#emotional investment is getting cumbersome guys

[scribeofmorpheus]

everyday i learn more about joplin, everyday i wish they just cancelled veilguard or took longer to make the joplin project they envisioned.

i think i'm just gonna put all the blame on anthem atp.

[article link]

if they were in such a rush to make me5, why didn't they just go ahead with that project and then make da4 after--if the funds allowed for it?! i bought the artbook and that literally just made me go down a spiral.

like... this hurts me so much man.

[link to video where comment is from]

[corysmiles]

Could you believe I actually am back with some Runnaway Experiment WRITING??? :D

This takes place very early on in the story, and gives some more insight into Tommy's life before they escaped (in the comics). Enjoy :D

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The experiment was growing years after years, to everyone’s delight. It seemed the first laboratorial human had a decent enough lifespan so that it could be studied in the long run. And so, 14 years, it has been since T0M saw the light of day, and it acted in a similar fashion a 14 year old human would. .

Of course, the many researchers failed to take in consideration an alteration of the most cumbersome. T0M looked human, could understand the english language, followed orders and didn’t complain, asked some questions but the specimen…. was big.

Too big to fit in a human bed.

Too big to fit comfortably in a room.

It went in spurts, which was terrifying the first time. It kept on growing and growing, as scientists hoped it wouldn't take long for it to stop, otherwise, it might lead to a lot of problems. But for the past 2 years, no noticeable change really occurred, which was a relief when the thing was already 25 ft tall. It never seemed to be challenging personality wise, which was a relief, but they still needed to keep him in line.

Hopefully, the Doctor Soot, as well as Doctor Puff took part in daily check ups and made sure he didn’t rebel.

So, every 2 day, they took turns to visit T0M in the room accustomed to its needs.

And both’s reports were excellent! T0M learned more while being as obedient and compliant as ever. Phil couldn’t be more happy with those results.

However, as time went on…. Wilbur failed to mention another kind of teaching he had going on with the subject for the past months.

“And this is called ‘Sadness’.” He held an A3 size paper with a moody smiley drawn on it, the word being written below. “It’s that feeling when our sessions are over and I have to go and you say ‘oh noooo’ in that voice.”

T0M was sitting on his knees in front of him, paying the utmost attention to what Wilbur was showing and saying.

“I hate that one.” He pouted.

“I know,” Wilbur chuckled. “No one likes to feel sad. But it’s a part of life.”

A single hum. Wilbur’s smile turned more sympathetic.

“Do you remember the other ones?” He stood up from his place and put the sheet in one of the dark grey metallic drawers.

T0M nodded, excitedly. He took his hand and poked his fingers as he counted. “ there’s “Happiness”, it’s the good one. And “Disgust”, it’s when I have to eat the weird green stuff.”

“Brocoli”

“That. And then there’s excitement, it’s when I smile real big because you come early.”

Wilbur clapped “Wonderful!” T0M’s eyes were shining stars at every approval from Doctor Soot. Even though T0M’s enjoyment was very appreciated and contagious, but it could be a bit… much, to handle at times.

“Since you understand the basics, I think it’s time for us to start a whole new lesson.” He clapped.

T0M gasped and cheered from the top of his lungs “YEAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!”, throwing his arms in the air and effectively making the room shake from the sheer volume of his voice. When he looked back at the scientist, his eyebrows were pinched and the brunette was covering his ears and curled up, almost in pain.

“...Doctor?” He brought his head close to the man who, after making eye contact, scrambled back until he hit the same drawer he put the papers in earlier. T0M looked at him confused, face still too big in Wilbur’s peripheral.

“I… Tom, I appreciate your enthusiasm when we do our lessons, but if you could prevent yourself from screaming, it would be nice.” He tried in the most gentle voice he could muster without it shaking.

“What’s screaming?” T0M asked, crouched so his face was almost on the ground at eye level with him. He brought a hand closer to the doctor who was still breathing heavily. When his head shot to look at the hand, his body on alert, he froze before saying.

“... Is it a moment when I can’t touch you?”

Wilbur’s eyes were locked on the now frozen hand for a good second before returning to T0M, nodding. “Uh, yeah.”

“... Okay.”

The hand retracted in the following seconds, and soon, he was back in his initial position.

The doctor thanked before regaining his composure. He looked back at T0M, and his expression held remorse. A guilt twisted Wilbur's guts at the view. Thing is, as T0M grew up, people quickly realised he was the equivalent of clingy. He would constantly grab people into hugs and had a hard time keeping his voice down which resulted in a large noise blocker investment. And so they had a rule. T0M couldn’t make any sort of physical contact with anyone without being given explicit permission first. Obviously, most workers considered T0M as a test subject and therefore, wouldn’t give him that pleasure.

Wilbur, though, was not in the same vein. Once he realised how empathic and emotional and human T0M was, he started teaching him things a human teen should need, and started giving him a sort of affection a human teen should have. Which included some sort of physical affection.

When T0M was sad, he would sit next to him or pat his back. It quickly evolved as Wilbur accepted being held by the boy and brought to eye level as long as he was careful when doing so, and ever later, they would hug and wilbur would try to brush his hair at times.

Still, that didn’t make him immune to any of T0M’s carelessness which’s consequences were amplified ten fold due to his scale.

“Did I do something wrong?” he asked pitifully.

“I- no, it’s not your fault. It can just be a bit overwhelming is all.” Wilbur explained.

“... what does that mean?”

“It means… when something is ‘too much’. Like when you want to bring Techno very close, but he keeps reminding you about the rule.”

“Oh.” T0M let his head fall. “... I don’t like that.” Wilbur scratched his head. “I want to be so close and show that I’m very happy and it’s all inside and I can’t let it out.”

“Well, here, it’s a bit more of the opposite. When outside, there is a lot and you’re incapable of letting it in.”

“... I’m sorry Wilbur” he mumbled.

“It’s okay, I’m not angry.” reassured the brunette. “I just have sensitive ears.”

“...Everyone has sensitive ears.”

“Well, when you’re a small guy like me, you’re sensitive on pretty much all fronts.”

“... It’s not fair.”

“What’s that?” Wilbur perked.

“When I stop getting big and strong, I want to hug you with all of my will. Like you do with me. It feels nice. I want you to feel nice just like that. I want you to be overwhelmed with happiness. I want to hug you so, so bad but I can't and it's shit. I don't want to be strong, I hurt you if I’m strong. I want to hug you."

Tommy vented, more to himself, and when he looked at Wilbur, his eyes shined, not with joy.

"Oh Tommy…."

It ached. It ached Wilbur to his core that something as simple as a hug was something he craved and still couldn't get. Because he knew. He knew all of the things T0M was missing out on. All the life he could have lived if he was granted freedom. How much he could live and appreciate. It kept him awake at night.

But he was here. Trapped. In a room barely tall enough to contain him, treated like a circus monster. And the worst thing was, T0M wasn't aware of it. Of all the life he wasn't living. How his life was no life and how he thinks this absence of everything is what life should be.

Plato would probably laugh in his grave.

"I promise you. One day, you will be able to do that. I promise you that I'll find a way for you to hug me just like you are a small man too. I promise you that I'll make you discover all of those joys of life, Tom. I Promise you. I will help you. And I'm sorry for not being able to provide it sooner. And I'll apologize for all the years it took for me to get it."

They stared at each other, and Tommy nodded, throat tight and eyes wet.

"And a promise makes sure that it's gonna happen." T0M croaked.

"Exactly, tom." Wilbur smiled. "You are going to live many more things."

The bell rang, and both faces fell a bit.

"I'll see you in 4 days, Tom. We're gonna have a little recap over the emotions you learned and then I'll teach you about relationships."

"Oohh, that sounds nice! What is it?"

As Wilbur packed his little bag, he looked at T0M and simply replied "it's all around you. But I'm not gonna spoil the next session. On that note, I wish you a nice week, Tom."

"Have a nice week, Wilbur! " T0M waved with a smile. "It's nice talking to you."

"It is my absolute pleasure, Tom."

And thus, they parted. As Wilbur walked down the immense corridor (just tall enough Tom could run through them.) He wore a satisfied smile. His small steps resonated, the only sound in the room, yet peaceful enough for his ears to listen to them as carefully as silence. Halfway through, the sound was doubled.

"Helloooo."

"Oh, hey techno! How are you?"

"Doing fine. You seem very happy."

"I am. I made some good progress with T-he subject. I feel like he's learning well. The next tests should have fabulous results."

"Ahh, wonderful. Let's make sure it doesn't learn too much though." He joked.

And at that, Wilbur chuckled, his hand on the man's shoulder. "Oh don't you worry about that, my friend. I can assure you that'll never happen"

"Amazing" techno replied, deadpan. Both nodded their conversation away and walked the rest of their ways.

As he got further away, the doctor's smile turned to an amused grin. His steps resonated, so much smaller than what could be, in a corridor in which the boy just next door should walk through.

"Don't you worry about a single thing."

MEL YES I ADORE THIS AU SO MUCH ITS SO GOOD!!!!!!!!

Poor Tommy but at least Wilbur is helping him :”]

[thedistrictsleepsalonetonight]

A goddamn blaze in the dark

The first time Emily sees Sue, the first thing she does is drop a cup of steaming hot coffee onto the floor, slip on it and land flat on her back behind the counter. And then she thinks — Oh. Found you.

To be fair, even without the pesky niggling at the back of her head, very helpfully pointing out that this was the girl, her soulmate, the love of her life, her forever and beyond, the sight of Sue would have knocked her down anyways. What else are you supposed to do when a pretty girl, dressed in tweed, with her hair tied up in a braid, walks into the coffee shop where you work with that smile on her face? That damned smile that doesn’t ask you so as much as inform you that you’re going to be haunted by it in your dreams tonight? With 10 am sunlight filtering in through the sides, casting half of her features in sharp, glorious light, Emily might as well have just signed away her breath for eternity.

Lavinia bends, looks her right in her eye from above her. “You’re in love, aren’t you?”

She wants to open her mouth to say something along the lines of – It's her! It’s her! What comes out, however is a garbled groan.

“Emily, buddy,” Austin rollerblades over to her, bends over her from the other side. “You gotta get up before there are complaints of unprofessionalism in the workplace.”

“Oh, because you’re the pinnacle of workplace niceties, I assume,” Lavinia shoots him a contemptuous look. “Only last week, wasn’t it? Those two young ladies in here fighting over who you were going to take to the mixer—”

“Guys,” she manages, before Austin can respond with something equally snarky, or god forbid, lascivious. “Is anyone minding the counter?”

And for exactly thirty seconds, the amount of time it takes Austin to slide over and ask for the orders of the disgruntled customers, and before she stretches out her arm and lets herself get pulled up to her feet, she hears a sweet voice enquire if everything’s quite alright back there. Emily closes her eyes, breathes it in, and wishes, not for the first time that hour, that she had her notepad near her to scribble a snippet of a poem that is now rapidly forming in her head.

*****

It is only sometimes that Sue looks at Emily and thinks that if Emily were to say the word, she would get down on her knees and hand over the entire world to her. Most of the time what she is thinking is goddamn it, Emily.

That’s what is going through her head as they’re kicked out of the lecture of the old man droning on about volcanoes. She can hear Emily giggling from behind her, and though her heart’s beating loud — the result of embarrassment and pure adrenaline — the sound makes her want to turn around and regard the idiot making it. So she does.

They’re alone in the deserted staircase; all the students, she guesses, are probably in that abysmally monotonous lecture. Emily leans against the banister, bent over at the waist from the sheer force of her mirth, and Sue takes it all in — her laugh, her gentle hands clutching at the wooden surface, and those intense, sparkling eyes looking right into hers. The next Goddamn it, Emily isn’t exasperated. It stays right there in her throat, accompanied by other, tender platitudes she’s never been brave enough to let herself say.

You’re beautiful. You make me ache inside.

(At night, Emily would talk to her about pressure, an acute force that demands to be released within her, and unable to help herself, the words — I think I know what a volcano feels like — would bubble up from her lips. And when Emily moves against her, a writhing mass of soft, bundled up wanting, Sue thinks she understands Pompeii a lot better as well; understands being frozen in time, brought to your knees by the sheer majesty of beauty and violence.)

