#owing a billion people a hundred different things

[kawuli]

so, my parents and I came halfway across the country to take care of my nephew while my sister and brother in law have a long weekend in New Orleans for his 40th birthday.

my dad went to urgent care this morning for what we thought was a stomach bug. Instead he's having his gallbladder removed tomorrow.

and the thing h that's been running through my head all day (other than shit I'm responsible for a 2yo now) is "thank God he's over 65 and on Medicare"

because if he was on private insurance my mom would have had to call around to figure out if there even IS an in-network hospital and if his insurance would cover emergency surgery in a different state. They might well have had to book a flight home to go to the ER there.

a couple decades ago, when my dad would have asthma attacks and need to go to the ER, mom would drive him half an hour to get to the in-network hospital because of they went to the one a couple miles away they'd end up owing maybe thousands of dollars in copays.

when I was living in the Netherlands people would ask me about this stuff - I was there during the years when the Republicans kept shutting down the government and trying to repeal Obamacare - and they were shocked that yes, it really is that bad. People can just die because they can't afford medical care.

which is insane! objectively nuts! there is no excuse for that in a country that spends hundreds of billions of dollars on weapons.

but here we are.

and thank God my dad is old enough to be on Medicare.

[heckpoint]

I feel like the issue with the "not reproducing" bit is that it's skirting our existing definitions of "reproducing", it's machine-learning corporations playing a game of "I'm not touching you" with people's creative output.

The issue is the speed of automation, the ability to create soulless approximations of an artist's entire oeuvre very rapidly. If you wanted to be, say, a knockoff sakimichan in 2020, you had to practice for hundreds or thousands of hours. So becoming a copycat artist just took too much effort to serve as a cheap cash grab, if you wanted to become an artist, you were becoming an artist.

Now you can mass-produce bootlegs of dozens of different artists simultaneously, just by becoming yet more reliant on the very corporations that are heating the planet, trapping us in infinite-scroll dopamine/insecurity loops, and eroding labor standards. And start a patreon career off of it if you win the social media lottery.

What was done to Greg Rutkowski is not plagiarism by any traditional definition. But I don't think what happened to Greg Rutkowski should be tolerated and endorsed by society. Technical skill and generalized aesthetics fall outside the definitions of plagiarism, but what we have here is megacorporations and bandwagon riders enjoying a huge financial boom thanks to the onerous and expert labor of artists who are excluded from the ensuing economic process.

The proposals of compensation that I've seen, are very silly and absurd, because there's no precedent for anything like this. But "OpenAI" would not be able to rent out a little Greg Rutkowski homunculus in a can, as a subscription model, if not for there being a real Greg Rutkowski, who's had the means and dedication to become a painter, and the vision to develop his personal style.

A lot of these problems are problems with automation more broadly. But for one thing, there's a new quality of *targeted* automation emulating specific people's skill and ways of expression.

Usual machine learning models are a "black box". That means it's not trivial or unambiguous to tell how much each input (from the millions or billions of images in the dataset) factored into a given output.

I don't think the black-box status is a reason to forget the fact that the output is created derivatively, as a mathematical collage based on millions of different images (a lot of which are only factoring into it indirectly).

For starters, we shouldn't forget how the sausage is made, because corporations would like you to forget. Treating the model as a mystical oracle - when it's convenient, as an equivalent to human creativity, and when the opposite is convenient, as a soulless, objective machine directly plugged into The Cold Hard Truth - gives governments and corporations ways to shrug off responsibility, to say "I'm sorry, that's what the computer said. The computer is smarter of us, could it be wrong? Oh, it's wrong this time? Well, we need to rely on the computer to save time, the computer has the bigger picture, and if it's wrong sometimes, that's a trade-off we have to make".

The deadliest bombing campaign in history, in Gaza, enabled by Google, rapid authorization of air strikes because machine learning and software design have turned it into a Tinder-like minigame.

Industrial accidents, self-driving car accidents, police surveillance, multiplied, intensified, hand-waved by the ideology of the black-box neural network.

I know there's not much of an immediate connection between this, and the original question of "Do machine learning corporations owe the artists who created the training data?".

But machine learning systems for the public, corporate machine learning systems and government/military machine learning systems are all interconnected, both financially (same corporations - "FAANG", "MANTA" etc), and in terms of the actual technology (image generation is related to image recognition. Uses of image recognition include face surveillance and military targeting among many other things. Ad profiling is just a civilian use for straight-up behavioral surveillance. There are countless other examples, it's a good idea to read up on the "dual-use problem".)

How we conceptualize machine learning systems determines how the public treats them, and how the public treats them is a huge factor in how they will shape our future.

sorry, a bit confused on your AI art take. Are you pro-AI art on the simple basis that humans have to input a prompt first? What of the artists whose work was stolen for that data set? Do they just not matter or have you just not considered them?

i'm not 'pro-AI' -- i don't really care about the technology itself as more than a novelty. i think there's some really talented people doing cool things with it but as a new artform the vast majority of the stuff being made with it fucking sucks. it enables a lot of really shitty business practices (that, mind you, were already standard -- it just makes them easier). much like any advancent in productive technology its implementation under capitalism will inevitably be immiserating. i just think that 1. generative art is indisputably art and almost every argument i've seen that it isn't is openly reactionary and 2. many of the arguments against it are equally reactionary petty-bourgeois nonense that drown out the actual labour concerns of how employers' use of it affects the proletariat.

that said i simply don't believe that anyone's work is being 'stolen' when datasets are created and AI is trained on them. they're not being deprived of anything! i definitionally think something cannot be a 'theft' if nothing is lost or taken, and i furthermore think that the ability to freely scrape words and images off the internet is actually incredibly vital to a lot of very important research and the idea that it represents 'theft' when those words and images are not even being reproduced is absolute nonsense.

like when people say that images have been used "without compensation", what do they imagine "compensation" looks like? like, the CLIP dataet that DALL-E 2 was trained on has 400 million images in it. DALL-E 2 charges (after a free trial period) $0.02 per image. so should each of the owners (not creators, mind you, because IP law does not protect creators and in fact demonstrably does the opposite) of the images in CLIP then get $0.000000005 whenever DALL-E 2 generates an image? be serious! barbie playset of the bulgarian presidential palace

[dikiyvter]

       Okay yeah, I’m officially calling it, here’s a very light semi-hiatus / general v low activity notice for October, I’m just not in a mentally sustainable place rn and trying to keep up with things around here and lately I am VERY much feeling this vague weight of ‘I Owe Things’ in terms of rp in general which has become a major bit of a Stressor on top of everything I’m dealing w/ OOC-- Not to mention I will be on the other end of the country from the 24th -28th, and I need to make sure everything is prepared for that, and I just--

       I’m sorry guys but I feel like I’m drowning and I need to lighten the load

[swagatron9]

Forbidden Love | Chapter one |

Parings: Cho Sang-woo x fem!guard

Notes: I'm not too sure about this chapter, I'm hoping the other ones will be better.

The amount of money I owed to people was almost unbelievable, whether these debts would be from school, hospital bills or simply because I owed my money to a group of thugs who I thought were there to help me. This is the problem that I suffered from before I found myself getting slapped for 100,000 won from a man who then offered me a chance to win more.

One week later, I was no longer in debt and found myself having 56.2 billion won. Five hundred sixty-one people had to die in order to gain that money, and with it, I was able to pay off everything that caused me to be in debt in the first place and still have plenty leftover.

I always question whether or not I was an evil person for spending the money, even if I needed it so bad. But then I would think about all the people that returned even after being given the option to leave. They made the decision to stay, knowing the consequences. At the end of the day, none of us were good people; we all made the selfish choice to stay. The only thing evil about me was the fact that I returned, but this time I was a guard.

For every player or even guard that we killed, we received half of what that person was worth, the other half going to the victims' families.

When I had first joined the red team, I would repeatedly tell myself that no one would die at my hands. I didn't need the money at the end of the day, but it was lonely being on my own. Returning back to the secluded island that could almost be called a torture device brought an unusual sense of familiarity. I wasn't there for long, but the time I was there, I was able to make friends, something I struggled with outside of the games.

I had become disassociated from reality. I no longer wanted to leave the house, and it was like my body had lost all emotions. That's how it felt when I finally got free.

A year after I won the games and returned with blood money, I met again with the man who started the chaos altogether. I had gone for a walk after not leaving my house for an extended period of time, when I came across him throw an envelope, playing the exact same game that we played together.

As soon as the man had received his card, I snatched it out of his hand before going back home and calling the number. That was how I found myself becoming a guard in the same games that I had before.

I started off as a circle guard, cleaning up the bodies and preparing food, a year after, I was promoted to a triangle guard giving me more privilege than those who consisted of a circle on their mask. Then the following year, I was given a choice to become a square guard, meaning I could boss the other guards around.

Eventually, I had become close enough with the Frontman that I had found myself saving his life on one occasion, and he promised to return the favour one day.

This all led to me being here, standing at the front of the room as I looked over at all the new players who were yet to find out what they had to do to win the money they were promised. "I would like to extend a heartfelt welcome to you all. Everyone here will participate in sex different games over six days. Those who win all six games will receive a handsome cash prize." I recited the exact words that were to be said every time we introduced them to the games.

"And why should we believe that?" A man from the crowd called out. "You took all our stuff and put us to sleep coming here, and then you brought us to this strange warehouse. Now you're saying you'll pay us if we go and play a few games? You really expect us to buy that?" He continued to explain.

I sighed. "We reluctantly took all those measures to maintain confidentiality as we brought you here. We'll return everything once the games are over." The man looked down as he no longer had anything more to say.

"You all have masks. Why are you wearing those things?" A woman asked.

"We do not disclose the faces and personal information of our staff to any of the participants. It's a measure we take to ensure fair games and confidentiality. Please understand-"

"Well, I don't believe you one bit. You got that?" The group of green-suited people moved apart to form an opening to get a clear view of the man who decided to interrupt my explanations. "You tricked us. We were kidnapped. You can make as many excuses as you want to make sure nobody knows you broke the law in her. If you're going to make up for that, then we're going to need something more." The way the man spoke told me who he was and what kind of person he would be. He had the brains, that's for sure, but anyone wise wouldn't end up in a place like this. He clearly made some poor choices in life, and that could go one way or another in here.

"Player 218, Cho Sang-woo." I grabbed the remote from my pocket and clicked on the TV, the lights going out simultaneously. "Age, 46 years. Former team leader of Team Two at Joy investments. Siphoned money off his clients' balances, then invested it in derivatives and future options and failed. Current loss, 650 million won." Sang-woo bowed his head in shame as he avoided eye contact with everyone else acting like they weren't in similar situations. I then go on to do the same thing to other people, showing clips of them losing several games of Ddakji in order to gain 100,000 won. "Every person standing here in this room is living on the brink of financial ruin. You all have debts that you can't pay off. When we first went to see each of you, not a single one of you trusted us. But as you all know, we played a game, and as we promised, gave you money when you won. And suddenly, everyone here trusted us. You called and volunteered to participate in this game of your own free will. So this is it, I'll give you one last chance to choose. Will you go back to living your old and depressing lives getting chased by your creditors? Or will you act and seize this last opportunity we're offering here?" Suddenly everyone began to mumble between each other. I cursed every one of them for being as foolish as I was to believe the words of strangers when they promise you money.

"Hey! Which games are we playing?"

"In order to play fair, we cannot disclose any information about the games ahead of time," I answered. Although it was true, it wasn't completely honest. Who would promote the opportunity to play a series of games to win money, but the catch was that you die if you lose?

"One question. If we win, just how much do we get?" Player 456 asked, he was the one that was screaming for our help when he was confronted by one of the other players. This was my favourite part. With a click of a button on the controller, music began to play, and lights began to shine as the empty piggy bank was slowly brought down. "Your prize money will be accumulated in there after every game. We will disclose the amount to everyone after the first game is over. If you do not wish to participate, then please let us know at this time."

Guards began to bring out tables where they stacked sheets of paper where players would give written consent to be a part of the games that were created.

This year I was told there would be a new game for the fifth round and apparently, it was 'more exciting than any of the others played' I don't know if I would use the term exciting when describing the death of human life.

The players were quick to form lines when the booths were set up. The clueless people would sign away their lives, not knowing what was behind those doors.

I observed from behind as all the players appeared happy, some of which had giant smiles on their faces as they imagined a world where they would live with the unknown amount of money they thought they would get.

I crossed my fingers, hoping that at least one of them would backtrack and pull out of the games; only hope wasn't on my side today.

It was rare that the players actually read what was on the consent form. I can't lie and say that I did because I didn't. I was exactly like all these players back then. Greedy and hungry for money.

