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ravenna222 · 2 years ago

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An unexpected beginning

Lmao sorry about the half-assed title, this is my first fic and I'm pretty nervous about it

Not to mention I wrote this in 10 minutes out of impulsivity so don't expect any quality writing really

Warnings: none (extremely sappy ending and possibly out of character sae)

pure fluff ♡

| slow burn | romance | engagement |

"Sae!"

"What now?"

"I told you it's fine, I don't need a bigger one, the one you got me is just fine!"

Your boyfriend, now future fiancé, was being a pain in the ass. It's difficult to discern what's going through his mind, and god damn how helpful it would be to know sometimes. Itoshi Sae is a mystery to everyone, no one can fathom the emotions behind those bored eyes, apart from you. Let's say to you he's more of a puzzle, you've put a part of it together, the outer parts, but you're struggling tremendously on the inside. To think you were just a waitress at a coffee shop he'd always go to extremely early before practice so he could avoid any unwanted paparazzi encounter, always wearing a black cap and a pair of sunglasses. In the beginning he never quite stood out to you, I mean he was just a simple guy in a simple outfit, the same old sweatpants and sweater, there was nothing quite particular about him. Perhaps that was before you had gotten a clear glimpse of the sea of emeralds hidden under those shades.

You remember it clearly, it was as if a fever hit you. They were dull, yes there was certainly no denying that, but they were deep and alluring. You had been bewitched! Or maybe unknowingly it was the other way round. Sae is so used to being recognised wherever he treads, taunted by the paparazzi, tormented by fans, oh and don't get him started on the constant buzz of his phone. It was nice, almost refreshing, being treated like a normal person.

Whenever he passed by he always hoped it was you who served him, you treated him like another client, unlike your colleagues who would constantly fawn over him, hearing mumbles and squeals such as "omg the sae itoshi", "i can't believe he's right in front of me!"

Perhaps it was because you too were a foreigner, another thing which brought you both closer, you didn't watch football apart from the occasional international match but overall the sport isn't very popular in your country, hence you didn't know who he was. Overtime you figured it out, a football prodigy, "Japan's national treasure", though it didn't mean much to you, you were a simple waitress working a part time job whilst studying at a University in Madrid.

You two were foreigners still adapting to a new lifestyle, a new culture, a new language.

Initially there would be a mere exchange of words, moreso you trying to awkwardly start a conversation: "How was your coffee?", "Would you like to try our new freshly baked pastries?" But Sae hated small talk, yet he seemed to find the energy to not glare at you every time you spoke.

He's known for his lean and muscular body, slowly earning the title of sex symbol, his flawless facial alignments, those enchanting eyes, however he was also known for his "do not waste my time" attitude, but somehow it made him appear even sexier to the public, certainly not to the poor interviewers who had to suffer in silence.

One time he was rushing away from the paparazzi, you were just opening the café as he rushed in almost making you fall. 'How rude' you thought, 'not even an apology?'

But those thoughts quickly vanished into thin air when you were met with pleading eyes. He wanted to get away from all the reporters, the people, the world. He was almost panicking. He could usually deal with everyone by brushing them off with that nonchalant stare of his, but today was different. He had enough. Thankfully you were the only one there at the time so you decided to hide him in the backroom, where you brought him a glass of water to calm down. Five minutes later, with all the paparazzi gone, he came out of his hiding spot and with a half-assed 'thank you' he made his way out. Gosh you were furious, nonetheless a crimson red flushed your cheeks. A note with his number and a little thank you written below.

And that's how it all started, to think you would be already picking your engagement ring after 3 years of dealing with this man. He proposed to you during a midnight walk along the seaside, Sae has always found comfort in the sea and that's why there was no better place to propose, but there was one problem: the ring. Even though the ring he got you was one he knew you'd like, he thought it was unworthy of you because it was so small, he wanted everything to be perfect and he wanted to make sure you were happy with the ring. It was nothing too extravagant or big, it was simple but embellished just right

"Seriously Sae, love it. Stop being so stubborn! It's perfect for me, gosh. Why are you worrying so much about this?"

Sae groaned, he was definitely being too worrisome about this and he was well aware of it.

"Y/n, I don't want to make any mistakes-"

"Sae, sweety, I love you and I love this ring. Now can we go home and get some rest? The shop's about to close".

"Yeah sure, but don't go complaining or flip out on me if you suddenly don't like it".

You laugh to yourself, hopefully you're going to be stuck with this drama queen for the rest of your life.

#sae itoshi #itoshi sae #sae itoshi x reader #itoshi sae x reader #bllk #bllk x reader #cringey romance #sae x reader #slow burn

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trlvsn · 1 year ago

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Please I would love to hear more umineko thoughts from you

oh my god you should NOT have asked. i'm on episode eight but i have so many. do NOT read this if you haven't read umineko, you HAVE to go through the experience completely unspoiled. tw: incest, christianity, death, but none in a positive light

my most recent thoughts have been provoked by the riddles in episode 8 and how kyrie and rudolf had just told eva they do not fault her for any harm she caused ange. it strikes you as odd at first, because they would never say that, but then you realize two things: this is very similar to the golden land and this is battler's chessboard. battler already knows about sayo and what she wanted from his as beatrice, what she wanted from everyone as beatrice: recognition. she is a girl who used to follow god's tests so blindly and has sinned so badly. she wants people to see her innocence, know of the sins that harmed her, forgive the sins that she caused herself. that is, at the end of the day, what everyone wants, and battler is treating everyone like it, in honor of beatrice. this is a very difficult topic for me to see in media. the idea that every person, no matter how horrible their actions and nature, has a heart and wants forgiveness, is something i can't accept because i, too, am human. what would i be if i forgave and understood everyone? what would i be without hate and revenge and a personal view on things? if i accepted everyone's truths, there would be nothing of myself left. but the idea is true, and i have to know it deep down, tame it carefully.

my thoughts overall, though? i could never put them in one single post. this novel is amazing in many ways - it's a love letter to an entire library of books, it's a love letter to love, but there is also no good love in this story. there is fake love, true love, great love, but there is no love that is good, normal, because the ushiromiya family didn't have it in the first place. kinzo built this family on blood-stained gold and adultery. this family is like a locked room itself in many ways (god, they even represent it with the incest), and nothing good ever happens in a locked room. while i haven't yet reached the end of episode 8, i hope they all die. i hope ange never really survived the fall from the building, actually. i hope it ends, i hope the room exploded and there is nothing left of the ushiromiya family now, not of the gold, not of the love, not of the anything. it probably won't be like that, though. bern promised there wouldn't be a happy ending.

sayo's story is the greatest story i have ever seen a character have, no joke. "greatest" as in enormous in it's tragedy and richness, an endless universe collapsing in on itself because it can't, of course, exist with just one person. of course she did everything wrong, nothing right has ever been in her nature.

i also loved the biblical symbolism, of course. how could i not. the figure of god specifically is something so subtle i almost missed it, but at the end of the day, three girls share that imaginary friend - sayo, maria and dlanor. for all three, it's their father/authority figure/commander in different ways. sayo ends up burning kinzo again and again, commiting rightful patricide, and also essentially rebels against god by giving up on his test and befriending demons. it's a nice touch. i have my own issues with the demon summoning (i dabbled in the occult long before playing umineko) but it's just a technicality.

anyways, serious stuff aside - loved the toxic yuri, loved the fuckedupedness of it all, loved the fact that the narrators are NEVER reliable and you shouldn't listen to the game, like, at all, but also you should. i was frequently theorizing about the origins of beatrice during my playthrough and talked to my friend about it, who had already finished umineko long ago. at a point of episode... 6? 5? i basically said "fuck this, i'm not even going to try. shannon is beatrice, shannon is part of beatrice, kannon is beatrice, fucking everyone is beatrice. i give up" and it was really hard for him to, like, be normal. thank you [REDACTED] for not spoiling anything. i am on my way to finish episode 8 and obsess about the music forever.

#umineko #umineko spoilers #umineko naku koro ni #umineko when they cry #wtc #when they cry #beatrice the golden witch #beatrice umineko #shannon #sayo yasuda #kinzo ushiromiya #maria ushiromiya

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watermelonsloth · 1 year ago

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Boruto Shipping Opinions

I’m gonna put a brief aside here to say two quick things to keep in mind before reading:

I am not going to go into great detail or analysis here because I’m holding off on that until the manga wraps up.

I am caught up with the manga, I am not caught up with the anime. I have watched up until the arc the new team 7 infiltrate a prison, the second chunin exams, and whatever clips/moments I’ve stumbled upon being discussed. I am not an avid fan, I do not know all the ins and outs of character dynamics, and I don’t even keep up with that part of the fandom. I have no horse in this race.

BoruSara

I don’t like this ship, and I don’t know if that’s an unpopular opinion. I’ll try to avoid saying “they have sibling vibes” or “they’re just friends” because, coming from someone who has used that excuse in the past, it is very difficult to explain/defend argument. So much so that now it just comes across as cheap to me.

I will, however, say that I don’t like it for the same reason I don’t like NejiTen. It comes across as “he was a boy, she was a girl. Can I make it anymore obvious?” It feels like it stems from the idea that boys and girls can’t just be friends. If the dynamic was introduced with an edge of romance (like how Naruto and Sakura’s dynamic was introduced with Naruto having a crush on her), maybe it would be a different story. But as of right now, it feels like the fandom reading into something that doesn‘t need to be read into.

KawaSara

I hate to say this, but I’m guessing this ship stemmed from SasuSaku fans reading them as “next gen SasuSaku”. Look, everyone can ship whatever they want or choose to refrain from shipping, but I’m sick of the fandom projecting old ships on new dynamics. I have seen BoruSara compared to SNS, NaruSaku, and SasuSaku (for some reason). I have seen BoruSumi compared to NaruHina. I have seen MitsuSara compared to SasuSaku and SuiKarin. I have seen KawaSara compared to SasuSaku. Every single time I thought to myself, “The manga starts with Boruto asserting that he’s not his dad and this isn’t his dad’s story.” I get that comparisons will naturally arise since it’s a sequel series, but these kids are not carbon copies of their parents and they don’t have the same dynamics their parents did.

