#ignore the fact that i’ve already been on this website for 5 months i didn’t have the balls to post anything until now

[spr1mkle]

resilient

[jbbuckybarnes]

We need to talk...

I knew that this topic of interactions will come up again, because it has never been talked all the way through, so I had this drafted for a while. So much of this old draft still resonated with this permanently unfinished discussion that I just had to edit it and post it, because I feel like it has to be said and put into one post. We can’t keep starting this conversation and then make it so dramatic that there is no conclusion or compromise. The only reason this time is more mellow is because people have better standards for this stuff due to a pandemic going on. This is written for the MCU fandom, but I’ve seen this go down in different fandoms, so here we go:

Things that are NOT at fault for readers not interacting:

The Readers. Should be clear after asking them again and again. And nothing changing. The readers at large are not at fault for a couple people being demanding or hateful. Neither are they at fault for this website and other social medias automatically putting writers at a disadvantage. They do their best with the time they have in their life (just like writers). And after asking them over months to try and reblog more and not much changing, it should be obvious that it isn’t where the problem lies. At least not 95% of it. NOW:

Things that ARE at fault for readers not interacting:

Pushing them, thinking they owe you stuff, while you tear other writers down saying that nobody owes them stuff. That happens time and time again. To me, to friends, to writers I check in with. Don't expect community to come to you when you don't come to them.

Not putting anon asks off when demands and hate get too much. It’s literally THAT easy when people get nasty. It’s sad for the nice anons, but they will understand. Save your mental health! Save the mental health of people reading that hate on their dash. I don’t know how many people constantly answering to hate I have unfollowed and I’m sure people have unfollowed me for doing the same.

Ego and hypocrisy. You can't say numbers aren't a problem and then say they are. In the same post. AND then also deny it later in some of the cases we’ve seen in recent months. Yes, that happened. In several fandoms where this topic comes up semi-regularly. And that might also be the reason people are tired of this stuff and speak out against it.

The fact Tumblr is only used approximately twice a year by most people. And has a shitty tag system. And a shitty algorithm. You are at an automatic disadvantage.

The fact some of you can't understand that 3-5% of your following interacting is a good and normal rate on pretty much all social media. The bigger you get in followers, the bigger the gap gets between followers and interaction (and demand and hate). There are literal statistics on that. 1% interaction at 10k is still good for a platform you have no power over!

The fact some of the people here call anons *haters* for pointing out that you interact w the same 10 people, making that speace seem excluding, when it's literally true what those people say!? Nothing wrong with only support the same 10 people on your blog, but then don't say that you practice what you preach (cause you don’t). You can’t demand more interaction when you don’t interact more yourself. That is how it works, for anyone, not just people of a certain follower count. If I reblog more fics, my blog gets more clout. Logical conclusion. Works for everyone. You have no time for that? Then don’t expect more back. It’s called SOCIAL media for a damn reason.

Telling people asking for Tumblr advice to interact more to make new friends but being the most defensive/indifferent person once they talk to you in DMs. Yes, that keeps happening and I know it from either my own experience or from others sharing their experiences with me. It’s kinda sad. It’s more of a minor factor in people not interacting, but I’ve seen it enough to mention it.

Making shitposts and personal posts all day and then saying you don't have the time in your life to interact w peoples' writings. Like, drabbles exist on almost anyone's masterlist. 5 minute read, easy support for a writer that might be losing motivation. Not every work has to be written like a novel to be great as hell or “quality proven.”

Oh, and there hasn't been a MCU movie in a while, making most of our readership probably currently not care about the fandom as much. Especially after Endgame ended up being a total opinion splitter.

Bonus: The misunderstanding that pushing shy readers to interact does the exact opposite. Not to start about the fact that we are in the middle of a pandemic at the moment. That means they may not have time to read and you may not have time to write. Normal. Logical. The same reason lots of people currently don’t publish. Don’t expect anything predictable and controlable out of current times.

Bonus: Check how you connect interactions to self worth and worth/fun of your writing hobby. Define what success means for you in this space, otherwise you will never be satisfied. It won’t matter if a post has 1k reblogs, you’ll always want more, because you chase an infinite metric.

Bonus: Maybe take a month to concentrate on community, getting outside of your bubble that you deny but very likely have (I’m not excluding myself from this), and actually improve interactions. Some people seem to have forgotten that when you interact with other writers, they probably interact back. Surprise! Your followers already know your tried and true fanfic friends, they want some new stuff without searching for it. Basic Marketing knowledge, know what your audience wants. If you do this for the interactions you gotta look at it from a marketing standpoint and not a pure passion standpoint. Oh: And maybe they find you interacting in the notes of someone else’s post and become an active follower. Win-Win-Win situation.

Bonus: Community is a loop, a net of interactions. Some people here have clique behavior, sound defensive and/or simply don't practice what they preach. That is not me or anyone else hating on specific blogs (I’m also no complete exception), it’s people trying to tell you that you can’t ask for shit you don’t practice yourself. Nothing wrong with supporting your friends only, but then don’t go around expecting new people to find your stuff. It’s literally THAT simple. You can’t have both!

Bonus: Ignoring some of the ride or die readers that are already there. Some of the people on here wish they had that and it’s deadass taken it for granted by some. Meanwhile I'm sitting here with Serotonin levels like christmas when someone I know reblogs my stuff and my fic gets some clout. Imma repeat myself: If you do it for the numbers, you gotta look at it more like marketing and less like pure passion.

And again: You are on a social media platform that will always put you at a disatvantage. That is not the readers' fault. It's how social media works at this point. If you want as much interaction as you can without putting in more interaction work yourself, simply share your works on here, AO3 and Wattpad simultaneously. Problem solved.

Bottomline: If you want more love on your work you gotta go beyond what you currently do, since it’s clearly not working for you. Reblog stuff from people you don't know. I don't give a sh*t if it's a 5k or a 100 follower blog. Hell, there is the whole 366 reblog challenge and some of you deadass went on reblogging the same people when that’s not really what this was made for. I, personally, haven't run out of new people to reblog, so this shouldn't be hard. Actually take time to talk to people in DM's, it takes 10 minutes in the evening to write a few people a message asking how they are or sending a cute gif. If you want stuff, you have to give it. Not leave it. People have come to me before, telling me "the community doesn't owe you stuff", no, they don't, but they do owe if they wanna be owed something back or even demand to be owed something back. Community is about back and forth. You give, you get. It's work, cause it's a big hobby. If you don't have time, that's cool, but then don't be sad about lower interaction. It’s logical that low activity from you leads to low activity from others in the long run, unless you do something worldshakingly new. You don't wanna look beyond a circle of friends or your go-to writers much? That's fine, but don't be upset about barely new people interacting cause they feel excluded or simply don’t find your work because of the same people seeing the same people reblogging the same works. What's not fine is not seeing how readers are NOT THE PROBLEM.

I haven’t talked to a single person about this that DIDN’T find the posts surrounding it demanding and completely ignoring the arguments some others had...repeatedly. Every single time it came up. Not just once but time and time again, whenever this topic comes up. You want interaction? Interact. You don’t want hate? Don’t give it a platform. As harsh as that sounds, I’ve never felt better on this platform since I put anon asks off, even when I miss the nice anons. They probably understand. PS: Again, this was written a while ago and edited to fit into a more general context now. I hope people can discuss this in a civil, non-judgmental way, because that is how I tried to write this. This is not again a specific person or group, it’s pinpointing what I see repeating for two years on this platform now, in all corners. I’d also like to mention that we are still in a pandemic and lives have never looked so vastly different, so you can’t demand anything normal in this very not normal time. Even if you do it all right, your interactions dropped in the pandemic cause people likely stay away form this platform for mental health reasons. There is so many layers to look at, these clearly aren’t all, but I hope it makes some people think about what and when they complain. Numbers will never satisfy you, they will always leave you wanting more if you don’t know why you do what you do and for what. Anyway: Be nice to each other and me in the notes in case this gets shared! No drama please! Ignore any grammar and typo mistakes, lol. Love ya!

[naamahdarling]

Social Security doesn’t actually publish the rules for disability benefits, I don’t know if y’all are aware of that.  

You don’t get a booklet when you apply or approved that explains how things work.  Not for SSI, anyway; SSDI is a separate thing that works very differently and I don’t know anything about it.  The SS website isn’t the easiest to navigate, and only lists minimal information for many aspects of the program, and for specifics, you have to call them and ask.  When you do that, they offer to send you some pamphlets, which contain the same information that’s on the website, which means you wind up having to call again.

And the thing is, even when you reach someone, they don’t always give you the same information.  Some employees seem ignorant about the entire system, some seem apathetic about everything, and some are doing their best but don’t know everything.  And some do know what they’re talking about.  And there is no way to know what kind of person you’re dealing with, and no way to check their information against something you already know to make sure, because you very well may not have the right information.

I have, in fact, been told things that are incorrect more often by SS itself than by anyone else, and I have been told wildly conflicting things by SS employees.  As an example, I was told initially that I had to report all income, even if it was under $1000. Then I was told I only had to report income if it was over $1000.  Then I was told that they can only go by taxable income, meaning if you made over $1000 at, say, an off-the-books unlicensed popup lemonade stand, or if you sold a dozen of your empty butter tubs on Craigslist for $100 each, that money doesn’t count because it’s not money that is taxed by the US government.

I was told these things within the span of six months, and the most favorable take, the latter one, came from someone higher-ranking than anyone else I’d spoken to.  She said, in these exact words, that “We only really care about taxable income.”

So what would you do?  Go by what is most favorable to you, but run the risk of having it held against you if someone decides it’s wrong, or if it IS wrong but you didn’t think it was because an employee of Social Security itself told you it was correct? Or would you go the conservative route and live in more hardship just to be safe?

We shouldn’t have to crunch ourselves into the smallest possible living situation, afraid of what they might do, not knowing the rules. Even in school, even for the very smallest children there are, there are clear rules, and everyone knows what they are so the kids can abide by them and the teachers can fairly enforce them.

You don’t get that with SS.  You get the information piecemeal and from unreliable sources. We are treated in a way that authority figures agree even children should not be treated. And I want people to know that.

Now, I admit I may have missed something. Some very obvious site, or a rulebook they were supposed to send me and I just never got, but I don’t think that’s the case.  I think they deliberately keep this information kind of under wraps because they don’t want people to “take advantage” of it.  But withholding information people could use to help themselves qualify for benefits they deserve is harming the many people who need help in order to prevent a few theoretical people from fleecing the system. 

Something like 5 million people are on Social Security. Compared to the number of people who genuinely need it, welfare fraud is nearly nonexistent. And yet policy is set, not by the overwhelming need of those who cannot do for themselves, but by the potential abuse of “undeserving” people.

Keep in mind, even those trying to fleece the system have to go THROUGH the system to do it, and it is designed to catch those people using measures that would be absolutely exhausting and almost impossible to fake.  I should know, I’ve been through the approval process.

Keeping information secret that could help someone after they have been approved is low, it prevents us advocating for ourselves and keeps us dependent on a largely untrained or poorly-trained network of social workers, SS workers, and case managers.  It is utterly inhumane.

THAT SAID

It IS worth it to fight.  It IS worth it to be on SS.  It DOES help.  It gets you into the Medcaid/Medicare system.  It helps get you SNAP benefits.  It is not enough to live on forever, not by itself; the system is broken by design; but it is SOMETHING, and without it, even fewer people would be able to survive.  The process is difficult and discouraging.  It is still better to take whatever they will give you, not as alms, not as a pittance meant to keep you quiet, but because they deserve to have to give it.  So TAKE from them.  Take everything you can.

[wildlyminiaturesandwich]

It’s time we talk about SimsDom again.

Most of you probably already know who and what Simsdom is but for those that don’t, Simsdom (or SimsDomination) claim to essentially be a CC finds website, which in essence I suppose they are... But don’t get your hopes up for a Lana replacement because they are SO much more than that. And not in a good way.

I know this is an old subject, and most people probably thought it was all over and done with, but Simsdom is still around and what’s worse is that I’ve noticed a growing trend among my fellow Game Changers who create content for Youtuber and Twitch/Mixer of promoting the site by using it to do CC shopping haul videos and streams, which is encouraging their viewers to use Simsdom. I’m not going to name names or point fingers but it made me realise that maybe some people don’t understand just how bad Simsdom is for the community in general, but especially for the amazingly dedicated CC creators of Simblr. And it’s just so disappointing to see people that some many in the community, including myself, look up to promoting this garbage site!

If you’re curious to know why this is a problem, I’ll explain under the cut. If not, keep scrolling... But don’t say I didn’t warn you.

If you visit the Simsdom website (which I’ve purposely not provided a link to because you absolutely shouldn’t visit it) you’ll notice a whole bunch of custom content is available there, more than likely you’ll even find quite a bit from some of your faves like @peacemaker-ic​, @nolan-sims​, @storylegacysims​, @crypticsim​, @renorasims​, @savvysweet​ and MANY more. My stuff is even on there as well and if you’re a creator, the chances are high your stuff is too; whether you want it to be or not.

But don’t be fooled, myself and most of the other creators whose content appears on their site did not give permission for our content to be shared on there. In fact, most of us have specifically asked Simsdom to remove our content from their site. I say “most” because there are some people who willing uploading their content there (god knows why). The easiest way to the tell the difference is to look at who posted the content. If you see this:

That content has been shared by a bot, without the creator’s permission and more than likely against their many requests that Simsdom NOT share their content. If it says the name of the actual creator instead of “Exchange”, that creator uploaded it themselves.

You might also ask why anyone would care if their content was shared on a CC finds blog, after all, it means more traffic to our blogs and content, right? First of all, whether it brings in more traffic or not, is beside point. These creators have specifically requested Simsdom not share their content and they have been ignored, disrespected, threatened, and harassed. Simsdom claims that their users make up 30-90% of Tumblr creators traffic, but I call bullshit. I check my Google analytics every single month for traffic coming in to both my Tumblr and Blogger from Simsdom and I can tell you that LESS THAN 1% of the COMBINED TOTAL traffic from BOTH BLOGS comes from there. And when you understand how they operate, you’ll understand why that is.

- UPDATE -

In reference to Simsdom’s response to this post, they linked 5 creators that they claim meet their crazy statement that their site provides creators with 30-90% of their traffic. So I just thought I’d point out some interesting facts I noticed while looking at those sites.

One of those sites is dead; literally, it doesn’t exist anymore, if it ever even did. Another, @simiracle​, is a fellow Game Changer who reblogged this post, so I’m guessing they don’t have support there. And the other 3 are alpha CC creators, none of whom have ever uploaded any of their CC to Simdom, nor have they ever mentioned Simsdom on their sites in any way. However, all three earn money on their own content via either adfly, adsense, patreon, or some combination of the three; my guess would be they wouldn’t be too happy to find out Simsdom is making money off them too.

You see, Simsdom might sometimes link back to the original creators site, but often times they don’t. I’ve noticed quite a bit of the content of my own on their site directly links to the file on SimFileShare, completely bypassing both my Tumblr and my Blogger. This might not seem like a big problem, but what about if the creator has put specific instructions, requirements, or notes on the original download page that if the downloader doesn’t read could result in broken/unusable CC, or worse, a broken game?

- UPDATE -

In reference to Simsdom’s response to this post, they linked to SimFileShare’s page on SimilarWeb and claimed that I was lying about direct-linking to my files there because their site does not appear in the list of referring sites. What they failed to mention is that that list only shows the TOP 5 sites that link to SimFileShare regularly. There are still 385 other sites that aren’t shown and can’t be seen without having an account with SimilarWeb. Convenient, huh?

I also said they only direct-linked SOME content. With my content it was only about 4 or 5 things out of the 15 or so they have on their site and I didn’t check anyone else’s stuff but I have heard other creators say the same thing. So of course they’re not going to show up in the top 5 if it’s only SOME links.

But wait, there’s more.

Anyone downloading from their website without an adblocker is forced to wade through potentially harmful ads as well. Notice the blue button that says “download” at the top? That’s not a real download button and if you click it, it will instantly begin shoving pop ups in your face claiming you have a system error or that your local law enforcement agency has detected illegal activity from your IP. Yes, I clicked it. There is nothing of importance left on my HDD (it’s all stored safely on an external drive that isn’t connected to the PC at all) because this drive has been slowly dying for weeks and I’m destroying it tomorrow and replacing it with a brand new one, so I decided to take a chance.

These ads, which are on pretty much every page of Simsdom, are what’s called “Ransomware”, and it’s whole purpose is to distract you with fake pop up “warnings” when you click on it so that you don’t realise it’s actually downloading a very harmful file to your computer in the background. It’s designed to be next to impossible to close the pop ups, so that even if you somehow became aware of the download happening, you couldn’t get past the pop ups to stop it before it’s had time to finish downloading and automatically begin running it’s payload when it’s done.

What payload? That’s the scariest part, you won’t know until it’s too late. It could be something as simple as a trojan that will force your PC to mine bitcoins, which is still harmful because these mining trojans are resource hogs and put a massive strain on your CPU. Or a trojan designed to target and encrypt specific files on your computer (usually sensitive ones) and demand you pay a literal ransom (usually either in bitcoin or pre-paid cash) and if you don’t, your files will either be complete erased or leaked.

Or worse still, it could be something even more sinister such as a key-logger; a piece of spyware that is designed to track and log EVERY. SINGLE. KEY. you touch on your keyboard. So every password you use, every online banking key code you enter, all the conversations you have via Discord, Twitter, Tumblr, or any other form of instant messaging, that fanfiction you’ve been working on that you are too scared to show anyone in case they think you’re a pervert, your credit card and bank account number you use to shop online, what porn you look for, even your Google search history (regardless of if you’re incognito); all of it will be no longer private and in the hands of someone who could use it to steal your identity, empty out your bank accounts, charge thousands of dollars worth of goods to your credit card, or expose every little strange thing you do on your computer that you thought no one would ever find out about, unless you pay their ransom.

Scary huh?

Also notice that those Get Famous recolours I made don’t say that they actually require Get Famous? Why is that a problem, you say? For most people it’s not, you see “Get Famous Recolours” and you automatically know you need Get Famous to use them, but what about people who are new to using CC and don’t know that for my recolours to work you need the pack they came from? Yeh, that’s a problem, because that particular download is one of those ones that leads straight to SimFileShare:

It leads directly to the merged file, which is NOT the only file available for download in that set, just the largest. But no one who finds my content on Simsdom will ever know that will they? Nor will they read the part of the download page that clearly states Get Famous is required to use the recolours.