As everyone signed away their rights, music began playing through the speakers. 'Attention, all players. The first game is about to begin.'

The players exited the room as they followed one of the masked circle guards, and I waited for everyone to leave before going my own way.

The Frontman's room was where I was given permission to stay and watch over the rounds, so that was where I went first.

The confusing hallways were hard to get through for someone with no experience, and sometimes I even found myself getting lost when I would doze off on my works, but eventually, I arrived at the Frontman's room just in time as the games were starting to begin.

'Here is the first game. You will be playing red light, green light.' That was what I heard as I pushed open the doors and found the Frontman sitting in his armchair.

"Nice of you to join me." He called as he poured a glass of whiskey.

'You are allowed to move forward when "it" shouts out, "Green Light," stop when "it" shouts, "red light." If your movement is detected afterwards, you will be eliminated.'

"Better quality," I mumbled as I sat down.

'Let me repeat the rules. You are allowed to move forward when "it" shouts out, "Green Light," stop when "it" shouts, "red light." If your movement is detected afterwards, you will be eliminated. Those players who cross the finish line without being eliminated within the five-minute playtime will pass this round. With that, let the game begin.'

The Frontman chuckled as he took off his mask and downed his shot. I didn't dare look his way. I had already seen his face on one occasion, but that was a matter of life or death situation. He didn't mean to show it to me. I was lucky to live as long as I had afterwards.

'Greenlight!'

I watched as the two friends took off in hopes of being the winner of a competition they created together. I couldn't lie. Some of the players this time around were quite cute. Some of them may be a bit old for me, but still cute.

'Redlight!'

The boy at the very front slid to stop, but he wasn't quick enough as he still continued to fumble around well after the robot had announced to stop.

'Player 324. Eliminated.'

It wasn't long now until the chaos would begin. "The first one to go out. I must say I expected someone else, but that's what happens when you think you're better than everyone else." Frontman tsked.

Player 250 smirked at his friend, thinking he had one more money due to winning the competition between the two, only to frown as he heard the gunshot go off, and his friend dropped to the ground.

'Greenlight!'

This time around, the players moved with hesitancy, wanting to find out what had indeed happened to the man on the ground.

'Redlight!'

I watched as it all played out. The sight of the man on the ground spewing out blood that startles his friend to the point where he turns around and runs away, making the mistake of moving when greenlight hadn't been announced.

He was shot before he could get far, and as he did, his blood was sprayed all over a woman behind him. This caused everyone to go into a mass panic as she cried.

Players were shot from every direction as they ran towards what they thought would be their escape.

They pounded against the door, and this made the Frontman laugh. "Get's them every time." I could hear the smile in his tone of voice as everyone in front of us died.

'I will now repeat the rules. You are allowed to move forward when "it" shouts out, "Green Light," stop when "it" shouts, "red light." If your movement is detected afterwards, you will be eliminated. With that, let the game resume.'

Everyone was frozen with fear as no one moved a muscle, everyone except player 1.

I had been informed beforehand who player one was, hence the reason he was so quick to move and held a giant smile on his face.

As the games went on, everyone was up and walking; players got shot every round as they disobeyed the game's rules. Others developed tactical moves of standing behind others to cover their movement. Some even tried to sacrifice others and get them eliminated.

'Fly Me to the Moon' began to play as the rounds passed by as people dropped like flies.

As most people began to reach the end, they would throw themselves over the lines to ensure they kept their lives.

My heart stuttered as I watched player 456 trips over the body of another player, only to be taken by surprise at the strength player 199 had to hold him up. "What a shame."

After the time ran out, everyone leftover was shot, and that was the end of round one.

"Not as many players were killed this time around, and certainly not as many were killed as from your games. It went from 562 to 122 real quick. I was almost worried that we wouldn't be able to burn all the bodies before the next round because of how many were eliminated. Any ideas on who you think will win?" Frontman asked as he stood up. He let the final part of 'Fly Me to the Moon' play before he turned it off, as well as the TV we were watching from.

"67, 218, 62, maybe. There are a few good ones this year." I recall seeing those three performing well and all having similar strategies that they came up with before all the others.

"We'll just have to see how this plays off."

[anheliotrope]

I have picked a number of comments from this HN thread that initially spurred my post in order to illustrate what I mean to you.

I'm not sure what you consider to be a salient example and what you consider to qualify as "in the wild". So I don't know if any of these examples rise to the standards you're hinting at.

Then again, I also wasn't clear about the type of person I'm talking about, so I don't know if we have the same image in our heads.

I know if I talk to my "normie" friends or my family, that half of them will be repeating similar notions to the ones in these posts.

The different strands of, what I consider to be, fallacious death coping mechanisms, are numerous but also tend to spring from similar origins. For example, I collected two comments here talk about how we owe it to evolution to die in for the benefit of the species. This is basically a rehashing of "great natural cycle" and "part of a greater whole" except in a format that is more compatible with scientism.

I also genuinely don't know what you're referring to when you say "ideology". I don't quite think of "deathism" as an "ideology". I think of it as a complex of many different cultural beliefs (or memes), a lot of them having existed for hundreds to thousands of years, that push people closer to accepting aging and death as a given (for non-logistical reasons*) or ascribe virtues to it that are either subjective or outright fallacious.

\* - What I mean here is that people who accept some measure of aging and death as unsolvable due to material, technological and sociological concerns are largely exempt from being bucketed in the same category.

Anyway, some caveats regarding the comments:

Some are more central than others to the thing I'm talking about.

Me quoting them here doesn't mean I think the poster is a moron. I'm not trying to do a name and shame here.

A significant portion of these comments are heavily downvoted. I'm not trying to imply it is a popular way of thinking on HackerNews, just that it is popular enough that people with these opinions still make their way to a popular tech board.

I tried to not copy paste repeated arguing from the same user, but there is probably a bit of duplication in this list (a few comments will be from the same user, but the majority are not).

I had to exclude some posts that were excessively mixing logistical concerns and philosophical concerns.

No, it isn’t sad that we die. It’s extremely important that we do — if not just for getting rid of some of humanity’s worst humans.

It's the ego that dies. Awareness is eternal. You the awareness is already here and now for eternity. Ego is the idea of you. The loosely connected memories that you consider as you.

Just my 2 cents - "why on earth would you ever want to die" Because its the end of any worry, doubt, suffering, fear, uncertainty. Because its over. And youll be dead, so you wont be able to feel what youre missing out on. The finality of death is a beautiful and comforting eventuality in my opinion.

I think that what most pro-immortality people forget is that forever is not just a very long time, our finite thinking does not allow us to understand something that never start or never ends and that death is life just as light is darkness and heat is cold one cannot exist without the other.

What is there to be afraid of about death, exactly? If you don't believe in any afterlife or continuation, then there will be no consciousness to perceive the other side of death. If you do believe in an afterlife or continuation, you'll have spent your life preparing accordingly.

I didn't exist for billions of years before I gained consciousness as a child. I'm sure I won't mind not existing for billions of years after my system expires.

Death is just the name we give to the moment when the condensed energy that is moving this system that calls itself a body breaks down into a temporarily simpler state. At some point I'll get caught up in some whirlpool of energy and find myself crawling out of some uterus again as I have time and time again for all of eternity. Yippee.

One of the most constant lessons of literature and mythology is that people who dedicate themselves to becoming immortal inevitably spend their life harming others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Men_Are_Mortal a great book on this. It shows how the immortal are withered away by time and futility of there attempts to change history and be a permanent influence. Meanwhile, the mortal while shortlifed and with only one poker chip in the game, play and win/loose with all the passion they have and form a sort of river, that withers the immortals plans and dreams down to zero.

You are confusing You-level and mankind-level, it was never about You. Meaning is there, but its not kind to people who think themselves as center of universe and mandatory part of it (we all are of our own version of reality but thats not what I mean). Life well lived is a life thats easier to let go, believing in afterlife or not. Now what does that mean is highly individual but for most its around friends, family and children, mostly children. Most prople with kids have no problem seeing that meaning in mortality, plus there are even more logical and potent arguments (resources, selfishness, not ending up with immortal dictator forever etc but thats for longer)

Death is a preferable outcome to immortality. If there is no death, there will only be more suffering, as suffering is in human nature. We experience pain, and want to return that pain.

I really loathe the hubris of modern people who think we shouldn't die like everyone did for millennia before us. Yes, we live longer and we have better medicine, stop trying to live forever.

For now it looks like death can't be "solved" at all. You may be able to prolong individual human life, even by a lot. But how to solve entropy and the end of an empty, cold universe? There is even speculation that life is from a certain angle only an effect to accelerate entropy under the umbrella of the Maximum Entropy Production Principle (but I do not remember the source). So from the standpoint of current knowledge of how nature works this seems to look dire. I also personally disagree. I do not think that the beautiful chaos of life is strictly preferable to the requiem eternam of death. I'll go when I have to, without hesitation and regrets. It's not the things that terrify us, but our opinion of the things.

"Solving death" won’t help humanity. Isn’t that obvious to you?? For a starter, birth rates and death rates should be about the same otherwise it’s not sustainable. If you "solve death", birth rates will need to drop a lot. Do you want to live in a world with almost no children? Just very old people all over the place. Sounds like a nightmare to me. You need to let go, accept your mortality and leave some room for new humans to live. At some point you’ll have had your time, death is part of life.

Don't forget that death is a required feature for a specie to evolve. It might be the case that immortal organisms lived on earth, the fact that we don't see them around just confirms that dying is a competitive advantage, not a problem. We are not the end of evolution, we need to overcome our individual desire to stay here an leave to make room for the next iteration.

Somehow, all people suddenly do wish to be immortal when they realize their death is very close. At this point I'm convinced it's a very strong, socially normalized form of learned helplessness.

Death is no big deal.

"There is no such thing as death at all for this body. The only death is the end of the illusion, the end of the fear, the end of the knowledge that we have about ourselves and the world around us." "There is no such thing as permanence at all. Everything is constantly changing. Everything is in flux."

Fear of death is a misunderstanding of what life is. [cont... in different post] In an eternity all individual events lose their meaning. An endless life is a meaningless life.

Materialistic people are so consumed by the fear of death that they yearn for immortality, craving endless time to create and acquire more distractions—little toys to appease their restless minds. It's ironic that in their quest to escape mortality, they lose touch with the essence of life itself. Humanity, as a collective, has driven us to this point, where the pursuit of material wealt overshadows the potential for deeper connections and meaningful experiences. Our struggle against it reveals this deeper disconnection which is evident from the our so many attempts to "enhance" life - to extend it further all the way to infinity. We became so preoccupied with that task that we often fail to fully embrace the current truth: finite life. In this quest to conquer the inevitable, we miss the opportunity to find meaning and peace within the natural flow of our existence.

The insane amount of hubris and entitlement on display among the pro immortality crowd here is enough to make me terrified of the tech sector.

Death is a moral responsibility. You owe your existence to evolution. Evolution would not work if we had to compete for resources with all of the organisms that came before us when they didn't die off. Death is an integral part of living a bringing our species forward. Your responsibility is to make the best of your time here. Have fun, love, and contribute to society and science if you can. Then die and make room for the next generations.

You can rant against it all you want, but we already live much longer than is justifiable from the evolutionary perspective. If it was up to the evolution alone, we wouldn’t live past 50. So try to make something of your life while it lasts. Or just enjoy the festivities, that’s perfectly valid, too.

A lot of the time when seeing deathists talk on the topic of life extension makes me want to reach out and say "the cultural tech we as humans developed to avoid freaking out about death is working too well on you and you're stupid on this topic forever now. I am sorry."

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Dead, broke

Of all the moving, wrenching accounts of death during the pandemic, Molly McGhee’s “America’s Dead Souls,” for The Paris Review stands out: haunting, furious and sad, an rude awakening of the status quo that denies any possibility of inaction.

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2021/05/17/americas-dead-souls/

I’ve known McGhee a long time, since she worked on my book INFORMATION DOESN’T WANT TO BE FREE from McSweeneys, a professional association we renewed when she landed at Tor.

During the pandemic crisis, I’ve had two different connections to her: on the one hand, the consummate professionalism of her emails as we published my novel ATTACK SURFACE in the middle of the lockdown.

On the other hand, I knew her through her wrenching and deeply personal Twitter account of the personal tragedies she’s endured over the same period. Her Paris Review essay brings those tragedies into sharp focus and uses them to pin a huge and heretofore ill-defined feeling.

McGhee’s mother died during the crisis, but the death was the culmination of years of hardship: “[earning] less than $10,000 a year. Suffering from debilitating depression while caring for her aging parents…chronically unemployed, undermedicated, and overstressed.”

