#he almost views mac as an extension of himself

[realbeefman]

boy best friends (:

[chrliekclly]

if you ever want to talk about your thoughts on joyce .. Peeks over the corner of your blog. i love talking and hearing ppls thoughts on joyce sooo much even if they're different from my own!! and your analysis and stuff is always so well thought out

i hope u dont mind if i answer this publicly to take advantage of th request nd get my ideas out ther (also tyvm im happy u like my insane takes on these idiots, iv ben thinking abt them for almost 10 years)

i said a lot here so gnna 'read more' it

iv ben building trans charlie n my head fr, like i said, nearly 10 years. i used to view him as cis bcuz i always try to take as much frm th source material as i can wen i craft my HCs nd i had v personal (stupid) hangups insofar as him explicitly referring to his junk multiple times nd bottom surgery simply not being on my radar as a naive littl trans idiot deep in th sauce tht transmen oftn fall into w phallo being viewed so so poorly

evn still i leaned towards transmasc charlie nd always lovd moments tht let me imagine, for a moment, it being true, like his discomfort w taking off his shirt [hundred dollar baby, charlie kelly: king of the rats, the gang exploits the mortgage crisis, young charlie and mac deleted scenes, etc etc etc], or bonnie yelling abt ppl stealing her "charlie-girl" [the waitress is getting married] which i lovd to see as her accidentally misgendering him while drunk off her ass.

having grown out of my phallo issues (nd if ur reading this and u still view phallo super poorly, please do some research and grow too), ive in recent years fully subscribed to transmasc/nb charlie, and view his timeline something like this:

baby -> elementary: charlie refers to himself as a boy, doesnt "come out," simply has no idea he's afab. bonnie lets him dress however he wants and refers to him as asked. when charlie gets confused about his genitals, bonnie says his dick will grow in later lol, makes charlie wear a dress in public restrooms and tells him its just a game

middle: puberty hits and charlie gets confused and scared. bonnie puts him on blockers w.o explaining them ("my mom used to vaccinate me like every month" [the gang gets quarantined]) charlie goes on content and oblivious. STP acquired because hes "a late bloomer" and his dicks still not growing in?? weird. confides this in mac once, but he doesn't understand.

high: charlie finally registers that he's trans after forgetting theres a health class 1 day and not being able to skip it. throws him for a loop a bit but he becomes actively invested in his goals. he gets to start T and wants to have surgeries. "what guy hasnt done some extensive research on his own genitalia?" [mac is a serial killer]

college (aged): able to surgically transition (ty medicare) and continues on with life as we kno him now

joyce, imo, fits neatly into these views.

as a transmasc nb who came out young nd prefers to be seen as just A Guy by strangers, i grew up v vehemently against anything girly that might get me misgendered, but th more i began to 'pass,' th more @ home n my body i felt, th more and more comfortable i am w femininity, th more i wdnt mind putting on a dress, as long as th general public wd see me as "a man in women's clothes." n my mind, i prescribe something not exactly th same but v similar to charlie.

i see charlie "i dont really identify" kelly as afab and nb. i see joyce as a "character" he originally created to distance himself from the dysphoria of putting on a dress as a young trans boy, but that became part of him as the hard lines he drew in the sand as a child became blurry with age and self acceptance. charlie's comfort with himself allows joyce to evolve into a more solid persona, one he enjoys embodying and allowing to become a permanent facet of who he is. he's ok with being referred to as either. they're both him.

so maybe joyce comes out a bit more outside of the bathroom now.

[margle]

half-baked theory about dennis, mac and control during s14:

one of the reasons dennis so fully and frequently rejects mac's attempts to support him and further their codependency in s14, despite being previously largely comfortable with their reliance on one another, is because he sees it as mac undermining his control.

in 'the gang gets a new member', dennis is very comfortable with their codependency. he even tries desperately to maintain it in the face of schmitty's judgement by ignoring an easy opportunity to make fun of mac for not hitting the bell. in the restaurant scene, it is established that dennis orders food for the gang. mac is outwardly happy with this, and dennis is pleased that mac is obeying him. he doesnt see this as codependency, he sees it as control.

in season 14, this illusion of control disappears. mac has gained agency and clarity in what he wants: an explicitly romantic relationship with dennis. previously, when their codependency was (largely) controlled by dennis, the reality of their homoerotic relationship went unsaid. it was not something to be ashamed of, because it was unchanging and would lead nowhere. when mac came out, this changed the landscape of their relationship. in part due to his acceptance of his sexuality (therefore meaning that the reality of their relationship could no longer be plausibly denied) but more importantly: confidence in himself away from dennis. in s14, although he is still trying to please and obey dennis, mac is the one insisting that they remain codependent. mac is in control.

in a subversion of 'the gang gets a new member', mac controls dennis' food. although he is doing this as a way to make dennis like him and nurture their dependence, dennis only sees it as a form of control. mac is now controlling their narrative. this can be seen in 'the gang gets romantic', which places mac in charge of the structure of the 'meat cube' and, by extension, their relationship.

therefore, mac's refusal to comply with dennis' order to help dee in 'the gang chokes', weirdly actually hands control back over to dennis. mac is no longer pursuing his vision of their relationship. it is dennis' turn to proceed and try to redefine them.

dennis is a deluded person who has a highly unhealthy view on relationships and views himself as superior to others, therefore leading him to presume he is entitled to rule over them (golden god). his insistence on total control in his life was typically more lenient towards mac throughout the show, perhaps because of mac's established loyalty? therefore his controlling tendencies only started to significantly negatively affect their relationship when there was a major shift in mac's confidence and forwardness. this is why s14 is so strained. mac is trying to further their relationship, but he is doing this by using the same facets of their codependency that now have new meanings due to the newly explicit intentions behind them. dennis is trying to deal with their changing relationship whilst being entirely out of his comfort zone of authority. he still gains lots from their emotional dependency, however he sees mac's attempts to take this further as mac seizing control. which is something that panics him.

interestingly, s15 shows how their relationship stabilises when they are both equal. it almost feels like an interim. waiting for something.

season 16? well, we know that dennis is going to take a mental health day, presumably for his god hole and anger (which is maybe a manifestation of his panic that he isnt in full control over his life). will this be a way for him to try and take more control over his life? or a way to try and relax his attempts to maintain his delusion of power over mac and others.

[scotianostra]

October 27th 1736 saw the birth of James MacPherson in the parish of Kingussie, Badenoch, Inverness-shire.

Seumas MacMhuirich/ Seumas Mac a’ Phearsain, in Gaelic or James Macpherson is mostly well-known for his translation of the epic Ossian poems of his native land but was also an accomplished poet in his own right and a leading political figure of the time. Born into a reasonably wealthy family, Macpherson traveled to Aberdeen in his teens where he studied at King’s College with a short sabbatical in Edinburgh.

Whilst at university he began writing verses and published his first work The Highlander in 1758, though for some reason he tried to withdraw it afterwards. He was attracted back to his home town of Ruthven in Inverness-shire and returned there to become a teacher after finishing his studies.

With MacPherson though it was, and is all about  The Works of Ossian, Fingal and Temora.

When it was first published Macpherson said that it was a translation of an ancient manuscript in Scottish Gaelic which had come into his possession, and which was a copy of an original work written by Ossian. This was contested by various people, including notably Samuel Johnson, who said that it was entirely the work of Macpherson himself. The Irish scholar Charles O'Conor published an extensive refutation of the historical accuracy of the work as an Appendix to his History of Ireland. Both sides became passionate, but bitter and abusive in expressing their own view, and the controversy rumbled on over the next fifty years. I like to imagine it being like a twitter war nowadays. 

Anyway the alleged manuscript never appeared, but later researches have shown that the work is based partly on genuine Highland traditions.

Those familiar with the later, more authentic, versions in English of ancient Gaelic literature will recognise many of the names and stories - Fingal is Fionn Mac Cumhaill; Temora is Tara (Temro in Old Irish); Cuthulinn is Cú Chulainn (though a much feebler figure than the Irish hero), Dar-Thula is Deirdre of the Sorrows; Ros-cranna is Gráinne and Dermid is Diarmuid Ó Duibhne, though the Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne is not one of Macpherson's stories. And so on. However, much of the work is Macpherson's own invention -- the tragic love story of Fingal and Agandecca, for example; and though "Temora" has some similarity to the Battles of Ventry and of Gabhra, the details are different. The footnotes (by Macpherson) are said to be almost entirely misleading or downright wrong.

I won’t pretend to know the full Ossian story, it’s a wee bit to “highbrow” reading for my liking, I much prefer contemporary reading subjects- BUT,  you can find the works posted online for free here https://ossianonline.nuigalway.ie/

[vintagegeekculture]

Who are the “Venoms Mob?”

Well, first things first: if you go to China and talk about the 5 Venoms, or the Venoms Mob, they’ll have absolutely no idea who you’re talking about there, because that’s a fandom-term among US Kung Fu cult movie fans.

In Hong Kong, the Venoms are known as director Chang Cheh’s Weapons Expert Troupe, a group of five lifelong friends, martial artists, bodybuilders, exotic weapons experts, and trained acrobats who did at least a dozen movies for manly man Kung Fu director Chang Cheh in the 1970s and 1980s. They were the real deal: they usually choreographed their own fight scenes, which often involved flips and crazy stunts due to their acrobat training, high-wire acts, and unusual and exotic weaponry not typically seen even in martial arts movies. It’s like every single one of them drank the Captain America potion. Their films tended to end in heroic sacrifices, and the Venoms, for all their athleticism and daring, tended to be identifiable people on the bottom end of the societal ladder: homeless drifters, refugees, itinerant hobos, traveling performers, or restaurant workers.

The Venoms were stars in the US, particularly among the black community who love Chinese martial arts movies, not just because of their truly breathtaking skill and choreography, but because they are how most people feel they are, secretly, deep down: rams among sheep. They are the poor, downtrodden, or average person who decides “not to take it anymore” after untold indignities. This is also why the Venoms are especially important to the black community. In fact, if you want to know how much the Venoms mean to their fans, just go up to nearly any Black Dad over 45+ and ask about the “5 Venoms.” 

Chang Cheh, Director of the Venoms

The best way to describe the director and writer of the Venoms films, Chang Cheh is that he is basically Mac from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia if he decided to make Gladiator and loved Sergio Leone and Kurasawa.

The director and writer of the Venoms movies, and maybe the most significant name in the history of Kung Fu cinema apart from Bruce Lee, Chang Cheh was towering enough that Quentin Tarantino dedicated Kill Bill Part 2 to Chang Cheh in the closing credits. It would not be inaccurate to say he invented the Kung Fu movie as we know it, with its training montages, mentor-student relationships, all cut with themes of vengeance, noble self-sacrifice, and rebellion of poor and ordinary people against unjust authority.

Chang Cheh’s life story is fascinating. His father was a warlord during the Republican Era between the World Wars, which must have made for an interesting school career day. He started as a film critic and became a screenwriter, then from being a screenwriter, became a director. I wonder if that is the reason that Chang Cheh was so fascinated by themes of masculinity and male bonding, as the arty, openly gay movie critic son of a central Asian warlord had a nearly impossible standard of masculinity to live up to.

The two Western movies that are, thematically, the closest to Chang Cheh are Gladiator and Saving Private Ryan, and if you like both of those movies, you’ll probably like him. His heroes are often James Dean-like angry young men, poor and at the outskirts of society. His movies tend to end in heroic self-sacrifice for a noble cause, and tend to have themes of vengeance, arty blood red slaughter, and a distrust of authority and government of any kind. He loves bloodshed and thinks violence is beautiful; an image that comes up often is someone in an all white outfit that gets covered in blood, an arty view of violence similar to his two biggest influences, Sergio Leone and Kurosawa. Like the Shawshank Redemption, Chang Cheh movies are essentially ensemble pieces about the friendships and close comradely bonds of brotherhood between men. Very few women of any kind have extensive speaking parts in his movies.

Another movie that also summarizes Chang Cheh would be 300. Remember that Sarah Silverman bit where she said that “300 is the answer to the question, how gay is this movie on a scale of 1 to 10?” Not just because it is about an entirely male cast, or about finding fulfillment in noble self-sacrifice and heroism Alamo-style against desperate odds, but also because it’s about glorifying the male body, with tons of abs and pecs. I suppose I should mention here that Chang Cheh’s movies are profoundly homoerotic, and discussion of their homoeroticism is the major way film academics talk about these movies. How many scenes in Cheh’s movies are about dudes hanging out with their shirts off, flexing their muscles? Or about “brothers” who clasp each other on the shoulder while looking longingly into each other’s eyes in a shot-reverse shot? The only meaningful relationship in his movies are male ones. I dislike passing on cheap gossip, but by all accounts it’s actually an open secret in the Hong Kong film industry that Chang Cheh was homosexual and lived with other men. 

Yi Kuang -Screenwriter of the Venoms

The screenwriter of nearly all the Venoms movies, much like Chang Cheh, Yi Kuang had an interesting life. He was a Communist Party officer who went to Inner Mongolia, where his primary job was writing death sentences for landlords. Once idealistic, he left disillusioned with the Chinese Communist Party, and a remained a die-hard anticommunist. Evil bureaucrats tend to show up in his stories often for that reason, and a common theme of his scripts is the anger of ordinary people against distant, unapproachable authorities. There’s no understanding Venoms films without their screenwriter. Chang Cheh started as a screenwriter and wrote his movies, but Yi Kuang was his most frequent partner.

Interestingly, Yi Kuang got famous long after for writing a series of supernatural and horror novels called the Mr. Wisely books, where a traditional Chinese medicine expert fights for sites of power charged with Feng Shui. It’s interesting to see his turn to the supernatural, sorcery, and ghosts as an overreaction to his distaste for Marxist materialism. Of all the Venoms films, the one that shows his influence the strongest was the one the Venoms fight an evil human sacrifice devil cult, Masked Avengers. 

The Hero – Kuo Chui

A guy with a big smile and a body carved out of marble, Kuo Chui started as a circus acrobat before becoming a stuntman and then a leading actor. He was the Venom with the strongest and most natural screen presence, the one that was the most “movie star.” In fact, he was almost always the hero and central character of Venoms movies, usually playing the most levelheaded and strategic minded of the group.

Kuo Chui deserves some credit also for being the one Venom to actually direct a movie himself, Ninja in the Deadly Trap. This sounds like a heck of a leap, but in Hong Kong, nearly all choreographers also direct their fight scenes. It’s no surprise that a common career path in Hong Kong cinema is to go from choreographer to director (see also Chang Cheh’s ex-choreographers, Tang Chia and 36 Chambers director Liu Chia Liang)

 The Bad Guy – Lu Feng

Every single movie, Lu Feng was the heel, the bad guy. I mean, heck, in Shaolin Rescuers, he even played the evil apprentice of the supreme supervillain of the martial arts, Pai Mei! But no matter what, Lu Feng was just so cool that you couldn’t help but root for him just a little bit. He was a character type common in pro wrestling: the arrogant “cool heel,” like Rick Flair and the Horsemen. 

The Venoms tended to be workaday regular poor guys, but Lu Feng usually played a rich guy who oozed arrogance and menace, rather like the evil rich football player heel in college movies. 

 The Funny Guy – Chiang Sheng

A guy who usually played the funny young hero or a wisecracking comedy sidekick prone to wiseassery and pratfalls, Chiang Peng was the Venom who most benefited from the rise of Jackie Chan, and his introduction of silent film era inspired physical comedy into the otherwise stale Kung Fu film. Like Robin Williams, Chiang Shiang was someone who made everyone else laugh, but because he had a lot of darkness inside him, which ended up killing him. Chiang Sheng is the only Venom to not be with us, he drank himself to death after his divorce in 1991. Because of this, there can never really be a full Venoms reunion.