I hear you saying “But adblockers are a thing”. Yes they are, but that doesn’t solve the issue of them linking straight to the file. And also, here’s what happens when you try to download something from Simsdom with an adblocker enabled:

You’re forced to wait 180 seconds before the download button appears. THREE WHOLE MINUTES in which you cannot move from that page or the counter will stop, and it will only restart when you go back to that page and stay there for the entire three minutes. Even Adfly isn’t that gross.

So, all of that isn’t enough to discourage you from using this vile site you say? Well, let me introduce you to the person/people who run the site. There are plenty of examples floating around Tumblr of how disrespectful, arrogant, immature, and disturbing the owner/s are (just search for “Simsdom” and you’ll see) but here’s just a few posts showing “receipts” of what happened to creators when they ask for their content to be removed from the site: Here,  here, and here.

They have threatened to doxx several creators, tried to blackmail others, threatened to shut down some people’s sites, and even actually refused to remove people’s content unless they say “please”; as though these creators are six year old children who need to learn a lesson for not wanting THEIR content on someone else’s website!

All of this was said AFTER they made a post on their Tumblr saying they would respect creators wishes to not have their content on their site. I myself had a run-in with them as well but I don’t have the receipts because as soon as they finally agreed to remove my content (after almost 4 days of arguing with them and being threatened several times) they blocked me... and they continue to share my content to this day. That’s part of the reason why my motivation to create has been so low lately; I know its just going to end up over there, locked behind a paywall making money for these disgusting people and tricking simmers into thinking they have to pay to access my stuff.

But back to the story! Once they realised 99% of Tumblr creators — the people they get most of their content from — were going to ask to have their creations removed however, they changed their mind and instead started refusing to remove content. In fact, if you go to their website and use the contact form and choose the option “Remove my Content” they literally ask if you are Tumblr creator or not, and if you say you are, this is what you get:

And that “Our Rights here” link? That leads to this nonsense that literally contradicts itself with almost every single sentence:

“Creations can’t be uploaded without the creators permission... but we do not need permission to share your creations” “Feel free to contact us to ask to remove your content... but actually don’t bother contacting us asking to remove your content because we won’t” “SimsDomination is a free website... We don’t steal any content... *literally has other people’s free content locked behind a paywall and charges people membership fees to remove said paywall*”

And as for the EA terms part... I have news for you Simsdom, YOU are the only one breaking EA’s terms of use by putting content behind paywalls. I’m an EA Game Changer, I have actually read the terms of use AND spoken at length on the topics of earning revenue from CC, and why paywalls/memberships/exclusives are against EA’s terms of use with the Sim Gurus, have you? Didn’t think so.

If you had, you’d realise that we are allowed to earn revenue from our CC by having ads on our blogs/sites provided they aren’t deceptive — you know, like that ad with the big blue button you have that shows up on every single page of your site — and don’t lead to anything malicious, which yours do. I clicked several of the ads on your site and they all either lead to disgusting 18+ websites, started producing ransomware pop ups like I described earlier, or tried to download a mysterious file called setup.exe to my computer (which was most likely a trojan as well). We are also allowed to earn revenue via donations and Patreon early access systems provided the content is also made available for free to the general public within 14 days.

We are not, however, allowed to lock content behind Patreon exclusives, memberships and paywalls such as Adfly; which is exactly what you are doing. Like Adfly, you are not only potentially exposing underage children to 18+ content and risking the safety of people’s PCs, but you are also forcing them to wait to click a link and charging membership fees to avoid having to wait to download said content that isn’t even yours; content that you have been asked REPEATEDLY to remove. That is the very definition of a paywall. It is NOT the same as Pinterest or Facebook AT ALL, they might have ads but they aren’t malicious and they do not force people to wait to view content.

- UPDATE - 

In reference to Simsdom’s response to this post, this is probably one of my most favourite Simsdom lies, because it never changes but it’s so easy to prove false! “Users don’t need to pay to download any content and don’t need to wait to download them” Oh really? Shall we take a look at your site on the old SimilarWeb that you love so much?

How strange. If you don’t make people wait, then why do you need adfly? And if no one has to pay, then why do you need premium memberships to get rid of the ads and wait time you don’t have? Odd.

Also, lets talk Adsense. I never said I had a problem with you having ads on your site; I said I had a problem with the TYPE of ads on your site. If you seriously don’t think your ads are in any way harmful, I’d suggest you take another look at your Adsense, because either it’s been hacked or you seriously don’t know what you’re doing. Oh, but that’s right, “Google will never display suspicious ADs“... Mmm hmm, you just go right on believe that. Yeh, it’s definitely not possible for Google to be hacked... Nope, definitely not.

Also, if you use your Adsense revenue to pay for your site.... what happens to the extra? Because based on your SimilarWeb page I can take a rough guess at how much you earn every month through Adsense alone and there’s no way your site costs that much to run. For that matter, where does all the extra revenue from Adfly, Short.st and this mysterious “other” go? And all the revenue you get from your premium subscriptions that you totally don’t charge people money for?...

Is that fish I smell?

You are not doing anyone any favours here, so stop pretending that you’re in this for anything other than money. Stop sharing content you’ve been asked REPEATEDLY to remove/not share and breaking EA’s and many creators TOUs!

If you’ve managed to make it this far, congrats lol I know this has been long and probably boring but thank you for taking the time to read the whole thing. All this post was meant to do was explain why people should not support Simsdom, and why I’m so disappointed in other Game Changers for promoting it, but it kind of got away from me a little.

Oh well, now you know what Simsdom is and why I will NEVER support them or willingly allow my content to be shared on their site. And if you do decide to still use their site, just... please be careful. My content will always be free and safe to download, just like the majority or CC creators here on Tumblr. Don’t pay for something you can get for free from the original source.

Also, if you’re looking for a Lana replacement (aka a good CC finds blogs that isn’t shady af like Simsdom) check out @maxismatchccworld!

- UPDATE -

This isn’t in relation to anything specific, just the situation as a whole. It seems Simsdom has just removed the search box from their website completely:

I’m sure it was totally legit reasons and not at all because they didn’t want anyone searching for their own content on the Simsdom website. Just like it wasn’t for that reason the last time too...

[paodequeijofeliz-blog]

Let me tell you a good story

Bloodbound Fanfiction (characters and main story belongs to Pixelberry Studios).

Pairing: Kamilah Sayeed and MC (Annie)

Information:  this takes place after Bloodbound 3, here I’m recreating how Kamilah and MC would meet if she had never gone to Raines Corporation right away.

Summary: Thirty years after meeting Annie for the first time, Kamilah is now a wife and a mother. During a regular family dinner, she decides to tell her daughter and their new son-in-law the story of how she fell in love with Annie after an unusual meeting through the hallways of NYU.

Warnings: none.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 5

Let me tell you a good story - Part 4

March 2nd, 2048.

           “Do not laugh”. – Anna pointed a finger at Drake. – “I was still confused.”

           “Not laughing, I swear. It is completely reasonable that you thought she worked for Ms. Sayeed.” He nervously took a long gulp of soda.

           Kamilah was taping her fingers on the table, a sweet melody playing in her head. Nothing could disturb her peaceful life anymore. She was sitting by a beautiful wife, someone who still held her heart. In front of them, there was the most intelligent and sweet child in the world, named after Kamilah’s brother Lysimachus. Even Drake, the goofy human, was a delight company. He was the perfect balance for Lysia’s seriousness.

           “Are you ok?” Annie’s touch woke her up.

           “I’m perfect. Why don’t you go fetch the dessert while I continue for a while? I left a surprise for you in the microwave.”

           Anna jumped into the kitchen with impressionable speed. If there was one thing she loved, that was Kamilah’s volcano chocolate cake, a masterpiece perfected over years and years of repeatedly baking it.

           “Child.” Both Lysia and Kamilah said at the same time when they saw Annie’s reaction.

           “You know, it creeps me out when you two do that.” Drake scratched his arm, having goosebumps.

           “You should see when they fight!!” Anna yelled from the kitchen. “It’s like watching a couple of clones!”

           They were interrupted by someone opening the door. The flash of a sparkle on Lysia’s face told Kamilah who the person was faster than anything else. The human girl opened the biggest smile she could, but remained sat on the chair, not even losing her posture.

           “Uncle Adrian!”

           “Hi, sweetie. I’m sorry to be late, there was an emergency to solve.” He placed a soft kiss on Lysia’s forehead before shaking Drake’s hands and smiling at Kamilah. “Am I interrupting?”

           “Not at all. We were talking about the past. Actually, little brother, you arrived at the perfect moment. Now you can help me remember this part of the story.”

           “Which story?”

           “Ti storu uf ru we fil in luv.” Anna came back carrying the cake, a big piece of it already missing. Her face had chocolate all over the mouth, nose, and chin.

           Kamilah sighed. At this point, there was no need for translation anymore. Adrian only laughed and carried on. “The story of how you two fell in love? Oh, boy. Rough times. You think Kamilah is a tense person? Should’ve seen her realizing her feelings for Annie. I thought New York wouldn’t survive it.”

           “Adrian, why don’t you continue for us? We were just getting to the part you entered the story.” The vampire queen said over the table while cleaning Annie’s face with a napkin. “And you, behave. The last time you ate so much chocolate, you cried for the entire night with a stomach-ache.”

           “Yu crid the whole niti withy stumachache, bla bla bla” she mocked her wife, taking another big bite of dessert. Kamilah solemnly ignored this part.  

           “Ok, ok. Let’s see… So, after that dinner and the job proposition, Kamilah wanted to either kill or kiss Annie, it was still unclear.”

           “Hmm, both.” Answered Kamilah, watching her wife out of the corner of the eye.

 August 29th, 2018

           The sky was already dark.

           The sky is always dark when Kamilah is looking through the window. The same old dark sky she had seen for years. But, tonight, something feels different. The sight that usually calms her down, the peaceful shade of black marked by the city lights, it was suddenly not enough. There was an irritation growing inside her chest, heavy and dangerous like a bomb ready to explode. The reason of it was worse than the feeling itself. She had felt anger many times before, with better motives. Right now, Kamilah knew deep down it was stupid to be so bothered by something that small. Finally, not being able to stand her own company anymore, her fingers called the same number it always does at moments like this.

           “Hey.” Adrian’s voice surged on the other side of the line.

           “Why hasn’t she given us an answer yet?”

           “What? Who?”

           Kamilah sighed. She was so tired. Angry. Frustrated. “Why hasn’t that mewling tiny stupid woman answered our business proposal? It has been a week, Adrian. There’s a limit for my patience. I don’t have time for this.”

           “Hm, you’re mad.” He just acknowledged it, his voice a little surprised. “I didn’t know this matter to be so urgent. In fact, I remember vividly that you were the one saying not to rush things when I suggested hiring a historian. She must have given you quite the impression to make you so eager to close the deal.”

           She snorted, and Adrian was sure her eyes rolled as well. “It’s not about her. It could be anyone. I just want to put things in motion.”

           “Right.” He didn’t buy it. “Well, my friend, then I’m going to tell you the options we have, since you clearly won’t quiet down until something is done.”

           Kamilah fixed her posture immediately, ready to jump into a plan.

           “Fist: you can call one of the historians on the list I sent to you last month. Call all the fifteen options, if it suits better. They were all graduated in high profile universities and sustain the best curriculums in the country.” Adrian gave it a second of silence, and since she didn’t make a sound, he continued. “Second: throw away the idea of working with one of them and just make a deal with one of us. I don’t know any of our group who is a historian, but most of them know a lot about the past and maybe will even understand the mission better than an outsider.”

           Silence again. And then, the distant sound of Kamilah’s high heels hitting the floor, like she was impatiently trembling her leg. Adrian knew that sign. It meant none of the options were good enough for her. “Or… Third: if you do believe she’s worth it, you can always go over there and demand an answer.”

           Her eyes widened.  

           “Can I do that?”

           “Sure.” He laughed. “As long as you don’t hurt, yell or kill the poor woman.”

           That was it. The solution. She wanted the mission to start already, and if Kamilah wanted anything, no one could stop her from getting it. Much less a professor who hadn’t done the courtesy of giving a simple answer. After a couple minutes, the Egyptian found Anna’s address on the university website and head there without thinking twice. In a blink, she was already ringing the intercom, but it seemed to not be working.

           “Kamilah?” Annie was dangerously leaning on the window. “What are you doing here?”

           “We need to talk. Open the door.”

           The grumpy and ordering tone made Anna frown, but she didn’t argue. From the street, the Egyptian could hear her mumbling things in Portuguese while getting down the stairs. Even though Kamilah couldn’t understand it, she was sure it was cursing. Without saying a word to each other, they climbed the stairs to the third floor. Annie’s place was thoroughly clean and covered with the pleasant scent of vanilla. A mess of books and papers had taken over the living room, where a dining table was set: a dish with a weird sandwich, a glass of cheap wine and an opened notebook. It looked like she was working late.

           “Take a sit. Do you want to drink something? I’ve got wine, rum, whisky, gin, coffee… Water.” The sweet tone on her voice disarmed Kamilah for just a second. The professor seemed extremely tired, but even like this, she wasn’t able to be rude.

           “No, I… I’m fine. Thank you.”

           “What happened?”

           Kamilah’s arms crossed over her breasts. That confused look on Annie’s face was genuine. How could she not know why Kamilah was there? That was the last drop. It unlocked all the irritation that had been burning on the Egyptian’s chest for days. “Did you hit your head recently? Or do you suffer from diseases such as Alzheimer?”

           “Wh…What? I… No…”

           “Why the hell do you think I am here, Ms. Mali? Do you believe I am a woman who has the time to sit around waiting for you to make a simple decision? To answer a yes or no question? Look at me. Do not stare at the floor. Raise your eyes.” Kamilah approached her with such a fast movement, Annie barely saw it happening. In a second, she was standing before her, lifting the professor’s chin to make their eyes meet. “It is not polite to just disappear once a business proposal is showed to you. I do not tolerate this kind of behaviour. If you’re too much of a child yet, then maybe we were wrong to approach you in the first place.”

           Anna didn’t stop her. Didn’t move either. Kamilah saw something growing on the professor’s face, some sort of weakness she wasn’t expecting to find. Her expression was flickering between insecurity and sadness. Finally, an answer came.

           “I can’t stay.” A whisper. The palpable shame in her tone. “I’m leaving.”

            “What do you mean by that?”

           “I mean… I got fired. I’m leaving the country. I’m sorry.” She shrunk her shoulders. Somehow, the woman was getting smaller. More fragile. “It happened on Saturday morning, right after that dinner. I know it’s no excuse and should’ve called you sooner. I’m really sorry. I just thought that now that I’m no longer related to the NYU, my name and reputation wouldn’t be of any value to you. I guess… I was embarrassed to let you know and go through the whole ‘well, then we don’t want you anymore’ conversation. Either way, I am sorry. For not answering, for making you come here, for everything.”

           Kamilah was not at all prepared for this. She went from almost tearing the professor’s throat opened to drowning inside her sorrow and beautiful features. Without much thinking, the Egyptian brushed some hair behind Annie’s ears in a soft movement.

           “Are you leaving the country because of visa issues?”

           “Yes. Not the main reason though… Even if they granted me a permanent visa, I don’t have money to stay. I was a recent teacher at NYU, my payment wasn’t that high and most of it went to cover the costs of the postdoctoral course. Now I’m trying to finish some papers quickly and I still need to buy the plane tickets.”

           “I don’t care about NYU.”

           Annie’s eyes came back to Kamilah only to find an unreadable face. “What?”

           “It’s not relevant if you’re related or not to a University. That doesn’t change my stand.”

           “But…”

           “We still want you.”

           The professor was speechless, staring in disbelief.

           “Answer me, Annie. Will you accept the proposal?”

           Kamilah’s arms uncrossed and her hands went to rest on the hips. She saw a thousand of emotions running through the professor’s eyes in a second.

          “What about my visa?”

         “Not a problem I can’t solve. As for the money part… Adrian will discuss this with you. He’s responsible for the bureaucracies. But I can guarantee, regardless of how the conversation goes, it’s going to be way more than what NYU was paying. So, there won’t remain any obstacles forcing you to leave.”

         Anna smiled. Not because of the money. She just noticed that Kamilah had come in person not to fight, but to persuade her to say yes. That made her wonder what the Egyptian’s thoughts were right now. “I did answer, you know. When I got home, after dinner.”

        “Oh?”

       She pointed at the computer on the desk. “It’s in the draft emails part. I was going to send it on Monday morning.”

       Kamilah arched one eyebrow. “And what was the answer?”

       Instead of giving her the pleasure to hear it, Annie decided to contour the table and send the draft email that was waiting there all along. Inside Kamilah’s pocket, her cell phone immediately buzzed. She gave it a quick glance before smiling and walking towards the door.

        “I’ll see you tomorrow morning, Ms. Mali. Don’t be late.”

[prince-claremont-diaz]

from outside looking in

An introspection into isolation, finding yourself and finding your people.

Or essentially, a stream of consciousness about Arthur's life leading up to the events of the season 5 trailer.

Warnings: internalised homophobia, general angst

Word count: 2.4k

Ao3 version

Yes, I wrote an Arthur fic because why the fuck not

For as long as he could remember, Arthur had felt like an outsider. When he was little, he used to play with his action figures alone on the playground, launching them off the swings or scrambling up trees and slides to pretend he was way up high in outer space, simply looking down at the rest of the world. He read comics and books and kept to himself for the most part. As he grew up, his classmates laughed at him for his 'toys' and 'picture books', on one occasion going so far as to flush one of his comics down a toilet. He knew there was something about him that generally kept others away from him, knew he didn't quite act or feel like the rest of them.

Like an alien sent right from one of his stories.

When Arthur first met Basile, however, it was the first time he felt like he belonged.

They met when they were 10 years old, when Basile transferred to his school after moving to the area. Arthur remembered the day vividly. It was the first day back at school and his dad had dropped him off on his way to work early, so he was one of the only kids that had arrived yet. He had been sitting alone at his new desk, flicking through his Hawkeye comic, idly glancing at the other kids chatting at another table when the door to the classroom unceremoniously burst open. With a tiny, high pitch yelp, somebody stumbled into the room, nearly taking out another desk on their descent to the floor. Arthur put his comic down as he watched the newcomer, who had wild curly black hair, getting awkwardly to his feet.

