#it's really sad because they end up scamming old vulnerable people

[ineffably-human]

We're going to scream about Nandermo all week, but right now I need to talk about Baron Afanas. Because the Baron's arc, so to speak, always felt like a big part of the series DNA for me - and oh fuck did this episode deliver on why.

I think we can agree: in the show, vampire society is fucked up, right?

Vampires on their own have plenty to deal with that can make them crazy. They have to live by killing. They lose everyone from their old lives. They have to find new reasons to keep going on, forever, so shit can get decadent really fast.

But holy shit, what that's turned into in vampire society? Where you actively put cruelty over mercy, and violence over solving your problems? Death cults and scam artists roam free, but if someone has depression the best thing to do is ignore them. Someone can get their mind wiped or be locked up for centuries, and that's just what you do to your species.

--

So: the Baron's arrival is the first conflict of the whole show. The joke is about an ancient powerful creature of pants-shitting terror, vs three lesser vampires who just want to live their lives and not get murdered for being too lazy to conquer humanity. There's a lot of talk about how to please him: do you keep to the old ways, or pick up some new traditions? Decorate with flayed skin, or with glitter? And the Baron says: who cares, you're all soft and useless. All that matters is getting more control over this world, until people are cattle and we have no reason to hide anymore.

But later he confesses: that shit stopped mattering ages ago. He's not even real nobility, he's literally impotent, and he talks about doing horrible things because he doesn't know what else to say. He's angry and half-crazy from boredom. And admitting that, owning those feelings, means suddenly he has three new friends and a whole new world of things to enjoy.

There's the Baron the rest of the vampire world knows, but for one night we see the ancient, unknowable terror was just a guy. Maybe he's always been just some guy.

That fun puts him in a vulnerable position, and he's killed by the most unwitting vampire slayer in fiction. But Baron Afanas is changed. He sucks dirt for a year and still comes out of it with a new lightness and joy to him. He saves the Sire, another ancient terrifying monster everyone was eager to kill or send away. They adopt the hellhound. They get cozy and give advice. They make popsicle stick houses and go on walks. They live.

And that seemed like the end of the story until last night - when the Baron suddenly felt like the butt of a joke everyone knew but him. Spurred on by someone else who feels lonely and ignored, the Baron felt vulnerable. And he snapped back to how he lived for centuries.

'What the hell are you all doing, enjoying yourselves? We're supposed to be unhappy. We're supposed to live centuries of unhappiness, bringing pain to everyone in our path, and we're definitely not supposed to cheer up our friend who's sad.'

--

Nobody liked the Baron before Guillermo killed him, not even other powerful vampires we meet; they saw the Baron as a crazy far beyond their own crazy. But this is also how vampire society values you. It's how they measure Nandor's worth when they think he's dead, too: how old and powerful you are, how much you've been able to conquer and kill.

Vampire pods are both cliquish and aren't expected to last in the first place. If someone dies, you literally paint them out of your lives and forget. Everything we see discourages feelings, sincerity, or even basic companionship. The only way to earn respect is to be cruel. The more cruel you are, the more powerful you are. The more powerful you are, the more feared you are - the lonelier you are, the crazier you are. It's practically designed to create the Baron, or worse.

But new vampires don't behave that way. And the vampires we follow in the show don't behave that way - because they have each other, because they've been encouraged to have each other, often by Guillermo. (Holy shit, Nadja saying maybe she'd be fine dying, and Nandor immediately asking if she's okay? Nothing changes in this house, except everything does. They're not going to almost lose one of their own ever again.)

The vampires in the heart of vampire culture never seem happy to be like this. It doesn't have to be like this.

--

The Baron doesn't become a tyrannical monster for long. Because he never actually was one - and because he spends two evenings and a fireball to the face, watching Nandor and Nadja fight for Guillermo. Watching them plead and cling and defy, seeing Guillermo's earnest feelings in spite of his bloodline and the mistakes he's made. Seeing Nandor's perfect trust, and then his grief, the way he insists that Guillermo was never 'just' anything. The Baron can't find real fulfillment in hurting someone (because that ship sailed ages ago). He can't deride them for caring, because he's cared for a long time now.

And when the Baron admits that's who he is, when he says it out loud, he only gains more in his life. He finds new depth in the happiness he'd felt for a while now, because he's admitted and allowed himself to be happy. And now he has the children he's always wanted. Living together, the Baron and the Sire are still ancient and powerful - and they're also family, finding real joy together in a world that was ready to dispose of them.

"I suppose with the right company, it can be beautiful, this eternal existence."

--

There's an inherent selfishness to being a vampire, taking from someone else in order to live. But there doesn't have to be inherent cruelty, or lack of love.

They're all ready to admit they care. The Staten vampires have all cared for Guillermo or each other in their own ways this season. And Guillermo doesn't lack for flaws, but loving his monster family has never been one of them. (When he and Nandor work their shit out, they're gonna be insufferable.)

Now they just have to let the Guide in. Because she's absolutely starved for love, and vampires get pretty fucked up when they're on their own.

[jemmasimmons]

my way of dealing with scam calls nowadays is actually staying on the line and asking them if their mom is knows if they’re a scammer.

I’ve gotten a lot of funny answers to that question!

[delicrieux]

☆ﾐ 𝚖𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚜𝚊𝚢 “𝚘𝚑”

PART 23: PRETTY BOY

emotions run wild when everyone is drunk and hardly coherent. quackity is always loud, but tonight is a full on assault on the senses (the ears, in particular). bretman simps for corpse too much for your liking. rae is happy for once. there’s a confession of love somewhere in there. sister james makes a very good impostor, but that’s old news, the real question is who gave you a knife? a new persona emerges that leaves the roaches quivering in their boots.

─── corpse husband x reader, a lil bit of everyone x reader (because she’s a queen) ─── soc. media + written fiction! ─── word count: a lil over 7k.

author’s note: it’s the way i can’t follow a fucking calendar for me. sorry guys, i swear to god i thought i had one more day before thursday . the idiot award goes to me and i accept it with pride. anyway, i was excited to write this for a while! quackity is in mexico, that’s why he drinks, too. my fic, my rules, he’s too funny not to include. im also working on an extra w dream and mr quack so look forward to that, too! hopefully u like this part ily xx and as always lmk wat u think!!

ultimate masterlist.  ҉  myso masterlist   ҉   previous. ҉   next.

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The outfit for today was picked with care and consideration. Hot, as always- you had forgotten your roots, your hoodie and sweats lay hidden in the bottom of your drawer never to be worn on stream again. You’ve changed. Clout really does that to people. Some viewers, naturally, find your hotness near insulting: how dare you rub your beauty in their faces, and so unabashedly, too?! If only you had a twinge of self-awareness, perhaps you would tone it down. But you don’t, and whether that’s by choice or not is the mystery the whole internet tries to solve (ARMY has been working diligently, and you admire their effort, though in the end their tireless labor brings no tangible results). 

You went from hot to hotter. In all truth, the fires eating away at California can be blamed on you. You carry this burden in stride, in your platform overpriced shoes some girl scammed you on Depop with, in your fishnets, in your skirt, in your corset, in your rings and necklaces and chains. You woke up today and chose violence. Decided your existence will be a plague to the rest of the populace, and meant it (that, maybe, you took inspiration from a certain faceless Youtuber that so happens to be your boyfriend or whatever). You feel powerful. Like you could step on the world and the world would let you. You decide that it’s the way it should always be. 

The smile on your lips informs of nothing good to your quaint, small audience of 40k. You change the lighting in your room from the soft cherry blossom pink to menacing violet. As fitting for a villain.

Perhaps California’s hellish sun has finally purged you of your bubbly, docile nature (arguably, you had never possessed it to begin with); perhaps it’s the forth mimosa you’re mixing as people slowly trickle into the lobby. Who knows?! Not you, definitely. What do all of those boring dead white European philosophers say? Embrace the unknown? Cheers, you’ll drink to that.

In stark contrast to your appearance, your room is a fucking mess. A war-zone of epic anime scale. Everything is scattered, well, everywhere. A perfect representation on what’s going on in your mind, always. You don’t like how people focus on your surroundings-- you’re the main attraction, hello? Are you not enough to sustain them? Must they beg for more?! Totally ungrateful. You shake your head in disappointment, as if a mother scolding her children. 

noooooo! mom pls forgive me i will never ask abt anything ever again T_T

yall looking at the room? lol couldnt be me

feels like im five and my mum just told me i cant eat a pretty rock i found on the pavement:(

You can’t contain your sly grin. Eyes twinkle with a purplish hue, appearing all the more menacing. You tricked them once again, oh how absolutely evil of you. In your blind delight you accidentally spill champagne on your lap.

“-Oop, fuck.” You snort.

why does she sound like goofy 

The scandalous drunk Among Us stream is about to start. You had been eerily silent through the greetings, and those that chose to approach you were met with a cold shoulder and minimal replies. All on purpose, of course. You wish to plant a seed of unease within them, and so far, it’s working. There are questions unanswered, jokes unsaid, Quackity unteased. It breaks your heart, but it must be done. You look into the camera, all vulnerable and devout, as if to say: I’m doing this for you, all for you.

pack it up yandere simulator

idk whats going on but i think im into it?

villain arc villain arc villain aRC VILLAIN ARC

“Hey, guys,” Corpse’s voices rings in your headphones, and not a blink later his astronaut appears in the lobby in a cloud of smoke, “Hi, Y/n.”

More sharp, excited hellos follow after. You merely hum, though give no further reply. As Corpse strays to your side, Charlie steps in in front of him, “BDA access only. You have a permit, bitch?”

“Y/n is being quiet-she’s being quiet, guys!” Quackity helpfully informs, as if the rest failed to notice your cryptic silence, “Don’t be sad Corpse, man, Corpse don’t be-she didn’t say shit to me either.”

“Y/n has decided to not waste her breath on the SDS.” Charlie voices, “And you know what? I actually agree with her for once.”

“SD-what now?” Dream questions.

“The Small Dick Society.” Charlie explains, noting Dream’s whine of protest, “Oh no, don’t give me that shit, weren’t you bitching about not being invited and not belonging to exclusive clubs? Congratulations, you’re finally part of one.”

“Wait!” Quackity interjects, “Am I part of it too?”

“Guess, Sherlock.”

“I’ll drink to that.” Corpse says. You nod to your audience, like he just spoke the God honest truth, and follow in his example. Your tentative sip unexpectedly turns into a greedy gulp, but you’re not complaining. The only slightly coherent thought that rings in your mind is drink tasty.

“Ignore them,” Rae chimes, “Y/n’s probably plotting something and using Charlie as a cover up.”

“I’d never.” The words slip past your lips before you can stop them.

“Well you sure are very quick to deny it.” You can hear her smirking, can hear the proud lilt in her voice, like she caught onto your silly little scheme, like she has you all figured out. Your eyes narrow dangerously. The night behind your window pools dark, with far away city lights glimmering before they, too, seem to dim. 

Your roommate is back on your shitlist. How her name was missed among the rest.

“I’m defending my honor.” You yelp, the playfulness back in your voice along with your sunny smile, “I can’t have my wifey slandering me online. At least do it in private, geez.”

If Rae’s such a good detective, you’ll give her a good chase. Perhaps you’ve been laying it on too thick. Made her too suspicious. She can’t out you yet--not when your plans are so grand, so fun. It would be a waste.

“Why weren’t you saying anything then?” Quackity questions.

“Do I need a reason not wanting to talk to you?” You shoot back. Your friends laugh and he tries to shriek something past their cackle. You lean back into your chair, the tension from Rae’s confrontation finally easing. You wink at the camera and bring a finger to your lips. The roaches swear to secrecy, elated by your wickedness. As appropriate, they spam devil emojis and various renditions of evil hohohos and hehehes. The apple truly does not fall far from the tree. You had raised them well. You raise your glass in solidarity. A few donations fall into your pocket, easily summed up as: make them suffer.

Muting the discord call, you give a single response, “Oh, I intend to.”

i hope this doesn’t awaken something in me

^already too late for me bro

As caught up in wreaking havoc among your viewers as you are, you miss Sykkuno’s entrance, though from what you can tell, Charlie gave a stern warning to back the fuck off to him, too. He’s playing into your plan so beautifully. Truly, you couldn’t do this without him. Back to stalking the chat you go.

Your eyes flicker to the game upon Bretman’s signature drawl and “Hi, daddy.”. You have no time to get offended at Corpse’s sweet “Hi, honey” back, because the next person to join the discord call and the lobby leaves you speechless. You knew, of course, you had been informed of the line-up, but still, you had never expected yourself to be so close to Jomes Chorles himself. You make a weird gesture with your hands, half wave half excited wiggle, as if you’re telling the audience to calm down, when, in fact, it is you that needs calming.

He goes saying his hello’s like doing a public service, name by name, before, lastly, uttering, “Hi, Miss Y/n. Loooove the vids.”

He’s a roach in disguise, who could’ve known?! Your audience is so diverse and unexpected, gosh, you’d shed a tear if the mascara wasn’t so expensive.

“Hi!” You reply with a grin, and it’s genuine this time, a glimmer of your old self, “Hi, I love your videos, too. It’s like, really cool to finally meet you.”

“Oh my God, you too!” Is his enthusiastic reply, “Okay, the energy in the studio today? Love it.”

“Is this all of us?” Quackity asks.

“Sadly.” James says with a note of disappointment.

“HEY!”

“Okay, guys!” Ash chimes, “Let’s do this! Proximity Among Us, round one, go go go!”

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Luck does not shine upon you during the first round- you are stuck as Crew Mate, your life cut short by Bretman who had the audacity to bite your head off. You’re positive Ke$ha wrote her hit single Cannibal about him, and if she didn’t, she definitely had a That’s So Raven moment and predicted it. It’s also insanely suspicious as after you are eliminated he sticks real close to Corpse, feigning innocence (and this is a controversial opinion you do not endorse) better than even you. It wounds your pride, having been picked off so casually, so quickly, and now stuck a ghost you roam the halls of the dying spaceship, lost, confused, heartbroken.

Charlie runs past you, not once even glancing in your direction. “Brother...” You mutter sadly, “Do you not see me here? Do you not feel... the loss of your twin’s heartbeat...?" Damn, these mimosas really are making you emotional. You sniffle and take a sip to calm the storm within you. No rage, just sadness. You are still processing your own tragic demise.

Suddenly, a meeting is called. There’s a horrible red X on your astronaut. You are the only one dead so far, and of course the rest won’t vote out the fucker. How bitterly you sit! With your arms crossed over your chest and your glare sharp enough to cut through glass. Fuck the sad shit, now you’re just angry. At the very least, the second Impostor could’ve given you some company!

“I knew something felt off.” Charlie is first to speak.

“Who the fuck killed Y/n?” Corpse questions, and his voice ignites a whole discussion that lasts much too short. The others skip, having no suspect yet. It’s much too soon to start pointing fingers, but you still feel like they should have at least tried. Pouting, you fix yourself another drink.

“Stop drinking!?” You gasp, exasperated at your chats demands, “I’m dead! What else should I do, the tasks?! Nah, fuck that. I’m done. I’m out. Charlie better employ his fucking detective skills because if the Impostors win, I will literally quit the game--yes I will, no I’m not bullshitting, fucking watch me.”

Thankfully, Bretman was caught venting, and you didn’t have to end the stream prematurely. The second Impostor, your roommate (oh, the betrayal, Rae, how could you?!) was voted out due to Corpse’s suspicion. Victory to the Crew Mates! The game restarts and you find yourself back in the lobby.

“Miss Y/n,” Bretman says, “I am sooo sorry for killing you first, baby. It was just too easy. I couldn’t pass it up.”

Giggling, Quackity chimes, “Sister slaughtered.”

“Oh my God,” James groans, “shut up!”

“Yeah, Y/n.” Charlie speaks, and there’s an accusatory note in his calm voice, “Why the fuck did you allow yourself to be eliminated first? Real noob shit, I expected more of you.”

“HUH?!” You frown, “What’s with the victim blaming?! I literally was doing my task and Bretman snuck up on me. It’s not like I had a weapon to defend myself!”

“You have been avenged,” Corpse states, “and that’s all that matters.”

“Thank you, Corpse!” You say, “At least someone cares.”

“Hey, I helped, too!” Dream pipes up.

“No, you didn’t.” Corpse shoots him down, “I was the only one.”

“You were not--”

“Literally was. Isn’t that right, Sykkuno?”

“Uhhhh-” Sykkuno trails off, “Well, we-we all helped!” You can hear his shy smile, and you just know he’s bobbing his head up and down at this exact moment, “We all helped. Team work!”

“Team work!” The rest echo, save for yourself, Corpse, Charlie, and the two Impostors. Silence speaks more than a thousand words or whatever. You pray to any higher power willing to listen to finally assign you the role of the villain, the one you were born to do. 

Sadly, higher powers must have either shitty customer service or are in need of hearing aids, and you almost scream in frustration when your astronaut appears along with the others, the bold CREW MATE title chipping away at your master plan.

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“Hey, Y/n, hey! Hey, Y/n!” Rae finds you in Cafeteria, where you, metaphorically, are eating your feelings. Not that she needs to know, of course. She sounds chipper, a bit ditsy, and that must mean she’s sufficiently tipsy. You store that information for later, and forget about it as soon as you notice Dream and Sykkuno, like her very own personal bodyguards, trailing after her, “Wanna play a game?!”

“Is this Saw?” You inquire, somewhat lazy. You’d be lying if you said the alcohol wasn’t affecting you, it’s just instead of making you bubbly, it makes you mellow. This was supposed to be fun, you were supposed to terrorize everyone and laugh as they perished by your hand, yet here you are, wallowing in self-pity. The roaches start worrying. The donation jingle chimes.

BEATINGS & SLUTATIONS yns_fishnets donated 5$ mom just wait it out & dont worry youll get your vengeance soon lead them on!!!!

Your fishnets have a point! 

“Saw?--No, no, haa, no it’s a drinking game.” Dream sounds like he has had one too many rounds of this mysterious game, and naturally, you are intrigued.

“Where we drink!” Sykkuno clarifies. Right, well that explains everything! If you had any questions, you surely have none now.

“Okay, so, name a category, and you have to, like, say a word associated with it...Or something along those lines.” You hadn’t even agreed and Rae is explaining the rules already. She knows you too well. It’s both a blessing and a curse, “Can be anything! Okay, Y/n, Y/n, Y/n start!”

“Uhh--” If only your brain computed as fast as she spoke! “Song lyrics! Wait--who drinks?”

“You fail, you drink!” She hurries, “Choke me like you hate me but you love meeeeee. Syk, go, go go!”

“Uhm, ah, I don’t wanna feel like this, uh, fuck?” He laughs--it’s a raspy, embarrassed little sound, “I don’t...wanna look like this? Dream, now you!”

“Wait, we’re singing Corpse’s songs?”

“Any song!” You urge him quickly, “Hurry! Or drink!”

“She say I kill her cat like I'm Luka Magnotta--”

“Hey! That’s cheating! You can’t use my song!” Rae protest.

“That wasn’t in the rules!” He counters.

“Y/n! Time’s running out!” Sykkuno exclaims.

“Oh, uh, will-will the real Slim Shady please stand up!”

