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qianinterprises · 4 years ago

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WayV Reactions: you get mad at them over something trivial

Pairing(s): WayV x mostly gn!reader (I think Kun's is the only one with a written female reader. The others should be gender neutral).

Genre: angst, fluff (happy ending)

Warnings: couples arguments, yelling, angry reader

Word Count: 3k

Author's Note: Thank you so much for the request!!! I had so much fun writing this, although I will admit I had to look up "trivial things to fight about" so nothing would be repeated lol! I have no idea why most of these take place in the kitchen lol, it just seems like a place of arguments. I hope this is what you wanted!! I hope you enjoy!! 💕💕

Tagging: @treasuretaeil

Kun:

Originally posted here

"How about Dandelion?" Kun asked from his spot on the couch, absentmindedly flicking through the large book of names clasped in his fingers.

An audible gasp left your lips. You turned, wide eyes to stare at him, completely flabbergasted.

"You want to name our daughter WHAT?" you snapped.

Dandelion? Of all the names in the big book, he had to choose the name of a damned weed!

Kun shut the book and turned to stare at you with an eyebrow raised, not expecting your tone to be as harsh as it was.

With you expecting a baby girl in a few months, you and your husband had set to attempting to pick out a name, which proved to be a little more difficult than you had anticipated. You just couldn't seem to agree on a name, which, until now, had been fine. You were both generally easy going people who hardly ever fought, so as your face flushed with anger, Kun was at a loss.

"I just thought it'd be cute," Kun defended, voice gentle.

You could tell he was trying not to anger you further, but you balled your hands into angry fists.

"Well why don't we just call her a useless weed and be done with it! See how that affects her mental health!" you yelled.

You didn't know why you were so angry, or why you were taking that anger out on your sweet husband who had done nothing but take care of you throughout your pregnancy.

You blamed your hormones.

"Babe, please calm down."

Kun's voice was gentle and soft as he reached out for you, and although you were still seething with anger, the second his arms wrapped around your middle, you could feel it dissipating, leaving you to apologize.

"Kun, I'm sorry for-"

"Shh, there's no need my love," he whispered.

How did you ever get so lucky.

Ten:

Originally posted here

Ten hardly ever got a day off. With WayV and the occasional comeback with NCTU, plus all the variety shows and vlives the boys did, you hardly got to spend time with him, but you knew what you'd gotten yourself into when you'd started dating. You knew nights together were going to be few and far between, so when he'd asked you over to the dorm one afternoon, you'd jumped at the chance, eager to see your boyfriend after so long. However, if you'd known what it would be like, you would have stayed home.

Ten's phone chimed again, not long after he'd placed it down in favor of wrapping his arm around you while the movie played on the tv. His phone had been going off every few minutes, and despite your sliding closer or attempting to distract him, he couldn't seem to stop from responding, spurring on the messages further.

You didn't question whether he was texting some tramp. You knew he'd never do that to you, plus, he was constantly showing you some funny photo or meme that Johnny had sent, making you chuckle, although you couldn't help but to resent Ten's tall friend for distracting your boyfriend.

Finally, as he removed his arm to grab his phone and text Johnny back, you snapped.

"Can you put the damn phone away! If I would have known you'd do nothing but text, I wouldn't have come!"

Ten paused mid text before dropping his phone on the couch.

"He's my best friend, (y/n)! I'm not just going to ghost him!"

You huffed.

"I'm not asking you to ghost him! I'm asking you to spend time with me without the phone!" you hissed.

Ten sighed and picked his phone back up. With a grumble, you got off the couch, preparing to go home, not wanting to watch a movie with your boyfriend if your boyfriend didn't want to be there with you. However, as you moved to grab your coat, he tackled you onto the couch, caging you in his arms.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I promise, for the rest of the day, it's just you and me. No more texting."

You looked at him skeptically, but as he held off his phone, switched off, you sighed and wrapped your arms around him.

"I missed you," you mumbled.

"I missed you too," he replied, kissing the top of your head.

WinWin:

Originally posted here

You had never been the kind of person to rely on anyone. You liked doing things on your own, relying on no one, and thus, many of your friends labeled you "stuck in your ways" because, despite having a boyfriend who'd bend over backwards for you, you couldn't bare to let him do anything for you.

This had spurred on quite a few minor arguments, especially when said boyfriend was the worlds sweetest guy who just wanted you to rely on him for more than a warm chest to snuggle against.

"Why won't you let me help you?" he'd asked several times.

Your answer was always the same.

"Because I can do it on my own."

You never meant to make him feel dejected, but as you opened the kitchen cabinet to grab out your favorite coffee mug, you found that maybe, your boyfriend had a little more of a mean streak than you gave him credit for, and this morning, without your daily caffeine, it really pissed you off.

"Dong Sicheng!" you yelled, anger filling your veins.

Apparently, at some time during the night, your boyfriend had snuck out of bed and rearranged your cabinets, moving everything up one shelf higher, so now, instead of the highest self being the only vacant place, now the bottom shelf was vacant. You were decently tall, but you couldn't reach the highest shelf. You doubted anyone who wasn't 6 foot tall could reach, and of course, on the highest shelf, was all of your coffee mugs.

"Yes?" Sicheng asked from behind you.

You spun around in a whirl, his shirt, that fit you more like a dress, flowing out at the sudden movement.

"What the fuck did you do! Everything was perfect! I could reach everything! Why the hell did you move it!" you snapped.

You glared at him as he tried to hide a small smirk, leaning closer to the counter as he reached up, grabbing your favorite coffee mug, and placing it on the counter for you.

This only pissed you off more.

"What the fuck Sicheng!"

"You never let me do anything for you! The power goes out, you fix the fuse box. Your car breaks down, you take it to the shop. You want coffee, you grab the mug out of the cabinet. You don't let me do anything for you!"

You could see his point, you honestly could, and maybe that's why your fury died down a little.

"Sicheng, I'm independent. I don't need you to do anything for me. I can do it on my own."

"That's what you always say! But I'm your boyfriend! I want to do stuff for you!"

With a sigh, you shook your head. Maybe he was right. Relationships were about give and take, push and pull. He let you help him with things and you hadn't returned the favor. Maybe it was time to bend.

"Fine. Keep the mugs up there, but damnit Sicheng, when I call for you to get me a mug, you better come running."

With a smile, he leaned close to press a kiss to your lips.

"Promise. "

Lucas:

Originally posted here

Having a live in boyfriend was fun, nothing you'd ever experienced before. Suddenly, you had someone to share your bed with, someone to cook for, someone to open pickle jars when you couldn't.

However, it also meant extra time cleaning. Especially when your boyfriend apparently didn't know the use of a welcome mat. Plus, he wasn't the cleanest person in the world, and that fact became evident as you walked into the kitchen to grab a drink and found two bottle caps and a candy wrapper sitting on the counter, forgotten.

"Seriously Yukhei," you muttered under your breath.

You threw the trash in the bin and opened the refrigerator, hoping for a nice glass of milk before bed. Your eyes landed on the milk carton. Happily, you lifted the carton out of the fridge only to realize that it was empty. You certainly hadn't been the one to place an empty milk carton back in the fride.

"Yuhkei!" You yelled to your boyfriend who was already cuddled up in bed.

You waited for him to make his way into the kitchen, but the longer you waited, the angrier you got.

When he did finally walk inside, he was met with your fixed glare.

"What'd I do?"

"First, you leave your trash on the counter, then you put an empty carton back in the fridge! Do you NOT know where the damn trash can is?!"

Yukhei raised his hands in defense.

"I forgot!" he whined.

You groaned. You'd definitely heard that one before.

"You always forget Yukhei! How hard is it to put your trash where it belongs!" you whine, glare still fixed on him.

"And... just so we're clear... an empty milk carton doesn't go back in the fridge?" he asked.

You threw the milk carton at his head, although you weren't planning on hitting him. As he ducked, the carton hit the floor. He was trying to be funny, and you hated to admit that it was working as a smile cracked across your lips.

"There it is! There's that beautiful smile I love!" he cooed, moving closer and wrapping his arms around your waist.

"Shut up Yukhei!" you grumbled, pushing against his chest lightly.

He wasn't having it. He pulled you closer and pressed a soft kiss to your lips.

"I promise I'll start putting my trash in the bin," he whispered.

You knew it was an empty promise. Tomorrow morning, you'd wake up to more bottle caps and candy wrappers on the counters. Yukhei could be infuriating. But you loved him despite his lack of cleanliness.

Xiaojun:

Originally posted here

(This image has nothing to do with the reaction, I just had to include it lol)

*BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* *BE-*

That was the sound you'd been hearing every ten minutes for the past hour as your husbands hand slammed into the alarm clock for the sixth time. You grumbled and rolled over, once again awoken by his horrible habits.

This wasn't unusual. Dejun tended to set 15 alarms before he'd finally get out of bed and start his day, which, by that point, was usually when your own alarm clock would start going off and you'd wake up groggy and cranky, having just lost an hour and a half of peaceful sleep because your husband coudn't seem to get his ass out of bed in the morning.

"Why do you need so many fucking alarms! It's fucking stupid! Just set it for the time you actually need to be up!" you growled, not opening your eyes as you buried your face in the pillow, hoping to get back to sleep.

"I can't wake up that fast," came his mumbled response.

You huffed. It was always the same answer, but it never made much sense to you. Why couldn't he just get out of bed like a normal fucking person.

Alas, you didn't respond as sleep once again tugged at your consciousness, lulling you back to sleep beneath the warm blankets before-

*BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP*

"GET THE FUCK UP!!"

"Five more minutes," he grumbled.

Five more minutes and you'd have to hear the infuriating sound of that damned alarm clock?! Fuck that.

You had had enough. Your sleep was important to you and being woken up two thousand times with a damn alarm clock before your husband finally dragged his tired ass out of bed was not helping your sleep in any way.

In a fit of anger and irritation, you pressed a sock covered foot against the middle of Dejun's back and pushed, affectively kicking his body out of bed, his body hitting the cold ground with a thump before he knew what happened.

"Hey! What was that for!" he snapped.

"Your up now," you grumbled, rolling back over and pulling the blankets over your head.

You could hear him grumbling something along the lines of "why do I love your psychotic ass" before the shower turned on.

Hendery:

Originally posted here

You let out a groan as the title of another horror movie appeared on the television screen as you cuddled next to your boyfriend. You hated horror movies, a fact he knew well. The ones that didn't make you have nightmares were generally so silly and irritating you'd spend the entire moving staring at the time. Your boyfriend, on the other hand, absolutely loved horror films, so it shouldn't have come as a surprise when you sat down for your weekly movie night at his place and found a horror movie coming on, which wouldn't have been an issue if you hadn't watched horror movies the last five weeks in a row.

"Can't we watch something else," you complained.

"It's just one move (y/n), you'll be ok."

You groaned. He never listened, too enthralled in his own excitement for the movie.

You didn't have a problem with the fact that he liked this genre, but he could just as easily watch it with Ten or YangYang, or, if he really wanted to torture his leader, Kun. You, on the other hand, somehow always seemed to get stuck watching them.

"We've watched these five weeks in a row," you whined.

"Shh."

That was the last straw. He wasn't even willing to listen to you!

With a huff, you got off the couch and grabbed the remote from the coffee table, switching off the movie and turning to glare at him.

"You know I don't like horror! Yet for the past several weeks we've done nothing but watch it! When are we going to watch something I want to watch?!" you snapped, hands balling into fists.

You could tell Kunhang was taken aback back your outburst as he floundered to find a response. You expected him to bite back, adding fuel to your fire by saying something along the lines of 'I work so much! Why can't we watch what I want!' But to your great surprise, his face just dropped.

"I like the way you hold onto me," he said softly.

You squinted.

"Huh?"

He sighed and sat up straighter, putting the bowl of popcorn on the table.

"You always cling to me when a part scares you. Sometimes you even jump into my lap and I like that. I like protecting you..."

As his voice trailed off, you sighed, anger evaporating. You sat down on the couch next to him and took his hand.

"I don't mind that sometimes, but not all the time," you said. "Besides, wouldn't you rather make out while watching a romance movie?" you smirked.

He paused at the suggestion, seeming to weigh his options in his mind before flicking the television back on and searching up the sappiest romance movie he could find.

With a grin, you sat back on the couch and discreetly coated your lips in cherry chapstick while he found a movie.

YangYang:

Originally posted here

Your feet and back ached as you walked through the door to your apartment after an exceptionally long shift at the diner you worked at part time. All you wanted to do was crawl into bed with your loving boyfriend and go to sleep in his arms. However, as you laid eyes on Jeno and Jaemin sitting beside YangYang with some game loudly playing from the tv, you couldn't help but groan.

"I'm home," you called tiredly, biting back the urge to grumble about games as you made your way into the kitchen to grab a glass of water and maybe a sugary snack.

As soon as you flicked on the light, you couldn't fight the irritation as your eyes met three empty pizza boxes stacked carelessly on the stove and a mountain of plates, cups, and bowls you'd begged YangYang to take care of that morning.

"YangYang!" you snapped, teeth gritting as you found the trashcan, also filled to the brim, waiting to be taken out.

You heard mumbling from the living room followed by an absence of firing guns, meaning they'd paused the game. YangYang walked into the kitchen, eyebrows raised as if he had no idea why you'd called for him.

"What the fuck Yang! I ask you to do the dishes, they're not done! Taking the trash out is your job anyway and it's piled sky high! And those fucking pizza boxes don't belong on the damn stove! What did you do today?! Sit on your ass while I was slaving away!" you yelled.

In hindsight, you probably shouldn't have picked a fight with YangYang's buddies in the next room, but your tired brain could take no more.

"I had to practice and they just got here an hour ago! Don't go snapping at me when you just as easily could do the dishes now!" he snapped back.

"Why should I have to! I've been working all day! You could have done the dishes before they got here! Hell, I wish you would have!"

"Excuse me for not being a clean freak!"

You blew out a huff of air and squeezed your eyes shut.

"Whatever, just go play your damn game."

You turned away from him and moved to the sink, starting the water and pouring in a good squirt of dish soap before grabbing a sponge and getting ready to wash the dishes before a pair of arms wrapped around your waist, a face nuzzling into your neck.

"I'm sorry I didn't do the dishes baby," YangYang whispered softly.

You didn't respond as he pulled the sponge out of your hand.

"Go to bed. I'll do the dishes and then come join you," he whispered.

It was a fast change of heart, but one you were thankful for. You pressed a kiss to his cheek before making your way toward your shared room, not missing the way Jeno and Jaemin bolted from the apartment before YangYang roped them into helping.

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bxttenbound-archive · 4 years ago

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Anonymous asked: Out of curiosity, admin, what are the silence? Like are they actual physical things or supernatural phantasmic beings?

Alright, I actually really love that I get to answer this.

The “Silence” can be taken a few different ways. I will put this under a readmore since I will be using screenshots and whatnot and don’t want to clog up the dash.

To put it simply the Silence is literal silence and a name she uses for the creatures that come after her.

The creatures themselves come from her cane, we actually don’t know what they are nor why she is afflicted with them coming after her but part of me wants to think it’s simply the cane itself trying to claim her soul, or another fun idea is that the creatures are souls that the cane has taken before and they are trying to drag Missi in to become another one (but i doubt this since they can change their shape/form and combine together into new creatures? IDK)

Also - I put it in the tags but will also say it here there is self-harm talk, suicide talk, and a self harm image below; all images are from the canon videos, none are realistic.

In a literal sense, it is the void of all noise and in this the Silence is the first step to her decent. It’s the thing she fears the most because it is, to her, the worst.

I have it so that Missi doesn’t just get beaten over the head and is instantly being attacked by these creatures. It starts with her senses being dulled, taken apart and in a way, blocked. Starting with her hearing. Barely any noise can get to her and if someone tries to speak to her in this state it is muffled and extremely difficult to hear with it only getting worse the further she progresses.

This is the Silence she normally refers to. This devoid of noise makes her start to lose touch with reality and can often disorient her, make her very panicked when it comes to near muting the world around her.

* Edit: To be clear she can still hear the chattering noise that the creatures make, it is the only noise she can ever hear when in this state or fallen far enough into it.

Next is her Vision. All color besides Black and White can be seen through her eye. I took this from how in Episode 4 the entire house she is in during her mental break is only Blacks and Whites besides her and a mirror until the very end.

In this video we are seeing the world through Missi’s eyes and how she perceives everything around her during this time. At this point she is starting to really feel the effects of them coming after her.

Next are hallucinations, specifically of the creatures that will eventually come after her. They stalk in the black shadows that her vision had created and always follow her.

They can do anything from turning into people she fears and playing on them to worsen her condition or make her imagine that her life is at risk

In the last picture, we can see from Missi’s expression she fully believes that this shadow figure of Duke is in the room and is there to harm her seen by her putting her arms up to try and protect herself when it lurches at her.

The most prominent case these are hallucinations is the scene with the chandelier

We clearly see that the chandelier is being messed with by the creatures, and in her vision it falls, nearly hitting her but cut to the next shot the chandelier is tsill in tact and nothing has been broken.

