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delimeful · 2 years ago

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to know that song (and all its words) (7)

warnings: injury, misunderstandings/assumptions, threat of murder, implied violence, cliffhanger

By the time trouble caught up to them, things had settled into a strange equilibrium on Virgil’s ship.

The sense of something close to casual co-existence with three Deathworlders was about the last thing he would have ever expected, but it was undeniably present.

He knew they were dangerous, knew that he was a danger to their secrecy and thus his life had an expiration date, knew that even the friendlier members of the trio were capable of surviving things Virgil could hardly imagine.

Even so, it was hard to keep that knowledge pulled around him like a shield when the three of them treated him more like a crewmate than a hostage.

Having access to food and hygiene facilities had done wonders for the Humans, the tension knotted up in every line of their bodies fading more and more until they hardly resembled the (weary-harsh-terrified) fugitives that had originally stolen onto his ship.

Virgil had thought he’d resent the very idea of invaders being on his ship long enough to grow comfortable, but the reality was that some strange tightness in his lungs eased when he saw the Humans indulging in things other than that single-minded focus on surviving future threats.

Noisy would chatter to himself while messing with the material printer’s settings until he got exactly what he was looking for, and while he mostly printed items for utility, like specific styles of dishware and what Virgil suspected were the Human version of first-aid materials, he would also occasionally spend ages fiddling with the tiniest details until he had created a design for a small, intricate sculpture. They didn’t have any practical use, but going by the (fond-happy-treasured) reactions when he presented them to the others, they were a form of expression.

He would put hours of work into each carefully crafted art piece, his face scrunched up with the force of his (concentration-effort-patience) focus.

Heartfelt could occasionally be found sprawled out on the floor of the bio room, face turned upwards to face the light as though they were just as sustained by it as the rest of the plant life. They often dragged Noisy or Square in to lay down with them, but the first time Virgil had witnessed it, they’d been on their own and he’d assumed the worst: that they’d fallen and hurt themself, or fallen victim to one of the many toxic specimens in the room. He had worked himself into a panic that took them an embarrassingly long time to soothe, and immediately set about labeling the plants by level of danger.

Now, passing the bio room, it had become a habit to glance over and check for a Deathworlder stretched out amidst the leaves and UV lights, acting more plant than person.

Even Square had been coaxed from their standard position hunched over a display or graph in the nav room, their attention tangibly catching the moment Noisy and Heartfelt showed them the lab. They curiously inspected every inch of the space, poking through the instruments with varying levels of recognition and surveying the chemical and organic compounds in the storage cabinets with a bright glint in their eyes.

Virgil offered explanations the best he could, but the language barrier didn’t discourage them; if anything, they seemed almost delighted about the prospect of puzzling out the purpose or composition of each individual component.

Somehow, it was… nice.

The company was far different from what he was used to, and his instincts were still constantly set off by Deathworlder body language, but the trio was such a departure from what he’d initially expected from their infamous species that he’d found himself drawn into their orbit.

It didn’t help that the more Common they picked up, the more they spoke to him just for the sake of conversation, friendly and curious about nearly everything they saw.

It didn’t help that he’d taken to sleeping in their makeshift den room most shifts, far away enough that he felt the illusion of security, but more than close enough to see the way they spoke softly to each other and curled up together in sleep like fledglings.

It didn’t help that while Square was still stringent about guarding the nav room, Noisy and Heartfelt had, by all appearances, outright forgotten that Virgil was a hostage who needed to be closely supervised at all times.

He’d returned to his usual habit of wandering the ship’s halls when he couldn’t sleep, and even though it was technically a violation of one of their rules, Square had let the unsupervised pacing go uncommented on, apparently seeing the wisdom in Virgil’s decision to leave the other two’s rest undisturbed.

It was during one of these insomniac sessions that the ship was boarded.

The pirate vessel must have been cloaked, because its approach went entirely unnoticed by the autopilot sensors. If it weren’t for the very subtle vibrations it sent through the walls of his ship as it locked on to the side of it, Virgil may not have noticed the intrusion at all.

As it was, it took him far too long to understand exactly what kind of trouble he had waded into this time.

Raiders didn’t typically risk direct boarding other vessels in open space unless they were hugely profitable, often preferring to prey on those who stopped at fueling bays or cargo loading areas. Less risk of a hull breach or other catastrophic failure taking out their victims and them, that way. Virgil’s undersized little repurposed research vessel was hardly an ideal target, much less worth that much risk.

Half-convinced he’d imagined the tremors, he’d headed down the main hall to run a security check, and reached the loading bay just in time for his gaze to catch on the handle of one of the emergency jettison exit hatches, and watch it twist and yank open.

The moment he realized what was happening, he’d tried to bolt.

Unfortunately, these raiders seemed to be well-practiced in their profession, because the first thing to pass the mouth of the hatch was the muzzle of a paralyzer, and Virgil’s sprint towards the door turned into a painful collision with the ground, every muscle locked up in pain.

He lost a bit of time– Ampen were well known as one of the smallest spacefaring species, and paralyzers weren’t anything close to gentle even on the largest– and by the time he’d blinked his way back into the realm of mostly-conscious, the raid on his ship was already underway.

There were a few aliens still in the loading bay, mostly prying open cargo boxes and guarding their entrance, but most of them had delved further into the ship to search with the methodical viciousness raiders were known for. Even from here, Virgil could hear the distant crashing of things being destroyed as his home was upturned and sifted through for valuables.

It was hard to care about that, though, when he could feel the aethers of the closest raiders, and knew exactly how much (glee-want-satisfaction) greed they were saturated with.

The feelings were far too strong to be about the simple rewards pillaging a small cargo vessel would offer.

Someway, somehow, they had learned about the Humans onboard. That was their true target.

Virgil’s limbs were still mostly-numb, entirely useless to him. Panic hovered over him like a wave about to crash, only held at bay by his impotent fury at both the raiders and himself.

He couldn’t believe he’d darted for an exit so mindlessly, so predictably. He should have tried for the control panel instead, should have locked the loading bay doors and cut off the intrusion at its source, should have sought out Square the moment he had felt that first mild tremor.

Stars, Square was the only one even awake when he’d started his pacing. Virgil imagined Noisy and Heartfelt waking up at weaponpoint and was filled with hollow misery.

Deathworlders were powerful, sure, but unexpected ambushes could take down even the most dangerous opponents.

And his Humans had lost their hunted look. They’d found security in Virgil’s ship, and he dreaded watching them get caught because of it, that sense of safety stripped away.

When the raiders began trickling back in through the doorway, however, it was with empty hands and mutinous expressions. The room began to fill with (frustration-apprehension-irritation) tension thick enough that it almost overshadowed Virgil’s own stunned disbelief.

His ship was not large by any stretch of the word. All the escape pods were present and only accessible through the loading bay. Most importantly, three entire Humans were hard to miss, how had they simply… vanished?

The leader of the raiders seemed to be thinking along the same lines. He turned to Virgil with a displeased air about him, a twitch of his head directing one of his nearby underlings to hoist Virgil into the air by the scruff so that they were at eye level.

His body barely spasmed at his mental command to struggle, but his feathers fluffed out without conscious control, an automatic defense that was entirely useless at the moment. “Let… go, you… shithead,” he managed to wheeze out, his Common saturated with the whistling pitch of his home tongue.

The leader made a derisive-sounding chk-chk-chk in the back of his throat, stepping closer. “With an attitude like that, I’m even more surprised they kept you alive this long.”

“My ship,” Virgil said, straining to get his limbs to respond.

“Only as long as you’re the strongest one on it,” the leader replied, like classic raider scum. “You know what we want to know. I can’t imagine you’ve had a very pleasant stay here with those creatures.”

The only reason Virgil didn’t bristle more visibly was because his body wouldn’t let him. “Don’t know. What you’re talking about.”

“Come on, even a scrapped-together pile of junk like this has heat sensors, doesn’t it? Just give me admin access to the system, and we’ll be on our way.” The leader paused, and then leaned in a little closer, his voice coaxing but a silent threat in every motion. “This is an excellent opportunity for you, you know. We’ll leave you unharmed, with your ship securely back into your possession, free of any and all bloodthirsty intruders! All we need is a short moment of your cooperation.”

This close, all Virgil could sense was his aether. There wasn’t a single trace of trickery in it; his promise was genuine.

The offer was generous, considering who it was coming from. It was the smart choice to make, considering that Virgil had anticipated from the start that he would be a loose end to tie up the moment the Humans decided to leave his ship.

If he agreed, he could be saving his own life.

In exchange, he’d be sentencing his captors to be forced into working for– killing for raiders, locked into service against their will. And that was at best. At worst… they’d be subjected to the kind of black market horrors he’d only heard stories about.

Virgil tucked his chin down, a habit borrowed from Crav’n body language and a fairly common indicator of stubbornness in this quadrant. He made direct eye contact, intentional rudeness to compliment his next words. “I don’t… give starscourge pirates shit. Nobody on this ship… ‘cept me, anyhow.”

A ripple of mocking jeers spread through the gang surrounding him, and the leader shook his head with faux-pity. “Looks like we’ve got a liar on our hands. You think we just picked your ship randomly out of the ink, little guy? We’ve been tracking you for weeks. Ever since we checked the sec-cam footage from a conveniently-located fueling station and saw some very interesting stowaways slipping aboard this very vessel.”

Virgil’s antennae flattened back against his head, panic seeping in.

The leader whistled in a pathetic mockery of a soothing Ampen call. “Now, don’t get upset. You had to know someone would figure it out eventually, I mean, look at all this cargo. A bit strange that you abandoned all your latest deliveries with no warning, isn’t it? Unless you had something more valuable on board.”

He hadn’t been thinking about it. First, he’d been too grimly certain of his own death to worry about things like failed delivery fees, and then he’d assumed that wherever Square was headed, he was competent enough to keep suspicion off them.

“No more stalling.” A prompting shake jarred him from his growing desperation. “Admin access, birdy. Now.”

Virgil hissed lowly, jerking his head in the closest gesture he could get to a negative, and the leader’s impatience twisted abruptly into fury.

“Useless.” The hand holding Virgil up vanished without warning, the metal floor rising up to meet him. He reflexively tried to catch himself, but his arm barely jerked in response to his brain’s screaming signal, and when he landed, something gave way with a sickening snap.

He couldn’t have helped the high-pitched shriek of pain if he’d tried, and though the leader kept talking, he hardly caught any of the words.

He did catch the sound of the loading bay doors sliding open once more.

Surprise-excitement-fear jolted through the raiders, so overpowering Virgil was startled he hadn’t blacked out already.

“Well, if it isn’t exactly the beasts we’ve been looking for,” the leader said, and a frisson of worry-fear-desperation slid through Virgil before being overwhelmed by the pain and the aether once more. He tried to say something, a warning for– for someone important, but the words wouldn’t come, only a high, thin whistle to accompany each painful exhale.

“You hurt him,” someone said. The voice sounded like Heartfelt, but it couldn’t be them. They’d never spoken with such a flat numbness to their words.

“My crew is one of the most feared in the entire quadrant,” the leader replied, his pride blooming like one of Janus’s deadlier flowers. “Those who defy us don’t live long to tell the tale.”

“Similar things have been said about us,” a cool voice responded. That was Square, wasn’t it? “And yet, you still boarded our vessel.”

“This can hardly be called a proper ship for creatures as powerful as you,” the leader said, radiating enough amusement to soothe his crew’s unease. “Bigger and better accommodations is the least I’ll be able to offer you as your new employer.”

There were large steps, slow and unobtrusive, making their way towards where he lay.

That seemed important, but his attention slipped away anyhow. His mind felt thick and cloudy with aether overexposure, each thought made distant and disconnected by the pain.

“Employer,” Square echoed. “This is your idea of a job offer.”

Their voice was different, too. Icy and carefully-controlled, the way it had been back when they’d first boarded his ship. Virgil felt his feathers– why were they so extended– ruffle in quiet apprehension.

Why were they mad? Had he broken a rule?

“You’re lucky,” the leader was saying, “most crews would see you as mindless beasts, and try to put you down for parts or sell you as entertainment. I’m on the sharper side of the blade: if you’re clever enough to speak, you have enough of a mind to take orders.”

They were being hired? Oh. That was why Square sounded like that.

They were leaving, so they had to get rid of Virgil.

Those steps, again, accompanied by a shadow falling over him. The crowd around him shrank away, taking their amalgamation of rough-edged (fear-anticipation-eagerness) aether with them.

In comparison, Heartfelt’s (desolate-tender-resolved) familiar presence felt like a down-fluff blanket against his mind, and he relaxed slightly despite himself. He tried to greeting-chirp at them, and the noise came out strangely.

“We’ll have to get rid of that one,” the leader said. “He’s a stubborn thing, and not the sort of witness that’ll play witless when questioned about raiders. We wouldn’t want the authorities to come sniffing around and find someone like him, would we?”

There was the barest tremor in Heartfelt’s hands as they delicately wrapped around his sides, lifting him slowly into a hold that could almost be called a cradle. They were careful to avoid jostling his arm, their eyes growing alarmingly wet at the sight of the snapped bone.

No matter how hard he tried, Virgil couldn’t hold onto his fear. He was too relieved, the specifics of why he’d been worried in the first place escaping him. The Humans weren’t in danger, after all. They needed Virgil gone, but Heartfelt was gentle, and they would be quick about it.

He could see Square, now, as Heartfelt returned to their side. Their body was rigid with tension, but they weren’t looking at him. Virgil’s antennae flattened back in consternation. There was something strange about seeing the both of them side by side.

“Thank you for your time,” Square said. “Unfortunately, we will not be accepting the offered position at this time.”

Their voice was low and measured. Next to them, Heartfelt was entirely silent, their eyes scrunched firmly shut. Something about the quiet…

“What–,” the leader spluttered, only to be cut off by Square whistling, three short but piercing bursts of sound.

Where was Noisy?

In the next heartsbeat, everyone was plunged into an all-encompassing darkness, as though someone had flipped every light breaker switch on the mainframe all at once. The hum of the ship’s electrical grid cut off, leaving a short stretch of dead silence.

Humans could still move fairly well in the dark, Virgil remembered idly. Even better with a warning.

His consciousness finally dropped away as the first screams started.

#sanders sides #sanders sides fic #humans are deathworlders #tktsaaiw #to know that song and all its words #ampen virgil #ts virgil #ts logan #ts patton #ts roman #my writing #writing #reverse wibar

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thenightfolknetwork · 1 year ago

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Good afternoon. I hope that you can assist me with a family matter.

