#now that 100 things has a bleak future :(

[merakiui]

100%

yandere!malleus draconia x (female) reader cw: yandere, unhealthy behaviors/relationship, pregnancy, implied baby-trapping, captivity, very vague and slight implications of codependency, angst note - your mobile phone was at 100% when he took you away. with time, the percentage has diminished. so, too, does your hope for a brighter future.

The windowpane is spattered with rain.

Sitting cozy in a cushioned alcove, you watch the droplets slide down in regal rivulets, consolidating to form single streaks. The scenery beyond the window is bleak and dreary—a despondent landscape of gnarled, leafless trees and scratchy brambles stretching towards a dark, dismal sky. Sometimes you liken the rain to tears, wondering if Mother Nature weeps for all creatures or simply for you and your situation. Rare are the days in which the sun shines upon the craggy stone façade of your captor’s castle, and she is as benevolent as she is cruel.

For all of its sumptuous splendor, generational wealth filling the interior with priceless heirlooms and relics, it is an empty, cold structure. You’ve taken to enveloping yourself in thick furs, if only because these furs do not speak like the monster who so humbly offers his embrace. Though you’ve always considered yourself of strong, sturdy mind, your restraint is thinning. As the days pass and you shed clothing sizes like they’re second skins, you find yourself drawn to warmth.

Which is, ironically enough, contradictory to your current temperament. The windows, frigid like the grave, provide solace you cannot find anywhere else—for it is only tender warmth you receive from him. Had he not been so merciful, perhaps it would have been easier to shrink away and truly loathe him with every ounce of your being.

And yet, in order to escape the warmth which enshrouds, you seek the cold, bitter windows and their rain-weary countenance.

Lying beside you on the pillows, snoozing the afternoon away, a calico cat snores idly. She was a gift from him. You were neglectful of your mental health and thus, as per his guard’s suggestion, he sought to find a cat to cure your loneliness and inspire some form of happiness. You appreciate Silver—genuinely, you do—but the good luck a calico brings is not nearly enough to rescue you from captivity.

She was a stray, a scrawny thing with a limp and one bad eye. You took to her right away, scooping her up in your arms and lovingly naming her Cotton. Similarly, she returned your affections, rubbing her head against your palm and purring pleasantly.

Now she likes to nudge the dome that is your stomach, a great, round thing at only six months. Sometimes you think she’s more motherly than you are. You’ve never been able to care for much of anything. Plants wither under your touch, recipes spoil even when you follow them to the letter, and your electronics crack.

Your phone, more fractured than your very heart, is cold in your hands. The screen is blank; it’s dying. It was at 100% before. Now it’s been reduced to a sad 7%. There is no reception or connection to be had in Briar Valley. Your phone, once so powerful and all-knowing, is but a hollow shell. Useless. A digital photo album will expire at its final hour, and there’s no charger. He offered to use his magic to charge it, but he has never known his own strength and you couldn’t risk losing the treasured memories stored within.

Sometimes you’d return to old message logs and read through them. Now you can’t do that, lest you drain the battery quicker than intended.

“So this is where you’ve retreated,” Malleus notes, poking his head around the corner of a towering bookcase. Concern settles on his features. “Are you well? Sebek tells me you were absent for breakfast.” “I wasn’t hungry,” you mutter, watching his reflection through the stormy glass.

Malleus glances at Cotton and then at your phone as it rests in your clasp. “May I trouble you to eat just a little, if only some fruit?”

“I’m not hungry.” He nods, stalling. “Will you join me for lunch?”

“If I must.”

A small smile lifts his lips. “Are you cold? It can’t be very comfortable to sit there for such a long time. You’ll catch your death.”

“I hope.”

He tuts in disapproval and shrugs out of his cloak, draping it over you even though you’re already wearing a fleece robe. Malleus assesses you with a fleeting once-over.

“It doesn’t hurt to layer. You must understand where I’m coming from, dearest. Extreme temperatures serve to weaken those who are already so fragile.”

“I’m not fragile,” you snap, turning to scowl.

He doesn’t flinch at the heat smoldering in your eyes. “You’re human.”

“How many times did you have to practice that to come to terms with it?”

Malleus’s verdant stare narrows; his frown tightens. “It’s the truth.”

“I didn’t think you’d confront it.”

“I must if I’m to understand…” He exhales through his nose, deflating somewhat. “You’re in fine health. The physician tells me so. There’s no need to worry ourselves with ineffectual what-ifs.”

You turn your gaze on the sprawling forest next, unwilling to discuss the report and its subsequent conclusion: If she remains in good health and follows the recommended diet for an expecting mother, she’ll carry to term.

“My phone is dying, Malleus.”

“Is that not life? Lilia once said so.”

“My pictures… My everything is stored in this phone. It means so much to me.”

“Truly? Is there not a way to make physical copies of these photographs?”

“Unless Briar Valley has the technology to do so…”

“I’m afraid not.”

Malleus takes a daring step closer, endeavoring to comfort you. Cotton cracks her good eye open to peer at him. She hisses low in her throat, a protector standing small against something so tall. Pouting, clearly disheartened, Malleus heeds her warning and chooses to linger just within the bounds she deems acceptable.

“Yeah, that’s what I assumed.”

You heave a dejected sigh, your shoulders drooping. Seeking to cleanse your visual palate, you power the device on. 5% blinks back at you, an insignificant number sitting in a corner that you normally wouldn’t have paid much mind to. Now it weighs heavy, a reminder that the end is encroaching.

“I would’ve liked to keep these photos forever,” you whisper, mostly to yourself. Malleus hums his acknowledgement; you think he knows the feeling—or some variant of it, at least. “If I lose these pictures…”

“Do you not have memories?”

“I do, but it isn’t the same. One day I’ll grow old and my memory will be frail. I won’t remember nearly as much as I do now. Those memories will become ghosts and eventually I’ll—”

“You will not.” There’s a finality to the declaration—you won’t leave me; you won’t drain or die like this mobile device.

You rest your head against the window. The cool glass soothes your soul. I wonder what the others are up to right now… You place your hand upon your belly. I wonder if they’d have any good ideas for a name. I’m terrible at naming things. I can never pick something that feels right.

“I’d like to have a funeral for my phone.”

But maybe there is no right thing.

“Of course,” he agrees, perfectly serious. You will have that phone funeral, just as you will have every other request you make—however patently absurd it may seem. (Every other request except for freedom, of course.) “Materials may not have the same worth as a loved one, but the experiences they provide are just as valuable. Surely, no? Otherwise I would not feel so troubled when Roaring Drago…” Pausing to search for the placeholder, Malleus glances at your phone. “Perhaps there is no greater tragedy than existence itself.”

“It’s the most bittersweet burden,” you echo, scrolling through each picture with wistful remembrance. “But then I’d rather know the fleeting frivolity of life than endure hundreds of years of solitude. It makes me appreciate everything that much more.”

You stop at a picture of you and Malleus, a photo snapped by Lilia himself. Part of you often wonders why he chose you—why he adores you to such a degree when you, like everyone else, will inevitably perish. But therein lies the allure: That which is unobtainable is even more tempting. And because there is only one of you, a human destined to one day return to her home world, your very presence is more fleeting than a dream.

To Malleus, who has always dreamt, fond and fervent, of the unobtainable mundanity of normal life, you are a sweet, tangible blessing.

“Horns, do you think I’ll ever get another chance to have my phone at 100%?”

He softens under the nickname. It means more to him than his lofty station. “Would you like to know that joy?”

“It would be nice, yes, but then I’d just get sad when it reaches zero. I guess I should be grateful it’s stayed alive for this long. Sorry, it’s a stupid question. Just forget it.”

“Nonsense. There is no such thing.” He reaches to touch your cheek, but Cotton hisses again and so he refrains. She stands on unsteady legs and climbs into your lap, perching awkwardly in spite of your rounded belly. The sight draws a deep chuckle from him. “Your feline friend is quite taken with you.”

“It’s probably because I’m warm. She likes my belly a lot.”

“As do I.”

You roll your eyes.

“Your beauty is most beguiling. There’s a certain radiance to your person. It’s very charming. Do you not agree?”

“Flattery will get you nowhere—definitely not in Cotton’s good graces.”

“I’m simply voicing a fact.”

Your hand slides down from your stomach to pat Cotton. She purrs under your touch, and a weak approximation of a smile tugs at your lips. Amidst all of this sorrow, she is a glimmer of hope. In a way, she’s like you—a stray without a place in this world, snatched from the cobbles she once wandered and confined in a cage of royal opulence. Your similarities are striking, if not immensely devastating.

“Fact or not, I don’t care if I look pretty. It means nothing to me.”

“To be impartial towards appearances… Quite a noble mindset.”

I never once thought you were scary or strange, Horns. Even now.

You look at your phone once more. 3% flickers back.

You’re just lost, and in being lost you found me. But I was also lost. I never even belonged in this world to begin with…

“I’m not going to be a good mother.”

“You can’t know that.” 

“I can’t even take care of myself.”

“I shall care for you when you find yourself unable to.”

“I’d rather you not.”

With Cotton having curled on your lap, slumbering peacefully, Malleus chances to close the gap. His broad frame leans to make up for the difference in height, and he runs cold fingers along your cheek. He brushes away the tears you weren’t even aware you were shedding.