One of the most amazing things about Hong Kong cinema in the 70s is that the actors tended to have scraggly teeth that aren’t perfect and that seemed to be Chang Shieng’s defining trait. To be clear, I am not in any way mocking him for having bad teeth. In fact, I think it is rather winsome and endearing, like a teenager with braces.

 The Tough Guy – Lo Meng

Known as the “Shaolin Hercules,” the person I’d compare Lo Meng to is Mr. Worf. Ultra-strong, humorless, intimidating, dead serious and never smiling, he was by far the most muscular and powerful of the Venoms, with tons of machismo and swagger, “big dick energy” as the kids say today. The camera tends to linger on his oiled up biceps and chest in extreme close-up…but was also, usually, the first to die in nearly all of these films. Much like how Worf was the toughest guy ever, but usually got beat up a lot so the writers could show that the situation was serious. In fact, Lo Meng, still in great shape, was in Ip Man 4, where, not one to break with a tradition, he was the first guy to get his ass beat in the film, even in a movie made in the Year of Our Lord 2020.

Lo Meng tends to be the “backup main hero” and was even the main character in films like 2 Champions of Shaolin. He had the most impressive “solo” film career apart from the other Venoms. Like Geri Halliwell, he left the Venoms to do his own thing, which is why the defining trait of the later Venom films is that he wasn’t there. 

Lo Meng wasn’t Taiwanese like the other Venoms, and was a native of Hong Kong. In fact, he got his start in the film industry not as a stuntman or muscleman, but as an accountant for the Shaw Brothers studios, and he lifted weights and did Praying Mantis Kung Fu as a hobby. That’s…that’s hilarious. Reminds me of that fake Simpsons movie, Undercover Nerd with Renier Wolfcastle:

 The Wild Card – Chun Shieng

Would YOU trust this man? I wouldn’t. He betrayed the Toad!

That’s Chun Shieng for you, the wild card Venom who could “go either way” and so wasn’t an entirely trustworthy ally.

Allow me to correct a misconception I’ve seen in a lot of places: Chun is sometimes known as “the one Korean Venom.” He isn’t Korean but Chinese, but he was trained in Korea and is a Tae Kwon Do expert, unlike the other Venoms, who studied Chinese Kung Fu and Peking Opera. And it certainly shows: he always fights with a kick-heavy Tae Kwon Do style that does not look much like any Kung Fu at all.

[missluthorwillseeyounow]

Never To Touch And Never To Keep

Westenray AU (NBC Dracula)

A/N: So, here it is, the Westenray AU where Henry Cavill is Lucy’s beard. Fair warning, I didn’t really watch much of the show, just the Lucy scenes, and not even all of those. Basically, this is a peeled-back modern AU of the whole story, without the Dracula stuff. It’ll follow canon for a little bit, unfortunately *cringe* but I need a happy ending for my gays.

Also, this gets quite dark before it gets better. TW: gaslighting, attempted suicide, poisoning, and manipulation. Like for real, guys, I promise a happy ending, but if any of these trigger you, please don’t read it.

Lucy and Mina have been friends since they were fifteen. Lucy's father is an affluent businessman, and Lucy grows up with her every whim catered to. She’s at the center of everyone’s attention. All heads turn whenever she enters a room, and she accepts the adoration as her due.

She and Mina meet at boarding school, and the bond between the two girls is immediate. 

That first year is spent in bare feet and nightgowns, dancing idly to Fleetwood Mac, drunk on youth and the vodka Lucy stole from the headmistress’ office. In the acrid scent of illicit cigarettes being passed from one to the other, and the soft curve of Mina’s lips under Lucy’s fingers whenever she slips the cigarette into Mina’s mouth.

Mina is quiet and earnest, where Lucy is vivacious and impertinent. Mina gently chastises her when she breaks yet another boy’s heart, and Lucy merely laughs. 

And when Mina breaks Lucy’s heart and falls in love with Jonathan Harker, Lucy just laughs and laughs, and cruelly breaks another boy’s heart in retaliation.

Between the two of them, Mina is the more logical one, whose head and heart are grounded and centered, while Lucy is a creature of flight and fancy -- the one who flits from one thing to another, the charming social butterfly who lights up any room she walks into and creates a spectacle to hide every insecurity she keeps inside.

Lucy lives with bravado, but retreats behind a glittering mask. Mina, she thinks, is the one who is actually brave, the one who is unafraid to live her life as herself.

At the time of this AU, they’re around 21, and Mina and Jonathan are engaged. They're still quite young, but they've been together for years. The "perfect couple", it was only a matter of time before they got married.

Mina is in med school at this time, when she meets Alexander Grayson.

Grayson is a wealthy businessman, the new owner of the hospital where Mina’s father had practiced before he died. He encounters Mina once, at a benefit for the hospital’s cancer ward. Mina speaks to him in her gentle, forthright way, and Grayson is immediately drawn to her.

The encounter leaves an indelible mark on Grayson, and he decides he has to have her.

He’s no stranger to manipulation, and he comes at the problem on all sides. The key, he knows, is isolation. If she has no one left to turn to, Mina will come to him.

Harker, he thinks, is easy enough. With his uncertain finances, the young man is insecure and doubts his place in Mina’s esteem or at least in her social circles. It’s easy enough to see in the way his teeth grit and his jaw tightens whenever Lucy delightedly plucks on this particular insecurity like a note well-played.

Grayson buys into Harker’s graces through his wealth, offers him a career in which he can succeed. The work keeps Harker rewarded and therefore docile, out of the shadow Mina’s condescending friends, and high on his own sense of self-importance for the first time in his life.

His seduction of Mina, however, requires more thought and subtlety. He applies himself to discovering more about her, the things that interest her and resonate with her.

He finds out about her admiration and respect for a prestigious doctor, Gabriel van Helsing, and he extorts van Helsing into offering his mentorship to Mina. He finds out about her passion for helping children and starts a charity for children in need, and offers her the chance to be more involved in the project. 

Through it all, Grayson places himself as the supposed catalyst of her advancement.

And Mina, grounded though she is, is still fallible. Grayson seems to her a kind man, misunderstood by some perhaps because of his brooding disposition, but still -- a good man. And he is attractive, that’s undeniable. Enigmatic, charming in a mysterious way.

Slowly, but surely, Mina is lured in.

Because Grayson presents himself as a pleasant and urbane gentleman, most people rarely suspect him of anything nefarious.

Except for Lucy. 

Like recognizes like, and Lucy has used her own charm to get her way enough times to know when people use it for their own machinations.

Grayson knows that Lucy is less susceptible to his manipulations and will be more difficult to eliminate as competition.

However, he learns that his intervention is not required. Someone like Lucy, whose emotions overrule even her own penchant for manipulation, will set her own self on fire. All it takes is a few whispers in Mina’s ear, and Lucy orchestrates her own destruction.

Lucy has been hiding her feelings for years, and she's become adept at it. But Grayson’s arrival has thrown Mina into turmoil and by extension, Lucy is thrown into turmoil as well.

And Lucy, when backed into a corner, always lashes out. She barely hides her resentment for Grayson, alienating herself from Mina, who thinks so highly of him, for the first time in their friendship. Not even her disparaging of Jonathan had lowered her in Mina’s esteem, but this causes the first real point of contention between the two of them.

For the first time, Lucy feels her slipping away, and her reflexive response is to pull closer, fearing the loss of Mina in her life. She holds fast to the bond between her and Mina, and clings to her friend.

And one night -- an ordinary night that finds Lucy stretched out on Mina’s bed as usual, their faces inches apart as they seek each other under Mina’s covers like they always do -- Lucy, grateful that no matter what contention they have about one man, they still find each other, becomes brave enough, desperate enough to close that familiar distance between them and press her lips to Mina’s.

"We could be so much more.... I've always loved you, Mina."

"Has our whole friendship been a pretense?!?"

Grayson’s insidious whispers flare in Mina’s mind, and every moment of their friendship is called into question. Every embrace, every sweet word, and every barb thrown at Jonathan viewed in the light of this new and terrifying revelation.

"You need to leave."

And leave Lucy does, feeling small and worthless and hollow, as if a crater has opened up in the middle of her chest. This is not a feeling she knows -- not this shame and this hurt and this dejection. 

She’s suffered for Mina before, the heartache of seeing the woman she loves in love with another. But this.... it feels as if all the love she’d kept in her heart has been spit back at her in acid. 

It rankles at her skin, and claws at her pride, and so Lucy does what she knows best. She claws back.

Harker is almost laughably easy, a pawn Lucy moves with disturbing ease -- she almost feels sorry for Mina that she loved a man whose loyalty can break with a pair of tear-filled eyes and a silk robe. Almost.

When Mina catches them together, as planned, Lucy catches Mina's eye with a level look over Jonathan's shoulder. She pushes Jonathan off, his erection twitching unsatisfied between them. Lucy rises to her feet, slipping on her silk robe -- never taking her eyes off Mina -- then brushes past her without another word.

And Mina... Mina knows Lucy. She knows how cruel she can be, and has long accepted it as a part of her, but never has that cruelty been directed at her.

This, more than anything, seals it all in Mina’s mind. 

The two most important people in her life have betrayed her, and it feels as if the very foundations of the life she’s known until now have been shaken.

The only person she can confide in, who listens to her and comforts her with a solemn touch of a hand, is Grayson.

And Grayson thinks, now that he has her, he means to keep her.

He makes her happy, makes her smile and laugh, builds her back up when her life is at its lowest. When she cries at her losses, he embraces her, and bids her forget about them.

A year later, Mina discovers she’s pregnant, and her Alexander is overjoyed. It’s a difficult pregnancy and keeps her weak and bed-ridden for most of it. Through it all, Alexander is the one person she can depend on.

It’s an even more difficult birth, but Mina immediately falls in love with her baby. But her pregnancy took its toll on her body, and she’s still having a hard time bouncing back. Her energy flags more and more, and at first, she attributes it to the enormous stress of juggling her studies and a new baby. She's just stressed, Alexander says, maybe they should go for a vacation.

A vacation smack in the middle of her training?? It’s unthinkable at first, but as Mina finds herself more and more fatigued, she relents. Perhaps it will do her good.

During the vacation, without the stress of med school and all the worries at home, Mina finally has some time to think about her old life before this whirlwind romance she’s found herself in. As much as she loves Alexander and their baby, she knows there are some things that were left unresolved, and she’s been covering them up long enough.

When they return from the vacation, Mina begins to write letters:

Dear Lucy,

You cannot imagine how much I long to see you again. Today will make it a year, nine months and fifteen days since we last saw each other. I can't believe it's been that long. Remember when we had that fight in chemistry class and you didn't speak to me for three days? Before our separation, that was the longest we'd ever been apart. I miss those days.

Every letter I have sent to you has returned unread and unopened. I know you don’t want anything to do with me anymore, and after the way I treated you, I wouldn't blame you if you never wanted to see me again. But still, it doesn't erase the yearning to see your face again.

I miss the nights we would sleep in each other's beds, talking until midnight. Your face -- your dear, loving eyes and your beloved smile -- would be the last thing I saw before falling asleep, and the first thing to wake me in the morning. I never knew what a blessing that was, until I was deprived of such a gift.

Too much has happened. We both hurt each other, I know. You hurt me -- yes, it still hurts -- but I know, I hurt you first. I realize now that what you did was born out of anger and deep pain, because of what I did.

You were never anything but loving toward me. My sweetest friend who always stood by me, always lifted me up, and gave me whatever happiness you could. With others you were always so cold, so cruel, that I could hardly believe you were the same person, because with me, you were so soft, and you took such great care to be gentle.

And I cast you aside. I treated you as if your love as something to be ashamed of, when really, I did not deserve any of it. You betrayed me out of pain, but I betrayed you without provocation. And I am so sorry. God, if you could only know how much I regret everything I said that night...

My infant daughter is sleeping beside me as I write this. My daughter, Lucy. Can you believe it?

She is so beautiful. She has a shock of jet-black hair that is resistant to combing (I can already tell we will have problems with that), and such mesmerizing grey eyes, and the cheekiest smile. She reminds me of you, but that might be because I love her so much.

I've named her Lucy Alexandra Grayson. After Alexander, and after you. Her father likes to call her Alexandra. I'm afraid he doesn't like your name, my dear, but he can't stop me. I've taken to calling her Lucky, as I confess, there has only ever been one Lucy for me, and always will be.

And anyway, Alexander is far too happy, spending time with the baby. He's so proud of her, and it makes me happy to see Alexander happy. He spends all day with us, and is devoted to me and my happiness. He tells me every day that Lucky and I are everything to him.

Oh, Lucy dear, if you could only know the joy I feel at this moment. I wish you were here so i could share this with you. I so wish that you could see Lucky. If you did, you would love her, I know. She is perfection. I can hardly believe that she came from me. That I made something so beautiful and precious.

Oh, Lucy, today my joy knows no bounds, save for one. I feel as if you should be here. Your presence, as warm and sorely missed as it is, would complete my happiness.

Love, Mina.

Mina feels better during the vacation, but when they get back home, she becomes worse. Fatigue sets in quickly, and she gets daily headaches so bad that she has to stay home. She finally admits that her body is having a hard time bouncing back and handling the stress of it all, and after spending several sleepless weeks thinking about it, Mina finally agrees when Alexander suggests she take a break from medical school. This way, she can stay home and rest. Her body can recuperate, and she’ll have more time with Lucky.

What she doesn’t know is that her symptoms are not part of an illness. Grayson has been slowly introducing medication into her system. Nothing life-threatening, or anything that would raise alarms. He’s much too careful for that. But enough that its effects keep her weak and drained of energy

After they returned from their vacation and Mina had expressed her desire to reconcile with Lucy, Grayson had decided that it wasn’t safe yet to stop drugging her, and so the small doses of the medication resumed.

As for the letters, Lucy never receives any of them. Grayson makes sure of it. He even takes precautions to make sure that every email, every text is blocked. Now that Lucy has excised herself out of Mina’s life, he’ll make sure she remains that way.

As for Lucy herself, in the passing years since their separation, she’s made quite a few changes.

Lucy has always been...  aware of the effect she has on people. She knows she appears as a charming coquette, and as she makes her own way in the world, she uses that to her advantage. In fact, she delights in it.

She rarely lets anyone see how clever she is until it's too late, and by then, she's already destroying their lives or their reputations. It makes people underestimate her abilities, and she gets to still play in her glittering little world.

Lucy meets Nick at a friend’s bachelorette party.

When they first meet, he’s a stripper hired for the night. 

It would have been easy to dismiss him then, but Lucy, clever as she is, sees his potential and cleans him up.

She had been planning on using Nick’s past as a stripper and her role as his benefactor to hold over him as blackmail if needed, but she soon realizes that he genuinely does not give a fuck about that.

“What are you getting out of this, then?”

“Aside from the suits and the Maserati? Honestly, I’m just along for the ride. This beats dancing Friday nights at Hunk-O-Rama. Besides, you’re cute.”

Lucy laughs derisively. “You’re not my type.”

Nick throws his head back and laughs even louder. “I have a feeling you don’t hear this a lot, but you’re not my type either.”

Aside from Mina, it’s easily the closest relationship Lucy has ever had. Nick is one of the few people perceptive enough to really see her, and surprisingly enough, he’s not enamored by her. Which works well enough for both of them.