NOT EMINEM WHAT THE FUCK

MOOOM WHT THE HELL THIS ISNT 2008 T_T

“Ra-Ra-Rasputin, Russia’s greatest love machine--”

“All...All the other kids with the pumped up kicks better, uhh, run better run, faster...-faster than my gun?”

“Uhh, shit--fucking hell.” Dream laughs, and Rae practically screams at him to keep going, “Alright! Okay! I’m singing--uh, you’re so golden, na na na na?”

“I tell you what a woman loves most,” You chime gleefully, “it’s a man who can slap but can also stroke.”

finally, the mother mother representation we’ve all been waiting for

i aint exactly gay but i aint exactly not gay >:)

the bis won

“I steal a few breeeeaaaths from the woooorld for a minute--”

“Mitski?!” You question, eyes bulging, “Baby, who hurt you?”

Even if you can’t see her, you know she’s waving her arms around and shaking her head, “Not the point! Sykkuno!”

“Uh, I-I, uhm, I don’t--”

“Drinnnnk!” You all chorus. 

“It was a good concert,” You say, “Syk, I’ll drink with you.”

“Thank you, Y/n. That’s very kind of you.” He says softly, with a smile lining his lips. You grin.

“Oh, fine. Everyone, bottoms up!” Rae decides, and no one protest. A moment of silence passes, then, “Well, GG, GG, let’s do some tasks?”

Your enthusiastic Ariana Grande-esque “yuh” is cut short by the second meeting of game two being called. The first one to go had been Ash, voted out during a bathroom break as a joke, and you still feel a bit bad about that. Now, you notice Charlie has been eliminated. A sense of righteousness fills you--while you mourn for your brother from another mother and father and family tree, you feel like this is divine punishment for slandering you before the start of this round. Karma. Nothing much is discussed, and the meeting ends shortly with everyone skipping. 

You spend a good ten minutes wandering around with Dream, who’s mission appears to be convincing you to join his Minecraft server, and really, there was no need for him to try so hard. You failed to provide him with a concrete answer only because it would've been to humiliating to admit that you agreed instantly upon hearing the word Minecraft.

That’s when things get fucking weird. Another meeting is called whilst you’re in the middle of fixing lights, and once the board with the members appears you audibly gasp. There had been 8 living, breathing astronauts rushing around the map, and now only 4 remain. You, Corpse, James, and Alex. 

“What the fuck--what the fuck?!” You screech alarmed, noting Dream being among the perished crew, “I was just with Dream fixing the lights, I was just with him, what the fuck--”

“Okay, no one panic.” James says, “Let’s figure this out. Okay? Okay. Who else is close to Electrical?”

“I’m at Nav.” Quackity says.

“I’m at Cafeteria, but Y/n--” Corpse starts, “kinda weird that Dream died when you were with him?”

“I didn’t fucking kill him, I swear to God, Corpse, why are you accusing me?”

“Don’t be so defensive.” He says smoothly, “I’m just pointing out the obvious. We all have a reason to be sus, no? Considering you were right with him.”

“...It is suspicious.” James agrees, and a part of you dies inside. You understand their hesitance to trust you, but it doesn’t make it any less frustrating!

“Guys, I didn’t kill him, I swear. He invited me to play Minecraft, I wouldn’t do that to him, not after that!”

Corpse merely hums, and it brings no comfort what’s so ever. The situation is spiraling, and not in your favor. Trying to salvage your chances at freedom, you try again, “Wh-James, James, you called the meeting, right?”

“Yeah, I found Rae’s body near Medical.”

“So I couldn’t have killed her and Dream at the same time!” You latch onto that piece of information, hoping it will save you.

“You could’ve vented.” Corpse points out, “Plus, there’s no telling how old the body is.”

“Killing five fucking people? It’s the work of one person, or else the game would have already ended. As it stands, I am no way sober enough to think all of this out.”

A brief silence hangs in the air; your lungs constrict from tension, from spilling words so hotly. You grasp your glass, as if for emphasis, and take a shy sip. It taste sweet, a bit too sweet for your liking. Must be your nerves. You drink again to wash the taste out of your mouth, which, surprisingly, doesn’t work. You whine a little, stomping your feet like a child about to throw a temper tantrum.

“...I believe her.” Quackity says. You breathe out a sigh of relief.

“Alex, thank youuuuuu!” You gush, batting your lashes as if he could somehow see you and that would somehow portray your innocence, “I knew I liked you for a reason!”

He mutes his mic, his spill of words lost to your ears, but chat helpfully informs that he’s screaming because you don’t hate him. 

y/n out here collecting men like pokemon cards

Now all that’s left is to convince the others. You start with the one you know will work, “Corpse,” You address him in your sweetest voice.

“Y/n,” James warns, “don’t you dare--”

“Baby, I didn’t kill anyone, I’m crew mate, you gotta believe me.”

“She's innocent.” Corpse declare, thoroughly convinced.

“Oh my fucking God, you fucking simp!” James laughs, “She’s obviously manipulating you!”

“No, no, she isn’t. She’s innocent, I agree with Quackity. Now, it’s either you or him.”

“Could be you for all we know!” Alex accuses.

“Guys, time’s running out.” You mutter fretfully, noting the seconds tick by from white to red. 

“I’m voting Alex.” Corpse says.

“What?! Fucking traitor! Fine, I’m voting for you.” Alex hisses.

“Ugh, hate agreeing with Quackity, but I’m also voting Corpse. Sorry, hon, nothing personal.” James says. The VOTED icons pop up beside their characters and you panic, pressing your mouse idly but it’s too late, there wasn’t enough time, and you cry as Corpse is thrown into lava. The chat spams F, and it feels like salt on a fresh wound.

In a second you’re back in Cafeteria, shell-shocked and trembling, and Quackity cusses because the Impostor is still among you. His frustration doesn’t last long as you watch in horror as Jams Chortles, beauty guru supreme, murders the only other crew mate in cold blood and all you can do is gape and let his cheerful laughter fill your ears. The screen bleeds red, informing of Impostor victory, the second one being Ash. Looks like you voted her off for the right reason, but little difference did it make.

“Corpse!” You yell past the cacophony of voices, all in varying forms of excitement or anger, beelining for his in-game figure, “Corpse, I’m so sorry, I panicked, I tried pressing the button but I wasn’t quick enough--”

“It’s alright, baby. Don’t worry about it.” He’s so calming, so gentle, you might burst into tears again. What did you do to deserve him? You wish he was with you so you could smother him in a hug. Alas, all you can do now is say “I kith you, mwah!” and rush to the other side of the lobby, as if to hide from such a bold display of affection, even if it was a joke (it wasn’t).

yall say corpse simps for y/n but the reality is y/n simps for corpse harder

queen stop its embarrassing

bhaddies can simp!! i wouldnt but its her choice <3

More deliberations, commentary, and short breaks. Once everyone has returned, the countdown starts. You’re still reeling from the chaos of emotions, the five stages of grief you experienced in 1 second upon Corpse’s unjust demise, that it takes you a moment, a single heartbeat to realize what you’re seeing on screen.

The letters IMPOSTOR hang above your astronaut, with Dream standing just behind you as your newly appointed partner in crime. And suddenly, all the sadness and the tenderness and sympathy vanish with a curt exhale. You slowly turn your head to the chat, muting the Discord call, your soft chuckle of disbelief turning into a full blown laugh.

it’s happening!!!! 

omg omg omg omg

VILLAIN ARC VILLAIN ARC VILLAIN ARC

You slap your palm over your lips, trying to contain your wicked smile, to tone down your broken giggles, “N-No, I can’t laugh yet,” shaking your head softly, you look into the camera, “they’re all going to die.”

pack it up light yagami

this has awoken something in me.

^ same

The crew mates go their own ways, rushing to do their tasks like the diligent little workers they are. How adorable. Their grim fate is still miles away from them. The shit you’ll pull will be for the history books. Much like your outfit, which you picked keeping in mind your newfound thirst for blood, you had devised your plan of action with care and consideration. You had been mulling it over all day, drawing on paper like the absolute madwoman you are; hell, you even made sticky notes on who to go for first and what to say. Sure, being moderately drunk hinders your memory slightly (an understatement of the century), but you got a feel for what you’re going to do. It’s nothing short of evil.

Dream and you don’t exchange words, you merely nod at him-- which he, of course, can’t see-- but your criminal bond enables telepathic communication. You can hear his thoughts, ones that strangely sound like drink drink, drink drink. And really, who are you to refuse such an enticing offer?! As he fucks off to stalk his victims, or play pretend, you take a sip. The cocktail is still sweet, but this time it’s not the icky sweet you had tasted prior. You glance at your sticky notes, ones the roaches can’t see, and nearly spill your drink for the second time today as you jerk.

“Fuck!” You exclaim, shoving your headphones off and spinning in your chair. You hastily stand up, wobble -- the world is pleasantly funny right about now -- and giggle. Stepping past the mountains of abandoned clothes and pillows and blankets and anime plushies, you maneuver your way to your bedside table and yank it open, nearly taking out the whole drawer with you. In the mess of old diaries and bad drawings, pencils, jewelry, and stickers, you fish out something you should not be wielding in your inebriated state.

It’s a knife.

In midst of teenage angst you had ordered it off of Amazon with your mom’s credit card, all the while whining that it’s not a phase, mom, and it’s what all of my cool kid friends with fried hair have, and don’t you want me to fit in, don’t you want your daughter to be happy?! You think it’s about that time, the time of too much uneven eyeliner and black eye shadow, that she took to calling you little raccoon. Trash rabbit was your personal favorite, but she used it sparingly. When you presented your Macy’s outfit, holding up a fucking butterfly knife, to your dad, asking if it was a look, he glanced up from some boring business magazine all boring business dads read and said, with a bright smile might you add, “It’s a something!”.

Oh, how it gleams in the lilac light. You used to do tricks with it, back in eight grade maybe, and--what the fuck? Why did you parents allow you to buy it in the first place? Well, because you’re the only child, the only one important, of course they got it for you and clapped enthusiastically at your performances, because why wouldn’t they? The whining they’d face otherwise would’ve been harder to endure than a whole dance number to Panic! At The Disco’s greatest hits. Broadway looked so fucking shabby in comparison. Your mom said so, so it must be true.

Stumbling back to your extremely confused viewers, you take your seat, feeling a bit more grounded now that you’re not standing on your platform shoes anymore. Putting on your headphones, you grin at the chat that starts swimming, and not from too much drinking either. You do a quick flick of your wrist, one that thankfully doesn’t end in injury, and the sharp tip of the exposed knife points upwards, glimmering. It’s a rainbow colored one, because one, it’s pretty, and two, you weren’t hardcore enough for the jet-black or straight up military ones the other emo kids had. Cute and dangerous, just like you.

So you just sit there, holding it up, looking somewhat sly as the roaches capture this momentous moment with screen-caps. Someone definitely clipped you trudging past the obstacle course to obtain a weapon of mass destruction. You must be already trending on Twitter, though you can’t exactly log on and confirm your suspicions. You just feel like you might be, like you should be, because your audience wouldn’t let this slide. Thankfully, your friends don’t have time to check social media, or you’d be outed in an instant.

“Y/n?” Your roommates voice booms from your headphones, and you perk up with a stupid realization that you completely forgot about Among Us. Stuck at the start, at the lobby where Dream had left you, you see her astronaut waddling to you, “What are you doing here? Wait--Have you not moved from the beginning?” She can barely finish the sentence without giggling. 

You grin, “I was looking for something.”

Your voice is soft, too calm for your usual frantic spill. You gently set the knife down, hand coming to rest on your mouse, fingers idly, slowly, bouncing on the buttons.

“...What were you looking for?” She’s none the wiser, the numerous drinks consumed tonight numbing her sharp mind. She would have noticed. Your eerie composure would’ve given it away in a heartbeat, or at least hinted at something being objectively wrong. But she sounds curious. Poor girl, hasn’t she heard? Curiosity killed the cat.

“A knife.”

“A knife?!” There’s something about her tone that implies a mental clicking, the puzzle pieces falling together, “You have a knife?!”

“Yes.”

“No!”

You think it would only be appropriate that the random sequence of killing animations renders the backstabbing one. You grin, biting your lower lip with a quiet snicker.

i love women

if evil bad...why seggy?

You take your time leaving her there -- in true serial-killer-to-be fashion, you stick around for a bit longer, admiring your handiwork, or more like the chat singing your praises. You joined today with the intent of making an interesting stream. You have no doubt in your mind that now it will be legendary.

You move down the hallway, and you let your imagination wander: you can almost feel the stuffy air of your helmet, can almost hear your loud footsteps echoing in all this hush, can almost see your reflection in the spotless tile floor. It’s not long before your second victim makes an appearance, running circles in Cafeteria. You hear his voice first before you see him, recognizing Alex by his unhinged screech of “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s goooo!” 

“And what’s got you so excited?” How cool and collected you are, gosh, you barely contain the quiver of excitement that threatens to slip out. 

“Y/n!” He exclaims, rushing to your side like a lost puppy--he’s really making this easy for you, he’s not even trying, “You just missed--Oh my fucking God, you just missed James, he-he called me tall, he called me fucking tall! Let’s go, let’s gooooo!”

“Well, you are tall, aren’t you?” You chime sweetly, almost as sweet as the drink that lingers on the tip of your tongue, “Real 6′3 energy, no?”

“Yes, yes, exactly! You get it, you fucking get it--” Once again, his mic goes mute, and you glance at the chat for help.

hard to transcribe what hes saying but hes taking shots and yelling that he loves you good job mom

hey, queen! girl, you have done it again, constantly raising the bar for us all and doing it flawlessly

mom plz dont kill alex hes too cute hes all uwu rn

Oh, how you’re about to break his poor little heart. If you had any good left in you, you’d spare him. You don’t, and you’re not taking requests at the moment, so all you do is smile at your chat and they know. They just do. Hive-mind shit, you’re all two-faced little fuckers.

You giggle, and it sounds a tad fake, “You’re so weird, Alex,” You start, and he’s back in the call, a sound of confusion echoing in your ears, “but I get it, you know. You’re weird. You’re a weirdo. You don’t fit it, and you don’t want to fit in. I mean, really, has anyone even seen you without your stupid hat?”

“...Do--” He sputters, bellowing a laugh, “Do you have that whole fucking monologue memorized?!”

“Is it because you’re bald?”

“I’m not fucking bald!” His giddiness is quickly replaced by anger.

You hum, pretend to think, lastly barking a “Liar.” before you kill him. His scream is cut off, leaving only deafening silence at it’s wake. Unlike with Rae, you don’t stick around. You didn’t appreciate how little he enjoyed your recital.

You run into James near Navigation, most likely on his way to Cafeteria. He ends his song mid-note, and you breathe a sigh of relief, “Finally! Someone! I’ve been looking all over, where the hell is everyone?” You question, blocking his way, lest he accidentally stumbles onto the crime scene and easily pins it on you. You’re not done yet.

“Honestly? No clue. I’m searching for them myself, like, everyone’s scattered. I hope no one died.”

You smile. You tried not to, but you can’t contain it, “Me, too.” You echo the sentiment, urging him to join you, and he does. Too trusting. Everyone in this game is too fucking trusting. You lead him back to Nav, feigning that you have a task here. As you pretend to move the spaceship, you can’t help but ask, “Hey, James?”

“Yeah?”

“What’s your favorite scary movie?”

A beat of silence passes, “Oh no, fuck that, I don’t like this at all.” He states, about to spin on his heel and bolt like he should do, but you’re quicker-- killer instincts and all-- and he’s dead before he makes it out the doorway.

“See, after your No More Lies video, I figured you’d only tell the truth.” Yes, this is the part of the anime where the villain monologues, only the hero in this case is an astronaut cut in half, and not exactly alive to listen to you. You hope James’ ghost sticks around, “Case in point, why the fuck did you tell Quackity he’s tall?” You eye the chat, which’s mostly spamming W and comparing you to Ryo from Devilman Crybaby. “Such a shame...” You murmur, pressing the REPORT button.

“What?! How are so many people dead?!” Ash gasps, her kind voice tinted with fear and confusion. Your three kills, like military stars on an uniform of a distinguished officer, are displayed on the board. Dream appears to be slacking, having yet to take a life.

“Someone’s been real fucking busy.” Charlie observes. It’s true, you have been.

“I found James in Nav, but holy shit--” You begin, exasperated, “--what the fuck, guys, how did we miss this shit? Where is everyone?”

“I’m at Electrical.” Corpse voices.

“And I’m with Corpse.” One sentence is all it takes to figure out your next target: Bretman. Revenge for being killed first in the first goddamn round, and for spending so much time with your boyfriend.

Eep!!! Boyfriend boyfriend boyfriend!!! The word even makes you forget your thirst for blood, that’s how whipped you are. Sadly, it’s time to return to reality, to this grave situation.

“And what have the two of you been conspiring?” You keep your tone level, but that alone is enough to set everyone off. The unease you had planted within them before the game started is starting to bloom. However, if they suspect you, they don’t speak up, not yet.

“Fishnets, mostly.” Corpse says.

only partly a lie he was mostly talking abt u queen <3

corpse simping for y/n is the sweetest thing ever

the times corpse used y/ns name when talking abt y/n: 1. the times he used baby or my baby: infinite

“I’m wearing them right nyoooow.” Bretman drawls.

You hum, “What a coincidence. I am, too.”

“Wait--For real?” That seems to catch Corpse’s attention, because of course it does, you picked them with him in mind, after all.

“No peeping.” You tsk, obviously referring to his tendency to hop onto your stream unprompted. Whether he actually listens to your demands is beyond you, “Peeping means cheating.”

“For the love of fuck all, can we get back to the three dead bodies, please? Because I’m about to have a second coming of Christ moment and taste my consumed, digested beer for the second time.” Charlie interjects.

“I mean, anyone have any ideas who’d do this?” Dream takes hold of the conversation. Quiet, disappointed nos greet him. They have nothing to go on, no clues, not even a subliminal message. With everyone scattered, there is no way of locating the actual bodies and drawing a long red trail leading back to you. 

You’re too good at lying, and Dream is too good of a publicist. People tend to trust his judgement, which is his main asset (besides his calm demeanor of course). When the Among Us gods chose you as Impostor, they made sure you had every advantage. 

“Who-Who do you think it is, Dream?” Ash questions, “I trust you. I do. Just know that.”

“No fucking clue.”

“Y/n?” She tries again.

“Same. I’m a bit worried, though.”

“Let’s, uhhh, let’s skip?” Sykkuno offers. The consensus is to start voting at six. Your new mission is to make sure you dwindle the numbers down drastically before that can happen. You have no qualms about sacrificing Dream in order to meet your goals, either. Absolutely cold blooded.

Back at Cafeteria, there are words exchanged about Quackity’s body just laying there, forgotten. Blame is shifted: how come we didn’t notice sooner? Where’s Rae? And you mindlessly go along with their mourning, not really paying attention. Dream leaves with Charlie and Sykkuno, Corpse requests you stay with him and you sprout fake apologies. Not his time yet. Us girls need to stick together!, you sing, following after Ashley and getting further and further away from him, going deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of the spaceship.

