#honestly i think my poor social skills get me into half of the situations in my life

[le-trash-prince]

This Love Doesn't Have Long Beans Ep 6 Thoughts

I'm caught between "I hate everything going down at the restaurant" and "I love everything going on between Methas and JJ"

I'm sorry y'all but I cannot stand Kluer, he's too fucking much for me. Man puts on a sweet and innocent face, meanwhile he's scheming for Plawan to get his heart broken, and he CAN'T EVEN OWN UP TO IT. I've got a personal bias against him tho coz he stares at Plawan way too much and it makes my autistic ass uncomfortable dfgkdfg he reminds me of someone irl who does this to me, and I hate it, so sorry Kluer but it's personal.

Oab did try to tell Khaosuay about him and Plawan, but she refused to hear it, and he tried to be straight with her about rejecting her, and she didn't want to hear it either. Out of all four ppl in this messy love square, he's the only one who's really trying to do right by the people around him (which is not saying much coz the bar is on the GROUND with everyone here looking out for their own interests), but you can't try to make everyone happy in this situation. Also unfortunately for you, Oab, one of these people walked out on you and the other has been lying to you for months

really feels like Khaosuay is just panicked about her dad and projecting all that onto Oab by trying to dig her claws into him and keep the life she had before. Which is really unpleasant, but like, I get where she's coming from. But stop that, girl, please.

I'm also really curious what Kluer told her on the phone, if it was just about her dad or if he was like "your dad is dying and this guy is trying to steal Oab even though he still loves you" like how far does Kluer's manipulation go

Also Kluer trying to kiss a completely wasted and possibly unconscious Plawan is a No Thanks from me LMFAO

Honestly I think their date was a good example of why Plawan gravitates towards harsh, no-nonsense people like JJ and Oab because a "I'm going to only tell you the things you want to hear" person like Kluer is just gonna let him get trashed in public

like JJ was absolutely in the right to tell Plawan to take this chance and move on from Oab because if he is hurting over Oab paying a little attention to Khaosuay right now, he is going to be DEVASTATED when the consequences of his own actions catch up to him.

Anyways okay METHASJJ GOD THE DESPERATION IN METHAS' VOICE WHEN JJ WAS QUITTING... WHEN HE KEPT CALLING HIS NAME... THE LOOK ON HIS FACE WHEN JJ ASKED IF HE HAD ANYTHING OTHER THAN MONEY TO MAKE PEOPLE LIKE HIM.... THIS IS THE KIND OF ANGST I EAT UP FUCK YES BE MISERABLE YOU POOR LITTLE MEOWMEOW

The whole scene at JJ's house had me dying oh my god. From JJ skipping outside to the trash to the way he suddenly had a date with Methas without even KNOWING what happened, like Methas was all, "Okay go get dressed, what are you waiting for?" and JJ was like "??????????"

Methas' lack of social skills is so funny to me... and his petty little jealousy over Plawan's relationship with JJ, like yeah I BET you wish you had friends too.

that preview too GOD I AM READY kfdgdfg i posted the stills for ep 5 on the benzgarfield sideblog last week, but i accidentally put ep 6 in the description at first, and then i corrected it to ep 5, and THEN half the stills didn't show up in the episode at all, so i was like ep 5 AND 6???? and now i find out it's ep 7 thank you TLDHLB staff for this clear and straightforward release of preview stills it has made it very easy for me to label things in an accurate and satisfying manner dgfdsfgsdfg

[eats-the-stars]

love the guy assigned to my case at the “help you get a job” program. i have exactly 2 modes. 1) procrastinating until the absolute last minute. And 2) guess I will complete months worth of work that is also due at the end of the year in exactly 3 days of non-stop effort. You can basically flip a coin as to which approach my brain will decide to take for any given task.

so yeah I have a job now. and my poor case manager dude is like “wait. no. that was so fast. it’s been one week. you did how many interviews? and you picked...this one. the one that is not like anything you have done before and also was not on the “jobs I think would work out for me” list that we made?”

and he was scrambling like “accommodations. training. oh god. um. do i need to talk to your employers?” and getting more anxious when I was like “no i think I have it covered.” like i am sorry bro but i know that my vibes in person are like “quiet forgetful autistic person who can pass for either a high school student or a grandma at any moment” and this does not inspire confidence, but I am actually pretty independent once someone gives me a little push to start a thing.

also...dude you have my job history. winter sports area general worker (concessions, ticket sales, renting ski/snowshoe equipment, managing cross-country trails, monitoring the tube hill, etc.). family restaurant hostess (basically every role in the place except a cook). person selling fireworks out of tent for all of July while also living in a smaller tent behind the shipping crate filled with things that go boom. call center customer service rep handling 4 different clients that range from crafts and home decor to incontinence products and super expensive furniture. freelance dog-sitting with clients ranging from “rich couple who wants me to let their elderly cockapoos out twice a day for $50 bucks a pop in a house with a basement theater” to “i’ll give you $10 a day to exercise and feed the 3 huskies in our small apartment also they can jump higher than you are tall and scream louder than you thought possible.” bro we added a whole “volunteer experience” section to my resume because I wrote grants and worked with an environmental group to restore native bluebirds to the community and volunteered at the community table and the animal shelter and the library. like i have done lots of things that are not really connected at all. someone says “hey do you think you could do this?” and I am suddenly living out of a tent for a month googling “what the fuck is a crossette?” i once ended up in Memphis for 2 months doing volunteer construction work in the aftermath of a hurricane because my cousin didn’t want to go alone and everyone was like “oh we know someone who goes with the flow so hard.”

so you better believe i told you “oh i don’t know, maybe a receptionist position would be nice” and then applied to every local job known to god and then a few extra and took the first one to say “cool can you start next week?” i know i did not give off “I will try anything at least once if you ask me fast and then go ‘great!’ before I can process what i agreed to” vibes while sitting in your office in my colorful leggings, grandma sweaters and animal hats while not making eye contact and talking about how lovely my nephew is and how much I enjoy quiet time alone and gardening and i struggle with a poor memory and navigating social interactions. but i know you proofread my resume my guy. you asked questions about all these things except the construction thing because i actually forgot to mention that actually which is good because then i might have had to mention the cult involvement that i wasn’t aware of until i was stuck on-site but it all worked out so no sweat. still, i am glad that he is concerned by my “out of the blue” spontaneity. it’s kind of his job to help people settle into jobs that they can handle, and I also know that I would realistically need more assistance from him if I wasn’t so good at adapting on the fly due to my bad habit of saying “sure, I can do that” to literally anything. also my new job is honestly pretty tame, so i am not sure what he is freaking out about. i should really not mention some of the other jobs i spontaneously applied for before accepting this one. like..my friend...i could be working in a bridal shop. i could be training to install and repair vending machines or decorating cakes or delivering medical equipment. i applied for a job that was literally “window production.” none of these are actually as wild as that time I spent 2 months with a religious cult doing manual labor and living out of an abandoned, half-destroyed school building because my cousin talked me into it. i had to watch a dramatic reenactment of the crucifixion of Jesus on my very first night that brought the whole gymnasium of strangers to wild, howling tears while I was awkwardly clapping my hands as my cousin sobbed incoherently into my shoulder. i once dog-sat a bluetick coonhound for 2 weeks in the dead of winter, and the snow if his yard was so high that he was able to jump the fence and book it down the street. i had to chase him through knee-high snow for over an hour before he stopped to sniff a bemused old lady long enough for me to catch him. i once had a customer at the restaurant rail at me for a good twenty minutes because she was absolutely sure that we did serve pineapple upside down cake and i was just withholding this dessert from her, specifically. the bar for “jobs I would apply for” is so low that I actually thought “well as long as nobody spits in my face, pukes on me consistently, or shanks me in the kidney again I could probably do anything.” although to be fair to my case manager i did not mention those things to him (except the pineapple upside down cake lady because I mention her all the time, i am still pissed off about that situation). also, my sister was actually the one to have a dog wake her up in the middle of the night only to puke directly into her mouth, but I watched it go down, so the psychic trauma of witnessing that still exists.

[thepropertylovers]

What Foreigners Really Think of The U.S. Right Now

The other night, after the kiddos went to bed, we decided to watch the second Borat movie that just came out (have you seen it?). It was insane and hilarious all at the same time, but it got me wondering: what do folks who don’t live in the U.S. think of The United States of America right now? What is their perception of us?

So I decided to pose this question on Instagram and wow. Y’all did not hold back. I want to thank everyone who submitted for your candidness and honesty, even if some of these were hard to swallow. It’s important to note that just because these are their opinions of America, it doesn’t mean it is all necessarily true. Regardless, it was interesting to read everyone’s thoughts and get an outsider’s perspective.

We received hundreds of submissions and couldn’t post them all, but below, people from all over the world share what they really think of the United States at the moment.

Leadership is out of touch with reality and messing things up real bad, not just for the U.S. but also for the world. What’s worse is that half the country is being misled successfully. It just shows poorly on the country all over. -Annonymous

Your president is a disaster when it comes to foreign politics and corona. No class, no knowledge. A joke. Very scary to watch. But half of the voters are happy with it. And that is even more scary. Very difficult to understand the hate and ignorance in your society right now. -Mikkel

It’s just weird. Everything basically. I totally understand now why the U.S. is described as '“flawed democracy” in the democracy index. It’s just a crazy system which is not providing equality among people- regarding the vote especially. This system leads to the fact of the two big parties (similar in the UK basically). But democracy is about diversity in opinions and options. Not just two. -Max

The US is more divided than ever. The two parties cannot work together nor do they appear to want to. The government is no longer run by reason, facts, and policy aiming for the betterment of the entire country and or world in the long or medium run; rather it’s instant gratification for the few who benefit from nepotism. Lies and misinformation are used to build a dictatorship hiding in the form of “patriotism”. And those who could act as a check or balance focus on their own personal gain, putting their needs above those of the persons they should be representing. -Joel

I personally don’t think there is a very good atmosphere in the USA, especially right now, Trump’s administration does not protect the American people or the economy. He only cares about himself and his male-white supremacy. The worst of all is that lots of Americans think Trump is actually a good leader (idk why, honestly). But thank God that people are starting to wake up and fight about what they believe. We can see it through BLM protests, feminist movements, and so on, and the whole world is proud about those people fighting for their rights. America was once the land of dreams, but nowadays (with all that is happening) it is even scary to go there. Lots of things have to change and those changes have to start, voting and defending your rights and your beliefs are the first step. Greetings from Spain. -Antonio

The main reasons I can think of are vote suppression/gerrymandering, expensive health care wealth inequality, racism, lack of fun control… -Brian

Definitely find the hypocrisy of the Republicans so annoying, Trump still being in office, the fact that there has been no police reform or justice for Breonna Taylor, the gun laws, and the COVID numbers just to name a few. -Brian

Here in the UK it seems like CARNAGE over there..don’t get me wrong, it’s wild here too but Trump is insane and it’s really odd seeing so many Americans supporting him. -Dan

Really worried about the fact that you might go for 4 more years with Trump and the fact that he’ll for sure contest the results if he loses. Add to this, all the racial violence and in particular the way some policemen act without being condemned by any judge. And finally the pandemic which seems to be even more out of control than in other countries. This is coming from someone who lives in France where we’re going to be under lockdown for the second time since the beginning of the pandemic (2nd lockdown starting tomorrow evening and will last at least until December 1st 😢). -Estelle

To put a long story short, let’s just hope Cheeto doesn’t get reelected otherwise our UK trade deal will be a disaster and we don’t need any more negative influences in the UK around gender and sexual equality.-Christian

I think with this administration, the US has demonstrated how to shipwreck a whole nation economically, ideologically, socially, and politically within a really short period of time. After just 4 years, we’ve come to associate the US with widespread narrow-mindedness, a lack of respect and courtesy to other nations (and minorities in its own country for that matter), short sightedness when it comes to global phenomena like environmentalism or migration patterns, and a celebration (by some at least) of almost barbaric notions of violence, oppression, and backward thinking, all under the camouflage of its constitution and socio-historic heritage. We’ve really admired the Obama administration over here in Europe, which-despite its flaws and shortcomings- has opened up the US to international partnerships and has established an ongoing discourse shaped by mutual respect and politeness…the contrast couldn’t be more pronounced these day…-Sebastian

I look at our Prime Minister and government and then see Trump and think we really could have it so much worse! Vote!! -Ant

As an American living in London, I can tell you that the news coverage here makes the US look like an absolute joke. Mainly due to 45, his lies, his bigotry, and his insane desire to make covid seem as though it’s a falsehood “created by the left” while hundreds of thousands of Americans have ben victimized by this pandemic. What was once seen as a country of opportunity and freedom, is sadly no longer held to that level of greatness in comparison to its neighboring countries. It saddens me because I had plans to move back home within the next year or so, but if the US continues on its path, I can see myself in London for the unforeseeable future. I can’t live in a country where I am seen or believed to be lesser than another because of my sexual preference. I can only hope and pray that this election brings the change we need to be that country of greatness once again. -Rob

Very poor to be honest. And I’m not necessarily [talking about Trump]- I think the immediate reaction is to blame him. Though, he is pretty awful. There was obviously a huge level of social and other problems in the US, and the current administration has exploited them to the breaking point. Whereas more “skilled” past administrations had the ability to leverage those issues for their benefit, but not let it boil over. I actually thought Trump would be a positive for the US and world- in that his incompetence would force other world leaders to step up. Meaning more equity in how disputes etc. are assessed and the US wouldn’t bully smaller nations. I think the US has hit the point in its journey with capitalism that the USSR hit with socialism in the late 80’s that led to its collapse. Does that mean collapse for the US, I don’t know but the system isn’t providing equity and equality for all as it stands. -Paul

Worried but also hopeful for you guys because I don’t think all citizens in America reflect the current administration. It’s been really great to see people voting early and making their voice heard. No matter what happens just know you did what you could in this moment in time. Even though the current administration provides a scary outlook for the future. As long as the current and future generations lead with love, there will hopefully be a brighter future. Love from Canada. -Ajetha

I've been subscribing to all of the US News since the Black Lives Matter Movement commenced and honestly, it made me scared as a Filipino Asian to step foot in the States ever since. I have big dreams of flying over there and probably working there as an immigrant after I finished college. However, when I found out about the racial injustice that is currently ongoing in the country, I became hesistant of still wanting to live there. Although, I'm positive that there are still people like you two that will be open about working immigrants, I really hope that racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia will end for good among every human beings in the US and also around the world. I do wish and pray that the 2020 US election will make certain amends to the current situation y'all are experiencing because it's getting pretty scary out there. -Harvey I’m an American living overseas working for the US government. I’m trying my hardest to stay overseas so my family and I don’t have to come back to the mess that is the US right now. From politics to COVID, it’s not a good time. While the virus may be surging again in Europe, at least the people comply with the government rules. Sometimes I believe Americans take freedom and liberty a bit too far, especially when it comes to the greater good. -Anonymous

Allthough on social policy the US is no real example for us (I think there is more social ‘security’, more justice, high standards in education for all in most of the EU countries), they always have been a ‘safe haven’ in big international politics. It now feels like ‘they have our back’ doesn’t imply anymore. -Jasper

Well personally I think the country seems in total disarray, instead of focusing on the real issues in the streets both house of the capitol are focused on bashing each other during the election campaign which is a circus due to the sitting POTUS. The obsession with the right to bare arms and the gun culture bewilders most other countries, you have teenagers walking into schools with Assault weapons and yet people still want guns to be available, worst still you ban one type of assault rifle but another just as powerful is kept on sale, it’s plain weird. -Philip

Neither candidate represents their party well. As an outsider looking in, it just baffles me that either of these men could potentially be the leader of the free world...It genuinely feels like worrying times are ahead for the US. -Marc I'm from India and living in Germany at the moment. The race problem in the US is as bad as the class/caste problem in India. Even if I don't have money I can go to a government health center in India. I just had an operation and stayed at the hospital for 18 days here in Germany, I had to pay only 180 Euros, everything else ( the operation and the many tests and scans that followed) was covered by the insurance. When my friends at the US heard about it they were shocked about low the hospital bill. There are really great labs (I'm a researcher) that I would like to work but I have no intentions of working/living in the US for a longer period of time. -Maithy

I think the US has become a joke to the rest of the developed world. Neither candidates running for president are fit to run such a powerful country. I can't help but feel after the election if Trump wins the left will riot and if Biden wins the right will riot. The country might just rip itself apart. American politics has zero empathy and zero morals. Honestly its terrifying. -Andrew

The US has always been a bit confusing to me - the two party system, the focus on religion, the divide in income and possibilities- as well as being the beacon of light in the fight for human rights, the strong personal pride in creating caring societets, the blending of and openeses for ethnicities and cultures... But for a while politics have become not at all about politics, religious beliefs are taking charge in policy work, the wealthier part shows little companion towards the less wealthy, the public spending is way above budget year after year while health care seems to be crazy expensive and not for all. The intrusion of US interest in politics in other countries are blunt to say the least, creating conflict where human lives have no value if they’re not US lives... School shootings that seems to be acted upon as that is part of normal lives, and schools to expensive for even middle class kids to study at... This is a shift in trust and soft power that affects all of us. -Olof

To be honest, I couldn’t come to the US right now, it scares me. The leadership, the gun laws, the violence and the divide of the nation. It sucks, because I love America and have been there 7 times in the last two years from Australia for work... but not anymore. I’m not coming back now until peace wins. -Anonymous

The fact that such a hate filled government is presiding over what is one the greatest countries in the world is scary. And it is seriously mind blowing that out of such a powerful country filled with some of the greatest minds in the world it’s these two men are the best you can do to be your next president. Unbelievable. Seriously unbelievable. -Rachel

I think the orange dude in office is making you guys look bad. But also, good (?). Seeing the black lives matter movement and so many of you stand up to the problems your country faces has been inspiring. One thing our countries have in common is how we are divided into very distinctive opposites sides. I mean, where do all these racists, bigots, utterly, madly conservites people came from? I few like a few years ago things did not seem so much as a boiling pan about to explode. Or maybe they were all hiding and when a lunatic like them rose to power (how that happened still boggles my mind) they all showed their true colors. It’s scary. I hope Trump doesn’t get reelected. Brazilians loooove to imitate americans🙄, so if he gets reelected it makes that much probable that our lunatic will also be in office for four more years. P.S. have you guys watched the show Years and Years from HBO? A really good watch is this election times! ☺️ -Taty

Re. The US atm. Unfortunately your president has made your country a laughing stock around the world and he's destroyed relationships with allies. It's gonna take time to rebuild all of that. He's also moved an entire branch of your government to the far right, even though the majority of the country if left/centr of left. So you've a supreme court that doesn't represent you and it's looking like they're going to try and take away rights from people. You have a healthcare system that doesn't look out for its people and there's this bizarre fear of universal healthcare that seems insane to every other 1st world country. If if Biden wins (and I really hope he does for everyone's sake), there's going to be a lot of work in undoing the damage Trump has done before he can even get into what he wants to do. All the while you've an ultra conservative highest court. There's also the massive political division and the systemic racism. It's a lot. It's not impossible, but it's going to take so much time and people who want it to change. -Ciara

I’ve been sitting here for an hour thinking about your question and there are many different outlooks I could raise so I’ll keep it generic. I’ll start with the elephant in the room known as Covid. Each day, our morning news informs us of what your leaders are doing and daily case numbers in the US. We sit here completely shocked at how your government has let it reach this point. You may have heard that Melbourne has just come out of one of the strictest and longest lock downs in the world. I wouldn’t wish that upon anyone to have to do, but I will say, I feel much more comfortable to be able to go to the shops knowing the numbers are at about 2-3 a day instead of in the thousands. I do think that your government does need to address this now, could even be making it compulsory mask wearing. It’s hard for me to comment about your economy as we don’t here much about it, but I will say Trump ‘says’ make America great again, let’s get more jobs, they are pro life, yet how is someone who is prolife not doing anything to stop a virus that is killing people? Isn’t your unemployment rate worse (pre-covid) than what it was when Obama was president? I think as a generic outlook, if change isn’t made in the election, the outlook from a Australian does not look like it would be something you’d want to be apart of. I love America. Have visited a couple of times, even thought about moving there, but at the moment, I’ve never been more thankful to not be there. -Ben

[eldritchsurveys]

1015.

