#i actually saw a word count page i had made in like 2016 on here snd

[jacklesraised]

sometimes i forget that i have to physically look at my tag

[taetaespeaches]

“When I say I love you forever, that’s what I mean.”

yoongi x reader (oc)

genre: fluff; smut (just barely at the end)

word count: 2.8K

a/n: Hi lovelies! It’s Yoongi day!!!! This is the night Yoongi starts working on People for his mixtape and he and Kid/reader have a long conversation about life, people, and the meaning of everything. Idek if the conversations make full sense but that’s kind of what I like about them, these two are just bullshitting and getting to know each other even more and I think it’s sweet. Anyways, I hope you all enjoy, and thanks for reading! :))

And happy birthday to our favorite honey boy 🍯💛

Seated on Yoongi’s studio couch, your eyes scanned over the words of the paperback novel in your hands as the sounds of the beats from the man’s computer started and stopped at random, filling the room with evidence of his genius and artistry. As you turned the page, the man sat back against his chair with a small huff, your gaze lifting from the book to your boyfriend.

You waited a moment, seeing if he was going to initiate conversation or if he was simply taking a quick moment to himself. However, when his head turned to peer behind him, sneaking a glance at you, you couldn’t help the upward curve of your lips.

“Hey,” he chuckled lightly, your smile growing.

“What’s up, Honey Boy?”

He appeared bashful, as if he was embarrassed and almost guilty for interrupting your reading. Lowering the book to the cushion next to you, holding your place with your finger, you cocked your head.

“Would you mind giving this a listen real quick?” He asked shyly, your eyes widening in slight surprise. Yoongi asking for your opinion on his music wasn’t new or even rare, but the tentativeness in his demeanor certainly was. The man could be bashful when sharing his work, but rarely hesitant.

Nodding at him, he sat back up and pressed play on the track. It was different than anything he’d ever shown you before, the slow melodic flow of the song, paired with interesting xylophone-type of sound, immediately capturing you. Your eyebrows pulling together as you listened, a focus overtaking you.

It was just the instrumental, but it felt comforting; calming.

“This is from,” he thought out loud, “2016 probably.”

“It’s amazing, Yoon,” you complimented sincerely. “I’m actually kind of offended you’ve had this all this time just hiding in your hard drive,” you teased with a smile, Yoongi chuckling as he spun his chair around to face you.

“You think I should use it for the mixtape?” He asked, already knowing he should, but seeking your opinion anyway.

“Definitely,” you told him as you lifted the book, only to fold the corner of the page down. Dropping the novel onto the couch, you stood and easily approached the man, his gaze following you intently as you neared him. Leaning against his desk, Yoongi spun in his chair so he continued to face you. “It’s really good.”

Giving you a single appreciative nod, he held back a grin. “Thank you,” he whispered, the shyness in his gratitude adorable, making you smile. “I love your smile,” he told you suddenly, a small breathy chuckle escaping your lips.

“Thanks,” you told him quickly, trying to brush over the compliment, feeling bashful under his gaze. You both simply stared at one another, both of your minds trying to decipher each other’s expressions.

“What is it?” Yoongi asked you, clueless as to what was going on in your mind, but knowing there was something weighing on it.

With a small sigh, you flashed him a small smile. “Do you think I’m a good person?” You asked him, the man’s eyebrows pulling together.

“I do,” he replied simply, though his expression remained the same. “Why?”

“I saw an old friend today,” you told him as you lifted yourself onto the desk so you were seated atop it, your feet dangling above the floor.

Yoongi’s eyebrows raised in curiosity, his hands coming to rest on your knees.  

“She’s changed so much, I barely recognized her,” you continued. “We used to be so close in school and now, it’s like I hardly know her,” you told him, the fragility of your voice apparent to your own ears, so you knew Yoongi heard it too. “She has a baby I had no idea about.”

Yoongi stared at you thoughtfully, locking his eyes with yours, a rare occurrence for him. “Why is that making you concerned about your goodness as a person?”

“I just-” you paused thoughtfully. “I let that relationship fade away. You know, I was the one who stopped communicating, I was the one who cancelled plans, I just pulled away and withdrew.”

“That doesn’t make you bad, that makes you human,” he informed you, his thumbs soothing along the insides of your thighs, just above your knee caps. “People change.”

Nodding in understanding, you directed a small tight smile at him. “You know, as happy as I am with my life and the people in it,” you scrunched your nose, poking his hand with your finger to emphasize his important role among those people, Yoongi letting a small smile grace his features, “I feel nostalgic for something,” you finished. Lifting his hand from your leg, he wrapped it around your own hand, holding it comfortingly in his grasp. His palm was as warm as his considerate gaze, and you realized for the hundredth time that Yoongi was warmth embodied. “Does everyone feel like this or is there something wrong with me?” You scoffed lightly at yourself.

“Do you really want me to answer that?” He teased, making a small giggle leave your lips as you softly jerked your knee up to bump his arm in light-hearted complaint. “I can’t speak for everyone, but sometimes I think I miss the person I was before,” he looked around the studio, “you know, all this,” he admitted, referring to his career.

Leaning toward him, you listened intently, your orbs scanning his features as he pondered over the thoughts within his mind.

“Maybe not even the person, but the life,” he elaborated, you humming in understanding.

“Do you find that it was a simpler time?” You asked, intrigued by his words.

“Not so much simpler but just different, I guess,” he thought out loud. “It feels like I sacrificed the ordinary for the extraordinary,” he added, latching his gaze onto your legs as you stared down at him. “And now the ordinary becomes extraordinary,” he said, lowering his chin to your knees as his fingers picked at the fraying around the hole in your jeans.

Your free hand that wasn’t being held by his found its way to his hair, your fingers digging into his soft strands.

“I sound ungrateful,” he chuckled dryly against your legs, you shaking your head despite him not seeing it, his eyes still glued to the hole in your clothing.

“No, just human,” you spoke up. “It’s natural to long for those realities that belong to some but not to us,” you assured him, the man rotating his face so his cheek rested against your leg, his orbs gazing up at you.

“People dream of having my life though,” he mumbled, his lips slightly pouted making him look precious despite the negative thoughts swirling around his head and leaving that adorable pout. “And here I am just wishing I could walk down the street without a care in the world,” he smiled a bit. “Am I even a good person? I feel greedy.”

Brushing your fingers through his hair, you pouted, watching him for a moment before responding. “I’m biased, but I think you are.”

“You sure?” He quipped, a teasing glint in his eyes that made you smile as a breathy chuckle left your lips.  

“You’re a good person, Yoongi, I won’t have you thinking otherwise,” you insisted with a glare, Yoongi’s lips curving into a grin in response.

“My life isn’t any more special than anyone else’s,” he suddenly decided. “Just different.”

Nodding at him, you agreed. “You’re just a person.” Yoongi’s eyebrows raised, preparing to tease you for the lackluster conclusion, your mouth already shaping into a knowing smile. “But my favorite person,” you added. “So that’s something.”

Placing a kiss to your jean adorned knee, he grinned. “It’s everything.”

“I think it has meaning,” you noted, your and Yoongi’s conversation taking several different paths throughout the past forty-five minutes or so. You were now talking about the meaning of life, and whether there was a meaning at all. “I just don’t know what,” you added with a shy smile.

Yoongi’s gummy grin beamed up at you as he squeezed your thigh playfully. “I go back and forth. Like, we’re here by chance, right? Maybe life is no deeper than that,” he explained, you nodding in understanding. “But also, I found music and BTS, and here I am with you, and all of that feels meaningful,” he added thoughtfully.

“Do you believe in fate?” You questioned curiously.

“Maybe,” he responded, his voice sliding up slightly in pitch.

“I find myself thinking that same thing. Like maybe we don’t have a purpose as living beings except to just, be here, and live. And maybe it’s the people we know and the experiences we have that give it all meaning,” you thought aloud, Yoongi humming as he peered up at you.

“Yeah, I like that,” he settled with a small close-mouthed smile that pushed his fluffy cheeks up adorably. Moving your hand from his hair, you poked his cheek, Yoongi giving you a feigned grimace in reply.

“Ok, so question for you,” you started, Yoongi’s eyes widening in anticipation. “If your life wasn’t so extraordinary, what would you do?”

“Like, without the fame?” He asked.

“Yeah, let’s say for a day, no one knew who Min Yoongi, Suga, Agust D was, what would you do?” You asked with a small smile, feeling giddy to hear his answer.  

“I would take you out on the most normal run of the mill date,” he answered easily.

“That’s what you’d do?!” You asked in disbelief, Yoongi smiling cutely. “What like to the movies?”

“To the movies and to dinner and to get ice cream and we’d walk around Seoul without a care in the world about who could see us,” he grinned.

“We’ve done all those things though,” you pointed out.

“I mean, yeah, we have our spots that feel safe, and we venture out on occasion, but we could go anywhere without the stress of being seen,” he explained. “No worries, just us.”

Flashing him a fond smile, you pushed his hair off his forehead gently. “I didn’t realize you had so much stress when we go out,” you noted, a softness evident in your tone.

“I’m just- hyperaware,” he clarified.

“Would you hold my hand in the street, Honey Boy?” You asked with a wide grin, Yoongi chuckling at you.

“I wouldn’t let go of your hand,” he told you, his thumb running along the side of your hand as he spoke the words. “You know what else I would do?” He asked happily.

“What?” You whispered through your beaming grin.

“I’d kiss you in front of everyone,” he returned your smile. “And I’d post a cheesy photo of us on my pubic instagram to brag about how beautiful my girlfriend is.”

“You’re ridiculous,” you laughed, Yoongi giggling as his chin rested on top of your knee.

“It would be nice,” he hummed thoughtfully, as if he was losing himself in a day dream where he could live so carelessly.

Moving your hand to the side of his face, you pulled his attention back to you as you cocked your head at him and smiled at him. “Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older, and we wouldn’t have to wait so long,” you stared to sing playfully, Yoongi dropping his forehead to your knee as he laughed at you.

Sitting back in his chair, he looked back up to you with his gummy grin, his eyes bright and full of adoration. “I love that song,” he noted, you giggling.

“Me too,” you replied in a whisper.

A pause in the conversation took place as Yoongi’s eyes scanned over your features, yours following the movement of his gaze. When his eyes met yours, he slowly pushed his chair away from the desk and stood in front of you, his hands finding your waist as his face hovered close to yours.

Placing a kiss to the side of your mouth, you breathed out slowly, the intimacy between you both blossoming more stunningly than it ever had before.

“I love you,” he whispered, his lips brushing over yours as your hands found his neck, your fingers greedily but gently exploring the soft skin of his neck and jaw, grazing over his throat.

“I love you too,” you told him. “Forever.”

Pressing your lips to his, he brought his body as close to yours as he could, wanting you as close as possible. As he deepened the kiss, your mouth moving in synchronization with his own, his hands found the bottom of your shirt.

Tugging up, you removed your hands from him to allow him to pull the clothing from your frame. Dropping the shirt onto the desk next to your bodies, his eyes glanced down at your chest to see the flimsy lace bra. As one of his hands moved behind you to feel your back, sliding down to grasp the top of your ass, he dragged the finger of his opposite hand along the edge of your bra cup.

“What does forever mean?” He suddenly asked in a low timbre, just before pressing a lingering peck to your mouth. “You never know what the future holds,” he said realistically, though his tone was still seductive and light.

“I think the intent behind the word is what matters,” you told him, trailing kisses along his neck, Yoongi tilting his head to the side to allow you more access. “What a person feels when they speak the word.”

“So what do you feel? What do you mean when you say forever?” He questioned, your head raising to look him in the eyes.

Scooting off the desk, you stood in front of Yoongi, your gaze locked on his. “When I say forever,” you started, your hands finding the sides of his face as his held your waist. “I mean it literally. For always, evermore, in this lifetime and the next. Maybe even past lifetimes. The future is unpredictable, but when I say I love you forever, that’s what I mean,” you assured him as the man stared at you with a surety you weren’t sure you’d ever seen from him before.

Leaning in to kiss him again, you began pushing him backward, you both stumbling as he bumped into the chair. Your lips curved upward into the kiss, you both chuckling as you continued your clumsy ministrations.

Finding your way to the couch, you dropped onto it, sliding across it so you could recline, Yoongi standing above you watching you intently. As you stared up at him with a smirk, he shed himself of his shirt. Crawling atop you, your hands grabbed onto his hips, your fingers digging underneath the waistband.

He kissed you passionately, pouring his feelings and emotions into the action, causing you to moan, the sound melting against the man’s mouth, making him smirk. Sitting up on his knees, he undid the zipper on his own jeans before reaching for your own. His eyes left your legs for just a moment as he reached for the book shoved against the back of the sofa.

“This any good?” He asked, you quirking your eyebrow.

“It is, want me to read it to you?” You asked, Yoongi scoffing as he tossed it onto the table, you giggled as he went back to pulling your clothes from your body.

As he removed his clothing, you reached for your bag on the floor next to you, pulling a condom out, Yoongi smirking at you.

Once your clothing was removed, giggles flooding the room as you both struggled to wiggle out of your jeans and your bra flung somewhere across the studio, it was a matter of seconds until his skin was against yours, your body caged by his arms. 

He kissed you passionately, a hand on your waist as his other arm supported his weight over you. Slipping inside you, you groaned out at the sensation, Yoongi breathing lowly at the feeling of you. 

As you clasped a leg around his, your hand grasping at his ass, he placed delicate kisses across you face, giving special attention to your cheeks as he began dragging his hips. 

“I love you,” he whispered before pushing his mouth to yours, swallowing your breaths and whimpers. He moved slowly, savoring every moment of being together, wanting this night to last, forever. 

Your hands clutched his back, clinging to him as he moved in and out of you with a passionate force that had you moaning out near his ear. And he reveled in your sounds, knowing he was the cause, knowing you were his. Forever.

Leaving a kiss to his earlobe, you confessed your love for him once more. And then again. And again.

“Forever,” you repeated, the word coated in intention and meaning. You’d be loving him forever.  

[soccerbites]

WHAT IT WAS | RAFE CAMERON

Masterlist on pinned!

A.N: Heeyy, if you find this familiar it could be because you read it on my wattpad account or on here before I deactivated! English is not my first language so please be kind!

WORDS COUNT: 4k

WARNINGS: a lot of them, swearing, blood, drugs, etc.

You hadn't thought about it in months when you finally were getting over it, suddenly came back, all the memories, good and bad, all the euphoria, when everything was angelic, when it was cruel, when suddenly it was radiant, then turned violent, and ended up being painful. When you gave up on it because you could not take it anymore.

-

Your family was the typical kook one, you grew up in a life full of luxury, you got everything you wanted due to your mum's richness.

Sarah and you were best friends since you were born and his brother was your boyfriend practically since both of you learned that word. The Cameron's and your family had everything arranged between you two, Rafe and you were supposed to be together for the rest of your lives, he was going to take care of his dad's company, the next step would be getting married, travel around the world, having lots of beautiful kids and live happily ever after.

2008

It was your 5th birthday party, all your friends were there and you felt extremely happy with the big amount of presents you had received from them all. You were not the typical little girl your parents desired you to be, you had begged for them to let "Pirates of the Caribbean" be the theme, you hadn't really seen the movies but you loved pirates! Rafe and you would always pretend you were them in his dad's yacht because Sarah did not like them at all, you couldn't understand how it was so fun! Your friend would lend you one of his plastic swords and play the whole afternoon. The best part was that you always won, but now, many years after, looking back at it Rafe was probably letting you win. However, your mum forced you to make your party about Cinderella, you hate princess but especially Cinderella, there wasn't a reason for it, you just did.

Weeks before you had told the little boy your birthday was going to be about pirates and he was so excited about it, you babble about it for days, so when Rafe arrived at your house with his family and saw all the princess decorations and the angry but yet sad face you had on, he instantly understood what was going on, you both were little but very smart for your age, plus he had sympathy for you due to his similar family conditions.

Everyone but you and him enjoyed the celebration, the young man and you stayed together in a corner of your backyard playing alone. Rafe picked up two small branches and played as you were pirates like you would usually do, he knew that was what you really wanted at that moment.

When it was time to blow the candles you looked at your sky blue and pink cake, wishing it had Jack Sparrow's face on it, Rafe smiled at you and you smiled back at him. Everyone sang the typical song, you blew the candles and buried three of your little fingers into the cake, thinking of three wishes.

being a pirate

playing as pirates with Rafe

Sarah wanting to play as pirates with you two

-

2010

It was almost summer and you were really excited about all the little adventures Rafe and you were going to have in the next months.

You felt so much older, your first year of primary school was over and it had been great! Even though Sarah was not hanging out with you as much as she was before; you had the hope of playing with her more now that you had nothing else to do.

Those weeks were great, you almost didn't see your girl best friend, but her brother and you were getting closer and closer as days went by. Rafe always protected you from everything and made you laugh a lot, he was funny.

Summer '10 was lovely, one of your favorites memories of you and the boy happened during that time, your first kiss. You didn't really count it as the very first kiss, but you had to admit that, at that time, for you was even more than what it actually was.

It was an extremely warm day and you invited Rafe over to play in the fort you both had made in your backyard, right where years before you were pretending to be pirates while your birthday party was going on inside the house. He was 'building' a table as you made mud cakes.

"Look at the cake i made for us!" you abruptly shouted, thing that scared Rafe, but he didn't let you notice because the last thing he wanted was for you to make fun of him.

"It looks delicious y/n, we should eat it!" he said, excitement on his face while sitting beside you.

"ARE YOU CRAZY RAFE?" you were shocked, the drama queen in you was starting to jump out, "IT'S MADE OF DIRT THAT'S DISGUSTING!" you looked at him, terrorized by what the little boy was saying.

"i- i- i wasn't serious, i- i just thought you'd like me to say that" he was so embarrassed.

"oh, i'm sorry" you apologized to him.

There was silence for a few seconds, it wasn't uncomfortable so you didn't mind about it.

"wanna know what Sarah made me do?"

"mmmm, maybe"

"she made me watch 'The Princess And The Frog', TWO TIMES" he sounded so mad, "and then she told me that Topper kissed her" he looked at you, you were not understanding why he was telling you this, but before you could talk; he continued, "and i was thinking that may- maybe we can d- do it too" you opened your eyes wide open, kissing him? like in the mouth?

"i- in- the mouth?"

"yeah, i mean, that's what she told me" you stared into his eyes, trying to figure out if he was just messing with you or was actually serious about it.

"uhm, i guess so?"

"you do?" he had a frown formed in his face.

"if that's what you want to" he nodded with a smirk on his lips.

You both turned and were now facing each other, without an idea of what to do you followed him, he started to lean forward and you did too, he closed his eyes and you did as well, and after what felt like an eternity but was actually almost four seconds, your lips touched his; ending up in a little pecked kiss.

After that day neither you nor Rafe talked about it again, it was like it never happened, which, at your really short age, was normal.

This year your family and you decided not to celebrate your birthday due to your grandma passing away two weeks before, it didn't feel right for them. At seven years old it was hard to fully understand what death was, you had heard about it but never experienced it before. Rafe felt really bad about it and on the day you finally turned seven he went to your house and spent it with you, so that way, you would not feel as lonely.

-

2012

Rafe was starting to change, he did not want to play with you anymore and that made you sad and upset. Your mom told you it was normal for boys to not hang out with girls once they grew up, but that wasn't him, it didn't felt like him. You never thought that the boy who was your best friend, the only kid you really enjoyed being around, especially after Sarah hang with more friends that were not you, would leave you alone.

You started to search for fun on other stuff and found that you loved to read stories about wonderful adventures, and when you finished every single book in your house about the topic, you started to flip through the pages of some old books regarding birds and insects, you were amazed by the stunning draws and colors of them and wanted to make your own.

For your ninth birthday you decided to do an exchange, it was difficult to convince your parents but they finally gave in, instead of a party you wanted them to give you a pretty journal with some color pencils. That way you would have your own investigation diary about those interesting creatures you were obsessed about.

Summer had ended and school season started, you and your little notebook were inseparable, you took it with you to class and spent all the recess doing little notes about birds you had seen during the day so when you arrived home you could search and learn about them.

One cold winter night, your dad told you that the Cameron's were coming home to have dinner, you couldn't wait for them to arrive, maybe that was the moment you had the opportunity to befriend Sarah again and show Rafe all the information you had collected during the months you didn't hang out. But they never appeared, their parents had gone but not them, Sarah was not feeling well and Rafe was sleeping over at a friend's house.

-

2014

Sarah was talking to you! you were friends again and there was no way you would not see each other every single day.

Spending every minute of the day over at her house was completely normal at that point. You two hanging out again made your families closer.

It was like your parents didn't care at all you were just a pair of ten years old, almost eleven, kids.

Rafe would always try to be with his sister and you whenever you were around at their house, but Sarah would just scream at him 'LEAVE US ALONE!' which ended in him giving up and walking away. It was sad, you missed spending time with the boy.

2014 was the year you turned eleven, and also had your first period. Everyone was so excited about that and you just hated it, with your whole heart, it made you want to cry every single time. Due to that, your body started to change, and boys started to notice it, including Rafe.

-

2016

The year it all started.

It was your thirteenth birthday and you did not felt like doing a big party, that night the Cameron's and your family went to a restaurant. Sarah, Rafe, and you were talking about what you were going to do the next week while Wheezie just listened. Finally, the boy and you were good friends again. When the food arrived you all shut up and started eating while paying attention to what your parents were talking about.

"oh yeah, of course, they are definitely getting married at some point," Ward said to what your father nodded.

"it's the best for them" this time your mom spoke.

"of course it is!" Rose laughed, "he will be taking care of the family business, they are going to have a splendid life together"

"Who are you talking about?" Rafe got into the conversation.

"we are talking about you silly!" you looked at your mom, not understanding what was going on.

"wha- what?" Rafe was just as surprised as Sarah and you were.

"yeah kid, we are talking about yours and y/n's future together" Ward stated as taking a piece of meat to his mouth.

"what exactly do you mean?" you stepped in this time.

"what you heard kid, your future life, your marriage, and all" your dad said as if it was the most normal thing to say to a thirteen-year-old.

"their marriage?!" Sarah was furious, you could notice it in her voice tone, Rafe and you stared at each other.

"you just are too young to realize yet" Rose brushed it off. None of you talked for the rest of the night.

Just a few months after that, your dad and Ward had already made a reservation for you two at the exact same restaurant. When you arrived you saw Rafe already there in a table positioned in a corner. Now looking back at it, everything was so fucked up, you were just kids. You approached him and sat, he smiled at you while you did.

"hi", he said, shyly, of course. It was really weird, you both had been alone before but never this way, this was completely different, your families were hoping that you turned this into something romantic. "Are we on a date right now?".

"i think so?" you laughed a little bit, "please, don't make this awkward, i don't get why they do this".

"i do" he said, you looked at him with a confused face, was he agreeing with all of this? "i mean, i can see why they want us to be together" after that he took a sip of his soda and started serving you some.

"Rafe, you should be allowed to 'date' whoever you wanted"

"And what happens if who i wanna date is you?" you were shocked at your friend's words.

"Rafe what are you talking about? i just turned thirteen and you are about to turn fourteen, you like it or not we are kids" you were a little bit mad due to what he was saying.

"well, Juliet was thirteen and Romeo was around that age"

"Rafe you did- you did not just compare us to Romeo and Juliet, have you read the book?"

"no, i did not"

"THEY DIE, THEY DIE AT THE END" you knew you were making this a lot bigger than it actually was but didn't care about it, "of course you didn't read the book" you whispered but he heard.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN?" now that you're remembering everything you can't believe that a pair of thirteen years old could be so dramatic.

"I MEAN WHAT I SAID," you said while leaning over the table.

"you know what, why don't we shut up and finish with this as fast as we can, i don't want to be here" Rafe proposed.

"sounds perfect to me, i do not want to be here too"

Either of you spoke again until you had had dinner and Ward picked you two up.

