#its fine if you do its a good way to find likeminded people

[lemonys-place]

heyyy gentlest reminder, my friends, that you do not have to disclose your trauma and mental illnesses to justify your age regression. it's perfectly fine to regress/dream "just because" and strangers are not entitled to your sensitive information/past just because they want to validate it FOR you. don't let anyone make you feel like you have to explain yourself just for coping/soothing/self-parenting in a way that feels good + healing for YOU. there is no criteria to meet to be yourself!

but also, it IS sensitive information and there are some people around the community especially predators who will use that information to get closer to you and/or hurt you. so please practice internet safety, be careful who you share your details with, and block ANYONE who doesn't seem right or play nice.

protect your space and be safe everyone! 🙏

[psalmsofpsychosis]

okay but something did happen—

growing up i always felt so different from the people around me and my own family, we're not talking cute " they like their eggs scrambled but i like mine flat with orange juice :((( " stuff, we're talking "i'm 100% sure i was an orphan and picked from the side of the road, there's no fucking way these people are my family, we share nothing, my own brother doesn't even look like me to the point that it's become the family joke and everyone keeps telling me that i look like i'm a child from another family."

And so one of my primary ways of dealing with this incessant sense of alienation was to tell myself that i dont really need a sense of relatedness or to be around people who were like me, looked like me, thought like me, shared my beliefs. I told myself that the feeling was superflous, it wasn't a necessity, i didn't need to feel a connection with other people, i could just exist besides them, and it'd be fine. And for a whole long while it was. I got very good at pretending the lack of likemindedness was okay and normal and that it didn't hurt. I also got very, very good at redirecting each and every point of discussion to other people because i wouldn't feel the lack of shared grounds if we never talked about me; there wouldn't be a disconnection, a constant sense of discrepancy if i didn't exist in the frame. I'd just erase myself and all would be good.

Fast forward a couple of years and in my teen years i discovered social media, and in it there were a lot of people parroting that it's actually a terrible unintelligent thing to read books and wants stories in which the characters are like you, that you're supposed to constantly seek and grapple with people who have different worldviews and mental frameworks than you, that you're supposed to seek diverse and differing voices, which is all true and good, but then again— context.

I'm so incredibly used to being around people who reflect very little of me, it's a challenge and it's almost a strange comfortzone for me at this point, i dont expect to be reflected and to find likeminded people when i enter a discussion, most often i dont even think about it. I just remove myself from the equation and listen to other people, it's not hard.

And it almost makes me feel guilty and pathetic when eventually the need for relatedness rears its wild-haired head and i start getting agitated and angry in ways that i can't explain to other people; other people who are so entrenched in their own communities and between their friends and family, they are mirrored and reflected by and so connected to their context. They ask me "yeah but why do you feel a need for this label? why do you need a precise category for the type of creative writing that you do? why do you keep removing yourself from different communities and disappear into the ether never to be seen again?" and i could explain why but it takes too long and i'm tired all the time, so i just say; it's because i too need to be around people who are like me. Who think like me and share my values and know where i'm coming from. I used to think of belonging as a fun extra treat that i'm somewhat allergic to and i'd do just fine without. But i dont think of it as "candy that other kids can have and i dont care for" anymore, i think of it as a necessity. It's necessary to be around people who are like me, it's the way i get to know myself away from the incessant friction of constantly being in disagreement with other people and feeling disconnected and underappreciated, unwanted and invisible. It's true that people grow by challenges, but there's a limit before you completely wear yourself out by grinding against opposing (not harmful, not malicious, or necessarily wrong or bad, just different) points of views. And i had to learn this the hard way, too much friction to the point that i become completely intolerant and rigid and cannot make space for other people anymore, which is not who i am.

I still feel bad when my only comment about something is "it's not like me; i need to be around people and things that reflect me." But also i need to acknowledge that my specific context requires me to be around more likeminded people to bounce my thoughts off of, not less. Right now my growth lies somewhere else, it's not in being challenged in my worldviews, i'm challenged in every single fucking thing i do day in and day out; my growth is in resting among people who are like me and hold the same values as i do. I'm learning to peacefully walk out of a discussion with people who differ too much from me, because more challenges is not what i need right now. I need peace of mind in knowing i'm understood and appreciated and mirrored, not in having to constantly explain and defend myself and "establish my point of view".

And all this is to say; i dont know who needs to hear this right now, but go pick up a book with a character you love, who feels like you. Rest easy with them. Sense of connection is not a luxury, it's a necessity.

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

Any tips got people starting their creative writing degree in September? Xxx

oh this is a great question!! sometimes I forget I will literally be an upper year next year :) how did this happen :) still feel like I’m in grade 9 :) lol! but I do have tips!

1. Trust in the process

Okay, this sounds a little gimmicky, but what I mean is, let things happen the way they’re going to happen. I was extremely prepared when I entered first year, and even more prepared for second year, and I’m not saying this is a bad thing--in fact, I recommend having something small (even an idea) at the ready, just in case of emergency writer’s block, time constraints, etc, but I’d love to go back in time and tell myself to chill! I wanted so badly to experience the idea of the Ideal Writing Degree Experience, and so kind of missed out on the actual (great) experience I had in front of me! so let it happen! Take creative risks! stray from your plan if your gut is telling you to!

2. Get involved

In first year, I found it SO helpful to get involved in writer events, or clubs on my campus. I joined my department’s lit journal (which I shall be managing in the fall!) as an intern, and made sure to attend most, if not all the writing events they had on campus, including general fine arts mixers. Though I am a super introverted person, it was actually super fun to make connections, and even so, just make memories of faces that I could later recognize on campus. This is also super helpful for getting to know people in your program! On orientation day, I really tried to huddle with some other Writing undergrads, and that was super fun because we just chatted about our writing backgrounds, etc! If you’re anxious like me, coming up with literal talking points could be helpful the night before, kind of like an “About Me” refresh?? Like, oh my name is Rachel and I write literary fiction, also I am from Toronto, would be what I would say in case someone asked (usually people were very excited to hear I was from out of province lol so this worked as a great talking point!). ALSO!! off campus events! go to readings! Readings are 100% more accessible to attend where I go to school versus where I live at home, and so I def took advantage of this by making sure to go out to multiple literary events! It’s nice to make connections, chat with the readers, or even other audience members! Usually people asked me if I was a student and what program I was in, etc, and because being a Writing major is kind of a Fun Thing To Be at a reading, this was always a great talking point!

3. Remember your writing degree is still work

I know a lot of creative degree pals give this advice to remind undergrads that their creative work for school is still work so they should sit down and do it rather than leaving it to the last minute, but I kind of like to flip this idea on its head by saying: it’s okay to prioritize your “non-academic” work versus your “traditionally academic” work! For example, I took many, many English classes this year, and put about 20x more of my time into those classes than my literal writing classes. I am a writing major?? lol! I could’ve gotten an English degree closer to home?? I did not come here for this?? I think it was easy for me to write off putting time into my writing classes because I was “good at that” and “needed to focus on my academic work” (whatever academic even means), but if you’re there for writing, don’t be afraid to actually... do your writing?? Fighting internalized stigma about my own degree is something I still work on! It’s still work! Which means it’s hard, and you should take breaks (and extensions if necessary/if you can) just like with any other work.

4. If you want to, prep a little

Like I mentioned above, this could be a helpful thing to do, though I do caution over preparation because that was me!! and I feel like one may learn more if they have more room to fail (which sometimes preparation reduces?) but this is also dependent on the type of person and student you are, so disregard if necessary! When I entered first year, I didn’t prep actual work, but made sure I knew what was expected of me so I could mentally prepare myself, haha. I knew there were 5 assignments for 5 different genres (because of COVID they actually axed 1 genre which I am GRATEFUL for rip playwriting), so I kept this in mind throughout the term. If I got an idea for a poem but knew we wouldn’t be doing poetry for the next term, I’d write the poem in advance, or write down the idea. A little bit of prep can help alleviate stress especially if you’re transitioning out of high school, but I do tend to overdo it!

5. SUBMIT your work!!!

This is also totally okay NOT to do if you don’t want to publish your work, but if you are interested in curating a portfolio, it doesn’t hurt to start submitting your work early to literary magazines! I know some people are too nervous to send out their work in first year, but if you’re comfortable with it and want to, go for it! I submitted my work for the first time in first year, and got 2 stories published. If you want to be published, you don’t have to wait for upper years to put your work out there! If you have a piece you like, send it out! This also includes on-campus writing contests if your school runs these. I entered one not thinking anything of it and won first place (HOW), and these experiences were fantastic in shaping my experience in the program and also showing me submitting your work is not so scary!

6. Talk to your profs and TAs

Y’ALL I did not realize how much I talk to my profs and TAs and how much the pandemic took that away from me! It’s so critical to form relationships with the people who are teaching you, not only because they’ll help you to shape your work, but also because they’re a great start to networking! In first year, I sat down with my TAs or prof for literally every single piece I wrote, and the amount I learned is astronomical. I guess this depends on your program, but generally, writing programs are generative based rather than super lecture heavy, and you learn by doing hands-on work (workshops, etc). I learned so much (sometimes, even more) by talking to my teachers. They want to help you and it’s a great way to get to know them. I only attended office hours once in COVID (and it was Zoom office hours), and I certainly feel a difference in my experience. Reach out! When I took an intro journalism course, my prof line-edited every one of my pieces by hand, and while it was nerve-wracking because she is a fantastic writer and a tough critic (and literally right in front of me), it was so rewarding when she’d point out where I’d improved. She was also great at taking her time to explain how I could better my piece. You can’t do that if you’re sitting in a 200 person lecture, but you can if you take some time for a one on one! Highly recommend if you can (coming from someone with social anxiety)!

7. Make friends

I will admit it! I still have not done a great job at this lol. But if you can, try to reach out to your peers. You’re all there to learn, and it’s actually so fantastic to meet likeminded people! My peers are incredibly talented, smart individuals, and when we’re in person, I’d love to chat with them more! In first year, it can be scary to reach out, which is why I did this minimally, though I still made an attempt to jump out of my comfort zone whenever possible. It’s nice to recognize faces on campus and wave at people/have a short conversation before you head into class. Like I said, I interned for my on campus lit journal in first year, so I had to reach out a few times to my classmates to participate in events etc, so this was actually kind of easier for me since I had a lil ~motive that allowed me to muster the courage to chat with people! It could be as easy as joining in on a convo of a subject of interest (for example, a lot of people at my school especially in my program, love D&D. I have no idea what that is/how that works, but if I did, this might be something to talk about if you love it also)! Also - follow people on social media if you can find them, or start a group chat!

8. Don’t be afraid to speak up for your needs

This will be my last tip, and it might be the scariest tip of all, but if you are not happy with how something is going in your degree/classes, speak up about it! If something is not accessible to you, don’t be afraid to speak out about that. Idk if it’s just me, but I’ve been advocating for the betterment of my education since elementary school (why am I like this loooool), but especially in university, you’d be surprised by how receptive some people can be! Shoot your prof or TA an email if you have concerns, and see what they say. Rarely, they can be assholes, but most of the time, they’ll try to work with you to make your class experience better. This is why I also recommend filling out your course evals. Most great profs really want their students to enjoy their classes and succeed, so don’t be nervous to speak out about your needs if xyz isn’t being met.

hope that helps!

[silver-mist]

BTS In The SOOP EP4 - HOBI’s REVENGE (The full recap)

I havent done a recap since Ep 1 and technically that wasnt a recap but more for fun. However, after watching today’s episode, I felt inclined to share some thoughts as I found this to be such a lovely and heartfelt episode that truly exemplified not only each member and how they are as well as dynamics between them so im making this exception. This may be a long read for some but if you make it to the end then ❤️and feel free comment. Welcome to a summary/analysis of my thoughts throughout this episode full of cute moments between certain member “ships”. I put that in quotations to point out that I look at these platonically in a friendly way (with the exception of 1 lol) but also as a way to emphasize how each member looks to another as different likes and circumstances arise. We all can fully see that OT7 truly have a special bond unlike other idol groups who pretend for years only to be discredited later. However, it shouldnt come as a surprise that some members are closer to some than others and that isnt a bad thing, just like we all may have that 1 or those 2 people we wanna tell first when you have a major life event or need to just talk. That is the main reason for my recap today, to talk about these and how it genuinely warms my heart because even though they may not act like their full real selves here, after all, this will be seen on broadcast by the general public and not just fans, this is probably the closest we get to their domestic normal selves, no narrative, no event or photoshoot to prepare for, just them doing things as they go. 

We start off after the dinner scene where everyone has dispersed into their own thing. Cue to V sitting by himself in the main house about to sing karaoke. As anyone who has followed him along the years, you already know that he often prefers his own “me” moments and its just cute to watch him start singing to his hearts content that its even pointed out by his hyungs as they sit outside further away chatting. Its nice to see him happily enjoying whatever he feels like doing with no care in the world but I do shy away from calling him an introvert as he can be the social butterfly. 

We then cut to Namseok sitting outside, drinking some beer, having a heart to heart. The rap line has obviously been close for a long time but the way Hobi speaks about his chat with Joon that night and how it feels natural and not awkward shows you that they gravitate towards one another vs possibly some other members in terms of lets say normal adult discussions where its not about jokes or laughter but just growing up and responsibilities or random hobbies and its a beautiful thing to see. Between Hobi wishing he could sing (I think he has a lovely voice and should try it out even when he thinks he isnt good) to Joon talking about writing in a journal or feeling like this is a break they should have where they retire, its cute, its normal non celeb talk, and just a moment between 2 likeminded friends. I’ll finish off this scene with another *Joon should just not touch things in general* moment when he drops the mosquito defector and all Hobi does is smile and reply... 

(Friendship Goals...)

Jimin decides to join shortly after but doesnt have a beer in hand, the hyungs are quick to point that there is some in the other fridge but Jimin dismisses it and goes to sit as all he wants is to be in their company awww. He mentions that he will take some cold medicine and Hobi immediately questions if he’s feeling unwell to which he replies that he is in fact not feeling well. This cause an immediate reaction of concern from the hyungs as Joon tells him to put his hood on to evade a bit of the cold air and Hobi insists in a serious manner to not disobey and do as they say after jimin says its fine. Double awww 🥺

Their night ends with Minimoni heading out to another mini tournament of ping pong because why not, Jimin trying to convince Hobi to watch them because awww, and Joon telling Jimin to not torture Hobi like that 😂. Joon reading the room and knowing its not his thing cracks me up, baby mochi just wants him around haha.

The scene then cuts to the next morning where we finally see Yoongi waking up from him sleep nest in the search for water. He is still out of it as he cutely blames someone from taking his water to only realize a few moments later that that someone was him 😂.

Lil meow meow cutely wobbles out of his camper to go get a drink only to suspiciously look around like he’s spotting the cameras. Perhaps to make a Yoongi Part 3 impromptu advertisement??? We all know how good he is at those 😂. He finally asks himself “What should I do”. Story of my life he probably thinks in his mind... meanwhile I go, just rest. 

We then cut to another episode of the Chronicles of Jin: The “It’s still Hot” saga where I genuinely wonder why he still chooses the tent when im sure another arrangement is possible but do you boo. As always, the forever RJ representative cutely wears his pj’s as he heads to the main house not before stopping to do the most random thing ever... 

The editor’s caption speaks for itself lol.

He finds his way inside to stumble upon baby Tae still kinda sleepy looking complaining to the sink where dishes were left unwashed the prior night. His annoyance cracks me up and then he starts to play with a mini skillet/stove? and we finally get a moment of Tae cooking... yayy. He cutely complains as the rice is not staying together and tests out the sugar level to then realize it needs more and its adorable. Hobi wakes up and heads downstairs to encounter Jin at the piano again and cutely heads towards Tae to smack his butt and ask for some food, cue VHOPE cuteness, which later continues when Hobi wants to time Tae’s food with his jog haha. Tae again complains about the dishes and proceeds to drag a chair closer to the stove because I guess the 2 second distance from the table is too much? 😂Cute..

Back to 2Seok which to what I have seen in videos is not often, agreeing to go for a jog as well as disagreeing on how to go about it. Jin is like America (we go out to the store in sweats with unruly hair and not give an F LOL) and Hobi is like Korea (Where everyone dresses nice no matter what the occasion) Side note* this is my perspective as an american who has visited korea, they just do fashion better over there and I want to buy it all ☺️. I guess Hobi ends up finally convincing Jin to change because next thing they are out and about in their morning jog.

Back to baby Tae and random inexplicable moment of the episode #2... He removes the plate from the chair then proceeds to sit on the floor to taste his treat when the chair is now empty...🧐😂

2seok is now on their jog down the road and Hobi stops to rest on the side with Jin judging him “We only ran for 3 minutes and you already want to rest?” LOLOL. He then proceeds to take some of Hobi’s water and insists on carrying the bottle back because it makes him look good on camera. LMAO Jin, stay humble always... 😂. Hobi just does a literal SMH.