5k Survey LXIX

3501. Is 'no glove, no love' your STRICT policy? >> I don’t have policies for activities I don’t participate in in the first place.

3502. What is the best Epic movie (examples of epics: ben-her, gone with the wind, last temptation of christ)? >> I don’t know what else falls into the category of “epic movie”, so... can’t really answer. 3503. Finish the sentance. Hey, Hey we're the: Monkees People say we:  But we're too busy:  The time to hesitate is: now You're too: physical It's a nice day to: start again 3504. Have you ever had 'missing time'? >> Only in the context of being intoxicated (and that one botched suicide attempt). 3505. Have you ever sent an electronic greeting? >> Maybe a long time ago.

3506. If you could send anonymous tips to people you knew who would never ever find out who sent them who would you send the following tips to? doesn't know when to leave: poor crotch hygenie: talks to much: band/art/dream is going nowehere: most likely to get arrestted: needs to get their life together: bad taste in clothes: bad taste in music: needs a hobby: 3507. Are you more likely to download porn or disney movies? >> I don’t download much of anything, really. Streaming has become my default mode of consumption. 3508. What is it with people? >> ??? 3509. Do you eat too much sugar? >> I can assure you that I do not. 3510 Imagine you have aband. Let's name your band. Adjective: Animal(plural): Your band name is (adjective) (animals) Under Glass! Could be better? Let's try again. Adjective: Noun (plural): Your band is (adjective) (nouns) With Puppets 3511. Are you desperate but not serious? >> I have no idea what this means. 3512. Was there a time when you were younger and it took less to get you excited? What did it take then? What does it take now? >> Honestly, I have no recollection of excitement experiences as a child. I do know that excitement is difficult for me nowadays because 1) I’m still pretty emotionally blunted, particularly for positive emotions and 2) I automatically attribute all physical feelings that could suggest excitement to anxiety instead (because I’m still learning the difference). 3513. Remember learning to write in elementary school? We spend 2 years learning to print..then they throw that out the window and teach kids cursive. Why? If cursive is so important and easy to read then why aren't books printed in cursive? Why aren't cursive computer fonts more popular? Why do buisness forms always say 'please print'? Schools are so preoccupied with teaching kids the complicated but traditional skill of cursive writing that more emphasis is put on that than on teaching kids how to clearly express their ideas through writing. I move that cursive writing become a jr. high school elective instead of a grammer school priority. Who's with me? >> This seems like a personal rant based on your own experiences and I have no dog in this fight, dude. I think of penmanship like art -- script writing is an art form and being adept at it can lead to some pretty results. Just don’t use it if you don’t care for it. Also, I’m pretty sure very few (public) schools care about cursive writing in this era, lmao, so this is also an outdated rant. 3514. Can you think of anything else (besides cursive writing) that is unhelpful, or unuseful, yet traditional and unquestioned? What? >> Whatever. 3515. Name one female celebrity who you would guess wears size ___ clothing: 0? 5? 12? 16? 20? 3516. Have you ever been to a place where the restrooms were named in a clever way rather than just saying men's and woman's? I've seen Hens and Roosters, Bart and Lisa, Dudes and Babes...what have you seen? >> Yeah, I saw “Pirates” and “Wenches” once. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen others but I can’t remember what they were now. 3517. What is the 'message' or 'point behind': Fight Club? Donnie Darko? AI? Minority Report? Solaris? A Walk to Remember? You've Got Mail? 3518. have you seen, and what are your thoughts about these movies: Drumline? >> Now this is a question block I can actually answer. I did see Drumline, but I was 13 at the time so I have no real recollection of my feelings about it. The Hot Chick? >> Nope. Maid in Manhattan? >> Nope. Star Trek: Nemesis? >> Nope. About Schmidt? >> Nope. Okay, maybe I can’t answer this question block after all. What are most of these movies...? Evelyn? >> --- The Guys? >> --- Intacto? >> --- The Jimmy Show? >> ---

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers? >> I did see this, but I don’t remember much of it either because it was at least half a decade ago. I do assume I enjoyed it. Gangs of New York? >> --- Two Weeks Notice? >> --- The Wild Thornberrys Movie? >> --- Smokers Only? >> --- Treasure Planet? >> --- The Santa Clause 2? >> --- 3519. START this sentance: ....and I think to myself, what a wonderful world." >> ---

3520. What is: insanity? normal? farenheit? 3521. Tell us about yourself in the third person for a bit: >> I’d really rather not attempt that. 3522. If someone breaks a law, should they be punished if they did not know it was a law? >> Oh, I don’t know. This is a concept that can get real thorny real fast. 3523. If it's so much easier to learn languages when we are very young (and it is, something to do with the developing brain) why do they wait until jr high and high school to teach them? >> I don’t know anything about the justifications behind public-school curricula, dude. 3524. Name a band you sort of like: Dream Theater. You are wearing that band's t-shirt in a store. SUDDENLY some guy you don't know comes up to you and goes, "Hey! You like (insert name of the band here)??!!" This is obviously a really stupid question because if you didn't like them you wouldn't be wearing the t-shirt. Your witty reply is: >> It’s not a really stupid question, first of all, because it’s a conversation starter as opposed to a straightforward inquiry. I’d assume he’s excited that someone else seems to be a fan of a band he likes, and is opening the floor to talking about it. Which is great! Let’s talk about prog metal! Now, on the other hand, if the tone of “hey, you like Dream Theater?” is skeptical, like he’s assuming I’m just blithely wearing the shirt without actually liking the band or whatever, then I’d probably just give him a simple “yep” and see what happened after that. I’m not going to immediately be sarcastic or “witty” until I am positive about what kind of interaction is happening. 3525. If you were organizing cd's in a music store what section would you put each of the following in (don't forget the 'bargain bin' section!): Blink182 Depech Mode Weezer Led Zeppelin The Doors Avril Lavigne Nelly Manfred Mann Iggy Pop Pink Floyd Guns N Roses Shakira Britny Spears Tool Ozzy Osbourne Madonna The Rolling Stones The Beatles Motley Crue Bon Jovi 3526. Does coffee stimulate your mind or body more? >> It stimulates my anxiety drive, is what it does. 3527. Can you do 'six degrees of seperation' to anyone famous? >> I assume not. 3528. What's the oddest thing in your home? >> Me. 3529. Do you find it odd when people who are not handicapped use the handicapped stall: in the bathroom? >> No, I’ve used it because the close quarters of the other stalls wig me out sometimes. Or I’ve used it because the other ones were disaster zones. Or I’ve used it because I was also getting changed in the stall, or something, and needed the room. in the parking lot? >> You need a whole placard (or handicapped license plate) for those, so there are obvious rules. 3530. Do you sometimes find yourself talking to yourself? Do you answer yourself back? >> No, I talk to the Inworlders, not “myself”. 3531. In your head do you call yourself 'I' or 'you' or both? >> Er... “I”? 3532. What is the best excuse for why you haven't done your homework? >> --- 3533. Someone tells you 'well there are black people, and then there are n*ggers'. What do you think? >> I think that person’s an out-and-out bona-fide bigot, obviously? What the fuck else am I going to think (besides “I have to leave immediately”)??? 3534. Does culture shape behavior or does behavior shape culture? >> Yes. 3535. What determines whether a person will be: intelligent? pretty? happy? sucessful? 3536. What is social loafing? What is groupthink? >> ??? 3537. I have an idea. let's change the english language by making the words fewer, shorter and more concise. What do ya think? >> No. 3538. What are the physical symptoms of: joy? fear? shame? 3539. Here's the scenerio...your little eight year old brother is hangin out in the house when you come in..and catch him watching the playboy channel! What do you do/say? He says, "Why can't I watch this?" What is your response? Why do you respond that way? >> I don’t have an eight-year-old brother and I don’t know anything about how I would respond in a sibling-dynamic situation because I’ve never been in one. 3540. Who REALLY has a higher sex drive, girls or guys? How can you tell? >> --- 3541. are you usually carefree? >> No. 3542. Do you generally prefer reading to meeting people? >> This is an odd comparison to make. 3543. Do you often long for excitement? >> No. 3544. Are you mostly quiet when you are with others? >> It depends on what kind of situation I’m in and what kind of day I’m having. And who the others are. And where we are. Context, people. Details. Please. 3545. Do you often do things spur of the moment? >> No. 3546. Are you slow an unhurried in the way you move? >> Sometimes. If I’m doing something I hate or that triggers me, then I tend to be a lot more hurried. 3547. Would you do almost anything for a dare? >> I wouldn’t do anything on a dare. 3548. Do you hate being in a crowd who plays jokes on one another? >> Er... 3549. Do you enjoy wild parties? >> No. 3550. Have you ever paid for something priced more than $5.00 in only change? >> No, but I was with someone that did. We had to scrounge for change in her car so we could buy enough gas to get us the rest of the way home, lol.

[idkwhoiamanymorebutwtf]

talking about Disaster made me remember the flashback in "Rerun" where Gumball details what happened, "but it wasn't my fault". With this half disbelief, since *of course* everything bad that happens is usually *his fault*

Honestly Gumball is the Scapegoat of the family. (funnily enough the term is often used in family dynamic’s specifically including very controlling mother’s.)

I think in the family, Gumball very much has a role very similar to a Scapegoat child’s. I mean, look at this description of a Scapegoat’s role. “Lost sweaters and keys, lateness, broken objects and rules���every crack in the veneer of family life that the controlling parent needs to be perfect—are pinned on the scapegoated child”. I’ve noticed throughout the show when something goes wrong it’s his fault. When the kids do something bad it’s on him. If Richard pranks Gumball and Gumball pranks him back, guess who gets scolded? If eight cars crash unexpectedly into you with nobody at the wheel, guess who’s to blame? When your t w o sons are late to turn in a dvd, who’s name do you immediately yell at when you get home? It’s always Gumball. Even when multiple people are in trouble he’s the one who gets the brunt of it. He’s the first person anyone looks at, even if he’s not the only one. With Gumball, the smallest discrepancies are blown out of proportion. 

One article I read used this as an example of a child being a scapegoat “Let’s say the family car gets vandalized in the driveway. A reasonably well-adjusted person is irritated, but figures this was the work of random thugs. Not so the controller, who discovers that when Nancy came home, she didn’t leave the porch light on. Voila! She’s an instant scapegoat as the parent focuses on the cover of darkness without which the thugs wouldn’t have acted. Yes, the vandalism becomes Nancy’s “fault” in this particular household.” and I couldn’t help but laugh because blaming a child for your car being vandalized because they didn’t leave on the porch light, is strikingly similar to blaming a child for your car being wrecked by eight driverless cars randomly hitting you because the kid was messing with the windows.

In some families the role of Scapegoat rotates from person to person based on the situation, however in other families (as with the Watterson’s) it stays on one person. And giving one child the role of the Scapegoat let’s the other family members feel like they’re better people than they are. They don’t have to take responsibility for the issues they cause, instead having a convenient person to put it all on. The one flaw in their ‘perfect’ family is the Scapegoat child and therefore whatever goes wrong must be that child’s fault, which leads to the idea that if that child could just be “made to act better” then life would be perfect, causing resentment towards that child for not being better, even though the kid isn’t any worse than any other member of the family. This is very clearly the dynamic this family has. Think about it. Darwin is great. He doesn’t do anything wrong. He’s the sweet innocent baby. Any time that angel of a child does anything wrong it’s because he’s with his brother and is being dragged down. And Anais is so responsible and grown up! She doesn’t do bad things, even if she did we wouldn’t know about it. Both of them can never really be in the wrong, at least not exclusively. The blame is always at least partially on Gumball, and more often then not it’s on him exclusively. 

In these sorts of dynamics, when the parent in the situation blows up in a way unprompted by the situation, nobody looks twice at it, instead being annoyed at the Scapegoat for messing everything up. Much like in the scene where Gumball was blamed for their car being hit and everyone just rolled their eyes and groaned at him like it really was his fault and Nicole wasn’t blaming him for something that wasn’t his fault. 

An article I was reading states “bullying and targeting the scapegoat is consciously maintained. With a narcissistic mother, it often becomes a team sport with the other children following her lead.“ and doesn’t it? How many times had Gumball been insulted by his siblings? Called a bad person, called dumb, called whatever bad thing? I honestly think his mother built this image of him in their heads where he’s a dull, selfish, ill mannered boy and nothing more, a child who she loved but who was nothing special. And his siblings followed in her lead. And he has a very hard time actually liking himself as a result, because he believes every word of it. Once again an article I read backs this view of the family dynamic up, describing a possible outcome of Scapegoated children. “they may have so internalized the negative messages about themselves that they set their sights low, avoid failure at all costs”, it describes, and as established in multiple episodes (such as The Triangle) Gumball literally refuses to try to be better because he doesn’t think he’s capable. I’ve spoken many times on his fear of failure. 

“Because the mother sees her children as extensions of herself (except for the rejected scapegoat)” is another thing I saw. And I have a whole analysis on how this woman projects her success onto two kids and completely lacks faith in the third. Other children in this family dynamic often work so hard to stay in the good graces of their parents that they end up seriously damaged. They may burn themselves out working so hard or become desperate for the smallest approval or even begin to think themselves better than other’s, just like I think Anais’ poor social skills are due to her spending most of her time trying to be the best she can be academically to secure her mother’s interest, and her tendency to act as if she’s better than her brother’s, come from that dynamic. Just like I think Darwin’s desperation to be well behaved and good comes from his need for approval and to be better than his brother, who is the Scapegoat of the family.

So yeah, overall I think Gumball is blamed for too much and it’s to the point where he kinda believes it himself.

[tornbetween2loves]

Arcana Unbound-Plane Rides

Four thousand years ago gods and magic shaped and ruled and were plentiful in the world. Man and all the creatures were shaped and marked by it. Then things began to change. Gradually those things of magic diminished and the things of science took precedence until magic became a myth tucked away safely in children’s fairy tales and skilled entertainer’s parlor tricks.

It’s been a thousand years of progress unmarked by true magic.

Things are about to change.

This is a collaborative project between @tornbetween2loves and @innerpostmentality parts of this particular post were also written by our good friend @kennaxval

Word Count: 2800+

Disclaimer: All characters belong to Pixelberry except for our OCs. They are our precious babies and were created with all of our love and affection.

Warnings: This series may contain erotica and adult themes and should not be read by anyone under the age of 18. 

Autumn Lee, heiress of Valtoria, felt her heart race as the plane landed. 'It had been two, no, three years,' she thought to herself, 'and I'm still nervous as hell to see her.' She had spent the last couple of hours scrolling through her phone and reminiscing about Cordonia. She looked through her reflection in the plane window down at the vast Atlantic below. She mused about the complex emotions that raged through her when her mom Hana had called her to let her know about the Royal Social Season. After the fallout from his own Social Season she would have thought that King Liam would never endorse such a cattle show for his own children.

When she left to attend Julliard she knew she was running away from her feelings for Sarissa that she wasn’t prepared to explore. Not that she regretted a moment of it. Living in Manhattan and experiencing her Mama Riley’s world had broadened her horizons and brought her closer with her New York mom. Not that she’d waited tables, her jobs included playing in the atrium at the InterContential Barclay, one of the litter of five star hotels that were scattered across the premium real estate of Manhattan. She filled in as an on call pianist for various Broadway or off Broadway productions.

Her life was good; and her life was busy and it wasn’t until the phone call that she’d ever really slowed down enough to think about Cordonia. As much as she didn't want to admit it to herself, she missed being there. Maybe it was how hilarious everyone’s obsession with protocol seemed to her. Or maybe it was Leonides, her brother from another mother. Prince and prodigy, his musical ability among the best. His infectious joy as he would play Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star as counterpoint to her Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue. Anytime they got together, they wrought joyous havoc through the palace. He would be sixteen, a young man now. She hoped he would still have that joie de vivre. She did miss him. But that wasn’t what got her on the plane to attend the Royal Social Season.

