#been able to get it in the us! (because i refuse to use amazon)

[coquelicoq]

year...2!

i continued my tradition of daily oral french reading this past year and here's what i read:

Voyage au centre de la terre, Jules Verne

La cantatrice chauve/La leçon, Eugène Ionesco

L'enfant de sable, Tahar Ben Jelloun

Le petit prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Gigi, Colette

Vingt mille lieues sous les mers, Jules Verne

Ranma 1/2, vol. 1, Takahashi Rumiko, translated from the Japanese by Fédoua Lamodière

Poèmes, Guillaume Apollinaire

Le fantôme de l'Opéra, Gaston Leroux

Le Robert de poche (1995), ed. Pierre Varrod, Danièle Morvan, et al.

Les oubliés du dimanche, Valérie Perrin

Par amour, Valérie Tong Cuong

Cyrano de Bergerac, Edmond Rostand

Le père Goriot, Honoré de Balzac

Zazie dans le Métro, Raymond Queneau

En attendant Godot, Samuel Beckett

Boule de suif/Mademoiselle Fifi, Guy de Maupassant

Onze Contes: An Introduction to Reading French, Olin Moore & Walter Meiden

La mare au diable, George Sand

in this time period i read a total of 59 books, which is a ratio of about 1:2 french to english (about a third of the books i read were in french and the other 2/3 were in english). which i guess makes sense, because although i don't actually have a habit of daily english reading, of course i can read much faster in english (both because i'm fluent and because i'm not reading out loud).

as you can see, i read more books in french than the year before, but mostly because some of the books that first year were real doorstoppers. i think i've actually chilled out in terms of pages/day; at first i was reading ~20 pages a day but that was cray cray so i'm usually clocking in closer to 10 nowadays.

reading a greater number of books allowed me to diversify my selection, so now in addition to novels and short stories, i've got some plays, poetry, a dictionary, and a textbook of sorts. i also read a volume of manga translated into french. and i should note that i always read the front and back matter, so for any of the classics, there's generally a preface and/or introduction, various commentary by academics, bibliographies, etc.

the only books i had read previously in any capacity were le petit prince (in french) and en attendant godot (in english). i'd also read a few of apollinaire's poems in school and had, you know, consulted the dictionary for specific words from time to time. lol.

this is slightly over half from the 20th century (10 books if i'm remembering correctly), followed by 6 books from the 19th century and three books from THIS century that we are in currently! watch out world!! ranma 1/2 was chock full of slang vocab, which was great (zazie dans le métro also was, but it was older slang and glorb knows my lexicon is old-fashioned enough as it is).

by far my favorite book i read in the past twelve months was the dictionary, which took about 11 months total at a rate of 2 or 3 pages a day. it was also the biggest challenge, because it required a lot of concentration and there was no narrative to draw me along (unless you count related words being near each other, which is indeed very fun). but i did still get a sense of wanting to know what would "happen" next! it was a fascinating experience on so many levels and i think helped me hone my pronunciation (the original reason i started this project of reading aloud in french!) in a way that reading novels wasn't doing as much, both because there are pronunciation notes and because the dictionary forces you to focus on one word at a time, whereas in a narrative you are generally more focused on the sentence as the important unit and can miss some intricacies that way. i feel like i already loved words and the sounds of words and the relationships between words, but reading the dictionary just increased my attention to them exponentially. it's been really fun thinking about words even more than i was previously.

i read les oubliés du dimanche after reading and loving another of valérie perrin's books the year before. it has one of the best, most natural and understated endings of any book i've read and i greatly enjoyed the reading experience. i will definitely read the third book of hers that i have (coincidentally entitled "trois") in the coming year.

the biggest surprise was guy de maupassant - for some reason i wasn't expecting to love his stories as much as i did. i just randomly picked up this book because it was the only french-language book at a thrift store, and i ended up having a blast with it! i've got his novel bel-ami and will read that at some point in the future.

there are several authors i read and now feel like i don't need to read anything else by them, not because i hated their book but because i feel like i've got a handle on their whole deal now and don't really feel the need to pursue it: gaston leroux, honoré de balzac, and george sand. which is maybe unfair of me, but life is short lol. jules verne also falls into this category except i actually read three of his books so i feel like that assessment is more based in evidence. i had been thinking i had reached colette saturation, but then one of the onze contes in onze contes was by her and it fucking rocked, so. rethinking that currently. (if you can read l'autre femme and not immediately dump your boyfriend, wow. kudos to you. the only thing stopping me was i didn't have a boyfriend to dump at the time.)

a few of these were only on my radar because people had recced them to me after last year's post (thank you!!). the people who told me to read la cantatrice chauve and zazie dans le métro were totally on the money because i did indeed love the way they played with language. tahar ben jalloun's style and story structure in l'enfant de sable was super interesting and i'd love to read more by him. please feel free to keep the recs coming - i definitely need to supplement my acquisition strategy of "extremely famous books everyone has heard of" plus "whatever random books happen to be in the french section of the bookstore that i pass on the way to the cash register and really shouldn't be looking at because i have enough books already but i can't help myself".

this year i'm looking to read another reference book or two - possibly another textbook and/or a thesaurus, both of which i already own. to continue my exploration of the mechanics of translation (currently in its baby stages), i'd like to read either something translated into french from an english original that i'm already very familiar with, or something in french but side by side with an english translation. i'm already kind of doing the latter with les fleurs du mal, my current book, because i happen to have an english edition as well, but so far i've only been doing it sporadically. and translated poetry is a whole different beast, so i'd like to do it with fiction specifically.

i'll probably read les trois mousquetaires next, because i am REALLY curious to know if dumas's syntax is actually as tortured as it felt or if that was the result of the 12 years' worth of dust my french had accumulated. probably both. i'll report back. i'm excited to read a couple books i've picked up by senegalese authors who i haven't read before (mariama bâ and mohamed mbougar sarr). i'll probably delay proust and villon for another year, but you never know. it's crazy how many books exist in the world...stay safe out there kids.

last week marked a full year since i started a daily habit of reading french fiction to myself out loud, so i took a picture of the books i finished in the last twelve months to commemorate the occasion!

as you can see, there are nine books total but two of the books (count of monte-cristo and les mis) take up fully half the volume, which makes sense because the first six of the twelve months were devoted to just those two behemoths. full list:

Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, Tomes I et II, Alexandre Dumas père

Les Misérables, Tomes I et II, Victor Hugo

La fin de Chéri, Colette

Le Tour du monde en 80 jours, Jules Verne

Exercices de style, Raymond Queneau (this one i read in both paperback and audiobook; the audiobook is stacked on top)

Changer l'eau des fleurs, Valérie Perrin

Claudine à l'école, Colette et Willy

Candide ou l'Optimisme, Voltaire

Le mur, Jean-Paul Sartre

la fin de chéri was both the shortest book and the hardest to read! there was a lot of vocab i wasn't familiar with, and the syntax was a real challenge. colette LOVES her a comma. like, she uses commas to do so many different things i can never really tell what any given comma is supposed to be doing. she might as well just not use punctuation at all. also, i only discovered this like five months after the fact, but it's apparently a sequel?? i was super confused by a bunch of stuff that seemed pretty unexplained and it turns out there was a reason for that lol (the reason being the explanations were in a totally different book). i also just, like, didn't really like the story 😩 rip me!

cmc and les mis were both books i had read previously in english but never in french. exercices du style and probably about half of le mur i had read for college french (if you look closely you can see the spines of those two are a more faded color because i've had them for 15 years lol). the rest were brand new to me. changer l'eau des fleurs was the only book published in the current century. so much great vocab in that one...i really gotta read more stuff from the last few years. also it made me cry big time.

i think i'm gonna keep up this daily habit, but i'd like to expand to poetry and possibly? even non-fiction?? at some point?? francophones feel free to rec me stuff! i'm trying to work my way through some of the really classic french canon, so next up i'm thinking maybe le fantôme de l'opéra, cyrano de bergerac, and at least the first volume of à la recherche du temps perdu? i also want to read more recent stuff, so i've been looking at winners of readers' choice prizes and whatnot, but suggestions from actual individuals would be grand. i think some scifi could be cool maybe, but i don't know anything about french-language scifi and have no idea where to start...

non-french francophone authors would also be really great if you have any suggestions!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Amazon’s financial shell game let it create an “impossible” monopoly

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then San Francisco (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

For the pro-monopoly crowd that absolutely dominated antitrust law from the Carter administration until 2020, Amazon presents a genuinely puzzling paradox: the company's monopoly power was never supposed to emerge, and if it did, it should have crumbled immediately.

Pro-monopoly economists embody Ely Devons's famous aphorism that "If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, ‘What would I do if I were a horse?’":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/27/economism/#what-would-i-do-if-i-were-a-horse

Rather than using the way the world actually works as their starting point for how to think about it, they build elaborate models out of abstract principles like "rational actors." The resulting mathematical models are so abstractly elegant that it's easy to forget that they're just imaginative exercises, disconnected from reality:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/03/all-models-are-wrong/#some-are-useful

These models predicted that it would be impossible for Amazon to attain monopoly power. Even if they became a monopoly – in the sense of dominating sales of various kinds of goods – the company still wouldn't get monopoly power.

