#i understood my assignment and binged all them movies

[carassiusvigorous]

[anythingandreitten]

thunderstruck and hard to breathe.

i have been trying to process the most recent grey's episode where meredith's house was on fire. even without ellen pompeo's recent post about her leaving the show, seeing that scene completely devastated my heart. i did not want to believe it until i watched it myself. this is my intention for writing this: to have a containment of my emotions and everything i have regarding not just this episode but ellen pompeo leaving grey's. i strongly feel that no matter how heavy this is for me, i would want to be able to keep this, because grey's anatomy has been such a big part of my life since the past year.

the show. when i was in high school, a lot of students watched series in their pasttimes. from what i kept hearing then, i had quite a lot of choices to go around if ever i do choose to watch by preference. however, i never saw myself doing so. i mostly stayed on social media to watch rather than committing myself to long minutes of episodes of seasons. a movie was enough. until one time in 2018, in 12th grade, one of my professors (who is also my sweet friend) asked us to watch something and do an ethics paper about it. each of us was assigned a certain medical drama episode to write about. that was the first 'episode' i've watched in my life—'an honest mistake', grey's anatomy s5e16. a year later, my brother started watching the series on netflix. since then, i committed to my first series, and it was grey's anatomy. there were month-long pauses in the process but i was definitely hooked. from being a thing i do on free times, it has turned into something that i anticipated and then learned much from. sometimes, i wish the time when i began really gaining understanding and wisdom (starting around past season 6) from every step of the way happened exactly on the first episode. it was helping me. it was growing me. to this day, i cannot believe how God used what people seem to just use for distraction to expand me. grey's anatomy has been such a great part of my life, and a much greater one since september last year, 2021.

meredith grey. before her, i had lexie grey, and april kepner as my comfort characters. i believe 'comfort character' can be self-defined, and for me, it is someone that does not just give out a hug, but also show parts of you that you understand and love more when you see apart from yourself (like watching a movie but yours). with lexie, it was more of her than of me. the way she carried her life and stood and fought for herself and the things and people she loved was fascinating. she was more than the photographic memory i also had. she was more than the fun and food junkie i so relate to. then april kepner, the woman who definitely matched my beliefs. she was a Christian, barely noticed but really worked hard. her persistence and stubbornness reminded me so much of myself. then came jo wilson, who had a story packed with so much trauma i share with. i did not like her but when i saw her story unfold, and how she rose above and lived and fought for her life despite her past, had me in so much awe. the words i have written about them, i just know, do not compare to how much 'comfort' i found in them. then there was meredith grey. when the hardest season of my life began, i believe i was also starting to see what people meant when they said that she has gone through so much. i was just coursing through episodes and seasons until i reach the latest ones, often without intentionally binging (just more on savoring what i can unpack from each). meredith grey at the time represented the who that i was—dealing with too much loss, fighting through life, and even grieving from all that has been taken away from her. she was learning a lot about herself; she was doing her job; but she also had quite a lot of unprocessed things. ellen's character made me feel seen, remembered, valued, loved, and understood during a time when i shut off from connections, when i was going through life alone, and when all wrong things were happening at the wrong times. though fictional, through meredith grey, the show taught me so much about myself and my story, our context and culture, our relationships, our phenomenal concerns and social issues, our fights, and simply just how the human body works. seeing the whole show unfold from season 1 to the latest episode was a masterpiece that i feel like God allowed ro really be a part of my life. i was not and more than just a fan—it was a part of my story. i can confidently attest that i would not be the person i am if it weren't for 'that phase.' i was shaped through it. it was not a distraction and most importantly not an idol, it was a tool. from meredith grey's house, to the development of her leaving, her storyline was so close to my heart, along with lexie, april, and jo.

the house burning and her leaving. a superficial factor as to why it easily became hard for me to process and let go of meredith grey was this: now that i am in sync with the show as it releases its episodes, the first character who leaves that i real-time encounter (among all) was meredith grey. it hurt when izzie left, ellis died, lexie left, george died, mark died, yang left, derek died, callie left, deluca died, arizona and april left, alex left, and jackson left, but because i had episodes to hang on to after them, there was not that much piercing through. i knew who were still there, but with mer leaving, it hits different, most especially at a time when she has become my home character. and what hurt more is that her house burned. her house was an unrecognized keyolayer in the show. it was a reservoir of everything good (and even bad) that meredith had and went through. it was where the show all began, and i could not have it in me to accept that of all that meredith had already lost, it did not stop with the last one. her house was also being taken away from her. this was just too much. my story tied with a lot of, if not most of, the show's storyline. after a few weeks of finally being stable, i find myself in a low, trying to pick the pieces of what will be because meredith's loss (her house) once again represents the moment when i remember all of mine. suddenly, there's also been something taken away from me, again, like how 'again and again and again' it is for meredith too. the show and most especially her and the other characters taught me so much through their conversations, their advocacies, their relationships, their patient care, and of course, who they are (despite fictional).

i guess that is all for now. i have yet to find a right time and a right space to particularly write about things i have learned and kept through witnessing the show's journey. for the meantime, i will cry to the song that played in this exact scene: 'one step' by jeremy lister. i will cry until i am done. thank you, meredith grey. thank you, grey's anatomy. i will continue to anticipate what it will be until it finally ends. thank you. all this is portrayed so well by the lyrics.

for the meantime, my heart aches.

agl.

[mister-supernova]

If I Saw You on the Street

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

Pairing: Hope Mikaelson x Reader - Platonic Josie Saltzman x Reader

After Malivore

For as long as you could remember, summer vacation was your absolute favorite time of the year. To your surprise, it’s actually been a huge drag for you this year. It wasn’t like this was the worst summer ever--you could think of a few others that could take that spot--but there was definitely something off that you couldn’t piece together. 

For instance, no one has any idea as to how Landon destroyed Malivore, not even Landon himself. That whole day seemed to be a huge blur to all of the students. You remembered the bigger events like the school defeating Triad, but everyone seems to struggle when it comes to the smaller details.  

In order to keep yourself busy, you decided to stay at the school and take a summer job at the Mystic Grill. Besides the fact that everyone else was back home with their families, the whole school had this off-putting sense of emptiness. The place has magic in the walls for crying out loud, you usually feel some sense of liveliness. 

There was this one room in particular that you felt strangely drawn to. You had no idea why since you knew that no one stayed in that room this past year. At least, no one you knew anyways. 

One day out of pure curiosity, you picked the lock to that room to see what was special about it. 

Just as you expected, it was just a regular empty dorm that was probably going to be taken up by a new student during the fall. It looked like every other bedroom at the school, but this one felt familiar. 

Something that caught you off guard was the scent that faintly lingered in the room. The best way you could describe it was something floral with a hint of sweetness and spice--vanilla and cinnamon maybe--and it wasn’t like anything else you had smelled in the school before. 

As much as you wanted to, you couldn’t bring yourself to leave for the longest time. The urge to stay and wander trumped over the obvious choice that was to walk away. 

Something happened here, you thought. 

A few small drops of pastel blue paint chips stained the wooden floorboards and you wondered how the hell they got there given the rooms have white walls. 

Instead of questioning it any deeper, you just assumed that a student who had this room before must’ve gotten the paint on the floor and the janitors hadn’t noticed it. 

But how could they have missed that? 

You stood there for what felt like hours, trying to piece together what it was that made this place have this unexplainable affect on you. You could’ve stayed there for the rest of the day digging through your brain for an answer that would never come. 

At the end of the day, you knew nothing would come to mind no matter how hard you tried. It was like the answer was at the tip of your tongue, but your mind was radio silent.

Frustrated and defeated, you had to force yourself to leave the strange room. After that, you made yourself forget about that place completely for the rest of the summer and refused to ever return to it.  

Whenever you weren’t at work, you spent time with Landon, Josie, and a wolfed-out Rafael which was fine in the beginning. Dorian gave you permission to shift in the woods on full moons for the summer so that Raf could talk to somebody and you guys could possibly get information on how to help him. 

He definitely appreciated the company that you could provide, but alas he had no idea on how he could be turned back. 

The happier times were the nights you four had weekly movie nights by the Old Mill. You all would alternate who would pick the movie to watch and Landon absolutely hated that you chose a horror movie every single time, but you loved hearing the phoenix boy screech with terror. Josie would get a good kick out of it, too and you were positive that you’d see Raf wag his tail every time Landon screamed.

During those small moments, things felt like they could possibly get back to normal, but once you stepped foot back in the school, you were lost again. 

Your thoughts were much louder through the night. It would get so bad that you could barely get any sleep and the times that you would, you’d wake up screaming from a night terror. 

There was one night when you were tossing and turning, you knocked on Josie’s door to ask if she knew some kind of incantation to get you to fall asleep. You were up for anything at that point, even letting her swing a frying pan over your head to knock you out.  

Not wanting to hurt you or possibly kill you, Josie made you some sleepytime tea instead which actually helped a lot. It didn’t help so much with the vivid dreams you’ve been having, but you thought that it was better than getting no sleep at all. 

Everything felt like it was going decently well until Raf decided to bow out once Josie and Landon started getting close. You wanted to curse at him for making you the third wheel, but you understood that he couldn’t wait here forever for some solution that could help him become human again. He had to move on somehow, especially seeing that his best friend seemed to be moving on, too.

Regardless, you started feeling awkward hanging out with just the two of them. They wanted to include you during their weekly movie nights, but you’d just make up some excuse that you had to be up early for work the next morning. 

Landon--damn him for knowing your work schedule--could tell that you were bullshitting, but he didn’t want to force you into doing something you didn’t want to do. 

You tried busying yourself with other activities like running through the woods, canoeing in the lake, taking extra shifts at work, binge eating all the good snacks in the kitchen; you even got yourself into drawing and painting for some weird reason, but no matter what you did, there was still something missing. 

Towards the end of the summer, you didn’t feel like your usual jokester self. Sure, you’d throw out a line of sarcasm or make a witty comment here and there, but most of it would sound forced. You’d mainly do it so that Josie and Landon wouldn’t worry about you so much, but Josie quickly picked up on your facade. 

They really wanted to help you figure out what was making you feel this way, but as much as you appreciate their help, there was nothing they could do. How could they figure out what was wrong if you didn’t even know for yourself?

One day after your shift at work, you decided to do something you never in your wildest dreams thought you would ever do. 

You started cleaning your room. 

Josie volunteered to help even though you assured her you’d be fine doing it alone. She bribed you by saying she’d buy you a milkshake if you let her help, so without another word, you agreed to let her stay and assist.

“Gosh, do you throw out any of your old assignments?” Josie asks as she rummages through your desk drawers, “This is an algebra one paper from three years ago, Y/n,” she says, flashing your old homework assignment with a huge F circled in the front. 

“Hey, less judging and more cleaning.” You say, digging through your dresser for clothes you don’t wear anymore. 

“Did you try writing a reminder for a history test or something?” 

You furrow your eyebrows before turning to look at Jo, “What do you mean?”

“You have this post-it note that says “Don’t forget H”, but that’s all that’s written,” she holds up the note and from the other side of your bed, you read exactly what she had said. 

It definitely looked like you tried scribbling another letter after the H, but it ended up being a long messy squiggle, “Uh, I don’t know,” you shrug, “Probably. I must’ve been half asleep when I wrote it though because I have no clue when I did that.” 

Josie puffs her lip out in confusion, “Well. I would be surprised by that, but judging by the ten cans of energy drinks I just tossed out, it’s not so surprising to hear that your memory is a little fuzzy.” 

You drop your jaw in shock, “Is today Judge Y/n Day and I wasn’t made aware of it? You asked to help clean my room Jo, now save your judgments for another day please.” 

Josie playfully rolls her eyes at you, followed by a small chuckle, “Toss?” She asks, ready to crumple the piece of paper up. You take a second to answer back, wondering whether or not if you did forget some history assignment or maybe something even bigger than that. 

“Sure,” you feel your stomach churn seeing her throw the note in the trash bag, but there was no taking it back now. 

Another few minutes of silence pass until Josie speaks up, “Since when do you draw?” 

You look back up from your clothes to see Jo now holding up a sketchbook you snagged at the lost and found a few weeks ago. It was brand new and untouched, so you thought to yourself “why not?”. 

After explaining that to Josie, she flipped through some of the first few pages. You were no Leonardo DiCaprio--or whatever that painter guy’s name was--but you thought you were decent with your sketches. 

“These are really good, Y/n. Did you just think of these by yourself?” She asks, talking about the drawings you had of a girl you’ve been seeing in your dreams. 

You could only see parts of the girl’s face. Mostly you’ve only been able to clearly see features like her eyes and hair, so most of the pages were taken up by a pair of blue eyes and waves of auburn hair. 

“Not really. I’ve been having these really vivid dreams lately.” You tell Josie.

“This is who you see?” She looks down at the pages again, “Who is that? She doesn't look like anyone we know.”  

“Yeah, I don’t know either. She’s all I’ve been seeing, though.” 

“Well, it looks like you’ve found yourself a hidden talent.” Josie smiles, gently setting the book back down on the desk, “And maybe she’s your soulmate,” she teases. 

You just roll your eyes with a small smile and get back to your tasks. 

Like a girl that beautiful could even exist let alone talk to me, you think to yourself. 

As you continue sorting through your clothes, you notice a pair of sweats that look almost smaller than half your size. 

“Uh, Jo?” She turns to your attention, “These aren’t yours, are they?” 

She raises an eyebrow at you, “How short do you think I am? I think my legs are a little longer than whoever those are.” 

“Well, they’re not mine, obviously. How’d they get into my drawer?” 

“Maybe they belonged to whoever lived in this dorm before you?” Josie shrugs.

“But the dresser was completely empty when I moved in,” you think for a moment, now questioning everything, “At least, I thought it was. I would think that I would’ve taken these out if they were here. Why would I keep a pair of sweatpants that I don’t fit in?” 

“You do a lot of questionable things, you know. Like that one time you jumped through a bonfire wondering how hot it really was or when you tried to do a backflip off the roof of the school and into the pool or the time you “drank” a beer through your-” 

You raise your hands in surrender and cut her off before she could finish, “Okay, I get it! I do stupid shit. The sweatpants belonged to whoever lived in here before I moved in and I didn’t take them out of the drawer. Case closed. Swiftly moving on.” 

You were positive they weren’t there when you moved in, but there weren’t any other reasons you could think of as to how they got into your dresser. 

Seconds before you tossed it back into the bottom of your drawer, your nose barely caught the same sweet and spicy floral scent that you recalled smelling in the strange room. Breathing it in again brought back that memory of being mentally lost in that room, but oddly enough this time it made you feel calm. 

After another hour passed you and Josie ended up filling three bags of trash, one of them recycled trash, and one large donation box of clothes. 

You didn’t waste any time reminding her that she owed you a milkshake. She kind of hoped that you would’ve forgotten about your deal, but she was a woman of her word.

You made a “compromise” to take your box of clothes over to the donating center on the other side of the town square while Josie bought the milkshakes. 

Your task was a lot quicker than Josie’s since it was pretty much rush hour at the Grill right now, so you waited for her on one of the benches in the square.

Sitting by yourself with nothing else to do but wait, you couldn’t help but feel that empty feeling return. The emptiness never hit you all at once, but it definitely drained the hell out of you. 

Again, you felt stumped. Like there’s somewhere you should be or something you should be doing or someone you should be with. You knew Josie was going to be back any minute, but that wasn’t what was missing. 

You anxiously looked toward the Mystic Grill, feeling your breaths becoming more and more shallow as every second passes. You started wishing Josie would walk out so that all your worries could just go away. 

Then--almost like you knew right where to look--your gaze stopped when you noticed someone looking at you from where you just came from on the other side of the town square. 

