#like I cannot stress enough how much I cannot do a career of any kind in this

[musical-chick-13]

Not me going, "Well, maybe I could be A Performer again if I could have no visible identity and filter everything through an anonymous costumed persona a la Sleep Token."

[mellowwillowy]

Yan! Lawyer Husband x GN Spouse Reader HCs

CW: mafia related stuffs

—𝒀𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒐𝒃𝒆𝒓 - 𝑳𝑰𝒇𝑬 𝑷𝒓𝒐𝒋𝒆𝒄𝒕 𝑬𝒗𝒆𝒏𝒕

Yan! Husband is a gentle soul to you, he can't and will never lay a finger with the meaning to hurt you! He just doesn't have the strength to do so, almost as though he was set to be so. It's another whole story when it comes to the others though, can you guess how many times he has pulled the trigger of a gun?

Yan! Husband who spoils you rotten with everything you could ever think of. Luxuries, reputations but never the forbodden knowledge he has tried so hard to keep away from you. No, he won't clip your wings. You are his songbird who gets to only fly inside the gilded cage but never in the outside world. He will create a stage of the outside world for you, but never the real deal.

Yan! Husband who paints a portrait of you whenever he's stressed over the cases he has to handle. To move the brush without any problem as your form starts to appear on the blank canvas, he has no trouble remembering you. Sculpting is no problem for him as well. He has spent all his lives honing his artistic skill just to eternalize you as pieces of art.

Yan! Husband loves you so much that he deems children as a burden and bothersome (adoptive too). He only needs you to build a family, he had no need for children to continue this lineage. His whole life revolves around you. If you pass away, he too, will pass away shortly after. That's how much he loves you to the point that death cannot separate you two.

Yan! Husband who might not look like he's able to do it but he is actually an S-rank gaslighter. He will trick you into believing that what he is suggesting is only to keep you safe! He doesn't really enjoy taking your autonomy directly unless it's needed (of course, in a way where you will not confront him about it).

Yan! Husband who will cover and remove all your bad track records (if you have any). He has the power and connection to erase any kind of dirt that is on you, you are his pristine pure lily-of-the-valley and you should not be defiled with those records. Live without any worry clouded in your mind dear, the laws will never tarnish your reputation when you have this lawyer backing you ^^

Yan! Husband who adores any sort of physical touch when it comes to you, yes, anything. Even if you hit him silly, he'd still love every moment your skin feels his. He loves hugging you the most, his face buried into the crook of your neck while taking a scent of you.

Yan! Husband who enjoys humming lullaby of yours to the point everyone's ears around him is bleeding from the repeating lullaby. Can this guy please hum something else for once?

Yan! Husband who will read for you whenever he has the time to sleep with you. He doesn't know what to say to you as his work is either foreign to your brain or a tad too shady. Childhood memories are not great too as he has long forgotten about everything the moment he pledges eternal vow to love you. He abandoned everything and lives only for you.

Yan! Husband who prioritizes you as his number one, even above his own well-being and career. He can still live even if he falls ill, his career would never fall out of track as he has the mafia under his grasp, but you can slip out of his grasp. And he doesn't want that to happen again.

Yan! Husband is without a doubt an infamous lawyer. Especially with how many times he has let the ringleader of that renowned mafia group slip out from the prosecutor and judge's grip? If you seriously think you'll be pronounced guilty of that murder, you better throw that thought out just like how he throws all the scapegoats and falsified evidence into the court. (Should I write a fic for this?)

Yan! Husband who will always make time for the two of you. While vacations are not as often as he wishes he could have, cuddles and tea parties sound nice enough for him to kill time with you.

Yan! Husband who has this cute journal that's filled with what you have been doing every day instead of his own daily stuff. Oh, your diary is almost his if you know how he reads it daily like a refreshment.

Yan! Husband who as much as he hates having to show you to the people at the official parties and events he has to attend, he just can't shake away the butterflies in his stomach as well! You are not just some trophy spouse, you are his beloved! A hand on your waist and a face that is seen whispering sweet nothings into your ear with a glass in his other hand. Oh, he looks so o-godly-handsome like a man who comes out from a romance novel!

Yan! Husband who is a man of greed, the embodiment of Mammon. Wealth is not something that he has never not possessed. So whatever the fuck you do, gambling or blowing it off somewhere in a dumb investment or stock, he won't make a fuss out of it. Instead, he'll teach you more about money management instead :/

"Do you want to learn how to invest? I know a way or two from my predecessor."

He will let you play all the money game you want and gives you the illusion of success despite all the trials and errors you made (he's the one who clean up all the mess lol)

I know that this is AFAB! oriented BUT Yan! Husband never wishes to impregnate you even once. No, he doesn't like the idea of you being in pain over a damn baby(ies) that could just take your life as well. He does enjoy fucking you without any protection on but that is after he tracks your safe day (man is literally fighting the fate of having you pregnant). He prefers you to not consume any birth control for just in case it causes harm rather than good to you. (Shots are a pass if you are scared of syringes)

He is A-OK with adopting if you are persistent enough about this matter and is B-OK if you want to get pregnant (AFAB). He just can't refuse and upset you...

So please don't imagine what would happen if darling dies during delivery :)

Yan! Husband who will always open his pocketwatch and kiss the picture of you in his pocket watch. How many times and lives had passed just for him to enjoy the solace of being your husband?

𝐀 𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐛𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐝𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐬, 𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐫.

Yulian de Alpheus is a man of ambition. While he does share the same look as his 'father', the ambition he has is the complete opposite of Castiel. Castiel created him to seek the truth of life, Adam existed to be the Genesis of Life, Alan existed to be someone he didn't recognize and Yulian existed to live beneath the shadow of his spouse.

𝐘𝐮𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐚 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐲𝐞𝐭 𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐚𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮. 𝐋𝐨𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐢𝐬 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐬𝐚𝐥𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧.

Taglist: @vinivave @destructa1 @szde8-blog @luminous011 @ush0 @annbourbon @randomnl @cassanderasblog @maam-appreciator @lem-hhn @fanatic-fan @flesh-eating-ladybug

(send ask/message to be removed from taglist)

[gilbirda]

My (subjective) thoughts on how to survive corporate hell while being younger than 30

I'm 27 and I've been working in corporate office job since I was 23 and I have some advice for any youngster out there feeling unsure if they can even make it in office corporate jobs while being younger than 40.

Don't reveal info about yourself. Craft a superficial version of yourself you can share with peers. Pick a hobby or two and repeat the same speech about what you do for fun. Points if you do something people would remember - everyone says sports and/or traveling. Say something original, but safe.

Your company is not your family. You don't owe them a minute more or less than what says in your contract. You are not less if you refuse to work unpaid extra hours. If they demand that of you, get that in writing and take that shit straight to HR.

Know your rights. If you have paid time off, you are entitled to those days off. I'm european so I have a lot of them, and my company is ALWAYS asking me if "I'm sure I can leave my team down for so long". Bitch I can take the days off whenever I want, is my right. The fact that I'm not taking them in the busiest times is a courtesy.

Be careful with what you say. Everyone will be nice, but not everyone is your friend. Some people would sell you for a potato chip, and finding out who would is vital for your survival. (Hint: if someone spills tea about other people to you, they will spill YOUR tea to other people).

Offices are just like high school. Rumors can and will spread like wildfire.

Another "high school" office cliché: cliques. Yes. Same dynamics will form and identifying them will make things easier. My favorite clique to observe is the people that are shooting for the stars and are always around the Biggest Boss licking their shoes. They will also be the first to speak about how a company project improves their personal life because their personal life and work life is one and the same and they ADORE the company.

Being young can play to your advantage. You are fresh and new, and most of the corporate toxic behaviors won't apply to you by default - but Watch Out, they will also underestimate you and dismiss your opinions. Is a constant battle and a delicate dance.

You Will Be Adopted. That's fact. Be quick to learn who exactly is trying to put you under their wing, and if you are comfortable with that dynamic. It mostly depends on what kind of career you want to make in the company - want to climb higher? Stick with the boot lickers (they will introduce you to Important People); want to be up to date with all the gossip? Attach yourself to the Nice Lady Everyone Tell Their Secrets To. Etc.

I cannot stress this enough: Don't say names. On top of everything else in this list, don't say a single name unless you are absolutely sure you are in a safe space. Names have power, and if you complain about someone and say their name, that will have consequences. Maybe that person will learn you are talking shit, or maybe you will unknowingly make a political stance depending on who you are complaining about, maybe you are implying someone is bad at their job.

Don't assume that young people are your friend. This is a tough one I had to learn, but at the end of the day we are all surviving. Other young people will understand you and stick with you, but if an opportunity opens they will take it without saying goodbye. Or they have other priorities and career expectations and just... not be your friend after all. Not because you are also younger than 30 it means you are besties.

You will be bombarded with boomers and gen Xers talking about "the old days" and "how before things were better". That if you "just worked hard enough the company repays you" and such. Ignore them. Corporate job is not what it was, this isn't the old days anymore. Getting in is not as easy and it used to be, the salary doesn't last as much as it used to be and the productivity demanded is higher than ever. Ignore them. Most of them have been pushing buttons for 30 years and wouldn't understand the hellscape the world is becoming in the last 20 years.

You have to accept the reality that none of your 45+ years old coworkers are as qualified as you. The requirements for regular entry level corporate jobs now are insane, and "back in the day" you just had to show up and have a nice smile. Yes, it sucks. Yes, higher ups are the least qualified. Crazy.

Learn how to talk corporate. Learn how to say no, how to set down boundaries, how to politely ask for help. Normal people talk will instantly work against you because you are young. Talk like them and they'll listen.

This got away from me but eh.

Disclaimer this is just based on my experience and my culture - I live in Spain, Europe. I tried to keep this general, but I understand there's a bunch of social dances and understandings that are unique to my culture and may not apply to other people.

I am also autistic and I understand that it affects how I experience social contracts and behaviors.

This is just the bunch of rules I live by and I'm doing my best at surviving. I'm not a corporate rat and if I didn't need money to exist I would definitely quit, but I can't deny I have learned a lot.

