#like ok then give us the meat! it takes 3 seconds to google a word give us the bigger picture!

[alistairian]

Stressed all yesterday cuz I forgot to do an assignment that was due today but now classes got canceled and I have an extra week to do it ❤️

[13uswntimagines]

Chanukah party (USWNT x Baby!Reader)

This isn’t a request but @literaryhedgehog​ and I thought it would be fun. The basic premise is that reader is at camp during Chanukah, and the team feels bad (especially Lindsey) so they throw her a party. (thank you @notmia101​ for betaing this for us). 

You smiled at Alyssa as she described her winter plans after training camp. How she was going to visit her sister and her family for Christmas. How they were hoping for snow and how they were going to kill an innocent tree and desecrate its body with lights for their amusement. Her words, not yours. It was a game she and the other girls played every year, trying to make their Christmas plans sound as horror-movie-ish as possible. It was a way of trying to make fun of themselves so you could share the amusement and join in laughing at them. 

But despite their efforts, a little piece of you always felt left out because you couldn’t (wouldn’t?) participate. See, you were one of the few who didn’t celebrate Christmas. You were proud of your Jewish heritage, even if your family wasn’t the most ~religious~. But you were proud of the culture you had been raised in. You held its traditions very near to your heart and weren’t AT ALL bitter that the rest of the team had time designated to visit their family during their winter holidays while you still had training camp through the third week of December.  

You were kinda zoning out because you could only take so much of their cookie baking, their stalkerish man that watched kids while they slept, and their hiding of a stupid stuffed toy you were sure would give you nightmares (who the fuck thought having an ‘elf’ stalk your family all month was cute?!?!? Capitalism was a weird man). (Though you may or may not have paid attention to Lindsey’s plan to dress Ferguson like a little elf…) 

“What about you kid?” Tobin asked, nudging you out of your daydream. 

“What?” You shook your head, making everyone around you laugh. 

“Do you have plans for the holidays?” Lindsey repeated, her smile showing off her dimples. 

“Oh, um. Chanukah started a few days ago. It’s cool, they have an app with a menorah and everything. My family has been face timing me most days, but it will be over before training ends.” You shrugged, hoping they couldn’t see how much being away from your family during this time of year sucked (though you were glad to be included on the camp roster). 

Most of the veteran's jaws dropped, how had they not known that you were missing something so important to you? How had US Soccer overlooked a holiday (and inadvertently given you an ultimatum- celebrate or make the national team). 

“Then why did they schedule training camp this week?” Tobin mumbled. Again you shrugged. 

“There’s 23 of you and only one of me… it’s really not that big of a deal,” you smiled briefly and gave the same speech you had given since middle school, “It’s not like the ‘Jewish Christmas’ even though it happens around the same time some years, my family doesn’t even exchange presents, so I’m really just missing the party they’re throwing on the 18th.” 

“That still isn’t fair though. I mean, we get Christmas off automatically, even if we don’t celebrate it!” Christen huffed, throwing her hands up. 

“I mean, this isn’t like a new thing. We’re always at camp during this time. And next year the holiday starts in November, so it’s not something that can consistently be scheduled around. I guess it’s just a sacrifice I have to make to be the best right?” You said earnestly, shaking your head. You knew all of the arguments, you had heard them for all of your life. 

“But-“ Emily started to protest, but before she could get the words out you cut her off. “Don’t make a big deal guys, it’s fine. Really,” 

The team stared at you for a few seconds, several women opening and closing their mouths several times. You shifted uncomfortably under their gaze, breathing a sigh of relief when your phone rang, glad to have an excuse to get out of this situation. 

“Ok so we’re totally going to make a big deal out of this,” Lindsey said turning back around to face the team the second you were out the door. 

“I’m guessing you have a plan to woo your girl?” Emily smirked, wiggling her eyebrows. 

“It’s not to. No. We are doing this as a team to be supportive of our teammate who is part of a traditionally marginalized culture that we need to be more supportive of,” Lindsey grumbled sternly, smiling when Christen nodded in return. “I’m googling “Chanukah for Dummies” right now. 

They were going to make this camp different from the others (and if she got to impress you that was just a bonus). 

…..

“Umm, why does it smell like something is burning?” Becky asked, walking through the hotel corridor towards the dining room. 

“Because Latkes are apparently more difficult to make than I expected,” Kelley said, tossing what looked like a stack of burned hockey pucks into the trash. “I didn’t realize the whole room was going to smell like fried food- do you think they’re going to fine me when we check out?”

“If they fine you, they better fine Em too. The stench from such a little jar is kind of amazing,” Lindsey huffed. 

“What did she do, get her sardines or something?” Becky asked, shaking her head, remembering the smell that she couldn’t quite place. 

“No. Something called ‘Gefilte fish’”. 

“But isn’t that usually for Passover?” Kelley asked, looking up from where she was trying to scrape burned potatoes off her pan.

“They said it was traditional, isn’t that what we’re going for?” Emily huffed, pouting. Lindsey rolled her eyes at her best friend. 

“I’ve got music!” Chrystal called, walking through the door in a star-patterned sweater. “It turns out there are not a whole lot of Chanukah songs. There’s a Spotify playlist that’s only 3 hours long, or so, so I supplemented it with a lot of Leonard Cohen and Paul Simon.”

“And I brought the sour cream and applesauce as requested!” Sam called, walking in after her, “also some apple juice and honey bourbon. I know apples and honey are a thing for Rosh Hashana, so I thought maybe we could make some cocktails?”

“I won’t tell coach if you don’t,” Kelley said taking the bottle and pouring herself a shot. “Someone else needs to take over the latke making. My attempts have all either looked like lefse, hashbrowns or just burned.”

“Lefse?”

“I had an ex-girlfriend from Minnesota. It was a potato tortilla thing her family sent her at thanksgiving. The point here is that someone else needs to cook or we are just going to be eating sour cream and applesauce on their own.”

“We could make french fries?” Rose suggested tentatively. 

“With bacon and cheese! Those are the best,” Emily exclaimed, only to have Lindsey (gently) slap the back of her head. 

“No, Sonnett. She can’t have bacon and I don’t think she’s allowed to have cheese and meat on the same plate…” 

“I think if we just batter potato pieces in egg and flour and fry them it would taste nice with the apple sauce and sour cream. And we’ve made french fries before so it won’t be so much of a… learning curve. Though you did a great try, Kelley!” Rose said, patting Kelley’s arm.

“You guys are useless. Did you even look at a recipe?” Megan shook her head. 

“If you think it’s so easy you try it.” Kelley scoffed. Megan raised her eyebrow at the woman, stealing the spatula from the defender's hand. 

“Tasty made here we come,” 

*****

“Happy Chanukah!” came from all around as you walked in. Lindsey was very proud. Not only had she gotten the team on track and ensured that they had all of the stuff google said would make the perfect Chanukah celebration; she had also kept you off their trail until this moment. The shock on your face made all the work on their day off entirely worth it. 

The room was decorated in tinsel with a shiny plastic menorah in the center of the table. Several people were wearing ugly sweaters with different “decorations” taped on. A sign on the back wall said “We survived, let’s eat!” Lindsey had decided against hanging up the posters Rose and Mal made saying “Stick it to the (ro)Man!” and “MaccaBEe mine.” The first one because she wasn’t sure it was appropriate, the second one because she knew it wasn’t.

“Ooo who brought the hotdog of the sea?” You asked, biting your lip to suppress a giggle as you walked over to the table to see the food on display. 

“What?” Lindsey’s eyes tried to follow yours, utterly confused. They didn’t get hotdogs. They most certainly weren’t on the list that Chanukah for dummies had given her. 

You smiled softly and shook your head, pointing to the tan balls that Emily had provided. 

“That’s what my siblings and I call it during Passover. Gefilte fish is kinda a love it or hate it thing…” you trailed off, scrunching your nose just slightly. 

“And you’re not a fan?” Lindsey smirked, wrapping an arm around your shoulder. 

“Umm, I plead the fifth,” You mumbled, shaking your head slightly. It wasn’t your favorite item in the world. 

“That was all Emily,” Kelley snorted, clapping you on the back, and you grinned devilishly back at her. 

“Well, it was very nice of her to be so thoughtful. She can try a piece with me,” 

Emily cringed at the idea, but nodded nonetheless. It was your party and if eating the smelly thing out of a jar made you happy, then that’s exactly what she would do. (She also stealthily shot Lindsey the middle finger while you were surveying the rest of the items on the tables). 

“Honestly the sufganiyot is my favorite,” you said, taking a step towards the platter, your lips ticking up at Lindsey’s adorable confused face. “sorry, the donuts,” you clarified, picking up one of the many powdered sugar-covered donuts in the stack, inspecting it to see what kind it was. The Jelly ones were particularly important for the celebration. 

Lindsey blushed a little. “We didn’t know if you wanted jelly or custard,” She said hesitantly, watching as your eyes got impossibly brighter. 

“Both are amazing, thank you,” You smiled softly at the midfielder, brushing a stay bit of powdered sugar off her pink cheeks. You held her gaze for a moment before seeming realizing you had an audience, and turning towards the rest of the team. “thank all of you,” 

It wasn’t the traditional Chanukah you usually shared with your family, but the friends who had become your family made it special nonetheless.

[princip1914]

A few thoughts on writing longfic

I’ve had this post brewing for a while and I figured since today is a Friday I might as well let it out into the wild. 

First off, this is not writing advice. I don’t feel qualified to give writing advice. This is a few observations I’ve made over the course of trying to write something that feels, well, long. Fandom is full of excellent authors writing long chaptered fic, but I don’t see a lot of people talking about how they go about producing such fics. I remember feeling like long fic was really out of reach for me when I started writing again in the summer of 2019 after not writing for years and years and I wanted to talk a bit about how that changed for me. Of course, this post comes with all the caveats that there is no need to ever write long fic if you’re not feeling it. Some of my favorite authors write mostly or only oneshots! But, if you are interested, here’s my lengthy, self indulgent, and entirely personal take on ~the longfic process~ below the cut. 

First, to get this out of the way: long fic is anything that feels long or complicated to you, the author. “I’m working on my long fic” can mean that you’re branching out from microfiction to write something that’s 2k long, or it can mean you’ve got a multi-part 800k epic. There’s no objective measure of if something is “long fic,” Your own personal definitions can also change as you grow in confidence or change your focus as a writer (a little over a year ago when I finished Doubt Thou the Stars are Fire topping out at 31k, that felt very very long to me. Now it feels….still long, but not very very long.) 

Here are a few specific things that helped me write something long. I don’t know if they will be interesting for anyone else, but at the very least writing these down has been a fun way for me to reflect on my own process. 

Practice exercises. Ok, this is going to sound exceedingly obvious, but writing one shots prepares you for writing chaptered fic. Here’s what I mean more specifically: if you know you want to write (as a totally hypothetical example) a chaptered fic set in America in the summer that relies heavily on a nature metaphors, is written out of chronological order, and features a melancholy tone--it helps to write a few one shots like that before you embark on the Big Fic. Just like artists tend to do sketches before starting a big piece, it’s very helpful to write something small that gives you a feel for the ~vibe~ of what you’re trying to do in the long fic. It’s helpful for all the usual reasons--you get to know a specific version of the characters which helps plan out a character driven plot for the long fic--but it’s also helpful because you will learn if the tone and mood of the fic has enough staying power to capture your interest for the long haul. For instance, I have a few unfinished chaptered fics that have a humorous tone. I wish I had done more short humorous fics before starting them, because I would have realized that I don’t currently have the mental stamina to hold up a humorous tone for the length of a chaptered fic (hopefully that will change and I will finish Last Days some time this century!). 

Plan it out ahead of time. I used google sheets for The False and the Fair. I do not think God intended google sheets to be used for fiction, but that was not going to stop me. On a more serious note, I think the best tool for planning fiction is the one you’re the most comfortable with--the notes app in your phone, handwriting, word, google drive, sheets, chalk board, summoning circle, the blood of your enemies, etc. The reason I chose to use sheets is that I knew from the very beginning that I wanted certain things to happen at specific places in the story--for instance, I wanted the first kiss to happen at the end of the first third of the story and I wanted the “reveal” about the mine accident to happen at the end of the second third of the story. But, I didn’t know what was supposed to go in between those elements. A traditional outline for a story at this point in development might have looked like: 

Meet cute

Kiss

Reveal 

Ending 

But, what my brain needed was to preserve the blank spaces in between these story elements, and specifically to preserve the right amount of blank space between these story elements so that it didn’t end up, for instance, that the first kiss was halfway through rather than a third of the way through. In this way, I found google sheets an invaluable tool for pacing in the early parts of the planning process. I simply made 30 rows assuming 30 chapters, and started plugging in the elements I knew I wanted in the locations I wanted them. Then I filled in the blank spaces by asking myself “how do we get from X plot element to Y plot element in Z amount of chapters.” I’m not a mountain climber, but I’ve often thought about the first things that go into the spreadsheet in terms of mountain climbing terminology.  In climbing, a crux move, which can be anywhere along the route, is the most difficult move of the route: if you can’t do it, you can’t do the route. I think of the first things that go into the planning spreadsheet as the crux moves of the story, the most important pieces around which everything else turns. It was not an accident that those were also all the first scenes of the fic that I wrote; if I couldn’t do those scenes, I couldn’t do the story the way I planned it so I wanted to know early on if I needed to make changes.

Make changes if you have to: even though it helps to have things planned in advance, don’t resist the story if it tries to change on you while you’re writing it. Usually the feeling that you have to make changes stems from having a plot that is not entirely character driven. As you write the story, the characters reveal themselves and sometimes the plot has to change to change with the characters’ motivations. Here’s an area where fanfic writers have a leg up on everyone else: if you write fic, you already know the characters really well. That means, (in my experience anyway) it’s less likely that you’ll have a surprise character development which leads to a rethinking of the whole plot. Less likely, but not completely unlikely, unfortunately.

Lie to yourself: The False and the Fair was supposed to be 90k words. I thought that sounded reasonable, a little less than 3x the longest fic I had ever written. Now it's 161k and will probably top out a little over 170k. Ooops. But I never would have set out to write something that long. I wouldn’t have thought I could do it, even though anyone more experienced looking at my plans for the fic probably would have laughed at the idea I could cover all those plot points in 90k. Ignorance is bliss. Protect your ignorance.

Scrivener: Long fic for me means “fic that is long enough you can’t hold all the parts of it in your head at once.” That’s where Scrivener comes in (or another app if you’d rather, but I really like Scrivener for the ability to see the project either linearly or as condensed notecards). You can put together an organizational scaffold in Scrivener that allows you to move back and forth between the forest and the trees. So, for instance, you might be going for a jog and come up with the perfect line of dialogue for chapter 27 when you’re only up to chapter 5 in terms of writing progress. With Scrivener, you can go home, and put that dialogue in the “bucket”/index card/whatever for chapter 27 without compromising your ability to see chapter 5 clearly or muddying up your google doc. You can then use the fact that you’ve started writing bits and pieces of the later chapters in conjunction with the tool of lying to yourself that, actually, you’ve written a lot more of the fic than you realize and that when you get to chapter 27 it won’t be as hard as chapter 5 because you’ve put in the groundwork already. In my experience, this lie turns out to be true about 50% of the time, which is better than 0% of the time.

Digestible mini arcs: The False and the Fair was originally broken up into thirds. I thought it would be 90k and 30k was the longest I had written, so thirds seemed to make sense. Also, 3 is a nice, time honored storytelling number. I think it’s good to give yourself seemingly achievable milestones along the way to completion. These milestones (for me anyway) lined up well with the “crux moments” I’ve described. If you’re someone who likes to write out of order, writing your way to an already written milestone can feel like sailing to an island where you get to rest for a bit from the stormy seas before setting out for the next island in the archipelago.

