#so we shall see if i finish the script and actually record it!!!

[deepfriedseagullfeet]

so i am actually working on a script rn for a video where i talk about like 8 different ego concepts, ideas, and au's that i came up with when my iron was severely low like a month or two ago and i maladaptive daydreamed very hard for like a week. i wrote out bullet points for one (1) concept and my doc is already like 4 pages long so uh. if i do end up finishing it get ready for a doozy yall

[natsumesakasaki666]

Tsumugi FS2 Sharing the happiness

Characters: Tsumugi, Ritsu, Anzu

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

Tsumugi: (….phew. I managed to finish all the work I wanted to this morning)

(I’m sure everyone in the office can handle the rest. It looks like I can take the afternoon off as planned)

Excuse me everyone. I have finished my work for today, so I’m heading out

Ritsu: …huh? Aoba oniisan, are you leaving? It’s rare to see you leave early.

Tsumugi: Good morning Ritsu-kun! Isn’t it also rare for you to be in the office at this time of day?

Ritsu: Not so much these days, right? I woke up a bit earlier this morning to go pick up a script I need for work later.

I’ve been taking work much more serious lately. So in return I want Aoba oniisan to praise me~

Tsumugi: ahaha, I guess I should. Thanks for taking work seriously, it’s been a huge help. I really appreciate it, Ritsu-kun!

Ritsu: just like that, it feels nice to receive praise♪

Putting that aside, Aoba oniisan do you have something important this afternoon? Otherwise you wouldn’t be heading out so early, right?

Tsumugi: I’m not heading out for anything important, I’m just taking the afternoon off! I was thinking of baking some sweets today.

Ritsu: Sweets? I don’t recall Aoba oniisan ever having a hobby of baking sweets.

Tsumugi: it’s because I don’t. Today’s lucky activity is baking sweets♪

Ritsu: So that’s why… Taking an afternoon off of work just to increase your luck is an oddly extravagant way to spend time.

Well, you always overwork yourself, so I’ll let it go this time.

Ritsu: …. Huh, is that-? Anzu-chan. What are you doing at entrance with your eyes looking all over the place? Is there someone you’re looking for?

Tsumugi: You were looking for me? Sorry, I didn’t notice. So, what did you need from me?

…… it’s been decided that I’m up next for a “feature live”. So if there’s time, you’d like to have a meeting about it right away?

You came at just the right time! I took the entire afternoon off so I have plenty of time!

Ritsu: oh no you don’t. Rather than right timing, it’s actually bad. It’s your day off, why do you want to attend a meeting on such short notice!?

I’m sorry Anzu but isn’t this too sudden? He already made plans to bake sweets this afternoon.

Tsumugi: Fufu. How kind of you to get angry for me. Thank you Ritsu-kun.

Actually, I originally took the afternoon off to be available for any urgent requests, so it’s alright.

Eh? What is it, Anzu-chan? “It’s that’s the case, it’s ok to have the meeting at a later date” ?

“ instead, I’d like to take photos of you baking sweets” you say?

If I remember, there was talk of taking off shots for the pamphlet.

Ritsu: that’s smart. Anzu-chan is very calculating. In that case, this can be considered “good timing”.

Tsumugi: fufu. These will truly be off shots of me. Of course I’ll let you take photos

If that’s decided, shall we go to the shopping mall now?

First I need to go buy ingredients to bake the sweets.

——scene change to shopping mall——

Tsumugi: umm… cake flour, cake flour…. Ah. Found it!

I’m pretty sure we have eggs and milk in the Starmony Dorms, so the only thing left is heavy whipping cream.

“What kind of sweets are you planning to make” you say? Now that I think of it, I guess I didn’t tell Anzu-chan what I plan on making.

I’m planning on baking cupcakes! I had trouble deciding on something while looking through a recipe book. I felt like I would fail if I chose something too difficult…

Also when baking cupcakes, you can make lots of them and have different toppings on each one!

Ritsu: Toppings~? Wouldn’t these matsutake mushrooms be good? They smell great too, like autumn

Tsumugi: I know it’s a bit late but, why is Ritsu-kun following us?

Ritsu: because Anzu and Aoba oniichan got all excited and left, leaving me all alone. Both of you need to pay more attention to me~

Tsumugi: but Ritsu-kun, you must be busy too… Ah, you only have work later in the evening, right?

Ritsu: yup. And since we’re recording at night, I have a lot of free time until then.

I have experience in baking sweets. So that’s why I thought It’d be great to bake sweets together with Aoba oniisan♪

Tsumugi: I’d certainly be more at ease if I were alongside someone who is familiar with baking.

Ritsu: fufu. If im with you, these sweets will turn out a success. If you’re going to make cupcakes, you have to play around with the ingredients.

Let’s throw in some matsutake mushrooms. And a couple octopus legs might be good too.

Tsumugi: Ah, wait Ritsu-kun! I’m the one who’s baking so please don’t add in any ingredients without my permission!

The color of the ingredients is especially important! I’m taking account of today’s lucky color!

Ritsu: eh~? Did the fortune reading specify that too? Isn’t it good enough as long as it tastes good?

Tsumugi: Of course not! I’m baking these sweets to bring good luck, so that’s the one thing I won’t negotiate on! *camera flashes*

Ah…. Anzu-chan, could it be that you took a photo of me just now?

Ahaha, it’s a bit embarrassing to be photographed because I was getting slightly irritated by Ritsu-kun just now.

Ritsu: but you got a nice rare photo, didn’t you? It’s not everyday you see Aoba oniichan get mad.

Tsumugi: Anzu-chan, please don’t just smile and nod~. It’s really embarrassing, ok?

Well if Anzu-chan thinks it’s good, there’s nothing I can do about it. I should be positive and think about how it’s a good photo that can be used in the pamphlet.

Anyways, Anzu-chan, Is there any toppings that you prefer?

Although I am concerned about today’s lucky color, please let me know.

I want to treat Anzu-chan to some delicious cupcakes too!

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

[agentnico]

The Adam Project (2022) Review

It took me five sittings to get through this film. Constant distractions and chores kept stopping me from finishing it. Did I choose to watch this movie on a very busy week? Yes. Should I have picked a better time? Yes. Does that change anything now? No.

Plot: After accidentally crash-landing in 2022, time-traveling fighter pilot Adam Reed teams up with his 12-year-old self for a mission to save the future.

Following their *insert Borat voice* great success, Ryan Reynolds and director Shawn Levy reteam after Free Guy for a science fiction film for Netflix. Upon researching the behind the scenes I discovered that The Adam Project was originally supposed to be made back in 2012 and had none other than Tom Cruise attached in the lead role, however then the movie fell into development hell until Netflix bought the rights and made the final result 10 years later. Evidently now the purpose of the delay comes to surface in that the script is weak. It’s as generic of a sci-fi time travel plot as you can expect, and the entire gimmick lies upon Ryan Reynolds sharing a screen with a kid who can make a good impression of a child version of Reynolds. To be fair, the kid Walker Scobell does well with bringing out the sarcastic wise-cracking self of Reynolds to life, however I did find his voice annoying. It’s the kind of kid voice I expect to hear at the grocery store negging his mother to buy him a Mars bar. Well shut it Walker, you ain’t getting a Mars bar! You don’t deserve it cause of your stupid voice!

Outside of the dynamic of Reynolds with the kid, the movie is left with not much else to offer. The time travel aspect is overly convoluted and nonsensical, and all ends up in a finale set piece that is stolen straight from Terminator Genisys, and not going to lie, Terminator Genisys is not the type of film one should be inspired by. Minor near cameo appearances from the likes of Zoe Saldana, Mark Ruffalo and Jennifer Garner (the latter two enjoying a little 13 Going On 30 reunion) are welcome in that they all come with some emotional heft, however two or three powerful scenes don’t save the movie from it’s overall blandness. Also Catherine Keener plays the villain, and she herself is okay, but the terrible aspect comes in when the movie’s plot rewinds to 2018, we see a younger version of that character and goodness gracious do I now realise that we had no reason to complain about that young Luke Skywalker deep fake in the finale of The Mandalorian’s second season! I mean just look at this so called transformation!...

Those are some lousy effects and also Keener’s dialogue is out of sync with her younger character’s movements in the film. This CGI’d version doesn’t match the ample photographic record of what Catherine Keener actually looked like in her 30s. It seemed really off and I’d hate to make the same reference again, but she looked like a bloody Terminator. Ah wait, hang on *shuffles through some papers* Skydance (the production company behind the Terminator movies) produced The Adam Project. All of a sudden these Terminator comparisons are not so coincidental!

The Adam Project is alright. Just alright. Has its moments, Ryan Reynolds and the kid share good banter (even though Ryan Reynolds playing Ryan Reynolds is getting a bit repetitive), however the time travel plot and weak CGI effects are a detriment and make for this to be an overall throwaway Netflix feature. I shall go rewatch Free Guy again instead.