For example, if Amazon tried to take over a category by selling goods below cost ("predatory pricing"), then rivals could just wait until the company got tired of losing money and put prices back up, and then those rivals could go back to competing. And if Amazon tried to keep the loss-leader going indefinitely by "cross-subsidizing" the losses with high-margin profits from some other part of its business, rivals could sell those high margin goods at a lower margin, which would lure away Amazon customers and cut the supply lines for the price war it was fighting with its discounted products.

That's what the model predicted, but it's not what happened in the real world. In the real world, Amazon was able use its access to the capital markets to embark on scorched-earth predatory pricing campaigns. When diapers.com refused to sell out to Amazon, the company casually committed $100m to selling diapers below cost. Diapers.com went bust, Amazon bought it for pennies on the dollar and shut it down:

https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/13/18563379/amazon-predatory-pricing-antitrust-law

Investors got the message: don't compete with Amazon. They can remain predatory longer than you can remain solvent.

Now, not everyone shared the antitrust establishment's confidence that Amazon couldn't create a durable monopoly with market power. In 2017, Lina Khan – then a third year law student – published "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox," a landmark paper arguing that Amazon had all the tools it needed to amass monopoly power:

https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox

Today, Khan is chair of the FTC, and has brought a case against Amazon that builds on some of the theories from that paper. One outcome of that suit is an unprecedented look at Amazon's internal operations. But, as the Institute for Local Self-Reliance's Stacy Mitchell describes in a piece for The Atlantic, key pieces of information have been totally redacted in the court exhibits:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/amazon-profits-antitrust-ftc/677580/

The most important missing datum: how much money Amazon makes from each of its lines of business. Amazon's own story is that it basically breaks even on its retail operation, and keeps the whole business afloat with profits from its AWS cloud computing division. This is an important narrative, because if it's true, then Amazon can't be forcing up retail prices, which is the crux of the FTC's case against the company.

Here's what we know for sure about Amazon's retail business. First: merchants can't live without Amazon. The majority of US households have Prime, and 90% of Prime households start their ecommerce searches on Amazon; if they find what they're looking for, they buy it and stop. Thus, merchants who don't sell on Amazon just don't sell. This is called "monopsony power" and it's a lot easier to maintain than monopoly power. For most manufacturers, a 10% overnight drop in sales is a catastrophe, so a retailer that commands even a 10% market-share can extract huge concessions from its suppliers. Amazon's share of most categories of goods is a lot higher than 10%!

What kind of monopsony power does Amazon wield? Well, for one thing, it is able to levy a huge tax on its sellers. Add up all the junk-fees Amazon charges its platform sellers and it comes out to 45-51%:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

Competitive businesses just don't have 45% margins! No one can afford to kick that much back to Amazon. What is a merchant to do? Sell on Amazon and you lose money on every sale. Don't sell on Amazon and you don't get any business.

The only answer: raise prices on Amazon. After all, Prime customers – the majority of Amazon's retail business – don't shop for competitive prices. If Amazon wants a 45% vig, you can raise your Amazon prices by a third and just about break even.

But Amazon is wise to that: they have a "most favored nation" rule that punishes suppliers who sell goods more cheaply in rival stores, or even on their own site. The punishments vary, from banishing your products to page ten million of search-results to simply kicking you off the platform. With publishers, Amazon reserves the right to lower the prices they set when listing their books, to match the lowest price on the web, and paying publishers less for each sale.

That means that suppliers who sell on Amazon (which is anyone who wants to stay in business) have to dramatically hike their prices on Amazon, and when they do, they also have to hike their prices everywhere else (no wonder Prime customers don't bother to search elsewhere for a better deal!).

Now, Amazon says this is all wrong. That 45-51% vig they claim from business customers is barely enough to break even. The company's profits – they insist – come from selling AWS cloud service. The retail operation is just a public service they provide to us with cross-subsidy from those fat AWS margins.

This is a hell of a claim. Last year, Amazon raked in $130 billion in seller fees. In other words: they booked more revenue from junk fees than Bank of America made through its whole operation. Amazon's junk fees add up to more than all of Meta's revenues:

https://s2.q4cdn.com/299287126/files/doc_financials/2023/q4/AMZN-Q4-2023-Earnings-Release.pdf

Amazon claims that none of this is profit – it's just covering their operating expenses. According to Amazon, its non-AWS units combined have a one percent profit margin.

Now, this is an eye-popping claim indeed. Amazon is a public company, which means that it has to make thorough quarterly and annual financial disclosures breaking down its profit and loss. You'd think that somewhere in those disclosures, we'd find some details.

You'd think so, but you'd be wrong. Amazon's disclosures do not break out profits and losses by segment. SEC rules actually require the company to make these per-segment disclosures:

https://scholarship.law.stjohns.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3524&context=lawreview#:~:text=If%20a%20company%20has%20more,income%20taxes%20and%20extraordinary%20items.

That rule was enacted in 1966, out of concern that companies could use cross-subsidies to fund predatory pricing and other anticompetitive practices. But over the years, the SEC just…stopped enforcing the rule. Companies have "near total managerial discretion" to lump business units together and group their profits and losses in bloated, undifferentiated balance-sheet items:

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/publications/2021/dec/crouching-tiger-hidden-dragons

As Mitchell points you, it's not just Amazon that flouts this rule. We don't know how much money Google makes on Youtube, or how much Apple makes from the App Store (Apple told a federal judge that this number doesn't exist). Warren Buffett – with significant interest in hundreds of companies across dozens of markets – only breaks out seven segments of profit-and-loss for Berkshire Hathaway.

Recall that there is one category of data from the FTC's antitrust case against Amazon that has been completely redacted. One guess which category that is! Yup, the profit-and-loss for its retail operation and other lines of business.

These redactions are the judge's fault, but the real fault lies with the SEC. Amazon is a public company. In exchange for access to the capital markets, it owes the public certain disclosures, which are set out in the SEC's rulebook. The SEC lets Amazon – and other gigantic companies – get away with a degree of secrecy that should disqualify it from offering stock to the public. As Mitchell says, SEC chairman Gary Gensler should adopt "new rules that more concretely define what qualifies as a segment and remove the discretion given to executives."

Amazon is the poster-child for monopoly run amok. As Yanis Varoufakis writes in Technofeudalism, Amazon has actually become a post-capitalist enterprise. Amazon doesn't make profits (money derived from selling goods); it makes rents (money charged to people who are seeking to make a profit):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

Profits are the defining characteristic of a capitalist economy; rents are the defining characteristic of feudalism. Amazon looks like a bazaar where thousands of merchants offer goods for sale to the public, but look harder and you discover that all those stallholders are totally controlled by Amazon. Amazon decides what goods they can sell, how much they cost, and whether a customer ever sees them. And then Amazon takes $0.45-51 out of every dollar. Amazon's "marketplace" isn't like a flea market, it's more like the interconnected shops on Disneyland's Main Street, USA: the sign over the door might say "20th Century Music Company" or "Emporium," but they're all just one store, run by one company.

And because Amazon has so much control over its sellers, it is able to exercise power over its buyers. Amazon's search results push down the best deals on the platform and promote results from more expensive, lower-quality items whose sellers have paid a fortune for an "ad" (not really an ad, but rather the top spot in search listings):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/29/aethelred-the-unready/#not-one-penny-for-tribute

This is "Amazon's pricing paradox." Amazon can claim that it offers low-priced, high-quality goods on the platform, but it makes $38b/year pushing those good deals way, way down in its search results. The top result for your Amazon search averages 29% more expensive than the best deal Amazon offers. Buy something from those first four spots and you'll pay a 25% premium. On average, you need to pick the seventeenth item on the search results page to get the best deal:

https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/3645/

For 40 years, pro-monopoly economists claimed that it would be impossible for Amazon to attain monopoly power over buyers and sellers. Today, Amazon exercises that power so thoroughly that its junk-fee revenues alone exceed the total revenues of Bank of America. Amazon's story – that these fees barely stretch to covering its costs – assumes a nearly inconceivable level of credulity in its audience. Regrettably – for the human race – there is a cohort of senior, highly respected economists who possess this degree of credulity and more.

Of course, there's an easy way to settle the argument: Amazon could just comply with SEC regs and break out its P&L for its e-commerce operation. I assure you, they're not hiding this data because they think you'll be pleasantly surprised when they do and they don't want to spoil the moment.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/01/managerial-discretion/#junk-fees

Image: Doc Searls (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/docsearls/4863121221/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[seraphsfire]

Life situation & kitty update! Help me stay in Seattle instead of being forced to go to wyoming

Hello! I was able to make rent this month, but so far I cannot make rent for next month.

Ko-fi has been holding donations since paypal has been flagging them as "income" so that no longer works.

If you would like to help me out using paypal, the link is HERE. I will look into other venmo and cashapp. you can also reach out for a commission! If you donated via paypal and would like me to draw you a little something in thanks, please let me know!

I also put together an AMAZON WISH LIST , most is things for the kitties or food and some non-essentials / self care things for the hell of it that are things i haven't been able to buy myself for a while. Other than rent, kitty supplies and food are what I spend most $ on.