Cutscene to the view where different rooms are shown at once and I spot the second room next to Jungkook in the floating house with the door open.. Hmmm who opened it I wonder? Was someone using the room??

Back to V being his cute self enjoying his “me” time. He proceeds to play again with the rc boat and I almost panic a little at what seems like he may fall into the water trying to place it there. Good thing he doesnt but he gets the wrong control remoter and rushes back to get the right one. Once it finally moves its like all is right in the world. Cute. We get a short glimpse of him in the floating house and seeing that Jungkook is still fast asleep.

We then see Yoongi back at the top house heading in to read his book, shortly after the 3 amigos V, Hobi and Jin are walking in as Jin previously mentioned he was hungry, cue to start of meal prepping. 

We finally see the final member we havent seen wake up, baby mochi in all his fairy like self is still in bed. Tae is the first to open the door to his room and proceeds to cutely jump over him, play around, get pushed back and complain and then just lay on top of him with his butt facing the door. Excuse me while I melt in cuteness..my VMIN heart... ❤️

Only to literally do a 180 and LAUGH my ass off when Hobi walks in, sees them there and just goes NOPE.. walking out 😂

Apparently 2seok have decided on their meal plan and the ever so helpful ray of sunshine seems at a loss on how to set the charcoal on fire, note that he could have asked Jin but he heads to Yoongi for help (Bring in some SOPE love :)). Either way here I was hoping Yoongi would just chill and it seemed like that was the plan until he saw Hobi’s lostness and eagerness to help so he decides to step up again and help out. It’s kinda evident he didnt plan to when he goes “Oh ok” after being told what they plan to eat but proceeds to jump in at Hobi’s lostness in terms of making a fire. Cute. 

Cue back to Hobi disturbing the soulmates and whatever little cute slaps Tae was giving Jimin to probably wake up to ask him to fetch the torch because hes finally done running between the houses like last episode lol. The ever obedient Tae obliges immediately, Jimin remains in bed. 

Were back at the main house and maybe not every caught on but its ADORABLE how Joon goes out with the plan to play with the boat like Tae but leaves it abandoned to see where all the other members are. Note, he is for some reason limping all of a sudden and I think it may have to do with why he left early for personal reasons, I hope he was ok. Potential theory, could Jin slapping the boxer bag have anything to do with it? 🧐.

Anyways, even with his leg issue he literally walks around to the other house, checks on all members and ends up back at the main house sitting next to Jungkook, encouraging him as he is building a glider and then ultimately telling him he will keep him company by sitting next to him and reading a book. Even takes care of him by bringing him a drink. Awwww KookieMonster ❤️

anddd were back to the others in the upper house. 

SOPE taking the lead with building a fire..

TAEJIN figuring out the fish with Tae sporting an adorable hat and looking lost but still willing to help his hyung. Cutely Tae later makes Hobi aware on how this is his first time putting a knife on a fish and learning that a fish’s life is previous. AWWWW.. 

Its the little things that I like to point out, the members gravitate towards who they feel more in tune with. Tae to help Jin and Suga to help Hobi although the opposite would have be interesting to watch lol.

We then get Yoongi thawing out the ribs, Hobi trying to get veggies and LITERALLY pulling out the roots of a poor plant 😂, Yoongi legit pulling up a chair to read while cooking (poor thing haha), Jin crying because hes wasting the fish fillet as hes still learning, Joon adoringly looking at JK while he continues building his glider like a big brother, JK finally giving up and whining that hes gonna ask Hobi for help (HOPEKOOK cutely building a glider? yes please), JK looking over to see what Joon is reading, giving up again and ultimately moving out with Joon looking up like “You leaving me?” and then looking at the camera LOL. 

The 3 cooks up in the upper house are busy in their own thing when Jin asks for the location of the wrapper with SOPE rapping in return making a joke about them being the “rappers” haha. 

Back at the main house Taekook are cooking together. It makes me laugh at the difference between the hyungs cooking above. For starters, JK is cooking sausage for some time but I legit wanna teleport myself over there to tell him “Hey, cut it in pieces, you are burning the bottom of it but the inside is still raw” 😂... thankfully he does that eventually.... Meanwhile little sweet Tae is getting fancy on us and bringing his wine habits into the mix making an appetizer and struggling to open the Jamon packet even though (as the camera clearly zooms in on) the scissors are right next to him...These two are funny. 

Finally someone acknowledges that Jimin is still alive somewhere LOL and its none other than Yoongi who says it out loud in the kitchen then passes by his room but instead of waking him up just cheers him on then walks away haha (YOONMIN ❤️)

However that lasts for about 2 seconds before Yoongi comes back and ask Jimin to gather the others from the other house for lunch as the other members are busy and Jimin listens obediently by rolling over and calling Joon and with a hoarse voice letting him know Yoongi’s instructions. Poor Jimin, he sounds unwell 🥺. Joon goes to gather the younglings, Tae makes it up and decides to decorate the cheese with a red umbrella only to look dissatisfied and make it a blue one lol. They then have some random cuts of moments because JK’s sausages appear on the table but we never see him walk up and then he magically walks out the house but dont show any of that.. hmmmm. I’ll leave my thoughts at that since some people might understand what im alluding to :). 

Yoongi is taking out the ribs and accidentally drops a piece and we get the following reactions;

Yoongi: little scream 😱

Joon: Just use the 3 second rule 🙂

JK: Just wash it and then recoat it with more sauce and that should fix it 😄

To which Yoongi can only look slightly flabbergasted at the suggestion and throws it back “Do you wanna eat them?” hahaha

They all finally gather at the table including Jimin and I see that both him and Joon look a little off, I hope they got better soon after but for sure they seemed sick. Jin sweetly talks about always wanting to make the dish he prepared and how complicated it is and refers to it being a hard dish to make for a Family (the BTS bond is one of a kind). All the members admire the sampling of food, Jimin calls out the cuteness of Tae’s umbrella on the cheese, JK helps Jimin break the ribs apart, Tae tells everyone to try his appetizer, the member’s cutely all aww and ohh when they find out he cut the melon 💜, everyone but JK and Tae seem to know the dish, Hobi and Jimin cue to immediately try it for their friend so he doesnt feel left out, after trying it he cutely asks Jimin how it tastes and waits for his response, another awww, soulmate responds with its diff (which probably isnt his taste but eats it anyway for him ) lol and it zooms out with someone asking (sounds like Jin?) what they will have for dinner to have another member whom I cant tell reply LETS STARVE.  These clowns 😂but I get it, it took like hours to cook each meal.

They get ready to clean and apparently prep something for dinner with Joon washing the dishes and eventually asking Jk for help who is busy cooking rice eventually summoning Jimin who heard his name with Jk cutely smacking his butt to tell him Joon called him to then Jimin telling Joon not to worry and he will take over ( I reread this whole sentence and ran out of breath haha but then again im not here for proper grammer.. oopps). This leads us to a sweet domestic Jikook moment where he asks JK to help him dry the dishes and the other obliges and they just fall in routine.. just cute.

Joon heads back to the main house to pack and I honestly think he probably was heading for a doctor check up, he just seemed out of it 🥺

Jimin gets done with the dishes and ends up next to Tae as the soulmates cutely discuss the game he is playing and Tae announces his kills and loses.

Jimin is then next to Hobi in the other house who is getting ready to customize his shoes, he asks Jimin to join but he doesnt seem enthusiastic to the idea so Hobi just goes “I’ll just do what I like” and to me sounding a little sad since this isnt the first time hes asked Jimin to do an activity with him lol. Before walking away Jimin starts singing a song about it. Yoonjin are back again as buddies down the lake fishing and we get a sweet after interview of Yoongi admitting he is not interested in fishing but he does it because Jin invites him. You KNOW you only do those kind of things for your closest friends or family and that was sooo sweet. YOONJIN goals!

Back at the house we see that Jimin ultimately decided to join Hobi and we get cute JIHOPE moments. Im glad because I honestly got the vide since the beginning of in the soop that he wanted to spend more time with Jimin and hadnt had the chance. They both decorate a shoe each and are careful not to splatter on each other. I also spy with my little eyes... an Iphone?? tsk tsk tsk.. all the others are at least trying and Jimin is like nope hahahaha. If that was indeed a samsung then my bad.

Next thing we know JK and Jimin are harmonizing and sounded just beautiful, can we get another subunit please? I know they did Who and We dont talk anymore but a legit korean song.. anyone? Ok.. moving on haha

Now here is a group I havent seen hang out together often, I  know yoongi mostly keeps to himself but I was wondering if we would see any interactions longer than just passing food or related to meal prep between Yoongi and JK/Tae but here we are, the 2 kiddos singing and the hyung just watching on. Yay..

We later see Jimin revealing his excitement over the art project and im glad he enjoyed doing that with Hobi.

Hilariously enough, not long after, while deep into another song, Yoongi tells Jk that he needs to get out to pack. Jk’s reaction? Proceed to continue singing and kinda ignores hahaha. Cue to the camera angle still showing JK doing his thing and an exasperated looking parent *aka yoongi* just staring at him like 😐

They all head to pack their belongings and we fast forward to them playing games in the upper house. While Jimin is packing he walks out and asks to no one in particular where his hanbok piece is, then sees Jk playing in with the VR and proceeds to go up to tickle him cutely (domestic much? 🥰). This is ironically followed up by mischievous Tae wanting in on the fun by standing up from his spot and moving behind JK and after what seems like thinking it over, carefully tugs his pants down but not with the intention to actually pull them. JK laughs at this and goes “You shouldnt do that” hahaha. Which begs the question, did he know who tried to pull a fast one on him? LOL  

Everyone is back to their usual roles, the 3 cooks prepping the dinner, the maknae line just doing their thing between JK still in the VR game and Vmin cutely playing games in the corner. Yoongi seems like he NEVER rests, poor thing. He sees them prepping the ramen and suggest they add meat and ends up cooking meat. He is such a DAD and im all for it. While all this is happening there is a whole ruckus in the background and we hear the maknae line having a blast but only get a short glimpse of what is happening when the camera is still on the cooks. Apparently Jimin is now on the VR game and Jk decides to mess with him by taking a controller away and putting it behind his back, as Jimin tries to reach out to find it somehow, mischievous Tae is back at it and steals the other and moves it all the way to the other side presumably above the food shelf LMAO. I gather from the way that Jimin reaches UP and not straight out when reaching towards JK and the controller that this is DEF not the first time this has happened and when it has JK played the “I am taller and you cant reach this” stance, so of course Jimin’s instinct is to reach above his head hahaha.

They finally get down to eat and they all run to the table, I spook a cute Jikook moment of JM sitting next to JK and pulling the chair up leaving little room LOL, then Hobi still needs help so Jimin proceeds to go in to help with JK not far behind and a cute JiHopeKook hug alongside a Jikook sweet moment (I see that waist caress there JK 👀🥰😂😏) and they all make it back to the table with their meals ready. Tae makes sure to remind Jimin there is also meat for him to grab. Aww, ive lost count of the times that these two have been looking out for the other and its just so subtle but sweet af. 

Its time to finally go homeeeee. They all decide on who’s going in what car and then suddenly Jin remembers to check his fishing rod. 

Now... you may be wondering why I called this Hobi’s revenge. Well well well.. I want to say that slowly, Hobi decided to butter Jin up by hanging out all day long to eventually go full betrayal mode muahahaha. I kid I kid. But as life turns out, Hobi was presented with an opportunity to return the favor of Jin’s BV4 master plan to abandon him in New Zealand. Well well well... how the tables have turned. He tells his plans to the other nearby and they immediately agree 😂. Cue to a total pandemonium... Hobi rushing them in, Yoongi slowly walking to his car because of course he aint gonna run, Jimin trying to drag his suitcase, Tae running from the house in a cute manner probably going hehehehehe as he hears the plan, Jungkook walking up to them with no idea whats going on, having like 1 second to understand it, and then immediately running unsure of what to do until Jimin goes “Help me load this in!”. 

Jin finally approaches and they get in in time and start driving off. Jin finally goes heyyyyyyyy and cant believe what is happening, shouts out Yoongi, like you cant do this to me LOLOL. You can see Yongi’s big ass smile through the windshield which is even funnier. For a second he stops and it seems like Yoongi decides to have mercy on him, even open the door for him to stick his suitcase in. Hobi, Jungkook and Jimin seem to believe it as they are seen walking back up away from the car guessing the plan is a no go. That is until Yoongi goes full AGUST D and says “Who's the king, who's the boss?”... JK but lets just pretends he says that 😂, and literally does start driving off. Jihopekook see this and run their asses back to the car like little kids and laughing all cute as can be HEHEHEHEHE and they end up leaving Jin there LOL. Revenge is a dish best served cold and you just got served Jinnie.

Legend says Hobi slept well that night. 

The end. 

Hope you had fun reading this long post, probably will never do another since it took forever but I had fun making these gifs and pics and typing in my 2 cents hahaha. Borahae everyone 💜

[probablypretentiousposts]

10/02/2021

This is just a test to see if I can actually still type what I’m thinking, and to see how scattered my thoughts have become. It’s nice to see that my keyboard typing skills seem to be fairly decent, despite not having used a keyboard since living in Milwaukee, almost 3 years ago now. It will probably have several grammatical errors, and won’t follow a clear format. Certainly, my “paragraphs” will be more vague nods to what could be paragraphs, if I were paying attention or actually trying to… try. Ah, how eloquent.  My ability to articulate what I’d like to say has deteriorated extensively while living in Sault Sainte Marie.

Today has been a waste of my time and mental capacity. I woke up and couldn’t get myself moving. They weather has been dreary all day and I can’t seem to bring myself to doing much when the weather is like this. It’s humid, cold outside, but for some reason still muggy and warm in the house. I haven’t felt like myself in ages. I miss who I was. I seem to be reverting back to the type of person I was back when I was a teenager, albeit more informed and aware of my own biases. Coulter is the only redeeming thing about living in Sault Sainte Marie. I always thought I would be able to live anywhere, but after years of my adulthood spent finding exactly the type of environment and people I like to be around, I realized I no longer have the type of mental resiliency against frustrating people that I used to possess… the type of resiliency I had to form to deal with people when I was a teenager going to a private school full of spoiled, wealthy kids, but even that place had several people in it that I could turn to. I know I’ve drunkenly complained about this time and time again to Coulter and mom on the phone, but since there is no progression on anything getting any better, I continue to be frustrated. How to make the situation better is excessively frustrating by itself. In order for me to not feel fatigued and trapped in this place, I need proof that there are some likeminded individuals living here. In order to do that, I need to go out and actually talk to people. However, each time I do so, it works instead in the opposite manner, proving to me once again that Coulter and I are outsiders that do not belong in an environment like this.

What a bouncing mess of a… whatever you would call this. My thoughts run all over the place; one thought leading to a million other things and finally landing on some slightly adjacent, but seemingly random concept. I also feel like my ADHD has become significantly worse, but I always feel so guilty for taking medicine for it; especially because it makes me more talkative, also known as more annoying or unable to shut the fuck up. I often become paralyzed when trying to accomplish things, because, “What if there was a more efficient way to accomplish these tasks?”

Sit and think about how to more efficiently tackle your “to do” list.

Maybe you should make a physical list and rearrange it after you can visually see all your tasks

No, that will be a waste of paper. I can do it in my head

But you aren’t accomplishing anything like that so clearly you can’t.

I always used to be able to do this.

Well, you’re unable to remember anything anymore. You have to write things down.

I’m. wasting. Time. I’m wasting paper. I’m wasting energy. I’m a waste. Oh, God. Here I go again. I’m doing fine if I don’t think about anything that’s actually bothering me. But everything bothers me. The way the carpet smells despite my attempts to deep clean it, how uncomfortable the couch is, how long it takes me to wash my hair, how long it takes my hair to dry once its washed, they way it looks if it air dries instead of me blow drying it, how my skin hasn’t looked good in years and I can’t tell if it’s because of this place or because of aging, not being certain about how well the cats actually get along, the way the soil is here, all of the mosquitoes that never let me enjoy the outdoors here the way I was able to back home, my inability to see in dim lighting and the fact that the natural light in this house is horrible, the way the house never feels clean no matter how much I scrub every inch of it, not being able to put my plants where I want them because the new cat will chew on them, having a lawn and garden to take care of, that won’t be mine in less than two years, but still putting so much money and time into it because I want it to look nice, not having any idea of what I look like because my body dysmorphia seems to have gotten worse, every effort I make feeling futile, feeling old and still feeling immature at the same time, how petrified I am of large expenses, how I want to go back to college but I can’t bring myself to talk to anyone about it, my fear of failure, politics, the future of humanity, my pessimism, how my attempts at positivity always feel like I’m being a hypocritical liar, being so fucking afraid of every god damn thing except for the things I should be afraid of, and the fact that this list is endless.