The now familiar bright grin immediately met Arthur from across the room. Dressed in an ill fitting Star Wars t-shirt and sporting a too-big orange backpack, the new boy immediately started walking over to Arthur, ignoring the jeers of the other classmates. He stopped in front of Arthur's desk and held out a marker-covered hand, grinning. "Hi! I'm Basile! But you can call me Baz! I like your comic, too. Can I sit here?" the boy babbled away, already sitting down in the seat opposite Arthur.

Arthur had nodded, his own wide grin melting over his face. "Thanks! I like your shirt!" he exclaimed, pointing at the other boy's t-shirt.

And from then on, Arthur had one other person in his life to keep him company.

For a while, Arthur tried to ignore most of the other people around him. He had Baz, so why should he care about everyone else? Why should he worry about the rest when he was playing video games or watching movies or discussing comic books with his best friend? It was easy to brush away the comments about his glasses or his comics if he just focused on the person that actually liked him. Baz was virtually the only person he cared about and he cared enough for the rest of the planet.

But as he got older, the retorts became harder and harder to let go. The name calling turned from "Four eyes" to whatever slurs they could come up with, chasing him down with jeers and taunts he had no choice but to listen to. Flushing his comics or throwing his action figures turned into pushing him into the lockers or throwing things at him.

It is almost impossible to ignore what stares you right in the face, after all.

The question of "am I gay?" swirled around Arthur's mind for years. Whenever he caught himself looking at Baz for too long or caring a bit too much about a male character, the smallest of voices wondered somewhere in the back of his head whether it was true. Was he gay? Or did everyone else look at their friends the way Arthur did with Baz?

His browsing history was meticulously deleted, all of his secrets hidden away in the depths of the internet where no one else would ever find them. He never lingered long on websites, always sure to keep safer tabs open should someone come into his room without warning. He only ever searched up the burning question or scrolled through the endless chat rooms in the dead of night, looking for the answers in the depth of internet forums and 12 question quizzes. He felt like he was on some quest to find an answer that he was simply keeping from himself, never fully allowing himself the truth.

Soon enough, Arthur couldn't handle it anymore. He hated himself when he caught himself daydreaming about his close friend, cursed himself for being a 'pervert'. He wasn't gay, surely. He'd had crushes on girls, after all. That meant he was straight, right?

Instead of acting on anything or letting himself even look at Baz, Arthur hid away. He spent his lunch periods in the school library, avoiding his friend in the halls in favour of keeping his nose tucked into the latest comic books. He took the long way to and from school to avoid walking the same way as Basile, ducking through side streets and crossing the street with abandon. Whenever Baz tried to talk to him, he shrugged him off, insisting he was busy with school work. His heart raced every time he saw the dark curls at the other end of the hall going to class, dread overflowing his body like a broken tap, shoving him into the corner of the hallway to avoid being seen by his friend.

It is agony to avoid the unavoidable magnetic pull of longing.

"Arthur? Can we talk?"

It had been in the middle of November, the wind unusually violent and unforgiving, rattling the windows of the small cafeteria. Arthur was sitting at one of the big circular tables by himself, poking half heartedly at his lunch, feeling light years away from the rest of the tables in the room. When he looked up to his name, his heart dropped as he made eye contact with a pair of familiar, sad brown eyes standing over him. Arthur had never seen Baz looking so forlorn, like a kicked puppy, clutching his green lunch bag with an iron grip.

Before he could dismiss him, Baz dropped into the seat next to him, dropping his lunch onto the table and pulling out his food. "Baz, what are you—" he had started, glancing over at the sandwich in an attempt to avoid looking up into those damn eyes.

"You're avoiding me," Basile blurted, "Why? I thought we were friends." Arthur glanced up finally, feeling his face flush at the look Baz was giving him. His eyebrows were knitted together and his bottom lip trembled in a frown like Arthur had never seen.

"We are friends," he insisted, "And I'm not avoiding you. I've just been busy."

"You won't even look at me anymore," Baz whined, taking a bite of his sandwich. "I know I'm not the smartest–everyone always reminds me–but I can tell you've been avoiding me for weeks. Just tell me why and I'll leave you alone for good."

But Arthur couldn't tell Basile why he had been avoiding him. He could barely admit to himself just why he felt the need to avoid the only person who had ever made him feel less alone. Deep down, he knew exactly why he forced himself to look away, forced himself to stay away.

But despite this, Basile was his best friend. Neither of them had any other friends besides each other and in his pathetic self-isolation to avoid his own feelings which were staring right at him, Arthur had ultimately abandoned Baz. Baz, who had treated him with nothing but kindness since the day he literally fell right into Arthur's life. Baz, who liked the same things as him and let him talk about his silly fantasies and hobbies. Baz, who never ever judged him for anything at all.

"I'm sorry," Arthur had said that day, swallowing back tears and forcing himself to look into those bright brown eyes he loved yet hurt him so much. "I-I can't explain why, but I'm sorry for avoiding you. You of all people don't deserve that."

No matter what, Arthur knew he couldn't just leave Basile just because he couldn't handle his own feelings. And so, he stopped avoiding Baz. He let them go back to normal, going over to each other's houses to play video games or rewatch movies, bickering about their favourite characters over lunch. He talked to Basile about the pretty girls in their school and let Basile plot out his futures with them, pretending he didn't think it was futile. He vowed to never let his emotions get the best of him. He prioritised their friendship over whether or not he did in fact have a crush on Baz. They had more important things to worry about like going to Lycée in a few months and going to a new school again. It did not matter if he thought Basile's eyes looked nice the way they seemed to glow in the sunlight or his desire to touch his hair or hug him. What mattered was that Baz was still his friend, despite him acting like a dick for weeks.

When they went off to Lycée together, picking different classes from each other, of course their dynamic changed slightly. That had been expected. They no longer shared as many classes together or had time to just play video games together. Basile talked and talked and talked about the hot girls in the years above or the girls he was crushing on for weeks, hardly seeming to notice that Arthur never contributed more than advice and support. They both made friends in other classes, spending more time with them than each other.

Slowly, as Arthur got more used to his new school and new people everywhere, he started to feel better about himself. Sure, he was still a bit of a nobody, mostly drifting from group to group, never quite a part of things. But he still had Basile and he liked his classes enough to get by.

One night, buried beneath his bedsheets, Arthur stumbled upon an article which changed his entire life. Hunched over his laptop, scrolling through the billionth website that night, his jaw dropped. His heart hammered against his chest, blood rushing past his ears and a gasp falling from his lips as he read.

Bisexuality is the sexual or romantic attraction to both men and women or to two or more genders.

With this newfound knowledge, Arthur continued to keep it private. He held the word deep inside his chest, locked away for safekeeping, only to be released in the darkest of nights. He whispered it to himself in the mirror, muffled by the rushing water of the sink, shrouded by the midnight stars twinkling above. He saw blue and purple and pink in everything, in every sunrise and sunset, in every rainbow and article, allowing himself only the smallest of glances. He kept the word safe from the rest of the world, blanketing it and boxing it away with the rest of his old yet sacred possessions.

Even as he kept his secret to himself, he slowly, gradually learned to accept himself. He wasn't wrong for how he felt. He allowed himself to be closer, to reach out and touch, to tease and to smile. He no longer held back as much, caving into his near constant desire to touch. And Baz didn't seem to mind, so what was the harm?

In their second year of lycée, he and Basile befriended Lucas and Yann. He sat next to Lucas in a few of his classes, sharing jokes about their teachers or whispering about the homework. Yann was also a delight, teaching him to skateboard and always lending a helping hand.

Arthur even befriended Alexia, whom he was forced to sit next to in Biology. She was a whirlwind with colourful hair and a friendly smile, making jokes left and right, sending his heart out the window. She was caring and energetic, far more intelligent than he was and beautiful.

Of course, Arthur couldn't stay away from his sexuality forever. When his close friend Lucas came out as gay and suddenly he had a new pansexual friend from the year above, Eliott, it was unavoidable to think about. Alexia talked about being bi often as well, making his whole face flush violently every time. Sexuality and attraction were common topics of conversation in their friend group these days.

When Alexia kissed him on the dance floor at Daphné's party, Arthur felt his entire body erupt at every nerve ending, a force so powerful he could taste static. It was the softest and the shortest of kisses, but it felt like belonging. Arthur could barely believe his luck, holding on tighter to her like he would lose her if he wasn't careful. For weeks afterwards, through flirting and teasing, Arthur fell harder and harder for her, finally getting the guts to kiss her again at Imane's party. And she had kissed him right back.

With Alexia, Arthur no longer felt the need to hide or to repress. He could be open and honest with her, knowing she wouldn't judge him. He no longer felt constantly on edge because of the potential disaster of Baz finding out about his feelings or of the potential reaction of their friends, seeing how they had reacted to Lucas and Eliott. Alexia was special and she liked him for who he was and Arthur could only thank the universe every time he had the luck to even be in her presence.

And now, as he was dancing the night away, preparing to count down to yet another year, yet another decade, Arthur looked around the crowded room. He looked at his gorgeous girlfriend Alexia as she danced with Daphné and Imane and he looked at Lucas and Eliott so captivated and entangled together. He looked at Yann and Emma jumping around as they talked and he turned to Baz as he moved closer. They danced together briefly, smiling, closer than his younger self would ever have imagined.

He looked through the blinding white strobe lights and the flood of blue, grinning around at his friends. He thought back to his entire life and as he looked around the room, he felt a lot less like an outsider than before.

[charlies-crashcourses]

Charlie’s College Crash Course #1: How to write a 10-page paper in 1 day

Background info first: I’m in the last year of my English undergrad degree and I’ve had to write at least 3 dozen 10+ page papers in that time. That being said, I’ve never once started writing a paper more than a few days in advance, and 9 times out of 10 I go for one day only. Honestly, this should be considered my trademark at this point because after all my high school AP courses and my English degree, it’s been going on 7 years of 1 day papers.

and so, dear friends, I would like to pass on this skill to you all. I should mention, none of this will work if you’re not already pretty solid on paper writing, i.e. if you only ever get C’s on your papers now this isn’t magically going to get you up to an A with one day. This is just to streamline the process, allowing for more time for other things or, more commonly, allowing you to not freak the fuck out when you realize the deadline is tonight at midnight and you’ve procrastinated all month on the final paper for your class.

(I should also mention that I’m currently procrastinating a 2.5k word paper due tomorrow night that I’ve only read one of two books for, so. There’s that.)

Anyway, without further ado, here we fucking go:

Step 1: Prep for the Day

this is going to be a marathon, not a sprint, so make sure you prep the day accordingly. Ideally, you’d wake up before noon, make sure there’s nothing else planned for the day, and tell your roommates/parents to leave you alone until you officially reemerge at midnight (or, if you’re in college and have a 24 hr library, try going there. Mine has closed off study rooms that I can chill in, but if you’rs doesn’t just find a relatively comfy quiet spot). If you’re at home, pick one spot, clear it off super quick, grab some snacks and energy drinks, make sure you have everything charged and ready to go. I don’t recommend cafes or the like simply because there’s lots of distractions and also those places close before midnight, so you can’t stay there the entire time and therefor waste time moving halfway through.

Also, I would recommend taking a break between all the steps after this one. Don’t let the break take too long, but just long enough to walk the block, or grab another snack, or do some stretches, or watch a ten minute video, something like that. I personally never break at a natural stopping point, because then I’ll never get back to it, but how you break is up to you.

Step 2: Preliminary Research

now normally I do some preliminary research beforehand. Basically looking into the topic, figuring out generally what resources would be best, etc. That can usually be done in five to ten minute bursts throughout the week or so before the due date, whenever the topic comes to mind.

But then again, I’ve also procrastinated that until the very end as well, so. Usually all that takes if you go for the day of is some quick google scholar searches, or if you have access to the MLA database that works as well. Or, if you’re more like me, you could just deep dive on wikipedia and check out what relevant facts pertain to what numbers in the bibliography, then go ahead and cite those wherever possible.

Basically, get a good base knowledge of the big facts. This step should be quick and dirty. For instance, for my paper my sophomore year on Robespierre (14 pages written in a record 6 hours) I combed through his wiki, some websites on the French Revolution, and watched the Crash Course youtbue video on the subject. The rest of the research was done after I did my first outline. 

Step 3: Outline #1

This is just a basic “What the fuck am I talking about” outline. It can be bullet points, numbers, stream of consciousness, i don’t care as long as it works for you. 

For the Robespierre paper, my first outline was something to the effect of: -born poor -school -elected to govt -took over govt -killed people -got killed

and that was it. It’s like, before you build a house you have to clear off the right amount of land, make sure there’s nothing in your way, and give yourself a vague area in which to build. Super simple stuff.

I did get some advice, from somewhere I can’t remember, that a paragraph is basically equal to half a page, and so (excluding one page length for your intro + conclusion) you should have around two paragraphs or ideas per page. So my outline above would need some more points, there, to keep me on track for my page count. I eventually added a whole paragraph about how he was chosen to read for a visiting King Louis at his school and was then ignored which made him hate the monarchy, and another about what happened after he died what with the government in shambles, etc etc. So two bullet points per page should do it.

Step 4: More Research

This is where you get a little more in depth. Look at your bullet points and learn everything you need to about them. 

For my first bullet, I found stuff like: “Robespierre was born in France in 1758 as Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre (the third of this name), to a lawyer and the daughter of a brewer, he had two siblings, and he could read by age eight. he also loved pigeons and started a lifelong feud with his sister over one that he gave her that she let die."

and then I would move on to the next bullet point, and so on and so forth, filling in the gaps. Make sure to keep track of where your info comes from, as well. It doesn’t have to be a full citation, but just the hyperlink after the fact is going to save you so much time, i promise

Pro Tip: don’t throw out anything as irrelevant just yet. Just gather all the facts, no judging. Trust me on this.

Step 5: Better Outline

this is where you start to have fun with it. I would like to remind you that no one, unless you have some crazy micromanaging professor, sees your outlines. This is for you and you only, so write it in whatever way makes sense to you. It can be colorful and fun and whatever you need it to be.

 I actually took screenshots of my outline for that robespierre paper (hence why i chose that one as an example) so here’s a look at what I do:

so, really, honestly, as shitty as you need this to be, or as many jokes, or whatever works for you my dude. Explain it like you would if it were a story you were telling, not a biographical/argumentative paper. Get informal with it.

Step 6: Write the Damn Thing

Okay to now that you did the research and wrote your fun outlines and all that, all you have to do now is write it! I tend to do this in the same doc as I do my outline, but starting again from the top so I can see what I need to add next right under where I’m typing, then delete it once I’ve covered the material. 

If you did your outline well, this is really just cleaning that up so it’s “school appropriate” and “not an affront to people’s eyes and sensibilities” or whatever. At this point, it should go super quick, maybe 2 hours max to finish up writing what you need to write, here.

Pro Tip: do your citations as you go. Better yet, make your bibliography first so that A its already done and B you know what your in text cites will be from the start so that you don’t have to add them in later. If you kept your hyperlinks next to your research, just open up citationmachine and get those cites, then replace the links in your outline with the actual citations so it’s easier to line them up with in text cites while you go

Step 7: Fudging

oh, you thought we were done after writing the paper? nah fam. Chances are, you didn’t hit the page count you wanted to, you’re probably around 1 full page short, unless you love long sentences. This is where my pro tip from all the way back on step 4 comes in.

First, before you do anything drastic, make sure your formatting is correct. If your prof wants the big long “name, date, class, assignment, etc” in the top left then that adds a lot of length. Fonts will also change your page length, and so will footnotes and citations.

If you did it right and saved all the less relevant details, congratulations! Just sprinkle a few of those in there and you’re magically at your page count. This is the only reason I included the pigeon story in my paper (and this post), because I was about 3/4 of a page short of passably saying I got to 14.

If you didn’t save those inane details, don’t go looking for them now. Trust me, it’s much more pain than it’s worth. Your best bet, then, would be to either A. Add one more point if you can think one up, B. do some more research for relevant details to add in, or C. expand on the details you already have with more examples or effects or whatever applies.

do not, i repeat do NOT, just try and expand the words you use, like changing “to” into “in order to” or whatever those deflate your phrases charts tell you Not to do. They tell you not to for a reason. 1. it sounds stupid adding them in after the fact, and 2. your professor absolutely 100% will know and will mark you down if you do that in excess. Inflated phrase charts like that are well known by professors, and also adding them in after the fact won’t fit in at all with the voice that the rest of your paper was written in, so it’ll stand out like a sore thumb. just don’t do it unless it’s your last possible “i have ten minutes to turn this in” effort.

Step 8: Celebrate!!

And that’s it! If you did it right, this whole process should have taken you around the equivalent of 1 hour per page you had to write or so, so in a regular twelve hour day you’ve got time to take breaks and eat and all that shit. Go turn it in and celebrate your victory!

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S4 Ep10 pt2: Yugi’s Never Ceasing Commute Continues

Last we left off, it was time to eat. Thank you. Thank you, Yugioh. You get me.

Not one of their better spreads, TBH.

No cheese wheels, too. They are truly living in hard times.

(read more under the cut)

Rex and Weevil decided to look for rare cards in the rubble of Arthur Hawkin’s house.

I don’t know why they bothered with this, everything was very clearly exploded and on fire, but youknow, these two just seem to be very hellbent on being bad at life. Just two jokes that are here just to be jokes, wearing these duel disks that they’re not going to use until it’s finally time for them to betray us. Checkov’s jokes.

And I hate to say this but they really are this season’s Bakura.

I know I just said that.

But this show really likes having at least one character that might turn at any moment and stab our protagonist in the back. They like to have at least one at all times there, hovering over Yugi’s oblivious shoulders, with that figurative knife (or literal, in the case of that time when Bakura stabbed himself without nearly any provocation).

In the past, when Bakura was out to lunch, we would have betraying friends like Kaiba, who would go solo in the middle of his own card game and end up throwing everyone in danger, and also Tristan who got full on possessed by the Big 5 and tried to murder everyone, but I guess after 4 seasons they were like “Youknow...I think Kaiba got over it.” and like...you can’t have Rebecca stab us in the back so lets bring Rex and Weevil.

At least their showtime is minimal, because unlike Bakura, who is pretty likeable even when he’s being an asshole, Rex and Weevil never turn off the asshole and are mostly just visual gags stumbling over eachother. Bakura was quite clever and had a bit of depth and mystery, while I don’t think Rex and Weevil are smart enough to even know how to spell mystery.

