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five-rivers · 4 years ago

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Orb/Reanimation

Another part of Doorways! Link to series here.

“What’s his name again?” asked Danny, picking at the hem of his shirt. Today had been… stressful, for a number of reasons. Partially the long drive and the disastrous breakfast stop, but also the fact that they were driving to meet a guy who was possibly:

a) Vlad Masters version 2.

b) A horrible hole in reality that would try to kill him.

c) Possessed, like the Keens.

d) Using ghost stuff without knowing it was ghost stuff.

e) Messing around with ghost stuff while knowing it was ghost stuff, but without any of the skill to keep it from messing him up in turn.

f) Crazy in some wonderful, unforeseen way.

Or, finally,

g) Mom and Dad’s one and only normal friend.

Danny really wasn’t holding for the last one, if he was being honest. After all, unlike Marianne, this guy had been part of the Paranormal Research Club.

Okay, maybe there were other, positive, options. It was completely possible for someone to be weird or crazy and not be evil or even particularly threatening. Most ghosts were like that, in fact.

Still.

“Frank Stone,” said Dad, cheerfully.

“If he turns out to be a Dr. Frankenstein type, I quit,” groaned Jazz. “Just so you know.”

“You won’t quit,” said Danny, with complete confidence.

“He is a doctor,” said Mom. “He was studying biology when we met him, for his undergraduate degree.”

“I quit; I’m telling you.”

“If you were really quitting,” reasoned Danny, “you’d just open the door and jump out.” He was pleased that Jazz was taking her turn as the resident overdramatic teenager. She carried that burden only rarely, but it did seem like long trips in the GAV really brought it out.

Maybe they made her remember the whole Youngblood thing. Who knew? Not Danny.

“I’m not going to jump out of a moving vehicle. That’s more of a ‘you’ thing.”

“I can’t really dispute that,” said Danny, remembering all the times he had, in fact, jumped out of a moving vehicle. “In my defense, I can fly.”

“Why you can fly completely negates that as a defense.”

Danny held up a finger. “Okay, so, first off, reality is not a moving vehicle.”

“Anything can be a moving vehicle, depending on your reference frame.”

“I agree on the moving part, but I dispute the vehicle part. Vehicle comes from the Latin vehiculum, which is ‘a means of conveyance.’ Reality is not a means of conveyance. Ergo, it cannot be a vehicle.”

“Not so fast, brother dear. Words change meaning over time.”

“Yeah, but that’s still what vehicle means,” said Danny. “Unless you’re doing the medicine definition, anyway. I think.”

“Reality is a metaphorical vehicle.”

“Well, if it’s metaphorical, it doesn’t matter whether or not it’s moving. Does it?”

“I’m… not sure.”

“I think this is the place!” exclaimed Dad, pulling into a parking lot. “Golding City University Medical Research Lab.”

“He doesn’t live here,” said Danny, slowly, “does he?” They weren’t ambushing this guy at work, were they? Even if he did turn out to be just as bad as all of Mom and Dad’s other friends, that was kind of mean.

(Except, the Keens had been acceptable, once they were no longer possessed, and even the ghost possessing them hadn’t been too terrible.)

“He’s in the building behind the lab,” said Mom. “They let the teachers live on-campus, here. He’s expecting us, anyway.”

Right. Because they had called ahead, giving warning to their potential enemy. Curse you, common courtesy and sundry social conventions.

Jazz was glaring at the small name sign on the building, which was just barely visible through the rain. “Golding City University,” she said, eyes narrowed.

“Uh, is something wrong?”

“Frankenstein,” she said.

“Um,” said Danny. He looked more closely at the name. “Golding City. Ingolstadt.” Oh, no. Now he was glaring at the name, too. Because Jazz was right, and it would be his luck. Their parents’ luck. Whatever.

“Do you feel anything?” asked Dad.

“No,” said Danny.

“Well,” said Mom. “We’ll have to run a bit, try to stay out of the rain. It’s too bad there isn’t a closer parking lot…”

“I could also just make us all intangible,” said Danny.

“What?”

“I could make us all intangible. I do it all the time to miss the rain when no one is looking too closely.”

“Huh,” said Mom.

“It isn’t as if my powers disappear when I’m not fighting ghosts,” said Danny. “I get to use them for other things.”

“I know, I know, it just seems… petty.”

“Petty is one of the best words to describe ghosts with,” said Danny.

Frank Stone did not look like a Frankenstein. Not the monster, and not the ‘doctor.’

(Because Victor Frankenstein had not, in fact, become a doctor, had he?)

He was actually pretty average looking. The same age as Mom and Dad, of course. Brown hair. Glasses. Skinny, but not that skinny. Could Dr. Stone rob a grave? Probably. But carrying the loot away without some mechanical advantage was probably out. Unless it was old loot. Dried out. Maybe just bones.

Corpses were heavy.

(No, Danny was not going to elaborate.)

Dr. Stone appeared to be somewhat confused about why Danny and Jazz were there. Evidently, Mom and Dad had managed to give the man the impression that they wanted to fund his research with the fortune they had inherited from Vlad.

Which, incidentally, had been inherited by Danny, who couldn’t really do much with it until he was twenty-five. Not that he was particularly keen on funding… Whatever it was that Dr. Stone was researching.

Maybe that would be different if he could tell what Dr. Stone was talking about. Danny wasn’t stupid, far from it, and had a good background in any number of esoteric subjects, but, well. It was hard to rival an adult lifetime of learning and research. Especially when he didn’t have any context.

Mom and Dad’s briefing on Dr. Stone had generally focused on what he had been interested in as a member of the Paranormal Research Club, not his true field of study.

“Oh,” said Mom, suddenly, “this is about your organ transplant project, isn’t it? You really need to provide more context. When you just jump right in like that, even we’ll get lost!”

Okay. Danny felt better.

“Well, yes,” said Dr. Stone. “I have been working on this off and on since college, you know how it is. I know you kept up with that portal business!” He flashed a nervous smile and set his coffee mug down on his coffee table. It made a soft chinking sound against the glass. “But the university gave me a grant, Vladco’s been donating some supplies—From their chemical division, mostly—and I’ve been having a lot of success! I can’t wait to show you. We’ve actually got a few specimens in near-stasis right now, all from mice. We’re going to be implanting one tomorrow. See how it functions.”

“Have you implanted any before?” asked Mom, leaning forward.

“A few, but, well. I can’t say they were resounding successes. The most recent subject only lasted a few days… Although, that is better than the first! We’ve been adjusting some of our ratios.”

“Say, Frank,” said Dad. “What chemicals are you using for this, anyway? I know you’re using them in conjunction with low temperatures, but keeping crystals from forming in the flesh—”

“Yes, yes, that’s always been the problem with cryogenics,” agreed Dr. Stone. Then they dove back into jargon and technical language.

Danny glanced sideways at Jazz, uneasy. Chemicals. From Vladco. Yeah. Not suspicious at all.

He leaned over. “Ten dollars says that he’s using ectoplasm to reanimate dead bodies.”

“I’m not taking that bet. Do you feel anything weird from him?” Jazz whispered back.

“Weird, yes, but…” Danny bit his lip. “I’m not sensing any… doors. Or ghosts.”

“Okay,” said Jazz. “So, when we do find his mad science lab full of dead body parts, what do we do?”

“Well… Nothing? As long as they’re legal dead body parts, I guess. You know, from organ donors, or people who donated their bodies to science. I mean…” He shrugged. “You’ve read Frankenstein, too. And met Ellie.”

“Hm. True,” said Jazz. “I have to check my biases. I’m still quitting, though. As soon as we find his Frankenstein stuff. Just so you know.”

“No, you aren’t.”

Jazz just sighed.

Danny walks silently through the halls of the research facility. True, Dr. Stone was planning on giving his family a tour of his workspace first thing tomorrow and had implied that other researchers would be doing the same, but Danny believed in being prepared.

Well. Sometimes. He was allowed to be inconsistent and contradictory. Like any teen, he was still learning how to exist.

Maybe he should stop comparing himself to ‘any teen,’ though. It was beginning to feel dishonest, even in his own head. Even though, technically, it was true.

Anyway.

This place was kind of creepy. At least, he presumed a normal person would find it creepy. Too bad he didn’t know any normal people. Sam would think it was cool. Tucker would be freaking out because it was a medical research lab. Ancients, Danny was as bad as his parents.

It did have a number of features that one would typically only find on the set of a horror movie, however, so he felt fairly confident in his assessment of its creepiness. Also, he had encountered at least five different crimes against nature and sanity (it took one to know one), and he hadn’t even gotten to Dr. Stone’s lab yet.

He was impressed. He hadn’t expected such a high concentration outside of Amity Park or Vlad’s hideouts.

At the thought of Vlad, Danny drooped. Yeah. He still wasn’t over the stupid fruitloop. Still hated the fact that he had died.

Back to the crimes against nature. Ectoplasm was definitely a component, if a small one. Hard to get things to glow that precise, reality bending shade of green otherwise. Also, well. Danny can sense ectoplasm.

And… Now he was in a room of jars full of diluted ectoplasm and… He sniffed. Formaldehyde? He frowned and decided the number, size, and arrangement of jars was suspicious. He walked around the table. Yep. That was in the outline of a human body. Yep.

Honestly, this wasn’t any more alarming than the living mice impaled with various glowing needles, or the disturbingly brown heart beating in a fish tank a few rooms back. It was, also, significantly less alarming than the prosthetic face (mainly because, dang, that thing looked realistic), the (fresh) skeleton someone had been injecting ectoplasm into (yikes), and the weird flesh… blob… thing that someone had just left out in their workspace.

Still. This was another point for the ‘someone is building a Frankenstein’s monster in this building’ theory, and Danny had kind of been hoping that he was wrong.

He walked out of the room, on alert for random murderous corpse monsters (or sad corpse monsters that needed a shoulder to cry on, a restraining order against their creators, and a loving home). Or mad scientists. Because, at this point, he was fairly certain that everyone who worked here was crazy, and not necessarily in the fun way Mom and Dad were.

He was glad they had decided to sleep in the GAV and ignore Dr. Stone’s invitation to stay in his apartment.

Dr. Stone’s office was just next door. His lab, just beyond that. Danny approached cautiously, his ghost half on high alert, and his deeper self stirring uneasily.

He laid a hand flat against the door, and that stirring became wakefulness.

Crimes against nature. Hubris. Pride.

Superbia. It had to be.

A hole. A wound.

Well. This was fast. Even with the Keens’ list of Paranormal Research Club members they had encountered while possessed, Danny hadn’t expected to find another thing like Gula so quickly.

He hadn’t wanted to. Despite his outward pessimism, he had hoped that there weren’t any more.

After several frozen moments where Danny braced himself for an attack, he realized one wasn’t forthcoming. The tear beyond the door had not noticed him, was not trying to consume him.

So, he had a choice. He could either try to deal with this alone, right now, or he could sneak away and tell his family what he had found. Both choices had pros and cons.

Before even a second had passed, Danny was easing away from the door. He hadn’t quite promised to share if he felt anything strange, if he had detected anything bad, but… It was a near thing, and he didn’t want to be dishonest with his family after they had been so accepting of all his… Stuff.

Yeah. Call it stuff. Nice and generic. Covers everything.

Plus, his encounter with Gula had confirmed that he needed backup.

He refrained from calling on his powers on the way out. He didn’t want to draw attention. The limits of the doors to the place which should not be mentioned were largely unknown to him.

Luckily, the doors weren’t alarmed, and he got back to the GAV without a problem. He poked Jazz awake first.

“Hey,” he said, “we’ve got a problem.”

“This portal is just… Sitting there,” said Mom.

“Yep.”

“In Frank’s office.”

“Well, I think it might actually be in the lab, but yes. It’s kind of freaking me out.”

“Is Frank sleeping in his lab?” asked Dad, stroking the stubble on his chin.

“No, I checked that before I went in,” said Danny. “He’s in his apartment.”

“You just… broke into his apartment?” asked Mom.

Danny shrugged. “I didn’t break anything,” he said. “But, I mean, what else was I supposed to do?”

For a moment, it looked like Mom was about to argue or scold him, but she shook her head. “Alright, then someone else is in his office.”

“Maybe. I’m not sure if these portals need a person attached or not. Using person in the very loosest of senses, because…” He made a gesture he hoped would be interpreted as a soul being forcibly removed from a body without killing the body.

“You don’t think it’s in the, um,” Jazz also made a vague gesture.

“You mean the hypothetical Frankenstein’s monster he’s made? Yeah. I think that’s likely. Also, judging from the sheer amount of, um, weird stuff in the other labs, I’d say it’s influencing everyone and everything around it, too.”

“Is that a thing it can do?” asked Mom.

“I mean, I can do that,” said Danny. He paused. “’I’ in this case being the portal. Yeah. That’s why Amity Park is so… Amity Park.”

Mom breathed out, slowly. “Sweetie, trust me on this, Amity Park was strange long before we made the portal.

“Well, yes?” said Danny, not seeing what that had to do with it. “So?”

“So, that strangeness couldn’t be caused by the portal.”

“Mom. I’m—It’s a hole in reality. Do you think it’s going to obey the laws of cause and effect? You went to Amity Park because it was already a ‘thin spot,’ right? I was already there.”

Mom looked vaguely ill.

“Okay,” said Jazz. “Let’s table that discussion for right now. What are we going to do about this? Break in? Wait for our ‘tour’ tomorrow?”

“I don’t like the idea of waiting for Dr. Stone to give us a tour,” said Danny. “I don’t want to give them time to prepare for us.”

“He doesn’t know what we’re here for, though,” said Dad. “Does he?”

“I don’t know,” said Danny. “I can’t read minds.”

“Yet,” added Jazz.

“Do you think he even knows about the…” It was Mom’s turn to enter the gesturing game.

“Let’s just call it a hell portal for the sake of communication,” said Danny, despite the fact that the term did not do the actuality justice. “Or Superbia for this particular one. I think this must be Superbia, anyway.” He didn’t want to imagine the possibility of even more of these things out there.

“I’m not sure how he couldn’t notice that something strange was going on,” said Dad. “Even if he was using ectoplasm and other supernatural elements in his research, we gave him a good grounding in what to expect from ectoplasm in college.”

“Yeah,” said Jazz. “But not everyone is like you and Mom. Your college days were over two decades ago.”

Something moving in the dark and rain beyond the GAV windows, catching Danny’s eye. He pushed past his family to get a better look, blinking to adjust his eyes.

“Heck,” he said. “We have a mob.”

“What?” exclaimed Dad, rushing to the console to turn on the GAV’s exterior floodlights.

They illuminated Dr. Stone and a crowd of college and graduate students quite nicely. Their eyes reflected a dim red. The GAV was, as far as Danny could see, surrounded.

Very briefly, the thought of gunning the GAV and crashing through the crowd crossed his mind. It was just as quickly dismissed.

He didn’t know what the line between influenced and mind controlled was, or how easily Superbia could cross it. It was even possible that the ‘hell portal’ could vault over both of those and land directly in possession.

“Ghost shield?” suggested Danny.

“Will it do anything?” asked Mom.

“Won’t hurt,” said Danny with a shrug.

Mom flipped the switch.

“What are we going to do?” asked Jazz, softly. “Wait them out?”

“Realistically,” said Danny, “we don’t have enough food and water to do that. With this many people, they could take turns watching us.”

“Call the police?” suggested Maddie. The other three turned to look at her. “They are still human, aren’t they?”

“Yeah,” said Danny, frowning. “But I don’t know how much, um, agency they have right now. If we were in Amity, I’d say sure, our police understand, mostly, but… Also, bringing extra hostages into this might not be a good idea.”

“If it’s the campus police that would get called, they might be affected, too,” said Jazz.

“They have campus police? How do you know?”

“This college sent me a brochure once.”

“Right. Um. I could always just fly us out of here,” said Danny.

“Assuming they don’t have ranged attacks,” said Mom, dubiously.

“Hm. Yeah. I think I could lift the GAV, and then we could just leave the shield on.”

“Assuming the shield does anything.”

Danny shrugged. “I can always just try to fight them outright. I’d prefer not to do that, though.”

Mom inhaled as if she were about to say something but was cut off by a loud noise from outside.

“Jack~ Maddie~ I know you’re in there.” That was Dr. Stone’s voice, warped by a megaphone speaker. “Why don’t you come out and see what I’ve done? I dare say I’ve exceeded even our wildest dreams from college.” A long pause. “I even made a portal… Weren’t you trying to get one of those? Isn’t that what got good old Vlad hospitalized?” There was laughter. Too much laughter.

The mob was laughing, too.

Superbia. Pride.

Danny knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to walk out and deal with the threat that was grating on his every sense. But… He knew that prideful actions were contraindicated under the present circumstances.

Influence. Right. How much could Danny be influenced?

How much could his family be influenced?

He looked up at his parents, seeking guidance. They seemed uncertain, too.

“I didn’t destroy any lives- I made new life. New life! Powered by an interdimensional portal, oh, yes… Can you imagine the application? Can you imagine a new world?”

“Okay, he didn’t seem like this in the apartment,” muttered Jazz. “We have human nonlethal weapons, right?”

“Still have to worry about running people over,” said Danny. He looked back at the lab building. “We could try to cut this off at the source. They aren’t protecting the building. They’re using it as part of their perimeter.”

Eyes turned to the dimly lit building.

“We can cover you,” offered Dad.

“I don’t like this any better than you flying off with us,” said Mom. “But… It offers a more permanent solution.”

Danny should have gone after it when he was in the building the first time. Well. Time only rewound for one ghost, and that ghost wasn’t him.

Unless he counted… Never mind. The point was, despite all his other wonderful and troubling features, Danny couldn’t go back and change a decision he’d already made. Agonizing over it was a waste of time and brain power.

Dad got behind the wheel. Jazz crawled up into the well-disguised turret. Maddie manned the other weapons.

Danny stood at the door, ready to run, ready to transform as soon as he was through the shield.

Family bonding activities. So much fun.

The mob attacked before he got the door open. He still made it to the building.

Danny didn’t bother with doors or windows or halls. He remembered what floor Dr. Stone’s office was on, and, now that he was sensitized to it, he could feel Superbia. He went through the walls, straight as an arrow.

(He wondered, briefly, if he was being as bigoted as he’d often felt his parents to be. If he was ascribing more evil to the portals to the Red Country than was warranted. If he was simply holding up a dark mirror and seeing what he feared from himself.)

