#like obviously theres the weird feeling of meeting a version of someone you love who is similar on the surface but is actually so different

[yasminbenoit]

I’m so proud to announce that I am the first-ever openly asexual person in Paper Magazine! It’s a great step for asexual visibility, I can’t believe I’m in a publication like this speaking about the importance of asexual visibility. Your support has made this happen. We are here, we are being seen. 

Spread the word! 

When we talk about the LGBTQIA+ community, there still isn't a lot of talk about the "A" portion, and that's something UK-based model and activist Yasmin Benoit is actively trying to change.

As an asexual and aromantic person, Benoit does not experience sexual or romantic attraction. And while she's spent the majority of her life comfortable with this knowledge, it's also something she knows isn't the case for many others — and a lot of this can be chalked up to a dearth of asexual and aromantic representation.

So, using the platform and visibility she built as a model, Benoit has spent the past two years making videos, writing posts, and giving talks about the topic, which is still rife with misinformation and harmful stereotypes. According to her, "when you say you don't experience romance and sexuality and that those things are, innately, not a part of you, people think you're less human," which she says is a result of the importance society places sexuality.

"[They say] you're robotic. You're psychopathic. I often get narcissistic," as Benoit explains, before launching into the misconceptions she has to deal with on a daily basis. The biggest one? Her occupation, especially when it comes to her work with lingerie, almost always elicits a confused public reaction. Even though the rationale behind modeling lingerie is simple: she likes the garments and enjoys mixing up her portfolio.

"People find it weird as an overlap, because I'm asexual," she explains. "People think if you're modeling lingerie, something sexual is going on. They don't realize I'm just standing there for a couple hours, making a little conversation and shaking hands, before I go home."

Yet despite Benoit's sound logic, she says she still, on the daily, runs into a lot of questions surrounding her job, which is "seen as an oxymoron" — likely due to the inherent sexualization of lingerie modeling. That said, she says this isn't the most troubling assumption she's had to deal with, as exemplified by the myriad of invasive questions pertaining to why she's asexual and aromantic.

"Literally, yesterday, I had a man insisting I had been molested, and I was just hiding it and repressing it," she uses as an example. "He was insistent that that was obviously my issue. They think sexual attraction is the most human thing ever, and it's impossible to not feel that. You can't be human if you don't feel anything."

Sadly though, this sort of presumptuous projection and unfounded theorization has been happening to her from before she even figured out that there was terminology for how she felt. As Benoit says, she'd constantly be "quizzed on my sexuality" from the time she was around 9.

"Once other people around me started getting more hormonal, more into dating and going out with each other, I was like, 'This is kind of silly. I just want to stick by myself and play with my Legos,'" she recalls. "I assumed it would kick in for me, but it wasn't something I encouraged."

Unfortunately, Benoit says that once people began noticing that she "wasn't reacting to things the same way" as other girls her age — talking about her crushes or fantasizing about boys — they began coming up with theories, with some people even going so far as to tell her about their hypotheses, which ranged from theories about her being gay, a religious prude, a potential survivor of sexual abuse, or "just mentally slow."

"Because I wasn't reacting like everyone else, they concluded that I was stupid," Benoit explains, also mentioning that she's had to put up with other people assuming that she was repressing sexual trauma or that she was hiding a secret perversion. "But I just didn't understand why other people were trying to work it out for me, because there wasn't really anything to work out. I hadn't been molested. I don't have sexual hang-ups. I'm not against sex. There was nothing to work out."

That said, even once she learned about asexuality and aromanticism, that apparently "didn't stop people from coming up with theories" — including her own father, who she says recently went so far as to accuse her of pedophilia. But all the naysay has also, in part, spurred Benoit to dive into the world of activism.

As Benoit started gaining traction as a model, she began toying with the idea of mentioning her asexuality online in an effort to reach others grappling with their asexuality. This all resulted in a casual post about the topic, as well as the release of a video called "Things Asexual Girls Don't Want to Hear" — something she genuinely "didn't think people would care that much about," but ended up "spiraling, because not a lot of people talk about it."

"The asexual community was very happy to see someone with a platform discussing it," Benoit explains, later adding that she had "people messaging me how much it meant to them, which [made me feel like], if doing something so simple is really impacting people's lives, I might as well keep doing it." Benoit adds that she'd love to see more asexual and aromantic role models out there, especially since the stigma is so prevalent. After all, as Benoit explains, a lack of visibility and understanding surrounding asexuality and aromanticism makes those grappling with their identities much more hesitant to "come out" — whether we're talking about men, for whom sexual desire is "seen as such a quintessential trait of masculinity," or an asexual person who doesn't want to potentially "embarass" their romantic partner.

For now though, Benoit is doing what she can, with her most prominent push toward asexual visibility so far being a hashtag she started last year called #ThisIsWhatAsexualLooksLike, which aims to "dispel the idea that theres an asexual way to look or dress."

"People often say I don't look asexual, and I don't dress asexual, but what do you think that looks like then?" she explains. "I was trying to show the diversity of the community and, at the same time, give a tool back to others, so that they can represent themselves without relying on the media."

"There is a lot of stigma still around, so asexual people can go decades without realizing there's a word for what they're not feeling."

That said, Benoit's also quick to posit that while her asexuality and aromanticism have "never been a secret," it took her until that point to "realize I was filling a space and providing that visibility, especially for asexual minorities." That said, she also mentions that being a Black asexual activist is also an especially tenunous task, as there's a huge racial disparity when it comes to visibility.

"People perceive my asexuality differently than white asexual people," Benoit says, before mentioning the televised version of a documentary that she was cut out of — something she believes is "reflective of people higher up in the company who looked at us and was like, 'She doesn't make sense.'"

However, in the uncut version posted online, Benoit said the comments about her were much more "sexually aggressive and racialized" than what the other white activists got. "There was a lot more anger directed at me," she says. "People find it harder to compute that a Black woman can be asexual just because we're hypersexualized a lot more."

And though she acknowledges the difficulties of being a Black activist, Benoit says she's undeterred in her mission to continue spreading visibility and tackling the misconceptions and stigma surrounding asexuality and aromanticism. Her next steps? According to Benoit, she's currently working on a BBC radio series about asexuality, starring in another documentary about the topic, and potentially doing more talks at sex-positivity conferences and international Pride events. However, she's also eager to help organize more events in the UK that would provide physical spaces for asexual and aromantic people to convene and feel seen as well as supported by others.

"There is a lot of stigma [and misconception] still around, so even asexual people can go decades without realizing there's a word for what they're not feeling," Benoit says. "That has to change."

Article written by Sandra Song.

Hair & MUA: Fey Adediji (@beautybyfey_) Photography: Matt Parker (@mtyparks) Lingerie: Playful Promises Model: Yasmin Benoit (@theyasminbenoit)

[idontwanttospoiltheparty]

Ive never really understood the hype surrounding Taylor Swift - I mean, I like some of her songs, but im not big on modern pop music so generally she just doesn’t really click for me. But I find it interesting that theres quite a few of Beatles/Swift blogs - like, they should have very little in common given that they’re from completely different eras and all, but somehow people seem to find a lot of semblance between the two. << and thats not me shitting on any of these blogs btw! Hope I don’t come off as rude or condescending there <3

Anyway, I was just wondering what got you into Taylor Swift? (I think ive read your post on how you got into the Beatles)

Hi, anon! Don't worry, I don't think you're rude or condescending! I agree they don't have too much in common and I don't really like their music for the same reasons.* I do have a playlist of Paul songs that have similar vibes to Taylor songs but it's mostly lyric-based. (Also the Beatles For Sale songs actually have quite the Taylor-tinge because Paul and John were not immune to Country Music)

I saw @stewy say once that a possible reason there are a good handful of us Swiftie-Beatle People on here is the appeal of a vast discography, which I agree with. If you have an artist/group with 200ish songs, it's just really fun to really dive into their work and explore all the facets. I also think: we're talking about the most popular band of all time and one of the highest-selling artists of the 21st century. They have a lot of fans so there's bound to be overlap, regardless of musical differences.

Moving on to your question: Getting into Taylor was an extremely personal experience for me and so my explanation is probably going to be kind of long so I'll put it under a read more.

It was spring-summer 2014, I was 15. I had heard the more popular songs of hers starting with Love Story and enjoyed pretty much all of them (I always found her hopelessly romantic point of view fascinating) but before I got a Spotify account in 2013 it was difficult in general for me to really get into an artists' entire discography so most of her songs had flown under my radar.

At the time, I was in this very weird sort of codependent online friendship with this girl who was basically my first real best friend and my first more or less crush. She was very depressed and I was very much in an I Could Fix Her™ mood, except that I obviously couldn't fix her and it made me feel like I wasn't enough and she had begun pulling more and more away from me and not replying to my messages and it was simply driving me insane. I consider it the saddest period in my life.

at some point during this period, I started trying to connect with other people (all online, I didn't know how to talk seriously to anyone IRL) and explaining the issues I'd been having, and one of the people who brought me joy and whom I actually felt not drained talking to was a huge swiftie. And IDK the fact that she loved Taylor and the fact that talking to her made my life better (and also the fact that I liked all the Taylor songs I knew at that point) just made me decide to give her a listen. And I think that whole "large discography discovery" phenomenon really helped me at the time (funny, because her discography has doubled since then). It gave me something new to focus on; there were just so many songs to discover, all telling such rich stories. I also have always loved bridges, they are almost always my favourite part of a song. And Taylor, god-bless her, loves them too and always puts her ALL in them. Like pretty much every bridge of hers brings the song to the next level, and even a lot of her songs I don't adore tend to have great bridges (Stay Stay Stay and Paper Rings come to mind). I think one of her most underrated qualities is how good she is at song structure and really building up an entire musical journey with a song. She also almost always adds cool ad-libs in her second and third choruses to keep the songs interesting and dynamic (or at least since she's gone pop). Anyways, back to the story: Then Taylor announced 1989 as her next album and released Shake It Off, and it was just like this great happy thing for me to look forward to, when I had very little keeping me going. The era was promoting a lot of happiness which in hindsight was slightly fabricated and it was just a really great thing for me to latch onto.

At the same time I was coming to realize that I was gonna have to pull away completely from my friend and all those break-up songs just… Hit, y'know? Like, some people seem to think Taylor's a one-trick pony because she likes to write break-up songs but to me, break-ups are just like this moment where you as a human can potentially feel every single emotion, and Taylor's songs have covered every facet of the concept. Here are some songs I remember from that period, that all meant a lot to me at the time because they explained my own pain to me so well:

Haunted, for the absolute terror you feel in the first moments you realize someone is probably gonna leave you. Come on, come on / Don't leave me like this / I thought I had you figured out / Something's gone terribly wrong / You're all I wanted.

I Almost Do, for the inner turmoil you feel when you know you have to stay away from someone for your own good but you really, really have to resist just running back to that person. We've made quite a mess, Babe / It's probably better off this way / And I confess, Babe / In my dreams you're touching my face / And asking me if I wanna try again / With you / And I almost do.

Last Kiss, for that absolute sadness that comes simply with remembering everything that was good and not comprehending how it could've possibly ended. I still remember / The look on your face / Lit through the darkness / At 1:58 / Words that you whispered / For just us to know / You told me you loved me / So why did you go / Away?

Forever and Always, for that feeling of desperately wanting to hold on to what you still have but at the same time realizing it probably isn't going to last and having no idea how to fix it, plus feeling like the other person doesn't even care. So here's to everything / Coming down to nothing / Here's to silence / That cuts me to the core / Where is this going? / Thought I knew for a minute / But I don't anymore.

Dear John, my all-time favourite song, for that moment you find clarity and realize that you deserved better and that you were headed in an extremely dark direction because of this other person. [DISCLAIMER: my friend did NOT abuse me nor did we have some inappropriate age difference. But the way she would ignore me and her general moodiness really affected my own mental health and self-worth problems] You paint me a blue sky / And go back and turn it to rain / And I lived in your chess games / But you changed the rules every day / Wondering which version of you I might get on the phone / Tonight / Well I stopped picking up / And this song is to let you know why.

(She's covered more aspects of break-ups in other songs [cheating, divorce, feeling awkward around your ex amongst others], these are just the ones I remember being really important to me when I was first getting into her)

She really helped me feel a lot less alone during one of my loneliest periods and I really can't thank her enough for that. Soon after this, I started crushing on a girl in my class and Taylor's love songs started to take on a new meaning for me as well.

What's crazy to me is, when she went on hiatus for a few years, a part of me thought maybe I'd grown out of her and no longer had much in common with her, but when reputation came out I was pulled right back into my love for her as a person and musician and then when Lover came out I found that she was still explaining feelings to me better than I ever could (specifically with the songs The Archer and Cornelia Street). And now with folklore and evermore she's simply absolutely perfected her story-telling and I find myself deeply moved even by the songs I don't directly relate to. I feel like she has this amazing ability to find the absolute truth in the specific. I've never had a summer romance with someone who already had a girlfriend and mostly wanted to go back to her, and yet the bridge of august feels so real to me, y'know?

Back when we were still changin' for the better Wanting was enough For me, it was enough To live for the hope of it all Cancel plans just in case you'd call And say, "Meet me behind the mall" So much for summer love and saying "us" 'Cause you weren't mine to lose

It's hard to explain but looking at this, like it's so much more than the story it's telling. It's talking about how when you're young you really need so little to feel satisfied; how sometimes the idea of someone maybe spending time with you is better than actually doing things with other people; and how if someone using you without much thought can make you feel like you're not even entitled to grieve what you lost. Sorry. I'll stop. Don't want to go insane.

So, all of this is very personal and unique to me, but I think really the main thing that draws me to her is how vulnerable and honest she is about emotions, how eloquently she can explain the pain of being alive to me. Some people think she isn't the strongest singer, but I think, much like John actually, one of her greatest assets is how good she is at projecting emotion. The song happiness is a song I think has some lyrically weak moments but her vocal performance on it is so raw and devastating that every single line works even when, looking at it on paper, it feels like it shouldn't.