You couldn’t make out her facial features from so far away, but it was the auburn color of her hair that stuck out to you more than anything. For a moment--and just for a moment--all the weight that had been weighing on your shoulders this summer felt much lighter and everything felt okay again. 

“One cookies and cream milkshake,” Josie’s voice startles you and you face her abruptly, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” she chuckles, lending you your milkshake.

“No, you’re good. I was just…” you look back to the spot you saw the girl only to find that she was gone, “I was just lost in thought.” 

You had no idea what just happened or how you seemed to have possibly seen the girl from your dreams, but just a glimpse of her made you feel more emotions than you have all summer long. Because of that, a huge part of you hoped that you would see her again. 

~

heyyyyyy beautiful people! thanks for over 100 likes on This Isn’t Goodbye you guys gals and nb pals! i’m super super happy that you’ve been enjoying this series so far! still have no idea how many more parts this will be just yet lol but i really appreciate every one of you for the love <3  

*also the title was inspired by the song Dreams Tonite by Alvvays in case you were curious ;)*

taglist: @chicken-wang09​ @trikruismybitch​ @sodangtired​

[izabellq]

Costumes -> Tamaki Amajiki

summary: you accidentally match costumes with tamaki. prepare yourself for a whole day of endless shenanigans.

contains: MAJOR FLUFF, language if you squint (ik canonically, mirio is in 3-B, but for the sake of this plot, the big three are all in 3-A) also, i tried to make this gender-neutral, so if there’s any specified pronouns, let me know and i’ll fix it ASAP!

THIS IS MY HALLOWEEN SPECIAL! (im very much aware i posted this a day late oop)

UA had decided to hold a special event where students could wear their Halloween costume to school. You weren’t planning anything special or unique, just something to get the job done. So, you decided to dress like a cute puppy. It was only a simple onesie: topped with cute floppy dog ears on your hood, and a tail that attached from the bottom. You weren’t expecting to get a lot of attention, which was perfectly fine with you because you were never the type to seek the stage. You topped off the simple look with a black spot on your nose and one around your eye. And just like, you were good to go.

When you walked into school, you couldn’t help but feel a tad bit insecure. It seemed like everyone had decked out for this special occasion. You passed by some anime cosplay, food costumes, group oriented costumes — everything you could possibly think of. And as you made your way to your class, you wondered what Tamaki would be wearing.

You couldn’t help yourself. It was undeniably true that you had a rather large crush on him. Everything about him was enticing. He was so shy that it was usually you who initiated conversation, but that wasn’t enough to make you falter. You understood he wasn’t the most socially active person around. To be frank, it was rather comforting to know that not everyone at UA was a egotistical narcissist.

Finding your assigned seat, you scanned the class. Some of your peers also took the simple route which put some of your thoughts at ease. Others, the more competitive students, were quite impressive themselves.

You turn towards the doorway when Mirio’s booming voice gathers the room’s attention. He was wearing a... whoopie cushion? Oh dear lord. Mirio was a stickler for humor, so of course, he’d wear practically anything that could rise a laugh out of someone. Only, his jokes kind of sucked and no doubt would the class of 3-A be subject to awful fart jokes for the rest of the day. You weren’t so worried about that as you were worried about the two other students usually attached to his hip. One of them being Tamaki Amajiki.

The next one to stop into class was Nejire Hado who was absolutely breathtaking. Her costume, which was nothing more than a fairy, seemed to capture her true personality perfectly. Although, an angel would also be very accurate in her case. She turned towards the entrance way and stuck her head out into the hallway, “Tamaki! Don’t be shy! You look so cute!”

Your heart began to beat just a little bit faster.

“Mirio! Come help me out with him,” Nejire stomped into the hallway, the fluttering of her makeshift wings dissappeared, only to be followed by a laughing Mirio.

When they returned, their hands were clasped over Tamaki’s wrists, forbidding him from turning around and sulking out in the hallway. When you saw him, you’re taken aback. The smallest of gasps erupt from your lips when you notice his costume choice. A onesie, similar to yours, but instead of the dog ears; replaced with cat ones, and a longer tail attached to the back. He had the same minimal face paint (lined whiskers and a nose) as you did, curtesy of Nejire.

When he looked up, his cheeks were flamed with embarrassment. He found your gaze, and if it were possible, he became even more sheepish. You weren’t any different. The thought of having a matching costume with Tamaki, despite not having any prior arrangements, made you equally embarrassed. Now, all you wondered was, did he notice?

Well, if he didn’t before, he sure did now when Nejire spoke up, “Hey Y/N! Oh my– are you a puppy? How cute! Wait! You’re matching with Tamaki! Now you two look like an adorable couple!”

Her excitement, plus her lack of censorship, made the class laugh— everyone’s attention on you and Tamaki. “Nejire...” Tamaki muttered. He stared at the floor, wishing it’d just swallow him whole.

“You guys should take a picture together,” Mirio suggested, walking over to where you sat and giving you a hand. You hesitantly took it, positive that you looked about ready to vomit or pass out. Maybe both. In that order.

Dragged to stand next to Tamaki, you spare him a single glance. He has his left hand up to his face, doing a shoty job at covering his red cheeks. To you, he seemed... more embarrassed than usual? Perhaps he just didn’t wanted to match costumes with you. It saddened you, but it wasn’t like you could do anything about it now.

Nejire laughed, “Say cheese!”

Tamaki mumbled something that you could only assume was in response to Nejire. In a small pickle of confidence, you grabbed his hand and entangled your fingers with his just before the camera went off.

“Cheese!”

That was first period.

When lunch rolled around, Tamaki had face planted himself on the table.

Nejire and Mirio sent each other a knowing look before moving to console him.

“I don’t understand why you’re not happy, Tamaki! You’re matching costumes with them, you got a picture with them, and they also held your hand!” Nejire listed off the things that happened before the bell rang, signaling the start of first period.

“I am happy...” Tamaki muttered, lifting himself up from the table, “But they probably hate me now.”

“I wouldn’t say that!” Mirio added, “Haven’t I told you that they most definitely have a crush on you?”

“No offense Mirio... but I’m not too keen on taking advice from a literal walking whoopie cushion.” Tamaki propped his arm on the table, before leaning his head into the palm of his hand. The same one you had so eagerly held. He wished to repeat the notion a million more times. Only now, he was afraid he had messed up his one and only opportunity.

Mirio gasped, “I’ll have you know that I got many compliments today!”

Nejire giggled before turning back to Tamaki. “Why don’t we just call them over here?”

“I- um, no... I’d rather not do that,” Tamaki rushed out. He wasn’t sure if he could handle another awkward occurrence with you. You’d surely find him weird.

“Where are they anyways?” Mirio asked, not before sinking his teeth on the apple provided on his lunch tray.

“Oh I see them!” Nejire not-so-subtly pointed at you. Tamaki couldn’t help himself as he turned to look in your direction.

You were laughing at something someone had said before adding your own little quip. You were so cute, he thought. Nejire was the one who suggested he wear a cat-themed costume due to the running joke that he was a ‘cute little kitten’. He was prepared to arrive in his normal uniform but Nejire’s persistence was unwavering. And if he knew what you’d be wearing— would he have accepted the costume more easily? You deserved better than him, he knew, but a small part of him fantasized about the ways you’d love him in a way no one else had before.

“Earth to Tamaki,” Nejire sang, snapping him out of his thoughts. “They’re coming over here, straighten up!”

“Hey Y/N, care to sit?” Mirio asked.

Tamaki’s looking down by the time you got there, so he barely registers it when you sit beside him. Your shoulder rubs against his in brief contact and it makes him shudder. He hopes you didn’t notice.

“What’s up guys?” You brought over a juice box from your other table, sipping on the straw of your drink rather intently.

“Tell Tamaki that my costume is funny!” Mirio piped up, distracted from the match-making he was SUPPOSED to be doing.

You nervously giggled, “Well... your costume is certainly an attention-grabber!”

Mirio seemed pleased with that answer, not having considered the fact that you dodged the question the best way you knew how. Tamaki stared at you, adoration etched into his irises. He didn’t realize he had left out a soft laugh until you were staring at him.

He choked up, “Uh- sorry... I didn’t mean to laugh.”

You smiled, a picture definition of the word perfect. Everything about you, he loved. He just loved you in general. “You don’t need to apologize Tamaki! Your laugh is very cute!”

You pinched his cheek before continuing your previous conversation with Mirio and Nejire. Did you even realize what you were doing to him? He hid his face in his arms and rested on the lunch table. Tamaki knew his face was probably several shades of red and pink. He was only wondering how long it would take before you’d actually kill him with your presence.

And that concluded lunch.

The last period of the day came and went uneventfully. And soon enough, class 3A had returned to the dorms, agreeing to remain in their respective costumes until the clock striked midnight. Some students had decided to spend the night on a scary movie binge, while others payed no mind to the event by studying and finishing thier cumulated late assignments.

You on the other hand we’re stuck in the kitchen, preparing some coffee to get you through the night. Mirio and Nejire had wanted to pull an all-nighter as well, which meant you had to figure out a way to not fall alseep before midnight hit. You already had a messed up sleep schedule as it was, so one more added incentive should make the whole evening smooth sailing.

“Y-Y/N?”

You turn towards the kitchen doorway where Tamaki stood, a bit shellshocked from your presence. Still in that cat onesie, you could see his whiskers had become a bit smudged.

You smiled at him, an ache wrapped around your chest became noticeably present to you. “Amajiki! Shouldn’t you be up in Mirio’s room with Nejire? I’ll be up there in a second, I just gotta finish this.”

“Ah, well,” Tamaki moved into the kitchen, fidgeting with his fingers as he talked. “You were taking a while, so they sent me to check up on you. I’m glad you’re o-okay though.”

You hummed in acknowledgment, turning back to the light stirring of the coffee machine. Your fingers uncoordinatedly tapped the kitchen’s counter, a melodic beat strung to match your voice. Tamaki watched with amusement— nothing like the sight of you in your element could make him any happier.

Actually, there was one thing that would be slightly better.

Slowly, he approached you until he had occupied the space beside you. You noticed him almost immediately, but had pretended to take more interest in your coffee than him. Your heart rate picked up, leaving you to mentally curse your inability to remain calm.

“I have a question,” His voice was hushed, a bit unsure of itself. You turned to look at him but his vision remained on the counter.

“What’s up?” When the coffee machine stilled, you pulled your mug out and carefully placed it in front of you. The smell of the roasted beans infiltrated your nostrils and you couldn’t get enough of it.

“Do you- I mean... I think I’m... no that’s not right. I think it’d better if I just show you...” He bit the inside of his lip, whilst finally mustering the courage to look at you. You’re eyes were widened with curiosity, the reflection of the night settling in your skin.

He moves slightly closer, and when you don’t move away, he softly places his hand on your cheek, angling your face so your centimeters away from each other. Tamaki tries to speak, but he honestly didn’t even think he’d get this far. He’s left utterly speechless. Perhaps if Fatgum were here, he’d supply him with the confidence he needed to pull this off. His anxiety-prone thoughts began to take initiative and he starts to pull away, believing to have bit off more than he could chew. He really did believe you deserved better than him.

But your still there. You’ve always been there. In more ways than one. You grip the front of his onesie and pull him back to his previous spot. His hand recupped your face, and you take this opportunity of surprise to place your lips on his. Nothing more than a second long, only the brush of your lips before the tingling sensation had dissappeared all together.

It wasn’t enough. For either of you. You can’t remember who surged forward first, but it couldn’t have mattered less. The only thing that was being even remotely processed was the heat of your frenzied kisses. Tamaki poured all of his emotions into that moment; from the way he felt when seeing you in your puppy onesie to the butterflies that clouded his mind whenever he thought of you.

You were the first to pull back out of breath. You don’t care that your makeup is beyond repair, or that his is either. Wrapping your arms around his neck, you muttered six words into the smooth crevice of his skin, completely forgetting about the coffee you were prepping for yourself. “I love you, I always have.”

Tamaki smiled, though the nervousness hadn’t completely disappeared. “I love you too.” He admitted, feeling his heart flutter at the mutual affection. It wasn’t one-sided after all, not one bit.

Maybe he ought to take more advice from his friend the whoopie cushion.

Then again, maybe not.

“There waiting for us you know,” Your voice was a bit muffled, having been the after-effect of hiding your face in his neck. He understood you perfectly nonetheless.

“They can wait a little longer,” His arms wrapped around your waist and pulled you impossibly closer.

“Kiss me again,” You pleaded.

And so, he did just that.

CHECK OUT MASTERLIST HERE!

[morningfears]

Nontraditional Graduation

Rating: PG

Summary: Calum feels bad that you have to miss graduation so he takes it upon himself to give you the best nontraditional graduation he can. || ((The class of 2020′s graduation isn’t exactly looking like the traditional graduation and as a member of that class, I was a little upset about it. So, here’s my take on a comfort fic.))

Word Count: 2.8k

Quarantine was, for lack of a better word, strange.

There were parts of it, namely spending your days with Calum and Duke in some sort of domestic fantasy, making up for lost time, that were almost nice. Not having to leave your home and go out into the world was almost nice, too. Under any other circumstances, you would’ve relished in these things. However, life felt a bit surreal and reality weighed heavily on your shoulders.

The street you lived on was never busy but as neighbors hunkered down and waited, the street (and city itself) was quiet. You saw the occasional neighbor out for a walk, never straying too far from their own home, and the mail carrier making their rounds but the streets felt eerily quiet. Life, understandably, felt like a movie that was placed on pause in March and forgotten about. 

Time had always felt like a stable concept, something dependable and easy to count on, but it no longer felt that way as days passed with seemingly no rhyme or reason. Four in the morning felt no different than four in the afternoon, Monday no different than Friday. If it weren’t for Calum’s weekly video chats with the boys - on Thursdays, of course, as Thursdays were for the boys -, you were afraid that you wouldn’t even know what day it was.

Before quarantine began, you’d been good about keeping your schedule written in a planner. Your work schedule was always there, right beside your class schedule, and your assignment due dates were even color-coded. It was helpful, a way to keep your hectic life in some sort of balance, and you’d managed to keep up with it for the first few weeks of quarantine. However, all of your organization flew out the window as the fatigue and discomfort of the situation really began to set in.

March and April had come and gone without so much as an indication of their passing and May’s arrival hit you much harder than you imagined it would.

Thankfully, your final semester of college was a light one. You’d planned it that way from the beginning, thanks to your advisor, and had ensured yourself a light course load that was supposed to leave you with time to job hunt and hang out with friends before everyone inevitably went their separate ways. You were grateful to your past self for that decision as you’d only had a few short Zoom meetings and a handful of easy assignments to submit in the month and a half between spring break and graduation.

If you were honest with yourself, graduation was something that you’d been looking forward to since August. It was a major achievement and you were excited to walk across the platform and gather the degree you’d busted your ass to earn. You and your friends had taken cliche photos in front of campus landmarks with a silly sign that read ‘Last First Day’ before classes began and had planned to make one that read ‘Now what?’ for after the ceremony. Your more artistic friends agreed to help decorate graduation caps, something you’d been looking forward to, and you’d even planned a Disney trip for the weekend before so that you could take photos in your cap and gown.

To make things even better, Calum had been able to book a later flight than the others so that he could stay in LA long enough for your graduation before heading out on tour with you by his side.

On paper, your plans were picture perfect. Everything felt like it was falling into place, like it was meant to be, and you were beyond excited. You were ready for something, anything, to celebrate the hard work you’d put in over the years - the late nights holed up in the library, studying and writing; the breakdowns over grades; the stress from trying your best to earn a degree.