Her mother’s debts were on public display through searchable databases, and her life was haunted by both con artists and bill collectors who carpet-bombed her with calls, letters and emails.

She was too poor to fight back: her wages were garnished by the IRS “for back taxes calculated from a years-old misfiling they refused to correct.” McGhee sent her months of her salary, but it wasn’t enough.

She had no answer for her mother’s rhetorical questions, “Why are these people harassing me? What good does it do them?”

Because the answer is obvious and insufficient: “The people in power don’t care if we live or die, as long as they get paid.”

It only took two days after McGhee’s mother died for her creditors to begin harassing her for her mother’s debts. The state of Tennessee seized the house, but Wells Fargo expected her to make good on the mortgage.

The hospital where McGhee’s mother died wanted a quarter of a million dollars. McGhee, not even 26, was staring down the barrel of the weapon that had been trained on her mother, the inheritor of nothing but debt.

The debt-machine is efficient. Bill collectors found out about McGhee’s mother’s death before McGhee’s own family got word. And they’re remorseless, immune to McGhee’s “pleading, bargaining, reasoning, denying, uploading, scanning, begging, faxing, and crying.”

McGhee compares it to Gogol’s “Dead Souls,” a surreal tale of a grifter named Chichikov who buys dead serfs’ souls to sell for profit.

It’s only surreal if you’ve never been in the debt system’s crosshairs, “where one day of lost wages can compound into houselessness.”

We live in a system of winners and losers. The winners’ winnings come from debt, shielded from the system’s cruelty by “professionalism and bureaucracy” that insulate them — and their functionaries — from “feelings of culpability, not to mention empathy or curiosity.”

Poor people have less money, but the system is firmly focused poor people, because people with money can defend themselves. When McGhee went into debt to hire a lawyer, a single letter on official letterhead instantly reduced all that debt by 90% — more than $250k, poof.

It’s expensive to be poor. Take Community Health Systems, one of the largest hospital chains in America. It sues the shit out of poor people. When those people can afford lawyers, CHS loses, because it is chasing debts it is not entitled to collect.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/18/unhealthy-balance-sheet/#health-usury

CHS itself owes $7.6 billion. It turned its first profit in 2020, thanks to hundreds of millions of dollars in state and federal subsidies, and its executives pocketed millions in “performance bonuses” for a performance that consisted of getting bailed out by the public.

The Trump stimulus handed trillions to the richest people and biggest companies in America. Those companies “leveraged up” their handouts to raise trillions more and went on spending sprees, buying up struggling businesses.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/17/divi-recaps/#graebers-ghost

They loaded these companies up with debt, declared “divi recaps” (where you take out a loan on a company you bought on credit and put that money in your own pocket as a “special dividend”) and crashed the companies, destroying jobs and communities.

Plutes know there are three kinds of debt: workers’ debts (which must be repaid), owners’ debts (to be “restructured” away) and government debt (not debt at all, but still handy for terrifying normies with stories of “mortgaging our kids’ futures”).

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/17/disgracenote/#false-consciousness

Forty years of this approach has turned the economy into a shambling zombie, dependent on the fiction that “consumer” debts — repackaged as bonds through financialization — will be repaid, somehow.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers

As an ever-larger share of the world’s wealth has shifted from the workers’ side of the balance sheet to the owners’, the ability of workers to buy things to keep businesses afloat as vehicles for debt-leveraging has only declined.

Wage-theft and stagnation, unions in retreat, monopoly, monopsony, tax-preferencing for home-owners over renters, for capital gains over wages, spiraling housing, health and education costs, worker misclassification — wages are annihilated before they’re even deposited.

With no wages left over to fund consumption, there’s only debt, and as Michael Hudson says, “Debts that can’t be repaid, won’t be repaid.” CHS can comfortably carry billions in debts, but the sick people it sues for $201 have to choose between rent and medical debt.

Every loan-shark knows how this works. The chump with $500 who owes you $500 and owes the bank $500 needs an incentive to pay you ahead of the bank. To assert the primacy of your claims, you need an arm-breaker.

The digital world has given us all kinds of fantastic new arm-breakers: digital repo men who can brick your car or your phone. It’s automated the once rare practice of evictions, creating eviction mills that run with devastating efficiency.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers

Creating a debt-instrument — a bond grounded in the payments from other peoples’ debts — requires that you convince investors and bond-rating agencies that your arm-breaker will terrorize the debtors into paying you instead of child-support or grocery bills.

“The cruelty is the point” isn’t ideology, it’s pure description. The system — an artificial life-form constituted as immortal colony organism that uses us as gut flora — runs on competing claims to your debt, and victory consists of terrorizing you more than any rival.

The financiers who practice leveraged buyouts destroy real businesses, ruin lives and hollow out communities. They are feted as “job creators.” The workers who must borrow to close the gap they leave are “deadbeats.” Leveraged buyouts are back, baby.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/14/billionaire-class-solidarity/#club-deals

If you fret that forgiving student loans and making college free will “saddle our kids with debt,” then you’ve been suckered.

Look. Replacing a system that starts all but the richest children with unserviceable debt with one that doesn’t is liberation, not bondage.

Since Reagan, we’ve been hiking tuition, killing deductions for interest, and shielding student debt from bankruptcy.That’s how you can borrow $79k, pay $190k, still owe $236k, and have 25% taken from every paycheck AND Social Security until you die.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/04/kawaski-trawick/#strike-debt

Debts that can’t be paid, won’t be paid. Student debts do get forgiven, but only for those highly educated, (potentially) highly productive people who can prove that they have been so thoroughly destroyed by debt that they have no future.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/20/sovkitsch/#student-debt

And as McGhee reminds us, the tragedy isn’t merely that we educate people on the pretense of betting on America’s future, but really, the principle use that the system makes of the educated is as collateral for securitized loans.

If the arm-breakers who chased her mother wanted to understand that woman’s humanity, McGhee says they should start here:

“Her humor and her rage were unmatched. In the evenings, against the setting Tennessee sun, she liked to drink red can Cokes in the garden while snuffing cigarettes out against the yard’s ant colonies. She could reckon with anyone just by looking them in the eye. Men were terrified of her, rightfully so. She was sweet. In the last week of her life, when she couldn’t understand where she was or who she was talking to, she greeted everyone the same: ‘Hi, pal. Hope you’re doing okay. When can you come pick me up?’”

Take a second. Re-read that.

[fanfic-collection]

Loki x Reader: Apocalypse - Ch 9

I'm running out of chapters that I've written, uhoh. Looks like I have hunker down and really write again.

-

You looked at Loki, then back to Tony, then did a double take and winced, “Surprise?”

“Honestly, this would happen to me.” Tony shook his head. “Really. I was having a relatively normal day in the face of an apocalypse, and now my cousin shows up with one of the Asgardians. Great. We haven’t seen Thor in ages, and just, boom. Out pops Loki. That is absolutely what I needed.” Tony started nodding as he spoke. “So what are you doing here Rock of Ages? Are you behind this weather? Global conquest, being a little shit, just ruining humanity’s day, killing for fun,” Tony held out his hand towards you, “What is that thing on his neck, did you capture him? Why are his eyes covered? Good job if so.”

“Well if you took a minute to stop talking, he could answer you.” You replied coolly.

“Is that thing on his neck the reason you wanted the cutter? Because nope, no thank you, whatever it is, it’s staying on. It looks like it’s,”

Loki stepped forward and pulled off the gauze. It wasn’t a normal step, it was a threat.

Tony looked at him and his Ironman gloves came on, hands at the ready, “Back off, I will shoot.”

“Has it occurred to you,” Loki sneered, “that things have not changed between myself and humanity since we last saw each other?”

Tony blinked taking in Loki’s eyes, “Uh, what’s up with,” he waved his hand in front of his own eyes.

“I wouldn’t know.” Loki replied, his voice colder than the outside, “I can’t see.”

“That’s part of why I asked you to come.” You piped up timidly.

Tony looked between the two of you, confusion scrambling his features.

“Please can I have the cutter?” You asked, reaching your hand out towards Tony, “look at him, those spikes are digging into his skin, he’s bleeding constantly.”

“Maybe he deserves it.”

Loki rolled his red eyes. “Oh yes, my loving father, torturing me continuously, I’m sure you would agree given your history with your oh so wonderful father.”

Tony clenched his jaw, “What do you know about my father?”

“I know a great many things about all of the Avengers. You will recall my time on Midgard when…” Loki paused and picked at his hand, “I was not quite myself.”

Tony laughed sarcastically, “Yea, we remember.”

You interjected, “And we also remember how you heroically died trying to kill Thanos.”

Loki looked up from the vague direction of his palm where he had bowed his head slightly, his blank eyes searching for your voice.

“And all the other Avengers are no saints by their own standards either, they’ve had their crimes they’ve committed in order to do good, or to come back from it and turn their lives around. Surely everyone deserves a second chance, no?” You elbowed Tony.

“He’s had his second chance.” Tony grumbled.

“When he died stopping dark elves from invading earth?” You offered.

“Ok, hello, since when are you so knowledgeable in all things Loki?”

“I talked to him, you should try it some time. When he was recovering, asked him about his life. You know, when you ask people about what they’ve been through, really listen, sometimes they share things. You could stand to learn a thing or two about people around you.” You narrowed your eyes at Tony.

Loki stood there unmoving.

“Fine! Fine! Throw in with him, betray humanity, I’ll have nothing to do with it. Take the damned cutter, but we’re hunting you down as soon as I leave. This is the last we speak.”

Loki sighed, “You really are an imbecile, Stark. Is your pride so great?”

“What?” Tony rounded on Loki, pointing a finger at him, though it had no effect.

“The monsters you humans need fear are frost giants. Those are what are hunting you in droves, and if I would stand to guess, I imagine they brought some of their beasts along as well.” Loki replied, crossing his arms.

Tony looked at you then back to Loki.

“That’s the information we were going to give you in exchange for the cutter.” You said, holding your hand out palm up.

Tony slowly set the cutter in your palm. “Expand.”

“Your cousin and I were attacked in a produce store by three of them. I am… not at my best at current, and they got the jump on me. They are also enhanced by some means, their weapons are different than normal Jotun weapons.”

“Which means?” Tony asked.

“That even if I were at my full power, healing my vision wouldn’t be a possibility. They’ve used ancient magicks, magick that goes back into the depths of time. It is very difficult to learn such techniques.”

You furrowed your brow, “Why didn’t you learn it?”

“Surely Doctor Strange would know it then?” Tony asked.

Loki sighed, “I’m very young, it takes centuries to learn and master, one has to commit fully to it. I have been working on other magical practices, so such things fell to the side.”

“You got a physics degree instead of a mathematics?” You offered.

“Essentially.” Loki turned in Tony’s direction. “That half rate sorcerer would not even know of such magick. What he knows is from books, and mostly books on Midgard. No, you need to travel the cosmos to learn this, even if he still had the time stone he would need to know where to travel, where to look, who to ask, what to seek.”

“Oh.” Tony leaned over towards you and muttered, “he’s still arrogant as hell, you really let him sleep with you?”

“Fuck, Tony, we shared a bed, and he can hear you.” You cried out, shoving Tony away. Though you were too busy to notice the pink on Loki’s face.

“Ok so fine, fine. What’s the creepy collar thing for then?” Tony asked.

“I’d rather not say until it’s off,” Loki paused, “If it can be taken off.”

“Fine, god of lies. Have at it, cousin.”

You stepped forward and gripped the collar carefully, looking at Loki’s face intently. Unbidden, Loki’s hand reached up to grip your arm. You could feel his warm breath on your face as you looked up at him. Your eyes lingered on his thin, pale lips, his square chin and sharp nose and cheekbones. Trying not to bite your lip, you whispered, “Do you trust me?”

You could see Loki swallow before he replied, “Yes.”

Pressing the cutter on, you held it to the metal. A thin beam of energy passed between the two prongs at the end of the red tube. The cold metal hissed and screamed as the energy beam pressed against it, your hand vibrating dangerously. Loki reached up and gripped your hand, steadying it.

“Easy, love. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.” Loki murmured, the disappointment evident in his voice.

You pressed against the metal harder. The tool screeched and shook violently, threatening to slide up and down the metal columns of the collar but you held fast with Loki’s help. Your heart pounded in your chest, you knew it was going to give, you just knew it, and you knew if you pressed in on the metal too hard, it would give and your hand would fly through and strike Loki in the throat.

Pulling your hand back, you tried to keep it in place, just enough that the beam would eat through the metal but not move forward. The beam was so bright, you wanted to look away, but you couldn’t, you had to be sure you did this right.

