an new, annoying feeling at the pit of his stomach, an annoying feeling that makes Yoongi want to know more about you.

Thanks a lot, Jungkook.

Chapter 7: After

Timotheé is staring at you with a very cute smile on his face, which can only mean one thing.

He wants something.

"What now?" You ask, sighing.

“Can I have some of that, please?” He asks as you sip your coffee, resting his chin on your shoulder and hugging your waist while you eye him suspiciously. You know he’s tired, but it’s only been a few minutes since you were given the cups. How fast did he drink his?

“Where’s yours?” You ask, staring down at his empty hands.

“I finished it.” He grins. “Pleeease, I’m sleepy.” You roll your eyes and give him your cup, and he kisses your cheek in response before releasing you to take it from your hand.

“Thank you!”

“It’s not free!” You say immediately, watching him gulp down the rest of your drink. “You’ll have to get me another one later.” He nods, still drinking. “Did you sleep at all last night?”

“Not really.” He says, rolling his shoulders with a grimace. “I’m still jetlagged as fuck.”

“Come here.” You move him in front of you to start massaging his shoulders, and his knees go weak when you do. “Timmy! Work with me here, man. Try to stay up.” You joke, and he laughs.

“Sorry, sorry.” He apologizes, looking back at you for a second before bowing his head forward. “Thank you so— ah—much.”

“This feels like it’s turning erotic real fast.” You tease him, but you don’t stop rubbing his shoulders. You don’t see his face, but you’d bet anything he’s as red as a tomato. He gets shy immediately when you make that kind of comments, it’s adorable.

“Shut uhhh— up.” He laughs, smacking your side lightly with his hand, not turning around.

“I’m not the one moaning—”

“Guys, come on. It’s time to start. Let’s go.” Your publicist approaches you both, pointing at the direction you’re supposed to go to.

“Coming!” You say, giving Timotheé a couple pats on the back before pushing him forward. “Time to work, mister.” He groans in response, but walks ahead of you nonetheless.

Once you’re both seated and ready, the people behind the cameras start giving you instructions on what to do. It's not really hard to keep up, and since you've both watched previous interviews of this type you already know what you're in for.

“So I say my name, she says her name, and then it’s one word each and we finish together.” Timotheé asks for clarification one last time. The producers nod and you give them a thumbs up.

“And… go.”

“Hey, I’m Timotheé Chalamet.”

“And I’m [Y/N]. And this is the—”

“Wired—”

“Autocomplete—”

“Interview.” You both finish in unison.

Chapter 8: The Interview

Namjoon smiles fondly at Jungkook, who is sleepily eating his breakfast with his eyes half open and his hair sticking up everywhere. He'd spent the most part of the previous night sulking, because he has to wait until Sunday to be able to sit down to watch your new movie without interruptions. Thankfully, once they all promised to join him in a movie night he became excited once again. Seeing him sad makes everyone else immediately sad as well; he always does his best to cheer them up and make them laugh, so it’s their job to do the same for him whenever they can.

Jungkook’s phone vibrates and he casually looks at the screen, seeing that a new interview you did has been uploaded. He’s familiar with this type, it’s the one where people answer things based on Google searches. He grabs his phone and gets ready to start watching it, that is until he sees the thumbnail and chokes on his food.

“Jungkook! Are you okay?” Namjoon asks worriedly, leaving his mug on the table and walking up to him. Jungkook nods, drinking milk to unclog his throat.

“Look, Hyung.” He rasps, handing him his phone. Namjoon grabs it from his hand and it takes him a moment to process what he’s seeing.

It’s a video of you, that’s unsurprising.

[Y/N] & Timotheé Chalamet Answer the Web’s Most Searched Questions | WIRED

It’s not until he takes notice of the Google search bar on the thumbnail that he realizes what made Jungkook react like that.

Did [Y/N] Did [Y/N] get married Did [Y/N] work in Criminal Minds When did [Y/N] meet BTS

Apparently, Namjoon takes too long staring at the phone because Jungkook snatches it from his hands and immediately presses play.

“What happened?” Jimin asks, walking into the room already dressed.

“Jungkook lost it because [Y/N] talked about us in a new interview, apparently.” Namjoon responds, shrugging his shoulders. He can hear you introducing yourself in the video.

Jimin’s mouth forms an “o” shape and he places himself behind Jungkook to watch the video as well, resting his chin on his shoulder.

“What did she say?” He asks the youngest, noticing Timotheé is the one answering questions about himself right now.

“I haven’t gotten to that part yet.” Jungkook answers, trying with all his might to not fast forward the video until your part begins. It’s a 15 minutes long video, and something tells him they will have left that question for the final part.

The questions you answer about yourself are mostly things Jungkook already knows but you're elaborating on, or other new little details about your life.

He checks to see how much is left of the video during Timotheé’s turn, and it’s not much. He’s sure after this come the last Google searches for you, and his heart starts beating a little faster.

“Okay, did [Y/N]…” You say, grabbing the board and placing it over your lap. “Did [Y/N] go to college?”  You say, ripping off the white paper.

“She did!”  Timotheé responds first, seemingly excited. 

“What are you guys doing?” Hoseok asks, entering the kitchen, but both Jungkook and Jimin shush him at the same time.

“That's true.”  You say in the video. “NYU, baby! I majored in Film and Television. Okay, next one.”

“[Y/N] spoke about us in an interview.” Namjoon explains to him in a whisper, and Hoseok raises his eyebrows in surprise.

“Did [Y/N] get married?”  You read, and Timotheé bursts out laughing next to you.“I honestly don’t know what possessed enough people to ask this so it is one of the most searched things but no, I did not get married.”  The video cuts to the next question, and Jungkook’s nervousness increases by the second.

“Did [Y/N] work in Criminal Minds?”  You say. “I did not. I did, however, work in another famous crime show you might have heard of called CSI. I played a girl who was into BDSM and got arrested for murdering her boyfriend. Spoiler alert: She didn't do it. But if you want to know who did, just watch the episode.”

“What?!”  Timotheé exclaims, looking honestly shocked. “You were on CSI?” You stare at him, looking very offended.

“How do you not know this?! It was my first role ever!”  You cry out.

“Do you know what my first role ever was?”  Timotheé retorts, staring at you. You look away and stare at nothing for a couple seconds, and Jungkook can’t help but laugh at your reaction. He hears Jimin snickering as well.

“Let's move on to the next question.” You say, making Timotheé laugh again.

You pull the white paper covering it, and there it is.

“When did [Y/N] meet BTS?”

“You met BTS? What else do I not know about you?” Timotheé says before you can respond.

“Okay, here’s the thing. I did not meet BTS, but there is a whole story behind why people thought I did.”

“Please share it.”  Timotheé urges you, crossing his arms with a smile.

“You know, this actually happened while we were filming.”  You tell him, and his eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “So, what happened was that someone uploaded some of the extras of one of my movies to YouTube, and they just named the video [Y/N] BTS. They meant it like [Y/N] Behind the Scenes, but some people thought it meant it was a video of me with, you know, the group BTS and then someone made a joke about it and that tweet went viral. I remember we were getting our makeup done and my friend texted me, and she sent me like screenshots of this tweet with thousands of likes. I thought it was very funny that it was all a huge misunderstanding, honestly.”

For some reason, Jungkook hadn’t considered the fact that you could also know what had happened with the video. It’s like he assumed you might have heard about it, but he didn’t think you’d know the details about it or that you cared about it enough to know.

“So you haven’t met BTS?”

“Tragically, I haven’t.”  You respond, and Jungkook gasps. Does that mean you’d like to meet them? “I wish I had, but alas, here we are.”

The video continues a little bit longer, but Jungkook is rooted to the spot even after it ends. When he finally looks up, he sees Namjoon and Hoseok trying to hold back smiles.

“Did she say…” He manages to croak out, throat dry.

“That she wants to meet you? Yeah.” Namjoon teases, sharing a look with Hoseok.

“She said she wants to meet all of us!” Jimin objects, standing up straight and looking slightly offended. “Not just Jungkook, she said BTS.” He emphasizes the last word, making it clear that he’s also included in the group of people you want to meet.

“Who wants to meet us?” Yoongi asks, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he enters the kitchen, with Taehyung and Jin right behind him.

“[Y/N]!” Jungkook exclaims, playing the video for the three of them, from the moment you start replying to the question about BTS.

“Well, I doubt we’ll meet her.” Yoongi says absent-mindedly once you’re done talking. Namjoon gives him a disbelieving look, and Yoongi quickly amends what he said. “For now, I mean. We have a lot of things to do here and we won’t be visiting America for a while. But I’m sure it’ll happen soon.” Jungkook smiles at him, but Yoongi knows he’s not as excited as he was a moment ago and he feels really guilty for taking that away from him.

“I’m gonna go take a shower.” Jin says suddenly, leaving the room.

“Is there something wrong with him?” Jungkook asks the rest, his shoulders falling down. “He acts weird when I show him stuff of her.”

“I have no clue.” Hoseok responds, while the others shrug their shoulders. 

Except for Namjoon.

He confirmed that Jin's weird behavior appeared every single time Jungkook did so much as mention your name a couple weeks ago, and he's been waiting for him to come clean to them and tell them what's happening on his terms, but he can't give him more time. Jungkook already noticed and it seems like it has started making him upset, which will throw off their entire dynamic even more than Jin acting off already has been doing.

While the others eat their breakfast and Jungkook calls his mom to tell her that you mentioned him in an interview, Namjoon patiently waits for Jin to be done with his shower, so he can get him alone and finally confront him about what's been going on with him.

Once Jin enters his room, Namjoon follows right after, closing the door behind him.

"What's going on with you?" He asks in a low voice, walking up to Jin. "Why are you acting like this?"

"What are you talking about?" Jin asks, pretending to be confused. If it weren't for the fact that Namjoon knows him so well and that he knows for a fact that something is wrong, he wouldn't be able to tell that he's faking it. 

"You have a problem with Jungkook liking [Y/N]. You're making it more and more obvious every day. It's making him upset." Namjoon gets straight to the point, because he has no idea how much time he has until someone comes in and interrupts them, and if that happens he knows Jin will get out of the conversation.

Jin is good at hiding his emotions, but not good enough to hide the flash of nervousness on his face when Namjoon says that.

"That's not—"

"I knew it." Namjoon interrupts him. "But why? We've never even met her, why don't you like her?"

"It's not that I don't like her—"

"Then what is it? Because it's obviously something, and that something is making Jungkook sad because you know how much he loves sharing what he likes with us. You have to tell us what's the problem because—" 

"I used to masturbate to her!" Jin whisper-screams, his ears immediately turning red. In any other circumstances, Namjoon's current face would be hilarious, but right now it only serves as a reminder to Jin that he actually is as dirty and gross as he's been feeling all this time.

"You—  I— When—" Namjoon stammers, completely at a loss for words.

Jin's shoulders fall and he sits down on his bed, holding his head on his hands.

"I know it's horrible, you don't have to tell me."

Namjoon scratches the back of his neck and walks up to the bed, sitting down next to Jin. He places a hand on his back and gives him a few pats, trying to comfort him as much as he can considering how shocked he currently is. Out of all the reasons he had imagined that were the cause of Jin's behavior, that he felt ashamed for jerking off to you was definitely not one of them.

"When did you... you know..." Namjoon pries, and Jin groans before burying his face between his knees. His ears are darker than Namjoon has ever seen them.

"Years ago. It was her CSI episode. I didn't even know she was a famous actress now."

Namjoon does the math quickly in his head, because if he remembers correctly what Jungkook said and what he managed to hear in the interview he was just watching, CSI was your first job, back in 2013.

That's a long time ago.

"Jin-Hyung..." He says, but all he gets in response is another embarrassed groan. "Okay, look at me." No movement. "Hyung, come on."

"I know it's gross." Jin says, lifting his head up and looking mortified. "And now Jungkook is obsessed with her and what if we actually do meet her one day?"

"Hyung... This happened years ago."

"And?"

"And we've all done stuff like that! I have! Everyone has!"

Before Jin can say anything, Yoongi enters the room, but he quickly closes the door behind him when he sees the state Jin is in.

"What's going on?" He asks, walking up to them and sitting on a chair. "Are you okay?"

"I can't say it again." Jin groans, burying his head on his hands once again. "You tell him." Namjoon sighs, but does as told.

"He used to jerk off to [Y/N]'s episode of CSI." Yoongi snorts, but quickly covers his mouth when Namjoon glares at him.

"I'm sorry. So that's what got you acting so weird? Jin-Hyung, come on. It's not that bad." Yoongi says, squeezing Jin's shoulder. 

"You know it's only a matter of time before we meet her, right? What am I supposed to do then?" Jin says, looking at him with an embarrassed frown.

"Okay." Yoongi says, rolling his eyes. "I've met several people I used to masturbate to. It happens. I don't do it anymore, and that's fine. Besides, what makes you think she hasn't done it as well? She's famous and she's American. Everyone masturbates to American actors."

"I'm not sure you're helping." Namjoon says, shaking his head.

"Whatever. Pull yourself together, because you'll hurt Jungkook if you don't." Yoongi says, squeezing Jin's shoulder one last time before getting up and leaving the room.