Another instance is with a photo in the house she *thinks* is Duke but when we see it again it’s actually someone completely different.

Once more it is a hallucination, it’s in Missi’s head and is only serving to make her feel more extreme emotions, make her further unstable so it makes the last part come easier.

The last part is when these creatures actually enter the physical world or what’s left of it in Missi’s vision. No longer just hallucinations they can actually impact Missi, make her feel things and actually physically harm her, manipulate her body or cause more extreme hallucinations (in the case of the wings sprouting from her back)

This pain becomes so bad that Missi attempts to rip them out of her veins, trying to get them out of her body

But it doens’t work because her Magic still keeps her alive and her soul hasn’t been completely claimed, she cant be rid of the creatures but she also can’t end it all by other means.

We know this does, to some extent, happen because when she throws away the Cane Missi (turned human after rejecting the magic) is holding the arm she just tore open, she looks down at her hands, her arms, to see if they’re still-- there and in tact shaking the entire time and looking traumatized.

If she is unsuccessful at fighting them off she will be killed, whether by her own magic or by her own hand being unable to handle the torment she is under. This instance I consider her worst night and from here she has learned to deal with or found better ways of coping with these problems, namely drinking. Keeping her mind too inebriated to even get that far ever again. Distracting herself with other things, or always having some kind of noise around her to keep her grounded to reality.

Things have gotten easier for her to control but we see in various drawings from Daria (mostly in stickers go figure) that she still does struggle with them and they are still relevant enough to Missi that Daria does make art of it

I hope this helped clear up some stuff even if I went on a bit of a tangent.

To put it in easier terms. The creatures come from Silence, they also are called the Silence because of where they come from.

#Out for a Bite // OOC #Screams from the Abyss // MT #Fact or Fiction // HC #Self Harm TW #;; there is a picture so do be warned

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ariadoesntwrite · 4 years ago

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Viktoria frowned and crossed her arms in front of herself. “Tyler, leave the seagulls alone.”

Tyler grinned cheekily as he tried in vain to wave her off. “Mr. Boss said to bring something back from the beach for him!” Viktoria shifted her weight and glanced over her shoulder in Tegan’s general direction, but it was immediately clear to her that he wasn’t going to be any help whatsoever in this sort of situation.

“You and I both darn well know that he didn’t mean the wildlife!”

Tyler pointed at her. “He didn’t specify. So, there is still a very slim but entirely probable–”

Viktoria threw her arms up in the air. “Dude.” “Do it for the meme,” Tegan called from under his frowny-face umbrella.

Victoria turned and looked straight at him for the first time that day, hands resting on her hips. “Where did you even find that thing?” Tegan shrugged nonchalantly. Well, as nonchalant as one can be while sweating to death, at least. “The internet.”

Viktoria sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose, then directed her attention towards the mock volleyball court that Raquel, Alistair, and Axel had set up. Axel and Ellie were up against Raquel and Alistair, and it was not going very well for the former team.

On Viktoria’s opposite side, Tadashi seemed lost inside his own little world as he drew a large square in the sand with a big stick, then started writing in large block letters underneath it. “D...E...T…”

That was clearly going to take him a while, and she was already bored watching.

Tegan shot Tyler a look that Viktoria couldn’t even begin to decipher, but she could tell it meant something meaningful.

Tyler began loudly heckling Axel, mocking his (admittedly lackluster) volleyball playing style from what he probably assumed was a safe distance away.

“I hope your vocal warmups aren’t as weak as your physical warmups are, AHAHAHA– OW!” Tyler was cut off abruptly via an inflatable beach ball to the face, courtesy of a smirking Axel.

Tyler snatched it out of the air with his hands before it had a chance to fall and raised it above his head, then ran straight towards him with a battle yell.

The smirk quickly disappeared off of Axel’s face, replaced by a scream of “SHHHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII–” that completely drowned out Tyler’s voice as he started running down the beach, both of them being deliberate in their avoidance of Claire’s very elaborate sandcastle, of course.

Viktoria raised an eyebrow. “That’s a very impressive lung capacity right there. And here I thought ‘singing on a treadmill’ was just an exaggeration.”

Tegan ran a hand through his hair and muttered something under his breath that Viktoria couldn’t quite catch. Something about someone owing someone, perhaps? Viktoria grinned to herself at the mental image of Tegan as a mob boss.

Karolina and Neha relaxed on lounge chairs a good few yards away and pretended not to know any of them. Neha took a long sip of her iced lemonade as she sketched out ideas for a swimwear line while Karolina thumbed through a magazine, protected from the sun’s harsh rays under an umbrella, a very fashionable floppy hat, Guccy sunglasses, and three layers of 100 SPF sunscreen.

Speaking of which… “Did you at least put some sunscreen on?” Viktoria turned and asked Tegan suddenly. He fell silent, then gave her a guilty smile. “That would be a no.” Viktoria sat down beside him and pulled a brightly colored tube out of her tote bag despite Tegan’s protesting.

Axel and Tyler ran by, still screaming at the top of both their lungs as they went right on past Tadashi’s…

“DETENTION DUNGEON,” Viktoria read aloud.

The beach ball must have gotten lost somewhere along the way, as Tyler was now just flailing his arms around above his head as he chased Axel.

Viktoria blinked dumbly. “Huh. Interesting. I guess old habits die hard.” She shook her head and squeezed a generous amount of sunscreen into her palm, then moved to apply it to Tegan’s arm.

Tegan gasped as the cold cream made contact with his uncomfortably warm skin. “You uh, you really don’t have to fuss over me like this...” Viktoria grinned as she slathered it up and down the length of his arm. “Awwh, but I want to, though.” She set to work, watching Tadashi out of the corner of her eye.

Tadashi scooted over to the ‘entrance’ of his detention dungeon, then started drawing what seemed to be some very elaborate puzzles and traps.

Viktoria paused and sat back on her heels, squinting. It was difficult to tell where exactly the sunscreen ended and Tegan’s pale skin began.

“What exactly is Tyler going to do if he catches Axel, anyway?”

Tegan rolled his eyes as the corners of his mouth turned upwards. “Well, you know the four F’s? Axel’s doing one of them right now, and then two out of the three remaining ones are… take your pick.”

Viktoria groaned and smacked her forehead against the armrest of Tegan’s chair. “Tegaaan!” “Viktoriaaaa!” Tegan whined back, matching her tone.

Viktoria raised her head and grinned suddenly as a thought struck her. “Hey, do you think Tadashi would throw people in his detention dungeon for PDA?” Tegan nearly fell out of his chair as he sputtered, barely coherent. “I– What– are you– I mean, he– you mean like–” “Because Ellie and Alistair have been making googly eyes at each other all day,” she continued, seemingly oblivious.

Was that a hint of a genuinely relaxed smile on his face as Tadashi added an extra leg to his manticore? Maybe it was a trick of the light.

Tegan took a deep breath to steady himself and sank further into his seat. “You are going to be the death of me, Viktoria.” He pulled his hood up over his head and covered his face with it, the corner of his glasses getting hooked on the fabric in the process.

“You… have a T-shirt... with a hood attached to it?” Viktoria asked incredulously, eyebrows raised.

Tegan stuck his bottom lip out in an exaggerated pout and crossed his arms, the effect only enhanced by his askew glasses. “Don’t judge me.”

Viktoria smiled as she moved from his left side to his right. “Well, at least it’s on-brand.”

Tegan lifted his hood to pull it back just enough to uncover his eyes and fixed his glasses. “So, what, I’m predictable now? I gotta change things up a bit.”

Viktoria motioned towards Tyler and Axel. “You could go join them, nobody would expect that.” She involuntarily cringed as Axel’s scream went shrill and went just sharp of the high C.

“Ugh, exercise. Never mind, I’ll stick with predictable.”

Tegan rolled his eyes again and wiped the palms of his hands on his shorts. “Lovely weather we’re having,” he said sarcastically.

Viktoria slowly inclined her head. “I don’t want to pry or come across as rude, but…” She trailed off, electing to stare at the crook of his elbow instead of his face. “Why are you out here instead of inside with the sweet, blessed air conditioning if you hate it so much?” She glanced up to gauge his reaction.

Tegan’s mouth twisted to the side as he avoided looking straight at her.

“...An hour of pure torment is paradise if I’m spending it with you.”

Viktoria inhaled sharply. “Tegan, I…”

Oh no, She thought to herself, not emotions and feelings! Not here! Not now!

She racked her brain for a fast and simple way to deflect. “If Axel ever decides to rebrand as darker and edgier, you could totally be his songwriter.”

“Like, what,” Tegan gestured grandly into the air with his arm, “The night sky is dark/just like my soul/and like the full moon/it swallows me whole?” Viktoria squeezed Tegan’s shoulder. “Pure poetry.” Tegan ran a hand through his hair, laughing in disbelief. “I don’t even know what it means!” Viktoria shrugged and shifted her weight. “That’s what makes it so perfect, though. Even if it has no meaning, people will eventually find one, anyway.” Tegan nodded slowly. “Wow. That got deep.”

Just then, Axel and Tyler came running by for the second time and collapsed on the sand, panting heavily.

“I’m,,, never,,, doing,,, that,,, again,,,” Axel gasped, arms wrapped around his middle.

“Me,,, neither,,,” Tyler agreed, nodding weakly as he stared straight up at the crystal blue sky.

“Okay, that dragged on for way too long.” Tegan stretched his arms above his head and let out a satisfied groan as his joints cracked loudly.

Tadashi’s head snapped to attention. “WHO BROUGHT FIREWORKS?!”

“Ooh, Tadpole’s gonna throw you in his detentsand,” Viktoria teased, resting one arm across the back of his chair.

Tegan pointed with his pale, ridiculously slender index finger. “Out. Get out.”

“I just—“ Viktoria started.

Tegan shook his head vigorously. “Nope nope nope, that was too horrible.” His glasses fell off. He retrieved and replaced them as nonchalantly as he could, which was difficult since he dropped them back onto the sand twice during the process.

Viktoria wandered over to the volleyball court, palms turned upwards. “Looks like I’m booted, so–” “Oh, good.” Ellie grabbed her arm. “We need another player to balance the teams, since–” she gestured vigorously at Axel and Tyler, who looked like a couple of stranded fish.

Viktoria grimaced and shied away. “Oh no, I’m terrible at all sports.” Ellie placed her hands on her hips. “Do you run away from the ball when it comes toward you?” Viktoria shuffled her feet, reluctant to answer. “...Yes, except for in dodgeball, because that’s an easy out.”

Ellie groaned and threw her head back. “Well, at least you’re capable of running, so there’s a start.”

Viktoria pursed her lips and cocked her head, crossing her arms behind herself.

“That depends on your definition of running. Because ‘moving as fast as you can, which is still not a lot’, is just about all I can muster.”

Ellie gave her a deep frown. Viktoria didn’t even know that mouths and eyebrows could turn like that before.

Viktoria gave a backward glance at Tegan, who seemed to be doing a decent enough job of entertaining himself on his phone. Little did she know, he was most definitely taking photos of her. Tasteful ones, of course.

“Okay, fine, I’m in. What do we need to do?” Viktoria began stretching, then started pulling her hair into a low ponytail.

Ellie offered her a spare hair tie and clapped her on the back. “Win, of course!” Viktoria’s jaw dropped open, almost cartoonishly. “Against Raquel and Alistair?” She shook her head, eyes wide. “I’m just gonna hold you back, hon. This has ‘bad idea’ written all over it.”

Alistair looked in their direction and shrugged nonchalantly. “I’m open to switching if you want.” “Tired of winning?” Raquel teased, spinning the ball on the tip of her finger. Viktoria watched enviously.

“Nah, but it sounds like you are.” Alistair chugged a bottle of water, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I am very in over my head I’m not competitive at all this isn’t going to end well for me–” Viktoria very much resembled a deer that wandered onto the highway and was now caught in a rapidly approaching car’s headlights.

Claire rose to her feet and carefully stepped over her completed sandcastle and matching sea dragon, dusting the sand off herself.

“I can join in too, if you want? To take the pressure off of it being two vs. two.” She gave her a tentative smile. Viktoria made a noise of appreciation and threw her arm around her shoulders. “You’re the best, Claire.”

Claire pulled her thick hair over her shoulders and smiled down at her feet. “Now we can suck together. Yay?” Viktoria stared at her in shock, then doubled over laughing. “I can’t believe you just said that! You’re not wrong, though!”

Raquel stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled, one fist in the air. “ALRIGHT, PANSIES! HALFTIME’S OVER! LET’S GOOOO!”

“Y’all are going down!” Ellie bounded over to the other side of the net, game face on.

Alistair placed his hands on his knees and planted his heels in the sand. “In history, maybe!” He hollered back, then to his teammates, “Don’t let them intimidate you, they’re all talk.”

The fire in Raquel’s eyes and the way Ellie pounded her fist into her opposite palm said otherwise.

Claire and Viktoria shared a tight-lipped, ‘we are doomed’ glance.

Claire reached over and weakly touched her fingertips to Viktoria’s. “That’s our team high-five,” she whispered.

“Dream tea–” Viktoria started to whisper back, but was rudely interrupted by Alistair’s shout of “BALL!”

Viktoria flailed her arms outwards. “Ack!”

Claire shielded her face as it headed in her direction. “Eep!” Raquel threw her arm out to the side, palm flat. “OUT!” She called, gleefully.

Viktoria scrunched up her shoulders and reached over to tap fingertips. “Yay, Claire! You got it over!”

Claire returned the gesture, eyes shining. “Dream team!”

18 notes · View notes

bl4cklabyrinth · 4 years ago

Text

ROCKIN’ON JAPAN December 2018 Interview Translation: Hiro talks about S･S･S

Disclaimer: Please do not retranslate my work into other languages, as my translation may not be accurate. I am no Japanese or English native.

The biggest thank you to Anna for helping me get the magazine clippings!

Photo from here.

The band has overcome its limits, and has given life to the masterpiece “S･S･S”

A solo interview with Hiro, where he shares his thoughts on finally getting to where he is now!

The rock band MY FIRST STORY has finally reached its full potential and came out with a simply amazing album.

Hiro has been making declarations for quite some time now – his thoughts towards his family, the meaning of his life, and the meaning behind his songs. At times they’ve been fired as a clear declaration of war and at other times as words of encouragement, but the truth is, until their last album “ANTITHESE”, those declarations naturally became a melody, a lyric, a song, against which MFS has always struggled alone.

However, this album is different. This album is solely dedicated to music. It’s just rock. It’s purely loud and piercingly melodious.

High quality, open, and very poppy music is being sought after. This is, so to speak, practically the first album they’ve made in which Hiro’s talent as a musician bloomed upward beautifully. It’s been 7 years since their debut, and it’s incredible how they were able to make it this far to get a chance at performing for 2 days at Yokohama Arena.

MFS and Hiro’s journey is finally approaching its quintessence from hereon. I talked at length with Hiro, who had made a breakthrough.

- How’s the band doing?

Hiro: It’s been pretty good. For better or for worse, we haven’t been aggressive since Budokan. I think we’ve been able to maintain our pace without spiralling out of control.

- Would it be safe to assume that that vibe was reflected in this album?

Hiro: Actually, I think this is the album that came out the best. On the flipside, it felt like everyone was just completely following my lead for our last album “ANTITHESE” (laughs). While continuing the course of the previous album, it was through our egos then and our desire to “take it easy”, “ do things freely”, and “try out all sorts of things” that this album came about.

- “ANTITHESE” was made in such a way that it just drilled you down, drove you into a corner, and squeezed you dry. Was the process completely different this time?

Hiro: About 3 or 4 songs on this album have been around since we made “ANTITHESE”. The songs “M.A.D” and “REMEMBER” are two of those, and more came about when I discussed how I wanted to make more songs like them with the members. “ANTITHESE” came together nicely, and I thought it would be nice if we could develop it further with these two songs.

- So there was no talk of putting those two songs on “ANTITHESE”, huh.

Hiro: In my mind, those 14 songs are the full maximum, no more or less than that. I didn’t want to put anything extra. But I thought, “The songs are cool, I wanna release them. Maybe in the next album.”

- I see. Did you already have some sort of vision as to what you wanted the album to be like from that stage?

Hiro: I did. “ANTITHESE” is like a boy while this one’s like a young man, as if it got a bit more mature. There are a lot of minor details that went into it like chord progressions, riffs, melodies, and rhythms, but we made it wanting to convey a sense of indirectness or something like, “Ah, this is pretty cool” when listened to.

- That sounds great. It’s like an upgraded version of the band, like “MY FIRST STORY 2.0”.

Hiro: That’s right (laughs).

- I suppose you could make another album like “ANTITHESE”, but to return to that point in your life...?

Hiro: That’s pretty tough (laughs). Once you’ve spit it all out once, the things you want to say the second time around will definitely be different. I can’t make another album like that.

- I believe you struggled in order to put out the album “ANTITHESE”, but after doing so, did you feel something like, “I’ve wrung out everything I wanted to say, what do I do now?”