Am I annoying all of my friends back home? Do I not talk to them enough?  How can I talk with them when there’s nothing going on in my life, and therefore there’s nothing to say? I’d like to call them but no one talks on the phone anymore, and they are busy. I wouldn’t want to call at an inconvenient time and setting up a time to talk seems like an inconvenience itself. I can’t bring up all of this because it’s not fair to them to burden them with all of this. How are they supposed to respond to this shit, as a friend? Say, “I’m here for you if you need anything,” knowing full well I’ll never reach out to them because I don’t want to ruin the time I have with them or bog down their day?  If I post this I’m just doing it for attention and unfairly making people feel like they should reach out, even though, as I’ve stated before, if they reach out I won’t be able to talk about anything because I don’t want to burden them.  They all have had so much happen in their lives, they are busy and actually being responsible adults.  If I don’t post this I’m just being a dumb child ranting in a diary and, once again, accomplishing nothing.

I’m fatigued, all the time.  I just want to rest.

[chaoswillfallrpg]

BELLATRIX BLACK is THIRTY-ONE YEARS OLD and a SENIOR ADVISOR in THE DARK LORD’S ARMY at THE DEATH EATER HEADQUATERS. She looks remarkably like CRYSTAL REED and considers herself aligned with THE DEATH EATERS. She is currently TAKEN. 

→ OVERVIEW:

tw: murder, death, kidnapping

Mysterious and cool blooded, Bellatrix Black is a name that strikes fear into the hearts of those familiar with it. A tenacious young woman, Bellatrix is the eldest child of CYGNUS and DRUELLA BLACK and was made by her father in his image. Bellatrix would always have a special place in the heart of her parents as their eldest, but would present herself to them as their legacy and the member of her family who carry forward their lineage with pride. Raised with strict ideals in regards to marriage and the importance of keeping their bloodline pure, Bellarix grew up striving to make her parents proud though perhaps not in the way they anticipated. Whilst her youngest sister NARCISSA longed to find a handsome Pure-Blood prince from the fairytales her mother read her, Bellatrix wanted more. She wanted to be like her father and make a difference in the world. Bellatrix and her sisters had been raised in the knowledge that in a world as cruel as this one, not all were created equal though everyone seemingly believed they could be. Being a Black once meant respect in the wizarding world, the realisation that you were a higher caliber of witch and wizard which had slowly been eroded by the embracing of Muggles and Mudbloods alike who didn’t deserve to even brush shoulders with their family. Bellatrix felt strongly about being a member of the Black family and wrapped herself in books and research on their family line. 

By the age of six, she could recite all the pivotal members of the Black family tree with the ease most children can recall their favourite nursery rhyme, making her the firm favourite of her aunt WALBURGA BLACK whose faces adorned the walls of her family home. Bellatrix enjoyed the attention that embracing their family rhetoric brought her, including the undivided attention of her very busy father. As Bellatrix aged, her father began to intrust her with more responsibility and allowed her to hear his personal thoughts and feelings on the world she dutifully attempted to pass on to her younger sisters and cousins. Sitting with them during family parties or alone in their room, Bellatrix would read her sisters stories of great Pure-Blood witches and wizards and encourage them to dream the world in a way their parents would have wanted. Narcissa and ANDROMEDA would marry into fine families and adorn their family tree with more beautiful children or join The Ministry of Magic and help their father control the rot from the inside as she hoped to do after finishing her studies. One thing Bellatrix was sure of growing up was the Black’s would have their part to play in the way the world was shaped and she was ready for the challenge, which would begin at school. Bellatrix was placed into Slytherin upon joining Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, just like all other Black’s who had come before her. 

Asserting herself at school as a dominant figure amongst the other pupils, Bellatrix ensured she was both feared and respected and hand selected a group of likeminded Slytherin students to enforce her message. Her first choice was her eldest cousin, EVAN ROSIER- slightly younger than Bellatrix and her favourite relation other than her younger sisters. His father had been taken from him by Muggle gang members, which had made him lean on Bellatrix for support during their earlier years at school. CASTOR WILKES quickly became Bellatrix’s best friend as someone who was almost as wicked and entitled as her, their family hadn’t come from as much money or notoriety as hers which had left them hungry for power and loyal to anyone who would offer them it freely. Then there was RODOLPHUS LESTRANGE, a quieter choice for their group of misfits and was often left doing their potions essays as they lounged around in detention. For the first few years of her life at school making pupils cry and watching teachers tear their hair out as she refused to play by the rules set in place. She despised sharing a school with mudbloods and blood traitors and made no effort to hide those feelings, her parents didn’t care of course, they would have sent Bellatrix to Dumstrang Institute if it had not been a family tradition to attend Hogwarts. Bellatrix had a desire to make those who should not have been there aware of their standing within society, but knew she needed greater direction. It was during her final year at Hogwarts she was first approached by the man who would change her world forever. 

Her parents held a Yule dinner at their home each year on Christmas Eve which was attended by her entire family and other pivotal members of the wizarding community. More than often Bellatrix spent the party being watched by her mother, her nervous gaze trained on her eldest daughter in the hopes she wouldn’t upset the apple cart and tell a Ministry Official her thoughts on the current state of the country- but this year was different. As she was sent to collect a bottle of her father’s best firewhiskey from his study, Bellatrix was approached by an older wizard she had not met before. He avoided introducing himself for as long as he possibly could, keeping the conversation focused on Bellatrix. He asked about her life at home, her friends at school and claimed he could see she was destined for more than the schoolgirl antics her father had told him about. TOM RIDDLE believed Bellatrix was a young woman of purpose and revealed he would be in touch in the near future before disappearing into the crowd gathering in the hallway of Brideswater Manor. Later that evening, her father would invite her into his office to tell her the world as they knew it was changing and Bellatrix had an important role within it. The Dark Lord, as he called himself- was rewriting the wizarding world and planned on taking the Black family along with him to the top of the hierarchy. Bellatrix would infiltrate Hogwarts and hand select people who would be a good fit for this new future as young followers of The Dark Lord.

Dutifully, Bellatrix agreed and returned to school that year with the aim to discreetly recruit as many people as she could to impress her father and hopefully gain the respect of The Dark Lord in tandem and graduated fulfilling that aim. Bellarix delivered her schoolmate Wilkes, her cousin Evan and important figures in their world like LUCIUS MALFOY. Her standout contribution came in corrupting the minds of those younger than her such as her cousin REGULUS BLACK. Bellatrix had always been fond of her youngest cousin but involving him in her latest affairs certainly brought them closer together due to his status as her understudy. Bellatrix was prepared to give her life over to spreading the message of The Dark Lord and he hadn’t failed to notice every time she brought him more names, which seemingly became more impressive. After a while, he stopped coming to visit her father and was only interested in speaking with Bellatrix, sending for her to visit him at his base in London where they would sit alone, plotting the demise of the world as they knew it in the hopes of rebuilding a better one in its place. Despite being much younger than a number of his first followers, Bellatrix quickly rose within the ranks to become his senior adviser and second in command on all of his most important projects, including hand selecting those who will be closest to the top. Currently Bellatrix is working closely with one of her favourite finds, RABASTAN LESTRANGE with the aim of grooming him as her second in command right under the nose of his family, who she hopes will join them soon enough. 

Though Bellatrix has been tasked with spreading his message, she has also been offered a greater task to which she alone is privy. Knowing the inner workings of ALBUS DUMBLEDORE well, The Dark Lord is convinced a rival group will rise to try and combat the one he is slowly building. Whilst gathering followers, Bellatrix has been tracking the movements of her disgraced cousin SIRIUS BLACK and a number of his associates in the hopes of squashing a potential rebellion and killing as many people as necessary in order to ensure his work goes exactly according to plan. The Dark Lord’s current vision is to stoke the fires of rebellion in the wizarding world, targeting creatures and showing them how their lives might be different under new leadership. Bellatrix and Rabastan were sent to recruit circus werewolf SILAS CRUMP in the hopes a band of freaks and creatures would follow. A simple task quickly turned messy as Silas pushed back, leaving Bellatrix and Rabastan compromised. In an attempt to think quickly the pair tracked him down and kidnapped his daughter CORIN HALE as a worthy replacement to infiltrate the circus and casting a memory charm on Silas to safeguard both them and their movement. Bellatrix believed the problem had been dealt with until the body of the Minister’s son BOOKER BAGNOLD ended up in the Ministry’s fountain as a result of Rabastan’s carelessness. Scrambling to cover themselves and safeguard their movement Bellatrix is keen to deal with Silas Crump whatever it takes and ensure there are no more mistakes in their quest for power. 

→ ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Blood Status → Pure-Blood

Pronouns → She/Her

Identification → Cis Female 

Sexuality  → Up to Roleplayer 

Relationship Status → Single 

Previous Education → Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (Slytherin)

Societies → Pura Sorores

Family → Cygnus Black (father), Druella Black (mother), Andromeda Black (sister), Narcissa Black (sister), Sirius Black (cousin), Regulus Black (cousin/mentee), Evan Rosier (cousin), Orion Black (uncle), Walburga Black (aunt), Axel Rosier (deceased uncle), Adèle Rosier (aunt), Alexandra Rosier (cousin)

Connections  → Tom Riddle (object of affection/boss), Castor Wilkes (best friend), Rabastan Lestrange (close friend/mentee), Lucius Malfoy (close friend), Aristaeus Greengrass (close friend), Rodolphus Lestrange (friend), Alice Yen (adversary), Silas Crump (victim/adversary), Corin Hale (victim/captor) 

Future Information → Wife of Rodolphus Lestrange

BELATRIX BLACK IS A LEVEL 8 WITCH. 

[goattales]

Caught in the Act

Plot: The reader catches Jasper and Alice making out and he starts avoiding them cause he's way to embarrassed to deal with that. Note: the reader doesn't know they're vampires

You, in general, didn't really fit into any of those neat little groups the school divided itself into. You weren't sporty enough to be a jock, you didn't wear enough black to be a got, and you weren't popular enough to be, well, one of the popular kids. You were just Y/N L/N, some high school Senior that kept his head down. The universe had no plan for you, you were merely wandering this earth as a bystander.

But that didn't mean you didn't want to be part of a clique, because it gave people a deeper sense of belonging, a reason to act the way you want to, dress the way you like, do things you enjoy, all with likeminded individuals! But it was too much stress, you preferred to just bounce between interests- sports, art, history, books -without having to be tied to one forever.

And with all that running around your head you started to shove your books and pencil case into your bag, barely even letting the bell ring before you stood up to go to lunch. Nothing fancy in your bag today, just some leftovers from last night's dinner and a bag of candy you had been slowly working through all day.

Despite not being in a clique, you didn't sit alone; you sat with Angela, Mike, Eric, and Jessica. Bella use to sit with you guys too, before she started to sit with the Cullens, now her relationship to the group was more a see-eachother-in-the-corridor-and-smile sort of deal.

That wasn't so big of a concern for you, though, in fact the first time you saw her sit at the table you knew she wouldn't be sat with you all for long, she had one of those popular looks about her, so when she was hand selected to join the five person moping party that was the Cullen table you weren't too surprised.

In some other timeline maybe she would have gone on to joint the nerds in the back table near the stage, or maybe she would have taken to the goth table that was in the corner near the fire exit. And maybe there was even alternate universe where she stayed at this table, but that would be something you may never find out.

Not, at least, with Mike Newton pulling you back to real life with little care for your ears.

"Y/N! Are you even listening?!" Mike dragged you out of your train of thought by waving a hand in front of your face and screeching at you. That was surprisingly subtly by his standards, though.

"Mike, leave him alone, he just got out of maths. He's recovering, aren't you, Y/N?" Jessica came to your defence with an elbow in Mike's ribs and a soft sort of grin for you, and you thanked her with a small smile before you spoke.

"It's okay, Jess, but thanks. I was just thinking about existence and how absolutely infinite it is" you shrugged.

"That much, huh? Deep, L/N, deep." Mike seemed stunned, or maybe he just regretted prompting you to talk, but either way he didn't try to drag you into the conversation again, and you took the opportunity to fall back to your thoughts gratefully.

When you all parted ways for the last five or so minutes of lunch everyone waved, some hugged, and Mike and Jess walked off attached at the hip. They were together again, though who knows how long it will last at this point. You and Angela were talking the other day, and agreed that they were probably so on-and-off because they were lonely and the other was close enough to fix that for a bit.

You shook your head and huffed quietly, rounding one corner after another and then climbing a set of stairs only to realise you left your coat in your last classroom, and with a great deal of frustration you turned on your heels and took a brisk walk back. You were hoping, no praying, that the room would still be unlocked, because the teacher would have left by now and the room won't be used until tomorrow.

By some streak of luck it was, but when you pushed the door open and made a grab for your coat- laid out on the teachers desk, predictably -the shuffling of other people's clothes made you look up so fast you hurt your neck.

Stood in the back of the room were Jasper Hale and Alice Cullen, both very disheveled and looking rather like deers caught in headlights. Even from as far away as you were, you could see that Jasper's shirt was almost completely open and the straps of Alice's bra and vest top were a mess around her forearms, more of her chest on show than usual.

As they rushed to correct it and called out for you to wait, though being vague as opposed to a name-you heard a very light "h-hey, you with the coat, wait!" as you made a break for it.

You decided in that moment that you would have to move schools, because the most they did was hold hands when other people were around and there was no way you could face them after seeing that, so you spent the next three days avoiding them as much as possible.

The next day you barely dodged Alice in the hallway, narrowly avoided Jasper in the bathroom, and didn't go to lunch at all for fear of them cornering you as you entered the hall. The day after that it was sunny enough for their mum and dad to yank them out of school. The third was more perilous, you had History and sat a seat in front of Jasper, but you managed to talk the guy in front of you into switching, and you made a show of hanging behind to talk to the teacher until everyone else had left.

But the fourth day it was all over. You thought that maybe they had just dropped it, because when you sat to eat and glanced over at the table with as discrete of a gaze as you could manage, Alice caught your eyes and just looked away.

You were actually just leaving as you were bumped out of the stream of teenagers and then grabbed by what you would maybe describe as the ice cold grip of death himself, but looking down you saw it was just Alice. Little Alice with the big eyes and pretty lips, lips that right now were pressed into a thin, terrifying smile.

She dragged you into a classroom, where Jasper was sat on a table, hands clasped together in his lap and shoulders stiff.

You were actually terrified, because in the few seconds between being grabbed and then getting pushed into this room you had convinced yourself that you were going to get murdered.

"You know, my family is gonna worry when I-I'm not home by four, so killing me w-would be a real bad idea" your mouth ran despite your better judgement telling you to keep it shut, though your fear died in your chest when Jasper snorted.

"What?" Alice let you go and raised an eyebrow, looking at you like you'd grown a second head. "Y/N, we're not going to kill you, where did you even get that idea from?"

"W-well, I walked in on you two the other day, a-and you've been ch-chasing me down ever since" tripping over your words, you were scratching the back of your head as though it would wake you up, because that would be really good right now.

"Only 'cause you've been running away." Jasper spoke this time, and you looked over to see him staring at you much in the same way Alice was.

"We just wanted to apologise, because the way you found us was kind of..."

"Unbecoming" where Alice trailed off, Jasper picked up, and you found yourself rushing to speak.

"Oh! Oh- no it's fine, I've walked into worse. This is a high school, freshmen are practically feeling eachother up in the halls every day. I just, well you two don't even hug around other people, s-so I assumed you would be super annoyed that I walked in"

Jasper shrugged and Alice shook her head, laughing softly.

"No! We were just really ashamed that you had to see that, especially Jazz." as Alice spoke, Jasper nodded along, and spoke only when she had finished.

"I hope this has not altered the way you see us, Y/N, though perhaps we can build a friendship from this experience."

Lost for words, you nodded, and something inside of you starting to warm up at the idea. Perhaps the universe, in all its vast and unpredictable glory, had a plan for you after all?

[occassionalfanficwriter]

I see your Jaskier Falls in love first but Oblivious Geralt, Geralt falls in love first and Oblivious Jaskier, They both know Jaskier is in love but Jaskier doesn't know Geralt loves him back, They both know Jaskier is in love but Geralt is obliviously in love with him and raise you my contribution:

Geralt Falls in love first and falls in and out of love with Jaskier and Jaskier doesn't realize up until post dragon hunt.

So it goes like this:

Geralt doesn't have any opinion on bards and he's just minding his business treating everything as a background noice up until his brain suddenly registers the singing and he looks and sees Jaskier and it's love at first sight even if the song is terrible and horrendously wrong on so many levels. He can forgive that because 1. Bard and 2. Beautiful Singing Voice.