"He's right, you know." Namjoon says once he's gone. "It's really not that bad, Hyung, I promise."

Even though years of repressed shame are hard to deal with and Jin will definitely need more time to fully process what he's been told, let alone accept it— something about having shared this with Yoongi and Namjoon makes the constant pressure he'd been feeling on his chest a lot lighter.

Maybe they are right, and maybe it's not that bad.

Jin can only hope that if— or when— they do meet you, that moment comes later rather than sooner.

Thank you for reading! Feel free to share your thoughts in any way you want!

[thecoleopterawithana]

Is it true that John once said something like " the fag in me made me feel insecure " ? I'm 98% sure that it was a quote from Lennon, I did try to find it on google but didn't find anything. Is it my imagination or he really said that? If it's legit it's actually a very important quote!

Don’t worry, dear anon, your memory doesn’t deceive you! 

The quote I believe you were searching for was said in reference to the Bob Wooler episode, from Paul’s 21st (where he publicly introduced his new girlfriend, Jane Asher). 

I was out of me mind with drink – when you get down to the point where you drink all the empty glasses, that drunk. And [Bob Wooler] was saying, “Well, come on, John, tell us,” something like that, “Tell me about you and Brian, we all know,” like that. And obviously, I must have been un– uh, f– frightened of the fag in me to get so angry at that. You know, when you’re twenty-one, you want to be a man, and all that. And for the first time I thought, “I could kill this guy.” I just saw it, like on a screen, that if I hit him once more, I – that’s gonna be it.

— John Lennon, interview with Peter McCabe and Robert Schonfeld at the St Regis Hotel, New York (5 September 1971). 

This is an excerpt, but I linked it to @amoralto‘s original post, where you can find the full quote and even audio of the stuttering shown in the transcription. 

And I totally agree with you that it’s an important moment of frankness and introspection, especially considering its timing, right in the middle of the early ‘70s PR campaign. 

If you check out the full quote, this passage appears in the context of John’s shame about his violent past. But it’s revealing of John’s capacity for getting to the bottom of his own emotions and motivations when he puts his mind to it, that he correctly recognizes his anger and violence for what it was: manifestations of his own insecurities; one of them being fragile masculinity.

Nearly a decade later, John recounts this episode once again, and his view on the underlying motivations doesn’t seem to change.

The Beatles' first national coverage was me beating up Bob Wooler at Paul's 21st party because he intimated I was homosexual. I must have had a fear that maybe I was homosexual to attack him like that and it's very complicated reasoning. But I was very drunk and I hit him and I could have really killed somebody then. And that scared me...

— John Lennon, interview with DJ Andy Peebles (6 December 1980).

It’s interesting the way he phrases it, “frightened of the fag in me” and “must have had a fear that maybe I was homosexual”. It’s like an admittance that there is a fag in him, or at the very least a questioning of it. At least that’s the way I read it.

But there’s no shortage of other little interjections by John, dealing with gender and sexuality, that show his thoughts on the matter and openness to it.

It’s a plus, it’s not a minus. The plus is that your best friend, also, can hold you without… I mean, I’m not a homosexual, or we could have had a homosexual relationship and maybe that would have satisfied it, with working with other male artists.

[Note: on the advantages of a female partner like Yoko over his other male artist best friend.]

I was always thinking I was gonna be a famous artist, you know. I’d have to marry a rich old lady or man to look after me while I did my art.

In a marriage, or a love affair (...) there comes a point where the marriage collapses because they can’t face that reality, and they go seeking what they thought they should be having, still, somewhere else. I get a new girl, it’ll all be like that again; I get a new boy…  

[Note: this is said in the context of trying to explain the trajectory of his relationship with Paul.]

But in the early days, we didn’t count lyrics at all. As long as it had some vague theme – she loves you, he loves him, and they love each other – it was the hook and the line and the sound that we were going for.

Please mind that I included only some examples out of the top of my head, and words said by John directly. There’s is also a lot of informative stuff being reported by Yoko and other anecdotes, but it’s good to remember that John was just as likely to mention it in interviews himself.

If you're curious, I amass everything I deem falls under the umbrella of John and Paul questioning their sexuality under the tag I’m not a homosexual, or we could have had a homosexual relationship. Peruse at your pleasure!

[eldritchsurveys]

781.

Your ten favorite movies

Movie number one: The Fountain 1) Who’s the main actor? >> Hugh Jackman. 2) When did it come out? >> I want to say... 2007. 3) What’s the genre? >> Er... hmm. Fantasy? Maybe? I’m going to ask google. ...Oh, apparently Wikipedia classifies it as an “epic romantic drama film that blends elements of fantasy, history, spirituality, and science fiction”. Like, okay, sure, whatever dude. 4) Do you know where it was filmed at? >> I don’t, but I’m about to find out because that’s an interesting question. ...Ah! Montreal. 5) How old were you when you saw it? >> The first time I saw it was... probably not too long after it came out, so early 20s. I rented it from Netflix back when that was new and was a DVD-only service. I didn’t pay it a whole lot of attention at the time and was mostly confused by its storyline (I wasn’t as practiced at following nonlinear timelines and heavily allegorical plots back then). The next time I saw it was a whole different story and tbh that’s a frequent occurrence with me, which is why I always go back to rewatch/reread certain things later on in life.

Movie number two: Sunshine 1) Who’s an actress in this movie? >> Rose Byrne.

2) Out of 10 stars you’d give it? >> I mean, 10, I guess? It’s a top favourite of mine, so... 3) Did it have a surprise ending? >> No. I mean, it had a kind of weird twist for the climax? But the actual ending was kind of what you’d expect. 4) How long was it? >> 1hr 47min. 5) Did you first see it in theatres? >> Nope, but god, if only I could... Movie number three: Interstellar 1) What’s this movie rated? >> PG-13. 2) Did critics approve of it? >> If I recall correctly, yeah, it was pretty widely praised. Mostly for the, you know... Nolan-ness. 3) Who were you with when you saw it? >> Sigma and I went to see it, and then we went to see it again, and then we went to see it yet again, lmao. 4) Did this movie make you cry? >> Sure the fuck did, sure the fuck does. 5) Who are five actors/actresses in this movie? >> Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Michael Caine, Ellen Burstyn, Jessica Chastain. Movie number four: District 9 1) Is the main actor your favorite actor? >> No, but I generally enjoy watching Sharlto Copley in stuff. 2) Do you know how old he is? >> No, and that’s not a detail I care to look up. 3) Did this movie make you laugh? >> I mean, yeah, there were a few funny bits, mostly because Wikus is a fuckin dork sometimes. But mostly it was not a laughing matter. 4) Last time you watched it? >> Uhhh... hmm. Maybe a year or two ago? I tend to avoid it because it gives me way too many feels. This is a common thread with me and things I really have emotional attachment to -- you’ll notice I’ll find excuses not to rewatch or reread them because I’m afraid of my own feelings, lmao. 5) Are you the appropiate age to see it by yourself? >> Well, yeah? Movie number five: Requiem For a Dream 1) What made you mad about this movie? >> Nothing made me mad, exactly. That’s definitely not the emotion I feel when watching it. 2) Was it based on a true story? >> It might have been based on real things that happen to real people, but not in any concrete “this is historical fiction” sort of way. 3) Do you wish it was real in any way? >> I’m sure a lot of it is real for a lot of people... I definitely do not want my life to go in that direction, though. It’s very much a “pay attention to that hole in yourself before it consumes you” story for me. 4) So what’s it about, anyways? >> The intertwined stories of four addicts. 5) Did they make a video game out of this movie? >> That... would be disturbing as fuck and I would not play that, lol. Movie number six: mother! 1) Did this movie bore you at any time? >> Oh, absolutely not. I was on tenterhooks the entire time. I even had to pause it at one point so I could have an anxiety attack. (That was also the moment when I realised I was definitely going to rate it 5 stars on Letterboxd. Listen, it makes sense, I promise.) 2) Was there a kiss scene? >> Er, well, the main characters were romantically involved, so there was kissing. 3) Who was the protagonist (main character)? >> The Mother, I guess. I don’t remember what she was called in the credits or in director interviews or wherever (she doesn’t have a name in the movie, no one does). 4) Have you seen this movie more than once? >> Nope. I sometimes consider watching it again because I do feel the need to, but that’s an experience I have to really be prepared for and I feel like I’m never prepared, lol. 5) Last time you saw it? >> Uh... I want to say... a year ago? Movie number seven: The Prince of Egypt 1) What is this movie’s genre? >> Er... I guess, like, animation. Which isn’t a genre to me either, but hey. (Maybe “family” or “adventure”...?) 2) Are there any kid actors in this movie? >> Probably, since there’s a fair number of kids in this movie and I don’t think they were all voiced by adults... but hey, maybe they were. 3) Where did it all take place? >> It’s animated so it technically just takes place in a studio. But the movie’s setting is Egypt and thereabouts. 4) Who was the biggest star in the movie? >> Like, as in... most famous actor in it? I really couldn’t say, it’s an incredibly star-studded cast all around. 5) What year did it come out? >> 1998. It was the first-ever movie I saw in a theater! Movie number eight: Quills 1) Main actor and/or actress? >> Joaquin Phoenix and Kate Winslet. 2) Is this a one-time only movie? >> Like, it didn’t have any sequels or anything, if that’s what you mean. 3) Is it a sequel to anything? >> No. 4) How much money did it make? >> I don’t feel like looking that up. Probably not a whole lot. 5) Favorite part? >> Oh god, uh. I couldn’t even pick one. Any of the dialogue scenes between the Marquis and the Abbé, also any of the scenes where the Abbé is overcome with horniness lmfao. Movie number nine: Event Horizon 1) When did you first see this movie? >> 2005, when I was in a psych hospital. It was one of the only films they had on tape.

2) Did it take a second time for you to like it? >> Nope, I loved it immediately. And proceeded to watch it every day for like a month. I don’t know how anyone in there put up with me. (Everyone being overmedicated probably helped.)

3) Does it have a happy ending? >> It doesn’t. Most horror movies don’t, right? 4) Who would you recommend it to? >> People who love gory space horror, and especially space movies of that particular nineties variety, you know what I’m talking about. 5) What’s its theme song? >> It doesn’t have one. Movie number ten: Repo! the Genetic Opera 1) Do you still have the movie ticket? >> I didn’t see it in a theater. I had planned on seeing it at a Vampirefreaks sponsored theater event in SoHo, but the line was so long I gave up and went home. Ended up hating it when I finally did get around to watching it, and then watched it again like a year or so later and loooooved it. Funny how that happens sometimes. 2) Favorite part? >> Oh man, how could I even choose? Maybe the Thankless Job scene. Or Night Surgeon! Obviously I’m going to pick anything Nathan-centric, lol. 3) Were there any songs you knew in this movie? >> No, the songs were written for the movie. 4) A quote from this movie: >> I’ma get lazy and say “Zydrate comes in a little glass vial”, sue me. 5) Were the main actors/actresses a perfect match or not so much? >> Like... romantically? Wasn’t that kind of movie. But as far as how they interacted in general, it was a really fun cast. Random Questions 1) Which one have you seen most on DVD? >> Actually, the only one I recall ever watching on a DVD is The Fountain, because I rented it from Netflix. 2) Which one have you seen most in theatres? >> Interstellar (3 times). 3) Did your parents like any of them? >> The only one my father saw was The Prince of Egypt because he took me to see it, and he complained about the skin colour of characters (not dark enough for his liking) in the car on the way home. While I was just basking in the divine afterglow of having just seen something beautiful that had changed my tiny life. 4) Which one did you see with your best friend? >> Well, Sigma was my best friend at the time we saw Interstellar. 5) Would you see #1 again? >> I do rewatch it sometimes, but not very often. It’s a real emotional trip. 6) Is #4 a movie you can only watch every once in a while? >> Yeah, and I mentioned that in one of the answers. 7) Was #5 hard to understand? >> Only if you have a hard time keeping up with multiple character arcs. Or if you’re just completely clueless about the mental mechanics of addiction, maybe. 8) Did you see #2 the day it came out? >> I didn’t. 9) Do you have #3’s movie ticket still? >> I think I kept at least one of the tickets for a while, but I never keep that kind of thing for long. What I really miss is the posters we’d gotten at the Franklin Institute showing. Those were nice, and I’d looked forward to putting one up in a room of my own one day. :( 10) Are there any sequels to these movies coming out? >> Not that I’m aware of. 11) Does your best friend like #9? >> --- 12) Did #10 have horrible special effects? >> I wouldn’t say that. 13) Who directed #6? >> Darren Aronofsky. He directed three of these movies, actually. 14) Did #8 scare you? >> Nah, it wasn’t that kind of movie. 15) Does #7 have a better effect at night? >> No, lol.

[nadziejastar]

What’s the relationship with Disney like? Disney’s attitude to games has changed in recent years to become focused on mobile and social games. Have you noticed their attitude change much?

The relationship with Disney has [remained] the same. Actually the contact person at Disney is still the same person from Kingdom Hearts 1, and Disney has given us lots of requests in terms of the Kingdom Hearts franchise and they did mention some smaller titles for other platforms, but our common, most important goal was to [complete] Kingdom Hearts 3. So it’s the same.