Autumn closed her eyes and thought back to that day 3 years ago when she finally tasted Sarissa’s lips and felt her body pressed close to hers. She remembered every detail as if it just happened yesterday. The way the water beaded on Sarissa’s perfect skin as she came up out of the water. The look of her perfect body in that metallic green bathing suit. How perfect her lips were as they kissed and how sliding her hand into the side of her bathing suit was like touching heaven. Autumn could still taste her lips, feel her fingers between Sarissa’s folds, everything. She opened her eyes, her body tingled just from the thoughts. She rubbed her eyes and tried to think of something else. But it was pointless.

She sighed deeply as she surrendered to the truth. Sarissa. It had always been her. Autumn had never had the courage to tell Sarissa how she felt to put it into words, and that's why she had to go back. She had always sworn to herself to speak her mind and not live with any regrets. It was time, one way or another, she would tell Sarissa how she felt.

* * *

Mona yawned and stretched her arms above her head. Flying was so boring. Especially on the royal private jet. There was no one to flirt with, no one to drink with. She looked across to the other side of the plane where her sister sat and flipped through a magazine. She unbuckled her seatbelt and moved next to her sister. “Hey Pam. Whatcha reading?”

"Sports Xtreme... Looking at all the things I'm going to be missing while we are doing whatever the hell we are doing." She frowned. "I can't believe they are still killing trees to put magazines on planes."

Mona shot her sister a sideways glance. “I’m sure you’ll find something extreme to enjoy while we’re in Cordonia. Maybe even find someone to enjoy it with.” She nudged her sister with her elbow as she raised an eyebrow at her

Pam lifted a brow at her sister. "Who would you suggest? I get the feeling you've been studying the prospects."

She smiled slyly. “Well, I hear that some of the Walker boys will be participating in the season. Perhaps one of them?” She looked at her sister pointedly. “Just keep your hands off of Xiphos Lykel. I’m calling dibs on Cordonia’s most eligible bachelor.”

Pam laughed and shook her head. "You like pouring fuel on a fire trying to put it out. That one is nothing but a handful of heartbreak Mona." She locked eyes with her sister. "Seriously you are going to pair me up with a bunch of Irish farm boys?"

“Hot Irish farm boys, Pam. Hot. Come on, nobody’s saying you have to marry one of them. Loosen up and have some fun!” She raised an eyebrow at her sister. “And I can handle Cordonia’s most eligible bachelor. He and I are cut from the same cloth I think.”

"You sure you don't want some of the 'Hot Irish farm boy' action? There are 4 of them if I recall correctly. Jeez, five kids... Didn't they know what causes that? I can't even imagine. One sister is great. Poor little girl... 4 brothers. Can you imagine?"

Mona shrugged with a mischievous smile. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll get a little action from the hot Irish boys too.” She giggled. “Poor girl is right. No guy in his right mind is gonna try and get close to that. Imagine facing the wrath of 4 older brothers, plus Drake? No thank you. She might as well become a nun.” The girls both broke into a fit of giggles.

Pam shook her head. "I wish I knew if any of them jump out of anything higher than their bed." She laughed.

Mona sighed. “Is that all you care about is if they’ll jump out of a plane with you? Come on Pam, you have to stop rejecting guys simply because they’re not daring enough for you. You are daring to the extreme. You can’t expect everyone you meet to be like that.” She raised an eyebrow as she patted her sister’s arm. “Most of us like to keep both feet planted firmly on the ground.”

Pam looked at her a long moment. "Have you ever thought about what you really want Mona? Seriously? How do you see yourself in 5 years? And do you really think some man is going to get you there?

Mona shrugged. “Yes. I see myself as the new Duchess of Lythikos. The only woman able to tame Cordonia’s most eligible bachelor. That’s exactly what I see in 5 years.”

Pam sighed knowing it was pointless to try to dissuade Mona. Once she got a cliff set in her sights she was hell bent to dash over it.

She closed her magazine. "Okay. So what's your game plan? Or do you expect a man who's been sampling the smorgasbord of Europe from one end to the other to be converted instantly by your admittedly stunning beauty and stellar wit?" She smiled and lifted her brow.

Mona giggled and punched her sister playfully in the arm. “Usually my stunning beauty and stellar wit is enough, dear sister.” She sighed. “But I fear you’re right. I may need a strategy.” She tapped her fingers on the armrest of her seat as she contemplated the situation. “Do you have any suggestions?”

"Suggestions?... Let me see. I could toss any other woman who looks at him over a cliff or out of a plane I guess... Hmm.

You know generally it helps if you know something about them. Something real. Not, he looks delish on a magazine cover. Do you actually know anything about what he does and doesn't like? What is fabricated to make good press? Do you care?"

Mona shrugged. “How the hell would I know anything besides what is printed in the press? I think we’ve met briefly in the past, but we haven’t really talked.” She broke into a big smile. “I know. Let’s google him!” She pulled out her phone and pulled up google then typed in his full name and pressed search.

Pam got up and walked over to the bar torn between drinking herself into oblivion and just tossing herself out of the plane.

She heard Mona squeal "Oh my God.. Oh my God... come look!"

She closed her eyes a moment before she grabbed the bottle of Glenfiddich and headed back to her seat. Where Mona shoved her phone with a full-frontal nude picture of Xiphos Lykel walking out of the surf on some godforsaken beach in her face.

She lifted a brow. And looked at her very excited sister. "Well now we know he's not circumcised. And DO NOT make that your wall paper!" She shook her head. "I can't believe you just shoved his dangly bits in my face. Seriously?"

Mona laughed uncontrollably. “Well now there’s nothing left to my imagination.” She grabbed the bottle of scotch from her sister and took a big swig, then handed it back. “I wonder if he knows this picture is out there.”

"Mona, it's Europe. They have more miles of nude beaches than some countries have coastline. Honestly it would be more surprising if there wasn't a nude picture of the man. He may have short comings but none of them are displayed in that picture. I'll give him that." Pam took a swig of the scotch.

"Mona why don't we just blow this all off. Land. Rent a car. Drive over to Rome, or Paris. Have a vacation without all the Social Season crap?"

Mona half-listened to her sister as she concentrated on zooming the photo of Xiphos. She held the phone up to Pam again. “And miss my chance at this??? No way sis, sorry.” She licked her lips and raised an eyebrow at her sister. “Can you really blame me?”

Pam shook her head. "I just don't want you hurt." She sat down and sipped some more scotch then took her phone out and googled 'duchy of Lythikos'. Information appeared about the area including scenes of its mountains and breathtaking vistas. Then information about the Duke and Duchess and their family.

"I'm not finding anything here about where he went to school. Must have been private. Or Bastien cleared the decks of personal information." She grinned. "Dad gave him a LOT of expertise in cleaning up messes." She got a thoughtful look. "Maybe that could help... If you can get his dad to like you?"

Mona shrugged. “Possibly. I’ve never had to go that route before, but it’s definitely something to keep in mind.” She took another swig of scotch. “I still think he and I will hit it off from the start. We’ll party together. We’ll have fun. We’ll just click. I know it.”

"So who else is likely to be there?" Pam Googled 'Cordonian Royal Court' Her screen filled up with lists of Kings and Queens and their courts for the last five hundred years. She laughed and narrowed the search. "I wonder who else is going to be there? Ramsford, Domvilliar, Valtoria, Krona?"

“I would imagine all the duchies would be represented. Don’t forget Lythikos.” Mona flashed a big smile at her sister.

Pam shook her head, "No chance of that."

"So have you got outfits planned for the masquerade ball? Are we going for stunning confusion, or stunning but individual?"

Pam looked over at her sister when she didn't answer and took her phone now completely filled with Xiphos’ schlong out of her hand. "Earth to Mona. Stop that! Seriously you are going to give me a problem staring at his crotch when I meet him." She reduced the size of the picture while her sister grabbed for it.

Mona pouted. “You never let me have any fun. Although I must admit now there is very little left to the imagination. I was thinking maybe we should do stunning confusion. What’s the point in being identical twins if we can’t use it to our advantage?”

Pam grinned and lifted her brow. "I'm the most fun person you know. Admit it. The only way I could be more fun would be if I happened to have an 8 inch cock. But that would definitely interfere with all the fun we get to have being identical twins." She laughed. "Do I get to see the gowns before so I know how much of my tits and ass I'm going to be strutting for the court?"

Mona grinned and shot her sister a mischievous look. Would you like to see them now? They’re hanging in the bedroom. I could sneak in there and grab them

"oooh yes! I love your designs you know." Pam lifted her brow. "Just make sure you listen at the door first and don't go in if you hear anything. You know they may be old but they sometimes still..." She waggled her brow.

Mona grimaced at her sister. “Ewww Pam why would you say that? I may be traumatized.” She got up and pressed her ear to the door of the bedroom. Pam followed close behind. She giggled and whispered low, “all I hear is dad’s snoring. I think it’s safe.” She slowly turned the handle and came back a few moments later with a garment bag. They returned to their seats and Mona unzipped the bag to reveal several gowns. She picked two and hung them next to each other. “Okay so there are two ways we can do the masquerade ball. Because obviously I didn’t have time to make us gowns for every event, I tried some new things.”

“Both of these are just basic black A-line gowns with a ruffled skirt. But we can switch out the bodice or the skirt and suddenly it’s a different gown.” She demonstrated by removing a length of the hem so the dress would now fall at mid-calf length. “I was thinking we could be phoenixes for the masquerade ball.” She pulled out two red sequined bodices, one strapless and one with one long sleeve. “This way we’re the same, but different.” She pulled out the different materials for the skirts. “One of us could do short, the other long. One ruffled, one not. One all black, one a mixture of red and black. And the masks are identical.” She pulled out two identical masks, black sequined around the eye holes and red and black feathers creating a plume that would cover the forehead. Mona raised an eyebrow at Pam. “So you’re completely in control of how much tits and ass you’re showing.”

"You're brilliant! I love these. Mona why don't you do this full time? I'd love to see you having shows. This is art and it's gorgeous!"

Mona shrugged. “Maybe someday. Right now I just don’t have the time. I’m too busy.”

Pam lifted her brow and moved her thumb and forefinger open and closed like she was expanding the picture on an imaginary phone. "Too busy? What exactly are you too busy doing?"

Mona broke into a fit of giggles. “Research. It’s research. Nothing wrong with being prepared.” She sighed as she began to pack the gowns away. “I do enjoy making clothes. A lot. Maybe I should try and make something of it. If I only knew where to begin.”

Pam smiled at her sister, "Well I think I'd try to talk with some designer that you admired who has done it?" She shook her head, "Didn't they have some classes on business modeling for this when you were in school? Let me guess.... you slept though it a lot."

Mona shrugged. “I guess they did but hell if I can remember.” She sat up straight and her face lit up. “Isn’t one of the duchesses of Valtoria a big designer? Do you think she might be at season?” Pam nodded and smiled. She picked up her phone and typed “Valtoria” into the search bar and after a moment came across a photo of Hana Lee. She held it out to Mona. “This is her. Are you familiar with her work?” Mona raised an eyebrow as she scrolled through the phone. “Actually, yes. She does great work. Now I have a second reason for wanting to attend season.”

A soft bong sounded over the plane’s speaker and the pilot announced that they were on their final approach and would be landing in the next fifteen minutes.

Moments later their mom and dad came out of the bedroom in the back and took the seats that faced their daughters and buckled in for the landing. Leo took Katie’s hand and smiled at Pam and Mona, “So have you girls been busy making plans for the Season?”

The twins looked at each other and burst into giggles.

Tags: @darley1101 @gardeningourmet @speedyoperarascalparty @hopefulmoonobject @bobasheebaby @carabeth @riseandshinelittleblossom @stopforamoment @furiousherringoperatortoad @indiacater @sirbeepsalot @alesana45 @museofbooks @eileendannie @furryperfectionlover @sawyeroakleyscowboyhat @strangerofbraidwood @teamtomsato @begging-for-kamilah @kennaxval @ao719 @blackcatkita

[journeysintowebcomics]

Worm Liveblog #99

UPDATE 99: Back Home for an Hour

Last time Skitter intimidated the mayor and his family, in the process defeating two professional heroes and almost causing one of them’s death. Quite the awful actions, and even she is surprised she went this far! What didn’t happen was Coil doing anything. What happened to his plan to kill Skitter? Let’s continue.

The chapter starts with Skitter trying to compartmentalize what happened, as well as her actions. She tries to think of a reason to be angry with the mayor, to maybe think they deserved what happened, but she just can’t forget Triumph didn’t deserve any of what happened. She even has to admit Triumph could have died or suffered brain damage due to lack of oxygen. At least she admits it. It doesn’t make it okay, but at least she’s recognizing it was all awful.

She feels so bad she asks her contact with Coil to send medical help to the mayor’s house. I hope Triumph will be okay, honestly.

You know, it has taken a long time for Genesis to make a new body. Has this always been like this? Perhaps she was stalling on purpose so Skitter would be in danger? I wonder...still, now that the fight is – conveniently – over, she’s here to help.

Her first concern is Trickster, of course. They’re teammates! So once Skitter tells her where Trickster is, she asks if Skitter wants her to carry her. Hah! That would be kind of fun but no, the unconscious guy kind of needs to be carried.

“Fine. Damn it.  Making a new body’s slow when I’m this far from myself.”

Ah...that actually makes some sense. I guess Genesis not intervening in the fight wasn’t she stalling for time while Triumph and Prism got Skitter out of the way. And then her current form melts away. I hope she’s nearer than she was before, or else it’ll be a while before she can carry Trickster.

The mission is over and there’s some distance to cover, so she returns to something she used to do before, when everything was just as harrowing but less complicated, technically: running. She starts running towards the meeting point, reaching the main street and finding it almost abandoned. This makes me think...can Brockton Bay really be saved? There are places where people still live at, and Skitter and a few select others are trying their best to stop things from getting worse, but Brockton Bay will never be what it used to be before. This city is likely to go downhill, unfortunately.

Not that they’ll get much time to see that happen, what with the end of the world and what not.

I would have left, if I could afford to.  If Dinah and my people could afford for me to.

Won’t lie, I’m disappointed Dad Hebert didn’t cross her mind. I’m still pretty bummed he was pushed aside in this story. He could have been so good for this story, seriously.

At the meeting point, Genesis’ new body is almost ready, so I suppose she’s much closer than she used to be before. She has made a bison with a basin in middle, to deposit Trickster in. Neat! Now that Trickster was safe, Skitter can get on her beetle and take off, getting away enough to make a call to Tattletale and discuss their rebellion plans.

Informing Tattletale of the recent developments is easy enough. In any other circumstances I’m sure Skitter being okay and able to speak would be something Tattletale would be glad about, but tonight it’s more like...a source of confusion.

“We’re clear to talk, no bugs, I’m ninety-nine percent sure.  So listen, if Coil wanted to assassinate you, that’d be his chance. Once you leave the mayor’s property, that’s it.  He doesn’t know where you’re going.”

Huh. That so? Hmmmm...well, Tattletale isn’t infallible. She may have been wrong. But it just made so much sense Coil would be trying to get rid of her, I fully expected it. I don’t want to think Lisa was trying to misdirect Skitter, I don’t believe she’d ever do such a thing, so...yeah, she must have been wrong.

In my opinion, it’s possible Coil used his power. In one timeline he arranged Skitter’s demise, in the other he didn’t. For one reason or another, the timeline where Skitter died ended being disadvantageous for him in a way he couldn’t accept, so he got rid of that one and kept the timeline where he didn’t get her killed. That would explain Tattletale’s interpretations and how she was wrong. Still, her power would let her know Coil used his power, no? So...maybe I’m wrong?

“I don’t like that you’re there without backup.  You said he might want to get rid of you too.”

“I’ll know if he does.”

“Like you knew he’d try to kill me?”

That was rather biting! I can understand if Skitter is upset, because Tattletale’s warning brought a lot of stress and worry, but still, I can’t help but read that as a biting remark. After considering for a moment if she should go meet Grue for nebulous reasons, she decides against it and instead returns to Genesis, so they can exchange a few words. First! Is Trickster okay?

He’s in a lot of pain and still unconscious. You know, his role in this chapter was insignificant. I didn’t expect that, honestly. Oh well. At least this gives them a chance to talk about the Travelers and their rather unusual situation. This isn’t the first time Trickster gets cocky and everyone pays for it, apparently. When Genesis comments they weren’t meant to be “a family”, Skitter asks why they don’t quit and go their separate ways. Because of Noelle, right?

“She’s only half of it,” Genesis said.  She didn’t volunteer anything more.

So there’s also another reason as well? Perhaps a shared past, or something they want to get that’s unrelated to Noelle? I thought Noelle would be enough to keep them all together, not that there would be something else going on as well.

The plan right now is somewhat vague. All she knows is that she has to stay out of Coil’s sight and soldiers for the time being, so going to the headquarters or to the territory may not be a good idea. Getting some stuff from her headquarters, she ponders what to do with Atlas. He can’t survive on his own, unfortunately. Atlas is like a big beetle puppet for Skitter, so she has to keep him close for her to keep him alive.

While Skitter walks with unclear destination, she looks around and notices just how ruinous the city is. Mr. Wildbow once again shows his descriptive skills, painting a rather good image of the derelict Brockton Bay. It’s not so flooded now, but weeds are growing and litter is everywhere. I guess the services haven’t been fully set yet. May be a while before they are.

Her wandering had a direction, and it takes her to a place she hasn’t been at for quite a while – for social visits, at least. Welcome home, Taylor. Dad Hebert misses you. She knocks on the door, and when he opens, she feels rather saddened about the marks left on him due to Shatterbird’s glass explosions. Overall he seems to be okay, although it’s worrying there’s something about a large bandage that should have healed by now but hasn’t. I hope it didn’t get infected or anything, Brockton Bay doesn’t seem to be in the best condition to help heal someone with a serious infection.

“It’s good to see you,” he said.  His forehead was creased in concern.  “You’re hurt.”

I looked down at the sling.  “It’s not major.”

