#i was literally having a panic attack but listening to this audio made me feel 1000 times better

[milogreer]

❥ my top ten redacted audio speakers !!

i’ve seen a bunch of people doing this so i wanted to join in! i love a bandwagon 😋

feisty werewolf; milo - i mean, come on. *gestures at my blog* look at me. milo very quickly took top spot, by the time i got to the panic attack audio i was like the rest of y’all can pack it up bc this guy’s got me hooked lmfao it was just so sweet to see a softer side of the guy who, at that point in the timeline, had mostly only been abrasive, cocky, and flirty. that accent also does everything for me. the exact moment i fell in love with him was when he said, “of course i’m not mad. i was worried - scared that you were hurt or something. but never mad.” 🫠💖

nervous air elemental; lasko - lasko… what can i say about lasko. he definitely awoke something in me lmao, initially i didn’t want to get into the elementals because meeting new people felt like a chore at the time but he immediately made me laugh and it was all downhill from there… i love that he’s kinda freaky and he makes me want to bite him in the non-canon audios, but even in prime universe he’s just so sweet and a really good friend. and his relationship with coworker makes me so proud of his development

arrogant incubus; gavin - i’ve said it before but gavin’s the reason i’m here! his hbs 2023 audio was my first audio of the channel, and to go back in time and watch his progression to that point was so heartwarming 🥺 him and freelancer are possibly the best pair in the universe, i just adore everything about them. gavin’s audios are actually the hardest ones for me to listen to because the love he has for freelancer is suffocating to witness in a really bittersweet way 😩

yandere cultist friend; blake - this one is um …. i never expected this HAHA when i first listened to the balance he really skeeved me out (as he should), but then mother mother released ‘explode!’ and for some unfathomable reason it got into my head as a blake song and i couldn’t dissociate it from him. on a second listen of the balance, i definitely appreciate his character more and the juxtaposition of him with elliott and sunshine vs bestie is so so interesting to me. i can’t even be mad at bestie because he’d have me wrapped around his finger too 🥲 rly nervous for his next story update

chaotic boyfriend; guy - BABYGIRL. humor is the biggest thing i look for in relationships both platonic and romantic and no one makes me laugh like guy does. he’s so my type and the way honey acts is literally how i am with guys i like, so guy audios are always so much fun to listen to 💖 and no BA hits quite like that pre-recorded one

i ended up talking more than i thought i would so the other half is under the cut!

it gets kind of messy in the second half because i think these could get shuffled around depending on my mood but for now these are my thoughts!

seer obscura; morgan - morgan is… captivating. i know he kinda only blew up after ‘time is a song’ but it’s with good reason; the atmosphere is so calming but also, like… there’s a longing to it, ykwim? the two of them being the only know seer obscuras naturally lends a hand to the tension between them. no one else understands their unique struggles - so when his new obscura acquaintance calls him up in the middle of the night asking for help and comfort, of course he isn’t going to say no. it’s such an intimate setting for their third audio together and you can feel the tension building the whole time up to “i want to know you.” it’s just a really good audio. very interested to see where his story goes

sarcastic inchoate demon; avior - THE SNARK. THE QUIET KINDNESS. THE MYSTERY. THE YEARNING. THE TRAGEDY. avior’s got it all. sovereign state had me on the edge of my seat the whole time and still does, honestly. his hbs rewind audio is one of my favorites; the effort and love he put into that little date to give starlight a reprieve from their shared hell… he is such a romantic 💖 there’s nothing quite like falling in love while stuck in an actual hell

unempowered boyfriend; geordi - he’s an interesting one for me bc my love of him is directly tied to cutie + cutie’s telepathy giving us a look into his head (i just melt over his whispered little i love yous and compliments). they have a fascinating and messy story that i live for even when it makes me sick lol i adore that they’re both flawed but that they’re taking steps to better themselves. it’s fun when couples in the redactedverse aren’t perfect but still try to be better out of love

mysterious stranger; hush - THE weird guy. within his first audio i went from being indifferent to charmed. i love a mystery and everything about him is mysterious, but he’s also so clueless sometimes that it’s like. so what if he tied doc to the bed in their first meeting, now he’s asking to hold their hand when he’s nervous. so what if his purpose is to free the sovereigns? he learned how to cook for doc. i can’t NOT love him

unknown yandere caller - i’m a ghostface fan, okay. and i’m a taurus. i like when people are obsessed with me 🤷🏼‍♀️ there’s just something so… like. listen. “you’ll start to expect me. you’ll start to crave me.” from the audio and “i know you’ll find them. and you’ll keep them. because they’re from me.” from his card? the arrogance. it’s bewitching. i need him back ASAP i don’t even care if he doesn’t get a real name, i just miss him. come back please 🙏🏻

[leviathanverse]

Chapter 16: Three days off?

How had it come to this?

The dinosaur, the larger one, had gotten aggressive as soon as it saw its own caretakers.

The smaller Allosaurus, although it was still able to kill, got spooked and hid behind the other Allosaurus.

It was not going to hand you over to Mr. Kanroji and Mr. Iguro, was it? Was it really THAT stubborn?!

" Y/n! Oh God! Hold on tight! I'll get Akari to help out!"

" That is not a good idea, Mitsuri!"

" Oh dear... What do we do, Iguro?!"

" Stay calm, Mitsuri. I'll go get her."

Just as Mr. Iguro said that, the larger Allosaurus roared at him. This was all your fault, wasn't it?

If you hadn't entered the enclosure, none of this would have happened! Not even the death of the worker!

" Y/n! Come to me, slowly."

His voice was quiet and you heard the harshness hidden behind the mask. Were you in trouble? For the second time?

You hoped not.

And to make things worse, the Allosaurus charged at Mr. Iguro once he BARELY set foot in the enclosure.

" Shit!"

He was, thankfully, able to dodge. Not to mention that the doors had closed just in time too.

You could hear Mrs. Kanroji panic from the noises she made. That made you panic too. Mr. Iguro was risking HIS life to get you.

In the blink of an eye, you were hoisted on said male's shoulder. He literally ran towards the exit. With you on HIS shoulder.

How strong were these people?! Where were they able to gym?! There just HAD to be a gym somewhere on the island in the park!

How else were these crazy people this strong?! Certainly not by using steroids or other drugs.

They were WAY too healthy to be accused of doing drugs. Not to mention that their behaviours were normal and not aggressive.

You hoped that their behaviours were normal. And after being pulled deep into your thoughts, you were pulled into reality.

" How were you not aware of your surroundings?! How did you get trapped in the enclosure?!"

" Iguro! That's enough!"

" Mitsuri. This one is trouble."

" I am sure that she has an explanation!"

" She better have one, or I am reporting this as an attempt at poaching."

Poaching?! You?! Never! That was impossible! You couldn't even hurt a fly!

Okay. Maybe a fly, but you would NEVER hurt other animals! It just wasn't in your nature to do so!

" I have an explanation..."

" You better be telling the truth like last time."

You pointed at the camera, hoping that it had captured the entire scene.

" The camera... it could capture everything including audios, right?"

" You better hope to God that it was on."

You gulped, eyes wide as you felt your chest grow heavy. Your throat tightened at that sentence.

You really hoped that it was on. That it had captured the entire scene and audio. Of the attack!

Both male and female caretaker and the workers left the viewing gallery. Leaving you behind and alone in the building.

You looked back at the enclosure, and saw the Allosauruses watch you.

You shivered and quickly walked out of the building. Just when you thought you were safe from the stares, you were suddenly grabbed and pulled into a bush.

A hand, clamped over your mouth. You struggled, feeling the familiar emotion of fear enter your chest.

" Calm down. It's just me."

" Mphmhmmmhm?!"

You recognized that voice. The voice belonged to that man with a lot of jewelry on him.

The hand removed itself from your mouth, and you breathed. You turned your head to get a glimpse of his face.

" Listen. I don't know what you are trying to achieve or prove here, but I don't like it. Ever since you arrived, suspicious activity blossomed here."

" What are you talking about, Mr. Tengen?"

" You. There had been more reports of possible poaching ever since you arrived."

Your brows furrowed in confusion and absolute anger. Was he accusing you of being a possible poacher group leader?

You wouldn't blame him if what he had said was true. But really? You? Out of all people? Couldn't he just question Tanjiro too?

He let you go and stared at you for a few seconds before leaving. You were left there. Alone again. In the bush.

Whatever was going on, you were guessing that everyone was suspicious of you. Not to mention think of you as the "villian" now.

Your watch buzzed. Confused, you liffed your arm to see why it had buzzed. You saw that you had a notification.

" Oh yeah... got this thing after settling in. Question is why do I have a notification?"

You gently tapped the screen, and saw an entire message worth of being an essay written on two pages.

You skimmed through the message, and sighed. However, you were a bit confused by what the message had in it.

" Three days off? Why? Not that I have any arguments about it. Just- why three days?"

You were puzzled by the message. You loved quizzes and all, having a passion to solve the mysteries.

But this? This was beyond your capabilities of being able to solve something. A mystery that you couldn't solve.

Fate and her sisters still continued to work on your path and choices that you were going to have to make in the future. Breaking and rebuilding a new route, a new path and choice every millisecond.

Everything went as planned. For them, at least. Not for you. What you had planned would go as you had planned in the future in a long, long, LONG time.

Your journey was still in its first phase. Not in the middle or last phase. That was what the three sisters had planned and agreed on.

A new chapter was happening with every action that you had made, every word you said. The world really was a strange and cruel place.

Previous <-•-> Next

[hederasgarden]

Operation Elevator

Summary: Claire plays matchmaker when she realizes Six need a little help wooing their new neighbor. Pairing: Sierra Six x F!Reader Word Count: 780 Rating: Gen. Claire being sneaky, humor, brief mention of a panic attack and being trapped in a small space. A/N: This is stupid and silly but I needed to write something goofy and fun. Thank you @hoe-on-the-range for beta’ing, @whatblogisthis216 for holding my hand while I wrote this and @a-reader-and-a-writer for her help as well.

It takes 50 dollars and an overpriced pineapple upside-down cake from the bougie bakery on 6th street to convince the super of the apartment building to agree to Claire’s scheme. As plans went, it was pretty simple. Trap you and Six in the elevator long enough to get you talking and realize you liked one another. The hardest part was getting the timing right because Six liked his routine and you apparently worked from home.

Claire knew you liked Six. It was obviously from the way you stammered and babbled anytime you saw him. Whenever she ran into you alone you were normal, chatting to her about school or the weather, but if Six was there your voice got all high pitched and you gestured weirdly. You also brought them welcome cookies, for god’s sake. No one did that – especially not in New York City. Six was even more awkwardly robotic than normal with you but Claire saw the way he stared at you whenever he ran into you in the lobby. She also caught him on your Instagram page a couple of times which was sloppy for a spy. Civilian life was clearly making him soft but that was fine by Claire, it made her plan easier to pull off.

What Claire doesn’t count on is you having a full-blown panic attack when the elevator screeches to a halt or the way Six seems to blue screen for a full minute before he jumps into action. Thankfully the super is distracted enough by his fourth slice of pineapple upside-down cake that he doesn’t notice what’s happening on the security camera. Claire feels a little bad about that part but after a few minutes, Six has you calm again. There’s no audio but whatever he says makes you smile and he hesitantly reaches up to touch the side of your face. You’ve still got a hold of the front of his shirt and for a hot second, Claire thinks you might kiss but then Six looks away and you duck your head, staring at your shoes.

Claire huffs, annoyed. Apparently, he was only a man of action when bullets were flying or lives were in danger. But that’s fine, Claire has contingencies. Six taught her that much.

“I don’t know how, but I know you were involved,” Six tells her later that night, in the middle of their weekly movie night.

“Listen,” Claire starts, shoving a handful of popcorn into her mouth and chewing loudly enough to make Six’s eye twitch a little. “I have no idea what you’re talking about but if I did, you should probably know you sent her some very nice flowers and invited her out for coffee tomorrow, mkay?”

“Claire,” he says, sounding so put out she rolls her eyes at him and pauses the movie.

“Oh my god, you’re literally killing me here. It’s bad enough you low key internet stalk her, but then you liked a photo of hers from over a year ago. It’s embarrassing, Six! She clearly likes you. What’s the hold up?”

“First, it’s not stalking, it’s called doing recon on our neighbors.”

“Sure,” Claire says. “I didn’t see you doing a deep dive on Mr. Anderson in 3B’s instagram account.”

“Mr. Anderson lives in 4B, Claire.”

“Whatever,” she says, waving him off. “You’re meeting her tomorrow at 2pm. Try to be charming and don’t be weird. She seems cool.” Six sighs and rubs his temples, something unexpected flickering in his eyes. “Wait, are you actually nervous?” Claire asks, sitting up straighter.

“No,” he replies too quickly. “Though it’s possible I am mildly concerned this will go poorly.”

“Listen, you were a CIA super spy. You can handle one date with our neighbor. I believe in you,” she says, punching his arm.

“Your confidence in me is inspiring,” Six deadpans.

“Cool. Can we get back to the movie or do you want to talk more about your feelings?” She asks, grinning when he sighs heavily and turns his attention back to the TV.

The next day, Claire can’t be sure exactly how the coffee date goes, but when she catches Six sneaking in after 1am she has a pretty good idea.

“I hope you were safe,” she says, flipping on the light. The only sign she’s caught him by surprise is the way his hand automatically moves towards his hip. Ha. Some super spy.

“Claire…”

“Yeah yeah. I know. It’s past my bedtime. You’re welcome by the way,” she calls out over her shoulder as she heads back down the hall to her bedroom.

A few seconds pass before she hears him speak again, his voice is quiet but clear. “Thank you, Claire.”

✥

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[artsyt0ast]

My top 5 Redacted audios (sfw version)

Okay, well I was tagged by @amberyartsy​ , I however can’t tag anyone else now ‘:) (cause everyone I know has already been tagged) 1: Lunch With a Sweet Himbo Earth Elemental Bro  It was my first ever redacted video and I woke up in the middle of it. I wasn’t into asmr and I had no idea what the hell asmr rps were, but this was literally a perfect introduction and just what i needed at that time. :))  2: Your Werewolf Boyfriend Finds You Having a Panic Attack This one very quickly threw it self up onto my top five... I get some bad panic  attacks sometimes, so this video literally made me feel so safe and cared for. It warms my heart every time I load it up.  3: Cuddles and Confessions with Your Vampire Mate  I find myself coming back to this video more often then I’d like to admit. (probably cause I’m a sucker for slow burns and this was nice and soft) It’s certainly an audio that I love with all my heart. 