“It's all part of the process”: I’m categorically incapable of describing things without resorting to running metaphors, and so I apologize in advance, but I am now going to do the insufferable thing of comparing writing a long fic to running a marathon. Here’s the thing with a marathon. You are not going to feel good every step of the way. We all know this. It’s a marathon, it’s supposed to hurt a little bit, especially at the end. In the same way you literally cannot write something novel length or even novella or long short story length without, at least at some point, feeling bad about yourself and your writing. But you also can’t run a marathon if the whole thing is agony, and for most people, it’s not--your meat sack shuffling along the course is subjected to the slings and arrows of all sorts of weird body chemistry that only happens when you push it to its limits. So, you’ll be in agony and then the endorphins will kick in for a while and you’ll be thinking “this isn’t nearly as bad as everyone said,” and then you’ll drink some water at a rest stop and feel like a God for half a mile before you crash and you’re in agony again until that one perfect song comes up on the playlist...and you get the idea. Writing something long, for me at least, is a bit like that. There are massive ups and downs. The key for me is to just understand it’s all part of the process, a necessary step on the way to the finish line. If the fic is 10 chapters long, at some point you have to write chapter 5. Just like you have to write chapter 5, at some point you also have to go through a bit of despair before reaching the end. It is unfortunately non-optional. In fact, despairing is something you can check off your list each time you’ve done it. Cut dialogue tags, check. Feel awful about my writing for thirty minutes, check. Write ending section, check. Often I feel that the stress and shame and fear that come with bad emotions while writing are worse than the bad emotions themselves. It really helps me to remember these emotions are all part of the process and nothing to worry about. If I didn’t have them, then I would worry! 

I certainly have plenty more to say about writing, but this ramble has gone on long enough. If you’re interested in any of this stuff, please feel free to send me an ask. 

I would also love to know more about everyone else’s writing processes, so feel free to pop into my ask box to talk about your own approach too! I am very interested in this stuff! 

[moonlightchn]

𝖂𝖊𝖗𝖊𝖜𝖔𝖑𝖛𝖊𝖘, 𝖜𝖔𝖑𝖛𝖊𝖘

and basic shit you should know before interacting I guess~

*Disclaimer: all the information this post contains will be based on things I’ve learned over the years and my personal modifications are NOT to be taken as the general rule. This is MY abo concept for this bot in particular. Yall are free to agree, disagree, take ideas, adapt to your own bot, etcetcetc. Bye. Also sorry this doesn't have a read more;;;; I tried :(

Hello, this is (not) JYPe,

and welcome to the first episode of “Admin’s abo concept isn’t probably what you think so we gonna go in dept on this shit hehe ”. This was originally going to be a one part documentary but I realized I would probably keep coming up with or remembering stuff and these would be so LOOONG so I decided to just do it as I go and I’ll use the hashtag “admins abo tmi ” for this yeah. But also remember you can ask questions if you have any or if you don’t understand something because I usually ramble a lot.

Today we’ll be talking about 3 things that seem to be the most important since they’re the most brought up on my RP’s and they are:

Turning/Transforming.

Heat vs Rut.

Mates.

So let’s begin!

🌙 𝕿𝖚𝖗𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖌/𝕿𝖗𝖆𝖓𝖘𝖋𝖔𝖗𝖒𝖎𝖓𝖌…

There’s two meanings to this concept, one is the concept of turning from human form to wolf form, and the other one is being transformed into a wolf by different means (these usually depends on which story you’ve heard, it can be being the 7th boy child in a family, it can be a bite or a scratch, it can be eating raw meat, etcetcetc).

*This change has now also been added to the Chan’s pack introduction.

What are the definitions of this words? Cambridge Dictionary defines them as:

Turn: to (cause to) become, change into, or come to be something.

Example: “Chan turned into his wolf form”

Explanation: Chan, already a werewolf, turned and changed into his wolf form.

Transform: to change completely the appearance or character of something or someone, especially so that that thing or person is improved.

Example: “Changbin was transformed into a werewolf.”

Explanation: Changbin, a regular human, was transformed /by a wolf/ into a werewolf.

𝕿𝖚𝖗𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖌…

In the classic folklore, turning consists of 2 phases, human with NO wolf characteristics whatsoever, (which is what makes it so hard finding out who the werewolf in town is) and fluffy wolf with some human like characteristics (being biped, having arms instead of four legs, body structure humanlike. The best examples I can think of are the underworld lycans mmm tasteful). Another general rule for classic werewolves was that the person and wolf were two different minds, the person never remembered turning and had no idea they were the werewolf terrorizing town. While being human, the person didn’t even have the wolf skills like hearing or strength. They were just regular boring humans. Another thing was that they had no control whatsoever and ONLY turned during full moon, but I’m not getting into that yet.

Here are some examples (it’s basically furries oop).

Moving on to my concept, I decided to have 3 phases of turning, consisting on:

Human: Basic, simple, boring human. No presence of wolf features whatsoever. YET they can still make use of their skills such as sensitive hearing, smell, extra strength among others.

Half-turn: Heavily inspired by Teen Wolf tbh, SOME features are present and can generally be controlled, such as eyes, ears, tail, fangs, claws. Can even be confused for hybrids. (sumn like this please appreciate my art)

Full-turn: they become big scary fluffy puppies. Let’s remember how they look like.

Channie Chan Chris

𝕿𝖗𝖆𝖓𝖘𝖋𝖔𝖗𝖒𝖎𝖓𝖌…

As mentioned before, transforming depends on which story you know and what you’re settling for. Generally we always talk about bites and deep scratches. Some of the most known stories about how to become a werewolf are being the 7th boy child born in a family on a full moon, or in Greek mythology, Zeus transformed some dudes into wolves after they tried to feed him human meat. There’s many different stories you can pick from, they’re just one Google away~

On my concept, though, the only way to transform is through a bite, even though I always keep options open.

I will probably be talking about the 3 types of wolves and deepening this a bit more later on.

🌙 𝕳𝖊��𝖙 𝖛𝖘 𝕽𝖚𝖙.

Imma give you a wolf biology class because I know too much useless info and I WANT TO.

Rut: The rut is the mating season of certain mammals. The rut is characterized in males by an increase in testosterone, exaggerated sexual dimorphisms and increased aggression and interest in females.

Heat: The estrous cycle or oestrous cycle is the set of recurring physiological changes that are induced by reproductive hormones in most mammalian therian females. Estrous cycles start after sexual maturity in females and are interrupted by anestrous phases or by pregnancies. This cycle presents four phases, the one known as “heat” being the second one, estrus or oestrus, that refers to the phase when the female is sexually receptive.

What are seasonal breeders and what is mating season?

The breeding season is when seasonal breeders reproduce. Seasonal breeders are animal species that successfully mate only during certain times of the year. These times of year allow for the optimization of survival of young due to factors such as ambient temperature, food and water availability etcetc. Male seasonal breeders may exhibit changes in testosterone levels, weight, and fertility depending on the time of year. Female seasonal breeders will have one or more estrus cycles only when she is “in season” or fertile and receptive to mating.

Wolves fall in all of these descriptions.

What does all of this shit mean and why do I care lmao?

This means that if this was a logical bot I should only be doing NSFW like one week during 4 months a year LMAO no frfr

This basically means that RUT and HEAT are the seasons when the MALE and FEMALE respectively are ready to mate with each other to reproduce.

I’ve seen many male idol hybrids having heats instead of ruts, which I have no problem at all with and am sure no one else does really, but I think you should KNOW that a heat would not make them want to fuck, but get fucked. Heat would be the need to be filled and not fill others. A heat and a rut does NOT have to equal dominance or submissiveness in bots, anyway, that would be like saying being top or bottom determines who is dom/sub and that’s wrong, so just a PSA I guess.

Now, how does this affect my CB and ABO concept?

I’ve never, anyway, read anywhere of classic werewolves reproduction, which leads me to believe that they’re probably sterile. So I will stick to real life wolves rules but on my own way. Wolves are even monogamous and I dont go by that one lmao.

Reproduction rules on my ABO are really simple, ruts are once a month, around 5 days, and each of the guys have different characteristics for them. They’re only capable of getting someone pregnant during ruts, too. I just generally believe all girls are on the pill tbh and I never really use condoms but guys irl please practice safe sex wrap your or your partners willy before going freaky and stay safe.

Not sure if there’s something else to mention here? Let me know.

🌙 𝕸𝖆𝖙𝖊𝖘…

Mates are the wolf equivalent of soulmates, but that’s bullshit. I mean, I’m not gonna say they’re not real, I just mean that the general idea of only one person for the rest of your life and if it’s not them you’re miserable is dumb when we’re talking about beings with feelings. Did you know wolves irl are monogamous and mate but if their mate dies they just look for another one and move on? Now you know.

The thing with mates and marks, in my humble opinion, is that they don’t mean anything. Peoples hearts change, feelings come and go, and my wolves are NOT about to drop everything they have for some person they don’t know who happened to be their true mate. In fact, Channie is the only one who believes in them. The mates issue is a bit complex if we think about it over each of the Chan’s, but on a general idea, the mates are not exclusive for the guys, and I’ll probably make a tmi on the boys at some point, but Chan met his mate and it didn’t work out, for example. Mates go further than the marking, btw, mates are a special, cosmic bond. Marks are just that, marks.

And talking about that, we do not vibe with marks. The original folklore states marks as the way a wolf has to claim their partner as theirs and keep away others, especially from an alpha, and they’re supposed to go both ways, so marks between human/wolf, for example wouldn’t be possible. There’s also two marks.

The first bonding mark is generally given during sex between mates and heals, and the second one in front of the pack (there’s a whole social status thing involved here but were not touching that yet) and its permanent. Also marks are literal WOLF BITES so no, they’re neither small nor cute. Just look at these teethies and picture the scar in a neck-shoulder. That’s your bonding mark.

(they're cute tho I uwuuu)

What I’ve been reading around in fanfics and seeing around is that bots have been mated and claimed with marks, which is ok if you’re into that. My chan’s, though, find physical marks archaic, possessive and toxic. And honestly I personally do too.

You may have noticed by now that even though the boys are quite possessive, they’re never trying to scare away others and their sole way of marking is love marks that heal eventually and scenting. Permanent marks are a nono.

They will NOT mark anyone as their mate. Especially Channie plz he’s baby.

This is a personal decision and it does not mean that marking is RIGHT or WRONG. I just personally see marking bites as marking your partner with fire or something and I dislike the idea a lot.

ALRIGHT I THINK THAT’S ABOUT IT FOR TODAY I FEEL LIKE I WROTE TOO MUCH ALREADY??? Feel free to ask questions or request certain topics! I think next topics will be Social Structure, Skills and maybe Self control or Moon Cycles.

If you read all of this WOW CONGRATS??? I LOVE YOU EXTRA MUAH

One question I got on the asks was “since their fur color seems to correspond with their hair color, what happens if they dye their hair?”

Nothing happens babe! When they’re half turned they will have really funny colorful hair, but when they fully turn their fur stays the same! hehe Don’t worry, Chan won’t be a clown red wolf heh

OK BYE MUAH MUAH

Tags (hmu for removal:] if you don’t care about this hehe)

@yandereminholee @bunjihyo @shinhaneul-oc @sub-chungha @song-mingi-cb @grungeyuta @yourhwaa @bunny-woong @princess-yeji @xash-axx @7deadlysins-chan @camgirl-jihyeon @hybrid-wooyoung @vampirehhj @ghoulxbaekhyun @mafiaxnct127 @deadly-skz-gods-cb @mafia-chaeyoung @vampiresanha @sub-minho @starsirah-oc @femboy-minho @subbyhyunjinchatbot @weeb-wonwoo @yandere-wendy @musiclovermino @galaxy-ateez @chanlix-koalas @vampirechangbinnie @mafiafelixlee @madmanwoodam @sweetandsleepyjamie @yanderedahyun @hunter-chaeyoung @hwangyeji-cb @artsydahyun @gamer-yeji @yourminju @seulgi-foxy @kittensua-cb @softbabieinnie @softboyfriend-cb @iceskater-sana @irregularchatbot @yandere-miya @doll-seungmin @skz-cb @subbylino @babie-sanie

[pandemiclaughter]

Rambling about MIL her anxiety, parkinson’s

Some of the most frustrating conversations are with those who are in the very beginning stages of dementia, super stubborn, riddled with anxiety, angry, and sprinkled with some passive aggressiveness on top for extra fun.   Then I’m going to make this communication even more difficult by letting my rambilng ADD tell you about these difficult encounters. 

(warning---you may just want to skip this one---if you do, but want to have an idea of what this is about here’s the basics of the post:  

The basic facts from this crazy non-linear explosion of words is my MIL believes she truly is going to run out of oxygen to breathe in the air. And how she went from telling me she has never had anxiety to she has lived with anxiety her whole life.)

MIL (in her 80s with Parkinson’s) does not have good balance, she can not stand for many seconds without support. She is always freezing.  When we first moved in here she would run blow dryers on her bed all night. She said it was to keep her warm. But now through much more dedection---they were also white noise to help with her anxiety. 

So we have moved to no longer using the bed as potential kindle.  It took her a few months to learn to use an app for white noise sound (damn when they upgrade the app---she stopped using it and went back to a CD--but was mad because it was a different CD player). We got google dot to work for a bit, but then she would tell it to play things with a limited time.  She also refuses ocean sounds--because ocean sounds make you pee.  (I get how the sound of a trickling stream may make you want to pee--but crashing waves---dear God, how forceful is your urine?)

So back to her freezing.  We got a nice little heater in there, with a thermostat and a timer.  Hubby went and turned “off” the vents--(these vents are from the 70s and they do not really close). One vent under the bed, the other behind the dresser.  Both I would have a really hard time getting to. 

Hubby and I came in the other night to help her with her sleep sounds again.  And he notices her vents are open full.  

First we asked her how---because with her balance---(We’ve had one fall since we’ve been Coronateened--thank GOD she didn’t hurt herself). So she’s like, of course I opened them---I didn’t have enough oxygen in here. 

Wait---her room is the largest room in the house---master bedroom with a door to the outside, windows, regardless--run out of oxygen--how do you run out of oxygen---she’s not in a sealed box. She continues to tell us that the oxygen runs out at night and she can’t breathe.  Hubby and I try not to laugh--explain she will never run out of oxygen in the air--and the air conditioner is not bringing in more oxygen. We ask her please, if she wants her vents opened or closed to come get us--because we really don’t want her falling.  (I still can’t figure out how she got them opened.)  This is the same woman who refuses to walk on grass--because she will fall and refuses to walk down the driveway--without someone watching her.  She’s riddled with these weird beliefs (it runs in the family--hubby’s sister is afraid to eat meat if the white and the dark meat have visibly touched).

Later, another time, I try to talk to her about her episodes at night and in the conversation explain they might be anxiety attacks she is feeling.  I ask her what has worked for her in the past for her anxiety attacks. Now this is the same woman who usually gets excited about being ill--but she hates that I use the word anxiety. 

MIL: I have never had an anxiety attack. I don’t have anxiety. 

Me: Ok, but didn’t you used to take Xanax daily? 

MIL: Yes. 

Me: Ok, why did you take Xanax daily?

MIL: That’s because I taught school and kids are stressful. 

Me: Ok, but didn’t your doctor just recently stop filling your prescription? Just in the last year?  (she’s in her 80s)

MIL: That’s because he said it’s not good for my health and I could fall.   (ok--I know kids are stressfull--but I’m pretty certain that you weren’t still stressed years after teaching---but I don’t go there.)

Me;  So was there anything else that you did to help when you were more stressed out?  I mention how she was doing well after starting Zoloft, but over the last couple of weeks she hasn’t been sleeping, she seems on edge,  maybe wanted to talk to the doctor about upping the dose.  (What I really want to tell her is I need you to get your anxiety in check, because it’s starting to set off my anxiety something awful.  We have had conversations about my anxiety it has helped opened up some discussion--and also that her 3 children all have it too.  i know some of this is people just didn’t talk about anxiety before---or I guess she didn’t?)

(this is the sweet lady that only gets mad at me---well and her oldest daughter. Before we moved in, I had never heard a harsh word--I knew she got mad at her oldest daughter, but since I have moved in---she really saves getting mad for me instead of her oldest daughter. her relationship has gotten better with her oldest---and I try to remember that when she gets mad---I would love for someone to be the buffer between me and my Mom, if this was my Mom, so I could enjoy having a better relationship.  My husband---the baby of the family and only son of an Italian family---he can do no wrong---still to this day.  If she is even slightly upset with him---she will still direct it towards me or his sisters)  I digress.  

MIL:   SHAUNA--- I HAVE HAD ANXIETY MY WHOLE LIFE, I just live with it. And I never needed more than under a mg of xanax---i’m already on 50 mg and that’s just too much medicine.  And I’ve never had an anxiety attack.  (ok---at least we have moved from never having anxiety---that was quick) 

(all who have known her feel like she took xanax more than once a day---she used to be zoned out and chill a lot--we have really wanted to see if edibles could help--I know I’ve seen some great things with the parkinson’s too---and if I am right---it could be a mixed bag with anxiety--becuase it can increase the paranoia---but maybe that’s a full edibile?---maybe the CBD only stuff?  I need to look into it more---we still live in the most strict---weed is bad state). But willing to help her too--if it will help. 