Hope this rambling made sense to you, lmao?? I love talking about Taylor though so thanks for the ask! Also very open to giving song recs if you do want to check her out more but I won't unless solicited to lmao *Sort of off-topic but I do think there's a relation between my fascination with the Beatles' history and my love for a great break-up song. I like pain I guess :)

[gayregis]

im at that stage of fatigue from the day where i’m so tired the fanfiction is writing itself in my mind theough dialogue but i’m too insanely tired to sit down and write it all out and i work a shift in the morning too so i dont even have time ... so ill forget everything come morning

[[MORE]]

psych, ima try to outline it rn

this is after a little sacrifice and also after season of storms and takes place in cidaris (im not clear on if kerack is the capital so season of storms dealt with the proper king of cidaris or if it was just a local kingship but im hcing that cidaris is also a capital city as well as the region/nation).

this is geralt and dandelion going to the grape festival mentioned in a little sacrifice btw

main goal for this is to basically give dandelion more depth and address his identity issues and backstory and just how his character is in general

valdo marx (as far as i am headcanoning in terms of appearance right now) is of course , also a twink and they have similar builds but valdo isnt as skinny as dandelion because he has access to three full meals every day. he has dark brown hair and green eyes, and i might give him the same hair and beard as dandelion from tw3 just to spite cdpr. he used to sport green/purple doublets as an independent artist, but now as the reaident troubadour of cidaris, he’s adopted their emblatic colors (blue and white) and wears a doublet with a sash of these colors. he doesn’t have poofy sleeves, instead he has these ruffs and like... bellbottom sleeves. also this method of embellishing clothes that i learned from a glamour video (it’s @ 4:30ish) called slashing is applicable to his outfits. i think he veers away from tights unlike dandelion, so he wears more breeches than anything. he doesn’t have detailed embroidery like dandelion, but rather patterned/quilted areas with silver and some small pearls added for decoration in these sections as well.

so geralt and valdo have to be placed together somehow in a conversation. basically he wants to #expose dandelion for being a fraud... but he’s not doing it out of Pure Evil, he’s (vaguely) kind of like the lodge of sorceresses in which it’s like, he is only wanting things to be done his way because really he thinks it’s the best way to do things. he’s really a victim of academia, he would be someone that supports the fact that instruments are like $1,000 each.

basically he and dandelion were classmates at oxenfurt and at first hit it off very well and shared notes and thoughts and sexual partners and all was splendid. but they got competitive and valdo HATES that dandelion does NOT come from a family known for music or any kind of art. basically dandelion is a novus homo, but in the world of music, and valdo comes from an established family which has been musically inclined for generations. he feels that ppl like dandelion just wanna go to oxenfurt for shits and giggles and dont take this opportunity seriously because theyre too blinded by their own arrogance to actually learn anything. and he may be right in regards to a lot of other children of wealthy noble families that attend oxenfurt. but dandelion’s case was different and this he does not like to admit. also he hates how dandelion is... inclined to... a life of debauchery... because he feels he perpetuates stereotypes of artists being good for nothing penniless drunkards and lechers, and makes it harder for Real Professionals from Actual Lineage to get a job. also he has a disdain for how dandelion really wanted to travel and admired the “musicians of the world” that never attended some fancy college, and again valdo sees this as him not appreciating the opportunity he was given, because all you ever need to interact with is this little 1 mile by 1 mile square of oxenfurt, and not even the whole city, just the college. also when valdo tells all this to geralt he goes give him a judgemental up and down look like... “julian loves meeting, writing about, and... ahem... fraternizing with... all kinds of ... people.” (he was gonna say “trash,” but geralt has swords and cats eyes, so valdo swallowed that last word). ALSO ALSO valdo thinks dandelion is further destroying the sanctity of academic places like oxenfurt by training good for nothings from other nobody families, like essi daven, who was actually from a noble family but one not too rich because it was kind of distant from the ruling family. and since she threw a fit they let her do her own thing instead of marrying her off.

also valdo is like “julian— ahem, ... ‘dandelion,’ as you know him... i don’t know why he uses that absurd little nickname,” because he just finds the idea of a pseudonym stupid (since hes from a famous musical family of course he wants to highlight his lineage). and again he dislikes how dandelion is Corrupting Others by not only mentoring essi at oxenfurt, but training her in an “unorthodox fashion,” ie they just duet and talk shit about random stuff and he advises her weird things like “get a cool fake name so all the girls have something to scream as you go on stage”

as they interact with each other, valdo and dandelion actually are kind of opposite of dandelion and essi. they dont throw ANY snide remarks and keep it all under wraps with just pleased smiles and then as soon as theyre out of earshot (a long way for bards) theyre like “i am going to take the replacement strings of my lute and choke the lights out of that tone-deaf idiot” ... geralt is like 😳 to see aggression in dandelion and hes a bit intimidated at first but then is like Bro Are you Fucking Okay ????? Because its so unnatural for dandelion to be Actually Upset about something and not be ok within half a day

scene where dandelion is staring at the mirror and geralt is like you have been staring at the mirror for a long time, even by your standards... dandelion is like “i have to change something... geralt, look at me. look at me. (says it again bc geralt didnt look up the first time). if you could change one thing about my face, what would it be?” and geralts obviously like “nothing.” and dandelions like dont be fucking difficult just tell me i need to know i need your opinion and geralt is like that IS my opinion i sincerely like your face the way it is. something something blah blah blah tenderness geralt says smth like dandelion you have a lot of loyal fans okay...... and hes trying to refer to himself but he doesnt wanna say it aloud

i think something about dandelion talking about who he was (basically referring to “julian” in the 3rd person) and just very uncharacteristically self-loathing but them he pops back into his little arrogant self ... basically he covers that everyone Fucking Laughed at him for wanting to sing but he did it and now he’s the best and also, sexy. in this whole scene (same scene as last bullet point) he is also saying that he needs to “prove himself” and geralt is just like What More Can You Do, You Are Literally Famous... but dandelion is just pensive about it

also he says something like “theres two versions of me... julian with a dream who nobody knows, and dandelion who’s famous and loved.” and geralts like “theres three.” “three?” “there’s also dandelion, the one i know, who, it doesn’t matter if he’s famous or what, because i just like him and enjoy his company.” BECAUSE i dont know how not to be blunt and not hit my readers over the head with what i wanted to get across. geralt is a blunt man however so i think its acceptable to do this

basically this fic is “dandelion can have little a OOCness for character development”

tbh its not too ooc (hopefully) bc hes not like downright depressed, hes just pensive, like he is when hes trying to think of a good title or rhymes and nothing is working. nothing is working! hes frustrated!!!

i have nooooo idea how to resolve this conflict ive introduced. i think valdo and dandelion have to sing a duet together and it is like skating on thin ice with sharks underneath . MAYBE valdo gets possessed by,, something? not a demon bc IVE HAD ENOUGH GOETIA AFTER SEASON OF STORMS but you know An Entity, and dandelion is like wow this is an improvement!! and geralts like no it isnt, now i have to exorcise this fucker

also throughout this i think that the king and queen of cidaris (maintaining that kerack isnt the capital and is just another kingship within the nation) looooveveeveveeee dandelion and his presence and are like oh dandelion you are always welcome in our court :) which also totally pisses valdo off because its like dandelion came into his work/home and fucked both of his bosses and is trying to steal their loyalty through Sexual Appeal. which. may ring true. but dandelion does stuff for fun and not for manipulation soooo valdo is a little wrong in thinking dandelion is manipulating them. and this also adds to valdos resentment of dandelion for being so promiscuous and also writing about his love affairs bc he feels it detracts from The Art...

basically this fic is also me telling academia and ppl who feel art should be limited to a certain crowd to go stuff it cause no one cares and creativity and learning is only human of anyone. also an excuse to give dandelion character depth and also an excuse to break how geralt is always the gloomy one and dandelion has to cheer him up, i think though they do have their strong personalities, relationships should ideally go both ways in terms of emotional support so it shows geralt has the capacity to support a dandelion with festering anger and personal identity problems. also a way for geralt to learn a little abt dandelions backstory without learning/spoiling the fact that hes a v*scount and actually noble and wealthy (they just refer to his family as being wealthy enough to pay for oxenfurt which is significant but not astounding)

[pwnyta]

Full Endgame spoilers/review:

(TL;DR: It was really fucking good. Theres some bad obviously but overall worth it. Even after reading the spoilers and feeling like I may not like it as much as I thought I would... I actually liked it more.)

- - So as I said I loved the movie I had some gripes but overall I thought it was one hell of a fun, entertaining movie. I'll go by each characters story in my review saving Cap and Tony for last.

Natasha- Honestly? Though I think the MCU dropped the ball on the 0G6 being a believable family... I think Nats role in this movie was sweet. I really like the scene where Tony Nat and Bruce were laying down talking about Strange and the stones. It was really cute but it really made me wish we got to see this earlier. Joss dropped the ball hard in AoU. Ive said it one and I'll say it again. AoU should have been the movie where the Avengers were a solid unit throughout the movie.Nats death was... heroic but honestly her and Clint beating the shit out of each other because neither could stand the thought of the other being sacrificed was kinda funny and cute which is jarring to the story. It kinda sucks that she was fridged before the final battle though.

Clint- What are the fucking odds that every one of his family was dusted? But w/e. Clint having a wild sword battle in Japan... it was ridiculous and weird and IDK what they were thinking with that scene but it was played really dramatically but I laughed? Cuz it was so over the top and silly... even though he just slit that guys throat and Nats like :c Clint~ honey no its fine... and they hold hands over the guys warm corpse. LMFAO WHAT!? Im at least happy his kids got him back if nothing else.

Bruce- ... Bruce with Hulks big green body? NICE. Thats gonna have some interesting fanart I can already tell and I lift my glass to you. I once tried to draw a little comic where Bruce and Hulk separated but also had swapped bodies.... so Bruce had Hulks body but I never did finish it I wonder if I still have it saved somewhere. Anyways. Honestly? I found Bruce in this movie to be equal parts funny and annoying? Like it was a bit jarring sometimes that he was so lighthearted despite everything.

Thor- When I read the spoilers I thought I was gonna really dislike Thor but watching it I understood where Thor was coming from and I couldnt really blame him for spiraling and its not like anyone close to him seemed to even check up on him despite clearly knowing where he was. Im really sad that it took all those years and only until he was needed for someone to try and talk Thor through what he was going through. Im not annoyed with Thor. Im annoyed with the rest of them (minus Tony and I guess Clint? Considering.). Bruce was his friend in Ragnarok, Nat keeps talking about them being family, and Steve is their leader where the hell were they? Unless im missing something... I guess Valkyrie too but shes been picking up his slack as a leader and was holding the Asgardians together so I can cut her some slack. ANYWAYS. Thor was kinda funny in the movie but it was kind of hard to enjoy his goofiness. It kind felt like Tony in IM2. Speaking of Im glad Tony seemed really tolerant of Thors drunk behavior... I was sure he would throw a lot of shots like Rocket did. I wish they had a moment to talk about Thor self medicating with booze... Tonys been there. I get why they couldnt really but.. His scene with Frigga was really nice. Frigga is a bad bitch raised by witches and shit.... she knows all~ A wise woman that Frigga.

Scott- HOLY SHIT Did I love Scott in this movie. He was soo funny and cute... and bullied a lot. You know I have a thing for easily bulliable character. And Scott just got spanked left and right. His helpless goofiness reminded me of Harry from KKBB a little. He bounced off everyone well and it makes me kinda wish he was one of the OG6 instead of Clint. He was more of the heart that kept the Avengers together than anyone. Also him and Tony talking about Caps ass? HILARIOUS. Bisexual icons honestly. 'That suit did nothing for your ass.' 'No one asked you to look!' 'I think you look great Cap as far as Im concerned thats Americas ass!' and then later Caps all 'That IS Americas ass.' Unbelievable. But his best scene is still him reuniting with Cassie. She was so big! Im so happy she got her dad back... but Bruces failed time travel machine scene.... that was a close second. 'Somebody peed my pants... idk if it was baby me or old me........ or me me.' Also the 'whats up regular sized man' scene is longer and more hilarious than the preview showed. FUCK YOUR TACO SCOTT. At least Bruce is nice to him. I ship GreenAnt a little. Rocket petting Scott and mockingly calling him a puppy. SAME.

Rhodey- JESUS RHODEY. Speaking of hilarious idiots. Im glad he got a bigger roll in this movie but he didnt hug Tony when he got back so whats the point? BUT W/E... He was hilarious and amazing. It was nice to see him step up as one of the sorta leaders after the snappening. But he was also A HUGE FUCKING DORK THE ENTIRE WAY THROUGH. Thinking that a secret cavern with a spooky name would be boobytrapped like in Indiana Jones and trying to convince Nebula to be careful. Naming a bunch of shitty time travel movies to prove a point about time travel (with Scotts help) and going back in time to kill baby Thanos...and Bruce was like 'yeah... no...' and him fucking TRASHING the magic of the iconic opening scene of the first GotG where Quill is dancing.... 'so hes an idiot?' RHODEY PLEEEEAAASSSEEEE have mercy. Him and Nebula are a trip. Also I made a note to mention Don Cheadles BEAUTIFUL soft voice. So here it is. I love Don Cheadles beautiful soft voice. He had too few scenes with Tony but their first scene when Tony starts freaking out and hes trying to get Tony to calm down was pretty good... and god that ending.... ;-; How come Rhodey got NO lines while Tony was dying? But also in the same position I dont think Id have any words either. I too would just cry. And did... for Tony. But yeah besides his lack of scenes with Tony I really loved Rhodeys scenes. I usually do. Hes adorable.

Nebula: Sweetie... You are just amazing. Shes legit one of the best most solid characters in the movie. The opening scenes between her and Tony? FUCKING adorable. Im sad we dont see more of them after the time skip. I also wish we got a longer scene of Neb and Rocket talking when she gets to earth... I guess just seeing them sit together sadly was enough to portray the emotions but.... I MEAN. More Nebula wouldnt hurt anyone. Having to see two tortured versions of Nebula was upsetting. Future Nebula who lost so much and past Nebula still under Thanos' thumb. 'You can change!' 'He wont let me' OOF. Im sad that past Nebula was killed... but appreciate that even in that moment past Gamora was upset to see her be killed. Im glad with Present Neb, Gamora was so easily heel-face turned. She loves her sister. Also their moment after past Gamora beats up present Quill was hilarious 'Really? This is the guy?' 'The choices were him or a tree.' WHAT ABOUT DRAX, NEBULA?! I know I said I may not watch any MCU movies after this but I might tune in for GotG3 for Nebula (and Thor).

Steve: I actually ENJOYED Steve in this movie for the most part. For the first time in any movie... even by himself I kind of enjoyed Steve. Especially the scene when hes fighting himself and his past self says 'I can do this all day' and hes like 'Tst... yeah I know... okay' Like he was sick of his own damn bullshit. And frankly? Same. Also him whispering 'Hail hydra' to get the scepter? Hilarious. I cant help but see it as a knock at that shitty Hydra Cap comic that everyone hated. But despite me enjoying Steve for most of the film... the MCUs inability to write a good romance and pretending like Steve and Peggys relationship was a peak or something completely undoes it all. It would still NOT BE GREAT regardless but the fact the RUSSOS are the ones who brought Sharon into TWS in the first place makes it SO MUCH WORSE that Steve dipped out. Steve should have moved on... even if it wasnt with Sharon. They could have at least MENTIONED HER but they knew they couldnt because then it would be too highlighted that Steve is a fucking FUCK BOY who used the niece of the woman he loved as a surrogate and that him going back to the past means hes gonna be meeting little Sharon at some point. Also? Really? Steve you have this whole new family you supposedly love and can live your life with but you rather go back in the past because the first woman who was nice to you was there? Move on. Its so fucking weird that hes so obsessed with her. You have your childhood friend and the rest of your new friends... and supposedly a girlfriend. IDK how anyone could be happy with that ending for him. But I guess its in character... remember the note he sent Tony 'I've been on my own since I was 18.' What about Bucky? He was there with you and you had family in the Avengers supposedly. Natasha seemed to think so. YOURE SUCH A FUCKIN SCUMBAG STEVE. Jesus.