4: Sleep Aid From Your Sweet Bakadere Daemon [Sleep Aid] It’s very soft. It was the first sleep aid I listened to on the channel, and it’s wonderful and warm (and I was extremely called the fuck out by a lot of the stuff in that video). I just love Caelum and I would love to bake with him.  5: Unwinding After a Long Day with Your Chaotic Pizza Guy Boyfriend  Yeah this is another one that shot up onto this list. Guy is probably one of my  favorite unempowered men on the channel. He’s very fun to listen to and I love the relationship that Guy and Honey have. :’) Honorable mentions (in no direct order because I love too many of these boys):  -Dragged to Back to Bed By Your Sweet Boyfriend [Sleep Aid] -Your Demon Finally Tells You The Truth  -Dragging Your Overworked Tsundere Boss Boyrfriend to Bed [Sleep Aid] -Sweet Himbo Earth Elemental Bro Confesses His Feelings For You [Friends to Lovers]  -Dreamwalker Boyfriend Saves You From a Nightmare - The Cost  -Sleepy Cuddles and Kisses With Your Needy Boyfriend - Yandere Boyfriend Comforts You After a Nightmare  -Helping Your Werewolf Boyfriend Shift Again [Reverse Comfort] - Listening In On Your Boyfriend’s Thoughts  -Comforted By Your Demon [Slow Burn]  There were so many more that I wanted to put down, my fingers were just getting tired of typing lmao 

[farty-city]

inside bo burnham review no one asked for

i enjoy other peoples commentary and i was writing down my first thoughts anyway so here it is

inside

first song/intro song

i like the phone screen on him, very reflective of how we have had phone screens on us

“roberts been a little depressed” osnskjdnfs

they were right “daddys made you some content so open wide” hjbfafn

intro

oh my god he looks awful

but like in a cute way

maybe

healing the world with comedy (second song)

the canned and queued laugher no exactly… is it a symbol or is it just funny.. who's to say. 

it think its a good first song, establishing he knows what he is doing is kind of useless 

“the indescribable power of your comedy”

he looks like marc maron rn

i like the synthed voice and synthesizer

the jesus allusion … yeah

“i'm a special kind of white guy”

this feels like he knows how he is perceived by fans.. Make happy was too much

his fucking dancing fksjdnfksj

i think he did a good job looking manic

the lasers lmao

Side 1

Bo made a huge gamble releasing this like,,, what if you just stumbled upon it and this was ur first introduction to him..

I bet its like when i comment dumb things on instagram comments and get that rush of hehehehe

NO NOT BO DEVELOPING BILLIE EILLISH VOWELS

Also this is exactly what he wanted like,, he just wanted to make his things and not deal with the crowds so..

To think i was like finding scraps of him performing at largo and stuff and now,, so much content

life imitates art

the way he's literally what he wrote hgbkdf

there is no authenticity with cameras

suicide ?

 facetime with my mom tonight

the blue light.. Yeah

o hblue like sad

i don't know how i feel about the electric music but i guess its no different than whatever else i listen to

this is sad wow

still catchy etc

side 2

i wonder if here will be any fart jokes

that is how the world works (songs)

the huge mess and then him in a sweater

this is reminiscent of that walmart muppets

he became tim minchin with a sock puppet

the “yes… yes sir” stoppp 

jkgdsnfijwkensfosnf

qbejfnjne

nerjgnoejns

bo making a political statement and a metaphor for activism and then making it weirdly kinky

brand consultant (bit)

man bun

i have to believe he filmed it with the beard because quarantine vibes and also bc he was tired of being seen as a child

white womans instagram (song)

i did not like that intro

BO AND GLASSES THANK GOD

the daisies wow just wow

underwear

“white womans instagram” or “bo burnham becomes a girlboss”

i like that he didn't lose his cadence like the way the rhymes are you can still tell its him

i don't get the mom part sorry

is it like how people are very superficial but also very personal on their instagrams

this part was legit sad

side 3

i wonder how he felt with cameras constantly on him

Although this is the point hes trying to make

lol seinfeld moment (bit)

unpaid intern (bit and song)

“barely people somehow legal” was so smooth woW

omg he was scatting

he was a man who would scat

oh my god what great news

the react clip omg

i cant believe he did that oh my god

observation/critisism and response to the “can anyone shut the fuck up” 

and as i realized what he was doing he was like “i have this need for everything i make to have a deeper meaning” oh my god

now the question is how long will this go on?

jeffrey bezos (song)

idk its catchy

and then theres him like sleeping and talking which kind of is part of the jeff bezos song

bug eyes salamanders hehe

sexting (song)

i do believe this is just a silly song 

the earrings tho omg

sounds like post malone hbkjdsnfskj

idk its still about like intimacy in quarantine and that stuff..

the knife (bit)

i know hes copying like other youtubers but like,,, what

stuck in a room (song)

the intro is very funny and relatable

classic bo i love it 

i will say this special has been more reflective but i suppose it has to be

“look whos inside again”

i like the end too, this is all a fabrication

this is the clip where hes staring at the projection of himself from his old youtube videos which is sort of more like an ending to the “stuck in my room” song

 sorry (song)

i love the 80’s style music and its like zumba

oh this is like an apology song

“father please forgive me for i did not realise what i did, or that id live to regret it” what a catchy line

i would say this is another more “classic” bo song where its self aware and funny

“my closet it chalk full of stuff that is vaguely shitty” 

camera falling

this deserves its own bullet because its silly

i'm turning 30 (bit and song)

i remember him talking about this on a podcast and like,, damn i didn't know this also happened LOL

i really like how he did the lighting 

“stupid fucking ugly boring children”

suicide talk (1)

this is interesting i like the use of the projection

this is something that could never have happened onstage

just like with the it being projected on him

i guess it could but it would have to be done differently and probably hed have to make it funnier to make it more engaging

intermission

i just checked this is about the halfway point.. Mh

i don't wanna know (song)

“i thought it’d be over by now”

i wish this was longer but i kind of like how its just a little snippet and then the cut

video game (bit)

“i guess i’ll cry again”

“is the dude big or is the room small” lol

hm depression

 feelin like shit (song)

ohh the lighting is fun again

this is the tone shift i suppose

the feels like supalonely and the new kind of music

atl

:(

panic attack 

everything all of the time (song)

feels like brandon rogers 

i enjoy this

this feels like “welcome to youtube” grew up

“a little bit of everything all of the time”

“apathys a tragedy and boredoms a crime”

ok olivia rodrigo

finishing the special (bit)

these feel like diary entries but as standup

interesting choice

jeffery bezos (2)

Why the seaweed suit

Where did he get that

the digital space (bit)

suit up, gather what is needed, and return to the surface

damn

pirate map anfdkjfnskjd

this was so stupid (affectonate)

that funny feeling (song)

the campfire vibes 

kenny loggins

i don't get it..

is it about childhood, is it about the present?

i think its talking about the end of content? 

“the end of culture”, to quote make happy

change and not liking it 

“we were overdue, but it will be over soon”

if the second half of the special is like a panic attack this song is like a momentary pause before it gets worse

“so ive been working on this special”/breakdown 

this was .. uncomfortable and genuine which i'm sure is why he kept it

all eyes on me (song/rant)

another sad thing to watch.. damn

me trying to tell if the audio was from make happy

i think he was trying to make it as if the audio was from make happy 

this feels.. familiar

and obviously that is the point

“come on in the waters fine”

the use of autotune during the talking part... yeah

sad that he was gonna make another special… and it would have been totally different than this

i’ve decided i like the homage to make happy

It feels like hes made peace with it

the montage of him waking up and the “i think i'm done”

and then of course the ending where he's watching it over to remind us that its all fabricated

possible ending song/ “i promise to never go outside again”

ngl he looks good in the shirt with the haircut hehe

which i feel like is what he wants up to notice

and then like not think after we saw all his breakdowns

“i want to hear you tell a joke when no ones laughing in the background”

i really like the medley

Final thoughts

I want a blooper reel, but this doesn't seem like the kind of special

I also wonder if the songs will be on like apple music, but again, doesn't seem like the kind of special

I'm happy for him, he got to be honest and open and show us the sort of panicky stuff

this self aware comedy is exactly the stuff that i think will be making a comeback in the next decade.  John better be pulling up with more deconstructed comedy. 

I hope this has given him peace

[theredwidowhouse]

Solitude, a skill I don’t master yet.

Silence again. From Him.

For the past few weeks I've been going through some tough times. I've had panic attacks in which I could barely breathe (described in the physical journal), and I finally realized how much I need help. I'm back on Clonazepan medication to cut the breakouts when they come, but I'm aware that I'll need some more medication to treat myself properly. But that is not the reason for this "chapter", if I can call it that.

Since another loop closed with Him and his "busy silence", I have been thinking about how lost I am when I have no one to talk to. Smoking has only come as an additional problem, and makes me feel guilty for every cigarette smoked casually or in the desperation of anxiety.  Other aspects have also been worrying me since he "left". I installed that shit Tinder to see if I could meet new people, I didn't manage to spend more than two days on it, but at least I made two nice contacts (although not that interesting, after all the purpose of the app is something else).

Some days, I repeat the mantra of "I'll leave it to the luck" when it comes to romantic or sexual relationships. On some, I manage to tell myself that one day, not today or tomorrow, someone will like me exactly as I am; with all the problems, internal issues, unusual dynamics... In others, like this one, I feel completely worn out by the lonely life I've been leading for the past five years.

I used to laugh at the brazilian musical statement that "it is impossible to be happy alone," but now on second thought I conclude that it is impossible to be happy lonely. Solitude is still a skill that I have not mastered, and the ambiance I am in is not conducive to it. My relationship with my sisters and my mother is not so easy, it is not my ideal of togetherness, and the small lapses of indifference collected over the days have distanced me even further from discovering the pleasures and displeasures of "solitude."

Earlier in the day, around 7 AM when I finally have a bit of quiet and can consider myself alone, I took some slightly more "suggestive" pictures, just to find out how I looked when trying to seduce someone. I stared at the pictures for a while and found them all attractive and "showable". But for whom?

I laid down on the bed again, and staring at the ceiling I decided to listen for the thousandth time to one of those ASMR audios for adults that I had found on youtube, in which a man with a deep, husky voice says extremely sexual things, alternating between the "aggressiveness" and the "softness" of the "Daddy Dom" fetish. I kept listening to that faceless man with the hallucinatingly sensual voice saying that I was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and how much I turned him on. I wasn't doing anything with my hands, I was just listening, and inevitably thinking how... sad it was to rely on an audio of a man who had never seen me to at least fantasize about being desired to that level.

After I got tired of the thoughts and dirty sayings that thousands of girls around the world should have already heard by now, I went to the backyard and smoked the fourth cigarette of the day.

With all the traumas collected throughout my life (rape, harassment, beating, etc) the logical thing was to never want to be touched again. But every time - when He reappears, or when my body prepares for sex during those painful fertile periods - I want to. I feel an enormous desire to have a companion to practice what I usually wonder about, but more than that, I feel the need for the intimacy that would lead me to let go to do what I fantasize about. The man I am interested in at the moment is interested in other things (or other people, I don't know), and he makes no secret of it by pouring out harsh replies to my too-hot messages. He knows how to be icy. I think about how long it took for me not to feel weird talking about it with him, about the three years of friendship before I finally managed to expose myself in a video call at 3 am overcoming the bodyshame cultivated since adolescence. It is too easy for him to just ignore everything and focus on what he thinks is more interesting, or important. Why is it not so easy for me?

And again, here I am, in the silence. No manly voices to stimulate me, no fantasies that leave this huge trail of "failure" when they are over; stuck in this loop of longing for what is out of my reach, literally and figuratively speaking, and ending it in the frightening loneliness when I am no longer considered a "priority".

I put into my mind again that hopeful mantra that: one day, someone will want me like this. One day, someone will come along who will make me comfortable and be interested enough so that I don't feel like a huge nothing, disposable; who won't walk away leaving me with the uncertainty of their return or the fear of their sudden rejection.

What scares me most is having a strange awareness that this may take a long time to happen, or may never happen at all. Here I am, walking on a tightrope between hope and void.

[rigelmejo]

January Goals Update and Notes

Chapters I studied with Listening-Reading Method: Notes lol:

i do not control wtf motivates me. perhaps it literally just is i have to get really attached to a book.

anyway, february is here. i am thinking i may just start listen-reading to Guardian this month. I know I’ve been debating whether to finish Tian Ya Ke first before I started guardian, or do both at the same time. I am leaning toward starting Guardian, sooner rather than later. Even though it’s still me ‘not finishing one thing before starting the next.’

In the end, any studying is better than no studying. And I haven’t been motivated to read chinese lately. However, I have been motivated to read english - and listening-reading will be 1/3 english reading which may help push me to keep progressing. And the 1/3 chinese reading portion is more passive, since I follow along with the audio, so I can have a break from the dictionary for a while. Also... why did I initially start learning Chinese? To read Guardian. To read it in chinese, and english translation. If I’m thinking about my most prioritized goals, this task is more directly in line with what I want to accomplish than finishing reading Tian Ya Ke. Although, both ARE related. 

Also, I think anything I learn from listening-reading to Guardian, will improve my reading/listening skills when moving onto any other priest novel. So it won’t be a detriment, it will only make going back to Tian Ya Ke easier afterward - since I will know more words, and recognize them in listening better (and ideally, pick up some words visually in reading better). So I think... if I do get motivated to start listening-reading to Guardian this month, then I’m just going to start doing it.

A note about Tian Ya Ke and difficulty: I am still noticing improvement. I am getting to the point where 1 page has a handful of unknown words at most, usually only 1-3 getting in the way of me easily following the plot. I am noticing I’m getting better at guessing what an unknown word is supposed to mean, guessing what the idioms that seem vaguely familiar mean (and remembering at least some of the words in them). Reading Tian Ya Ke has gotten much closer to reading Han She in terms of ease. I think I’m running into a similar number of unknown words now. I haven’t measured yet if the chapters are taking me under 30 minutes to read yet. Mainly because lately I can’t get myself to read more than 5-10 pages in short bursts at a time. So I’m not sure if reading speed has improved. But I can say that my reading recognition for Tian Ya Ke is currently better than my listening comprehension. I’ve been scanning the pages I read lately pretty fast as I read, guessing most words fine, and then just double checking their pronunciation/definition by clicking them for audio afterwards. Its currently the checking for precise sound/meaning that’s slowing down my reading of Tian Ya Ke. If I were reading it extensively, only looking up words for crucial meaning clarification, I would probably be reading it decently faster. 