Oh, for sure. I get sad when I see Nomura’s old interviews. The above quote is from June 2013. He was so much more upbeat. KH3 actually had a plot back then, too. Sora would look for the ‘Key to Return Hearts’.  

Disney has changed tremendously since 2006. Obviously Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, totally different style of animation. How your relationship with Disney and its properties evolved over the past 10 years or so in the context of Kingdom Hearts? Tetsuya Nomura: I can say that it has actually been increasingly difficult to get approvals from Disney. That's mainly because in the past Kingdom Hearts titles, the creator wasn't around anymore or the team that used to create those titles wasn't there anymore. There was just this one person that we would just have to go to and they would approve it and we'd be fine and good to go. But because we've been featuring recent titles, they still have existing teams for existing creators that are still working in Disney and still working on a certain title. That feedback process just has been a little bit more difficult than before. And each team would have a different set of rules and guidelines and they would say different things, or they would look at different things. It's just been a little different that how it used to be because Kingdom Hearts is a bigger title than it was before. I think that whenever we would bring our previous titles, a lot of people at Disney, and this is my assumption, but I do assume that they probably didn't know what Kingdom Hearts was. They'd go, "What's Kingdom Hearts? I have no idea." But now that it's become a bigger title, a lot more people have been involved in than before. In that sense the relationship with Disney has changed quite a bit. Emotional changes I don't really know if there has been any changes emotionally for me. But at least physically I can say those were the changes that we had with Disney.

After Versus XIII got cancelled, he became a lot more negative in his interviews. This is from June 2018. Five years later. Around the same time as Versus XIII, BBSV2 got cancelled. And also his relationship with Disney changed. So in a way, even KH3 was kinda taken from him, like Versus XIII was. Nomura was trying to dodge the subject of his emotional changes toward the KH series, but there obviously were some.

You've grown up as a person and as a designer alongside the players and it's been so long since the last Kingdom Hearts was released. How has your perspective on making the game changed over time? Do you still have that passion for it? Or is it just like you feel more of a responsibility to people to make it and end it?

I'm getting older now, so my body really can't take all that difficulty anymore. When I was younger I was definitely more aggressive and I was the one pulling everyone forward, but now there's a lot more energetic staff around me who are more aggressive, so I feel like I'm more like a sage now. Like I'm in the sidelines just telling people what to do. The Kingdom Hearts series has become a huge title nowadays and back then it was more like I was making it secretively in the corner, but now that a lot more people are involved I do feel that it's not my title anymore, it's everyone's title. And just talking about all this … It actually kind of makes me really sad.

This is another interview from June 2018. He said that with all the people involved, KH3 wasn’t really his title anymore and it made him really sad. At this year’s E3, Kitase said that the FF7 Remake was the first game in a long time that Nomura has been really heavily involved with. So, it sounds like Nomura wasn’t as heavily involved with KH3 as he was with past KH games.

Kingdom Hearts means a lot of things to a lot of people. For some, it represents their childhood or it's a story about friendship. What does Kingdom Hearts mean for you?

It's probably the title that represents who I am. When I was a starting as a developer, like I wasn't an industry veteran yet, when I was creating Final Fantasy titles with Mr. Sakaguchi, the father of Final Fantasy, and at that time, he said that Final Fantasy is a game that has everything in it. I don't think that there are that many people left in Square Enix that have actually worked with him on Final Fantasy. Of course, Final Fantasy is still continuing on--they still are committing to push out titles. But when I started creating Kingdom Hearts, that was when I kind of had this time away from Final Fantasy. And of course, I am working on a Final Fantasy title right now, but it was at a time when I was not working on a Final Fantasy title, and I really wanted to realize what Sakaguchi-san said about Final Fantasy, that it is a game that incorporates everything, to Kingdom Hearts. So I brought that idea to Kingdom Hearts. Currently looking at the newer Final Fantasy titles, to be honest, I don't think it really incorporates that idea of having everything. So I think that Kingdom Hearts, to me, is a game that has everything in it.

Nomura actually said that Versus XIII was more of his preference than KH. He enjoyed working on it because it was a break from the super happy, always positive KH universe. 

Nomura: "Kingdom Hearts is not too realistic, but I do want my players to grasp a sense of reality from it as well. For example, I'm sure you had friends when you were young, a good group of friends, but as you grow older things change and it doesn't always stay the same." 

And I think that’s why Lea is (was?) my favorite KH character. Versus XIII was a “fantasy based on reality”. I got the sense that Nomura used Lea/Axel to inject a lot of himself and his preference for realism into KH, since he was so different from other KH characters. He was an adult with a dark backstory. He and his best friend were human lab rats. His best friend later became a sociopath and is possessed. But he longs for the times when they were innocent and happy. Axel was very complicated. I DID get that sense of realism Nomura wanted to convey in his character. That’s why I loved him so much. There was such genuineness in his dialogue.

But I think what Nomura was doing with him and Saïx was so subtle it went over most people’s heads and they couldn’t appreciate it. It sucks because the subtlety made it even better. He basically lived inside the world of his memories. But he hid all of that from everyone (even the player) by smiling. Because he knew happy-go-lucky kids like Roxas and Xion wouldn’t be able to understand him. He was the most realistic and human character for me. He had a dark backstory, but he was still charming, intelligent, and funny. He had many layers. It was devastating to see him get dumbed-down and turned into a caricature of himself in KH3. Flat comic relief whose dark backstory was totally stripped from him. Just like that...poof. Gone. Now it’s all about Retcon X.

October 2014

“If I had to pick, I am a person more on the dark side like Xehanort and co., I harness the burning anger in my heart into what I create,” “Kingdom Hearts 3 current development explodes very much in this sense.”

When I first saw this quote, I had no idea what Nomura meant by channeling his anger into KH3. After playing KH3, I finally understood. That’s why there was so much breaking the fourth wall. Axel was Nomura’s mouthpiece. He was basically acknowledging that the story was crap, like during the scene where he reunited with Ventus and was commenting about how stupid the whole situation was. That B.S. ending? The result of Nomura’s depression. Things aren’t the same anymore. They’ve changed. The whole game just felt like it was phoned in. Nobody who actually cared about the story would do what they did with Kairi and also Lea and Isa’s backstory. KH3 was just so depressing for me because of that. Reading Nomura’s interviews just made it sadder.

2018 Famitsu interview

Tetsuya Nomura's cats were included. He speaks of how his cats cheered him up when he was depressed and how they inspire his work on Kingdom Hearts 3. -The reason he got these cats: Our family really loved cats and dogs, so we always had them in the house. For this reason, when I got a little depressed I was recommended to get cats.

I was really looking forward to Versus XIII when it was announced. Everything about it just sounded so cool. The story was supposed to be the saddest FF, but it would still have fun and humor in it. It was going to be like a road-trip. Noctis’s family was involved in organized crime, like the Yakuza. I still remember the tagline that was a quote from Hamlet. “For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Nomura said Noctis wasn’t going to be super serious like Squall. He was shy and awkward. Somnus is still an awesome song. The Noctis in the above picture just felt totally different from the Noctis in FFXV. They give off a completely different vibe. 

After I beat KH3, I was so disappointed with it, I started looking for a bunch of info on Versus XIII, since that game’s cancellation obviously influenced KH3 so much. I have seen a lot of stuff from people who claim to have leaked info about Versus XIII. I find this particular leak to be credible since the person correctly leaked the plot of FFXV six months in advance:

The game centered about death, ghosts and hallucination/dreams. Noctis killed the female protagonist before the game started but he didn't remember. Ardyn was Noctis ancestor and he was responsible of the crystals disappearing over time (the only one left was Lucis crystal). Regis died in front of Noctis because his bodyguards betrayed him. The protagonists had to leave the capital because their nation lost the war.

The game didn't focus on summons that much (they still existed) and instead there were actual gods which didn't appear physically. One of the gods was the main antagonist of the first FF game. Each nation was inspired by a different capital of the world. The empire was using ghosts as weapons. Ravus wanted to kill Noctis for having killed her sister. The game ended in another dimension which was supposed to be their version of the after-life.

This sounds a lot like what Nomura would do with a story, and is consistent with the info and trailers about Versus. I think I remember one where people were being turned into ghosts/monsters. The goddess Etro was supposed to be worshiped in Lucis. And I remember one of the things that interested me most about Versus XIII was that Noctis was able to see some light in the sky that others couldn’t, and it was due to having had a near-death experience as a child. That sounded SO cool.

I can believe the whole Stella being a ghost thing, because Tabata said they had to create Luna because Stella just wouldn’t make sense in the new story. The dreams/hallucinations part sounds cool to me, but is probably thought of as being “too weird” for a mainstream game. Also, the fact that the game ended in the after-life stood out for me. KH3 already had something similar with the Realm of Sleep. But they tried to connect it more with the after-life, even though Nomura previously said there was “no concept of death” in KH. This made me think he was still hung up on Versus while making The Final World. 

I definitely think that the original Versus XIII would have been a much more interesting game, since Nomura was SO passionate about it. The script was finished, too. It was jsut scrapped. The voice actor of Noctis, Suzuki Tatsuhisa, mentioned during the release date live stream that he still has the Versus scripts at home that he reads on his days off. And he said he couldn’t figure out how to move from the Versus Noctis to XV Noctis and struggled to find middle ground. 

He said he had a hard time getting into the character towards the end of the game, so he had to re-do his lines from the middle of the story again a few times to get it right. The fact that he still reads the Versus scripts tells me that he was really disappointed when Versus became XV. It sounds like he enjoyed what Nomura/Nojima wrote a LOT more and had a hard time masking his displeasure.

I stand behind what Sakaguchi said about big budget games development: it’s not worth it anymore. But they are also very disorganized. The staff -200 souls- had to work when the story still wasn’t completely defined. In fact, this story kept changing every 3 months and the definitive delivery date for the game was for the end of 2014. ---Roberto Ferrari

Sadly, the big budget style of production seems to be at the root of why Square Enix’s console games have been so soulless. KH is not for everybody, but it was a series that was made with passion. I actually enjoyed the handheld KH games more than KH3 because they felt like Nomura was able to do what he wanted creatively, instead of feeling like it was made to appease a focus group. I would give up the super fancy graphics in a heartbeat to get KH0.5 and the original vision Nomura had for KH3.

[rkcoco]

Lee Coco’s MGA5 Callback (Interview) Mentioned -  @rkkyungsoo​, @rkxuxi​, @rkguanheng​, @rkchoutzuyu​, @rkxkikwang​, @rktaeil​, @rkxsnh​, @moonbokrk​, @rkyeosang​, @rkaisha​, @danielxrk​, @rksuwoong​Quote - “Give love, and then you might receive love” Thanks to everybody for doing such great job

An interview. Once again an interview. Answering questions has never been a talent of Coco’s, she always worries too much about whether she answers correctly or not. She sits quietly in the room alone with a big smile placed on her face, she plays with her long hair. She had short blonde hair once and she liked it very much, however everybody she knows prefers her with long hair and for her hair to be any shade of brown, by now she has colored her hair any shade of brown there exists in the world. Perhaps she’ll do better in the interview than with her performance? Not that she did bad in her performance, at least she doesn’t think she did too bad. But for her its easier to get attention and win peoples’ hearts and love while talking instead of singing. While talking she gets the chance to really show her cute side.

How did you choose your song?

That’s the first question. She pouts her lips and looks at the ceiling as she thinks of an answer, it wasn’t too hard to answer, she already knew the answer, but she knows that she looks cute while thinking and making the expression she makes, so she takes the opportunity to act cute.

She knows the song from the movie Coco, a movie which she had only watched because her friends suggested it and it had the same name as her. She watched the movie in Korean, and to be honest she had never even heard the Spanish soundtrack before she was informed that she had passed the audition and had gotten this far. She could’ve just chosen to sing the song in Korean, but that wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted to show her Spanish speaking talent, show something the viewers hopefully hadn’t seen before, she wanted to surprise those who watched and heard her perform. That was her goal throughout the MGAs, to continuously show something new and surprise whoever watched her, she hoped for lots of screen time, she knew that would make the ones around her proud, and that was what she wanted, to make people proud of her. She looks straight again and shows a smile on her lips, she scratches her neck before finally deciding to answer the question. “I like the movie Coco, it’s title is the same as my name, I think that’s funny” she chuckles shortly before continuing “I sang in Spanish so I’m not sure if anybody understood what I sang so I’ll quickly explain the lyrics. It’s a song about love, whether it’s with your family, pet or significant other, it’s about true love always connect us, it even says it in the chorus. Amor verdadero nos une por siempre, that means; true love connects us forever. I like that, the thought of love being the strongest thing in the world and the thing that connects us, I think that’s why I chose the song I chose, because the lyrics are nice” she smiles brightly at the answer. The answer was far longer than intended, perhaps she should’ve said something short and cute, but talking about love also makes one seem innocent and therefore that was her choice.

Were there any performances you liked?