Overall score: 4/10

[americasass81]

Make Her Mine - Chapter Eight

Warnings:- 18+, Dark theme, Smut, Dubious Consent, Non-Consensual Sex, Brief Mention of Spanking, Oral (male receiving).  Do not read if any of these warnings are upsetting.  Feedback is welcomed.

This contains adult themes and by proceeding you are acknowledging that you are over 18 and are consenting to the content below the cut.

Word Count:- 2,571

Sitting you down at the dining table in the crypt, as you now called this place, Tony washed his hands and began moving seamlessly around the kitchen preparing what you assumed was pasta, again.  You thought about trying to talk to him, but whenever you opened your mouth, no words came out.  Eventually you took to taking small glances in his direction until he finally had enough.  "Darling let us have a quiet dinner and then I promise, we will try to resolve everything.  Okay?"

"Sure." you replied, staring at the table before returning your gaze to him.  "Um Tony, is there anything I can help you with?"

"Yeah, I guess.  Do you want to set the table while I finish the meatballs?" he smiled, moving effortlessly from one task to the next.

Getting up, you joined him in the kitchen and went about removing the necessary plates and cutlery before placing them where they were needed.  Retrieving the wine glasses proved a more difficult task however when you discovered you were unable to reach the cabinet overhead which housed them.

"Here, allow me darling."  Thinking that Tony was coming to your rescue, you let out a squeal when he placed his hands on your waist and easily lifted you up to reach them.  "How about we leave these two down for the duration of our time here?" he suggested as he lowered you gently back on your feet.

"Would make more sense I suppose.  Though since I'm no longer allowed wine, does it matter what I drink out of?" you mused as you stepped aside to allow him to continue the meal prep and carried the glasses to the table.

Eventually walking after you, Tony allowed you to set down the glasses before taking your hand in his.  "Okay, so the meatballs are in the oven, ready to go and V.I.R.G.I.L. can now take over while we get cleaned up.  Shall we N/Y?"  Reluctantly following him to the master bedroom, you hoped that the incentive of dinner would be enough to keep his hands off you.

Thankfully it seemed your worries were unfounded however when Tony simply ushered you into the shower and proceeded to gently wash every inch of you.  Then stepping out and wrapping a luxurious towel around each of you, the shocks continued when he opened the double doors to the closet and led you inside.  "I'd like you to make an effort for dinner, but honestly if you don't feel like it, I understand.  Just have a look around and see if something catches your eye."  With that he walked to the other side, picked out a complete suit and returned to the bedroom, leaving you alone.

Moving along what you assumed was your half of the walk-in, it still surprised you that you could be shocked by the discovery that all the clothing here were in your size.  Kitted out like a well stocked department store, albeit a high-end one, you planned on something casual until your fingers skimmed over a light grey silk dress.  Taking it down and looking it over, you told yourself you could never pull it off, but placed it in front of you before the mirrored wall all the same.  Hearing Tony inform you that you had about twenty minutes, you threw caution to the wind, found the matching shoes along with a dusky pink set of lingerie and dressed in record time.

Walking out into the bedroom, Tony turned around at the sound of your presence and the look he shot you, turned you on and made you uncomfortable in equal measure.  "My god darling, I thought you were beautiful that night in the restaurant, but now you're a vision.  That is most definitely your color."  Dropping your eyes towards the floor as he came over to stand beside you, Tony kissed your cheek and looked at his watch before raising your chin to face him.  "Ready to go eat, my love?"

"Actually yes.  I am kinda hungry." you answered while trying unsuccessfully to maneuver out of his tender hold.

"Don't do that Y/N.  Don't hide from me . . . or the world." he requested, as he took your hand and led you back to the dining table.  Pulling out your chair, you quickly sat and enjoyed the wonderful aroma permeating around the place while Tony got to work plating up the meal.  Placing it on the table along with water for both of you, you noticed, he too sat down as you tucked into the most delicious spaghetti and meatballs you could ever remember eating.

Having enjoyed the meal in companionable silence, Tony rose from the table but refused to let you help as he cleared up.  "Thank you Tony, that was amazing.  But if you don't mind me asking, where did you learn to cook?"

Laughing at the question, he turned around to face you as he finished off his water.  "Y/N, despite what everyone thinks, I don't actually have a bunch of servants who do everything for me.  I'm quite capable of looking after myself and those I care about."

Not missing this little remark, you turned back towards the table and tried to get your thoughts and feelings in order while Tony finished up what he was doing.  You were however afforded a bit more time when his phone rang and the conversation indicated that Steve was on the other end.  Suspicious as to why Stave was asking questions about a woman he had probably only glimpsed once outside the office, Tony stuck to the 'employee being treated on the company health plan' script before finishing up the conversation.  Looking your way while realizing that Steve might not be as gullible or loyal as he thought, he knew now more than ever that he needed to make you his.

                  *************

Putting away his phone and walking over to join you at the table, his heart broke a little when you pulled your hand back before he had a chance to take hold of it.  Sighing deeply as he thought how best to approach the situation between you, he decided for now he would try to avoid bringing up the fact that you had attempted to kill him not once, but twice.

Taking his seat, you looked up to see him press something on his wristwatch before he lifted his head to look at you.  "I've disabled the shock feature on your nanoparticles.  Now, if you promise not to try anything, perhaps we can discuss our future without any extra fear on your part.  How about you tell me simply why you fear being with me."

Thinking through your situation, coupled with what little you knew about Iron-Man, the Avengers and the slew of enemies lurking around every corner, you checked Tony's demeanor before standing up, moving over to the couch and getting comfortable.  Sighing as he sat down next to you, but acknowledging that you seemed to be thinking, he reluctantly kept his mouth shut until you were ready to finally talk.  Setting aside everything that had happened and could still happen, as well as all the feelings threatening to swallow you whole, you instead set your analytical mind to the task before you.

Thinking back on why you first rejected his advances, you accepted that both his loose morals and your own views on love and relationships was reason enough to steer clear of the egotistical playboy.  Added to that his life as an Avenger and the deck was clearly never in his favor.  However, a small part of you had to admit that being easy on the eyes, coupled with his oh so numerous skillful body parts, meant that falling for him wouldn't be the hardest task in the world.  It was simply a matter of how much you wanted it.  Then of course there was the monumental task of getting away from him if you so chose.

After two unsuccessful attempts, you wondered if you even had it in you to finish him off, but you knew as long as he still had breath in him, you would never be free of the iron avenger.  That just left you relying on your mob friendship and you had to wonder if they really stood a chance against the world famous heroes.  Feeling the exhaustion of everything that had happened, along with the weight of what was to come, you looked towards Tony to see him watching you apprehensively as the minutes you deliberated ticked by.  Finally accepting that when you played ball he tended to give you the benefit of the doubt and so you could only hope that given enough time you could use that to your advantage, while dealing with whatever consequences said timeframe created.

Catching his knee bouncing with irritation, you figured it was probably time to let your inner musings out.  Turning to him, you quickly reiterated your earlier statement about being his flavor of the month and lifting your hand to shush his evident interruption, continued to confess your fears about his superhero lifestyle.

Taking your hands in his, he reaffirmed that everything about you, from your cheeky, defiant attitude to the dangerous streak you kept directed towards him, was more than enough to keep him faithful.  He also promised that if you remained by his side, given enough time and trust, he would be only too happy to hand over the nanoparticle armor he designed for you the first night you slept under this roof.

Letting his words sink in and making a silent wish that you survived long enough to take possession of the promised armor, you kept your expression neutral as you launched yourself across the couch and crashed your lips against his.  Feeling his goatee tickle your chin as your tongues wrestled with each other, you pulled back slightly when your lungs cried out for air.

"Am I to take that as offer accepted, darling?" Tony asked, as he pulled your body closer against his strong frame, a glorious smile evident on his face.

"Take it as I'm willing to give this a try and see how things go." you replied and in the next instance, Tony's skillful hands had unzipped your dress and dropped it off your shoulders.

Moaning at the lacy pink material, because there was no way it could be called a bra, barely concealing your gorgeous tits, he looked up at you with lust-filled eyes and his next words took you completely by surprise.  "Tell me I can make love to you darling.  Please." he begged and as you realized this was the first time he had asked your permission, it finally hit you just how much power you might actually hold over him.

Feeling the now usual, yet powerful, tingling sensation deep in your core, the shocks continued coming as you nodded your head and allowed Tony to have his way with you.  Leaning forward to kiss your lips, his tongue snaked out to dance with yours but didn't linger before moving down to place soft wet trails along your neck.  Giving yourself over to the tune he was pulling from your body, a deep groan left your throat as Tony's mouth latched onto part of your exposed breast and he bit down just enough to send shockwaves rushing south towards your aching sex.  Writhing against him as he then ran his tongue across the area to soothe the sting, affording the same treatment to the other breast had you cursing his level of self control as you silently wished for him to fuck you senseless.