I come from a very long line of mischief-makers, extending back for well over twelve generations. And my children all took after the family trade, as did all—well, almost all—of my grandchildren, and while my gaggle of great-grandchildren are too young to be working, they seem to have the knack for it as well.

You may have noted that I said almost all of my grandchildren. This is because of my youngest grandchild. They went to uni, had a strange and unnerving group of friends, got varied grades, graduated, and became… are… decided to become—my youngest grandchild is, you see, well, they’re a… they’re an accountant. A white button-down shirt pressed slacks accounting accountant!

As I’m sure you can imagine, the whole family was a bit shocked. We’re not all strictly mischief-makers; I’m a shenaniganerist myself! Still, none of us have ever strayed that far from the family business.

In retrospect, we really should have anticipated this—they were always a bit less inclined towards tomfoolery than their siblings and cousins. And they are overjoyed with their job, always chattering on about numbers and graphs. Besides, perhaps becoming an accountant when you come from a family that prides itself on chaos is chaotic? Either way, I’m trying to be happy to them, and I am confident that with time, I will be able to succeed.

However, I’m not quite sure what to talk about with them. They’ve always been a bit more distant than my other grandkids, likely because of their interest in… other topics, and this job has just exacerbated that. With the exception of a few reclusive ghosts, I’m the oldest person in my family. And, as head of the family, I’m the figure who people go to when they need help, whether it’s something small, like illusion homework, or big, like setting up an ongoing scheme that’ll run for decades.

I don’t know how I could help with this new profession. Well, I do, but I have a feeling that anything involving dental floss, temporary hair die, and two pounds of mustard seeds isn’t what they would be looking for. I want to show my grandchild that I am here, for whatever they need, and have it be true. How do I do that when I don’t know the right way to support them?

Oh, reader. This sounds like a very delicate situation, and my heart goes out to you. I can certainly empathise with your surprise at your grandchild's chosen profession. But at the same time, I can see how deeply you love them, and want to show that love in a way that supports and validates their identity.

Your grandchild is likely very aware of how different they are from the rest of the family. It's a very good sign that they've felt comfortable enough to share this part of their life with you all, and that they feel able to talk to you about the things they enjoy about it.

I understand that it's important to you to be someone your family can turn to for help and practical support. But that's not all you bring to the relationship. You are valuable and precious to your family beyond the role you play as a help-mate and advisor.

Your grandchild doesn't need you to understand the ins and outs of accounting. They don't need you to work out some way of helping them directly in their career, or to come up with a complicated scheme involving their accountancy skills.

This seems like a very good time to step aside, and let your grandchild take the lead. After all, they're the best possible person to know what will make them feel supported.

I recommend taking them out to spend some one-on-one time together. Don't make complicated plans – this is about spending quality time together, and giving them your attention. Let them know how proud you are of them, and how much you want to support them in their endeavours.

If there is anything specific they need from you, all to the good. You will have opened those lines of communication and let them know you're happy to help. But I strongly suspect that all your grandchild will need is to know that you're there for them, and that you love them. That's quite enough to be going on with.

[For more creaturely advice, check out Monstrous Agonies on your podcast platform of choice, or visit monstrousproductions.org for more info]

#answered #the nightfolk network #monstrous agonies

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 3 days ago

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By: Ryan Burge

Published: Oct 3, 2024

Generating a graph that helps us understand the religious composition of just 18 countries is a Herculean task, as I found when trying to do just that with the Global Attitudes Project from Pew. In the United States, it’s pretty simple to throw together four or five categories that encompass almost all of our religious diversity - Protestant, Catholic, atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular. Those five labels will fit at least 80-90% of the residents of most parts of the United States. Of course, there are outliers like Utah and its significant Latter-day Saint population. Yet, despite the fact that we have Lutherans in some parts and Southern Baptists in other areas - American religion falls into just a handful of broad categories.

When I went to try and visualize the religiosity of the countries that were included in this recent dataset that was published on the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA), I had to rethink how many categories were necessary and how many groups could just be combined into a “all others” category. This is my best attempt at that after writing about four hundred lines of computer code.

There is a lot going on in the world of religion when you compare just this dozen and a half countries. Of course there are many that are dominated by Protestants and Catholics. For instance, 96% of Poles say that they are members of the Roman Catholic Church, as do 67% of Italians and 61% of Hungarians. But there are also lots of Catholics in Spain (54%), Belgium (51%) and France (41%). On the other hand there is not a single majority Protestant country in this group of eighteen. Sweden comes the closest at 45%, and there are a few clustered around 25-30% (UK, Germany, Australia).

What about non-religious places? What is striking to me is how few of them have a big chunk of atheists - France leads the way at 26%, followed by the Netherlands at 22%. Yet, there are a lot that fall between 10% and 20% - UK, Sweden, Spain, South Korea, Italy, Germany, Canada, Belgium, and Australia. The number of agnostics in a country tend to be strongly related to the share who are atheists, too.

But then there are the outlier countries. For instance, 68% of Malaysians say they are Muslim. Nearly 90% of the country of Greece are part of the Orthodox Christian faith and 38% of the Japanese say they are Buddhists. And I would be remiss to not point out the incredible religious diversity of Singapore, where no religious group makes up more than 30% of the population. It’s 17% Protestant or Catholic, 21% Muslim, 29% Buddhist, and 23% non-religious. That’s a whole lot of larger religious groups at relative parity in terms of size.

But I wanted to move a step beyond that and focus on some other really intriguing questions about the role that religion plays in the personal lives of each respondent. And also how important they think religion is in terms of a well-functioning society. Let me start by showing you how people responded to the question, “How important is religion in your life?”

From this angle, Australia is the least religious country in the dataset. Nearly half of folks say that religion is “not at all important” (47%), but don’t miss out on Japan. While only 30% say that religion is not important at all, another 37% chose the “not too important” option. That puts it on par with Australia. Almost all the European countries fall between 30% and 40% on this metric. The country that is easily the most religious from this data is Malaysia with 84% of folks living there saying that religion is “very important” to them. That’s double the rate of the next country - Singapore where just 42% chose the ‘most important’ response option.

Of the eighteen countries in total, seven of them are more likely to say “somewhat” or “very important” than they are to choose the bottom two response options. There’s a nice mix of regions there, though. You have Italy and Greece, but also Israel, Singapore and Malaysia. It’s just not so simple to say that one region of the world is really religious - it very much matters what country we are talking about.

Let’s take this a step further by looking at this religious importance question through the lens of age groups. What I am really interested in is tracking how quickly religion will continue to decline in the future in countries outside the United States. So, I calculated the share of each age group in each country that said that religion was not important all.

One thing I can say without a doubt - older people put a higher value on religion compared to younger folks. You can see that by looking at the 65 and older group. In most countries, less than 20% of those people say religion is not important at all. When you look at the younger age group, you can see the overall percentages are a whole lot higher. Religion is clearly fading in a macro-level sense.

What also stands out to me is that there isn’t a huge jump from one age bucket to the next, it’s just a really incremental slide away from religious importance. For instance, in the Netherlands, the percentages go like this: 47% → 42% → 36% → 29%. Every successive age category is five or six points less likely to place no importance on religion. Generally speaking, the trend is maintained in this data. Inside each country, younger people are less religious than older people. It's just that the baseline tends to be different based on the overall religiosity of the country.

But to simplify this analysis, I wanted to show you the share who said religion is not important at all in the youngest age group and the oldest age group side by side per country. This really illustrates how much religion is declining across generations in some places.

One interesting observation: there are two countries in which the younger generation is actually more religious than the older generation. In Belgium, 32% of retired folks say religion is not important at all. It’s only 27% of people between the ages of 18-29 years old. Maybe there’s a religious resurgence in Belgium. That’s not something I have seen reported on by any outlets. Also, young Israelis are slightly more religious than the oldest Israelis. The difference here is just two percentage points, but it’s also worth noting that the country of Israel is a whole lot more religious than the average country in this dataset.

Which countries are experiencing huge drops? We have to talk about South Korea. Among South Koreans who are at least 65 years old, just 10% say religion is not important at all. Among the youngest adults in that country a whopping 42% place no importance on religion. That 32-point gap is the largest in the dataset. The other countries that have a huge generational gap are Japan at 25 points while Hungary and Spain are at 23 points.

What strikes me also is looking at the countries that are the least religious in the aggregate. Take note of Australia and Sweden. In both those cases, young adults are incredibly irreligious. But it’s not like the older generations in those countries are highly devout, though. For instance, 38% of Australians who are 65 years old or more say religion is not at all important. If you compared just the oldest Australians to the entire sample from every other country, they would only trail Sweden and the Netherlands for the mantle of ‘least religious.’ It’s quite stunning just how irreligious Australia is when looking at this data.

There’s another battery of questions in this data that I thought were incredibly telling about how people in these countries see the importance of religion to a functioning society. Respondents were asked how important a bunch of issues were to being good members of a society. There were questions about voting, reducing climate change, joining demonstrations, paying attention to current events, and getting the COVID-19 vaccine. I am showing you the share who said that each activity was very important across all 18 countries.

The activity that clearly scores at the top in most countries is voting. But there are others that also tend to do well. For instance, reducing climate change was seen as very important by huge chunks of folks in European countries like Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Spain, and Italy. It’s fascinating to see which countries don’t put a ton of emphasis on environmental concerns. In Israel, just 28% of respondents said it was very important. There was also significant positive sentiment toward getting the COVID-19 vaccine. In most countries, a majority of folks said that being vaccinated was very important to being a good member of a society.

Where does regular religious attendance rank across these countries? In short - very low. There is a total of one country where it scores in the top 3 activities and that’s Malaysia, which as you can recall, was easily the most religious country in this survey. In many countries, the share who say church attendance is a vital part of being a good citizen is below 20%. In Japan it’s the absolute lowest at just 5%, followed by Sweden at 6% and Australia at 7%. It’s fair to say that they really don’t value religious service attendance in those countries.

Let me just zero in on that question about the role of church attendance in being a good member of society. This time I calculated the share of each country who said that religious attendance was not important at all. What we find here is pretty similar to the prior graph. Over half of Australians say that attending church is not at all important to being a good member of society, it’s 50% of Swedes and 45% of Spaniards. In fact, most European countries in this data score at least 40% on this metric.

The countries at the bottom of the graph are Malaysia and Singapore. I think it’s interesting to compare them to the country of Japan, which scores in the top five. Just because these countries come from the same broad region of the world doesn’t mean that they have the same general approach to religion. That’s also true when comparing a country like Poland to most of its European neighbors. Poland is still a strongly religious country - which stands in stark contrast to other countries in the region.

It’s always nice to broaden our perspective and try to understand the contours of religion outside the United States. There’s a clear sentiment in a lot of these countries that religion is just not an essential pillar to a functioning society. It ranks near the bottom when compared to things like staying abreast of current events or tackling climate change in a lot of countries in this dataset.

This data clearly points to the conclusion that in the case of almost all of these countries in the survey that they will continue to move away from religion in the decades to come. Young adults are much less religious than their parents and grandparents and generational replacement will continue to secularize these countries for the rest of the 21st century. Whether Belgium is just an outlier or represents a reversal of this trend, it is too early to tell.

Reminder: an "agnostic" is an atheist who won't admit they're an atheist.

#Ryan Burge #decline of religion #rise of the nones #irreligion #no religion #atheism #religion #church attendance #religion is a mental illness

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fakemonexperiments · 1 year ago

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fakemon concepts

so, you’re still thinking about making one of those pokemon creatures: the question is, what kind of pokemon creature do you want to make?

how to concept

before we get to actually designing the pokemon, you’ll first want to come up with a strong concept. this is what your pokemon is actually about, its core conceit, what makes it special! a strong concept will guide your design and tell you exactly what your pokemon should look like, in terms of physical characteristics, pose, and personality.

disclaimer: pokemon concepts have evolved over the generations, which is really only to be expected from an almost 30-year-old franchise. pokemon concepts will continue to evolve over time. I’m not going to be the judge to say “this looks like a pokemon” or not, mostly because they release new and surprising pokemon every year and I always find myself liking them anyway. these are just a few frameworks that will hopefully help you navigate fakemon design.

anyway.

the fundamentals

pokemon concepts are often made up of multiple parts: where the skill lies is in pairing parts that go well with each other. for example, bulbasaur is a bulb-frog that evolves into a flower-dinosaur. confusing? yes, when I put it like that. but what makes it work is the narrative that ties the pokemon together (a rafflesia growing and bursting into bloom). so,

pick a base concept. easy tier would be an animal, plant, or object (1), but feel free to go further! many of the more anthromorphic pokemon are based around ideas or professions rather than a specific animal. think of snorlax (hungry sleepy animal, not actually a bear) or kirlia (a ballet dancer). pick a base that’s evocative and flexible. the base should be something that would be familiar to a child, if not in specifics then at least in general. (2)

find a secondary concept. the secondary concept does not need to relate to your base concept, but it should have synergy with it, IE they should resonate with each other and make it easier, rather than harder, to understand your pokemon on first glance.

marry these concepts together using a narrative and personality. your pokemon should tell its own mini-story. how does it function in the wild? how does it behave in relation to humans? what are its likes and dislikes? at this point, you may start filling out the laundry list of pokemon traits (post upcoming), like their typing, evolution stage, pokedex entries, stats, and so on. (3)

does this pokemon go with other pokemon? if so, you might need to think about those pokemon too! like real life critters, they can have a variety of relationships, be it mutualistic or antagonistic or anything along those lines. if this pokemon evolves, think about how its core idea evolves through the different stages (as opposed to just getting bigger and more complexly designed). you can go through this process for those guys too!

happy with your fakemon concept? good! now is time to refine your concept further. here is a DIAGRAM I have made for your reference.

pokemon graph 01

you’re probably looking at this like. what the hell does THAT mean??? but you also probably get it from looking at it. all pokemon fall on this diagram somewhere. you should try to stay within the pale red diamond, otherwise known as “the pokemon zone”. here are why I labelled the axes as such:

a zoo animal is a pokemon that’s too familiar for anyone’s liking. it does not necessarily need to be an animal, that’s just the name I’m using for it. this often happens if you lean too hard on your base concept and make your pokemon wayyy too specific. like if you made a mantis shrimp but it’s just a mantis shrimp. yes, it’s very cool, because mantis shrimp are fundamentally cool, but at the end of the day, it’s still basically just a mantis shrimp with no other significant traits. again, “zoo animal” can also apply to more humanlike concepts - this happens when you make a pokemon’s assigned characteristics too clear in its design. remember: timburr has a vest and carries a steel bar, but it does NOT wear a hat and its vest is not high-vis. try simplifying and abstracting if this is you.