One final ear-wrenching screech and your hand shot forward. Lightning fast, you snapped the tool off, succeeding in only grazing Loki’s throat and leaving a mark resembling a small hickey.

You let out a soft gasp of relief.

Loki pulled his hand away from yours, feeling the broken metal. He had cried out softly at the burn but compared to other pain he had felt, it may as well have been a curling iron. The tool cooled fast for safety reasons. Loki touched the cut part that slid down, one side no longer digging into his throat. With a mixture of giddy relief, he laughed.

Tony leaned around and saw the cut metal, “Well not bad me.” He squinted at the mark on Loki’s neck.

You narrowed your eyes and held up the cutter.

Tony opened his mouth to say something.

You cut him off with an angry look and mouthed, “Don’t.” Then you turned back to Loki, “How are you feeling?”

“I believe as long as it’s on me it’s going to keep working.” Loki sighed, “assuming taking it off even works.”

“Well, hey, even if it doesn’t help, at least you’ll be able to move.”

“Yes, thank you.”

And so the process continued, this time with the one by his chest. You wanted to delay the one under his chin as long as possible since it was so close to skin. Even as fast as you moved, that one would burn the bottom of his throat in a long strip before you could turn it off.

“Can you put like any nanites or something to protect him, Tony?” You asked as you struggled with the lower bar. “The last one is going to be nasty if not.”

“You know? I probably could.” Tony said thoughtfully. “But you owe me.”

“I assume you want to know what this contraption does.” Loki replied dryly.

“Bingo.”

“It makes me mortal.”

“Wait what?” Tony blanched, “Woah now, cousin, wait a minute, I don’t think cutting that off is the right idea.”

The lower bar snapped, the cutter shot forward and just in time you managed to only lightly singe Loki’s armor.

“We had a deal, Tony.” You growled.

“Nonbinding contract, oral agreements aren’t technically legally binding.” Tony replied.

Loki narrowed his eyes, looking slightly to the right of Tony. “Even without my sight and powers I am plenty lethal.”

“Yes well, I like my odds way more if you can’t go around using magic and surviving explosions and like fifty foot drops.”

“Tony! We had a deal!” You slapped Tony’s chest.

Tony looked at you stunned. “Did you just hit me?”

“Loki has been nothing but kind to me throughout the entirety of me knowing him.”

“Minus the murder of eighty-six people in a SHIELD bunker and two-hundred fifty or so people in New York plus billions in property damage.”

“As I recall, the SHIELD bunker was your director’s doing, he was the one playing with the tesseract, attempted to bury me in a last ditch attempt to stop me from escaping, failed and blamed it on me. And while I did hurt some people in New York, I do apologize for that, I wasn’t quite myself but that is neither here nor there. How is your Hulk, did the civilians he traumatized appreciate him? And the chitauri which you by now know wasn’t me. In fact, if the Hulk hadn’t shown up, you might have been better off, given the sheer amount of damage he added to the wreckage.”

Tony opened and closed his mouth pointing a finger at Loki.

“I assure you, whatever gesture you’re making at me is wasted.”

“Fine, you can use my nanites.” Tony grumbled. “You fell hard for this guy, huh?”

“That is none of your business and neither here nor there.” You huffed. As you turned back to Loki, a lingering ghost of a smile stayed on his face.

Then the nanites were on his throat and you began to cut.

[skaruresonic]

Guess that's the difference, you suppose. You snub God, He spanks you. You don't talk to the Creator, He forgets. To be honest, you'd rather take the blows. Forgetting cuts more.

It's like death. Ohronte. "Used to be." Like the bodies you'd lay out on the curb day upon monotonous day, drained and light, they used to be something. There's no such thing as dead. Not really. Knowing the difference doesn't comfort you as much as you think it would.

Longhouse says, Use your common sense and behave. That means it's up to you to be sensible. Don't drink. Don't gamble. Don't go killin' your mind with drugs. Don't act selfish-like, only out for your own.

Great Law's pretty easy to follow once you remember. But you're stupid. You forget.

---

After ten days, the mourning period concludes. Of course the afflicted will continue to mourn. However, it is this process that ensures they survive the sharpest birthing contractions of grief. Though the memory of pain always lingers, an inescapable shadow, it subsides in the presence of family.

Ten days, multiplied by eight billion. Innumerable homes to be cleaned; not enough food to cook. More time than a human being has to live, even if she opted to forfeit sleep for the rest of her days.

The world of the dead is an ever-growing one. The spirits are not ravaged with pain, though. They're simply weighed down by their sheer mass, clawing over one another, crabs scrambling in a bucket.

---

Mom, Tóta and Rita drown you in overlapping voices. They speak stilted fragments of Kanien'kehá:ka too quickly for your inert mind to keep up.

You fight them in the midst of your wan attempts to give the language breath, to revive it with what scant huffs you can manage.

Glances and whispers be damned. You have to listen to people swear red and blue in Russian all day, nobody bats an eye.

Screw this, you scream at your family in English, the language that, of all which remain, most feels like you're pointing a gun at them. Cock it back and you won't have to worry about a damned thing anymore. I don't owe you nothing.

You jolt awake, doused in a chilled coat of sweat. Such cruelty surfaces from the recesses, you wonder who it belongs to, which dark unexamined crevice it slithered out from.

---

In the grand calculus of things, you figure, being able to keep some is better than having none.

---

What am I permitted?

Can I smudge? Am I allowed to inhale the smoke? If I cough when the sage irritates my lungs, is that proof of my innermost sin? (We call it "lacking.") Then why do we need to repent? (To show Creator we're serious.) God, I'm so tired.

Am I allowed to speak Kanien'kehá:ka when my memory is plagued with holes? (Every word you speak is another step you take toward the Creator.) Then why can't I put it down and pick it up as I please? Why do we play with English like it's indestructible, but treat our own like glass menagerie? Look at the words wrong and they'll shatter into a million pieces, never to retain their original form again.

They let me keep some hair.

(They didn't pour boiling water on my scalp, try to scrape off imaginary lice. Should I be grateful, or blaze with a fury that threatens to tear me out of my own skin?)

Indigeneity deserves every good soul it can get, you think, but not every Indian deserves indigeneity. I'm just too damn exhausted for this kind of work. Too selfish. Too impatient. Too bitter. Too lazy. I just want to live without the weight of five hundred years on my shoulders, is that too much to ask?

You feel it again, that cold twist in your gut. You can never fully imagine the horrors of the past when you are instead meant to experience a new set.

---

Dead ends. Dead ends, dead ends, dead ends. Up to this very moment your life has been a series of wrong turns onto dead-end streets.

In the following days, as sensation trickles back into your numbed soul, you cry. Not just for the departed, but for people you've never even met. People you should have loved and who should have loved you, family that might have been, who never even had the chance, who never drew the breath to impart their fledgling spirits.

Combine did away with making families, the rebels lament. Well, I'm glad there are no more kids around to see this.

They're not speaking of the children they've long since forgotten. Of course not. Those who were buried in the dark, packed earth underneath garden plots and schoolyards, silent rot against the droning of as I lay me down to sleep. Tossed unceremoniously into piles, tangled together, inextricable.

Something inside me is screaming, Look at me. We are still here. You can't kill us. We refuse to die. And I know, don't think I don't know, that the only thing y'all know how to do is act deaf and blind.

Yeah, girl. We see you. But your heart, confused creature that it is, whose blood does it pump? At this point, in this ravaged and broken shell of a world, what does the question matter?

Look at me.

You know, you tell Okwáho, they always used to talk that shit about seven generations, but I'm too deaf to listen. Creator can hear me, but I can't hear Him. Can you imagine? God speaks and you don't understand a fucking lick.

Okwáho nods. He knows who you had to be isn't who you wanted to be.

Your body may be heavy, but your mind feels heavier, spread out on the ground.

--- Breathe.

As long as you can breathe, it means the Creator loves you.

As long as you live, you have to keep going.

Mohawk is damn hard to learn when there's nobody around to correct you.

Because that's what you do after a while. Without Mom and without Tóta, you reach deep into your memory and teach yourself. You teach yourself your language behind the confines of your mask, uncertain of the blurred boundaries between memory and invention, what is imaginary and what is true, faltering on syllables best sounded out. Recitation of a litany the Combine will erase with your blood. Your trembling lips move in silence, lest the sound slip through the holes and be murdered.

They look ashamed, these rebels. You inhale a thin breath.

I know a few words, you say, offering consolation like a party trick. I know a few words. Listen.

Niá:wen. Thank you.

Atónnhets í:ken ne ohné:kanos. Water is life.

Mask?

Mask is akón:wara.

[paper-n-ashes]

Which of your fics?

Thank you to @safarigirlsp and @hopeamarsu for the tag! The writers block gremlin has been tormenting me as of late, making me feel pretty down, so I hope going over some of my writing might give me some confidence to push through.

Which fic got a better reaction than you expected? 

I would say Here, simply because it truly was the most self-indulgent, written for myself thing I ever typed out. And I struggle with fluff, so to get a positive reaction to a sweeter story was really warming. 

Which fic is your funniest? 

I am, uh, not naturally funny. So my writing tends not to be either. I think I’ve popped in a few comedic things into Calling The Light, because Poe as a character is much easier to write in terms of funny quips, and the Knights of Ren characterisations I went with added a few little lighter moments of hilarity. But hey, maybe I’ll make myself a challenge to explore my comedic side? Please someone help me do this.

Which fic is your darkest/angstiest?

Calling the Light, Only to Vanish into Darkness, ticks the angst box. Dead set. Writing a love triangle is just angsty trope city. The yearning, pining, jealousy, betrayal, heartbreak, all of it. ANGST. I haven’t delved into anything viciously dark yet, but that might change as I get more daring. 

Is your absolute favourite? 

CtLOtViD is my passion project, and the Poe and Kylo characters are still the most enjoyable for me to write, so it’s hard not to put that as my favourite. The only thing I’ve worked on longer is my nursing degree. It thrust me into fanficiton writing, brought me to an incredible international best friend, and introduced me to so many kind and talented people. I owe it everything. 

Is your least favourite? 

I only have a couple one shots/series, and I’m pretty happy with how they all turned out, and CtLOtViD works well as a whole but UGHHH some of the chapters I hate with a burning passion, mostly for how I still, to this day, can’t get them exactly how I want. *cough* 22 and 28 *cough*

Which was the easiest to write?

Under the Radar. Which, after whining I couldn’t write reader insert, was the first time I tried it and... it was so much easier than expected. All of it came so smoothly, knowing I was writing it specifically for someone else as a gift. I really had fun with that one. 

I’ll also say Chapter 38 of CtLOtViD surprised me with how much easier I found writing about a sub!Kylo and a tinge of blood play. THAT was a surprising revelation. 

The hardest? 

Chapter 41 of CtLOtViD. HANDS FUCKING DOWN. I agonised over that fucking chapter. I’m not in my strongest element with action scenes, so that was a struggle. Making Old Republic Star Wars lore sound interesting and coherent was also way more difficult than I ever predicted. And look, it is legitimately one of the most important chapters plot wise and my perfectionist ass lamented for so damn long over how a huge plot bomb was going to be dropped. This chapter ripped me a new one and I’ll never forgive it. 

Which fic has your favourite line/paragraph? 

I have two.

From Chapter 39 of CtLOtViD

“The gravity of fate had forced us in each other’s orbit. Clinging so close together for this brief fragment of time. But something told me, in the deepest chasm of my mind, our paths were destined to diverge again.”

From Here

“Words were fickle. They could be misconstrued. Altered by tone. Changed by moods and attitudes.

There was no differing interpretation. No miscommunication. The definition explained merely by the feeling invoked from every action each of you made.

Two people. Expressing love in the most basal way in existence.”

Which fic have you re-read the most? 

I’ve had to re-read CtLOtViD billions of times to ensure I’m not forming any plot holes. In terms of the reader insert stuff, I would say Consequences, because damn if I don’t love a simpy Charlie Barber and straight shooting Santiago Garcia. 

Which one would you recommend to someone reading your work for the first time? 

If you can possibly endure a canon-divergent Star Wars longfic that isn’t reader insert, I would love anyone to give Calling the Light, Only to Vanish into Darkness a chance. If reader insert is more your thing I’d definitely start with Under the Radar or Here. 

The one you’re most proud of?

It’s hard not be a little proud of a collection of 50 chapters I’ve poured my heart and soul into, so CtLOtViD takes the cake here. I’ll never undertake a story like this again as long as I live, and the hundreds of hours of writing have been almost too overwhelming and effecting. I could have given in so many times, not thinking it was good enough or worth it to continue, but I’m still here, typing it out. So... yeah... just happy to have not thrown it in. 