Tony: First of all Id just LOVED his scenes with Nebula as I said. He sat there patiently teaching how to play paper football and held her win. It was REALLY cute. When he passed out she picked him up off the floor and sat him down on the chair and pat him. REAL CUTE. He nicknamed her 'The Blue Meanie' its cute and he tried to give her the last of their food but she insisted he eat it. Bobbos eyes never looked more gorgeous than in that scene where Carol finds them honestly. Tonys I told you so was really really sad. It had a lot of feeling like that scene in AoU when he laughs hysterically and starts ranting? Rhodey tried to calm him down but he just ripped into Cap. Also he yanked off his arc reactor and I FULLY JUMPED IN PANIC because I forgot it wasnt in him. I fully flinched. But he pulled his heart out and gave it to Steve and then passed out. Tony and Peppers daughter is ADORABLE. And her interactions with Tony are so sweet. Domestic Tony is lovely. I love that when Steve and the gang roll up on him Morgan runs out during their discussion and is like 'Mom told me to come and save you....' and hes like 'Well Ive been saved!' REAL CUTE. Also he swore and his daughter copied him and hes like NOOOOO!!!!!!! LMAO. LANGUAGE Tony. Tony is motivated to fix things seeing that pic of him and Peter. Hes such a softie. IM REALLY REALLY SAD that we finally see Pepper kinda GET Tonys need to be Iron Man and is like 'But could you rest?'. The one time she encourages him to go back to be Iron Man and he fucking DIES. Im so sad for Pepper. But that scene between them where shes like 'We'll be ok.... you can rest now.' FUCK. Im crying again. That scene between him and Steve- 'Someone shoula warned you~' 'You did...' 'Oh did I? Thank god Im here' has the same energy as 'Who taught you how to dance?' 'You did.' 'Well Ive done a marvelous job!' It was pretty great. Tonys nicknames for Scott are 'Pissant' and 'Thumbelina.' Im not OVERLY fond of his scenes with Howard. But honestly? My brother is the same way with our dad... he just chooses to forget the bad stuff and focus on the few good times. I cant do that but if it made Tony happier then VERY WELL. I wish Tony coulda talked to Jarvis too tho... just a word... anything? Best Tony scene is Peter babbling about how he musta passed out because Tony was gone and and and and Tony just hugs him so tightly and Peters hugs back and is like :D 'this is nice'! Though that STARK contrast of them after Tony uses the gauntlet... and Peter is like 'Mr Stark... we won... we did it... no Mr Stark...' Big Simba and Mufasa feels (and kind of Hughes and Elicia tbh). Not cool Disney. I was already crying. Rhodey was the first to reach Tony and Tony couldnt say ANYTHING to anyone and Rhodey just pets his cheek... Tony was just looking around as his family just has to watch helplessly as hes dying and Pepper tells him its ok. His funeral was really nice. He recorded a message for everyone kind of like his message for Pepper on the ship. Everyone was there... I think even Harley (Im really sad we didnt see them get reunited even once). The scene with Happy and Morgan was really sweet. 'I'll buy all the cheeseburgers you want....' It was cool to because... ya know.... Jon Favreau. He got a really beautiful end. I wish he could just retire and live with Pep and Morgan... but if he had to die... that was a really lovely sendoff. SO ALL IN ALL. Awesome movie. I didnt get to see past elderly Steve passing the shield off to Sam... I'll have to rewatch it again when theres a better version. Especially for that fucking STUNNING end battle. Even with the shitty cam I watched it looked AMAZING and I cant wait for it in HD.

[tumblunni]

Wow i had such a weird dream?? The story itself wasnt too unusual, just an emotional moment of an anime that doesnt exist, but the way the dream delivered it was really confusing!

The plot of this apparant anime was that there was some sort of ragtag group of monster people wandering the earth looking for a place they could belong without being hated. And i got the feeling here that they'd just found a place where things were going good, but the show's recurring villains appeared and revealed their secret to the town and now they had to flee again as everyone they thought was a friend took up pitchforks against them.

And the main focus character was really interesting? I dont think he was actually the protagonist but he got the focal role in this episode. Cos the monsters had to disguise themselves as humans to live in this town, and this was the youngest monster who didnt know how to do that yet. He had a really emotional struggle of pushing himself so hard to try and master this skill, because he was actually unique amoung the group for being a monster that was actually once human. So it was a combination of frustration at being a burden to his new friends, with desperation to finally see his own face in the mirror again.

And I feel like maybe before he became a monster he was bigoted against them and scared of them? Within the dream i recalled watching that other episode some other day, and apparantly it was super emotional. It started off just seeming like another 'we find the town of the day along our journey and meet some friends and/or solve a conflict' type thing. And this kid was mostly antagonistic through the episode, a dumb naive kid who believed everything negative about monsters and now struggled with the situation of being the only one who knew the truth that these guys are monsters but also now theyre doubting whether they should reveal it because these people seem so..normal?? And scared?? Starts to doubt whether all the other monsters executed by the corrupt church in their town were fully sentient too, and every time the 'nice' priest was teaching them how to spot liars he was really teaching them how to kill innocent monster people who were just as scared as the humans are of them. But the roots of gaslighting and abuse from this priest ran deep, so the kid struggled with the choice and ultimately made the wrong decision. Also i think maybe theres a reveal that the priest was actually their biological dad too, just for even more levels of why theyd make that wrong decision. And more reasons why its horrifying that the priest dad just treats his kid like shit once they outlived their usefulness. Im thinking something like the kid tries to make up for their mistake and save the protagonists but they get captured by their dad and like.. Ok holy fuck this dude is outright willing to murder his son and he's eminantly aware that these monster people are 100% sentiebt because he's using the threat of killing his son as a way to get them to lay down their weapons and agree to be recaptured. And then i think there was something super messed up when it was revealed all the monster attacks that happened to the town to get them so scared and paranoid were actually orchestrated by the priest as a form of control over his citizens. He had some sort of Ominous Doom Science to both turn people into monsters and control them to do his bidding. And like the predictable asshole he is, even after the protagonists gave up in order to save the kid he still killed him anyway. And after snapping his neck he threw him down into the prison cell with the protagonists and was like 'lets torment them by making them fight the kid they wanted to save'. Because it turned out he'd been doping the kid with a special dose of the monster formula ever since birth, and he was his 'secret weapon' all along without knowing it. Ultra super mega concentrated doom form of the artifical monsters he uses in his army, activated upon the moment of the kid's death. But then it turns out the ultimate experiment was too much for him to control and the kid was able to keep their mind in their new form, and turn against him to save their new friends. But when they realized what had happened to them, they broke down in fear. And everything was super depressing cos the protagonists knew this poor kid was now doomed to share their fate as monsters, and theyd have to take them away fron everythung theyd ever known in order to keep them safe. But also heartwarming at the same time because the kid had never known a truly loving family before, and as they passed out in the arms of main protagonist mom friend werewolf they felt like maybe this is what having a real family is like...

So anyway that led to a bit of an angsty team dynamic with this new recruit? The kid was obviously all new to monsterness and terrified of everything. But also even now they were struggling with that 'what if my abusive dad is right' instinct drilled into them from all those years. They still struggled with really believing that monsters arent evil, and like 'no i must have only disobeyed him because i was infected and i didnt know it, monsters are evil and i became one because i'm evil too'. Unwilling to believe that their dad did that to them and trying to find excuses where it would be their own fault. Maybe the kid was even tricked by another villain at some point who lied about having a cure? Like even whenthey became more able to trust their new monster friends they were still like 'theyd be happier if they became normal right?' Lots of angst and messing up and this poor kid feeling not only weak and useless to the team but also outright toxic to them.

So all of this led to this situation where disguising yourself as a human is a skill all the other team members already mastered and this kid is struggling real hard to accomplish it in order to save the day. Ans its extra depressing cos they havent seen their original human face in months, and theyre trying to cling onto the memories but scared they migjt forget what it was like to be human. And then i cant really recall all the details but i feel like the writing and cinematography were just super amazing emotional on this scene of the kid struggling to Do The Thing in time to save their friends, and like.. Atone for all their mistakes.

Also i think like the kid had this big super kaiju ultimate chimera form which was what their dad designed them to be, but also most of the time they were poofed into a tiny mascot sized version of that. And theycd never actually managed to control their powers enough to turn into their battle form willingly until now. Just this super depressing and also uplifting scene of this fuckin tiny monster kid being pinned to the ground underneath the villain's heel, trying desperately to turn human again to save their friends. And i think it was an awesome moment where they did manage to regain their old face for just a few seconds, but instead of actually learning to master the human transformation they learned to master their battle form instead. Like, accepting that that old face isnt who they are anymore, and it wont help like they thought it would. What they really need now is their REAL face! Some sort of dramatic badass speech about this that cuts the villain's philosophy right in half, and then a badass scene of tiny kid finally being able to control (and not be scared of!) their beast form, and fight the whole damn army singlehandedly to save their friends!

Also i think there was an extra emotional moment somewhere along the way where one of yhe villain generals was like 'no, stop, i want to see if they can do this', and actually started motivating the kid. Like i think they were a brainwashed soldier of the old priest bastatd who was sent to kill these monsters supposedly to avenge the priest's dead kid but they were actually starting to have doubts when this terrifying monster that 'killed them' seemed to act so much like a child. So this was the big moment of them finall believing the kid, and getting to see proof it really was them and the priest really was a manipulative evil bastard all along. So i think they switched sides and joined super powered up kiddo in fighting their fellow knights, giving them the keys to go free their friends. And possibly this knight person also joined the team after this and was the first proper human ally theyd ever had? And probably had loads of emotional plots of atoning

ANYWAY that was the cool really engaging story of my dream that i wish i could watch a real anime about!

But the weird part was that this was all delivered really fragmented cos of how little sleep ive had lately. I was seeing it in the form of (for some reason) laying down on the stairs at my abusive father's old house, listening to it playing on the tiny tv he had in his room. And you may have noticed i kept mixing up the kid's pronouns, thats because everyone in the dream was represented visually by a character from some other franchise and it was REALLY confusing! The kid was like an amalgamation of all the dudes from Wolf's Rain which i guess is where the concept of wandering monsters in human illusion came from. (Tho they werent all reverse werewolves like in that show) It was weird cos i knew this character was meant to be a child but they looked like five ripped teenagers smooshed together? Cos i havent seen that show in ages and couldnt even remember the protagonist's name. (Was someone called Hide or is that a guy from tokyo ghoul? I think they had the outfit of the tokyo ghoul guy.) And then predictably the evil priest dad was cornello from full metal alchemist mixed with my old doctor who had the same name. But less predictably the redeemed villain holy paladin knight guy was replica riku from kingdom hearts?? Ans specifically his medal from the app game, like he came with a floating medal attatched to his waist like a mermaid who was also a coffee table.

Also it just ended with a floating box of hair dye that turned to face the camera and it was actually coffee in a hair dye package. Like an exact replica of the blonding bleach i usually use, right down to every detail, but all the text was replaced with coffee info. I..i dont know what that has to do with anything else that just happened...

Oh also i think maybe one of the other teammates was a big cuddly 50-something circus ringleader type guy? He was the friendly comic relief but actually deep downn the most tormented of all of them. He'd been imprisoned as a circus attraction for most of his entire life and dressing up like a ringleader now he was free was kinda a way of coping? But yeh i think he bonded well with the kid cos they both didnt have much experience with being free and everything seemed new and scary. This guy also didnt have much experience of monster society either cos he'd been enslaved since he was a child. Man this anime sounds so fuckin intense and dark and emotional but also full of powerful friendship!! Why cant i watch any more episodes!! give me a sequel dream!!

[winterune]

A Natsume Yuujinchou Fanfiction #10 - Because I Love You

Word count: 2778

Summary: Natsume received a chocolate from a girl outside his class, much to his surprise, because he didn’t realize it was Valentine’s Day. 

A/N: something I thought about on a whim because I realized I have never written a Valentine’s Day Natsume fic before. It’s been soooo long since I wrote any fic--or written anything for that matter--so I’m sorry if this turns out weird. Not edited or beta’d. Probably going to post a final version later on AO3 or FFN. Also, I wrote this for @epona999 as a late birthday present^^. Hope you’ll like it! And thanks for reading :)

“Natsume-kun!”

Takashi Natsume was walking down the corridor heading back to class in the short break between lessons when a voice called out to him. It was a girl, standing several feet behind him, with long brown hair that draped over her shoulders.

“Yes?” he asked, turning around to directly face her. He had never seen her before.

“U—Umm…” Her eyes flitted in and out of his face, hands hidden behind her back. “It’s just—umm—something I made in cooking class so uh…”

Natsume cocked his head to the side. “Can I help you?”

The girl seemed to shut her eyes and in one smooth motion, shoved something toward his chest, yelling, “This is for you!” before running off and turning around the corner. She was gone in an instant, leaving Natsume blinking in confusion with a small brown bag in his hand.

He held it up and scrutinized the bag with a frown. Cooking class?

Soft snickers around him made him realize he had spectators and dipping his head self-consciously, Natsume made his way quickly back to class.

His classmates’ buzz of conversation reached him before he opened the door. Nishimura, who was sitting by his table, looked up and noticed the bag he was carrying. His eyes widened in surprise.

“What’s that?!” he exclaimed, pointing a finger to the brown bag.

Natsume shrugged. “A girl gave it to me outside.”

“A girl? Seriously?!” His mouth hung open in disbelief.

Natsume frowned at Nishimura’s sudden enthusiasm and eyed the bag suspiciously.

“Let me see that,” Nishimura went on, and without waiting for Natsume’s reply, he’d snatched the bag away. “Cookies,” he commented. He sniffed at it. “And it smells delicious too.”

“She did say she made it in cooking class—”

“Cooking class!” Nishimura exclaimed dramatically. All of a sudden, it was as if all those enthusiastic energy left him and Nishimura deflated on the table beside Natsume’s, head falling on the desk top, his arms hanging limp on his sides. “Ahh I want one.”

Natsume looked at his friend incredulously. What was so good about these cookies? You could buy cookies from the store if you want one.

“You could have them if you want,” he offered.

“Nope. She gave them to you so it’s yours,” his friend said, adamantly handing the brown bag to Natsume.

Still feeling unsure what Nishimura was whining about, Natsume took the bag back, when he heard Kitamoto, who had been silent throughout the exchange, chuckling.

“They’re Valentine Day cookies, Natsume,” Kitamoto explained. “Nishimura’s been nagging since morning that he hasn’t received one.”

“I keep dreaming Taki would come through that door and give me a home-baked chocolate,” Nishimura said.

Valentine’s.

Natsume didn’t realize it was Valentine’s. Ah, now it made sense why the girl seemed fidgety then. But why would she give him one?

Well, at least he understood now why Nishimura seemed somewhat depressed since morning, and seeing his friend now being consoled by Kitamoto, it brought a smile to his face.

***

“Well, that’s a pretty boy to you,” Nishimura grumbled when classes for the day was over and they were gathering their books and things to head home.

Throughout the day, a couple of other girls had approached Natsume—once in class, the other was when the three of them were heading to their lunch spot on the roof—to give him yet another Valentine’s chocolate. Someone had even snuck in and slipped a chocolate box in his desk drawer when he wasn’t in class, so he had a total of four chocolates by the end of the day—five if you include the one from Sasada’s.

Kitamoto and Nishimura had received only one, and that was from Sasada. Kitamoto had accepted it but Nishimura had gotten into a fight over it, saying a chocolate from Sasada didn’t mean anything. Sasada had been tempted to take it back, but Nishimura had immediately apologized since “it’s better than coming home empty-handed”.

Natsume never liked that nickname but he could only smile wryly at it. There was nothing he could do anyway, no reason he could give, not that they were asking for any…probably. Well, what could he say? He certainly didn’t predict this happening.

When they met Tanuma by the front door, just about to slip off his indoor shoes for his outdoor ones, they noticed he was carrying a small plastic bag that no doubt contained the chocolates he’d received that day.

“Damn you pretty boys,” Nishimura muttered under his breath.

Like Natsume, Tanuma could only chuckle to that.

“How many did you get?” Kitamoto asked.

Glancing at the pouting Nishimura slipping on his outdoor shoes, he murmured, “Five. Sasada just gave me one.”

“Same as him, then,” Kitamoto replied.

Tanuma’s eyes shifted to Natsume, though he didn’t look at all surprised. “I’d thought as much.”

“Right?” Kitamoto went on, a grin now plastered from ear to ear. “Despite his quiet demeanor, he’s surprisingly popular with girls.”

“Maybe I should start having a quiet demeanor,” Nishimura piped in.

“Oh, shut it, Nishimura. You still haven’t received one from Taki yet.”

“There’s no guarantee she’s going to give me one.”

“Wait, she hasn’t?” Tanuma asked, genuinely surprised as his hand started rummaging inside his plastic bag. “I’m sure she has one for each of you. I mean, I got one from her—”

“Ah! There you are!”

Before Tanuma could finish speaking, he was interrupted by a voice. They simultaneously looked behind them and there stood Taki, somewhat out of breath, her bag slung over her shoulder had its zipper half opened.