And if Rex and Weevil end up being good guys and the saviors of the whole show then my sincere apologies, but they are still kind of grating.

Now Rebecca gets a duel monster’s card that has a death threat on it, which is probably the normal way to sign your duel monsters cards in this universe. I imagine every card in Yugi’s deck has a couple death threats on each of them by now. Probably makes them more lucky.

Ya so...

I can forgive this. The people who made this looked at a map of California, forgot that California is roughly the same size as Japan, and were like “I mean, there’s like 50 states, it can’t be that big.”

But here’s the thing about Death Valley. I am a Californian, but I have never been there. This is why.

Death Valley is ASS to get to. Barely anyone lives there. Nothing goes there. You can’t just take a train, you have to drive there by going south past it and then turning around. It’s real round about and just in the middle of nowhere. May as well get there by flying into Las Vegas, and if you are flying into Las Vegas, chances are slim that you will leave that Vacation Town USA to vacation in a literal desert.

Clearly they saw the name “Death Valley” and got super excited but y’all...there’s a reason why we call it that, and everyone who knows about geography or is a Californian is kind of like “um...is Yugi...going to Death Valley???? That city slicker?”

Cuz this is not a normal desert. Normally, a human can survive 3 days without water, in Death Valley you apparently can only survive for 14 hours. It is the lowest point in the US and also the hottest point in the US and the place where the highest temperature was ever recorded on the Earth. And while that heat is only for 5 months of the year...it’s not winter in the show, is it? It’s fairly warm. San Fransisco wasn’t even foggy?

Like even the Death Valley website is like “please don’t leave the main roads and hike during the hot months” because y’all, this park is damn serious. Like this is one of the only National Parks that has not just one, but multiple ghost towns in it.

Don’t get me wrong, Death Valley’s very pretty and very fun I’ve heard, and it has like a very fancy dayspa in it, and if you like geography and like to rough it, then you will absolutely love how freakin weird Death Valley is. So, if you’re safe and know how to pack your gear, you’ll have no problem, but...Y’all, Yugi Muto, who barely survived Pegasus’ island (and only because Mai fed him) is going to just casually go into Death Valley.

In that outfit.

Then, in some barn somewhere (I have NO IDEA where this exchange takes place) Rafael is grilling Arthur only to realize that this is a very pointless conversation.

And in case you forgot Darts exist, he’s still out there, murdering people off for kicks. we’ll just add 20 more to the death count, the internet told me that’s the average amount of people on a fish boat of average size (although sometimes this boat seemed like the size of a shipping container barge but youknow...)

And in case you missed it, I have been doing the death counter wrong so I was 2 people behind--it’s correct now. With the rate this show goes I feel like we might see death 666 eventually. But, yes we did pass 269 so we’ll have to wait another 100, I guess, because it went to some rando on this boat. Nice.

(The highest surface temperature of Death Valley ((not the air, but the ground)) ever recorded, was 201° F.)

(That’s 94° C for those in the back.)

I mean Yugi is part Pharaoh so I guess he just has a strong attraction to really terrible deserts. He’s also half a dead guy so maybe he also just has a strong attraction to being dead.

But I dunno, maybe this is the months of the year where Death Valley is manageable? Maybe? Possibly? We’ll just assume that it is.

Now you can go horseback riding in Death Valley, as you can in any National Park, but it isn’t real normal to ride your horse all the way from San Fransisco. And like you can’t even let your dog off a leash in Death Valley. This is such a bad park for pets!

Also, I found out some fun facts about horse travel, for anyone interested in writing fantasy and wants to know the average speed of a horse.

So a horse can go about 100 miles in a day, but only for one day. If you do 250 miles, the time has to be more spread out since you must recharge your horse. According to some horse-specialist on the internet who does horse marathons from coast to coast, if you have to do 500 miles, then you average about 24 miles a day, accounting for horse-recovery time and assuming it’s a horse that wasn’t bred for super long distances. (this is about a 500 mi horse ride, ps)

The pony express of old, the iconic Wells Fargo, would actually have horse stations along the prairie, where you would trade in your tired horse for a new horse, so that way you would never have to stop going 100 miles in a day. Since Yugi never changed his horse, this ride would have been absolutely ridiculous, and Copernicus the horse, would have stopped somewhere in Gilroy.

But this is a kid’s show so wtv, we’re gonna ignore that.

(reminder that Yugi decided not to unhitch the perfectly serviceable truck and drive away with air conditioning.)

And Yugi really did make Rebecca promise not to tell these much older teens that he took off (something about how he doesn’t want to put more people in danger yada yada, normal Yugi stuff), but the show kind of blames this on Rebecca...but like...she’s 12. This one is on Yugi.

But, if Rebecca were older, maybe she would have done the same thing. Rebecca seems like maybe the type that realizes that when you like an idiot boy, you gotta let them do idiot things, and make idiot mistakes. You can’t just control what your friends do all the time, unlike this crew, which is controlling because that is the only way they keep eachother alive.

So Joey decides to ignore both of the cars right next to him, and just book it to save his stupid ass friend. On foot. To Death Valley. From what the show insisted was just outside San Fransisco.

And I guess that Rafael decided to just let Hawkins go?

Probably because Yugi got on a horse and Rafael was like “of course I know Yugi is chasing me on horseback off the main roads. Of course I know that.” and then he just...let Hawkins walk all the way back...

Hawkins should be dead, but not yet.

So lets check out Death Valley.

So like...again I just think they probably boarded everything and had a rough idea of “America has a bunch of natural canyons, right?” and didn’t realize that the Grand Canyon was soooo far from California.

There are actually canyons in Death Valley but like...I dunno if the art matches that so much? They aren’t nearly as massive as the canyon situation farther East.

Again this was their art choice that they made and it’s...a choice. And they committed to it.

And this bike thing happened?

This tandem bicycle for children lost among the wreckage of Rebecca Hawkin’s home is like a whole “baby shoes, never worn” short story in itself. Rebecca has nooo siblings or parents, right? She has a really old grandpa who is like 80 and doesn’t bike? Just uh...bringing that up...was this tandem bike for her to hang out with Yugi? Does Rebecca even have friends her own age? She already graduated college.

So much inferred by the bike that I know is just here because it’s a funny joke to see Rex and Weevil on a stupid tandem bike.

So I’ve heard about the bike/car/horse paradox before in regards to this season, (it’s one of the few things I knew about this season before going in) so I’m happy to see I’ve recapped enough Yugioh to see it play out.

The paradox being, if Yugi is on horseback, and Rex and Weevil are on a bike, and the rest are in a car, who arrives first?

Apparently the show itself isn’t even sure because Rex and Weevil can keep up with a horse???

Anyway, the correct answer to the paradox is that everyone not in a car is dead for not bringing any water.

Everyone except for Raphael, who probably put a camel pack into each of his shoulder pads.

OH NOW IT’S AN ANIME.

I don’t get why this is happening. But it’s a thing now. Rafael has either literal or metaphoric wings. Bear in mind I thought Pharaoh was Metaphoric for like 14 episodes. These Icarus wings might just be real. Rafael might have been a card this entire time, and I wouldn’t even blink.

Anyway, if this is your first post of mine you’ve seen of this, my apologies, we’re in S4 and this is very confusing. You can read from S1 ep 1 in chrono order by clicking this very handy link here!

[itsmyusualphannie]

something wrong in the village

Chapter 4/5: numbers Beta: @candanandphilnot Rating: T Warnings: Read on ao3

Summary: Fiona Lester has a secret. Dan Howell thinks they hate each other. Dan meets an online friend and comes to realize something important about himself while juggling a changing relationship with his parents, friends, and Fiona.

~~~ previous chapter ~~~ next chapter ~~~

The first thing Dan did upon waking up the next morning, after slapping the alarm on his phone, was to crawl out of bed and blearily stagger his way to his desk. He felt a bit like death warmed over. He’d stayed up late last night - or early in the morning, depending on how he looked at it - even though he knew it was a bad idea. That one message to Phil had sparked an entire conversation, though. The deepest one they had had so far. Dan felt like his most repressed emotions had been scooped out of him and laid bare before an empathetic almost-stranger sort-of-best-friend.

Upon sprawling sleepily in his desk chair, Dan typed in his computer password and brought up the chat on the cheesy ‘FRIENDS’ website. He could see the last few messages exchanged between him and Phil, but scrolled up further to glance over some of the others. 2 a.m. sleep-drunk messages were terrifying to look back on, but these didn’t seem so horrible.

it’s not like a solid thing, read one of Phil’s messages, and below it, Dan’s reply.

yeah but i’ve only ever felt like that toward guys and like one or two girls. idk. is there even a label for that? 

You don’t have to have a label unless it feels right. i mean I say i’m gay because i want to but you don’t have to

idk, Dan had simply replied, and even now, in the sun-glare of early morning, he still didn’t know. He scrolled back to the bottom of the chat, to the most recent messages.

i’m so tired i should probably sleep lol, Dan had typed.

Yeah it’s a school night! rip to us. There had been a long wait between that and his next message, where Dan had just stared at the laptop screen and been unable to think of anything original to say, but then Phil had added going to sleep now i guess lol. gn!

night, Dan had somehow managed to type without any spelling mistakes induced by his tired fingers, and then he had staggered to bed.

There was a new message waiting from Phil, time-stamped only a few minutes earlier. He’d probably just gotten up for school too.

hey i just thought it’d be cool to text if you want? so we can message when we’re not just home :) you don’t have to if you don’t want! but if you do, my number is 01184 80222.

Dan rubbed his eyes, trying to smear out the sleep, before reading it again. cool, he replied. He read it one more time. “Oh,” he said out loud.

He reacted instinctively, crossing the room to find his phone again and unlocking it. It took him less than a minute to save the number under a new contact that he called “phil the fellow nerd.” He looked between his phone and the open webpage on his computer, and then he closed out the browser on his laptop. It would be easier this way, now.

He tapped on the message icon by Phil’s new contact and hesitated before slowly typing out a message. hey it’s me, internet stalker dan :)

With that, Dan shoved his phone deep into his pocket, tugged on his shoes, and headed out. He made it halfway outside before he realized he was still wearing his pyjamas. Today was going to be just...great.

~~~

“Hey, dude! What’s up!” To emphasize the greeting, Sam offered Dan a hearty punch.

“Ow,” said Dan mildly. He rubbed his shoulder and took another bite of his sandwich. “It’s...not up.”

Sam laughed and threw himself into the seat next to Dan, digging into his own lacklustre cafeteria meal. “Ready for that test today?”

Dan and Sam did not have any classes together. Dan also had no test today.

“Sure,” Dan agreed.

The clatter of the lunchroom was almost a dull roar today. It still felt heavy, oppressive noise pressing into Dan’s ears and against the mild headache that he was once again nursing. He probably should have grabbed a painkiller from his bathroom this morning, but he’d been a little rushed after his attempt at heading to school in his nightclothes. Now that would have been a nightmare.

Another guy seated himself across from Dan, briefly glancing up and giving Dan a cursory nod. Dan chewed a bite of his sandwich and returned the nod.

“So, had a cool ride here this morning,” said Sam around an open mouthful of something that looked like mashed potatoes or glue. It looked more like the latter. “My board’s got a loose wheel though, gotta get that fixed.”

Dan took a loud slurp from his water bottle. “Yep,” he said.

“Talked to Johnathan too,” continued Sam, undeterred by Dan’s clear disinterest. “He went out with that girl Sam or whatever her name was and they hooked up in the…”

Dan set down his sandwich, tuned out Sam, and pulled his phone from his pocket. A new message from “phil the fellow nerd” was waiting for him, and a subconscious smile pulled at his lips as he clicked on it. This was his first message from Phil.

hi, internet stalker dan. This is pretty convenient, totally not messaging in class right now

Dan huffed a laugh and wiped his fingers on his trousers to remove any extra sandwich crumbs before replying. don’t message in class you nutter, you’ll get caught and then who will i talk to?

my teacher :D  replied Phil instantly. i’m sure you’ll get along great.

ew.

“Ooh,” said Sam. He leaned toward Dan, eyes bright as he tried to sneak a glimpse of Dan’s phone. Nonplussed, Dan tilted the phone away from him, waiting for a response. “Who’re you texting, Danny boy? Finally got a bird to talk to you?”

“Yeah, it’s your mum,” Dan retorted. The boy across from him slapped the table and laughed.

Sam snorted. “Sure, mate, have your secrets.” He chomped into another bite of the glue-like substance that coated his spoon.

dw class is almost over anyway, about to head to my next class, popped up a new message from Phil, and as if on cue, the bell on the wall of the lunchroom shrilled loudly with its obnoxious warning to head to class.

Dan climbed to his feet, shrugging his backpack over his shoulder. He collected his trash with one hand, typing out a reply to Phil with the other. omw to class right now. english, gross.

Somehow, this felt easier than anything Dan had ever done before. Messaging Phil wasn’t something that he dreaded, unlike literally any time Sam the self-proclaimed surfer tried to strike up a “bro” conversation. Even that nod with the guy sitting across from him had wearied Dan. These brief messages from Phil seemed to somehow have the opposite effect. Reading them felt more like a breath of fresh air or a sip of cold, soothing water than the draining outcome of most conversations. Maybe it was that they were just words on a screen, but Dan didn’t think so. Dan thought he might feel the same if Phil was standing in front of him right now.

He dumped his trash in the bin by the doors and headed to class, fingers rapid on his screen as he walked. Sam went with him, but Dan ignored the stream of chatter that was directed toward him. He navigated around other students with ease, making his way to the door of his class within a few minutes of leaving the lunchroom.

i have english now too lol, read the last message from Phil. gtg now though, talk to you l8er

the fact that you actually just typed ‘l8er’ disgusts me, Dan informed Phil. No reply came, but Dan had a feeling that Phil had seen the message anyway. good luck in class, Dan added, then slipped his phone into his pocket.

“ - so I gave her my least favourite banana,” Sam was saying, and he laughed uproariously at his own uninteresting story he had just been relating to Dan.

Dan was about ninety-five percent sure that he had heard this story before. He hadn’t listened those times, either. He stepped out of the way of a passing student and gazed through the open door to his English classroom. A few people were still milling inside, so Dan resolved to wait until they left. He had no interest in starting a class before he actually had to join.

“Yeah, so guess I’ll see you later!” said Sam. He socked Dan in the shoulder again, which Dan did nothing but wince against. He had probably developed actual muscles from the daily punches.

“See you,” he said, more apathetically than he had even planned to be.

“Cool, I’ll - oh damn,” breathed Sam, and Dan’s attention was snagged. He hadn’t heard that tone since last month when Johnathan’s wealthy grandfather had bought him a cherry red sports car for his sixteenth birthday and Johnathan had driven it up in front of school to show it off to the groups of girls that hung outside after school. He had gotten a flat tyre the next day and hadn’t driven it to school since, but the appreciation from his friends had been enormously gratifying so he gave quite a few of them rides to and from his oversized house and the ice cream parlour down the road. Dan had not been one of those friends.

“Dude,” said Sam, still in that same voice. He punched Dan in the shoulder again, but it was half-hearted as he stared down the hallway. “Look.”

Dan was already following his gaze. He felt his own jaw fall slack as he took in the sight moving down the hallway toward him.

It was Fiona. She was different, though. She moved with rare ease through the sparse crowd in the hallway. Her shoulders were square, confidence evident in her posture as she strode toward Dan and their shared classroom. This clear self-assurance wasn’t the only change, though. There was an obvious change from only yesterday, where her disdainful stare had bored through Dan in the bathroom encounter. Her long, flowing dark locks were shorn. Instead of the usual cascading hair toppling past her shoulders, she had shaved the sides of her head and the top was styled only a few inches short, ruffled into a playful quiff.

Something burned hot in Dan’s chest. He swallowed harshly, unable to tear his gaze from the new hairstyle. It suited her almost unfairly, the short sides of the cut highlighting her sharp cheekbones and sloped jawline. Her eyebrows were still that pale brown hue, arched evenly over her cool blue eyes. Said eyebrows narrowed harshly as her gaze snagged on Dan. Her lip curled as she drew closer, but she didn’t speak a word to him.

“Hey,” said Sam, unaware or uncaring of the crystal contempt obvious in her expression. “Cool cut, my dude. You look hot!” He nudged Dan, elbow digging harshly into Dan’s ribs. Dan didn’t notice, still staring unblinkingly at Fiona. “Doesn’t she look hot?”

“Hot,” Dan repeated without really thinking about it. Fiona didn’t seem to hear him, as she cast Sam a slightly less contemptuous look. 

“Thanks,” she said.

Sam beamed. “Sure!” he said. “So you’re a lesbian now?” 

Sam was a fucking dumbass.

Fiona’s gaze slid back to Dan, scalding him with obvious scorn as if he was the one who had asked the question. “No,” she said, gaze boring into him, “I definitely like guys,” and with that, she swept past both of them and into the classroom, ignoring the other students still inside. Dan dreaded having to follow her inside.

“She’s totally gay,” Sam confidently informed Dan.

