#it seems like the same person because theyre all basically formatted the same and they reblog random shit from each other

[saru-003]

to the weird italian "roleplay" blogs that have kept following me for a while now please stop thank u

[roe-and-memory]

headcanons

hi tumblr ihave like three headcanons to share currently (there will be more soon i just need to see how well theyre taken, do we like headcanons on here??)

(based off of him not having headlights but how i perceive it humanized even though racecars cant have headlights in Real Life) lightning has light sensitivity issues with his vision . he cannot see. the sun is too bright sometimes and if its dark he will trip over one of the floorboards in docs house, no matter how many times hes walked this floor. (hes very prone to tripping Always but it just gets worse when its dark) (he has rips in the knees of every single pair of jeans he owns)

docs old sunglasses have his name lasered into the arm, lightning found them basically untouched in a box in docs garage. he pulls them out and starts using them when its too bright outside and doc has learned to just hand them over whenever lightning shows up like

2. lightning just. doesnt sleep ?? he is 100% an insomniac and his nightmares are to blame. he would rather work himself to exhaustion than willingly sleep at a normal time. cue him spending most nights out in the fields or at the junkyard with mater building things or whatever until mater is the one to be like ok im tired im going to bed and lightning is forced to go back home, climb back through his bedroom window, and stare at the ceiling until he passes out. he hates sleeping because every night, without fail, he has nightmares. vivid nightmares about whatever his brain can think of, and when he does sleep hes basically fighting his sheets for five hours because of these nightmares, and then he wakes up early and goes about his day as if he wasn't at war with literal demons 20 minutes ago.

doc knows about these nightmares, of course he does, he's a light sleeper and lightnings room is just across the hall, he's also completely aware that the kid sneaks out the window every night because, although lightning is quiet around the house, he is not too graceful when hes attempting to climb out the window -- he's fallen into the bush beneath it countless times.

because of this, doc has tried everything to help him with the nightmare issue, from melatonin to getting him to just write down whatever he was dreaming about to show himself it wasnt real, and absolutely none of it worked. in fact, melatonin seemed to make it worse, and doc gave up there.

3. doc wears a silver "wedding" band. he's not married, in fact he's never been interested in having a partner or getting married at all (i dub thee aroace) but when he was younger he was certainly eye candy for girls at the racetrack and they fawned over him like nobodies business. he comes up with the great idea to get a silver ring and lie, he makes up some tragic backstory to tell whenever a woman asks him why he has a ring or who the lucky person is, and it makes them back of pretty quickly. in reality, the ring is made from a small wheel bearing, and smokey made it for him when he asked because he thought it was funny as hell and was like yes sure but pls make it sound ridiculous . and dont ever tell the same story twice. confuse them.

word gets around and he's told multiple different stories so everyone is confused, but if someone questions him he just gives them a Look and they shut up about it.

even after his crash and his inevitable leave from the piston cup and thomasville, along with his change of address, he continued to wear the ring just in case he got recognized or something.. (it was for aesthetic reasons, he loves that ring its just his signature thing now)

ok... thats it for now, is this how things get formatted here??? do we Like this???

[definitelynotshouting]

oooh talking about interesting formatting in fiction, some really neat things i've seen:

a fanfic where some things in the narration were in brackets and some weren't, and it seemed like narrative asides at first but then it was gradually revealed there were two completely different narrators with different sets of information

a fanfic named Blank Space that at first appeared to be just a gigantic empty page, like really long, but then if you highlighted anything it turned out the text colour was deliberately the same as the background colour because the narrator was a fairy changeling style imposter and the story was their PoV as they staked out and kidnapped the person whose identity they wanted to take

a style experimental/meta work named either CSS In Testing or Bleed Gold depending on where you looked that had a chapter with retroactive text and a chapter that didn't exist

an animorphs fanfic where the narration at first appears to be third person omniscient but with gradual hints that something was up, and then those hints became more and more obvious until you got a first person pronoun and it was clear that the narrator was the ellimist

a hermitcraft fanfic where some dialogue was outside of dialogue tags and formatted differently to indicate it was being said - potentially basically telepathically - by the character's bases possessing them, up to and including one instance where there's just straight up images of minecraft signs with text on them because tango's base is talking to him by using his body to write on signs

and a fanfic which at first seemed to be jumping between first and second person at random as a writing mistake, but as you read it, it gradually revealed that the narrator was the central node of a hivemind and the second-person had been her referring to the specific hivedrone the story was focusing on

THESE ARE INSANE THEYRE MAKING ME GO FUCKING CRAZY OHMY GODS..... PEOPLE ARE SO COOL AND SKILLED THATS FUCKING BONKERS I AM ACTIVELY LOSING MY MIND AT ALL OF THESE

Shit like this truly inspires me and makes me just froth at the mouth with how CLEVER it all is OUGHJG

[leminhthinking]

i just found a bunch of words i wrote (as comments on my own facebook post) right after going to the theater to watch Everything Everywhere All At Once. it ended abruptly because i wanted to do something else that day and forgot to come back but well. this is a way to view Everything Everywhere All At Once taking it as equivalent to Umineko's magic viewpoint

oK WELL. firstly im a regret fueled multi timeline eeaao truther, because the multi timeline concept when portrayed as created by choices doesnt sit right with my brain and from this lens everything makes sense to me. because as timelines created by randomness, it feels so heartless and pointless; while the idea, the very message eeaao's trying to convey is exactly the opposite of that. theyre all regrets. just like when Evelyn told Waymond she saw a great life without him and she wished he could see it

how i view eeaao is basically

(knowing) everything (the facts - the Shape of the Universe, the one Truth)

(being) everywhere (the pain. the hope - the feelings, the Heart, the Human Part)

all at once (accepting that and continue to live on)

or everything (question arc), everywhere (answer/core arc), all at once (tea party) /hj

that can only make sense when the multiverse isnt something to just. be. something that neglects the people living in it. but also in this way or another way, intended or just described as such shortly after, another name, another portrayal of regrets. not just hm. not just any regrets. personal regrets. for example if you take Evelyn's line to Waymond about her martial arts timeline out of the sci-fi (namely "magic") context, it could be translated to "i regretted marrying you just to live an ordinary life". and i like that view a lot more because framed in this way it actually centers the people more than it seems. that yes nothing matters everything could be different everywhere in time and space but their core remains the same...

also like theres really something about "Jobu Tupaki" (the concept, what is talked about by other people) that is alienated and detached from her "original self" (what is perceived by. well let's say, Evelyn) at the start. how Evelyn wanted to be just like Jobu, as in, having her strength, her power, the reason of her formation, so that she could defeat Jobu. thats an approach that is lack of love - just like the whole verse jumping thing at the start, which was used to get special abilities only. thats like just asking for the "how" only to redo the exact thing, not considering that their positions are so different, not considering that everyone in themselves are different either

just like this, Evelyn's turning the chessboard around, assuming the opponent to be just the same as her, having the same kind of position, the same kind of mindset as her. she's seeing The Truth only as a sequence of actions and not considering the person behind it. i mean, fair. Jobu's talked about like the plague anyway, she's so alienated from the family and detached from "Joy Wang" as a concept

like i said earlier, everywhere is about the very Heart. eeaao's core arc. first half of this is exactly what Evelyn wanted earlier, she got put into Jobu's shoes, understood, but then only felt and acted like Jobu instead of creating any difference. the position changed, from the outspoken "ill defeat her if i become just like her", to the silent "of course she would become this way". Evelyn became numb to every universe shes in, existing for the sake of existing, because existing in itself to her no longer holds meaning if everything is everything and everything changes and everything is meaningless and doesnt matter. personally i feel like thats such a beautifully written tragedy. if nothing really matters, even people with a higher sense of understanding, living life as if theyre on a higher plane of existence, cannot escape such numbness and detachment

like this is not my life. ive lived so many lives. i cannot feel what im supposed to feel because i felt too much, and that emotional energy source had run out on me

this image again:

its so sad to want this then finally have someone who understand you only for them to think hmm theres really no other way

also since were going with the regret fueled multi timeline understanding it is also. knowing that things you regret, if given the chance to happen, would still leaves you with so much pain and other regrets, with just some random specks of happiness. happiness, in that way, does not hold any meaning, if it too shall pass, and replaced by suffering instead. even in a world that doesnt exist, a world you want, a world you aim for, a world youre more than you now, youre still going to suffer as hard as your current world

the second half of everywhere is very frequently talked about so although i really really love it i dont really want to keep repeating what others had said because. yknow. i love the message a Lot but others had made it very obvious. i love being kind i love cherishing feelings despite feeling like living in so many lives. despite regretting so many lives. because every lives are worth living! not just existing aimlessly and throwing away emotions because they dont matter

(this is also the exact approach that i often tell people to read umineko with, although a bit different because its consuming a story and in this case its living. nevertheless, theyre all cherishing your feelings to the fullest, and not neglecting everything to find what is "real" and "true")

so like what i really do want to talk about is the contrast of how Jobu is seen by Evelyn at the start of the movie and at this very point. the keyword is acceptance. with kindness, understanding leads to acceptance, and that very acceptance ties the "Jobu" everyone feared wth "Joy Wang", Evelyn's daughter, together, as they should have always been because theres no Great Evil splitting from Evelyn's daughter, there has always been just Her. the final notes of everywhere resonate with me so much, because then, it finally clicked for Evelyn, and she chose to accept that truth

and i think that acceptance is so so important and what touched me. separating the aspects you dont agree or like from who your loved ones really is, then only love the parts you like hurts them

[diyeoracha]

fanfic recommendations

for @kittensocute bc i heard “atsukita” and “iwaoi” in reference to fanfiction and i am There

i took your “i love slow burn or slow build fics... so i like relatively shorter burn fics (20-30k). If its a 10k oneshot slow burn hELL SIGN ME UP” and absolutely ran with it.

i listed my fav iwaoi fics (17) with a longer word count (longest is 80k) that are all mostly either canon compliant or divergent with only two straight up AUs. none of them feature heavy nsfw content and most if not all are tagged as friends to lovers lmao. feel free to read the my thoughts or just go into them blind!! and they’re all in order of how much I absolutely adore them :^)

now atsukita is not a big ship *sobs* but here are some of my favorite fics (7) of them! a lot of them are shorter bc i guess that’s just. what happens when it’s a small ship LOL. 

the formatting in this is fucked if you open it from ur dash but if it’s on my actual blog it should be fine!

Iwaoi

the courtship ritual of the hercules beetle

Word count: 66k

thoughts: my absolute absolute absolute favorite iwaoi fic. the characterization, the fact that oikawa’s a bastard but because he and iwaizumi are older (late 20s i believe), it feels more realistic and sad rather than oikawa being a bitch for the sake of it. spoiler alert it’s slow burn and pining and mostly oikawa not realizing his feelings. this world building is pretty cool bc iwaizumi is the professional player while oikawa is an entomology professor! also i love non-linear narratives bc of This fic. there’s mutual pining in this fic but it’s really really really subtle to the point where you dont even know if oikawa likes iwa. this made me cry like twice.

sunset towns

Word count: 33k

Summary: In the summer of 2020, Oikawa Tooru returns home from his first successful stint as captain of Japan’s national volleyball team. In one hand, he holds the undisputed weight of an Olympic medal, and in the other, his unresolved feelings for a childhood best friend.

thoughts: the tone in this is So similar to the courtship ritual that I liken this as an alternate story even though it’s still oikawa’s pov. professional player oikawa and regular guy iwaizumi and oikawa is just. bumming around at iwaizumi’s place and naturally he messes up but things happen.

told before and told again

word count: 4k

thoughts: i looked through literally all the tags i could’ve thought of for this and nearly cried when i found it agian. outsider POV!!

In damp earth my body

Word count: 15k

Summary: Onscreen, the nation’s favorite setter has arranged himself so that he’s bowing, forehead pressed to the court, like he’s thanking everyone for their kindness thus far, like he’s asking for forgiveness. Hajime thinks: shit, it’s really happening

thoughts: oikawa retires and moves in with iwaizumi and they blur the line between roommates/best friends and being fwb. this is an iwaizumi pov and the pining is obvious on his end. as a iwa stan the tone made me feel weird bc it makes it seem like iwa cares more abt oikawa than he cares abt himself but. its a good fic

i grew up, you grew down

word count: 19k

thoughts: this is also SO funny bc basically oikawa retires and moves in with iwaizumi and becomes his stay at home wife and a bunch of shit happens like people think that oikawa is dating ushijima and oikawa basically loses it every time. here’s one of my favorite quotes:

“Oikawa also bought a new ultra-strength vacuum cleaner he’d decided to name Ushiwaka out of sheer spite, because it sucked all the air right out of the room. Iwa-chan didn’t think the joke was that funny when Tooru told him, which was frankly very hurtful and insensitive.”

Mint

Word count: 19k

thoughts: iwaizumi is moving and oikawa planned a perfect last hangout and it goes to shit featuring matsuhana. oikawa pov where he pines more than iwa which is something i can get behind!! and this was written in 2015 and iwa’s moving bc of a sports medicine program so iwaizumi stans know and love him sm ;;

Almost a Stranger

Word count: 16k

thoughts: same premise as mint LOL except they’re on a trip together and there’s more non-linear narrative!! this one is a little more mature in tone than mint i would say (funny how people just like splitting them up and throwing them in different countries huh)

with every second that you could give

Word count: 9k

Summary: The journey of Iwaizumi and Oikawa going for gold.