“Good thing I hadn’t missed you,” she said, determinedly walking toward them with a hand fishing inside her bag for what turned out to be a small cute bag filled with cookies. “Here,”—she gave one to Natsume, then to Nishimura, and last to Kitamoto.

A huge sigh escaped her lips. “Sorry, I had stuffs to do all day. It was just because I passed by Tanuma-kun that I remembered to give him the chocolate. Good thing you hadn’t left just now.” Smiling from ear to ear, her hair slightly disheveled from the running she must had done from the upper floor, she said, “Happy Valentine’s Day, guys!”

Natsume and Kitamoto thanked her with grins of their own while Nishimura outright cried. They were left glancing at each other in half smiles as Kitamoto patted Nishimura’s shoulder.

***

“What’s that, Takashi-kun?” Touko-san asked the moment Natsume opened the door and called, “I’m home.” She’d peeked her head from the kitchen doorway and noticed the small bag he’d received from Taki. Feeling embarrassed and self-conscious all at once, Natsume had hidden the chocolates he’d received in his bag. But Taki’s was a last addition and his bag couldn’t take in another chocolate—if he didn’t want it crushed, which he didn’t, since it was what Taki had made herself. So he decided to carry it. When he entered the house, he’d made sure to hide it from view so Touko-san wouldn’t see it, but that plan obviously failed.

“They’re chocolates,” Natsume replied sheepishly. “From a friend.”

“Ah!” Touko-san exclaimed after a moment’s pause, so sudden that it almost made Natsume jump. “It’s Valentine’s, isn’t it? Ah, how that brings back memories. I used to give Shigeru-san chocolates too back then.” A warm smile graced her lips as her eyes looked on some distant memory. “Maybe I’ll make something special for tonight’s dinner. Ooh, how exciting! I haven’t felt this energetic for a while.” Her eyes meeting Natsume, she grinned and said, “Want to help, Takashi-kun?”

Natsume blinked and could only stammer, “Oh, okay,” before his mind could process what Touko-san just said.

Touko beamed from ear to ear. “This’ll be fun! Shigeru-san will be so surprised,” she said gleefully, getting back inside the kitchen. “Put your bag down and don’t forget to wash your hands first, right, Takashi-kun?”

***

“What’s all the ruckus down there?” was Sensei’s way of greeting when Natsume opened the door to his room.

“I’m home, Sensei,” Natsume greeted him back. “It’s rare to see you here so early in the afternoon.”

Sensei ignored the comment, then his eyes spotted the pink bag Natsume was placing on his desk. Eyes wide, ears perked, he took a sniff—it smelled like food. “What’s that?” he asked, sauntering over to Natsume’s desk.

“Cookies,” Natsume replied. “Taki made them.”

At the mention of her name, however, Nyanko-sensei stopped on his tracks, his nose scrunching in disgust. “Taki?” he asked incredulously. “Can that girl even cook?”

“Don’t be like that, Sensei,” Natsume said with a chuckle. He opened the bag and saw star-shaped chocolate cookies inside. He fished one and looked at it carefully. “I’m sure it’s edible.” He took a bite of the cookie, tasting it for a while. The chocolate melt in his mouth, the flavor spreading and coating his tongue, before he gulped it down then tossed the rest of the cookie inside.

“It’s good,” he commented.

“Surprisingly,” added Sensei.

“Want some?” Natsume held a cookie out to the cat, but Nyanko-sensei was looking at it as though he was looking at something out of this world.

“I’d rather have this,” he said, as he rummaged inside Natsume’s bag and held out a box one of the girls had given Natsume. He sniffed at it, and Natsume had to wonder if he could even smell something through the box and wrapping. But apparently he could, since his eyes seemed to gleam so bright when he looked at Natsume and said, “This is from that shop, right? The one you always pass by to and from school?”

Well, Natsume had to say he was impressed. Give it to Nyanko-sensei to be able to spot something so random. There were quite a few stores that sold chocolates at this time of the year. How did he even know which shop this particular box was from?

“You’re going to get fatter, you know, Sensei, and then I have to take you out for a walk again,” Natsume teased even as he took the box from Sensei and began unwrapping it.

“Oh shut up and hurry up and open the box!”

Natsume snickered at his response.

The box had a variety of colorful chocolates in various shapes: hearts, stars, flowers, leaves, or plain simple circles. Without further ado, Nyanko-sensei took one of them and plopped it into his mouth. The instant the chocolate made contact with his tongue, a smile bloomed on his face, eyes shut in bliss.

“You should buy more of this chocolate stuff, Natsume,” Nyanko-sensei said after tossing the third chocolate into his mouth.

“You know chocolate isn’t good for a cat, right?”

“Well, I’m not a cat.”

“All the more so. Isn’t it weird for a great youkai to be so giddy over a little chocolate?”

“Shut it!”

He was eating the fifth one when Natsume snatched the box away. “Don’t eat it all, Sensei! I’m going to save some for Touko-san and Shigeru-san.”

“What’s the problem? You have more than enough for them even if you give me that box.” Sensei made his point more apparent by grabbing the rest of the chocolates from Natsume’s bag and dropping them down on the table. “See? You have—what—six in total?” he said, counting the wrapped boxes and the two bags of cookies. “You can have Taki’s. I’ll have this box. And you’ll still have four more.”

“That’s not the issue here,” Natsume replied with a sigh. “Anyway, no! You’re not having any more before I give some to Shigeru-san and Touko-san, all right?”

Before Nyanko-sensei could protest or snatched any of the boxes for himself, Natsume moved fast and grabbed all the chocolate boxes and bags. Nyanko-sensei scowled and clicked his tongue in irritation.

“Why do you have so many chocolates in the first place?” he asked.

“I guess it’s Valentine’s Day. Girls give chocolates to boys.”

Nyanko-sensei stared at him. “Why?”

Why?

Natsume pondered that question and couldn’t really come to an answer. Though he’d seen his classmates getting rather excited for Valentine’s Day before—like how Nishimura was that day—Natsume himself never really cared about it. None of the families he’d lived before had ever done anything special. In fact, it was the first time he’s ever received a chocolate from anyone.

“I heard it’s the day girls give chocolates to the boys they like,” Natsume responded rather hesitatingly.

Nyanko-sensei’s eyes flitted from the pile of chocolates on Natsume’s arms to his face, then his lips spread into a wide smirk. “Does that mean all those girls like you then?”

It took a moment, two moments, then three, before the statement was rooted into his mind, and he realized then why that girl had been so nervous when she gave him the chocolate. He couldn’t stop the heat from reaching his face.

“W—What are you talking about? Of course not!”

Nyanko-sensei snickered. “You’re blushing.”

“There is what you call friendship chocolate too, Sensei,” Natsume tried not to let Sensei’s words rattle him so much.

“And that is Taki’s chocolate. I believe you have Sasada’s too, right? The others—”

“Anyway!” Natsume cut him off. He wouldn’t let Nyanko-sensei finish that thought. “I don’t know much about it, okay? And Touko-san is waiting for me downstairs to help her with dinner.”

“Even Touko-san,” Natsume heard Nyanko-sensei said absently after a pause as he left his room behind in a hurry. “Sometimes I really don’t understand this holidays you humans have.”

***

Touko-san was already busy with a soup and some side dishes when Natsume entered the kitchen.

“Is that you, Takashi-kun?” she asked without looking from chopping up vegetables. “Can you help me stir the soup over there, please?”

“Okay,” Natsume responded. He put all the chocolates he’d carried on the dining table before heading over the stove. It was then Touko-san looked up with a smile, as if she was about to say something, when she spotted the pile of chocolates on the table.

“Oh!” she exclaimed in surprise.

Natsume noticed the direction of her gaze and, reminded of Nyanko-sensei’s remark, heat immediately rushed to his face again.

“It’s not what you think, Touko-san!” he said quickly. “I received some chocolates and I only wanted to share them with you and Shigeru-san and—”

But Touko-san, who met his gaze, only had a warm smile that touched her eyes.

“What?” she asked, a slight giggle escaping her lips. “I wasn’t going to say anything.” She turned her attention back to the vegetables she was prepping for dinner. “I’m just happy to see you so loved.”

“What?” Natsume turned his head toward Touko-san, surprised at her words.

“Didn’t you know?” she asked. “Valentine’s Day is a day when women show her appreciation and love toward the men in her life. Of course, you can express your love on any other day, but it’s a nice thought, isn’t it? That someone takes their time to buy you or make you something on a special day. Doesn’t that make you feel you’re special to them? That you mean something to someone? Oh, and it goes without saying, too, that this special dinner is not just for Shigeru-san, but for you too, Takashi-kun.”

“For…me?”

Touko-san met his gaze and she nodded, her smile so warm that Natsume felt something squeezing his heart. He could almost hear it—the words unsaid.

Because I love you.

He didn’t know when he had started crying, but he felt the tears in his eyes and tried so hard to hold them back.

Of course he knew that. He knew how kind the Fujiwara couple were to him. Some part of him knew they loved him. It had taken a while for him to see that, but he knew it, though none of them ever explicitly expressed it. From their actions and the way they treated him, he’d learned how much the Fujiwaras cared about him.

His throat felt constricted as he tried to fight back the tears. He couldn’t form any words even as Touko-san gently wiped a tear that had silently slipped through his eyes, rolling down his cheek.

With a last gentle pat, Touko-san then said determinedly, “Let’s finish this quickly before Shigeru-san comes home. It wouldn’t be a surprise now, would it, if he saw us preparing this?”

She got back to chopping the vegetables and Natsume could do nothing but smile at this woman he called his foster mother, the warmth of her hand still lingered on his face.

“Okay,” he said quietly and went back to stirring the soup that already smelled quite delicious.

~ END ~

Thanks for reading! I hope you like it^^

More of my Natsume Yuujinchou fanfiction here. 

[gammija]

The Hollow review/summary/rant/explanation of why i hate the ending I wasn’t sure whether I should post this, but I did enjoy reading others experiences watching this show, so here’s mine under the cut. Edited from a convo with a friend.

(Obviously, spoilers!)

Me: Okay so to properly express my disappointment i gotta take you through the major beats

The show starts with three teens waking up in an almost empty room, finding out they all have amnesia. They quickly solve a puzzle to escape the room, and just as quickly Adam and Mira realize they have superpowers (superstrength/agility and some weird 'speak to animals/know all languages' hybrid, respectively. also she can breathe underwater and swim really fast. its kind of vague)

Kai is already clearly a comic relief, discount Ron (from HP, the movies, no idea about the books) so me and sister correctly predict he'll get jealous of adam and miras relationship (even if there is none), gets pissy and jealous that he has no powers, but then finds out he has powers anyway he does, hes a fire bender. cant say im not bitter about that cause id put my money on invulnerability but eh its alright he has red hair after all hes still fun

Friend: Of course he is

I just feel bad is all aldjs

Me: adam gets a throwaway line of 'maybe were dead' and kai never lets it go

this food might be poisoned but im starving and hey were dead anyway! right, adam

Friend: I love him??

Me: i loved him as soon as he spoke his first dumb words also he puns but basically hes the only interesting char; adam and mira are just cookie cutter 'male lead 1' and 'female lead 1' i mean, he’s cookie cutter ‘jealous 3rd wheel’ but that has more going on than the first two still servicable though

anyway so the jokes are sometimes fun, and superpowers are always my jam. but the REAL reason to keep watching is just, whats going on? ARE they dead? or in some kind of weird gvnmt experiment? some weird magical vampire guide (dont ask) hints they wanted this themselves ooh, intrigue. and the world is very very quirky they start in a gravity falls-y woods and then get teleported to a desert with minotaurs and witches, then get invited for tea by the Grim Reaper and the rest of the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse

tbh Grim is the best part of the show but thats neither here nor there

anyway they have a magic map that updates once theyve been somewhere, and it shows them that the hot dry desert and the swampy wood bunker are like right next to each other

so you start thinking, how are they gonna explain that? this is too weird to be handwaved away. theyve gotta be going somewhere

they visit some other exotic locals, like what appears to be the set of Alien (complete with alien) and an abandoned old fair and a floating island with japanese inspired evildoers on it

the weird magic guide keeps showing up and being vague, dropping hints that there are other kids there etc

at some point Mira says "This is no time for games!" Weirdy: "Thats where youd be wrong~" me and sister: Aha! videogame! that connects all the dots, and also makes the tropes clear: small world with all kinds of different areas, quests, fights, superpowers, an updating map, fast travel Adam, a few eps later: guis i think we might be in a videogame me and sister: [high five]

Anyway in the meantime also the second predictable Kai (discount Ron) plot happens: they meet three other kids (boy boy girl) and they act shady but the girl takes an immediate and obvious interest in Kai so obviously theyre gonna manipulate him and have him betray his friends but in the end he'll see through their facade and kick their ass that more or less happens. The other teens also confirm that this is a game, and theyre trying to win. winning is done by bringing the MacGuffin to a tree fights over macguffin ensue situations are dire but our characters persevere

(also Mira kisses Adam and he acts very weird about it, almost as if hes gay and the only reason they didnt make it canon is censors) (no lingering gaze, just him going 'hehe yeah no thanks, its not you, its me', but in a very... he doesnt seem to be saying it with shall we say burning desire in his soul. hes literally just like 'eh youre a good friend.' Cool move, cartoon that made the two main boys have arguments over nothing cause of course the two main guys have constant dick measuring matches)

this all is not the offensive part btw it was all fun and games, its just a flash cartoon i wasnt expecting Shakespeare

anyway so theyre in a videogame, and apparently thats the answer to all the weirdness. A bit of a cop-out, cause thats a very easy answer, but eh, it works. it wasnt immediately obvious.

also something i hadnt mentioned yet: thisd be ideal for making (self-insert) OCs. Unique powers for each person, there are clearly more characters than shown, the world is your playground

and maybe the video game thing could be interesting on its own in the last few eps the game seems to be glitching out a lot they say its breaking apart so they really gotta hurry now maybe they were beta testers for a vr game gone wrong maybe this is part of it but its like a huge experience that you tell all your friends about anyway there are ways it could be cool, could be expanded to a season 2 despite having solved the mystery

but. last episode. our heroes get the MacGuffin, go to a final stage, and fight the Boss Battle (its a dragon). they enter the Castle....

...and the screen zooms out, into a sudden live action stage, where we see the cartoon (literally what you were just watching) on screen. there are 6 chairs, 3 with our heroes, 3 with the other teens, presumably. theres a host and hes dressed exactly like the weird guy (and that was already kind of a clashy outfit in the cartoon). it was all just a game show. but. the worst part is the live action

you. dont. go. from. animated. to. live. action.

other way around? fine, can work. But now? WHY itd still be dumb and dissapointing but if itd been animated too itd at least have been.... nice to look at but the acting.. oh god they didnt even say anything and it was all wrong clearly theyd just picked the first random teens that vaguely looked like the chars and put them in there cause they had no lines so who needs acting?!

the enemy teams girl had, in the cartoon, pink hair. Purple with pink highlights instead of stylizing that into something more realistic or painting the actual hair, they gave some 30-year old woman a wig and called it a day

keep in mind i binged this show in one go

purposely stayed up late to watch the last ep with my sis even tho we shouldve gone to bed and were disobeying our dad cause we Had to Know

and theres more i said they had no lines but i was lying. Kai did have a line. well, his voice actor did they dubbed him also the line was about him having to pee which is already not the most hilarious in animated version but a live action kid whose supposed to be this character you spent 3 hours with but looks nothing like him saying that in a voice that doesnt belong to his throat, as he stands bashfully in front of a live audience, the only words spoken by your main characters in the last moments...