If someone has more advice to add please do!

[psychic-refugee]

I've seen posts from the past year and more so recently, blaming Jenna for "not doing enough" regarding Percy.

This is just my two cents on the issue.

I think people grossly overestimate Jenna’s influence and ability to control her brainless, rabid fans. I do not think people will be like, “oh if Jenna supports him then he must be innocent.” As far as I’m concerned, that’s just as much of a fantasy as Wenclair or Jemma happening.  

Like 90% of her fans that hate Percy have no critical thinking skills, are creepy weirdos who infantilize her and make pornographic AI ���art” of her, and their ardor of her is predicated upon whatever fantasy relationship they have with her in their head or fantasy relationship she has with Emma.

They cannot be counted upon to make rational conclusions from evidence that actually exists, they rely on willful ignorance and “what if” scenarios to justify their hateful actions. We cannot assume or even reasonably expect they can be counted upon to change their minds if Jenna gives more definitive statements supporting him than she already has.

Additionally, her opinion on the matter is of no relevance. She didn’t know him nor was she present when the rumours say the alleged incidences took place. She can only speak of Percy as she knows him now. She CAN’T proclaim his innocence to something that she didn’t witness nor has anything to do with her.

Further, she does indeed have her own career to think about. She doesn’t work for him and it’s not her job to rehab the unfortunate effects of a baseless rumour on his reputation and career.

People are forgetting that not only are they friends, but they’re CO WORKERS. Things get dicey when you mix personal friendships and business.

They have to balance both worlds. Sometimes hard decisions have to be made, and people need to learn to embrace the suck.

In the end, this is Percy’s problem, and he doesn’t have the right to ask friends and coworkers to go beyond what they’re comfortable doing, nor go against professional advice, if any has been given on the matter.

I think it’s really unfair to have these expectations of Jenna and the rest of the Wednesday cast/friends.

I also want to point out that we have no evidence that Percy himself has ever asked any of his friends/coworkers to do what you all seem to expect they are obligated to do. If Percy has no such expectation, then we as fans should have no expectation, much less think we have any kind of entitlement to demand these things.

What support she has given, people need to learn to accept and be grateful for it. She’s still his friend on “socials” for whatever that’s worth to people. She hasn’t disavowed him publicly, which we’ve seen she has no issue with stating her position on important matters.

I cannot stress enough how we don’t know what goes on between them in private messaging and real life. Perhaps all the support she has for him is done in private. Privacy is their prerogative and right.

As @shiptillitsinks has stated on her post, Jenna has given support via the podcast when it first happened. As far as I’m concerned, her support has been asked and answered. She does not have to keep repeating herself.

Whatever is happening with the professional side of their relationship, such as WSSF, they know their own business best. That's all I can say on that matter.

[f0point5]

I always did wonder when people criticize Jos that how a mother could just leave her son like Sophie left Max? Especially knowing the kind of person Jos was. I know it's none of my business and Max has an amicable relationship with his dad, but I always thought that the same criticism should be applied to his mother who up and left with his sister. Like isn't his mother on the same page that Max needed his father and how he treated him to be where he is now? If she didn't believe this she would've taken him with her. Like she kinda agreed with Jos's methods and what not since she left Max with her. Doesn't that also make her a "bad parent" like the one that did the abuse? Sophie was also known in the motorsport world so it's not that he wouldn't have had a chance to get into it, and still Sophie decided that Max needed to be with his father to achieve what he wanted.

Obviously there must have been a lot going on that we didn't know about but you raise a valid point. I've never seen a person criticize Sophie with the same attitude they do with Jos, and people even go as far as praising Kvyat when we (at least I) know nothing about what P's life is like when she's with him. He's also still active in motorsports so if he had full custody, P would actually be more trackside or in the care of a nanny or idk but thinking about that is too much work, and people only really care is about hating on these perceived villains that they elevated Kelly and Jos to.

Sophie has been quoted as saying that she left Max with his dad because she knew if he was going to be successful with racing that’s where he needed to be. That’s pretty telling to me. She is also a racer, comes from a racing family also I think, surely if she hadn’t agreed with Jos’s methods at some point over the years she could have kept Max with her and continued his racing it didn’t have to be one of the other. But to me it seems like she knew that Jos was pouring his whole life into Max’s career and that that was his best chance of success. Which…fair enough. You’re the parents you make the calls. But I think it’s wild that even people who’ve got all this energy for Jos think that Sophie is this kind hearted Saint when she’s actually never come across that way to me at all. You left the guy, you know exactly who he is, and you left your son with him. So…what does that say about what you think the right way to raise a child is?

And to be clear, I don’t know any of these people and really even if I did, the only people any of them have to make peace with is their children. Max and Victoria both have a relationship with both parents, and Sophie and Jos seem to get along fine so tbh for all anyone has to say about all this…they’re literally doing better than 90% of broken families out there? Sorry but these kids aren’t raised in vacuum, it is bullshit to say they - or Jos - did absolutely everything wrong when they have a son who by all accounts is a nice person as well as incredibly successful and they have a pretty strong family unit which most divorced couples cannot even manage with half their stress.

But the fact remains that anyone who thinks Jos is abusive and the devil incarnate better be coming for Sophie as an enabler (but I’m not that person) and yet they never do.

Same way they come for Kelly for posting Penelope but nothing about Victoria using her newborn to advertise products or her sons to advertise Max’s merch. And I have no issue with either of things because they’re not my kids but what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

And yeah, Daniil is held up as a Saint for not posting Penelope on the internet but is never demonised for having a career that takes him away from her most of the year and then going on holiday without her (people were having a go at Kelly for taking Penelope on her holiday with friends to Portugal…where else should she leave the kid when her dad isn’t there? People take their kids places…shocker), but Kelly is lambasted for going to Paris for three days as if she’s left her child locked in a playpen with a cup of water or something. It is unhinged to care about any of this because if it’s not your kid, fuck off, but if you are going to be a Parasocial…let’s not do the double standard.

Or, alternatively, just admit you’re bitterly jealous of her and be done with it.

[checanty]

HELLO, I’ve teamed up with Drink and Draw Berlin for another online workshop, this time about how to do the whole freelance illustrator thing. I’d like to stress this is an ONLINE workshop, meaning you can participate wherever you are in the world, though you may want to check time zones as this is live. Tickets HERE. ____ So you want to be a freelance illustrator. Or perhaps you’re not even quite sure you want to be a freelance illustrator. You mostly want to pay your bills by making art or making art for a living (those are not the same thing, mind you. ’A living’ should include more than paying bills, right?). Now, freelance illustration is, in my humble opinion, the most straightforward way of making money as an artist. That’s why I do it. It’s still a bit bonkers, the way any career in the arts is a bit bonkers, and it can be intimidating to get started. For one thing, there’s your least favorite aunt, the well-meaning teacher, and society, in general, telling you *not to do it* because you will starve and die on the streets despite the existence of successful illustrators who are doing *just fine*. There’s also a reality in which being an illustrator is totally possible, but it’s not easy, at times confusing, and definitely scary. I mean, it’s also *the best job*, but it’s anxiety-inducing all the time. Ok, not all the time. But often. And most certainly when you’re just starting out. How do you find clients? How do clients find you? How often are you allowed to send somebody your portfolio without being annoying and is it normal if there’s no reply (freebie: Yes��yes it’s very normal.) And once you do get clients, the issues don’t end: How much do you charge, what does a contract look like, and when does your client take suspiciously long to reply? What if you cannot make a deadline—will you actually die aka never work again in the industry unless you change your identity? It’s A LOT. Especially if you have an anxious-perfectionist disposition that is trying very hard to convince you of your own inadequacy. I’ve been a freelance illustrator for eight years now, my friends call me ’established’ (whatever that really means), and I believe I have learned a whole lot in those years, enough that I feel confident I have something to teach, but I’m still learning myself every day because this is a weird little career you’re planning on pursuing and it’s different for everybody. I won’t promise you a career in freelance illustration as soon as you’ve taken my workshop. That’s more of a long-term project and less of a two day affair. I do, however, promise that I will do my best to clear up some of the confusion and give you the best tools I know for succeeding in this shared dream of ours. This is the kind of workshop I wish my art school had offered. We won’t have enough time to get into each of your individual hopes and fears in detail, but I want to make sure I’ll answer as many of your questions as possible so that by the end of this workshop you’ll hopefully have a good grip on what’s next for you and where your journey is headed.

[bayesic-bitch]

Honestly the thing I find kind of frightening about the recent wave of large language models is the degree to which they developed capabilities that we did not explicitly give them. Like more and more it seems like transformers are a truly universal architecture that can do almost any task you can give them.

Like okay, they can do a little bit of math and solve some simple logic puzzles. The thing that I find so so startling is that they get this and also the common sense reasoning necessary to solve them without there being specialized architectures for those things. There's been a ton of work on trying to plug machine learning algorithms into formal reasoning models and trying to learn them together. Neural Turing machines, differentiable neural computers, Markov logic networks, fuzzy logic, neurosymbolic languages like Scallop and Neuralogic. This is decades of work from half a dozen different angles. Turns out you don't need it. Just make the model bigger and it can do math.

What about vision? It's a field with a long history. hand engineered features like wavelets gave way to convolutional networks, but those are also being replaced by guess what? that's right transformers! You dont even really need to think about the structure of the problem, just feed it to a transformer and also feed it text, and the fact that it's jointly trained with language improves its performance.

What about planning in robotics? Again, field with 50+ years of research. Turns out GPT actually just solves this too with no robot- or planning-focused training at all. All you have to do is ask it to write a plan and it'll give you one, a lot more easily than we could with the existing frameworks we've spent 50 years developing.