a furby is a pokemon that is unearthly to the point of unfamiliarity. I mean, yes, strictly speaking all pokemon are unearthly, but this is a pokemon that’s so unfamiliar it’s hard to parse on first glance what’s going on with it. often this has to do with missing the mark on pokemon design conventions, but the existing pokemon I’d place close to this are actually ultra beasts, which are like this by design. they do this by doing things like having uncomfortably and satirically humanoid silhouettes, missing faces and facial expressions, being full abominations and so on. there are some really interesting things you can do in this space, but you want to still make sure this pokemon is interesting and likeable to a child.

a digimon is, well, a digimon. there are plenty of theses on why digimon are different from pokemon, but personally the main difference is in the scale of design: digimon tend to be much more anthropomorphic and also much more complicated, with the addition of armour and clothing. when a pokemon (such as lucario or gardevoir) is anthro, they aren’t straightforwardly so - they mess with the proportions, they disrupt the silhouette. they also don't straightforwardly add clothes; usually the clothes are baked into the pokemon's fur or skin to give an impression (such as with gumshoos). people fall into the digimon trap when they overcomplicate their design by adding too many elements into it.

a neopet is also, well. a neopet. unlike digimon, neopets tend to be undercomplicated and oversimplified. instead of having the secondary concept, they tend to have a single concept with a personality tacked onto it. not all cute pokemon are neopets, and not all neopets are cute pokemon. for example, eevee looks like it could be a neopet, but is specifically designed to be no particular animal, as well as having a unique concept behind its evolution and relation to other pokemon. if you’ve got a neopet-looking pokemon, try to make its concept more complex (although not necessarily more convoluted).

you might have noticed that I’ve mentioned that certain existing pokemon lean one way or another, but are still considered pokemon. this is because pokemon changes all the time and is constantly pushing the definition of what it means to be a pokemon. as I said, making fakemon is meant to be fun! do whatever! but pokemon official is able to do this because they are aware of pokemon design conventions to begin with. that’s why ultra beasts are Labelled As Ultra Beasts, it’s because they don’t fit the design conventions. keep this in mind when conceptualising your pokemon!

appeal to children

think your fakemon sounds like a fakemon? cool. now you want to make sure your fakemon hits the right tone, and for that, it must be parseable to a child.

like, a kid should be able to listen to your concept and be like oh that makes sense and not get lost along the way. this is because despite the ageing fanbase, one of the cornerstones of pokemon remains being accessible to new and young players, rather than just old veterans. if it’s too complex, streamline your ideas! if it’s too simple, buff up the narrative! every pokemon should, theoretically, be able to become some child’s best friend and companion.

if you’re struggling to figure out how to do this, one thing I’ve found very helpful is actually relying on the frameworks pokemon already gives us in game. that is, your pokemon’s condition!

in-game, pokemon are used in contests, and their condition is part of their judging. for fakemon, this means you can use these stats to guide the appeal of your pokemon:

tough

cool

beauty

cute

smart

or any combination of these! most pokemon (I find) tend to lean on 2 of these characteristics. a pokemon can be large and brutish, but it must be scary in a cool way. in an exciting way! in a “wow that’s so sick I wish I had one of those” kind of way. note also that conditions tend to lend themselves to certain kinds of moves, builds, and stats, but if you’ve been following along with a fakemon in mind that should probably make sense to you anyway.

now that you’ve thoroughly refined your pokemon concept, it’s time to put your pokemon in context.

cultural concepts (and appropriation)

okay, listen. if you are making a fakemon, there’s a good chance you’re thinking of making a fakemon region, or pokedex. like the pokemon company, you’re probably considering basing it on a real-world geographic area and culture. and that’s not bad! but you need to be careful!

I’m not saying that you should only write or make art about cultures that you personally are familiar with, but please for the love of god do not make racist fakemon. I have seen enough racist fakemon for a lifetime. think about the appropriateness of the story you’re telling. are you the right person to tell this story? is this story yours to tell?

as a creator it is your responsibility to research thoroughly any other culture you seek to represent, especially their mythology. this includes being sensitive to their perspective on said culture, which may have religious or otherwise implications that you aren’t aware of. I am once again asking you to be, at the bare minimum, respectful. (4)

if you’re working on a culture that isn’t yours, look into getting a sensitivity reader! I assure you that this is not as scary as it sounds, and could be as simple as asking a friend from that culture to look over your work and point out any blind spots. (if you don’t have any friends from that culture, this should doubly make you question why you’re making fakemon about it, of all things.) please also thank your friend for their time - sensitivity reading is also a job that people get paid for, if you’d like to hire someone instead.

anyway, key points:

if you’re representing a culture or background that isn’t yours, do your research

part of that research may involve speaking to people from that culture or background to actually make the pokemon work

this is not a bad thing and will in fact help you make better pokemon

ultimately the goal of any culturally inspired pokemon should be to celebrate that culture! not to perpetuate racist stereotypes lol

conclusion

a lot of people think that pokemon is often X + Y = Z. they’re not wrong, but it’s actually more like A + B + C + D + E = Z, where A to E aren’t just different things, they’re different categories of things. A might be your base concept. B might be the weird riff you’re putting on it. C might be a personality trait. D is the narrative role of the pokemon. and E is probably the completely broken unique move or ability you’ve concocted for your pokemon that would make it horrible to play against competitively.

make your pokemon rigourously! make them robust! make them fun! and ultimately, please make them a child’s best friend, to go on their pokemon journey with.

footnotes:

(1) I guess a sort of riff on animal, vegetable, mineral, except that pokemon objectmons go far beyond minerals. grass types aren’t all strictly plants, and vegetables do encompass mushrooms though.

(2) a child might not be familiar with the specific parasite that orbeetle is based on, but they do know ladybugs and they do know UFOs. and they’d be like, wow, so cool!

(3) please know that even though I’ve labelled these steps 1-4, you don’t have to actually do them in order. you could start with a typing you want to fill or a narrative in mind, then come up with a pokemon to fill the gaps. start with a design and then make up a personality for it! I’m not the boss of you.

(4) I’m not going to pretend pokemon doesn’t have its own history of cultural appropriation and racism (cc xatu, jynx, etc.). but that doesn’t mean you have to do it.

#fakemon #pokemon #fakemon tutorial

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mad-hare · 7 months ago

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@arabellameyer

immunology is so cool because it's like, endlessly complicated, and i romanticized this A LOT because it's really easy to romanticize things from afar, so I decided to get into it... and now my life is like an up and down of "i figured it out!" *reads new sentence* "i don't know anything!" and it's like good then awful

Inflammatory Bowel Disease is sooo cool and complicated because the combination of your immune cells + microbiome influence makes it so like... you could almost say every person with IBD has their own unique disease as there's exceptions to like everything we know about it...

right now I'm writing a research proposal regarding a drug that has been used for about 25 years to treat IBD patients with a lot of success, and a lot of success means about 60% of people respond to it positively and we have no way of knowing if someone is going to respond to it or if they won't, we just haven't figured it out after a quarter of a century (you could even argue we don't know exactly what pathway in the body it's affecting that reduces IBD symptoms because it affects a huge component of your immune system).

and i think the power of machine learning, or ai or whatever, might be vital in analyzing these complex things because like, I see so many graphs that look like this

where the red line is the average, each dot is a person (this is just a sketch i made in paint) and the conclusion is like through the power of statistics we've determined that IBD patients have higher ___ than control. but the RANGE of differences in these patients is so big, it just seems like this classical type of statistics is too reductionist to understand this disease

so we can start to split disease a bit more, we can split IBD into the main subtypes of Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis and that can help sometimes but not always. studying human populations is incredibly difficult because people have a lot of complexity to them (ie once you start dealing with older patients you have things like diabetes, heart disease, that are altering your population so you can't say for sure X is caused by IBD and not by heart disease + IBD skewing your data)... the fact that once you've treated IBD once (successfully or unsuccesfully) you've potentially permanently altered the immune system of that person (so some papers like to focus on "treatment naive" patients who have been freshly diagnosed which is good but also people with IBD have it forever and often have to go through multiple drug changes and surgery so that is also important to study)

what I'm interested in is finding a way to create new populations of IBD patients that are sorted in a useful way (ie being able to predict what drugs will work on them) and this involves potentially looking beyond the traditional classification system of "ulcerative colitis" or "crohn's disease" and using factors like treatment history, blood test results, endoscopic scores, populations of immune cells... and somehow plugging all that into a computer and telling the computer to sort them into little groups that make sense in a way people haven't figured out yet

so like.... idk

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 1 year ago

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Opinion At 33, I knew everything. At 69, I know something much more important.

By Anne Lamott :: Contributing columnist

Anne Lamott is an American novelist and nonfiction writer. Her latest book, “Somehow: Thoughts on Love,” will be published in April 2024.

Today I woke up old and awful in every way. I simultaneously cannot bear the news and cannot turn it off: It’s cobra hypnosis — Gaza, Israel, the shootings in Maine. The world is as dark as a scarab. I have two memorial services on my calendar this week. A dear friend is in the hospital waiting for a liver, dying. She keeps assuring me, “I ain’t in no ways tired,” and I say, “Oh, stop with that or I’m not going to visit again.” I’m exhausted just driving 90 minutes to and from San Francisco to see her.

My body hurt quite a lot when I got out of bed this morning, and I limped around like Granny Clampett for the first hour, until it unseized. Worse, my mind hurt, my heart hurt and I hated almost everyone, except my husband, my grandson and one of the dogs.

I don’t think I could have borne up under all this 20 years ago when I thought I knew so much about life. That was not nearly as much as I knew at 33, which is when we know more than we ever will again. But age has given me the ability to hang out without predicting how things will sort out this time (mostly — depending on how I’ve slept).

In many of Albert Bierstadt’s Western paintings, there is a darkness on one side, maybe a mountain or its shadow. Then toward the middle, animals graze or drink from a lake or stream. And then at the far right or in the sky, splashes of light lie like shawls across the shoulders of the mountains. The great darkness says to me what I often say to heartbroken friends — “I don’t know.”

Is there meaning in the Maine shootings?

I don’t know. Not yet.

My white-haired husband said on our first date seven years ago that “I don’t know” is the portal to the richness inside us. This insight was one reason I agreed to a second date (along with his beautiful hands). It was a game-changer. Twenty years earlier, when my brothers and I were trying to take care of our mother in her apartment when she first had Alzheimer’s, we cried out to her gerontology nurse, “We don’t know if she can stay here, how to help her take her meds, how to get her to eat better since she forgets.” And the nurse said gently, “How could you know?”

This literally had not crossed our minds. We just thought we were incompetent. In the shadow of the mountain of our mother’s decline, we hardly knew where to begin. So we started where we were, in the not knowing.

In the center of many Bierstadt paintings, you sometimes see animals grazing or drinking. They’re fine, they’re animals; they are just doing animals. But they are not the point — the point is the light. No matter how low you are, the light can reach you. It falls on animals, including us. This is positively biblical. Some of Bierstadt’s animals are lined up at the water as if they’re going to march onto Noah’s Ark. Or they’re huddled together as on a park bench, just hanging out. You have to wonder if the older deer are slightly surprised upon waking every morning, as I am, fumbling around for their glasses.

The animals never seem to have anywhere to go. I used to have lots of places I had to get to. I had to go out for this or that, and it was an emergency — graph paper! I suddenly, urgently, needed to drive to town for graph paper. Also, in the old days when there was something to celebrate, I’d go out to a nice restaurant with friends. To celebrate now, I might exuberantly skip flossing for a night, and maybe if the news is good enough, the hip exercises. Wild times.

In my younger days when the news was too awful, I sought meaning in it. Now, not so much. The meaning is that we have come through so much, and we take care of each other and, against all odds, heal, imperfectly. We still dance, but in certain weather, it hurts. (Okay, always.)

The portals of age also lead to the profound (indeed earthshaking) understanding that people are going to do what people are going to do: They do not want my always-good ideas on how to have easier lives and possibly become slightly less annoying.

Now there is some acceptance (partly born of tiredness) that I can’t rescue or fix anyone, not even me. Sometimes this affords me a kind of plonky peace, fascination and even wonder at people and life as they tromp on by.

The price of aging is high: constant aches, real pain and barely survivable losses. But each time my hip unseizes, it reminds me that this life is not going to go on forever, and that is what makes it so frigging precious.

Another gift of aging is the precipitous decline in melodrama. Enjoying how unremarkable life is takes practice and time, and then the little things start to shine and delight. Life gets smaller and in its smallness it starts winking at you. On my first day back in New Mexico recently, the high desert looked barren and brown. Pretty, yes, but a little dead. Then the tiny desert flowers, yellow, lavender, magenta and baby blue, made their way into my consciousness, and the earth’s shades of ochre and red started to warm me, and before long the formerly dead desert was alive and awash in dynamic, undulating streams of color.

[Albert Bierstadt :: Yosemite]

Sometimes at the right or the top center of Bierstadt paintings is a trippy splash of light, often a mystical, jagged slash that breaks through dirty-looking or white-fire clouds. There might be bright reflections, or long, slanted fingers of sun shining down with religious airs, organ music playing softly in the background. Puffy rainclouds glow. All say, “Yes, there is the deep dark, but we have some light as well.”

Will my brothers or I inherit our mother’s Alzheimer’s? I don’t know. I do know that I recently parked in front of my house and sort of forgot to turn off the engine. Three hours later, a formerly standoffish young neighbor knocked on my door to tell me this, and I pretended to have known. I said the battery had been low and so I was letting it recharge.

“Ah,” she said.

Now she is sweet when she sees me. We wave to each other when we pass in our cars, reflecting a new affection. Reflections say, “In the dark, there’s still some light around. So don’t ever think things are too dark. We’re not going to give you the entire reserve, but we just want you to know it is there. And more may be on its way.”

[Anne Lamott]

#articles #Anne Lamott #aging #age #Bierstadt #WAPO #Washington Post #paintings #Thanksgiving #Yosemite #about art #Albert Bierstadt

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atinylittlepain · 6 months ago

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A note on line graphs, spit, and take and bake croissants

If you couldn't tell, I don't know what I'm doing. Right now, in this liminal space between graduating and Whatever Is Next, it's never been more clear to me how very much I don't know what I'm doing.

I've been out of college for three weeks now, and I've been so depressed for all of these three weeks that my days have turned into a string of small bargains with myself. I feel like there's a fine line between wanting to censor content to protect folks from what could be triggering, and calling a spade a spade. So, a note to take care of yourself, because I'm about to talk about depression, and I'm going to do so in a truthful, and therefore ugly way.