Quote: He knows they’re too close. Iwaizumi knows it too, and they both decided to move in together anyway.

thoughts: iwaoi roommates and they’re both obviously and really pine-y for each other and everyone sees it but them. srsly. they’re sleeping in the same bed. like my god

Lost in Translation

Word count: 9k

Summary: Because misfortune come in threes, Iwaizumi Hajime starts his Thursday having a screaming fight with Shittykawa, spends his lunch break listening to the UCI women’s volleyball team gossiping about how Ushijima Wakatoshi had gone public about his longtime love affair with Oikawa Tooru, and closes out the day by drunkenly dropping his phone into a sewer grate.

thoughts: so funny. so sososoosso genuinely funny. the tone is so snappy and iwaizumi honestly just sounds like a confused teenager (which he is in this) and it gets extra points for including a lot of american culture that a lot of the other iwaoi college au ones don’t include for like. obvious reasons lol.

Something Borrowed

Word count: 16k

Summary: In which Oikawa and Iwaizumi have always been a foregone conclusion to everyone else, but a massive, unanswered question to one another.

thoughts: iwaoi roommates thats abo but it’s like. mentioned twice. whiny and possessive oikawa makes an appearance in this but it’s done really well

things that change, things that stay the same

Word count: 8k

Summary: Oikawa realizes he’s in love with his best friend; it sucks for a while. (But only for a little while.)

thoughts: high school getting together!! my second iwaoi fic ever and this one is just. so sweet. just an unsure oikawa realizing iwaizumi might be more than someone he wants as a best friend. this fic is honestly really really lovely.

galaxies, within you

Word count: 21k

Summary: Hajime and Tooru move in together at the start of university. Too bad they’re stuck with the two gremlins that haunt their apartment.

thoughts: ok this fic was so funny. theyre uni roommates and matsuhana just come fuck shit up and they all act like idiots together even though they go to different schools. and this really throws me back to university days.

Thirty Years and Change (the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad)

Word count: 19k

thoughts: pro! oikawa and iwaizumi haven’t been close for a while until oikawa invites iwaizumi to go to the games with him. there’s a lot of frustration and pining and actually talking about feelings (aka iwaizumi losing his mind and getting advice from people like akaashi)

when it starts to rain, they go inside

Word count: 33k

Summary: “Where?” starts Iwaizumi.“ My parent’s old lakehouse, silly, didn’t you hear me the first time?” OR: Oikawa takes Iwaizumi to his lakehouse for two weeks, post-graduation.

thoughts: this was actually my first iwaoi fic which is funny bc the author doesn’t even like oikawa much and i didnt even ship anything in haikyuu before i read this fic and now im in iwaoi hell. oikawa is really frustrating in this in that it’s basically a really good character analysis on how oikawa comes off as a Mean person all the time bc he’s manipulative and there’s some explicit content

shiver

Word count: 16k

Summary: Oikawa was always the brave one. Hajime just followed two paces behind.

thoughts: iwaoi roommates with oikawa admitting his feelings first back when they were in middle school and iwaizumi putting that thought on the backburner until. obviously. things happen.

Desperado

word count: 80k

thoughts: one of my favorite aus. it’s all from kyoutani’s perspective and it’s almost so au that they’re original characters (if that makes sense). basically iwaoi matsuhana are ex-grifters except iwaoi are estranged and daishou somehow brings everyone back together. excellent world building and reading the pov from someone not involved with the iwaoi drama was refreshing

sing with me a song of conquest and fate

word count: 26k

thoughts: a mythical kings au that’s just. so pretty. iwaizumi ends up becoming oikawa’s servant for some reason and the world building is a+ because you can feel the trust and frustration from both of them build

Atsukita

dreams of me and you

word count: 10k (incomplete)

my second atsukita fic that rly sent me down atskt hell ;; what is essentially post-break up when atsumu gets signed to msby and he’s just Pining and sad for the most part. but the established relationship pre-break up was written really nicely because it just fits my hc of them just being domestic and atsumu being blatantly head over heels

take me home

word count: 4k

i read this this morning and it wrecked me. domestic relationship atsukita?? sign me up

No time like the rest of my life

word count: 19k

mythology au with kita as a regular person and rest of inarizaki as fox spirits! it’s cute and the world building is absolutely lovely but it is an au so they might seem ooc but their core character values are still there

wild blue yonder

word count: 6k

literally full of similes and metaphors and it’s more of an abstract read i guess? but it’s so beautiful and soft and this is exactly how i imagine their relationship

reap and sow

word count: 8k

atsumu confesses and kita ignores him and it’s a couple years after the fact and it’s mostly just weirdly domestic almost roommate like except for the fact that atsumu makes it clear he likes kita LOL. they’re really in character for this!

weightless souls

word count: 2k

pillow talk before atsumu’s first game! the atsumu pov and voice is amazing

if we were both alone

word count: 7k

now this was actually my first atskt fic that sent me down this rare pair hell. it’s an explicit chat fic (both tropes i usually try to avoid) but atsumu types like me (except for the nsfw parts alksfjd) so i guess i like. feel appreciation LMAO.

if you do read like any of these fics pls let me know so we can discuss

♡＼(￣▽￣)／♡

[fellhellion]

can you make a rec list of your favorite fe3h fics? if that's alright?

OF COURSE I WOULD LOVE TO <3 always happy to give my fave works a shoutout <33333

Though mind u this is going to be a LOT so ill pop them under a cut

from the heart in exile

TLDR: platonic hubert edelgard fic that haunts me. It’s extremely good with really well written character voices and focuses on these two characters trying to find out who they are beyond the war with their friends refusing to leave them behind

Summary: 

You can’t speak just yet to whether time—and age? experience? not that war or rulership have given you much of the latter, at least in the area of gardening—has made your thumbs any less brown, but the house in the Oghma Mountains is surrounded by so many growing things it hardly seems to matter. It sits at the edge of a forest, on the gentle lower slopes, and the people in the nearest town had all smiled to speak of it when they pointed the way for Hubert, the day you arrived. A number of them were old enough to remember what it had been like, years ago, in the warm and golden before, and to insist that it had not changed in the ways that mattered. It was still full of light. The air still smelled green.

In which Edelgard keeps a garden, Hubert learns to fly, and those they leave behind refuse to be left behind.

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Watchtower

TLDR: platonic fic and amazing sylvain character study. Like genuinely one of the best i’ve ever read. If you’re someone who really wanted a deeper exploration of Sylvain’s feelings about Dimitri this fic is for u. 

Summary: 

When Sylvain is six and a half and climbs to the top of a tower with no one’s hand in his, he realizes that each and every one of the people he loves has been born as a gift to something else. Dimitri was born for Faerghus, and Felix was born for Dimitri. Glenn was born for the royal family, and Ingrid was born for Galatea and for Glenn. He realizes, too, that what they’re for decides their future. Dimitri will lead them into a better world. Felix will guide his path, and Glenn will protect his life, and Ingrid will bind her future to theirs.

And Sylvain, who was born for the border, will stand in a watchtower. He will see the enemy before it comes, and he will keep Dimitri and Felix and Ingrid and Glenn safe.

Dimitri reappears after five years. Sylvain knows it's his role to fix the mess they're in, but he doesn't know how.

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little light

TLDR: really good exploration of flayn and seteth’s relationship (+ with his wife and flayn’s mother) pre canon (also post canon if i remember right) just a really good if heartbreaking family fic 

Summary: 

"She is beautiful, and she is perfect. It is foolish to say so, because the goddess herself says perfect beings cannot exist - but Cichol knows now she must have been wrong, because his daughter is perfect. They name her Cethleann. In the old tongue, it means 'light.'"

Cichol, Cethleann, what they lost, and who they became.

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conjure the wind, ease my mind

TLDR: this author in general writes FANTASTIC work so pls check out their whole repertoire. a platonic fic between holst and claude w an exploration of claude’s past that’s just so good....found brotherhood i am WEEPING 

Summary: 

“I’d like to know what’s wrong. I’d like to help if I can.”

Calculating green eyes lock onto Holst’s own, but this time they’re laced with something a little bit like resignation

Many people call Duke Riegan a liar, but Holst feels like he knows the young man a bit better than that. To call him a liar is wrong, you see, because all Claude has ever really done is master the art of giving up as little of the truth as possible. He keeps truth close, treats it like a valuable commodity.

“I have three brothers,” he says. “Half-brothers.”

***

Claude won’t spar with Holst and Holst wants to know why.

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my fellow passerine

TLDR: same author as before and just...god this fic is so good. a platonic exploration of the relationship between Claude and Cyril. This fic has it all: found brotherhood, worldbuilding about Almyra, Claude character study, CYRIL character study. it’s just fantastic 

Summary:

Then the Alliance delegation shows up, and their offering strolls through the gates of the monastery like he already owns the place.

A reminder, for those who need it: Cyril is not an idiot. He has good eyes and he uses them.

An observation, for those who want it: The Golden Deer house leader is Almyran.

~

Cyril knows a lot more than he lets on, Claude is far less covert than he thinks he is, and messing with the guy your parents told you was a possibly-unkillable demon-prince isn’t usually supposed to earn you a lasting friendship but hey… life is already pretty damn weird.

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Autotomy

TLDR: god this ferdibert fic just fucking...destroys me. i cannot get through it without crying at least twice and usually more. it’s basically a CF canon divergence with a heavy HEAVY exploration of ferdinand and hubert’s perspectives towards usefulness and how abelist thinking affects that in their efforts to find Shambala after Ferdinand loses his sight from one of Hubert’s experimental spells. All while falling in love. this fic is VERY fucking heavy, please mind the tags, it’s amazing but it’s subject matter is something you need to be very aware of. Also i would highly reccomend reading the prequel to this fic as it provides some critical context to Hubert’s actions that you don’t get through Ferdinand’s flawed pov. Basically this author is a master of character perspective.

Summary: 

Ferdinand von Aegir's war record ends in 1182. The war does not.

Or, blind man's bluff.

---------------------------------------------

Coming of Age

TLDR: same author as before and god...just my FAVOURITE ferdinand character study. Takes place within the period Byleth is away. I don’t want to spoil anything but it’s incredible. Mines the fantastic character drama hook between Edelgard and Ferdinand that canon DIDNT rip

Summary: 

Ferdinand was a general. In theory. Edelgard had promised him continued command of his battalion, and a general needed a certain measure of wealth to supply his horses, his servants, his armor and rations and lodgings and, she’d promised.

But his father sat rotting in a cell, or worse, and it could be nothing more than a fable they thought him simple enough to believe. What did promises matter?

When the house of Aegir collapses around him, Ferdinand struggles to forge a path forward. He quickly discovers he can't manage it alone -- and neither, perhaps, can Edelgard.

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Another Life

TLDR: same author AGAIN (can u tell theyre my favourite fjsdhfk). Ferdibert fic, a man loving his partner and trying to figure out the best way to support them as they silently wrestle with questions about their gender identity is something that can be so PERSONAL and make u CRY god. also dark flier hubert my beloved. 

Summary: 

Ferdinand notices things. He cannot say what he notices, precisely, because he has no one to ask, and if he were to ask Hubert it would damn well result in every questioned moment up and vanishing forever behind a new wall of prickly austerity. Ferdinand cannot risk that. The things that he notices stick in his chest, and he thinks only, but.

Hubert wrestles with unasked questions; Ferdinand wrestles with a pegasus.

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Beneath the Sheets of Paper Lies My Truth

TLDR: Dimilix fic in my FAVOURITE fucking format of secondary in game historical sources exploring their relationship in retrospective.

Summary:

It was said that Duke Fraldarius’s grief at King Dimitri’s death was more potent than even the queen’s—but said by whom, and how, and why?

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A Fair Day’s Work

TLDR: Post CF Canon ferdibert where Hubert and Ferdinand’s overworked aides desperately try to get them together so they’ll be too busy being uhhhh AMOUROUS to give them so much work. Very much a romantic comedy with very fun OCs as our protags. 

Summary:

“I may have some coffee in the place for you,” said Prime Minister Aegir. “Let me show you how much better I have become at brewing it to your taste.”

“If you insist,” said Minister Vestra but he sounded pleased. To Delarivier, who had literally made it her profession to attune herself to his tone (usually ranging from sort-of-murder-y to extremely-murder-y), Minister Vestra sounded very pleased indeed.

--

Ferdinand and Hubert's long-suffering aides figure out a way to work fewer hours.

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Roost

TLDR: Dimilix post AM Canon with some pre canon moments. Basically an exploration of the complexity of their relationship with bird symbolism and extra Holy Kingdom lore. Gifting ur lover a vulture is something that can be so personal fksdhfsjkd

Summary:

Dimitri makes an affirmative noise. Then he takes a breath, voice leveling out into what Felix had long ago dubbed his 'future king voice', all steady explanation: “Long ago, the saying fledged right along with the nobles' and royal family's love of hawking, and it has remained a common phrase from one generation to the next. As adviser to the king, the duke is meant to be regal and strong, even deadly when required, from his place at the king's side. To always act as the most piercing, watchful eyes over the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus and her sovereign."