*its actual hell*

oh oh one more thing at the end the six kids stand in a line and kai is next to other girl they glance at each other and as the eyes of this teen and 30 year old in wig cross, her eye glitches for a moment

dun dun duuun

bUT i dont care anymore, The Hollow. You overestimated your own premise. this wont be forgiven. your most interesting part was the mystery, and the answer  to that was "just a normal game show" (which also doesnt make sense on another level smh) soo if you think that im interested in what these two-dimensional (ha) characters will do now about the glitch in the eye of a bitch then i have news for u

i dont

...if they get a second season ill probably check it out though as long as its animated

Friend: Gammi I'm getting the real sinking suspicious feeling that what you saw isn't the real end but bad on purpose because there's more to it

Me: the show didnt seem good enough to be bad on purpose

and yet im still not done, if youll still hear me out

i mean, im an animation fan so ill still watch but if theyd wanted to be bad on purpose they really shouldve done a better job fleshing out the characters thats what people come back for that was a bit of a sidetrack BUT so i said why the live action itself was just terrible in overal quality

but the resolution that 'oh it was all in a game show' doesnt work on multiple levels

first of all, they show a short flashback of "About 5 hours earlier". The kids stand on the stage and are instructed to take their seats in the vr-chairs, and pick their superpower

2 things i dislike about that

1) there goes all the self-insert/oc potential. they werent teens in over their heads, they werent gvnmt experiments, or just some kids who wanted to play a game -they were in it to win it, from the start. thats very specific and not the most appealing to all kinds of characters (goodbye, all the 'im just an average girl whod never step into the spotlight like that' characters).

Also, all the expansion on lore is gone. maybe there were other games simultaneously? eh, maybe, but theyd be all gameshows. Maybe someone ended uo trapped there for way longer? nah its just a gameshow theyre not gonna let anything actually bad happen. Maybe there are other worlds, other areas, other weird creatures? unlikely, they finished the map and familiarity seemed to be a thing for the audience. Now every new idea has to be put not through a 'whats interesting for a player' but a 'whats interesting for a viewer' lens, and whats a selfinsert if not a player in another universe

2) HOW IS THIS A SUCCESSFUL GAME SHOW

who the hell watches a game show for 5 consecutive hours, some of which mustve been just them walking. also, we zoom out of the screen were watching, so implication is that everything up until then has been what the audience has seen. but... we only followed the one team. there were two? why didnt the audience want to see what they were up to? ~reality tv usually thrives on showinf the worst assholes so realistically they wouldve been the focus~

There are also way too many times *both* teams couldve failed, from early on till late in the game. Not a single game i can think of thats played for an audience is set up like that, and especially not a televised one (okay tbf idk if this was televised, i dont remember if i saw cameras, but. it mustve. monetary reasons.)

What r u gonna do if they all 'died' from the monsters in the first ep? Call it a day? boring for the audience. let them restart from scratch? boring for the audience. the existence of an audience messes with everything

AND THEN ANOTHER THING what do you mean, "5 hours ago?" you never get a time stamp to show how long theyve been in there but there are some cuts, when they travel and such. The actual show is a lil over 3 hours runtime. You mean to tell me you sat through 2 hours of the characters just walking?

okay last thing. so. they were clearly second season teasing with the glitching eye thing. i already said this but. theres nowhere to go from here that isnt worse that the first season. your mystery is dead. you clearly know your live action teens cant act so youd have to go back into the game - but why would they do that? how would that be in any way interesting? you explored all there was to explore.

The other, more out there option, is that as you said the 'real world' was a fake-out and theyre still in a game. but. how would- how would you even make that remotely convincing? if youd just left the 'real world' gameshow as animated too this wouldnt have been a problem. but there is absolutely no conceivable reason to justify, in universe, why another meta-level up is 2D animation again unless they were in a game, in a game, in a game. and thats just dumb. yall aint inception

Friend: HONESTLY if they just kept the whole deal animated it'd probably be okay. Not good, but better,

Me: ye me and my sister came to the same conclusion

i couldve lived with that. at least, i couldve just acknowledged the finales existence but chose to ignore it. now however im full phantom planet levels of denial. in fact i dont even know how the show ended anymore, suddenly

Friend: what finale? what show?

Me: also at least now we know why its called The Hollow

it leaves you feeling empty inside

[thelifetimechannel]

The Dave and Dirk log, for obvious reasons, was something I wanted to try very hard to get right. That meant although we drafted it together via msparp, as was our custom, I ended up overhauling it way more than any of our other combo walkaround logs. A few chunks did survive the transfer, though.

In other news, we’ve made a solemn pact to finish TLC over winter break, which is good because I’m running out of bonus content. Hopefully we’ll have some assets to show off soon. I’ve already seen a few; they’re very nice.  

DIRK: Hey, dude. You did pretty well out there. DIRK: Didn't even die once. DAVE: twice in a day is my max im satisfied with keeping that record DAVE: even if getting machinegunned is rapidly becoming my "thing" DIRK: Seems we each have our respective "signature deaths". DIRK: Or at least it ain't a party until I get decapitated. That sure was something we needed to do again. DIRK: Just once, for old time's sake. DAVE: well that puts the nail in the meme coffin DAVE: any time you panic someones gonna tell you to keep your head on DAVE: like keeping your hair on except you know that shit aint going anywhere its probably shellaced DIRK: That shit is bolted to the floor. Did you know I walked around with a girly-ass pink tiara on my head this whole day and had no idea? DIRK: I had no idea. Couldn't feel a thing. DIRK: And people let me do that. DIRK: Can't fuckin' believe it. DAVE: oh DAVE: i figured you knew DIRK: I am less than pleased with my Skaia-ordained divine color scheme. DIRK: But I guess I have to live with it. It's part of the team aesthetic. DAVE: you could always change DIRK: Nah, with the tiara and tights ditched I have at least mitigated the enforced flamboyance. It's bearable. DIRK: I can't be the one dude out of uniform. Couldn't bear the shame. DAVE: my outfit is pretty sick ngl DAVE: sburb knows everyones secret desire is to have a cape DIRK: Unfortunately, mine isn't long enough to also make for a good tactical maneuver. DIRK: Not gonna lie, that was pretty funny. DAVE: if nothing else my attempts at combat can provide a source of humor in our lives DAVE: but honestly id be fine if my fighting days were over DAVE: i was never into it DAVE: rose on the other hand was obviously itching to beat people up DAVE: one of those 12 year olds who wants to get jumped in an alley to work out her suppressed anger DIRK: Maybe Skaia did make a few miscalculations in dumping your asses with your respective guardians. I think you'd get along well with Roxy and her cats, make her budget her time away from the alcohol. DIRK: ...in theory. DIRK: Rose can go a few rounds with me if she wants, we still need to sort out who has the rights to document our legendary journies. DAVE: ill plan your funeral DAVE: what kind of flowers do you want DIRK: ...there's different kinds? DAVE: damn thats right you grew up in waterworld DAVE: these choices matter DAVE: allegedly theres a thing called "flower language" DAVE: whether you can actually send someone a boquet telling them to meet you in the pit i dont know DIRK: Like, I get that, in theory, different kinds of flowers exist. But I fully anticipate any attempt on my part to conjugate in the language of said plants would end in my coffin declaring my hovercraft was indeed full of eels. DIRK: Maybe it'll have thorns on it. Or it'll be like the sixteen millions tons of green bullshit covering my land and making my nose itch. DAVE: probably DIRK: Worst case scenario, I'll pick out something orange and present to a prospective love interest and it'll mean something like "my brotherly passion for you knows no boundaries, and also no homo". DAVE: my bro wouldnt go for flower arranging DAVE: or pink tiaras DAVE: he was pretty uptight about the whole rah rah macho act DAVE: probably subscribed to alpha males weekly DAVE: which is weird considering DAVE: well DAVE: youre gay right DIRK: Uh. DIRK: Well. DIRK: My symbolic quest land is not covered in green bullshit, but I. DIRK: Happen to like watching birds, if you know what I mean. DIRK: Fuck, you probably don't know what that means. Jake and his goddamn thousand euphemisms. DAVE: cant say i do no DIRK: Nobody knows what it means but Jake. It's an old time epithet for being into dudes. DIRK: He knows all the old epithets, including some I suspect he made up. DAVE: so DAVE: thats a yes DAVE: in a roundabout way that includes birds DIRK: I've never denied it. DIRK: I'm just. DIRK: Not a huge fan of the word. Why, in this world post-society, do we need to confine ourselves to labels like "gay"? Such constraints were washed away from my world with the rest of the human race. DAVE: holy shit that was such a pretentious dodge DAVE: dont let rose hear you say that DIRK: Rose can hear all she likes. DAVE: but anyway DAVE: i wasnt asking to get up all in your business like SOME PEOPLE DAVE: who are so into getting into other peoples businesses theyre basically the fucking mafia or the irs DAVE: but DAVE: it explains some stuff DAVE: but on the other hand it doesnt DAVE: the way you raised me was kinda aggressively mainstream masculine enough that it wasnt something that ever seemed to come up as an option DAVE: [describe that type of culture and mindset better later, I KNOW what i mean but im tired rn lmao] DAVE: and anything outside of that id just brush off because it couldnt apply to me DAVE: and that went for pretty much everything that went against what you wanted for me DAVE: including that DIRK: And yet, here the man was, subconsciously shrieking his desire for floppy felt dong through, DIRK: What I guess you could call his art, for want of any other applicable word at all. God, the mental images are crawling up the insides of my skull like the Exorcist child, do I want to know? DAVE: probably not DAVE: guess trying to act peak male has its drawbacks DAVE: weirdly enough troll culture is obsessively hyperviolent but doesnt give a shit about sexuality DAVE: they dont see the difference most of the time i guess DAVE: and so like DAVE: maybe it rubs off on you because in some ways that kind of makes sense DAVE: but after so long its hard to know what i feel and what it means because i spent so long ignoring it DAVE: so i guess i was wondering DAVE: if you had anything that might help with that DAVE: or if youre also trapped in this whirling screaming maelstrom of bullshit DAVE: while kinsey sits in the eye of the storm laughing DIRK: Wait, wait, wait. DIRK: You're coming to me. DIRK: For advice. DIRK: Do you know what a laughable hurricane of disaster my interpersonal life has been? DIRK: Like, in a weird way, I'm kind of honored, especially since about five hours ago you were scared shitless to be around me, but. DIRK: I'm standing here and waving my credentials in the air just to display how I don't fucking have any. My degree is a sham and my hands are empty except for a crudely scribbled on piece of construction paper. DAVE: are you suggesting theres a gay university DAVE: where you study bird watching DIRK: Do I look like a man who's been to college? DAVE: fair DAVE: but like DAVE: your friends know DAVE: how did you broach the subject there DIRK: I might as well have been dating a Yoko Ono for the devastation it wreaked on our friend group, so yeah, it was a little hard to ignore. DIRK: Compounded by the fact some smartass from Gay University was using my social circle for romance geometry homework. DIRK: It wasn't even a love triangle so much as a love roundabout. DAVE: ok but thats just because you were a dipshit not a gay dipshit DAVE: they were chill about the first part right DIRK: Thanks. DIRK: I mean... Roxy always seemed disappointed. DAVE: luckily i dont think anyones waiting in line for me DAVE: i guess im blowing it out of proportion DAVE: i dont think anyone will MIND DAVE: no one did about rose and kanaya DAVE: didnt even question the vampire bit which goes to show what our lives are like these days DAVE: like ok our outfit has vampires now DAVE: thats a thing that we have DAVE: if i say oh hey i might be bisexual theyll just say sure pull up a chair at the acronym table DAVE: the only one who might be weird about it is john DAVE: but hed be just as weird if i told him id changed my favorite color hes just like that DAVE: the only person its really a big deal for is me DIRK: Jane was a little bit like that. I'm pretty sure the only reason she had to object was because she found out the day I made a move on her crush. DIRK: It might just be growing up in a household where you're not regularly fighting for your life, and thus what genders are kissing whom has the space to be higher on your priority list. DAVE: that aint anyones priority these days DAVE: im prepared to acknowledge the concept that hey maybe everyone elses lives dont revolve around me and my personal drama or self revelations might have some merit at least as a hypothesis DAVE: when i met kid english he kept going on about how i was the most important person and everyone else was side characters DAVE: and maybe ive acted like that sometimes DIRK: Yeah, like you alone are the one responsible for everyone around you. DAVE: and maybe ive acted like i think that way too sometimes DAVE: ive been wrong about people DAVE: people i care about people i shouldve known better DAVE: i was wrong because i wanted to believe things that matched how i wanted the world to be DAVE: things that made it easier for the story i was telling myself DAVE: i dont think kid english meant to call me on it but damn DIRK: Reality is, after all, something we construct for ourselves. DIRK: I think maybe I knew that all along when I surfaced for air inbetween shoving my head as far up my ass as it would go. DIRK: Or maybe that's just what I try to tell myself in hindsight. DAVE: well if it takes a hyperactive 12 year old version of the final bosss creepy hero worship of me to make a point i guess thats not the least subtle way the universe has sent me a message lately DIRK: You want unsubtle? Let me tell you about my damn planet quest. DAVE: haha DAVE: i didnt have to do much of my quest because im invisible DAVE: thanks mom DIRK: My denizen practically sat me down like it was my life coach and growled in my ear about improving my communication skills with a guy I told to go fuck himself not eighteen hours prior. DIRK: So while I'm glad SBURB has a vested interest in me repairing my friendships, playing electroshock death DDR with him was a little on the nose. DAVE: maybe getting shot again wasnt that bad DAVE: so weve all learned our life lessons good job team DIRK: Exactly. Can we wrap this up now? Can we please go rest? DIRK: I'm so exhausted I haven't even noticed I'm still hungover. DAVE: sure thing DAVE: but if i need tips on leaping out of a closet to intimidate passerby i might text you DIRK: I mean, I can try. As long as you don't ask me for dating tips. That, I definitely shouldn't be helping you with. DIRK: Go talk to your sister for that. DIRK: ...wouldn't she, by the transitive property of siblings, also be my sister? DAVE: yeah i guess DAVE: but theres no way in hell im asking rose for dating advice DAVE: on her first date which she refused to admit was romantically oriented she got wasted in anticipation forgot to show up and then fell down the stairs DIRK: Oh my god. DAVE: she tries to look like shes got her shit together but its a lie DAVE: if you find my corpse floating on lolar in the next few hours dont let the truth die with me DIRK: Why are we like this? DIRK: Is there actually something hardwired into our DNA that predisposes us to being disasters? DIRK: But, that aside. DIRK: I won't object if it's me you come to talk to. DAVE: ill hold you to it DAVE: and if you ever want to publicly you admit you DAVE: "enjoy birdwatching" DAVE: in less vague and evasive terms DAVE: ill have your back DIRK: Thanks.

[memoriesthatkeepyounear]

150 Random Questions

1.) What’s better, having high expectations or having low expectations?

 Low lmao

2.) Would you rather go without junk food for a year or go without TV for a year?

 junk food

3.) Describe your perfect man/woman.

Tall, funny, weird, silly,serious,optimistic,driven,adventuous, list goes on

4.) Thoughts on school dress codes?

they’re honestly stupid and degrading but some are necessary

5.)Any strange phobias?

Not that i can think of

6.) At what job do you see Donald Trump best fit?

6 feet underground 

7.) Who was your first crush?

NIck Jonas lmao

8.) Who was your first best friend?

Girl named Morgan don’t remember her last name.

9.)What is one weird thing about you?

I hate when I have an uneven amount of tattoos.

10.) Top 5 TV shows you like to watch?

11.) What are your favorite boys names? Degrassi, Greys Anatomy,TVD,Black Mirror

12.) What are your favorite girls names? Marley,Tasha idk i dont really have any lol

13.) Do you have any tattoos? If so, what are they? Yes, there’s too many to name each one lmao

14.) Do you plan on getting (more) tattoos? If so, what do you want to get as of the moment? yes many mor, next one is an alien head with a space ship and UFO.