The truth, I've been depressed for a while. The other truth, the last three weeks have brought on a weight and depth of depression I have quite literally never experienced before. On the bad days, I only feel half-real and end the day saying nonsense words out loud to myself to make sure I still have a voice. I get angry and cancel plans and say awful things to people I love. And on the good days, I feel like a child who just got in trouble, all soft and smarting, all raw skin. I speak and I don't like what I say. I write and I don't like what I say on paper either. I've been crying, a lot, all the time, usually in the evening and in bed. I wake up with my eyes crusted shut and a headache most mornings and yes, I think, it makes sense to look as miserable as I feel.

Another truth, I almost backed out of my graduate school admission because I convinced myself I would fail miserably and completely, almost backed out of moving to Austin, the move that is happening in four days, because I had swallowed so much fear that it was, and kind of still is, all that I breathe. That's how little faith I have in myself right now.

Today was one of the better days, a clarity that I haven't had in a while, and I guess that's why I'm writing this, to try to pin that clarity down. Another truth, I don't think it's depression. I think what this really is is mourning, done very shittily.

Mourning a place, sure. Bye, Colorado. Mourning a couple relationships too, friendships that have run their course always sting. But I think more generally I'm just growing out of something right now. My bones hurt and my skin feels tight and I'm growing out of something - a particular time in my life that looked a particular way that is starting to rot, frankly, with how I've tried to cling to it. I don't want to be here, in whatever this is, anymore, and at the same time, I'm afraid to let go of it - does that make any sense? I don't know if it does, I really don't. Something is passing away, that's all I know, and if I don't let it, I'm going to wither with it.

Last week I walked onto my empty undergrad campus and I stood on the steps of the chapel within which I planned the memorial service for my dead friend only a year ago, and I looked around to make sure no one was watching, and I spit on the holy threshold. It didn't feel as good as I thought it would, marginally amusing at best, and then I left. Something got let go of, at the very least.

Today I bargained with the oven - all I had to do was stay for the twenty minutes it took to bake one of those shitty croissants you get in the freezer aisle, and I could do that, and it was simple for those twenty minutes. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I've been struggling with time, and how to keep up with it, and how to stop asking for some of it back. I had a therapist who I wanted to throw a lamp at because she was always telling me that my problem is that I get stuck in the past or the future, which, what a fucking therapist thing to say, right? I'm afraid she was right though.

I still don't know what I'm trying to say here - maybe just that things are changing, and I'm trying to let them, and that is easier said than done.

And listen, I don't like being a bummer on here - but also, lately, I don't like being on here, period. I thought I wanted to write fic again and it turns out that was more of me clinging to the corpse of something that just makes me feel sick and shitty. I liked when this space felt like my own and it doesn't feel like that anymore, and maybe that's what I'm trying to accomplish by writing this, just to assert that there is some kind of space somewhere that I can make my own, that doesn't require any bargaining. Who knows, I'll have probably changed my mind by tomorrow morning, but I'll keep you posted, pfft.

#gin treats tumblr like a diary again #idk keep walking if you want

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laine-lulu · 2 years ago

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My first thoughts when looking at this page was actually a memory of the terms area of the page. I remember doing these in past classes growing up in some of my English courses. I know more than one of my teachers usually had a poster in their room similar to this, but with terms regarding learning and English vocabulary. So being this struck me first, it really allowed me to see the key words used throughout, the top five were (page, begin, know, man, and life). Although I would disregard “page” being number one since I did do a copy and paste to not have to go back and forth between two web browser pop ups, so I’ll make the importance of the other four words.

I think these words really are seen throughout what Whitman writes. When we read we “begin” our journey into his mind, and what he entails us to acknowledge about life. Which then leads us to “know” which is also something like in my last post with the Bibble meme, and how Whitman is often asking the reader and everyone in general what they know (how they function essentially and their lifestyle; what is known to them in their routine of life). Then we fall into “man” which relates to more man-kind rather than just “a man”. This is also important to point out as again the poem is open for everyone to question life with. The last in the top 5 was “life,” which again would make sense of the higher usage throughout the poem, since we are talking about experience of ourselves and others.

Besides the terms scrambled into a framing way based upon usage, I also looked at the trends graph to the right corner. This caught my eye as it distributed the way the top 5 words were relative. I noticed one word that was at the highest part of the graph and lowest at some point on the frequencies which was “know”. I think this is fascinating, because it sort of could be seen as a visual metaphor on what we know and don’t know as we go through this rollercoaster we call life. We have points where we might feel the most smart or equipped of reality when in a certain room full of people, other times not so much. Which is why I go back to Whitman questioning the reader so much throughout the poem, while also telling his knowledge throughout. Sometimes we might know the most compared to everyone in the room, as almost if we’re an expert, other times we might not have a clue after being questioned more, or asked to break something down and almost feel “defeated”. Though once we get over the defeated stage we become more equipped from taking in that experience and start to grow from it, leading us to a high point again. Of course down the line it can go down, but it’s a frequency, it won’t always stay the same forever.

Seeing these two parts on the page, showed me Voyant is a tool that although might look like a lot going on at first and possibly even feel messy, can tell you a lot about what is the key of focus through whatever you are plugging into it. I think before doing this exercise I feel like I could explain Whitman’s poem to someone else, but it might be a broad meaning to them if they haven’t read it. However, after doing this, it could allow me to breakdown more into detail on what Whitman portrays and tackles into his work and allow me to explain to someone in a better description; since it focuses on things such as terms and the times used, frequencies throughout what is plugged in, as well as other things like the density of vocabulary given, and the readability of it. These are important tools to have when trying to not only explain to others if they want to know or communicate on this piece whether they’ve heard about it or not, as well as for ourselves to dive deeper into the meaning of what we are learning.

#BlogPost3 #voyant

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kissagii · 2 years ago

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Hi hi hi!

Congrats on 100 followers!! \(ϋ)/♩ Your stuff is so comforting to read istg- You totally deserve it.

So, for your event, I'd like to ask you for summer + cherry tree and I really liked how you wrote Kuroo, so I'll go with him.

ahhh tysm!! i was a little worried about this prompt combo but honestly it's really cute haha

kuroo + summer (strangers to lovers) + cherry (place you first met)

warnings: none it's just pure fluff <3

There was a back corner of the local library that you had informally claimed as your own. You were there almost every day, occasionally accompanied by friends or classmates, and every time the table was blissfully unoccupied.

Until, of course, it wasn't. A quick snack run meant you were fifteen minutes later than usual, and when you went to find your favorite little table, you found a somewhat familiar person sitting in the chair you always used. Though you couldn't remember his name, you knew roughly who he was - the guy from physics who sat in the very front seat and answered the teacher's questions without fail. Someone who, you realized, might be a valuable study partner.

"Can I sit here?" You asked quietly, pulling out the chair opposite his.

"Oh, sure," He says, looking up to see who decided to join him. At the sight of you he was awestruck, staring in silence as you sat down and began to arrange your things on the table.

"You alright?" You whisper, looking at him with concern.

"Yeah, just... you look familiar but I guess I've forgotten where I saw you," The young man grinned awkwardly, silently cursing himself for staring, especially at someone he had just met.

"I'm Y/n, from your physics class. I know you sit in the front table, but I can't remember your name for the life of me."

"Kuroo. And speaking of physics, can I see what your lab data looks like? I think we botched ours," The black-haired boy, Kuroo, turned his laptop to show you the various graphs from the experiment you did that morning. And, from what you could tell, it was very botched.

You spent the next hour and a half working through the lab report together. Mostly you had to selectively choose data points to make the graphs look less insane, the product of cheap motion sensors that couldn't make nice data if they tried. You quickly learned that he wasn't only smart, but friendly, and completely willing to poke fun at his own mistakes.

"And that's the last of it," You say with a sigh, typing out the last few words on your conclusion.

"Thanks for the help, you probably just saved my ass," Kuroo said with a quiet laugh.

"Say, would you want to study together again? I'm here about every day if you ever want to work through a few problems together," You placed the offer out casually, though secretly you were a bit desperate to spend more time with your classmate.

"I can do you one better - let's go get coffee on Friday. No botched physics labs, no math problems, just you and me," He shot you a cocky smirk, passing you a folded-up piece of paper as he stood up and slung his messenger bag over his shoulder.

"Yeah, that sounds... amazing," You felt a flush in your cheeks. Did he seriously just ask you out? A quick peek inside the yellow note confirmed your suspicion, the handwriting beautifully messy.

Are you C12H22O11? Because you seem pretty sweet to me.

Call me somtime : (xxx)-xxx-xxxx

Friday couldn't come soon enough.

kuroo 100% uses dumb chemistry pickup lines and you can't convince me otherwise

#{🍄 - mushrooms}#{🐾 - explorations}#kuroo x reader #kuroo #kuroo tetsuro #kuroo testuro #kuroo x gn reader #kuroo x gender neutral reader #kuroo tetsuro imagine #kuroo tetsuro x male reader #kuroo tetsuro x reader #kuroo tetsurou #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu x gender neutral reader #haikyuu imagines #haikyuu!!#haikyuu kuroo #haikyuu kuroo x reader

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mrpenguinpants · 4 years ago

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Mona HCs: Self-worth

[For the Christmas Celebration Requests, please read this]

---

Hey anon! I’m so sorry this is late. I hope you’re doing okay anon, wherever you are. But I’m happy to hear you like my work 💕💕 I don’t mind talking/writing about sensitive topics if it can help people, even if the comfort is coming through words it’s still comfort, but I’m never too busy to skip over a request. Just might be a bit slow haha. I’m glad you enjoy reading them and sending me an ask! Thanks for telling me I’m doing great cause damn I need that right now.

If any of you are struggling right now, even if you’re in a slump, I’m always free to talk. Sometimes it’s easier to vent to a stranger and know that you aren’t alone. We’re in this together.

I’m kinda scared to post this but that’s alright;; This was way longer than I thought it would be so I’m gonna split Barbara and Mona into separate hcs.

But, depending on the feedback (if there is any lol) I might skip Barbara. I swear I was going to make this happy but then I shot myself in the kneecap.

[taglist] <- if you want to be added, please read this first.

@hanniejji @mikeysbike @unionwitch @musekala @twistedsunnshiii @stanzastic @akaasea @xoneaboveallx @adoring-ghost @asheseiler @childelover

---

Mona HCs: Self-worth

Mona Megistus was an astrologist of great skill and equally-great pride. She was both beautiful and confident and never used her astrology for profit. You were so proud of her and grateful that she was your partner. But maybe being with someone so great was when you started feeling off. You started comparing yourself to Mona and everyone else around you, seeing and thinking that everyone was doing something worthwhile. Sucrose and Albedo were great alchemists. Jean, Kaeya, and Lisa were part of the Knights of Favonius. What were you doing? Even though you felt guilt for feeling these ugly emotions towards your friends, you couldn’t stop them. You loved Mona, nothing would change that. So instead, you started hating yourself.

You had met the astrologist when she was moraless and starving outside the walls of the City of Freedom. You knew that she had a temporary home towards the corner of Mondstadt so why was she outside the walls? It turns out that she spent all her mora on astrological devices and forgot that she was human and needed to eat and had collapsed before making it home. Out of the kindness of your heart and frankly, leaving someone to die right outside the gates of the City of Freedom would be awful, so you helped carry her back to your home and made sure she was alright. Since then Mona had attempted to return the favour but you always declined. You didn’t want to know about your fate but if she wanted to hang out as friends, you would be inclined to. It started to elevate from there and now you’re both partners. Since then you found yourself in Mona’s temporary lab and house more often than your own home.

Being that you spent so much time with Mona, you’ve had to deal with a fair share of clients storming out the door because of Mona’s bluntness when reciting their fates. To be fair, she was blunt towards you too. In the beginning you didn’t mind, you actually enjoyed the honesty, but now you couldn’t help but second guess yourself. Trying to reason with yourself that if Mona didn’t like you, she would say it. If you weren’t good enough, she would tell you. Well, due to her astrology she took one glance at you the next time you walked in and knew all your deepest insecurity's.

“Your life is not at a standstill, it’s not hopeless. There is nothing to be sad about.”

That made you take a step back. Slowly registering the words and repeating them over and over in your head. You knew that she was just telling you what you needed to hear. That this is what you needed and wanted to hear. That she wasn’t trying to be mean and that she was right. You wanted to live a happy life with her and if you felt useless then you should work on it. Staying holed up in your room wasn’t going to help you. You knew all of this and yet, you could feel yourself slowly breakdown.

“Breathe in. Breathe out. You’re going to be okay. It’s going to be okay.”

Mona had her experiences of clients crying and getting angry at her predictions but when she saw you slowly breakdown. To see your eyes start to burn and get heavy, like the rim of a glass being pushed down and down. To see you slowly crumble from the inside out as you tried to hold your tears and sniffles in. She didn’t need the stars to tell her that she said the wrong thing. She was told to never offer advice, just to read what fate said when asked.

“I want to be happy. But I just can’t. I want to enjoy these little moments. I want to enjoy seeing my friends. I want to do so many things and make so many happy memories with you. I know all of these things and I’m trying my hardest to think like that but I just can’t. I can’t. Am I just not trying hard enough? Am I enough to you? Am I worth enough to be okay?”

She called out to you but you already turned away and ran out the door. You didn’t see each other for a few days because you couldn’t help but second guess what you said. Were you overthinking it? Mona didn’t say anything hurtful so why were you so upset? You didn’t want to face her so you curled into yourself further and let yourself get swallowed whole in despair.

When a week had passed, Mona made her specialty dish “Der Weisheit Letzter Schluss (Life)” and awkwardly shuffled outside your door. She wanted to give you time to yourself but after talking with Albedo and Klee plus your absent presence from her, she felt lonely and was starting to reflect on her words. It was a insensitive to take your happiness for granted and while she usually didn’t complain about upset clients being told future’s they didn’t want to hear. You were important to her. You were worth enough to be told things were going to be okay and much more.

As much confidence that Mona had in herself and her skills, she couldn’t manage money. She was always living on poverty line. She almost died if you didn’t find her and extended your help. She was so lonely and you were the first person that she considered a friend. More than a friend and more than a partner. You meant so much to her and she couldn’t realize that this is what you needed to hear instead.

She softly knocked on the door to see if you were home but the door gave away. You hadn’t bothered to even lock the door. At least you were in Mondstadt so she could rely that no one had broken in. She softly opens the door and places the dish on the table and searches your little home trying to find you.