Now that my rant is out of the way, I think a hypothetical child between them having black hair with pink highlights would be cute and that’s about it.

MitsuSara

I wish these two had more of a dynamic. Both characters have interactions with Boruto and clear dynamics with him, but they don’t really have much going on with each other. They both have recognizable personalities, but they mellow each other out whenever they interact and it makes them boring (I’m guessing Ikemoto isn’t interested in them together). They also only tend to talk to each other about Boruto (at least in the manga). Say what you want about them, but at least Sasuke and Sakura had a dynamic.

Anyways, funny ha ha, Orochimaru gets an Uchiha in the way they least expected.

MitsuBoru

Gayer than any of the Naruto dynamics and that is saying something. However, I struggle to like the ship because I’m just so confused.

First, why does Boruto have so many lancer/foil/rival characters. Kawaki, Sarada, and Mitsuki all act as lancers. I get that writing doesn’t have to be formulaic, but they aren’t even all lancers to each other, having dynamics that bounce off of each other, they’re just lancers to Boruto. At least for me, it’s already gotten really boring and ends in the three’s dynamics with each other falling flat.

Second, the sun and moon symbolism makes no sense to me as a writing decision. The obvious problem is that it’s redundant; it’s already been used for multiple Naruto dynamics. The less obvious problem is that it contradicts Mitsuki’s manga introduction. Mitsuki was introduced as the middle between Boruto and Sarada’s two extremes, taking up a role similar to Sakura’s in the og team 7. If he’s supposed to be the moon to Boruto’s sun, why is he introduced to us as the earth? The admittedly more minor problem that distracts me is that Orochimaru was the one that Mitsuki down this road. Why? Orochimaru wasn’t redeemed by Naruto and has never shown interest in him or this philosophy before now. My best guess is that they’re fascinated by Naruto’s affect on Sasuke, but that still leaves me with questions.

It makes me think that the writer didn’t have any ideas when they introduced these two.

BoruSumi

I don’t like how the fandom is making another love square, but I doubt there’s anything I can do to stop them.

This ship is boring because Sumire is boring. That one anime arc made her interesting, but it’s referenced and relevant so rarely that she goes back to being boring. I’d like this more if the story let Sumire be morally gray or treated her like a redeemed villain more. As of right now, I think the only leg the ship has to stand on is writing tropes and I do not care.

KawaSumi

This ship feels like the product of the same people who ship SasuHina/SasuIno/SasuKarin/KibaHina out of spite. My last post/reblog went into why this happens but the short of it is that it’s easier to ship something in peace if the biggest “threats” to it are paired together. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I have a feeling most KawaSumi shippers also ship BoruSara.

KawaHima

Please… just stop. If not for yourself, then for me. I’m already barely coping with how popular NejiHina is. Why have I seen this as much as I have??? This feels like a personal attack on my sanity. They’re siblings.

Other

This is the section for all the ships I have little/no opinions on. I think MitsuCho is too boring for how popular it is, I think ChoSara should be more popular, I’m disturbed by all of the Eida x next gen ships because she looks and acts like an adult (at least how adults are portrayed in Boruto), and I’m surprised Code x Eida isn’t more popular, but I also think that Code has gotten the Kabuto treatment and isn’t very popular in the fandom.

The ships I haven’t mentioned I either have so little fucks to give or so little information on that I have ZERO thoughts about.

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miseria-fortes-viros · 1 year ago

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(brings microphone to your face) tell us abt ur au!!!! whatever you're willing to share, i love hearing abt wips.

OOHOOHOO OK!! so i have talked abt this before but i don’t think i have a tag for it however im going to go back thru and tag ALL of it bc well. i like all of my things in one place. ANYWAY. i’m going to put this under a cut bc it will be LONG because i cannot help myself ever. so, i present: trc rival bands au!

this is the pinterest board i’ve made for the au that i cannot stop adding to. i’m refraining from sharing my spotify playlists because uh. those are a major part of the story and i don’t want to take that away from it 😭 BUT trust me they are SO good. im obsessed.

anyway. rival bands au LETS GO!!

gansey, ronan, henry, and noah make up the (pop punk?/alt rock?) band Kings of Henrietta.

ronan plays lead guitar. he’s the son of legendary irish rockstar niall lynch and also ex lead guitarist of the boyband the lynch brothers. he plays a seven-string ibanez xiphos in black flat (VERY sexy guitar VERY difficult). its name is chainsaw. he has perfect pitch. he’s also very, very irish

gansey’s lead vocals and rhythm guitar. he grew up hollywood royalty but was never really interested in acting, just did it because it was expected of him. his exodus from the film industry in order to be in a band was originally widely considered a long shot but now. well. one of the most famous bands in the world and all that. he plays an obnoxiously orange gretsch jet that fans have dubbed “the pig”.

henry’s bass and backup vocals. he’s the heir to two tech fortunes but ran off to be a musician and was a solo artist for a few years before the formation of KOH (think yungblud). he has a classic rocker haircut, he’s openly queer, he’s a weirdgirl fashion icon. he plays a custom made electric blue fender precision with lightning detailing. he calls it “madonna” but this name has yet to catch on

noah plays drums (and also provides vocals on occasion if the occasion is screaming). his parents are music producers, his sister adele is also in the industry. he breaks at least one drum stick per show and tosses it into the pit. hardcore fans can and will fight for it.

they are SO fucking famous. like taylor swift 95m monthly spotify listeners famous. like people recognize ronan just from his hair like eminem famous. about to leave on one of the longest world tours ever famous. it is INSANE how famous they are.

they all met at aglionby and often played together but didn’t form a band until after niall lynch’s murder and the disbanding of the lynch brothers. there’s a few years gap between graduating aglionby and the formation of KOH

some circles still believe ronan killed his own father however they are very few and far between. WHATEVER

blue grew up in a house full of musicians. she can play pretty much anything under the sun but prefers drums and guitar. she went to juilliard on scholarship, which is where she met adam

adam did not grow up playing music with his family. he grew up learning it in secret. he cannot play everything however he is a VERY quick learner out of sheer willpower. he graduated high school as valedictorian and immediately got the fuck out of there to go to juilliard (also on scholarship). he and blue were inseparable almost immediately

they moved in together after graduation and blue took him home to henrietta when the rent started to get a little too high. they officially formed their band page of wands in blue’s room at 300 fox way

“page of wands” merges both of their symbolic tarot cards together (page of cups + magician). did i mention blue was raised pagan? she was. as to be expected. anyways.

virtually unknown indie rock band page of wands posts a cover of a KOH song. they do not expect KOH to see it. they also do not expect KOH to return the favor in front of tens of thousands of people. KOH does it anyways. because gansey is ENAMORED. he is SO FAR GONE.

blue hates this. she hates it so much. unfortunately POW’s sudden success is now irreversibly tied to KOH and there’s nothing she can do about it. or is there

their record labels agree to a rivalry. success! this is what she wanted

except it’s not. but she doesn’t know why

cue enemies to lovers. and long distance pining. mutual destruction. the entire music industry watching this all unfold. bluesey. pynch. way too many spotify links. you get the picture

guys i literally CANNOT stop thinking about this i don’t know what to do. what do i do. i am so lost. please help me

#the raven cycle #helenaposting #asks #trium #trc band au #barbi.trc #barbi.wip

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idreaminmugiwara · 11 months ago

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Oda: “Decisive point of his would be Luffy’s new power-up called Gear 5th. I drew this because I really want to have fun, and I think that it’s okay if people don't like it. I just want to play around with my battles. Since I was an assistant, I have felt that silly expressions that were so characteristic in manga have been gradually lost. Putting a light bulb in a character’s head when they come up with some idea, or making the character’s legs go in circles when they’re running, for example. I have always loved those symbolic expressions, but they keep disappearing. Nobody draws them anymore even though they’re our predecessors' creations who also left many formulae we still use. Battle manga has to keep getting more and more serious to keep up with readers’ expectations and I honestly hate that. I definitely don’t want my work to become a serious manga like that. I want and have decided to have fun, and I feel like I’m finally able to do that. When I was drawing this, I actually had fun. When thinking about its concept, you can think of it as if it suddenly became ‘Tom & Jerry’. Jerry? Oh no, I supported Jerry! When I tried to draw it for the first time, it was pretty difficult. The world of ‘Tom & Jerry’ works because of both characters, so I struggled a lot looking at the difference in attitude between Luffy, who was making pranks in the middle of the battle, and his serious opponent. But in the end, I feel like I actually pulled it off. The older you get, the harder and more tiring it is to draw battles, isn’t it? I drew Gear 5 as a big joke, knowing that my readers would be disgusted by it. Battle manga becomes more serious when they follow readers' expectations. I hated that. I didn't want my manga to be too serious, so I had fun achieving it with the fight against Kaido." From Over 100 Miracle Talk with Gosho Ayoma

#eiichiro oda #oda one piece #gear fifth #one piece luffy #monkey d. luffy #manga

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louise-ella · 5 months ago

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A review of "Good Riddance" by Gracie Abrams!

I discovered Gracie Abrams a year after her ‘Minor’ (2020) EP release. My original favorites were “I Miss You, I’m Sorry” and “Brush Fire”, but the rest of her songs stockpiled so well that those are now ancient history to me. What struck me about her initially was the brutal honesty of her lyrics.

True to what Abrams told listeners prior to the ‘Good Riddance’ release, I listened to the album for the first time in the tracklist order with earbuds in. I was also in Honolulu that night, so I sat on a balcony and stared at the skyline. A year and a half later, here’s what I think.

This album commits to representing anxiety in leaving someone and leaves few crumbs. Abrams talks about doubt, fear of restarting, navigating nostalgia, FOMO, guilt, and the harsh realization that it’s time to go. Many choruses in this album (“Best”, “Where do we go now?”, “Amelie”, “I Should Hate You”) are the hook repeated, symbolizing the incessant repetition of anxiety. For the first 10 tracks, she’s mostly talking about breakups and fear, and in the last two tracks, she is fully immersed in a new love, that in “The blue” she states, “came out of the blue”, explaining the abrupt mood change.

