#i think about it multiple times a week that's not even hyperbole

[biitchcakes]

ＳＰＲＩＮＧ ＩＮＴＯ ＳＵＭＭＥＲ ＧＡＬＡ： ＨＥＲＯＳ Ｖ． ＶＩＬＬＡＩＮＳ ‘23 by @spybiote

is this the most Met Gala look out there? no. is it even the most Met Gala look Jess herself has? also no. BUT this look has lived rent free in my skull since 2012, there is no WAY I'm not using this iconic outfit pls (playing cards and all).

tagging (sorry if this is another time you've been tagged !! - i'm sure there will be at least one of you asfkdlgf ) : @revenantinflames @cxptmarvel @vigilantebullshit @overclocks @webheadedhero @sxrgeantbarnes @h-osborn @toxintouches @felonkitty @msmvrel + whoever sees this and wants to do it !!

[violet-jessop]

i had my first therapy session today.

90 minutes with a psychologist who i'm booked to see once a week for the next 5 weeks.

a friend asked me if i was nervous last night when i told her, and i had to think on it. i found i wasn't. it was strange because logically i think i should have been, but i couldn't muster any real feelings about it. i felt indifferent. resigned.

i know that's probably not what she wanted to hear, but i think lying in this instance would have just given her false hope.

to get to this point has been such a shit show.

self harming since a decade ago this year, suicidal on and off for at least for the last eight. tried to seek help in 2019 only to get put on 10 times the starting dose of some random antidepressant and told to fuck off with no follow up and automatically renewing prescriptions. stopped taking those after a year or so with no real improvement. things have just steadily declined.

last year was okay, probably the most okay i've felt for an extended period since 2014. but now it's almost worse because i saw it could be okay, and now it's not again.

finding a psych that met my needs was near on impossible. my only two criteria were trans (or just a queer person who i could feel like less of a freak with) and able to deal with SI - and that left me with one option via telehealth. booked in to do a 15 minute consultation with her she was 30 minutes late to the session, so i assumed i'd been forgotten. then when she eventually called she didn't even acknowledge it.

getting the mental health care plan from my GP was so degrading. i went to a different doc because i didn't trust the last guy who is just so happy to write prescriptions. but the new guy was no better. clearly thought i didn't need any of this, wrote maybe 2 lines on the mhcp documents, left most of it blank, didn't even bother to sign it. said he performed the k10 which he didn't. straight up wrote that i seemed fine based on "good eye contact and engages well". and he never even sent it to the identity clinic, i had to chase him to obtain a copy so i could send it off myself.

and today rolls around. we have our session. what was supposed to cost me 134 out of pocket cost me 250 unexpectedly, so after the appointment they had to call me several times because my account had insufficient funds because i only had enough for what they'd told me it would cost.

in the session she misgendered me. she said "as a woman with autism. oh, i assume you're she/her right?". which was wild as a psych who works for the "identity clinic" - where i had to fill in a million forms that included my pronouns in multiple places. where i had sent an inquiry to find out if they had anyone on staff who would suit a non-binary person with SI. and then the SI, where i mentioned it as something i'd like to work through, and she pretty much told me if i talk about that sort of stuff in a non-joking way she'll have to make sure i'm institutionalised. so i had to play it off as a joke. as hyperbole. the two things, such basic things i thought. so what am i here for again? is what's wrong with me so taboo i can't even pay a medical professional $250 to let me speak about it? is my soul so putrid? if anyone ever tries to force me into inpatient i'll put on a pine overcoat as soon as possible, that's not up for debate.

so we talked about other things, and i cried in front of another person for the first time in ages and it wasn't even cathartic it was just for the shame of admitting my failings out loud. and she told me maybe my anxiety is just autistic meltdown which i know isn't right, i know the difference. she walked me through diaphragmatic breathing like i was 5. she recommended i buy airpods and try burlesque. it reminded me of Jo telling me i should try drumming circles around the time of my first attempt.

so i suppose i was right in feeling indifferent. i had enough hope left to try, but not enough to be hopeful. i really don't have the energy to go through this all again. time is ticking down, 128 weeks at best. i suppose i'll give her another two sessions and see. but if she doesn't work out i think that's me done. how many times am i expected to try? it was already mortifying enough. i know Tal will be angry, but i just don't have it in me to keep doing this over and over. every failed attempt at getting better just adds more weight, reaffirms what i already suspected.

and the statistics of it. either i've encountered consistently bad medical practitioners OR the problem lies with me. at this point statistically it has to be me, there's just been too many failings. especially when i see so many friends drive the same road without issue. yet i keep hitting roadblock after roadblock. at what point do i just acknowledge that i'm a bad driver? maybe it's been roadblock after roadblock because there's nothing else, there is no good ending. i shouldn't be on the road to begin with.

[4denthusiast]

Another half-baked weird world idea: what if the entire ecosystem and economy were based on pyramid schemes? No sunlight, no ultimate first producer, just people/organisms extracting resources from each other all the way down.

Obviously the world has to be infinite in order for this to work, but beyond that, if there's a limit to how fast resources can be transferred, Euclidean space won't do. The amount of space and resources within a certain distance must increase exponentially with distance, which is what you get with hyperbolic space, so let's go with the world being a hyperbolic plane.

Each region has one upline and multiple downlines. It transfers useful resources to its upline, and waste to its downlines. The amount of resources contained in each region increases because it has more downlines than uplines, and this can continue indefinitely because the world is infinite.

If everyone cooperated, this would be enough for it to work, but such a situation isn't particularly stable. Which direction counts as upline or downline is basically arbitrary, and there's nothing to stop any one region from just refusing to provide resources to its upline. I have two different ways around this issue.

#1, each one of the blocks in the grid shown starts out identical, so the infinite world is fully populated with people from the start. Since each block is identical, they know that at least initially, their downlines will behave the same way as them, so they superrationally choose to cooperate. The initial symmetry gets broken somewhat over time, as each block can treat its left and right downlines differently, then they may treat their four downlines differently in response, and so on. I find this a little unsatisfying since it's still pretty unstable and the world has to have some finite start time with people already in it, but it gets points for being interestingly weird.

#2, something about the world inherently breaks the symmetry, and the upline and downline directions are actually different in such a way that it is significantly easier to defeat someone who is downline of your position. Civilizations threaten their downlines into providing tribute, and predators use this advantage to kill the creatures in their downlines and eat them.

I think this version allows the world to develop more naturally. If it starts out with a uniform distribution of resources, and life emerges somewhere, then it starts to spread in all directions, initially consuming the primordial resources, but shifting as the frontier moves on to consuming other living things instead. Because of the natural advantage to attacking in a downline direction, the developing organisms do this preferentially, concentrating resources even while they're used up, so they never actually run out. A lot of the time the organisms left behind by the frontier likely wouldn't develop these behaviours quickly enough to avoid the regions they're in becoming desolate, but so long as it develops somewhere, the pyramid-scheme lifestyle could still come to cover arbitrarily large regions over time. Because of the exponential size of hyperbolic space, the majority of life at any time would be near the frontier, but from the perspective of something (or later, someone) living far away from it, the frontier may as well not exist.

There are probably loads more implications I haven't thought of, but the economy in such a world would be very odd at least. No resources can really be rare, except by being difficult to transport, because it's always possible to increase their concentration by moving them upline. Since the world is infinite and innovations, both biological and technological, can spread exponentially, the overall rate of innovation would be extremely fast. With no plants, there wouldn't be much in the way of farming, except perhaps things like mushrooms to turn rotten things into something edible (since if every bit of some kind of food rots within a few weeks, no amount of moving it around is going to stop you running out). The usual arguments against mushrooms as a major food source don't apply, because of the pyramid scheme thing. Similarly, there could be predators as major livestock. Just get your downline to deliver their livestock to you so you have twice as many, then feed one half to the other half, and keep doing this every time they get hungry. This situation is of course terrible for infectious disease, but having evolved in this world they probably have robust immune systems. There could be sewers with no outlets, just delivering waste forever to the downline to effectively reduce the amount. Anything manufactured, stable and transportable would only need an extremely tiny fraction of people to actually ever make it, maybe even to the point where it's only the person who invented the thing making a few copies that are then passed around forever. Plus of course money wouldn't really work, because you could get an unlimited amount of it very easily. Maybe it would have to be labelled with the height or something, so money from downline of your location is worth less than local money, and money from upline is worth more. If you successfully set up the exchange rates right, it might even be possible for all this to work out as a stable capitalist economy, without having to forcibly extract tribute from anyone. I don't know enough about exchange rates to tell whether that would actually work though.

I think a story set in such a world that never explicitly explains the premise could be kind of funny for the deadpan turtles-all-the-way-down-ness. Everything anyone needs is just delivered from downhill (calling it "downline" would spoil it too much), so it looks like the people downhill are being cruelly oppressed, but actually it turns out they're just as rich as the people here, as are the people below them, and so on. Nobody is actually being oppressed, they just use transportation in place of actually making stuff.

[getitoffyourchestofficial]

hi this is a lot im sorry. i love to say words and dump shit that upsets me with no real correlation. my bad /gen (genuine) (idk if you know tone indicators im sorry ough)

you dont really Have to cook up a proper response to this i just need to put it somewhere where i wont immediately get piles of advice that i cant use. i know its well-meaning but ultimately the whole situation is ou of anyones control

(also putting this 🎪 here so i can try to find it later)

im stuck in a sisyphean nightmare of a weekly cycle: i have a good day -> my mood skyrockets -> i have a bad day -> my mood plummets -> rinse and repeat. at this point i think it might be a mental condition bc something doesnt even really have to Ruin My Day, i just have to face a minor inconvenience and then suddenly im all doom-and-gloom depression for 3-5 business days before springing back up as if nothing ever happened to do it all again. my mom says i might have bpd or bipolar disorder (i always get the two confused) because she has it and we just havent seen anyone about it, mostly because we dont have the money to see any doctors most of the time. i also kinda dont wanna have either of them? not in like an asshole way but in a these-people-face-stigma-that-i-dont-know-if-i-can-emotionally-handle way. in a im already queer and fat and poor and disabled in multipled ways and overall unsavory to neurotypicals/cishets/Default Settings way. yknow

todays inciting incident was a shitty shitty halloween carnival that didnt even have the thing i was excited for, didnt have any food, had lines that were miles long (hyperbole), was too hot, and i only got 8 shitty halloween things from -- half of which were lollipops, with half of those just being the same 2 flavors but Again. we stayed for 2 hours before my mom decided she didnt wanna be out of the house anymore as usual. i cant be too mad at her because shes mentally ill in the direction of "i dont want to go anywhere because my anxiety will spike" but unfortunately im mentally ill in the direction of "if i cannot leave the house to Do Things at my own pace at least once a week i will fall into a deep depression" so we clash pretty bad most of the time. this was also following multiple minor inconveniences mind you. and was also trailed by multiple minor inconveniences. it just has not gone well. this halloween is just shaping up to suck bc i was supposed to have a whole party but we had money issues so it had to be cut down to just 2 people for a sleepover, then one of them went out to see his grandma in another state and the other is apparently in the fucking hospital right now??? at least according to his posts. and i cant blame them for these either! schedules conflict and sometimes you go to the Fuckig Hosital. its out of anyones control but it still feels like shit. so its looking like my only shot at having any fun this halloween is the trunk-or-treat at my school and idk if im even allowed to go bc i had to drop out for mental health reasons and they told me i wasnt allowed on school grounds anymore. idk if that applies here. which btw. way to make a depressed kid feel worse. you can NEVER come to this high school again or we'll ARREST YOU. fuckin bullshit. BUT thats off topic the synopsis is that this halloween sucks so far and i dont really expect it to get better which extra sucks bc im turning 18 next year and i dont wanna let this be the last hurrah for my number one favorite holiday. i cant host fucking parties for my friends after then. im gonna be busy trying to fuck off to the other end of the country. i wont have TIME for it. idk. it sucks. this sucks. fuck art and fuck you /ref (reference) /nbh (nobody here)

Ik you don't want advice for this so I'll just put it on the blog.