On a general goals note: I am still for some reason managing to focus easily on reading english books, which is not that usual for me (usually I can read 20-40 pages in a book, then can’t read more than 10 pages an hour or slower and eventually drop the book). So I’m going to keep taking advantage of this ability to focus while I’ve got the chance. It’s been really nice to finally start getting through more of my books. Right now about half are mental health related books (which I’ve been meaning to read for ages), and fiction (mostly historical romances as I’m trying to find an author that Clicks well with me lol). I’ve read 5 so far, with 2 non-fiction books in progress and 1 fiction in progress. That is a LOT in one month for me, each book being 200-500 pages. Lets say 350 pages average, I’ve read over 1750 pages so far this year in January. Yes, that might only be the same as 2 ‘big’ books... but in my defense, non-fiction is soooo much harder to focus on (like i said, i get about 10-20 pages read in an hour of non-fiction even now that i’m focusing -o- ), and I just have not managed to read anything considerable in a while. So... while I still have long term language goals, I’m not going to be upset if they end up getting sidelined again this month. Reading more is something I’m enjoying getting back into, and I truly have so many books to finally read... so I’m glad I’m doing it now. 

Things accomplished in January:

Chinese novel chapters read in January: 8 (I’m on Tian Ya Ke chapter 27, page 10. I’m around 33% through the novel. I read around half as many chapters this past month compared to December... and honestly like 4 of these chapters I remember reading one Saturday that I managed to focus. I just wasn’t in the mood to intensively read very much in December).

Chapters I studied with Listening-Reading Method: 2 (Wow that’s not much... both were Tian Ya Ke chapters. Doing both intensive reading AND listening-reading to a single chapter really burns me out. Again, I just wasn’t in a reading mood, so I mostly skipped l-r to speed up how long chapters took to read).

Japanese Audio listened to: 14 (I was listening through Quicksleur - which is pimsleur but with the silences cut out, there are 3 sections, 30 audio files in each section. I completed 14 audio files in section 1. I’ve been listening to Quicksleur to try and refresh the japanese I used to know. Is it working? Yeah, I’m remembering a fair bit of what I used to know. I definitely think re-reading Tae Kim’s Grammar Guide or Japanese in 30 Hours would help reaffirm the grammar I used to know - but I haven’t been motivated to read grammar books. I was listening to quicksleur while playing video games, and that worked well as a low effort way to include listening. I will probably just keep listening to quicksleur, then change my audio to japanese and see what vocab I can refresh. Then maybe in a few months, once quicksleur is completed, I may move into using Japanese Audio Lessons and my actual grammar books. At the moment, realistically, I have 0 time for my grammar books. And I want to focus on audio primarily anyway for now - I do NOT want my kanji/spelling knowledge of japanese to affect my chinese reading skills right now. And I know, having tried, that for me they definitely do affect each other - I’ll see kanji and the pinyin pronunciation will jump in my head, or I’ll know a word in japanese and see it in a chinese novel and have to remind myself its a new word there. This mix up happened a lot when I first started studying Chinese - as I’d just come off of studying Japanese for 2.5 years. Which was very weird, it made learning chinese words harder, but the more chinese i learned the easier manga got to Read for a while. Anyway now that I’m refreshing my japanese, even Without seeing kanji on purpose - when I see them in my chinese reading i’m re-remembering the japanese pronunciation and word that hanzi also goes to. Which is already a bit awkward. So I don’t really want to add kanji included study on purpose for a while. I’ll just keep trying this audio focus for now... with the added benefit its easy to include, and doesn’t have to compete for my energy level I have to make myself read. I am well aware I’ll need to go to my long term, more well rounded, japanese study plan later on. But for now this is fine).

Chinese Spoonfed Audio: 0 

Manhua chapters read: 0

Chinese shows watched: 1 (Watched anti fraud league ep 1 in chinese, and again I think some small videos and partial eps of other shows. I haven’t watched many shows period this past month though, so I’m not surprised this is low. 

Personal goals met:

Personal books read: 5 (3 non-fiction , 2 fiction novels, 2 non-fiction in progress, 1 fiction in progress. This is really where my energy has been happy to focus on this past January. The non-fiction I’m particularly happy with as its a lot of mental health books I’ve been meaning to read for ages, and some of them I really think have helped me to cope with my panic attacks better. Lately my panic attacks have been less overwhelming, to a degree I think because my inner thoughts during them are having an easier time getting back to self-soothing patterns so I can calm down, and I’m more willing to openly express I’m feeling so bad which I think is helping me process the emotions faster, which helps them end sooner. I read a few as mentioned, although I literally cannot recommend complex ptsd by pete walker if the subject material is relevant to you. That book definitely helped the most, and the books he recommended within it are what I’m reading through now. The book was compassionate, informative, very supportive and encouraging of the recovery journey and its steps, and had a ton of very helpful exercises that can be put to practical use).  

Continued to get my stomach to not hurt, also got it to work better without medicine. Avoiding very processed carbs - mainly white breads like biscuits, pizza, pie crust, cinamon rolls that come in those cans - has kept my bloating down and the pain down. Eating apples again every day with coffee/tea is helping, both with not needing my medicine, and with foods not hurting me/not bloating me so much. So I guess I have to keep eating apples every single day -o-. I ate pizza several times this past month (with my lactose medicine) and I only bloated a little, it did not hurt, which was GREAT. Eating biscuits from a can still hurt though - happily the bloating only happened a little, but the pain sucks, and definitely is caused by those kinds of carbs specifically. Other then minimizing dairy and that specific carb type, my stomach’s been tolerating other carbs pretty well. I’ve kept my daily bloating low even with some foods that ‘could hurt’ per day, to 1-2 lbs. Which is great. The worst I’ve bloated this month was by 4 lbs (biscuits), which hurt a bit but thankfully subsided after a day, and that is a big improvement over the 7-10 lb bloating I’d get in a single day from one ‘less tolerated’ food choice. I’m very happy I haven’t had to take my medicine daily, hopefully I’m on the way to getting my stomach as happy as it was this summer. 

Goals for February: 

Listen-Read Method Guardian, until I’ve gotten through the entire novel. I will probably start this in February, not sure yet if it will be postponed. This, and goal 2, are the main priorities for chinese and I don’t mind which one happens as long as I do some of either of these goals.

Continue reading Tian Ya Ke. Work on reading through my first complete novel in chinese. This goal has not changed, though I predict it may be postponed as I’m not sure how much time I will dedicate to it in February.

Optional. Audios. Keep listening to Japanese Quicksleur when there’s down time (like playing games), and Chinese Spoonfed audio if I feel like it. 

Personal. Keep reading while I’ve got the motivation to. I am really enjoying getting through all these books I’ve wanted to read for so long. 

So same chinese goals as last month - and I imagine these goals will remain the same into the spring and possibly as summer starts. For japanese, just continuing to progress to refresh my memory is all I am planning at the moment. 

And a note to myself: it is shocking how motivating making a little line item in my notes saying “Personal books read:” managed to be. I added that to my to-do list in the middle of January, and since then have read a TON. So just as it motivates me to read chinese chapters, it looks like that particular motivator can work for more things.

[erekiosuncreativeideas]

Reliving An Old Nightmare - Chapter 24

<= Chapter 23

Summary : Things don't go as planned. Also available on AO3 : https://archiveofourown.org/works/22337299/chapters/59020252

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New chapter, yay ! [WARNING: the third and last drawing is gory]

THIS CHAPTER HAS AN AUDIO FILE ! I commissioned Puyo-Proto again, and he did an AMAZING JOB ! Please check his Twitter, he's so talented !! (Here : https://twitter.com/Puyo_Proto) Thank you so much for voicing a part of this dialogue !

YOU CAN LISTEN TO IT HERE !

I hope you'll like this chapter :) Happy reading !

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Chapter 24

-“Oh, it’s so good to be back!” The voice coming from their enemy brought back Snatcher to reality: this was it. The moment he had been waiting for so long. The evil spirit was almost out of the breach as Vanessa launched another one of her ice attacks in his direction. The stranger avoided it by very little and managed to enter the rift, cackling threateningly as he did so.

Something felt very wrong about the way this guy laughed, thought Snatcher couldn’t put his finger on it. And it certainly wasn’t the time for this kind of thoughts.

Vanessa didn’t wait long to throw another attack, defiantly adopting an aggressive attitude against their common enemy, who kept dodging all of her attempts at hurting him. The stranger floated around, avoiding each ice pillar coming out of the floor with grace, all while laughing maniacally at the trio.

This Moonjumper guy was mocking them and certainly didn’t see them as a serious threat to his existence. Normally, this would enrage the shade more than enough, but in this particular scenario… This was extremely dangerous, because it meant their opponent was much more powerful than them. Plus, the latter had a Time Piece in his possession, which would definitely play a part in their fight.

What would happen if this guy used it to his advantage? The kid probably knew the answer, but the time wasn’t appropriate for questions. Now was the time to fight.

The other snickered, while Vanessa’s frustration intensified. She always missed her attacks and the ghost could see her powers corrupting her body more and more. Her attacks were becoming messier, meddled and less coordinated. If she continued like that, not only was she going to get consumed again by her powers, but she would most likely wear herself out. Considering the fact that she was the only one able to pit herself against this Moonjumper, this was not a good thing. The Queen needed to snap out of it and to stop letting herself be taunted by this guy. This was exactly what this spirit was trying to do!

Apparently, the kid on his side came to the same conclusion as him, though she reacted in a completely different way than Snatcher would. Without his powers, the ghost felt useless and quite literally harmless against an enemy able to resist Vanessa’s attacks. Trying to hurt this monster would likely result in him being thrown away or, in the worst-case scenario, getting killed. Thus, charging this opponent in that meat sack of a body was not something strategic, at least not if he wanted to attack the other physically. He didn’t even have a weapon!

But, of course, the hatted brat didn’t think. No, she just rushed into things without thinking about all the possible outcomes!

The little girl exchanged her dweller mask for her alchemist hat and then started to run to the crate she had broken earlier, grabbing one of the damaged planks on the ground. She took a good hold of it as she charged this Moonjumper while the latter was still busy dealing with Vanessa.

Fuelled by a feeling of panic, the ghost extended his hand towards the child, letting a “no!” out of his lips. But the moment his voice came out of his mouth, he deeply regretted it: their enemy hadn’t actually seen the kid approaching him but, now that Snatcher had voiced his worry aloud, the other spirit looked in the child’s direction and spotted her attempts at hurting him.

The shade wished he could have kept his mouth shut. Vanessa abruptly realizing how close the kid was to their enemy and was stopped in her tracks, as she was about to throw another attack. She had already risked hurting the hatted child before and surely didn’t want to do it again, but this had been a mistake too.

It simply gave the other a chance to attack as well.

A sickening smile appeared on their opponent’s strange face, as his crazed stare was fixed on the little girl, who had lifted her weapon above her head to hit him. Red strings suddenly appeared from the tips of the other spirit’s fingers and launched themselves in the kid’s direction. They moved in the air quickly, almost too quickly for Snatcher’s stare to follow them. However, before the child was able to dodge or defend herself, the red strings tied themselves around her small body, immediately immobilizing her and bringing her attack to an abrupt stop. The plank she was holding fell back on the ground.

-“Well, well, well, what do we have here?” cooed the evil spirit with a dark smile.

Vanessa frowned at his tone and tried to attack him once again before stopping herself almost instantly when this Moonjumper pulled the child just in front of him, where the spikes would have hurt him if the Queen hadn’t hold herself back. The child let out a shriek and closed her eyes as the ice pillars almost hit her. She was unable to do anything else, much too tied up to move. Fear had suddenly replaced her determination as she was now completely harmless and powerless.

This guy was using the brat as a hostage. The thought made the shade absolutely livid. No one could dare to hurt that hatted brat, he was the only one. The ghost felt heat radiating from his body as he gave the other spirit a death glare.

-“You let go of her right now,” he started with a dark and threatening tone, “and maybe I’ll consider giving you a merciful death.”

The threat only made the other giggle cruelly. He pulled on the red strings with one hand, making them squeeze the brat tighter, as if he was taunting him. His victim winced from the sudden pain, not without struggling. But no matter how hard she was trying to get free, the strings only seemed to squeeze her more.

-“Is that so?” bragged Moonjumper: “And how are you going to attack me? You may look like your old form, though you are just as harmless to me than a regular and common human.”

He used his free hand to tie more strings around the hatted brat, this time around her neck. Terror appeared on the kid’s face as breathing was getting difficult for her.

Apart from Vanessa, the shade had never wanted to kill someone so badly. However, seeing how much in danger the kid was, he remained motionless and silent as their opponent started talking again, turning towards Vanessa:

-“As for you… I would not try to do anything if I were in your shoes,” he paused and continued, much more serious: “Unless you want another child to die because of you.”

The remark made the woman grow pale instantly and she lowered her black hands back to her hips, unable to do anything else. The ghost saw her glancing in his direction, probably wondering if she should try to attack the other and ignore the latter’s threat, but Snatcher glared at her in response. They would not take a risk like this one. Hurting the kid was not part of his plan of the day.

-“Good, good,” cooed this Moonjumper, sarcastically, sending more red strings in Vanessa’s direction. The strings tied her up before she was able to dodge them, keeping her in place: “Now, kneel,” ordered the evil spirit.

The woman hesitated, glaring at him fiercely. However, when the latter started to pull on the red strings on the little girl’s neck, Snatcher’s voice echoed in the room:

-“Do as he says!”

There was too much despair in his intonation for his taste but he couldn’t care less at the moment. The kid’s life was in danger and if Vanessa had to kneel to save her, then he would scream at her to do so. The Queen glanced at him and eventually complied, while the shade let out a sigh of relief when their enemy gave the child more slack.

Why would anyone want to murder them anyway? This made no sense! They didn’t know that guy!

-“Why are you doing this?” interrogated Snatcher, trying his best to sound calm, even if he definitely wasn’t.

The question seemed to take the other spirit aback as he simply stared at Snatcher in bewilderment for a few seconds. Why? This was a perfectly legitimate question! Who in their right mind would not ask that if they were in this particular situation?

Their enemy tilted his head in pure confusion and then a smile appeared on his lips. Slowly, his expression started to change, going from surprise to hilarity, and he then started to laugh. If his hands weren’t busy to keep the child in place, the other would have certainly clenched his sides from how much he was laughing.

This laugh, why did this laugh bother Snatcher so much?

It was now his turn to be confused and the trio couldn’t help but watch the scene before them, completely powerless. The child was glancing between the monster holding her as a hostage and her two adult companions, not knowing what to do or what to think at all.