Abrams pictured on the album cover

“Best”: Abrams said in an article before the release that this is one of her favorites on the album. It’s somewhere in my top 5. My initial impression was that it reminded me of ‘Folklore’ by Taylor Swift. ‘Good Riddance’ was produced by Aaron Dessner, so this makes sense, but I would’ve noticed this whether I knew that or not. This song was gut punch after gut punch. I could’ve been out at “when I could come to life I didn’t”, but “you fell hard, I thought ‘good riddance’” was the first line that truly killed me. She made me feel like I had commitment issues.

The entire chorus of “Best” is “I never was the best to you” repeatedly. In the bridge she beats herself up, singing, “I feel terrible ‘bout how I handled it” and “I’m alone, sitting here, staying home/all of my self-control kind of got difficult, but I deserve it, though.”

I appreciate the accountability in the song, as well as the feeling of released tension that I bet came with writing and releasing it. As a songwriter, I’ll write 30 songs about how upset I am with someone, but it only feels useful once I’ve finally made one apologizing or taking accountability for my own end of the spectrum.

The lyric that makes me feel the most seen (the most valuable part of a song for me): “Go ahead, we can just call it conditioning”

“I Know It Won’t Work”: This is another favorite of mine! Partially because it’s the one that blew up, which I always get some excitement from on behalf of the artist.

Firstly, I love the intro. I have no idea what it was meant to intend, but to me, it feels like the line “You’re a flashback in a film reel” from Taylor Swift’s “This Is Me Trying” (2020). It feels like a flashback in time, and that’s particularly because of the hook “Part of me wants you back, but I know it won’t work like that”.

This song helps build up the idea of this album being mostly about a long-term relationship ending. She sings “It’s a lot/the shine of half a decade fading”.

Another motif throughout this album is lyrics about the awkward moments when you know something is over but aren’t ready to say it – so you just lie even though you know it only makes it worse. Some of my favorite instances of that include – in this song – “in case this year, I come back and stay throughout my 20s/what if I won’t? How am I supposed to put that gently?”, “I hate to look at your face and know that we’re feeling different”, and “I’m thinking everything you wish I wasn’t/the call was tough, but you’re better off/I’m being honest/so won’t you stop holding out for me when I don’t want it?” In other songs “You look hopeful like we’re supposed to work somehow/can’t you tell our light burned out?” (“Where Do We Go Now?”)

I don't love the two verses at the start of the song. I think there are great lyrics in both verses, but by the time the chorus comes, I’m a little bored. Nonetheless, my disliking of this is small, and I think both verses are very well written.

The lyric that makes me feel the most seen: “I’m thinking everything you wish I wasn’t”

“Full Machine”: this one is probably my favorite on the album. It’s full of somewhat submissive lines, but she writes them from a place of control. She sings, “Say something nice to me/and you don’t have to mean it” but also “I’m a shameless caller”, using the word “shameless” to change the meaning. I adore juxtaposing lyrics. She isn’t saying “I would die for you and I’m so sad you left me”. She isn’t saying “You better know who you just lost, screw you”. She’s saying, “I hope you know who you lost because it means a lot that someone is so devastated that you’re no longer in their life”.

The lyric that makes me feel the most seen: “It’s just that I’ll always choose you”

“Where Do We Go Now?”: When I say I fell in love with this song when it came out, I mean it. I love how she references specific places – “24th street, where you held me, grabbed my arm”. I love how she expresses feeling like her trying was never noticed – “You don’t know how hard I tried/had to fake the longest time” and “What a brutal way to die, but you choose it every time”. Then, she shows that she too wasn’t perfect – “We had no control when it fell through/it was one-sided, hate how I hurt you”. Meanwhile, the instrumental feels timeless and is never too overwhelming or underwhelming.

I just need a moment to acknowledge the bridge. The long schpeel ending in “but I miss you”. I heard that for the first time and I was like, this song is perfect.

The lyric that makes me feel the most seen: “You look hopeful, like we’re supposed to work somehow”

“I Should Hate You”: “I Should Hate You” would be my favorite if it didn’t make me feel physically unwell. I’m looping these songs while writing this, and even two sentences in, I’m pausing because of instrumentals that put a pit in my stomach. Over the acoustic guitar, there’s a whistling instrument that reminds me of how the intro to “I Know It Won’t Work” makes me feel. This song feels like when you’re so exhausted that you feel like you will never sleep. It gives me the feeling that one day something that is so important to you now will mean absolutely nothing anymore, and even if that is what you want to happen, it still feels wrong. You begin to think “I should hate you because you were so important to me, but I realize now how much you really messed with my head”.

This also reminds me of “Full Machine”, in which she sings “if you asked me to run away, I’d go easily”. In the second verse of “I Should Hate You”, she sings “I just drank something strong to try to forget, but it wasn’t right” – saying she does things that she knows are bad for her just to let go of someone. To add meaning to that, she sings in the first verse “I wasted my breath when I tried to console you, didn’t I?” She yet again appears submissive, but also fully aware of how she needs to let go of her sadness and be mad. This is a very powerful thing to do in writing. Finally, perhaps the best part of the entire song is the bridge.

The lyric that makes me feel the most seen: “I feel stupid like I almost crashed my car driving home to talk about you at my table in the dark” (never actually gotten close to this happening but I've had this feeling for so long and was shocked to hear it in a song)

“Will You Cry?”: This song has a few standout lines for me. My personal favorite is the set of lyrics “It’s kind of funny when it goes from all to nothing/you have to laugh before you start to cry/cause now I stop myself from holding onto something that makes me feel a little less alive”.

However, that's basically the only part of the song I like. I can’t figure out what this song is about, and I don’t like anything about it enough to really want to figure it out. I think the melody is beautiful, but it feels like a melody I would’ve written when I was 13 (not meant as a diss at all, I wrote plenty of songs I love to this day at 13), so it annoys me a little but otherwise just makes me feel nothing.

The lyric that makes me feel the most seen: “I don’t follow, I don’t want to"

“Amelie”: This song, prior to its release, was highly anticipated by Abrams’ fandom. She played it on her 2022 tour for her second EP, "This Is What It Feels Like" (2021) on piano, and many people loved it. However, Abrams is one of the few artists who I don't care much about the unreleased songs of. When I heard this song upon its release, the lyrics were the only things even remotely keeping it going for me. That was until I heard the interpretation that it was about her past self. Now when I listen, I imagine that I'm trying to figure out what caused someone (be it myself or someone else) to become someone they aren't anymore.

The lyric that makes me feel the most seen: "She had her hair up, she cried about her obsessions" (literally me in 2019)

“Difficult”: This song is really cool to me because the chorus moves the way a good cry does. The song feels like you’re crying while on a freeway full of small potholes. I love the spinning feeling of the chorus and how she lowers her voice on certain lines in the verses. The song details how she feels like her lack of mental well-being is breaking a relationship apart, and she wishes she could fix it, but it feels like a part of her.

The lyric that makes me feel the most seen: "I hope I wake up invisible" (so simple but so, so real)

“This is what the drugs are for”: this is one of the only unreleased songs I’d hoped would appear on this album. She posted it on TikTok in 2021, and I was immediately struck by the line “What am I supposed to do when you used to be my lifeline?”

While this song, like “I Should Hate You”, is a little too sad for me to listen to, there are a couple things I adore about it. This song seems to be about a relationship that’s been officially over for a while, but she’s beginning to realize moving on won’t be so simple. She expresses this with lines like “Now I feel you in my room, haven’t seen you in a lifetime”, “I’ve counted all the days since you walked away”, and “Though I’ve tried, I can’t pretend that I don’t sit around and think about you”.

The lyric that makes me feel the most seen: "She appears in dreams chasing after me"

“Fault Line”: I was excited to hear this song when it first came out because I’d seen a friend of Abrams' saying it was her favorite song ever. I initially thought it was fine. It felt like a combination of the topics of “I Know it Won’t Work”, “Will you cry?”, and “Difficult”. She describes the feeling of being aware something might not work out, being okay (I think?) with leaving, and feeling like her judgment is bad. I kept waiting for something in the song. I hoped during its four minutes that it would have some cool beat drop or a key change but to no avail. Luckily, it has since grown on me.

The lyric that makes me feel the most seen: "Most nights I will pretend I left this sooner"

“The blue”: I saw on Twitter before the album release that there was one love song on the album and that it was the one you’d expect the least. That proved true. After all the breakup songs on this album, it shocked me a little, given that I’d become a little emotionally attached to her sadness (which is partially the point and partially not the point, I guess.) Because this song confused me given the sheer sad power of the rest of the album, it took a moment to get my head around it. But once I did, I began to love it. The part of the song that I felt really gave it life was the line “What are you doing to me now?” The lack of trust helped its spot on the album make more sense. She’s falling shamelessly in love with someone and provides enough parallels to the rest of the record for this song to fit into its puzzle.

The lyric that makes me feel the most seen: "I kind of think you should just drop it all and call me" (such a Taylor Swift thing to say)

“Right now”: This is a really beautiful ending to the album. Abrams is still unsure, but she expresses the same confidence as the rest of the album. Going from, “I was bored out my mind/lost my whole appetite/when I could come to life I didn’t” to “I feel like myself right now” is the journey of the record.

The lyric that makes me feel the most seen: "Look at me, I feel homesick/want my dog in the door" (this plays in my head every time I leave my city)

I'm very excited to see what will happen now that Abrams' sophomore album, "The Secret Of Us" is out. You can listen to both the standard version and the deluxe version (featuring "Block me out", "Unsteady", "405" and "Two people") on all streaming platforms.

Some lyrics I love that I didn’t mention in the review:

“you still tried to stay while I’d self-isolate/and I knew but I stayed hidden”

“now I bet you resent all of me, all of it, angry, blocking me over the internet”

“I know we cut all the ties but you’re never really leaving”

“I'm a forest fire, you're the kerosene/I had a life here before you and now it’s burning”

“when I kissed you back I lied”

“we could meet down the line after all of the time and give an actual try”

“guess the space was the thing that I needed, but I miss you”

“pulled the knife out my back, it was right where you left it/but you aimed kind of perfect, I’ll give you the credit”

“bet you’re doing alright and you don’t even know it”

“why’d it feel louder when all of it went unspoken?/all I can do is hope that this will go away”

“I meant to tell you how I hated how we left things when it feel through”

“I’ll break too, cracking at the same time, does it shock you?”