-

2018 / 2019

In the past two years, Rafe and you had finally got together. Your parents were over the moon about it and you were also really happy. You both were discovering and experiencing together what being in a relationship was.

The first months were a little bit strange, you both knew that it was not a real relationship, for everyone else you were together, but in reality, you hadn't had that many kisses as you thought you were supposed to have and outside school didn't see each other that much.

Summer '18 the Cameron's took you with them on their holidays to the Bahamas, it was amazing, not just because Rafe and you spent a lot of time together but also because you got to hang more with Sarah who you were not seeing a lot since it all started, and the reason was that whenever you went to their house you were with her brother, and they definitely didn't get along that much.

Unfortunately, the 'real' part began in 2019, you and Rafe turned sixteen and started going to parties and being more around of what people called 'pogues'. During the school year, it was like a daydream, he picked you up and went together, you had lots of dates and spent beautiful moments together, those were the times when your relationship was at it's highest, where you realized that, after all, maybe your parents were right and your destiny was, indeed, be together.

Your favorite moment from that time in your life was with him. You both were laying in the grass of your house's backyard, it was really cold outside, and decided to take some blankets with you to be warm. You were laying in his chest while he hugged you, appreciating the stars. He pressed a kiss to your head and you smiled to yourself.

"wanna know something?" you looked up to him.

"pretty boy is thinking! someone please record this!" you said, just to annoy him.

"shut up" he laughed, knowing you were messing with him, "you want to know or no baby?" he asked, a more serious tone on his voice.

"of course i want to know" you took his hand into yours, the warmness made you shiver, to what he hugged you harder.

"i read on the internet that you can buy stars online, maybe one day i'll buy you one and name it Rafe so whenever you wanna get rid of me you would not be able to" the boy started swinging you side to side in a slow speed, you'd never felt that peaceful in your life before.

Once again you looked at him "that's a little bit wicked of you" he giggled, "however, i think that would be the most divine present someone could ever give to me" he backed down his head and kissed your cheek, "and also, i'm never getting rid of you" you could feel him smiling while pressing his chin against the side of your head.

That was the last happy time you genuinely can remember at perfection.

You still don't know what happened when summer '19 arrived, it was the breaking point of your relationship. Parties at the beach were being held by pogues most of the time, and you never went because partying was not your thing, all of them ended up in disaster, pure and authentic disaster. You are grateful the only one you went to was the first one. Rafe was extremely drunk and you were trying to take care of him but it was being hard, especially when Topper got into a really intense fight with JJ and John b, two of the few pogues you knew, it was tragic and it got worse when the blonde one pulled a gun at Sarah's boyfriend head, while all that happened you lost Rafe and found him after like five minutes beating up someone that was on the ground, barely moving. You ran towards him and with all your straighten you push him.

"YOU'RE KILLING HIM RAFE!" you yelled at your boyfriend, when you finally got to see him he was covered in blood, you took him by his hand and got out of there, arriving at your house where you helped him clean up himself.

"i think i'm in love with you" he tried to say but was too drunk to pronounce the words properly.

"don't start with that now when you almost killed a random guy tonight, for what? explain" you were furious.

"'cause he is a pogue, he deserves it y/n" you both walked to your bed and laid down to sleep.

"no he doesn't Rafe, that's not an excuse for what you did, they are people just like us" you scolded him.

"whatever" he ignored you.

Some time after that Sarah started to see John B behind Topper's back and she asked you to keep her secret safe, which you did.

At midsummers Rafe escorted you, it was a fantastic night, you two were together the whole time and drank lots of expensive champagne while you danced. The pride on your dad's face was priceless, in that moment you forgot about what had happened a few nights before and just enjoyed the moment, smiling at your boyfriend, always.

"you wanna know something?" Rafe whispered in your ear while you danced to a slow song, his hands on your waist and yours behind his neck.

"mmm, this brings back good memories" you smiled to the handsome man in front of you.

"i love you"

"i love you too Rafe"

"let me finish pretty girl" you laughed a little bit, "please stop smiling like that, i'm not sure what will happen if you keep doing that" this time your laugh was stronger, getting some looks from people around you.

"i'm just really happy right now, wouldn't want to be anywhere else" you hugged him without stop moving.

"i know, me too"

A few minutes after he disappeared, and you did not have an excuse to stay so you went home. The next day you found out he was trying to beat up the blonde pogue, JJ.

You don't really know why but for some reason it went away and everything was perfect again, but it only lasted a few days.

You were really bored at your house and after contemplating whether you should or shouldn't go to the Cameron's house, you got into your car and drove around the few blocks that separated your house from Rafe's. You knew his parents were out of town that day and Sarah was probably hanging out with John B and his friends so you didn't bother on knocking and just got in. You heard your boyfriend's voice from the downstairs bathroom. Once you got into it you saw his clothes on the floor and he was applying toothpaste to his arm.

"Rafe?" he looked at you scared.

"y/n- i- i" he was crying, you directed your eyes to his arm, a huge new burnt was there.

"Rafe what happened?" you got closer to him, "is that blood?" you pointed at the clothes on the floor.

"no", he denied it but it obviously was blood.

"Rafe, what's going on?"

"i- i got into a fight" ha answered.

"with who? baby who did this?" you helped him with his injury.

"Barry" but as soon as you heard that name you pulled away.

"Barry? as the drug dealer Barry?" he didn't even look at you, "Rafe are you doing drugs?" completely ignored you, and when he did that you figured out the answer, "how much do you owe him?" you asked, one hand on you waist and the other one on the bathroom door.

"some thousands" your jaw almost touched the floor, and your face was full of disappointment and anger. "don't look at me like that" he begged, and tried to grabbed you and pulled you closer to him but you just pulled him away.

"DON'T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT? THAT'S ALL YOU HAVE TO SAY?" he didn't reply "FUCK RAFE, THOUSANDS? YOU OWED THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS TO A DRUG DEALER AND YOU EXPECT ME TO STAY CALM?"

"i can explain."

"NO YOU CAN'T, WHAT? TOPPER AND YOU GOT BORED OF THE STUPID WEED AND WANTED TO TRY SOMETHING STRONGER? WHAT DID YOU BUY? COKE? NOW YOUR HOBBY IS BUY THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS ON COKE? THAT'S WHAT YOU WANT TO EXPLAIN TO M-"

"GET OUT" he screamed to your face as he got closer to your body, while pointing to the door, "GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY DAMN HOUSE" you looked at him and turned away, walking towards the door and he didn't follow you.

"HOPE YOU HAVE AN AMAZING LIFE RAFE" you screamed without closing the door.

After that you didn't see him in a long time, you didn't go out of your house anymore.

You heard that Sarah and John B were missing, you missed her. You had no one to talk to, just your own thoughts.

A few weeks later, everything came out to the light, Ward went to jail for killing John B's dad and being kinda responsible for another poor man's death.

Rafe confessed that it had been him the one who shot the detective, but they found out about his drug addiction and blamed it on that, so he ended up going to rehabilitation and not directly to jail.

-

2021

It was your eighteenth birthday, Sarah was coming to your house to keep you company until your parents got out of work.

As you were walking towards the kitchen the doorbell rang.

"hi" you said as opening the door.

"hello, is this y/n?" the man in front of you asked while reading your name from a box.

"that would be me" you said, and after signing some papers he gave you the package.

You placed it on the table and started opening it. It seemed like a picture frame, when you paid attention to it, tears fell from your eyes, there was a little letter on it.

i did not name it after me, i realized that you were, are, and always will be the big star that keeps me going. I hope you know how much i miss you and regret everything i did, maybe one day you'll forgive me and love me again. I took that for granted and i'm so sorry of that. happy eighteen birthday y/n, i expect you still think this is the most divine present someone could ever give you.

- Rafe

It was a star, he had bought a star and named it after you, Rafe kept his promise, and even though you had said to yourself, just the night before, you will move on and forget about him, you couldn't help but smile; wishing you could re-do everything and go back to what it was that night from a few years before.

[jcmorrigan]

I saw the tag- I am gonna ask you about the crossover universe- (omg I’m literally gushing about this)

OH, IT IS TIME!

 So you can find a lot of this on the “What is the WHAM ARMY?” page on my blog – I’ll try to remember to link it; I’m drafting this in a word processor first so I don’t use it. Essentially, this is the universe I’ve created for my fanfic “Taking Back the Crown,” which is about…basically my favorite villains all moving into the same house and trying to take over the multiverse. And then it got lore. And more lore. Because I cannot write anything normal. The fic is nearing its 150th chapter and I’m nowhere NEAR exhausted of all the ideas I want to put in it – it’s just my big playground for hyperfixation fun. Anyway, here’s a rundown of the major points of it!

 THE CAST

 The main characters are the eight villains who are the founders of the WHAM ARMY. The faction name is an acronym of their first initials. They’re my ultrafaves, the villains I always get fluttery heart for, and probably the biggest collection of losers you can imagine. I’ll put them in order of the acronym and give you some background on how each entered the team.

Wuya (Xiaolin Showdown) – So the connecting factor between these people is that Mozenrath (his name is a few slots down) is their team leader and the one who decided to build a team in the first place. Wuya was recruited when Mozenrath found her puzzle box in an ancient vault. This is set post-series for XS (and Chronicles is not at all canon), so what had happened is in the big Showdown right after Raimundo was named team leader officially in the finale, the Xiaolin Monks won ALL the Shen Gong Wu to their side and stuffed Wuya in the box. So Mozenrath found her and let her out so they could be pals. A magic potion let her regain human form fairly early on, and her power isn’t even nerfed either the way Chase Young would’ve done.

Huntsman (American Dragon: Jake Long) – ADJL is also post-series in this timeline. Mozenrath has the power to resurrect people from the dead at will because he’s memorized an ancient and incredibly complex ritual that he can execute mentally (note that this means you can remove this ability from him by tampering with his memories). The Huntsman was resurrected so as to show Mozenrath around the old Huntsclan vault (which is where they found Wuya’s puzzle box). No other Huntsclan member survived the purge except Rose (and 88 and 89, but they don’t count and aren’t in this story), so the Huntsman is starting from square one.

Ayam Aghoul (Aladdin: The Animated Series): Basically just got sick of losing. He’d teamed up with a few other rando Aladdin rogues to try and pick a fight with Maleficent, and she sent him packing. So he ended up finding one of the few residents of the Seven Deserts who was powerful enough to match him AND had a similar grudge against Maleficent.

Mozenrath (Aladdin: The Animated Series): The man of the hour and the creator of the entire team. He starts the fic by crashing Maleficent’s KH Disney Villain alliance and trying to add himself to it, but…ends up being such a disrespectful nuisance that Hades just drags him straight down to the Underworld. That moment inspired him to get his OWN band of friends and start making a name for himself.

Archibald Snatcher (The Boxtrolls): Met Mozenrath in the Underworld after his death in film canon. Annoyed Hades one too many times by claiming that he wasn’t actually supposed to die, seeing as he isn’t allergic to dairy (he is), so Hades threw him in the same cell as Mozenrath and…

Roman Torchwick (RWBY): I started writing this fic in 2016, immediately post-V3, so it’s canon-divergent after the last episode of V3 (but I got all the later-game characters to show up eventually). Which means Roman is ALSO dead at the start of this fic. He ALSO comes storming up to Hades insisting he’s not even supposed to be dead. At the same time as Snatcher is already pestering him. Which is how Mozenrath, Snatcher, and Roman end up in the same jail cell in Tartarus and get the idea that maybe they should break back into the world of the living and try to build something BETTER than what any of the three had beforehand.

Mad Madam Mim (The Sword in the Stone): Mozenrath, immediately after breaking out of the Underworld, attempted to take over Arthur’s kingdom by just walking in and throwing magic around. It backfired horribly when Merlin showed up. But then Mim showed up to counter Merlin and realized that maybe she had a potential friend here who was as blackhearted as she.

Yzma (The Emperor’s New Groove): Post-TENG, no KNG or TENS (but I reference things from TENS every now and again). Merlin turned Mozenrath into a rat, so Mim brought him to Yzma’s Secret Lab to change him back. There, they found Yzma as a cat, and she so desperately wanted out of her living situation that she added herself to the team. She was also restored to human form shortly thereafter.

 There is a potential ninth member of the core in the form of Vexen (Kingdom Hearts). KH is canon-divergent after DDD and basically ignores almost every game that comes out after Fragmentary Passage. Vexen, as Even, was trying to integrate into life as a hero in Radiant Garden, except everyone annoyed him way too much, so he decided to go be with people that would give right back any insults he dished out. And then realized he was much happier being on the evil team and doing mad science with no ethics. However, he will not be promoted to the upper ranks because 1. it would spoil the acronym and 2. he is unanimously agreed-upon to be the biggest wet blanket of the group and nobody wants him at the founder parties.

(Imagine my disbelief when the actual canon arc for Vexen was THE REVERSE ONE IN WHICH HE JUST DECIDES TO GO LIVE AT RADIANT GARDEN AND NOT BE ANNOYED BY ANYTHING and that’s why JC doesn’t like Kingdom Hearts III)

 Anyway, this crew is a bunch of silly friends who enjoy partying, singing, dancing, drag, indulging in vices, causing mayhem, taking over cities, arranging for mass murder, piecing together smear campaigns…but they’re all pretty much ride or die for each other. And that goes double for the ships of the set: Mozenrath/Huntsman, Mim/Aghoul, Wuya/Yzma, and my favorite ship to end all favorites, Roman/Snatcher (RedHatBlackHat is the ship name).

From there, you have a B-Squad of, like, seventy other people based on my faves. Nonnie, I know you saw this because of Vincent Edgeworth, Victor Blake, and Albert Krueger, and they are three of COUNTLESS examples. It’s a found crime family that keeps getting bigger as I get more fave villains and there’s hardly a rhyme or a reason. Currently, they live in a floating fortress designed when they stole Terra Cyclonia (Storm Hawks) and hefted it out into the aether between worlds with crystal technology.

 They have a rival hero faction in the form of the Cinnamons: a gathering of people who they’ve wronged who turned out to make pretty good friends themselves. While the WHAM ARMY are the villain-protag team that you feel slightly bad loving the escapades of, the Cinnamons are the rainbows, fluff, sunshine, (secret crippling depression and anxiety), and pep-talkers of the multiverse. They’re the deuteragonist team as opposed to the “villains” of the story. They also have eight “leaders,” but they were picked up a little less quickly than the WHAM ARMY founders, instead coming together over the span of a much longer quest. These people are:

Sora (Kingdom Hearts): Heart of the team and the person who pulled them all together, because Sora loves everyone. He, Riku, and Kairi witnessed the WHAM ARMY wreaking destruction on both Radiant Garden and Disney Castle, and Sora decided no one gets to treat his homes-away-from-home like that and get away with it! Between Mozenrath and the still-looming threats of Maleficent and Xehanort, he’s now collecting pals from all worlds to fight against evil and do as much good as they can do! (While having sleepovers.)

Ruby Rose (RWBY): Before she, Nora, Ren, and Jaune could get into Mistral, Sora interrupted them on their path and directed them right back around to Vale with the news that Roman Torchwick was back in action. After an incident involving the Destiny Trio and Team RNJR having to team up and actually kill the massive Grimm unleashed in the V3 endgame, they all headed out to Radiant Garden together to continue their mission.

Papyrus (Undertale): Sora found him while exploring worlds and they clicked immediately as pals. Then the WHAM ARMY, who was living in Mt. Ebott at the time, sparked an anti-monster racist sentiment through the town, and Papyrus was advised to leave the world for his own safety, so he went traveling with Sora.

Stork (Storm Hawks): Maleficent, who is also an active player in this game, made a power play by destroying the Condor with the entire Storm Hawks team onboard while they were on the Far Side of Atmos (post-series). Stork, believing himself to be the only survivor, attempted to take his own life – only for Sora to show up just in time and offer him something better: hope that his friends survived, and new friends to tag along with until they could prove either way.

Jasmine (Aladdin): The Cinnamons came looking to Agrabah for more information on Mozenrath. When Jasmine heard he was causing chaos, she decided to get personally involved.

Katara (Avatar: The Last Airbender): Post-ATLA, no LoK. Sora made a trip to the Fire Nation to see if he could head off the WHAM ARMY’s latest scheme, and ran into the Gaang along the way. After helping Katara, Aang, and Zuko protect the Fire Nation from a very near miss, Sora invited them to come travel with him. Only Katara accepted at first, the other two wanting to clean things up on their homeworld.

Kazuichi Soda (DanganRonpa): Post-SDR2, no DR3. Xehanort requested Izuru Kamukura be used as a vessel, and Kazuichi went in Izuru/Hajime’s place so his buddy didn’t have to. But the first chance he got, Kazuichi turned and ran from the Castle That Never Was…where Sora had just crash-landed. Kazuichi patched up Sora’s ship, and immediately became part of his crew. (Worth noting: in this AU, the Remnants of Despair were never brainwashed and were completely aware of what they were doing. Kazuichi is basically a redemption story, trying to be a better person to make up for the hell he caused. Also, while on the Despair side, he’d hacked off his leg to sew Junko’s in its place, disabling himself – that leg goes through an arc regarding what prosthesis is in its place.)

Rapunzel (Tangled): After the Vardaros arc of S2 of Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure. Rapunzel was targeted by the WHAM ARMY because she was essentially a living MacGuffin for one of their spells. Sora showed up, and Rapunzel decided to go along with him for safety AND fun, leaving Cassandra to continue the pilgrimage to the Dark Kingdom. (Wrote this before KHIII was out. And before the Evil Cass twist.)

 And just like the WHAM ARMY, these folks have a huge B-squad that lives in the Radiant Garden castle and helps them deal with the various tragedies they have to clean up after. Riku, Kairi, and Jaune Arc in particular get a decent amount of stage time.

 As you can see, Maleficent (Sleeping Beauty/Kingdom Hearts) and her forces are another big set of chess pieces on the board! After she sent Mozenrath to gay baby jail and it didn’t stick, she’s been trying to continue plans for domination as usual but ALSO wipe the WHAM ARMY off the face of the multiverse. She, Jafar (Aladdin), Ursula (The Little Mermaid), and Hades (Hercules) all came straight here from KH. But I’m working to model that team’s inner circle on the team in “Quite a Glittering Assemblage,” the sister fic by gavillain (it’s basically this premise but Maleficent gets a team to start instead, but similarities end there, his is a whole different, fresh, and fun flavor). I’ve just gotten all these characters intro’d instory, but the other biggies are Loki (Marvel – I based him in the Cinematic Universe but he’s kind of just an amalgamation of Lokis), Dr. Doom (Marvel), Captain Hook (Once Upon a Time), Russell Edgington (True Blood), and Fish Mooney (Gotham). Currently, they operate out of the Forbidden Mountain in the Enchanted Dominion.

 There’s also a very new addition as of the 140’s chapters: the Heathens. This is a squad of villains with moral lines in the sand (and some antiheroes or corrupted heroes). Basically, these aren’t your killers for fun. These are the people who steal candy from the gas station and think they’re slick, but the point is they’re enjoying themselves so just let it happen. The four founders of this one are Harley Quinn (DC – based on The Batman but an amalgamation of Harleys that leans sympathetic), Yang Xiao Long (RWBY), Giovanni Potage (Epithet Erased), and Velvet Crowe (Tales of Berseria). Currently, they operate out of the old mansion in Twilight Town.

 The Xehanorts are here, and that team is largely who you think it is – though I stripped away Vexen, Demyx, Marluxia, Larxene, and Luxord in order to replace them ALL with Xaldin. More crossover shenanigans to come on this front. This team isn’t very active – they’re waiting for the Keyblade War – but they’re operating out of the World That Never Was.

 There’s also another side villain faction: the Morbians, led by Mirage (Aladdin: The Animated Series). These are the demons of fear, the stuff that lurks in your nightmares, and…the villains I really like but who I don’t quite think fit in with the WHAM ARMY or any other more prominent group. But to give you an idea of what the flavor of this team is, she’s recruited not one but TWO Boogeymen – Pitch Black (Rise of the Guardians) and Oogie Boogie (The Nightmare Before Christmas).

 There will be more villain factions to come, and I kind of want to splinter the Cinnamons to multiple bases as well. Obviously it’s easier to split villains up because they’re fun to write at war with each other – when I have hero teams come up against each other, usually they end up becoming best buddies instead of fighting, and that’s how I like it, but that’s why there’s just ONE BIG HERO TEAM as opposed to the many villain squads rattling around.

 THE SETTING

 So as you have probably gleaned, the multiverse setup is largely based on Kingdom Hearts, which is one of my favorite things (in the KH1 through Fragmentary Passage era anyway). There are many worlds that can be visited either by Gummi Ship or Corridor of Darkness. Basically any evil-aligned sorcerer can use Corridors in this ‘verse – they’ve opened their souls to Darkness and have magic, so they can do so.

 The implication is that every world represents a separate “story” or part of one. As in if it’s a work of fiction HERE, it’s a world THERE. Some characters are actually savvy enough to know they’re fictional (e.g. Megavolt from Darkwing Duck, Xayide from The Neverending Story). Most of them aren’t built to handle the news, though, and just shrug it off if told. (No, really, the cosmic order prevents them from taking that news seriously if they’re not from something that regularly leans on the fourth wall anyway.)

 But sometimes, things get AU’d in without their full worlds. I was inspired by how Final Fantasy is treated in canon KH, and once I started bringing in more FF stuff by the same method, I felt motivated to do that with MORE fandoms if I felt the characters could be divorced from their settings and histories easily. I’ve done it for most Disney Channel non-animated properties as well as Satellite City (ain’t that the worst combo you’ve ever looked at). I’m planning to do it for Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn because I’m coming up on a location I want to delve into the civilization of but don’t have many canon characters for, so guess what, you get the FE cast now.

 Major worlds or relevant locations in play are the Cyclonian warship, Radiant Garden, Twilight Town, and occasionally the Enchanted Dominion, but we move from plotline to plotline with journeys to many, many, MANY worlds of things I want to play with the settings and casts of. Also, the Cyclonian warship is about to get replaced with another WHAM ARMY base; we’ll get there.

 THE STORY

 For the first major “book” of TBTC, the WHAM ARMY has found a spell that they think will let them conquer the entire multiverse by giving them control over Kingdom Hearts itself. All they have do to is collect a bunch of MacGuffins that correspond to twelve elements: fire, water, earth, air, light, darkness, life, death, time, space, entropy, and aether. In order to do this, they visit the worlds of KH, RWBY, Avatar, Storm Hawks, Okami, Undertale, Wakfu, The Legend of Zelda, The Neverending Story, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, and many many more. The Cinnamons catch wind of what they’re doing and start assembling. Meanwhile Maleficent is on the hunt for the Book of Prophecies and starts hiring villains on her team as well. After many madcap adventures and some devastating tragedies near endgame, the Cinnamons accidentally put the Book of Prophecies in Maleficent’s hands at the same time that Maleficent finally captures Mozenrath and gets him under heel. The WHAM ARMY and Cinnamons both launch attacks on Maleficent’s forces, and each walks away with what they came for. This is also the part where we slowburn up to the four major WHAM ARMY ships and many Cinnamon ships. In the end, the WHAM ARMY actually gets all the ingredients for their spell, but what they don’t know is it will actually cause the DESTRUCTION of the worlds. So an outside force intervenes (Discord from MLPFIM, who later joins the WHAM ARMY because he wants friends who actually appreciate him as a villain and won’t make him change) to stop them, and the next thing they know, they’re starting from square one.

 We’re now in the second “book” of this story. The Cinnamons are gathering up all lost friends – the rest of Team RWBY, the Gaang, the Storm Hawks (who did in fact survive the explosion), the lost KH characters. The WHAM ARMY, on the other hand, is gathering up more villains to bolster their forces for a new evil plan: to conquer the worlds one by one, starting with Atlantis (Disney’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire) and using portals to link to other territories of interest. While the WHAM ARMY is essentially working through a to-do list of what they need before they can launch such a massive invasion, the Cinnamons are finding strength in numbers because the writing’s on the wall that between Mozenrath, Maleficent, Mirage, and Xehanort, things are going to get worse before they get better, and as evil builds, good will need to rise to protect the innocent. As for Maleficent, she’s no longer able to chase the Book of Prophecies, and so, because she’s got Hades, Loki, and Salem (RWBY) there and they’re all like “Even though we’re pretty godlike, we are not that happy with how the gods we knew have run things,” Maleficent’s new goal is to slaughter the gods of all pantheons (minus those in her care) and replace them with her allies.