“Is it why you-” he said, stopping himself as if he didn’t want to jinx things and scare me off with a poor choice of words.

“No,” I said. I found myself searching for an explanation, opening my mouth to respond and then closing it when that explanation didn’t readily come.

You know, it has been several days since the last time they saw each other. I can’t imagine how it’s like to not know where his daughter is, because, well, she’s been rather vague about where she’s at.

“No,” I said, again.  “I just saw someone nearly lose her daughter.  It made me think of you and mom.”  I’d changed the genders on the spur of the moment to be safe.

I don’t think that’s impossible, but her narration didn’t indicate she thought exactly about that. I do can buy the mayor’s reactions reminded her of Dad Hebert, though. Still, she’s not the most reliable of narrators.

Turns out Dad Hebert hasn¿’t been having a good time in his life these days. Not only Taylor is living in parts unknown to him, he also has needed to barter and sell stuff from his house in order to acquire supplies. Well! I’m sure Taylor will try to divert some supplies to Dad Hebert, but how can she do it in a way that nobody notices nor Dad Hebert links it to Skitter or any other villain? Just leaving supplies on the doorstep isn’t going to be of any help, because I doubt Dad Hebert would accept it.

So what’s going on is that Dad Hebert suffered some kidney damage, and in the current state of the city it’s a tad more difficult to have the necessary diet the doctor told him he should have. That’s going to make a tad more difficult for Skitter to provide the supplies, because only she and I suppose a few select others would know what’s going on with him, so it’s not like anyone can give him supplies.

Well, I suppose she could just go to the house and deliver supplies, and then just lie and say she took what’s left of her own supplies. It’d be the simplest way to give him food, I think.

Obviously Dad Hebert is worried about Taylor’s injury, and sounds horrified she had surgery. By now he knows asking further questions is futile, so he lets that go and instead comments something else:

“You’re so different,” he said.  “You’re standing straighter, dressing like you aren’t trying to hide in your clothes, moving with more purpose.  I think you’ve grown, too.  So many people, they seem like they’ve been burdened by what’s going on, they’ve given up a little, lost important things.  That just makes the contrast between you and them that much stronger.”

Yeah, she has changed a lot. Not really in a good way, some would say, but she has changed indeed. Oh well. At least the way Dad Hebert is making this sound is favorable. Taylor herself isn’t sure if her changes are good, anyway. It’s a tad of a heavy topic of conversation, so it dies after a moment. Taylor sits to the table and sees a couple piles of papers, with information about the Travelers and the Undersiders’ Simcity shenanigans.

The one about Grue remarks he and Imp don’t attack civilians under provoked. I’m glad that’s written here, anything that can make the Undersiders seem like an okay bunch to be around of will be favorable. Doesn’t mean the civilians should get involved with their stuff in any manner, but hey, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth or whatever the saying goes!

Worth noting his power being used at all is being taken as an indication there may be fighting nearby. A reasonable assumption to make, pretty much. Also, there’s almost no information about Imp. Niiiice, the least everyone knows about her and her skills, the better.

There’s also a notice about Skitter. It’s rather accurate, although the information about her territory is a bit out of date.

Skitter is an unpredictable young woman tending towards acts of apparent kindness to those she deems her subjects and bursts of sudden and extreme violence towards those she sees as her enemies.  The city is not funding work in her territory, as Skitter is handling matters there.

It may not be generous of me to assume this, but I suppose if it wasn’t for Skitter, that area of the city would be sorely screwed. Good thing Skitter is taking charge of everything there.

Dad Hebert asks Taylor how she got here from the north, where she’s staying with Lisa’s family, and Taylor says she crossed through Skitter’s territory. She says they stopped her and then they gave her permission to go through. I suppose that means that’s what she’d do with any civilian who tried to cross through her territory. Kind of encouraging.

I looked around.  It didn’t feel like my house anymore.  I’d only been gone two months, but things were different.

I think I have said it before, but I’ll say it again: with everything that has happened it sure feels like more than two months have passed. This story has been quite eventful!

Of course, Dad Hebert would like Taylor to stay, so she immediately says she doesn’t plan to stay. Then she receives a call from Tattletale. Something happened already? Boy, there’s no rest for the wicked!

Luckily for Taylor, nothing happened. In fact, nothing will happen, because Coil isn’t planning to kill Taylor for the time being. Well then! I thought for sure he would know Taylor is against him and he would take measures, but apparently he doesn’t know, or he doesn’t consider Skitter a threat at all. Tattletale is concerned because everything indicates stuff is going according to Coil’s plans – which is a good reason to be scared, honestly.

“Um,” she said. It wasn’t like her to be lost for words. “I told Coil that Trickster got injured. I wasn’t sure if you’d told him.  He didn’t seem concerned.  There was zero indication that his plan had been disrupted.  Told him you were on your way back, again, no concern. Everything that had been telling me he was harboring plans to assassinate you was telling me he wasn’t and hadn’t ever been, this time around.”

“Your power lied to you?”

“Um. That’s what I thought.  I was thinking maybe I was working under a mistaken impression, tried adding and removing the elements to see if I could get a different result, interpret his earlier behavior differently.  No go.  And I was doing all this while having a perfectly normal conversation with Coil, until he says something like ‘Very dangerous.  You want to be careful who you’re picking a fight with.'”

I don’t know, I still think I may be onto something with what I said about Coil having used his power. If that’s so, then having Taylor around will be more advantageous for him in the near future than killing her. Once Dinah is back and active she’s expendable, though, that’s what I think. I bet he would use his power and ask Dinah something about the odds Skitter will be able to defeat him, and depending on the number he’ll take action.

So it’s still urgent for Taylor and others to take action, I’d say. They should give it a try. Either way, he knows something’s afoot and he’s not particularly concerned about it. What a smug villain! He did prove with this that he can manipulate Tattletale’s power to some extent, so they can’t really know what he’s thinking or planning.

“We’ll figure something out,” she said.

There are, what, five days or so left before Dinah is back in action? Better hurry! The conversation ended shortly afterwards. Well I’m taking this as an indication this arc is close to over, unless it turns out Coil really is planning to kill Skitter tonight and a gas pipe explodes underneath her current location or something.

It’s introspection time! What do you have to say about your motivation for your actions so far, Taylor?

Whatever my overall motives might be, some part of what drove me was some desire to patch up the damage, fix that part of myself that had been taking a beating ever since I’d gotten that call about my mom’s death.

Weeeeell...given how much guilt and regret she has been accumulating, if her narration is any indication, she’s failing at this. I mean, unless she all along intended to fill that damage with lots of regret. In that case then she’s excelling at this.

It was unlikely she was going to stay at Dad Hebert’s house for long, but it seems to me the call has made her want to leave now. The only farewell they can have is a hug, but Dad Hebert wants more. And this time he manages to get something a little more concrete than vague reassurances.

“No vague promises.  You’re going to promise,” he said.

“Day after tomorrow?”

“Okay.  I don’t have work then, with the mayoral elections.  We can eat lunch here and then go to the town hall.”

Oh shit. If Coil had something for us to do-

...she’s not going to fulfill this promise, is she. I can see it already; she’s not going to meet Dad Hebert that day. That’s going to tug at my heartstrings. She even tries to think of an excuse but promises it anyway. Yeeeeah this definitely isn’t going to be fulfilled.

I felt the need to reward him, to express some kind of gratitude, but I had only one thing to offer that he really wanted.  “I-  don’t know when.  But maybe I’ll come home?”

Won’t lie, part of me is hoping she actually does this, but yeah, as long as she’s with the Undersiders she won’t return. Although, given how there were two months in these fifteen arcs, it will be like three months more before the story ends. That’s no guarantee she’ll return home, but hey, there’s a chance she will once the story reaches its end. I sure know that, if she doesn’t, I will like to think she does.

...although I have to admit that depends on Dad Hebert staying alive until the end of the story and, knowing the conventions of stories with superpowers, his odds aren’t that good. Welp.

Having exhausted everything she intended for this visit, Taylor pretty much runs away, tearing up. Is this the end of the arc? Possibly. I’m sure an interlude is coming, and then it’ll be time for the next arc, but after how the arc didn’t end last two times I thought it would, maybe it won’t either this time, haha!

Well, we’ll see next time.

Next time: in four updates

[fantroll-purgatory]

Hello! It’s 2am, I’ve been rewriting this for 3 hours because words are the hard and I’m just tired. (Sounds like you are ALSO dealing with Time! But, that doesn’t make you a Time player either- let’s get into it.)

World: Alternia

Name: Tempus Facrem

“Tempus” means “time” in Latin, and “Facrem” is derived from “factorem” which means “maker”. Assuming I’ve not beansed the name (which is very, very possible), it should mean Time Maker which compliments her story and classpect nicely.

Age: ~8 sweeps

Theme/Story: Tempus is a hobbyist clock maker who’s hive is located in a quiet area of Alternia who tries her hardest to keep to herself and keep out of bother. Despite this, she’s often commissioned by trolls higher up the hemospectrum than herself and almost never has time to do her own thing or even make a clock for herself. I try to follow the general theme of time with her overall.

Goals: A general overview would be appreciated, as well as some suggestions for whatever I couldn’t decide on. As Tempus were originally created for a casual and definitely not canon-compliant Lords and Muses only RP session, I couldn’t adapt everything. (I am going to open my review here, because a General Overview of a character like this, by nature, turns into a Overhaul. I talk about Overcommitment To Gimmick A LOT in my reviews, because it plagues many fantrolls, ESPECIALLY Time Players.) (Your Troll is not the first Clock Themed Time Player Fantroll I’ve received, and I always point to canon. Aradia? Damara? Dave? When are any of these characters clock themed? You use the word “Time” 28 times in this profile, which points, once again, that that’s kind of her only thing.) (I will tackle alternate Aspects for her under Classpect. Much of this review is going to be trying to tease a more rounded character out of this. Perhaps your initial RP had more character for her? But, if there was, it hasn’t translated through to here.)

Strife Specibus: Sniperkind (or maybe riflekind, I can’t decide) (Riflekind is more general, and it’s what Jade uses!)

It also leads to some interesting questions you can ask yourself about her character- is she good or bad at guns? If she’s good at it, where did she learn and is this a passion? Is it just for protection or is there more? And if she isn’t good at it, why did she choose to pick it up and why does she stick with it? 

Fetch Modus: Honestly no ideas here, chief.

I could probably make a cuckoo clock joke here, but I honestly don’t want to reinforce the already drowning-in-time theme. 

God I could more jokingly apply a TikTok reference here. She has to make a musical.ly about the object in question. 

Or if she’s fascinated with universal constants, she could have a more abstract time system, like an Orbit system. All the cards are locked into a central ‘orbit’ and can only be uncaptcha’d when they line up in particular ways. 

Really, fetch modi usually involve alternate interests or coding jokes and it’s hard to think of any of those to apply here. I’d expand on her interest set and then come back to this!

Blood Colour: With reference to Fir3h34rt’s hemospectrum chart, between scarlet and cardinal.

I know we’re already making a lot of change recommendations and we’re hardly even half way, but I have to say that she really doesn’t read like a rust to me. We have to remember that rusts are rooted in Aries. The extended zodiac says rusts are wild, they crave adventure, they love drama, they’re dynamic, they’re quick to anger, they’re incautious- where is that in Tempus? 

Further, clockworking isn’t a very low maintenance career. Most of the rusts we see have “menial” labor or things they can do on their own, adventuring out into the world without much equipment. If a rust can’t have prescription glasses, how are they getting a clock studio? Where is she getting the materials? Where did she get the startup materials? Did someone else act as her patron? Why? 

This kind of niche skill and dedication to a craft isn’t something we see as emblematic of rusts, it’s something that’s more in line with bluebloods. That’s not to say I necessarily think you need to make her a blue (though I think it would be an interesting twist on the character and a good way to migrate her away from the obvious Aradia association). I just think you need to bring more of that Rustblood Fire to her, even if it’s repressed. Where’s the boiling under the surface tension? The desire to throw off her shackles and run free? 

Her theoretical EZ symbol with your current assignments would be The Headstrong. Where’s the headstrong? 

Symbol and Meaning:

A minimalist empty hourglass. Represents a lack of time. (I don’t have a better sign off the cuff, but refer to my comments above as to why I think this is a poor choice.)

Handle: I’m also not sure what to put here. This was another detail that I just couldn’t adapt. Her original handle was timeyWimey because she was meant to be a Lord of Time and my humour isn’t very creative. (I… actually think that’s pretty cute.)

Quirk: Regular capitalisation. Vowels are replaced with respective numbers, unless if the number created from the quirk is greater than 12. e.g. My n4m3 1s T3mpu5 F4cr3m.

Again we can kind of see the overcommitment here. I can’t fault you too much for it, but you might want to step away from the clock thing Too strongly here. You say she likes rhythm, tempo. Maybe you could think of different speaking patterns instead. Find syllabic patterns to give her, or even just chop her words curtly, monosyllabic. Ex: Give. Her. A. Drone. One. Syl. La. Ble. At. A. Time. It. Is. Slow. But. She. Is. Pa. Tient. Are. You? 

But I again recommend looking more into her interests and then coming back to this later. 

Lusus: Greater Skarthi, a dog-sized beetle with two horns. A very relaxed lusus who taught Tempus the value of patience. They share a good relationship.

I honestly think she could use at least a little conflict. Having a soothing lusus relationship is easy, sure, but how about the interest of trying to focus on her craft when her lusus routinely wrecks her shit? The stress. The Drama. 

Interests: Tempus is fascinated with clocks and rhythm as a whole, seeing time as a universal constant that should be respected. She chooses to respect time by making clocks, and prior to her being frequently commissioned she used to make them in a variety of shapes and sizes through different methods for entertainment or to pass the time. (So… her entire interests are clocks and Time. A Time Player is not like this. Let’s look at Dave’s intro page:  “Your name is DAVE. It is an UNSEASONABLY WARM April day. Your BEDROOM WINDOW is open to let some air in, and your FAN is cranked. Arguably even more cranked would be your FLY BEATS, which brings us to your variety of INTERESTS. A cool dude like you is sure to have plenty. You have a penchant for spinning out UNBELIEVABLY ILL JAMS with your TURNTABLES AND MIXING GEAR. You like to rave about BANDS NO ONE’S EVER HEARD OF BUT YOU. You collect WEIRD DEAD THINGS PRESERVED IN VARIOUS WAYS. You are an AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHER and operate your own MAKESHIFT DARKROOM. You maintain a number of IRONICALLY HUMOROUS BLOGS, WEBSITES, AND SOCIAL NETWORKING PROFILES. And if the inspiration strikes, you won’t hesitate to drop some PHAT RHYMES on a mofo and REPRESENT.” Homestuck ACT 2, Page 312) (Aradia gets kind of a free pass for her intro page because she is… well… a ghost. And her stated remembered interest is Archaeology, not Clocks.)

This is where you have to ask your self some additional questions. How might she have gotten into clock making? Did she start with woodworking? Was she inspired by something else? Did she just do it out of convenience because she didn’t have one? Does she just like DIY in general? Because DIY could be a very interesting origin point for a character like her. A lot of self-crafts DO take a lot of patience and you can capitalize on that character trait in ways besides saying it. 

And, of course, you should ask what she does in her downtime. Unless she’s a workaholic or is in extortionist circumstances, most people have downtime. Does she have unfair contracts keeping her working constantly and stopping her from pursuing old intrigues? Does she miss her other interests? Or does she choose to burn the candle at both ends and neglect leisure? Because if neither of these are the case, she needs other hobbies. 

Appearance: Has long black hair, similar to Aradia’s but slightly shorter and a tad tidier. Her horns share the ram aesthetic of Aradia’s too, however they have significantly less curling and point downwards and forwards. Wears a tool apron with her symbol on it over a dark grey jumpsuit. (I would absolutely love it if you could draw your interpretation of her to see how it compares to mine, but it’s absolutely not necessary.)

Personality: While she isn’t particularly optimistic, Tempus is good at looking at a situation from different perspectives which can be confused for optimism. In reality, she’s far more calm and relaxed under pressure than she is optimistic. She’s incredibly patient, both with people and in a literal waiting sense, thanks to her lusus. As she has the patient of a saint. when she does rarely get frustrated it’s usually very small scale. In spite of this, she’s prone to cursing, but not often to directly insult someone or something and more for comedic effect. (I think we have the beginnings of a solid character here. The thing that she’s really missing is the Time sense of fighting. She’s got this serene, steel will which is a useful trait, but where’s the STRUGGLE? Where is the drama, where is that draw to cyclical destruction.)

^^^ You’ve given us red on red, here. Time and Rust together have an inherent drama and tension. I really think that’s what we’re missing here. I think you could easily do something with the fact that she’s been put on commission to so many highbloods. Is she playing up her patience? Is she putting on airs for her professional career? Does she have a fury boiling beneath her skin? If she about to snap? Is she one snide violetblood comment away from tearing a clock off the wall and committing murder? Is she trying so hard to be a patient person but god people make it so HARD don’t you just want to go APE SHIT? 

Lunar Sway: Prospit, as she’s loyal to her acquaintances and often employs a creative approach to problems, even if they aren’t the most efficient ways of doing things. She also lives in the moment as she doesn’t always have the time to plan ahead. (Checks out to me.)

Title: Maid of Time. Don’t have much commentary regarding that :/ sorry

(And here it begins. Is this character a Maid? I don’t think so- Maids have a pretty classic character arc of being pushed around and then snapping and going absolute bonkers- Aradia beats Vriska to literal death, Kanaya chainsaws Eridan, and Jane…. oh boy, half of Act 6 is Jane’s.) (Is this character a Time player? I often use the phrase “Chosen by Time” in my reviews, because Time players are so DISTINCT, and required by Sgrub/Sburb. Time players aren’t chosen to be such because they like clocks or time, but because they have traits that allow them to whether the endless destruction and struggle that the Red Mantle puts on their shoulders. She needs a core of restlessness, a core of churning, if placid. EZ says that “at their worst they are ruthless, defensive, and impulsive”, which I think helps put them into perspective. Time players can and will lash back out at you.) (I think… this might be a Void player. She’d need an overhaul just to be something other than a walking clock reference, but she has the makings of one of those. A draw towards creation but in a lowkey sense, expanding on things that are already known…) (Otherwise, she may be a Space Player. She has that creation focus, and she reminds me more of 1-4 Jade than any Time player in Canon. Jade also leaned very heavily into her Time inversion for most of her life, to the point where she received Seer of Time powers for quite a while.)