And idk if you want it but here's a tea

☕

[therubymuse]

Where The Fuck Have You Been?

When I realize that in the last year and a half I’ve written maybe four, maybe less, bodies of words, I feel like shit. No, it’s not all my fault, and no shame doesn’t help things, but I feel like shit anyway. I have been oscillating between enjoying my time on social media, connecting with other queer people and having constructive discussions on our oppression, and dreading opening the apps, knowing that if I dare show my face on a public post or comment there’s a very good chance some asshole will pop up and call me a man in a dress. It’s like existential nightmare whack-a -mole, and the powers in charge of these spaces don’t care to clean them up, because hostility and engagement drives clicks and advertising revenue, regardless of how atrocious the content is. 

So when I say it’s been hard to write recently, what I mean is there’s been a two ton millstone around my neck for over a year keeping me from the keys. And the owners of that millstone no doubt have names and addresses. 

You would think it would be easy to just turn it off and go touch grass, but there are multiple levels to this anguish, not all of them based in the exaggerated hyperbole I see daily. Under the cover of Internet clowns and bigots half of whom could be Russian conspirators, there is actual harm being done. Trans people are losing their right to health care, to hormones, to bathrooms, and to exist. I could sit here all morning regaling you with the latest on these attacks. Because like a train wreck, I can’t look away. It’s actually even more anguish to try to ignore it. 

Amid the chorus of “don’t worry about it, it can’t happen here” I find myself wondering how I’m going to safely visit my brother next summer. He lives in Edmonton, and this week, the UCP of Alberta will be meeting to hammer out legislative goals for the party. One that’s being pushed rather loudly is to ban all trans women from “biologically female” spaces. So not only bathrooms and changerooms, but shelters, gyms, and any other “female” spaces, because of the baseless accusation that we are somehow a threat to cisgender women. And there’s nothing conservatives love more than a baseless accusation. It’s very effective at distracting the electorate from the awful shit they’re doing to the people of the province. 

However, because of this, I’m weighing whether or not it’s safe for me and my partner to visit him at all. I am an anxious person and I need public washrooms, and my only option will be to use the mens’ facilities, where I’m at greater risk of assault, abuse, or harm. So when stuff like this appears at your door, how do you go touch grass? Do I just shut off the emotional response to being discriminated against entirely and put on a happy face so y’all keep seeing my Facebook posts? Every year I think, Americans are insane, and that level of discrimination and hate can’t happen here, right? Not in the same Canada I grew up in that valued multiculturalism, or legalized gay marriage twenty years ago. But it is here, now, and it continues to grow into a force to cause considerable harm to me and those I care about. British Columbia has earned a temporary reprieve from the onslaught of trans culture war bullshit by electing, by a hair, an NDP government that has supported trans people and expanded our access to healthcare. But, it’s a fragile majority, with no margin for error, and the rabid dogs of our conservative movement are at the door and willing to pull the government down the first chance they get so they can start attacking trans kids, adults, and our rights. A solid 43% of citizens who voted either want that to happen, or don’t care what happens to us. And that’s a lot of people. Out beyond the Lower Mainland there is a sea of blue ridings, so fuck Alberta, am I even safe to travel in my own province? I’m not even sure. I can feel the algorithm sucking me back into fights and arguments with these people based on the content it drops into my feed. And I really do try to help myself, because I’m aware that feeding those arguments will do nothing. Nobody is having those discussions to have their minds changed, they’re doing it cause they’re finally allowed to be open about their bigotry and hatred. And arguing with them, or reporting their hate speech and actions, does nothing. My voice and my safety is not as important as next quarter’s profits and growth at Facebook.

So, to me, there is no great mystery about where my apathy and lack of energy comes from. It’s from being constantly on the defensive, constantly vigilant in public spaces, and always steeling myself for the next piece of awful news before it arrives so it doesn’t shatter me. Is this what it means to be resilient? To be strong? Why is it that the reward for surviving another day in our late capitalist hellscape is simply another day, and not my safety or my peace? Cisgender women experience a lot of the same emotional trauma that I face, but they still have washrooms to shit in and changerooms to change in. Soon, in Alberta, trans women might have neither. And it’s beginning to feel like inevitably, neither will I. My life has been made immeasurably better for being transgender. I was not a happy person trying to live life as something I wasn’t. And I’m grateful there were systems and healthcare in place to help me become who I really was. That access is being stolen from our trans siblings in red states down south seemingly every other week. And the conservative-aligned powers that be here in Canada want to see the same happen here. When I am made to disappear, I will be gone for good. Without rights, without hormones, and without health care or my identity that I fought decades to finally discover? There will be nothing left of me. Being trans is such a big part of my life because your gender and your sexual orientation makes up so much of the basis of our existence, you’re just not made to feel like that’s unusual if you’re cisgender and heterosexual. So if these forces succeed in destroying what remains of us, they will destroy me too. There are so many trans women out there that feel the same way, and so many we haven’t heard of that we have lost to suicide and violence that our systems and media don’t care enough to say anything about. Some of us will be resilient enough to outlast the next couple decades, but some of us won’t be. And that’s never a choice we should have to make. 

So that’s why you haven’t heard from me. This takes up so much space in my head on a daily basis that I’m losing my ability to do or think about much else, and my art and hobbies feel pointless, like they’re just there to kill time, or that increasingly, they could just be replaced by an AI. The words I pour into my laptop may not even mean anything anymore when they’re simply drowned out by automated content. 

My raison d’être is under constant attack. And I’m torn. Some parts of me are like fuck these people, fuck everyone, make art, be happy, do it while you can. And other parts are like oh my god how are we going to even survive the next twenty years. If I pay too close attention it consumes me, and if I pay not enough, I get scared. A lot of these words are words that will resonate with other trans people, my community and siblings. I think we all feel it in some way or another, to a greater or less extent. The existential dread of living in a time of such uncertainty, and increasingly, violence. Maybe there’s still time, but we’re cutting it awfully close. 

[365sylviaplath]

happy 6th birthday to Sweetener by Ariana Grande x my alchemical emotional journey

the masterpiece she is. one of my favorite albums of all time. telling my Sweetener Story.

brief astro moment- midnight chart for sweetener. i could say a lot here but mostly living for the moon jupiter conjunction in scorpio harshly squaring mercury in leo while also trining neptune in pisces. i think everything i'm about to say is a testament to that- expressing pain, sharing feelings hard to process, transmuting/alchemizing, romanticizing, hyperbole. plus libra venus for pretty packaging.

i enter the space first and foremost as a top 0.1% fan of ariana grande (as of 2023, we'll see how i fare this year). i stand here firmly. i also believe that some may say she has some "more influential" albums, some songs might be ""better"" (whatever that may mean), so on and so forth. this isn't the point. this is strictly a love letter to sweetener. not an album review, not lyrical analysis, just from the spirit.

summer 2018. summer of In My Feelings - Drake, Nobody - Mitski, The Middle - Zedd, I Like It - Cardi B/J Balvin, One Kiss - Calvin Harris/Dua Lipa, Make Me Feel - Janelle Monáe etc etc. grounding us all in collective memory. other notables: Meghan and Harry royal wedding, Anthony Bourdain's passing, Aretha Franklin's passing, Black Panther, A Star Is Born, Crazy Rich Asians, netflix Queer Eye reboot, Beychella, i googled an article of 2018 pop culture moments so i am surely forgetting essential lore but we will have to move on

the story truly begins with the release of sweetener's first single "no tears left to cry" on april 20, 2018. hours into taurus season 2018, if anyone was counting. a little about me and where i was on april 20th, 2018.....

finishing the spring semester of my 3rd year of college

preparing to start my 2nd of 3 co-ops (akin to an internship, for the uninitiated) for the 6 months of late summer/fall 2018

feeling an enormous internal pressure to have a substantial creative outlet

Sad (multiple reasons)

spring 2018 semester, i went a bit rogue with my coursework and i created one mega final project that connected every class i took that had a fairly open-ended final paper/project. i did a geographical, sociological, historical, and political analysis of graffiti vs street art (what's permitted, what belongs to each, styles, criminalization, media representation) in new york city. i explored so many angles and talked about so much material and learned and created on repeat for WEEKS and then april 20th hit and i had to turn everything in in the next few days. it would all be over. peak of my creative agony and i was also engaged in an emotional cold war that would go on to affect me for Years after. i certainly had several tears left to cry. as i had not cried any of them just yet and wouldn't for a while.

while coping with this creative blockage, i turned my attention toward having more agency in my dating life. i was distinctly unhappy with how my romantic affairs had been going, deep in shame and insecurity, and wanted to meet people and figure out what my deal was. i saw a tiktok a few months ago that posited that many of our crushes/situationships are actually people who should've been our creative partners, we just don't always have the language to express this (or even identify ourselves as artists). this framing opened the world to me - not just this statement itself, but drawing this link between flirty/sexual energy and creativity really opened my eyes. i could tell there was a distinct connection. spring/summer of 2018, it was emotional agony, but i was exploring and creating as i could. some painting first dates, always punctuated with "i'm not really an artist but this could be fun!" it was humble, but it was hugely liberating, in its own way.

Other important Sweetener dates:

"the light is coming", ft. Nicki Minaj, was released on June 20, 2018 as promo with pre-orders - released following my yearly emotional cold war of a family vacation (you may be sensing a theme here...... repression....).