So he goes back to eating and thinks to keep this one as a memory. Nothing will come out of it because he is a witcher and the Butcher of Blaviken.

But then he hears footsteps and the bard is talking to him and look, Witcher School didn't include what to do when your crush talks to you in its curriculum so it takes him a while to register what Jaskier is saying but because Witcher genes, a while in terms of Witcher is equivalent to like nanosecond to humans.

So he gives 3 words and that's it. Geralt kinda hates himself for it but also thanks his self discipline that he didn't say some stupid shit like, "i like your voice" because that's probably an i love you is bardspeak.

And Geralt is ready for this to be over except Jaskier keeps talking and Geralt realizes that Jaskier ("what a nice name" "shut up brain" doesn't recognize a Witcher and Geralt entertains a one night stand and no more because we all know he accepts the love he thinks he deserves. Sad emo witcher™ etc etc.

But THEN! Jaskier pieces it out and then he's recognized as Geralt of Rivia and he leaves because he knows what follows his name.

'Story of my life' Geralt thinks because no good thing lasts when it comes to him. So yeah he's a little broken hearted up until Jaskier calls him the Butcher of Blaviken and then he falls out of love because you know he has standards. And he is slightly pissed up until they get captured and then he is pissed and sorry for Jaskier.

And then he keeps on getting disappointed with Jaskier especially on the beginning of toss a coin up until he hears the whole song and then Jaskier explains why he did what he did and Geralt falls in love again and has an introspection so Jaskier becomes his travelling companion.

And then they travel together and Geralt just wants to punch a whole drowner pack or go back in Kaer Morhen because in all the years he spent on the Path, Jaskier is the only one who gives him continuous emotional upheavals. Falls in and out of love towards this Bard that loves peole easily without a care for his own self and look this wasn't part of the Witcher curriculum. His heart and mind is in a seasonal love with Jaskier and the worst part is that Jaskier doesn't know.

Now to make this more fun think about this from Jaskier's side. It's the medieval fantasy era and during that time artists treat their Muses so much better than they would when compared to a lover, think about a fan that got close to their idol but little bit more personal and yet dettached at the same time.

Like Jaskier, calls Geralt his muse at the same breath as saying they are friends but back then a Muse was someone the artist saw and put into a pedestal. Flaws are loved and beautiful in their eyes. And Geralt senses this distance but can't articulate the feeling and Jaskier knows it but doesn't say anything because a Muse isn't like a comman man.

So Jaskier is toeing the line between keeping his Muse untarnished and being a friend. There is a fine line between Jaskier the Bard and Jaskier the Witcher's friend, and it begins and ends on Geralt's witcher job. Geralt doesn't notice this at all up until the mountain.

Because Jaskier easily flunctuates between his personas and does it seamlessly that it barely registers to Geralt. Because they don't travel together long enough even if they've traveled together for 10 years before the djinn incident.

Which brings the djinn incident and Yennefer to a whole new meaning.

Because when they meet, Yennefer knows a likeminded soul and Geralt is in the same boat as her. In and out of love. Jaskier is the Istredd to Geralt's Yennefer. And they bond over that and in this moment, Geralt is hurt and sorta tired of loving Jaskier but he doesn't want to stop. Add that with the sex magic and the almost dying and the djinn Geralt decides to fuck with Yennefer because they're on the same boat and nothing can truly come out of this.

And Geralt isn't adverse to friends with benefits and there is, in the depths of his heart, the unspoken desire for Jaskier to take him down on whatever pedestal he was placed on by doing this thing with Yennefer.

But it never happens and its just awkward. Because nothing changes, Jaskier still keeps on treating him the same and he just wants to keep on being in love with jaskier and not fall out of love because of whatever new muse Jaskier found while away from him.

He wants to be more than Jaskier's Muse,to be his only muse, to be a friend and to be his lover but he can't because Jaskier goes where the winds take him and Geralt is afraid that one day he'd walk the path alone and Jaskier won't return to his side.

And then the whole dragon hunt happens and he hears Jaskier's offer and he wants to take it. Agree and make promises that whenever they part there is a place where they will meet and it will be theirs but then he hears the words,

"-for a while."

And Geralt knows that whatever he'd have with Jaskier on the coast won't be permanent it would be a fleeting moment and they'd be back where they started and Geralt.Is.So.Fucking.Tired.

So he simultaenously says all the words he doesn't want to say and the words he want to say and he is fed up with the world and himself because nothing ever comes out right from his mouth and Jaskier is hurt but Geralt has no fucks to give right now.

He just wants Jaskier, wants Jaskier to remain in his life for as long as possible, something permanent that he can hold onto, something that makes him different from the other people Jaskier has come to collect over the years, something more than whatever it was that he had with De Stael.

So Jaskier leaves and he is one muse less and sure it hurt but artists takes their pain turns the ugly into something beautiful and its what Jaskier does. Her Sweet Kiss is his pain and heartbreak turned into a beautiful song and after that he turns to his other muses. Finds other Witchers and interesting people with interesting stories and sometimes ordinary people with their beautiful ordinary stories.

Except his fellows from Oxenfurt realizes this and Jaskier gets an awakening and has committed the most heinous crime, for him, by falling in love with his Muse, Geralt of Rivia the White Wolf. He had debased his Muse by doing so and suddenly the parting is more painful and more just in his eyes because real artists don't do that. They illuminate their Muses and makes them more brilliant, loving them and not loving them at the same time. And Jaskier stops singing because he knows whatever song he'll make next won't hold up to what he had made when Geralt was his Muse.

His other muses were not muses at all but lovers and he has fallen the same way his many colleagues did once in their career. So he takes up writing for awhile because there are stories to be told, stories that are not song worthy but worthy to be told in writings. Jaskier becomes just Jaskier and he grows for it.

In a different way than Jaskier the Bard had grown and he accepts his many failings both as a friend and as a Bard to Geralt.

So the next time they meet, both of them has grown as a person and Geralt takes the first step because he has learned that sometimes no matter how many times he has been hurt that it is better to have known love that left guessing what it would have and he had chosen Jaskier a long time ago. Settled his heart on the gentle palm of Jaskier's calloused hand and trusted that it would be taken care of.

Geralt apologizes for the hurtful words and bears himself naked to Jaskier's eyes, lets himself be known and finds comfort in the knowledge that no matter what Jaskier had once loved all of him. He lays his heart and soul bare to this person who had seen beyond his worst and taught him how to be his best.

And Jaskier accepts him as he is and as he was all the while saying sorry for the hurt he had unintentionally gave him and all of this gives Ciri hope even if the world is in turmoil. Because this is what she would be fighting for, it was more than just surviving and peace for her now.

Because Geralt and Jaskier has shown her something that calls to the primal part of each person's soul. Something that has been discarded by the world for a long time, something thought of as useless and disdained and yet it was what would make the world a better place.

In between the wartorn and ravaged land that the world became underneath Nilfgaard's army, Geralt and Jaskier learned and remembered the gentleness and healing of love.

A love that comes from a place of understanding and striving to be good, to others, to the ones we love, and to ourselves. That separation doesn't always mean good bye, that not all bridges that have been burned can't be rebuilt anew, and that there is always someone who will look at you and see all of you, even the parts of yourself that scare you because they have loved you and decided to keep on loving you.

And for all of the pain they gave each other, intentional or not, they had chosen to love and keep on loving each other. And Geralt knows that Jaskier has made his choice and that choice is him.

[revol-lover]

dreams don’t end at “30″

so i just had a little breakthrough and maybe this wont sound like anything to anyone else but i just have to share it

so i’ve talked about this before. about how my friend and i were both planning these personal development like goals for this year that covid got in the way of. and he said something, about how this is his last year in his 20s and he wanted to get some goals accomplished before 30 

and i thought about that and realized something.

i have been feeling similarly about a few goals that i’ve been hanging onto for years and years. like i’m going to be honest with you, some people might remember this if you’ve been around here for a long time but probably not. anyway when i was in high school i really wanted to make music, sing, learn an instrument. and i did make some covers that i posted on myspace (showing my age here lol) and youtube but then i kind of gave up on it when

 1) became 18 and realized my dream to go to NYC and pursue music when i was 18 wasn’t happening because of a million reasons (it was very much a pipe dream, right? i mean you can’t have that dream and not prepare for it and i didnt. also i was too scared at the time to even move out to my own place if i had the funds to do so because my parents wouldnt have really approved and i was still so under their thumb) 

2) broke up with my musician boyfriend. which needed to happen. but he was the only person super passionate about that kind of goal at the time around me (till he ran lol)  and he actually is still doing music now so good for him but basically 

because of those 2 reasons i just let go of that dream all together as something i thought i wanted to do but was “unrealistic”.

but the thing about turning 30 and feelings like you needed to achieve all these personal/dreamy/goals in your 20s. what is that bullshit? why? 

what changes when you cross over to 30? i’ll tell you one thing. media pushes movies, books, films, everything about people chasing their dreams in their 20s and “settling” down in their 30s. where’s my inspiring movie about the 32 year old mom who finally wrote a song and performed it live after being terrified her whole life of doing so?

 think about it though

in your 30s you. *might* have a better paying job than you did in your 20s. which means, if you can manage to find time or a way for it, you *might* be able to save a little more money or afford to do something like, buy that guitar and guitar lessons in order to learn to play and write a song and live out your dream in some way, even if its just learning to play so you can play at an open mic. and maybe you’ll like that and you’ll somehow connect with likeminded people and form a band. idk. your dreams dont have to end in your 20s. 

you dont have to fall into the trap of your 20s are for your dreams that are so big you feel like the chance of achieving them is getting struck by lightening

and then your 30s are for fancy adult goals like buying a house, and going on a $10k vacation and those things are probably just as hard as the goals you had in your 20s but the world wont make you see it that way. its seen as “selfish” to prioritize and budget for your artistic goals - but not a house. no that’s responsible and what you “should” do. but its ok to prioritize something that’s going to give your soul fulfillment too! we need to believe that! because it’s true. we are not here just to work our jobs and live mundane colorless lives once we aren’t considered “young” anymore (but 30s are still young. not what i’m saying)

 you’re always going to be chasing something big and if you let the world control what that thing is you’re always going to be on some rat race. 

it’s fine if you achieve your goals in a different order than the world says you were supposed to. i got married young and had a child young, that was how my life played out and i’m happy with that because, yes, finding love and becoming a mother very much were goals of mine.

yes i dropped out of college because i couldn’t afford it and i couldnt find a major that felt worth being in debt for. and also, because hey guess what? contrary to what a lot of people will try to lead you to believe, college is not for everyone. and college does not = success. college drop out does not = failure. it’s just an option of something you could do with your life. AND if you didn’t go to your college in your 20s it doesnt mean you can’t in your 30s. or 50s. hell my husband, who did go to college saw elderly (think, 80s!) people going to his college as students! college isn’t just for 18 year olds fresh out of high school. 

My 27th birthday is in 2 weeks and no, i have not yet to worked up the courage to write an original song from words to music, or have the courage to get on a stage and sing anything, or talk to a stranger, or publish any of my writing or art, goals i’ve had whirling around in my brain since I was 18, but, it’s going to happen. maybe this year. maybe when i’m 35, but it’s going to happen. a number is not going to be the thing holding me back.

that whole mentality of “my youth is slipping away i need to achieve all these dreams before midnight the day of my 30th birthday” is so stupid and flawed and we all deserve to see ourselves, and our individual potential as more than that. 

last part of this rant - one of the reason i even became so passionate about reignighting some of my dusty, old goals, that it turned out, i still cared about, is because i had a moment where i was like

ok i am a mom. i am someones mom. how will my daughter see me, as a person, not just her mom? 

kevin and i always talk about how between the two of us we’ve both had a lot of quintessential young adult experiences that we look forward to sharing with her. like, quitting jobs, getting in car accidents, that one time i unknowingly participated in an illegal bonfire and ran from the cops then lied straight to their faces and somehow got away with it (literally my ONE act of teen rebellion), changing college majors like 3 years in (kevin), failed classes, tried cigarettes, etc like i’m ready, and hope that one day she will feel comfortable talking to us about things because we’ve been through things and have a lot of input and two different perspectives to offer

but further than that, i realized that i want her to know that her mom is a person too. i want her to know that mom is also passionate about writing, and music, and somehow tackled some of her goals in regards to that so that SHE can feel that SHE, too can do those things. and i know that, that is in part how it works 

because,

my dad IS an artist. my dad IS a musician. yall. my dad is SO talented.  my dad is brilliant. besides his artistic abilities which include, drawing literal realistic as fuck portraits, sculpting, painting, playing guitar, bass, piano, mandolin, he also knows music composition, etc etc etc beyond all of that, he also taught himself fucking PLUMBING and ELECTRICIAN SHIT to fix things in our house growing up. like he bought a book. and taught himself. my dad. i grew up thinking that was normal but i realized not everyones dad can just tear down the bathroom and rebuild it from scratch down to the plumbing without being a licensed professional.

but anyway the point is - as talented as my dad is, he doesnt really pursue his artistic dreams much. and its sad. i’m glad that i’ve seen some of the work he did when he was younger. i’m glad that if i bring it up, he’ll show me something he can do. but he doesnt pursue it anymore really. my dad works an exhausting physical labor job but even he, as a 50something year old has fallen into that trap of like, i dont have time to draw, but he will scroll his phone and read articles for hours and i’m not shaming him. i’m just saying we all have this problem in the modern era of technology and social media and what not (hell i am writing a post on tumblr instead of my book right now).

but if timing was different and my dad grew up in a different time, where lets say something distracted him from doing the little bit of art and music that he did when i was a kid that i was able to witness, if i hadnt seen that. i wouldnt know that.. in a way.. that’s in me. i mean, he’s my dad. if my dad could pick up a craft and work at it to be good at it, why can’t i? there are so many musicians and (kind unrelated but not rly - i think being “self made” is an art) business owners in my family. there’s either some common thread in our genetics ORRRRRRRRRR just growing up around people working at and succeeding at those kinds of goals shows you that it CAN be done so you’re more likely to believe in your abilities

and i want that for my daughter. because even as an almost 3 year old i can see that she has a gift for music, and reading. and even if i’m wrong about that and she grows up wanting to do some other thing as a job or hobby, i want her to know, by seeing her mom do it, that she can achieve anything she puts her heart to. you don’t have to box yourself in because of your age or your sex or the fact that you’re a parent. 

and your dream doesnt have to become your career. it can be a hobby and still be fulfilling. like yes, 18 year old me dreamed about some life in nyc singing in clubs or bars or whatever and being ~famous (lol) and that did not happen, but i can still get out there and play open mic downtown and get that love of music, and desire to face my fear of performing out of my system. maybe i’ll love it. maybe i’ll hate it. but i’ll have done it. and that’s the ultimate goal. 

sorry i went off but i had to get that out of my system and i’m very passionate about 

[go-diane-winchester]

Why Misha's fans behave so cult like

Thank you so much for the ask.  And don't apologize.  It is a very legitimate question.  First of all, I did a post of this subject as to why Misha's fans behave the way they do.  Why are they so willing to go to such extreme measures for a fictional ship?  Why don't they think twice before sending a death threat?  I hypothesized that Misha has the personality of a cult leader and he uses sympathy to gain support and devotees.  How was it that Misha managed to amass the support of a group of people with such similar personality types.  The only thing they haven't done for him yet is kill themselves for him.  Well, that is because they exhibit a group of personality traits that makes cult leader types like Misha prey on them. 

1.  They want to feel validated. 

They are looking for approval.  They want to be accepted.  They want to be part of a group.  What a cult does is that it welcomes you and immediately you feel like you are no longer an outsider.  The majority of people in Misha's destiel fan base are young people.  Teenagers feel very out of place.  School is a horrible social concept.  And most kids suffer throughout their entire schooling career, because they want to fit in rather than find at least one true friend and stick with them.  They don't realize that the whole school doesn't need to like you.  As long as you find one friend to care for you, you are fine.  The prettiest girl in you school [you know the one that has that handsome jock boyfriend - every school has one] also feels out of place.  If she has one little zit, she freaks out.  She managed to become popular and now if she gets toppled from the top, she will be a loser and it scares her.  So you see, it bothers everyone, even the popular kids.  Sometimes, I like being average.  Because even if you fall, you don't fall very far.  In the destiel cult, whenever one of them does something wrong, others clamour to explain the action and make excuses for each other.  They protect their own.  Even if the person is wrong.  They validate each other.