*****

Listen, Emily has never claimed to be an expert on love.

(Austin has, on several occasions. Sauntered into the café, placed his elbow on the counter, and grinned roguishly. “Emily,” he’d started, once. “You know what the”—

“Is it that time of the month again?” Lavinia, who had been mopping up the floor, drawled. “Too much time since your last breakup but not quite enough that you can start going out with another girl and still maintain that image of the soft, sensitive manchild you’ve carefully cultivated. So you’re stuck in that weird limbo of no dates to go on, and subsequently are here to bore us.”

He’d chucked a tissue in her direction, continued smoothly. “As I was saying, do you, my dear Emily know what girls like best?”

“My sunny disposition?” she’d asked.

“No,” he replied flatly. “What girls want is someone who is cool. Indifferent. Somebody who displays absolutely zero interest in them. In fact—”

“That is horseshit,” Lavinia cut in.

Emily faux-gasped, continued leaning the espresso machine.

“Don’t you listen to him, Em. Girls like sweet, sensitive people who express an interest in wanting to get to know them.”

“I am an expert on women.”

“I am a woman!”

Emily half-listened to the sound of their bickering, and wished that she were a cat)

She considers both approaches briefly as she faces the girl, wondering why time hasn’t at least done them the decency of slowing down. It’s only polite, isn’t it, for the universe to cooperate when two eternal lovers meet. Emily has no justification as to why the universe should be so invested in the meeting of her and this woman who she’d decided was her intended, except it just makes sense.

(Intended. The word feels like it bears the weight of a hundred years. Like a woman back in the 19th century was whispering it to another woman she was in love with, as they lay in bed playing with each other’s hands.)

(It fits. She doesn’t care to find out why)

The girl opens her mouth. Emily holds her breath.

“You’ve got foam in your hair.”

The words — “It makes them bounce” — are out of her mouth before she can think. And then she wishes she’d picked up another cup of coffee in her hand so she could drop it on her head again.  

Thankfully, the girl laughs. Rests both her elbows on the counter and assesses the menu above Emily’s head. Emily doesn’t mind the reprieve from eye-contact. There’s something about looking right at this.... angel, for lack of a better word, that makes breathing cumbersome. And yet there’s another part of her that wants to raise her arms above her head and bounce like a little child, all “Hey! Look at me! It’s me!”.

(It’s a very strange day)

“What would you recommend?”

“Me?” Emily startles a little. Turns back to the menu, then back to the girl. Blinks. “That depends on your name.”

“How does my coffee order depend on my name?” the girl sounds amused.

Emily shrugs. “Eh. It’s a process. Can’t give away all my secrets.”

There’s prolonged eye contact, again, before the answer comes. “Sue.”

It rings in her head. Sue. Sue. Sue. There’s no prettier word in the English language. Saying it over and over in her head feels like a prayer. She tells Sue to wait a moment, and then turns to make her a caramel freakshow, all the while acutely aware of eyes on her. Her clothes are drenched in coffee, and she’d picked out the most faded of her t-shirts to wear today. God only knows what she looks like from behind.

The drink is her very best effort, though. Topped with the best slices of fresh fruit, and she’s made the swirls on the cream topping extra carefully. “Coffee for,” she pauses, pushes at the glass gently till it’s on Sue’s side, “Sue.”

“Can I ask what’s in this.... concoction?”

“My hear—” Emily knows she’s turning red, and desperately look away. “Um, coffee?”

Sue fumbles in her bag, and she wrestles with the urge to say — “Nevermind, it’s on me!” — which would not be the wisest. Emily hates the idea of taking money from Sue, that too, for something as measly as a coffee. Probably because she knows that if Sue were only to ask once, she would make her coffee every day, unprompted.

(She cannot reiterate enough – It's a very strange day)

When Sue steps away, Emily feels loss. It’s an unusual nudge to her sternum, a tingle in her hands that wants her to call Sue back. Before she has the time to dwell on it too much, Sue does.

“Do I,” she starts, frowning a little “Do I know you from somewhere?”

Yes.  

Yes.

I can’t explain it but we know each other somehow, the same way artists know their muses, and flowers know their bees, and my hands know how to write poems — and maybe a hundred years ago you and I were neighboring trees in the woods, or two seeds in the same tangerine; I’m pretty sure my knowledge of your existence was probably coded in my blood.

“Do you?”  

Sue seems to consider that for a while before shaking her head, and then walking over to take a seat by the window.

(And if she catches Emily stealing a glance every five minutes, she’s nice enough to not mention it)

*****

The day of her wedding is the happiest day of her life so far, and yet, the wedding has very little to do with it.

It’s a tiny, foolish fact that this is the first smile she sees on Emily after Ben’s tragic death, and yet, it makes her feel unreasonably pleased with herself. If her life were split into days she could see and touch Emily, and dreary days — the former were made significantly better if Emily smiled in them. Not to be dramatic, but the sun shines better, the skies glow prettier, and the ground is a little easier to run on.

Emily points out somewhere in the middle of their frolicking, for back of a better word, in the woods, that her dress is getting ruined. And then flings a flower onto her face. Goddamn it, Emily, she says, and then is struck dumb by the sound of her loud, exuberant laugh.

(And even quieter still when she holds the magnifying glass over the tiny piece of paper Emily had handed her earlier, the words washing over her like some tidal wave, drowning her in emotions too terrifying to admit. I held her hand the tighter, she reads and she smiles; Still in her Eye, the Violets lie, she reads and punctuates with a deep breath and when she reaches the end, the Sue – Forevermore, she’s aware of an awful keening in her throat, of the sob waiting to make its way out. Emily, Emily, her heart sings, and she is sure it will never shut up again)

She thinks of Emily the whole time, through the vows and the subsequent cheers, as they make their way into the house; thinks of her when Austin holds her tight and tells her that he loves her. A quiet voice, the sound of her guilt crawls up from inside her to tell him that she loves him too. She may be his in name, but her heart isn’t hers to give away anymore.

*****

Seven. That’s how many days she steals glances at Sue in the library before they talk again.

Monday, 9 am: The librarian’s just gotten started with her morning coffee, which means that Emily can sneak her own breakfast past her bleary eyes without being detected. She gets the books that she wants off the shelf, makes her way to her usual chair at the very back of the room and settles in. Her bag gets hooked to her chair by the straps, the tiny diary, her faithful companion, finds a place beside the humongous book, and the coffee sits next to her breakfast burrito. After the entire process is done, she stretches her legs, leans back, looks up and freezes.

Sue is seated on a nearby desk, staring at her.

Emily looks away, on reflex. Her heartrate’s up, and her palms suddenly feel clammy. She takes a deep breath, takes in the floor, and tells herself she’s seeing things. Surely, there’s no way the girl of her dreams also goes to her college and it absolutely isn’t possible that she’s sitting in front of her, in the flesh. She readies herself, looks again.

Sue’s still looking at her, now amused as well.

Well. There go her studies.

Tuesday, 8:50 am: Her plan is foolproof. There is no way she will be caught off guard again. She will be first to the library this time, and she will be prepared when Sue walks in, ready to impress her with her overall charm and chill-ness. There will — not — be a repeat of yesterday when she’d spent the better part of two hours hyperventilating, stealing secret looks or straight up going red every time Sue caught her eye and smiled at her.

The librarian hasn’t even started eating yet. Her head’s resting on the desk, and her eyes are tiny slits, when Emily runs in, makes her way to her own seat. Sue’s seat is empty, thankfully.

(Emily totally does not punch the air in celebration, startling a few other sleepy students)

She stretches out her arms, places them behind her head and waits.

And then jumps about a feet in the air when a hand brushes her shoulder.

There are multiple things happening all at once — the gentle hand resting on her shoulder for a moment, a hand whose warmth she instinctively recognizes as being a familiar one, despite never having felt it before (she knows it’s her. There’s no other option. Nothing else could make the skin at the back of her neck prickle in anticipation), a faint, teasing whisper of “I thought we weren’t allowed to eat in here”, and the realization that her plan has woefully failed.

(Why, then, does she feel so happy about it?)

Sue passes by, turning back once to shoot her a quick grin, and then settles into her usual chair, opening the book already present on the desk in front of her.

Emily’s jaw stays on the floor. The state of her heart stays up in the air.

Wednesday, 9:00 am: Sue opens the note Emily’s just chucked her, reads it, and smirks.

Emily waits. It had been an impetuous decision to scribble “Waffle?” onto a scrap of paper she’d torn out of her notebook, when Sue had looked at her earlier, but it’s alright. These are matters of the heart, and matters of the heart require at least 25 percent an attitude of ‘Ah, fuck it’, another 25 percent of run-of-the-mill stupidity, and 45 percent the ability to laugh at your own shenanigans.

Oh, and about 6 percent bad math.

She catches the crumpled-up note that comes sailing through the air in return and opens it up. “I was taught not to accept food from strangers”, is written in beautiful cursive, along with a smiley face.

(A smiley face. A smiley face!)

Thursday, 9:10 am: She writes — “You know, I am named after one of the best American poets, and your name coincides with the name of her ultimate love and muse. Some would say we’ve known each other a long time” — and slides it over to Sue, heart in her throat.

Twenty seconds later, the sound of Sue’s clear laughter rings out in the otherwise quiet place, and Emily is so enchanted she nearly falls off her chair.

(She hands off half of the breakfast burrito to Sue when she passes by to grab another book, and Sue’s grateful smile just about makes her day)

Friday, 9:00 am: The book she usually grabs to pore over is already sitting on the desk in front of her usual chair. After Emily’s done waving hi to Sue, and has settled down, she notices the tiny flap of paper poking out of the first page. Tucked in the corner is a tiny note.

“As an English major, this is your game, isn’t it? Using words to impress people? :P”

It doesn’t take her long to compose a reply.  

“First of all, how dare you? Second, is it working?”

Sue covers her face with her hands when she opens it. Emily counts it as a win.

Saturday, 8:50 am: The poor boy who has been sitting in the next row all week finally loses it after they’ve exchanged their fifteenth et of notes for the day.

“Can you people, like, just text like the rest of us, for fuck’s sake?”

When the rest of the people surrounding them nod in agreement, Emily sinks into her chair, catches Sue’s equally embarrassed gaze from across the room, and resists the urge to laugh like an idiot.

Sunday, 10 am: The morning’s been hell.

Austin had been panicking about some test he had on Monday, and so she’d come in to help out at the café, early morning. Between quizzing him on his flashcards and making sure every customer had a full cup in front of them, Emily completely lost track of time until Lavinia dragged her apron off her.

“What?” she’d asked, bewildered.

The clock was pointed out to her.

(No, she does not leave an outline of her body behind when she dashes out of the café. There is, however, a mad moment when she’s pretty sure her legs are scrambling with her body still at rest. It is pretty comical nonetheless)

From the entrance she sees a couple of things on her desk, and is a little miffed. Clearly, somebody else has claimed this prime spot with a vantage point from where she could stare at the most interesting woman in the world all day. And yet, she approaches it, because the chair is empty.

The book catches her eye first. It’s a copy of Hope is the thing with feathers by her namesake, and it’s got a note with a familiar handwriting peeking out of the top. She reads, delighted, a haiku about fruit and tenderness that’s been scribbled on it. And then she gets to what’s lying next to the book — what seems to be a sandwich, wrapped carefully in foil. She touches it. It’s cold, as though it’s been waiting there a while.

The smile on her face is definitely a permanent fixture now, she decides, as she walks over to where Sue is sitting and pretending to not look over. Her heart’s tripping over with delight, with gratitude with something tender that she’s absolutely sure she hasn’t felt before. Hope is the thing with feathers, indeed and it is perched in her soul. She pulls out the chair next to hers, and sits down.

“Thank you,” she says, quietly, and swears to god she can hear the entire table go Fucking finally — before Sue shoots her a small smile.

*****

“Only you would show up at a party looking like a raccoon,” she tells Emily, exasperated.

(And enamored. And besotted. Emily makes an adorable raccoon)

“I’m not here for the party — I’m here for you,” Emily shoots back, defiant. “As long as I can still see, I wanna look at you.”

And oh, there it is. There’s the Emily she knows, saying words that slide into her chest as easily as their hands go together. Words are Emily’s deadliest weapons, and she wields them to inflict sheer havoc.