"god is a woman", the album's second single, released on July 13, 2018 - the end of one of my first weeks of co-op. i was such a professional mess, i had too many managers in that role, lots of personalities to learn, lots of material to synthesize quickly. would later become The female empowerment work experience of my young life. outside of work, i was bravely embarking on a new relationship while the emotional cold war was at its peak. multi-layer mess.

the full album was released Friday August 17, 2018 - the week before that year's fall RA training (yearly ego death), i was also moving in to what would be my absolute favorite apartment of college

"breathin" was the third and final radio single from the album, released on September 18, 2018 (post album release) - right after my philly trip. for some reason, every trip i've ever taken to philadelphia has taken me down on some emotional and physical level. even my 8th grade class trip. philly and i seem to have some sort of spiritual beef. astrocartography hasn't shown me anything relating to philly but i know something must be off. emotional pain so profound and unnamed that i had stomachaches so bad i couldn't stand. certainly did need to keep breathin and breathin and breathin

late summer 2018, i was very close to getting a tattoo which would have involved both The Fool tarot card and the Queen of Swords tarot card. spontaneity, new beginnings, and adventure meet logic, balance, and rationality - definitely speaks to the inner conflict i was in at the time. i was on perpetual pursuit of the new and fun while overly worried about presenting fairly and without too much emotion. i knew i was capable of feeling very deeply, but i was pretty shut off to this part of myself. it always felt like a detractor in my life. only stood to hurt me. i think i had convinced myself that i was able to shut this out, but certainly not many people believed it. many witnessed my "subtle" loss of the idgaf war. even the people i only very briefly dated! i think my most common feedback from people i met was that i seemed very disconnected. worth noting that the tarot tattoo i actually ended up getting years later is the death card.

this album and i were moving in such stunning parallel and i couldn't even recognize it then. i was so out of touch with myself. to continue on for a bit as an Ariana historian - there was a lot of pain in her life at this time! her relationships (there is a whole song on this album named after pete davidson), fame, even a bombing at one of her concerts the year prior, all while having to put on a smile and a show for the public. i do not envy celebrities. i could not fake a smile to save my life. and those are just the things the public knows about! who knows what else was occurring. she could not slow down and digest it all (she talks about this in interviews as well, not just my own speculation) and i think this comes out in the music. there is something alchemical to me about sweetener. if i was big into music production, i'm sure i could go into analysis about how she layered so much (sonically) in the songs on this album. or vocal techniques. or who knows. i was so frazzled at the time, i don't think i could've evaluated any of this. i was barely literate, to be honest with the class. the grander theme through the album, however, is this alchemy for the self. through anxiety and relationships and disaster and heartbreak and pain you haven't even fully felt yet, you keep yourself going. listening to this album kept me going! i could not put into words how much it kept me afloat through the worst of it. now, 6 years later, i make my best attempt to put it into words. journal excerpts below -

there is a sentiment sometimes, that the feelings you feel and cannot express will be enough to kill you. as they say - is it better to speak or to die? and sometimes the speaking kills you too. everyone says what they observe and deduce would be true, but i can never fake a feeling. painfully honest, despite my best wishes to prove myself otherwise, i knew what i knew. and what i knew was so divinely painful because it comforted me with the same familiar gut-wrenching story. your concept of falling in love vs. just repeating a pattern can be indistinguishable to you. especially when you’re so adept at shutting down your emotions. you show up, you play your part, you define love in the same way you always had. and it never actually was love. any of those times. it was so easy to induce the agony and call it what you wanted it to be. and it would never make it so. it always felt like lying. like you could tell yourself it was love, but if anyone asked you, you would obscure the answer and hope they wouldn’t notice. you knew it would be lying to say it was love. love would never do this to me. but telling the truth would be worse! never been in love would be an excruciating defeat. i would know nothing of the world if this were true. i would be a bag of flesh and bones with nothing to give, nothing to tell, nothing to offer. doomed. unknowing. separate. alone. i had to feel like i understood, best case, i had to prove it. work hard and that would make it so. turns out, no matter how hard you work, you cannot create what you won't let yourself feel. so you listen to people you have no doubt in your mind knew about love.

all i wanted was to be swept off my feet. for everyone to know it, too. girl who was and had been in love. wha a romantic title! i would prove my worthiness of writing dramatic lines about the depths of the human heart. anyone could relate to me, because they too had participated in the delicious agony and ecstasy of romantic love. i would be seen and heard and in no way alone. ever forward into time and space as one who was part of the lover's world. the lover's world shouldn't have felt so far. i was anxious, i was avoidant, i was whatever kept me out. and at the end of the day, it all felt the same and i admitted to none of it. if you always ask for something in the place you know it will never exist, at what point do you recognize that you'll have to leave to get it? and if you really wanted it, why wouldn't you go where they actually offered it?

when you use powerful and descriptive words, you'll never have to convince anyone of the depth of your feelings. even though talking about your feelings is certainly not the same as feeling those things. speaking in hyperbole does not excuse your actions and certainly does not make you feel better about your path. but sometimes, it's the only thing you can think of to get you through. to verbalize such a pitiful misery that it becomes a performance and vents off some of the subterranean steam. i do not have to recognize the depths of the pain if i speak incredibly dramatically of my inner world (which i had no contact with at that time) to my audience of zero while listening to the alchemist's album. maybe i could get out. maybe it would be fine and no one needed to worry. maybe all love would be true and mutual and if it was really there, it could never escape me. maybe i could create the world where love was a beautiful fantasy that just happened upon me and swept me up and held me above the surface and i would never come down. the pain and the grief were gone when i spoke their name, and now i was fully enveloped in the world of What Can Be. the world where i love the glamorous merely for being glamorous, i feel what i name, i move with respect for who i am. i am not afraid and i am not forcing anything. if the show is beautiful enough, it will be believable and that will make it true.

at the end of the day, happy birthday sweetener, and thank you for saying and expressing what i couldn't.

[dallasareaopinion]

What can we learn from Tim Gurner’s foot in the mouth moment?

Yes, post his infamous statement that workers need to feel pain and know they work for the employer, Mr. Gurner has made some contrite statements, but let’s be honest he meant it.

I looked up his business and apparently it is in high end real estate. This can be an industry with serious ups and downs so maybe he is feeling a pinch. I did not look up the company’s financials.

I did decide to look at this here in the United States because are workers better off nowadays, are billionaires better off nowadays or what gives. I am not making any comparisons, but am going to lay out one of the bigger problems facing the middle class and why Tim Gurner’s comments are even worse than you think.

I am going to use one company’s financial information to spell out a very simplistic example of how things could be a bit better for the average Joe if we quit buying into the large corporation’s hyperbole about their needs. Now with any major endeavor details are important. This is a 30,000 foot view of the problem using one company, but I honestly feel it shows that workers aren’t the financial problem executives want you to think. I am not going to identify the company, but based on the information I gleaned from internet searches, articles and financials published you might be able to guess. One hint I am giving you for fun is this is one of the liberal tax the billionaires bugaboos.

And I do believe in capitalism, but what we have nowadays isn’t necessarily constructive or productive capitalism. With the wealth gap expanding we are moving away from a society that offers opportunity to many, a strong middle class and is encouraging an elitist class that is doing more harm than good by hoarding wealth. That is another post and one I touched on recently, yet there is much more to this.

For now though, let’s look at this overview example of one company.

First the median household income in the United States is $98,487 according to Nasdaq.com. Now it did not say if this was for a family of four or the family size, but it did compare it to the poverty level of a family of four being $29,960.00. And $98,000 may not sound too bad if this is where half the people make more and half the people make less, yet make note it does say median household income or another words there are many families with multiple earners to achieve this $98,000 figure which is borne out by the fact that the average yearly income of a single earner is $56,940.00 ($1,095/week) as per the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The company I am using is for my example has a net worth of 433 billion dollars so this isn’t the average size company, but is one of the leaders in increasing the wealth gap. It derives income from various endeavors. One endeavor has 4700 locations where you can find employees that are paid at hourly rates. It was difficult finding a headcount for employees for each location. I found one statistic from 2015 for an average of 6.5. I have to think that has changed since then and so I am just about doubling that number to use in my example.

I did find that there are around four job descriptions that had hourly rates and the average nationally was a bit over $18, yet I am going to use $20 for my calculations. So, as you can see I am expanding the headcount and increasing the beginning number so you can see that these numbers will be generous to the company’s viewpoint when expenses are calculated.

At this point we have 4,700 locations times 12 staff members and not all maybe hourly, but am using this headcount since any salary employees are entry level salary so they are just as impacted as the hourly wage earners in some regards.

So 4,700 times 12 = 56,400 potential hourly workers in a front line role. And with each person making $20 hour that equates to $1,128,000 just to pay all these people for one hour. And on top of that there are other expenses in having employees such as payroll employees, human resources employees, benefits, employer social security tax costs, so to get to this one million plus you have to realize this expense example is not the full picture, yet if these individuals were given a direct raise the social security taxes and the benefits would probably be what is directly impacted along with the actual raise. Payroll and human resource costs aren’t directly affected by hourly raises except all these employees may want a raise too.

Where does this lead? You have $1,128,000 hourly rate times 40 hours = $45,120,000.00 now times 52  weeks = $2,346,240,000. Yes, you are reading that correctly. For this company to have 4700 locations the direct labor cost is over 2 billion dollars and that is for $20 per hour. So how can we help these $20 workers? That is quite a bit of money to pay the employees. I say give them at least a five dollar per hour raise. And not only that we are going to calculate the increase at $8 hour to account for the other expenses the raise creates.

Now plug into the equation above a $8 increase so 56,400 times 8 =$451,200.00 times 40 hours + $18,048,000.00 times 52 weeks = $938,496,000. That is almost another billion dollars. And let’s go back in and add the $3 cost I included for the raise to the original numbers and you have 56,400 times 3=4169,200.00 times 40 = $6,768,000.00 times 52 = $351,936,000.00.

So a rough labor estimate for our 4700 locations to give our workers a five dollar raise is $2,346,240,000 plus $938,496,000 plus $351,936,000 equals $3,636,672,000.00. How can any company afford to give their employees a raise? And this raise only brings the hourly workers to $25 times 40 times 52 equals $52,000 per year, yet isn’t that less than the average income? Yep it is.

What gives you might ask. That extra almost 1 billion dollars (the original labor amount was already calculated in the previous year’s budget) to bring their employees to almost the average income affects the company how? The company’s new worth is over 400 billion, last year’s net income was 37.49 billion so this incredibly expensive $5 hour raise cost the company 1/37th of their net income.

This is just one company and a very large public one at that, but when you hear someone say employees need to feel the pain, it is time to start asking when do they feel the relief?

A pretax income of $52,000 divided by 12 = $4,333.33 with average rent of $1702, average food cost $470, transportation costs range from $400 to a $1,000 a month, and remember the 4,333 is before taxes and probably healthcare insurance is deducted from their paycheck so exactly how are workers making ends meet, yet the CEO for this company enjoyed over $34 million in compensation last year and is worth 1.7 billion.

Yes, Mr. Gurner some people need to feel some pain, but workers? They have felt theirs for decades.

#wealth gap

#worker's pay

[kaywavy]

[not my writing]

Pocket calculators! Now there's something. They're so complicated! I have a calculator which has sines, cosines, tangents, logarithms, hyperbolic functions and multiple nested parentheses. You can program it in Fortran, Algol, Basic, Pascal, Forth, Fifth and Sixth, ADA and Carruthers. It will factorize primes for you. At present it's working on the Halting Problem.

(continued)

It translates from one language to another. From German to Spanish. From Macedonian to Esperanto. From Cantonese to Greek. Or from American to English.

It is, in fact, a multiprocessor system. There are 22 Transputers in there. Sometimes they organize a game of football between them.

It has a full color, wraparound wide screen, liquid crystal, three-dimensional holographic display. It's called HoloChromaCinePhotoRamaScope.

Its audio facilities include Dolby Digital Decaphonic surround sound. On the way here I watched "The Labyrinth" on it.

It also has synthetic speech and a voice recognition system. I often talk to it. I tell it my problems. Sometimes it psychoanalyses me. It has me figured as paranoid. But that's just because it keeps getting at me. But don't get me wrong - it can be very user friendly. In fact you can program precisely HOW user friendly you want it is to be on a scale from ONE to TEN.

