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alfredosauce50 · 4 years ago

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[APH x AOT] Headcanons: The countries’ military regiment, fighting style and ranking

I only managed to get Germany, China, America, England and Russia in this, but I went pretty deep with all of them: There will be reasons for joining, strengths, weaknesses, and their overall ranking. The total wordcount for this is 3, 759, so that’s triple the amount of a regular headcanons post.

I hope you guys enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Garrison

The regiment with the most personnel, and arguably, the most productive. With limited entry into the military police and high fatality rate of the Survey Corps, most graduates wind up here.

But there is lots of work to be done. Whether it be maintaining and protecting walls, or evacuating citizens and adhering to emergency plans when disaster strikes--a breach in the wall and an invasion--there are always important jobs to get busy with. The Garrison frequently encounter both titans and civilians, so the soldiers here are well-rounded in titan combat, cannons, security detail, crowd control, and rifle usage.

Given their concrete role and how they successfully deliver what they pledge, they are objectively the most deserving of respect.

Germany

He always had his eyes set on the Garrison, having a high regard for their integral role in maintaining and protecting society.

Ludwig is well aware of his plethora of skills while remaining humble, and wishes to use them to his full potential. While he admires the will and purpose of the Survey Corps, he’d much rather join a regiment that has a better ratio of risk and return. The scouts who die outside the protection of the walls may not die meaningful deaths, but members of the Garrison have clear goals to dedicate themselves to, and he wants nothing more than to be a part of it.

As a hardworking person, he believes in sacrificing every bit of his time and energy to serving the people. What better way to be productive than defending civilians and the home he loves?

Fighting style

Selfless, strong and disciplined

Strengths

He’s outstanding in all areas. He’s fast, sharp, unafraid to tackle problems had on, and to top it all off, his cuts are deep and damaging. Using 3DMG in a city as convenient as it is dangerous. Infrastructure often hides titans from the naked eye, but he’s able to take in clues and process them quickly to take the quickest and safest route.

He has a high pain tolerance. Theoretically, if he got his arm bitten off, he could make his own way to find medical attention.

Ludwig is a natural born leader. He has one of the finest military minds. If you want strategy, you go to him. Not only is he renowned for remaining calm and level-headed no matter how grim circumstances become, he is direct and detail-oriented, so he’s a great communicator. Thus, he can be relied upon by everyone who works with him.

He has a strong moral compass, but isn’t very emotional. More often than not, he will take the initiative to go out of his way to save someone, putting his life on the line in the process. Ludwig won’t linger on any setbacks and incidents, and will make the most out of them by trying to learn something. This sources from being mentally strong, so he’s able to keep pushing without the troubles of self-doubt.

He possesses a very high standard for his work, and everything he does will be done well. As he takes on more authoritative roles, he will implement his work ethics into administrative tasks, and demand that others follow his example. Ludwig will not turn a blind eye to any instances of incompetence, and corruption will automatically result in your termination.

He’s a fearsome fighter. His combat skills are one of the best. Ludwig never held back when sparring in his training days, but now that he’s faced with real enemies, he will dedicate his time to studying and perfecting variety of techniques. If you can do so little as touch him, consider yourself good. Breaking your ribs is merely a warning from him.

Weaknesses

Ludwig is a workaholic, and he will get carried away. He can get too obsessed with completing his tasks to the point of neglecting his own health. This may result in pulling consecutive all-nighters or skipping meals, believing that his body can handle it. However, the long-term effects will be detrimental if somebody doesn’t stop him.

He takes on too much responsibility, sometimes more than what he can handle. There’s never too many burdens for him to shoulder, or at least, that’s what he thinks, but he’ll end up pushing himself and getting in trouble. This coincides with his selflessness, but he puts himself in harm’s way too often.

He can get fixated on the smallest imperfections and inexplicabilities in himself and the happenings in his regiment. As a detail-oriented person with high standards, he could get distracted by these fluctuations. Ludwig believes everything has to be accounted for, but he ends up counting in the more trivial matters.

Rank: 2nd

Military police

Only the top ten get to join the military police as the most prestigious branch in the military. They operate in wall Sina, the innermost wall, and maintain order, as well as serve the king. Ironically, they are the biggest farce of all regiments by nature. Soldiers train to be the best at fighting titans just to get away from them in the safest spot of their civilization.

That sounds appealing, doesn’t it? To hide away from the humanoid beasts and live a nice cushy life with the royals. Of course, this paves way for corruption, and their higher authority over the two other regiments leads to misuse and abuse of power.

Considering how little oversight they have, the military police often clashes heads with the other two regiments, but especially the Survey Corps.

Russia

He doesn’t like people enough to join a branch that will actually help them.

Ivan understands that its more worthwhile to join the Garrison or Survey Corps because they actually contribute to society. But his view on their work and humanity in general is far too pessimistic. When will the scouts actually do something useful after so many meaningless deaths? People will inevitably die inside the walls, with or without the Garrison, so what’s the point?

If he can live his own life not caring about things he can’t change, why not do it?

Being in the military police, the most prestigious and powerful regiment, and yet, met with their jarring incompetency everyday reminds him that maybe, he shouldn’t sell himself to saving the human race. His soul is far too bitter--too disappointed. He ends up prioritizing himself in a world he believes will eventually self-destruct. These walls won’t last forever. The people will only break down faster.

Fighting style:

Sharp and unpredictable

Strengths (In the military police)

Ivan’s ability to outsmart his colleagues allows him to stay on top of all the going-ons in the military police. He’s very cynical, but that’s the perfect trait for thriving in such a corrupt environment. Nobody will be able to take advantage of him, and he ends up doing it to others without even trying.

It’s impossible to anticipate where and how he will attack you. Ivan has a keen eye for body language, and will mirror his opponents’ movements for the most part, then when they least expect it, he will come for them in the most merciless fashion.

Thus, his combat style is definitely special, but that’s what makes him so deadly. He won’t always use punches and kicks because they’re easy to defend against. He might just hold you in a chokehold, but if he wants to get rid of you, he’ll use his height and strength to his advantage and slam you to the ground by your neck.

Weaknesses (In the military police)

None

His transfer to the Survey Corps

Nobody anticipated this. Not even Ivan himself.

He grew up rather poor, but fortunately, he wasn’t impoverished to the point of living in the underground slums. His father was a no-show, and his mother struggled to put food on the table for as long as he could remember. Already, the thought of joining the military police to escape poverty was starting to look like a realistic goal to strive towards.

Who would have thought the nice but strange-looking boy he befriended from his neighborhood would change his mind one day? He didn’t, not as he stood in the line of the top ten graduates of the 104th training corps, determined to fulfil his lifelong dream and finally stop suffering.

Every day, he’s reminded it was the right choice to join the military police. His superiors are corrupt, his colleagues incompetent and everyone is absorbed with gambling and drinking. Humanity was hopeless. It would face its eventual demise as the Garrison struggled to keep swarms of titans from invading one district to another, and as the personnel of the Survey Corps decreased every expedition with little progress. He might as well enjoy himself while he can.

His deep attachment to his childhood friend Yao would change all of this. As a child, he was always quite clingy to the boy, but one needs to wonder if it was because he gave him things to eat. While they went off on different paths to join different regiments, they kept a close connection, and would often meet up in secret to discuss each other’s military branches.

Eventually, Ivan’s attitude begins to change as his relationship with Yao deepens. After all, his friendship with the man reminds him of what’s left of the good in humanity. Soon, as he learns about the change in tide for the Survey Corps where they encounter new, real progress, and eventually, a real chance for salvation, he begins to question his morals and beliefs.

The military police start to look more distasteful to him at every passing day. The tables finally turn when he learns that the Survey Corps are to embark on an expedition outside the walls in a few months, meaning Yao will face uncertain death--that’s what convinces him to transfer.

Strengths (In the survey corps)

Like his personality, he has an unpredictable and unique 3DMG style. Most people will choose to swing by one way, he will choose the other. He might even go upside down for a while wherever he sees fit. That’s what makes him so strong against aberrants/abnormals. He might even laugh at how ‘predictable’ they were when they were anything but. Like the saying goes, to catch a thief, you have to think like one.

He always shows up at the right time. He will appear from obscure spots and pull you into a hiding spot when you’ve abandoned all hope. To his comrades, seeing Ivan in strange places is the best thing that could happen to you, because his presence signals a threat nearby and he’ll end up being your only ticket out.

His intelligence is one of a kind. On top of this, he’s very difficult to faze so he can orientate himself quickly in foreign environments and pick up on situations without panicking. Friends tend to rely on him in dire moments for this reason.

Weaknesses

He often rubs people the wrong way with how he speaks. Half the time, he’s being too blunt and honest that it’s hard-hitting. If not, he mentions grotesque or unpleasant things with a smile on his face. And in a world with titans, there are many things that fit the description. People have a hard time liking and trusting someone like Ivan, which may cause his isolation and a disconnect with the goals of the majority.

His blades don’t last as long as most people’s because he has a questionable way of cutting up titans. He gets the job done, but he definitely over does it. He’ll have to rely on his 3DMG to survive for the meantime until he’s able to replenish.

Ivan isn’t the best communicator in the world, and this is mostly because he assumes people already understand what they need to do. Unfortunately, not a lot of his comrades are as bright as him, so it doesn’t help that he can be quite vague. He can’t be relied on to relay important information, so he stays where the action all happens, or in other words, where trouble begins. This will put him at a greater risk even if he’s good at facing unexpected and dire situations.

Rank: 4th

Survey corps

You’d definitely be called crazy for considering joining. The Survey Corps is the branch of military that specializes in titan research, human expansion, and exploration of the outside world. Thus, this regiment symbolizes a hope for mankind—for freedom. However, the mortality rate is high. Stepping into titan territory will decimate members, and most will die within 4 years of joining. High risk, and almost zero return.

They are notorious for how little their success rate is so that citizens and other military regiments look on in disapproval. But they keep fighting and fighting, hoping that one day, their efforts won’t be in vain in their quest to change the world for the better.

Only the most convicted individuals will join. But only the most talented, and perhaps, luckiest, will survive.

America

This isn’t even a question.

He knows the risks. It’s not certain whether his death will be meaningful either, and count as one step forward for humanity. It probably won’t. But he’ll be damned if he’s stuck in these walls for the rest of his life, getting fattened up by taxes just to turn into livestock for titans.

Unlike Ivan who believes in self-preservation, Alfred thinks the meaning of life is to join a cause bigger than himself. To build something that will last for lifetimes.

He’s also a free spirit, and yearns for true freedom and justice. So he’ll fight for it. The logo representing the scouts aren’t “The Wings of Freedom” for nothing. Call him cocky, but he’s convinced he was born to join the scouts. Everything they believe in, he does too. Their goals resonate with the deepest fibres of his soul. He craves knowledge. Bleeds for revolution. He won’t rest until he satisfies his quest for discovery, and hope.

Fighting style:

Powerful and explosive, but a little flamboyant.

Strengths

Alfred possesses an almost super-human strength and stamina. He can go long, and go hard. He will go on a killing rampage for as long as his gas and blades allow him to.

He’s very hardy and able to make fast decisions in risky situations. Hence, when he’s subject to difficult situations, he makes it out without a hitch. This is evident in how he can make narrow escapes to survive in cases most people wouldn’t. Losing your horse outside the walls guarantees death, but he has a half and half chance of surviving.

His slashes are always deep to ensure he incapacitates a titan. He spins and flips a lot. He could easily dismember them if he wanted to.

A terrifying opponent to spar against because his attacks are usually too strong to defend against. The immense force he uses coincides with his incredible speed, so his opponents will have a hard time dodging and keeping up with him. One punch to the head will leave them blacked out, and two could mean permanent brain damage. Three and you’re probably as good as dead.

A good and calm communicator and works well in a team. He’s more observant than he lets on, so he has a keen eye for his friends’ abilities and will take them into consideration.

Weaknesses

He can be rash and act out on his own accord when he thinks he’s right. That’s why his teammates are wary of him when a plan is a little more complex and ambiguous. This often creates problems for other team members because once Alfred starts improvising, they have to as well. It never ends well.

As earnest as he is, he tends to talk back to his superiors. Looks like he’s on toilet cleaning duty again.

He can let his emotions get in the way. Anger is not his friend. It clouds his mind and that’s when he’s the most reckless, and thus, vulnerable.

As skilled as he is, his blades tends to dull faster than everyone else’s because he puts them under too much pressure. He will be the first to break them and could wind up defenseless for a while, but he has an uncanny ability to survive against all odds.

Rank: 3rd

England

Unlike Alfred, freedom and justice isn’t his main motivation to join the Survey Corps. But there is one thing they share in common--a deep passion for the quest for discovery. As human beings, arguably the most intelligent species in existence, he finds it to be a devastating waste to know so little about the world he was born in.

Is there another civilization out there fighting titans like his people in the walls? What kinds of foreign cultures, languages and religions could be waiting for him to come into contact with? And is the ocean really something that exists? If it does, then there’s a whole new world in the waters waiting to be discovered. The answers to these profound questions are well worth dying for, especially for someone who embodies human curiosity.

Salvation comes in a little further down the list. He has his doubts on whether he can save the human race. But when the chance comes, his loyalty and determination will be unbreakable, and he will go to the most extreme means to seize the opportunity.

Fighting style:

Swift and resourceful, but unsociable

Strengths

He’s one of the fastest and most efficient 3DMG users. One of the reasons is that he can use his gas sparingly, but not without cutting back speed. That way, he can survive for longer without stopping to replenish.

With this in mind, Arthur can go back and save any comrades in a tight spot. That’s what makes him an irreplaceable member of any team--with him around, you have a higher chance of surviving.

He can move like nobody else can. Tight spaces and unexpected obstacles will not slow him down, as he can make sharp turns and good approximations under pressure.

Cunning and good at avoiding conflict. Rather than direct confrontations, whether its with people or titans, he will only fight when he absolutely has to. This minimizes expense of energy and resources, as well as casualties.

Arthur has impeccable navigation skills and threat perception. When he’s outside the walls and on horseback, he’s often right next to the soldier holding the colored flares. If not, he’s in charge of firing them. He can accurately estimate the distance between his squad to the nearest titan, and he always knows where he’s going. That’s how he can make all the right calls.

Weaknesses

He’s a bit hot-headed and rough around the edges. This will make working in a team harder. Other times, he just doesn’t talk at all. A rather poor communicator when it comes down to it.

While his leaner build gives him speed, it also makes him a little weaker in hand-to-hand combat. Height and weight does not put a cap on sparring abilities, but since he isn’t great at it in the first place, he ends up sustaining worse injuries.

Arthur’s stamina is pretty average. Usually, he makes up for it with his 3DMG skills and conflict avoidance, but when he has to fight, he won’t last forever. That’s where his speed comes in. He has to end things quickly, if not, he won’t make it.

He take things personally and lingers on any incidents that happen. He’s mentally weak, and does crack from time to time. So if someone doesn’t talk to him, he could spiral down a path of self-destruction because it’s hard for him to reach out.

Rank: 5th

China

Along with the pursuit of intellect and salvation, he sacrifices himself so that one day, future generations can live in a safe world free from titans. This priceless moment in history will not be forgotten, and instead, remembered as proof of the spirit of humanity, unwavering and strong in the face of adversity.

There’s nothing more human than fighting for a cause you believe in. To know this while confronting those beasts, the very opposite of a thinking and feeling human being, sparks a fire inside him to keep pushing. Like everyone else, he’s under the impression the people in the walls are what’s left of humanity--the last remnants of culture, intellect, love, and joy--and he will defend it until his last breath.

If anything, he’s one of the most selfless characters of all. He’s prepared to put everything and everyone else before him, because he knows he’s replaceable. But everything aforementioned isn’t, so he will choose to save them over himself in a heartbeat.

Fighting style:

Graceful and gifted

Strengths

He’s the dark horse of the military. Despite his friendly demeanor, Yao is incredibly talented and proficient in all areas, and keeps updated with the going-ons in the other regiments.

He’s the most skilled with his blades so they dull the slowest. He uses them as if they were an extension of his body. To many, all you have to do is slice hard and fast, but he has technique that lets him lengthen the life of his blade while maintaining a good, clean cut. This lets him last even longer than Alfred, who is rather reckless with his weapons. If he can kill twelve before replenishing, Yao can kill twenty.

Nobody can beat him in hand-to-hand combat, not even Ludwig. This is where the saying ‘size doesn’t matter’ comes in.

He knows a variety of martial arts, so it’s a given he can use moves targeting bigger opponents. If you somehow last more than two seconds, he’ll dodge and deflect any attacks you try to land on him, then retaliate so quickly, you’ll be down faster than you realize he even hit you. He’ll use your own limbs against you and make it seem like you’re hitting yourself.

His manoeuvring skills are impeccable and crazy fast. With his smaller build, he can beat Arthur. And while they’re both cunning, Yao prefers to use it to his advantage to exterminate threats rather than avoiding them. This draws a fine line between the two men, and makes him so dangerous. When it’s not just titans he’s killing, he is perceived as a threat by human enemies.

He can remain calm and resist the urge of panicking when faced with adversity. That way, he can keep his head and rely on logic to come up with a solution.

Weaknesses

Like Alfred, he can be unpredictable when plans are ambiguous and complex. He will have his own agenda, and is confident enough to pursue them, so this will cause some discord among team members. Fortunately, he isn’t as reckless and won’t rope others into trouble.

Unlike Alfred, he doesn’t have the same fire to survive. If his chances are incredibly slim, he will probably sit down and accept his demise, whereas Alfred will keep fighting until the bitter end. This sources from his belief that he is replaceable, and he shouldn’t waste energy avoiding something inevitable.

Rank: 1st

To all the AOT fans following my page, this is a treat for you! If people liked this, I’ll have a part two and include France, Italy, Japan, Spain and a few other characters. That’s when we’ll get even deeper into the lore, because not all of them will join the military but will have important roles all the same. Yes I’ve read the manga and watched all four seasons, so I’m also aware of the Azumabito clan. But there are no mentions of it here.

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seiin-translations · 3 years ago

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2.43 S1 Chapter 5.4 - Stand By Me

4. TRANSITION ATTACK

It kind of sucks that the anime cut out a lot of the cringe comedy in the books

Translation Notes

1. Three-stage attack refers to the offense where the ball is received, set, and then the attacker spikes it over the net

2. De Cecco refers Luciano De Cecco, an Argentine volleyball player known as one of the most talented setters in the sport

3. Abe refers to Yuta Abe, a setter who’s 191cm tall

4. A deuce is a term that refers to a tie score where a player needs to score twice consecutively to win

Previous || Index || Next

Starting with his right thumb, taping was applied to his index finger, middle finger, and then his left thumb, index finger, and middle finger, in that order. He covered the nails and left the second joint open. He could already measure the exact length he needed by eye.

Normally, every time he finished taping a finger, he felt a switch turning on inside him, but today, he hadn’t felt that once. He wanted to feel a definite response, so he found himself taping harder than usual. The tightening sensation in his fingers told him that blood was flowing to and nerves were stretching to every corner of his body.

He had brought his bag for club activities, so he had all his familiar gear, including shoes and supporters. He changed in a corner of the gym, having said that he didn’t need a changing room. Finally, he tied the laces of his shoes tightly, stretched lightly, and then stood up.

He kicked his left and right foot backwards in order to check the slippage of the floor, and heard some nice squeaky sounds. It was indeed a nice gym. It was quite a difference from the Seiin gym, where the wax had peeled off the floor and made it slippery. He was so used to practicing in a gym that was as hot as a steam bath that the air conditioning made him feel cold. His body felt like it was stiffening up, so he stretched with great care.

He turned his eyes to Kuroba. Kuroba was bouncing up and down on the sideline. “You have nice shoes,” he said, admiring his borrowed shoes. His jumping power was the same as ever, able to hug both his knees lightly just from jumping a little. Kuroba didn’t have his practice gear with him, so he was only wearing his T-shirt that he wore underneath his shirt and his uniform pants rolled up to his knees.

Meisei High School had two gymnasiums, the larger but older first gym and the slightly smaller but newer second gym. The boys’ volleyball team practiced in the second gym. It wasn’t like in Seiin, where six clubs divided up the days each of them could use the gym, and they could only envy the environment of being able to practice in the gym every day.

On the other side of the court, a dozen or so Meisei team members were gathered, chatting among themselves and sneaking peeks at them. The Seiin team had team jerseys for game days, but their regular practice clothes were all different. Meisei had practice uniforms with their team logo on them. It was intimidating to see a wall of matching practice uniforms lined up in a row.

The only people present were the first- and second-year members of the club. The third years, the coach, and the advisor were having a meeting in the coach’s office with the members of the opposing school for a friendly match. Using that timing, the second years took the initiative to accept the “challenge.”

“Didn’t Haijima get into the best six?”

“He’s gotten big…Having that height with that volleyball sense, how much does he have…?”

He frequently heard his name mentioned in the gaps between conversations. He didn’t know what Komukai and the other first-years thought, but he got the feeling that the second-years were generally interested in finding it out—if the “genius setter” who dropped out of a powerhouse private school had lost his edge.

On the other hand, they seemed to take no notice Kuroba for the present. It couldn’t be helped, as an ace attacker from a no-name school in a prefecture they didn’t even know wouldn’t ring any bells for them. Even though Komukai had talked down on it, best 16 in the Kanto Tournament was a considerably good level. Before entering the Kanto Tournament, there were more than 150 schools that participated in the Tokyo preliminaries alone. They were in the best 16 in the tournament, on top of winning the block against a number of schools that was incomparable to the scale that Kuroba had experienced at Monshiro and Seiin.

The rules were two against two. Since beach volleyball was played with a two-person team, there was no reason they couldn’t play. Since they didn’t know when the third-years would come back after their meeting, they decided to keep it short and play only one set with whoever getting twenty-five points first winning. At the turnaround point of thirteen points, they would change courts. There were only two people on the court, so there was no rotation. Naturally, each person would have a wide range of roles, and both people must play receiver, setter and attacker.

For the Seiin team, it went without saying that the two players on the team were Kuroba and Haijima. In contrast, the first player for the Meisei team was the second-year, Tatsumi. Tatsumi was only about 180cm tall, but he remembered him to be a good blocker in middle school, making use of his long arms. To be honest, he was surprised to see Ikawa, a fellow first-year, was put on the team. Ikawa himself seemed puzzled by his selection, fidgeting unsurely.

“Alright!”

Kuroba shouted after finishing his relatively proper warm up. “Oi,” Haijima called out to his back, grabbed his waist belt and pulled him close.

“Whoa, hey, stop that. My underwear would be showing if I was wearing track pants.”

Kuroba, who had turned around to complain, blinked. “Nnn?”

“You’re playing with your glasses? What about your contacts?”

“I didn’t bring them today.”

Isn’t that your fault in the first place…? He glared at Kuroba, who feigned ignorance, and clicked his tongue. He hadn’t practiced properly in a while, so he didn’t carry his contacts with him. Since he started play volleyball, he had been wearing contacts out of necessity, but he avoided using them as much as possible because they didn’t suit his constitution and were too much trouble. This was the only thing Haijima was “lazy” about when it came to volleyball.

“You get it, don’t you? Two against two, we’re at a disadvantage.”

He thrust his face forward and made his voice stern. “You’re talking about that now? You’re a guy who keeps changing your own subject.” Kuroba shrugged and said indifferently.

“They have the same conditions, don’t they? How are we at a disadvantage?”

“You should be aware of your own weaknesses. You were the one who came up with the idea to challenge them. Who’s going to receive the ball?”