Hiro: I did, I did. Personality-wise, I can’t keep writing lyrics that only convey “hope”. There are a lot of other artists who can do just that and make it resonate with everyone, so when we realized that that wasn’t what we should be doing, we thought we had to write ourselves realistically the way we are now. It’s easier to get a bird’s eye view of the song’s world rather than the lyrics’, so I would say, “We made a song like this last time, let’s try to make it more stylish by adding a tension chord,” or have an idea in my head like, “We did this last time, maybe we should do this next time”. I honestly thought it’d be boring if we only put out songs like “ALONE” or “Fukagyaku”, and the songs themselves aren’t gonna die out anyway, so “ACCIDENT” was born. Sometimes it’s harder to figure out how to flesh things out from there (laughs).

- In terms of lyrics, what kind of changes have taken place since the end of “ANTITHESE” up to this point in time?

Hiro: Probably up until around “ALONE” and “ANTITHESE”, the lyrics had only been about me. But as you would expect, there isn’t much more to say (laughs). I’m not all hate. The lyrics I envision or write are of my ideal person. So it doesn’t mean that I live my life that way every day – of course I’ve betrayed myself countless times, and I’ve lied to myself as well, but you can’t see that part of me from the outside. Those who receive it as a song lyric always think that that’s all there is to it. Humans aren’t that strong – there are days when your mind is on the edge, and there are days when you feel like you’re not your usual self. Rather, I think it’s during times like that when people can relate to the lyrics. When I started writing with that in mind, I was surprised at how much I could write. I was so adamant about needing to write in that tone of voice, but I was able to remove that part of me after doing Budokan which made things a lot easier.

- The more you listen to it, the more you realize that the lyrics are very personal. You also feel a sense of living that you’ve never felt before.

Hiro: Yes. It’s important to show different sides of myself, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to write more in the future. I also look forward to what kinds of reactions I’ll get when I put out such things. It’s like, I didn’t cook anything super elaborate, I just tried making something out of what I had in the fridge. But I’ve been doing this for 7 years now, so I think I can make a pretty decent meal with what’s stocked in the refrigerator (laughs). You can do a lot of things with the nuance “as long as the dish is good”. I think that’s how the album came to be, in a good way.

- I think that’s a great change. For the longest time you’ve been setting up some sort of hurdle that goes, “How many people truly understand what I’m feeling here?” but that was taken away and now it’s just like, “If you like music, give it a listen”.

Hiro: That’s true. In a sense, I’ve finished what I wanted to do, so I thought I’d take a more casual approach to MY FIRST STORY. I’m now able to challenge all sorts of things I wasn’t able to do in the past. Conversely, I think the 5 years after Budokan will be even more difficult.

- In the days leading up to Budokan, MFS as well as Hiro were looking for a way to end things, or even a way of life in which things would personally end in the most beautiful way possible.

Hiro: Right. It’s still the same now, it’s never ending, but I definitely don’t want to continue doing this on an emotional level. So far, we’ve made it clear that we’re aiming for Tokyo Dome. I think it’d be tough for the people watching over us to support us if they didn’t know what we want to do, what we’re trying to achieve or what our goal is. We can’t keep running in the dark with no goal in sight, but we have to keep running regardless. By putting what lies ahead of me into words, I feel like it solidifies the path I should be taking. When we started the band, our goal was Budokan, but after finishing that, it became Tokyo Dome. This time, I wonder what will happen next after Tokyo Dome is over. Only then will we know what the future holds, but right now, I think Tokyo Dome will be the end of the road for MFS 2.0.

- Then after that, you might find something new again, or you might think, “It’s over”. You never really know, huh.

Hiro: Yeah. It’s like a plot with a clear introduction, development, twist, and conclusion. We’re called MY FIRST STORY after all, so if we don’t convince ourselves that we’re in a story with a beginning and end, we won’t be able to continue running ahead. I’m the type of person who can’t pull through unless I set a goal to run for 1 hour or 10 km. Because we decide on a location to aim towards, in a sense, we become able to keep moving forward.

- I see. That’s a good mode to be in.

Hiro: That’s right. It would be tough if I kept the same pace as I did moving towards Budokan (laughs). And even if I did go at the same pace, I don’t know if I’d be able to make it. If I thought about it all the way through until we got there, everyone else would be thinking about it too, so I thought it’d be better to stop fussing over it for a while. I’ve thought about it enough. So for now, at our own pace, we’re focusing on working with what we can sensibly come up with, what would be good for us to do, and what we’re capable of doing now. I believe it’s for the best.

- I really admire how Hiro, who was searching for his final destination, is now singing about wanting to continue on with MY FIRST STORY.

Hiro: Yeah. I as well as the members are excited for what lies ahead, not having to be bound to a certain rock band image or genre. Of course, the members and I definitely have our pride and things we want to maintain, but none of us have a “must do this” mentality. Because of this, I think there’ll be more opportunities to try things out in the future. With the addition of Kid’z, we’ve moved past Budokan, and I’m sure there’ll be even more in store from now on. The members have been getting along really well lately. We’ve been hanging out a lot, and when I taught them how to play poker, they all got hooked and played together until morning (laughs).

- For real? (laughs)

Hiro: When you spend time together outside band activities, your perceived values become the same, and the things that come out of that will be more different than how they’ve always been in the past. I think the ideas we’ve been putting out and reconciling with each other up to now are becoming more and more whole. If you don’t experience or feel the same things on a regular basis, you won’t be able to create much. I think we blend together really well right now, so I’m looking forward to the future.

- The first thing I noticed this time was your voice. The way you sang and the variations in your singing voice were really well done. It’s like, “There’s this drawer, and this drawer, and if you’d like, there’s this ceiling”. It kind of felt like that way of singing was finally unleashed.

Hiro: Really? Thank you. For me, it didn’t feel that way this time at all, I felt it more so when I made “ANTITHESE”. But just like the “even if you overthink things, there’s nothing much you can do” thing I mentioned earlier, if you think too much about it and then try to sing, that’s when you surprisingly become unable to sing. So now, instead of trying to sing without letting the pressure get to my head, I focus more on casually internalizing what I would think if I were the listener. Mainly thinking, “If I add a little touch here, would it sound weird,” or “I wonder if it isn’t bad”, I would’ve sung it rather quickly so I wouldn’t think too much about it.

- So it would be like you were just singing along to the music?

Hiro: Yeah. As if that’s just the way I wanted it to be.

- I’m sure there were a lot of variations in terms of music, so inevitably I’d assume there were variations in the songs as well.

Hiro: Ahh, I really wanted to make an album that wasn’t straightforward. Of course there are straightforward songs as well, but I wanted to throw in a few curve balls there too. Curves, sliders, forks, knuckles, all sorts of things were thrown together to make it work, and specifically having that in mind made things easy to understand when we were putting the songs in. It’s like, “No matter how you look at it, it’s this kind of song. Well then, let’s sing it that way”. It was easy to grasp for me as a listener and as a singer.

- If you listen to this album objectively, what do you think about your vocals?

Hiro: I’d tell myself, “You had a lot in mind when you were recording, huh.” However, I can definitely sing without an issue this time around, so I feel totally fine listening to myself now. I’m really jealous of people who can shake it off and say, “This is who I am”, because I can’t. But I was thinking, if I could push myself hard enough to be able to sing like that one day, I’d feel much better, or perhaps something new will be born within me from there. This album allowed me to experience that. Rather than having me in the song, it’s something I created, something I can present as a part of myself. This album shows the breadth of my own evolution and what lies ahead. It goes the same way for MFS as a whole, too. That’s why I’m really glad we tried making an album like this.

- You’d want to say, “It’s a masterpiece!” but I feel like it’s more so “There’s gonna be more masterpieces from now on”.

Hiro: That’s right. It’s like the meat in a course meal. And then it’s gonna be like, “We’re serving pasta after this,” “Eh, seriously!?” (laughs)

- Even the band members are playing very freely, huh.

Hiro: Yes. This time, I wasn’t present for the members’ recording sessions at all. They’d call me and ask, “What do we do here?” and I’d answer, “Eh? Anything goes” (laughs). Of course I knew the dates, but I wouldn’t go even if I was free (laughs). There’s nothing for me to do there even if I went, and we all have our own things we want to pursue and things we want to do with the songs. I didn’t think it was right for me to say how things should be done. Even my parts aren’t perfect, and I wouldn’t know what to say to the member in question if I wasn’t sure whether the part they worked on was done correctly or not, and I feel like telling them what to do would take out all the fun. Realizing that it’s better for me to listen objectively to a piece of work created through everyone’s efforts was a huge help. On top of that, I’m able to do the things I want to do – it’s already an ideal situation (laughs). I don’t care what they do, as long as they don’t commit a crime (laughs).

- Amazing. I never thought the day would come that I’d hear those words from you (laughs).

Hiro: Hahahaha, it’s true. We didn’t start out as friends. We just considered each other as fellow members when we started the band, always keeping one another in check with a great deal of care and a little bit of stress. However, even if Budokan was for me and for everyone listening, it was the members who understood me the best. From that point on, we didn’t really mind each other’s businesses anymore, and it became like, “Why don’t we just say what we want to say to each other, we’ve come this far after all?” They know their parts, and they know themselves better than anyone else, so there isn’t a whole lot to complain about anymore. Even if one of us would make a mistake at a show, we wouldn’t say, “Play it right” or anything like that anymore. They know what they’re doing, and they know that there’s nothing else to respond to such a comment other than “I’m sorry”. If doing so would immediately change things then go for it, but if they continue on without changing then just tell them off. They’re not the kind of dudes who don’t do anything, and on the contrary, it is me who gets his ass kicked more often than not, so I don’t really have anything to say to that. That’s about as good as it’s gonna get.

- That’s great. You’ve finally come this far, huh.

Hiro: Yeah. I’ve been feeling like I’ve gone rather far lately (laughs).

- Is it because you made this album?

Hiro: I think it’s more because we were able to appreciate each other more, or realize, “It’s okay to do this now”. As for the album, it was a piece of work that made me feel like I could see the future in more ways than one.

- Up until now, the band’s primary identity had been what Hiro squeezes out and screams about. In that case, it’s not so much about how you want people to hear you play, but more so about how you can bring your cries and messages forward.

Hiro: That’s a pretty hard task for the other members to do. But all of that is over. If that had been the case until now, I would have never said, “The members can do whatever they want” and this album would have never been released. Back then, I’d go, “Let’s do it like this here,” “The last chorus definitely goes after the bridge,” but it hasn’t been like that these days. Now we’d go ahead and say, “This is good,” “Interesting, interesting”. It’s like the kids who always had to ask permission from their mom have disappeared.

- “Young man” is a great metaphor in that sense as well (laughs).

Hiro: Mhm. It’s just like disciplining a child – just because you did it before doesn’t mean you’ll grow up that way, and saying too much isn’t a good thing either. We are all different people after all, and whether we’re lovers or family, we can’t understand each other 100% of the time, so we have to accept and trust each other more. I don’t really like it when people grow apart because of work. I want to make a team like the one in “Wild Speed”. We all get along really well, getting together in a garden to have a barbecue and stuff like that. It’s partly because we have such a good sense of team spirit that we’re able to do things indie. I wouldn’t be able to continue on unless I had a team with the same ambitions and the same passion to move forward. Seeing a lot of adults being considerate of me makes me feel better about myself (laughs). The members are the ones who understand “Let’s take it easy” the most. This may seem natural, but it’s super hard to do. And now that I’m able to do so, it feels great.

- You’ve truly made an incredible rock album. And it’s good that your methods can effectively be used to make more in the future.

Hiro: In fact, it’s been going so smoothly that it has become the focal point of our work process, so I don’t think it was difficult for anyone. Scheduling was pretty tough though. In August, I was singing at shows and recordings for 15 days in a row or something like that. Some of the songs didn’t have melodies or lyrics yet, and I was thinking, “Seriously, what are we gonna do!” but we had the same situation when we were making “ANTITHESE”, so I was like, “If you have the time to say ‘Oh no’ or ‘We’ll never finish’, then use that time to continue working instead” (laughs). Because of this, I’ve learned to believe in myself. The members were on a super tight schedule as well, but they would respond to requests from me like, “I want to change the first verse” or “Sorry, take it down a half-step”, so I was confident that everything was going to be okay. We may be in a hurry, but I no longer get worried or anxious.

- There were a lot of songs that used the words “white” and “black” this time. However, rather than black and white symbolizing “win or lose”, it was more of “There’s a part of me that’s pure white, and a part of me that’s pitch black”, providing a perspective that allows us to see both sides of you in the same light.

Hiro: That’s true. “ANTITHESE” was always about me, but that was completely overturned this time, now having different main characters for each song. Then, I wrote the lyrics, sang the songs, so there are many different stories of me in this album. Sometimes they’re of a similar hue, but still slightly different in shade. Of course, I didn’t write about colors that I didn’t have at all, so I was able to recreate the colors in my mind, or rather, sublimate them in the form of music.

- It’s like, “Sometimes it’s white, sometimes it’s black. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t. But that’s just the way things are, right?”

Hiro: Yep. With this one album, we’re no longer limited to, “This is what I say in this song, so I have to keep saying this”. It’s like, “That isn’t always the case, you know. I’m only human” (laughs). Like, “Sometimes I feel that way, sometimes I don’t”. It doesn’t matter if they’re on the same album. I was able to reach that point in my life, so now I have a wide range to work with.

- That’s why Hiro’s melody-making skills are being opened up to the fullest.

Hiro: This time, I mostly worked upwards from the chorus. After breaking apart the original chorus, I’d go, “This one’s catchier”. I didn’t even stick to the general concept of the melody – I’d try to make one, but if I wasn’t 100% sold on it, I’d try to make 10 more, and then I’d go with what everyone said was good. The premise behind a melody is that it’s something you can hum along to when you suddenly hear it, so I didn’t want to change my approach of starting songs from there. Nowadays, people don’t say, “This song is good”. They say, “These lyrics are good”. Because of this, I want to create a catchy melody that’s easy to remember, one with a rebellious spirit, and at the moment, I think it’d be good if it were in Japanese. That being said, I want everyone to be able to say, “This melody is good”.

- I think it’s a really well-made album. I thought that the Hiro who’s been shouting out what’s inside his heart has made it this far (laughs).

Hiro: On the contrary, it’s exactly how I imagined it to be from the moment we started the band up to this point in time. Our pace and work are progressing as well with a margin of error of about 0.5 mm. Thing is, we’re gonna start with a completely clean slate from here on out, so we’re in a bit of a hurry (laughs). We’re kind of in a standstill right now, but if you’re asking me how I feel about the members or the music, I’d say, “Well, it’ll be okay”. From this point forward, I think we’re just gonna have to put ourselves out there. To be honest, we aren’t really sure ourselves either (laughs), but from now on, it’s not gonna be a story that was created – it’s gonna be a story that we create while walking forward.

#my first story #マイファス #print #2018 #yay #first full-length magazine interview translation #pats self on the back #am I ready to translate the Antithese interview though #oof #Hiro

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firstdegreefangirl · 5 years ago

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Eddie Week Day Six: We Are Family

Word Count: 1241

Original Pub Date: 20 June 2020

Relationships: Firefam. It’s just the firefam. Hints of Buddie, but you gotta squint REAL HARD.

Read on ao3 here

I’ll stop tagging when my friends stop being amazing: @eddiediazweek, @hearteyesforbuck, @rebeccaofsbfarm, @thisissirius, @hearteyesforbuck, @dramamineontopofme, @twinien, @meloingly, @myemergence

“OK, is everybody here?” Bobby rolls up onto his toes and wiggles his pointer finger as he counts to himself, moving his lips as he looks around the group of firefighters milling around outside the station.

Not that he really needs to count, Eddie thinks. There’s only eight people on the crew, counting the alternates who rotate in and out so everyone can have days off.

“Everybody’s here, Bobby.” Athena sighs from her position behind the camera. “Just like they were last time you checked. Now can you all just line up in front of the trucks and take the damn picture?”

Eddie stifles a laugh at the way Athena rolls her eyes when Bobby tries to argue with her, and follows everyone else into a single-file line. They’re far enough down the driveway for the firetruck and ambulance to show in the background, just the way Bobby had sketched out – yes, on a whiteboard and everything – when he’d pitched the idea to the team.

A team picture, he’d explained, would increase morale around the station, serve as a visual reminder that they’re all working together toward the same goal. And if they put it on display, then anyone who stops by the station will know the people who are protecting them when things go wrong.

It had taken a decent amount of cajoling (and the promise of his famous pecan bars), but he’d finally convinced everyone to put on their dress uniforms and let the LA sun beat down on them for a photo. Athena and May are behind the camera, in charge of making sure that everyone looks their best. Bobby’s already told everyone how to line up – shortest on one end, tallest on the other – and they’d taken two hours to wash the trucks this morning, making sure everything is sparkling clean.

(Chimney had almost gotten himself saddled with a month of bathroom duty when he pointed out that the back of the truck isn’t even going to be in the picture, so there really wasn’t any reason to re-wax all the chrome parts until they reflected the sun.)