Isn’t that just it, though? Emily has no idea. No idea what it does to her to have her this close — with their foreheads pressed to each other’s, their noses a whisper away, with Emily surrounding her, taking every one of her senses and carving her name on them. Sue feels a hand on her hair, then on her cheek, and knows she’s this close to losing any bit of self-control she might have had.

She steps away, composes herself, and thinks, Shakespeare was right. Parting is such sweet sorrow.

*****

“You might as well have ditched us,” Lavinia grumps.

“What?” Emily blinks, momentarily distracted from whatever text she was in the middle of shooting off to Sue. “Oh.”

“Not cool, dude,” Austin chimes in from the other side. They’re smushed into the couch together, planted in front of the screen where some 80s movie is on. It’s a weekend, which means movie nights filled with chicken wings and some dreadful drink that Austin’s invented that he calls the Faustinator, because.... reasons, apparently. And Emily’s just now realizing that she has no idea what the movie even is because she’s spent most of her time texting Sue. “You’re texting your sweetheart lameass cringy shit.”

“How do you know what I’m texti— Austin, stop reading over my shoulder!”

(She conveniently ignores the sweetheart thing. It’s easier than the alternative, which would be to dwell too much on the possibility of Sue being her sweetheart, and Emily being Sue’s and oh — she can feel herself smiling again.)

“Believe me, it isn’t easy on me,” he snarks. “Two months of talking our heads off about Sue, Sue, Sue and free drinks for Sue, Sue, Sue and pining over—”

“It has not been that long!”

“Lavinia?” he asks.

“Two months, two weeks and four days,” Lavinia tells her, flatly. “That’s how long we’ve had to hear about how you know her and that you’re convinced she is the love of your life.”

“I do.... know her,” she trails off, uncertain. It’s one matter to think it and feel it, like she’s felt the absurd familiarity in her bones every time she hears Sue’s voice, or Sue touches her skin, and sets it on fire. Another matter entirely to set about explaining it. Plus, other, unrelated things, like how reading Emily Dickinson’s poems feel like a friendly little nudge someone’s giving her, an inside joke, or why sometimes she feels so, so much that she would burst if she didn’t write that very moment.

“She walks you to class most days from the library.”

“And she’s been coming to the café every other day, and listening to you rant about random things,” Austin chimes in.

“Didn’t she write Emily a couple of poems as well?”

“Hey, that’s,” she starts, pauses, smiles. “Yeah. I, uh, told her nobody had ever written me anything before, and she — she’s really sweet.”

“Honey,” Lavinia says, gently, “the woman’s in love with you.”

“Oh-kay!” Emily jumps up from the couch and announces her intention to get more popcorn. And the pokes her head out from around the corner, and asks, in the tiniest voice.

“Really?”

Two chips come flying in her direction, and then they can’t stop laughing.

*****

There’s a kind of truth in the life she lives when she’s alone; no one to defer to, no one to explain to why she doesn’t want children or why, even after a couple of months of a blissful wedlock with Amherst’s most eligible ex-bachelor, the smile slides off her face as easily as the fruit punch in her parties off the plates. And then there’s the second kind that has to be dragged out of her — with heaving breath and shaking hands and salt dripped out of her eyes. Honesty that scalds and tears up her inside as it makes its way out of her.

(It’s a particular bit of irony in the fact that Emily is both the cause, and the only one who ever gets to witness the fallout, of the second one)

“Emily, I love you.” she says, like Emily’s put her arms down her throat and is ripping the words out of her. “I love you, and, and I felt you in the library — because you’re always with me.”

There’s a moment of complete, utter silence, when she stares at Emily and Emily stares back at her and the space between them is filled with the distance of lies and fury — and then they crash together. It’s an impossible push and pull, and Sue feels, for the first time in weeks, this complete surrender, abandon of all inhibition. Love tastes like Emily, and it feels like drowning and sounds like the tiny noise Emily makes when they part, like she can’t stand to be away even a second longer. All of what she knows about love is Emily.

If Sue could write, this is what she’d put down on paper: the feel of Emily’s neck beneath her hand, the way she melts when Sue wraps an arm around her. This yearning to be closer, the hunger to consume and the reluctance towards stopping. She wants, so badly to do Emily the same honor of immortalizing her in the form of words — she deserves it. The world deserves to know how she felt about this.... miracle, this angel in her arms. More than anything else, Emily deserves to know how Sue feels about her.

She turns to her side, kisses Emily’s hand once, twice. “I will never let go of you again.”

*****

Life is an endless sea of pain.

“Emily, she’s just a girl,” Austin tells her, then immediately flinches as Lavinia whacks him on the head.

Emily wipes away the moisture from her face with the sleeve of her favorite oversized hoodie, sniffles, and sticks her spoon in the tub of ice-cream again.

“Not to pry,” Lavinia starts, hesitantly, “but we still have no idea what happened. You came running into my room a week ago and haven’t stopped crying since. I guess — I guess we just want to know what’s up.”

Emily sighs. “It’s Sue.”

Austin blinks at her. “Yeah I — I mean, we know that.”

She thinks back to Sunday morning when she’d come upon her favorite restaurant while out on a run. The sight of Sue, sitting there with some.... dude. It was a cozy booth, and the way the guy seemed to be smiling in Sue’s direction couldn’t be construed as anything but romantic.  

“A date?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re telling us this is because you thought Sue was on a date?”

What wasn’t clicking? “Sue was on a date. There were flowers on the table and everything.”

“And that’s why you haven’t been returning her calls or texts? And have expressly forbidden us to tell her where you are when she comes into the café, like, everyday?”

Emily shifts. “Yes?”

Lavinia whacks her on the head.  

“Ow,” Emily groans. “What’s with all the violence?”

“Oh, stop it, you big baby. Now,” she took a deep breath, and Emily knew instinctively a huge lecture was incoming, “let’s examine the facts, shall we?”

“Is there any point in refus—”

“No. So, you like this girl, and it seems like she likes you too. But you refuse to do anything about it, like, you know, maybe admitting it to her. Then, you come upon her having lunch with some random dude and you assume it’s a date, and then freak out about it and cut her off.”

“But I’m pretty sure it was a date!”

“Fine! Okay! It was a date! So what? You expect her to hang around waiting for you to get your shit together, what, forever? And what if she doesn’t like you, god, Emily! I—”

“Okay, okay, wait!” she cuts in, holds up a hand to gather her thoughts. “I — I get what you’re saying, okay? I really do.”

“I know I have no right to be angry. She doesn’t owe me anything — I just. I dunno. I thought we had something. But even if that wasn’t the case,” she scrambles to add, “I guess I’m just taking pre-emptive action. To not get hurt. I can’t stick around and watch her fall in love with someone else, okay? I just. I can’t.”

Austin pats her on the back, and she sinks into his arm. This, of all things, is true. There are a multitude of things in life she has had to bear, and that she has borne, but this — watching Sue slowly fall in love with someone else, would be unbearable.  

She has another spoonful of ice cream. “I’m being an asshole, aren’t I?”

“A little bit, yeah,” Lavinia agrees. “But give yourself a break — you’re in love. It turns everyone a little bonkers.”

“It’s fucked.”

“No!” Austin and Lavinia tell her, together, before Lavinia continues, “Listen, I think you should talk to Sue.”

“Pretty sure she hates me now.”

“If she does, then go and face it. Honestly, though, I think you owe it to her, and also to yourself, to explain your side of things.”

“I’d literally rather die.”

“Then go do your dying in the fucking library. It’s almost ten, anyways.”

*****

She can still feel Emily’s teeth on her collarbone, can still wrap an arm around herself and trace the marks Emily’s fingers have left on her, when Sue announces that she’s trying to write a poem.

Emily throws off the sheets from her body, and turns so their heads are close. Sue’s sitting at the end of the bed, wrapped in sheets herself, eyes closed. She opens them when Emily’s nose nudges against her cheek.

“You are?” she asks, hand already playing with Sue’s hair, and Sue nods. “What’s it about?”

Sue cannot stop herself rolling her eyes. “Guess.”

“Is it,” Emily asks, teasingly, “about me?”

“Maybe.”

There’s a delighted gasp from her paramour, and she can feel a small kiss pressed to her temple. “I want to read it.”

“Only when it’s done.”

“And when will it be done?”

She turns to look right at Emily now. “I’m not sure it ever will.”

When Emily kisses her — every time Emily kisses her, Sue adds a line to the poem in her head. She’s running out of words to express joy, passion and beauty, at this point.

“The romance of it all,” Emily remarks, pretending to swoon. “This way I will live on through your words as well, after I die.”

Sue frowns, feels her lips automatically pull down at the corners. “No talking about death.”

“But we will die, darling,” Emily explains, patiently. “I can only hope that I die first.”

“How — how dare you?” she asks, indignant. “I’m going to try my very best to be the one to go.”

(That one spurs an argument that goes on four rounds before either of the participants admit defeat)

“How about,” Emily starts, ponderously. “Whoever dies first comes back around the next time and finds the other?”

Sue can’t stop the smile. The thought is so whimsical, it drives their previous non-argument right out of her head.

“You think we’ll come back someday, years after our deaths?”

“Try and stop me,” Emily declares, fondly. “Susan Gilbert, I will always — always find you.”

Sue closes her eyes, feels Emily’s lips ghost over her cheek and tries to imagine the thought of the two of them, years from now, sitting side by side, hand in hand. Breathes deeply to stop the sudden onslaught of tears the image evokes.

“My foolish sweetheart,” she says, after she’s composed herself. “I love you.”

This is what she’ll put in words — Emily next to her, head tilted downwards, turned towards her. In about a minute, she’ll start complaining of the blood rushing to her brain, and Sue, exasperated, will tell her to sit straight. She’ll write about the light that falls on the edge of Emily’s nose, the one crooked tooth all the way in the corner, the tiny scar on her brow. About the way their hands lock into each other’s, how there’s a space on her neck made perfectly in the mould of Emily’s head — two girls, sitting next to each other, together into an eternity, and beyond.

*****

The first time Emily sees Sue after a week-long absence, she’s just run into the library and crashed into a nearby bench, thus bringing down a student, two books, and herself. She gets up almost immediately, sees Sue staring at the sight of her, wide-eyed, and thinks — Oh. Found you.

There’s an empty seat next to Sue, and on the desk lies an apple. Emily approaches her, and touches the back of her shoulder lightly.

“Can I sit here?” she asks.

“I don’t know.” Sue answers, not looking at her. “Can you?”

Emily has to bite at her lip to keep in the wild laughter that threatens to erupt. It’s not just the quip, either. It’s Sue — seeing her after these many days of zero contact feels like a drug, and she breathes it in, greedily. She pulls the chair out, and sits down on it.

“So,” she starts, then trails off.

“So,” Sue mimics, not unkindly.

“It may have been brought to my attention that I’ve been a bit of an idiot.”

“Only a bit?” Sue raises an eyebrow, leans back where she’s sitting.

Well. “More than a bit,” she amends. “I’ve been an idiot. A dumbass. An utter fool. A rake. A rogue of the highest order.”

Sue tells her she agrees. Then — “You wanna tell me why?”

“I saw you and, um, some guy. On your date that day over at the Plantain Leaf?”

Sue stares. For the longest time. “You ghosted me for a week because you saw me out to lunch with a guy? Emily that is so—”

“I know!” she says, then gets shushed by the people sitting around them. She consciously lowers her voice when she speaks next. “I know, Sue. I was being an asshole, I just — felt complicated about.... things.”

“Things?”

“Yeah. Like — feelings. And stuff.”

She sees Sue stifle a smile, and feels a little bit of life come back into her hands.

“What about your feelings?”

“Well,” Emily says, pauses, then comes out with a masterpiece of an explanation, “I have them.”  

Then covers her face with her hands, because why? It hasn’t even been ten minutes, and she’s already started messing things up.

“I mean — I have feelings. For you.”

She chances a look up at Sue, after a minute of that incredibly earth-shattering revelation, and stays held in place by the intensity of her gaze. Sue’s eyes are soft, large, and Emily wants to do something stupid, like bury her face in her hands again.