Dan punched Sam in the shoulder.

~~~

Dan was drawing a random person. He was definitely drawing someone random. The quick strokes of his pencil over the sketching pad were casual and brief, etching out nothing more than the portrait of a sharp-cheekboned, slope-jawed, dark-haired, narrow-eyed person - “Fuck,” said Dan aloud, his pencil pausing over the paper.

“I’m sorry?” asked his teacher.

Dan blinked and glanced up. Ah, yes. He was in English class. His teacher stared him down, the marker in her hand hovering above the board. “Um,” he said. “I just...remembered an assignment I need to work on.” He offered a tight-lipped smile, which was returned with obvious gritted teeth by his teacher. For as much as she cared about him talking in class, she never paid attention to what he was constantly drawing.

“Like I was saying,” she said, turning back to the board, “we’re going to be going over these lines of poetry and…”

Sighing, but quietly, Dan frowned down at his sketchbook. He flipped to a new piece of paper and lowered the pencil to it, but hesitated to start. He could hear a scoff from Fiona in the seat behind him, and yet no kick was offered to his seat. She hadn’t started anything since their suspension, but she’d at least slipped him some cutting insults when the teacher’s back was turned. Now, he got nothing but huffs.

Dan tried again, this time an ambiguous sketch of a teenager sprawled across a bench. He grew the outlines of long, lanky limbs, a very male torso and lower appendages, and slender calves and feet. Once he got to the face, his pencil moved without his permission, detailing the long nose, sharp eyes, and arched eyebrows of - Fiona.

Motherfucker.

Dan was tempted to rip out the page, but that would draw too much attention, so he just angrily folded over the page to a fresh paper and dropped his pencil on his desk.

Bzzz. His phone vibrated briefly with a notification, warm against his leg where he’d tucked it when he sat down. Dan tried to ignore it, but it buzzed again a moment later. And then again. At least it wasn’t loud enough for anyone to hear, not even Fiona, who had keen ears and was right behind him.

Well. He couldn’t draw anything, if Fiona’s face was going to invade everything he worked on, so he might as well. He watched the teacher, but her back was still turned as he slipped careful fingers beneath his thigh to slip his phone out. He placed it atop his sketchbook and half-closed the book over it. It was extremely unsubtle, but at least his teacher wouldn’t immediately be able to tell what he was doing. He still kept an eye on her as he swiped at his phone, though.

Three messages from Phil were waiting for him.

Bored

booored

dan entertain me

Dan had to physically force himself not to laugh as he painstakingly typed out a reply. what, i’m in class. i can’t just leave to talk to you

Only a few seconds passed before a reply popped up. Lame. don’t you know that’s your sole purpose for existence, to talk to me?

This was terrifying, Dan decided, but it was fantastic. He and Phil had talked so much before and after school, whenever Dan could get his hands on his computer, but now they could actually talk in class. 

besides, I’m in class too, came in another message from Phil. living life on the edge, that’s me

if you get caught i’m going to laugh at you

I am the sneak master I would never get caught, Phil replied confidently.

“Excuse me!” barked their teacher from the front of the room. “Are you on your phone in class?”

Dan carefully did not react, letting his fingers slip away from his phone and slowly lifting his eyes to stare at her with a level gaze. He could still see the glare of the phone out of the corner of his eye, lighting up the pale pages of his sketchbook that were drooping over it.

But she wasn’t looking at him. She crossed the length of the room in a quick dozen strides, pausing next to Dan’s desk to stare behind him. “Miss Fiona,” she said sternly. “You know the rules.”

“Sorry,” said Fiona, in the most insincere tone Dan had ever heard in his life. The teacher apparently accepted it though, as she just nodded.

“Put it away. If I see it again, I’ll confiscate it until the rest of class.” With that, she turned and made her way back to the board.

Dan finally breathed. He couldn’t dare keep texting Phil now, since his teacher would be on high alert for the rest of class. He spared a quick glance at his phone, though, but didn’t see anything from Phil. Maybe the other boy had finally realized the danger of texting in class. Dan snuck the phone from his sketchbook to its original place beneath his thigh.

Although he waited for it, no other messages buzzed the phone against his leg for the rest of class.

~~~

Dan’s morning had been rushed, obviously, but there were four items he had not let himself forget. They were currently crammed into the bottom of his backpack. He’d left his English textbook - it hadn’t even been needed this class, anyway - at home so they could fit. They rattled together, quietly but still noticeable, as he slowly climbed to his feet.

He’d been sitting on this toilet for the past thirty minutes after his last class. Dozens of other students had come in and out of the bathroom since then, but the rush had slowed to a trickle and now it was finally empty as everyone left school for the day.

Dan’s ass was fully numb at this point, so he kicked his legs out in ways that probably would have looked hilarious if anyone had seen him as he ducked out of the stall and made his way across the room. He locked the door and reached high above one of the sinks to crack open the tiny window that led outside, and then he took a moment to take a breath and glance around the room. It still smelled heavily of piss and the five stalls, three sinks, and two urinals were still varying shades of ugly grey, matching the walls.

His phone chirped in his pocket. He’d taken it off vibrate once he left class, and had spent most of his time hiding in the stall earlier by texting Phil. Just the usual, mundane, hilarious, witty messages that left Dan feeling like a weight had been dragged from his chest. But that was beside the point.

Just got home, said Phil’s most recent text when Dan dug his phone from his pocket and glanced at it. time for homework :(

ha, good luck, Dan replied. He put the phone back and then shook out his arms, brushing his thumbs over his fingers anxiously. He was going to do this.

Hoisting his backpack into one of the sinks, he unzipped it and rifled briefly to the bottom before he found what he was looking for. It was a cold metal can, decorated with bright smears of colour and a solid grey lid. It rattled when he shook it. He placed it on the floor next to the wall that was violent with marker sketches, then dug a few more similar cans from his backpack. Each one had a differently coloured lid, one with pink, one blue, and the last one white.

Dan took a step back and glanced over the wall. The cans before it were full of potential, something fierce and proud inside of them ready to be released. The wall was ugly now, black scars of marker marrings its dull grey paint, the occasional splash of colour where someone had discovered a coloured marker in their bag. And there was that tiny trans flag, its bright colours muted by the slurs and graphic art scrawled around it.

If Dan was caught once he picked up one of those cans, he wouldn’t be suspended. He’d be expelled. The danger of it felt valuable. Adrenaline already sang through his veins, although he had yet to start.

Hauling in another deep breath, he let his chest expand and relax with the strength of it, and then he reached down and snagged the grey can of paint.