This is why it's driving me nuts seeing all these posts dumping on alignment concerns by saying "oh but intelligence isn't just one thing, just because GPT is good at text generation doesn't mean it'll be good at all the other things we call intelligence". This is completely missing the point. Whether or not it's necessarily true, what we're rapidly finding is that the current generation of language models very much are able to solve a wide variety of tasks, even for things it wasn't specially trained for. I cannot emphasize enough that what's concerning about this is 1) nobody was trying to make a model that could specifically do math or reasoning or planning. There's no specialized math or planning part of the model. It just figured out how to do them. 2) The transformer architecture seems to be a fully general, or nearly fully general, tool for learning from almost any kind of data. The paper that introduced the model was called Attention is All You Need, and that's only proven to be more and more true over time. For many tasks, attention really is all you need. It really feels like we're getting a lot closer to truly general artificial intelligence.

Now, I do actually think there are some things separating our current knowledge from building something really generally intelligent, and several more that separate us from making super-human level intelligence (most notably, while you can probably get human level intelligence from imitating humans, I don't think you can get superhuman intelligence this way -- you need some way of reasoning about exploration and how to gather new out-of-distribution data). But by far the longest standing open problem in AI has not been "how to do reasoning" or "how to do math", but "how to encode common-sense reasoning into an AI". It's an old enough problem that philosophers have built careers talking about why it's so hard. And I cannot stress enough that this problem, long considered to be the holy grail of the field, is now very close to being solved, if it isn't solved already. GPT-3 gets 65% on Winograd schemas, and GPT-4 gets nearly 95%. Is anybody really betting against the idea that GPT-5 will get 99.8% or higher? It would not at all surprise me if a lot of the other problems after this, like enabling long chains of correct reasoning, ended up being easier than this one.

[czarnoxiestwo]

Let me display an array of negative emotions in public for a sec

I feel like I haven't been this low in ages. I'm seriously considering changing my career to something less interesting but maybe a little more stable. I almost wrote 'less fulfilling' instead of 'less interesting' here but the point is - it's more stressful than fulfilling at this point.

Impostor syndrome is a quiet constant for me but it seriously seems like I'm far behind other people I know who started tattooing around the same time as I did. It's like I'm walking in circles, not actually acquiring any new skills, at least not in a sensible timeframe. And being stressed about not being as competent as I should be while having to pretend like I am is not the best learning environment which completes this circle. I work with people who are both younger than me and technically more competent than me which is discouraging in the sad, tired and resigned kind of way. (I should point out that I did the right thing at the very beginning - but you can still go through apprenticeship that doesn't point you in the right direction or provide any actual practical advice, not to mention solid skills). What's more, I feel like it hurt my general artistic abilities, not giving me enough room (energy and mental capacity) to grow through experimentation, exercise that my 'waste' my time or creating more time-consuming projects. I taught myself how not to rely on inspiration (which is actually a very useful skill) but I usually use it to create things at the merely passable level that a perfectly average client finds acceptable and will graciously agree to use instead of some random picture stolen from Pinterest. I love doing art, I want to do art - I don't know if tattooing is the kind of art I should be doing or if the art should be my main source of income in general.

My client base (as little as it was) pretty much crumbled away with only some people coming back from time to time but even then I see they don't have much money to spend (nor I expect them to). I don't know if I'm too awkward around strangers (I'm can be pretty awkward) for clients to actually want to work with me on a purely vibe based level or people just aren't interested in what I have to offer art-wise. I'd say my skills have something to do with that but I know (of) tattooers with absolutely abysmal works still managing to be fully booked. Being a queer person in a not that big of a city also means I have to be selective about who I'm willing to work with because my safety may depend on it. I know the self-promotion is an important part of being any kind of professional artist in this capitalist hell but to be frank, I fucking suck at it. I loathe fake-fun fake-energetic artistic content. I hate content-content, to be honest. At the same time I don't hate social media as a concept, I'm more of a shitposter type of guy though and I don't know if I'm brave enough to let it spill into my public facing profiles - both because of my safety as mentioned above but also because it my scare potential clients even more. In consequence my financial stability kind of doesn't exist at this moment.

I'm burned out but I don't do enough to be burned out. I need a break but I cannot afford to have a break. This job takes its toll on a body too. I need a regular physiotherapy for my arm, and fuckes my eyes even more than they're fucked by themselves (a lot). Sometimes I wonder how for how long I'll be able to continue this career before my body says no.

I'm just constantly stressed and worried, and I'm not sure what to do.

[tarnished-angelcoric]

As a fellow working adult system, can I ask about what kind of job you have? We're finding it extremely difficult to agree on any kind of job and actually just turned in our 2 weeks at the current one because several alters are deeply unhappy with it. I feel like none of us can agree on what we want, especially long term career stuff. How did you find your work? Is it fulfilling enough for everyone? If someone doesn't like it, how do you manage to cope with that?

Sorry for all the questions, just been very stressful job hunting when no one likes anything and I was wondering if you had any advice/ your experience with it.

-In Calus

no thats so real. honestly, finding work,, really sucks jdbsjdbjd its definitely not easy. we're in a position where we kind of Have to work to support ourselves, theres really not any way around it. ill try and answer all of your questions in order.

so we work in retail at a mall, which is. a monster all of its own, but its what we have. we've had other jobs too: food service (dont recommend, sucks ass), food delivery (stuck with this for 2 yrs and honestly wouldve stayed longer if we hadnt moved, this one was actually pretty okay), and at an animal shelter (had to leave bc we're physically disabled also and the work put too much strain on the body, but otherwise really liked it, work was pretty solo so socializing wasnt an issue). honestly id say retail isnt an Ideal job for a system unless youre relatively under control, it can certainly go haywire. only reason we have this job is bc we had just moved and were Desperate for work, applied to a billion places and took the first one that got back to us lol. *i* personally dont mind it. we dont all share the same opinions about it, but we are mostly in agreement that you gotta do what you gotta do, yknow? this probably isnt a lifetime career for us, but itll hold us until we can find one.

our system is a little bit tricky in the fact that im the one whos fronting the majority of the time, and so for the most part, the bodys life is "my" life. almost everybody else really only fronts on occasion, and so i tend to take the lead on bodily decisions. i dont want to call it "my" life, but when it comes to things like that (especially work), thats kind of how it is yknow? and since im almost always fronting, i tend to be the one that deals with work unless its a rare occasion where im triggered enough to be pulled from front.

i wouldnt say that our job is fulfilling to everyone, i dont think? there are certainly those of us who dont like it, especially the social aspect. those parts tend to not front during work, unless something goes awry and they Need to be pulled forward – though, we've been in therapy long enough that those of us who Dont mind working can handle it okay.

its really just a thing of. we Cannot move back in with family, thats Not an option. and unfortunately, in order to Not move back in with family, we Have to work. we dont really have any other viable options. so none of us really Love our job, but we do what we have to in order to survive. n so even the parts that Hate work will do it if they have to. a lot of it just comes down to us being realistic with ourselves and knowing that we have to do things we dont like sometimes in order to make ends meet. n obviously our situation is different from some peoples in the sense that i as the host am almost always fronting and rarely leave front, so mostly everybody else doesnt have to worry too much about work because i can usually handle it.

finding a proper Lifelong Career has always been harder for us, n we tend to hop around between things quite a bit. its again a thing where its Mostly up to me, because ill be the main one dealing with it, but its still hard to come to a consensus that everyone will like. we still havent found that answer, truthfully. we liked helping at the shelter, bc it was pretty solitary work and didnt require a lot of socializing, but unfortunately it doesnt seem to be a good option with the direction our physical health is going.

i wish i could say that it was easy, i wish i could give you the magic puzzle piece to solve the problem. but for us it really is just a matter of Life Sucks But You Do What You Gotta, and that will have to do until we can find something better. i wish you guys the best of luck with finding something that works for you, and you can always talk to us if you have any questions or need anything <3

other working systems feel free to weigh in if you have anything to offer!

[septembersghost]

What do you think about Harry as a bf? I am sure he is a nice guy and strives to have good friendship post breakup. However, he seems very flaky unemotional type of boyfriend. Like, I thought Olivia was his really serious relationship. We don't know what happened but what bothers me is that he looks unaffected. It is very jarring for me. It is the reason I never took haylor seriously. He just doesn't seem emotionally invested. At that time, I thought he was not that serious about Taylor but now with Olivia too after 2 years???

i don't think we have enough information on this to make any kind of real judgment, in all honesty. the issues with taylor i feel are fairly clear in both of their music - to quote a friend, "they loved each other, they just didn't love each other right." they were never on the same page with when they wanted to fully commit, so it became that back and forth situationship, and they were VERY young, harry was still figuring things out, and taylor was struggling quite a bit and keeping it hidden or suppressed, and when she wanted him to stay, he didn't, and when he was ready to be serious, it was too late. (he skewers the idea of flaky, unemotional boyfriends on the very song entitled that, i think he's aware of making those mistakes. "to boyfriends everywhere, f**k you" certainly said it. and i think sometimes he can even be overly sensitive, which also shows up repeatedly in his lyricism.) as she said: miscommunications. you're not sure and i don't know. also, the outside pressure had to have been horrible for two young people who just wanted to work out how to be in love without the media's judgment, the cameras following their every move, and the endless harassment from certain sections of fans...it wasn't only about them, it was also the band, it was also the already weighty feeling of hugeness that came along with being taylor swift™ that she now depicts as the monster on the hill. they could never fully be only themselves, so instead they had all that shaky ground and uncertainty and running through the woods. there was never a chance for them to be solid enough to flourish, so it's always a what-if.

in regards to olivia, tbf i just think it ran its course? like prolonged getaway car. that sounds too mean, but the circumstances that brought them together weren't great, and they're at very different life stages (NOT because she's older, which i don't think is a big deal at all. but she does have her children to consider, and she seems to be passionate about her directing career, and that does require more stability and probably a lot more time in LA, and being on a world tour then makes figuring out how to even see one another difficult). they have different priorities. i also feel...that the over-the-top vitriol of the dwd press was extremely stressful and a fracture point. that was distressing to me as a relatively impartial observer, i cannot fathom what it would be like to have to try and exist as the focus of it. that had to have been too much. it would be too much for anyone unless you're absolutely rock solid and plan to be together for life.