Kuroba was worse at reception (serve receives) than digs (spike receives). It was probably because he was strangely under pressure while waiting in the stance. His digs were not so bad, because he didn’t have time to think. Though he had strengthened his reception skills during the intensive practice at summer camp, he had finally become average at it. The dilemma arose when Haijima had to cover Kuroba’s defensive range, but Haijima couldn’t set the ball if he did the first contact.

“You say that, but we can’t back down now. It’s gonna be okay. Let’s go.”

With a strange confidence of unknown basis, Kuroba escaped from reality and stepped onto the court while spinning his arms. It looked like there was a flaming aura rising from his shoulders, and Haijima stared at his back in slight astonishment before hurriedly following him to the court.

He had never seen Kuroba showing so much fighting spirit. The usual Kuroba had the disposition of a spoiled only child, and winning or losing a competition wasn’t fundamentally his purpose of action. Usually, he was the one who was frustrated by his laxness, but…

Komukai and the other freshmen, who were responsible for keeping score and line judging, ran from courtside to take their positions.

The second-year team members watching from the walls, the first-year team members scattered around the court’s perimeter—all eyes were on them from all sides, as though to see what they got.

“You mean, a performance?”

…That was what was said.

He recalled Komukai’s confession again.

So they all conspired to see how I’d react to a teammate’s suicide attempt. So, what did you think when you saw my reaction, where I endured a lot, as planned? Did you enjoy it…?

Before he knew it, the contours of the people disappeared, and many eyes floating in the air surrounded him on all sides and stared at him. …What is this. For the first time, he cared about the stares pouring in from outside the court. I wonder how I’m being looked at.

He said, and then he was suddenly grabbed by his chin and made to look at the court. He blinked in slight surprise and saw Kuroba peering into him with a severe look on his face.

“I didn’t tell you to not care about your surroundings. It’s natural to care about it. I’d rather show them what I can do. Let them know how big of a loss it was to banish Haijima Kimichika from Meisei. I hope your former teammates’ senpais chew them out hard because of that. We’ll make them say, ‘If he had been here, we wouldn’t have just finished in the best 16.’ We’re gonna show off, and then I’m gonna carry you off back to Seiin while laughing. That’s the outline of it. In the first place, if we ran back shamelessly while our crucial setter disgraced, Oda-senpai would yell at us.”

With his both his cheeks squeezed, Haijima blankly looked up at Kuroba. “Still not enough?” Kuroba sniffed in dissatisfaction, then looked like he suddenly thought of something and then whispered to him with his hand over his mouth, as though telling him a secret. “Hey, before we go home, I’d like to go sightseeing just once in Tokyo…like going to Harajuku or something. Those girls from earlier looked like they wanted to talk to us, right? What if we accidentally get scouted…”

“…Don’t get carried away.”

When Haijima gathered his eyebrows and said that in a low voice, “I-I was joking.” Kuroba said and let go of him in fear. “I was just trying to ease your nerves, you know? There’s no way I’d be saying that seriously.” He said, but he probably wasn’t all that opposed to the idea.

“You look happier than before, don’t you? You’ve got a shameless look on your face.”

He said with a grin. Haijima adjusted his glasses with a sour expression on his face. Do I always have a shameless look? It’s not like I’m consciously making faces.

…I can talk now…huh. That reminds me…

He put his fingers to his throat and breathed in and out gently. Somehow, as he followed his usual procedure to prepare, he felt relieved, and the foreign object feeling that had been pressing against his vocal cords disappeared.

He gently manipulated the three taped fingers of his left hand one by one with his right hand. He then did the same with the opposite hand. They didn’t feel cold. His body temperature went through to them. He could handle the ball as usual. I’m fine. My fingers…are still attached.

Alright…maybe this can work?

“Nnn? …You’re kinda…”

Kuroba blinked and looked at his own palms suspiciously.

***

“He’s kind of like you, isn’t he? No, you’re much more developed, but the things he’s trying to do are…”

Kuroba was also surprised and let leak such an impression.

The Ikawa that Haijima knew until his second year of middle school was a reserve setter with no special characteristics. He had a quiet personality and always waited for others to make a move before making a move himself, which was a flaw of his. But today, his impression of him was very different from how it was in middle school. It didn’t seem that the Meisei side sent Ikawa into the court because they looked down on the match.

Tatsumi was an all-rounder with a good balance of defensive and offensive skills, and it was unpleasant how his long reach, especially when it came to blocking and spiking, caused his movements to be a little unpredictable for Haijima. In addition, while he was stuck in the six-person system, Tatsumi on the other hand didn’t stick to the three-stage attack (1) and lightly went back and forth between the first and second stages. There were only two defenders, so even a weak ball would score unexpectedly if it was dropped right at the edge of the court. If you became vigilant about that and stepped back, he would then do the third stage properly and spike. Though they were definitely not losing in terms of technique, it was absurdly frustrating to be reminded of the difference of one school year with such deftness.

He had noticed that he was getting more impatient than ever. If it were a full game, he could spend the first half of the first set observing, and then build up a game to crush them from the second half onwards to crush them in the second set, but this game only had one set. We have to catch them early——.

From Ikawa’s hands came a set that dived straight for the attacker’s hitting point. Now a hard hit came. It was right in front of Kuroba’s block, but Tatsumi skillfully used his long reach to catch his spike on the tips of Kuroba’s fingers and blow it all the way back to the end line. Haijima, who was defending deep, chased the ball, but couldn’t catch up and ended up only used his stamina for unnecessary sliding.

“Shit…”

He should have run. He got up on his arms and pulled up his T-shirt to wipe the sweat from my face. It wasn’t usual for him to be this breathless at this point in the game, but he was more exhausted than usual. “Sorry, Haijima,” Kuroba, who seemed to still have plenty of energy, ran all the way outside the court. He lent him his hand and Haijima let him pull him up to his feet.

“Your hand when you block should be more…” He wanted to give him instructions to fix it there, but he didn’t want to use his energy to even teach him with specific hand gestures, so he just said, “Never mind…court change” and turned around. “Oh, right,” Kuroba was puzzled for a moment before following him. Currently, they were at 10-13. At the turnaround point of thirteen points, Meisei took a three-point lead and they changed courts. The two teams moved counter-clockwise around the sides of the net to the opposite court.

He heard the second-year assistant referee chatting with another second-year by the pole.

“Ikawa’s pretty good. Was Haijima always like that? I had the impression he stuck out more in middle school.”

“No way, he can hit and he’s a good defender? He really can do it all.”

“Yeah, but not as good as I expected.”

“Anyways, the teachers will be coming back soon. We’ll be in big trouble. Should we stop?”

They were beginning to worry about the time. That meant the Meisei side’s concentration on the game was diminishing. The game was not being played in a way that made the gallery lean forward eagerly.

I’ll show you how big of a loss it had been to let Haijima Kimichika go—he didn’t feel like he had shown much to make them think that. Haijima bore much of the defense, so he couldn’t show off his set work. Of course, it wasn’t as though setting was the only thing he was good at. He couldn’t have peace of mind unless he was the best at serving, blocking, digging, and spiking, so he did them all. But more than anything, he wanted to build his offense the way he wanted it to be. He had his hands full with returning the ball in the flow of the game, and he wasn’t able to control the flow himself. Frustration was building up within him because he knew very well that he was playing a mediocre game.

“That set he made just now was a perfect copy of yours.”

Kuroba came up next to him and said. They were looking at the two members of the opposing team, who were moving around the court, talking with relatively cheerful faces.

“Kou is Chika’s fan.”

A voice cut in from the side. It belonged to Komukai, who was keeping score. He leaned languidly against the score board’s frame and looked at Ikawa with a look of displeasure on his face.

“Apparently, he’s been studying Chika’s game videos from middle school, watching them hundreds of times. He said there’s a lot of cool plays he wants to copy. But with how he is today, it looks like he already caught up to you. I think Kou must be disappointed that his idol turned out to be not that great after all.”

When Komukai boasted that, purposely stirring him up, Kuroba said, “Shut your trap. You guys only knew him until second year of middle school. You don’t know high school Haijima at all, do you?” He stepped in between them like a shield and pushed Haijima to the court.

“Good grief, standard Japanese is so creepy. So it wasn’t just you that’s creepy.”

Haijima asked Kuroba, whose anger still hadn’t subsided when he entered the court.

“Am I having a bad day today?”

“Huh? No, not really. In fact, I’ve never seen you have a bad day.”

“If you have the time to see my games a hundred times, you should watch the video of the Argentina game and see De Cecco’s (2) set work a hundred times. You’ll never get bored and it’s way more interesting. I’m still not even ten centimeters away from Abe (3) yet…”

When he muttered that to the floor, Kuroba tilted his head to the side and peered at him.

“You’re…not used to being praised much, are you?”

“…”

He sullenly shut his mouth and looked away.

He saw Ikawa on the opposing court looking at him over the net. The gallery seemed to be getting bored, but Ikawa seemed to be enjoying the game and his eyes were shining in his flushed face. No matter what he did, he was more often shunned or envied than praised, so he just couldn’t get used to being looked at in such a purely admiring way.

He remembered the first time Ikawa replaced Haijima as the setter in the Fall Tournament in his second year of high school, when he would come to the warm-up zone repeatedly while wiping sweat off his face and looking like he was about to cry for help. But now, there was confidence in his face. As Komukai said, he might be beginning to believe that he was more equal to his opponent than he thought.

“…Crush Ikawa.”

He declared, narrowing his eyes and glaring at beyond the net.

“Huh? What did you say? He’s your fan, you know.”

“That’s why it’s good manners to not hold back. I’m going to crush him with all my might and push him away. I’ll make him regret ever hoping to catch up with me. I haven’t done anything to make it easy to catch up to me.”

He hadn’t found much motivation to play this game, but his fighting spirit was finally ignited and his heart began to boil.

Kuroba sighed in disgust. “…You’re a guy who’s never satisfied with anything. There’s not much people out there who can keep up with you.”

He rolled his shoulder blades and relaxed his shoulders. Before he knew it, he was straining in a bad direction.

He wasn’t aware of strange things like showing off his setting to Komukai and the second-years who were watching from around him. It would be enough to remind Ikawa, who was fighting on this court right now. You watched videos of me from up to second year of middle school hundreds of times? Then, don’t you want to feel it for yourself now——?

In that instant, the view outside the court disappeared. He was no longer conscious of the gazes from the gallery that often glanced over at him. He didn’t care what the people outside the court thought of him. He was in absolute control of the court, both enemies and allies. He connected his nerves to the court and made the world move on that board. Because this intoxicating feeling was addicting, he didn’t want to give up this position to anyone.

“Kuroba, starting now, you’re doing all the receives.”

“Huh, all by myself?”

“If I’m on defense, I can’t play setter. I want to play in the middle.”

I’ve said something like this a long time ago…when I was in Meisei. At that time, his statement had caused a wave of disquiet. However, then and now, he had felt that he was being selfish, but he didn’t think he was wrong either.

“You don’t have to return the A-pass. It doesn’t matter where you are, as long as you get the ball up somewhere. You have to do the second contact. As soon as you get the ball, you have to run and hit it.”

“You’re being unreasonable…there’s only the two of us.”

Although he looked fed up, Kuroba opened his legs on the stop without much hesitation, twisted his body left and right, then let out a shout. “So, I should take them all myself. It’ll be easier if it’s that simple. I’ll do my best to keep you from running as much as possible. It’s more something to aim for, though.”

***

After changing the strategy, Kuroba’s movements improved dramatically. It seemed that he had been confused by the unfamiliar two-person team, unable to grasp the scope of his jobs. When Haijima affirmed that he wouldn’t be getting involved with the reception, he seemed to have a clearer idea of what he needed to do and moved on.

Although he called it an unreasonable request, if his partner wasn’t Kuroba, Haijima wouldn’t have said anything at all. Even if he just expanded his defense area, if it was just a matter of catching up, Kuroba could do that. His eyes, reflexes, and physically ability were a cut above everyone else’s. If I tell you that’s your prey, you will react and definitely catch up to it.

“You’re like a border collie.”

When he told him that half in admiration and half in exasperation, Kuroba, looking amazed, said, “That’s rare, you used a non-volleyball related simile.” A border collie chasing a frisbee had come to his mind, but he himself wondered how did he know anything about dogs. That’s right…that was Yoshino’s dog. They lived in a detached house.

He could catch up to it and hit it with his hand, but most of the time it wasn’t even a B-pass, much less an A-pass. However, Haijima predicted where the receive would go based on the angle and rotation of the serve the moment it arrived and Kuroba’s reaction, and got under the ball ahead of time. That was what he meant when he said it didn’t matter where it went as long as it went up. He demanded it because he was willing to do whatever it takes to follow through, as long as he got his teeth into it one way or another. There was no reason to be told that if he was going to tell people to do something, he should do it himself first.

With only two team members, there was no way to make full use of their attackers and show off their combination attacks, but as long as the second touch was given to him, there were plenty of ways to show off his skills as a setter. After letting Kuroba hit the ball from the left or middle as usual, he signalled for him to run to the right. He set the ball to as far as the antenna at the edge of the net and tear off the block. Kuroba alone left the block behind and mutter “This asshole” through gritted teeth as he caught up with the set and drive the ball in straight from the right side.

If he judged that the ball could be stopped even if he set it to Kuroba, he would instantly switch to hitting it himself. The effectiveness of his greatest weapon, the dump, could be demonstrated more powerfully in a two-player system. Fundamentally, the setter set the ball with the right side of his body facing the net, but for a dump, the setter himself threw the ball into the opponent’s court with his left hand from that stance. This was why left-handed or ambidextrous setters were able to perform a powerful dump.

Of course, Haijima’s former Meisei teammates knew the terror of his setter dumps. Ikawa, anticipating that he would do a dump, marked him. He turned his left hand from the jump set stance to do the dump—right before that, he turned his hand over again over the net. Right in front of Ikawa, who had been caught off guard and unable to move, he made a left-handed backhanded set to the right. Even without looking back, he could see Kuroba jumping there. The sound of a crisp impact sounded behind him.

While the two of them were getting into the swing of it, it was Ikawa who had suddenly gotten worse. His face began to show signs of impatience, and he was frequently seen wiping off sweat with his hands on knees. He had been running a lot in the first half of the game, and his legs seemed to be hurting. The two-person team was three times as tiring as the six-person team, so to speak.

However, it was the same for them, as they were approaching the limit of their stamina. Every time the rally was interrupted, he felt so tired that he wanted to sit down.

“Ugh.”

The bottom of his shoes slipped on his sweat and he fell to his knees. He was also quite exhausted. While feeling glad that he wasn’t in the middle of a rally, he knelt down and took out the towel at his belt. There was no mopper standing by to wipe the court like there were in big tournaments, so he did it himself. Even though the air conditioning was working in the gym, a drop of sweat ran along his chin and dripped onto the floor where he was wiping it. He pulled on his T-shirt and wiped his face again, but the T-shirt itself was already soaked, so it was useless.

“Stand up.”

Kuroba held out his hand, but he couldn’t raise his arm. He was squatting down, his shoulders heaving before Kuroba took his arms and made him stand up. “You’re already at your limit…” “What are you talking about?” He spat out those words as he took a breath and interrupted Kuroba. If he could stand up, he could still look up. He wasn’t doing the easy-to-understand actions of looking down and putting his hands on his knees. His experience and force of will was different from Ikawa’s.

Kuroba already knows, doesn’t he… I get that from the way he spoke. But.

“We’re almost there, so don’t say a word. All you, have to do, is give it your all.”

He said choppily while breathing shallowly. His voice had the slight hint of a plea in it.

Kuroba looked like he wanted to say something, but gave up in the end and said, “Okay.”

Just a little more. Just a little… I haven’t been able to show them what I wanted to show them yet.

A feverish membrane enveloped his head, and his consciousness became hazy. Hah… Hah… His rough breathing filled the inside of the membrane and he could hear it reverberating only around him.

But when he heard the in-play whistle, the membrane was cleared away and he could firmly concentrate. It was a conditioned reflex that his mind and body learned.

The ball that Kuroba slid to pick up drew a low trajectory and flicked to outside the sideline. Haijima was already dashing towards it. He braced himself on his outside leg, twisted his body, and dove right under the ball with an overhead stance. Right after he pushed the ball back into the court, he stepped on his sweat again and his heel slipped. He fell backward, unable to keep his footing, but his eyes never left the set he had made.

The set released from his fingers with all his strength tore through the empty space and headed for the net. Kuroba rolled around on the floor, got up, immediately broke into a run and took off. The ball was far away. But Kuroba could hit it. No one except Kuroba could hit it.

He brought his entire body to the front of the net at once with his inherently dynamic jumping distance. Even so, the hitting point was high. Tatsumi jumped to block him, but he didn’t even allow a single touch, as though it was payback for earlier, and went over the block. “Go!” Haijima spontaneously shouted. He could confidently say that there were no high school-class players who could stop Kuroba one-on-one at the net when he was on the top of his game.

He saw with his own eyes Kuroba knocking down the ball with a powerful swing, and then in the next instant,

“Chika!!”

The outside voices that had completely disappeared suddenly flew in from nearby. Komukai?——The moment he turned his head in the direction of the voice, he was hit by something from the side. A violent metallic sound penetrated his head all the way to the other side.

There was a stir around him. All the noise in the gym suddenly came back to his eardrums, and he was temporarily lost in the torrent of disorganized sounds.

“Chika! Oi, Chika!” He heard Komukai’s voice near him, but it was kept away and replaced by another voice saying, “Haijima!”

“Haijima! Are you okay, Haijima!?” “Ugh…” He could still feel the metallic sound reverberating in his head. It feels like I got slapped…he was conscious enough to have that thought in his mind. He could guess from the direction he slid in that it was the metal panel of the score board.

Am I okay…? He checked himself and got the response that he was fine. He sat up on the fallen panel while pressing his face.

“Haijima, oi!”

“Yeah…I hear you. I probably didn’t hurt any…”

The person hanging over him and peering into him was probably Kuroba, but he couldn’t get a clear image of him even if he strained his eyes.

“My glasses…”

“Glasses? Oh, this…mmh? Ah.”

“…What is it.”

“No, this…are you fine with it like this…?”

While Kuroba spoke unfocusedly, he ran his hand over the thing he had given him and checked the shape of the familiar frames. He tried to open the earpieces, but something felt off.

The frames were warped. Well, it’s an emergency measure, but if I forcibly bent it to the other side, I’ll be able to put them on more or less…as long as they aren’t broken… Nope.

“…”

He held up the glasses by the earpieces. Grimacing with all his might, he stared at the fuzzy figure eight outline in front of his eyes.

One of the lenses was gone.

“Oh, here it is, here it is. It looks like it’s not broken.”

Kuroba found the missing lens, but it wasn’t like he could fit it in right here.

“What are you going to do? Quit? We don’t mind if you quit.”

The Meisei second-year who was acting as the referee said. When he used the received lens like a magnifying glass and glared at the referee, he could see the referee flinch a little in the slightly distorted oval.

He pointed the lens at the scoreboard under his butt. The numbers were flipped up and the scores for both sides were unclear, but they were recorded in the scorebook inside his head. Haijima didn’t doubt that Kuroba’s spike right before had went in, so he added that.

“…23-23, huh.”

They were always behind by two or three points, but they gradually closed the gap in the second half and caught up at the end. Now all they had to do was to score two times in a row without giving up a single point. Meisei seemed to be worried that the higher-ups would be coming back soon, but it would be irritating to have the game end with no definite results.

“It’s no problem. I’ll play like this.”

Is he serious? The gallery buzzed. He stood up with his glasses, which couldn’t be used due to the warping of the frames. Kuroba tried to support him, but he pushed his hand away with an “I’m fine” and turned to Tatsumi.

“Tatsumi-san, you’re going to play until the end, right?”

“Yeah, if you’re fine with it. It’s getting interesting, after all.”

Tatsumi said with a wry smile, his voice coming from a completely different direction from where Haijima was facing.

Now we’re talking… His heart boiled up lightly, and he pushed aside his fatigue for the moment. He was glad he was able to play this game. Ikawa was able to rouse him, and there were many things he could learn from an experienced player like Tatsumi.

Absorb it all, push it away, and go up.

“It’s my serve, after all.”

“If you can’t do it, you can rotate the serve order around, okay?” He couldn’t make out the face at all, but a long and thin object that seemed like Tatsumi said.

The serve was Seiin’s. The server was Haijima.

“Kuroba. Put this near my bag.”

He thrust his glasses to Kuroba while glaring at the court. Kuroba let out a shrill “Uweh?”, and he sensed that it was no good. Even though he had been on the top of his game, the current commotion had broken his concentration.

Well, we were able to unveil our ace, anyways.

If Kuroba said he wanted to show off their setter, then Haijima also wanted to show off the fact that there was such an attacker at a no-name public school. He had already accomplished that goal with that shot earlier, and he didn’t need to show their hand any more than that today.

He started walking along the line. His feet were a bit unsteady, but he had no hesitations about the direction he was walking in. Kuroba put his glasses near his bag by the wall and then hurriedly caught up to him.

“Can you see?”

“I can’t. I have 0-0.1 vision without my glasses.”

He stood in the service zone to receive the ball. He tried to catch the ball with one hand and ended up receiving it with his face.

The gallery buzzed for a moment and then fell into complete silence. “…Is this guy going to be okay?”

He once lightly nudged the ball in the service zone. Everything around him looked blurry, like it had rained, but only the white lines, a rectangle of nine by eighteen meters, stood out clearly. Like guide lights illuminating a runway at night, they shone white in his vision. He had only moved away to a place where he couldn’t see the outside of the court. His connection with the court wasn’t broken.

The soles of his shoes squeaked as he checked the feeling of the well waxed floor. He rolled the still relatively new Molten practice ball in his hands.

Haijima liked the feel of a volleyball. Not a soccer ball, not a baseball, not a basketball, but a volleyball. The surface was slightly cushioned, and it fit into his fingers as though wrapping around them. For him, a volleyball was “warm.”

The whistle sounded to resume play.

If the other side scored even one point and it became a deuce (4), then they probably won’t win. They had to score twice consecutively to reach twenty-five points. Of course, they couldn’t miss any of their serves. But there was no option to include a float serve. A lukewarm serve would be easily counterattacked in any case.

To be honest, he couldn’t tell where Kuroba was standing, so he couldn’t tell what defense Tatsumi and Ikawa were taking on the other side of the net. However, the tension given off by those breathing on the court created a slight airflow. He used the feeling on his skin, sense of hearing, and sense of smell to grasp the changes in the air. Even if he couldn’t see it, there was a court in his mind that he could recreate in vivid detail from corner to corner. The bright coat on the wooden floor at his feet radiated out from beneath his feet as though to stretch out the roots of his nerves all around.

He put the ball in his left hand and held it up to his eyes. He could only vaguely recognize the three colors of white, red, and green at the end of his arm, and he couldn’t even recognize the colors of anything further away than the ball.

But…so what?

How many tens of thousands of times do you think I’ve stood in this place and hit the ball from here?

With a snap of his left hand, he threw the ball high in front of him. While looking up at the ball he had just released, he ran forward, sank his knees in the same manner as a spike jump, and jumped. The blurry white, red, and green disappeared completely, blending in with the lights on the ceiling. However, he believed in his set and swung his arm out without hesitation. He felt the sensation of his left hand securely grabbing the center of the ball.

There was a stir at the same time he landed on his toes, and the whistle blew.

“Haijimaaaa!”

Haijima didn’t know what the whistle was for, but it seemed that he had scored as Kuroba cheered and flung his arms around him.

“…Can I hit another one?”

“Of course. You’re our service ace.”