They line up, the shutter clicks twice, and when Athena steps back from the viewfinder, everyone relaxes.

They’re done, the picture is taken. Not completely painless, but easy enough.

Until May looks up, sets her coffee down and slides her sunglasses up to the top of her head.

“Really? That’s it? You’re only taking one photo? Bobby, you’re sure you don’t want something more creative?”

“Well …” Everyone freezes, the last flicker of hope that they might be able to go change back out of their dress uniforms fading right before their eyes. “I suppose it might be a good idea to have a few options.”

That’s all the permission May needs to step forward and start arranging people. Eddie would be willing to put money down that she’s the one organizing her friends for pictures when they hang out, as easily as she seems to picture who would look best where.

When she’s finished, nudging Athena out of the way so she can check her work through the camera’s lens, Bobby is standing between him and Buck, with an alternate on either side of them. Hen, Chimney and Tommy make up the front row, kneeling with their hands folded on their thighs.

May presses the shutter button, but looks up.

“Don’t get up. Chim, turn a little bit more toward Tommy. Bobby, relax. Shoulders don’t belong in your ears. Eddie … stop doing that thing with your face.”

“What?” He doesn’t think he’s doing a thing with his face. “I’m not doing a thing with my face.”

“Yes, you are.” Chimney doesn’t even look up as he’s shuffling closer to Tommy.

“You’re not even looking!”

“I trust May.”

“Good,” she smirks at Chimney. “Now turn back out a smidge. You went too far.”

“Chimney Han, don’t you roll your eyes at my daughter.” Athena glares at him and Hen starts laughing. “Henrietta, you’re next. You think I forgot what you said after that merlot the other night?”

Hen stops laughing, and Eddie tries to figure out what to do about his face while May leans back down to the viewfinder.

“Hang on, it’s all wrong.” She stands back up. “I can’t see the top of the truck.”

Everyone groans when she picks the tripod up and starts walking backward. After a few feet, she sets it down, checks the angle again and repeats the process until she’s satisfied with the camera placement.

“Better?” Bobby leans forward, like he’s trying to see the reflection in the glass of the lens.

“Better,” May confirms. “But you’re all too far away now. Stay just like you are, but forward a few feet.”

Everyone shuffles forward, and Hen reaches around to swat Chimney on the back of the head when he starts whining about a piece of gravel digging into his knee.

“Hush, we don’t need any reasons to stay down here longer!”

Eddie feels time slow down as May leans forward over the camera and positions her finger on the shutter button. All at once, four things happen.

Bobby rolls his eyes, opening his mouth to tell Hen and Chim to cut it out so May can take the picture. Buck rears back, sucks in two short breaths and sneezes so hard that Eddie’s first instinct is to fear for his health.

Tommy's first instinct, on the other hand, is to reach back and make sure that nothing from Buck’s sneeze landed on his head, while he turns around to glare. Chimney starts laughing, and Eddie’s pretty sure he’s doing whatever face-thing May had told him to change.

Then the shutter clicks and May recoils to stare at the group in horror. She presses a couple of buttons, then waves Athena over to peer at the tiny screen with her. They’ve hardly looked at the image when Athena steps back and doubles over, laughing so hard that there are tears running down her face and she’s gasping for breath.

She finally stands up, but her shoulders are still heaving when she wheezes out a reaction.

“Well, anyone who sees this picture is going to know exactly what kind of firefighters they’re getting when they call the 118: damned fools.”

Eddie is so taken aback by her response that he starts laughing too, and the whole moment seems to be infectious enough that everyone joins in. Before long, they’re all howling, leaning on each other and wiping their cheeks.

None of them are paying attention, so nobody sees May lean into the camera again, nobody hears the shutter click.

But a few weeks later, when Bobby gets the frame hung up on the wall in the garage?

It’s a perfect representation of their team, exactly how they act when the camera isn’t turned on them. When Bobby hands 4x6 copies around to everyone (plus prints of the picture right before it, which Eddie honestly likes even more), Eddie mentally starts clearing room for it on the shelf in his living room, right next to Christopher’s latest school picture and a snapshot of the two of them with Buck at the arcade.

When he gets home that night and fishes a frame out of the hall closet, the picture fits in perfectly with the others: a tiny tribute to the most important people in his life: his son, his Buck and his team.

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slingsendarrows · 5 years ago

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To His Coy Master

“I have often reflected on upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive…My homemade education gave me, with every additional book I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America.” — Malcolm X “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”

Photo by Will Small

It never ceases to amaze the length, and breadth white people will go to willfully deny history in as much as it tells them the truth about themselves. I don’t blame them. It is a bitter pill to swallow owning up as a member of a people that has wreaked such havoc and extended so much unmitigated violence. Your domination in pursuit of betterment for your people and racial superiority was at the unquantifiable expense of others.

Now, before we get bogged down in the mire of wilfully confusing terms, let me resentfully explain what I mean by the words I am using. I say resentfully because expounding upon the injustices heaped upon my people requires I justify my position and take care not to offend the sensibilities of those I am addressing. It is dormant trauma indicative of the master/slave dichotomy I still have yet to shed. For it is only the oppressor that necessitates the oppressed exercise restraint and caution in stating and expressing his grievances, however vile and repulsive, adjusting for nuances and individual circumstances as if his subjugation wasn’t abrupt, violent, and complete. What is the virtue of incremental progress if the oppressor committed the original sin with absolute expediency? But, I digress.

“White people” or “white men,” refers to the collective white man, woman, and child as befits the ideologies of white supremacy, meaning those originating from Europe and the inheritors of their ancestors’ misdeeds. I will not deign to account for individual acts or attitudes of “good” white people because it is irrelevant. It is a tactic the oppressor uses to detract from the larger truth about himself.

Also, in speaking collectively, I will use the masculine pronouns, reflexive and otherwise, in an umbrella fashion similar to holy writ, signifying patriarchy as the apex of privilege and tyranny. Occasionally, I may address collective “white people” as women and men, specifically. “Master” is not restricted to those who owned slaves in actuality but those who propagated ideas of white superiority and black subjection.

Finally, and for what I hope will be the last time, privilege is a Russian doll ladder in that some have more than others in the broader context of the hierarchical structure as well as within each rung. Privilege is the exemption from specific experiences due to the inherent characteristics of race, ability, sexuality, gender identity, sex, socioeconomic status, etc. I have privilege within my rung as educated, able-bodied, cis-gender, and heterosexual. I shall leave it there.

I know you are, but what am I?

There are things you can’t unsee. I can neither unsee injustice nor abide civility for civility’s sake. Living as a black woman person is a burden, but one I am learning to carry with pride. You live in the depths of a valley with a clear perspective of the surrounding landscape. I look about me these days, and I yearn to be free. Natural freedom, not granted, but inborn and awakened through the conscious effort. Freedom rising from truth and understanding, painful though it may be. But master, I must tell you the truth about yourself, for I see now, as Malcolm X stated, you love yourself so much you’re often surprised to discover we do not share your “vainglorious self-opinion.”

Bettmann Archives/Getty Images

The cyclical nature of oppression angers me: outcries and marches, cosmetic salves for change, and disingenuous support that lasts just long enough for us to return to business, as usual. I don’t want to mince words anymore. It no longer serves to be palatable. You must swallow whole my incredulous raging despair and dubious hope for change. You will taste every unpleasant bite as I tell you the unflavored truth about yourself. I will not be distracted by dog-whistle racist dismissals of reverse-racism and black supremacy. Pipe down! You know I do not have the power to alter a fraction of your daily existence fundamentally.

For all your talk of progress, history shows very little of significance and import has materially changed. Individual achievement is pointless if institutionalized racism persists, unimpeded since the advent of colonial conquest when you left your lands to “discover” ours. It matters little that some of us make it if most of us continue to suffer the same injustices bereft of reprieve through education, wealth, and status. In short, your surface efforts at woke-ness and allyship are of little use if, in your white homes and white spaces, you propagate or remain silent in the face of racist sentiments and ideologies.

I reason real change calls for radical action. The how eludes me. Real change requires rooting out the problem in its entirety, a problem so deeply ingrained and pervasive it infects every facet of our daily existence. It is institutionalized. But our subjugation was so final we forgot our names. We have been in the wilderness far too long, thirsting for understanding and starving for identity. You hope we never figure out our freedom was never a matter for your consent.

In the midst of my hungering, I have awakened to two fundamental realizations: 1) we are and have only ever been as free as you have allowed us to be, 2) truth comes through knowledge of self, and knowledge of self comes through self-education.

It’s been a long, long time coming, but I know change is gonna come.

During moments of considerable racial unrest, you remind us to be grateful for the crumbs that fall from your feasting tables and make it into our mouths. With each protesting hamster-wheel cycle for change, you erroneously juxtapose our grievances against your apparent signs of progress, as if the two are analogous. You caution against violent reactions when your institutions murder us, and you selectively misquote our advocates out of context to suit your purposes and invalidate our rage. The conversation inevitably becomes about how we are not decent people, and our behavior courted death; therefore, we deserve to die. There is no need to mourn, much less to protest. Still, during our tear-gassed and rubber-bulleted peaceful protestations, you implore us, once again, to be patient. Someday we’ll all be free. Incrementalism over expediency!

Photo by Charles Moore

You ask us to remember Abraham Lincoln and his hundreds of thousands of Union soldiers. Do we not recall the numerous, albeit contradictory, supreme court decisions that have brought us thus far? Lyndon B. Johnson and his predecessors awarded us civil rights, benefitting the electorate with the sacrifice of black bodies. The matter of reparations is a non-starter — sins of the father, and all that; it’s in the past. See our constitutional amendments, white abolitionists, James Meredith, northern white liberalism, and lest we forget, the progressive black achievement permitted in your industries and society.

But the fact that we’re still witnessing black firsts 400 years later is not a sign of progress; it is the opposite.

Our schools teach the efforts and white generosity of Abraham Lincoln liberated black people in America. However, a cursory glance at your records will show this is factually incorrect. I am tired of being reminded to pay homage to the “Great Emancipator,” whom we remember, in large part, due to this astounding act of condescending deference. Master Lincoln is an excellent example of your self-conceit that our freedom is yours to grant or deny. And to add insult to injury, you congratulate yourselves for it. The overarching white supremacist belief you can deign to give us freedom is a glaring reminder we are only as free as you enable us to be. Your love for this lie is so profound; you pull it out each time issues of race arise. But Lincoln, a white man, freed you! He might have been black too.

So let’s set the record straight.

Lincoln did not free slaves out of moral imperative but political expediency. A cursory study of his papers and thinking at the time show he was willing to maintain slavery if it meant keeping the Union intact because “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Before the Missouri Compromise of 1820, a carefully maintained 1:1 ratio determined the slavery status of newly admitted states. This balancing act was codified when Maine and Missouri sought admittance; the former was free, and the latter legally permit slavery. The law also prohibited slavery north of the Mason-Dixon line.

At the onset of the Civil War, Missouri demographically split between confederate and union allies. In 1861, witnessing Missouri’s descent into chaos, Union Major Generals Fremont and Hunter issued emancipation proclamations calling for the execution of those found guilty of taking up arms against Union and the confiscation of their property, including freeing their slaves. Shortly after that, Lincoln fired the generals and annulled the proclamation. He issued a Second Confiscation Act in July 1862, allowing for the confiscation of slaves owned by the rebels, freeing them at the discretion of the court.

District of Columbia. Company E, 4th U.S. Colored Infantry, at Fort Lincoln

Slaves were commodities of considerable economic value. Slaves were mortgaged collateral and settled debts. Losing slaves would result in a substantial financial loss for southern masters. The Union knew that, so they exploited it. Freeing slaves robed the Confederacy of its free and disposable labor, eliminating the possibility of slaves fighting against the Union army at the behest of their rebel masters. Lincoln did not issue the Proclamation of 1863 because he thought black people were inherently equal and deserving of justice under the law. Asked about his decision-making process, he stated, “…if I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that…” The Civil War did not end slavery in acknowledgment of black equality. Slave emancipation crippled the Confederate economies and, in so doing, weakened the southern rebellion. Emancipation was a means to an end.

Lincoln could not conceive of a nation with black people as equal if not, primary stakeholders. Nevermind their backs built the wealth of the country. Now that the problematic part of nation-building over, he could simply return them from whence they came and be done with it. He thought it better to return black Americans to Africa and failing that, create a whole separate nation unto themselves.

Reportedly the only known photo of a black American Union soldier and his family. (Library of Congress)

In 1854, before the Civil War, Lincoln stated, at a speech in Illinois, his “…first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them back to Liberia.” It was the only foreseeable solution to the race issue. He considered the coal-mining prospects of the Chiriqui region in modern-day Panama an option for deportation and resettlement. Still, the idea met fierce abolitionist opposition when he tested it on a sample slave population in Delaware. He supported a congressional bill that would “…aid in the colonization and settlement of such free persons of African descent […] as may desire to emigrate to the Republic of Haiti or Liberia or such other country beyond the limits of the United States as the President may determine.” After signing the Second Confiscation Act, in August 1862, Lincoln invited a delegation of five prominent black men to the White House to clarify that white and black people cannot coexist; therefore, separation was the most direct path to peace. He wanted their support for a mass black exodus.

Liberia presented a logistical nightmare. The Chiquiri coal was worthless, and the land in dispute with Costa Rica. Approximately 450 black people moved to an island off the coast of Haiti, of which almost 25% died of poor nutrition and illness before the remainder returned to the U.S. Defeated, Lincoln, considered deporting “the whole colored race of the slave states into Texas.” Days before his death, he stressed, “I can hardly believe that the South and North can live peace unless we can get rid of the negroes…I believe it would be better [for the whites] to export them to some fertile country…”

Getty/Library of Congress

In conclusion, asking me to celebrate a white master for granting me what is rightfully mine is ludicrous — honoring him for a decision that only benefitted me as a secondary consequence of his primary purpose is the height of white arrogance. It merely cements you don’t believe freedom is ours by right; it is yours to give in the manner befitting your white sensibility stretched out over the expanse of time. Time to legitimize the numbing effect of revisionist history and position us in gratitude toward master’s acquiesce and tolerance, however slow. Master is doing his best. After all, his wife, at a time, condescended to teach Frederick Douglass to read and write.

And yet, here we remain, yearning for crumbs off of master’s table. Asking, begging, pleading, for what is ours.

The real nightmare scenario for white supremacy is an actualized black mind, educated and conscious of its pervasive and pernicious effects. Global black unity jellies the white man’s spine in fear of retribution for his crimes. It is why you champion incremental progress and hail peaceful protest as the height of moral discourse. You only understand violence for violence is what it took to achieve your dominance. You cannot conceive of any other possible outcome, and you cannot revise history with enough “good” white people committing “good” white acts to cover the rancid stench. You know it stinks, and since you cannot find a solution outside your oppressive playbook, you must deny, obfuscate, distract, appease and roll the ball down the road of historical replay.

To that, I now turn a deaf ear. We must educate ourselves about our people and history if we are to be truly free. We cannot depend upon you to what is right. You have made it abundantly clear.

#black lives matter #malcolm x #carter godwin woodson #abraham lincoln #deportation #black unity #miseducation of the negro #revisionist history #white supremacy #white people

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alexwinfield-blog1 · 6 years ago

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There’s a ‘Price’ to pay for meme trolling.

There is no doubt that the social media world are lovers for a good ol’ meme. Need a conversation starter? A witty reply? Or cheering up on a gloomy day? A meme will guarantee you a laugh. However, what constitutes a well-curated, humorous meme? Well, as we all know, humour is subjective. What you and I find funny will differ, of course. But what criteria needs to be met in order for a meme to go viral? What do the creators of memes set out to achieve when sharing them online? Most importantly, is there a line to be crossed? At what point can we agree that a meme no longer has a shared meaning?

I want to look closely at the memes created online targeting Harvey Price, but firstly, let’s get to grips with what we mean by a ‘meme’. Dawkins (2006) describes the practice of ‘memeing’ to involve “participating in the creation or distribution of a powerful, original idea”. He also proposes that a meme is a “unit of cultural transmission”, an idea or collective conscience that a community share. We share this culture like we share genetic characteristics. Like “biological organisms evolve based on the natural selection of genes, cultures evolve based on the natural selection of memes”. Despite what this wishy-washy, too-poetic-to-be-true analysis may suggest, memes speak volumes about the humour and beliefs within society. Remember these?

With the relationship between the image the caption having no etymological meaning, the caption of a meme can be chopped and changed depending on the intention of the creator. Examples which spring to mind are “Cash me Outside” and the compilations of Arthur memes, in which the captions are often quite predictable. Nonetheless, the meaning of a meme is not always required to be clear and linear. Most of the time they are abstract and nonlinear, in fact. Above all, the most important function of a meme is to depict ‘coolness’.

Virality and Memes: the good, the bad but mostly the ugly.