As it was, you refused to give voice to this particular desire, and instead simply reached out, grabbed hold of his hair and brought his sinfully skillful mouth back to yours.  Kissing him with both a passion and hunger you never knew you possessed, your body emitted a squeal as he rose from the couch with you secured in his powerful arms and walked you back in the direction of the master bedroom.  Losing your dress somewhere along the way as your legs instinctively wrapped around his waist, you looked at him in complete frustration as he dropped your now almost naked form on the bed while he stood before you, fully clothed.

Looking down on you as your eyes pleaded with him to join you in a state of undress, his eyes tightened as they roamed over your heaving form while his gaze focused with pin-point accuracy on your heels.  Leaning forward, his hands took hold of your right leg and removed the shoe before moving to the left.  Kicking your legs out in pure frustration, Tony couldn't help laughing at the pout that now settled on your features.

Stepping closer still while removing his jacket, his lips found yours again before resting his head against your forehead.  "Don't pout Y/N, good things come to all in time." and with that he moved back and winked at you before slowly and teasingly unbuttoning his white dress shirt.  Licking your lips as more and more flesh appeared before you, you still couldn't figure out why this man wanted to be yours.  Tossing the shirt across the room while removing his shoes, your thoughts were pulled back to the present as his weight between your legs caused the bed to dip and your eyes to lock with his.

"Want to unwrap your package, darling?" he smirked and even you couldn't stifle the laugh that erupted past your lips as you joined him on your knees.  Reaching forwards, your trembling fingers closed on his belt only to be stalled when his hands rested over yours.  "Take your time Y/N, neither one of us is going anywhere."

Licking your lips while looking up at him, you nodded, before unbuckling his belt, undoing the button and deftly slipping down the zipper.  Placing your fingers along the waistband, you pushed his pants down to his knees as his hand reached forward, cupped your chin and kissed you passionately while your hands found their way into his boxers.  Placing them firmly over his ass, his breath hitched against your mouth as you squeezed hard.  "Fuck me darling, you're too good at that." he panted, and even you had to admit the praise was kind of intoxicating.

Continuing to knead and pinch the firm flesh, you deftly maneuvered one hand around the front and taking hold of his warm, semi-hard cock, you coaxed the most delicious sounds from the world's most eligible bachelor as your hand worked him up and down.  Then somehow managing to use one hand to nudge down his boxers, you marveled at your hand wrapped around his shaft as creamy precum made it's home against your palm.

Moving your hand down to massage his sac as your head bent forward, Tony's knees began to shake while your tongue started to lick the vein on the underside of his cock.  Finally gaining control of his facilities, he caught hold of you and tossed you on your back before moving forward between your legs.  Looking down at you through hooded eyes, he smacked your thigh playfully before placing a soft kiss against your panties.  Then rising from the bed, he fully divested himself of his clothes, before smirking over at you saying, "You've had your fun darling.  Now it's my turn."  

Tagging:- @nsfwsebbie @hoseokchild @gotnofucks @ironlady1993 @floatingdaisy7 @taintedgenre @buttercandy16 @kind-of-crazy-butthatsokay , sorry if I missed anyone.

[animebw]

Short Reflection: Maquia

My feelings on Mari Okada as a writer are... complex. She’s unquestionably talented, and the best of her works capture the raw vulnerability of intense emotion like few other storytellers can match. But even at her best, she’s incredibly messy. Every single show and movie I’ve seen from her- Anohana, Kiznaiver, O Maidens in your Savage Season, A Whisker Away, The One That Shall Not Be Named- makes frustrating choices that handicap the drama and lead to shockingly ill-advised story beats. Her adaptational work is more solid- Toradora and Wandering Son were both excellent- but her original scripts are evidence that she has some serious blind spots when it comes to writing. And sadly, the same is true of her first time directing a feature film. Maquia: Where the Promised Flower Blooms is a bold, ambitious work that does a lot of things very right, but it’s frustratingly imperfect in all the ways Okada works often are. At its best, it’s a movie is genuine, moving beauty. If only it was at its best throughout its entirety, we might have a masterpiece on our hands.

The story takes place in a fantasy world, and it centers on the titular Maquia, a shy, weak member of a race of immortal beings known as the Iolph. These people stop aging as teenagers and live forever with eternal youth. Apparently, tapestries are a form of language among the Iolph, and they can encompass everything from letters to books to full histories. And they spend their whole lives weaving their memories into long tapestries as a way of recording how things have gone for them. They’re also encouraged not to go outside safety of their city; should an Iolph travel to the human world, they will surely experience some form of love there. And in time, when the object of their love grows old and dies, they will be left with nothing but sorrow. “If you love someone,” the elder often tells Maquia, “you will know true loneliness.” Thus the central question of the movie is posed: is it worth it for these immortal beings to experience life among mortals when every emotional connection they make there will one day be severed by time’s inexorable march forward?

Sadly, Maquia finds that choice taken out of her hands when her city is invaded by the nearby human kingdom of Mezarte. Their king desires to conquer the Iolph people and make use of their immortality, both to sire a half-Iolph heir who will live forever and to preserve the lives of the Renato. These Renato are ancient, eternal dragons, but lately they’ve been dying out from some mysterious illness, and now only a scant few of these incredible beasts remain alive, all of which are also held captive in Mezarte. The city is ramsacked, and Maquia barely makes it out alive. In the outside world for the first time, all alone, she happens to stumble across a newborn baby cradled by its mother’s corpse, another victim of Mezarte’s lust for conquest. Seeing in the human child a reflection of their own loneliness, Maquia decides to raise him as his mother, so that they may share each other’s strength in the face of life’s tragedies. Thus, the movie proper begins, and we spend the rest of it following the lives of Maquia and her adopted son Ariel. It’s the story of an unusual mother raising an unusual son, set against the backdrop of political turmoil as the kingdoms of man grow ever closer to war.

So, good stuff first: I really love this movie’s fantasy world. It’s richly detailed and lived-in, with gorgeous settings from simple farmsteads to sprawling kingdoms. The story does a fantastic job selling you on the reality of these places; every location we visit feels like a place people actually live thanks to countless little touches and wordless worldbuilding that brings them to life. It also helps that this is a PA Works production, and you better believe they know their way around beautiful background art and setting design, especially on a movie budget. Maquia is gorgeous to look at from start to finish, and even the occasional use of CG doesn’t interfere too much. I also love how the fantastical elements are integrated, not just into the world itself but the story’s themes. As Ariel grows older and Maquia remains a teenager, their mother-son relationship grows increasingly complex as they’re forced to navigate increasingly thorny questions of what it even means to be a mother and son. What is it that defines their relationship, and how does that definition shift when only one of them is growing older? What, if anything, makes Maquia his mother, and how does she live up to that concept? How will their bond survive as he grows increasingly apart in age and she remains eternally fixed in time? It’s powerful stuff, and the mythic weight of the dying dragons subplot further emphasizes the themes of immortality, memory, endings and beginnings.

These things are the heart of the film, and whenever it’s focused on them, Maquia damn near soars. Its title character riding one of the dragons, the warmth of her love for Ariel, his increasing inability to see her as his mother because of time tearing them apart, a pretty damn epic final battle when the political intrigue explodes into open warfare, all of it rendered with tenderness and awe in equal measure. And the lengthy post-climax epilogue, which brings Airel and Maquia’s story to a breathtaking conclusion, is worth the price of admission all on its own. If the final ten minutes don’t leave you a sobbing mess, you’re probably a heartless bastard. Unfortunately, the journey to reach that point isn’t always satisfying. There are a lot of confusing time skips throughout the story, where we’ll jump ahead a few years and see Maquia and Ariel in a new location and have little to no indication of how long it’s been, or where this place is in relation to the last place. At first, you don’t even realize some of them are timeskips until you put the pieces together from context clues. It’s needlessly confusing, and it leads to the movie’s flow being kind of disjointed. Even just a title card saying, like, “three years later” would’ve been enough to solve this issue.

More critically, though, Maquia is meant to be a treatise on the power of motherhood, but its approach to that subject feels... misguided at times. There’s a subplot centered on one of Maquia’s Iolphian friends who is captured to become the king’s baby mama, and while the film acknowledges how awful it is that she’s been forced into this role, it also portrays it like the child born from this awful situation is the only thing keeping her from falling apart. Like, she’s imprisoned and kept from seeing her child, and she understandably starts breaking down from the sheer trauma of it all, but it’s presented like the thought of seeing her child is the one thing still giving her hope. She even chooses not to escape with Maquia when she’s pregnant, and it’s really uncomfortable how it’s framed like her being pregnant is something that binds her to the person who impregnated her. Even when she finally escapes at the end after meeting her daughter for the first and only time, it’s framed like this was a precious memory she’ll weave into her tapestry and never forget, and... no! No, it really doesn’t need to be! This child was a product of rape. She has no obligation to keep it, to feel obligated to it, to stay with the man who raped her as if motherhood was a shackle she had no choice but to endure. And what’s doubly bizarre is that Ariel is never framed as being “less” of Maquia’s son just because he’s adopted, so the movie clearly understands that biological bonds aren’t the be-all-end-all of parenting. So why the hell does it make this other character’s story revolve around her undying love for a child she’s never met, born from violation and assault, and treat that bond as equally important to its understanding of motherhood? It doesn’t make a damn lick of sense.