 Anyway, as I had said in the post you saw, Anon – I basically take everything fictional I love and shove it into this AU for daydreams because it lets me imagine my faves having CROSSOVER INTERACTIONS and doing cool epic stuff on a multi-world scale. (But as much as I’ve talked up the epic aspect, a lot of it is just…like…people fucking around and hosting karaoke nights.) Anyway, I hope this gave you a good sense of the madness, and I hope it serves as a reminder to everyone that they can and should just. Make a daydream and/or fanfic universe that’s indulgent as hell. Just do it.

[nerdygaymormon]

what do you think about the new handbook?

In January 2016 I received a calling that gave me access to the Church’s Handbooks and I was surprised at the amount of specific things in there on which I had never considered the Church having an official position. I imagine a lot of people are having that experience this week.

I’m glad the Church made the Handbook available to everyone, it’s a move towards transparency. Before this, people were being held to standards or facing processes that only their leaders could access.

I appreciate that in some areas there’s better framework and clarity, but am sad that it often came in the form of being more restrictive or not in line with modern science.

I’m going to outline the changes and add a few comments. ’ll put my opinion about all of this at the end, so if that’s what you want to see, scroll to the bottom.

————————————————————— 

Miscellaneous

The Handbook covers a lot of information, so I’m certain in the days and weeks ahead more new things will be discovered. But for now, here’s some assorted policies.

Sacrament

We’re supposed to take the Sacrament with our right hands

The wording that young men are encouraged, but not required, to wear a white shirt and tie is gone. All males who pass the Sacrament are asked to be clean and well groomed.

For a long time, which hand to use has been considered a personal choice, and some associated special meaning by using their right hand.

In February 2019, Elder Oaks saw some youth take the Sacrament with the left hand and he gave a short lecture that went viral telling these kids they were wrong, and now it’s official policy in the Handbook.

Dress Standards

The Relief Society Presidency is to teach dress standards to the sisters so their appearance and clothing show reverence and respect at Church and at the temple.

These are adult women!!! They can’t figure this out for themselves? It mentions ostentatious jewelry and casual clothes without any examples of what this means. I’m afraid some leaders will enforce their personal opinions, such as pants are verboten.

Also this section included a comment about ostentatious jewelry. What is that? Having 2 earrings in 1 ear?

—————————————————————

Discipline

Disciplinary councils have been renamed “Membership Councils”

People no longer are disfellowshipped or excommunicated. They have “formal membership restrictions” or “withdrawal of membership”

Does away with the unequal disciplinary structure for adult men vs adult women.

Before, men who were endowed had a disciplinary council at the stake level. Everyone else had a disciplinary council held by their bishopric.

Now anyone who is endowed and likely to have their Church membership withdrawn will have a stake membership council. Everyone else has a ward membership council for serious sins & actions

At the ward level, membership councils still function the same (the bishopric holds a council with the person whose membership is at risk).

At the stake level, the council now is similar to the way it works at the ward level (the stake presidency meets, without the high council also being involved).

The individual’s bishops can sit in on the council. The individual can also choose for the Elders Quorum or Relief Society President to sit in on the council.

Same-sex marriage is no longer apostasy

Apostasy has been removed from a list of reasons to hold a membership council. Instead it is on a case-by-case basis.

The stake president can place informal membership restrictions on the person and the stake president counsels with the Area Presidency (which are Seventy) about anything more than that, such as a membership council

The language is softer but the results are the same.

I like that men & women are treated equally in this new system. It always struck me wrong that most men in the church automatically had a council of 15 men and women had 3 men.

The reversal of the 2015 Policy of Exclusion finally made it to the Handbook. 

————————————————————— 

Gay, Lesbian, Bi, Same-Sex Attracted

Families & members should be sensitive, love and respectful of people who are gay, lesbian & bi

Sexual activity with someone of the same gender is on the same level as an unmarried sex.

Membership councils are optional in these cases, based on the leader’s discretion.

As long as an LGBTQ member is “striving” to live the law of chastity, they’re allowed to hold a calling and temple recommend

“Sexual cohabitation” used to be forbidden, now it’s “cohabitation”. So I guess gay people living together is a problem regardless of whether they have sex. I do know of a few couples who live together, but have given up sex in order to be temple worthy. I guess that’s no longer an option.

The mormonandgay website was done away with and some of the items moved to a new page titled “Same-Sex Attraction.”

Most of the links on this new page don’t work. I’m sure this will get fixed

Most of the “resources” from the old page aren’t on the new page.

The last 4 video stories of members from the former site are on the new site.

Credit for finally making this page available in languages other than English.

I wonder if it will still say it’s okay to identify using the terms gay, bi or lesbian.I know President Oaks prefers the phrase “same-sex attraction” and a lot of his influence is seen in the new Handbook changes. 

The best section of the previous site was a collection of 17 members who are gay, bi and lesbian (well, 2 of them are parents of gay kids). Hearing them tell their story in their own words was powerful. Most of them have asked for their video to be removed.

The only stories remaining are 2 people in a mixed-orientation marriage and 2 parents who have a gay son. Each of those 4 members now has multiple videos (Laurie, Laurie’s husband, Laurie’s bishop, Laurie’s friend). 

The experience of most LGB people in the Church is now absent from this page, which again confirms for me that this has been a site for leaders & family, not actual members who are bisexual, lesbian or gay.

—————————————————————

Transgender

Preferred names can be noted in your membership record and Church leaders are encouraged to use them.

People can also to ask others to use their chosen pronouns

Elective surgical or medical intervention (which I believe means hormone treatment) for the purpose of transitioning, and social transitioning will result in membership restrictions.

These restrictions include not getting to exercise the priesthood, receiving or using a temple recommend, and receiving some Church callings

Even if the hormone therapy is prescribed by a medical professional to ease gender dysphoria or reduce suicidal thoughts, membership restrictions will result

Transgender people who don’t transition can have Church callings & temple recommends

Gender is defined as “biological sex at birth.”

This is recorded on Church records and determines whether someone can receive the priesthood and how they experience the temple ordinances

Transgender people & their family are welcome to attend Sunday church meetings and social events

There is now a page for transgender people, just as there has been for LGB people

This whole section of the Handbook makes me sad because it reduces these members to being a mistake and they need to choose a side. Nevermind they were born this way and have complex lives, they need to look and act like a cishet member.

I’d love if the church leaders could show scriptural backing & the words of the Savior to justify their views on trans folks other than the Family Proclamation.

Credit to the Church for switching from “transsexual” to “transgender

While trans people are welcome to attend the 2nd hour of church, no guidance was given about if they can choose either Relief Society or Elders Quorum

It’s problematic to define gender being as your biological sex at birth. If gender is eternal, why is “at birth” needed? A doctor or nurse assigns a biological sex at birth by taking a look at the newborn’s external genitals. This is only 1 of 5 markers of gender. A doctor or a nurse is not God.

5 components of biological sex

external genitalia

inner reproductive anatomy

sex hormones

chromosomes

gonad differentiation (gonad secretions cause sex-specific patterns in many other tissues & the brain)

This section of the Handbook still speaks of gender as binary–you’re either male or female and trans. Genderfluid, nonbinary, or any acknowledgement of a spectrum doesn’t exist.

To say a trans person will face consequences for social transitioning is really troubling. What does “social transitioning” mean? Do pronouns count as “social transitioning?” Long or short hair? If people must dress according to gender stereotypes, then it seems like leadership is more concerned about the feelings of the 99 and not the health & well being of the 1.

Why is it only transgender members who have a ban on these surgeries? Lots of breast enhancements, reductions and mastectomies take place every month with not a whiff of interest by church leaders, but if it’s done to affirm one’s gender identity, then it’s forbidden, even if it’s life saving.

It did make me feel queasy to read that even if medical or surgical intervention is prescribed by medical professionals to deal with gender dysphoria or suicidal thoughts, too bad, we’re still going to punish you. What kind of monsters came up with this?

————————————————————— 

Intersex, aka People Whose Sex isn’t Clear at Birth

The Handbook says the incident rate of intersex is extremely rare

Questions about membership records, priesthood ordination and temple ordinances for youth or adults who were born with sexual ambiguity should be directed to the Office of the First Presidency.

This is the first I’ve seen Intersex given their own section in the Handbook.

While policies about LGBT people are listed as “moral issues”, the section on intersex people is under “medical and health policies.” That’s a good sign, it means that the medical profession determines what is best, not a church leader.

I appreciate that church takes this out of the hands of local leadership. It’s a complex issue that untrained people shouldn’t get to have say over.

The Church assumes that surgical & medical intervention is needed for this group of people. Unfortunately it implies the default is to do so in infancy or early childhood when current best practices would be delaying, if possible, until the individual can weigh in on their body & identity. 

The idea that intersex is rare, well that depends on what they consider rare.

The rate could be as high as 2% of the population or as low as 1 in 2000.

If we think of that in terms of Church congregations, it suddenly seems not so rare.

In North America, a ward must have 300 members. If 1%-2% are intersex, that’s a couple people in each congregation.

If we go with the lowest rate of 1 in 2000, consider that in the US & Canada a stake requires a minimum of 3000 members. So 1 or 2 members per stake would be intersex.

—————————————————————

I think these changes show that the Church is willing to include queer people up to a point. We can feel & be the person we believe ourselves to be as long as we don’t actually act in a way that affirms who we are.

We are to be loved, respected and welcomed, however these homophobic and transphobic policies remain in place. Love & respect is more than smiling & being nice to someone.

The policies of the Church regarding queer people is out of line with science. As science continues to advance and confirm that gender identities and sexual orientations are real and biological and not changeable by will, the tension for the Church on these topics will continue to grow.

“The only clear line I draw these days is this: when my religion tries to come between me and my neighbor, I will choose my neighbor. Jesus never commanded me to love my religion.” -Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor

Considering Jesus admonishes us again and again to love each other and that we are all alike to God, I can only guess that Jesus wept. Again.

[shitty-check-please-aus]

2020 Books Read So Far

Note: Most of these are audiobooks (listening to books counts as reading books and if you disagree I’d ask you to consider why you believe that), books I started and didn’t finish will be listed but not reviewed, and all my opinions are extremely subjective. I’m putting this on this blog because I want to and I think it’ll help me keep track of what I’ve read if I write it down in a couple places. 

Some notes:

I’m surprised that most of these are nonfiction! I don’t usually think of myself as a nonfiction reader. 

Having audiobooks has made me way more productive as a reader, since I can read while I’m doing repetitive tasks at work, when I have to stand on the bus, when I’m running, etc. 

Naked, by David Sedaris

3/5, the audiobook was “unabridged selections” which means “we didn’t edit the individual essays but you’re only getting half the book”– it would probably have been a 4/5 if it was a whole book. I liked that Amy Sedaris was reading parts of it, but that’s because I like her more than I like her brother. This is sort of an example of the difference between “comedic” and “humorous,” because it’s definitely the latter. 

Read it if: you want to read something pretty fucking weird. 

Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, by Sarah Vowell

4/5, I saw this recommended a lot when Hamilton first came out so it’s been in the back of my mind for a good while. The book had a great cast, and having different people reading the historical quotes was an excellent touch! 

However, I think Vowell’s conversational style is a little jarring here sometimes. It’s like “wait, why are you talking about Bruce Springsteen, I’m not that familiar with his work but he definitely isn’t from Revolutionary War times.” I got her book Assassination Vacation at a used bookshop recently as well, and both books suffer from post-2016 hindsight, where she’ll say something about how incompetent and foolish the politicians of her time are, and I just have to snort to myself and say “Sarah, you’re going to lose your goddamn mind soon.” That’s a bit of an unfair reaction, but it’s hard to avoid having it.

I was also, maybe unfairly, expecting to learn more than I did. The problem is that I know a Lot about the Revolutionary War, and from the introduction I thought we’d hear more about Lafayette’s later life (my knowledge drops sharply after about 1810). The book basically ends after the Battle of Yorktown, though.

Read it if: you have not seen/listened to both Hamilton and 1776, or if you want to read a summary of the Revolutionary War with a focus on one French captain. 

Assassination Vacation, by Sarah Vowell

3/5, honestly maybe a 2.5/5. Okay, so. Either I know a lot more about American History than I felt like I did or this is again a very surface level thing. Part of it is because she spends 123 pages on Abe Lincoln. There are 255 pages total. 2/3 of the states I’ve lived in are Indiana and Illinois, two states that fight about claiming Lincoln as their own, and I’ve been to D.C. 4 or 5 times, so I feel like I know enough about Lincoln. I know about John Wilkes Booth, and his brother Edwin who saved Lincoln’s son’s life, and the death train that took Lincoln’s body around the country. I did enjoy learning about the doctor who was probably conspiring with Booth and how he ended up saving tons of lives in prison when there was a yellow fever outbreak (also to be briefly unbearably nitpicky: I think she might have mixed up dengue and yellow fever? She calls yellow fever “breakbone” but I can only find instances online of people calling dengue fever that. Maybe they called them all breakbone in the late 1800s. If anyone reading this is an epidemiologist, let me know).

It was interesting to hear that Charles Guiteau, killer of President Garfield, was part of the Oneida cult. I’m trying to think of anything notable she said about Leon Czolgosz, killer of President McKinley. I guess she talks about how people assumed he was a foreigner because of his name, but I already listened to “The Ballad of Czolgosz” in Assassins, so I knew “Czolgosz, angry man, born in the middle of Michigan.”

This one is from 2005 so the politics stuff is a little more interesting, since at the time I was busy learning multiplication and spending one entire baseball season learning about baseball and following my team (they won the world series, I have excellent timing). I will say that in 2005 we did have Google, so I am again annoyed with some of her asides and personal anecdotes. Look, if you go to the Hemingway house and you don’t know there will be cats there, that’s on you if you don’t bring your Claritin. Hemingway is associated with only two good things, six-toed cats and Daiquiris. 

She also does not acknowledge that the parties basically switched platforms? Lincoln’s Republican party is not today’s Republican party, in fact kind of the opposite, so it’s weird that she starts the book with a dedication that’s like “to my lifelong Democrat grandpa, he’d be pissed I dedicated a book about 3 Republicans to him.” I guess she does sometimes say stuff like “how did Lincoln’s party become Reagan’s” (paraphrase), but she doesn’t actually get into it. 

Speaking of Democrats, she literally spends more time talking about Pablo Picasso than she spends talking about JFK. She doesn’t explain why she didn’t talk about JFK, but it seems bizarre to me to write a book about American assassinations and to leave out John Fucking Kennedy. Literally I’ve talked more about JFK in this section than she did in her assassin book. It’s not until page 253 that JFK gets a full paragraph. There are 255 pages total. Truly, if she’d taken a paragraph to be like “I’m focusing on the presidents who were elected before 1900″ or “the presidents whose immediate families aren’t still alive” or even “I didn’t want to travel to Dallas for research” or SOMETHING to explain why she left out JFK, I would have understood it more instead of flipping through the pages wondering what was going on. 

Read it if: You do not listen to too many history podcasts and you didn’t read the Wikipedia page for the musical Assassins. And I guess if you don’t want to acknowledge that JFK did also get assassinated and that was kind of a big deal. Actually just listen to Assassins instead. 

And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie

5/5 as a mystery, 0/5 for its original title (not gonna say it here but if you’ve ever googled the name of HP Lovecraft’s cat, it’s along those lines). Less than 6 hours, narrated by Dan Stevens from Downton Abbey, fairly ideal as an audiobook. I am 95% sure I’ve already read this, because I spent the summer before I started high school reading every Agatha Christie book in the library (I do not have a list of all the Agatha Christie books in my library the summer of 2010, so there is some question). 

Read if: you want to hear the guy from Downton Abbey deliver the line “I’m not a complete fool!” in a tone that makes it sound like “I’m not a fucking moron!” Sidenote: Can anyone tell me if Brits say “solder” by pronouncing the L that I’ve always heard as a silent L? Or if Dan Stevens just fucked up that one word?

Over The Top: A Raw Journey to Self-Love, by Jonathan Van Ness

4.5/5

This was a super enjoyable audiobook! It’s a testament to JVN’s considerable charisma that this book is full of him giving people in his past who would rather be anonymous Russian names, and it doesn’t get grating (as a Marina, however, I was shocked to not hear my name at any point; most of the other Marina’s I’ve met in my life are Russian). JVN has had a wild ride in life, and it’s a really raw, honest story of how he became who he is. I will say that if you are interested in reading this, please look up the trigger warnings; there are a lot of things that could be triggering to people. 

I feel a little bad at how much more I liked this one compared to Tan France’s memoir, but I also feel like whoever was ghostwriting that one did a bad job at making Tan seem... not extremely defensive, cocky, and prickly (it seems that JVN did not use a ghostwriter; Tan’s on the other hand, let the phrase “I’m proud to be a petty bitch” make it into the final proof several times). Also JVN advocates going to therapy in his book, while Tan kind of says that you should only go to therapy if you have no friends or family or life partner to talk to, which I fundamentally disagree with. I don’t know. I also feel like, if I were to get a makeover from the Fab 5, Jonathan would love my hair (I have great hair) while Tan would say that I’m dressing too old for a 24 year old and then take me to fucking Lane Bryant or Torrid (I wear a size 16 US so IRL options are limited). 

Read if: You like Queer Eye or Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness

Medallion Status, by John Hodgman

4.5/5

I really like John Hodgman’s podcast, and I got to ask him a question at an event he did at the Field Museum and he was very nice, so I went into this inclined to enjoy it. 

And I did! I had a good time reading it. I read it the first week of January and now it’s the second week of February so I have already erased much of the book’s content from my mind, but he somehow made the perspective of being a formerly kinda famous person really interesting. I would also recommend Vacationland, particularly if anyone wants to write an au where Nursey, as a New Yorker, has a vacation home in Dex’s town in Maine. That’s right, I brought it back around to the topic of this blog. And that would be a fucking fantastic au. 

Read it if: you like memoirs! it’s a good one. 

Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie

Gonna give this one a 3/5 for performance, because Dan Stevens (again, because I liked his narration in the other one) does a really annoying American accent for a few characters, and an extremely bad Italian accent for another. I’m starting this review only a few hours in, so if it turns out that the Italian man is not Italian, I’ll revoke my criticism. Still a 5/5 mystery, though. I did have to stop many times when they were talking about Istanbul to go over to Spotify and play “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” by They Might Be Giants. 

Books abandoned in 2020 (so far) (no real spoilers, I didn’t get more than a few chapters into any of them):

The Unhoneymooners, Christina Lauren

I got to a point where the main character was telling a lie that would put her newly accepted job into jeopardy, and it stressed me out so much as a relatively new hire that I stopped listening for the day and started another one, and then the week had passed and then the library took it back. I think I’d enjoy it more if I was reading it physically and I could control how fast I got through awkward parts (I am practically allergic to secondhand embarrassment). The performance was good and I did get a hankering for cheese curds. 

Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris

I had like three audiobooks checked out at the same time, and even though this was again an abridged version, I just didn’t have time for all of them. My mom has a physical copy, I’ll borrow that at some point. 

The Witch Elm, Tana French

This is one I may revisit someday. The main character is kind of an asshole, which is the point of his character I think, but it made it hard to get into the story. It’s also a 22 hour audiobook, which is kind of insanely long. Additionally, the narrator has a very slow way of talking, but if I tried to speed up the rate of playback I had trouble understanding his accent (I think I just have trouble processing really fast speech in general as well, but I would’ve had an easier time understanding someone with the same accent as me). Anyways, someone put a hold on it at the library and then I didn’t check it out again. 

[spideyy-girl]

Red Cheeks and Bloody Noses ~ Richie Tozier

Request: HEYYYY beautiful! I had an idea and I thought you’d be the perfect person to write it. I was hoping I could request a Richie T. x reader where she wants to do something nice for Richie so she rents out the Derry’s arcade/roller rink for a cute little hang out but it makes them both all flustered and ends up being a fluffy date with a bit of kissing? ✨

Summary: Richie takes Y/N out to distract her and have a fun day to themselves at the roller rink, even though Richie isn’t the best at skating…

Fandom: IT (2017)

Warnings: mentions PTSD, swears a lot, sexual innuendos (obviously, its Richie), blood (nothing too violent).

Word Count: 2016 (5.6 pages)

Date: March 11, 2019

A/N: So I sort of did Richie is more comforting the reader, but also the reader is comforting Richie sorta. Also sorry this took soooo long but I hope you like it. My first IT imagine yay!! REQUESTS ARE OPEN so if you liked this and want to see more, please tell me!!!!

It had been a week or so since the events that occurred at the crackhead house on Neibolt. It had also been a week since the Losers stopped talking to each other. Y/N sat in her room, legs crossed on her double bed, blank-mindedly staring at herself in the mirror hung up across from her. She had been in a dazed sort of state ever since she saw it, the creature had been plaguing her mind and appearing in her horrible nightmares since. She had tried reading a book, that always seemed to calm her down before, but she couldn’t find herself focused enough to even get through a page. In fact, she felt like she couldn’t focus on most things nowadays.  

The loud ring of the telephone made her jump, and knock herself off the high bed. She rubbed her head, looking at the doorway. She steadily stood up and made her way downstairs, still trembling from the earlier shock. Her shaking hands slowly went for the receiver before picking it up and holding it to her ear.

“H-hello?” she asked quietly, hoping not to hear children singing some creepy anthem again. Her breaths were uneven, waiting for the person on the other line to respond to her.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Y/N. I thought I ringed Bill with all the s-s-s-stuttering!” Richie Tozier’s loud voice erupted through the smallish device, causing her to immediately bring it away from her ear slightly. She sighed and rolled her eyes.

“What do you want Richie?” she asked, slightly annoyed. Y/N L/N and Richie Tozier have known each other for as long as they could remember. Sure they were considered as best friends, but they still annoyed the hell out of each other. To Y/N because he kept asking her out, and to Richie because she wouldn’t accept his offer.

“What do you think I want, babydoll,” Richie says, trying to sound flirty but just coming through as awkward. “I want to take you out and for you to ride me like a merry go round-”

“Oh my fuck, Richie! Do you ever shut the fuck up!” Y/N screamed as to hopefully not hear the rest of that sentence. She closed her eyes tight and cringed, trying to get that horrible statement out of her head. “How many times do I have to tell you, it will never, EVER, happen.”

“You say that now,” Richie counterparts, she could hear his smirk in the way he talked.

“Yeah, and I’ve been saying it for the past 7 years,” she replies. She hears Richie sigh on the other side of the line.

“Yeah whatever, but it will happen!” Richie proclaims. Before you could tell you otherwise, he continues. “So… have you talked to anyone yet?” he said, his voice suddenly getting quiet. It was odd to hear Richie so serious and concerned.

“No, I tried calling Bevvy but she didn’t answer.” Y/N said, feeling sad again. When she had met Beverly, she was so happy that there was finally another girl in the Losers Club, since she had to deal with the four boys for at least a decade. They had gotten really close but had disagreed when it came down to the fighting the demon clown argument. “What about you? Have you heard from Eddie or any of the other boys?”

“Well, Stan invited me to his bar mitzvah, so that’s sick,” Richie said, he also sounded a bit down. “You’re actually, uh, t-the first person I’ve c-called.”

“Look who’s stuttering now?” Y/N joke light-heartedly, earning a small laugh from the boy.

“Yeah yeah, whatever,” Richie dismissed her quickly, before mumbling something that was almost inaudible, but she had just heard. “Goddammit, Y/N. The one time I tried to be nice to you-” he cut himself off with a sigh, before speaking at a normal level again. “How are you? How’s your, uh, injury?” he asked. Y/N took a deep sigh, before lifting her short sleeve up to her shoulder, revealing a large and still very bruised and puff gash, she pushed it back down, not wanting to look at it.