Nick sees Lucy for the mess that she is. When they’re not in public, he treats her like an annoying, reckless little sister, and it amuses him to watch her wreak havoc and play her little games. When she doesn’t annoy the crap out of him.

Nick, however, knows very little about Mina.

All he knows is that she’s a sore subject. He's deduced by now that Lucy was in love with her, but beyond that, he lets Lucy keep her secrets.

As for Mina, over the years, Grayson’s manipulations become more and more overt, and it becomes harder and harder for her to leave.

As Lucky grows up, Alexander showers her with affection and spoils her, making the little girl devoted to him. “Daddy’s little girl” he calls her.

"Mummy, why are you and Daddy fighting?"

"Daddy wasn't being nice."

“But Mummy, Daddy's the nicest! He loves us. He says so all the time."

Mina tries to leave once, when Lucky is 7 years old. She tries to take Lucky with her, but her daughter runs to Grayson and clings to him. “No! I want to stay with Daddy!”

And Grayson levels Mina a look, daring her to separate her child from her father, or leave her behind.

From then on, Grayson keeps Lucky close. She hears him whispering things into the child’s ear (”Mummy’s sick. She’s not well.”) and it reminds her so forcibly of the things he used to whisper in her ear. 

That’s when she knows. She has to leave, for her daughter’s sake.

She takes some of the pills she keeps in the cupboard, carefully calculates enough to make her sick but not kill herself. She only needs enough to be taken to the ER, and put in a temporary psych hold.

It's dangerous, her plan. She could actually kill herself, and if she's on psych hold, Lucky will be left alone with Alexander, and though she's sure Alexander won't hurt her, because Lucky is his bargaining chip to get Mina back, she can’t be sure of what he’ll be putting into her daughter’s head.

Her attempt fails when Grayson brings in a doctor friend of his to help her instead of taking her to the hospital

He performs gastric lavage on her at home to flush the drugs from her stomach. As Mina lies on her bed, lethargic with the tube in her nose, Alexander grips her wrist and murmurs under his breath "You are everything to me. I won’t let you go."

As Mina recovers, she finds herself locked in her room. She asks in vain for Lucky, but Alexander’s only reply is that “She shouldn’t have to see her mother like this.”

Days pass, and the sense of urgency and panic rises, unstoppable, in Mina’s throat like bile. She knows she has no choice. When she’s strong enough, she pushes herself out of bed, locks the door to buy herself time, and breaks one of the windows. She picks up one of the shards, and thinking of her beautiful little girl, Mina cuts through the flesh of her wrists.

It takes a while before Grayson and the doctor realize what she’s done, and she loses enough blood that the doctor decides she needs to go to the hospital or she will going to die.

Once she's at the hospital, she asks a kind nurse to contact Lucy, but she’s told that Lucy’s number is unlisted. The nurse tries the business number, but gets the usual run-around.

And so, as a last resort, Mina gives the nurse the address to Lucy’s family home, hoping and praying that someone there -- Lucy’s father or her mother -- will see her name and remember it. Then she gives the nurse a bundle of letters. The ones that were returned unopened, and the ones she wrote but didn't send because she knew by now Lucy wouldn't read them.

The nurse kindly agrees, and Mina wishes she could tell her everything, that it could help her and her daughter. But Alexander is too influential, and he has Lucky with him, and Mina will not risk her daughter.

The letters are forwarded to Lucy. Nick hands them to her over the breakfast table. But when Lucy hears who they’re from, she goes silent and refuses to open them.

"Do what you want with them. Take them, or they'll end up in the fire. I won't read them."

Nick reads them. The next day, he approaches Lucy again, letters in hand. "The letters, that Mina wrote you..."

Lucy doesn't even look up from her cup of coffee. Her jaw twitches. "I don't want to hear it."

The letters drop onto the table next to her plate. "I think she may need your help. I think she's being abused."

Lucy applies herself to recovering Mina and Lucky, as well as sinking Alexander Grayson, like Nick has never seen her apply herself to anything before.

Nick loses track of how many people Lucy bribes, threatens or blackmails to get Grayson arrested and the charges to stick, or how long it takes for her to get Grayson’s properties seized and his assets frozen. 

He’s lost count of how many times he’s seen Grayson’s face in the news, getting condemned and absolutely dragged by every news outlet Lucy and her family have access to. 

Nick also has no idea know how she managed to get a decent-sized portion of Grayson’s fortune back for Mina and Lucky -- and honestly, given Lucy’s pervasive, systematic destruction of everything Alexander Grayson holds dear, he’s kind of afraid to ask.

As Lucy’s “business face”, Nick has to field everyone from the press to the lawyers. Fortunately for them, he’s a competent son of a bitch, and he tells Lucy the one time she’d asked "Don't worry about it, kid. Your family is my family."

Lucy doesn't quite know what to respond to -- the declaration that Nick considers her family, or that he thinks Mina is her family. "They're not my family."

"Sure, whatever you say, babe." Nick just laughs and walks away. "Oh, and I better get a raise after this."     

Nick, however, does suspect that Lucy’s almost manic focus on sinking Grayson to the mud is at least partly so that she doesn’t have to deal with Mina being back. The fact that she had stashed Mina and Lucky in one of her summer homes, hidden away from her, is evidence enough of that. 

Lucy says it’s to keep them out of the public eye, and while that’s true enough, there is also some truth to Nick’s theory.

Ruining Grayson is easy. Revenge is easier and altogether more satisfying that hashing out old feelings that never really died -- just got shoved to the back of her mind, and only came up whenever Lucy was with another woman and, instead of red hair, she'd see Mina's black curls; or when she said the wrong name in the throes of an orgasm.

And looking across the courtroom at Grayson with a triumphant smile on her face is infinitely easier than looking Mina in the eye.

Lucy puts off visiting the summer house as long as she can. But she has to eventually, to let Mina know how the trials went

For once, Lucy, the social butterfly who can charm birds off trees, has no idea what to say. Mina is quiet too. She wants to tease Lucy for her awkwardness, and if it had been 8 years ago and the Lucy of old, she would have.

Now all she can really do is stare at Lucy and drink her in, cataloging every feature that has changed or remained the same 

In the end, Lucky saves them. The little girl looks up at Lucy with a sweet smile "Hi! You're Lucy!"

Lucy can only stare at her for a second before shaking herself with a nod. "I am."

"We have the same name! But my Mummy calls me Lucky."

Lucy finally meets Mina's eye. "So I've heard."

Lucky quickly warms to Lucy, and Lucy, who has never spent more than an hour with any person younger than herself, finds herself feeling strangely attached to the child.

Lucky is what brings Lucy and Mina together.

In truth, they're each so desperate to know the other again, to somehow find their way back to how things were before that night. They've both changed so much, but they both want to see how much has remained the same, how much they can still salvage and patch together.

It's too much to say, but too much to leave unsaid, so they focus the affection they can't give the other on Lucky

Lucy and Mina are never quite alone together at first. Lucky is usually a buffer between them 

Then one day, Lucy brings Lucky a whole new wardrobe of dresses and Lucky tries them on for her and Mina one at a time. As Lucky flounces off to change into another sparkly tulle dress, Mina chuckles, “Remember that time we got drunk and we snuck into the the props room in school and tried on all of the costumes for ‘Hamlet’?”

Lucy smiles. "I remember having to drag you there because you were too scared of getting caught.”

"And I remember you trying on every gaudy thing you could find. Just like Lucky.” Mina laughs, her eyes softening. “I swear, sometimes I think she's your child." 

Lucy looks away for a second, but Mina murmurs "She reminded me so much of you all those years."

Lucy hides the tremor in her voice behind an arrogant smirk. "She's amazing then."

Mina looks at her, eyes clear and bright. "She is."

Nick joins them some weekends, and Lucky adores him almost as much as Lucy. On one particular visit, he comes bearing some “sensitive information” for Lucy.

When Mina had first been rescued, she had asked Nick if he had any information on Jonathan Harker. When he reported this to Lucy, she had tasked Nick to find him. Not out of sentimentality for the man, she couldn't care less about Harker. But for Mina...

Nick finds Lucy and Mina in the sunroom, talking quietly. Mina is reaching over to brush a non-existent stray hair out of Lucy's face, and Lucy is smiling in a way Nick has never seen before. Gentle, almost tender. 

And this is the woman who has left a trail of broken hearts a mile long behind her.

Nick almost doesn't interrupt them -- but then Mina leans forward, bringing her that much closer to Lucy... And the smile disappears on Lucy's face like water evaporating. She pulls away abruptly, her eyes sliding away from Mina's to find Nick in the doorway.

He holds up the folder for her to see. Lucy rises and leads him to her office, where they won't be overheard. When Nick hands her folder, she scans it silently, her jaw tight. The file contains all of Harker's information, including how to contact him. 

"He's unmarried and working as a writer for a newspaper."

Lucy closes the folder and hands it to Nick, her eyes stony. "Give it to her."

Nick blinks and pauses. "Are you su--"

Lucy silences him with a sharp look that berates him for daring to question her. "Give it to her."

Nick's lips narrow. "Yes, ma'am."

Lucy cringes inwardly. She knows she was a little bit too blunt with Nick, but honestly she's in no mood to be nice. "Oh, and have my team prepare the jet."

"Where are you going?"

"Anywhere but here."

Lucy flies off to see a frequent bedfellow in Paris for a week. She heads to Italy for another the next week. By the time she gets back, she’s informed her that Mina and Lucky are gone. Nick tells her that he gave Mina the file on Jonathan and she left the next day.

Lucy arrives home to an empty summer house, and finds that she misses Mina and Lucky too much. She misses Lucky's mischievous giggles and Mina's light laughter. She misses having tea with Mina in the sunroom, and sitting in the library while Lucky reads her old children's books to her.

She misses the days spent on the lake, Lucky swinging into the water from the old rope on the tree, and somehow managing to coax Lucy along with her, while Mina, quietly radiant in her white linen dress, sips tea and watches them from the dock. She used to laugh whenever Lucy and Lucky emerged dripping wet from the lake, hair stringy and waterlogged, dresses stuck uncomfortably to their skin, but having the time of their lives.

Everyday there just reminds her more of what she doesn't have anymore. So she goes back to her home in the city. It's not much better there, but at least there aren't any reminders of Mina or Lucky there

Mina calls her several times, but Lucy ignores each call.

When they were younger, she used to listen to Mina talk about her relationship with Harker, not a secret between them, except one. And Lucy was just content to listen because it kept her in Mina's life.

And while she doesn't want to lose Mina again, she thinks she's grown up enough to set limits on what she can or will take. And she doesn't think she can take hearing about Mina's new life with Jonathan. How she's rebuilding her old life with him, and shaping her new one around it.

She does allow herself some bitterness over the thought of how perfect that new little family would be. Mina and her old love, Jonathan, a perfect new father for Lucky, to replace the twisted one she got.

It's perfect for them, she thinks. Absolutely fucking meant to be. A happy ending after the hell Mina went through. She deserves that, Lucy thinks as she downs yet another glass of wine

And Lucy bets that within the next six months, she'll receive a call from Mina asking her to be her bridesmaid. A year later, Lucky will be getting a new brother or sister.

On nights like these, when Lucy drowns herself in enough wine to numb the crater in chest, Nick has to scoop her up and take her home himself.

On one such night, she doesn't come home to an empty house. Mina's waiting for her there. She follows Nick to Lucy's room then gives him a small smile. "I'll take it from here." 

Lucy is half passed out, but Mina manages to get her to drink some water and helps her change out of her clothes. Then she tucks Lucy under her covers and slips in with her.

Lucy's eyes open blearily, "Aren't you going back home to Jonathan and Lucky?"

Mina smiles at her. "I left Lucky with my cousin, and I'm sure Jonathan can manage without me."

Lucy mutters something into her pillow.

"What was that?"

"He doesn't deserve you."

Mina brushes her hair back "Then who does?"

"No one."

"You think too highly of me."

"Rightly so."

"Even after..... even after the way I treated you that night?"

"That night wasn't your fault," Lucy mumbles sleepily, voice slurred from the wine. In vino veritas. "It was my fault. It was me -- my feelings. I was responsible for them, not you. I was doing so well before that, and you, you my darling brilliant Mina, are so stupid when it comes to love. You would never have known anything if I hadn't opened my stupid mouth - or kissed you with it."

Mina's eyes search hers in the dim light. "Would you never have told me? Would you have kept it a secret from me forever?"

Lucy nods, making herself slightly dizzy. Her eyes close and she murmurs. "If I could go back, I would never have kissed you."

Mina doesn't speak for a while. She just listens to the sound of Lucy's breathing even out to sleep. She just stares at Lucy. "It's funny. I often think about things I regretted about that night. I regretted the way I acted toward you, the things I said.... But that kiss was the one thing I never regretted."

When they were at the summer house, there were several moments when Mina almost got carried away and kissed her, her eyes flicking down to Lucy's lips, lush and candy-pink. She's spent nights reliving that kiss over the years, trying to recall details of it, but it's been blurred by time and guilt and confusion. 

She wonders how she never knew how Lucy felt. She wonders if Alexander hadn't been manipulating her, if she would have said the things she did. If she hadn't been so in love with Jonathan then, would she have kissed Lucy back? 

She looks at Lucy now and wonders if she would taste the same.

But every time Mina lets any hint of these thoughts show on her face, Lucy looks away.

Lucy -- who, even after all these years and all this turmoil, has opened her heart and home to her and her daughter -- shows all the fear of a trapped animal whenever Mina looks at her with want in her eyes, and closes herself off.

Mina knows she's damaged that beyond repair. Lucy -- dear Lucy who never kept a secret from her but this one -- showed one moment of vulnerability and Mina had all but slapped her in the face

And she still knows Lucy well. Lucy always lashes out from hurt at first, but after, she hides in dark corners where no one can see, like a heart-hurt little kitten seeking the comfort and safety of being unseen.

So she doesn't bring it up in the morning, when Lucy pads softly into the kitchen where Mina is making her breakfast and the hangover remedy she came up with in college.

Lucy looks up at her gratefully, if a little confused. Her eyes are a little cloudy, and her perfect hair tousled just enough for Mina to want to run her hands through the golden mess. 

She knows she can. This is Lucy, and since they were teenagers, touch has been a language between them. Mina's heart twinges, and she wonders if this is how Lucy felt all those years ago, wanting to touch her as she always does, but this time with a lover's hand, each nerve ending coming alive with the stark difference.

Lucy watches her with a question on her lips that Mina can almost see, even as she hesitates, her mouth fearful and unwilling to open. 

Mina reassures her with a gentle smile as she places a plate of Lucy's favorite scrambled eggs in front of her. She leans forward and kisses the top of her head. They don't have to talk about it now.

Hope is a cruel thing to entertain, she knows from years living with Alexander. And she knows that sometimes the best defense from it is to reject it.

And right now, she knows they're both brimming with it. The rigidly suppressed hope in Lucy's eyes, marshaled by years of emotions never expressed, and the answering hope in Mina that prays she still feels the same way

This is not a conversation that can be had while Lucy is hungover and barely awake. Lucy waited for her for years before that kiss, then the duty of waiting fell to Mina. She thinks she can wait a little bit longer for Lucy.

After breakfast, when her wits are more collected, Lucy sits with her feet curled up on the wicker love seat, and Mina sits opposite her. Lucy's no longer drunk, but she nurses a cup of tea in both hands, gripping the porcelain as if her life depends on it

"Why are you here, Mina? Shouldn't you be at home with Jonathan and Lucky?"

Mina regards her with a tranquil look. "I told you, Lucky is at my cousin's place. And Jonathan... I don't know where Jonathan is."

At that, Lucy looks up. "What do you mean?"