You grip your phone in shaky hands, your shoulders hunched. There’s a piercing ache in your chest, pain stabbing all the way through to your heart. It persists when you power it off, unable to delight in pictorial reminiscence for a moment longer. Silent like death, you sob; seismic dismay shudders through you in waves. Distantly, in a forgotten corner of your brain, you suspect this may be the last time you’ll ever use your phone. The last time you’ll ever look upon the photos you’ve amassed. Photos of friends, class notes, food. Photos snapped by mistake, blurry and unfocused. Photos taken when Ace and Grim stole your phone. Precious memories are preserved within the permanence of a photo album—an album that only remains everlasting so long as you keep your phone charged.

Your final shred of the world beyond Briar Valley vanishes in a blip, leaving you with the dark void that is an empty screen. Brutal is the agony, contorting your face, and you bawl like you’ve just witnessed the end of a life.

In a way, you have. You held it in the palm of your hands, and you watched it wither. Watched the percentages drop through numbers, double digits easing into singles. Watched every week and tried to spare your beloved phone of its fate. Watched and attempted to stall the impossible—a foolish undertaking. This was inevitable; you knew this, and yet you’re still mourning.

Perhaps that is the most tragic facet of existence. From the moment one is born, they are mourning. Humans mourn losing time—of allowing it to slip through their fingers when they should have put it to better use. Humans mourn aging even though it is celebrated yearly. Humans mourn for things that are inhuman—for robots stuck in an endless cycle of some menial task while gears grow rusted and systems shut down or trapped on a distant planet, never to return home. For the fruit that falls from trees and rots, trampled and forgotten. For the endings, good and bad, of novels. For art that will never see the light of day because it has been destroyed or stolen or silenced. For the friends they meet, have met, and will meet.

You mourn because you know it’s impending, and you spend all of your life coming to terms with it, only to break down when it finally happens because the truth of the matter is that you will never be prepared no matter how much you prepare yourself. You mourn because you’re a complex human with complex emotions, surviving in a complex world with millions of intricacies, and the only way to weather misery is to mourn.

To the little life cradled in your womb, who knows not of these difficulties yet, they cannot fathom the anguish that accompanies loss. And right now that is all you can hope for—a life without loss.

But that is impossible because loss is true to everyone’s experience. It is part of existence, and existence is inescapable.

Malleus does not gather you in his arms. He will do so if you ask, and he knows you want to ask, which is precisely why he waits. But you’re stubborn and you refuse to give in to the temptation, let alone grant him the satisfaction. It doesn’t offend him.

The windowpane is spattered with rain. So, too, is your phone, spotted with tears and snot.

Briefly, you wonder if you still look beautiful to Malleus.

Even at your ugliest, he would still cherish you. Desperately, as if he might lose you.

Knowing this does not soften the gutting grief.

[fivewantscoffee]

Yeah, if it was going to be a broken timelines issue, it would make so much more sense for Five to be the reason they are broken in the first place. I wish we'd gone with that instead of... you know.

Then the subway existing has an actual point, because the inciting incident was when our Five (the original Five) time travelled for the first time. And they still have to sacrifice the current versions of themselves to fix that but it isn't all bleak and for nothing.

Reginald and Allison's world still ends because of the Cleanse or whatever, but that isn't where it ends.

Five transports them all to the subway and sits them down to explain what's going on. The constant, non-stop apocalypses aren't random: they're a symptom of the broken timelines. They're trying to repair themselves by ending the world because they were never supposed to exist in the first place.

Five gets to have his total breakdown over being the reason the world keeps ending, then Lila eventually proposes a way to try and fix things.

Cue to the Hargreeves having to try and find their original timeline, getting lost for some time and all that.

Diego and Lila work out their issues. Allison gets to address her entire S3 Thing. She apologises to Luther, and then they can maybe have a heart to heart about how Allison got Claire back, but it cost Luther his wife.

The six-year timeskip is explored in some more detail, revealing what they did after separating at the end of S3, the hardships they faced, how they reconnected and got to where they were when the season began.

So, they find the right timeline eventually. They step out into Five's apocalypse and travel back in time to the day he time-travelled for the first time. The plan is to convince him not to.

They don't know if this is going to work, but it's all that's left to try. If they do nothing, the apocalypses are just going to keep on happening regardless. They can keep running, but there will always be something world-ending right behind them.

So they wait for Five to run out of the academy, all of thirteen and about to ruin his life in a jump our Five has regretted since the day he made it. This time, they confront him before he jumps.

They convince him not to time travel, telling him exactly what it is this jump will lead to. Five doesn't soften the blow or mince words; he needs his past self not to time travel, to never use this facet of his powers again.

Time wasn't made to be messed with.

They succeed, Five's past self doesn't time travel. He blinks back inside, to his room presumably, because he's not about to face Reginald right now.

The Hargreeves all stand around for a moment, looking at the Academy, at each other. Eventually, Klaus nudges Five. They all turn around and leave, too.

They end up at a park, where they sit down, they talk, and as time passes, they start to feel it.

The future - their past - is being changed.

All of the offshoot timelines are being erased, and theirs might have been the first one, but it is still an offshoot. In changing the past, this version of Five is also no longer the original. We get an actual, heartfelt goodbye before they all go.

Next, we see Five and his siblings as young adults in the original, fixed timeline. They're all nineteen, and as we bounce around from one character to another, we see what they're up to:

Luther walks into a coffee shop. He orders something, and as the camera pans to show the person at the till, a French exchange student who looks a lot like Sloane is revealed to be taking his order.

We see a floor being mopped. It's Diego in a slightly bare-looking apartment, large cardboard boxes scattered all around while he listens to music and dances to it. He's clearly in the process of moving house, and Eudora is there to help him. Grace's cross stitch hangs on the wall.

Allison is at an audition. She looks excited and a little bit nervous, but mostly happy to be here. When her turn comes around, she is 100% ready for it.

Klaus, Five, and Ben are all doing their own thing. Five is attending a university lecture. Ben is alive. Viktor is seen playing the violin, using his powers.

Finally, Lila is at the airport, boarding a plane. She puts on a pair of headphones, and music starts blasting. Fade to black.

The narrator says his part about how on the eighth day of August 2024 absolutely nothing happened. It was a normal day. The end, credits roll etc. etc.

[fipindustries]

another thing i noticed watching all of these kids cartoons and modern children's media in general is that they put so much effort on teaching about emotional inteligence. learning how to manage your feelings (particularly anxiety for some reason, anxiety seems to be a BIG thing children's media wants to teach about now a days). about how emotions affect us, how to recognize them, how we might try to repress them and how they will inevitably manifest.

this stems from the idea that a lot of the evils from past generations, the trauma inflicted by our parents, which was in turn inherited from our parents parents, stem from emotional immaturity, from toxic feelings manifesting and leaving scars in the generations that come after. and if only we get to teach the children of today how to process this in healthier ways then the future will be less bleak than our past.

this is all fine and good and in some levels i do ascrive to this and i endorse it.

but, not to be too rationalist on main, i feel that critical thinking skills is being kind of neglected a bit in these shows. a lot of their stories are emotionally resonant but frankly they depend too much on the power of love, friendship and acceptance and too little in the importance of temperance, of recognizing internal biases and trapped priors (and this goes beyond confronting internalized bigotry, i mean the much more mundane failure modes of confirmation bias et al), of when a conclussion is valid, of when a thing has been demonstrated, of what counts as rigorous evidence that actually works as dispositive for a hypothesis. essentially on the importance of Truth. on the imperative need of being actually Correct. on having a good handle of what is real and what isnt.

this all may sound unbearably nerdy and pedantic but i genuenly feel that a lot of the evils we are dealing with today stem, yes, from the maliciousness and emotional immaturity of close minded selfish people, but also from the stupidity and the open embracement of anti intellectual forms of thinking. the world is getting darker because evil rises but also because stupidity finds itself unable to stop it.

it makes me think of this one quote from ward

“I don’t believe in order, or tallies,” she said, staring out over the edge, into oblivion.  “I like art, creativity, ideas.  Kindness.  I know I’m not rational, but rational gave birth to this.” She extended a hand and unconsciously dissolved it to indicate the edifice they were beside with bands of flesh.  Even dropping her hand to her side, she pointed at the platform, and at sections of building that bulged out from the exterior wall. “Rational gave birth to everything good too.  Irrationality gave birth to every problem we’re dealing with now.”

obviously im 100% on the side of number boy here

[genericpuff]

omg can i just say i love your work so much!! it’s so fun to read this i’m over the moon

anyways, i’m aiming to get an art degree! i’m so inspired by your work. is this just a hobby or is it a job? i’d love to make art my full time job when i’m older, tho it’s not known for being very sustainable. how do you make it work??

ALSO your expressions, the anatomy, the faces, the colors, all of it!!! i aspire to draw like you one day!!!!

thank youuu!!

also whoof as for advice... well, for starters, it depends on what specifically you're wanting to pursue. Is it a specialized diploma / degree in a specific trade like animation/illustration/graphic design? Or is it more like a university BA? I ask this not because one is better than the other, more so because different schooling is tailored to different aspects of the overall "arts" industry and whatever you're currently studying (or planning on studying) is gonna be up to you and what you're planning on doing, whether it's being a freelancer or going into a specific industry! (or doing a mix of both!)