You’re on your bed, asleep even when it’s noon. She didn’t want to wake you up but she didn’t want to leave yet. Not until you were okay. She felt so much guilt and only now found the courage to come see you. She was disappointed in herself that she basically abandoned you in your time of need, what kind of partner was she? She bit her lip hard enough for it to bleed as she carefully lied down next to you and wrapping her arms around you. Even if you hate her or you don’t want to see her, she doesn’t want you to think that you’re worthless or she doesn’t care. You mean so much to her and you spent all this time not knowing.

You don’t need to be the best, even if you think that what you’re doing isn’t good, it was and she was proud of you. No matter how long it takes for you to feel okay, to feel happy, she’ll stay by your side the same way you did.

“It’s okay. It’s okay to feel like you’re not good enough. Don’t feel guilty for being stressed or sad. Things will get better. Fate has not abandoned you and neither will I.”

She had regressed to her apprenticeship, thinking that astrology could explain the laws that governed the existence of all things. That human hearts were guided by these laws, and if one had great enough powers of calculation, all the mysteries of the world could be understood. She remembered when she was starving, you had shared half your food with her. In your small but warm kitchen as you offered her your own hard work just to make sure she, a stranger, had something to eat.

"Out here, we've gotta have each other's backs."

That was the first time she truly questioned her thoughts under the stars, she marveled that her research had been so full of holes. Mona cries silently beside you, even with all her training and how she boasts about the power of astrology, she can’t help you. No matter how many hydro graphs she makes or tells you that the stars show a glimmer of hope. That won’t help you. So she holds you and hopes that you can feel all her emotions and love.

While you’re asleep she tells you about when she first started astrology, she accidently scaled herself. The burns are still on her as a reminder that she makes mistakes. How she was moraless for years after leaving her Master’s teachings but somehow found a job in the Court of Fontaine’s mainline newspaper. All on pure chance. She tells you how appreciative she is that you visit her everyday, to make sure she has a meal, and that she remembers to write her column for the newspaper. That she’s grateful to have met you and have you stay by her side.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It’s okay. It will be okay. You’re enough. You’re perfect. Everyone may seem to be exceeding but it doesn’t mean you’re slow, that you’re not worth it. You are at your own pace, working through your own steps. You’re not alone. I’m here. You’ll be okay.”

#genshin impact #genshin #genshin impact x reader #genshin x reader #genshin impact imagines #genshin imagines #genshin fanfic #genshin impact fanfiction #genshin headcanons #genshin impact headcanons #genshin mona #genshin impact mona #mona megistus #mona x reader #mona x mc #mona headcanons #mona imagines #tw depression

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btsficsforthehumble · 4 years ago

Text

adj.: 1. Modern, unfamiliar, or different

2. Not based on or conforming to what is generally done or believed

pairing: reader x ot7

genre: college au; angst, fluff, smut, poly, ot7

Summary: You begin your first year at a prestigious university, set out on achieving your academic goals when a series of men step into your life that change the way you view the definition of love.

A/N: Thank you to the glorious minjoonalist for this banner! Everyone give her some love <3

Part One

Warnings: none in this chapter

Word count: 2k

It’s your first day.

First day entering the world of higher education, on the path to betterment (or whatever the dean said in his boring introductory presentation). To tell the truth, you were pretty zoned out as various speakers talked to the thousands of students that would now become your peers. Those hard ass plastic seats were NOT conducive for attentive listening.

Regardless, you pushed through, and here you are, Monday morning, at 8:45 sharp, sitting in yet another hard ass plastic seat. This time however, you had a small wooden desk in front of you, in line with about a couple dozen others. This was your first class --- Calculus.

You were always good at math compared to the average student, however, being placed with the super smart kids all the time made you self conscience and at worst, made you feel stupid. You were too good at math for the standard curriculum, but felt too dumb for the advanced one. It’s no surprise that math quickly became your least favorite subject.

That hadn’t changed. You were dreading this class, even though you took calculus already in high school --- theoretically, it shouldn’t be that difficult. You knew however, that you had absolutely no willpower when it came to studying math. And considering the fact that you are now attending a prestigious university, one known for their STEM programs, you felt adequately nervous.

You glanced around the classroom, baron except for the desks and the large whiteboard covering the expanse of the front wall. A few other students showed up early as well, mostly looking either as nervous as you felt, or tired like they had just enjoyed their first weekend at college perhaps a little too much.

You yourself hadn’t gone too crazy, going to a single party on Saturday where you only had one drink --- lame even by your own standards. However, you were just getting to know your roommates, and felt it best to remain sober enough to keep an eye out on them or manage any situation this new environment would throw you.

You weren’t close with any of your peers from your high school that also attended your university, and it seemed your roommates were in the same boat. So, naturally, you all decided to go out together as new friends. They all seemed to be nice, and you got along well with everyone so far. You hoped that wouldn’t change.

You sigh gently to yourself while reflecting upon your less than thrilling weekend. You hope that one day you’d let yourself experience the wild college parties that you've heard about. You want to know what it felt like to get properly drunk and dance with a cute stranger without any worries in the back of your head.

Speaking of cute strangers, you take a glance around the classroom, steadily filling up with students. You might as well see if there were any hotties in the class that you knew you’d rather daydream about than pay attention to exponent integrations.

You spotted a boy sitting a ways away from you that caught your attention. His legs were stretched out in front of his desk, in a way that screamed “I don’t care if you trip over me, in fact, I dare you.”

His attention was glued to his phone, as he appeared to be taking snapchats --- probably for some obnoxiously beautiful girls, you thought to yourself, eyes rolling slightly. You had to admit though, he was quite attractive. He had dark brown hair, covering his forehead and slightly swept to the side. His eyes were a dark brown to match, and were quite cute. He had a nice nose and clear skin. His most striking feature was his lips however. He had lips that were larger than the average guy and they looked very kissable. And his frame was decently large, his shoulders wide and masculine, juxtaposing his cute eyes and lips.

You blushed at your own thoughts about the stranger across the room, knowing you were getting entirely carried away in your state of boredom. You still had five minutes until class was supposed to begin. You put away your own phone, which you were holding in your hands as some sort of social protection, in your backpack. You then pulled out your fresh new binder with graph paper, lined paper, tabs, dividers, the whole nine yards. You may not enjoy math, but organization always brought you some level of mental tranquility.

You pull out a pen just as you glance up to see a boy standing in front of you, with the brightest, thousand watt smile on his face. His backpack was slung over one shoulder, his hand in his jeans pocket. He had on a loose tee-shirt that somehow flattered his slim frame. You could tell that he wasn’t a meek first year still finding his bearings. He must be at least a second year. You feel your face heat up as you make eye contact, seeing that he’s looking directly at you.

“Hi there! Is this seat taken?” His eyes widen almost comically as he points to the seat directly in front of you.

“Ah no, no it’s empty.” You cringe internally as you notice your less than relaxed delivery.

He gives you another dazzling smile as he plops in the seat in front of you, pulling out his own simple notebook and pencil.

You rub your forehead trying to get yourself to calm down. You need to not turn red every time a cute boy talks to you, let alone look in your direction. This is so not like you.

You manage to calm yourself down, ready to begin your first class so your attention is off the boy sitting in front of you.

Your professor must have walked in as you were mentally reprimanding yourself, because you hear an authoritative man's voice come from the front of the room when 9 o’clock hits. You immediately began trying to pay attention, writing down all of the information he put on the board even though it’s stuff already in the syllabus. The truth was that you simply needed to throw yourself into a task to keep your mind from straying back onto the boy in front of you.

About seven minutes later, the door to the classroom swings open and another boy walks through, giving the prof a quick salute and grin in apology. You, as well as the rest of the class, had naturally turned your eyes towards the distraction. As soon as it was found to just be a straggler, everyone’s attention quickly shifted back to the professor in front. Your curiosity was piqued by his confident, goofy nature, however.

You couldn’t help but keep your eyes on him a moment longer. He had shaggy dark hair, tanned skin, and a smile that was strikingly unique as it was a little bit of a square shape. He was devastatingly handsome, and you had a feeling he knew it too. Your hypothesis was instantly supported as he made eye contact with you, noticing you looking at him longer than your peers. He flashes a smirk your way that you’re pretty sure could knock anyone’s panties off.

You mentally start screaming and feel yourself turning the color of a freaking fire truck. You quickly jerk your head back down to your notes and refuse to look back up to meet his eyes.

It appears he wasn’t going to give you a break though. You felt the air woosh past you as he walks down your aisle and stops immediately behind you, taking the empty seat.

Great.

Now, you were sandwiched between two guys that you're pretty sure were the most attractive you’d seen in a long while. Not to mention the guy several rows over that you were ogling before they even arrived. You quickly realized that there wasn’t a chance in hell your full attention was going to be on the lecture during this class.

Your entire body sagged with relief when your fifty minute class was up and the professor released everyone. Noticing, the boy behind you leaned forward and huskily whispered, “You’re not a morning person either, huh?”

You froze for half a second at the sound of his voice. It was deep and silky, and my god was it sexy. And he was talking to you.

“You could say that.” You were shocked at his attention but somehow managed to pull out a response that didn’t make you look like an idiot. You didn’t bother turning around to look at him as you answered, deciding not to let him see how pink your cheeks were as you returned your items to your bag.

He let out a little chuckle and stood up.

“I’m Taehyung. And you, my little night owl, are?” He drew out the are waiting for your response.

You too stood up, putting your backpack on.

“I, Taehyung, am off to my next class.” You were annoyed that he seemed to take notice of your attention on him in the beginning of the class and thought that you were a fun little target to flirt with. You knew he wasn’t interested, but merely found it fun to take advantage of his good looks. This allowed you to get over your schoolgirl crush behavior and return to your normal self, which you knew had more of a bite than necessary at times. You had developed a tough edge at a young age and you think that it has protected you a lot already in your short life.

He raised an eyebrow at the sudden appearance of sass and gave you another grin. You simply rolled your eyes and turned on your heel to march yourself out of the classroom, joining the other students that were filtering out. By the time you had turned around, the cute guy with the smile that made your heart melt had already left. You were slightly disappointed to your own chagrin. Why on Earth are you paying attention to boys when you knew you had other priorities? It’s not like anything would come of it anyway.

Throughout high school, you steered away from boys in a romantic sense and they more than happily did the same. You knew you were intimidating, as you had a sharp mouth and quick wit. No one messed with you and you liked it that way. You had kept to yourself, and kept your grades high. You just didn’t have any interest in the boys you’ve known since you were a kid.

As you walked to your next class, you silently cursed yourself for not being cool and collected the entire period. Where was that icy exterior that you had curated for years? How did a simple smile from the boy in front of you turn you into a puddle? How did that annoyingly hot guy behind you manage to blindside you at first?

You nearly stopped in your tracks and groaned when you realized that you had that class every. single. day. It was five credits, so that meant Monday through Friday, you’d be there 9 in the morning, attempting to not think about the cute boys around you.

You were giddy deep, deep down that such cute guys were in your class but the more level headed side of you knew it was in vain. It’s not like they’d go for you or anything. And besides, they would only distract you from the class that you already knew was going to be a struggle.

You pinched your eyes shut when you slid into your seat in your next class.

You had a feeling it was going to be a long semester.

#BTS #ot7 #ot7 x reader #poly ot7 #fanfic

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incorrectbandofbrothersquotes · 3 years ago

Text

You Better, You Better, You Bet - Chapter 9

As Long as You’re Mine

Ron Speirs x Juliet Fletcher

Summary: Juliet Fletcher reaches a breaking point in her life. When she is at her absolute lowest, she meets Ron Speirs, and something happens between them that neither of them will ever forget.

Word Count: 4.1K

Tag List: @vintagelavenderskies @how-are-those-nuts-sarge @iilovemusic12us @hesbuckcompton-baby @tvserie-s-world @whovian45810 @50svibes @cagzzz107 @evelynshelby @piano-isnt-my-forte If you’d like to be added, let me know!

A/N: Hope you guys enjoy this update!

Warning(s): None :)

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8

AO3 link

Chapter 9 let’s go!!!

“Okay, how does this sound?” Juliet asked Ron, who sat on her bed as she put together her story of the trial. He was careful not to recline, lest he disturb her pages of notes carefully organized atop the quilt. “Meredith Fisher confessed to the murder of six-year-old Peggy Lee in front of the courtroom before her trial began. Mrs. Fisher was arrested and charged with the murder in September of last year. Her lawyer, Mr. Harvey Cooper, originally planned to plead not guilty, but in a shocking turn of events, Mrs. Fisher herself admitted to the jury she killed Peggy Lee before even opening arguments could be made.”

“I’d read that,” Ron replied.

Juliet huffed and looked around her room at the Blue Boar. Papers littered the floor, pens were nowhere to be found, and her typewriter was mocking her. Now that the trial was finished - with such a dramatic twist - she was hard at work, trying to ensure she reported it just right. An impossible task, it felt like.

“Okay, but would you read it because I’m your girlfriend or because of the writing?” she asked.

“The writing,” he told her. “It’s simple, it explains everything.”

“It feels a bit long for the lead,” she said. “Perhaps I should put the bit about her arrest in the nut graph.”

“That does feel more like background information,” he agreed.

She pulled a pencil from behind her ear, scratched out the sentence, and began again. “So, it’d go like this - Meredith Fisher confessed to the murder of six-year-old Peggy Lee in front of the courtroom before her trial began. Her lawyer - I’m gonna take out his name and have that later - so, Her lawyer originally planned to plead not guilty, but in a shocking turn of events, Mrs. Fisher admitted to the jury she killed Peggy Lee before even opening arguments could be made. Then I’ll go into when she was arrested, the details of the murder, then the evidence the prosecution had prepared, and finish with her sentencing date. How’s that?”

“I think it’s perfect,” he said.

She chewed her lip. “Should I use the word shocking? I don’t want to tell the readers how to feel.”

“When she confessed, what was the first thing you heard?” he asked.

“Gasps,” she answered.

“There’s your shock,” he said.

Juliet had to concede that point. Ron almost didn’t believe her when she told him the story. The judge had barely gotten the words “How do you plead?” out before Meredith let out a wail like wounded animal and confessed to the whole gruesome thing. She sobbed that she was sorry, but she knew she had to be punished. She wasn’t safe. And truthfully, Juliet felt bad for her. It was truly one of the most pitiful things she’d ever witnessed.

But the one thing Juliet could never forget, the image that would stick with her for all her days, was the look on Peggy Lee’s parents’ faces. The Lees watched, dignified, proud, yet misty eyed as the person who killed their daughter begged for mercy. Their grief was profoundly felt, despite their stately manner. They said nothing. They did nothing. And they spoke to no one upon their exit from the courtroom.

“Jules?”