2.  They seek an identity.

There are people who feel like loners.  Like they don't belong.  They will be in a crowded room and still feel lonely.  They want to find their place in the world.  They want a group they can clique with.  With Misha, there are two groups.  The slash fans and the LGBT.  Slash is a personal thing.  When I was young and into slash, only a few girls in a chat room spoke about it.  They all were likeminded because they all liked slash and it was enough for them.  They never fought over ships.  When actors where asked about ships they were part of, they would just make a joke, smile and more on to the next subject because that is the right thing to do.  What Misha did, was speak openly about destiel.  So suddenly destiel had a ''platform''.  Instead of saying that slash was a personal thing, Misha said that slash was a taboo subject, and that he and the hellers were ''breaking the norm and making it acceptable''.  He also made it about the LGBT, who are an ostracized group in many social circles.  Certainly in a school environment.  So they started to feel that the destiel group was the only one that will ever welcome them.  That is how he recruits.  And that is why he speaks about destiel even when nobody asks him about it. 

3.  They are followers, not leaders.

These are people who want to look up to someone.  In this case, the cult leader.  They want to be told what to do, and they are very good followers.  They cling to every word that comes out of his mouth.  They will quote him, because to their ear, everything he says is quote-worthy.  In Misha's case, it is not just things that he says but also lines of dialogue that are written for his character.  Because the words came out of his mouth, they are significant.  In Misha's case, he doesn't give instructions directly.  What he does is, he plants a thought seed in their mind and from there it grows until the hellers take action because of that thought seed.  When he wanted his minions to fight off the girl whom he wanted a threesome with, all he did was tell his friends he was mugged and then tweeted to his fans that he got a few scrapes but that he was fine.  They just took it from there, stalking every social media account that the girl had and even following her onto Tumblr. 

4.  They seek meaning.

This ties in with looking for identity.  Every human being wonders what their purpose is.  They want to look for meaningfulness in their lives and their actions.  Some people do good deeds.  Some people look for faith and spirituality.  Some people indulge in an art form.  Slash fiction is an art form.  But what Misha has done, is he has overemphasized it so much, that now the hellers feel that this is their purpose.  They want destiel to be canon.  They want their hard work of fighting for it to be validated to achieve fruition.  And they will do anything to make that happen.  If it doesn't happen, the almost ten years of hard work that they put into campaigning for destiel will go down the gutter.  They don't want the ship to be canon because it deserves to be canon.  They want it to be canon, because they want to be right.  They want to tell people ''I told you so''.  I theorize that some of them don't even like destiel.  They just want to belong somewhere and fight for a cause.  It gives them purpose.  There are some people who identify as destiel positive. 

5.   They have schizotypal thinking.

Schizotypal thinkers are people who always have the most fantastical take on anything.  They don't think like other people.  If an incident happened, like a picture frame falling on the floor, logical thinkers will say ''maybe a gust of wind dropped it when someone opened the front door''.  Schizotypal thinkers will go for every out of this world, paranormal reason rather than the most common sense one.  They don't really have mental illness.  They just have colorful imaginations bordering on stupid.  There are cults out there that center their entire thinking around a particular fantasy or nightmare that these types of people have in order to attract them.  For people who feed on meta and headcanon, this cult chose destiel.  They want to theorize and speculate about a scene rather than accept it at face value.  Although I have noticed that seeking validation for Castiel and proving his importance is also something that they tend to do.  I hope you have never read destiel meta because it will mess you up.  Destiel meta is so over-reaching and shocking to logical thinkers because they dodge what would actually make sense, and go straight towards something that is nonsensical and ship friendly.  In fact, most of their posts are about really stupid, debunkable meta, because they want to prove how right they are about destiel.  They are not enjoying their ship.  They are suffering from it. 

6.  They are highly suggestible.

They are very gullible people.  When they find a cult leader, they believe everything he says.  Even if he has a sad excuse for doing something wrong, if he gave the excuse, then it is good enough for them.  They will accept the excuse.  I have seen Misha insult them to their faces and they just laughed.  That is because Misha has put himself into such an authoritative position that, they cant even dream of questioning him, and they will tear apart anyone who dares speak up against him.  Anyone who leaves the cult, has to do so without announcing it, because if they are stupid enough to announce it, they will be harassed, or a group of devotees will try to re-indoctrinate them.  Sort of like a therapy session to keep you in the group.    

7.  They constantly blame others.

This is fairly self-explanatory.  They don't take responsibility with they mess up.  Even as a group, they will put the blame on other people.  I have seen hellers pretend that death threats were never brought up in a conversation.  In fact, you have to remind them ''hello, I was talking about death threats''  to which they answer usually is ''we are not all like that''.  They literally don't recognize that they are causing damage here.  They think they are the victims.  They are they are being bullied because nobody wants to recognize their brand of truth.  They do that with their cult leader, Misha's behavior as well.  He can do no wrong.  One heller is currently making excuses for why he was leering at children through a school fence.  There is one more frequent characteristic I have noticed about them.  They ''misunderstand'' the argument being made.  I used quotation points, because they do it on purpose.  It is their way of throwing sand in your eye to confuse you so you wont know which way the argument is going. 

8.  They are always angry.

These people get angry at the drop of a hat.  They get defensive and are argumentative.  I theorize that social justice is very cult-like too.  Because social justice warriors get offended for everything.  These people have angry energy in them and they look for ways to expend their angry energy.  Sometime they will join groups that allow them to stay defensive over the imaginary injustice that they are suffering.  In the case, of destiel, they treat it like an ideology instead of a ship.  Because Misha Collins ''himself'' spoke up for destiel, it is worth fighting for.  Misha gave them half of their validation.  Canon will give them their other half.  Destiel shippers get so angry if they hear that someone hates their ship, its almost like you kicked their puppy or something. 

9.  They have very low self-esteem.

These people don't have any personal value.  All the value they have is attached to how they can contribute to the cult.  Misha have high level minions that he is in contact with, like Melanie aka mishasdiary.  She actually has fans of her own within the cult.  Can you believe that?  Misha puts the shippers down, but throws out something shippy, like bait to keep them hooked.  Its their drug so he dishes out liberally.  For example he will make a sexual remark about Dean and call the hellers perverts in the same conversation.  The high level minions will give the hellers a chance to earn Misha's respect by giving them tasks to do, for example voting for Misha, his character or destiel when need be.  Or perhaps fighting Jared for making a joke that ''offended'' them.

As far that that girl is concerned, sweetie, I think its safer for you to just stop talking to her.  Don't debate with her.  Don't reason with her.  She is not going to listen to you.  If she persists, just tell her very nicely that you would rather not talk about that.  The problem is not her death threats.  The problem is your immediate safety.  Hopefully, she will take the hint and leave you alone.  If she doesn't, then I think you might have to get an adult to intervene, like the school counsellor.  Don't confront her yourself.  The best bet is to go out of your way to avoid her as much as humanly possible.  I wish you the best of luck and let me know if that tactic worked. 

https://www.bustle.com/p/if-you-exhibit-these-9-personality-traits-youre-more-likely-to-join-a-cult-9432374.

[technicolorfamiliar]

The Artist vs Social Media

I have been sharing my feelings about art and its ever-growing relationship to social media with a number of people recently. I wrote a bit about it here some months ago, but that was primarily focused on reactions to different types of art I was posting on different platforms. Without a doubt, it’s been something that’s given me pause for a while, and I have a suspicion I can’t be the only person that feels this way.

To be clear: this is not meant to be an attack on the people who enjoy and excel at being a creative on social media. It is purely an expression of my own frustration, a cry out to others who have struggled with the same issues, because I know I’m not alone.

First of all, my personal style just doesn’t compliment a successful social media presence, I’m such a fan of the long-format, in general. I don’t want anything in my life to be bite-sized, cropped, or condensed. I struggle to convey the concepts teeming in my heart in a limited number of characters and pixels. As I am evolving as an artist, I enjoy incorporating many layers of meaning, drawing on a multitude of sources for inspiration. Social media, for the most part, wants to condense, compartmentalize, limit. It’s short-format, lacks fluidity, and promotes shorter attention spans. It feels counterintuitive to the kind of art I love and the art I want to be making.

For as streamlined and easy as social media has made sharing artwork with the great big world out there, it’s also birthed a lot of additional anxiety and despair. At least that’s been my experience. Some people have taken to social media like ducks to water, they are thriving in an endless stream of posts and pictures and stories. But this particular artmaker finds the rise of social media more like an impossible mountain, and climbing it is a requirement.

I envy the artists and makers who have figured out how to hack social media in order to promote their work and their brand. These people make it look easy, like social media integration with one’s art practice is as simple as breathing. I understand how it is crucial now as any kind of artist to have a big social media presence. But despite that understanding, I still have a lot of issues with it.

I was in art school in the still relatively early days of Instagram. Facebook and Twitter were big, but I didn’t really ever get too deeply involved in either platform. For me, Facebook was mostly for staying in touch with friends and family back home. I didn’t even have a smart phone until some time after I graduated. The school I attended encouraged us to build a website, get a business card, but there was no way to prepare us for the expansion of these apps among others that would emerge later on. This is not a sorry attempt at an excuse for my complicated relationship with social media, because there are a lot of artists in their early 30s right now who are very clearly doing well in that arena.

Circa 2009 – 2011, using social media for networking was beginning to be a real thing to consider. Having a Facebook page and separate Instagram and Twitter accounts devoted to your craft in addition to your website and blog in order to reach all possible professional connections was increasingly important. And now, they are all absolutely essential. People think you must be kidding yourself if you’re making art and don’t have a social media presence. I’ve caught myself being judgmental of young artists who aren’t on social media. But then I’m reminded of my own issues with Facebook and Instagram and all the others and I think maybe I should shut my mouth.

—

That’s the background. The real thing I’m trying to say is this:

Social media is exhausting.

I hate it.

For all the good content being generated and shared on FB, IG, etc there are a thousand mentally and emotionally draining posts being shared by people who, by and large, aren’t on social media to promote their craft. And that’s fine, people should have a place to vent their frustrations, laugh at funny or un-funny memes, share recipes and cute animal videos, get 100+ validating reactions to their photos, post thoughts/criticisms/ideas too long for Twitter but too short for a blog…

But to expect an artist generating original content to compete with everything else being blasted on every social media platform is complete and utter unrealistic nonsense.

—

My big, huge, major beef with social media is the totally insane decision to stop having posts featured in chronological order on pretty much every major platform. This really hurts creative people who are trying to get exposure, share their work to the world (or at least their friends and followers), and requires them to generate even more content, or share the same post over and over again in the hopes that their painting or photo or video somehow makes it over all the other posts from everybody else that are only just so much noise. Trying to get noticed or share your work with likeminded creatives you don’t already know is like shouting in a canyon full of other people shouting, drowned out by all the other voices and the echoes of the voices.

But that’s not the only thing about social media that keeps me up at night.

There are people on social media who have become experts in making their lives look like perfect, magical journeys of self discovery and growth and good fortune. Seeing their perfectly composed, perfectly lit photos of what is supposedly their daily lives, their brunches, their cocktails, their pets, their clothes, their travels, their significant others, and whatever else makes me want to not even try. Why should I even bother to try to compete with that? Looking at those kinds of posts immediately makes me feel inferior because 1) I’m not living that theoretically beautiful, charmed life, and 2) I’m not generating masses of content like that of my own experience. I look at my weird little life and there’s hardly anything photo- or post-worthy, at least not on a daily basis, not enough to get above everyone else’s noise. When did having a social media presence become an art form in and of itself? One of my very close friends described social media as performance art, which is probably the best description of this phenomenon I’ve ever heard. I’m not saying it’s not hard work — in order to project this perfect life, you have to be a photographer, or at least know and/or have the money to pay for one, be a master of self-marketing, and you have to set aside the time in your day to make the posts (more on that in a bit). But as someone with at least half a brain, I know that the content being gobbled up by glowing, supportive friends and followers is only a version of reality.

I know I’m not the only one who feels utterly alienated by the “perfect lives” being presented on social media, and I know that it’s not most people’s intention to alienate their friends by posting gorgeous photographs and positive affirmations of their own journeys.

And yet, even just thinking about it is exhausting. It’s a destructive and deadly combination of self-loathing and self-doubt inspired by the vast majority of what I see on Facebook and Instagram with knowing full well that those feelings are totally unfounded since the posts are not a true reflection of reality. It doesn’t motivate me, it doesn’t inspire me to follow their lead, it doesn’t get my blood pumping. It just makes me tired.

—

By my nature, I am a relatively private person. I have no real desire to share my private life with strangers, and it’s a struggle for me to open up to acquaintances. I have a hard time talking about myself, my dreams and aspirations, my needs and wants with other people. I keep to myself, I have a small circle of close friends and family with whom I share things openly.

There’s nothing like the gut-wrenching feeling you get when you’re talking passionately about your art or your interests or your hopes for the future with someone and seeing the very moment their eyes glaze over with disinterest. It’s a special kind of soul-crushing dismissal that has lead me to live an introvert’s life. Because why, after all, would I share anything with people when that’s the reaction I often got in my youth when sharing with my peers?

The whole grand purpose of social media is to share. Share everything and share often. Artists who hold regular jobs and don’t have an abundance of free time or energy to devote to generating social media content on top of the art they’re already making need to find that magical balance. The Buzzfeed article about burnout that was circulating a few months ago touches on this a bit. Work + Art + Self Promotion. That’s always been the case for artists looking to make a profit off their work, but now it’s on a whole other level and puts creatives in direct competition with social media influencers and everyone else on FB, IG, Twitter, Tumblr, Snapchat, etc. When I say time and energy, I mean the lack of energy I personally have after a working a job that already requires me to use my creativity, strategy, and organizational skills. When I get home or when I finish a job, I want to recharge so I can have the energy and motivation to actually sit in my studio and make new art. I struggle with budgeting out my time and energy for taking photos, writing cute little descriptions, thinking up clever hashtags, and setting timers to remind me when to post in order to get the most views.

I’m over-focused right now on making the art, in finding my voice as an illustrator, in re-vamping my portfolio and considering the future of my practice. I would need a personal assistant to run my social media accounts in an effective and professional way, and I don’t understand how other artists don’t have assistants. Or maybe they do. At the very least it would require me to have my phone in my hand far more than I already do, so another reason to keep it on me, especially in my studio while I’m in the zone, working, makes me feel gross.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “But Emma… you took all this time to write and edit this long blog post. Surely you could have used that time to work on content for your IG or FB accounts.” And you would be right. However, I’m in a place mentally and emotionally where I see the social media game, I understand it, but I just don’t want to play it. Not the way we’re all expected to if we want to get noticed. I’m not a performance artist, I’m not extroverted enough, my process doesn’t lend itself to this new gold standard of being an artist in the 21st century. Am I making big strides to change my process? Not really, because the very nature of social media feels inauthentic to me and the work I want to be making.

—

In the end… I don’t really know how to make social media work for me and my own journey as an artist. It would be great if there was some compromise, some middle path for people like me who are rubbed the wrong way by hashtags and stories and filters. Is there even a possibility for existing any other way as an artist today? Because everyone I know who creates any kind of art seems to have accepted and figured out the key to doing well on social media. It’s almost not even worth airing my grievances since I’m not willing to completely change and conform to something that does not feel right to me.

I’ll just keep plugging along as I have been until I figure it out. Or some kind souls who have been through a similar conundrum swoop in and offer their wisdom and insight.

[cisspirituallearningcentre-blog]

Week 1 - A blog we all should read

Magic, doubt and negative emotions...

By Cindy I Schulter

It is I Cindy; sending many blessings and magic your way...

Humans have a funny way of functioning... When presented with a belief that makes their eyes open, their core beliefs shudder for they tend to over analyse, over theorise the magic which had occurred. At the time of it happening they would be like, ‘did I see that’, “Oh my God what just happened.” Then the doubts start to infiltrate. Sometimes certain magicks in life reoccur and you go – wow that’s happened before and you are able to tell yourself ‘see that did happen’.

All is then fine, and the higher levels of communication and magical events start occurring more frequently and you find your belief system located in your base chakra start to accumulate a memory box of these events.

This is great, for you think “I’m not crazy, I did see that.” And you go on in life, accepting and believing.

Accepting, believing, and being grateful for all the magic which occurs in your life would be the correct way to achieve more opportunities of like to occur. Keeping the memories fresh in your mind while there is a lull in occurrences will also help you to achieve a higher level of being.

What usually occurs is you are presented with a task or lesson, in this there is healing to be done, experiences to have and general life to combine so that more magic can start to present itself to you. So when magic happens then all of the sudden stops – how you react to that is the key to accessing the higher realms of spiritual awareness and magic.

I find humans tend to do one of two things, or maybe I should say a few things but stick to two drastic ones.

Firstly, they may start searching, either by buying books on the related events that occurred in their life, or trying to find likeminded people. They become “Searchers”, searching for answers and reasons of why they had magic in their life and now it’s disappeared. Being a searcher is not incorrect but what you have to keep in mind is there is a reason for the lull. And as long as when you search you don’t become bogged down with analytical theories and stop experiencing life, searching is a good way to go for not only will you meet like-minded people, you will also open up your own awareness and also place your INTENT behind your healing, basically saying – Yes I’m receptive, my intent is clear and purposeful for having more experiences which magic, synchronicity and spiritual awareness to occur. Thus it will be so.