He looks over to Felix as soon as his mouth snaps shut on the final word, as always seeking approval on his recitations.

Felix tilts his head, trying to look unimpressed. “I like eagles.”

A hand automatically comes up to cover the lower half of Dimitri's face, muffling the inarticulate sound of a snort of amusement. “That is good, since you are to be mine.”

***

They say an eagle watches over Fhirdiad.

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A faint and faraway sound

TLDR: Ferdibert with an excellent Hubert centric character study....just so good...makes me warm and fuzzy...the mutual pining and ROMANCE of it all

Summary: 

Hubert learns to be a person, with a lot of help and complication along the way.

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In golden light

TLDR: A really REALLY good ferdibert fic with ferdinand centric pov that focuses on him reflecting on his life as he prepares the Aegir house to become a boarding school. Ferdinand sibling exploration is ABOUND here and it’s great

Summary: 

When his family's summer home at Lake Aegir is set to be converted to a boarding academy, Ferdinand pays it one last visit and contemplates his complicated relationship with family, love, and legacy.

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one three four three four zero

TLDR: the fic that actually got me into dimilix. VERY heavy character study and you NEED to mind both the general fic tags and the content warnings the author lists for each chapter but it’s incredible. Takes a very familiar trope and just. slams you in the face with over 60k words of amazing character study. 

Summary: 

“How are you going to get the One-Eyed Demon of Garreg Mach, the Boar Prince of Faerghus, smuggled past Dukedom soldiers? What plan could you possibly have to get a creature that incapable of even pretending it isn’t a bloodthirsty beast into Dominic without getting caught?”

The Professor gives him one of their steady, unreadable stares. They definitely do not and could not possibly have answered him, “You’re going to pretend to be married to him.”

or, How to Pretend to be Married When One of You Can't Stop Hallucinating and the Other One Uses Hostility to Cope

[irwen-s]

pregnant omega wendy getting taken care of by alpha Irene?

(interpreted this as sfw) i decided to do headcanon format because i had so many ideas to write about wheeze; this ended up become really long. this prompt is like, my excuse to bust out all my abo pregnancy ideas. 

seungwan during her pregnancy is composed and bubbly as usual on the outside, but an overthinking, anxious mess on the inside. she’s cheerful, keeps a positive attitude so as to not worry the people around her, and because she genuinely is really happy about soon having a pup. she’s done all her research too, has read through pregnancy and parenting books, consulted older omegas who have had pups, and eventually takes classes with joohyun in preparation for when she does give birth. 

but seungwan has a lot of thoughts as well as a tendency to overthink, and combined with the usual anxiety every person experiences when pregnant, it means seungwan has more things to worry about and more chances to do so. her nervousness stems from many different things—the state of her pup, her bodys health, her nest, the house, joohyun, her job, being a parent, her pup’s expected due date, the actual delivery . . . its a lot. and seungwan worries. 

so joohyun unsurprisingly ends up being the person who helps keep seungwan calm, soothing her anxieties to the best of her ability. its not just because of her scent and her physical presence, but also her personality in general. joohyun is naturally a nurturing, caring person. during seungwans pregnancy, her maternal instincts are basically at home, making her perfectly fit for the role of caretaker—to both seungwan and their pup. 

—

massages, belly rubs

one obvious example: joohyun jumps on any opportunity available to make things easier for seungwan. as seungwan’s baby bump grows, she ends up experiencing lower back and feet pains, once in a while swollen ankles as well. joohyun takes to giving her frequent leg massages and belly rubs, even without seungwan having to ask.

they’ll be in the living room or bedroom, seungwan resting back against soft pillows as joohyun props her legs in her lap, her hands gentle yet firm as they knead and rub at her sores. seungwan closes her eyes as all the tension leaves her body, and she practically melts with each of joohyuns touches, letting out pleased little huffs and sighs that make joohyun smile quietly. sometimes theyll take turns talking about their day or just random little things, like seungwan recounting an interesting fact she learned from a documentary on tv, and joohyun will listen attentively as she continues her massage.

joohyun also gives her belly rubs. those are much more frequent, the two of them dont even have to sit down with it in mind for it to happen. half the time its just casual touches on joohyuns part. 

during seungwan’s first trimester when her belly isnt as large yet, joohyun loves to hold her from behind with her hands resting against seungwan’s stomach, sometimes gently rubbing, sometimes just feeling. having seungwan nestled against her is always something joohyun enjoys of course, but theres something so right about being able to cradle both her mate and their pup in her arms at the same time. seungwan spends much of her first trimester with joohyun glued to her back, nosing against her nape or her mating mark while her hands wander around the soft swell of her belly, which can be pretty distracting sometimes when seungwan just wants to bake some muffins or something. but its endearing, and seungwan enjoys the extra back hugs too much to really complain. 

planned belly rubs happen after joohyun helps seungwan lie back in bed. she settles down next to seungwan then, hands carefully massaging and rubbing the round, warm skin of seungwans baby bump, making sure to also give attention to the stretch marks near the underside of her belly. honestly, any belly rub feels really good to seungwan when shes pregnant, but its just so much nicer when its joohyuns hands gently touching her. sometimes joohyun cant resist moving closer to rub her face against seungwan’s belly too, making seungwan laugh as she noses along her skin and breathes in seungwan’s scent (which is a lot sweeter and calmer during her pregnancy) while at the same time releasing her own.

sometimes, joohyun offers to give her a massage right when seungwan is beginning to feel more sore or achy than usual. she has no idea how joohyun just seems to know, but her alpha’s always been a person with ridiculously sharp instincts, so. either its that, or joohyun knows magic. 

—

food

joohyun also takes over their cooking. they can both cook pretty decent dishes, but joohyun basically bans seungwan from being in the kitchen alone some time near the end of her first trimester, since she doesnt want seungwan to somehow overexert or hurt herself. she’s only okay with seungwan cooking if joohyun is home with her to supervise (seungwan rolls her eyes while grumbling that joohyun is being too overprotective, but she does follow along, if only to keep the huffy person clinging to her back from fussing over her even more).

also yeah, joohyun does a shit ton of grocery shopping during seungwans pregnancy. as the weeks pass, the frequency of her shopping trips fall inversely proportional to the amount of food she buys—fewer trips, bigger mountains of food each time. usually joohyun would be able to buy only as much as they need, meticulous and precise as always. but seungwans random cravings and the necessity of stockpiling food during the last few weeks of seungwans pregnancy force joohyun to overshop on purpose. 

—

sleeping

 when theyre sleeping, joohyun of course spoons seungwan from behind. she presses her lips to seungwans warm nape while her hand curls around to rest against seungwans baby bump, cradling her close protectively. sometimes she just lies awake, not falling asleep yet, filled with overwhelming love as she listens to seungwan softly breathing, her slow and calming heartbeat. feels beneath her hand the gentle rise and fall of her tummy, the occasional, faint kick from the life thats growing inside her.

—

relationship dynamics

although joohyun is a clingy person, its different from the stereotypical stifling, neck-breathing alphas. she definitely becomes more touchy with seungwan during her pregnancy, but nothing drastically changes in how they treat one another. 

the way joohyun scent marks seungwan is oddly peculiar, but very specific to her. its through their laundry: being a ridiculously sensitive person to smell, joohyun is very, very particular when it comes to how their household’s clothes smell, and a large factor of its scent ends up being joohyuns own scent. every article of clothing seungwan owns and every fabric that ever touches her or makes it into their house goes through joohyuns meticulous examination, laundry, and scenting process first. shes only satisfied when its smells the way she wants it to: distinctively hers, a cool, soft lavender that never fails to soothe seungwan and make her feel at ease. 

its why joohyun doesnt have to always cling to seungwan with the purpose of constantly smothering her in her scent—controlling their laundry is her way of scent marking her omega, oddly enough. 

(around the middle of seungwans second trimester, joohyun comes home to find seungwan having done their laundry as the result of a random spike of energy and nothing else in the house to clean. they get into a petty squabble over it because joohyun is huffing about the detergent and her very precise laundry process, and she ends up making a bigger fuss about it than seungwan, who learns to never try and touch the laundry again. 

“are you sure you aren’t mated to our washing machine instead?”

“darling, you can’t just pour a cup of detergent and fabric softener into there and call it a day. there’s a whole process involved and—”) 

but anyways. joohyun is still a clingy person, and during seungwans pregnancy,  she’s always finding a way to keep at least one part of her touching seungwan. if she doesnt have her arm hooked around seungwan’s, she has a gentle hand resting against seungwan’s lower back, a shoulder brushing against her or fingers clutching onto her hip. joohyun generally tries not to constantly touch seungwans belly when they’re in public so as to avoid coming off as an overbearing alpha. 

that also means joohyun makes sure to give seungwan her own space. even though shes protective and worried about seungwan, her clumsy omega thats constantly tripping over things—to which joohyuns like, someday youre going to give me a heart attack—she knows better than to try and stop seungwan from doing everything. 

seungwan will go around the house, cleaning or organizing and rearranging their furniture, sometimes cooking or baking, maybe just randomly pacing in thought. sometimes she takes walks outside in their neighborhood to clear her mind or for the change in scenery. its a little endearing because while seungwan is moving around doing these things, joohyun is usually trailing after her a few paces behind, attentive and alert as she follows her tiny, bustling omega around the place. wherever seungwan is, if joohyun isnt attached to one of seungwans body parts, shes almost always a distance away, tailing her like a quiet shadow. 

—

relationship dynamics with others

when theyre with close friends, joohyun isnt all that on protective with seungwan and behaves pretty normally. seulgi is a beta, yerim an omega. the only issue joohyun ends up having is with sooyoung, their other alpha. even though joohyun rationally knows sooyoung is someone completely trustworthy around seungwan, her alpha instincts constantly cloud her attempts to make logical judgments. the few times seungwan ends up being in the same room as sooyoung during her pregnancy, joohyun is struggling to keep her alpha instincts from lashing out.

(its understandable, though. seungwan and sooyoung get it. throughout seungwans pregnancy, seulgi and yerim visit more often in person, but seungwan frequently contacts sooyoung through video call or phone call, and their group chat stays very active with texts.)

joohyun is basically restless whenever seungwan is near any alpha that isnt her. although she isnt physically crowding close to seungwan or possessively holding onto her, she’s visibly tenser and more alert, pupils darkened warningly in the direction of other alphas nearby. during those moments, seungwan usually has to be the one to pull her close and let joohyun latch onto her, soothing her alpha with her own scent until joohyun relaxes a little and comes back to herself, nuzzling back into seungwan. 

also, the two of them kind of mellow out during this time. theyre not as crazy (or horny) as before during seungwans heats and joohyuns ruts, being noticeably calmer and more domestic. naturally. theyre already considered the parent line in their group, but its become very apparent how much theyve truly grown into the title. 

—

nesting

to joohyun, seungwan nesting is pretty cute even though her tiny omega takes it very seriously. she gathers all their blankets and cushions and pillows into an elaborately complex pile on their bed, and joohyun often comes home to her arranging different parts of the nest or sorting through their drawers, sniffing and picking out specific clothes to add. 

its a little messy, because seungwan is an omega on a mission and hence has single minded focus on nesting; unsatisfactory clothes get tossed over her shoulder while other items lay scattered about the bedroom. joohyun quickly joins in to help, obediently following seungwans directions while also trailing behind her picking up anything left stranded in the wake of seungwans nitpicking.

joohyun also definitely runs out to buy more pillows and blankets, of course filtering them through her personal laundry process first so theyre all perfectly scented by her in order to be usable to seungwan—who is so used to having all her things smell like joohyuns mix of alpha and laundry lavender that she’s only comfortable with this. 

seulgi, sooyoung, and yerim had offered their own assortment of cushions and blankets, but joohyun is really picky about smells and about what things belong to who, so she doesnt want seungwan to borrow other peoples things at all. 

as for the actual nesting process, seungwans nest undergoes a lot of reconstruction and rearrangements. its not just because of the characteristic omega necessity to make the nest as satisfactory as possible, its also because seungwans personality is that of a perfectionist. so she just keeps scuttling around and fixing different parts of her nest, adding and removing shirts and blankets, and joohyun eventually begins to realize that seungwan is just looking around for more stuff to add, even though the nest is perfect already, because nothing is ever going to meet her standards. 

joohyun learns to pick up the signs then, to catch on to when seungwans fussing over the nest goes from genuine need to reorder things to anxiety over achieving perfection. its then that she gently coaxes seungwan to relax and nestle into her arms, guiding her nervous, tiny omega into her nest as joohyun rubs her baby bump and soothes her until she settles down. tummy rubs especially come in handy to help seungwan both calm down and sleep because she absolutely melts and mewls whenever joohyun does them. 

by the time seungwans second trimester comes to an end and she enters her third, the bedroom has basically become the living room—all the cushions and pillows have been hoarded inside, and seungwan spends almost all her time there now. there are also parenting and pregnancy books and guides scattered all around the place, and seungwan is usually in her nest reading or researching while rubbing her belly. joohyun ends up using the tv in their bedroom more so she can be with seungwan, curling around her and nosing into her skin.  