what he wrote musically following the taylor breakup feels heartbroken to me. with olivia right now, if he seems unaffected, it's probably a mix of things. he's a performer, he turns "on" that upbeat attitude onstage (and it's an instant serotonin boost, part of what makes performing both wonderful and sometimes damaging/dangerous for people), he's not going to mope about his breakup in front of stadiums, but also, it may be that he realizes this was for the better. and sometimes, even if it's lousy and sad, if something ends for the better, you can feel a sense of lightness. sometimes very passionate things that are short (or crash and burn) can be more painful than something long-term that fades out gradually.

i had a message about this that i didn't answer bc i didn't feel right digging into it, but idk a lot about his other romantic history except camille, and from interviews/comments given around the fine line release, he was quite wounded by that one too. i think he was actually more serious/invested there than maybe she even was. sadness suffuses that album, and some self-reflection/criticism too.

it feels unfair (not you! just in general!) to judge or say he's not affected or not trying. it's different obviously because sexism plays a role in the nasty hatred and negative public treatment that taylor got for years for her breakups, but even so, i hesitate to do that to anyone else, regardless of gender. sometimes things don't work! and you try and they can't be fixed. it's just life, and people. love for people who aren't splashed all over magazines and having invasive questions posed by strangers and selling out stadiums is complicated! fame has to impact that many times over.

the thing for me, is, i don't believe that every comment (outside his romantic endeavors) made about him as a human being could be untrue, and all of them (and there are MANY) are consistent, and describe his thoughtfulness and basic nature in the same way, that kindness doesn't come across as fake. i think about the story of him cleaning up broken glass on the dance floor, it's an anecdote, but it's one of many that are all the same. it's also like...i see "weird" used in a derogatory way towards him a lot, and i don't love that! because being weird/quirky/esoteric doesn't make you not a good person! (not to mention the inane qbaiting debate and negation of his mspec identity which i cannot begin to get into rn. the internet is unnecessarily mean.) the fact that he does continue to be nice/respectful and try to maintain those friendships says a lot as well.

basically, i think it's complex, and humans are multifaceted, and relationships not working out is sometimes simply a part of life. harry just hasn't found whoever the right person is yet. and he's still young, he's only 28. he probably has some growing up left to do. there's plenty of time.

[brooklynbrunette]

Hi blog,

Been a while, but that’s the norm here. Lately I’ve been getting such a strong urge to write, to get all of my feelings out on paper (or doc, or tumblr post, whatever) but by the time I finish the work I have planned from the day, I’m to exhausted to think. These past two weeks have been rough. Lack of sleep, tons of headaches, and just having a mind that refuses to focus and nail a task one at a time, but rather stay in a freeze state when it sees the much bigger picture of everything I have to do.

Don’t get me wrong—yes I am stressed, busy, tired all the time, but I also think my mind being all over the place has to do with the fact that I am falling for a boy. I just haven’t really gotten the chance to sit and write and express my feelings on the matter. So here I am, four months into knowing the guy, one month into dating, and I don’t know if what I’m feeling is love or not, because I’ve never really loved anyone, romantically at least.

For the sake of not spilling names I’ll use initials: I was obsessed with E, discarded D, and lusted after V. I don’t even count L, although I have to say I am learning that he was kind of my only test-run at an adult relationship. He took me out on dates, walked me home, cared for me. It was sweet. But it wasn’t what I needed nor what I was ready for at that time. I was still very immature with my emotions and needed to “play the field” a bit more.

What I didn’t realize is how I almost talked myself out of my first date with K, now I can’t imagine my life without him in it. I am usually stressed, moody, angry, and even though seeing him means I have to sacrifice more sleep I really cannot afford to lose, he calms me. He makes my brain go quiet. And that to me is no small feat. I feel protected, I feel safe, and I feel like I can be soft around him. I’ve never felt that way before.

Which begs the question—is this what love is supposed to feel like? What are the signs? Am I in it? How will I know? SHOULD I know? Am I moving to fast? Will I regret this? And more and more questions pop up as I try to figure out what I’m feeling. It’s so odd. I feel like I can’t keep my hands off him, like I need his body heat to feel okay. But I’m so fucking skeptical.

I was always the one saying I wouldn’t conform to dating in the culture, because I couldn’t see it happening. I could never see myself yearning for the cute relationship where you talk about marriage and kids and futures. That. Was. Never. Me.

With K, I feel like my realities have shifted. I’m trying to do it all—to expand my goals and dreams for myself and my career while also standing by someone’s side. To not feel like I’m alone. To truly care about someone, and drop the act. And every time I think he’ll be afraid to know everything about me, he proves me wrong. Every. Single. Fucking. Time.

I told him how things with V ended, but I told him the whole story. I didn’t want to hold any details back because I felt like it was important to know: would this stop him from seeing me and thinking of me in such high regards? Would it bring him back down to earth? But no, he held my hand, he squeezed it when my voice was getting shaky, and he reassured me that everything was going to be okay. And whenever I find myself stressing out about work and wanting to do more, be better, screaming at myself that I’m not doing enough, I have that same notion in my head: no matter what, everything is going to be okay. And it is. It will always be.

So yeah, maybe I do love him or I’m still falling in love with him but as much as it enlightens me to get that out of my system, it terrifies me. I’m scared of how much I want to impress him, impress his friends, impress his family. How much I want to be perfect for him, but also perfect for all the people I work for. How my mind is so scattered that I completely missed an important work call that I should’ve been a part of. How I’m losing sleep and doing the bare minimum of work. How as much as I want to grow in my career, more work terrifies me because I’ll see him less. But on the flip side, it terrifies me that I find myself blaming him for my lack of constraint over my work schedule. My forgetfulness.

I have a lot I want to do with my life. I’ve stated it, written about it, typed about it. I know I was put here to make something of myself in whatever way, shape or form that I see fit. Right now I see myself growing brands, growing businesses, and being known as the person who comes into a company or a brand and flips it. Makes it better than it’s ever been. Brings more meaning to its message. I want to be known as that person. I want to turn myself into a brand. To be recognizable.

Recently I talked about my loss of respect for one of the women I was working with that I saw as a mentor. That loss has fueled me to be even better. I want K in my life, but not at the expense of my career. I want his affection and attention, but not at the expense of my aspirations. He’s been so supportive of me and I plan to be the same for him, and I think we’ll be alright. I just had to say that I will NOT change myself and my course.

I do have a lot to better about myself. I need to be on top of my game in all things me: self-care, doctor’s visits, personal time, gym routine, SLEEP. I can’t just give 110% to the people I work for. I have to give that to myself first. This right here is a reminder when I check back in to my blog - DO BETTER FOR YOURSELF. See how big of a difference it will make in your life.

[elodieunderglass]

Ok so going out to a bigger context and a massive bugbear of mine: this is tumblr, so you’ve probably seen a lot of posts from ✨humanities✨ people that go like this.

Dumb uneducated masses: hurr durr historians lied to us! I never learned about this in school! Historians say dumb things like “we don’t know if gay people ever existed” but I saw a TikTok about gay people in history. A conspiracy I think from the Man

Buff victimised wojack historians: we are not hiding things from you! We are doing important work on these topics in our theses! A tiny amount of intensive educated research would bring you the knowledge you crave! I’m a gay history PhD with gay history book ACTUALLY. You are all illiterate, and blaming us only shows your lack of education.

Another historian: god it’s so frustrating how stupid the public is when our academic publications are RIGHT THERE.

Another historian: smh it’s the way they’d prefer to get misinformation on tumblr and TikTok.

Historians in particular do this a lot. I could link you to a few distinct posts that do exactly this with 40k+ notes. and lots of sanctimonious people complaining about how the public have NO information literacy, and ALL of these complaints are PERFECTLY addressed in Ratbin and Huguenot (2001) “Gender and Ungender in Mesopotamia” which these morons would KNOW if they only (paywall)(paywall)(paywall). You have seen multiple popular posts on tumblr where extremely intelligent, kind, smart, educated people are not realising that in their complaints about their discipline’s massive communications issue, they are repeatedly demonstrating why they have a comms issue. You have possibly even reblogged it, without realising the massive flaw at the heart of the rhetoric. We usually trust historians to have good rhetoric! If they don’t, who does?

But surely this is common across academic disciplines? Well, we note that sciences have an entire professional field called “science communication.” When someone asks a science question on social media, scientists usually sprint to be the first to give the clearest answer.Scientists consider it a personal failing if the public don’t understand a key update in modern science, and will often go out of their way on social media to spread correct content in accessible ways. Science grants and funding bodies and journals require that scientists have plans to communicate, and make accessible and publicly serviceable, pretty much every piece of funded research and increasing amounts of published research. Scientists go into schools and talk to little kids and have festivals -for free- they don’t get paid for this and yet you can call up any ambassador association and ask for a lecture and get one. Science communicators pound the pavement, working as park rangers and forest school leaders, comedians and podcasters; an ENTIRE LINE OF WORK involves getting paid by researchers to translate, communicate and promote their science. There are companies and people for whom this is their paid, actual factual salaried career.

And I cannot stress enough how easy it is to get any given science PhD student to come and do any form of science communication for free. They will do it for free , and they will thank you for the opportunity.

The attitude in the sciences is “if the public don’t understand, then we’ve failed to communicate, and need to do better.” There is an entire professional field dedicated to doing this; as OP says, science museums do not scorn to stoop to the level of children.

Now I return to the image of the science PhD student, who is quivering with anticipation at being asked to talk about sea turtle conservation to small children, who will objectively never give them funding, in the true belief that it is good for society and sea turtles to do such things. We can intuit, from pop culture, the scientist personality: the belief that you can save the world. if you just get the work done and the words right and people believe you, you can save the world. We instantly see the fears and hopes of scientists from this; we can study the psychology and history of the Mad Scientist trope, exploring what happens when the motivations of this personality become no longer socially acceptable. We can see this belief that science, like a key, could open the lock that saves the world; this explains the franticness of the personality that gladly spends its free time forging different keys. The hope here is the beautiful perfect Argument, a shining radiant Key, that one presents to The Public, and suddenly they cry out and fall down and say “Of COURSE! we care about ocean acidification so much now! We will immediately overthrow everyone who doesn’t care, and fix it at once.” To this personality, knowledge sharing is survival. The more people who are educated enough to appreciate and admire and pay the scientist, the better the scientist has of realising their hopes (saving the world) and avoiding their fear (getting it wrong and failing forever.)