You find yourself in Security with her, her cute astronaut pressed to the cameras, watching the live feed, “Let’s lurk here, okay? Maybe we’ll see something.” If only she saw who was standing behind her. 

“Who do you think is the Impostor?” You ask, standing in the doorway, “Or, more like, who are the Impostors?”

“Honestly?” She ends her word with a little sigh, “I think it might be Corpse and Bretman. I haven’t seen them at all this game.”

You smile, raising your brows, tilting your heard, and you sound so kind, like a dear old friend about to deliver a tender message, “...Have you seen me?”

“SHIT!”

Too late. In one smooth motion she joins the afterlife. You cut the lights, venting mindlessly till you spot Corpse and Bretman panicking in Weapons. Your existence is still a mystery to them.

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck--” Corpse mumbles, “Bretman, don’t you dare fucking kill me right now.”

“I’m not Impostor!”

“Okay, I’ll drink to that.”

They rush out of Weapons, most likely on their way to Electrical, and you trail after them like the Grim Reaper itself, biding your time till you can deliver the killing blow.

“Corpse?!” You call out, mild panic ringing in your voice, “Is that you?”

“Shit, Y/n? Where are you?” He questions. Crew vision is so sad, so small, how can he not see you standing almost right next to him? “Where’s Ash?”

“I dunno,” You say, “when the lights went out I ran. Please don’t kill me.”

“I’d never do that, baby.”

Too easy. They’re all too fucking easy. You bite your lower lip, trying to stop the laugh bubbling in your chest, to stop the lightheaded dizziness that overcomes you with a rush of excitement. 

“Thanks, pretty boy.” You mutter, and it sounds a bit lower than you intended, a bit darker, something sinister lurking underneath cotton candy words. It instantly clicks in Bretman and he makes a noise, something like a whine, and you see him backing away, “I know I can always trust you.” 

Whether Corpse notices the odd shift in tone, he doesn’t show it, “I like it when you call me that.” Is all he says, and you hear the smile in his voice, the appreciation. The trek to Electrical is all but forgotten. You slowly make your way to Bretman, “Where are you? Come here.”

“Just a minute,” You say cheerily, “I just need to kill Bret first.”

“Holy shit.”

“N-” Your victim’s sentence is cut off in a second, and you can’t contain your manic cackle this time, because the screen bleeds red, the words VICTORY splattered on it, depicting yours and Dream’s sneaky astronauts. You’re still laughing as the voices of your fallen friends ring in your ears.

“Y/n, what the fuck, you’re an actual monster.” Dream says, but there’s no actual weight behind his words, each syllable punctured with a laugh.

“I knew the second she asked me about my favorite scary movie that I’d get the chop.” James states.

“Wait, Y/n, did you kill everyone?” Corpse questions.

“She fucking did!” Dream answers for you, “I got Charlie and Sykkuno, and barely at that. What the fuck.”

“I’ve been waiting so fucking long for this.” You admit, giggling, raising you glass, “I toast to you, Dream. My perfect partner in crime.”

“I didn’t really do shit, but cheers.”

Quackity heaves a heavy sigh, “Y/n, Y/n, you don’t actually think I’m weird, right? Right?”

“No, she does.” James chimes.

“WHAT THE FUCK DID I EVER DO TO YOU, DUDE?!”

More commotion, more noise, and you just sit there, buzzed, snickering, reading the chat as the rest agree to play another round. You thank the people who donated that you had accidentally missed among the, you know, murder, reply to a few questions, bow dramatically to the many praises and invisible flowers you receive for such beautiful assassin work. When you look back at the screen, you throw your head back with a maniacal laugh.

Impostor again, only this time it’s with Charlie. Family bonds are often restored when united under a common goal. You’re so happy. So happy. You weren’t done terrorizing your friends yet.

✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼

✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼

tags (in italics is those i couldn’t tag! make sure all’s ok w your settings!) : @littlebabysandboxburritos​ - @fairywriter-oracle​ - @tsukishimawh0re​ - @ofstarsanddreams​ - @bbecc-a​ - @annshit​ - @leahh19​ - @letsloveimagines​ - @bellomi-clarke​ - @wineandionysus​ - @guiltydols​ - @onephootinfrontoftheother​ - @liamakorn​ - @thirstyfangirl​ - @lilysdaydreams​ - @pan-ini​ - @mxqicshxp​ - @tanchosanke​ - @yoshinorecommends​ - @flightsandfantasy​ - @liljennyx3​ - @bingusmode - @unknown-and-invisible​ - @sinister-sleep​ - @fivedicksinatrenchcoat​ - @mercury–moon - @peterparkerspjsuit​ - @unstableye​ - @simonsbluee​ - @shinyshimaagain​ - @ppopty​ - @siriuslystupid​ - @crapimahuman​ - @ofthedewthesunlight​ - @mythicalamphitrite​ - @artsyally​ - @corpsesimpp​ - @corpsewhitetee​ - @corpse-husbandsimp​ - @hyp-oh-critical​ - @roses-and-grasses​ - @rhyrhy462​ - @sparklylandflaplawyer​ - @charbkgo​ - @airwaveee​ - @creativedogs​ - @kaitlyn2907​ - @loxbbg​ - @afuckingunicornn​ - @fleurmoon​ - @yeolliedokai​

more tags are in the comments bcs tumblr only allows me to tag 50 people max 💙

[velvetthunder1999]

All the time on Earth

Part 5 - Yesterday

Summary: You and the twins open up about your families, also, George hears you singing for the first time

Warnings: None, Fluff

Word count: 2.8K

George Weasley x Reader

Featuring song: The Beatles - Yesterday

Masterlist

- Edited for grammar -

The month of January had passed with great improvements in both cases of your business and your relationship with the Weasley twins. As the first week of February arrived, you had already worked out many ways to sell either their products or your items. After classes you three — sometimes four when Lee chipped in — were sitting in the common room, discussing that week’s orders, trying not to be caught by Prefects in your year. As you were also studying for your O.W.L. exams, business hours got pushed up close to midnight.

Today was no different; Lee had already went to sleep but Fred and George were by the fire trying to finish an order, while next to them you were struggling with your Potions homework.

“Y/N,” said Fred suddenly. “Who do you think the focus should be on when taking promotional pictures?”

“Er — what do you mean?” you asked, suspicious of where this is gonna go.

“He means which one of us is more handsome,” helped out his brother George with a grin. “Is it me or Fred?”

“Excuse me?” you said.

“Y/N,” Fred continued, “I’m the more handsome one, aren’t I? The statue should look like myself.”

“Sure, if you wanna scare people away,” answered George. “Y/N knows what is the right answer, don’t you Y/N?”

He looked at you with such a sweet smile you almost fell for the trap. You snorted and raised an eyebrow.

“You know you’re twins, right? People won’t care whose picture they see,” you dodged the question. Fred was not satisfied.

“C’mon Y/N, that’s not an answer!”

“What statue are you talking about, anyway?” you asked.

“At our joke shop. When we have our own place and everything.”

“You should collect the money first before talking about statues.” you shrugged. The twins looked at you, hurt. You added quickly “Sorry, I meant that you should really finish the list for the orders, I’ve been waiting to check that for three days!”

“Well, we’d have finished it already if we knew when we’re gonna get our money back,” muttered Fred, looking at his brother. George shot a sharp look at him to make him quiet. They had a staring contest, then looked at the parchment in front of them in one motion.

“What is it?” you asked, having no idea what was going on. “What are you two doing?”

The twins locked eyes again, then said in perfect unison, “Nothing.”

You put down the quill and turned to them with your whole body.

“Look, you don’t have to tell me if it’s not my business. But if it affects the orders then I have a right to know, because it’s partly my job to solve our problems.”

Fred and George made the exact same face of deliberation. Then George nodded slightly and Fred took it as a sign to speak.

“Do you know Ludo Bagman who was here watching the first task?”

“Of course I know him,” you said. “He tried to make me place a bet but I said no.”

“Well, good, cause he would’ve scammed you, too,” continued George. “We were at the Quidditch World Cup last summer and bet all of our money. And we won.”

“We said the Irish would win but Krum will catch the snitch,” took over Fred. “We were right, but he paid us fake money. First we thought it was a mistake and talked to him after the first task. He said he’s sorry and that he’d make it right. We’ve been waiting ever since.”

“Wait, what?” you asked, feeling shocked. “Are you telling me he stole your money?”

“Well — ”

“Well, yes!” Fred interrupted his brother. “He stole it and we need to write him a letter about it. Saying we’d take it to the Ministry.”

“I agree, but we can’t be too reckless,” George shook his head. “He’s working at the Ministry, after all!”

“Yeah, will figure out somethin’. Till then, tell us Y/N, how stupid that makes us look.”

He shot a smile at you but there was hardly any joy in it. His tone was just as painful and ashamed as George’s eyes were suggesting. You took a deep breath. You were furious, but also felt sorry for the boys.

“Can’t your father do something about it? He’s working at the Ministry, too.”

“Dad’s not as highly ranked as you might think,” said Fred.

“And we don’t really want to tell him what happened, either,” George casted down his eyes.

“I see,” you said.

Fred suddenly slammed the table so hard it made you jump and your ink bottle fell on the floor.

“I’m so sick of being penniless! Always struggling with money even when we’d win a bag of galleons! I hate all the hand me down books! I hate these fucking old robes! I hate how hard we work and there are no results! Everyone treats us like kids and when we could really do something we’re still being told off!”

He burried his face in his palms, taking deep breaths. George stood up quietly and sat down next to his brother, placing one hand on his shoulder.

“It’s okay, Freddie. We’ll make it, trust me. We just need a little more time.”

“I can’t.”

You watched the two of them sitting together, comforting each other and suddenly loneliness came over you. They reminded you of what a real family looks like. Also, you felt like you just witnessed something not many people do. You had no idea they were struggling this much.

“I’m really sorry,” you said, almost whispering.

Fred looked up, almost as if he just realized that you were still watching. A sad smile appeared on his face.

“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”

He let out a dark chuckle.

“We might end up at the Ministry, after all. Cleaning the floors.”

“Mum would be happy we got in,” said George sarcastically, trying to cheer up his brother a bit.

“Sure. Mums and their expectations, am I right Y/N?”

He looked at you, nothing but bitterness in his eyes. If he was waiting for an answer that you didn’t know. Your lip trembled.

You had never talked to anyone about your home, really. No one seemed to notice and you didn’t mind. Your friends… Even Ginny didn’t know the whole story and you had known her for years. You were only with the twins for a little more than a month. Still… something seemed to change. All three of you felt so vulnerable in this moment. You wanted to tell them. You wanted them to know.

“My… my mum hasn’t talked to me in five years.”

You had never said it out loud like this and the realization hit you like a slap in the face. You felt like you were chocking on your own breath. The twins looked at you, stunned. You had told George bits and pieces, but you’d never told him everything. But it wasn’t just George. You wanted Fred to understand, too. You wanted both of them to see. And you wanted to have someone in your life who finally sees the whole picture.

“When I got my letter, my mum was so angry she claimed she no longer had a daughter,” your voice was shaky and filled with pain. You just hoped you wouldn’t cry. “My parents are strongly against everything that’s related to anything unusual. Anything out of ordinary, anything abnormal. So when we realized I’m a witch, and every magic I did before made sense now, she looked at me with so much hate in her eyes… I know I’ll never forget that. She said I am her greatest disappointment and she wished I was never born. Then went silent and whenever I’m home she doesn’t even acknowledge my existense.”

You stared at one of the legs of the table. You realized it was easier to talk that way.

“My father wanted to send me away. Have me fixed. I didn’t agree. I came here instead. I… I read about what muggles did to witches in the past. And whenever I’m home, I… I sleep with my wand and lock the door from the inside because I’m… I’m… I’m scared they’ll… they’ll do something to me.”

You didn’t cry but you were close to it. You swallowed your tears, still looking at the table, scared to look at the twins. You weren’t sure at all, what their reaction would be. Maybe it would be easier, never getting to know it. Maybe you’d just stay here forever, fixating on the leg of the furniture.

“Y/N…” George’s uncertain voice finally made you look up. The twins were just sitting there, obviously having no idea how to express what they’re feeling.

“Holy shit, Y/N” said Fred too.

“I’m sorry if I overshared,” you said with a half smile, mostly to defuse the tension.

George got up again but this time it was you who he sat down next to. His knee almost touched yours as he turned to you and hesitantly looked into your eyes. You carefully leaned closer to him and he welcomed you in his arms. He hugged you softly, almost as if you were going to break. On his robes you felt a nice scent that reminded you of fireworks.

The hug was short but you still felt like it lasted for years. You almost didn’t let go as he pulled away. Fred was still looking at you, quite heartbroken. Then finally, he spoke, more seriously than you had ever heard him talk.

“Y/N, I want you to know that if you need us, we’ll be here for you. Anytime. We mean it. Right, Georgie?”

“Absolutely.” George said, kindly smiling.

“Thank you,” you said. “And I want you to know that I will be helping you with anything you need. I’ll be the best business partner you’ve ever met.”

Your cheerful tone seemed to return but Fred shook his head.

“No, I don’t think we’re business partners anymore,” his smile was also real this time.

You looked at him, confused. George put an arm around your shoulder and pulled you closer.

“We’re friends, Y/N,” said the boy. “You can’t get rid of us now.”

——

George was heading back to the common room with his brother after giving McGonagall’s message to Ron and Hermione. Tomorrow was going be the second task, and they had just finished writing down the bets of a large group of Ravenclaw boys. It was almost curfew and he and Fred didn’t have anything special in mind this time so they decided to head back and see if you’re up to playing a game of Exploding Snap.

You were almost like one of them now, apart from the color of your hair, of course. They loved having you around. You were like the secret third behind everything they did. You didn’t like the spotlight, but planned pranks and orders so brilliantly, the twins were often left speechless.

As George entered the common room with Fred behind him, he automatically searched for you with his eyes and grinned when he saw you sitting at a table. You were clearly busy with your homework so the twins decided to lay low until you would approach them as soon as you finished.

Quite a lot of people were already gone to sleep, but there was still a few kids playing around; a bunch of girls were flipping through the pages of a magazine, some boys were exchanging chocolate frog cards, and George also recognized Dean Thomas not far from you, quietly playing some gentle tunes on his guitar.

He turned back to Fred who was now emptying his pockets, ready to get his quill and write down the bets the Ravenclaws had placed.

“We should do another round tomorrow before the task,” said Fred. “Get as much as possible.”

“All right,” said George, barely paying attention. He was watching you, as you smiled while glancing over to Dean and his guitar.

“Good news is, we almost made double compared to last time.”

“Brilliant,” said George, feeling dizzy.

You started talking to Dean but you were sitting too far away from George to hear what you were talking about. Dean nodded and said something back with a cheerful expression. George furrowed his brows at the sight of you laughing. Was Dean saying something funny to you?

“Anyway, let’s do…”

He wasn’t paying attention to Fred anymore. He even raised his head to see you better, when you sat closer to Dean. You two seemed to be discussing something, then Dean started to play his guitar, this time more loudly and firmly. Then your face completely changed and you started singing the sweetest melody George had ever heard. Yesterday All my troubles seemed so far away Now it looks as though they're here to stay Oh, I believe in yesterday

It felt like as if everything had disappeared from the room and it was only him, you and the song. He had never heard this song before, he still felt as he’d known it his whole life.

Suddenly I'm not half the man I used to be There's a shadow hangin' over me Oh, yesterday came suddenly

No, he’s not the man he used to be. This was a muggle song, this was a song from your previous life and he wanted to know everything about that life and you.

Why she had to go, I don't know, she wouldn't say I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday

No, he cannot let you go. Your voice was the only thing keeping him alive. It wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t a well-trained voice, and that made it real. That made it touch his heart.

Yesterday Love was such an easy game to play Now I need a place to hide away Oh, I believe in yesterday

No, it wasn’t an easy game now. Maybe after the ball. But now he had too much to loose.

Why she had to go, I don't know, she wouldn't say I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday

He cannot let himself say anything wrong. He cannot ruin this.

Yesterday Love was such an easy game to play Now I need a place to hide away Oh, I believe in yesterday

As you finished the last line, some of the people in the common room started clapping and you smiled at them gratefully. Dean was bowing playfully then continued playing his quiet tunes. George couldn’t take his eyes off you. His heart was so full he didn’t even know how to handle this feeling.

“Oy!”

Fred clapped in front of his face and George jerked awake in a second. He didn’t even realize he zoned out the whole time.

“Wake up George, what’s gotten into you?”

George didn’t say anything. With a lot of effort he turned his head away from your direction and looked at Fred.

“What?”

Fred didn’t answer. He was looking at his twin quite suspiciously. Then looked at the direction George had been looking a second ago. He only saw you, sitting at the table. The he looked at his brother’s dazed face again. George seemed like he was drunk. Then Fred looked at you again. Then something clicked and he turned to George with his whole body, his jaw dropped in shock.

“You like her!”

“W — What?” said George again, this time with his full attention on Fred.

“You like her, you git!” said Fred again, this time laughing.

“W — no, stop —”

“Georgie…!”

“Stop calling me Georgie —“

“I can’t believe you like her!” said Fred happily, hitting his brother’s shoulder.

“Shh! Quiet!” hushed him George while anxiously checking if you heard him or not. “She doesn’t need to know!”

“What?” said Fred in disbelief. “Are you mad? You have to tell her!”

“No, I don’t, and lower your voice, Fred!”

“Why?” now Fred was concerned. “Is there something wrong?”

“No, everything’s peachy,” he answered in a sarcastic tone. “I can’t tell her, she’s my friend!”

“Yeah, and two months ago we didn’t even know her.”

“No — listen. After the ball I might’ve had a chance to ask her out. If she said no it wouldnt’ve mattered. But we promised to be there for her, what if I tell her now and it’ll be awkward afterwards? I don’t wanna ruin this for any of us.

“Also, she’s helping us with the sales.”

“What? Yeah, sure, that, too.”

Fred had a large grin on his face.

“C’mon Georgie. You’re just looking for excuses.”

“Maybe I am.”

“Why?”

“What why, I just told you! I — I don’t wanna risk not having her around anymore because I was a sappy idiot.”

“But if you actually asked her out — ” Fred started but George didn’t let him finish.

“Let’s not talk about this for now, all right? I’m not even sure it’s gonna last. I probably wake up next week, forgetting I ever liked her.”

“Sure, cause that’s how you are,” muttered Fred skeptically.

George didn’t answer, he turned his full attention towards counting the money on the table. He had to force himself not to look in your direction — or not to hit Fred in the face to make him stop grinning.