More on what I'm facing and what my kitties need:

about the kitties:

My sweet kitty Jade, needs a steroidal shot for her dermatitis. She should have gotten another one on the 25th, but I had no money to take her to the vet and she started ripping her fur out and made big, golf-ball sized spots completely bald on her armpit and chest :'( We put her on benadryl, moisturized her, and gave her a little jacket thing to help but I can tell she's really uncomfortable and really needs a vet visit to get that. it's $80 just to visit my vet and i'm sure the shot could be anywhere from 10-40 dollars, I really don't know. She's not in danger of pulling huge chunks of fur out thanks to the little jacket but she's really not happy and it makes me so sad.

About my situation (kind of long, sorry):

My Parents (mostly my mom; it's very hard to get responses from my dad) gave me rent money for September, but then made it clear that she will no longer help me financially under any circumstance if I want to "choose" to live in Seattle, then I'm essentially on my own. She doesn't want to give me money because she doesn't want ours to be a "transactional-based relationship" (after spending my entire childhood having them pressure me to move out on my own)

My dad is convinced that since Seattle is a city, it is very unsafe (and too full of Democrats) and that we would be safer living in their small town of Pavilion, Wyoming--which is literally just like, a few very spaced out neighborhoods. The nearest actual town is a 30 minute drive, and it's not very big either, and I don't drive. I would be snowed in *with them* for 4+ MONTHS every year, and every summer unable to leave the house for weeks because of the heat.

My dad has told my sister and I that if we choose to live right next to them, where they could have complete control over our lives, they would even buy us a house--but because we're not doing that, they refuse to support us in the life we've chosen for ourselves. They do not see the cruelty in this and think we are being nonsensical staying somewhere like Seattle which is "dangerous" and they do not like that it is full of non-republicans. I came out as queer in 2016, something which they have never spoken about since. I would likely be the only (out) queer person for MILES, and I don't feel like being the guinea pig for whether the anti-gay people there are the kind who ignore you or the kind who will hatecrime/kill you (:

Since I'd be at zero in my bank account in wyoming, they would have complete control over what I eat (not fun since I have a messed up digestion), clothes I buy, where I go, and how I behave just like they did when I was a child, or they'll start taking things away hoping that "tough love" will work. (it just made me mentally ill lol)

If I start a job in a week and a half I might be okay, but if I can't start until after that I won't have enough for October rent. I have one interview coming up but the future is still very up in the air.

[all-hail-the-witcher]

questionable government spies, but better written and 5 years late chapter 2: please don't scramble my eggs

back at it again :)

i got stuck in florida for 5 days and produced this

___

words: 750 (short but its necessary)

edited: yes :)

warnings: kidnapping, threats, gangs

tags: @jack-kellys @ainti-pretty @boygirlctommy (let me know if you want to be tagged)

ch 1 | read it on ao3

___

*24 hours earlier*

It was a normal day for Spot. Which should have been his first red flag. There were no normal days when you worked for The Anonymous. 

Which was why he really shouldn't have been surprised when between one second and the next he was getting knocked out and thrown in a van. 

Next thing he knew he was blinking his eyes open in a dim, dank room. One single lightbulb flickered annoyingly above him and thick rope dug into his wrists. Something chirped in the corner. Rats, most likely. Spot wasn’t sure if the higher ups in the gang simply had no money or just had a thing for shitty movie interrogation core rooms because believe it or not, this was not the first time that he had ended up in a room that looked like this. 

“Sean Patrick Conlon.” 

Fucking Christ. 

“Oscar if you wanted to talk to me you could have just asked like a normal person,” Spot sighed. “We work in the same building. There was really no need to pull out all the stops for me.”

Oscar stepped into the light, a sickly smile stretched across his stupid face. The hilt of the silver knife he was rolling between his hands clicked against his many gold rings. Spot resisted the urge to roll his eyes. 

“You know you shouldn’t talk to me like that,” Oscar grinned. “Not after everything I’ve done for you.” 

“I wasn’t aware that kidnapping me and tying me to a chair fell into that category” 

Faster than he could blink, Spot felt the tip of Oscar’s knife digging into his collar bone. He ground his teeth together so he wouldn’t flinch. It wouldn’t do him any favors. He waited for Oscar to make some kind of smart ass comment, but what he said instead was far more terrifying. 

“Why did you never tell any of us that you have a sister?” 

Spot’s blood went cold. He hadn’t seen Grace in years. She had been placed in a different foster home than he had been after their mom had dropped off of the face of the earth and he had never been able to find her again after he had aged out. After a few years he had come to accept the fact that she had likely been adopted by whatever family she had been placed with.

He fought to maintain his composure. “So what if I do?” 

Oscar was unfazed. “Grace Michaels. You know she’s living in the city? 42 West 64th street. She has a cat named Slippers. Her Amazon package is arriving today, she ordered a new 10 foot iphone charger. She left the house at 7:33am with her fiancée. Did you know she was getting married? I’m assuming he didn’t ask for your permission.” 

Spot narrowed his eyes. Straining against the rope would just make Oscar more annoyed. 

“His name is Patrick Cortes,” Oscar continued. “He proposed during their vacation two months ago in Italy. The date is already set for next November. She picked out her dress two weeks ago.” 

“What do you want with Grace?” Spot asked, fighting to keep a straight face. In a way, it was comforting to know that Grace was still alive and seemingly okay, but if Oscar was interested in her then that might not last for much longer. 

Oscar flipped his knife in his hands. “Tomorrow morning you are going to go to the FBI Headquarters in Times Square and you are going to turn yourself in. In exchange for your immunity you are going to offer to work with their agents in order to take down this organization. You will refuse to work with every agent except for Antonio Higgins. You will build trust with him and help him to infiltrate our organization. After one month you will double cross him, leading him to his death.”

“And why would I do that?” Spot had a sinking feeling that he already knew the answer. 

“Because it would be a shame if your sister was in a horrible accident before her wedding, don’t you think?” Oscar smirked. 

“You’re sick.” 

Oscar shrugged. “It’s not my plan. This one’s direct from the higher ups.” 

“Of course it is,” Spot muttered. “I’m assuming I have no choice?” 

“Not unless you want your roommate to find your head on his doorstep.” 

Spot tried to imagine Elmer opening the door of their apartment to his head in a cardboard box. Not a good mental image. Especially when Elmer thought that he worked as a security guard at a Hilton hotel. 

“Do I have to kill him?” Spot asked. That was his one remaining boundary. Over the years they had pushed him to do worse and worse things, but he had still remained firm in the fact that he didn't want to kill anyone.

“No,” Oscar said. “The higher ups have a plan for him.” Spot resisted the urge to shudder. Hopefully whoever this Antonio was was an asshole so that he didn't feel bad about leading him to what was surely to be a terrible and painful death.

It was a lose lose situation and as usual, the only way out was through. That was how things worked around here. And the worst part was, he was stuck here.

“So are you in?”

“Yeah.” Spot hated that he didn’t even hesitate. “I’m in.”

___

:O evil spot

ch3 will be long and incredible to make up for how short this one is

let me know what you think !!!

[stormblessed95]

Jimin has been sabotaged a lot

The song wasn't available in many countries in itunes, spotify and youtube

Spotify went down for hours

There are 2 versions of the song in spotify, only one is credited to Jimin. We didn't know until it's too late after seeing taeyang charting higher than Jimin because of it. It affects his position.

Not everyone can see the song that is linked to Jimin's profile in spotify

The song is not linked to Jimin's melon profile

The song can't be bought from amazon

Bigbang company using 3 tiktok sounds and pushing the one without Jimin in it.

And of course, many army refused to stream it because they don't like bigbang

Jesus.... like I told @chikooritajjk in the comments of the other post. I've honestly been super busy so I haven't been keeping up with what's been being said about streaming numbers, I've just been streaming as I've been doing things. I had no idea so much was happening. I'm just learning about this and that is so disheartening. I looked up how the numbers have been doing and luckily it seems to have been doing pretty good regardless. Which just goes to show how much it would've broken the world had it been allowed to. I'm so disappointed in YG for not giving this the support it should've had. If Jimin wasn't on it and most ARMYS actively trying to support him (as well as how he made the song good too), it would've drowned.

I hope things get fixed and the people who fucked up get their shit together. Jimin doesn't deserve this madness. I'll keep streaming though! I hope you guys are all still streaming if you are able to!

[stoookes]

You want VK headcanons? I'll give you VK headcanons ;)

1. VK loves to cook. He can whip up a ten course meal better than five star restaurants and in a shorter time. Anyone is sick with a cold, VK prepares them the warmest, most wonderful soups. Anyone has a birthday, VK is baking the cake. India loses a match, he's ready with a freshly baked batch of cookies to make everyone feel better. He often hums and dances while cooking, which is genuinely the most adorable thing ever. Somebody messes with him, he messes up their meals. Rohit, Mahi, and the rest of the day Indian team can attest, they've been on the receiving end far too often. Whenever they've had a disagreement with VK, the rotis that night are inadvertently burnt, the daal has no salt, and the vegetables are too spicy for them to digest.