Now we turn to the graduate student in fine arts, and contrary to what we would think of progressive bohemian artists, we often see a different set of fears and hopes that are conservative. Conservative, fundamentally and etymologically, means to hold; to grasp; to keep; to spend small amounts very cautiously. perhaps they are seeking to curate and preserve previous works, like OP’s curators: or perhaps hoping to create valuable works of their own, to sell for a living to a special population of discerning rich people. Either way, if Just Anyone could create a work that appeals to rich collectors; if Just Anyone could declare what is art; if Just Any Object could be found to have value; if Just Anyone could look at curated objects and understand them with context and appreciation: it rather undermines the idea that collecting this education is inherently valuable. And thus we see the response: the public should educate themselves. An arts education is good to have, and probably makes more customers, but people should go and get one, rather than being given it for free; we know that most people won’t, but that’s okay, because it’s important that the Knowledge itself is curated. The best people to understand and interpret these works have won the right to do so through proper curation of the Knowledge. In a sense knowledge should be hoarded or handed out sparingly because that is how it simultaneously retains value, and ensures the good quality of the most knowledgeable people.

Similarly, history does not attract the “save the world” nerds in the same way that science does. And that’s honestly fine. It’s a burnout personality - kind of a psychological complex - too dependent on externals. The Locked Tomb does not feature the apocalypse of a mad historian.

But you can’t desire the fruits of the hard work that the science community reaps (public appreciation, attention, funding, pop culture) without doing some reflection about why you want all fruit and no work. And no, it isn’t that Nobody Cares (And Should Get An Education So That They Care More, Which They Won’t, Because Nobody Cares About Humanities Anymore, Because The Sciences Are Luring Them Away with their Wiles.) nobody cared about pretty much any part of science until someone found the key to the comms. Plastic straws in sea turtle noses, save the bees, plant more trees, feathered dinosaurs, genes that cure cancer - all images, all stories that made people care. If the sciences are better storytellers, then don’t sulk; tell a better story! Maybe more people would care about the humanities if you secured their passions as children! Maybe the fact that nobody is reading your book is giving clues about accessibility. Maybe the public don’t really read that many paywalled papers, and you should be doing podcasts and press releases and tumblr essays about them. Maybe the fact that people prefer TikTok means that YOU SHOULD MAKE A BETTER TIKTOK.

Science communication says: you don’t understand the results of my science education? No problem! Let me show you! Don’t worry - even a kid can learn it. We’ll make it fun! Where did we lose you?

While the humanities are spending far too much time saying: you don’t understand the results of my arts education? Well you should get an arts degree, and then you would. If you weren’t so stupid and easily misled by TikTok, you would have simply gone to a university library and placed a hold on my book - what do you mean you’re twelve.

If you read all this and it makes you feel defensive: good! The storytelling arts shouldn’t rest on their laurels. It should be a challenge, a provocation, the red gleam of the other racehorse’s eye as it pulls away from you. You should be champing at the bit to prove me wrong - to tell a better story at ONCE - to change the world.

I would be very interested in hearing the museum design rant

by popular demand: Guy That Took One (1) Museum Studies Class Focused On Science Museums Rants About Art Museums. thank u for coming please have a seat

so. background. the concept of the "science museum" grew out of 1) the wunderkammer (cabinet of curiosities), also known as "hey check out all this weird cool shit i have", and 2) academic collections of natural history specimens (usually taxidermied) -- pre-photography these were super important for biological research (see also). early science museums usually grew out of university collections or bequests of some guy's Weird Shit Collection or both, and were focused on utility to researchers rather than educational value to the layperson (picture a room just, full of taxidermy birds with little labels on them and not a lot of curation outside that). eventually i guess they figured they could make more on admission by aiming for a mass audience? or maybe it was the cultural influence of all the world's fairs and shit (many of which also caused science museums to exist), which were aimed at a mass audience. or maybe it was because the research function became much more divorced from the museum function over time. i dunno. ANYWAY, science and technology museums nowadays have basically zero research function; the exhibits are designed more or less solely for educating the layperson (and very frequently the layperson is assumed to be a child, which does honestly irritate me, as an adult who likes to go to science museums). the collections are still there in case someone does need some DNA from one of the preserved bird skins, but items from the collections that are exhibited typically exist in service of the exhibit's conceptual message, rather than the other way around.

meanwhile at art museums they kind of haven't moved on from the "here is my pile of weird shit" paradigm, except it's "here is my pile of Fine Art". as far as i can tell, the thing that curators (and donors!) care about above all is The Collection. what artists are represented in The Collection? rich fucks derive personal prestige from donating their shit to The Collection. in big art museums usually something like 3-5% of the collection is ever on exhibit -- and sometimes they rotate stuff from the vault in and out, but let's be real, only a fraction of an art museum's square footage is temporary exhibits. they're not going to take the scream off display when it's like the only reason anyone who's not a giant nerd ever visits the norwegian national museum of art. most of the stuff in the vault just sits in the vault forever. like -- art museum curators, my dudes, do you think the general public gives a SINGLE FUCK what's in The Collection that isn't on display? no!! but i guarantee you it will never occur, ever, to an art museum curator that they could print-to-scale high-res images of artworks that are NOT in The Collection in order to contextualize the art in an exhibit, because items that are not in The Collection functionally do not exist to them. (and of course there's the deaccessioning discourse -- tumblr collectively has some level of awareness that repatriation is A Whole Kettle of Worms but even just garden-variety selling off parts of The Collection is a huge hairy fucking deal. check out deaccessioning and its discontents; it's a banger read if you're into This Kind Of Thing.)

with the contents of The Collection foregrounded like this, what you wind up with is art museum exhibits where the exhibit's message is kind of downstream of what shit you've got in the collection. often the message is just "here is some art from [century] [location]", or, if someone felt like doing a little exhibit design one fine morning, "here is some art from [century] [location] which is interesting for [reason]". the displays are SOOOOO bad by science museum standards -- if you're lucky you get a little explanatory placard in tiny font relating the art to an art movement or to its historical context or to the artist's career. if you're unlucky you get artist name, date, and medium. fucker most of the people who visit your museum know Jack Shit about art history why are you doing them dirty like this

(if you don't get it you're just not Cultured enough. fuck you, we're the art museum!)

i think i've talked about this before on this blog but the best-exhibited art exhibit i've ever been to was actually at the boston museum of science, in this traveling leonardo da vinci exhibit where they'd done a bunch of historical reconstructions of inventions out of his notebooks, and that was the main Thing, but also they had a whole little exhibit devoted to the mona lisa. obviously they didn't even have the real fucking mona lisa, but they went into a lot of detail on like -- here's some X-ray and UV photos of it, and here's how art experts interpret them. here's a (photo of a) contemporary study of the finished painting, which we've cleaned the yellowed varnish off of, so you can see what the colors looked like before the varnish yellowed. here's why we can't clean the varnish off the actual painting (da vinci used multiple varnish layers and thinned paints to translucency with varnish to create the illusion of depth, which means we now can't remove the yellowed varnish without stripping paint).

even if you don't go into that level of depth about every painting (and how could you? there absolutely wouldn't be space), you could at least talk a little about, like, pigment availability -- pigment availability is an INCREDIBLY useful lens for looking at historical paintings and, unbelievably, never once have i seen an art museum exhibit discuss it (and i've been to a lot of art museums). you know how medieval european religious paintings often have funky skin tones? THEY HADN'T INVENTED CADMIUM PIGMENTS YET. for red pigments you had like... red ochre (a muted earth-based pigment, like all ochres and umbers), vermilion (ESPENSIVE), alizarin crimson (aka madder -- this is one of my favorite reds, but it's cool-toned and NOT good for mixing most skintones), carmine/cochineal (ALSO ESPENSIVE, and purple-ish so you wouldn't want to use it for skintones anyway), red lead/minium (cheaper than vermilion), indian red/various other iron oxide reds, and apparently fucking realgar? sure. whatever. what the hell was i talking about.

oh yeah -- anyway, i'd kill for an art exhibit that's just, like, one or two oil paintings from each century for six centuries, with sample palettes of the pigments they used. but no! if an art museum curator has to put in any level of effort beyond writing up a little placard and maybe a room-level text block, they'll literally keel over and die. dude, every piece of art was made in a material context for a social purpose! it's completely deranged to divorce it from its material context and only mention the social purpose insofar as it matters to art history the field. for god's sake half the time the placard doesn't even tell you if the thing was a commission or not. there's a lot to be said about edo period woodblock prints and mass culture driven by the growing merchant class! the met has a fuckton of edo period prints; they could get a hell of an exhibit out of that!

or, tying back to an earlier thread -- the detroit institute of arts has got a solid like eight picasso paintings. when i went, they were kind of just... hanging out in a room. fuck it, let's make this an exhibit! picasso's an artist who pretty famously had Periods, right? why don't you group the paintings by period, and if you've only got one or two (or even zero!) from a particular period, pad it out with some decent life-size prints so i can compare them and get a better sense for the overarching similarities? and then arrange them all in a timeline, with little summaries of what each Period was ~about~? that'd teach me a hell of a lot more about picasso -- but you'd have to admit you don't have Every Cool Painting Ever in The Collection, which is illegalé.

also thinking about the mit museum temporary exhibit i saw briefly (sorry, i was only there for like 10 minutes because i arrived early for a meeting and didn't get a chance to go through it super thoroughly) of a bunch of ship technical drawings from the Hart nautical collection. if you handed this shit to an art museum curator they'd just stick it on the wall and tell you to stand around and look at it until you Understood. so anyway the mit museum had this enormous room-sized diorama of various hull shapes and how they sat in the water and their benefits and drawbacks, placed below the relevant technical drawings.

tbh i think the main problem is that art museum people and science museum people are completely different sets of people, trained in completely different curatorial traditions. it would not occur to an art museum curator to do anything like this because they're probably from the ~art world~ -- maybe they have experience working at an art gallery, or working as an art buyer for a rich collector, neither of which is in any way pedagogical. nobody thinks an exhibit of historical clothing should work like a clothing store but it's fine when it's art, i guess?

also the experience of going to an art museum is pretty user-hostile, i have to say. there's never enough benches, and if you want a backrest, fuck you. fuck you if going up stairs is painful; use our shitty elevator in the corner that we begrudgingly have for wheelchair accessibility, if you can find it. fuck you if you can't see very well, and need to be closer to the art. fuck you if you need to hydrate or eat food regularly; go to our stupid little overpriced cafeteria, and fuck you if we don't actually sell any food you can eat. (obviously you don't want someone accidentally spilling a smoothie on the art, but there's no reason you couldn't provide little Safe For Eating Rooms where people could just duck in and monch a protein bar, except that then you couldn't sell them a $30 salad at the cafe.) fuck you if you're overwhelmed by noise in echoing rooms with hard surfaces and a lot of people in them. fuck you if you are TOO SHORT and so our overhead illumination generates BRIGHT REFLECTIONS ON THE SHINY VARNISH. we're the art museum! we don't give a shit!!!