And that discomfort is ultimately what kneecaps Maquia. There are other minor problems- there’s little sense of spatial awareness to the world and characters kind of teleport between scene with no sense of how long it took to get from point A to point B, some side characters feel underdeveloped, Ariel doesn’t always feel like a realistic kid in the first chunk- but as a story explicitly about motherhood, the fact it ends up feeling so creepy about motherhood is a thorn I can’t shake off. If you cut that subplot, Maquia and Ariel’s story works just fine on its own, but its presence taints the waters and muddies a picture that should have been crystal clear. If this is what Maquia thinks of motherhood, I don’t know if that’s a version of motherhood worth honoring. Which is Mari Okada’s issue in a nutshell; however good her works are at their best, her writing always steers into problematic territory that infects her messages with an unpleasant aftertaste. This movie is still excellent at its best, but I can’t fully give myself to it when part of its ethos is so obviously wrong. And combined with the more tangible storytelling flaws I mentioned earlier, it turns what should have been a slam dunk into a “good, with caveats.” For that, I give Maquia a score of:

6.5/10

One of these days, Okada will make an unqualified masterpiece. Until then, I guess we’ll have to settle for this. See you next time!

[365days365movies]

March 13, 2021: Kwaidan: Hoichi the Earless (1965)

Um...yeah, no idea, people.

Not sure what “the earless” means, but it worries me. So, rather than try to guess here, let’s get right into it!

This is the third of four tales presented in the film Kwaidan, listed here:

The Black Hair (黒髪, Kurokami)

The Woman of the Snow (雪女, Yukionna)

Hoichi the Earless (耳無し芳一の話, Miminashi Hōichi no Hanashi)

In A Cup of Tea (茶碗の中, Chawan no Naka)

Here we go again! SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap (3/4): Hoichi the Earless

A musician sings a song, known as “The Tale of the Heike”, and is specifically detailing the epic Battle of Dan-no-ura, during which two clans fought each other at the end of a great war. The scene is played out on screen as kabuki theatre, with the singer strumming an instrument in the background of the epic clash. It’s, uh...it’s pretty goddamn rad, not gonna lie to you.

Don’t know if you guys have ever seen kabuki theater, like legit kabuki theater, but it’s genuinely interesting. If you want to see an example accessible to non-Japanese audiences (and nerds like me everywhere), check out Star Wars Kabuki-Kairennosuke and the Three Shining Swords! Here’s a link! It is also rad.

Anyway, the epic tale of war and suicide results in a haunted shoreline, on which the mysterious Heike crabs appear with faces on their shells. But as the story ends, we meet its teller: Hoichi (Katsuo Nakamura), a blind monk who works at a temple. One day, a noise draws him inside one of the buildings of the temple. He attempts to investigate, but finds no one there. Confused, he decides to settle down and play his instrument, the biwa.

But as he does, a soldier (Tetsurō Tamba) appears with a message: his master wishes to see the site of the battle of Dan-no-ura, and also wants to hear Hoichi recite his version of the battle. While Hoichi doesn’t think himself worthy, he still goes along with the mysterious soldier, who takes him...towards the shore. So, dude’s a ghoooooooost, and Hoichi’s also to be fuuuuuuuucked. The soldier takes Hoichi to the beautiful azure temple to see his master.

Yeah, no, it’s definitely haunted, and Hoichi’s either dead, or is about to be dead. Or...wait, is this an Orpheus story? You know, a mortal recording artist so good that even the gods love his hit singles? Dunno, just came to me, so we’ll see. Anyway, he’s brought into the definitely not haunted temple, bedecked in tattered red flags, with beautifully spectral backgrounds all throughout.

Meanwhile, on the shore, a young man is found dead on the shoreline. We don’t see his face...but I have a bad feeling I know who it is. Although, it seems that it might be a fisherman whose boat recently sank...maybe. I’m still not convinced. The other monks wonder where Hoichi’s disappeared to, and then he reappears later that night. OK, cool, he isn’t dead. That warrior from before definitely was, though.

Hoichi never tells the monks where he disappeared to, but he’s soon called back to the mysterious temple by the warrior, who is indeed a ghost. Apparently, they commanded Hoichi not to tell anyone of their meetings, a command which he obeys willingly. Subsequent visits continue, but they obviously start to take a toll on Hoichi, who’s beginning to look, well...gray. Uh oh.

The head monk questions him on his disappearance, but Hoichi makes up an excuse about “needing to finish something, heedless of the hour”. And yeah, he REALLY doesn’t look good. Looks like this one’s gonna be another “don’t fuck with ghosts” lesson, huh? But Hoichi doesn’t really care, as he goes out even in a massive rainstorm. As his fellow monks look for him, he’s playing once again for the ghosts, which includes a child emperor seen in the epic song reenactment seen earlier. So, yeah, these are the spirits lost on the day of the Battle of Dan-no-ura. And those spirits want to hear that song once again.

And, of course, Hoichi plays it for them on the biwa. When ghosts tell you to play a song for them, you goddamn DO IT. We see him play it and the song for them, and all the while, the other monks are looking for him. As they do, will-o-the-wisps appear before them. Which, yeah, is another Pokémon, just saying. Both Gastly and Litwick are basically will-o-the-wisps. 

But OK, back to the actual ghost story, as Hoichi plays the biwa with some crazy-ass intensity. As he does, the people he’s playing for change from the emperor and his people to the samurai of the opposing side.

The spirits listen, as we see a painting of the battle and the disaster that came from it. The spirits, ALL of them, listen on, as the scene changes from an attentive spiritual audience, to a battle scene. And, uh...it’s intense. And terrifying. And genuinely very haunting. And while Hoichi can’t see any of it, we can. And again, it is HAUNTING, my lord. And then, as the monks arrive to find Hoichi singing, the spirit court fades away, and Hoichi is instead surrounded by will-o-the-wisps. My God.

The other monks try to take the clearly fucked up Hoichi back to the temple, planning on giving him an exorcism to cleanse him of these spirits. But the spirits, now seen in Hoichi’s absence, all rise as he leaves. Tattered red flags hit water, and the spirits disappear, AND I WILL HAVE NIGHTMARES TONIGHT. Now exposed, Hoichi is spoken to by the head monk, who reveals that doing what a spirit tells you to do is a sure fire way to open yourself up to their influence. And so, a plan is formed, in order to protect Hoichi from further possession. And to do that...it’s time for some painting.

Yeah, the monks paint Buddhist symbols all over Hoichi, hoping to protect him from the spirits influence. And they write ALL OVER him, and it’s both a gorgeous sight, while also being...well, extremely eerie. They paint all over him, in black and red script, even painting his eyelids. The GF pointed out that they’re putting the larger red symbols on his chakras, which makes sense and is neat. They even paint his hair, which is genuinely impressive.

The plan is then formed to let Hoichi outside to act as bait for the spirit to come back. He’s told not to make a sound in front of the spirits, and that he mustn’t move in front of them either. If he does, the spirits will tear him to pieces. But he’s still protected by the Heart Sutra, which is painted all over his body. Except for...his ears. Oh, shit, I think I know what’s gonna happen to poor, sweet Hoichi.

Sure enough, the Spiritual Samurai shows up, and is unable to see every part of him...except for his ears. GODDAMN IT DONKAI (the monk who painted the symbols on him), YOU DUMBASS. Well, the spirit believes that only his ears are left, and the spirit needs proof of Hoichi’s fate...so he takes his ears. And when I say he takes his ears, I mean that HE TAKES HIS FUCKING EARS. HE. RIPS. OFF. HOICHI’S. EARS. And Hoichi doesn’t make a goddamn sound as he bleeds profusely. HOLY FUCKING SHIT DUDE

With that, Hoichi bleeds his way to another part of the temple. Injured, he’s cared for by the head monk and DONKAI, who’ve realized Donkai’s grave mistake. And Hoichi is now Hoichi the Earless. Remind me never to fuck with the spirits without checking EVERY. SINGLE. MINUTE. DETAIL. Hoichi’s basically traded his ears for his life. And the spiritual visitors will no longer visit, according to the head monk. Meanwhile, Hoichi the Earless is now pretty famous, due to his unusual predicament. A wealthy lord wants to meet the strange young man, n as brought along a bunch of people to watch him play. While the monks tell him to refuse the request, he still plays to honor the fallen spirits regardless.