Kim Kardashian, or more specifically her career, is a perfect example of how virality can change a life for the better. All thanks to a leaked sex tape in 2007. You can guarantee that this certainly wasn’t one of her finest, most glamorous moments, but I’m sure she’s never looked back. This scandalous footage landed her a career of fame. And now? Over a decade later we spend our lives Keeping Up With The Kardashians. Most recently, with her half-sister Kylie Jenner competing with an egg to get the most liked photo of all time on Instagram, and her step-father Bruce Jenner’s latest transition in becoming Caitlyn, there is no doubt that this family are familiar with being the centre of media attention. With what seemed to be the world going crazy over an egg, this was an attempt, an extremely successful attempt, to promote mental health, specifically how the pressures of social media can make us ‘crack’. Harmless virality, right? What may have once been perceived to be attacks on the Kardashian family, have ultimately led these stars up a path of wealth and success. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t see roaring headline complaints about them loathing this lavish lifestyle?

But it isn’t always this rosy…

What is the first thing that comes to your head when you think of a troll?

This one?

What about this one?

Or perhaps this one?

Both through her own career as a supermodel and TV presenter, and since the birth of her son in 2002, Katie Price has experienced, first hand, the ugly truth of virality, specifically in the form of trolling. Tweets, memes, death threats, you name it, attacking her son for the colour of his skin as well as his disabilities. Unlike the Kardashians, Harvey is blissfully unaware of the extremes to which he is taunted daily online. But why do we live in a world which allows people to get away with such disgusting behaviour? On a mission, not only to protect Harvey from this online abuse, but anyone who has ever been subject to trolling, in 2017, she started a petition. This eventually received over 200,000 signatures in a bid to make online trolling illegal. Despite her best efforts at exposing these trolls herself, she discovered there to be little, if any, law enforcement in place to protect victims such as Harvey. Being what Goldhaber (1997) describes to be a “star”, fortunately, she was equipped with the tools to attract mass media attention about the issue of online trolling, to which she appeared on many day time TV programmes informing people about ‘Harvey’s Law’.

In spite of her good intentions, it was no shock that trolls not only continued to fire hate filled tweets about Harvey, but curate memes mocking things he has said on TV appearances, as well as taking content Katie had uploaded to her own social media of Harvey as inspiration.

Any mum would agree that just because she’s in the public eye, it should not mean that she should be deterred from posting photos of her children on social media to protect them from being targeted by trolls.

A clip which many may be familiar with is their appearance on Loose Women, in which he swears on live TV. Although trolls immediately took to photoshop to mock this display of innocence, many could argue that this is part of the viscous cycle of attention economy (Goldhaber, 1997). In order for trolls to give Harvey attention, they need a source to retrieve it from. Contrary to her pledge to protect Harvey from the doom and gloom of social media that we all know and love, she was recently slammed for ‘baiting trolls’ (The Sun, 2019) by setting Harvey up with his own Instagram account. Is this ultimately an invitation for trolls to attack him? Does it provide trolls with the ‘new’ and ‘original’ content they so desperately desire? What do we think, is she now responsible for the trolling Harvey will now be exposed to online?

youtube

A more recent adaptation of memes, known as GiFs, has also been a platform explored by trolls in order to attack Harvey further. During my research into this topic, from simply typing into my search engine “Harvey Price”, this result appeared…

As if memes weren’t exhilarating enough to fulfil the trolls in their cyber-attacks, GiFs of Harvey can now be generated through this site, ultimately allowing people to express themselves in online conversation through indirectly mocking Harvey. But to them it’s nothing serious. Just a passing comment. What angers me the most about this GiF generator is the use of the term “popular”, suggesting that people visiting this site will have access to nothing but the best GiFs - what the trolls would label to be most successful in terms of their virality. First and full most, who is spending their time designing these websites, and secondly, are they proud? Are they THAT disconnected from their emotions that they don’t view this young man as a human being?

But do these memes live up to the definition of ‘memeing’ proposed by Dawkins (2006)?

Are they powerful?

Definitely not.

But perhaps in one way? They’re powerful for delivering the message that no matter what your race, your sexual orientation, your disabilities or your religion, there will always be people in the world who disagree or are opposed to it. Sure, trolls can hide behind their twitter username, but can they hide from their own insecurities? This is important to consider. What is the need for them to create this content? For how long is it funny? A day? A couple of hours?

Are they original?

Most certainly not. If anything, they lack originality. Well, put it this way, I can’t hear anyone applauding these creators for their outstanding pieces of work…

Is it cool?

You must be joking?

The creators of this content might have themselves fooled that they are some- what inspirational to the rest of the nation, or that they’re admired by their fellow meme-ers for their hardcore memeing. But the rest of the nation? The decent human beings of the nation? Disgraceful. Unintelligent. Bullies. A valuable point to be made here is that creators of memes believe they’re in a superior position to those they are ‘memeing’ about, hence why when these memes are shared and distributed online, they appear ‘funny’ to those who perceive Harvey as inferior to them.

And this is why we can’t have nice things…

Phillips (2015) argues that essentially, trolls “are the reason we can’t have nice things online”. He suggests that the online space is meant to be a community where people can feel safe in sharing their thoughts; through tweeting, or sharing snapshots of their life via Instagram. It appears that sadly, this is no longer the case. Trolls are “born and embedded” within dominant institutions. As a result, the saddest, and most frustrating thing of all about meme trolling, is that as long as trolls have the community to support them, and until social media platforms build stronger, much more stable networks which block out these trolls, there will be no end to trolling. This “unapologetically racist humour and legitimate corporate punditry” will only seize to exist online if the threat of the law was to stand between the troll and the ‘send’ button. Why, in those “golden years” between 2008-2011 in which the trolling subculture became “crystalized”, did establishers of these social networks make a stand for this unwanted behaviour? Why is a mother, regardless of whether she’s famous or simply just the mum next door, forced to make a pledge for this internet craze to be wiped from our screens?

How can we make a difference?

It is important to not turn a blind eye to this kind of behaviour online. Although it may not directly affect you, there will always be someone else is in the firing line. Avoid retweeting, sharing and even posting content online which may later come back to bite you. As someone who has been a present, and an active user of social media since my early teens, during this time, I was extremely naïve to the content online. I’m sure there have been posts which I would look back on now and think how my online presence has changed. My humour has changed. What I like and post about has definitely changed, but most of all, social media as a 20-year-old seems a much scarier place to be than when I was 13. Do you agree?

References:

Phillips, W. (2015). This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture. Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Dawkins, R. (2006). The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gibb, J. (2019, January 28). Katie Price accused of ‘baiting’ trolls. Retrieved from: https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/8300554/katie-price-accused-of-baiting-trolls-by-giving-son-harvey-his-own-instagram-account-and-failing-to-protect-him/

#week4

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merrillcarney · 2 years ago

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Dating the Bible

Relative dating does not offer specific dates, it simply allows to determine if one artifact, fossil, or stratigraphic layer is older than another. Generally it is assumed that the heliacal rising of Sirius would be observed when the star was at the angle of 8.5-9.5 degrees above the horizon; however, the difference of one degree in the angle of Sirius above the horizon corresponds to the difference of about ten years in the astronomically calculated date of the relevant heliacal rising. However, aren’t you ever curious of hearing nature in unheard ways. נערות ליווי בבת ים For the people who would, there aren’t many ways to achieve this without paying tons of money for expensive professional microphones. Instead of starting afresh, people try to hide the mess of matplotlib under the carpet. A contemporary era full of different computers, smartphones and similar devices people use literally every single day chatting on different applications - so why it would not be the way to get a shot at online dating services, dating hot Russian women in particular? With every page layout, component and element possible, you can just mix and match, implement your branding and call it a day. Implement and use an algorithm to convert the high frequency sound into a form that we can hear without altering the time domain.

Lex, a dating app for “queer, trans, gender non-conforming, two spirit, and non-binary people,” is inspired by newspaper personals: Its profiles use only text. While you can just about RAID any two identical drives, if they are not RAID certified they are more likely to get dropped out of the array when doing error recovery. I’ve been a Roku user for years, dating back to when their devices were basically shitty under-powered little pieces of cheap plastic with a laggy interface (the current models in comparison are good, decently smooth-going, and get the job done). There are likely many old drafts dating back many years. When interacting with matches or other members of a dating site, it is important to be honest about who you are and what your dating intentions are. We have members or Asian singles that are students, successful working professionals, entrepreneurs, retired or volunteers working for a good cause. Gold members can select 2 experienced & dedicated matchmakers. Can I pay without doing it through the Internet? This mentality is clear on Righter, where men are encouraged to make the first move and pay for the first date.

While others are more open or general in their search - they will know what they are looking for when it finds them. Run a search. Copy the images your online correspondent has posted to his or her profile, then run them through a reverse-image search engine, such as TinEye or Google Images. Core i7 processors are the first to run on the 45nm Nehalem architecture, which includes such goodies as 30% lower power usage for the same performance, an integrated memory controller supporting DDR3 and better hyperthreading performance. Likewise, because of heterogeneity problems with the MMhb-1 sample, the K/Ar ages are not always reproducible. Several patterns are evident in this chart. You can also see when users are online or when they were last active. Added bonus - interactive (i.e. you can click and see which points are where on the axes), SVG plots (i.e. resizeable, play-around-able without messing up the resolution)! Many of these instruments, for our satisfaction, are to enhance our eye sight and this is understandable as we are primates after all. Here are some great, easy-to-copy dating profile examples & profile photo optimization tips for gents and ladies.

Here is an article which talks about finding cheap ultrasonic microphone modules. Gulf Singles & Friendship - Find friends and your perfect match safely and easily! So here’s an idea: networks of authors and citations, clustered by labs and collaborators, to assess the potential impact of pre-published papers on arxiv and biorxiv and newly published ones in other journals with no citations yet. While reading two papers on RNA-Seq transcript quantification, we realized that the authors of one paper were so up-to-date that they could compare their tool to the results of the other paper which was pre-published (pre, mind you, not actually published) just a month before they pre-published their own. Nor should one conclude that instability is a simple good, since it does contribute to exclusions on the basis of technical aptitude and interest, and these exclusions should be taken seriously. So, what’s keeping me away from converting a cheap bat detector into a simple DIY ultrasound recorder? So, you might want something long-term or you might prefer something more casual. Many insects make sounds at more than 20khz frequency. Toyplot has a variety of canvas, axis and plotting functions which actually make sense and uses CSS formatting for styling the details.

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donveinot · 4 years ago

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To Be or Not to Be Accountable

Photo by Sandra Dempsey on Unsplash Often newly formed cults and/or high demand authoritarian groups which may be operating within the church claim they are trying to “get back to the New Testament church.” These groups have some vague idea that the first century church had an unadulterated uniform pristine faith. The church, they think, was error free under apostolic direction and all early believers held the same belief and behavior on all topics. In response we sometimes ask, “Have you read the Bible?" Nearly all the New Testament was written to correct false teaching, bad behavior, fighting amongst believers and inflated egos. That was the negative emphasis. The positive emphasis of apostolic letters to the various churches was to establish sound doctrine. We would suggest to the new ill-informed “reformers,” who almost universally believe they are now the only true Christians or church, that if they are trying to get back to the New Testament church, they have arrived. We might also mention that Christian history is littered with the carcasses of often abusive groups who saw themselves as “restoring the true Church of the first century.” The fact is, the church is dealing today with many issues which are closely akin to those that troubled the first century church, if not indeed the very same issues. Those early churches were made up of human beings still encumbered with their old nature, and in some cases their pre-Christian pagan practices. As a result, they were not at all pristine and perfectly united in spirit and doctrine – and neither are we. Sad, but true. What makes the church, the Body of Christ, the church? It is not uniformity of belief in all areas but is made up solely of imperfect individuals who have called on the Name of the Lord for salvation and have been “made one” by the Spirit. The millions have become ONE, but much like marriage, their “oneness” does not guarantee agreement on all issues. The one thing that would bring uniformity in all issues would be for all Christians everywhere to stop this nonsense and simply agree with US, or rather ME – since I don’t always agree with my spouse. But we don’t really see that happening. We can all thank God for that. In Realville, while we are yet in our fallen state, true believers must, yes, affirm the essentials of the faith and have unity in the Spirit, in spite of disagreements on other important but secondary areas of the faith. For those who wonder what the essentials might be, this will be helpful: God – monotheistic (one true God), trinitarian (within the nature of the one true God exist three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit). He created all things, is separate from creation but interacts with His creation. Man – is part of creation and was created in the image of God. As Got Questions? explains, “It is a likeness mentally, morally, and socially.” Sin – Eve was deceived into disobeying God and Adam chose to follow Eve’s lead. The disobedience (sin) caused a separation (death) between man and God. Since then, humans are born separated from God with a predisposition to sin (sin nature) and we also choose to sin. Salvation – When Adam and Eve sinned, God provided temporary payment for sin in the form of animal sacrifice. This continued until the Son, Jesus, second person of the Trinity, incarnated (took on humanity), lived a perfect life in our place and died a death we deserved, to pay the penalty for sin that we owed, providing peace with God by calling on the Name of the Son for salvation. Resurrection – The resurrection of the Savior was physical and demonstrated death itself was conquered. This pointed to the promised redemption of the whole person spirit and body. When Christians breathe their last, their spirit separates from their body and goes to be with God. At the resurrection, their physical body is raised, and their spirit is reunited with their body. The inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture – the text of the 66 books of the Bible is God-breathed or inspired, and in the original writings are error free. Once we get beyond these essentials of the faith we may, and often do, have disagreements on important but secondary issues of the faith. These disagreements often involve something we might call the “mechanics of the faith.” They deal with questions like “How does God do stuff?” How did God create the heavens and the earth from nothing? (we have no idea). When did God create the heavens and the earth? (Many divide into armed encampments over this one). How could Jesus be fully human and fully divine and not some mixture of the two? Then there are the mechanics of the faith regarding living and practicing the faith. Which day should we gather to worship? Even Paul had to address this one (Romans 14 and Colossians 2). Is baptism sprinkling, pouring, full immersion or something else? A brief article on early baptism, “How was baptism practiced in the early Church?” describes many of the elements practiced then, including fasting for a day or two in advance, anointing with oil, immersion or pouring. Obviously, each position had their preferred method. There is an odd position which has (we say thankfully) passed from the scene and is no longer a point of current contention in the church: The Apostolic Tradition explains how those to be baptized must “remove their clothing,” and go into the water “naked.” There are many issues in various categories that are still fought over – we mean disagreed on – regularly. One of the biggies is the question of Pentecostal/charismatic gifts. Have they continued since the first century (continuationism) or did they cease in the first century (cessationism)? Very few have yet asked us what the true positions on secondary issues should be, and, as a mission that focusses on cults and non-Christian religions, MCOI does not take any official positions on most of these secondary issues although it is fair to speculate, we’d say IXNAY on naked baptism ceremonies. We feel that most Christians would agree that a vast majority of people look far better – and are far less distracting – with clothes on. We are all for “leaving behind our dirty sin-stained garments” in a spiritual sense, however. The fact that we do not take official positions on many of those issues, does not mean we do not have personal views which comport with our understanding of the Bible and our respective church affiliations, but it does mean we major on the essentials and try not to get embroiled in debates on secondary issues, which debates will likely survive until the LORD sets us all straight at the time of our redemption. The Bible does address the issue of “sign gifts” directly. In First Corinthians, the Apostle Paul spent a great deal of time (3 chapters) on the question of sign gifts in the church the believer’s behavior regarding these gifts to correct wrong conduct. Some of those who had more visible gifts were acting arrogantly against those who did not. Consequently, chaos, pandemonium and divisiveness ensued. Paul’s first correction was to make clear that these gifts were not their personal toys but: To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good (1 Corinthians 12:7) The gifts were for the benefit of the entire Body. Some would have more visible sign gifts others would not. All were to benefit and be blessed regardless of the distribution and all were to be act biblically, serving one another and being responsible in their behavior and attitudes. Unfortunately, there are some in the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement today which are unaware of – or perhaps disregarding – Paul’s instruction in this area. In spite of what Paul plainly wrote, chaos and pandemonium rule the day in some – though by no means all – Pentecostal/Charismatic circles today. Where Paul did not allow tongues in the church unless there was an interpreter of such utterances available, some churches today are a veritable cacophony of chaos. In other gatherings – particularly Word Faith and NAR – people are being routinely “bowled over with the Spirit” and being so-called “drunk in the spirit,” along with other unruly behavior. Paul’s word to the Corinthians on similar behavior was given both to bring godly order to the fellowship and protect the reputation of the faith to the outside world: If, therefore, the whole church comes together and all speak in tongues, and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are out of your minds? (1 Corinthians 14:23) He ends this section with sobering words: But all things should be done decently and in order. (1 Corinthians 14:40) We also have a growing movement of false prophets which are operating with impunity within Pentecostalism. Sadly, one of their chief apologists seems to be Dr. Michael Brown. We have written on this issue with “False Prophets Prophesying Falsely,” in early January and “Michael Brown and the False Prophets” in late January. After Dr. Brown responded to that blog, we wrote, “Michael Brown: Fraternity Over Orthodoxy?” in March. The common thread through all three articles is simply this: We go to Scripture and recite the biblical definitions of false prophets. False prophets and false prophecies are also something Jesus warned his people to be on the lookout for. Biblically, a false prophet may even be one who gives true prophecies but use these “successes” to lead others to accept false views of God. Or alternatively, if a self-appointed prophet were to give even one false prophesy, even one teensy little prophecy that did not come to pass – they were to be recognized as false prophets and were not to be listened to. Period. The biblical guidelines are simple, easy to understand and unequivocal. The legal penalty for being a false prophet in the theocracy of the Hebrew nation was the same as sexual sin – capital punishment. The issue is so serious to God the Nation of Israel were to execute the offenders. Michael Brown and the false prophets have simply created extra biblical criteria which allows them to prophecy falsely with little or no repercussions at all. Recent times have proved to be a dark and embarrassing time for these “prophets” when a veritable blizzard of false prophecies were unleashed on the public, which stubbornly refused to happen as predicted, bringing great discredit to the church of Jesus Christ from enemies of the faith, and likely doing great harm to the faith of Christians that had believed in them. Word of these “prophecies,” when given, had been spread far and wide, so their abject failure was apparent to millions and these “prophets” were inescapably recognized for the false prophets they were. To make matters worse, even when all hope of the prophecies’ realization was past, these false prophets, men, and women, simply clung on – quite publicly – to the false hope that God would shortly do as they said. They openly and rather defiantly issued proclamations of “soon and very soon” fulfillment of said prophecies, rather than just admitting they had been disastrously wrong. After this massive public exposure of so many of these false prophets, and humiliating reality began to set in, a new tact has been taken by these false prophets. On April 29, 2021, the “Prophetic Standards Statement” was released. It seems the biblical standards are far too narrow and confining and could result in their being removed from pulpits and ministries, as we believe they should have been. It was necessary to implement a new criterion which allowed for the continued operation of false prophets while projecting at least the illusion of accountability for their false proclamations. Perhaps the two most illuminating paragraphs are: On the other hand, if a prophetic word is delivered containing specific details and dates in which the stated prophetic word will come to pass and that prophecy contains no conditions to be met in order to be fulfilled, and that word does not come to pass as prophesied, then the one who delivered the word must be willing to take full responsibility, demonstrating genuine contrition before God and people. Any statement of apology and/or explanation/clarification should be delivered to the audience to whom the erroneous word was given. For example, if it was given to an individual, the apology (and/or explanation/clarification) should be delivered to the individual. If the word was delivered publicly, then a public apology (and/or explanation/clarification) should be presented. This is not meant to be a punishment but rather a mature act of love to protect the honor of the Lord, the integrity of prophetic ministry, and the faith of those to whom the word was given. Not meant to be a “punishment? In the Hebrew Scriptures false prophets were to be executed. Execution seems like an obvious “punishment” of some kind to us. Under the newly revealed criteria, false prophets need to apologize, as well as giving an “explanation” and/or “clarification,” which means they can offer excuses for their actions. By what authority can these new prophets elevate their self-authenticating criteria above the clear word of God? It is clear the only authority they recognize is their own. This is not a matter of cessationism vs. continuationism. This is a matter of fidelity to the word of God concerning something on which He has been abundantly clear. We don’t say these false prophets are beyond the grace of God, or beyond His ultimate forgiveness, but to issue an “apology” without even coming to a real and deep understanding of the terrible seriousness to God of making false prophecies, is a very serious sin. How can they be trusted at this point? They do not seem to even know what they did wrong and should be allowed to go right back to “false prophecy business as usual.” It is a direct slap in God’s face. Obviously, false prophets are not qualified for leadership in the church. How could they lead others to understand the word, when they lack such understanding themselves, completely disregarding His clear warnings about false prophets and false prophecies. The Body of Christ, “to protect the honor of the Lord, the integrity of prophetic ministry, and the faith of those to whom the word was given” should rise up as one and call for the removal of any and all of the false prophets from leadership positions.Ω