“you could go and I bet I’d recover overnight/finish hurting each other/you feel light years away, if I met you today/I would run to the arms of another”

“I know I’d let you in on all my bad decisions/you’d make them feel less terrible the second that you’d listen”

“this is somebody’s hometown”

#gracie abrams #the secret of us #gracie abrams good riddance #gracie abrams daily #good riddance #this is what it feels like #minor gracie abrams #close to you

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velvetvexations · 6 months ago

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actually if you want to talk about it I’d be curious about your petscop opinions (in a friendly discussion way) but if not that’s totally cool!

One of the things I was telling people Petscop was of too high-quality for something to be what was happening was the incredibly dumb "playing the game in a car" thing, which I thought was a completely ridiculous theory and I really was out there like, no, guys, that's stupid, that's so stupid, and this is PETSCOP, the single greatest web series in existence, my Roman Empire, it's not stupid so obviously that can't be it.

But what I really disliked and put me down a lot was the lack of hard answers. I unironically feel like people nowadays fetishize narrative ambiguity. Death of the Author or even the idea that a work might have literally no intended meaning except to be a viewer's personal Rorschach test has gotten so big that to even suggest something mysterious might have an answer can be seen as sacrilege.

Sometimes that can be a difficult wire to walk. David Lynch refuses to ever give away the intended meaning of his work because he does want his audience to reach their own conclusions and find their own meaning in it...but, also, he did still have an intended meaning behind everything and it's not weird to try and work that out. Yes, the demand for answers killed Twin Peaks - but I would argue it was more like impatience because what fans wanted to know was specifically who killed Laura Palmer, and Lynch always intended to get to that eventually, just at the very end.

Fans during the airing of Twin Peaks took it 100% literally and weren't generally looking for symbolic meaning, they were looking for hard facts about what was occurring in-universe. While my belief of the "correct" interpretation of Twin Peaks is that the narrative blends in-universe reality with out-of-universe meta anyway, I think we would have gotten basically satisfying answers to the in-universe reality if the network had been willing to let it cook. I think subtext can be really cool, and despite my sidebar text being a Garth Marenghi reference the things I write have subtext in them as well, but usually I'm far more interested in the text when it comes to mysteries like this.

So like, I'm going to take a gamble with allowing myself to be vulnerable and admit something: when it turned out the website in Petscop had been made, but the creator just decided not to put it out? I was without hyperbole livid.

I struggle, like really struggle with anger issues, to the point where earlier this morning I was thinking about making a post about how much I've been feeling the "check your bathroom" message from Rainer, but decided against it because that's implied to be a suicide note and I didn't want to give the impression I was referring to suicidal ideation. I mean, I am also extremely depressed, but that's not what I had in mind.

Just like...the bitterness of what Rainer says in that message, the exhausted rage? Yeah, that's me. I'm an angry person. It's one of the reasons I related so hard to Kipperlilly Copperkettle in Dimension 20. Because like, my fandom for her started out being really annoyed with the protagonists and the ways they have their cocks sucked by the fandom and narrative no matter what, and how KLCK in particular was getting insane hate for insane reasons, but when it was revealed she had been in therapy for years for anger management I wanted to cry because I suddenly felt this intense empathy with her.

No matter how irrational, the revelation about the website existing but not being shown gutted me. So I was really, really angry about it and to be honest I still kinna am. I don't hold any real ill will towards the creator and, again, I know it's irrational, but that hurt me a little.

There's this scene in The Expanse where a spaceship hits a field that makes anything in motion come to an instantaneous and complete stop, and you can imagine what that does to the occupants of spacecraft traveling a bazillion miles an hour (it should really obliterate the ship, too, but whatever). It kinna felt like that. Like the series just came to a sudden and arbitrary stop with nothing explained and my investment turned into several gallons of red paint splattering the camera.

I was also very dissatisfied with it turning out that either it was all about being trans or the very least had a significant amount of it's plot be about that. I don't mean to be a Sad Puppies kinna geek who thinks their entertainment should never touch on social themes and just stick to cool laser guns, but like...I am trans. Nearly all my friends are. I talk about it constantly on this blog, I'm thinking about it constantly, it is one of the single most important, defining aspects of nearly every facet of my life. I enjoy some media that's outwardly about being trans and my writing is heavily heavily HEAVILY centered around diversity and inclusion and talking about it all, but when it's the answer to a mystery?

I can't help but find that tremendously boring. And that's another thing that, like not getting answers and it all being over so abruptly, Expanses the shit out of my investment.

And my investment in Petscop ran...deep. Very, very deep. I loved the series with every fiber of my being. Like I said, the drop-off in how I felt about it was like Satan falling from Heaven like lightning, and I felt every bit of that falling damage.

So Petscop and the way it ended was a lot for me.

#petscop #cw sui mention

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wickedmoonlite · 1 year ago

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KinnPorsche Rewatch 2023

Reminder: as we go into heavier topics in KP (dub-con/non-con, toxic behaviors, etc.), I will not be doing deep dives. I’m planning on taking this just below surface value as these are literally thoughts I have in the moment as I’m watching. Thank you.

Side Story Random Thoughts

Tankhun is so dramatic here. Fake crying and the whole time giving side eye to P like "he's really buying this?"

Why is this hospital so fancy though? K is sleeping in a queen size bed for goodness sake.

Ah yes, Vegas. Here to stir shit up.

I'm on vacation he says. I'm gonna sleep alone he says. Liar. Scared of fake ghosts (actually probably not fake, most hospitals are haunted for obvious reasons).

K, I think it might be slightly obvious that P is going to stay by your side. Come on now. But thanks for giving him a phone so he can talk to Chay at least. Damn.

Sweet little ending with a cuddle ❤

Episode 7 Random Thoughts

Iconic Pete opening.

The lighting in this episode is so pretty.

Porsche and Big really just focus on a guy with an earbud... Meanwhile, another guy just strolls up with a damn grenade. Honestly.

I love how all the people there are causing a ruckus because there's a grenade up for grabs but no one fucking leaves?? They just sit there and watch??? What are y'all doing?

I dunno, beating someone into a confession probably would be difficult if the person is particularly tight lipped. But Vegas walking over with a torture case? Idk, I think I'd rather talk than be tortured...

The look that Pete gives Vegas though. Somewhat intrigued, it seems.

Did he pull out a tooth?? What is that?

Gun always trying to out wit and out maneuver his brother. He has one hell of a complex... And gave his sons a complex. And abused them. And he has too many cravats.

The red velvet shirt though.

I actually really enjoy this scene where we see how differently the minor family operates. People greeting with respect as they walk by, but they're more relaxed than the main family's people are.

Vegas walking in and out of the shadows, the lighting in general.. It's... Telling in a way. Of what kind of character Vegas puts forth for his people but also of the darkness dwelling within.

I feel like for how many people most likely live in that complex, they should have like three of those long tables set up.

Typical teenage boy with a messy room but it's just the house that's messy.

Why is K still on a saline drip at home? How long has it been since he got shot?

"But Daddy I love him!!" Honestly though, P makes K such a better person overall. Not just for their employees, but for himself. K doesn't necessarily need to be cruel to be an effective leader. I still hold that K was the worst thing to happen to P though, it turned him into someone that the old P would have hated.

Back to the single seat on the Panigale.

Vegas is more like a dad to Macau than Gun is.

Chay is all embarrassed about his room, like no my crush cannot go in there because he'll see my little shrine.

I love how easy going Kim seems to be around Chay. Compared to how we know he can be. Jeff did such a good job with him.

And then the closeup where we see the friendly demeanor drop and he goes straight back into nosy mode and walls go back up.

And then when Chay comes back, those walls come down a bit again and Kim's like damn, this boy is getting to me. I must get him to admit his crush.

It's because he's jealous, P. Always because he's jealous. K is so bad at communication and trusting P 🥴 get your shit together.

That shit eating smirk on Vegas's face. So good at sowing little seeds of distrust.

My boy Tay coming in with the best advice. And the best style.

How long has that body been there though?

Pete's out here doing the most.

I actually love that K comes to see P and gives him the lucky gun to hold onto. Nice symbolism.

"Let me show you your product." Guns ablaze. God this scene is well done. Porsche and Vegas work together surprisingly well for gun fights.

I think I've played too much Assassin's Creed, I always want to hear requiescat in pace vs reposa in pace.

The party is so well lit. All these lighting differences are so pretty.

Then Vegas trying to get Porsche to stay on with him, telling him what he thinks P wants to hear bc he's a stalker ass.

Porsche is visibly uncomfortable around Vegas in the bathroom scene. Then during the kiss pushes him away... Because he only loves Kinn.

Then Porsche hits Kinn where it hurts: I know about your ex, but only vaguely.

So hurtful, that slap was well deserved.

"I shouldn't have loved a shitty guy like you." He was trying to hit K where it hurt. And finally speaking the words that K needed to hear.

I do like how P takes back control during the NC scene. Doing sexy time on his own terms this time.

The chemistry is out of fucking control.

Consistently, the best NC scene of the series in this episode, in my humble opinion. Plus growing (my faves) KimChay's relationship :')

Episode 8 next!

#kprewatch2023 #kinnporsche #kinnporsche the series

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tiikerikani · 11 months ago

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I hate to be That Guy (who starts the queue)

(but somebody has to do it)

I'm trying to keep this brief because I need to sleep so I can do this again tomorrow.

2023.12.09 – Tavastia-klubi, Helsinki

It's cold. I decided to start hovering by the door at 5:15, though I'd already been standing around outside since 5. (Doors were at 6:30.) I can't feel my toes. Why am I like this???

Janne pops out and is going to the mall across the street (he returns later with a bag of food from the supermarket). He thanks me for the miniature and says it's "fabulous".

Senpai comes out carrying a backpack and says hi to me, then goes down the street the other way. I assume their hotel is over in that direction, as I saw three more band members exit carrying bags and going that way.