“You do?” Sue asks her, in the tiniest voice possible. Like she can’t believe it. Like Emily has done an awful job of wearing her whole heart out on her sleeve the past couple of months.

“Yeah,” she replies, and finds her voice is equally tiny. “Good ones.” The kind that have me convinced we knew each other a couple decades ago, that I have heard your voice in my dreams all my life, that I’ve been waiting for you for turn a corner and walk into my life this whole while. And if not this time, I’ll wait a couple decades more for you to love me back. “And it’s okay if you’re dating that guy, I just — I thought you should know. That’s all.”

Sue lets out a shuddering breath. “I’m not dating Sam.”

Oh.

So turns out Emily had been holding her breath.

Ants are crawling all over her body. To combat them, Emily picks up the object nearest to her, which happens to be the apple.

“Is that for me?”

Sue nods. “You owe me the six sandwiches I got you this entire week,” she adds, teasingly.

Elation fills Emily until she imagines she’s probably floating a few inches above the ground, buoyed by this tiny admission of caring on Sue’s part. Whoever had said all those things about love had been right. It really was.... something different altogether.

“You’re telling me you sat here and read Emily Dickinson all week, waiting for a girl to show up?”

A light blush lights up Sue, and she leans forward a little bit. “Not just a girl,” she tells her, seriously. “I waited for Emily, who was named after this poet whose work I’ve really come to like. Emily, who I’m pretty sure I’m falling in love with.”

Oh dear God.

They’re closer together now, their heads almost touching; Emily imagines them in a world of their own, separate from the rest of this library. She pretends to scoff.

“What? You don’t think a lot of Emily?”

“I think I can write better,” she declares.

“You think you can—” Sue starts, then lets out a laugh. “Emily, shut up.”

And then they’re suddenly kissing, and each and every cell in Emily gathers somewhere near her chest to rejoice together, every beat of her heart falls and arranges in the shape of a song, and time just kind of. Slows down. Pauses. Stops.

Emily thinks she knows what a volcano feels like, now. When she’ll go home, later, she’ll sit at her writing desk, pen down a poem about lovers and hands and two women sitting with their heads close together; maybe put in a fruit or two. And tiny pieces will come together in her head, just like the ones in her chest that crumble every time Sue looks at her.  

But right now, she closes her eyes, feels poetry on her lips, and it is good enough.

[rekkingcrew]

Campaign Debrief

So for nearly 2 years I ran an Edge of the Empire campaign with 3-4 players, mostly weekly. These last couple of months we’ve been using discord, which has gone great. I want to get down some of my thoughts about what worked and what didn’t. 

This is gonna be a big wall of text and all but two bits are gonna be under the cut: system and play style. 

Fantasy Flight Star Wars game system is legit my favorite system EVER. (Not to dick wave or anything, but that’s including D&Ds 2-5, Gurps, White Wolf, Blades in the Dark, Dungeon World, Deadlands, and a few miscellaneous other short form ones). The system of advantages and disadvantages, and especially triumphs and despairs rather than just straight successes and failures really opens up complex narrative opportunities and gives a chance for wild story beats that just would not have happened otherwise. The fights go fast but feel meaty and there’s a lot of room to pitch advantages to your friends so you’re not just waiting your turn. Character creation is granular enough that your choices always feel meaningful, and points can be spent anywhere, so you can really specialize and shape your character. 

We played very collaboratively and it made things AMAZING. Part of this is that we were all good friends and have played together for a while now. Our taste in what kind of story we want is similar- nuggets of drama scattered throughout, but mostly cutting up. A lot of the best NPCs and story suggestions came from my players rather than from me- our season one boss villain, Imperial spymaster “Uncle” Karston Severax, a pantoran ex-special forces black operative whose current public face was a Mr. Rogers-esque children’s TV presenter, for example, was someone my players started out and all of us collective “yes and” added to around the table, and he was JUST THE BEST. These kind of exchanges also gave us moments like the time our tech tried to blackmail the head of a security corporation with the fact that he was having an affair and he’d written just LOADS of incredibly cringey fanfiction; but the roll was such that the attempt ended with him finally getting the push he needed to quit a job he hated, get out of a marriage that just wasn’t working, and follow his dream of self-publishing. He even dedicated his first book to our slicer. Because it wasn’t a DM vs Players atmosphere, because we were all on the same page, I could ask my players “hey, what do you want for your triumph?” and “all right, so who is the NPC you know?” as well as just “that’s enough to finish this guy, what does this look like?” This campaign was 1000% better for sharing that world building load, and the players were all, I think, more invested. 

more below the cut. 

What Worked

One of the most useful things I ever did was start giving players morality pet NPCs that were their special hench people, and I’m embarrassed that I waited so long to assign one to our droid. 

The zero session was absolutely invaluable in setting the tone of the game and the relationship between characters, and I will bang this drum until I’m fucking blue in the face. Don’t meet in the first session. Sit the players down and say “how do you know each other, why do you stay together, what are some of your past adventures?” It’s just so much better. 

Cameos and ties to our other games, in what we’ve been calling “The Drax Kreiger Expanded Universe” have continued to be welcome pretty much every time. People were delighted to have a moment or two to slip back into old characters. 

I was able to identify what each player wanted and give them that. Brick’s player wanted quiet scenes with big character emotion, like his one on one pit fight the character didn’t want to have, or the letter from his mother telling him how proud she was of him, or the time in training where he tapped into how angry he really was and it spooked the character and everyone on the ship. Nyla’s player wanted a big epic, but also difficult space journey of good vs. evil, and so Nyla got a padawan whose parents she had possibly killed when she fought for the empire, she dug up the grave of her clone teacher’s order 66′d jedi for the crystal for her lightsaber, she got to cleanse a temple that was trapped in a fruitless struggle between light and dark, and a climactic lightsaber battle that was about possibly sacrificing herself for the good of others. TK’s player was deep into star wars trivia and space stuff, so he practically squealed when Verpine shatter weapons showed up, and he seemed to get a kick out of the Evocii, and also that time they put on wing suits and dove the atmosphere of a gas giant. It’s worth noting nobody was actually all that interested in the thing that turns my gears: complex mysteries with a lot of clues and investigation, and once I let that shit drop, things ran a lot smoother. 

Some of our best stuff was non-combat challenges, like climbing the cliffs of Naboo or navigating the deep undercity of Nar Shadaa. The guys reliably failed anything social, but environmental challenges were always appreciated. 

I always tried to make sure there was more than one way to do things. For any given mission, especially early on, I’d try to brainstorm at least three ways something could be accomplished. 

My party split up a LOT, but we found a sort of cinematic cutting back and forth to be really useful. When there was a big crit, or a goal accomplished, or something like that, we’d jump to the other party even if the fight wasn’t over. Sometimes that was only just, like, Brick and the guys doing drunk karaoke and saying to no one in particular “MAN, I hope Nyla’s having as fun a time as we are!” but it kept everyone involved and it wasn’t just people waiting their turn for 20 minutes at a time. Also people chimed in with fun advantages and disadvantages. 

I had everybody write backstories and whenever I could, I incorporated in things from what they’d written. Our second season was basically TK tracking down the guy who’d made him, a Thackwash alien with the same sort of shifting personalities he had. TK’s player hadn’t written much about the guy except that he’d been a salvage mechanic who constructed TK for protection when he got in trouble with the local mafia. Giving that guy complementary personalities for each of TK’s really helped stick the landing on that one, and the player really enjoyed having actually completed his character’s goal. 

It’s worth saying, we took some time at several points during the campaign, either individually or as a group, to talk about what we liked and didn’t, what we wanted more of, where we wanted things to go, possible directions for characters, mechanical issues, how to have a better game, group dynamics, all sorts of stuff. In a way it’s like sex: people have this fucked up expectation that you’ll just be good at it without communicating, and man, fuck that. Talking to my players was ALWAYS worthwhile.

I was always adamant, because it was a thing that bugged me when I was a player, that if a character had spent the points to be good at something, they got to be good at it. That made some things difficult, but I think it was the right decision. It took me a while to tailor fights right, and honestly a lot of times, splitting up the party was the best way to balance fights, but I never said to anyone hey that thing you spent all those points on, could you please not do that?

My players were excellent about encouraging each other to have serious dramatic moments. TK was completely ready to die in a fight, and when he lost a significant chunk of his programming, the way he chose to play it was really heartbreaking. Everyone came inside and had tea with Brick’s mom. No one stepped on anyone else’s fun when it was time to be serious, and everybody was great about cheering each other on, whether they were being funny or being dead serious. 

I FUCKING FINISHED A CAMPAIGN. IT HAD AN END. So much stuff petered out over the years, I was adamant I wasn’t going to do that. 

What Didn’t Work

Boy, my players had pretty much all the trouble trying to remember to use “they/them” pronouns for NPCs with neutral or alien genders. 

No one is interested in falling damage. Sigh. 

I did not keep good track of money or ship fuel or anything. The campaign didn’t end up relying on it too heavily (I was honestly expecting a much more Cowboy Bebop setup than where we drifted), but that was an area I kind of fell down. 

We never really got obligation working correctly and in the end we just ended up abandoning it. We kept doing the force morality because the lone force player was very into it and it was a huge part of that character’s journey, but for the rest having people show up to collect on obligation was sometimes not possible in the story- or if it was possible it was pretty cumbersome. Campaign did obligation by arc, and I think that’s a pretty useful way to do it- roll at the end of the arc for what’s coming next. 

Early on, I made way too many assumptions about what was an adventure hook for my players and what was an annoyance. Honestly, bits of this lasted pretty late. At one point I gave my players a spy for the larger rebellion they could totally talk to- he was even working with their resident bothan spy- but they looked at the senatorial assassination he was doing and literally said at the table “I think it’s best if we just walk away from all this.” And so they did. Which was frustrating, but, you know, it is what it is. They also never much cared about the hutt gang war. 

I let a lot of things drop that I would have liked to bring back before the end, but in all honesty, I think we were all running a bit out of steam. I would have liked to put in Brick’s old mentor, or follow up with the imperial governor that was a falleen in a human skin suit, or see more of the bounty hunter’s guild, or have a nice end thing with our bothan spy, or any of that. But I do think it was time to end it. And we followed the threads people liked. 

I had way too many NPCS.

What sort of worked

I had like 200 npcs and they were not all bangers. In particular, I let the party design their own ship, which I wish had played a bigger role (though it did really set the tone), and I let them design 2 npc crew who would fill in any party roles they didn’t want to play and guard the ship so they could go on adventures without worrying about it. The devaronian scoundrel was with the party to the end though I never really got him to be more than a joke, but the bothan spy kind of fell off, and while she made some appearances, she didn’t really have as big an impact as I would have hoped. She kind of got replaced by Nyla’s padawan, a hench mon calamari called Nezrene, who was a better fit with the party. But, you know, players will do what they like.

Factions. In the first bit of the campaign, my factions were a fucking life saver, because I could design scenarios with a sort of “what is each faction doing/ which faction hurts from this, which benefits?” By the second season we’d kind of abandoned them to go to the core, and by the third my group was solidly rebel, so the hutts and bounty hunters fell a lot by the wayside. I still think having a couple of broad poles of power, and having the players know them and their leaders, is a good call. But they do seem to kind of organically pare down on their own, and it’s easy to get caught up too much in them. Useful sorta?

There was definitely a point where my players just were not challenged by conventional challenges. We ended up doing most of the later fights that involved a lot of minions in montage. I’d have them roll their fight skills unopposed, just to see if they got any interesting advantage/triumph set ups. I still had boss fights that were mostly challenging, but there just was no point in throwing storm troopers or low level gangsters at them. Not when they have soak 8 and autofire, and that one talent that lets you kill every minion in a combat. Designings fight got a bit tricky, and in those big high level combats, despairs and triumphs come up a lot more and really sway the fight, which I like, but also it’s very hard to plan for. 

Mass combat was tricky. I did a lot of it toward the end because my players were generals in a rebellion. I always had them do the rolls and some of the narration, but that wasn’t always enough to make them feel like things weren’t very arbitrary. 

I personally love the rule that if you roll a despair shooting into an engaged combat you shoot your friend. Nyla, who got shot twice this way, does not. 