“Let’s just say that it’s definitely not going anywhere anytime soon,” she said quietly. Her slightly brightened mood dimming out again fast.

“You alright?” he asked again, sounding concerned. Y/N didn’t know, but Richie very much loved the girl, and wouldn’t be able to handle if anything happened to her, which is why he freaked out on the other Losers when her arm was almost slashed off.

“Yeah, Richie, I just told you that it’s okay-”

“I’m not talking about your arm, dumbass,” Richie cut her off mid-sentence. “I meant after what happened, Y/N, you looked like you were about to shit yourself and you suddenly became mute. I know you, Y/N L/N, and you’re an obnoxious loud little bitch all the time. You fucking scared me.” Richie started to ramble, not knowing why he was suddenly spilling everything to her but knowing she probably needed the comfort anyways. After waiting for a response and not getting one, he spoke again.

“Alright, get off your ass and out the door, L/N. We’re going rollerskating! And yes you have to because I know it’s your favourite!” And before she could complain, he hung up. Y/N let out a loud groan before getting dressed and ready.

Half an hour later, Y/N finally pulled up to the rollerskating rink. Bright pink and green neon lights flashing the words right in front of her. She locked her bike and helmet to a nearby pole before walking in. She had tried to cover up the bags under her eyes with her mother’s makeup, and the stress pimple that formed on her relatively clear face, but neither seemed to be successful. She walked through the building, to the attached small diner on the side of the rink, where she found Richie sitting in their usual booth, slurping aggressively at a chocolate milkshake. Another Y/F/F milkshake stood in front of him, waiting for you. You smiled while you plopped down on the bench across from him and pulled the sweet beverage closer to you, already starting to feel better.

“Hey there, hot stuff,” he said, slicking his hair back and nodding at you. You rolled your eyes, trying not to let your small smile peek through.

“Don’t ruin this for me, Rich,” she warned him, quickly taking another sip of her milkshake before standing up with him and going to the desk to rent a pair of roller skates. Richie followed her, shrugging at her warning. They put on their wheeled shoes and got on the track and started skating around the brightly lit room.

Y/N had always loved rollerskating, she loved to overly loud music playing, the dark room lit up with patterns made up of neon lights on the walls, the oddly delicious milkshakes they made here. She came here almost every day, so it was safe to say that she was quite comfortable when she got on the rink. Richie watched as she gracefully placed one foot in front of the other, gliding against the sleek wood floor, as if it was easier than walking.

Richie definitely couldn’t relate to that sense of easiness when it came to this particular activity. Richie struggled before his wheeled skates even touched on the slippery floors. He must’ve fallen on his face at least 5 times before he joined Y/N on the track. And after that, well it was a bit of a shit show, for Richie at least. To say he was completely flustered would be completely true. Richie thanked god that the room was so dark so that Y/N couldn’t see his terribly red face, even though the darkness was also a factor to him tripping every two seconds.

“You alright, Rich?” He heard Y/N question, after Richie fell again, his face making a loud slapping sound against the wood. Y/N skated to him quickly, bending down and trying to help him on his knees. She gasped when he lifted up his face, revealing a slightly crooked nose and blood, lots of blood. Y/N had to really calm herself down, as the sight of the dark red liquid made her feel like crying, starting to bring up horrible memories.

“Yeah, yup, I’m all good,” Richie says, grasping at his nose. He and Y/N quickly get off the rink, Y/N making sure to hold his arm so he doesn’t trip again.`Y/N unties his laces, not really bothering to do hers in the process, as Richie stuffs his face with tissues to attempt to stop the bleeding. After taking them off, they rush quickly to the bathroom. Y/N immediately sat him on a toilet and got a wet paper towel to put on the back of his neck, as well as an abundance of toilet paper to help stop the bleeding from the source.

“Y/N, I appreciate this and all but… you know this is the boy’s washroom?” Richie ass, as she rushes around the small disgusting bathroom, trying to find more ways to help.

“You know I don’t really give a shit?” She quickly replied, finally walking over to him and kneeling down next to him, holding the paper towels in place as he tries to control stream. “It doesn’t look good, Richie. We should take you to a doctor-”

“No no no no no, I’m feeling better already!” Richie exclaims, attempting to get up, only to be pushed back down by the girl, giving him a stern look. She continued to tend to him, but taking a step back and looking at him. Richie smirked, pushing up his glasses.

“Whatcha lookin at, sweetcheeks?” He asked, wriggling his eyebrows. Y/N scoffed, rolling her eyes before going back to help stop the blood.

“The giant fucking mess on your face,” Y/N replied sarcastically, referring to his out of place nose, which she grabbed and snapped back into place, causing Richie to let out a loud groan of discomfort. He grabbed his nose, as Y/N cleaned up the rest of the blood before standing up to wash her hands. Richie stood up after her, going to the bathroom mirror to check out what happened.

“Hey, look! Good as new!” He says happily. Y/N smiled, her teeth peeking past her lips. She shrugged.

“All in a days work,” she joked, taking Richie’s face in her hands, examining the wound. Richie’s face fell and his cheeks went red again. “You should still get that checked out though.” She pulled away, not removing her hands from their position, and looked at the flustered boy.

“O-okay, t-thanks,” he managed to get out, the words falling quickly from his lips. Y/N smiled, she went up on her toes and pressed a lingering kiss to Richie’s lips, her hands winding around to the back of his neck. Richie tried to kiss back, but the kiss ended as quickly as it began.

“Thanks, Richie,” she said, a smile on her lips. “Today was actually a lot more fun than I thought it would’ve been.” Richie smiled nervously at the girl, not knowing how to reply. This was literally his dream coming true. Her hands slipped from his neck back to her sides as she went up and pressed another kiss to his cherry red cheek. “I can’t wait for our second date,” she whispered in his ear, before slipping past a man trying to get into the washroom, giving her a weird look in the process. Richie couldn’t help but stand there starstruck for a few seconds, before a giant shit-eating grin came upon his face as he ran all the way home, shouting and pumping his fist in the air.

“Stan the Man!! You wouldn’t believe what happened today!”

“You’re right, Rich, I probably won’t.”

[borisbubbles]

Eurovision 2010s: 02 & 01

It’s here.When you’re reading this I’ll be safely tucked away on a vacay, but let me say, it’s been an intense two months. 408 write-ups, 408 desperate famewhore, 408 beautiful people (and Boggie.). 406 have been ranked and now it is time to reveal whom I think the best entry of them all is.So let us start with the runner-up, the also-ran the entry that ALMOST could’ve made it, but didn’t. 

02. Iveta Mukuchyan - “LoveWave” Armenia 2016

All-time ranking: #12 

Hey, it’s me. Look,

I know it might sound strange but suddenly I’m not the same I used be

it’s like I’ve stepped out of space and time and ~Come Alive~

When she touched us, the world went silent. Calm before the stormed reached us. The art in motion set off all sirens. She took over our heartbeat - beat - beat

IT’S TAKING OVER ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

God I should just stop quoting “LoveWave” but it’s stronger than myself. SHE SHOOK MY LIFE LIKE AN EARTHQUAKE YOUR FAVES COULD NE-E-VER HAVE! It, too, is a stunning masterpiece, a masterclass in seduction, an example of how everyone should tackle avant garde. Completely original- ok lmfao that isn’t true, the Aminata influence is pretty obvious here. However, unlike most other copycats, Iveta understood that imitation is best served as a form of flattery: in other words she took on a great formula and made it even better. If Aminata was the “Love Injection”, the Iveta is the “Fierceness Injection”.

or more like a LOVEwave

SPREADING LOVEWAVES AND MY HEART GOES BOOM-BA-BA-DOOM-WO-OH-OH. 

At the relatively small cost of a lesser vocal performance Iveta brought us a more unfiltered, more realistic, more intense exploration of what love actually does to somebody and the result is supereffective. 

“LoveWave” is edgy and dynamic beyond my wildest expectations. It absolutely shatters me from start to finish. It’s a thrilling rollercoaster that never slows down and the second you believe you’ve figured out this meandering song’s musical formula, there’s yet a new twist around the corner. Its layers unfold slowly, gracefully, beautifully like the budding rose. There is only one entry that can compete with it in terms of its innovativeness and that’s the winner of this ranking. 

ARMENIA

A country of high risk/high reward entries. Armenia isn’t always good, and they are in fact very often terrible. However, the moments when they are good are moments of undisputed slayage. The persistent coin flip of the Armenian selection is a very exciting ride and I always look forward to seeing what they have on offer, provided they can fix their staging problems. 

________________________________________________________________

and now the moment you’ve all been waiting for: the WINNER is none other than: 

01. Lena - “Taken by a stranger” Germany 2011

All-time ranking: #04

Let us start by noting that Lena is DEFENDING HER TITLE, and what a defence it is. 😍 I shan’t get ahead of myself, but know that 2011 Lena blows 2010 Lena completely out of the water. Gone are the days of constipated adorkability. This beautiful introverted cygnet finally transformed into a graceful, confidence black swan. 

Okay so... as it turns out, my bitching about German women and 2011 entries was only foreshadowing for the inevitable: my favourite song in this decade is the German entry from my least favourite year of the 2010s.  😂

Of course, the fact this daring and amazing entry was sent by a country which usually doesn’t do daring, in a year which otherwise doesn’t do amazing only further enhances the spice, but there actually a more rational reason for me ranking Lena first:  “Taken by a stranger” marks the first time, the first true time an avant garde entry was taken seriously in modern Eurovision. 

Remember what I said about the original source always being the best? We are here. “Avant-Garde Eurovision” is Lena City and we’re all living in it. Before “Taken by a stranger” novelty entries were either greeted with mockery (Silvia Night, Pas de deux, Divine, Visionary dream) or as flukes, anomalies within the system (Sanomi, Dancing Lasha Tumbai). Critics saw them as shallow gimmicks and little more.  

“Taken by a stranger” reinvented the way people look at experimental music and did it with great style. Lena proved that weird can be accessible, that quirky can be high-quality and that artistic can be enjoyed. She proved that ‘different’ has a place in Eurovision.

She also proved that giant condoms make perfect dancing costumes:

 Without Lena, we have no precedent for “LoveWave” or “Love Injected” or “Rhythm inside” or “Midnight Gold” or “Skeletons”. Without Lena laying the groundwork and being greeted with praise, some of the greastest, most innovative entries in Eurovision may have been brushed off like “Telemóveis” and “The Social Network Song” were.

Now, I understand that “Euphoria” arguably set the same precedent as “Taken by a stranger” did and that’s definitely a valid point. However two counterpoints: One: Loreen came after Lena and therefore only expanded on the foundation that Lena already had established the year before.  Two: I love “Euphoria” but each time anyone in my vicinity praises it for being unique, a masterpiece, ... a great... song I just *yawn* instantly becooome *yawn* soooo tiiiiiiired, :snore:. “Taken by a stranger” is the true unsung hero that shaped the contest in what it is today, and remember, unlike Dina Garipova I always reach out to those who need it the most.

However, that’s the theoretical backstory behind  “Stranger” winning my ranking, what about the practice? What about the live? Does it hold up to the placement I gave her?

The answer is a resounding YES. “Taken by a stranger” is a shining example of an excellent, near-flawless perfomance: Lena takes the microphone with mad confidence, gets absorbed by her song’s dark, psychedelic energy and delivers an A+ singing and miming effort. Her soul-piercing stares into the camera are chilling beyond the bones.

The story told here is immersive (the quirky beat), credible (Lena’s faces), humorous (dancing condoms) and entertaining (all of the above), all at once. It unfolds like a neo-noir audiobook. I can only think of a handful other entries that hit a similarly wide spectrum of great eurovision qualities with the same killer accuracy as Lena did, all of which (lovewave, euphoria, love injected, city lights, etc)  made it deep into the ranking.

Over the years, I’ve patiently waited to see if anyone could replace Lena as my favourite of the decade. Over the years many came close, but never were great enough to dethrone her. The act which came the closest was indeed Loreen, but with “Statements”, not “Euphoria” and we all know how that journey ended. Perhaps its for the better. In her two iconic stints Lena proved that both chartable hits AND avant garde novelties can be worthy Eurovision entries, paving the way for Eurovision’s renaissance into a contest everyone takes seriously again, which makes her, in my humble opinion, one of the most, if not the most, important people to ever participate in the Eurovision Song Contest. 

ALL HAIL THE DOWAGER EMPRESS OF THE 2010S:

Germany is the ultimate hit-or-miss nation. There isn’t a single country in the history of Eurovision that has ranked as often in my bottom 5 or top 5 as Germany has (T10/B10 for the semifinal era). I always either love or hate their entries (with the exception of Jamie-Lee). At the same time however, I am often frustrated by them. Their penchant to make the WRONG decisions out of a severely misguided sense of “tolle Klasse” is what causes them to often select utter garbage and it irks me because they are capable of undisputed greatness. Lena is the quintessential example of Germany at their peak and I both look forward and dread what the upcoming decade will provide. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ That concludes my ranking, I hope you’ve enjoyed it. 🤗 Since I started this endeavour my follower count almost doubled to 225-ish and BorisBubbles received 800 individual page views per day, roughly 20K per month. THANK you for all the support and for coming back to me. It means a lot and keeps me motivated to gladly return with more ranking material on the 1st of April 2020, when I hope we can kickstart the 2020s in great style. 

If you want to see the full list, free to consult the overall list on IMGUR or delve into the archives 

In the meantime, take care and we’ll hopefully see each other in April! 😘 Love, Boris. 

[uniqueharreh]

The Night We Met

Summary: Harry loses his spouse to a terrible car accident, left with anger, sadness and loneliness, he finds a diary she kept writing for years. 

Warning: TW - depression, mention of a car accident -- if you lost someone and reading about it makes you feel uneasy, please don’t torture yourself like this. Otherwise, a lot of one-sided fluff to a sad person. 

Word Count: 2.2k 

Song Recommendation for this piece is Lord Huron - The Night We Met.

Sitting in our bedroom, without you. I never thought I would. I knew we were meant to be, you inspired a lot of art, a lot of songs that meant a lot to other people. You were my muse for all these years, and now, you weren’t here. 

And I couldn’t bring you back. I couldn’t. Your phone number was never going to be yours again, and you would never reply. 

And I couldn’t just go to your parents, ask if you were home. Because you weren’t, your address wasn’t on the Earth anymore. And, I thought many, many times of reuniting with you. To just stop the years of waiting until I can meet you, hug you and kiss you again. 

I canceled the rest of the tour, the second I found out what happened. And I still blamed myself for it. Not the drunk driver, or your impulsiveness behind the wheel. I always said you are going to have a car accident if you don’t keep both of your hands on the wheel, and both of your eyes on the road. 

You were just always the kind of person, who needed to talk and throw their hands around. Who bent half in their waist when they laughed. And you used to tell me that I was too serious and needed to live a little. 

I sent my driver for you, to bring you to the airport. We were supposed to meet in Japan, and you would continue the rest of the tour with me. I always felt much calmer, when I had you by my side. But you were a strong-willed woman, you needed to have your own business, and sometimes our ways just parted. 

And I admired you how patient you were with me, and my fans, and people around me. And I still remember the day I asked you to come to one of my shows, it was kind of narcissistic. But it was probably one of the best shows I have ever done. 

I could feel you in this room more than anywhere else. You taught me how to open up and talk about my emotions, which led to loads of fights at first, but then, you also taught me how to relax, how to sleep in. You changed me into a much more relaxed man. 

I also remember how my best friend and also a manager was watching the show, from his usual place. Jeff looked devastated, I was in the middle of the show and couldn’t be happier to see you tomorrow when you land. 

I had last two songs to perform, but I felt like something was wrong, and a single look at Jefferey was enough. I knew something bad happened. I walked over to him, leaned a bit lower so I could hear him. The fans were screaming loud, and his, Y/N had an accident, but she’s alright, scared me. But I knew that it’s last two songs and I can worry then. 

I was never the type of musician who would cancel a show in the middle of a set. I thought it was unprofessional, but the creeping emotion in the back of the spine, just made the entire ending uncomfortable. 

You died. You were in an accident, that took your life. There was nothing the responders could do for you. Jeff knew I would collapse on the stage if he told me the truth. Because that’s what happened backstage, I had to be taken to a hospital and to be given IRV. I remember calling your phone so many times, not being able to cope with the fact you were gone.

A quiet buzzing interrupted me from rethinking the night all over and over again. 

Mitch

Are you okay? Just landed in LA with Sarah, can come to meet you if you want.

I gave him a quick call, just to assure him I was doing well. He always texted me, asked me how I was doing. He spent days with me in hospital, taking care of me, trying to make me talk. But I couldn’t even open my eyes without crying. 

I walked around the room frantically, trying to calm myself down. I shouldn’t come to our house so soon. I wasn’t ready yet. But then I noticed a black leather notebook. I remember you to have the notebook with you everywhere, and you would never tell me what you were using it for. You said it’s a top secret and no one can know. 

It opened directly on one certain page, it seems like you used to reread that part, there was lots of heart painted there. And I felt my eyes getting watery at the sight of your handwriting. It was so polished, so beautiful. You could illustrate books, or create all these motivational quotes for online businesses. 

I sat down and started reading, wiping tears that escaped my eyes.

3rd April 2014

Dear diary, 

I met a lovely guy. He is a bit younger than me but so persistent. It was kind of a gimmick. It was like all these young adult books stories. Where the girl spills coffee on the guy and he turns out to be a vampire or something and they fall in love deeply. I was in my usual rush, carrying my laptop, handbag, books, and coffee in one hand while calling my boss. He was yelling at me, as usual, and all of sudden I ran into someone. Of course, I spilled my coffee all over his white t-shirts, my laptop fell on the ground and my screen is bit cracked, but it’s still working quite alright and everything just fell out of my handbag. 

Instead of yelling at me, he started picking my stuff and handing me the books I dropped, making sure my laptop wasn’t broken. He even apologized, and I lost it when I made a proper look at him. He was so beautiful. I never believed in love at first sight, but he looked like someone I would walk to at our wedding. His beautiful green eyes were looking down at me, he was speaking and I wasn’t sure if I heard him. I was just losing myself in the beautiful eyes. And his soothing, low and a bit raspy voice. 

And then he invited me out. That’s when I snapped out of it. And said no. 

What is actually wrong with me. 

Dear diary, it’s 25th of September 2016 and I just married this guy who happens to be my anchor. Just thought of an update. xoxo

I started crying, literal sobs were coming out of my throat. I always knew how much you meant to me, how much of a better person you were making me, Y/N. But I never understood what you saw in me. Even the point of us running into each other was different in my view. I was fighting with my sister over little things through texts. I wasn’t looking where I was going and all of sudden I had the warm black stain on my T-shirt. It was a natural habitat to apologize because it was my fault. 

24th April 2012, 

Dear Diary, 

I’ve been a bit busy lately. But apparently, he got my business card and texted me nonstop. I mean Harry. The guy that I spilled my coffee at. Tonight, we were supposed to meet. Well, he invited me to his show. Or his band’s, actually. Told me to meet him backstage and stuff. 

I must admit he is talented, quite the package. And after his security guard led me to the backstage, he introduced me to everyone in the room. I was nervous, my friends told me who he was, and how successful his band was starting to get. 

After he took a quick shower, we agreed to go somewhere to eat. Harry actually let me choose where. And we went to Mel’s diner. Apparently, they already had a thing called The Harry Special, and I just wanted to make him uncomfortable. To mock him for it even. 

And he seemed to be amused when he heard the diner’s name. I don’t know if he knew I knew. But I definitely knew he knew, that everyone else knew. 

When I ordered the special, he nearly choked on the water he just tried to swallow. 

I think he got me right there. Without us actually talking properly yet. He had a good sense of humor, and he made sure I was feeling comfortable. 

He walked me back home, lending me his cardigan. We talked about our families, and he seemed to be fond and privileged to have such a beautiful family around him. 

He was everything I looked for in a man. 

But I thought those existed only in fictions. 

And he waited if I wanted to give him a kiss, he didn’t make the first move, he didn’t pressure me. And he made sure I was safe home until he walked into a car arriving. 

Dear diary, I think I have a sweet spot for that guy. 

Yeah, you love him, fool.

I was crying. I always thought that our first date was a disaster. Not that inviting your potential date to your work, that is a literally a show of what you can do to thousands of people, is a bad idea. It was an asshole idea. We used to laugh so many times about it. Always asked me if I tried to make sure you wanted to date me, by telling you I was famous. 

And I always mocked you for thinking I needed to show off my wealth to have you. I remember when we first kissed, it took me five dates to finally make the first move. And I think you were enjoying how unsure I was about myself around you. I was stepping on my own foot way too often and always tripped. I sometimes stuttered even. I think you must have thought I didn’t even make it past an elementary school at that point. 

And I would always remember when I was sick and was on voice rest. And everyone tried to make me talk, and make fun of me that I couldn’t. And you bought me that board, that I could write on. You always made sure, that I was happy. 

It was always me, who was cooking. You would never, not that you wouldn’t like to be all domestic together. But you were a terrible cook. 

I remember when you tried to make me homemade pasta for our first anniversary because you knew how much I loved Italy and their cuisine. But you messed up. And I wasn’t even sure how. But it was terrible, but I still ate the entire thing. Because you seemed so excited that you at least tried for me.

And when you decided to open your business, I had your back. I supported you. I tried to help you with everything and even offered to invest in you. But you denied my offer. Always said you need to make it by yourself. 

And I remember when we tried to have a baby together, but then you found out you couldn’t and you felt so sorry, you cried a lot that month. Blaming yourself and telling me, that we can break up, that she’s going to be alright. 

And I remember that you cried, even more, when I offered that we can adopt sometimes later when you’d be ready to become a mother. 

And I remember how you walked the altar, everyone had eyes only for you. You were so beautiful. And it was the first time I properly cried on the public. 

You said yes, and you were mine, and I was yours. 

But now I’m here, crying over the happiest memories. Because I won’t be able to share them with you. Not again. I won’t be able to have a child with you and become a father. 

I won’t be able to sing about you either. Because every memory of you was too painful. 

You had a wonderful funeral, and I tried to sing your favorite song. But just broke into pieces. I shattered. I met my lowest and nothing could make the pain to go away. 

I tried it all, alcohol, drugs, Xanax, antidepressants. But you were still standing there, in your wedding dress, in my mind. 

And I knew you would hate to see me like this. Hiding from all my friends. 

You would kick my ass if you knew that I haven’t talked to my mom or my sister for months. 

That I stopped living, and just lived in the memory of you. 

I wish you could take us to the night we made love for the first time, to take us to the first night of our honeymoon when you expressed how much you loved me and made me cry like a little boy. 

I wish you would take me with you. 

Because the world is a very dull place without you. 

[dynamic-instability]

In one of my classes we have to write weekly personal narratives about an experience with illness. This week, mine turned into this. It’s probably too personal, and too... immediate?? to turn in to a professor without cutting out a lot of stuff, but not too personal to post online I guess lol

_____________________________

It’s November again.

In 2009 the lights were too bright. Mid-October one morning I woke up to my dad turning on my lights and it was like having to look into the sun while posing for a photo—my eyes wouldn’t stay open, if I forced them to, they couldn’t stay pointed in one direction, they spasmed and hurt. When the light was dimmed, I still saw double. That morning, I showered in the dark, and I remember being scared. They gave me eyedrops that paralyzed my accommodative muscles. In November my pupils were giant discs and I wore reading glasses over sunglasses to look at the computer, and when it was all said and done, the lights were still too bright, and I still saw double.

In 2011 I was tired. There’s fatigue and then there’s fatigue, I learned that Fall. In May of that year I had pulled two all-nighters in a week, and that was the only other time I’d felt this kind of tired, a sensation in about the 30th hour of the second time where it’s like my brain itched. I once saw someone else online describe it as “nausea, but in your head and eyes instead of in your throat and stomach” and that’s the closest anyone else has come to describing it. By November this was happening more and more often. I remember laying down in the corner of the room during a break of Citywide choir and thinking what the hell is wrong with me? I got a cold the next week, and I thought that maybe that was all it was. It wasn’t.