15.) Do you have any piercings? Do you plan on getting more? i mean just my ears and eh maybe

16.) Do you like hugging people?

eh i could live without hugs tbh lol

17.) Think of ANY person on earth right now.  Who did you think of? you don’t want to know (CB)

18.) Do you have an iPhone? yes iphone 8 plus

19.) What is the worst thing that could happen in your life right now? losing one of my jobs lmao

20.) Do you watch anime? no

21.) What brings true happiness? music,traveling,friends,concerts.

22.) What is the most expensive thing you’ve ever paid for? honestly, i dont know i dont remember

23.) If you could have any job in the world and get paid millions of dollars a year for it, what would you be and why? tour manager or selling merch for a band

24.) Do you want children? If so, how many? honestly no but if i had to have children probably 1 or 2

25.) Name and describe someone who you feel most comfortable around. I’ll just name them, Pape, Chase, Michele, Destany,Chris,  Zion, Mary,Tori, Alyssa

26.)If you could invent a holiday, what would it be? Corbyn Besson Day just because LMAO

27.)Would you rather have summer weather or winter weather all year round? This isn’t a choice but spring weather

28.) If you could make an alien race, describe what they would look like. they would look like an alien racing, obviously.

29.)  What was the first thing you learned to cook? Grilled Cheese

30.) Describe your sense of humor. I’m funny as fuuuuck. I’ll send memes, stupid random shit i can think if, anything.

31.) What is the key to happiness? Surrounding yourself with positivity, and trying to find the positive out of anything negative that happens. Not worrying what other people think of you except yourself. Surrounding yourself with good people

32.) How many phone numbers do you have committed to memory? Whose numbers are they? One of my sisters, both my parents, thats about it lmao

33.) Name three songs that make you want to dance. Dazed adn Confused-Jake Miller, Mojo-Round2Crew,something different-wdw

34.) What job did you want to have as a child? Vet Technician

35.) Do you have any talents or skills? My talent is getting all the rings in the ring game on toontown

36.) What was the worst punishment you’ve ever had? I got grounded for a month-dont remember what i did tho

37.) Did you ever do anything weird as a child? Oh im sure i did.

38.) What is your dream car? a car that doesn’t break down

39.)  Describe something that made you laugh this week. probably something corbyn did or sue or my friends

40.) Did you have a dream last night? If so, describe it. Yes and i”d rather not lmao

41.)  Do you ever have repetitive dreams? Describe it/them. oh yes and u don’t want to hear that either

42.) Describe the worst/ scariest dream you’ve ever had. I’ll always remember this--I was younger maybe like 11 and it was that my dad went psychotic and my sisters and her friends snuck outside and tried to get away but he found us, threw us in his car and had my neighbors at the time help him kill us idk bro it was wild. thats the short version.

43.) Describe the best dream you’ve ever had. there’s so many and no thank you

44.) If God himself gave you a choice of either having unlimited money for the rest of your life or finding your one true love starting tomorrow, which one would you choose (keep in mind, you are still able to make a ton of money if you choose love, and you are still able to meet your soul mate if you choose money)? probably finding my one true love-thats worth more than any amount of money

45.) If you could do anything (and I mean ANYTHING) right now without consequences, what would you do and why? honestly i dont know

46.) Do you have any recipes that you know off the top of your head? What is it/ what are they? yes, how to make whipped cream lmao 

47.) Do you have your license? If so, do you have a car? no

48.) Have you ever had a near death experience? yes

49.) Do you personally know anyone that has been to prison? yes

50.) Have you ever been in a physical fight?

yes.

51.) When you get out of the shower, do you towel dry, blow dry, or air dry your hair? depends, if im not leaving the house i towel dry and then air dry but if i have to look good i blow dry.

52.) When you go to the movies, what snacks and drinks do you take with you? candy, popcorn, soda or an icee

53.) Do you like going to the beach? If so, do you like to stay dry or go in the water? If not, why? i like goigng to the beach adn going in the water, i hate sand

54.) Do you untie your shoes when you take them off?

sometimes.

55.) If you could have a superpower ASIDE from being invisible or being able to fly, what would you have? reading minds.

56.) If you were able to live for however long you wanted to (i’m talking thousands of years without aging), when would you choose to die? in this moment tomorrow lmao

57.) What do you think happens after you die? the light you go into is really the light when ur leaving the womb and your soul goes into a baby just beig born

58.) Do you believe in aliens? yes

59.) Do you believe in ghosts? yes

60.) Do you believe in spiritual things like ouija boards, tarot cards, and crystals? Do you believe they are portals for evil entities to enter the mortal world? yes

61.) If you could make one mythical being real, who/what would you make?

i dont know

62.) Do you get tan, or do you burn? the first time i tan, i burn the rest of the time i tan

63.) Describe your shower routine. I get in, shampoo, shave, rinse, conditioner, exfoliate sometimes, and body wash then rise hair and get out

64.) Do you enjoy school? Why or why not? Im not in school

65.) In your opinion, what is the worst way to die? struggling 

66.) Do you get carsick, sea sick, or airplane sickness? no

67.) What’s one memory that you wish you could live again and again? probs seeing one direction lmao i miss them

68.) What were some of your stuffed animal’s names from when you were a kid? scraper-he was a dog i still have him

69.)Do you have any pets? no

70.) Describe your daily wardrobe. homeless

71.)  Describe what your daily wardrobe would be if you were rich. beautiful,with the trends

72.)  Create a character right now.  Give them a name, age, and character description. Jessica Arkansas from Ohio, 22, makes youtube videos, fun when drunk,funny,works alot, drinks alot, smokes weed sometimes, love making people happy.

73.)What was the last thing you bought? Aromatherapy sleep lotion and shower gel from bath and body works.

74.) Have you ever bought a CD? What band was it for? uh yes I have many CDs, jonas brothers

75.) Describe your perfect ice cream sundae. the traditional one

76.) If you could make ANYTHING happen right now with no cost, trouble, or obstacles, what would you do? make corbyn besson fall in love with me

77.) What are some of your favorite physical activities to do? hiking, walking, going ton the gym

78.) What were some of your favorite shows as a child? Dragon tales, The Amanda show, hannah montana, thats so raven, wizards of waverly place, jonas,little bear, oswald. theres much more

79.) Describe how you would survive the zombie apocalypse. I wouldn’t

80.)What are some things you shouldn’t say at work? anything unprofessional

81.) If you were told that if you killed someone, you would save 100 people, would you do it? depends who the person im killig is (if its ****** or ********* then absolutely)

82.) How’s the weather right now? cold

83.) What is the background on your cell phone right now? its flowers that gnash tweeted one time when he released the broken hearts club

84.)Is it better to work at a job that you love or a job that pays well? a job you love.

85.) What do you have within arms reach of your bed? my stuffed giraffes.

86.) Have you ever been fired from a job? If so, why? no

87.) Have you ever won a trophy, prize, or medal? If so, for what? yes many, for soccer

88.) Do you have any posters, pictures, or art hanging on your walls in your room? If so, what are they? I have 1 poster and its corbyn and then i gave 2 2019 calendars one is jake millers and the other is a friends tv show one and i have hats on tacs hanging, poloroid pictures and a giant s for my name

89.) Are you afraid of the dark? If so, why? yes, because the dark is mf scary

90.)What is something that you’ve never done but would like to try? sky diving or parasailing

91.) If you could choose three famous people or characters to be friends with, who would you choose and why? wdw bc why not and they cool, the cast of friends because they are me and i love them, niall horan bc hes the loml

92.) Do you smile at strangers when you pass by them on the street? sometimes

93.) Do you have a favorite TV commercial? If so, what is it? no

94.) Do you like your handwriting? no

95.) Cable TV or Netflix? netflix

96.) What are your favorite smells? beautiful day from bbw

97.) Do you consider yourself physically strong? no im a weak ass bitch

98.) Describe a time where you said something really rude or mean, whether intentional or not.

oh there are mnay times im a bitch

99.) Do you ask strangers to pet their dogs? yes

100.)What is your most embarrassing moment?

wasn’t even my fault but when a group of drunk girls mauled me down a flight of stairs in front of people and DIDN’T EVEN NOTICE LMAO also whe I tripped at my high school graduaton going to get my diploma.

101.) Has anyone really close to you ever died? If so, who was it and how did you handle it?

yes, my uncle and i did not handle it well.

102.)  Describe your plan of action if you were home alone and you heard someone break into your house.

Lock myself in a room and call 911 or fight them lmao

103.) If you were to be born again, would you want to be born male or female?

probs male

104.)  What shampoo do you use?

the cheapest one i can find

105.) Guess the meaning of this word: ulotrichous.

I dont even know where to start lmao definitely a phobia for something maybe

106.) Do you let messages (phone, email, text, social media, etc…) build up, or do you have to look at them right away?

texts i let build but everythig else i dont

107.)  Where is the nearest McDonalds to your house?

on the other side of town like 5 mins away

108.)  If you had $1 billion and you had to spend it in exactly one week, what would you spend it on?

makeup, concerts tickets, plane tickets, clothes, alcohol,food.

109.) What is the best thing you’ve ever eaten?

pasta for sure

110.) If you could go on a trip around the world with up to three people, who would you bring (they can be people you know personally or famous people).

Michele, Zion, thats about it lmao

111.) What expletive/ explicit phrase do you say most often?

fuck off i guess

112.) What is your personal definition of success?

happy with yourself, your job, your life as a whole

113.) How was your day today?

it was good, tiring.

114.) What is the closest Big City you live by?

hartford or probably new york

115.) Have you ever been in a car accident?

no

116.) Do you hide anything from your parents?

yes

117.) If you could possess one talent, what would you be able to do?

sing or dance.

118.) Ugly and smart or beautiful and stupid?

ufgly and smart

119.) What is the worst thing you’ve ever seen in real life?

i dont know

120.) Use only 3 words to describe how you want your future to go.

happy, imperfectly perfect and promising.

121.) QUICK! give me a few things a brick could be useful for

hitting myself in the head

122.) If you could make a dream society, describe it in great detail where it would be, who would be in it, and what rules there would be?

somewhere warm, my friends/favorite artists, no negativity, everything is free, the artists who live there HAVE to perform every other weekend.

123.) If you could make any animal miniature, what would you make and why?

giraffes so in can have one as a pet,

124.) What are your favorite candle scents?

salted caramel, flannel, vanilla bean noel, champagne toast, hot cocoa and cream,endless weekend

125.) If you HAD to have one plastic surgery, what would you get and why?

something to make me skinnier

126.) Do you prefer to hang out with the same sex or the opposite sex?

opposite--less drama.

127.) If you could make a charity, what would the profits go towards? How would you raise money for it?

animals,homeless people, children

128.) Describe the body you wish you had.

just a flatter stomach and thinner thighs

129.) If you were a famous director, what would your next movie be about? Describe the plot, characters, and possible title.

probs a romcom or a romance movie--to tired to make a plot

130.) If only women were to rule the world, how different would the world be by 2050?

very probably better tho

131.) What is your favorite alcoholic drink?

jack and coke.

132.) Do you have a problematic friend?

doesn;t everyone?

133.) Are you more spontaneous or more of a planner?

spontaneous

134.) If you could change your full name, what would your name be?

idk

135.) What is one song that describes your life?

probably wait for you by jake miller or invisible by anna clendending

136.) What is one show you’ve been meaning to watch but can never find the time for?

all of the ones in my list

137.) Do you find it easy to drop toxic people from your life that you’ve known for a long time?

yes

138.) Do you like children? Why or why not?

yes bc they’re cute af and funny and honest

139.) What is your zodiac sign?

pisces

140.) Do you like to dance? Do you dance often? In front of other people?

when im drunk

141.) Name some of your favorite colors.

blue

142.) Have you ever shoplifted? If so, what was it?

yes random stuff from walmart lmao

143.) If you could speak three additional languages, what would they be?

spanish, italian and french

144.) Have you ever been in legal trouble?

eh

145.) Have you ever had surgery?

yes twice.

146.) If you could change 2 things about yourself, what would you change and why?

my body and my face bc uglyand fat

147.) What do you want done with your body after you die?

cremated

148.) What three physical features do people compliment you most on? What do they say about them?

my hair, eyes and outfit sometimes.

149.) If you could have your own business, what would you do?

something that requires me to travel

150.) What current friend do you have that you’ve known the longest?

Angelica--known her before we were born 

[deadlyunicornsofspace]

My Podcast Idea: take 2

okay, so this is the second post I’ve made about it, because my first was all over the place and I missed a bunch of stuff. a few points to make first though so the rest is easier to read.

1) I won’t cover everything I’ve figured out in case I ever do make this into a real thing, and I don’t want to tell you guys everything that happens right now

2) I'm going to call humans two different things, humans (obviously) and deathworlders. the reason for this is that Aliens don’t refer to humans as humans, simply because that is not what they named them. Aliens refer to this insane species as “deathworlders”

3) I am going to refer to the main human character as TH (tiny human)

Okay now that I’ve covered that, time to talk about the rest of it.

Premise

So basically, the first idea I had was just this human being raised by these aliens who don’t know that this kid is a human, and humans are some mythical creature in that universe. obviously a lot has changed since then.

First off, I have TH actually living on this spaceship for most their life (Specific age isn’t hugely important, but I've decided that they've been on it since they were about four) and they can’t remember anything from before they were on the ship. 

The spaceship basically has the entire internet on it (Minus all the viruses I guess) up until the ship was sent into space. (So like when Tumblr has already loaded a whole bunch of posts, but then your internet crashes and you can look at all the already loaded posts but not any new ones) So TH knows a whole bunch about earth, they’ve seen tv shows, read books etc etc. so they know they’re human and a lot about earth. (However of course their perspective is skewed of course because they learned everything from the internet)

So I have no idea how spending all this time with no other humans around is going to affect this kid (obviously they’re going to be fucked up from lack of human contact) then I decided I didn’t want this kid to be completely alone (Because come on, the podcast doesn’t even start until they're fourteen, that’s like ten years alone) so I gave them robots. the robots are on the ship with them, they take care of stuff, but they also have AIs so TH can sort of talk to them, but still not the same as having real humans around. 

On that note, if you know anything about psychology and how this might effect them, please message me or something, I don’t want to mess it up I’d love to talk to someone who knows what they’re talking about

okay, so next event is first contact. so TH lands on this planet. (I can’t decide if it’s a crash landing or not, because it seems weird not to have it be able to land, but I’m also pretty sure they were expecting it to be flown by someone trained to do this you know?) So anyway TH is on the planet and is found by this pair of aliens.

time for the Obvious Problem.

communication. because, don’t get me wrong, whilst I love Voltron, the whole meeting aliens and of course they speak English, why wouldn’t they? is kind of ridiculous. I can only assume that the castle has a translator (Which does raise the question of why English would be in their data base, or any human language for that matter, but that is a long post for another time and on my main account.) so I need to figure out this language barrier quick

So after a long time of pondering, I figured it out. All aliens have translators, because while the optimal world would be where everyone spoke everyone’s language, it’s not happening. so when they meet this strange species they’ve never seen before they open up their translator and try to translate what they’re saying, and it works, TH seems to speaking a strange variant of an archaic language that they cannot identify the planet of (Yes I realise this is shady af, but I'm going to have an explanation for it, but not in this post.) So they’re just about barely able to communicate the bare essentials. 

so they manage to get across that they’re friendly, and that they’re going to going to help fix their ship etc. the issue is that they seem to have a really old version of English, so they use the ships data base to update their translator. now do you remember what I said earlier about the internet not being the best way to learn stuff. these aliens cannot tell fact from fiction, they do not know the difference between slang and not. 