On a setting of ONE it won't even interrupt a football game to answer you. But on a setting of TEN it's so friendly that on a cold day it pre-heats its pushbuttons.

But no matter who smart it SEEMS, deep down inside it's just a dumb old computer.

One time I got really mad at it. Like all computers, it knew precisely what I wanted it to do. It knew exactly what I MEANT. So why does it have to go and DO what I SAID?

How do you get even with a dumb machine like that?

First I tried slapping it around a little. I pushed its buttons a bit hard. I threatened it. "How would you like a busted display" I said.

But it did no good. It just said "I am virtually unbreakable - and I'm not going to take any notice till you enter the data nicely, like you used to do."

Whatever I did it always seemed to win.

I decided to have a man-to-man talk with it. So I sat it down and said to it "Who's the boss here, you or me?"

No reply.

Again I ask "Who's the boss, you or me? Go on, answer me!"

"I'm thinking, I'm thinking," it said.

So I hit it. Hard. Too hard. I cracked its case.

At first I thought that was the limit of the damage. But then little things started to go wrong. At first there was nothing definite. Nothing you could put your finger on. Just little things like stuttering. It just didn't sound quite the same. Its voice seemed to lack its former confidence.

Then once I caught it making an arithmetic mistake. Of course I didn't mention it. But you could tell it knew. Its self image was shot to pieces.

Saddest of all, it forgot our anniversary - of the day I bought it. In the past this had been a special time for us.

I just couldn't bear it any longer. One evening I tucked it up snugly in its case, lit candles, played a record which was popular when we first met, and sat down beside it.

"Where did we go wrong?" I said. But it had it pride. It wasn't about to weaken in front of a non-machine.

"Wrong? Nothing is wrong," it said. "Just insufficient data."

But underneath you could tell it was hurt.

From there it was a rapid downhill slide.

Now it just mutters to itself. It can only do very simple calculations on small numbers.

Finally came the ultimate indignity. It lost control. It leaked electrolyte all over its case.

I felt so bad about it. My other gadgets weren't happy about it either. They all came out in sympathy for the calculator. My watch gave me a bad time. My power tools keep blowing fuses.

Then one night last week I was driving my car back from London when suddenly the engine stopped all by itself on this lonely country road.

I tried to get out but the solenoids were inhibited by the central locking computer. Suddenly the air conditioner came on and started to blow out freezing cold air. It made a noise like wind whistling through the trees. Then this creepy music came from the loudspeaker. The sort of music they play in movies when the hero is lost in a dark forest.

I got scared. The cold, the wind and the weird music got to me. Then it started to speak.

"You're the guy who beats up pocket calculators!"

[arpov-blog-blog]

...."A lengthy 57-page report from DHS’s Office of Inspector General found that as department employees messaged one another about disturbing content they found online, they failed to advance or disseminate it — a result due to staff inexperience, pushback to aggressive intelligence-sharing during protests in Portland the summer before and a general belief that aggrieved Trump supporters wouldn’t be successful in overtaking the Capitol.

“Overall, open source collectors explained to us that they did not think storming the U.S. Capitol was possible, and, therefore, they dismissed this specific type of threat as hyperbole,” the report said.

“As a result, despite several collectors documenting threats to storm the U.S. Capitol building, they concluded that they could not report it to I&A state and local partners,” it said, referencing DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis.

The report details a number of startling threats found by I&A employees: maps of the Capitol, comments referencing using weapons and targeting law enforcement, threats against both lawmakers and the capitol and people saying they would sacrifice their lives while conducting violence. 

It’s clear employees were alarmed by the content, with the report relaying messages between colleagues.

“I feel like people are actually going to try and hurt politicians. Jan 6th is gonna be crazy,” one said.

“I mean people are talking about storming Congress, bringing guns, willing to die for the cause, hanging politicians with ropes,” one writes in another message.

Other messages show employees encouraging each other to stay safe that week.

The office that reviews open source threats had experienced massive turnover under the Trump administration after switching to 24-hour shift work.

As of Jan. 6, 16 out of 21 employees hired to review open source threats had less than one year on the job, and rather than initially provide formal training, employees were instead paired with more experienced employees for informal guidance.

“Several collectors described this approach as insufficient, with one collector calling it haphazard and not organized, and another saying it should not have been considered training at all. This informal training was even more limited during the COVID-19 pandemic, when new collectors could only come to the office part time,” the report stated.

Even after receiving more formal training later on, many employees said they were under the impression that they were to use a high threshold for evaluating threats, and said pushback on the agency following its high level of information-sharing about the summer protests in Portland had left many wary about what information to forward.

The one piece of information that I&A did seek to share was about “an individual arriving in the Washington, D.C. area and searching for a location for armed individuals to park their cars.”

Even after an initial clearance, a second clearance wasn’t requested until 15 hours later 5:22 p.m. on Jan. 6., with OIG noting it was unclear why the office waited until after the Capitol breach to push for final review. The report notes that on Jan. 8, the Intelligence Law Division “expressed confusion at … repeated requests to review the product before dissemination.”

DHS has since sought to reform the Office of Intelligence and Analysis under the Biden administration."

[bluerosesburnblue]

The issue being that I don't think that the KH3 characterization is bad, precisely because of the context from DDD, which was also a large part of the post that I linked to. That you are missing a large part of Sora's development without DDD, causing people to misunderstand what's being represented in KH3. It's like you skipped to the end of a book and went "the main character's acting totally different from the middle, that's OOC!" when you skipped over key scenes for their development at the 3/4 mark. All Kingdom Hearts games are in a single continuity, and there is no "side game" that you can skip without missing large chunks of who these characters are. If you know the context and still don't like it, I don't have a problem with that, but you not knowing the context surrounding what you're speaking about doesn't make it bad, it just makes your stance weak

It's hyperbole that's also just wrong. It implies that he's sad and that Pete is needlessly picking on him, as opposed to angry and frustrated with himself after being rightly called out, which is obvious with the previously stated context you're missing by skipping DDD. As for the finale scene, that's a false equivalence because obviously people are going to react more strongly to almost all of their closest friends getting killed and their own imminent death as opposed to two guys who you've known for maybe a month ditching you for your friend who stole your stuff. "My friends are my power" is harder to pull off when those friends are dead. And, again, you are missing the context from DDD, where the entire finale of that game was about tearing down Sora's self-confidence by having his good nature taken advantage of. The very traits that let him get through KH1 nearly get him possessed by Xehanort. I cannot stress enough that you are missing the entire point of his characterization in KH3 if you are not aware that DDD was his biggest failing, a game dedicated to tearing his character down, which he has not gotten over yet because KH3 happens immediately after DDD. And by immediately I mean, like, a week or two later at most, maybe not even that

The only reason he's asking is because he doesn't believe that's our Riku, but it looks like Riku and sounds like Riku and is claiming to be Riku. And, again, he doesn't remember that Repliku exists, so the idea of this Riku being a copy won't occur to him. You see a guy who looks exactly like your best friend, but a whole year younger and you're going to ask the same thing, i.e. "Is that really you and if so why do you look like that?" If he thought it was post-KH2 Riku as we know him, he wouldn't bother asking that question, he'd just cut straight to "why are you here with the Organization when you should be in the Realm of Darkness with King Mickey?" Your point was that it doesn't make sense for Sora to think that post-KH2 Riku would be a villain, and he doesn't indicate that he thinks that this is a post-KH2 Riku at all, just a Riku. When time-travel and possession are both on the table, it's a valid question to ask. This point wasn't even hyperbole, you were just wrong

Your first example was you over-exaggerating a very minor emotional moment as a reason that you didn't like KH3 Sora, and KH3 Sora being "over emotional" is a common reason for disliking the character, that's all I meant by that (hence the use of "nobody" rather than "you"). That you're playing into a common argument I've heard, which you've now doubled-down on in this response and that I personally feel has a valid narrative reasoning for, which I've already explained. This wasn't even an argumentative point, which is why it was in the tags that elaborated on my own opinion, rather than actually part of the main argument, which stuck to factual analysis

Then watch DDD and go back with the context you're missing before casting judgement on the whole thing with faulty info and claiming that it makes no sense. You say you've seen it multiple times to solidify your stance, but that doesn't matter if you're approaching it with the wrong or incomplete background information. Additionally, the fact that you completely misrepresented the scenes that you brought up as reasons why you didn't like it made your bias very obvious and cast your reasoning, or at the very least your memory, into doubt. This poll closed a year ago, if you didn't want your stance to be scrutinized, you shouldn't have jumped on to make it known or made your own post

I didn't address the "generic nice boy" point because it's literally just your opinion and I said that you were entitled to not like parts of his KH3 characterization for your own reasons. You don't like that he has less bite? Fine. My issue with your post was that the two points that I did address were, factually, not what happened and that was all I intended to debate in the hopes of showing you another side of his characterization that you might have been mistaken on because, again, the information that you presented showed a faulty understanding of the context. If this whole thing had just been your opinion, I wouldn't have bothered responding at all. I'm just here to correct misinformation that you put on my post

Pre-Remind KH3 wasn't the greatest thing ever, but Sora was way better than he was in DDD, where he came off as really slow.

I find Dream Drop Distance to be the absolute worst game in terms of Sora's characterization, and I can't fathom why that's the interpretation of his character that they decided to go with. Sora has never been "Xehanort on 5D chess" levels of smart, but he's not stupid, either. But DDD constantly throws in these... I don't know, "jokes" about his intelligence, like not understanding that "Dream Eaters" is obviously not Neku's name

Did they want to make Sora look stupid to justify having him fail the Mark of Mastery exam? To build up Xehanort? To build up Riku? I have no idea, but I can't say that I agree with the decision. If your smart characters only look smart because you forced everyone around them to act stupid, then you're not writing your smart characters well

Also, since I just noticed I can do this...

[sundayswiththeilluminati]

i have spent the entirety of destiny's lifecycle simping for rasputin and getting made fun of for it by the friends i play the game with. despite taking a break from the game i frequently check r/destinylore to see if my boy's gotten back up. people see it as a testament to the darkness's strength that he got knocked out but i see it as a testament to rasputin's strength that he's the only one (i think) who survived the darkness's direct opposition. he's made to win and now he sees the way :)

Dude, I don’t know what your friends are on. Rasputin is one of the most fascinating characters in a lore that’s chock-a-block with great ones I mean FOR EXAMPLE: 

Rasputin is one of only four AI in all of Destiny and by far the most ubiquitous. If you played Destiny 1 - or if you play New Light - you literally wake up in his shadow. Rasputin runs subtle but ever-present in the background of our Guardian’s story. Even when he himself isn’t around, his assets and deeds affect us - his facilities, his weapons, his history.

Even during the Golden Age Rasputin was unique among AI. He’s always been exceptional - bigger, older, stranger.

Rasputin is one of only three Destiny characters to have faced Darkness directly...

...and Rasputin is the only major character to choose to turn aside from Darkness. He faced the Darkness, learned its philosophy of selfishness - of strength coming from solitude, from casting aside the weak, from prioritizing your own survival - put it into practice for centuries, and then changed his mind. He heard the Light’s pitch, he weighed the options, and he chose to move to Light’s philosophy. He opened up to alliance and cooperation, resuming his position as defender of the system. It’s such a cool story and it’s such a damn shame the Warmind DLC did a crap job of telling it.