He began.

~~~ previous chapter ~~~ next chapter ~~~

[talesfromthefreezerinmymind]

The Adventure of the Accidental Client

On this day in 1859 (May 22) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was born.  

May is also Mental Health Awareness month. 

What do these two things have in common? For me, quite a lot. I’ll start this story in early 2012.

At that time I was a freshman at Maryville College, in my second semester of majoring in graphic design. I was completely miserable.

Why was I miserable, exactly? Well…

 I had no friends (turns out, I had never learned how to make them)

 I doubted that graphic design was the career for me (Imposter Syndrome vibes)

 I was homesick (even though I went home every single weekend)

I phoned my parents every night and told them about my day. During one such call, my dad told me about a show on Netflix that he’d started watching: Sherlock. It was made by some of the same people that made another favorite of ours, Doctor Who. I was intrigued, and had plenty of time on my hands, so I thought I’d give it a try.

If you know nothing of Sherlock Holmes (as I did when I first started watching the show), he’s a famous English detective residing in 221B Baker Street created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes and Doctor John Watson solves mysteries in the late 1800s and early 1900s. But for Sherlock, the adventures are set in the modern day. Over the course of a week or so, I watched the whole first season. Normally I’m slow to warm up to things, but I was instantly hooked.

I kept watching the show. I read interviews with the cast and crew. I found a fan-run website with all sorts of lovely info. I discovered Tumblr and all the fandom madness that lives there. The second season had already premiered in the UK, and I dredged up info on it (and spoiled it for myself). I started reading the original novels and short stories that the show was based on. I read everything Sherlock Holmes in about 5 months. And then started reading it over again.

Sherlock had found me at just the right moment. I was unusually lonely. I was unusually bored. I saw myself in John Watson; a directionless man in need of a purpose. A deeply loyal man, without a friend to adhere to. I saw myself in Sherlock Holmes; a man whose mind is always running, who loves feeling clever and in control. A man for whom feeling like an outsider is normal, though not always welcome. In the words of John Watson, “I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers are irresistibility drained.” I was a lounger, an idler, and London had found me.

The Sherlock Holmes stories rekindled my love of reading, which had been dormant for a few years, and sparked a much more serious interest in writing. There was just something about how Doyle went from unknown medical man to literary giant that grabbed my attention. He started in one world and ended up in another. It got me thinking that perhaps though I began in graphic design, I could end up somewhere else: a published author myself. So I wrote more. And I read more. I changed my major in the Spring of 2013 to English with a concentration in Creative Writing (Oh, and I transferred to UT in the fall of 2012. I had to get away from Maryville. Fresh start. Sorta). In 2015, right after graduating UT, I joined an organization called the Society of Children's Books Writers and Illustrators. Long story short, in April 2016 I signed the contract for Roof Octopus, my first picture book.

Sadly, though, writing doesn’t pay much when you’re first starting out so I really did need a backup career for the moment. Fall 2015 I enrolled at Pellissippi State Community College (backtracking, I know, per the usual order of things) and began earning an associate’s in graphic design.

Though by this point I was far removed from my freshman year at Maryville, I still felt all the loneliness and failure that I had felt then (and I was still fanatical about Sherlock; third season came out in 2014). Honestly, I had been feeling watered-down versions of those emotions since my junior year of high school (that’s another story for another time). Plus, there was something else that I was carrying that was growing heavier over time: an addiction to daydreaming.

An addiction to daydreaming? Is that even possible? Well, it is possible. It even has a fancy name: Maladaptive Daydreaming Disorder (MDD). It’s when a person’s habit of daydreaming is so obsessive that it interferes with everyday life. I would describe it like there’s a TV on in my head all day. It places my favorite shows, lots of reruns but new stuff, too. Your daydreams are like movies that you write and direct and star in and you can’t get enough. Part of the time they are white noise and I can ignore it. But more often than not, all I want to do is sit and watch. I have trouble focusing on what I’m reading or writing. I zone out super easily while listening to music or podcasts. I have trouble falling asleep for my mind not “turning off”. I zone out in class, at meetings, at church, and in groups of people when no one is talking directly to me. I daydream while driving and running and showering and cleaning and swimming and biking and just walking through my house. I’ve been struggling to focus while writing all this out; I’d rather daydream about writing this than actually do it. (Fun Fact: A big part of my daydreaming is I like to talk aloud while I’m doing it if I’m alone. On second thought, that’s probably more of an embarrassing fact than fun…)

People with MDD aren’t crazy; they don’t hear voices in their head or think people are around who really aren't there. They are fully aware that their daydream worlds aren’t real. But for some people MDD is so severe that they don’t leave their homes for days; they stay in and daydream their life away. Luckily, my MDD is not that severe. Often MDD is used as a coping mechanism. Even though I’ve never experience trauma like some people have, I still really crave an escape from life and all the emotions brought on by it.

I had never heard of Maladaptive Daydreaming Disorder until one day in the summer of 2016; I googled for ways to quit daydreaming and stuff about MDD was in the results. Up to this point I’d slowly been growing tired of my daydreaming. I’d always had an active imagination. Played pretend a lot as a kid, had imaginary friends. But in college it started to get out of hand. Particularly falling asleep was a struggle, or if I woke up super early, falling back asleep. It took me ages sometimes to write a paper or read through something. However, I had so much time on my hands that it didn’t really matter how much I procrastinated. (While at UT and Pellissippi, I still didn’t try to make friends.) I didn’t talk too much to anyone about how much I hated college. About how alone I was. I’m a Christian, but I didn’t pray about any of it. I didn’t talk about all the ways that I felt like a failure. I bottled it all up inside, because that’s what Sherlock did. Sherlock was a loner, who was never a failure. Emotions were for other people. He was too smart for them. Sherlock never seemed to let loneliness get to him, and I wasn’t going to let it either.

Anyway, the more I learned about MDD the more I was convinced that I had it. The most important thing that I learned about MDD was that people who struggled with it could get help. Therapy and medication (like antidepressants) had helped other people get control of their life once again. In the back of my mind, I began to wonder: I had been using MDD to help cope with life, but now did I need help coping with MDD? Nevertheless, true to my never-bare-my-soul nature, I shared these discoveries and questions with absolutely no one.

I kept on keeping on. Finished a year at Pellissippi (still worried about whether or not I could make it as a graphic designer). Signed that book contract. Stayed close (as close as you can be without spilling your guts) to my friends at home, who I usually had to make an effort to see (something I really missed from the good old days pre-college). Tried (and failed) not to freak out as some of those friends got married and/or moved off. Who needs friends anyway, right? They’ll just ditch you eventually; no one’s as loyal as John Watson. I daydreamed too much. I wrote and wrote. I worked at Cove Lake State Park in the summer. I started a second year at Pellissippi.

Then one night in December 2016, I stayed the night at my Nannie’s. After I went to bed, I, per usual, had a horrible time falling sleep. I laid awake for hours, but eventually drifted off.

The next day when I came home, my mom asked me if I had slept well.

That was all the provoking that I needed. I broke down and cried. I told her that I could hardly ever sleep because my mind would not turn off. My daydreaming had become too much. Once it had been my rescue, my escape from everyday life, but now I felt like I was going mad.

My parents talked it over together and decided that I should see someone professional. My mom made me an appointment at a counseling office. On December 20, 2016, I had my first meeting with my therapist.

It was rather surreal. In the first season of Sherlock, John sees a therapist because he’s trying to deal with returning home from war. In January 2017, just mere weeks after my first appointment, the fourth season of Sherlock aired. In in the first episode, Sherlock (spoiler) himself pays a visit to John’s therapist. Sherlock actually needs help and he’s actually asking for. And I had just done the same thing. Life is funny like that sometimes.

Over the last 3+ years my therapist has helped me understand a lot about myself. Anxiety has been present in my life for several years now. Talking to people I don’t know, and even people that I do know, often gives me some level of anxiety. I’m always worrying if I sound weird or dumb or boring. I never know what to talk about. Therapy has helped me build up my confidence so it’s much easier for me to talk to others now. Am I still an introvert? Oh, yes. Can I carry on a conversation with someone I just meet? Yeah. Do I always want to? No, not really. But I’m much more willing to try it now.    

I’ve always hated change, good or bad. Watching friends grow up and reach life milestones (marriage, kids, dream job) all while I changed majors, changed jobs, and had little luck in the dating realm was (and still is) rough. Therapy has helped me be a little more okay with changes in my life. I’m not so scared of the future as I once was.  

I prefer to keep to myself. I’m a perfectionist and a control freak. I hate asking for help. I always feel like an oddball, even among my close friends. I love feeling clever. I hate feeling like a failure. I hate change.

I am Sherlock Holmes.

Therapy keeps me in check. Keeps from going over the edge. Helps me understand myself, the world around me, and those in it. It helps me become a better version of myself.

Therapy is my John Watson.  

I don’t know what would have happened to me had I not discovered Sherlock when I did. I do believe that God knows exactly what types of things would catch my attention (i.e. mysteries and best friend adventures) and perhaps that’s why and how things turned out the way they did. He is the Great Author, after all. I am thankful that He loved me even through the times that I was not a fan of myself, running and hiding from everyone, including Him.

I’ve told this story today because (1) I love telling stories. It’s why I write. It’s why I read. Heck, it’s why I’m addicted to daydreaming. Yep, I still daydream quite a lot, but I feel in control of it now. I’ve been taking an antidepressant for about two years now and that has helped with the daydreaming and my overall mood, too. I’ve also told this story today because (2) stories can save us. Sherlock Holmes saved me. I was a lounger, an idler, who wandered into 221B Baker Street in need of a mystery solved. What was happening to Lucy Branam? Can she be saved? Sherlock was just the detective for the job.

Happy 161st birthday, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Thank you for writing.

[akahana21]

I played the elevator game again

I’ve decided to post about the elevator game on reddit again. Why not? There are lots of plotholes, I only made this because I was in a state of ‘overthinking’ so I tried to occupy myself into writing. Anddd I felt a sense of relief when I finished writing it. 

Hello, Reddit. Yes, you read it right. I played the elevator game again. This time, it HAPPENED. My first post is about playing this game yet I failed. It's already 2019. June 12th. I'm in the mood to be real "independent". I've lost the people that I thought were my friends and the person who said he'll never get tired of me, they're all gone. To hell with that!

Before attempting to play this game again, I looked for several blogs and websites which contained the steps. Maybe there's a whole different "setup" for the individual to enter the other world. I failed playing it the first time, and I admit that I gave up. But that was months ago! Here I am. No entity nor human being could ever interfere with the ritual being successful again.

Anyway, I never found a website or blog that gives different steps. I'll be using the steps that I've memorized many months ago. My brain has saved it for future use. LMAO. You see, it's our summer vacation, I'm busy with my summer job in the hotel, that 5-star-hotel after the failed attempt. Seems weird, but there are only a few people checked in here. People are supposed to be enjoying their stay on a hotel while it's summer and today's a holiday. I swear, there are only a few people here, some of the staffs went out to eat since it's lunch break. This is the perfect timing to play the elevator game. There are only a few people here, which means that I can be alone, no one will be interrupting the ritual and no one will get on inside and mess up the process for about 50%. LOL, who am I kidding? It's always crowded here, real crowded. When I went here to play the ritual for the first time, the hotel was full of people. And as far as I can remember, these people were giving me weird looks and all. To be honest, the seats in the hotel's restaurant are mostly vacant, every seat anywhere are vacant, the rooms are vacant. Is the universe telling me something? Does this mean that this is now the time to do the ritual, to play the elevator game? Let's see.

I still know the steps. I know how I can go back if I get off the elevator on the 10th floor and if I didn't get off. Wearing the hotel staff uniform, I used the stairs to go down from the 2nd floor. Good thing, this uniform has multiple pockets. Inside my left pocket is my cellphone, despite the fact that I have no plans in using it in another world because it is said that electronic devices won't work, in my right pocket is my wooden rosary (I always bring my rosary everywhere since I'm a religious person. Wait, what? A religious person playing a ritual? Are you insane, self?) Maybe I really am though. I was told by my family that I needed to go on a mental health expert to "check" my sanity. Multitude of thoughts came over me. I have decided. I'll do the ritual, no more second thoughts anymore. Life's been miserable, people hating me, and I'll make it worse.

I headed inside the first floor's elevator beside or most likely near the restaurant door. The restaurant door's huge enough to recognize and I wouldn't have a hard time later on. This elevator is the one from the right side and the very last one, the end, with no elevator on its right side but four elevators on its left side, you know what I'm saying? I'm having difficulties explaining this one, you see. English is not my first language, as what I've mentioned earlier with my first post here (which was deleted, think I'm going to edit it and repost). Also at the tenth floor, it's also beside a huge glass door. So I'm confident enough that I won't be entering the wrong elevator later.

Lunch break is one hour, I wonder if how many hours I'm going to spend in another world, and hope I won't get into trouble once I'm back here. Still wearing the vibrant red hotel staff uniform with multiple pockets (and these pockets have my cellphone, rosary, inhaler, handkerchief, pocket-sized notebook, and ballpen), I pressed the button for the fourth floor and focused. I pressed the second, sixth, second again, and tenth floors respectively. The atmosphere is getting heavy or is it just me?

Getting ready to get killed or whatnot, I pressed the button for the fifth floor. Luckily, the elevator's not reflective, so I can just stare at the buttons and at my left side (the buttons are in the left side). Finally, the elevator has arrived at the fifth floor. I heard the door open and footsteps coming near me, coming inside the elevator with me. Is this the woman? She's not uttering anything, she must stay that way until I become successful with the ritual. She might make me nervous and unfocused and I don't want that. I never even looked at her. Never knew how she looked like. And I wouldn't dare to look at her. I forgot telling this, but the atmosphere started getting heavy when I have arrived at the second floor at the second time, someone's calling me, I didn't answer in any way and ignored it. Who could it be? Is lunch break over? No, just my head messing with me or the ritual, maybe. I'm in the middle of the ritual. I must stay focused.

"Goodbye, world." I told myself but I didn't really speak that, okay? I never spoke. I'm quiet. Just my mind telling goodbye, you may never know if I return safe and mentally unstable. I pressed the first floor's button and said a quick prayer inside my head. I felt the elevator ascending to the tenth floor instead the first floor. The real journey begins. The elevator arrived at the tenth floor and the door opened. I don't want to be the stubborn traveller who peeks at the woman for a second to see if she's really there. Because she is.

As I begin to move my feet towards the door to get outside, the woman spoke which caused a mini-heart-attack. What a nightmare.

"Where are you going?" Her voice is so sweet but I won't respond. Never. She sounded like a nice person and I would want to be friends with her since I don't have a single friend anymore and I would like to sing with her...I want to hear her voice some more. But then I remembered- she's not a person.

"Is there anything wrong?" She asked again, her voice full of curiosity.

As I took one step again, "I said, where are you going? You're not answering me. How rude." And now her sweet voice sounded sad and made me look like evil. She's the evil one!

I have to get out quickly, she may shriek later as I cross the door. I hate anyone shrieking, I become violent when I hear those sounds. I'm afraid I won't make it. And so I stepped faster and got outside the elevator. As expected, she shrieked as fuck. I wanted to punch that bitch so much to shut her up. But I can't and shouldn't.

It's dark outta here, the lights are off, but atleast I can still see because of the red light passing through the windows. I checked my cellphone, it's working! Why the heck is it working? Do I have to take a picture of my surroundings or maybe take a selfie? No. I can cry out of...happiness? I'm finally alone. But something's wrong, I can tell you something's wrong. I feel kind of tipsy, but I never drank liquor before the ritual. So scratch that. I have to make sure to keep my wits about before and during the ritual. I swear, there's something wrong.

I walked near a wall, this still looks like the tenth floor of the hotel I'm working at. I know the hotel all too well, and I'll never lose my way. While touching the wall for support, I just walked until I reach the gigantic windows showing the crimson red sky without clouds, without the sun, there's emptiness in the sky except the even crimson red color. From a distance, I can see a cross-like structure standing all alone. At this point on, I am confirmed very dizzy. I immediately got seated on the floor out of dizziness, staying vigilant. I feel like I'm losing some oxygen to breathe, and I started coughing and gasping for air. I'm sure I brought an inhaler with me, I touched my pockets one by one to feel the inhaler. And there, I found it and of course, used it. Now I don't feel dizzy anymore and not even gasping for air. I recommend to bring an inhaler or two if you're that fearless enough to play the elevator game. Approved and recommended! Works for me, but if it doesn't work, for you then, I'm sorry.

Once I feel better, I again walked towards the windows, now touching it. I tried to glance what's down there, like a soil or whatever I can walk on to discover what's more with this world that other travelers didn't see. I want to be the first one to see and reveal what we can do in this world.

I want to go outside the hotel. But I don't want to use an elevator to go down. No elevators for now. I went to the nearby staircase and walked down the stairs, patient enough to go down the first floor. Unfortunately, as I approached the next stairs to the fifth floor, it was barricaded, I think? Sort of someone or something put a gigantic wall on purpose or whatever. To stop me from going down the stairs. To stop me from knowing what's down there that we haven't yet discovered.

As a sign of defeat, I walked up the stairs again to the tenth floor. As I reach the ninth floor , I feel dizzy again. I've stayed too long in this world. People aren't meant to live in this "netherworld". Now I have to believe that "no man is an island". We can't always be alone. Especially in a world where there's only you who exist. We cannot live alone. I guess I've learned a lesson.

Still dizzy and a headache is starting, I hurriedly ran up the stairs. It's like running for my life, as if a horse is chasing me. I successfully reached the tenth floor, gasping for air again, walked to the elevator cautiously where I got off. I feel alive. Take note, I carefully went inside the elevator, only looking at the floor, afraid to look at the woman, fearing that I might disobey the rules.

With a sigh of relief, I clicked the button for the second floor. For short, I repeated the ritual. Now here it goes. As the elevator is ascending again to the tenth floor, I calmly pressed another floor's button lower than ten. Que horror, the elevator's still ascending. Fast. I began shaking. I pressed and pressed the first floor's button and hoped it'll work. I went past the eighth floor, before the elevator to step and reach the tenth floor, it began descending down the first floor. I'm still shaking. I looked at my rosary bracelet that I'm wearing and got the wooden rosary from my pocket and started praying. Prayers can do wonders...if you could only have faith.

The elevator stopped at the second floor. The door opened. I didn't get out. I looked at my surroundings. Looks normal and home-y. But then, the elevator's door closed on its own and went down the first floor. The door of course did open again. I observed everything outside. Once I realized that everything's where they were supposed to be, I went outside without looking back and without breaking the rules. I'm home.

It was still lunch break when I got back. As usual, I worked like nothing happened. But deep inside, there are things that troubled me. Especially this one. Why did it open at the second floor? I haven't read it somewhere. Everything's normal. Everything's alright. While working, a co-worker called me and said that I have a visitor. I went to the office and waited. I heard the door opened, someone hugged me from the back. Look who it is.

"Baby, I'm very sorry. I brought you a pizza."

[xo-dailypier-blog]

this is not a recap;

     hey cumguzzlers,

It has come to my attention that Lady X took it upon herself to rate the nether regions of the men of Santa Monica. Unfortunately her assessment was BIASED and hardly based on facts. So as a JOURNALIST, I have taken it upon myself to get to the TRUTH. Today will be a Top 9 list of the men in this town, and their BEDROOM PERFORMANCES.

I’m not revealing actual sizes, because I firmly believe that it’s all about the motion of the ocean. And if you think I’m giving a run down on every SCRUB in this town, you’re out of your mind! I WISH I could have made this a Top 10 but most of the guys on Lady X’s assessment, have already been exposed in the fuck hut tapes during Summer Crush, and honestly? Don’t even make the cut for the top 5. Like, we KNOW the #DemonDick is low-key worth the hype (BUT YOU SHOULD STAY AWAY FROM IT BECAUSE HELLO? IT RUINED TWO RELATIONSHIPS IN LIKE THE SPAN OF A DAY! AND IM SURE THE BUCK DOESNT STOP THERE!), and we GET IT, Adam has a massive ROD, and I’m sure (Power Top) Asher, his brother, isn’t that far off. Vic IS well endowed AND can make things EROTIC. And we all know about Jack, who is also well endowed but has, like, erectile dysfunction or whatever. Oh, and don’t forget Daddy Sorrentino is obvs a beast in the sheets, but I’ve been telling you guys that since, like, ever. And I’m honestly on a Jamie/Cunty Sabbatical atm, they’re going through a difficult time after Cunty cheated, so who really needs their dick-info broadcasted on top of all that, ya know? (Cunty deff comes in at an alleged 9 inches, which is bigger than Jamie, BUT he (Cunty) never uses his junk on Jamie because, like Asher, Jamie is a Power Top. (but you didn’t hear this from me). Look, if any guy is left off the list that you have interest in, like, just ask Phobe. I’m sure she’ll know.

But before we get started, Congratulations are in order! You guys voted on Hottie of the Moment, and we have a winner!

It’s none other than Miss Fraudi Zirconium herself (@heidistarks​) The queen of bargains has stormed onto the scene in her Wild Fable Couture and has CAPTIVATED the hearts of all Santa Monicans. In honor of her win, I am giving everyone a $25 gift card to Claire’s! If you go to their website and use offer code SharkThot, you too, can get the Heidi Look. When asked about her recent accomplishment she had this to say:

"It's about fucking time." - Fraudi Zirconium Stark, 2019

Congratulations, again Fraudi! You go girl, work that Forever 21 tracksuit, bitch!

NINE - ALEC CLARKE @alecxclarke​

One of the wangs in question that Lady X TOUCHED ON was Alec Clarke. She mentioned that Alec was more than likely LACKING in the his SOUTHERN MEAT DEPARTMENT. So obvs i had a BONE to pick with this assessment because Alec’s fan base is GETTING UP there with Jamie Carter’s so we have to know what he got in them jeans. Sadly ... while his junk is fine. His way around the bedroom is is abysmal, I honestly thought it was a PHALL-ACY but one girl who is one of his past flings, wrote to me after seeing Lady X’s post. She has asked to remain anonymous...

Hey DP (and Lady X),

I saw your post about Alec and you’re wrong about his size. He’s actually pretty girthy and lengthy or whatever. But he is honestly one of my worst encounters. We met on a dating app, that shall remain nameless. So fast forward to sexy time, and once we started making out it was a tragedy! No tongue, no passion. It was like kissing a mcfucking corpse! His lips were like, so dry, but, whatever, that’s not the problem. Once I started giving him a blow jay he just randomly burst into tears, and said he couldn’t do it anymore, and asked if I wanted to play fucking Yahtzee. I left and bought Listerine. I think you should look into if he is like this with all the girls, instead of his size. Bc that’s the real tea. Anyways, Love the Blog! Kisses!