Ron’s voice brought her back to the present, his hand on her shoulder making her turn to look at him.

“Sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “Just...it’s so unfair. If anyone had a right to be screaming and crying it was the parents.”

“They must be very English,” he said.

“Oh, they were proper English,” she agreed. “Stiff upper lips and all. The mother did at one point hide her face in the father’s arm, but other than that, they were stoic.”

“Thinking about including that in your story?” he wondered.

“God, no,” she replied. “I’ll mention that they were there and offered no comments, but this isn’t that kind of article.”

“Just the facts, huh?”

“As usual.”

“Juliet.”

“Yeah?”

“The article’s gonna be great,” he said.

“How can you be so sure?” she asked.

“Because you care this much,” he said. He accentuated the point with a kiss to the top of her head. “I’ve got a staff meeting. Are you alright here?”

She nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks for being so patient with me.”

He kissed her again. “I’ll see you tonight.”

“See you later, Ron,” she returned.

With that, he left. Juliet started trying to condense the lead again, still feeling like it was too long. There had to be a better summary. But it was a lot to try and fit into one sentence, so she resigned herself to making it more than one line. She hadn’t chosen a headline yet, either, but she usually liked to write the article first. That way she could pick out the singular most newsworthy part and headline with that. As she organized further, the phone rang.

“Hello?” she answered.

“Juliet, it’s Lottie.”

“Hey, Lottie, how are you?” Juliet asked.

“Fine, same as usual,” Lottie returned. “Otis just rang and told me about the trial. I hope you’re hard at work.”

“Absolutely,” Juliet assured her. “I’ve nearly got the lead down. I’ve just got to get the facts organized. I’m thinking of doing a follow up story about the shortcomings of Operation Pied Piper, since Cooper’s little tidbit did prove to be true.”

Sad as it was, Harvey Cooper was right. There was no process for vetting the families agreeing to take the children. The committee had been in such a hurry to evacuate, they had not even considered that some children could end up in more danger than they were at home in the cities. Juliet found the whole thing fascinating, and it could open up a conversation about war time protocol - be meticulous or swift?

“I think that’ll be fine,” Lottie said. “But have you gotten any war news? I know I wasn’t enthusiastic about it initially, but you’re the only reporter I’ve got with the Airborne.”

Juliet bit her lip. While the prospect of war news had originally driven her to accept the Peggy Lee story, she found herself conflicted about it now. Her relationship with Ron threw a wrench in it.

“I think it’s a conflict of interest for me to cover the Airborne,” she said.

She could practically hear Lottie’s eyes roll. “Oh, come on, Juliet, don’t be absurd.”

“It isn’t right, Lottie!” Juliet insisted. “I’m in an intimate relationship with one of the soldiers, there’s no freeing me from bias there.”

“You could use it to your advantage,” Lottie said. “Obviously, you can’t use him as a source, but couldn’t he lead you to the right person?”

“I can’t ask that of him,” Juliet said. “I don’t want him to get the wrong idea.”

“What wrong idea?”

It was something Juliet had already put a lot of thought into. As badly as she wanted to cover the war - and it did seem like things were ramping up even more in Aldbourne - she was hesitant. She had actually considered asking Ron for a source and then immediately hated herself for it. She would not use her relationship to get ahead in her job. She couldn’t. It just wasn’t right, simple as that.

“That I’m using him,” Juliet explained. “If I ask him to get me a source, he might worry that it’s the reason I entered the relationship, and that’s not the case.”

Lottie sighed. “So, you just want to give up on covering the war?”

“I didn’t say that,” Juliet returned. “I’d be happy to cover something else once I get back to London, but-”

“Forget it,” Lottie cut across her. “Just focus on the trial for now and then Pied Piper, if that’s what you want.”

“Lottie -”

“Good afternoon, Juliet,” Lottie said harshly, hanging up before Juliet could protest any further.

She sighed, hanging up as well, and sitting back in her chair. She had a feeling the conversation wasn’t quite over, but she’d hear more about it on her next trip home. For now, she wanted to focus on what happened at the trial. The sentencing would be in another few weeks, so she needed to get this done.

***

Ron was right of course. The article was published and the London Pursuit sold the most copies it had in years. It surprised Juliet a little, but perhaps people were tired of war news and what better than a dramatic murder trial for a change of pace? It was morbid, sure, but Juliet knew she’d handled it as well as she could.

Lottie called, absolutely elated by the circulation numbers. And honestly, Juliet was thrilled too. She found Ron later that day and leapt into his arms as a display of her unmitigated excitement. She’d done it, and done it well! It was cause for celebration. So they went to London for the weekend - staying with Nancy of course, since she would have had a fit at missing an opportunity to see Ron - and they went to a nice dinner, champagne and everything. Juliet could hardly believe her luck. Everything was going so perfectly.

And that night, as they lay together in the afterglow, she looked at his face and knew she loved him. The kind of love she read about in books and poetry. The kind that crooners sang about on the radio. She’d found it. It was scary enough to admit to herself, but she determined that she would - one day soon if the opportunity presented itself - admit it to him.

He caught her gazing at him.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she replied. “I’m just happy you’re mine.”

***

The sentencing hearing was not as interesting as the trial itself, but Juliet was relieved to report that Meredith Fisher was going to prison for life. There would be no chance for parole, either. So justice was served.

However, Juliet couldn’t help but notice the look on Mr. Lee’s face. Mrs. Lee had not come for the sentencing, so it was just father. When the judge announced Meredith’s fate, Mr. Lee only closed his eyes and let out a long breath. He nodded, put a hand over his heart, and inhaled again. A single tear rolled down his cheek. It made Juliet look away so that he could have that moment for himself. To take in whatever feelings came to him. To remember Peggy and take some solace in that her killer was going away.

“I thought I’d be happier,” Juliet told Ron as they prepared for bed that night back at the Blue Boar. “But it still just feels...rotten.”

“Nothing can bring the girl back,” he said matter-of-factly.

“I know,” she replied. “But I just....I suppose you’re right. What else could anyone have hoped for in this situation?”

“Right,” he agreed.

“I’m also grateful we didn’t have to hear that lawyer make that ridiculous argument in a courtroom,” she said. “I don’t think I could bear the looks on the parents’ faces at that.”

“That would have been awful,” he said.

“Even so, it feels rather anticlimactic,” she said. “Especially for the prosecution who spent months putting everything together.”

“They still got the result they wanted,” he pointed out. “So what does it matter?

She shrugged at that. She still felt unsatisfied, as if there was something more to be done. Even though logically, she knew there wasn’t. She would write an update for the paper, and that would really be the end of it. That was when it hit her. What was really upsetting her was that now that this was over, there was no more reason for her to be in Aldbourne. Especially now that she didn’t want to cover the Airborne. It meant that she would go home to London, in turn reducing her time with Ron significantly. And that was a dreadful thought.

***

“What do you mean you aren’t coming back to London?” Lottie cried through the phone. “What about the Pied Piper story?”

“I reckon it can wait,” Juliet said, entirely unconvincing, but she hoped Lottie was buying it. Her reasons for remaining in Aldbourne had nothing to do with her job and everything to do with the man she was in love with. “And maybe with some time, I can find my own sources on war news.”

Lottie remained silent for several minutes. “So, you’ve just changed your mind all of a sudden about covering the Airborne?”

“Not completely,” Juliet lied. “I...I’m just not sure I’m quite finished here. And what if there’s something else about the Peggy Lee story that comes up? I could -”

“Give it a rest, Juliet,” Lottie groaned. “I know you want to stay for your boyfriend.”

“That’s not -”

Lottie cut across her protests. “Please do not insult my intelligence by suggesting otherwise. You want to be near him.”

“You don’t sound quite as sympathetic as I hoped,” Juliet said, giving in.

“You have a life in London, Juliet!” Lottie reminded her harshly. “You have a job to do, your mother is here, and you want to put everything on hold for some man?”

“He’s not just some man!” Juliet argued indignantly. “He’s...different from any man I’ve ever known. And what we have means more to me than anything I’ve ever known.”

She glanced down at the necklace that sparkled against her skin. A constant reminder of how much she meant to him as well.

“Oh, come off of your cloud, will you?” Lottie snapped.

“Lottie,” Juliet said seriously. “The whole time I was with Arthur, did you ever know me to put him before work? Or my family?”

“No, so why is this Ron fellow -”

“Because it is different,” Juliet emphasized. “This is it, Lottie. He’s the one.”

That seemed to stump her. “Has he...proposed?”

“No, he hasn’t,” Juliet said. “I don’t even care if he does.”

Lottie scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous, you can’t just carry on living in sin.”

Juliet rolled her eyes. “Could you please pay attention to what's important here? There’s a man in my life who I genuinely see a happy future with and I just...I want to focus on that. Is that so wrong?”

“I suppose not,” Lottie sighed, and Juliet inwardly celebrated a moment of victory. “But I can’t pay you if you aren’t working. At least be making the proper phone calls to follow this Pied Piper story. Conduct interviews of other families there who have taken in children from the cities. Part of the story is there if you know where to look.”

“No problem,” Juliet said. “You’ll be glad to know I’ve already begun. I’ve got an interview with the Barnes family next week, who are housing a little girl. I’ll ask them about how the process went for them.”

“Perfect,” Lottie said. She paused for a beat. “And, Juliet?”

“Yes?”

“I really am happy for you.”

Juliet smiled softly. “Thank you, Lottie.”

***

Spring fully thawed the winter out by the time April arrived. Aldbourne was rather charming in bloom. But Juliet wasn’t sure if it was the flowers or that she was in love. She found herself humming a lot more than she used to - these days she didn’t even need food to start a merry tune in the back of her throat. She had more energy, despite spending rather long nights in Ron’s arms. And she found her enthusiasm for work - even though her priority shifted - a great deal easier to come by as well.

The interview with the Barnes family went splendidly. They were also housing a couple of lieutenants from the Airborne, though they were not in Ron’s company. Juliet only exchanged brief greetings with them, as they were heading to work just as she was entering the house. She nearly melted at the connection they had formed with the girl - Ann - which was clear in their goodbyes to her for the day. She seemed particularly close to the tall redhead.

Juliet told Ron about it that evening over drinks.

“Yeah, that’s Winters and Welsh,” he told her. “Good officers.”

“Do they spend much time here?” she wondered, indicating the Blue Boar.

“Welsh does, but Winters doesn’t drink,” he said. “He spends most nights there with the family.”

“I can tell,” she said. “I mean, it was seriously precious. She hugged his knees and he patted her on the head and I think I fell a little bit in love with him for a moment.”

He scoffed. “Good luck, I think he has a girlfriend.”

“Has he?” she questioned.

“Yeah, the nurse,” he said. “She works for the regiment.”

“You lot have your own nurse?”

“She’s got some connection to Colonel Sink,” he said with a shrug. “I’ve never actually met her.”

“And what about the other chap?” she asked. “Welsh?”

“He’s engaged,” he told her. “Her name’s Kitty.”

“You know that but not the name of the nurse?” she questioned.

“I only know because Harry never shuts up about her,” he said. “The whole regiment knows at this point. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Krauts knew.”

She giggled. “I think that’s sweet.”

“It’s obnoxious.”

“You mean, you don’t brag about me to the whole regiment?” she teased. “Romance is dead.”

“Sorry for your loss,” he retorted as he took a swig of his drink.

“Not as sorry as I am,” she returned. “Now I’ll have to spend God knows how many hours in mourning.”

“At least you look good in black,” he said.

“My saving grace,” she agreed with a smile. She paused for a beat. “Seriously, you don’t talk about me at all?”

“I do if you come up,” he told her.

“And what do you say?” she wondered.

“Whatever’s relevant,” he said.

She rolled her eyes. “You’re impossible.”

“I prefer not to broadcast my personal life,” he said. “All they need to know is that you’re mine.”

She smiled as she leaned over to kiss his cheek. “That’s true.”

***

April was drawing to a close. Juliet stood in her room, preparing to go and interview another Aldbourne family about their process in fostering a child from London. These interviews were restoring the bit of faith she’d lost in covering Peggy’s story because most of the families were very kind, and doted on the children. They were proud of doing what they could to ensure the future of England. And the children were mostly happy. What happened to Peggy was a tragedy and an outlier.

She was just getting ready to leave when Ron entered her room. A grim shadow of doubt on his features made her smile disappear as fast as it had come. Something was wrong. He definitely had bad news.

“We’re moving out,” he told her.

She had expected this at some point, but she still blinked in surprise. Her shoulders drooped as the reality of it percolated through her.

“Oh,” she said. “Well...when?”

He hesitated. “This is off the record -”

She scowled at him, momentarily offended that he felt the need to clarify.

“Everything between us is protected, Ron,” she said sharply. “You and I are always off the record unless stated otherwise.”

“Sorry,” he said quickly, picking up on her tone. “I know that, I just -”

“When?” she demanded again.

“End of May,” he said. “I don’t know when we’ll be back.”

The if hung in the air, but remained unsaid. This was it. The moment she had been dreading since she met him. Well, maybe not that long, but since they had started getting to know each other there in Aldbourne. The war was taking him from her, like it took everything.

“I see…” she trailed off, her annoyance easing up. That was sooner than she had hoped and she didn’t want to waste any precious time being angry at him. “Um...where - wait, I can’t ask you that.” She bit her lip. “When - oh, no, you’ve just told me, that’s right -”

“Juliet.”

“Yes?”

“Wait for me.”

Once again, Ron failed to disappoint her. Despite all the reassurance, she worried that when they shipped out, he would take the opportunity to break it off with her. Instead, he was asking - in his way - for a commitment from her. She held his gaze for a long moment, waiting for him to say more. But he didn’t.

“You really want to stay together?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said assuredly.

“Oh, thank God,” she sighed, and she threw herself into his arms for a kiss.

He returned the kiss with enthusiasm, his lips fiery and desperate against hers. As if he were leaving the following morning instead of a couple of weeks. But Juliet wanted the intensity. She wanted to savor every touch, every kiss, every moment she had before he was gone. She also wanted to let him know that she absolutely would wait for him. She would do anything he asked of her. She just wanted him. Forever, if possible. And if the war robbed her of that, she would at least have the memories of kisses like these. Of nights in his arms. Of his unwavering dedication to her.

***

The arrangements were made for Juliet to return to London once Ron and the rest of the Airborne were off. On his final morning in Aldbourne, they of course made love again, only it was the after that they relished even more. Juliet etched into her brain the feeling of his embrace, the warmth of his skin, the sound of his voice. She wished desperately that she could freeze time and hold onto him for just a little longer. She had found something so wonderful and now it was being dragged away from her.