[diwyllianwrites]

CHARACTER CHART:

Character’s full name: Matías Felipe Belmonte Reason or meaning of name: The meaning of the name “Matias” is: “Gift of God”. Additional information: The boy name Matias is a biblical name, a Spanish and Finnish form of Matthew, from the Greek Matthaios, found in the New Testament of the Bible, used for the Evangelist and Apostle Matthew, the author of the first Gospel. Character’s nickname: None, thus far Reason for nickname: -- Birth date: August 17

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE:

Age: 38 How old does he/she appear: About the same, I’d say.  Height: 169 cm  Eye color: Brown Glasses or contacts: Has to wear glasses whilst driving Skin tone: Olive  Distinguishing marks: Has some older scars on his arms/wrist area from his teenage years of dealing with his OCD. Anxious scratching. He doesn’t really try to hide them but also doesn’t wave it around either.  Predominant features: Freckles, his chin Hair color: Black Type of hair: Thick and wavy, almost curly Hairstyle: Usually has his hair styled up one way or another Disabilities: OCD, anxiety and color blindness  Usual fashion of dress: Dapper, but in a casual sense. Wears clean and pressed shirts and dress pants. Tries not to overdo it with colors since he can’t see them.  Favorite outfit: Opposite to what he usually wears though, Matías owns a rather colorful suit that he brings out on the occasional fancy meet and greet. It’s usually for exhibits and other tidbits when he feels like it’s more necessary for him to match up with his art.  Jewelry or accessories: Wears a bracelet Pollux gave him after he moved in. 

PERSONALITY:

Good personality traits: Generous, Loyal, Patient, Creative Bad personality traits: Compulsive, Anxious, Naïve, Insecure Mood character is most often in: He’s most often in a good mood Sense of humor: Depends on who he’s with, but usually he’s on the humble side. He likes to poke fun at social standards, gender roles and sometimes do those type of jokes you’d expect from an older person. His jokes are often harmless and doesn’t come at the expense of others.  Character’s greatest joy in life: Art and his family Character’s greatest fear: Not being able to fend for said family.  Why?: Being an artist is time consuming and sometimes doesn’t pay well. He’s the one that has offered his children a home and he wants them to be able to grow up in a stable environment. His OCD often play on this fear of his, especially when it comes to his own art and the level of perfection he feels he has to meet.   What single event would most throw this character’s life into complete turmoil?: Character is most at ease when: At home in his studio, working or watching a movie with any of the kids.  Most ill at ease when: Dealing with deadlines, talking about his older brother, when his OCD act up Enraged when: It’s really hard to make Matías enraged?? He’s usually annoyed or disappointed at best, you’d have to push it damn far for that.  Depressed or sad when: Same with this  Priorities: Getting an income and making sure the kids have a good childhood.  Life philosophy: Matías generally likes to live by the golden rule, of giving what he wants given.  If granted one wish, it would be: He’d like to get rid of his OCD. It’s not as big of a hindrance as it used to be, but still gets him in trouble sometimes. Why?: Because it gets in the way of him enjoying his own work and steals a lot of time. It basically forces him to go through a ritual before and after he works on his art pieces and if he messes up or if someone interrupts he could end up trashing the whole art piece -- thus needing to start over. It’s expensive at that, art supplies don’t come cheap.  Character’s soft spot: I feel like that’s obvious by now.  Is this soft spot obvious to others?: Yes. Greatest strength: His patience and generosity towards people, he’s overall a great person to lean on if you got troubles or need help with anything.  Greatest vulnerability or weakness: However, it’s also a weakness as it’s easy to take advantage of a soft soul and his brother already proved that point.  Biggest regret: Letting his brother set up business through him, thus helping him network and possibly scam others.  Minor regret: He always lowkey regets throwing away his art work, but it cannot be helped.  Biggest accomplishment: His career! Minor accomplishment: Keeping his house tidy with five people living in it Character’s darkest secret: Matías doesn’t really have a dark secret, unless you count his brother being in jail etc.  Does anyone else know?: It was definitely in the news at the time of his arrest so I’d say a lot of people know, at least if they’re from Kelowna. 

GOALS:

Drives and motivations: Besides his family and career, Matías is highly driven towards pushing more information about color blindness and making society more accessible to those that have a harder time reading and seeing colors. He does the occasional speech and educational seminar when he has time to spare.  Immediate goals: Catch up with all his deadlines.  Long term goals: Have a stable future, watch his kids grow up, work on his OCD.  How the character plans to accomplish these goals: Hard work and dedication.  How other characters will be affected: Not much, it’s mostly a thing of his own. 

FAVORITES:

Color: Matías mostly see the world in tints of red with some green mixed between and thus he tend to appreciate his narrow color spectrum as a whole. Music: Honestly, he will play anything by Gloria Estefan and Tina Turner on repeat. Food: Can always go for a good meat stew or an avocado toast Literature: Perfume by Patrick Süskind, but usually tend to read magazines rather than books. Form of entertainment: Reads, paints, sometimes tries to further some skill he’s been trying out.  Mode of transportation: Walks whenever he can, otherwise a car

HABITS:

Hobbies: Same as with his entertainment.  Plays a musical instrument?: He doesn’t play one fully, but he has definitely tried a few out of curiosity. Flute, guitar and harmonica for some.  Plays a sport?: Nope. How he/she would spend a rainy day: Probably working in his studio or helping the kids with their homework. He also tends to do some crafting with Lillian or listens to Pollux as he rants on about astrology.  Spending habits: Stays within his budget, doesn’t buy thing he doesn’t need just for the sake of having it.  Smokes: Water pipes yes. Drinks: On the occasion, not a huge fan.  Other drugs: Only medication.  What does he/she do too much of?: Dwell and worry about petty things.  What does he/she do too little of?: Speak up and take space.  Extremely skilled at: Painting Extremely unskilled at: Decorating Nervous tics: Scratching or pulling/fiddling Usual body posture: Seems relaxed but tend to sit and stand upright, open and welcoming  Mannerisms: Calm and collected, pensive

TRAITS:

Optimist or pessimist?: Optimist Introvert or extrovert?: Ambivert  Daredevil or cautious?: Cautious, but doesn’t stray away from trying new things Logical or emotional?: Logical but can let emotions override depending on the situation  Disorderly and messy or methodical and neat?: Methodical and neat Prefers working or relaxing?: Working Confident or unsure of himself/herself?: Unsure  Animal lover?: Yes! He doesn’t have time for animals but Natalie has a pair of rats and Pollux owns a hamster he tend to help out with. 

SELF-PERCEPTION:

How he/she feels about himself/herself: Matías feels neutral when it comes to himself. He doesn’t hold hold himself to a standard of importance but neither is he riddled with self-hatred. He finds that he fills the role of support for a lot of people and quite often so enjoy it.  One word the character would use to describe self: Caring What does the character consider his/her best personality trait?: Being level headed What does the character consider his/her worst personality trait?: Being naïve How does the character think others perceive him/her: Matías thinks other people view him as someone who has his whole life in order, someone who is lucky to have a career that he loves and a big family to rely on. He’s a person with a warm aura and wise thoughts to share. Most end up fond of him and find him reliable.  What would the character most like to change about himself/herself: Besides the OCD etc I feel like Matías would like it if he gained some more courage and the ability to stand up to himself. He’s not really the type of person who wants to jump into conflicts or argue with people. Due to his childhood he prefers to stay low and out of the way of others. 

RELATIONSHIPS WITH OTHERS:

Opinion of other people in general: He enjoys the company of others, especially those that hold similar values or ways of life.  Does the character hide his/her true opinions and emotions from others?: Yes, as mentioned he doesn’t like conflicts and prefer to paint over or avoid a subject if it’s a cause of problem. He, of course, has matters he’s vocal about but generally so he keeps it on the low and on the friendly side.  Person character most hates: He cannot stand his brother any longer.  Person character goes to for advice: Miguel  Person character feels responsible for or takes care of: His adoptive children Person character feels shy or awkward around: None, yet Person character openly admires: His best friend Silas Person character secretly admires: None, yet

[eenefangirlanalysis]

“Oh, EEEeeeddd....”

“Gum?”

Ed’s lucky day!

I was just watching For Your Ed Only today. The Ed’s have quite history with gum.

That should have been a subplot in one of the school episodes seeing how it’s not allowed in school. Well, technically it had one appearance for a scam in No Speak Da Ed.

What looks as if it could be normal looking gum is really an electric shock which turns Ed into many different personas which he has portrayed in past episodes. Let’s take a look.

Ed with a very big head.

‘Fish Head Ed’ from ‘Dueling Eds’!

All these screenshots fly by in seconds making this scene look like a flip book. It’s important to pause this movie or even any episode. There are many hidden background moments.

Look closely at Ed’s skull.

See that line?

That’s the skull fracture that was never properly tended to.

I feel like this fractured skull is what deteriorates Ed’s character over time. Ed is barely able to form sentences, look after himself, and people’s emotions don’t register to him. Ed should have known that Eddy was in danger when taped to the back of that school bus. 

The writers meddled with his character. Season 6 was considered an apology to fans for making the characters who they grew up with unlikable. The writers made changes to Edd and Eddy, but there wasn’t much they could do with Ed. So, they kind of made Ed a background character which I don’t like. Edd and Eddy get all the screen time trying to figure out their own problems. They couldn’t change much with Ed because it would be a much noticeable change. Still, it’s a subtle change, but they made Ed more independent.

It’s sad how nobody gave this injury proper care. It gives a lot more insight on how Ed’s parents prefer Sarah over him. 

Throughout Big Picture Show I think Ed’s parents are in the process of getting divorce. Edd and Eddy’s fight is reminiscent of two parents arguing and then divorcing. Honestly, it’s best that Ed’s parents get a divorce as they don’t get alone. 

Although everything would finally be at peace if the parents divorced there is the issue of who gets custody over the children. Who would get to remain in Peach Creek? Are both parents healthy enough to even take care of their children?  Going off from head canon’s, Ed’s mom is bipolar while Ed’s father could be suffering from depression. He does nothing to help situations.

It’s tough imagining our Ed boys getting separated from one another but it’s for the best. Ed would lead a much happier and safer life. His life is already at risk with that skull fracture making him worse.

A hot dog.

Thank you for not flashing the audience, Ed.

It’s Ed’s cartoon character form from when he hid inside the TV during Ed n Seek. That episode was from season 1. The artists and writers have gone back and watched the show to see what they could add in. They knew their has grown in the ten years. In a way, they’re testing us to see what we remember.

Ed, Edd n Eddy is our childhood. We grew up with these three goons almost feeling as if they were real people. We can relate to these characters.

Ed’s mascot costume from Tight End Ed.

Luther the viking! My favorite Ed persona from the Halloween special!

Old Ed!

Baby Ed with his trademark fork!

Oh Eddy, please tell me you didn’t kill Ed.

Still, this was a wonderful display of animation. I would love to study how the artists did this scene. Ed, Edd n Eddy has gone through an evolution with their animation. Go look at the characters and background that were colored outside the lines and compare it to now. 

EENE was the final show to use traditional animation. A part of me wishes that they didn’t animate them digitally because it ruined the tone of the series.

Another thing I love about this scene is that the artists never forgot to draw Ed without one shoe. Ed’s missing shoe is very important to his character in the movie. He’s vulnerable and yet he feels free. 

[himbowelsh]

Webgott 💙💙💙

meme my heart away (ACCEPTING)

who hogs the duvet

Lieb is an inconsummate blanket hog, and he has no shame. Their nights often turn into a duel for dominance of the bed, but especially cold nights they inevitable wake up with Lieb hogging the blankets and Web hogging Lieb.

who texts/rings to check how their day is going

Web’s a writer. He, like... does that as a job. Writers will do anything to avoid actually writing. Web is the kind of check-in texts. “what’s up?” “how are you doing?” “good morning!” When Lieb’s cutting hair he’ll usually respond right away, but if he’s driving his cab he’ll have his phone shut off and won’t answer until the end of his shift. (He won’t admit it, but seeing David’s texts always make him smile.)

who’s the most creative when it comes to gifts

Web loves the idea of going all-out with gifts, but the truth is he’s no good at gift-giving. He either can’t think of anything or comes up with an idea that’s impossible to accomplish. Plus, getting gifts is a lot of effort, and he’s sort of lazy. He’s more likely to make a card or buy something at a gift shop on a whim. Liebgott, however, will come up with the unexpected perfect gift -- clever and just on the right side of sentimental. 

who gets up first in the morning

Web will sleep in until noon if he has the opportunity, then hate himself for it late. Joe -- an early riser by necessity, not choice -- has the thankless job of dragging him out of bed. (If he’s feeling nice, he’ll have coffee ready for him when he wakes up.)

who suggests new things in bed

Joe is nothing if not adventurous in bed. Web is a little vanilla, but is always willing to experiment, and has surprised himself by what he’s into.

who cries at movies

Freakin’ Web will bawl over happy movies, sad movies, and everything in between. He’s also kind of a movie buff, so Joe will frequently find him bawling over foreign films he’s never even heard of before, and have no way to comfort him. Joe, who never cries at movies, is baffled.

who gives unprompted massages

Web’s got magic hands, and when Joe is wound up from a long day at work he’ll often surprise him with a soothing massage. Nothing works better to get Joe out of a rotten mood.

who fusses over the other when they’re sick

Web is kind of useless when people are sick, okay? Hell, he’s useless when he’s sick. He just doesn’t handle sickness or vulnerable people at all, and tries to avoid them at all costs. Joe, on the other hand, has a well-hidden caretaking streak that runs a mile wide. He doesn’t enjoy it, but if someone needs to be looked after he’ll step up and do it damn well.

who gets jealous easiest

They’re both as bad as the other; however, Joe’s shameless about it, while Web tries to pretend he’s above that. They are not above public displays of extreme affection to show everyone else where they stand.

who has the most embarrassing taste in music

Joe is really into classic rock. He likes old rock like AC/DC, The Clash, even smoother songs from The Smiths. Meanwhile Web is into a little bit of everything (even rap, which he can appreciate for it’s poetic value even if some of the language makes him uncomfortable). He’s into a lot of indie music, but writes best to instrumental soundtracks and even ambience/ASMR stuff.

who collects something unusual

Lieb has a massive comic book collection, but it’s nothing compared to Webster’s shark memorabilia. He’s got entire shelves of that stuff. It freaks Liebgott out a bit, as much as he loves seeing Web so passionate about something.

who takes the longest to get ready

Webster has two modes: “actual disney prince” or “severely caffeine-deprived, hasn’t met a razor or a bed in weeks”. Liebgott doesn’t need to put much effort into his look; he throws on jeans and a leather jacket, ruffles his hair, then he’s good to go. Webster either puts all the effort into his appearance, or none at all.

who is the most tidy and organised

Webster is tidy in everything except his writing. He leaves papers and notebooks scattered everywhere. Lieb is constantly tripping over them, but Web doesn’t even feel bad, because his boyfriend leaves his junk everywhere at all times. Lieb is a walking hurricane, and it shows.

who gets most excited about the holidays

They both get surprisingly into it. Lieb is a Halloween guy through and through. Meanwhile, Web gets really into Christmas, and turns sentimental around Valentine’s Day. (He’s not afraid to write it off as a corporate scam, but it still means something to celebrate it.)

who is the big spoon/little spoon

Web likes to be the little spoon. It takes him a while to get used to sleeping with people; once he does, he finds he can’t sleep alone. He’s also prone to bouts of insomnia, so Lieb will wrap him in his arms and soothe him to sleep.

who gets most competitive when playing games and/or sports

THEY ARE THE MOST COMPETITIVE COUPLE it’s not even funny. It doesn’t matter WHAT they’re doing, it turns into a competition.

who starts the most arguments

They don’t need to start arguments. They just happen. Usually Joe is the instigator, but Web is definitely not above picking petty arguments if he’s in the right mood.

who suggests that they buy a pet

They’ve both considered getting a pet before, but neither of them would do well taking care of a living creature and keeping it that way. Maybe one day, when they’re less... volatile together.

what couple traditions they have

Whenever Web is feeling insecure about his writing or just needs a proofreader, Lieb will make the time to do it. Also, Joe basically drives Web wherever he wants to go, so that’s kind of a tradition for them.

what other couple they hang out with

No one wants to go on double dates with them, because they’re insufferable. They’re either being gross or arguing like cats and dogs, they have no in-between. They hang out with Babe and Gene sometimes, just because Babe and Lieb are friends, but they’re really hard to stand sometimes.

how they spend time together as a couple

They’re a very passionate couple. Wither they’re arguing with each other, having sex with each other, or just... talking to each other. It wouldn’t seem like it, since they get on each others’ nerves so often, but they actually have a very deep emotional connection. They get each other in ways neither of them expected they would, and when they really get going they can just talk for hours.

who made the first move

Joe hit on Web for ages before Web finally got the hint, but Web was the one who kissed him first.

who brings flowers home

Web is just the type of person to eat up ridiculously sentimental stuff like this, but Liebgott obviously isn’t gonna do it. Web is willing to step up to the plate; he’s brought home roses on more than one occasion, just for Lieb.

who is the best cook

Liebgott, for sure. Liebgott can at least handle him in the kitchen. Web could burn water.

[mingchii]

On Leave

Sunday. Usually a day where everybody is just chilling since there’s no work/school. A day people spend freely on whatever they want. But for me, that Sunday is one of the toughest Sundays I’ve ever had.

I woke up from a nightmare. My chest was extremely heavy as I recall the terrible things that happened in my dreams. I was crying. I felt scared. I thought everything was falling apart. I dreamed about something I was desperately trying to avoid. A dream, nightmare rather, where I saw him seeing women while I was standing from afar. I can’t move. I can’t do anything but feel my heart being torn piece by piece, very slowly. Crying while you’re asleep isn’t really the best thing, it takes away all of your energy and leaves you nothing when you wake up.

My brother knocked the door to wake me up, “we have visitors” he said. After tidying up my terrible face, I went downstairs to see my aunties with goodies. I got a ton of bags and wallets. “Well I guess this day isn’t too bad”, I assumed. Then the day went on from me keeping myself busy. Sorting my calendar, preparing documents for my new job, and cleaning my room. I tried to keep my phone away. I admit I get tempted a lot. “I want to know how’s he doing.” But I want to stay out to keep myself from hurting more. That afternoon went by too quick. My parents didn’t have to call me when we’re about to head back to the city since I was not busy on Skype anymore. I was going to take a shower when my glasses slipped, fell, and broke. “Ah sucks. But that’s okay, I still got a shit spare.” It wasn’t too bad really.

We dropped by to my grandma’s grave to light some candles and offer flowers. My dad and aunties were chatting. As I grabbed my phone, it slipped off my hand and fell flat on the concrete. I looked for cracks, it was perfectly fine. But it won’t turn on when I tried to. I felt devastated. I had the similar feeling when I got scammed by that shit insurance company. “I have no money to buy a new one”, I thought. And if I’d get to repair it it’ll be costly, on top of what I have to spend on new glasses. I didn’t know what to do. I had no choice. The day had to go on with me sighing all the time. Suddenly, I heard my phone ring. It’s not dead, but the screen is still off. I asked my brother if I could borrow his power bank. The thing is, I need to press the power button before I can enter my passcode. The power bank lit the screen and let me enter my passcode. I got a bit of relief, it wasn’t too bad again. Now I realized that it’s just the power button that’s broken. It also means that if my phone completely shuts down, I cannot turn it on again.