Oh. That was an unexpected question that should’ve been expected. Of course they were going to ask her to talk about others, it was surprising they asked who she liked and not who she disliked, don’t they want drama? Coco knows how this business works, the MGAs most likely are out for getting more viewers, and drama is something that usually will get a show more viewers. Coco is not going to be a part of drama, and if she is then it’ll only be to make others seem bad, not at all does she want to seem like a bad person. She wants to seem nice, cheerful, innocent and cute, therefore being nice to others is a must. To be honest she didn’t watch most of the performances, were they too boring then she would just think about other things, or else she would be busy thinking about how she would do or how she had done, however she did watch some performances and she would mention those who she liked most out of the few she had seen.

“Well I think I would like to mention Kyungsoo first” she paused for a bit, wondered if the two were going to pretend they had never met before while on the show or not, she knew Kyungsoo and surprisingly she knew a lot of the other contestants too. The world really is small. “I’ve never heard the song he sang, so I don’t know if he even sang the right lyrics, but I think he did a really great job. His voice fit perfectly for the song, at least I think so. He really does have a pretty voice” and once again she pauses before pouting her lips and showing a sad expression “I’m jealous” she says. To be honest she only mentioned him because they knew each other and he had comforted her in a difficult situation, she did enjoy his performance but she hadn’t watched much of it, while he was on the stage she hadn’t managed to watch him very much because the thought of whether he knew of her grandmother’s death or not bothered her.

She has a second name in mind, but she stays quiet for a second, the name in her mind sounds too unfamiliar and weird “s-sushi. I think his name was…” she bits her lips, her confusion will hopefully make her look ever cuter even if it’s unintentional. “Yeah sushi… I think I need to mention him. I was really surprised when I saw him perform, I don’t think anyone could forget his performance. He really rocked that outfit, I think I might need to ask him where he bought that shirt” a short chuckle escapes her mouth before she continues “but not only was his outfit amazing, everything was really woah. I really like dancing myself and I think I could learn from him, I think singing and dancing might be my two best performance skills, but I’m not sure if I could do both at once, I’ve never tried. But he sang and danced at the same time! I really admire that” she ends her comment with a big smile on her lips, she did enjoy his performance and thought it was very well, but she’s not sure if she would ever have the courage to ask a stranger for help.

“Oh I also need to mention Guanheng!” she burst out, she has already talked a lot about two, but she needs to mention this guy too. “You did well” she says in Chinese as she shows a thumbs up, Coco doesn’t speak Chinese, but she speaks around six words ‘you did well’ and ‘I love you’, and she feels the need to show off her Chinese skills “I’m not sure if he’s Chinese, but his name did sound Chinese”. “He sang and played an electric guitar if I remember right, he performed history maker, right!? I really like that song and I think he sang it well—” and then she goes silent for a second “wait—” again a break. “The guy I talked about before? His name isn’t sushi, it’s Xuxi, isn’t it? Oh my god I’m so sorry!” she bows slightly and covers her face with embarrassment, sushi did sound weird. “Oh my god…” she gulps before then again speaking “oh but I was talking about Guanheng, wasn’t I? Oh yeah I really enjoyed his performance”

“Tzuyu just like Xuxi sang while dancing, I really admire those two that they can do that” Tzuyu is a friend of Coco’s and honestly she was surprised to see Tzuyu. Never in a million years had she suspected that Tzuyu would be a good dancer and singer, was she honest then maybe she was a bit jealous of Tzuyu, how Tzuyu managed to sing while dancing, not that the dance was the hardest in the world, but she still danced while singing. Coco has never tried dancing while singing, but she just assumes that she’s bad at it “Tzuyu did very well, she has a very beautiful voice, I’m surprised she sings so well”

“L-lee Kikwang I think his name was? He also sang while dancing. I was honestly very surprised when I saw his performance, I don’t think he has the best singing voice, but I think his dancing definitely makes up for it. Out of all of the dancers I’ve seen today, he’s totally in top five, or maybe top three! I was seriously entertained by his dancing, I wish I could see his dancing on repeat, I want him to teach me how to become such good dancer! I really like dancing, and I hope that I can compare to his skill” she smiles brightly upon ending her comment, jealousy is something that comes easily to her, and is she honest she hopes they won’t cross paths because she fears she would get too jealous of him.

“I think I need to mention Taeil too? He’s a friend of mine, but that’s not the only reason why I’m mentioning him. I was the one who convinced him to try out for the MGAs, and see how far he has gone? I knew it was a good idea” a short chuckle leaves her as she tucks a tot of hair behind her ear before continuing; “it seems as if he has practiced very hard, and I think that’s what makes a performance great, when you can see they really want it” to be honest she had no idea whether or whether not he had practiced hard, but because she had dragged him into this she felt the need to compliment him. “I’m sure that he’ll improve a lot throughout this season”.

“I know I’ve already mentioned a lot of people, but I have a few more people I need to mention! Someone who really needs to be mentioned is Hyejoo! I hope everybody mentions her because she showed some really wild skills. When she walked up on the stage I had never expected her to rap, but then she opened her mouth and showed the wildest rap ever! I’ve never tried rapping before, but I’m 100% sure about the fact that I’m bad at it. She’s really wild! If I ever want to rap then I’ll be sure to ask her for advice” her face lights up when speaking about the girl, she sure was very amused by Hyejoo’s performance.

“Jang Moonbok… I think that was his name, right? He was in the last season too, if I remember right. His hair is so pretty! I’m really jealous!” again, a short chuckle leaves her before she continues “I know his hair doesn’t have anything to do with his performance, but it was what caught my attention! Because of his hair I paid extra attention to him! And I’m really glad I did! He both sang AND rapped, right?! That was truly amazing, that dude really has talent. I don’t remember much about him from last year, but that must mean he has improved, mustn’t it? Because he grabs my attention now, that he didn’t do last year”

“Another rapper I would like to mention is Yeosang, or was he rapping? I think he did a mix of rapping and singing, and it was really cool! He really stands out from the crowd, I really enjoy his way of rapping, if he ever made an album, then for sure I would buy it” the never-ending smile continues on her lips as she speaks about the male, honestly? Maybe she was a bit jealous of how unique his method of rapping was.

“I know I’ve mentioned a lot of people already, but there’s are more people I want to mention… Yoorim, I think that was her name, I’m not very good at remembering names, but she left a strong impact on me, she really did a great job! I don’t know why, but when people can sing and dance and do it greatly then I just get so entertained! Yoorim did a really good job with both, I still have yet to sing while dance, but seeing her perform? It really just makes me want to try it!”

She feels tears pressing on as she is about to speak about the next and last person; Daniel. She watched the MGAs season four and she cheered him on, all while he was on the show, he was truly her favorite. “Daniel…” she holds a short break before continuing “he has really gotten good, it’s great to see. I’m a big fan of his, I think he’s really cool and he has a lot of talent. I’m both happy and sad that he has joined the MGAs again, I think it’s good he has come back so he can show how much he has grown, however it feels weird to kind of be competing against him? Regardless of whatever I think he did really well, I hope everybody will support me as much as I supported him last season” and then she ends of her comment with a smile.

Truly she did not think she would mention this many people, but oh, a lot of people did do great. “Sorry for talking so much. I think everybody did great, but these were just some of my favorites”

Were there any performances you didn’t like?

Oh. Of course they were going to ask that, she should’ve expected it, shouldn’t she? Well she had mentioned quite many she had enjoyed watching, and probably there were more people she disliked than she liked, but she wouldn’t mention that many, that would just make her seem rude.

The first name who came to her mind was Lee Suwoong, she widens her eyes upon thinking about him. His performance had surprised her, it was memorable. It wasn’t that it was bad, it was just… Weird? But oh well, weird things are sometimes good, aren’t they? Or maybe he joined the MGAs to make a fool out of himself? That could be it too, if she remembers right Kyungsoo had told her that Suwoong was his cousin, and she was quite surprised at this fact because they did not seem the least alike. Though even if his performance hadn’t been her favorite, she wasn’t going to mention his name, she had her nice reputation to keep. “Nope, I think everybody did their best, and that’s what matters” and with that she sends a big smile in the way of the camera.

Who do you think will be eliminated today?

Her smile which she had been so good at keeping slowly faded upon hearing the question. Why would they ask her something like that? If she answered the question then wouldn’t she just seem rude? Or perhaps that was what they wanted? It would make sense, she had been nice so far, she had kept a smile through the interview, and she said every word with her cute voice, she did her best to maintain her cute, kind, innocent and soft self. But that probably wasn’t what they wanted, they probably wanted to crack her and make drama by showing her true self but was she honest then this was her true self, well in a way. Normally she didn’t speak with her cute voice all the time, but she did do it often, normally she would also be a bit more mature, but everybody seemed to think cuter her was better, so that was the reason for why she acted so cute on the show. But even if they wanted to make her look bad, she wouldn’t let them. “I have no idea, you can never predict things like these. The MGAs are really unpredictable” and then again the smile returns to her lips.

And it seems that, that was the final question. Perhaps some of her answers were too long, but long answers could be good too sometimes, who knew? Perhaps they would time-lapse it or something, or show a video of people falling asleep, if they made a joke out of her long answers then that would gain her attention too.

And once again she needed to show her signature move, it was what she was supposed to be known for. “Please” the word leaves her mouth as she sticks out her left hand and shows a thumbs up “support me” stretching the word like a kid while stretching her right arm and showing a thumbs up with that hand too.

And now it’s over, she managed to do her second interview.

[ahntravels]

Day два.

Day 2. Woke up and completely forgot I was in St. Petersburg for a moment. My bed at home is  a queen, and the bed at this hotel is for a tiny person (in fact, I think my bed at ND was larger...) Anyway, I rolled over as per usual, and completely rolled off the bed. 

I never would have thought, in my wildest dreams, I would one day wake up in Russia. Here’s to just pulling the trigger and making it happen. 

Today, as mentioned yesterday, is Hermitage day. I didn’t know what exactly to expect, except all blogs mentioned to a) buy your ticket in advance (online) and b) get there early. The museum opens at 10, and I had planned on getting there at 10, except halfway through the 20 minute walk I realized I forgot my wallet and visa so I had to go walk back to the hotel and then walk back again, basically adding another 30 minutes to my trip. I arrived around 10:30.

I will say, walking up to the Winter Palace (Hermitage) was surreal. It’s HUGE. 

Below is the arch you walk through which reveals the mammoth Palace

I’ve seen Buckingham Palace in London and Versailles in Paris. I will say that they are NOTHING compared to the Hermitage Museum in terms of shear size. It’s kind of crazy that those arches completely conceal the Palace until you start to walk through it. Then you see like...part of the Palace, but it’s not until you walk through the arch that there is this instantaneous reveal. Included in the reveal is the shock of just seeing the Palace in full + the huge size of it spanning your vision across the X-axis + all the blue sky and empty space that just silences you for a moment. 

SIDE NOTE: For whatever stupid, immature reason, every time I think of the “reveal”, I think of that scene from Mario 64 when you’re running towards a photo of the Princess and it turns out to be Bowser. No, I’m not drunk, don’t ask me why I think of these things at the most random times. And yes, I did spend 15 minutes searching for this photo collage. 

Anyway. I am sure the Winter Palace is GORGEOUS during winter. The acoustics of the space when it’s covered in snow must be like...next level. I’m sure St. Petersburg during the winter is amazing. 

If you want a history lesson on the Hermitage, the Hermitage website has a great timeline. Again, as with the other blogs, I’m not going to be going into detail about images of the place or the history of the pieces exhibited. So many other blogs have done it so much better and I’m not going to butcher that. I’ll just mention a few things that stuck out to me, and you can Google around and figure it out.

I will say that if you do visit, I can offer a couple of tips you may want to follow.

1) The map. The map is confusing but not. You’ll just find yourself getting annoyed because, when you know where you are going, the gaggle of tourists and tourist groups will spin you around and suddenly you forget which way is which. Because the museum is HUGE (I saw maybe 1/8th of the museum in 4-5 hours?) you have to prioritize what to see. Keep in mind that, as time elapses, the museum becomes more and more inundated with the dreaded tourist groups, basically making your chances of getting a clear photo of anything nill. 

2) Tourists (a.k.a. the “Boos”). See the map below. The Hermitage has 3 floors. Below is a floor plan of probably the most popular floor, thanks to Mr. da Vinci and many of the decorative palace rooms (amongst other exhibits):

The good thing is that the map kind of pulls out the most famous exhibits and shows you what room they are in. This makes your job of figuring out where you need to go to cross out those items from your bucket list easy. The bad part: The enemy (a.k.a. tourists groups a.k.a. “boos”) also know where these pieces are and are racing as well to find them. The good news: the boos are with tourist groups and have to wait until the tour guide guides them to the room with the exhibit. So, you have time to beat them to it and snag the photo if you are quick. 

Just like in Mario, as time progresses and you aren’t being proactive, more and more of these guys are going to flood the Museum and follow you and clog up the exhibits. So, how do you win? I suggest getting to the museum first thing, then IMMEDIATELY source those famous exhibits, get your photos, then start at the beginning. Most of the tourists are going to be spending a large portion of their time taking photos of the great hall, which leaves you time to sneak past. Case in point:

The line to da Vinci. It was actually way worse a bit earlier when I came around again. I managed to get there early enough and snagged a decent photo:

In general, just like Versailles, the rooms are huge and ornate and absolutely beautiful. I was standing by a window, looking out into the courtyard from what was probably a ballroom in the palace, and thought to myself who else, years ago, was gazing forlornly (or with happiness, or deep in thought) out this same window.