We started the game with a tech character who dropped out. Toward the end, we picked up another tech character whose player couldn’t do their regular stuff because of covid lock down. Neither of these characters could fight at all, and both were very differently oriented than the rest of the party, and that was tricky to manage. Additionally, the dude coming in at the end had like a year and a half of in jokes he did not get and there were 200 goddamn npcs. I tried to give him the lowdown on what he might have heard about the party, but it was a combination of too much information and not that much player interest. He did get to break a star destroyer though, and I think he liked that. 

I offered players XP to write backstory stuff, and later goodbye notes others could find if they kicked it. Not all of them did. In the end it made a negligible difference, and I still think offering the bounties on this is basically a good idea. 

What I would do different next time.

Three ring binder that opens and closes so I could move fucking NPC stats around. I filled two goddamn school notebooks with notes for this campaign and there were so many goddamn times I was like “I KNOW I wrote this down, but where?!”

Players felt a bit aimless when they didn’t have a specific villain. I’d planted a few in, but they took finding, or they were too easy to avoid. Next time I would have a few more people who were actively on my player’s tails. 

I would keep better campaign notes and/or ask one of the players to do so. I used to do recaps for the games when I played Rek. There’s stuff I KNOW I’ve forgotten, and more I’ll forget as time goes on, which is a shame. It’s a weird, ephemeral medium, but possibly I’m just spoiled by living in an age of easy reproduction and enormous storage where data is concerned. 

Better book keeping in general, really. 

When I did a mystery short, I wrote up a list of all the clues people could find but not where specifically they were, so that I could just jam them anywhere they seemed like they’d make sense whenever a roll called for a player to find something. I think I’d try to do that with player’s personal stories so they could be woven in a little better. I did a lot of flying by the seat of my pants. 

All in all, I’m pretty happy with how it went, and I’m ready to get back to playing for a bit. I loved DMing, and I more or less DMed the game I would have liked to play, but man, doing this all the time, or being the only person who does it? After a while, that’d be a lot, and I’m looking forward to the break. 

[go-diane-winchester]

5 Reasons why Supernatural is not queer baiting you [and is not stuck in the closet]

This is an edited repost.

Interpretation of any piece of art and literature is one of the fun aspects of being human.  You use your imagination to analyze a loved work from every angle so as to increase your pleasure of said work.  However, if you present your interpretation as if it is a fact, and it results in harassment, bullying and threats for actors involved in a show, then it becomes a problem.  Why do some fans accuse Supernatural of queer baiting, whilst others are vehemently opposed?  Why is it not a universal argument in fandom?  It is because the former don’t admit that their interpretations are just that: interpretation.  Bi Dean arguments have no basis in canon, and proponents of Bi Dean in fact refuse to acknowledge canonical oppositions to their interpretations.  The vehement opposers of Bi Dean actually respect canon.  Truth is universal and canon is truth. 

1.  Dean was not born from gratuitously bisexual inspiration

As a fiction writer myself, I know that an original character is not easy to put together.  You have to do a character analysis [I believe in using a homemade template, myself], character background [because it should shape what the character becomes in the current canon] and formulation of their physical attributes as well as wardrobe.  I, in fact, include things like medical history and diet choices in my own template to get a feel for the character that I want.  But every writer is different and chooses a different approach.  Eric Kripke had a clear idea of what he wanted his characters to be.

For the character personalities

Kripke wanted them to be like Han Solo and Luke Skywalker.  Han Solo was a cavalier renegade who had no respect for authority and fits in with Dean’s overall personality.  Dean doesn’t care if he is talking to an FBI agent, a priest or even his own father.  If you say something wrong, he will correct you and he has done that in canon.  If you have given him a reason to hate you, trust Dean to let you know, right to your face.  Dean doesn’t kiss up to authority.  He is the quintessential bad boy. 

Luke Skywalker is the polar opposite of Han.  He does things by the book.  He wears his heart on his sleeve and shows more empathy and emotion than his counterpart Han.  Sam is all of this and, like Luke, gives off an air of innocence, and sporadically the viewer feels the need to protect him because of said innocence.  Despite the fact that Sam has grown up and out of his chocolate boy features,  he still remains the quintessential good boy. 

There are many tropes at play here that fiction writers cling to.  The polar opposite trope is favored because it provides room for friction.  Imagine how Supernatural would be, if Dean and Sam just agreed with each other all the time.  It would make for bland viewing.  Sometimes they are on the same page.  Some times they aren’t.  Polarizing characters make for more vivid story telling and [particularly in our fandom] forces you to pick a side.  In other words, it keeps you invested in the characters.  The polar opposite trope can also be used for two enemies who are stuck in the same situation.  And in some cases, one of them is the overall baddie in the story.  It is not just a friendship trope.

Another well known trope that is being used here, is the much-loved buddy formula.  The buddy formula is used by a lot by screenwriters, because it is so popular with audiences, and can share similarities with the polar opposite trope.  Essentially the buddy formula contains two characters and even though they may be polar opposites, they tend to have a deep affection for each other.  Cagney and Lacey, Riggs and Murtaugh, Thelma and Louis and finally, Sam and Dean are example thereof. 

At this juncture, I would like to laughingly point out that Bi Dean advocates will cling to Thelma and Louis as proof of bi dean, because of the possible lesbian subtext.  Stop right there.  I watched Thelma and Louis, and I felt that they were fed up friends, almost sisters who didn’t want to live in the world any more.  I didn’t see any subtext.  If you did, good for you.  It increases your viewing pleasure.  However, as a straight woman, I have my own interpretation and it is just as significant as yours.  Hilariously, Sam and Dean have referred to themselves as Thelma and Louis.  So you cant use that to proof Dean is bi, because essentially you will be proving wincest. 

The difference between the buddy formula and the polar opposite trope is the affection that is inherently mixed into the buddy formula.  Buddies are more affectionate with each other.  In one of the Lethal Weapon movies, Riggs walks into Murtaugh’s kitchen, plants a kiss on Mrs Murtaugh’s cheek, walks up to Murtaugh and nonchalantly plants a kiss on his cheek as well, before going to raid the food storage.  Murtaugh doesn’t react negatively.  That scene was added for many reasons but there are two important reasons:  [1] to show the affection between the two, which is platonic [2] to get a laugh out of the audience by showing how irritatingly unaware Riggs is, that Murtaugh is angry with him. 

Murtaugh even “sensed” that Riggs was drowning and saved him, telling Riggs “I heard you, Riggs.  I heard you, baby.’‘  Yes, that is an actual line from Lethal Weapon and it proves that they love each other.  How you perceive their love is up to you.  Affectionate name calling is used in the buddy formula and is also apparent in Sam and Dean’s interaction as well. 

Is Cas an affectionate shortening of the name Castiel?  Both Dean and Sam call him Cas?  Maybe.  Or it maybe because the name Castiel doesn’t syllabically roll off the tongue.  It’s an ancient name and for modern day Sam and Dean, saying the full name is verbally cumbersome.  So they opted for Cas.  If the shortening of the name means Dean is in love with Cas, then it easily means Sam is in love with Cas too.  Oddly, despite the character name of Samuel being shortened to Sam, by Dean so it will roll of the tongue during a conversation, Dean actually adds a syllable and called him Sammy out of affection.  So for Sammy, the ’'name is too long and cumbersome’' excuse flies out the window.  Sammy gets used even when Dean is in a hurry, angry or affectionate.  It is a part of his personal lexicon.     

For the character backdrop

Part of Kripke’s logline for Supernatural and its backdrop included “Star Wars in truck stop America,”.  Another trope comes into play here:  The fish out of water.  In earlier seasons, the studious and preppy Sam clashed with the dustbowl Americana surroundings and its people.  Dean fit in.  Dean is salt of the earth.  Sam is more aware of the world beyond the dustbowl Americana because he is an intellectual.  Another part of the logline was ’'X Files meets Route 66”.  Route 66 is about two guys [Todd, the Yale graduate good boy and Buz, the street smart fighter bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks]  who go on a road trip across North America, encountering and solving social problems along the way, while trying to find a place to settle and find how they themselves fit into their world.  Kripke picked very accurate loglines for Supernatural, because Todd and Buz are exactly like Sam and Dean.  But they had names that Kripke didn’t like.  I don’t blame him. 

For the character names  

Bi Dean advocates always use the name Dean as being proof of Bi Dean.  Kripke chose both the names of his main characters from Jack Kerouac’s Beat Generation classic On the road.  it is not an LGBT classic.  It was a universal classic that just happened to have a bisexual character.  The characters were Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise.  That is all he took from the work.  He didn’t take the road trip idea from On the road.  He took it from Route 66.  Even the polarizing characters were taken from Route 66.  All he took was the names, and even then, he wasn’t happy with Sam’s previous name so he changed one alphabet.  He took nothing else.  And that is the one thing Bi Dean advocates cling to.  There is no unique similarity between On the road and Supernatural.  Or between Dean Winchester and Dean Moriarty, for that matter, other than one character sharing a name with another.  I can understand why he stuck with Dean.  The name just has an All-American ring to it.

Bi Dean advocates argue that the bisexual Dean Moriarity was inspired by a real bisexual man called Neal Cassidy.  What they fail to realize is that Moriarity and Cassidy were not only bisexual but also pedophiles.  Dean Winchester is not a pedophile. 

Don't dig into Kerouac’s character's backstory to try and prove that Dean from Supernatural is bi, whilst ignoring the backstory of Supernatural own formulation.  That is called over reaching, and some fans use this unsteady theory to threaten the leads and plant accusations of bigotry.  Jensen has received online abuse for this and his reputation is completely tarnished with accusations of homophobia.     

2.  Castiel’s wardrobe choice does not reflect on Dean’s sexual orientation

I remember watching a scene from That’s 70’s Show, where Fez confessed to having an erotic dream about Kelso.  Kelso is shocked and declares “Do you know what this means?  Its means I’m gay”.  This fandom is proof, that Kelso is not unique in his stupidity.  Our fandom has a rich supply of ignorance, conveniently shrouded in social justice, so that when you successfully contradict them, they can just call you a bigot and quieten you down. 

For Castiel, Kripke only took wardrobe inspiration from John Constantine, a famous bisexual character.  That is it.  He took nothing else.  Trenchcoats are wardrobe items and not a sign of an individual’s sexuality.  Constantine was bisexual.  Columbo was straight but also wore a trenchcoat.  There is no unique similarity between Castiel and Constantine.  Constantine is a man, an occult detective, a humanitarian and is best known for his sarcasm.  Does that sound like Castiel to you?  Castiel is an angel [a very useless one], a killer of many innocent people, a displacer of angels and very rarely says something mildly sarcastic.  And if the trench coat makes Castiel bi, how does that reflects on Dean? 

3.  Castiel’s sexual orientation is not complex, neither is it reflective of Dean’s sexuality

Castiel is not human, and therefore is not shackled by human limitations.  He is not even a “he”.  He doesn’t have any preferences, nor does he canonically have any sexual desire except for Meg, whom he willingly kissed.  But that might be borne out of his love for her and her relentless pursuit of him.  His bond with Meg was not sexual.  When he became human, sexual desire awoken in him and he slept with a woman merely because she hit on him and he was curious.    But he doesn’t do that in his angel state.  He doesn’t seek out sex in his angel state because he has no human, physical desire.  Canonically, he doesn’t even have a soul, so how he and Dean can be seen as soul mates baffles me.  Nobody else has relentlessly pursued Castiel accept Meg.  Dean hasn’t.  Dean kicked him out of the bunker despite the fact that he was vulnerable because Sam’s host Gadreel had a problem with him.  Dean doesn’t love Castiel, nor does Dean pursue him.  He looks for Sammy when Sammy is missing, but doesn’t do that for Castiel.  Dean doesn’t sympathize with Castiel’s pain, even telling Castiel once “nobody cares that you are broken”.

4.  Dean cannot, textually, be interpreted as a bisexual unless you relinquish common sense  

Most of the canon examples of bi dean can easily be explained away. 

Dean is not giving Charlie flirting pointers because he has hit on men before.  He is himself a man, and know what he wants to hear from a woman and what would get him interested or distracted.  By the end of the scene, both Dean and Charlie who like women and not men, felt dirty.  And Sammy laughed through the whole thing because he knew how uncomfortable his brother was.  Because Sammy, who was raised by Dean, knows his brother.  Dean wont keep his bisexuality from Sam, because he has no reason to.  Sam is not narrow-minded.