The other spirit’s laugh ended darkly as he stared back at Snatcher, eyes full of hatred:

-“Oh, of course, you wouldn’t recognize me, how silly of me,” he growled as he squeezed the strings around the child even more, making her whine and close her eyes from the pain. The ghost was so going to murder this guy, slowly, making him suffer as long as possible.

However, the words took Snatcher aback: what did the other mean? Snatcher had never met another spirit like this so-called Moonjumper before! His frustration intensified, though he managed to keep his mouth shut, not forgetting that his interlocutor could very well snap the child’s neck if he wanted to.

-“Well, it is not really surprising, I suppose,” continued the monster, his cruel smile widening: “Using the Time Piece had some…Special effects on my vessel. It seems now that I am both dead and alive at the same time,” he explained, in the same tone someone would use to talk about the weather: “My appearance is quite different now because of that. A shame, truly.”

-“Listen,” protested the shade, careful not to sound too aggressive and kept going: “I have no idea who you are.” It certainly couldn’t be someone who died after one of his contracts, since he always ate their soul afterwards. Maybe an acquaintance of one of his victims? Yet, it didn’t make much sense as his interlocutor seemed to know him personally.

The ghost was not lying when he said he didn’t know this guy.

-“Oh, I know you don’t,” replied the latter cynically: “You never even knew I existed in the first place.”

-“So who are you?!” snapped the shade, unable to stay quiet anymore. He just wanted answers! He glared at his opponent as he kept talking, still watching the child carefully, hoping nothing would happen to her because of his attitude: “Why would you go through the trouble of recreating a whole version of our past just to kill us in the end? We don’t even know you!”

The evil spirit glared back at him but didn’t hurt the brat again, thankfully. Instead, he just smiled wickedly and tilted his head as he finally gave an answer to the question the trio waited for:

-“I am you.”

This was definitely not the answer Snatcher was expecting. From the look on his companions’ face, they didn’t expect that kind of answer either. Apparently, their reaction must have been pretty visible because this Moonjumper giggled and corrected himself:

-“Or, well, I used to,” he explained, then continued with a darker intonation: “Fortunately, I have nothing to do with you anymore.”

And when he said those last words, the stranger showed his left hand, as if to prove a point. For a few seconds, Snatcher didn’t know what to look at exactly, until he spotted something very special: a ring on his ring finger, a golden jewel on which could be seen a damaged ruby. Immediately, Snatcher’s heart sunk in his chest: he knew that ring. Even from afar, the shade could recognize what this ring was.

This was his old engagement ring. The one he used to have when he was alive. The one he had when he woke up in that forest. The same one he died with, so many years ago.

The shade’s eyes widened as everything started to make sense: the clothes this “Moonjumper” was wearing, his claims, the way he laughed, his corpse-looking like appearance, this ring… But this couldn’t be! Snatcher was here! And this guy was over there! If they were the same person, how could they be at two different places at the same time?

There had to be an explanation for all of this, and what this spirit had told him certainly wasn’t it.

The others must have perceived his scepticism because his smile widened as he spoke again:

-“You don’t believe me, do you? That is fine. I did not expect you to. It does not matter anymore,” he said, darkly: “Nothing matters anymore, because you are all going to die,” then, patting the little girl’s head in a very disturbingly slow manner, he added: “Well, not you, little one. I used to want you dead as well, but I changed my mind. This does not concern you in any way, after all. Furthermore…”

The evil spirit gave Vanessa a death glare as he continued :

-“If I did kill an innocent child, I wouldn’t be any better than you,” his smile returned as he turned back to the trembling victim in his hold: “Besides, if I do come back to the Horizon after this, I will have someone to keep me company!”

He chuckled at the sight of the brat’s confused and afraid expression. In the meantime, Snatcher’s anger and frustration kept growing. He didn’t understand a single word this guy was saying! The Horizon? What was that? What was he even talking about?

-“You’re crazy,” mumbled the shade, astonished. He couldn’t believe what was happening: this was the only explanation! There was no way this monster was right, it was simply and physically impossible!

The word caught the other’s attention, though in a very bad way. He frowned and threw a glance full of hatred at Snatcher:

-“Me, ‘crazy’?” he repeated, in a voice that was much too calm to be normal. The shade should have kept his mouth shut. His interlocutor kept going: “You know, this is quite ironic. You are the one who caused me so much trouble, who abandoned me… And I am the ‘crazy’ one?”

-“I have no idea what you are talking about,” insisted Snatcher, putting an emphasis on each syllable as he answered. But the other was not having it:

-“You left me in there to rot, literally! You left me, your other half, to be stuck in a hellish dimension for hundreds of years!” yelled their opponent, absolutely livid: “I spent all this time, alone, having to watch you, of all people, being this pathetic while I couldn’t even leave this place!”

Snatcher’s eyes widened as he was listening to the other, astounded. “Other half”? “To rot”? This guy couldn’t mean…

The latter guessed his thoughts and finished them for him:

-“I am the part you left behind, that night,” he explained with a low voice: “You are the coward part of us that fled because you were just too afraid to face her!” he accused, pointing at Vanessa as he kept going: “And you abandoned me in there, with her! You left me in this pathetic body while you buried your head in the sand, not even considering the possibility I existed!”

He laughed bitterly, tilting his head on his side:

-“You know, I have thought a lot about why I was stuck in this place, the Horizon as I like to call it now. And I think I know. I can’t believe it took me so long to understand why!”

He squinted, looking daggers at Snatcher:

-“I am incomplete. That’s why I can’t dwell in the mortal plane like a dweller or go to Heaven if it even exists! You are the reason I got stuck in this dimension, forced to watch people living happily while I was alone for years! I have no idea how you even exist, why I was the one to suffer because of this… But I will definitely fix what you did to me.”

He paused, smiling in a horrifying way as he revealed his plan:

-“I will not be incomplete once you just stop existing. I will not be missing any part of myself anymore. As soon as I stop maintaining the stability of the rift… You will both perish and I will finally be free.”

A cruel laugh came out of his lips as he watched in delight Snatcher and Vanessa’s reaction to his plan. This guy was absolutely mad. They had to act now!

The shade was trying to find something, anything to help the kid and get them out of a situation like this one. However, when his eyes fell on the brat’s, he noticed her expression had changed from fear to determination. With her eyes, she instructed him to look at her right hand. When the spirit’s glanced down, his ghostly face grew pale immediately.

The kid had materialized a potion in his hand and was cautiously and gently shaking it to activate it.

Instantly, Snatcher’s body became weak at what she was planning to do. She couldn’t seriously think this was a good idea! There were so many other ways involving her not hurting herself in the process of getting away from this monster!

Said monster let his laugh die slowly and started to talk again:

-“Well… I guess this is time for us to say goodbye,” he said, before turning to Vanessa, who was shaking from rage: “I really must thank you, Vanessa. Without you, I would have never been able to go this far. You were so easy to manipulate! Getting the opportunity to finally kill you is the best gift you could have ever given to me.”

He was about to add something when a strong-willed voice interrupted him:

-“Not so fast, you crazy peck neck!”

The little girl’s voice echoed in the room, forcing the other to look at her, surprised. However, when his eyes fell on the little vial in the kid’s hand, his face crumpled in distress. Everything after that happened so fast. The monster immediately released her, trying to get away from her before the potion exploded. Once she was free again, the hat-wearing child managed to throw the potion in his direction while she was sent flying to the other side of the room. Red strings had caught her arms and were taking her as far as possible, but it was too late. The vial had been thrown and the kid had managed to get away from their enemy without getting harmed!

But as Moonjumper was blinded with the explosion, he lost the control of his strings, not seeing where they were taking the brat anymore. But Snatcher was seeing what was about to happen, but he was far too slow to prevent any of it. A deafening and horrifying scream left his lips as he witnessed the little girl being impaled on one of Vanessa’s previous ice pillars.

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:)

=> Chapter 25

[grungegoths]

I dont stan any kpop artists nor have i ever listened to any kpop song ever, but to be honest, Im quite suspicious of people who justify their hatred and criticisms of kpop with “Kpop artists are heavily exploited and overworked by the hands of their labels,managements and the music industry!!1!″ when like, thats not something that is exclusive to the KPOP music industry and happens as much in the western music industry too.

Almost the WHOLE music industry IS a highly capitalistic and exploitative  and misogynistic  industry which usually signs artists when they are usually young and/or have little to no knowledge about contracts and the law system governing them and exploits   their talents into getting more and more money for the record labels and management they have signed for.

Many artists  even in the WEST are sabotaged and are prevented from releasing music or promoting their music by their labels who dont want to grant funds for either of those things , usually if the artist refuses to comply by their rules.Not only this, music artists are prevented from speaking up about their abuse because of NDAs,threats of having their careers ruined by big industry people and tabloids who have deals with such industry people to not publish,discredit or give attention to stories of people speaking up about the abuse they faced by the hands of the music industry..THIS  IS A FACT CONFIRMED BY MANY MANY ARTISTS IN THE WEST.Look it up for yourself.

Kesha was literally abused and raped by her producer for YEARS but prevented from seeking aid by her label, SONY.Harvey Weinstein sexually harassed his victims FOR YEARS and prevented them from speaking up with the help of NDAs and threats of ruining their careers.Theres audio proof of lauren jauregui from fifth harmony lamenting about how “They were being made to work like slaves but getting nothing in return”.(Look it up on twitter).Little mix recently admitted that they were told to flirt with industry members to have their songs be more promoted or played on radio stations.Ryan Ross(from panic at the disco) was fucked over by his manager .(x) .The backstreet boys were fucked over by their label.Rebecca black was fucked over by her label.And dont even get me STARTED on how MANY MANY lgbtqa artists are forced/told to appear straight and cis in front of the media and fans by their labels for various reasons.

One direction’s band members (1d was a boyband like kpop boybands too) were extremely exploited and overworked by being made to record and release albums and being on tour for FIVE YEARS CONTINUOUSLY WITH ONLY GETTING TWO TO THREE MONTH BREAKS IN BETWEEN.They singed to their labels when they were between the ages of 16-18 and 4/5 of them were STILL in school and since then, they rarely visited their families or got much time for themselves bc they were so busy.All this intense work and exploitation had bad effects on them and led to zayn malik developing huge anxiety disorder which started to give him panic attacks before performing in front of the public and made him cancel many of his gigs after he went solo.Liam payne and niall horan too have spoken up about the side effects of such intense work they had to do for 5 years. 

Many people calling out the kpop music industry mean well and might not be aware of how much shit goes down in the western music industry too.But also i feel like most people just jump on this bandwagon as an excuse to politically justify their dislike of kpop by taking about how problematic the industry is instead of just saying that they dont like KPOP.If you really care about overexploited and abused music artists and want to “change the music industry”; apply your thoughts towards the WHOLE of it, and not only the KPOP music industry bc its not those korean artists’ fault that their dreams of making it big in the music world are exploited by horrible industry people.Stop trying to guilt people into NOT liking KPOP by this excuse bc you are going to look like a hypocrite since your western fav too might have been/is being exploted by the music industry.

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball 242

You know, if you had asked me a year ago, I would have said the Majin Buu Saga was better than the Babidi Saga, mostly because the Majin Buu Saga has Buu in it, along with Super Saiyan 3 Goku, Vegeta blowing himself up, Gotenks’ first appearance, etc.  

But now I’m starting to think the Babidi Saga was the better of the two.    It set up a clear goal and the heroes completely failed to prevent Babidi from reaching it.   The Mr. Satan/18/MightyMask stuff kind of got in the way at times, but it was never boring to watch.   It made good use of eleven episodes.  

That’s not to say that the Majin Buu Saga is bad at all.    It’s really good too, just not as good as Babidi, or the Fusion Saga that follows it.   You can break it down into these segments.

232-237: Buu clobbers everyone at Babidi’s spaceship.

238-244: No one really knows what to do about Buu.

245-253: The good guys finally settle into a general path forward.

It feels a lot like driving on an interstate highway in Indiana.   Not I-65, though.    I mean a good highway, like I-64 with no traffic.    And you’ve got some good stuff to listen to on the radio.   Actually, this may not be an analogy at all, because I used to have a mix tape with the opening audio from Episode 245 on it, and I listened to it on a lot of long drives through these same roads. 

The point I’m trying to get at is that this title card could apply to any one of at least six episodes.   Goku doesn’t actually teach the boys fusion until episode 247, which continues into 248, and the boys don’t succeed until 251.    I guess “Gohan revived” is a fairly unique event for this episode, but the Kai’s been hinting at his “other method” across multiple episodes, and that concept doesn’t really pay off until Episode 250.     The Majin Buu Saga is very good, but a lot of it, especially this middle section, is like fifty miles of road surrounded by cornfields.

I will say this, Buu’s much more direct about his reign of terror.   First, he kills all the people in a city by turning them all into candy.   Now we have a completely empty town, which is very reminiscent of Imperfect Cell’s early appearances, except Cell only hit small towns, and it took him a while to kill everyone, and he had to suppress his ki so the Z-Fighters wouldn’t gang up on him and kill him.    Buu did this in a matter of seconds, in full view of the entire world.  

Then he blows up the city with a blast of super breath... that makes things explode.   Still haven’t figured out how that works.     

Babidid announces to the world that Buu will continue doing this until Piccolo, Goten, and Trunks show themselves.   He estimates that at this rate, it’ll take five days to kill everyone on the planet.    Then he’ll just have Buu blow up the Earth, so if his enemies don’t come out of hiding, they still won’t escape his wrath.   So there’s shades of Android 17 and 18 from Future Trunks’ timeline, except they spent twenty years terrorizing the world this way.  But those two needed the world to live on.    Buu doesn’t.   I’m not sure how Babidi plans to travel to the next planet over without his spaceship, but that’s his problem. 

If it were me writing this, I might have worked the angle where Babidi was stranded on Earth, so he would focus on subjugating the planet’s population and forcing them to build him a new ride out of here.   I might have a scene where some engineers are worried about getting the thing built quickly so they can get rid of these two, but then another engineer points out that they mustn’t build his ship, because once Babidi has a way off the planet, he’ll just have Buu destroy it.   So the Earth is kind of screwed either way.   

But that would take too long, and really, this is better.    Babidi isn’t a long-term strategist.    He’s apparently spent centuries on this Majin Buu project, but now that he has him, he doesn’t seem to have any particular plans on what to do with him.   All he’s thinking about now is getting revenge on Piccolo for chopping him in half, which has completely clouded his judgment.   He should be concentrating on Buu, and figuring out how to control him, since Buu is the key to what he wants, and the only thing keeping him alive, and the only thing that can stop him.    