In 2013 I went to the ER for the fifth time in three months of college, and when I wanted to leave before waiting another couple of hours to eventually see a doctor who would tell me once again that they couldn’t do anything to help me, the woman from student life who was there to drive me back to campus made me call my parents on speaker phone and get their permission to leave before she would turn on the car. I had missed more chemistry labs than I could afford to miss without failing, passed out in a voice lesson, was asked by the director to drop out of choir because watching me was distraction when I looked like I was in pain, and if I passed out it would have ruined the concert for everyone. I remember leaving calculus in the mornings mid-class to go to the bathroom and lay on the floor and cry. I remember not being able to lift my hand off the mattress of my dorm room bed. I withdrew from half of my classes on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, and took the Spring semester off.

In 2014 I had made a promise to myself that I would come back to college full time for that Fall semester just to see if I could do it, and then if I couldn’t I would drop out for good. There was one week where I thought that might be happening. Mid-November. The girls in my dorm had made a fort in the lounge out of sheets and blankets and colorful scarves and I remember laying on the couch through the green-filtered light and feeling the world spin and thinking oh god I still can’t do this. The door opened with a rush of cold air and my friends came in with food for me, since I’d been too sick to go to dinner. They sat with me and helped me with chemistry, offered to type up a paper if I dictated it, told jokes and made me laugh. I took an incomplete in one class, but I passed everything else, just barely scraped through, and came back in January.

In 2015 I just wanted to sleep. I passed out in an elevator and heard familiar voices, concerned voices, as I came to, and I stayed there laying motionless for another minute longer, because as long as I wasn’t awake I didn’t have to keep pushing. I wrote whole pages of completely unreadable ochem notes because my hand wasn’t working any better than my brain, and woke up on the floor and was wheeled out on a stretcher crying. It was dark all the time. My cane slipped on wet leaves and I felt my wrist crunch and there it was, one too many missed organic chemistry labs. I couldn’t stand for an entire choir rehearsal because breathing to sing made me lightheaded. I slept for 16 hours a day. The week before Thanksgiving, I called my mother to tell her I had decided to take another hardship withdrawal, and she sighed. I had applied to transfer schools during my much more optimistic Spring semester and Summer, and the week I left was also the week I found out I’d been accepted.

And so okay now it’s 2019, and it’s October and now November again, semester plan again, dark again. My reading is piling up again, feeling overwhelmed again, laying on my kitchen floor again. But here’s the thing—my health is… fine? Midterm week I didn’t sleep, and yes I passed out twice, but no ER. For the past 18 months, I can count on one hand the number of mornings I’ve been unable to get out of bed because of fatigue. My heart still pounds too hard but my head doesn’t swim every time I sit up. I walk the streets of New York City like mobility has never been a problem. I always take the stairs. My brain doesn’t itch until it’s been 30 hours no sleep.

I couldn’t go to class last week. I lay on the floor of my kitchen and stared up at the ceiling and tried to get up, tried to type out an email to my professors, and I couldn’t do it. I was not too tired. I was not too weak. I was not in pain. I could not move. I try to write and try to write and try to write and the words don’t come. I eat instant oatmeal at 9 PM because I haven’t been to the store in a month. I have lost nearly 15 pounds since moving to New York. I clean the stove for two and a half hours but can’t bring myself to take the dead spider off the side of the bathtub. I check the door lock one-two-three times, pace the floor, sit back down. I do not read Austerlitz. I write a Canvas post for Self and Other but it’s nonsense. I do not write a Canvas post for Accounts of Self. I do not write a Canvas post for Applied Writing. I write a Canvas post for Illness and Disability and somehow forget to post it, the one thing I’ve actually done, because I’m too busy feeling sick at everything I haven’t. I shadow a doctor for the clinical witnessing assignment and everything is fine but when I try to write it up I have a panic attack that leaves me sobbing on my couch and the assignment nine days late and counting. It takes me eight hours to write two pages. I watch 18 hours of YouTube video essays discussing drama about creators I don’t even watch and play a stupid game on my phone for an entire weekend until I’ve spent $25+ in a labyrinth of microtransations and every time I close my eyes I see the moving dots.

In November of 2015 I had three overdue essays for Global Literature, and two more due in the next two weeks. More than half were on books I had not read. My pre-lab wasn’t done for organic chemistry, and I wondered for a moment, if I pretended to pass out, if that would be easier. I stayed up until 4 AM laying on my floor and listening to Hamilton. I was sick, that much is true, but when I felt okay I still sat at my computer and could not bring myself to write.

In 2011 I had so many unfinished assignments for my college-level English class that I resigned myself to failing and I went to school the morning of the final class, but I hid in the stairwell by the choir room until I heard the bell, and I never went back to that class.

2009 was the year my dad stopped being able to yell at me for not doing my homework, because no one, including me, could tell whether it was actually my eyes stopping me.

In 2008 I wrote 6 essays in the 5 days of Thanksgiving break because I had not done any work for Intro to Lit all semester. I pulled it off, somehow, even aced the class because of an unusually lenient late work policy, but what I most remember is the sick feeling of dread as I lay on the floor in the living room staring up at the Christmas tree and feeling invisible sand slip through an invisible hourglass and a vice tightening in my chest.

In 2006 I stayed up almost all night writing a paper and crying my eyes out because I couldn’t find the words to explain to anyone why it had been so impossible for me to get the work done, that I wasn’t being lazy or distracted, I just couldn’t do it. I wasn’t necessarily reading YA novels or watching TV or IMing my friends instead of working, I could sit and stare at a blank word document for 6 hours straight and still it would not get done. Everyone talked about potential, talked about how smart I was, but a gradebook that is half 100’s and half 0’s still averages out to an F. No one, including me, could explain the discrepancy. The logic of that simple math was not lost on me, the knowledge that turning in half-finished or not very good work was mathematically better than not doing it, but that didn’t mean I could do it. Words failed me when I tried to explain the illogic of my particular suffering.

I didn’t hear the term executive dysfunction until I was in my 20s. In retrospect I was tentatively told at 16 that I had “probably some ADHD and OCD”, but that psychiatrist was someone I’d been sent to by a neurologist because he thought she could fix my eyes, and when she said she couldn’t, I stopped making appointments. After I got sick, physically sick, the lines blurred between what was causing what, to the point where even I have no idea. Two of the Novembers missing here are ones I spent at CC, on the block plan where I only took one class at a time. My physical health arguably improved a little after transferring in January of 2016, but mostly it didn’t, not until Spring of 2018 at least. And you can see that evidence in dropped blocks, concussions from passing out onto hard surfaces, a couple of incompletes taken when viral illnesses (or concussions) compounded my other problems. What the block plan changed was the way things pile up, lessened the struggle of constant task switching between classes. (Admittedly, I also had fewer papers when taking mostly science classes. Writing takes much more energy, and it’s much harder to convince myself it doesn’t have to be perfect to be worth submitting.) At CC nothing ever really reached the level of catastrophe. Some of that is purely the ability to drop a single block, meaning when it was my physical health that was the problem, I didn’t lose a whole semester, just one class, then reset. But I should have realized sooner that the block plan wouldn’t account for the level of improvement if my physical health had really been the only barrier.

So we’re back to now. Grad school. November again. Dark again. Semester plan again. Too much writing again. Crushing dread again. Dysfunction again. Panic attack in the middle of the night increasingly elaborate organizing rituals scream of the subway tracks in my mind can’t stop can’t start can’t breathe can’t move burnout again. This time without the explanation of chronic fatigue to fall back on.

I have my tricks, have actually learned somewhat to cope in the past 18 years. Schedules help, break tasks into pieces that are as small as possible. Mindfulness meditation. Forgive yourself when it’s not perfect. Get started with something easy, set a timer for 20 minutes and only work for those 20 minutes and then let yourself stop if you want to (and surprisingly often, you won’t want to, sometimes that momentum is all it takes). If you work better in the night, work in the night, who cares what society says your sleep schedule should be. When switching tasks, physically get up and move to a different location. Allow yourself to procrastinate on work with other work if that’s what you have to do. Delete the stupid games from your phone. One or two missed assignments are not actually the end of the world, if you let yourself view it as piling up, you won’t be able to get anything done, so if you absolutely have to, just move through and move on.

It’s not a catastrophe, this November. It’s a fight, but it’s not a catastrophe. I read Austerlitz and forgive myself for skimming it. I write a Canvas post and forgive myself when it’s only 500 words and doesn’t make complete sense. I read Toni Morrison and Édouard Louis and classmates’ discussion posts about Deaf culture and identity and remember why this matters in the first place, that it’s not just a series of assignments to overwhelm me, it’s a series of interesting complicated exhausting important thoughts and questions. I get it done. Some of it. Most of it. I let myself sleep. I breathe. I remember to be grateful because I can get out of bed in the mornings and take the stairs. I am okay.

[hypeathon]

A Belated, Nuanced Response to the Rooster Teeth Animation Glassdoor Controversy

2019 has been an especially problematic year to be a fan of animated content from Rooster Teeth.

By now, any of you reading this might already know what happened. But for those that don’t know the gist of it, since late March of 2019, Rooster Teeth consecutively received rather scathing reviews from anonymous employees via the job recruitment website, Glassdoor.

As of the time of this post, there have been 15 negative reviews listed that can mostly be seen with a Glassdoor account. Although they did gain a bit of attention from certain people that attempted to exploit this to any Rooster Teeth Animation fans at one point or another, it was not until RWBY Conversations on Tumblr made a blog post on June 15th with a compilation of screenshots of each review and addressed the matter quite aggressively. That same day, the post made its way to all the major social media platforms and emotions spiked incredibly high.

There have been numerous opinion pieces in the form of tweets, blogs, reddit posts and videos, the last of which has been made by people who otherwise don’t know anything about Rooster Teeth. Lots of other people have been outspoken about the matter, but what do I think of it? First off, as a clarification, I was... somewhat aware of this reputation Rooster Teeth had recently been receiving a couple of weeks prior to when things blew up. I say “somewhat” because I stumbled into this from someone (who shall remain nameless) who has been quite known for being committed to paiting anything related to RT Animation in a negative light. I took the matter with a grain of salt not because I thought the reviews I saw were false (more on that later) but rather because not having an actual Glassdoor account, I only saw a small fraction of the reviews made available so I admittedly underestimated the magnitude of the situation.

With that out of the way, to sum up my thoughts on the controversy, it’s definitely concerning. Coming from someone that has spent a good year highlighting and analyzing the skills of individual animators from RWBY and the show’s production into volume 6, the scale of the backlash from former and current RT Animation employees has been a bitter pill to swallow. It’s alarming knowing that things have gotten bad enough to warrant the responses seen on Rooster Teeth’s Glassdoor page as both a stern advisory to higher management and a warning to anyone who has considered working there. However, as alarming as this all has been, what I’m not going to do at this point and what I’ve been mostly careful about avoiding is emitting a knee-jerk, heightened emotional reaction.

As stated in the beginning of this post, 2019 has been pretty rough for fans of RT Animation. This is far from the first controversy of the year to come by and invoke extreme and conflicting feelings regarding this one company name and what tends to follow are very loud, irrational and even some bad faith discussions. It doesn’t matter if it’s about the company’s animation department or about blacklisting a voice actor or what an employee advises about watching something you don’t like, the responses have been consistently reactive with extreme opinions and with little thought for nuanced or educated conversations. This matter with RT Animation has been no exception in that regard, though to be fair, it’s not without good reason. I may have my interests towards RT Animation and content both in front of and behind the scenes, but I do also value seeking information and learning. And going forward, the latter is very relevant in order to get as much of a full picture of this controversy.

Now, having said that, this is something to be genuinely concerned about and is thus a rather difficult and touchy subject to talk about. I want to make it clear that everything I’m about to say from here-on is not meant to discredit what former and current employees have said nor is it to sugarcoat Rooster Teeth’s tendencies. I may ultimately be giving Rooster Teeth some benefit of the doubt, but I’m not going to obscure the things they have done that have led to things being the way they are. At the same time, I’m not going to viciously crucify them over this either. I won’t judge or blame anyone that has or will continue to resort to harsh measures to call out Rooster Teeth on their practices regarding crunch and production management. I’m just choosing personally to throw my two cents in a less harsh manner since what I plan to cover in this blog post will require avoiding that. The goal is to share and dissect some things using whatever information I can collect and contextualize which would hopefully provide a better understanding about how things got to the way they have and what Rooster Teeth is supposedly attempting to do about it.

Getting to the Bottom of The Situation

There’s a lot to unpack so let’s first start by breaking down the reviews themselves. As mentioned earlier, between the months of March and June of 2019, there have been at least 15 critical reviews from a combination of current and former employees regarding their experiences at Rooster Teeth animation. They each may vary a bit in tone and wording, but just about all of them share the same set of complaints that can be summed up as follows:

More often than not unpaid overtime work hours

Poor planning of scheduling and budgeting from managers in higher-up positions

General pay that’s too low to compensate for the unpaid overtime

Unfulfilled promises to contract employees of being given full-time employment after their time was up

Inexperienced directors/producers/managers

  This is the bulk of the criticisms and to breakdown the pattern of reviews further:

5 of them were from former employees while 10 of them were from current ones.

4 of them were from animators (2 specified 3-D animators), 2 were from compositors and the rest did not specify.

2 claimed to have worked at RT Animation for less than a year, 7 claimed to have worked for over 1 year, 2 claimed to have worked for over 3 years, 1 claimed to have worked for over 5 years and the rest did not specify.

Now some fans who have spoken about the reviews questioned the legitimacy of them. This is an understandable reaction but given the broken down information between the set of reviews, there’s evidence to suggest that they are very true. Most of who claim that they are true would immediately point to a handful of tweets from the creator of the 2-D animated series, Nomad of Nowhere, Georden Whitman who left RT Animation in 2018. His claims have much validity to them, but he’s not the only former employee who has brought up the matter directly or indirectly. Without getting too specific or naming names, one person who had been credited on RWBY & Red vs Blue from 2016-2018 indicated that the management and scheduling of productions was the reason said-person left. Another instance was one whose position was in the post-production stage of a few projects who had left RT Animation in early March of this year after having been credited in a few projects since latter 2017. This actually matches the description of one of the former employees who left a review in late March, who had been working at RT Animation for over a year. Even the description of one of the current employees who claimed to have been working for over 5 years is especially specific, as that would’ve been at least since at least 2014. Back then, the staff count on productions like RWBY volume 2 and Red vs Blue season 12 was much smaller and Rooster Teeth’s animation department was not officially founded until later that same year. 

So it’s not really a matter of whether the reviews themselves have any truth to them or not. Instead, a better question to ask and focus on is why did this happen? How did things get so problematic that it led to harsh responses one after another on just one job recruitment site alone? One thing I’ve seen fans and critics of RWBY suggest after this controversy broke out was to have volume 7 be delayed, with some going as far as launching a signature campaign to plead Rooster Teeth to delay the volume as if volume 6′s production was the main culprit behind the backlash. Putting aside the very questionable success rate of online signatures, while delaying the next installment of one of their shows is not ultimately a bad idea, it’s overlooking a couple of important details. The big one is the timing of these reviews which again, have been consecutively posted on Rooster Teeth’s Glassdoor page since late March of 2019. On the 9th of that same month, the season finale of Gen:Lock premiered which actually was the same date as when the former employee who worked in post-production left the company. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Gen:Lock’s production was what ultimately led to the backlash when you take into account director and writer of the show, Gray Haddock, posted a journal entry on June 2018 where he elaborated on the arrangement of staff between that show and RWBY volume 6′s production.

“Some of you have had questions about how production of gL impacts RWBY or vice-versa, and the answer is that these are largely parallel productions with separate crews.”

Earlier in January of 2018 on the season 1 finale episode of RWBY Rewind, Gray confirmed that Gen:Lock was “in the throws of pre-production”, where Gray was finishing a couple of the scripts left characters and mechs were being designed. A month prior, Gray posted a journal entry, stating that storyboards started on the first week of December. Though when he said the characters and mechs were being “designed”, it’s unclear whether that meant they were already designed and were in the midst of being modeled or not. But given how Gray also said animation would start “pretty soon” at the time, it might’ve been the latter, maybe?

It was never made clear when the animation phase started for Gen:Lock between the months of January and June of 2018. Regardless, the fact that both productions were for several months happening at the same time was what bit Gray in the butt. Now on the one hand, he’s not entirely wrong about the crews between productions being separate. As far as higher positions like directors, supervisors, leads, and assistant leads were concerned, certain teams like animation, lighting, and modeling between Gen:Lock and RWBY volume 6 did have separate names leading the helms. However, as the old saying goes, the devil is in the details and upon closer inspection, not all teams for both shows’ respective productions had separate leads such as camera layout, crowds & tech. Not only that, but the lower positions of each team had a lot of names overlap. And these credits were just from the first episodes of RWBY volume 6 and Gen:Lock. This is not counting how certain names like Paula Decanini who was co-lead animator throughout RWBY volume 6 wound up being co-lead animator for Gen:Lock by episode 7. Also, something to keep in mind is that a one or two reviews mentioned how some employees were under contract for roughly 90 days, equating to 3 months. It’s possible that Gen:Lock needed the extra hands by earlier January as maybe a sign that maybe deadlines during the production were not being met accordingly.

Now none of this is to say that RWBY had no potential issues of it’s own. One review from a 3-D animator mentioned about doing a “10-14 minute episode in 2 weeks” (whether that’s through the entire production or during later episodes is unclear) as an example of higher management having insanely high expectations, which likely referred to RWBY. It doesn’t help that for volume 6, the Lost Fable episode marked both the longest and one of the most difficult episodes to make, so it is not exempt from this. However, Gen:Lock’s episodes were longer, spanning between 20-30 minutes on average which meant that on the day of an episode’s premiere, every stage and aspect of that half-hour long episode had to be finished with each episode premiering back-to-back without a break. While RWBY’s episodes can vary more wildly in length, they are on average under 20 minutes. Also, not every episode of RWBY has a fight sequence whereas every episode of Gen:Lock had at least one either in the form of actual battles or sparring matches between mechs, humans or aircraft. That’s noteworthy due to how, at least in RWBY, a fight sequence can span between 4-6 weeks while a dialogue sequence can take roughly 2 weeks to do. Assuming a similar time frame applies to the same kinds of sequences in Gen:Lock, that, combined with each episode’s run time and the amount of animators, compositors, lighting artists, modelers, layout artists and crowd artists having to go back and forth between RWBY volume 6 & Gen:Lock, especially when the latter premiered right when the former finished, that would have likely led to the absurd crunch periods we’ve been hearing about.

Speaking of crowd artists, that’s another matter to consider. RWBY and Gen:Lock may both be 3-D animated projects, but the latter is arguably more demanding of its presentation due to its story’s hard sci-fi setting. This can apply to the show having a set of assigned User Interface or “UI” compositors for the many holographic images and text displayed throughout the show, which is unique to Gen:Lock, as well as models of background characters and their animations. In an interview from the website Inverse on October 9th, 2018, Miles Luna, the voice of Migas in Gen:Lock and co-writer of RWBY said the following:

“It’s one thing to make a fantasy world because you can’t compare it to real life,” says Miles Luna. “But a cartoon version of something that exists? All eyes are going to be on what’s correct. One of those things is crowds.” Without getting deep into the specifics, Luna says Rooster Teeth has made leaps in efficiently creating crowd scenes, not to mention making them look alive. “We did a whole bunch of R&D on crowd research for gen:LOCK that we’re now able to use retroactively for RWBY Volume 6,” he explains.

It was never specified ever since what supposed leaps were made in creating crowd scenes, but there is a clue. Back in RTX Austin of 2018 in August, it was confirmed from both the compositing and tech panels that RWBY volume 6 would be utilizing a new software for Crowd simulations called Houdini from Side FX. This is different from how for volume 5, the Autodesk Maya plug-in, Golaem was used and before that, crowds were done more manually. This is backed by lead crowds artist, Jacob Hilton on episode 1 of CRWBY: Behind the Episode season 2. It’s a likelihood that Houdini was similarly used for Gen:Lock and this is not the first time a software was used for one production before being used for another one. Though given the scale of background characters for crowds that have to sit, talk, walk, run and whatever other kinds of gestures in various shots, it may have possibly served as a challenge to handle, even with a more efficient software. It doesn’t help either that a majority of the main cast are seen wearing 2-3 different outfits which require extra models to be built and rigged.

I want to stress that all of backlash is not due to Gen:Lock exclusively, as much of this applies to other animated shows like RWBY. But it does seem to be the straw that broke the camel’s back for some and it’s production and scheduling might’ve been part of a broader problem. In 2018, there was a certain strategy to scheduling various Rooster Teeth animated shows, be it 2-D or 3-D ones. Let’s look at the following:

RWBY Vol 5 - October 14, 2017 - January 20, 2018

RWBY Chibi 3 - January 27, 2018 - March 17, 2018

Nomad of Nowhere - March 16, 2018 - April 20, 2018

Red vs Blue S16 - April 15, 2018 - July 23, 2018

Camp Camp S3 - May 25, 2018 - August 10, 2018

RWBY Chibi S3 (Cont’d) - June 30, 2018 - August 17, 2018

Nomad of Nowhere (Cont’d) - August 17, 2018 - September 20, 2018

RWBY Vol 6 - October 27, 2018 - January 29, 2019

Gen:Lock - January 29, 2019 - March 9, 2019

Red vs Blue S17 - March 9, 2019 - May 25, 2019

Camp Camp S4 - June 1, 2019 - September 28, 2019 (Presumably)

Although there are a few small gaps and a one or two overlaps, a season/volume of each show have come and gone right after one another. And that was just from 2018 to 2019 as of the time of this post. Scheduling content like this was not always case for Rooster Teeth, even back when the Animation department was founded. I imagine that this schedule is parallel to the gradual changes in how their first membership has been arranged which is due to the success of their animated content. Once upon a time, before Rooster Teeth Animation existed, it use to be that RWBY and Red vs Blue would be available for paid subscribers a mere hour before it was made available for everyone else on the website.

It’s clear that Rooster Teeth does consider their animated content very valuable, but the scale of the projects and the rate they end up being made are at the expense of the middle-men going through unpaid overtime. There are cases where with say, RWBY, measures are taken to increase the quantity of staff so that almost everyone is not required to wear more than one hat, have the pipeline for different software and plug-ins set-up at the start of a production and making sure every team has their own coordinator and manager. But it’s clear that despite these measures taken, they have not been large enough to fully compensate for the increased scale of the productions and the rate these productions need to get made. These circumstances are unfortunately not exclusive to Rooster Teeth either, as this has been a prevalent problem in the Japanese animation industry. On rare, more extreme occasions, you hear of staff members of animation studios either committing suicide or dying from overwork (otherwise known as “Karoshii”), whereas reports of how animation studios are suffering tight schedules to get shows like Black Clover, Dragon Ball Super, Märchen Mädchen, Dynamic Chord, God Eater the Animation and Attack on Titan out week-to-week with either poor, mixed or efficient-looking results through the presentation are more commonly made. Though similar to this Glassdoor situation, there are people in the anime industry, such as production assistants, who have anonymously spoken out about the harsh, troubling working conditions. Part of these situations may be due to Japan’s culture being taken to an extreme, but the systemic woes plaguing the anime industry can always be seen as cautionary tales of what a company like Rooster Teeth should avoid doing.

Looking Ahead towards Rooster Teeth’s Future

A lot has been touched on regarding the Rooster Teeth’s poor management within their animation department and there’s more I could touch on. There might even be certain woes behind-the-scenes that I’m unaware of. However my goal is not to perpetually dwell on the downsides. The question to ask from here-on is what can be done about this or rather what is being done about it? To stress, it’s not just about what should be done. Yes, Rooster Teeth should improve their management and recruit people who know how to handle deadlines better. Yes, Rooster Teeth should avoid overtime crunch periods from happening in their animated productions as much as possible. Yes, staff of various positions should be payed better. There’s a lot of discussions about what they should do and I do not disagree with any of those advisories. But there’s not a whole lot of what they can do or even what they are supposedly doing about the situation right now.