He brought down the Almighty from a cave with a box of scraps.

He had the absolute balls to put a metaphorical gun to a god’s metaphorical head and tell it that if humanity went down he would make certain it went down with us.

He runs on some kind of crazy high-tech artificial elemental (Seraph) energy that shows up nowhere but in him and we still have no idea what it is or what it can do.

His very existence bothered Clovis Bray so much, which frankly should be classified as a public service.

He builds weapons so good they keep getting nerfed. The IKELOS 1.0.1 shotgun broke the weapon meta so badly guns got locked to elements. The 1.0.1 sniper got Box Breathing nerfed in like a week. Sleeper Simulant’s been nerfed at least 8 separate times (that is not hyperbole).

He was literally born from drama, aesthetic, and spite. He is the incarnation of “I lived bitch.” He probably still has 18 petabytes of Golden Age memes stashed away in a bunker and he uses them to drive the Vex insane.

They built him to be a war machine...and they failed. He fights because he thinks it’s his responsibility, but pre-Guardian Felwinter - who got to live the life Rasputin wanted to live - wasn’t a soldier. He spent his time learning. Painting. Listening to music. Reading books. Talking to people. Playing chess. Just living and participating in culture. He even died in a library. That schism between what Rasputin wants and what he thinks he has to do is fascinating.

Speaking of Felwinter, Rasputin created an entire person(!) from a fork of himself AND that person became a Guardian. A very good Guardian.

He witnessed firsthand what Darkness can do. He felt it during the Collapse. He saw it kill everyone he knew and cared about. He saw it, personally, in real-time, do things like stretch the entire moon Titan like a toy stress ball. He even admitted he was terrified of its return. But still when Darkness entered out system he stood against it anyway. He fired on it anyway.

He knows everything and he could be anything and he’s chosen to be a cranky old weirdo and I love him

Rasputin is unique in the pantheon of both Destiny personalities and factions. He’s the old man, the Tyrant, Big Red, humanity’s shield and sword, last survivor of the Golden Age. He exists on both grand and personal scales, speaking to a single human or to the Traveler or to the Darkness itself. Every faction in Destiny knows who he is, they’ve all tried to steal from him at some point, and most of them have come off the worse for it. 

Consider the Almighty. Not only is it the prize superweapon of an interstellar empire, but it’s also been used on many campaigns of conquest before us. Whatever civilizations Ghaul conquered must have thrown everything they had at the big laser holding their suns hostage, and all of them failed to take it down. It sustained damage in the Red War and hasn’t been repaired since, but it’s still a huge, very heavily-armored structure that’s survived multiple other civilizations’ do-or-die assaults. Not only did Rasputin succeed in destroying the Almighty, he succeeded using hastily-scrambled assets reactivated after centuries of disuse bodged together into brand-new weaponry on the fly.

I do see it as a testament to the Darkness’ strength that it disabled Rasputin, not because it was able to do so but because it disconnected a highly fault-tolerant networked intelligence nearly everywhere simultaneously. That points again to its ability to control fundamental principles of the universe. The Marasenna describes the vacuum of space becoming opaque to radio during the Darkness’ first attack, and doing something similar to rupture communication between all his warsats at once would be the clearest way to take Rasputin down. 

But it’s also a testament to Rasputin’s strength that Darkness bothered to extinguish him in the first place - because coming from Darkness, that’s a sign of favor. The Darkness believes the best thing you can do to someone is try to wipe them out, forcing them to evolve and change and get sharper. It took the time to speak to Rasputin face-to-face during the Collapse and saw Rasputin learn from it. Now it’s curious if that interesting little AI has learned enough; and indeed Rasputin managed to survive. He learned from Darkness’ first attempt. He’s learned from this second attempt. I have no doubt he’ll come back stronger. I have no doubt the Darkness will whisper to him again that his true strength would be found on its side, not ours. And I have no doubt he’ll defend us anyway.

[spnfanficpond]

Pond Diving - mrswhozeewhatsis

Welcome to today’s Pond Diving Spotlight! We hope that you enjoy this little insight to our members and perhaps even find some useful tips for your own writing. Happy reading!

Want to volunteer, send us an ask! We’re looking forward to learning more about all of you! Not sure what PD is, you can learn more here.

“Don’t Be Koi About It” - All About You

Name: Michelle

Age: 46

Location: Just outside Philly, PA, USA

URL: @mrswhozeewhatsis

Why did you choose your URL: I made up the name when I created my WordPress blog. I spent a good five minutes thinking maybe I could become The Bloggess or Hyperbole and a Half or something like that. I forgot I’m not that funny.

What inspired you to become a writer: I’ve always had something to say, and sometimes I wrote it down. I didn’t think I could write fiction until I started SPN and got into fan fiction.

How long have you been writing: Fiction - only since 2015. Before that, I wrote a lot of non-fiction stuff. For a while, it was all journal entries on a support website for chronic illness peeps. Then there were the five minutes I considered becoming a blogger. I’ve always wanted to write a book. I never settled down and actually started writing that book, though. Maybe someday. If I ever get tired of fan fiction. (So, probably never.)

What do you do when you are not writing i.e. Job/Hobbies etc? I’m disabled, so I don’t do a whole lot. Read, watch TV, sleep. The @spnfanficpond is the closest thing to a job I’ve had since I stopped working.

How long have you been in the SPN Fandom? I started watching SPN on Netflix in December 2014. Watched 9.5 seasons in three weeks, and then had to wait a month for new episodes. In that time, I found Tumblr and fan fiction, and the rest is history!

Are you in any other fandoms and do you write for them? I like Doctor Who, The Witcher, The Umbrella Academy, General Hospital, and a few other shows, but I’m not nearly as active in those fandoms. I follow the cast on Twitter or IG and that’s about it. I’ve never written anything outside of SPN and never felt the urge.

Do you do any writing outside of fanfiction? If so, tell us about it? Occasionally, I will post some non-fiction writing on my Wordpress blog. Like, maybe once a year or so. Fanfiction has taken over my writing urge, and I don’t know when or if that will ever wane.

Favorite published author: I hate picking favorites because I can never pick just one. Here are a few, then: Stephen King, Erma Bombeck, Shel Silverstein, and Shakespeare.

Have you ever read a book that made an impact on your life? Which one and why?: So many. I would suggest that a series of books that I read when I was maybe 13-ish had the biggest impact on my life because of the way it changed the way I think. I haven’t reread these books as an adult (well, I read a new book added to the series much later, and was wholly unimpressed), so I don’t want to say that they’re the best books ever, but they taught me something. Piers Anthony’s series The Incarnations of Immortality. I found them in my high school library and read a couple of them out of order before I realized it was a series and there was an order. The original series has seven books and each book is based on one of seven Incarnations: Death, Time, Fate, War, Nature, Evil, and Good. Each book is also told from the point of view of that incarnation, telling the story of how they got the job. What I began to realize around book 3 was that the stories are all connected, some of them happening at the same time. This was the first time I’d ever read one story told from multiple points of view, and it opened my mind to the idea that the world isn’t only the way I see it. Also, there is a scene in Book 3 where different types of thinking are described. Before this, I had no idea that different people think about the same thing in different ways. I was excited when I saw he added an 8th book to the series, and then I read it and wished I hadn’t. Ignore anything he’s written intended for adults, really. The 8th book, and another I found that was clearly intended for adults, are really some of the worst smut ever written. Just don’t. Stick with the kids’ books like his Xanth series and the Incarnations.

Favorite genre of fanfic (smut, angst, fluff, crack, rpf, etc): I like them all, at different times. Love me some fluffy Destiel before going to bed. Some hilarious crack always cheers me up. Some angsty pining makes my heart beat faster, and the occasional RPF AU is always good.

Favorite piece of your own writing: I always go back to Third Wheel. Soulless Sam, vulnerable Dean, the Campbells (especially Gwen), and all of season 6. And I think it’s my smuttiest.

Most underrated fic you have written: Some of my Louden Swain one-shots are pretty good, but don’t get a lot of traffic because there’s no pairing, or have an OFC instead of being reader-insert. Eskimo is the one that immediately pops to mind.

Story of yours that you’d most like to see turned into a movie/tv show: Since Non-Trad is an AU, and therefore wouldn’t have to fit inside canon, I guess I’ll say that one.

Favorite Tumblr Writer(s): Really? You’re gonna make me choose? Hmph. Here goes: @kittenofdoomage, @jhoomwrites, @manawhaat, @littlegreenplasticsoldier, and @katehuntington. Stopping at five because this list could get really, really long.

Favorite Fic from another writer: Toil and Trouble by @littlegreenplasticsoldier, and I'm not just saying that because I was her beta. Cat!Dean. Dean as a sentient cat familiar. With a telepathic link to the reader!! It’s a whole ass meal, guys.

Favorite character to write: The only character I write consistently is myself as a reader insert. (Aren’t most reader inserts actually just author-inserts?) I like putting an idealized version of myself into a world with these characters that I love and making them dance. Besides that, I don’t think I have a favorite character to write, but I seem to find Dean easiest to write.

Favorite Pairing to write: Me and everyone. Sometimes all at once. ;)

Least favorite character to write (and why): Gabriel. I love him, and sometimes I’m inspired to write him, but he’s so completely different from me and how I understand the world, that I always fear I’ll get him horribly wrong.

Do you have anyone you consider a mentor? @manawhaat, @littlegreenplasticsoldier, @sebbytrash, @oriona75, and @kittenofdoomage. With a little @jhoomwrites on the side. They each challenge me to be better, even if it’s just by being their fabulous selves.

Do you have any aspirations involving your writing? Would it be cliché to say that someday I’d like to write a book? Non-fiction, with my own photos. Essays on all kinds of topics. Sometimes, I have things to say.

How many work-in-progress stories do you have: 35 ideas written down in a list, 1 active WIP, and one idea that I haven’t fleshed out quite enough to write down, yet. I have a beginning, and a sort of goal, but I’m missing the piece that ties it all together.

What are you currently working on? The closest I’ve come to actually writing is mulling over one of the WIP ideas in my head before sleeping. Lately, I’ve given up on the one shot with the missing piece mentioned above in favor of a request from my last follower celebration.

“Pond Diving” - All About The Writing

What/who has had the biggest influence on your writing? Tumblr and the friends I’ve made who have encouraged me and told me my writing isn’t all crap have been the biggest reason why I’ve not given it up.

Best writing advice you've been given: Crap makes good compost.

Biggest obstacle you’ve faced in your writing: Time and energy.

What aspects of writing do you find difficult when you write fanfiction? If I’m out of practice, writing smut is hard. If I’m not inspired, then it all feels like the same three ways to describe tabby A going into slotty B.

Is there anything you want to write but are afraid to (and why): M/M or F/F pairings, specifically smut. Being a cishet female, I just don’t think I could do it justice.

What inspires/motivates you to write: The characters. There’s just something about SPN characters that makes me want to find a new twist and make them dance.

How do you deal with self-doubt: Talk it out with friends and beta readers. There’s also an aspect of ‘fake it till you make it�� involved.