(But no. He did not command like that. He did not force his people to assemble armies in the night or attack people. He kept them safe. He had rules.)

The lab was awash in sick red not-light that burned in Danny’s mind. It was barely physically perceptible, more present in senses that couldn’t translate to human terms than anything to do with Danny’s eyes, ghostly or not.

In the center of the lab, on an operation table, was a stitched-together corpse. Perhaps, under other circumstances, it would have been a very pretty corpse. A young woman with long dark hair and broad shoulders.

Its chest had been torn open. Half-in half-out of the cavity was a red orb, the source of the not-light, like some sick imitation of a ghost core.

(It reminded Danny of Freakshow’s staff, and he realized that he never did find out where that horrid thing had come from.)

They had been trying to make something like Danny.

He felt like he had eaten those blood blossom pancakes.

Danny gritted his teeth and let his light, white-green and clear, fill his hands. Ectoplasm fought against the miasma in the air, an oddly purifying presence. It wasn’t enough to chase away the wrongness. This wasn’t his space.

The fight against Gula was different. Both he and it had been within nominally living bodies. They had been next to the heart of Danny’s territory, his home ground. Danny had been tricked and trapped, taken off guard, unable to use the tricks he had grown used to while fighting ghosts and Vlad.

(He could feel Superbia in his mind, pride urging him forward towards error. Pride in his abilities, in his mind, in his family.)

Danny drifted sideways, watching. Listening. Other things in the building were stirring. Sparks of wrongness growing and twisting, warping into fountains and springs. This whole building was full of it. Rotten to the bones. It pressed against his teeth.

Careful.

He had to be careful.

The orb shone.

(Too much like Freakshow’s staff.)

(Influence, Danny remembered. Just how close was it to mind control?)

Doing this as a human was impossible. Trying to fight that as a ghost was unwise.

The always-open always-closed door that both contained and laid within Danny’s soul shifted. So did the corpse on the table, its constituent parts sliding over each other gruesomely. Death had lost its hold, lost its meaning. The ghost that was Danny twisted, and he was too human, too alive.

Special little thing. You think you can defeat us.

He could. He could open himself and wash all this away in an instant. He could burn with electric fire and the cold of deep space. He could reach out. The orb would be as dust under his hand.

He didn’t move.

In thinking you become…

Un-light burned up from the grooves in the tile floor. It didn’t reach the soles of his boots, didn’t reach his soul. He gritted his teeth.

US.

YOUR VICTORY IS OURS.

“Wow, you picked the wrong person to use that strategy on,” said Danny, out loud. Internally, he pulled on the delicate and frayed strands of reality that persisted even here. “I have so much imposter syndrome and anxiety that it isn’t even funny. I know I can’t beat you. Not here.”

But then, he didn’t have to.

He found the right string and pulled. He found the key and opened the door. Death was in the room again. Danny could move again. Not so much the pile of flesh in front of him. It was hard, it hurt, to keep hold of something like this, but half of Danny was this, was dead, even if he had far too many halves to ever be whole.

Ice coated the floor, the tiles cracking under the sudden temperature change. He dropped to the floor and was human.

An impossible thing.

And behind the human—

Well. Danny didn’t have to defeat Superbia. It wasn’t like Gula, didn’t have that strength, that experience. He just had to make it so the things that would, could.

(Danny had rules. Some of them were to protect himself.)

He walked over to the orb. Ultimately, it was just a representation, not Superbia itself. Still. He put his foot down on it and slowly transferred his weight to it until it cracked. Until it splintered. Until it shattered. Until he ground its dust under his heel.

Then, the building collapsed. Danny didn’t move, didn’t have to move. He was a ghost again, floating in the air, exactly where he had been, all the floors having passed harmlessly through him.

Outside, the faculty and student body of the college were sprawled in piles on the ground. The GAV was, somehow, halfway up a tree. A shockingly sturdy tree. Several statues were in pieces.

The sun was coming up.

Danny put a hand to his chest and assessed himself. Yes. Still here. Still himself. The Ghost Zone still sang in his bones, in his core. He was still anchored in Amity Park. Everything in order.

This place, though… This place would be tainted for years, a thin spot forever. He could feel it, now. Why couldn’t he feel it before, when they drove in?

He shuddered. Then he flew down to the GAV and knocked on the window. Mom rolled it down.

“Want me to fly us away to somewhere secluded before the cops get called and we get asked a bunch of awkward questions?” he asked.

Mom closed her eyes. “Please do,” she said.

#danny phantom #ectober #ectober week #ectober week 2020 #ectober 2020

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jpegjade · 4 years ago

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Going Swimming - Spencer

HELLO DOUBLE UPLOAD DAY. so i decided to finish this one while I was on a break to eat lunch. It is a bit shorter compared to my other ones. I think this is fluff. im calling it fluff bc nothing dramatic happens.

Request: Hey! I thought it would be really cute for a story where Spencer and y/n have been dating for a bit, but he’s never really seen her without makeup before because she’s insecure without it. Maybe he does something to help show her how beautiful she rlly is! I love your writing, thank you so much for being you!

((also: thank you lovely anon. you touched my heart.))

___________________

You and Spencer had been together for 2 blissful months. Even when he was gone, he talked to you as much as he could, calling you each time he was in the hotel room or texting you when he had good news. He always wanted to share what he could with you, even if it was vague without any details. He could never share the details but he loved telling you that he successfully talked someone down. Those were his favorite days.

Today was an off day so the two of you spent it lounging around at his apartment. You liked his apartment, it was full of so many interesting books and you were on a mission to read them all while you guys were still together. So far, things were going well and you couldn’t imagine any reason that you couldn’t get through all of them.

“Do you want to go to the pool?” Spencer asked. He was only wearing swim trunks and a towel around his shoulders. Damn he looked good like that.

“Pool?” You asked, wondering what got into him. It was a nice day to say it was summer but you wondered where he would have access to a pool.

“The apartment complex built one and it’s finally complete.” He smiled.

“Oh.” You thought about it, you really did. “No, that’s okay.” You said, going back to some book about mathematics and physics.

“Are you sure? It will be fun.” Spencer said, getting a little down.

“Spence, I don’t have a bathing suit.” You said, trying to avoid the idea.

“You look good in your bra and bottoms, I promise.” He smirked, walking over to you.

Your body took up the whole couch since you were stretched out with your legs up on the other seats so he sat near you on the floor.

“I don’t want to swim, baby. But I can sit poolside and watch you swim, if you’re that set on swimming.” You smiled, kissing him on the forehead.

“It’s not fun without you, y/n.” He said, pouting.

Spencer tried to come up with an answer to all of your points but he couldn’t come up with anything. He sighed, turning so his back was leaning on the couch. While one hand held the book, the other hand naturally went to play with Spencer's hair. He sighed again, this time a little louder before turning back around.

“I’ve never seen you without make-up.” Spencer said, studying your face.

“Okay?” You looked up from the book that was giving you a headache. The concepts were going over your head.

“Why?” Spencer was just wondering innocently. He was inquisitive so it was natural that he would ask questions he didn’t have the answers to, which was rare.

“Because?” You said. It wasn’t something you were defensive over because you knew he was only asking since he was curious.

“Because why?” He said, scrunching his eyebrows a little.

“Because I just feel more comfortable with it on. If I’m going out in public, I’d prefer to have my best face forward.” You looked back down at the book, satisfied with your answer.

“Do you feel like you have to put it on for me? Or is it more for yourself?” Spencer turned his body completely to look at you, criss crossing his legs and putting his hands in the gap. You thought he looked like a 5-year-old who was waiting for nap time.

“No, it’s not you. Well it’s you a little bit but it’s just how I am. I grew up like this and it stuck.” You said, shrugging your shoulders.

“Oh.” Spencer wasn’t getting it and you could see it on his face. “What do you mean?”

“When I was growing up, I learned the hard way that people think you’re prettier when you look perfect. While girls were putting on makeup, I liked being natural. For a while, no one cared. Then I started to notice that people only wanted you if you wore make-up, dressed a certain way, acted like you didn’t care about anything. I got bullied into wearing make-up, basically.” You paused to collect your thoughts.

“When I got older, I noticed that boys only liked me when I had make-up on. Even just a simple look was better than showing my natural face. So I decided that I would just look my best at all times so nobody could catch me on an off-day. Even when I’m lounging at home, I wear something because I don’t like my reflection otherwise. I’d rather be perfect.” You finished.

Spencer was quiet for a moment. He didn’t want to say the wrong thing.

“So… Why do you feel the need to wear it around me?” He asked, wondering how he played into everything.

“Because I just like to look perfect around you. I like knowing that I’m my best for you.” You said, looking at your feet. It came out in such a quiet voice, you weren’t sure he heard you.

“I know it’s not my place and my opinion doesn’t matter but I think you’re perfect already… There’s very few things that could dissuade me from my opinion about you and whether or not you wear makeup is not one of them. I think that your experiences with selfish, superficial people has given you a tainted view of the world and I understand. Generally speaking, the golden ratio does seem to exist. It’s a very western culture way of thinking but being conventionally attractive is valued greatly and anyone who is not up to that standard isn’t-”

“Spencer, I love hearing you talk but you’re going to stop being helpful if you continue down the path you’re on.” You said, looking over at him. He didn’t even realize he was going off on a tangent.

“Right. My point is that I appreciate you as you are, with or without makeup. I can only hope that during the course of our relationship, you become comfortable enough to show me another side of you that I haven’t seen because I would like to give that face a multitude of kisses. I always want to kiss you but I’m scared of messing up your hard work so I restrain myself a lot of the time. Garcia has shown me makeup videos on the Tube website about how long it takes and how much the stuff is and all the different designs and stuff and I admire the hard work that goes into the process. But I want you to know that you don’t have to look perfect when you’re perfect as you are to me.” He said, grinning.

“You promise you won’t judge me?” You said, finally looking up at him.

“I promise I won’t judge or change my mind about you.” Spencer smiled.

“Okay. Maybe next time.” You said standing up to grab a different book.

“I have one more question.” Spencer said, standing up. He lost his balance and fell forward onto the couch.

“Go ahead, babe.” You grabbed The iliad.

“Can I try that stuff you put under your eyes to hide dark circles? Mine are getting out of control.” He said standing up and walking over to where you stood, in front of the bookcase.

“I don’t have your color but we can try it just for fun. But I have to say, you with dark circles is really hot. I’m attracted to guys who look like they haven't slept in a millenia.” You chuckled.

“Oh really? Well maybe I don’t need it, in that case.” Spencer smirked. “One last question.”

“Just ask, baby.” You smiled.

“Can I kiss you? You’re wearing my favorite lip gloss, the minty one, and I’ve been dying to kiss you all day.” Spencer hovered just above your face, your noses barely touching.

“You don’t have to ask.”

________________

tag list:

@dr-reid-ismyspiritanimal

#spencer x reader #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid #cm #criminal minds #criminal minds imagine #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid imagine

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sugar-petals · 5 years ago

Text

SuperM as Subs

↪ A/N. UGH these guys have me fucking spiraling. very excited to bring you this, please indulge 👀

○ warnings ⚠️ 18+, dom/sub, kinks galore, gender-neutral dom!reader

3.5k words | bullet points | this is all over the place there is so much to say i—

⌈ ten

— motto: kitten has ‘ten’ in it, but so does intense.

wowza honey

best choke out you’ll find

the stamina, too, oh lord. ten can handle a lightning fast riding without blowing up in two minutes

all while you choke him

with a waist harness on and ankles bound

bondage looks so good on him; he’s flexible and enduring. imagine a hogtie... art.

such a beautiful man.

literally, rope marks, imagine that

we need to talk about his pain threshold as well there

things that have other guys screaming are a mere tickle to him

i can’t emphasize enough how lucky you’ll be. this fella does not have to be trained much. experience? abundant. talent? more than vast. he knows precisely how far he can go with what kind of kink. that is invaluable.

and now, the most mind-blowing part. stress: he encourages you to take it all out on him. in his mind, that’s an extra treat and a promise he gets it raw how he loves it.

your satisfaction is his fuel, as is seeing you unwind.

the whole progression from heavy beginnings to breathless ends

the boy needs you to go, for the lack of a better word, buck-wild

so yes, ten is your number one (pun intended) address for all things messy. he asks you to hatefuck him, you spoil him with it.

the sheer masochism of him

are you kidding me

listen i’m not a fan of the sin concept but in this case... you can sin all you want with him

tl;dr: angry sex is his thing. strong emotions. guts will be rearranged.

about the elephant in the room: yeah, this guy can bust some extraterrestrial, dazzling, sexy as hell moves

that means one thing. contortionism. you can bend him into every position you desire and fuck him like that. he’s petite but don’t worry. your babe’s strong

in fact, you can sit on his face and get one ferocious rimming daily

things will get wet wetter wettest

surprise surprise vice versa he likes his own ass filled with plugs and vibrators

the type that buzzes him into a delirium while you slap him. with his neck turning red and those pretty almond eyes going wide.

they do hold the universe. he’s just so enthralling.

btw. talking about toys. having a fleshlight ready to make him moan and ruin his orgasm is a veeery good idea.

chances are you will draw cute english or thai interjections from him

in return, you can call him your prince and kiss him all over for aftercare. he’s no different, thinking of you as someone figuratively and literally noble to him. he’s thankful you fulfill his greatest sexual dreams. it’s true, you’ll really worship each other.

he’ll do his little mona lisa smile and doze off in your lap...

sub!ten is just priceless okay

10/10

i need a moment

⌈ kai

— motto: local strip club found bankrupt.

oh mY GOD nini

he knows how it’s done

did he go to sub school or something

you’ll find him at the stove around 6:30 AM in his apron

making you breakfast pretty much butt naked otherwise

flustered and sexy butler kim right at your service

looking very sculpted

dancing a little, as usual, he’s getting into it

in other words, you’re sure to get those eggs fried well

now, besides his skimpy clothing and waiter allure

kai as a submissive is almost definite to be an epitome of organization. he’s just good at it. period. lube and protection are always in the house.

you do your part doing maintenance for toys and cracking the occasional whip but really i mean... as the great oh sehun once said... never don’t mind about a thing when jongin gets the chance to put something in order

so lean back — kai is a service sub. he’s the type who wants to break a sweat for you

and have that very visible because he doesn’t own clothes anyway. well, well.

something more about organization

fucking according to a schedule sounds about right

you have it all planned out with a special calendar book just for that purpose

but don’t believe he’ll be boring and hyper-structured beyond that

kai is the precise opposite of dull as a lover but that’s a huge duh

he has both the acute sense of bashful romance and strong erotic feelings that come with a regular eyebrow wiggle

he likes to provoke the wild animal in his partner

reckless abandon

kai is 100% guaranteed to make you let out the beast. he enjoys feeling you go all out and grip him, pin him. everything hands-on is good.

grinding and gyrating is always part of sex. hell, even floating and flying. fuck gravity.

you need a certain level of dexterity. and hey if you don’t, you will pick it up from him in a solid minute

what i’m trying to say is that it won’t happen that the two of you rub against each other in the sheets like two blocks of wood (even when going into aftercare!). it will be fluid, ever-moving, energetic right and left with the mattress creaking all over the damn place

sex with jongin is one thing for sure: fucking fast. he won’t mess up his tempo if you know what i mean. the two of you will be thrusting and moaning until complete fatigue sets in

he whines a lot i’m telling you

it’s the surefire way to know kai is into it, being genuinely vocal is one of his best qualities as a sub

besides handling any rough pace

this guy will have you sneaking into his gym room and have a quickie on the next best workout bench

and lord knows what else.

the bathroom is another destination. wet!kai, the yearning romeo, is an image you won’t forget

prepare to get your hands on all of that

he’s gonna melt right into ya

and that is sub!kai for you

⌈ taeyong

— motto: vanilla? hardly heard of her.

to use an nct pun: the options are— limitless.

and another: you’re signed up for a... long flight.

and you’re gonna be the: boss

who gives it to him

and i’m warning you

he’s shy about it but

taeyong is simply insatiable. take his kinky reputation at face value.

what doesn’t he do

the softest softcore (feathers to tease him) to the hardest hardcore (edge play, hallelujah), the whole spectrum without any efforts for transitions

so you guessed it, a normal bedroom really won’t do.

neither does a standard dom

but since you’re knee deep into taeyong — go figure, you’re reading this — news flash you likely aren’t one

plug in all of your toys and cameras for date night. he needs his good dose of lube-dripping fantasy, homemade with a bunch of latex thrown into the mix

yeah i know that will escalate quickly

he wears it well i’m telling you

and also greatly enjoys you donning it for friday evening

it will frustrate him to the max which is a sight to see indeed

no other sub in super m gets harder boners over latex. that’s how it is. he’s just so drawn to the material and how much authority it gives you in particular

noona/oppa kink incarnate

hell, even daddy/mommy

he calls you that when you are forehead to forehead and catching your breath

because man these orgasms are going to get you so high, bodies gently intertwined

and very, very drenched

not just skin-wise

so let me underline this

your dear taeyong, no matter how innocently he can blink at you, gets his daily nutrient intake from cum.

what fancy-schmancy protein shake is he interested in other than yours like literally none

put him on a leash together with baekhyun and you have two salivating, ultra dirty boys

so ready to please and swallow everything up

taeyong is a handsome handful

you’ll be horny 24/7

or 23/7 maybe because aftercare

where we revert back to adorable yong. he clings to you a lot, you nuzzle him all the time, the affection is off the charts

he’s pouty and sweet, smiling to himself

holding him tight gives him a big sense of security.

safe to say he wants everybody to know he belongs to you in terms of PDA, too

it’s not restricted to domestic intimacy and sexual aftermath

taeyong truly has the perfect ratio of freaky and soft

god worked hard on him

⌈ lucas

— motto: when bigger is better, things get wetter...

ready for take off are we

yukhei is one flirty crackhead you’ll love it

teasing will go back and forth

there might even be play fights and wrestling involved. messing around on sofas and carpets, you know the deal. things won’t get too rowdy, he’s being his 6′ baby self and you don’t want to use your whole bag of tricks yet vice versa

lucas eventually lets you win anyways

and acts like he’s lethally injured ffs

he’s an aquarius don’t come for him they roll that way

in comes the patient-doctor roleplay. yep that’s how the story goes

and you sure as hell get to take care of um

luke’s big lightsaber

alright

it’s throbbing a bit too much and needs medicine

so think of yourself as a jedi master training your disciple.

read: edging the living soul out of him.

rough handjobs are just perfect

as is going on a rodeo trip getting the guy to tame those bucking hips with a lil punishment here and there. and with punishment i mean tickling even when he is close to orgasm

uh-oh

wong yukhei is a cutie pie but he has just about a bucket of cum for you spilling all over the place

he might get a lil embarrassed about it, that’s the sweetest thing

cleaning it up will be his greatest pleasure

ready for subby lucas yet?

he’s juicy

so what else do we have...