2. VK loves cuddling. For all his feistiness, this is one omega urge he can't resist. His love language is definitely physical touch. No celebration on field is complete without VK jumping into somebody's arms or burrowing his head into their neck, or being lifted off his feet and twirled around by one of his teammates. In the early days of their marriage, Pat hundred percent once woke up with VK's head laid on Pat's chest, and his hand fisted in the alpha's shirt. Pat has no idea how this happened, because he's sure they went to sleep on opposite sides of the bed, with enough space for three people to lie between them. Pat tries to pull away, but VK lets out a helpless little whine, and snuggles further into Pat's chest, and Pat just gives up and lets VK nestle against him, because really, it's too cute.

3. VK loves to spoil his loved ones with little thoughtful gifts. VK is actually like this irl, this has been confirmed by AB de Villiers on a show called Breakfast with Champions. 😂🥰 He said something like, "If I tell Virat I like your shoes, next minute he's organizing the same shoes for me. I told him I like espresso the other day, I'm getting a coffee machine now. He's ordered it for me from Amazon." 😂 The interview I'm talking about is there on YouTube, and it's pretty sweet.

4. VK loves kids. As an omega, he's naturally nurturing and caring, and that's one aspect of his omega personality he doesn't suppress at all. He can quiet down a crying child within minutes, he loves giving his friends' children a piggy back ride, he always has chocolates and other sweets in his bag to give to kids he sees, he often loses purposely when he plays cricket with the kids. Everyone coos about how he'd be a great dad when he finally has babies of his own.

5. VK never hides his omega scent on field, and the fragrance drives all the alphas crazy. VK smirks, enjoying the distracting effect it has on alphas, especially in the early days of his career, when he's the first playing omega, and nobody is used to having an omega scent in their midst for a good 7-8 hours.

6. VK is actually very commitment-phobic, because he knows that he'll never be as devoted to an alpha as he is to his career, and obviously, alphas won't be OK with him putting his career over them. So VK never lets his relationships go beyond casual flings and semi-serious dates. It's not worth getting too attached to an alpha only to get his heart broken when he decides to leave him, because after all, which alpha wants a playing omega as a husband?

7. VK is a great singer and dancer. Definitely went to singing classes as a little kid. He has a wonderful, smooth, somewhat even hypnotizing voice, but he absolutely refuses to sing when he knows he has an audience. Impromptu shower singing sessions keep happening though.

8. VK's the type of person to have a fever of 120, be sneezing, coughing, and barely able to walk straight because he's that dizzy, and still turning up to training like that, because "I'm not sick guys, you are overreacting!" 😑 Rohit gets fed up and physically puts him to bed, and stands outside his door to make sure he doesn't sneak out.

9. VK is really, really clumsy. His hand-eye-foot co-ordination is non-existent. He's always tripping over his own two feet and if a thing is a noun and it is tangible, VK will find a way to drop, break, or spill it. He simply cannot use the staircase without falling. His toe is constantly stubbed. He is physically incapable of walking inside a room with banging his shoulder or elbow into the doorframe. His whole body is always covered with little bumps, bruises, gashes, and scrapes, and he simply cannot remember how he got them in the first place. Miraculously though, he's never broken a bone in his life.

10. VK is an early bird. He's up at 4 in the dawn, going for a jog, and preparing a cup of morning tea for everyone.

1 - yes, I’ve heard this one a lot (and I’m pretty sure you’re all hunting me down if I don’t include it in o verse 😂)

2 - stop this is adorable what? 😭🥹

3 - awww I really like this one 🥰

4 - I can so see him being an absolute gem with kids

5 - Now this tracks very well (especially if you’ve read chp4 of HIPS)

6 - yeah I can definetly see this working

7 - Patty is so catching him doing this every now and then ;)

8 - ahaha, forget Rohit, Pat isn’t letting him leave the house 😂

9 - Naaww clumsy baby 🫣 Pat covers the dirt frames in foam you just know it

10 - Ehehe, I can see that being a little frustrating

Thanks for all these!

[stevenbasic]

Growing into the Job, Post 379: The Tale of Queen Angie, p8

Alright, so you need me to explain? Okay, though you should have figured it all out anyway by this point, if you’ve been reading this crap, this is what I know. I’ll tell you if you need. I know not all of you weirdos pay attention.

Me? I pay attention, for sure. I listen, I ask around, I snoop. I’m able to see some of his emails. I know Melissa’s some sort of freak, that she gets studied by scientists at the drug company. I mean, I kinda knew it even back in high school. Things are way too easy for her. She changes, like physically, to get what she wants. Not just “go to the gym and get hot” kinda changes. She fucking evolves. Have a teacher that likes long legs, you need to pass American History? If you’re Melissa Monroe, a junior at Middlesex High, your legs get longer. Does your supervisor like big butts? Boom. Asszilla. Really helped at that dealership she worked at. And here, with this cretin of a doctor who wants to - what? - be a fucking worm like all you other guys these days and burrow into our fucking under-tits? She’s not just growing into some sort of Dolly Parton meets Pam Anderson the 4000cc porn star She-Hulk the Amazon Queen Kong, SHE’S MAKING HIM FUCKING SHRINK. And I think - no, I know - that it has to do with these chemicals coming off of her. They’re doing something to him, and they’re changing everyone else, all these other bimbos, too. They’re making them taller and stronger and bustier and some of them are getting fucking superpowers.

BUT WHY NOT ME?!?!!!?

I’m fucking pissed. I mean, I took this job in the first place because I wanted in. This stupid old-person medical practice is, like, ground zero for some of the shit going down. No one really tells us these things but I just know it.

This “Product” that they’re ‘studying’? ‘Testing’? What a joke. They know what it does, they’re just jumping through hoops that they could break into pieces, if they really wanted. This stuff they’re injecting is making all these study subjects into little fucking Melissas!! I’ve seen it, I’ve read some of the papers and documents that come through that are supposed to be classified or whatever. Shit that, for some reason, people like Morgan and Kathy have access to but he doesn’t?? And he’s the ‘principal investigator’? Red flag much?

I mean, I’m not a scientist but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that they’ve concocted some treatment from whatever it is that naturally makes Melissa a freak of nature and they’re trying to spread it around. So they can have a whole, what?, echelon of women that can breastfeed a small village or break spines with their bare hands?

Is “echelon” too big a word for you? Sorry. Yeah, the way I see it, Evolution Pharmaceuticals - or, probably rather, this big shadowy network of companies they’re calling 'The Collective'  is trying to create a bunch of these ‘Queen Bees’ from hand-picked women, each with their own little ‘hive’, like the thing Melissa has here with the girls (THAT I’M BEING EXCLUDED FROM). They want to make some sort of ruling class maybe, using like Melissa’s genetics or something. Is that it? Well, whatever the fuck it is I refuse to be left behind. I came here wanting to be part of this shit, but now I know too much. In fact. I don’t want to be a fucking worker bee anymore, even if it does mean growing six inches taller and knockers the size of zeppelins. I want to be a fucking Queen. The fucking Queen.

But nobody will talk to me. My calls to Evolution go unreturned. I’ve tried to weasel into, or at least listen in on, some of the meetings between these ones that I think are “agents” here - Morgan, Kathy, Karen (if that’s her real name), some of the others - but these chicks are pretty careful. My next thought is approaching the intern - Sammi. I think she knows more than she lets on, and is into something weird with the tall redhead Bianca and the big-boned one. Emily, yeah that’s her name. Even this new manager lady Olivia - the friend of his wife’s that’s never around - something’s up with her.

What else do you want to know? Oh yeah, about the prion? Didn’t think I knew about that, did you? I didn’t even know what a g-d prion was until I started reading some of the communications back and forth between these agent-girls here and Evolution. They didn’t explain too much themselves, but I did  some of my own snooping. It's been around for a while - I'm not sure how long, a few years, at least - and it changes people somehow. Not necessarily physically, but maybe it's what started everything on this…whatever. Path, trajectory that society’s taking.Like, ten years ago there’s no way most girls would have wanted to be taller than their boyfriends. Back when I was in high school guys always tended to be kinda in charge. But maybe it was around then that things started to change?

Anyway, for now, I have more important things to worry about. Like, I have his suit. Yeah, someone had bought it for him, brought it to the tailor to size it down for this photoshoot thing (he'd shrunk again since they measured him for the suit). They’re doing this press event crap over the weekend, and though it sounds like he’s more an afterthought at this point, they want him to at least look put-together. The news station was sending people over today to get some footage, take some pictures for a news piece they’re doing to cover the grand opening of the new wings, which - technically- wasn't until Monday but there’s like this little ceremony or whatever, some party with the new staff this Friday. So, yeah, I thought, if I hijacked his suit, I could get in on some more of the action.

“Heyyy! You’re awake!” I sang, busting into his office that morning with my friendliest, most bubbly office-girl voice. I wanted to make him comfortable, and I knew he’d basically been avoiding me since the party downtown where I’d come on maybe a little too strong for him to handle. So yeah I can play the bimbo when I need to. “So…I have your suit, and we need to get you dressed. It’s almost eleven and your photoshoot’s in a half hour!”

“Oh, uh, yeah,” he answered, looking up from whatever he’d been doing on his computer. He didn’t look well, kinda squirrely. Immediately he started nervously smushing down the bed-head of hair that he was sporting. “And, uh, good morning Angie,” he finally said. 