Tagging a few who I would die to hear talk about their beautiful writing, and who have inspired me immensely. 

@tlcwrites @roanniom @princessxkenobi @foxilayde 

[comphersjost]

Being a dancer and Matty finding out. He would get so cheeky so fast with all his chirps and when y’all eventually get together he definitely tests your flexibility😏

oh my god okay

smut under the cut

hear me out

like, you’re on an internship with the flames as a junior athletic trainer

and like, it’s your last year of college and you really just want to get this degree and go

and your kinesiology advisor was some washed up hockey player and had given you two options:

apply for a different physical therapy related internship

or work with the university’s hockey team

and after a few run ins with those guys at parties well, there was no way you were working with your university’s hockey team

so you applied for the flames position

and got it

but like, youre still a college student, and you still have to do things like make rent and pay your car insurance and your health insurance and utilities and groceries and billion other things that sucked all your money out of you

so, you found a nice little side hustle that only required a few hours a night for a couple hundred dollars

and it was perfect because it didnt just help you with your expenses, but also made you comfortable

you were financially secure with this job - as long as you kept your face covered

and you did

one night, it’s matthew tkachuk’s birthday

you only really know because noah hanifin had come down to the trainer’s rooms to get his knee checked out and taped just in case - he had an awkward fall and wants to be safe

he’s nice enough, always smiling politely and asking how you are

and then matthew shows up, waiting for you to finish

the two talk about their plans for the night, and you pretend not to listen

your ears perk when you here noah say “come on man it’s your birthday, let loose” 

“i know dude, theres just one thing i really wanted for tonight and i cant have it,” matty replies, and when your eyes flick up at him hes already staring at you. “ill  still come out with you guys though”

you finished up with noah’s knee and tapped him, signaling he could go

“look man, just try to have fun,” noah hops off the table, “dont think you much you know - thanks y/n - you know dude?”

matthew rolls his eyes and shoves noah in front of him, ignoring his yell of protest

“bye, y/n” he says, his gaze too intense for you to keep eye contact

“bye guys, see you tomorrow,” you say softly, the clean up in front of you suddenly the most interesting thing in the room

you push them out of your head as youre finally leaving the arena

youve got somewhere to be and you werent going to let whatever these two hooligans said make you late

you make it to the club you work at just in time

you get ready in a rush, trying to fasten all the clips and tie all the ribbons as fast as you can

one of the other girls helps you, fasting the last few clips while you tie a masquerade mask over your face

and like - you shouldve double knotted it

or at least double checked it like you normally

because you get out there and your boss tells you

“you’ve got a private booking first, some hot shot kid’s birthday”

the description makes you uneasy but you figure, calgary is a big city, theres not way its him

but you walk into a room set a side for private shows and -

there he is

dumb navy suit and dumb curls and all

he looks up when you enter the room, a smirk on his lips

but youve been around the team long enough to know when its fake

his eyes dont have the fire in them

you drop your voice a few octaves, purring to make yourself sound seductive but more importantly - different

every thing is going well, and youre almost through

matt has a hand on your hip as you grind on him and then -

it’s your fault really, you reached up to brush your hair out of your face and the same time matthew reached up to do it for you

your hands knocked together and his finer catches on the ribbon thats looped through your mask

it falls into his lap and he stares at it for a moment, before staring at you

you’re looking at him with wide eyes, while he stares between you and the fallen mask

“you’re-”

“please don’t tell anyone!” you blurt out before he can say anything “please matthew don’t tell any of the team or anything, please, i’ll owe you whatever you want”

“woah, hey, relax,” matthew laughs, calming you by squeezing your now-still hips with his abnormally large hands “i wont tell anyone, its okay”

with an uncomfortable and short conversation about you doing this because you needed the money (and quickly shooting down matty’s offer to help you out, the two of you stumble through awkward goodbye’s

he double knots your mask for you this time, making sure it’s on tight before promising you your secret was safe and walking out the door

you pretend not to notice the tent in his pants that started growing the moment your mask fell off your face

you and matthew dance around each other for a few weeks, until some gala thing you were required to go

“the event is mandatory for all staff, even the interns. the organization will pay for all of your attire and transportation necessary to arrive at the banquet hall” your advisor had emailed you, making it clear you werent being given a choice here.

you showed up at this event dressed to the nines

your best friend had been in town visiting you when you had gone shopping for the event, refusing to let you wear something she deemed anything less then goddess-like apparently 

matty doesnt see you at first, hes at the bar with his back to you

hes a few drinks in already cause like, he really doesnt wanna be here

and then elias shoves him in the shoulder, motioning with his head over matty’s shoulder

you watch as matty turns around, your mouth going dry at the burgundy suit, white shirt, and black tie he was wearing

his lips are parted, frozen in his spot

and really - you didnt mean to match with matty, you and your best friend had just seen the dress and fallen in love with it

until his friends chirping turns into sean shoving him again to get his attention

without even sparing a glance at his teammates matt is barreling for you

hes dodging higher ups and execs and reporters and everyone who wants to talk to him like it’s his goddamn job

you finally release a breath that youre holding when he reaches you

he grabs a hold of your hand, pulling you along as he weaves through the people

both of you catch your breath when youre finally out the door and into the garden area of the venue

“you said anything” matt says abruptly, turning to you

“what?” you say, confused, and matt wants to kiss the pout off your lips

“at the club,” he says, and your blood runs cold. “you said youd owe me anything i wanted if i kept your secret.”

you nod slowly, apprehensive of what his ask was going to be

“well, it’s you,” he repeats, sighing when you stare at him, not understanding what he wants

“i. want. you.” he punctuates every word with a step towards you. “you said anything but i’m letting you choose, let me take you home, or take you out, but any part of you that you’ll let me have, that’s what i want.”

hes towering over you now, his bright blue eyes darkening with every second his eyes roam your skin

it takes you a moment to find your voice, but you clear your throat and say

“how about both?”

a smile tugs at matty’s lips, and his hands slide around your waist

he leans down to your ear, whispering “both sounds just short of heaven pretty girl”

“what will it take to get you to heaven, mr. tkachuk?” you whisper against his mouth, arms looping around his neck

he chuckles darkly, stealing a kiss, then another, and another as he pulls you closer to his body

“let’s just say,” he hums, trailing kisses down your neck, “it definitely involves some of that flexibility i saw in the club that night”

and, well, you’re okay with that

[3piox]

The Jedi and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Plan

Making new post because that reblog chain was getting a lil long and I can talk about Ventress til the banthas come home:

What does the Jedi Order do with this?

They decide “we can use her as a tool. We will send one of our own to her, under false pretenses, and we will have him pretend to be a Fallen Jedi. We will have him inveigle her to train him in the secrets of the dark side. And we will have him use her to launch an assassination attempt on Dooku, killing him using his own student.”

This is a HOWLINGLY bad decision. It is morally dubious. It is grotesquely dismissive of Ventress as a person, it is NOT in accordance with the Jedi Code. This is a desperate, fear-based attempt at murdering their enemy using any weapon available to them.

Fear, of course, being the path to the dark side.

Asajj Ventress dies because the Order fucked up and gives her life to protect the vehicle of that fuckup.

It’s those kinds of decisions that should be laid at their door.

- @opinions-about-tiaras​

Oh, yes. Now setting aside my more Doylist opinions on That Book (Golden is a hack, Asajj dying to further Quin’s story is tired sexist BS, anyways she’s a lesbian duh) something I do like about this terrible, terrible series of events is how thoroughly Obi-Wan roasts the Council at the end for their choices.

"We lost our way," Kenobi had said. "We lost it when we decided to use assassination, a practice so clearly of the dark side, for our own ends, well intentioned though they might have been. All that has happened since-Vos succumbing to the dark side, the deaths he has directly and indirectly caused, the secrets leaked, the worlds placed in jeopardy-all of this can be traced back to that single decision. Masters, I submit to you that Vos's fall was of our making. And Asajj Ventress's death is on all our hands. That Vos is here with us today, devastated but on the light path once more, is no credit to us, but to her. She died a true friend of the Jedi, and I believe that she deserves to be laid to rest with respect and care, with all gratitude for the life she gave and the life she has restored to us, and this bitter lesson that came at so dear a price. We are Jedi, and we must, all of us, always, remember what that means."

This scene is also very interesting when you contrast it to Ventress kinning Ahsoka when Ahsoka was framed for the temple bombings.

My master abandoned me, and that's exactly what you did to her, you and your precious Jedi Order.

Obi-Wan defends Quin where Ahsoka was failed. Ventress wanted the full pardon Ahsoka promised to argue for her, but Ahsoka losing faith in herself and the Council meant she never did try to speak in Ventress’s defense. Ventress still living on the edges of society meant she was in prime state to be used for this terrible, terrible plan.

"If we can take him, we can turn him back," Kenobi said.

"You cannot save everyone, Master Kenobi," Plo Koon said, not without sympathy.

Yoda nodded. "Save themselves, they must."

(...)

"You know as well as I do that there is still hope for him."

"I don't know that," she said bluntly. Kenobi was surprised. Mace Windu frowned, leaning forward. "You weren't there. You didn't see his face. You don't know how hard it is to come back from-"

"You did it," Kenobi interrupted quietly. Ventress paused in midsentence, her eyes looking piercingly into his. He could sense how stunned she was by his recognition of what she had done. 

“He could sense how stunned she was by his recognition of what she had done.” Ventress saved herself, without being given any favours. I do understand in a general way why the Jedi wouldn’t offer her any. She has done horrific things. I wish they had decided to reward her from the start of this plan, however, even if they chose to keep her in the dark (hah) because of her lack of trustworthiness. Instead they just sit on an offer of a pardon until they need to reassure her she won’t be arrested for helping them get Vos back.

The Jedi assume that because she’ll be DTA (Down to Assassinate) she won’t have changed enough to earn forgiveness, despite the fact that Vos would get to stay a Jedi after hopefully beheading Dooku. Moral equivalence, and all that.

We owe Vos the chance to choose again, and, with our help, wisely.

We owe him that chance to choose again. “Anakin, this path has been placed for you; the choice is yours alone.” People make informed choices when all their options are clear to them. Thanks to Dooku and Ky Narec, Ventress knows the life of a Sith and of a Jedi. She can choose how she wants to live as a result -- but some material limitations exist outside her (i.e. her status as a war criminal.)

The Jedi come up with this terrible plan because they’re clouded by emotion -- the novel opens up with Dooku committing a mass murder and laying the blame at the Jedi’s feet. They react by doing what they’re always seen as both guilty and not guilty of: Taking action.

"Answer me this. How often has this Council sat, shaking our heads, saying, Everything leads back to Dooku? A few dozen times? A few hundred?"

You accept the ‘gift’ of a million soldier slaves to end a terrible war. You could also end that war by laying down your arms, accepting the consequences on your own small organization -- and the deaths of billions as they’re mowed down by droids. You choose to fight, and if you take that step, what’s so different about sending someone to kill the instigator of this war? Where do you draw your line in the sand?

To Quin’s credit, he does tell Ventress who he is and about the whole plan before any training or assassination plans take place. She agrees without needing any reward.

I think what really gets me is the point they bring up time and again, and Dooku himself sums up so perfectly:

"Our escape plans hinged on her?" Dooku exclaimed almost at the same moment, his lip curling. "The most abysmal assassin of all time?"

They can make all the noise they want about Ventress having gotten closer than anyone to killing Dooku -- at the end of the day, she’s still failed, TWICE,  and that was with magic witches on her side. Why would they use her for this plan, for any reason other than she’s convenient. It’s lazy. It’s that ultimate allure of the ethically dubious: “It’ll just be easier if we do it this way.” If they really wanted to assure this working, why didn’t they just offer Ventress a pardon in exchange for Dooku’s itinerary, then send Mace and Yoda to dice the devil up? Seriously.

Also, this whole stupid book becomes Even More Pointless when you consider how fucking funny it is that after Learning Their Lesson here the Jedi decide that the perfect plan of action a whole 2 months later in RotS is to .................................. send Obi-Wan to kill Grievous. I mean, what, they weren’t worried just a little bit that Obi-Wan would end up sleeping with him instead and switching sides? 🤔🤔🤔

[yandere-wishes]

Genie and the Savanclaw boys

So this was someting I wrote to get me out of my sour mood. Latly I haven’t been feeling to great. So I decided to wrote some platonic scenarios between my persona Genie and Jack, Ruggie and Leona, please let me know what you thought of this, I spent roughly six hours on it.