(besides that he sounds like harry styles is dubbing him and that voice is going to turn you on so hard)

if his dominant doesn’t have an ounce of a muscle and biting kink that’s, how to put it, a missed opportunity

just licking him and leaving marks everywhere just has to be the biggest feast in history. you have him parade around sleeveless just to see the hickeys on his arms.

and you don’t have to be frugal. it has to scream mine mine mine. yes, xuxi has some arm sensitivity going on. he needs your mouth on him doing chaotic stuff that leaves his jaw hanging open. to the point of you eating your brunch off his chest and shoulders.

there i said it

breakfast with yukhei is cancelled. it’s breakfast on yukhei

as for positions: things are usually more chill and standard. just how much missionary will there be, you’ll lose count. he’s good at it. lucas has the condensed passion of ten people, it will be more arousing than you’d think. it’s also a good pause to your usual activities, you both get a chance to um take a breath

if he feels cocky, wong brathei likes to lift you up during sex and here we go again with a staring contest... which ends with a bright smile and kissing

what did you expect

always remember this one thing. in his big himbo brain only one thought floats around and that. is. his. love. for. you.

a whipped boy

he’s irreplaceable.

patient xuxi reports speedy recovery

⌈ mark

— motto: good boys go to heaven after debuting a couple times more

sirs and sirettes, mark lee.

what did you think the “m” in super m stands for? mario, man, massive, market, model?

nope

SuperMark is what keeps the planet spinning

now here it goes

let’s get one assumption out of the way first

you’d think he fucks how he talks but you’ll be surprised

everything’s slow slow slow

the pace is very casual for someone who raps and thinks that fast

mark is just too friggin’ cute

a blushy cupcake

innocent and always curious what you’re up to

just perfect for all sorts of gentle dominance

you can reassure him when he gets nervous which happens every now and then

and put him into soft sweaters and blankets when he feels cold

maybe even building a pillow fort and just caressing him ad nauseam literally for minutes on end.

tousling his hair would be adorable beyond belief

the same goes for giving him cheesy pet names

or feeding him sweets

you can bet chocolate is his favorite.

but it’s not just all about pampering him

keen how he is you can expect a lot of gestures of attention from mark, like carefully selected presents and foot massages

there’s a real gentleman at your hands.

a gentlemark

he might have come up with that himself

you bet there will be lots of humor involved mark just can’t do serious sex

his intellect is yeahhh... superhuman

as much as his heart is squishy for you.

it’s hard out there. this world is tough

but mark is a safe haven to return to and have wholesome hours in bed with

30% sex, 70% aftercare.

you think that’s impossible? look into his puppy eyes and tell me all you’ll do won’t be spooning

it’s an art form and mark is just too inviting not to do a brush stroke on the canvas.

and after you’re done spooning things are back to more caressing

a smooch left, a smooch right

for the 30% he might need a bit of outside support because his inner perfectionist compels him

so he’ll text johnny at 4:30 in the morning with urgent questions

because his mind is racing and he promised to wake you up with a set of spicy stuff

sex veteran johnny will calmly explain it to mark but also keep it short and simple

because man how early can someone text you

and mark appreciates a crisp how-to that he won’t forget

even when you are chest to chest feeling each other’s breath and his brain almost shuts down

at the end of the day...

you say hey canada lemme get my hands on those big thighs of yours and ding ding his pants are off. he responds so easily to guidance

and his dancing skill always helps to get groovy with you

bust down markiana

you’re that bitch and you know it

⌈ baekhyun

— motto: you and me, relax and ch...oking

leader on the streets

screamer in the sheets

even the most peace-loving, noise-sensitive neighbors are going to dig the things that come out of his mouth as caused by you

just how good are his lungs

imagine him making audios for you. yes, god is real.

you just hit the lotto

the things his mouth can do

byun baekhyun is a synonym of oral fixation when will merriam webster admit it

if there’s one person in super m who can nail the picture perfect drooling ahegao face without hesitation it’s him

he will pleasure you with his tongue so vigorously

that level of spit blowing will haunt you

and the slurpi—

THE NOISES. we can’t talk about the noises. nope, nope. the noises are not meant to be described to this world.

you’ll suffer from incurable lust once you picture it

you know what his voice can cause

that would trigger a mass hysteria

anyway. moving on.

baeks is the type to appreciate a mix of cheek-on-cheek cuddling and getting his brains banged out

you can toss him around, grab him by the hair, fuck him absolutely stupid

while also kissing his forehead and playing with the hair at the nape of his neck. as if he doesn’t want you enough already this will have baekhyun needy for so long

he’s the king of slutty behavior

and making both of you crack up with mid-sex jokes about who knows what, suho’s butt mole or something

he’s just too hilarious. on the other hand he likes being creative and concentrated

in his free time you’ll probably find him reading erotic stories, sketching sexy stuff (i.e., well, you) in a journal, or even a manual to the kamasutra. it gets him all hot and bothered to the point where he can’t stop being chatty about it.

baekhyun’s arousal always first manifests as a wave of words or texts

your part of the equation is distilling the essence of said texts and getting to work on that perky body of his

and praise him plenty. baekhyun loves a lot of verbal affirmations and you’re glad to shower him with it.

kink-wise: he really has a gazillion ideas to try

costumes, gags, whips, pet play, sounding, collars, semi-clothed sex, cock rings, suspensions, you name it

as the cherry on top, a three- and fourway could be part of your routine for sure.

that being said he might have a few dicks in him physically or mechanically because geez bacon loves fucking machines and dildos

he is 100% ready to embark on one hell of an anal odyssey

how much he can stretch out you can probably guess. and he’ll make jokes about it either way to turn you on

you’ll be certain to exhaust and stuff your lil’ darling to the brim but i’m telling you what you already know

he’s gonna be the happiest ahegao boy in the world

and throw peace signs when you take pictures of him fucked out

that’s byunbaek for you. one of a kind

a subby gem

⌈ taemin

— motto: 500 points to slytherin!

this is what you’ve been waiting for i know I KNOW

red carpets out for the sensual sub king and nation’s p.r.e.t.t.y. boy

the international bombshell blonde

a bdsm luminary

DEITY

now, listen.

some erotic feats are truly hard to execute

but there is always one guy who’s the exception

and his name is lee taemin

no matter how unrealistic or complex your imagination of sex with him is

with this man, most of it can become real

effortlessly

because he’s a) an open-minded lover b) rich enough to rent ten dungeons — per hour and c) closest to perfection we as a human race have ever come

taemin is a pro at bringing all kinds of your and his fantasies to life. that’s why it’s important that you sit down to talk about how your intimate encounters could look like every other week

primarily, as far as his taste is concerned

we’ve all heard about his tales of creepypasta romance

literally he’s been an idol for so long and still comes up with new baffling ideal type stories

so according to those

he wants to be run over by you and thinks that’s hot,,, but i say... we stick to flipping him over... like on a bed,,, no car involved

this pal is macabre you have to be an embodiment of the law to rein him in

police roleplay much. arrest this provocateur!

furthermore and on a lighter note

besides being jailed

lo and behold, chained up and decked out in lace, draped on a lip-shaped art sofa is how he feels the most in his element

add a mask and a corset

just how glamorous is he

this guy has mastered all techniques of drawing you in with the most elaborate seduction.

tremendous!

including dance: for your eyes only.

prepare to have your loins set on fire.

because within the 4 walls of your home his every move will be pure danger loaded with sexuality. it would be even more of a public menace than he already is when performed in front of a crowd

keep those handcuffs ready officer

because it is your mission to stop that guy

the more restraints the better

put five harnesses on him i don’t care as long as it contains him

and once that’s done

taemin likes to be stimulated and teased with you running silk fabric all over his body

he also enjoys you creating artistic pin-up-esque photography of him

with sultry eyes and puckered lips

and no worries. taemin will put his plump lips to good use elsewhere, too. all. over. the. place. servicing his dominant is an honor.

and those moans will be like a melody.

the literal only weak spot he has

is to kiss and tell. taemin gets carried away in conversation and feels pride when the topic switches to you. so... if you lick his earlobe and call him your slave, jongin knows the very next day and finds it very entertaining.

taemin won’t deliberately spill the beans in a group chat but one-on-one with a close friend? he’s too excited not to talk about your chemistry and lets some juicy details slip if he can’t control himself.

taemin requires a dom/me who’s definitely not insecure and wants others to know who’s boss.

on the flipside, if you enjoy voyeurism? he is your man. it’s a matter of perspective entirely.

so to speak — even his weakness is a strength.

that’s all you need to understand about him

in sum: you got yourself quite an ace

taem will press your number and you’ll have no sorrow in the world.

we truly are blessed by his existence

peace out

#this ended up riddled with song puns #superm #super m #super m smut #super m x reader #sub!superm #super m imagines #super m hc #superm smut #super m crack #sub!super m #sub!taemin #sub!ten #sub!lucas #sub!kai #sub!taeyong #sub!mark #sub!baekhyun #super m memes

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bearpillowmonster · 5 years ago

Text

Static Shock Retrospective

I was watching Young Justice: Season 2 (Invasion) when I decided I wanted to watch this, I always liked Shock but never got into the lore of it, and I love his powers. I've seen gifs of the show and thought it looked interesting but never really got around to it, I just haven't been in the mood. Then I saw a video on YouTube called "Jimmy no!" not knowing that it was from Static Shock and oh boy...it got dark, I wasn't expecting it to go that deep, that kind of thing wouldn't get aired today but it made me interested in it again.

I started the first episode and Virgil's personality made it for me, mix that with Richie, played by Jason Marsden (aka Max Goof and Kovu) and you have a very nice protag duo. I instantly knew that I was going to finish it when I saw him using a blanket like Dr. Strange's cape or a homing device because of his static cling. Yes I started it because it's dark, but the series isn't always dark, just parts of it, like the first episode has to do with gangs, another with racism, then one where a kid gets trapped in a vault and is losing oxygen?? I mean is my memory hazy and cartoons were just like this and aren't now?

They call the people who were in the accident from his origin "Bang Babies" which sounds like a play on Baby Boomers, Virgil is pretty quippy like that. With this, I'm not a big fan of all the baddies coming from the same incident as our hero, especially when we don't see them all there in that episode, you might as well say that the whole town was infected.

Does it withstand the test of time? Well yeah, as I mentioned, there are things we probably wouldn't see in today's television but the topics are quite relevant as well as the humor. The visual style is pretty nice, the language they use isn't as "cringy early 2000's crap" as I thought, the only sign of age is formats, they'll talk about VCRs and have CDs hanging from the ceiling. The actual content is ahead of it's time with almost public service announcement type episodes that are extremely relevant today, for example, one episode they go to Africa and they show that "Black people can be superheroes too." and Virgil says about how in America he's a black kid, but in Africa he's just a regular kid and asks Ritchie if that's what it's like for him all the time. They talk about culture, sometimes it'll teach a lesson that way and it's so wholehearted that it just fits, it's really nice and surprising to see.

They have sections at the end of the show where they'll have an artist draw a specific character, it's different every time, I have a knack for that and for some reason I remember it?? Maybe I accidentally caught it one day or I'm confusing it for something else because I'm pretty sure I never saw the actual show but it's only after some episodes from what I can see. I think I remember Avatar doing something similar, I guess great shows think alike.

Here’s a link if interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PPMgBU_GmU

Virgil's mother is gone, they make that apparent pretty much from the get-go so no spoilage here but I like the way they make his sister pick up where she left off. Like there's a running occurrence where she'll make a meal for the family and Virgil will make fun of it and say something like "Runny...just the way I like them..." about his eggs, it's like she's doing this stuff to fill the gap and failing but she's making the effort and that's all that counts, for as much or little as we see her, this is a nice little additive to her overall character. As for his mother though, I like that they go all in and make that a running theme, sometimes having full episodes commemorating her.

There are some special guests too. I won't say any more on that though, I'll let it be a surprise if you decide to watch it because the crossover episodes are hands down some of the best I've seen and another reason I started this series.

I got about halfway through the series and I was like "Oh yeah, what about Frida?" She appears in the very first episode and she seems like a main character, then Daisy enters the scene a little later but Frida's kind of been pushed back to the background, used only when the plot finds her convenient, so we don't really get a whole lot of character from her. I guess that's representative to the series as a whole because what I got was a lot different than what I expected from those first few episodes.

In season 3, they change up the intro, it kind of fits the times, the original one sounded kind of 90's, the second one sounds very early 2000s, I suppose it fits the flow. We still get the original theme during Static's bigger moments, but they do that for all the seasons. What's funny to me is that if you read the Wikipedia page, it says they wanted something fast paced with "DMX-type vocals", ha! As if. I will say that some of the OST overall has a few really good tracks, but unfortunately I haven't found a way to find them on their own, separated from the show. I know most of them only last a short time but other DC shows still have the OST released despite being fairly short or only being in a specific episode. That's not the only thing that changes, he has a second design, which I personally have become accustomed to the white shirt over black but it is what it is, his costume was literally just street clothes in Young Justice and I was surprisingly okay with that so whatever suit is fine. The second one is meant to show that he's growing and it definitely seems that way with the sleeker design and more black added but what I really like about it is that he takes the jacket off sometimes and the Static shirt is just a sleeveless black shirt, it just adds more variety in my opinion. Daisy's overall design changed too for whatever reason and Frida's changed a tiny bit, her's is a little harder to notice.

For some reason in the middle of the season, in the episode "Consequences" and "Trouble Squared", he changes back to his old suit (I mean he could have just had the old suit lying around and decided to use it for old times sake) but it seems like that episode was made before S3 started or something else because Daisy has her old design as well. It also shows that he has a FULL white mask, not just the eye mask, like a part that goes over his head, I'm not sure if that's supposed to be where his hood is or what but he takes it out of his backpack separated from his hoodie. It might've been just a miscolor though. He has electric as his power (obviously) but they use it in pretty creative ways, the most outlandish and kind of dumb one though is that they basically have him use Photoshop.

You can also argue that he makes the computer a touch screen.

Now Season 4's first episode is really pretty cool, reminds me of something out of Ben 10 but without spoiling it, there's a part in an earlier season where Static asks where a certain character is and they respond by alluding to a DC reference, however we see that character again in the season 4 opener so the timeline doesn't fit, there are a few other inconsistencies but that's the one I'll mention.

Season 4 also seems to have a return for a lot of different characters almost like a sequel to those episodes. Those are hit or miss, some do well while others don't. It's easily my least favorite of the seasons. It's not bad or anything, it has some really good episodes but the good to bad episode ratio is just more than the other seasons, I must have been spoiled by the consistent number of good episodes.

This may be the realest animated tv series I've ever seen and it's about SUPERHEROES! The way they manage that is unbelievable. I hope we see more of this character, somewhere, anywhere because he’s been given the backseat in pretty much everything, even the comics, he’s been absent from those for quite a while, I feel like now is an excellent time to bring him back, I mean look at the current position we’re in.

The last retrospective I did was American Dragon, there are a few things that I can compare between the two endings but does this one seem definitive? Well in a way, yes, it seems like a very good last episode but doesn’t end everything off in such a way that there wouldn’t be room for one more season. I have a feeling they knew it was the last episode given the way they sort of built it up here and there. The cancellation, however, was caused by the lack of toy sales, not lack of views, however I can’t say I’ve really seen any merchandise from the show.

Seems like there were some dinky Subway toys and a GBA game...

#static shock #dc #retrospective #review

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padfootagain · 5 years ago

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The Suit

Here we go with a new cute little thing!! It is the last one-shot for my celebration, for the next two days, I will be updating two series you have voted for. I do hope I have managed throughout these 5 fics to bring a little bit of fluff and softness into your week. In case I had not succeeded so far, maybe this one will do the trick ;)

I have 0 respect for Canon in many fandoms (okay, all fandoms, to some extent) but especially when it comes to the MCU. Everybody lives, everybody is happy, the Avengers live together and the sky is full of rainbows! So… cute things ahead for Steve Rogers :)

I hope you like this, tell me what you thought about it!

Gif not mine (enjoy the eyelashes… argh, why is he like this?)

Word Count : 3941

When people picture the interior of the Avengers headquarters, they imagine some kind of large hangar filled with training rooms. Advanced weaponry on display in some of these rooms too, target practice, and large spaces where the Avengers can train and learn new fighting moves. Some might also imagine the Avengers' personal quarters, a kitchen, a large living room where all can gather and eat some Chinese food, maybe a room where they all can watch a good movie together too, a large bedroom for each of them and offices too were they can work on the intel sent to them.

And to this entire description, although one would gather a vague image instead of a real glimpse at the inside of the most secret building in the world (or at least one of the most secret buildings, for sure, although we must all admit that many labs in Wakanda are even more wrapped in shadows), this person listing the inside of this fortress would be right. At one major detail… or well, three, actually.

This enlightened person would have forgotten the library, for one, large and composed of an eclectic collection of novels, thesis about nuclear physics and comic books, was right between the movie room as the Avengers called it, and the offices.

Also, there is a miniature hospital in the base of the Avengers. They call it the infirmary, but it contains everything needed to heal any kind of wound they could sustain on the battle-field, and some of the most recent pieces of equipment would make even Dr Strange blush out of envy.

But the most important set of rooms that one would have forgotten are the labs. Scattered throughout the buildings, and yet vital for the heroes. Who makes the suits? The weapons? Who collects the intel? Who improves their defensive accessories? Who analyses the clues the Avengers find throughout their missions?

Obviously, the busy team of researchers and engineers working at the base.

And while you could hear the characteristic detonations of Natasha, Bucky, Sam and Clint training at firing, you were yourself stuck with a very hard problem to solve.

On your desk, what was left of Captain America's suit laid splayed so you could examine the damages the explosion had caused. He was okay, thanks to luck, his super-soldier organism and a little bit of patching up. A week after he was back from his mission, he was apparently completely healed already.

His suit, however, was still just as damaged as it was at its return from the field.