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thesethingsofours · 4 years ago

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Embracing Failure in Photography

In every photograph taken, there exists profound potential.

Istanbul © Neal Gruer

We will all end in failure, but that’s not the most important thing. What really matters is how we fail and what we gain in the process.

- Costica Bradatan, In Praise of Failure

An artist’s life is a never-ending, unresolvable, inconclusive search for the perfect expression of an internal sensation as it relates to the wider world. In this endeavour, most are lucky if, a handful of times in their entire lives, they stumble upon something merely approaching “decent”. Consequently, rather than being preoccupied with creating, the artist spends vast resources interrogating themselves from within, and observing the world at large, carrying the faint but persistent hope of working out who they are, what they think, and what is worth expressing. The goal is to produce an artwork that contains at least a slither of that intended expression, and to hope beyond hope for a slither of that slither to contain some understandable meaning. In this regard, art is built from a catalogue of failures, falling one onto another, eventually making a stack tall enough for something to be plucked from the elusive top shelf of meaningful expression.

In photography — particularly the improvised forms of street and field photography — the arduousness of this process is clear. Not only do you need to take a ton of photos in order to find something worthwhile, but you need to spend many exhausting, sole-wearing, soul-wearing hours walking around on high alert, searching. Alex Webb goes as far as to put a number on it, maintaining that “99.9% of street photography is about failure”. Even he, one of the most renowned practitioners in the history of the field, aims for just 1/1000 photographs to be a success, of which only a small percentage will become widely celebrated. If, at best, just 0.1% of an artist’s effort is successful, how is the overwhelming “failure” to be understood?

In life generally, we tend to misplace “failure”. We look at the outcomes of our activity and judge it against arbitrary, extraneous benchmarks. In photography, failure is typically positioned in one of three places: the appearance of the final image; the technique used to take the picture; or “missing the shot” in the first place. In truth, none of these are where the real failure lies. Arguably none are even failures. Instead, the only failure in photography is a failure to see; to purposefully engage. Why? Because regardless of whether you end up with something materially valuable, the contrails of purposeful engagement will linger with you, no matter what.

Failure Fanatic

Personally, by choosing to become a field photographer with manual, mechanical, half-century old, analogue cameras, I have deliriously maximised my relationship with failure. I am a flop aficionado; a bungle believer; a disappointment devotee; a washout worshiper. Compared to digital photography, which is increasingly moving towards a zero percent failure rate, manual film photography has the potential for failure at every turn: leaving the lens cap on; unknowingly using expired film; irreparable over- or under- exposure; inaccurate focus; mechanical failure; failing to wind the film forward; moving too slowly to catch the moment; running out of film before the moment arrives; light leaks from accidentally opening the back of the camera (FFS!!); light leaks from deterioration of the camera’s sealant; film exposed to x-rays in airport security; film lost in the post on its way to the developer; film incorrectly or poorly developed; or maniacally smashing the camera against a wall out of pure frustration at all of the above.

Anyone shooting manually on film must accept, from the outset, that no matter how well-intentioned, experienced, capable or careful, at some point, one of these failures is inevitable. Failure is deeply embedded into the process and only so much within your control.

Beyond the practical failings of taking pictures, in metaphysical terms it is arguable that, rather than only 99.9% of photographs failing, the failure rate is 100%. Whether on film or digital, no photograph will ever fully replicate the internal stimulation that prompted you to take the photo. First, given the limitations of biology, converting a thought into an act can never be done with complete accuracy. It can be close (the exploits of Simone Biles and Nadia Comaneci are testament to that), but there will always be a minute or massive degree of approximation between what you intended to do and what you did. Second, if you do manage to catch a scene as close as physically possible to what you had envisaged, in every photograph there remains an insurmountable structural failure: the inability to convey the entirety of a three-dimensional, five-sensual human experience into a comprehensive, two-dimensional, visual testimony.

Madrid © Neal Gruer

Seeking Success

If indeed the physical act of photographing and the photograph itself are cursed to fail by their very nature, then where in the photographic process can success be found?

Ultimately, each photographer must find success within themselves, in the internal exploit of seeing, and seeing well — the deliberate operation of visual, intellectual conception; grey matter moulding grey clay of sight and emotion into an exhilarating, vibrant sculpture of idea and object. If your body fails to compel the camera into action, or the camera fails to record your bodily response, or if everything goes as well as possible, but the resulting image is lost or destroyed; provided you succeed in the act of instantaneous conception, you will be forever changed, minutely or massively. If you screw it up, lose it, miss it, destroy it: you still saw it; conceived it; “took” it. Even without a camera to hand, the exercise of seeing well offers boundless thrills, but the camera acts as an amplifier, pumping up the volume on the jazzy rhythm of human existence. Fundamentally, it’s about being a photographer rather than taking photographs.

Ironically, this mentality is the furtive ground on which taking meaningful photographs is sown. What you have seen becomes part of who you are, and will forever exist as one of the many grains that fills the beach of a future photograph; a future artwork; a future profound, non-photographic interaction with the world.

Under this process, there is no such thing as missing a shot — there are only shots gained. I shall furnish you with an example.

Photographing Phantoms

As a field photographer, I roam around looking for stirring, naturally occurring scenes to take pictures of. In March 2017, for four days, I was doing this in Bucharest, Romania.

Having nearly finished a roll of film, I took my afternoon break. Inside a coffee shop, a server in boy-fit jeans, a navy roll neck and oversized, wire-rimmed glasses gleefully introduced herself to me: “Cristina”. With hair bundled anarchically into a blonde, cotton candy nest, she took my order and asked me about my camera. Surprised by her enquiry, I fumbled my way through an explanation, vainly attempting to seem simultaneously aloof and interesting.

Immediately, I was taken by her manner and appearance. With one frame remaining before changing the roll, I resolved to ask for her photograph. But between her busyness and my sheepishness, I failed to catch her eye. Despite sipping my flat white as slowly as I could, the opportunity never arose, and with the encroaching dusk hastening my need to get back to work, I relented, clumsily asking one of Cristina’s colleagues to play subject. I took the picture and wound the roll onward, expecting to hear a click. To my surprise, despite showing “37” on the counter (typically the maximum number of frames on a 35mm roll of film), there was no resistance under the winder. I still had one frame left.

Suddenly, positioned by the till under a theatrical spotlight, there stood Cristina. I approached her. Besides paying for my coffee, I paid her a gentle compliment and quietly asked for her picture. She bashfully agreed. I shot and wound to 38. This time, click! In a moment of rom-com reproduction, she asked for my details in order to see my work. Like a struggling salesman at a vacuum cleaner conference, I fingered through my wallet and formally delivered her my card. We exchanged smiles, and I left; flustered but buoyant.

The next evening, I returned to the coffee shop for an evening cocktail event. Cristina was there. We spoke, expansively. After the event, we went to a bar and continued speaking. Then to another, and another; diving deep into the night before floating towards the shallows of early morning and departing each other’s company, possibly forever.

But within three months I had moved to Bucharest. Within four, we were living together. Three and a half years later, here we still are.

Not knowing how this would all turn out, photographically-speaking, you might say two things are important — first that taking Cristina’s photograph furthered the nascent channel of communication between us; and second, that I will always have that precious photograph from the first time we met.

On the latter point, you would be wrong. As it turns out, the last frame on my roll of film was a phantom. There was no film left, no picture to develop. I took her picture but have no picture.

However, I do have her.

Cristina, March 2017

Art Imitating Life

As this (entirely true, yet implausibly romantic) example demonstrates, taking the photo was more important than having the photo. Whereas it would generally be perceived that I failed in taking Cristina’s photo, in truth it was an enormous success. It opened me up and my life was irrevocably changed.

Yes, to have the 3:2 image from that moment would be amusing — one can imagine it being wheeled out over the decades at any major celebration of our partnership; the first, rectangular page of an amorous, amorphous fairy-tale. We would intermittently return to it, pouring over Cristina’s expression, projecting thoughts into her then-head; arbitrarily amending those thoughts to suit our wavering memories of the moment. But self-evidently, the physical image has become entirely irrelevant.

Success was achieved the moment I meaningfully, deliberately, and honestly engaged with the world through my camera— here, in the delightful, atomic shape of Cristina. After doing so, the ability to subsequently show anyone what that moment looked like became largely frivolous. Admittedly, the extraneous consequences of this engagement were extreme — it’s highly unlikely for the love of your life to emerge every time you take a photo (if nothing else, I’m 99.9% certain Cristina would now prefer I ensure this is not the case). In fact, most of the time, I am photographing people who never know I have taken their photo, who I don’t directly speak to. But even if I never saw Cristina after that moment, or had taken her photo without her knowing, I would still have aspired to have been meaningfully transformed by the act of releasing the shutter.

Finding success in seeing rather than taking equates to a certain philosophical view of life in general, where success lies in being rather than doing. As mortal creatures (at least until Elon Musk devises an alternative), human life is characterised by failure — eventually our bodies flounder, and we cease to exist. Yet arguably, it is the inevitability of this failure which drives us to love, explore, create and accomplish. Being a photographer can help put this philosophy into practice. If you get a few good pictures along the way, all the better.

See more of Neal’s photographic work at nealgruerphotography.com.

#photography #art #creativity #philosophy #film photography

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lost-in-our-words · 7 years ago

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“Stellar Hearts” Chapter I (Part I): Juliana

Again, thanks to anybody who offers any suggestions, corrections, or constructive criticism. Before I start, I need to be sure to state that this story belongs to me, so please do not copy this story in any way, shape, or form. I want to make sure I’m making my posts easy to read. And, without further ado, here is Chapter I of Stellar Hearts.

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Autumn was settling over Haynes, evident by the display of fiery hues replacing the natural green of the trees’ leaves. It was the first of October, and by now I was beginning to see residents of the isolated town break out their heavy jackets and scarves. Meanwhile, I was huddled with my friend, Mya Townsend, inside of the Cabin, a modest, yet charming restaurant which sat humbly on the outskirts of Haynes, overlooking the Foxborough woods. The two of us were partaking in our annual tradition of enjoying a warm cup of hot cocoa from one of the local restaurants when the month of Halloween struck. I watched Mya, who sat silently across from me, gazing out the large windows which had replaced the western wall of the quaint restaurant, intended to provide the restaurant’s patrons with a splendid view of the woods’ Autumn trees and their leaves which swayed back and forth ever so gently in the mid-afternoon breeze.

I ran my finger along the rim of a porcelain cup which sat in front of me on the polished table, half empty of the chocolate beverage and completely drained of what whipped cream that had arrived with it. Compared to some of the other hot cocoa’s Mya and I had tasted over the previous years, this one was quite a letdown. Between its more watered down taste and the lack of marshmallows, I was sorely disappointed. Nonetheless, hot cocoa was hot cocoa, and thus I continued to sip away, as did my friend.

Mya sat upright in her chair and ran her fingers, whose nails were glossed over with a vibrant pink, through her blonde, bobbed hair. I had learned that this signal meant she was interested in starting up a conversation. However, she was never the best at bringing about a discussion, and so, instead, I cleared my throat and offered a question to her.

“You’ve been attending that college for a couple months now,” I began, my hands now clasped around the warm mug containing the disappointing drink. “Have you figured what major you may be interested in pursuing?”

Mya glanced up with a delighted smirk on her face, more than likely because a conversation had been stirred.

With a shake of her head, she explained to me that she still hadn’t the slightest clue what she may be interested in. “I’ve still been trying to wrap my head around a few possibilities, but they all seem to not be quite what I’m looking for.” She paused for a moment and glanced into her cup, seemingly studying the bits of whipped cream which still floated on the surface of the liquid. As she lifted the mug in her hands and enjoyed the warmth which radiated from it, albeit not taking another sip, she continued. “Alexus told me before senior walkout that she was considering studying a foreign language, and, thinking that perhaps she was onto something, I had convinced myself that such a major may be interesting. Thus, I enrolled in a French class this semester, but it just isn’t enthralling enough to peak my enthusiasm.”

“Enthralling?” I questioned. “That’s some impressive vocabulary for you, don’t you think?” Of course, I was joking around with my friend, but I had never expected to hear the word “enthralling” to escape her lips.

Ignoring my remark, she continued to tell of her journey through searching for a major. “After plan A failed, I tested out a few other ideas, pondering them for some time and weighing the pros and cons. I’ve sat in on a pair of classes, including an introductory sociology class and a women’s studies class which covered gender equality.” Mya lowered her head and seemed to enjoy a faint whiff of the hot cocoa before again looking up from her mug with a particularly unamused look. “Picking a major is a ‘major’ pain in the ass, Juliana. Although, I am sure you understand my pain. Tell me, have you come any closer to discovering what you’d like to do with your life?”