Mina shrugs. "I haven't seen him since the day I went to visit him."

"Haven't you moved in with him by now?"

Mina casts her an exasperated look. "I've been living with my cousin for the past few weeks. You would know that if you answered any of my phone calls."

Lucy is quiet, and Mina ducks her head so she can meet Lucy's eye. "Did you think I moved in with Jonathan?"

Lucy looks up at her, and there's something almost accusatory in her green eyes. "You went back to him."

Mina gives her a level look. "Of course I went back to him. I loved him for years, Lucy. I owed it to Jonathan to see him again. We were together since we were teenagers! We were engaged to be married, before Alexander. I owed it to myself."

Lucy has turned away again, not wanting to meet her eye, and Mina wants to shake her. "..... But Lucy, above all that, I owed it to you."

“Me?? You went back to your old lover for me?" Lucy scoffs, tears forming in her crystal eyes. Her voice breaks, but Lucy is always Lucy, and her words bite back, even if she's hurt -- especially when she's hurt.

"Forgive my skepticism, Mina, but I fail to understand how returning to the man you loved first, the man who could have given you everything I never could -- the first man you chose over me -- could possibly be about me."

"Because!" MIna can feel her voice rising out of desperation and frustration and anger and love at this woman who owns her heart now. "Because you deserve the truth.... Because you deserve to look me in the eye and know beyond a doubt that I'm telling the truth when I say I choose you. Not Jonathan. Not Alexander. You."

Lucy's mouth drops open, and Mina feels a sense of satisfaction that she has managed to render Lucy Westenra, of all people, speechless. 

"I went to see Jonathan, I let him hold me in his arms, and I knew that what I feel for him, even what I felt for him then is not even half of what I feel for you. After all these years. After everything we've all been through -- you are the one I choose.... It might not mean anything at all to you now, after what I did to you, but I know now without a single doubt that it's the truth. And so do you. I choose you, Lucy."

Lucy just stares at Mina, her eyes wide. Her hands are shaking so much, Mina fears the tea in her cup will spill. She crosses the room and kneels down in front of her chair. She takes the cup carefully from Lucy’s hands and sets it down.

Lucy has looked away from her again, like she does now whenever Mina tells her the truth, with her eyes or her words. Mina almost sighs, because she was right. She has damaged this beyond repair.

But then, Lucy's trembling fingers catch her own in a fearful, hopeful grip. "Please tell me it's real. Tell me you're telling the truth."

“Oh, Lucy...”  Mina reaches up and her fingers curling around the nape of Lucy's neck. She brings their foreheads together, until she can practically taste the salt of Lucy's tears. "I love you. I'm so in love with you."

Finally she kisses her, the taste of Lucy touching her lips, unadulterated by blurry memory and guilt. This time, it's Lucy who hesitates, who is still beneath Mina's mouth, and Mina knows the terror of Lucy that night, whispers the same prayers Lucy did into the kiss of so many years ago.

Then Lucy's mouth parts beneath her with a soft sobbing moan, and bliss floods Mina's whole body. She never knew bliss tasted like Lucy and her tears. She laughs into the kiss, her own tears slipping from her closed eyes to Lucy's waiting lips.

Lucy's hands, greedy and fearful, grip onto her dress and haul her up into the chair above her. The love seat is small and cramped, but Mina doesn't care, not when Lucy holds her like she's never ever going to let go, like she's afraid Mina will change her mind. 

She imagines that it will take some time, for Lucy to truly believe that she's here to stay. So Mina holds her gently and firmly, like a cherished thing, pushes her down into the soft cushion of the chair just so Lucy can feel her weight, the permanence of her and her choice. 

Mina will wait and she'll show her. She will show Lucy every single day of the rest of their lives.

[murdocsmacattack]

fandom discussion: is murdoc a metaphor for a sexual predator

so a few post back i did a fandom discussion called "is the one sided sexual tension between mac and murdoc actually cannon , and is it done on purpose  " where i talked about murdoc as being a medium of homoerotic expression , both positive and negative , my opinion on this being that murdoc was a sapiosexual and a sexual predator all rolled up into one and that his obsession with mac was both an expression and good example of this ,but can we go even a little deeper then that ? is murdocs character actually a metaphor for more deviant sexual behavior ? in my opinion , yes ,but i want to delve into this with things iv actually seen on the show , and the actual 8 signs of a sexual predator and how they actually parallel murdocs actions to a scary degree ..

tho its murdoc so is anyone surprised ? anyway here we go....

1 there over attentive in the early stages

you could choose not replace attentive with obsessive and this statement  would still be true for murdoc , as soon as murdoc had gotten a tastes of what mac had to offer as an intellectual opponent and had set his sights on him , everyone else literally ceased to matter , to the point where murdoc was willing to risk his reputation and let 3 people he was paid to kill live, mac had murdocs full attention for the rest of there interaction , and this has actually escalated the more they interact

2. they uses manipulative language

this is murdocs staple habit with pretty much anyone minus cassian , but this technique is used arguably even  more with mac ,murdoc constantly uses his words to cause metal distress and this mental distress -when murdoc isn't tied down -is almost if not always followed up with emotional of physical force , and all three are usually a personal attack on macs own character , but ill expand on this in number 4

3. they make it seem normal

its clear murdoc views his own behavior as completely undisturbing , but macs underplayed  reaction to hearing murdoc whistling , and realizing that it was indeed murdoc who had him in 204, begs the question that after all there interaction if mac is in fact becoming desensitized to murdocs  violent and violating behavior , and is in actuality coming to expect the trauma associated with interacting with murdoc as normal when ever said interaction accrues

4. they play the victim  

expanding  right off from number 2 , again murdoc is staple for this and episode 120 and 215 are perfect for this , in 120 murdoc uses manipulative language to the extreme , twisting macs words and moral codes to not only make parallels to what and who they are , but to avoid having to actually contemplate the consequence of his own actions , instead manipulating the entire conversation to blame mac for him being in prison , and the  supposed state of the world for his actions as an assassin , despite the fact that it was murdocs actions that led to this outcome , there are hints of this as well in 215 when murdoc pushes blame unto his father for how he turned out as an adult , even tho his father only had that kind of power to make those chooses for murdoc as a child , while murdoc himself had the choice for who he became as an adult

5. they ridicule the actual victim

a sexual predator has no consideration for thoughts and feelings,and this is usually coupled with needing to know every detail about  past experiences , now murdoc may in actually care what mac thinks to a degree but that's only true when it comes to murdoc himself , in any other area murdoc doesn't hesitate to dig the knife in emotionally , and as for needing to know everything , murdoc has admitted in 108 that hed studied up extensively on macgyvers person before meeting him in the junk yard and this so called studying went beyond what was required

6. they push boundaries sexually

being a prim time show on CBS  macgyver is very lacking where it comes to actual sex and the many actions that  accompany it , this is really where the metaphor part comes in , tho not by much ,the fandom as a whole can agree murdoc has always had a rapey vibe and these things are expressed through murdocs obsession, he has no respect for healthy boundaries, he has admitted openly to stalking mac , and takes pleasure in putting mac in situation that make him uncomfortable to the point of getting physical with him , murdocs actions become both the expression and the metaphoric parallel to a sexual violation

7. they disempower you

all the while murdoc plays off as if this oppressive behavior is ok ,normalizing macs distress and justifying his own actions as macgyver being deserving off them , mac is a worthy obsession and in going against him has made himself an opposing force , there for mac is deserving of any violation or victimization that results

8. they  boasts about conquests

this was done both in 204 and in 215 , once when murdoc reveled the fate of cassains mother nadia , and again in 215 when murdoc described in levied detail the things he intended for henry , both were tools  to violate mac further

what about you guys ?

[hadarlaskey]

Why I love Gene Hackman’s performance in The Conversation

Harry Caul has crawled under a hotel room sink. His legs are pulled up to his body, and his head is tilted as he grasps his headphones like a lovelorn man listening to break-up songs. It’s the sounds of conversation he hears on the other side of the wall – close, but miles away. Cradling himself in a foetal position, his distant stare cuts through the quiet as he does what he is paid to do: he listens.

Few actors capture the burden of loneliness like Gene Hackman. His characters have a marooned quality, as if the weight of the world has severed them from the rest of humanity. In Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, he’s fiercely brilliant as the tyrannical sheriff “Little Bill” Daggett; equally memorable is his turn as Harry Moseby, a detective sinking deeper into a mystery as dark as the sea at midnight, in Arthur Penn’s Night Moves.

Hackman’s most remote character is Harry Caul, the protagonist of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 film The Conversation. A private surveillance expert who is as much as voyeur as an artist, he is unable to reconcile the dubious morality of his work. The job requires invisibility – the targets can’t know their conversations are bugged – but it’s Harry’s shame that drives his need to disappear from view.

Coppola’s sparse dialogue pushes Hackman’s physicality to the foreground, a performance communicated almost through mime. After a stakeout, Harry arrives home to find a birthday present left by a neighbour. He calls her to ask how she gained access to his apartment, while he unceremoniously unbuttons his trousers and wriggles out of them (wriggling out of his own skin might be preferable). He sits in his underwear and shirt, his clothes and body an extension of his own paranoid, itchy discomfort.

Rarely is Harry shown without his translucent rain mac, a layer separating him from anything undesirable, be it bad weather or other people. Thick eyeglasses reflect the world he’s desperate to keep out, while a moustache obscures a perpetually sweaty upper lip. There is nothing sexy or stylish about this spying. When he does speak, it’s in stammered half-sentences: fumbling, awkward and punctuated by long, frightened stares.

Only when admiring his own work is there a hint of pride. In a pivotal scene, Harry sits behind colossal machinery, playing back and editing several recordings he’s made of a clandestine conversation. The film’s narrative tension is predicated upon this recording, though now the danger of its contents is irrelevant. Now he is a maestro, elegant in his movements.

He manipulates the machinery like the conductor of an analogue orchestra. His hand movements are fluid and confident, a gentle smirk appearing behind the moustache. Morals don’t seem to matter in the instant that you betray them, as long as you betray them with flare. Harry doesn’t need to talk or think – he just needs to perform, and perform loud enough for the fears to be drowned out.

So, how can this be the same man that we find curled up on the floor of a hotel bathroom? Intermittent gratification does little to prevent the tidal wave of guilt crashing down on him. You can practically see Hackman shrink in the moments when he reckons with what he’s done. “People were hurt because of my work,” he whimpers. It’s his own twisted version of post-coital clarity and regret, and now people are getting hurt again.

The dichotomy of pleasure and remorse that Hackman balances reflects the fears of our own work-based culture: if we come to define ourselves by the quality of the work we do, then who are we outside of that work? That tension is there in Hackman’s darting eyes, his restless body. Gazing at his feet or some arbitrary piece of his clothing, he holds himself with an awkwardness that gives away his greatest fear: that he could be under surveillance. He seems both rigid and small, as if he were a tape caught in a larger machine that just won’t spit him out. He craves release; to dissolve into nothingness.

Anonymity might well be the best Harry can hope for, to be permanently obscured in the San Francisco fog. Yet he’s not invisible. We catch his figure wading through the fog, his work following him like a ghost, along with our own current fears about social media, privacy and isolation. Like editors, we assemble Harry’s glances and gestures into an understanding of who this man is, just as he takes garbled audio recordings of strangers and assembles them into conversations.

As joyfully complicit participants in the act of watching, perhaps we realise something about our own voyeurism, too. It is testament to Hackman’s skilled performance that, like the reflections that dance across his glasses, we’re looking directly at a distorted image of ourselves as much as we’re looking at him. We’re all lost in the fog: alone, together.

The post Why I love Gene Hackman’s performance in The Conversation appeared first on Little White Lies.

source https://lwlies.com/articles/the-conversation-gene-hackman-performance/

[thenarcolepticone]

Would You Like Fries With That?

by TheNarcolepticOne

(AO3) (FF.net)

Summary: Without any other alternative for a lunch break, Arthur decides to settle for McDonald's; his least favourite establishment in proximity to work. But along the way, a rather odd foreigner decides to take some part of the stage too. Fate seems to always have it that way.

A/N: I’m going to try and transfer some of these fics to Tumblr. Maybe people can tell me later about some prompts they want me to try lol. Let me know! Warnings: Rated T, language, and sexual concepts. Nothing outta the ordinary gay fluff lmao

Arthur was late. He hated being late, and he hated leaving bad impressions on people. The concept of not knowing when he might arrive at a specific location at a specific time just bothered him enough to make his chest ache, and thus, his dislike for tardiness. But it couldn’t be helped. From the time that he had started on his paperwork last night, to the early morning memory of seeing the digital clock read 3:39AM before he dozed off; it made it an understandable mental mistake. But a mistake like that usually bargained his job, and his paycheck by extension. He might not be able to afford pressing down on the gas pedal to an almost horizontal position if he lost it today. Though, he believed it best not worry about it now.

The radio was off; it was a distraction to his focused driving. He honked a man for being unbelievably slow in accelerating after the light had turned green. He barely saw the hand of the man he passed (probably giving him the middle-finger) out his window before he overtook him. And a string of curses left his lips as he continued to tailgate another car, and promptly turning left so hard that his Alfasud nearly tilted on its side.

Arthur practically sped down the straight path leading to his building; able to maneuver the traffic with practiced skill (though it was more likely from experiencing lateness more than he’d like to admit). His car had barely fit between the two lines of space provided. Arthur wasted no energy wanting to fix it as he stumbled into the building with only four minutes to spare.

The next round of orders began to start up as Alfred adjusted the black hat with the famous M on his head, along with the headset for listening to the drive-in orders from outside. He sighed, getting to his station as he started to clean it up a bit. Another six hours of standing in one place and taking the same orders every time. Not that he really found it bothersome, however. He did get paid, and generously too. The manager seemed to have an interest in his rather peppy personality, to which he took as both a compliment and another reason why he was always asked to take longer shifts than his co-workers.

Days like this usually stacked on him, though. Homework and housework had to be put on hold for those six hours, and it usually didn’t mean any good news for him later when his mother came home with a tired look, but fuming rage. At least he was doing something productive, or else his (new) phone would get confiscated.

Alfred, despite being here for 2 months now, had just barely moved to England and was currently waiting for the start of the academic year to begin at the University of London. Getting into a foreign institution was difficult; what with the sudden separation of his parents and his mother’s hasty decision to return to where she was raised. But he was able to make it just fine, albeit being technically alone and friendless until then. It didn’t really let it get to him, and instead chose to think positive by smiling every day like the happy meals he was meant to advertise.

He was a little later than normal to come to work. The busy traffic and the rush of people trying to get to their offices by their strict time quota was a familiar battle he had to fight every day. The only difference was that by the time they got to work, the entire memory of the ordeal would go away instantly until the next rush hour for lunch and the third one on the way home.

Conversely for Alfred; it was an unending cycle of less than happy customers demanding specific orders from the menu all day every day. From the morning people who want to buy a quick breakfast at Mickey D’s, to the asswipes who yell at him because his co-worker forgot the mustard.

It was jumble for everyone on board.

The shift thankfully didn’t start until fifteen minutes later. His lunch break was only so short. Alfred propped his elbow on the counter, staring out through the small window with a strong sense of irritation.

Some shitty excuse for a driver wanted to ruin his morning by not even giving him a chance to move forward even an inch before the light switched. The American didn’t feel the need to dwell on those thoughts for long, but he often wanted to vent his stresses privately some of the time. His happy-go-lucky façade couldn’t always keep itself up.

Alfred knew afternoons weren’t always his favorite type of the day. But he would get off soon enough. The stench of burgers seemed to always fill his nose and he was, lord forbid it, actually getting tired of the stench.