“Good morning to you!” I sang back. Of course I noticed the cot in the corner with the rumpled sheets. The girls had snuck him some of Katarina’s breastmilk yesterday, I heard, and it had eventually knocked him out for more than twelve hours. I’d filed that under “another weird thing I’ve got to figure out” in my brain and moved on, but not until I’d grabbed the bottle of leftover milk still in the breakroom fridge and hid it away. 

“Speaking of good mornings, I haven’t had my daily kiss yet!” I chirped (yes I can chirp if I want to). I saw the look that came across his face but I moved in on him anyway, laying the suit I held on its hanger down flat on his desk and leaning over, towards him. I’d made the mistake of wearing this high-necked black sweaterdress today, with these crazy shoulder pad things; something with some cleavage would have been useful for this moment. “C’mon,” I said, “You know the rules!” My face was suddenly right in front of his, and I set my eyes to flash, egging him on.

For as dumb as Melissa is, this new policy of mandatory morning greetings was a win. Even though I could tell his heart wasn’t in it, just getting him to peck me on the lips gave me the chance to exert some dominance. My tongue danced over his lips and even though he pulled away quickly I could feel him shudder.

“Watcha working on?” I asked, leaning in a bit more to look at his computer screen, rotating it towards myself. He was writing to someone, and I saw him get nervous. Was this one to that “Anderson” guy? No, it looked like he was talking to someone else.  “Some emails?”

“Y-yeah…” he answered…

========================================

Thx to Elephantporn for the image and RiF for editing work

[cosmicclearwater]

Feels Like | L. Clearwater

• ──────────────☾────────────── •

Genre: fluff Character: Leah Clearwater Word Count: 785 Warnings: none Summary: It’s in the little moments that you truly begin to understand what love feels like.

(a/n: Should be sleeping right now but I was listening to a song and came up with this. Let me know what you think. If you want to know/listen to the song that I listened to prior to and during writing this, it's called Feels Like by Gracie Abrams.)

• ──────────────☾────────────── •

Tucked away in a small, one bedroom apartment in the heart of Seattle, I found myself running away from my lover after having attacked her with a pillow in a lame attempt to end her teasing, cheeks tinted red from my efforts to escape, and maybe a little too much wine. It was moments like those, where we run around our apartment together, laughing like little kids as if we didn't have a care in the world, that I truly understood what it feels like to be loved. To be in love. Finding a sort of comfort in her that I can't find anywhere else. Being my true self without the fear of being judged. Looking into her eyes and feeling all of my worry, fear, and self doubt fade away. Despite the sound of the heavy rain mixing with the sound of the evening traffic flooding in from outside and our music playing softly in the background, her laughter was the only sound I could hear.

"Give up?" Leah asked, a smug grin on her face, having tackled me to the floor.

Although she had me trapped, I refused to give in. Responding with a resounding, "Nope!", I tried to maneuver my way out from under her. She giggled at my unsuccessful attempt, eyes full of admiration and amusement. After a few more seconds of pointless squirming, I accepted defeat. The room grew quiet, our eyes focused only on each other. The two of us perfectly fine with basking in the silence.

Eventually, Leah was the first to break it. "What are you thinking about?"

"You." I replied simply. She tilted her head in confusion, a cute pout forming on her lips. "I'm thinking about how lucky I am to have you. To have these moments with you. Despite the predicament I've currently gotten myself into, I can't help but think of now and all the other times that I've been with you and began to truly understand what love feels like." 

The honesty of my words and the seriousness in my tone caught her off guard. Leaning her head down, she nuzzled her face into the crook of my neck. It was her attempt at hiding the fact that what I had said flustered her, but I knew her well enough to know what affect my words had on her. If I could see her face, her cheeks would be burning bright red. It was then, at her moment of weakness, that I was able to free my arms from her grasp, but I didn't attempt to flee. Gently, I picked her head up so she could see my face, and so I could see hers.

"I would go anywhere in this world, whether it be here, hidden away in this apartment, or in the deepest parts of the Amazon, as long as you're there." I continued. "I used to be scared of this feeling that I would get only around you. This feeling of overwhelming certainty that I would do absolutely anything you asked of me. To completely allow myself and my world to be consumed by you. I love you. I wish there was more words in this world to explain how much I do because those three words just don't feel like enough."

"I love you, too." was all she said before closing the little bit of distance between us.

Our lips collided with a passion so intense that Cupid would cry. She may not have said many words compared to all of mine, but she didn't need to. Her actions said enough. They always did. Pulling away to allow us to catch our breaths, she brushed her nose softly against mine. My eyes remained closed, head swirling and stomach full of butterflies. It wasn't until I felt a small drop of wetness touch my cheek that I opened them again. Lifting a hand to her cheek, I wiped her tears away with a soft stroke of my thumb.

"So this is what it feels like." she said. Her words more of a statement than a question. "This is what love feels like."

It was there, on the floor of our shared living room in our shared apartment, that I lay side-by-side with my lover. Foreheads connected, fingers intertwined, hearts beating in sync. Even with the city bustling below us and the storm outside raging on, I couldn't find myself thinking about anything other than the sleeping woman in front of me. Peace and comfort lingering in the warm air around us. A soft smile on my face, my voice nothing but a soft whisper as I glanced at the sleeping beauty beside me.

"This is what it feels like."

• ──────────────☾────────────── •

[moshintheteagaiwan]

T.Kettle Part 8: The Coming Of The Milk & The Stock

One of the most basic components to running any business is making sure your store(s) are able to get the stock and supplies they need, easily and quickly. The people running T.Kettle behind the scenes did not get that memo. From day one when I had buy my own cleaning supplies, and provide my own mop, bucket and ladder to the day I left, getting what was needed was always a challenge. I did get reimbursed for the cleaning supplies thankfully.

When the store opened we were still under Covid restrictions. One of these restrictions was that there was no sitting in the food court and all public seating in the mall had been removed. Normally this isn’t an issue for mall staff because most stores have a backroom, and most backrooms have some kind of small table and chairs for staff to eat on their lunch breaks. We did not. In the summer this wasn’t an overly big deal except when it was sweltering hot outside, but we were now in the middle of fall, and getting lots of fall rain and cooler temperatures, so no one wanted to sit outside for their breaks.

At this time the company had set themselves up with Amazon Business and we were able to order whatever we needed for the store once a week through Amazon Business. However, all orders had to be approved by the head of operations before Amazon could fill them, and since we were the lowest on the totem pole, quite often these orders would sit until Amazon cancelled them due to no approval and we would have to place the same order again. The other issue was that the company only gave each store $150 per month spending allowance. Any further spending would have to be approved.

I battled for a small table and chairs set for our backroom, and explained to upper management that my staff had no place to sit and rest and eat during their breaks due to restrictions and weather conditions. Once I finally did hear back from them, they said they understood and I could purchase my own table and chairs and send them receipts for reimbursement. I went out to Ikea and bought a cheap table and two chairs which is all we needed and sent the receipts. I never did get reimbursed.

Christmas was also on the way and seasonal stock began showing up to the store. Boxes and boxes of it, and it wasn’t long before it had already filled all our storage space on the floor and was now piling up in the backroom. It took two weeks of back and forth emails telling the company we needed new backroom shelving as the old shelving had been removed and left us with no proper storage space. Eventually I took a chance and ordered three shelving units from Amazon Business and sent an email saying what and why I had ordered them. Shockingly the order was approved and we finally had shelves just in time for the season.

(A screenshot of our Christmas Infuser Mugs)

The other issue we faced with Amazon Business was orders constantly went missing or went undelivered. Drivers used to call me saying our store didn’t exist and that they had looked through the whole mall and our store wasn’t there. Almost every time I’d look out into the mall and see the delivery driver and I’d say “turn around”. They would turn around saying “I swear this wasn’t here 5 minutes ago.”

Other times drivers refused to come into the mall and would call asking me to come outside, which usually wasn’t an option as I was often working alone. Sometimes I would check emails in the morning and find an Amazon notification saying a package had been delivered. Attached would be a picture of the package that the drive left in some random spot in the mall, so I would have to lock up the store and go on a treasure hunt to find the package.

As for actual merchandise stock the company made an excel spreadsheet we would fill out and send in with what we needed ordered for our store. Our merchandise was through a secondary company unrelated to the company that owned us. Their products were good. Not great and far from outstanding, but good. But they had a thing for only making items available in solid plain colours and were very overpriced. The issue with this company is they also sold the same products on their own website which made no mention of T.Kettle. And because they sold from their own website, distribution to companies such as us whom they supplied to was notably low priority for them. This meant often times when our orders did arrive, anywhere between a quarter to half our order would be missing.

(One of our hardest selling and most overpriced items. I have covered the name of the company out of respect)

They supplied our matcha whisks and sent each store two boxes for the matcha roll out. We sold out of them quickly and it took over two months to get more, and when we did it was only half a box or so. And regardless of how many complaints we sent to upper management we would always get the same answer, “it’s on the way”, which meant we might see stock in a month or two.