But the universe had other plans.

You’d been the realistic one of your friends, cancelling plans and coming to terms with the fact that you most likely wouldn’t get a graduation the moment stay-at-home orders were announced, and spent the majority of your time trying to stay positive. There was nothing you could do to change what was happening and you knew that the cancellations were happening for the best.

Everyone was safer at home.

However, the positivity came at a price. Every time a negative emotion began to bubble, you swallowed it. Whenever you felt sad that you would no longer have late night dinners with friends after a rough class, whenever you felt disappointed that you had to cancel a road trip or a Disney trip, whenever you felt hurt that you wouldn’t get a graduation ceremony despite the hard work you put in to earn your degree, you bit them all back and reminded yourself that things could be worse.

You didn’t allow yourself to feel the emotions that were festering beneath the surface because they made you feel guilty. Feeling anything other than grateful for your health and comfort in the fact that you knew this situation wouldn’t make you or break you lodged an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of your stomach so you avoided those thoughts altogether.

However, as desperately as you avoided the negative thoughts for yourself, you were quick to comfort your loved ones and encourage them to experience their emotions fully. Calum, especially.

You knew that he was heartbroken - as were the others - that their plans for the album had had to change so drastically, so quickly. They’d all been so excited, so ready to release the album they’d put so much of themselves into, and things came to a grinding halt. You knew that they were devastated that the release of such a personal album had to be under such conditions. They couldn’t celebrate with the fans and, even worse, they couldn’t celebrate with one another.

Calum never complained but he did acknowledge his feelings. He talked openly, to you, about how disappointed he was that things were going the way they were even though he understood it all. He got it off his chest and moved on. You understood, he’d worked hard and deserved to have the album release they’d all been planning for. You told him as much in the days immediately surrounding the release, words of comfort leaving your lips as you ran your fingers through the blonde curls you were praying he kept.

And that was why he was completely and utterly baffled when he learned that you didn’t feel you deserved the same.

You’d never outright told him that you were upset about having to cancel your travel or that graduation was cancelled - in fact, you’d joked that you were glad because it meant you didn’t have to deal with crowds or packing - but he could tell just how much it was hurting you. You avoided bringing up those topics yourself and when you only offered enough words to move past them in a conversation, he learned to leave them alone. He could tell that you felt guilty for feeling sad and it broke his heart.

You’d worked so hard for graduation, for the things that were coming after, and to see you trying to pretend that it didn’t matter that they were cancelled worried him.

You were upset, more so than he realized, and he wanted to do something to make your nontraditional graduation a little easier on you. You’d been so kind and understanding when he was upset over the album release, when your friends were upset over their own cancelled plans, and to him, graduating college was an astounding accomplishment that deserved a celebration.

So, with the help of friends, he set out to make it a day that you would never forget.

Distracting you in order to set up for the impromptu graduation ceremony and party he was planning was much easier than he’d imagined it would be. You forgot that it was even supposed to be your graduation day - to be fair, you’d forgotten what day it was generally - until the calls from your family started rolling in.

You spent your morning on the phone, thanking relatives for their well wishes, but as everyone lamented the loss of a traditional ceremony on your behalf, he could tell that even though they meant well, the calls weren’t exactly helpful.

He knew that you didn’t want to talk about it, not yet,  and that you wanted to be alone so he encouraged you to go for a walk with Duke around the neighborhood. He sent you off with a kiss and he was glad to see that you felt better when you returned thirty minutes later. Your shoulders were lifted and your eyes were lighter as you watched Duke settle onto the couch for a nap after his adventure but your movements were still sluggish as you wandered around the house in search of something - anything - to entertain you.

In an effort to keep you out of the backyard for just a little longer, he guided you to the couch and encouraged you to take a nap with Duke, to cuddle up and watch television - binge something now that you were officially done with school and had time to properly enjoy it without the guilt of putting off schoolwork. It was easy, getting you to settle in, and he felt his heart break slightly as he watched you fight tears.

He took a little over an hour to finish decorating the backyard, each piece of his elaborate plan falling into place finally, before he returned to the living room. The first thing that Calum saw was you, curled up on the couch beneath a heavy blanket a friend had given you for Christmas, with Duke lying on your stomach and tears in your eyes as you watched a scene that would have pulled a few tears from you, already sad or not.

He bit back a laugh, both at your emotional investment in the show and at Duke’s annoyed huff as you made a noise at the scene, before he crossed the living room and kneeled down beside the couch. He waited a second, just until the credits began to roll, before pausing the television and nudging your shoulder.

“You okay, love?”

His words were soft, quiet in the still air of the living room, and he knew that the answer was no but, as expected, you nodded. “I’ve never seen this episode. All the good characters are leaving the show,” you answered, a pout on your lips as you shifted to glance at him.

He smiled, a barely there quirk of his lips, and shook his head before he stood from beside the couch and offered you his hand. “Come on, let’s get some fresh air. Give you time to process those feelings before you start another episode,” he teased, a grin on his lips as he watched you lift Duke and place him back onto the blanket as soon as you were out from under it.

“I don’t want to keep watching but I’m too invested in the story to stop now,” you mumbled, your voice muffled as you wrapped your arm around Calum’s and leaned into his side.

“You want me to hate watch it with you? I’ve been told my commentary’s excellent.”

“Your commentary is excellent, when it’s directed at the boys and not my television shows. Only I’m allowed to make fun of how bad it is. Deep down, I still love it,” you defended, a laugh leaving your lips as you followed Calum out into the backyard. He stopped, right by the door, and it took you a moment longer than it should have to notice. But when you finally lifted your head, confused as to why he’d paused before you made it to the swing, you were awed by what you saw.

The backyard had been transformed. Calum’s laptop sat on the table near the swing, a Zoom call open with the boys and family - both yours and his -, and beside it sat a box from your favorite bakery. There were balloons and string lights and shiny black and gold confetti littering the area and it brought tears to your eyes as you took in the amount of work Calum had done to give you some kind of celebration.

“It’s not the same, I know,” he began, gently tugging you closer to the setup, “but you deserve a celebration. You worked hard for your degree and I’m sorry you don’t get a traditional ceremony but we’re all really proud of you. Is this okay?”

It was hard to answer his question with the tears threatening to spill so you nodded and threw your arms around his neck in a tight hug. “Thank you,” you whispered, your voice low as you tried to fight your emotions, and Calum nodded his acknowledgement as he gave you a smile.

Although it wasn’t the traditional ceremony, far from it, the graduation that you got was one that you knew you’d never forget. Your families didn’t stay long, only long enough to watch Calum hand you a rolled up piece of paper with a wide grin and for you to toss your cap into the air after turning your tassel, but the boys and their respective girls - and Mali - stuck around after to celebrate.

“We’re all really proud of you,” Ashton commented, a smile on his lips as he watched the others nod their agreement. “You’ve worked really hard and this isn’t the party we wanted to throw you but it’ll have to do for now. It was really inspiring to watch you put your all into getting your degree and all of your hard work has paid off.  I’m excited to see what you do next because I know it’s going to be amazing. Congratulations!”

“When we’re allowed to see each other again, we’ll do something fun,” Michael agreed, “but for now, just know that we knew you’d get your degree and put us dropouts to shame.” Michael’s comment was teasing, he had a grin on his lips as he raised his drink in a toast, and Calum muttered a faux-offended ‘hey!’ by your side. “Seriously, we’re really proud of you and happy for you. Congratulations!”

“I don’t know what I can say that they haven’t already said,” Luke laughed, “but it’s worth repeating that this is an accomplishment and we’re really proud of you. You did it! You graduated college! I’m not going to ask what your plans are now because no one has any plans right now but I know that whatever you do next, you’ll do it just as well. Congratulations!”

You leaned into Calum’s side, a wide smile on your lips, as you watched them all toast to your graduation. It was surreal, celebrating such an event via video call, but you were grateful for your friends as they all shared stories and jokes with the goal of making you laugh in mind. You spent nearly two hours chatting with them, your mood lifting significantly, before it came time to end the call.

When the last person was gone, Calum turned to you and offered a sincere smile. “I hope that made missing graduation at least a little easier. I know it was hard on you but you achieved something amazing and I’m proud of you.”

“Thank you,” you repeated, your heart light for the first time in weeks. “I was really upset about having to miss the ceremony but I think this more than makes up for it. Except I’ll be really glad to get my actual diploma, not a-“ you paused, taking a quick glance at the paper Calum had used, “oh my god, Cal! Not an instruction booklet that came with your awful wifi router.”

“Hey, it was the only paper I could find,” he defended, laughing just as hard as you as he realized what he’d handed you in lieu of your diploma. “But I’m glad this was a suitable stand-in. Michael was joking but it really is impressive. I dropped out of high school and here you are, getting your degree. You never let anything get in the way of achieving your goal and I’m really proud of you for working so hard.”

“I love you, you know that?”

“I do,” Calum nodded, a soft smile on his lips as you leaned in closer to him, “and I love you, too. Congratulations, love.”

In the end, you never could’ve predicted your graduation would end up turning out this way but the love and support from your friends and family, and from Calum, made your nontraditional graduation one that you would never forget.

___________________________________________________

Author’s Note: Yesterday should’ve been my graduation day. I technically did receive my MA but there was no ceremony. Even though I’ve already experienced one college graduation, having to miss this one hit me really hard and I spent yesterday in a bit of a funk. But, as I said, I’ve already had one college graduation so I consider myself lucky. To the class of 2020 experiencing their first graduation, I’m really sorry things didn’t turn out the way you were expecting. Just know that everyone is incredibly proud of you and it’s okay to be sad that you didn’t get a ceremony. I hope this is at least a little comforting. This isn’t the best but my mental health has been on the decline, as has my writing. I, of course, don’t mean to make light of the situation. I understand why graduations were cancelled,  I really do. But I still felt a loss and know that I’m not alone. So, to the class of 2020, congratulations and good luck on your future endeavors. I believe in you!

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[handeaux]

An Odd Couple: Cincinnati’s Conscience & The Last Cox Machine Judge

The Cincinnati Post sprung a surprise party for Alfred Segal in 1954. Segal, who wrote a daily column under the pen name “Cincinnatus,” marked 50 years in the employ of the city’s afternoon newspaper. The newsroom chipped in and bought him a wrist watch, engraved “To Al, the conscience of Cincinnati.”

It is unlikely that Judge Dennis J. Ryan would have applauded the sentiment, but he surely would have understood. On multiple occasions over two decades, Segal used his column to comment on Ryan’s rulings, sometimes approvingly, more often critically.

Segal and Ryan made quite the odd couple. Ryan was born in 1881, Segal in 1883, and they both began their professional lives in 1904. Segal was an East-sider, Ryan lived in Westwood. Ryan was Catholic, Segal Jewish. Ryan had a reputation for strict sentencing, especially for what he called the “gun-toting type,” repeat offenders and reckless drivers. Segal, following years of attacks on the political machine of Boss Cox, devoted the next half-century to preaching tolerance and compassion.

Ryan first landed in Segal’s sights in 1925. Ryan was a rookie judge, one of the final few candidates nominated by the crumbling political machine of Boss Cox. Segal, after decades of investigative reporting, rejoiced as Cincinnati adopted the Charter form of government. When Ryan offered a young scofflaw a chance to turn his life around, Segal [27 July 1925] approved:

“If Cincinnatus were a judge he would rather be one who could say, ‘During my term of office I saved a number of men from prison and gave them fresh starts,’ rather than one who boasts, ‘During my term I sent large numbers of men to prison.’”

Cincinnatus took a harsher tone in 1930 when a woman faced Judge Ryan, charged with forgery. Ryan gave her five to 20 years in prison and she snapped, “And they call you square!” The judge added two years to the sentence. Segal [17 November 1930] was outraged:

“ . . . are two extra years in prison a just punishment for offending a judge? One can commit manslaughter and get no more than that. Therefore, Cincinnatus moves that you relent from your stern judgement and punish this woman no more than she deserves and only for the crime for which she was convicted.”

Judge Ryan did just that, subtracting the additional sentence. His change of mind earned praise in print from Segal. A few weeks later, Segal again praised Ryan when the judge declined to send an accomplice to a payroll robbery to prison because of the torment it would cause the man’s wife and five children.

Motorists charged with traffic violations dreaded having their cases assigned to Ryan, who took a hard line on such cases. On 7 February 1938 Judge Ryan sent a man to prison for killing one man and injuring three others in a Reading Road accident. Al Segal approved, sort of:

“If this is to be the fate of killers on the roads hereafter, I ought to be more careful, says Cincinnatus . . . Yet Cincinnatus (were he a careless or drunken driver) might find some comfort in this case. This driver who was convicted by a jury was a Negro. Perhaps juries might be more considerate of me, who is of the white race? Should there be the same justice for me who is white as for him who is black?”

Segal brought out the hammer again on 17 February 1939. It seems a German immigrant, a naturalized citizen, failed to appear in answer to a summons and was arrested. He was hauled before Judge Ryan who scolded, “You ought to be sent back. You are not fit to be a citizen!” That got Segal’s typewriter steaming:

“Tut, tut, your honor! Let’s not start this! If it gets to be the practice to send back immigrants who don’t respect the government in all departments, what will become of the country? (For in a way of speaking, we are all immigrants and the only difference between one immigrant and another is that his father came over on an earlier ship.)”

Ryan drifted back into Segal’s good graces in 1940, when he declined to send an elderly couple, accused of cheating the welfare system of $15 a week, to prison and instead mandated probation.

But, when a 20-year-old woman was convicted of manslaughter in 1942, Judge Ryan sentenced her to one to 20 years in prison. The woman had married at 15. Her husband was away in the army and she got pregnant through an affair. She gave birth to a baby she believed was stillborn and placed it in an ashcan. The baby was found alive but died soon after. Segal objected to the prison sentence in a series of Cincinnatus columns, noting that the Salvation Army had stepped up to oversee her probation. Segal [13 June 1942] raged:

“The Salvation Army  which, like the judge, hates the sin also regards the sinner. It can’t always despise the sinner. What circumstances made her the sinner? What abject poverty? What despair? And who is there without sin? The Salvation Army takes these things into account and gives compassionate judgement.”

Judge Ryan got a nice bit of publicity on 24 January 1946 (not from Segal) when the Cincinnati Post ran a cute story about his innovative judicial wisdom. A young couple had filed for divorce and appeared in Judge Ryan’s chambers. Instead of dissolving their marriage, the judge ordered the couple to go to the movies, specifically to take in Bing Crosby’s current hit, “The Bells of St. Mary’s.” According to the Post, as Der Bingle crooned “In The Land of Beginning Again,” the pair clasped hands, forgave each other and agreed to drop their request for a divorce.

Cincinnatus would have none of it. The next day he opined that another factor was more influential than Bing Crosby or Judge Ryan – the welfare of a two-year-old daughter.

“It sounded romantic enough as reported in The Post yesterday . . . Cincinnatus hopes that when Bing Crosby’s song wears off, as it must, they will remember the more rational cause that brought them together – that small girl.”

Alfred Segal was notably silent when Judge Dennis J. Ryan died in 1954, with nary a word of memoriam. Within months, however, Westwood proposed that the City Of Cincinnati rename Westwood Commons in his memory. And so it was that Ryan Playground carries the name of a judge who endured the intense scrutiny of Cincinnati’s conscience throughout his judicial career.