Me:  (I give up even trying to compare/contrast Xanax to Zoloft dosages.) Have you ever thought of deep breathing when you feel like there is no oxygen in the room?

MIL: That won’t work.

As this cycle of conversation contitued she opened up to hearing about breathing exercises, tells me about how she has used them before and used to have a CD on them,  and then was shocked again about the fact they could be on youtube.  

She’s always shocked we tell her she can find things on youtube.  We possibly always take it a bit too far hubby tells her how she can learn to make a pipe bomb or find naked old men to watch, if she wanted.  I can’t think of all the crazy things hubby tells her she could do on youtube. I’m surprised we haven’t had a visit from the governement. 

 She has learned to do her daily Parkinson’s workouts and other therapy through youtube. I also connected her with a therapist online (she swore she didn’t need one of those--but thank goodness for them.).  I will have to remember their name--great company and really reaching out to the elderly during this pandemic time.  But they seemed like a good company before this time---I’m glad. They also check in with the patient’s family members to see how they are doing and relay things back and forth and also help the children with their aging parent. 

Then we are back to square one---she doesn’t want help with anything---so showing her these breathing videos---that takes a couple more days. 

I forget how much time she takes.  And sometimes I just need a break, so me needing a break extends some of this time too. And how did you teach school, but also believe you can run out of oxygen in a large, ventilated room?  I get these worries aren’t logical---but sometimes they just hurt my brain. 

Rambling end for now. 

[burnt-tomato]

“Soba ni ite Hoshii”

Hinata Shouyo x Reader

Introduction: Hinata has seen you as someone special, but couldn’t take the courage to say it out loud. He begged his team to help him out and give him a step up, but anything they adviced didn’t work out like they imagined it would. There was this upcoming school festival for Karasuno High. Will Hinata finally grab the chance to tell you or would it take him much longer to be ready.

Anime: Haikyuu!!

Genre: Fluff

➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴

[“Hey y/n.”

“Mmmm?”

“You never knew what Soba no ite hoshii meant right?”

“Nah. You did tease me about it though.”

“Then I’ll tell you.”

“Will you really?”

“Yes. Y/n… Soba no ite hoshii!” Hinata blurted out loud without hesitation.

“? We’re you saying that to me? Because if it was, I didn’t understand haha. Sorry Hinata.”

“I’ll tell you, y/n… do you-”]

.

.

.

“Y/N!!” Hinata shouted your name while waving his hands and running towards you. “Thanks again for the meat buns you bought me yesterday. You’re a real lifesaver!”. Yesterday Hinata walked with you because your houses were close. He got really angry and told you he forgot his wallet at home, so you bought him some of his favorite, meat buns.

“Nah dude, don’t mention it! You don’t have to owe me even if I always buy you food after school”. He smiled widely and went to Kageyama, supposedly to discuss about their quick, which just ended with them bickering at each other.

Tanaka walked over to you and got close to your ears and whispered. “Hey y/n, mmmmmm is it just me or you and Hinata auhhhh… have gotten closer?”

“Hm? Well dUh. We walk to school together, we walk home together, we’re in the same grade, we’ve been friends since middle school, and were basically neighbors. Are you stupid?”

“THatS nOt wHat i mEanT- yknow what, nevermind” he said as he walked away to Daichi and spoke to him.

You noticed your phone ringing…

Unread Messages

Y/n where are You? I thought that you agreed to hang out with us after school today.

“Ah. Sorry. I forgot. I’ll be there, so wait for me.”

Are you with Hinata and his volleyball team again? You spend your after school hours there, so hang out with us for a chance.

“Fine fine. I’ll tell them that I have stuff to take care of. But ill only do this today.”

Thanks y/n!!

You looked up from your phone.

“Daichi-san, I’m really sorry but I have to go. I have some outside school things to take care of, but only for today! I’ll make sure to come tomorrow.”

“Oh y/n. Of course you can!”

“K guys! I’ll head out now.” You said as you waves your hand above your head and rushed out.

[♤: Even if y/n is gone, the story continues on even without her, and in this part the perspective is 3rd person to narrate everyone’s perspective]

The end of practice drew closer, and the boys went to their clubroom to change.

“Crap. Exams are drawing near, and after that, a 3-day festival, and after are the finals.” Yamaguchi said.

“Yeah…wait. E-exams? C r a p.” Hinata said

“Kshh, oooooh that’s gonna hurt.” Suga said

“N-nevermind! I’ll just ask y/n for help! She’s really smart and good in teaching, and she’s also really nice.” Hinata said

“Yeah. If you pass the exam period, you can still enjoy the festival.” Daichi said

“Hey Hinata. Since yknow, y/n has helped you alot till now, especially during exams right? So don’t you like, wanna repay her back somehow?” Ennoshita said

“Yeah, like inviting her to the festival and yknow, finally tell her how you feel, or something?” Tanaka said teasingly

Hinata’s cheeks grew bright red and instantly looked away. “Wha-? W-what are you s-saying?” He stuttered

“Oh c'mon Hinata, it’s hella obvious that you both like eachother. Anyone could tell, even the dumbest person we know can.” Suga said

“N-no I don’t! Besides, we’ve been friends for so long, she’s seen how stupid I am, so obviously she’ll never like me. I can’t even gather up the courage to tell her, heck, I don’t even know how to set the right time to let her know!” Hinata said

“Mmmmmm…. then.. we’ll help you out! How ‘bout asking her to teach you? So if you confess by then, you both would have fUn together at the festival. Or at least hint it, yknow?” Nishinoya said

“During a study session? Noya that’s like the worst time to tell someone your feelings. This is why Kiyoko doe- u r g h-” Noya screams at the top of his lungs to overlap what Suga was saying

“Mmmmm… I’m not sure about this. I can barely stay focus when with her.. maybe we- I shouldn’t.”

“Dumbass. If you won’t do it now, when will you? You’re just gonna sit there till she finds someone else? If you really don’t want to lose her, then at least make your move now. One day you’ll regret not telling her if you don’t, so get moving and let us- I mean tHEm help you.” Kageyama said wow some actually good advice from kags. How rare.

“Wow. Who knew? Kageyama can actually say stuff that are helpful?”

“K r00d.” Kageyama snarled

“Heh. Fine. Since you’re all willing to help, I guess the least I can do is set your plans to work.” Hinata said.

“Ok. Since we’ve been planning for this day since the time you introduced y/n to us, we have a plan in mind already. Care to say it Suga?” Daichi said

“Ok. Y/n sucks at Japanese right? So here’s what you have to do….. did you get that?” Suga asked

“Mmmm… yeah. Kinda” Hinata said

They all called it a day and went straight home.

You were about to sleep when you heard your phone buzz, revealing a message.

Ah. Y/n. Sorry for messaging you this late

“Mmm Hinata? No no it’s Fine! What’s up?”

Well I’m pretty sure you have like alot to do and I’m just being a bother because I always ask you about this buuuuttttt

“Mmmmmm it’s about the exams isn’t it? It’s fine! I’ll help you study, and you can even bring Kageyama too, maybe Noya-san and Tanaka-san too.”

Haha yeah. I forgot that your knowledge is actually advanced, so you’re capable of teaching upperclassmen.

Hinata told Tanaka and Nishinoya, as well as Kageyama and Yamaguchi what y/n told him. This boosted the chances of their plan and to offer Hinata support.

3 days till exams, 4 days till the festival, and 7 days till Finals. Goal, to carry out the plan before Finals comes.

Hinata and the others were able to come to your class during breaks and free periods and study hours.

“So y/n, you sucked at Japanese literature, right? Even if you speak Japanese, it’s hard for you to actually write what certain words say.” Kageyama asked

“Ah, yes that’s true lol. But isn’t that the subject that Hinata’s good at? That’s why I asked him to teach me that” you said

As time went by, you all continued to share learning and understandings, plus you were able to help even the second years alot.

“Ah, Hinata! What does Soba ni Ite Hoshii mean?”

“Mmmmm… that means-oW” Hinata said, surprised. Tanaka gave him a soft kick on the leg and shot him a look. “Are you stupid Hi- ah- y/n? Everyone knows that!” Tanaka exclaimed.

You pouted. You were confused as to why they didn’t tell you what it meant but teased you instead. But that didn’t bother You, you wanted to focus on studying and to pass your exams to be able to enjoy the festival with your friends.

2 days till exams, 3 days till the festival, and 6 days till Finals. Goal, to carry out the plan before Finals comes.

“Y/n!!!! How tf do you do that Pythagorean theorem nonsense whatever that shit is again??”

“Oh! Tanaka-san! I’ll teach you, you do this and that then you do that” (♤: ok like I can’t describe how this theorem stuff works so I ain’t using my time to Google it and copy paste it here lmao)

“Psstt! Shou, what’s Soba ni ite Hoshii meaannnnn??” You asked. “Hmmmmm… I’ll tell you if you buy me 10 meat buns for the entire year.” He said. “GeEz fInE u d0nT hAvE t0 tElL mE” Damn Shou be bullyin you nowadays.

“I’ll tell you after exams” he said as he half smiled at you. “0r mAyBe n0t”. Damn Shou be savage.

Tomorrow are the exams, 2 days till the festival, and 5 days till Finals. Goal, to carry out the plan before Finals comes.

“Hey y/n, after school today, want to stop by Ukai-san’s shop and buy some meat buns?”. “Shou we always stop by there and I’m the one paying for our food.”

“Ok guys. Tomorrow are the exams, so show me how much you’ve learned from me by passing the exams so we can enjoy our 3-day festival to rest up before finals”

After studying together with the others, you finally wrapped up and separated ways, with you stopping by the shop to buy some snacks then walking home with Hinata.

Today are exams, tomorrow is the festival, and 4 days till Finals. Goal, to carry out the plan before Finals comes.

Time seemed slow. The entire class remained quiet, but deep inside, everyone was panicking. Today is the day of exams. Today is the day that’ll determine who gets to enjoy the festival and who won’t. It was obvious in the atmosphere surrounding the school that no one dared to make a single sound.

“Time’s up class, pass em in. The results will come out by the end of the day, but for now, turn to page 345 of your Mathematics textbooks and answer the 50-item Chapter Review there.” The teacher said. You all watched the teacher’s every step as she exits the classroom. Once she closes the door, everyone breathed out a huge sigh of relief. You could hear everyone talking to one another, transferring seats, and talking about how hard the test was and what challenged them the most, but all you thought was I wonder how Shou and the others did… I hope they pass so that we can all enjoy the festival together.

Hours and hours passed by. You couldn’t take it. You were minutes away from hearing about the results, and everyone was scared shitless. Everyone was restless, and you were sure that the only thing in everyone’s minds was I hope i pass, even if I get the exact passing grade, just let me pass.

The teacher came in, carrying cards that probably contains your grades and how well you did. No one dared to breathe a single sound. Everyone barely moved. Everyone seemed to be stuck on their chairs, all eyes are focused unto the teacher’s hands.

“Well start with the students at the back row, once I call your surname, stand up and retrieve your grading cards. We’ll start with… Nichiiyama…”

Nichiiyama stood up, his movements were stiff and his hands were shaking as he held his card, and quietly made his way to his chair. The teacher continued calling students’ names, until she called yours. You stood up stiffly, making your way to the front desk and held up your hands and- “Good work y/n.. You scored the top grades in the class. Continue your good work, alright?” The teacher whispered into your ear and patted your back. As you walked back, you opened your card and saw that your grades were either 1 or 2 in every subject. You sighed when a huge wave of relief came over you. The only thing you’re worried about now is how Hinata and the others did.

“Aaanddd that’s all of You. Those who didn’t make it, you’ll be spending your 3-day break in Supplementary classes to retake your tests and pass, but those who passed, you’re free to enjoy the festival as you wish. That’s all for today, and let’s see eachother next week.” The teacher bowed and made their way to the door. Everyone started to pack up, chatting with eachother about how they did, or who passed. “Hey y/n, did You pass?” Your friend asked. “Yeah I did, how about you?”. “Man, I barElY made it, yknow? My scores were a solid 42 and around 40s, and my grades were Like, 3 and 3.5! I was lucky to make the 40-grade mark. Btw y/n, do you want to hang out after school today?”. “Ah… I’m not sure… I have to stop by the club today, but I’ll catch up with you.”

You rushed out of the classroom and to the gym. You arrived to the clubroom with the 3rd years inside already, and Ennoshita, Kinoshita, and Narita. “Oh hey y/n, you’re here early. Your students aren’t here yet, but they should be arriving soon” Narita said. You waited and waited for them while playing animal crossing on your phone.

“Y/n!! Y/n!! We passed! We fuckin passed! How in the world did I passs??”. Tanaka said running towards the room, teary- eyed. “Idiot! It’s all because y/n helped us!” Noya said, smacking Tanaka’s back. “Yeah, it’s all thanks to you, y/n. We’ll be able to enjoy the festival because of your work. Even I passed all of the exams.” Kageyama then bowed. “Ah- no you don’t need to thank me! I didn’t do much, you should thank yourselves, for working hard to pass! All I did was help you get there.” You said. You turned to look for Hinata and hear about his results. “Heh. Yeah. Thanks so much y/n, we passed because of your help. So uh… because of your help and all uhm.. I wanted to somehow repay you and stuff..” Everyone turned their heads to Hinata and you, somehow expecting something or an answer. “What is it Shou?” You asked. “Well uh.. I was thinking that since you helped all of us and personally you help me alot everyday I was wondering if you wanted to come to the festival with me.. I mean all of us ofcourse!” He said shyly, his cheeks heating up a bit and fiddling with his fingers. Everyone looked like they were gonna laugh and some were smiling widely. “Ofcourse I’ll go! I was planning to anyways, but I gotta go right now since my friends and I are going out for a bit, so I’ll meet you all by the entrance tomorrow! See ya.” You said as you rushed out of the room and met up with your friends. As you left, Hinata looked like he was about to faint and exploding.

.

.

.

Geh. I’m too early.. we all agreed to meet up by 3pm.. and look at this, it’s only 1:30pm and I’m already here. Guess I should walk around for now till they come-

“Y/n?” You were surprised to see the 3rd years standing by the entrance, along with the 2nd years and the 1st years, except one person..

“Why isn’t Hinata with you, y/n? Aren’t you 2 neighbors?” Ennoshita asked. “Mmmm, his mom said he might get there late and told me to get along, so I decided to wait for him here.” You told them.

“Crap.. If Hinata doesn’t show up, what’s the point of doing all this?” Tanaka whispered to Suga. “Don’t say that, we just have to do as we planned. I’ll call Hinata to check up on him.” Suga whispered. “I’ll go over there for a while to call someone, k?” Suga walked over by the trees and took out his phone and dialed Hinata’s number.

“Hinata, where are you?”

Suga-san? Oh sorry, I didn’t feel well when I woke up… My mom said that I should rest, I’m really sorry… you all planned for this day, but I blew it, just because of a godDAMN fever-

“Nono it’s fine Hinata. Don’t apologize, I understand, these stuff happen unexpectedly, but it’s not like you lost your chance, alright? Remember, this plan is full proof and we have 3 days of the festival! Although I’m not sure if you can heal up by Then, but we’ll have to hope for the best. Just, rest up right now ok? So you can catch up.”

Alright Suga-san. Bye.

Suga puts down his phone and walks over to where the others are. “Well, Hinata wouldn’t make it today… he’s gotten a fever. But he said that he’ll try his best to make it tomorrow though! So let’s enjoy this day and hope that he feels better, especially with Finals coming up soon.”

Damnit Shou. You’re the one who invited me, then you’re the one who wouldn’t make it.. sigh.. I’ll just drop by your house later I guess… I do hope that he’ll feel better soon, I wanted to tell him something and decided that the festival would be nice…

Despite Hinata’s absence, you all tried to enjoy the festival. Checking out every stall, entering games and winning them, and eating with the team. You decided to bring Hinata a stuffed crow you won at one of the shooting games, and to stop by a convenience store to buy him some food.

“Alright guys, we’ll all meet by here tomorrow at the same time, if you can. But we’ll all be there at the last day of this festival, okay? On the 3rd day there’ll be a fireworks showcasing, and i think that’ll be fun and calming so all should be present by Then, but for now, all of you go home and rest.” Daichi said. Everyone began to separate ways, including you. You walked lazily, not used to walking at night alone. Looking up at the sky, you remembered how you and your friends always went out stargazing during cold winter nights like this. Even if you were wearing a yukata that travelled along your feet, you could still feel the cold air breezing through. After stopping by the store to buy some food, you started walking up the mountain road towards home. You were cold and freezing. You were lonely.