The space feels so small now, now that I've been to several newer and bigger clubs. I'm dead centre and I don't remember the barricade being so close to the stage in here. I can literally reach over and swipe a set list if I wanted to. When it's this close, being in the centre is no good for taking pictures of Senpai but that's okay today because I'm mostly trying to get more pictures to match my miniatures.

Leo's got an invisible microphone, lol :P

Senpai asks who's coming back tomorrow. A bunch of hands shoot up into the air. "IF ONLY WE COULD HAVE ACTUALLY GOTTEN TICKETS!" "YOU SHOULD DO A THIRD SHOW!!"

Yes my too-much-gesturing is 100% Senpai's fault

Too many of them wearing sneakers today

The Regular Groupies were talking to ... somebody who waves at me. "Hello!" she calls. It's her again!! "HOW DID YOU GET IN TO TAMPERE!??" I don't recall actually seeing her there last week but she'd have known because miniatures appeared there (and she's definitely Teemu's significant other, as the two of them left holding hands).

Janne says that "the set list is the same [tomorrow] but the atmosphere will be different". It won't be the first time I see them on a Sunday and yeah Sunday crowds are generally a bit more subdued.

I also asked him to suggest a song for me to learn next (with the caveat that I might not take it up). He named one of the old old songs; it's in the music book so I wouldn't have to work out the chords/melody. ("Have you learned all the songs from the book???" What, no :D ) He says it's fairly easy but still has interesting subtleties, and that he wrote it with Teemu so it's also, like, written on a piano and thus more playable on a piano.

"But if you want to do a new song..." he continues, "there's the one that we haven't performed yet? Don't remember the name, it goes like..." He's thinking of Jamesin takki and I think it's funny that I'm filling in the song title for him. "It'd be really challenging, I'd say it's the hardest song on the album. It has the modulation and it's in a difficult key...E-flat minor or something?" ("I'd transpose it, I'm lazy :D")

But oh no I know. It's the one that made me seriously reconsider my silly idea to learn the entire album on the piano, which I came up with before I listened to the whole thing.

Yeah I dunno about that song.

(Edit: I just checked my notes, it starts in F-sharp minor, which is much more reasonable. He was probably thinking of Ilman mua, which IS in E-flat minor and which, yes, I did transpose but could just as easily learn in the original key.)

I also think it's funny that they have to take all the equipment and the barricade and everything down just to put it all back up tomorrow. The equipment I understand, to keep it under lock and key, but I think the barricades come down so they can get the stuff out the door? Dunno.

I'm feeling lazy, here's the set list. (It is also on my arm as usual but I've had to come up with new symbols and I wasn't sure I'd remember what they meant by the time I got home.)

[Concert write-up archive and master calendar]

#music #concerts #vesterinen yhtyeineen #set list #pianists gonna piano #amateurs gonna amateur

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softness-and-shattering · 5 months ago

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Or just say christianity. If that's the religion you're referring to and are familiar with. There's no shame in sticking to talking about what you know, in fact that's usually most advisable. Unless you have decent working knowledge of multiple religions you can't begin to talk on behalf of "some religions" and certainly not "all religion".

All religions do not function on a basis of shame and coercion. I don't know if it is possible to hate "religion" and still respect all people because you're going to hate those you see as representative of religion, and be uncomfortable around those people, and make your discomfort their problem. It's at least extremely difficult to hold hate and respect together within yourself.

And I'm being davka at this point, but I'm also not so confident in my knowledge of all humankind so as to say "dont be a dick is a universal moral code". I don't know. It's likely there are people who hold certain values higher, like perhaps safety, or privacy. There's certainly vast ranges of definitions of "don't be a dick" across all kinds of cultural contexts. Do you make or avoid eye contact? Do you accept or reject the first offer of tea? We have these discussions on tumblr and you're just talking about different regions of the USA, maybe other English-speaking countries.

So if you see someone at pride who looks Different, wearing clothing or symbols you're not familiar with, praying publically in ways you're not accustomed to seeing, leave them be. Pride is for queer people. If you're harassing queer people for existing as there whole selves in ways you don't understand, you are the one who does not belong because you are making others unsafe. It does not matter what you have experienced in the name of (your specific) religion. That is your trauma to deal with on your time. You don't get to lash out at others because of it. If you think you're likely to panic, become triggered and lash out, don't go to pride. Don't put yourself in a position where you're likely to hurt people. You don't have that right.

reminder that visibly religious people belong at pride. that person wearing a hijab is not a threat to you. that person wearing tzitzit and a kippah is not a threat to you. someone simply wearing an item that is culturally or religiously important to them is not a threat to you. however, your aggression upon seeing a religious person at pride is a threat to them.

#might delete #comment

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icarusreading · 4 months ago

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The Virgin Suicides (Sofia Coppola)-5/5 Stars

!!Spoilers Ahead!! (this is much less formal than La Chimera because this is my favorite movie ever and i have many thoughts)

Cast-5/5

Kirsten Dunst and AJ Cook my loves. My angels. They are so good. I think something that stood out to me that i’m not 100% sure was intentional was that all do the Lisbon sisters looked old/mature for their age while the majority of the boys (besides Trip…asshole…) looked young for their age. I just find that and interesting detail, intentional or not.

Also Trip was far too well casted. He is SO someone that i would’ve crushed on and been heartbroken by. I’m biased though because the longest crush i ever had was a Trip Fontaine lookalike and that did not work out for me.

(and Danny Devito making a brief cameo in this movie made me giggle the first time i watched it)

Plot-5/5

I think what makes this movie so interesting is how the viewer sees the girls. As a viewer, we’re being put into the eyes of the boys who are so heavily infatuated with them. So, we actually barely know a thing about the girls. We don’t know if what they said is how they said it, if there really were signs of their impending doom, because we’re getting all our information from a secondhand source. Had this been written in Lux or Mary’s perspective, i guarantee we would see the characters in a different light. and I think that’s why this has stuck with me.

Overall, I love the plot. I watched this movie at a difficult time in my life and it felt equally as haunting as it did comforting. I think if anything it’s a commentary on the male gaze. These girls weren’t a mystery to be investigated, they were just girls. I know i keep talking about the book when this is a movie review but I feel it’s important to mention how in the book, the girls are rarely ever described as human. Even in the movie, one of the first lines describes them as “creatures”. This whole plot centers around them being these weird, almost god like beings to the world around them. Everyone admired, no one knew them.

Score-1000/5

I think i’m Airs #1 listener on Spotify. Like actually, the soundtrack for this movie is one of my most listened to albums. Again, i’m not super well versed in this topic but I think it matched the movie very well. It gave an almost melancholic air to the film without being typical ‘sad’ music.

Cinematography-5/5

I love Sofia Coppola’s style of filming. I really do feel like she achieved making this movie feel nostalgic, because that’s what the story was to the narrators. I remember there being a lot of color in this movie but at the same time i felt like it was almost dull, like a faded memory. That’s really what it felt like to me, although I don’t even know how to fully describe how that was accomplished. It’s really stunning.

I liked how the girls were almost always filmed in groups, except for Lux. Lux is the girl that the boys most focused on. She was like a sex symbol to them, and I feel like she always stood out even when she was being filmed with the other sisters. She’s the most vibrant part of the memory the boys are trying to piece together.

Ending-4.5/5

The only problem i have with the ending of this movie is that they didn’t stay true to how Mary died!!! That part of the book felt so important because the Lisbons were living with a daughter that they already viewed as a corpse and although it was a more detail, it was what gutted me most at the end. Although i don’t hate that they didn’t add that in the film.

I liked especially how they mentioned that Lux was the last to go because it did feel like more of a full ending. Lux was the girl the boys knew the most about, and even then it was very superficial. They were most infatuated with her and when she was gone it closed that chapter (even if it was reopened later in the boys lives)

Favorite quote/scene-

‘Obviously, Doctor, you’ve never been a thirteen year old girl’

She was right. I was a 13 year old girl once and it sucked. But honestly i think this whole scene just sets the tone for the story. No one listened to any of them. We never know what truly went on in that house.

Final thoughts-

What i find so incredibly haunting about this movie is that we will never know what the Lisbon sisters were like. We saw them through the eyes of boys who knew nothing about them, saw them as a mystery to solve. I watched and read the book when i was in a very dark place myself and i connected to it to a point where it will always stick with me. The Lisbon sisters were never, and will never, be understood by those in their world. And yet i think to people who connect with their hardships and tragic endings are the ones that know them the most intimately.

Also. I have to say. When the girls were communicating through morse code and the boys thought they were saying “help, send bobo” THEY WERE SPELLING POPO. AS IN POLICE. that detail makes me so upset because it was RIGHT THERE.

divider credit: @strangergraphics-archive

#icarus reviews: films #the virgin suicides #the lisbon sisters #jeffrey eugenides #sofia coppola #films #lux libson #mary lisbon #therese lisbon #cecelia lisbon #bonnie lisbon

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justwritedreams · 3 years ago

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The 9th Infantry Couple | Chanyeol

Sergeant Chanyeol x Sniper Reader, enemies to lovers au!