Anyway, the point of this telepathic address to the world was to get someone to rat out Piccolo, Goten, and Trunks.    Babidi invites anyone who knows where they are to simply think at him, and he’ll pick up his psychic phone and listen.    But barely anyone knows those three at all, and even fewer know where to find them.    Hell, does Piccolo even have a permanent home?  

In desperation, one of the officials from the 25th Tenkaichi Budokai recalls seeing those three at the competition, and he looks up their names on the registration forms.    He contacts Babidi and reads them off, although Piccolo used “Majunior” as an alias, so even that turns out to be pointless.

So Babidi angrily makes the guy’s head explode, because he doesn’t care who they are, he wants to know where they are.   This is what I’d like to do to the robocaller who tells me the warranty on my car is about to expire.

Piccolo’s so upset by all of this that he resolves to show himself, just to try to get Buu to cut it out, but Goku convinces him that this would be useless.   Babidi would just be doing something like this anyway, and besides, he wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d killed Goten and Trunks to.   As it is, Goku needs all of them here, because he wants Piccolo to train them on the fusion technique after he leaves.    The irony is that Piccolo was just saying that they would have to endure mass genocide while they trained the boys, and Goku already has to remind him.

That’s the big thematic difference with the Buu arc.   With Frieza, nearly all of the Namekians were wiped out before the heroes got there, and while they had to keep a low profile, they could at least do something by securing Dragon Balls and hiding them.   With Cell, this is a lot like the period where the Saiyans were using the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, and Cell and the androids were basically running loose on the Earth, but Piccolo was still actively searching for them.   Here, there is literally nothing they can do about Buu’s rampage while they prepare their counter attack.  

Meanwhile, the Supreme Kai has brought Gohan to his world, the Sacred World of the Kais, or the Supreme Kai Planet, or whatever else you want to call it.   Kibito finds this unthinkable, since not even lesser Kais or Kami are permitted to come here.   I’m not sure why Kibito is so bent out of shape over this.    It’s like he really wanted to invite the Grand Kai over some time for beer and pretzels, and he knew it was against the rules, so he’s pissed that he respected that for so long just to have a mortal show up.   

As for Gohan, he assumes he must be dead, but the Supreme Kai explains that he’s still alive, and that he brought him here to retrieve the Z-Sword.   This makes Kibito even more apoplectic, because even the Kais can’t use the Z-Sword, so how could any mortal being do anything with it?    The Supreme Kai takes a lot of lip from this dude.   Then again, he seem to recognize that his orders must be very nonsensical to someone who doesn’t know what Gohan can do.     And Gohan’s confused himself, because he doesn’t know what the Z-Sword is.

Meanwhile, Trunks and Goten wake up in Kami’s Lookout.   They don’t know where they are, so they start checking out the place, then discover a table with a huge dinner just laid out for them.    Is that yellow blob an omelet?   That’d really hit the spot.  

Then Mr. Popo shows up and hassles them, and Trunks panics because he thinks he’s in trouble for stealing food.    Okay, so why is all of this here in the first place?   The only explanation that makes sense is that Popo set it up for the boys when they woke up, but he seems genuinely surprised and a little miffed that they made there way here and started eating.  

Then Popo tries to stop them from running, and they fight him as Super Saiyans, and Mr. Popo blocks all their hits.   I’m really looking forward to seeing how Team Four Star handles this scene with their version of Mr. Popo.

Anyway, Goku finally catches up to them, and we’re finally ready to start teaching them how to fuse.

Back on the Supreme Kai Planet, Kibito uses Clothes Beam on Gohan to make him a suit more in keeping with the dress code.   “If I gotta wear a tablecloth around my waist all day, then so do you.”    Personally, I hate this look for Gohan, but his Great Saiyaman suit was pretty much shredded, so I can’t complain too much.   

They fly over to this tall butte surrounded by a lake, and that’s where the Z-sword is kept.

The sword is embedded in the rock, and no one has ever been able to pull it out.   No Kais, I should say, because lesser beings aren’t even allowed on this planet.   The Supreme Kai figures that since Gohan is far stronger than any Supreme Kai, he ought to have a better chance.

Of course, this all resembles the Excalibur legend, and Gohan himself points this out, because he’s a huge nerd.   Of course, with Excalibur, the whole point was that you had to be a specific person to be able to draw the sword out of the stone.   It was a matter of fate more than brute strength, but this is Dragon Ball F’N Z.   The Supreme Kai figures that if the sword won’t come out, that means we just need a stronger guy to pull on it harder.    Either that, or he thinks Gohan can just blow up the whole butte and get it out that way.

Back at the Lookout, Goku tells the boys about Gohan and Vegeta’s deaths.    Well, Gohan’s alive, but they don’t know that.   The boys take it hard, but Goku tells them to stop crying, because it’s up to them to stop Buu, and they don’t have much time.   

bUt gOkU iS tOo SoFt oN hIs kiDs tO tRaIn tHem  

This is how you can tell those “Piccolo is a better dad” nutbars are full of it.    They only watched the early Z stuff, and they ignored the part where Goku trained Gohan for an entire year and made him vastly more powerful than Piccolo ever did.   And now he’s literally repeating story beats from when Piccolo first met Gohan.   Remember?    First he told him that his father died, and then he told him that he’d have to train to save the world.   That’s what Goku is telling Trunks right now.

Piccolo brings up the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, since that seems like a good way to solve their time crunch, but Goku declines.   You can only use it for two days out of your whole life, and he figures that Goten and Trunks may need it for some other battle later in life. 

More to the point, I’m not sure Goku would have more time on Earth this way.    I guess it depends on how Baba reckons his 24 hours.    The key thing here is how long the boys get personal instruction from Goku, since he’s the only one who knows the technique.   

And that’s the course we’re on.    While Goku prepares Goten and Trunks to use Fusion, the Supreme Kai prepares Gohan to use the Z-Sword.    So it looks like there’s two separate paths to beating Buu.    I suppose this sort of thing happens in DBZ a lot, but usually one of the multiple paths is Vegeta, who sort of makes the whole thing into a competition.   It’s weird that one (or both) of these groups might have to step aside for the other, and they’d have absolutely no problem with that.  

[moonicekitten06]

Day 17: Share a Memory YOI Related

So this is a little personal, but when YOI came into my life I was going through a rough patch, kind of still am 2018 has been a crazy year, but I was at a convention last year and was totally having a panic attack because I was in a knee walker and there were so many people and I just got really overwhelmed. One seller had anime goods and that had a Makka purse and it made me thrilled because in a dark moment YOI was really there as a shining light.

The second memory is....up until like a couple of months ago, I’ve *never* shared my art public, *never*. But then I took it upon myself to give myself this Screenshot Challenge where I would choose a screenshot from YOI and try and have it colored in the same day...it doesn’t always happen, but I try really hard to post a new pic daily. It’s really hard for me to share my work, but it’s getting easier every day.

My very first art ever posted!

My last bit is about the amazing people I’ve met in this fandom, the people who really touch my life and bring sunshine into it when skies are grey. @yukipri makes the most beautiful fandom art I’ve ever seen! Her AUs are so creative and her world building skills are phenomenal! Her Future Verse gives me life! I got into A/B/O because of it! Not to mention my love of her Russian Sandwich. And um... *cough* *cough* her Star Wars AU... Check it out! Check it all out! Her updates always make me really happy! Not to mention her OC children who are adorable and I just want to adopt them all! @joeys-piano makes the most phenomenal audios I’ve ever listened to. I can literally listen to his interpretations on loops while I’m making art and writing because they, and his talent, are so inspiring. He’s so talent d, please listen to his audios! @crimson-chains her Siren AU and Mafia AU slay me! The talent she has with coming with these AUs and creating such story driven manga pages is just mind blowing. And her original is fantastic! Sine I’m so into to YOI I don’t look at too much art outside it, but man, her work blows me away I wish I had her skills! Check her out! @lucycamui Her Siren AU just has me blown away and I love re-reading it and can’t wait for its release! The way she writes her scenes, builds characters, and builds suspense is incredible! It becomes pageturning and I need it in my life. Check her out! @lusciouswhiteflame I can’t say enough about their Yuri Plisetsky art! I love him, but I love seeing him happy and in their work he’s happy and in love with their OC Alex, who is hot...in fact all their work is steamy and playful, I love it! Please support them! I bought my very first zines from @lusciouswhiteflame and haven’t been happier! @phaytesworld her writing is some of the steamiest I’ve read and her slow burns slay me! Okay, just flat out kill me, I live for her updates! Her rare pairs make me so happy and her confidence in posting her works inspires me immensely. I’ve not posted my writing yet because it’s not of caliber, but she inspires me. @geekmom13 one of my first followers and someone who makes me happy! I don’t have many followers, hopefully one day, but I appreciate anyone who takes them time to view my work. It means a lot to me. And her Harry Potter and catposts gove me life!

I can’t list every person who’s made me happy with their posts, art, and stories! These are just the ones I know off the top of my head! This fandom has given me sunshine in such a cloudy year, I wouldn’t be where I am today without the amazing influences of these and so many others. I can’t thank everyone enough!

So...this was more than a little personal, but these are my happy memories. Please enjoy!

Thank you so much for stopping by! Please feel free to reblog with much love but please don’t repost without permission.

Good night all!

~ C. Kitten

[mytearsrricochet]

ok so....inspired by the events that took place tonight (or were rather “exposed” tonight, if you will) I feel this is a good opportunity to share my own story about a similar situation. it’s been awhile since this happened and I don’t tell almost anyone about this. but I feel like talking through it step by step will help me cope. the realization about this thing happening was about 6 or so months ago I think....and I haven’t let myself think about it or really do anything with it because I've been terrified of confronting my feelings. I just wanted to put it behind me and forget about it, but we all know that’s not healthy.

so this doesn’t really relate to anything in this fandom, and it may seem too personal for me to post, but ya know whatever this is my blog and one means of posting about something that happened to me without judgment from people who already know me in the real world (besides just the internet). I'm putting it under a cut because I don’t want to bother people with this long ass story lol.

trigger warnings for abuse, self harm, suicide attempts, all that jazz

so when I was about 12 and a half or so, I embarrassingly took place in a thing that was popular back then (circa 2011/12) which was facebook roleplaying. basically what you did was create a new facebook account for a character you wanted to play, which could either be a character that was canonical or one you made up, but you were usually in a fandom. I roleplayed a character from the hunger games as I was very into the fandom at the time, but I was also very into glee then as well. that meant I was active in both fandoms equally, roleplaying with thg and glee people. it was a way to pass the time and I met a lot of cool people on there.

I became friends with a girl who was roleplaying a glee character very quickly. her real name was Emilee and I facetimed with her a lot and had her on my real facebook. she was really great and she was actually a few months younger than me. no qualms about her in this story. she role-play “dated” a male character from glee, Finn. the guy behind Finn was clearly foreign as he spoke English but pretty choppy. since I was friends with Emilee in real life (not just on facebook), I became friends with the Finn character too. the person behind the facebook account was named James. he was really nice and cool, and I didn’t really go further with him in our friendship in terms of social media. eventually though, Emilee deleted her role-play account very suddenly and blocked me on all social media. I had no idea why until Finn/James told me he would rather role-play date me. please keep in mind I was like 12/13 so this is more dramatic then than it is for me now at 19. I thought it was stupid for Emilee to ghost me like that as I liked finn/James as a friend, but Emilee was a really good friend to me and I was pissed that he would tell her that knowing it would jeopardize our friendship. again, 12 years old. this was a big deal back then.

I ended up getting over Emilee ghosting me pretty quickly, and after talking to finn/James (as my character, not about real-life issues, strictly still role-play) I decided sure why not. Emilee (her character was Rachel) was no longer around and I liked to role-play dating scenarios since I had never had a relationship in real life and I liked to act them out online.

my character (Madge) began dating James’s character Finn. they got engaged, married, whatever. by this point in the role-play timeline though, I had actually grown to know James more personally, and half our conversations were about our own lives. we became actual friends. he was really nice, and eventually, I formed a crush on him. I had never met him, facetimed, Skyped, or anything with him, I just really liked his personality. he was nice and funny and always cared about what I wanted to talk about. naturally I formed a desire to talk to him more, which I probably wrongly perceived as a crush. I just liked attention, and at that age, I was going through a hard time in my life with an abusive person that my father was dating, and I was honestly just trying to find comfort anywhere. James provided it for me.

I was getting bored with roleplaying and was getting anxiety about having a crush on someone I didnt know, so I confronted him about it. he told me he cared for me honestly, not just in the roleplaying world. that was about it at that point. I didnt know what that meant which caused more anxiety. eventually he told me he had a crush on me too, based off of the things we had talked about before, and he wanted to get to know me better. I had just celebrated my 13th birthday around this time. I vividly remember going to church with one of my friends and seeing a long paragraph he messaged me about himself. he was 17, his name was James Levine, and he was from France. I realized at that point I was too scared to tell him my age because it might scare him off, so I let him know I wasn't comfortable with sharing my age, but I shared a lot of other personal stuff like my name and whatever. he understood.

about 2 years goes by, and we are still talking and “dating”. the thing is, he has never shown me a picture of himself, we haven’t talked on the phone, we don’t FaceTime, nothing. I had requested it before, but he always blew me off. I had a really bad feeling in my stomach about it, and I think I always knew what was going on, but he was my outlet during a time where I had either bad friends or no friends, my dad was in and out of rehab, I was living with my emotionally abusive grandmother, and I had no one to rely on. I ignored what I knew in my heart because I just needed someone to talk to. it’s my biggest regret to this day.

anyway, when I was 15, I tell him how old I am. if you do the math, he is 19 by now. he’s kind of upset about the age difference, but he kind of forgets about it, I guess. nothing happened from it. I send him a selfie of me, and it’s the first time he’s ever seen me. the next morning, he sends me a selfie of him. he’s cute. we go about our lives.

he sent me recordings of songs he covered, and sometimes when I was really upset, I listened to them before I went to sleep because his voice soothed me. things seemed pretty normal, but I still had that gut feeling, and I ignored it.

one day I opened my laptop to reverse image search something for a friend, and something hit me...I could reverse image search the pictures he’d been sending me of himself. I started crying before I even clicked the search button because I knew what I was about to see. I was right. he used the picture of some 15 year old model from Portugal. before I even confronted him, I (somehow) sleuthed really well and found the model’s social media and sent him a message on all of it to let him know someone was using his pictures to catfish him. I'm not sure what he could've done about it, but I guess it gave me some satisfaction. he responded “ok”. 

finally I confronted James about it, and his first response was to tell me he wanted to delete his account and never speak to me again. he told me this was for my own good, since there was no way I could ever continue to love him after that. and for some reason...since I honestly had no one at the time...I told him to let me think bout it for a few days. I did, and I returned as if nothing happened. he still neglected to send me a picture after that, and I was pissed.

this was around the time of my first suicide attempt. with everything going on in my life, I couldn’t handle it. he was very scared, understandably, and I tried again a few weeks after the first. for this time, though, instead of being met with sympathy, he told me I was selfish and all i thought about was myself. 

around this time, he also started talking about how sick he was. I always knew he had a heart problem (he told me the specific name but I can’t remember now). he was afraid it was getting worse. whenever I had panic attacks, he would pretend his heart was acting up and leave.

now, I’ve been diagnosed with PTSD since around this time. I had started going to therapy after my second attempt, where I was diagnosed with a multitude of illnesses. one of them was PTSD and one of the triggers, though it has since been handled via therapy, was alcohol. he knew this, and one of the things he always told me was that he hated alcohol and could never drink it. this was good for my situation, as we did one day plan to meet up and get married (yeah, you don’t have to lecture me about that, I know, just keep reading). but one night, he got shitface drunk and told me all about how he had a huge crush on this girl that worked for his dad, and he really wanted to leave me because my depression and PTSD were too much for him, and he couldn’t handle me anymore. in fact, he kissed one of his best friends that night, a girl who he had been friends with for awhile and she always made me really jealous because he would talk about her so often. this sent me into a deep depression that literally took me forever to get out of. I was so hurt for many many reasons.

the next day, he asked me, as if it was no big deal, “so uh I know I told you about the girl Payton, can I leave now? I wanna go ask her out”

I just wanted to include that to note his lack of empathy. typing that made me mad all over, though it was FAR from the worst thing he did.