I have to agree here. I think if you wanted her to be a Maid of Time you’d really have to lean into what I addressed under the personality section. She has to be ready to SNAP. Her narrative would have to be about being pushed around and then she lets go and finally embodies the full chaotic force of time.  Otherwise, she’s just not a time player or a maid. Space player is where I’m leaning, personally. They embody the patience and mutability you describe here way more and they also tend to be of the craftier and more hands-on sort. Void player is also a great way to go for a creative. You’d have to lean into her interest in the universe, in the unknown- you address her caring about universal constants, but why? That’s the sort of question the Void assignment would ask. 

[mihanada]

Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation

(back to masterpost)

I’m not ready for this.

Also, this chapter is so long, but I don’t have that much to say because I was mostly screaming softly the entire time.

Chapter 59: Poisons (Part 4)

“Wei WuXian felt his heart skip a beat...”

My heart skipped several beats during this chapter, you little idiots! Seriously, it was excruciatingly sad reading these two blunder through the aftermath.

lool I love how Wen Chao is, like, trying to placate her but he also is completely unsympathetic to her whining about Wen Zhuliu who is honestly far more valuable to the cause than this girl.

“What could happen if he’s gone?”

like, damn, he’s on your side you know. also, get the hint that Wen Chao doesn’t care what you have to say about him!

aah I see what they’re doing with this guy’s character. Still, he has that scary title that Jiang Cheng never got a chance to explain...

Still, apparently he has limits. No disgracing the dead! One of those loyal warrior types. Granted, he fights for the bad side here, but there should be limits even the villains won’t cross or else they really will turn into nothing but canon fodder who you feel zero sympathy for and exist only to cause trouble then die. We have enough of those already in Wen Chao and Wang Lingjiao, thank you very much.

It’s not like they’re not realistic in their horribleness, but they suck.

“He wondered if they could look at each other one last time, if Jiang FengMian had the chance to tell Madam Yu one more sentence.”

stooop my heart can’t take this

I really wonder how the hell the Jiang Sect managed to come back from this.

“Like a blade doused in poison, it cut into their ears and their hearts again and again and again.”

Nice description.

JIANG CHEEEENG.

those are my entire thoughts regarding this chapter.

poor kids.

I really like how the author wrote their grief over what just happened though, it all flows well despite how much you want to scream at these two to get as far away as possible and don’t even think of going back!

Even Jiang Cheng pulling Lan Wangji out as a way to vent his grief and find someone to blame things on, or yelling at Wei Wuxian even though he knows that in the end it’s the Wen Sect’s fault.

“Hugging his right hand, he pressed Zidian onto his chest where his heart was, feeling over and over again the only remnant of his family that was left.”

Wait. Is this.

Is this why he strokes the ring when he gets extremely angry. I mean, the reason behind the action is slightly different in each situation but both times it happens when he is extremely emotional.

“However, Jiang Cheng was gone.”

I kind of screamed at this part.

It’s like, what can you really expect in the state he was in, but also: you idiot why did you go back.

“For the first time, he discovered how little his power was. In front of something as large as the QishanWen Sect, it was the same as a mantis trying to stop a chariot.”

This chapter is interesting, because adversity builds character!! sort of kidding, but not really because this is the first time we get to see Wei Wuxian truly at a loss, nothing has gone right, and there isn’t anything he can do.

The helplessness and rollercoaster of emotions are really well written I’m just crying over here you can feel the grief they feel, when they’re just numb I’m screaming at them to keep going...

“Wei WuXian’s eyes felt so warm that he was about to tear up again.”

I also like this, how the grief comes in waves. It hits them hard the night they left Lotus Pier, turned to numbness, and now it comes back in bursts.

“He rejected the thought at once and his grip tightened, “Don’t play any tricks!”

This part made me oddly happy. Because, for once, the protagonist doesn’t immediately believe the words of someone he should regard as an enemy. He thinks for a second, it could be someone I know...? but then he does the logical thing and rejects that idea.

After a traumatic event, being hypervigilant is not strange but expected.

“Maybe he’s hidden something inside his mouth and he’s prepared to spit it out?”

idk if you’re being serious here, Wei Wuxian, or if it’s the fatigue and delirium talking but even if I was an evil cultivator, I probably wouldn’t be walking around with a weapon ready inside my mouth. just saying.

“The boy seemed a bit disappointed, “I… I’m Wen Ning.”

lol poor Wen Ning, but you know, Wei Wuxian only ever heard your courtesy name...saying your name won’t help him remember you if your face didn’t do it.

“Wen Ning was so scared that flinched within Wei WuXian’s grip, as if wanting to roll into a ball with his hands around his head. He whispered, “Yes… Yeah.”

ok, if you didn’t already know something about Wen Ning’s character you wouldn’t necessarily feel as bad but. Poor timid Wen Ning.

Hey, he doesn’t stutter in the present timeline, does he...?

“He had never been someone with bloodlust. But after his sect had been destroyed, wrath and hatred had pooled within him in the past few days. The extremity of the situation didn’t allow him to take any kindness along with him. If his right hand clenched up, he could snap Wen Ning’s neck in half at once!”

sorry Wen Ning but I do like the flash of killing intent here.

like I said: realistic

He knows who Wen Ning is now, he saw his timid character and how he seems nice now, but right after their sect was slaughtered just last night? His distrust is going to last a bit longer than usual.

“Wei WuXian’s voice was harsh, “Follow your orders? Follow your orders and kill people?”

THERE IT IS AGAIN. god, I love this author.

also, I’m surprised that Wen Ning has people who will listen to him. I guess the Wen Sect really is large.

“The scary thing was that a desperate ecstasy really did sprout from somewhere in the bottom of his heart.

He gave himself a harsh scolding in silence—he was stupid, useless, ridiculous, it was bizarre, unimaginable.

He wasn’t scared of death. He was only scared that after he died, he wouldn’t be able to save Jiang Cheng and betray the trust that Jiang FengMian and Madam Yu left him.”

D: don’t beat yourself up for hoping there’s still a chance, some good in people’s hearts!

I have a lot of feelings about Wei Wuxian and his self-sacrificing, self-deprecating, self-sabotaging traits.

flashback within a flashback lol

“Wei WuXian was speechless. He felt his chin, Am I really so charming? So charming that I scared him away?”

lol, no Wei Wuxian. get a hold of yourself.

poor Wen Ning, his social anxiety is strong.

“These Wen Sect’s… archery skills are the same level of bad.”

lol so they aren’t good at everything

Wen Qionglin! Finally, Wen Ning’s courtesy name appears! It’s rarely used though, like Jiang Cheng’s Jiang Wanyin.

“If anyone in the QishanWen Sect could find some face for you all, he’d be the one.”

haha its nice to have some light humor in such dark chapters

“Wei WuXian pointed at him, “There, this one, for example, he’s not as good as you.”

Jiang Cheng raged, “Do you want to die?!”

lool casually throwing Jiang Cheng under a bus there as usual

“Wei WuXian encouraged him a couple of times and touched on a few areas of growth, correcting some miniscule problems that he had when he was shooting in the garden.”

Heey, teacher Wei Wuxian making an early appearance! He really is good at it, surprisingly.

“He spat as he dragged, “See how you shoot? Do you think that you’re a model or something?!”

Wei WuXian thought for a moment before replying, “Yeah. Am I not?”

“Wei WuXian! I haven’t seen anyone as shameless as you!”

omg Wei Wuxian never change, never change.

he actually thought for a moment though! as if he considered it!

“The second day, they had arrived in Yiling.”

Wait. Yiling? We’re finally going to Yiling? ooh...

(quotes from ExR’s translations)

← back・onward →

[yakumtsaki]

Ok I knew I hadn’t posted Unions in forever but good lord. The screenshots after, not before, AFTER this.. are the previews for this. Like we’re literally talking ancient history here. Let’s dive right in and see if we can wrap this up sometime during a human’s natural lifespan. SO when we left off we were desperately trying to make friends for Wyatt’s final promotion, ‘desperately’ being the operative word. We’ve done some pathetic shit in our time but shittalking each other to Apartment Life nobodies is honestly peak gutter, so you know. our natural environment. Spoiler alert, the kids are teens now and Wyatt has still not gotten promoted! Truly the Picasso of incompetence.

Good ol’ uncle Gunther is also here for some reason which I’m guessing is ‘came over uninvited’ but at least someone is paying attention to Shajar for once. Beggars can’t be choosers and Gunther as a father figure is the equivalent of someone leaving a button and good vibes in your cup. 

-So you see Shajar, life is nothing but a slow march towards our certain doom so who cares if your parents hate you?? My parents hated me till adulthood and I turned out amazing as you can surely tell by my stripes/plaid/indoor sunglasses combo!

-Think long and hard before procreating, brother, because there’s no guarantee you’ll even like your kids. Looking at you, Shajar.

-Um can I go now?

-Don’t know why you’re here in the first place and not in the crypt where we’ve set up your bed and everything! Kids these days.

Oh right, Brit Brit is also here so I guess I did invite these douchebags over. Way to go @ me.

-BRITTANY HOW COULD YOU TEAR THE MORAL FABRIC OF OUR WIFE-SWAPPING-BASED LIFE PARTNERSHIP LIKE THIS???? JUST STEAL ONE OF THEIR PETS LIKE AN UPSTANDING CITIZEN 

DON’T YOU DARE BRIT-

Ugh nevermind, it’s Sophie aka Brittany in cat form. Take her!

And take Shajar too while you’re at it cause absolutely not @ Victoria dying but the gnome drama living on. ENOUGH. This almost makes me appreciate Cyneswith’s ridiculous 10 nice points for a split second..

..but then I turn around and see this. GOOD GRIEF. How did Jojo and Wyatt produce vegan Tinkerbell here not even god knows.

This alliance of obnoxiousness is but the first in what is gonna become a running theme of every annoying flop in this neighborhood looooooving Maxx. Can’t keep kindred spirits apart for long! Honestly this legacy is turning me from pet maniac to Captain Ahab, like on one hand you have fucking Maxx who hasn’t done anything yet but just you wait till he grows up- 

-and on the other you have FUCKING VICTOR’S GHOST TRYING TO KILL US EVERY NIGHT. Apparently Victor + being a dick = a love not even death can tear asunder. Seriously tg kids can’t die cause these overactive freaks are up all night till the sun, are up all night to get some (entertainment), are up all night for good fun, are up all night to get lucky murdered.

This happens about 3000 times per night, I’m not even taking pics of it anymore, but it’s worth pointing out that everyone in this house, both alive/dead and human/non has a raging hate boner for Shajar in particular. It’s uncanny and depressing..

..and speaking of depressing, UGH. My poor, poor Shajar. I actually attempted to intervene and have them interact being the moron that I am:

JOJO WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM 

.....................................WHERE IS VICTOR’S GHOST WHEN I NEED IT

Yea sure, waste your niceness reserves on fucking Goro here instead, who isn’t even the cat heir and is about to go live on the farm (not a euphemism, Daniel and Melody’s literal farm). This Jojo fuckery is seriously starting to bum me out on top of pissing me off, let me find something cute to look at to raise my spirits..

No.

No.

NO.

Disturbing stuff.

Seems about right.

Old habits die hard.

No.

Ugh.

Ugh.

UGH.

OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE

FINALLY. THANK YOU CATS. Now let’s get back to this nightmare..

..and I mean nightmare in the technical sense of something not real occurring when you’re asleep, because Wyatt maxing a skill is truly the stuff of Taylor Swift-Wildest Dreams.mp3. It’s official, the only thing standing between us and Wyatt’s LTW is social ineptitude. But what if we revolutionize the friend game by approaching someone who can’t leave..

..because she’s contractually obligated to be here?? Go for it Wyatt!

-So Kaylýnn, you have the français maid thing going, I’m French and in need of a hag, c’est match made in les paradis!

-Yea sorry, Henry III, but it’s my professional policy to not fraternize with married clients I have no chance of fucking. 

-But..but you’re just a face template fiasco!

-..I have some bad news for you.

Kaylynn left Wyatt dick in hand and went to pet the cats, so I guess the day has arrived for me to go from being the leading Langerak hater of this community to being the leading stan-

-and apparently the leading Jitmakusol stan as well, which as we all know is a large and very competitive group. DOWN WITH JOJO

Well at least you still have this invaluable stamp of approval! All I see in this pic is 3 bags of trash.

Look at this trove, treasures untold, how many assholes can one photo hold? The reason there’s more awful people in our house than usual is the “exciting” occasion of the Shajar/Wulf double birthday and honestly even by our standards this party was especially terrible. Like it makes the one where Komei and Marissa happened look like Project X.

When this is the situation 10 seconds in you know you’re in for a good time. I don’t think a single positive interaction took place this entire party and I’ve subconsciously (?) forgotten every birthday since. What a loss!

Wulf is up first, and of course since this is Wyatt’s literal one and only parenting-related job, it took 3 cakes to happen and no one is paying attention by the time it does.

Wyatt makes one last-ditch effort to kill his child via decapitation and obviously he thinks it worked thus the wide smile. But Wulf is named after the spawn of Satan, head spinning comes with the territory-

-as do incredible looks. Gunther hair + tuxedo, and you think your little yellow blazer is subversive?? Step it up.

-If the sunglasses weren’t blocking the power of my stare this child would be dead by my sheer resentment.

Happy birthday, Wulf! 2/2 surviving murder attempts.

Wulf gets this Don Corleone makeover because a) he also survived murder attempts b) wedding tuxedo c) trying to avoid a Gunther mental breakdown. He looks exactly like Wyatt, like I don’t think there’s a drop of Jojo in there..

..BUT MAN IS THE PERSONALITY PURE UNION. Another nice little addition to our ever expanding freakshow.

Shajar time and no one is paying attention now either but there’s no cake malfunction, they just don’t care! And why should they? What is she, their child?

Wyatt can’t even be bothered to stay standing for literally 10 more seconds. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a parent do that before but you can always count on Wyatt for this sort of innovation. 

And this is what Shajar grows up to: Wyatt half-asleep, Daniel waiting to beat him up and the rest reacting to Wulf having shit himself. I don’t think any further comment is needed. 

Now, having lived through the experience that was Daniel and having marveled at Shajar’s seemingly genetic unlikability, I’m sure we can all tell which is the one aspiration she should under no circumstances roll because it’s going to make nails on a chalkboard seem like a fun musical break.. Yes, this is not a drill..

..we have another trainwreck firstborn who can’t get their own family not to hate them roll popularity. AND DANIEL WAS NICE. Shajar is bringing 1 nice point to the table so all I can say at this point is fml. 

And of course because the above wasn’t bad enough on its own and we always need the overkill, gaze upon whatever the fuck this is-

-YE MIGHTY AND DESPAIR. GOOD GOD SHAJAR 

LOL. Well with the custom sky this is an Under The Dome situation so technically you’re not wrong but still. fucking popularity? Leave the sky alone and aim for ‘slightly above ground’. Even that is pushing it.

Good, finally we return to reality and face the facts. Couldn’t agree more! 

[bioneuralgelpack]

Suddenly I See...

Bit of a non sequitur for the first post on here, but I’m not that great at the old linear thinking so here goes!

Let me talk you through my morning. I ran into a radiator while dodging two marauding kittens, I rammed my water bottle into my face so hard that I cut my lip, I somehow trapped my finger under the seat of a chair while sitting down into a café and now have a nail which is slowly, but surely going black… And all this is so normal for me that I barely noticed it.

Yesterday, I was diagnosed with dyspraxia… And I should probably mention that I was late to the assessment because I couldn’t find the room (despite the fact that it was in a building I used to work in). I did manage to bring the questionnaires I was meant to fill out beforehand, but they were crumpled, illegible and covered in the footprints of the afore-mentioned marauding kittens. By the time I actually met the assessor and started to answer his questions, the actual assessment had become an exercise in formality.

So yeah, I was diagnosed with a developmental disorder at age 30. And I felt… relief.

Stuff suddenly makes sense. Maybe it’s not all my fault – actual messages aren’t getting through to my actual body from my actual brain (can you tell I’m a psychologist from all those technical terms?!).

I have all the co-ordination things associated with dyspraxia - yes, Dad, I do have a ‘hole in my racket’ when I try to play tennis! – Home videos of me at tumble tots have the potential to make me a fortune on youtube. Let’s just say, I did an awful lot of tumbling and not that much… totting… Actually, what is one meant to do at Tumble Tots, other than tumble?! Maybe, I was technically very good at it…

My primary school advised my parents to send me to ballet classes aged 4 to help with co-ordination stuff. Displaying a well-developed instinct for self-preservation in the face of potential teasing, I refused.  Only time I’ve ever refused any school activity (yes, I was that child). And then there was the problem of cartwheels. You see, when you’re an eight year-old girl, the ability to cartwheel (preferably one-handed) is your primary social currency. The most I could manage was a sort of lopsided bunny hop… And, why oh why, did only boys get to have Velcro on their school shoes?! To this day, I cannot tie my shoelaces properly.

I was also, unfortunately, the kind of child who quite liked to get stuck in. Sadly, in my case, that wasn’t a graceful leap into extracurricular activities, it was more like a fast and badly-timed bellyflop. Cue years of scraped knees and elbows, getting stuck in trees I’d managed to climb up, but could not climb down and falling into probably every river, pond or large puddle in Wiltshire. I particularly remember, my first ever trip to an ice skating rink ended before actually reaching the ice because I dropped a skate on my foot with rather nasty consequences.

Oddly enough, the one positive in this was swimming. I’ve always been able to swim and swim well. When I’m held up by the water, my body just becomes more…coherent somehow. Even now, when I’m stressed, I swim, when I’m sad, I swim, when I’m very happy, I swim. Preferably, outside.