[aidadigital]

give me the strength to change the things I can control, and the wisdom to accept that which I can't

Long distance does not do well for me, which to me shows signs of clingyness and, therefore, insecurity. To be fair I think I've been really stressed ever since the internship debacle. I feel not enough, palpably. It sits really negatively with me that my professor actively didn't recommend me. And I think a real concern of mine is not keeping pace with my girlfriend. We graduate the same time --- a little over a year from now --- but she's just always so much more ahead. Ahead in classes, ahead in opportunities, she's just... a mix of more talented and luckier, I think. Maybe she's a more charismatic interviwee than I. She's definitely a more skilled reporter. If I want everything to work out between us I need to be on the top of my game, arguably better than the top. 110% output at all times to catch up and meet pace, to be able to get a job, to not have to worry about everything. I'm really scared I'll fuck everything up. There is this position my brain takes that I'm not a fan of, but kinda sits in the back of my head. "Things are going well now, so that means things have to get really bad soon." I have nightmares of one of us cheating on the other. I sit anxious and insecure that she's going to tell me she's not really feeling anything anymore, or that she wants to breakup. I'm afraid that if I'm not at my absolute best at any given moment, I'm going to fuck up and our relationship will be over as a result. I really like this girl. I really, really like her --- in a "I see myself marrying her one day" kind of way. There's a certain type of love that feels omnipresent, like a blanket that covers your entire body. The kind of love where you go to the store, see a flower and remember it's her favorite, snapdragons. The kind where you go to a coffee shop and imagine cracking a joke about how caffeine would kill her, the kind where every love song and every romcom is somehow about her and you now. The kind where you sometimes wish you could just fast forward and hold her in your arms, where every night spent with her feels like a dream. I am my own person, one of value to the world, my career, my partner and my friends. I am a good listener. I am good at responding with empathy. I can be good at writing at times. I'm not skilled in much, but when I'm passionate about something I pour my whole being into it. I need to remember these things. If I fear losing my girlfriend I need to pour more passion into giving the best me I can to her! If I worry about my career I need to keep working. If I worry my own anxieties are clouding good moments in my life, I need to meditate and think. I get freaked out incredibly easily, to the point I worry about being a shooting victim in a crowded area, or worry about being arrested even when I'm doing nothing wrong. The anxiety I face is real, and it will probably stick with me in some form forever; I've always worried and over analyzed. This can be used to my benefit, though. It allows me to be thoughtful, and while a real, palpable feeling, I know it's also *just* a feeling. Me stressed my girlfriend hates me because she sometimes responds slow (actually a good thing, she's spending time with her family!) is just my brain being bored and idly crafting problems. All is well, and I also trust her that even if something wasn't well, she'd be willing to tell me. In the end, I try to rest on the laurels of the cliche --- give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the strength to control what I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

also in extremely rare instances there's some wonders of genderqueerness LOL but i think its less i am trans and more I like indulging in feminine things from time to time idk we can tackle that another day!

[achehex]

デジモンゴーストゲーム#36ご視聴本当にありがとうございました!!! Thank you from the bottom of my heart for watching Digimon Ghost Game #36. This was the most titanic task I’ve been assigned in my admittedly short career. I handled 24 cuts of layouts and I think 14 cuts of 2nd key animation. I feel bad for leaving so much extra work, but the deadline was way too tight for me to be able to draw the remaining 10.  This time around I won’t post gifs of my scenes because it’s a whole 1:20 minutes of animation :’v But if you are curious I handled the bit when Kiyoshiro is being turned to stone, all the way to when the debris from the fight hits around Ruri. The more action packed portion of my section even made it to SakugaBooru if you wanna take a peak and don’t feel like watching the whole episode. I want to thank everyone again for your support, and as always some longer thoughts after the cut! Another thing I’ve been meaning to say is that my inbox is always open if you are curious about my work and all that good stuff.

I cannot even begin to describe how stressed I’ve been. I was constantly rewatching the episode preview just to have something to watch. There was only one time where we got to see the finished episode before it aired, and I understand it, it’s sensitive information, and they can’t just send it to any freelancer, even if not maliciously that kind of stuff can leak easily, but the problem on my end is that I’m left not knowing how my cuts will truly look. As you may know inbetweens are the drawings you add to your animation to smooth out the motion, but in anime production inbetweens are handled by a whole separate team, you can draw guides for them (both charts, and rough drawings), but since it’s not really your job, it doesn’t factor in the time that you have for said work. I drew as many IB guides as I could on what I considered the most important cuts, but a bunch of other ones I just did my best guess at what good timing and spacing would be. I still don’t have enough experience to do that in my head without seeing it, so there’s always a chance that a cut won’t look the way I imagined.  I was desperate to know if my cuts looked good, and I think they mostly do. I think that animation is my current skill ceiling in terms of action sakuga. It obviously could’ve been better, it always can, but at my skill level and within the deadline, I’m definitely more than satisfied. If you read my reflections after episode 18 you’ll recall that I was feeling depressed because I didn’t know if I had blown my one chance to draw a really cool action scene, but this time around I was given that chance again, and I tried so hard to not squander it. Maybe it’s weird or even immature, but I like being complimented for my work, so I wanted to draw something that was worthy of compliments. I’ve gotten a lot of impostor syndrome these past 2 months, this industry is just filled with so many incredible artists, and I can’t help but feel that I skipped so many steps that would’ve given me a more solid foundation to stand on, but at the end of the day, given the right circumstances, I can produce good work, and I’m happy about that. Oh also this episode was my first episode working as a full time freelancer on Digimon Ghost Game! So at least for the foreseeable I will work on 1 episode of Digimon every month-month and a half, so you haven’t seen the last of me there. Thanks for reading and for all the support, cheers!! Here’s a bonus drawing, my practice drawings for learning how to draw BettelGammamon, since I had never drawn him before. 

[animeomegas]

Omega!Bakugou headcanons

Anon: Pssssss imma need some more omega Bakugou like now no it make him jealous too because why not

AND

Anon: hi! could you do some omega!bakugou x male alpha!reader? nsfw and sfw pls <3

nesting too pls!! idk why but I love the idea of nesting sjdjsnd, pregnant bakugou fluff would be lovely too <3

AND

Anon: Hi I was wonder if you could do omega Bakugou sfw and nsfw please 🥺

(Hey, everyone!! Bakugou is very popular in my inbox! Okay, let’s write some omega!Bakugou headcanons <3 I have another request for pregnant!Bakugou, so I’ll add that part of the middle request to another post 😊 Also, I only write for a gender neutral reader. I hope you all enjoy~)

Warnings: N-sfw under a cut, suggestive behaviour multiple times not under the cut.

Nesting:

Bakugou is not an omega who is big on nesting. He does nest and he’s very proud of his nest, but he doesn’t feel the urge to nest super often.

He doesn’t keep a permanent, all year-round nest, he’s kind of a clean freak so having to constantly clean all the blankets in his nest would drive his nuts.

He does nest during his heat and late term pregnancy, and also after periods of extreme stress, but not often outside of these times.

But if he knows his alpha likes his nests, he might build them for his alpha when they’re stressed, although he’ll claim he just felt like making it and it shouldn’t go to waste.

It’s not a very convincing lie.

His nest is not in a very popular style, mainly because Bakugou overheats so easily.

It’s a simple double mattress on a very low frame, with a couple of pillows and sheet like blankets that he normally uses as a base rather than a covering.

He has a black and red colour scheme that he thinks is the coolest thing ever, and he definitely has an All Might pillow hidden somewhere at the back that he threatens his alpha to keep a secret, it’s very cute.

He likes his nest to be in an easily defendable position, whether that be inside a large cupboard or wardrobe, or a small room with one door and a small window.

Bakugou also keeps a mini fridge by his nest, as a lot of omegas do, to store water and food, but what he has that a lot of omegas don’t, is a mini freezer too.

He keeps ice packs and ice lollies in there to help when he’s in heat because his temperature tends to get way too high.

Bakugou doesn’t like being vulnerable, so his nest is a sensitive topic for him.

It takes him quite a while to let his alpha into his nest, but he’s quicker to let them chill outside of it, holding his hand and keeping him company. He would probably let them outside his nest after courting for a year and knowing them for at least two years. When he lets them inside depends on a lot of factors, including how well they deal with him from the outside of his nest. It could be anywhere from three months to another year.

Pups:

Bakugou has always wanted some pups, but in a removed and distant kind of way. After all, becoming the No. 1 hero was far more important than any of that ‘family’ nonsense.