There have been certain suggestions on what Rooster Teeth can do. Delaying RWBY volume 7 is one thing, but balancing out the scheduling between all of their live-action and their animated content more would help, assuming they haven’t already done so. Unionizing would also be a significant improvement and is something I’ve seen a former employee desire. Another animation studio in Austin, Texas, Powerhouse who is most known for making the Netflix Castlevania series, is one of many studios signed to collective bargaining agreements with The Animation Guild. These are some valid steps they could take, though for now, let’s examine what is actually being about all of this, starting with looking at Rooster Teeth CEO, Matt Hullum’s Journal Entry post who responded about the matter on June 17th. More specifically, certain segments of his entry are worth examining:

  “Over the last several months we conducted a review and have taken several steps to improve communication and workflow to ensure we have a studio where people are happy to come to work every day. We are announcing today new measures on the road to improvement.

Effective today, we are moving forward with a previously planned change in our producing and creative structure. Gray G. Haddock is stepping down as head of studio for animation to dedicate himself to a strictly creative role. With Gray’s help, we have been in the process of hiring a new production head of the department, who will be responsible for the overall producer hierarchy and staff management. We want to thank Gray for his hard work and dedication to growing the animation studio over these years, and are excited to continue working with him in this new capacity.

Further, we are consulting with experienced leaders in the animation industry on our workflow, pipeline, production structure and other areas to enhance the workplace experience for our staff. Margaret M. Dean, the head of Ellation animation studios and president of Women In Animation, will consult with us and aid the search for a new studio lead.”

There are a few important things to dissect about Matt’s response. First of all, the fact that this is something higher-ups at the company have spent several months doing can be interpreted in two ways. On the one hand, it can be seen as wondering why is it that only in that span of time have more drastic steps been taken to do something about this as oppose to a year or so before that, which is a very fair counterargument. On the other hand, taking several months to do this which could’ve been around the time the series of Glassdoor reviews since March were posted, if not before that is at least a sign that they have been conscious about these issues to want to do something about it and spend the time tending to the matter.

If the journal entry ended there, then it would naturally be seen as vague, damage control, press release speak that would satisfy no one. But there is of course more to examine, such as Gray Haddock stepping down from his position as Head of the animation department. When Gray became the head of RT Animation as the department was founded in September of 2014, that was at a time when the staff count was a lot smaller than what it is now. Whatever the reasons why, Gray stepped up for the position when the department was just starting. The problem is that as far as his career up until that point, his prior credentials were generally in voice work and theater, specifically anime dubbing. He had a creative background, but not so much a management one. That’s not to say his time spent on voice acting did not lend itself to management at all, though. In an interview with Inverse on August 7th, 2018, Gray mentioned as a means of being flexible, until the rest of the cast for Gen:Lock got around to recording lines for their respective characters, Gray “voiced the entire first batch of episodes by himself”: 

“We had to hit milestones. We had to begin animating,” he said. ���I read all the parts with the cadence and intonations I was hoping to direct the performances into, and roll with the changes as needed. The poor crew had to put up with three or four months show of me performing every part on the show.”

This is elaborated more in his interview with Anime News Network on October 26th, 2018 where he mentioned that despite getting A-List actors on board, getting the cast to do recordings in the midst of their busy schedules forced the production staff to be flexible. Whether or not this included the character Kazu Iida, who was voiced by Koichi Yamadera at Warner Bros anime in Japan and thus constantly speaks Japanese (Gray supposedly knows some Japanese), that was a hell of a task to do either way. This is not the first time he did this either. During production of volume 3 of RWBY, when Meg Turney, the voice of Neon Katt, was not available to record lines for the character, Gray had voiced all of her lines for chapter 5 so that the animators could get around to handling the character. So he has at least been pretty conscious about making sure the ball in a given production like Gen:Lock kept rolling through whatever he could do. But it’s clear that as Rooster Teeth Animation is growing up, not just through the tone of their content but through the need for a more efficient and healthy working environment, Gray Haddock was only capable of so much.

This leads us to the final point of the journal entry, the matter of consulting with experienced leaders in the animation industry. As far as animation studios go, RT Animation is still a fledgling that since its founded has arguably grown too big, too quickly. and at least some of the management staff do not have many years of experience under their belt. So to consult names like Margaret M. Dean, the head of Ellation Animation and President of Women in Animation is an especially big deal.

Though before talking further about her, a quick clarification should be made as to what Ellation and Women in Animation are. Ellation is a division of Otter Media which is under Warner Media Entertainment. Ellation studios is Ellation’s animation department with two sites located in Burbank, California and Tokyo, Japan. Women in Animation is a non-profit organization that Margaret has remained co-president of since 2013. With that out of the way, what is Margaret Dean’s relevance in all of this? This is sadly the part of the journal entry that’s most neglected even though it’s the most important. To make matters worse, the few people who have referred to Margaret when talking about the journal entry associate her name exclusively with the Crunchyroll original animated project, High Guardian Spice announced last August. This is one of those times where it could not be any more essential for one to separate his/her opinion of a work (or in this case, a teaser trailer for an upcoming work) from the names involved with the project and their credentials. With Margaret M. Dean, what people should look into is her IMDB profile page which gives an extensive list of her career in the American animation industry.

This is someone with over 27 years worth of experience in Animation and almost all of her credentials have to do with production management, coordination and supervision on a variety of shows. That’s nearly 5 times the amount of time Gray has been credited as supervising producer in a majority of the animated shows he has been involved in so far. To further put this in perspective, here’s a list of some of the animated productions she worked on:

Production manager/assistant for episodes of The Ren & Stimpy Show (1992-1993)

Production supervisor for every episode of Teen Titans and the Trouble in Tokyo movie (2003-2006)

Production manager for season 1 of Men in Black TV Series (1997-1998)

Production supervisor for many episodes of Ozzy & Drix (2002-2004)

Production supervisor for seasons 1 & 2 of Xiaolin Showdownn (2003-2004)

Line producer of most episodes of What’s New Scooby Doo (2002-2006)

Supervising producer of Supermansion (2016-2019)

Supervising Producer for 30 episodes of Robot Chicken (2015-2018)

Supervising Producer of Hot Streets (2016-2018)

That is not a resume to sniff at and the fact she’s one of the experienced leaders in the animation industry Matt and Gray have been consulting is a testament to how seriously they are about resolving this problem going forward. Or maybe this is all a way for them to save face. Who knows? I’m a just fan making educated guesses, not a psychic.

What Can Fans Do About This?

This situation has of course led to varied emotions suddenly erupting when the Glassdoor reviews went viral. Some have been weary about this while others have capitalized on the matter to stir up further controversy for the sake of views. But some (including me) have wondered if there is anything the fans can do. Some have declared that they would cancel their First member subscriptions to teach Rooster Teeth a lesson. I’m not going to tell people how to go about spending their money (and no, what I spoke of in my Monty Oum Vision, part 1 video was not meant to say otherwise) but I’m not sure how much good rioting by not paying anything will do beyond getting the company’s direct attention. At best, it may put the higher-ups on even higher alert but the whole point of the reviews is to address the need for current and would-be employees to have better working conditions and better pay.

We’re talking about certain animators that due to various circumstances, one of which being financial, that at least some employees are stuck with working at Rooster Teeth. Make of that what you will, but that is the reality and I’m not so sure how much canceling a paid subscription will help the animators as oppose to hurting them. Again, this is not about me telling you to keep your subscriptions out of obligation. That’s not the point. Rather, this is about finding other possible ways on our end to help the ones suffering the most.

So what can we do? Well, that’s another reality about the situation. There’s really a whole lot we, the general public since this is something that at the end of the day has to be resolved internally. Sure, we got the CEO’s attention over the course of the weekend. But beyond that, I’m not so sure we can cause more to happen than that. That said, we can provide support to those who either currently are or have worked on the Rooster Teeth shows we are fans of. Familiarizing yourself with the names of anyone in the staff of a show’s production through the ending credits and following them on Twitter or wherever else they frequent via social media is a good starting point. This is especially helpful in case certain folks may announce needing financial help of some sort. RWBY and RWBY Chibi animators Asha Bishi and Andrea Caprotti specifically spring to mind. Asha, who some may know of for her expertise character acting, including with Faunus characters like Blake, Kali, and Sun and how their animal traits are animated, put up a Go Fund Me campaign since April of 2019 where she needs outside help in order to pay off her Hospital Bills after going through some heart problems and being rushed to an ambulance a few times. Andrea who has animated scenes in Gen:Lock, RWBY, RWBY:Chibi & Red vs Blue, including Pyrrha kissing Jaune goodbye, part of Cinder, Emerald & Mercury vs Amber, and the “Evil Genius” skit, opened art commissions as of late June to raise money to get a ticket to see a very close friend of hers going through Chemotherapy.

These are right now a couple of the only examples I could find, but they are nonetheless more helpful ways fans can immediately help any skilled talent. And even if you can’t pitch in by providing money yourself, spreading the word also helps. Beyond that, the best thing we can do is wait-and-see. I know that’s not the most game-changing answer, but again, this whole situation is mostly internal affairs and while much greater measures are being taken to make things better for the animation departments employees, whether this will ultimately amount to great improvements is something only time will tell. That’s not to say I’m advising people to stop speaking out about the matter (though perhaps contacting them via email may be a more direct and expressing what you want for the employees may be a more direct and precise way than broadly shouting via social media). That might be necessary at this point in order to make sure the company does not get too lax on resolving the problem. At any rate, we can expect to start seeing the results of said-changes either as soon as RTX or whenever we see the new name for the next head of RT Animation in ending credits, whoever that might be or if there is a change in the scheduling of their content. Whatever happens, change is definitely on the horizon, one way or another.

[j-k-notrowling]

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Hi there! Spoilers up front: this is a gratuitously long-winded “thank you,” not an Ask (also I’m 31 and don’t know how to Social Media so apologies if this is the wrong page/tab/link/widget).

--(oh actually it’s a blog post now because of course I can’t send an “Ask” this stupidly long see? wasn’t kidding about that Social Media thing...)--

I started writing my first book in the Fall of 2016. Before that I’d only written songs. One day I got an idea which didn’t fit within the usual rhymes or rhythms. I tried and tried, but kept on hitting a wall. In addition, I was fed up with the whole “business” of music—the fragile egos, the politics of being in a band, all that. One morning I sat down at my HP desktop computer (again...31) and opened up a blank Word document. I stared at it with murderous intent for a long time, but nothing happened. So I grabbed the nearest book off the shelf (Crash by J.G. Ballard), opened it, and began to type out the first paragraph, copying the sentences line by line. I wanted to see what it felt like — my clumsy fingers pecking at the keyboard, observing how the words fell into place with a musical cadence and tempo almost prophetic, as though the ink were destined to dry in this exact form upon the page, the machinery of its tumultuous birth and impeccable design skillfully concealed. I paused and looked out the window. There was a squirrel on the deck, I remember. And then I saw it. Not outside but inside my own head, behind my eyelids. The song, the one I’d been struggling to write, I saw that it could be a story. I saw it had a clear beginning, middle, and end. I saw a world of characters opening doors to other worlds, other stories, other characters. This was life-changing shit. Suddenly I was a little boy at my first baseball game, drinking my first ice-cold Coke, surrounded by old men chain-smoking Marlboro Reds and muttering dirty words I’d never heard before about the [EXPLETIVES DELETED] on the opposing team. I’d discovered a fire fueled by the psychic anarchy of its own discovery, a Moebius-strip of dramatic invention, a repository for all the pop-cultural turds floating around inside the cracked porcelain toilet bowl of my skull. I wrote prose every night after work. I never thought about what I was doing. I never once stopped to check word counts or page counts. I never thought about sticking to an outline, making sure my story adhered to a specific plot structure, none of that. I wrote like a man in love. Delirious, overheated teenage love. Wear-my-ill-fitting-letterman’s-jacket love (is this also A Thing™️ in Canada?). Stupid stupid stupid love, naive and hormonal and precious and retrospectively mortifying. I’d turn off the world, turn on the music, sit back and watch the words sashay straight into my lap. It took 2-3 months before the ruthless scourge known as Self Doubt farted in my private elevator. Am I doing this right? How many words are in a book, anyway? How many pages? How long is this going to take? Is this an effective way to impress women and/or get laid? Am I writing a novel or a novella? The fuck is “flash fiction”? Are you allowed to write actual books in Microsoft Word? Does it matter that my free trial version of Microsoft Word expires in 30 days? They’re bluffing, right? And so on. I compared my own writing with that of authors I admired; subsequently, I couldn’t get out of bed for a week. I watched 40+ hours of “Kitchen Nightmares” reruns (it’s. the. same. fucking. formula. every. single. episode.) and nursed my shame with bowl after bowl of strawberry ice cream. To think — I’d TOLD people about this fool’s errand, and sooner or later I’d have to show them precisely how awful a writer I was... I turned to the Internet for advice. At first, it seemed like a godsend. There was such a litany of knowledge, so many pro-tips and life hacks and proven formulas for success. This was how I stumbled across your channel. I found other channels which offered more straightforward “DO IT LIKE THIS YOU FUCKING IDIOT” instructions, but I still enjoyed yours the most. I lol-ed at your jokes. I remember a few videos where you spoke highly about All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, which remains among the most achingly beautiful books I’ve ever read. Also you’re Canadian, and you guys just generally Human better than we (Americans) Human. ...and here my troubles began. See, the more I tried to adhere to word count goals, the more I tried to properly organize the scenes on my Scrivener™️ virtual cork board, the less I enjoyed the actual process of writing. So I tried other things, based upon other writers’ suggestions: cut the adverbs, write in the morning, write at night, write during your lunch break, write an outline, stick to the outline, write x amount of pages per day, write x number of hours per day, spend x amount of hours drafting and x amount of hours editing, etc. But nothing I tried made me feel confident in my writing. I started actively hating it, to be honest. I dreaded the cursor and the infinite white void. Then I would watch more writing videos and feel guilty about my lack of ambition, my inability to accomplish simple tasks. It’s only a few thousand words, dude — just get in there and do it. Eventually I would. I’d grumble and feel miserable and stay locked in my little writing dungeon all night, ignoring my friends’ texts and phone calls, and the next day I’d hate everything I wrote, trash it, and start over. Then, when I had no more writing left to hate, I started hating myself. The words in my head turned malignant, putrefied into spongy, black tumors. I’d spend all day at work consumed by thoughts and ideas and goals! goals! goals! for my book, then I’d come home and stare at a blinking cursor and wonder why I was such a worthless failure. I couldn’t write the way these other writers did, no matter what I tried. But I still wanted to write. Needed to, in that yearning, terrible way I suspect you understand. I don’t know why The Internet subconsciously invites us to flay ourselves before total strangers, but it does. So I will. Shit got Dark™️, Shaelin. I gained 50 pounds, started living like a hoarder, stopped hanging out with my friends, stopped leaving the house altogether. I kept the curtains closed so my neighbors wouldn’t see the piles of empty take-out boxes stacked up on the kitchen table. I traded the pleasures and contradictions and beguiling enigmas of women for the 24-hour neon distraction of cheap porno. My cat Maggie, basically the only friend I had during this time, got cancer. I watched her suffer and waste away because I couldn’t bear the thought of putting her to sleep and coming home alone to an empty, filthy house. Eventually she died and I hated myself even more for not being able to save her. I wore the same pair of pants for six months. I’d go to work and sit at my desk all day and do absolutely nothing (I was the accounting manager at a small company, technically my own “boss,” so I got away with this for a shocking, frankly heroic amount of time). Then I simply stopped going to work. And I kept torturing myself with those stupid goals and word counts, never happy with the end result, resigned to feel like a failure every day. I remember watching your “Spill the Tea” video back when it was initially posted. Watching it now is eerie, because you describe exactly what I was going through, what I was feeling. Like, to the “T” (see what I did there? #WordPlay #LitPuns101). I’d never experienced anxiety/depression before, so I didn’t really understand what was happening to me. Not that it mattered, because by that point the damage was done. I couldn’t recognize and isolate the real problem. I’d given up. Even though you said a lot of things in that video I desperately, desperately needed to hear, I didn’t listen. I didn’t want to listen to you, because you were one of Them™️. Your eyes were bright and your voice sounded friendly and encouraging, but your name wasn’t McCarthy or Pynchon or DeLillo or Nabokov. You were just a kid. What could you possibly know that I didn’t? In January of this year I called a local psychiatric hospital and told them I was planning to kill myself. I never harbored any true intentions of doing that, but I figured they’d offer me a nice three-week vacation in a padded cell. Considering the circumstances, it honestly seemed like a relief. I ended up quitting my job, selling my house, and moving back in with my parents 300 miles away. I started seeing a therapist once a week (still do, for the record). So far I’ve lost 30 pounds of the 50 pound surplus I acquired. I kept watching your videos, even though I was no longer in the market for writing advice (#JustHereForTheSnark). You kept me lol-ing through some bad days and weeks and months. I’d listen to you talk about problems with the writing community and nod my head like an old woman in church (#ShaelinSermons™️ #SheTeachesANDShePreaches), but I still hadn’t made the connection with my own issues. I swore off writing completely, went back to playing music. Cover songs in coffee shops and family restaurants. It was fun for awhile. I genuinely felt happier. But my story was still an old pebble poking around in my shoe...calling out, issuing playground taunts, drawing hairy cartoon dicks on my forehead while I slept. About a month ago I stared down another blank page, my first since experiencing that fun-sized nervous breakdown earlier this year. I closed my eyes and heard your voice in my head. “You can do whatever you want.” I had no goals, no arbitrary quotas to meet. I wrote a few lines, stopped, fixed a couple things I wasn’t satisfied with, and then went on with my day. I thought about what I’d written, sure, but I didn’t worry or spend the whole day stressing out. The next morning I read over what I’d done, and I didn’t hate it. I thought it was actually pretty good, funny and off-kilter and a little/lotta fucked up. So I sat down and wrote some more. Took some things out, re-worded stuff, dressed up the bones in silver and pearls. Addition and subtraction. Before I knew it, I’d finished a whole page. Then another. And then the hair on the back of my neck stood up, because I remembered: This is how it felt at the beginning. Back when I was young and love-struck and writing only to catch those moments of pure levitation, that devilish tickle, that rush of blood propelled by my own wild heart. It’s been a rough road, but I finally found what I’d lost. I figured out how to write again and enjoy it. And ultimately, the best writing advice I received didn’t come from McCarthy or Pynchon or DeLillo or Nabokov. It came from a young woman in another country with a camera and a nose ring and a big tapestry and bigger dreams which run parallel to my own. So thank you. Thank you for taking time out of your busy life and braving the Steaming Pile™️ that is The Internet to offer words of empathy and encouragement to complete strangers. Thank you for the wisdom you share. Thank you for being who you are. Know that tonight the stars shine brighter as a result. They do for me, at least. (Also I’m sincerely sorry about the absurd length of this “Ask” wherein no actual questions were posed and nothing substantial was communicated beyond a simple yet torturously delayed “thank you” kthxbye #longlivethenewtapestry 

—Justin)

[clarascuro]

Clara Reads City of Bones Part 3: Hogwarts Institute for Witchcraft and Shadowhunting

The Plot Thus Far

When last we left off, our lovable cardboard cutout protagonist, Clary Fray, had been attacked by a demon called a Ravener and taken to a place called “The Institute”. After three days of recovery, she has an uncomfortable (for us) conversation with Isabelle Lightwood, where we learn that Isabelle is hot and that we, the audience, should hate her for that, and also that Jace Wayland lives with the Lightwood family because his parents are dead. We are meant to feel bad about this. We are meant to feel sorry for Jace, which is a bit of a tall order, considering that Jace Wayland is the worst person to ever smirk and shrug his way through a YA book. If I were trapped in an elevator with him I wouldn’t even wait five minutes to be rescued, I’d pry those doors open and just drop. Death is cruel but quality time with Jace Wayland is crueler. 

So Clary leaves the hospital wing and goes down a long hallway, lead by the sound of someone playing a piano. Last time I said that it was Alec (Isabelle’s brother) who played piano, and that it was his only character trait, but nope!! It’s actually my favorite boy Jace, that sack of human refuse! So I guess Alec has no personality, actually. Anyway, they have some “witty” “banter”, and then Alec takes her to the library to talk to the head of the Institute, Hodge Starkweather, and, yeah. I think it’s time to talk about the Harry Potter stuff. 

The Harry Potter Stuff

You know how E.L. James made minor changes to her crappy Twilight fanfic and then published it as 50 Shades of Gray? Well, as near as anyone can figure out, this is basically the same thing that Cassandra Clare did with her Harry Potter fanfic The Draco Trilogy. Just change the names, tweak the backstories ever so slightly, slap on a crappy cover and publish that sucker! It’s technically not plagiarism anymore! This is how you end up with stuff like "The Institute”, a secret school to teach young magic kids to control their powers, or Hodge Starkweather, elderly magic professor, who, one could argue, is a crackpot old fool teaching our protagonists magic tricks. (Gosh, how does Clare come up with this stuff?) 

This obviously isn’t proof of any kind, but when the villain of your story is named “Valentine” and he’s an evil magic user who has been dead for sixteen years (the age of our secretly magic protagonist) and the main characters are afraid to even say his name...yeah, it doesn’t exactly take a genius to figure out where all of this comes from. 

Now all this is frustrating, but it’s also hilarious. I mean, the big bad of the story is called Valentine. VALENTINE. And I actually laughed out loud for several minuted when I first read the name “Hodge Starkweather” to myself. I still get a little chuckle typing this. Oh, and since the word “muggle” would have JK Rowling’s lawyers on her ass faster than light, the word Cassandra Clare uses for non-magic people is...”Mundie”. It’s short for “mundane”. Like...first of all this is objectively hilarious. Second, mundane just means “normal”. If the Shadowhunter society is magical, then aren’t they they mundane ones? I know humans don’t have magic, but we still figured how to like, fly and stuff. That has to count for something. If I saw a dog that taught himself how to read, I wouldn’t like, make fun of him for not also being able to talk. I’d be like “Shit! That’s a pretty impressive fucking dog!” like what the fuck?

Anyway, this is all just a roundabout way to say that obviously this used to be a HP fic that through some twist of fate landed a publishing deal. And you know, it’s not as brain-meltingly bad as 50SoG, so who cares? Cassandra Clare’s just having fun, so who cares if her writing gets published? 

Well...

The Plagiarism

So, yeah, she plagiarized lot. Like a lot. The Draco Trilogy has lines of dialogue taken directly from shows like Red Dwarf, Black Adder, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as well as from Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett novels. Quoting shows apparently used to be pretty common in the early days of fanfiction, so there is context to consider here, but it gets worse. Cassandra Clare lifted almost a whole chapter, nearly word for word, from an out-of-print fantasy series called The Hidden Land, by Pamela Dean. On top of that, Clare was sued in 2016 by author Sherrilyn Kenyon, whose Darkhunter series predates Clares Shadowhunters series. (And for the record, Clare’s series was originally titled Darkhunters. Yikes.) You guys can read the full(ish) stories here and here.

I Guess I Have To Keep Talking About The Plot Now

Sigh. So after Hodge Starkweather (A+ naming there) tells them about Valentine, he explains that Shadowhunters are angel-human hybrids? Or something? They’re special, and they fight demons. Also faries, vampires, werewolves, all that stuff exists. We’re stuck with the Shadowhunters, however, because God has punished me for my hubris, and my work is never done. (Oh look, I just plagiarized Brian David Gibert. I’m a real author now, like Cassandra Clare!) The Shadowhunters were started thousands of years ago by a man named, I shit you not, Jonathan Shadowhunter. JONATHAN. FUCKING. SHADOWHUNTER. Why the fuck am I trying to come up with clever names for my characters? I should just name them all “Alex Clarasbook” and call it a fucking day. Fuck.