Ugh. He probably needed to purge himself later by buying another Big Mac on the go.

“Are you doing okay, Alfred?”

The blonde’s head turned. Before him stood a kind man, gentle with the way he spoke but with a certain independence that was admirable even to Alfred. He didn’t speak much, but only if he was concerned for a friend.

“Yeah, Toris,” he sighed. “Just a bit tired. And a little bit of road rage left in me. Nothing bad, I swear.”

The other shifted in his step.

“Well…I suppose. You’re still getting used to it here, anyway. You mentioned you lived in rural area before coming here. It’s a big change. I thought m-maybe I might relate a little, being a foreigner too…”

Alfred rose his eyebrows. His smile went back to full blast as he pat Toris on the back. It was rough enough to make him stumble.

“Thanks for worrying about me, man. I feel fine. Don’t sweat it.”

With a final glance over in his station, he stood there, ready to take the orders. The monitor revealed a familiar looking car in the line, and Alfred turned the headset on.

Arthur yawned, staring ahead as he waited for the next car to finish their order. McDonald’s wasn’t a place that he would rather prefer to eat. His preferences usually consisted of sit in, full course dining restaurants with a little bit of class and some variation with the foods; not really some branch-extended business that was only there for the sake of profit. But alas, the other cafés were particularly full and this was the only option near enough to his workplace without much concern with the distance.

The car ahead finally moved forward, and he pushed down his parking brake and accelerated slightly to align himself with the large walkie. He rolled down his window with some effort before he leaned out enough for the man to hear him.

“Hi! Welcome to McDonald’s! What can I get started for you?”

Arthur took a moment to ponder the voice. American. He blinked, uneasy at the fact that he almost assumed that he was in the States for a few seconds.

“Uh, hello,” he greeted rather offhandedly. “I’d like a cheeseburger, please. No pickles or condiments. And a drink as well. Sweet iced tea, if you have it.”

There was a moment of silence as the order began to go through. But before the actual price was announced, a different response came out instead.

“Are you sure that’s it, sir?”

“I’m positive I know what I want, yes.”

“No…lettuce? Or tomatoes?”

“I probably would have mentioned that in my order, sir,” he said, getting slightly annoyed with the questions. Was this business really just bent on getting his money on basic vegetables? “Now may I please proceed?”

“Uh, sure,” he said awkwardly before stating the price. “I’ll be at the window.”

Without so much as a hasty ‘thank you’, he put his upper frame back inside his car and left his window open as he drove to the window.

By the time he got halfway there, he heard the same voice, asking the car behind him about his order. A fast worker, no doubt. He began to feel the weight of his exasperation lift by a fraction. Despite the man’s obvious rookie-like style of work, at least it was something. Arthur briefly wished he could go back on his years before attending London University and work like the cashier was doing instead of the relaxing he did back then.

He was a first-year graduate student now. There really wasn’t any need to dwindle on the past.

The windows realigned again, and Arthur yanked up the parking brake before looking to the employee.

And his heart thumped.

The individual in question wasn’t quite ready to talk to Arthur but was instead typing the orders onto a monitor. Arthur noticed the way his black polo seemed to hug his body in the right places, revealing to be what looked like a well-preserved athlete’s physique. It was hard to find those types in the autumn. Even his face appeared more foreign than he expected. Sure, the man was blonde like him. Except hearing his voice alongside actually looking at the physical body made it all the more different.

It screamed American.

And he swallowed.

What a bloke.

Eventually, the other got off of the headset and walked to the window, smiling as he leaned down (almost casually) to Arthur’s height.

His car wasn’t elevated, so it made some sense why he was doing it. Although he actually believed that his Alfasud was a piece of junk, perhaps it had some use after all.

He had a good view of his cashier.

“Hi,” the American greeted again. “Cash, credit or debit?”

Arthur cleared his throat, looking back to his empty seat and grabbing his wallet.

“Cash.”

For a moment, the stare of the attractive man was rather embarrassing as he sifted through his wallet. He pulled out two, five-pound notes and handed it to him. From this action, he was able to get a name from the name tag he wore.

Alfred F. Jones.

He couldn’t have gotten any more American than he already was.

Alfred took the money, putting it in the register before handing back the change.

“Alright. Excuse me a moment. I’ll be back with your order.”

Arthur put the extra change back in his wallet before sighing.

Christ. He thought his hormones were at a standstill after Francis. And it just resurfaced as quick as a rabbit’s birth.

Alfred returned soon enough, and with the paper bag. Arthur retrieved it, putting it into his lap and checking the food to make sure it was right. It was.

“Thank you,” said Arthur without looking at him. He feared if he did, he would be blushing a lot more obviously than he was now. Arthur set the food right next to his wallet on the empty seat. He was about to release the parking brake, but not before Alfred spoke up again.

“Would you like fries with that?”

The Englishman glanced up.

“…since you’re asking…but make it quick.”

Alfred looked as the man drove off while he waited for the next in line. Sometimes, people didn’t appreciate this establishment like they should. And Alfred wanted to get it a point to get as many snobby Englishmen to try and taste the burgers first before saying it stinks. He was glad he was able to convince the last customer otherwise.

Before he could even try and turn back to the monitor, he just caught the sight of the recent car driving away.

On its bumper was the coat of arms for the University of London. It made itself familiar in two ways. The first with its obvious relevance to him. The second being that it was the same asshole who decided to honk him.

The cutest asshole he had ever laid eyes on.

And he had just gotten him extra fries for being such an asshole.

It made him feel like an asshole.

…but fuck that.

He hoped he’d stick around longer tomorrow.

[bloggerblagger]

81) To my old, impressionable friends who are falling for Corbynonsense.

Remember Barbara Follett? Blair babe and MP. Wife of seriously wedged-up  best selling author Ken Follett. She was queen of the champagne socialists.

I mention her because champagne socialist seems an outdated term to me these days. As outdated as Blair Babes. Or Blair anything come to that. To begin with,  it’s perfectly respectable to pitch up at a party with  a lesser bubbly  these days - champagne even seems a tad vulgar, a bit footballer. And with the sharp  leftward swerve of Corby’s Labour Party, well,  ‘socialist’ hardly seems to cover it. That’s why, in a recent Facebook spat I had with some  old advertising pals who have decided that Jezza is the new messiah, I called them Prosecco Marxists.

One of them objected. Not to the Marxist bit. He told me he was strictly teetotal these days. So I tried a bit harder, and always liking a bit of alliteration I offered up Perrier Pol Pottist. Then I thought a bit more and came up with Eau Chi Minnist. All a bit seventies I agree, but that seems to fit in quite well with Jezza’s policies.

For those still on the booze, how about Cava Commie? Or if you really are a footballer you could make that Cristal Commie?

Raw nerves touched.

Anyway, my central and not terribly well received  point was that there was something faintly ridiculous about people who had spent their lives in the engine room of capitalism, and living very comfortably as a result, deciding that the Islington Hugo Chavez was the answer to their prayers. When I suggested that whatever the problem, Jezza was most emphatically not the answer, and that,  should he ever actually manage to fly the Red Flag outside no.10, they would  be the first ones dispatched to the gulag, I received back some impassioned replies.

One said, “….you would rather vote for a morally & fiscally bankrupt bunch of murderous bastards?  Seriously? Purely on the basis of ‘what might be’? Crikey. I’m sorry but I’m genuinely surprised by that. It’s an interesting inversion of the ‘it was all better in the old days’ thinking that led to your generation voting overwhelmingly to Leave. Now the same generation is voting AGAINST a return to the past. Jesus. Make your minds up!! (I appreciate you’re a remainer but you are unusual in your generation) And try looking forward at the world you’d like to create rather than running from one you fear will be recreated.

Come on Richard, where’s that youthful idealism? Where’s the belief we can make the world a better place? A fairer, more just, more equal one? To want that isn’t to want a return to the 70s, it’s just to want a world in which human beings are more important than lining your own pockets. A world with some principles, some humanity, some hope. A world in which the prevailing orthodoxy isn’t that the free market is the answer to all ills.”

Selfish? Moi?

As this particular correspondent admitted to being 54 himself, I thought the ‘my generation’ bit was a bit rich. And as for the whereabouts of ‘my youthful idealism’, well, pretty obviously you’ll find that in the locked and barred cupboard of my youth along with the Beatle jacket and the “Make Love Not War’ badge and the flower that I never wore in my hair even when I had some.

Actually, I wouldn’t rather vote for a morally and fiscally bankrupt bunch of murderous bastards. Although I probably would work on their advertising business if I got the chance. I’d draw the line at Golden Dawn and ISIS but I’d sell my soul for pretty much anything in between as I am pretty sure most advertising people would; very possibly including my friend who wants the world where human beings are more important than lining your own pockets. ( I really objected to that; when I worked in advertising, it wasn’t just about the money. It was also the company pension, the six week hols, the trips to Cannes, the business class plane tickets….)

It is not that I am pro Tory, at least not pro this lot. The fact that the only one of the present bunch that I have any time for is Spreadsheet Phil  clearly underlines my total disillusionment with the Conservatives. It is just that I genuinely believe that Jezza and Johnny Mac and Big Di  represent an existential  danger. To the country. To  the public services. To the poor and needy. And, lastly, to me.

Actually, this is one of those cases where the last shall be first. Because what I really mean to say is, not, lastly, to me, but firstly to me.

My heartlessness explained.

If I have one central guiding precept by which I make sense of the world, it is this: self interest rules. At the epicentre of my world is me, as it must  be because it is through my eyes that I see it, and through my mind that I make sense of it, and when I cease to exist, for me the world will do likewise.

Similarly the epicentre of your world is you, and the epicentre of anybody else’s world is their's and their's alone. I concede that if there were a God we would all be equal but only in that God’s eyes. It is an immutable law of life;  me and mine first, you and yours second, them and their's last. (Me and mine rather than just me, because I see our children are an extension of ourselves, our immortality.)

It is this order of value of  which explains why, when tens of thousands  of people die in Syria it rates less British column inches than when 129 people die in an attack on a nightclub in Paris, and why that in turn gets less coverage in this country  than when one soldier is beheaded in Greenwich. It is that which is closest to us which always gets our attention first.

It’s all me, me, me. Even for you.

However I also realise that for every other person it is their self interest that rules and for us all to coexist  we each have to allow for that.

As you may know, I am not the first to have happened upon this revelation. Moses may have got there first. The Ten Commandments, it seems to me, are  not so much a matter of morality as a matter of  self preservation.

Thou does not kill because thou would much prefer not to  be killed. Thou honours  thy mother and father in the hope that thine own little dears won’t ship thou off to the nearest nursing home.  

This, I would say, is enlightened self interest. It mean giving careful thought to what my medium and long term interest might be,and in doing that,  sometimes sacrificing my short term  interest as a result. I might have an almost irresistible urge to jump over the garden fence and nick next door’s ox,  but, unless I want to start the next war of the oxen, I had better keep a lid on it. Peace between neighbours is more in my medium and long term self interest  than the brief pleasure of slurping down a  nice bowl of oxtail soup.

A tiny cog in the great machine of commerce.

Thinking in terms of self-interest, even enlightened self interest, might not give one the lofty views  of others that one gets from  believing one is occupying the moral high ground.  But it just makes more sense to me.  Amongst other benefits, it  allows me to have worked and profited from a career in advertising, without the queasy feeling - most of the time - that I was doing something fundamentally wrong. (Which is how I am sure  Jezza would see it.)

Being in advertising often involves attempting to persuade people to part with money they often have to borrow, to pay for things they often don’t need, and  which they wouldn’t otherwise want. If ‘belief that we can make the world a better place’ is what is driving you it is hard to see how that squares with a life spent  working in advertising. (Although, if that were your point of view, you  could, if pushed, just about, make an  argument that advertising increases demand and  that is to the general economic good.  But somehow I think I would find that more of a comfort than you would.)

So what would Jezza do for me?

I would hazard a guess  that as soon as he was elected the pound would fall through the floor, the credit agencies would slash our credit rating, the interest on government’s borrowings would rise inexorably, inflation would soar, and interest rates would have to follow.

The property market - already falling in London - would fall further and faster, leaving some owners (grown used to the low interest rates of the last years)  in negative equity  and no longer able to afford their increased mortgage payments that would follow interest rate rises. Overseas investors would be withdrawing their money before you could say  Viva La Revolucion.

Unfazed by any of the aforementioned, Jezza and his dedicated disciples would whack up income taxes and inheritance tax and corporate taxes and lots of companies would up sticks and bugger off to Ireland or somewhere. If corporation tax rose by the 40% (from 19% to 26%) promised in the Labour manifesto, what would be the consequences of the resultant hole in profits? Either, less money for investment in plant or people or R and D, and less for dividends on shares - which means pension funds suffer - or cost cutting, meaning possible loss of jobs, or a combination of all of the above.

So far, so bad

And then we come to the wealth tax that John McDonnell has always been a proponent of but which was conveniently downplayed during the election. Any sort of wealth tax - and John McDonnell has previously proposed one  on the wealthiest 10% - would obviously be heavily biased towards London and the South East. They mentioned a Land Tax  in the manifesto but we have no idea of the details.

So, what I see is a doctrinaire Marxist-ish Labour government steadfastly hanging on to its outmoded ideas while the economy tips into serious decline, with the payment of lots of extra taxes being requested of me while the value of my house, pension and other assets falls precipitously.

No, Jezza wouldn’t be  too good for my short term self interest. And neither would he be good  for my medium and long term self interest - my enlightened self interest - as I don’t see how his policies  would ultimately benefit anyone else either. In the words of the unfashionable Tony Blair earlier this week, they would leave the country ‘flat on its back’, 

And it gets worse.

Then there is Jezza’s position on the EU, which is the polar opposite of mine as I am a staunch, unrepentant Remoaner. Whatever he claims to think, however much he tries to face both ways, it is absolutely obvious from his lukewarm campaigning during the referendum - so inferior to his full-blooded performance during the election - that he is a Brexiteer. His parliamentary voting record on every matter from 1975 onwards has been steadfastly anti-EU. Many of his and McDonnell’s cherished plans for state intervention in the economy, would, it is believed, run foul of EU competition laws.

And I have another fundamental problem with him: his supposed integrity and authenticity. Far from believing in it, I think he is, in a sense, the most duplicitous of politicians. I think he could teach even Boris a thing or two. For whereas we know brazen Boris is completely two faced, he at least makes no real effort to disguise the fact, whereas Jezza unashamedly trades on his entirely fictitious image of being a straight-talking anti-politician.

His refuses to be honest about his positions on the EU,  on nuclear weapons, and  on the monarchy, none of which he believes in. As it happens I agree with him on the Royals and I am half in sympathy on the Trident issue, but he thinks these views might be electorally damaging so he prevaricates and obfuscates like any other politician does.

Last - for the moment - but not least for the enlightened self-interest of a Jew like me, there is his half-arsed, unconvincing, lack of action on  anti-Semitism in  the Labour party  despite his proclaimed determination to root it out. (You might have misgivings about the Sun as a source of reference but this time they were bang on : https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1558035/jeremy-corbyn-faces-backlash-for-nominating-shami-chakrabarti-for-peerage-after-she-led-partys-anti-semitism-investigation/ )

Oh Jeremy Cor-byn (as his adoring fans like to sing) -  whatever happened to all that  refreshing honesty?

And yet…

What I do accept is that the NHS and social services need a drastic rethink and will need more money. Likewise schools, and very probably the police and fire and prison services too. I don’t see how councils can fix the roads and sweep the streets and empty the bins and do all the other things they have to do if government subsidies are constantly being cut. And I can’t help feeling university tuition fees of nine grand a year are  way too high, and that charging interest of 6.1% on  the loans for them  is outrageous.