He only really considers pups when he’s in a very committed relationship and at a comfortable place in his career. He’s not prepared to take time off at a vulnerable career moment, after all.

Bakugou wants two children, because, while he would never admit it, he always wished he had a sibling when he was a kid, so he wants to give that to his children.

But he’s very conflicted about it.

Firstly, two pregnancy leaves would be a huge blow to his career. Prime hero years and prime ‘having children years’ are the same years, so in a way, he has to decide how to balance these two priorities. He isn’t sure he wants to risk his career with that much leave so close together (heroes can’t be in the field while pregnant at all, so it would be a huge sacrifice.)

Secondly, he’s nervous about how useless he would likely feel while pregnant. He’s a workaholic and being confined to his house and losing control over his quirk would drive him nuts.

So, he doesn’t really know what to do. He doesn’t share any of his concerns with his alpha, but he does take their wishes into account too. If his alpha really wants two children, Bakugou does keep that in mind. But he’s not a push over. If he decides that two maternity leaves are too many, then it’s too many. It’s his body and he won’t let anyone tell him otherwise.

So, with all this in mind, Bakugou is fucking thrilled when he finds out he’s having twins.

Two pups for the price of one pregnancy leave?? Sign him the hell up!

Bakugou has twin boys, both alphas, and Bakugou just cannot believe his luck that all his problems just fixed themselves.

“But I don’t want to go!” came a defiant voice from the back seat of the car. Both you and Bakugou sighed, not keen on restarting the disagreement that had plagued the household for the entire morning. It had taken twice as long as normal this morning to get the twins dressed and in the car because of this very argument.

You could see Bakugou about to open his mouth to tell him that they had to, but you held up a hand to stop him.

“Why don’t you want to go, sweetheart?” you cooed at your oldest son.

“I don’t want you and daddy to leave…” whimpered your youngest son, answering in his brother’s stead.

Bakugou winced and reached a hand into the back and squeezed each of his son’s hands in turn.

“I know.” He said simply. You could feel his guilt, even though you both knew it was the best for all of you that the twins get used to nursery so that both you and Bakugou could go back to focusing on your careers. They would be fine, you tried to convince yourself. Millions of kids do this every year and it works out fine.

The nursery came into view, and you refocused your attention onto finding a parking space in the little car park on the side of the building. You could hear your sons shifting anxiously in the back and it pulled at your heart strings. You pulled into an empty space and turned off the engine. You and Bakugou shared a single look before moving to get your children out of the car with practiced ease.

“No,” your eldest son shouted. “I’m not going to go. I’m staying here!”

You had tried to take him out of the car seat, but he had refused to cooperate. You didn’t want to pull him out in case you hurt him. Bakugou came to stand behind you, your youngest son clutching his neck desperately.

“Let me talk to him,” he spoke softly, handing the younger twin over into your arms.

“Hey,” Bakugou said softly, leaning down to peer inside the car where his eldest son stubbornly sat with his arms crossed. “It’s okay to be scared to go to nursery, you know.”

Your oldest son visibly flinched and avoided looking at Bakugou in the eyes.

“I’m not scared, daddy. I just don’t want to.”

“Uh huh,” Bakugou said, eyebrow raised.

“I’m not!” Your son exploded. When he realised that he’d just shouted at his father, the colour drained from his face and his bottom lip started to quiver. Bakugou wordlessly held out his arms and his eldest son accepted the embrace just in time to burst into heavy tears on Bakugou’s shoulder.

“It’s alright,” Bakugou hushed. “I’m not angry at you.”

In your arms, your youngest son was watching his brother cry and letting out little whimpers into your neck. You rubbed his back soothingly and whispered that everything was going to okay.

Out of the corner of your eye, you realised another parent was staring judgementally at your family. Bakugou clearly also noticed because he bared his teeth as a warning and the parent quickly moved on. You scoffed at the idiot who thought it was a good idea to antagonise an omega who was looking after a distraught pup, let alone when said omega was a top ten hero.

“W-What if they don’t l-like me?” your eldest whimpered out.

“Here,” Bakugou wiped some of the tears away with his thumb. “How about this, you tell me if anyone is mean to you and I’ll sort it out, how does that sound?”

“But…” your son hesitated. “But what will you do?”

Bakugou grinned.

“I’ll make their parents regret doing such a shitty job at parenting.”

You gasped, halfway between scandalised and amused.

“Katsuki!” you reprimanded and smacked his lightly on the shoulder.

It did seem to cheer up your sons, though, who were now giggling at your antics.

“Daddy said a bad word,” your youngest twin giggled to you.

“He did,” you pressed your lips together. “And it was very naughty of him.”

Bakugou rolled his eyes and instead placed the pup in his arms on the floor, taking him by the hand. You did the same and slowly, you both made your way toward the school gate. The mood dropped, but neither of your children tried to resist.

You could see a teacher standing at the gate to escort the new students and you made your way over.

“Remember,” Bakugou said before you reached the gate, stopping you all for a moment. “We’ll be back in this many hours,” he held up three fingers. “Can you guys tell me how many this is?”

“One… two… three…” they both said together.

“That’s right! See? You guys are going to be the smartest ones in there,” Bakugou boasted, ruffling their hair.

“Careful,” you teased. “They’ll turn into you.”

“Are you saying I’m always the smartest person in the room?” Bakugou grinned back.

“No, I’m saying you always think you’re the smartest person in the room.”

“Oi!” he growled, knocking his shoulder with yours. The pups giggled again, seeming to be in higher spirits. You escorted them to the gate at the front of the playground and let the teacher introduce herself.

And with one final goodbye, your pups were off into the nursery and out of sight.

You and Bakugou walked to the car in silence, digesting what had happened and processing that your little ones were now old enough for nursery. You both slipped back into the car and began the drive home.

It was weird to think that your children were neither with you, nor at home waiting for you, but that kind of existential deep dive could wait until later.

Bakugou’s hand settled just a little bit too high on your thigh. For the moment, it was time to appreciate the novelty of an empty house.

 Jealously:

I don’t think anyone would be very surprised to find out that Bakugou can get quite jealous on occasion.

In the early days of your relationship, he’s very nervous that his alpha is going to find a ‘better’ omega, an omega who is more traditional, and leave him for them. It takes a lot of bravery for him to leave himself vulnerable to being abandoned, and occasionally the insecurities seep through.

He hates the whiny, simpering omegas that plaster themselves onto the nearest alpha, and it makes him furious to see anyone doing that to you.

He has no subtlety, no brooding angst, he just threatens the other omega(s) away to their face, and then drags you somewhere private to cover you in his scent.

Later in the relationship, things change. He’s extremely confident that his alpha is his. Why would they ever leave him? He’s the best fucking omega ever!

Instead, he gets jealous if he isn’t getting enough attention because you’re spending too much time with someone else.

He doesn’t do this in a possessive way, it’s just that he doesn’t get a whole lot of free time and when his alpha spends that free time with someone else? Another omega? He’s pissed.

He gets surly and passive aggressive about it, and it’s extremely obvious.

The best way to fix it is to just give him lots of attention, he won’t behave like this is you have to leave for something important (he understands duty like the best of them), so it’s very easy to address.

Bakugou idly stirred a pot of miso soup as the radio in the kitchen blasted out whatever awful top 40 song it had picked this morning. He had only put it on to fill the silence really, which was the only thing this awful excuse for music was good for in his opinion.

He was making breakfast for the two of you as a kind of mini celebration. He had two days off in a row, the first time in a couple of months because of his crazy work schedule and he wanted to make sure he spent every moment that he could with his alpha. And so, here he was, getting up early to prepare breakfast for your both.

There was a lull in noise as the radio switched between songs, and in the few moments of silence, Bakugou could hear shuffling coming from the bathroom. He grinned. Perfect timing.

He put down the last plate and waited for you to come out, you should be here any second now.

 Fiddling with your shirt one last time you swung open your bedroom door, bag on your shoulder, finally ready to leave. You were interrupted momentarily by a delicious scent in the air. Bakugou must be cooking, so you followed the smell to the kitchen and walked in to say goodbye to him, vaguely sad that you were going to be missing his food, but he was probably only making himself something to bring to work, anyway.

And then you saw the elaborate breakfast spread your heart stopped. Had you forgotten an anniversary? Bakugou looked just as shocked to see you dressed up and ready to leave. However, his shock soon melts into frustration.

“Why are you all dressed up?” he growled, the excitement that had been on his face when you walked in now gone. “You said you weren’t working today.”

“I’m not,” you said quietly, confused as to why he was so upset. “Izuku messaged me while I was getting dressed and invited me for brunch, I was just going to meet him.”

Bakugou’s face screwed up at your words. He went to open his mouth but then stopped. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He was doing the breathing exercises that his therapist taught him for when he was angry. What had you done to make him this upset?

The relaxing exercises clearly weren’t working for him because he stood up from the table and stalked out of the room suddenly, shutting himself in your bedroom. You winced as the door slammed shut behind him.

Oh dear… you had made your mate so upset that he had shut himself away in your bedroom. Your stomach twisted itself into a knot. It was time for some damage control (and a quick check of the calendar to makes sure you hadn’t actually forgotten an anniversary or something.)

You shot a quick text to Midoriya, apologising for cancelling and letting him know that something had come up. He sent back a ‘don’t worry!’ message and about six smiling emojis. Well, at least he wasn’t also mad at you.

Fishing out a tray from the cupboard above the sink, you stacked it up with as much food from the table as you could, thankful that it appeared to still be warm, and carried it to your bedroom door.

“Katsuki?” you called out, knocking on the door with your foot. “I’m coming in, is that okay?”

There was silence. Well, silence was better than swearing, so you carefully slid open the door and moved towards the brooding lump on the bed.

“The fuck do you want?” he growled. “I thought you were going out to eat with Deku?”

You froze at his vicious tone. Was he jealous? Well, that was a lot easier to solve than forgetting an anniversary, at least.  With a smile, you slid the tray onto the bedside table and climbed on the bed behind you mate, letting out a reassuring scent. You wrapped your arms around him, ignoring how he tensed in your embrace, and whispered into his ear.