You heaved a sigh, rubbing your tired eyes. If one had told you, back at University, that your PhD in chemistry would be put to use to help a bunch of super-heroes, you would have laughed at their faces. And yet…

You heard a knock on the door of your office, but you didn't need to look up to know it was Peter Parker. You had recognized the knock already.

"Hi, Dr. Y/L/N!" He beams at you as he steps into your office and closes the door behind him.

You rolled your eyes at the teenager.

"How many times do I have to tell you? You can call me Y/N. I’m not that old! Besides, everyone does."

"Captain Rogers doesn’t."

"Yeah, but that’s because he’s old fashioned on a few things."

Peter grinned.

"You know, Natasha has another theory, and it’s a very different one."

"And what could that theory be?"

"Better let her explain it to you," he eluded the question. "What’s that?" he added, nodding at the pile of burnt and torn fabric on your desk that really didn’t look much like a uniform anymore.

"It’s Captain Rogers’s suit. I’m supposed to make an improved one for him."

"Cool! Your suits are always comfortable and efficient. Do you have any ideas yet?"

"None whatsoever."

"I guess he won’t need a new suit before the party. I hope nothing calls for it, at least. So you have a couple of weeks."

"What party?"

"There’s a big party in a couple of weeks. Everyone working here will be invited, I guess Pepper simply hasn’t sent the invitations yet. You’re gonna come, right? That would be awesome!"

"Well… if we’re all invited, then I guess…"

"Nice!"

You exchanged a smile. Something told Peter, and not his Peter tingles, another sense, a sense that was growing sharper and sharper ever since he and MJ were together, that Steve Rogers would be happy to learn that you would attend the party…

"But I doubt that you were coming here to talk about suits and parties, now, were you?"

His smile was back on his face.

"I have a new idea for my web fluid. But I need your expertise. Can you help?"

You let out a chuckle as you stood up and walked towards the door with a pen and your notebook.

"Of course. Come on, tell me all about it."

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

After a few sleepless nights for you and your team, the new suit was finally ready. The tests showed a major improvement in terms of heat responses, you hoped it would protect Captain Rogers efficiently for his next mission.

The advantage of being the head of a scientific team in the Avengers HQ was that you could go to their part of the buildings and give them their new suits, weapons and other gadgets yourself. You had grown quite fond of most of the team along the years too, which made the trip out of your lab particularly enjoyable.

You wandered off from room to room, passing before the fighters training in various methods of combat. You also came across Tony and Peter watching Morgan’s favourite Disney movie with her, and you asked them about the Captain's whereabouts.

"I think he went to the gym with Sam and Bucky," Peter answered, his voice distorted by the handful of popcorn he had shoved in his mouth.

"Because obviously gym is useful to him," Tony added in his usual teasing and yet casual tone over the loud music of Be A Man. "I’ve always thought he was short in muscles."

Meanwhile, Morgan was shouting the lyrics and was now standing on the sofa, mimicking the fighting moves of Mulan.

"BE A MAN!"

"What are you looking for him for, anyway?" Tony went on over the loud singing of his daughter. "You need a coach for the gym?"

You laughed in response.

"No, we’ve finished a new suit for him, so I’m bringing it to him."

"YOU MUST BE SWIFT AS A COURSING RIVER!"

"You guys even do the delivery part for free? Amazon might have reasons to worry."

Peter had now joined the little girl for the rest of the chorus, and he and Morgan were both singing at the top of their lungs.

"WITH ALL THE FORCE OF A GREAT TYPHOON!!"

"Well as I said, he’s at the gym," Tony went on, still focusing on you instead of the two kids by his side. "Lifting heavy things and stuff. He’ll be happy to see you."

"What do you mean?" you asked back with a frown.

"WITH ALL THE STRENGTH OF A RAGING FIRE."

Tony merely chuckled and gave you a knowing look. Although you didn’t know what the knowing in the look was about, you oblivious little thing…

"He’s always happy to see you, Y/N."

"MYSTERIOUS AS THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOOOOOOON!!!"

Tony’s gaze finally drifted back towards the two kids on the sofa, a tender smile soothing his features.

"I think she has a chance to become a superstar," he told you, pointing at Morgan. "That’s pure talent we have here. It’s not the same for the other guy over there of course, but everyone can’t be gifted."

"Hey! I don’t sing that badly!" Peter protested from his end of the couch, making both you and Tony laugh.

You thanked Tony for his help, and he waved at you in response, along with giving you a wink that seemed to carry a silent message, but you failed to understand it. Instead, you continued your journey through the HQ (but not without Morgan giving you some popcorn in support for your noble quest first, of course), and walked to the gym with a light trot and humming the tune of Mulan’s songs.

Indeed, you found Steve right where Tony had told you he would be. At the gym. Sam and Bucky were there too, but the three friends seemed on their way out. Sam and Bucky were talking (or well, bickering was a better word to describe any of their interactions, really) near the door while Steve was picking up his stuff…

… and for some reason he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Or a T-shirt. Or any piece of fabric whatsoever that would cover his torso, the skin glistening slightly with a thin layer of sweat.

No matter how uncomfortable you felt, you couldn’t help but stare.

The three of them turned to you as the door loudly closed behind you, and you all remained motionless for a moment. And for a short moment, time seemed to stop as the four of you each reacted differently to the scene unfolding around you.

You were standing, frozen, in front of the door, your package still safely in your arms as your lips parted without you noticing, and you wondered about the ratio between his biceps and your thighs…

Bucky and Sam were motionless as well, simply because they were trying not to laugh as they watched the silent scene playing between you and Steve.

Steve was still, stopped mid-movement, holding his towel in one hand and a bag in the other. And his mind was currently wondering how it would feel to touch your cheek…

He was the first to shake himself out of his thoughts, and you were rather grateful for it, as you reckoned that you wouldn’t have been able to break free on your own.

“Dr. Y/L/N. What can we do for you?”

You forced your brain to work again and your stare to leave his torso to rest on his intense blue eyes instead. How could he have such long eyelashes?

"Actually, I… hmm… I’m the one who can do something for you. I’ve finished your suit," you added, handing him the suit although you were unable to cross the room to give him the package. You didn’t trust your legs enough, they felt like they were made of soft cotton instead of bones and muscles.

"Oh, thank you," he gave you a bright smile, throwing his towel on his large shoulder and striding to you.

You reckoned that it was rather rare to see a genuine, bright smile on his features. Little smiles, yes. But large ones? Not so much. You guessed that he was very happy to get a new suit. Or perhaps the source for such happiness blooming in him was the person who brought the suit… but you didn't know that, by then.

He took the suit wrapped in kraft paper, his smile still on his lips. You noticed how flushed he was, you guessed it was because of the gym session he had just finished. You couldn’t know that your assumption was only partly true. There was another reason for him to blush up to the tip of his ears. That reason was standing right before him.

"Are you coming tomorrow night? At the big party?" he softly asked.

"Yes, I am. All the lab was invited, and most of us are coming."

"Have you found your plus one yet?" Sam jumped in the conversation.

"Oh, no. I’m coming alone. I mean, it’s not like I need support, I’m going to see my friends there so… no need to pretend."

Sam gave Steve a pointy look. Which his friend ignored.

"Are you bringing someone?" you inquired in a friendly tone.

"Yeah. Yeah, I do. He doesn’t though," he added, nodding towards Steve.

You turned to Steve again. He tightened his grip on the suit, and shrugged, a shy smile on his lips.

"As you said, no need to pretend tomorrow."

You stared at each other for a couple of seconds, that seemed to stretch into minutes. And the more you looked at him, the more you wanted to tell him how you felt, how you hoped to see him the next evening, how wonderful you thought he was and… Gosh, he had gorgeous eyes…

But you couldn't do that.

"Well, I’ll see you all tomorrow then. Have a nice day," you hurried the words out of your mouth so you could stride out of the room before your reason would yield in favour of your heart, and you would spoil everything.

The second the door had closed behind you, Sam was chuckling.

"You know, it ain't that hard to ask her out. You had the perfect opportunity. You just had to ask ‘Y/N, would you like to come with me to the party tomorrow’."

"Sam…" Steve heaved a heavy sigh.

"He’s too romantic for that. He’ll make a move tomorrow night. In the moonlight and all," Bucky mocked, making Steve roll his eyes.

"I hate both of you."

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

The large room was filled with a crowd. Low lights kept an intimate atmosphere throughout the floor. At the top of the Stark Tower, the view on New York City was stunning, an intricated labyrinth of shining lights matching the paler ones hung on the sky. You felt a little tipsy after drinking a couple of tequila shots with Natasha and Wanda. You reckoned that you needed some air, and stepped outside the busy room decorated with perfect taste. The music was still loud coming through the windowpanes as you walked on the large balcony. You hadn't seen Steve yet, but reckoned it was for the best. People had dressed up for the occasion, and you did not plan on dying of a heart attack because of the sight of him in a tuxedo.

The fresh air cleared your thoughts a little and you took a deep intake of breath. You leaned against the bannister, shivering a little as the breeze brushed your naked arms. You took in the view, the sparkling lights shimmering against the darkness of the night, the busy streets and wandering forms drifting back and forth into the maze spreading below your feet.

"Hey! Y/N! Bring your arse back inside, Thor and Nat are trying to see who holds their liquor best!" you heard one of your colleagues call for you, but you shook your head with a chuckle.

"We all know Nat will win."

"I wouldn't be so sure."

You spun on your heels as you recognized Steve's voice. He was standing there, a few steps away from you, his silhouette wrapped in the lights coming out of the busy room giving him a surreal halo, a hand in the pocket of his trousers and a shy smile on his perfectly shaven face. And yes, he was wearing a classic tuxedo. And God, did the man know how to wear a bowtie…

"After all, he is an alien," he went on.

Your colleague had disappeared, you guessed she had judged wiser to leave the two of you alone on the balcony.

How could there be only the two of you out there anyway? Where were people gone to?

"Yes, but she knows too many tricks to lose this kind of bet," you argue.

He let out a chuckle, his eyes flickering to the tip of his black shoes and back up to your gaze, capturing it for good.

"I guess you're right. It's always unwise to underestimate her."

"Exactly."

"Aren't you cold out here?"

"No, I… I needed a little bit of fresh air."

"These parties can be a little too intense," he nodded.

"So can be the tequila."

You both laughed, and fell in a comfortable silence. Steve was too busy staring at you to think of anything else, let alone about words to say.

He hadn't felt that way in what seemed to be an eternity. The nervous tremor through his body, the stumbling of his heart, the freezing of his thoughts… he knew the symptoms and had no doubt about the disease causing them.

Love was an easy thing to spot when it was true, after all.

But if his feelings for you were clear to him, he didn't know about your feelings for him, that was a completely different story. Everyone kept on telling him that you liked him, and he reckoned that he should trust his friends' judgment. The doubt was still there though, a little frozen cube buried in the depth of his heart that burnt through now and then. And it was burning now.

Because as he stared at you, such an accomplished, clever, independent, strong, fierce, graceful woman, he wondered if you could really feel the same way he did.

He had been feeling this way for you for so long though… years, really. And he reckoned now that it was more than time to speak his mind. In the worst case, he would get his heart broken. But in the best case…

"Are you enjoying your evening so far? Would you like something to drink?"

You gave him an amused smile. He seemed nervous…

… maybe your friends were right about him after all.

"I am enjoying my evening so far," you answered. "And no, thank you. I already feel tipsy enough for tonight."

He walked to join you against the bannister, a dreamy smile on both of your faces.

Inside, the music had changed from some energetic pop to a slower and intimate tune. It seemed that time had slowed around the two of you as well, as you stared at each other, your frames lightened by the light inside the tower but also by the stars above and the streets below. Steve's blue eyes reflected the distant lights in an almost impossible way that lit your heart on fire.

There were a thousand things that he wanted to tell you. He wanted to tell you how he thought about you first thing in the morning and last as he closed his eyes to fall asleep. How you made him feel like he belonged in this world that wasn't his. You were amongst the few people who did not see the old soldier in him, but the man behind the shield. You had never made a snarky remark about his lack of knowledge to a reference, and he was grateful for it. You loved sharing the things you loved and that's what drove you when you showed him things he had missed during his time in the ice. It wasn't in a will to change him and make him fit better into a world he had been pushed into, it was in a desire to show him something you were passionate about, simply because you liked talking about it. It wasn't about changing him, it was about sharing. And the majority of people he had met since he had been awakened did not share that state of mind, but the opposite.

He longed to tell you how much he loved hearing you laugh, and thought you had the most adorable smile, and how he admired your smart mind, and how he respected you and your opinion about everyone else's…

There were a million words to be spoken and a thousand thoughts to articulate, but all that passed his lips when he finally mustered the strength to talk was a mere invitation, although it still sounded like a declaration.

"Would you like to dance, Y/N?"

Your heart skipped a beat or two as he called you by your first name, and dear God, did your name sounded wonderful rolling on his tongue. His hand rose as he offered you his open palm, fingers trembling slightly, blue eyes drenched in reflected lights still capturing your gaze and your entire life too. You were vaguely aware of people inside, and maybe some were staring at the two of you, but you couldn't find a way to care, nor even to check if your assumption was correct. Instead, you could not look away from Steve.

There were so many words you meant to speak and thoughts to express and confessions to free from the safety of your heart. How you adored how kind he was, and selfless. How you respected how driven he was and always right to his beliefs. And an infinity of other tiny things that had made you slowly and yet irrevocably fall in love with him.

Instead, you smiled up at him, and spoke only an answer, that still sounded like a promise.

"I would love to."

You thought he would bring you back inside, but he didn't. Instead, he wrapped an arm around you, pulling you closer in a soft gesture. You slipped your hand in his and he gave your fingers a tender squeeze.

You started to sway with the gentle tune, but could barely acknowledge the movements of your feet. You were so close to him, he was so close to you… how could you survive this?

Calloused fingers held yours in a gentle hold, his other hand resting in the small of your back, drawing you closer and closer in an embrace that grew tighter every second and yet of which you knew you could free yourself of if you wanted. It felt safe. Warm. Peaceful. And safe, yes, so safe, so comfortable, you could lay your life in his hands blindly and wouldn't even worry about it. You couldn't remember when was the last time you felt like this, like this man before you could never make anything to hurt you, like not in a million years would he let anything bad happen to you. It felt like a lifetime ago that you trusted a man so thoroughly as you trusted Steve now.

There was warmth spreading from your body to his, reassuring, soothing. A calming glow oozing from your soul conquering his last lines of defence. He couldn't fight against you. He loved you too much for it. All he could do before you was to lay down his arms and offer you his heart on a plate. It was dangerous, and yet he was not afraid. He trusted you too blindly to worry about what you could do with his most precious offering. You would do with it what you pleased. He would accept it all no matter what. It could either bring him back to life or break him for good, but in any case, he would not regret giving you his heart. He knew so much, at least.

He leaned down, your bodies too close to be moved closer to each other by then, resting his jaw against your temple. He remained quiet and so did you, although your two pounding hearts spoke better than your tongues at this moment.

There were no words needing to be spoken, you both knew that this feeling coursing through your bodies now was the feeling of coming home.

Inside the busy crowd, Sam was finishing his third glass of bourbon, while Bucky drank the last drop of his third beer. They exchanged a glance, and Bucky extended his hand. Sam could only chuckle before reaching for his wallet and slipping a twenty dollar bill in Bucky's hand. He had lost his wager, but learnt an important lesson.

One should never underestimate the sense of romance of Captain America, especially if he is wearing that kind of suit.

*****************************************************************

Tag list : @ponycake27 @horsesreign @xinyourdreamsx @jbluevelvet @notkeppeki @daynigt-dreamer-stuff @fudgeflyss @stuckupstucky @snek-shit @suchatinyinfinity @i-padfootblack-things @buckybsarmy @heyohheyitsgabi

@madamrogers

#Steve Rogers #steve rogers x reader #captain america #captain america x reader #steve rogers imagine #steve rogers fanfiction #captain america fanfiction #captain america imagine #mcu #mcu imagine #mcu fanfiction #fanfiction #fanfic #imagine #writing

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steve0discusses · 7 years ago

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Yugioh S1 Ep 40 PART 2/2: Shadi’s Coming Out Of His Well

More plot is happening up in Pegasus’ journaling nook. Since, while Tea went straight for that journal, she missed the three things on this desk that they actually came up here for.

It’s a good thing Yugi remembers the only reason they came to this island in the first place. What follows is a bizarre set of events that just...they just happen.

There is no valid explanation for what the hell Yugi is doing at this desk. If I knew my Grandpa got revived I’d like...be first out of the room, but Yugi is staring blankly at a desk for a good minute and that is how he gets trapped in one of the most bizarre heel turns this show has taken me on so far.

Don’t worry, it’s just a space-time wormhole. Yeah. In Yugioh. The card-game TV show. It does this now.

(read more under the cut)

BOY Yugi has a somewhat more casual reaction to this than most people would have. Especially since Yugi just found himself framed for eyeball larceny. Thanks Bakura, what a good friend.

Yugi very slowly backs away from Shadi, but, despite the fact he’s wearing about 50 less lbs of fabric and Ankh, instead of running away, he just allows this to happen.

I know there’s gotta be a crossover half-finished fanfic somewhere where spiky hair bros blade wield while card wielding, but with the rate Disney is gobbling up properties, it could easily be canonical if you just give it enough time. Goofy could easily wear a Yugi hairpiece, just saying. Super easy.

Ahhh...we’re back in the brain zone. We’re back into the “Oh wow Yugi’s been hiding a lot of problems from us” zone. While this is hella random, this is actually pretty nice from a storytelling perspective, because it’s easy to assume that now that Yugi and Pharaoh get along, that Yugi has found a cure and can go on living life like this forever and be A-OK.

On the surface, everything is tied nicely into a bow: His friends understand and accept him, his Ghost Dad has decided to give him the reigns, Pegasus is conquered, and his Grandpa has woken up in the hospital (and man I can’t imagine the conversation he’s having with Yugi’s Mom right about now) But, finally getting a house tour of this brain place lets us see that while they do get along, Pharaoh wasn’t really the entire problem anyway. There’s still something super weird going on with this kid’s head and no one else knows about it.

This is where the recording gets a little wonky--you’ll see blur, it’s not on my end, that’s just how it is in Netflix. You don’t notice it as the image is moving, but when you pause it’s...it’s pretty noticeable.

Also, it was hard to catch before since Pharaoh was blocking it, but Pharaoh’s wall has veiny rainbow mold. Makes you think “oh gross, a virus--but at least it’s a real pretty one”

Shadi is immediately disturbed but instead of just...turning around, he’s decided to keep on snooping.