“Walking home at nights like this without anyone to talk to sure is lonely.” You let out a little chuckle afterwards.

“It sure is. Why didn’t you call me that you were heading home? I could’ve walked with you.” You jolted. You were sure that you were alone while Walking, but as you faced infront of you, you saw Hinata in his pajamas, holding a jacket. “Here. You must be freezing.. Sugawara told me that you all went home, so I tried to get out to bring you home, but Natsu insisted me to stay. I had to give her one of those ‘Play with Sister for 1 hour Coupon’ just so I can leave lol.. ah! You must be freezing, here, wear this.” He said as he put on the jacket on you. You felt safe and warm, and complete with him. You both shared chars and laughs as you walked, which reminded you from when you were middle schoolers.

The next day you called Hinata’s house number, but his mom was the one who picked up, saying that he wouldn’t be able to come again, but he was feeling a little bit better. You thanked her and dropped the phone. He’s still not healed up yet, huh? What should I do for today? If I go to the festival, it would be boring because we already experienced all of it yesterday, and plus Hinata wouldn’t even be able to come with us..

Since you weren’t feeling like doing anything productive today, you just slept till afternoon.

.

.

.

“Shit-! I slepT an entire day? Is it seriously the last day of the festival?? I only planned to sleep till afternoon, so how is it the next day already?? Geh, fuck that. I should just get changed to meet up with the others. Especially that today is when all of us should be present..” either way, you got up and got dressed. After getting ready, you found yourself standing infront of Hinata’s doorstep. I probably shouldn’t disturb him, he might still be resting. You decided to go on alone.

You met up with the others and surprisingly-

“Hey y/n..”. You saw Hinata standing infront if everyone. “Sorry I didn’t tell you that I decided to go on ahead. I wanted to sorta… surprise you I guess…haha” Hinata said with a short laugh. “It took awhile, but when he called up on me, he said that he was feeling a bit better, although he still has a bit if his fever.” Yamaguchi said

You were really happy that you’re able to spend the last day of the festival with him especially so that you could finally tell him.

You spent the entire day playing games, eating in every stall, and watching the band’s perform. You all had an amazing time together. Suga and Daichi trying to contain Tanaka and Noya, Ennoshita, Kinoshita and Narita all sitting in a bench calmly, Tsukki and Yams playing with the fish thing, yknow… the one ripoff game where you catch fish using a paper on a handle thing but the fish wouldn’t survive an entire month, Asahi and Kiyoko looking at souvenir shops, while you and Hinata, long with Kageyama, go around eating everywhere.

Finally, 8pm came around. The fireworks were said to start at 8:30, so you all decided to get a spot to put a tent on so you could all wait.

Hinata was with Tanaka, Noya, Kageyama, and Suga. “C'mon Hinata, now is nOt the time for you to back out! This is finally the moment you can tell her!” Suga said. “Yeah! Shouyo, this is now or never, if you don’t do it now, then when will You? Noya asked. “You don’t want to lose y/n right? Then take it now.” Kageyama said.

Hinata wasn’t sure. All he could thing was what if she doesn’t feel the same? If I told her and turns out it isn’t mutual… wouldn’t that make our friendship awkward? What if confessing just break the history we had? What if-

“I’m sorry guys… I’m… just not sure I can. What if she doesn’t feel the same? Then that would just ruin everything… maybe we should give this more thought…” Hinata sighed. “Yeah But.. Hinata what if-”. Suga was cut off by Hinata standing up. He smiled then said “Its alright… if she does find someone… then I’ll support her whole- heartedly.”

He stood up and walked over by the trees. “Hinata wait-”

He sighed. “Heh. What was I thinking? Actually hoping that if I confess, it would work out? She probably doesn’t like me at all honestly..”

20 minutes passed by. No one could find where Hinata went. “Suga! Dis you check any of the stalls?” “Yes we did! But he wasn t there! I don’t think he’s at the festival anymore..” “maybe he went home already?”

You helped everyone search for him. What was he thinking? Wandering off like that out of nowhere.. Dammit Shou! Where are You? You saw a trail of footsteps towards the forest. You thought that just maybe, he might have went there..

You walked through… and as soon as you saw light, you saw..

“Shou?” You asked quietly. He froze for a minute. When he turned around to face You, you noticed that he had tears running down his face.

“H-hey Shou… why are you- are you alright?” You asked. You walked towards him slowly

“Y/n… I uh.. I’m sorry for disappearing so suddenly.. I didn’t mean to- i-” he stops. “I wasnt-” he pauses. He quickly wipes his tears and plaster a huge smile on his face

You instantly run up to him, and throw you arms around him, hugging him tightly. “Idiot. At least tell me if you’re going to disappear like that..” You release.

“Haha.. yeah.. sorry about that..”

Crap.. is it almost 8:30? We better get back to the others before we miss the firewo-

Just as you were tugging his shirt, signaling that you both go back, he grips your arm.

“Maybe we should stay. The view is nice out here.” He says with a soft voice

“Yeah.. but what about the others?” You asked. “They’ll be fine.. since you haven’t come back yet it’s obvious that you’ve found me already.” He says. You both stood next to eachother waiting for the fireworks. Hinata stood silently looking at the sky with a wide smile on his face.

“Its been a while since we went stargazing..” he said. “Ah. Haha yes it has..” You said. There was a moment of silence and awkwardness. You wanted to break this unstoppable silence covering the two of you-

“Hey y/n.. have I ever told you what Soba ni Ite Hoshii meant?”

“Mmmmm… nah. You all teased me about not knowing it though..”

“Then I’ll tell You, right now..”

He takes a deep breath then.. “Y/n! Soba ni Ite Hoshii-!” He takes a few steps back, trying to process what he has said without thinking.

“What? A sorry Shou… I didn’t really know what it means lol… Maybe if you can tell me in English?” You laugh nervously.

“Fine.. y/n.. I-”

You could hear the fireworks blasting off with your left ear. You both stood firmly from where you where standing. The fireworks were loud, loud enough to overlap what he meant. But You heard him loud and clear. What he said caused your heart to skip a beat. You couldn’t process properly what you had heard. You thought that you were somewhat dreaming.

You both stood in silence, both yours and Hinata’s faces were red. You were speechless.

“Shou.. i-”. “I get it y/n.. it’s not the same huh? Maybe we should just stay as friends.. or if that’s too awkward for you-” he pauses. He turns back, waving his hand to signal you that you both should go back.

But I haven’t given him my answer yet…

You grip his arm, jerking him towards you. “Shou please listen for a while..”

You told him everything you’ve hidden since God knows when. All you could think was this is it. This is now or never. There’s no backing out now. If i don’t tell him now, when will I? I don’t want to lose him. You were speaking in a hushed tone, your face heating up, your heartbeat growing faster and faster, but you knew that you shouldn’t stop. You didn’t.

After you told him, you tried to avoid eye contact. He pulls you closely, your faces drawing nearer eachother. You felt his hands tightly behind you back, yours on his. His face resting in your shoulder, beside your face.

“Does this mean we-”

“Dammit Shou, don’t make it more awkward than it is already” you laughed.

“Hahaha yeah… but we should really go back to the others now y/n..” He said. “I guess we should lol.” You hold his hand tightly as you both walked towards your team.

.

.

.

“Congrats on your win at the Finals, Shou.” You giggled as you both walked home. “Thanks y/n, but I wouldn’t have done my best without you watching us.” He says. “Damn, since when have you been romantic?”. “Shut up.” Hinata says looking away.

“Hey y/n… stay with me always, will You?”

➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴

The cringe is unbearable in this one lol. Sorry for the late post and for being wAy t00 inactive lmao. It took me some time to decide what I’m doing first but I finally finished this lol.

Feel free to send in requests for hcs, scenarios and oneshots!

-♤

[lamaestramendez]

en route to fascism

Ok, class.

I am angry. I am words I cannot use on this blog out of the very remote possibility my actual students google me.

Our 45th president (henceforth known as 45 because I refuse to give him the name recognition that he wants) is a fascist pig. Let me teach you about this terminology so that you understand my full meaning.

Let’s begin with “pig” as it’s a more commonly known term than “fascist.”

Pigs, also known in English as hogs, swine, etc. Let’s look at my favorite the Oxford English Dictionary for a literal definition.

Notice that the 1st definition in the noun section is a literal definition, “an omnivorous domesticated hoofed mammal with sparse bristly hair and a flat snout for rooting in the soil, kept for its meat.” I’ve been told that pigs are delightful creatures with higher intelligence than many other small mammals. That is NOT my meaning. In defense of the pig, I share share some pictures of its beauty for you, class, to enjoy.

Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/skeeze-272447/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=1507208">skeeze</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=1507208">Pixabay</a>

Look how clean they are! Want some more cuteness before we get metaphorical? Check out this pig swimming with a bird!

Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/larsen9236-47917/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=171908">Lisa Larsen</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=171908">Pixabay</a>

Okay, now to all pig-loving friends, I beg your forgiveness. I cannot come up with better word choice. Pigs are not despicable creatures. I’m even somewhat fond of them. However, the only other terms that convey my full meaning when I say “fascist pig”, are inappropriate for my real life students to be reading when they inadvertently google me and stumble upon this post. I love them too much to expose them to that kind of English.

So when I say “fascist pig,” I am not referring to the many, many good qualities of the wild boar’s descendent. I am referring to those characteristics which humans find repugnant because we are wired differently than pigs are.

Yucky traits I am referring to with the term “fascist pig.” (Feel free to skip this section if you have a delicate stomach).:

Pigs, for instance, do not sweat, so they cool off by covering themselves in mud. Clever idea, right? Modern humans from my culture wouldn’t do that because the mud would dry out and stick to your hair; there could be something nasty in it; and dry mud under your nails is unpleasant. We also sweat, so mud as a cooling technique is rendered unnecessary. 

Pigs are not picky eaters. My dad is the son of a large animal vet. When I was a kid, he told me about how farmers have pigs go into a cornfield after the cows have finished the post-harvest leftovers because the pigs will eat whatever unprocessed corn is left from the cow’s droppings. Needless to say, the image stuck what me.

Due to the rooting through excrement habit, pigs stink.

Now on to the word, fascist. Following is a screenshot of the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition for the term “fascism.”

The screenshot demonstrates that the definition of fascism is, “an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization.” The next line explains a way the term is used generally to mean “extreme authoritarian, oppressive, or intolerant views or practices.”

Examples of 45′s fascist behaviors:

Children separated from their families in concentration camps. I have second-hand knowledge of this. The Gestapo Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) locked up a friend of mine for 45 days. He was taken from his uncle. He was 5 years old. Here’s his story: https://youtu.be/Xa6NYkQWF4I . It’s also been documented by many reputable news sources. https://apnews.com/9794de32d39d4c6f89fbefaea3780769

Children and adults placed in hieleras (ice boxes/coolers). I know people from multiple Central American countries who have suffered this at the hands of ICE. What happens is , the family turns themselves into ICE to apply for asylum. ICE locks them up and turns the temperature down to just above freezing. ICE lets them go within 3 days. There is no benefit to these families making up this story. Being from different countries, they did not know one another before telling me the exact same story. Here’s a similar story that happened to another family from a reputable news source: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-s-family-separation-policy-never-really-ended-why-ncna1025376

Flint, Michigan still does not have clean water. Yes that’s more in the hands of state government officials but I don’t see 45 using any political clout to help mitigate the situation. https://detroit.cbslocal.com/2020/07/30/michigan-supreme-court-rules-flint-class-action-can-proceed-over-lead-in-water/

45 is violating court orders in regards to DACA. ***Side note: Just like Andrew Jackson. Can we please take him off the $20 bill and replace him with Harriet Tubman already???*** https://www.npr.org/2020/07/28/896334928/trump-administration-will-reject-new-daca-applications-administration-official-s

Journalists are arrested and manhandled by law enforcement when covering protests which is a clear violation of the 1st amendment. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/arts/television/cnn-arrest.html

He’s attacking his own citizens. https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/07/27/895713277/tear-gas-fired-on-protesters-again-during-overnight-protests-in-portland

He thinks Kim Jong Un is awesome. https://www.npr.org/2017/05/02/526520042/6-strongmen-trumps-praised-and-the-conflicts-it-presents

He’s trying to lengthen our border wall - again, shades of North Korea. https://www.npr.org/2020/05/25/861837314/trumps-border-wall-would-go-through-laredos-historic-downtown

140,000 deaths from COVID keep getting minimized. Steps to mitigate the pandemic keep getting minimized. https://www.npr.org/2020/07/19/892787298/some-young-people-have-the-sniffles-trump-downplays-the-coronavirus-severity

I’m starting to work myself up into a state with this list. In order to preserve my sanity, I’m skipping the rest of the reasons and going to the most salient one.

45 is advocating for a delay of the 2020 presidential election. See this screenshot from twitter?

Delay the election?????????? A delay would inevitably extend the length of 45′s current term, no matter the election’s outcome. That’s not how a republic works. It’s how a fascist who is trying to make it look like he’s operating in the people’s best interests, steals absolute power for himself.

Post-Nazi Germany, Germans often said, “We didn’t see it coming.” I say that is a bunch of baloney. I say, Hitler’s contemporaries did not WANT to see what was happening, so they lied to themselves to make their own reality more comfortable.

You should not be comfortable right now. You should be sick with worry.

Get the word out about the evil that is happening in America. Our own citizens are victims of 45′s fearmongering. Do not let them be comfortable with his actions. If you are silent, you are complicit. Do not be complicit. A true American pulls all the stops to make this country that we LOVE a better place. Staying silent in the face of fascism has the opposite effect.

Oh, and in case you forget, today’s learning objective is to understand why I am correct when I describe 45 as a fascist pig.

[uselessace]

The Game

Pairing: Real world none, game world CharliexReader

Word Count: 2790

Warnings: Swearing, and some canon typical type violence, Male!Reader

A/n: This is loosely based on dungeons and dragons (D&D) but remember that loosely part if you play please. I have no clue how to play the game in all actuality and was kinda making it up as i went while asking google how the game worked. This is also my entry for @kdfrqqg writing challenge

Prompt: “My wife is dead Thanks to him.” Which I changed slightly.

You locked shocked eyes with Charlie. Her in game character, whom was married to yours, had just been killed.

“Charlie…?” you muttered, fully shocked by this outcome.

You were invested in this game, much like Charlie was. For you and her it might as well have been a LARP. You two had even planned out the future on how'd you raise your new adopted child, which Crowley so helpfully decided to play.

“You know I expected death from those two,” She said motioning at Sam and Dean.

“But never you. Never the good uncle, never my husband's brother.” She looked at Castiel betrayed

Castiel smirked smugly at her. He loved the game and his chance to be different with only in game consequences.

While Charlie stared down Cas, you looked to Rowena. You had somehow convinced her to play the ‘dungeon master’. One of her roles was to project exactly what was happening in the game. Currently she was happily looping the murder. It was obvious from that clip that your child had seen it happen.

Sam and Dean looked at each other, then Cas as if they were miffed by him.

“DUDE! We were going to kill them!” Dean irritatedly stated.

Then looked shocked as if he hadn't meant to say that out loud. Cas meanwhile looked far too smug. Truthfully while Cas enjoyed being able to do whatever, so long as the dice let him do it, He wasn't usually the murder type. That was far more suited to Sam, Dean was the one who advocated for saving people.

“Next time be quicker, you were the one who told me to be more ruthless.”  The mischievous smirk he now sported probably didn't bode well for the others. Luckily for yourself he had rolled a 1 on disguising who did the murder.

“Fergus you have to roll to see if you break into hysterics or stay calm.” Rowena nearly sing-sang.

Crowley glared at her, but rolled. He managed to roll a 18.

“I want to roll to tell Father 2 what happened.” Crowley said.

You looked sadly at him, unless charlie was successful and rolled a 20 on becoming a ghost, she was out of the game forever, and he wouldn't ever have to distinguish between you two.  

Rowena nodded, he rolled. It was a 20.

“Caius, Tells his still living father what happened. No detail is missed.”

The scene that was playing changed to depict Caius, Crowley's character, telling yours what happened.

“I hope everyone realises it's on now.” you said, then turning to Cas you glared.