[chimbu617]

A HTTYD Micro Memoir of the Past Ten Years

     It was 2010. I was 8. I just moved to a new town and as someone who was bad at trying to talk to people, I spent all my free time in my imagination and/or with my brother. He was my best friend and we did everything together.      My parents weren't big on going to theaters especially with an 8 and 12-year-old. So whenever we watched the newest, latest movie it was always through Red Box, they somehow always got for free. They rented two movies. I don't remember how they picked them out, if it was their or mine and my brother's choice. One night, after dinner, they popped in a disc and played the movie for us. I vividly remember how I felt sitting in our faux leather couch, cuddled up with a blanket in a dark room, focused on the movie.      The camera swoops in over a vast ocean in the dead of night. Pillers of stone carvings extruded out of the water with fire burning inside the mouths. In the distance, a beautiful island inhabited with wooden shacks. Small specs of fire can be seen in the village. Over this is a voice-over by the lead character, "This is Berk." A line that will follow me throughout the next 10 years of my life.      I spent the rest of that year dreaming of owning a terrible terror and have a friend to explore my world with. Of course, that was virtually impossible. Jump to 2012. I was 11. The first episode of Dragons: Riders of Berk aired. My brother and I begged our parents to record the series and we watched it religiously. We jumped into my bed turned on my tv and grew immensely excited for this world we both developed a love for.      I remember how I watched Heather first be introduced and immediately hating her character from the moment she was on screen. I created a self insert character where "I" washed up onto berk after a shipwreck with amnesia. I always thought that Heather stole my premise and then ruined it by betraying the main characters. I now enjoy her character and look back on my childish foolishness.      I guess my mom at some point stopped recording the show after my brother moved out and I grew out of the show, but not the fandom. 2013, I was 12 and just started 7th grade. The teaser trailer of the second movie came out and I watched it with awe. I was conflicted by the redesign of Hiccup yet I probably watched that trailer more times than I could count. I met my best friend and we both spent our time in science class drawing. She convinced me to start drawing actually. I spent that time drawing and watching crack compilations for Rise of the Brave Tangled Dragons.      I never stopped my love for the world despite not having a lot of content to fill in the void in my heart. I ended up teaching myself Viking/Celtic runes, so I could read the text in the movie and show. It was 2014 when I taught one of my friends in my 8th grade English class the runes so we could pass notes in class. We wrote notes that absolutely made no sense but had so much fun knowing that we were the only ones who understood it. Our teacher caught us passing the note and took it from us. The look on her face was priceless. She looked frustrated and confused. She gave us a baffled look and continued on with class without a word.      I wasn't able to watch the second movie in the theater either. I ended up pirating it off some streaming site. I laughed and cried. At his death, my parents came in to ask if I was ok.      Several weeks after my 14th birthday in 2015, Race to the Edge's first season was released onto Netflix. I ended up binging all of Riders of Berk and Defenders of Berks in a few nights. I cried when I saw Stoick alive again and revived my undying love for this franchise.      January of 2016, my brother called me and asked if I had seen the new season of Race to the Edge. I ended up watching only a few episodes before falling out of interest in the series.     In December of 2017, I decided to catch up with the show. I would wake up, go to school, go home, did homework, binge as many episodes as I could and repeat. Soon after I finished it was 2018 and the new and last season was released. I had my friend come over to spend the night and I straight up said "Sorry, but I want to watch this" and she had to sit there and watch the show without any context of prior seasons. For Halloween that year that same friend and I ended up dressing up as Hiccup and Jack Frost. My mom gave me a stuffed toothless she was holding for Christmas for my costume. Some older lady told me she liked my plush cat.      When I found out about The Hidden World coming out my friend group and I decided to go see it in theaters. I accidentally overslept that day and rushed to the theaters where my friends were waiting. One of them ended up buying a ticket for me, refusing to accept my money when I offered to pay him back. There aren't words to describe my emotions in those few seconds the Dreamworks logo played. I was excited at being able to finally see one of the movies in the franchise in theaters. Although I started to feel my heart being pulled apart by tiny strings attached to the muscle. I then realized in that small amount of time that, this was it. This was the end. No more. That everything I watched, learned, waited for was for this moment. The dragon classes and types I learned, the runes I used, the music I would close my eyes to and imagine I was in a different world, and the reality in front of me ever since I was a child that I could never live in this world. It was all in front of me.      The movie played, and sure I laughed at Tuff, watched in awe at the beautiful plant and sand animation, cried at their parting, and rejoiced at their reunion. As I left the theaters though I couldn't help but think, "It was better than expected but not as good as I hoped". Whenever someone asked me my thoughts of the movie I would tell them those exact words. Looking back now, I don't know what I hoped for it to be. A happier ending? No, I came into this expecting the loss of dragons. A more interesting villain? I can't think of any better villain for the context of the scenario. I left it as such. I hoped for better yet knew not of what I hoped for.     It was winter break in 2019 and I left my dorm to go home and visit my family. The first night I was back my mom said she recorded something for me. I sat in the recliner as my cat snuggled into my lap and my mom started up Homecoming. I appreciated the fact that my parents haven't seen the second or third movie, yet sat through Homecoming with no context for me. This last Thursday, the 19th of March, I was working on my theater assignment mid-quarantine and randomly had the desire to watch Ratatouille. As I finished the film it reminded me of How to Train Your Dragon. With the whole human and animal bond that overcomes the differences between the two species to work together. I ended up wanting to watch the film again. As I watched it, I thought to myself, just the first movie, right? As I started The Hidden World, I thought to myself, just the movies, right? As I started Riders of Berk, I thought to myself, just the pre-time skip series, right? As I started Race to the Edge, I thought to myself, I need to drop my Biology course since I'm gonna fail.      When I rewatched the third movie all my original doubts on the film vanished. At the end when Hiccup decided to let Toothless go, I didn't cry. But, when Hiccup tells us, the viewer, that dragons were waiting for us to get along, I sobbed, more than I did any other time watching the entire series in the last 10 years. I realized two completely separate things. We as humans will never earn the right to have dragons, as we will never get our crap together. We are filled with corrupted morals and mindsets and will ruin everything and anything we get ahold of. The second thing was something I experienced earlier. Though I was afraid of the end I was so used to things claiming to be over and then the creators ending up making more for a cash grab. In that moment of watching 30-year-old Hiccup throw his son into the air, I realized that this was it. This was the end. The end of the movie, the end of the story, and the end of a large part of my childhood.      When I graduated high school I cried in my car after our practice run. I was growing up and I would have to be leaving everything I had known until then behind. It was Troll Hunters a series I started before I moved into my dorm that helped me calm down and move into a new place. It helped me understand that I can't just change and leave what I love behind. I can take it with me beyond this line I drew myself. The past few days changed that though. I couldn't take my beloved world across the line with me. It will forever be chained into my past as something I can look back on yet have no expectations for any future with it. I cried because there was nothing in my hands that I could do to keep what I loved with me. But, with Stoick's words "With love comes loss, that's part of the deal. Sometimes it hurts, but in the end, it's all worth it."      Thank you How to Train Your Dragon. You have given me so much. More than I could say. More than I know. We have grown up together, but now it's time for both of us to move on. Time for me to let you go.

Whoever stuck around until the end, thank you. I felt I had to write this as my fingers were itching for it. This is just a first draft but I doubt I’m ever coming back to this. I wanted to do something for the anniversary but like I said I didnt start getting back into httyd until the last 2 weeks and I just found out. I wrote this in like 2-3 hours, and I’m suprised at myself for powering through it. I’m still working on writing personal memoir pieces so excuse my skills. Anyways thank you again and Happy Ten Year Anniversary HTTYD!

[negativewriter26]

Our Emphasis on Romance

Do you remember the first time someone asked you if you had a crush on someone?

I do. I was nine years old, in fourth grade, and I was eating lunch with my friends in the cafeteria when one of my friends asked me. I gave my honest answer: No. After all, we were only in fourth grade. She accepted my answer and moved on to another topic.

As I got older, people stopped accepting my honest answer. Now, it is usually followed by Really? and Are you sure? and You must be lying! and How is that possible?. Therefore, in middle school, I started making up crushes.

I have had straight A’s my entire high school career thus far, and the fact that I have never had a crush before seems to make every other aspect about me irrelevant. For the past seven years, I have been trying to fix myself for being broken. How could I have never dated anyone before? How could I not want to be in a relationship? How could I have never had a crush on anyone?

Recently, I’ve realized that I am not broken. I do not need to be fixed.

Our culture does.

Romance is seen as the be all end all. Books about dystopian governments, about rebellion, about magic have plots that could stand by itself, but, for us, is still only second to the romance.

We emphasize romance so much that it’s breaking us.

I still remember whispers about Tris and Four’s relationship in Divergent in the middle of math class, while our teacher droned on about sine, cosine, and tangent. People binged The Office to find out if Pam ended up with Jim or Roy. There were days where two most important teams were Team Edward and Team Jacob. The epilogue in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has everyone married and with children. The Breakfast Club ends with four of the five main characters dating each other. By the finale of Friends, everyone but Joey is either married or dating someone, but even then, Joey gets paired off in his spin-off.

We are surrounded by the media telling us that we cannot be alone, that we do not have a happy ending unless we are with someone. We need to start questioning this.

Recently, we have been questioning the trite trope of the princess getting saved by the prince. The three most notable examples of this trope are the movies Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first animated feature film from Disney, yet Cinderella and Aurora have the same fate as Snow White: getting saved by Prince Charming, falling in love, and living happily ever after.

And Disney responded to the public’s complaints by giving princesses a new role. Mulan, The Princess and the Frog, and Frozen are three movies commonly credited with having strong female protagonists who don’t need a boy to save them. Though just because they aren’t saved by a prince, doesn’t mean that they don’t end up with one. Mulan had Shang, Tiana had Naveen, and Anna had Kristoff.

This new trope is causing a new problem. Now, for strong female protagonists to have a happy ending, they must end up with someone. This trope still supports the idea that we cannot be the protagonist of our own story if we do not fall in love during it.

Anna and Kristoff have each other, but Elsa has no one. Her happy ending is seen as tragic and lonely, because her canonical true love is her love for her sister. This raises the question: Is this type of happy ending sustainable? We won’t know until Frozen 2, but the co-director responded to the Twitter movement #GiveElsaAGirlfriend by saying that it’s possible Elsa will have a girlfriend. If this happens, we will know our answer.

It feels appropriate to be talking about these tropes this time of year. Valentine’s Day is in less than three weeks. Around this year, we feel pressured to date. After all, it is universally understood that no one wants to be single, whether it be on Valentine’s Day or any of the other three hundred sixty-four days of the year.

It doesn’t have to be that way. We can live fulfilling lives, in our teenage years, without being in a relationship. We need to start embracing that, but, most importantly, we need to draw attention to what is making us feel broken: our emphasis on romance.

Question how much time you spend with your significant other in comparison to your friends. Stop abandoning your friends when you start dating someone. When someone says they don’t have a crush on anyone right now, believe them. Be mindful while consuming any work of media, and consider how characters get paired off. Hold others accountable when they suggest being single is shameful.

Because for anything to change, we as a society need to first be aware that this is a problem. That’s how we got Mulan in 1998, over sixty years after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs came out.

So speak up about the harmful messages the world implicitly tell us. Maybe soon, there’ll be stories about princesses where a happy ending doesn’t involve falling in love.

Because it is okay to be single.

Because our lives are worthwhile without being in a relationship.

Because falling in love is not a requirement for your happily ever after.

I wrote this for an assignment in my English class during our deliberative speech unit. My speech, as you can tell, was about our emphasis on romance in media. This version that I posted is slightly edited to censor more personal information about me, and also while it isn’t said directly because I’m not out at school, I am aromantic and romance repulsed, so this is written heavily through that lenses. In addition, I mostly focused on girls in this speech because that’s what I know as a person assigned female at birth and my experiences as one.

If you want to talk about this more, feel free to message me or reply to this post. I cut a lot out during revisions of this speech, including how male protagonists are allowed to have narratives without romance, how our society loves love triangles, how it is inherently wrong that young girls feels broken for not wanting to date, and, but not limited to, how we might actually be unhappier because we internalize this message that falling in love is required for a happy ending. 

(By the way, if any of you feel like this doesn’t belong in the aromantic tag for whatever reason, please tell me, and I’ll be sure to remove it.)

[cruzrogue]

The Bakers on Staple Drive

Olicity Hiatus Fic-A-Thon - WEEK 3

This week’s prompt is:

Hidden.  can read on A03

Hidden feelings? Hidden fantasies? Something hidden in the Loft? Somewhere in the city?

The rules are simple:

Every     Friday I will post a new writing prompt.

You     will have a week to write, beta, completely rework after a crisis of     self-confidence, re-beta, and post your interpretation of the prompt the     following week. (Yes, I’m a writer myself and am aware of the process we     go through.)

Tag     your response #OlicityHiatusFic, #OlicityHiatusFic-A-Thon, or #OHFAT (or     all three for you overachievers out there).  Make sure to use these     tags on both Tumblr posts AND on AO3.

Tag     me @thebookjumper in     all your Tumblr posts.

Add     your contribution to the Olicity Hiatus Fic-A-Thon 2018 collection on AO3.

Look     for the next prompt.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

HAVE     FUN!

​The Bakers on Staple Drive

‘They be coming for your girl. That pretty blond.’ He hears those words over and over while he lies in solitary confinement from beating a man to a pulp.

She’s supposed to be hidden away under A.R.G.U.S. Protection. He knows though deep inside she is defiant and is putting her life in danger and he isn’t there to scold and protect her.

<->

“William do you want another piece?” Felicity calls from behind the counter.

“No. I’m good.” He says as he gets up from the dining table and cleans up as their fixed body guard is at the head of the table looking at the view of the scanners placed around their safe home. To the outside world it looks like a couple and their son moved in a few weeks ago. Felicity dyed her to be a few shades darker to allow her natural color to come in.

A.R.G.U.S. did setup some state of the art computer equipment so Felicity would have something to do. Lyla was relieved that her friend even wanted to help on any mission that needs her expertise. Face time with John is Felicity’s only window to her past.

<->

Passing the two-story lovely cottage house on Staple Drive with its cute post mailing box saying ‘the Bakers’ and the white picket fence adorn with rose bushes no one can tell that it’s a well-constructed safe house with bullet proof windows and so many other amenities that yield to safety. Felicity is left in the safe room built within the house every single weekday as William is dropped off at summer camp that other agent’s kids go to and Derek isn’t there to protect her for five hours every day as he heads to a base not more than twenty miles away to keep up appearance of a working man so their neighbors don’t get suspicious.

Patting Derek’s arm is the closest contact she has with her guardian as she plays housewife. Derek and Rosie Baker with their son Adam. Derek is seen as a stern father keeping tabs on his son’s whereabouts when the neighborhood children love to bike everywhere.

They have been seen together as a family unit every Sunday as they head to church creating an illusion so chatter surrounding them is low. They then make an appearance at a local diner to eat before making the trip to the local grocery store. Other than that, the Bakers do keep to themselves as Mrs. Baker is a stay at home mother and their son is off in summer camp during the weekdays.

Rosie happens to be a devote Christian which makes Felicity roll her eyes as the Sunday brunch ladies exchange recipes and gossip and her new knowledge of passages of the New Testament she delivers on Sunday mass is work of art. William snickers at how she tells him that she could be an actress with all the lies she’s spurts out now a little afraid that she might even get struck by lightning when entering the church after the very animated pastor kept talking of the act of living in sin.

<->

Their days turn to weeks and soon Months and Felicity knows she can’t keep up this lie. Her moods follow repeatedly to missing Oliver to being so angry with him when silence in the quiet house catches her off guard especially when she becomes idle and she hates being idle. Diaz has been tended to but her life is upside down with their secret being out in the open. She really has no clue how William will take it when she tells him there is no way he can go back to a regular academic setting. She has been offered a job by Lucius Fox of Wayne Tech and she is thinking that might be a viable option. He sent her a package in Bruce Wayne’s behalf with details that could help her come from hiding. She wants to be Felicity not Rosie Baker, she wants her life back and she’s only been Rosie for six weeks.