So that’s gonna be a real wild ride

Anyways, back to plot

So TH is going to stay with Aliens while they fix up ship and figure out what’s going on with them

At one point I think they’ll be telling TH about deathworlders, maybe TH will be telling them about horror stories and stuff like that and they jus, “Oh, you mean like deathworlders?” and they just, “What the heck is a deathworlder?” and there I could have a spooky campfire stories sort of scene.

They start talking about what they want to do

TH says they want to find other humans and figure out where they came from

Aliens want to explore space

anyway long story short they find this map with a whole bunch of places marked down

they cross reference it with a map of all the planets they know of and some of the marked places are planets, both inhabited and not, and some are in unrecorded territory

Long story short they go fuck it, and leave in TH’s spaceship to explore the cosmos. Idk if they’ll pick up others to join their crew along the way

I definitely want them to have a person on their crew that is a human conspiracist. like how we have conspiracies about aliens, they have conspiracies that deathworlders exist

anyway along the journey they’re gradually going to piece together that TH is a deathworlder. theres gonna be a whole bunch of little bits that Ima put under another section.

“The real conspiracy was the friends you made along the way”

Anyway that’s pretty much all I've got for plot to share with you, so

TH is a deathworlder?

early clues:

TH has an astounding pain threshold. Like they injure themselves and it sounds excruciatingly painful and like they should see a doctor if what they say is anything to go by, but insist on just walking it off

Their ability to multitask is astounding, like they’re doing three things at once while also consuming their daily required nutrients

TH threw a piece of paper into a bin while not looking and acted like it was no big deal WHAT THE ACTUAL

As they start to question it: 

“Dude, you said deathworlders digest poison to build an immunity and weed out the weak”

“YOU HAVE PEPPERS GROWING IN YOUR GARDEN!”

“They’re for flavour.”

“THEY’RE POISONOUS!”

“I thought you said that deathworlders are so eager to fight they even fight their own genetics”

“PUNCHING THINGS AND SPRINTING IS NOT SOMETHING YOUR SPECIES SHOULD BE CAPABLE OF”

“and?”

“YOU HAVE ENTIRE RITUALS AND CEREMONIES DEDICATED TO THEM”

About the world

so basically whenever what I am going to refer to as the alien government (AG)discovers a likely place for an inhabitable planet to be they send out an exploration squad to see is there is one, they then send another group to go visit the planet and speak to them and ask if they wish to join their big group of planets, idk what to call it.

Nobody ever refuses, because why would they? 

Communication and transport is established and they are now a part of their clique. 

so all of the aliens are very peaceful

so the priority in tech is communication, transport, and exploration. 

there isn’t really anything in the way of weapons

it’s hard to get clearance to explore

Well more specifically it’s hard to get clearance for an exploration ship. TH’s spaceship is a loophole, because they aren’t a part of their government so they can't stop them.

which is why the aliens wanted to explore so bad, because no proper exploring is really done, it’s all just science and there should be a planet here, check it out.

you can get little ships for singular planet use about as easily as a car, but they’re effectively just used as cars because that’s the kind of thing they’re made for. you can also get ships for interplanetary travel, but only through established routes. that’s kind of the equivalent of getting an airplane.

That’s all I can think of to put in this post, I’d love to hear back from you guys with your thoughts, as I said, if you know anything about psychology and how TH might be affected by their situation please message me or something, I need help. also just feel free to message me, about this, about anything to do with my whole blog, or anything at all. or if you just want to talk. 

see you guys next time! And hey,

you’re beautiful

[fuck-customers]

scandal - cliques and sex

**i really love my manager, he was the manager at my store about 3 years ago before i transferred, he then left and then came back about a month or so after i transferred. i've came to him with so many problems - both work related and personally due to various things such as the death of a family member, mental health and even because i wanted time off to do some silly uni assignment last minute. he let me leave 45 mins early one day because i looked upset - he's a gem. and its not just me that he does this shit for - its everyone. i get on with him personally as we have similar interests. he's a pretty good boss most of the time, and he's never been an asshole to me.**

this is kind of a fuck-managers, fuck co-workers thing but anyway my work has broke into proper scandal recently. 

ANYWAY, its highly likely my boss is fucking one of my co-workers, let's call her becky so i don't refer to her as "this girl" 24/7. shes 25, hes 30. 

it's a huuuge story and we basically need to speak about it all for it to all make sense. (and believe me this is the cut version) 

when my boss become the store manager for the second time, everyone was happy cos he's amazing but there was a lot of giggling like, "oh becky will be happy, she loves him" blah blah blah all that bullshit. anyway, she had a boyfriend at the time and he was in a pretty serious long term relationship. i never thought anything of it, cos he is a pretty man and he seemed to be her "type". 

flash forward to about a year later, late 2016, she gets promoted to keyholder. she did a lot of opening shifts - often with my boss. again, i see no problem with this. she's full time and she gets on with everyone. progression. good for her. 

but this is when shit gets nasty! she becomes friends with these two part time girls - obviously there's nothing wrong with this but they form a pretty brutal clique. they managed to get shifts together and just sorta stood and spoke for the whole shift, had their lunches together and did no work whilst hating on everyone else for not doing work, idk whatever. they have this whatsapp chat, where they added pretty much every girl apart from me, a girl we will call "sally" (who similarly, fucked our old supervisor but thats a different story and they date now so its not as bad), the xmas temps, the other full time girl and the mature student whose part time. i cared at first but i got over it pretty soon. 

becky became very nasty to sally, basically because sally seen through her shit and called her out for being a bitch. becky managed to turn most of the girls away from sally, apart from those not in the chat and one of the girls in the groupchat ("emily") who never contributed. sally spoke to my boss about it because she was feeling really shitty, and he just kinda swept it under the carpet - very not a him thing to do. sally couldnt take it and ended up quitting - which is a shame, because sally was probs my closest friend at work.

i spoke to sally about this at a later date when we met up and she said that when she opened with becky and the manager they ignored her and made her do stupid tasks whilst they did really minor jobs together. she said it reminded her of what her and her now boyfriend used to do at work. this opens my eyes a lil, and i noticed anytime i am working with them that they talk a lot, and go on lunch together - my boss normally takes his lunch alone when shes not in and he used to drive home and eat it with his girlfriend - or he'd sit in a cafe.  

jumping a little bit, i was on a shift and was on the phone to a manager of another store, he asked to speak to our manager, and i couldnt find him anywhere. when i finally find him i just hand him the phone, not saying anything because the store was really busy. it sinks in as i walk away from him that i caught him crying. he doesn't properly bring it up again but he asks me and a few other people "what would you do if you saw me crying" - i feel mega guilty but act as if i honestly didnt see, cause its awkward. idk if i mentioned it before but he has like major depression, possibly bipolar but hasnt confronted his doctor on this (i dunno how many people know this) and like, i think some things get to him. like if him and the area manager disagree, or if him and his girlfriend fell out or if he fucked something simple up. hes quite reserved during the xmas period, and very unlike himself. i mention this to a supervisor im very good friends with a few weeks later and they tells me that hes been having problems with his girlfriend and she got rid of their pet dog, for no apparent reason.

so thats...really shit.

at some point becky and her boyfriend break up, im not sure but i notice after a facebook stalk at the start of 2017. this is around the time my manager starts to act more like himself and work feels more normal.

and this is when shit gets more obvious and more weird. 

there's a shift im on with the manager, emily and one of the boys we work with. one of our other managers is getting married and my boss recommended him his friend to be the photographer. so we're all talking about weddings and getting married and children. when we ask our manager about this, he acts flakey and says he doesnt want to get married. its left there but im in with the same people (excluding boss) and becky the next day and the conversation picks up - becky says she really wants to get married but doubts it will happen because she'll "probably fall in love with someone who doesn't want to get married".

my boss starts using his phone on the shopfloor, snapchatting and texting, it gets to the point that our area manager BANS him from using his phone. myself and other staff members notice that he's snapchatting becky a lot. emily tells us when she went on a night out with "the girls" (from the groupchat) becky wasn't off her phone, snapchatting him with "the girls" but then hiding her phone and texting him when she thought nobody was looking. obviously, her little clique seen nothing wrong with this, or blindly ignored it but by this point emily was sick of her shit. 

we win a staff night out. long story short, they go off together for ages. 

another time, she goes over to his house (that he shares with his girlfriend) with the shitty excuse that he was gonna fix her laptop, cos "he can fix them". 

i hear from the same supervisor that told me before about his relationship problems that his girlfriend was looking for jobs in another city without really consulting him. so things are pretty bad. 

emily (bless her) left the groupchat after too many bitching sessions. they start targeting this poor younger gal at work that becky decides to randomly argue with on facebook. they all claim they dislike her because "theres just something about her". i think the gal knows that becky despises her for no apparent reason and is sick of it so she blocks her. they dont really work together anyway, so idk, its a bit drastic but i suppose its fair. emily defends her and leaves. the next day at work, she shows us the whatsapp chat. 

becky screenshots a conversation between her and boss that has statements like "tbh i only hired her because she was hot" and him making a meme of her. its HORRIBLE. its so out of character and weird. and it seems even more fishy that becky is stirring it by showing a large chunk of the work group. personally i feel like becky knows exactly what shes doing, idk, i feel like shes took advantage of the pretty good nature of our sometimes unstable manager and make him like this. i have no idea, i could be biased cos i really like him - he could be using her as a bit on the side, taking advantage of the fact she always had a crush on him.

someone tells other management about the whatsapp, cause y'no... its sick. and emily shows the other managers the picture, and they call him up on it. he seems to be pretty apologetic about it but idk. becky sends emily passive aggressive texts about the whole thing saying she trusted her and whatever blah blah blah... i dont care. its a lot of shit.

someone at my work calls my manager on the way he is with becky and apparently just breaks down into tears and says he left his girlfriend last night and slept in his car. about a week later, someone else calls him out on it and he says he knows he's "been a dick" and kinda ignores the confrontation. i think hes back in his house now, no idea about his girlfriend.

beckys girl posse dont know anything about it, or claim not to, not even the two who shes closest to. i go to the same uni as one of them and one day we meet for lunch, it comes into conversation and she says "well its not any of my business" i try and remain neutral and say if they are doing anything its not fair on either of them and she says: "no its not fair on becky if he doesnt want to date her and only wants to fuck her", goes bright red and changes the subject. 

a few days later, emilys brother who works in a takeaway where becky lives sees both becky and our manager ordering (emilys brother comes into our work a lot - just before the "how did he know who they were" bullshit). he tells emily, and says to her just to say that he saw him, apparently he went bright red about this and quizzed emily on when this was (obv because he knew he was getting caught in this scandal) but she said she wasnt sure. 

so, this week, becky and my manager were caught coming to work together, when they live in complete opposite directions of eachother. i think someones reporting him and i think becky might be transferring to another store.

this is all confusing and a clusterfuck but it feels like something that would happen in a soap opera and its something that i thought i should share.

if there's any updates on either

- the clique being more bitchy

or

- manager/becky relations

i'll keep y'all posted!

[beer-and-breakdowns]

1-117 ;)

1: Let’s start with a tricky one; what is the real reason you are confused right now?

I guess I’m not too confused at the minute, but a confusing situation I deal with sometimes is falling for someone that I probably shouldnt, and not knowing how to and not being able to deal with it.

2: Do you ever get “good morning” texts from anyone?

Sometimes. Rarely though.

3: If your significant other smoked pot, would you care?

Yes, and no. I’d be concerned and probably kind of annoyed, but I guess its their life, yano.

4: Do you find it easy to trust others?

Yeah! Sometimes too easy, but I’m a positive dude.

5: What were you doing at 11PM last night?

I was probably listening to music knowing me

6: You’re drunk and lost walking down the road; who is with you?

Probably my boi, Leo

7: What would you do if you found out you had been cheated on?

My heart would drop and I would get upset and angry. I would probably confront my partner and take it from there.

8: Are you close with your dad?

Yeah, to an extent. I’m happy with it, we’re not NOT close, I guess we could be closer, but we’re close!

9: I bet you kissed someone last night, right?

Hahahahaha, next joke

10: What are you listening to?

Shadows Fall, and I highly recommend them to anyone and anything with ears

11: You can only drink ONE liquid for the rest of your life - what is it?

Ummmmmmm, this is hard. Probably something lemony, like 7-up or sprite, but my answer would probably be different tomorrow

12: Do you like hickeys?

Kinda, not gonna lie. In small amounts obviously, lets not look battle scarred… unless thats ur thing

13: What time do you go to bed?

Way later than what is healthy

14: Is there someone who continuously lets you down?

I dont think so

15: Can you text as quickly with one hand as you do both?

After some highly scientific testing… nope

16: Do you always answer your texts?

I try but I’m horrible at seeing messages and notifications

17: Do you hate the person you fell the hardest for?

Odd question, no, quite the opposite actually

18: When was the last time you talked to one of your best friends?

Today!

19: Is there someone that makes you happy every time you see them?

If prof. pictures count, sure

20: What was your last thought before you went to bed last night?

I think I was too tired to think, so probably just thoughts about actually sleeping

21: Is anyone else in the room with you?

Nope… unless theres a ghost in here o.o

22: Do you believe what goes around comes around?

Depends

23: Were you happier four months ago than you are now?

Probably not

24: Is there someone you wish you could fix things with?

I guess, but I dont dwell on that stuff

25: In the past week, have you cried?

Nope

26: What colour is the shirt you are wearing?

Grey. Not black, for once.

27: Do people ever call you by your last name?

Actually, yes sometimes

28: Is anyone ignoring you right now?

Maybe

29: Do you have a best friend?

Yup!!:)

30: Would it be hard seeing someone else kiss the last person you kissed?

Heck no

31: Who was your last call/text message from?

I had a text from my dad lmao

32: Are you mad at anyone?

I dont think so

33: Have you ever kissed someone older than you?

Yup

34: How old will the last person you kissed be on his/her next birthday?

20

35: How many more days until your birthday?

Woah, ummm, 88 I think

36: Do you have any summer plans yet?

Nope, but I have been on a vacation at the start of summer already so probably nothing, rip

37: Do you have any good friends of the opposite sex?

More than my own sex

38: Are you keeping anything from your best friend(s) now?

Nah

39: Do you have a secret that you’ve never told anyone?

Maybe, but I’m not sure

40: Have you ever regretted kissing someone?

Yup

41: Do you think age matters in relationships?

Depends, if you’re both consenting adults then nope, if you’re happy, you’re happy

42: Are you available?

You know it

43: How many people have you had real, strong feelings for since high school ended?

Well, high school actually JUST ended for me, so one

44: If you had to get a piercing (not ears), what would you get?

If I HAD to, probably nose I guss maybe?? I’m not a huge piercing guy so idk

45: Do you believe exes can be friends?

Definitely, I’m friends with most of my exes, just dependa why you borke up

46: Do you regret anything?

Kinda, maybe, but again, I tend not to dwell

47: Honestly, what’s on your mind right now?

Good music and a love interest… sounds like the title of something relatively mediocre hahaha

48: Did you ever lose a best friend?

Yeah

49: Was your last kiss a mistake?

Probably

50: Why aren’t you pursuing the person you like?

Ummmm, a few reasons

51: Has the last person you kissed ever seen you cry?

Probably

52: Do you still talk with the person you LAST kissed?

Very very very rarely

53: What was the last thing you ate?

Pizza, lmao, whats health?

54: Did you get any compliments today?

I think, maybe

55: Where are you going on your next vacation?

Very unsure

56: Do you own anything from other countries?

I think so

57: Are most of your friend guys or girls?

Girls

58: Where have you lived most of your life?

Wales for 100% of my life

59: When was the last time you took a long drive?

Ages ago, I dont go anywhere hahaha

60: Have you ever played Spin the Bottle?