Soon, he and the temple are given money and gifts from all over the place, and Hoichi gains much personal wealth and fame. However, it never was about that for Hoichi, really. He just plays.

And that’s Hoichi the Earless! Wow. Interesting ending. Three out of four! Let’s go to the last, shall we? See you there!

[bakug0stw1nk]

Hello, everyone! This is the LONGEST TEXT EVER! I was inspired by the various other "longest texts ever" on the internet, and I wanted to make my own. So here it is! This is going to be a WORLD RECORD! This is actually my third attempt at doing this. The first time, I didn't save it. The second time, the Neocities editor crashed. Now I'm writing this in Notepad, then copying it into the Neocities editor instead of typing it directly in the Neocities editor to avoid crashing. It sucks that my past two attempts are gone now. Those actually got pretty long. Not the longest, but still pretty long. I hope this one won't get lost somehow. Anyways, let's talk about WAFFLES! I like waffles. Waffles are cool. Waffles is a funny word. There's a Teen Titans Go episode called "Waffles" where the word "Waffles" is said a hundred-something times. It's pretty annoying. There's also a Teen Titans Go episode about Pig Latin. Don't know what Pig Latin is? It's a language where you take all the consonants before the first vowel, move them to the end, and add '-ay' to the end. If the word begins with a vowel, you just add '-way' to the end. For example, "Waffles" becomes "Afflesway". I've been speaking Pig Latin fluently since the fourth grade, so it surprised me when I saw the episode for the first time. I speak Pig Latin with my sister sometimes. It's pretty fun. I like speaking it in public so that everyone around us gets confused. That's never actually happened before, but if it ever does, 'twill be pretty funny. By the way, "'twill" is a word I invented recently, and it's a contraction of "it will". I really hope it gains popularity in the near future, because "'twill" is WAY more fun than saying "it'll". "It'll" is too boring. Nobody likes boring. This is nowhere near being the longest text ever, but eventually it will be! I might still be writing this a decade later, who knows? But right now, it's not very long. But I'll just keep writing until it is the longest! Have you ever heard the song "Dau Dau" by Awesome Scampis? It's an amazing song. Look it up on YouTube! I play that song all the time around my sister! It drives her crazy, and I love it. Another way I like driving my sister crazy is by speaking my own made up language to her. She hates the languages I make! The only language that we both speak besides English is Pig Latin. I think you already knew that. Whatever. I think I'm gonna go for now. Bye! Hi, I'm back now. I'm gonna contribute more to this soon-to-be giant wall of text. I just realised I have a giant stuffed frog on my bed. I forgot his name. I'm pretty sure it was something stupid though. I think it was "FROG" in Morse Code or something. Morse Code is cool. I know a bit of it, but I'm not very good at it. I'm also not very good at French. I barely know anything in French, and my pronunciation probably sucks. But I'm learning it, at least. I'm also learning Esperanto. It's this language that was made up by some guy a long time ago to be the "universal language". A lot of people speak it. I am such a language nerd. Half of this text is probably gonna be about languages. But hey, as long as it's long! Ha, get it? As LONG as it's LONG? I'm so funny, right? No, I'm not. I should probably get some sleep. Goodnight! Hello, I'm back again. I basically have only two interests nowadays: languages and furries. What? Oh, sorry, I thought you knew I was a furry. Haha, oops. Anyway, yeah, I'm a furry, but since I'm a young furry, I can't really do as much as I would like to do in the fandom. When I'm older, I would like to have a fursuit, go to furry conventions, all that stuff. But for now I can only dream of that. Sorry you had to deal with me talking about furries, but I'm honestly very desperate for this to be the longest text ever. Last night I was watching nothing but fursuit unboxings. I think I need help. This one time, me and my mom were going to go to a furry Christmas party, but we didn't end up going because of the fact that there was alcohol on the premises, and that she didn't wanna have to be a mom dragging her son through a crowd of furries. Both of those reasons were understandable. Okay, hopefully I won't have to talk about furries anymore. I don't care if you're a furry reading this right now, I just don't wanna have to torture everyone else. I will no longer say the F word throughout the rest of this entire text. Of course, by the F word, I mean the one that I just used six times, not the one that you're probably thinking of which I have not used throughout this entire text. I just realised that next year will be 2020. That's crazy! It just feels so futuristic! It's also crazy that the 2010s decade is almost over. That decade brought be a lot of memories. In fact, it brought be almost all of my memories. It'll be sad to see it go. I'm gonna work on a series of video lessons for Toki Pona. I'll expain what Toki Pona is after I come back. Bye! 'm back now, and I decided not to do it on Toki Pona, since many other people have done Toki Pona video lessons already. I decided to do it on Viesa, my English code. Now, I shall explain what Toki Pona is. Toki Pona is a minimalist constructed language that has only ~120 words! That means you can learn it very quickly. I reccomend you learn it! It's pretty fun and easy! Anyway, yeah, I might finish my video about Viesa later. But for now, I'm gonna add more to this giant wall of text, because I want it to be the longest! It would be pretty cool to have a world record for the longest text ever. Not sure how famous I'll get from it, but it'll be cool nonetheless. Nonetheless. That's an interesting word. It's a combination of three entire words. That's pretty neat. Also, remember when I said that I said the F word six times throughout this text? I actually messed up there. I actually said it ten times (including the plural form). I'm such a liar! I struggled to spell the word "liar" there. I tried spelling it "lyer", then "lier". Then I remembered that it's "liar". At least I'm better at spelling than my sister. She's younger than me, so I guess it's understandable. "Understandable" is a pretty long word. Hey, I wonder what the most common word I've used so far in this text is. I checked, and appearantly it's "I", with 59 uses! The word "I" makes up 5% of the words this text! I would've thought "the" would be the most common, but "the" is only the second most used word, with 43 uses. "It" is the third most common, followed by "a" and "to". Congrats to those five words! If you're wondering what the least common word is, well, it's actually a tie between a bunch of words that are only used once, and I don't wanna have to list them all here. Remember when I talked about waffles near the beginning of this text? Well, I just put some waffles in the toaster, and I got reminded of the very beginnings of this longest text ever. Okay, that was literally yesterday, but I don't care. You can't see me right now, but I'm typing with my nose! Okay, I was not able to type the exclamation point with just my nose. I had to use my finger. But still, I typed all of that sentence with my nose! I'm not typing with my nose right now, because it takes too long, and I wanna get this text as long as possible quickly. I'm gonna take a break for now! Bye! Hi, I'm back again. My sister is beside me, watching me write in this endless wall of text. My sister has a new thing where she just says the word "poop" nonstop. I don't really like it. She also eats her own boogers. I'm not joking. She's gross like that. Also, remember when I said I put waffles in the toaster? Well, I forgot about those and I only ate them just now. Now my sister is just saying random numbers. Now she's saying that they're not random, they're the numbers being displayed on the microwave. Still, I don't know why she's doing that. Now she's making annoying clicking noises. Now she's saying that she's gonna watch Friends on three different devices. Why!?!?! Hi its me his sister. I'd like to say that all of that is not true. Max wants to make his own video but i wont let him because i need my phone for my alarm.POOP POOP POOP POOP LOL IM FUNNY. kjnbhhisdnhidfhdfhjsdjksdnjhdfhdfghdfghdfbhdfbcbhnidjsduhchyduhyduhdhcduhduhdcdhcdhjdnjdnhjsdjxnj Hey, I'm back. Sorry about my sister. I had to seize control of the LTE from her because she was doing keymash. Keymash is just effortless. She just went back to school. She comes home from school for her lunch break. I think I'm gonna go again. Bye! Hello, I'm back. Let's compare LTE's. This one is only 8593 characters long so far. Kenneth Iman's LTE is 21425 characters long. The Flaming-Chicken LTE (the original) is a whopping 203941 characters long! I think I'll be able to surpass Kenneth Iman's not long from now. But my goal is to surpass the Flaming-Chicken LTE. Actually, I just figured out that there's an LTE longer than the Flaming-Chicken LTE. It's Hermnerps LTE, which is only slightly longer than the Flaming-Chicken LTE, at 230634 characters. My goal is to surpass THAT. Then I'll be the world record holder, I think. But I'll still be writing this even after I achieve the world record, of course. One time, I printed an entire copy of the Bee Movie script for no reason. I heard someone else say they had three copies of the Bee Movie script in their backpack, and I got inspired. But I only made one copy because I didn't want to waste THAT much paper. I still wasted quite a bit of paper, though. Now I wanna see how this LTE compares to the Bee Movie script. Okay, I checked, and the Bee Movie script is 50753 characters long. Not as long as some of the LTEs I mentioned, but still longer than mine and Kenneth Iman's combined. This LTE is getting close to 10000 characters! That means it'll be half the length of Kenneth Iman's LTE. That's pretty exciting. Also, going back to the topic of the Bee Movie Script, I tried to write the entire thing out by hand once. But I never finished it, especially since I'm focusing on this thing now. Maybe I should write this LTE out by hand. Nah, I don't think I will. Yay, we're at 10000 characters! Let's celebrate by talking about MUSIC! Music is cool. That concludes our celebratory discussion about music. Thank you, and have a good rest of your day. Hi, I'm back now, and I got a book! It's a