(also, seungwan is practically always playing music aloud in her nest, and if she isnt engrossed in research, shes organizing her playlists or sorting through her music collection for the right songs. joohyun realizes somewhere along the way that she can gauge what kind of mood swing seungwan is in the midst of through what kind of music shes playing.) 

—

other headcanons

joohyun is the only alpha in her family—everyone else are betas. so her protective, nurturing nature has been something shes developed ever since she was young. 

seungwan starts to sleep a lot more during her second trimester, so joohyun often comes home to find her dozing off while curled up in her nest. it melts her heart every time, and she quickly ends up crawling in to nestle against her back, arms coming to rest over her belly as she cuddles close and breathes in seungwans familiar, soothing scent.

joohyun eventually has to help bathe seungwan. seungwan is a little flustered by the ordeal because even though theyve been mated for a long while now, shes always been independent. so she feels bad about joohyun having to do this for her. not to mention she sometimes gets a little self-conscious about her baby bump. but joohyun tells her that if seungwan were in her place, she would do the same for joohyun. and that to joohyun, seungwan will always be perfectly imperfect in her beauty, stretch marks and swollen belly and all. 

during doctor appointments, seungwan takes notes and asks questions while joohyun listens quietly. she usually lets seungwan take the lead when it comes to the health side of things, since she doesnt want to get in the way of seungwans need to gather information and understand everything related to her pregnancy. joohyun comes along as . . . emotional support at this point. for when seungwan starts getting panicky. 

joohyun is protective of seungwan and will face anything. anything except spiders because killing them is still seungwans designated job, even four months into her pregnancy and joohyun is running screaming from the kitchen into the living room to latch onto seungwan in fright. seungwan nearly trips over her own feet from laughing when she sees joohyun trying to hide behind her baby bump. 

theyre both light sleepers and joohyun clings to seungwans back like a koala in her sleep. so whenever seungwan has late night snack cravings and crawls out of bed, she ends up dragging sleepy and tired joohyun along with her. sometimes seungwan wants food outside though, so joohyun ends up driving them around at like three in the morning while seungwan keeps changing her mind about what she wants  to eat. she falls asleep at some point and joohyun just sighs grumpily, but with obvious fondness as she drives them back home.

[minijeong]

i just read some of your dance analysis posts and whoa you're so cool skdjhsdf !!!!!!! well i was wondering, since fiesta has been out for quite some time and they also posted the dance practice vid, what are your thoughts on it choreo-wise?? u should answer this only if u have time though!!! (ps i love ur posts btw! they inspire me to make gifs too hehe keep it up! ^^)

HAHA thank you!!! i appreciate you appreciating my thoughts adkfjsa come join izonetwork if you want to hear more 🥰

i actually went wild about the choreo when it came out so i guess this is a good opportunity to re-evaluate now that i’m calm LOL. thoughts below the cut!

(yall insp me to make gifs too 😭😭)

to sort of premise my thoughts on the dance, i want to say that i really think fiesta set a new standard for gg dances. most of the time, gg dances that are praised are honestly not tHAT interesting to me… not to say that their work is for naught, but as someone who has seen a lot of dances of different levels, gg dances tend to fall flat in choreography and execution. ggs are usually not taught to use grooves or textures as basics, and companies dont want to spend effort teaching them to do so. then they are restricted to choosing choreographers that tend to make choreographies with “arms and legs”, and barely any torso movement besides basic body rolls or chest rolls. on top of that, they are usually given restricted outfits that make the dancing even more underwhelming for me and then i just prefer bgs for dance :( to be honest, even recent gg dances that people have been wowed at have not really been… that interesting for me either because of execution or choreography or both, but i dont want to mention them because i dont want to disregard the work of any idols! i respect them all and hope you will just take my word for it haha

i just watched the dance practice again and honestly the first thing that i think of is that the choreographers really put a lot of time and effort into this. usually to keep things dynamic, i try to change formations every 8-16 counts in a competitive set. this isnt usually something you see in kpop, but the choreographers had a lot of formation changes going on every 8 counts, and most of them werent just simple center or window changes… very nice. the use of stage was nice as well, and varying the number of members on stage at once is a good way to keep things dynamic. there are also points in the choreography that match the lyrics with movements that would normally be cheesy, but it ended up not being cheesy because the formations were so nice e.g. yujin’s first line using a waking up gesture, but having the other girls do level changes and fan their arms out… i enjoy that a lot

another thing i want to comment on about the choreography that is kind of rare to see in gg dances is the use of textures and how the musicality changes. to understand this, the intro is a good example. if you really listen to the music and match it with the choreography, you can tell that the choreographers try to follow a different instrument every 4-8 counts, and this is something i really value and look for as a choreographer. the choreography for fiesta isn’t just a simple one that follows an 8 count strictly (e.g. one that would probably look fine to any song as long as you follow the beat), and i appreciate that a lot

at the same time, izone gets equal credit, because theyre able to see it and interpret the choreography in relation to the music, showing that they have understanding and appreciation of textures and musicality in dance. i think this can be attributed to chaeyeon eunbi and yena and this is an asset in making a dance performance interesting

the only feedback i have about the choreography is that the formations are usually centered and the girls are usually brought up one by one either by walking up or being hidden behind a member that goes down when it is their part. it would be a lot more interesting if the attention was moved around with more variety, like having the attention move from one side of the stage to another. when done well this could be very interesting. the only place i see this happen is minju’s part at the beginning of the bridge

moving away from choreography, and before i talk about the girls, i just want to mention that i feel the stylists are very mindful about izone’s mobility while dancing this comeback. the outfits are generally easy to move in, and the part that stands out to me the most is the shoes. in the comeback show, they were wearing boots, which are easier to dance in than other shoes that ggs usually wear. in the other stages where the stylists have them wear heels, those are the best heels you can wear for dancing lol (boot heels). a lot of dancers i know who have to dance in heels use boot heels because those are the most comfortable to dance in, and give proper ankle support to keep you safe. i also found that the outfits from the comeback show (although many people thought they werent flattering for the girls individually) worked really well with the dance, like when the camerawork showed an arial view

ok now for izone

i think for this comeback, my favourite member to watch is yena. this choreography has a lot more musical complexity this time around, and i think this is yenas greatest strength. to kind of show what i mean, i watch yenas fancam and see how well you can hear the music from her movements, and then watch another member, and it just doesnt match the same. (but also i have a weird thing where i can basically “hear” when someone moves, so it might be a personal thing lol. try it out anyway!). 

another person i notice is eunbi. normally the choreography and concept is softer or cuter, so eunbi hasnt really been able to show off her strength, but there are parts in this choreo that let eunbi really go off and it feels like she literally slaps me in the face when she hits lol. good example of this is in the comeback show at her last part… that hip hit… i actually felt like she punched me lol… thats when i realized that eunbi could beat me up in an instant she is so strong lol…

other things i noticed… hitomi sakura and nako’s musicality has improved, yujin is learning to dance as a tall person (match your levels with shorter people… it’s a skill LOL), hyewon and nako are learning to put more strength in their movements (my heart flipped when i saw), and izone is really unified when they are in good condition. i say good condition because idk about you, but in the first week of their performances, watching them made me feel kind of uneasy. i could feel their anxiousness from the way they moved and from the looks in their eyes and i could eunbi being dizzy and losing balance and it made me sad… esp compared to comeback show. in comeback show, you can see that they have the same fire in their eyes, that they really are performing as one, and thats honestly what you want to aim for when you are dancing as a group

but for the show, izone really hit different… the fire was coming back and i watched it like ten times… i think the best part is seeing the fire in the eyes of members you dont really see it from, like minju and nako. not to say that they dont perform well because this isnt what i mean at all, but their intensity and focus made me feel their genuine effort on stage and i loved it. theres just a Look that dancers have when their condition is good and they’re performing better than usual. and there’s just this Vibe that a team gives off when things are going Right. it’s really hard to explain because it’s not really something you practice, but it’s just when your hearts match and everyone is on the same page and when you dance with your team the energy you share with your team and the energy you have on the stage is literally TANGIBLE. there is really no other way i can find to explain it, and im honestly normally a super sciency person… but this is just something i will never be able to explain… 

the only thing about that performance was that they performed with such energy and intensity that they kind of lost it after the bridge LOL. there are times in choreographies when you’re really tired and theres a resting point and ur adrenaline dies down a bit and ur like shit im tired LOL. and you can kind of see that happen… yena seems tired, and then the formation kind of gets messy,,, but it’s understandable because that jumping is tiring looool

if i had to give izone some constructive feedback:

the pathing for some of the arms in certain parts of the choreo are not the same, so it gets a little messy and loses effect. i know this is something they can fix if they know how to though, since there are other arm parts that are very clean

the timing for some of the canons need to be cleaned up.. i understand this is very hard though. the choreographers gave them pretty quickly timed canons that dont really follow any part of the music. this is generally really hard on the people in the middle vs. the people at the beginning and end who have it easier knowing exactly when to start and stop their movement (google dance canon if you dont know what im talking about)

it would be best if izone learned to pace themselves throughout the performance while keeping the focus and intensity. e.g. if youre going hard all the time, youll run out of energy real quick, so usually when dancers perform they kind of gauge when they put in 80% effort vs 110%, so the performance can have ups and down, and they wont get tired that much. this is honestly hard though and im still working on it hehe i get excited really easily and then halfway im wheezing like holy shit i shoulda calmed down LOL

to make things cleaner, it would be best if some members adjusted their height more e.g. wonyoung esp when they are near nako LOL it’s tough but yea it’s a skill… i got yelled at for like 6 months before i learned so

some formations need to be adjusted e.g. the last one, yuri and hitomi need to move out a bit to adjust to the formation change for the end formation. sakura is actually quite attentive and readjusts her formation mid movement to fix the line - this just needs to happen on the other side now

some random things i noticed:

yena has clean hands and arms and i appreciate this

their facial expressions change collectively at some parts e.g. minju’s first part, they all start smiling and their dance gets light and it’s cute. also during yenas rap in so curious they collectively get more serious and i like that uwu

if chaewon stomps on me one more time in the beginning ill probably cry 

i really like the crossing behind wonyoung with their arms up (at the beginning) that goes into the hits (yena hits HARD) and then the hair flip canon (this is always so good omg)

my dance friend acknowledged this choreo, like its good can confirm

that leg part where they go down in the chorus is hard lol i was talking to my dance friend like yea if i had to do that in a set id quit like i cant man LOL

i miss chaeyeon’s chest hit that was in the mv during her part she doesnt do it anymore :cry:

more members are figuring out how to spot during spins and SO AM I i feel an emotional connection LMAO

after wizones were worrying about members’ knees, they started being more cautious when doing the floor part and i thought that was the sweetest thing ever

if youre still here, thanks for coming to my ted talk and thanks for supporting my blog and caring if i have time etc etc etc my anons are always always so sweet qq

[mama-germany]

Submission: {IIRC, submission format is bad. This is feminists-against-feminism, hopefully unedited by Mama Germany :^), and ill end my submission with “/submission”, and the rest, if anything, is mama-germany. Also, hopefully the paragraph breaks take, and if they dont…. welp…}

Imma be real with u chief, I dunno what you want me to do with this.  I’m a Jew.  I don’t like communism.  I don’t actually live in Germany.  And I’m not reading all this.  Idk.

Karl Marx’s “On: The Jewish Question” seems a prototype for conflict theory, but has ‘the real jew’ as the 'Haves’ the in place of the 'bourgeois/rich/capitalist’ 'oppressor class’. Conflict theory, icydk, is the collectivist egalitarian pseudoscientific theoretical paradigm taught in sociology, underpinning essentially the whole social justice perspective, and directly encompassing marxist theory, feminist theory, critical race theory, critical theory, gender schema theory (and likely influenced John Money’s gender theory, and builds on gender theory), queer theory, gender critical theory, postmodern theory, lysenkoism (mostly abandoned), standpoint theory,  post colonial theory, animal liberationism, and of course, intersedtional theory which synthesizes them all together wherever they can be synthesized. Marx said the nature of jews is huckstery, he said the real lofe manifestationnof the god of israel is money itself, he said eliminating money would render the jew an equal and normal person. His whole theory, and every conflict theory since, relies on the presupposition the indovodual is irrelevant and what matters is only the aggregate disparities between groups. This turns his theoey ultimately against all boundaries of the individual, their private property and necessarily their innate natural self ownership, their right to self ddetermination. Marx viewed liberalism/individualism as egoism. His whole family was actually jewish, IIRC, he just didnt succeed like they did, he was jealous and a mooch, kind of a beta, likely an aspie if i am to go off the symptomology. He hated them, he was jealous, he wanted success and they had it and he didnt, and so he was basically spot-on like the character Cain from hebrew legend.

Martin Luther. He wrote “On The Jews and Their Lies”. He described jews as piglets suckling from their mother pig, israel, and blamed jews for pretty much everything he viewed as wrong in society. He was basically the predocessor to Hitler and Marx. And one might actually say Marx was an additional predocessor to Hitler. I sure would posot that as likely, even if by proxy of Hitler being influenced by left socialists. I mean, he literally modified the marxist “'class struggle” into his own version of “the struggle”, “MY Struggle/Mein Kampf”. Which brings us to out next german collectivist philosopher. If youre picking up the theme im putting down.