“Jules,” he said, voice low as if there might be someone listening on the other side of the door.

“Yeah?”

“We’re going to France,” he said.

She blinked and adjusted her position so she could look him in the face. “France?”

He nodded. “I wanted you to know.”

She couldn’t explain why that felt more intimate than anything they had just done in her bed.

“Why tell me now?” she asked, curious.

He swallowed, his eyes fixed on the ceiling, but his arm gave her shoulders a squeeze.

“Trust,” he said.

She pressed her lips tenderly to his chest to let him know how much she appreciated his trust. There was no longer a need to specify on or off the record. His statements were privileged. Anything he told her would remain between them.

For a fleeting moment, she considered telling him right then that she loved him. Because if he was going to France, there was a chance he would never come back. And shouldn’t he know just in case? But her heart told her to play it safe. If she didn’t tell him now, perhaps whatever power there was would protect him enough so that she could say it later. If there were still things left to be said, hopefully that would keep him alive.

There were no guarantees, of course. All they had was each other and their promise.

That afternoon, the trucks began rumbling out of Aldbourne. Juliet walked Ron as far as she was allowed. Her chest felt tight as the impending goodbye hung in the air. She hated this. It was too painful. How could it be that the very war that brought them together would also be the reason for their parting? What was fair about that? Nothing, that’s what.

A kiss from Ron drew her out of her thoughts. He held her firmly against him, almost as if he were afraid she would disappear right out of his grasp. When they parted, they were both breathless.

“Be careful,” she said.

His eyes searched hers. “You too.”

Her brain was practically screaming at her to tell him now just what she felt. But she was too afraid. Too afraid it would doom him. Too afraid he wouldn’t say it back. Or even worse, say it only because of the passionate nature of the moment. It had to be when they weren’t so desperate. When they really meant it because whatever was coming was not a threat.

“I’ll write,” she told him.

“I’ll respond when I can,” he returned.

She nodded. Her throat was dry and thick. The lack of tears in her eyes surprised her. How could she not be crying when she could feel her heart breaking so badly? She kissed him again. Just to prolong the last moment where he was only hers.

“Stay safe,” she told him.

He nodded.

With one last kiss, they said goodbye without saying it. Juliet went to the train station and headed home to London. And Ron went to war.

#band of brothers #ron speirs #juliet fletcher #ron speirs x ofc #hbo war #you better you better you bet series #Easy Company #band of brothers fic #hbo war fic

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arcticdementor · 4 years ago

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In a democracy, every vote is supposed to be equal. If about half the country supports one side and half the country supports another, you may expect major institutions to either be equally divided, or to try to stay politically neutral.

This is not what we find. If it takes a position on the hot button social issues around which our politics revolve, almost every major institution in America that is not explicitly conservative leans left. In a country where Republicans get around half the votes or something close to that in every election, why should this be the case?

This post started as an investigation into Woke Capital, one of the most important developments in the last decade or so of American politics. Although big business pressuring politicians is not new (the NFL moved the Super Bowl from Arizona over MLK day), the scope of the issues on which corporations feel the need to weigh in is certainly expanding, now including LGBT issues, abortion laws, voting rights, kneeling during the national anthem, and gun control.

…

As I started to research the topic, however, I realized there wasn’t much to explain. Asking why corporations are woke is like asking why Hispanics tend to have two arms, or why the Houston Rockets have increased their number of 3-point shots taken over the last few decades. All humans tend to have two arms, and all NBA teams shoot more 3-pointers than in the past, so focusing on one subset of the population that has the same characteristics as all others in the group misses the point.

I think one reason Woke Capital is getting so much attention is because we expect business to be more right-leaning, and corporations throwing in with the party of more taxes and regulation strikes us as odd. We are used to schools, non-profits, mainline religions, etc. taking liberal positions and feel like business should be different. But business is just being assimilated into a larger trend.

Corporations are woke, meaning left wing on social issues relative to the general population, because institutions are woke. So the question becomes why are institutions woke?

…

Through the lens of ordinal utility, in which people simply rank what they want to happen, we are about equal. I prefer Republicans to Democrats, while you have the opposite preference. But when we think in terms of cardinal utility – in layman’s terms, how bad people want something to happen – it’s no contest. You are going to be much more influential than me. Most people are relatively indifferent to politics and see it as a small part of their lives, yet a small percentage of the population takes it very seriously and makes it part of its identity. Those people will tend to punch above their weight in influence, and institutions will be more responsive to them.

Elections are a measure of ordinal preferences. As long as you care enough to vote, it doesn’t matter how much you care about the election outcome, as everyone’s voice is the same. But for everything else – who speaks up in a board meeting about whether a corporation should take a political position, who protests against a company taking a position one side or the other finds offensive, etc. – cardinal utility maters a lot. Only a small minority of the public ever bothers to try to influence a corporation, school, or non-profit to reflect certain values, whether from the inside or out.

In an evenly divided country, if one side simply cares more, it’s going to exert a disproportionate influence on all institutions, and be more likely to see its preferences enacted in the time between elections when most people aren’t paying much attention.

…

Here are two graphs that have been getting a lot of attention

What jumps out to me in these figures is not only how left leaning large institutions are, but how the same is true for most professions. Whether you are looking by institution or by individuals, there are more donations to Biden than Trump. Yet Republicans get close to half the votes! Where are the Trump supporters? What these graphs reveal is a larger story, in which more people give to liberal causes and candidates than to conservative ones, even if Americans are about equally divided in which party they support (and no, this isn’t the result of liberals being wealthier, the connections between income and ideology or party are pretty weak). Here are some graphs from late October showing Biden having more individual donors than Trump in every battleground state.

…

In the 2012 election, Obama raised $234 million from small individual contributors, compared to $80 million for Romney, while also winning among large contributors.

…

In September 2009, at the height of the Tea Party movement, conservatives held the “Taxpayer March on Washington,” which drew something like 60,000-70,000 people, leading one newspaper to call it “the largest conservative protest ever to storm the Capitol.” Since that time, the annual anti-abortion March for Life rally in Washington has drawn massive crowds, with estimates for some years ranging widely from low six figures to mid-to-high six figures. March for Life is not to be confused with “March for Our Lives,” a pro-gun control rally that activists claim saw 800,000 people turn out in 2018. All these events were dwarfed by the Women’s March in opposition to Trump, which drew by one estimate “between 3,267,134 and 5,246,670 people in the United States (our best guess is 4,157,894). That translates into 1 percent to 1.6 percent of the U.S. population of 318,900,000 people (our best guess is 1.3 percent).” Even if the two left-wing academics who did this research are letting their bias infuse their work, there is no question that protesting is generally a left-wing activity, as conservatives themselves realize.

People who engage in protesting care more about politics than people who donate money, and people who donate money care more than people who simply vote. Imagine a pyramid with voters at the bottom and full-time activists on top, and as you move up the pyramid it gets much narrower and more left-wing. Multiple strands of evidence indicate this would basically be an accurate representation of society.

Another line of evidence showing that the left simply cares more about politics comes from Noah Carl, who has put together data showing liberals are in their personal lives more intolerant of conservatives than vice versa across numerous dimensions in the US and the UK. Those on the left are more likely to block someone on social media over their views, be upset if their child marries someone from the other side, and find it hard to be friends with or date someone they disagree with politically. Here are two graphs demonstrating the general point.

…

There’s a great irony here. Conservatives tend to be more skeptical of pure democracy, and believe in individuals coming together and forming civil society organizations away from government. Yet conservatives are extremely bad at gaining or maintaining control of institutions relative to liberals. It’s not because they are poorer or the party of the working class – again, I can’t stress enough how little economics predicts people’s political preferences – but because they are the party of those who simply care less about the future of their country.

Debates over voting rights make the opposite assumption, as conservatives tend to want more restrictions on voting, and liberals fewer, with National Review explicitly arguing against a purer form of democracy. Conservatives may be right that liberals are less likely to care enough to do basic things like bring a photo ID and correctly fill out a ballot. If this is true, Republicans are the party of people who care enough to vote when doing so is made slightly more difficult but not enough to do anything else, while Democrats are the party of both the most active and least active citizens. Yet while being the “care only enough to vote” party might be adequate for winning elections, the future belongs to those at the tail end of the distribution who really want to change the world.

The discussion here makes it hard to suggest reforms for conservatives. Do you want to give government more power over corporations? None of the regulators will be on your side. Leave corporations alone? Then you leave power to Woke Capital, though it must to a certain extent be disciplined and limited by the preferences of consumers. Start your own institutions? Good luck staffing them with competent people for normal NGO or media salaries, and if you’re not careful they’ll be captured by your enemies anyway, hence Conquest’s Second Law. And the media will be there every step of the way to declare any of your attempts at taking power to be pure fascism, and brush aside any resistance to your schemes as righteous anger, up to and including rioting and acts of violence.

…

From this perspective we might want to consider this passage from Scott Alexander, who writes the following in his review of a biography of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The normal course of politics is various coalitions of elites and populace, each drawing from their own power bases. A normal political party, like a normal anything else, has elite leaders, analysts, propagandists, and managers, plus populace foot soldiers. Then there's an election, and sometimes our elites get in, and sometimes your elites get in, but getting a political party that's against the elites is really hard and usually the sort of thing that gets claimed rather than accomplished, because elites naturally rise to the top of everything.

But sometimes political parties can run on an explicitly anti-elite platform. In theory this sounds good - nobody wants to be elitist. In practice, this gets really nasty quickly. Democracy is a pure numbers game, so it's hard for the elites to control - the populace can genuinely seize the reins of a democracy if it really wants. But if that happens, the government will be arrayed against every other institution in the nation. Elites naturally rise to the top of everything - media, academia, culture - so all of those institutions will hate the new government and be hated by it in turn. Since all natural organic processes favor elites, if the government wants to win, it will have to destroy everything natural and organic - for example, shut down the regular media and replace it with a government-controlled media run by its supporters.

When elites use the government to promote elite culture, this usually looks like giving grants to the most promising up-and-coming artists recommended by the art schools themselves, and having the local art critics praise their taste and acumen. When the populace uses the government to promote popular culture against elite culture, this usually looks like some hamfisted attempt to designate some kind of "official" style based on what popular stereotypes think is "real art from back in the day when art was good", which every art school and art critic attacks as clueless Philistinism. Every artist in the country will make groundbreaking exciting new art criticizing the government's poor judgment, while the government desperately looks for a few technicians willing to take their money and make, I don't know, pretty landscape paintings or big neoclassical buildings.

The important point is that elite government can govern with a light touch, because everything naturally tends towards what they want and they just need to shepherd it along. But popular/anti-elite government has a strong tendency toward dictatorship, because it won't get what it wants without crushing every normal organic process. Thus the stereotype of the "right-wing strongman", who gets busy with the crushing.

So the idea of "right-wing populism" might invoke this general concept of somebody who, because they have made themselves the champion of the populace against the elites, will probably end up incentivized to crush all the organic processes of civil society, and yoke culture and academia to the will of government in a heavy-handed manner.

To put it in a different way, to steelman the populist position, democracy does not reflect the will of the citizenry, it reflects the will of an activist class, which is not representative of the general population. Populists, in order to bring institutions more in line with what the majority of the people want, need to rely on a more centralized and heavy-handed government. The strongman is liberation from elites, who aren’t the best citizens, but those with the most desire to control people’s lives, often to enforce their idiosyncratic belief system on the rest of the public, and also a liberation from having to become like elites in order to fight them, so conservatives don’t have to give up on things like hobbies and starting families and devote their lives to activism.

#richard hanania #substack

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soulwillower · 4 years ago

Text

crush culture • richie tozier

(richie tozier x reader)

requested: fic where Richie and reader have been best friends since kindergarten, and have always had feelings for eachother secretly, until one day richie gets a girlfriend (just to take his mind off her), and the reader gets jealous and distances herself from him? he obviously gets upset by this- and things go on from there? sorry if it’s too specific! love u!

warnings: swearing, brief mentions of death, fighting, mentions of an abusive relationship, intentionally pissing off richie, a bit of angst, richie is an oblivious idiot, but reader is MUCH more of an idiot, like dude lmao, but i think that’s it, unedited tho

this isn’t rly based off crush culture, but i took the title from conan gray’s song :)

[losers + reader are 18+ in this!!!]

3.8k words L O L :))

♡

you swear to god, you’re getting sick. that’s what this was, for sure.

it started about a month ago, when you started to get headaches and terrible hollow feelings in your stomach. it happened everywhere - in the line for coffee, in class, driving home from school, at the dinner table. but it got a hundred times worse at night and then seemed to triple in force every morning when you woke.

and it all came at you some time after richie announced he had a new girlfriend.

you were really sick the few days after that, enough that you stayed home from school and laid in bed, the pit in your stomach sinking. it didnt take long for you to realize how bad richie’s girlfriend was - she treated him like a dog, like he embarrassed her - and he didn’t even seem to mind. he just brushed off every offhand comment, rolled his eyes with a grin when she told him she didn’t want to see his friends or when she told him to stop talking.

he still seemed to like her, anyways. and that thought made your stomach convulse.

so then you had to distance yourself from richie because it hurt you to see him with her. it hurt you to see him with someone who didn’t treat him like the incredible person he was.

so yeah.

you say you’re sick, but you know that’s not really true. it’s easier than accepting reality at this point, though, so you spew this nonsense (to yourself, mostly) in order to justify ignoring your best friend of nearly a decade because christ, he is becoming unbearable.

like the other day, at lunch while you were all sitting in the courtyard. it was your first time eating with them again after almost a week and a half, as you’d been eating alone in your car recently to avoid richie. “rich, why’d you take off the nail polish?” bev asked, out of the blue, sounding disappointed as she grabbed his free hand and examined it.

he blew smoke out of his mouth slowly and you had forced yourself to look away, the sight of richie doing nearly anything these days being pretty dangerous for you. it also made you sigh a bit - you knew he only smoked at lunch now, since his girlfriend hated it.

“don’t want my paws to be prettier than y/n’s when we hold hands.” he had joked, wagging an eyebrow at you. you’d shook your head and looked to the ground in lew of a real response, just as you had been doing a lot recently.

you'd missed richie’s frown at your reaction, but you did catch his next statement as it was added on, “nah, actually it’s because the ol’ G-F didn’t like it. thought it looked too girly.”

you, stan, bev, and mike all stopped chewing to look at richie, in varying stages of bewilderment. you'd cleared your throat quickly but decided against speaking up just as richie’s phone started to ring. he’d answered it nearly immediately, the enthusiasm of which made you feel like you’re going to be sick again - because richie never answers your calls until the last possible minute.

god, jealousy is a fucking disease.