So all that said, take my advice with mountains of salt!!! What worked (and didn't work) for me may not apply to you! But I hope in sharing my own experience that it might resonate with you or at least give you an experience to relate to in your present and future endeavors :>

For full transparency though (and this will be a bit of a personal anecdote so bear with me): I am absolutely 100% not making a living off Rekindled, more so that it's just a side thing that I do that's supplemented by my actual job, which is tattooing. So by definition, Rekindled is a hobby! (and one that I very much enjoy doing and keeping as a hobby!)

But tattooing is also pretty rough right now, when I'm making money the money is great, but when I'm not, it feels like the same grind that every artist is on, trying desperately to get people to notice me and buy my work haha

I wish I could say that there's a moment where it all just "clicks" and everything falls into place, but it's more like... you just learn to take the good with the bad, and most importantly, you learn how to prepare for the bad so it's a little less bad the second and third and tenth time around. I know that sounds super bleak, but that's just the cycle of life in general - things aren't always good, we just do what we can to work through the bad times so we can find those good times and come out stronger each and every time.

I'm currently in one of those bad times, and I have been pretty much this entire year. The slow season that I thought would end around March... didn't. So with the slow season now turning into a slow year, it finally happened - a couple months ago, I picked up a retail job. It sucked to have to do because I quit retail YEARS ago in the hopes that I'd never have to return to it and that tattooing would always provide for me, but life has changed since then.

Despite this, I am in a very unique and privileged situation where I can "afford" to have slow seasons at work, but I'm also like... well aware that that can't last forever so I'm doing what I can now to slow the decay until it hopefully picks up again. I'm doing what I can, but ultimately, I know a lot of the circumstances of the past year have been due to the state of the world in general, which is far outside of my control. So I do what I can within my control instead, and that eventually included having to go back to retail.

Thankfully the retail job I work is great and I get to work with really cool people, so it's not all bad! But it definitely felt bad in the beginning because of the internalized shame I had towards going back to retail. Almost felt like I was proving to everyone else - especially within the tattoo industry - that I wasn't "cut out" for it.

But now that I'm doing it... I know that that's not true, and I frankly don't care what opinions people could have about it, because at the end of the day, the economy is shit right now and we all gotta do what we gotta do to survive. And having those couple shifts a week in retail means I can continue to keep doing what I do through both tattooing and making comics, because now I have more income coming in. And that is, overall, a good thing :)

Working retail to help make ends meet doesn't make me any less of an artist. It's just that making a living at this is difficult and isn't guaranteed to be a "happily ever after" type thing where you just "find a job" and the rest sorts itself out later. This is also something that applies to any field / career in general, life happens and things can change a LOT so on the one hand, that can be a hopeful blessing because it means you never have to be stuck where you are right now, you CAN keep moving forward towards the things that you're hoping for; but also, it can suck ass because it means even when the going is good, it's never forever.

When it comes to the art world specifically... regardless of whether or not the going's good, the important thing is to keep creating and keep moving forward.

Buuuut I guess if I had any real advice to offer beyond waxing poetic about my personal experiences, especially to those seeking an art degree - learn the business side too. Because in reality, there's a lot more to doing art as your job than just drawing. In fact, I would say that once you start doing art as your job, the actual creating is often forced to take a backseat to the things you have to do to make your art profitable in the first place - like marketing/networking, attending art markets, collaborating with other artists, running an online shop, building a clientele, etc.

So if you have the opportunity to do a class or two in marketing or event coordinating or anything under the umbrella of "business" that could supplement your art degree, please consider it! The art world is competitive, but that doesn't mean you can't give yourself a competitive edge by arming yourself with skills that others may not consider; and I do find a lot of people entering these fields tend to just completely forget or overlook the fact that doing art as a job means turning it into a business, which means you're gonna have to sharpen the business-adjacent skill sets alongside your art.

And I say this from experience, I SUCK at doing the business side of things because a lot of it I'm either really bored by or really bad at. Marketing myself on social media feels like an exercise in futility. Filing my taxes is torture. But those are still skills that are often necessary that I'm pushing myself to get better at - it's just often really hard to learn it through trial and error so taking classes would have probably helped me out a lot LMAO

It can be boring and it's not art, but it's still worth learning. Learn how to apply to art markets, learn how to file taxes as a self-employed individual, learn how to create a CV and portfolio for the industry you're interested in, learn how to decipher your metrics and statistics, learn how to offer quality customer service. These are all things that are, again, extremely worth learning, but also often overlooked when we think of "making a living off art", especially when it comes to freelancing.

That's pretty much the extent of the advice I can offer, at least in terms of the broad subject matter of "getting an art degree" and "making a living at art". I'm ironically sorta the worst person to ask when it comes to that, though, because there are times - like right now - when I'm very much not making that living! And it's requiring that I change my game plan so that I can continue to live - it doesn't mean I've given up on my art, it just means that right now my art can't pay my bills so I have to find another way to get by until they can again.

And of course, it cannot be understated that the circumstances in which I exist are different from yours. It's kinda like asking a Youtuber "how to get famous on Youtube", because the circumstances that made a Youtuber famous will vary widely from other Youtubers. For some people it was years of hard work and slowly building up an audience, others may have been an overnight sensation, and for anyone the ability to make videos on Youtube at all is dependent on what else is going on in their lives that allows them the time and energy and resources to do so. Sure, we kinda know what the end result "looks like", but how you get to that point is largely influenced by other factors and can't be summarized in some "how to" video beyond the general advice of "here's how to make a video for Youtube" "here's how to make an appealing thumbnail" and "here's how to engage with your community". Many of those famous Youtubers are following the exact same formulas as the smaller Youtubers, they just had other factors influencing their career path that got them to fame first / faster / etc.

I can create Rekindled the way I do now because I have a decade of experience already creating multi-panel comics with longform storytelling on a deadline, but someone who's just starting out in webcomics probably wouldn't be able to do exactly what I'm doing; just like how I can't ever perfectly replicate the look and vibe of Rachel's original work, because her work exists through the experiences and circumstances of her life which I could never copy because they're unique from my own.

When I am making good money again, it will still be influenced by other factors - some within my control, some purely circumstantial - that are unique to me that can't be summed up for the benefit of other artists.

If I were to hypothetically write you a guide on "how to make a living at art" based purely on my own life experiences, it would go something like:

Step 1: Spend your whole childhood drawing weeb anime art and writing Legend of Zelda fanfiction

Step 2: Get a diploma in 2D Animation from a for-profit school that puts you $25k in the hole

Step 3: Work at Starbucks for half a decade and then on your days off work on a really long comic series that you plan to spend the rest of your life making

Step 4: Get hired to do a tattoo apprenticeship with a shitty mentor who treats you like shit

Step 5: Work a bunch of other retail jobs while trying to survive your apprenticeship and then eventually find a job in a basement shop that happens to have a spare bed

Step 6: Survive COVID on savings, root beer, and that really long comic series that you're still working on but isn't getting read by more than 10 people

Step 7: Get really obsessed with an online webtoon that you love; then get really mad about it when that online webtoon turns to shit which motivates you to create an entire blog just to talk shit about it and make a fan comic rewrite about it

Step 8: Get a really cool readerbase from that fan comic through the pre-existing community of shit-talkers that you joined who now ask you questions like "how to make a living at art" which you're not even sure how to answer because you don't know if what you do can even be called a "living"

Step 9: ???

Step 10: Profit ?? Sometimes??

Yeah, not very helpful to literally anyone but myself (and not even myself because if past me was asking present me this question, they'd probably be very confused by my answer LOL)

That was a lot of words, but I hope at least a few of them help arm you with the confidence to pursue your goals!! A lot of it might also sound scary, but remember that the path is long and the scary times don't last forever. That path will often take turns you couldn't have anticipated, but that's okay! Ride along with it and see where it takes you - there's always joy to be found in this line of work so long as you keep moving forward and keep your eyes open for it <3

[xentari94]

I don’t usually read much from Screen Rant but- that whole article on how Tech could very well be 100% alive as cx2 just boosted my fucking morale so much. Like- I know it’s stuff that’s already been gone over but still… no matter how many times I’ve heard it, hearing it again is what keeps me hopeful.

Tech, sweetheart, come back beautiful we need you 😭🧡🙏🏻

I know it’s gonna hurt like hell to see him so lost, and I don’t know if he’ll ever be able to get back to where he was pre fall, but I have faith he’ll be okay.

I honestly think now that this is what they meant when there had to be a consequence from going against Tarkin. It had nothing to do with Tarkin, and sacrifice doesn’t always have to signify death. Tech’s alive, but the possibility is high that he’s lost a part of himself. Along with this marking the end of his days as a soldier, the only thing he’s ever really known.

This isn’t a happily ever after. Happily ever after would be Tech recovers fully and as much as I hate to admit it, I don’t see that happening. I want it to happen, but realistically… I mean the show could take it either way. But this could be what is supposed to be the bitter-sweet ending. Everyone lives, but each has been individually changed, and not all positively as such in Tech’s case.

And that is why I too feel like it will be partly Omega who finds a way to help him because of what Tech once told her. It will be far from easy, and he’ll need all his family, but as a whole they find a way to adapt like they always have.

I don’t think they will return to Pabu, not because they wouldn’t be welcomed back, I believe even Tech would be even after what’s happened if Shep were ever to find out it was him as cx2. I don’t think Shep would blame him for something that Tech did not want.