Third subject, Hitler. Self explanatory. Jew-hating anti-egalitarian ethno socialist. Obviously fits in with the last two subject entries. BTW,I have a larger point to all this random pattern listing. One more.

Slightly diverging from hatred of jews, and more toward the begining of postmodernist thought, Max Horkheimer who said freedom and justice are incompatible opposites, and argued everything are oppressive social constructs, every letter and word and phrase and interaction. He said there is no way to know what a just society is, but that we can complain and struggle against the things we dont like and dont find just. And so if you also consider he in the same sitting said freedom and justice are opposites, and this was while summarizing his academic ideas to an interviewer, we can deduce he was directly opposed to freedom, despite considering himself anti-authoritarian…. Anyways, he was bonkers, hope you dont live near Frankfurt, theyre bonkers around them parts, and i know someone who has told me firsthand just how horkheimer style bonkers that town is.

{Honorary mentions. The Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert. Although there was clearly nuance here, Prussia WAS part of the German Empire, but the german youth injunction/sinker was still set in him, to which collectivism was his driver/floatation. He was a nationalist and refused advisors compelling him into an anti-left policy. Honorary mention 2. Antifasciste Aktion, the communist vanguard formed by the german communist party, the KPD, formed to forght fire with fire, using brownshirt tactics against the brownshirts (to whom they lost).}

All four, all German. All of them. 5 if we include the Kaiser. The father of protestantism, the father of communism, the left reformer whos students sparked the “New Left” movement, and Hitler, HITLER. ALL GERMAN. Which is not an implicit racial claim im implying, but one about a sour philosophy. I refer to this as German Collectivism. It is the archetype if collectivism which germany seems particularly possessed by. These have ravaged the whole world, toppled entire nations and enslaved likely over two billion people considering just the PRC, USSR, and Nazi Germany esp with its labir camps. Luther could be viewed as the origin, certainly the origin of modern german collectivism (protestantism & lutherean conspiracy theory, left socialism, and nazism), but the purpose of germany has not changed through any of its past or present phases. It’s purpose seems to be unintentionally destroying itself in the process of intentionally trying to destroy the rest of Europe in attempt to conquer Europe and/or the world. Maybe it came from its clash with Rome, and it never left that modality of picking away at its neighbors. Perhaps its influence from the abrahamic faiths it long traded with, maybe that caused the sort of over-populate-and-make-conquest-youth-army kind of societal reproductive modality, by influence of the abrahamic faiths that did that in the middle east for millennia (with obvious great success, whereas Germany fails at the same niche). Maybe it’s because of their empire-orientation, their pre-lutherean state where they were catholic, and so the culture, thinkers and leaders became oriented toward empire. I dont know. But i do know Hitler, the Kaiser, and Marx were all three alienated children who were very disturbed, and assume Horkheimer and Martin Luther were of similar origins, it seems the common theme among these german influences. Disturbed children make for great communists, and germany has long been riddled with communists. Communists & new left communists like intersectionalists have been frequently compared to a religion, and germany was previously, according to Neitzsche who overtly shared my distain for German philosophy (to my surprise, i love him even more now), he said it seemed to him 4/5 people in germany  were part of protestant clergy. The whole state seems in an unending modality if one total hegemonic culthood after another.

The purpose for german collectivism being so consistently against jews, i assume. It is that jews are very successful on average by comparison to every other category in the west. So theyre integral to the structure of society, particularly around power. So to do the sort of semetic strategy, the strategy of Mohammad and Moses, the strategy of just toppling societies and inheriting the remains, in the west, one must (perhaps in a sidenote of historical irony) go through the jews. If they want to make their collectivist totalitarian ideology dominate, they have to go full cain, and stab their brothers - the jews. And just as stabbing Abel didnt wirk well for Cain, obviously taking out the most success oriented demographic (OF WHICH THERE ARE TWO) in your country is not going to work well for Germany. The other the German Collectivist opposes is the individualist - the English liberal, the stoic, the empiricist, the existentialist, the naturalist, the skeptic, these sorts. These sorts of ideas bring success, and so the authoritarian german collectivist requires their demise as well. The Kaiser hated types like us, the Fuhror hated types like us, marx hated types like us, Horkheimer, and Luther to a clear extent.

i should mention, im not a supernaturalist, the supernatural is all metaphor taken as superstition, im woth Neitszche. Theres certainly no supernatural, and race is a politically meaningless concept to me. But what is contained within the borders of germany…. There seems to be an eccentric kook persona, as a sort of cultural clone prevalent in germany, parallel to the American redneck or hillbilly. Theyre not all terrible people, but theyre often super fucked up like longislanders are in NY, or hillbillies from appalachia, or rednecks from alabama. Or just extremely eccentric like a german lady i knew IRL or Joerge Sprave, or oh my god, Max Horkheimer the kook. And it doesnt miss the city, theyre like that, but converted to progressive ideology. Crazy brutes from yesteryear, mostly tamed, or stubby and eccentric out the wazoo, or tall frail and vegan and metro af. And it’s not limited to the old german. Einstein, (not shitting in einstein, not calling him collectivist, but) absolute weirdo jewish german, Horkheimer, absolute nut job, jewish german, Marx, jewish family, the only correlation is they lived in Germany, like Hitler, the SS, and the kaiser. Even the nations east of them who share similar culture, look at Freud, absolutely a german collectivist type, but from Austria, which today is apparently an ethno national socialist state in all but admission. Prussia influenced the Kaiser’s collectivism. Even people i know from america who have all german ancestry and only third gen american, theyre bonkers, like ICP & Twisted clown-rap omega bonkers, and believe in shit like vampires and wicca and werewolf “lychen”. Oh, and i forgot to mention in summarizing Hitler, his wackjob supernaturalist beliefs. What is that? Why is this so normal there for so long and nowhere else for so long? It seems to spread from there more than anywhere else.

It has to be cultural, and deep seeded. It can be changed, and it needs to be. A german lady mutual of mine sees it and is clearly very weighted by it; i was hindered by it drastically, and i live in America. The nihilism, the self hatred, the narcissism, the psychopathy, the selective empathy (ie, selective psychopathy), the tribalism, the scapegoating. You live in germany, you must see it. You dont seem to like sj or right socialism. You seem closer to an individualist. A westerner despite Germany.

Would you consider it a real phenomenon? 'German Collectivism’? A label for describing the seeming german modality of collectivist government and the german philosophical origin of the majority of world’s largest, most wide spread, and deadly collectivist movements? Particularly today regarding the medium of marxian/intersectional conflict theory ideology? I can easily empirically trace intersectionalism and the french fake-gobbldigook-espousing 'intellectuals’ Peterson points at, back to the ideas of Marx (a german). What are your thoughts on it? What caused it? Why is it so historically persistent to this day? It’s still trying to domineer and control Europe via the proxy of the EU. And what the hell is wrong with so many (#notall) German children?! Or, likely, should i moreso be asking about ***the (#notall) parents***? But today, those parents were raised by nazis, or people raised by nazis. (#notall) but those nazis were raised by communists and imperialists, and those imperialists and communists were raised by communists and lutherean protestants, and those communists and lutherean protestants were raised by more protestants, and then catholics before them, and tribalist pagans before them. The hegemony is just unending waves of wacky who begat waves of wacky. Id like to see the origin of this crap fixed, see germany liberalized, just to show german collectivism undone SOMEWHERE it has been established for once, and in Germany itself no less. My first thought is just end the EU.

Is it real? What’s the cause? How do we undo it? 

[of-cloves-blog]

One Piece Live Action

All of the live actions Hollywood has done has been an ass of a disaster. Just getting that out there.

I personally haven’t watched DBZ or the recent Ghost in the Shell but I’ve been in the midst of the generally dissatisfaction, to say the least, about both. And we all know of the unspeakable Avatar the Last Airbender (ATLA) live action.

But with One Piece(OP), that’s a whole monolith of a story that ATLA and Attack on Titan and others haven’t been before with almost a thousand chapters and episodes ongoing.

I think the main problem live action movies and their writers and directors have is that they can’t get the idea of the source being from an ANIME. It just sticks in their head and doesn’t allow them to treat this as a movie as it should be. An anime, a tv series, a book, and a movie are all different mediums and have completely different rules.

The thing I’m afraid about is that the live action will try to get the whole crew together in one movie and the fans know how long it took to get to Brook. I’m thinking that the best way to approach this is by following the animated movies’ lead, such as Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island and Dead End Adventure, and create an original narrative and plop it into the flow of OP’s storyline, kind of like what they do for filler.

Then comes the main purpose of the live action even existing, which is to appeal to an audience that typically wouldn’t watch anime and haven’t even heard of OP. So if they do as I said and make an original narrative like which was made for only the fans in mind, it might alienate the other half of the population.

Which comes in the whole situation of treating this like a movie instead of an anime. Get your head out of that anime is weird belief that everyone still has, writers and directors. You don’t need to spoon feed us everything by stating it directly and I think the audience who weren’t fans originally would agree even if they don’t have previous knowledge.

Let’s take Avatar again. The writers and director had a hard time with that one as they felt the need to add narration and world building and backstory within the characters’ dialogue and thus sucking any characterization from them and making it seem like the movie was just regurgitating information at you. Narration and Dialogue can be utilized to do worldbuilding, but it needs to be done right and not overused or repetitive. As I’m not an expert I can’t dive into this knowledgeably but I think this is the general consensus, unless they would do something smart and innovative with those things, but I digress. Even taking the anime in consideration, OP doesn’t use its narrator often, he mostly just shows up to recap on the fights or show where Zoro is lost at the moment. There needs to be a balance for both the fans and the ones who don’t know what they’re getting into. So worldbuilding is important, backstory is important, but what I believe should be the main focus is selling the characters and the spirit of One Piece.

This doesn’t mean doing as Percy Jackson the movies did by changing things unnecessarily, such as the character’s ages and the entire plot and the wit and spirit Rick Riordan put into the books. I think the Harry Potter franchise did the best in this case as they sold the spirit of the books, stuck to the plot, but was good at knowing when to trim some details off to fit the movie format.

So what I’m trying to say is that you’re translating something from a different medium to another, so it should be different from the main material. Of course, OP is going to be better as a manga because it works best as a manga. It has basically no restrictions on when it should stop and this way the writer, Oda Eiichiro, can more freely get people involved in the characters and the backstory. But there is a restriction on movies, and clearly the formula of shoving everything into a medium that has different rules isn’t working. The movies aren’t something the populus should expect to see an entire book in or an entire anime series in.

Another example is Howl’s Moving Castle, which is a stretch as it was inspired by the book and not based. But in my personal experience, I checked out the book because it did beautifully in an ANIMATED format but was completely different from the book.

So, if ATLA had been given and promised multiple movies, then they should’ve stuck to the plot. If possible stick to the plot. But it wasn’t because they weren’t promised another movie. And I believe, trying to fit the entirety of season one into one movie wasn’t the right choice for a solo movie. They should’ve cut it down. They should’ve stopped after the Winter Solstice, maybe cutting out Avatar Kyoshi and Omashu, though those are really important parts in themselves. The success of a movie done right, even though it didn’t have everything could’ve brought on the chance of another and maybe even more live action movies.

If OP is given more movies then they should stick to the plot. But the big difference between OP and ATLA is their versatility. OP as an anime series is more malleable and, in my opinion, has written the better filler arcs of anime. ATLA had a strict almost book like structure that builds off of each episode. So OP can have the possibility of straying off the original plot more than ATLA had.

To sum up, sell the spirit and character, never change things unnecessarily like Percy Jackson, don’t stick to the plot with a giant of a story like One Piece, and treat this like what it is: an action and adventure movie.

I know for a fact, it’s almost a given, that the movie will begin with Gol D. Roger’s execution and his last words about the one piece that prompted the Pirate Era. (and then Cinema Sins will say ‘roll credits’). Then it can go multiple ways. A montage of Luffy meeting his crew, young seventeen Luffy about to leave with his little boat, thinking back to Shanks and his hat, or just the flashback to Shanks putting the straw hat on luffy, and my personal favorite is just cutting to Luffy’s grin and the crew fighting on the deck of the Sunny where they can show their relationship to each other while in combat and their role in the crew. Or maybe a mishmash of all of them.

My hopes are that they will make Chopper cute and– the elephant in the room–not whitewash the Straw Hat crew. Personally, Usopp and Brook should be played by black actors, Nami could be latina, Zoro should be asian, Robin could be filipino or Indian but definitely someone dark skinned, Sanji and Franky can be white but Sanji needs to be or must resemble a french origin. Luffy can be anything to be honest as long as he acts like the character.

And the thing is, One Piece didn’t catch on in America as well as Naruto did back in the day, because of the horrible 4kid’s adaption that tried to make the show kid friendly which One Piece really isn’t (and that whole issue with making things kid friendly or maybe even dumber for kid’s to understand is also something that gets on my nerves). It ruined the chance of the show to be something even more amazing than it already is. The same thing happened with the live action of ATLA which made people disinclined to check out the animated show and affected the success of Korra.