“hey, sugar.” he had purred suavely into the phone and for some reason, hearing him call someone else sugar had you abruptly rising, gathering your things and nearly running off to put as much distance between you and four-eyes as you possibly could, because you’re not sure how much more you could take.

after that, you were absolutely sure it was just pure denial on your part.

as far as you could tell, richie wasn't noticing too much. he still phoned your house every day, just to be met with your mother telling him you 'weren't available,' and then he'd call your own phone, which you'd let buzz itself into a dark hole on your bedside table while you stared at it solemnly, guilt heavy on your mind as he left voicemail after voicemail.

he doesn't deserve it, you think as you open the doors to the school library, backpack on your shoulders. but you can't help it. you're not his girlfriend, and you're not mature enough to accept that with any ounce of elegance so instead you just ignore him all together. at least you're self-aware, right? that ought to count for something.

you shake your head just as a voice catches your attention, “well look who decided to show up!”

richie's sitting at the usual study table in the very back corner of the library, a spot tucked away by rows upon rows of dusty books and an alcove of couches. bill sits at the head of the table, scribbling his chicken scratch handwriting onto graph paper, mike next to richie with a textbook spread out flat. across from mike is stan, writing out his statistics work.

all three of them wave at you before going back to their work, whereas richie just watches you expectantly. his feet are kicked up on the table, textbook balanced on his lap as he hovers on two leg chairs. his smile is as blinding as always, a dimple faint on his left cheek and full eyebrows raised in jest. his curls frame his face perfectly and you want to scream.

but you take your seat next to stan with a tight lipped smile, not really sure how to respond to richie. are you even allowed to be flirty with him like you used to? he still does it on the rare occasions when you do see each other - but that itself is the issue, you figure. his flirting is just a joke, a tiff from one friend to another. but you can't see him as just a friend, and that’s unfair to him.

so you stay quiet, which makes it infinitely more awkward.

richie clears his throat and you pull out your work with an awkward expression, the minutes slowly churning by in what has to be the quietest hangout with the Losers yet.

you feel the tension building in your body and in the air, and you're not sure what's wrong with you or why you have so much resentment towards richie in this moment, because he's not done one single thing to offend anyone in the last ten minutes.

then richie's phone rings suddenly and mike jumps a bit as he's startled out of the passage he's reading. you all look down to richie's screen, where his girlfriend's name blares up at you and all you can feel is white hot jealousy coursing through your body.

richie looks half way exhausted and annoyed at the call, which you find extremely odd and out of character, not to mention persistently frustrating.

as you all stare at the phone, the tension in the room stretches tighter and tighter, like a rubber band and you can't breathe -

"uh, why is she calling you?" mike asks, as if this was something that was forbidden or shocking in any way, and for some reason, that is finally it.

the rubber band snaps.

"how could you forget, mike? they're in love!" you say with mock enthusiasm.

bill shoots you an alarmed look that you probably should read into or at least consider for a moment, but instead you're looking directly at richie, as if challenging him.

he blinks at you and clenches his jaw, "she and i haven't really been... talking recently." richie says lightly, shooting a glance to mike.

“well then maybe you’re just not right for each other.” you quip, the blood boiling in your veins. richie's eyes snap to you and you see the fire behind them as he suddenly breaks.

“sorry, did i miss the divine intervention when god floated down on a cloud of marshmallows and deemed you expert in relationships?” he says abruptly, making your eyes widen at his outburst. he continues, “because last time i checked, you’re a bit of a failure in that department. so i don't need some jealous, disappearing-act wannabe criticizing my life when she's barely even in it.” he seethes. it’s near quiet in the library anyways, but his words seem to silence the entire town.

with a quick glance to your right, stan and bill sharing an uncomfortable look, and mike is staring down intently at his work with wide eyes.

you want to die.

does richie know? has he known this whole time that you're just deeply, painfully head over heels for him?

"i'm so sick of your bullshit. maybe you're jealous because you want what i had, but you’re being really fucking rude."

you nearly cry. or scream.

“criticism doesnt equal jealousy, okay?” you spit without thinking, immediately regretting even opening your mouth. you're so intent on covering for yourself, you don't even take into account the phrasing he'd used when referring to his girlfriend, instead fighting with richie in order to keep your secret from him.

this is not how you’d intended today to go. he stares at you, eyebrows furrowed in a way that almost makes you keel over in sadness, the guilt of the situation falling too heavily on your shoulders and crushing you.

it’s tranquilizing to see him like this - he's fuming, but he's also got bright, glistening eyes which you think may be filling up with tears.

“i didn’t really ask for your input, though.” he mutters, cheeks reddening as tears definitely well in his eyes behind his lenses. “you can’t just ignore me at your every whim just to come right back and tell me what's good for me.”

you blink, shaking your head quickly, deciding to back off. now is not the time to fight, especially when you know he’s right. you had no idea it was hurting him like this. "richie, i... i just wanted-" you gape at him, extremely embarrassed.

“-i don’t fucking care what you wanted, y/n.” richie says sharply, causing you to shut your mouth so quick your jaw clicks in the silence. clearly, even the other boys are perturbed by richie’s actions and everyone’s staring down in silence at their homework.

it’s quiet like that for a few minutes, the tension so thick that you’d need a jackhammer just to chip away at it. but stan rummages through his bag suddenly, pulling out two painkillers and dry swallowing them. you don't look at anyone else, your stomach hollow and your heart thumping so hard in your chest you think you may explode.

"d-do you have a headache?" bill asks, looking at stan with concern. the sudden voice causes you to perk up, head flowing with humiliation at the fight you and richie had just had in front of your friends.

“yeah, but it’s not that bad. i guess i’m used to it.” stan says, pen between his teeth.

“just because you’re used to something doesn’t make it any less unhealthy for you.” you say louder than necessary, your mouth suddenly deciding to speak without consulting your brain.

the glare of pure frustration that richie throws you pierces your lungs and suddenly makes you feel lightheaded.

your pettiness doesn’t go unresponsive, of course, and mike sighs into his hands, standing up to gather his things. "alright. i can't study when you two are like this. i'll see you guys later."

richie sighs quietly and bill and stan mumble good-bye's. the library goes back to quiet for maybe three more minutes, until you see stanley start to fidget like he usually does when he's anxious. and then you notice it after a few seconds, too.

richie won't stop tapping his foot on the desk.

for everyone's sake, you try to ignore it, because you know richie can't help his compulsions - especially when he's upset (which, your mind painfully reminds you, is all your fault).

but it's driving you crazy.

“-if you keep doing that i’ll throw you out that fucking window rich, i swear.” stan mutters not unkindly, his eyes rolling to meet richie with a concerned gaze as richie stares out the window.

you raise your eyebrows, “what’re you even looking at?” you ask, trying to mend a bit of the open, festering wound you’d created in you and richie’s friendship.

without looking at you, richie shrugs. “checking to see how high the drop is. may be worth it to have schnoz just toss me down. it would certainly do you a favor right? gettin ol’ trashmouth gone for good.”

what was he saying? you look at him, scandalized. stan and bill don’t even say anything about the offensive nickname as you gape at richie. "what the fuck?" is all your brilliant mind can think.

"what, you can dish it but you can't take it?" richie says sharply. he shakes his head, looking upset. "i'm tired of trying to be friends with a fucking brick wall."

then he's gathering his one notebook and swiftly exiting your alcove in the library in a wind of cigarettes and cologne.

you blink, his words sinking in and making you sigh shakily. your stomach feels hollow as you remember the expression of glee on his face when you'd walked into the library, and how completely different and broken he'd looked as he'd left. you think you're going to cry.

“every minute that you don't follow him digs yourself deeper into this grave, you know.” stan says, giving you a stern but encouraging look.

you let out a shaky sigh and scramble to grab your bag, tripping over your feet as you run out of the library, flying down the staircase faster than you've ever gone and making it to your lifelong best friend just as he reaches his car in the parking lot.

"-a brick wall?" you ask, out of breath. you see richie hold back an eye roll, his arms crossing over each other as he serves you a look of discomposure.

he shrugs helplessly, looking as if he's at his wit's end.

"what do you want me to say, y/n? you've been avoiding me for weeks. i know i'm annoying and obnoxious and whatever, but i'm not blind." he says, making you swallow as guilt pangs through your chest. you have been so fucking selfish, haven't you?

it hurts to hear him say that about himself.

he sniffles a bit, sounding choked up as he goes on, "i've had a rough couple of days - weeks, even. but every time i'm near, it's like you've had more than enough, and you just leave. am i that repulsive? why do you suddenly hate me?" he asks, looking desperate as his eyes rim red, filling with tears again.

“what did i do?” his voice cracks as he whispers the sentence and your heart breaks in two.

your own vision goes glassy as he continues, "-i've needed you, y/n/n. i'm lost, i'm seriously not okay and you just don't care at all."

you're stunned for a moment, mouth opening and closing silently as your mind races to rush something out, anything,because you aren't sure you can bear to see richie look at you like this for one more second. but your silence comes off wrong to richie, and tears slip out of his eyes.

“don’t you love me?” he asks, voice hoarse and cutting right through you, deeper than any knife ever could. "don't you want me to be happy?" he adds and you take a shaky breath, looking helplessly at him, where you're met with nothing but glassy eyes and tear trails. your heart is slamming in your chest, tears falling from your eyes and you can't breathe.

"a-are you?" you ask, trying to keep your tone even although it comes out just as vulnerable as you feel. “h-happy. with her?”

richie freezes at your words, mouth slightly open and you watch a single tear course over his high cheekbones and down to his bottom lip as it shakes faintly. you curse yourself for the longing to feel those very lips against yours.

"i was." he whispers, voice shaking as he rubs his face with his hand under his glasses, the moisture of his fallen tears clinging from his long dark lashes onto his slender, shaking fingers. "and then - and then i lost you. and y'know, i got my girlfriend so i could distract myself, but she made me feel like absolute shit all the time and so i went and broke up with her, but -" he hiccups through his tears and you blink, biting your lip as tears cascade down your cheek in wet trails.

they broke up?

he broke up with her, and he's going through this breakup and trying to better himself after she tore him down and you've just been ignoring him - he thinks you don't care about him, that you don't love him. you start to cry harder.

"-i thought she'd distract me from you. i-i'm sorry." he says, his voice muffled by his hands as they cover up his angelic face, his shoulders shaking as more tears fall. "i'm so sorry."he repeats.

you see double for a second, completely shocked by his words as the breath leaves your lungs. he tried to distract himself from you... and he’s so hurt because of what you did.

but finally, for the first time this whole damn day, you find the right words. "i-no, richie, i'm sorry, please - fuck." you break, letting out a sob as you rub your eyes furiously in search of any relief from the guilt ripping you in two. "i didn't mean to hurt you. i'm so sorry, i can't believe i did this, i didn't want to hurt you, i'm just so selfish." you babble, his sniffles making you open your eyes.

he looks so alone and so vulnerable as he hugs his arms around himself in search of comfort, tears still falling from his bright eyes and down his rosy cheeks.

he looks devastatingly beautiful in the golden sunlight of the afternoon, a breeze ruffling his curls lightly. "just please, i can't - i can't deal with you hating me. please, please, please."

he's pleading with you and you think you may be sick from the guilt and sadness that envelopes you, so you spring forward and wrap your arms tightly around him. the force of your body pushes him against the side of his car and the way he clings back to you like you're the last thing holding him to earth just makes you cry even harder.

"i don't hate you, richie. i love you, i love you too much." you say, your body shaking as he just holds you tighter against him. "i'm so sorry, i didn't mean any of it. you're right. i was just jealous... i'm so sorry. i was so jealous of her, i couldn't see you be with her." you mumble. "i'm so sorry."

richie pulls you back gently at your words, his eyes wide and wondering as you look at each other. "what?" he asks so innocently, his eyelashes wet and dark and his lips parted.

you can count the freckles on his nose and cheeks, you're so close. you can feel his shuddering breath against your face as he huffs in a breath. your hands hold onto his shoulders and you decide to fuck it, you just have to tell him how sorry you are, to explain yourself.

"richie, i'm in love with you. and - and when you and her got together, it hurt so much, and i didn't want to deal with the fact that i couldn't have you, so i just ignored you. i’m sorry, i’m so sorry." you say it quickly and in one breath, looking down at your shoes and how they point straight towards his.

"you're in... love with me?" he says weakly, sounding hopeful as you finally look back into his eyes guiltily.

you laugh wetly, "of course i am, richie. how could i not fall head over heels for everything about you?"

he tears up again at your words, but this time it's accompanied by a beautiful smile and a light, wet laugh. he shakes his head, his arms circling your waist tighter as he presses his forehead against yours. your butterflies tickle your stomach at your proximity.

"fuck, y/n. i can't believe i spend my time trying to get my mind off you." he says and your breath hitches a bit. "do you have any idea how long i've been in love with you?" he asks quietly, and you let out another small laugh out of shock, but it's wet and gleeful.

"i'm sorry." you whisper, your finger curling around a strand of the dark hair on his head. he shakes his head, your noses rubbing slightly. "it's okay, y/n. i love you so much. please let me forgive you." he says, pulling a smile out of you that you don't think anybody else ever could. you nod shortly, looking into his eyes as one last tear falls.

he kisses you tenderly then, taking your breath away.

richie fills up your every sense as he clings to you desperately, his lips salty from your combined tears and his arms strong. his tongue is gentle as it runs along your lips and enters your parted mouth, one of his hands sliding up to tilt your head up towards him. you're breathless because of him for the millionth time in your life and you decide kissing richie is the only thing you want to do forever.

you pull away slowly, and as you lean back he presses a chaste second kiss to your lips, causing you to grin.

you barely make eye contact as you pull apart and then you greedily pull him back to you, his lips finding yours yet again with a sweet, loving laugh.

"i love you too, rich." you mumble against his lips. he sighs almost dreamily as you pull back, biting your lip and laughing when he opens the passenger door, gesturing to it with a shy grin.

"now can i please buy you a burger?" he asks, almost bashfully, and your heart does somersaults. you nod and kiss him again, his hand falling to the small of your back, palm wide and fingers lower than you'd expected. he pulls away and his grin is loving, his eyes hooded in pride as you caress his cheek softly before you slide into the car seat.

he holds your hand the whole night and refuses to let go until you slip through your front door at near midnight, blushes on both of your cheeks and lips kiss-bruised.

the butterflies you feel as you fall asleep with a grin on your face are the exact same ones richie feels as his head finally hits the pillow, a giddy smile on his own face as he smiles to himself in the dark halfway across town.

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