She heard that Dinah got hurt really bad when a meta gang went after her luckily that Dig wasn’t far from her location or she would have bled out. Rene left Starling with his daughter before Diaz emerged from his hiding spot. She hates that it was Black Siren’s cooperation that helped capture the Dragon. Though in his final act before his take down he violently killed her. At least Quentin was spared living through that despair she thinks darkly. She didn’t know much about Curtis but after his boyfriend healed up, he vanished.

<->

Felicity is very protective of William it hurts her soul how yet again Oliver’s foolishness cost him dearly; being separated from his family.

Working for A.R.G.U.S. indirectly has given her an outlet and a way to target criminals and she is not going to let that dumb pine tree stay there any longer than necessary. She isn’t foolish she knows the government wants to use Oliver’s skills and even push at him by using extortion against the people he loves and she isn’t interested in being one of his weaknesses.

<->

Derek and William leave and she supposed to go the fortified room and do her diligence work from there. She thinks nothing of it as she dumps a garbage bag into its container off the side of the small balcony by the kitchen entry. When the neighbor calls out, “Good morning Rosie, do you have a minute?”

Felicity looks at the woman and thinks nothing of it. “Sure, come inside. I was just finishing up.”

“How do you like the neighborhood?”

“It’s nice.”

“It’s very quiet and secluded. Doesn’t it make you feel safe?” without waiting for Felicity’s answer “It makes you wonder what people are hiding in places like these.”

“I…”

“Your husband Derek, right?” Felicity just nods. “He was followed to that base a distance away.”

Felicity understood the implication and backed away slowly.

“I had my husband well associate take family pictures of the lovely Bakers.”

Felicity looked at the woman before peering to see that another person is coming up the walkway towards the open kitchen entry.

“Pleasantly surprised that there is a hefty price for your talents.” The woman calls out to her associate. “We won the jackpot.” The man enters the house and his sneer is evident as he looks at the subject that will give him a good payout.

They don’t display any weapons so Felicity takes off running as fast as she can to only to be tackled by the man. His heavy weight holding her down enough to also wind her. He moves only when she stops struggling and he drags her back to the kitchen and plops her on a chair.

“I’m going to get some rope.” He says as he takes a knife from its holder. “If she moves stab one of her legs.” The woman nods grabbing another chair to sit in front of her victim. She’s holding the blade towards Felicity’s thigh and seems content that Felicity won’t do anything stupid.

Felicity mumbles something that has the other woman asks, “What?” as she gets closer. It’s enough for Felicity to head butt her.

“Owe.” She holds her head a moment before her eyes search and finds a weapon right beside her. “It always looks cooler in movies.”

Moving out of the way as the object grazes her leg she twists herself around and kicks the neighbor as hard as possible than grabs the saucepan she was going to put in the dishwasher earlier and smacks the neighbor across the face. Not enough time to reach and close the door so Felicity runs from the room as the woman goes down.

She can hear a mans aggravated voice enter the open kitchen and is on her tail right away. She thinks about getting to the forfeited room which is just up the stairs to her left but a hand sloppily grabs her ankle and she’s begins to slightly fall luckily gets a hold of the banister to help stabilize herself. Throwing the dented saucepan at the man he ducks which gives her a moment to make it to the top and run as quickly to her safe spot to be hidden from these crazies.

She hits the distress button and sits behind the monitors as she locates the criminals in her home security system. The distress button also locks down the house and all the doors and windows automatically lock up. So, the intruders are in the house with her. If her heart rate wasn’t spiked with narrowly escaping her captives she could be enjoying the show before her. Its reminding her of one of those reality television shows she binge watched with William recently.

She sees that John is trying to contact her and she picks up.

“Felicity?”

“Hey, John I’m okay… really I am okay… umm just a little gash on my right thigh.”

He stays on the phone with her for twenty minutes until a few black vans show up and begin a perimeter sweep. She sees Derek take point at the front as several armed men have other points of entry. Within minutes that feel like an eternity the two neighbors are escorted out in handcuffs into awaiting separate vehicles and she sees the camera shot where Derek is waiting for her to open the panic room door.

“You okay?” he asks as his eyes roam her over.

“I’m fine. Just a cut that isn’t bleeding anymore.”

“Let’s take a look at it.”

“I…”

“Ms. Smoak, please let me do my job.”

“Okay. Okay.” she sits there as he goes through protocol in taking care of his assigned task.

She hates to think that this is her life now. She feels like she has two options one to keep hidden away and act like the damsel in some overrated storybook or take charge and plan a future where she’s still in a guilted cage but free to be Felicity Smoak and pick up the pieces with William and start making a life for them.

Picking up the phone given to her she makes her decision final.

“Hi, I’m Felicity Smoak, I was told…” she listens to the other end before a small pause and soon after she speaks again. “Hi. Mr. Fox, I’ve decided to take you and Bruce on that offer.”

[its-love-u-asshole]

Hello Adriana! I binge read all of Let My love and I just want to say that it is absolutely lovely!!! It hurt me in the best of ways and I just... I just want to lock Kuroo and Tsukki in a closet somewhere! Would you share some kurotsuki/terutsuki headcanons (or any of the couples)? Only if you're willing to of course, as the fic is still ongoing. I'm really excited for the next chapter and I'll be patiently waiting.

Ahh first off, thank you so much! This anon made my day and gave me the strength to finish up some of my assignments so bless you lol. I’m super excited whenever people ask about lml, it’s my favorite fic to write and I have so many headcanons about it skdjfn I’m really just flattered that you enjoyed it enough it send this ask

Minor spoilers under the cut:

Terutsukki

-Tsukki is Terushima’s first long-term relationship in years, before him he’s mostly had flings or one night stands. He’s not ashamed of that of course, but part of him does worry that Tsukki would think less of him if he found out, since some people aren’t as open minded

-Terushima really respects Tsukki though for how smart and non-judgmental he’s been so far, and enjoys spending time with him

-Romantic intentions or not, Terushima really feels that Tsukki listens to him when he needs it most, and had Tsukki been in a relationship when they’d first met, they still would’ve gone on to be really good friends

-before Tsukki met Kuroo, he was content with dating Terushima, but he never really has the urge to be overly affectionate or physical with him; it’s not in a disgusted way, it’s just that the usual passion isn’t there, though they’ve had sex a few times

-Their relationship is actually fairly nice for both of them though, they’re super different people and often clash, but they admire each other’s qualities, especially if they themselves lack some of those traits that the other has

-Terushima likes having a partner he can pamper and show off, while Tsukki values someone who he can work with to achieve their goals and someone he can cherish in private

-one of their first dates involved them going to a nice restaurant, but they can’t manage to get a reservation and the manager is snooty as hell, so instead they pretend to get engaged in the restaurant’s lobby and totally get free food out of it. It’s a fun time.

-Terushima doesn’t have a lot of experience with love or what it’s like to fall in love, but he does know that he’s grateful that Tsukki is in his life

Kurotsuki

-when they first meet in the library, Tsukki also feels the weird pull (not just Kuroo), and he can’t help but think of Kuroo all the way up until he falls asleep

-Tsukki looks up to Kuroo and is super thankful for him, despite how much he roasts him lol. For Tsukki, finding someone who doesn’t exhaust him is rare and something he appreciates

-Kuroo and Tsukki are relatively private individuals but around each other they over share way too much lmao they can’t fucking help it, by the end of week one, Tsukki knows Kuroo’s thoughts on movies, books, politics, you name it

-of course, the subject of family hardly comes up, but wow, wouldn’t that have saved them some awkwardness huh?

-Tsukki always finds excuses to restock books in rows near Kuroo, just so they can talk. He’d never admit this.

-They both love horror movies and one day when it’s super slow, they stream some shitty ones on Kuroo’s laptop

-Kuroo’s jokes and puns are fucking terrible but Tsukki remembers every single one

-Kuroo is super observant of Tsukki’s behaviors and after talking to him for a while, becomes familiar with the things which make Tsukki happy or uncomfortable

-Tsukki also sees through Kuroo quite easily, and doesn’t get why he feels the need to act so confident even when he’s clearly having a bad day

-the thirst is real but Tsukki is so astonished by it initially that he just pushes it away and acts like he imagines it

-they never want to cross the line of actually going out together outside of the library/coffee shops, but they always speak in hypotheticals. “if we ever went to an amusement park, we’d have to go on this…” “if we ever go to the movies, we need to see this director” “I’d kick your ass at mini golf, just pick a date and we’ll go”

-they know deep down it’s probably not good for them to do it but their imagination is kinda all they have so whatever

-Kuroo hides notes for Tsukki in his favorite books, because he knows when Tsukki is bored the blond rereads the same novels over and over

-Tsukki recommends books to Kuroo and in return he reads all of Kuroo’s science articles and asks questions about what he doesn’t understand

Other

-I’m sorry but I just have to say that Semishira is the cutest married couple ever okay, they’re fucking saltmates and they’re probably worse than kyouhaba when it comes to group gossip

-Semi is a famous volleyball player and Shirabu retired after an injury, but he enjoys working from home and travelling around the world with Semi

-Semi is super whipped and everyone makes fun of him, but honestly Shirabu would die for him so it’s even

-Semi always scolds Shirabu for roasting people but when they’re all alone they hella high five each other bc damn that shit was savage, and Semi is proud

-Though Semi knew Shirabu since he was in diapers, they didn’t develop feelings for each other until high school, and it was super embarrassing for both of them

-Everyone still gives them shit for it

-The group knows Yachi from college but she may as well have been there from the beginning, she’s their anxious angel. In Uni, they’d always order food for her or call the office whenever she felt too nervous, but make no mistake, if it gets to a breaking point, she will put her foot down, and they’re all weak as fuck to her

-Yachi’s “I’m disappointed in you” face is a force to be reckoned with

-She can even reign in Oikawa when he’s having a dramatic episode ok? She’s fucking hardcore, she totally is the first person he called when he was first getting to know Iwaizumi

-Yachi loves all her dumb boys, it’s law

-Kuroo and Terushima are the ones who conspired back in high school to push Kyoutani and Yahaba together after years of pining

-Kyoutani’s parents were never home when he was little so the group always had sleepovers, and Kyoutani and Yahaba always seemed to mysteriously disappear…

-Kuroo is the nerd of the group and the group never understood why everyone thought he was a suave bad boy in high school, since Kuroo spent half his time buried in books

Honestly there’s so much more…I haven’t scratched the surface of iwaoi and their relationship with Suga, but anymore and I feel like I’d be going overboard LOL but I hope you enjoyed these! I’m also tagging @rhealmobsidi bc maybe she’d be interested? 

Thanks again! Asks like this are tons of fun ^^ 

[ramblingthoughtsofayoungadult]

Chemistry-James Cook Imagine

Requested: No

Warnings: smoking and  swearing

A/N: I’ve wanted to write an imagine about Cook since I finished Skins. Please let me know what you think about it and if I should do a part two. 

   16:45. 16 flipping 45.

   Cook was supposed to be in the classroom forty five minutes ago and that made my blood boil. For the past two weeks, we had been meeting for tutoring at sixteen and he was always five to ten minutes late. Usually, I was able to brush it off and dive into the material, but Cook made it difficult. He would make crude jokes,suggestive comments, and simply not focus. When Mr. Edwards assigned me to tutor Cook in chemistry, I was less than thrilled. Everyone in Bristol knew that Cook was one misdemeanor away from real prison time and I made sure to distance myself from him. Though his friends seemed alright, I couldn’t really trust them if they were friends with Cook. However, I agreed to do it because I knew it would look good on my university applications but as I sat in that empty classroom glaring at my phone, getting accepted into Cambridge mattered less and less.

    “That’s it!” I snapped.

    I slammed my textbook closed and shoved it into my backpack along with my pencil case. I slung the strap over my shoulder and marched out of the classroom in an almost blind rage. Frustration and anger were flooding my entire body as I stormed past the few people still at the school. When I got outside, I relaxed slightly, but that changed when I saw Cook standing and laughing with Effy Stonem. They were standing on the pavement outside of school and Effy was smirking with a cigarette in hand. The fact that they were both so relaxed and calm made me want to  scream and I nearly did when I approached them. Cook maintained a cocky smirk on his face when he noticed me. 

    “Nice to see you, love,” he said.

    “What is your problem, Cook?” I demanded through gritted teeth. 

    “Whoa, relax, Y/N.”

   “Don’t tell me to relax! I have been waiting forty five minutes to help you pass chemistry. Did it ever occur to you that maybe I have a life outside of college? That I would much rather be doing something else besides helping you even though it’s apparent that you don’t want to help yourself?” I could feel Effy’s gaze boring into the side of my face but I couldn’t care less as I stared down Cook. “You think you’re so bad because you do drugs, you drink, you party, and you break the law, but you’re pathetic. You have so much potential and you’re squandering it. If you don’t want to do well in school, that’s fine, but don’t waste my time in the process.”

    For the first time, Cook seemed surprised as though the rug had been snatched out from under him. It served him right; he couldn’t keep disrespecting me or my time. I felt a thousand times lighter as I pivoted and stormed off in the direction of the bus stop. At least I would be able to go home earlier and focus on my own projects. Maybe it wasn’t too late to volunteer, universities loved volunteers. The animal shelter around the the corner from my house was always looking for new people and dogs were my favorite animal. Perhaps resigning as Cook’s tutor was the best thing to do. Mum was stunned when I walked into the house fifteen minutes later.

    “Oh, hello, sweetheart, did tutoring wrap up early?” she asked in her sing-song voice.

   “You could say that.” I slipped off my ballet flats before walking onto the freshly polished wood floors. “Did I beat Dad home?”

   “Yes, but he did have a few things to finish up for his big case at the firm.” Mum turned off the TV and walked over to me. “Did you have a good day?”    “For the most part. I got an A on my Russian history pop quiz and Miss Turner thought that my presentation for Social Psychology was in depth.”

   “That’s good. You should go out with some friends to celebrate.”

    I rolled my eyes. “That would suggest I have friends to go out with.”

   Mum pursed her lips in that way she only did when she pitied me or anyone else. “Oh, I just don’t want you to waste your youth. Of course, I’m proud that you’re so smart but I don’t want you to have any regrets.”

   “The only regret I have is not dropping the person I was tutoring sooner.”

   At least, I thought it was my only regret. For the rest of the day, I wondered if I had made the right decision. Cook was undoubtedly a pain in my neck but he did need help. On the other hand, I couldn’t help someone who seemed to have no desire to help himself. Even when he wasn’t around, he was the most frustrating person ever.

   The next day, I attended class as per usual, occasionally seeing Cook or one of his friends in passing. He seemed a little less engaging with them and I wondered if I had any part of it.

   No way, I couldn’t have done anything to make him act like that...right?

   So, I decided to conduct a little experiment that day: I went to the classroom Cook and I had agreed to meet for tutoring after school. To my surprise, Cook was sitting at the table in the front of the room, hands shoved into his jacket pockets. He glanced up and smirked at me.

   “About time you showed up; been waiting for ya for the past ten minutes,” he said.

   “Sorry, I’m used to you being late every time we meet.” I walked over to the table and sat in the chair across from him. “What do we need to go over today?”

   “The first four chapters.”

   I snapped my eyes up at him. “Have you skipped every class?”    “No, just some.”

   I shook my head a little and laughed. “Alright then.”

   So, I spent the next two hours helping Cook understand everything he missed to the best of my ability. For the first time, he asked questions and when I explained the concepts, he didn’t look at me as though I was speaking Mandarin. At the end of the session, Cook understood the concepts.