“You especially should be happy I have to watch my child. Or you'd be dead meat already.”

Cas cocked his head to the side,

“How would I be dead meat? I am still alive..?” He muttered confused. Dean started to clue him in as Rowena turned to you, before she could speak however Crowley spoke up.

“I’m shocked feathers was so ruthless to kill Charlie's character, my father , in front of me.”

“I was not aware of your presence at the time of the murder, or I would've tried to kill you as well.”

Rowena cleared her throat, annoyed at the interruptions.

“Let's get back to the game, shall we?”

Everyone settled down, glares being freely passed around, and nodded.

“Now Y/n what do you do.”

“I hug Caius  and roll for comfort.” You roll a 20. While glaring at the other three you say.

“I lie to Caius and tell him he was mistaken, his Uncle didn't kill his Father. I hug him tighter and ease his fears before sending him to his room.”

Rowena reflected that scene before turning to charlie.

“Roll to see if you’ll come back as a ghost now.”

You and Charlie locked eyes nervously. You both had suspected that she would be killed, so you already had a plan in motion. If she failed this roll the plan would unravel. She rolled, the dice tumbled as if in slow motion, before settling on a 18. You both hugged, then you being the brave soul you were, hugged Crowley.

“Caesar successfully comes back as a ghost. However he is stuck to his house and can not leave the premises. Lysander is nonetheless ecstatic.”

With the recent murder Cas had used his last turn to go into hiding. Which meant he gave up three turns, Sam and Dean had gone into hiding 2 turns back and still couldn't go yet. So it immediately flipped back to Crowley.

“I roll to sleep peacefully.” He rolled a 3

“Caius tosses and turns in his sleep, his sleep is anything but restful. Caesar and Lysander have a conversation.”

That meant you and Charlie had to converse about what to do in front of the others, who had to pretend to not know what was going on.

“Caius needs one of us here, I can not leave you should go and avenge me.” Charlie started out.

“I love you Caesar, but how would it affect him being raised by a ghost? He has already seen you killed.” You motioned at the screen which showed your two characters conversing in a still bloody room.

Charlie grimaced.

“I roll to start cleaning.” Rowena nodded and let her roll. She got a 18, meaning you join in on the ‘chore’.

“Well we start by cleaning this up. He will be fine. You can go off and avenge me.”

“I pause and caress my husband's cheek.” The animation showed just that. You and charlie copied it to add to atmosphere.

“And what of you love? Would you be ok if I were to leave to murder my brother?”

“As long as you return safe and sound to me.” She brought he hand up to your cheek as well then leaned her forehead on yours.

“Avenge me, then return and keep this family safe.”

The animation showed your characters sharing a tender kiss, which was the only thing you and Charlie wouldn't do, mainly because you both were far to gay for that. She wasn't a guy and you weren't a girl.

The moment lasted just a second longer before you both got back to cleaning.

“What do you do?” Rowena asked

“I finish cleaning and gather my things for a journey. I plan to find and kill my brother.”

“Roll for to see what's behind the door as you leave.”  Rowena said

You looked at her oddly, but rolled nonetheless. You rolled a 5.

“Lysander gathers his equipment and kisses his husband goodbye. He sneaks into Caius’ room and soothes his slumber, then leaves. As Lysander opens the door he spots someone, whom he assumes to be Castiel, running away. He only sees enough to ascertain the direction the person went.”

You looked at Charlie and Crowley and felt determination set in. you were definitely going to try and get revenge and stay alive. They may just be ingame family, but gosh darn it you were protective of them.  

About three hours of aggressively playing later, Caius had a birthday and you briefly came home to celebrate. You had found clues that Sam and Dean, who uncreatively named their characters after themselves, were hiding Cas, and had found their location.

“Roll for luck.” Was all Rowena said as your character approached the hideout.

“Typical, let me guess if it's bad I won’t find him here.” Was all you muttered as you rolled. The dice seemed to tumble in slow motion, rocking on edge back and forth, just to tease you. You had done this countless times throughout the hours since Caesar’s demise. After one final rock it landed on 20.

“You open the door and find Sam and Dean hastily packing three suitcases. Castiel is nowhere to be seen. The boys are heavily intimidated by you angry demeanor and their stats take 2 damage across the boards.”

Sam and Dean both glared at you. This campaign had lasted for nearly 3 years, and during all of that they had been building up the secret lair. The very one that your character now stood in, the very one that was unplottable. You tossed a sweet and innocent smile their way, your eyes however betrayed the danger lying within.

“Roll for resistance boys.” Rowena stated with an unusually happy smile on her face.

They both rolled, Sam got a 1 and Dean got a 10.

Rowena then turned to you.

“Sam is unable to resist answering you, Dean can resist if you roll an intimidation under 10. Whom do you choose?”

“Dean.”

“Then roll for intimidation.”

Everyone, including Charlie, looked shocked at your choice. You were hinging on rolling an 11 at least, no matter what Sam would cave in to your demands. It was even likely he wouldn't be able to fight back because he was so intimidated by you. Dean was the real threat.

You picked up the dice and turned to Charlie, holding it out to her you asked.

“Would you kiss it for luck?”

Before she could answer Rowena interrupted.

“If Charlie rolls for luck and you roll for kisses, we can figure out the multiplier the luck will add, do you wish to do that?”

You had been joking but the chance to get a multiplier was too awesome to pass up.

“Of course!” Both you and Charlie said at the same time.

You rolled for Kisses and got a 2, Charlie rolled a 10 for luck.

“The ghost of charlie comes forth and grants you 20 times your roll, roll for intimidation.”

The roll was a guaranteed win now. Charlie kissed the dice in real life twice, adding in a

“Good luck!”  

You took the dice and rolled it, it twisted and turned as if it was a ballerina dancing to their death.  Finally it took one last dramatic bow and fell down to reveal a perfect 20. Everyone looked shocked around the table.

“Lysander’s intimidation is now at 400-” Rowena stopped and cleared her throat, still shocked.

“What would you like to do?”

“Shove Dean into a wall and ask where Castiel is.”

The animation updated to show Dean being shoved against a wall by Lysander. Animation Dean’s jeans grew slightly darker down one leg.

“You shove Dean into the wall, who is immensely intimidated.”

“I want to roll for sass back ability.” Dean butted in, clearly not impressed with the darkened spot showing up on his animation.

Rowena gives him the go ahead, he rolls a 18.

“Despite being Intimidated Dean has the incredible ability to sass Lysander exactly one and a half times. Sam has curled up in a ball ineffectively. Dean and Lysander have a conversation.”

You and Dean looked at each other, mutually agreeing that this once you won't act out what the characters are doing.

“Wheres Castiel?” You growl out. If looks could kill Dean would be long gone.

“Oh he’s here and there, probably on this planet.” Dean said back, the bite in his tone overshadowed by the sheer terror his eyes projected.

You growled back at him, suddenly standing up at the table.

“My husband is dead thanks to him. So you listen here asshat, Tell. Me. Where. My. Brother. IS.” You emphasized all of the last part, nearly screeching out the last word.

Dean gulped.

“I- I told you he’s here and-” He stopped his last chance to sass you over. The growl certainly didn't help his case.

“He- He’s in the back. I pro-promise.” Dean stuttered out.

“Lysander, having gained the information he wanted, released Dean. He then proceeded to stalk to the back of the hideout, there is only one room in which Castiel stands. Castiel is not intimidated by Lysander.”

You reseated yourself as Rowena weaved the situation. The animation showing the scene as she described it. This was it, the moment you either successfully avenged Caesar or died yourself.   Of course you could always attempt to come back as a ghost but anything less than a 20 meant you'd either fail or be stuck here.

“Castiel, Y/n roll for luck.”

You both locked eyes. He knew he couldn't cheat and he felt to strongly about the games random turn of events to even try cheating. You both rolled at the same time. He looked away first. You then looked at the dice, his was a 1 and yours was a 16, shockingly enough.

This was the first 1 that Cas had ever rolled. In fact he had never gotten below a 10 before.

“What course of action do you both take?”

“I attempt to run.” Was Cas’ response.

“I wish to attack.”

“Roll for damage.”

You rolled a 5.

“Castiel attempts to run but trips over thin air. His defense is low and his health lowers by 2 points due to the fall. Lysander takes advantage of Castiel’s moment of weakness and attacks, dealing 15 damage due to the origin of impact. Due to this Castiel loses the use of one leg and is bleeding profusely.”

The animation showed a grisly scene. You reached over and covered Crowley’s eyes, despite the fact he had probably seen worse. He irritadly pushed your hand away.

“I wish to roll for persuasion.”

Castiel reached for his dice waiting on the go ahead from Rowena.She looked confused but nodded anyway. The dice tumbled out of his hand before landing on a-

“TWO THIS ENTIRE GAME I’VE GOTTEN A TEN OR HIGHER AND NOW WHEN I’M ABOUT TO DIE I GET A TWO?” He yelled out.

You looked at the usually calm angel surprised. He took a moment and calmed down.

“What were you going to persuade for?” Rowena cautiously asked him.

“I was going to persuade him to let me live.” He said through gritted teeth.

“Very well, Castiel tries to persuade Lysander to spare him. Lysander is lost cause to him. Lysander ignores Castiels attempt at speech. Y/n roll for damage, if you get an 8 or higher you will have killed Castiel.”

“You know Cas I would say sorry but you killed my darling husband.” You smiled as you rolled. It was a 9.

“Lysander deals the final blow, Castiel is killed and Caesar is avenged. Castiel roll for revival.” Rowena stated.

He rolled, everyone held their breath in anticipation. The dice rolled as if it was a wheel of cheese going downhill, until it reached the end and stopped. He had managed to roll a 17.

“Castiel’s ghost rises but can not leave the building. Lysander what do you want to do?”

“I want to roll for swift travels and go back to my family.”

Rowena nodded and motions for you to roll. This time you got a 19.

“Lysander turns and leaves the room, he quickly walks past the boys and leaves the base. He makes it home in record time to his family. Caius is asleep. Lysander and Caesar converse.”

“Darling, I’ve returned home.” You said caressing Charlie’s cheek. You were staring into her eyes as if she was water and you were a dehydrated man.

“Love, I’m so glad your back. Is it over?”

Both of your eyes were filled with tears, both in game and out. You smiled and nodded. Your characters shared a tender kiss.

“Well Lysander and Caesar have moved on. They are happy and will be able to look after Caius. Castiel, Sam, and Dean are still at the not so secret secret bunker. And we have a starting point for next time. I am done narrating you idiots.” Rowena snapped out, before standing and leaving.

Cas had his head in his hands while Dean comforted him. Sam had already headed off to the library, you swear he had a fetish, And Charlie had left to her room to check on some other game of hers. That left you with Crowley.

“Well then, how do you feel about this session?”

“It’s nice to have both parents, now I can once again cause trouble with both of you.” He smugly stated. You chuckled along with him, before standing up.

“Well could I offer you a drink? I even managed to get Cas to take me to get some Craig.”

He smiled at you before standing and offering his arm to you.

“I would love a drink, shall we?”

You rolled your eyes and walked off to get a drink. Him following behind.

You truly enjoyed you get togethers, just not when they decide to kill your ingame family. The game is a nice way to bring everyone together and have minimal real life drama. You handed Crowley his drink and got your own before sitting down and chatting the night away.

Tag List: @wayward-mirage @trollhunter94 @kdfrqqg

Just a reminder the Tag list is open shoot me an ask or message and I’ll add you in! All you have to do is make sure you tell me what type of content you don’t want tagged in. 

[dreamteamn]

Get to know me tag

Tagged by @spicypancakedoyoung dude I’m telling you now that I’m kinda obessed with these so you might wanna stop now unless you want me to dedicate my life to you. just saying Also thank you ^w^ like I can’t not do a tag once I’m tagged

1. Are you named after someone?

Yes o.o Like my great great great great grandmother or something???

2. When was the last time you cried?

Last Monday when I dropped my phone into a toilet and the microphone stopped working and both of my grandmas called me and I couldn’t talk to them !!!

3. Do you like your handwriting?

Sometimes. It’s getting worse tho because we don’t write stuff in school that much anymore

4. What’s your favourite lunch meat?

What is a lunch meat??? Am I missing something here?? Is it just a meat you eat for lunch ???

5. Do you have kids?

Yeah like 9 +

6. If you were another person, would you be friends with you?

I mean it depends who this other person was? If I was another me then probably not because I don’t talk to ppl irl. But I do like tall ppl so maybe idk!!

7. Do you use sarcasm?

I’m too lazy to come up with a joke here so imma just say yes, yes I do.

8. Do you still have tonsils?

What are tonsils?? I just realised how badly I English!! Ok I just googled it and what the fuck?? I don’t know??? No???

9. What is your favourite kind of cereal?

Lion cereal !! haven’t eaten those in years but still

10. Do you untie your shoes when you take them off?

I mean if I have to ???

11. Do you think you’re a strong person?

My life’s been pretty easy so far so I can’t tell. I’m pretty positive at least ??

12. What’s your favourite ice cream flavour?

Chocolate or cooKIE!! OR CHOCOLATE COKIE!!

13. What is the first thing you notice about people?

Maybe height? Or facial expressions??

14. Red or pink?

ROSE QUARTZ YALL!!

15. What is the least favourite physical thing you like about yourself?

The least favourite thing I like about myself?? Erm?? My height?? I’m pretty tall and I’ve learned to live with that but it’s made a lot of things hard for me in the past.

16. What colour pants and shoes are you wearing now?

Black

17. What was the last thing you ate?

I drank coffee this morning?? Ate a few whatever they’re called in English nuts.

18. What are you listening to right now?

Nct Dream playlist on Spotify (Chewing Gum Chinese version)

19. If you were a crayon what colour would you be?

????? What ????? Erm I don’t know ??? Gay wow that’s the best typo I’ve made in days I am not gonna fix that but I meant gray

20. Favourite smell?

Ok this is gonna sound weird but I really like the smell of dogs. Like my pup smells so familiar yeah… His breath smells horrible tho

21. Who was the last person you talked to on the phone?

Well I talked to my grandma but she couldn’t hear me smh… No wait my sister video called me yesterday!!

22. Favourite sport to watch?

Glad it says watch… But Hockey because I’m Finnish duh!

23. Hair colour?

Atm it’s like dark brown

24. Eye colour?

Blue… Very blue…

25. Do you wear contacts?

I don’t and I probably couldn’t even if I had glasses.

26. Favourite food to eat?

Chicken is this even a question??

27. Scary movies or comedy?

I’ve never finished a scary movie so I guess comedy 

28. Last movie I watched?

I honestly can’t remember?? Maybe the xXx thingy the second one the one that doesn’t have Kris lol

29. What colour shirt are you wearing?

Like a grayish blueish Marvel shirt

30. Summer or winter?

Summer on winter and winter on summer… But honestly spring

31. Hugs or kisses?

AGDJSGS both!! Like I love giving hugs but receiving them is awkward cos I’m tol ok??! But I love receiving kisses like little pecks on the cheek and yeh but no one ever kisses me so hugs

32. What book are you currently reading?

It’s a Finnish book and I just started it but it’s called Fraktaaliruhtinas (wow nice word no idea what it means) by Hannu Rajaniemi

33. Who do you miss right now?

Well I haven’t seen most of my irl friends in the longest time so them and also lowkey like really lowkey my sister

34. What is on your mouse pad?

I just use my iPad I broke the mouse tho

35. What is the last tv programme you watched?

I watched dancing with the stars with my grandma and I started watching Cosmos just now

36. What is the best sound?

Honestly music if not then silence or that bling sound that comes when you get a tumblr message ;))))

37. Rolling Stones or The Beatles?

HEY JUUUDEEE DON’T MAKE IT BAAAD!! Zhong Chenle

38. What is the farthest you’ve ever travelled?

Do I really need to get up and look at the map?? Fine. Tenerife jesus fuck why am I so Finnish??

39. Do you have a special talent?

I can tell when my nose is gonna start to bleed ?

40. Where were you born?

Lahti Finland which is honestly kinda weird cos I never lived there???

41. Who am I tagging?

@saddermachine @chibiirin and @midnight-daydreams-11​

I’d like to say that it’s optional but IT’S NOT!! Yall are gonna do this and cry!!!