A quick recap of Genie's powers

Vision--  Genie can see small glimpses of a person's past. "Past Vision 2/4" occurs when Genie comes into direct contact with a person's possession (it could be inanimate or their darlings), this allows her to see a quick "video" of their past which can last up to 2 minutes. "Past Vision 4/4" is a longer version of the previous power. For her to be able to view an in detailed vision of a person's past, she must first have experienced a "Past Vision 2/4" of them and this power can only be unlocked while she's in her lamp. Think of it as downloading a video and only being able to watch the first two minutes until you're in "a room with a sort of significance to you." Due to this power also affecting her, Genie is sometimes forced to relive traumatizing events that have occurred to her in the past one thousand years.

Maniacal File-- Note that all of Genie's powers are based on manipulating the "yandere side" of people and or events. Maniacal file lets Genie create multiple scenarios or events for how a person under a yandere influence may act. Think of this as someone having a multitude of one-shots or stories about one particular "character". Now, these "files" allow her to do two different things. One being able to manipulate the person to commit various acts, such as murder, kidnapping amongst other macabre deeds. Two, she's able to mimic almost anything a that a person who's file she "owns" can do. Of course for this to work, the files first have to be shrunk to the size of a USB and inserted into her encephalon manually (or with the use of a bit of magic). The more files she has on someone the better she understands them and the better she can help them with their "wishes", there is also a sentimental viewpoint to these "files". Since Genie is very anti-social and withdrawn these fils are sorta like her "friends". For her to obtain a person "files" she will need to either see them perform a sort of "yandere like" act, stalk them to better understand them or/and have a very in-depth and detailed conversation with them.

Bloody Background-- Certain environments (like the entirety of the Savanclaw dormitory) trigger "bloody background" which always Genie to see multiple "escape routs" or "attack routs". These routes can be used for hiding, stalking and multiple other things.

Jack Howl

Genie’s eyes landed on the warn out beat up door. Scratch marks ranging in size, were left on the wooden entrance, each one a declaration of war. The purple-haired Jinn traced her long slender fingers over a random set of claw marks, debating whether or not to enter the Jackel’s den. For a split second her vision flashed, the ground morphed from marble to rough rock, bones of wild animals littered the ground, the door had disappeared and in its place was the mouth of a pitch-black cave. Screams of terror scorched the air followed by maniacal laughter… She'd seen this place before, stood on the very same flooring and heard the same disparate cries o despair.  “Ten more seconds and then the roar” she whispered. But the visions never last that long, it shattered into a thousand tiny shards and scattered away. Genie once again stood in front of the battered door. Inside she could hear the low grunts and huffed breaths of the ill-tempered first year that resided within. There was no reason for her to enter, she had no need nor business to invaded his privacy like this, her intentions boarded on plain rude…but the curiosity of the matter was eating her alive. She had to know!

Jack Howl first year Savanclaw student with a knack for getting into fights. He had no friends, never showed interest in a darling and the only words he ever spoke where curses and threats. Due to his harsh and brutish manner, Genie had never been able to receive a type three profile on him. Sure she knew all his attack moves and strategies by heart and could predict any action he would partake before he even knew it himself. But that left the biggest question unanswered...what kind of darling did he desire?

Based on pure analysis she could take an educated guess and say a darling whose temper was even shorter than his and who would beat up a defenseless person for kicks. But there were so many "what ifs.." maybe he liked a girl who was the opposite of him. Or maybe someone brave enough to stand in his way and tell him to stop his meaningless fits of rage. All these questions made the young girl's mind race with potential suiter for the boy.

Hesitantly the Jinn pushed on the door, it creaked as it was shoved out of her path. "Um...J-Jack", she counted her heartbeats a thing most Genii tend to do to pass the time. One heartbeat, two--

"GET OUT!" A water bottle flew in her direction, hitting the left side of her face. Ok so maybe she didn't know every move as confidentially as she had thought. "Ow!!" a court whine came after, followed by a stream of tears. Before Genie knew it she had fallen to the floor legs splayed to either side of her and loud sobs escaping from her mouth. The bruise on her head where to waterbottle had hit her pulsed with pain each time her heart beated. She frantically tried to dry the tears with her wrists to no avail. This was not what was suppose to happen, but then again had she expected anything better?

"Hey cut that out" Jack kneeled next to her frame, roughly grabbing both her wrists in one large callused hand. She tried to wiggle out of his grasp for a second debating wheater to kick or headbutt him. Slowly her white hair aggressor lifted his other hand to her face and wiped away her tears. "hey hey no more crying ok? You're going to be alright got it?" His voice was rough and demanding but it held a gentle undertone.

It took a while but eventually, Genie's tears stopped and her sobs died down. When the room had fallen into a semi-comfortable silence jack spoke again. "What the hell was up with barging into my room? Are you trying to get beat up?"

Genie casted her gaze downwards and took in a shack breath. 1 heartbeat, 2 heartbeats, 3 heartbeats...

"I wanted to...to-to talk to you..." Her voice shook with uncertainty and cracked from the strain the crying fit had left on her vocal cords.

"What for?" Jack glared at her, a snarl spread across his lips and his grip on her wrists tightened. "Don't tell me a useless pipsqueak like you want to pick a fight with me?"

In that second a strategy started to map out in her brain, Millian old gears turning and formulating words, tailoring them together to generate sentences. She swiftly lifted her eyes and locked her blood-red orbs with his golden ones.

"I-I've seen you fight, multiple times actually and I...I um came up with some strategies and suggestions for how you can improve...not that you're not tremendous I mean sorta good, already but...but um I can help you improve...if if you want that um that is."

Jack's eyes bore into her soul for a solid moment, he tossed her hands aside savagely. Getting up he stomped in the opposite direction, his bushy snow-white tail smacked her beauty in the face. He paused for when he reached his punch bag, grabbing the role of hand wrap, reapplying it to his bloody bruised knuckles. Finally, he barked out an answer "Meet me by the elephant skull at twelve am sharp, got it!"

feebly Genie stood up, using the wall as a support. "S-sure thing" she replied, surprise evident in her tone "You g-got" a large triumph smile graced her tanned face.

"Oh and bitch?"

Too happy to register the insult Genie cheerfully responded with a chirpy "yes".

"GET THE HELL OUT OF MY ROOM!"

Ruggie Bucchi

Booted feet pounded on the rough uneven ground. Heavy breathing filled the air. Behind her, Genie could hear footsteps chasing after her. Panic crawled into her mind, stretching its self thinly over her mind. It's ok she mumbled to herself, just realize you've done this a billion of times before.

"Bloody Background" she whispered under her breath. Genie blinked, hundreds of tiny blue circles appeared in her red orbs. A full layout of the land before he appeared in the far left side of her sight, multiple little notes flashed in bright shades of blue and red. navigating through the notes and maps, Genie finally made heads and tails of the situation. Quickly mapping out the most deceitful rout.

--Run 10 meters then take a left, lean to the right there is a 16 cm deep pothole in the middle of the path.--

Accelerating her pace she took a sharp turn, behind her she heard the squeaky raw sound of shows scrapping rock. followed by a few curses. She kept running, watching as a blue circle highlighted the promised pothole. She aimed right, hissing as the rock wall bite into her skin. when she was a good few feet away she heard a scream and 'thump', her pursuer had hit the fallen that should give her a head start of approximately three minutes.

--with a three-minute head start run straight ahead, you'll come to a cliff jump and role down. The current calculations do not predict any major damages to be inflicted, fractures and momentary body shutdowns are not guaranteed to be avoidable.--

Her body was feeling numb, blood rushing to her fingertips. A warm dusty wind hit her face, small bits of sand sticking in her eyeballs. "Thank you Arabian desserts" she mumbled, there really were some benefits of being born in the 8th-century middle east. In front of her the earth seemed to disappear, she braced her self for the jump. Leaping into the air she curled her body into a semi-oval like shape. Upon impact, with the rugged ground, she curls her self further. She finally used the tip of her boot to dig a slow her down. Getting up again she started to run trying her best to ignore the immense pain in her right arms and the various bruises and blooding scratches over her body.

--The skull on an elephant in approaching, hid in the inside of its hollow cranium.--

No, no hiding Genie thought to herself. This whole chase -although exhilarating- was starting to get boring. She scanned the ground, reading the comments trying to find something that might help. The blue comments kept highlighting potentially useful objects and hideouts. Swiftly Genie picked up two rock shards. Holding them tight she switched her path and dashed for the elephant skull in the far right.

She entering through the mouth, quickly taking in her surroundings. Using the jagged bone matter, Genie pulled her self up climbing until she reached the window of the empty eye socket. Looking out she could see Jamil, so he'd been her mysterious stalker. Racking her brain for a second Genie tried to find a reason why Jamil of all people would be after her. Did he need something? Was he having trouble with his darling? Or did he need her for something else?

The second-year Scarabia student was only a few meters away from the skull, his back turned eyes darting every which way trying to find the Jinn girl. Swiftly Genie positioned her self, one foot resting on the opening of the eye, the other ready to push her forward. One arm held her still while the other gripped one of the shards.

One heartbeat, two heartbeats, three heartbeats...

She leaped forward, crashing into Jamil's back. The third dorm's vice president landed face first in the dirt, Genie straddling his back. She raised her hand with the rock, balling it into a fist and slamming it down on Jamil's head.

"Ouch, cut that out you rouge Jinn!"

Genie didn't respond she struck him again and again. A sickly smile spreading on her face.

"Aw look at you little bunny, trying to beat a man to death."

Turning her head Genie glared at the source of the voice. Her eyes immediately widened. They're on top of an elephant spin sat the savage gluten of savanclaw Ruggi Buchi the vice dorm leader.

He leaned his head onto his hand and smirked down at the two. At that moment Genie noticed just how dark the sky had gotten and how many glowing eyes were watching her. She gulped and rolled off of the boy. Landing on the ground in a w sitting position. Jamil also got up, he placed a hand on the back of his head covering the bleeding wound. With his free hand, he grabbed Genie's wrist. "Listen here you useless genie.." Before he could finish Ruggie had landed next to him, claws leaving deep scratches in his arm. With a painful hiss, Jamil retracted his injured arm. Ruggie walked behind Genie placing a protective hand over her shoulder. "Get off our territory before Leona arrives."

Jamile sent one last glare towards the duo before returning from which he came.

"thanks" Genie mumbles

"Don't mention it, that's what a pack is for" Ruggie flashes her a predatory smirk

Leona Kingschalor

Genie leans over Leona's shoulder, arms loosely wrapped around his shoulders. A few centimeters in front of them a blue port screen is floating in the air. pictures of multiple girls rotating with their bios on the side.

"We really need to find you a darling big brother" Genie mutters as she nuzzles the crook of his neck. Leona simply takes another bite of the beef jerky in his hands, he chews slowly, relishing the feeling of his beloved "sister's" warm breath over his exposed skin. "Why are you in such a rush? Despreat to have me occupied with someone else so you're all alone and abandoned again?" He could feel her body tense, her breath hitch, and the nervous tick as she dug her long nails into his shoulder.

"N-no you're just getting older and we need to find the future king his queen. That-that's all"

Leona huffed and glared at the screen, there was something rather monotonous about these girls, they all lacked a certain "spunk" to them. Plus how did she expect him to concentrate when she was right there.

Leona didn't know when the entirety of Nightraven had decided that the naive little psycho jinn would become his "little sister" or even why for that matter. If it had been up to him he'd declare her as his darling the moment her lamp had been tossed through that magic mirror in the director's office. But something had happended, some choices, something! What that something was he did not know...only that it kept them apart.

Genie straightened and walked over to Leona plumping down on his lap and grabbing the screen, scrolling through some names and articles mindlessly. Automatically Leona's hands when to her head patting her softs then braiding a section of their hair to match his own. It was the brotherly thing to do, but when had it become so natural? "Look big brother.." Genie turned the screen and showed Leona the "file" of a round-faced hyena girl. She looked cute, maybe even try worthy...just not right now. "She's cute," he mutters turning his emerald eyes to Genie's face. No, he though her Genie's cheeks where come how rounder and puffier.

"I could set up a date if you--"

"NO!" Leona flinched he hadn't meant for it to come out so harsh. He cleared his throat and gently caressed the "young" girl's face, started pulling both her cheeks. "Why don't you give me her number and I'll give her a call after my nap...how's that?" The purple-haired girl tried to nod despite her flesh being pulled in opposite directions. "Good" Leona let go of her face and got up, lifting Genie up in the process. He walked over to the door of his room kicking it open and letting her fall on the bed, not a second later he plumped down on top of her. Genie let out a giggle and squirmed under him until she had some breathing room. "Get some rest  Ruggi tells me you haven't slept in a week." This was concern, it was how an "older brother was supposed to feel for his "little sister". "But I'm not sleepy-" she tried to protest. "Don't care, do that counting thing you do sometimes maybe that'll bore you enough to drift off."