Now, the second reaction that is most common is doubt. Doubt is associated with the term negative ego. Negative ego is fear based emotions which hinders growth and stops you from healing aspects of your auric bodies and light bodies to help elevate your magical experiences.

In this, you must realise that when you feel an emotion, whether it be happiness, sadness, anger or contentment, it’s your emotions or your physical self telling you how you are reacting to the experiences in life. Do not, if you are disillusioned, berate yourself for that is lending to more fear-based emotions in your journey. Instead be grateful your emotions have told you an area on which you have to work on, once you know your body, your emotions – you can start to heal them, turn those thoughts so more positive and magical experiences occur.

People must realise what we usually FEAR is what we HOPE for.

In that, you might be saying to yourself – well I would like to experience more magic but at the same time fear is at the base. The trick is to learn steps to eliminate fear and that’s by intent and recognising what it is about, what you hope is which you fear.

Take for example LOVE.

Most of humanity wish to experience love in its truest sense yet they hide behind their fears when it starts to present itself and you basically – when that love falters say – well see I was right to be fearful, look what happened.

This is the same with doubting the magic which had and can occur in your life. You may experience it once or twice, it leaves for awhile or you shut off seeing it as you are fearful, you are crazy and DOUBT becomes a core reaction so that each time magic presents itself it is diluted with this negative emotion. The trick is basically to acknowledge why you doubt or fear then find ways to eliminate that so more magic can occur.

It’s the same with guilt and repression. You may be ecstatically happy one day, but your partner, your child, your friend or whoever is down in the dumps may say – why are you so happy? You then feel guilty for being so happy when this person is so sad or depressed. This again leads to a core reaction to happen and starts to build a negative cycle so that every time you experience a positive emotion you have guilt attaching itself to it. The more that guilt attaches to your happiness, to your positive experiences, the more tainted those experiences become so that in the end what was at the start ecstasy and bliss now makes you weary and wary.

It’s all about balance. You would not know happiness unless you have experienced sadness extra but the trick is how you deal with each emotion. With happiness and contentment, with peace and love I’d tell you to ride that wave as long as you can, even if something or someone tries to or makes you feel guilty about it. When in the dumps or sad or in discord, recognise it but DONT ride the emotion, don’t pack it away so that it settles into your beliefs. Turn it around, say thanks for letting you know this feeling, say goodbye and release it and find positive memories and experiences to replace those thoughts.

So if sad, guilty or doubtful remember times when you were happy, guilt-free or in total belief. Replace negativity with positive thinking and I know many of you try this and sometimes find it hard. But is does work.

Think of it in this way, your core reactions have built up over time. If you have certain core reactions change them for the better and know it took time for them to become that way so you have to work hard and take time to build them up to a new way of reacting.

I have a good ritual for that – which is to get a red candle, first write on the candle your intent of healing your base chakra, then specifically write; one or two areas of what you wish to heal. It may be a belief system, it may be a reaction to love or magic, it may be a reaction you have to certain events or people. Do it over a few days. Don’t rush the healing.

Find some quiet time to meditate and think of why you have those reactions and release it slowly as the candle burns. Believe in the magic of the healing and write in your journal any experiences you may have. Some people may find they will see a small auric globe of red and in that the colour red will indicate how the healing is going. At the start it may be dull, in the middle of the healing session you may find it becomes brighter but has a dark ring around it. At the end you will either see that it’s completely a bright red or may need some more work.

So try it as soon as you have the red candle. Write on the candle itself (a medium pillar candle will do) “I heal my base chakra with pure intent” also write “one or two areas you wish to heal on candle” and light it, keeping your journal close by for any signs you see but also to immediately write in your journal the reason you chose to heal that core belief and what you wish it to change to. Write any visions down and if the flame rises note what you are thinking and write it down.

LIFE IS MAGIC. Everything is possible and can happen. All you have to do is BELEIVE in YOURSELF, love yourself and be truthful to yourself then REAL MAGIC can occur.

Why not take a quick break then write in your journal or workbook (which is what you will be handing in with your assignments) what you feel right now. Are you excited but fearful? Are you comprehending my words and if not please write me a brief note on what you wish for me to explain further. Write your general thoughts about starting this course.

Then take another break and continue reading when more energised and pure in mind. You probably find that you will have a lot of thoughts as reading and doing tasks through this and its good to keep and re-read these thoughts 3 months and 1 year later to see where you have grown or where fear is keeping you at a recurring cycle.

WATCHING always, Cindy

[megabadbunny]

speechless

TenRose; all ages/mild teen. fills @timepetalsprompts​ general “Tenth Doctor month” prompt

***

He knows the instant the TARDIS touches the tarmac that something is wrong. (There’s no grinding of the Time Rotor, no sickly shuddering or sharp-flashing warning lights; it’s just wrong, in his chest, something squeezing and clenching where it shouldn’t. Guilt, he’d label it if he didn’t know any better, but the feeling is hardly helpful when he hasn’t a clue what he’s done wrong.)

The sonic makes quick work of the door—normally he wouldn’t, not here, anyway, but rapping his knuckles and pounding his palm on it didn’t work, save to elicit nosy or dirty looks from curious passersby. He flashes the psychic paper and mutters something under his breath about maintenance and steps inside the flat before anyone has time to question him. The flat, of course, is empty. Well, that at least explains why no one answered the door. It isn’t because of...other reasons. Admonitions about nosiness and boundaries and sometimes people need privacy, Doctor all crowd to the forefront of his mind, only to be pushed to the back as he scopes out the flat for clues. But the flat seems insistent on shaking him at every turn, betraying nothing of its inhabitants’ whereabouts. The message-taking pad by the phone betrays nothing; it’s new, fresh, no ghosts of messages past pressed into its pages. There are no new notes tacked to the fridge or washing-machine, though the latter has a funny little rattle when the Doctor walks by it (and two-minutes’ worth of the Doctor’s tinkering puts an end to that). The calendar remains stubbornly unhelpful as well, showing nothing but distant family birthdays and friends’ anniversaries and a series of red x’s tapering off after— The Doctor’s lips purse together, a dam stoppering the flow of curses trying to leak out. He heaves a frustrated sigh. It’s no twelve months instead of twelve hours, but it might as well be. He really is a rubbish pilot. But eventually that excuse will run thin, if it isn’t already riddled with holes. One day, she’ll stop forgiving him, and he isn’t so sure he can blame her.

(He almost forgets to re-lock the door when he stalks out, but he only almost forgets.)

A quick scan of the rest of the Estate returns no notable results, and no familiar faces greet him from the inside of the local chippies, or pubs, or store-fronts. Searching the library is a fruitless endeavor, as is an examination of the bus-station. The Doctor wanders up and down the streets for what feels like years but is, in truth, only a few hours, peeking inside games shops and bookshops and sweet-shops and Tesco’s and tailor’s-places and any place that hasn’t got the windows shuttered because where is she, where the bloody hell is she? And then a thought strikes him, something unpleasant indeed—he checked the bus-station, but that would be pointless if she was already gone. And if she’s gone... He swallows. He can find her easily enough; he’s only doing this the hard way out of some kind of silly penance. Finding her isn’t the problem. The problem is if she doesn’t want to be found. (After the other universe, after the black hole, after everything at Canary Wharf—maybe she doesn’t want to do this anymore. Maybe that’s perfectly reasonable. But, rather selfishly perhaps, where does that leave him? What is he supposed to do then?) It’s in a hair salon that he finds Jackie, getting her nails manicured and laughing gaily with a circle of likeminded and like-aged friends, all thoughts of ghosts and Daleks and Cybermen completely erased like they never were. But the second Jackie’s gaze land on him, her smile disappears, her eyes gone cold. Her friends continue chattering around her but she doesn’t join in the fun, doesn’t tear her eyes away from the Doctor’s. She raises a sharp-plucked eyebrow and points a lacquered fingernail westward. Go fix it, you twat.

She doesn’t need to say it for him to hear it, and he doesn’t need a physical slap to feel the shame burning his cheeks. With a curt nod in thanks, the Doctor turns on his heels and heads westward. Once he’s out of Jackie’s sight, he runs.

***

He feels more than a little stupid when he finally finds her. But of course she’s here—with a busted-up machine, where else was she going to get her washing done? The Doctor just stands and watches her for a moment, taking her in amidst the unnaturally bright laundromat lights. She looks terribly bored from her lonely perch atop the yellowed old washing-machine, her eyes half-shuttered, her hands clasped in her lap. Previous experience tells the Doctor that she should be reading a trashy magazine right about now, or maybe a book pilfered from the TARDIS archives, or painting her nails or noshing on a treat if she’s not gone from the laundry room altogether, watching a film with him in the library or keeping him company while he tinkers under the console or lying atop the grass with him in the garden, making up new names for all of the constellations she doesn’t recognize, even some of the ones she does— Another customer pushes past the Doctor and he startles at the harsh clang of the doorbell. So sure he’s about to be discovered, he throws a glance at Rose that’s somewhere between nervous and hopeful, but she doesn’t look up. She doesn’t even twitch. She just...sits. Oh, no. She’s not bored. She’s numb. She’s good and properly numb. And it’s good and properly his fault. The guilty-feeling from earlier bubbles unpleasantly in his gut. He should go in there. He’s got to go in there and explain things, namely himself, as much as he can bear to. He can’t let her think he’s angry with her, even if he sort-of is, in a way that’s got nothing to do with her. He can’t let her think he just left her here, at least not for longer than he intended, which wasn’t really very long at all, not even by her standards. He can’t let her think she did anything wrong, nothing besides loving him, anyway. (She shouldn’t; she really, really shouldn’t. But that doesn’t appear to be stopping him, either.) It isn’t until after the newcomer dumps their washing into a machine and goes through the motions, the detergent and the coins and the buttons and the swearing and the top-of-the-machine-pounding and the pressing of buttons again and then the eye-rolling and the muttering and the leaving, that the Doctor manages to pull together the last remaining threads of his courage and pushes open the door to the laundromat. Slowly, Rose’s gaze sharpens, traveling from their stare into nothingness over to where the Doctor stands, taking him in from the floor up, battered Chucks and pinstriped suit and fists balled in pockets and coat settling around him as the door bangs loudly into place. Neither of them twitch, too fixed on each other as the washing-machines whirr and clang and generally make a ruckus. Opening his mouth to speak, the Doctor steps forward, but Rose turns away. He falters. That’s sort of a universal sign, isn’t it? The unmistakable broadcast of I don’t want to talk to you. Fists clench tighter in his pockets before loosening, relaxing. Fine. They don’t have to talk. It may be his typical modus operandi but he has other ways of doing things, too. A regular problem-solver, him. The Doctor crosses the laundromat in several long strides and before Rose has a chance to react, he envelops her in a tight, breath-squeezing hug, his hands wrapping around to either side of her ribcage. Surprised, she tenses beneath the embrace, but relaxes into it soon enough, her own arms coming up to limply encircle him. He tightens his hold on her and nudges her elbow with his—snugger, as if to say. A real hug. More. Rose complies and the Doctor imagines he can hear her slight little smile. Tension eases from his shoulders and he turns his face toward her, into her neck, at this height. He feels rather than hears her swallow, senses the uptick in her breathing, her heartrate. For all their hugging and hand-holding and waist-grabbing, it’s still a surprisingly intimate gesture, and a vulnerable one, whether she recognizes it as such. But fortunately, blessedly, she must, because soon she’s leaning into him, burrowing into his shoulder while one hand buries itself in his hair. He needed time, he thinks he should tell her. To clear his head, to sort his thoughts. To give her a bit of a break, room for her to visit her mum. To reconsider if this is what she really wants. He needed time to come to terms with the fact that— His eyes clench shut against the memory, against the hurt that blossoms with it. I almost lost you. He steps back with every intention of delivering the apologetic plea hovering on his lips, only for Rose to lean forward and press her mouth to his, swallowing any words that may emerge. (Thankfully, his hands only flail about uselessly for approximately 1.03 seconds before flying up to her face, holding her close when, flushing and suddenly uncertain, she tries to pull away. But surely his hands holding her close will let her know she has nothing to be ashamed or uncertain about; surely his trembling arms and desperate mouth give him away.) Both of them jump at the washing-machine buzzing impatiently beneath Rose, letting her know in no uncertain terms that it has completed its cycle, thank you very much. But Rose just laughs shakily and pulls the Doctor in for more, and it’s sort of funny, isn’t it, all of time and space at their disposal and their first proper snog takes place in a dingy old laundromat on unremarkable old planet Earth. It would have been much more romantic to take her somewhere exotic and new, somewhere with a triple-sunset or a glass ocean or rainbow-luminescent flowers unfurling their petals toward the inky midnight sky. But she’s kissing him, she’s kissing him, and it feels like a promise, one he’ll gladly take no matter how little he deserves it or where she gives it to him, romance be damned. (Later, he’ll tell her anything she wants; right now, this says everything they both need to know.)

***

[the-truest-sentence-i-know]

Chapter Three: The Underground

Fandom: Disney’s Descendants

Summary: Quinn Little, raised in Auradon by Little John, finds out that her heritage is not what she thought it was. When Little John tells her that her real father was a villain, she must go on a journey of self-discovery that will bring her to all the forbidden places in the United States of Auradon. Pre-canon & canon compliant to the first Descendants film.

Word Count: 4k  |  3/23

ao3 ||| ff.net ||| wattpad ||| quotev

Walking down the streets of Auradon Central, Quinn asked Mark, “Alright, seriously, where are we going?”

“Just a little place where you can get the stuff you need over there,” said Mark.

“Right.”

“So, how were you planning on getting there?”

“Uh...” Quinn had not yet thought about that. The only way to get onto the Isle was a bridge that was only accessible through a Crown-sanctioned vehicle. They were well-guarded and hardly ever went to the Isle. There was no other way to get to the Isle, except for. “By boat,” she said, suddenly. “Shipments go to the Isle periodically, with food and other supplies. I’ll stow away on one of them.”

They turned into an alleyway that was so small that it was easily overlooked. It was much different than the street they had just been on; it was dark and quite dirty, a severe contrast to the clean, white cobblestones they had just been walking on.

It seemed to end at a dead end, but Mark pushed on the back wall, which turned out to be a door. Behind this door, there was a dark staircase followed by a passageway and Mark took out his phone to light the way. The temperature plummeted as soon as he closed the door. As hey walked, their footsteps echoing ahead of them, Quinn could hear scurrying and dripping sounds.

“Mark,” she whispered, staying close to him. “Where are we going?”

The part of his face that she could see in the dim light of his phone light was cautious. “You’ll see.”

Soon they reached the end of the tunnel and went up another flight of steps. Mark pushed on a battered wooden door and it opened onto an alleyway that looked a lot like the one they had come from. As Mark closed the door behind them, Quinn walked ahead to where the alley met the main street.

Quinn looked around in wonder. Auradon had always been colourful, but now she saw how limited its palette was. Instead of only the brightest or most pastel colours, the buildings and clothing here used deeper shades in addition to those of the rest of Auradon. There were much more uses of black, as well as the purples and greens most associated with villains. Some of the people walking past had grey armbands.

“What do those bands mean?” Quinn asked quietly as they walked down the cobbled street.

“Those are members of the Underground Council,” Mark said, and Quinn looked over to see him putting one around his arm. She looked at him in surprise.

“What?” he asked with a grin. “You didn’t think you were the only rebellious one, did you?”

Quinn tried not to stare at the outfits of those they passed. Some of the women wore pants here, and some of the men wore dresses and skirts. There were fabrics no other hero would wear: leather and denim, which was sometimes ripped and frayed. Some had colourfully dyed hair, or multiple piercings or tattoos.

Quinn could almost hear what Fairy Godmother, or her other teachers, might say, but she pushed them aside, instead finding the beauty in everything she saw. There was so much more variety here!

“Here we are,” Mark said stopping in front of a shop called The Princess’ Wardrobe.

Quinn raised her eyebrows. “Really?”

“The name is tongue-in-cheek,” he said with a smile. “I promise.”

They stepped inside, the bell over the door tinkling as they did so. As Quinn looked around, she knew that Mark was right. This was definitely not your typical Auradonian clothing store. There were combat boots and ripped denim and studs and leather, so much leather. She smiled widely; from what she had seen of news broadcasts about the Isle, this would be the perfect place to find something to wear to fit in.

“Mark!” exclaimed the woman behind the counter. She was wearing a black dress with ripped tights and combat boots. Her hair was short and a shocking shade of neon green. If the Fairy Godmother saw her, Quinn was pretty sure she would faint.

“Hey, Chloe!” said Mark, kissing her lightly on each cheek before turning to Quinn. “This is Quinn.” He turned back to her with a slight grin on his face. “And she’s hoping for a change in style.”