Word count: 4472 Genre: fluff, action, slight smut. Author: maari Warnings: mentions of fight, guns, bad guys and death (not the main characters), very suggestive but nothing too explicit I can't actually write smut so I'm trying sorry. Note: Not him only being my bias but also serving in the infantry, the same one that I wanted to serve in my country's army, coincidence? I don't think so. I don’t know nothing about the korean army i think you can tell but I made a research and the position of Chanyeol in the army it’s similar to Sergeant so we gonna stick with that, ok? Ok. Summary: You saved Chanyeol's life, your biggest enemy, and now you will charge. Next >>

Whoever came up with the idea of putting Chanyeol and Y/N on the same team must have done it on purpose. The two hated each other, the whole division knew that. In fact, the entire army knew. She thought he was cocky, whenever he had the opportunity to rub the patent in her face he did. While Chanyeol found her arrogant, it was clear that she was jealous of him and the only thing she did was doubt his ability to lead. Hatred was something they both couldn't explain the real reason for. They had already taken serious punishments for their behavior, they didn't reach physical aggressions, not for lack of opportunity, but because their colleagues separated them. But the choice was purely technical, Chanyeol was great at combat and Y/N was an excellent sniper. Perfect for the rescue mission of one of the commanders who was held hostage in enemy territory. And while they knew exactly that, it wasn't like they were going to stop arguing once they got to the right spot and started talking with Jin about the plan. Poor Jin, always between the two. “I'm saying, Park, let me in. I'm smaller than you two, I'll walk into any hole." she saw him roll his eyes for the thousandth time and he took a deep breath. "You just want an opportunity to show your skills." he said and she laughed humorlessly. As if he didn't want to do the same. "And you just want to show off your Sergeant rank." she complained and Chanyeol smiled teasingly. “The rank you want?” he asked and before she could reply he continued. "And it's sir to you, don't forget my position." he pointed to the uniform where the rank symbol was and she went still. “Do you understand, soldier?” Y/N swallowed what she really meant to tell. "Yes sir." she replied against her will, making his smile widen. She wanted to punch those perfect white teeth. “Are you guys finished so I can give my opinion?” Jin asked ironically and they agreed. “The Sergeant is right, Y/N, the mission is to enter and withdraw. You're a great sniper, we need a watchful eye out here. I cover for you.” Jin spoke to Chanyeol. “Then let's decide the codes. Eagle." he pointed at Y/N. "Raven." then to Jin. "And…" “How about cockroach?” Y/N spoke as she saw him point at himself. Chanyeol laughed wryly, trying not to fall into her little game even though it was a difficult task. She could irritate every last tip of his toenail. "Dolphin." he decided. “Check your communicators and equipment.” he ordered and the two did. Y/N prepared the equipment on the ground, her long gun that had been her partner lately and put on the infrared sight, plugged the communicator to her ear and lay on the ground, adjusting the weapon on her shoulder and looking through the scope. Alright. "Try not to hit me, it's the plan to return with no bodies to the base." Chanyeol spoke to her, watching she raise her head with a playful smile on her face. "Don't worry, as tempting as it is for me, I know how to control my feelings, sir." she spoke wryly and saw him roll his eyes but not respond. Chanyeol and Jin walked away, weapons ready and taking cautious steps as they surveyed the area of the abandoned shack. Y/N followed them looking through the scope, her instincts sharper and on alert. Although the intelligence work had been very successful in finding out where the commander was being held, she felt that something was wrong. The shack was exactly on the border between the two countries, right in the middle, a place that until then the South Korean army had ignored, the region was remote and difficult to access, but after satellite images showed unknown movement, the place was carefully observed by drones while commanders of other divisions were too busy with other problems. However, after realizing that there were too many orders arriving at that location, a team was assigned to look closely at the situation. The army engaged the enemy, casualties were high, and the commander was held hostage. And that was where the white horse division came in. The division was highly decorated and had high level soldiers, so it was chosen to rescue the hostage and return. No more deaths in that place apart from the enemies. “Do you see this, Raven?” Chanyeol said while looking at the wooden boxes outside the shack, there were many and they weren't there for nothing “Positive, Dolphin. If that's what I'm imagining, we've entered a minefield.” Jin responded and covered the Sergeant, seeing him approach and lower his weapon. “What are you seeing?” Y/N asked curiously, it was still quiet. Too quiet. Chanyeol took the knife from his belt and opened one of the boxes, his back being protected by Jin who was watching the place. “Armament. Heavy." Chanyeol replied and shook his head, that just could be a new base for terrorists. “AK47?” Y/N asked, this time taking a deep breath. "Not only that." Chanyeol opened another box, this time dark, and swallowed hard when he saw what was there. "They have enough bombs to destroy an entire city." The three soldiers were on alert. If they kept weapons and bombs, the plan was much bigger than they imagined. They hadn't taken the commander hostage just to look nice. "Let's hurry, Dolphin." Jin warned and looked back quickly, seeing the Sergeant nod. “Shoot anything that moves.” he ordered. “Do you see any movement in the shack, Eagle?” “Negative, sir. It’s dark, with no thermal signs.” she warned. If the information was correct, the hostage was underground and they would have a 9-minute time window to rescue and get out of there. "Let's go in." Chanyeol spoke and saw Jin next to him. They went in, it wasn't difficult to adapt to the darkness and they analyzed it well. The shack looked so far normal, almost empty except for a table and a few chairs, an old kitchen that had only recently been used. They headed for the stairs that would take them down to the basement, still on the alert in case they needed to clash, but the place was empty. They went to the door where the hostage was supposed to be and Chanyeol opened it, with Jin behind him and his gun pointed. Hearing a groan of pain, Chanyeol turned on the flashlight and saw the injured commander, sitting in a corner and tied up. "We found the hostage, extracting it now." Chanyeol warned and went to the commander, undoing the ropes and making him lean on his shoulder. He was injured and could barely stand up but he was alive. Y/N noticed a strange movement and cursed when she saw what it was. "You guys need to leave now, they're back." She warned, hearing Jin complain. "How? We still had two minutes.” Chanyeol spoke and they tried to hurry, but with the commander weak like that, it would take more than two minutes. "They knew." Y/N noticed the way they approached the shack with long strides and weapons at the ready. Chanyeol huffed and handed the commander over to Jin, who stared at him confused, but held the man back. "Get him out of here, I'll delay them." he spoke, although the soldier didn't agree it wasn't like he had time to argue, so he lifted the commander on his own shoulders after dropping the gun and carried him. “How many, Eagle?” Chanyeol asked and held tight to the gun, heading towards the door of the shack they had passed while Jin came out the other side. "Six." she reported, already with one in her sights. They got closer and closer to the shack. “I take care of three and you take care of the rest.” warned and she could almost smile when she heard that. She assumed her all-too-familiar sniper stance and when she saw Jin come out the other side with the hostage, she shot the first one. A clear shot to the head, which made the others run confused and shooting all over the place, hoping it would hit whoever shot it. But Y/N was at a strategic point and the uniform hid her very well between the bush and the fact that she was small compared to her colleagues, helped her even more. She found the second target, this time hitting the back of the head. However, the third target entered with the others and she momentarily lost him. Chanyeol prepared himself inside the shack, hiding as much as possible in the dark when he heard the gunshots. The first guy who came in, he hit the knife in his neck, which instantly fell like rotten fruit. The second pointed the gun at Chanyeol but he disarmed him before he fired, the noise of the shot echoing throughout the shack, the two had a hand fight and when Chanyeol noticed that a third came in ready to shoot, he used the man's body as a shield and the third fired. Killing his own partner. Chanyeol was quick to throw his body on top of the third man, this caused him to get distracted and Chanyeol kicked his gun away. The two fought hand to hand, Chanyeol noticed that he was a little smarter than the others, he had a knife and tried several times to hit Chanyeol, so he had some difficulty putting him to sleep, but he managed to give a choke and was about to break his neck when he heard a shot that shattered the window. He didn't feel the burning of the shot in any part of his body, so he turned around and saw a fourth man go down with a thud to the head. Chanyeol turned around, not letting go of the man and looked out the window, seeing Y/N get up from where she was with the gun and wave a goodbye, Jin was by her side with the hostage. He broke the neck of the man he was holding as he felt an odd sense of relief at having been saved by none other than Y/N. Now he owed her his life. And she would charge.

[...]

The return to base was quick. Chanyeol came out of the shack with some photos of the contents of the boxes to show the division commander, more evidence for the plan to protect that area from the terrorists. The commander was taken straight to the ambulance that was waiting for him at the base and then he would give his statement, a lot of precious information was with him and the Intelligence would need to know. Chanyeol, Jin and Y/N were released by the commander. Jin took the opportunity to check the equipment for the next mission and Chanyeol disappeared before Y/N even looked at him. She laughed but it wasn't like she was going to worry about him now, she'd have plenty of time to rub it in his face that if he was alive, it was thanks to her. So she decided to take a shower and eat something while still at the base, without thinking too much about what had happened that night. It was still dawn when she was heading back to the dorm and she passed a room, hearing a muffled groan of pain. She would have ignored it if it hadn't been for two reasons: she knew that gravelly husky tone all too well. And because he never, ever complained about pain. The Infantry demanded a lot from a soldier, because everything was fought on land, sometimes in the rain or scorching sun. Aside from the physical fights, there was a lot of heavy training, but Park had a bit of admiration for Y/N for never giving up or protesting. Even after he became a sergeant, he seemed determined to dedicate himself even more. So, curious, she looked through the half-open door and felt something that until then didn't know she could. Compassion. That's what motivated her to open the door as she watched Park try to touch his back, unsuccessfully.