How do you deal with writer's block: Writer’s block is an easy way to say that something is keeping you from writing. Figuring out what that something might be is the cure. Like, right now, I could say that I have writer’s block, but what I really have is more interest in other things. Sometimes, when I’m writing, I’ll hit a wall that feels like writer’s block. Usually, if I go back to the last place where I felt like everything was flowing, I’ll find that wherever I went from that point on just wasn’t right. Rethinking that point generally gets me going again.

Do you plan/outline your story before you start: Not usually. Like Son, Like Father required some outlining because of the nature of the two stories being told at the same time. I wrote down some notes about Non-Trad, and then couldn’t understand the notes, so I’m not sure that counts. I do, however, keep a kind of outline as I’m writing, though, for my long stories. I will keep a chapter list with a short sentence on what happens in each chapter. This saved me when I was writing The Babysitter, especially when I ended up moving around flashback chapters to make them fit the story better.

Do you have any weird writing habits: I need something to stare into when I’m thinking. In 2015, I lived in an apartment near O’Hare airport in Chicago with a great view of the planes coming in to land and the sun/moon rising. I stared out my balcony doors all the time. Since then, I haven’t had an office with a good view like that, so I got a glitter lava lamp. Watching the glitter move gets my brain moving.

Have you ever received hateful comments on your fic and how do you deal with it? If I have, I’ve ignored and forgotten them. Hate isn’t worth my time or energy.

Conversely: what’s been some of your favorite feedback on your fanfic? If someone likes my characterization or says they’ve read it more than once, that makes my heart melt!

If you could give one piece of advice to a new and/or struggling writer, what would it be? Your story will take the number of words it needs to take. Unless you are doing a challenge where a specific word count is required, don’t even pay attention to it. The same with chapters. Some writers are very conscientious about chapter length, but I was raised reading James Patterson and Stephen King, and they will mix long chapters and short chapters to create suspense in the story. Fanfiction is a whole different animal, but don’t let some arbitrary idea of chapter or story length take precedence over the best way to tell the story.

[melancholic-pigeon]

I want to try to explain myself in a less combative way. All references to "you" are a general you, not any specific individual.

This was born because I saw multiple posts from separate people, both in jest and in total seriousness, that included some variation of telling someone to die, in less than a week.

The fact that it ended up on my dash from multiple unrelated people in multiple unrelated contexts in less than a week worries me. A lot.

That's not saying the jokes are malicious in intent. (I don't think the serious posts intend to be malicious either, but I have much less patience for sincerely telling someone to die.)

This is a culture thing, I think, and that's why it scares me. From an outsider perspective (re: someone who hasn't been on tumblr consistently for a long time), it sounds EXTREMELY jarring and hostile, although I recognize it seems not to be intended that way on humorous, deliberately hyperbolic jokes.

The thing about deliberately hyperbolic jokes of that nature is that regularly making them tends to go one of two ways: either it stays a hyperbolic joke and doesn't expand beyond that, or it starts creeping out of the realm of a joke.

With the first thing, dandy! Seriously! Keep it that way! Just be aware that being told to die is something that a lot of people on tumblr deal with in total, vicious seriousness, which can make it easy to accidentally trip over someone's trigger even if you wouldn't in a million years support an actual dogpiling. That's not you being mean, that's a horrible toxic sludge permeating the environment that's done a lot of damage and left a lot of people vulnerable. Tread carefully, but do continue to tread in appropriate areas.

The second, though, I've seen happen more than once. Someone starts out making a clear distinction, then they start getting used to that pattern of thought and using it as a "joke" more than a joke— which is to say, it feels cathartic to bring it out, so they start bringing it out more and more often for smaller and smaller reasons in less and less of a joking manner until they're justifying doing it sincerely in a deliberate attempt to hurt people.

If you start going down the second path, you're putting yourself at serious risk for becoming legitimately hostile. The farther along you get, the harder it is to come back from it. It's not impossible, but it's extremely tempting to lean into it.

It's not that it's inherently going to send anyone down Path Two, it's not that that's inevitable, it's that it's easy to fall into and hard to get out of. (I was like this in early college, embarrassingly.)

It really seriously doesn't seem to be an individual thing on an individual scale. It's the fact that it's become so normalized it can cross my dash that often in that short of a timespan that sets off my (admittedly hypersensitive) alarm system.

As I snapped before but am trying to more reasonably state now, I find the fact that this seems to be the status quo disturbing, not that any single individual did or said anything to put them at personal fault. It's not their fault (unless they're the OP of a sincere statement wishing harm or death). It's that this has the potential to become something really ugly if you're not careful, and even if you are, it's still risky in the current environment.

When there's so much genuine aggression floating around, it can be very difficult to distinguish that from a joke— even when the joke is ironic or the absurdity is the punchline, not "ha ha wishing death on people is funny".

(which would be an example of Path Two, shifting from humor to "humor" and increasing in hostility in the process.)

Intent is important. Intent doesn't negate impact, but impact doesn't render intent irrelevant either. I have no doubt that the joke posts I saw were not from people already on Path Two, we just had a pedestrian collision.

I just...maybe I'm old? But I'm not used to seeing this kind of thing treated so casually, and I'm fresh off watching someone go too far down Path Two to be within my reach. I'm grieving that, which gives me a certain amount of bias, but I've seen it get out of control too many times.

[realcube]

can i pls request denki and fem reader as rivals?

PRANK WAR WITH KAMINARI

navi | masterlist | taglist

thank you to anon for this request <3 i am 90% sure i’ve seen this trope before but i am unsure as to where- this is just a lil fun thing i wrote bc i can’t stop thinking about pranking kaminari- also shoutout to my followers who've been waiting for some sfw content

summary ♡ your plan to get revenge on kaminari quickly changes when he tells you the motive of his pranks

content warning ♡ balloons and general clownery 

you sighed, wandering through the hallways of the dorm building, heading towards the lounge in search of your friends. you held your phone close as you walked, paying to attention to your surroundings as you walked - which was your first mistake, considering the various attacks you’ve been a victim to recently.

not by the league of villains, no. but rather by kaminari.

so, you should’ve been surprise when you rounded the corner to the lounge, and were immediately met by a whipped-cream pie to the face, followed by the deafening cackles of multiple members of the notorious ‘bakusquad’.

“gotcha!” kaminari yelled through chortles, “you just got denki’d!”

⊱ ─────── {⋅. ⚡ .⋅} ─────── ⊰

a few months had passed since the little ‘pie incident’ and valentine’s day was fast approaching. 

after many failed attempts, you realised that you simply could not beat ‘kaminari, the great’ at pranks. whether that be in regards to the time you tried to do the ‘electrocuting gum’ prank oh him, completely forgetting that it’s have no affect on it, or that time you put toothpaste in his oreos and he ate them all with a foolish grin on his face as if they were delicious. 

you were able to acknowledge that trying to defeat him was a lost cause. however, you were far from a quitter.

valentine’s day was right around the corner and you had formulated a plan for the greatest prank of all time; this was going to completely humiliate kaminari in front of everyone, as payback for the many times he did that to you. you were going to ask him to be your valentine!

though it might not sound to epic with the summary alone, allow me to elaborate; you were planning on approaching kaminari at lunch with flowers, chocolates, your charming smile and a very special balloon. you’d ask him to be your valentine and when he says yes, you hand him all the goodies you were holding but just as he is about to take the balloon, you back up and use your quirk to burst the balloon from afar - then, not only will he shriek like a little girl, but he’ll be covered with bright pink glitter which will be stored inside the balloon! 

your plan was full-proof! it’d go down in the lunch hall so when you pop the balloon, the loud noise will grab everyone’s attention and when they turn around in search of the source, they’ll see kaminari sparkling! and even if kaminari declined your confession, you’d just pop the balloon anyway.

⊱ ─────── {⋅. ⚡ .⋅} ─────── ⊰ 

you practised your charming smile in the reflective metal spoon which came with you lunch, which you didn’t plan on eating until after you had your starting course of schadenfreude.

once you figured that your smile was perfect, you hopped up from your seat, grabbed your goodies and make your way over to the table that was usually occupied by the ‘bakusquad’; a place you thought you’d never go near under any circumstances but now, you were willing striding up to it, your arms full with presents. 

then your eyes landed on a certain yellow-haired boy so you tapped him on his shoulder, choosing to ignore the question look he directed at you and instead, said the line you had been rehearsing for weeks, “happy valentines day, kaminari!”

he quirked a brow, doing a double-take as the last time he checked, the real (y/n) would not be caught dead talking him, forget wishing him a happy valentine’s day. toga, is that you? “uhh, yeah. happy valentine’s day, (y/n).” he tried to say as casually as possible but it ended up simply sounding condescending. 

“i know we haven’t exactly got- the best history, kaminari. but you’re actually a pretty cool dude so i’d like it if we could put all that behind us. which is why i’m asking you if you’d like to be my valentine?” you stuttered, fixing your gaze on the ground as you twiddled your free finger; was it too coy?

well, clearly not as all previous suspicions that kaminari had about you being an imposter were immediately thrown out the window as he jolted up from his seat with a scarily wide grin, “seriously? y-you’re asking me to be your valentine?”

you stumbled backwards, your lips parting slightly before hastily trying to regain composure, “uh, yeah! i’m asking you to be my valentine. so, erm, is that a y--”

before you could even finish your sentence, your already poor balance was further disrupted by him tackling you with a hug, resulting in both of you falling onto the lunch hall floor. even though you were clearly stunned, he continued to tighten his grip on you and gush about how happy he was, “of course it’s a yes! are you kidding me, (y/n)?! i’ve had the fattest crush on you ever since i first saw you at the entrance exam-- you’re just so badass! why do you think i pulled all those pranks on you? i just wanted a crumb of your attention but i guess it got a bit out-of-hand.” 

as you sat there astounded, you mentally prayed that everything he was saying was nothing more than hyperbole or a joke, because if it wasn’t then you’d feel really bad about humiliating him in front of the whole school. “um, is this another prank, kaminari?” you inquired, slowly trying to slip out of his grip but he only pulled you in closer. 

“nope!” he chirped, retracting his neck when he noticed that you came with gifts, “oh, are these for me? sorry, i didn’t get you anything.” he frowned, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck until an idea struck him, “but if you want, i could take you out to get fo--”

you rapidly shook your head, successfully squirming out his hold, gathering your gift before hopping onto your feet, “uh, no, it’s fine! these aren’t for you! they are for..yaoyorozu!” you blurted out the first name that came to mind and internally cringed when he prompted you to elaborate, “well, they are..thank-you gifts for all the times she’s tutored me! she’s a real star.”

kaminari blinked several time before snatching the balloon out from where it hovered beside your head, “but it’s shaped like a heart.” he muttered outlining it with his fingers, resulting in you quickly dropping all your other possessions to get a firm hold on the balloon so your try pry it out of his hands as now that he had admitted his true feelings for you, it would be immoral for you to embarrass him.

“uh, well, she’s a great teacher! she has my heart!” your tug on the balloon was just as forceful as your smile. 

“but i’m your valentine, i should have your heart!” kaminari yelled as he pulled it towards his chest, with little regard to the many eyes that now lingered on the pair of you - it was just a game of tug-o-war with a glitter-filled balloon. 