Service ace…it went in, huh… The strength slipped out of him for an instant, and he rested his chin on Kuroba’s shoulder and took a breath. Well, he was confident, but even so, he was surprised with himself.

“Where did that one go?”

“Straight into the right corner…wait, you really can’t see!?”

“That’s what I’ve been saying all along.”

“That’s scary, you’re strong even in this condition…”

He reproduced every serve he hit on the court in his head while digesting the sensations so as to not forget the sensation of every move that remained in his body. He could clearly imagine the white, red, and green ball that drew a slightly distorted trajectory to the left and sucked into the opponent’s court and stab into the right corner, as clearly as if he were seeing it with his own eyes.

One more…I can do one more.

“The ball…”

He muttered heatedly while staring into space. “Huh? O-Okay,” Kuroba caught the ball that had been released and passed it to him.

He didn’t have to think about the whole court anymore today. He didn’t need to think about game-making for ahead. He only had to think about making this serve——

Kuroba’s voice disappeared from his eardrums. The court he had been drawing in his head with himself as the starting point disappeared as though a dark curtain had been pulled down in all directions. The place he was standing in and the white lines at a ninety-degree angle that indicated the right corner of the opponent’s court. The world was condensed into a single sharp, thin line—the shortest path that connected those two points and grazed the top of the net. A ray of light in the darkness, only for the No.5 ball with a diameter of 20cm to penetrate.

If he had only the nerves to make this one serve, then the circuits in his brain might as well be burned out for the rest of the day.

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#2.43 #2.43: Seiin Koukou Danshi Volley-bu #2.43: Seiin High School Boys Volleyball Club #2.43 book 1 #2.43 translation #2.43 seiin high school boys volleyball team #2.43 seiin koukou danshi volley bu

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alkhale · 5 years ago

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Shoot the Ball (Ushijima x Reader) Ko-Fi request

Guuuurl can I please get like a bunch of accidental run in encounters with ushiwaka plssss I feel like he doesn’t get much love

Here’s the problem with a school like Shiratorizawa.

It’s a big school.

Fucking huge.

Massive campus yet elite, trimmed student body with a very personal class average of students to teachers. Private tutors are offered in every nook and cranny of the libraries, and the dorms are luscious and extravagant.

Unknown to many of your classmates but most of your team members are aware, you got into Shiratorizawa on a favor from your childhood kyudo coach and a hefty scholarship you had to claw your way towards over a bunch of other studious bookworms.

You’re the leading star on Shiratorizawa’s kyudo club, the ochi from your tachi group, the last person to shoot, the person who guides the rest of the team. You also hold the position of captain in your third year at Shiratorizawa, and kyudo is all you have ever known and love.

But, but, but, but, at a school like Shiratorizawa where a classic, high performance sport like kyudo, a traditional, beautiful sport like kyudo should be fairly popular, your club and your teammates’ performances are always outshone by more high-energy, easily watchable sports.

Shiratorizawa’s sports expect nothing but the highest level of triumphs from all their divisions. From basketball to dressage on horse, each club is required to perform admirably. If you perform well, the more funding you got for your club, the more prestige, and all good things.

Shiratorizawa’s kyudo club is actually high on the list, last year your team placed first at the Inter High and made it to the top four in nationals. Despite all this, despite the fact that you even scored consecutive kaichus, hitting all your marks and not missing a single arrow, making waves in the kyudo community and getting higher renown for your team, your headmaster still refused to acknowledge your club.

You’d come to him, white headband tied around your head, posters ready, armed and prepared to fight tooth and nail for an increase in funds and a spot at advertisements because if your fellow student body just knew about the sport, more people would join, more people would watch, and your club wouldn’t be in danger of closing down after you graduate or declining—

“It’s just not popular!” your headmaster clapped you over the shoulders himself, beaming. “Keep working hard though! Good job last year!”

Because popular and television-worthy, massive poster worthy, constant overhead announcements in the morning and the afternoon about matches, constant offered opportunities for extra credit, belong to certain sports at Shiratorizawa.

Shiratorizawa’s Boys’ Volleyball team.

Every morning you came to school and stared in disgust, not out of a personal vendetta for the guy, but for his whole damn team for taking the spotlight for the past three years you’d been here at Shiratorizawa, at the giant, blown up poster lining your school’s walls, posted in any classroom you two might have together. He flooded the school’s daily bulletin, online articles, even the god damn konbini near your house when your returned home for the holidays.

Ushijima Wakatoshi.

Volleyball star, playing for Japan’s national youth team—which was something you did drool over because nationals was your goal for kyudo—and even top of all his classes.

You kinda hated this guy and you didn’t even know him.

But it was no matter because this year you planned to take your team all the way to the top. Everyone at this damn rich school was going to known kyudo and love it, damn it. They were going to sing your praises all the way down the halls, line up outside the shooting range to get a peek at your beautiful team and fall in love with the bow.

All the way to the same stage this rich, boastful school’s especial crowning achievment and pride, enough to get them their own stupid bus, enough to get them their own damn gym, enough to get them their own damn cheer squad and—

Your first real, personal meeting with Ushijima Wakatoshi goes something like this:

I don’t need more protein, I need better results. You frowned, staring at the picture of the protein drink you’d been texted that was apparently quite popular these days, according to your fellow teammate. She constantly sang its praises, promising nothing but the best and urging you to start getting into it.

“Your practice schedule is too rigid!” she lectured, shaking her hands at you as you notched another arrow and took aim. “You’re going to shoot arrows till you’re an old maid! No one will marry you at this rate!”

“Kyudo will marry me,” you said, completely serious. “I’m marrying the best kyudo archer of this era and no one else.”

“He’s over fifty!”

“I like them older anyways.”

While normally you would have ignored your vice captain in favor of your own home remedies, your joints were acting up lately, specifically your left wrist and that was never a good sign. You had a feeling the tautness to the new string you were trying to break in wasn’t doing you any favors either. You needed to keep an eye on it in case it got worse.

I can’t bring this team down.

The school’s mini-grocery was fairly empty at this hour. Most students were back at the dorms and anyone still lingering around should’ve just finished with their own club practices.

The rows were designed so items could be taken from either side, not just one. You browsed the aisle, tempted by the choco-snacks but willing yourself to put another batch of fruits in instead. Have to treat my health like second nature. Results don’t come from potato chips.

“Finally,” your eyes zeroed in on the brightly colored bottle. A hefty size, meant to be poured out in cups and drunk daily. You had no idea how it would taste, but by your vice captain’s face, it couldn’t be too great.

You crouched down, reaching for the last bottle on the lowest row.

A massive hand engulfed yours at the top of the bottle’s cap, swallowing your hand whole.

“Holy shit!” you shrieked, ripping your hand away—only to find yourself unable to do so with the massive hand still laid down over yours. You hit the floor on your ass, gaping in horror at the monstrous palm and the calloused fingers and fearing this was finally the moment you were dragged into some abyss by an unknown creature and killed—

Eyes like olives, flecked with gold.

You stared, caught, unable to move for a second. You’d always thought his eyes were brown. You never noticed the weird lining to them that gave them a sharper look, like an eagle or—

“My bad,” Ushijima. Ushijima Wakatoshi said, his voice a deep, resounding rumble in his chest like a goddamn bear.

He crouched there, sitting back on his heels, directly across the aisle from you, peering through the metal shelf like some kind of monster trying to fit through a crack. His massive hand and massive arm barely had to leave his body to reach the same bottle of protein you’d both been shooting for.

Ushijima Wakatoshi.

All at once, the flood of posters assaulted your brain. The blaring announcements, the squealing girls, the headmaster, the volleyball buses with his face printed on the side, the magazines, the articles and—

You blinked, once, twice.

His lips parted.

You ripped your hand out from under his with a hefty amount of force. The action sent you flat on your back and you were sure he’d gotten a front row view of under your skirt but you really didn’t give a crap.

“Have it!” you barked out, awkwardly scrambling to your feet. You grabbed your basket and Ushijima blinked once at you, slowly, face monotonous. “You need it more anyway, jerk!”

You huffed, shoulders puffing up. Ushijima was silent on the other side of the aisle, wordlessly taking the bottle of protein with him as he stood.

You gaped.

HE’S A LIVING TREE.

Your neck actually craned a bit, straining to look up at him and he stared down at you from the top of the aisle.

His arm promptly stuck itself through the gap in the shelf, offering the drink to you.

“I’ll be fine,” he said, voice devoid of emotion. “You should take it.”

For some reason that irked you.

You forcefully—struggling with great difficulty—shoved the drink back to his side through the shelves. Ushijima blinked once, slow down at you and you bared your teeth at him before hoisting your basket up into your arm and storming to the check out where you flew through your wallet, aggressively paying the lady at the counter, nearly running into a smirking redhead at the doorway and rushing the rest of the way to your dorm where people kept asking why you looked so damn mad.

“Who was that?” Tendou chirped, sidling up to Ushijima. “A fan?”

Ushijima stared out the still swinging door and calmly examined the bottle of protein in his hand.

“No,” he said.

“...you gonna continue with the sentence or what?” Tendou prodded.

I hate this time of the year. You frowned, burrowing deeper into your muffler as you fought the early morning chill. Several other students were trudging beside you, sleep in their eyes as you all headed to the regular meeting for club time slots. You always showed up as early as possible to get the best dibs for your club.

You absently kicked a pebble in your way, wondering how you should organize practice this week. You wanted to brush up on your form again and—

Why was everyone looking at you like that?

“Good morning.”

It took you a moment to realize a massive shadow had engulfed your own. You stared at your feet for a moment, rubbing your eyes before slowly turning.

Ushijima Wakatoshi bore down on you, face cast in dark shadows from the early morning darkness, puffs of steam clouding by his mouth where he breathed.

He looked like a monster.

You felt your hackles raise, nearly jumping out of your sneakers as you started to backpedal away from him, “Hah?”

“Good morning,” Ushijima said, looking completely unfazed by the crack of dawn and cold.

You continued to hurry backwards toward the gym while barking back at him as Ushijima took calm steps forward—since you were both headed the same way—every three of your steps one of his own.

To anyone else, it looked as though a bear were advancing on a chihuahua.

“G-Good morning to you too!” you snapped. “Bye!”

“What?” Ushijima asked.

“I said bye you—”

“We’re still headed the same way.”

“Stop following me then!”

- - - - - - - -

You smirked, hefting the pile of posters into your arms. This was it, this was going to work for sure. No way anyone could ignore the please join flyers if you were pinning them up all around the school, and the team had worked hard to make it stand out and eye catching, appealing to all genders and interests.

Your wrist was starting to bother you a bit, so you shifted the papers to the other arm. I got careless trying to get the bow turn again. I need to slow it down and ice it tonight.

Who says we’re last on the funding list? You grinned, grabbing your tape. They can’t ignore us with a bunch of members—

“Good afternoon.”

You screeched, dropping your stack of flyers onto your foot. They scattered the hallway.

Ushijima calmly turned his gaze downwards, staring at the colorfully illustrated flyers now flooding both your feet.

Join the kyudo club!

“You,” you snapped, urging your heart to calm and shoving your tape back into your pocket. You hurried, grabbing the flyers and restacking them as he stood, towering above you. “What the heck do you want? Do you get some kind of kick out of scaring people or—”

In one smooth, swift motion, Ushijima had crouched down beside you. You stared, gaping in disbelief as his large hands—he has such big hands, I’ve never seen anyone with hands that big, this guy is all muscle and—moved across the floor, gathering up the papers in one fell swoop. His bangs shifted slightly over the slight furrow of his brows.

Ushijima looked at you, quiet, somber, unreadable as he carefully put your stack back together.

He looked weird in the school uniform. You were so used to seeing him in his volleyball one. He seemed like a different person. Oh, you’re the type that leaves the first button undone.

“I did not mean to scare you,” he said, slow, with that rumbling voice of his. It sent a timbre down your spine.

Ushijima remained silent, staring calmly at you, seemingly content with the silence.

“Y-Yeah, well,” you started. “My bad then.”

You quickly stood, lifting your stack. You stared down at Ushijima for once as he calmly looked up at you and promptly ran off without another word, unable to figure out the weird awkwardness that sat on your tongue whenever you dealt with him.

I mean, it’s not like I really… hate him right?

Why the hell am I running into him so much?

You just needed to shoot some arrows and you’d feel a lot better.

-----------

You shot too many arrows.

You frowned at your throbbing wrist, giving it a look of utter betrayal. The nurse had said to give her a few minutes for her to come back with some pain killers. You were only in the infirmary this time because the pain had gotten to a point where you’d actually dropped your bow in the middle of a draw.

Prelims are coming up. You glared harder at your wrist. You just needed to ice it and you’d feel better. I can’t let them down.

You were taking them straight to the top and then it’d be kyudo posters this school would see, not just stupid Ushijima’s face and—

“(L/n)-san.”

You screeched, nearly toppling off your stool. Your wrist smacked into the counter and you hissed in pain, tears pricking the corner of your eyes.

Ushijima stood in the doorway of the infirmary, staring at you with furrowed brows.

Why him, why now? You grunted in greeting, gingerly rubbing your throbbing wrist, turning away from him toward the window.

You heard the door close behind him, focusing all your attention on anything else to ignore the massive presence behind you.

“What happened?”

WHY IS HE TALKING TO ME.

“Oh, this and that,” you said simply, vaguely, struggling to find better words. You… you really didn’t hate this guy personally or anything, but it was personal at the same time? You didn’t know how you felt about him and it was making you confused.

You hated being confused.

Ignoring any and all other social cues, Ushijima took a seat on the stool beside you, back and posture impeccable. His hands calmly set on his knees. His volleyball uniform like second skin against his form, revealing nothing but miles of muscle and hardwork.

You stared at him in disbelief.

Ushijima faced forward, face unreadable.

….okay. You awkwardly glanced to the side, rubbing at your wrist. Way to make it even more awkward. Does this guy not socialize much or what?

“Uh,” no! Don’t talk to him! Just keep your mouth shut! “What happened to you?” you said awkwardly.

Ushijima’s face relaxed an inch. You blinked in surprise.

“My knee,” he said. “Coach made me go get it checked out.”

“...me too,” you said. He looked at you. You looked away. “Not my knee, I mean. My wrist. My vice captain will have my head if I didn’t. I told her I could just ice it.”

“You should be more careful,” Ushijima said.

You looked at him. He looked at you.

“I’m sorry?”

“You do not need to apologize.”

You stared.

Ushijima motioned to your wrist, not taking his eyes off your face, “Your fans would be disappointed if you were unable to perform.”

“I-I’m sorry?”

“You do not need to apologize,” Ushijima said again, shaking his head. You gaped at him. “I would be disappointed. I wish to see your kaichu again.”

Your brain short-circuited. You were left to dumbly look at Ushijima. He seemed to take pity on you and turned fully on his stool, several heads taller, looking down at you before he calmly said—

“I am a fan of your archery.”

The two of you sat there in silence.

Steam shot out of your ears as your face exploded into red. Ushijima watched in silence as you toppled over your stool and back onto the ground.

- i also stan one giant tree

#haikyuu reader insert #ushijima x reader #ushijima wakatoshi #ko fi requests #haikyuu

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steppedoffaflight · 4 years ago

Text

Summer’s a Knife - Chapter 6

Catch up on Chapter 5 here

“Van?” You gasp down the line the second you hear the ringing stop. “Van!”

“What’s going on?” Van says immediately. You can hardly process what he’s saying. Your teeth chatter.

“Are you in L.A.?” You ask, still gasping for air.

“I am, why?”

When you can’t answer through the chattering of your teeth you hear him down the line again: “Y/N? Are you okay?”

“I was in an accident,” You choke out. And with your announcement the real gravity of the situation hits you. You start crying. “I just got hit by a car.”

Van is there for you on arguably one of the worst nights of your life.

A/N: Content warning for a very in-depth description of a car accident (only minor physical injuries), psychological shock, and an anxiety attack.

Word count: ~6.1k

Chapter Six May 2019

The Catfish show is the last hurrah of sunny L.A. weather before clouds roll in. By Wednesday, it’s been raining consistently for days.

Technically, you know you should be grateful. Rain can be sparse sometimes, causing some serious droughts and an increase in wildfires. But while you’re happy those are being prevented, you’re not happy with having to constantly drive in the spattering rain and be kept awake at night with roaring thunder. And without any gaps in the showers for the Earth to soak everything up, the ground has become one giant swampy mud puddle everywhere you go.

You come home from work that night worn thin. The daily grind is mundane enough without the lack of sunshine, but after consecutive days without any time outdoors you feel extra irritable.

You check the weather forecast as you plop down on the couch without even bothering to change clothes yet. There’s still more rain being predicted. You tip your head back against the couch in annoyance.

One thing was for sure, you couldn’t stand another routine night of cooking dinner and then heading off to bed early simply from boredom. Something had to give.

Your fingers are poised over your phone screen as you consider. Should you text Mary? See if Van’s still in town? Have a night to yourself? It was a weeknight, after all. Everyone was probably busy with regular life.

But a night to yourself didn’t sound so bad, as long as you deviated from the usual. Maybe tonight was a good night to get some takeout and do something special in the name of self care. Now that you think about it, it’s been a long time since you’ve had IHOP. That’s always a nice treat.

Once you’ve had the idea, something about it just seems right. A big stack of your favorite pancakes, the rain pounding against the windows while you enjoy them. You could catch up with some TV or maybe grab one of the brand new books on your bookshelf you’d bought and never touched again. Or you could run a bath. All of those possibilities sounded perfect for tonight.

Before you can talk yourself out of it you’ve pulled up the IHOP menu. You really only look for fun. Your favorite order is always the cupcake pancakes, and this time is no exception. You place the order through an app and shuffle around getting dressed to head out in the rain.

Outside, the weather is disgusting. You tug your windbreaker around you tighter, carefully trying to avoid stepping in the murky puddles overflowing your yard as you head for the car. Even your gate seems sad at the weather, so waterlogged it doesn’t give its usual enthusiastic creak as you pass through.

Everyone else seems to have taken the night-in approach, too. There’s not too many other cars out, and you make it to the restaurant in record time, collecting your still-hot styrofoam container of pancakes. You’ve got the heat going in the car, your favorite Spotify playlist running through the aux, and as you pull away from IHOP you can feel yourself bubbling with excitement at the little night you’ve carved out for yourself.

You’re having an internal debate between Netflix shows when you see it. Actually, you hear it first: the noise of another car near you, even though you weren’t aware someone was so close in the lane next to you.

But they’re not in the lane next to you. You’re passing under the green light of an intersection when you realize you’re hearing a car that’s still driving on the opposite road. Headlights soak your vision as you realize they’re still moving directly towards your car. Your first instinct is to hit the brake, but immediately you can tell there’s no avoiding him. In a sickening jolt your mind processes that he’s going to nail the front passenger door and your adrenaline makes your foot press on the gas. You don’t hear any brakes squealing. He’s going to run you into the middle of this intersection and kill you.

“SHIT!” You scream as the sickening sound of metal crunching fills the car, the rubber of your tires wailing as the car is pushed sideways. You don’t know why you scream when you’re the only one present. You try to check your mirrors, hoping you don’t hit someone else as you’re pushed a whole lane over. Headlights beam you in the eyes again as the car slightly behind you in the lane next to you comes to a screeching stop.

As fast as the chaos had begun, it was over. You’re directly under the traffic light you’d been trying to pass under, and it beams red into the windshield of your car. You jerk your neck looking around, hoping someone doesn’t absentmindedly accelerate. You can’t see too much through the rain but tons of yellow headlights spotlighting you.

Someone tries your car door handle. You scream, startled. When they realize it’s locked they slap their hand against the window. You have to fumble before you manage to unlock the door.

“Are you okay?” Someone shouts at you. You stare up at them, trying to process the words.

“He ran right into you!” They continue, gesturing to the passenger side of your car. “Are you hurt?”

Honestly, you don’t feel anything. All of your limbs feel like solid ice. “I don’t think so,” You tell them, looking around for blood. Everything seems intact.

The rain is pelting through the open door, soaking the interior of your car. In the beam of headlights you see another silhouette approaching you from across the road. “Is everyone okay?”

“Get in my car,” The person talking to you commands. “You’ve got to get out of the middle of the road.”

You try to unbuckle your seatbelt with your icy fingers. You grasp for your phone on the passenger seat, coming up empty.

“My phone!” You cry out, groping around in the dark. “Where’s my phone?”

“Is this it?” The person asks, kneeling down by the side of your seat before pressing the solid weight of your phone into your palm. It’s splattered with raindrops. You attempt to wipe it off with the sleeve of your jacket, realizing too late that it’s also wet, smearing more water across your screen. The thought of your phone being broken only pumps more icy panic through your veins.

“Let’s get in my car,” The stranger says again, “So I can pull us to the side of the road.”

You do as you’re told, stumbling through the puddles of rainwater to his car. Your fingers ache as you ease them under the door handle, sliding into the front seat.

It’s only then you can see the scene of the accident fully. Your car is in the middle of the intersection, melted around the front of the other car, who’d hit you square in the middle of the passenger side. The whole right side of your car is crinkled and caved in. Black tire marks streak the pavement around you. Other good samaritans are attending to the other person. It looks like they’re struggling to get the driver’s door open.

“Are they dead?” You panic, leaning forward in your seat for a chance at a better look. The car starts up, the man who’s helped you immediately turning the music down as he slowly inches around the scene, pulling halfway onto the sidewalk in an attempt to be out of the way.

“I dunno,” He says glancing around in his mirrors as he cuts the ignition. “I’m gonna go help. Stay here.”

You don’t know how long you sit in the silence, shivering, before you look at your phone again. You manage to dry it off by wiping it against the seat you’re sitting in. It lights up when you hit the home button, illuminating a jagged crack that runs across the center of the screen. Your thumbs act of their own accord.

“Van?” You gasp down the line the second you hear the ringing stop. “Van!”

“What’s going on?” Van says immediately. You can hardly process what he’s saying. Your teeth chatter.

“Are you in L.A.?” You ask, still gasping for air.

“I am, why?”

When you can’t answer through the chattering of your teeth you hear him down the line again: “Y/N? Are you okay?”

“I was in an accident,” You choke out. And with your announcement the real gravity of the situation hits you. You start crying. “I just got hit by a car.”

“Holy fuck. Where? Are you hurt? Is help on the way?”

You’re not able to properly process anything he’s said. “I got hit by a car,” You sob again. “He just- He just ran into me!” You choke around a wail. “It wasn’t my fault! It wasn’t my fault!”

“Where? Fuck, you gotta give me something else to go on! Where are you?”

“I dunno why I didn’t call Mary,” You blubber, more tears running hot down your cheeks.

“It’s okay, alright,” Van tries to shush you. “Where are you? C’mon.”

“I was at IHOP.” Van’s shushing had worked for a brief moment, but as the memory floods back you return to full on sobbing.

“On Sunset?” Van presses, before his voice cuts out as he jostles around on his end.

“No, no,” You cry, wiping at your nose. It only rubs icy rainwater all over your face. “Not Sunset. The other one. The other big road. I can’t remember the name, fuck. I’m drawing a blank on everything, I dunno.”

“Santa Monica?”

You perk up at his words. “Yeah, that one, that one.”

“Are you hurt?”

“I can’t feel anything,” You sniffle. “I’m so fucking cold. I don’t think so. I’m not bleeding. I don’t think. I hope I’m not bleeding all over this guy’s car.”

“What guy’s car?”

“This guy. He almost hit me, too. The car pushed me over into his lane. But he stopped.” You are cut off by your own involuntary gasp for air. “I got in his car. He drove up on the sidewalk.” You glance out the side mirror, watching the crowd of people still fussing over the other person’s car.