dictionary for a language called Elefen. It's like Esperanto, but better. Now I can learn Elefen even without internet! That's pretty cool. I will now write something in Elefen. See if you can understand it! Here goes: Si tu pote leje esta, tu es merveliosa! Elefen es un lingua multe fresca! Did you understand that? Maybe you can't speak Elefen, but you still understood that because of your knowledge of other languages. Elefen is cool because it's an actual language, not an English code like Pig Latin or Viesa. Oh, I forgot to mention that my sister is back from school. She's blasting Rhett and Link songs right now. Have you seen that picture of Rhett and Link standing with a bunch of *******? Sorry, I almost said the F word there. That would've broken my rule of not saying the F word. I wrote something in Elefen, so I will also write something in Toki Pona. See if you can understand it now! sina sona e toki mi la sina pona mute a! I can speak Toki Pona fluently, by the way. It's also a pretty cool language. My sister is still playing annoying songs. It's hindering my focus right now. But it's fiiiiine. Okay, luckily she's run out of songs to play. At least for now. She's trying to think of another annoying song to play. Now she's playing a song by Green Day. Not NEARLY as bad as the other songs she just played. I should go for now. Goodbye! Hello, I'm back once again. I don't know why I feel obligated to say that every time I come back. But I'll keep doing it anyway. My sister stopped blasting annoying songs, so that's good. She's cooking something in the microwave. I'll go check to see what it is right now. Nevermind, it's already done cooking. Right, I remember! It's mac and cheese! Now she just started singing "I have a tongue, you don't, because I cut it off yesterday". I don't know what goes on in her mind when she does stuff like that. I've been messing around with my Elefen dictionary for a while, looking up whatever random words I can think of. By the way, the whole reason I'm doing this longest text ever is because of pointlesssites.com. That's how I found the Flaming-Chicken LTE, which inspired me to start writing this LTE. So thanks, pointlesssites.com! I check that website every day to see what new pointless websites they add. You know, I could double every letter I type so that this text would be twice as long as it normally would be. But nah, that's kinda cheating. So I won't. Also, SUBSCRIBE TO PEWDIEPIE! There, I did my part. Not that anyone will read this, but still. 'Twould be nice if you subscribed to PewDiePie. That's another word I invented. Actually, I looked it up, and I didn't invent it. Someone came up with it before I did. That's pretty sad. Also, LEARN VIESA TODAY! IT WILL CURE YOUR DEPRESSION! Seriously though, learn Viesa. It won't actually cure your depression, but I'm desperate for speakers. I only have one other person to speak it with. I should go now. Goodbye. Hi, I’m back. I just came up with an idea: SIMPLIFIED ENGLISH! Or, in Simplified Engish: Simifid Enis. It’s where every group of consonant letters is reduced to the first consonant in that group of consonants, and same goes with the vowels. If a word ends up being just a single consonant with no vowel, put ‘a’ at the end. So “I like eating my waffles” becomes “I like etin ma wafes”. Isn’t it the most amazing thing ever? Nah, it’s not quite as amazing as Viesa. Actually, Viesa isn’t a real language, so it’s less amazing then Elefen and Toki Pona, both of which are cool languages. I kinda figured that half of this text would be about languages. Oh well. I just really want this to be the longest text ever, without using copy and paste, keymash, etc. If you remember, my sister did a little bit of keymash in this text a while ago. I would’ve deleted it, but nah, I didn’t feel like it. And besides, it’s not like it took up half this text. I have an estimate for how long it’ll take me to be the world record holder: about one month. I think I can manage one month of writing this. You know what? I’m just gonna break my rule of not saying the word “furry”. There, I said it. Now I’m allowing myself to write “furry” whenever I want. So with that out of the way, let’s talk about how I first became a furry. For some reason, I have the exact date when I became a furry memorized. It’s May 4, 2018. At that time, I discovered that I was a furry by watching some furry YouTube videos. I knew about the existence of furries years before this, but I didn’t know much about it until this time. I said to myself, “You know what? I’m a furry now,” and that’s what started it all. And I’ve been slowly learning more about the fandom ever since. I would like to participate more in the fandom when I’m older, but I’m too young for most of it right now. Guess I’ll just have to wait. But in the meantime, I can write about it in this text. I should sleep now. Goodnight. Hello, I'm back once again. Happy Pi Day! I memorized a bunch of digits of Pi once, not sure how many I still remember... I have literally nothing to write about now. I've been trying to come up with something for the past 10 minutes, and I still have no idea. Literally nothing is happening right now. It's pretty boring. My sister is watching Friends, as usual. Okay, since there's nothing for me to write about, I should go now. Bye! Wow, it has been a while since I last added to this. It is now July 10, 2019. Last time I edited this page was Pi Day, which was March 14. Those 4 months of this thing being untouched end today! Wait... 4 months? That means I was supposed to get this past the world record three months ago. Oh well. I have put many things into this text. A lot of them were cringy, like how I keep mentioning furry-related things. You know, I should stop putting things in here when I know I'm gonna cringe at them later. I'll try not to do that from here on out. I just know I'll fail though. I'd hate to be aware of someone reading this entire thing... like, if I had to sit and watch a family member or something read this entire text, I would cringe so hard. I would not want that to happen. I am currently pasting the entirety of the FlamingChicken LTE onto a page on OurWorldOfText. The frustrating thing about pasting stuff there is that it pastes one letter at a time, so it takes forever to paste long text. And when the tab isn't open, I'm pretty sure it just stops pasting, so you have to keep the tab open if you want it to continue. Why am I even doing this? No idea. I might not even paste the whole thing. I probably won't. Hey, I just had a thought. What if, in the future, students are reading this for a class assignment? What if this LTE becomes part of the school curriculum? If so, hi future student! I hope you're enjoying reading my CRINGE. What is my life coming to? That's enough writing for now. Goodbye. Hey again. Might as well continue writing in here for a bit. Hey, have you ever heard of 3D Movie Maker? It's a program from the 90s (that still works on modern computers) where you can make 3D animated movies. It's pretty cool. I've made a few movies with it myself, and many other people use it to make interesting stuff. In case you want to try it for yourself, I'm sure if you google "3dmm download" or something like that, it will take you somewhere where you can download the program. It's kinda aimed at younger children, but hopefully that doesn't stop you from making absolute masterpieces with this program. I have a keyboard in my room (the musical kind, not the one you type words on), and I don't really know how to play it properly, but I do it anyways. I can play a few songs on the piano (albeit with weird fingering because like I just said, I have no idea what I'm doing), including HOME - Resonance and PilotRedSun - Bodybuilder. You might not know one or both of those songs. If you don't know one of them, why not google it? You will have discovered some new music, and it will all be because of me. Why are you reading this, anyways? How did you even find it? Were you like me, and you were browsing pointlesssites.com, eventually finding the FlamingChicken LTE and going down a rabbit hole of discovering random LTEs? Literally the only reason I'm writing this right now is because that happened. I just discovered a new LTE: the RainbowFluffySheep LTE. I'm gonna see how many characters long it is. 75,957 characters. Pretty long, but not as long as the top two LTEs (FlamingChicken and Hermnerps, both with around 200,000 characters). I wanna write as much as possible into this text today. I'm gonna see how much LTE-writing I can do in one day. Hopefully it's a lot, because I wanna hold a world record! Imagine having a world record. Well, would it really be a world record? Because I don't know of any world record books that have "Longest Text Ever" as a record. Oh well, I just hope this LTE passes exactly 230,634 characters. That's all my goal is. I'm not even a tenth of the way there yet, but give it a month and I'm sure I'll get there. Hey, remember last time I said it would only take a month? That was four months ago. I should just stop promising things all together at this point. Forget I said anything about that. Did you know my sister has an LTE? That's right! It's not very long, though, and you can't read it because it's on her phone. She made it while bored at the library. That library was where I used to have web design classes. Those were fun, but I don't do them anymore. Now all I do it sit at home and write stuff in here. Well, I'm exaggerating. I go to the convenience store with my sister sometimes. But that's pretty much it outside of being bored on a computer. I should be a less boring human being. One day, I should translate this entire LTE into Viesa. That would be a big waste of time, even bigger than writing the LTE itself. But I could still do it. I don't think I ever will. This text is simply too long, and it'll be even longer than that by the time I pass 230,634 characters. By the way, if you think I'm gonna stop writing this once I pass 230,634 characters, you're wrong! Because I'll keep writing this even after I pass that point. It'll feel nice to be way ahead the record. My sister's alarm clock has been going off for half an hour and I haven't turned it off. Why? Because LAZYNESS! Actually, I really should turn it off now. There, I turned it off. First when I tried to turn it off, it started playing the radio. Then I tried again, and it turned off completely. Then I hurt myself on the door while walking out. So that was quite the adventure. I'm gonna go sleep now. Goodnight! Hey, I'm back again. My computer BSOD'd while