“Want some help?” she asked aloud and watched as he returned his attention to her, still not turning to face her. "No, thank you." he responded by trying to take a deep breath as the position didn't help with the gaping cut in his skin. But Y/N didn't obey, on the contrary, she approached seeing that he had a first aid box on the bed. Without saying anything, she took a cotton ball and the liquid to clean the cut, during the process she just limited herself to paying attention to what was in her hand. "Take off your shirt." she ordered and glared at him, seeing him look at her with outrage. He bordered on offense. She even found it funny. “Hurry up, Park.” He huffed but did so, with some difficulty. Y/N didn't think it would feel a bit hot to see him rip off his black shirt, well, she knew he was strong but even though they were in the same room, she couldn't remember ever seeing him shirtless. And she wished she hadn't, because Park was defined. Very defined. The kind she couldn't take her eyes off his strong shoulders and well-shaped biceps. She shook her head as if trying to shake off the naughty thoughts she'd had, this was Park, she shouldn't think of him like that! And although it was only a momentary lapse, it didn't go unnoticed by Chanyeol who smirked proudly. "You're pretty stubborn." he commented and Y/N made him raise his arm, the quick contact between the skins generated another feeling, until then unknown to both. "You seem to forget." she spoke and bent down enough to run the cotton over the cut after analyzing it. "What?" Chanyeol turned his face to face her and noticed how close she was, in a way they had never been before. He could even get a better look at her face, the concentrated expression as she cleaned the wound was… reassuring. “That I was the first student in the first aid course.” Chanyeol gritted his teeth from the burning and saw that she was looking at him out of the corner of her eye, as if she was expecting him to make drama, like most soldiers. But he held back, as usual. "Now you're going to tell me that you always wanted to be a doctor." a smile played on her lips and Chanyeol didn't find her that annoying. She was even pretty, when she wasn't pissing him off. “Wrong, I wanted to be a dancer.” she admitted, straightening up again and discarding the cotton. "Ballet?" he asked, watching her pick up gauze and bandage. "Belly dance." she replied and saw his jaw drop, the expression of pure surprise. "Okay, you can laugh." she rolled her eyes as she covered the area with the gauze. "I won't laugh, I just wanted to understand." Chanyeol admitted, seeing her raise her eyebrow, silently asking what he meant. "How did you go from dancer to army soldier?" He noticed that she swallowed and the soft touch of the cut ceased, indicating that she was done. "You were lucky, the cut wasn't deep. I think it's just going to need some ointment for the next few days." she changed the subject and started packing the things in the box. Chanyeol waited and when he saw her leaving, he held her wrist lightly, making her stop. The touch gave off a heat they hadn't felt before, but it wasn't strange, quite the opposite. The way he had touched her was comforting. Y/N took a deep breath, she knew he wouldn't stop with the questions because she had given him freedom to ask them. "When your custody is in the hands of the government, you don't have many options." she shrugged, feeling Chanyeol's gaze analyze her deeply, so she sat beside him on the bed. That would be a long conversation. "I'm an orphan. I know absolutely nothing about my parents, I wasn't even adopted by any family and within the orphanages I had two options: become a criminal or a law enforcement officer. I ended up studying at a military school and well, I came to a stop here. Not too many adventures." She smiled, without any humor. Chanyeol looked thoughtful. He didn't know Y/N's story, didn't even remember the one time they'd talked alone. But now, he understood why she was so withdrawn and why she avoided getting attached to anyone. "And dancing was part of your life?" he asked in a tone Y/N hadn't even known Chanyeol had the ability to use. Tenderness. "It did. I used to watch dance videos out of pure curiosity because it takes a lot of training and discipline, those are things the army also needs, but I ended up falling in love with belly dancing. It takes a lot of skill." Chanyeol stared at her again, analyzing every inch of Y/N's face, as different as the times when they cursed each other or exchanged barbs, she looked vulnerable. It was as if he was the only person she'd ever opened up to, willing to share something so personal and intimate that no one else knew but him. "I like playing instruments, I used to think I was going to have a band when I was a teenager." he laughed, looking away. Y/N looked at him, he had a smile that was amused to remember something and for some reason that warmed her heart, not anger like she was used to. But because he hadn't made fun of her childhood dreams, he'd shared his own teenage daydreams. It was as if they were exchanging secrets. "And why did you join the army?" she asked, curious. She could even imagine Chanyeol as a vocalist or guitarist in a band. "My grandfather served in that same division." The phrase made Y/N understand everything. She wanted to have that kind of story, follow in the footsteps of a close relative and make him proud to have continued the legacy. But she couldn't because didn't even know where she came from. "He sure is very proud of you." she spoke and smiled, seeing he stared instantly. It was the first time they had looked into each other's eyes at such a short distance, in a welcoming silence. She had never really noticed Chanyeol's dark eyes but realized that they were lighter than they appeared, the chocolate brown was attractive, she could almost hear a voice calling her to swim in the immensity. Chanyeol noticed how Y/N's figure fit perfectly with the sparkle she carried in her eyes, of course the vulnerability was still there but he felt a companionship that he had only seen on missions, when she was forced to help him. But there, there was no obligation. It was spontaneous. He felt as if she was looking for a home like the one he had, an overwhelming urge to protect her then surged. They didn't realize it but the bodies drew together like magnets, the heat seeking closer and closer. All the disagreements or even anger they felt were far away, they didn't even remember them. Chanyeol lowered his gaze to her lips, too inviting, it was as if they asked to be kissed and he didn't repress it, he showed the desire he felt. Y/N didn't object, she could barely, not with him so close. It was ridiculous how her body trembled inside with his cologne, it wasn't the one he put on after his shower that she thought was overdone to get the attention of the few women in the base, it was his natural scent. Of sweat, gunpowder and danger. Was he supposed to be stupidly handsome like that even after a mission that almost took his life if it weren't for her? She bit down hard on her lower lip as she saw him brush their foreheads together, their noses touching softly sending a shiver through both of them. The moment their lips met, her eyes closed, giving in to the sensation. She felt Chanyeol's hungry and powerful lips grab hers in a single-tempo dance, slow and sensual, making her feel completely intoxicated. She reciprocated in the same way, feeling her hands tingle and almost create a will of their own to grab his shoulder. When they pulled apart millimeters, Chanyeol took Y/N's face with one hand and brought her back, just the feel of his long fingers made her give herself completely to the new kiss that started greedy, almost desperate. She threw her arms around his neck, bringing their bodies closer, feeling Chanyeol bring his hands to her waist as their tongues met. While they fit perfectly, Chanyeol forced his torso so that Y/N lay on the bed with him on top and he made her sigh, wrapped her legs around his waist. He raised one hand to the back of her neck, feeling the skin prickling under his fingers, and set the pace of the kiss. Slower than Y/N wanted, so she pulled away, breathless, and glared at him. "I'm the sergeant, beautiful." he smirked, seeing her lips completely red and swollen. "Your patent has no jurisdiction here, Park." she complained, feeling her body temperature rise considerably. He shook his head and brought his lips to the back of her neck, placing long wet kisses on her skin, making her squeeze his shoulder. "It is what you think." he replied, close to her ear. Y/N had to close her eyes to control the sounds her mouth wanted to make. "I hate you." she spoke and felt his teeth grip the skin near her collarbone. "It's mutual." he responded with anger and pleasure at the same time. Y/N felt his wide hands go to her uniform shirt and forcefully undo the buttons, he pulled away enough that she could lift her torso to discard the uniform across the room. The two looked at each other once more, the anger was there once more but now it was mixed with the desire of the heat of both bodies to get involved and suddenly everything seemed more desperate. When the lips met again, the rhythm was faster as the hands trailed and tried to remove the other pieces that hindered the process. Chanyeol lifted her onto his lap when he remembered the bedroom door was open, on the way to close it Y/N planted kisses on his neck as he gripped her thighs tightly to keep her steady. He tossed her onto the bed, seeing her smile with her teeth gripping her lower lip, his hurried hands making their way to her boots which were thrown in a corner along with her pants. When Chanyeol got back on top, covering her body with his own, she helped him get rid of his pants, Y/N taking it off with her own feet while receiving a dirty look from him. They kissed again, Y/N stopped her hands on his broad back feeling the warm skin between her palms while Chanyeol couldn't stop caressing her entire body, he wanted to memorize every inch from top to bottom. It wasn't until the last pieces of clothing were thrown away and their hot bodies fully met that they looked back into each other's eyes, while the rhythm they maintained took their breath away. The tired, heavy breaths meeting, making the place a lot hotter than it actually was. Chanyeol wanted to bury his face between Y/N's neck but couldn't look away, even though her hands were scratching his back in a painful way, it didn't matter. And Y/N had finally given in to the urge to surrender to the immensity of chocolate brown eyes, she found much more than she imagined there. She hated Park. She hated his wide and sometimes innocent smile, hated his childish and serious way at the same time, hated his rank and how the uniform made him so irresistible. She hated wanting him so much. It was there, fully surrendered to her deepest desires, that she realized that the hatred she felt was actually attraction. As Chanyeol lost himself in Y/N's inner heat, he felt not only his mind being taken over by every inch of her, but also his heart. He knew that the moment he truly looked at her, without the childish teasing they had, he would find her pure heart. That would make him fall in love as fast as ice melting in the hot sun. And now that was it. There it was not pure and simply carnal attraction, it went further. And when the two of them reached their climax together, her nails still digging into his skin and him moaning softly in her ear, they realized that the bond between them had grown stronger. Unique. They took a deep breath before pulling away, Chanyeol realized that Y/N was restless and about to get up so he hugged her around the waist, bringing her closer. She made no move to fight it, nor would she have the strength to do so, and she placed her hand on his chest, feeling it rise and fall rapidly. They stayed like that for a while until they caught their breath and normalized, Chanyeol made abstract designs on her skin as she shamelessly looked at his definite abdomen. "Thanks." Y/N felt the back of her neck prickling as she heard his husky voice so close but she stared at him with a raised eyebrow. "For this?" she looked suggestively at the embracing bodies, drawing a laugh from him. "Also." he grinned and brought his free hand to the back of his head, making his biceps more evident and drawing Y/N's attention. "For saving me today." It was her turn to smile. "It wasn’t a big deal." she shrugged and propped herself up on her elbow to bring her face closer to his. "I think the only person who should shoot you is me, sir." she smiled teasingly and he looked at her sideways. "You really wish you were that lucky." Chanyeol used his strength and the fact that his body was twice as wide as hers to get her to lie down again. "But I still haven't forgotten all your provocations." He raised his eyebrows and smiled at her. "You can punish me any time you like, Sergeant."

#exowritersnet #i just miss Chanyeol 🥺#and i'm so proud of him that's it #chanyeol x you #chanyeol x reader #chanyeol imagine #chanyeol scenario #chanyeol #chanyeol scenarios #chanyeol imagines #exo fluff #exo imagine #exo scenarios #exo #exo imagines #exo scenario #soldier!au #maari

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cassandrasimplex · 2 years ago

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This would have changed so much for me in grade school.

I have what was initially diagnosed as a "math-related learning disability" and would later be known as dyscalculia. It has several symptoms, like difficulty estimating distances and amounts, not understanding how long it takes to do things or how much time is passing, and other things that basically come down to "the brain keeping track of quantities", but the primary symptom is that I can't. fucking. do. arithmetic.

My father fought for years to keep me from saying, "I hate math." Sure, I'd sit down at the kitchen table, look at my math homework, break into tears, and often throw up from stress. (This is "math anxiety", which is its own separate thing anyone can develop if they experience enough trauma related to doing math, but whoo boy is dyscalculia one very certain way to develop it!) Dad insisted that I hate arithmetic, not "math", and would only allow me to complain if I were specific about that.