Just as worrying,  the constant whittling away of legal aid is profoundly wrong. It makes our legal system fundamentally unjust.

Perhaps most important of all, we need a radical and imaginative building programme that gives young people a chance to buy a home of their own. If bits of the green belt have to go, if the toes of the constituents of Tory MPs have to be trodden on, then so be it.

Buying a house is the route by which - certainly since the war - have-nots in this country have become haves. That’s how I, once a have-not, became a have and if ‘me and mine’ and the rest of the haves are not to become an ever shrinking minority, and thus politically marginalised and vulnerable, then we need a constant stream of new blood.

(Young people who yearn to own a home of their own please note: Helping people to buy houses  will never be a priority for Jezza and Co. They do not stand for an aspiring, burgeoning, upwardly mobile middle class.  

If  not publicly opposed to the ownership of property, which, ideologically,  at bottom,  they surely are, then you can be certain that their housing policy is, and will continue to be,  focussed on increasing social housing and not on private ownership.)

Money, money, money - my money.

How is all of that to be paid for? One way or another by higher taxation I reluctantly suppose. (And by a reduction to my perks - the pension triple lock and my winter fuel allowance will have to go of course, although Jezza wouldn’t agree because, for the far left, the holy cow of universal benefits must never be slain, no matter how much sense it makes. )  

As I believe it to be in my medium and long term self interest - my enlightened self interest - I am prepared to settle the bigger claims that will be made of me.

I don’t say I am enthusiastic about paying more tax - never yet met the person who pays more tax than she or he has to - but I regard tax as a sort of protection money. It is what I have to pay to keep the ravening hordes from my door and demanding everything.

It’s become clear to me that the heavies are now putting the squeeze on me so I’d better slip them a bit more or face the unpleasant consequences. Some call this the price we pay for a civilised society. Put it whichever way you like, it adds up to the same thing.

Thou can be holier than me.

What I refuse to do is pretend that what impels me is anything other than what is good for me and mine. I do object to those who insist on claiming the moral high ground, but more than that, I laugh at them. I don’t doubt their sincerity but I think they are as self-interested as I am. It’s just that they insist on looking through the wrong end of the telescope.

Personal reward is everything. Sometimes materially. Sometimes, for want of a better word, spiritually. (Or as I, who make no claim to any kind of spirituality, prefer to think of it, sometimes it is the reward of making yourself - your self - feel better.) You don’t give money to a beggar because it makes you feel worse, or tend a sick friend, or rescue a mangy dog. Virtue is it’s own reward, as the saying goes. Even the idea of empathy is rooted in self-interest. It means to put oneself - one’s self - in another’s place.

For me, this is the only way to square the circle: of being competitive, of wanting to do well - in an egg and spoon  race or in  a career - which inevitably means judging yourself by the yardstick of others’ relative lack of success, and yet squaring that with  the innate sense of fairness and justice which we all feel almost as soon as we can speak - “it’s not fair, Mummy!” Both positions, it seems to me, are undeniably essential to the human condition.

So to the Mōet Tendancy, I say this. Call me a selfish bastard if you want. I cheerfully plead guilty. And so are you.

[stellarspaced]

BASICS

full name: do kyungsoo. sex/gender: cis male. right or left: used to be right-handed, now favors left-hand. age: 30 (international), 31 (korean). height: 172 cm / 5'8″. eye colour: dark brown. hair colour: black, only ever dyed his hair once, and that was in graduate school, it was a reddish wine. distinguishing marks: none visibly noticeable, two faint beauty marks on the back of his neck, a smaller one near his mouth.   paragraph of physical traits: a little bit below SK average height, medium fair skin and does not tan easy at all, wide-set eyes, heavy brows, a straight nose, full lips, could be conceived as handsome, looks years younger than his actual age and often gets mistaken for a student, frequently works out and build currently reflects that, permanent veins visible under the skin on his hands and wrists.  

FAMILY/RELIGION

parents: do kwangsu, nonexistent relationship at best, no longer talks and lee hyeon, still close to. siblings: none. marital status: single. significant other/s: none. children: none. other relatives: none. pets: one cat. friends: touhi. dominic. youngho. neutral: jongin. minwoo. minjae.   dislikes: hyunwoo. sooyoung.  enemies: none. ethnicity: korean. religion: agonistic. beliefs: agnostic atheism, in the sense that he believes it’s impossible to determine if there is a god, but does not deny the possibility nor existence; endorses neither positions. superstitions: will say that he does not believe in the superstitious, but he grew up in a household where both his parents held weight in common beliefs; setting foot on a threshold was a source of bad luck, writing names in red were bad omens. diction/accent: fundamentally articulate, speaks somewhat low and style of speech can be described as reserved, accent is trained decently neutral when speaking chinese or english.

SCHOOL/WORK/HOME

education: graduated early from secondary school – moved from jeju to seoul with his mother for him to attend a prestigious academy, enrolled at kaist for his undergraduate studies, where he took mechanical engineering with an emphasis in aerospace specialization and had a minor in physics, left to graduate school at mit, massachusetts institute of technology. degree(s): dual masters in aerospace engineering and physics. occupation: now mechanical engineering professor at seoul national university, recently transferred from kaist, former aerospace engineer/astronaunt for nasa. occasionally freelance aerospace engineer for the military and private multinational corporations. own or rent: rented. living space: two bedroom apartment complex, upper-middle class ranged and fairly spacious. decor can be described as traditional. colors are earthy and dark, neutral shades such as dark browns, grays, golds, oil paintings on the walls. apartment has a designated library, half has been converted into a space for his diverse and extensive collection in music, records visible on the wall near the windows, collectibles lining shelves. off the library is an an office where he keeps most of his blueprints and designs. organized and neat, he keeps his living spaces quite clean. spacious kitchen, walk-in closets for each bedroom, two bathrooms including the masters, a balcony outside his bedroom overlooks the cityspace; telescope sits out there. work space: his office at the university is quite similar to the one he has at home, if not slightly smaller in size, organized, less cluttered than other colleagues. recently moved in. main mode of transport: ‘15 range rover sport, black.

PSYCHOLOGY

fears: darkness, fire, small spaces and confinements, forgetting himself, losing memories. secrets: inability to self-recognize, inhuman abilities.  iq: 135, considered gifted on most scales. eating habits: eats neat, slowly, never in a rush. has to have water or tea along with his meals. food preferences: somewhat picky with what he eats, has a rich pallid, yet a childish-like taste for sweets. sleeping habits: has a hard time getting to sleep, usually sleeps at most 4 hours a night, however; is never really exhausted and does not like to dwell on this, prone to overthinking, analyzing, mind is constantly racing; if he does not eventually fall asleep, will get up in the middle of the night to finish projects or even run, opting to stay awake until he has to go to work. book preferences: science fiction novels, specifically time-traveling and cyberpunk genres, military-fiction is favored as well. historical novels, classic literature. music preferences: alternative r&b, (fka twigs, the weeknd, frank ocean, janelle monae), contemporary r&b (miguel, jhene aiko, mariah carey). he’s also really into neo-soul music in general, (maxwell, erykah adu, esperanza spalding). independent music favorites include: nell, third line butterfly, jaurim, hyukoh, 10cm) groups or alone: alone, he can operate in a group if he has to; but prefers solace. leader or follower: leader; natural quality allows for him to take charge in situations, often overrunning multiple projects and groups at once. planner or spontaneous: planned, he prefers to have an exact schedule down to the details, adjusts accordingly when unexpected events happen, needs to be constantly be aware. journal: once kept several journals, original purpose was to document occurrences and his daily life in space, much more personal than the reports he was required to do; the journals from his last and final mission were all confiscated. hobbies: singing, culinary arts, exercising. known to get up before dawn to run in parks. stargazing.  how do they relax: calculating, numbers, astronomy, putting his mind to work and analyzing, debates, writing on whiteboards.  what excites them: recognition and awards for his efforts, creativity, putting his mind to work and getting positive end-results, being ahead of his competition. what stresses them: being behind, unknown valuables, unable to recall what he should and when he should. pet peeves: ignorance, useless conversations, has no time for meaningless dialogue and exchanges, prefers to get straight to the point; in other words, not one for small talk, wasted time. prejudices: misconceptions about gender roles and gender prejudice, was once what could be conceived as biphobic. attitudes: pretentious, comes across very aloof and standoffish at times, mostly keeps to himself unless he has to interact, mildly polite and strictly formal when engaging, argumentative as well as overly-opinionated, curious by nature. obsessions: cleanliness, empirical driven due to his background, needs reasoning and for the numbers to add up. addictions: order above all else, control.

OBJECTS KEPT IN

purse/bag: none. wallet: identification and multiple badges, key-passes for clearances, credit cards, spare cash, condoms. fridge: meats, vegetables, bottles of soju, almost always consistently stocked, prefers to cook rather than to dine out; in fact, always liked to cook, medicine cabinet: pain killers, unopened bottles of anxiety medication, expired over the counter insomnia pills, condoms, rubbing alcohol, shaving cream, lube. glove compartment: registration papers, proof of purchase, flashlights. junk drawer: none. briefcase: documents, paperwork, laptop. desk: pens, files, memory cards, books opened with highlighted pages, his work phone on charge, mac air book, planners, a disorganized mess in general, but he knows how to navigate his own chaos.

MISC

halloween costumes: none, never really celebrated the holiday in particular and in the united states, was almost always the guy who showed up to events without costume. talents: innovation, redesigning, thinking outside the box, able to calculate, has a nice singing voice. politics: liberal, traditional in some ideas, but swings hard left on most concepts, opinionated within his views; for equal marriage, pro-choice, etc. flaws: deflects, comes across as callous and distant, has a tendency to be condescending, often ridicules others, prone to cutting himself off completely, argumentative, stubborn.  strengths: critical thinking, listening, complex problem solving abilities, analyzing and evaluating, able to think quick on his feet, known to take reign when he has to; voluntarily takes a leader position, but not against following. able to adapt to most circumstances. drugs/alcohol: casual drinker on the weekends. prized possessions: niclas’ class ring from the airforce academy. passwords: 1927, code for his work phone, the year hisenberg introduced the uncertainty principle; 1989 for his personal phone. various passwords for his laptops that he changes every few weeks, always a string of numbers and letters. time and place:  0100 hrs/1:00 pm kst. gwanak-gu, seoul, south korea. mechanical engineering department, snu. 301.  special places: a bar in boston, old apartment complex in the states, an observation dome in new york city.  special memories: graduating mit, meeting his ex, first trip into space, paying off his family’s debt. 

[adrianicsea]

Now that you mention gang saves the day, idk if anyone noticed, but when Mac dies in his hallucination with Dennis being upset, he imagines Dennis saying I love you, but you almost miss it because the music starts playing around the same time he delivers the line. And I always wondered if they did that on purpose. It's also interesting to note that Mac knows Dennis "doesn't" have feelings yet in his dream, he had Dennis say to him the most important feeling lol.

believe me people noticed. as for whether it was on purpose to mask it with music or not..... idk? that’s something i’ve never really thought about

as for mac imagining dennis saying he loves him i think there’s a couple ways to interpret that. it could just be wishful thinking on mac’s part but we know that mac has successfully deluded himself into thinking a lot of things over the course of the show (his physical prowess and abilities, most notably) and i’ve seen people theorize that mac legitimately DOES believe that he and dennis are in a relationship, albeit just on a subconscious level. if that’s the interpretation that you choose to view the scene with, mac imagining dennis saying that he loves him becomes just an extension of that belief

[universitystudentsim]

University Student Sim - Story Bible

Story Bible - University Student Simulator

Twitter: @unistudentsim

Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/universitystudentsim

Premise and Purpose

 University Student Simulator is all about trying to get that grade while at the same time, squishing in as much relaxation time as possible. Experience the fluctuating emotions of a student across campus, through the quiet library, to the coffee shop downstairs. As a student in university, you have one week to get through that netflix series while studying and trying to ace your assignment, and maybe (with some luck) get a date with that special someone. We want to give our users a relatable experience while maybe including a few laughs here and there.

Medium, Platform, Genre

The genre that the University Student Simulator falls under is Role Playing Simulation/Visual Novel Game on a web-based browser for PC or Mac. The strengths of this medium is that anyone can access it as long as they are able to connect to the internet. Another advantage is that there are not many graphic limitations. We plan to take advantage of this medium by sharing it with many people and students, integrating several interactive choices and building a rich storyline that develops the environment and characters.

However, this medium does include some weaknesses. One such disadvantage is that it will not be available to console gamers and if the user does not enjoy reading text then it will be difficult to keep them interested in the story. Our strategy of dealing with this problem is to keep the script concise and only include necessary dialogue. We will also try and overcome this problem by including visually appealing graphics and music.

Intended Audience and Market

Our main intended audience is young adults aged 18 to 23, mainly university students. Due to the rise of video games in the entertainment industry, many people, especially in this age group enjoy playing video games. Therefore, this is a perfect platform to appeal to the technologically savvy population. This should appeal because it is basically an over exaggeration of university life, for students to laugh about similar experience and create that connection since they may have had these experience first hand. Therefore, the intended audience would be interested in our application because it is related to their life and experience at university.

The visual novel simulation genre does increasingly well in Japan, where it originated. It has expanded to the Americas with the increase of cross-culture interest, and is a very good way for new gamers to experience gaming in general. Gameplay is a simple point and click, but the relationships between characters and unfolding narrative appeals especially to younger adults or those that have seen the premise of the story and find that they can relate.

User’s Role and Point of View (POV)

The user directly impacts the character’s academic and love life and gradually learns more about the character’s environment, classes, and relationships. The user is also able to choose between two options at each stage of the game to determine his/her outcome. At the end of the game, the character either fails or passes the assignment - and that all depends on the decisions the user makes. An interactive image map will be used to provide the user with a way to access the different environments where paths of the narrative can take place. The user will view this world in the first-person perspective and therefore feel more connected and impacted by the decisions they make in the game.

The user’s role is critical in navigating through relationships and interactions with different characters and their environments. In conversation, the player will determine whether or not a Progress Bar will increase toward their objective through player’s choices in conversation. For example, a player may be talking to his/her romantic interest and compliment her, causing an increase in LoveLife Progress. In choices with the environment, the player will navigate using a point-and-click interactive map, and each area will provide the player with different story choices, and characters they can interact with.

Storyworld and Sub-Settings

1. Classroom (Academic Progress Finale)

This classroom is in the top floor of the Somin Fresar campus with a conference room-style setting. The room comforts you as it greets you with views of the suburban landscape through the windows at the far side of the room. It is an open and bright space that is furnished with long desks and swivel chairs. The space also features SMART boards (none of which are actually used by your professor, much to your dismay), and an array of audio-visual equipment that you are unable to identify at the corner of the room. A desk in the back is the usual spot of your eager teaching assistant, where she marks assignments during class time.

In this area, you can only interact with your professor. You can either pay attention in class (+1 Academic Progress) or watch your Korean drama (+1 Nitfleks Progress). This area is only available in the morning on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and coming to class will take up ⅓ of your day. In this area, an automatic event will also occur on the final day of the week for you to hand in your assignment. 2. Blenderz Coffee Shop

Blenderz is the place to be if you wanted to hang out with Arin, the barista. Arin keeps the places spick and span throughout the day, with Blenderz being at the bottom floor of Somin Fraser, giving easy access to caffeine for students. Blenderz features comfy couches with small tables in a lounge area, as well as cafe tables where students can study near the classrooms. Music from Arin’s phone is often playing in the background, where she sets up Spofity playlists for cafe patrons. Blenderz is easy to spot with a stand up chalkboard that often states the drink specials, many of which are made by Arin without the permission of the manager (which does not really matter, as the manager is never really there in the first place).