writing this, so I have to start this section over again. That's why you save your work, kids! Before I had to start over again, I was talking about languages. Yes, I decided to bring that topic back after a while. But I no longer want to talk about it. Why? Because it'll probably bore you to death. That is assuming you're reading this at all. Who knows, maybe absolutely zero people will read this within the span of the universe's existence. But I doubt that. There's gotta be someone who'll find this text and dedicate their time to reading it, even if it takes thousands of years for that to happen. What will happen to this LTE in a thousand years? Will the entire internet dissapear within that time? In that case, will this text dissapear with it? Or will it, along with the rest of what used to be the internet, be preserved somewhere? I'm thinking out loud right now. Well, not really "out loud" because I'm typing this, and you can't technically be loud through text. THE CLOSEST THING IS TYPING IN ALL CAPS. Imagine if I typed this entire text like that. That would be painful. I decided to actually save my work this time, in case of another crash. I already had my two past attempts at an LTE vanish from existance. I mean, most of this LTE is already stored on Neocities, so I probably won't need to worry about anything. I think I might change the LTE page a little. I want the actual text area to be larger. I'm gonna make it a very basic HTML page with just a header and text. Maybe with some CSS coloring. I don't know. Screw it, I'm gonna do it. There, now the text area is larger. It really does show how small this LTE is so far compared to FlamingChicken or Hermnerps. But at least I made the background a nice Alice Blue. That's the name of the CSS color I used. It's pretty light. We're getting pretty close to the 1/10 mark! That's the point where we're one tenth of the way to making this the longest text ever, meaning all I have to do is write the equivalent of everything I've already written so far nine more times! Not gonna make any promises, though. How come every time I try to type "though", it comes out as "thought"? Why do I always type the extra T? It's so annoying that I have to delete the T every time. Okay, only mildly annoying. Not as annoying as I previously described. I apologize for my exaggeration of the annoyance level of me typing "thought" instead of "though". I just realized that most of the games I play are games that I've been playing for at least six years. I started playing Garry's Mod in 2013, Minecraft in whatever year version 1.2.3 came out. Now I have to look that up. March 2, 2012. So I started playing Minecraft approximately during that time. Wow, seven years ago! Coincidentally, I was also seven years old then. I remember the days of 2012-13. That was when I still played Roblox and made terrible YouTube videos. I was called "Infinite Budgets" back then. I also remember the days of 2016. A lot of people thought that was a terrible year, but for me personally, it brings me a lot of nostalgia because I talked a lot with my online friend at the time, and I did livestreams on YouTube and stuff. It was fun. 2016 was also when I got the phone that I still have to this day. Yup, my phone is three years old. My life was completely different when I got this phone: I was 11 years old, my YouTube channel actually had activity, and I wasn’t writing this text. I’m currently writing this in the car. We are on out way to the dollar store. And since I’m writing this on my phone, I’m making a lot more typos than usual. Some of them might make it through, so be prepared for that. Anyways, we appear to be getting close to the dollar store. I have a gift card for that place. I think so anyways, it might be for a different store... Yup, this dollar store is different. Oh well. My sister has an obsession with sponges. I’m sure she’s gonna find the sponges and go crazy over them. Why does she like sponges so much? No idea. She just found a bag of tiny baby dolls, and she wants to put them in ice cubes and call it “Ice Ice Baby”. She is truly a strange human being. My sister also has an obsession with stuffies. She has such an addiction, that she’s banned from them. Now she found the wigs and she’s considering buying one. She’s been looking at them for quite a while now. We’re out of the dollar store, and now we’re going to the computer store. I have no idea why we’re here. I guess we just are. Now we’re going home. Welp, that was a fun adventure. Stay tuned for more fun adventures as you read through this LTE. I should go now. Bye! Hello again. I made a private world on OurWorldOfText for my sister and I, but she doesn't want to join it. She doesn't think it'll be fun. Now I'm just editing it alone. How sad. But oh well. Now I’m here adding more to this text. I once made a Discord server specifically for a language called “Bo”, where the only word is “bo”. I made it almost four months ago, and somehow, it’s still going. People are still spamming nothing but “bo” there. It’s great. I also once made a server where you’re not allowed to use any vowels. It was a very strange server. I deleted it after some time though, so all that insanity is no more. I also used to own a Pig Latin server, but it got inactive so I deleted that too. We had some good memories in that server though. Now there’s a new Pig Latin server, but it’s not owned by me. Dang, my YouTube channel has been dead for so long. I haven’t posted a video in a year. I want to revive it, but I don’t know what to post there. I’ll figure it out. I doubt my channel will ever go back to it’s 2016 legacy, but I’m sure I’ll post something eventually. Random fact of the day: there are thirty-nine question marks so far in this text. Am I about to make it forty? Yes, I just did. Now the fact I initially stated is no longer true. Or is it? Because I said “so far” in the fact, that implies that we’re talking about the moment that fact was said, disregarding any future events. Now I’m pretty sure that fact is still technically true. Welp, I guess I should just accept that I’m editing that world of text alone for the rest of my life. I originally put a bunch of complaining in there, but I deleted it all. The thing is, now that world will never be same without all of that complaining about my sister not being here. But that’s fine. Hey, I just had a cool realization. Basically, there’s this conlang (constructed language, for those not in the know) server where we have a Sentence of the Week activity. In this activity, someone posts a text with a maximum of nine sentences, then people translate it into their own conlangs. My realization is this: if we take nine sentences from this LTE every week, there would be a whole year of sentences for people to translate. There are approximantly 523 sentences in this LTE. Divide that by 9 sentences each week, and you get 58 weeks worth of sentences, which is approximantly the number of weeks in a year. Quick maths. I actually suck at math, but that’s besides the point. I should go now. Goodbye! Hello, I’m back again. I really need to come up with different hello and goodbye messages, because I’ve already said “Hello, I’m back again” once before. Same with the “I should go now. Goodbye!” I said at the end of the previous section. I was going to explain what a “section” is, but I’m terrible at explaining things, so I’m not going to anymore. I guess you’ll just have to figure it out yourself. It’s probably not very hard to figure out, anyways. I guess I can just say that a section starts with me saying hello, and ends with me saying goodbye. That should be enough explaination, now that I think about it. Hey, do you ever feel like you never have any idea what you’re talking about? That’s my entire life. I just summarized it all in one sentence. On an unrelated note, I feel like half this LTE is just me talking about the LTE itself. I mean, press CTRL+F on this webpage, then type “LTE”. Look at all the times I use it in this text! Not counting the ‘lte’ in the word ‘multe’, of course. Dang, now the search results will include that, too. Anyways, half of this text is just me talking about how I’m trying to get this text to be the longest. Well, the longest LTE, anyways. I still have a long way to go. I’m only 12.7% of the way there. I mean, minus the four month gap, my estimation is that I’ve only been writing this for not even two weeks. So it makes sense that this LTE isn’t very long yet. Whenever I look at this webpage, it looks long at first glance, but the longer I look at it, the more I realize how short it actually is. It’s something that I can’t explain. For real this time. I just realized that none of this is helping the fact that half this LTE is about the LTE itself. I should bring up a new topic, but I don’t feel comfortable talking about much else. Why? Because, like I said, I never have any idea what I’m talking about. Most of this LTE is just me talking about LTEs or languages. Sometimes furries, but I don’t wanna go back into that territory at this point. But it doesn’t matter, because I’m still gonna write this LTE for as long as possible, even if it means talking about the same things half the time. Also, LEARN VIESA! Haven’t said that in a while, so I might as well bring it back. The documentation for Viesa is on this very website, so go ahead and read it! You might need to know some linguistic knowledge to understand it, though. In fact, you probably won’t understand most of it unless you know some amount about lingusitics, so you have been warned. If Viesa is too much for you, Pig Latin will probably be better for you. If it's so easy that kids can learn it, you can too! It's a language you can learn in probably five minutes, so why not give it a try? You may also enjoy Ubbi Dubbi, where you place 'ub' before every vowel sound. It's also a very easy language to learn, although not quite as popular. The thing is, none of these are even real languages. They're just codes, and very simple codes at that. You could probably crask Pig Latin or Ubbi Dubbi rather easily. Viesa too, actually. But I still enjoy them occasionally, even if Pig Latin and Ubbi Dubbi are inefficient and easy to crack, and Viesa is easy to crack yet unneccesarily difficult. I do make real languages, but I never put in the effort to learn them to fluency. At least I make them at all. Here’s a fun game: I will open up a random page from a book, and tell you the first word I see. English. That’s the word. Stay tuned for more fun games as you read through this LTE. We’re back, and we’re gonna play the same game as