However, a small step in the right direction soon came in the shape of a – refrigerator. One day the company informed is that each store would be getting a new fridge because they had finally, after over a year of requests, decided to carry milk options at the tea bar. Finally! No more looking stupid telling customers our tea back didn’t provide milk options. Maybe this meant lattes were soon to come as well. All us managers were eager for the conference call discussing the new milk options, but we were all less then thrilled by the end.

The company had no faith in the idea of milk options, and wanted to try an experiment to see how carrying milk would go. To do this they were sending each store a prepaid visa card worth $120. And with this card managers were to go to whatever local retailer (in their own mall preferably) that carried milk and purchase two cartons of milk at a time and no more. Should this visa card run out they would send us a new one if approved. Now for the real kicker. Absolutely no dairy free options, which was of the most requested milk options.

Many of our clients were vegans or had allergies to dairy and lactose so dairy free was essential. We heavily expressed our concern with this decision on the call but our concerns were shot down fast, and the needs of our clients with such demands could be narrowed down to “too bad for them”.

During the call someone asked if lattes would be made now that we had milk. And you guessed it – they said no. This was because once again, they didn’t want to compete with Starbucks. We even tried suggesting at least doing iced lattes. We explained this would not require the use of the steamers and that by adding milk to iced drinks and calling them an iced latte we could charge an extra dollar or two for little to no extra work. This too was shot down quickly and was followed up with, “if they want milk in a hot or cold drink, only put in a splash”.

To be continued...

[daemonmatthias]

despite my best efforts at a schedule and socializing... it’s been one of the hardest summers I’ve had in a while.

some of it is big things, like struggling to stick to any kind of schedule I set for myself due to this being the first year my husband’s work schedule is hybrid (he is home every other week, then I am home alone every other week; if it were just one or the other, I’d be fine), and not being able to go on walks due to the heat.

some of it is nebulous things, like needing to save money but then Sales keep happening on things we kinda need/weird things pop up, and my husband is bored af all day at work and then his mood affects mine because i just am sensitive to other people’s moods, and the fact that we need to formally decide if we are moving out of state soon (husband knows his answer, but I am scared/overwhelmed and will have to quit teaching), and that all this weirdness is making it So Hard to Concentrate on Reading, which is usually my solace in the summer.

but honestly, a lot of it is stupid little things and I don’t understand why so many of them are happening all at once. Just since yesterday morning:

the new avocado I needed to quarter for my usual breakfast smoothies refused to yield the pit, which ended up breaking, and I spent a solid 5 min scraping and slicing to be sure there were no remnants

immediately after I finally got that situated, I grabbed the new carton of almond milk, and it was... somehow sealed wrong?? idk how, but it would NOT open. so I tried opening the side to make a spout (like the little milk cartons from school), but that also would not open cleanly. I ended up needing a knife to slice into it. And then I had to go digging for a pitcher we never use to keep it in since the carton was destroyed.

then my nook crapped out on me. [backstory first: 2 months ago, my nook started randomly resetting itself, which deletes all of your side-loaded content. I ended up having to call customer service. They wanted me to hard reset. It took like 1.5 hours on the phone with them because it SAID it was connected to the wifi but then it wouldn’t do the next step of the set up process because it couldn’t find a wifi connection. Finally the set up process actually went through and they were like “ok all good now!” (right. ok. magically fixed the resetting issue by resetting it. yeah.)] Yesterday, while I was in the middle of reading a library book (considered side-loaded content), it reset itself again, which, of course, deleted the book I was reading.

We agreed last time that if it kept happening, I could get a new nook. Unfortunately, the new model doesn’t come out until september and I’m wary of buying another of the same model in case it has the same problem 2 years in (which is past the warranty period, of course). I did decide to pre-order the new one and pray that hard resetting would again “magically fix��� the problem for another 2 months.

This morning, I finally made myself start cleaning the porch. This is terrifying because our porch gathers leaf litter like a mofo and I haven’t cleaned it in ages. There are all sorts of spiders and bugs out there. 

AND of course my gardening gloves have been in an unsealed cart out there. they are shot. i will have to do all this bare handed...

I successfully get the pots of dead plants thrown away. I begin to gather the open bags of dirt to throw them away, having to be extra careful of spiders with my bare hands. A wasp starts flying around me. I try but fail miserably to remain calm and run inside. That chore will not get done today, and today was the last day of below 100F/some cloud cover for who knows how long.

Since I can’t do that chore, I check my amazon cart to see if anything we need got put on prime sale. basically... no. I buy it anyway. or try to; the shipping page keeps crapping out on mobile. I move to my computer and finish the purchase on desktop.

now time to pre-order that nook. except it won’t let me sign in. b&n’s website has so many trackers and shit that it breaks firefox sometimes. (is2g i use nook only because others don’t let you completely turn the backlight off, and as soon as my free year of premium membership is up, I’m going back to using bookshop.org for everything.) I switch to chrome (blech) and sign in.

i press “pay with paypal” and then “complete purchase”. It never pulled up my paypal to let me choose which card to pay with. I have to get into paypal to even figure out which card it payed with. It paid with not the credit card I wanted, not even my default card as selected in paypal, but with our shared checking account. (annoying but no damage done.)

time now to hard reset my nook... oh look, it’s doing the same connected/not connected to the wifi thing. goody...

all this in only the last 30ish hours. and it feels like the whole summer has been like this!

I can’t pretend good things haven’t happened. I visited my family, my bestie visited me and we did a fun craft together, I joined a new public library and love it more than my old one, I hung out with a friend to eat good food and visit a thrift/record store, we FINALLY framed/hung some art and it looks GREAT, I reorganized most of our music so its easier to access, husband made an htpc (home theater computer) so we no longer get youtube ads and he set up plex on it so I can watch the shakespeare plays I have downloaded, I finally made our new 9 delights tracker and it’s almost perfect, I joined my coworker-friend’s book club (bingo card system- good-, but the group read is an author I hate), I crocheted a dog sweater that actually worked (but idk yet if it fits cuz it’s for my parents’ dog), I began the process of switching away from google drive/gmail to something more secure (proton, which I got for almost 50% off).

And there are SO MANY good things coming up: we leave in a couple days to visit the city we might move to, we have tickets to barbie & oppenheimer, we’ll go to a friend’s daughter’s 1st bday party, my besties are coming to visit (museum, escape room, and musical all purchased and lined up!), we’re spending labor day weekend in a luxury cabin in the mountains with friends (owned by one friend’s rich aunt who is not charging/excited to host us), we have tickets to see my fav studio ghibli in theaters in sept., I have tickets to see To Kill a Mockingbird with a coworker-friend, we have ballet tickets for the season...

and yet, I’m struggling daily to complete basic tasks and maintain a positive attitude due to the onslaught of Stupid Little Grievances. :/

[system-of-a-feather]

(CW: Vent, CSA, grooming, blind trust / faith / following, physical abuse mention)

Honestly, some talk about our oldest sister, but I find it very very fucking satisfying to see how poorly her relationship with the rest of the family tanked the moment I realized the damage she did to us and refused to serve her anymore. Among many other things - much more nefarious and fucked up - she raised us to be her personal attack dog and to blindly defend her regardless and I kid you not, growing up - when she was there, when she WASNT there, when she was miles away and not doing herself any services - I spoke for and adovcated for and kept secrets for her to keep her image in our family clean, to counter the THREE times she had been disowned by our parents, to make sure our parents kept an open door for her. She did nothing to keep in good graces with the family other than sometimes playing nice with them but deadass told me the only reason she came to any of the parties was to be with me.

Which cute, wonderful and all, but the bitch fucking wanted that support from our family and its been like what? Two years or so? Since we cut ties with her? Stopped reporting our life to her every two weeks? Stopped keeping secrets of shit she did and said to keep her image clean? Stopped coming up with reasons and excuses for her behavior?

And what now? Our parents, who are the ever "good parents" tolerate her - barely and disgruntled? My middle sister acknowledges her as a right wing Amazon-working transphobic and possibly homophobic republican when my sister is MORE radical left in a number of areas than we are and what? She's now avoiding me and the family for holidays which makes our middle sister - who has BPD - take that as a massive slight and worsens that relationship? Increases the distance between her and the parents?

Good man. Good, stay away.

You aren't welcome here and I'm so fucking glad shes not coming that I was not even sardonic when my mom told me she actually decided to double back and just not come again.

Honestly, I don't have to wish her ill because honestly, she makes her own life horrible and ruins her relationships without me anyways and its been a never ending sense of schadenfreude to watch her ruin her own shit.

I also will say, I don't think I am over the sheer level of disrespect and realization as to how little respect and value she held to me when after YEARS and YEARS of fighting our family (both physically and verbally) for her, after being a blind loyal fucking dog to her for years, after being OK with all the garbage she exposed us to, handed us off to, and hurt us - she decided that she drew the line at me *checks notes* saying I need space for one holiday because *check notes* her husband who is / was ten years older than me when I was a minor was sending me *checks notes* a shit ton of pornography games when *checks notes* I was already a known grooming / CSA survivor that *checks notes* she at least enable and possibly *checks notes* facilitated.