In the context of this scene, when Castiel just berated Dean, only a true intellectual maverick is going to think that Dean is inviting Castiel to a impromptu session of fellatio.  Because that would make sense for the whole vessel scene, wouldn’t it, geniuses.  For people, who are not soaked in delusion, Dean is countering Castiel’s berating with disrespect because he is angry.  I cant believe this needs to be explained because “blow me” is a popular colloquial slang, used to insult someone.  Have none of the bi dean advocates ever heard that term before?  Do they think “scr*w yourself” means “Go and masturbate right now”?  Which rock to they live under?

Dean is not flirting with the sheriff here.  He is drunk.  There is a reason, a drunk person’s testimony doesn’t fly in court.  You don’t take a drunk person seriously.  The deputy isn’t flirting back either.  He is just amused by the compliment which he didn’t earn or deserve.  He even asks Sam beforehand if the other “agent” is drunk.  He is probably amused by a drunk, anxious agent hanging around the station.

The gif is wrong.  He didn’t say hi.  He said doctor.  I am touchy about this one because Jensen got a death threat over it.  The idea that a man can only be a fan of a male celebrity because he wants to sleep with the male celebrity, is completely insulting and a failure to understand male psychology.  Dean’s flustered facial expression here is used for two reasons.  [1]  that is how some fans, both male and female behave, and [2] its hilarious to watch Dean fanboying.  This is a humor device and nothing else.  Even blushing is not a sign of attraction.  If your teacher compliments your work in front of the entire class, and you blush, does it mean that you are in love with Mrs Haggerty from Science Lab? 

Ah, the birth of Performing!Dean.  Performing!Dean doesn’t exist.  He has no reason to.  Because Dean has no motivation to stay in the closet and hide his supposedly feminine bisexual self behind a toxic masculine façade.  Sam is not giving us clues of Dean’s bisexuality.  He is taunting his big brother because that is what obnoxious little brothers do.  Remember, the hotelier thought that they both were gay.  Sam only picked on Dean here, because only Dean has an issue with it.  He isn’t a homophobe but a proud straight man. 

Dean doesn’t care about the human state of the world.  He doesn’t care about human issues like racism, sexism and the lgbt.  He will categorize you as a human being and protect you, if you gave him a reason to.  He doesn’t care how you look, which way you swing, and how you pray.  If you give him a reason to like you, he will like you.  If you give him a reason to hate you, he will hate you.  Dean will only care if you are useful to him in his hunt.  The hunt is his life and his motivation to hunt is Sam and keeping Sam close and safe.  Dean is not pro or anti anything.  If you are human, you matter.  That is why de-graced Castiel is left out of hunts, because without any power, Cas is “basically a baby in a trenchcoat”, in other words, utterly useless to them.  But if Sam’s wall breaks, hold the phone. 

He doesn’t judge your sexual orientation.  He has worked with gay and bi people before, like Charlie and the gay hunting couple. So he is not  a bigot.  However he isn’t used to men hitting on him.  He almost throws up because the Chief from the BDSM club [Criss Angel is a douchebag] describes what he is planning to do to Dean and asks for a safe word, and he is flustered by Aaron because he doesn’t know how to react.  He wasn’t expecting Aaron to tell that very clever lie.  He didn’t bother telling Aaron he was straight.  Of course, bi Dean advocates think that is significant, and how he closed his badge is also significant. 

It is.  It shows that Dean is compassionate.  He was ready to punch Aaron in the face for following him.  But when Aaron lies about being attracted to Dean, Dean lets him down easily.  What was he supposed to say to a man he thinks he will never meet again:  “Look dude, I am not queer.  We didn’t have any moment.’'  Dean quietly packs away his badge, because he realized that he brandished it at the wrong person.  Another reason is that Dean is an arrogant man when it comes to his looks and doesn’t mind a compliment.  So he isn’t going to break the heart of the person complimenting him.  He is compassionate but he has an ego.  That is why he was disappointed that Aaron had successfully fooled him by inflating his ego.  Because he did it so easily and Dean must have wanted to kick himself for falling for it. 

Dean being born in the Bible Belt of America means nothing.  His father was an atheist.  He was too, until he came face to face with an angel.  He acknowledges the Divine exists, but he believes in free will.  He spent most of his life, traipsing around America.  Its not like he stuck it out in the Bible belt area.  He has no religious reason to be in the closet.  He raised Sam and Sam isn’t a bigot, so Sam wont have a problem with him being bisexual.  Dean has no motivation to hide himself from Sam because, in many ways, Sam is his child and knows him.  If Dean was bi, Sam would have figured it out.

Dean is sexually not a vanilla person when it comes to sex, and despite where he was born, he is a sexually outspoken, kinky, loudmouth who admits to wearing his date’s underwear, not because he is feminine, but because he is a kinky little dirt bag who will do anything the date says, so he can close the deal with her.  Wearing her underwear is not proof that he is bisexual, because there are bisexual men who don’t wear women’s clothing and this is insulting to them.

5.  Dean and Castiel do not make a better couple than any of their love interests

Castiel had only one genuine love interest.  Meg.  And this union between two polar opposite characters in human vessels, is certainly more compelling than the blank stares that Dean and Castiel shared until their screen time decreased, much to Jensen’s happiness.  Meg took care of Castiel despite being a demon.  Dean kicked Castiel out of the bunker for Sam’s benefit.  Meg pursued Castiel.  Dean let Castiel to swop places mentally with Sam, so Sam could leave the asylum, safe and healthy, whilst Castiel remained in the asylum, broken and damaged.  He never pursued Castiel or took care of him. 

Dean only had one girlfriend.  And she was Cassie.  The name Cassie does not foreshadow destiel.  Cassie didn’t work out because she was far too involved in worldly things like racism and he cared about the supernatural world.  She was an intellectual and he was a high school drop out.  She is actually a lot like Sam, and they would actually make sense as a couple.  Dean never loved Lisa.  Canonically, he only shacked up with her, because Sam forced him.  And when Lisa realized that, she let him go. 

Castiel and Dean don’t make sense as a couple because Castiel has lied to Dean about many things.  There are some things he hasn’t come clean about, to Sam and Dean, e.g. opening up the Panic Room door and letting Sam free.  He used the mixed tape to double cross Dean, so the mixed tape is a proof of Castiel’s betrayal.  It is not proof of destiel.  The whole Leviatian affair is Castiel’s fault.  And although Dean does take Castiel like a brother, canonically, he wont sell his soul for Castiel, like he did for Sammy.  Using slowed down gifs of Dean and Cas staring blankly at each other, doesn’t proof that Dean is bisexual.  Every time Dean stares at a man, its doesn’t mean he is attracted to that person. 

The show is not queer baiting you by leaving subtextual easter eggs in the frame.  They don’t have time for that.  Because they average one episode a week.  They are working at a break neck speed.  They don’t have the time to indulge fannish nonsense.  Everyone associated with the show have said that Dean is not bi.  I don’t mind you interpreting, but when you force it on Jensen and threaten him when he doesn’t like it, you are being a vile and disgusting predatory beast.  The only person who is reinforcing destiel, claimed at Jaxcon that Dean is bisexual and is queer baiting you is Misha Collins.  Go take it up with him.

[spiderxwebout]

HOMESTUCK ASK MEME PART TWO

ACT FOUR PART TWO "i'm motivated by self-interest" "this is bullshit its an unfeeling monster who gives a fuck" "who gives a fuck?" "that just made me feel upset to think about" "drop some hard, peer-reviewed motherfuckin' science on his ass" "that actually sounds pretty good i guess" "i don't see how we're supposed to be friends if you recoil from my olive branch" "i just think it's still cumbersome and completely illogical" "why are you in cahoots now?" "it's for our candle light hate date" "fuck you" "i'm sure many highly justifiable punchings will happen" "it was because shut up" "imagine the worst day of my life just stood up and clinked a glass like it was going to give a speech" "please, just once, shut the hell up" "you can't overthink it" "stop being a tool" "what kind of civilization wouldn't invest in orange creamsicles?" "now i feel kinda bad" "no more coy bullshit antics" "you're really not all that terrible" "why am i so fucking awesome?" "that's the best fucking question anybody ever asked" "this is kind of perverse. what's wrong with you?" "this is always a terrible idea" "you're fucking welcome" "get off my dick" "welcome to the party, motherfuckers" "what else is new?" "think of something better" "why are you burning your wizard fanfiction?" "i can't keep track of what you like anymore" "this story sounds suspicious" "i'm out of the loop again" "the best thing about how i did that is how it in no way will ever come back to bite us in the ass ever" "ditch the body" "fuck you and goodbye" "you have sounding stupid down to a science" "we're all sort of like superman?" "you've assassinated my patience" "i could give myself a hernia trying to be as big a douche of that guy" "i'll help you instead" ACT FIVE ACT ONE "in case it wasn't clear, magic is real" "you're on your own now" "i wonder what i did in the future that i'm being punished for in advance" "maybe i'm like, the worst piece of trash and don't know it yet" "all i see is motherfucking miracles" "fuck you for me just hearing that" "you flip your shit about everything" "here is my shit, and yet it remains unflipped" "that sounds like melodramatic bullshit" "i don't know why most of our friends are such psychos" "i can't talk to her, she's spooky" "stop being so sensitive" "i hate you way more than i hate myself, and that's saying something" "the idiot gets a time out and shuts up for a second" "i'm such an idiot for not rewarding your bubbly personality and impeccable people skills with leadership" "i knew you were a cheater lowlife scumbag with no self esteem and were basically worthless on every level, but somehow i'm still disappointed in you" "how do you get out of your bed every morning knowing you're the worst thing a universe was ever responsible for?" "shocking development!" "you shouldn't be afraid of anything" "unlike you i have a fucking smidgen of maturity and self respect" "this is what i was made for" "this is the kind of thing sane people say" "whew, back in sane land" "don't pretend you didn't enjoy going around killing things" "why don't you just fuck off and go to hell?" "you're always the victim of something" "sometimes you think you suck when you really don't" "that's just some personal private emotional issue and i'm dealing with that" "i will have a fucking blast and you can't stop me" "i'm okay with a lot of things. even our inevitable failure" "that was so much more depressing than the thing i just said" "but you like to talk to me" "this is a fact, not a question" "why do you like to talk to me?" "i despise myself" "you seem so sad and angry all the time" "bye bye friendship!" "you were a fraud all along" "your bluff has been called" "you are the dumbest motherfucker on the planet, i swear"

[bioclub778]

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Coffee Meets Bagel is a San Francisco based startup with a dating and social networking mobile app of the same name. To stand apart in the crowded field of dating apps, Coffee Meets Bagel focuses on improving women’s online dating experiences by offering a curated selection of matches (based on an ever-changing profile matching algorithm) with the opportunity for continuing the introduction by commenting on something in a profile as an icebreaker, which might lead to further interactions on the platform.

About Coffee Meets Bagel. Coffee Meets Bagel is a San Francisco based startup with a dating and social networking mobile app of the same name. To stand apart in the crowded field of dating apps, Coffee Meets Bagel focuses on improving women’s online dating experiences by offering a curated selection of matches (based on an ever-changing profile matching algorithm) with the opportunity for. Actually, you can do it 'twice'. Sign up, make sure to cancel the sub immediately (which will still let you use the remainder of the duration) then go to another tab in the app. It apparently let's you try the trail again. While you still only have till the same expiration, it does give you another 6000 beans (so I ended up getting 12k) 2.

LovingFeel is an international website focused on international communication. Our user-friendly search tool makes it possible for you to meet someone who shares your interests and satisfies your communication needs. We strive to help thousands of people meeting someone exciting, and feel positive emotions from an enjoyable conversation. Loving feel dating site.

Data from 2017 shows that Coffee Meets Bagel made ~2.5 billion introductions and more than 70,000 couples met using the app.