I didn’t talk to him for about a week, until he came back and said it was just a fascination with the girl and not a crush, and he really loved me. I foolishly said ok. 

one day, I was sitting on my computer, and out of nowhere, I got this horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach, as if I was going to vomit, and I spent 3 hours surfing youtube to see if the audio clips he sent me of song covers were even his. I have NO idea how I did it, but lo and behold, I found the channel of a guy with those song covers. I remember clicking on a video and hearing the first notes and vomiting all over my lap. I was so upset.

let’s just say I didn’t learn. I forgave him.

he finally sent me pictures of his face, and I was satisfied with that. he sent me voice recordings of him saying my name. I let everything else go, because he did what I asked him to do. still no Skype or phone call.

fast forward a bit, and when I was 17, our relationship was really waning. we wouldn’t talk to each other for days, and when we did, it was nothing of substance. on Black Friday, I went shopping with my friends, and I found the hair dye I'd been wanting to dye my hair for awhile, this metallic blue. I sent him a picture of the bottle and was clearly excited that I had found it. he sent back, “you’d look so ugly in that, I wouldn’t date you if you dyed your hair that color”

contrary to popular belief, I did not suck it up as I did all those years before. I said “ok, guess you don’t have a girlfriend anymore”. that night I went home and dyed my hair an electric blue, and that was a mistake as I didn’t mix the color correctly, but damn if I may say I felt really confident with that bright blue hair after that.

we talked a little bit after that, and he backtracked and said he liked the blue in order to get me back. the night before our 4th anniversary, he broke up with me. and I said “ok. I'm done”. I blocked him on facebook and went on my damn merry way. I was pissed because I never found out what I wanted to know, about who he really was, but I was so done with the years of emotional abuse and neglect from him, all the lies and the insults and the long nights with no sleep and missing school because he would ask me to so he could still talk to me. what a wanker. however, right before I left the account, he told me he thought he might have cancer. I said ok cool and continued on.

fast forward a year, I reactivate the account because I am bored and I wonder if he still has the account. he does. I send a message “hi”. this turns into a few days of talking. I was in college at this point, definitely healed from the wounds he created, though I'm still very insecure about the things he pointed out. finally, I asked him, “can I know the truth?” it took him an hour to reply, and he said “tomorrow. I will tell you everything”

now, that weekend, my roommate’s friend was in town, and I wasn’t sure how that was going to be handled as she was staying in our dorm and I knew if what he would tell me was bad, I'd probably not leave my bed for days.

the day comes, and the first thing he does Is send a voice recording.

typing this part out still hurts, as I never let myself cope with what he told me. the rest of the story is old news and something I honestly don’t care about anymore, but this part just happened 6-7 months ago, and I still can hardly breathe when I think about it.

James was actually...Daniela. she was a 20 year old girl from Mexico who liked to role-play on Facebook as men. she never told anyone about it, and for some reason, instead of just telling me the truth when we decided to talk outside of our role-play characters, she lied to me. she made up WILDLY elaborate stories. I knew I couldn’t trust this person the whole time I was “dating” them, but this was another level. if you’re doing the math correctly, she also lied about her age by a few years, and our age difference was one of the many things that gave me anxiety throughout our “relationship”. 

I literally didn’t get out of bed for 11 hours. my roommate didn’t know what to do with her friend, but eventually I got up. I ended up with my fourth suicide attempt (the third was not mentioned in this story as it was not relevant to Finn/James/Dani). she Brought up the fact that she had told me (as James) that she thought she had cancer and it was very true. she still thought she did.

the next day, she acted as if everything was back to normal. as in, when we were dating. calling me baby, saying I love you. I was so pissed. but for some reason, she sweet-talked me into feeling like this was normal, and for a few days, I even went along with it. until one day, I snapped, and blocked her on everything (at this point I had gotten her snapchat too). I wanted nothing to do with her.

I unblocked her on facebook a day later for some reason, and she sent me 40 messages about how I betrayed her. my last message was “fuck off. I hope you die”.

brutal, but that was the last correspondence I have with her. and I fucking mean it. I hope nothing bad bad things happen to her. I'm still heartbroken over it, though not surprised. 

catfishing is very real, and while I knew what was happening th whole time, that doesn’t mean what happened was ok. I'm WAY better now, but the experience left me with trust issues, severe insecurities, a fear of talking about my mental illnesses because I assume I'll be judged, and a fear of getting close to people.

so yeah. there’s that. sorry about posting, but honestly, this was so therapeutic.

[macromicrocosm]

Novel Review: Automatic Reload by Ferrett Steinmetz

Hei Hei and Welcome to MacroMicroCosm Literary Review…

Novel: Automatic Reload Author: Ferrett Steinmetz Publisher: TOR Books (2020) Rating: 4/5 Stars

Today we are diving cautious as a paranoid quadruple amputee cyborg into the cyberpunk romantic kill zone known as Ferrett Steinmetz’s Automatic Reload published in 2020 by Tor Books. Strap into something, prepare your payloads and it’s time to dive in.

I borrowed Automatic Reload’s audiobook from my municipal library’s Libby app, and will be critiquing the audiobook narration by Tim Campbell via Macmillan Audio with Steinmetz’ prose. Tim Campbell’s narration hit my auditory nerves with the same grit as a Private Eye in my spouse’s beloved old radio shows. Instantaneously, I was brought back to The Shadow, and Red Panda Adventures. Mat’s internal narration was made vivid with Campbell’s grit. All goes as expected for a guttural masculine-led audiobook… until Campbell narrates female characters. The grit and gruff voice of our narrator and protagonist Mat (whose name I missed completely for the first few hours of audio storytelling), shifted to a nasal ‘quasi-feminine whine’ each a tad different for the few feminine characters in the novel. While off-putting to hear limp feminine audio, it didn’t stop me from listening to the entire audiobook. I wish Macmillan Audio hired two voice actors, that Sylvia and Trish especially were voiced by a woman. I don’t envy Campbell’s options with Sylvia’s voice, especially in the beginning, Sylvia is a panic-attacked whimpering victim and Mat the rough but conscience-bound redeemer. Maybe it’s a pet peeve of mine, when listening to audiobook narration with too ‘breathy’ a character voice, or too much differentiation between a narrator’s timbre and the various dialogue, but it threw me out of Automatic Reload’s prose a few times and elicited many a rant among our MacroMicroCosm discord server on the nature of respecting female characters by allowing them a more natural voice, and not a whining nasal whimper. It’s unfortunate, because Tim Campbell had the perfect voice for Mat’s rough narration. All in, this was the only issue with the audiobook version of Automatic Reload.

On to Steinmetz’s prose. While entertaining, and a fun way of portraying neuro-divergent characters, Automatic Reload is not making it into my top cyberpunk novels. As it was billed to be a cyberpunk romance, the choice to spend a vast third if not half of the novel in a first-person narrator-protagonist dry technological readout of the various guns, cybernetically augmented prostheses and associated weapons-come-defence programs felt stale as a slice of bread on the kitchen counter in summertime. Maybe engineering isn’t my thing, I know of several friends who would love such attention given to the weaponry, and recommended Automatic Reload to all of them, but a good hour into the prose and all I knew of Mat was the amount of weaponry he possessed on his specialized limbs, that he was attempting to halt a kidnapping, and he was paralyzed with the incapacity to kill. A decent bedrock for a PTSD scarred main character, Mat’s inability to take life becomes a mainstay of the manuscript. This is not in itself a negative. It makes for intriguing prose, and shows his caring, ethical side.

But I could not help feeling Mat’s selfish delusions within the first few chapters. His first-person narration of saving the teenaged girl became more about saving the people, who caused her fear and harm at her expense. When I taught self defence in a university and martial art academy setting, one of the first lessons (especially to the female students) was a defender has the right to go home. The attacker has every opportunity to stop harming you, and them refusing to let go is them allowing you to defend your right to survive unharmed as possible. In the introductory arc, Mat rescues a girl from kidnappers, who are prepared to kill her. Regardless of how noble Mat was in his attempts of causing less harm, I could not stop thinking of the harm he was causing to the poor girl frightened out of her mind, with a knife against her neck. Steinmetz goes so far as to have the girl bleed from a superficial slice to the throat, before our ‘wounded hero’ intervenes in a kinetic fashion.

Mat is not a hero, his paranoia at preventing harm does not make him precisely good. It does, however, make him a fascinating study of an injured veteran compensating for the horrors of war. He reminds me of Perseus, played by Sam Worthington in the 2010 released Clash of the Titans, where Perseus discovers his demi-godhood and struggles to go about his mission as a normal man, not a god. As if his spectacular powers were to be feared or forgotten in self-hatred rather than used to others’ advantages. Even when companions on his voyage begin to die, Perseus sticks to his selfish morals and refuses his inner power until it is all but too late. Just as Perseus could have saved multiple companion’s lives had he accepted his power, so too Mat could have saved the girl from trauma (injection of ‘anti PTSD drugs’ notwithstanding) if he hadn’t attempted to wait the kidnappers out as long as he did, until a last second where she looks into his faceplate and knows she is about to die.

As protagonists go, Mat is an insecure, selfish moralist with his own set of obsessive edits, who passes it off as a sheriff’s bravado in the wild world of body hacking. When his contact and seemingly only friend Trish (whom I loved) gets him a job worth millions, Mat dives in to prevent collateral damage only after she cajoles his ethics, and that is noble. But this is where the novel takes its’ turn. I won’t be going into spoilers much here, but from the moment Mat meets assassin-damsel in distress Sylvia, I could see where the novel’s plot was going, and for the most part I was 9 for 10.

Sylvia’s panic and anxiety disorder took centre stage, as Mat tumbled with her assassin-programmed artificial body, and the other body-hackers who were looking to bring her back and finish their job. The bonding between the two (through ‘old timey cinema) was ultimately endearing but fairly stock, between the constant verbal output of every single technological gadget Mat had on hand, or modified to work, or picked to replace old limbs, or because we were at another moment, where Mat needed to drone on about the tech as if to remind us that we were, in fact, in a cyberpunk setting.

My major criticism of the prose isn’t Mat’s struggle with harm reduction, but the sheer amount of technological data Steinmetz pushed into the manuscript, until I felt like half the novel was a sci-fi reader’s guide to emotionless guns, cybernetic components and threat awareness programming. At a fairly early point in the prose, the tech talk got so redundant if I hadn’t been listening on audiobook in my car, I’d skip pages. Yes, I can see this was a coping mechanism for Mat, and the best way Steinmetz had to frame the science fiction setting in a novel completely from the protagonist’s inner monologue (a literal ’subvocal recording’ as we discover), but it threw me. Automatic Reload lacked a balance between the cold cover of Mat’s obsessions and the emotionally gorgeous story of two wounded people falling in love… while being chased by psycho body-hacking killers.

It’s unfortunate, because the relationship development between Mat and Sylvia is agonizingly sweet. Their ability to both freak out and help each other, the peppering of laughter to break the tension of their run with death were all wonderfully done. Trish, Mat’s business contact and friend is the stand alone best character of the novel. Sassy, strong and incapable of selfish intentions, Trish gives Automatic Reload the backbone it needs to evolve both Mat and Sylvia and drive the plot forward, even through the constant re-hashing of the setting as Mat experienced it. I cared about Trish more than I cared about Mat or Sylvia, beyond their growing connection. The enemies, while trope-ish, were believable in their immensity, and brought me to the feel of a 1980’s action flick with Van Damme, or Norris at the fore… if their female lead happened to be more powerful than the Hulk in Thor: Ragnarok.

Steinmetz’s plot in Automatic Reload is visible miles before the chapter headings, and that is unproblematic, if you’re looking for an easy, entertaining read similar to that 1980’s action flick. I won’t say the climax didn’t take a twist, it did, but even when the twist occurred, I again called what would remain of the plot. If you want a cyberpunk weapon’s heavy cute-couple novel to relax with, this will certainly do it for you. Aside from its’ flaws, Automatic Reload has a vulnerability and joy to its escapism, the clinging growth of a relationship in two freaked out, lonely people.

Mat does grow through his moments with Sylvia, but especially with Trish’s advice. If you like to know the technological readout of every warrior’s equipment, watched the Matrix and Maltese Falcon, and enjoy a good gritty radio-show, with romantic plot-line, Automatic Reload is for you. I give it four out of five stars, and imagine the ideal reader would be of the masculine or tech-minded variety who is woke enough to handle a gritty romance with more bullets than people, a transgender best friend, and heroes whose anxiety and PTSD cause as many problems as they eventually, and inevitably, solve.

For those who want something to listen to of a similar feel, I thoroughly advise listening to the Red Panda Adventures.