Apparently, being her ride or die who blindly and faithfully believed anything she told us (even to the point of believing we had 2D vision and had special vision at age 14-16), APPARENTLY she wasn't sure if she would be able to still walk with me if I *checks notes* stated that I needed emotional space because I was processing CSA trauma and her husband - while not the main perpetrator - was enough of a part of that to the point it made me extremely uncomfortable.

I had literally made the decisions that I was aware she played a large role in that and made the decision that I was going to give her the benefit of the doubt, the benefit of my thousands of excuses and contexts that I used to get her out of shit with our parents, and say I would forgive her and that I understood despite her never ONCE apologizing. I was completely overlooking it and letting it fly for her role in it, all I needed was for ONE holiday that her creepy fucking weeb ass husband maybe DIDNT talk to me beyond basic pleasantries. And *that* was too much.

I'm honestly kind of thankful she drew that line (and then proceeded to DARVO and victim blame me) cause I really don't know if I could have ever taken the XIV part of my brain seriously about how much he hated her and how toxic she was because at the time, most of our system saw her as our only ally growing up.

XIV won that, and he was absolutely fucking right about her and well damn man, bless XIV being right.

But anyways, I had mentioned her in terms of Christmas and remembered its like the second anniversary of her completely being a total bitch about shit and TOTALLY dropping the ball on her blindly loyal attack dog and getting the fuck bit out of her.

Fucking angry bless hallelujah a fucking bitch ate shit.

Best thing she ever did was be such an idiot it made me realize she was a fucking toxic parasite that needed me far far far far far more than I need her.

Cause fuck her man. She can fucking sit in her castle of shit and cry about it as if she didn't build it herself.

[dapper-shipping-forever]

Been developing some T.rigun ocs. Not all have names, but most of these newer guys are also bounty hunters. Basically thought of an episode slash arc in the manga that would be like, Gill gets a letter and the top six bounty hunters on the planet are being invited to come and work together to capture Vash. At first she wants to just refuse, but they all decide to go because Gill knows all those bounty hunters and like how they all act. A if they go then they know their whole plan, B if they can prove they can't catch Vash then their team work is going to quickly disappear. They go, the team acting as Gill's new bounty hunter team mates and Vash in disguise with his face covered. These ocs are the ones they meet and along with Gill are the top bounty hunters around, in monetary value gained from bounties and in skill.

Maleficence Maelstrom: I started thinking of him a lil bit ago, before the others, as just a sort of rival. He's a dangerous slinger, seems to go out of his way to not turn in his bounties alive. He and Gill often clash. They worked together once, but after Maleficence shot their bounty, she refused to split the payment. She wouldn't take any "blood money". After that partnership, they've hated each other. He's sadistic and mean with a tendency to taunt. He likes trying to get people to pick fights and is an expert in duels. He often wears a sharp grin and has a certain condescending swagger.

Mayhem Wayham: He's a cool dude. Pretty cheerful and laid back and a constant flirt. He likes asking women to marry him casually. He and Gill get along. He likes a joke and to party, but he has a knack for stopping a fight and cooling people's anger. He's pretty easy going. Uses a bow with augmented arrows.

A set of two girls, their title includes twins and they act like two twin sisters except they're fully unrelated. They just met and realized they look similar and like the other and decided to go with being twin sisters after. They're all around pretty nice, though with their own typical rough edges. They and Gill get along. Love to drink together and are loud.

A set of three. Their nicknames are like judge, jury, and executioner. The bounty hunter nicknamed as their judge picks their bounties and is like a leader. They decide whether to take their bounties alive or execute them based on their judgment of the crimes they are wanted for with their bounty. Gill isn't a big fan of them; while most of the others do whatever is necessary with a fight and Gill can't exactly fault them, she always says to not severely harm or anything their bounties, she can't agree with acting as the sole decider of executing a bounty like that set does. They're also a polycule.

A muscular Amazon of a lady. She is almost an authority figure to other bounty hunters, able to get them in line when together. She's a kind woman with a strict side but it's like a well meaning sterness, she is thoughtful often of others. Likes handing out treats. She and Gill get along well. She is the person who decided to try getting all six top bounty hunters to work together; insists it's not for greed but simply to stop that dangerous guy.

I also have another oc who's not a bounty hunter. She's new.

She's an outlaw, a rather flamboyant person. She respects above everything else great passion. Passion for anything as long as they're devoted. This includes romance; in a fight with Vash she knocks him unconscious and Gill arrives to help him and when she gets between them she's prepared to fight her. She sees Gill's passion and decides to stop fighting. She says she couldn't think of getting between a fellow passionate shooter and the source of their passion, and leaves. After that encounter she and Gill have a sort of respect towards each other. Lmao

[luciddreamingstuff]

Niche Under the Magnifying Glass Lamp

If there is one thing I can take away from being in some smaller fandoms, or niche hobbies: You take what you can get and There are people out there who need their medical bills paid for carrying the fandom on their backs.

My two babies are the Lego Monkie Kid:

If you loved Lego Ninjago as a kid and still do to this day, I highly recommend this show. You can find the first couple of seasons on Amazon Prime. Seasons 3 and 4 are gonna be a bit more difficult, and this is what I mean by some needing their medical bills paid. Because the only reason I was able to keep up with the show with it being poorly marketed and dubbing is slow, folks came together to not only find the episodes, but also do their damnedest to fan sub these. I've already written a post about this show and why you need to watch it somewhere on this blog. Anyways, my next baby, and the one I have sunk so much money into already, is Zoids:

Most would be familiar with Chaotic Century or New Century Zero, as the Liger Zero (not depicted here) is the poster boy of the franchise. And with the 40th anniversary upon us, I'm glad I get to experience this niche franchise/hobby in general (My wallet not so much). I say that as I have a few kits that are sadly yet to be built. Right, Zoids if you don't know, started out as a sort of model kit toy line-up with a whole story between two warring factions and the mechanical beings known as Zoids. Most of it takes place on Planet Zi, with the exception being Zoids Wild Zero (and I swear to the gods above, I have been trying to watch this series for years now but finding episodes has been extremely tricky. That or I have just been extremely unlucky.)

Anyways, all that aside, insert here how even small fandoms have their problems and blah blah blah. But in general, I found the hardest part of being in smaller communities is mainly finding the content for them. Again, Zoids just isn't a big thing here in the States, so finding kits can be a little hit or miss. I say this as someone who fell into the pit trap of knockoffs (three to be exact.) and yeah, still new to all of this, only started building the kits recently. And as for Lego Monkie Kid, thankfully the internet exists, and the dedicated fans who work their asses off to find episodes and get them translated? Hats off to you my friends and thank you for all you do. It's always so exciting when you find someone out in the wild, so to speak, who knows about some of these smaller properties. And again, just being in these smaller fandoms, you have a slightly different perspective on Things you wouldn't think about being in bigger fandoms. I never thought I would be building model kits because of my horrible coordination and the fact that a disability I have makes it a little difficult to handle the tiny pieces. But then I discovered Zoids: New Century Zero on youtube some odd years ago and then learned about the model kits. Liger Zero was the first kit I got. Sadly him and my knockoff Mugen Liger took a tumble and are now in Model kit hospital trying to fix the broken parts. And even now, I still hunt for new kits, droll over some I could never hope to own. And I've rewatched Zoids Genesis at least 4 or 5 times now. And before anyone says anything, Yes I have seen Chaotic Century, and I do love it, don't get me wrong. But my favorite Zoid happens to be the Murasame Liger and its evolts. So you can imagine why I would watch Genesis a few more times than the others. And then there's Lego Monkie Kid. See, I loved Lego Ninjago as a kid, always diving into each episode and recording them on the VCR to see anything I missed. And then one day, scrolling through TikTok, I came across some clips of this new Lego animation that was essentially a sequel (I'm not calling it a fanfiction, I swear to the gods I refuse) Of Journey to the West. Which I learned about through Overly Sarcastic Productions. And doing my usual thing, now that I know how to surf the um . . . Okay let's be real here, pirating sites for cartoons and then Amazon Prime for this show. It was so easy to catch up on and the animation was eye candy, the characters and story were amazing, sound design and all.

Anyways, if you made it this far into my rambles, I applaud you and hope I convinced you to go searching around the deeper waters a bit. After all, you never know what you're going to find. Whether it be a gold mine, okay but still a guilty pleasure, the downright bad, or just the strange of the strange. Either way, happy exploring and I'll see you on the other side.

[illgiveyouahint]

watching the downfall of netflix makes me want to watch all the shows on my watchlist or that seem vaguely interesting and just unsubscribe I reckon :)

I tried that at first but realised that I will never be able to finish everything on my watchlist and I do think it is part of these streaming sites strategies, so I just unsubscribed and watch anything Netflix owned illegally. Occasionally I am a bit sad about it. Like I'd love to support Young Royals, Heartstopper or Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio legally. But just like with let's say Good Omens or The Legend of Vox Machina which are on Amazon Prime I simply refuse to pay truly shitty companies with terrible practices even if they do occasionally have some good stuff on it.

I have pivoted towards trying to watch stuff legally as much as possible because I want to support the filmmaking craft and support the creators and such, but this is where I draw the line.