[boysbeambitious]

Tagged by @moshetei​ :>

1: Are you named after someone? Priscilla Presley. My parents wanted to give me a really “American” name but I don’t think they realized it’s not so American…   2: When was the last time you cried? When I skyped with my parents last month, I think? I was doing bad health-wise and they really cheered me up, so it was a happy cry. 3: Do you like your handwriting? It’s ok sometimes!  4: What is your favourite lunch meat? Smoked turkey.  5: Do you have kids? Not at the moment.  6: If you were another person, would you be friends with you? Oof, maybe? Both of us might be too shy though. 7: Do you use sarcasm? Sometimes…not so much though. I’m very gullible myself so I try not to be so sarcastic.   8: Do you still have your tonsils? Yep.  9: Would you bungee jump? I’m afraid of heights so…nah. 10: What is your favourite kind of cereal? Cheerios or corn flakes.  11: Do you untie your shoes when you take them off? If they’re my Doc Martens, yes (can’t manage to take them off otherwise). Sneakers, no.   12: Do you think you’re a strong person? I could be stronger (physically and mentally).  13: What is your favourite ice cream flavour? I usually go for coffee flavor.  14: What is the first thing you notice about people? Their facial expression. 15: Red or pink? Both (I’m indecisive!) 16: What is the least favourite physical thing you like about yourself? MY TEETH (and my knees are in second place). (Edit: just realised how oddly this is worded and not sure if I answered correctly...oh well) 17: What colour pants and shoes are you wearing now? Blue (from Gina Tricot). No shoes while in the apartment! 18: What was the last thing you ate? Homemade salmon poke and avocado.   19: What are you listening to right now? I’m watching a mukbang on the side so…some munching and slurping…lol.  20: If you were a crayon, what colour would you be? Mustard?  21: Favourite smell? Fresh linen.  22: Who was the last person you spoke to on the phone? JJ.  23: Favourite sport to watch? I’ve been doing Brazilian jiu jitsu for a few months, so probably that. [24 is missing???] 25: Eye colour? Very very dark brown.  26: Do you wear contacts? Yes! My eyesight is awful. -7.5 on both sides.  27: Favourite food to eat? Lao, Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese food.  28: Scary movies or comedy? Comedy!!  29: Last movie you watched? Kimi no Na wa. 30: What colour of shirt are you wearing? Black (like most of my clothes).  31: Summer or winter? Summer (as long as it’s not too humid).  32: Hugs or kisses? Both.  33: What book are you currently reading? “A Tale of the Time Being” by Ruth Ozeki  34: Who do you miss right now? My brother. I’m glad I got to see him over Christmas vacation though! 35: What is on your mouse pad? “Graphisoft Archicad” with a bunch of keyboard shortcuts…it’s JJ’s.  36: What is the last TV program you watched?  The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. 37: What is the best sound? Gentle waves. 38: Rolling Stones or The Beatles? The Beatles.  39: What is the furthest you have ever travelled? Indonesia.  40: Do you have a special talent? Googling things.   41: Where were you born? Portland, Oregon.  42: People you expect to participate in this survey? (if you are bored!) @eggwrap @dolllike

[eirenical]

Brick Club ‘17 – Chapters 1.1.1-1.1.5; I admire a man with chutzpah.

(...jfc, if you had any idea how much trouble this post gave me. *glares at tumblr*  I HAD TO REWRITE IT FOUR TIMES and between times 3 and 4, Kaspersky randomly decided that Firefox shouldn’t load any websites.  ANY.  NOT EVEN GOOGLE.  ARGH.  But I’m OK, now, and I’m going to retype this again for the (HOPEFULLY) last time.)

The first thing I have to say about these chapters is that I absolutely adore the Bishop.  Anyone who follows me knows that Courfeyrac is my absolute favorite of favorites in all of Les Mis, but Feuilly and the Bishop tie for second place.  And this is the reason why: The Bishop is a classic representation of what it is to have chutzpah.  

Merriam-Webster defines chutzpah as “supreme self-confidence: nerve, gall” and that’s part of it, and is what it’s come to mean in English usage, but that’s not the whole truth.  I’m going to borrow something now from an article on chabad.org by Tzvi Freeman:

So what is chutzpah? It’s a kind of acosmic attitude, as though there’s nothing really there stopping you from doing whatever you want.

That’s why chutzpah can be real bad and chutzpah can be real good. Bad chutzpah is something we all know about. But good chutzpah is one of the first rules of behavior cited in the Shulchan Aruch—the classic codification of Jewish Law. Citing the words of the Mishnah, “Be fierce as a leopard,” the code tells us that this means that when you go about doing all those Jewish things that Jews do, you shouldn’t feel the slightest embarrassment before those who ridicule you. You don’t have to call them names, you don’t have to react at all. Just keep on doing what you have to do as though they don’t exist. […]

So, to be a good Jew, you need two opposites: A sense of shame that prevents you from acting with chutzpah to do the wrong thing, and a sense of chutzpah that prevents you from being ashamed to do the right thing.

The Bishop is very clearly not a Jew, but this is such a Jewish thing that he does: unashamedly doing the right thing, in spite of ridicule, standing up to people who look down at him from on high and not only assuming equality, but daring to encourage them to use his behavior as an example do better.  He is who he is, he knows what is the right thing to do, and he’s just going to go about his business and do it, no matter what you think.  That is chutzpah, and that is my Bishop.

And now, below the cut, I will give you some of my more specific thoughts on each chapter.  ^_^

I’m not going to go over each of these chapters in much detail, because, to be honest, it’s too much and I could probably spend 20 pages babbling, and I don’t think anyone wants that.  So, I’ve tried to stick with picking one (or two) thing(s) in each chapter to talk about to avoid making this ridiculously long.

1.1.1

The thing that always strikes me out of this chapter is that I desperately want the story of Myriel before he became a priest.  Because that transformation from well-born, well-to-do, charming and yet somewhat debauched man to the Bishop we know in Digne?  That fascinates me.  In there lies a story just as complex and interesting as Valjean’s own and I want to hear it.  I want to know more about this man who gleefully looked Napoleon in the eye and punned at him.  I want to know more.  I would gladly read another 1200 page novel on him.  And that’s honestly my biggest problem with Les Mis in a nutshell.  Even the minor, minor background characters are so richly created that I want to know more about them.  It’s a problem.

[Side note: I forgot how frustrating Hapgood’s handling of puns is.  She misses just about every one.  Or maybe the way she translated them just doesn’t translate into modern English, but, either way, it’s super frustrating.  I can FEEL the lead-up to the pun (Hugo sets them all up pretty obviously, especially for the Bishop’s puns) and then where the joke would be it just… falls flat.  :P  I found myself rifling through my FMA and my Donougher to see if they were handled any better there, and @pilferingapples, I gotta say, I’m tempted to flop over to Donougher every time there’s a pun because she did a MUCH better job with the few I checked.  Did you find the same?]

Anyway, the other thing I need to mention about 1.1.1 is this: Myriel is “advanced in years and living in a very retired manner.”  His sister, Baptistine, who is 10 YEARS HIS JUNIOR, is “an elderly spinster????”  And let’s not forget this hot mess:

Mademoiselle Baptistine was a long, pale, thin, gentle creature; she realized the ideal expressed by the word “respectable”; for it seems that a woman must needs be a mother in order to be venerable. She had never been pretty; her whole life, which had been nothing but a succession of holy deeds, had finally conferred upon her a sort of pallor and transparency; and as she advanced in years she had acquired what may be called the beauty of goodness. What had been leanness in her youth had become transparency in her maturity; and this diaphaneity allowed the angel to be seen. She was a soul rather than a virgin. Her person seemed made of a shadow; there was hardly sufficient body to provide for sex; a little matter enclosing a light; large eyes forever drooping;— a mere pretext for a soul’s remaining on the earth.

Hugo, Victor. Les Miserables (Xist Classics) (Kindle Locations 483-489). Signet. Kindle Edition.

Hugo… NO.  WHAT ARE YOU DOING.  PLEASE, STOP.  JUST… STOP.  OTZ

(That being said, “diaphaneity” is a pretty great word.  Did you make that one up, Hapgood?  I may have to find an excuse to use that.  ;D)

1.1.2

“Hold, Monsieur the director of the hospital, I will tell you something. There is evidently a mistake here. There are thirty-six of you, in five or six small rooms. There are three of us here, and we have room for sixty. There is some mistake, I tell you; you have my house, and I have yours. Give me back my house; you are at home here.”

Hugo, Victor. Les Miserables (Xist Classics) (Kindle Locations 519-522). Signet. Kindle Edition.

CHUTZPAH.  XD

But, no, the thing I really want to talk about is this:

NOTE ON THE REGULATION OF MY HOUSEHOLD EXPENSES. For the little seminary … … … … . . 1,500 livres Society of the mission … … … … . . 100 “ For the Lazarists of Montdidier … … … . 100 “ Seminary for foreign missions in Paris … … 200 “ Congregation of the Holy Spirit … … … . 150 “ Religious establishments of the Holy Land … . . 100 “ Charitable maternity societies … … … . 300 “ Extra, for that of Arles … … … … . 50 “ Work for the amelioration of prisons … … . 400 “ Work for the relief and delivery of prisoners … 500 “ To liberate fathers of families incarcerated for debt 1,000 “ Addition to the salary of the poor teachers of the diocese … … … 2,000 “ Public granary of the Hautes-Alpes … … . . 100 “ Congregation of the ladies of D——, of Manosque, and of Sisteron, for the gratuitous instruction of poor girls … … … … … … . . 1,500 “ For the poor … … … … … … . 6,000 “ My personal expenses … … … … … 1,000 “ Total … … … … … … . . 15,000 “

Hugo, Victor. Les Miserables (Xist Classics) (Kindle Locations 526-541). Signet. Kindle Edition

EXPENSES OF CARRIAGE AND CIRCUIT. For furnishing meat soup to the patients in the hospital. 1,500 livres For the maternity charitable society of Aix … … . 250 “ For the maternity charitable society of Draguignan … 250 “ For foundlings … … … … … … … 500 “ For orphans … … … … … … … . 500 “ ——- Total … … … … … … … . . 3,000 “

Hugo, Victor. Les Miserables (Xist Classics) (Kindle Locations 568-573). Signet. Kindle Edition..

The thing that strikes me about this bit on the household expenses is how absolutely clearly Hugo saw that society had to be improved from the bottom up.  I mean, just LOOK at some of these stuff!  Education of the poor, education of women, straight up money to just give to the poor, women, and orphans, proper nutrition for the sick, prison reform, returning the wage earner to families whose wage earners were in debtor’s prison.  I mean, LOOK AT THAT.  Can you imagine how much it would improve the life of the working class if we had bishops across the world doing this?  Taking government money and applying it where it will actually do the most good?  Hugo had some revolutionary ideas; that’s fact.  But, the idea that even the poorest among us, even those who have committed crimes, deserve mercy and a basic living wage?   That’s an idea that’s still revolutionary TODAY.  And it makes me angry… and sad.  We should be doing better.  We NEED to do better.

1.1.3

Good gravy, the bit about the donkey.  XD  CHUTZPAH, AGAIN.  See?  This is why I love the Bishop.  ^_^

Anyway, another thing that struck me in this chapter was how the Bishop teaches mostly by examples and models.  We literally just had a huge class discussion in my doctoral program about that the other day.  A good example, or a good model, is worth more than any amount of polished or wordy language.  It’s yet another case of a picture being worth 1000 words.  Hugo, via the Bishop, being ahead of his time, yet again.

1.1.4

I am NOT getting into the capital punishment discussion.  I’m just not up for that tonight.  :P

So, instead, here’s a discussion of mishandled puns and translation fails.

Madame Magloire liked to call him Your Grace [Votre Grandeur]. One day he rose from his arm-chair, and went to his library in search of a book. This book was on one of the upper shelves. As the bishop was rather short of stature, he could not reach it. "Madame Magloire," said he, "fetch me a chair. My greatness [grandeur] does not reach as far as that shelf."

Hugo, Victor. Les Misérables (English language) (Kindle Locations 442-444). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.

This is honestly one of my favorite puns in the whole book.  It’s such a dad joke.  ^_^  Unfortunately, in Hapgood’s translation, it falls a little flat.  It’s clear what the joke is in French (the play on grandeur) thanks to the [notes], but in English it doesn’t entirely work.  The fact that I have to rely on the original French to get the joke leaves me feeling like she could have done a better job on that.  So, just for shits and giggles, I checked Donougher to see what she did with it.  She seemed to do a better job at translating the pun:

Madame Magloire liked to call him ‘Your Highness’. One day he rose from his armchair and went to his bookcase to fetch a book. This book was on one of the top shelves. As the bishop was rather small in stature he could not reach it. ‘Madame Magloire,’ he said, ‘bring me a chair. My Highness falls short of that shelf.’

Hugo, Victor. The Wretched (Clothbound Classics) (p. 13). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.

It may not be an exact word-for-word translation, but I feel like it captures the spirit of the pun just a bit better.  So, kudos to you, Donougher.  Point in your favor.

Here’s the other translation gaffe:

"I am thinking," replied the Bishop, "of a singular remark, which is to be found, I believe, in St. Augustine,—'Place your hopes in the man from whom you do not inherit.'"

Hugo, Victor. Les Misérables (English language) (Kindle Locations 451-452). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.

vs.

‘I’m thinking,’ replied the bishop, ‘of something curious to be found, I believe, in St Augustine: “Place your hope in him who has no successor.” ’

Hugo, Victor. The Wretched (Clothbound Classics) (p. 14). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.

And FMA translates it even differently than that but I think made it sound even more like he’s referencing G-d?  When I climb out from under my cat, I’ll double check that, but the point stands--Hapgood’s translation is clearly talking about a person and Donougher’s is talking about G-d.  I’m, ironically, more likely to trust Donougher’s translation there just because it sounds much more like something the Bishop would say and because the set-up feels like the lead-in to a pun and Donougher is clearly better at handling those.

Now, that being said, I have no idea which of these interpretations is actually more correct.  My French is DEFINITELY not at the level of translating Hugo puns.  But for anyone with better French who may wish to take a stab at it...

—Je songe, dit l'évêque, à quelque chose de singulier qui est, je crois, dans saint Augustin: «Mettez votre espérance dans celui auquel on ne succède point.»

Hugo, Victor. Les misérables Tome I Fantine (French Edition) (Kindle Locations 255-256).  . Kindle Edition.

It doesn’t LOOK like there’s a pun hiding in that French, but again... not an expert by any stretch.  :P

1.1.5

(IN THE HOME STRETCH.)

I... actually have nothing to say about this chapter?  Other than that I’m picturing this little Bishop running about town, attracting a mini-parade everywhere he goes with little children cavorting around him and it’s the most precious thing.  ^____^

OK, one last translation amusement because it’s directly related:

Here and there he halted, accosted the little boys and girls, and smiled upon the mothers.

Hugo, Victor. Les Miserables (p. 28). HarperCollins Canada. Kindle Edition.

vs.

He would stop here and there, talk to the little boys and girls and smile at their mothers.

Hugo, Victor. The Wretched (Clothbound Classics) (p. 20). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.

But this is the best part, because my French is good enough for this, I think:

Çà et là, il s'arrêtait, parlait aux petits garçons et aux petites filles et souriait aux mères.

Hugo, Victor. Les misérables Tome I Fantine (French Edition) (Kindle Locations 381-382).  . Kindle Edition.

“PARLAIT” IS PRETTY CLEAR, HAPGOOD, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? XD 

Although, to be fair, I’m pretty sure she meant the type of “accosted” where like... adults make monster faces and “chase” the little kids around until the kids turn the tables and chase them.  And the idea of the Bishop doing that is SUCH a perfect image to close this week’s reading on that I think I’ll forgive it, this once.  ^_~

Tune in next week for chapters 1.1.6-1.1.10!

[preciousmetals0]

Volatility Is Your Friend; Beyond Meat Is Hot Again

Volatility Is Your Friend; Beyond Meat Is Hot Again:

Friday Four Play: The “Shoeshine Moment” Edition

I have a bit of a rant today.

The thing is, I’m getting bombarded by friends and family asking how to buy stocks.

It’s getting out of hand. “Relatives” are popping up all over the place asking for recommendations. Heck, I’ve even had people on my PlayStation friends list ask how to get started with investing.

No, xx360NoScopeHeadShot420xx, I can’t give you stock advice. The SEC will fry me. Will you just cover Point A? That enemy sniper is creeping up again.

Personally, I’m having flashbacks to 2007, when those same relatives and friends asked me about flipping houses.

You know, that Joe Kennedy “shoeshine boy” moment?