“He’s trying to help the other person,” You tell him tearfully. “They can’t get the car door open. I think they’re dead, Van.” At that you sob again. “I think they’re dead.”

Van starts to speak, but a noise from your phone interrupts him. You pull it away from your ear in confusion. The screen doesn’t light up. You hit the home button. The empty battery indicator beams up at you.

You stuff your phone into your jacket pocket, a small sob of frustration escaping your throat.

You sit alone in your numb haze. There are car horns honking in impatience at the hold up. You wipe your eyes, laughing bitterly to yourself. If only you were one of them, caught in the minor inconvenience of traffic while someone else suffered your fate.

In an unknown amount of time the emergency responders are finally on the scene. You watch as the police start posting up yellow emergency tape and other officers attempt to direct the jam around the giant mess. The sirens of a firetruck and an ambulance rip through your consciousness as they drive up on the muddy grass around you.

A paramedic retrieves you from the car. You’re not sure who even told them where you were. She leads you through the rain to the back of the ambulance.

There are lots of questions as she gets you seated on a stretcher, starts working on paperwork. They’re hard to answer. You don’t remember your own phone number. You don’t have your purse with your license with you. You left it in your car, you tell her. She checks you for a concussion, whiplash. Makes sure your reflexes aren’t impared.

You stay in the ambulance while two police officers take the paramedic’s place. Telling the story makes you feel slightly calmer. You start to put the pieces together in your mind, slowly grasping how you went from excited for your food to the back of an ambulance. You’re not sure if your details make sense, but the officers seem pleased with what you’re able to tell them.

“Are they dead?” You ask when your part is finished. You can’t see any of the scene from where you’re sitting, only the officers conducting traffic outside in the rain. You’ve heard the commotion though, the ripping of metal while the firefighters dismantled the car.

“She’s alive,” One of them tells you, and your body is flooded with relief. “Injured, but alive.”

They’re packing up their things, carefully depositing their notebooks back into their uniform pockets and starting to shuffle away when you hear the bleep of one of their walkie-talkies.

Yeah, looks like it was distracted, the voice crackles over the speaker. Phone should be submitted into evidence.

The officer unclicks the radio from his pocket. “Headed over there now,” He says, and they leave you to handle that accidental information on your own.

The first one steps down into the grass before you hear him say, stern, “Can I help you, sir?”

You immediately jump up from the stretcher, clamoring over to the edge. The officer that hasn’t stepped out yet looks at you in confusion.

“Van!” You gasp, stumbling out of the ambulance. At the sound of you moving around the other officer is distracted, Van easily shuffling past him to get to you.

One of your feet slips in the mud. You almost fall backwards but Van’s there to steady you.

As instantly as you’ve caught your balance Van roughly pulls you forward into his chest, his arms wrapping tight around you.

“Are you her ride home?” You hear one of the officers ask Van from where you’ve got your face pressed into his chest.

“I am,” Van tells them. “Is she going to the hospital?”

“The paramedic examined her, but she can choose to go if she thinks she needs to. She’s in shock, though. Can’t drive.”

“Do you think you need to go to the hospital, ma’am?” Someone asks from behind you.

It takes all your strength to pull yourself away from where you’re pressed against Van.

“I think I’m okay,” You tell them. “I don’t have any pain right now. Just wanna go home, really.” As soon as you’re done speaking you’ve pressed yourself back against Van. Having something familiar to cling to has instantaneous calming effects on you. Your teeth start chattering again.

You break away from him eventually to speak to the paramedic, who hands you some paperwork that’s getting damp from the rain.

“If anything feels off, come to the emergency room immediately,” She tells you, holding eye contact so you take her seriously. You nod.

She turns to Van. “It’s very important she comes in if she’s showing any of the symptoms listed.”

Van thanks her, before gently tugging the paperwork out between your fingers, folding it into his own pocket.

You get a slip from the officers so you can get the police report later for your insurance company. Then you’re free to go.

The scene has quieted down significantly. The helpful pedestrians are gone now, having been replaced by the responders. The car honking has stopped now that traffic was being directed, and a tow truck company was supposed to be arriving any minute now.

“I didn’t even get to thank that guy,” You mumble when you realize that the car you’d been sitting in is no longer on the curb.

“Hm?”

“That guy,” You say louder, looking around again. “I never got to thank him.”

Van rubs his hand over your back. “It’s okay. He knows you were distracted.”

You nod, hoping he’s right. “Where’s your car?”

Van gestures down the road. “At the IHOP. Are you able to make it?”

“IHOP? You walked all that way?”

It’s only then you realize that Van’s soaked from the downpour, same as you. For some reason your brain had been tricked into believing he’d escaped the misery of being this cold.

“Well, yeah,” Van laughs, “I didn’t have a choice! Traffic was blocked. I had to get to you!”

“You didn’t have to do that,” You huff.

“Will you fucking stop?” Van insists, starting the journey down the sidewalk towards his car. He keeps a hand on your back as you move with him. “Look at you. Your car is a ball of tin foil in the middle of an intersection and you’re tryin’ to tell me not to come check on you. Save it, love.”

Your brain is too tired to bicker with him. You let your body move on autopilot. When you reach the crosswalk of the intersection you’d been hit at Van’s hand suddenly drops to grab yours, breaking into a light jog to get you two across during a red light.

Even once you’ve crossed the road he doesn’t let go. He holds your hand the entire walk down the block to IHOP, where his range rover is crookedly parked across two spaces. He only lets go to help you into the car.

“I assume you didn’t eat dinner?” He asks softly once he’s pulled onto the street.

“I had takeout in my car,” You say sadly.

“Wanna run back in to IHOP?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Well I am,” Van says, “And you gotta eat something. McDonald’s it is, then. At least get some chips.”

As glaringly obvious as his britishness is, it still catches you off guard. You crinkle your nose at his choice of words. Chips.

He pulls up to a drive-thru a few minutes later, easily rattling off what you assume is his usual order. Then he turns to you expectantly.

“Um, whatever you got,” You tell him, unable to remember your usual order. Van nods, turning back to the speaker.

“So you get vanilla, too?” He asks when he pulls the car forward, in line for the window to pay.

“Vanilla what?”

“A vanilla milkshake,” Van says slowly. “That’s what I ordered.”

“Oh.” You watch the windshield wipers move in an arc across the glass. “I honestly have no idea what you ordered. I just couldn’t remember the menu.”

The weirdness of feeling so cloudy makes your eyes water. You desperately just want to feel normal.

“This is so weird,” You tell Van, your voice tight from your tears. “Something’s wrong with me.”

As Van pulls up to the window, you reach out suddenly, hand on his arm. “I don’t have my purse,” You realize. “I don’t have any money on me.”

Van only gives you a confused smile before he fishes his wallet out, handing his card over to the cashier when the window opens. You heave a sigh of relief.

“Nothing’s wrong with you,” He says when it’s time to pull forward again. “Your head is fucked up. You’ll calm down.”

You wipe away the stray tear that’s started its journey down your face, hoping he’s right. “I guess it feels so stupid, getting McDonald’s after that. I almost died.”

“Yeah.”

“Have you ever been in an accident?”

Van hands over the paper bag of food and then a wobbling drink tray before pulling away. “I’ve had a fender bender or two when I was younger. Nothing like yours. And I don’t drive much, to be fair. Only when I’m here or in London. On tour I don’t have a car.”

“I never thought of that. How do you get around then?”

“Walk. Take an Uber.”

As the scent of hot french fries fills the car your body remembers how hungry it really is. It rips through your stomach with a growl.

“I take it back, I am hungry.” You pick through the paper bag. “What’d you get us?”

“Quarter pounder with cheese, Coke and a milkshake.”

“Holy shit. Is that what you usually get?”

“Sure. Sometimes I like some nuggets with it. But usually this is it.”

You blink at his silhouette while he looks ahead at the road. He glances over at you. “What?”

“That’s a lot of food for one sitting!” You laugh in disbelief.

Van shrugs. “I dunno! Maccies is good! What do you want me to say?”

“Maccies?”

Van rolls his eyes. “Aw, Christ. McDonald’s.”

“Is that what you call it?”

“Sometimes!”

Having a normal conversation helps you calm down. By the time Van pulls up to your house, you feel slightly closer to being back on Earth as you help carry the food inside.

But being back in your living room and remembering the night you’d originally intended to have still brings tears to your eyes. Van notices right away.

“Go take a hot shower, yeah?” He suggests, coming over to you as soon as he’s set the bag of food and a lump of his things he’d thrown in his car down on the coffee table. He takes the cardboard drink tray from your shaking hands, setting it down before helping you ease off your soaked jacket.

“I don’t want to,” You sniffle, rubbing at your eyes. The idea of becoming even more waterlogged sounds miserable. And you just want to sit down.

“It’ll warm you up,” Van continues. He gives your lower back a rub before resting his hands on your shoulders, giving you a closer look. “Your lips are blue. You definitely need it.”

You open your mouth to protest again, but Van doesn’t allow it.

“I’ll get the water running,” He says, making a beeline for the bathroom before you can decline.

You find him fussing with the faucet when you finally follow. You take off your clothes right there, the icy layers of fabric slapping against the tile.

He doesn’t even give your naked body a glance when he stands upright. “Do you want something hot to drink when you’re done?”

“Do you know how to work a Keurig?”

Van nods.

“Yeah, coffee. But use one of the blue cups. The other ones are nasty.”

With another nod Van shuffles past you and out of the bathroom, leaving you to it.

Your skin is so cold even the lukewarm water Van had turned on burns. You stay in there, easing the water hotter and hotter until you’re no longer cringing away from the spray and the shower is filled with steam. Then you decide you’re warmed up enough and rejoin Van.

He’s changed into the dry clothes he’d brought with him, a black t-shirt and the worn flannel pajama bottoms you’d borrowed once. His hair is starting to dry, fluffy and unruly. He’s on his phone but looks up as soon as you return from getting dressed in your bedroom.

He smiles sheepishly. “I realized too late I have no idea what you put in your coffee. So I ran the cup and left it for you to finish.”

You head to the kitchen and finish adding milk and sugar into the steaming mug before you come back to the sectional.

The paper that the paramedic had given you is resting on the table. You nod to it. “Reading up on me?”

“Oh, yeah. Wanted to make sure I knew what we were looking for. You’re still okay, right? Nothing hurting?”

You roll your neck. “I’m starting to feel a little stiff, but I mean, that’s probably expected.” You tug your sweatpants down to your knees, showing Van a cut on your outer thigh. “I think a piece of the shattered window hit me.”

He grazes his fingertips against you gingerly, careful not to touch the cut. It only looks like a long cat scratch, but there had been enough crusted blood around it when you’d undressed that you knew something sharp had caused it.

“But I’m okay.” You shrug, pulling your pants back up.

Van eyes you for a long moment. “Are you doing better in your head?”

You manage a weak smile. “Yeah. It still doesn’t feel real. But the shower helped.”

Van seems satisfied with that answer, nodding to your food set aside on the table. You notice he’s waited to eat until you were ready, the milkshakes starting to melt. With both of you present now you dig into your meals. In the silence your mind wanders.

“I don’t think I can explain this to everyone tonight,” You groan around a mouthful of burger. “I don’t even remember the story as it is.”

“Wait ‘till morning,” Van says, uncapping his shake in order to dip his fries in. “You don’t need to worry about anything else tonight.”

“I wish it was that easy,” You sigh. “But I’ve got to call off work tomorrow. Gotta text my boss.”

“So just do that. Nothin’ else.”

You feel a headache blooming at everything that has to be done. You try to push your thoughts away, focusing back on your food. You abandon your coffee while you eat, the hot drink not going as well with your menu as the Coke, but once you’re done eating you pick the mug back up just for something to keep you distracted.

When Van’s done he taps away at his phone, and you remember that yours is dead.

“Fuck, gotta charge my phone,” You huff, going to get up from the couch. But Van points to the kitchen table, where your phone is charging.

“I got it going for ya. Is the crack from the accident?”

“Yes,” You sigh.

You make your way to the kitchen table, checking out any notifications. Everything is achingly normal. There’s a meme from your mom, a text inviting you out to drinks from some of the girls at work, and Mary complaining about something Theo’s done. You try to keep the details as minimal as possible as you text your boss, and you ignore everything else.

There’s so many people who will want to know what happened: Mary and Theo, your mom and dad. Your boss. Some of your coworkers you’re close with will wonder why you were out. You could cover a lot of your bases with your family and close friends with a Facebook post, but inevitably people will only reach out to you wanting more details. Then the insurance company will need all the details for the claim. And who knows how much everything will cost, and who’s responsible for it. You had no idea what towing company had even taken your car.

“Are you alright?”

You feel like you’ve been asked that question a million times tonight. You only realize you’re short of breath when Van’s question pulls you from your thoughts.

“Whoa,” Van murmurs. He sets his phone on the coffee table, instantly repositioning so that he’s sitting in front of you. “What’s going on?”

“I’m stressed out,” You admit. Your eyes have watered so many times tonight that you’re sick of the sensation, wiping at them furiously. That only irritates the already tender skin.

“It’s all gonna be okay,” Van tries to tell you, hands on your shoulders. “It’s gonna be fine.”

“But it’s not!” You sob into your hands, before digging your fingers into your hair. “It’s not okay! I almost fucking died! I almost died, Van! Would you have even missed me?”

Van’s face immediately contorts into anger. “Why would you even fucking ask that?”

Because we’re just a fling. There’s others. Why would you care? You don’t scream the words that run through your head.

“I’m freaking out!” You yell instead. “I’m freaking the fuck out! I can’t ever drive a car again after that! I almost died! I don’t even have a car to drive! I have no way to get to work! And I’m not made of money, I don’t have the kinda cash to Uber everywhere! I don’t have money for car repairs. And I mean, you saw my car! C’mon, it’s fucking totaled! I don’t have money for an Uber, let alone a new car!”

You reach for a stiff McDonald’s napkin in order to wipe your running nose. “How do I tell that story to everyone, Van? How? I literally could not explain it if I tried. A car literally ran into me. Straight into me. They had a red light. A red light! And it was distracted driving. Did I tell you that? I heard it over the walkie-talkie. Fucking texting and driving. How do I explain the fact I don’t even have whiplash? Or a broken arm? None of it makes sense!”

Van’s anger has faded from his expression by the time you’ve stopped yelling, but his jaw is set. He looks like he’s thinking.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” He agrees. “I saw it with my own two eyes and I don’t know how you walked away. I don’t have an answer for you there.”

He takes a deep breath. “But you can borrow the Rover as long as you need it.”

You blink at him. “What?”

He snatches the keys off of the table and holds them out to you. “It’s yours while you figure all this shit out.”

You jerk away as if he’s offered you a grenade. “There’s no way. Nuh-uh.”

“You’re right. Everything is fucked. But it’s gonna be okay. And if I can help it be okay in some way, that’s what I’m gonna do.”

You’re still leaned away from him. “You’ve helped enough already. I don’t want your fucking car. What if I crash that one, too?”

“You didn’t crash anything. An asshole hit you. And it has full coverage, so I don’t care.”

“I’m not taking your car, Van!”

“Yes, you are! Fuck!” Van tosses the keys in your lap lightly. You flinch as if they’ll burn you. “Stop giving me shit every time I’m trying to be nice to you! I’m going to be back in London soon anyway, so use my car! I won’t be around to!”

You toss the keys back at Van. “Take these back.”

Van stands up. “I’m not taking these back, they’re yours for now.” He walks over to where your coat is hanging over the back of one of the kitchen chairs, dripping water onto the floor, and tucks his keys into your jacket pocket.

“And just so you know,” He starts angrily as he returns, “I meet people all the fucking time that I can tell don’t give a shit about me. We were at a party full of them. When you have money and even the smallest amount of influence, people want to be mates so bad. Especially in the music industry.”

He plops down in his seat, gesturing at the front door behind him. “If you think I’m racing out of my house in the middle of a storm to make sure they’re okay you’ve got it all wrong. And if you think I’m offering everyone my car keys you’re crazy. We’re friends. Don’t ever ask me some stupid shit about you dying like that again. The keys are yours. End of.”

You stare at him through your tears, clenching your teeth. When he’s around nothing ever makes sense. It’s like you’re best friends yet you feel like you know nothing about him. You two act like you’re dating in private and then go weeks without speaking. He’s so fucking nice to you all the time and you don’t understand where it comes from, why he feels compelled to do things like hand over his car keys without a second thought. You don’t have an issue with a friends-with-benefits arrangement. But Van has a way of blurring the line between the benefits and the friendship. And you have nothing for him in return. No exclusive access to things, no guest lists, connections. Certainly no cars to lend.

You want to cry from how overwhelmed you are by his kindness this entire night. And you want to scream at how much it confuses you. You settle for reaching forward and grabbing his shirt collar and pressing your lips against his, hard.

Van’s not one to startle. When you kiss him he’s usually all in, easily following your lead. But this time you notice his surprise, how he’s frozen in shock for a moment before he’s kissing you back.

He’s gentle, carefully cupping the back of your head as he tries to slow the pace. You’re not having it. You pull him closer by his shirt, pressing his mouth open with yours to force the kiss deeper.

He’s sitting slightly too far away from you to the point where you can tell it’s hard for him to lean forward enough to kiss you. You press him back by his shoulders, nudging him to rest against the back of the couch as you scramble up to straddle him, resting yourself over his thighs. You pant into his mouth as you slip your fingers under the hem of his t-shirt, pressing it upward in an attempt to slip it off of him.

Suddenly his hands are resting over the back of yours.

“Hey, hey,” He murmurs. He holds your hands gently, guiding them away from their task of undressing him. You still cling to the fabric for dear life. He has to press into your flesh with his fingertips in order for you to finally let go.

“There’s no need for that,” Van tells you softly. You accept he wants to keep his shirt on and go for the waistband of his pants instead, trying to ease the elastic down. He tightens his fingers around your wrist, gently wrestling you away again.

You give a frustrated sigh. “What’s wrong?”

“Your head’s not in the right place,” Van replies. “You’ve had a long night.”

“I know I’ve have a long night,” You plead, “That’s why I need this. To chill out.”

“I’ll roll us a joint. That’ll chill you out.”

“I don’t want to smoke weed. I want to give something back for how nice you’ve been tonight.”

“Oh, quit it. You’re keeping me company. I was sitting around bored out of my mind.”

“No, you’re keeping me company,” You argue, wriggling around in his lap. It’s easy to feel his semi through his flannel bottoms. “Lemme make you dealing with me crying all night worth it.”

Van grabs your upper arms firmly, nudging you off of his lap before standing up. “I’ll grab the weed.”

You watch him rifle through his things as you come to terms with the fact you’ve officially been rejected.

The sting of Van’s rejection is only eased after passing the joint he’s rolled back and forth a few times. He doesn’t acknowledge how silent and broody you’ve become as he rolls it, but he’s too smart not to know. The fact he’s as cheerful as ever as he makes you take the first hit only boils your blood more.

But as you two burn the joint down to a pitiful nub you start to simmer down. Your bad mood becomes less about Van and more about how awful your night has gone as a whole. The fact you weren’t going to get a quickie with Van out of tonight was only the cherry on top.

“Should I roll another?” Van asks after you two have given the first one some time to settle. It’s calmed you down, but not enough to sleep. Given the way Van’s socked toes are tapping at your knee you get the feeling he’s not ready to sleep, either.

He brings the second one to the bedroom, waiting to light it until you two are settled in. This one tastes a little stronger, burns your throat more. After three hits you’re snuggled up against him as he lights his nighttime cigarette.

“I have a question,” You say slowly, keeping your eyes closed. You don’t want to lose the way your head is floating, so much lighter now that you’ve been able to let go of your worries. Besides the one that keeps nagging your brain every time you breathe in the scent of Van’s fabric softener.

“Shoot.”

“Are you seeing someone in London?”

“Loads of people. Me mum ‘n dad. My cousins. Mates from back home.”

You giggle, poking his thigh. “You know what I mean.”

“I’ve got a question for you,” Van declares, poking you on the arm.

You press your forehead against his outer thigh, slinging your arm across his lap. It’s the ultimate comfortable position, your body sinking into it happily. “Hm?”

“I wanna know who’s been treating you so lousy that you’re so shocked when someone cares for you.”

Maybe you could’ve answered him if you hadn’t drifted off to sleep.

#summer's a knife #van mccann #van mccann fanfiction #vanfic #catb #catfish and the bottlemen #van fic #van mccann fic

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thecollegefootballguy · 3 years ago

Text

2021 Big Ten Coaching Power Rankings

Hello everybody, welcome back to the Coaching Power Rankings. I’m rating coaches against their peers conference by conference. Remember, with power rankings I weigh both recent and overall career success. Let’s see where each man stands.

Check out last year’s rankings here.

The Big Ten had a strange season in 2020. Regular powers Michigan and Penn State both had crippling losing season while Wisconsin took a step back. This vacuum allowed Indiana and Northwestern to flourish. Ohio State still won the league, of course. The Buckeyes don’t seem to be going anywhere and should be expected to run the conference for the foreseeable future.

The only coach that was fired was Lovie Smith at Illinois. I’m not sure if that was the right call, especially since the Illini finally made a bowl in 2019.

14. Mel Tucker

Record at Michigan State: 2-5 Overall Record: 7-12

Movement: Same

It was year 1 for Mel Tucker in East Lansing so I’m not too concerned about the 2-5 record. The Spartans managed to beat Michigan so I think you can still call it a successful season.

13. Mike Locksley

Record at Maryland: 6-17 Overall Record: 8-43

Movement: Same

Maryland showed some signs of life in 2020, especially with their road win over rival Penn State. If Locksley can translate that improvement into more wins he’ll start moving up the list.

12. Bret Bielema

Overall Record: 97-58

Movement: N/A

Welcome back to the Big Ten, Bret Bielema! Bielema was of course the coach at Wisconsin from 2006 to 2012 and he led the Badgers to three consecutive Rose Bowls. I have my doubts that he can replicate that kind of success at Illinois, but here’s to hoping.

11. Greg Schiano

Record at Rutgers: 71-73

Movement: Down 1 spot

It took Greg Schiano 5 years to get to a winning record at Rutgers the first time he was a had coach there, so we need to give him some time to turn things around in Piscataway.

10. Tom Allen

Record at Indiana: 24-22

Movement: Up 1 spot

Indiana had a hell of a year under Tom Allen. The Hoosiers went 6-2, finishing 2nd place in the Big Ten West. It was their best season in decades and if a full 12 game schedule had been played there’s a decent chance that IU would have gotten to 10+ wins. I hope Allen can keep things running smoothly at Indiana, it’s always great to see long downtrodden programs rise up to compete with the big boys.

9. Scott Frost

Record at Nebraska: 12-20 Overall Record: 31-27

Movement: Same

Is Scott Frost the guy who can turn around Nebraska? I don’t know, he’s starting his 4th year and is still attempting to make his first bowl as Cornhusker head coach. I know the program has taken a nosedive and realistically will never be on Ohio State’s level anymore, but in the Big Ten West you should be able to find 6 wins in a season. Any day now.

8. Jeff Brohm

Record at Purdue: 17-21 Overall Record: 47-31

Movement: Same

I have half a mind to move Brohm and Frost even lower given their specific circumstances, but I’ll trust in them a bit longer since they both did so well at their previous stops. Brohm’s Purdue Boilermakers have been struggling in the past few years despite their initial success. I honestly have no idea if Brohm can right the ship a second time, I know fans are disappointed how things have played out considering the promising start of his tenure.