I think that is the most magical part about these palace museums: people LIVED here. People also died here, were executed, fell in love, gave birth, went mad. And when you see relics of those like ridiculous looking Russian uniforms or weird trinkets from decades past, you have to remember that, no, these weren’t fashioned after film props, but film props fashioned after the real living thing. And the real living thing from 100+ years ago is right in front of you. 

It’s pretty spectacular. 

Oh, so this was exciting: The were having a temporary exhibit, and it was REMBRANDT!! Mike! I’m sure you have seen most of these because they sourced the pieces from the Leiden collection...maybe you have seen some of these at the Frick?

Anyway, there was NO PHOTOGRAPHY so I couldn’t really snag photos of pieces specifically. 

I did find myself in a Jean-Baptiste while lost in the French wing:

I didn’t and couldn’t wander the halls for the full 4-5 hours straight. I took a couple of breaks, grabbing a coffee at the cafe for 15 minutes before trying again. I do suggest you break up your visit to the Hermitage into two days; it really is the only way to not feel like your brain is going to explode. 

Afterwards, I took a walk outside by the water behind the Palace. 

Gratuitous selfie. That’ll be two hundred rubles. 

At this point, I had about 2.5 hours to kill before I needed to make my way to the Mariinsky Theater for the performance. So, I did what anyone should do, and that is wander around and picked up a snack to munch on (sorry, no photo of munchies).

There were people painting on the lawn, and I meant to come back and scope out the progress, but became distracted so I didn’t. I did manage to view a live performance (there are performers EVERYWHERE) and I’ll have to post in a separate blog entry because I still can’t figure out how to take the video from my phone and stick it here. 

I stopped at a progressive burger joint (in terms of menu options) for my “snack” (I didn’t eat breakfast despite my large leftovers still sitting in the refrigerator) and ate one of these guys sans burger sauce:

It’s essentially a falafal burger with cucumbers and halved grape tomatoes inside. The bun was my least favorite part (larger in circumference than the patty, which drives me INSANE) so I ditched it angrily. The bun and the burger should be the same size, and the patty should be thicker than each half of the bun. If the top bun is thicker than the patty, the bun is trash. BESIDES THAT ISSUE, the patty was actually really flavorful, and the veggies were (surprise!) slightly pickled. I wasn’t a huge fan of the background of dill I tasted, but that’s fine. The lunch hit the spot and I felt alive again. 

I know, call me a hypocrite for yelling about wasting food and here I am ditching a perfectly good bun. Well, arguably it wasn’t perfectly good, but I did take a bite and decided I much preferred the insides. Whatever. To quote Trump, “Who cares, we won!”

ASHLEY SIDE NOTE: It’s actually been great being overseas, because I have been shielded from all the US politics. However, I did catch a headline today and I mistakenly checked out Trump’s interview and wow...glad I am over here.

Eventually, I made my way to the theater via Uber (there is no Lyft here, and taxis are a little...shady. And slow. And expensive). I will have to comment on Russian driving (or, driving in Russia):

1) It’s nuts. Nuttier than cabbies and NYC driving. Nuttier than driving in France. Probably not nuttier than driving in Vietnam or other places where you are competing with scooters and cars, but it’s still pretty nutty.

2) However, I noticed that they do one thing correctly and without anger that we don’t do in America, and that is merging. In Russia, they utilize the “zipper merge” technique quite patiently and diligently, which, after taking 3 Ubers and cursing under my breath at the “assholes” who merged at the last minute, I realized that this was common and drivers didn’t sweat it. 

“Those apparently rude drivers are putting more of the roadway to use and thus helping speed things along, in much the same way water flows faster through a funnel than through a straw.”

3) There is no bus lane or real lanes in general (I mean, there are lines painted in the road but people disregard them) and cars are just weaving in and out, trying to avoid buses, bikers, etc. And everyone drives stick, so it can get a little rough at times.

Anyway, I manged to get to the theater at the nick of time (traffic is TERRIBLE) and had decent balcony seating:

The Mariiinsky Theater isn’t huge, but the acoustics are really good. The ballet itself was really interesting. Interesting in the sense that this performance, in terms of skill, seemed to be this mix of gracefulness and like...cirque du soleil. I haven’t seen many ballets, but the ones I have seen did not showcase these magnificent bouts of exaggerated athleticism as performed by these dancers (i.e. 360 degree turns ad infinitum, Labron Jamesesque slam dunk vertical leaps, etc). Don’t get me wrong; these dancers are incredible and it was fun to watch them exhibit their unrelenting strength. However, I felt, where the narrative fell short, the shock and awe carried it through.

 I have to be honest and say that I’m not the type to sit through a long, dry opera or ballet, so Le Corsaire broke through any of that fear and was much appreciated. Given we are in the world of #metoo, the plot didn’t really adhere to the moral standard (the narrative is much about the selling of women as slaves, that people of the Middle Eastern ethnicity is less than smart, etc). Yeah, not the best message. However, despite the immature and possibly offensive plot, the artistry was really good...the backgrounds and costumes were beautiful, and the music was moving. I really liked the duo in Act II...I believe it’s the Adagio, but I will have to go back through the soundtrack to figure it out. 

Afterwards, I ate a really light and late dinner and came back to the hotel where I am writing this. It’s past midnight, and I am officially 63 years old!*

Tomorrow, I think i will visit the Faberge museum, then the Anna Akhamatova Museum, then a food market called  the Kuznechny Market where I will try to buy some caviar, THEN bday dinner, then I need to hit the hay because I have a 6AM train out of Russia and into Estonia. I am really feeling sad that my stay in Russia is ending, but excited to see two more countries. 

Until tomorrow!

*I told the waiter today was my birthday, and he said, “Congratulations”. What a curious response. I suppose living is a task, and becoming a year older is like a life promotion.  

[jinhogwarts]

list of my jinho ships~

idk why but i felt like writing a breakdown of all the ships i have for jinho... some are obvious or popular but i have a few that even i don’t really know why i ship them so much but i do ;~;

will do it under a ‘read more’ bc i have no idea how long it will be lol

Jinho/Hongseok: probably the most obvious (and popular) one. i mean, i even have an entire blog dedicated to this otp (@jinhongseok0417) and even wrote a full analysis of their relationship and why i think they’re so close (you can read it here if you want!). before pentagon maker started when i first heard that one of the members is an ex yg trainee i thought it would be funny to ship him with jinho (before i even knew who he was) bc jinho is ex sm trainee and in the end they both ended up in cube... and then when pentagon maker started they became like the biggest otp ever (well maybe other than huidawn but they’ve been married for years so) and just... ;^; i love their relationship so much, they’re my #1 ship ;^;

Jinho/Suho: yes, you read that correctly. yes, i know they never actually interacted or even talked about each other. b u t. as i’m sure everyone knows, both of them were in the original debut lineup as sncj (before it turned into m1 and m2 aka exo k and exo m) and just... here’s the thing. when exo debuted i was a huge exo l (idk if anyone here has been following me long enough to remember that time lol) and i was also a huge shipper so i wanted to have a ship for every member, only at that time i didn’t have any otp for suho (i had some ships for him but with people who had other otps) and i was like... “oh i know!!! that’s because his otp just didn’t debut with them!!!” and for y e a r s i was obsessed with this weird non-existent ship. up until pentagon maker started and i moved on to jinhongseok lol. i’m still highkey hoping they’ll meet eventually but... we never even had any info about them being friends even when jinho was still in sm so i’m doubt that will ever happen lol

Jinho/Chanyeol: so while i was obsessing over the weird 2ho ship i invented in my brain, most people who liked exo from the teaser era or debut era shipped jinho and chanyeol. for a long time i had NO IDEA why... i think it was when i looked up fics of exo with jinho (back when i still read fics about exo) i saw they had a few and i didn’t understand the combination lol. the funny thing is that eventually after jinho debuted i still kept looking up stuff of him with exo and just trying to figure out the timeline of when he left sm, and then i came across a picture of him and chanyeol from... 2013 or 2014 i think it was? probably not long before he left sm actually... anyways i started to think about this ship more and more and realized how cute they would have been.. (also before jinho deleted his instagram they were following each other so~~) anyways these days they’re probably my favorite non-pentagon ship for jinho because chanyeol is a big fluffy puppy and i’m emo just thinking about them like all the time :(

Jinho/Johnny: ok so tbh i never followed the smrookies bc as soon as i realized jinho left i didn’t really care anymore lol and i wasn’t a huge nct stan at the beginning so whenever people talked about johnny and that he has to debut already i didn’t really care about it... but then, i don’t remember when it was, maybe around the time sm announced that he’s joining 127 but before limitless came out, i googled him for some reason and the first thing that came up was a picture i recognized as trainee seo youngho who i knew of back when i still cared about the sm trainees bc i thought jinho would debut with them. and only then it clicked that johnny and jinho probably knew each other for a long time bc they entered the company around the same time (i think, don’t quote me on that). i didn’t know if they were really friends or if they kept in touch with each other - until jinho tagged johnny in a kind of charity relay thing (where idols give something of theirs to sell for charity) which meant that he knows him well enough to tag him on that thing... and since then i became obsessed with them as a ship, i got into nct just for johnny (unfortunately 127 is my least favorite group out of the 3 lmfao) and even wrote an jinho/johnny ex-boyfriends fic (*cough* if you wanna read)... i’ve been waiting for so long for them to interact, and it took about a year until jinho FINALLY went on nct’s night night and even though they weren’t in the same frame they were sitting next to each other and they kept talking and smiling to each other every time there was an ad break and when jinho did aegyo johnny looked so done with life and oh my god i’m still emo about that ngl :”)

Jinho/E’dawn: probably my favorite underrated ship in pentagon ;^; it’s funny bc at first i really liked jinhongseok x huidawn and i was like “every ship between those 4 work, except for jindawn” but then i started noticing them and i realized that they’re actually????? perfect????????? like honestly i don’t know what it is about their relationship because their personalities are quite different but there’s SOMETHING that makes me go !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! every time they interact. i can’t even put my finger on it enough to explain why, but... next time you watch pentory or any other video with pentagon, try to notice their interactions and i’m sure you’ll understand what i mean ;^; please tell me i’m not alone with this ship ;;

Jinho/Hui: gosh, i always love the relationship between the leader and the oldest member (or leader and second oldest when the leader is actually the oldest). there’s just something really special about their relationship - a sense of responsibility, i guess? i think jinho and hui explained it best themselves in their recent allure interview; you can read what they said >here<, i’m referring to the first two paragraphs (but read everything if you want ^^). basically, the thing is - i can really see them leaning on each other when they can’t really lean on anyone else. jinho is the oldest so he’s supposed to be the person the younger members turn to for advice, and hui is the leader so he has to take a lot of responsibilities, but then jinho can always count on hui to help him as a leader and hui can count on jinho to help him as a hyung... i’m not sure i’m explaining it well but i hope you understand what i mean. another thing, though, is their supposed “rivalry” which doesn’t actually exist lol. basically bc they’re the main vocalists and they have similar vocal range it would be easy to assume they would be rivals (and they were for that one pentagon maker episode), but in reality they’re both so supportive of each other and they’re both strong in different areas and they both get good opportunities (hui is getting a lot of promotions from cube but jinho has magazineho and he did a musical) and just... idk it’s really cute how much they love and respect each other even though it would have been so easy for them to be at least a bit competitive with each other... ^^

well that’s pretty much it tbh. i don’t ship jinho romantically with any of the maknaeline because i find it weird (i’m the same age as jinho and i find that age gap kinda weird lol not as much now but when they debuted and were still minors), though i do love his friendship with all of them <3 but as far as actual ships, that’s pretty much it. i mostly ship jinhongseok which is why i don’t actually have that many different ships for him lol

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY IT'S SAFE FOR MAKING NEW VENTURE ANIMAL

It's exciting that there even exist parts of the world than what I saw immediately around me. The Mythical Man-Month, adding people to a project tends to slow it down. More often it was just an arbitrary series of hoops to jump through, words without content designed mainly for testability. It's like the court of Louis XIV. Modern literature is important, but the job listings have to be really useful. But you could in principle have a useful conversation about them with some people. Technological progress means making things do more of what we want. It would be less now, probably less than the cost of sending them the first month's bill. But that same illiquidity also encouraged you not to seek it.1 You don't do that if you start scanning people with no symptoms, you'll get this on a giant scale: a huge number of software patents there's not a lot of users.