In this area, you can interact with Arin the barista, or Claire on Wednesdays. Here you can either try Arin’s Special Smart Drink (+3 Academic Progress), ask Arin about Claire (+2 LoveLife Progress), or if you visit on Wednesday, you can find Claire herself and talk to her (+5 LoveLife Progress/-3 LoveLife Progress). This area is available all the time, and coming to Blenderz will take up ⅓ of your day. 3. Library

The Somin Fresar Library (SFL) is probably one of the quietest places on campus. The 3 story library features extensive reading and study areas, with each floor characterized by its amenities. The first floor of the library is has a 24 hour computer lab, as well as providing printing and copying facilities to all students and faculty. The main front desk can also be found here, where students can borrow and return books and equipment. The second floor features all the teaching assistant offices, and where Evelyn, your teaching assistant, can be found on certain days. The third floor is the silent study area, where students can divulge in silence as they attempt to get through assignments and revision for exams. It is rumoured that your crush can be found at the library, as she is a regular reader. Maybe you should ask Arin?

In this area you can interact with this Evelyn the T.A. on Wednesday or Thursday, or see Claire here on Tuesday. Evelyn can help you with your assignment here if you talk to her (+4 Academic Progress). Claire is available to talk to here as well (+5 LoveLife Progress/-3 LoveLife Progress). This area is available only in the afternoon every day, and coming to the library will take up ⅓ of your day.

4. Meckaznie Cafeteria

Meckaznie Cafeteria is a short walk away from Blenderz, and is the perfect place to find some cheap eats. There is a plethora of food choices found here, including poutine, sandwiches, and all-day breakfast foods. The place was recently remodeled, where TV screens can be seen at every corner of the cafe, and walls are filled with contemporary art. Meckaznie is not a good choice if you wanted to study, as it is almost always teeming with people coming and going regularly. It is difficult to find a seat unless Channing is hanging around. That being said, Channing can usually be found here anyway, where he lounges and hogs an entire booth to himself, often just watching TV shows on Nitfleks.

In this area you can only interact with Channing at any time. Talking to Channing will lead you to talk about the new Nitfleks series that is about to end. Channing invites you to watch the series finale with him at the end of the week and offers to help you catch up on the series (+5 Nitfleks Progress). This area is available all the time, and coming here will take up ⅔ of your day.  

5. Aggie Enston Centre

This building is connected to the main academic building on the Somin Fresar campus, through an overhead walkway above the road. Named after one of the main patrons of the school, the Aggie Enston Centre (AEC) is the main student lounge building on campus. The five story building features information regarding school clubs, the student representative society, student unions, student health services, career services and admission services. At AEC, students can also find another food court, but more importantly, comfortable study spaces. At the bottom floor is where you can find Claire on Thursdays, studying for her evening class by the leather couches.

In this area you can only interact with Claire. Claire can be found here on Thursday, and you can speak with her (+5 LoveLife Progress/-3 LoveLife Progress). In this area, you can also self study (+1 Academic Progress), or watch the Nitfleks series on your own (+2 Nitfleks Progress). This area is available only available in the morning and afternoon on every day of the week, and coming here will take up ⅓ of your day.

6. Roof - Confession (LoveLife Progress Finale)

Your crush asks to meet you here at the end of the week to enjoy the view after a hard first week at school. This part of the school sports fantastic landscape views of the surrounding mountains to the east, and the city skyline of downtown to the west. Tables and benches are set up for students to enjoy the scene and to relax in between classes. There are also a few flowerbeds here, maintained by the Somin Fresar Gardening Club as well as some experimental plants from the Biology department. In the centre of surrounding flowerbeds, there is a glass dome, allowing students in the top floor of the building to enjoy the natural light as well, on the occasion it’s too cold to go outside. This site in particular is very popular for couples to hang out, is this a sign that Claire likes you? Maybe you should ask her out here…

You can only come here at on Friday in the afternoon (endgame). You can only talk to Claire here, and decide to ask her out or not.

Bedroom (Nitfleks Progress Finale)

You begin the game here. Your room is as simple as it gets, with a built in closet directly in front of your bed, a bookshelf to your right and the doorway to your left. You were never really all too particular about furnishing your room, seeing as how you might move out soon after you graduate. The only real personalization is a couple picture frames on your bedside table of your family, and one of you and Channing in elementary school. How cute. In the corner of your room beside the door is your desk, where you have poured endless hours into studying, and is the regular spot of your laptop. Your pride and joy is your office chair however, with its back support and headrest, this chair cost you most of your pay check, but it pays to be able to sit at your desk for hours on end. You can watch Nitfleks or do homework for hours, depending on how productive you want to be.

In this area, you can self study (+1 Academic Progress), watch the Nitfleks series on your own (+2 Nitfleks Progress), or go to sleep. This area is available at all times, and coming here will take up ⅓ of your day. You wake up here every morning, and this is where daily AM phone checks will occur to inform you of that day’s events. In this area, an automatic event will also occur on the final day of the week for you to watch the series finale with Channing.

Character Design

1. Professor (adversary) - found in Classroom Mon Wed Fri

Dr. Barnaby Higginbotham just got tenure after teaching for 20 years at the “ripe” age of 57. Over the time teaching students, he has grown gruff and uncaring in his teaching style, often correcting students to call him Dr. Higginbotham. Many of his students have little to no interest in his course, as it is only a prerequisite for that new-fangled Field Study Course in the Bahamas coming up on campus. He gets his happiness from rewriting the same required textbook every other year, and slightly hiking up the price every time.

Dr. Higginbotham is a short, stout man with a receding hairline, and seems to be going through his mid-life crisis. He takes his frustrations out on his students, and proceeds to be unhelpful, lazy, and inattentive during classes. The fact that he had assigned students a major assignment in the first week of classes is a testament to his compassion for a student’s schedule. He does not hold weekly office hours, and instead will email students the morning of the day their teaching assistant will be available for additional homework support.

2. T.A. (ally) - found in library Wed Thurs

Evelyn Hirsch recently finished her masters degree and is currently aiming for her PhD in History. It is a blessing to have her as a Teaching Assistant, with her quick wit and intelligence. She’s a true professional and holds herself as such, maintaining a certain distance from her students. Despite her stern demeanor, you can tell she cares about her students’ success. Whenever you meet her you notice her stationery, writing utensils, and all of her belongings as a matter of fact, feature a cat on them.

Although she seems stern with her narrow glasses and hair in a perpetual bun, Evelyn is an approachable teaching assistant who loves to help her students. She is dressed usually in a long skirt and blouse buttoned up all the way to her chin, with some accessory featuring a cat on it. She may unexpectedly bring up cats in conversation but will promptly correct herself and get back on task.

3. Barista (ally) - found at coffee shop all the time

Arin Blake is the mysterious and graceful barista at Blenderz Coffees. Arin’s brewing techniques can soothe the soul. He (or she? You’re not really sure) does have a tendency to invent new (and sometimes questionable) drinks and put them on special without the manager’s permission. Arin is a good friend of Claire and usually will give helpful tidbits about her whereabouts and interests, rooting for you two to get together.

4. Friend (ally) - Mon (auto - Grand Hall), found in cafeteria all the time

Channing Wilde is #44 on the Somin Fresar Beavers Rugby Team, on scholarship. He has been a friend since your elementary days, and although his exterior is rugged and well-built, you have known him long enough to know that he is quite sensitive and loves a good romance. Channing recently introduced you to the new and amazing series Neverending Rainfall on My Sleepless Soul, a Korean melodrama that had you hooked since episode one. He’s invited you to watch the series finale at the end of the week, and has offered to help you catch up on the season before then.

5. Love interest (adversary) - Mon (auto - Grand Hall) Tues (Library) Wed (Blenderz) Thurs (Aggie Enston) Fri (Roof)

Claire Fontaine-Han. She’s the prettiest girl you’ve ever seen. You and Claire met the previous semester in your world literature class, and you’ve been smitten ever since. She made group projects worth it, and you know she has a good head on her shoulders, but not much else is known about her. She’s shy, but generous with her smiles, and you hope to ask her out before someone else realizes how amazing she is.

Claire has light brown, flowing hair, always tucked behind her ear. She is a few inches shorter than you, and always seems to wear a sweater that seems a bit too big for her, but on her it’s cute. Her eyes always seem clear with curiousity, although she is quite demure. It seems that if you talk to her about a certain show, she gets very excited and is very willing to open up. She likes to explore the campus and can be found at different places every day. Claire is does not sense your romantic interest in her at first, and is oblivious if you try to flirt with her too early in-game.

Narrative/gaming elements

The tone of this narrative is a light hearted, slice-of-life type of story to help a student succeed in his/her everyday life. The basic storyline follows the main protagonist as he or she attempt to get through the first week of school as a good student. Each day is considered as another tier in the story (i.e. another level), where the protagonist can make different choices in different environments. In order to fulfill the objective of being an overall successful university life, the main protagonist must fill Progress Bars through choices in the game’s environments or interactions with other characters.

The main complications in narrative have been identified with the player character having the following main three objectives to be completed over the course of the week:

Major Storyline Objectives:

Your assignment (get a full Academic Progress bar)

Get a date (get a full LoveLife Progress bar)

Finish the season of the Nitfleks show (get a full Nitfleks Progress bar)

The multiple ways to increase Progress Bars and their different classes are outlined as follows:

Academic Progress

interact with TA +3

self study +2

focus in class +1

Barista’s special smart drink +3

LoveLife Progress

talk to crush +5/-3

talk to barista about crush +2 and knowing where crush is

Nitfleks Progress

go back home and watch +1

watch series in class +1

watch netflix with Channing +3

Design Interaction/Interface

The interface features simulations of different locations of a university campus (e.g. classroom, library, coffee shop) and each location acts as a stage of the game. Initially, the user will be able to choose the gender and name for their player - they will feel like a real university student! The simulation focuses on the different narrative choices a student has to make based on what they want for their academic career. The game is structured so that different outcomes occur based on decisions made throughout the simulation via a non linear branching storyline.

The player controls their own avatar, and gameplay includes conversing with different characters through correct choices of dialogue. The game lasts over the course of a week - starting on a Monday when the professor character hands out the assignment to the player - and the assignment is due on Friday. The game revolves around complex character and branching dialogue trees, and having the player chose responses as the player character would say them.

An interactive image map of the university which allows the user to view the different locations and chose where to go next. In terms of different modules, each “day” is considered one module that a player has to get through, and each day will include different interactions with different characters and environments.

[tammara459fortnite-blog]

Fortnite Origami Amazing 8 Movies About Helpful Hints That'll Cause you to Cry

How Fortnite Captured Teenagers’ Hearts and Minds

The craze for the 3rd-man or woman shooter activity has components of Beatlemania, the opioid crisis, and ingesting Tide Pods.

Fortnite V-bucks

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A minute later, Gizzard Lizard was useless—killed by a grenade. Afterward, he replayed the ending, from several vantages, to research what experienced absent wrong. For being so near successful and nonetheless appear up short—it was frustrating and tantalizing. A single desires to go once again. The urge is strong. But it was time for my son to perform his research.

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Game fads occur and go: Rubik’s Cube, Dungeons & Dragons, Angry Birds, Minecraft, Clash of Clans, Pokémon Go. What persons appear to agree on, whether they’re seasoned gamers or dorky dads, is there’s a little something new rising all over Fortnite, a sort of mass social collecting, open to the A lot wider array of men and women when compared to the online games that arrived prior to. Its relative insufficient wickedness—it appears to be typically free of the misogyny and racism that afflict all kinds of other games and gaming communities—can make it more palatable to a broader viewers, which attraction the two ameliorates and augments its addictive power. (The game, in its basic method, randomly assigns players’ skins, which may be of any gender or race.) Popular anecdotal evidence indicates that ladies are participating in in extensive quantities, both with and without the need of boys. There are, and probably ever shall be, some gamer geeks who gripe at this sort of newcomers, equally as they gripe when there are no newcomers in the slightest degree.

A friend whose thirteen-year-old son is deep down the rabbit hole likened the Fortnite phenomenon for the Pump Household Gang, the crew of ne’er-do-very well teenager surfers in La Jolla whom Tom Wolfe transpired upon while in the early nineteen-sixties. In place of a clubhouse on the Seaside, there’s a virtual world-wide juvenile hall, exactly where Children Assemble, invent an argot, undertake change egos, and shoot each other down. Wolfe’s Pump Home Young ones went on beer-soaked outings they called “destructos,” in which they would, at regional farmers’ behest, demolish abandoned barns. Now it’s Juul-sneaking tiny homebodies demolishing virtual walls and residences with imaginary pickaxes. Children almost everywhere are swinging away at their planet, tearing it down to survive—Inventive destruction, of A sort.

Shall I demonstrate the game? I really need to, I’m afraid, Despite the fact that describing online video game titles is a little bit like recounting desires. A hundred gamers are dropped on to an island—from the flying college bus—and battle each other to the Loss of life. The winner is the final just one standing. (You are able to pair up or kind a squad, way too.) This really is what is meant by Battle Royale. (The initial Model of Fortnite, launched past July, for forty pounds, wasn’t fight towards the Demise; it's the new iteration which includes caught fire.) A storm encroaches, slowly forcing combatants into an ever-shrinking region, where they must kill or be killed. Together the best way, you look for out caches of weapons, armor, and healables, although also collecting building supplies by breaking down existing buildings. Hasty fabrication (of ramps, forts, and towers) is An important element of the sport, which is why it is commonly called a cross concerning Minecraft along with the Hunger Video games—and why aggrieved parents are able to notify them selves that it's constructive.

In advance of a video game starts, you wander all over in the kind of purgatorial bus depot-cum-airfield waiting around until eventually the next hundred have assembled for an airdrop. This can be a Weird put. Players shoot inconsequentially at each other and pull dance moves, like actors strolling aimlessly close to backstage practicing their strains. Then come the airlift plus the drifting descent, through glider, into the battleground, with a gentle whooshing seem which is to your Fortnite addict exactly what the flick of a Bic will be to a smoker. You could land in one of 20-just one regions about the island, Every single by using a cutesy alliterative title, some suggestive of mid-century gay bars: Shifty Shafts, Moisty Mire, Lonely Lodge, Greasy Grove. In patois As well as in temper, the sport manages to be equally dystopian and comic, dark and lightweight. It could be alarming, for those who’re not accustomed to these kinds of matters or are attuned into the information, to listen to your darlings shouting so merrily about head shots and snipes. But there’s no blood or gore. The violence is cartoonish, a minimum of relative to, say, Halo or Grand Theft Vehicle. These kinds of are classified as the consolations.

The island by itself has an air of desertion although not of maximum despair. This apocalypse is rated PG. The abandonment, precipitated through the storm, that has either killed or scattered the majority of the earth’s population, appears to have been the latest and comparatively fast. The grass is lush, the canopy total. The hydrangeas are abloom in Snobby Shores. Properties are unencumbered by kudzu or graffiti and have tidy, sparsely furnished rooms, as though the inhabitants experienced only just fled (or been vaporized). Evidently, Absolutely everyone on the island, in All those prosperous pre-storm instances, shopped in the exact same aisle at Concentrate on. Every time I view a participant enter a bedroom, whether it is in Junk Junction or Loot Lake, I Take note the multicolored blanket folded across the bed. Those people cobalt-blue table lamps: are they available for sale? Maybe at some point they will be.