   “I’m a bloody genius,” he said as we walked out of the college.

   “We’ll see about that on your next exam.”

   There weren’t many people hanging around campus, but I did notice Effy and Freddie standing on the pavement outside the college, smoking cigarettes. Effy was smirking at something Freddie said. It was only a matter of time before Cook ran off with them, but I didn’t mind since my job was done for the day. 

    “Admit it,” Cook said.

    I turned to him. “Admit what exactly?”

   “I’m not as bad as you thought I was.”

   “Of course you aren’t. I know you have potential and you were wasting it.”

   “By having fun?” Cook teased.

   “Oi, Cook!” Freddie called. 

   Cook looked up at his mate. “Be there in a minute!” Then, he looked at me. “When was the last time you went out and didn’t give a f-ck about anything or anyone and had a good time?”

   I remained silent because there hadn’t been a time. Cook’s cocky smile immediately appeared and I wanted to smack it off of his face. “Why does it matter?”

   “Because it proves that you don’t know everything and maybe you need tutoring in that area.”

   Cook wasn’t the best at hiding his intentions, so I immediately disagreed with his idea as though I could read his thoughts. “No, I won’t need any kind of tutoring from you.”

   “Oh, come on, Y/N, let me and my mates teach ya how to have some fun.” 

   I glanced at Cook and then at Freddie and Effy. Freddie was nice enough but Effy intimidated me since she was silent most of the time. When she did speak, she sounded mysterious and wise beyond her years. Then, I turned back to Cook. “I’ll have to take a rain check on that.”

   My mouth was tingling to smile but I managed to keep a straight face as I walked away from Cook. I would be lying if I said I was never curious about what happened at parties that I heard whispers about. While binge drinking and drugs never had a real appeal to me, I kind of wanted to be included or at least invited. However, I understood the world of books and academia not clubbing.Cook was persistent in trying to coax me into going out with him and his friends and while it was flattering, I turned him down every time. He finally broke me during the tutoring session before his exam.

   “How about this: if I pass, you have to go out with me and my mates,” he said.

   “And if you don’t?” 

   “Then, I’ll watch one of those documentaries you’re always mucking on about.”

   I groaned. “Why do I ever tell you anything?”

   “Because I’m Cook.”

   The stakes were a bit high since I knew for a fact that he hated movies that didn’t feature violence or action, but I was not about to miss the opportunity to force him to stay awake and watch one. So, we made a deal and I was only a little nervous that I would lose. Cook was smarter than he let on so he could do well on the exam. Plus, I wanted him to do well since he was kind of my student but I was anxious about going out with him and his mates. The day of his exam, he seemed pretty confident that he had done well and made a point to stop by my locker.

   “You’ll want to wear somethin’ a bit skimpy for Friday,” Cook teased.

   “Why would I do that when we’re going to watch Bonhoeffer?” I teased back.

   “Don’t you want me to pass? I am your student.”

   I opened my mouth to respond but Effy interrupted us. “Cook, you wanna go for a smoke?”

   “Yeah, sure, Eff.” Cook smirked at me. “You’ll want to borrow somethin’ from her.”

   “Oh, bugger off.” I jokingly pushed him in Effy’s direction and laughed at the smile on his face.

   It was the first time I saw him smile, actually, the third time since he couldn’t stop smiling when he told me the story of the time JJ got an olive stuck up his nose and he and Freddie thought that he might die. Cook seemed a lot brighter when he smiled as though the bad boy facade had melted away. I liked those moments with Cook. I was going to miss seeing those moments.

    Two days later, he cut me off in the hallway and shoved his exam in my face. All I saw was a large red seven on the top of the exam.

    “I passed, I f-cking passed!” he shouted.

    “Congratulations, I’m proud that my teaching has helped you,” I teased calmly.

    He pulled the paper away and closed the little distance between us, a devilish grin on his face. “I’ll see you at ten.” 

    I felt the blood drain from my face and my body grow stiff. He had won the bet so I had to go out with him and his mates. There was no telling what debauchery I was about to get myself into. 

[katesattic]

My Experience with Anxiety and Depression [and How Supernatural and Thomas Sanders (Unknowingly) Helped] #BellLetsTalk

I wanted to do something completely out of my comfort zone; I wanted to make a video about it. But then I kind of got sick and lost my voice. So that option’s kind of out. And with only two days until the event there is no way I would be giving myself enough time to learn how to edit, so even with my voice now coming back, there still wouldn’t be enough time. So, maybe I’ll try to make a video for next year. So here we are. Back to my usual format: writing.  And that’s OK. I can probably better articulate my thoughts this way anyway.

So, where do I start? Death anxiety? Social anxiety? Generalised anxiety? Depression? I guess with the death anxiety? I view it as my longest anxiety, though I could have possibly had the social anxiety longer, it was the death anxiety that was more difficult to cope with. Why don’t I just split it up into four parts so this way I’m not going back and forth on which I had when. We can focus on the chronology of each individually.

DEATH ANXIETY

So this one arose, as you could image, as the result of a loved one passing away. My grandmother specifically, though I called her Nanny, and to make things easier on myself, that’s what I’ll continue to call her.

I was no stranger to death. My younger sister, my baby brother’s twin, died at nine days old. At the time, I was three.  I definitely knew my parents were sad and that our family would be different yet again (nine days ago we went from a family of four to a family of six, now we were down to five). I knew things were going to be different, but I don’t think I understood the gravity of the situation. I don’t think I knew how finite death actually was.

Seven years later, I was ten, and my cat had been put down. I did not know this at the time, and my mum managed to convince the vet into releasing the body. So my mum brought our dead cat home and told us that she found the cat dead in the basement. For years, I swore I saw the cat’s ghost around the spot where my mum claimed she died. Now, I understand why the cat was put down, her health was deteriorating. But at that time, there was a void. She was my childhood pet and she “suddenly” passed away. I remember being legitimately sick after her passing, not just grieving but cough and fever, that whole deal. But not much else. It was twelve years ago after all.

 Two years after my cat died, so did my Nanny. To this day we still don’t know the exact cause. My dad suspects some things, but we have no definitive answer on what was his mother’s cause of death. I think I took this death the hardest. She was my favourite grandparent, and she was the first of them to die. How was that fair? Again, it was ten years ago, I was twelve, I don’t remember specifics. But I do remember a few years later when the family went to see the film UP, and I just couldn’t enjoy it. You know that beginning? Carl and Ellie’s whole life story is told in like five minutes? Yeah, well, I was kind of triggered by that. I didn’t know that was a term, but in hindsight, I was definitely triggered. Ellie reminded me of Nanny, and I just couldn’t get happy after the movie ended.

I also remember the death anxiety coming up randomly in class in grade eight, and thinking life’s so short and fearing what would happen to me after I died. I’ve had panic attacks about that. My most recent one was a really bad one in 2014. But now I don’t let myself go that deep. I don’t let myself go down that rabbit hole. I take a deep breath, tell myself “we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it” and find something entertaining to distract me from my thoughts. And that’s been working well so far.

SOCIAL ANXIETY

OK, this one doesn’t really have an exact start date. I can’t pinpoint any one event. I’ve kind of just always had it. And I just shrugged it off as shyness and introversion. But it’s more than that. I am definitely shy and introverted, but I also have social anxiety. When I was formally diagnosed, my mum wasn’t remotely surprised about this one. The depression was a surprise but this one she always suspected.

If anything, university made it worse. I mean, it was always an issue, but being in an entirely different province where I literally knew absolutely no one.  That didn’t help. I couldn’t even stand the thought of going to orientation. And I assumed that was because of my extreme shyness, though now I know it’s my near-crippling social anxiety. Hindsight is 20/20 after all.

I think it was during this time that I became much more active on the internet. Tumblr specifically, I love this website. But I began bingeing more on shows and would only really leave my dorm to go to the meal hall or class. I was just so terrified of social interaction. And I still am. But now I’m taking baby steps towards meeting people. Right now, all I can do is talk to people online, but if people don’t rush me and let me do it when I’m ready, I’d be fine meeting people in a comfortable and safe public place.

This is the one I think I have to work on the most. I know where I want to be and don’t know entirely how to get there, but I am taking small steps. I’m even telling people I suffer from social anxiety to let them know I’m not just being a bitch but that I am actually struggling and terrified to make social connections for fear of rejection.

The other real problem with this anxiety, for me specifically, is that I come off as bitchy and standoffish. Maybe I have bitchy resting face? I don’t know. But that’s what my mum thinks anyway. Whether I seem bitchy or snobby, or whatever is just what you see on the outside. Inside my mind, down that deep rabbit hole of suck, I am freaking the fuck out. Apparently, I mask that panic by looking snobby, who knew? But I assure you, if I’m actually being a bitch, you’d know about it. I don’t really keep that side of me quiet. But just standing alone in a crowd or in a corner? Yeah, I’m probably not plotting some bithcy scheme. I’m most likely terrified and seeking sanctuary in the very place that is so often cruel to me: my mind.

Meeting people scares the crap out of me. It really does. But I yearn for those social relationships. I am human after all. But going out into the world and actually seeking out people with whom to form those relationships? I’m not quite there yet. For now, I’m focusing on making friends online, but also people who live near me, so when I am comfortable, I will be ready to take that next step and meet them.

GENERAL ANXIETY

This asshole. This one was definitely brought on by university life. Seriously, I don’t think this would have affected me to the degree which it has, had it not been for university.  In some ways, university is better than secondary school, in others, it is exponentially worse. Procrastination only exacerbates the anxiety monster, but it definitely is not the cause. Deadlines. Terrifying deadlines, the weight of an assignment, and the fear of failure – the intense fear of failure – is the cause.

This one was kind of brought on hand-in-hand with my depression. I mean, I still stressed about marks before, but this really hit me hard when my depression stepped onto the scene. So both this beast, and depression entered into my brain after an event which I just call “the Academic Fiasco”. It is not an event I am comfortable discussing not because I am ashamed or embarrassed (though I am a bit) but because I don’t feel entirely out of the woods yet. And until I the woods are safely behind me (in other words: after I graduate) I won’t really be elaborating upon it. So the Academic Fiasco is a story for next year’s Let’s Talk Day.

Anyway, after the Academic Fiasco, I did enter into a depression. For several months. And ever since then I was never truly able to shake it. And it would come in waves. Sometimes I would be fine and my usual self but often the depression got in the way. So after the actual ordeal of the Fiasco was over with, and the depression had more or less subsided, I was then left with this anxiety. This dread that surrounded my marks in academia and my potential future career after obtaining my degree. This feeling just wouldn’t go away. And in November 2016, my friend started to notice that I was acting differently. She’s been my friend going on seventeen years now (we’ll both be 23 later this year), so she’s known me most of my life. And she could tell, through the virtual world, several provinces away, and through text not video chat, that something wasn’t right. My parents didn’t even know. Apparently, I hide my depression well. But my friend instantly suspected depression as she’s had it in the past and was medicated for it. She told me to seek help. So I booked an appointment at the Counselling Centre on campus and had a Brief Initial Consultation (where they would listen to me for thirty minutes to decide if my issues were serious enough to be waitlisted for therapy). It was during this time that the therapist believed I had anxiety, the death anxiety for sure, but also general anxiety. She didn’t really think I had depression, but she was certain I had anxiety. She suggested I seriously consider medication.

The thought had occurred to me once or twice. But until my friend expressed concern I hadn’t really thought about medication in a while. So, when the appointment was done, I went to the Health Clinic on campus and booked an appointment for the following Tuesday (I saw the therapist on Saturday).  And then I went home with nothing but the knowledge that I wasn’t crazy for thinking I wasn’t OK. And that was a relief.

It was over the next few days that I started to watch Thomas Sanders videos. Now, I know he’s been on Vine since 2013, but I really had no idea who he was up until that point. I didn’t have Vine, so I didn’t know him from there. But his vines would sometimes make their way on to my dashboard on Tumblr, so I knew of him. I knew he was that funny, relatable guy that I would occasionally see on my dashboard which could always bring a smile to my face in seven seconds or less. But I really had no idea who he was beyond that. I don’t really remember how I stumbled upon his vines on YouTube, but I did. It was there where I found an hour-and-forty-minute-long compilation of his vines – it definitely wasn’t all his Vines, but it was a significant amount of them. From there I started watching his YouTube videos. And I quite literally watched them all (check my watch history. I’m not lying) and have re-watched them many times since. For quite some time Supernatural – an oddly dark show – was the only thing that could completely distract me from my mind. Other shows and films could only do so for a time, but Supernatural and Thomas Sanders have consistently kept me distracted from the darkest areas of my mind. And this guy, this king amongst men, this angel without wings, not only did he distract me, but he brought genuine joy to my life during a time when I thought that to be impossible. Thomas Sanders wasn’t just a distraction from that horrible rabbit hole in my brain, he was genuinely uplifting. And for that, I will forever be thankful.

That following Tuesday, the twenty-seventh of November 2016, I was officially diagnosed with anxiety and depression. Together, my doctor and I agreed that it was best if I start medication.

DEPRESSION

Oy, this thing. Depression, my greatest foe. Honestly, depression is King Douchebag. Depression is that demonic Hobgoblin thing that likes to run about inside my mind and cause mayhem wherever it goes. It is the king of a shit-tastic court. This royal dickhead of a mental disorder is the reason I felt worthless after that Fiasco, this monstrosity of an illness was the reason I felt hopeless and joyless. Depression was the dementor, and my life was wasting away.

As I said above, in November I went to the therapist on campus where the therapist believed me to have anxiety but wasn’t convinced that I had depression. My friend, conversely, was certain I had depression. So that following Tuesday, after four days of bingeing Supernatural again, and watching copious amounts of Thomas Sanders videos, I went to the Health Clinic, and I talked about how I felt, and the doctor made me fill out two questionnaires. I was told to evaluate my last two weeks, rate how I felt from 0-4, and tick a little yes/no box on the depression sheet. Then she evaluated me. And she determined that I, indeed, had both depression and anxiety.

We decided together that medical intervention was best. I had been definitely suffering on-and-off since 2015. So I got the prescription and went straight to the closest pharmacy to my apartment to get it filled because I was not waiting another day. I knew the meds would take several weeks to start taking effect, so I didn’t want to waste any time. Why feel crappy any longer right? We decided on Cipralex because it’s a brand I knew (two friends of mine have taken it) and she said it had low side-effects. Now, it’s January 2017, and I definitely feel better. The meds definitely help, and I am in no way afraid to admit that.

COPING

So, I’m taking SSRIs but overall, how am I coping? Much better actually. When attacks strike, I do some breathing techniques and some light meditation. I’m also learning to face the problem instead of just hoping it goes away. Distractions might seem like nothing more than avoiding the issue but, honestly, they help. They help get you outside of your mind. And believe you me, I know how vicious the mind can be. So distractions are nice, even if they aren’t permanent. The other big thing is having someone to talk to, whether that is a friend, a family member, a teammate, a therapist, or some random stranger willing to lend you their ear. It makes a world of difference. To know that you are not alone is another big one. On days like today, it’s easy to see that. Social media is abuzz about Bell Let’s Talk. But throughout the rest of the year, it might not seem that way. And please know that if you feel alone and you need someone to talk to, you can always talk to me. You can contact me in various ways on social media or by email. I’ve been through the bad, and now I’m starting to see the light, and you will too. Just don’t be afraid to ask for help.