I’m very passionate about One Piece, it’s dear to my heart and I really hope the live action isn’t a complete flop. I don’t remember OP for the fights, honestly, (naruto fights are more well animated and interesting) and I don’t like OP for them either, I like the story, and the characters. Luffy and the others say some profound things that have resonated in me and motivate me to this day. OP makes me laugh and cry and feel a connection to the characters. Not saying it doesn’t have faults, but I can see why it made the top and has stayed the top in shonen manga.

This is just my messy attempt at making a suggestion for the infamous anime live action. Oh yeah, and there’s the whole deal with how weird and wacky one piece can be, especially for western audiences. Well, if they can handle a movie about humanized emojis I think they can handle a rubber man and a talking reindeer.

Really hoping live action FMA is good though.

Thank you to nchanstories who talked this through with me and who I can’t tag at the moment because theyre getting some rare hours of sleep

[magalamantle]

HEY HERES some longass fucking shit!!!! about my settings for ocs for a p5 continuation/sequel/etc!!!!!!!!! just kind of. expanding on stuff i guess lol!!! the first one is the longest and the one im most interested in expanding on ideas for ocs on but anyway :Y

IDEA ONE:

'palaces': garden, zoo, restaurant, temple, courthouse, funhouse, bunker, garden, graveyard, safari, library, museum(not art gallery)

an emphasis not so much based on heists or stealing or treasure. instead the intention is to destroy the heart of it to reveal what the place "actually is". the whole intention becomes revelling in the large-scale destruction of different chunks of the bases, before eventually defeating the person at the heart of it.

not knowing the exact individual whose construct it is, has to infiltrate and work way into the place in order to follow clues - more like a detective than anything else.

characters access nav not through going to a specific location but via "dreams" - peeks into the human unconsciousness, cant really control when they go into or come out of constructs, are just kind of dropped in whichever location is selected in a list on the app before they sleep. therefore, players are lead into dungeons without fully knowing what theyre doing - theyre kind of placed into more of a mystery detective thing, trying to figure out why theyve been placed in each area, kind of what they have to do in order to escape cause like otherwise theyre placed in the area literally every night and cant do much about it lol. basically as long as theyre contributing (according to some unspoken rules) theyre fine in terms of sleep, but if they refuse to cooperate theyre basically sleepless, which really really impacts some of them until they end up basically having to act.

each area basically introduces a new playable character via waking a construct version of them in someone elses palace. like literally waking them up.  

it takes like the first full dungeon for them to register that it isnt just a weird same dream that theyre having and that like. the real person whose cognitive world they broke is affected, and in the wake of the whole "shadow thieves of hearts" thing its kind of terrifying because theyre like "oh god we destroyed that place what if weve killed someone" but it seems to have a different effect on individuals than previous, but its still. really weird.

eventually they kind of register that the worlds and people presented are getting bigger and scarier for them to have to deal with, and that its kind of like. training them??? especially since the targets theyre being given are getting more grey morally, and more just given to them because the task is just more difficult rather than more important.

anyway on their journey thats eventually mementos that they end up in when theres really no big mission for them to do, and they like explore it n shit. it feels totally different from the other worlds, cause its kind of this... weird mishmash? and as the plot continues theyre basically. kind of. its more or less revealed that this mementos isnt the general consciousness as the general consciousness of a select group of individuals - the people who basically set them up in this situation. individuals who used the research on the cognizant world to basically force the protagonists to do their dirty work - starting them with easy missions against people that they would agree with fighting against, and slowly working more into individuals that they wanted to get rid of, tying up loose ends, etc. basically training up a little army to get rid of people for them. this group thats controlling them isnt sending them into their mementos though, that would be a Higher Power

the uh. the group in this has a mascot thats a cute little cartoony puppy!!! that claims that theyre a wolf and cant remember how they got there etc etc. anyway basically it was made as a weird rude parody of morgana, and theyre pretty much a sleeper agent that kind of. gains consciousness as the team applies traits to it pretty much??? either way puppy is pretty much just the shadow council things way of calling the protagonists their dogs lol. something to sic on people they dont like.

IDEA TWO:

the palaces are all... literally different kinds of palaces: from different ages and aesthetics, but all definitely castles and mansions. includes roman palace, victorian mansion, funhouse/theme park castle, gothic mansion, classic medieval castle, etc

more of a kidnapping thing. have to find the master of the house/king/baron/etc and extracate them from the construct - whether a rescue or kidnapping depends on the particular target. this one features a pair of antagonists who only want to use the palaces' treasures for monetary gain - or at least it seems so at the start?? but its actually for a person theyre working for with the intention of studying the cognizant world in order to access the public conscience for what is essentially mass demoralization leading to global shutdown

this one in particular probably features the protags from p5 in a weird way, like. theyre all kind of younger adults in the city, doing stuff, and the new protags kind of interact with them and subtly try to figure stuff out about this whole world and everything about it from them.

IDEA THREE

more of an emphasis on the internet and incredible popularity therein - palaces are all based on internet sensations, big personalities who are secretly doing unsavory things. accessed through whatever website/social media whatever that they use the most.

PALACES in this world are based on VIDEO GAME TYPES. rpg, fps, puzzle games, etc etc etc. still in the kind of stealth, heist format of the actual. u kno. persona 5. but the aesthetics and enemy styles, dungeon setups, etc, npcs/cognitive humans etc are all based on the respective video game type. IMPORTANT: theres a rogue person wandering into peoples cognitive worlds who considers it all genuinely a game, has fun "competing" with the players team to get to the "end boss" first. unfortunately his aim is always outright to kill the boss lol. playable characters' outfits in the palaces change to fit the video game, but follow a general theme for each character.

the way that palaces are accessed more or less through the internet opens up possibilities about the new protags meeting through exclusively the palaces, not knowing each other in real life, etc.

every world contains a specific npc that sort of guides them around n stuff. its literally just akechi. like thats just him. still young. hes just there, in a shitty prince outfit or equivalent, and my excuse is that 1. he die in a really weird way in a really weird place and 2. as an incredibly public figure that was so prevalent in the publics eyes their perception of him kind of kept him floatin around in the sea of human etc etc etc. it might not be FULLY him but hes definitely. there. thats definitely just him standing there, telling them about game stuff. weird af.

[relationshipadviser-blog]

Esther Perel: 'Fix the sex and your relationship will transform'

New Post has been published on https://relationshipqia.com/must-see/esther-perel-fix-the-sex-and-your-relationship-will-transform/

Esther Perel: 'Fix the sex and your relationship will transform'

Esther Perels breathtakingly frank therapy podcasts Where should we begin not only make for juicy listening, theyve revitalised the stale private lives of millions. Miranda Sawyer listens to the psychotherapist

Passion has always existed, says Esther Perel. People have known love forever, but it never existed in the context of the same relationship where you have to have a family and obligations. And reconciling security and adventure, or love and desire, or connection and separateness, is not something you solve with Victorias Secret. And there is no Victors Secret. This is a more complicated existential dilemma. Reconciling the erotic and the domestic is not a problem that you solve. It is a paradox that you manage.

Ooh, Perel is a great lunch date. All psychotherapists are, in my experience, but shes particularly interesting. Sex, relationships, children; she covers them all in the two hours we spend together. But also collective trauma, migration, otherness, freedom all the good stuff.

Perel is a practising couples and family therapist who lives in New York. Aside from her clinical work she counsels around 12 couples or individuals each week she has two best-selling books: one about maintaining desire in long-term relationships (Mating in Captivity), the other about infidelity (The State of Affairs). She has released two fascinating podcast series, called Where Should We Begin?, where listeners get to listen in on real-life couples having therapy with her. The podcast is where I first came across her its won a British Podcast Award, a Gracie Award in the States and was named as the Number One podcast by GQ.

On top of all this, she hosts workshops and lectures as well as the inevitable TED talks, one of which has been watched more than 5m times. I went to one of her London appearances earlier this year. Alain de Botton was the host and he introduced Perel with quite some hyperbole, calling her one of the greatest people alive on Earth right now. (Perel dismissed this afterwards, though she likes de Botton: He put me on such a platter.)

Esther Perel sometimes sings to her clients; she tells them off quite a lot, especially if they think sex should come naturally. Photograph: Jean Goldsmith for the Observer

The reason for Perels popularity is her clear eye on modern relationships. She says, rightly, that we expect much more from our marriages and long-term relationships than we used to. For centuries, marriage was framed within duty, rather than love. But now, love is the bedrock. We have a service model of relationships, she says to me. Its the quality of the experience that matters. She has a great turn of phrase: The survival of the family depends on the happiness of the couple. Divorce happens now not because we are unhappy, but because we could be happier. We will have many relationships over the course of our lives. Some of us will have them with the same person.

For a while, Perel wasnt taken particularly seriously by the therapist community: she tells me that when Mating in Captivity came out in 2006, it was only the sexologists that thought it was great. This is because her thinking went against long-established relationship wisdom, namely that if you fix the relationship through talking therapy, then the sex will fix itself. Perel does not agree. She says that, yes, this might work, but I worked with so many couples that improved dramatically in the kitchen, and it did nothing for the bedroom. But if you fix the sex, the relationship transforms.

We meet in a boutique hotel in Amsterdam, where Perel orders her food in fluent Dutch. She has a light Belgian accent (she says boat for both), and she wears some delicate gold jewellery, a bit like the Indian hath panja, on her right hand. (Both of these seem to excite American journalists, along with Perels good looks. A relationship therapist who you might fancy, shocker!)

We begin talking about her podcast series. Its an astonishing listen, partly because you get to earwig other peoples problems (always great) and partly because Esthers methods are so flexible: in the first series she got one young woman to wear a blindfold while her partner inhabited a more assertive sexual character, which he did by speaking in French. She sometimes sings to her clients; she tells them off quite a lot, especially if they think sex should come naturally: Who the hell told you that BS?

Series three, released next month, is slightly different to the last two. This time round Perel very deliberately chooses couples at different stages, because she wants to show an arc of a relationship, all the way to its end. Also, she says, I wanted to bring in the way that relationships exist in a larger, social, cultural, context. That context often gives a script about how one should think about suicide, about gender, about divorce and so forth. So we hear from a young couple coping with enforced distance in their relationship: one is US-born and the other is Mexican, without a US visa. Another is a mother and her child, who does not identify as either gender. Another couple, with a young child, have divorced, but seem to get along much better now: why?

Perel finds her podcast therapees via her Facebook page: they apply in their thousands. Her podcast producers sift through, using guidelines that Perel suggests them: this time round she knew she wanted to cover infertility and also suicide. Then theres a lengthy pre-recording interview process where its explained to the couples that, yes, this really is going on air and, yes, they might be recognised (from their voices; theyre anonymous otherwise). Are you OK in understanding that your story will become a collective story? You will be giving so much to others, as well. Its not just for you, actually. And then they have a one-off session with Perel for three to four hours, edited down to around 45 minutes for the podcast.

She loves the format. The intimacy of it, the private listening of it, the fact that you dont see them, thus you see yourself. You hear them but you see you. It reflects you in the mirror. But also, surely, its quite exposing for you? Oh yes. People can come and hear me give a talk, but theyve never seen me do the work and you cant talk about what you do. But when you write a book, that is the first part of exposure. Then comes TED and the podcast. If you ask, What does Perel do? My colleagues know how I do.

Perel is 60 now; I wondered how she found being a relationship therapist when she was younger, in her 20s. Werent clients put off by her youth? Actually, Ive always found that the age of the clients goes up with me, she says. It mirrors. I dont know why. She doesnt think lived experience is necessary, though sometimes she wonders how she had the chutzpah to counsel parents before she became one herself (now she has two grown-up sons; shes still married to their dad, Jack Saul, who is a professor and an expert in psychosocial trauma). But then I have worked a lot with addiction, and Im not an addict.

Interestingly, she came to therapy via drama. Drama and collective trauma. She was the second child of Polish Jews who came to Belgium as Holocaust survivors (Perels first passport was a stateless passport of the UN). In Belgium, they became part of a community of 15,000 Jewish refugees.

Loss, trauma, dismantlement of the community, immigration, refugees All these themes that I observe in the world today, were basically mothers milk to me, she says. Everybody had an accent, a good number of people had the number on their arms. There were no grandparents around, there were no uncles. Its all I knew. Its different than if it was just your parents. Its every home I went to. One of Perels earliest memories is of card games where her parents would talk of a friend, and someone would say, casually, Ah, he was gassed, he didnt make it.

Perels parents had her older brother in 1946, then she came along 12 years later. This was not uncommon. When people came out of the camps, the first thing they did to prove that they were still human was to have a child. They waited to get their periods back, and then they had a child. But then there was a gap of 8, 10, 12 years before they had another. Perel thinks this was because the parents needed to establish themselves in society. Hers ran a clothes shop in Antwerp. The family lived above the shop. They spoke five languages: Polish, Yiddish, German, French and Flemish. Every evening they watched the news in German, French and Flemish, to get a good all-round view.