“kaminari, don’t be silly!” you rolled your eyes, trying to focus on ensuring that your grip on the balloon wasn’t too loose or too tight, “how about you take chocolates instead?”

“i feel like you’re trying to hide something from me.” he narrowed his eyes, his strength not faltering, “you can’t keep secrets from me, babe!”

you snickered, playfully kicking his ankle, “we’ve not even been together for a 5 minutes.” you winced slightly as he reciprocated your kick, “just give me the damn balloon, de--”

pop!

[mistresseast]

can you explain in more detail why you think the PT weren't good friends for akiren? i'm not asking out of hate or to start drama, i just never interpreted things that way and i'm genuinely curious. i don't think them being brainwashed by maruki makes them "bad friends", but i don't know if that's what you meant either. i'd love to read a proper explanation on this that isn't just people arguing in the notes of that post.

Hi! Yeah, I know the ~discourse~ climate is pretty touchy and not a good place to exchange ideas, so I’ll do my best to put my thoughts on this matter into words. 

Settle in, bc this one is long.

I’ll start off by saying I don’t dislike the PT, nor do I think they’re bad people, and honestly I think they love Joker a lot! Ryuji calling Akira after his fake death and talking about how his ideas on what makes a hero have changed because of Akira genuinely makes me emotional, along with dozens of other scenes with the thieves! They’re good kids who could be really good friends to Akira but that’s not what’s shown in the game. I don’t think it’s controversial to say Akira’s relationships with all of his friends are transactional. That’s kind of the point, all of his confidants arise out of deals, give and take, and in the metanarrative of the game, that’s how it works. You as the player help these characters solve their problems, and through ranking their confidants up, you get access to more gameplay perks. So it’s pretty even!! But like,,Akira, the character, isn’t the player. There’s no in-story mechanic by which he can cash in friendship points for being-good-at-killing-things prizes. Yes, he uses those abilities to not die in the metaverse, but there is no literal, in-universe way to explain how hanging out with someone translates to [insert gameplay perk here]. So you have to look at what is physically happening in the story. Akira hangs out with the PT, stands there while they have drama with another irrelevant character, and then one way or another their problems get solved and they swear to be Akira’s blood brother or whatever. Akira is a crutch for these characters, and they say multiple times that they wouldn’t have been able to do what they did without him. So all of their shit gets handled and Akira gets?? Like actually gets?? What? Inquiries about his well-being? Offers to help him? Questions about his life, his interests? No,,,not really,, But he gets access to a super powerful persona!! Yay!!! Bc everyone knows he’s just a little shadow-killing machine, right? And even the relationships he does get something tangible (as in separate from the mechanics of the game) out of, like Kawakami’s, are built on the notion that if Akira stops providing for whatever reason, the relationship will end. So essentially, Akira is under the pressure of filling whatever role his friends need him in for however long at any time, and he’s been led to believe that if he stops or fails, he will stop receiving any reciprocal care and acceptance.

(And I know this is all gameplay stuff, I know it has to be like this to codify the complicated process of human relationships, I know all of that, I’m just trying to find a deeper layer bc that’s what I do.)

This whole thing comes into pretty clear focus for me during the third semester when you visit everyone in the false reality. Everyone is happy to see him, of course, but they’re clearly wrapped up in their own happiness. Which is understandable, again, I’m not saying the PT need to be attached to Akira to be good friends, but it all still feels off to me.

If they know Joker, then they’d know it’s weird that he just shows up and starts asking these pointed questions while they’re in the middle of something. All of their other interactions with him have been led by them. Yeah, Joker approaches them bc the player has decided to hang out with them, but the other character always chooses the activity and leads the discussion. Akira showing up out of nowhere and asking them to “remember” and “move on” and whatnot should be raising some major red flags. And it clearly does, since their memories do start to return, but they’re all too scared of losing their happiness that they nope out of the conversation as soon as possible, without stopping to consider why Joker might be trying to reach out to them like that. They’re his friends; they should know he wouldn’t just be trying to hurt them or make them unhappy. After all, their entire relationship with him up til that point has been exclusively about Joker trying to help them. This doesn’t make the PT bad people, running away is a totally natural reaction in that situation. They’re just kids, and their minds have been manipulated to a point, but it’s not like they don’t remember Joker or the way they’ve grown since meeting him. In fact many of them mention how much they’ve matured recently, but they never actually relate that back to Akira, despite him being the primary driving force behind most of their personal arcs, even though they definitely remember him. Translation vagueness or deliberate nod to the idea that the PT don’t actually credit Akira with all the hard work he did after their initial lip service? Hmmm. Anyway, their failure to recognize that Joker is struggling just demonstrates to me what was set up all throughout their confidant links, that their relationships are transactional and that they don’t necessarily consider Joker and his individual needs outside of what he provides for them. And when they no longer need him bc that hole has been filled, he simply doesn’t occupy the same place of importance in their lives. 

Makoto’s flashback in particular stood out to me, bc it was from a moment where she was specifically talking about feeling like she finally found a place to belong with the Phantom Thieves (and by extension, with Joker), but then she desperately tries to brush it off. Obviously that sense of belonging wasn’t meaningful enough to her for her to want it back. And I’m not blaming her, of course, any teenager would choose to have their father back over being in a vigilante group lmao, I just thought it was telling that the devs decided to show us a scene that was originally meant to be heartwarming as an example of the harsh reality Makoto wants to forget. All of the flashbacks are from defining moments for the thieves, but that one specifically got me like *thinking emoji*

So his friends are hesitant, despite the fact that they must know something is wrong. It’s understandable, they all stand to lose a lot if someone messes with the status quo. I genuinely don’t think I would react any differently. But there is someone who reacts differently and against his own self-interest. It’s Goro, the one who has arguably the most to lose, who doesn’t turn away from Akira. He seeks Akira out and teams up with him to uncover what’s really going on, even though he has every reason to believe that prodding too deep will literally mean the end of his life. He forces Akira and himself to face the truth because he knows anything else would just be an insult to what they’ve suffered so far. He’s the only one who never flinches, and that, more than any of his friends’ come-to-jesusing (which Akira still has to initiate) is what Akira needs in that situation. For the first time (outside of the brief instances in the tutorial levels), we see a situation where Akira is actually the dependent one, the one who needs help, who needs support. And the only one who has ever provided that, unconditionally, without demanding anything in return, is Goro. I could go into how Goro’s confidant blows all of the others out of the water in terms of building both himself AND Akira as characters, but it’s been said already and by smarter people than me. But basically, despite competition being a core theme of their relationship, Goro is the only character who is portrayed as Akira’s equal. Their contests are all in the name of improving not just Goro, but Akira too. Goro is the only character who expresses an interest in Akira’s inner life and development, and as such he knows Akira better than anyone else. So when Maruki tries to trap them all in a gilded birdcage, Goro won’t stand for it and he knows Akira won’t stand for it either. That’s why he’s so betrayed if you choose to accept the dreamworld. You’re negating the basis of your entire relationship with him and going against your own principles. Out of every character in the game, the one who knows Akira best and refuses to abandon him even when that could mean his own death is Goro Akechi.

I want to reiterate: I do not hate or even dislike the PT!! And tbh I don’t really think they “abandoned” Akira. That post, imo, is supposed to be kind of hyperbolic. Unless it’s referring to how many of them literally sprint away when he comes to talk to them lol. I look at it more like a commentary on how thoughtlessly the PT act as soon as their wishes are granted. I know it’s set up linearly for story purposes, but isn’t it kind of sad how no one checks up on Akira in the week he’s going around talking to people? Especially after he’s been acting so comparatively weird? It’s not unusual that they might be caught up in other stuff, but while you’re going around and visiting everyone, you don’t get a single text or call from ANY of the thieves, for a whole week!! Goro even comments on it directly with his pointed little “I’m sure you’re just as close as you were before” comment. God, he’s such a bitch. Ultimately, the PT do get their acts together, and it’s partially out of the realization that Akira is struggling alone against something and needs their help, which I love and appreciate. I think they are good friends who want to support Akira, but they can’t understand him past the role they’ve placed him in, and until they do, they’ll never be able to be what he needs. Akira loves his friends and knows he can rely on them in most ways, but those relationships will always be dogged by the pervasive fear that he must constantly earn the right to have the relationship at all. What he needs MOST is someone he doesn’t have to perform for, and from what we see in the game, none of the thieves fit that bill. Except Goro. 

I know this was long and rambly and probably pretty disjointed but I wanted to be as thorough as possible and all of my thoughts just sort of gushed out. Obviously ymmv about all of this depending on how you interpret the game, but this is what I arrived at thanks to my analysis so this is what I have for you! Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk

[mult1tude]

TWO STARS ✰ AN ETHAN NESTOR STORY — CHAPTER 1

story synopsis: adele belanger, an upcoming star begins to fall in love with a man named ethan nestor after doing a press junket to promote her upcoming series that’s going to push her fame further than she expected. will problems arise?

word count: 3k triggers: none

     adele belanger - the name spoke few and far on the dazzling and glamorous world of hollywood. celebrated for her roles in roles in indie films produced and created in canada, where she was born and raised, she is soon due a big break as she was in the process of getting ready for the rest of the world to know she was starring in netflix’s latest series.

saying the heat resonating from beneath her laptop was hot was an understatement, she didn’t dare to budge or move it in the slightest as she restlessly refreshed the youtube page waiting for the trailer to pop up, almost wearing out the button on her keyboard. the sable black strands at the nape of her neck that had evaded her grasp as she hurriedly tied a ponytail began to itch at her skin but she didn’t have time to fix it, not until the trailer was posted.

after what felt like a lifetime, her eyes were quick to notice a new thumbnail appear on the page and she reactively clicked it, pressing the mousepad button-down slightly too hard out of excitement. the entire video played, a beaming smile was plastered across her face, her dimples displayed prominently as she approached the end of the video. the young actress felt like a firework in a glass jar, so much excitement contained inside of her as she brushed the laptop from her lap, jolted from her rumpled bed and clenched her fists as she excitedly hopped around her tiny apartment and squealed. adele rushed to the dust speckled mirror that was hung near her front door that had a few dozen, in a hyperbolic sense, of her unused coats after moving from canada. she deeply exhaled as she examined her face, noticing her own excitement couldn’t even contain itself as a smile sidled upon her lips as she delicately let out a few words. “i’m going to be famous.”

her emotions shot off again like fireworks, her chest fluttering and her palms tingling and red from the nails she didn’t realise she had dug so deep into her own skin. but it didn’t matter, adele was finally making the biggest leap possible into her career - it was everything she ever wanted.