[captainsimagines]

Kill ‘Em With Kindness - PART TWELVE

Bucky Barnes x Reader

You had been detected.  You were now on their radar.  You were recruited for one mission only.  You’re trained and put to the test.  With your background, everyone realizes it was a mistake recruiting a college student who would soon be faced with the thing that drove her to kill in the first place.   

Warnings: ANGST; ANGST; ANGST; SWEARING

Word Count: 2,532

“You are the most beautiful person I have ever seen... I want to ruin you.”

“You’re too late.”

PART TWELVE 

     “What the fuck?”

     You were seething. Your face was puffy and red, your lips sucked in so far you were talking through clenched teeth.  Your voice was a mix of tiny squeals and angry whispers, the combination frightening.  The pressure of the two clawed at your veiny throat.  Your hands were around Sam’s neck, nails digging into his skin as he struggled to get away. 

     Bucky could only tug at your shoulders because the sight of your bulging, tear-filled eyes prevented him from pulling you any further.  He knew the anger you felt and how no one should interfere.  He believed you were right in threatening Sam, Tony, literally anyone who let Peter leave their sight.

     “How could you let this happen?” Your frustration caused an overflow of tears and your face became redder.  Sam clawed at your hands and looked around at the rest of the team for some assistance.  Natasha was in the same boat as you, deciding however to stare at the wall blankly and think of a way to retrieve Peter.  You would be trying to do that too but there was no possible way you could clear your mind. 

      “The hall... was clear!” Sam choked.  Steve huffed, finally stepping in and ripping you away from Sam.  Your fists curled and your nails punctured the tender flesh of your palm, the crescents most likely visible from miles away.  Each breath you took felt like a sea of fire, every second passing as if you were drowning in hell. 

      “It wasn’t! It fucking wasn’t!” You began to whimper and your body gave out.  Your back ran into the wall and slid down to the floor, Bucky following your actions and pulling you into his body.  He tried to calm you down, not really understanding why you were so emotional over his disappearance.

     “Y/N, please calm down.  You are having a panic attack,” Vision warned, his hands extended in a comforting way.  You only stared at him and shook your head. 

     “He doesn’t have his web shooters! He was taken by HYDRA and he doesn’t have his web shooters,” you declared, looking at Bucky as if you were trying to make him comprehend that information.  You searched his eyes for understanding.  Bucky knew you what you meant.  Peter doesn’t have his web shooters and there is no way he could win a fight with just his fists... no matter how hard Steve had trained him.  He didn’t even have his suit.  

     “Security is getting the video now.  We’ll have our lead soon.” Tony rounded the corner looking disheveled and out of breath.  He wiped his face and his eyes, holding his chest every so often and blinking rapidly as if this was all a dream. 

     This had to be hitting Tony harder than it was hitting you.  It certainly didn’t feel like it but this wasn’t a battle of ‘who was the most worried’.  Everyone was dealing with the kidnapping in their own manner.  

     Tony began to regulate his heavy breathing while Steve stood still and clenched his jaw, deep in concentration.  Natasha picked at her cuticles, straining her ears for the slightest sound that could possibly lead to Peter.  Clint sat silently, imagining if this was his own kid and how that would feel.  Thor held Wanda close, her silent sobs muffled by his shoulder.  Sam was perhaps the most scared.  He breathed heavily and closed his eyes.  This was all his fault, he thought.  

     Ten minutes had passed before security gave you the tape.  You all piled into the safety room which was specifically built for protection against the mafia.  

      Here you were, pushing a VHS tape into a VCR and praying the old technology would work.  The equally ancient television shined, a grainy image and crappy audio of the hallway coming to life.  You witnessed Sam leaving the room and doing a routine check, sweeping the hallways three times over before he stepped into the elevator. He had done everything right.  

     You apologized quietly, Sam nodding in return.  Nothing appeared for five minutes and the tension in the room had everyone on their toes.  Finally, you saw Peter emerge from his room and walk to the middle of the hallway, entering the small corridor where the vending machine was located.  Three minutes.  

     Peter got his snack and came into view again, this time not alone.  Once he rounded the corner, a woman in a high ponytail and regular street clothing purposefully bumped into him.  You could hear Peter apologizing and see as they separated.  Then the woman made an abrupt turn and raced towards Peter.  It was the same woman who had planted the cameras in your room and around the tower, but she wasn’t wearing a baseball cap this time.  You could make out her face, even through the static and shitty image. 

     You raised your hands to your mouth, no one noticing your shocked state yet.  They were focused on the screen.  You backed away slowly, eyes filled with tears, and bile lapped at the base of your throat.  

     Lucy.  

     Inhaling was harsh and you became verbal, whimpers beginning to escape your covered, quivering lips.  You backed up enough to run into the table and grip the back of a chair.  Your vision became useless, the image abolishing any former notions of reality you once had.  You knocked over the chair and you went down with it.  Your body crumbled to the floor and you landed on your knees.  The loud cries you let slip wracked your battered form until you had to breathe in again to exhale a more intense cry than the first.  

      The whole team was startled.  Shock was evident in their faces and the mere sight of you scared them beyond anything they could conjure up.  They had never seen you like this. You had never cried in front of them when you were in pain.  You had only cried out of frustration and anger, but never once did they see you wail. 

     Your heart shattered, each piece piercing through your breast and evening gown, landing on the concrete floor.  

     Bucky couldn’t help but weep.  He didn’t know what was happening- no one did.  But seeing you crouched on the floor, bawling and screeching, destroyed his tough guy act.  He had suffered for years, saw numerous others suffer a horrible fate due to his own hands, but never once did he think he was completely and utterly ruined.  This conclusively mutilated him.  

__________

     The hotel was forced to inform their guests on the floors above and beneath the team of the loud noises filling the building.  Many of the guests relocated with no questions asked. 

      No one knew what to do.  They sat in their rooms and waited.   Sitting on the edge of their beds, making calls, and trying to sleep.  No one could relax completely, your sudden wails snapping them awake.  The sounds were etched in their minds with each flinch you caused. 

     You were thrashing around in bed, screaming and crying at the top of your lungs.  Bucky lay behind you, clutching at any part of your body you would let him.  He tried to rock you, smooth down your hair, wipe your tears, and hold you down so you wouldn’t injure yourself.  He was struggling and the intensity of it wouldn’t allow him to breathe.

      Your face was red and puffy, the pressure of your yells taking a toll.  You had a headache, a stomachache, hell- you had vertigo, nausea, all the fucking above wrapped into one catastrophic meltdown.  

      Bucky had changed your clothes and dressed you in his, hoping the size of them would help you feel less constricted or panicked. 

     When you had finally choked out Lucy’s name, the team quickly realized why HYDRA wanted to find you.  It was finally obvious as to why you were asked to go to Paris instead of Germany.  They wanted to break you, and then Bucky, and then Steve.  The order was going to be chronological- they had planned this. 

      Bucky, however, could only cry with you.  He was experiencing this all over again.  He had no idea what it was like to be in your place, but knowing what it was like to be mind controlled wasn’t foreign.  You were now dealing with two people who had suffered the torture of HYDRA.  You didn’t deserve it. 

     When you finally stopped thrashing and yelling, Bucky hooked his arms under and over you to hold you in place and rock you back and forth.  It calmed you down, but you still wanted to scream for your sister and Peter. The innocence of both was parallel and the urge to rescue them was immense.  

     As your screams dialed down and went extinct, the others exited their rooms and went to see why.  You had finally fallen asleep, the brutal beating you had made your body endure ultimately tapping you out.  Bucky slowly rose from his spot, heading to the bathroom in Steve’s room to throw up. 

     When you woke up, you expected to find Bucky still holding you and whispering in your ear.  However, you were greeted with the sight of Steve sitting in a chair beside your bed, napping as well.  

     Your eyes were swollen and your lips were extremely chapped, the constant stretching and pulling resulting in a few bloody cracks.  You took short breaths, watching Steve’s chest rise and fall.  You were on your side, half of your face hidden in the blankets and pillow.  Your knees were tucked in.  You could have sworn you were the smallest being on earth at the moment, the feeling so dangerous your swollen eyes began to water up again.  With a small sniff, Steve woke up and locked eyes with you.  

     “Y/N,” Steve whispered, leaning from his chair and taking your left hand in his.  You whimpered and ducked into the pillow.  He massaged your palm and each individual finger. 

     “Shh, Y/N.  Listen to me.  You’re okay.”  

     His words cut sharper than any knife you owned.  You sobbed and responded. 

     “How did you do it, Steve? How did you get through it?” 

     Steve seemed surprised by that question.  Never did anyone ask him how he bounced back from the Winter Soldier reveal.  They would always ask him if he was okay and if he needed anything, not how he was going to recover.  

     Steve had witnessed his best friend in the whole wide world fall off a train to his death.  He had suffered while fighting in the war, the misdoings of his country and the rest of the world a distraction from his own turmoil.  When he woke from the ice, he was reminded of everyone he had lost.  Even though he was asleep for seventy years, Bucky’s death technically happened a few days earlier in Steve’s mind.  

     “I thought he was dead.  I knew he was,” Steve explained, his voice soft and reassuring.  He continued to rub your hand, inching closer to the bed as he did so.  You nodded but urged him to continue. 

     “I woke up like he had died a week ago.  It was still fresh.  I didn’t have time to recover and adjust.  I was automatically recruited and told the world needed me.  While I was trying to piece my life back together, he was losing his all over again.”

     Steve matched your expression, the pain expressed in both his words and his face.   

      “I was peacefully asleep for seventy years and he was tortured-” Steve sucked in a ragged breath, “he was tortured for all seventy of them.”

     Sniffing, you started rubbing circles into his knuckles.  

     “I should have recovered his body.  I didn’t and I regret it everyday.  But he’s here now, Y/N.  We’ll get Lucy and Peter back.  I promise you that.”

     You shook your head, “Don’t promise me anything, Captain.”

     Steve wiped his cheeks and stood up, looking down at you with determination swimming in his blue eyes. 

     “Suit up.”

__________

     “Are you okay?” Thor asked as you walked onto the quinjet.  You looked around the cabin and met Steve’s eyes.  It was almost as if he was giving you your answer. 

     “I’ll get over it.”

     You strapped yourself in and grabbed Bucky’s hand, squeezing it to let him know you would indeed get over it.  

     You could feel yourself slipping away again.  No matter how hard you tried to hold on, the same feeling you felt when your parents died, when your sister was taken, and when Mark betrayed you, began to creep its way to the front of your mind.  

     The silence in the jet was interrupted by your ringtone.  You stared at everyone and they stared back.  The number was blocked.  You motioned for Tony to record the call just in case, tracking the number if possible.  With everyone leaning toward you and your phone on the fifth ring, you answered. 

     “Hello?”

    “Y/N?”

     A whisper.  

    “Who’s this?”

    “It’s Mark.”

     He was the last person you wanted to talk to right now.  You growled, the pressure of your teeth cracking your jaw slightly. 

    “Listen to me, I don’t have much time.  The coordinates are tucked into a page of your anthropology textbook.  Someone in the Avengers compound was working for me this whole time.  The textbook should be stored near Clint’s arrows,” Mark stammered.  Clint practically flew to the back, searching through every crack until he found your favorite highlighted copy.   

    “Why are you helping us?” you asked him.  You weren‘t about to allow your voice to falter.  

     “I didn’t know what they did to her,” Mark choked.  You closed your eyes but let him continue. 

    “The money they offered was too much to refuse.  My team had no idea how to copy Howard Stark’s recipe-”

     “It’s not a fucking deep dish- it’s a weapon!”

    “Y/N, I know.  I know that now.  Please, I am so sorry.  I don’t have much time.  The place is surrounded.  When you get here, do not approach Lucy.  They wiped her beyond repair.”

      Bucky dipped his head, his shaggy hair falling over his face. You ignored Mark’s comment about Lucy.

    “Is Peter with you?”

    “He’s right here.”

    “Y/N?”  The weight on your chest was immediately lifted, as was everyone else’s.  Tony clutched at his chest and mumbled something along the lines of ‘thank fucking god, May would have had my soul.’

     “Peter, oh my God!” you happily stated, clutching the phone tighter in your hand. 

    “I’m okay, but they are planning something big.  Keep Natasha safe, guys,” Peter instructed, his voice wavering. He was trying to sound tough but you could hear his sniffling. There was shuffling on the other line. 

    “Peter, we are so sorry.”

    “Don’t sweat it.  Things would have been easier if I had my webs and a tracker but hey, life has its little games.”

     “Peter-”

    “I am fine for now.  I don’t want to worry you.  Mark says we have to go.”

    “Peter, we promise we’ll get the-”

    “Please just hurry,” Peter interrupted Steve.  Before you or Mark could hang up, you brought the phone to your ear and lowered your voice. 

     “Peter, I couldn’t save Lucy... but you can be damn sure I will save you.”

TAG LIST: 

@chipilerendi @4theluvofall @purplekitten30 @owhatshername1 @buckyappreciationsociety @sumafamouxx @g0back2bed @katykyll @shaexoox @polkadottedpillowcase @jonnavgl @thefridgeismybestie @bunnymother93 @s8sense @huntermichelle @lovable-harmonica @almondbuttercup @wowiebro @secondsandstars  

[striptaese]

10 questions tag

I still have a pile of tag stuff I haven’t got to, so let me get started.

Thanks Kit @jjongeyed​ for tagging me to answer 10 questions, and then making 10 more for those I tag~

1. What does your “self-care” usually look like?  Or rather, what do you do to unwind when you’re overwhelmed?

I’m someone who depends on sleep a little too much for it to be healthy. Sick? Sleep will cure it. Migraine? Sleep will cure it. Sad? Sleep will solve it. Angry? Go to sleep and forget about it. So usually my first option would be sleep, but otherwise, I either like to listen to certain music depending on my mood (some days I use my special shinee playlist made just for anxious days, some days I feel like going instrumental, and just recently I found myself listening to nature sounds like rain or ocean waves, etc.), or I tend to watch animation movies . More often than not, those animation movies would be Disney because I’m a sap that cries at each and every one of them, and also because I like that they aren’t too long (>2 hours). Lately I have run out of Disney movies to watch, so I’ve been turning to chick flicks

2. How do you feel about tattoos?  Would you ever get one, and if so, what of?

I love listening to stories about why people get their tattoos, so generally when people get a tattoo, I tend like it more if there is a special story behind it (like I remember one girl I met was talking about how her tattoo was something that connected her to her grandmother spiritually and that just made me aww). I personally don’t like full sleeves or just too much tatts in general, but you know, not my business what people wants to get on their body. I did consider getting one of a sleeping cat that maybe sits on my hip somewhere, because I have a really lazy cat that basically sleeps all day so... that’d be her. But I’m indecisive and I can’t even bear to peel stickers and paste them anywhere, much less get a tattoo so I doubt it’ll ever happen. 