Its always such a disappointment when this happens. OBVIOUSLY our HoneyBun Alec has some issues to work on. I know he has a Crazy life but I didn’t think things were this HARD for him.

Overall Rating: N/A

Favorite Position: Again, N/A. I could hardly find girls who’ve had sex with him ................. INCHresting. (Ok, that was the last one).

Downside: I mean, Hello? He breaks out in tears mid-coitus! He IS the downside!

Alec! Write into us with your side of the story! I prom (half a promise) that I won’t believe the rumors. Love ya, Honey Bun!

EIGHT - SKYLER DAVIS @skylerxdavis​

No idea where Lady X got the idea that he had the biggest LOVE MISSLE in town, but it is absolutely FALSE. And in fact, what I’ve heard about his performance in the bedzzzZzZzZzzzzzzzZzZzZzZzZzZzzzzZzzzzZzZzZzzzz ZzzzzZzzzZzZzZzZzZzZzzzzZzzzzZz

Overall Rating: zzZzZzZzZzZzZzzzzZzzzzZz

Favorite Position: zzZzZzZzZzZzZzzzzZzzzzZzzzZzZzZzZzZzZzzzzZzzzzZz

Downside: zzZzZzZzZzZzZzzzzZzzzzZzzzZzZzZzZzZzZzzzzZzzzzZz zzZzZzZzZzZzZzzzzZzzzzZzzzZzZzZzZzZzZzzzzZzzzzZz zzZzZzZzZzZzZzzzzZzzzzZzzzZzZzZzZzZzZzzzzZzzzzZz zzZzZzZzZzZzZzzzzZzzzzZzzzZzZzZzZzZzZzzzzZzzzzZz zzZzZzZzZzZzZzzzzZzzzzZzzzZzZzZzZzZzZzzzzZzzzzZz

Alleged Body Count: zzZzZzZzZzZzZzzzzZzzzzZz

SEVEN - NOAH SINCLAIR @nhsinclair​

So next on the list is Noah Sinclair. This one will be brief, because it really threw me for a loop. So I’m sorry to report, that Noah has a Chode. I know. I’m actually crying while typing this but this is only the word on the street, so take it with a grain of salt.

“Darla” (fake name) wrote in to my blog to refute Lady X’s claims. She writes:

I’ve had half way sex with Noah one time and when he dropped his pants I literally laughed. Not to body shame or whatever, but I, like, couldn’t have sex with him because the condom didn’t fit. Sorry, didn’t have a Trojan Jr readily available? He’s good with his hands though.

So Noah has made the list in a sad and unfortunate entry. So ladies if you want Noah to DIP his NUGGET in YOUR sauce, you better make your move!

Maybe this is why he got that divorce. Ugh, poor Natasha. Let’s hope this is all a rumor, I would hate for it to be true.

Overall Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (The hand thing is kind of important).

Favorite Position: Noah’s Nugget Number (No clue what this means, ask Diana or Natasha).

Downside: There is no downside if you, like myself, are privy to a good Nugget or two. #RanchPlease

MOVING ON!

SIX - LOGAN LANCASTER @loganlancaster​

Our next entry is none other than Long Dick Logan Lancaster. According to Lady X, Logan is average. Well I’m here to let you know that, thankfully, LDL lives up to his name (no nuggets here!). But you guys would have to get with him to truly find out how #blessed he is.

Overall Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Favorite Position: Alligator Fuckhouse, according to sources. (DON’T Google it, live in ignorance).

Downside: The only reason, ya boi has gotten 4 stars instead of 5 is because of the rumors surrounding his hygiene. As we know, there’s been a debate on the internet about washing your legs. And Logan, an able bodied man, doesn’t do that. Nor does he take showers the way that he should. Many girls who’ve been with him have complained of smelling the stinch of onions and mildew while ENGAGING with him. Others have complained of a SALTY taste while going down on him. Most of the girls he’s BANGED have all been in the junkyard of his Auto Shop or whatever so maybe it’s a fetish for them? That’s no excuse for bringing that nasty ass behavior to every other girl in Santa Monica.

Thankfully a bunch of you have been sending body wash to his shop, so maybe we can LanCAST the mustiness away (If this is true).

Logan, please write in, I need to know the truth. But other than that, the dick is BOMB! But make sure you don’t over-do it on B.J. part though, sodium intake is v important and you wouldn’t want to get hypertension suckling on his salty ass COCK.

FIVE - EMRE YOGIOH @emre--yavuz

Ok, so next on the list is Emre Yugoslavia (or whatever his name is). Ok so ... buckle in ladies.

Overall Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Favorite Position: The Lion King (I’m serious, don’t Google these things).

Downside: Ok, so Emre is supposedly into bondage. Which totally makes sense since he’s like, repressed from childhood. The whole missing sister thing really took a toll on his psych, since he’s parents totes forgot about him. Now he YEARNS for control. So the word is that he’s basically Christian Grey but not a literal abuser. He’s into bondage, slapping, SPITTING, choking, flogging, and whips and chains EXCITE HIM. An S&M Daddy! Now the only reason this is in the Downside section is because it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. Some girls find it disturbing, and others are totes into it. I’m the latter! Sign me the FUCK up! Choke me with those strong REPRESSED hands.

I noticed he and Olivia have been friendly recently, let’s hope she knows that she’ll be walking side to side after a night with him (no, but like, because of the flogging, not the dick). Once he’s done with those spread sheets at his hoity-toity big boy job, spread sheets take on a whole new meaning once the dawn comes. You go Emre Yahooligan! #callme

FOUR - DEVIN FLORES @devinxflores

First of all, I just want to give a big thanks to all of you for letting me call him Devin TORRES for the past few MONTHS like a complete MORON! I really appreciate you guys letting me disgrace the future KING of Santa Monica in such a terrible way! No really, you guys are the best. I love my fans <3.

Anyways, it’s well known that Devin and his Alaskan Bull Worm have burrowed through the city. Both the men and women alike have survived the DF experience, with ZERO complaints .... well, except for one ...

Overall Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Favorite Position: The Charizard (ONCE again, don’t Google. Just know that it involves fire ... And we aint talking about lighting no candles (which he allegedly seems to enjoy, how romantic!)).

Downside: As we have witnessed, Devin is a complete and total klutz! He is always getting himself into a bullshit that is literally all his fault. Didn’t he glue something to his head a few weeks ago -- actually, you know what? That’s not important. What I was getting at is, the main complaint about DaddyDevinFLORES is that during SACX the klutz JUMPS OUT. He has been rumored to have smacked his head on the headboard whilst switching positions (causing him to go UNCONSCIOUS for SEVERAL HOURS, which completely RUINS the mood). One of his Encounters even claimed that during a Romantic Toast of Wine, he clinked the glass so hard it broke and and SHARDS of GLASS went into his hands, causing him to bleed INSTANTLY. What the fuck, Devin?

How could someone who can handle balls so well out on the soccer court, not be able to handle them in the bedroom without accidentally falling out of a window in the process?

Ladies and Gents, much like Emre, Devin will have you walking Side to Side, but if it happens you might be suffering from brain damage after falling in the shower whilst trying to have sex with him. Please seek professional help immediately.

THREE - BERNBERN<3 @carverberncrd

Coming in at Number 3 is none other than Heidi’s personal play thing! We’ve seen his bulge through his Under Armour spanks, so Of Course I had to do a little research to find out the Lipton on HIS heat-seeker. I’ve reached out to his past flings and came to a general consensus.

Overall Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The women I interviewed all confirmed he is an excellent LAY, so once again, I was right. BernBern<3 outsold your favs.

Favorite Position: Doggystyle (obvi)

Downside: He’s a Taurus so while he will indeed fuck you into a state of paralysis, it’s only to reach his Hedonistic Quota for the evening. He probs won’t even remember your name once he’s done, let alone learn it in the first place. So don’t get attached<3.

His star sign also explains his relationship with Fraudi. Not only are they both so annoyingly stubborn, but Two tops can rarely make it in a relationship. Just ask Ash — never mind. (Omg, btw Idk WHY everyone keeps asking. YES, the rumors are true! BernBern<3 gets pegged, but only by Heidi, it’s actually a testament to his masculinity and how he’s reached the apex of it at this point. But this is all old tea. So I guess Julian isn’t the only #DemonDick in the Stark Fam, Surprise?). Anyways, I ship them, but they get on my fucking nerves! They can’t even admit their undying love for each other, which is so obvious. But this isn’t about #Berni (working ship name), BernBern<3 has a massive COCK (and heart) and it has landed itself on the Top of the list.

TWO - SINRIQUE @itsenriqueaguilar

This one came as a surprise to me because I have no idea who this is. But yalls asses do! So here we have Enrique Aguilar, coming in at number 2 because of the OUTPOUR of receipts on the TALLY WACK ATTACK that he PACKS.

Overall Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Favorite Position: You know, there wasn’t a general consensus, he’s a man FULL of surprises.

Downside: No, you don’t understand, there is literally no downside. Look, here is a letter from one of the women he’s slept with. For reasons, you will understand REAL soon, this person has been kept anonymous.

Dear DP,

It’s been approximately 1 year, two months, 9 days, 5 hours, and 46 seconds since I Locked Eyes with Enrique from across a crowded room. That night would go to be on of the most invigorating, tantalizing, and romantic experiences of my life. But when I woke up the following morning HE was gone. I long for the day I see him again. My heart Aches at the thought of him with another women. Giving her the same love that HE gave to ME. I need you to understand that I was a grade A student at my university (4.0). I had an paid internship at an elite institution that OWULD HAVE LED ME INTO A PROMISING CAREER! BUT AFTER THAT NIGHT I BECAME RAVENOUS. I NEEDED MORE. AND IT CONSUMED ME! EVENTUALLY I LOST MY INTERN BECAUSE I STOPPED SHOWING UP! I FLUNKED OUT OF SCHOOL BECAUSE I DIDN’T CARE ANYMORE. I SEARCHED YOU ON ALL SOCIAL MEDIA BUT I COULDN’T FIND YOU! ENRIQUE I NEED YOU BACK IN MY LIFE! JUST FOR ONE MORE NIGHT! PEASE I KNOW YOU’RE OUT THERE! CALL ME AT [redacted]

Obviously Ivy, sent this in ... kidding (But honestly though? They did used to date, which ... yikes ... Good to know Daddy Rique has no standards, maybe we all have a chance. #shade #clapback #scalpt)

Anyways, I’ll have to keep an eye on this one, he seems to have a good head on his shoulders ... AND good head on his shoulders OKURRRRRR!!!

ONE - SEBASTIAN DELGADO @bashdelgado

That nerd that sat in the back of the classroom brainstorm his next nerdy ass invention with high-watered khakis, and orthopedic shoes in like, the ninth grade (because he was focused on Arch Support???????). That’s him, Sebastian Delgado. And Baby Daddy Bash has DITCHED the NERD LOOK and is now ready to SNATCH YOUR CAT BACK.

I’m sure everyone is just surprised as I am. But hey, they don’t call him “Bash” for nothing (except for the fact that it’s a shortened version of his name). He’s totes Bashing Puss with his MONSTROUS MEAT TRUNCHEON (and Buss?? Sebastian contact me about your sexuality).  

Overall Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Favorite Position: Missionary, he’s a man of passion and likes to stare DEEP into your eyes. #swoon #romantic #westan

Downside: Well if you HATE Love and AFFECTION, this one is not the one for you. Not only does he have a GINORMOUS, UN-NUGGETED MEAT SEPTOR/LAP ROCKET/VAGINA MINER, which, by the way, last a LONG time, He is EXCELLENT BOYFRIEND Material! He’s caring, patient, kind, resourceful, loyal, and he is well on his way to becoming a multi-millionaire -- which is NOT the reason he is number one! Money is not the goal here ladies (and guys? Seriously Sebastian, I need to know what’s up).  

Sebastian is the complete package and he has ALL of the other guys in this town QUAKING!

So Stan A True Man. Stan .... Sebastian.

And that, my friends, ends the TRUE tea on the wangs in this town. This was fun while it lasted, but I have some COCKtails that need my attention (ok, maybe THAT was the last one).

xo, DP

[prorevenge]

You don’t want to send me the money even after you received and used the stuff i sent you?!

Soo, this might be a long story. Hold tight!

It all started when i got a gift card for my birthday. It was filled in with 25€ but man I needed these 25€ to live from as I’m a broke college student. So i went to Marktplaats (a some kind of a Dutch version of Craigslist) and I posted just enough info to show the card and asked for a 21€ for it. You can do (almost) everything with it, but not shop from these small cheap supermarkets where i get my food from. So this guy came, let’s call him Jack, and sure enough he offered 21€ but wanted to do the deal via WhatsApp as he “doesn’t understand how MP works exactly”.

I thought sure, it must be an old lady or something. It was a bit suspicious to be honest as the account was only a month old which can be seen as suspicious according to MP culture. But I thought well nothing bad can happen and asked him to transfer the money first and send a screenshot of the transaction and I’ll directly send him the rest of the info of the card. So Jack sent the screenshot containing the first letter of his name so “J” with some last name, his bank account number was there and i had his phone number because we were Whatsapping. So everything seemed fine. He then said it might take a day or two to arrive because we have different banks and i said sure, why not. I sent him the card info and we thanked each other and everything seemed fine. Later that night, I checked the balance of the gift card using the official website of the gift card and it was empty already. I thought he must wanted some shirt or so and he could save 4€ with it so why not. A few days later, didn’t get anything on my bank account. I sent him a message saying that this is very unusual and it never takes this much time but he reassured me by saying that the money was really taken from his bank account and some bullshit. After a week has gone, nothing was on my bank account so i sent his screenshot to a friend of mine who’s a professional in Photoshop and photos editing and such stuff and asked him if the screenshot seems photoshopped because I wasn’t sure. He said no everything seems to be fine. I sent Jack a message via WhatsApp, he didn’t respond. Vis Maarktplaats, same story. Smsing and calling didn’t yield a thing either.

Before i was planning to find that asshole, i was really curious how he faked that screenshot. So after some googling, I found that it’s possible that if you call your bank and tell them a valid excuse, they will return your money and especially if the other side didn’t receive it yet. So i sent my brother a few euros to try it and called my bank to cancel the transaction. The employee at the bank was surprised when i told her that i sent it per mistake to this person and started asking stuff like “how could you fill in a bank account number and a name per mistake??” I responded with it was on the list of the people that I often sent money to and i per mistake choose him instead of the person right above him (there’s some kind of contacts list of bank accounts and names so that you don’t have to fill the info in each time). She found that reasonable and sent me money back directly and sure enough my brother didn’t hear a thing or get a notification or anything. Just nothing. Then it made sense how he proved it but I didn’t get anything. So after i knew how everything worked, I wanted to chase that asshole down.

At this point, i knew i was dealing with a crook. I had his telephone number, where he lived ( from MP), his bank account number, his first letter and his last name.

I searched using his telephone number via all the websites and search engines you could ever think about, I couldn’t find anything. It was like he disappeared. I searched FB (and other sites) using his last name but man, his last name was one of the commonest in the Netherlands. Thousands of results. I filtered a lot to decrease the search results as much as possible until i was left with a few results starting with a J and ending with his last name. Unfortunately, none of them seemed like the one I’m searching for (and none of them were, I discovered later). I didn’t know what exactly to do so I reported to the police and to the MP website. The police said that they will need sometime to decide whether they look into the case and such but were negative if they could help me because “I should have done it via MP”. Which I agree with but i was still furious. MP said they don’t have enough evidence to block his account or anything. I knew i needed to handle it myself. So i sent everyone that has that he/she are living or from the village where he came from, a FB message( these were 493 people). I explained everything and provided screenshots of what happened and asked if they could help me find that asshole or search in their mobiles for his number or in family groups on WhatsApp so i can get his first name to be able to do my next step. Only 5 have read and responded to my message and none of them had a clue. So I joined all the local groups of his village and posted the story again. Sure enough, a nice lady provided me with his first name, where he currently live and a lot more info than what i hoped for. It turns out that he has multiple telephone numbers and that was not his main so it was logical I couldn’t find anything. She sent me his telephone number so I threatened him with the fact that I will report him to the police, that now I know his name and more info about him, I’ll post that in any online local community...etc. Odd enough, he didn’t seem to give a single fuck and asked me to “fuck my self” and said that he wouldn’t return the money. So I actually didn’t mail his friends and network about it because I thought I’m doing too much which won’t work because he’s probably a trashy person that listens to no one.

My final option was to go via his bank, i emailed them and they were so nice that they wanted to look it up for me and everything but said couldn’t tell me much because of privacy and stuff. This lady from the bank was so sympathetic that she gave me the email of the security department of the bank and asked me to send everything i had in a mail explaining what happened. Did that but didn’t get a response, even after a week so I thought I could email her one last time to ask whether I should be waiting for a response or not. She said don’t wait because the security department is not a department that communicates with customers and asked me to have patience. After a month had passed from the beginning of the accident, i began losing hope that I’ll chase down that crook ( i had his home address but bringing him a visit wasn’t an option for me). A few days later, he called. I didn’t respond but he left like 10 messages that he would love to find a solution and everything so i was really shocked and asked why now out of a sudden. He said the his bank blocked and freezed all his four bank accounts after they’ve discovered that he has been doing that shit for a while already. He even offered me 200€ to just email his bank that everything was solved and that they should unblock his shit. I said no I don’t want your filthy money, i just want my 21 euros and I’ll then reconsider emailing the bank. He sure enough sent them directly from a friend bank account and I’ve finally received my money. Now it’s revenge time!

I told him he can fuck him self and that he can kiss my a$$, I’m doing nothing for him and I’ll ignore him even longer that he was doing to me. He sent me like a thousand time he’s sorry and he won’t do it again and he really would send me any amount of money just to email his bank. 2 weeks later, he said that he can’t access his money and bills are stacking up. I just simply blocked his number after i sent him a middle finger emoji. He sent more apologies, called and everything from other numbers but i left him there hanging. It has been 3 weeks now and he’s still begging me and sending sorries and shit. I’m not planning to help him anytime soon and i believe that he should legally solve his shit with his bank and I wouldn’t care a shit for such people. So, do you still want to steal my money, you motherfucker?!

(source) (story by RefugeeDutch_Syrian)

[docholligay]

Life as a Grab Bag

A release from the patreon vaults for New Year! 

Rachelle's commission request this month was "Rei and Mina doing the Japanese New Year traditon of fukubukuro after a hard year" After doing research on this, I found myself intensely jealous that this isn't a US thing, because tag urself I'm Rei. I hope you enjoy! Thank you so very much for all your support.

“You know, every year I say I can’t believe this shit, and yet, every year, here we are.” Minako complained, but it may as well have been to the air, for all that Rei was listening to her. “And every year I’m misled to think doing something on New Year’s means something other than standing in line for 5 hours for a bag of crap.”

Rei whirled around in line. “Listen, the savings on these fukubukuro are fantastic.” She opened a large piece of paper, her eyebrows knit in concentration as she looked down, “And then we’ll go stand over at the department store--they’re staggered, so as soon as we get this bag, we’ll head over,” she nodded with determination, “and then, tomorrow morning--”

“What about food, rest….libations?” Mina shook her head, already knowing the answer.

“Mina, this is once a year.”

“God, do I envy Haruka right now. Even if she is with Squidward” Mina looked up at the sky, as if opening up a general request to any deity that might care to listen.

Rei gave her a scowl.

“I’m joking.” She crossed her arms and gave Rei a smile. “There’s nowhere I’d rather be than a sidewalk, waiting.”

Rei had always been rather serious about her New Year’s bags, but this year her focus had taken a chilling seriousness, a lean and hungry look in her eye, the same as when she shot her arrow at an enemy. It was a unique blend of annoying, terrifying, and a little alluring, if Mina was being entirely honest.

The line moved ahead roughly three inches.

Rei whirled around. “See? Moving right now.” She tossed her head confidently. “You’ll see, just wait until we open them, I bet I’ll get a fur coat and then you’ll be forced to eat. Your. words.”

“Much as it does not surprise me to hear your dreams of being swathed in beaver,” Rei shot her a look, which she ignored, “you know no one ever gets those big prizes they advertise.”

“Just wait until I have my own company. I’m going to get those luxury fukubukuro, you know, from the big stores? The more you spend, usually the more savings you get per yen--you know, the higher end bags offer an average 67% real savings, while the lower--”

“Oh my god Rei.” Mina buried her head in her hands.

“--bags only offer something like 20% savings.” She tossed her hair back, near bragging over a victory she had not yet achieved. “I’ll win a vacation, or something like that, in one of those. I’ll be rewarded for all my hard work. It’s fate. You’ll see.”

“I’m not sure I believe in that kind of stuff anymore.” It was offered not as a judgment and not as a jibe, but as a simple fact, and it left them both quiet for a moment before Mina recovered. “You know, I’ve done enough of these and got screwed, I mean. I didn’t even bother getting on this year.”

And it was true enough that the year did not need to assist in Mina’s general sourness--between Rei’s constant and as yet unproven assurance that this year would be her year (it was, Mina loved to remind her, never quite her year), and Mina’s many times getting fukubukuro filled with lip balm and colored cellophane, and not much else, she was not predisposed to love New Year’s anyhow. That the grab bag of this year had turned up a net loss did nothing to soothe her, although perhaps, she thought fairly, even the best year of her life would have only resulted in more lip balm.

“Well,” Rei tossed her head authoritatively, “I know I’m excited. Oh, look, the line is moving again!”

They scooted ahead 6 inches.

__

There was a certain kind of pageantry that Rei took to these things, her bags all stacked up, ready for opening, waiting for her willing (or not) audience. The girls nibbled at their food as Rei cackled over the savings she’d won over.

Rei unwrapped her treasures, giving special attention to the cost savings of each one, cross-indexing websites to prove it. It was annoying in the way Rei always could be about money, and yet, with that, there was a comfort in it, that, despite the difficulty of the year, some things hadn’t changed, and never would. Mako still cooked in the kitchen. Rei still pinched a penny til it bled. There was hope in that, in the way there was in each sunrise, that no matter what, life continued, and they all continued along with it.

“The value of this bag ALONE is 4000 yen, and it was only 500” Rei nodded at the entire room as if teaching them an important lesson. “That’s a huge value.”

Mako laughed, wondering how it was that Rei ever got to know what a kitchen item was worth, and the warmth of it filled the room.

“Are you sure you want that stand mixer?” She tried not to show what a win it was, although Rei must know, there was nothing about savings that Rei didn’t know. “It’s just gonna take up space in your place, but I’d take it off of you.”

Rei looked at the large box. “I don’t know, I’ve been thinking about getting into baking…”

“Rei, I’ve had enough harrowing experiences this year.” Mina smirked at her from the couch.

Rei scowled. “I’ll have you know that I could learn to cook, especially with this,” she waved her hand over her winnings, “amazing and very valuable set of supplies that I’ve amassed.”

“Okay, okay, Rei,” Mako cracked her knuckles playfully, “What do you want?”

Rei’s eyes sparkled, alive with the glory of the deal. “I think a month’s worth of dinners is being extremely generous of me. For all this.”

“A week, tops, but I’ll throw in lunches.” Mako tried to look disinterested, but Rei was too shrewd, too quick, and too dogged for Mako’s will.

“Two weeks!” She held her fingers high, “and you throw in dessert with the lunches.”

Whether Rei actually wanted dessert was up in the air, but then, that was hardly the point of the exercise.

Mako shrugged and looked longingly at the stand mixer. “Fine.”

“Okay.” Rei frowned a little, disappointed that Mako had abandoned the game so quickly, and looked over at the pile of cosmetics. “Mina--”

“Forget it, Rei.” Mina moved toward the back of the apartment, looking for something.

Ami had a stack of books in front of her, her hand drifting over the covers, trying to decide which she wanted to delve into first.

“It looks like you did really well, Ami!” Rei beamed proudly. “What would you estimate your percentage saved was?”

“Oh this wasn’t a fukubukuro,” she looked almost apologetic, “I just bought these from the bookstore near my house, as a New Year’s gift to myself.”

Rei looked at her with a sort of shocked and disapproving wordlessness.

Ami blushed. “I used my membership card?”

Rei sighed heavily, but was interrupted by the sound of Mina setting something down with a small but decisive thump.

There was a simple wrapped fukubukuro on the table, indicating it came from the hobby store on the other end of town, and Mina sat down in front of it wordlessly.

“You got a bag, Mina? I didn’t think you were doing this.”