They wouldn’t want to put Pabu on the radar again. So that steady life Hunter wants for Omega might not be reachable with who they are, always having to remain on the run, but that’s okay. As long as they have each other, Phee as well because I see them all grouping after this, then the future isn’t bleak. There’s promise. Hope.

[artycomicfangirl]

Princess Daisy’s Past, Her Family, and her Kingdom

Personal Headcanons List so far

—————————————————

Because it seemed like quite a few people were interested in some of my Daisy fan works. I decided to release this list of headcanons, which I actually found out I abandoned a while ago. Just decided to polish up and add more!

Before I go on, I just would like to add some context of my own kind-of AU and lore about Daisy’s father. (Since the fandom calls him Richard, I’ll be using that name too!) Some of these are just complete brainstorming. So in the future, info might change.

Now we got that out of the way, hope you enjoy this almost mini-book length lore, haha. Take your time, no pressure. But consider this as a little treat for those who love fan-lores and such!

—————————————————

Sarasaland’s History

Sarasaland was either a Barren wasteland, where 4 Kingdoms have been at each other’s throats for a long time in prior history.

Or, it was once a prosperous land. But one where it had been oppressed and enslaved by a crueler rule.

Whichever idea I was planning, it’s important to know that before Current Sarasaland, it was said to have been a bleak and dark place where “Not even flowers would even dare bloom”. The innocent folk there always dreamed of seeing beautiful fields of flowers.

There was supposed to be a miracle event that was recorded in a historical book entry about the day that Sarasaland was saved. From an account written by someone unknown:

“…Gone was the grey, somber Plume Filled Sky. When the Rays of light shone through, For the first time in ages, we saw crystal blue. Blessed by a miracle, the sight of flowers blooming all across the land. We have been kept in darkness for so long, now finally free from a cruel ironic-clad hand.”

—————————————————

Daisy and her Family

Daisy’s Father

I had ideas that Daisy’s Father may not even have originally been of royal blood at all. However, he ended up being the ‘Hero’ of his time long ago, when he and his comrades swore to save Sarasaland. And because of his spirit in battle and admirable leadership, he was chosen to be the King of the Land. A bit like Mario and Luigi being the signature heroes of Mushroom Kingdom.

The way Richard was crowned Prince could be similar to how Princess Peach would go through a process in the Super Mario Bros movie 2023. A time period of training, until he was very much ready to be crowned.

I 100% believe that this is a like Father, like Daughter situation. Daisy has inherited much more of her personality from her Father than her mother, and it shows. People would wonder how a Princess can be so battle-ready, rough and brave? Just take one look at her Father, and you’ll see why! She has very much inherited her his stubborn, and often at times very energetic and silly nature.

Personality wise, I assume that current Richard is overall, a tough man. A Veteran. He might look a bit too intimidating. But deep down, he still has a good heart that cares for the well-being of those around him.

Even more so, he melts when he’s around his wife. He adores his daughter even more so, because she is all he has left. So I guess we can believe with certainty, that Richard is definitely an overprotective type over things he loves and cares for.

When he was his younger self, he was more of a Bright-Eyed and determined youth. Leaning towards more of the stereotypical hero figure. Over time, he did learn to become a stronger and good leader. But as he grew older, there show the traces of a slightly grumpy older man.

There was that point where he did made sure to keep a child Daisy in the confines of the castle, right after losing his wife.

At first, the subjects and other 4 Kings thought this was a necessary and appropriate idea. But a while after, they started to think that the Princess might be sad if she was to constantly be watched over and told to stop doing things and be careful.

The King’s mindset would end up changing, when he finds a Diary that his wife used to own around the time when they were both still Prince and Princess.

The contents of the diary contained deep, poignant feelings and emotions. The most that moved his heart, was when she would describe her love for the King. All in all, Richard got an insight of his late Wife’s thoughts. Her happiest moments showed how genuine, kind and free the Queen felt, and how much of a beautiful person she was inside and out.

It was then Richard decided to do what was right, and to raise his Daughter to not always just be cautious and meek. But to be brave, carefree and unafraid, letting her flourish to be her best self. So that in the future, he would be able to have more faith in Daisy being able to take care and fight for herself.

At the beginning, He began teaching Daisy at a young age on how to fight and defend herself, along with giving her scholars that teach her about Sarasaland’s history. It’s a bit later that Richard had the idea of Daisy being also mentored by the 4 Kings in Sarasaland. This is the reason why Daisy is so headstrong and strategic as she is now. Also opening for the idea of her having a close familal relationship with the other Kingdoms, and how much they trust and have faith in her.

I actually thought it would be an interesting take to get some inspirations from the 1993 Daisy in the live action Super Mario Bros movie. A personal Headcanon (And inspired from her original personality), is that despite being a tomboy, Daisy values and treasures history and culture. Being quite knowledgeable in some things across the cultures of the 4 Kingdoms under her rule.

It’s because Richard wanted Daisy to be able to know her kingdom like the back of her palm. In fact, Daisy’s vast knowledge with certain historical things comes off as a surprise to most others. It may be even implied that Daisy could even be able to read and speak certain languages. Funnily enough, Daisy is also quite savvy when it comes to financial things.

But with Daisy being Daisy, she is more of an assertive Soldier/Leader. A bit different to Peach being a calm and caring Diplomat.

On the Day Tatanga made his presence known, the King only found out about the invasion during his usual visitings with the Palace Scientist’s (A bit like their version of Prof E. Gadd).

One of the Scientists gave reports about how for the past few days, there have been strange activity of something entering and lingering within the world’s Atmosphere, Somewhere above Sarasaland. This strange activity would try to emit signals. which each time, seem to grow more powerful every day.

After Richard asks when the next signal could be predicted, all computers and systems were hijacked. Each and every communicative technology displaying a sinister message, Implication of an invasion. The King immediately took action, initiating an entire announcement throughout the entire land. However, they were little too late.

The Main Sarasaland Palace was seized as Tatanga and his army would make his appearance. But not wanting to give up, The King was able to cause a rebellion. Sparking the first Battle with the Alien Army.

At this point is where I thought of the idea that originally, it seemed like that Both the King and his daughter were going to escape together, trying to reach one of the Warp pipes.

However, the big reveal was that The King had only wanted to assist his Daughter in making sure the Future Heir of Sarasaland, would escape safety. Richard would stay and fend for the Kingdom he swore to protect. As he said “Much like your mother did in her last moments, before they took her away.”

Richard believed that because The Aliens had been above their land for quite some time before they attacked, they had been surveying the land down below. And in turn, knew everything on what to expect. If Daisy were to escape, it was highly likely that she could reach other Kingdoms in time and ask for help, places where Tatanga would have not been able to reach just yet.

Daisy initially refused to leave her Father. But at the end, Richard ordered the Sphinx King Totomesu to take Daisy away to the last warp pipe. And that once Daisy was able to be transferred successfully, to destroy the Warp pipe afterwards. The last thing that Daisy saw before she was knocked out from the Warp Pipe being destroyed, was her father and the other 4 Kings going right into battle.

Usually I would go the route of “Parents have died” route. But I’m juggling with a potential idea that in fact, both of Daisy’s parents are not actually dead. She may have initially thought so. But both her Mother and Father in both occurrences, have only been taken away. But in Daisy’s case, she has witnessed Tatanga perform the mind control across almost all residents of Sarasaland.

It is through her Father’s will, which drives Daisy to take back and free her Kingdom and her father.

—————————————————

Daisy’s Mother

(She is sort of like a Fan Character/Oc at the point. And because I have a name for her, I’ll be referring to her as such here!)

Queen Laelia. A woman of knowledge and intellect, A preserver and appreciator of history and culture. She is pictured to be calm, elegant, kind, gentle and wise. However, she is also known to be firm and confident when it comes to decision making. Yet also understanding and more willing to hear the perspectives of anyone to gain an understanding of them.

Her Namesake is inspired from the Laelia Orchid flower, known for its purple colour. She might have some hint of magical abilities, or has a connection with magical places or objects.

Laelia could potentially be a descendant of long past ancestors from Sarasaland. That, or her ancestors were known to have an old holiday home/territory/Base somewhere located within one corner or Sarasaland. However during her time before she met Richard, she only knew life of her own Kingdom, located across the sea.

Because of this, she always felt like there was a ‘calling’ for her to one day see Sarasaland. Yet, she couldn’t quite place why. Her name might serve as a little indicator that Her Ancestors adopted the floral naming ideas, showing how deep their connection with the homeland runs.

Surprisingly, It’s Laelia whose main role as the Botanist/Plant specialist in the family. Daisy just ends up sharing and taking up similar hobbies and passions as her Mother did. But Daisy might more under the Explorer/Archaeologist role.

A young Princess Laelia would have met a Prince Richard when she was arriving to Sarasaland. Her Royal family treated this trip as a big deal, as this would be the first time they were able to set foot on Sarasaland docks. About a year or more prior, was when the news of Sarasaland being saved became public celebration.

The Princess and her family were impressed at the efforts for the 4 Kings in making the most of their efforts to restore Sarasaland to its former beauty. And even moreso shocked, as the Princess was always told that for the longest time, Sarasaland had lost its beauty and flowers. Yet here, the land was now thriving with no more war.

Laelia’s Interactions with Richard began when the Prince offered to give her a tour of Sarasaland, when she personally asked to be able to learn more as a part of her research and studies. Surprisingly, the Prince took up the role of Acting almost like a guide or advisor to her and her family.