In the mall, we immediately had it checked. I can still get my warranty but I don’t have my receipt with me. The service center guys also said that if I have internal cracks, I can’t avail the warranty. I had it initially quoted for the worst case scenario – 9K. That’s half of the cost of my phone. I felt so lost and so vulnerable. I got out of the center quite dumbfounded, not knowing what to do next. I remember walking around the mall while keeping my tears from falling. I know I needed to buy my own power bank to unlock my phone. I was searching, and searching, while keeping myself from crying. That’s when I made the decision to message him. That was around 5:45 PM. “That’s still 9:45 PM in his time, a bit early for bed, he’ll reply right?” That moment I desperately needed someone I can talk to. The message double ticked - I assumed he knows that I messaged but chose not to reply. I felt so broken. I’m really by myself now. I blamed myself too for expecting. After I arrived home, I just went to bed immediately. “I want to end this miserable day.”

Monday. I got a message from him. Yep, I was right. He chose not to reply. He gave me a quite decent reason on why he did that. But I also realized, with that reply, it proved that I’m not his priority anymore. I messaged early, but still wasn’t enough. “Well you wouldn’t be, you’re not together anymore”, I reminded myself. Still glad he prayed for my health.

I decided not to go work today. I’m too tired and sad to do anything. My manager is gonna be shit mad because we have a very important meeting. I check Whatsapp a lot and see if he tried to message me more. I do see him go online, but doesn’t leave a message for me. Sometimes I just wonder if he checks it because of me or for someone else. But in the end, I decided to write this down. Just like old times, to let everything out without having to talk to someone else.

I hope I don’t end up being the old quiet self again. I hope my sun shines soon

[trashandstimcaf]

Niccus Character Intro

Character Chart

Character’s full name: Niccus Glitz

Reason or meaning of name: It’s flashy and attention grabbing

Character’s nickname: Nic, Jackass, Hey don’t you owe me credits

Reason for nickname: He’s an ass with a bit of a fondness for high stakes

Birth date: unknown

Physical appearance

Age: 26

How old does he/she appear: Early 20s

Weight: 250lbs

Height: 6’5

Body build: Broad shoulders, narrow waist, and very buff with a nice butt

Shape of face: Rectangular

Eye color: Purplish Blue depends on the lighting really

Glasses or contacts: he’s that asshole with 20/10 vision

Skin tone: Light Green

Distinguishing marks: His Mirialan facial tattoos and rosy cheeks

Predominant features: A big ol lantern jaw

Hair color: Greenish Black

Type of hair: it’s thick and wavy

Hairstyle: Big overdone pompadour

Voice: Smarmy

Overall attractiveness: He thinks he’s very attractive

Physical disabilities: none

Usual fashion of dress: like is a 50’s greaser wandered into swtor

Favorite outfit: Bold Hellion armor

Jewelry or accessories: he has a flip comb

Personality

Good personality traits: Highly affectionate and good humored

Bad personality traits: Greedy, bombastic, and cut throat

Mood character is most often in: Highly amused with himself

Sense of humor: What if i just ruin everything at once while saying a dumb one liner

Character’s greatest joy in life: Credits, Risha, Being with his moms

Character’s greatest fear: Dying in obscurity

Why? His mother was an infamous pirate that he strives to be like failing her memory terrifies him

What single event would most throw this character’s life into complete turmoil? Losing his crew

Character is most at ease when: He’s running a scam or gambling or even better both at once

Most ill at ease when: When he’s trying to be sincere

Enraged when: Someone steals his shit (looking at you Skavak)

Depressed or sad when: He thinks about his moms, he misses them

Priorities: Getting rich and getting laid

Life philosophy: Eh fuck it

If granted one wish, it would be: To be so damn rich he could buy the cartel, the empire, and the republic

Why? He strives to reclaim the Glitz name from the smear campaign done by the empire to downplay the damage his mother had done to it

Character’s soft spot: Languss Tuno, Bowdarr, Risha, and Akaavi

Is this soft spot obvious to others? Yep he’s pretty open with his affection

Greatest strength: He’s got the skill to carry him through when luck fails him

Greatest vulnerability or weakness: His obsessive search for fame and fortune has pushed away many people

Biggest regret: He feels like he didn’t tell his mom he loved her enough before she was killed

Minor regret: Not smacking Corso upside the head more

Biggest accomplishment: Claiming Port Nowhere as his own and becoming a Pirate feared by both the republic and the empire

Minor accomplishment: Convincing Risha to marry his dumbass

Past failures he/she would be embarrassed to have people know about: None

Why? He owns his failures so it doesn’t hurt when it’s thrown in his face

Character’s darkest secret: He was sad that Darmas betrayed him

Does anyone else know? Nope he keeps that to himself

Goals

Drives and motivations: stupid amounts of fame and wealth

Immediate goals: get rich

Long term goals: get really rich

How the character plans to accomplish these goals: Rob the empire and republic blind

How other characters will be affected: He’s pissed off plenty of sith, jedi, and bureaucrats

Past

Hometown: a space ship

Type of childhood: mostly spent on the run with his mother learning to shoot quick and talk quicker

Pets: A little reprogrammed probe droid

First memory: His mother pulling him into her lap and showing him how to steer

Most important childhood memory: His mother’s ship getting shot down in a dogfight between republic and empire ships

Why: It’s when his childhood ended for him

Childhood hero: His mother Ramilia Glitz

Dream job: Pilot

Education: Spotty he can fix a speeder, cheat at cards, shoot a blaster and patch up himself and crew after a fight, but his reading is pretty basic and his math is pretty much confined to adding and subtracting

Religion: He thinks the force is for the jedi and the sith to kill each other over

Finances: Depends his adopted mother’s where a smuggler and bounty hunter so income was spotty as a kid

Present

Current location: His Ship

Currently living with: His Crew

Pets: Same little droid

Religion: still thinks the force is for pompous jackasses with laser swords

Occupation: Smuggler

Finances: Changes day by day he’s a bit of a spendthrift

Family

Biological Mother: Ramilia Glitz

Relationship with her: Niccus worships her memory at this point, but before she died they were very close

Biological Father: Unknown

Relationship with him: Gives not a single fuck about him

Adoptive Mothers: Bantara and Telkali

Relationship with them: He loves them and would bring them several moons if they asked. He learned most of skills in fighting and basic medical care from the two women.

Spouse: Risha

Relationship with him/her: He’d die for her if necessary but he’d prefer a plan that gets them both out alive because he’d like to hear her call him an idiot for the rest of what he hopes is a long life

Children: none but took Guss under his wing

Relationship with them: He adores Guss’ ambition and appreciation of a good scheme

Other important family members: He considers Bowdarr and Akaavi to be family

Favorites

Color: Red

Least favorite color: Light Blue

Music: Anything with a beat that he can dance to is a okay with Niccus

Food: He’s not picky

Literature: He’s not big on reading unless it’s speeder schematics

Form of entertainment: Gambling

Expressions: Take a long walk out a short airlock

Mode of transportation: His space ship or custom built speeder

Most prized possession: His blaster

Habits

Hobbies: Playing cards and flirting

Plays a musical instrument? no

Plays a sport? No, what if he messed up his hair

How he/she would spend a rainy day: inside macking on Risha

Spending habits: Buys a lot of frivolous shit because he can

Smokes: sometimes

Drinks: yes

Other drugs: sometimes

What does he/she do too much of? Drinks a little more than he should

What does he/she do too little of? Consider the consequences of his actions

Extremely skilled at: Shooting, flying, and if you ask him flirting

Extremely unskilled at: Shutting up, reading, not being a jackass

Nervous tics: pulling out his flip comb and running it through his hair, licking his lips, pulling at his ear piecing, and clicking his tongue piercing against his teeth

Usual body posture: Relaxed and open

Mannerisms: hooks his thumbs into his belt loops often and preens too much

Traits

Optimist or pessimist? Joyfully pessimistic

Introvert or extrovert? Extrovert

Daredevil or cautious? Daredevil

Logical or emotional? Emotional

Disorderly and messy or methodical and neat? A complete slob

Prefers working or relaxing? Chillin like a villian

Confident or unsure of himself/herself? He’s a big pompous jackass

Animal lover? Sure if they don’t cramp his style

Self-perception

How he/she feels about himself/herself: He’s hiding a very scared man under the 50 layers of narcissistic jackassery

One word the character would use to describe self: Fantastic

One paragraph description of how the character would describe self: A man of action and excellent taste. With an ass to die for and a luscious locks. He’s just stupidly good looking and it's a burden he must bear.

What does the character consider his/her best personality trait? His clever wit

What does the character consider his/her worst personality trait? He’s just so damn pretty

What does the character consider his/her best physical characteristic? Everything

What does the character consider his/her worst physical characteristic? Nothing

How does the character think others perceive him/her: As a charming lovable rogue

What would the character most like to change about himself/herself: Nothing

Relationships with others

Opinion of other people in general: Depends on how attractive he finds them

Does the character hide his/her true opinions and emotions from others? Not often unless it’s to run a scam

Person character most hates: Skavak, Rogun, Darmas

Best friend(s): Risha, Akaavi, Bowdarr, Guss, Theron, Lana, Koth

Love interest(s): Risha, Theron

Person character goes to for advice: His moms

Person character feels responsible for or takes care of: Guss

Person character feels shy or awkward around: Theron and Risha make him a little twitterpated

Person character openly admires: Risha, Lana, Senya

Person character secretly admires: Scorpio

Most important person in character’s life before story starts: All his moms

After story starts: All his moms, Risha, Theron, Lana, and Koth

[orthographewrites]

MATIAS BELMONTE - HC CHART

CHARACTER CHART:

Character’s full name: Matías Felipe Belmonte Reason or meaning of name: The meaning of the name “Matias” is: “Gift of God”. Additional information: The boy name Matias is a biblical name, a Spanish and Finnish form of Matthew, from the Greek Matthaios, found in the New Testament of the Bible, used for the Evangelist and Apostle Matthew, the author of the first Gospel. Character’s nickname: None, thus far Reason for nickname: – Birth date: August 17

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE:

Age: 38 How old does he/she appear: About the same, I’d say. Height: 169 cm Eye color: Brown Glasses or contacts: Has to wear glasses whilst driving Skin tone: Olive Distinguishing marks: Has some older scars on his arms/wrist area from his teenage years of dealing with his OCD. Anxious scratching. He doesn’t really try to hide them but also doesn’t wave it around either. Predominant features: Freckles, his chin Hair color: Black Type of hair: Thick and wavy, almost curly Hairstyle: Usually has his hair styled up one way or another Disabilities: OCD, anxiety and color blindness Usual fashion of dress: Dapper, but in a casual sense. Wears clean and pressed shirts and dress pants. Tries not to overdo it with colors since he can’t see them. Favorite outfit: Opposite to what he usually wears though, Matías owns a rather colorful suit that he brings out on the occasional fancy meet and greet. It’s usually for exhibits and other tidbits when he feels like it’s more necessary for him to match up with his art. Jewelry or accessories: Wears a bracelet Pollux gave him after he moved in.

PERSONALITY:

Good personality traits: Generous, Loyal, Patient, Creative Bad personality traits: Compulsive, Anxious, Naïve, Insecure Mood character is most often in: He’s most often in a good mood Sense of humor: Depends on who he’s with, but usually he’s on the humble side. He likes to poke fun at social standards, gender roles and sometimes do those type of jokes you’d expect from an older person. His jokes are often harmless and doesn’t come at the expense of others. Character’s greatest joy in life: Art and his family Character’s greatest fear: Not being able to fend for said family. Why?: Being an artist is time consuming and sometimes doesn’t pay well. He’s the one that has offered his children a home and he wants them to be able to grow up in a stable environment. His OCD often play on this fear of his, especially when it comes to his own art and the level of perfection he feels he has to meet.   What single event would most throw this character’s life into complete turmoil?: His brother being released from jail, who knows what he can get up to or decide for his daughter. Character is most at ease when: At home in his studio, working or watching a movie with any of the kids. Most ill at ease when: Dealing with deadlines, talking about his older brother, when his OCD act up Enraged when: It’s really hard to make Matías enraged?? He’s usually annoyed or disappointed at best, you’d have to push it damn far for that. Depressed or sad when: Same with this Priorities: Getting an income and making sure the kids have a good childhood. Life philosophy: Matías generally likes to live by the golden rule, of giving what he wants given. If granted one wish, it would be: He’d like to get rid of his OCD. It’s not as big of a hindrance as it used to be, but still gets him in trouble sometimes. Why?: Because it gets in the way of him enjoying his own work and steals a lot of time. It basically forces him to go through a ritual before and after he works on his art pieces and if he messes up or if someone interrupts he could end up trashing the whole art piece – thus needing to start over. It’s expensive at that, art supplies don’t come cheap. Character’s soft spot: I feel like that’s obvious by now. Is this soft spot obvious to others?: Yes. Greatest strength: His patience and generosity towards people, he’s overall a great person to lean on if you got troubles or need help with anything. Greatest vulnerability or weakness: However, it’s also a weakness as it’s easy to take advantage of a soft soul and his brother already proved that point. Biggest regret: Letting his brother set up business through him, thus helping him network and possibly scam others. Minor regret: He always lowkey regrets throwing away his art work, but it cannot be helped. Biggest accomplishment: His career! Minor accomplishment: Keeping his house tidy with five people living in it Character’s darkest secret: Matías doesn’t really have a dark secret, unless you count his brother being in jail etc. Does anyone else know?: It was definitely in the news at the time of his arrest so I’d say a lot of people know if they’re from the area.

GOALS:

Drives and motivations: Besides his family and career, Matías is highly driven towards pushing more information about color blindness and making society more accessible to those that have a harder time reading and seeing colors. He does the occasional speech and educational seminar when he has time to spare. Immediate goals: Catch up with all his deadlines. Long term goals: Have a stable future, watch his kids grow up, work on his OCD. How the character plans to accomplish these goals: Hard work and dedication. How other characters will be affected: Not much, it’s mostly a thing of his own.

FAVORITES:

Color: Matías mostly see the world in tints of red with some green mixed between and thus he tend to appreciate his narrow color spectrum as a whole. Music: Honestly, he will play anything by Gloria Estefan and Tina Turner on repeat. Food: Can always go for a good meat stew or an avocado toast Literature: Perfume by Patrick Süskind, but usually tend to read magazines rather than books. Form of entertainment: Reads, paints, sometimes tries to further some skill he’s been trying out. Mode of transportation: Walks whenever he can, otherwise a car

HABITS:

Hobbies: Same as with his entertainment. Plays a musical instrument?: He doesn’t play one fully, but he has definitely tried a few out of curiosity. Flute, guitar and harmonica for some. Plays a sport?: Nope. How he/she would spend a rainy day: Probably working in his studio or helping the kids with their homework. He also tends to do some crafting with Lillian or listens to Pollux as he rants on about astrology. Spending habits: Stays within his budget, doesn’t buy thing he doesn’t need just for the sake of having it. Smokes: Water pipes yes. Drinks: On the occasion, not a huge fan. Other drugs: Only medication. What does he/she do too much of?: Dwell and worry about petty things. What does he/she do too little of?: Speak up and take space. Extremely skilled at: Painting Extremely unskilled at: Decorating Nervous tics: Scratching or pulling/fiddling Usual body posture: Seems relaxed but tend to sit and stand upright, open and welcoming Mannerisms: Calm and collected, pensive

TRAITS:

Optimist or pessimist?: Optimist Introvert or extrovert?: Ambivert Daredevil or cautious?: Cautious, but doesn’t stray away from trying new things Logical or emotional?: Logical but can let emotions override depending on the situation Disorderly and messy or methodical and neat?: Methodical and neat Prefers working or relaxing?: Working Confident or unsure of himself/herself?: Unsure Animal lover?: Yes! He doesn’t have time for animals but Natalie has a pair of rats and Pollux owns a hamster he tend to help out with.

SELF-PERCEPTION:

How he/she feels about himself/herself: Matías feels neutral when it comes to himself. He doesn’t hold hold himself to a standard of importance but neither is he riddled with self-hatred. He finds that he fills the role of support for a lot of people and quite often so enjoy it. One word the character would use to describe self: Caring What does the character consider his/her best personality trait?: Being level headed What does the character consider his/her worst personality trait?: Being naïve How does the character think others perceive him/her: Matías thinks other people view him as someone who has his whole life in order, someone who is lucky to have a career that he loves and a big family to rely on. He’s a person with a warm aura and wise thoughts to share. Most end up fond of him and find him reliable. What would the character most like to change about himself/herself: Besides the OCD etc I feel like Matías would like it if he gained some more courage and the ability to stand up to himself. He’s not really the type of person who wants to jump into conflicts or argue with people. Due to his childhood he prefers to stay low and out of the way of others.

RELATIONSHIPS WITH OTHERS:

Opinion of other people in general: He enjoys the company of others, especially those that hold similar values or ways of life. Does the character hide his/her true opinions and emotions from others?: Yes, as mentioned he doesn’t like conflicts and prefer to paint over or avoid a subject if it’s a cause of problem. He, of course, has matters he’s vocal about but generally so he keeps it on the low and on the friendly side. Person character most hates: He cannot stand his brother any longer. Person character goes to for advice: Miguel Person character feels responsible for or takes care of: His adoptive children Person character feels shy or awkward around: None, yet Person character openly admires: Open for plotting Person character secretly admires: Open for plotting

[biofunmy]

21 Things BuzzFeed News Tried And Loved In 2019

As the tech and business team at BuzzFeed News, we love stuff. Gizmos, gadgets, games, and gear. So here are some of the many things that we tried this year and wholeheartedly recommend.

1. Forest App — Free

Can you go half a minute without checking Twitter, or TikTok, or Facebook? I bet you didn’t make it through that sentence without gazing longingly at another tab. How does one get work done in such a distracting world? Some of us have given up. For the rest of us, there’s Forest. No, not the one with trees. Don’t get carried away. I’m talking about Forest, the app, and also a browser extension, that helps you concentrate. When you use Forest, you can choose to block certain websites, or stop using your phone, for 25 minutes intervals. When you start your countdown, Forest displays a small shrub, which grows until it’s a fully mature digital tree at the 25-minute mark. If you try to navigate to your forbidden websites — which you can whitelist or blacklist — you will kill your tree. And since you don’t want to be a tree murderer, you will concentrate and enrich your life, or your company, and live happily ever after.

—Alex Kantrowitz

2. Google Doodle Polls — Free

Toward the end of 2018, I attended my first meeting for what became the BuzzFeed News Union. When it was time to plan when we’d meet next, there came that inevitable murmur of everyone pulling up their calendars, throwing out a bunch of dates, and then someone else saying they weren’t free — but how about this day? Rather than let that agony go on any longer, I volunteered to just make a Doodle. “What’s a Doodle?” someone asked. “What’s a DOODLE?!” I probably shrieked back, stunned that so many people didn’t know about the productivity tool I’ve been loyally using for at least six years.

Doodle is pretty simple: It’s a scheduling tool that makes planning meetings ridiculously easy. You select a bunch of possible dates and send them to the attendees. They check off which dates they could do. At the end, you have a neat little tally showing which day most people are free.

But Doodle isn’t just for meetings! It’s also how I kept my book club a well-oiled machine this year. And there’s truly no better way to plan a dinner with that group of friends you’ve been meaning to catch up with. Maybe I sound like a square using a productivity tool to manage relationships, but it’s the simplest way to push past the “I’ve just been so busy!!” excuses and find time to see the people you love. I often find myself wondering what else I could be using Doodle for: A family reunion? A weekend trip with my college friends? And when will Doodle integrate with dating apps? Can it please be now?