“It’s Haruka’s.” It settled over the room, echoing off the walls, and Mina could not stop herself from looking up at the photo on the wall from she and Michiru’s wedding, all smiles and warmth.

Rei put her hands on her hips, her mouth running. “How the hell did she get a bag for New Year’s, I mean she--um.” She stopped herself, suddenly realizing that everyone knew the end of the sentence, and the pain that lay behind it.

Usagi’s lip quivered, Mako’s arms crossed over her chest,

“Yeah, she had it preordered. Even though every year she thought she got ripped off,” She gave a huff, “Guess I’m not the only one who never learned from New Year’s.”

She opened the top of the bag, the crackle of each movement popping through the air and

She pulled out a handful of banded together nickel train tracks. “Haruka always talked about getting into model trains. She had a box of this stuff in the closet, just in case,” She looked back out to the girls, “but remember that year she got nothing but Roman warships and some army men, and some paint she already had? She was so pissed, I think she spent the rest of the day eating everyone’s osechi and pouting.”

Rei sat down next to her. “Michiru told her she could,” Rei smiled weakly and curled her hand in the air, her voice affected and haughty. “Buy you anything you care to have, Haruka.’”

Mina laughed, and popped her palm onto the table, “THAT’S NOT THE POINT, MICHIRU.’ You were right, buddy, your shitty luck was always the point.”

She took the last thing out of the bag, a large box with curled red writing on the front.

“A 1939 Jaguar. She’d have loved that.”

The girls stood around the table, looking down at the table, a small detail paintbrush rolling away toward the edge, almost falling until Usagi caught it and turned it over in her hand.

“I think we should build it.” Usagi spoke for the first time, and it was only then that Mina realized the strange quietness of the room as she’d opened the bag. The feeling of the room had been so oppressively loud that she had paid no mind to the actual lack of sound. Usagi let a tear fall from her cheek, but she did not sob. Not now. Now she was determined. “You still have her stuff, don’t you?”

Mina nodded. She could see it there, taking up space but somehow impossible for her to get rid of, years of hobby supplies and car kits that would never be made, placed in the back of her closet, hoping to be forgotten.

Rei put a hand on her shoulder. “We don’t have to.” She seemed to remember herself, suddenly. “I mean, we have plenty of other things to do today, we don’t need to sit around and--”

“No.” Mina looked up at her. “I think it’s a good idea. I think she’d like it.”

Usagi opened the box and studied the plans carefully, as if Haruka’s knowledge could be transferred to her by sheer force of will. Mina walked back to the bedroom, and opened the closet door.

It was a strange thing, she reflected, what we take and what we leave when someone dies. Why this box, of all the things? They had never made a car together, she’d never so much as sat and watched as Haruka worked on her models-it was a mostly solitary hobby by its very nature, and for Haruka it had been unusually quiet and contemplative, and not what most people would have defined her by. The leather jacket Mina now wore from time to time, a few coins from the last time they’d gone to the arcade together, those things seemed more natural and no one questioned them.

And yet this box was the thing she clung to the most tightly.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” The voice was so unusually kind that it took her a moment to recognize it as Rei’s.

She began to unload some of the paint and glue out of the box. “Yeah. I think I do.” She looked up at Rei. “help me carry this?”

“I’ll help you carry it all.”

__

Meanwhile, in the Ginza district, a pre-ordered fukubukuro as a gift for Rei Hino sat, waiting to be sent out. The card was signed, M. Kaioh.  

[esthersnippe]

Becoming a Digital Nomad: A quick and dirty guide to UpWork

(My “office” on the Isla of Flores in Guatemala)

Freelancing is one of the best jobs I’ve ever had. 

Although now I have moved off of freelancing and am more of an independent contractor, I still pick up a few freelancing projects ever quarter.

Because it is simply a great way to make money. Loads of people are leaving their office and opting for something more flexible: according to the FreshBooks Self-Employment Report, potentially 27 million Americans will leave the traditional work in favor of self-employment by 2020. This shift would triple the current population of full-time self-employed professionals bringing the total number of workers to 42 million.

And that’s just in the US, imagine what these figures look like globally.

I’m guessing if you are here reading this, we’ve talked about it already and I have sent you the link, so you are pretty sold: but let’s review:

You choose your hours. No bosses saying “You’re ten minutes late!” or having to suffer through another 8-hour shift that just never seems to end. You pick when you work. If you are hungover and can’t bring it to the table: that’s your call. (But warning: you will not get the money if you don’t work.) 

You choose your projects. After the first couple projects (which is a bit of a mad and dirty dash, I am afraid) you get to start to get choices. Storytime! Once I was working for this American Museum Tour company. At first, they were loads of fun, and they even flew me to New York City multiple times, and I got a paid trip to Switzerland. Things were great, until the point they weren’t. Then I began to hate it with the passion of a thousand suns. So one day, I just quit. The next day, I found another project, and they paid me more money, and were a better company. It was bloody easy. Stop suffering. Pick a project you like and only stick with it until/if you stop liking them.  (Note: I have been with the new client for 3 years, and they are still a dream to work with.) 

You get paid real money. There is this idea that if it happens on the internet, maybe there is something sketchy about it. This could be true in some cases: but in this case, you get actual money (ok, sometimes it is in a different currency then the country you are living in, but you can turn it into your currency) that goes into your actual bank account and you can actually buy and pay for things. For sitting at home.  Doing stuff on your laptop. 

You can learn new stuff on the job. I definitely didn’t start out with all the skills I have now. I started off as a modest internet researcher, and through time, worked my way up to having this whole jetpack of skills that clients not only want, but need. Don’t feel daunted about not being able to do everything right away. Start with a good project, and be a sponge. Learn as much as you can, because these skills are valuable (remember the part about making real money?) 

You can go anywhere in the world. As long as they have wifi, and your clients are ok with you being in a different timezone? You can go anywhere. Since working as a freelancer, I have travelled to, get this, 30 countries. Screw waiting around for a two-week vacation. Go see the world. And make some money while you do it.

Now, here comes the part where I bring that excitement down to a reasonable level.

There are some hard truths about freelancing I am going to be frank about.

The first is that it is real work. You’ve got to be dedicated and you absolutely have to have a rock-solid work ethic. If you don’t, you will not get very far, because this is not the kind of job you can “float by” on. People will drop you like a hot potato the second you stop performing. And there is no safety net. You will have to hustle your own projects for the first bit: people will not be chomping at the bit to get you. In fact, they will probably, most like, almost definitely ignore you for the most part. There are literally 12 million users on UpWork: if you aren’t hustling, you aren’t going anywhere. Apply for ten positions a day. Get up at 4am for a Skype interview. Be charming af. Follow up, then follow up again. Don’t let them forget you, and if they don’t hire you, ask why and then get better. You’ve got to get your own work. Lastly, you are probably not going to make mad money right away. The money is there, and you can have some of it, but you are probably going to have to do a bit of grunt work first, and I am talking up to 2-3 months at a low rate. But keep at it. There is a bunch of money and magic at the top of the mountain.

Still with me?

Ok. Let’s get into it.

Why UpWork?

So, when I first started freelancing, I signed up for a few different Freelancing websites that were around at the time: oDesk, Elance and Freelancer.   There were others I looked at, like Toptal and Fivrr. But I couldn’t see how people could make actual money to pay bills on Fivrr, but didn’t have high enough skills or experience for Toptal.   I got work within a few weeks of signing up for oDesk, and after seeing the cut that Freelancer was taking after one project, stuck with oDesk. oDesk merged with Elance, they changed their name to UpWork, and here we are.  

That being said: I love UpWork. At one point, one of my clients asked me if we could leave UpWork, and he would pay me directly. I agreed. That is $1000 I will never get back. He was a nice guy, but at that moment, I was screwed over, and there was nothing I could do. UpWork protects you from that happening. 

Secondly, with the sheer amount of freelancers on the site: clients are simply drawn to UpWork. They aren’t just looking for the cheapest: they are looking for the variety.

Note: I am not longer using UpWork, and work 100% on my regular clients and referrals. But there is no way I would have gotten there, or gotten so many skills, without UpWork, so I still think it is the best place to start.

Setting up your profile

Here are three great articles on how to set up a great profile:

Enhance Your Upwork Freelancer Profile for Greater Success

How to Create an Upwork Profile That Gets You Clients, FAST

Sample: Profile

I am not going to rewrite what they’ve said. Because that is a waste of time (hurray for understanding time management!)

But here are my top 6 tips:

Upload a profile picture where you look good. I mean real good. Don’t be an a** about it either. Clean, professional, and hot. That’s all. No party hats or dogs or sunglasses or duck-facey, off camera looks.

Pick 5 skills. Even though they let you have 10: be clear about what you can and want to do. Now, on the topic of skills: you do not need a journalism degree to be a writer. Or a photography degree to manage an Instagram account. Think about the kinds of things you like. Are you a grammar nut? Put those skills to work as an editor. Do you speak multiple langauges fluently? Become a translator. Do you love spreadsheets? That is a freaking skill, (wo)man! Are you generally a happy-go-lucky, I-can-get-shit-done kind of person? Be someone’s personal virtual assistant. You do not have to be defined by what you’ve already done, focus on what you like to do.  

Watch out for typos. I was hiring for this client once, and found a woman who was amazing. We had a skype interview and I was ready to sign on the dotting line, but at the last minute, my client looked at her profile and found a typo and said “No.” Simple as that. I was gutted, because she was really fantastic. Have someone proofread your profile, because it’s that easy for potential clients to move on to the next person.

Don’t worry about tests. Very few clients look at them. Or care. Even if you are in the top 5%. They are nice, but also, kind of a waste of time. 

Fill in your profile so that your bar goes up to 100%. Just do it. I know it’s work, but you’ll get more clients.

Set a reasonable rate for how long you’ve been on the site. Yes, I know you’d love to be paid $50 and hour, but if you’ve got zero experience or hours, you are not going to get clients. Honestly, start at $7-$10 an hour. Then after your first 100 hours, you can bump your rate up to what you think you should be getting. Why 100 hours? Because it puts you in a different search category: a better one. Wait...what are these search categories? Well, when a client is looking for someone, this is what it looks like:

See that massive jump in the number of  Freelancers (the bracket number) on the “Hours Billed” section? That means your competition decreases by more than half, and you can start to get more choosy about your gigs. 

On getting hired

Remember that thing I said about hustling? Yep. You’ve got to do that.

But here are some more tips.

Apply, apply, apply. Then apply some more. I don’t even know how many proposals I wrote in those first few weeks, but it was a lot. And here’s the thing, you can’t cheat. You’ve got to read the position, and write to them personally. All the low-end people cut and paste and never move ahead. Put some soul into it, especially at first.

Start small (I mean cheap): Although your insides might be screaming “I AM BETTER THAN THAT.” take 1-3 low paid one-off projects. Get a five-star rating and use it to propel yourself to the next freelancer level.

In the interview process: be as attentive as possible. This means responding right away to messages, and being available for interviews even if the hours are weird (remember the 4am comment? Yeah, I did that once). Follow up with them, and then follow up again. Be impressive.

On working as a freelancer

Wow! Have you gotten a gig? Good job! You rock! From here on in you are kind of a free agent, and it is between you and your client, but here are some tips.

Get really good at online communication. This means responding to emails quickly, and being clear. This means if at any point you don’t understand what your client wants: you ask them before charging them for work they didn’t need or want or is incorrect. Give them your email, Facebook and Skype, and ask them how their team communicates (Google Hangouts? Slack? Basecamp *gulp*) then be there.

Download the time tracker and stick to working when you are working. It takes three seconds to turn off the tracker, check your Facebook, and then turn it on again. But once you get a screen grab of you hanging out on Facebook, it looks bad. Also, I have come to suspect (from being caught more than once) that UpWork automatically looks for you slacking off, ie. Facebook.

Get your hours in. If they have given you hours, they expect the work to be done. Coming back without the work done with excuses and worse, not having filled up your hours? Bad. Remember the thing I said about them dropping you like you’re hot? Get the work done in the hours they’ve given you, or talk with them and discuss with them why you need fewer hours. That is far better than simply coming up short.

Getting good feedback is important. Even if this means swallowing your pride from time to time. Here is what they are going to rate you on: 

But wait: why is there public feedback and private feedback? Well, you know how you’ve got that job success thing on the side of your profile?  Over time, you get secret points. Those secret points work up to you being featured higher when the clients use the search tool. Also, you’ll get some cool perks in the future, like the Premium Freelancer program.

Lastly, and most importantly: GETTING PAID So, I have to be honest here. I have never fully figured out the timing of the payments. It goes through my PayPal, and whenever it hits a $1000 of earning, it goes into my bank account. There is a bunch of information here though. If you’d like to talk to me privately about payments (ie. Taxes and other trickier areas) feel free to message me.

I hope this gives you enough to get started. As I said before, freelancing is an amazing option if you are done with the office and dream about doing something slightly more, slightly different and have the gumption to do it. If you have any questions, want me to review your profile, or just want to talk more about freelancing— shoot me off a message, I love helping people get one step closer to freedom, be that fiscal or philosophical.

PS. Here is the list of countries I’ve been to while working as a freelancer: Austria, Belarus, Belize, Canada, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, El Salvador, England, Faroe Islands, France, Guatemala, Germany, Honduras, Iceland, Lithuania, Mexico, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and the United States.

[entitledunemployedmillennial]

Endless Job Searching

While I waited for my unemployment benefits to come in the mail, and for the past 6 months or so. I’ve started applying for jobs in whatever way I could. Monster, Craigslist, Dice, Ziprecruiter, Indeed, any major job search site, every major company you named it I did it. All unemployment insurance in all states require people going to receive benefits to apply for three jobs a week. And more increasingly, they require you to sign up for the unemployment office website, register their information, and register your three applications on their website so they can verify that you’re actually seeking work.

Most people apply to at least ten jobs a day. But in reality in order to actually get any type of job in a metropolitan area you need to apply for 125 jobs a week. Here is a list of all the jobs titles I’ve applied to:

Linux Systems Administrator

Linux Administrator

Site Reliability Engineer

Linux Analyst

Solaris Administrator

System Administrator

Technical Writing

Software Engineer

Unix Engineer

Unix Systems Adminstrator

IT Support Analyst

Help Desk

IT Manager and IT Lead

They’re with Large companies, small companies, recruiting firms, temp agencies. And or the most part despite being well qualified for these roles, I rarely get a call back.

Many of the applications range from simple ones that just want your name, address, phone number, email, and your resume to ones that require you to make an account to simply apply for a job with your resume, or in some cases you are required refill the entire application for the Applicant Tracking System so that it will be parsed with keywords or buzzwords set by the employer’s Human Resources Department. If it does not fill enough buzzwords, it won’t be selected.

And even if it does fill in enough buzzwords, it would not not be selected anyway. This is because ATS systems have beyond buzzwords to secret algorithms that determine if your resume would be actually seen by a human. These same systems are in some cases, used by state courts in the United States to determine sentencing in criminal cases. Due to the use of algorithms, you can be rejected for any reason: Length of unemployment, length of gaps between jobs, which type of experience you have, place of living, email. In some cases, certain address you put there will put your name and application on a blacklist, meaning that you may not be hiired ever from a company that uses such a blacklists. This affects people living in homeless shelters who are actively seeking work, not knowly that they have been placed on a blacklist for doing what they’re supposed to do to stay in a homeless shelter.

In some cases, the applicant tracking system is glitched and it’s apparent that HR did not even test their systems.

In many cases, most companies have a 5 year experience requirement for their positions. This is done to legally discriminate recent graduates, and those who don’t have recent experience in the employment field. In some cases, they only want paid, professional, and recent experience. Shutting out people who took the advice of volunteer to get paid experience. Even people who volunteer in a different field who get employers to look at their resume are rejected because the volunteer experience is not related to the field they wanted to work in.

Due to all of this, the standard advice for job seekers that have been repeated to them over and and over simply do not apply anymore.

Due to the advancements of ATS systems, most people don’t bother reading resumes anymore. In many cases, just type in buzzwords and just email job opportunities to as multiple people as possible. Then they do the usual phone screening, and then phone interview, then in-person interview, then finally a job offer. That’s the usual practice.

In reality, companies have been known for taking a long time in hiring people. Even in times of low unemployment or a labor shortages. In some cases, the job opening can be fake in order to college resumes and get a feel of the job market. In some cases, the job opening is placed there to fulfill Equal Opportunity Employer regulations because they already have someone who the employer want via a referral or a internal candidate. In some cases, companies may choose to refile the job opening over and over again because the people they apply for the job, may not want be the ones the employer wants. So it’s more easier not to hire anyone than to risk a liability or a bad hire.

Recruiters do the same practices of most employers these days, and they do it with no consequence because instead of actually advocating to the employer on your behalf, or actively seeking and apply for jobs for you, they apply for one position and three positions and call it a day.

In practice, what recruiters do is sales. Not actual recruiting. In actural recruting role, the person finds a person, reads the resume, after sometime they call the person in. After the screenig and phone interview, they will send you to the person the actual company for a interview.

Often times they will tell you that they will call you when there's a update or will call you on like Wednesday. Then wednesday comes along and then you realized that they have not called back because they forgot. So you have to call them yourself. Then when you follow up with them, they seem to routinely dodge your phone calls and emails. When you do catch up with them, they will pull an excuse and pretend that they didn’t hear that you said that you missed their voice messages.

Indian recruiters, whose whole business scheme is to spam resumes in areas where no one want to go with a 3 or 1 month contract. They’re hoping that people who are unemployed  are desperate to post their resume so they can use them to prove to the US company that want to hire a person who is part of the overseas company attached to recruiting “business” that they tried to find a US candidate. Or in some cases, steal the information for their own ends: Such the job experience and place them on their hire they actually want that is from overseas, or steal the person’s name, address, and phone number as a form of identity fraud.

These practices have been active since the 2008 recession and have not changed because company simply realize that it’s easier cheapen the cost of labor by hiring less or none at all. Some of them I won’t include are abolishing on-the-job training programs for new hires, or outsourcing them to the workers on their own dime and time. But what most companies did was outsource hiring and recruiting to HR executives, ATS firms, and the recruiting industry as a way to cut costs. In some cases, companies post their listings on several job postings, to several recruiting firms. So the amount of jobs that are posted may not be real at all.

But the most insidious and unprofessional thing about the job market since is they way respond to job seekers. These days, they’re actually not genuine, some cases it’s totally fake as you can in some cases listen between words of interviewers and people calling you or calling you back. Despite systems that allow you automate sending rejection letters to each state of the process, most employers choose not to even though it can take less than five minutes to set them up.

Often times, you will never hear back. And this is done via ignoring your phone calls, emails,and voice messages. In some cases, recruiters place your number on a block list, straight to voicemail. It’s unprofessional but a routine practices nowadays in the age of the internet, and cell phones. But if a job seeker calls out a employer for doing so, they will make the job seeker the bad guy for not playing their game.

If you do get a hold of the HR person calling you, they will tell you a generic statement.

We have too many applicants

You’re resume is impressive, but we decided to go with other candidates

You’re not a good fit

We’re not decided to go with other candidates

We closed the position.

The same thing with email statements, too. It’s all generic because they don’t want to risk a lawsuit. You can argue that the hiring practices today, is to find excuses not to hire even a candidate that is not perfect but can work with: Zero-Liability Hiring.

Despite the Trump’s Administration boasting of a 4.1%, and a now absurd 3.8% unemployment rate, you would think that companies might suddenly change their tune and maybe be more flexible. Sadly, they haven’t, as it’s too profitable to change practices.As a matter of fact, for the tax breaks Trump promised and signed to Congress, most companies have pocketed the tax reductions they got instead of reinvesting it into hiring more people.

Now as for my story, almost all companies I’ve applied to have not acted like they’re desperate to hire people. In some cases, they stalled or made excuses why they can’t move forward.

The worst part is that I got laid off during the worst part of the year: The Holiday season. It's the time where employers despite posting job openings, are less inclined to actually pull their weight when it comes to the job application process, and will flake or stall out the first change to avoid giving applicants a callback closer the actual holidays come.

(The only exception is if you know someone that is willing and able to help, and will actually keep trying to help instead of seeking a one off thing and then going away if it does not work out).

In many cases, I’ve tried applying for jobs and casted a wide net to even places in the Northeast such as New York, Boston, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware. Same result, never hear anything back or they refused to go forward because I don’t live in the area where the employer is. I’ve even applied for jobs that are outside my field. Anything and I get no reply back response.

I’ve created multiple resumes over the past six months: There was one that had my job experience for the past 7 years. I had a federal resume to apply for federal jobs. I had a full one that is similar to the federal resumes, but without the federal government specific sections. I even had a dumbed down resume with just the last job I had. It didn’t matter, which resume as none of them got me the job.

And I’ll tell you why. Despite the fact that the unemployment rate is is low, there are too many people applying for too few jobs that exist in the market. 95% of the job growth since the 2008 economic recession is for part-time/contract work in low wage service industries, with the exception of fields that are in bubbles such as the STEM field, and the Oil/Shale industry during the oil boom before OPEC caused a oil glut in 2014.

Instead of companies expanding full-time job openings the jobs since 2008, they kept it low on purpose because it’s more profitable to hire less or none at all. This is what we call a jobs shrinkage. This is why you have one person doing the job of 2 or 3 people without a wage increase. And when the person finally quits, they will spread out the work to new hires that will be paid much less.

But it does not matter what I experience, because to American society I’m a worthless entitled unemployed millennial