This would lead to The Princess being curious as to why he offered to personally guide her, instead of sending a subject instead. The Prince mentions how much pride and love he has for the land. And how he will always wholeheartedly be a supporter to advocate for how much the Land changed him for the better. It was his job to oversee as much of the responsibility he can, so all of the civilians can live life in peace and free from worry. However, he mentions that if the Princess would like to have interviews with some of the local folk, he’ll gladly let her.

While Laelia’s family had to return to their kingdom, she opted to stay in Sarasaland for a while in order to keep watch, and to learn more about the development and culture. She promised that she would come home some time after them.

However, during this window of time, the Princess was slowly growing attached to Sarasaland. And unbeknownst to her, The Prince was the first to Harbor feelings for her as time went on. This would all build up throughout more interactions with the Prince, and soon ended up falling in love with one another.

When it was time for her to go back to her kingdom, she of course felt sadness when Even when she promised that one day she will return. But at that point, the thought of not being able to see Richard again made her feel down.

This would later be picked up by a family member (Could be mother, uncle, aunt or sibling ect) who couldn’t help but be concerned about the Princess. At first, the Princess tries to hide this, as her time there was meant to be strictly professional. But said family member would put the pieces together. Commenting how they noticed that from reports they heard, Laelia looked like she belonged there. That she had a newfound happiness.

This would later become a process of Laelia discussing with her Father. The King arranging to return to Sarasaland again with his daughter. And after some further discussion between two Kingdoms, there would come to an agreement that re-uniting and reforming an alliance that was once broken, would be the first beneficial step for both Kingdoms.

After a Wedding being arranged and taken place in Sarasaland. The Princess would gain her title as Queen, and the Prince now became a King.

Some time after, The Queen would give birth to their first and only child, A Daughter. They decided to name her Daisy, after the Queen’s favourite flowers.

(*NOTE!! At this point I’m not so concrete and fleshed out on this part of the story next, so these are just potential ideas)

The Queen would be able to be with her Daughter throughout most of her early childhood. However, the first life-changing incident would happen at a festival at the Queen’s home Kingdom.

During the yearly festival, an attack was made where a Villain wanted to take something from the kingdom. Maybe an object that radiated energy or held ancient secrets and knowledge that kept the kingdom thriving. A planned mission. All in all, if this object was taken, the Kingdom would call into Chaos.

At this point, there may be an implication that Daisy’s Mother has a magical ability. ( a Hand Power?? Similar to Firebrand or Thunderhand?) Maybe always born with one. So even when the enemy had failed to take the Prized object. They unfortunately managed to take Daisy’s Mother away. And the little Princess had witnessed it all.

Both Kingdoms were left grieving immensely after the incident. And even as both sides tried to heal over time, this was where Richard would have developed that time period of protectiveness over his Daughter for a little while.

[beardedmrbean]

BEIJING (Reuters) - After quitting the education industry last August due to China's crackdown on private tutoring, He Ajun has found an unlikely second life as an unemployment influencer.

The Guangzhou-based vlogger, 32, offers career advice to her 8,400 followers, charting her journey through long-term joblessness. "Unemployed at 31, not a single thing accomplished," she posted last December.

He is now making around 5,000 yuan ($700) per month through ads on her vlogs, content editing, private consultations and selling handicrafts at street stalls.

"I think in future freelancing will be normalised," said He. "Even if you stay in the workplace, you'll still need freelancing abilities. I believe it will become a backup skill, like driving."

China is under instruction to unleash "new productive forces", with government policies targeting narrow areas of science and technology including AI and robotics.

But critics say that has meant weak demand in other sectors and risks leaving behind a generation of highly educated young people, who missed the last boom and graduated too late to retrain for emerging industries.

A record 11.79 million university graduates this year face unprecedented job scarcity amid widespread layoffs in white-collar sectors including finance, while Tesla, IBM and ByteDance have also cut jobs in recent months.

Urban youth unemployment for the roughly 100 million Chinese aged 16-24 spiked to 17.1% in July, a figure analysts say masks millions of rural unemployed.

China suspended releasing youth jobless data after it reached an all-time high of 21.3% in June 2023, later tweaking criteria to exclude current students.

Over 200 million people are currently working in the gig economy and even that once fast-growing sector has its own overcapacity issues. A dozen Chinese cities have warned of ride-hailing oversaturation this year.

Redundancies have even spread to government work, long considered an "iron rice bowl" of lifetime employment.

Last year Beijing announced a 5% headcount reduction and thousands have been laid off since, according to official announcements and news reports. Henan province trimmed 5,600 jobs earlier this year, while Shandong province has cut nearly 10,000 positions since 2022.

Meanwhile, analysts say China's 3.9 million vocational college graduates are mostly equipped for low-end manufacturing and service jobs, and reforms announced in 2022 will take years to fix underinvestment in training long regarded as inferior to universities.

China currently faces a shortage of welders, joiners, elderly caregivers and "highly-skilled digital talent", its human resources minister said in March.

Yao Lu, a sociologist at Columbia University, estimates about 25% of college graduates aged 23-35 are currently in jobs below their academic qualifications.

Many of China's nearly 48 million university students are likely to have poor starting salaries and contribute relatively little in taxes throughout their lifetimes, said one Chinese economist who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.

"Although they cannot be called a 'lost generation', it is a huge waste of human capital," the person said.

'DOING THREE PEOPLE'S JOBS'

Chinese President Xi Jinping in May urged officials to make job creation for new graduates a top priority. But for younger workers unemployed or recently fired, the mood is bleak, nine people interviewed by Reuters said.

Anna Wang, 23, quit her state bank job in Shenzhen this year due to high pressure and frequent unpaid overtime. For a salary of about 6,000 yuan per month, "I was doing three people's jobs," she said.

Her ex-colleagues complain about widespread pay cuts and transfers to positions with unmanageable workloads, effectively forcing them to resign. Wang now works part-time jobs as a CV editor and mystery shopper.

At a July briefing for foreign diplomats about an agenda-setting economic meeting, policymakers said they have been quietly urging companies to stop layoffs, one attendee told Reuters.

Olivia Lin, 30, left the civil service in July after widespread bonus cuts and bosses hinted at further redundancies. Four district-level bureaus were dissolved in her city of Shenzhen this year, according to public announcements.

"The general impression was that the current environment isn't good and fiscal pressure is really high," she said.

Lin now wants a tech job. She has had no interview offers after a month of searching. "This is completely different from 2021, when I was guaranteed one job interview a day," she said.

REDUCED STIGMA

Shut out of the job market and desperate for an outlet, young Chinese are sharing tips for surviving long-term unemployment. The hashtags "unemployed", "unemployment diary" and "laid off" received a combined 2.1 billion views on the Xiaohongshu platform He uses.

Users describe mundane daily routines, count down the days since being fired, share awkward chat exchanges with managers or dole out advice, sometimes accompanied by crying selfies.

The increasing visibility of jobless young people "increases broader social acceptance and reduces stigma surrounding unemployment", said Columbia's Lu, allowing otherwise isolated youth to connect and "perhaps even redefine what it means to be unemployed in today's economic climate".

Lu said unemployed graduates understood blaming the government for their plight would be both risky and ineffective. Rather, she said, they were more likely to slip into "an internalisation of discontent and blame" or "lying flat".

He, the influencer, thinks graduates should lower their ambitions.

"If we have indeed entered 'garbage time', then I think young people could accumulate skills or do something creative, such as selling things via social media or making handicrafts."

[i-still-mask-because]

hi! i'd just like to first say thank you for this blog! it's been a very valuable resource and i appreciate what you do and the information you make available!! this ask is sort of a vent/just my thoughts and general feelings i feel like i need to share somewhere. i don't have any resources to get a better mask at this moment, and the masks i do wear give me sensory issues and are generally not ideal. i can't really do anything else about this except wait until i get financial independence, which is relatively far off. it's been...becoming a bit more difficult to look forward to the future. i don't acknowledge this often because it feels like so many people already have but i have some difficulty accepting that things will never truly be the same again (until capitalism and colonialism are abolished and the world can focus on fixing pressing issues and actually improving people's lives but that's a different conversation!) and that not only does it feel that i'm missing out on a majority of my teen years but also that i may not even get to enjoy my twenties, thirties, and so on because of circumstances generally not in my control. i know that joy remains present in my life and things will improve if i just hang on a little longer but it's still difficult when i spend day after day watching my masks irritate my skin while i'm not even safe from covid because so few people mask. i firmly believe some protection is better than none but i suppose that can tie into why i am glad other people mask, as uncommon as it has become. i still mask because i want to do what i can to care about the safety of others and to combat toxic individualism.

Hey! Thank you so much for sharing this 💛 I appreciate the vulnerability. And thank you for your patience; I wanted to be sure I was in a clearer headspace before answering this. I hope you can see this, and I hope you're doing alright!

If you want, let me know in another ask what masks you've already tried. I'm happy to compile some recommendations for more comfortable ones.

I genuinely recommend finding online spaces with other covid cautious people you can connect with, find support & validation, and find access to tools & resources (be it through Facebook groups, Discord servers, IG communities, Tumblr communities, etc.)