We'd also play math games for fun, except Dad called them "logic games" and would try to hide the math from me until the very end. Weekend mornings, he'd crack open a Martin Gardner or Douglas Hofstadter book and pick a "puzzle" for us to work together. We'd talk it over a bit, identify important parts of the puzzle, and then he'd have me draw a picture to represent the logic I was applying.

What Dad didn't tell me was that he, someone whose job regularly required him to do things like calculate orbital mechanics, had grown up with the same problem I was struggling with. He kept promising me that all the hard part came first, and that if I could just make it to higher forms of mathematics, I'd discover there was less and less arithmetic and more and more "logic puzzles". He'd replace all the numbers in my math homework with letters for me, then walk me through "putting the numbers back in" one at a time when there was nothing else left to do.

So even in very early grades, if I saw a problem like

6 ÷ 3

We'd first sign a letter to the answer:

6 ÷ 3 = y

Dad would have me ask, "is 6 even or odd"? It's even, so my problem would change to

2x ÷ 3 = y

Then he'd ask me for 6 ÷ 2 and we'd make a note off to the side that x = 3.

You might think this is where we'd put the 3 in for x in "2x", but Dad was focused on using fewer numbers, not more. So we'd end up with

2x ÷ x = y

since if x = 3, all xs are 3s and all 3s can be replaced with xs.

"But if you're multiplying by something, and then you divide by the same thing, all you've got is what you started with before you multiplied!"

That's right, Dad would say, and he'd cross out both xs to leave us with

2 = y

"...and there's your answer."

This meant writing approximately three billion and twelve (but I'm bad at estimating) steps nobody else in second grade had to write down -- but it also meant I made fewer mistakes and passed my math tests.

It also gave me a way to start engaged with the logic behind mathematics when the symbolic notation was working hard to "hide" the part I was good at and force me to confront, first thing, only the parts I'm neurologically unfit for.

Symbolic notation is great, don't misunderstand me. It's a fantastic kind of lossless compression, a shorthand in which everything has a highly specific, precise meaning. It's SO much more difficult to write everything out in words instead. Ask me how I know.

Don't bother; I'll tell you anyway. I know because that's how Dad would have me write down how I was working the math pr- uh, logic puzzles we did together. And a decade plus later, when I was volunteering as a math tutor at community college to work with other students who had math learning disabilities, I'd ask them to do the same thing.

Sure, it takes six hundred and fifty-two times as long (curse you, estimation!) as just doing the problem once. But it actually doesn't take longer than doing the problem WRONG twelve times, getting twelve different answers, not knowing whether the right answer is among them at all (let alone which one it might be), getting frustrated, taking "a break" and getting up to do something else, coming back to it e next morning and trying again only to get a thirteenth answer of unknown quality, throwing the whole paper into the trash (and considering setting it on fire), and then nothing else because you can't bring yourself to prioritize that task again until class time, when you try to "just quickly do it to have something to turn in" and making a zero for something you handed in instead of something you didn't, further permanently centering your belief that you're "just bad at math".

So eventually, I learned I could go the long route, get an answer I could trust, actually learn whatever skill the homework was trying to teach, and get credit for my work... or I could spin my wheels in the mud for roughly equal hours producing nothing, learning nothing, and failing the class by way of failing every single assignment I was given. While crying and throwing up.

And the other students I tutored in college learned the same thing. (They all passed. They ALL passed. You have NO IDEA how proud I am of that, for myself and for them!)

Turns out, "math" is just a way of taking about logic in shorthand. But it's the logic that counts most, not the shorthand! And when there's a complete disconnect between the symbolic notation and the logic it represents, some people who have no trouble at all with mathematical logic are going to fail because their brains get lost in the symbols. When your brain gets left behind by the symbols, you can't learn the logic.

I have yet to meet anyone who's just innately "bad at math". Y'all. I need you to read that again. Three times. Four times, if your reflexive response is "Bullshit, I'M bad at math." I have yet to meet anyone who is innately bad at math, and I say that as someone who is neurologically incapable of adding one and one reliably. I've met people with math anxiety (SO MANY people with math anxiety) and people with low frustration tolerance and lots of other people with dyscalculia. I've met people bad at memorizing and people with less-common learning styles whose brains can't handle learning something intimidating at the same time they're struggling to translate from, say, spoken information to a visual or tactile-kinesthetic leaning style.

But "bad at math"? Nope. Never yet. Not even me.

So why am I going off about dyscalculia on a post about Inuit numerals?

Because this is symbolic notation with the logic baked right in.

This is symbolic notation that TEACHES the logic of arithmetic rather than serving to obscure it.

This is notation that represents the logic clearly to both visual and tactile-kinesthetic learners.

Look at that long division. LOOK AT IT.

Actually, look at the subtraction and addition examples first. Then look at the long division. If the first two examples make great sense, but the long division makes your head swim, I'm going to ask you to consider something: that you don't really understand the logic behind long division as well as you think you do. Not as well as you understand the logic behind addition and subtraction.

I mean, you understand it will enough to perform it. Probably. Although lbr, when was the last time you had to write out a long division problem and work it by hand? You probably learned to manipulate the symbols, passed that grade, and have used a calculator for anything remotely like long division ever since the school system decided you no longer needed "practice" at it.

But you might not have learned it DEEPLY. You might not have learned all it has to say about the way we count, about the way the decimal system works and about how other systems of counting could work instead. Which is fine, in a way, for adults; we get very entrenched in our hatred for math and our resentment that it can benefit us to learn more about it, to truly understand it. We have other tools we rely on and maybe the idea of going back and re-learning how to do long division makes our teeth grind. Because long division sucks, right?

Most of us hate long division, if we're honest.

Unless we had fathers, teachers, tutors, mentors, or friends who wouldn't take "I hate math" for an answer and demanded we separate hatred of calculation from hatred of logic. Or just being bad at calculation from being "bad at math".

But the thing I learned as a tutor is that everyone who hates math, everyone who believes they're bad at math, they got left behind at some point. They missed one day of class when the logic of something like long division was being taught, and when they got back, they memorized how to go through the steps, but they stopped really grokking the logic in fullness. And after that, anything else that built on that skill that got left behind will also be something they have to just memorize, not understand.

More than half my job as a tutor was "rewinding" to whatever early skill I could find that the student couldn't explain and re-teaching that -- and then just getting the hell out of their way as everything else they'd memorized that built on that fell into place as true understanding. So fast. SO FAST. It's like watching a video of a jigsaw puzzle assembling itself at triple speed.

I had to pause up there at "more than half my job" to reconsider the phrase, because more than half my job was also rebuilding lost confidence to battle math anxiety, but you know... in reality, fixing those left-behind points was a huge part of that confidence-building, because that's the point when the student fully realizes that HOW THEY WERE TAUGHT had more to do with their poor performance in math classes than anything else, including dyscalculia. So no, it stands -- even if fixing the left-behind points was less than half the job directly, it's also a critical step in doing the other major task of restoring confidence.

And ever since then, I get SO angry about math education sometimes, because I know from my own experiences that even a "hey presto, you're permanently Bad At Arithmetic Forever!" learning durability that can't be changed isn't enough to make anyone actually, permanently and forever bad-at-math. And I know from my father's experience that even that kind of leaning disability isn't, all on its own, enough to keep someone from being very successful in an EXTREMELY math-centric career for fifty years. And loving it! Truly enjoying it! And I know from the experiences of students I've tutored, as well as my own, that the logic of math is one long, unbroken chain (well, actually it branches into several later on) where any one link being weak, especially an early one, can completely wreck a person's ability to enjoy or succeed at math for multiple decades afterward, and that it's very easy for one link of that logic to just kind of fail to form in a way that goes unnoticed, again for multiple decades.

Some of the people I tutored were retirees. Some of them were great-grandparents. You get lots of older people returning to community colleges after decades of believing themselves "bad at math". I saw how angry THEY got when they realized that something like learning how to cancel fractions without understanding WHY to cancel fractions had been not just holding them back in all math that followed but wrecking their self-image and giving them panic attacks for longer than I, at that point, had been alive. Their rage became mine.

So when I say that this is important. When I say that this visual representation of arithmetic is important.

I wouldn't want to try to do calculus in this system. It's not going to mesh well with established notation. I definitely wouldn't want to use it in any algebra that uses x, y, m, n, w, and v as common variables. I wouldn't want to try to use it in exponential notation. Writing something like "10^5" would be a nightmare to keep legible with numerals based in part on "^" as a number instead of an operand! But for teaching arithmetic itself? This isn't just alternate notation for numbers, it's a METHOD. Just like the sign you use for long division. Just like using sigma for sums. It's numeric representation that also encapsulates logic like an operand does. Squeeze this in between "counting on the number line" (already a visual representation of logic that students discard as soon as they've mastered it) and solving expressions like "7 + 3” and fewer students get left behind so early they never recover from it.

So like. It's important. It's important for reasons already stated, like its cultural significance. It's important because it contains a lesson about how cultures oppressed nearly to extinction matter and have ideas of value, ones they came up with long ago, that are still useful but end up ignored thanks to racism and xenophobia.

But like also. Get this the fuck into classrooms, I beg us all. THIS IS A GIFT. Billions, literally billions, of people could benefit from this. It isn't just a cultural curiosity -- and I feel like there's still some lingering patronizing going on here: aw, isn't it cute what these Inuit kids came up with, see how smart other cultures can STOP THAT. This is vital, it is modern, IT. IS. NEEDED. This is research into the advancement of mathematics as a field that must be taught before it can be practiced.

In the remote Arctic almost 30 years ago, a group of Inuit middle school students and their teacher invented the Western Hemisphere’s first new number system in more than a century. The “Kaktovik numerals,” named after the Alaskan village where they were created, looked utterly different from decimal system numerals and functioned differently, too. But they were uniquely suited for quick, visual arithmetic using the traditional Inuit oral counting system, and they swiftly spread throughout the region. Now, with support from Silicon Valley, they will soon be available on smartphones and computers—creating a bridge for the Kaktovik numerals to cross into the digital realm.

Today’s numerical world is dominated by the Hindu-Arabic decimal system. This system, adopted by almost every society, is what many people think of as “numbers”—values expressed in a written form using the digits 0 through 9. But meaningful alternatives exist, and they are as varied as the cultures they belong to.

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