“Why would I spend time with Midoriya when I could be spending time with you, hmm?” you whispered, purposefully blowing hot air onto his neck. You revelled in his full body shiver. “The only reason I accepted plans with Midoriya was because I thought you were going to work.” You pressed as close to him as you could and placed a single kiss right behind his ear. Bakugou melted at the affection.

“Come on now,” you continued, a coy smile on your face. “Let’s not let this delicious breakfast go to waste.”

You reached over and scooped a little bit of rice onto your fingers before holding it up to his lips. Bakugou opened his mouth with only a small grumble in complaint, and you made sure to push your fingers a little deeper inside than perhaps absolutely necessary.

“I promise I’ll make this morning’s misunderstanding up to you.”

Miscellaneous:

Bakugou’s scent is fairly sweet but still quite smoky.

When he’s upset/stressed, his scent is like burnt sugar, and when he’s very happy/excited, he smells like almost like a marshmallow roasting on a bonfire.

It’s a very pleasant scent but it does tend to divide people. Some love it, and others hate it.  Bakugou doesn’t care what anyone else thinks about his scent (except his alpha, but shh, that’s a secret!)

In his family, his father is an omega and his mother is an alpha and while they are happy together, Bakugou always promised himself that he would never end up in a relationship like that. He didn’t want some alpha bossing him around like his mother bossed around his father.

Bakugou finds meek alphas (and people) annoying, but he doesn’t like super aggressive alphas either. He’s attracted to people who exist in the middle of those extremes.

Bakugou knew he was an omega from birth, and it was something he was very insecure about for a long time. It was a big part of why he turned out the way he did as a child, he was making up for something that he viewed as a weakness by being as aggressive as possible.

His mother wasn’t great at making him feel secure in his secondary gender, assuming he would like certain things and pushing him in certain directions simply because he was an omega.

His father said that he was there if Bakugou had any questions, but he let Bakugou reach out to him instead of reaching out to Bakugou, and Bakugou was too proud to make the first move.

Bakugou ends up deciding that being an omega wasn’t going to stop him becoming the No. 1 hero. He decided that he could overcome being an omega.

It wasn’t until he was an adult that he actually started to accept being an omega was a part of him that he didn’t need to overcome, but that he could instead embrace and that it didn’t make him weak to do so.

When he does become a mainstream hero, he makes sure to always tell the omega children that he meets that they can do whatever they want and still be an omega.

N-sfw under the cut

Bakugou is a switch, mostly.

Oftentimes he switches multiple times in the same session, so his alpha needs to be quite the brat tamer to keep him from getting frustrated and trying to get on top so that he can control the pace.

He has a very high sex drive, and he likes to have a partner who can match him because he way prefers sex to masturbating.

It would be hard to find someone whose chest and nipples are as sensitive as Bakugou’s, and when he’s in heat, he can definitely orgasm just from his chest being stimulated.

Bakugou is also definitely a squirter, something which he was very shocked and embarrassed to find out.

Bakugou generally prefers slightly rougher sex. He gets bored when the pace is too slow and definitely scratches and bites (and is happy to receive the same in return).

When he’s in heat, Bakugou is a bit different.

He’s not a pillow prince by any means, but he is definitely a lot more passive than he is normally.

He’s not super loud, but he definitely swears a lot, even between waves of heat when he gets grumpy that he’s too hot and sticky. That swearing is a lot less sexy though.

Bakugou’s sexual side doesn’t really come out outside of his own home. He doesn’t like flaunting anything in public and can even get uncomfortable talking about sex with his friends, especially when they tease him with personal questions. He’s definitely a private person when it comes to sex.

Although that is not to say he isn’t confident in the expression of his own sexuality, much to opposite is true. He is definitely the kind of person to order some new toy or outfit on the internet every month to surprise his alpha.

He’s sexy and he knows it, so why not?

[darkcircles4lyfe]

Death to All Might, Rebirth to Yagi Toshinori

So about All Might. I’ve been extremely wary of talking about what could happen to him because straight up saying “I don’t think he’s gonna die” is asking the universe to spite me. Plus it also feels like a room full of people turning to stare at me as if I said the Sun isn’t a star. Man has death flags everywhere, I know. 

But, okay, *Bill Nye voice* consider the following:

Mr. Yagi here, if he overheard everything, just received the final nail in the coffin on his career. His time as the symbol of peace is not only over, it was in fact partially responsible for the current state of things, since he once did so much on his own that his absence now makes heroes and civilians alike ill-prepared to cope. I think it was very apt for that one guy to be wearing an All Might shirt--he was acting as a mouthpiece for the latent societal problems embedded in All Might’s legacy. 

We know already that he’s been feeling useless. I love this scene and although I’m not gonna talk about it right this second, remember what Aizawa says about just “being here” being enough:

And we know from conversations with Inko that Toshinori is also reframed his purpose around looking after Izuku. But in the end, Izuku rejected his help, and it was his classmates instead who were able to save him. Now the very progress of humanity is rejecting him too. You may me wondering how on Earth I don’t see the logical conclusion of all this being his death. Hold on. It actually has a lot to do with the fact that we’re all expecting it. Nighteye himself saw it, and despite any contrary convictions anyone might have, the plot doesn’t seem to be veering away from that end. All Might Is Gonna Die, says absolutely everything. 

It’s occurring to me that I have previous experience with this kind of plotline that probably little to no one else in this fandom shares, being that I’ve read a certain book series in which the main character is told in no uncertain terms that he will die (no, I’m not talking about hp). The series in question is T*e Und*rland Chronicl*s (censoring so it doesn’t get put in their side of tumblr) and I’m sorry but I’m about to go on a shameless tangent about it and spoil the ending for you.

So in this series there is a prophecy in every book, each one having something to do with war and conflict, and so far all of them have been right. In the last book [mc] finds out that it’s prophesied that he will be killed. Lots of the things in the prophecies are convoluted and metaphorical, but no, this one literally says “when the [mc’s title] has been killed.” He spends the whole book coming to terms with this, and he gives into it, only to find himself waking up in the hospital instead. “Wow, plot twist. /s” you may be thinking, and yeah sure, the mc in a kids book survived, big shocker. But it doesn't end there. After the war, there are peace talks, but they escalate until the two sides are on the verge of declaring war again. And [mc], bless him, has just been caught in the middle of all of this the entire time. He’s sick as shit of fighting, of watching the suffering and death of people he cares about. He draws his sword against both of them angrily, gives a speech saying he won’t take a side, and then promptly breaks his sword across his knee: “There. [mc’s title in the prophecies] is dead. I killed him.” He’s giving a huge middle finger to everyone there, to the man who wrote the prophecies, to the entire fucked up culture of it all. And so something that was taken literally turns out to be metaphorical. That is, if you still believe in the prophecies at all.

Hopefully you’re catching my drift here. What I’m saying is, even though this other series has nothing to do with bnha, it goes to show sometimes it’s the most absolute certainties that are red herrings, and a “death” can consequently be a symbolic one. In All Might’s case, it could be the death of hero society and a rejection of his own past. In other words, character development for Toshinori himself that reflects on the way the world is changing, too. Also there’s the fact that the mc from that other series I’m trying not to name has an honorary title, and I’m imagining that role he occupied “dying” could correspond to something that amounts to, “All Might is dead. I (Yagi Toshinori) killed him.” 

And here’s another thing: we also have to ask ourselves what good a dead Toshinori is to Izuku, narratively speaking. Yes, Izuku has spent his whole life idolizing even the more toxic parts of All Might, and his idealized vision of his hero does need to “die.” But how about Toshinori as a father figure?  Izuku regretting that his last interaction with Toshinori was to reject his help may drive home the fact that he shouldn’t go off on his own, but at this point it’s kinda redundant. If anything it would negate some of the progress that was just made because it’d make him extra paranoid about losing other people too. To be honest, the whole “Uncle Ben” trope, the mentor/father figure who dies and gives the mc a reason to do better, is so tired. Experiencing the death of a loved one really doesn’t deserve to be romanticized like that. I might as well admit that I’m speaking from experience, and let me tell you, losing someone you love suddenly, when you weren’t around, and with unfinished business--it makes you paranoid as hell that it will happen again. It literally gives me nightmares. Y’all, I cannot stress enough that trauma does not equal character development. Granted, just because I know this doesn’t mean Horikoshi does, but in general he does seem to lead his characters toward healing.

Okay, back to the present. Toshinori is turning away from UA. He likely feels useless and rejected. We can infer that what happens next will involve Stain, and we have a couple of extra clues to go with it: Stain considers All Might a true hero, and has stated that he would let All Might kill him. And since Horikoshi loves his parallels, we also have this fight between Endeavor and this random villain who admires him so much that he wants to die by Endeavor’s hand:

This suggests a confrontation in which Stain challenges All Might to live up to himself as he once was, so that as a hero he can vanquish Stain and symbolically overcome society's perversion of that role. But based on what All Might has learned about the system he upheld, Stain is wrong. All Might is not a “true hero” in the sense that the societal issues Stain witnessed exist not in spite of All Might, but (in part) because of him, because he took too much of the responsibility for himself.

Stain probably had no idea about the personal cost of All Might’s lonely burden until after the fact. Maybe he’s seeing it now. So then perhaps the confrontation would be more about Stain claiming he’s just as fake as the rest. Either way, Toshinori has the opportunity to denounce himself and be rid of “All Might,”  to stop living in his own shadow. Nighteye’s vision has been defied before, and I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the combination of society shifting + Toshinori’s own conviction is enough to do it again and work fate in his favor.

He is not All Might. He is Yagi Toshinori: quirkless, worn down, and directionless except for his dedication to Izuku. If he survives his interaction with Stain, he can resolve his imperfect mentorship by confessing about his shortcomings and simply supporting Izuku as a part of his family, not as his teacher (as Aizawa said, just “being there”). And that’s how you really get character development, for both of them. I mean, shit, imagine Toshinori straight up telling Izuku to stop calling him All Might.