Anyway after a thrilling conversation with Alec-Who-Has-No-Personality, we find out that he does have a personality! His personality is that he hates humans. Oh, excuse me, “mundies.” Yep, that’s the best way to make a character relatable. Just make ‘em fucking racist. It’s okay though, it’s only magical racism so it evens out. Have I mentioned that this story has no poc?

(Oh also Clary’s mom was a Shadowhunter, but 1. I hate Clary                        and 2. literally a newborn baby could’ve figured that out, so)

Clary and Jace leave the Institute to go back to Clary’s house, and Clary slaps Jace, an act that brings me such joy that only the birth of my firstborn child will ever eclipse it, and even then, it will be it close tie. The moment is quickly over, however, as Clary immediately feels bad about it, because again, she is not a character. She’s a Walmart mannequin created for Jace to make out with. Then she sees two girls looking at Jace, and, in what can only be called the true essence of the book, “Clary turned instant traitor against her gender.” Just as a reminder, Clary sucks.

Anyway they get to her house, kill a giant, talk to a witch, yaddah yaddah yaddah. Basically nothing happens except the inevitable unraveling of my mental processes. I had to stop reading there because I have better things to do with my life besides destroying the few braincells I have left. I’ll post the next part soon, as soon as I can read more than five pages without wanting to fling the book off a seaside cliff into the frothing mist that obscures the swell and crash of the unforgiving waves. Until then, please enjoy some of my favorite bad lines.

Selected Passages (And Commentary)

“Jace chuckled. Clary could tell that he had come up behind her and was standing there with his hands in his pockets, grinning that infuriating grin of his.”                                                                                                             (She knew all that without looking?)

“Attacked. Clary wondered if this was a euphemism for ‘murdered’.”            (Clary you’re literally the dumbest person I’ve ever met.)

“Clary let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding in.”                  (This may just be me being petty, but I hate this cliche so much.)

“‘You may be the only guy my age I’ve ever met who knows what bergamot is, much less that it’s in Earl Grey tea.”                                                                   (Ah yes, that famous stereotype, that boys don’t know about tea. Oh, you like tea? Name three kinds. I hear sexist gatekeeping is a real problem in the tea community. I am not having a good time.)

“Dorothea chuckled. ‘It’s good to see a young woman eat her fill. In my day, girls were robust, strapping creatures, not twigs like they are nowadays.’ ‘Thanks,’ Clary said. She thought of Isabelle’s tiny waist and felt suddenly gigantic.”                                                                            (Cassandra Clare’s super feminist, guys. You can tell because she’s always pitting her female characters against each other.)

Rating So Far

3/10-Bad. Jonathan Shadowhunter gets an entire 10/10. I’m going to have my name legally changed to Jonathan Shadowhunter.

[berniesrevolution]

WARNING: LONG ARTICLE! (It’s worth it, though)

It’s Time to Give Socialism a Try.” So declared the headline of a Washington Post column in March; one imagines Katharine Graham spitting out her martini. The article, by a twenty-seven-year-old columnist named Elizabeth Bruenig, drew more than 3,000 comments (a typical column gets a few hundred); a follow-up piece, urging a “good-faith argument about socialism,” received nearly as much attention.

By now, the rebirth of socialism in American politics needs little elaboration. Bernie Sanders’s surprisingly strong showing in the 2016 Democratic primary, and his continued popularity, upset just about everyone’s intuition that the term remains taboo. Donald Trump’s victory, meanwhile, made all political truisms seem up for grabs. Polls show that young people in particular view socialism more favorably than they do capitalism. Membership in the Democratic Socialists of America, which has been around since 1982, has grown from about 5,000 to 35,000 since November 2016, and dozens of DSA candidates are running for office around the country. In June, one of them, twenty-eight-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, upset New York City Congressman Joe Crowley in the Democratic primary, knocking off a ten-term incumbent and one of the most powerful Democrats in the House.

The meaning of socialism has always been maddeningly slippery, in part because it has always meant different things to different people. Michael Harrington, one of the founders of the DSA and the most outspoken American socialist of the postwar era, writes on the first page of his 1989 book, Socialism: Past and Future, that socialism is “the hope for human freedom and justice.” By the end of the book, the definition hasn’t gotten much more concrete. Karl Marx himself spent more time critiquing capitalism than describing communism, a habit that subsequent generations of leftists inherited. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said of pornography that, while he couldn’t define it, “I know it when I see it.” Socialism sometimes feels like the inverse: socialists know it when they don’t see it. Bernie has only made things murkier by defining his brand of socialism in terms hardly indistinguishable from New Deal liberalism. “I don’t believe the government should own the corner drugstore or the means of production,” he declared in the fall of 2015, at a speech at Georgetown University, “but I do believe that the middle class and the working families who produce the wealth of America deserve a fair deal.” But while the meaning of American socialism in 2018 begins with Bernie, it doesn’t end there. Every political movement needs an intellectual movement, and when it comes to today’s brand of socialism, it’s the thirty-five-and-under crowd doing much of the heavy lifting.

The American left of center is like a soft mattress, and Bernie is an anvil dropped in the middle: whichever side you’re lying on, gravity pulls you a little closer to him.

Bruenig, the Post columnist, is perhaps the most prominently placed of a small but increasingly visible group of young writers unabashedly advocating for democratic socialism. In writing her attention-grabbing article, she helped elevate a discussion that has long taken place on Twitter. Of course, the relative merits of socialism—and Marxism, Maoism, anarcho-syndicalism, you name it—have been debated in lefty journals and academic circles for a century or more. Members of this new generation, however, aren’t just talking among themselves; they’re trying to take socialism mainstream. And unlike their predecessors, they have reason to think Americans will take their ideas seriously.

They’ve got a double challenge. The first is to convince skeptical Americans that, despite what they may have learned in high school, socialism doesn’t have to mean Stalinism, and it doesn’t lead inexorably to the gulags of Soviet Russia or the starvation of Nicolas Maduro’s Venezuela. The second may be even trickier. They must explain how their version of socialism fits, or doesn’t, into the American political system while showing how, specifically, it is distinct from traditional Democratic Party liberalism. In other words, they must not only defend socialism in the twenty-first century; they must define it.

Nathan Robinson hated Bernie Sanders before he loved him.

It was the fall of 2015. Robinson, a doctoral candidate at Harvard and, at the time, a recent law school graduate, had been steeped in socialist thought since high school, when he discovered the writings of anarchistic socialists like Mikhail Bakunin and Noam Chomsky. Socialism has always been dogged by the question of whether it’s possible to participate in electoral politics while remaining truly radical. Like many leftists, Robinson initially saw Sanders as an example of intolerable compromise.

“Based on Senator Bernie Sanders’s public statements, one of the following things must be true,” he declared on his blog in October 2015. “(1) Bernie Sanders is unaware of the definition of socialism or (2) Bernie Sanders is fully aware of the definition of socialism, and is lying about it.” Sanders, he explained in a follow-up post, was “not asking for public ownership of the major sectors of the economy,” but merely calling for expanded welfare and regulations. “Socialism means an end to capitalism. Bernie Sanders does not want to end capitalism. Bernie Sanders is not a socialist.”

(Nathan Robinson, the editor of Current Affairs, sees socialism not as an economic platform, but as a strong commitment to certain principles.)

Those turned out to be among Robinson’s last blog posts. In January 2016, he launched Current Affairs, a deeply irreverent leftist magazine, with backing from a Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign. Despite being essentially a one-man operation, Current Affairs quickly developed a substantial following on the left thanks to Robinson’s extraordinary writing talent—especially his knack for composing viral takedowns of conservative intellectual hucksters like Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson.

By 2017, Robinson seemed to have fully shed his earlier hostility toward Sandersian socialism. Here he was, last summer, writing on the difference between leftism and liberalism: “As Nancy Pelosi said of the present Democratic party: ‘We’re capitalist.’ When Bernie Sanders is asked if he is a capitalist, he answers flatly: ‘No.’ Sanders is a socialist, and socialism is not capitalism, and there is no possibility of healing the ideological rift between the two.”

That’s a long way from calling Sanders an ignoramus or a liar. What happened?

Much has been made of how Sanders has pulled the Democratic mainstream to the left. Presumptive 2020 presidential candidates are racing to capture the Bernie vote by declaring their support for policies—single-payer health care, free college—that once seemed impossibly radical. But Robinson’s evolution on Sanders is representative of a complementary phenomenon that has received less notice: Sanders seems to have also pulled the far left closer to the mainstream. The American left of center is like a soft mattress, and Bernie is an anvil dropped in the middle: whichever side you’re lying on, gravity pulls you a little closer to him.

“Those of us who consider ourselves on the more radical left were kind of disdainful of the political system,” said Robinson. “It was a real minority within Occupy saying you should even contest elections.” Sanders’s tantalizingly strong primary run—roughly equivalent to the MIT basketball team making the Final Four—made some lefties reconsider. For the first time, it seemed as though they could actually win. But winning requires engaging in politics, and politics requires some degree of pragmatism—a recognition that the achievable will always fall short of the ideal. That, in turn, requires giving up the ideological purity of the fringe.

Consider Jacobin magazine, the leading publication of the Millennial far left. It’s a magazine that wears its Marxist affections on its sleeve, with the tagline “Reason in Revolt.” Across the first seventeen issues, by my count, the word “Marx” or its derivations appeared an average of about forty times. But, since then—that is, beginning in summer 2015, when people started feeling the Bern—that’s fallen to only about twelve times on average.

Bhaskar Sunkara founded Jacobin in 2011, while an undergraduate at George Washington University—which now makes him, at age twenty-nine, something like the granddaddy of Millennial socialists. The magazine doesn’t have a strict party line. In May 2015, its website ran dueling pieces on Sanders’s candidacy. One, by Ashley Smith, called Sanders’s campaign an “obstacle” to the formation of a new left. But the other, by Sunkara, argued that the left should welcome Bernie’s run, “even if Sanders’s welfare-state socialism doesn’t go far enough.”

Since then, while Sunkara continues to distinguish in theory between Sandersism and full-blown socialism, Bernie has practically become the magazine’s mascot. A Jacobin Facebook ad, which reads, “It’s not you, it’s capitalism,” features an image of Sanders superimposed over the Jacobin logo. The winter 2016 issue featured a cartoon of Sanders on its cover, alongside Jeremy Corbyn of the British Labour Party. And a health care–focused issue from earlier this year reads as an extended brief in favor of Medicare for All, Bernie’s single-payer plan, featuring a fawning Q&A with Sanders. The editor’s note that opens the issue begins, “When future historians chronicle how Medicare for All was finally won . . .” To cast Medicare for All—not even fully socialized medicine, since it would nationalize insurance, but not providers—in such grandiose terms is a striking shift of the socialist goalposts.

(Bhaskar Sunkara, the editor of Jacobin, is at age twenty-nine something like the granddaddy of Millennial socialists.)

“We push for social democratic reforms in the here and now,” Sunkara told me, though he insisted that his long-term vision remained as radical as ever. “There’s a need to at least dabble a little bit more with strategy and some more policy-oriented stuff, instead of just merely trying to build an opposition movement and mainly talk about theory.”

Not everyone on the left is happy about it. Socialists, the leftist writer Fredrik deBoer wrote last year for Current Affairs, “seem to be falling into the models of the welfare state without really knowing we’re doing it, sliding rightward as we talk about a reinvigorated left, slouching towards liberalism.” At its core, he argued, socialism means moving sectors of the economy into communal ownership—not merely expanding the welfare state, which is social democracy, or perhaps social insurance, but not democratic socialism. Taking issue with an op-ed by Sunkara in the New York Times, deBoer worried that the Jacobin editor’s “alternative” vision “does not look very different from a more humane, more nurturing liberal capitalist state.”

Nathan Robinson, who published deBoer’s piece, and is currently at work on a book about what socialism means to young people, doesn’t deny that his own thinking has become less doctrinaire. “I’ve sort of come around to the idea that ‘socialism,’ the word, should less be used to describe a state-owned or collectively owned economy, and more used to describe a very strong commitment to a certain fundamental set of principles,” he said. “It should be used to describe the position that is horrified by solvable economic depravations, rather than a very specific and narrow way of ordering the economic system.”

For Robinson, the heart of socialism is not this or that policy, but rather the fundamental values that should drive our politics. During the election, Hillary Clinton bragged about having the support of “real billionaires” like Mark Cuban and Michael Bloomberg, in a shot at Trump’s refusal to disclose his finances. Obama, after he left office, was promptly seen vacationing on Richard Branson’s private island and partying with celebrities on billionaire David Geffen’s yacht. That makes someone like Robinson skeptical that the Democratic Party is actually committed to reducing inequality—which, after all, would require taking back some of the wealth of people like David Geffen.

A socialist, in other words, is hungry for a little class warfare. Sunkara, in the intro to his Sanders interview in Jacobin, wrote that while Sanders “may share some of the same policy goals as progressives like Elizabeth Warren,” the difference is his “confrontational vision of social change,” which involves calling out “the millionaires and billionaires” who are hoarding too much wealth.

Or, as Robinson put it in a Current Affairs essay (published under a pen name, a habit he has since dropped) titled “It’s Basically Just Immoral to Be Rich,”

After all, there are plenty of people on this earth who die—or who watch their loved ones die—because they cannot afford to pay for medical care. There are elderly people who become homeless because they cannot afford rent. There are children living on streets and in cars, there are mothers who can’t afford diapers for their babies. All of this is beyond dispute. And all of it could be ameliorated if people who had lots of money simply gave those other people their money. It’s therefore deeply shameful to be rich. It’s not a morally defensible thing to be.

If Sanders and the prospect of political power have made some preexisting radical leftists start talking more like New Deal liberals, the even bigger effect of his prominence has been compositional: by defining socialism in an especially capacious and inviting way, he pulled in people who might otherwise still identify as liberal or progressive. “What Roosevelt was stating in 1944, what Martin Luther King Jr. stated in similar terms twenty years later, and what I believe today, is that true freedom does not occur without economic security,” he said in his Georgetown speech in November 2015. “Democratic socialism means that we must create an economy that works for all, not just the very wealthy.”

This kind of talk is enough to make a certain kind of liberal’s eyes roll clean out of her head. What Democrat doesn’t believe in those things? But Sanders couldn’t have claimed this ideological real estate if his overwhelmingly Millennial supporters didn’t feel that mainstream liberals—embodied by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic establishment that lined up behind her—had abandoned it.

Briahna Gray, a contributing editor at Current Affairs who was recently hired as a politics editor at the Intercept, told me she probably wouldn’t have identified as a socialist in 2015. “The primary in 2016 radicalized me,” she said. Gray, a Harvard Law School–educated lawyer, has made a name for herself by embodying an intersection of identities that’s rare in media: a leftist, Sanders-supporting black woman. That has given her credibility to puncture the “Bernie bro” stereotype and take on Sanders critics who dismiss his movement as insufficiently attuned to racial or gender issues.

(Briahna Gray, an editor at the Intercept, came to socialism more recently. “The primary in 2016 radicalized me,” she said.)

“The most disappointing part of the 2016 primary was centrist candidates convincing Americans that policies that are implemented in wealthy nations all over the world, much less wealthy than ours, are completely a fantasy world,” she said. (Clinton declared during a primary debate that single-payer health care would “never, ever come to pass,” and later ridiculed Sanders in her campaign memoir for essentially promising Americans free ponies.) This was a recurring theme in conversations with young socialists. To their ears, the term “liberal” has come to represent an intolerably unimaginative posture toward politics: less “Yes we can” than “Not so fast.”

Still, the worldview Gray sketched out—“where socialism is used to mitigate the negative effects of capitalism”—sounded like good old Keynesian liberalism. If you’re someone who believes a word should have a fixed meaning over time, or who believes in the importance of the liberal tradition, then this approach—socialism as liberalism, just more liberal—can be deeply exasperating. Sean Wilentz, a historian and longtime friend of the Clintons, captured some of this frustration in a recent essay in the Democracy journal. “[T]here is something essentially dishonest about trying to assimilate the New Deal legacy as ‘socialism,’ ” he wrote, referring to the speech in which Sanders tied himself to Franklin Roosevelt.

There’s no denying that much of what today’s socialists are demanding fits within the liberal tradition of a Ted Kennedy or Paul Wellstone. Advocating something like single-payer health care, but calling yourself a socialist, can look like mere positioning. In fact, the socialist writers I spoke with didn’t really have a problem with that. “Part of it is just a rhetorical claim,” said Ryan Cooper, an opinion writer at the Week who identifies as a democratic socialist. He said that the core aspects of his political agenda are creating a “complete welfare state” and reducing inequality by democratizing ownership of capital. Why use a term as loaded as socialism to describe those ideals? “The point is to say, ‘Here’s a left,’ in a way that just could not possibly be co-opted by Andrew Cuomo types.”

Nathan Robinson echoed the sentiment. “I used to call myself ‘progressive,’ and then the term became used by everybody, and now it doesn’t really mean anything,” he said. “If you’re trying to say, ‘I’m further to the left than Obama and the Clintons,’ you’re stuck!” (Disclosure: I’m friendly with Cooper, who is a former Washington Monthly web editor, and Robinson.)

The divide may owe as much to differences in memory as to ideology. If you’re old enough to remember Democrats getting absolutely creamed in three consecutive presidential elections in the 1980s, then you’re old enough to remember them seemingly needing to pivot to the center to regain power in 1992. They didn’t compromise their core values (they would love a complete welfare state, if only it were possible), they just did what they had to do to win votes from what looked like an overwhelmingly conservative electorate. That included getting cozier with Wall Street and members of the plutocracy to ensure a stream of campaign funding that could rival the right’s.

But if the 1980s are when you were born, that’s not your experience. You remember that the Bill Clinton years were pretty good—but yielded George W. Bush. We got eight years of Obama—then Trump. If cautious, corporate-friendly liberalism gives way time after time to revanchist Republican administrations, is it really doing its job? If liberal figureheads stop even talking about a truly ambitious social safety net, how long should we keep assuming that’s what they want, deep down? Someone under thirty-five years old has no memory of a Democratic presidential nominee, let alone president, to the ideological left of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile, that young person is broke: a report by the St. Louis Federal Reserve recently warned that households headed by ’80s babies have 34 percent less wealth than expected based on earlier generations at that age, and are thus “at greatest risk of becoming a ‘lost generation’ for wealth accumulation.”

Telling a young radical that, despite all their sharp disagreements with the liberal mainstream, they’re really a part of it, is a bit like telling a football fan that the Cleveland Browns are actually good because they won some championships in the ’50s and ’60s. It’s fair to wonder how many years a political movement can distance itself from certain principles before it runs the risk of a rival movement claiming them for its own.

(It must be said, too, that “liberal” is an unfortunate term. It belongs to that category of words—like “sanction” or“oversight”—that mean both a thing and its opposite; thus a “classical liberal” is really a free-market conservative. An acute instance of this problem is the even more awful “neoliberal,” which itself has two meanings: one is simply Reagan-Thatcher laissez-faire capitalism; the other, elaborated in the pages of this magazine in the 1980s, is more akin to the “New Democrat” philosophy of Bill Clinton. But these definitions overlap, because Clinton added financial deregulation to the agenda.)

It’s a bit unfair to ask the term “liberal” to cover every political position to the left of conservative and to the right of seizing the factories. The socialist label might be annoying, but it’s useful. Of course, the policies Bernie Sanders and many of his followers are calling for fit within the American liberal tradition, if you go back far enough. But to insist that they therefore owe loyalty to liberalism itself is to get the point of political movements backward. Ask not what you can do for your ideology; ask what your ideology can do for you. If young people increasingly feel like liberalism as it exists today doesn’t represent their values, then perhaps it’s up to liberalism to win them back.

If you think the Millennial socialist movement is only about protesting Clintonism, however, you haven’t been paying close enough attention.

The tricky part of advancing ideas under the banner of “socialism” is threading the needle between two contradictory critiques. The first is an evergreen: that real-world socialism inevitably leads to catastrophe and dictatorship, and only someone totally ignorant of history could deny this. (A representative headline in the National Review: “Despite Venezuela, Socialism Is Still Popular in the U.S.”) The second critique, as we’ve seen, is that self-identified socialists actually aren’t socialists. (David Brooks managed to make both these points at once in a recent column. The idea that capitalism is inherently flawed, he wrote, has “been rejected by most on the left.” Nonetheless, today’s progressive left, drunk on populism and identity politics, “seems likely to bring us the economic authoritarianism of a North American version of Hugo Chávez.”)

Few people seem to be working harder to tackle that challenge than Matt Bruenig, the twenty-nine-year-old founder of the People’s Policy Project, a one-man socialist think tank—and the husband and intellectual teammate of Liz Bruenig, the Washington Post columnist. I met them for lunch near Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C., in April. Former high school sweethearts who met on the debate team in Arlington, Texas, they’re an odd couple, by which I mean both that they are different from each other and that they are individually odd. Matt is tall and scruffy, with a paunch and a patchy beard. Liz is barely five feet tall and had her hair pulled into a tidy bun the day we met. He is hyper-analytical and obsessed with economic policy. She is a religious Catholic—her pro-life views have made her enemies on the left, whereas Matt, she joked, “loves abortion”—and more concerned with philosophical questions than policy specifics. “I make a much more romantic case for socialism than Matt does,” she said.

(Matt Bruenig’s one-man think tank, the People’s Policy Project, specializes in left-wing policy wonkery.)

Matt gained some notoriety in 2016 when he was fired from his part-time blogging gig at Demos, a liberal think tank, after directing a stream of Twitter insults at the head of a different liberal think tank. At the time, Liz was thirty-eight weeks pregnant with their daughter, Jane. I asked what happened after the kerfuffle.

“We went to Twitter boot camp,” Liz said.

“Who was the drill sergeant?”

“Me.”

In 2017, Matt launched his crowd-funded think tank, which immediately began being noticed in liberal policy circles. His work, which in its faith in winning arguments by marshaling the right facts calls to mind a socialist Ezra Klein, is often cited in places like the Atlantic and Vox, and he has been quoted as an expert by CBS News and elsewhere. Even among prominent young lefties, his Twitter presence, even post–boot camp, stands out—277,000 followers as of June.

(Elizabeth Bruenig, a twenty-seven-year-old columnist at the Washington Post, has devoted columns to making the case for socialism.)

The Bruenigs argue, as Liz has written in the Post, that “it makes sense to think of socialism on a spectrum, with countries and policies being more or less socialist, rather than either/or.” Much of Matt’s work revolves around making the case that real socialist policies have been implemented successfully in other countries, particularly Nordic nations like Norway and Sweden. The question of how to describe the governance of these places has become quite contentious, because if these healthy, happy, rich nations are meaningfully socialist in some way, it’s hard to argue that socialism always ends in disaster. Conservatives protest the most loudly, but liberals, too, deny that socialism is afoot in Scandinavia. These countries are, we’re told, “mixed economies” or “social democracies”—bigger welfare states, sure, but fundamentally capitalist systems.

But in a post last summer, Matt used data from the OECD library and the International Labour Organization to show that a strong welfare state is only one part of the story. Most strikingly, at least some of the Nordics come out ahead on that textbook aspect of socialism, state ownership. In Norway and Finland, he wrote, the government owns “financial assets equal to 330 percent and 130 percent of each country’s respective GDP,” compared to 26 percent in the U.S. Norway’s government owns around 60 percent of the nation’s wealth—nearly double the level for the Chinese government—including a third of its domestic stock market. “There is little doubt that, in terms of state ownership at least, Norway is the most socialist country in the developed world,” Bruenig wrote a few months later—“and, not coincidentally, the happiest country in the world according to the UN’s 2017 World Happiness Report.”

The Norwegian example figures prominently in what is probably Matt’s most interesting policy proposal. In a New York Times op-ed last November, he argued that the easiest way to combat American inequality would be a “social wealth fund,” which he described as akin to an index or mutual fund, “but one owned collectively by society as a whole.”