As an adult, requests to do cartwheels are rare (but perhaps more regular than you might expect when you work in a child mental health team). I have learned to laugh at my dreadful dancing in clubs, my unexplained bruises and my abysmal tennis skills. Driving is a problem – I failed seven tests despite the very best efforts of a truly exceptional driving instructor (Ann, if you ever read this – thank you. No one else could have got me to eventually pass) – but, driving, I’ve found is largely avoidable and I’m alright in rural areas and situations where I don’t have to reverse around corners. My co-ordination problems don’t stop me from doing things.

What’s more of a problem, is the hidden side of dyspraxia, the bit no one really knows about. I am disorganised, I am messy, I have a comically poor sense of direction (seriously, I can get lost in my home town, inside buildings, on routes to friends’ houses which I have walked a thousand times previously). The person who invented google maps and made the moveable dot which tells you where you are is honestly one of the people I admire most in the world. Without it, I would get nowhere. And that’s not an exaggeration. When going to job interviews or catching plans, I sometimes set off two hours early to allow for ‘getting lost’ time.

While getting lost is just a fun quirk of my personality, chronic disorganisation is an actual problem. I’m a clinical psychologist (well, a trainee one) – day to day, I see people who are disclosing horrific trauma and battling internal demons most of us couldn’t even imagine. People who are an inspiration for their resilience in the face of overwhelming circumstances. And the most stressful aspect of my job? It’s not seeing those people – that’s a privilege – it’s booking rooms and putting appointments in my diary for the right times. Seriously. For me, that is a Herculean task, equal to fighting any hydra.

On my last clinical placement, I was lucky enough to work with two admin staff who went above and beyond to be helpful and supportive. They somehow sensed my areas of weakness without me having to say anything and made sure that my appointments were booked and my letters were sent. With their help, the stress of clinical work vanished and I could feel myself flourishing.

Where it’s a real problem for me, is research tasks. I somehow completed a PhD and found things like making sure that the right participant ID numbers were on the right questionnaires near impossible. And then there was that master’s debacle where I failed to record data for fifty participants by genuinely not seeing a box I was meant to tick on the EEG readout which read ‘save data’. Research is all about sequencing tasks and being methodical. Remember when I said I wasn’t a linear thinker? I meant it. For me, A will never lead to B. A leads to F and then to G via space and a brief tour of duty aboard the Starship Enterprise and then arrives at B. Give me a problem to solve and I will get there, not necessarily slower than anyone else, but I will get there in a way which maybe doesn’t make huge amounts of sense and might be harder than the tried and tested path.

To be honest, there are advantages to this. I am creative. I can generate novel solutions. I have a vivid imagination. My weird thought processes have engendered a love of creative writing, of theatre, of newness, of possibility, of anything wacky and wonderful. But it can be a problem in the world of research and I do need better coping strategies for my chronic disorganisation.

The upsides? I don’t take myself too seriously – after all, I fell flat on my face in front of twenty senior mental health professionals in my first ever multidisciplinary team meeting as a psychologist. Being a serious person was never going to work. I have learned to place value on the things I am good at. And I refuse to let poor co-ordination stop me from doing anything. Last year, I ran a half marathon. Sure, I ran it with arms and legs akimbo and with all the grace of an unusually enthusiastic puppy, but I ran it. And that’s what matters.

[lethesomething]

Someone adopt Todoroki already

Let's talk about everyone's favourite BnHA prince, Todoroki Shouto, and his parental figures. This kid is some weird cross between Haikyuu's Kageyama and the Last Airbender's Zuko, in that he's a socially awkward pretty boy with a dark past and some very serious daddy issues. This kid has seen some shit, my dudes. And like those two he gets a rather satisfying, still ongoing character arc, making him one of those characters you can’t help but root for. You know what else Todoroki is? A walking symbolism manual.

 Todoroki's parental figures

So BnHA is very interesting in the way it deals with parents. As opposed to most manga, they don't just all die or disappear into the background here. This series has some of the warmest mother-son relationships (hello Midoriya Inko), and it's also chock full of father figures (Dad Might, Dadzawa, Dad Torino). People like Midoriya and Bakugou, and Kirishima in the manga, get several of these mentors to help them on their way.

Todoroki, on the other hand, gets surprisingly few. He doesn't have the same relationship with Aizawa or All Might that Midoriya and Bakugou have, and he doesn't even get a separate mentor during his  apprenticeship, because he chooses to spend that time with his own father. In a way, this makes a lot of sense. Whereas Midoriya gets outside guidance to grow, Todoroki's character development is very much an internal struggle. It is central to Todoroki's character arc that he learns how to deal with the parents he already has.  

Putting this under a cut because it’s super long, and it ventures a little into manga territory (i tried to keep the spoilers mild).

 Fire and Ice

I don't think I'm going to shock people when I mention that Endeavour, Todoroki Senior, is a bit of a dick. The man has many flaws as a father and a human being. He's abusive, for one. He is shown as proud, calculated, ruthless, selfish. He wants to mould his child with the very specific purpose of defeating his own greatest rival and he's willing to disregard the lives and feelings of others (like his wife) to make this happen. Now what may shock you is that honestly, I don't believe Endeavour is a purposely cruel person. You can't really save that many people if you're a full sadist. He appears to actually want a relationship with his son, or at the very least, he wants his son to look up to him. He doesn't seem to understand that holy shit, bro, you frigging traumatised that boy.

I feel that the way he's treated his kid, and his wife, is mostly him having a one track mind and going overboard. I'm not trying to redeem him here, but there are levels of evil and Endeavour for me falls into the 'drunk in a wife-beater' category. Putting aside the question of whether Dabi is also a Todoroki sibling, it does seem like not all his kids hate him, for instance. Shouto's sister Fuyumi seems pretty ok living in that house still. As a school teacher, she is an adult woman with an income who could be living alone. The fact that she stays in that house could mean she's there to take care of her younger siblings, or that she at least has a casual enough relationship with her (rich AF) dad that staying is preferable to making it on her own. Honestly, he probably just lowkey ignored his other kids for most of their childhood, or at least let them have a normal life. As such, it's mostly just Todoroki's bad luck that he was born as a 'perfect sample'. Endeavour strikes me as someone who is very full of himself and it causes him to look at other human beings as a means to an end.

On the other side of the scale is Mrs. Todoroki. Like Izuku's mother, she is framed first and foremost as someone who loves, someone who cares, someone selfless. But unlike Inko, her selflessness is pushed to a point where she can't take it anymore.  This is a woman who has lost any and all agency. She is trapped in a loveless marriage she did not want and she doesn't even seem to have a name of her own. She is just 'Mrs. Todoroki', a plaything to be used and disposed of by a powerful man. The pain and fear she absorbs during the years is too great and she snaps, hurting the ones she loves the most. She is then quickly carted off and locked away somewhere out of view.

 Appearances

So how has this whole business shaped Todoroki? For one: he doesn't give a damn about appearances. BnHA is very big on the difference between what you look like, and what you are. For a blatant example, check out the 'two forms' of All Might. Appearances are important for a hero, but Todoroki knows that this could be bullshit. Endeavour is the 'number two' hero. He is looked up to as a great and powerful man by the general populace, but it seems to be a bit of an open secret (judging by Present Mic's reaction at the Sports Festival) that he's a grade A jerk. On the other hand 'Mrs Todoroki' is known as a violent woman. Someone crazy. Someone dangerous. Someone that has to be hidden away in a hospital, never to see the light of day. In both these cases Todoroki knows better. He doesn't particularly look at the outside. He doesn't even judge people on what they say, but on what they do.

 On a much more symbolic level, this is even the case for the whole 'element' business.  I personally love how the reality of Todo's fire and ice, and of his parents elements, doesn't correspond to their official 'element'. Fire is supposed to be warm. The 'hearth' is the traditional centre of the family, whereas ice evokes the cold, lonely wilderness. But when it comes to parental love, Todoroki's mom's is the warm one. Her loves is even so hot that it when it goes out of control, it literally burns his skin. On the other hand, his father's love is a cold one. To his father, Todoroki is a product, a pawn in the race for Number One. It is an attitude that causes Todoroki to reject any sentimental ties he has to his father, almost literally turning the boy into a block of ice, since that's the only skill he's willing to use.

Walking. Symbolism. Manual.

 Dual personality

But as the manga mentions, Todoroki is the perfect genetic mix of both his parents, whether he wants it or not. He is the 'half and half bastard' and step one in his development is actually becoming that. When we first meet Todoroki, he has a cold personality and he quite literally only uses ice, in apparent defiance of his father. This is his Ice Side. It is calculated, it is sharp, it is dismissive of others and it is ambitious. This is the kid that wants to win the tournament on half strength. It is the kid that challenges Midoriya as an 'opponent-to-beat'. It is, against all rebellious tendencies, the personality of his father.

Now let's look at his Fire Side. Remember when we first saw that? It's not the moment you're thinking of. It's this one

Todoroki's fire side is passion, it is anger, it is explosive and full of feelings. It is the side that cares, and cares so much that sometimes it explodes and threatens to hurt people (like poor Sero). Oddly enough, Todoroki's Fire Side comes much closer to his mother's personality.

Don’t believe me?

Todoroki's mom with a whistling kettle in the background.

Todoroki right before he freezes the hell out of Sero.

 Achievement: Fire

Enter Midoriya, our superhero with an extra in 'unlocking character development'. What our boy does, in the tournament, is set Todoroki's fire side free from several years of suppression, obviously. He does this by making him forget about his father and get more in touch with his mother.

For just that moment, Todoroki switched sides, willingly.

And you see that from then on, he starts to flip between both sides more regularly. In his fight with Bakugou he's still sputtering, but honestly, boy just had a revelation, you can't expect him to be up to speed that fast. But you do see it more often later on.

We see Todoroki slowly warm up to his classmates, particularly to Iida and Midoriya. We see him start to visit his mother, because he's quite literally nurturing that side of him.You see him give very sensitive advice and lose his cool (heh) another time, like in the superhero exam. We see him remain his calm and calculated self all through that Bakugou rescue mission.

Back to dad

An interesting point in the story here, is the apprenticeship. Todoroki chooses to go to his father here. This is a calculated decision and he even mentions that in the anime. His father is a popular hero and it gives him good opportunities to work with the 'number two', despite whatever his feelings for this man may be. That's his ice side speaking (his father's side, if you follow my theory).

Now look what happens when Midoriya needs help.

Instant dismissal.

Todoroki knows what he cares about, and it is the continued well-being of Midoriya. The switch is almost instantly flipped. Forget his father, go save his friend. His mother's side is slowly but surely gaining.

 Balance

Right now, you see a lot of duality in everything Todoroki does. This boy, despite unlocking both sides of himself, is still very much struggling. He can still come across as aloof in unfortunate situations. And let's not forget that his explosive side is just that. Explosive. If he doesn't learn to reign that in, he, too, could cause hurt to others. What Todoroki needs, more than anything, is to balance these sides of himself.  The right brain and the left brain. Hot and cold, doing and feeling, Ice and Fire. Right now, he's almost split himself in half, showing one side now and another side the next. I'm not sure if all that switching is altogether healthy, but at least it's better than what he did before when he was literally suppressing entire parts of himself. It's progress. I'm hoping that he'll get past this stage also. It's slow going, but honestly? I get that. Kid's seen some shit.

PS: I have a bunch of these BnHA meta things.

[violetsystems]

#personal

I fell asleep watching Scanners on a Friday.  Honestly, not the worst way to be spending my time these days.  I spend most of it alone.  I’m an only child.  My parents divorced in college so a lot of the emotional referee duties fell on me solely.  I get along with both of my parents but they don’t really speak to each other.  It’s not like they don’t acknowledge each other’s existence.  It’s just awkward.  They don’t hate each other.  I know this because I’m a pass through in conversations about the other.  But both of them have pretty much moved on with their lives.  My mom has a giant garden in her childhood home she attends to.  My dad is remarried and spends half of his time up in Michigan.  The other half he spends working.  He still has not retired.  I know this because I do web development for his company every few weeks.  I talk to my parents a lot more than I do anyone else.  And they don’t really pry too much into what it is I’m doing with my life.  They know I quit drinking more than a few years ago.  They’re both moderate drinkers so it doesn’t really register to them.  They know the situation I’m in to a certain point.  But mostly every card I play in my personal life is pretty close to my own chest.  Facing peer pressure out here is similar to high school.  Everybody wants to know what you are up to but nobody really cares to ask.  When you are an only child resisting the status quo is horrifyingly easy.  You are so used to being left to yourself that you just develop survival skills.  Maybe you got sick and tired of crying to yourself.  Maybe you got sick of hearing it.  As your own best friend for long periods of time, you tend to get mad at yourself every once and awhile.  Your outlet whatever it is be it art, music or dancing in place for short bursts of time tends to grow more inward if you can’t share it.  I create to communicate things that don’t seem to register.  Things I’ve explained maybe in my writing time and time again that people never listen to.  As an only child you spend a lot of time just listening to yourself.  So you start to learn when communication breaks down talking to other people.  If you can’t talk and be real with yourself, you will get completely lost.  I’ve gotten madder at myself not being able to connect to mainstream society at times.  The most frustrating feeling is trying to reconnect professionally when you have no real friend network left in a city.  It makes you feel worthless and at times I feel it is intentional.  To isolate you to assimilate to the crowd.  The tough love approach of this city is abusive and gross in that respect.  That’s the nature of peer pressure.  When you have survived alone for long periods of time, you have varying intel on what works and what doesn’t. You don’t hear the war drum of popular opinion as much in terms of what everyone else thinks is wrong with a situation they care little to read into.  Writing to me here on the internet has worked as sort of a public meditation.  It bothers me that people follow me around in the street all day to get a read off what I’m thinking.  You know you could just read it here.  I don’t have facebook.  I don’t use any real geocaching apps intentionally.  I don’t have an account on a dating app.  When I make posts on the internet it’s usually to customer support wondering where my package has been misdelivered to.  I’m painfully pragmatic that way.  And easier to understand when it comes to why I shriek away from everything in theory.  Oh you’ve heard I’m some kind of monster!   If you believe hearsay and what people tell you, I’m alone because I like it that way.  I’m on the fringes of society because there’s something wrong with me.  I read this headline on CNN.  Hundreds of thousands of cybersecurity jobs are opening this very minute.  And they’ll pay you whatever you want.  I post in a hashtag about cybersecurity almost every week on a professional job networking site.  It’s like a tree falling in the forest.  I’m the only one who cares about posting what vulnerabilities are out there other than my fragile male emotions.  If there’s something wrong with me in terms of connecting, it’s that I care too much about what wiffs in terms of trying to be myself.  

I’m a minimalist at times.  This might be because I’m part Swedish.  I hate nationalism and attributing cultural ticks to my genes.  I’m nothing really like either of my parents and yet something born anew.  When my job was cancelled and my office was thrown in the garbage, I learned a valuable lesson.  To take stock in who I was at the present and move on.  Never look back.  I look back a lot.  It’s called post traumatic stress.  I constantly have to read into the past as a warning.  I operate by a simple posit.  What is working versus what isn’t,  And personal responsibility has been the one thing I have been able to count on.  I see results.  When I manage the net income I have, I move and plan around my goals financially for the next six months.  I’ve done that for over a year now.  So I have a lot of data just by isolating myself and setting milestones day by day.  Looking for a job lately has been demoralizing.  I am completely invisible.  In America this is somehow my problem for not speaking up over a wall of cacophony that sounds like verbal diarrhea ninety percent of the time.  Americans love to talk out loud and say absolutely nothing.  The retention of what they’re talking about is in constant flux.  My dad’s side of the family were poor missionaries.  My dad joined the army.  My mom’s family were working class.  My grandfather retired due to injury as an Electrician.  Also in the army.  To escape the constant hum of recruiters trying to draft me to do the same I wrote a letter declaring my status as a conscientious objector at eighteen.  I’ve been anti war for as long as I’ve known.  I still have the piece of paper I wrote in a file with the ten pieces of documents I needed to prove my identity to renew my passport.  The more I look back at all this, the more I realize the person I am now is something incredibly defined but outrageously misunderstood.  I’ve been writing since high school  Mostly poetry.  There is nothing clearer than writing when you care about the economy of words.  Writing three paragraphs on here for years is what some of my friends have come to expect.  I’ve connected with people here that have inspired me to continue to be myself.  Just a click.  An affirmation of not being alone in whatever it is I think or dream about.  That the things I consider beautiful, sacred, or art are shared.  That’s real connection.  It’s worth a lot to me.  It makes me feel like I’m not really alone.  And yet when I go back to the real world, I’m faced with a shuddering realization.  That nobody has the time to respect the history.  When I think about art and culture, I think about how long I’ve been trying to be creative.  I don’t try.  I am a creative.  I’ve been shunned by other creatives particularly in America for as long as I’ve known.  I’ve tried.  To be a part of scenes.  Out here everybody is comparing each other against each other’s insecurities.  It’s not unlike the army.  Where they break down your ego so that you’re easier to command.  In Chicago, everything connected to art now has some seriously hellbent agenda of social justice.  As if footwork, hip hop or any of the things I’ve been involved in for years hasn’t.  I’m more like a pariah out here than an artist.  For all the words I write and for all the things I try to connect with, I’ve hit a fucking wall.  Hard.  So hard that people hear it halfway around the world when I wake up in pain.  Looking back at the wall is something that gets old.  Like looking at a wall of text at five in the morning doesn’t.  At least it keeps me sane.  Keeps the narrative consistent.  That I’m ok and at the same time not.  I know I’ve got me.  And that’s all I know I’ve got.  Or at least all that I expect to rely on.  It’s called responsibility I guess.  And it’s nowhere in sight around here so I keep to myself.