7. P. J. Fleck

Record at Minnesota: 26-19 Overall Record: 56-41 Division Titles: 1 (2019)

Movement: Down 1 spot

Minnesota regressed in Fleck’s fourth season at the helm. Given the 11 win season in 2019 I think Fleck has earned some patience. He’ll rise back up in the rankings as long as the Gophers continue to build up their program under his careful guidance.

6. Jim Harbaugh

Record at Michigan: 49-22 Overall Record: 107-49 Division Championships: 1 (2018)

Movement: Down 1 spot

Jim Harbaugh tumbles out of the top 5 after Michigan suffered their first losing season under his leadership. I know the dramatic regression came as a surprise to Wolverine fans, many of whom are concerned with the direction things are heading with the program. It’s a tough position for the coach and the administration, who will struggle to beat Ohio State no matter who is coaching the team. We’ll see if Harbaugh can turn things around in Ann Arbor, he might not get too many chances if things don’t break his way in 2021.

5. Paul Chryst

Record at Wisconsin: 56-19 Overall Record: 37-13 Division Championships: 3 (2016, 2017, 2019)

Movement: Down 1 spot

Wisconsin was fine in 2020. I expect them to compete for division titles every year and they did, the Badgers just didn’t win this time. Better luck next year. Wisconsin hasn’t gone two years without at least tying for the West title so I am confident that they’ll be competing in 2021.

4. James Franklin

Record at Penn State: 60-28 Overall Record: 84-43 Division Championships: 1 (2016) Conference Championships: 1 (2016)

Movement: Down 1 spot

Much like Michigan, Penn State suffered from a similarly horrible year. James Franklin has done much for the Nittany Lions, bringing their program back into regular competition with the top flight of college football. However, losing seasons don’t come out of the blue very often to a well run program. We’ll see if this downturn is just an aberration. Franklin certainly still seems like he’s capable of turning things back around.

3. Pat Fitzgerald

Record at Northwestern: 106-81 Division Championships: 2 (2018, 2020)

Movement: Up 4 spots

Pat Fitzgerald really outdid himself in 2020. The completely unheralded Wildcats went out and beat both Iowa and Wisconsin to win the Big Ten West for the second time in three years. NU continues to punch above its weight and it’s all thanks to the hard work of Pat Fitzgerald and his staff. I don’t know if Northwestern can ever really be a year in and year out competitor in league play, but if anybody can do it Fitzgerald can.

2. Kirk Ferentz

Record at Iowa: 168-106 Overall Record: 180-127 Division Championships: 1 (2015) Conference Championships: 2 (2002, 2004)

Movement: Down 1 spot

The longest tenured coach in FBS football has slipped down one spot. It’s not really his fault, it’s hard to keep pace with a guy who’s making the Playoff every year. Ferentz is a living legend and as long as he’s around Iowa is going to be just fine. The Hawkeyes continue to battle it out with Wisconsin for West Division supremacy and I don’t think that will change for the time being.

1. Ryan Day

Record at Ohio State: 23-2 Division Championships: 2 (2019, 2020) Conference Championships: 2 (2019, 2020)

Movement: Up 1 spot

Ryan Day hasn’t crashed the Ferarri yet. Ohio State was the second best team in the country last year after an Alabama squad that might have been the greatest ever. That’s not bad competition. The Buckeyes seem well served by Day so far and will compete for Big Ten and national championships for the foreseeable future as long as he’s in Columbus.

#college football #Michigan State Spartans #Maryland Terrapins #Illinois Fighting Illini #Rutgers Scarlet Knights #Indiana Hoosiers #Nebraska Cornhuskers #Purdue Boilermakers #Minnesota Golden Gophers #Michigan Wolverines #Wisconsin Badgers #Penn State Nittany Lions #Northwestern Wildcats #Iowa Hawkeyes #Ohio State Buckeyes

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unproduciblesmackdown · 4 years ago

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The opposite of your last post for the ask meme! Like 1, 5, 9..

thank you lol sorry it took me a minute to get to posting these answers......i also skipped a couple that got asked previously via answering all primes lol

1: What inspires you?

hm well just basic stuff like “being in a good mood” lol or “being hyped up by friends” or “having reason to be particularly excited about something” which is all like, factors that Contribute Energy......learning about stuff / trying something and discovering like oh i’m Into this thing, or that for whatever reason something turns out to be more within reach / doable than i might’ve thought, like, hey i wanna get on this maybe.......~creatively~ it’s great to like, see other ppl’s art, and while i’ve sure been Inspired by professional artists, overall i’m more like, influenced and motivated by seeing the styles / specific works of Online Randos like me.......i also Draw to create [self-indulgent (usually fairly) niche fanart which is also probably gay and is all the time of characters i like] so like, the Stuff I Wanna Make Fanart Of (which has Whatever characters i specifically would like to draw lol) is sure directly Inspiring in that way. i’d say i never had that experience of like, ppl being kids and seeing some [distributed work in a certain art medium] like oh i want to make my own [distributed work in a certain art medium] as in like, i wanna publish a book, i wanna make movies, etc, but i guess i Did b/c i was like elementary school age in the early-to-mid 00s and experienced some instances of online fanart like :o :o wow damn ppl can do that?? just be a rando drawing fanart and sharing it w/ other people online???? and today i am living that dream, so good for me lol. and also i’d like to shoutout marge simpson anime, which is a particular piece of Online Art (technically fanart even lol) which was like, unusually Motivating as a single work of art lol, i made a notes app fanart like immediately and then a way more “painterly” piece of fanart that was v directly inspired by it lol.......and i was sure Drawing It Up last last winter when bmc 3.0 was impending / happening, b/c i got into like Just in the dec before, so that was Fresh, and then bam the Content is happening concurrently and as soon as we even just learned that jeremy has glasses i immediately spent like honestly 25 consecutive hours making fanart for that exact Inspiration. we didn’t even know abt the hello kitty shoes yet!!! and naturally im not out here for stats or clout but it is Inspiring when ppl enjoy the stuff i make and let me know one way or another. [tag comments that express enthusiasm in any way.....Appreciated]

9: Do you trust people easily, or do people have to earn your trust?

i have to say i am wary! that’s in part just like, a default anxiety defensive mode lol. but it takes me a hot minute (aka weeks....or months.....) to realize when someone like, would like to be friends or something, so while i can be Friendly and Outgoing w/ people like, immediately, i’m not picking up relationships left and right that are close enough that i’d particularly talk about “trust” or whatever. i’m not necessarily Distrustful either lol, it’s more just like, again re: the constant wariness thing. it is not unlike a cat lmao i vibe with them lol i Get that [approach]....and there’s been times i’ve been like “hmm i sure do Not vibe with this person ever and am not comfortable around them / interacting with them to any extent beyond occasional casual interactions that i don’t super enjoy. that’s me being overly anxious and failing to be personable i guess!!” and then that person Does give that reason down the line like oh, actually, that eternal uneasiness was warranted :/ damb

21: How does someone become friends with you?

yknow i was like “didn’t i Also answer this one previously” but it turned out the question i was thinking of, which i Had answered, was “how does someone become important to you” lmao.....same diff

tbh it’s kind of an arduous process lmao like. first of all i am Bad about initiating shit, and a lot of times will like, be wary of Directly Interacting with people for a while b/c i am also Bad At not being too passive / unwilling to assert anything so like, if someone’s regularly interacting with me but i’m not into it / Eventually Realize i’m not into it, it’s that thing again where my main strat is [v gradually sidle away] lol and just find it difficult to extricate myself from interactions / relationships and so that plays into me really feeling like i have to have some real confidence that i’d get on with / vibe with someone Before i start significantly interacting with / getting involved with them which....is also difficult natch lol like. can’t rly get a great feel for what someone’s like w/o talking to them.......but then if i Distance myself at all at any point will that be taken as rejection or whatever.......and then anyways say i Am talking to someone, then it’s like, also i’m just not fantastic at casual conversation always and that stage where you don’t know someone too well and talking is mostly a Polite Ritual and it’s like oh god don’t mess up, respond Normally lmaoo......i am nervous. and i also have a tendency to just naturally try to make an interaction go smoothly than immediately prioritize / feel comfortable busting out My Personality lmao.....so then even if ppl are responding well enough it’s like ah jeez i know we’re all performing always but have i shown them What I’m Actually Like to any significant degree, am i just masking it up / mirroring the crap out of how they talk?? and also it then takes me quite a while to put together “if someone keeps talking to you / choosing to interact with you for like, weeks, it probably means they want to / are interested in doing so” lol.........and then i’ll take ages more of trying to consciously Be More Myself without *also* feeling like this is too much of an act lol, and gradually picking up like oh they’re still not like, annoyed or disinterested or something..............what i am trying to say is it sure takes a minute lol

also when i Am attempting sometimes to like [initiate interaction] with people my version of being Active is still not all that active lmao i will be like [occasional Like] or [even more occasional reply] or [tag comments or no comments coz it’s twitter and im rt-ing stuff] and it’s like oh wow if we’re not having more regular interaction i suppose i’ve failed or something?? does this mean anything further lol, did i do anything.....but welp gotta have that perspective that Not Necessarily lol and i’m not the only person in the world who might not make friends or even friendly acquaintances easily / at the drop of a hat and u can’t necessarily read way into shit that hasn’t Actually been communicated to you.......naturally though it is easier to have some ~perspective~ and Serenity about all this sort of thing when you do already have some Friends lmao........been feeling (and consciously nudging myself towards feeling) More Chill about say like, friendly acquaintances i have who aren’t raring to interact with me on the reg.......ppl i’ll go months or half a year or more between having a convo with and then we’ll be like trading dm’s for a couple days and then it’s back to not really talking, and that Is What It Is, not necessarily a tragedy, and really it feels “rude” to acknowledge to myself like oh i’m not sure that me and whomever even Vibe well enough that *i’d* be raring to talk all the time either, but hey, it’s also true, i don’t have to be Validated by ppl who know me having me in their friend circles in any significant way......i be out here on the peripheral / outer orbits and i can appreciate that for what it is, even if, again, easier to be more Cool with that when i’m not Only in ppl’s periphery...........i appreciate the pal i have who like, 99% of how we Communicate is occasionally sending each other pics of our cats, not very intimate but also back when i was offline for months on end they eventually went out of their way to find someone to get in touch with to verify i hadn’t like died or anything lol........i appreciate the Gestures of Caring that ppl have and do extend, even if we do not actually talk regularly.

and like also i’m bad at like. idk the main way i talk is again, At Some Length and often about real specific shit lol so im like woop aware that many ppl are not into that, or they might be down for having an exchange like that for a day and then they’re done.........not at all like wholly Against more lol Conversational conversations but i gotta say that’s more of a struggle lmao..........so let’s say befriending me takes some Patience. i kinda operate on [cat] rules. jellicle

25: How do you stop yourself from going back to toxic people?

i absolutely am Refraining from launching off on a ted talk of a tangent that is also me being the [the guy about to throw down a card on the pile on the table and that card pile is like “any conversation” and the guy is labeled ��me” and the One Card about to be played is labeled “it’s capitalism” or smthing like that and also it’s all in spanish].jpg.......

anyways idk just try to keep things in perspective, right......i generally am pretty Passive about gradually sidling away from relationships that are bad and so by the time i Have exited them it’s pretty overdue lmao and i get to be quite confident that it was The Right Thing........and just when looking back on stuff it’s like, well if you remember the Good or “Not That Bad(tm)” parts maybe consciously think about the whole of it And specifically the Bad parts / the reasons for peacing out.......also the other day i was mulling over some standard [conflicted / complicated feelings about having cut certain ppl out entirely] and it also occurred to me that a lot of the [conflicted] feeling part came from sympathy for them, whereas from the perspective of Entirely My Own Feelings On The Matter minus that “how do/would they feel about it” consideration, the thought of never interacting w/ these ppl is like. fine with me lol........stuff like this is always Complicated and Individual and there’s certainly no like, one-stop simple Guide To Navigating All This Kind Of Thing, Cmon It’s Easy........another consideration i saw the other day via a graphic on twitter, which is probably most relevant re: say, controlling / abusive Partners, was how like, to think about how someone is acting if they’re saying you should Take Them Back b/c they’ve Changed their behavior, but to pay attention to if they’re trying to guilt you into it / justifying or downplaying their previous behavior / shifting blame and otherwise manifesting the inherently harmful and controlling patterns that are supposed to be gone now........anyways yeah complicated stuff and also just p.s. (and what would’ve been the jumping off point for the It’s-Capitalism tangential essay lol) ppl shouldn’t be blamed if they do choose to let someone back in their life like oh now they’re responsible for bringing their mistreatment upon themself.....no better than blaming someone for, say, having a harmful / controlling romantic partner in the first place like oh well they should’ve known better than to have gotten involved with this person..........ppl are in control of their own abusive behavior and shouldn’t be considered Forces Of Nature no matter how intransigent they are

33: Do you have someone you know you can always rely on?

tbt question 9 lol there’s defo some people that i do trust! love it....

45: Do you consider yourself creative?

another #tbt to question 1 lol.......i mean Yes i am creative in ways but like, who Isn’t, really.......think sometimes “creativity” means “do you like, do Art things” which, yes i do, but then within that there’s art that’s deemed more ~creative~ or w/e......not to mention that i don’t think something has to be definitively labeled an Art to be creative. like, for example, Science and Art aren’t opposites / the antithesis of each other, and anytime defines ~science~ as like, people just memorizing and outputting Facts and Numbers and considers this a distinction from Being An Artist.....wild and i Will fight you lmao. i tell you i can v much remember times i have had to completely disengage to keep from losing my cool at people arguing about “why i respect science but could only be an artist :’|” or “why Art is actually harder than Science and also we’re the underdogs b/c society values science so much more :’|” like.....mf...........anyways scientific pursuits may certainly have a different Methodology (see: scientific method) than art but lbr it still requires creativity and science and art are friends you fucking fools................and then also just zooming in on the Art-Making business here, i also like, have never had any interest in coming up with Original stories / characters and the like, and i don’t enjoy trying and it just really is not my thing, and it’s Funny or something when people wanna say that creative fanworks have value b/c they let ppl cut their teeth for what really matters, inevitably making their own original content(tm)......that isn’t inevitable for me lol and certainly is nothing i aim to do ever, and when there’s the suggestion that if you’re Good enough at ur medium you gotta manifest some of that original the character do not steal shit.........anyways i’m not pressed to claim i am an Artist(tm) or Creative(tm) lol like i guess technically i am both but i have no professional aspirations and my brain does not Do [generate original content] so it’s all like, i’m just out here.........s/o to this time i was trying to do my fuckin thing drawing on a tablet in a cafe and some random annoying guy is trying to talk and i happen to mention like “lol i don’t exactly call myself an artist really” and Guy goes “OH REALLY??? WHAT’S WRONG WITH ARTISTS? WHAT’S YOUR ISSUE WITH ART” like please cool it lmao but god p sure it was a guy who was just. very Around and very annoying in general

49: Do you feel like you’re a good person?

yeah i think i’m alright but really what is the use in like considering there 2 be achievable Good or Bad Person Statuses for everyone........let’s say it’s an ongoing, active state to be in the process of consciously choosing to be Good and working towards Better. especially considering that We Live In A Society which tries to teach everyone and continuously imbues our existence with Bad Messages about how to perceive and engage with other people, and being A Good Person is a lifelong effort and it’s unhelpful to feel that if you’re already Good or well-intentioned enough you can just dust off your hands and be like “well my work here is done” and be unprepared to examine your beliefs/actions or deal with the might-as-well-assume-it’s-an-inevitability that even if u have some noble-ass beliefs you’ll fail to live up to them at some point/s.......so like yeah lol again i feel like i am a pretty good person but can always be better and ought to be aware of / willing to work on that at any point

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technoashish09 · 4 years ago

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What is blogging? How we earn money from it?

Today we will learn what is blogging and how to make money online in English with it.

Today we will learn what blogging is and how to make money from it. Before you start reading this article, know some facts. If blogging is done properly then you will not need any other job. You can withdraw as much money as a normal man earns in 1 year.

But what are the difficulties that you will have to go through in order to create such a big blog and all the things that you will have to do have been discussed in this article. If you read this article properly till the end, then you will not have any problem related to blogging and you will also learn how to make money from it.

There are many ways to make money online with blogging which we learn in this post.

Learn to earn money by blogging - What is Blogging and how to do?

You must have heard about blogging before. Even if you have not heard, there is nothing because today we are going to give you complete information about blogging. And it will also tell you that you blogging karke paisa kese kama sakte hain in Hindi.

Let's first know what blogging and blogs mean.

What is a blog?

Friends blog is the place where people present their views. When you go to google, search for anything and the website you find in the result below is called a blog.

A blog is a website in a way. Just post continuously in it and many are added. Our website, which is a best example of a blog.

In the future, I will tell how you can earn a lot of money by blogging - like the whole world is earning.

Let's first know who is a blogger and what is blogging.

Who is a blogger?

A blogger is a person who writes a blog. See me as an example. I keep writing regular posts here. This means that I am a blogger.

Being a good blogger is not easy.

Because to be a good blogger, it is very important to have complete knowledge throughout your field.

To be a blogger you do not need to come to coding.

What is blogging?

Now you know what a blog is. Blogging is the work in which you post posts on your blog continuously. That means, suppose you have a website. That is, blog and you post continuously on it. So it means that you are blogging.

There is absolutely no need for coding to do blogging.

for example -

We constantly post posts on our website. Meaning that we are blogging.

What are the types of blogging?

Types of blogging

There are two types of blogging, friends.

1. Event blogging

This type of blogging style is done for a few days.

Content and articles have to be put less and more work has to be done to spread it to the people.

Money is usually earned in this short time.

If not done, the money put is drowned

It requires a lot of experience to make it

You should already have a community of people following you

So that as soon as you share something with them, it goes viral overnight.

for example

A wishing website created for Diwali, upon opening, people will get Diwali greetings and will also see an advertisement as well. The person who creates a blog earns from this advertisement.

2. Permanent blogging

It takes a lot of hard work. A lot of content and articles have to be inserted.

It takes a lot of waiting.

But once such a block is created, then there is no problem.

This type of website gives lifetime income.

People usually use this blogging style more to earn money.

How to start blogging?

You don't need to do much to start blogging guys. Just you should have some knowledge of how you can bring your blog to the world in the best way. In that manner, I will tell you further. Through which you can rank in Google. And make your content accessible to the people.

Two things are required to start a blog.

First is domain and second is hosting.

What is a domain?

Domain is your blog name. Like our website is called roopmafi.blogspot.com

The Roop mafi is the only domain or domain name in it.

Domain is available for free and also for money. It depends on your requirement which one you want.

If you want to make your identity online, then you must have a domain name of your own.

What is hosting?

Hosting is the platform where your data is stored. Meaning that when you do any work on your blog, all of it is stored in the hosting.

Hosting is also available for free and also for money.

You are bound in free hosting. And with money hosting, you can do whatever you want on your blog.

Blogging can be started in two ways. One you can start for free to learn. And second, when you learn, you can take a domain and hosting by paying.

How to start blogging for free?

Below you will learn how to start blogging for free?

Friends, there are many ways to start a blog for free. I am going to tell you below in all the ways.

1. You can start a blog for free by visiting Blogger.com. It is a platform that is most famous worldwide. Blog can be made very easily here. And work can be started in few minutes. You can also earn money from here. When your blog started being liked by people and people started coming to your website in plenty. Then you can earn money by applying google adsense code.

2. WordPress.com is also known in the world of blogging. Here too, you can easily create a blog like Blogger.com. The only difference is that it does not allow you to earn money by applying your AIDS. This is why this little work is used. But there is also a lot of specialty In this, you get a lot of good themes which do not get any more space.

3. tumblr.com

Even today these days it is very much discussed. Blogging can be done here for free. And you can bring your blog to the world in a good way.

4. We can also start blogging for free on Weebly.com. That too easily. Here you get the facility of drag and drop. With which you can make your website or blog beautiful.

5. Medium.com here you can blogging for free. Here you get a chance to reach more people easily. And there are not even that many people here. If you start then you can become famous quickly.

You have to create your account on any of them.

And then according to your knowledge here, which comes to you well.

All that is to tell and reach people through blogs.

What are the benefits of blogging?

Benefits of blogging

Lots of benefits of blogging friends

1.Blogging helps you master your field. Meaning that you get stronger knowledge in your field.

2.You get your idea and style to express well.

You can make a lot of money. If you can reach your blog to a lot of people. And get your website or blog ranked in Google.

3. The biggest advantage you get from blogging is this. That people all over the world know you.

4. If you can make people happy with your words, then your name automatically starts spreading everywhere.

How to make money from blogging?

There are many ways to earn money by blogging. But below I am going to tell you the methods which are very easy. People are making a lot of money using this method.

1. Earn money with Adsense Aids

If your blog reaches a good height. That means 100 daily visitors come. Then you can earn a lot of money using Adsense Aids. You have to create your account by visiting the website of AdSense. And then you will be given a code that you have to put in your website.

And after that you will start wishing money from your blog.

2. Make Money Through Affiliate Marketing

People are earning millions by using affiliate marketing. If you review a product on your blog, you can earn a lot of money through affiliate marketing. In this all you have to do is You have to pick the link of the product from any such website amazon snapdeal and put it on your blog.

When people buy the product through your link, you will get its commission.

3. Sell your own digital product

Yes read your right. You can make and sell your own digital products such as E-books. And this is a very easy and good method. To earn money from your blog by putting your book on instamojo.com. Put the link to buy it on your website or blog.

It earns a lot.

4. Other ways

Using your blog, you can send people to your YouTube channel.

And then you can also earn money from youtube.

You can also make your Android app and download it with the logo.

As a quote, you must see our android app

How Much Money Can You Make From Blogging?

Blogging can make a lot of money. It all depends on the topic of your blog. If you have a technical blog. So it is possible to earn a lot of money through it. If you can write a technical blog in English, then believe it. If your 1000 visitors also started visiting your blog everyday, then you can earn above 1 lakh comfortably. One more thing that makes a difference in money. That is where your traffic is coming from.

If visitors to your blog are coming from outside countries. Your earnings will be 10 - 20 times more than the visitors here.

How to write a good blog? How to do blog writing ?

To write a good blog, you have to take care of a few things. All the things you need to know. I am going to tell you all that below. Will read carefully -

1. You can write your blog in any language. But keep in mind that all the posts should be in the same language. Only then you will get more benefit in coming up in google.

Meaning blogging in the same language.

2. You will not have to sit empty after creating a blog. Make sense blog You will have to keep posting after three to four consecutive days.

If you did not do this, you will not get that much importance in google.

3. On your blog, you have to post related posts from the same topic. Meaning if your website is on technology, then | You cannot write posts on it above animals.

You should be blogging on it over technology.

4. If you want to rank your blog in Google, then you have to learn to do on page seo and off page seo. If you do not know this, then your post will never come up in Google. If you want to learn this then go to the website given below.

What is SEO full information?

5. In your blog, along with writing, you must use photo and video. This will make you blog look good. And people will also enjoy reading.

This also increases your ranking in Google.

6. Keyword research is also very important if you want to earn a lot of money.

Always keep in mind that while doing blog writing in english you should consider seo in mind. We will also post that how you should do seo in hindi for blogging.

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vroenis · 5 years ago

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Reaching Out, Reaching In

It would be criminal not to use ABIIOR for the lede given I’m going to quote Matty albeit not quite verbatim - nevertheless - buy this album, it’s incredible.