Divorce happens now not because we are unhappy, but because we could be happier: Esther Perel. Photograph: Jean Goldsmith for the Observer

As a teenager, she was interested in psychology, mostly because she hated the strictness of school. She read Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child-Rearing, about a British school run like a democracy, and from there she moved to Freud. I was interested in understanding myself better and in people around me. People dynamics. I was quite melancholic and I was often wondering, How does one live better? How do you talk to your mother so she understands you better? Id say the primary ingredient I had was curiosity. I was a massively curious person I still am. She was also a good listener a confidante for her friends. I tell her she would have made a great journalist, and she agrees: That would have been my other career.

After school she went to study in Jerusalem, a university course that combined French linguistics and literature. More importantly, she developed her interest in theatre, which had begun in early adolescence. I assumed she was an actor, but shes talking of improv and street theatre, with puppets, of all things. Big ones, you hold them on two long high sticks, or I did hand puppets. She liked the immediate contact with people and gradually, she found herself merging these skills with her studies, doing theatre with gangs,with street girls,with Druze,with foreign students. At one point she went to Paris to study under Augusto Boal, who created the Theatre of the Oppressed. He would stage fake crises in everyday situations: actors pretending to have a physical row on the Metro, for instance. Perel found it interesting to see which passers-by would get involved and which would turn away.

She moved to New York to do her Masters. She specialised in identity and immigration How is the experience of the migrant different if it is voluntary migration or forced migration? and in how minority communities relate to each other. She led workshops for what were then called mixed couples: interracial, intercultural, interreligious. I knew the cultural issues. I knew how to run a group. I dont think I knew much about couples dynamics.

Around that time her husband, who is a few years older than her, suggested she might enjoy systemic family therapy. I ask what this is. For a long time when people looked at a problem, they thought the problem is located within the person, says Perel. But systemic family therapy thinks that a family, or a relationship, is made up of interdependent parts. What is the interactive dynamic that preserves this thing, that makes this child not go to bed? That makes this man never get a job? That makes this son be such a nincompoop? How is the family system organised around it? You need two to create a pattern, or three or four or five.

Its interesting how therapy has trends, I say, and how those trends manifest themselves in actual life. Couples therapy goes in parallel to the cultural changes and the expectations in a culture, says Perel. During the 1980s her married clients didnt come to her because their sex life was bad, they came because of domestic violence or alcoholism, not because we dont talk any more. Back then, the shame was to get divorced at all, even if one half cheated; now its not to get divorced if one half cheats. She saw clients having problems with infertility, the changing role of women and daughters, the Aids crisis. In the 90s, single mothers, blended families, gay couples with kids. Todays problems, she says, are often centred around people marrying later, after a sexually nomadic youth. Also, modern fatherhood dads wanting to be more involved in childcare and monogamy versus polyamory. Straight couples are becoming more gay, gay couples more straight.

The obvious question, of course, which she has been asked many times, is how Perels own relationship works. She doesnt like to give too many details, but what she does say is that she and Saul give each other a lot of freedom If youve had an interesting life, you have more to bring back, something that energises the couple and that they renegotiate their relationship as it changes. At the moment her husband is entering what she calls a third stage, and he wants to paint more. This means he will be away from New York a lot, while she is usually in New York or travelling herself. We need to, once again, come up with a new rhythm of how we create separateness and togetherness. Its a fundamental task.

She wants others not to copy her own relationship, but to use her work as a way to better their own relationship for themselves. And plenty do. Just the other week a young woman came up to her and asked for a selfie. She said, My boyfriend listens to you all the time, and he comes home and he says, Have you listened to this episode, we need to talk? The podcast is a transitional object, a bridge for conversation. Like a teddy bear that you hold and you say: Its OK, dont be worried.

Like when couples talk through their dog, I say.

Yes, she says. There is such disarray and such hunger about getting help on how we manage our relationships today, on navigating the challenges For the first time we have the freedom of being able to design our relationships in a way that we were never capable of doing before, or allowed to do before. So, I dont give the details of my relationship. Instead I will give you the tools to come up with your own thing.

Season 3 of Esther Perels Where Should We Begin is available exclusively on Audible from 5 October

Try this at home

Three ways to change the way you think about your partner at home

Pay attention to what is important to the other What happens in a couple is that we often give to the other what we want them to give to us. If somebody is upset, you dont talk to them, because when you are upset you like to be left alone. It isnt necessarily what they need.

Roles are often patterns rather than habits If you really want the other person to take out the rubbish, you have to be able to spend two weeks not doing it. You dont say anything. You just wait until the other person finally notices it. When youre not there, the other person sorts the bin. They can do it. Its just that when youre there theyd prefer not to.

Women are not less interested in sex than men, theyre less interested in the sex they can have What makes women lose that interest? Domesticity. Motherhood. The mother thinks about others the whole time. The mother is not busy focusing on herself. In order to be turned on you have to be focused on yourself in the most basic way. The same woman whos numb in the house gets turned on when she leaves. She doesnt need hormones. Change the story.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us

[charly-ra]

10 Marketing Automation Trends That Will Shape 2019

Marketing is increasingly driven by data and technology. Nowhere is that more evident than in marketing automation.

It’s enabled us to do some pretty cool things. Most B2B marketers, for example, have moved beyond the simplest forms of marketing automation. We can send welcome emails and autoresponders in our sleep. We’ve got the email part of marketing automation down.

Now it’s time for B2B marketing automation to shift into multichannel messaging, even personalized, real-time multichannel messaging.

And that’s only one of B2B marketers’ new capabilities. As AI and machine learning gain wider use, marketing automation is set to get increasingly more sophisticated and impressive. It’s both exciting… and a little daunting.

So if you’re ready for the brave new world (or at least 2019’s version of it), here are the B2B marketing automation trends most likely to have the biggest impact. We’ve chosen these trends based on research wherever possible, so while this list may have some opinions in it, it’s mostly based on data. Which seems appropriate, given the state of marketing automation in 2019.

The most successful marketers will be those who manage their data best.

Marketing has become a data wonk’s job. Everything runs on data now – pretty much every trend mentioned here is data-driven: Personalization, Multichannel, Improving the Customer Journey, you name it.

Data management is complex of course. That’s why it’s a challenge, and often mentioned as a primary barrier to marketing automation success (only strategy seems to give marketers as much trouble).

And “data management” is a very general term. To rock marketing automation like we want to, data has to be accurate and formatted correctly so it can be accessed. It has to be current, and you’ll have to figure out a way to keep that data “clean” so no delayed process ends up updating a field with outdated information.

Managing all those data inputs can be tough. And it isn’t going to get any easier. The number of data sources used by most marketing organizations is actually increasing.

Don’t expect this to change all that much in 2019. The real thing to expect is that the marketers who can figure out how to turn their data from a cacophony into a symphony will do better and better.

And while data management is a big job… it can be done. “47% of marketers say they have a completely unified view of customer data sources” according to Salesforce.

You want to be in that half.

More B2B marketers will use multichannel messaging – and use it well.

For years, “marketing automation” has largely meant automated email marketing. More sophisticated B2B marketers moved past that a while ago, but some marketers are still “stuck” in the early phases of marketing automation.

There’s nothing wrong with that, but your prospects and customers don’t just use email. As you know all too well, they’re using social media (often several social platforms) and they’re on your site (we hope). They may even be at an in-person event now and then, and they’re almost always texting.

So expect to see more B2B tools and marketers move toward multichannel communication this year, especially because more marketers are integrating AI and machine learning into their martech.

AI and machine learning have a data-crunching power needed to pull multichannel off. It’s always been nearly impossible for human marketers to manage multichannel campaigns of any size, especially now that customers and prospects basically expect personalization and real-time messaging.

There be more personalized communications, and more personalized customer journeys.

Personalization is no longer a competitive edge – it’s a customer expectation. And yet, only 28% of marketers are “completely satisfied” with their ability to “Create personalized omni-channel customer experiences.”

  If you can get this right, though, the rewards are there: Salesforce reports that “High-performing marketers are 9.7x more likely than underperformers to be completely satisfied with their ability to personalize omni-channel experiences.”

What B2B marketers can do now with marketing automation is truly impressive… and at the same time, to some customers and prospects, we’ve finally achieved what they’ve been expecting for so long: To give them the information that’s relevant and useful to them, and nothing else.

More B2B marketers will implement real-time communication.

You know the cliché: Strike while the iron is hot. Well, it applies to marketing automation in spades, and smart marketers are chasing this capability down.

To give you an idea of how powerful real-time communication can be, consider the difference between response rates for welcome emails that are sent instantly versus welcome emails that are “batched” and sent out a bit later.

The real-time emails get 10X the engagement.

What would your marketing reports look like with 10X engagement? Heck – what would your bonus look like?

Marketing automation will be used more often for the entire customer lifecycle – not just for lead generation.

Marketing automation is great for nurturing leads, but it’s also great for customer retention and increasing customer lifetime value. We’ve known this for a while, but as marketers have had more time to grow into marketing automation, and to use it more confidently throughout their marketing, we’re finally seeing the full lifecycle use show up.

40% of marketers in a recent survey said that “prospect/customer re-engagement” is one of the most effective tactics for optimizing marketing automation.

If your current marketing automation program is only “sort of” profitable, an automated re-engagement program could be an easy way to move it into the black. Re-engagement programs are generally the low hanging fruit of marketing programs: They can generate strong results with just a little bit of work.

All you’d need to do to set up a marketing automation re-engagement “program” is to:

Ask your IT department (or your own marketing software, in some cases) when customers/clients tend to dis-engage.

Have a copywriter write you a series of re-engagement emails.

Get the emails designed and set up.

Start testing.

The opportunity for re-engagement emails is particularly ripe. Only 10% of marketers are sending re-activation emails according to a recent survey.

Lead quality will continue to beat lead quantity.

The shift to lead quality over lead quantity has been going on for a while now. It’s a sign of how marketing automation is becoming more effective.

Of course, lead quality can mean many things. It can refer to whether leads are Sales qualified, how long leads take to mature into sales, and the value of leads. Those are all more granular measurements of the same trend: Better leads are better than more leads.

Sales will welcome this, for sure. They’ve spent too much time already following up on weak leads. Actually, the quality of leads (however you measure them) could be an excellent metric for tracking that elusive Sales and marketing integration.

Marketers will use marketing automation as a way to improve the customer journey/experience.

Pop quiz: What’s the single most effective way to optimize marketing automation?

According to the marketers (mostly B2B) who responded to Ascend2’s survey about marketing automation, the answer is: Customer experience mapping.

This actually makes enormous sense. In a way, marketing automation – sending pre-defined messages to people who take particular actions – is a way to shape their experience with your company. All those drip email campaigns… that’s a way to guide a customer’s experience with you.

Marketing automation is customer experience optimization.

And as you know, optimizing the customer experience is one of the single best ways to be an awesome marketer, build an awesome company, and have customers/clients who rave about you to thousands of other likely customers.

That’s why it’s been called the ultimate competitive advantage. A survey from PwC found that:

“Forty-three percent of customers would pay for a greater convenience, and 42 percent would pay for a friendlier, welcoming experience, according to the survey. Furthermore, 65 percent believe that a positive experience with a business is more influential than great advertising.”

Another survey found that “80% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services.”

Thinking of marketing automation as an extension of optimizing customer experience could be a great way to get more budget for it. A lot of CEOs get the benefits of improving the customer experience – they know how it can affect practically every aspect of a business. And so, framing marketing automation as one way to improve customer experience could get them onboard with projects that they might otherwise have been cool about.

Strategy may continue to be a sticking point.

It’s the classic story: Marketers get attracted to cool technology, but don’t have enough of a strategy set up to really make the most of it.

Developing a marketing automation strategy should happen after you’ve defined your personas and mapped their customer journeys. Customer journey mapping will never be perfect – customers and prospects don’t move in a linear path, and they definitely don’t all do it in the same way.

But take a deep breath, accept that your customer journey plans won’t be perfect, and build your marketing automation system from there.

It will evolve the longer you use it and test it. But you have to start somewhere, and starting with a “good enough” customer journey map is far better than just diving in and starting to implement marketing automation in a little corner of your business here and there.

Use of artificial intelligence and machine learning will continue to grow.

Honestly, B2B marketing automation is probably using more machine learning than true artificial intelligence. The classic definition of AI is that it can fool a human into thinking the AI is another human; most chatbots can’t do that (yet).

But machine learning is definitely in play. The definition of machine learning is “using data to answer questions” according to Google. As mentioned above, marketing performance basically runs on data now – who wouldn’t want to use machine learning to get the data to start answering questions? That seems to be exactly what we all need.

And because marketers’ adoption of AI grew by 44% from 2017 to 2018, expect 2019 to see at least that much growth in “AI” (or machine learning).

Voice search will become the next new messaging channel for messages sent via marketing automation.

B2B marketers get such a bad rap for being behind on trends. But 32% of us are already optimizing for voice-activated personal assistants.

This is going to accelerate in 2019, and it is absolutely going to affect marketing automation. Even now, Alexa can read emails.

So… have you listened to how your automated emails sound when read? Have you looked into what your company’s customer experience is like via voice for your automated messages? Some of your competitors are already doing this.