I started coping by escaping into shows. That’s the magic of a Netflix account. You can just binge. It doesn’t judge (except on some devices where it asks if you’re still there. Like, geez, I am just let me binge in peace!). CraveTV and the wonder that is Letterkenny also helped. It’s the best Canadian show I’ve seen in years and can’t wait for the St. Paddy’s special and season three. But the show that’s helped me the most has been Supernatural. I found the show on Netflix (I heard of it before and actually tried watching the pilot once before, but Mary on the roof scared the crap out of me, so I stopped) and binged all ten seasons. This was during my summer slump. I wasn’t truly depressed then, but there was just a gloomy air about me. After watching all ten seasons in under two weeks, I looked for other shows. I started watching Stranger Things but stopped at episode four after experiencing a panic attack (which was unrelated to the show or my usual triggers), and I have not picked up the show since. After being talked out of panic by my dad over the phone, I was calm enough to hang up. But I didn’t feel entirely at peace, so I went back to re-watching Supernatural. It was after that attack that I also watched season eleven through less conventional means (because it wasn’t on Netflix yet). And I started to feel better again. For several months, I just re-binged the show, albeit at a slower pace than I first watched it. It was the one thing that made me feel good. My worries melted away when that show was on, and I was enthralled in the narrative.

The other thing that helped me cope was Thomas Sanders. As I mentioned above, in the days leading up to my diagnoses, I stumbled upon a compilation of his Vines, and I was hooked. I found he made YouTube videos and I watched them all. I got Snapchat just so I could see his snaps. I followed him on Instagram and Twitter and liked him on Facebook. Then I found out he has a Tumblr (@thatsthat24)!  And it was magical. My favourite site and my new favourite internet personality, together! So I follow him there too. But unlike the others, I get notifications when he posts to Tumblr, and seeing those notifications are the best part of my day. It’s always something positive, or funny, or relatable, and it’s always certain to bring a smile to my face. I know that Thomas Sanders is only human and that he’s not happy every second of every day (if he were, he would be a game show host), but I really appreciate that everything he puts online is positive. I have no idea what goes on in his life, what anxieties he might face, but if he reads this, I want to thank him for brightening my day and making it suck a little less.  Because right now, he’s the thing that makes me happiest and I hope we, his fans, make him just as happy.

________________________________________________________

Holy! That was 3150-ish words (or 5 12pt Garamond single-spaced pages). If you stuck through it all, thank you. I hope #BellLetsTalk 2017 was everything you hoped it would be. And sorry for the length, but I needed to make sure I said everything. -KNC

P.S. I'm sitting here thinking about the family gossip that might ensue (because, before today, only my immediate family knew) and honestly, I don't care. I don't care if it makes them uncomfortable, because this isn't about them. My illness doesn't affect them, so I really don't care what they think or how they’ll react.

[norihisahyuga-archived]

tagged by @chlance for this 10 + 1 facts about me thing. i’m not entirely sure i’ve seen that floating around before now. also, i’m incredibly boring.

click the read more at your own risk.

i’ve been writing for 11 years. it’s weird to think about it in terms of time now because i used to talk about it in high school, joking i’d have been writing for a whole decade soon. but nonetheless, it’s true. i started writing when i was very young because state standardized testing is terribly boring, takes too little time, and i needed to fill in the huge empty gaps of waiting with something. i’m still not entirely sure what drove me to write in the first place, but that’s what i did. and i’ve almost always been exclusively fascinated by stories about lgbt people and lgbt relationships even before i knew i was lgbt.

i like shitty movies and hate good movies. that’s only half a joke. there are plenty of movies that are considered “good” that i like, but when i actually tried watching a lot of classic movies that people have raved about, i ended up not liking a lot of them or just being terribly bored. it’s not even just a matter of not appreciating the themes present, but more that the films just don’t hold my interest for very long. in contrast, i can binge watch shitty horror films until i pass out in the middle of them. creature feature weekends on syfy used to be my favorite parts of the month for a reason.

i have a fear of ghosts and demons. i’m not entirely sure what caused it or why it’s become such a part of my life, maybe it’s just too many possession/demonic horror films at the wrong point in my life. maybe it’s just that i was raised religious and though i’m not religious anymore, i still can’t shake the fact that i believe these things do exist and can be malevolent. maybe it’s too much reading too late at night. i don’t really know why, to be honest. it’s ironic, because i’ll purposefully seek out movies and books that feature ghosts and demons. the grudge came out in 2004, and to this day i still have a paranoid and irrational fear of stairs late at night and can’t shake the creepy feeling that something is in the dark. might sound crazy, but it’s true.

i suffer from mental illness and personality disorders. and they all most likely result from the abuse i suffered at the hands of my mother for most of my life. i have very high key anxiety, which makes it difficult for me to initiate conversations with people and make decisions that are risky in nature. it also makes walking my dog at night very difficult. there is also depression mixed in there, which makes me very tired and decreases my motivation significantly. i have bpd and avpd, as well. bpd makes it very difficult for me to manage my emotions, as everything feels very intense or very numb, and contributes significantly to my self-loathing as there’s a constant stream of uncertainty in my head. avpd makes it very difficult to talk to outside sources about my issues, which makes therapy at the moment an absolute impossibility. i’m finding my own ways to cope as i can, and i think it’s starting to work.

tadanobu asano is my favorite actor. and he has been since i watched ichi the killer when i was in sixth grade. that was a very pivotal point in my life for several reasons, and he’s very important to me. believe me when i say that silence might have been a shitty movie, but i really enjoyed everything he did in it. i’ve been steadily tracking down and watching his films ever since. he’s the real reason that i started watching j-horror in the first place, which is pretty much what led me to the place i’m at right now and led me to the fandoms that would become the most important to me and the most important in my life. there’s a LOT i would like to thank him for, tbh. he means a lot to me.

i love animals, and they love me. and i’m not exaggerating when i say that. i’ve encountered animals and been told that they’re dangerous, but they liked me just fine. i’ve had stray animals grow warmer towards me and allow me to pick them up and hold them. my grandmother had kittens in the barn next to her house and i was the one who made it possible for my cousins to touch them since they trusted humans by trusting me first. i’ve had people’s dogs who usually bite approach me and let me pet them. and i really love animals. i don’t kill bugs if i don’t have to, i used to play with the daddy long leg spiders that showed up in my veterinary science room in high school, and i raised praying mantises as a kid and kept a pet frog for just over a year.

i have a natural talent for academic writing. when i was in my last two years of high school, my grades absolutely tanked and a large part of that had to do with returning to an abusive environment and being so isolated from everyone that i had no way to cope. my grades suffered heavily, except for my grades in english. my senior year, i was taking a college freshman level class through a university and i was able to get great grades in it even when i often scrambled to complete assignments or worried i didn’t understand the material. i had a teacher comment he never understood how much english meant to me until he saw a test score of mine that was incredibly high when most people hadn’t scored that high. had i kept my shit together and gone to college, i probably would have studied it. i might still some day if i ever get my shit together enough to consider attempting anything academic.

i have a sleep disorder. it’s largely caused by working the night shift and developed the longer i worked there. while left to my own devices, i usually develop a nocturnal sleep schedule and spent an entire summer sleeping during the day and staying up all night several times. that didn’t really translate well to working for some reason. as time passed, it became more and more difficult to sleep during the day to the point where i now have to take sleep medication to ensure i sleep for more than three to four hours before i go to work. during my days off, my sleep schedule almost always tries to revert to me staying up during the day and sleeping at night, and it’s an active issue trying to resolve it. i’m strongly considering changing what hours i work as a result.

i’m agnostic. i was raised in a nondenominational christian church and ended up not going back once i entered public school. when i lived with my grandmother, i encountered several denominations, which were apostolic, baptist, and pentecostal. needless to say, i’m very apathetic at best to religion. that doesn’t stop me from watching movies that include religion or make me automatically dislike media with religious themes. i’ve also retained a lot of information about christianity from my time in the church and my own studies which makes me very critical toward people misusing the faith. i don’t mind people who are religious! i just merely ask that you don’t approach me about the topic unless you’ve asked first.

i’m gay and trans. it’s in my about and my description and if you somehow missed both of those, i talk about it a fair lot. my identity is very important to me. i knew for the vast majority of my life that i was not straight or cis, but i didn’t have the terms i needed to really describe how i felt and wasn’t really able to admit it to myself until recently. however, that’s who i am. being lgbt is very important to me and is a very important part of my life.

i’m a restless perfectionist. it’s why you’ll see my theme change often (though this one is lasting well). it’s why my icon and mobile banner change. on my old tumblr account and on twitter, my @ changed very often, as did my entire layout + color scheme. i want things to be perfect, and that often means changing them. that also means i pretty much bust my own ass on my writing and my gifs and edits, and it also means i hate a whole hell of a lot of what i create because it’s never up to scratch and never what i envisioned it to be.

since i’m supposed to tag 11 followers, i’ll tag @halfpastmonsoon @yoshimiyahagi @hironoshimizu @sparktaekwoon @complicatedmerary @chatcsantana @underjacksumbrella

look that’s enough anyway if you actually read this... i’m so sorry

[holytheoristtastemaker]

Search engine optimization (SEO) is essential for almost every kind of website, but its finer points remain something of a specialty. Even today SEO is often treated as something that can be tacked on after the fact. It can up to a point, but it really shouldn’t be. Search engines get smarter every day and there are ways for websites to be smarter too. The foundations of SEO are the same as they’ve always been: great content clearly labeled will win the day sooner or later — regardless of how many people try to game the system. The thing is, those labels are far more sophisticated than they used to be. Meta titles, image alt text, and backlinks are important, but in 2020, they’re also fairly primitive. There is another tier of metadata that only a fraction of sites are currently using: structured data. All search engines share the same purpose: to organize the web’s content and deliver the most relevant, useful results possible to search queries. How they achieve this has changed enormously since the days of Lycos and Ask Jeeves. Google alone uses more than 200 ranking factors, and those are just the ones we know about. SEO is a huge field nowadays, and I put it to you that structured data is a really, really important factor to understand and implement in the coming years. It doesn’t just improve your chances of ranking highly for relevant queries. More importantly, it helps make your websites better — opening it up to all sorts of useful web experiences. Recommended reading: Where Does SEO Belong In Your Web Design Process? What Is Structured Data? Structured data is a way of labeling content on web pages. Using vocabulary from Schema.org, it removes much of the ambiguity from SEO. Instead of trusting the likes of Google, Bing, Baidu, and DuckDuckGo to work out what your content is about, you tell them. It’s the difference between a search engine guessing what a page is about and knowing for sure. As Schema.org puts it: By adding additional tags to the HTML of your web pages — tags that say, "Hey search engine, this information describes this specific movie, or place, or person, or video" — you can help search engines and other applications better understand your content and display it in a useful, relevant way. Schema.org launched in 2011, a project shared by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Yandex. In other words, it’s a ‘bipartisan’ effort — if you like. The markup transcends any one search engine. In Schema.org’s own words, “A shared vocabulary makes it easier for webmasters and developers to decide on a schema and get the maximum benefit for their efforts.” It is in many respects a more expansive cousin of microformats (launched around 2005) which embed semantics and structured data in HTML, mainly for the benefit of search engines and aggregators. Although microformats are currently still supported, the ‘official’ nature of the Schema.org library makes it a safer bet for longevity. JSON for Linked Data (JSON-LD) has emerged as the dominant underlying standard for structured data, although Microdata and RDFa are also supported and serve the same purpose. Schema.org provides examples for each type depending on what you’re most comfortable with. As an example, let’s say Joe Bloggs writes a review of Joseph Heller’s 1961 novel Catch-22 and publishes it on his blog. Sadly, Bloggs has poor taste and gives it two out of five stars. For a person looking at the page, this information would be understood unthinkingly, but computer programs would have to connect several dots to reach the same conclusion. With structured data, the following markup could be added to the page’s code. (This is a JSON-LD approach. Microdata and RDFa can be used to weave the same information into content): { "@context" : "http://schema.org", "@type" : "Book", "name" : "Catch-22", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Joseph Heller" }, "datePublished" : "1961-11-10", "review" : { "@type" : "Review", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Joe Bloggs" }, "reviewRating" : { "@type" : "Rating", "ratingValue" : "2", "worstRating" : "0", "bestRating" : "5" }, "reviewBody" : "A disaster. The worst book I've ever read, and I've read The Da Vinci Code." } } This sets in stone that the page is about Catch-22, a novel by Joseph Heller published on November 10th, 1961. The reviewer has been identified, as has the parameters of the scoring system. Different schemas can be combined (or tiered) to describe different things. For example, through tagging of this sort, you could make clear a page is the event listing for an open-air film screening, and the film in question is The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou by Wes Anderson. Recommended reading: Better Research, Better Design, Better Results Why Does It Matter? Ok, wonderful. I can label my website up to its eyeballs and it will look exactly the same, but what are the benefits? To my mind, there are two main benefits to including structured data in websites: It makes search engine’s jobs much easier.They can index content more accurately, which in turn means they can present it more richly. It helps web content to be more thorough and useful.Structured data gives you a ‘computer perspective’ on content. Quality content is fabulous. Quality content thoroughly tagged is the stuff of dreams. You know when you see snazzy search results that include star ratings? That’s structured data. Rich snippets of film reviews? Structured data. When a selection of recipes appear, ingredients, preparation time and all? You guessed it. Dig into the code of any of these pages and you’ll find the markup somewhere. Search engines reward sites using structured data because it tells them exactly what they’re dealing with. (Large preview) Examine the code on the websites featured above and sure enough, structured data is there. (Large preview) It’s not just search either, to be clear. That’s a big part of it but it’s not the whole deal. Structured data is primarily about tagging and organizing content. Rich search results are just one way for said content to be used. Google Dataset Search uses Schema.org/Dataset markup, for example. Below are a handful of examples of structured data being useful: Recipes Reviews FAQs Voice queries Event listings Content Actions. There are thousands more. Like, literally. Schema.org even fast-tracked the release of markup for Covid-19 recently. It’s an ever-growing library. In many respects, structured data is a branch of the Semantic Web, which strives for a fully machine-readable Internet. It gives you a machine-readable perspective on web content that (when properly implemented) feeds back into richer functionality for people. As such, just about anyone with a website would benefit from knowing what structured data is and how it works. According to W3Techs, only 29.6% of websites use JSON-LD, and 43.2% don’t use any structured data formats at all. There’s no obligation, of course. Not everyone cares about SEO or being machine-readable. On the flip side, for those who do there’s currently a big opportunity to one-up rival sites. In the same way that HTML forces you to think about how content is organized, structured data gets you thinking about the substance. It makes you more thorough. Whatever your website is about, if you comb through the relevant schema documentation you’ll almost certainly spot details that you didn’t think to include beforehand. As humans, it is easy to take for granted the connections between information. Search engines and computer programs are smart, but they’re not that smart. Not yet. Structured data translates content into terms they can understand. This, in turn, allows them to deliver richer experiences. Resources And Further Reading “The Beginner's Guide To Structured Data For SEO: A Two-Part Series,” Bridget Randolph, Moz “What Is Schema Markup And Why It’s Important For SEO,” Chuck Price, Search Engine Journal “What Is Schema? Beginner‘s Guide To Structured Data,” Luke Harsel, SEMrush “JSON-LD: Building Meaningful Data APIs,” Benjamin Young, Rollout Blog “Understand How Structured Data Works,” Google Search for Developers “Marking Up Your Site With Structured Data,” Bing Incorporating Structured Data Into Website Design Weaving structured data into a website isn’t as straightforward as, say, changing a meta title. It’s the data DNA of your web content. If you want to implement it properly, then you need to be willing to get into the weeds — at least a little bit. Below are a few simple steps developers can take to weave structured data into the design process. Note: I personally subscribe to a holistic approach to design, where design and substance go hand in hand. Juggling a bunch of disciplines is nothing new to web design, this is just another one, and if it’s incorporated well it can strengthen other elements around it. Think of it as an enhancement to your site’s engine. The car may not look all that different but it handles a hell of a lot better. Start With A Concept I’ll use myself as an example. For five years, two friends and I have been reviewing an album a week as a hobby (with others stepping in from time to time). Our sneering, insufferable prose is currently housed in a WordPress site, which — under my well-meaning but altogether ignorant care — had grown into a Frankenstein’s monster of plugins. We are in the process of redesigning the site which (among other things) has entailed bringing structured data into the core design. Here, as with any other project, the first thing to do is establish what your content is about. The better you answer this question, the easier everything that follows will be. In our case, these are the essentials: We review music albums; Each review has three reviewers who each write a summary by choosing up to three favorite tracks and assigning a personal score out of ten; These three scores are combined into a final score out of 30; From the three summaries, a passage is chosen to serve as an ‘at-a-glance’ roundup of all our thoughts. Some of this may sound a bit specific or even a bit arbitrary (because it is), but you’d be surprised how much of it can be woven together using structured data. Below is a mockup of what the revamped review pages will look like, and the information that can be translated into schema markup: Even the most sprawling content is packed full of information just waiting to be tagged and structured. (Large preview) There’s no trick to this process. I know what the content is about, so I know where to look in the documentation. In this case, I go to Schema.org/MusicAlbum and am met with all manner of potential properties, including: albumReleaseType byArtist genre producer datePublished recordedAt There are dozens; some exclusive to MusicAlbum, others falling under the larger umbrella of CreativeWork. Digging deeper into the documentation, I find that the markup can connect to MusicBrainz, a music metadata encyclopedia. The same process unfolds when I go to the Review documentation. From that one simple page, the following information can be gleaned and organized: { "@context": "http://schema.org/", "@type": "Review", "reviewBody": "Whereas My Love is Cool was guilty of trying too hard no such thing can be said of Visions. The riffs roar and the melodies soar, with the band playing beautifully to Ellie Rowsell's strengths.", "datePublished": "October 4, 2017", "author": [{ "@type": "Person", "name": "André Dack" }, { "@type": "Person", "name": "Frederick O'Brien" }, { "@type": "Person", "name": "Marcus Lawrence" }], "itemReviewed": { "@type": "MusicAlbum", "@id": "https://musicbrainz.org/release-group/7f231c61-20b2-49d6-ac66-1cacc4cc775f", "byArtist": { "@type": "MusicGroup", "name": "Wolf Alice", "@id": "https://musicbrainz.org/artist/3547f34a-db02-4ab7-b4a0-380e1ef951a9" }, "image": "https://lesoreillescurieuses.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/a1320370042_10.jpg", "albumProductionType": "http://schema.org/StudioAlbum", "albumReleaseType": "http://schema.org/AlbumRelease", "name": "Visions of a Life", "numTracks": "12", "datePublished": "September 29, 2017" }, "reviewRating": { "@type": "Rating", "ratingValue": 27, "worstRating": 0, "bestRating": 30 } } And honestly, I may yet add a lot more. Initially, I found the things that are already part of a review page’s structures (i.e. artist, album name, overall score) but then new questions began to present themselves. What could be clearer? What could I add? This should obviously be counterbalanced by questions of what’s unnecessary. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should. There is such a thing as ‘too much information’. Still, sometimes a bit more detail can really take a page up a notch. Familiarize Yourself With Schema There’s no way around it; the best way to get the ball rolling is to immerse yourself in the documentation. There are tools that implement it for you (more on those below), but you’ll get more out of the markup if you have a proper sense of how it works. Trawl through the Schema.org documentation. Whoever you are and whatever your website’s for, the odds are that there are plenty of relevant schemas. The site is very good with examples, so it needn’t remain theoretical. The step beyond that, of course, is to find rich search results you would like to emulate, visiting the page, and using browser dev tools to look at what they’re doing. They are often excellent examples of websites that know their content inside out. You can also feed code snippets or URLs into Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper, which then generates appropriate schema. Tools like Google’’s Structured Data Markup Helper are excellent for getting to grips with how structured data works. (Large preview) The fundamentals are actually very simple. Once you get your head around them, it’s the breadth of options that take time to explore and play around with. You don’t want to be that person who gets to the end of a design process, looks into schema options, and starts second-guessing everything that’s been done. Ask The Right Questions Now that you’re armed with your wealth of structured data knowledge, you’re better positioned to lay the foundations for a strong website. Structured data rides a fairly unique line. In the immediate sense, it exists ‘under the hood’ and is there for the benefit of computers. At the same time, it can enable richer experiences for the user. Therefore, it pays to look at structured data from both a technical and user perspective. How can structured data help my website be better understood? What other resources, online databases, or hardware (e.g. smart speakers) might be interested in what you’re doing? What options appear in the documentation that I hadn’t accounted for? Do I want to add them? It is especially important to identify recurring types of content. It’s safe to say a blog can expect lots of blog posts over time, so incorporating structured data into post templates will yield the most results. The example I gave above is all well and good on its own, but there’s no reason why the markup process can’t be automated. That’s the plan for us. Consider also the ways that people might find your content. If there are opportunities to, say, highlight a snippet of copy for use in voice search, do it. It’s that, or leave it to search engines to work it out for themselves. No-one knows your content better than you do, so make use of that understanding with descriptive markup. You don’t need to guess how content will be understood with structured data. With tools like Google’s Rich Results Tester, you can see exactly how it gives content form and meaning that might otherwise have been overlooked. Resources And Further Reading “Getting Started With Schema.org Using Microdata,” Schema.org “Schema.org Project Repository,” GitHub community “Structured Data Markup Helper,” Googe Webmasters “Add Structured Data To Your Web Pages,” Google Developers Codelabs “Rich Results Test,” Google Quality Content Deserves Quality Markup You’ll find no greater advocate of great content than me. The SEO industry loses its collective mind whenever Google rolls out a major search update. The response to the hysteria is always the same: make quality content. To that I add: mark it up properly. Familiarize yourself with the documentation and be clear on what your site is about. Every piece of information you tag makes it that much easier for it to be indexed and shared with the right people. Whether you’re a Google devotee or a DuckDuckGo convert, the spirit remains the same. It’s not about ranking so much as it is about making websites as good as possible. Accommodating structured data will make other aspects of your website better. You don’t need to trust tech to understand what your content is about — you can tell it. From reviews to recipes to audio search, developers can add a whole new level of sophistication to their content. The heart and soul of optimizing a website for search have never changed: produce great content and make it as clear as possible what it is and why it’s useful. Structured data is another tool for that purpose, so use it.