But of-course, I’m going to start by talking about

I mention BT a lot; he enters the lists often in my writing, in my discussions. Like many artists in my collection and listening rotation, I seem to be really into an artist for a period of time and then reach a cutoff point where I stop being into them. This probably happens for most people, I don’t know, I’ve not asked most people, but I do want to be very careful of not living in the past or rather dying in it. Still, I like to keep finding new things or rather I’m compelled to. I enjoy things that continue to grow older each second time passes, but I always thirst for new creations by all artists of all ages, whether they bring to bear the experience of years, or they’ve only been around for a few. The point is everyone is here on this wild ride and art is their response to the stimuli; it’s what comes out of us in abstract and semi-abstract, re-translated and it forms these amazing emotional and often transcending connections and multifaceted responses in us and by us I mean me.

I’m getting distracted.

In the last and understandably downcast piece on my deathbed playlist, there are three key BT albums and it’s worth noting the years he released them;

2006 - This Binary Universe

2012 - Nuovo Morceau Subrosa

2016 - _ (untitled - there’s a story, you can look it up if you like, it’s more or less just referred to as the character *underscore*(verbal))

There were other albums in-between but naturally those don’t make the list as far as what I want to be hearing if I’m half or unconscious or in a delirium on my way to imminent death. In 2019, BT released two albums;

October 2019 - Between Here And You

December 2019 - Everything You’re Searching For Is On The Other Side Of Fear

You may remember I wrote a whole lot about 2009 - 2019 and these albums were absent.

If you go to the wiki for BT, which are his initials for Brian (Wayne) Transeau, you’ll see a wonderfully rich history of a stupendously talented musician and immensely intelligent individual. He is part of a collective of people most wouldn’t know about (which is perfectly fine, to be honest) who are responsible for the digital audio revolution that has completely changed the way we create, record, produce, publish and distribute music as we know it. There are parts of that people may think are negative and some elements certainly are, but the net benefit is unquestionably positive even if only on the sole subject of accessibility. Accessible digital audio has put creation and power within reach of everyone and of-course this means there’s a glut of material available, but it also means we catch sight of more amazing art rather than never see it, or it not seeing the light of day. I lean on humans seeing it and saying that directly rather than speaking in abstract. The light of day is literally us - we humans, seeing the expressions of one-another and hopefully remunerating appropriately so that we can continue to live and improve each other’s lives.

I have always had and continue to have immense respect for BT. He began writing This Binary Universe when his daughter was born, and as she grew, continued working on the album with this tiny infant often in his lap as he worked. He wrote it from creation in 5.1 surround sound, rather than all other “surround sound mixes” being done in retrospect from the stereo stems. It is an astonishing work and See You On The Other Side may very well be one of the greatest pieces of music in history. When I first listened to TBU in 2006, I had a myriad of emotional responses and I certainly didn’t have as much knowledge of BT’s creation process and background for the album at the time, but I can appreciate that shortly thereafter upon learning it, it probably does form biases in how I feel about the album. This will be important to the discussion later. Nevertheless, the album feels massively injected with specific intent and yes, surely every artistic work is regardless and we’ll get there. This is going to be personal but all writing is - that doesn’t warrant further discussion, we should always be making that assumption.

I follow BT on Instagram and saw him build his awesome new studio, an amazing space for all his gear and synths and something any music professional would love to have in some way... which I may check in a moment, or perhaps not so soon but I hope I don’t forget to come back to that. I will say that I do like it. It is a wonderful playground of vintage, rare and new synths, of super powerful computers with extremely new software and plugs, of high-end analogue desks and outboard units, extremely nice monitors and custom designed absorbers, panels, racks and furniture. It is an absolutely amazing space.

After the studio was finished, he did some collabs with some other artists and folks, some of which I also follow on Instagram whose setups are wildly different so it was nice to see some cross-over. He also interspersed with increasing regularity work on his albums which included clips of 100+ piece orchestras and often DAW session captures of the stems and him working on them. It was all pretty cool and the tiny snippets he posted were rad.

In October 2019, I was travelling to visit family due to cancer treatment, something that’s been at the centre of my life for well over 18 months, and I have my first full listen-thru of Between Here And You on an early morning when the rest of the house is asleep. It’s pretty great, sonically I like it a lot. I don’t have the same response to TBU but I don’t expect to, I should give it a chance, but it still doesn’t elicit a really significant response in me. At this point it has to be said that on the same trip, I have my first full listen-thru of Telefon Tel Aviv’s Dreams Are Not Enough, having slept on its initial September release, and that might be enough to give context to how I responded - it may have been where my head was at and remains to this day. I couldn’t shake it tho, as I still really have an affinity for TBU and I was wondering what was up.

Fast-forward to December and the release of Everything You’re Searching For Is On The Other Side Of Fear, and I do not respond to this album at all. It has some decent BT synth and sample work in it that exhibits his amazing talent, but it’s cut with orchestral and choral music that to me is indistinct from any other contemporary material available on a Pandora channel playing similar genres. I hate the sound of myself being so critical of someone I admire so much, because for someone who can write bangin’ trance and intricately complicated micro-rhythms and sample-chopped music, someone who writes their own freaken’ software and who edits audio down to the sample because their attention to detail is so specific and demanding - for that same person to be so talented to also be able to write scores and choral vocal arrangements is immense. I’m sure it all means so much to BT and I’m so proud of him for creating what to him must be an amazing work. I’m not trying to say anything negative about the work itself...

But I just don’t respond to it. Almost all the other music I’ve been listening to over the last 10 years including very recently, feels like it’s been created in response to extremely personal experiences that haven’t all been great - singular or accumulations of events that have precipitated significant introspection, and the art that has resulted from it for me reflects it clearly. BT’s two albums feel like... a very fortunate and privileged guy who’s had a lot of time and opportunity to play with his gear, record it and release it. The title also sounds presumptuous as if to position that systemic poverty and oppression and struggle outside of ones’ control can be solved by the oppressed simply stopping being afraid and I border on hating it every time I read it... - and that sounds so horribly mean because it is, I don’t intend for it to be mean. I need to check my expectations and I need to respect that Brian is still doing what he wants to do and he doesn’t owe me anything, least of all in something as abstract as how something sounds and whether or not I like it, because ultimately that’s all I’m talking about here, no matter how obscure I want to make the discussion. The intent of the title, especially - I’m certain - isn’t to diminish those who suffer, and I should be careful in my reading of it. So keeping myself in check, I’m here to explore the rest of my response, and I’m going to try and give further context.

Coldplay

I’ve no problem telling you I like Coldplay. I guess if you knew more about my musical background, it’d be less of a surprise, tho if you’ve been following along, it’ll make sense. If you’re reading this journal backwards, it may or may not, depending on how much I write about production in the future. To cut a long story short, like many bands I’m almost not at all into the band themselves and almost entirely into the production that surrounds them. Meow meow meow, all the art purists will bang-on about how music is about the performers but producers and engineers are artists in every way as much as performers are, and even bands or individuals who “just perform” with their instrument and no-one else on stage and no technicals (screens, lights, unseen backing musos etc.) still have a myriad of people surrounding them without which they can’t execute their working careers. Anyway, feel free to remain ignorant of those facts if you like and be all “pure performers”, no problem - magic can be real for you.

I lost track of Coldplay at after their 2015 album A Head Full Of Dreams. I’m less emotionally invested in the band and totally don’t mind that they’d up until that point releasing more or less the same sound for four consecutive albums. I really like the sound and if you pay close enough attention, it was actually evolving nicely, enough for me at any rate. I’d forgotten all about the band which is easy to do when you don’t really pay attention to pop-music and the activities therein, and then a couple of months ago (January maybe?) by whatever divination of the YouTube algorithm, a video titled Coldplay: Everyday Life Live in Jordan came up in my recommendations - a thing I was until then, unaware even existed. I’d no idea what the band was doing and I’m always keen to give them a shot, so I clicked-thru.

Moments ago I said I was happy with the band doing the same sound over and over again, and when I listen back to those albums, I’m still fine with them - let’s call it the Viva/Prospekt’s/Dreams anthology. Several things struck me about Everyday Life. Given my personal experiences of the last ten years, my struggles and the struggles of everyone around me, both personal and the cultures I observe and choose to observe, watching these four guys geared up in these ruins in Jordan looked stupendously privileged and a massive flex of wealth and influence. It looked like money buying good photography, framing and impossible location kudos and style. The sound in culture to my personal experiences also felt irrelevant.

And now I can finally talk about

The 1975 - Reaching Out, Reaching In

I now don’t remember whether it was at the ABIIOR concert in Melbourne, September 2019, or in one of the many interview snippets on YouTube or an article - I’m fairly sure it was his voice, so I either saw him say it in a video or he said it at the concert or both. Matt Healy said something along the lines of...

“... I know our last album was very inwardly focused... but A Brief Inquiry is very outwardly focused... it’s more about the world... and you... and us...”

That is not at all what he said verbatim but it was something very similar to that so I desperately hope a 1975 fan drops in and corrects me or can find a clip of him repeating it. Anyway there are a lot of really good things to extract from that, firstly from what it means about The 1975′s music and the culture that forms around it, and then about the discussion I’m having.

BT, Coldplay and The 1975 all live in my Ultimate folder on my hard-drive, but while BT and Coldplay fall where they will alpha-numerically as far as directory structure is concerned, The 1975 have the auspicious honour of having leading zeros in their text so they appear first. This is so that I never have to scroll all the way down to T in any program or utility (like my car’s head unit) to find them. Worth noting that composer Yoko Kanno is 01 and Underworld are 02.

The album that preceded A Brief Inquiry... was released in 2016, titled I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It, an intentionally Emo title, I believe or at least hope, and it is definitely an inwardly focused album in the themes indicated by its lyrical content. It’s to date one of my favourite albums of all time, superbly performed and produced and overflowing with emotion - there’s some truly heartbreaking sound and words therein. I feel like this album is a perfect inclusion with the others in my Circa 2009 - 2019 piece that was somehow vaguely about how much of a struggle those 10 years have been. I guess it’d be difficult to get a notion of that if you’re not familiar with the music and material, but all of that music is introspective - it’s all about reaching in. As mentioned above, the art these artists are producing is the result of deeply intimate experiences, some they share directly with us outside of the abstract of art - relationships, family loss, drug addiction, mental health - but many that they don’t so clearly telegraph and leave us with the abstract; the art.

A Brief Inquiry.../ABIIOR certainly is about reaching out, even when the lyrics do seem to be personal, but to me as an individual, it feels to reach out in the right way - that is to say *I* feel it’s reaching out to a world *I* identify with, in a way that *I* agree with or find agreeable. The songs in ABIIOR are about misunderstanding, they’re about not giving up, making mistakes, desperation, honesty, the chaos of the destruction of modern society. One of my all-time favourite songs has sprung from this album and has become anthemic for me - Love It If We Made It and I’m going to embed it;

youtube

And now I feel I want to say that naming an album “Everything You’re Searching For Is On The Other Side Of Fear” and also performing a concert in ancient ruins on the top of a mountain during a picturesque sunrise in Jordan with expensive drone photography both feel to me like also reaching out but in ways that I don’t like and agree with, that feel irrelevant and/or culturally inappropriate but I use the term culturally to mean my personal culture; the culture I see myself fit into as an individual that interacts with others, the struggles we seem to share as a collective.

I feel as tho Coldplay once did reach out in the good way I’m trying and possibly failing to describe, or perhaps just trying to frame from a position I prefer. I felt they had a more grounded sense of community with everyday people which makes the irony of their most recent project more apparent. It may well be that I just don’t like what these artists are doing any more and that’s fine. Sometimes we might feel entitled to a sense of righteousness, to validate our distaste for something on a more grand cultural level, to co-opt others into our critique so more fingers can point and collectively say “See?! That thing you’re doing really *is* BAD! More people said so!” but I really am keeping myself in check and not wanting to do that. I think I’m writing this journal to explain myself to myself - yes, to log my justifications because I believe in them, but also ensure I don’t turn into an arsehole.

Still - I stand by my criticisms because they’re important. I don’t know why in-particular these few examples struck in this way when others didn’t. I bought a bunch of Anjuna music that has nothing to do with culture and emotional response in the ways I’ve discussed them and I love them. Sometimes music is about bangin’ beats and euphoria and that’s OK. Still, the world isn’t entirely a joyous place for me at the moment and hasn’t been. There are positives to celebrate, but I have never been one to only log my celebrations. In particular from a mental health perspective, only documenting positives is incredibly hazardous and I condemn the practice. As much as these entries are laced with darkness and difficulties, each one also contains the things that assist me in surviving, keeping me nourished and navigating this often hellish experience of life. Ultimately of all my skills, seeking out art I identify with is the most valuable survival skill I have, it is the only one that matters.

Love is a kind of art, there’s nothing abstract in that statement - the love between people is artful, in any and all forms it takes - hence the tags; Art Worth Dying For, and Art Worth Living For.

#music #The 1975 #A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships #ABIIOR #BT #Telefon Tel Aviv #Dreams Are Not Enough #Coldplay #Love It If We Made It #art worth dying for #art worth living for #chrono #2020 #writing about music

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ahnsael · 5 years ago

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Two years later, the last physical remnant of the trouble I got into is going away tomorrow.

The DMV removed the restriction from my license today (it was a three hour wait, which I didn’t expect going in the middle of the week at opening time, but I’m glad I got it done -- I could have done it a month ago but was nervous about the process of getting these last loose ends tied), and after a couple games of phone tag between the manufacturer of the device and the auto shop which services it to finalize approval on both of their ends, tomorrow I get the ignition interlock removed from my car.

Now there’s just the SR-22 insurance for two more years before I can go back to regular insurance (but the SR-22 isn’t much more expensive than the regular version anyway).

We have a guy at work who’s mind isn’t in it lately. Because he just his FOURTH DUI. His third was a legal battle (three in seven years becomes a felony and involves prison time and there was a question as to whether it was from the occurrence of the first one or the sentencing and the court gave him the benefit of the doubt but then he did it AGAIN two months later). I don’t see how you don’t learn your lesson after the first one. And even if not then, the punishment is more severe for subsequent instances. So he’s looking at a lengthy prison sentence this time.

I got 48 hours. Well, technically 62 days, but 60 days were suspended pending my completion of other court-ordered responsibilities like both group and individual counseling, DUI school, a victim’s impact panel (in which victims of crashes caused by drunk drivers told their stories -- including some VERY graphic images), being under the watch of “alternative sentencing” for a year (basically that meant zero drinking, random tests to see whether I had had anything to drink, home visits to see if I had any alcohol around, all of which punishable by either a day in jail or kicking in the entire 60-day suspended sentence), having an interlock installed in ANY car I might drive for a year after reinstating my license (I only drive my own so I only needed the one, at $67 per month which from what I’m told is a pretty good price; I’ll have to pay “$50-$60 or somewhere around there, I’m not entirely sure” tomorrow when I get it removed but it SUCKS for people with no credit/debit card because it’s literally the ONLY way you’re allowed to pay, keeping low-income people without a card from being able to fulfill that obligation and that order does NOT expire a year from sentencing, it expires one year FROM WHEN YOU REINSTATE YOUR LICENSE and you can’t reinstate your license until you have the device installed -- I had to show the DMV the installation paperwork last year), and SR-22 insurance (including Statement of financial Responsibility -- that’s the SR part) for three years.

At one point as I talked to the (actually very nice) DMV lady today she asked whether I still had the device installed or whether it had already been removed. She framed it as a way to say “Show them this temporary license which shows no restriction and they’ll be able to remove it” but I’m guessing it was a “gotcha” question, as removing it before having the restriction removed from my license would have violated the restriction of my license. But I bet they get people saying “My year was up last week so I had it removed,” therefore getting themselves in more trouble (I was actually half-expecting them to want to see it in my car, maybe punch some buttons and get my latest statistics as far as “has he had any violations since the last time he had it serviced and we were sent his data?” but that didn’t happen...I also had the original installation paperwork and the original court order in my jacket pocket just in case, since I had to show both when I reinstated my license, even though they scanned them at the time -- when I first reinstated my license they forgot the restriction so I had to go back and have them put it on). I’m also wondering whether the three-hour wait was intentional, since most people are there for renewals or new licenses or to change their address or register a vehicle, and those of us in the “C” group broke the law, which was why we were there. Kind of makes me feel like they were testing our patience to see if we gave them attitude about seeing SO MANY people who got there after us called first. But I was as nice to the DMV lady as I would have been had I waited 10 minutes, and by the end the lady next to her behind the counter was complimenting my Genie tie (Genie from Aladdin -- I went there straight from work this morning so I was still dressed up from work).

An interesting aside...I shave my head, but have a beard. I asked the lady, pointing to the gray under my chin, “At what point to I change my official hair color to gray?” (the color listed on the original police report). She said it was basically up to me, and that I could even put “bald” if I wanted to since I shave my head, but sometimes the hair grows out a bit between shavings and I want to make sure I’m in compliance. But I pointed to my eyebrows as evidence of the “brown” that I put down, and she accepted that. She said switching to “gray” is pretty much up to me as long as SOME of the original color remains, but then we shared a laugh about people with completely gray hair who put down “black” as their hair color (that was when I pointed out my non-graying eyebrows as evidence that while I do have some gray in there, it still is mostly brown).

She also laughed when I said the only “stat” that had changed in the past 13 months since reinstating my license was my weight, which I upped by 15 pounds for honesty’s sake. She said she NEVER would have done that, but then I said that I used to be about 35 pounds more than I am now, so I’m pretty good with where I’m at and would rather be accurate on a REAL ID-compliant license -- even though weight fluctuates, the weight I put is my average these days.

And after I got a little worried about phone battery after playing cell phone games for an hour, I then spent the next two hours *almost* finishing Rolly Crump’s book “It’s Kind of a Cute Story,” which I hadn’t picked up in so long that the Kindle app had updated and completely forgotten where I had left off (I only realized that I read two chapters that I had already read when I came upon a section that I had highlighted). I’m about halfway through the last chapter now. The Kindle app takes a LOT less battery than playing a game that has to communicate with the internet (especially since the DMV’s WiFi was worse than Disneyland’s as far as reliability, which is kind of saying a lot).

But anyway, other than the (only slightly) higher insurance bill for the next two years, all of this kerfuffle will be behind me tomorrow. No more breathing into my car before I can start it. No more worrying that “I bartended this morning, and I spilled some on my pants...will the interlock pick that up and fail me? (it happened a couple times, as did using an alcohol-based window de-icer this winter and then having the fumes from the can in the car when I tried to start it; I learned to leave the can outside the car after using it, but there are “rolling tests” where they are trying to see if you drank after starting the car and have six minutes to provide a passing same of breath and so I would have to pull over, remove the can, and then re-take the test to make sure I didn’t get COMPLETELY locked out -- I did have violations based on this, but found out a week ago when I emailed the DMV that it takes four consecutive months of such violations for the terms of the interlock to be extended, even if I had to air out my car before I could successfully start my car at the time).

After those violations, I was worried my time was going to be extended, so I was SO happy to receive a reply from the DMV last week telling me that they had looked at my records, and I was good to get the restriction removed. I had thought ANY violation would result in “more time with this thing in my car.”

And on the WAY to the DMV...I ran into a problem I’ve run into a couple times in the past couple months.

Ever since getting the interlock serviced in December, I’ve had issues with it rebooting itself.

Now, if you turn off the car with a pending test, that’s another violation. And the thing would tell me to breathe into it (it’s actually more throat-humming with this device -- it prevents someone taking a lungful of fresh air and then breathing in to beat it; humming in your throat means air from INSIDE of you is going through and it can detect alcohol you maybe thought you could hide).

So there have been times I’ve driven to work, parked, and just before turning off my car the interlock would ask for a “rolling test.” I couldn’t just turn my car off. That would be a violation, which the DMV would hear about. But if I picked the device up and it went blank as I blew into it, then said “Initializing,” I learned NOT to turn the car off (the hard way, when I got a violation for it). Just sit there in the parking spot, engine running, and wait for it to ask for a test again.

On my way to the DMV today, though, the device wanted a “rolling test.” Which I expected. The first “rolling test” can be 5-10 minutes after starting the car, and subsequent tests come every 45 minutes to an hour (and you have six minutes to provide a breath sample before you are locked out). When I drove to Disneyland in September, I can’t even guess as to how many tests I had to take as I drove, to make sure I was still sober.

But today, it asked me to re-test. I did. I heard the tell-tale “click” by my left knee that tells me it just sent a signal to the car that it’s okay to restart if I shut it down. But instead of “PASS” on the screen, the screen was blank. Then it said “initializing.” Then it asked me to test again with a beep. I did so. This time, it not only made the click on my ignition switch to turn it on, but said “PASS” -- fir about a half-second before going back to “INITIALIZING.”

When it came back up, I only had two minutes and 30 seconds left to provide a sample. I thought, “If this thing keeps resetting itself, I’m going to get a violation on the way to the DMV for permission to remove this.”

Fortunately, on the third try, the test was passed WITHOUT the device restarting itself (I am SO glad to get rid of this thing because it’s been doing this a lot for the past two months and while I’m passing the tests, it doesn’t always KNOW that I pass the tests before rebooting itself).

But at 10:00am tomorrow, I get this thing OUT of my car. If it’s anything like the installation, I’ll be there for about an hour. Which will still beat my wait time at the DMV today. I’ll probably finish Rolly Crump’s book and then either play some video games on my phone or start something new to read, like the continuations of the book which I’ve already bought.

But video games are more likely -- this shop, as I’ve seen personally and heard from other customers, does not only good work, but QUICK work, so I don’t want to get too into reading and then be disappointed when they have it done.

#Kenny the criminal #don't drink and drive kids #trust me it is NOT worth assuming you're good to go a few blocks to get a burger #it's expensive as heck and takes a LONG time to meet all your legal obligations #and that's if you DON'T hurt anyone or cause any damage #I can only imagine how much worse this would have been had I hit someone or something #I'm SO grateful that I didn't #and SO ashamed that I put people in the community in danger #definitely won't be making that mistake again #if you aren't fine CALL A CAB #don't risk it #this has been a PSA that may catch some of you off-guard if you weren't following me when it happened #(and if knowing that I was stupid enough to have gotten behind the wheel in that condition alters your opinion of me I 100% understand)

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fibi-draws · 6 years ago

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The characters and character information for the Sanders Sides Mermaid AU has been done (I did post it on Instagram way before but it's here now!!)

Character information under the cut!

Virgil:

•M!Virgil is a deep sea mermaid, which means:

•His eyes are too sensitive for the surface's sun, and since he has heterochromia, his purple eye is more sensitive than his green one, so he covers it with his hair.

•His body temperature is very warm since the deep sea water is way colder than the regular sea water (he's also a little chubby, that helps)

•He's really pale. Sun who? Not in my deep sea boi.

•He's always crouching due to how nervous and uncomfortable he is constantly.

•The sea is dangerous. Men are dangerous. He's just really stressed and in danger.

•He covers his chest a lot when he's reached peak anxiety.

•Mistakes were made and somehow he ended up in the shore meeting Patton.

•This might be 90% of the reason he doesn't want to go back home.

•He can't speak English yet! He understands English when he hears it but he can't talk in English!!

Patton:

•Hes the caretaker of the aquarium situated right next to the beach, they take in injured animals and study the sea creatures.

•His passion for The Little Mermaid and Finding Nemo when he was a kid drove him to dedicate his career for the sea life.

•He just loves the sea!!

•Hes not vegan nor vegetarian but he doesn't eat fish.

•Once his mom made him eat a shrimp without him noticing and he cried for three hours when he found out.

•Logan is his childhood friend and co-worker (we'll talk about him later)

•He makes a bunch of sea-related puns on a daily basis and no one is happy about it.

•Virgil likes them tho.

•He got dumb luck and now he has a mermaid bf.