She obeyed like the good little sister she was supposed to be. As sleep took over his sense Leona heard her tiny voice barely above a whisper.

one heartbeat, two heartbeats, three heartbeats, four heart--

[arpmemething2]

Sherlock starter sentences

Send one for my muse’s reaction

"I wrote my own version of the Nativity when I was a child, "The Hungry Donkey". It was a bit gory, but if you're going to put a baby in a manger you're asking for trouble."

"I was just playing the game."

"I can't make bricks without clay."

"I play the violin when I'm thinking and sometime I don't talk for days on end. Would that bother you?"

"You were thinking.  It's annoying."

"Oh, hell! What does that matter? So we go round the Sun! If we went round the Moon, or round and round the garden like a teddy bear, it wouldn’t make any difference."

"Not important? It's primary school stuff! How can you not know that?"

"I'm not a hero, I'm a high-functioning sociopath!  Merry Christmas!"

"What's the point in being clever if you can't prove it?"

"And exactly how many times did he fall out the window?"

"There was once a merchant in the famous market at Baghdad. One day he saw a stranger looking at him in surprise and he knew that the stranger was Death. Pale and trembling, the merchant fled the marketplace and made his way many, many miles to the city of Samarra, for there he was sure Death could not find him. But when at last he came to Samarra, the merchant saw, waiting for him, the grim figure of Death. “Very well,” said the merchant. “I give in. I am yours. But tell me, why did you look surprised when you saw me this morning in Baghdad?”, “Because,” said Death, “I had an appointment with you tonight – in Samarra.”"

"And we're having quite a lot of sex."

"You are a living, breathing man. You've lived a life; you have a past."

"Look at them. They all care so much. Do you ever wonder if there's something wrong with us?"

"I've always been able to keep myself distant. Divorce myself from feelings. But you see, body's betraying me. Interesting, yes? Emotions... grit on the lens, the fly in the ointment."

"Look, this is a six. There's no point in my leaving the flat for anything less than a seven, we agreed. Now go back, show me the grass."

"What a couple of lightweights! You couldn’t even make it to closing time!"

"She provides, shall we say, "recreational scolding" to those who enjoy that sort of thing and are prepared to pay for it."

"Sex doesn't alarm me."

"No idea why people think you’re incapable of human emotion."

"Careful! Some of those skulls are over two hundred thousand years old! Have a bit of respect!"

"You ripping my clothes off in a darkened swimming pool. People might talk."

"Down girl."

"Don't talk out loud.  You lower the IQ of the whole street."

"That's not what people normally say."

"Should I answer chronologically or alphabetically?"

"I've got a better question: is everyone I've ever met a psychopath?"

"Kill you? Um, no. Don't be obvious. I mean, I'm gonna kill you anyway, someday. I don't want to rush it, though. I'm saving it up for something special. No no no no no, if you don't stop prying... I'll burn you. I will burn... the heart out of you."

"No, I just said that in one of your stories."

"You think he lost a lot of money? Suicide is common among city boys."

"He will outlive God trying to have the last word."

"Listen, what I said before, I meant it. I don't have friends; I've just got one."

"I'm not dead.  Let's have dinner."

"So he'll have to make a speech in front of people. There will be actual people there actually listening."

"Don't make people into heroes. Heroes don't exist, and if they did, I wouldn't be one of them."

"Stop talking, it makes me aware of your existence."

"This is my game face.  And the game is on."

"Oh, I may be on the side of the angels... but don't think for one second that I am one of them."

"We solve crimes. I blog about it, and he forgets his pants. I wouldn't hold out too much hope."

“Do you always carry handcuffs?”

"When I say run … run!"

"He’s planned something, something long-term. Something that would take effect if he never made it off that rooftop alive. Posthumous revenge. No, better than that – posthumous game."

"Intuitions are not to be ignored. They represent data processed too fast for the conscious mind to comprehend."

"You can't arrest a jellyfish."

"Brainy is the new sexy."

"Taking your own life. Interesting expression - taking it from who? Once it's over, it's not you who'll miss it. Your own death is something that happens to everybody else. Your life is not your own. Keep your hands off it."

"Oh, I'm sure something will turn up. A nice murder. That'll cheer you up."

"So what if there are right? They are always right, it's boring."

"We all have a past. Ghosts. They are the shadows that define our every sunny day."

"Is it nice not being me? It must be so relaxing."

"Once the idea exists, it cannot be killed."

"It's not a pleasant thought. I have this terrible feeling from time to time that we might all just be human."

"Friends protect people."

I'm not implying anything. I'm sure she came round for a nice little chat, and just happened to stay over. And I assume she scrubbed your floors, going by the state of her knees."

"The universe is rarely so lazy."

"Everybody dies. It’s the one thing human beings can be relied upon to do."

"I gave you my number. I thought you might call"

"Really hope you don't have a baby in here."

"How did he recognize her from.. not her face?"

"I'm suddenly realizing I probably owe you some sort of an apology."

"I always hear "punch me in the face" when you're speaking, but it's usually subtext."

"People don’t really go to heaven when they die. They’re taken to a special room and burned."

"We've got a serial killer on our hands. Love those, there's always something to look forward to."

"Dear God.  What is it like in your funny little brains?  It must be so boring."

"Fear is wisdom in the face of danger. It is nothing to be ashamed of."

"To a great mind, nothing is little."

"I was thinking more about our imminent and daring escape."

"Fine. We'll start with the riding crop."

"Pass me your revolver. I have a sudden need to use it."

"No, no, NO! Of course he's not the boy's father! Look at the turn-ups on his jeans!"

"Dear Lord, I have never been so impatient to be attacked by a murderous ghost...!"

"What I'm trying to say is that, if there's anything I can do, anything you need, anything at all, you can have me.…"

"Look at those cheekbones. I could cut myself slapping that face. Would you like me to try?"

"I would have you right here on this desk until you begged for mercy, twice"

"Are you wearing any pants?"

"When he was dying, he was always cheerful. He was lovely. Except when he thought that no one could see. I saw him once. He looked sad."

"Does yours rub off too?"

"I'm in shock. Look, I've got a blanket!"

"Get out.  I need to go to my mind palace."

"The world is woven from billions of lives, every strand crossing every other. What we call premonition is just movement of the web. If you could attenuate to every strand of quivering data, the future would be entirely calculable. As inevitable as mathematics."

"You should put that on a t-shirt."

"I'm soooo changeable. It is a weakness with me, but to be fair to myself, it is my only weakness."

"Every fairy tale needs a good old-fashioned villain. You need me or you're nothing — because we're just alike, you and I. Except you're boring. You're on the side of the angels."

"Just once, can you two behave like grown-ups?"

"Sentiment is a chemical defect found on the losing side."

"None of the cabs would take me."

"Also, your loss would break my heart."

"I can open any door, anywhere with a few tiny lines of computer code. No such thing as a private bank account now. All are mine. No such thing as secrecy. I OWN secrecy. Nuclear codes? I could blow up NATO in alphabetical order. In a world of locked rooms, the man with the key is king. And honey, you should see me in a crown."

"And you read my writing upside down. You see what I mean?"

"London. It’s like a great cesspool into which all kinds of criminals, agents and drifters are irresistibly drained. Sometimes it’s not a question of who, it’s a question of who knows."

"You've gone all croaky, you getting a cold?"

"All lives end. All hearts are broken. Caring is not an advantage"

"I hope you'll be very happy. You deserve it. After all, not all people you fall for can turn out to be sociopaths."

"Is that a British Army Browning L9A1 in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?"

"...Murder. Sorry, did I say murder? I meant to say marriage. But, you know, they're quite similar procedures when you think about it. The participants tend to know each other and it's over when one of them's dead."

"That's clever.  Is it clever?  Why is it clever?"

"Interesting thing a tuxedo. Lends distinction to friends and anonymity to waiters."

"If I wasn't everything you think I am, everything that I think I am... would you still want to help me?"

[ehyeh-joshua]

Understanding the coming 2021 Economic Crisis.

TL;DR - the banks and hedgefunds have been screwing the US economy over and merely repeating what happened in 2008 is a good outcome at this point, with the worst case scenario being the complete collapse of the United States Dollar, and with it the entire global economy.

It's not an accident that Bank of America and JPMorgan have both issued Bonds totalling $15 billion and $13 billion dollars - both record breaking amounts - at the same time Warren Buffet has sold 100% of his JPMorgan stock.

To explain why goes back into the history of Wall Street greed; for decades they have been targeting companies to short-sell their stock (where a share is borrowed and sold, and replaced later at the lower price, causing a profit of the sale of the original share minus the cost of the replacement share and the interest fees on the borrowed share, which can be more profitable than holding the share for the person being borrowed from) on a massive scale; the goal is to make the victim company into a worthless penny-stock, and then force the company into bankruptcy by not having enough liquidity to pay off things like toxic debt, default on issued bonds.

They will even do it to their own; this behaviour was what truly killed Lehmann Brothers and Bear Sterns - Wall Street made hundreds of millions of dollars shorting those two all the way to the ground. In total, they made well over a trillion dollars shorting businesses that went bankrupt as a result of 2008.

There are hundreds of public companies - especially brick and concrete building based companies - that are affected by this, right now, on the stock exchanges; they've been hit hard during the last year, and Wall Street is betting that they will fail between Covid and the shift to online retail.

Then the second side of the attack comes in - they will replace the old leadership with their own team and blame the previous team for all the problems, ride the short term boost in confidence, then control the collapse of the business.

And knowing that the business will go bankrupt makes it safe to do a much more risky and profitable version of short-selling - counterfeit short-selling.

The difference between the two is that in a normal short sell, there is a share that is actually borrowed from someone else in order to be sold; in a counterfeit short-sale, they get a friendly market-maker - a company with the authority to create counterfeit shares as a normal part of trading (make a million of these IOU shares, and fill them with a million real shares milliseconds later in order to create liquidity in a stock, which is hedged by the sale of calls and puts options) to create these counterfeit IOU shares.

They can do this because in the actual transaction, although the money transfers instantly the actual shares transfer on a T+2 settlement system (day of the trade, plus two days) - it's a relic of the old days when physical share certificates had to be moved around.

The IOU share is treated as a legal share - to all legal purposes, you own the share. This is not a "Contract for difference" arrangement, in which you are just betting on the stock going up; this IOU, this synthetic share, is a legal share that is meant to be replaced by the real share during the T+2 system. When it doesn't deliver, it is called an FTD; a 'Fail to deliver".

But it is a fake share - instead of there only being X shares in existence, there are now X+Y shares in existence. This devalues the stock due to increasing the supply.

This is why the news media is going on about meme-stocks - a bunch of 4Chan and Reddit "retarded apes" figured it out and YOLOed their savings on these stocks, and because they refuse to sell the stocks and have bought as many of these counterfeit shares as they can afford (and a few actual retards have bought more than they can afford) and now Wall Street has been caught counterfeiting at least 140% of the shares (the absolute minimum, based on SEC fillings for institutional ownership of GME stock, which necessarily does not include the retail investors) ever issued by GameStop. If you go through the SEC's published data on FTDs, you see that typically hundreds of thousands of shares have failed to deliver each day in the case of GameStop. Hundreds of thousands of fake shares that have been sold and are now trading on the market, in dark pools or sat in some Ape's account.

Now, GME is not going to crash the economy, and this is from someone who fully believes the hype about a million dollars a share not being a meme; there aren't nearly enough retarded apes to make it so big that the dollar will crash, although I do think that GME will temporarily cause the dollar to halve or drop to a third of present value before it all gets spent as apes pay taxes and buy Lambos and houses and continue to make the badly judged options bets that made r/WallStreetBets famous.

The real big nuke is that Wall Street has been shorting the US Treasury Bonds market. Worst case scenario is seven times more Treasury Bonds - especially the ten year Bond - are trading than were ever issued by the Federal Reserve. Best case scenario they've only managed to double the Bonds in existence.

To explain just how terrifying this is:

Imagine that you are a major bank. You need liquidity - you have customers in so many sectors that you have departments to track what departments you have covering different sectors of finance.

So, you use the Treasury Bond; they are backed by the government so they can't go wrong. You buy them when you have money, sell them when you need cash; these things trade typically in total values of trillions of dollars each day. The whole system works because Bank A borrows from Bank B to pay Bank C who owe a Bond to Bank D who need a Bond for Bank E who owe Bank A a Bond; all the time all the members stay afloat, they can play hot potato with the Bonds.

As soon as one goes down, the dominoes fall.

"But what on earth could take out a Bank?"

The Mother Of All Short Squeezes.