http://damianfallon.blogspot.com/2020/04/baking-structured-data-into-design.html

[ijtorchwood3]

1. What is you middle name? 2. How old are you? 3. When is your birthday? 4. What is your zodiac sign? 5. What is your favorite color? 6. What’s your lucky number? 7. Do you have any pets? 8. Where are you from? 9. How tall are you? 10. What shoe size are you? 11. How many pairs of shoes do you own? 12. What was your last dream about? 13. What talents do you have? 14. Are you psychic in any way? 15. Favorite song? 16. Favorite movie? 17. Who would be your ideal partner?

Oh wow, thank you for asking so many. That’s very kind of you.

Oh God, it’s embarrassing. Sorry, but I really don’t need the whole world knowing. Only Jack has access to those files, and I’ve sworn him to secrecy (Tosh could easily access them if she wanted to, but I don’t need to bribe her).

35, surprisingly. The dreaded “soon to be middle-aged” stage. Wow....To be honest, I didn’t expect to get this far. Knock on wood.

19/8/83

Leo. I’ve never really cared about that sort of thing, but the posts on here where they assign things to certain signs can be fun.

Red, definitely red. I feel it looks the best on me, and it’s one of those colors that holds all sorts of different meanings in it.

22. I’ve never understood why 22. I’m not usually one to attach myself to random things without meaning, but 22 just feels right to me.

I do! I’ve got a Russian blue cat named Leia and she’s beautiful. Not to be one of those pet owners, but she’s like my daughter.

Newport, Wales. Which, depending on what you know about Newport, probably explains absolutely everything and nothing about me.

We’ll go with a solid two meters/six feet and call it a day.

Depends on the brand and style, but we’ll go with 10.5.

Hold on, let me check....Ten. Is that weird? I hope it’s not weird. Jack owns maybe four at the most. In my defense, we do a lot of running and my shoes aren’t exactly made for that. Should I switch over to trainers? Absolutely. Will I? Absolutely not.

Something about Owen, Gwen, and I getting ice cream in a place shaped like an owl? You’d go in and there’d be a whole bunch of mini animatronic owls inside. Honestly, as creepy as that sounds, the weirdest part of the dream is the fact that I don’t even like ice cream.

Um...I can rub my stomach and pat my head? I don’t know....I’m very good at remembering things. I can read faster than anyone on the team. I’ve beaten Owen in a binge-watching contest. Wow, these are really lame talents, aren’t they? Um...I’m very...flexible?

Nope. I don’t really believe humans can be psychic, unless there’s something alien going on. Or rather, they can be, but it’s a very rare case.

Right now? It’s a Hard Life by Queen. I have not stopped listening to Queen since Bohemian Rhapsody came out. Obviously I’ve been listening to other artists as well, but they’re the main ones at the moment. At first the team was appreciating it, since we all love Queen, but there’s only so much Mercury they can take (because they’re all weaklings).

Probably Goldfinger ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I just asked Jack how he would describe my ideal partner and he said “someone who drops dead frequently and is drop dead gorgeous always”, so there you have it.

[literallyshookblog]

Late to the Party

Growing up I was definitely sheltered from the majority of pop culture. By no means was my family reclusive or Duggar levels of oppressive. My parents carefully curated what kind of media I consumed. In retrospect, it makes sense why I was not allowed to listen to any Britney Spears besides the first two albums. Eight year old me had no business listening to “I’m a Slave 4 U”-- let alone seeing the music video. So generally the guidelines became that if the artist did not first come from Disney Channel or American Idol I was not allowed to listen to them. The one time I tried to break those rules as a kid was shortly after Hitch came out and I bought “Yeah!” by Usher. Naturally, my older sister tattled on me and I lost access to my pink ipod mini, my most prized possession at the time, for two weeks. After that incident, I adhered to the rules until college.

In high school, I used a different tactic. I went through high school amidst the craze of the Twilight franchise and my peers, besides thirsty Mormons moms, were the target demographic. All of the people who I wanted to be friends with loved the series. When you are a sophomore in high school with literally no friends, study hall presents a special challenge. You can be the weird kid that actually does their homework, or you can be a part of the group and engage in whatever your classmates are talking about. At this point I had not read a page of the books and the movie had not yet come out, but both were already labeled off limits at home. However, I wanted to be a part of the discussion. After my homework was finished each night, the next assignment I gave myself was scouring the internet for details for all things Twilight. I read the plot summaries of the books. I read each and every Entertainment Weekly article pertaining to the movies, which if any of y’all remember that period of time was A LOT. I read fan forums and when it got closer to the press period, I found every photo shoot and interview clip of the whole cast. Every day in Study hall, I had something about Twilight to share with the other girls in my class. I was their hook-up for all the details, but did it get them to invite me to sit with them at lunch? Nope.  As the pop-culture trends changed, so did my research topics. Twilight moved on to Pretty Little Liars and Gossip Girl, etc. and all of my efforts bore the same result.

Most images of the college experience perpetuated by film and television often show young people exploring their newfound freedom by throwing massive parties and drinking like they are in a John Mulaney bit. While hyperbolic and an overgeneralization of each person’s individual experience, there is a kernel of truth in the stereotype. It is human nature, upon no longer having the boundaries set by parents and other authority figures, to indulge and test the limits of how much one was missing out before. My binging and boundary pushing did not involve red plastic cups and dancing on tabletops; however, there was dancing involved. Now in my freshman year, all of a sudden I am on my own for the first time and I have over a decade of pop music to catch up on.

To this day, I am still the type that becomes singularly obsessed with one song before moving onto the next one. I still remember at one points finally understanding the pop culture reference of “hips don’t lie” by discovering the song of the same name. I remember the night when one of my roommates was at volleyball practice and the other was off with some boy, I had a dance party of one in my dorm room of mid-00s pop from Shakira to JLo to Beyoncé and more. Discovering these songs gave me so much joy and I had no outlet to share it with. Normal people had heard these songs for years and they had moved on to newer trends. Bringing up the new songs I had discovered, an R-rated movie I hadn’t seen before, or a TV show that I had just binged did not suddenly make me one of the cool kids. It had just pronounced my otherness. I was Steve Rogers gleefully stating that he understood a reference for once and the people I was hoping would include me were all Tony Stark in the back of the room rolling his eyes.

However, my binging continued because I had still created a brand for myself of being the pop culture obsessive that could talk with anyone about their favorite television show. The best friendship I have to this day began around this period of my life because an at-the-time acquaintance expressed interest in watching Arrow and I crafted a detailed PowerPoint presentation on how to best binge it and other shows I recommended.  I had caught up quickly to the present, but by that point I was deep in the golden age of television which continues to this day. At one point in my junior year of college, I noticed that I was watching TWENTY-FIVE television shows regularly. Was I also enormously depressed during that period of time and using such high levels of media consumption as distraction to my ever present aching loneliness? You betcha. However, that’s an essay topic for another time (specifically this September.) At this point, I was becoming numb to even enjoying the shows I was watching because it was just work I had given myself to bring something to table in order for people to like me.

One would think that after the years have gone by and I have grown into myself as an adult and developed fulfilling and wonderful friendships that this feeling would go away, but it doesn’t. In the words of one of my favorite songs from Smash, “I thought the race was over, but they just keep moving the line.” I may have grown so much in the past decade since I was researching Robsten photoshoots to show my peers in study hall, but nonetheless I still feel like that kid that’s late to the party. We are still in the “Age of Peak Television” with and endless array of things to watch and consume. Now that I’ve gone through the joyful experience of sharing a TV show, movie, or song that you love with your friends who also enjoy the thing, that desire to not always be late to the party in regards to pop culture has transformed into a fear of missing out on sharing something awesome with my friends.

For example, I’ve seen clips and gifsets here and there of Mike Schur comedies but I had other pop culture stuff on my plate when they started. I know from what I’ve sampled that I would absolutely love them, and some of my favorite people in the world watch these. However, I did the math and to catch up on all episode of Parks and Rec, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and The Good Place; I’d have to watch five hundred and seventy-nine episodes of television. That’s around three and half weeks straight for perspective. I wholeheartedly want to watch these shows but those kind of numbers are daunting.

However, that kind of statistic is comforting in a sense. There’s no realistic way to catch up at this point. The market is so saturated that there is physically no way to truly watch and enjoy all of the television and movies out there and still lead a healthy and abundant life. It has helped relieve some of the pressure. There is literally no way to see it all, so now there are so many more people late to the party. Earlier this week I came across a twitter thread of someone watching the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes “Surprise” and “Innocence” for the first time, and the best part was all of the longtime fans who were delighted to be there for the person tweeting as she went through the emotional rollercoaster of those two episode. Those who had seen those episodes decades ago and had re-watched countless times since then got to see something they love through the eyes of someone experiencing it for the first time again. For once, social media has actually been helpful. People are so often experiencing television shows, in particular, out of sync from their actual air dates. No matter when you watch now there is always a community of fans ready to enjoy it with you. So while I had no one to share my delight of discovering “Hips Don’t Lie” seven years after it was first released, if I catch up to a new show or movie, I can share the joy of discovery with others through Twitter. I may still be late to the party, but now I have a community to enjoy the festivities with.