Several months — and more than a dozen Doodle polls — later, we officially formed the BuzzFeed News Union. And while that was mostly thanks to the hard work of my colleagues, I like to think Doodle deserves a little bit of credit as well.

—Julia Reinstein

3. Apple EarPods — Free With an iPhone

At the end of 2017, I said that Apple’s AirPods were my favorite gadget of the year. At the end of 2019, I am retracting my opinion. AirPods are trash — after about two years, when the tiny battery in each one begins to die, and your $159 pair of earphones start sputtering out in minutes. Your only recourse is buying an expensive, out-of-warranty replacement or a brand-new pair from Apple.

So earlier this year, I abandoned my AirPods for something a lot less sexy: the simple white wired earbuds that came with my iPhone.

Sure, I can’t plug EarPods, which is what Apple officially calls them, into my MacBook, something that drives me nuts, and sure, I have wires dangling out of my ears like we all did not that long ago. But they also NEVER die on me in the middle of a podcast because the battery died, and I NEVER have to charge them, and if I ever lose them, new ones are $29 a pop, far less than what a single replacement AirPod costs. And they don’t sound any worse than AirPods.

When AirPods work, they are magical. But when they flake out, as AirPods inevitably will, they make the simple act of listening an experience fraught with anxiety — I could never predict when I’d hear the telltale chirp in my ears that meant the battery was depleted, sometimes just minutes after a full charge.

Now, I shove my trusty little EarPods into my ears and just go. Around me, millions of human beings swirl freely, unencumbered by wires, but hours later, my EarPods keeping playing and playing and playing. It’s magical — and it works every time.

—Pranav Dixit

4. Google Home Mini — $14.99 on Amazon

This year, for me, has been about investing some energy into making the devices and apps I regularly use fit into my life better. It’s weird that the technology’s default mode right now is changing human behavior rather than adapting to it. After moving to a new apartment, I realized the Google Home I’ve had for about two years really couldn’t cover multiple rooms, so on a lark I picked up a Google Home Mini and threw it in my bedroom. The two devices work seamlessly together. I bought a bunch of cheap Wi-Fi outlets and plugged some lamps into them in different rooms, which lets me turn lights on and off like I’m living on the starship Enterprise. I can move a song on Spotify around my apartment, from one Google Home to another. The Mini’s speaker is just the right size for a bedroom. In the morning, it tells me the weather and plays a few headlines. This all sounds extremely basic and it is, but it’s also exactly the right relationship I think we should have with smarthome technology — add a little bit at a time when you feel like it, see if you like it, casually adjust accordingly, have fun with it.

—Ryan Broderick

5. Feedly and Pocket Apps — $6/month and $4.99/month

Over the last four years, my personal internet had mostly shrunk down to just Twitter — which is by all accounts an irredeemably awful website full of the worst kind of content being created by the worst people on Earth. To fix this, I started paying for the RSS reader Feedly ($6 a month) and the read-it-later app Pocket ($4.99 a month). I mainly use Feedly for work. The paid version supports Google Alerts and works really well on mobile. Pocket, according to my phone’s screen time, is regularly in my top three most-used apps. I’ve used the free version for years, but the paid version has a really powerful search function, which means that whatever I put in there is easily findable, online and off. Pocket also has a Spotify-like algorithm that is always recommending me stuff to read based on what I’ve previously loaded in there (it used to be better, but sadly now it mostly just recommends Pocket originals which I’m kinda meh on). Both apps have helped me focus better, follow the news more easily, and actually enjoy the long-forgotten feeling of digging into something interesting on the internet. Read more websites in 2020!

—Ryan Broderick

6. Nintendo Switch — $298.99 on Amazon

I’ve technically had a Switch for about a year and a half, originally buying it for a European vacation with lots of train rides. In the last year, I really dove into its catalog of games. I’m by no means a Real Gamer — I’m 30 and the last system I owned was a Nintendo GameCube. That means I mainly just want to play a bunch of cartoony RPGs, remakes of old games, and a bunch of party games for when friends come over. I also travel a lot. All of these things make the Switch one of my favorite devices. Big games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Astral Chain, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and this month’s Pokémon Sword and Shield are genuine joys. And the Nintendo store has all kinds of cheap mid-sized games that you can just jump into whenever you want to kill some time, like Untitled Goose Game, Sonic Mania, and Hollow Knight. The console is also incredibly portable with a shockingly good battery life. Plus, Nintendo has for the most part avoided the toxic cultural wars that follow other video games. Instead, I can come home, lay around with my Switch, and spend a mindless couple hours trying to catch a shiny Galarian Rapidash in peace.

—Ryan Broderick

7. Instagram’s Close Friends Stories — Free

As someone whose private Instagram account is PG-13 at its absolute most risqué, I initially brushed off Instagram’s “close friends” stories feature as unnecessary. But Instagram has become my main means of sharing and communicating, my followers now include my boss, colleagues, aunts, married high school friends, acquaintances — as well as several dudes from Hinge who will apparently continue watching my stories until one of us dies. So the close friends feature has become my go-to. Whether I want to deliver an update while perhaps being a little drunker than advisable, share a meme without individually messaging it to seven different people, or just generally be a little sad/weird/vulnerable online, close friends has become both a micro version of a finsta and the realest version of myself I share anywhere on the internet. It’s some small comfort to take back a bit of privacy on social media — as much as privacy exists there at all, of course.

—Olivia Niland

8. Scam Goddess — Free

The summer of scam may be over, but scam springs eternal — and Laci Mosley keeps us informed on Earwolf’s Scam Goddess podcast. She’s tackled everything from Anna Delvey, aka the Soho Scammer, that nationwide Airbnb scam, and the absolutely bonkers Ukrainian orphan story since the podcast began in September. Mosley’s guests have included Paul F. Tompkins, Lauren Lapkus, and Nicole Byer, so while the show can’t help being hysterical, at least once per episode she delivers a line so strikingly, memorably, out-of-left-field funny that I find myself rewinding to listen over and over again. Scam Goddess is true crime without the ick factor, a bubblegum fun listen with a dose of education, and a breath of fresh air in my podcast feed.

—Olivia Niland

9. Silicone Case for Apple TV Remote — $7.45 on Amazon

This was the year I finally cut the cord on cable television, which meant I used the Apple TV remote a lot more than before. I have a fourth gen Apple TV (the 2015 release that was the first model with Siri), and my chief complaint is that the remote is incredibly slippery. Not only do I find it slippery in terms of trying to scroll with my thumb on the trackpad, but the damned thing flies out of my hand like a bar of soap in the tub. I literally marvel at it sometimes wondering how Apple sells something that is impossible to hold. Steve would never!

Here’s where the silicone sleeve comes in. It’s anti-slip, and it gives a tiny bit more girth and bulk to the remote to make it easier to hold. My only regret is buying it in black. I’d recommend getting a bright, easy-to-see color, because you know the Apple TV remote is always getting lost.

—Katie Notopoulos

10. Idagio Classical Music Streaming App — Free or $9.99/month

A few years ago, I wrote an article about the current state of the used CD market and discovered that one genre that still thrives on CD is classical. It isn’t just the better sound quality or that it’s for old people (OK, maybe that’s part of it), but rather that streaming apps like Spotify are terrible at organizing classical music. Unlike pop music, where Spotify’s algorithms and playlists can create amazing guesses on what you’d like to hear, classical is quite different.

The metadata is different — do you want to search by composer or conductor, orchestra or soloist? Also, many classical “albums” have several composers — a CD might be one orchestra’s concert of Mozart and Beethoven together, making an album search confusing. And there are dozens of versions of specific pieces recorded by different groups.

Idagio was recommended to me by a few people on Twitter after I tweeted complaining about the lack of good streaming for classical. The paid version (I signed up for a free week trial) was great — interesting curated playlists, good search, and recommendations — everything you’d want from a dedicated streaming app for classical. You can browse by composer, ensemble, conductor, soloist, genre, period, or even instrument. There are curated playlists from composers and soloists and even things like highlights from the London Symphony’s 2019–2020 season.

That said, I didn’t feel up to paying $9.99/month for yet another streaming service. I already pay for Spotify’s family plan, plus SiriusXM (which is soooo expensive, but I need my Howard Stern). So I canceled it after the free trial.

But this fall, Idagio released a free version. Not all the features of the paid version are available on the free version, crucially the ability to play a specific track. For example, you can’t play an exact Richard Strauss song, but you can play the Essential Richard Strauss radio playlist. Even so, it’s still the best free classical listening experience you can get.

––Katie Notopoulos

11. Curology — Subscriptions From $24.90/Month

Perhaps it was naive of me, but I assumed that once I got out of my teenage years, I wouldn’t have to worry about acne. And then I hit my late twenties, and BOOM — some sort of cursed second puberty, complete with painful cyst-like zits that I couldn’t remember having as a youth. I tried every “miracle” mask, face wash, toner, acne cream, oil, etc. Nothing helped.

In May, after years of extreme self-consciousness every time I had a flare-up, I stumbled across a thread on the /r/SkinCareAddiction subreddit about Curology, a subscription mail-order acne medication service. Since I had nothing to lose, I gave it a try. A week and a half later, I got a little white bottle in the mail that literally changed my life.

It’s been six months and the hormonal acne on my chin that I thought I’d be cursed with forever is all but nonexistent. The discoloration marks on my chin and around my nose have begun to fade and my skin tone is even in a way that it’s never been before. When I get a zit or two, they aren’t painful and they’re gone after a few days of my normal cleaning and Curology routine. My prescriber has answered every question I’ve had promptly and I have yet to have any problems with my shipment — and I still can’t believe I’m only paying $40 every other month for something that’s had such a profound change on my skin and day-to-day existence.

—Ellie Hall

12. SoFi Banking App — Free

Banks suck. I like money just fine, but I’ve always resented the institutions that hold onto the money for me. For years, I had a checking account at Wells Fargo, which, thanks to a massive scandal in which the company opened at least 3.5 million “potentially unauthorized” accounts, I now very much regret. Then I put my money in a local credit union, which somehow meant I was never able to access it unless I went to one specific office in San Francisco that never seemed to be open. So when I needed to open a new account earlier this year, you can imagine my trepidation — send my money to an evil empire with a UX from 1995 or to a rickety storefront in some basement, which also somehow had a UX from 1995?

Enter SoFi, the startup lending company which launched a mobile banking and investment app in February. I opened an account and now do all my finances from the free mobile app. It’s great. It’s a money market account, so I earn a small amount on my deposit and can easily pay bills, transfer money (similar to Venmo), and invest in the low-fee index funds dear to my heart. The UX looks like it was designed in this decade, and the investment side isn’t cluttered up with a bunch of unintelligible quant gibberish. (Looking directly at you, E-Trade.)

My eyes aren’t closed. SoFi seems to have previously been a terrible place to work. I sincerely hope the culture is better for employees under new CEO Anthony Noto, because I really like this app. Now if I could just convince my boomer psychotherapist to let me pay him on it instead of writing paper checks.

—Scott Lucas

13. Frogstagram — Free

Frogs: They’re usually small, sometimes green, and always delightful to follow on Instagram.

I stumbled upon Frogblr, the unofficial community of frog-owning Tumblr users, in early 2018. In the months following that, I realized many of my favorite frog blogs also had frog-themed Instagram accounts. So in 2019, I fully committed and now follow more than a dozen Instagram accounts operated by frog owners.

There’s @stickyfrogs, which features frogs named Gumby, Jeans, Voight, and Tiny. I also love @moonnight.17, which has wonderfully TINY frogs, as well as small snakes and geckos. I’m also a fan of @frog.wizard_, which has extremely earnest frog-themed memes. Also, @the_froggy_momma is great. She features dozens of different amphibians and reptiles, including frogs named Buttercup, Bertha (who has three legs), Norman, and Darla.

Of course, the frogs are incredibly cute. I love their big eyes and oddly shaped little bodies. But it’s equally joyful to watch their owners livestream the frogs, call them goofy names, and brag about everything they do (which is, in all honesty, not very much). It’s very sincere. I’d highly recommend going through the #frogsofinstagram tag and findings some accounts to follow.

—Caroline Haskins

14. Nuking All the Digital Evidence From Before My Haircut — Free

Bangs are not just my haircut. They are a crucial part of my personality. There are two stages of my life: before bangs and after. If you ever have the misfortune of glancing at my giant forehead, you will understand.

I got bangs in January 2017. Tragically, that is not very long ago. So I decided this year to delete and untag myself in any Instagram or Facebook photos before bangs. I also deleted all of my tweets in January 2018, which would have included any images of me from before I got my haircut.

This may sound dramatic. However, I promise it is not. If I’m honest, this isn’t just about liking my current haircut. It’s about having some control over the ways that I’m seen online. I keep the number of public pictures of me to an absolute minimum, and exercising some private control over my image feels like a natural extension of that instinct. Now with bangs.

—Caroline Haskins

15. TikTok — Free

It’s more than just funny, although it’s funnier than almost anything on television. TikTok is as much a portal into the everyday lives of other people as Chatroulette ever was, but without the expectation to engage with what you’re seeing. It’s the only social app on which I follow only delightful strangers, don’t consume content from anyone I know, nor feel pressure to post content myself. TikTok shows me a greater diversity of race, class, and, yes, age than any other platform I currently have access to. I’ve watched videos made by Mennonite teenagers, by hippie grandmas, by immigrant families. TikTok isn’t all jokes; I’ve watched girls do interpretive dances to the soundtrack of abusive boyfriends and screaming parents. I’ve watched videos expressing queer pride, native pride, ethnic pride. I’ve watched hours of TikToks; I’ve watched TikToks about being a 30-year-old woman addicted to TikTok. I conceal the extent of my TikTok watching from my partner.

I used to be addicted to Instagram, scrolling endlessly and closing the app only to immediately reopen it seconds later. But now, that pink and orange neon square doesn’t beckon the way it used to. I’d rather be watching TikToks, which pass no judgment on my baking, never make me wonder if I’m taking enough vacations, buying enough candles, or wearing fuzzy enough sweaters. What TikTok offers is comedic, absurd, and intimate. The only problem is now I need headphones in public, and I might be under surveillance by the Chinese state.

—Caroline O’Donovan

16. Send to Kindle for Google Chrome — Free

I’m trying to spend less time looking at my phone and have become obsessed with looking at my screen time stats (in the iPhone’s settings app). My most-used app, other than Instagram, is always Safari or Pocket, because that’s where I read long articles — actually, where I try to read long articles, but never finish in one sitting because some news alert or push notification has pulled me away from the story.

In an attempt to create a more distraction-free reading space, I’ve started to send any article of length to my Kindle, which has a black-and-white screen that’s more comfortable on the eyes. This Chrome extension makes it so easy. It grabs all the text on the page and zooms it right over to my e-ink reader in less than a minute. And it really works! I plowed through an entire ~3,800-word piece without reading one incoming WhatsApp and loved every minute of it!! (BTW, the fantastic, multithousand-word story is by my colleague Katherine Miller, and you will not regret spending 15 uninterrupted minutes on it.)

—Nicole Nguyen

17. Tile Pro — $35 and Tile Sticker — $40 2-pack

I’ve been yelling at people to get Tile’s Bluetooth-enabled thing finders, for years, but with the caveat that the device’s biggest flaw is the way it handles its battery, which is glued onto the device’s circuit board and can’t be replaced. Not great for the environment.

Well, the latest version of the Tile Pro finally has a replaceable battery!!! This is huge because the Tile really is a wonderful little doodad for helping you find keys, your kid’s fave toy, etc., and now you don’t have to throw away the entire device when it runs out of juice a year from now.

There’s another new Tile, called Sticker, which unfortunately doesn’t have a replaceable battery, but it lasts three years, which is very good for an always-on Bluetooth device. It’s also small enough to put on my AirPods case and stick discreetly on my bike. I haven’t lost either yet — but I am a huge fan of these tiny things.

—Nicole Nguyen

18. Streaming Co-Op — Free

It has been active for years, but in 2019 my streaming cooperative really began to shine. The idea is so obvious that you may be in one already: a group of friends — comrades, one might call them — who each subscribe to one streaming service and share the login details with all the others.

As it currently stands, I pay for Netflix, a friend in San Francisco pays for Hulu and another here in New York pays for HBO Now. We all pay for Amazon Prime, because Amazon. The co-op is currently onboarding a fourth member who will pay for Disney+. Scale!

Sharing passwords like this might go against the fine print of the average streaming user agreement, but it doesn’t seem to be against the spirit of them — most allow two and sometimes four seperate devices, in completely different locations, to be streaming simultaneously. Unless we’re talking about a situation where every member of the co-op is watching the same service at the same time (Does this really happen in a post-GoT world??), you should be just fine.

And given the trend, this might be the only workable model for watching stuff in the 2020s: Apple, Netflix, Amazon, HBO, and Hulu will all have exclusive shows you can’t see anywhere else, while Disney and its fellow content mega-giants will be using their vast libraries to funnel people into their own platforms. In a world with 8 to 10 streaming services each demanding 12 bucks a month — and we’re not even including cable channels, for those who want live sports or CNN or whatever — a co-op is the only game in town. Viewers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your passwords.

—Tom Gara

19. Buy Nothing Project — Free

On Jan. 1, 2019, Netflix released Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, a reality series consisting of eight episodes of sweet lifestyle porn. The smiling, soft-spoken, petite host gently floats into people’s messy, cluttered homes, like an organizational Mary Poppins, and — from the shambles — helps them create a peaceful space to live and breathe and be joyful. Deep. There were moments during the show, however, when I wondered what exactly happened to all that perfectly usable stuff that Kondo helped them thank in a moment of ritual silence before tossing it into a trash bag in the driveway. Is it all headed to the landfill before ending up in crushed shards in some whale’s guts or up some turtle’s nostril?

One answer to this problem is the Buy Nothing Project, a network of local groups on Facebook started in 2013 “to quickly get rid of things that are cluttering their lives, or simply to save money by getting things for free.” The groups — which have popped up around the world — are organized by city, sometimes even by neighborhood. Some members post items they’re ready to “gift” to their neighbors, and others post things they need, in case anyone happens to be looking to expel that object from their house.

People gift clothes they no longer want or that don’t fit, furniture that doesn’t work in a new apartment (even a fireplace), storage and packing boxes, cosmetics and other beauty products that aren’t exactly the color or scent they were looking for, kitchen gadgets and spices they don’t use — the list goes on. One popular member regularly gives away extra bagels (local hero!). My most recent acquisition was a bunch of baby spider plants from an indoor gardening enthusiast who is propagating her plants and who — it turns out — lives across the street from me. It can be a nice way to meet neighbors with shared interests, which is part of the project’s ethos: “A gift economy’s real wealth is the people involved and the web of connections that forms to support them.”

I’ve found it to be an especially fabulous resource for new parents like me, since babies grow out of (or grow tired of) everything in just a few short months — onesies, shoes, toys, feeding gear — and a Buy Nothing group creates a pipeline to people in a similar life stage as you and who also live near you. It’s way easier than holding a yard sale and preferable to plopping a box of stuff on the sidewalk with a “FREE” sign and hoping for the best.