•Virgil gives him shells every day and now he supposes he has a collection?

•When he's not at work he's at the beach or at home watching documentaries. •A pure, dumb nerd.

•He's noticeably tiny and chubby, especially when he's next to Logan.

Logan:

•He's a marine biologist! He's the one in charge of everyone around the lab.

•You enter his lab? You're his problem now. He's in charge of you. •He's not Logan. He's DR. LOGAN to you, shithead, he has a PHD and deserves better.

•Tall skinny boi that forgets to take care of himself because he's busy overworking.

•The headband was Patton's idea since he kept complaining about his hair being on his way.

•He even considered shaving his head, that's when Patton intervened. •He flipped his shit when he saw Virgil for the first time.

•Meeting Virgil was great. Meeting Roman was a pain in the ass (you'll see).

•High-key disappointed he's not the one that met Virgil first.

•Totally, genuinely thought mermaids didn't exist.

•He was wrong!!!

•He doesn't like being wrong.

• He cusses..... a lot...

• Logan: *spills his coffee* Shit. Coworker: Language. Logan: Fuck you. Get back to work.

Prince Roman:

•He's darker skinned since he's not a deep sea mermaid and the sun,,, is there,,

•Obsessed with jewels and shiny stuff.

•An actual prince.

•He likes to fuck around with people.

•Cocky boi.

•His body temperature is very cold, we don't need no extra warm.

•I'm not saying he's the cause of those "mistakes were made" that caused Virgil to end up in the shore but that's exactly what I'm saying.

•Deep down he's an actual sweetheart.

•He's intrigued by the surface, but only to a point.

•As soon as he met Logan he had a new motivation (take that as you'll like 👀)

•Live on the surface? Are you kidding? He's the future sea king, he doesn't need no human making him fall in love and move to the surface.

Deceit:

•He might be 100% tired of everyone's shit (he might).

•Quite honestly, he's less mean than Logan is when he's pulled 3 consecutive all-nighters.

•He definitely swears less.

•His mermaid kind is often seen as evil by everyone else, so he just got with the program and started acting as such.

•Highkey knows everything that's going on even if he pretends not to give a fuck.

•His kind can live in both shallow and deep waters so that's why he's everywhere.

•I mean it. You talk about Deceit? He probably already knows you did and he hates you now.

•Fake bad guy.

•He's bad about it too.

•Fails at sarcasm.

•He hates Roman the most out of everyone else he could possibly hate.

•And he's been through a lot of shitty people.

•Roman isn't even the worst of them, he's just annoying to him.

•Eels are his friends •He lost his bad guy persona the first time he saw a snake.

•He squeaked.

•"Bad guys don't squeak!!" What a shame, seems like you're not actually a bad guy, huh.

•Looks like he'll kill you but he actually would never.

Thomas:

•You know how many years he's been working as a lifeguard? Like, 5, dude. That's a lot. He's tan as fuck.

•He's about 22 years old.

•Dimple boy has dimples.

•He might be the lifeguard of this beach but this bitch is clueless as fuck about what's going on over mermaid town (That's Patton. Patton please stop interacting with every mermaid existent.

•He's really ongoing and probably talks more to people than he should.

•Do your JOB, THOMAS.

•He's met Patton before and they've talked about since Patton is always walking around the beach or doing literally anything sea related.

•But he has no idea who Logan is, outside of Patton's stories of him, that is.

•If you think he's as white as Patton underneath his lifeguard uniform you'll be absolutely right. Foot bracelet included.

•He's that kind of lifeguard that would just start building sand castles with kids.

•Or without them.

•(Patton might have joined him once... Or twice..... Or many more times)

•He's doing his best.

•The reason he's not been fired before is because his boss has never checked how he works.

•And because no one has died at his beach.

•Yet.

•I MEAN,, WHAT-

#sanders sides #mergil au #virgil sanders #patton sanders #logan sanders #roman sanders #deceit sanders #thomas sanders

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lovemesomerafael · 5 years ago

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No One Else Chapter 3: Turning Up The Heat

Source: @sherrykinss

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Read It On AO3

It takes three days, but the guy on trial is convicted. He gets two consecutive life sentences. It’s a stunning victory for the prosecution and it makes great headlines, which means that the DA, One PP, and a whole lot of people with “Chief” in their titles are happy. The big shots get to take a victory lap in front of the national press and the FBI, and they’re making the most of it. They find as many cameras as possible in time to make the evening news, and by five p.m. there are a lot of satisfied people around Foley Square. They take over Maxwell’s. Because it also happens to be a Friday, things get a little out of hand. Even Vanessa Hadid overindulges a little bit (to be fair, she hasn’t been sleeping or eating much, as usual for her during a trial) and Sonny finds himself standing in front of DA Jack McCoy’s table with Ms. Hadid’s arm around his neck. It’s uncomfortable in a number of ways, not least of which is that he’s a lot taller than she is, so his choices are to bend over or be strangled.

“This guy,” she enthuses to McCoy, planting a sloppy kiss on Sonny’s cheek. “He’s gonna be a star.”

McCoy is only marginally less uncomfortable than Sonny, but Sonny sees the comment register with him. “Well done, Mr. Carisi,” McCoy says.

Holy shit, the DA knows who I am! I can’t wait to tell Kate about this. He wonders again where Kate is, and hopes she’ll make the party. They’d decided to wait until the verdict came in for her promised post-trial visit, and she’s due any time. She didn’t know when she’d be able to leave the station, so the plan is for her to toss some clothes at Sonny’s apartment and meet him here.

Sonny sees Olivia Benson and Dean Porter through a break in the crowd. He wonders again whether there’s anything between them and has a split second to register their very friendly body language before the crowd blocks his view and Ms. Hadid drops an F-bomb. She’s not drunk enough to miss the looks on some faces at the DA’s table, so she mercifully lets go of Sonny to excuse herself to talk to someone across the room. Sonny excuses himself awkwardly and leaves the table, too.

He thinks he’ll say hello to Benson and Porter, so he’s making his way toward them when he spots Kate, just inside the door, looking helplessly around for a familiar face. Her hair is in a knot at the back of her neck and he really likes the way loose tendrils have escaped around her face. She looks so pretty standing there, he’s sure he would have noticed her even if she were a stranger. She’s wearing a casual dress made of some soft material in a muted green pattern he really likes, and he especially likes that the dress shows off her long legs and has an open neckline that is just slightly on the right side of appropriate. She sees him when he gets to within about ten feet of her, and slips around a group of people to meet him with a hug and a kiss. He wants to kiss her more, and he plans to, but first he wants to show her off.

Sonny leads Kate across the bar, which takes some time due to the raucous crowd, toward a table where some of his colleagues and a number of the support staff from his office are laughing and carrying on. Most of them are younger than Sonny and Kate are, but it’s clear they really like Sonny. He introduces Kate to everyone, a proprietary arm around her waist. When he gets to Mary Duderon, Kate tries to be as friendly as possible, making sure she knows that Kate recognizes her from their previous meeting. It doesn’t work. Mary minimally acknowledges her and doesn’t make eye contact. Kate sees a couple of guys standing close by exchange an amused look.

Sonny introduces Kate to them last, because they’re standing next to him, at the end of the circle of people he’s just introduced to Kate. She despairs of remembering any of their names, but these two guys she’s heard of, because they’re the guys with whom Sonny shares Mary as an assistant. The three of them have also bonded over the long hours and pressures of being fairly new ADAs.

Maurice Mikhail is the shorter of the two. He’s dark-skinned, but his ethnicity isn’t readily apparent from his looks or his name. His wide, open smile makes him look like a guy who is always looking for a laugh, and Kate thinks he looks just like Sonny’s description of him. Scott Lam looks a few years older than Maurice, and seems a bit more serious. His features have a definite Asian look, although he looks like he’s multiracial. He shakes Kate’s hand and looks into her eyes as he greets her. Somebody taught this guy nice manners, Kate thinks.

Sonny leaves Kate with Maurice and Scott and goes to get her a glass of wine. Maurice starts right in. He looks over his shoulder to see that everyone around the big table has resumed conversations among themselves. None of the individual conversations is discernable from the others in the din of the packed bar.

“So how do you know the Dude Ranch?” He asks, amusement all over his face as he tosses his head to indicate the table.

Kate knows he’s talking about Mary. Sonny has told her that, around the office, Mary’s surname has been turned into a nickname of sorts behind her back. Many of the more junior ADAs call her Sister Mary Dude Ranch, because she really does bear many of the stereotypical characteristics of the type of woman who used to be called a spinster, including the fact that she has several cats. But Kate is offended on Mary’s behalf and doesn’t appreciate the casual cruelty, especially toward a skilled woman whose job makes theirs possible.

“I beg your pardon?” She asks, her tone intentionally icy.

Scott breaks in. “Don’t listen to him. He’s an imbecile. He’s part of the DA’s program for special needs lawyers. What he means is, it seems like you know our assistant, Mary.”

Kate smiles at Scott, hoping that in some way, she’s sent a bit of a signal. “Oh, Mary. We met a couple of weeks ago. Sonny says she’s pretty good.”

Maurice elbows Scott in the side, and Kate revises her estimate of his age down a bit.

“She is. We appreciate her,” Scott says, ignoring Maurice.

They begin to ask Kate about her job, and their questions make it clear Sonny’s been talking about her. It’s also clear they have a lot of mistaken ideas learned from cop shows. They’re especially interested in Kate’s version of the story of how she and Sonny met. Sonny appears with drinks for himself and Kate just as Maurice is exclaiming, “I wouldn’t have thought Carisi had that kinda badassery in him.”

Kate is glad to see Sonny. She’s also glad to see a glass of alcohol with her name on it. Running into a gunfight to save Sonny made her less nervous than having to hold her own in a room full of strangers she wants to impress for his sake. Taking a healthy drink, she happens to glance over at the table of Sonny’s coworkers, and notices Mary glaring at her with an expression that reminds Kate of something. It takes her a second to realize that it’s the look on the face of a perp with a low opinion of women when she slaps the cuffs on. Kate shivers and turns away.

Sonny feels ten feet tall. He has just won his first big case – OK, he was only second chair, but still – and his bosses are pleased with him. His SVU squad is proud of him, too. He feels like he’s on his way, like he may have successfully made the transition to the DA’s office and, until this moment, he hadn’t realized how frightening that leap really had been. And then there’s Kate. He still can’t believe she’s here, back in his life, back in his plans, back in his arms. He hasn’t taken his arm from around her all night. Yes, he wants everyone to see his beautiful girlfriend. But it’s much more than that. It’s just so right that she should be here to celebrate this first big win with him. Having her by his side feels like… He can’t even explain it to himself. It’s like his life was VHS before, and now it’s Blu-ray. Or whatever comes after that. And he’s insanely proud when people recognize her name and comment on her reputation in the NYPD. It’s a very good night for Sonny Carisi.

They stay at Maxwell’s until after midnight, when the party has pretty much wound down.

Sonny and Kate flop down on his couch immediately upon finally making it to his apartment and pull off their shoes. They’ve been standing for hours, talking and celebrating and networking. They’re exhausted and, although they aren’t drunk, they have been steadily sipping drinks all night. For a few minutes, they just slouch, side by side, heads back on the cushions.

“That was… somethin’,” Sonny says. “I never saw so many mucky-mucks in my life.”

“No kiddin’. And they were all there to celebrate your win.”

Sonny chuckles skeptically. “A small cog in a big machine.”

“Bullshit. You were sitting right there at the prosecution table. You questioned - how many witness was it again? You’re a regular big deal, Baby. Get used to it.”

Sonny puts a hand on Kate’s thigh. “I loved havin’ you there tonight.”

Kate puts her hand over his and turns her head where it rests on the cushion to look at him. “I loved being introduced as your girlfriend.”

“Was that OK? I didn’t mean to get ahead of things…”

“I mean it, Sonny, I loved it. I wanna be your girlfriend. And I want you to be my boyfriend.”

“I already am, Katie. I’m yours.”

Sonny reaches for her and they don’t come up for air until quite some time later, when Kate has Sonny’s shirt open and untucked, and Sonny has Kate’s dress on the floor.

“Do you think you can stand any more good news today?” She asks, running her fingers through his hair in a vain attempt to get it back under some control. He is lying on top of her, looking down at her and playing with her hair, too.

“I dunno. It’s been –“ Sonny is on the point of making a joke when he has a thought. “Holy shit, Kate. Your transfer came through?”

“You’re making out with the newest Detective in Manhattan South Narcotics.”

For the next five minutes, Sonny stumbles through excited half-sentences, alternating with kisses and hugs, punctuated by excited shouts. He feels drunk in several ways, and finally has to sit up and hold his head in his hands, trying to assimilate all that has happened today. “This is too much. I feel like I’m havin’ a dream and I’m gonna wake up in the crib in the SVU squad room with midterms in a week.” He looks over at her. “And you in Brooklyn.”

“Nope. It’s all real. You’re a big shot and I’m a traitor to Brooklyn North. The guys stole everything that was in my locker and then filled it with paper from the shredder soaked in beer.”

Sonny laughed. “That’s cop love.”

“I know. I’m gonna miss them. But you’re worth it.”

“I’m gonna remind you of that when you’re in the middle of moving and I break something.”

The rest of the night is a happy blur. When they get to bed, Kate tells Sonny to lay back and spends what feels like hours touching, stroking, kissing, and licking him everywhere, all the while murmuring compliments and love. She gives him a spectacular climax, curling a finger inside him; Kate is the only woman he’s ever trusted enough to let her do that. Sonny has to smile at the memories evoked when he pulls her in to spoon with him and, together, they finger her to orgasm. It’s a compromise they made back in their Brooklyn days. She doesn’t always have to come; she likes the idea that sometimes she wears him out. It’s kind of a compliment, actually, if he can’t keep from falling asleep. But he has a thing about making sure she’s satisfied, too, and this way is quick and efficient, and they’re both happy. It takes him less than two minutes to fall asleep afterward.

*************

Sonny doesn’t find the picture of himself and Kate at Forlini’s. After a while, he forgets about it because Kate gives him a framed picture of them at Maxwell’s on the night of the verdict celebration. It’s a great picture, and it’s a reminder of one of the best nights of Sonny’s life. Unfortunately, it gets knocked off his desk and the glass gets broken. He assumes it was the cleaning people who broke it, and means to replace the glass, but just hasn’t gotten around to it yet. He has other pictures of them, too, as the desktop background and screen saver on his computer, so it’s not that big a deal.

Besides which, he has the real Kate, who will be moving to Manhattan this weekend. They’ve decided that “no pressure” includes not moving in together, at least not now. Neither of them really thinks they won’t be successful in picking up their relationship again, but it kinda makes sense. Besides, Kate was able to sublet a tiny studio apartment from a cop Sonny knows at SVU who’s just moved in with her girlfriend and has most of a year left on her lease. It’s more expensive than her one-bedroom in Brooklyn, but it’s not too bad, and she’s not expecting to be there much, if things go well with Sonny.

Sonny’s never been one to hide anything, and his friends at work don’t mind hearing about Kate’s impending arrival. Scott is married and his wife is expecting their first baby, so he’s kind of blasé about the whole thing, but Maurice thinks Sonny is the luckiest SOB on the planet. He sees Kate as somewhere between Wonder Woman and Beyoncé and, since hearing the story of how they met, has a little bit of hero worship going for Sonny, as well. The problem is Mary. Any time she hears Sonny talking about Kate, Sonny has to endure stony silence for the rest of the day. It’s annoying, but she does a good job, and Sonny doesn’t want to get her into trouble by complaining.

He did once try to talk to her about it. He asked her to have a seat in one of the chairs before his desk, closed the door, and sat on the edge of his desk, looking down at her. His intention was to be kind of fatherly, although she was at least his age. The look on her face as she gazed up at him was almost beatific, which made him even more uncomfortable that he had been to begin with. But when he began to explain that he’d noticed she sometimes became silent and standoffish with him – he’d decided not to mention Kate – she started to cry. He tried to console her while standing his ground. She looked at him with puppy eyes awash in tears and a trembling lip. He tried again, soft-pedaling as best he could. She wailed. He said maybe it was his imagination. She began to hyperventilate. He panicked, shoved a handful of tissues in her hand and began to apologize profusely and, in the end, promised that he, Sonny, would try to behave better in the future.

Sonny knows women. Sonny grew up with three sisters, and they’re all close. But for the life of him, he can’t figure out how to deal with Mary. So he doesn’t. Instead, he avoids talking about Kate when she’s likely to be around and tries to keep as much distance as he can. Which isn’t easy when Mary is in his office a hundred times a day, on one excuse or another, and brings him coffee and treats no matter how much he tries to discourage her. He tried telling her he was trying to cut down on caffeine. She brought him decaf. He told her he was trying to cut out sugar and carbs. She brought him horrible sugar- and carb-free treats he wasn’t even sure were actual food. But he had to eat them, because she checked. He saw her look in the trash to make sure he hadn’t just tossed anything. She is relentless. When he actually finds himself sprinkling crumbs on the napkin on his desk and going to another floor to throw a particularly horrible fruit bar in the trash, he gives in and casually mentions he’s back on caffeine, sugar, and carbs. It’s easier to just let her bring real coffee and real treats and just eat the damn things.

***********

Anything that can go wrong with Kate’s move does. For some reason, the moving truck company thinks she cancelled her reservation and doesn’t have another truck, which means she spends valuable time chasing down another available truck on no notice. The keys aren’t where the previous tenant left them, so she has to get a locksmith to make new keys. When she does finally get in, she’s hit with a terrible smell that comes from a dead rat under one of the windows. That is somewhat of a mystery, because the rat is well decomposed, but Sonny’s friend only vacated the apartment a few days before. Being so far behind schedule, however, Kate doesn’t have the luxury of time to worry about it. Especially since she has to get moved in before the sun goes down, because there is no electricity, and won’t be until at least the next day. Somehow, Con Ed is also under the impression that she cancelled her appointment.

A couple of Kate’s cop friends and their spouses help her and Sonny with the move, and they take it all in stride, which helps Kate stay calm. Besides, she and Sonny are pretty much delirious to finally be at this point. Neither of them has forgotten what it was like to be apart, aching for each other, trying without success to get over one another. There’s not much that can dim the joy of this day.

Kate finds herself staring at Sonny sometimes. He’s only gotten better looking over time. She decides she really likes the silver in his hair, and she’s captivated anew by his mouth – she’s always had a thing about his smile. He has the best smile she’s ever seen, and he’s smiling more than usual today. Sometimes he catches her looking at him with a sort of deer in the headlights expression, and it gets to him. She looks at him the way he feels about her.

They get Kate’s things moved and she takes them all out for pizza and beer. It’s been a good day, regardless of the problems. They laugh and drink to the future and it feels like Christmas morning. Sonny has a plan; he tells Kate he wants them to stay in her new place tonight. She looks at him like he’s lost his mind, but she can’t say no to him, especially today, and they go back to the little studio with no electricity, nothing unpacked, and the bed not even put together yet.

Earlier, Sonny put the box holding Kate’s bedding in one corner so he could find it again. He also took some candles out of a box marked “candles” and lined them up on the windowsill. Now, by candlelight, he pulls the mattress and box spring down from where they’re leaning against a wall and makes a nest of blankets and pillows. There, he makes love to Kate slowly and thoroughly by the light of one candle sitting nearby on the floor and it’s like electricity would only have gotten in the way of this perfect moment.

**********

It’s taken a while for Kate to get used to Manhattan South. They have a different way of doing some things, and she’s careful not to make any “that’s not the way we did it in Brooklyn” comments that will get her ostracized. Her partner is a good guy who seems to be happy enough to be partnered with her. He smooths some of the rough edges and teaches her what she needs to know without treating her like a moron. She thinks they’ll do well together.

She’s long since moved into her studio, small as it is, and for the most part she likes it. There are two things she’s not crazy about. First, she comes home sometimes to find dead things in there. Rats, mice, a snake once. And they’re always decomposed enough to smell. Which leads to the second thing. Someone comes into her studio when she’s not there. She’s almost sure of it. She doesn’t think there is any other way for the dead things to get in there; the apartment’s so small, she thinks she would have known they were there if they crawled in themselves. And things are just slightly off sometimes. A drawer messed up. Things moved on a shelf. A favorite picture of her and Sonny at Coney Island taken years before fallen to the floor and the glass broken. She spends more time at Sonny’s, however, than she does here, so she can’t be absolutely sure. So she doesn’t ask the Super to change the locks, or say anything to Sonny.

There’s not much that could make her regret the move, though. After three months in Manhattan, God knows she’s happy, and she thinks Sonny is, too.

She’s right about that. Sonny’s starting to wonder how long he should wait before he asks her to move in with him, or whether he should ask her to marry him first, or how this should go. He remembers their “no pressure” agreement, and he doesn’t feel pressured by Kate at all. But the agreement goes both ways, and he doesn’t want to pressure her, either. His sister Gina counsels patience. She says to wait until it’s been at least six months. She also gives him shit about being like a puppy when it comes to Kate, but it’s all just sibling teasing. All of the Carisis are glad to have Kate back.

Sonny feels like, even as hard as he’s working, his life couldn’t be better. Ms. Hadid is letting him handle arraignments and even motions now. From the beginning, she’s deferred to him when it comes to questioning defendants. She knows talent and experience when she sees it. He’s looking forward to sitting first chair at his first trial, which will necessarily have to be something small, but it’ll be huge to him.

The one dark spot continues to be Mary. She’s become overtly flirtatious now, in a way. She never calls him “Sonny” anymore. Now he’s “Sweetie” or “Honey” or “My Dear.” It’s totally inappropriate, but in every other way, she does a great job. It’s time to have another talk with her. It’s past time, actually, but he dreads it. He’s sure it will end up like the last time, but it has to be done. Between the treats and the nicknames and the fawning, if he doesn’t address it, he’s complicit or, worse, leading her on.

He chooses a Friday afternoon, because that way if she gets upset, she can go straight home and have time to recover. He says a prayer to St. Michael the Archangel as he’s waiting for her. A conversation with his assistant shouldn’t require him to ask a sword-wielding seraph to defend him in battle, but it does.

Mary walks into his office. Her pink dress is a bit oversize, like all her clothes, and does her figure no favors. She’s smiling the smile Sonny’s come to think of as creepy and she stands leaning against the front of his desk expectantly.

“Go ahead and have a seat, Mary,” Sonny says, getting up and closing the door. She watches his every move, her hopeful simper maybe burning just a bit brighter at the idea of being alone with him behind closed doors.

“You said you wanted to talk to me. What is it, sweetie?”

Sonny goes to sit back behind his desk. “Well, um… that’s just it. You and I are colleagues in a professional environment, and it’s important to behave that way. So I wanted to ask you to call me Sonny, not anything else, like sweetie, or honey.”

Tears well in her eyes and she goes first pale, then bright red and blotchy. “Don’t you like me?”

That question is wrong in so many ways, Sonny shouldn’t be prepared for it. But he is. He has actually role-played this conversation with Kate. They covered this precise question.

“Mary, I think you are very good at your job, and I appreciate working with you. I have no complaints at all, except that I would like you to stick to calling me Sonny.”

“But we’re friends, right?”

Another question he’s practiced. “We’re friends and professional coworkers. That’s how we should treat each other.”

“It’s that Kate, isn’t it? She’s jealous of us.” This one they didn’t practice. Sonny would not have foreseen the sudden venom in Mary’s expression and her voice. Her brown eyes were swimming in tears a moment ago, but now they’re narrowed and her lip is actually curled. Out of reflex, Sonny moves his hand to his holster which, of course, isn’t there anymore.