She got me there. While Mya was currently attending the Haynes Community College to explore her options while also knocking out some gen-eds, I diverged from her path. Likewise to her, I was indecisive in regards to my future, but had no intention of attending classes when I was still in the dark. This was not due to financial issues as many suspected, especially as my parents are offering to cover tuition and any other expenses, but rather an issue concerning avoiding a “mental overload” as I described it. I wasn’t exactly the best at managing schoolwork in high school, and so instead, while the majority of my graduating class is spreading across the United States to pursue careers, I had made the decision to take a year off from schooling and instead am focusing on my side business of photography in the meantime. Simply enough, it was named “Juliana’s Photography,” a cheap service as I wasn’t the most talented person with Nikon, but I could provide half-decent senior portraits to those who resented the thought of paying top-dollar for something so insignificant as photographs that may live only in a scrapbook or on a house wall, and to my amazement, the business was doing rather well. In fact, I had just returned from a photo shoot and still had my carrying case full of equipment resting beside me, and after stating that I was no closer to coming across an attractive major, Mya turned her attention to this photo shoot instead, curious as to how it had gone.

I offered a vague shrug. “The shoot was nothing spectacular. Nothing out of the ordinary occurred. My subject, a fairly pretty girl from Jefferson, had this obsession with fixing her hair nonstop despite being perhaps the most photogenic person I had ever come across. Thus, to my dismay, it would take several shots before I could ultimately snap a picture where she didn’t have her fingers up and tangled in her black hair.” As I reflected on the photo shoot, the corner of my lip flicked with a delicate twitch. “Now that I think back to it, however, little miss Priss was quite the nuisance, constantly insisting that another photograph be taken because of one tiny issue that could hardly be noticed, and no matter how many times I assured her that I could fix whatever the hell it was in editing, she begged for ‘one more picture just to be safe.’”

“I couldn’t have the patience for such an annoying client,” Mya joked as a response, then continuing to sip the last of her hot cocoa.

I offered a faint chuckle in response, drawing a look of confusion from Mya. From irritation, my mood returned to collected as I recounted what occurred following the session. “Except the mother offered to pay extra, obviously understanding how much a pain her daughter was being,” I added.

“How much?”

“Double what I was charging her. As tremendously as I wanted to accept the extra payment though, I refused. I was just being humble. Nonetheless, the mother shoved the large amount of cash into my hands and scurried off with her daughter before I could reiterate that I simply couldn’t accept it.”

Mya slammed her palm on the table and sent a stern glare my way, claiming that I was an imbecile for turning down such a glorious offer. However, deep in her sea green eyes, I could see a glimmer of humor. Before I knew it, she was bursting out in a fit of laughter, dubbing her comment as a joke and begging that I should not take her seriously, and surely, I wasn’t going to take her serious anyways. She is a terrible jokester after all. Anybody with functioning eyesight could see straight through her charades.

Returning to a sitting position on the wooden chair, she took a deep breath to regain her composure. Mya sure could crack herself up.

Our conversation went silent for a moment following the madness, and amongst the discomforting feeling of the ensuing awkwardness, Mya cleared her throat. Between her lips, I spotted a thin opening as if she prepared to speak, yet not a word came out. So, in an attempt to move the conversation forward, I reached down and unzipped the unvarnished black bag sitting by my feet, keeping an eye on my friend’s fingers which glided softly along her mug as she eyed me curiously. Searching throughout the bag, my hand moved between different lenses and filters before finally arriving at my camera.

“We were originally supposed to travel out to some field by the zoo about fifteen minutes east of town,” I started, “But the clients gave me a ring last night and said they discovered this small garden up on the northern outskirts of Haynes. It’s a wonderful venue, public and free to enter, and it actually made a great backdrop in my opinion.”

Pulling the camera out of my bag and switching it on, I handed the bulky device over to Mya. “Take a look,” I insisted simply with a faint smile curled upon my lips.

Graciously, she took the camera and focused her attention to the small screen on the backside of it. For a few silent moments following, she examined the pictures one by one, quietly dissecting the images and admiring the background which I had glorified. Some of the photographs had the high school senior sitting impatiently upon a granite stone wall with an array of colorful flowers, primarily irises and tulips, behind her. In others, she was standing with her back against an old wooden shed that we had found, the timber structure rustic in nature. However, perhaps my favorite photograph was the one with the black-haired woman holding a vibrant scarlet rose to her nose as she took a whiff of its floral scent. My reverence for the photograph, however, arose from how genuinely candid it was. It took one snap of the shutters for photo to be recorded, unlike all of the other pictures which required numerous attempts. There was no need for fixing the hair, no “one more photo just in case,” but simply a wonderful portrait.

Mya paused on one of the images, and reflecting off of her pupils, I could vaguely make out the photo that I had appreciated.

“Being here in Haynes, it meant I didn’t have to get in my car and drive anywhere as well.” I dug my heel into the carpeted floor and offered a faint smirk. “That was a plus.”

My friend’s emerald eyes rolled with misunderstanding as she gently let my camera down onto the table, and slowly, she relaxed back into her chair, sending a somewhat irked glare my way. “I’ve never understood what your quarrel with driving is,” she commented with her arms crossed loosely in front of her stomach.

This was not the first time that she questioned my distaste towards driving, and sure enough it would not be the last. Never did I understand why she was so passionate about understanding this uncommon trait of mine, but she always seemed determined to convert me into a lover of driving. “I’m serious, Juliana,” she reiterated, but now with a very gentle smirk creeping their way onto her face.

“Driving is stressful,” I responded modestly. “You must have said it a thousand times how driving gives you some sort of freedom, but I hate being responsible for a two-ton vehicle on a road with a bunch of maniacs who seem to have no respect for the rules of the road.”

“Stickler,” Mya mumbled.

“I’m sorry that I don’t want to get myself killed!” I sputtered, not angrily, but more in quick retaliation, accidentally sending a shot of saliva towards Mya. She flinched from the flying fluid as it landed on the table in front of her. In embarrassment, I swiftly covered my hands over my mouth.

How disgusting that must have been?

Instead of an appalled reaction, however, my friend once again broke into a fit, and by that point, we had turned into a pair of girls sharing a bout of giggles in the restaurant, drawing the attention of the other customers. Through my joyful tears, I could see a few other people scattered here and there, generally patrons similar to our age, becoming infected by the contagious laughter as well. The mature joint was no longer quiet with hushed gossip, instead being overcome with multiple tables sharing in the mirth that we were not able to contain within ourselves. Our waiter, seemingly aggravated with the sudden guffaw, returned to our table with checks in hand, settling them upright in front of Mya and I respectively before walking off without another word. Taking the hint, the two of us signed our checks, ensuring to tip the waiter as apology for the unwanted outburst, and dashing off quickly once we were free to. Thus, us two women, still suffering from an unstoppable frenzy of laughter, were left outside face to face with the boundless Foxborough Woods.

#stellar hearts #make life a story worth telling #werewolf #romance #chapter 1 #part 1 #juliana

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junker-town · 5 years ago

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The 49ers built their offense around one idea: Everyone blocks

Photo by Michael Zagaris/San Francisco 49ers/Getty Images

We take a look at the ways the 49ers get EVERYONE involved in blocking to support their running game. Will the Chiefs be ready?

Only one team rushed for more yards than the San Francisco 49ers this season: the Baltimore Ravens, and that was with Lamar Jackson at quarterback.

San Francisco, using the three-headed rushing attack of Raheem Mostert, Matt Breida, and Tevin Coleman, consistently ran their opponents into the dirt en route to a 13-3 record and an upcoming Super Bowl trip against the Kansas City Chiefs.

During the regular season, the 49ers averaged 144.1 yards per game. Here’s how the 49ers’ top three backs fared on the stat sheet:

Mostert: 137 carries, 772 yards, 5.6 average, 8 touchdowns

Breida: 123 carries, 623 yards, 5.1 average, 1 touchdown

Coleman: 137 carries, 544 yards, 4.0 average, 6 touchdowns

The 49ers then amassed 471 rushing yards in playoff wins against the Vikings and Packers.

The running backs didn’t get there on their own, though. They got assistance from a stellar offensive line and some of the best lead blockers in the NFL. Tight end George Kittle and fullback Kyle Juszczyk are the two who make the biggest impact, but head coach Kyle Shanahan puts an emphasis on his receivers blocking, too.

The result has been impressive, with receivers like Emmanuel Sanders, Deebo Samuel, Kendrick Bourne, second-string tight end Ross Dwelley, and even quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo laying out punishing blocks this season.

Garoppolo only attempted eight passes in the 49ers’ 37-20 win over the Packers in the NFC Championship Game. Sanders and Bourne each saw only one pass thrown his way, while Samuel had three. None of the four were upset about their lack of stats in the game, however.

“I told myself, if I’m not going to get the ball, I might as well go out here and be a bully,” Sanders said after the game. “I kind of turned into a bully, I started to enjoy blocking.”

The 49ers have had plenty of “bully” moments this season, and they’ll be hoping to have more against the Chiefs in the Super Bowl. Kansas City has effectively stopped the run in the postseason so far, but the 49ers present a very tough challenge.

Here’s why.

What the 49ers did to the Packers is a perfect example of their “everyone blocks” attitude

The 49ers’ running game hit another level against the Packers. They ran the ball 42 times for 285 yards; Mostert alone had 29 carries for 220 yards and four touchdowns.

While that signifies a strong personal effort from Mostert, he had plenty of help. Let’s get into our first key block of that game, which features Samuel, Juszczyk, and Kittle all contributing.

Two extremely important blocks happened immediately: the first was Juszczyk getting right in there and blocking No. 55, Za’Darius Smith, one of Green Bay’s top run stuffers who almost certainly would have stopped Mostert for a loss. The other was Samuel following his defensive back, No. 23 Jaire Alexander, all the way around to eventually block him into the ground.

Mostert made the perfect cut and took the lane created by Kittle and right tackle Mike McGlinchey. Kittle was on No. 93, linebacker B.J. Goodson, who didn’t get any forward push AT ALL as Kittle blocked him into oblivion.

Our next big block came later in that same drive, courtesy of both Samuel and Dwelly.

Samuel ran the fake reverse to set this up — an important note because the 49ers use the rookie as their gadget-type player and he typically gets one decent reverse a game. Here, he ran the fake and collided with No. 26, Darnell Savage, hard enough to knock the Packers safety off balance. There was also Dwelley in the interior pile, stumbling out of it to block No. 31, Adrian Amos, the guy with the next-best chance to tackle Mostert.

That touchdown gave the 49ers a 17-0 lead in the game. Blocks from Kittle and Bourne would set up their next touchdown, also a run from Mostert:

At the start of this play, you’ll see Kittle had the edge on the top of the screen, where he sealed out Za’Darius Smith. The final 49ers player that Mostert ran past was Bourne, who pushed his man a good 6-7 yards off the snap. Bourne disengaged at JUST the last moment before a holding penalty might have been called, too.

That 18-yard touchdown put the 49ers up 27-0.

So far we’ve seen just about everyone get in on a block, but not much of Sanders. He helped seal off one of those Samuel reverses:

Sanders, No. 17, was working on No. 91, linebacker Preston Smith, who clearly saw that it was going to be a reverse. It wasn’t a huge, punishing block, but Sanders got in Smith’s way enough that he had no chance of stopping Samuel on the play. You can also see McGlinchey and center Ben Garland making blocks in the open field at the end.

But it’s how Shanahan used Juszczyk on this play that sticks out the most. Juszczyk ran my absolute favorite type of block: the wind-back block. Just like a misdirection run, Juszczyk started to the left to sell the fake, then flipped around to hit No. 38, Tramon Williams, in space.

No defensive back in the league can handle that, and Williams could only watch as Samuel broke free for 32 yards.

The 49ers have been doing this all year, in the regular season and playoffs

While the running game didn’t lead the way in every outing, they 49ers have been laying these kinds of blocks all season.

The wind-back block in particular is something the 49ers have used before to great effect. Let’s look at their Week 14 game against the Saints to show you another one.

Again, this was a Samuel reverse with a fake to the running back first. Instead of Juszczyk, this time it’s Kittle who ran the wind-back block. Kittle ran through his blocker, which gave Samuel the edge, freeing him for a big gain.

Notice Sanders and Bourne making blocks, too. Bourne was in the scrum in the middle, while Sanders went ahead to stall one of the linebackers. The 49ers’ 48-46 win was helped mightily by 162 yards on the ground and Kittle’s ability to absolutely run over guys.

We’ve looked at blocks with all of the key players except one: Garoppolo. If we go back to the Divisional Round, we can see a good one:

This was a more intricate play than the others because it looked like an option. After Garoppolo handed it to Juszczyk, he had the option to run it himself, pass it to Samuel, or dump it to Coleman.

You can tell it’s an option because when Garoppolo turned around, he wasn’t sure if he should be blocking to his right or his left. He saw it went to Samuel, and got out there in space to block Pro Bowl linebacker Anthony Barr all the way to the ground, allowing Samuel pick up a decent gain.

The 49ers’ running game finished with 186 yards and two touchdowns in the 27-10 victory over the Vikings.

The 49ers have the right blocking mentality. Can the Chiefs stop them?

Shanahan expects everyone to block, and the 49ers have a philosophy built around everyone contributing however they can. In practice, 49ers coaches are encouraged to call out receivers who don’t give 100 percent in their blocking.

“I think it’s just holding people accountable from the beginning,” Shanahan said. “Then you just set a standard as it is and every time you watch tape you point it out. Some people don’t point it out very much and don’t think you can get that out of wideouts, but that’s what we do from the first play that we’re with someone until the last play.”

They’ve created a culture where Kittle, one of the best receiving tight ends in the league, is always eager to block (remember the pancake block against the Falcons where he’s LAUGHING the entire time?). He’s easily the 49ers’ most important weapon in the receiving and blocking game, and he’s not worried about how he helps the team, either.

“Kittle, everyone knows what he’s done in the pass game, but he has never once in three years came up to me during a game and said ‘Hey I need this route or Hey we’ve got to do this,’” Shanahan said. “He’s never once came up to me about a pass play, but he comes up to me about every seven plays about what type of run play we need to do, who we need to allow him to hit, things like that. It makes it very fun to call plays for him.”

The 49ers will face a game opponent in the Chiefs, though.

The Chiefs allowed a lot of rushing yards this season — 128.2 per game, 26th in the league — and 4.9 yards per carry (fourth-worst). However, they’ve clamped down in the playoffs. First, they went up against Deshaun Watson, Carlos Hyde, and Duke Johnson in the Divisional Round, and held them to under 100 yards.

Much more impressive than that is how they handled Derrick Henry and the Titans in the AFC Championship Game. Henry went into that matchup having rushed for 195 yards against the Ravens in the Divisional Round, and 182 yards against the Patriots in the Wild Card Round. But the Chiefs stacked the box and held Henry to jut 69 yards on 19 carries.

Conquering the 49ers’ run blocking schemes requires more than stacking the box. The Chiefs will go into the Super Bowl knowing that everyone on the San Francisco offense is a threat to seal off a big run. While the 49ers’ running game is their most difficult task yet, the Chiefs have been clearing the rushing challenges ahead of them lately. Can they keep it up?

All we know for sure is that the 49ers will be ready — and willing — to deliver punishing blocks when it’s their turn to test Kansas City’s rush defense in the Super Bowl.

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niktorvikiforov · 7 years ago

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24. and Yuuri TO Yuri! :3333

Haaaa okay :D Here we go

Title: All that glittersRating: TPairing: Otabek Altin/Yuri Plisetsky, Katsuki Yuuri & Yuri PlisetskyWordcount: 1,831Tags: Prank Wars, Crack, POV Yuri PlisetskyRead on AO3: link

“Yurio?”

The Katsudon’s voice is cautious. Yuri purposefully ignores the question.

“Yurio, what are you doing?” he asks again with a sigh as he tries to step out of the way. Yuri follows him like a shadow, keeping his eyes glued to the door.

“Don’t call me that!” he snaps angrily. “I’m not some five-year-old.”

“Well, you’re sure acting like one,” the Katsudon says with a condescending smile that resembles Viktor on a level that’s actually creepy.

“Shut up, pig!” Yuri spits out, still making sure that the man is directly between him and the entrance.

“So you can call me whatever you want but I can’t call you Yurio?”

“Whatever,” Yuri rolls his eyes.

“No, seriously,” Yuuri starts again. He just doesn’t fucking know when to stop. “Why are you hiding behind me? What did you do?”

“None of your fucking business!” Yuri yells in his face. Yuuri calmly stands in front of him, his arms crossed.

“It is if you’re planning to use me as your human shield.”

Fair enough, Yuri thinks. He wouldn’t say it for the world, though.

“Yuri.”

“What!?”

“What happened?”

“We had a prank war, okay?” he finally snaps.

Yuuri says nothing; he just waits for him to continue patiently. Yuri sighs, dragging a hand across his face in defeat. “It was fun, I changed his ringtone to Sk8er Boi and called him while he was in class, he zip-tied my skates together, you know, stupid shit like that.”

“But then?” Yuuri prompts.

“And then he walked in on me before I was done with my next one and I had to distract him before he found out. So I kissed him!” he blurts it out.

The awkward moments of silence keep stretching between them. Yuuri’s face slowly transforms from utter surprise to understanding and it’d be the most infuriating thing if Yuri wasn’t preoccupied by the realization that he really just said that. He can actually feel his face burn and he hates the way his body keeps betraying him like this when it’s not even a big deal. He shakes himself but just as he takes a deep breath to continue the story, the Katsudon interrupts him.