This weekend is the start of the holidays here in the states.  The YOLO can commence.  We can all celebrate that the worst is behind us now.  And yet I’m just sitting alone in the ac with my cat typing out to all the beautiful people that tolerate my ranting weekly.  I’m not a kind of person who likes to complain.  I hate it actually.  I’ve relied on social engineering for years not as a hacker but as a forge.  I’m the one who shovels the sidewalks in the blizzard because I don’t want to fuck up my shoes.  I don’t really want anyone to fuck up their shoes.  But if no one is going to do it, it’s going to be me.  I know for a fact reintegrating into American society this summer is a no no.  It sucks.  To be alone.  To be isolated.  To not trust anyone but still have to pass off that tired smile.  I’ve gotten so angry over the last few months.  I’ve yelled at myself.  I’ve never hurt myself or anything.  I’m frustrated how people expect such a mammoth attention to detail from me and fail at even the most basic functions in return.  I’m always wondering if somebody is fucking with me behind my back.  Like this was all some sick, elaborate joke to hurt me that I brought upon myself.   At first I thought it was a test.  Then it started to feel malicious.  Then it was just people being emotionally chaotic..  Blame these times.  Blame whatever you want.  I don’t blame myself.  And that’s a big change lately.  Maybe because the weather is warmer.  Maybe because it’s not the dead of winter and I’m freezing, cold and alone.  All I really know is nothing I try to do works.  And I’m always expected to think eight layers deeper.  To think in reverse entropy.  Literally backwards and forwards without revisiting the past like some elaborate time heist.  Is it worth it?  Yes.  Which is why in typical time travel fashion I want nothing to do with any interactions of the past.  Think about it.  I was let go almost eleven months ago.  In those eleven months, absolutely zero people from my past checked in on anything.  My emotional well being.  My fiscal health.  My job search.  Nothing.  Look back to the past and think about it and your head will explode.  Scanners style.  To YOLO forward is it’s own little death for me.  The death of understanding the responsibilities.  I beat myself up over the fact that I should have escaped all of this years ago.  And I tried.  I flew half way around the world trying to be an independent artist only to get dropped from Pitchfork reviews of my own crew.  I sat with other musicians and artists and talked about this invisible wall only to be trapped outside of it.  Probably for the better.  Now it’s just a wall around me.  There’s a door.  You can enter it if you have the key.  But I’ve kept a lot of things at bay and locked out for good reason.  People love to deflect the blame.  That I’m angry.  Or I scare people.  How would they know?  I have never seen half of the people that talk about me on the internet or otherwise in about a year.  And yet they can’t keep my fucking name out of their mouth.  You would think that would work in my benefit.  Maybe I’d have some real job offers.  Maybe I’d have an offer to perform my music for the city and get a small piece of that COVID money you’ve been wasting on police overtime.  Maybe none of that is worth it.  Maybe I’m better off cutting my losses with this city and waiting for a quiet exit.  I don’t really know anything.  At all.  And the most frustrating thing is to worry more about the things you can’t control.  I can control the liquidity in my bank account.  The equity.  The lack of any sort of debt.  And I’m still worthless to people here just the same.  Not here on Tumblr.  Just here in the flesh.  The biggest whiff of all has not been my lack of a social life but the lack of imagination for people believing I keep it real in a city with a murder rate higher than unemployment.  Is the future really out here or am I just ducking for cover until somebody realizes I’ve been in danger all along.  I’ll be ok.  I’ve been on my own for as long as I remember.  And I’m not alone in the AC sharing memes with all of you this summer anyway. <3 Tim

[parsonsjessica1989]

Save Marriage Therapy Creative And Inexpensive Unique Ideas

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[chatlote]

This was a mistake

Ship: Keith/Lance Word Count: 2307 Read on AO3 

Summary: 

“My mom once beat up a robber.” Lance had said while they were sitting together on the couch. Keith hummed in thought. “Thats not a dumb story though, that’s pretty badass.” “Yeah it kind of is, but the thing is that the guy was dressed up as a clown, an actual clown, make up and all.” “What the hell.”

Or: Lance convinces Keith to dress up as a clown.

"Why was he dressed like a clown though?" Keith asks, honestly curious.

He and Lance are sitting together on the empty living room. Lance is on his lap with his arms around him and Keith can't help but notice how light Lance was. It's comforting to be close like this, it unbearably reminded each other of how they weren't alone. Especially on times like these where Lance was feeling homesick. He has been narrating about a silly story of how his mother had once beat up a robber dressed like a clown.

"Many people are terrified of clowns, and the makeup was truly awful so I assume it was to scare us?" Lance replies with a light shrug.

"Okay but like, wouldn't a black outfit work better to sneak inside?"

"Keith I have no idea, I didn't ask the guy if he had a PHD in robbing people. Do you have one, Keith? Were you trying to become a robber?  Do you know how the robbing life works? Maybe the guy was tired of the robber stereotype and wanted things to change!"

Keith chuckles half amused, Lance ramblings always end up in quite a few interesting places. Then Lance eyes are lighting up, just like they usually do before he comes up with an awful idea. "Oh no."

"Keith we could become robbers together! Like-"

"-No." Keith interrupts almost immediately, only because he knows that it won't matter and Lance will certainly explain his full train of thought.

"Just hear me out!" There he goes. "I have total amazing social skills to keep people distracted and you have like, your whole emo aura that makes people look away because it's just sad to look at another victim of the Black Parade."

Keith smirks, not even feeling offended. "You still look at me though."

"I am strong, loving and caring." Lance says placing a hand on his chest dramatically.

"And because you think I am pretty." Keith points out, and smiling as Lance doesn't attempt at arguing back. Going back to the topic, he decides to indulge Lance in his crazy ideas, once again. "So do you want us to dress up as clowns too?"

Lance eyes go wide, just as his smile, Keith thinks he might go blind because of how radiant it is. He should ask Pidge to try and create sunglasses. "Would you do that?" Lance voice goes high pitched, he is basically begging Keith to say yes.

He wants to refuse, he really does, it's a stupid awful idea, possibly the worst idea of the century, scratch that, totally the worst idea of the century. He hums in thought though as he stares at Lance, honestly considering his choices. It's so hard to say no to Lance when he gets like this. "If you dress up too, I might."

Lance gasps, clearly surprised but also pleased, and then turns into a giggling fit as he presses his face against Keith neck and tightens his hold. Keith can't help himself when he starts laughing too, his cheeks flushing because everything about this situation somehow just makes him think that he truly has it bad for this boy.

"I love you so much." Lance mumbles against his neck, happiness basically dripping from his voice.

"Love you too." Keith replies with a smile so wide that his cheeks are hurting.

---

Keith was one hundred percent certain that Lance had forgotten this whole conversation, and Keith realizes he was a fool for thinking that. For Lance would never pass up and opportunity to make himself look like a complete fool.

He honestly can't believe his eyes when Lance walks into his- well their room at this point, with a pair of flashy over sized clothes and a bunch of containers that seem to have white, black and red paint inside.

He also can't believe when he actually lets Lance sit down in front of him and cover his face in all those weird paints and then doing the same for himself with the help of something similar to a hand mirror.

And he can't believe either when Lance manages to make him wear one of the awful outfits he brought with him.

When they are finished and Keith is staring at Lance, does Keith finally regain a bit of his senses to realize their current situation.

Lance managed to put the two of them in clown outfits... in space.

"Wait, where did you even get all this?" He frowns looking at himself, especially at his hands covered in white gloves, he already misses his normal gloves, his poor fingers being suffocated by silk.

"Coran." Lance chirps happily as he admires his work on both of them. "I told him it was a human tradition a while back and he helped me organize. "

"Oh." Well that was one question answered. "And why exactly are we wearing this? There isn't exactly anyone to rob in space, also that would be wrong and illegal."

"Dear Keith, that's where you are very very wrong." Lance puts a arm around his shoulder pulling them closer. "We have the perfect victim right here, in this spaceship" He pauses as if trying to create some kind of suspension. "Pidge."

Keith blinks. "What exactly can we steal from Pidge?"

"My precious alien phone." Lance says, with an exaggerated sad tone as he wipes away a tear that isn't there.

"Doesn't that device belong to Pidge though? They made it right?"

Lance waves a hand in front of him, dismissing the facts. God, how did he end up with a boyfriend this extra. "That is besides the point! The point is that we have a treasure we need to get back and the perfect costumes for it!"

"I can't believe I agreed to this." Okay, so in a way he kind of can, if it meant to see Lance smiling when he is feeling down, Keith would basically agree to anything.

"It's because you love me, now come on Space Clowns have work to do." Lance starts pushing him towards the door.

"Never call us that again."

They are sneaking, well only Lance is sneaking, Keith refuses to do the same and is walking normally behind him. Either way, they are going through the hallways when they finally get spotted by someone, Shiro. Keith freezes in place as they share eye contact, expecting some kind of reaction, starting to feel like this really was an awful idea and feeling a bit too conscious.

Shiro looks at them up and down, then he just sighs and keeps walking. "I am not even going to ask." He mumbles more to himself than to them.

"We are robbing Pidge!" Lance snickers in a yelled whisper.

Keith sees in silence Shiro pass by them and wave a hand in the air. "I said I wasn't asking." Shiro says louder as he leaves their field of vision.

"Okay so here is the plan I will go in and speak to them, keeping them distracted, while you sneak behind and get the phone." Lance explains after they find out that Pidge is with Hunk in the living room. They are currently standing outside the door and can hear both of them speaking inside.

Keith is completely sure this is an awful plan that had no chances of working, and he is also too tired to argue so he replies with "Sure."

Not wasting a moment, Lance is slipping inside and before Keith can even think of attempting to play his part, a shriek and a loud thud echo through the walls.

Keith quickly peers inside, worried. He finds Lance holding his face and a very worried Hunk beside him apologizing nonstop. "Man, you should know I am terrified of clowns why the hell are you dressed like one?" Lance only laughs in reply, but the gesture must hurt because he winces afterwards. "Wait here, I will go get you some frozen goo."

Hunk quickly leaves the room running and Keith is just as quickly next to Lance. "You okay?"

Lance raises himself and pulls his hand down, to squint at Keith as if he was somehow guilty of this turn of events. "I am great, however, I am wondering why you aren't following our plan? Also concerned this might leave a bruise and ruin my beautiful face." Keith rolls his eyes. Yeah, Lance is fine.

Keith looks over to Pidge who had been silent the whole time, to find them with their phone turned to him and a huge grin on their face as they snap photos nonstop. "I am so glad you started dating Lance."

Seeing what game Pidge wants to play, Keith speaks up with a grin. "Unfortunately for you, when I started dating him I also threw any dignity I had away so you can't really blackmail me with those."

"Hey!" Lance pipes up, offended.

"Damn it." Pidge said as they dropped the phone. Then looked at them up and down, thoughtfully. "Seriously though, why are you two dressed like literal clowns."

"He wants the phone back." Keith replied nonchalantly pointing at Lance.

Pidge grins dangerously, the kind of grin Keith images on a wild animal looking at their prey. "Just so he can fill it with images of you?"

Keith quickly turns to Lance. "You do what?!"

"I do not!" Lance raises his hand defensively, "Well okay, I took a few because you looked really cute, I am sorry."

Keith feels the heat creeping into his face, he supposes the good side of all this is that the paint won't show his blushing. "You don't have to apologize but you could have told me."

Pidge is still staring at them, fairly amused, though they look at Lance with a frown. "I still don't get it though, I told you I was going to make you your own phone anyway?"

"Stealing yours sounded like more fun!"

"You got yourself hurt for nothing." Keith points out, still somewhat concerned considering Hunk strength.

"Unexpected events happen on robberies! This was all just part of the experience, now I know how the man who robbed my house felt and have become wiser."

Keith raises an eyebrow, not convinced. "What did you learn exactly?"

"That this is an awful costume to rob people with." Lance states as a matter of fact, looking proud of the discovery somehow.

Keith resists the urge to face palm himself, simply because of the makeup, while Pidge bursts out laughing.

All Keith hopes is that nothing else happens as they leave the room and start heading back, he has had enough of 'Lance Eventful and Disastrous Adventures' for the rest of the week, if not month. However the world hates him, a lot, because they cross paths with yet another person, and possibly the worst person to find them in this state.

Allura.

As he sees her face light up in interest and delight, Keith is already trying to prepare himself mentally for what will happen next.

Shortly after, everyone is gathered on the Bridge. Everyone except Hunk, who refuses to participate in any of the 'Clown Activities' as Lance called them.

Speaking of Lance he is now putting his hands to work and slowly placing more and more paint on Allura face slowly turning the beautiful princess into... a clown.

Coran is on the side chatting excitedly as he asks more about 'Clown Traditions' to Pidge and Lance, who reply with the same vigor. Pidge is also busy snapping photos at Allura, Lance and Keith, because according to them 'this is a moment they need to remember forever.'

Shiro is besides Keith and to say he looks tired would be saying little, and Keith is pretty sure the only reason why he is still here is to make sure Lance stays in line.

Keith finds comfort that someone else is suffering. Okay if he is being honest, maybe he isn't having as bad of a time as Shiro, because Keith is a fool and he can't help but smile at the way Lance keeps giggling as he keeps on working.

Shiro mumbles besides him, frowning at the scene in front of him. "Why clowns though? Why not mimes? Like even mimes would be less terrifying to look at."

Keith smiles and shrugs. "It's a long story."

"Okaaay, I think I am going to join Hunk in the kitchen." Shiro announces as he makes his way towards the exit, officially giving up on trying to keep up with this tale.

After all is said and done, they do manage to reach their room without further events.

And as soon as the door closes, Lance is throwing himself around Keith, laughing as he buries his head on Keith shoulder, the sound vibrates through Keith and he is smiling. He still isn't sure whether he hated or loved this day.

"This was the best day of my life since I have been thrown into an intergalactic war." Lance says, holding him closer.

"I thought that was the day where we went to the planet that basically looked like a huge beach."

"Don't ruin the moment." Lance scolds but there was still a smile in his face. He really needs those sunglasses.

Then Keith notices that Lance is slowly leaning towards him, with his face full of white and red paint. The sight is horrifying and looks straight out of a nightmare, suddenly Keith understand Hunk to a deeper spiritual level.

He puts his hand over Lance lips without a second of hesitation. "No, nope, not doing that. I'm done, this is too far and I can't do this anymore. I won't kiss you like this. We are washing off right now and then we are coming back here and I will kiss you until I can forget that today ever happened."

im so sorry, i m not sure how this happened

[aleatoryalarmalligator]

Life Story Part 53

I had been looking forward to the new Willy Wonka all summer long. I knew Johnny Depp was going to be in it, and I loved him, and I also loved the old movie with Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka. Sarah and I bought ourselves tickets after school one day to discover that it was quite disappointing.. It wasn't really Johnny Depp's fault entirely, though many people didn't like his performance as Willy Wonka and I didn't much care for it either – truth be told. I honestly didn't like the way it was filmed or the campy cutesy way they portrayed the children and their parents, and this has a lot to do with the fact that Tim Burton seems to have more or less lost his touch (at least in my opinion). The score was terrible and continuous. Most movie music, particularly the kind used in family films is actually kind of terrible and will kill a movie for me in the end. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the original one, and the book itself were actually quite dark in a way that the new remake failed to be. The first movie seemed symbolic of society to me, whereas the second was trying to be quirky. It wasn't that they altered the story. I understand that a new direction is creatively interesting and inevitable to any remake, but the movie itself seemed very empty. You didn't get the bleak metaphors in the second remake. You didn't get anything that compared to the colored lights playing on Gene Wilder's face as they went through the chocolate tunnel and he sang his little song.

I was also disappointed that Marilyn Manson didn't get the role of Willy Wonka. He had wanted it, but ultimately, the movie makers were too worried about making it too frightening for most viewers. Marilyn Manson would have been perfect I think. It was a movie I think that he had personally loved too much himself to mess up. And I always had loved the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as a child as well, which might have been why I cared so much and was so disappointed by the end product. Whenever I find myself sad or disappointed or lonely in life, I sometimes laugh at myself and and sing Cheer Up Charlie in my head in order to mock myself.

Dare I say, I was obsessed with Marilyn Manson. I think I have mentioned this before, however he was definitely my new number one by the time I was sixteen years old. At the time, I guess I found myself drawn to him, less for his appearance, but by how misunderstood he was and how he seemed to have mastered his message and the collected and methodically he spoke and presented his ideas to people who hated him and all the hype that came with that. I read his biography – which was really more of an autobiography – only he had mostly narrated his life I think through tape recorded conversation and had someone else write it – so technically it was a biography and that inspired me a lot. It probably influenced the language, subject matter, and the way I try to tell stories to a certain extent. While it is true, there are some times in that book more towards the end where he really went too far for me, I rather appreciated the dark honesty and combination of dark comedy and intimacy about the book altogether. He spoke honestly, and that makes most people uncomfortable. I really like uncomfortable subject matter.

There were opinions that he held about creating a world of chaos and drug abuse as some kind of lash back to the postmodern world that has made many people – such as myself if I am to be honest, that I no longer agree with at all (Honestly, he probably doesn't either – the book came out in 1998). The story was very focused on him, and his own selfishness. It wasn't a cruel form of selfishness, but a very self aware one. This is something that people don't like to see in themselves, but Marilyn Manson was all about that. He was very into being driven and moving forward – which I also admired. Some of the selfish stuff he wanted to do led him to pushing himself into some creepy situations – and those are places I honestly would never go, probably because drugs were involved. The notion that you can fix society by breaking down all rules and social structure was lame – and I even thought so in my teenage wannabe-just-like-my-idols larva stage. Also, when the singer for Jack off Jill said that his guitarist Twiggy raped her, I do believe it. Marilyn Manson didn't have anything to do with that, but when you read that book, there was a very strong sense of them breaking down social rules. And there was very little place for women – because of course there generally isn't in the music business. And now, I can honestly say, I don't like Marilyn Manson's music very much. It's okay – but not great like I once thought. I still feel like he had tapped into something very real. And the book was ultimately hilarious – with his choice of phrases and words. I think it really influenced me and it might be a small part of why I am writing my own life story as I am today. And he really showed the strange looking, average people lost in a world of consumerism and shallow beauty standard, how you could transcend that. You don't have to fit a mold. You can create their own form of beauty and become a work of art, rather than accept mediocrity. This idea really revolutionized the way I looked in the mirror everyday.