Norway has such a fund, he pointed out, which is valued at over $1 trillion and is used to pay for its generous welfare state. Alaska has one, too, paying its citizens cash dividends from the proceeds of a diversified investment fund that, like Norway’s, started with oil money. Under Bruenig’s idea, the federal government would create an investment portfolio—perhaps by selling federal assets, or through “taxes on capital that affect mostly the wealthy,” or by redirecting recession spending by the Federal Reserve—and distribute a regular cash dividend to every American, or every American adult, each of whom would have one equal share in the fund. If the fund came to own a third of the nation’s wealth, he calculated, that would have meant an $8,000 payout to everyone between the ages of eighteen and sixty-four in 2016.

In addition to arguing for a social wealth fund, Bruenig published a long paper authored by Ryan Cooper, the writer at the Week, and Peter Gowan, a Dublin-based researcher, arguing that the best response to the problem of housing affordability would be a massive new “social housing” project, in which the federal government would pay to build ten million homes over the next ten years. Unlike traditional American public housing, this would be “designed to cater to people of various income levels, rather than just serving the ‘deserving poor.’ ” Again, they point to Europe for proof of concept: in the 1960s, facing a housing crisis, Sweden built one million social-housing units over the course of a decade, increasing its housing stock by a third. In Vienna, Austria, they report, “3 in 5 residents live in housing built, owned, or managed by the municipal government.”

(Continue Reading)

[wowheadquarters]

I have a little idea for the 1k followers. As I followed this blog recently, I was wondering about his history. If you feel like it, could do a summary? Like, why did you start it? Your first joy/disappointment. Any thing that we haven't see that you might want to share. Absolutely anything about the blog and you. (If you're comfortable with it of course)

This is a very good idea, lovable anon, I’ll try.

History:

It was 17th November 2015, somewhen in Tuesday afternoon. I don’t remember what exactly sparked the idea of starting this blog, but I can say for certain that it was heavily inspired by the @bleachlists (which is, if you ask me, better humor than canon Bleach). And thus the first list was born.

(I never expected this blog to get famous. Or followers besides bots for that matter. I hoped, maybe, for a little circle of, like, 5 actual readers. I certainly didn’t think I would keep this blog for longer than 4 months. That’s how it is with me usually, I have bursts of inspiration but lack long-term dedication. The fact that this blog is still going is a miracle.)

At first the lists were written in the “chat” style. I had to make up my own prompts, because the two followers or so only hearted the posts but didn’t interact with me at all otherwise. That’s why the activity was very irregular at the time, I was writing when I was inspired and thus a month could pass without a word from me and then boom, three posts in a week. Additionally, I wasn’t writing only lists, but also short stuff, kind of like “Slice of life from Azeroth.” Of these the most famous is Chromie and Dragons and in my opinion the best one and not enough appreciated one is Kel’thuzad’s Heard Of Sylvanas’ Plans.

The first breakthrough came in January 2016 when an anon, who made me happy so much that I called them “lovable” in the list and kept on doing so for all following anons, requested the very first requested list, the Care of Babies list. For a long time this has been the list with the most notes. Now there are too many lists to keep count and Tumblr doesn’t do “the best of your posts,” but still it is one of the most popular posts I have and along with the Chromie and Dragons it still pops up in my notifications. Around April 2016 I had stable enough queue of requested lists to stop making up my own prompts, thus I could completely rely on prompts from followers, most of them from anons.

Another important milestone was August of the same year: First of all, I came up with a posting schedule (Fridays and Mondays, but two months later I understood that was too fast - It ate the prompts faster than they were prompted, and I wasn’t managing it). Then Taedal was added to the lists, at first he was meant as a joke, as I keep reminding him and everyone else, and somehow it happened he stayed here. Additionally, Varian and Vol’jin’s deaths were acknowledged, putting Anduin on the list. Soon after, Garrosh joined in from beyond the veil to annoy Vol’jin in his afterlife.

About this time the blog began to create it’s own lore (and not only the L.O.R.E.), and I even had the (short-spanned) will to mystify people that Taedal is going to get his own expansion. I even had a sideblog dedicated to Taedal (in fact, it was Taedal’s own blog, intentioned as a RP blog but somehow it never…got much traffic) and even a wiki. The wiki still exists! I like to think of this as the Golden Age of HeadQuarters verse, when I even got fanfics on AO3 and a dozen of drawings for this blog even. This blog lives in an alternate universe where there is a new isle west of Pandaria and Garrosh adopted 37 dead children in the afterlife and learned to be a better person (not necessarily the same as good person, but let’s not lose hope).

I don’t remember exactly on what occasion in the 2017 the Interviews were added, but they were the first not-list which were requestable (that is, they weren’t the short filler stuff I used to make before). I think it was to celebrate the first 100 followers but I might be wrong. The first Interview was held with Taedal, by my decision, and ever since then the Interviews went by request every twenty days, moved to every other Wednesday, later as of not-so-recently, every other Tuesday. In the history of the Interviews, there happened to be only one which wasn’t published, because nobody asked any questions. (It was Interview with Kel’thuzad, pt. 3, and I jokingly said that “ when we met, the Archlich thought I used the Interview as an excuse to go out for a date with him and things went awkward” which resulted in this Top N list).

From there things went rather fast. To here actually. As a celebration for 600 followers (or was it 500? Memory fails me) I began writing Top N, sort of as of a filler in between the Interviews, so actually now this blog has moved back to the biweekly posting scheme very close to the one from 2016. Earlier this year (2018), there was a list about attack on not-Theramore, where I made up a character especially for my timeline speculations - because timeline shenanigans, it is a bronze dragon, and because it is representing me, the character is called Authormi. That is a very poor play on the word “author” (because I am the author of this blog) and the “-ormu/ormi” suffix characteristic for the Bronze dragonflight. Coincidentally, it was also the first time I have referred to myself with any sort of name here on this blog (besides the FAQ where is a link to my main blog) and I am using it since.

An important part of the blog is post maintenance when I try to at least twice a month (but if I’m very responsible, then every Friday evening) go thorough the blog, update the Interview, Top N, and L.O.R.E. pages, delete old request asks and so on. However, over the years a good number of not-request asks had piled up in here. They were…not filtered here and the blog seemed messy with them. Which is why Authormi vs. Inbox tag was created and from time to time when too many not-request asks pile here, I dump them into these post as a sort of archive. I admit that it is not, uh… ideal in case you are looking for something specific, but it keeps the blog clean. Well, cleaner.

The most recent new development of the blog was the addition of the Allied Races leaders - Alleria Windrunner for the Void Elves/Ral’dorei, High Exarch Turalyon for the Lightforged, Jaina Proudmoore for Kul Tiras, First Arcanist Thalyssra for the Nightborne Elves/Shal’dorei, Mayla Highmountain for the Highmountain Tauren Tribes, Overlord Geya’rah for the Mag’har Orcs, and Princess Talanji for the Zandalari. The choice of the leaders is taken from the information on the Allied Races from Wowpedia.

Speaking of Wowpedia, it is my primal source, besides personal experience, when it comes to writing the lists. I used to rely on WoWWiki, but, uh… that one turned a bit messy a couple of years ago and I never get around to check on it now. When I don’t know something, I look it up on Wowpedia. If it’s not on Wowpedia, I consider it a Free Real Estate lore wildcard, which means I can bullshit it out as long as it is lore/character consistent. I pride myself on giving the characters (leaders) some actual character, because, now correct me if I am wrong, Blizzard writers confuse character personality for that wind flapping pole. I am not saying that I am writing “good” or “pure” characters. They have faults, they are prejudiced, foolhardy, depressed (in not romantic ways), mean, holding grudges. Some, like Garrosh, Genn or Gallywix, are more straightforward in their flaws than others, but I am pouring a cup of sour traits to everyone here. (What I am saying here is: Be critical when you read your favorite leader’s opinion. They might not be right and/or honest.)

Overview, as of today, Monday 19th November 2018:

Published 174 lists, 24 more in the queue + bunch of requests hanging in the asks among the posts. (Somebody needs to do their maintenance)

Published 25 Interviews, 9 more in the queue + some in the asks too, I think I saw one request or two.

Published 21 Top N lists (most favoured number for N is 10), 0 in the queue.

1009 followers, woooo! I love you all. Except the 1009th one who is a porn bot, you can go fuck yourself. ‘Xcuse me. 1008 followers now!

The blog is 3 years and 2 days old. Happy birthday!

Authormi’s pick of lists to read (besides the one linked):

What they say far too often: Vintage one, so you see what the old style was like.

What do the think of the heroes: Meta one!

Their pick for a movie night: There were no guesses on what movie is a Ayeroth-verse of what Earth-verse. I am proud of some of those titles.

No Orc Invasion: The first timeline speculation, which I really lvoed. If somebody was to write that AU, I’d read it actually.

If they could erase one person from existence: Another timeline speculation. I like making those!

Draw the squad: Maybe you could draw the squad?

Watching Les Misérables: This one was an especially important journey for me, because this list is why I saw the musical in the first place. Later I read the book too (I love the book), got into some Les Mis RP, made some very good friends out of that… Yeah, I owe this one lovable anon who requested it a lot. (More or less, now I am also a professional Valjean RPer, except I don’t get paid for it. Whenever somebody who knows me joins a new RP server and they haven’t got Valjean, they usually ask me. Like… what? How? Why? Why do you all think I am a good Valjean? Why- Never mind, this is a Warcraft blog. Moving on.)

Spell of the Violent Tongue: The first time it has been brought to my attention that I think about the characters in a way a lot fo other people doesn’t, because this list surprised a lot of readers, and by surprised I mean hit into feels so hard they complained to me. I talked about it with my mum later (family support is an important thing for me and mum is fan of Warcraft), and I’ve been told that “I treat the characters maybe a bit too realistically.” PSA for everybody: Warcraft is a story about broken people and violent racism.

Their God Tier: For the people who are fan of Homestuck too. (Homestuck itself is good. The fandom is weird)

Garrosh’s 37 ghost children: By which they became more or less canon on this blog, a regular stuff which is to be counted with.

How do they insult people: The most recent popular post.

Interview with Azshara: My personally favorite thing I have ever written for this blog, as in, I don’t think I am going to peak it.

Interview with Luxien: Because I want to press Taedal’s story and “expansion” to everybody, read the interview with his older evil sister.

Top 10 favorite characters: I suppose you are a bit curious who my faves are, so here you go.

Top 10 changes to the story I would do: By heart I am a storywriter. I give such things a lot of thoughts. But as I’ve mentioned earlier, lack of dedication is… making things hard.

Other cool stuff to check out (maybe?):

Taedal’s expansion wiki, of course. I have a lot of thoughts about that world and story and… I would love to went about it a bit, too.

This very cool fanfic on AO3.

The official portrait of Taedal.

The official portrait of Authormi.

The description of this blog, as taken from my personal blog:

wowheadquarters (WoW HeadQuarters, World of Warcraft Headquarters, WoWHQ) is by far my most popular blog, despite being younger than SNTS. I add new content twice a week, on Tuesday and Friday. I never thought I’d make more than 10 posts in total, but there we go. I admit that the original idea comes from bleachlists, but it has sort of evolved since then. I am trying to keep the blog not contradicting the canon, but some things in the HeadQuartersverse might not always agree with the official lore

Final words from Authormi:

Oh my fucking god, this is really unbelieveable that this thing is still going on. I never expected this blog to live beyond a month. I never thought I’d get more than 20 followers. I have 1000 now? That’s… is that Tumblr-famous? I’ve never had this many followers. Do you all read this? All the stuff? Am I shaping your view on the Warcraft universe? This is too much power for one person to have.

You want to know what’s actually my happiest memory connected to this blog? It was actually some time back (because my memory is a mess, I can’t tell you how far back), I had a really, really stuffed couple of weeks. A lot of to do, but also mentally exhausted, I was in a bad place for a bit there. Usually I am able to kick myself in the ass, sit down and make up the list on the go, even if it is bound to be miserable wreck of text, I write it. Sometimes when I am super done and tired, I write it on Saturday evening and pretend it’s Friday and so far everyone’s been so kind and there’s been no comment to that. But in those two or three weeks I just… couldn’t. Even clinging to this self-made structure was too exhausting. I wasn’t on Tumblr for basically the whole time (my main blog was fuelled by the queue). Sometimes when I am in a good place, I write lists in advance and schedule them, but at that time no such a thing took place, so this blog went silent without announcement and I couldn’t care less. When I finally found it in me to come online, my inbox greeted me with various people who were asking me if I was okay and whether or not I am still alive written in a very worried manner. And you know… reading that helped me a lot at the moment. It was a reminder that somebody here cares for me and cares for what I do and… Yeah, it was a damn motivation to get myself together a bit and write stuff and do some stuff. Since then I’m trying to announce in advance if I think I am not going to make it, and even then I am still trying to write the list as soon as possible when I am fit to.

A story for your amusement on this “write it when possible” note. This summer I was with my 4 younger siblings (my oldest sister, still younger than I, turned 18 last Thursday, the youngest sibling who also happens to be a sister is 4, but I don’t live with all the siblings, blah blah divorced parents blah blah, not related) and dad and grandfather in the beautiful village (or town?) of Au in Austria. I took my old laptop with me (I’ve got a new one recently) which had battery that could live on it’s own for, like 10 minutes. The house we were living in had no wi-fi, but there was a village-wide public wi-fi… which din’t reach the house. The nearest was at the bus stop, but that one was shaky, and the good reliable hotspot was at the park, 10 minutes of walk away from the house. Now, it was nearly Friday and I needed to post the list. So I wrote it int he laptop’s notepad, then turned off its life support, took it and dashed across all of Au to the wi-fi hotspot, formatted the document into a list, and hit post. About 2 minutes later, the laptop died.

I am thinking about making another blog directly meant for the asks, request or not, and those would stay there. What do you all think? Maybe I would lose things there, I am quite capable of it.

I’d love to talk about Taedal and his demons and his entire story a bit more. But I haven’t got, like, a reason to do so. I am sort of insecure in this matter, I sort of have the feeling that nobody really cares for Taedal here. “What are you thinking, a ‘good demon’ OC?�� (Ask me about Taedal and his faction and the Broken and Distant Worlds expansion. I have an expansion and half planned in my head.)

There is some kind of an expectation or anticipation in me to have someone from Blizz discovering this blog and some big consequences happening. I am not sure whether I want it to happen or not. I mean, I am a bit… too-critical of their work in attempt to please the crowd here. (It’s easy to search for flaws when you take the good stuff as the norm. You are actually doing a good job, Blizzard, in the terms of game developing and marketing. But there is that one post going around which says that Warcraft lore/story is written by 9 people who cannot talk to each other. In this spirit, I am sure that there are 4 people writing charcter psychological profiles who don’t know of each other’s existence. Your animation is a snack, though.)

Wow. I suck at summaries. This is as brief as it gets.

[eaglesfan986]

Christina Grimmie: One Of My Idols, Gone Too Soon.

WARNING: This is going to be a very long post, so unless you have the time or patience to read it all the way through, I suggest you keep scrolling.

Christina Victoria Grimmie was an American singer who started off on YouTube. She and I both grew up in New Jersey, she lived only a few miles away from me, before moving to Los Angeles. She was only a couple months younger than me. As I’m typing this, it’s been over a week since the 2-year anniversary of her untimely death in Orlando, Florida. I’ve been having a hard time getting her off my mind all week, so I figured the best way to get this off my chest would be to just let it all out. Share my story about Christina, like how I was introduced to her, what I liked about her, and how I heard of her tragic passing. So, here goes.

I first heard of Christina some time in 2011, when I heard that she was touring with Selena Gomez on her We Own The Night tour. At the time, I was obsessed with Selena, so when I heard of her, I looked her up, and sure enough, I came across her YouTube channel. In her first couple years on YouTube, Christina just uploaded song covers on YouTube. Some of my favorites were her covers of Skyscraper by Demi Lovato, My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion, We Found Love by Rihanna & Calvin Harris, Impossible by Shontelle, and of course, Just A Dream by Nelly with Sam Tsui. Before I looked her up, I realized that I had seen her YouTube videos before, her videos at the time were titled, “Me Singing _____,” so I didn’t really think about checking them out at the time. I’m glad I finally gave her a shot. When I watched her more and more, and followed her on more social media sites, I realized that she had more than just a beautiful singing voice, she also had a heart of gold, and was very goofy. She loved making people laugh, and she participated in many charity events that she could. In fact, her last video before her death was her asking her fans to participate in this charity for animals in need that she was a part of, called the Humane Society of The United States (HSUS).

When I heard that she had made original music, I knew I wanted to buy them myself. I remember waiting to receive an iTunes gift card, so I could download her music, Throughout her music career, she had released two EPs, a studio album, and a few singles. Some of my favorite songs of hers are: Liar Liar, Counting, Advice,  With Love, Get Yourself Together, Make It Work, The One That Got Away, My Anthem, and more.

One of my favorite segments on her YouTube channel was her Above All That Is Random series, that she would do with her friend, Sarah. In those videos, they would sing just a bunch of random, goofy things in autotune. For the last 3 episodes, they asked the fans to write down some lines that they could use in the final cut. Her sense of humor also consisted of posting April Fool’s videos. Her first one was her crying, saying that she had enough of people harassing her, that she was giving up music, and moving back to New Jersey from Los Angeles. She almost got me, but when I saw the date on the video, I was like, “OK, say [April Fool’s].” She did manage to get many of her fans, some of which posted videos begging Christina not to give up, and that they were there to support her. Later that day, she did release another video, saying that the first one was a joke, and she apologized for freaking her fans out.

In early 2012, Christina introduced in a new video this new hand gesture for her fans, who she called, Frands (friend and fan), and Team Grimmie. The hand gesture was simply holding up 3 fingers, as if someone was saying they wanted a quantity of 3 of something. She called it, “RAWWK Fingers.” No, that wasn’t a typo. Christina loved misspelling words, she would often say on social media, “Team Grimmie RAWWKS,” that’s what the hand gesture was supposed to represent. For my high school graduation later that year, I actually did the RAWWK Fingers when posing for a few pictures. My friends thought I was throwing gang signs.

In early 2014, Christina auditioned for season 6 of NBC’s The Voice. Her blind audition was her singing Miley Cyrus’s Wrecking Ball, and within 10 seconds, she had 3 chairs turned for her (Usher, Shakira, and Adam Levine), however she did manage to make Blake Shelton turn his chair at the end. Christina ended up joining Adam’s team, and the two of them became inseparable, he even went backstage to hug her mom, who Christina said on stage was her inspiration, and had battled breast cancer 3 times. I never watched The Voice before, but when I heard that Christina was going to be on it, you bet I watched the entirety of that season. I did everything I could to help Christina win, I called the phone number that they showed us to call to cast a vote, and I even helped save her on Twitter, with the hashtag, #VoiceSave. Unfortunately though, I didn’t have the money to buy all the songs that she sang on the show at the time, so I couldn’t do much to vote for her there. Me watching The Voice was how my family was introduced to Christina, they said they loved her, and were rooting for her throughout the season. She made it all the way to the finals, but in the end, she only got 3rd place. I was a little disappointed, but I was happy that she at least made it that far.

Then, in the morning of July 11, 2016, I heard of the tragic story of Christina’s death. I was on YouTube, and I saw a video from Keemstar’s Drama Alert titled, “Christina Grimmie Shot.” Seeing how that was from Keemstar, I knew I couldn’t trust him for accurate news, so I looked it up on Google, and unfortunately, Keemstar was right. Christina was performing at The Plaza Live in Orlando, Florida, opening up for the band, Before You Exit, and after the concert, she had a Meet-and-Greet, and one of her fans took out a gun, and opened fire on her. Her brother, Marcus, tackled the gunman, who then killed himself. The police later reported that Christina was rushed to the hospital, but died there. I was utterly shocked, I couldn’t believe it. I thought, “Who would kill such an innocent, fun-loving, caring girl like Christina.” I later realized that the guy who killed her was an obsessed fan, who fantasized of marrying her, but then found out she had a boyfriend from one of his coworkers. What’s most disturbing is that the guy actually had 2 guns on hand, 2 fully loaded magazines, and a hunting knife. I was disgusted to find out that The Plaza Live at the time had no metal detectors, and no pat downs, they just checked people’s bags. Of course, many people, including myself, were outraged that this happened, and part of me felt like suing The Plaza Live for having inadequate security. All this happened only a couple days before The Pulse Nightclub shooting in the same town.

I talked to some of my coworkers about Christina’s death, and as it turned out, one of them actually met her in person one time. This coworker said that Christina was friends with someone in his family (I can’t recall if it was his daughter or niece), he even had a picture of them together, and I asked him if I could see it. He let me see it, and I was delighted to see Christina’s smiling face on that photo.

Adam Levine, Christina’s former coach on The Voice, was of course heartbroken over Christina’s death, and offered to pay for her funeral. Christina was buried in a private ceremony on June 16, 2016 at Berlin Cemetery in Berlin, New Jersey. 

In early 2017, Christina’s family released her first posthumous song, Invisible, which would later have an animated music video. That year, Christina’s family released one posthumous EP, Side B, and her 1st posthumous (2nd overall) album, All Is Vanity. I, of course, bought them as soon as I could. A couple of my favorite songs on All Is Vanity are Echo, and Everybody Lies, while on Side B, I really like Invisible, I Only Miss You When I Breathe, and her cover of Jason Mraz’s I Won’t Give Up   In April of 2017, Adam performed Hey Jude by The Beatles on The Voice with his team, in memory of Christina.

Earlier this year, Christina’s family released another posthumous single, Little Girl, which I bought only a couple days ago. Christina’s mother actually released a video a day before the song was released to talk about how much that song meant to her, and Christina. She goes on about how Christina was a toddler, she was worried that her mom was going to die because of her cancer at the time. It gets very emotional, and truth be told, I didn’t even watch the whole thing, because I didn’t think I would be able to take it.

A few days ago, I came across this Creepypasta reading on YouTube. It was titled, “Christina Grimmie Final Goodbye.” The story was basically, this guy hears about the death of Christina Grimmie, and a few months later, he discovers this playlist of alleged unlisted videos of Christina Grimmie, and he comes across this one video of hers that was uploaded on that day. He clicks on the video, and he sees Christina in her room, her face covered in blood, she’s crying hysterically, and choking on her own words. Basically, Christina is thanking her fans for all the love they’ve given her over the past few months. She then tells them that she wants them to be strong, that she’ll always remember all the good times she had going on tour seeing their smiling faces, and that she’s sorry she never got the chance to say goodbye. The guy is confused as to how this video was uploaded months after Christina’s death. The video eventually starts buffering, and he reloads the page, only for the video, and playlist, to suddenly vanish. 

Of course, people were outraged over this Creepypasta reading, saying that the guy was only profiting off of Christina’s death. While I can understand their point, I actualy enjoyed the video, it felt very uplifting, and truth be told, I wish that story was based on a true story. What that story said that Christina said actually did sound like something Christina would say. I tried looking up the original story, but no luck, it must have gotten removed because of Christina’s angry fans.

A couple days ago, Scribbler released a video on YouTube of a big brony collab cover of “You Will Be Found from the Broadway musical, Dear Even Hansen, to raise money for The Trevor Project, a charity dedicated to help prevent suicide from those in the LGBTQ community. I ended up leaving a comment that consisted of a quote from one of Christina’s songs. The quote was, “You are an extremely unique and individual person. And I’m telling you, don’t let those invalid opinions of others just bring you to the pits, OK? You’re strong, so own it. Love, me.” I also went on about how recently was the 2-year anniversary of her death, that she was my idol, and how I missed her so much. In hindsight, I think it may have been a little bit selfish to talk about Christina on a video that had nothing to do with her. Like I said earlier, I’ve been having a hard time getting her off my mind, and I want to get it off my chest.

We all miss you so much, Christina. Hope you’re singing with the angels as I’m typing this. <3 <3

Love,

Chris