Ah, it’s Yugi’s sid of the brain. It’s...

...I know Yugi is super pure and I wouldn’t dare argue with that, but like, Yugi’s in High School, right? Like I’m guessing he hasn’t played with building blocks or whatever that strange bowling pin floaty is in about 10 years?

I figure it’s a representational thing of “this is his childhood” or whatever, but I’d like to think this is more like Pharaoh hastily threw this room together and just hasn’t gotten around to updating it in the past 10 years.

Either way, no one lives here anymore. I mean the floor was mustard yellow, no one can possibly stay here for very long.

So Shadi, very carefully, decides to walk in the other door that couldn’t be less unwelcoming. Like it has a giant eyeball on it and gross throbby veins. Why would you touch this door??

Pharaoh has a very odd hot/cold attitude towards Shadi, kinda vacillating between should I just kill him???? and also wanting to just hang out and talk shop about magic stuff.

Wh...why, Shadi?

Why have you been randomly entering minds, Shadi?

You live in a crypt under the desert, what are you talking about?

Anyway, the best part of this whole exchange is Shadi trying to figure out why all this Pharaoh crap is here when he has literally studied only the Pharaoh and all his stuff for the past who knows how many years that Shadi has been alive.

So my prediction that Yugi’s brain was a Dali Painting was just--the wrong artist. I was off by a couple degrees of abstraction, was all. Turns out its...a little worse than melting clocks...it’s a full on Escher.

Yugi Muto, your mind is an non-Euclidean painting and like one room with this weird green foam bowling pin with glasses. I would say Yugi needs to find balance in his life but he freakin needs to find gravity first, wow.

Well that explains where Yugi wanders off to when Pharaoh’s in charge. He’s just having the time of his life pretending he’s David Bowie and recreating that one scene from Labyrinth word for word.

youtube

I mean, that’s what I would do if I had incurable Labyrinth brain. When life gives you lemons covered in stairs...

Shadi decides he better start looking for evidence quickly, and so he runs up to the first door he sees and of course this happens.

This door and every door--all the doors are traps and Pharaoh’s just like “Are you still here, Shadi???”

Luckily for Shadi, Yugi pulls him out of this position. Not sure how since Yugi is 70 lbs when wet, but when he’s a brain apparition, I guess anything is possible.

Yugi blames Pharaoh’s behavior on the “secrets” that the puzzle is trying to keep secret. Honestly I haven’t really given much thought to whether the puzzle holds more than a ghost so...news to me, show. Nice you brought this up right before the end of the season but OK, let’s go for it.

And then a door just...starts glowing.

Behind the door is something that we are familiar with, but Yugi hasn’t seen before since Yugi didn’t wander into the ritual sacrifice chamber from the other night.

So uh...I haven’t really given it much thought but it just occured to me that if Pharaoh ever played the old version of this card game where people’s soul’s get devoured, then that’s kinda effed up.

I mean in Yugi’s defense we don’t know how big the blocks room is. Maybe he’s got a k’nex room next door? Either way, it definitely feels like the 60-40 Pharaoh-Yugi mix that I suspected is turning into way more of a 99-1 ratio. Really seems like Pharaoh just keeps Yugi around because he likes the kid a lot, not because Yugi has that much control over Pharaoh physically because uh...one has a room of this colossal electrical magic creature and the other has a room of with a scooter car in it and a toy rake.

Most shows you’d expect a doomed asshole like Shadi to dig too deep and never recover. To keep going past the point of no return. I mean, Yugi’s totally willing. Yugi’s like “hey, lets go deep as we can and find all the secrets!”

And then Shadi proves he’s one of the smartest millennium power players there is by just quitting while he’s ahead and getting the hell out of dodge.

PS THERE’S BEEN AN APOCALYPSE THIS WHOLE TIME.

There’s only like 8 episodes left this season what are you talking about, Shadi?

Remember when Bakura first turned evil and told Pharaoh “I’m going to take all the items and destroy the world” and Pharaoh was like “Oh. OK.”

There it is. There’s the name drop.

Literally the last thing he says is his freakin name.

Thanks for absolutely nothing, Shadi. You came down here to sentence the guy who stole the eye, the first thing your family’s had to do to save the planet in I’m guessing thousands of years, and before actually finding him you got Too Spooked and you bounced.

So Bakura roams free, because Shadi assums Yugi stole the eyeball but doesn’t want to bother to do anything about it because Yugi’s mind was too freakin complicated and self destructive.

TL;DR Yugi was SO EMO that it broke Shadi within ten minutes.

I mean, congrats, I guess?

Next week, on Yugioh:

Will anyone else realize that Yugi was gone or is he going to catch up to everyone and just not mention this happened because Yugi doesn’t Talk About Things? Is Mokuba just wandering around the castle being like “WHAT DAY IS IT!?” Is the rest of Pegasus’ staff taking the week off now that their only client is comatose?

Anyway, I brought up Labyrinth so I think it’s law that I have to post this as well, this actual footage of Yugi and Pharaoh on their time off. Yugi is the baby in this scene.

youtube

#yugioh #yugioh recap #photo recap #humor #s1 ep40 #yugi muto #shadi #brain stuff #labryinth brain #I have the sinking feeling none of this will be ever brought up again #mc escher

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thespacequail · 7 years ago

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Darling in the Franxx (ep. 17)

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..........Well then, I didn’t think they’d go there, yet here we are. Im still waiting on that huge revelatory twist, but we are getting close, I can almost taste it.

>Ok so, everything is going great, the kids are doing fine, then the Nines show up to ruin EVERYTHING. They tell them Papa sent them and he’s worried about them, they are all happy to tears and this is a LOAD OF BULL SHIT, you can see it on their smug little grins, bunch’a assholes if you ask me. Anyway they are going to stay with the gang for a bit to, as I said before, ruin everything. 02 tells Alpha to go fuck himself. It was a good scene.

>HIRO IS GROWING HORNS! REPEAT! HIRO IS GROWING BLUE HORNS! HE IS TURNING INTO A KLAXXOSAUR PERSON JUST LIKE 02!!! *ahem* We’ve all kinda assumed this would happen for a while, what with the saurification comments and the high yellow blood cell thing (which still means nothing but a lot of people are interpreting it as meaning the cells that make up bone marrow, as such having a high amount means he would grow bony structures easily, i.e. horns. Fine, I’ll go with it.). The whole scene is really cute and I like what they’ve done with their relationship and how it’s portrayed, the bit about Hiro’s drawing being awful but 02 loves it because he made it was particularly sweet and reminded me of some good times (which was immediately followed up by remembering why those times are no longer good and I was made sad. But that is neither here nor there.).

>Then the plot dictated that the Nines needed something specific to fuck up, so one of them bumps into Kokoro and she drops her baby book. Question: how did she not realize it was gone? She clearly carries it everywhere, why was she not freaking out that she lost it when she went back to her room? Why did she take it to the bathroom anyway? Oh right, the plot, whatever. So the Nines are like “How dare these kids learn about sex. Papa didn’t brainwash people for them to understand how their bodies work.” Jeeze, this is like the worst of both Catholic AND Public school when it comes to sex-ed. But the menacing cut to Kokoro being innocent, I’m just thinking “Oooooh she ‘bout to get shanked for this. This ain’t going to go well...” Then we go to Kokoro and Mitsuru in the greenhouse and...Imma need another arrow for this one.

>Kokoro really wants to get it on with Mitsuru, and I’m not saying that like a joke, like she ACTUALLY wants to fuck him. She leans in close, then closer, says some stuff that only horny teens in hentai would say, and then she starts taking off his shirt. Meanwhile I’m just sitting there like *insert blinking guy gif* “I’m sorry what? Is this really happening right now?” I just didn’t really know how to process it. But Mitsuru kinda panics and pushes her away, and that makes sense cause like, Kokoro is the only person who knows what sex is, and Mitsuru still has a few issues he needs cleared up first. Then Zorome shows up to break the tension, nothing else really to say about it, it plays out about as you’d expect from a show when teens get caught about to do the nasty.

>TWO BROOOS, CHILLIN’ IN THE HOT SPRINGS FIVE FEET APART ‘CAUSE THEY’RE NOT GAY! Hiro and Mitsuru finally have their heart to heart, well I say finally cause its been years for them, only a few episodes for us, feels like years, whatever. They talk about love and stuff and they patch up their issues, everything is good. It is a good scene and was important growth for them.

>Everyone is in the exposition room, I mean the living room, and they address the Kokoro and Mitsuru situation. There we go Futoshi, that’s the emotional response I was expecting from you, kinda figured he wasn’t actually totally over it like he acted beck at the snow base. Time for the Nines to be fuckers. Kokoro reveals she wants to make a baby because that’s how she wants to leave her mark on the world, ok, that’s cool. Turns out sex is banned, and Alpha says humans evolved to not have/need reproductive organs, also that way they don’t need to worry about gender. Man I really want to punch this guy in the face. Ikuno’s got me covered, pimp slapping that hoe, even the Nines respect the backhand with a whistle. I highly respect that the LGBT character is the one to say gender is still important, but man, she would have murdered him right then and there if she didn’t get held back. Personally, I’d have let her.

>Hey look, the adults are back. Kokoro gets reprimanded cause sex is bad m’kay? They don’t like the Nines either, but can’t do shit cause the Nines out rank them. Turns out only kids have reproductive organs in order to pilot the Fraxx, but then they get removed later? It’s not clear, cause after that Nana has a break down cause she’s relapsing through puberty, so does that mean she still has a uterus from when she was a parasite? I feel like there’s some logistical minutia that’s getting glossed over that I don’t think they’ll take the time to explain. But GOD FORBID they don’t give Alpha every conceivable chance to be a douche. He says she should be replaced with a new Nana, the fuck does that mean? Also he chastises them for working with Dr. Franxx, doesn’t he also work for APE? Or is he implying that he does secret experiments that APE doesn’t like? I’m confused., but the Dr. is intrigued by the kids having the urge to fuck, that came out wrong, he’s interested that they have the original biological impulse to reproduce, so I guess that’s what Al-fuck meant by humans evolving past that. Interesting.

>I knew I was right about the Klaxxosaur Princess (it was obvious but shut up, let me have this). A couple of APE guys ask her to surrender, it does not go well for them and they get brutally murdered. Ooooooh she has the same widescreen aspect ratio thing they used to do with 02! Oh I like her. She calls them “human wannabes”, does that mean she’s a real human and APE is something else? I’ll theorize later.

>Back in the exposi-I mean, living room, the kids talk about the fact they have no idea what sex is. 02 doesn’t have reproductive organs apparently, but she thinks it’s cool that the rest of them do and can “leave their mark on the future”. Ok, don’t think that was necessary, but whatever, just add it to the list of character traits I guess.

>Mitsuru goes and makes up with Kokoro, they kiss, I’m thinking “and then they fuck”, AND. THEN. THEY. FUCK. Wow, they actually went through with that, that’s pretty ballsy (heh) for a story like this, but good on them for not leaving that hanging, or worse not showing anything of it. Like I’m actually glad they showed the shot of them in bed together, people have sex, teenagers have sex, it happens, sometimes you just gotta show it, or at least what can be shown on a daytime airing TV show aimed at a young adult audience.

>Finally, we got Ape up in the death star, talking evilly about how evil they are and how the world will soon be their’s (not really but you get the joke). The Nines show up one last time to be dicks before the episode cuts out.

A’ight, Imma pose some theories: +APE are aliens that enslaved part of the human race +The Klaxxosaur Princess is among the last original humans +She preserved what she could of humanity by putting them in the Klaxxo-cores so they could fight back +Dr. Franxx is trying to undermine APE’s efforts and restore the enslaved human species to their original form/abilities/want’s to let people fuck again +The squad is going to get order 66′d in the next episode or two now that Papa knows what’s up. Obviously they wont do it, but it will happen.

One theory I don’t personally believe, but my friend posed and is just crazy enough to be possible, if not really dumb, is that Hiro’s original partner is not actually dead, and will be one of the ones piloting Hringhorni. That’s some hot anime bullshit right there, but Hiro resurrected by the power of boners before, so crazier things have happened.

#darling in the franxx #anime #anime review #spring anime 2018

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megashadowdragon · 3 years ago

Link

www . elitedaily . com/dating/couples-fight-love-more/723139

While we haven’t yet found much evidence to prove this theory, there isn’t much disproving it. We’re not suggesting you go home and pick a fight tonight; we are saying that if you are going to fight, just look at the make-up sex as the consolation prize. Maybe now it won’t be such a big deal who wins.

psychotherapist . org/myths-and-truths-about-happy-couples.html

This article is partially based on extensive laboratory and longitudinal scientific research about couple satisfaction in long term relationships as presented in the book The Marriage Clinic, by John M. Gottman, published by WW Norton & Company in 1999. Please see this book for more resources.

Most of us know by now that the fairy tale happily ever after stories are full of holes. Dashing men on horses don’t usually rescue helpless women and live happily ever after in real life. But most of us don’t know how inaccurate our current popular expectations and beliefs are about what makes “marriage” work are (and by this I mean any long term committed romantic relationship). Mostly we look around at such things as divorce statistics and see that a lot of them don’t work This assessment is also unfair, given that this doesn’t include long term committed relationships outside of marriage, nor does it consider that relationships may last several decades and still be included in divorce statistics. Most importantly, the numbers don’t tell us what allowed some relationships to last and others to break up, and they don’t tell us how much overall satisfaction existed in those relationships that stayed together or broke up.

Many of the following cultural myths perpetuate some of the problems that bring couples to counselling.

MYTHS 1. Arguing = trouble. 2. Distance = trouble. 3. Opposites attract. 4. Flattery will get you nowhere. 5. You have to agree on the BIG issues (like children, sex and money). 6. People divorce because they “grow apart”. 7. Couples divorce because they get older and change physically. 8. The more sex the better. 9. A fat woman will lose her man. 10. Men and women have to be equal in a good marriage. TRUTHS

1. Fighting per se is not necessarily a problem. If there is basic mutual respect, the ability for partners to cool down and soothe each other afterward, and lots of good stuff in the “emotional bank account”, the tendency to fight is more a result of personality style than trouble in the relationship. In his book The Marriage Clinic, John Gottman talks about the “emotional bank account” and the “fondness and admiration system” in which he describes the ability of a couple to draw on “stores” of good feelings that have been deposited there by each partner. It is the ratio of negative interactions and positive interactions -he advises the ratio should be at least 5 (positive) to 1 (negative) -that is more of a predictor of a satisfying relationship than the number of arguments. Some couples like to handle problems directly, and if each of the two people are this way, then they may resolve their problems more quickly and with less bitterness if they approach them head on. 2. Other couples are more avoidant and have a similar level of tolerance for putting off confrontations. It is the compatibility of problem solving style between the two people rather than the style itself that is more predictive of failure. When two people prefer to avoid conflict together they don’t necessarily get into trouble unless this escalates to avoidance of positive regard for one another. If they can accept each other’s differences and remain loving toward one another they may be able to avoid conflict for a long time. It is more a problem if one is a conflict avoider and the other is a conflict confronter. This difference can be worked out (although sometimes help from a therapist is required) if there’s a lot of overall positive regard. 3. Differences may make the courtship stage of a relationship more exciting, but they can make a lasting relationship more difficult. Not all differences are alike, however. The most important differences that can cause trouble are: difference in conflict style (see above), differences in mutual respect for each other’s life dreams (note I did not say the dreams had to be alike, only the amount of respect accorded the other person for his/her dreams), differences in libido (sexual drive), differences in lifestyle (e.g. degree of accumulation vs. simplicity desired), etc. All of these differences can be worked out in a healthy relationship and don’t necessarily signal danger - they just make things harder rather than easier. 4. Some would say the solution to all marital difficulties is honesty - always saying what is on your mind because that is the Truth. But in my practice I have seen this become an excuse for disrespect and contempt, and these are the things that will cause ruptures rather than healing. True, people need to be able to express themselves freely to their partners, but this doesn’t mean there is no room for tact. And what may feel “honest” at one moment, may feel irrelevant at another. Flattery, if that means complimenting your partner frequently, showing your affection regularly in symbolic or romantic ways, and bragging about her or him to others - will get you everywhere. I don’t mean saying things that aren’t ever true, but focussing on the positive and building up credit in that emotional bank account makes a huge difference in how well your relationship will weather rockier times.

10. 10. There are many ways for couples to share power and responsibility that do not necessarily correspond to absolute equality in all areas. What is more important is that each partner have equal influence on the other. Weiss'2 coined the term: “positive sentiment override” (PSO) to describe this ability. He coined the term “negative sentiment override” (NSO) for the opposite. What this means is that when partners feel trusting of one another, they tend to hear each other’s suggestions and complaints non-defensively. There doesn’t have to be agreement on the issue, just willingness to talk about the differences. Statements judged neutral or negative by observers can be interpreted positively by a partner with a couples history of respectful conflict (PSO) just as statements judged neutral or positive by observers can be interpreted as negative by a partner with a couples history disrespectful conflict (NSO) as in the following examples.PSO Example:W: Will you shut up and let me finish?H: Sorry, go ahead.Though the husband may not be very happy about this comment, he still recognises that his wife felt hurt by his interruption and gives her the benefit of the doubt..NSO Example:W: Will you shut up and let me finish? H: To hell with you, I’m not getting a chance to finish either. You’re such a bitch, you remind me of your mother. Here the husband assumes negative intent and feels he must defend himself.

The Criticism Defense Cycle

Power can be used to destroy or create, to belittle others and

over-inflate the self, or to belittle the self and over-inflate others. We may call the use of power to harm or belittle the self passive power, and to harm or belittle others aggressive power.

Assertiveness,in contrast, can be seen as the use of power to enhance and respect both self and other. Learning assertiveness, then, can be a way for people to

reclaim their rights to power and effectiveness in the world without doing so at the expense of others. But to learn to be assertive, we must work on

our feelings of self worth.

To get our needs met we must act on a sense of self worth and value and give voice to our own needs, and give equal validity to the needs of others.When we respect ourselves it is easier to respect others. It then becomes possible to express our feelings without causing harm by making others feel worthless. In a relationship, putting another person down will cause them to react in ways which keep a negative cycle going. Contempt and criticism from one partner will likely stimulate defensiveness and stonewalling from the other- which then starts the cycle over. Here is an example of an assertive approach to problem solving –>

www . nathancobb . com/communication . html

Communication problems are very common among couples seeking help for their relationship. Frequent arguments, fear of touching off a fight, heated exchanges, and avoidance of issues are all common complaints among couples I work with.