The Infrastructure

Coffee Meets Bagel uses a variety of Amazon Web Services. Okcupid video chat free. From EC2 for compute to S3 and Redshift for storing their various data sets and many more (Kinesis, SQS, CloudWatch). Given Coffee Meets Bagel’s heavy investment in AWS, its management is ultra sensitive to unexpected or unintended costs arising from a sub-optimal use of these infrastructure components. That’s where CloudForecast comes in.

The Challenges

We spoke with Stephen Brandon, Manager of Engineering and Infrastructure at Coffee Meets Bagel. As the manager of all the infrastructure, as well as handling SRE and DevOps related aspects, Brandon is acutely aware of the need to keep the hundreds of servers on AWS operating with no down time and allowing the workflow to progress smoothly.

Like others, he found AWS tools for monitoring and reporting, such as Cost Explorer, cumbersome and confusing. While Amazon Web Services provide all sorts of APIs to extract raw data into CSV files (Cost & Usage Report), there were too many reports to compare to get actionable data. Prior to their investment in CloudForecast, they would often be surprised by cost overruns only when they got the monthly AWS bill. Also, it was not very easy to slice the CVS data to find the sources of the cost increase. It would have been cost-prohibitive and time-consuming to build a proper in-house reporting tool from all the Cost & Usage Report, and anything quick and dirty would have been a hack with limited usability.

The Screening Process

Brandon’s team surveyed the landscape of available tools, selecting four for evaluation. Their main requirement was that the tool provides the total daily and monthly spend in a simple and easy-to-understand manner — especially, as much of this data would be shared with C-levels in the organization. They didn’t need a lot of organizational tools and pay for features that might be more useful to a large enterprise.

Pricing was a major factor in their evaluation, but also the complexity that arises from too many features. Some of these offered far more features than Brandon’s team felt they would ever need. He says that CloudForecast’s AWS cost monitoring and reporting tool “..fits us to a tee. The tool makes it simple to let us know how much we are spending on AWS, the areas where we are spending, surfaces any cost increases and gives us a way to slice/dice our costs through our tags so that we can extrapolate our cost better.”

The Benefits Of Using CloudForecast

Coffee Meets Bagel found just the right amount of features in CloudForecast’s tool. “We wanted to make sure we would actually use the product and all the features. The product is simple and the daily cost reports we received are easy for me and my team to understand”, Brandon observes.

Brandon sends out two different AWS cost reports each day, via email and Slack, one to the engineering leads and another to himself and the CFO. Each report is built using CloudForecast’s custom report tool, tailored using cost tags to highlight those aspects that the recipients are responsible for, allowing them to react to any cost anomalies that day.

The engineering leads responsible for the data, which accounts for 60-70% of their monthly AWS spend, particularly appreciate this visualization and insight on their AWS usage. Prior to using CloudForcast, the data engineers would not have proactively used AWS Cost Explorer to check daily costs, or even monthly ones. “Now, with the daily cost reports from CloudForecast, I’ve had the data team leads message me noticing cost increases and catching them before I do,' Brandon observes.

For example, Brandon cites the case where the data leads noticed cost increases in AWS ECS usage because of the use of an old data model that was not being leveraged within their solution. Deprecating that model “saved us some money that would have been a recurring wasted cost had it not been caught earlier,” he said. Other examples of hidden costs include detecting zombie on-demand server instances not caught by the usual garbage collection tools, unnecessary large GPU on-demand instances, and unneeded “tests” when commiting code to GitHub in the staging process. Catching these early has saved them thousands of dollars per day.

With the straightforward visibility offered by CloudForecast, the engineers take greater ownership, responsibility and accountability for costs, a factor they have now added to their technical processes.

With CloudForecast, the CFO is now able to slice the data in different ways to better understand cost using novel, in-house metrics such as Revenue/Daily Active User and improve forecasts for AWS spend.

'

Saved us money that would have been a recurring wasted cost had it not been caught earlier.

Stephen Brandon, Manager of Engineering and Infrastructure

Summary

It takes a lot of time and effort to look at a company’s AWS infrastructure and check for situations that can cause unexpected or unintended cost spikes. With CloudForecast’s AWS cost monitoring tool, Coffee Meets Bagel has been able to catch these situations within a day, rather than wait for the surprise in the bill a month later.

A final note from Brandon: “You have probably paid for yourself 10 times over. I can’t put a number on it, but I know you have saved us at a minimum tens of thousands of dollars over the course of our engagement.”

'

You have probably paid for yourself 10 times over. I can't put a number on it, but I know you have saved us at a minimum tens of thousands of dollars.

Stephen Brandon, Manager of Engineering and Infrastructure

Coffee Meets Bagel Review

Is the Coffee Meets Bagel (CMB) dating app better or worse than other popular dating apps like Bumble or Tinder? How does Coffee Meets Bagel compare with these popular options?

We researched Coffee Meets Bagel and combed the internet for detailed user feedback and reviews. Here’s a quick but complete summary of our findings.

Bagel Meets Coffee App

How Does Coffee Meets Bagel Work?

Coffee Meets Bagel prides themselves on their algorithmic matching, and only handpicks a couple suggested users for you to like each day at noon.

Women only see users who have already liked them in their suggested list.

If you’re not into your suggestions, you can always browse through profiles in the “discover” tab of the app.

Does Coffee Meets Bagel Cost $?

How much does Coffee Meets Bagel cost? Nothing.

Coffee Meets Bagel is free to use, but like Tinder Plus and Bumble Boost, they offer a paid premium service with some extra perks (like increasing the amount of profiles you can like each day), and it costs from $20-$35/month. You’ll get the best deal on Premium if you commit to 6 months up front.

Like Bumble coins, CMB has their own in-app currency “beans” you’ll need to purchase to access premium and other perks. You can also earn free beans just by using the app.

Coffee Meets Bagel Dating App PROS

• Coffee Meets Bagel limits the amount of users you can like to five per day, which greatly discourages the swipe-now-look-later spirit of apps like Tinder. Thus, Coffee Meets Bagel attracts users who are more discerning and review whole profiles, not just pics.

• There are more women on the app than men. Coffee Meets Bagel has a ratio of about 60/40 women to men. This helps everyone out — women get to be more selective, and men don’t need to worry about competing with tons of other guys.

• CMB limits how long you can chat before setting up a date. You only have 7 days after matching to get to business and exchange info and/or plan an IRL meeting. This eliminates the who’s-going-to-make-the-first-move game, and cookie-jarring matches to hit up later.

Coffee Meets Bagel Dating App CONS

• Fewer opportunities for matching — Because CMB only shows users a handful of profiles each day, it can take longer than other apps to get matches. This longer process can feel discouraging for users who want a more min/max experience.

• There’s no desktop version of Coffee Meets Bagel.

• Some users have complained that not enough people are on the app, making high-quality match material more of a scarcity.

Overall Takeaway: ✔️

We can conclude our review by saying that Coffee Meets Bagel is a pretty cool dating app, and can be a refreshing change from the endless swiping game of Tinder and Bumble. We like CMB’s mentality that more doesn’t always equal better, and it can be a more fulfilling experience to carefully review a handful of profiles than swipe through hundreds.

How to Optimize Your Coffee Meets Bagel Profile?

Good pics.

Seriously, you can’t underestimate how much good pics matter, especially for apps that attract discerning users like Coffee Meets Bagel.

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With the wrong pics, you can end up with 0 matches. The right pics can change your dating life completely.

Test your dating pics on Photofeeler to make sure you’re using your best ones.

Coffee Meets Bagel Update

Go to Photofeeler.com now and give it a try!

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[go-diane-winchester]

5 Reasons why Supernatural is not queer baiting [and is not stuck in the closet]

Interpretation of any piece of art and literature is one of the fun aspects of being human.  You use your imagination to analyze a loved work from every angle so as to increase your pleasure of said work.  However, if you present your interpretation as if it is a fact, and it results in harassment, bullying and threats for actors involved in a show, then it becomes a problem.  Why do some fans accuse Supernatural of queer baiting, whilst others are vehemently opposed?  Why is it not a universal argument in fandom?  It is because the former don't admit that their interpretations are just that: interpretation.  Bi Dean arguments have no basis in canon, and proponents of Bi Dean in fact refuse to acknowledge canonical oppositions to their interpretations.  The vehement opposers of Bi Dean actually respect canon.  Truth is universal and canon is truth. 

1.  Dean was not born from gratuitously bisexual inspiration

As a fiction writer myself, I know that an original character is not easy to put together.  You have to do a character analysis [I believe in using a homemade template, myself], character background [because it should shape what the character becomes in the current canon] and formulation of their physical attributes as well as wardrobe.  I, in fact, include things like medical history and diet choices in my own template to get a feel for the character that I want.  But every writer is different and chooses a different approach.  Eric Kripke had a clear idea of what he wanted his characters to be.

For the character personalities

Kripke wanted them to be like Han Solo and Luke Skywalker.  Han Solo was a cavalier renegade who had no respect for authority and fits in with Dean's overall personality.  Dean doesn't care if he is talking to an FBI agent, a priest or even his own father.  If you say something wrong, he will correct you and he has done that in canon.  If you have given him a reason to hate you, trust Dean to let you know, right to your face.  Dean doesn't kiss up to authority.  He is the quintessential bad boy. 

Luke Skywalker is the polar opposite of Han.  He does things by the book.  He wears his heart on his sleeve and shows more empathy and emotion than his counterpart Han.  Sam is all of this and, like Luke, gives off an air of innocence, and sporadically the viewer feels the need to protect him because of said innocence.  Despite the fact that Sam has grown up and out of his chocolate boy features,  he still remains the quintessential good boy. 

There are many tropes at play here that fiction writers cling to.  The polar opposite trope is favored because it provides room for friction.  Imagine how Supernatural would be, if Dean and Sam just agreed with each other all the time.  It would make for bland viewing.  Sometimes they are on the same page.  Some times they aren't.  Polarizing characters make for more vivid story telling and [particularly in our fandom] forces you to pick a side.  In other words, it keeps you invested in the characters.  The polar opposite trope can also be used for two enemies who are stuck in the same situation.  And in some cases, one of them is the overall baddie in the story.  It is not just a friendship trope.

Another well known trope that is being used here, is the much-loved buddy formula.  The buddy formula is used by a lot by screenwriters, because it is so popular with audiences, and can share similarities with the polar opposite trope.  Essentially the buddy formula contains two characters and even though they may be polar opposites, they tend to have a deep affection for each other.  Cagney and Lacey, Riggs and Murtaugh, Thelma and Louis and finally, Sam and Dean are example thereof. 

At this juncture, I would like to laughingly point out that Bi Dean advocates will cling to Thelma and Louis as proof of bi dean, because of the possible lesbian subtext.  Stop right there.  I watched Thelma and Louis, and I felt that they were fed up friends, almost sisters who didn't want to live in the world any more.  I didn't see any subtext.  If you did, good for you.  It increases your viewing pleasure.  However, as a straight woman, I have my own interpretation and it is just as significant as yours.  Hilariously, Sam and Dean have referred to themselves as Thelma and Louis.  So you cant use that to proof Dean is bi, because essentially you will be proving wincest. 

The difference between the buddy formula and the polar opposite trope is the affection that is inherently mixed into the buddy formula.  Buddies are more affectionate with each other.  In one of the Lethal Weapon movies, Riggs walks into Murtaugh's kitchen, plants a kiss on Mrs Murtaugh's cheek, walks up to Murtaugh and nonchalantly plants a kiss on his cheek as well, before going to raid the food storage.  Murtaugh doesn't react negatively.  That scene was added for many reasons but there are two important reasons:  [1] to show the affection between the two, which is platonic [2] to get a laugh out of the audience by showing how irritatingly unaware Riggs is, that Murtaugh is angry with him. 

Murtaugh even ''sensed'' that Riggs was drowning and saved him, telling Riggs ''I heard you, Riggs.  I heard you, baby.''  Yes, that is an actual line from Lethal Weapon and it proves that they love each other.  How you perceive their love is up to you.  Affectionate name calling is used in the buddy formula and is also apparent in Sam and Dean's interaction as well. 