Right away, he recognizes that as the overreaction it was, and tries to take a deep breath and return to the script. “We’re talking about you and me here, Mary. The way you and I treat each other here in the office. All I’m asking is that you don’t call me anything except my name. OK? That’s it.”

The venom is gone as fast as it came, and now it’s time for tears. Tissues have been prepositioned on the edge of Sonny’s desk for just this purpose, and Sonny and Kate have decided that not reacting to the tears is the way to go.

“Sonny, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make you feel bad. I’d never do that. I just really like you, and I like working for you, and I thought you liked me back.”

“I like you just fine, Mary. I’m just asking for this one thing. One professional to another.”

“Is that all we are to each other? After everything I’ve done for you?”

Sonny thinks about that robot in that old show that used to flail its arms and yell, “Danger, Will Robinson!” He had actually done that, sitting on his bed in his boxers, role-playing this conversation with Kate, who was wearing the shirt he’d taken off to go to bed. Kate had actually predicted this, word for word.

“We’re coworkers. I think we have a good working relationship. All I’m asking for is to be called by my name.”

She’s in full weeping mode now, having helped herself to the tissues placed before her. Sonny braces for hyperventilation, like last time. But instead, Mary does something that really creeps him out. She pulls herself together. After about three minutes of eye wiping and nose blowing, she looks at him with eyes that are red-rimmed, but calm. Still, there’s something there… The detective in Sonny wouldn’t trust a perp who looked at him like this. She’s angry. He’s sure of it.

“I understand. Maybe I shouldn’t call you by your first name at all. I know some of the assistants use ‘Mister’ or ‘Ms.’ I could do that for you.”

“Sonny is fine. I’m not a ‘mister’ kind of guy.”

“All right. Is there anything else?”

“No, that was it. I’m sorry you’re upset. I just want us to be appropriate and professional. That’s all.”

Mary gets up and leaves, that unnatural calm still pulled over her like a camouflage tarp. Sonny shivers.

***********

When Kate finishes her shift on Sunday night, her partner drops her off at Sonny’s office. Tom Hensler is a dedicated cop who enjoys ribbing Kate about dating an ADA, given the continual strain between the NYPD and the DA’s office over cases and evidence. In truth, however, he and Sonny actually get along well. Tom and his wife, Kelly, have been out together with Sonny and Kate a few times in the months that Kate and Tom have been partners, and they all have quite a bit in common. Kelly is a police dispatcher and mother of their three-year-old twins - little boys who, since meeting Sonny, constantly ask their parents when Sonny can come back to play with them.

Sonny is waiting just inside the building, having finished the work he’s come in to do and ready to go home. He gives Kate a smile that lights up her world and they begin to walk together to Kate’s apartment, enjoying the nice evening and just being together. Upon reaching Kate’s building, they can immediately smell something when they come in the front door. There’s no smoke, but it’s definitely a burning smell.

“Should we call the Fire Department?” Kate asks, concerned.

“There’s no smoke,” Sonny answers. “Let’s go talk to the Super.”

They knock on the door of one of the apartments on the ground floor, which is almost immediately opened by a thin, white-haired man in his sixties, looking as though he’s had a long day. “Oh, there you are. Let’s go take a look,” he says.

“Did something happen?” Kate asks, trading surprised looks with Sonny.

“You could say that. C’mon, let’s go.” The Building Superintendent steps out, yells back into his apartment, apparently to his wife, that he’s going upstairs, and closes the door. He leads the way down the hall to the stairs.

Sonny and Kate exchange another look. “Where are we going?” Kate queries, a bad feeling growing in the pit of her stomach.

“Your place.”

“Shit.”

The door of Kate’s third-floor apartment is open and fans are blowing out the window, although it’s a cool night.

“We hadda get rid a’ all the smoke, so I hadda put fans in here, I hope ya’ don’t mind,” the Super explains, leading the way into Kate’s small studio, where a charred, series of bent springs and other unidentifiable debris fills a hole that comprises about half the mattress.

“What happened?” Kate shrieks. Sonny immediately begins looking around the room as though at a crime scene.

“I dunno. Weirdest thing. The fire alarm never went off. Abe Taylor across the hall smelled smoke, and he came out and saw it was comin’ from under your door. So he ran down to get me, and I ran up here with a fire extinguisher. But here’s the really strange part. The fire was already out before I got in. It looked like somebody put it out, everything’s all soaked.

“What’d the fire department say?” Sonny asks, in full cop mode now.

“Nothin’. We didn’t call ‘em. It was out. I tried to call you, Kate, but you didn’t answer.”

“That’s right! I’m sorry, I got your call, but I was in a briefing, and I actually forgot about it until right now. This is no accident. I’m calling the Fire Department.”

Sonny nods and starts asking questions of the Super as though he’s just naturally fallen back into detective mode. The Super has asked the other people on the third floor, but no one has seen or heard anything, and no one has seen a stranger in the building.

“They’re on their way. They’re bringing the whole show, I’m afraid. I couldn’t talk them out of it,” Kate says.

Half an hour later, the street is full of fire equipment and flashing lights, surrounded by onlookers who don’t stay long when they see there was no flame. Not even any smoke. Just a burned smell and a lot of people standing around.

Kate is rattled. She’s unflappable at work, but this is her home, and it feels like an attack. Sonny stays at her side, always touching her in some way – holding her hand or with an arm around her, sometimes just putting a hand on her back. She answers all the questions she can, but she really doesn’t know anything because she wasn’t there. There is one question, however, that both she and Sonny can answer. Neither wants to, but the answer is fairly obvious.

“Do you know of anyone who would want to do something like this to you?” The arson investigator asks, taking notes in a little notebook that Kate notices is covered with smudges that she assumes are ash.

Kate looks at Sonny, who looks back with an equally troubled expression.

“I think we do,” Sonny says to Kate.

“We don’t have any proof. We don’t know it’s her,” Kate replies.

“Tell me,” the investigator says. So they do.

Somewhere during their explanation of what’s been happening with Mary Duderon, one of the inspector’s technicians comes down the front stairs of Kate’s building, a bag filled with what looks like charred sticks in her hand. She holds the bag out to the inspector, who squints at it.

“Picture frame,” he says.

When he says that, Kate sees unburnt edges of the sticks, suddenly recognizing the sticks as being from the frame around the picture of her and Sonny at Coney Island. She feels sick.

“It’s taking some time to separate out, but it looks like there are two or three more. Looks like there were pictures in frames on the bed while it was burning,” the technician says.

Kate looks at Sonny. They both know there are, or were, a few framed photos of them scattered around Kate’s apartment, including a copy of the picture of them at Maxwell’s hung on a wall.

“Can I go look? I think they could all be pictures of the two of us,” Kate says, her voice weak. She doesn’t realize how tightly she’s holding Sonny’s hand, and he doesn’t mention it.

“Why don’t you let me do it?” He asks, wanting to spare her if he can. “I’ve probably been here almost as much as you have. I know what was there.”

“You can both go up,” the arson inspector says. “I want to know exactly what’s missing.”

Two framed pictures, one of Kate with her family and one of Kate and Ahmad Washington and the rest of her Narcotics squad in Brooklyn, still sit on a windowsill, untouched.

What’s missing is every picture of Sonny and Kate that was displayed in the apartment. All of them have been piled on the bed and set on fire.

#law & order svu #law & order: special victims unit #sonny carisi #peter scanavino #ADA Dominick Carisi Jr #ADA Carisi

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askavenezuelan · 6 years ago

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Art. 233 and 333 - Or how Guaidó ended up as interim President of Venezuela

Another question we received, which is very important to clarify:

“What exactly does it say in the constitution for Guaidó to take power how he did

Cause this is what I’m told “in absense of s president this guy can act as interim president until new elections take place” as I really oversimplified but is that the idea”

- @the-history-munarch

Let’s start at the beginning:

The reason Venezuelans have been clarifying that what is happening in the country is not a coup is that every move made by Guaidó and the National Assembly is based on the Constitution. Particularly, articles 233, 333 and 350.

Here’s what those articles say:

Article 233:

The President of the Republic shall become permanently unavailable to serve by reason of any of the following events: death; resignation; removal from office by decision of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice; permanent physical or mental disability certified by a medical board designated by the Supreme Tribunal of Justice with the approval of the National Assembly; abandonment of his position, duly declared by the National Assembly; and recall by popular vote.

When an elected President becomes permanently unavailable to serve prior to his inauguration, a new election by universal suffrage and direct ballot shall be held within 30 consecutive days. Pending election and inauguration of the new President, the President of the National Assembly shall take charge of the Presidency of the Republic.

When the President of the Republic becomes permanently unavailable to serve during the first four years of this constitutional term of office, a new election by universal suffrage and direct ballot shall be held within 30 consecutive days. Pending election and inauguration of the new President, the Executive Vice-President shall take charge of the Presidency of the Republic. In the cases described above, the new President shall complete the current constitutional term of office. If the President becomes permanently unavailable to serve during the last two years of his constitutional term of office, the Executive Vice-President shall take over the Presidency of the Republic until such term is completed.

Art. 333:

This Constitution shall not cease to be in effect if it ceases to be observed due to acts of force or because or repeal in any manner other than as provided for herein. In such eventuality, every citizen, whether or not vested with official authority, has a duty to assist in bringing it back into actual effect.

Art 350:

The people of Venezuela, true to their republican tradition and their struggle for independence, peace and freedom, shall disown any regime, legislation or authority that violates democratic values, principles and guarantees or encroaches upon human rights.

The basics

So, how does this all work?

Well, it’s anything but simple.

Let’s start with the articles listed above:

1- The Government of Venezuela lead by Maduro has repeatedly violated democratic “values, principles and guarantees” as well as human rights. So under Art. 350, Venezuelans are in their right to disregard their leadership and remove them from power.

2- Since Maduro’s Government has violated the Constitution by stripping the National Assembly (the main institution chosen by the people) of its duties, creating an illegal alternate Parliament, as well as repeatedly infringing articles regarding the role of the National Armed Forces and other institutions, violating basic human rights established in the Constitution, and even ignoring and/or manipulating processes in it... Art. 333 allows citizens to take actions that will bring the Constitution “back into actual effect”.

3- In that sense, the people have demanded exactly that from their National Assembly. And after holding sham elections called by the illegal Constituent Assembly (instead of the National Assembly chosen by the people), Maduro’s rule was declared illegitimate by the National Assembly. By straying away from legality, Maduro has abandoned his position, and therefore there’s a power vacuum in place.

**It’s important to note here, that Venezuelans tried to implement a “recall by popular vote” before Maduro tried to re-elect himself. However, the Electorate Council -controlled by Maduro supporters- pushed back against the possibility, as courts -also controlled by Maduro supporters- lifted complaints against the process of collecting signatures in favor of the referendum, and declared it null. Later on, they also claimed “irregularities” in the signatures that the opposition had managed to collect, and finally suspended the process indefinitely in October of 2016.

This sparked outrage, and during the first months of 2017 deadly protests took place all over the country.

To add insult to injury, while the National Assembly was trying to determine the next steps to take by consulting the people, Maduro took the chance to hastily establish the Constituent Assembly, supported by the Electorate Council, the same that refused the Venezuelans’ right to demand a referendum. **

So, since there is no President, someone must take his place. Since the Vice-President (currently: Delcy Rodríguez) is also one of the members of the Government infringing the Constitution, the President of the National Assembly must take his place.

Enter Guaidó.

Guaidó took the role of President of the National Assembly on January, 5th of 2019, while Maduro was declared President of Venezuela on January, 10th of 2019, by the illegal National Constituent Assembly appointed by him.

Following his usurpation of the role, Guaidó and the National Assembly did “cabildos” (town halls), where they met with people all over Venezuela on streets and squares, so they could explain the complex situation and present their solution: a three-step plan that would return the country to a democratic path.

The plan included:

First: the end of the usurpation by Maduro’s Government. That is: Maduro and his political cronies would have to step down from their current positions.

Second: establishing a transitional Government, led by the National Assembly, as the only legitimate representatives of the people.

And third: calling for free elections, so a new President, truly elected by the majority, could be appointed.

People showed their support to this idea, and they demanded that Guaidó took his role as Interim President, which he did in January, 23rd.

So that’s where we are it right now.

So, why hasn’t Guaidó called for elections yet?

As seen in the articles mentioned above, our Constitution determined 30 days to call for new elections in case of a power void.

However, like everything in Venezuela, it’s not that simple.

Not only has the usurpation of the ex-Government continued -that is, they still control all institutions and refuse to step down, as well as having the Armed Forces and militias on their side-, but there’s a long and complex process ahead that involves a deep cleanse of all institutions currently hijacked by Maduro’s goons, including the Electorate Council that organizes and audits all elections in the country.

Without a proper cleanse and the establishment of certain conditions that guarantee free and transparent elections (including: no political prisoners, lifting the unfair ban on popular opposition leaders, allowing all Venezuelans in foreign countries to vote, guaranteeing that the departing Government won’t harass, menace or buy the votes of public workers and poor people that have benefitted from certain social programs, etc.), we’ll find ourselves facing the same scenario: rigged elections that will benefit Maduro.

Here’s a great Twitter thread that explains part of what would be needed to grant free and fair elections.

The bottom line

As you’ll see, our Constitution wasn’t anywhere near ready for a situation as critical as ours, so there are many gaps and interpretations that make our current situation extremely delicate.

What’s important to understand is this:

- Guaidó did not "declare himself” President. He took a responsibility established by the Constitution with the support of the Venezuelan people.

- The importance of foreign support is this: there’s no way Guaidó could fulfill any of his roles as President while all institutions are still under Maduro’s claws, and the rest of the countries look away.

It took so long to get here because for years the rest of the world has only vaguely lamented the difficult situation, called for dialogues (that never see any results) and at the same time fed Maduro’s corrupt Government by maintaining regular commercial relationships with his goons.

That the world has finally understood the gravity of Maduro’s illegality and corruption; and recognized the need to take a strong stance, is a huge step for our voices to be finally heard so we can get our country back on track.

- It’s not enough to say “we need elections”, because right now there’s not a level playing field, and until there isn’t, we’re still under Maduro’s thumb. So there’s a lot to be done.

Hope this helps, @the-history-munarch

Anything you’d like to ask, let us know!

#venezuela #free venezuela #freedom #nicolas maduro #juan guaido #politics #economy #elections #human rights #ask a venezuelan

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noramoya · 6 years ago

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MICHAEL JACKSON’S PERSONAL PHOTOGRAPHER,HARRISON FUNK,SPENT 3 ROLLERCOSTER DECADES CAPTURING THE LIFE OF THE POP LEGEND. HE REVEALS THE STORIES BEHIND HIS FAVORITE SHOTS...

“Me and Michael had our own language,” says Harrison Funk. “The buzzword was always the same. He would ask, ‘Harrison, can you make magic?’ Anything less wasn’t acceptable.” Funk was the photographer who got closer to Michael Jackson than any other, working with the singer from the late 1970s right up until his death in June 2009, witnessing and capturing his many changes, as the star rose to be the most famous person on the planet.

Funk was born 12 days before Jackson, on 17 August 1958, just outside Brooklyn. He was inspired to pick up a camera by his uncle, Leo Friedman, a famous Broadway photographer. Starting off with street photography and shooting local basketball matches, Funk worked his way up to such magazines as Time, Life and Newsweek. But a chance meeting with Jackson at New York’s infamous nightclub Studio 54 (where Jackson, a regular, would dance in the DJ booth to avoid autograph-hunters) set Funk’s career on a different trajectory.

Impressed by his versatility, Jackson employed Funk as the official photographer for the Jacksons’ Victory tour in 1984. Funk says he quickly sensed the media circus that was starting to form around the singer: “Rupert Murdoch’s people called and practically begged me to sneak out a photo of Michael from rehearsals. I told Michael and we laughed about it – but the fact I told him built up a trust.”

Subsequently, while on the Victory tour, Funk was given unprecedented access to the singer. One intimate photo taken by Funk captures Jackson applying his own makeup, something he took great pride in. “Him and Jermaine [Jackson] loved putting on their own makeup,” says the photographer, who adds that Michael became more and more interested in his appearance, more determined to look sharp, under the influence of such mentors as Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire and James Brown.

Jackson’s make-up routine, adds Funk, was also a sign of the singer’s gender fluidity: “It wasn’t so much femininity on Michael’s part as androgyny – he was fluid around gender. Michael had no interest in assigning a gender to anybody.” At that moment, he recalls, “he didn’t overtly identify as one particular gender”. However, when Jackson became a dad, his image changed to that “of father”, Funk says. “He became a strong man in that sense.”

On the Victory tour, Funk was exposed to occasional outbursts. “Don’t be fooled,” he says. “Michael had very demanding moments. If he didn’t like something, he let you know. Michael was never ridiculing to me ever, but if someone messed up the design of his stage, then he would yell at them. He expected perfection.”

The sold-out Victory tour was a turning point for Jackson. Just two years earlier, he released Thriller to stratospheric acclaim, and the media circus was now starting to spiral out of control. Yet some of Funk’s most iconic images of Jackson aren’t from his undisputed reign in the 1980s, but from the 1990s – when albums Dangerous and HIStory marked the singer’s evolution into a more socially conscious artist, who could be both profound (Black and White) and ridiculous (the messiah complex of The Earth Song was so jarring it provoked Jarvis Cocker to storm the stage during the 1996 Brits).

“PEOPLE SAY MICHAEL HAD A JESUS COMPLEX — THAT PISSES ME OFF !

In one of Funk’s favourite shots from this period, Jackson can be seen holding his arms out in an almost biblical pose. “People say Michael had a Jesus complex,” he says, “but that pisses me off, as it just wasn’t true. There was a practical reason for me taking that photo. Michael had huge hands and I wanted to make the most of them as they were expressive – and a good way for him to embrace the world. At that stage, his whole existence was geared towards healing the world, so having big, expressive hands was a very important way to speak to the people.” The way he communicated with his hands, adds the photographer, “you’d have thought he was Italian!”

Another Funk photo shows Jackson holding a book in front his face. It is an intensely personal shot intended as an advert for the World Book Encyclopedia, which would be distributed to American classrooms. “The art director gave me carte blanche to do what I wanted, so I really wanted to push the limits of what was possible. Michael’s eyes were his most defining feature, way more than his feet. I knew I could capture his soul by focusing on his eyes and that’s exactly what happened with that photo.

But was Jackson actually covering his face due to shyness? “Maybe. But his shyness and introversion never hindered his ability to work with me as a photographer. Michael knew exactly what he wanted artistically, right up until probably the last two years of his life, where he got swayed by the wrong people and got in way over his head.”

This was the time of the This Is It tour, which Funk had been due to photograph. Jackson was all set to play 50 dates in quick succession at the O2 Arena in London. But, 20 days before the opening night, he died from cardiac arrest, triggered by acute anaesthetics intoxication. “As much as I don’t like talking about the end,” says Funk, “I will say he got destroyed by people who only had their own financial interests at heart. I can tell you that a big part of his plans following the This Is It tour was to do charity work and use his influence to better mankind.”

In 2003, Jackson was charged with child molestation, only to later be acquitted. The memory still angers Funk. “All the accusations and crap he went through,” he says. “Let me ask you this: what is a better way to ruin someone who is going to make massive positive changes to the children of the world than to discredit them?” Jackson’s awareness of the power of photography was perhaps best illustrated in the early 1990s, when he asked Funk to shoot him with Elizabeth Taylor and Nelson Mandela, who had recently been released from prison. The image, which Funk describes as the highlight of his career, shows the trio smiling infectiously.

“Mandela was so excited to meet Michael,” says Funk. “He flew in all of his family especially. I was told by the publicists I had no time to shoot, but Michael kicked them all out and let me take my time. I didn’t want a boring photo so I suggested they jump on each other’s backs and hug one another. Liz Taylor said, ‘Harrison, you know I’ve got a bad back!’ And Nelson said he was too old and joked he wanted to put his feet up instead. I tried to capture the joy of this incredible moment.”

Funk then watched as the three went into a meeting room to discuss plans to topple apartheid, improve women’s rights, tackle the Aids crisis, and address crime in Africa. He claims Jackson was acutely aware of how the photo could help Mandela’s bid for the South African presidency.

HE DIDN’T WANT TO LOOK WHITE. HE WAS SUFFERING FROM A CRUEL DISEASE. I HAD TO RISE TO THIS AND ADAPT HIS LIGHTING.

“That image was in something like 400 newspapers. It was real powerful. The next year, Michael went to Africa to shoot the They Don’t Care About Us video. He would have done anything for Nelson – Michael and Liz gave his presidential campaign a very generous donation. I believe he and Nelson got on so well as Michael was like the Mandela of music, in the sense that he too broke down a lot of barriers. Remember, Michael was one of the first global black superstars.”

But Jackson’s image started to change dramatically. Some critics accused the singer of being ashamed of his blackness, and of gaining a dangerous obsession with plastic surgery. In a recent interview, Thriller producer Quincy Jones said: “I used to kill [Michael] about the plastic surgery, man. He’d always justify it and say it was because of some disease he had. Bullshit … He had a problem with his looks because his father told him he was ugly and abused him. What do you expect?”

Funk, however, insists Jackson was actually the victim of a “cruel” media campaign and was suffering from the pigment-destroying skin disease vitiligo (a claim confirmed by Dr Christopher Rogers, who carried out Jackson’s autopsy). “It was all a load of bullshit,” Funk says of these reports. “He didn’t want to look white or find a way out. He was immensely proud to be a black man. Michael was suffering from a cruel skin disease, which changed his appearance, and I had to rise to this as his photographer and adapt his lighting. I think the problem was Michael wanted badly for his skin to look even-toned. I didn’t have Photoshop back then so I lit Michael myself and had specific techniques to make him look at his best.”

Funk, who seems to have an endless supply of Jackson stories, speaks softly in a New York accent, energetically recalling their nine consecutive rides on Space Mountain at Disneyland. Jackson attempted to persuade Funk to ride it for a 10th time but by then the photographer felt sick and his legs had turned to jelly. They would also regularly take the Viking boat ride at Jackson’s Neverland ranch.

“I was sitting across from Michael,” says Funk, “shooting him with my camera, as he told the guy controlling the ride to go higher and higher. I screamed at Michael that he’d make me lose my camera. He screamed back, ‘I don’t want to lose my cookies!” These were in his shirt pocket. Yet, for all the fun they had together, Funk’s most cherished memory of Jackson is a dark one. He remembers sitting with the singer in the home theatre of his Neverland ranch while watching What’s Love Got To Do With It, the 1993 biopic about the abusive relationship between Ike and Tina Turner, when Jackson began to cry. “The scene where Ike beats on Tina was playing and Michael started to tear up. I asked him if he wanted me to stop the film but he signalled to keep it rolling. He squeezed my hand tightly. I really felt his humanity in that moment.

WE PLAYED PRETTY NASTY ON THE THE BUMPER CARS. WE REALLY WENT FOR EACH OTHER...

“After the film ended, we walked out of the theatre and Michael asked me to go do bumper cars with him.” Funk laughs. “We played pretty nasty and really went for one another. He was like a big kid.”

Jackson was not the only star who turned to Funk. The photographer is currently planning a London exhibition of his work, which also includes shots of David Bowie, Tina Turner and Amy Winehouse, though the king of pop will of course dominate. This will be an interesting postscript to On the Wall, the show about to open at the National Portrait Gallery that looks at how Jackson was portrayed in paintings and photography. Funk, who is based in Los Angeles, is quite happy to let his career be defined by his shots of Jackson. While daydreaming, he sometimes hears the singer’s voice, imploring him one more time. “Let’s make magic,” it says.”

AT THIS PIVOTAL TIME !

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