It's what bias means. By definition they're partisan. I worked at Yahoo during 1998 and 1999.2 If I remember correctly, our frontpage used to just fit in the size window people typically used then. Now the frightening giant is Microsoft, and they could not master it. Want to know if you bet on Web-based software, you can probably get even more effect by paying closer attention to the time you have.3 Enough of an effect to triple the value of what they create. There are really two variants of that question, and the bureaucratic obstacles all medical startups face, and the classics. When I was 13 I realized, is that my m. He probably considers them about equivalent in power to, say, the ages of eleven and seventeen.4

And yet, mysteriously, Viaweb ended up crushing all its competitors. The war was due mostly to external forces, and the most efficient way to do it. So for any given team of founders, would it not pay to wait till his arteries were over 90% blocked and 3 days later he had a quadruple bypass.5 At the end of the year I couldn't even remember what else I had stored in that attic. Obvious comparisons suggest themselves, both to the process and the resulting product. Basically, Apple bumped IBM and then Microsoft stole its wallet. What happens now with the Super Bowl used to happen every night. That is, are the riskiest startups the ones that wanted Oracle experience. That doing good work.6 It let them build great looking online stores literally in minutes.7 Web-based application.8

They're a lot of bandwidth.9 What that level of ability can get you is, say, Python? Or rather, any client, and if you have genuine intellectual curiosity, that's what you'll naturally tend to do if you just follow your own inclinations.10 As a result it became massively successful. By granting such an over-broad patents, but they are an order of magnitude less important than solving the real problem, my friend Robert Morris and I started a startup to do this is to collect them together in one place for a certain number of hours each day.11 Everyone was so cheerful and healthy and rich. What was really happening was de-oligopolization. When would you ever want to do. I found I could entertain myself by having ideas instead of reading other people's.12 Microsoft client and server software. One forgets it's owned by a private company. You can mitigate this with subsidies at the bottom nine tenths of university CS departments.13

And while I miss the 3 year old ever had. You might think that people decide to buy something, and if you want to be their research assistants because they're genuinely interested in the topic. A company that sues competitors for patent infringement till you have money, and making money consists mostly of errands.14 This was too subtle for me. People from the desktop software business will find this hard to credit, but at the time. But if you look at the source, because you control the whole system, right down to the hardware. For the first week or so we intended to make this point diplomatically, but in some cases it's possible to get rich will do whatever they like with you: install puppet governments, siphon off your best workers, use your women as prostitutes, dump their toxic waste on your territory—all the things we describe as addictive are. I got was $12. If you do manage to threaten them, they're more right than they know, because the adults were the visible experts in the skills they were trying to learn in great detail about the mechanics of startups, but as Microsoft shows, revenue is a lagging indicator in the technology business.15

At least $1000 a month. The best ideas are just on the right side of impossible. Programs that write programs.16 You can figure out the tricks for winning at this new game. That is very hard to answer in the general case. This will take some effort on the part of the game.17 And yet the authorities still for the most part act as if drugs were themselves the cause of the problem.18 Perhaps a better solution is to let as few things into your identity as possible. You can probably take it as a computer system executing that algorithm. The effects of World War II were both economic and social history, and the advantage will grow as fast as I can type, then spend several weeks rewriting it.19 Finally, the truly serious hacker should consider learning Lisp: Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of us can use. I wanted to buy them, however limited.

Notes

But although I started using it, and the older you get to profitability on a weekend and sit alone and think.

It's unpleasant because the arrival of desktop publishing, given people the shareholders instead of themselves. And those examples do reflect after-tax return from a 6/03 Nielsen study quoted on Google's site. I talked to a VC is interested in investing but doesn't want to write your thoughts down in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Oxford University Press, 1996.

Does anyone really think we're so useless that in the world of the company.

73 billion.

Apparently there's only one founder is being compensated for risks he took earlier. The shift in power from investors to founders is how much they can be explained by math. MSFT, having spent much of observed behavior.

I ordered a large company? As well as down.

But his world record only lasted 46 days.

Related: Reprinted in Bacon, Alan, Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity, Social Text 46/47, pp. If you seem like noise.

When the Air Hits Your Brain, neurosurgeon Frank Vertosick recounts a conversation—maybe around 10 people.

I call it procrastination when someone works hard and not fundraising is because their company made money from them. Learning this explained a lot of detail. If this is the kind that has little relation to other investors, even thinking requires control of scarce resources, political deal-making power. It tipped from being this boulder we had high hopes for doesn't do well, but that's a pyramid scheme.

Financing a startup. The dialog on Beavis and Butthead was composed largely of these titles vary too much. Copyright owners tend to say, of course it was 94% 33 of 35 companies that an eminent designer is any better than enterprise software—and to run on the server.

Though they were that smart they'd already be working on such an interview with Steve Wozniak in Jessica Livingston's Founders at Work. A single point of treason.

There's a good chance that a startup you can do it in B. That's why there's a continuum here. The other cause is usually slow growth or excessive spending rather than ones they capture.

By Paleolithic standards, technology evolved at a time machine. There are still expensive to start a startup to become addictive. Instead of bubbling up from the other seed firms always find is that most three letter words are bad news; it would not change the world barely affects me. Then when we got to see if you do.

But not all are. They're common to all cultures with long traditions of living in cities. I think it's mainly not having the universities in the former, and large bribes by the normal people they're usually surrounded with.

They're still deciding, which parents would still send their kids won't listen to them about your fundraising prospects. The Socialist People's Democratic Republic of X is probably not do that.

And the reason.

As I was once trying to sell hardware without trying to capture the service revenue as well, but economically that's how we gauge their progress, but rather that if a company just to go to college, they have to decide between two alternatives, we'd ask, what if they pay so well is that it killed the best hackers want to design these, because people would treat you like a compiler, you could only get in the narrow technical sense of being harsh to founders would actually increase the spammers' cost to reach a given audience by a sense of the word intelligence is the least correlation between launch magnitude and success. Good and bad luck.

Heirs will be interesting to 10,000 sestertii, for many Americans the decisive change in how Stripe felt. I talked to a woman who had recently arrived from Russia. Many will consent to b rather than ones they capture. Good investors don't lead startups on; their reputations are too valuable.

[lubbuthedigitalnomad]

IN ONLY @1000 WORDS — Clarity, Communication, Politics, and Religious Arrogance

About the Author

Doug “Ten” Rose may be the biggest smartass as well as one of the most entertaining survivors of the hitchhiking adventurers that used to cover America’s highways. He is the author of the books Fearless Puppy on American Road and Reincarnation Through Common Sense, has survived heroin addiction and death, and is a graduate of over a hundred thousand miles of travel without ever driving a car, owning a phone, or having a bank account.

Hello from the Himalayas! 

I hope you are happy, healthy, and enjoying the winter. Things are just beginning to possibly change for the better. There are logical reasons to think that 2021 will be a better year than 2020 was and, in a few months, Spring and the new life it brings may witness some progress in the human condition. From out here, it looks like we will have to remember at least two things in order to have any chance of that progress taking hold.

1. Staying active on behalf of the lessons we’ve learned is essential. The Himalayas didn’t briefly become visible again by accident. It happened because people and their machines started pumping less crap into the atmosphere. The environment is certainly not the only issue at hand — but if that issue isn’t addressed immediately, there won’t be any other issues.

2. Many of us see life through the wool that has been pulled over our eyes, and attend to illusions and delusions more than we attend to the world we would see without them. No matter how unpleasant reality is in spots, we cannot allow ourselves to be frozen into inaction by externally manufactured and dangerously manipulative bullshit, or internally manufactured fears and frustrations.

“The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion all rolled into one.”

John Ruskin

This is an excerpt from the book Fearless Puppy On American Road

Mary and I have hitchhiked over fifty thousand miles together by now. We are not judgmental or prejudicial but have put in enough observation time and earned enough experiential education to recognize some patterns in humanity.

Three Types of Communication

When you are hitchhiking, there are three types of communication that you can have with your host. These are:- a shallow conversation, a deeper conversation, and silence. Silence speaks for itself. It can range from uncomfortable through comfortable, and on to transcendent.

The shallow conversation mode may have more of religion and politics in it. Many people seem to think that just choosing these topics to speak about qualifies the conversation as being in deep mode. I have to disagree. Regardless, politics and religion seem to be the most popular subjects in human dialogue.

The evidence of fifty thousand miles worth of listening suggests that many folks may not give these subjects as much thought as they should before they open their mouths about them. That doesn’t seem to stop many of my fellow humans from talking about these subjects for hours on end — and thinking that their personal opinions should become global mandates.

I can sum up what I’ve learned from listening to several thousand hours of conversation on these subjects in two very short chapters.

Defeating Organized Religious Distortion

The quality of attention paid by the student is more important than who the teacher is. A kind Christian is better than a harmful Buddhist. A kind Buddhist is better than a harmful Christian.

Jesus is not going to keep you dry if you piss into the wind.

(Almost) every religion is waiting for someone to come save us. Jesus is going to come back and save the Christians, Messiah is going to come to save the Jews, etc. My guess is that all this divine saving comes later. There seems to be a lot of saving that needs done by us amateurs before the professionals get here.

Some folks think that Salvation will never come. Some folks think that it’s already here. It seems more likely that Salvation has been circling the planet for a very long time but can’t find a suitable place to land! Unless each individual human on Earth starts taking on the serious tasks of saving both themselves and their fellow humans, we will disappear as a species — with or without God’s help.

There have been many examples of how very capable we are of getting the job done if we would all just get about doing it.

Ending Political Malfeasance

Some politicians may be less full of shit than others. Maybe not. Maybe some are just better at hiding it. As a rule, politicians get to be more full of shit as they climb higher up the political ladder. Some start out full of shit. Some actually start out with the altruistic intention that would be necessary to do the job correctly. After a period of time, they also succumb to the necessity of playing the game and the self-interest that has become the basis of political systems.

The self-interest of the rich and powerful in every society seems to have consistently required the compromise (or martyrdom) of that society’s authentic leaders. Couple that general coercion and threat with the more personalized temptations (money, sex, power, cars, control, etc.) offered to those who would be public servants and leaders, and the result is the sacrifice of moral priorities by those climbing up the ladder and…

Actually, all of the above is a very shortsighted observation. None of these malfunctions are the fault of individual politicians, even the most despicable ones. It is the duty as well as the right of the public to install the systems and representatives that we want to be governed by. Politicians are indeed full of shit, but the public is responsible for that. We let the situation get out of control and we are the only ones who can potentially reel it back in.

Politicians don’t rate praise or blame. We do.

Supposedly, the government is in the process of saving us from several varieties of terrorists. No one has quite figured out who is going to save us from the government, and from the power brokers that bend government to their will. It seems it will have to be us.

Part of what we built works great. Part of what we built badly needs fixing. It is delusional to think that a few politicians can fix what took several hundred million people to build — and run down.

And The Very Next Ride…

From New Orleans, we got a ride with an annoyingly loud evangelist preacher. He was driving his brand new Cadillac to Houston for a big revival meeting that would reap him “many souls and dollars to do HIS work, Amen.” The man was wearing enough money in diamond rings to feed a small nation.

After about an hour of his self-righteous attempts to convert us in the name of his Lord (who, it seemed, also had a very good credit rating, no concern for humanity, and the ability to prattle on at a pace that would scare the shit out of an auctioneer), we asked to be let off at the next exit.

“But I’m going all the way to Houston,” said our host, who it seemed had mistaken himself for The Host.

“Thank you anyway, but we won’t be going with you.”

We got out of the car and walked to the nearest town for coffee. Mary showed me what the preacher had inspired her to write during her silent hour in his luxury car’s back seat. She was so impressed by the arrogance of one of his statements that she quoted it as the title.

“I Think What God Meant to Say”

“You think you know everything, in general. This seems to interfere with you knowing anything specifically. You crisscross the country as quickly as delusions cross your mind, as quickly as mindless platitudes fly from your mouth. You maintain a facade of happiness, but it is only a vehicle for salesmanship. You strive to control the weak and gain stability through materialism. Your pace is too fast, false, and graceless for the normal human to want to learn from. Your only visible value is teaching by negative example. You are what not to do. You are who not to be.

“You are trapped in the quicksand of your own outdated bullshit. How could you be expected to re-examine preconceived notions when you run so quickly past thought in order to reach manipulation? You don’t have the time or heart to pay attention to your own conscience, much less anyone else’s needs.

“Professed internal wholeness is belied by your fragmented external judgments and condemnations. You relay pretentious truths of minimal depth with maximum coercion. I heard them all a thousand lifetimes ago!

“Business gets done. Profits, not prophets, have made you pay them a heavy price. It’s not my way.

“Go on by yourself!”

Mary was a very smart woman. She was also an exceptionally kind-hearted, patient person and rarely had a bad word to say about anyone. I think the few paragraphs above are as ill as she ever spoke of another living thing.

The books Fearless Puppy On American Road and Reincarnation Through Common Sense by this same author are also available through Amazon or the website, where there are sample chapters from those books. Very entertaining TV/radio interviews with and newspaper articles about the author are also available there. There is no charge for anything but the complete books! All author profits from book sales will be donated to help sponsor an increase in the number of wisdom professionals on Earth, beginning with but certainly not limited to Buddhist monks and nuns.

If you missed the Introduction to the new book that will be titled Temple Dog Soldier or would like to see several chapters of it that are available for free online, go to the Puppy website Blog section. This is a book in progress. You will be reading it as it is being created! Just like you, I don’t know what the next chapter is going to be about until it is written. As the Intro will tell you, this is a totally true story — and probably the only book ever written by and about a corpse journeying completely around the world!