Life is fluid and ever-changing, but most of our stuff outlives its utility. I’ve really embraced the idea of letting things go when I no longer need them. My place isn’t Marie Kondo–level tidy — and probably never will be — but a Facebook group that facilitates free, no-landfill decluttering really can spark joy.

—Venessa Wong

20. #great-tweets — Free

This feels kind of like cheating because this isn’t a product that normies can access. Also it’s not new: I’ve been using it for the last two-and-a-half years at BuzzFeed News, when in my first week here someone showed me its greatness and my world perspective was forever changed. With this product — or more aptly place — the 473 people who can see it will on any given day find memes about Baby Yoda, a listing for a toddler’s (unused) Minion coffin, wedding photos from the holy matrimony between two water coolers, and screenshots of an influencer tanning their perineum, a.k.a. “buttchugging sunlight”. And that was all just on a random Monday in November.

This wonderful watering hole of content is known within BuzzFeed as #great-tweets, a Slack channel open to everyone at the company where folks pop in to just share really good tweets. There’s little conversation — save for the emoji reactions that fellow great-tweeters use to express their gratitude or disgust — and each day it’s a continuous stream of hits, 10 to 15 of the funniest, weirdest, nastiest things taken from the blue bird hellsite that most of us here spend too much time on. Maybe the tweets have been ripped from another platform (TikTok is a pretty popular source these days). Maybe the tweets have already gone superviral. But they are our great tweets, and we love them.

While I feel a little dirty sharing the existence of my colleague’s secret space with the public, #great-tweets is just that good. After spending some pretty terrible days online at work, I’ve spent many a night lying in bed laughing my ass off because someone shared a tweet with a hypothetical conversation between a cat and an octopus in a standoff, or a cow wearing a VR headset. It’s one of the few things that I know can consistently bring me joy on the web and I hope when I go, I too will be memorialized in the channel.

—Ryan Mac

21. Neato Botvac D7 — $599.99

One of the best things to happen to my family in 2019 was Kevin, the robotic vacuum cleaner. Kevin is a BOTVAC D7, and he is a cleaning monster in a household of 4 sloppy humans, 2 sloppier dogs, and a cat aghast at their collective sloppiness. When my home is dirty, I summon Kevin from my phone. Kevin is always ready to clean. He is very good with dust and dirt, and — crucially — his blade-and-bristle brush makes short work of dog hair, which is in issue in home with 200 lbs. of doggo, where things can go from relatively clean to dog park very quickly. When Kevin gets stuck or encounters an insurmountable obstacle, he messages me asking for help. It feels stupid to say it, but I find this adorable. Part of this is because that help typically involves picking Kevin up like a baby and relocating him to an easier navigate area. And part of it is because afterwards Kevin will message me again noting — like a dorky little grade school cartographer — that he has updated his map of my home. Two things here: 1. Kevin uses exclamation points! 2. I can use this map to create zones for targeted cleaning (kitchen, dog bowl area) and also out-of-bounds areas for Kevin to ignore (dog bed, dog). My home is a small one, so Kevin’s advertised battery life of 120 minutes has always been plenty. He automatically switches cleaning modes when running on wood, carpet, or tile. Typically, there is no (to little) visible dog hair on those surfaces when Kevin is in town. Kevin’s lone flaw, as best I can tell, is that his dirt bin can be easily overwhelmed during spring “blow,” but in a house with these two, who wouldn’t be.

—John Paczkowsi

Sahred From Source link Technology

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[fox-household]

Act 5: The Countess’ Request, Chapter 1

This is short. Short chapters are a thing, makes life easier for me. Year 12 hard. Not much else to say. Though this ended up making me really sad for Sci, something I never realised for him. Anyway finally she’s here after all this time, it’s rude to keep a countess waiting after all. 

FIRST, PREVIOUS, NEXT, INFO

‘’Asgore, wrench please.’’, Sci’s voice came from under the sink, reaching his hand out behind with even taking a glance. The sound of metal clanging was quite the invasion of everyone’s eardrums as the kid rifled through the unorganised toolbox, finally pulling out the aforementioned tool and handing it to the skeleton. ‘’Thank you’’. ‘’Soooo… you just want to use one of your few days of spare time to go around fixing things, do you ever stop working?’’, Asgore asked curiously, partly to hide the boredom of only being there to pass tools to the other. ‘’Well yeah kid, just want to help out and might as well do that with the excess of energy I’m feeling at the moment. Besides, didn’t you come here to help Al fix up the place?’’, His tone was one of amusement that only went along with his casual humming as he worked. ‘’That’s true I guess, just it turned out there was a lot of stuff that I couldn’t do… apparently cleaning didn’t end up fixing everything.’’ ‘’Well some of it is to dangerous for a kid like you, electrical sutff for example, which is my next project.’’ Asgore’s brow furrowed, ‘’I don’t believe you’re allowed to do that either’’ ‘’Says who?’’ ‘’Al did’’ ‘’She did not say that’’ ‘’She did too, I heard her yesterday, ‘leave it to me or someone with more electrical expertise’ were her words exactly I believe’’. Sci groaned and moved out from under the sink to look at Asgore with a slight grouchy look, ‘’Well why the heck not, I work in a state of the art lab, I work with tech that surpasses home electrical systems, I have dealt with things beyond the comprehension of those that built this. I’m sure I can damn well change some wires around in the wall, just watch me.’’ The kid’s face was doubtful, but he decided it was best not to argue. Any argument he could’ve had would have been interrupted anyway as a phone went off, Sci’s mobile device on top of the kitchen bench let out a rather jazzy ringtone. Sliding a small distance away from the sink, Sci then stood and picked up the phone while Asgore moved to check under the sink himself. He sighed as he found it was a blocked number, should he even answer such a secretive call? Though he soon found it was more of a question about whether or not his curiosity would forgive him if he didn’t answer. Finally, with a determined acceptance, he answered.

‘’Hello, whose this here?’’ ‘’Oh hello Sci, it’s been quite a while’’. The caller was that of a woman, her words sounded like they were carefully chosen, yet her voice was lathered with an alluring feel, a girl that most definitely wanted something. Though it wasn’t surprising considering who the voice belonged to as it also came with a sense of dread and cold chill down his spine. ‘’…Hello Muffet… Underkeep right? what brings you calling?’’, his tone was dull and tempered, he had to keep his feelings in check, what type of trouble could he possibly be in? It had to be Keep! Muffet because she called him Sci, anyone from his universe knew him as Sans. ‘’Would you look at that, did you research me after all this, that’s quite sweet of you. It’s a real shame isn’t it? We became quite friendly back in those old days, but then we lost contact. Should’ve really done something about that I think’’. The voice on the other end didn’t change disposition at all. He could only believe she was lying, after the incident he was sure she cut any sort of contact with everyone, at least he hadn’t heard of anyone talking to her or even knowing where she was, at least that’s what the others told him. What on earth was he saying, it didn’t matter, why did he even care that much two years ago? Why did he even feel the need to wonder where she went? Muffet was talking to him now and he had to focus, who knew what scam she was going to pull on him. ‘’Yeah for sure, but what’s the real reason you called?’’ ‘’Well that’s rude of you, why must you be so blunt? I’m quite astonished that even you’re showing signs of being a ruffian.’’ ‘’…Muffet...?’’, there was barely an effort to contain the bite behind his word, something he felt he was going to regret with the coming short silence, luckily for him it seemed nothing truly came of it. ‘’Well you see Sci, as much as I feel embarrassed and vulnerable to say this, and you know I hate both of those things, I need a place to stay. I need a roof over my head. I need a place to… crash as you folk say’’. ‘’What?! No, that’s not happening. You can’t stay here at all.’’, He couldn’t believe what he was hearing, she wanted to stay with him? Why? Was he dreaming? No it didn’t matter, if she came it would put his substance use at risk, he couldn’t afford her to be here, any other reason be damned. ‘’Oh really? Let’s not be unreasonable here! Isn’t it nice to be helpful to a friend in desperate need? A few months is all I really want.’’ Her tone suddenly became a little more aggressive, a sense frustration was pervasive. ‘’No, no, no. You’re not taking a step in here, especially not one lasting that long. There’s no way you’re in desperate need, surely you have others to stay with’’. ‘’I called you because out of all the people I know, I deemed you the most reliable and the one who’d most likely take me in.’’ ‘’Well sorry, but you don’t just god damn ignore any sort of contact from someone for two years and then show up asking for a home.’’, a small amount of personal anger seemed to come out of the general annoyed tone through that sentence There was silence on the other end and then the tone on the other end changed to a tone he couldn’t quite recognise, something closer to confusion and concern, something so very unlike Muffet, ‘’What are you talking about Sci… why were you trying to …?’’ ‘’You know what just stop… ugh, it’s not like I could invite you anyway even if I wanted to so better luck next time.’’ Her voice returned to normal except it was a little more serious in nature. ‘’You can’t, why is that?’’ Sci cursed himself for letting that be known and even more he cursed the sudden stroke of bad luck that came in the form of Asgore speaking. ‘’Sci, you alright there?’’, the goat’s concerned look would’ve been touching in any other circumstance if it wasn’t for the spider on the phone. ‘’Was that Asgore?’’, she asked curiously, a rising volume of glee was appearing in her voice. ‘’Yes, thank you, I’m alright’’, he then went back to putting his attention onto the call, ‘’Maybe it was it doesn’t matter.’’ ‘’Ahuhuhuhu~ I think it does matter very much, I think that was a very a valuable piece of information. I’ll be seeing you soon, have a nice day dearie’’. ‘’Wait Muffet don’t.’’, but by that point it was to late and she was gone. ‘’What’s happening, is someone bothering you?’’, Asgore stood up next to the skeleton, wondering what was going on. ‘’Yes, I suppose you could say that… appears like trouble might be coming.’’, Sci sighed, being left wondering what to make of Muffet’s declaration.

[sheisrelationshipanxiety]

He was the first to listen to me.

I’d always tell myself that this is where it all started for me. My anxiety definitely manifested largely through this experience, but this can’t be the only reason why.

I was 14, 15? Perhaps. I come from an extremely provincial town where our population is probably the size of most normal high school populations. For scale, I graduated with only 80 people in my senior class. I was the only student of asian descent in my entire school. It was hard growing up where I was from. I had friends, but I was often mentally alone. No one understood me, and thus I was outcasted for who I was. My life was very mundane, until he came into it and stirred up a storm. 

This story is a sad and silly story about an internet crush that went very south. 

I started an Instagram page around this time, it wasn’t anything special. Just awkward photos of myself that I thought were cute at the time, but in hindsight they were outright cringey as fuck. I was that asian girl that liked to take cute photos and model after that ulzzang theme, which is a Korean word meaning “best face” or “good-looking”. These ulzzang models would have contact lenses that made their iris bigger (I never actually went this far thank god), eyeliner to make their eyes appear puffy because somehow that was cute, and very minimal facial expressions that were just...well cute. It was a regular day where I continued to post these awfully adorable photos. However, this time, I received a special comment. 

“you’re so cute!”

His fake name is Roy. Damn was he handsome. Perfectly exemplifying the desired image of a male ulzzang. If you are still confused by this term and by what these models look like, simply look it up and you will catch my drift. We kept commenting in my comment section like a bunch of losers, but nevertheless, it gave me butterflies. He was so handsome, and he noticed me. My 14 year old self was enthusiastic. We exchanged kik usernames (wow this was further back than I thought) and started to chat over the app. I learned these things about him. He was kind, honest (italicized for a reason...wait for it), handsome, talented, uni student, lived internationally, and came from a family with a lot of money. He sounds perfect right? I’m not a gold digger, I don’t care for the money, but I was 14 at the time and it was just an added bonus. Plus, I was so traditionally asian when I was younger. We are always trying to look for a secure partner for the future, and that’s of course in financial terms as well. We spoke back and forth everyday. He lived in Singapore, so the time difference was quite dramatic. He fed me compliments that made my little heart soar. 

I come from a very traditional asian family where not many words of affirmation and appreciation are exchanged. It just simply isn’t a part of our culture. The children are expected to be the best, and any slip up resulted in a very harsh berating from their parents. I didn’t have the best childhood because of this. I was always walking on eggshells, waiting to be yelled at. Waiting to be told that I was worthless because I grabbed the wrong soysauce off of the shelf. This cultural habit of my parents translates into emotional abuse here in the states. It wasn’t until I was much older when I realized how much it fucked me up. I was a small, insecure, and brittle teenager. My parents pushed me to be perfect, while simultaneously uttering insults under their breath any chance they could. Their parents and family members treated them like this, so why would they raise their children any different? We couldn’t communicate about our problems because there was no way to do that. We had no form of communication. My parents were so traditional in the worst way possible that they never understood how I felt, and they always thought I was ungrateful because I had depression and major insecurities. I would tell them that I was sad because people in school didn’t understand me and my dad would say “Get over it. It doesn’t matter.” I’d tell my mother I was depressed and she would tell me “You have nothing to be depressed about. I was depressed when I lived in poverty in Asia, you are so ungrateful.” In the hierarchical sense, children weren’t allowed to speak to their parents about many things because it would be a form of “talking back”, especially if the parents disagreed.

That’s why Roy had me hooked. He was giving me these words of affirmation and constantly listened to my feelings when I struggled with my family. He had me wrapped around his finger. I felt like for once someone was there to listen to me. He was my little secret. He felt like a warm blanket freshly out of the dryer, He felt like hot chocolate on a chilly day outside. I’d message him while I was in class, when the kids were being stupid, being bullies, he was there for me. I was that one girl smiling at her phone in the back. He really made me happy. But then everything started to go downhill from here. 

He claimed that he started to feel sick, so sick that he was often passing out and was in need of medical assistance. As you can understand, this troubled me deeply. I suggested that he go and get his health checked-out. He returned from his appointment to tell me that he was diagnosed with - a brain aneurysm. “What the hell is that?” my very confused 14 year old self thought. After much research I realized how serious those conditions were. He would get major migraines everyday. They would hurt so bad that he would disappear for days because he would be in the hospital. My whole world was falling apart. What would I do without him? We have never spoken on the phone, or have we ever facetimed. It wasn’t him, I just never suggested it. We planned a lot of things for the future. We wanted to meet, eat ice cream together, talk about our lives, embrace, and just comfort one another. He didn’t have a supportive family either. They were always gone working, because his family was so focused on making money. He was raised by a nanny, and she was like his own mother. He had many insecurities in his life, despite the nice cars, nice clothes, nice haircuts. I have a soft spot for people who need someone there for them. It’s always been in my nature to nurture others. At the time, I really believed that I was in love with him. He was all I knew when it came to boys, and he was so kind to me. 

“You’re the most beautiful girl I have ever seen.” “I want to help you realize how amazing you are.” “I think all of your insecurities make you perfectly imperfect to me.”

 We go back and forth for many weeks regarding his brain aneurysm. I stayed up many nights crying and praying for things to be alright for him. I’d cry and wonder why life was so unfair. The one time I find someone who seemed to really care about me, to seem to really listen to me, life wants to take them away. His aneurysm progressively got worst and eventually he had to get surgery. Surgeries for this type of problem are extremely risky. He briefed me over what percentage of living he had, when the surgery was, how long it would take him to recover, what they would do to him. It was all so awful. I felt so alone, I was so young, I couldn’t do anything to help him, certainly not through a screen. I was invested in him. He doesn’t message me for a while after that, and when I confronted him about it he said he didn’t want to drag me into this problem. That I should “move on” so that I wouldn’t suffer. But when I was stubborn and insisted on staying put, he tells me the worst thing imaginable.

“Wait for me. If I make it, I will come back for you. I promise.”

So I did. Days turned into weeks, which turned into months, and eventually years. I never heard from him again. I was utterly heartbroken. Cold. Empty. He left me, just like that...and in the worst way possible. For the longest time I thought he died, I thought that the operation was unsuccessful. But then, I was shrouded by doubt, insecurity. What if he left me because I wasn’t enough? What if there is another girl? What if this was a scam this whole time? What is wrong with me? Why won’t he love me? Is he alive? Is he dead? Where is he? Is he okay? This became one of the darkest moments of my life. I was so vulnerable, so alone because I couldn’t talk to anyone. All I had were my thoughts, my nasty thoughts fighting me. My parents words turned into my own as I tore myself apart. My chest felt heavy, my head hurt with all of the insulting words, my heart burned like fire. 

Of course I wasn’t good enough. But what if it was real? What if he died? No, I’m just a loser. I hate myself. 

This type of thinking was chaotic and toxic. I cried every night for months, I lost all of my self confidence, the little that I had. I was a mess and I felt deep down inside there was no way to fix it. One night, I distinctly remember crying by my bed. I was bawling, all alone, frustrated at the world and at myself. I made a promise and said

“You will never be with another man. You will never trust another man. You will never be in a relationship.”

That statement still stands today. I started something completely and totally irreversible. This situation, my childhood, all of my traumas, come together to form the most confusing, painful, and frustrating case of relationship anxiety.

I found my closure in this story a few years later. Two girls reached out to me through my instagram DMs. Both at different times, and both unaffiliated with one another. They tell me that they were his ex. One girl was just as confused as I was about what happened for him. I found out that he was dating her during the time that he and I were talking. But then the other girl finally fills me in. She tells me that she was his current girlfriend and that she had answers to end my restless inquiries. She tells me that he’s known for talking to multiple girls, that she was trying to change him. She told me that he is not who he said he was, that he was a different guy disguised as whoever was in those pictures. He was a catfish. But she fell in love with the real guy. However, I am convinced they were both kind of crazy. He was awful to her, distrustful, flakey, yet she loved him and couldn’t leave him. I found an out to that situation and finally received my closure. Years later I finally know it was all bullshit, and it really fucking sucked because the damage had been done. An attitude becomes a habit, and there was no way I was breaking this habit anytime soon.

[heididaily]

R E G R E T S

regret (verb)--feel sad, repentant, or disappointed over (something that has happened or been done, especially a loss or missed opportunity)."she immediately regretted her words"synonyms:be sorry about, feel contrite about, feel remorse about/for, be remorseful about, rue, repent (of), feel repentant about, be regretful at/about regret (noun)--a feeling of sadness, repentance, or disappointment over something that has happened or been done."she expressed her regret at Virginia's death"synonyms:remorse, sorrow, contrition, contriteness, repentance, penitence, guilt, compunction, remorsefulness, ruefulness

Originlate Middle English: from Old French regreter ‘bewail (the dead),’ perhaps from the Germanic base of greet

twitter @Trump_Regrets 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/10/18/the-25-biggest-regrets-in-life-what-are-yours/#1e9854824d8f 

1. Working so much at the expense of family and friendships.

2. Standing up to bullies in school and in life.

3. Stayed in touch with some good friends from my childhood and youth. 

4. Turned off my phone more/Left my phone at home.

5. Breaking up with my true love/Getting dumped by them.

6. Worrying about what others thought about me so much.

7. Not having enough confidence in myself.

8. Living the life that my parents wanted me to live instead of the one I wanted to.

9. Applying for that "dream job" I always wanted.

10. Been happier more. Not taken life so seriously.

11. Gone on more trips with the family/friends. 

12. Letting my marriage break down.  

13. Taught my kids to do stuff more.

14. Burying the hatchet with a family member or old friend.

15. Trusting that voice in the back of my head more. 

16. Not asking that girl/boy out. 

17. Getting involved with the wrong group of friends when I was younger. 

18. Not getting that degree (high school or college). 

19. Choosing the practical job over the one I really wanted. 

20. Spending more time with the kids.

21. Not taking care of my health when I had the chance.  

22. Not having the courage to get up and talk at a funeral or important event. 

23. Not visiting a dying friend before he died. 

24. Learning another language. 

25. Being a better father or mother.

wikipedia

Regret is a negative conscious and emotional reaction to personal past acts and behaviors. Regret is often a feeling of sadness, shame, embarrassment, depression, annoyance, or guilt, after one acts in a manner and later wishes not to have done so. Regret is distinct from guilt, which is a deeply emotional form of regret — one which may be difficult to comprehend in an objective or conceptual way. In this regard, the concept of regret is subordinate to guilt in terms of its emotional intensity. By comparison, shame typically refers to the social (rather than personal) aspect of guilt or (in minor context) regret as imposed by the society or culture (enforcement of ethics, morality), which has substantial bearing in matters of (personal and social) honor.