Take a look at these links [Link 1: Worldwide Mask Bloc Directory] and [Link 2: Covid Action Map] to see if there's any mask blocs and/or covid action groups wherever you live that can provide free masks for you (I know some give away free rapid tests & other tools too). They may even be able to give better suggestions for the first two things I mentioned! See if you could find their social media accounts too to keep up with their updates.

I absolutely feel for the younger generations right now. Knowing how hard going to school was as a minor in and of itself, I cannot imagine how difficult it is to go through Pre/K-12 being one of the only, if not the only, one masking to protect themself from a virus that the majority of the population doesn't even think is a big deal anymore. I'm so sorry the systems in place have let you down. I 100% understand how bleak the future feels right now; trust me, I'm right there with you. Navigating life in a covid-denying world is extremely difficult, to say the absolute least. I personally did not expect the first half of my 20s to go like this 😅. I try to remember that there are communities out there that aim to support us, validate us, and get us the resources we need. Being in community with other covid cautious folks online has been tremendously helpful because it makes going through this feel a lot less lonely.

Things will take a turn at some point; it's inevitable. Just keep protecting yourself and taking precautions. You're doing the right thing 💛😷

If anyone has additional supportive things they want to say and even suggestions of their own, please feel free to share!

[therealvinelle]

Hello. The dome above Forsk was already there, but what about the dome over Volterra? How will the Volturi cope with the situation?

"Gentlemen, it seems we'll have to amend a few rules."

The people of Volterra are no longer off-limits.

The good news is, there's 10 519 of them.

The bad news is, there are ~35 Volturi.

If each vampire eats one human every fortnight for a year (35*26) then 910 humans are sacrificed to the blood gods. That's 9% of the population total.

That is not all, however.

In a normal year, Italy has a mortality rate per thousand people of 10 people, that is to say, of these 10 519 people, we can assume 100 of them die of natural causes.

However, that rate is going to be significantly higher under the dome. Everyone dependent on medication is cut off, the hospital is going to run out of supplies fast, you have people dying of easily preventable causes.

I imagine the very first thing Aro does, after ascertaining that nobody is getting out and they're going to have to start living off the humans of Volterra, is dismembering all but Caius, Marcus, and the wives, and those in his guard who can help with crowd control. The twins, Heidi, Corin, and Chelsea get to stay online, the rest are stored in separate boxes in the basement, hopefully to be put back together someday in the future. We are now down to ten vampires, making it so 260 people are killed annually.

(Though I imagine Aro uses gamification to lower the rate even further. "Funny hats to whoever goes the longest without feeding!" "Praise and brownie points to he whose eyes are the blackest!")

There are, however, some good news.

Tuscany is a very fertile region, even if Volterra is a city and on top of a mountain hill there are large swaths of green areas that could be repurposed for farming, at least in theory. The people of Volterra are luckier yet in that there happens to be a very powerful man whose only interest is to keep as many people as possible, who could easily take control and allocate the resources in whichever way he found most constructive.

Said man also happens to have superpowered people who will never grow tired by his side, people who could easily take care of the farming.

Water is a concern, but with a sound filtration system that should sort itself out.

Would people still starve, yes, and there's the question of where Aro would find the seeds for farming (here's to hoping the local flower shops come through, or else that Aro has a seed bank in his palace. You never know with that guy), how long it would take for his efforts to bear fruit (pun intended), and how long the rations already in the city would keep.

Feeding is done as strategically as possible, the Volturi kill only the sick and the dying in a bid to keep the mortality rate as close to normal as possible. Fertile and pregnant women and children are cared for the best, in the hopes that humans won't stop procreating.

(... I imagine the fertile women with chronic illnesses or other health problems hurry up and get pregnant so they won't be the next sacrificed to the blood gods.)

They have a chance of achieving sustainability, is what I'm saying. The population will be significantly reduced and their standard of living will plummet, but it's not as bleak as with the dome over Forks, mainly because Tuscany allows for farming in a way Forks doesn't, and Aro can take control of the city in a way the Cullens can't.

The irony, I imagine, is that without the Volturi the world outside that dome is tearing itself to pieces, making the humans within the dome better off than those without.

[from-the-clouds]

I grew up with a very similar narcissistic abuse system leaving and distance are the things that help the most. Kendall is free.

The last argument he had with his siblings involved them trying to hold his guilt against him and telling him his kids aren't real. If that doesn't fuel him into trying to find his kids and apologize for everything.

I do see hope for him. I refuse to believe that there is no hope for him, there's hope for all of us. There has to be.

Kendall is a billionaire, the only one of his siblings that has successfully gone to therapy before. He has crunbled before and he has healed before, he can do it again.

I really have to belie that he can, so that I believe that I can. I don't think he can ever go back to his siblings tho and that's probably for the best.

i 100% agree.

i do hope ken goes an apologizes to his kids, or at least takes a greater interest in them now that he has more time on his hands. kendall is incredibly resilient and we've seen him pick himself out of terrible situations before.

i think there's a chance he could go back to his siblings, but i do think the dynamic would be different with logan gone and none of them in the company. it is necessary he spends some time apart from them maybe, so they can heal on their own. i think they should avoid working together in the future, though. maybe they can just be normal siblings who only interact during holidays.

but yeah, i do think ken is capable of change. but i don't think it was possible for him to change with logan around or if he is involved at waystar. i know it might feel horrible to him now, but i think that with time he will see the freedom that comes with not vying for that position/trying to impress his father anymore. i love jeremy strong but i do disagree that this is the end of ken's life. i think even jesse was more hopeful than that. i guess it's valid to have that bleak outlook, but as someone with a somewhat messed up childhood myself, i always am going to believe i am capable of changing and i have changed by going through therapy and learning about myself. i have a lot of friends who have done the same. its possible to change and break the cycle.

i think kendall, too, has a lot of capability to be a good person and a desire to do good, and now he has a chance to learn how to without feeling the judgement of his father or siblings.

also, for what it's worth, i believe you can, too :)

[cleverthylacine]

I just saw your post, and I also just watched Episode One and was absolutely furious about it. I've been looking forward to this season!

I was so into the thought of new baby Terrans! I was thrilled at the idea of Breakdown having a kid! That sounded awesome! Even with Aftermath giving me immediate Motormaster vibes, I was initially hopeful being like, Okay, maybe the Emberstone Theory about who last touched it affecting the creations is true.

Maybe Breakdown being in Menasor is going to be brought up.

Maybe we get to see Breakdown dealing with raising a baby Stubticon a la their G1 more wild personalities, and he gets to give them the parenting he didn't get.

Maybe it's going to be continuing the family and breaking abuse cycle themes. That could be cool. Let Aftermath have a rougher personality, but be a good kid. Let other Cons get babies, too.

But I got immediate ick with the descriptions of the "Chaos Terrans," by Alex. It makes no sense. And how they are "corrupted". What?! Hated that.

Me and my Roomie spent the entire time going "BUT WHY???" with the opening! I wanted to see the Cons and Bots working together! The relationships built last Season were fun! THAT WAS ALL THE FUN STUFF!

I loved Hashtag & Starscream and Tarantulas & Nightshade! So much was unpacking different trauma from the war on both sides.

Everyone has issues! Explore them! Continue the theme of not passing on your trauma to your kids and healing and a new generation without war! Getting the future, they all wanted just not how they wanted it!

And the Quintessons would have been a great villain! Especially with all the mucking about Quintus did and their call out with the Sharkticons! AND IN EPISODE TWO THE EVEN PLAY WITH IT BY DIRECTLY CONNECTING THE FACT THAT A QUINTESSON EXECUTIONER WAS ON THE HUNT FOR QUINTUS! WHY WOULD THEY NOT JUST USE IT!

THE DECEPTICONS COULD HAVE GONE FULL SANCTUARY STATION! IT WAS RIGHT THERE!

Sorry to rant, but your criticism was similar to my own! And now I am on the edge of pulling a full V.O.S. of my own on Earthspark. I am just gnashing my teeth at this. I have to write an Alt-Season Two or I'll scream. Worst part is this was supposed to be a treat for a stressful day. 😭

ACK how do I spoiler cut the ask itself?

Welp, I'll put a spoiler tag on it, hopefully people are filtering those.

*hugs*

Man I get it, you just got mad, didn't you? I watched it and I just got madder and madder and madder.

I guess I'm gonna have to steal some characters. Go write your alt-season-2. Make it RavWave and I'll love you forever.

I wanted Hashtag to bond with Star so fucking much. And Tara and Nightshade. I love Nightshade and Hashtag, tbh I'm not that interested in Twitch and Thrash.

I don't understand why they did any of this. A lot of people in places like TFW2005 were complaining about how "woke" they thought it was, maybe they decided to go back to G1, but holy fucking crap it just sucks. I'm not going to watch the rest of it. I might watch the episodes that Ravi and Wave are in, maybe, just to like, SEE them. But maybe not. I don't want this.

The thing about "pulling a VoS" is that it will grow. I thought I was going to write a story where Ravage left the Lost Light, went home to Soundwave, and everything was, well, not 100% fine, but as fine as it ever is in IDW. @sharkteethies and I were joking about how Ravage would get to be Prom Queen and Starscream would maybe mope a little (the Prom Queen jokes come from there, but I gave them to Swerve because Swerve.)

But then as things happen they snowball. Maybe you don't have to be like me and shove every character you ever loved from the rest of the franchise into one AU (they are all there because they fill a need though). But whether you do that or not, you eventually have to go into the past to figure out why things worked out different this time.