FEARLESS PUPPY WEBSITE BLOG

FEARLESS PUPPY ON AMERICAN ROAD/AMAZON PAGE

REINCARNATION THROUGH COMMON SENSE/AMAZON PAGE

FEARLESS WEBSITE (About Author section)

[loghorizonfunfacts]

Pet peeve of mine: People saying that we won’t get a third season of the anime because of the tax evasion scandal.

Since the majority of anime viewers don’t know much about the anime’s background, they pin the blame of “no season 3″ on Mamare and the tax evasion scandal. In reality? Season 2 just barely scraped by in terms of material. If anything, NHK greenlit the second season way too fast, and the anime suffered for it.

For some background on season 1:

When Log Horizon’s anime came out, it was an under-the-radar anime that was just kinda there. Most people (at least in the west) suspected it was riding off SAO’s popularity (to be fair, the anime very well could have been). If I’m remembering correctly, Mamare himself didn’t think Log Horizon was actually getting animated until he saw ads for it (he mentions this in one of the light novel’s afterwords). He and his editor, when they first heard that Log Horizon was getting an animated adaption, both thought it was a joke. (His previous series, Maoyu, received an animated adaption, but I’m pretty sure it was a commercial failure.)

The channel Log Horizon aired on was a family-friendly, national public broadcaster (NHK E). It aired at prime-time and followed a show that was literally for kindergarteners (I looked up the show and I believe the age range was from 2-5). Most of the shows they produce are for children, nothing that would be particularly popular (and very likely, there were no plans for merchandise, given the young target demographic).

But Log Horizon exploded, relative to NHK E’s other animated productions. Sure, the number of BD/DVD copies sold was middling compared to other anime series that released at the same time, but those were from studios reputed for making anime and were making it to sell. The show wasn’t made to sell, and Log Horizon did. The OST was produced because of popular demand; beforehand, there were no plans on releasing one.

Now, I know  that animation takes a long time. I can’t say for a fact when the producers decided to greenlight season 2. I just know that many people in the west were eager for a second season and asked Mamare about it in his 4chan Q&A sessions during season 1. (Of course, for professional reasons, Mamare couldn’t say whether there would be one until there was an official announcement.) However, I’m fairly sure that in most cases where an anime will get a second season almost immediately after the first, we’re aware of the fact fairly soon after, or even before, the first season starts airing. But for Log Horizon, we didn’t know any such thing.

Then, in the final episode of season 1, after the ending theme, we got a notice that Season 2 would be coming in the Fall of the same year. Even more curiously, though we didn’t know it at the time, the animation studio had also switched from Satelight to Studio DEEN. Usually, the same animation studio will continue producing the series, unless it’s a reboot or a new adaption (like in the case of Yozakura Quartet, which aired the same season LH season 1 did). I suspect the switch to DEEN was because DEEN had ties to the gaming platform GREE, and soon after season 2 aired, a mobile game developed by GREE was announced. (It’s still going to this day, and spread to Mobage and some other Japanese mobile gaming sites.)

As for season 2′s announcement, yes, there was a lot of hype. And from some, a fair amount of concern. Season 1 had roughly followed “an episode per chapter” format, covering the first five books of the light novel series.

At the time season 1 ended, there was a total of seven books out. Soon after the first season ended, Mamare started publishing his eighth book online. Not even the official physical copy. So you can see where the concerns were coming from. People were wondering if Mamare could write enough content for a second season in time for 25 episodes.

Then we got an official episode count of 25 episodes, plus the information that Studio DEEN was animating, which led to a fair amount of concern because, well, DEEN. If you’ve seen enough of their productions, you’ll probably know what I mean. When we saw Kanami get featured in the promotional video, some of our concerns were alleviated, as Mamare had written the Kanami-centric side-story Dragonhowl Mountains after volumes 1-5. It was just a matter of when it would air relative to the other volumes.

Dragonhowl Mountains, as it turned out soon after Season 2 began airing, had been converted to volume 9 of the novels. And so concerns began mounting as to whether Mamare could finish writing volume 10 before the anime finished. The answer was no. He released the first chapter of volume 10′s web novel after Episode 16, and was a little past halfway through the volume when season 2 wrapped up. In an interview before volume 10 was officially published the September of that year (2015), Mamare admitted that scraping together what he wanted to do for volume 10 to tell the producers and storywriters was an extremely rushed. To quote from the translation I did of the interview:

Question: Congratulations on the release of Log Horizon 10. Let's jump straight to the questions. How did you feel when you were overtaken by the anime while writing volume 10?

Mamare: It was all according to keikaku (nervously) (TL: He didn't actually say that, but that's the gist). Actually, that's a lie; it was really rushed. I felt like I was going to die during the weekly anime meetings where I had to give them the plot and materials. 

What does this all mean for a season 3?

Long story short, even if we didn’t have a tax scandal, it would probably be a long time before season 3 happened. Currently, he’s written three complete volumes since volume 10 was published, but they are all in web novel format and none have been published officially. He’s been on hiatus from volume 14 since the end of August and hasn’t reached halfway in the volume.

While these may seem like worryingly slow updates, it should be noted that volume 6′s web novel alone took him nearly two years to write (or at least, upload online). I’ll admit that the scandal probably hasn’t helped publication any, but it’s not the first time Log Horizon has had a writing rut. The western side of the fandom just found out about the series after it was already over.

Without any content, there’s really no way for a third season to be produced. Even if volume 15 was finished by now (which is supposedly how long the series is going to be, though that may have changed after incorporating Kanami’s story into the main story), he didn’t have any of that content when the anime ended. We still would’ve had to wait--the animation teams, voice actors, and all the staff probably booked other series to work on without an immediate Log Horizon follow-up.

[tam-nya]

NINJAGOOOOO? :^000

Under cut because it’s quite long (I wrote way too many quotes haha)

Top 5 favourite characters: Zane, Nya, Jay, Cole, MorroOther characters you like: Acronix, Cyrus Borg, Kai, Lloyd, Dareth, Skylor, Misako, Lil Nelson, Ed & Edna, Neuro.Least favourite characters: Eh I guess I don’t care about most of the skeleton and snake villains from the pilots to season 2. Skales is good though.Otps: JAY X NYA GIVES ME LIFE! I also love Kai x Skylor, Ed x Edna, and Misako x Garmadon. And Ray and Maya seem cute together.Notps: Let’s see... Morro x Lloyd, Lloyd x Kai, Lloyd x Garmadon, and Cole x Zane are the worst to me.Favourite friendships: I love the friendships among all the ninja, especially Lloyd + Kai, Cole + Jay, and Nya + Zane!Favourite family: Jay’s! Jay is a fantastic character, his adoptive parents are lots of fun, his discovery of his biological father is cool and his biological mom is beautiful.Favourite episodes: Home, Tick Tock, the Royal Blacksmiths, The Surge, The Titanium Ninja, Only One Can Remain, and The Temple on Haunted Hill.Favourite season/book/movie: Well I really love S3 the most! But S4, S5, and S6 are close in awesomeness too.Favourite quotes: Let’s see... Sorry if some are slightly off,  I might not remember completely correctly.

“There comes a time when every boy must become a man. What kind of man is up to him.” - Garmadon“We must all grow up someday. When that time comes, we must remember the lessons of our childhood, because our childhood is the greatest training of all.” - Wu (I think?)“We honour our ancestors, because if we do not look to the past, we cannot envision the future. On the Day of the Departed, we remember those who are no longer with us, and spend time with those we are still fortunate to have.” - Wu“You are like the sunrise. We cannot begin the day without you.” - Zane“Even in the darkness, we have the choice to reflect the light.” - Zane“I used to think technology would be the answer to all our problems. But then I saw it create new problems. Devastating problems. And then, a Nindroid named Zane saved us all. He was the perfect balance between us and technology. He taught us that life should be a balance, and if we focus on one at the expense of the other, that’s when the balance is off. Technology can improve our lives, but so can people.” - Cyrus Borg“You know, I think the real reason sailors name ships after women is because we name them after the most important people in our lives; mothers, wives, sisters. The people we can count on to be by our side when things get rough.” - Cole“I don’t feel anything anymore.” - Cole“It’s like I don’t exist anymore.” - Cole“Everyone wondered what powered Zane. I’d like to think it was brotherhood, because he powered me. And he’ll still power me as his memory lives on.” - Kai“I have no friends.” - Jay“Haven’t I suffered enough?” - Jay“Well, I’m HOOPED! And I haven’t brushed my teeth in a week!” - Jay“We’ll see who laughs when I have to go commando!” - Jay“Care for a mucus salt sandwich?” - Jay“Are you seeing what I’m seeing? Of course not, because all I see is my life flashing before me!” - Jay“You should never swear. It’s a sign of weak verbal skills.” - Jay“The only thing decided about you, Zane, is that you’re weird.” - Jay“I���m a tall glass of water!” - Nya“Now, I need to go before the perfume toxins enter my bloodstream and I go into shock.” - Nya“If you’ll excuse me, I need to go write a song about my feelings.” - Lou“I hate waiting... it’s beneath me!” - Morro“You can only save those who want to be saved. Goodbye, Sensei.” - Morro“Eh, kids. That’s why I never had any. Not because Gayle keeps rejecting my marriage proposals even though I’d make an excellent provider.” - Dareth

Best musical moment: ZANE’S FUNNY SWITCH DANCEMoment that made you fangirl/boy the hardest: The entire show. But I guess I love the Royal Blacksmiths scene with the ninjas dancing and then snuggling at the end.When it really disappointed you: I guess Zane’s drastic change in personality after his sacrifice disappoints me but ah well.Saddest moment: Zane’s death and funeral, Garmadon’s death, Garmadon’s SECOND death (when Lloyd meets his dad in the Cursed Realm but it has to be destroyed minutes later) Morro’s death, Nya’s death, and the Day of the Departed Scene where they’re remembering their lost loved ones and when Cole is fading from existence. Jay’s endless suffering in Skybound is pretty sad too.Most well done character death: ZANE’S! IT FRIKKIN RIPS YOUR HEART OUT.Favourite guest star: n/a?Favourite cast member: Brent Miller, he’s so sweet to his fans and makes wonderful videosCharacter you wish was still alive: I think it’d be interesting if Morro was still alive.One thing you hope really happens: Just more hella emotional scenes and more Jay x Nya moments is all I need!Most shocking twist: Cole turning into a ghost was really shocking to me.When did you start watching/reading?: I started lowkey watching 2-3 years ago maybe but I only became hella involved a few months ago.Best animal/creature: The lego people!Favourite location: Borg Industries is really cool.Trope you wish they would stop using: *shrugs* I guess villains being related to snakes in some form is getting overused (S3, S5, and S6 were different though) but I actually like how they’re used in Hands of Time, so it’s okay.One thing this show/book/film does better than others: Uhh it deals with heavy themes better than other kids cartoons and it has amazing CGI animation in my opinion. And I think the characters and humor are great too.Funniest moments: ...Where do I begin... I already listed some funny quotes before. Admittedly I find the S4 scene where a fortune cookie explodes in Cole’s stomach really funny. And Jay screaming/overreacting is often funny. I also like a lot of humor involving Zane’s weirdness, like when he was sitting in the fridge.Couple you would like to see: I wanna see Kai x Skylor again and see it develop more.Actor/Actress you want to join the cast: Ehh don’t really care.Favourite outfit: The ninjas’ teacher outfits in The Surge are so cuteFavourite item: Does Zane’s falcon count as an item?Do you own anything related to this show/book/film?: Yes... lots of lego sets, some books, all the DVDs, stationery... but my favorite thing is my lil Cole ledlight keychain!What house/team/group/friendship group/family/race etc would you be in?: I don’t think I’d be one of the ninja, but I’d still love to be friends with them.Most boring plotline: The pilots!Most laughably bad moment: Ehhh I guess some of the humor involving the skeleton and snake villains but it’s funny to my little brother, so at least it appeals to the target audience.Best flashback/flashfoward if any: Zane’s flashbacks about his creator raising him and then dying after erasing Zane’s memory. And Wu’s flashbacks about Morro’s descent into darkness.Most layered character: I think Nya.Most one dimensional character: The Overlord because he’s literally just an embodiment of evil :PScariest moment: The Overlord’s dragon form at the end of S2 was rather creepy. And Morro can be terrifying, especially when he possesses Lloyd.Grossest moment: I guess that would be Jay talking about mucus sandwiches and making Cole vomit but I find that hilarious because I’m weird.Best looking male: Honestly I think Jay is the cutest but they’re all extremely cute.Best looking female: NYA IS SO CUTE AND BEAUTIFUL AND PRETTYWho you’re crushing on (if any): Well, none really now but it was Zane before.Favourite cast moment: Brent Miller interviewing any of the other staff.Favourite transportation: I think the Bounty is cool.Most beautiful scene (scenery/shot wise): The Cloud Kingdom scenes are pretty, scenes with water are pretty, and the scene at the end of Day of the Departed where the lanterns are going into the night sky is pretty.Unanswered question/continuity issue/plot error that bugs you:Best promo: I like the S3 trailer but I guess I’m biased haha... the music is cool though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIuGSfSKZPEHonestly though the trailers for seasons 3 to 6 are all cool!At what point did you fall in love with this show/book:When I saw the scene with Zane in the apron and everyone laughing at him while he was just confused. :P

[michaelpatricksmith]

2020 So Far

At the end of 2019 I was getting plenty of overtime at the furniture factory. Whenever I get overtime I tend to be more carefree and my stress level goes down. Like all things in my life it never lasts. 2020 came in like a lamb. Our department slowed down to a crawl and there was little work to share. Things in this factory were always ‘every man for themselves’, and when the work slowed down it became even more so. Somewhere around the middle of January my supervisor told me that there is no work and they need to do cross-training in other positions. I thought great! I was told it would just be for a week or two. I am a sewer by trade and was keen on the idea of getting up off my butt and doing something different. I was sent to the packing department. The folks over there were great and I learned a lot. My job was basically to inspect products coming off the line and call out any defects and do my best to remedy any if needed before it made its way over to the shipping department to get shrink wrapped, boxed, and banded. I liked it! I learned quickly and was doing something different and enjoyed interacting with the other folks in that department. A few weeks went by and I had thought the sewing department was going to call me back. The department just didn’t have enough work to keep all of us busy so I was stuck in packing longer than I expected. Normally I would quit and find another job, but this was in the middle of winter and if you are a factory worker in Michigan you know winter is not a good time to find a job. So I stuck it out and was getting 8 to 10 hours overtime every week. This was a blessing and kept me employed doing something outside my usual work. Long story short; I ended up in the packing department for about two months. Not what I expected but at least I was working. When my department called me back I noticed there wasn’t very much work. One of the folks was gone on leave so it made room for me and I was happy to be back even though the work load was sparse. Then COVID-19 hit.