[fitnesswomenshealth-blog]

Breaking Up with a Depressed Partner Doesn't Make You a Bad Person

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Breaking Up with a Depressed Partner Doesn't Make You a Bad Person

I dumped my boyfriend when he was frustrated. It was the hardest matter I have ever finished. The text jammed in my throat and our tears mingled as we hugged in bed in a dingy AirBnB. He questioned me if I meant it and, head thumping with a hangover, I said indeed. We went for breakfast at our beloved location and drank orange juice in silence. Then he pleaded with me to remain as we cried on a park bench. We hugged and kissed, for closure, right before I climbed into my car and drove for 3 hours, back to my parents’ household.

Admitting that I left him when he was at his cheapest issue fills me with guilt. Individuals will say I was egocentric. They are going to say that if you definitely love anyone, you support them by sickness and dark moments. I experimented with, but it wasn’t doing work. The fact was that his psychological health and fitness challenges infected my possess headspace and I actually was not sturdy ample to offer with it. The problem remaining me struggling worry attacks and teetering on the brink of melancholy myself.

When information broke on Friday that rapper Mac Miller had died of an apparent drug overdose at age 26, folks on social media were being fast to stage fingers at his ex-husband or wife, singer Ariana Grande. “You did this to him… you should come to feel absolutely sickened,” one particular social media user wrote in a tweet directed at Grande. “Treated him like dog shit, threw him to the suppress like he was almost nothing.” “You killed Mac Miller,” wrote another.

Enjoy: How to Get Around Your Ex

Grande and Miller—who admitted working with medication in a Noisey interview nicely right before his connection with the singer—began dating in 2016 and ended up together two years prior to splitting in May well 2018. Shortly afterwards, Miller was charged with driving under the impact following crashing his car. Just one tweet in reaction to the news, which went viral, mentioned: “Mac Miller totalling his G wagon and having a DUI following Ariana Grande dumped him for one more dude immediately after he poured his heart out on a 10 track album to her called the divine feminine is just the most heartbreaking detail taking place in Hollywood.” The 25-12 months-outdated star strike again: “How absurd that you decrease woman self-regard and self-worthy of by expressing someone ought to keep in a toxic marriage.”

Examining the reviews into Miller’s dying, and looking at the abuse at the moment becoming directed at Grande, all I can say is: She’s suitable. Grande was not to blame for Miller’s DUI, any additional than she’s to blame for his tragic demise. No matter if it really is substance abuse or lousy psychological health and fitness, dating an individual who’s in a dim location was 1 of the most difficult experiences of my life.

Max was my to start with right boyfriend. We met in Rio de Janeiro while travelling all around Latin America. We had our very first kiss at dawn on Copacabana Beach front. We produced sure our paths crossed once more a few months afterwards, in La Paz, Bolivia. I was interning at a magazine and he was backpacking, but we finished up acquiring a solitary mattress and a established of Toy Story sheets and sleeping on the flooring of an vacant mansion adjacent to our friend’s condominium. The assets had a cellar, 50 %-painted children’s nursery, and creaky floorboards like a traditional horror motion picture set. It was creepy, massive, and cost-free, so we used a couple of months there. Then we returned to our life in the United kingdom and made the decision extensive length was hell, so we moved in alongside one another. I adored him.

Alongside one another in Bolivia. Photo courtesy of Shanti Das

We began renting our very first flat when I was 19 and he was 22. All my mates were going to higher education and we have been dwelling in a shoebox that we could barely afford to pay for but obtaining the time of our life. We would take in chicken nuggets at a cardboard box desk and sleep on a futon. Afterwards, we moved for my position. Issues progressively bought more difficult. I had started out my to start with job as a journalist and the lengthy several hours took a toll. I was normally drained and pressured. Max hated his position but felt helpless, for the reason that he was not sure what he preferred to do. I usually understood he experienced depression. As a teen he was in and out of clinic undergoing remedy for a coronary heart affliction, which activated a extended period of time of very low temper. It lingered, constantly, but it had been manageable right until then.

In those few months, we became trapped in an exhausting cycle. We were being dependent on one a different for our contentment, but we were being fully out of sync. A small comment or temper swing would send out almost everything spiralling out of handle. Max would apologize, certain he was to blame. I would say it wasn’t his fault. He would not believe me. I would sense undesirable for having frustrated. I would go for walks, travel all around the community, smoke cigarettes in the park, continue to be late at function to get away. I would have worry attacks. He would consider times off. I was functioning 12-hour days, and he demanded all my attention when I got dwelling. Sometimes, I felt suffocated.

We experienced no area to breathe or feel feelings without upsetting one particular other and location off a chain of events that could drag on for times. I begged him to see a health practitioner, but he was just handed a tick-box questionnaire with a sliding scale asking him to fee how most likely he was to get rid of himself. Irrespective of telling physicians that he had suicidal feelings, they didn’t take into account him to be a significant more than enough possibility. He was prescribed antidepressants and enrolled him in a team counselling session where a PowerPoint slideshow recommended he do more physical exercise. Max was now going to the gym five times a 7 days and cycling to get the job done each and every day. As there was no one particular-to-1 treatment available on the Nationwide Well being Assistance, medical practitioners upped his dose. It failed to perform.

I distanced myself subconsciously right before we broke up. I recommended we each go again home with the intention of saving revenue but I think that actually, I desired to reset. We noticed each and every other at the time a fortnight and right after a several months, resolved to go on a weekend away. I didn’t prepare to split up with him, but the phrases came out through a alcoholic beverages-fueled row. He asked me the up coming morning if I meant it, and I realized I did.

In the months that adopted, Max hit rock bottom. I realized he was suicidal and that weighed on my mind constantly. He had normally stated I was the ideal matter to come about to him and he hated his life in advance of he met me, but at the similar time he was confident I’d be better off devoid of him. For the initial time, I agreed: and I also realized that he would be better off without having me, also. We were being trapped in a continual destructive loop, and points wouldn’t increase unless of course we broke the cycle.

I know that I’m not by yourself in this: when you have a companion with mental wellbeing concerns, it is tricky to know where to begin. “Possibly the most essential matter that you can do is to motivate your husband or wife to seek out acceptable cure,” points out Stephen Buckley of the mental health and fitness charity Thoughts. “You can reassure them by permitting them know that enable is out there, and that you will be there to aid them way too.” It can be also significant to acquire care of your own perfectly-remaining and wellness. “Be reasonable about what you can and won’t be able to do you,” Buckley provides. “Your psychological health is critical much too, and searching right after a person else could put a pressure on your wellbeing.”

After we broke up, I felt unwell and feared that he may possibly harm himself. All I required was to be there for him, but I realized that could make issues worse. As a substitute, I messaged his mother to see how he was performing. Deep down, I was terrified that our split-up could direct him to conclude his lifetime and change mine without end.

It was the lowest issue in each our lives, but it finished up staying the most formative. Max spent 18 weeks devoid of aid on waiting around lists but ultimately, with the assist of his loved ones, began viewing a private psychologist whom he credits with serving to him turn things all-around. The treatment gave him the applications to deal with detrimental ideas that crept into his mind, taught him that he wasn’t to blame for my unhappiness, and gave him self-worth. It also made him notice he needed to help others in a equivalent predicament and he commenced learning for a diploma in psychology. He’s just completed his to start with yr and is in a fantastic spot. And—plot twist—we’re again together now.

We bought again alongside one another late past calendar year, immediately after getting points bit by bit and speaking for a lengthy time. Max was performing superior, and so was I. Issues are much from great, but we are more powerful and happier now than we have at any time been before.

Miller’s demise is a tragedy. Irrespective of irrespective of whether he was mourning his relationship with Grande or, like some sources say, or had moved on, our knee-jerk response to tie the two points together is destructive. It insinuates that Miller may possibly still be alive if she experienced not still left him. This is just not true: Miller talked about material abuse and battling depression decades prior to his romantic relationship with Grande began. We need to cease putting the obligation for keeping a further individual alive on the shoulders of their husband or wife. It perpetuates the fantasy that women—and men—should remain in unhealthy relationships. They shouldn’t, and to propose normally is hazardous.

In my situation, my break-up with Max could have finished in tragedy. If it had, I would have felt dependable for the relaxation of my life, but I know now that it would not have been my fault.

Editor’s be aware: Max has presented authorization for Shanti to share his story and use his photograph.

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[toddlazarski]

On Anthony Bourdain, Istanbul, and the Art of Looking at the World

Shepherd Express

In every writer there exists a towering, ever-struggling duality: the desire to be left alone, to your words, books, thoughts, hidden quiet corners of libraries; and the wish to be celebrated, toasted by everyone as the smartest person in the room. From a staggering array of novels, non-fiction, and cookbooks, to a series of popular and acclaimed travel TV shows, Anthony Bourdain achieved both. In grand fashion. And he did so with such an easy grace and badass authenticity, strident but unposturing, always walking through some faraway airport in sunglasses and jeans, a knowing swagger married to selfless curiosity, a seen-it-all, snobby curmudgeon with the the air of - yes, as it’s been said before, appropriately - your coolest uncle. The one with the tats and back porch stories and faraway look in his eye while describing some distant bar, some endless night in Hanoi, another day’s chilli dog. Which is all why you’ll read one million of just this sort of personal tomes. As is the practice of the day, when someone dies, something big happens, one can almost hear the collective laptops the coffeeshopped world over, softly plodding with hastily penned takes. It is an epoch of “let me tell you what this means to me.” So maybe there needn’t be any more Bourdain tributes like there needn’t be any more gun control facebook posts. But there’s a reason chefs, foodies, fans, all of us, really, can’t help themselves with Bourdain. And the desire feels even deeper still with writers.

Simply, he was living our dream: widely published, successful, adored, pervasive, respected, still cool, on the road while the rest of us squirmed stuck in the quicksand of digital glow, all while seemingly never needing to sell out. He made himself a rock star in an era where nobody cares about writers. While Tom Wolfe and Philip Roth can pass to the next world like a ship in the night, with Bourdain co-workers that had never even read him approached my desk on the day of the news with tears. “I’m sorry”’s passed in text message form like a family member had died, like I had known the man, simply because I idolized him.           

It was easy to feel familiarity - you could go along, exploring, discovering, scoffing, smoking, looking, feeling like you were figuring something out about the world with a poet’s removed involvement. I followed, time and again, through countless joints and ventures, not knowing there was another place to even consider starting travel research. I ended up in a multitude of places like Tadich Grill in San Francisco, Eisenbergs in New York, a cacio e pepe spot in Rome, some chicken joint in Brazil. In a pre-smartphone, pre-Uber era, I wandered for hours through uptown New Orleans, backtracking, circling Audubon park, hailing cabs just to futilely beg directions, assisted only by a known street name - Bellecastle - and a vivid memory of his enjoyment of Domilise’s off-the-menu fried shrimp, cheese, and gravy po’ boy.

There has always been a validation in going to the places he’d been, a way of feeling you were doing things right, appropriately appreciating culture, a place. You’d see him at a dive in Chicago and feel smug with satisfaction over your own life’s pursuits. It was an easy extension to think you knew him off camera too. Everyone knew about his reformed bad boy antics, penchant for drunkenness, graceful entry to fatherhood, budding relationship with Asia Argento. “He doesn’t smoke anymore.” We all knew that. “He loves KFC.” And so I feel no need for shame in occasionally blasting an eight piece with mac n’ cheese and biscuits, sitting solo in my car, in a parking lot on Layton, cranking classic rock radio. “He wears Clark’s.” I have three pairs. I could never remember the name of his new show. And it didn’t matter, there he was, in my living room, showing me someplace in Africa I’ll surely never go, illuminating what I did wrong, misunderstood about Detroit.   

Practically, this is why suicide seemed so wrong. He had it all, but mostly he had perspective. Realistically, it is a reminder: You have no idea what’s going on in another human being. You don’t understand your own brain, let alone somebody else’s. By now we all at least know the “selfish” trope is hooey. But if you’ve been through it, close to it, if the suicide of my best friend, at the age of 25, taught me anything, it’s that you can devote your personal life to pondering the matter, study the professionals that have given their careers to the issue, and never get any closer to an answer of Camus’ “one truly serious philosophical problem.” Really, we all have so little understanding of the world.

Which was actually so much the point of Bourdain’s body of life work.

Years ago, in a random episode of No Reservations, I found myself finding Bourdain perched outside a tiny corner Istanbul kebab shop. He was eating, rapping with a local, mostly always smart enough to balance, to know when to let himself be guided. In my mind, he seemed to go from liking his sandwich to a string-swelling discovery of love moment, just within a few bites. A subtle kind of euphoria played across a thanks-for-showing-me-this type smile, him wrapping up the kebab in typical lyrical summation, “torpedo of joy.” There was something in the combination: the dripping meat package, the contentment, the all-is-well realization amidst a cobblestoned old world setting of winding, shambly, timeless streets, a feel of fearlessness yielding intense hedonist pleasure in the heart of a mysterious world. It was an unscrubbable moment of enlightenment, he had decided for me: Turkey was suddenly the place of my heart.

Through no coincidence, years later, my wife and I found ourselves closing our honeymoon in Istanbul. On our last night, post dinner of endless mezzes, our breaths heavy with smoked eggplant, sumac, parsley, our bodies already sluggish with lamb meat, it was nonetheless the last checkmark I needed, desperately, on my first trip to Europe. At midnight it would be my 32nd birthday. At noon tomorrow we would be on a flight home. But for now, I was after something. Down snaking back alley’s, a stream of dark loud bars pouring boozers onto the street side tables, fish shops still open and stinky and neon-lit, the distinction between patrons and pedestrians blurring, a propulsive cacophony of raised foreign tongues jibing with tinkling glasses, everyone young and hungry and dressed in black and close together, the streets too narrow for anything but whizzing mopeds. By the time we got there - me realizing the ultimate consummation of fresh marriage is when a new bride will follow you into questionable neighborhoods in strange lands for midnight snacks - a man, a brother or cousin of the proprietor it seemed, on my side of the counter with a drugged big-pupil look, upsold me on extra meat. I obliged, forking over Lira, salivating, breathing deep hand-stoked charcoal fumes, noting the coating of the bread with meat fat, noticing everything, stoically, or so I thought, chasing that Bourdain vibe. Bold. At least bold enough to hit a rough-edged corner store on the way home, for a six-pack of bad but frigid Turkish beer, a pack of locally-flavored Camels.

Twenty minutes later I was on our hotel room’s balcony, delaying my meal, swallowing a Bond movie scenescape, mosques doting the horizon, minarets standing rigid like menacing fingers, the Bosphorous River flowing behind me, the hotel where Agatha Christie penned “Murder on the Orient Express” just around the corner. In a grand gesture of chivalry, I eventually tried to wake my wife for a bite. She shrugged me off, opting for some sleep after 2 weeks of trekking around Italy and Turkey, eating endlessly of my deranged itinerary, now facing a 12-hour flight home. Instead I stood alone outside, I let the spice-addled cucumber sauce run down my arm as the rotisserie-ed beef and lamb combo danced, delivered on the wings of crisped lavash bread, popped up by red onion and juicy tomato. Solitary on a balcony, framed in smoke and late night buzz, I ate and drank, Istanbul spread endlessly around me. It was now my birthday. It was also my poetry moment. And Bourdain had brought me here. It was the apex of everything his books and bevy of heavy-hearted shows had taught me, the joy within being an active, discerning participant in life’s sorrows. His was the art of looking at the world. And showing how much better is the view when sided by a cold beer and really good sandwich.