Communication problems can be confusing and discouraging but there is a way out of the fog. There are positive adjustments that couples can make in how they respond to each other that can make a big difference to their relationship.

THE BALANCE THEORY OF MARRIAGE According to research by Dr. John Gottman, one of the foremost experts on what makes marriage work, happy and healthy couples demonstrate an optimal ratio of 5:1 positive to negative behaviors in their relationship.

In other words, when happy couples communicate, there are five times as many positive interactions between them (i.e. listening, validating the other person, using soft words, expressing appreciation, affirmation, physical affection, compliments, etc.) as there are negative (i.e. raising one’s voice, stating a complaint, or expressing one’s anger).

By contrast, among couples on the path toward divorce, this ratio is just under one to one. For every negative interaction there is less than one positive interaction.

One way to improve the quality of your communication is to increase the amount of positive behaviors in your relationship and to decrease the amount of negatives.

Reflect for a minute on what ratio characterizes your conflicts. Is there respect? Is there kindness? Do you genuinely listen to each other? Do you soften your tone with each other? Are your intentions helpful and positive?

DIVORCE PREDICTORS Over the past twenty-plus years Dr. Gottman has conducted an exhaustive and thorough study of married couples, seeking to understand what distinguishes couples who divorce from couples who create strong and vibrant relationships. Much of Gottman’s earlier work, summarized in his first book What Makes Marriage Succeed or Fail?, highlighted the relationship between marital stability and how couples handle conflict with each other.

His more recent work, summarized in his book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work integrates his later findings about the importance of friendship and fondness as the primary factors that predict the health of a marriage. In other words, how spouses are with each other when they are not fighting is a telling measure of how they are with each other when they do fight and of the long-term viability of their relationship.

For purposes of our discussion about conflict and communication, however, let me outline some of Dr. Gottman’s predictors of divorce that have to do with how couples communicate with each other about difficult issues.

Harsh Start-Up Imagine starting off a discussion with your spouse about an issue that upsets you. If you are feeling frustrated and resentful your first uttered words might be harsh, sarcastic or critical. For example, “The trouble with you is …,” or “Why do you always have to be so selfish?” or “My problem with you is that you never ….” Notice the accusing and hostile tone of these words. Imagine the body language associated with the tone. This is what is called a harsh startup, meaning how you “started” discussing the issue was severe, sharp or accusing.

According to Gottman, ninety-six percent of the time a harsh startup predicts how the argument will end—negatively and without resolution. Once an argument starts off in a negative direction, it very rarely “rights” itself. Harsh start-ups are strongly associated with divorce and relationship break-up.

The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse These are four hostile forms of communication that put couples at high risk for divorce when these patterns take up permanent residence in the relationship.

Criticism is defined as blaming, faultfinding, or using global and negative labels to attack your partner’s character. For example, “How would you know? You’re never home,” or “My problem with you is ….” A harsh startup often comes in the form of criticism.

Contempt is a lack of respect for your partner’s dignity, an attitude of looking down on your partner as unworthy. Forms of contempt include name-calling, put-downs, sarcasm, cynicism, swearing at each other, rolling of the eyes, mockery or hostile humor. Contempt is demeaning and conveys not just disapproval of your partner’s behavior, but disgust with who your partner is. While the other three horsemen show up in small amounts in most marriages, contempt is only found in toxic relationships. This horseman also includes belligerance, which is an aggressive and angry provocation or threat.

Defensiveness is a way of turning back a perceived attack. Someone who is defensive denies their partner’s statements, refuses to admit their role in problems, avoids responsibility for how they impact their partner, or deflects their partner’s complaints back onto the other person. Defensiveness is destructive because it escalates tension and creates an adversarial interaction.

Stonewalling usually occurs as a result of escalating criticism, contempt and defensiveness as emotional overload becomes intense. Spouses who stonewall stubbornly refuse to give any verbal or nonverbal feedback that they are listening or attending to what their partner is saying. Often they just get up and leave the room. It’s like talking to a stone wall. Stonewalling is best seen as a containment strategy that spouses use to avoid further escalation of the conflict. The problem is that the stonewaller does not just avoid the fight, but avoids his spouse and the relationship as well. According to John Gottman’s research, 85% of stonewallers are men. Flooding Normally, when you encounter a stressful and threatening situation, your body reacts in a way that helps you to deal with the danger. Your body temporarily shuts down non-essential systems, channels blood flow to your large muscles, creates extra fuel for energy, heightens your sensitivity to signs of danger and releases hormones that help you deal with stress.

Normally, this “fight-or-flight” response works well when we have to fight off an attacker, escape from a burning house, or perform a miraculous feat of strength. The problem is that it also impairs our ability to process information and to think clearly before we speak—exactly the abilities we need to have in order to work through difficult areas of disagreement with our spouse.

John Gottman has a vivid word for this physiological “fight-or-flight” reaction. He calls it “flooding.” Flooding occurs when you and your spouse get into hostile arguments where the Four Horseman (criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling) are allowed free reign in your relationship.

Physical signs of flooding include rapid heart rate (above 100BPM), high blood pressure, sweating, and the overwhelming urge to leave or to say something hurtful. When we become flooded, we operate mainly from a self-preservation mindset. We seek mainly to protect ourselves from the turmoil of an escalating argument, either by becoming aggressive (verbally or physically) or by trying to get away.

In distressed marriages, we commonly find habitual harsh startups by the wife combined with frequent flooding and subsequent stonewalling by the husband. This common pattern leads to a vicious communication cycle where one partner repeatedly complains, nags, criticizes and blames her spouse, while the other person repeatedly avoids, withdraws, stonewalls, or dismisses his partner. The withdrawn spouse might initially respond by counterattacking or by being defensive but eventually he switches to withdrawal in order to avoid being overwhelmed.

It becomes a cycle because the more the husband withdraws and avoids his wife, the more frustrated and resentful she becomes. Eventually the resentment comes out as criticism and blame, which leaves her husband feeling unappreciated and overwhelmed, and so he avoids her more, so her resentment continues to build, and on it goes. Sometimes the pattern is reversed and it is the wife who withdraws and the husband who pursues.

This vicious cycle is maintained by each spouse’s reaction to the other person, and by their respective fear-based focus on self-preservation. It is important to note that their reactions, on a core level, are really attempted solutions to difficult situations; but each person’s “solution” fuels the flames instead of extinguishing them.

Failed Repair Attempts Repair attempts are efforts to de-escalate conflict and avoid flooding. Repair attempts are words, phrases, or responses intended to soften the conflict, to get things back on track, to start over, or to acknowledge or recognize the other person’s view. For example, “I’m sorry,” or “I see your point,” or “Please don’t raise your voice with me,” or “Maybe we can compromise,” or “That’s not what I meant.”

According to Gottman’s research, couples in distressed marriages actually make more repair attempts than do happy couples. The problem is that these repair attempts repeatedly fail.

Distressed couples are often so ruled by negative intentions and the desire to protect themselves or to hurt the other person, that they either ignore or do not recognize each other’s repair attempts. In happy marriages, spouses make fewer repair attempts, but that is because the ones they do make are received. They work.

When couples stop responding to each other’s attempts to de-escalate the conflict, when they use the Four Horseman on a habitual basis, when they become frequently flooded, until one or both partners withdraw without resolution of the conflict, then the marriage will become a source of pain and torment rather than comfort and support. Where repair attempts are repeatedly failing, and the Four Horseman are habitually present, Gottman found that over 90% of couples will eventually divorce.

What determines whether repair attempts will succeed or fail? The strength of the marital friendship and how positively each partner feels about the other. This is why it is so important to focus on building friendship, positive sentiment and goodwill toward each other. Friendship, goodwill and fondness become the foundation for effectively using communication and conflict resolution skills.

RESOLVING YOUR CONFLICTS If you have been married for some time and you recognize some of these signs in your own relationship, don’t be discouraged. As long as you are willing to make conscious efforts and you are committed to your relationship these negative patterns can be reversed.

If you are fairly new as a couple, start now to build mutual respect and goodwill into your relationship and learn how to protect your relationship from these corrosive behaviors ever taking hold in the first place.

Time and space don’t permit a full discussion about how to turn things around, but let me offer a brief summary of principles that can stop or help prevent these negative communication behaviors from consuming your relationship. Some of these principles are inspired by Gottman’s work mixed in with my own clinical experience.

When you raise an issue, approach your spouse softly, respectfully. Let your choice of words be guided by an attitude of friendship and respect. Remember that this is your life partner. Think about the things you love and respect about this person. If you habitually treated a friend of yours in a mean-spirited or aggressive way how long would that person stay your friend?

Let your partner influence you. Learn to open space for your spouse’s ideas, feelings and perspectives to arise as real and valid. Try to be responsive to your partner’s requests. Adopt the policy of never saying “no”, outright, to your partner’s needs. If you can’t accomodate a request, then negotiate alternatives or other options.

Act with positive intentions to create understanding, to show respect, and to find win-win solutions, instead of acting on your immediate, negative intentions and fears. Use your positive intentions to make and receive repair attempts.

Learn how to self-soothe and soothe your partner through appropriate time-outs and self-reflection. Sometimes this is a necessary step in order to re-align your intentions with positive goals and to calm down enough to think about what the real issues are for you.

Pinpoint the real issues that fuel the conflict. These are underlying needs, dreams and goals and sometimes the fears related to your needs, dreams and goals. Don’t get sidetracked by arguing about details such as what your spouse said three months ago. If you are not sure what your spouse’s underlying issue is, ask. Be curious. Not recognizing these underlying issues will often keep couples stuck in gridlock.

Learn the art of compromise. Adopt a mindset that each of you have dreams and interests that need to be honored. You can find creative win-win solutions if you stop allowing your fear to be your dominant motivator. I know what some people might be thinking: “I’m not afraid. I’m just mad.” But if you really stop and think about it, fear is usually at the root of what keeps people from moving out of their polarized positions—fear of losing face, fear of losing self, fear of beng used, fear of getting hurt, etc.

Learn to accept your differences and not be threatened by them. A good deal of your conflicts may arise because of how you view your differences. Conflicts rooted in personality and life experiences are not likely to go away anytime soon. It is best to learn to accept each other and focus on positives and strengths than to be pre-occupied over annoying habits or dissimilar interests.

Make requests instead of demands. Requests are respectful and open the floor for discussion. Demands will usually just intensify a power struggle.

Begin to recognize the vicious cycle that you both co-create and take ownership of your part in that cycle. Change the cycle by interrupting it, that is, by not giving your usual response, or by stepping back and doing something different. Often this is the very opposite of what you feel like doing in the moment.

www . brainpickings . org/2015/02/18/hannah-fry-the-mathematics-of-love/

Every relationship will have conflict, but most psychologists now agree that the way couples argue can differ substantially, and can work as a useful predictor of longer-term happiness within a couple.

In relationships where both partners consider themselves as happy, bad behavior is dismissed as unusual: “He’s under a lot of stress at the moment,” or “No wonder she’s grumpy, she hasn’t had a lot of sleep lately.” Couples in this enviable state will have a deep-seated positive view of their partner, which is only reinforced by any positive behavior: “These flowers are lovely. He’s always so nice to me,” or “She’s just such a nice person, no wonder she did that.”

In negative relationships, however, the situation is reversed. Bad behavior is considered the norm: “He’s always like that,” or “Yet again. She’s just showing how selfish she is.” Instead, it’s the positive behavior that is considered unusual: “He’s only showing off because he got a pay raise at work. It won’t last,” or “Typical. She’s doing this because she wants something.

She cites the work of psychologist John Gottman, who studies why marriages succeed or fail. He spent decades observing how couples interact, coding and measuring everything from their skin conductivity to their facial expressions, and eventually developed the Specific Affect Coding System — a method of scoring how positive or negative the exchanges are. But it wasn’t until Gottman met mathematician James Murray and integrated his mathematical models into the system that he began to crack the code of why these toxic negativity spirals develop. (Curiously, these equations have also been used to understand what happens between two countries during war — a fact on which Fry remarks that “an arguing couple spiraling into negativity and teetering on the brink of divorce is actually mathematically equivalent to the beginning of a nuclear war.”)

Fry presents the elegant formulae the researchers developed for explaining these patterns of human behavior. (Although the symbols stand for “wife” and “husband,” Fry notes that Murray’s models don’t factor in any stereotypes and are thus equally applicable to relationships across all orientations and gender identities.)

She breaks down the equations:

The left-hand side of the equation is simply how positive or negative the wife will be in the next thing that she says. Her reaction will depend on her mood in general (w), her mood when she’s with her husband (rwWt), and, crucially, the influence that her husband’s actions will have on her (IHM). The Ht in parentheses at the end of the equation is mathematical shorthand for saying that this influence depends on what the husband has just done.

The equations for the husband follow the same pattern: h, rHHt, and IHM are his mood when he’s on his own, his mood when he’s with his wife, and the influence his wife has on his next reaction, respectively.

The researchers then plotted the effects the two partners have on each other — empirical evidence for Leo Buscaglia’s timelessly beautiful notion that love is a “dynamic interaction”:

In this version of the graph, the dotted line indicates that the husband is having a positive impact on his wife. If it dips below zero, the wife is more likely to be negative in her next turn in the conversation.

What all of this translates into is actually strikingly similar to Lewis Carroll’s advice on resolving conflict in correspondence. “If your friend makes a severe remark, either leave it unnoticed, or make your reply distinctly less severe,” Carroll counseled, adding “and if he makes a friendly remark, tending towards ‘making up’ the little difference that has arisen between you, let your reply be distinctly more friendly.” Carroll was a man of great psychological prescience in many ways, and this particular insight is paralleled by Gottman and Murray’s findings, which Fry summarizes elegantly:

Imagine that the husband does something that is a little bit positive: He could agree with her last point, or inject a little humor into their conversation. This action will have a small positive impact on the wife and make her more likely to respond with something positive, too… [But] if the husband is a little bit negative — like interrupting her while she is speaking — he will have a fixed and negative impact on his partner. It’s worth noting that the magnitude of this negative influence is bigger than the equivalent positive jump if he’s just a tiny bit positive. Gottman and his team deliberately built in this asymmetry after observing it in couples in their study.

And here is the crucial finding — T- is the point known as a negativity threshold, at which the husband’s negative effect becomes so great that it renders the wife unwilling to diffuse the situation with positivity and she instead responds with more negativity. This is how the negativity spirals are set off. But the most revelatory part is what this suggests about the myth of compromise.

As Fry points out, it makes sense to suppose that the best strategy is to aim for a high negativity threshold — “a relationship where you give your partner room to be themselves and only bring up an issue if it becomes a really big deal.” And yet the researchers found the opposite was true:

The most successful relationships are the ones with a really low negativity threshold. In those relationships, couples allow each other to complain, and work together to constantly repair the tiny issues between them. In such a case, couples don’t bottle up their feelings, and little things don’t end up being blown completely out of proportion.

She adds the important caveat that a healthy relationship isn’t merely one in which both partners are comfortable complaining but also one in which the language of those complaints doesn’t cast the complainer as a victim of the other person’s behavior.

In the remainder of The Mathematics of Love, Fry goes on to explore everything from the falsehoods behind the standard ideals of beauty to the science of why continually risking rejection is a sounder strategy for success in love (as in life) than waiting for a guaranteed outcome before trying, illustrating how math’s power to abstract reality invites greater understanding of our most concrete human complexities and our deepest yearnings.

web . archive . org/web/20100201033412/http://www.angriesout.com/couples6.htm

THE BEST WAY TO FIGHT: The Research on Anger and Relationships

John Gottman is the foremost researcher in the world on marriages and relationships. He puts add in the classified pages asking couples to come in and fight about anything they choose so he can study patterns of anger. He wires the partners to many scientific instruments to get body feedback and videotapes the arguments. He analyzes the tapes frame by frame and studies how relationships succeed and fail. He follows up on the couples to see who remain in relationship years later. Out of his study of many couples, happy and otherwise, he has discovered the necessary principles for making relationships work. Learning to resolve issues is necessary for the relationship to be happy.

All relationships have problems. It is usually the woman who is most dissatisfied. The woman who is usually the more submissive partner brings Eighty percent of complaints up first. The dominant partner does what he wants, but there is a cost to the relationship. The woman ends up unhappy. In these days, women are leaving relationships more often than men. It is usually after years of resentment after trying to have her needs met and failing.

The most successful relationships have partners who are willing to hear and deal with the complaints. This means that the man must be willing to be influenced by the woman. The willingness to be influenced by each other and take complains seriously is a skill necessary for a happy relationship. Men who are willing to share the power with their wives get to have a happier relationship. Men who are typically less able to express themselves and withdraw from fights result in having a partner who holds on to anger. The woman seeks closure around an issue and remains angry when the problem is not solved.

Anger, per se does not destroy a relationship. It is how people DO their anger that creates problems in couples. Happy families know how to settle disputes without leaving scars. Gottman’s research found the four behaviors that destroy a relationship/marriage are:

CRITICISM–blaming, finding fault, nit picking over small things

CONTEMPT –disgust, name-calling, cursing, and being hateful. Disgust over time builds up into the decision to separate

DEFENSIVENESS –not taking responsibility for own stuff, turning the blame back on your partner

STONEWALLING –refusing to deal with the issue, minimal zing the problem, inability to deal with conflict, walking away angry

Gottman can detect these four behaviors within the first 3 minutes of a conversation! He can predict with 96% accuracy, which marriages will succeed and which will fail from these first three minutes of the fight!

Anger is not the reason that couples break up. It is how each partner copes with threat and the types of anger responses they have learned! Gottman’s research offers proof that one of the best investments you can make in your life to preserve your relationship is to learn about anger management and conflict negotiation.

Flooding of Stress Related Hormones Often Side Track Problem Solving During Arguments

The level and intensity of anger that accompanies the sharing of the complaint predicts whether the issues will be addressed positively or not. Flooding of the hormones is the reason people cannot resolve conflict easily. The flooding causes hormonal and emotional arousal and is more typical in men. A huge amount of adrenalin is produced to give energy for the ‘fight or flight’ coping strategies of the cave men days. Gottman’s research shows that when pulse rate of one member of a couple that is fighting goes up 15 or 20 percent, they are flooded with adrenalin and other stress related hormones.