Is Cas an affectionate shortening of the name Castiel?  Both Dean and Sam call him Cas?  Maybe.  Or it maybe because the name Castiel doesn't syllabically roll off the tongue.  It's an ancient name and for modern day Sam and Dean, saying the full name is verbally cumbersome.  So they opted for Cas.  If the shortening of the name means Dean is in love with Cas, then it easily means Sam is in love with Cas too.  Oddly, despite the character name of Samuel being shortened to Sam, by Dean so it will roll of the tongue during a conversation, Dean actually adds a syllable and called him Sammy out of affection.  So for Sammy, the ''name is too long and cumbersome'' excuse flies out the window.  Sammy gets used even when Dean is in a hurry, angry or affectionate.  It is a part of his personal lexicon.     

For the character backdrop

Part of Kripke's logline for Supernatural and its backdrop included “Star Wars in truck stop America,”.  Another trope comes into play here:  the fish out of water.  In earlier seasons, the studious and preppy Sam clashed with the dustbowl Americana surroundings and its people.  Dean fit in.  Dean is salt of the earth.  Sam is more aware of the world beyond the dustbowl Americana because he is an intellectual.  Another part of the logline was ''X Files meets Route 66''.  Route 66 is about two guys [Todd, the Yale graduate good boy and Buz, the street smart fighter bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks]  who go on a road trip across North America, encountering and solving social problems along the way, while trying to find a place to settle and find how they themselves fit into their world.  Kripke picked very accurate loglines for Supernatural, because Todd and Buz are exactly like Sam and Dean.  But they had names that Kripke didn't like.  I don't blame him. 

For the character names  

Bi Dean advocates always use the name Dean as being proof of Bi Dean.  Kripke chose both the names of his main characters from Jack Kerouac's Beat Generation classic On the road.  it is not an LGBT classic.  It was a universal classic that just happened to have a bisexual character.  The characters were Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise.  That is all he took from the work.  He didn't take the road trip idea from On the road.  He took it from Route 66.  Even the polarizing characters were taken from Route 66.  All he took was the names, and even then, he wasn't happy with Sam's previous name so he changed one alphabet.  He took nothing else.  And that is the one thing Bi Dean advocates cling to.  There is no unique similarity between On the road and Supernatural.  Or between Dean Winchester and Dean Moriarty, for that matter, other than one character sharing a name with another.  

Don't dig into Kerouac's character's backstory to try and prove that Dean from Supernatural is bi, whilst ignoring the backstory of Supernatural own formulation.  That is called over reaching, and some fans use this unsteady theory to threaten the leads and plant accusations of bigotry.  Jensen has received online abuse for this and his reputation is completely tarnished with accusations of homophobia.     

2.  Castiel's wardrobe choice does not reflect on Dean's sexual orientation

I remember watching a scene from That's 70's Show, where Fez confessed to having an erotic dream about Kelso.  Kelso is shocked and declares ''Do you know what this means?  Its means I'm gay''.  This fandom is proof, that Kelso is not unique in his stupidity.  Our fandom has a rich supply of ignorance, conveniently shrouded in social justice, so that when you successfully contradict them, they can just call you a bigot and quieten you down. 

For Castiel, Kripke only took wardrobe inspiration from John Constantine, a famous bisexual character.  That is it.  He took nothing else.  Trenchcoats are wardrobe items and not a sign of an individual's sexuality.  Constantine was bisexual.  Columbo was straight but also wore a trenchcoat.  There is no unique similarity between Castiel and Constantine.  Constantine is a man, an occult detective, a humanitarian and is best known for his sarcasm.  Does that sound like Castiel to you?  Castiel is an angel [a very useless one], a killer of many innocent people, a displacer of angels and very rarely says something mildly sarcastic.  And if the trench coat makes Castiel bi, how does that reflects on Dean? 

3.  Castiel's sexual orientation is not complex, neither is it reflective of Dean's sexuality

Castiel is not human, and therefore is not shackled by human limitations.  He is not even a ''he''.  He doesn't have any preferences, nor does he canonically have any sexual desire except for Meg, whom he willingly kissed.  But that might be borne out of his love for her and her relentless pursuit of him.  His bond with Meg was not sexual.  When he became human, sexual desire awoken in him and he slept with a woman merely because she hit on him and he was curious.    But he doesn't do that in his angel state.  He doesn't seek out sex in his angel state because he has no human, physical desire.  Canonically, he doesn't even have a soul, so how he and Dean can be seen as soul mates baffles me.  Nobody else has relentlessly pursued Castiel accept Meg.  Dean hasn't.  Dean kicked him out of the bunker despite the fact that he was vulnerable because Sam's host Gadreel had a problem with him.  Dean doesn't love Castiel, nor does Dean pursue him.  He looks for Sammy when Sammy is missing, but doesn't do that for Castiel.  Dean doesn't sympathize with Castiel's pain, even telling Castiel once ''nobody cares that you are broken''.

4.  Dean cannot, textually, be interpreted as a bisexual unless you relinquish common sense  

Most of the canon examples of bi dean can easily be explained away. 

Dean is not giving Charlie flirting pointers because he has hit on men before.  He is himself a man, and know what he wants to hear from a woman and what would get him interested or distracted.  By the end of the scene, both Dean and Charlie who like women and not men, felt dirty.  And Sammy laughed through the whole thing because he knew how uncomfortable his brother was.  Because Sammy, who was raised by Dean, knows his brother.  Dean wont keep his bisexuality from Sam, because he has no reason to.  Sam is not narrow-minded.

In the context of this scene, when Castiel just berated Dean, only a true intellectual maverick is going to think that Dean is inviting Castiel to a impromptu session of fellatio.  Because that would make sense for the whole vessel scene, wouldn't it, geniuses.  For people, who are not soaked in delusion, Dean is countering Castiel's berating with disrespect because he is angry.  I cant believe this needs to be explained because ''blow me'' is a popular colloquial slang, used to insult someone.  Have none of the bi dean advocates ever heard that term before?  Do they think ''scr*w yourself'' means ''Go and masturbate right now''?  Which rock to they live under?

Dean is not flirting with the sheriff here.  He is drunk.  There is a reason, a drunk person's testimony doesn't fly in court.  You don't take a drunk person seriously.  The deputy isn't flirting back either.  He is just amused by the compliment which he didn't earn or deserve.  He even asks Sam beforehand if the other ''agent'' is drunk.  He is probably amused by a drunk, anxious agent hanging around the station.

The gif is wrong.  He didn't say hi.  He said doctor.  I am touchy about this one because Jensen got a death threat over it.  The idea that a man can only be a fan of a male celebrity because he wants to sleep with the male celebrity, is completely insulting and a failure to understand male psychology.  Dean's flustered facial expression here is used for two reasons.  [1]  that is how some fans, both male and female behave, and [2] its hilarious to watch Dean fanboying.  This is a humor device and nothing else.  Even blushing is not a sign of attraction.  If your teacher compliments your work in front of the entire class, and you blush, does it mean that you are in love with Mrs Haggerty from Science Lab? 

Ah, the birth of Performing!Dean.  Performing!Dean doesn't exist.  He has no reason to.  Because Dean has no motivation to stay in the closet and hide his supposedly feminine bisexual self behind a toxic masculine façade.  Sam is not giving us clues of Dean's bisexuality.  He is taunting his big brother because that is what obnoxious little brothers do.  Remember, the hotelier thought that they both were gay.  Sam only picked on Dean here, because only Dean has an issue with it.  He isn't a homophobe but a proud straight man. 

Dean doesn't care about the human state of the world.  He doesn't care about human issues like racism, sexism and the lgbt.  He will categorize you as a human being and protect you, if you gave him a reason to.  Exactly like Jensen.  He doesn't care how you look, which way you swing, and how you pray.  If you give him a reason to like you, he will like you.  If you give him a reason to hate you, he will hate you.  Dean will only care if you are useful to him in his hunt.  The hunt is his life and his motivation to hunt is Sam and keeping Sam close and safe.  Dean is not pro or anti anything.  If you are human, you matter.  That is why de-graced is left out of hunts, because without any power, Cas is ''basically a baby in a trenchcoat'', in other words, utterly useless to them.  But if Sam's wall breaks, hold the phone. 

He doesn't judge your sexual orientation.  He has worked with gay and bi people before, like Charlie and the gay hunting couple. So he is not  a bigot.  However he isn't used to men hitting on him.  He almost throws up because the Chief from the BDSM club [Criss Angel is a douchebag] described what he is planning to do to Dean and asks for a safe word, and he is flustered by Aaron because he doesn't know how to react.  He wasn't expecting Aaron to tell that very clever lie.  He didn't bother telling Aaron he was straight.  Of course, bi Dean advocates think that is significant, and how he closed his badge is also significant. 

It is.  It shows that Dean is compassionate.  He was ready to punch Aaron in the face for following him.  But when Aaron lies about being attracted to Dean, Dean lets him down easily.  What was he supposed to say to a man he thinks he will never meet again:  ''Look dude, I am not queer.  We didn't have any moment.''  Dean quietly packs away his badge, because he realized that he brandished it at the wrong person.  Another reason is that Dean is an arrogant man when it comes to his looks and doesn't mind a compliment.  So he isn't going to break the heart of the person complimenting him.  He is compassionate but he has an ego.  That is why he was disappointed that Aaron had successfully fooled him by inflating his ego.  Because he did it so easily and Dean must have wanted to kick himself for falling for it. 

Dean being born in the Bible Belt of America means nothing.  His father was an atheist.  He was too, until he came face to face with an angel.  He acknowledges the Divine exists, but he believes in free will.  He spent most of his life, traipsing around America.  Its not like he stuck it out in the Bible belt area.  He has no religious reason to be in the closet.  He raised Sam and Sam isn't a bigot, so Sam wont have a problem with him being bisexual.  Dean has no motivation to hide himself from Sam because, in many ways, Sam is his child and knows him.  If Dean was bi, Sam would have figured it out.

Dean is sexually not a vanilla person when it comes to sex, and despite where he was born, he is a sexually outspoken, kinky, loudmouth who admits to wearing his date's underwear, not because he is feminine, but because he is a kinky little dirt bag who will do anything the date says, so he can close the deal with her.  Wearing her underwear is not proof that he is bisexual, because there are bisexual men who don't wear women's clothing and this is insulting to them.

5.  Dean and Castiel do not make a better couple than any of their love interests

Castiel had only one genuine love interest.  Meg.  And this union between two polar opposite characters in human vessels, is certainly more compelling than the blank stares that Dean and Castiel shared until their screen time decreased, much to Jensen's happiness.  Meg took care of Castiel despite being a demon.  Dean kicked Castiel out of the bunker for Sam's benefit.  Meg pursued Castiel.  Dean let Castiel to swop places mentally with Sam, so Sam could leave the asylum, safe and healthy, whilst Castiel remained in the asylum, broken and damaged.  He never pursued Castiel or took care of him. 

Dean only had one girlfriend.  And she was Cassie.  The name Cassie does not foreshadow destiel.  Cassie didn't work out because she was far too involved in worldly things like racism and he cared about the supernatural world.  She was an intellectual and he was a high school drop out.  She is actually a lot like Sam, and they would actually make sense as a couple.  Dean never loved Lisa.  Canonically, he only shacked up with her, because Sam forced him.  And when Lisa realized that, she let him go. 

Castiel and Dean don't make sense as a couple because Castiel has lied to Dean about many things.  There are some things he hasn't come clean about, to Sam and Dean, e.g. opening up the Panic Room door and letting Sam free.  He used the mixed tape to double cross Dean, so the mixed tape is a proof of Castiel's betrayal.  It is not proof of destiel.  The whole Leviatian affair is Castiel's fault.  And although Dean does take Castiel like a brother, canonically, he wont sell his soul for Castiel, like he did for Sammy.  Using slowed down gifs of Dean and Cas staring blankly at each other, doesn't proof that Dean is bisexual.  Every time Dean stares at a man, its doesn't mean he is attracted to that person. 

The show is not queer baiting you by leaving subtextual easter eggs in the frame.  They don't have time for that.  Because they average one episode a week.  They are working at a break neck speed.  They don't have the time to indulge fannish nonsense.  Everyone associated with the show have said that Dean is not bi.  I don't mind you interpreting, but when you force it on Jensen and threaten him when he doesn't like it, you are being a vile and disgusting predatory beast.  The only person who is reinforcing destiel [and by extension Bi dean] and queer baiting you is Misha Collins.  Go take it up with him.