(I got to cheat some because briefcase.)

VoS gets very dark and "Every Day Is A Winding Road" is particularly bleak in places, but it has to get dark so the sun can rise.

[dallasareaopinion]

Dear MAGA, what happens next?

Sooner or later Donald Trump is going to pass away. He may live until 90 or 100 or 79 who knows. Yet it is inevitable, we all pass away.

And when he does, what happens next?

Sad to say probably not much or way too much. What most people outside the MAGA world realize is this is a cult of personality. There will not be an immediate successor. And different people will try to jump in and claim the leader of MAGA mantle, but sadly it will be very sad moments for quite a few people. Don Jr. may get some play, there are a few Senators and Representatives having sold their soul to Trump will try to claim a leadership role. Overall though the people who follow Trump will move on, to what is a bit scary, but they will move on.

Trump is a dynamic personality and no one will be able to duplicate what he has going on. This will leave us in quite a strange world. Think about Russia for a moment if you will. Putin rose to power as a young person. He took over Russia and has had years to consolidate whatever it is he has consolidated. Trump is not young. Even if he wins a second term most likely there will not be much of a life afterwards.

Sure Biden is barely making it through coffee much less a campaign and every Democrat needs to figure something out by the Convention, yet the Trump world is staring down something completely different and hence the future of the Republican Party.

MAGA’s every waking moment is an obsession of Trump. So much so they cannot realize there is a world beyond theirs and that there are people who just don’t like Trump. In some ways they have an argument when they say 80 million people didn’t vote for Biden, yet what they don’t realize is that Biden received 80 million votes because quite a few people don’t like Trump. They cannot comprehend this reality. There is a slight difference between voting for someone or against someone. To this day I say Trump won in 2016 because quite a few people voted against H. Clinton. I think there are quite a few people that agree with that conclusion, but that is water under the bridge as is 2020. Unfortunately Trump convinced MAGA world that bridge never existed and he won.

Since the Republican Party has pretty much gone all in on Trump, what happens next for the Party? Sure Christie and Halley tried to separate themselves possibly for a post Trump world, who knows. Too many Republicans though cannot see beyond the tip of their noses to realize there will be a world without Donald Trump someday or more likely have chosen to ignore this fact to survive in the current environment.

Going back to 2016 I was thinking the Republicans were in better shape than the Democrats, they had quite a few candidates vying for the Presidency, many were relatively young, all had Republican bona fides, and I presumed this was going to be a tough bunch to crack for the Democrats. The Democrats didn’t have any strong candidates and what was worse they seemed bound to fulfill a self destructive course by nominating Clinton. It goes back to them being clueless elitist liberals. They are still in that same predicament. Biden is just a place holder for now. They do not have a strong developing leadership core that I have noticed like I thought the Republicans had in 2016. Then Trump ran roughshod all over them and proved they were all weak. This weakness has become even more obvious with the massive acquiescence of the party leadership towards Trump.

We are in quite the pickle as they say since post Trump the Republican Party may go into different directions with some type of hard right party with quite a few people vying to be the dear leader and some moderates trying to put back the pieces of some traditional Republican nonsense. As mentioned before the Democrats do not have outstanding people waiting in the wing so what happens next?

It is a bit bleak by the above description, yet sometimes when things get a bit wacky someone comes along and rallies the troops. Or we are going to see quite a period of uncertainty and our leadership on the world stage is going to come under serious attack from Russia China Iran and a few other countries.  And our allies will suffer a bit by our floundering around internally.

The 1 percent will try and consolidate more money and power in the possible leadership vacuum, but their power grab will not be productive for our country, our allies, and the world overall so hopefully someone with some values will find a way to pull us back to a more constructive course. I do not run around with blinders on that we will find a savior who will keep all the wolves at bay. Reigning in the madness we have let take over will take a concerted effort by quite a few people, yet those people do exist. Will they be given the chance?

Yet for today, the question is what does MAGA world do post Trump?

[cityandking]

black 4, green 2, purple 2, silver 4 for daichi, minah & anticlea!

I love u!! // medieval heraldry oc asks

Has your OC always feared the loss of the same thing - perhaps a loved one, a valuable artifact or a carefully nurtured reputation? Or do they look back with amusement on what once felt important to them?

DAICHI — well his worldview (worlds-view?) has expanded quite a great deal recently, but at the end of the day he's always feared loss of the same thing, which is his person (people, now). there's a reason he went shield paladin and all that. he stands by his conviction. MINAH — minah looks back at what she used to fear losing with immense cynicism and some measure of self-disgust. she's lost a lot over the years and has very much revised her hierarchy of what's important CLEA — she's always feared loss of the same thing (a loved one), but it wasn't a real fear until suddenly it was. she was a grandmother already when it went from a distant, theoretical fear to a real thing. but it was also the kind of fear she could act on, so she did, to the best of her ability.

How hopeful is your OC about the future? Do they see things as becoming better in general - either for them personally or the world at large? Or do they feel as if decline and disaster are inevitable and all that can be done is to delay the final end for as long as possible?

DAICHI — okay well first of all until very recently daichi's thoughts about the future were *static noises* in a sort of self-sacrificial, passively suicidal way (which. self-fulfilling prophecy I guess), so on the personal level I wouldn't say there was a lot of hope. in terms of a theoretical future that may or may not involve him, he felt. pretty bleak actually? like he was well aware of the Void and its creeping tendrils and the Owl Traveller and the staining of the worlds and all that so. not a great look! but he also doesn't believe it's an inevitable decline, and is (was) quite willing to give his life for the possibility of a better ending (also a self-fulfilling prophecy maybe?) and he'll stand by that decision a hundred times over. he's a creature of faith, no matter how much of a struggle that might be. sorry to his loved ones. MINAH — gonna level with you, I don't think minah has thought about the future. she's a live-in-the-moment kind of gal. that said, she's not an optimist to begin with, and with the way things are trending right now (especially given the Orlais-Tevinter tensions and the Blight and the Tevinter cults and all that) she's not super hopeful. things are fucked. CLEA — clea absolutely 100% unequivocally believes that things will turn out right and we can make it so. even in the darkest and bleakest of times she believes in the power of turning on a little light and planting something to watch it grow

Is your OC comfortable in the higher echelons of society, such as aristocratic functions or assemblies of the rich and powerful? Or do they prefer to avoid these events if possible?

DAICHI — he's definitely uncomfortable among shows of wealth and power and Would Prefer Not To. however, paradoxically, the higher echelons are some of the most regulated by rules of politeness and propriety and that is something dai can navigate without trouble. give him a hundred social rules to memorize and he's golden. MINAH — she really doesn't get on well with nobility, and given the option, she'd avoid aristocratic functions and assemblies always and forever. that said, she could fake it til she makes it pretty damn well—she's got the charisma for it and she's a slippery little bastard. she'd hate every second of it tho. CLEA — she's not super comfortable, but she's also old and set in her ways and wouldn't really have an issue. she's passed through plenty of high society functions in her time adventuring. at best she finds it invigorating and at worst she finds it irritating, but regardless, she can hold her own just fine. (she really doesn't like the fey courts tho)

Do others find your OC easy to believe? Or is there something about them that makes others distrustful or cynical about their motives or trustworthiness?

DAICHI — his flat 0 charisma mod says it's a little dicey, but honestly he's a forthright guy, and I think he exudes an air of stalwart honesty and trust. it's not just that he can't lie; it's that he wouldn't. he's got Good Vibes MINAH — and on the other hand...... despite the high charisma (and deception) mod, I think she's got just enough edge to her to put people off. she can mask it when she's doing a job or if she's with a casual acquaintance, but long term exposure to her is like. yeah. it's clear that she's squirrelly and a little untrustworthy and a little sharp around the edges in ways that aren't obvious on first meeting CLEA — the only dishonest bones in her body are the sly and insightful grandmotherly kinds. she clearly means well, but she'll also use her old lady charms to be a little conniving when the occasion calls for it

[areyoudoingthis]

Saying this fully as a lover of s2 and ride or die fan

It would have been a cool option to open s3 with the lucius/pete matelotage. Maybe it would have lessened the whiplash after Izzy's death. Provide a reason for Stede and Ed to reunite with the crew in s3 (not that there's any shortage of possibilities there). Something to bring full circle at the end of s3 if they do an Ed/Stede matelotage. I do totally get why they put it in s2 especially not knowing if there will be a s3. This is probably just my brain not letting go of thinking we'd see a Lucius/Pete wedding bash lol.

I'm being 100% serious here, I don't think there's anything they could have done to make the reactions any less feral than they were. Even if they'd had the whole 10 episodes they needed, even if Lucius and Pete's wedding had happened on a completely separate episode from Izzy's death and funeral instead of like two minutes later, even if they'd gotten married five episodes earlier, the Izzy stans would still be raging about it as much as they are. They don't care about actual reasons, they're just grasping at any straw they can find to bitch about their blorbo's death because they were watching a whole other show where he was for racist reasons a main character and his death is an unforgivable crime against humanity and queer people everywhere (you have my empathy if you're a sane fan and you're sad about your blorbo's death without harassing anyone about it, I've shed a tear or two for Izzy myself.)