It does help that many Netflix shows I used to watch have been cancelled, and I made a point of not really starting any new ones. Actually, cancelling Netflix also helped me get rid of this idea that I have to watch everything that's popular. Because again, often times the thing either gets cancelled anyway or it turns into something shitty after 1 season. Like there isn't really any Netflix show (other than Heartstopper and Young Royals) I can think of that I feel like I'm missing out on. Instead, I see shows on tumblr get popular and then a few weeks later I see people raging over it being cancelled or them killing a lgbtq+ character or being racist. Like I don't think I'm missing out on anything tbh

[cebwrites]

//lays on the floor

thinking about an AU where Kirin stayed with Baroque up until the Strawhats defeated them

The reason why Kirin was ever associated with Baroque in the first place was because of Bon-chan

They were they one who brought him in thinking it'd be a good way to keep an eye on their new friend and also stay close because this was after Kirin left his grandmother's place for trying to kill his brother (after finding out that Takashi became a marine) and essentially he had all his support systems and connections reduced to null

What they didn't expect was for Kirin to rise so quickly within the ranks, to a named position (Mr. New Years) as their partner, because of his efficiency (and cruelty when applicable) that caught Crocodile's eye - this gave him something to do, yes, but it ultimately made him worse emotionally/mentally

I like to imagine that Daz very much sees himself as an extension of Crocodile's right hand, even though Robin was his partner in the organization, Daz was the level directly underneath that and took his position seriously (during ID and post-Marineford he does take that position as Croc's right hand)

Kirin is similar in that regard, but because he didn't have as strong of a grasp of himself or wherewithal as Daz did at the time, it was more like he was a tool to Croc's orders rather than a faithful subordinate; and it was killing him - to throw away his personhood, to numb himself to the actions asked of him (in canon Bon-chan noticed this and regretted not having the foresight to predict something like this, and managed to get Kirin out of there with a bit of Robin's help before it was too late, but in this AU Kirin would stay for 3 more years until Baroque's defeat; Smoker was the one to take him down because none of the Strawhats would’ve been able to at this point)

After Baroque's dissolution they were all sent to a prison that the majority of them broke out of but Croc and Daz refused to come with for whatever reason like the cover story implied, then Impel Down once security regained their bearings

Kirin didn't really care where he went so long as it was with Bon-chan (assuming the two of them missed the bus to escape with the rest of them and didn't just sit and sulk like Croc and Daz)

But then the Impel Down arc happens

And then Marineford where Doflamingo still uses Kirin and Daz to taunt Crocodile and the former gets his leg severed as an outcome of two divorcees' hatred for each other

Miraculously (me, I'm god and I say so) he gets picked up by the Heart Pirates because when they were surveying the edges of the battlefield Bepo spotted and recognized Kirin from an interaction some time ago (Pen and Shach were ordered to get him and the leg, Kirin thought he was dying when he was suddenly grabbed and dragged underwater but it’s fiiiine it turned out fiiiiine)

Law was very hesitant since it'd mean more resources spent on a stranger, but then again taking Strawhat and Jinbe were also on a whim (I do like the theory that Law helped Luffy because then he'd owe a favor to them though, given his time under Doffy and also old man Wolf from the Law novel) and when was Law ever immune to Bepo's wishes

While Luffy was tearing through Amazon Lily's forests and destroying trees Kirin was offered a position on the ship like much in the way that Jean Bart was - devastated at the supposed death of Bon-chan, taking more psychic damage at being called a monster by his brother at Marineford, and nowhere else to go (believing that all his found family would reject him after word of the Baroque stuff came out - he also never formed his crew in this AU so Rio, Izzy, Coco, everyone would still be scattered across the world), Kirin agreed

Over the course of the timeskip he'd slowly start to recover with the introduction to actual (relatively) normal and cheerful people who gave him space but were ultimately kind and welcoming and appreciated his presence - that 'tool' programming very much remained though, but instead of a weapon at Crocodile's disposal, he was now a Heart Pirate willing to do anything for his captain

This Kirin, unlike canon, followed orders and didn't complain, he'd keep to himself until others entered his personal space and he'd leave when he had enough of it

This Kirin confounded Law because he was nothing like the snarky man he met in the North Blue years ago that bested him almost immediately in combat (due to Law's own underestimation and Kirin's experience/intuition/craftiness, but still) and it drove them up the wall trying to figure out why

Law wanted to study him under a microscope and that's what lead then being in avertedly in each other's spaces a lot

Plus, he likes his new captain and Kirin is observing Law just as much as they are to him (very slow-burny shy touchy touchies but the relationship isn’t really allowed to fully blossom because both of these assholes’ hangups - Law with their inability to open up and Kirin putting his “captain” on a pedestal and thinking of his life as second to theirs and the crew’s very much a la Sanji’s entire WCI arc and learning self worth)

Being around the other Hearts was still a huge help for his mental health though, it brought his smile back and maybe even coaxed a few more out of Law to see their “””test subject””” very heavy quotation marks enjoying himself too

No one questions it when the two Hearts go missing after dinner, and even though Zoro’s grumpy about leaving his gym in the crow’s nest early every evening he lets them have their privacy for the nights they’re there

Fast-forward to Punk Hazard where things progress as usual until Kirin reveals himself when Law cuts the giants down and Law has to contend with a stray crew member (they panic internally given the stakes, immediately asking if anyone else followed him but Kirin reassures them that he’s the only one that left, plus if they all did it would be too suspicious and it was a hard-won victory against the crew that he’d be the one to go, plus there’d be shockwaves if Law’s plan went as intended and Zou needed as many reinforcements as they could get)

When they’re all in the cave recouping Law gives Kirin a proper chewing-out to one side even though they can all feel everyone eavesdropping, particularly Robin’s eye on Kirin, but Kirin looks up afterwards with this determined look says that he’s never asked for much when he joined their crew but if he could be selfish just this once then it’d be to ask that his cap- no, that *Law* not do anything reckless on his own with a certain glint in his eyes that tell Law all Kirin isn’t saying, ”I don’t want you to die”

Law’s definitely not keen on having this conversation, least of all in front of the Strawhats, but they’d sigh and pinch the bridge of their nose, pull their hat down too - and say that there’s not much else to do now that Kirin’s *here*, so he might as well pitch in with the plan

[glittergutts]

I've been having a stressful morning. And I need to process my thoughts about preparing for treatment.

First we couldn't figure out the money to get all the stuff I need to take to treatment and I had a cry about feeling like I shouldn't even go. I didn't know all my vitamins and supplements had to be unopened until the other day and it cost a lot to buy all at once.

Figured it out with the last of our available credit and my supplements and stuff should be here tomorrow and Sunday just in time for me to leave Monday morning.

Loki is extra whiney today. Like he won't chill out and I want to yell because I do not understand what he wants. I wish he would lay down and let me rub him when I'm sad. He refuses to be comforting.

My anxiety started getting really bad when I was on the phone with my mom and she was slamming me with question after question. She's always like that but today I couldn't handle it. She's asking things I can't answer and reminding me how out of control even my best plan is.

So after awhile I took the anxiety pill and convinced myself to get out of bed. I found some pretzels that looked pretty plain and a Gatorade and even though I barely had any of either I feel uncomfortably full. I think all the days of skipping food has started to really hurt my body.

I got the okay to bring ensure drinks to treatment but I'm not even sure if I like them I just have to have the calories in a drink (because i cant fucking eat 360 calories at once) so I can take my latuda and I normally drink a Chai protein thing at home. I'm going to ask Chris to bring home a few flavors I can try so I can figure out which type to buy.

The food at treatment is close to nothing. They do cook dinners but it's always meat or something I don't eat so I have to fend for myself the whole stay. Once I lived off orange cups and plain Oatmeal for 12 days. I was so happy to eat again when I discharged.

I hope it's better this time I wish I was allowed to just bring my own food but I understand why they don't allow that.

I need to wash all my laundry today so I can figure out what clothes I'm bringing and get my bag ready. I'm waiting on a night gown from Amazon. I don't want to sleep in a big tee shirt there like I do at home because it doesn't feel safe and private to be pantsless. I bought a nice pair of sleep shorts when I went a few years ago and I'm going to bring those again and I think having 2 sleep outfits should be fine as long a I don't have sweat nightmares. They have laundry there if I do need to wash anything.

Also because of covid the rooms aren't shared anymore so I have the privacy to use the bathroom or change or sleep in my room whenever I want to. Hell I can take a shower at 3 am and nobody would stop me. Although I'll be trying to sleep and behave like the functional person I want to be. It's just a relieving idea to have some space and freedom.

I'm desperately hoping having the time to focus on my needs and health will let me leave a little better of a person or at be able to take better care of myself and family. I'm tired of letting myself down.

I found some nice skincare things in mini containers I can bring with that will make shower time a little more enjoyable. I have some fidget toys in a bag and some art supplies with a folder that has paper and coloring sheets inside. I'm going to bring my comfort pillow and my favorite squishmallow plushies. I just need to take a few pictures of my family and I feel like I tried my best to bring comfort with me. I got to order aromatherapy balm sticks because I can't have essential oils and I don't see why I couldn't have these so I feel good about my supply of comfort things.

I used to take so much klonapins and do normal stuff like safely drive my car but I feel heavily medicated this time like I need to lay down. At least I'm not having a panic attack and I had some food.