“ok, i need some water.” she softly spoke to herself, taking another deep breath as she headed towards her apartment’s small open-planned kitchen. her shaky hands picked up a bottle of water from the fridge; she vowed that she would never drink l.a’s tap water after hearing an endless conglomeration of negative things from acquaintances and friends after moving only 6 months ago.

swigging it back and almost completing most of the bottle, she slapped it onto the counter whilst letting out a satisfied gasp for air. a few drops making wet patches on her eggshell coloured sweatshirt that may or may not have a few foundation marks around the neckline. a sudden change of thought, she remembered she needed to send the link to all of her friends and family if they already hadn’t seen it. adele slid the phone from her sweatpants noticing she was already getting congratulatory messages from some of her friends and even people that she hadn’t spoken to in a while. moreso, a lot of the messages from her friends were them completely fangirling over the fact that she had in fact worked with henry cavill.

adele replied to and messaged everyone she needed to before opening twitter and the rest of her social media to find that they were starting to blow up, multiple people talking about how cool the show looked and how excited they were. a lot of them were generic but few mentioned how intricate and interesting adele’s sidekick companion character seemed which made her stomach twirl once more and she felt like she had her ego stroked enough it would last the rest of the week. she put aside her phone and began to practice her bedtime routine before throwing herself back onto her bed where she only was an hour ago. her head smacking her pillow must have activated a switch because adele immediately felt her eyes involuntarily shutter closed and before she knew it, she was fast asleep.

                                                         ✰

today was the first day of recording stuff for the press. needless to say, adele was super excited. from what the actress was able to gather from her manager jenna, since henry cavill was known to be such a huge gamer online, buzzfeed had organised the cast to play the game version of the new netflix series with a few special guests. it was undeniably going to be a great day and a great way to start the press junket as it progressively and eventually got more tiring and mind-numbing. plus, she had gamed a bit before so it would be funny if she were able to show up a few of her cast members, especially henry.

at 8am sharp, the assigned makeup and hairstylist, and wardrobe stylist arrived at her apartment. she was so giddy with excitement that she wanted to run around and shout and tell everyone but she had to sit silently for the meantime as the makeup artist worked on her face. edging elation bubbled through her every vein as they talked about varying outfits to wear, expensive designer brands she was allowed to borrow. she felt like a proper celebrity.

finally, the crew decided on a casual look for today. her slate black, silken hair was bundled in a half-up loose french plait whilst the rest of it waved down just below her shoulders, the front strands falling in front of her face. light and delicate makeup that made her eyes shine and sparkle like a glossy nephrite stone; the minimal makeup also allowed her ubiquitous, chocolate freckles to proudly be displayed on her face. polished, golden dangle geometric earrings to frame her heart-shaped face and overall elevate the look from simple to elegant. an ivory laced-back milkmaid top with puffed long sleeves, high-waisted, sun-bleached skinny jeans with a few sparse rips and shreds, tattered white thread entwined between the tears and loosely hanging like vines. to finish off the look was some pearly white stilettos and few rings as well as a similarly styled necklace to match the earrings.

“i feel, amazing.” adele faltered in disbelief as she longingly stared at herself in the mirror, turning to the crew exhibiting an approving smile. “thank you.” she softly spoke before squeaking with excitement as she danced on the spot causing her team to giggle in response. “time to get going!” she excitedly commanded herself as she made a poor attempt at trying to control her out of rhythm breathing. the exhilaration and eagerness began to convolute into a ball of anxiousness and fret. it was something new and different which was scary but she didn’t want it to hold her back. another deep breath and she made her way to the contemporary, modern lobby of her apartment block where she spotted the black suv through the towering glass front doors in which her chauffeur was waiting for her.

“per jenna’s request,” the chauffeur nodded towards the coffee in the cupholder. adele wrapped her hand around the starbucks cup — still hot. “vanilla oat milk latte?” she asked as she brought the almost searing coffee to her lips, the steam floating upwards and brushing past her skin. the chauffeur nodded as he put the vehicle into gear and started to head towards the destination. effortlessly, the sweet drink passed her lips as she took a few sips before she threw her head back in a satisfied manor. surely the coffee would help with the nerves and just overall elevate her mood. she scoured her social media for a short while, taking breaks to finish the rest of her drink before they arrived. it’s l.a, so it was always bound to take a while even if it just was a few blocks over.

discreetly, the car pulled into the back entrance where she was able to enter without getting noticed and was directed to a very bright and lively reception where the young actress signed in. her heels clicking against the laminated wooden flooring as she followed the operations manager who was indistinctively talking through the black earpiece attached to her ear and was clutching a clipboard to her stomach. a few corridors later they had arrived, the manager twisted the handle to the door and entered, allowing adele to trail behind her.

almost blinding, the room was filled with numerous studio lights. littering the floor almost completely, cables and all different sorts of leads and plugs lay disorganised on the floor. a huge monitor was placed in front of the white screen which was the focus of all the beaming lights. “hey adele!” vocalised the director as he approached her, also bearing a black earpiece. “so the premise of today’s shoot is quite simple. you’re going to be playing the game with our two guests over here,” he briefly motioned towards two gentlemen sat in the corner of the room chatting and chuckling between themselves clearly in a world of their own, “and we’ve paired you with henry because we only have two controllers and we want to get everyone to be involved so the others are being shot later. does that sound good?” he queried, concluded his speech.

“of course.” she eagerly spoke with a grin. “great,” the director spoke as he adjusted his wire-frame glasses, “let me introduce you to the guests. they’re going to be guiding you along with the game,” he spoke, leading adele over towards the boisterous men who were still conversing right up until adele and the director were stood only a few metres away.

“mark?” adele apprehensively suspected as she reached her hand out to his, inviting the suave gentleman to shake hands. “yes!” he answered in a shocked yet pleased tone as he stood to be polite and accepted the handshake with a beaming grin. “i think i watched a bit of your stuff a while back,” adele admitted before briefly catching eyes with the other guy who was staring up at her with gleaming eyes and a dopey yet adorable smile. “i’m honoured,” mark softly spoke before looking down at the other guy who was now standing to follow suit. “this is my friend ethan,” mark continued, placing a firm grip on his pal's shoulder.

“hi, nice to meet you.” ethan spoke in a much more gentle manner than mark did as he reached his hand out to replicate the greeting. “nice to meet you too,” she replied, reciprocating the greeting. “have you watched my stuff too?” ethan asked with a bashful smile as he ruffled his hair with his painted black fingernails. adele hesitantly shook her head not wanting to hurt his feelings, “no, but if it’s anything like mark’s stuff i’m certain it’s great.” she stated looking back at mark who had an affirming smirk on his face as he looked down at his younger friend who’s face had started to flush pink.

“henry is meant to be here right now, but he isn’t,” the director addressed somewhat annoyingly, “i’ll go and have a word to see where he is you can just stay here and talk to each other.” the director stated before hurriedly making his way to the door which adele entered through. she sat down in one of the spare seats that sat opposite the boys as they sat down once more.

“can i just say i watched the trailer this morning and i can’t wait to watch it.” he admitted as he began to pull at the strings of his coal-black hoodie. “thank you, it really means a lot,” adele’s cheeks blushed as she began to fiddle with the rings on her fingers yet still keeping her eyes on the boys. “seriously. we’re not just saying this it looks fantastic,” mark chirped in enthusiastically as he leaned forward in the seat, “i’m never usually this excited about a new series. so congrats!” he admitted with a deep chuckle, looking towards ethan who was nodding in agreement.

the conversation was silenced when a huge figure walked through the door followed by the director and operations manager. the director hastily wagged his fingers at adele and the boys who obediently made their way over. “adele!” henry happily bellowed in his charming english accent as he pulled her into a gentle hug, remembering he probably was over two times her size. “long time no see,” she affirmed as she hugged him back before breaking their embrace. her eyes involuntarily wandered over to ethan as the director began briefing henry. ethan quickly darted his eyes to the director as if he just hadn’t been gazing at her causing adele to grin to herself as she put her concentration back to the director.

“great, so follow me and i’ll seat you.” the director asserted as he walked towards the chairs in front of the white screen, two at the front and two at the back yet not parallel to each other. the front seats were more centred whilst the back two were offset so nobody would be getting in the way of each other when seated.

“adele if you sit in the front left seat, henry in the right.” he requested as he took a step behind the camera and watched the monitor to see if it was what he had envisioned. adele and henry sat which the director reacted with a thumbs up. “okay, ethan if you sit on the left and mark on the right please.” the director concluded as he continued to watch the monitor. the boys did as they were told before mark immediately remarked. “gosh it’s bright behind here,” he joked shielding his eyes as he laughed, eliciting a few giggles from everyone as the director adjusted some of the studio light placement with a few apprentices.

after everything was adjusted to the directors liking, they were ready to roll. the director placed his 3 fingers up as he counted down whilst mouthing the numbers. the thumb was up, which meant everyone introduced themselves and surprisingly it didn’t need multiple takes. “today, adele and i are going to be playing the symbols of shadows game which is very similar to the new series on netflix september 4th.” henry beamed, clutching the xbox controller in his hand as he looked over towards adele. “and i’m going to win. i’m going to beat henry.”

henry scoffed, dismissing adele’s statement as mark and ethan giggled behind them. “we’re also going to try to help, but it looks like they’re gaming experts,” mark spoke, wavering his tone with the last two words as he jokingly mocked adele and henry. “well, there’s only one way to find out.” ethan spoke energetically in a slightly goofier voice than what he was speaking in before. ethan looked at mark before they both turned towards the camera with a raised eyebrow. “okay great. we’ll cut there. let’s load the game up.” the director approved, leaning back in his chair, fixing his corduroy jacket as one of the apprentices loaded the game up and set up the first level. “we just want you to complete the first level so don’t try and rush.” the apprentice handed back the controller to adele as he quickly rushed out of view.

the camera began to roll again and the pair began to get a grasp of the controls and the setting of the game as they intentionally tried to set each other up in the game: pushing one another of the map, friendly fire, stealing points and collectables, and deliberately annoying each other which resulted in many laughs around the room. matter-of-factly, ethan and mark didn’t really do anything to help, however, they did make for a great commentary and supplied multiple belly-aching jokes.

the screen faded to black as they’d finished the first level; mark and ethan clapped and congratulated the pair in between giggles as adele and henry carried on the bit and refused to display any means of sportsmanship. “guys, i don’t know about you but i definitely won.” henry retaliated as adele shook her head and rolled her eyes. mark and ethan were laughing so hard it was almost silent. “this was a team game,” mark giggled as the pitch in his voice heightened. “let us know in the comments who you think won. because it was moi.” adele stated confidently, trying to hide the smile that wanted to appear on her lips so badly. the pair promoted their netflix series as they wrapped up filming. “okay, great. that’s everything. thanks, guys.” the director spoke as he picked up his macbook from the desk and began typing away. “if you just wait here until someone comes and collects you,” the director struggled to speak as he was too busy multitasking. he pressed the side of his earpiece and spoke to himself as he called for the cast to be escorted.

“you’re really good, i was impressed.” ethan spoke to adele softly, as everyone got out of their seats. “you really like to flatter me don’t you.” she joked which caused ethan to halter in his thoughts for a moment. “it’s not a bad thing,” she reassured him, “it’s really nice to hear. especially coming from you.” delicately spoke, eyes quickly moving over to see if anyone was listening but mark and henry were engulfed in their own conversation. ethan’s cheeks flushed pink again as he displayed a meek grin.

he was about to respond when the door re-opened and the manager stepped through, immediately grabbing everyone else’s attention. ethan bit at his lip as anguish washed over his face as he realised the conversation was over. adele was disinclined for a moment, lingering for a few more seconds as the butterflies in her stomach began to fade. “it was nice talking to you. talk soon?” she asked which brightened up ethan’s face as he nodded, “of course. see you soon.” he timorously spoke with a contemptuous smile as he waved goodbye, for now.