It is also distinct from remorse, which is more direct and emotional form of regret over a past action that is considered by society to be hurtful, shameful, or violent. Unlike regret, it includes a strong element of desire for apology to others rather than an internal reflection on one's actions, and may be expressed (sincerely or not) in order to reduce the punishment one receives.

Regret can describe not only the dislike for an action that has been committed, but also, importantly, regret of inaction. Many people find themselves wishing that they had done something in a past situation.

Opportunity principle[

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]

Opportunity principle defines people's biggest regrets as those marked by the greatest opportunity for corrective action.[2] When the opportunity to improve conditions is nonexistent, cognitive processes proceed to mitigate regret. Education is the forerunner of what we regret most because it is seen as something where circumstances could be changed: "In contemporary society, education is open to continual modification throughout life. With the rise of community colleges and student aid programs in recent decades, education of some sort is accessible to nearly all socioeconomic groups."[2]

Regret pushes people toward revised decision making and corrective action that often bring improvement in life circumstances. A study measured regret in accordance to negative reviews with service providers. It was concluded that regret was an accurate predictor of who switched providers. Regret can be seen as an evolutionary development. As more intense regret is experienced, the likelihood of initiating change is increased. Consequently, the more opportunity of corrective action available, the larger the regret felt and the more likely corrective action is achieved. People learn from their mistakes.[3]

The lost opportunity principle[

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In response to the opportunity principle, the lost opportunity principle directly opposes its views. The lost opportunity principle states that regret should intensify, not diminish, when people feel that they could have made better choices in the past but now perceive limited opportunities to take corrective action in the future. "People who habitually consider future consequences (and how they may avoid future negative outcomes) experience less, rather than more, intense regret after a negative outcome." [4] This principle offers another reason as to why education is the most regretted aspect in life. Education becomes a more limited opportunity as time passes. Aspects such as making friends, becoming more spiritual, and community involvement tend to be less regrettable which makes sense because these are also aspects in life that do not become limited opportunities. As the opportunity to remedy a situation passes, feelings of hopelessness may increase.[5] An explanation of the Lost Opportunity Principle can be seen as a lack of closure. Low closure makes past occurrences feel unresolved.[6] Low closure is associated with "reductions in state self-esteem and persistent negative affect over time". Because high closure is associated with acceptance of lost opportunity, low closure is then associated with the realization and regret of lost opportunity.

The lost opportunity principle suggests that regret does not serve as a corrective motive (which the opportunity principle suggests). Instead, regret serves as a more general reminder to seize the day. Feeling regret will spur future action to make sure other opportunities are taken so that regret will not be experienced again.

Anticipated regret[

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People appear to overestimate how much regret they will feel in the future. In particular, anticipated regret (how much regret one thinks one will feel) appears to be overestimated for actions and choices.[7][8] This appears to be, in part, due to a tendency to underestimate the extent to which people attribute bad outcomes to external factors than to internal factors (i.e., themselves).[7]

Neurology[

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Research upon brain injury and fMRI link the orbitofrontal cortex to the processing of regret.[9][10]

https://secretregrets.com/

http://tinybuddha.com/blog/dealing-with-regret-8-ways-to-benefit-and-move-forward/

Dealing with Regret: 8 Ways to Benefit and Move Forward

1. Identify and address your weaknesses.

When we acknowledge our weaknesses, there’s often an implied sense of judgment, as if we should never make any mistakes. The alternative is to accept that everyone makes mistakes and then focus on what we can do differently going forward.

For me, that meant discovering why I was so afraid of putting myself out there. The rewards of learning to conquer that fear in the present far outweigh the pain of having given into it in the past.

2. Use your mistake as a teaching tool.

In my time writing for ‘tweens, I read many letters from girls who’ve learned to beat themselves up by watching their parents’ response to mistakes. If you forgive yourself and bounce right back, you empower your children to respond the same way.

If you’re like me and don’t have any children, think of it as helping everyone around you. I know when I see someone fall down and get back up without stressing over what they could have done differently, I feel inspired. It reminds me that it is possible, and I can do it too.

3. Use the opportunity to become better at adapting.

Most big mistakes present instant changes to reality as you know it. When I first arrived in NYC at twenty-two, I got involved in a pyramid scam, thinking it was a shortcut to success, and blew through my savings. What’s worse, I unknowingly pulled other people into a sinking ship that went under, with their money.

I couldn’t believe I’d been so naïve. I couldn’t change what I’d done, but I could take my new set of circumstances and challenges and plan a strategy to get back where I wanted to be. Any time we practice adapting, we create the possibility of happiness that doesn’t depend on perfect conditions.

4. Strengthen your ability to focus on

things you can control

.

If you cheated on your boyfriend after one too many margaritas, you probably wish you could go back and show more restraint. Unfortunately, what you should have done is now irrelevant. All you can do is move forward from where you are.

This is an invaluable skill because it empowers us to take positive action instead of falling into a shame cycle.

5. Embrace impermanence.

Everything in life is impermanent. While I’m not thrilled when my actions end a relationship or good situation, this reminds me to appreciate everyone and everything in the moment. There are no guarantees in life—even if I make very few mistakes.

6. Evaluate your relationships.

Think of this as your It’s a Wonderful Life moment. You’re down on your luck and vulnerable. You have to do some major life restructuring to rebound from whatever you just experienced. Are your friends there for you, offering forgiveness and support—even if it takes them a little time to get there? If not, this may be a perfect time to remove unhealthy relationships from your life.

This may also give you a chance to strengthen your relationships. If you hurt someone else, take this opportunity to discover what really motivated your actions and then let yourself get vulnerable with them. We’re all human, and nothing brings us together like acknowledging our universal struggles.

7. Get better at accepting responsibility.

I know many people who would sooner donate their organs to science than take responsibility. We’ve all passed the buck at one time or another, because it’s a risk to admit culpability. Still, there’s something empowering about saying, “I screwed up, and I accept the consequences.”

8. Challenge your thinking.

There’s a quote that reads “Success is often the result of taking a misstep in the right direction.” If your mistake propels you toward a better future, then it’s actually a blessing in disguise. I realize mistakes oftentimes present challenges, but ultimately, you can only move forward if you find opportunities in your reality, whatever that may be.

The crazy thing about regret is that it seems imperative sometimes—as if we have to indulge it like a bed we made and now have to lie in. But there’s nothing compelling us to dwell on the way things could have been. The only thing that keeps us stuck in lost possibilities is the refusal to focus on new ones.

Life is now, and we always have a choice: Do we drown in regret over what never came to be, or use our energy to create what can be? Today, I am choosing the latter.

Inside the Growing Movement of Women Who Wish They'd Never Had Kids

Trouble In Transtopia: Murmurs Of Sex Change Regret

readers share photos of tattoos they regret

Tattoo Regret: Why The Majority Of Middle-Aged Americans Are Deciding To Blast Away Their Ink

DONT REGRET REGRET TED TALK KATHRYN SCHULZ

So that's Johnny Depp, of course. And that's Johnny Depp's shoulder. And that's Johnny Depp's famous shoulder tattoo. Some of you might know that, in 1990, Depp got engaged to Winona Ryder, and he had tattooed on his right shoulder "Winona forever." And then three years later — which in fairness, kind of is forever by Hollywood standards — they broke up, and Johnny went and got a little bit of repair work done. And now his shoulder says, "Wino forever."

0:44(Laughter)

0:47So like Johnny Depp, and like 25 percent of Americans between the ages of 16 and 50, I have a tattoo. I first started thinking about getting it in my mid-20s, but I deliberately waited a really long time. Because we all know people who have gotten tattoos when they were 17 or 19 or 23 and regretted it by the time they were 30. That didn't happen to me. I got my tattoo when I was 29, and I regretted it instantly. And by "regretted it," I mean that I stepped outside of the tattoo place — this is just a couple miles from heredown on the Lower East Side — and I had a massive emotional meltdown in broad daylight on the corner of East Broadway and Canal Street. (Laughter) Which is a great place to do it because nobody cares. (Laughter) And then I went home that night, and I had an even larger emotional meltdown, which I'll say more about in a minute.

1:49And this was all actually quite shocking to me, because prior to this moment, I had prided myself on having absolutely no regrets. I made a lot of mistakes and dumb decisions, of course. I do that hourly. But I had always felt like, look, you know, I made the best choice I could make given who I was then, given the information I had on hand. I learned a lesson from it. It somehow got me to where I am in life right now. And okay, I wouldn't change it. In other words, I had drunk our great cultural Kool-Aid about regret, which is that lamenting things that occurred in the past is an absolute waste of time, that we should always look forward and not backward,and that one of the noblest and best things we can do is strive to live a life free of regrets.

2:38This idea is nicely captured by this quote: "Things without all remedy should be without regard; what's done is done." And it seems like kind of an admirable philosophy at first ��� something we might all agree to sign onto ... until I tell you who said it. Right, so this is Lady MacBeth basically telling her husband to stop being such a wuss for feeling bad about murdering people. And as it happens, Shakespeare was onto something here, as he generally was. Because the inability to experience regret is actually one of the diagnostic characteristics of sociopaths. It's also, by the way, a characteristic of certain kinds of brain damage. So people who have damage to their orbital frontal cortex seem to be unable to feel regret in the face of even obviously very poor decisions. So if, in fact, you want to live a life free of regret, there is an option open to you. It's called a lobotomy. But if you want to be fully functional and fully human and fully humane, I think you need to learn to live, not without regret, but with it.

3:50So let's start off by defining some terms. What is regret? Regret is the emotion we experience when we think that our present situation could be better or happier if we had done something different in the past. So in other words, regret requires two things. It requires, first of all, agency — we had to make a decision in the first place. And second of all, it requires imagination. We need to be able to imagine going back and making a different choice, and then we need to be able to kind of spool this imaginary record forwardand imagine how things would be playing out in our present. And in fact, the more we have of either of these things — the more agency and the more imagination with respect to a given regret, the more acute that regret will be.

4:30So let's say for instance that you're on your way to your best friend's wedding and you're trying to get to the airport and you're stuck in terrible traffic, and you finally arrive at your gate and you've missed your flight. You're going to experience more regret in that situation if you missed your flight by three minutes than if you missed it by 20. Why? Well because, if you miss your flight by three minutes, it is painfully easy to imagine that you could have made different decisions that would have led to a better outcome. "I should have taken the bridge and not the tunnel. I should have gone through that yellow light." These are the classic conditions that create regret. We feel regret when we think we are responsible for a decision that came out badly, but almost came out well.

5:14Now within that framework, we can obviously experience regret about a lot of different things. This session today is about behavioral economics. And most of what we know about regret comes to us out of that domain. We have a vast body of literature on consumer and financial decisions and the regrets associated with them — buyer's remorse, basically. But then finally, it occurred to some researchers to step back and say, well okay, but overall, what do we regret most in life? Here's what the answers turn out to look like.

5:46So top six regrets — the things we regret most in life: Number one by far, education. 33 percent of all of our regrets pertain to decisions we made about education. We wish we'd gotten more of it. We wish we'd taken better advantage of the education that we did have. We wish we'd chosen to study a different topic. Others very high on our list of regrets include career, romance, parenting,various decisions and choices about our sense of self and how we spend our leisure time — or actually more specifically, how we fail to spend our leisure time. The remaining regrets pertain to these things: finance, family issues unrelated to romance or parenting,health, friends, spirituality and community.

6:30So in other words, we know most of what we know about regret by the study of finance. But it turns out, when you look overall at what people regret in life, you know what, our financial decisions don't even rank. They account for less than three percent of our total regrets. So if you're sitting there stressing about large cap versus small cap, or company A versus company B, or should you buy the Subaru or the Prius, you know what, let it go. Odds are, you're not going to care in five years.

6:58But for these things that we actually do really care about and do experience profound regret around, what does that experience feel like? We all know the short answer. It feels terrible. Regret feels awful. But it turns out that regret feels awful in four very specific and consistent ways. So the first consistent component of regret is basically denial. When I went home that night after getting my tattoo, I basically stayed up all night. And for the first several hours, there was exactly one thought in my head. And the thought was, "Make it go away!" This is an unbelievably primitive emotional response. I mean, it's right up there with, "I want my mommy!" We're not trying to solve the problem. We're not trying to understand how the problem came about. We just want it to vanish.

7:50The second characteristic component of regret is a sense of bewilderment. So the other thing I thought about there in my bedroom that night was, "How could I have done that? What was I thinking?" This real sense of alienation from the part of us that made a decision we regret. We can't identify with that part. We don't understand that part. And we certainly don't have any empathy for that part — which explains the third consistent component of regret, which is an intense desire to punish ourselves. That's why, in the face of our regret, the thing we consistently say is, "I could have kicked myself." The fourth component here is that regret is what psychologists call perseverative. To perseverate means to focus obsessively and repeatedly on the exact same thing. Now the effect of perseveration is to basically take these first three components of regret and put them on an infinite loop. So it's not that I sat there in my bedroom that night, thinking, "Make it go away." It's that I sat there and I thought, "Make it go away. Make it go away. Make it go away. Make it go away." So if you look at the psychological literature, these are the four consistent defining components of regret.

8:59But I want to suggest that there's also a fifth one. And I think of this as a kind of existential wake-up call. That night in my apartment,after I got done kicking myself and so forth, I lay in bed for a long time, and I thought about skin grafts. And then I thought about how,much as travel insurance doesn't cover acts of God, probably my health insurance did not cover acts of idiocy. In point of fact, no insurance covers acts of idiocy. The whole point of acts of idiocy is that they leave you totally uninsured; they leave you exposed to the world and exposed to your own vulnerability and fallibility in face of, frankly, a fairly indifferent universe.

9:45This is obviously an incredibly painful experience. And I think it's particularly painful for us now in the West in the grips of what I sometimes think of as a Control-Z culture — Control-Z like the computer command, undo. We're incredibly used to not having to facelife's hard realities, in a certain sense. We think we can throw money at the problem or throw technology at the problem — we can undo and unfriend and unfollow. And the problem is that there are certain things that happen in life that we desperately want to change and we cannot. Sometimes instead of Control-Z, we actually have zero control. And for those of us who are control freaks and perfectionists — and I know where of I speak — this is really hard, because we want to do everything ourselves and we want to do it right.

10:38Now there is a case to be made that control freaks and perfectionists should not get tattoos, and I'm going to return to that point in a few minutes. But first I want to say that the intensity and persistence with which we experience these emotional components of regretis obviously going to vary depending on the specific thing that we're feeling regretful about. So for instance, here's one of my favoriteautomatic generators of regret in modern life. (Laughter) Text: Relpy to all. And the amazing thing about this really insidious technological innovation is that even just with this one thing, we can experience a huge range of regret. You can accidentally hit "reply all" to an email and torpedo a relationship. Or you can just have an incredibly embarrassing day at work. Or you can have your last day at work.

11:31And this doesn't even touch on the really profound regrets of a life. Because of course, sometimes we do make decisions that have irrevocable and terrible consequences, either for our own or for other people's health and happiness and livelihoods, and in the very worst case scenario, even their lives. Now obviously, those kinds of regrets are incredibly piercing and enduring. I mean, even the stupid "reply all" regrets can leave us in a fit of excruciating agony for days.

12:06So how are we supposed to live with this? I want to suggest that there's three things that help us to make our peace with regret. And the first of these is to take some comfort in its universality. If you Google regret and tattoo, you will get 11.5 million hits. (Laughter)The FDA estimates that of all the Americans who have tattoos, 17 percent of us regret getting them. That is Johnny Depp and me and our seven million friends. And that's just regret about tattoos. We are all in this together.

12:46The second way that we can help make our peace with regret is to laugh at ourselves. Now in my case, this really wasn't a problem,because it's actually very easy to laugh at yourself when you're 29 years old and you want your mommy because you don't like your new tattoo. But it might seem like a kind of cruel or glib suggestion when it comes to these more profound regrets. I don't think that's the case though. All of us who've experienced regret that contains real pain and real grief understand that humor and even black humor plays a crucial role in helping us survive. It connects the poles of our lives back together, the positive and the negative, and it sends a little current of life back into us.

13:32The third way that I think we can help make our peace with regret is through the passage of time, which, as we know, heals all wounds — except for tattoos, which are permanent. So it's been several years since I got my own tattoo. And do you guys just want to see it? All right. Actually, you know what, I should warn you, you're going to be disappointed. Because it's actually not that hideous. I didn't tattoo Marilyn Manson's face on some indiscreet part of myself or something. When other people see my tattoo, for the most part they like how it looks. It's just that I don't like how it looks. And as I said earlier, I'm a perfectionist. But I'll let you see it anyway.

14:25This is my tattoo. I can guess what some of you are thinking. So let me reassure you about something. Some of your own regrets are also not as ugly as you think they are. I got this tattoo because I spent most of my 20s living outside the country and traveling. And when I came and settled in New York afterward, I was worried that I would forget some of the most important lessons that I learned during that time. Specifically the two things I learned about myself that I most didn't want to forget was how important it felt to keep exploring and, simultaneously, how important it is to somehow keep an eye on your own true north. And what I loved about this image of the compass was that I felt like it encapsulated both of these ideas in one simple image. And I thought it might serve as a kind of permanent mnemonic device.

15:19Well it did. But it turns out, it doesn't remind me of the thing I thought it would; it reminds me constantly of something else instead. It actually reminds me of the most important lesson regret can teach us, which is also one of the most important lessons life teaches us. And ironically, I think it's probably the single most important thing I possibly could have tattooed onto my body — partly as a writer, but also just as a human being. Here's the thing, if we have goals and dreams, and we want to do our best, and if we love people and we don't want to hurt them or lose them, we should feel pain when things go wrong. The point isn't to live without any regrets. The point is to not hate ourselves for having them.

16:14The lesson that I ultimately learned from my tattoo and that I want to leave you with today is this: We need to learn to love the flawed, imperfect things that we create and to forgive ourselves for creating them. Regret doesn't remind us that we did badly. It reminds us that we know we can do better.

16:36Thank you.

16:38(Applause)