And it’s not just anecdotal. According to Google Trends, searches for “How do I buy stocks?” are at their highest level of popularity since 2004.

All this public attention — this groundswell of stock-trading interest — sets off my contrarian senses. (They’re like spider senses, but nowhere near as cool.)

Do you know what my contrarian senses tell me right now?

Stocks are out. Options are in. It’s no secret that we’ve seen massive market volatility this year: 2% daily swings used to be terrifying; now, they’re as mundane as your morning ritual. (Take that how you will…)

The absolute best way to take advantage of this spike in volatility is by trading options. With the right strategy, you make money when stocks go up, and you make money when stocks go down. And there have been a lot of big ups and downs lately that could’ve made you bank.

But I hear you. You’re thinking: I don’t know how to trade options!

As in all things (well, most things … OK, a few things here and there … sheesh), Great Stuff has you covered.

Truth is, you don’t need to be a whiz to dive into the options market. Heck, you don’t even need to know what an option is to get started.

Why? Because you can let Banyan Hill’s experts do the heavy lifting for you.

Paul Mampilly (yes, that Paul Mampilly!) has a “rebound” method to look for specific opportunities in volatile markets. In fact, looking back, you could’ve used this method to rack up 529% returns during the worst month of the ’08 financial crisis.

So … why not let Paul and co. find the opportunities for you? That way, you can get back to, well, whatever you’d rather do right now than stare at stock charts and data.

Click here to see how Paul Mampilly’s options research can work for you.

And now for something completely different … here’s your Friday Four Play:

No. 1: Bring Me the Verizon

If you thought wireless would be a safe haven in this pandemic market, Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) just burst your bubble.

The “Can you hear me now?” company just updated investors on its first-quarter performance, and the results are mixed. Earnings topped expectations by $0.04 per share, while revenue missed by $330 million. Not a complete face-plant, but it’s far from exciting.

Furthermore, Verizon lost 68,000 monthly phone subscribers last quarter. The company also yanked its 2020 guidance due to pandemic uncertainty.

Here’s the thing…

Verizon subscribers either can’t get into the store to pay their bills — the number of people still paying in person is disturbingly high — or they were forced to make budget cuts. The fact that smartphone plans make the “budget cuts list” should be a worrisome development for investors.

Not sure where to start with wireless and 5G tech? Click here!

No. 2: We Have the Un-Meats

Beyond Meat Inc. (Nasdaq: BYND) just saw its biggest weekly gain since going public. No, millions of people didn’t just decide to become vegetarians … or did they?

One of the themes coming out of the COVID-19 story is that humanity could cut down on the number of viruses it contracts by eating less meat.

“Most infectious disease outbreaks are transmitted from animals to humans,” CFRA Research wrote in a note to clients this month. “Since lab-based meat is produced in a clean and controlled environment, we think the progression of the lab-based meat industry could be accelerated as more zoonotic outbreaks occur.”

In other words, analysts believe that fake meat could be the solution to our outbreak problems.

But dietary shifts to avoid viruses aren’t the whole reason Beyond Meat surged. The company just launched its plant-based menu in China, featuring faux pork.

In case you didn’t know, China is the Porkopolis of the world. They produce and consume more pork than any other country. That production has been severely hampered by an outbreak of African Swine flu.

Swine flu? COVID-19? Maybe there’s something to this alt-meat thing after all.

No. 3: Bad Week for the Blues

With “Big Blue” in cash-conservation mode, the big tech market got even frothier with yesterday’s news of next-generation Macs ditching chips from “Team Blue,” aka Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC).

There’s a shadow hanging over Intel, oh, yesterday came suddenly. Why Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) had to go, I don’t know, it wouldn’t say. (But really, we all knew Intel couldn’t cut it anymore. Not with Apple’s ARM processors having three times as many cores as Intel’s archaic chips.)

Yesterday, processors were such an easy game to play. But last night found INTC shares down more than 6% after hours when the company reported earnings.

Earnings came in at $1.45 share, right above analysts’ estimates for $1.28 per share. And revenue hit $19.83 billion, beating both analysts’ expectations and the company’s $19-billion forecast. A decent chunk of revenue was from workers and students alike snatching up devices for their stay-at-home battle stations.

So far so good, no?

The problem — in Wall Street’s eyes, anyway — is second-quarter projections. Intel projected revenue to beat analysts’ estimates, but earnings would come up $0.09 short per share. Combined with Intel yanking its full-year guidance, this was simply too much for Wall Street to handle, and it sold.

Intel is shifting to corner the market for data centers and servers anyway. Losing consumer-device customers like Apple would happen sooner or later. My take? Ho hum.

No. 4: Penney Dreadful

A Penney saved is a Penney burned, apparently. J.C. Penney Company Inc. (NYSE: JCP) is about to become the next Sears Holdings Corp. (OTC: SHLDQ). (How the heck is Sears still a thing?)

According to The Wall Street Journal, Penney is in advanced bankruptcy talks with funding groups and lenders. Specifically, the department store failure currently seeks financial help with lenders while it undergoes a court-supervised bankruptcy.

Apparently, Penney needs about $800 million to $1 billion to stave off lenders. That’s a lot of pennies.

While J.C. Penney has hemorrhaged cash for years, the recent pandemic shutdown pushed the company over the edge. In recent weeks, Penney closed all 850 department stores and furloughed practically all its 95,000 employees.

JCP shares now trade for about 25 pennies.

Great Stuff: Penney for Your Thoughts?

That’s going to be a wrap for this week, dear reader, and what a week it was! Earnings season continues to rage on, with Wall Street flabbergasted both by companies pulling guidance and beating expectations. It’s been a wacky one, and I’m glad you chose Great Stuff to help guide you through the pandemic pandemonium.

If you ever have any questions, comments, concerns or just want to let off some steam, reach out to us at GreatStuffToday@BanyanHill.com. Our inbox is just a click away!

And if you haven’t bought into our most recent Great Stuff Pick, you might want to take a gander. Citrix Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS) shares are already drifting higher now after Wall Street’s overreaction this week, and you can bet we haven’t seen the last from this work-from-home play.

Before I go, don’t forget to check out Great Stuff online in your weekend’s search for excitement, enlightenment and entertainment. You can always find us on social media: Facebook and Twitter.

Until next time, be Great!

Joseph Hargett

Editor, Great Stuff

[goldira01]

Friday Four Play: The “Shoeshine Moment” Edition

I have a bit of a rant today.

The thing is, I’m getting bombarded by friends and family asking how to buy stocks.

It’s getting out of hand. “Relatives” are popping up all over the place asking for recommendations. Heck, I’ve even had people on my PlayStation friends list ask how to get started with investing.

No, xx360NoScopeHeadShot420xx, I can’t give you stock advice. The SEC will fry me. Will you just cover Point A? That enemy sniper is creeping up again.

Personally, I’m having flashbacks to 2007, when those same relatives and friends asked me about flipping houses.

You know, that Joe Kennedy “shoeshine boy” moment?

And it’s not just anecdotal. According to Google Trends, searches for “How do I buy stocks?” are at their highest level of popularity since 2004.

All this public attention — this groundswell of stock-trading interest — sets off my contrarian senses. (They’re like spider senses, but nowhere near as cool.)

Do you know what my contrarian senses tell me right now?

Stocks are out. Options are in. It’s no secret that we’ve seen massive market volatility this year: 2% daily swings used to be terrifying; now, they’re as mundane as your morning ritual. (Take that how you will…)

The absolute best way to take advantage of this spike in volatility is by trading options. With the right strategy, you make money when stocks go up, and you make money when stocks go down. And there have been a lot of big ups and downs lately that could’ve made you bank.

But I hear you. You’re thinking: I don’t know how to trade options!

As in all things (well, most things … OK, a few things here and there … sheesh), Great Stuff has you covered.

Truth is, you don’t need to be a whiz to dive into the options market. Heck, you don’t even need to know what an option is to get started.

Why? Because you can let Banyan Hill’s experts do the heavy lifting for you.

Paul Mampilly (yes, that Paul Mampilly!) has a “rebound” method to look for specific opportunities in volatile markets. In fact, looking back, you could’ve used this method to rack up 529% returns during the worst month of the ’08 financial crisis.

So … why not let Paul and co. find the opportunities for you? That way, you can get back to, well, whatever you’d rather do right now than stare at stock charts and data.

Click here to see how Paul Mampilly’s options research can work for you.

And now for something completely different … here’s your Friday Four Play:

No. 1: Bring Me the Verizon

If you thought wireless would be a safe haven in this pandemic market, Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) just burst your bubble.

The “Can you hear me now?” company just updated investors on its first-quarter performance, and the results are mixed. Earnings topped expectations by $0.04 per share, while revenue missed by $330 million. Not a complete face-plant, but it’s far from exciting.

Furthermore, Verizon lost 68,000 monthly phone subscribers last quarter. The company also yanked its 2020 guidance due to pandemic uncertainty.

Here’s the thing…

Verizon subscribers either can’t get into the store to pay their bills — the number of people still paying in person is disturbingly high — or they were forced to make budget cuts. The fact that smartphone plans make the “budget cuts list” should be a worrisome development for investors.

Not sure where to start with wireless and 5G tech? Click here!

No. 2: We Have the Un-Meats

Beyond Meat Inc. (Nasdaq: BYND) just saw its biggest weekly gain since going public. No, millions of people didn’t just decide to become vegetarians … or did they?

One of the themes coming out of the COVID-19 story is that humanity could cut down on the number of viruses it contracts by eating less meat.

“Most infectious disease outbreaks are transmitted from animals to humans,” CFRA Research wrote in a note to clients this month. “Since lab-based meat is produced in a clean and controlled environment, we think the progression of the lab-based meat industry could be accelerated as more zoonotic outbreaks occur.”

In other words, analysts believe that fake meat could be the solution to our outbreak problems.

But dietary shifts to avoid viruses aren’t the whole reason Beyond Meat surged. The company just launched its plant-based menu in China, featuring faux pork.

In case you didn’t know, China is the Porkopolis of the world. They produce and consume more pork than any other country. That production has been severely hampered by an outbreak of African Swine flu.

Swine flu? COVID-19? Maybe there’s something to this alt-meat thing after all.

No. 3: Bad Week for the Blues

With “Big Blue” in cash-conservation mode, the big tech market got even frothier with yesterday’s news of next-generation Macs ditching chips from “Team Blue,” aka Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC).

There’s a shadow hanging over Intel, oh, yesterday came suddenly. Why Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) had to go, I don’t know, it wouldn’t say. (But really, we all knew Intel couldn’t cut it anymore. Not with Apple’s ARM processors having three times as many cores as Intel’s archaic chips.)

Yesterday, processors were such an easy game to play. But last night found INTC shares down more than 6% after hours when the company reported earnings.

Earnings came in at $1.45 share, right above analysts’ estimates for $1.28 per share. And revenue hit $19.83 billion, beating both analysts’ expectations and the company’s $19-billion forecast. A decent chunk of revenue was from workers and students alike snatching up devices for their stay-at-home battle stations.

So far so good, no?

The problem — in Wall Street’s eyes, anyway — is second-quarter projections. Intel projected revenue to beat analysts’ estimates, but earnings would come up $0.09 short per share. Combined with Intel yanking its full-year guidance, this was simply too much for Wall Street to handle, and it sold.

Intel is shifting to corner the market for data centers and servers anyway. Losing consumer-device customers like Apple would happen sooner or later. My take? Ho hum.

No. 4: Penney Dreadful

A Penney saved is a Penney burned, apparently. J.C. Penney Company Inc. (NYSE: JCP) is about to become the next Sears Holdings Corp. (OTC: SHLDQ). (How the heck is Sears still a thing?)

According to The Wall Street Journal, Penney is in advanced bankruptcy talks with funding groups and lenders. Specifically, the department store failure currently seeks financial help with lenders while it undergoes a court-supervised bankruptcy.

Apparently, Penney needs about $800 million to $1 billion to stave off lenders. That’s a lot of pennies.

While J.C. Penney has hemorrhaged cash for years, the recent pandemic shutdown pushed the company over the edge. In recent weeks, Penney closed all 850 department stores and furloughed practically all its 95,000 employees.

JCP shares now trade for about 25 pennies.

Great Stuff: Penney for Your Thoughts?

That’s going to be a wrap for this week, dear reader, and what a week it was! Earnings season continues to rage on, with Wall Street flabbergasted both by companies pulling guidance and beating expectations. It’s been a wacky one, and I’m glad you chose Great Stuff to help guide you through the pandemic pandemonium.

If you ever have any questions, comments, concerns or just want to let off some steam, reach out to us at GreatStuffToday@BanyanHill.com. Our inbox is just a click away!

And if you haven’t bought into our most recent Great Stuff Pick, you might want to take a gander. Citrix Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS) shares are already drifting higher now after Wall Street’s overreaction this week, and you can bet we haven’t seen the last from this work-from-home play.

Before I go, don’t forget to check out Great Stuff online in your weekend’s search for excitement, enlightenment and entertainment. You can always find us on social media: Facebook and Twitter.

Until next time, be Great!

Joseph Hargett

Editor, Great Stuff

[spatialshadow-blog]

Sample exam 2017 Mid-sem exam

This is my working for the 2017 mid-sem exam sample paper

Question 0: what is the most important property for a cryptographic hash function to have to make it as resistant as possible to birthday attacks? 

-A : Collision resistance 

Question 1: You are a developer of opensource fake-news software called "The trumpet shall sound", or "Trumpet" for short. You wish to use a cryptographic algorithm to generate a 64 character "digital fingerprint" of the "Trumpet" binary, which you will display on your web site so that people can check that they have downloaded a legitimate and unaltered copy of "Trumpet".

What is the most important property for this cryptographic fingerprint algorithm to have?

-A : Preimage resistant 

Question 2:  A MAC is designed to provide

-A : Integrity and Authentication: 

Question 3: You have a password file of 1,000 password hashes. Assuming that 50% of the passwords used were weak passwords which can be found in a dictionary of 1,000,000 common passwords, and that hashing a password takes 12 bits of work on average, roughly how many bits of work would it take to discover all these 500 or so weak passwords?

Working: 

    1 000 000 word dictionary implies -> 2^20 -> 20 bits for work to hash

But the question said 12 bits of work on average to hash a password, hence  

2^20 * 2^12  = 2^32 -> 32 bits of work to hash the whole dictionary. Thus the 500 weak passwords should be found in 32 bits of work  

-A : 32

Question 4: As for Question 3 but now assume that each password is appended to a different 32 bit number (a salt) before the hash was computed, and that the salt number for each password hash is stored, unencrypted, next to the hash in the password file.

Roughly how many bits of work would it take to discover all the 500 or so weak passwords in this case?

Working : note that there are 1000 hashes and salts -> 2^10 -> 10 bits of work worth of saults. 

Now note that the rainbow table need to be recalculated with each sault inorder to test all possible combinations and thereby the worst case required to find all 500 weak passwords (if they were the 500 last tested)-> 2^32 (the bits of work of hash the dictionary) * 2^10 (the worst case number of times you would have to hash the dictionary) = 2^42 -> 42 bits of work worst case to find the 500 bit password. 

-A : 42 

Question 6:

What is the 5th word in the plaintext for the ciphertext below?

HHPET IAESR DTEHN SRAKA UASMI UEOYR CNWOK FNERA TRONE TNYLO

SOENO OHDAS RYUSW DONUR BNSGI STLAU HTTOO DSAHE EWSYO SRTEC

IFHWO EHNOC TIHGM AENUB EAERW DEYRV EYHTA OUGNS WSODE ROEVN

HLTLA ESSEE SRTEC ONSDA YVREE SNIEO ENHTI IAKRD WOENN AYROA

EOHTN OIYFR SAERU TNABU IIGNH RAAPN IFROK NSATN TEUBC OODUY

NOKTN AWHTO CAOLT AECDK TIENB RSUBI IEFDI ETFYF NTEBE YAHTE

LUBRO TNEKA YHNET EURAO ENHTI EAKRD HETNV YUHGO EURAO COATN

LULAT HITNY KDRAE

Ok so i am self amending this question to say “decode the whole block of text”. 

Note that due to the letter frequency this is likely to be a transposition cipher.  Note that in this case we assume the key size is 5 (as the letters are grouped by 5)

Also not that the first word has to start with one of these letters H H P E T, based on the position it is likely that the first word is in fact THE. 

note that there are 2 ways this could be made. 