When the person becomes flooded, their fight or flight hormones are in charge and they lose it! Common sense goes out the window. They say and do stupid things in the heat of the adrenalin surge. Staying and arguing during flooding can be damaging to the relationship because people say and do things they do not mean to hurt the other person. They may have regrets later about what they said, or they may forget their hasty words. However, their partner becomes hurt and resentful and does not forget the mean words that were thrown at them in the heat of the moment.

Gottman believes that that during a fight if one or both partners increase their pulse rate from a normal pulse rate of 74 to 85 to 90, they are flooded. The flooding indicates they are feeling threatened or ‘in the presence of a feared object’ and their body acts just like the cave man did when faced with a saber toothed tiger. Once the arousal system becomes flooded (ready to fight or flee) there is no possibility of resolving the disagreement.

Constructive Quarrelling

Gottman recommends that couples agree ahead of time to take a break when emotions get so high and nasty comments get out of control with high anger. Each person has the responsibility to call for a time out (make the referee sign as seen during football TV) when either one of them starts to feel the heat and start to go for the jugular vein. Time out away from the angry feelings is a powerful and useful strategy to help you be in control, not your hormonal high,

If things get hot during a fight, both partners should go away and do deep breathing, self-soothing, and stress management to cool off. They must agree to return to finish the discussion when they are more in control of their emotions. For some people, this is a short period of twenty minutes. For others, it may be several days before their mind works the issue through so they can be reasonable about the topic. People are different in how they react when they are threatened. Some need more time than others. The important thing is to remember to come back to discuss the issue.

Gottman’s research points out the importance of using a ‘soft’ as opposed to a ‘harsh’ start up when sharing a complaint in a marriage or relationship is a strong predictor of marital/relationship failure. Be ready to use a gentle introduction to talking about the issue. Let go of nit picking criticism whenever you can. Save your efforts for the big things that contribute to the unhealthy parts of the relationship.

Practice damage control by giving five positive communications to one negative communication. Healthy relationships have a ratio of 5 positive communications to 1 negative communication. Happy couples learn to do ‘positive sentiment override’ where they agree to practice damage control after an argument. They ‘repair’ efforts during a heated exchange over an issue to take the heat down.

Learn to define the problem as belonging to both of you‹not just your partner who should shape up. ‘Our issue is who should clean the house.’ ‘You never do your share of the work.’ sets the stage for defensiveness.

Stay in the present and do not bring in old examples of the times you were hurt by your partner’s behavior.

Really listen to what your partner says so that you can repeat it back to him. ‘What I heard you way was____’ Keep eye contact with your partner when you can. Keep your voice low and steady.

Stay focused on the issue to be solved. Do not go to personality digs. ‘The issue is how we ____.’

Validate what your partner says. ‘I can understand that because a similar thing happened to me once.

Ask for compromises. Brainstorm as many ideas as the two of you can to think of other options.

State with what you have agreed on at each step of the way. ‘Okay, we have agreed on the first point. Now the next item is____.’

Congratulate yourself when you do settle something. ‘Hey, that’s great. We got that out of the way.’

Read my article Fair Fighting on the web pages.

Choose Your Fights Wisely

Some fights are simply not resolvable, but are silly because each person tries to get the upper hand. This is a power struggle just for the sake of having a power struggle. One couple I knew had bitter fights over whose mother was the meanest! Some arguments can never be resolved because they are based on value differences between the couple that are so personal that they are not seen objectively.

Gottman says that two thirds of all arguments in a relationship never get solved! Only one third of all marital arguments are solvable on the average. No wonder we have so many problems when we are in relationship. So be willing to distinguish solvable from unsolvable problems. Make two lists of your problems: What can be negotiated and what cannot? What is most important to you; what can you let go? Unsolvable problems require different strategies for dealing with in relationships than solvable ones.

Invest In the Love Account of Your Relationship

Understand what your partner or spouse’ needs to feel loved. Express your appreciation, respect and admiration for your partner whenever you can. Build up a positive ‘emotional bank account’ with your partner by showing respect, listening, caring and being understanding, patience, forgiveness. Give your partner the attention, hugs, smiles and positive attention that he or she wants, not what feels good to you.

Continual courting each other is a key to continuing a happy marriage. Couples who were positive and affirming of each other achieve success in relationships. They do not take each other for granted and share sparks of intimacy during the day. They fight boredom in the relationship by doing small things that surprise and please their partner. They talk to each other and keep the dialogue going even when they are angry. They get professional help when things start to get rocky. They work to keep the intimacy flowing between them. For more information on John Gottmans’ research, read my other article on the web site summarizing his latest book, The Relationship Cure: A Five Step Guide for Building Better Connections with Family, Friends and Lovers.

Developing Maturity in Love

Aware, mature love is the opposite of addiction. Authentic self-love is the precursor to loving another person in a healthy way according to Erich Fromm, a noted writer on love. Learning to appreciate and own your lovableness is the hallmark of maturity. Aware love equally values both the self and the other person and is based on friendship and caring. It is a mutual recognition of each partner’s right to grow and expand. It nourishes both partners and everyone who is around it.

Education and counseling are the answers to the goal of becoming your authentic self. Read books on codependency. I like Alice Miller’s book, The Drama of the Gifted Child, which explains how you gave up your sense of self as a child, usually to please a selfish parent.

To bring real changes into your life, you must think, feel and do something different! Recent research reveals that writing about problems is an inexpensive effective way of sorting out your problems. It is not enough just to read about how to change. Keep a journal of how you feel about what happens to you and how you deal with it. As the poet, Anne Sarton said, we can choose to write ourselves back in to sanity–to write ourselves sane! Sarton struggled with anger most of her life and wrote about it to express some of the pain in her life.

Examine those early childhood experiences that brought about the loss of your innocence resulting in the decision to become co-dependent. Examine those illusions you use to fuel the flames of unhealthy or unrequited love. Writing out the answers to these soul-wrenching questions will jar something loose in you. The feelings must be experienced and seen in new ways. Challenge your self and examine your definitions of unwholesome loving and dysfunctional behavior. This is your opportunity to help you discover your values and how to live them.

Gottman, John and DeClaire, Joan. The Relationship Cure: A 5 Step Guide for Building Better Communications for Family, Friends and Lovers

Gottman, John and Schwartz-Gottman, Julie. Why Marriages Succeed and Fail

Hendrix, Harville. Getting the Love you Want: A Guide for Couples.

Hendrix, Harville, Keeping the Love you Get: A Guide for Singles

#shipping #relationships #makorra

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easyfoodnetwork · 5 years ago

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What Will Become of the Cruise Ship Smorgasbord?

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Cruise companies have been fighting contagious viruses for years, which loyal cruisers say makes eating aboard as appetizing as ever

In those early days of the novel coronavirus, as we all watched its terrifying spread from its point of origin, cruise ships dominated the headlines.

Reports of big numbers of cases on board were bandied first as a precautionary tale, then simply a precursory one. In the eyes of the wider public, the Diamond Princess, the site of one of the first major outbreaks outside of China, with 712 infections, 14 dead, and thousands quarantined for weeks, demonstrated not just the highly contagious nature of COVID-19, but a failure on the part of the industry — one often maligned as a source of disease outbreaks in general.

For many loyal customers and people within the industry, though, the illness’s strong sea legs represent bad timing and unfortunate coincidence — a function of nearly 4,000 people, more than a quarter of them staff, packed into a ship less than 1,000 feet long — more than a failure of procedures. The virus caught cruise ships, hit hard and early, off guard and before epidemiologists and public health experts fully understood its nature and characteristics.

It’s no wonder, then, that the industry’s shockingly fast return to the stage leaves much of the American public wondering who in their right mind would go on a cruise right now — or, more precisely, in August, when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “no sail” order on large cruise ships expires.

The answer, logically, is people who go on cruises: For those who already prefer their vacations shipboard, confidence in the industry barely wavered. An April survey by the Independent found that two-thirds of readers wouldn’t consider a cruise; that ratio was inverted for readers who had previously been on one. An industry survey in the U.K. similarly found that 75 percent of previous cruise customers would book again — down by only 4 percent from the previous year. And as of April, the LA Times reported that cruise ship bookings actually increased since the same time last year.

None of these surveys asked if or how cruisers still planned to eat aboard, if they’d still feel confident hitting the signature mile-long buffets or communal table-stacked dining halls — or if the presence or absence of these traditional setups would change their choice at all.

With its tightly packed lines, utensils used and reused, and massive numbers of strangers breathing directly over each other’s food, the classic cruise ship buffet and 1,000-person main dining room fall smack into the intersection of large gatherings and restaurants — two things that the novel coronavirus has turned into the stuff of horror movies.

As of April, the LA Times reported that cruise ship bookings actually increased since the same time last year.

But cruise companies come into the ring more prepared than many industries. “A lot of this is things we do every day,” says Wes Cort, the vice president of food and beverage operations for Norwegian Cruise Lines. “We have an advantage here because this is not a stretch for us.” Due to size and strict tracking requirements, ships have long held reputations for spreading norovirus — so companies have fought both the floating-petri-dish image and actual contagious diseases for years.

“I feel like they have a bad rap,” says Kathy Casey, a chef and owner of a food and beverage consultancy who has worked extensively on and with ships, and a cruiser herself. But in her 20 years of experience in the industry, she trusts the sanitation and safety situation completely. “I always joke with my team that I would lick the floor if you asked me to.”

Few people who watched a Japanese video simulating viral spread at a cruise ship buffet would do the same. The buffet seems like the first thing that ships should toss overboard, but so far few of the major cruise lines have released details of their new safety protocols for returning to service. “We’re doing all of this work now,” says Susan Lomax, the associate vice president of public relations at Celebrity Cruises, saying they were working with “a group of leading epidemiologists” to dive into what best practices will be.

The hesitation by companies to put out concrete policies plays out like a game of chicken, with those who speak first risking getting picked apart by the media, customers, and the public. “Cruise lines are talked about quite a bit now,” says Cort. “I watch CNBC, they talk about us every day.” Royal Caribbean ended up backtracking on their CEO’s comment that the famous Windjammer buffet won’t return: While most of the comments on Royal Caribbean’s blogpost on the topic support the company’s efforts — anything to get back on the board — a few voice hope that the changes are temporary. “Otherwise I may have to forgo cruising,” one cruiser posted.

“Buffets will exist in some sort of form,” says Chris Gray Faust, the managing editor of Cruise Critic, confidently, noting that their readers are “very passionate” about them. “But it won’t be this sort of free-for-all where you’re getting your own food.” The evolving nature of what we know about the virus keeps things unstable, as Gray Faust has heard from cruise line CEOs. “The thought is that every week they’re learning more about the disease, and so specific changes can’t be announced yet until they actually know what needs to be done.”

The first of the big lines, Norwegian, put out its new safety plan, called “Peace of Mind,” on June 1. Its plan includes a buffet, but not one that’s self-serve — food items will be dished out by staff. Though he acknowledges this may mean meals might take a little longer, with sanitation, distancing, and serving, Cort says they plan to adjust staffing to expedite the process. But he also knows what people care most about: “We’re not planning on adjusting our menus right now.”

Cort compares changing guests’ minds about self-serve to moving the opinion needle on plastic straws: When they explain it, it makes sense, and guests get it. But he’s adamant the change is minimal, and overall, the goal is “to provide exactly what [guests] have enjoyed in the past — albeit with masks on.” That contrasts with the headline on The Points Guy’s piece about boats returning. “Believe it or not, cruising is back — and it’s weirder than we expected.”

But the drastic headline belies the reality of the outlined safety procedures by Norwegian and smaller ships — which can return sooner than those over the CDC order’s 250-person limit. Many of the changes already exist on ships, points out Casey. “There’s handwashing stations right there at buffets,” along with sanitation stations outside dining rooms, and enthusiastic enforcement of personal use of them by crew members — like Norwegian’s “Washy Washy” song and this “Let It Go” parody by Royal Caribbean employees.

But unlike norovirus, which mostly spreads by particles, the coronavirus significantly spreads through respiratory droplets that travel through the air, meaning even the cleanest of hands can’t contain its movement between people. “On most ships, dining rooms are usually full,” says Sheri Doyle, the owner of Pacific Northwest Journeys, an independent affiliate of Travel Experts and a Virtuoso travel advisor. “People sit cheek to jowl, back to back; you can barely squeeze between tables.” She expects — and hopes for her own cruising and that of her clients — to see more spread out dining hours, and thus more social distancing. Gray Faust says on a lot of the larger ships, a trend away from communal tables was already underway. “The idea of eating with strangers has kind of been decreasing in popularity anyway,” leading ships to move toward smaller tables. “I think this will just accelerate that trend.”

Most notably, the “served buffet” style is already more common than most people realize, she explains. “Passengers weren’t actually reaching out and getting the food themselves” on many upscale lines, nor on larger lines like Holland America during other virus outbreaks. Cort says that normally when they switch to the served buffet, there’s pushback from guests. “I think people are going to be fully understanding,” he says of the current situation. And while the self-serve buffet has some avid fans who will be disappointed if it disappears, Casey notes that staff tune in closely to what people want, asking how much, aiming to please, and keeping the biggest draw on offer: a little bit of everything.

“People love a wide variety,” she says. “They like to cruise because you don’t have to make a lot of decisions,” and that includes on what to eat — the buffet means they don’t have to. As ships moved away from the mega-dining rooms, that variety also morphed — toward more small specialty restaurants, where, conveniently for the current situation, numbers can be controlled more easily through reservations. Cruisers want Indian food and French food; they want fancy meals and barbecue. They want the chance to eat food from Thomas Keller on Seabourn, Curtis Stone on Princess, and Edouardo Jordan on Holland America. These days, says Gray Faust, “some people never go to the buffet, never go to the main dining room.”

While the details about what cruise ship dining will look like in the coming months and years remain unknown, the major lines all emphasize the same thing: that they look to science and regulatory entities like the CDC and WHO for guidance. In addition, Cort points out that Norwegian already has a full division of the company dedicated to health and safety and has brought on Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and an experienced public health and medical policy expert, as an advisor.

“I would lick the floor if you asked me to.”

As a cruise customer herself, Doyle hopes to see a vaccine or at least rapid tests administered to everyone at boarding before she gets back on, but she also wants to know more about one aspect that few CEOs seem to be addressing. “All the focus is on the guest, and not on worker safety,” she says, stating that recent webinars and industry events have largely ignored the health and safety of the staff — one of the more egregious oversights during the Diamond Princess crisis — not to mention how staff health can affect guests.

“It’s been really upsetting to me,” says Doyle. Three-quarters of the infected crew members on the Diamond Princess were food-service workers, but for his part, Cort says with the pre-screening, quarantining, and testing, his staff will be safe, and that they are already pretty well distanced at their stations. “Food safety inside the kitchen is paramount. I’m not sure if there’s anything we can do more there, really.”

The biggest changes floated so far come in overall reduction in numbers to promote distancing — how many people in a dining room, how many people on a boat. But Gray Faust discourages people from making the logical leap to considering this a sign of impending price hikes for a vacation format long seen as an affordable alternative to high-end resorts. In a recent call with Royal Caribbean’s parent company, she learned that newer ships sailing with just 30 percent load factor (of capacity) break even, and that even older ones — which tend to be less expensive — only need 50 percent to hit that mark.

On top of that, many ships gave customers of canceled cruises credits worth more than their original payment, meaning that plenty of customers have vacation money ready to spend. Doyle’s customers, both those with credits in hand and without, are mostly looking at next year, rather than the immediate reopening.

They assume there will either be a vaccine, “or that things will be better in some ways,” she reports. But with lines requiring lower deposits and offering lenient cancellation policies, the minimal financial risk is tempting.

For her, reassurances about all safety measures — for guests and workers — are top priority in bringing her back. “Overall, it won’t be fundamentally different,” she says of eating on cruise ships. “But new health and safety things might become normal, like how we wear masks in public.”

Which really forms the crux of the evolution of cruise ships and their dining rooms: It mirrors the changes we’re seeing in restaurants on dry land. “We’re all grappling with life as we know it changing,” says Gray Faust.

Really, cruisers considering whether to return to onboard dining rooms are no different from landlocked diners assessing the safety of returning to one of their favorite restaurants. But everybody’s own equation of risk versus reward depends on personal preferences. So while a certain kind of traveler — those for whom boutique hotels and Michelin restaurants are the norm — are unlikely to reassess their judgement of cruises, devoted passengers are trusting in cruise companies to help them find old joys under new circumstances.

Naomi Tomky is a Seattle-based food and travel writer.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/3hBv1HA https://ift.tt/2AMZwty

Shutterstock

Cruise companies have been fighting contagious viruses for years, which loyal cruisers say makes eating aboard as appetizing as ever

In those early days of the novel coronavirus, as we all watched its terrifying spread from its point of origin, cruise ships dominated the headlines.

As of April, the LA Times reported that cruise ship bookings actually increased since the same time last year.

“I would lick the floor if you asked me to.”

Naomi Tomky is a Seattle-based food and travel writer.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/3hBv1HA via Blogger https://ift.tt/3dkajZC

#Blogger #cooking #Eater #food #recipes

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cinema-tv-etc · 7 years ago

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33 Secrets You Probably Never Knew About The Making Of Galaxy Quest Gordon Jackson Mar 21, 2016,

Galaxy Quest could have been a forgettable Star Trek spoof — but instead, it's become a beloved science fiction comedy, which has been voted one of the best Star Trek movies of all time. How did this miracle happen? Here's everything you ever wanted to know about the making of Galaxy Quest.

For this article, we drew on a number of sources, including DVD featurettes and old magazines from the time of the movie's release — but one source in particular was absolutely indispensible. MTV's Jordan Hoffman put together the Oral History of Galaxy Quest a couple years ago, and it's essential reading.

1. Harold Ramis was originally asked to direct the film under the title "Captain Sunshine".

Ramis wanted Kevin Kline, Steve Martin or Adam Baldwin to star, but when Disney insisted on Tim Allen, he dropped out of the project.

2. Sigourney Weaver wasn't by any means the first choice to play Tawny/Gwen — because she had already done too much science fiction.

As she told Starburst Magazine in 2000:

"I'd heard about this and I had asked my agent about it," she recalls. "He'd told me that they didn't want anyone from Science Fiction in the movie — only Science Fiction virgins as it were. "I said, 'That's silly because if anyone can spoof Science Fiction, surely it's me!' Then to my surprise I was offered the part. I had always wanted to work with Tim Allen, I was a big fan, and Alan Rickman was somebody I really admired and I fell in love with the script.