I think it was tonally perfect to close the season on a wedding, showing everyone moving on from the loss of their friend and all the hardships they all (including and especially Lucius) went through during it. It's the promise that no matter how bleak things get, how much you suffer or how much you lose, there's always something good to hold onto, something brighter in your future (the way Ed looks at Stede during the ceremony tells us clearly he's decided to marry Stede at some point, which is such a lovely thing to include there given where he was like two episodes ago. He knows he's loved and capable of love now and he's allowing himself to dream of a future with Stede and I, for one, am still dying about it.)

Everyone deserved a sweet, quiet sendoff after being put through the wringer this season, and I think the wedding followed by Ed and Stede deciding to retire and stay behind watching the crew sail off into the sunset together while they reaffirm their commitment to each other was absolutely perfect.

You cannot write a tv show around the fandom's expectations and potential reactions. Ofmd is incredibly kind in the way they take into account how much the queer community has suffered and try to be mindful of that in their writing (David has said this influenced their decision to end the season on a hopeful note in case we don't get s3, even though Ed and Stede still have a ways to go to get to a place where they can finally settle down together in a truly stable way.) But they are still writing a tv show, creating a story they want to tell in the way they want to tell it, and it's not fair to ask them to take into consideration that there's a whole subsection of the fandom that has been refusing to see the show for what it really is for a year and a half and harassing everyone else about it, or predict how they were going to react to the very necessary and well executed narrative beat of Izzy's death, or, god forbid, change the story to prevent their temper tantrum.

I'd have loved to see more of Lucius and Pete's wedding, finally get to see Ed and Stede dance, maybe, discuss retirement. I firmly blame HBO for slashing their fucking budget for s2 tho, I'm sure they would have loved to write us a lovely wedding party if they'd been given the chance. We did get Calypso's birthday, so I can't really complain. And I have absolute faith we're gonna get to see Ed and Stede's wedding in s3, and hopefully then they'll finally be allowed to dance.

[vixlenxe]

But look, it important for Tiffanie to be able to confront both Diabolos & her parents, because they deal in two different sides of her that still remain from her past, even after all the time. Diabolos is the more physical threat, the securing of her future & allowing herself to be open with others. Evault & Jesette are the stunts in her mental & emotional development.

Diabolos is her gaining the rights to her future, as well as her lesson in learning to fully trust others & allowing them to take care of her. If she can't get rid of him now, while having access to The Void, then her future is limited & bleak. And though now, she has the ability to take care of & fight for herself & others, she's still very hesitate to allow others to do things for her & take care of her when she needs it or even lowkey wants it. She still feels guilty about 'burdening others' with her strifes when she should be able to handle it herself now.

Something we've learn about voidsents is that, when they consume another living being's aether(aka their soul), said being doesn't die, they're soul and consciousness live on in the voidsent that consumed them, this is what will happen to Tiffanie should Diabolos gain complete control of her. To kill a voidsent would then in turn kill the souls within it, given, they are on a aether-ly balanced world, like The Source. The Thirdteenth is not aether-ly balanced, & for a voidsent to die on this world would not equal death, merely it would break it apart into the individual beings that comprised it. With this info, the plan will be to allow Diabolos to take over Tiffanie while she is on The Thirdteenth, in which her company will do battle with Diabolos until 'death', & result in the splitting of Diabolos & Tiffanie's souls at last. This, of course put's Tiffanie's very existence completely into the hands of those that go to the void with her(the team now is small, but I imagine that more scions will come with her on her final trip). It will make her realize that she quite literally can't do this one her own, & she needs to put 100% trust into others to both save her life, or end it should this not work. She trusts people to kill her, but not being able to save her own life is a heavy weight because she does not what to burden others with her troubles. This is not a burden for her family & friends, nor will it ever be. This is something they want just as bad, to set Tiffanie free, to save her life, & to subsequently care for her afterwards & forever. It's knowing that she's not burdening these people she calls her family, that they are happy to help & actually are rather scared of losing her, that can let go of that weight, that she doesn't need to do everything by herself. They'd do this thousand times over, gladly, to make sure she gets the future she deserves, because they love her.

Evault & Jesette are the emotional & mental halves. These are the people that have spent 20 years of Tiffanie's life telling her that she is worthless, her existence is a mistake, & that their treatment of her is the best she'll ever get in life. No one will want her, no one will love her, not unless they are getting something out of it. She is a unwanted failure, & it's all she'll ever be. While in most aspects now, she understand that they're wrong. Tiffanie is the Warrior of Darkness now, & the savior of two worlds, there's no way she's a complete failure, 'at least not anymore'. The idea that she still believes she was once a failure is something that I believe speaks for itself: some of Evault & Jesette's 'teachings' still resonates with her. If she's not bringing something into another's life, then she's not worthy of love & care, she must bring something to the table. Unconditional care is something she's not used too, which is way she like to be 'fair' & play things based on 'fairness'. And love is an extremely touchy subject for her as we've seen, as it's very difficult for her to experience romantic love, & she knows little difference between what is romantic & what is just sexual, so when she does experience romance or has romance aimed her way, she gets super confused & retreats into silence like she did for everything when she was young. She's still retreating into silence, she still believes no one will love her in such an intimate way, she still believes that to be loved at all she needs to be worth something or to have something someone wants.

Confronting Evault & Jesette is confronting everything she's been taught, confronting her entire upbrings, confronting things that she still somewhat believes. It's realizing that she has a lot of emotions, some she doesn't always understand, but knowing she shouldn't have to hide from them. It's realizing that people do love her, completely & fully, romantically & unconditionally, even when she can't give anything back, even when she makes life difficult for others around her. It's realizing that her entire childhood was filled with abuse & mistreatment & she's so tired of hiding from it, she doesn't like it but she's also doesn't want to act like it didn't matter & like it didn't happen anymore. She's tired of being silent on things that make her want to scream, she tired of letting these two abusers walk away without punishment, because she once thought 'it didn't matter they abused me, it's just me after all, I don't matter as much as others' because she matter so much to so many people, & to herself now. Her own life matter, not just to others, but to herself, finally.

Diabolos, Evault, Jesette. These are Tiffanie last hurtles to jump over to self growth. They are her biggest ones. And thankfully she has long legs to jump with.

[the-12i-times-jerome-reporting]

Don't Dream It's Over: An Anthem of Hope and Resilience

Crowded House's "Don't Dream It's Over" is more than just a catchy 80s tune; it's an anthem of hope and resilience that has resonated with listeners for decades. Released in 1986 as part of their self-titled debut album, the song, penned by Neil Finn, quickly climbed the charts, reaching number two on the Billboard Hot 100 and achieving international acclaim. But its enduring popularity lies in its universal message of perseverance in the face of adversity, a message that transcends generations and continues to inspire today.

At its core, "Don't Dream It's Over" is a song about holding onto hope even when things seem bleak. The lyrics paint a picture of despair: "When the words in your head are saying surrender," "When the sky is so gray and the clouds are all bluster." These lines evoke a sense of hopelessness, of feeling overwhelmed by challenges and negativity. Yet, the song's powerful refrain, "Don't dream it's over," serves as a defiant counterpoint, a call to resist the urge to give up.

The song's message is particularly poignant in its acknowledgment of the difficulty of maintaining hope in dark times. Finn sings, "I know, I know, I know it's hard to see the light when you're surrounded by darkness." This line speaks to the very real struggle of finding optimism when faced with adversity. It's a recognition of the human tendency to succumb to doubt and despair when challenges seem insurmountable.

However, "Don't Dream It's Over" doesn't simply acknowledge the struggle; it offers a way forward. The lyrics, "But I believe in you, and I know you can make it," provide a much-needed boost of encouragement. This message of belief and support is crucial, as it reminds listeners that they are not alone in their struggles. It suggests that even when we doubt ourselves, there are others who believe in our ability to overcome challenges.

The song's enduring appeal lies in its ability to connect with listeners on a deeply personal level. Its message of resilience resonates with anyone who has faced setbacks, disappointments, or challenges in life. Whether it's a relationship breakdown, a career setback, or a personal struggle, the song's message of hope offers comfort and encouragement. It reminds us that even when we feel like giving up, we have the strength to persevere.

Furthermore, "Don't Dream It's Over" has taken on new meaning in various social and political contexts. Its message of hope and resilience has been adopted by movements advocating for social change, environmental protection, and political reform. The song's call to action, "Don't give up now," has become a rallying cry for those fighting for a better future.

Musically, "Don't Dream It's Over" is a masterpiece of pop songwriting. Its soaring melody, lush harmonies, and memorable chorus create a sense of uplift and optimism that perfectly complements the song's lyrical message. The song's instrumentation, featuring acoustic and electric guitars, keyboards, and drums, creates a rich and textured soundscape that adds depth and emotion to the music.

The song's iconic music video, directed by Alex Proyas, further enhances its message of hope and resilience. The video features a dreamlike sequence of surreal imagery, including a floating house, a melting clock, and a dancing couple. These images symbolize the fragility of dreams and the importance of holding onto them in the face of adversity.

In conclusion, "Don't Dream It's Over" is more than just a pop song; it's a timeless anthem of hope and resilience that continues to inspire listeners around the world. Its message of perseverance in the face of adversity, its universal appeal, and its musical brilliance have cemented its place as one of the greatest songs of all time. Whether you're facing personal challenges or fighting for a better world, "Don't Dream It's Over" reminds us to never give up on our dreams.

Jerome Weidinger

www.the-12i-times.com

jerome.weidinger@gmail.com

WhatsApp + 61 (0) 493 740 834