Most of the time, on the drive to and fro from Kendrick to Moscow and back again in the evening, we would listen to Mudhoney a lot. The reason we liked Mudhoney so much was because we were poor. Sarah and I never had money for decent albums, and when we bought an album, we would listen to it to death. For whatever reason, Hastings had plentiful stacks of Mudhoney cds, often for only three or four dollars a piece. Had we had more money, we would have experimented, but that wasn't there for us. Buying an album was taking a chance. Neither one of us had a job, and we were at the mercy of rare handouts from our parents. So if we spent fifteen dollars on an album that sucked, it was very disappointing. But there was a certain kind of delight in listening to Mudhoney out in the farm roads of the Pallouse Hills. The members of Mudhoney themselves were very apart of the rural north west themselves. They're music seemed relevant and very close to home.

Aside from the general music we had been listening to, the mixes that I made from Danny's computer on the weekends, Marilyn Manson and Mudhoney, I discovered Bob Dylan. Sarah's mother owned the album of Blood on the Tracks. I think lyrically, it was the best thing I had ever heard. It kind of surprised me, since it was a lot more mature than what I generally wanted to listen to. Bob Dylan's unique narration of thoughts and ideas brought my own thinking to a much higher state. Over the course of that year, even though I was fond of a lot of music, Bob Dylan rose and rose in my mind. It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) to me was like a tearing apart of everything in society and expressing it for what it was, and even though I felt this dread about my life and my own future, the growing awareness of death that waits for us behind everything we see, think, do and say, about human beings as the collective and what we have been building since we came into existence, there was this serene sense of everything would be okay. That song really built a foundation for me. There were many dark nights driving home that late fall and throughout the winters, where both Sarah and I would listen to that song in the dark winding roads in rural farm fields well off the highway. Something about the way we would listen to that, and the fact that even though we were a ways out from Moscow, you could still see the light's of the city miles away playing on the dark clouds that loomed above us. Bob Dylan introduced me to the abyss.

Sarah was still very much apart of the CKY internet forum, but she seemed to have left the business of commenting on the forum and arguing with the pointless trolls on there, since it was mostly composed of obnoxious abusive assholes who just hated women, and she had singled out a few friends over the internet that she liked to correspond with online. One of these friends was a fellow who lived over in Georgia. His name was Alex, he was two years older than Sarah and I, and he seemed rather intelligent. He played in a hardcore punk band. Even though he knew a lot of people who considered him a friend, he didn't consider many other people his friend. Sarah was maybe the first real friend he seemed to have. Tough he played in this punk band, he preferring more melodic and organized sounding classic rock/pop music like The Beatles or Paul Simon, and mostly just played in the band he was in for the experience and because his friends were into it. There were parts of the concerts where Alex would rap. He enjoyed writing, and he was far far better at expressing himself that either Sarah or I were. He had skills as an orator.

He also had a substance abuse problem with cough syrup. He took other drugs, and I think over the course of that year he ended up getting into some legal trouble. He was given a counselor, and the counselor betrayed his trust and told his parents what he had done. So there was a lot of that. And then at some point that year, even though he had straight A's and could graduate, he ended up punching one of his friends while they were doing some school project and he got kicked off and went for a GED instead. I never spoke to him. But Sarah talked to him all the time, and she would tell me these things – so by extension, I felt we were friends in an odd way.

It was Alex who got Sarah into Queens of the Stone Age and into Mark Lanegan. Half the time, I was wanting to listen to Hole, Marilyn Manson, mixed cds, and Bob Dylan, Sarah wanted to listen to Queens of the Stone Age and Mark Lanegan. Mark Lanegan, though not a household name, is a well respected singer and songwriter. He initially was in a band called Screaming Trees in the early nineties, had been a friend to Kurt Cobain, and eventually went solo, got clean off of heroin, and his music drastically became far more folk inspired. His voice is distinctly low and raspy. He's compared to Tom Waits a little bit – though they are still quite different. He is a very tall, very serious looking. I mention these details about Mark Lanegan because when Sarah found Mark Lanegan, she became crazy obsessed with him.

Queens of the Stone Age gave our trips to school and particularly back from school, this very particular sound. The album Songs For the Deaf made me feel like we were hundreds of miles away from humanity. Outside the small 1979 Honda Civic, the world was a dark place and we might have been the only two people who existed, Sarah and I – since it was usually night time by the time we got out of school later on as the fall played into the winter. Sarah would also listen to Mark Lanegan's new album at the time, Bubblegum and it's EP cousin Here Comes That Weird Chill. It's a really great record, the both of them, very blues inspired but also very indirectly – dark, bassy and minimalist and lyrically strong. Sarah was madly in love with Mark Lanegan. And we used to laugh about this -as Mark Lanegan was in his forties, and Sarah a sixteen year old girl. He became such an ingrained part of her identity that it's still very much a part of who she is.

Aside from these nights driving home, and the time we put in at school, or the time at home where we would sometimes still have fights that ended in us both crying and falling asleep, we would once a month afford to eat lunch at the China Buffet in the mall. We had so little money, and our parents didn't have much to give for us to eat out. Sarah often was the one who bought us lunch. I don't know if my father or mother can truly appreciate just how often Sarah had to use her chore money to feed the both of us. Today, I kind of look suspiciously at the China Buffet's food – excluding the added fact that I don't consume animal products anymore. It's far far far too cheap and that makes me suspicious since I know they are still churning a profit most of the time. Most of it isn't truly or strictly Chinese – more loosely Americanized Chinese inspired foods and if you want better quality Chinese/Thai/Korean/Japanese food it's better to just look up the reviews online and go to a real restaurant. In any case, it was six dollars a piece for us to eat there, and neither one of us ever even had that much to pay for food – which is kind of hard for me to believe now. Six dollars to me then is like sixty to me now.

I remember there was a weekend when Samantha, who I had not seen much since leaving Kendrick, who was still dating Adam, invited Sarah and I to do to the movies with her, a silly romantic comedy called Failure to Launch with Matthew Mcconaughey. For some reason, I didn't think I needed to pay my own way. Samantha was annoyed with me, and angrily paid for my ticket. I felt badly, in predictable fashion. In the end, I more or less remember Samantha most as someone who was always annoyed with me for my personal failings at being adultlike. After the movie was over, we were driving home, and Samantha and Adam were just ridiculous. They were fighting about nothing essentially. It's something couples do often, and I've never fully understood it. Samantha was being kind of quiet, and Adam was going 'what's wrong Sam??', and Samantha would huff and say 'Nothing....'. He would implore that something must be wrong, because she's 'being all weird'. I didn't see the weirdness personally, but whatever. She seemed to be playing like she was upset, but was hiding something from him, and he was vying to find out what that something was, trying to drive and get some strong eye contact in there. Meanwhile, Sarah and I are sheepishly in the back seat watching all this go down as the dark silhouettes of Samantha and Adam continued on and on this way.

It was like they were fake fighting. Samantha was talking in a high pitched voice. Nobody was saying anything. And then at some point one of them would accuse the other one of not loving them anymore, but of course it was said not like it was a real problem, but like a way to manipulate the other. Then they would sort of weepily banter back and forth. In the end, Adam would put on Styx's Lady in the car stereo, and they would begin making out like it had never happened. I came to the conclusion that neither one of them knew the other at all. For them, like many many people, being in a relationship and being in love is more pushing one another's buttons looking for reactions. There is a lot of power stuff going back and forth. I can't say I am one of those people or not. I never feel like I am looking to press buttons, but I probably am – I may be the worst.

On the weekends, we were at Danny's very small one bedroom house. It was very small – I cannot express that enough. My mom and Danny slept in the bedroom. David was set up in this small hallway TV room to play Danny's bad video games – like American Choppers and other biker related games that nobody really liked but Danny. Allison slept on the floor or a very small loveseat. And I slept in a recliner in the living room, but I would generally be on the computer until three or four in the morning trying to find decent songs to burn. The house was small, and it was also very muggy. Most of the time, my mother and Danny were gone. Nobody was in a good mood, but none of us fought either. I remember awkwardly asking Danny if he wanted to use his computer when he would get off after work, and he would say no, but would sort of mean yes.

What confused me, was that it was clear that we were taking up his space. We took up the televisions, we took up the computer. We probably took up the bathroom and the refrigerator. He wasn't really rude to us about it, but he didn't seem to enjoy it either. And yet, when my mother had found her own place, and was making good money as a bartender, he had demanded that she move in with him and quit her job. He didn't want her working at the bar anymore, because he didn't want her being ogled at by drunk men. So she took a job at a boy's home. It was this place that they sent mentally ill boys between the ages of fourteen and twenty two. You had to have done something criminal to be in there. It wasn't quite an insane asylum, nor was it quite juvy. It was a little bit of both. A few times while my mother was working there, she got knocked down by the boy's who were stronger than her, and beaten up a bit. It was a very rough job and the pay wasn't good, though she did seem to like it a lot.

But, as I mentioned earlier. Almost all my time was devoted to school work. By November, I was just beginning to get the hang of this school thing. I was finally becoming somewhat receptive to Mike teaching me, and I felt rather special. Most people would have thought that an alternative school education would be deluded and easier than the main public schools. Actually, the alternative school was much more challenging, and even more rewarding. Mike didn't like testing at all. He never used it except in the rare occasion where the state demanded it. Personally, he didn't like grades, though he understood that they gave an indication of how you were doing. All he really wanted you to do is learn how to think critically about ideas. And I was starting to trust Mike and Jenni a lot. I trusted them more than I had ever trusted most adults. Mike and Jenni at home had a son and a daughter. I remember their daughter's name was Sunshine. Both of them had bright smiling faces, their parents actually seemed to want a little more than to keep them fed and clothed. In fact, they didn't exist solely for their parent's benefits at all. The point of their existences was for them to become capable strong adults. They actually cared how their kids were getting on in life and how they coped with things. Mike and Jenni would pool up the money they made every school year, and they would take that money, get visas for the whole family and visit places in Europe and South America every summer. They seemed incredibly happy – living somehow in a world that I could never truly belong in. And yet, Mike obviously at the same time was able to take on a lot of philosophical issues and to face very harsh realities of humankind, and we were always there to remind him of that.

I could not help but feel a little bit jealous of their family. Not that I was crazy envious about it, but I really was beginning to care a lot about Mike and Jenni and what they thought of my own future. Dare I say it, the little rebellious satanist that I was secretly wanted their approval quite a bit. I wanted them to see great potential in me and to care about me like I was one of their own smiling happy kids. But I obviously wasn't. No matter how many books I read or how much I wrote, I was still very much a member of my own clan. Internally, I felt like a sick little creature that lingered on the outskirts of their happy home. Metaphorically, I, as the sickly thing, on a cold winter night would stare into the the household of their happy family and long to be one of them as they ate dinner or sat around a Christmas Tree (the image that comes to mind). But of course, that could never be.

Understandably of course, Mike had this wall towards his students becoming too close. And it seemed painfully unfair to me, even though it was the only way that this school could function. He broke layers and walls up in his students, but they could never really get to know him. He didn't lie to anyone exactly, just pushed students away subtly at any hint that they were getting to be that way. It was a mindfuck and it could hurt your feelings if you were vulnerable. He knew that he had a very strong affect on his students and he was afraid he would meet an especially vulnerable student one day who would either kill themselves, and break his heart a bit, or get confused about the nature of their teacher-student relationship. He also wanted us to be self sufficient. It was contradictory, but in order to try to help us to helping ourselves, he had to get inside of our minds. He knew what he was doing. Jenni and him had met in high school. They went to college together and eventually got married. They were incredibly close, and I venture to guess that while Jenni was taking psychology courses, Mike learned second hand from her and was using it on his students to retrain us. He was obsessively curious about that kind of stuff.

What I did always find strange, and what I eventually found out was that Mike and Jenni were extremely religious. Mike was very decent about not mixing his Christianity with his teaching. He taught about human truths that went to the core of the human spirit so to speak, but he did so in a way that an atheist could understand as easily as a religious person could. I respected Mike enough not to challenge him on religious grounds, but it bothered me. Mike was very much dedicated to real true debate and expressing your ideas. He wanted his students to know how to debate like pros. So I found it strange that he had decided to believe in the bible so heavily. He questioned none of it. Or at least, I really imagined that he didn't. I found out offhandedly from Jenni that both of them believed the first testament when it said that there was a time when men grew to be a thousand years old, and the world was only about six thousand years old at that. It was preposterous. Mike even played guitar in the church band.

I am quite certain that Mike converted to Christianity because of Jenni. I am not saying he didn't believe it. I think he did. But it was much more of a struggle for him than it was for her – not for reasons of wanting to sin or anything like that, but because he had to at some point shut his mind off and have faith in something without question. I knew that, because Mike tended to challenge concepts a lot. And as I was still in my first year atheist stage, I really wanted to question him. But I promised myself I wouldn't.

All the same, I learned a lot about Christianity indirectly in a way that created greater complexity for me and my schemas about what it meant to be Christian. For one thing, we often think about fundamentalist Christians as being the Pro-Trump types. They tend to vote right wing, have a mistrust for education, they tend to be either stingy and rich, or hopelessly poor. We see them in the political arena often, holding their signs against abortion, gay marriage. Mike – though I think it was a contradiction, was not against gay people. Jenni might have been, but Mike was not. If he had a problem with it, it didn't seem to create any sort of riff in his mind. I never asked him in specific detail about what he thought, but it was clear that this was a nonissue for him. He was much more privately adamant about evolution not being how we came to be what we are than he was about God hating gay people.

I once asked him about abortion. I didn't ask him because I wanted to fight, and at first I had to assure him this was not the case. What I really wanted was to ask someone who would be obviously caught in the middle – having strong ties to the liberal education system and the church. His answer was that he personally only in his own conception of the world could not imagine not wanting to have the baby. He just saw life as a blessing and human beings as being primarily good – so only good could come from a new baby in the world. But he let me know that this was just him. He was not about to say that he was the ultimate authority of what should and should not happen in the world. He felt it was a woman's place to make the decision and it was between them and their own truths. He could not possibly comprehend what everyone's situation or reality is like. And I really respected that answer. Obviously, the benefits to being in his shoes probably would have made having children not such a bad thing and he was fully willing to admit that he had a personal bias for himself that he and Jenni both agreed with. But he wasn't getting in anyone else's business.

Another interesting thing I learned from him came from the time I asked him about what he felt about the division of church and state. I knew vaguely that there were a lot of politicians who wanted to combine Christianity with government policies, and most hardcore Christians were all for it. When I asked him about it, he explained something to me that I hadn't really thought of before. Mike really didn't want religion and government to combine at all. He didn't feel like any of it had to do with being close to god or being enlightened by Jesus. And aside from opposing it on the grounds of religion having a way of corrupting our civil liberties, he actually felt that government made religion worse too. It was intrusive to his spiritual life. He didn't want government in his religion. He respected those boundaries because he felt the idea of government being mixed with his personal faith actually tampered with his relationship with god and brought it down to earthly places.  I keep these conversations in mind, because even though I am not a Christian at all, I felt that his answers were well thought out and what I wish more Christians were like.

Mike also taught us about Islam and Judaism in an incredibly fair way. We spent two weeks studying Islam, reading texts – in a secular way. We watched several documentaries on the history of Islam. Mike had no problem with Muslims, and in fact had many Muslim friends who he respected. This isn't to say that Mike gave us the whole truth about Islam, but he basically gave us a much clearer view of the religion as a whole. All in all, it's equally as violent as the bible is. To a degree however, when I compared the two religions, I actually found myself gravitating towards Islam the most. I wasn't by any means dropping my atheistic views. But I could see certain elements of Islam that resonated more deeply with me. Their idea of God felt more in depth than the Christian god. I admired how they represented their idea of God through architecture. Not that I don't love a good rosary or catholic cathedral – I do. But when you are trying to conceive of something as profound as the creator of all beings alive or dead, some all knowing consciousness that lays beyond time and space itself, than the design and math that is used in Islamic architecture fits better with my idea of how one should go about thinking of it. With Christian architecture, it often feels like you are looking less to the heavens than you are to yourself.

Anyway, I am very happy that I was introduced to religion in this way. It didn't so much change my views about God, but gave me a greater appreciation for the fables and stories that resonate with people. I felt for the first time in my life, connected to people who lived thousands of years before me, and I think it grounded me in the history of my own existence, what it really means to be alive, to pursue truth for truth's sake, to actually want to make the world a better place for more than just myself, and to harness beauty. It put in motion a need to find meaning behind everything.

After the first quarter there was supposed to be a parent-teacher conference. Even though it had only been a few months, and even though I still occasionally saw my father for a rare three or four hours a week – I wanted him to come to this conference. I wanted him to see how much better I was doing in school. Given what a academic failure I had grown into being over the previous seven years, I wanted him to sort of acknowledge that I was flipping things around. He promised he would show up. But of course, he forgot. My father was desperately trying to find a way to hide the pain of Patty's death. He was online dating again, more as a distraction I suppose than a genuine need to be close to anyone. After Patty, there was a string of forty or so women he would talk to for a time. Most of these relationships never went past the telephone, and I cannot even remember them all. You could pick up a phone book and just start naming off women, and many of those names would come to mind as the name of someone my father online dated for a time.

And when he wasn't doing that, he was buying speakers and musical equipment on the internet. Rooms of our house were beginning to fill up with speakers. He became so emphatic about certain products that he would spend hours on the phone, till he eventually was talking to CEO's of these companies. And even stranger still, my bald conservative father who had accused me of being high for a few years at this point, who loved listening to conservative talk radio for five hours straight most days, decided that it was fine for he himself to hang out with the druggy crowd of teenage boys in town. It was a strange sight for me, and I didn't know what to think about it. I was mostly too busy learning in school, but I observed it from a distance and had to scratch my head.

Sarah's mother did showed up to the school for the conference that day, so I got a ride home with her and Sarah – thankfully. Carol and Sarah might have felt a little bad for me. There is something incredibly disappointing about being forgotten or stood up. I remember we went out to a Mexican restaurant afterwards that made very tasty salsa and homemade chips, and I cheered up somewhat after that.

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