GameStop going boom to a thousand dollars a share might take out a single hedgefund, but the damage stops there. And back in January, $1k per share was a meme amount even to the most dedicated autistic retard ape. These days, the apes realise that the economy is as screwed as it was in 2008, and they are using GME to hedge against another global financial crash, which contributes to why they want millions - it's no longer about Lambos and YOLO options bets, but about making sure their families don't lose their homes when banks go boom and the housing market crashes because the bubble pops. Its about having support systems for people who will be left with nothing.

Back in January, apes thought that it was just Melvin Capital - a single, not particularly big hedgefund only worth ~$20 billion in Assets Under Management. Subsequently, they discovered how deep in this Citadel group are; a group of companies that is ultimately worth a trillion dollars and handles 46% of all trades on the New York Stock Exchange.

Citadel are backed by Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan. Bank of America is involved as part of their own short-selling position on GME.

When GME squeezes, the US stock market will crash as the Depository Trust Clearing Corporation margin call small fry like Melvin Capital, large players like Citadel and eventually major banks like Bank of America and JPMorgan. (Goldman Sachs have hedged their short position and will survive, the other two however...)

How do I know this?

Last week, the Biden administration appointed Gary Gensler - who oversaw the fallout from 2008 - to being the head of the Securities Exchange Commission; the organisation who regulates the US securities markets.

Six months ago, the Trump administration gave the US markets a respite on collateral to be deposited to be held to cover investments on margin.

The SEC has been kept up to date with the situation - once apes figured out that this was going to cause a 2008 style collapse they started sending it all in to the SEC; sure, they want Lambo and tendies, but they also want the economy to survive. They've watched The Big Short, and serveral times a day you'll see the Don't ****ing dance" quote cited because they've realised that they have discovered what Michael Burry found out back in 2005. They are terrified. I've had sleepless nights over the last month, and I'm long GME because I think it is the only hedge against the economic collapse that could be on it's way. I don't want to imagine what someone who knows about this stuff and isn't long GME is thinking.

What gives me hope is that the SEC are rapidly changing the rules - there have been three massive legal developments since I started following the situation - in order to contain the damage that can be done from GME going off. I believe that the SEC is coordinating with long institutional investors - particularly BlackRock and Fidelity - GameStop's leadership (who are pushing to turn the company around and need this dealt with so that they can move forward) crypto-currencies experts and the Federal government to ensure a situation where retail gets paid (roughly a hundred thousand Chinese people and a Chinese investment fund are long GME - the US government cannot afford to give the CCP the propaganda coup of betraying the principle of free markets, the US economy would never recover from the blow) and the system has a systemic crash this year and rebuilds much better now that a decades old criminal practice is gotten rid of and the shares system is converted to blockchain and instant settlement to make sure the factors that led to this disaster aren't repeated. I.e. I become a millionaire and retire at 28, buy the dip knowing that things are going to recover from a massive but temporary crisis.

A "normal" bad situation, where this does not completely worst nightmare wrong? I walk away from GME a billionaire, but a loaf of bread costs a million dollars.

Worst case? Well, the bit before Jesus' return in glorious victory is seven years of hell on earth, under an economy where no one can buy or sell without the beasts involvement. How you get that is you arrange a global financial crisis to bankrupt nations all over the world and make your centralised one world economy look like the saviour.

Whatever you do, don't rush to pull money out the banks - that only screws everything over guaranteed because if everyone has a run on the banks you immediately get a short squeeze on the Treasury Bonds, which nukes everything. If everyone pretends that life goes on as normal and the Fed gets away with giving Treasury Bonds to those who need them to complete their chains then only GME goes boom, and the economy survives, and therefore hundreds of thousands of people will not lose their jobs and houses. But they need GME to go boom so that they can use it as a cover story so that they can get away with covering up the Treasury Bonds problem.

As always, none of this is financial advice, and while I'm not a cat, I'm also not a financial advisor, and this is written by a guy who has 19 tickets on rocket built by self-proclaimed retarded apes knowing he only knows of one actual physicist among them, having YOLOed his savings on hope that his affordable investment won't lose value even in the event of 10,000% inflation.

This is going to be my last post on the subject, because frankly, I'm scared. I've seen the Cthulhuoid monster lurking in the depths, and I hope and pray I'm wrong.

[collapsedsquid]

Suppose my kid’s meth habit got the best of him. He needs to come up with $100K quick or his dealer’s gonna whack him. But he’s a good kid, really! Coulda happened to anyone. So I “lend” him the money, even though he has no visible means of support and the sketchiest loan sharks in town wouldn’t give him the time of day. Now I believe in bootstraps and hard work, individualism and self-reliance. So I tell my son. “Son, you are going to pay me back every penny of that loan. You are going to work it off. I have arranged with one of my golf buddies, a guy who owes me a favor or three, a job that pays $200K a year. You’d better show up every day at 9 a.m. and sit behind that desk, and get me back my money!” And he does! After a year, he’s made me whole. What a good kid.

No bail out, right? He paid me back every penny! Worked it off!

Bullshit. The opportunity I provided him, the $200K job that he would not have received without my intercession, was a huge grant. On the open market, if I were to accept bribes from the highest bidder to wangle the job from my friend, that opportunity would be worth more than the $100K advanced. I paid my son’s loan with my own money. I just obscured the cash flows, so my son and I can pretend and sustain our mutual self-regard and our righteous disdain for the moochers and the hippies and the riff-raff.

After assuming the banking system’s downside risk, the US government engineered a wide variety of favorable circumstances that helped banks “earn” their way back to quasi-health. The government provided famous and obvious transfers like unwinding AIG swaps at 100¢ on the dollar. It forced short-term yields to zero and created an environment in which medium-term interest rates would be capped for several years, granting banks a near-risk-free arbitrage for a while. It emitted trillions in excess reserves on which it continues to pay interest. It forewent investigations and prosecutions that by law it should actively pursue, and settled what enforcement it could not avoid for token fees. Then there are the things conspiracy theorists and cranks like me suspect but cannot prove: that the government and the Fed have been less than aggressive in minimizing their costs when they or entities they control (AIG, Fannie, Freddie) transact with large banks, that they have left money on the table where doing so could be hidden in arcane accounts or justified as ordinary transaction expenses and trading losses. Large banks have enjoyed some rather extraordinary results for allegedly efficient markets, quarters with large trading profits and no or very few losing days. Government housing policy is pretty overtly subject to a constraint that interventions must not provoke loss realizations for banks carrying bad loans at inflated values, or interfere with servicing revenues. (If you think I am overconspiratorial, I’m still waiting for an innocent explanation of this, from 1991.)

Hyman Minsky famously described crisis stabilization as a two-step process: First, the state/central-bank steps in as lender of last resort to halt the panic. Then the state must underwrite a program of massive deficit spending in order to “validate” — Minsky’s word — the fragile capital structures and the “innovative” business practices that proliferate during periods of tranquility.

Translating into current buzzwords, when the trouble begins there is a solvency crisis. It is converted into a liquidity crisis ex post by a firehose of net spending by the state. The current crisis has followed Minsky’s script perfectly. Banks’ ability to “pay back” bailouts has depended upon continued regulatory forbearance, tacit expectations of support if shit hits the fan again, and massive government debt issuance which resuscitated assets that would otherwise be worthless.

But who has lost anything from the bailouts? Wasn’t it a win-win? This all sounds very abstract. Where are the transfers?

If the government borrowed or printed a trillion dollars and gave the money to me, would there be any losers? If you don’t think there has been a wealth transfer, if you don’t think ordinary people have lost, please call your Congressperson and ask her to cut me a trillion dollar check. In some abstract sense, this policy of giving me money would push government debt higher. But that is so very vague a cost! I promise I’d do great things with a trillion dollars. My ideas are so much cooler than Goldman Sachs’, despite all the wholesome commercials they are running.

During the run-up to the financial crisis, bank managers, shareholders, and creditors paid themselves hundreds of billions of dollars in dividends, buybacks, bonuses and interest. Had the state intervened less generously, a substantial fraction of those payouts might have been recovered (albeit from different cohorts of stakeholders, as many recipients of past payouts had already taken their money and ran). The market cap of the 19 TARP banks that received more than a billion dollars each in assistance is about 550B dollars today (even after several of those banks’ share prices have collapsed over fears of Eurocontagion). The uninsured debt of those banks is and was a large multiple of their market caps. Had the government resolved the weakest of the banks, writing off equity and haircutting creditors, had it insisted on retaining upside commensurate with the fraction of risk it was bearing on behalf of stronger banks, the taxpayer savings would have run from hundreds of billions to a trillion dollars. We can get into all kinds of arguments over what would have been practical and legal. Regardless of whether the government could or could not have abstained from making the transfers that it made, it did make huge transfers. Bank stakeholders retain hundreds of billions of dollars against taxpayer losses of the same, relative to any scenario in which the government received remotely adequate compensation first for the risk it assumed, and then for quietly moving Heaven and Earth to obscure and (partially) neutralize that risk.

The banks were bailed out. Big time.

This piece was written in 2011

[khali-shabd]

Mental Health and COVID-19

The human brain is more complex than any other known structure in the universe. Made of billions of neurons, the brain has the capacity to store millions of gigabytes of data- memories about our past, moments of the present, hypotheses about the future- and it has learned to perform hundreds of functions at the same time. The in-and-out of your breathing, the wave-like peristalsis of your food pipe, the pumping of your cardiac muscles all occur at the same time as your brain sends and receives emotional signals, dispatches hormones that change your mood, and comprehends what is going on in your surroundings at the moment. However, it stands to reason that just like any other organ, the brain can also technically fall sick. 

Like a broken bone, or a fever, your brain can face problems too- it can feel low, it can be ill-. but the way people and the society they form treat this sickness can be problematic. Often, we can even be part of the problem without even knowing it. The way we react to physical ailments drastically differs from the way we treat mental issues. There is a heavy, dark stigma revolving around mental illness, depicting it as a sinful, evil thing, but in reality a mental illness is no different from a regular sickness. When you have a broken bone, you just don’t ‘get over it’ and start walking. When you have the flu, you can’t just ignore your symptoms and keep moving as if nothing is wrong because you physically can’t. But this is the way people talk, think about and discuss mental illness. It can be alienating and painful to those suffering from it due to no fault of their own, and this mindset can even serve to worsen pre-existing symptoms. It’s just... not fair. 

Now, especially, in these frightening, unpredictable times, mental health comes to the fore just as important as physiological health. We suddenly found ourselves living in a strange new normal, stuck within the four walls of our homes, distant from our friends and loved ones. We find ourselves trying to adjust to these circumstances nobody has really experienced before, diving headfirst into a routine we know nothing of- be it online school, work-from-home, video conventions, making connections on the internet- it’s all incredibly new and confusing and scary for everyone going through it. With our social circle being reduced to just a few family members, with the amount of time spent staring slack-jawed at the screen almost doubling, we find ourselves being cared for and taken care of reducing drastically. We present a version of ourselves to the screens, and we tend to hide what’s really wrong, and because of this it becomes increasingly difficult to check in on your loved ones and care for them. This also means that they can’t do the same for you, and we all feel lost for things to do to help each other fit into this new life. We tend to feel overwhelmed; with anxiety for the health of those we love, depression and loneliness from this isolation and repetition, endless fear and worry for the state of our planet. We feel stress and tiredness from the extra work we have to do to maintain our houses, finances and schoolwork; moodiness and irritability from being stuck inside the food walls of our homes; and a panicked hopelessness from everything going on right now. 

It’s important to recognize when you are not doing okay. 

It’s important to understand that these are not normal times, and that it is okay to not be doing okay. I myself often struggle with really being honest with my feelings, and being able to recognize when things are too much for me; but over the years I’ve also come to the conclusion that not expressing how I feel does no good to me or the people around me. All the pent up emotion can be released all at once in a very negative way, which can actually alienate those who love you and care for you by something that is no fault of their own. It is essential to every once in a while, look at yourself and ask- am I doing okay? And if your answer is ‘no’, do not beat yourself up over it. It is normal, it is fine, and it is valid if you feel not normal. However, you need to communicate this to people around you so that they can help you through this. If you have access to a mental health professional, try talking to them. 

Last, but not least, take care of yourself. I know that there will be a lot of people encouraging you to work endlessly during this time, quoting ‘Shakespeare wrote King Lear while he was quarantined’, but again, none of us are Shakespeare. You owe it to yourself to detox, clear your mind, relax and take care of your mental and physical health during all of this extra free time. Take this time to focus on your hobbies! Exercise (just for the dopamine high), or take up yoga. The possibilities are endless, and so is your time. 

792 million people have experienced some sort of mental health issue in their lifetimes. Multitudes remain undiagnosed.