“So you’re hiding from Otabek because you kissed him?”

Yuri just rolls his eyes. “No, idiot, I’m hiding from him because I glued his shoes and his backpack to the floor in the locker room.”

Yuuri’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline.

“It was probably a bit too much,” Yuri shrugs.

“You think?”

“Don’t give me that look like you’ve never done anything stupid!” he snarls at the man who smirks at him.

“So you admit it was stupid.”

“Shut up!”

Yuuri holds his palms up defensively.

“Yura!” Otabek’s voice cuts the conversation short and Yuri’s breath catches in his throat as he hears the anger in his tone. He takes one step so Yuuri is standing directly between him and the door again. Yuuri rolls his eyes and steps out of the way again, leaving Yuri with nowhere to hide. He shots the man what he hopes qualifies as a death glare as his heart hammers in his chest and he feels his face heat up again, just as Beka rounds the corner, almost running.

He looks furious, his hands balled into fists at his sides, his dark eyes narrowed, promising nothing good. The effect is somewhat ruined by the fact that he’s wearing red and blue spotted socks. That glue really does wonders, Yuri takes a mental note. They stay like that, Beka right at the door and Yuri backed against the wall on the other side.

“I guess this is my cue to leave,” Yuuri says cheerfully. Yuri’s head snaps to the side and his anger flares up again as he sees the amused look on his face. “Please don’t kill each other!”

And with that the traitor is gone and they’re all alone.

Otabek says nothing but he doesn’t take his eyes off Yuri as he reaches into his back pocket, taking out Yuri’s phone and holding it up for him to see that he’s got Instagram open.

Yuri draws his eyebrows together in suspicion and he swallows nervously. “Why do you have that?”

“I thought I could surprise your fans with a little something,” Beka says, his face completely void of emotions now.

“Wh- What do you mean?” Yuri suddenly finds himself almost panicking. He’s very picky about what lets his annoying, pain in the ass fanbase see from his life, and he knows that Beka knows this. He also knows that his phone holds a lot more than what’s public knowledge.

“Hm,” Otabek rubs his chin as he pretends to think hard about his answer. “I was thinking that photo from the banquet after World’s. You know, where it’s you, Viktor, and Yuuri. You’re hugging both of them, looking very happy… Or even better, the one where you’re giving Yuuri a kiss on his cheek!” he smirks as Yuri splutters, going completely white.

It’s not fair for anyone to hold any of those things against him, it was his first really important senior competition where he managed to medal, someone gave him a glass of champagne, and Yuuri and Viktor seemed like actually decent people in that crowd. And everyone’s allowed a moment of weakness or two.

“You wouldn’t dare!” He’d rather die than let those photos leak. He has an image to uphold after all! He narrows his eyes as the betrayal hits him.

“Do you really want to try me?” Beka asks, raising an eyebrow, his finger hovering over the “post” button.

“What the fuck would you do that for?” Yuri yells at him, his hand twitching at his side as he wonders if he could stop Beka from posting it if he’d make a dive for it. Probably not.

“Why did you feel the need to glue my stuff to the floor?” Otabek yells back.

“I don’t know, okay?” Yuri throws his hands in the air.

“Not okay!

“I wasn’t thinking,” he tries.

“You sure weren’t,” Beka snorts.

“It just happened!”

“Oh yeah?”

“Beka, please–”

“These things don’t just happen without a reason!” Beka gestures around aimlessly, the phone in his hand temporarily forgotten. Yuri’s afraid that he’ll accidentally end up posting the photo whether he really means to or not.

“Maybe I don’t know the reason!”

He also has a feeling that they’re no longer talking about a pair of leather boots and a backpack.

They stare at each other in heavy silence, both of them too proud to break it first. The staring contest stretches on until Otabek finally sighs, holding out Yuri’s phone.

“Here,” he says, his voice quiet.

“You won’t post it?” Yuri asks suspiciously as he takes some tentative steps towards the outstretched hand.

Otabek shakes his head. “I was never gonna do it. I respect your privacy.” He suddenly sounds very serious and Yuri’s heart flutters in his chest, something warm spreading through his insides. He thinks that deep in his mind he knew that Beka wouldn’t betray him like that but still, confirmation was nice that whatever stupid crap he’s done he can still trust him.

Yuri nods and he slides his phone into his pocket. He hovers a few steps away from Beka, suddenly not knowing what to do with his hands or where to look; he shifts his weight from one leg to the other. He sneaks one quick glance at Otabek, and he can practically see the cogs turning in his mind as he stares into the space between them, his eyes unfocused.

It’s awkward. Everything is suddenly so awkward and it sucks because that’s not how they’re supposed to be, and Yuri has no idea how to fix it. He’s not good at this, he doesn’t know how to not let people down, he has nothing to offer. He wonders how long it’ll take for Otabek to realize that. Making friends with fellow competitors was probably a mistake in itself. Kissing a fellow competitor who was supposed to be your friend is a whole other mess. But here’s the thing. He’s Yuri fucking Plisetsky, Ice Tiger of Russia, and he’s not one to give up, so if Otabek is so slow on the uptake that he hasn’t figured it out yet that this may not be worth it, he sure as hell won’t make it easy for him. He takes one deep breath and clears his throat, raising an eyebrow questioningly.

He startles Beka out of his thoughts, his cheeks slightly flushed but he stands Yuri’s gaze, his face still serious. Almost too serious, Yuri would think– if this was anyone else but this is Beka and that’s just his face.

“Do we need to talk?” Otabek’s voice is soft.

Yuri rolls his eyes despite that nervousness in his stomach. “No.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” he repeats it stupidly.

“So what now?” Otabek asks.

Yuri shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe we should go back for your stuff?” he suggests.

Beka snorts. “And do what? Glue won’t disappear just because you’re sorry.”

“Hey, who said I was sorry?” Yuri grins at him, and next thing he knows he’s being tackled to the floor so fast he doesn’t even have time to yell.

Beka kneels above him, pinning his wrists down as he tries to wriggle free, but despite the fact that he’s grown quite a lot in the past year, Beka still has the upper hand in muscle mass.

They stare at each other and there’s a new kind of tension between them, undeniably sparkling in the air.

Otabek crushes Yuri’s last shreds of dignity as he manages to keep both of his hands in place with only one of his own as he reaches into his pocket for something Yuri can’t see.

And in the next moment he can’t see anything because Beka just dumps an entire handful of glitter in his face and his hair, and he sits back with a grin, finally letting Yuri go. Yuri splutters as he tries to get the damn sparkles off himself, only making the situation worse.

“You asshole, this will take forever to wash out!” he complains loudly, making Otabek laugh.

“Still not as bad as superglue,” he points out and Yuri has to admit he’s right.

Before either of them could say anything else, they hear footsteps approaching and a very familiar voice cutting through the air. Yakov sounds angry – angrier than usual. Yuri winces.

Beka studies him from where he’s still kneeling. Yuri gathers his strength to sit up but he doesn’t get the chance. Beka leans forward so suddenly he has no time to react before his lips are pressed against Yuri’s, just for a single second. And then he’s on his feet and out of the door in a moment, leaving Yuri speechless, lying on the floor, covered in glitter.

He has about ten seconds before Yakov walks in. He’ll have some serious explaining to do.

#yuri on ice #yoi fic #otayuri #otabek altin #yuri plisetsky #katsuki yuuri #mine #fic #my fic #rhaegarion #answered

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apriltwentythree · 7 years ago

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do you want to know what my favorite neurotransmitter is…? Acetylcholine.

the other day I was at the local book store, and ended up browsing the sports section. i noticed this book ‘the performance cortex’ ; there was a chapter in it titled ’motor hunter’ focussing on Steph Curry. I am a Curry fangirl and can consume almost anything about him, even this silly Water filter Ad! anyways, i stood there for 20 minutes reading about his brain, and about how he does what he does on the playing court! the book in general attempts to speak about how Sports-Scouting is increasingly relying on neuroscience. and personally, i felt it may be an even better approach than the Moneyball-like Sabermetrics. (Moneyball btw, is one of my all-time favorite sports movies.)

later, i walked out with the realization that i am now officially a Neuro-junkie!

it is after being a part of the Brain-Gut-MentalHealth group project, that I started to obsess over the Vagal Nerve, for starters.

real quick, it goes like this….Cranial nerves are those that emerge directly from the brain, rather than from the spinal cord. there are 12 pairs, responsible for carrying sensory info to the brain, and motor signals to muscles and organs. Vagus nerve— sometimes referred to as Vagal nerve—is the 10th and the longest one, originating in the medulla oblongata and is named for its wandering path through the body. it is like a superhighway that handles sensing the internal environment of the body and regulating it, like lowering heart rate, constricting the bronchi of the lungs, reducing blood pressure, to name just a few. one of the easiest bio-hacks they say, in order to keep the Vagus nerve in tip-top-shape, is to take cold showers in the morning.

now, if you are a neuroscientist or neurologist or, a superior-Neuro-junkie reading this blog and say hey, some of your understanding here is not exactly right, i would just say i’m sure you’d know better! and will agree with you happily. on the other hand, if you are someone who thinks you are decently-smart but usually take your brain for granted, and cannot self-influence, ever, to read up on generic brain stuff unless you get Alzheimers some day, then this blog is decently-sufficient for your lukewarm-curiosity!

anyways, the Vagal nerve has been extensively studied; there is this dork-geek-nerd-joke that only dorks-geeks-nerds will find funny ‘what happens in Vagus doesn’t stay in Vagus but affects many aspects of emotionality and neurobiology, ha ha’!

to say more…lets say, you are hungry, the gut sends a hormonal trigger to the brain (Ghrelin) and when you are feeling full, it sends another (Leptin). but, now they say there is a neural circuit from the gut cells—dubbed Neuropods— that have nerve endings, which can directly communicate to the brain through Vagal neural synapses. and this overturns many ideas around appetite and satiety! say, you are into serious-dieting. taking appetite suppressants may not work as they usually target the slow-acting hormonal route to the brain, which can take up minutes to hours. but, as the instant-connection Vagal neural circuit takes about 100 milliseconds or less, targeting the Vagus may work better at losing all those unhealthy, add-on pounds!

the Vagal gives legitimacy to the idea of ‘gut feeling’ as a sixth sense, and I doubt if any of the other nerves can beat the magic!

all my Vagalmania led me to Acetylcholine and, made me think about it in context with Epinephrine, the rollercoaster neurotransmitter. now, the story there is….um, independent of the Central Nervous System, the Autonomic Nervous system houses two subsystems — Sympathetic and Parasympathetic—speaking really simplified!

Sympathetic translates to “Adrinergic”. Neurotransmitters — Epinephrine, Norepinephrine— are behind your high heart rate in both super-pumped-up situations and heart-in-the-mouth situations. and on March 31st, guess it was Sympathetic pathways that totally ran the show! This system does have a say in most Akhlat Latifa feelings that knock us over, be it beauty-weed mode or fighter-jet mode. Parasympathetic translates to “Cholinergic”. Neurotransmitter — Acetylcholine— slows down your heart rate and makes you stay in calm, comfortable situations. It’s Parasympathetic pathways that make you want to socializie and say hello. like today May 10th, which also happens to be my mother’s birthday. somewhere I read, it’s the myelinated Vagus B-fibers emerging from the Nucleus Ambiguus inside the Medulla O, that takes care of all the cholinergic responsibilities.

anyways, reading up on the lovely Acetylcholine made me think about the month of April which was like a hangover-recharge month for me, with my Parasympathetic totally working up the scene. Lot of peace, lot of beauty. Zero rollercoaster rides, zero adrenaline rushes. Thank you vagal B-fibers.

but, guess I also slightly miss my adrenergic lifestyle of the past one year, with all the nonstop-gaming, and what not….

the whole world must be engaged in all kinds of interesting things happening around. but while THIS socmedia-window-to-the-world stays super-inactive, I keep on staying in some kind of cozy, mental time-warp that I have taken quite a liking to. it’s always good to need less, I guess. and to feel oh-so-minimalistic.

Anita Desai popped up inside my head the other day, and I was reminded of one of her fiction works. in the story, all her protagonists play games at twilight, and one of them goes into a time-warp of a few hours, as he stays inside a shed next to the garage, while the others keep being engaged in all kinds of interesting games happening on the lawn around the house.

aside from being a neuro-junkie, I have always been a creative-junkie. so taking cue from Desai’s writerly imagination, I felt like “playing derivative” at her work, and go inside the head of her time-warped protagonist. and to see what I can pick up from that last weekend of March, what I can pick up from what’s on there, at this socmedia-window-to-the-world!

and there’s scope for gaming...

but let me write a quick disclaimer: bcos of KL’s celebrity clout, all the lovely colors were color-gamed by all the world more so than ever, and as imagination-inventor, AK always thinks this is immensely cool and it gives her an inception-orgasm. but, since the colors were also endorsed to crazy-overkill on this socmedia-window-to-the-world ---a lot of times in intolerance and with spite and hatred even--- AK had given away all colors sometime back in February, as part of “The Curse of Raghu”, thus making a statement of protest against the misappropriation of disability-imagination in a happily-ableist world. AK truly remains in a BnW world.

okay then, game-time!

Reference Tweets from Mar 30th:

https://twitter.com/CarDroidusMax/status/1112035121916493826

https://twitter.com/CarDroidusMax/status/1112034751521665029

#lawpoint1 -- back in August sometime, when AK/KL had first begun sparring on SM, AK had shared this Malayalam film clip and KL had shared back this ICICI Bank Ad. in both, the color is predominantly red. it is quite implicit that it is only blue in a red-disguise; there wasn’t any doubts whatsoever back then. this fact is significant as this was the first time AK/KL had ever faced-off. so if she so wishes, AK can re-possess any color. example, the red and yellow on the KSRTC bus in the above reference photo, KSRTC bus and the green in the twitter profile Cover image, the sort-of-purple on the shirt of the guy on the road in same Cover image, and the colors on Capt. Cavey DP, even! Winner takes all.

#lawpoint2 --- there was supreme court judgment sometime in September that since Karthiyayini had 2 ‘Y’s in her name, any Y in Kerala could be used to AK’s requirement. back then, as a hat-tip to this landmark judgement, the aYYappan-sabarimala ruckus had followed. so, since we already have a precedence regarding settlement of Y disputes, all 26 alphabet can be monopolized by AK just like in the board game. to say explicitly, AK can call Monopoly on the lovely district of waYanad or kottaYam or any other place for that matter. this rule is especially valid on this socmedia-window-to-the-world as the AK/KL combat had initially also begun by involving the lovely malayalam actor parvathY thiruvothu.

In clear conclusion, about the two reference tweets from KL on Mar 30, AK would like to say -- അതേ, വളരെ ഭംഗിയുണ്ട് :)

this out-of-sync and strenuous “comeback” above is the equivalent of how in her fiction, Desai writes: Ravi bawled, shaking his head so that big tears flew. “Raghu didn’t find me. I won, I won…”

all ക്രിയേറ്റിവ് മണ്ണാങ്കട്ട gaming aside, it’s also some Desai appreciation…her way of writing… sensitive imagery about gamer protagonists and their gaming worlds! It’s good how sensitivity is not just romantic fiction-feature anymore, at least for me! growing up, my mother used to sometimes romanticize my ‘differences’ using the word apoorvaraagam, and that was that! Most of us are like her I guess, rarely ever intuitively-acknowledging the many differences in how different people navigate the same world.

the Neuro-junkie in me thinks that Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS) seems to be what Desai’s timewarp-ed protagonist is going through; temperamental personality trait involving increased sensitivity and deeper cognitive processing of social and emotional stimuli. apparently, people with a high measure of SPS make up about 15-20% of the population. they say it is the gene variants of ADRA2b and 5-HTTLPR that lead to the emotionally enhanced vividness in perception.

It’s good that making sense of these will influence how we raise our children; help make lives, more tolerant and relaxed for them!

hey KL, what is your son like? does he still prefer football to cricket despite his sub-continental genes? is he old enough to have a favorite football team? someday, will you be teaching him to hack-stalk women? :) .…. my son is right now in a freezer, probably waiting for his uterus implantation by year-end! Johan is expected to default-love soccer thanks to namesake Johan Cruyff.... let’s see how that sports inheritance goes!

p.s. In this Malayalam film scene, Nanda (Revathy) tries to humor her hard-stalker Naren (identical twin no.1 Lalettan). He somehow has all the A-Z on her, while she knows next to nothing about him and just keeps going in circles trying to figure out.....

I have always loved this song from Mayamayooram. Janakiamma singing ഇതളടർന്ന വഴിയിലൂടെ വരുമോ വസന്തം....? is easily among her best! Also, I will never really know why Shobhana is not superstar-Shobhana; she is effortless in everything…. ഒടുക്കത്തെ പേട്രിയാർക്കി തന്നെ, അല്ലാതെന്താ?!

#CLASSYwomen

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