The corner of her deep plum lips pulled up in a grin. “That is one of my favourite things to hear. What kind of change?” Her eyes sparkled in interest.

“I was hoping for a kind of Isle-lite?” Quinn said cautiously. “Like not fully leather, but like.”

“Denim?” Chloe supplied.

“Yeah.”

“Well, let’s see what we can do, shall we?”

Mark gave Quinn a knowing smile as Chloe began to hunt around the racks of clothing. For the next half hour, Quinn tried on outfits – all of which seemed fine to her but did not quite satisfy Chloe. She was like a barely contained ball of chaos, flitting around the store. Mark watched it all with an amused look on his face, having seen Chloe work her magic many times before.

Finally, when Quinn exited the change room, Chloe stood back, standing still for the first time. She smiled. “Perfect. It’s confident, a little delinquent, but in a ‘steal from the rich, give to the poor’ kinda way.” She winked. “Cute, but a little dangerous, and practical for movement.”

Quinn could not help but smile at the description, because it was exactly what she had been hoping for. Black skinny jeans, forest green tank top under a fishnet top and dark denim jacket, paired with black leather boots and green leather fingerless gloves. She liked how the green still nodded to Sherwood; Chloe knew what she was doing.

“And if you wanna make it a little sexy,” Chloe said. “You wear the fishnet top over a bra.” She lowered her voice with a grin. “but make sure Mark’s not around because he’ll go all older-brother on you.”

Quinn laughed, especially when she saw the look of disapproval that came over Mark’s features. When she looked in the mirror, she could see herself belonging on the Isle. She raised her chin and clenched her fists at her sides, and the glint that came into her eyes made her shiver a little. She would fit in just fine.

•••

“So, what exactly is this place?” Quinn and Mark were sitting in café, looking out at the people passing by.

“You mean, why is it a thing?” Mark asked.

Quinn nodded. “I mean, I love it, but how did it start?”

“I’m not exactly sure how, but it came to be because there are actually a lot of people who don’t agree with how Auradon is run and all the performative goodness that goes on.”

“Like all the stuff we Sherwood kids would talk about at school,” Quinn said with a slightly wistful smile.

“Yeah, there are actually a lot of Sherwood kids that either live here or are involved here. The Underground Council, or UC, will run campaigns sometimes. Remember when the sidekicks got a council in government a couple of years back?”

Quinn nodded.

“The UC helped with the campaign that made that happen.”

“I’m assuming they’re also not huge fans of King Beast.”

“No,” Mark said with a laugh. “I doubt you’ll find a single pro-King Beast person here.”

“Well, then I guess I fit right in,” Quinn looked out past the buildings to the mountains on the horizon. “And we’re not really underground either, where is this?”

“It’s right on the outskirts of Auradon City but surrounded by mountains and thick forest. There are very few ways to get in.”

“How have I never heard of it?”

“Well, a lot of people know we exist – maybe not where exactly – because of the campaigns and whatnot, but they tend to pretend we don’t. We stay out of sight and they don’t mind us.”

“But why stay out of sight?”

“In the beginning, it was more like a haven for likeminded people, where they could speak their minds. For now, we can make the most change this way, but there is hope that we can slowly open up and maybe change people’s minds with our integration.”

The clothes still felt weird, a little bit more snug than Quinn was used to. But she loved the confidence they gave her.

She and Mark sat on their horses in the patch of trees at the edge of the shipyard. In the patches of light that the floodlights cast on the dark area, they could see workers loading crates onto the ship. They were silent for a bit.

“You know that once you’re on the ship, I won’t be able to contact you,” said Mark finally.

“I know,” Quinn said, still watching the loading of the ship.

“And you know that coming back will be a lot harder, if not impossible.”

“I know.” She knew he was looking at her. She could tell he didn’t want her to go. After all his helping and planning, he didn’t want to let her. Maybe he never thought she would go through with it. Maybe he thought meeting the Undergrounders would satisfy her need to belong.

But Quinn knew she had to go. She would regret it if she didn’t. She would always wonder what her life would have been like over there.

Taking a deep breath, Quinn slipped off of Onyx’s back. Mark followed suit as Quinn slung her backpack over her shoulder. They crept towards the ship, staying out of the light and out of the sight of the workers. While learning how to move stealthily through the forest had been one of the things both their fathers had taught them, this was a bit different. There was no moss or sticks or animals, just concrete and piles of crates and bags.

Eventually, they made it near the ship and, hiding behind a pile of crates marked BREAD, Quinn turned to Mark. “I’ve got it from here,” she whispered.

He looked over at her, concern in his eyes and opened his mouth to say something.

Quinn held up a hand to stop him. “I’m not backing out now, so don’t try to convince me.”

A small grin spread across his face as he shook his head. “I just wanted to wish you good luck.” He straightened her backpack strap. “Be careful and don’t let them know where you’re from.”

She smiled. “I promise.”

“Good.” He gave her a big hug and then quickly slipped away into the darkness.

While the shipments to the Isle were not exactly secret, there was not a lot of public information. The main shipment was food since the Isle was one big city with no farmland. From a vantage point down the shoreline, they had mapped out the schedule. However, the actual boarding of the ship would have to be improvised because they couldn’t risk going to the shipping yard twice.

Fortunately, there was basically no security on this side. After all, who would want to leave Auradon?

Quinn watched from the shadows as the workers grabbed sacks and crates and walked up the various gangplanks. Fortunately, she had had the foresight to pull a pair of wide pants and a formless shirt over her outfit, to better match the dock workers. From her pocket, she grabbed a rather large cap that would hopefully obscure her face enough to not arouse suspicion.

After trying to tuck as much of her hair into it as she could manage, Quinn scurried over to a pile of smaller sacks. She quickly shouldered one and followed the line of men tramping up the nearest gangplank. She kept her head down as she walked. The sack was fairly heavy but those around her didn’t seem to be having any trouble, so she pretended she was fine as well.

They tramped down to the hold and Quinn saw the men ahead of her deposit their loads in a pile near stacks of crates. After tossing her sack onto the pile as well, Quinn pretended to stumble and – as she did so – tossed a pencil towards a pile of crates across the hold.

Sighing, she scampered after it. Once she was out of sight of the other men, she scooped up the pencil and slipped between some crates. Certain that no one could see her, she carefully sat down and leaned against the crate behind her.

Quinn listened to the scuffling in the hold for about half an hour. When the hold became quiet, she heard the hum of machinery grow louder. She felt a tug in her stomach as they began to move and her heart began to race.

A smile spread across her face as she slipped out of her hiding place. The hold was pitch-black and Quinn – stumbling with the rolls of the waves – felt her way to the stairs. She tiptoed up the steps to the main deck, holding tight to the railing.

It was a perfect night, near a new moon, so the only natural light on deck came from the stars. Some yellow light spilled out of the bridge at the back of the ship, but for the rest, it was quite dark. From what Mark and Quinn could tell, very few Auradonian workers stayed on the ship for the journey, if any.

Trying to keep out of sight of the bridge, Quinn made her way to the front of the ship. The wind was strong and blew her hair and made her clothing flap around her body.

She had always loved wind – it fascinated her. She loved how it would howl around the school during heavy storms. Sometimes, on windy days back in Sherwood, she would stick her head above the trees and let it blow through her hair.

But this was so much different. This cold wind was combined with the faint spray of water and the salty smell in the air. While the smell of the forest was safe, this smell held danger and adventure. It was intoxicating.

Was this what had drawn her father to seafaring? Did he love the wind out at sea as well? Perhaps on the Isle, she could learn more about who he was.

In the distance, Quinn could see the island. There were far fewer lights than in Auradon. There was an odd trick of the light too, making it look like there was a giant bubble around the island.

That must be the magical barrier, she thought.

As they approached the barrier, it shuddered and an opening just large enough for the ship to pass through appeared. Quinn held her breath as they slid through. She was now on the side of the villains. Her heart began to race with excitement.

The docks weren’t too far ahead and Quinn knew she had to think of a plan before she was seen. She had noticed ladder rungs along the side of the ship and – taking a breath – clambered over the side and down almost to the water. Even though the ship was slowing down, waves still crashed against the hull and soon she was soaking wet.

Quinn could now make out the docks. They were old-fashioned looking, worn rough wood on supporting stilts above the rocky shoreline. Figures stood on it with what looked like kerosene lamps.

When the ship was almost stopped at the docks, she slipped into the water, quickly paddling her way under the rough slats of wood. She had never been the best swimmer but managed to get to one of the support posts and hold onto it for a moment of rest.

Quinn heard boots stamping overhead as the ship was unloaded. She decided to get away from the docks during the commotion as there would be less likelihood of being seen.

Bracing herself, she let go of the post and began paddling towards the shore. Her arms and legs were beginning to feel heavy, but she kept going. She was so close.

Finally, panting and shivering, she crawled up the jagged rocks of the shore, avoiding the particularly sharp ones. It was dark underneath the dock with only some light filtering through from above.

She heard the shifting of stones ahead of her and realized that she might not be the only one down here. She reached for her belt and unsheathed her dagger as a precaution. Walking as quietly as she could, Quinn moved down the shoreline, nearing the end of the docks.

Suddenly, there was a burst of light as the ship turned on its lights, preparing to leave. It flooded the space with light and she saw two figures ahead of her. Tensing, Quinn held her dagger ahead of her as her eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness.

Two terrified pairs of eyes stared at her. They were just little kids, two boys in ragged denim. They held up their hands, showing that they were no threat. The bigger boy stood slightly ahead of the other. “We’ve got nothing for you,” he said, voice shaking a little.

He was afraid of her. Both of them were.

“I don’t need anything from you, I’m just passing by, alright?” she said.

They both nodded and as the ship began to move away, she carefully stepped around them. Once past them, Quinn strode quickly out from under the docks.

Suddenly, something grabbed at the back of her shirt and Quinn was lifted into the air and deposited ungracefully onto the wooden planks of the dock.

“Hey!” she exclaimed, picking herself up quickly. Her next complaint died in her throat as she saw the person who had grabbed her. She stared up at the ugliest face she had ever seen. Mottled grey-green skin and filthy teeth leering at her, grinning.

It wasn’t until he began speaking in a language that she vaguely recognized from history lessons that she realized: he was a goblin.

Seeing that she had no clue what he was saying, he switched to English. “Tryin’ to escape on the ship, eh?”

Quinn shook her head, quickly trying to regain confidence. “Of course not.”

He guffawed and slung her over his shoulder, striding down the dock towards the city. Quinn struggled, but there was no point. He stopped where the city began and tossed her unceremoniously into an alleyway. “Don’t let me catch you around here again,” he warned, walking away.

Groaning, Quinn looked out to sea, just in time to see the ship – her last connection to Auradon – slip through the barrier.

•••

The city was full of – almost seemed to be built with – shadows, in various shades of darkness. Quinn had taken off her outer clothes to fit in better, but the damp denim still restricted her movements a little.

There were a lot of people out and about for the time of night. They huddled in groups outside shops and ran down alleyways. Quinn tried to keep her head down even though she wanted to stare and take everything in. Even though most Auradonians would classify her surroundings as grungy and gross, she found them oddly fascinating. Flickering neon signs advertised for “Tremaine’s Curl up and Dye” and “Gaston’s Gentleman’s Pub.” Particularly loud guffaws came from the latter and she crossed on the other side of the street. She knew Gaston’s reputation.

As she was looking back at the pub, something tripped her up and she fell to the ground. Quinn heard snorts and laughter from behind her and quickly got to her feet.

“You’d better watch where you’re going,” said a girl with short, spiky red hair in studded black and pink leather. Her voice was exaggeratedly sweet and she smirked at the younger girl beside her. This girl also wore black and pink leather and had the same colour hair, which was worn in cornrows into a ponytail.

Getting back on her feet, Quinn tried to look confident. “Me look out? You were the one who was in the way.”

She tilted her head to the side and her smirk turned into the most terrifying grin Quinn had ever seen. The other girl – probably her sister – smiled in anticipation, stepping back a little.

“Well,” said the older girl. “Aren’t we feeling cocky tonight.” She stepped towards Quinn. “Do you know who I am, lowlife?”

She sounded so much like the girls in Auradon that Quinn felt her blood boil. Except they would always reference their parents’ reputations, not their own. “No, I don’t,” she said, standing her ground. “And I don’t really care about knowing the identities of lowlifes, as you say.”

The girl drew her tongue over her lips and took off her jacket, handing it to her sister. Drawing an elegant rapier from her belt, she took a defensive stance. “Well, let’s see who the lowlife is, then.”

Quinn drew her dagger quickly, earning her another smirk from the terrifying redhead. “Our weapons aren’t exactly equal,” she said.

“You should’ve thought of that earlier,” she said, attacking immediately.

By sheer luck, Quinn managed the block the stroke with her dagger. The girl pushed the blade nearer to her, but Quinn shoved it aside.

Quinn watched her blade for the next attack, but as she seemed to attack her right side, she slipped around Quinn’s left and kicked at the back of her knees. Quinn fell to the ground, turning towards the girl as quickly as she could, rolling out of the way of her rapier. Her eyes glinted in the faint light from the streetlights. She loved to fight.

Scrambling to her feet, Quinn held her dagger out in front of her. If only girls had learned more combat in Auradon. Unfortunately, even in Sherwood, the line was drawn at archery and quarterstaffs.

The girl looked over at her sister, rolling her eyes.

Overconfident.

Quinn ran at her, taking the girl’s move and pretending to go for her stomach and, as she blocked Quinn’s blade with hers, Quinn tried to punch her in the face. She managed to block this as well, but looked – at least, Quinn thought – impressed. Then she tossed Quinn to the ground.

Before Quinn could get up, the girl was on top of her, Quinn’s own dagger to her throat. “If we were more evenly matched, I probably would kill you,” she said. “But you’re boring me, so I’ll just leave you with a reminder.” She quickly sliced a cut on Quinn’s cheek, almost from her ear to her mouth. It was not deep, but it hurt. “Learn to fight before you pick one.”

She got up, still holding Quinn’s dagger, and began to walk away. Then she turned back and threw it towards Quinn’s face. She closed her eyes, bracing for impact, but it embedded itself in the dirt beside her head. “And I’m Skyla,” she said.

Her sister pulled Quinn to her feet by her collar. “I’m Scarlett,” she said with a smile that quickly disappeared, “and I would’ve been less lenient,” she sneered, punching her square in the nose.

Quinn stumbled against the wall as she heard their retreating footsteps. Hand over her nose, which was pouring blood, she quickly grabbed her dagger and hurried farther down the alleyway to be alone.

Trying not to cry, she sat against a brick wall in the darkness. The cut of her cheek stung and her nose throbbed and her entire body was sore from all of today’s events. Quinn dug the cap from her backpack and used it to wipe the blood from her hands and face before holding it to her nose.

It was starting to dawn on her that perhaps she was not cut out to live here. Even what she had learned in Sherwood seemed cushy compared to here. She may look the part, but she most certainly did not have the required skills.

Eventually, her nose stopped bleeding and the cut began to scab over. Quinn wiped away the few tears that had escaped against her will and shoved the bloody hat into her bag. She was here now and so she had to learn to survive here. And clearly, that meant avoiding conflict until she was able to handle it.

But first, she needed some rest. Nobody seemed to be coming down this alleyway, so Quinn curled up in the corner behind some foul-smelling trash cans, using her backpack as a pillow. It was much less comfortable than her bed at Auradon Prep, but she was exhausted, so she fell asleep quickly.