Secondly note if the first word is THE second word must begin with PH or HP considering that i can't think of a word that begins with HP i assume PH. so the transpositions i am considering are 

OPTION 1 

5 -> 1

1 -> 2

4 -> 3 

3 -> 4

2 -> 5

Or 

OPTION 2

5 -> 1

2 -> 2

4 -> 3 

3 -> 4

1 -> 5

Now try decoding part of the scyther (HHPET IAESR DTEHN) until one doesn't make sense 

OPTION 1: THEPH RISEA NDHET 

OPTION 2: THEPH RASEI NTHED   ( hahaha :D the spell check on google doc where i am writing this is correcting this to the correct(rearranging) statement “the phrase in the” ;) ) 

So option 2 seems the most promising so lets try decode it : 

THE PHRASE IN THE DARK AS I AM SURE YOU KNOW CAN REFER NOT ONLY TO ONES SHADOWY SURROUNDINGS BUT ALSO TO THE SHADOWY SECRETS OF WHICH ONE MIGHT BE UNAWARE EVERY DAY THE SUN GOES DOWN OVER ALL THESE SECRETS AND SO EVERYONE IS IN THE DARK IN ONE WAY OR ANOTHER IF YOU ARE SUNBATHING IN A PARK FOR INSTANCE BUT YOU DO NOT KNOW THAT A LOCKED CABINET IS BURIED FIFTY FEET BENEATH YOUR BLANKET THEN YOU ARE IN THE DARK EVEN THOUGH YOU ARE NOT ACTUALLY IN THE DARK

That would make the 5th word DARK 

Q7 

So in this case give us the public key : (e = 23, n = 55) and we want to find private (decription) key  : (d, n).

We know n = 55 = p * q, where p and q are prime numbers 

We can guess  p = 11  and q = 5 wich meat the requierments 

Phi = (p-1) * (q-1)  = (11-1) * (5-1) = 10 * 4 = 40 

We also know that e * d mod phi = 1 -> 23 * d mod 40 = 1

So we can guess d = 7 as 23 * 7 = 161 and 161 mod 40 = 1

Hence the private key would be : (7, 55)

So now we decode the message c^7 mode 55 

24 ^ 7 mode 55  = 29 = T

18 … = 17 = H

49 … = 14 = E 

16 … = 36 = ‘ ‘

48 … = 27 = R

49 … = 14 = E

33 .. =  22 = M

10 .. = 10   = A

2     =  18  =  I

12  …  23=   N

52  … 13...   D

49 … = 14 = E

48 … = 27 = R

16 … = 36 = ‘ ‘

19 ….           O

20 …15 …    F 

16 ……..      ‘  ‘ 

24 ..  =  26 = T

18   …..        H

2    ……….   I

7    …28…   S

16    ……     ‘ ‘

31 … 26 …  Q

50… 30 …   U

49 …. 14 ..   E

7      ….        S

24  ……….   T

2 …………    I

19 ….24  …. O

12 …..          N

-- ok honestly is stopped calculating at this point and just guessed the rest with the exception of 53

16,             ‘     ‘

18,              H

10,              A

7,                S 

16,              ‘   ‘ 

11,               B

49,               E

49,               E

12,              N

16,            ‘      ‘

 E  N   C  R   Y  P   T  E  D  

49,12,23,48,34, 5,24,49,52,16,

U   S  I   N   G      R  S   A        

50, 7, 2,12,26,16,48, 7,10,16,

W  I   T  H        A  N         E   N

43, 2,24,18,16,10,12,16,49,12,

C   R  Y  P  T    I  O   N       K

23,48,34, 5,24, 2,19,12,16,25,

E   Y        O   F       2  3         A

49,34,16,19,20,16,29,35,16,10,

N   D        A       M  O  D   U  L

12,52,16,10,16,33,19,52,50,21,

U   S       O F        5   5   .       

50, 7,16,19,20,16, 3, 3,47,16,

     T  H    E       A   N  S  W  E

16,24,18,49,16,10,12, 7,43,49,

R        C  O  D   E   W O  R   D

48,16,23,19,52,49,43,19,48,52,

       I S       0   0   0   0   0   0

16, 2, 7,16,53,53,53,53,53,53,

0   0 

53,53.

So the answer code word is : 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 

[nicholaslovett-blog]

How I Research and Organize Literary Magazines

How a guy that’s been published once tries to get published again.

PART TWO

In part one I wrote about the vast and confusing literary magazine ecosphere. Poets & Writers lists over 1200 literary magazines that accept unsolicited submissions. Where to start? If you followed the first post, you’ve already read and digested the Pushcart Prize, and you’re hip to the best of the best. What about the rest? Once you’re fluent with the 50-odd magazines where every writer sends work, where to take it from there? Because unless you’re Karen Russell and your first publication is the New Yorker, you have make some kind of sense of the remaining 1150 venues, and it’s not BCCing three hundred editors with rich text pasted in the body of an email. 

Keep reading, and I’ll tell you where to find them, how to interpret them, and how to organize the venues. 

I. Where to Find Literary Magazines

There’s more than one way to skin this cat. The big list, as I’ve mentioned, is on Poets & Writers website. That’s all of them. However, they all have different submission periods, different themes, etcetera, making this tool as unwieldy as hanging a piece of drywall. 

Duotrope will allow you to narrow a search. The service is five dollars a month, and you’ll get stats on each market. How long they take to tender a rejection, how many users have been accepted and that percentage, and it will put “Temp Closed” in big, red letters, saving time. This is the best of the best of internet crowdsourcing. There’s also a helpful email list that goes out on Wednesdays with new and newly reopened markets. I use Duotrope regularly, but that’s no longer where I find venues. 

Sadly, Writer’s Market, imo, is obsolete. I remember a family member of mine, a poet, giving me a copy in high school. That was my first formal introduction to writing beyond 5-point essays and the Sylvia Plath facsimiles I wrote in honors English 10. There’s not much here that you can’t get from the internet. There’s something to be said for having all of the contests in one place from A-Z, instead of scattershot announcements via Twitter or email, but I’m not sure that’s worth 15 bucks. The articles at the beginning of the book are pre-internet, when writers had a tough time accessing career information. Pre-Writer’s Digest, honestly.

Where I find markets is Entropy’s “Where to Submit” list. This is what that looks like. The compiler of this list should never have to buy a drink at an event where writers are present. The list is bi-monthly, and divided into four sections: Presses, Chapbooks, Journals and Anthology, and Residencies, Fellowships, Conferences and Opportunities. The journals section has everything from “Zzzyzva” to “Wanton Fuckery.” (Don’t lie, you just threw that into Google). Like every other list, it’s overwhelming. But it’s monthly, and if the magazine accepts submissions in the second listed month of the title, that’s specified. Start with the A’s, then the Z’s, then the Ms, and you’ll be ahead of the game. I didn’t get them all from the August/September list, but I found five prime, previously unknown-to-me markets. 

The other source not be forgotten is “Calls for Submissions.” These are markets that explicitly need more work to read, so yeah, might want to keep up with those. Poets and Writers, The Review Review, and New Pages all list markets with open calls for submissions. Some are niche, many are not. 

II. How to Interpret a Magazine’s Work

We’ve found the market, how do we know what it likes? Simply, don’t send a sci-fi story to Ellery Queen, and all that. I don’t want to go there, that should be obvious by now. But I also don’t want to get into dense literary criticism, which I probably can’t pull off as-is. Though, I don’t think you have to.

Start with the submissions page, where you’ll get all the relevant info about formatting, submission window, SASE or not, fees. Often, there’s a mission statement. Maybe they only publish teenagers from Borneo? That’s something to know. The mission statement is something of a wish-list, but with 1000s of submissions, believe they can find it. Here’s a common one I just saw from TIMBER:

“We’re...interested in hybrid work that pushes against the limits of genre.” 

Okay. That makes sense. They’re more likely, if this were a novel, to publish Phillip Meyer or Benjamin Percy than Don Winslow or James Ellroy.

My next stop is the contributor’s notes. Magazines publish writers from one stage of their career, more often than not. I divide them like this:

a. Heavyweights - Names any writer would recognize like Stephen King, James Patterson, Joyce Carol Oates, Lauren Groff, Junot, TC Boyle, Jeffrey Eugenides. The upper-crust. The careers we would all love to have. 

b. Pros - Full Professors with a track record, or well-known names in the literary mag world like Stephen Dixon, Tea Obreht, Deb Olin-Unferth, or Steve Almond. 

c. Up and Comers - MFAs, adjunct professors, emerging writers with a few credits. I would say the literary magazine bear is stuffed with 70 percent of this class of writer.

d. New Writers - MFA students, writers with two or less publications. 

That’s not too hard, eh? If you read the submission guidelines, the mission statements, and get a feel for the writers, you’ve eliminated 3/5 venues. Keep in mind, this is after you’ve narrowed a macro-list. So we’re down to 2 of 10 venues. 

The last bit I’ll keep short and sweet: the aesthetic. There’s a long answer that I won’t get to here, and a short answer. If you have a PhD in English Literature, you can read the last three years of issues and find the needle in a haystack. 

Or...you can submit to the journals whose work you like. That’s it! Read two stories. Do you like what you read? Submit. Do you have a first person story about punk teenagers (like half of mine) and you’re looking at a journal like The Gettysburg Review that takes a very educated look to its subject matter, like Melville’s treatment of manual labor? Don’t. At the end of the slush pile, editors have about 50 stories that are worth publishing. From there, a theme emerges, and they pick their favorites. Don’t overthink it, but don’t send your work just anywhere. Often times, editors will just list their aesthetic preferences, like the Master’s Review love of “interiority.”

III. How to Organize Literary Magazines

Should all this info just go into a computer document with the title “mysubzyo,” or a desk drawer on pieces of scrap paper? Nope, but you can figure this one out. I keep an alphabetized box of index cards with the following categories written down on each:

Editors: Need to list the right editor for your cover letter. 

Length: Will be explicitly listed, but some favor long, some short. Online-only venues favor stories that are less than 2500 words, because that’s what our minds tolerate from the computer. 

Submissions: When, how, and how often.

Contributors: See above.

Story: Which story I liked the most, and why.

Thoughts: Three or four lines of editorial.

Front of the card: I list the name, the SASE address, and the mission statement comments. 

Top line of the back: Tier ranking, where they’re from, and how much, if any, cost to submit.

How does this all come together for me? My wife went out breakfast with her mother yesterday, and I decided to do some research, and submit.. I spend at least 2-3 Saturday mornings a month pounding the pavement, and more before the academic calendars open for submissions. 

I narrowed the Entropy list to three venues: The Hour After Happy Hour Review, Craft, and The Atticus Review. I looked at their websites, and they were high-quality. I dove deeper and found:

-The Hour After Happy Hour Review was a great fit. Their mission statement included “a subject few have thought of” and “quirky.” I have a story I’m trying to place about rehab kids working in a South Florida call center which matches up nicely. I read two of their stories that matched this aesthetic, and I didn’t feel embarrassed to put my work next to.

-The Atticus Review was a good aesthetic fit for the same story, but has the edict that all stories need to be single-spaced. That’s ok. But I already have documents with and without contact info, and documents in PDF, .doc, and .docx. That’s not even digressing into what I have to do to compile these formats in Scrivener. I’m not willing to spend 10 minutes reformatting after spending hours before my story was ready. This isn’t a knock against their policy, but just as editors can be arbitrary and dislike certain flubs or themes, I can do the same. So there.

-Craft is a new concept from the Master’s Review. Like the title suggests, they focus on the craft of writing. The stories were good, but after looking at their contributors notes, I saw a lot of reprints and only writers out of my weight class. Which makes sense. Each story is concluded with an author’s writerly note on a craft element, and this isn’t 101. There were no emerging writers, of which the Master’s Review specializes. This market was not a fit, and while I’ll read their stuff (instead of the red-meat, high calorie political journalism that’s taken deep ro(o)t on social media), I won’t waste my time or their with a submission.

Hope this was a help. If anybody wants to compare notes, they can email me at lovett.nicholas@outlook.com or @lovettfiction

[whereisbanana]

THAILAND

HOSTEL SITUATION

Since I was brought on by a friend I didn't have to much say so in my trip to Thailand (besides the Elephants). I got to my hostel around 1 am and of course EVERY one was asleep. I don't have an international plan so I couldn't phone Gabrielle and my driver called the number on the door. It took him 3 times till someone finally picked up and came and unlocked the door from me. Now I am only going to tell the truth about this hostel and nothing but the truth. The hostel had a vintage feel: Quils, typewriters, old looking vases, what looked to be a meat churner, etc. It was super cute, kind of how I would like a room in my future house to look. The breakfast was mediocre, it had the basics, eggs, salad, toast, grapes, and oats. Nothing too fancy or special. I made oatmeal every morning because it was filling. Now the scary part. My second night in the hostel I awoke to a few bite marks on my legs...and when I say a few I mean my whole leg was covered in tiny bite marks. This looked like a case of bed bugs. I immediately notified the owner of my situation and demanded something be done about it (reimbursement, new room, return deposit, etc.) but after further examination she said it could not have been bed bugs. She pulled up a picture on google and found the most severe case of bed bugs. The picture had boiling bites. Of course mine did not look exact so she insisted they were mosquito bites. I had two mosquito bites on my arm and you could clearly see the difference between the two. But whatever, she gave me a new bed and said we could wash our clothes. We washed one load of clothes, but since we put our used clothes in our bags we thought it be best to just wash them all to be safe. This caused havoc. We asked for more money to wash our clothes and the receptionist told us she couldn't do so. We talked with the manager and he said there was nothing he could do about it. I remember his exact words were "That's not my problem". I just want everyone to be safe while traveling and have a nice stay. So if you're ever in the Bangkok NEVER stay at Bangkok Bed & Bike. Just save yourself the trouble. They didn't have too many reviews on Hostelworld.com anyways so just make sure you do your research. I have provided you with some pictures of my "Mosquito" bites below.

F O O D

In Asia you'll find yourself eating Rice and Noodles with every meal. Gabrielle & I wanted to escape that tradition and find something else. We came across a place called Farm to Table  it was the cutest place every. Although we went through a sketchy ally it was well worth the walk. They had a dozen different Teas you could choose from along with salads, pastas, and ice creams. I highly recommend this place if you're ever in the area. 

One of our excursions included a trip to the spa. Infinity Spa was hands down amazing. When we arrived we were greeted, seated, and given a "Welcome Drink" which was a mix of Natural blend green tea, fresh lime, and blue butterfly flower. We drunk it so fast and it was indeed relaxing. When it was almost our turn we were moved upstairs were they washed our feet and included a mini massage. Gabrielle got the deep muscle massage while I got the Thailand traditional "Thai" massage. Just for the record, those are two DIFFERENT things. If you're looking for a nice massage of the shoulders and body then you should get the deep tissue massage. If you're looking for something different and new then you should get the Thai massage. I didn't know what the Thai massage consisted of but there was pulling, tugging, and some massaging lol. Overall a great massage if you've never had one. Once we were done we went back to the lobby where they had sticky rice and mangos waiting for us with another glass of "Welcome Drink". BEST SPA TRIP EVER! 

DAY OF TEMPLES

Gabrielle was in charge of planning our itinerary for our "Day of Temples". She had about 5-6 different temples to visit but we ended up visiting two. My advice is to really give yourself or party time to examine and see everything. Also factor how long it'll take to walk, the temperature, and breaks in between. We did none of this and we were sweaty, tired, and exhausted. The temples are BEAUTIFUL. We toured the famous Grand Palace along with Wat Pho. If you would like to see more pictures from my trip to Thailand please click here

ELEPHANTS! ELEPHANTS! & TIGERS!

We booked our tour with Tours with Tong a tour guide I found on Tripadvisor She had a bunch of good reviews so I thought I we should try it out. We did alot of communication via email (deposit, date, etc.) The Elephants were 3 hours away and transportation was included so the driver picked us up around 5 A.M.  Once we finally arrived we were greeted with two majestic creatures. Both female, one 15 years old the other 23. Our tour guide asked right away who would be ok with going under water a lot and I immediately said "I am"! 

We prayed with the monks and afterward gave them food as a thanks for their blessings. 

Being with the Elephants is an indescribable experience. After feeding them a tub of rice, fruit & veggies we roamed around while they continued to eat grass in the fields. We went into the river for a dip, gave me them a mud bath for their skin, a Tangerine facial, went back into the river, another bath with a scrub brush to remove the dead skin, and had a water fight. BEST DAY EVER!

I hope you enjoyed this post about Thailand. Next up Bali, Indonesia!