Closing Thoughts

Marketing automation reminds me more and more of the advertising automation going on in pay per click and social media advertising. Marketers are increasingly able to sit back from routine operations (like bid edits or sending updates about a new blog post) and are moving more into data analysis and customer experience.

Having these powerful tools to work with is fantastic. It lets us do truly cool things. But the tools are really only as good as the people who use them.

Marketing automation can work really well, but it’s not magic. Even the most robust marketing automation platforms still need smart people to set them up and optimize them.

from http://bit.ly/2QWiFes

[isaacathom]

technically the logical extension o Rhia’s arc is for her to actually become the Champion in between the ‘first’ game and the ‘second’ but i also feel like that only makes sense if she took the e4 job willingly. which she ONLY does if you reconcile her and Elliot. if they dont reconcile, she takes the job out of a sense of duty, not because she explicitly wants it. she DOES, like she does want the job, because even if she hates authority on some level she still really wants to be a powerful trainer and protect people. but she didnt go into it with the right mindset. but if Rhia and Elliot sort out their problems, Rhia is able to deal with her issues with authority and take the e4 job with glee. she revels in it! she loves it! its the culmination of her childhood dreams! and this would allow her to become the champion in future, should Gwendolen allow it (bearing in mind Gwen is a fucking beast). but if Rhia still has that slight block, if she and Elliot didnt really deal with their problems ‘correctly’ (constructively?) then Rhia wouldnt have the drive. so even if Gwendolen said ‘hey Rhia you’re really strong. would you consider trying to become the Champion?’ she’d probably say no! even though, in her heart, she really wants to. but being unable to deal with Elliot properly is a block on that, for her.

its like. the thing with the split ending is that, even though Rhia becomes the e4 member no matter WHAT route you put her down (due to postgame content), Rhia doesn’t get to feel correctly about Elliot. with Reconcile, your actions prove to her that Elliot has changed, and she opens up to the possibility of sorting out their problems, which ultimately allows both of them to grow. not to move past, because Rhia’s life has been intimately shaped by his actions, but to grow with it instead of remaining stunted. but Split, your actions prove he HASNT changed, so she is closed to the idea. so when Elliot basically forces her to consider that he’s changed (by intervening in the confrontation with Felicity and nearly getting himself actually killed like straight up human murdered) its not right. she still ends up acknowledging that he has changed, but the context for that revelation changes EVERYTHING for her. because in reconcile, its mutal. in split, its one sided, and its elliots side, forcing what he wants onto her AGAIN. and even if Rhia doesn’t consciously acknowledge this (if she did she’d probably fucking shatter so its for the best), she’s aware of this dissonance on some level and it continues to hold her back.

the only way to properly reconcile these differences (in routes, not elliot/rhia, fuck) is for that hypothetical second game to recognise those choices you made, and change the formation of the whole elite 4 around it. like, in the ‘first’ game, the only change that is made is whether Elliot is in the e4 at all. Rhia will be in the e4 by the end regardless, but Elliot can be there for a while (at least once - you can take on the league during te postgame story though thats a weird choice for you to make as a player but i mean fuck it power to the player?). but in the second game, as an extension OF that choice, it changes whether Rhia is just an e4 member or if shes the champion, WHICH then extends to affecting Gwendolen, who would now just be a regular elite. and that seems like a lot of effort to make? though it would be kind of fun. the ‘default’ would be Rhia Champion because i make the rules.

though if i was going to allow the E/R routes to have that much of a consequence, then id have to make the same allowance for Sam, since the asumption is if you ended up with team!Sam (who then disappears after the tower because /they got arrested/) they would return in the second game as a Villain. or could they be reformed? thats the issue. once Sam is arrested i imagined that the player would get one last chance to talk to them, maybe apologise or wish them good luck, or say shit like ‘good riddance’ or laugh. and if thats the case, would THAT dialogue feed in? would a Sam who received an apology act the same as a Sam who did not? i dont think so! id hope that the apology would help Sam be a better person, while an insult would make Sam more bitter and more likely to commit more crimes in their future! so THAT alone is like, a SPLIT in the route, meaning theres actually 4 permutations of Sam. apology!sam, insult!sam, neutral!sam, and friend!sam. which is a shit to fuck. my god. thats so much. admittedly neutral!sam does fuck all, but friend!sam would have a place, absolutely. they’d be working with Mattie and Rhia and all the other org loyalists to continue running the region but properly this time. insult!sam is off being a big part of whatever new villain appears. and apooology!sam issss..... maybe double crossing? their past as a Team member allows them power in the new villains group but theyre good intentions allow them to work with the ‘new org’ and they can double agent. which would lead to some significant differences. then theres Zeke, who i STILL havent figured out what the fuck is doing. and THEN theres the other characters who would exist in that game who would have their own routes. itd be a clusterfuck, is my point.

idek what this is useful for. psychoanalysing Rhia? about right. if she doesnt get closure the way she wants it - with mutual understanding - then she never truly grows. on the surface she may end up in a similar place, doing similar things, but its where she goes from there. with closure, shes free to move forward onto other things, other problems. it will always be there, but it can be managed. if the closure doesnt come or it comes wrong, it will be harder to manage and she cant move past it as much. yay! she can only unlock her potential if she closes that door to that which holds her back and confronts it. and while forcing her to confront it is ONE way to do that, allowing her to make that choice to close it herself at her own speed is more meaningful to me and lets her feel satisfied with the outcome.

in the hypothetical far future, a split!Rhia, even though she has technically reconciled with Elliot, will probably never truly come to terms with it until he dies. and he will, probably 10-20 years after the end of the postgame. thats when a split!Rhia will open herself proper, but its too little, too late. the ability to have proper closure is lost and im fucking projecting arent i. god fucking dammit. im projecting. nooopppeee zip that shit we arent do that again.

idk maybe if i got closure id be able to give Rhia the closure she deserves but i imagine she’d end up in the same boat as me, where she’s never able to properly close the door on that chapter of her life and it hangs open at all times, flapping in the wind. she can never truly right it off. and maybe if he’s not there she’ll be free on some level, and able to move forward in a different way, but it definitely isnt the same, and its not the ending she wants. Rhia wants to confront Elliot and have him be genuine with her and explain himself, and for him to accept what he’s done. if he dies before she thinks he’s done that (or before SHE has properly explained herself in a way that feels satisfying) then its a failure.

this is just some fuck shit.

[in-paradox-space]

very long rambly text post, you know the drill

you’ll get nothing out of reading it, you may as well scroll.

It’s fucking painful. 

I barely even know her

but I can’t stop thinking about her

I’ve met her once, I shouldn’t feel this way about her.

I can’t concentrate on anything.

I just really really want to be around her.

I miss her.

and its really fucking painful to think she probably just wanted to get away from me 

fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck

I need to work on improving my skills before college starts. I need to be able to pick myself up, eat the right foods, shower and sleep at the right times

I can’t. I can only think about her

and its weird. I have had crushes before, painful ones, for girls and guys.

and I’ve spent nights awake because of it

but this is making me really sad

to feel like I’ll never be with her and she’ll probably never approve of me

she probably thinks I’m really weird

and that I just want a hookup

because our mutual friends made it out like that before they invited her

and 

she’s a regular girl

I met her one night

and I don’t understand.

It would make sense for me to enjoy being around her and wanting to chill with her again

but it does not make sense that I feel like this

that she comes into my mind every single minute

and she makes it hard to focus on anything

I want to look at all the units on my course, and visualize how I can get the best grades in each one

I want to research some shit to buy 

I need to choose a good cheap bag to order from china or somewhere cheap

I can not concentrate on any of it. 

My mind is only interested in thinking of her

I’ve been waiting for a camera for weeks, it arrived today

I unboxed it. 

the tag and the plastic was still there

I need to format an SD Card and change the date/time settings

the box had the big bubble wrap 

why am I not excited? 

I don’t give a shit 

I don’t.

I only seem to care about her right now

and it feels like a drug craving

like im low

I need her to pick my serotonin up

and I think, relationships, crushes, love, affection, sex, all that shit

it kind of is like a drug 

not in a poetic way

but its basically the same release of chemicals in the brain

and you think about it every day

you look forward to it

and you feel highs and lows

pick me ups and comedowns

the rushes, the emotions

you change and shape your life to suit it, you make compromises

and its all for a release of the chemicals your brain creates

i know im not the first one to point this out

but im growing aware of it

and I’ve always been aware its just chemicals

an illusion, a distraction from what is important

and I know in reality it doesnt mean shit. I should move on and get on with whats important

but heres the thing

its making me low, because somewhere along the lines my serotonin or dopamine or one of those kind of things has been thrown off balance

and thats basically what happens when you want more cocaine, but it would be more extreme with cocaine of course

I want to see her again.

I dont want to ask my friends to invite her out again, its embarrassing that im interested

and i feel sort of uncomfortable knowing my friend fucked her that one time

i dont even care what we do

i just want to be around her

and i am well aware of how creepy this is 

considering i dont know her

and I spent one night with her

and if anyone spouted this shit to me, I’d think they were just being really dramatic

and they just wished they lived inside a movie

theres not really a pattern to when I think of her

and i find it so strange, because I really really dont know her

but I feel so strongly about her, like I would with a crush from high school

it just does not make sense, logically, to me.

but I will be thinking of anything and I’m suddenly overcome with this unique feeling

a reminder through my whole body

that I really really fucking like being around her

and I just want to be around her again

a feeling exactly like seriously craving a certain drug which you haven’t done for a day or so, but its less physical pain and more feeling emotion through a sense of weakness in your  body

 i wont tonight because i might not be thinking straight

but im considering just talking to my friend about it

and trying to see her again

and i want her to like me, but authenticity is important

but i wouldnt want them to set me up

and honestly i dont think she wants any of this

even if she did date me it’d probably be for 3 days and she’d move on

and she is the kind of girl I’d be friends with

but I really don’t consider people like her as anything more

she liked blink 182 and generic pop rock

i didnt even care about that

you can like whatever you like, but a part of my interest is usually dictated by that

i just liked her more

simply because I was learning more about her

and my god

I would fucking hate anybody who was talking like me right now

I will get over her. 

but for now I’m enjoying hearing her voice as I sleep

I think it happens to most people, it almost always happens to me after doing ecstasy 

the next few nights have mild hallucinations 

kind of abstract and psychedelic 

rarely scary but I have had very very fearful nights of paranoia a few days after in the past

they’re mainly voices

its like certain phrases keep being replayed in your ears over and over

not thought out but heard

like theyre really there

and you know theyre not there

but you feel as if these people are really around you

and youre in the same place

and you dont question it at all

you believe they are there

and its not imposing, it doesnt raise any questions. you’re physically in your bedroom but you look around, you hear them, youre really in the place you were the other night

and eventually when youre really drifting off

it becomes lucid visual

and you see them but you also dont

and its just certain things being replayed

and it has the potential to turn into a bad trip but its mostly pleasant and soothing

and I can still hear her voice

I still hear my friends and his girlfriends

but I hear hers too

I love it

I don’t want it to go away

I cant think of what she says

well theres one phrase

and again it makes absolutely no fucking sense

shes just a completely regular fucking girl, with her own interests and experiences

some we share. some we dont

and i met her fucking once, spent one night high with her. we didnt even kiss. hugged once

she didnt express any interest

didnt show any signs of it

and my heart feels fucking weak

and my body is released with, is it endorphins? 

it feels like when something release endorphins

an opiate effect.

im going to see her again

i wish my brain could take that in

so it will stop distracting me with thoughts of her at this crucial part of the year

the version of me from a year ago would feel disgusted by these posts

and I’m sorry, old me

I’ll always be me

probably

ill feel that same way about love again

i dont know what this is

i think im physically dependent on codeine again

and that might have influenced me being sick before

i took some when i got off the bus but it didnt change much

im going to go cold turkey anyway

i was planning on taking some at a gig but i begged kek, bargained to not be sick until im off the bus

and i made a sort of deal that i will sacrifice taking codeine at the gig

then bargained some more and said id stop

idk if it was them who helped me 

but a deal is a deal

and it will still be a fucking good show

would probably love it more if I was high though

im gonna have to forget that

and I feel sick again

im going to wash my hair and sleep

I started college today

I got up at 6am, and I would’ve made it on time but I was almost sick on the bus ride.

I didn’t want that to be my first impression so I went home.

I think it’s because of the weekend. I don’t take alcohol very well, even a little. Or cigarettes. I just get migraines from anything slightly unhealthy. 

I think its more of a delayed hangover/comedown though. 

If the pills are 200mg each, I did roughly 700-900mg of MDMA on over two different days.

I started one day, rested the next and continued the day after that.

to some thats a lot. 

To others it’s a milestone they’re way past. 

It’s the most I think I’ve done in that timeframe though though. 

I’m still very tired after sleeping through the afternoon and very weak. 

I want to make it tomorrow but I don’t think I will. 

It’s a shame. I want to ace the first project and make a good first impression. 

I told them I get ill a lot, they should understand but I think they’ll be suspicious that I just happen to be seriously ill on the first day

especially after talking about how much better I am compared to the start of the year in the interview

Now im going to think of a personal tag for her,

one memorable that isnt her name