[topicprinter]

Yesterday I made a post here, and even though the comments and reception were overwhelmingly positive, the mods decided to remove it. I tried to get in touch to ask why and didn't get a reply, but I assume it's because I linked to my Medium blog post. (IMO that's quite stupid. If a link doesn't add value the post will be downvoted, I don't see a reason for the mods to act as if the sub members are children, but fair enough - not my sub, not my rules.)So, because I don't care about the Medium traffic that much and because my main goal was to share my personal experience with likeminded people, I'll post again today with the whole gargantuan text copied here.(I'll still give the original link at the very bottom because the sub doesn't allow pics in the text post, and I specifically made comic strips to make the post easier to read and hopefully funnier (and there are a couple of screenshots). Feel free to ignore it.)- - -5 Lessons from 2 Failed Startups7years ago, on my last year in university, I unwittingly embarked on a startup journey. Here are the five most important lessons that I picked up the hard way.(comic 1)The main reason I wrote this piece is so that I don’t repeat the mistakes I list below, but I’m publishing it in hopes that my experience will have a positive externality — that someone out there will internalize these lessons without paying the cost of money, time, and tears.FIRST STARTUP What it was: the first premium educational platform for a popular competitive video game (Dota 2); My role: main content guy — I wrote most of the content and worked directly with our influencer partners, but with time got more and more involved; Timeline: created platform and developed content; launched successfully and found decent traction; slowly faded into obscurity due to lack of sufficient funding; LESSON 1: Be prepared for different levels of successNaturally, when we started the project we had great expectations for its future financial performance. We also kept in mind that it could crash and burn, as we knew most innovative products fail.The two options in our heads were either:great success — the business supports itself just fine and growsor total failure — we close down and search for “real” jobs.What we failed to anticipate is the vast land in between those two extremes. That’s where we ended up. When we launched we started making enough money to indicate we are onto something, but not enough to fully support and grow the business.(comic 2)When you hear something along the line of “90% of startups fail”, you imagine that 10% of startups hit the jackpot while the other 90% lose their money and close their doors instantly. However, this statement lacks a time dimension and a grayscale between the whiteness of success and the blackness of failure. It could be useful to investors, but it is misleading if you are a founder.I’m sure some startups lose their money very fast and are left with no choice but to close operations. Yet, I’d wager a big chunk of the unsuccessful 90% spend a long time trying to navigate mixed signals from the market. The problem is that in such conditions decision-making is not straightforward. Are you wasting your time, or are you on the brink of something worthwhile? Not an easy call to make.When faced with such decisions, pessimists quit too early, while optimists tend to believe success is just behind the corner perpetually. Both mindsets are wrong.If you quit too early, you are cutting short the chances that you’ll hit a lucky breakthrough.But if you fight for too long, it could get you stuck in a terrible limbo people in the startup community call “the land of the living dead”. You make ends meet, barely, but in reality, you are just wasting your time, potential, and testing the patience of all the people with a stake in your success or failure (people in both your personal and professional life). A business is, generally speaking, not a worthy cause for martyrdom.In our case, we ended up in the second option. We had over-promised so our investors and business partners were unhappy with the performance, yet we were not ready to give up yet because we still saw a lot of potential.At the same time, without the full support of the inventors and partners, we had no chances to succeed. We spend over a year in this state. You need to be realistic about these things, and in startups, the business of selling dreams, this is harder than it sounds.Plan for success, plan for failure, plan for everything in between.Retrospectively, what we had was a successful proof of concept which required further funding to grow and become a real business. Our failure to anticipate this outcome meant that neither we nor our partners or investors were prepared, which spelled the slow and agonizing death of the project.If you’re a founder, you need to be granular in defining success and failure. You need to have a timeline everyone agrees upon (not only the founders but all stakeholders) and a definition of different levels of success so that nobody quits too early or leads a lost war for too long.For example: Great outcome: X months after launch, we’re making enough money to support the business. We agree to reinvest and grow it slowly to avoid dilution (lifestyle business route) or to fundraise to grow fast and search for an exit (startup route). Good outcome: X months after launch, we’re making money, but not enough to support the business. This is expected — proof of concept. We’re in the process of fundraising. If we succeed to fundraise until month Y (money runs out) — great. If not — we close the business. Bad outcome: X months after launch we’re making very little (if any) money. We pivot if we still have resources, if not — we close the business. LESSON 2: Find a mentorThe three main components people talk about when evaluating startups are usually the team, the product, and the market.It’s hard to argue if any of the three is more important than the others. Usually, you need all three to be good enough to reach success.In our case, we were lucky enough to have a favorable market — demand for what we were offering and lack of any real competition.The product was so-so: it could have been much, much better considering our lack of experience & resources, but it was good enough to attract the early adopters and with time it could have evolved.The team, however, had 0 experience.We did this straight out of university (I worked on the project part-time until I finished my masters). The founder was the technical guy and he was a junior developer at best. I was the content marketing guy and even though I had some marketing courses in uni (which mostly focus on traditional, big businesses), I had 0 real-world experience.Our lack of technical/marketing experience proved not to be fatal — we were learning on the go and managed to push out a working product and to reach our customers. We had vision, passion, some domain knowledge, and the willingness to work hard.What was fatal, however, was that we had 0 experience running a business. Honestly, we had close to no knowledge about startups and what to expect of these kinds of projects. Doing the actual work takes thousands of hours, and the minutes spent making a bad decision can easily invalidate all your efforts.If present-day-me could advise and mentor this startup, I’m certain it would have become a successful business.(comic 3)If you are a young entrepreneur, you need a mentor. An official one, with a small share in the business in order to have skin in the game. Ideally — an entrepreneur who has some startup experience behind his back or at least someone who has been deeply involved in such businesses. Turn to your local startup community and it won’t be that hard finding someone interested: after all, most people like giving advice as well as getting free shares in companies.[If you don’t have an official mentor, at least make sure you’re getting mentorship from other places intimately familiar with your business (investors, startup groups or communities, etc.).]Embarking on your first startup journey without a mentor is like trying to become an MBA star without ever having a basketball coach. Unless you are incredibly lucky, you will simply fail. You’ll make fatal mistakes like the one above (and many more I can list, but it would take forever). Frankly, even nowadays, being much more experienced, I doubt I’ll ever work on anything innovative without a mentor.SECOND STARTUP What it is was: a monetization platform for video game influencers and content creators in the same niche My role in it: founder Timeline: fundraised (a bit more ambitiously this time, $90k); created platform and developed content; launched and found 0 traction; turned the website into a profitable gaming blog for a year; tried to pivot in the meantime, unsuccessfully; LESSON 3: Market expertise doesn’t trump startup common senseAs you’ve probably noticed, startup one and startup two are connected. What happened is that the founder of startup one finally had enough and bailed. I still had a chip on my shoulder, however, and managed to convince one of the old investors (and a few new ones) that there is merit in having another go at the market with a new (more ambitious) concept. Naturally, things didn’t turn out as planned.“Fail fast, fail cheap, and leave yourself time to pivot.”That’s probably the most frequently repeated startup advice. And probably the most valuable one you can get. The one that you need tattooed on your forehead if you’re a founder.So, even though I was aware that the biggest startup mistake is to spend all your resources developing something no one needs, I made exactly that mistake. Like many a startup, I burned through 90% of our bank to acquire the validated learning that there’s no demand for the product we’re making.What led me astray was the belief that I was an expert on this particular market niche and knew intimately its needs.(comic 4)The confidence I had, obviously, was false.What’s true is that the previous startup validated that the market actually exists, which is a good start.What’s not true is that the previous startup validated in any meaningful way the new product we’re developing. We had a new concept, a new marketing approach, etc. Equally importantly, the market had changed since the first project — competition was starting to pop up, etc. I was probably one of a handful of people on the planet intimately familiar with this small market niche, and yet my ideas weren’t bulletproof anyway.After we launched and saw 0 traction, I tried to pivot with a new idea based on the market feedback. The problem was that I had to validate it on my own with no budget and no team. I couldn’t do it properly, and I still don’t know to this day if this idea would have worked out if I had more resources to test it.Looking back, if I had focused on being an expert on running a startup as much as I did on being an expert on the market, things could have turned out quite differently. I could have tested the waters for plan A with 20% of the budget. That would have left me with enough resources to try out at least three more different approaches. We were working from Eastern Europe (Sofia, Bulgaria) and mainly with freelancers, which meant that our burn rate was quite low.Failing fast and cheap would have made the company four or five times more likely to succeed. I suspect that this number is even higher because the accumulated expertise by smashing your head into the wall (market) repeatedly means that plan B is usually better than plan A, plan C would probably be better than plan B, and so on.Every startup needs to be lean (test your assumptions with minimal resource investment) and agile (be ready to continually change your concept/priorities base on market feedback). This is simply not negotiable if you want to succeed no matter how much of an expert you believe yourself to be.“Startups almost never get it right the first time. Much more commonly you launch something, and no one cares. Don’t assume when this happens that you’ve failed. That’s normal for startups. But don’t sit around doing nothing. Iterate.” — Paul GrahamLESSON 4: Don’t regret correct decisions that didn’t turn out your wayAfter launching and finding 0 traction with almost no money left in the bank the realization where things are headed hit me hard. I wasn’t ready for a second failure just yet, however, so I poured all my efforts into finding a source of income for the business to give us some breathing room.Content marketing was my biggest strength, so I made a content strategy and started churning out articles. I managed to grow the traffic of the website significantly (reached 240k unique monthly visitors at its peak), and at the same time, I was doing cold outreach to any viable business that might want to advertise with us long-term.(Google Analytics Screenshot)I deliberately made some of the content well suited to advertise a certain type of business in our niche. Eventually, I managed to close a deal with such a business, which gave us just enough income to keep our head above water.During this time, an unexpected opportunity presented itself. A new game closely related to the one I was writing about pupped up and started gaining popularity (Auto Chess, which later turned into Dota Underlords). I was in a great situation to start writing about it and to turn our website into the main authority site on the subject, and slowly but surely I managed to rank our website in the first place in Google SERPs for most relevant keywords.(SERP screenshot)The hope was that the game was going to continue to grow (and our traffic along with it). This, in turn, would allow me to land bigger advertising contracts, giving me the needed funds to bootstrap a team and continue the validation experiments related to this new market and our newly acquired audience (I was trying to get the business into a positive feedback loop).Then this happened:(steam charts screenshot, player base falls)Dota Underlords (the game we attached ourselves to, our market) fell from over 200k to about 10k concurrent players. Naturally, as I had invested most of my time into Dota Underlords content, our traffic started falling as well, which invalidated the authority site plans and made new advertising sales much, much harder.You could argue I should have diversified our content to avoid this situation, but the reality is that you have limited resources and you need to plan how to use them. The business was created as a startup, it had investors, which by definition demands at least some level of ambition. Surviving as a niche gaming blog wasn’t going to cut it for the people involved, so I decided to go all-in on the opportunity I saw.It didn’t work out, but that’s OK. As mentioned, most startups fail. Sometimes they fail because of avoidable mistakes (as demonstrated above), but sometimes they fail because the educated bets they make don’t work out.Making educated but risky bets is what startups do, so don’t regret the second kind of failure when the risk is anticipated.LESSON 5: Accept full responsibility(comic 5, this one's not that funny :( )It’s quite easy to blame the circumstances when you’re looking back at past failures. It’s a great way to protect your ego. Going back to my own journey as an example:Startup environment: access to mentorship, funding, and know-how would have been much better if I was located in Silicon Valley. Yet, I tried to play the game of startups in Eastern Europe. Paul Graham sometimes mentions the concept of the Milanese Leonardo. In two words — there is no such thing, all great 15th century painters come from Florence, not Milan. So where are the Milanese painters? The theory is that the environment in which you develop trumps any kind of talent and probably even hard work. Maybe I’m a hardworking genius, but simply failed because of the unfavorable environment half-a-planet away from the Valley.Influencer partners: our two key influencer partners for the 2nd startup project bailed just before we launched. Surely they are to blame for the failure at launch, not me?Crisis in Ukraine: speaking of partners, our main business partners for the first startup were a Ukrainian esports organization. Shortly after launch, the political crisis in Ukraine happened and naturally, they were unable to fulfill all of their promises related to our project (they had bigger problems of their own). Surely we couldn’t have predicted geopolitical events while managing an esports startup?I could go on, we’re all masters at making excuses. However, this is a fool’s game. Analyzing your past circumstances is important, but only in the light of taking valuable lessons into the future. An excuse means you learned nothing from an important event.All of the above seems like it’s something I don’t have control over, but I’d argue that’s not true.Environment: I didn’t want to move to SV, but there are other ways to solve this problem at least partially. E.g. I could have reached out to people to ask for remote mentorship. “We have funding, we’re building this product, we want mentorship (weekly/monthly Skype calls) and we’re ready to give you a small share in the company to commit.” That’s not a bad offer and a viable way to make a connection to the real startup world.Partners: I could have done a thousand things to keep them more interested or involved in the project to minimize the chance they’ll quit. Even that aside, I could have made sure we’re not as reliant just on those two and involved more partners in advance.Crisis: sure, I couldn’t have predicted the geopolitical events, but I could have prepared for potential problems with our partners (same point as above). If someone is so important for your business that you fail if they underperform, you better have some plan to mitigate this risk. As a startup founder, you constantly operate in a high-risk environment. It’s your job to protect the project against the most critical and most likely of those risks.Past failures are a blessing — put them on your shoulders and they will make you stronger.Future failures are the ones you want to avoid, and your past failures are the best tool for the job.- - -If you were crazy enough to read all of it, I hope it was useful.(Here's the original Medium link if you want to see the images, feel free to ignore it. If it gets removed again without an explanation I give up.)

[vtruq]

My thoughts on the gym and cramping

Today was a beautiful day. I was meant to do applications and all kind of things. But I really was not feeling it. So instead of cramping and forcing myself, I accepted that I have to change the order of the things on my To-Do List. So I read, I meditated, I treated myself with a coffee and did some journaling. I tried to do my work again. Still did not feel it.

So I met a friend and we went to the gym. I have not worked out with a gym-buddy in ages and finally, I had an amazing workout all the way through again. On the one hand, because we tried out a new and super nice gym. That helped because I am someone who loves the craftsmanship and who appreciates esthetic really much. I love it when people put love and thought in the product and the process of creating it. And you could see how the owner of the gym put though in every detail of the gym. And that was awesome. The other and even bigger factor was, that I was in good company. See I have been super focused in the gym for such a long time. I did not allow myself to go to parties or to have alcohol because I needed to stick to my training plan and to progress. But recently this perception changed. I realised that I won´t ever do sports professionally. So what´s the point of overfocusing on sports? It should be fun. I lost that fun in the gym for a long time and finally found it again. I always liked it because it is the most efficient sport you can do. But I won´t ever overfocus on it again. I will go there once or twice a week and still try to improve and work enthusiastically. But if I cant make it a week or two, or if I can not put on more weight, that’s completely fine because it is just a hobby. Doing sports because of fun seems to be a way better motivation that progress and goal orientation. That just brings frustration and it makes me unhappy to say no to friends who invite me to play basketball because I don´t want to do inefficient sport. That leads me to another point: Try out different sports. That way you learn, might find a new hobby, or might just realise what sport is not for you. You get to know new people and also learn more about yourself. Even if you hate it, you know how much you appreciate your sport.

I am so grateful that I have finally reached the point where I am not too hard on myself. (At least I reached this point regarding sports.) After the workout I was already so happy. Happy because I finally had fun in the gym again. Happy to realise that my perception of sports changed and even more happy that I started to build a new routine in India that I love. It was that very moment when I started to be happy here in India. And I guess it was that very moment when the vibe I am sending out to the world started to that “happy and grateful” vibe that I want to send all the time. It was that very moment when I could forget all the difficulties at work and that very moment when I could finally appreciate the situation I am in. Before I appreciated it as well but it was more of such a thing where I said to myself: “Be happy! Don´t you see all the things you got?! Be happy! This is awesome!” I guess you could say I tried to talk myself into being appreciative. Which was also helpful but not the same as the situation in the gym. At this moment in the gym, I could finally fully appreciate how great living here is. The fact that it is November and we are standing in the sun. The fact that we live in a hotel and everything is made for us: from washing to cooking or cleaning. We can fully focus on our work. And everything is super cheap and all the people want to talk to you. It was a moment of pure appreciation. A moment of pure focus on the positive things in which I could completely blend out all the “negative” things. And my back pain is gone too. Going back in my memory I only have such moments of pure happiness when people are around me. I guess I can only be fully happy when I have good people around me. I realise that I just love people. And if someone shares my perspective on the world and is likeminded I am just so happy to share my happiness, my perspective, my humour and my life with them. I can be happy with myself. But I am a very social individual. I love people around me and I guess that’s also important learning of today. To fully unlock this level of happiness and excitement I need amazing people around me. After the workout we had an amazing lunch. I met this friend recently and we connected on such a deep level and we have amazing conversations. We instantly connected and there are so many more amazing things to happen. I am so grateful for this. For the time we will have; the talks, laughs and the trips we will do. The chance to travel and to meet such amazing people. Sure we could have talked about work. But no, we were both locked in this situation and had an amazing talk. I guess journaling, reading and meditation also helps me to be so locked in in moments. Another thing to be grateful for. The restaurant was beautiful, the food was amazing and the conversation was the top edge. Bringing this all together I guess I want to say four more things. 

Happiness is a choice. Go out there and be the captain of your own life. Do things you enjoy. You are the one who is in charge to make your life the way you want it. And sure not every day can be as amazing as this one, but still, every day can be great if you put on the right mindset of happiness and appreciation. With this mindset, even “small things” like a good coffee or a good meal or a nice chat can make your day.

Live the life you want to. You are in charge of the vibes you send to the world.

The joy that results from the synergy of two likeminded people that connect is priceless.

Life is awesome. The love of life is just a decision-the choice is yours.

This does not only hold true for your private life but also for your job and profession. Happiness is the key to a good life. And I want to love every moment and every aspect of my life! Its 7 pm and finally I am in the mood to do my work 😊