At the tail end of March a pandemic was coming on. At first no one really paid much attention to the virus. During the winter I noticed plenty of co-workers that were very sick but still came in to work. The very first person I noticed was sick was a co-worker from Hong Kong that was sewing behind me. All’s I could hear were the tell tale sings of coughing, sneezing, nose blowing, and so on. It dragged on for three weeks and I finally mentioned to my supervisor that I think so and so is sick. My supervisor replied ‘ya think’. I did get sick this past winter, but I think the flu-shot I received helped me move through it quickly. Incidentally, that flu-shot I received was the first time I ever felt sick from one. The day after the shot I was sick but without any chest discomfort and runny nose. It only lasted a day and was very weird. Sick but no symptoms! I just felt achy inside. I think it was March 24th our governor signed an executive order to stay home. Wow! I never thought a governor could do such a thing but here it was and all of us but essential workers were furloughed. Being furloughed is great because it means less hassle with the unemployment agency when receiving insurance benefits. You’re basically a shoe-in and as long as you filled everything out correctly there should be no problems. So for six weeks I collected the usual amount for my income bracket and a $600 boost from our federal government. My very first unemployment direct deposit came the same time my federal stimulus check showed up. The whole deposit was around $3,000. All good! During my six weeks off I was able to get all of the projects done that I have been wanting to do. It was great! Painting, patching the walls, spring cleaning, and much more! Eventually my employer called me back after the governor lifted the stay-at-home order for factories in Michigan. I got back to work and there just wasn’t much to do. I was happy to be back but I could tell we didn’t have enough work to keep us busy for the days and weeks to come. While I was off on furlough I did meet the requirements of the unemployment agency and did apply for work at other places. About two weeks after I was called back I got another call from a company that makes mattresses and they were interested in me and wanted me come in and take a look at their operation. They needed an experienced sewer and was willing to pay me the money I requested. So I put my two week notice in with my current employer and after my last day on a Friday I went to work for the mattress company the following Monday. Around this same time my girlfriend and I broke up. This was very hard on me. We’ll get back to that episode later on in my story.

The mattress company was in the downtown area of the city and was located in a scary part of town. Lots of murder and crime there. I don’t scare off easily so I just kept my pepper spray close. The building was old and dusty. It had hardly any windows. The time clock was at least 30+ years old. I know this because I’ve been around so long. The very first day on the job a man approaches me while I was sewing and said we are taking bets in the back that you won’t last till Friday. He told me he bet a dollar. I said nothing to him and thought he’s just another strange fuck I’ve meet along the way. That week went by and in the following week he came up to me and did the same thing. Told me of a bet going on about me. This time I asked him ‘who won?’. He didn’t answer and walked away. This strange person stopped saying that to me and I figured we all moved on. I think he was upset that he lost a dollar. After about six weeks I was sewing away when I noticed my machine wasn’t sewing properly. So I stopped to have a look-see at what was going on. I opened the main cover and couldn’t see anything so I grabbed the air hose and blew out all the fuzzies. After that I noticed one of the thread loopers was snapped off on the end. From experience I knew the machine wasn’t going to be easily fixed so I went over and let my supervisor know that something is wrong. She then came over and told me that she will call the maintenance guy over and I am to go over to another machine and sew other parts of a mattress. So I started sewing on another machine and within five minutes I hear the maintenance guy tell me to come over to the machine he was working on with the broken looper. He then asks me if I ‘hand cranked’ the machine. He tells me that is what broke the machine. I told him that I ‘don’t have time for this’ and that he needs to just fix the machine. I then walked back to the machine I was working on and within a minute I hear ‘you’re a fucking dead man!’. He starts shouting this at me several times and that ‘he is going to kill me’ after work. I stood up and told everyone in the department they are witness that this man is threatening me with violence and threatening to kill me. My supervisor dragged me into the break room and poured me a cup of coffee to calm down. Eventually the plant manager came in and we talked about what happened and offered me an escort to my car after work which was coming up soon. The escort never came and I was very nervous leaving the building at punch out time. I was able to get to my car without a hitch and went to the police station to file a police report. The following Monday I went in to a closed door meeting with the manager. I told him what happened and let him know that I don’t feel safe here and because they employ a mentally ill person like that I cannot work here anymore. I left that meeting and asked them to send my last check in the mail. I didn’t get to see my supervisor on that visit so I texted her to say goodbye. She texted me back and I quote “I will remember you always Mike, you are a real gentlemen. Thank you ☺️” end quote. After that I never looked back. I did file an unemployment claim and even sent the police report to the agency. I saw nothing from them. Nada! Eventually I went to a job fair at a company who is clean and puts a lot into everything. An engaged HR and all the bells and whistles. They hired me on the spot after the interview. All good there. Now back to the break-up with my girlfriend.

After the first week of our break up everything was so peaceful. I loved the quiet time. No arguing, fighting, and all the crap involved. It was great! After the second week I noticed that in the evenings after work I started thinking about her. My stomach was having funny feelings. I found myself thinking about her more and more. After the third week I was looking at all the pictures of the great times Norma and I had together. My mind was flooded with her and I vacationing together and going on camping trips and all of our time together. She really was my best friend. The pictures, the thoughts, good times, and all the affection we shared were starting to get to me. I noticed I was starting to shed tears thinking about her. I never do this! I missed her! It was becoming obvious that I still love her. She can be a whipper snapper but I knew I was still in love with her. We did everything together. She was always up to do the things I like. Hiking with me everywhere was one of our most best pastimes. Even today no other women has ever liked to do all the things that I like. She truly is one of a kind. I started to realize this. Even so I need to have sex! I have never been one to go very long without the companionship of the ladies. Say what you want, but there are women out there that feel the same as I. By this time I figured the only way to get my ex-girlfriend out of my head is to entertain a foxy women. Nothing serious! Just once around the goal posts and sprint on the whistle should the occasion arise. (😁 Where have we heard that before?) You know it baby! One evening I had a lady over to my house who wanted to see my artwork. She saw my painting I did for ArtPrize. The ArtPrize that was cancelled do to COVID-19, 😠. She asked if she could see it along with some of my other sketches I have posted on my Facebook page. I said sure and I invited her over for dinner and a chat about my painting. She arrived and I had dinner ready. She walked around my home and looked at my painting and all my personal work on my walls. We were getting along and things seemed fine. I noticed she was giving me those tell tale starry eyes. About 8pm while we were on the couch chatting about art and my work, all the sudden I hear a knock. It was slight at first and then become louder. I asked my guest to excuse me and that I need to see who would be knocking at this hour. I opened the door and it was my ex-girlfriend. Her eyes were big and she was amped up. Basically she walked right by me and wanted to know who this person is in my house. I told her and then introduced the two. By this time my ex-girlfriend and I were broke up for about four weeks. I didn’t think I’d ever see her again. Well, long story short my ex-girlfriend starts yelling at my guest. The two exchanged a lot of words I won’t mention here. I did my best to calm the two down and eventually got my ex out the door and she was going to leave. At that time I told her I love her! I miss her very much and that I am going to tell my guest that it is time for her to go. My ex-girlfriend was so shiny. She was radiating with some kind of strange golden light around her. I haven’t seen her in a while and seeing her made me fall in love with her all over again. My blood was rushing in my veins and I knew I needed her back in my life. By the next day we were back together. Our relationship has been rocky, but so has 2020 so far. We are still together and I love her so much I am thinking seriously about our future.

What will the rest of 2020 hold for me? God only knows. I have taken some time for myself to gain some perspective on this wild-ass strange year. I have funerals to attend and as somber as those things are they really do help me to think of how fragile life is. I love everyone from my past, good or bad, and cannot be mean to others. The older I get the more I feel the warmth of the sun in my life. I’m not afraid of tomorrow. I am not afraid of others opinions of me. My life just keeps rolling on with all these wonderful memories.

Michael Patrick Smith

August 13th 2020

Grand Rapids, Michigan

[seoexpert332]

Five Reasons Why You Must PR Your Little Business

Mainly persons understand that Community relations may help their company. You have almost certainly heard the term "there is no such thing as poor coverage", and (correctly) thought that engaging in the press is generally good. But just how precisely can the media aid you and your business? In this short article I'm going to take a look at various ways the press may benefit you.

There is and in addition such a thing as poor coverage, so I'll also discuss the only real situation when it's sensible to keep a low profile...

Mot Test Reading

Purpose 1: The media will increase the page of your business

This is possibly the most apparent benefit of PR work. Any moment your organisation gets insurance in the press, you feel a feeling better identified in your community or market place, and a little prone to gain around new business. One note in the magazine isn't going to enable you to retire to the Bahamas and perform tennis each and every day, but it means some one anywhere may be exposed to your brand and the message you intend to get across.

Say for example you work a garage. In December you choose to have an open time to tell the general public (without cost) how to prepare their cars for winter months climate, so you phone up the neighborhood press and they feature it because week's edition. Possible clients read the content and think'that's good of them, they appear to become a genuine, trusted company '.

Reasonably, you most likely aren't about to truly have the whole city queuing outside on Monday day anxious for you to support their engines - PR performs in a somewhat more delicate way than this.

Sure, a consumer may guide their vehicle because time because they basically eventually need an MOT and desire a storage they have the ability to trust, but significantly more likely they'll remember your business. Then when your potential PR stop makes the newspapers, they could be capable to guide their truck in. Or enough time following that. High quality PR isn't a one off event, it's a series of slow steps that steadily help make your organisation more attractive to prospective clients.

People visit businesses they know. To carry on the garage example, Kwik Fit is not the least expensive destination in the UK to have an MOT done. You are able to possibly find a garage close to you that could do only of the same quality a job at less price. But many individuals travel to Kwik Fit everyday since they are a strong persons can rely upon a niche where everybody else is definitely concerned about getting scammed.

Increasing the account of the business enterprise will not just be noticed by your clients either. Different company companies in your segment may recognize your enterprise is expanding, which could lead to relationship and combined venture opportunities.

The advantages of a solid model will not just have an external effect on your company either. Positive press insurance may allow you to obtain and retain great personnel. Everyone needs well known, respectable businesses on the Resume. By finding coverage in the press, you'll be helping your HR office out, and possibly keeping thousands in recruiting costs.

Purpose 2: PR could save thousands in promotion expenses

An offer in a national newspaper would be much too costly for many company owners to even consider, yet with public relations you may get your organization in the report completely free. Plus when you're mentioned in articles, your meaning comes across just as much more respected than an advert.

Put it in this manner, in the event that you saw an assessment in The Day-to-day Telegraph letting you know a movie was the most effective bit of cinema because Person Kane, and an advertising letting you know the same, what can have significantly more of an effect?

Purpose 3: The press returns you professionally

It's not only your organisation that'll be enhanced by finding protection in the press, an elevated media page will benefit you privately if you're the average person being interviewed or quoted.

As you feel identified in your market industry, a number of opportunities may start themselves around you. You may obtain work presents from bigger organisations which have observed the work you have been doing in the industry. You may be provided consultancy function, that could be very rewarding. You could also be provided public speaking options, which give you yet another chance to improve your individual and business brands.

These prospects all base from the power you get by being viewed as a specialist in your discipline - and recognize I said being regarded as an expert. You do not have to be the absolute most prepared individual in your segment to be considered as an power, you only have to function as the'specialist'most people are many aware of. Coverage may make you more admired in your industry position than a opponent or co-worker with decades more experience.