Yeah, but not like THE spin the bottle, just the version everyone plays as kids, so actually, no

61: Have you ever TPd someone’s house?

No, thats lame

62: Who do you text the most?

I dont text, sooooo, I guess my dad

63: What was the last movie you saw?

Kong: Skull Island, and it wasn’t great, not gonna lie folks

64: What’s preventing your current boyfriend/girlfriend from going back to their ex?

I dont have one, so literally nothing hahaha

65: How many boyfriends/girlfriends did you have in 2011?

None that I can remember, so if I did have any, they must have been pretty lame, but that was a decent year. MITB 2011, Cena Vs. Punk, Great match ;)

66: Is the last person you kissed younger than you?

Nope

67: Do you curse around your parents?

Nah

68: Are you happy with where you live?

Yeah, why not

69: Picture of yourself?

It’ll be on the end, yo

70: Are you a monogamous person or do you believe in open-ended relationships?

Monogamous, but if people are happy in oepn ended relationships I got no issues

71: Have you ever been dumped?

Yup

72: What do you most like about making out?

Everything. Thats a cheap answer but making out is one of my favourite things on this planet.

73: Have you ever casually made out with someone who you weren’t seriously involved with?

Nope

74: When you kiss someone for the first time, is it usually you who initiates it or the other?

Mixed bag really, sometimes

75: What part of a person’s body do you find most attractive?

Depends, I like faces obviously. Hair can be really pretty. Um, I dunno if this is weird but hands can be pretty sometimes I guess hahaha. Midriffs are cool too h'okay

76: Who was the last person you talked to last night before you went to bed?

I cant remember tbh, is that bad??

77: Had sex with someone you knew less than an hour?

Nope

78: Had sex with someone you didn’t know their name?

Nope

79: What makes your heart flutter and brings a big cheesy smile to your face?

Y O U

80: Would you get involved with someone if they had a child already?

If I really likes them and I was ready for the responsibility yeah. Right now, probably not.

81: Has someone who had a crush on you ever confessed to you?

Yeah

82: Do you tell a lot of people when you have a crush?

Not a lot of people

83: Do you miss your last sweetie?

Nope

84: Last time you slow danced with someone?

Like, never hahaha

85: Have you ever ‘dated’ someone you’ve never met?

Yeah

86: How can I win your heart?

Have a good taste in music, be funny, be as kind and caring as you can be and support me at all times, just love me gosh darn it

87: What is your astrological sign?

Libra

88: What were you doing last night at 12 AM?

Watching YouTube videos

89: Do you cook?

I cant cook a lot of dishes, but yeah I think I can

90: Have you ever gotten back in touch with an old flame after a time of more than 3 months of no communication?

Depends what ya mean by “flame”

91: If you’re single right now, do you wish you were in a relationship?

Yes

92: Do you prefer to date various people or do you pretty much fall into monogamous relationships quickly?

Monogamous, sometimes too quickly

93: What physical traits do you look for in a potential interest?

This is gonna feel petty, but its a petty question. I have a major thing for blonde hair. I like natural looks, nothing fancy or over the top. Small is cute, but then so is tall sometimes, depends on the person.

94: Name four things that you wish you had!

The right relationshipMoneyA custom built guitarA record deal

95: Are you a player?

No

96: Have you ever kissed 2 people in one day?

Nope

97: Are you a tease?

I can be I guess

98: Ever meet anyone you met on Tumblr?

Not YET

99: Have you ever been deeply in love with someone?

Yeah

100: Anybody on Tumblr that you’d go on a date with?

Yeah

101: Hugs or Kisses?

Both are AWESOME, depends on the situation, I guess off the top of my head, kisses

102: Are you too shy to ask someone out?

I can be

103: The first thing you notice about the opposite sex?

Depends, sometimes its their personality, other times its their appearence, depensa what I’m paying more attention to at the time

104: Is it cute when a boy/girl calls you babe?

Yeah

105: If a sexy person was pursuing you, but you knew he/she was in relationship, would you go for it?

Nah, thats bad, it would suck, but I’d do the right thing

106: Do you flirt a lot?

Sometimes

107: Your last kiss?

My ex

108: Have you kissed more than 5 people since the start of 2012?

Maybe, but idk

109: Have you kissed anyone in the past month?

Nooe

110: If you could kiss anyone who would it be?

The person I like

111: Do you know who you’ll kiss next?

Nope

112: Does someone like you currently?

I have no idea

113: Do you currently have feelings for anyone?

Yup

114: Do you like to be in serious relationships or just flings?

Honestly, serious relationships

115: Ever made out with just a friend?

Nope

116: Are you happier single or in a relationship?

Depends on how good the relationship is

117: Your own question that you want me to answer. Just write it.

Nice question ;)

[jackoshman]

#BellLetsTalk

let me introduce myself for those not close to me: i’m josh, a university freshman from a middle-class family. a middle-class home in a middle-class neighborhood. i’m a white jewish cis male so, you know, the world is pretty much set for me to succeed - i’d like to start this by explicitly making note of that. i live on treaty 1 land, the land of the dene, anishinaabe, oji-cree, metis, ojibwe, cree and dakota nations (although the dakota never signed treaty 1). no matter my problems, there are many that inherently have had it much tougher simply because of their skin colour, religion or sexual orientation.

all that aside, i write this with hopes that i can reach 1 person who is going through something similar to my life. i’ve been reading a lot of articles and stories from people that are experiencing the same adversities, and i’ve found a lot of comfort in seeing that i’m not alone. 

i wont beat around the bush. lets get right to it.

my mother has struggled with a crack/cocaine addiction for approximately 12 years. it has been generally swept under the rug, as most families with addict-parents and small children do. until last year. after spending a lot of time at my girlfriends house and seeing how other people live, i convinced my mom to join narcotics anonymous. this was one of the hardest conversations i’ve ever had to have.

although she struggled to stay sober for months after her first NA meeting, the dialogue opened and i have been able to start my healing process. i’ve realized my deeply-rooted anxiety problems and just being able to be open about this has been such a free-ing experience.

i know there are many questions. how did our household function? what was it like?

right off the bat i’d like to mention my mother never used in front of me until this last year, which was another huge step towards pushing me to get her help. for over a decade she was able to keep me pretty sheltered. in 10+ years i only spotted strange men leaving my garage maybe 4 or 5 times. i only saw the lingering, distinctly thick smoke a handful of times. i rarely came face to face with a pipe and never the actual substance itself. my mother really did make a conscious effort to make sure my sister and i were never completely traumatized. for me personally, the events i look back on as traumatizing (seeing the smoke, dealers, my mother high) only have emerged as traumatizing this year, when i actually realized they were traumatizing. many childhood memories are tainted with the idea that my mom was likely either high, about to use, or in the process of using, just across the hall from my bedroom.

to give some more context, i’ll go a little further back.

my mother’s sister committed suicide on halloween in 2006. i was 7 and my sister was 9. this sent my mother spiraling into a deep depression and so her use increased. by the time i was 9 and my sister was 11, we were used to my mom being locked in her room for hours each night. because we grew up with friends who lived across the street and loved playing outside for as long as we could, we definitely used this to our advantage and got to stretch our curfews more than a few times. -

- this is an incredibly common thing among children of addict-parents. because an addict’s behavior is so dramatically different depending on what amount of substance is in their blood, the rules of the house get bent or changed basically at complete random. this plants a seed of mistrust in the child; a lack of trust between the child and their parent, and generally all figures of authority.

in november of 2008, i was in the 5th grade. i remember waking up one day and instantly knowing i was late for class - this was a frequent occurence in our house, another product of our complete lack of real structure. sometimes when i noticed i was late, i would just lie in bed and wait for my mom to wake up and yell at me and then go to school for the afternoon or whatever. this was one of those times.

the hours went by. it was almost lunch time and my mom hadn’t come to yell at me, so something felt strange. i left my bed to go see if she was still sleeping. her bed was empty. i looked out the kitchen window to see if she had left but the car was in the garage. i checked the living room, nothing. and then i checked the basement. the light was on, which my mom always got on us about turning off. when i go down the stairs i see my mom asleep on the couch. a little unusual perhaps, but nothing that extreme. i walked over and began to lightly shake her to wake her up. nothing. no response at all. i shook her harder. still nothing. it was at this point that i went upstairs, got dressed, woke my sister up and filled her in with what was happening. we both went back down and shook her at the same time. my moms eyes briefly opened and she made out a few unintelligible sounds. after maybe 10 more minutes of this my mom finally gained enough consciousness to assure us she was fine and sit herself up. within 10 seconds she was completely slouched into her own lap. we shook her again. she fell to the floor and went completely limp. i ran to the phone and dialed my baba. my grandfather picked up and i did my best to explain what was happening. although clearly confused and unclear about what was happening, he came over within about 10 minutes. it was when we lead him down the stairs to her that i actually noticed something weird. there were pills scattered everywhere (my mom was on a plethora of anti-depressants, pain-killers, etc.). my grandfather dialed 911 and luckily she made it and spent the next 2 weeks in the ER and psych ward at the hospital.

it wasn’t the hospital visits that were the most difficult. after the ambulance came to get my mom, i was dropped off at school and all my friends rushed to me to ask why i was late. i had no idea what to tell them. i had no idea what the fuck just happened. the first responders explained to me that my mom must have accidentally taken too many sleeping pills. even though i always considered myself the smartest person in my class, i completely believed thats what happened. but i was too ashamed to even tell my friends that; i just walked away holding back tears until i could get to the washroom and let it out. the rest of the day i avoided the question and all the kids, as kids do, got something else to be excited about. - 

- a few follow ups to this story: i didnt understand my mother attempted suicide until years later. looking back i have absolutely 0 idea how it took me so long to realize this, but what i’m finding is that it’s extremely common among children of addict-parents to have distorted ideas of reality. because children are often given a sugar-coated version of stories, children of addict-parents are at an exponentially higher risk to confuse what they see with what their told and so they have trouble wondering what’s real and what isn’t. their external and internal realities often exist separately. are they crazy? is it their judgement that’s flawed? obviously it’s easy to see that the child is rarely delusional, but for the child that may be difficult to see, especially if they have nobody to talk to about this problem, which nicely ties in the 2nd follow up to this story: living with an enormous family secret is one of the toughest things a child can experience. mainly, the shame is unimaginably overwhelming. a child of an addict may avoid friendships with other children and may feel they cannot invite their friends to their house, because their parent might be at home high, coming down from the substance, in the process of getting high or drunk, and the parent will embarrass them. another result of a major family secret is fear and/or paranoia. a child of an addict lives in constant fear of having their truth revealed to someone outside the house. the child is constantly worried they might be taken away from home and put into the foster system, and that their parent could go to jail for their addiction.

after reading x many articles theres definitely a lot of the same things i’m noticing between the stories and experiences of children of addicts. heres a small guide that can help u understand ur trauma if u are a child of an addict, or a guide that will help u offer better support for those u know who had a strange childhood:

lets talk about “normal”. i briefly eluded to this before but i want to be more clear. children of addicts have no idea what the fuck normal is. let me tell u. generally speaking, normal shouldn’t include instability, fear, or any form of abuse. for children of addicts, this is literally new information. normal for us is taking care of your household, your siblings, your parent(s), and very rarely yourself. this is a major reason that many children of addicts are seen as pushovers or unable to stand up for themselves. we’ve learned forever to put other people before ourselves, because nobody has put us first. ever. an addict parent, to be very blunt, puts their addiction before their children all the time, whether they mean to or not.

fear. fear is an instinctive feeling that everyone experiences at some point or another. everyone is afraid of something. but it’s very different for children of addicts. we live in fear most of the time. and the fear is hidden — sometimes very deeply. we’re afraid of the future, specifically the unknown. the unknown has been our reality for many years. we may not have known where our parents were, or when they’d return. we might not have known if there would be a pleasant family dinner or awkward silence through the whole house. while we may know now that we no longer have to worry about our households because we’ve moved out or some other reason, life can still be terrifying. coming home and not knowing what to expect (at all), all through your childhood, is a major factor in making us incredibly anxious people. this fear or anxiety may express itself in a number of ways, everything from anger to tears. we probably won’t recognize it as fear or anxiety without professional help or doing our own research. so read as much as u can!

we feel guilty. about everything. we don’t understand self-care. we don’t have clear-cut boundaries. if we stand up for ourselves, we feel guilty. if we take care of ourselves, we feel guilty. our life is built on a foundation of i give to you and receive nothing. we don’t know how to receive. this is a super tough thing to learn for us and can take a really long time to understand.  it was very difficult for me to move out for this reason. how could i not be there to help my mom? shes kinda fucking crazy and doesn’t have many friends. what is she gonna do without me? eventually you have to hold your addict parent accountable, solely for your own mental health. you didn’t make them an addict. get yourself some space and distance. you can tell them to join AA or NA (which aren’t that helpful for a large % of people, sadly) or some other rehab program, but at the end of the day the addict has to want to get better. and that is only on them. nothing to do with u. at all. trying to empathize and work with an addict will drive u insane cause their brain doesn’t work properly anymore.

obviously, we had no peace in our childhood. we don’t know peace. chaos, stress, unrest: these are comfortable for us. we feel at home in these circumstances, not because they are healthy, but because they feel normal. we develop different survival tactics that people shouldn’t need until much later in life. we have trouble planning things and managing our time. many of us would rather live without a schedule. nothing in our households have ever been consistent. and so we learn to deal with random fucking shitstorms all the time.

after a month and a half of detox and rehab programs, my mom is now a few months clean and i am living at home. things can always get better. that being said, getting here has been the toughest thing i’ve ever had to do in my life, and by no means is it over. addiction is a struggle my mom will have to deal with daily. i have panic attacks. but reaching out to others for support has been instrumental in getting my life in order.

i know i talked about this already but having to keep a secret like this from your friends and other family members is mentally and emotionally exhausting, and after over a decade this manifested in me into anxiety, depression and paranoia. because i couldn’t explain this problem to anyone without explaining the root of it, nobody knew what i was going thru for over 5 years. opening up to my closest friends, some of over 15 years, has been the toughest but best thing ive ever done (they have been wonderful so i’d like to thank them here for that). i’ve cried more in the last year of my life than the other 17 combined. it has been sooooo worth it and i can’t stress that enough. i was never able to have any sort of real relationship before i sorted my brain out, and this is often the case for those struggling with mental illnesses and/or trauma. there is nothing more important than than your own mental health. put yourself first for just a bit. sharing your experiences opens the doors for yourself and others who are struggling to come forward.

this is also (maybe obviously) why i’m so hellbent on doing away with the war on drugs - and capitalism as a whole but i’ll leave that for another day - because i’ve literally been on the dark side of it. the war on drugs, though ADMITTEDLY a war on poor (black) people, has failed massively as a detterent away from drugs. treating addicts like criminals is the worst and most damaging thing we can possibly do. my mom was scared of getting help for all of those years, and partially, rightfully so. coming forward with two young kids could’ve sent me and my sister away from her, could’ve put her in jail, not to mention the massive public shame she would feel from the jewish community, and our local community. keep in mind were just a middle class family in winnipeg manitoba. the damage the war on drugs has taken onto marginalized communities across the USA (especially) and the world is beyond measure. what we know concretely, is that this system of prohibition doesnt work. it never has over the course of modern history. what does work is decriminalizing, best showcased in Portugal where money once spent on harrassing and imprisoning addicts has been redirected into rehab programs and subsidies for companies willing to hire addicts. this is what progress looks like!!! their overdose and addiction rates generally have plummeted since decrimnalization. the choice here is simple.

anyway thanks for reading my rambled story. thank you to everyone voicing their issues today. dialogue is our best medicine. be kind to each other and think about where people may be coming from before you jump to conclusions about them.

love, josh