"It was really about something more than just the people in it. It was that great sort of Wizard of Oz story of these people feeling so incomplete in the beginning, and then during the course of this adventure they come out almost like the heroes they pretended to be in the first place. "

3. Tim Allen believed Galaxy Quest would launch his second career as a science fiction actor.

He told Starlog Magazine in 2000:

"I love it. It's my favourite thing. Galaxy Quest was a baby step for me. I like other scripts that are a bit more serious, but I'm doing this first. It's really funny right up front, then gets more serious. There's enough SF that they allowed me to do it. While it's not quite you expect from me. Technically, it isn't what I would want, which would be a Larry Niven sort of thing. It isn't right on, but it's a Saturday afternoon, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine kind of dramatic science fiction"

4. The alien Laliari was cast late in the process

According to casting director Debra Zane in an interview with Backstage:

"The filmmakers had a difficult time finding a woman who could 'be Thermian in the same way as actors Enrico Colantoni, Rainn Wilson, and Jed Rees. Missi Pyle remembers that Zane showed her the first minute of Rees' audition, to give her a sense of the tone the filmmakers were looking for. "Missi saw it and got it immediately," says Zane. "And then we came into the audition room, and we taped her, and she was so great that when I sent the audition tape to Dean Parisot, the director, on her picture and résumé, I put a little Post-it…. I actually made a Xeroxed copy of my Casting Society of America membership card, and I said, 'If this is not Laliari, I will resign from the CSA.'"

Stephen Spielberg liked Laliari so much he asked that her role be expanded to include a romantic subplot with Tony Shaloub.

33 Secrets You Probably Never Knew About the Making of Galaxy Quest 5. Tony Shaloub auditioned for Guy Fleegman, but was offered Fred Kwan.

According to MTV, he told them:

"I'm not going to play an Asian guy, but I'll play a guy that plays an Asian. How about that?"

Director Dean Parisot expounds on this:

"Tony brought up David Carradine in "Kung Fu" [another example of a non-Asian actor playing an Asian character] and the story goes — I don't know if it's true — that David Carradine was completely stoned all of the time on that show. Dialogue would just come out of his head and people would just stare at each other and think, "Where did that come from?" We knew we couldn't do a stoner because we needed to hit a PG-13, but we basically suggested that."

6. Sam Rockwell nearly dropped out of the project but was convinced by Kevin Spacey to stay onboard.

In a twist of fate, Tim Allen opted to make Galaxy Quest over Bicentennial Man.

7. The "Pig Lizard" was a full body puppet.

See above! Eyeholes for the actor inside were located inside the creature's mouth, on its soft palette. 8. Sigourney's "F" bomb during the "chompers" scene in the hallway had to be dubbed over in order to secure a PG-13 rating.

She still clearly mouths, "Fuck that!", if you look closely. 9. Alan Rickman provided input into the prosthetic that Dr. Lazarus wears.

It was designed by artists at the Stan Winston studio. As he told Starburst Magazine in 2000: "I thought it was important for it to be good enough to convince the aliens who believe we're the real thing, but also cheesy enough to imagine that it was something he applied himself." 10. Rickman also felt it would ring hollow if his character had been knighted, and asked for a few script revisions.

In the credits, Dr. Lazarus is still credited as "Sir Alex Dane." 33 Secrets You Probably Never Knew About the Making of Galaxy Quest 11. On set, Alan Rickman found Tim Allen incredibly off-putting:

"Tim Allen used to kick the door open to the make-up trailer. We would be all lined up and he would say. 'Number one is here!'"

12. Tim Allen hectored Sigourney Weaver the entire production to sign his highly coveted piece of the Nostromo from Alien.

She finally did, writing: "Stolen by Tim Allen; Love, Sigourney Weaver". According to Weaver:

"He was so upset. "Why would you write that?! I was going to put it in my screening room!" Which was such a Hollywood thing to say."

While filming, the entire cast attended a 20th Anniversary screening of Alien. 13. Dean Perisot was driven to create a passable episode of Star Trek:

"At the risk of sounding pretentious, there are a whole lot of themes playing in there. The movie needed to begin as a mockery and end as a celebration. That's a hard thing to do. Part of the mission for me was to make a great "Star Trek" episode."

14. According to Tim Allen, his performance was based on Yul Brynner:

"When I was in that Captain's chair I was not mimicking William Shatner, with whom I'm now friends [with] because of this movie. I liked the way Yul Brynner sat in his throne in "The Ten Commandments." I worked off of that. I studied that. Well, I rented the tape."

15. Screenwriter Robert Gordon didn't intend to write a family film:

"There's talk about the so-called R-rated version of the film. When I originally wrote it, I wasn't thinking about a family film, just what I wanted to see. So when the ship lands in the convention hall in the original draft it decapitates a bunch of people. There was also stuff we shot where Sigourney tries to seduce some of the aliens. It was cut — and that's why her shirt is ripped at the end."

Also, Alan Rickman's famous catch-phrase "By Grabthar's Hammer" was a temp line. But it was ultimately kept in when Robert Gordon couldn't think of anything better, Gordon told MTV. 16. Production designer Linda DeScenna was delighted to work on a film so different from the sci-fi aesthetics of the late 1990s.

· As she told Starlog:

One of the reasons I wanted to do Galaxy Quest was because it didn't have to be real, hi-tech and vacuformed: it could be, you know, kind of tacky. We were going to use blue and violet, but we ended up with the same colour of grey, just three different values. When I start a movie, aside from the things you would normally focus on, like how to lay out a set to accommodate the action, etc., etc., is colour. If you look at Mouse Hunt, which I designed, every single prop, every single piece of wardrobe, everything is keyed to three colours. In this movie, we have Sarris' world, where everything is green. So when Sarris' men are aboard the ship, they stand out, because everybody else is in grey and they're green. So when we go into the real world on this movie, everything stays with the steel blues and the greens. My thing is colour: That's what I get most excited about.

17. The film's aspect ratio switches from 1.85:1 to 2.35:1 when the ship lands on Thermia.

18. The "chompers" scene was not inspired by an old science-fiction series

Instead, it came from the whirring blades of 1997's Event Horizon.

19. The alien warlord Sarris was reportedly named after film critic Andrew Sarris.

Mr. Sarris had vocally disliked producer Mark Johnson's previous film, The Natural. Hearing of this, Sarris responded that the movie "probably won't make enough money for me to sue for $US10 ($13) million."

20. Sarris's eye patch is a nod to General Chang from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

21. Guy Fleegman was named after Guy Vardaman.

Vardaman had played several no-name characters in Star Trek: The Next Generation. He also served as the occasional stand-in for Brent Spiner and Wil Wheaton. After seeing the finished film, Guy Vardaman "just about fell out of the chair". 22. Roger Dean's album cover for Yessongs influenced the design of the Thermian station:

23. The Robot on stage with Guy at the beginning of the movie was recycled from 1992's Toys: 24. The sound for the Protector's automatic doors was taken from the video game Ultimate Doom.

This is according to IMDB, anyway.

25. It's a myth that the Rock Monster is thought to be an homage to the "twenty rock men" that William Shatner wanted for the finale of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier , but were cut due to budgetary reasons.

Screenwriter Robert Gordon denies this commonly cited myth: "The rock monster is not really a reference to [the cut scenes of the rock monsters in the William Shatner-directed "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier."] I've read about it since. But, yeah, I would say the Gorn [the famous lizard creature Shatner fights on a desert planet while the crew watches from the ship] was very much on my mind. Plus the transporter malfunction and taking the ship out of dock, winking at "Star Trek: The Motion Picture." In fact, the early drafts were called "Galaxy Quest: The Motion Picture." There are some other direct sci fi things in there. "Westworld," with Yul Brenner, is one of my favourites. When Quellek [Patrick Breen] says, "I'm shot," that's a direct reference to James Brolin in "Westworld." The little blue babies are a nod "Barbarella," cute and then mean. When Jason triggers the Omega 13, I was inspired by the end of "Beneath the Planet of the Apes." And the few clips you see of the original show, what Dean did was so great, he really made the camera moves and the recycled sets look like old, cheap "Star Trek." I wish you could see more of it in the film."

26. Creature designer Jordu Schell shared his concept art for the "cute-but-deadly" aliens on his now-defunct website.

They are very different from the final form of the creatures, and can be seen here. 27. Liliari is mentioned by name in John Updike's novel, Rabbit Remembered.

Because Updike was apparently a fan of the movie. 28. To promote the film, E! aired a mockumentary on the cultural impact of the Galaxy Quest TV series

The whole thing is here:

29. An intentionally crappy-looking fansite was used to promote the film.

And to maintain the pretense that there had been a Galaxy Quest TV series. The site contained reviews of the Five Best Episodes of Galaxy Quest, as decided by its Webmaster, the fictitious "Travis Latke":

30. In a 2000 issue of Starlog, Sigourney Weaver compared Sarris and the Thermians to the Kosovo War:

'This guy Sarris is so bad," Weaver exclaims."He really is a sadist; [he's committing] genocide against these creatures. What he's doing to these people is just what we read in the news, with the invasion of Kosovo. Get rid of them, wipe them out, for no other reason than they're there and he feels like it."

31. Costume Designer Albert Wolsky posted artwork for another alien character apparently cut from the film

"This alien has claw-like hands and a face with some human features." Concept art can be seen at the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences website.

32. The Rock Monster scenes were filmed at Utah's Goblin Valley State Park.

The area's eroded sandstone dunes, called "stone babies" provided the inspiration for the planet's cute-but-killer native aliens. It's a popular camping area and visitors are known to play laser tag amongst the rocks on full moons.

33. Star Trek may have returned the favour by borrowing from Galaxy Quest.

At least, some fans feel Star Trek: Enterprise plagiarized the look of film's Fatu-Krey when they introduced a new alien race, the Xindi-Reptilians. The Xindi-Reptilians are green, and retain the spider-like appendages radiating from theirheads.

Sources: Starlog, MTV, Starburst Magazine, DVD featurettes, and other sources as linked

https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/03/33-secrets-you-probably-never-knew-about-the-making-of-galaxy-quest/

"Pig Lizard" Suit Movement Test #2 - Stan Winston Studio Behind the Scenes

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#superlist #Galaxy Quest

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kiefercat · 7 years ago

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30 Day Trans-Challenge except not really bc my memory is too bad for that so you get it all now Little intro and context for new followers and also for me when I look back at this; I'm a 22 year old trans guy from Canada. I've been out since I was 16 and have been on T for 5 years in October. My top surgery is scheduled for 2019 with Dr McLean in Mississauga, Ontario. 1) When did you realize the term transgender referred to you? In grade 10 one of my best friends started transitioning to male. It was my first exposure to anything trans and everything just fell into place after that. I talked to my partner at the time about it a lot and how my identity suddenly started making sense. After around half a year i started going by male pronouns with my friends and I came out publicly a year later. 2) How did you choose your name, and what names were you thinking about using and why? Contrary to popular belief I didn't choose Cooper because of my high school obsession with Alice Cooper. I ripped it off of a cartoon character that had no discernible gender to me. I was also debating going by Kiefer but after some research found out it connects to Cooper like Bob to Robert and just rolled with it. At some point before transition I asked mom what she would have named me if I was born a boy and she said fucking Wayney (dad's name is Wayne) and yeah no I did not want that name at all 3) Have you ever been outed? Quite often. Surprisingly from the people closest to me. My mom and stepdad out me all the time and my best friend/ex gf used to do it a lot too. She stopped thankfully but my mom keeps insisting on making me a discussion topic 4) How did your family take it when you came out/ if you are not out why aren't you? I came out in stages to my family. Mom was first. I fucked up though and forgot I had a stepbrother and basically walked up to her one day and said “you only have a son” and then ran out of the room? She thought I was running away????? Woops. She was kind of ignorant about some stuff for a while but changed a lot of her views pretty quick. She wasn't initially going to let me medically transition before I was 18 but turned around over time and I started t at 17. Stepdad was awkward but supportive. I didn't come out to my dad. My mom had to for me a year after I'd been out to everyone else. I was terrified of rejection bc yay abandonment issues but it went over well! Right after I came out my dad started dating my step mom and she really helped things bc she wasn't afraid to ask the questions that he was too weird about to do himself. She actually administered my tshots for me for a while. Fast forward to last year and suddenly family I hadn't seen for 9 years wanted to get back in contact with me and mom. I was expecting my grandparents and uncle to be really weird about it but they've always been chill. They used to call me a dyke and tell mom she was a failure bc I wore boy clothes when I was a kid so obviously I was worried. 5) Are you active in the trans community or LGBT community? Not nearly as much as I'd like to be. My local active trans community is 80% 40-60 year old trans ladies. Like I love them to bits and I appreciate them sharing their experiences as older queer people but I feel very out of place there. I've been invited to a gay dude cafe meet a few times but am too nervous to go. That being said, my entire friend circle is trans sans a few sprinkled cis people. So I guess we're all just an informal support group lmao 6) Who was the first person you told about being trans? My first partner. She was super queer (was identifying as a bi male at the time we dated) and very understanding and supported me through a lot of the mental gymnastics of realizing I was a dude. 7) Who do you look up to? My friends, honestly. Like I don't know what else to say here lmao 8) How do you deal with being misgendered in the beginning of transitioning by people? Told them politely to only use he/him with me. If they were malicious about it I would try to explain how ignorant that was and if they still didn't get the hint I'd ignore them. 9) What is something positive about being trans? I don't have to hide awkward boners. 10) What are some of your fears in regards to being trans? I'm super afraid of top surgery ending in a result im unhappy with. Like I don't care about the pectoral scarring at all, but I'm worried about proportional problems or dog earring. Basically anything that would require a revision. I'm also super insecure about not having a bio dick. It limits me a lot sexually even with strap ons. No harnesses stay where they need to on me to get anything good happening and my dick always slowly drifts downward. Its frustrating. 11) How do you manage dysphoria? Hahahaahhaa ice cream And usually taking nudes. 12) What are you doing to stay healthy for transitioning mentally and physically? I'm working out every day now. Nothing too intense, but it feels nice. I want to drop about 30-40 pounds before top surgery so am slowly amping up the workouts. Mentally I'm a disaster and am frantically looking for a psychiatrist but can't find any open that have experience with a trans patient. 13) Bathrooms I haven't used a women's bathroom since before I was in testosterone. I'm not anxious about them at all unless there's a lot of drunk dudes or the locks on the stalls don't work. 14) What are some of your passing tips or things you do to pass? Confidence. Fake it till you make it. Being a walking masc alt stereotype got me through high school. 15) How have you embraced your trans identity? Tbh coming out and living life as trans is one of the few times I've been able to do one very important thing consistently: do something for myself no matter what people think. Its something that I've been trying to spread into other aspects of my life. If anything, my trans identity embraced me. 16) What's your rock anthem and why? I think this is the only answer that hasn't changed since last time I did this. I Am, I'm Me from Twisted Sister. 17) What's your binding choice and why? I use a GC2B binder. They're comfy, last long, don't roll, don't have prominent seams, and don't smell funky like my old underworks ones. If I swim publicly or want to slim out my hips for special occasions I wear a full length underworks swim binder. Fun fact: I didn't bind for a year and half bc I gained a fuckwad of weight and my tits passed as moobs. 18) How do you feel about the trans laws where you live? They're getting better. I live in Ontario, Canada so am pretty protected all around. I wish the technical side of transition (name, gender marker) was more streamlined. 19) If you're religious how do your views effect being trans? if you're not religious what about your family religions? I'm in no way religious. My mom had to jump through a bunch of hoops in her head to legitimize my transition through her religion/spirituality. Its a little disturbing to me for details I will not share publicly. 20) Do you want to be a parent? why or why not? I hate children. Keep them away from me. 21) Your views on the cis-gendered community? ??¿¿ they exist. I believe education about trans people and other queer identities should be taught in schools to help cis society not be as blissfully ignorant. I don't believe all cis people hate trans people, but they do have a lot of misconceptions about the community. 22) Do you feel being trans holds you back from your career choice? Fuck no. Honestly I haven't felt nervous about transition affecting my work since my first job. I was just coming out when I worked the museum and was scared they might kick me from the position. Nowadays, I do not disclose my trans status to potential employers until they're hiring me. I thankfully live in a place and time where I'm protected as a trans person in the workplace by the law so haven't felt held back at all. 23) What stereotypes are put on trans people? Undercuts Tbh The stereotypes that stick out to me are the fucking weight ones. Where the fuck are my chunky trans men and ladies at? As a trans guy I am pressured a lot by the representation in the community to aspire to be a buff/cut beefcake or stick thin. Hell, a few of my already very small trans girl friends think they're not as valid bc their bust/waist/hip ratio doesn't make them look like a model. There's literally nothing wrong with being any weight but I find the pressure to be small is even higher within the trans and queer community to fit the stereotype/preconception that we have to be conventionally beautiful to be valid in our identity. 24) Who is your favorite LGBT actor/musician/director/artist etc and why? Uhhhhhhh Tbh I don't even know 25) Doctor visits? I hate them. They make everything about my trans status even if I'm there for something completely unrelated. There is FREE training on trans care for doctors in our part of the province but none seem to opt for it and instead decide its appropriate to ask me transition questions when I'm there for something as unrelated as an impacted nail. 26) Do you feel comfortable answering questions about being trans if say your teacher/friend/stranger asked you? If I'm not paying for their time, if I'm not busy doing something else, and if they are polite, yes. I don't mind answering questions at all! But there's a time and a place and some people just don't understand that. 27) What goals do you have? Lose weight and tone up a bit in time for top surgery. Be aggressively body positive. Continually try to normalize trans bodies. Find a local community to be a part of. 28) What is something you have to do everyday or else you feel like your whole day is off if you don't do it? Shower. If I go out or if people outside of friend circle are near me I have to have my packer and binder. If I'm alone I need music or something on at all times. 29) Write out something positive about yourself using the letters of your name. Ex. Your name is Bob so B-Beautiful O-Outstanding B-Boy Um. I don't have a good name for this uhhh C-Creative O-Open hearted O-Okay P-Phenomenon E-Eager R-Rad I had to Google positive words to do that lmao 30) Write a haiku about being trans I hate writing these Please just cut off my titties Throw them in the fire

#ftm #transgender #trans #transition #afab #30daytranschallenge

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