3. What is one photo/video/audio/screencap that you feel is a the most accurate and quintessential representation of your bias?

I refuse to pick one, it’s a representative of all 5 members

4. Could you please share a story of how you met one of the dearest people in your life?

Okay so my pretzel Jo whom we can never remember how long we’ve actually known each other for... We... weren’t that close initially. I think I initially got to know of her when I was 13? or 14? through an online game. We had a mutual friend whom we were close to and we talked here and there but were never really super close. Well in this game our characters could get ‘married’ and one day she was looking for a ‘bride’ and because she knew my character was single, she pop the question (I was forever alone even in the game, don’t laugh). Since she was someone I actually knew (I just didn’t like that everyone was getting ‘married’ to people they don’t even know, I take my games way too seriously, I know LOL), I agreed. But even when our characters were ‘married’ we were still individually closer to our mutual friend than to each other. Unfortunately... things got a little sour along the way. Long story short, that mutual friend of ours expected us to always be there for her, but would throw us to the side in a heartbeat when her other friends came around. By then I already knew this mutual friend for like 4 years? And I regarded her as one of my bestfriends, and just it really hurt me when it just seemed like I wasn’t important to her anymore, while she turned around and blamed me for ‘changing’ because I refused to be her puppet that would give in all the time. Jo was basically going through the same thing I was with this mutual friend and we kinda connected while ranting and venting. We’ve been close since then. She’s in a music major that I know nuts about, and I graduated with a Business major that she knows nuts about, but somehow it just works out because our personalities kinda match I guess, and she joined the shawol party just last year so now we just spazz about shinee together. She’s coming to HK con with me!

5. Does your heart race easily?  Or do you make other hearts race more easily? 

I’m not too sure to be honest. I think it would be easy to make my heart race because I’m inexperienced in every field of relationship (friendships included) so really little things can make my heart race, but it hasn’t happened very often so...

6. What was the last thing that made you laugh?  Describe or share it!

This is gonna get the p*** blogs to start following me... but I laughed so hard I had to watch it again. (before you ask how I got on that side of youtube... it was because I was watching buzzfeed videos about the clear jeans and I got linked to her channel)

7. What do you look for in a friend?

Ease of communication? There’s just some people you click with, and I need that connection to be comfortable enough to speak to them. I feel like I have become very guarded towards making friends. Just like Jinki who says all his friends are from his school period, that’s literally it for me too. The few deep friends I have made, were all people I’ve met before I was 15. 

8. OH OH OH!!!!  Last meal on earth–it can be anything–what do you eat?  I’m talking main dish, desserts, sides, drink, etc!!!!!

Hmm... I think it’d either be steak, or pizza... but if geography isn’t a restriction I REALLY WANT A STACK SHACK ONE MORE TIME

9. You win a lifetime achievement award (for whatever reason) and you could have anyone as your plus-one, who do you take?

I’ll probably get one of my parents, I guess; they’d deserve to go the most of all

10. They make a movie about your life: what genre is it?  for the aesthetic people, describe how it’d look?  auditory people, what five songs would be on the soundtrack? (feel free to answer both!)

I think it will be a dreamy kinda movie... like soft faded colors, and just a feeling of a dream because that’s how my life feels like to be honest. Everything just feels dream like to me (not differentiating between good or bad dreams). The movie would be one that puts some people to sleep because of the tone and a plot that seems to be going no where. Since I’m listening to Lullaby right now, it has that feel. Like soft, flow-y, dreamy tone.

Here are my questions:

1. Are you someone who cries easily while watching shows or reading books/fanfics? Are you (also) someone who cries easily in general?

2. If you could have a superpower, what would you want your superpower to be? How would you use this power?

3. Describe your wardrobe - are you a colorful wardrobe person, or an all black/white wardrobe person? Accessories and caps, or no?

4. Why do you love SHINee? (yes, I’m giving you an opportunity for an essay)

5. If you had a chance to hand gifts to the members personally, what would you give them? If they are letters, what would they say?

6. Tell me about a fandom crush/squish/someone you admire?

7. Which fictional character (from a movie/show/book) do you aspire to be like and why?

8. What is your method of outlet for your emotions? (stress, restlessness, thoughts, etc.)

9. What are your reactions to bugs - scream and panic and run, scream and panic and attack, capture and release, capture and kill, ignore... others?

10. What is a memorable memory you can think of right now?

Tagging: @jjongspink @jinkirella @eyes0ny0u @onthighsbelongtotaemin @taeontae @hellotweetygirl

[iamtheunicornprincess]

Aight, folks. I think we can all agree on one thing: Audio gear is expensive. Unless you find it at a yard sale, sold by someone confusing a heavy duty multi-voiced monster for a kid’s toy (but hey, even a snot-covered Fisher Price xylophone from a Savers can be sampled into something beautiful), the chances of you finding a deal is going to be rare. If you are a sound person, then stories of such rarity buys will be over-told for decades to come; your audio friends will loudly resent you with a smile and ask you retell said legend again, and again. Usually, though, you’ll save up and look forward to the weekend you can finally spend together with your new, shiny, synth companion. 

Lately, I find myself longing so badly for my own space. I want a home. I grew up in a family of eight with five siblings, and while my childhood reeked of copious amounts of people related to me going in my room while I was out and touching my shit, and blurting pieces of my diary over the dinner table, and picking up the other end of a landline to eavesdrop, living with roommates is different. I’ve had some INCREDIBLE roommates, and would continue to live with them if I didn’t have to leave Boston/they hadn’t moved. But, I dunno. Although I foresee a future of travels and while I’m a more “go with the wind” type of person, there is something really, really calming about not having all my shit stuffed into a 10′x10′ bedroom in the most boring section of Brooklyn (though I did have a package stolen from me yesterday [and I not-so-secretly hope said salt lamp that s/he stole falls on their foot]). My dream is to someday own a house, once the terrors of student loans have surpassed, and I want a backyard. But, most of all, I want a STUDIO. And today, I am going to leave a list of my dream gear that I currently do not own that I would love to have in my said future studio (NOTE: Many of you have probably seen pictures of me using some of these items. I am lucky enough to have worked in two recording facilities that housed them and, like a good studio person should do, I utilized them to the point where parting ways from some of them still makes me sad. However, they were not mine). 

DREAM GEAR 

Arturia Minibrute

Some people might kind of wonder why the Minibrute is here: It’s not super expensive for an analog synth (you could probably find it under $300 at this point). But you know what? I don't own it right now, because I had access to it for quite a while before I moved. You’ll hear a great deal of it on my upcoming record, so over the past year or so, I’ve been nonstop mixing tracks I created with it. Even though I *could* buy it right now, I am so frugal with my finances when it comes to buying anything for myself. But, anyway - the Minibrute is great. I love the Microbrute, as well, but the Minibrute has a special place in my heart because of the dirty, gritty noise channel you can add to the mix, along with a sub and three other oscillators. Pretty sweet, especially since it has MIDI, CV, and a straight 1/4″ output. Can’t go wrong. I just love the sound... Anything gritty will have my heart.

OTO Biscuit

I kind of need to just get one of these because of how rare they are. This is the best distortion/bitcrusher I’ve ever used. I love running vocals with it, I love how easily out of control-sensitive it is, and I will love lo-fi for life. 

Roland Juno 106

Because, duh. This baybee is a classic. It has six voices. Despite it being fairly easy to track down, I’m well aware that the most common issue with this synth is voices dying (but you gotta remember that you’ll most likely purchase one that’s never had a voice replaced since, like, ever, and it’s from 1984). However, it’s EXPENSIVE to replace voices, and Roland does not create them anymore (it would be wishful thinking for them to, but as they don’t produce the 106s anymore...). BUT, there is someone who created a more functional voice IC replacement (check out Analogue Renaissance for more info on voice replacements. Just be wary that he will charge you for asking questions that have already be answered on his site, so read carefully). I’ve promised myself that I wouldn’t get a dog ‘till I have the time for one (duh?) AND money for any unexpected vet visits, so I’ll do the same for the Juno 106 (unless purchased with replacement voices).

ARP Odyssey 1978 MK III 

VINTAGE. NOT THE REMAKE. NOT THE APP. NOT THE MINI OR FULL SIZE FROM KORG. NOT THE EBAY SELLER PRETENDING IT’S A VINTAGE WHEN IT’S A KORG. I SEE YOU.  IT NEEDS TO BE THE VINTAGE MK III FROM 1978. Okay, let me explain: This synth holds a huge place in my heart. During the hardest parts of my life in late 2015 to mid 2016, I couldn’t sleep normal hours, or create. My anxiety was out of control and I had literally three full on attacks a day and I didn’t want anybody to know. So, even though I couldn’t do much to fix any of those issues at the time, I needed to do something. So,  I would force myself to pour over the manual for this synth every time I felt a panic attack creeping up, and would press random keys and hit record. The old sound of it would distract me. I don’t know. I just associate this synth with comfort. Every time I was sad, I would have this synth in front of me. I’d leave my apartment at odd hours of the night to go sit with it and hope something good would be recorded out of it. So, yeah - when I buy this synth, it needs to be vintage. It’s just sentimental and if I could buy the same synth I used, I would. And, yes, I love how it gets out of tune. A whole track on Living Proof is totally in tune with the Odyssey, but out of tune with... everything else. You’ll see. 

ARP 2600

Again - the original, not the TTSH clone. The first time I ever saw this synth, it did not fascinate me -- I was 19, and I was terrified. It was 2009, and I was enrolled in Michael Brigida’s class at Berklee College of Music (he was my modular synthesis & signal flow professor and he’s worked on every ARP machine ever and was one of the best teachers I have ever had). Back then, the synth was held in A59 in 150 Massachusetts Ave. The room had no windows and reeked of mildew, and on the first day of class, myself and my classmates trekked down the hall from our classroom and watched Michael calmly create different patches. I was the shortest in the class, and I was the only girl, and I was painfully shy.  I wore a black fitted hoodie with spikes almost every day and I was fucking weird. Everyone in the class just seemed to understand what was going on and I just stood there, hardly able to see anything (because, well, I’m just shy of 5′3′’). Listening in awe, I felt like a total idiot. I had no idea what this modularapolis kajargen was and I was too afraid to ask for help. I clearly remember Brigida telling us to ‘not fear the synth!’ and to ‘make it fear you!', but everyone in the class just seemed at ease and I was, well, not!  Fast forward four years -- I got a lot more experience in the game audio and synth hardware world, and I was hired by the department, and the more I worked there, the more I saw that, sure, some people DID just have a knack for that kind of stuff right off the bat, but a lot of times, people wore a concrete-made poker face. I had already been employed by AKAI at that point and had gotten over my insecurities a little bit. And it was ME that everyone was now asking for help, since, you know, that was my job (those days, I worked 80+ hours a week between there and AKAI). I felt a little less alienated  that I was not the only person in fear of getting my ego hurt around the 2600, and I used this time to really learn it so I could help others understand it. Anyway, I’d go into work on days the facility was closed, and own it so I was more prepared to teach students it when class started back up. This synth taught me a lot about getting past insecurities, and guess what - I’m not so afraid of that synth anymore! Ha!

Yamaha CS15

This synth is so underrated and so cool. Made in 1979 for a few years onwards, it just sounds like how you think it would. Good luck finding one online that isn’t from Japan and doesn’t require a power converter. And if you find one and are feeling generous, my birthday is June 1st. 

THE KLEE 

Okay. I used modular eurorack systems quite a bit when I still lived in Boston. I do not own a system right now. However, The Klee. Is. A. Monster. I was immediately drawn to it because 1. it’s a sequencer and, um, I love sequencers and 2. it has green LEDs and buttons. I unapologetically love the color scheme of that thing, and it sounds fucking awesome. However, it will take up almost your entire rack case. Google it (sorry not sorry). You can build it from scratch for a little over $500 or buy it complete for a little less than $1,000.

 Avalon 737sp

Coolest preamp & compressor ever. I always “got” EQs, but compressors used to confuse the crap out of me. Ratios? Math!? I wanna do MUSIC (...till you realize a music technologist is more mathematically inclined than you’d be willing to admit, ha!). However, the Avalon really helped me understand what was happening to sound while changing up parameters manually, as opposed to staring at a stock plugin in Pro Tools and visually trying to hear results, if that makes sense. I just understand tech better when hands on. Anyway, one of my favorite producers of all time, Mark Ronson, has used them in recordings and the second I learned that, bam. Look at me! I can make myself burp AND I can use compressors with my eyes closed! 

Empirical Labs Distressor

Mostly because every studio I’ve worked in has them next to each other and I like the comparison. And it sounds good. I still prefer the 737 but I love this thang, too. 

Moog Sub 37

SOUNDS GOOD. MY MAIN HOBBY INCLUDES GOING INTO SAM ASH AND WAITING FOR GOSPEL GROUPS TO FINISH THEIR SYNTH JAM SESH SO I CAN GO INTO THE ISOLATION ROOM AND ROCK OUT ON THIS MOOG. 

Electro-Voice RE20

Just like the ‘wand chooses the wizard’ (and yes, I heard Ollivander’s voice when I wrote that), everyone will usually resonate to at least one mic that makes their non-traditional voice sound... okay. Heck, maybe it’ll even sound good! I really adore this microphone. I haven’t bought it because I have spent time in facilities over the past 4 years that have owned it everywhere I’ve went, but someday, it shall be mine. It’s mainly used in broadcasting, but, I dunno. I use it when recording my own voice singing because I just like how it makes it sound. I also like that Thom Yorke used it in a show once. Very coolio. Google ‘Radiohead RE20′ and I’m sure that basement show will pop up.

DSI Tempest

Um, coolest drum machine I’ve ever used. That thing is a beast. I love the weird sounds you can make, the sequences you can create, and I’m happy that DSI finally created a couple updates for it. Hell yizzzzzeah.

Crumar Bit-01

This synth came to my attention the other day and ohhhhhh my god, it sounds good. It’s so awesome. I played three seconds of a demo video and I said ‘gimme’. 

Otari MTR12

Very cool tape machine I started to mess with at one of the studios I support. It looks like an oven. Everything just sounds better with tape. 

-

And that is all I can think of, for now. May you all have a synth filled week.

Cheers!

x The Unicorn Princess