before. Ready? Subject. Now we’re gonna do it again. Reading. And again. Itself. Constituent. Grammar. Colloquial. Black. Outline. Add. About four of those words were language related. You’ll never guess why! (Spoiler alert: it’s a conlanging book). I’m running out of ideas now. I’m just gonna generate a random word and try to talk about it. Forbid. That’s the opposite of “allow”, I’m pretty sure. I don’t really know what else to say. Well, I guess I failed at generating a topic I could talk about. You know what's weird? My favorite word hasn't been used once in this entire text. I'm about to change that forever. Epic. Yup, my favorite word is "epic". I use it on a regular basis. I say "That's epic" all the time. It's a word I can't live without. Hey, I've now written more of this text after the 4 month gap than before it! Just thought I'd share that fact. Also, I'm gonna try and write as much as possible in this LTE today. I've already written more today than the day I first said I was gonna write as much as possible, so that's a good sign. The thing is, I don't know what to write about. I need to write about something, otherwise I won't write at all and I won't accomplish my goal. Wait, what goal should I set? How many characters should I write today? I'm gonna try and get 10,000 characters. I've already written almost 5,000 today, so from here I just have to write the equivellant of everything I've already written today. I'm just gonna try it and see if I make it. Maybe sometime in the future I'll do a bigger goal, like 15,000 or even 20,000 in one day. Actually, I don't know if 20,000 would even be possible for me. It might be, but it sounds like somewhat of a stretch for me to write that much in a single day. We'll see how long 10,000 takes, though. I'm already doing a bad job at this. I haven't typed anything here in several minutes. I need a topic. Um, Vabungula, I guess? Basically, it's a conlang created by Bill Price in 1965. It amazes me how one can work on a single conlang for that long. Most of the conlangs I start making die after 15 minutes. Anyways, I really like it because... um, I don't know, actually. There's not really anything about it that's super interesting (other than how long it's existed), it's just his personal conlang. Maybe it's the amount of development that went into it. It has over 5,000 dictionary entries and several texts written in the language. I'm sure most people reading this don't care about my language related talk, but I gotta make this long. I'm desperate to reach my 10,000 character goal. I've got 4,000 to go. I just found a website that generates random art from a seed. I just put this entire text as the seed, and it generated something quite nice. I would put the picture here, but I want this LTE to be nothing but text, so I won't do that. I've been playing with this for a while now. Many of the seeds produce boring pictures, but some of them are nice. For example, I just used "e" as the seed and it produced a nice looking picture. "a" looks nice too, arguably nicer. I've been using nothing but the word "nice" to describe these pictures. Maybe it's time to get a bigger vocabulary? "b" looks, um, good? I don't have the right vocabulary for this. I also don't feel like doing every single letter, because the pictures take some time to generate. But if you want to do it for yourself, just go to random-art.org and try it out! By the way, this is another website I found through pointlesssites.com. You know, the same website that lead me to the FlamingChicken LTE, which lead me to begin writing this whole thing. But what made me discover pointlesssites.com? Vsauce mentioned it. But what made me discover Vsauce? YouTube Reccomendations, probably. But what made me discover YouTube? As far as I remember, my dad showed it to me when I was 6. So I would like to thank my dad for being the reason I started writing this. He's the one who showed me YouTube, which reccomended me Vsauce, which mentioned pointlesssites.com, which brought me to the FlamingChicken LTE, which inspired me to start my own LTE. If he had never shown me YouTube, I wouldn't be here writing this text, and you wouldn't be reading it. Well, that's probably not true, because I probably would have discovered YouTube by other means, thus leading me to Vsauce, leading me to Vsauce, leading me to pointlesssites.com, leading me to the FlamingChicken LTE, leading me to... okay, I really need to stop now. I've gone too far. But you know what I haven't gone too far with? This LTE. I don't think I even can go too far with writing this text. Unless this text gets so long that it surpasses the 1GB storage limit of Neocities. In which case, I'll need to upgrade to Supporter in order to get a 50GB storage limit. But what if the text gets so long that is surpasses that? I don't think I'll ever make it there. I mean, 50GB is about 50 trillion characters. So I think we're good. I still need to get to 10,000 by the end of today. I've got 1,500 to go. Currently watching a livestream. It's reminding me of when I used to livestream back in 2016. I still kinda miss those days. But at the same time, I was quite awkward and had zero social skills, so I'm not sure if I'd want to go back. At this point, everything I've written today is longer than what can fit on the screen at once. At least on my computer screen. It probably changes with different screen resolutions and devices. But anyways, it's pretty unusual for that much of the LTE to be written in a single day. I don't want to pressure myself into writing this much every day, though. Last time I forced myself to complete a certain amount of something every day, it was overwhelming and I ended up losing motivation, thus letting down all my fans who were anticipating the August 30th, 2016 release date. Okay, the amount of eager fans was probably a number you could count on one hand, but still. By the way, if you're wondering what this "something" was, it was GoAnimated Garbage: The Movie, which was supposed to be an hour long episode of a series I made to make fun of random GoAnimate videos. In case you're not the type of person who knows what GoAnimate is... hoo boy. Basically, it's a drag-and-drop animation website infamous for the "grounded videos" that people made with it, among other types of videos. It's this whole community that I neither can explain nor want to explain. But I had somewhat of an association with that community back in the day. On my YouTube channel, I used to make a genre of GoAnimate video known as the "OS video". Typically an OS video is where some sort of hated character within the GoAnimate community forcefully installs their operating system onto a user's computer, and the user has to deal with this OS until they eventually find a way to "destroy" it. I made five of these videos. In chronological order: Caillou OS, Boots OS, Franklin OS, Little Bill OS, and Crap OS X. Caillou OS is the most viewed video on my main channel, which is unsurprising since Caillou is pretty much THE character associated with the GoAnimate community. When I made that video, it was a big transition for my channel. The channel's name was changed from Infinite Budgets, which had been my name since 2013 when I made crappy Roblox videos, to Allisima. All of my old videos were deleted, with the exception of my "Barney Errors", which was yet another genre of GoAnimate video. Basically, a Barney error is when a user's computer/console/whatever session is interrupted by a "Barney Error", a message informing the user that Barney has been killed, and the device must not be turned off because it's an "important message". There's also a bomb that's placed in Barney's "lair", the timer for which is displayed in the error. The user gets some amount of "chances", and every time the device is turned off, the user looses a chance and the time until the bomb explodes decreases. Eventually, the user turns off the computer enough times that there are no more chances left, the bomb explodes, and some sort of punishment happens. These punishments can range from having to downgrade your operating system, to having your computer destroyed, and in extreme cases, even to death. I once made a whole channel for Barney Errors, where I made about twenty of them before quitting. After that, I eventually quit GoAnimate all together, but I still made Crap OS X, an OS video made with Powerpoint. I also made an interactive OS parody called Windows Poop Editon, again with Powerpoint. Before that, I also made one called "Atch OS" using my old Windows XP netbook. I just checked to see if my old Weebly website still exists, since there's an Atch OS download on there and I wanted to see if it dissapeared from existence or not. Appearantly it does! I'm getting so much nostalgia from this website. It's like a window into 2016, when I had fun making these videos on a regular basis. I'm way past my 10,000 character goal now. I'm kinda glad I set this goal, but again, I'm not gonna force myself to do it everyday. I think I'm gonna stop writing for today. Bye! Hey, I'm back. Yes, that hello wasn't original either, since I already said it once. Specifically, after my sister seized the LTE and started spamming. You remember that, right? I hope you read through this whole thing instead of just picking a random part (which just happened to be this part) and reading only a tiny bit. Nah, I'm just kidding. Read this text however you want to, it doesn't matter if you read this entire text from start to finish or not. I mean, I did put some cringy stuff in here, as I keep mentioning. But it's on the Internet, and since recently, on my homepage, so I know people are gonna read it. Really the only reason I'm making this is because I have a weird obsession for writing giant walls of text. Guess what? I just added translations of this LTE into various conlangs on my website! But they're all very incomplete, and I probably won't finish them ever... I mean, if I'm gonna finish any of them, 'twill probably be the Viesa translation since it's the easiest to do. Hey, 'twill's back! I remember the very beginnings of this LTE, when I first mentioned 'twill. That was 40,000 characters ago. Appearantly I'm measuring time with characters now. Hey, what's the average amount of text I write per day in this LTE? The four month gap probably significantly drops that amount. Let's see! The trouble is finding out when I started writing this LTE, because I don't know the exact date. I'm just gonna estimate that it was March 12, based on the amount of times I said goodnight before I said "Happy Pi Day". It's not a very accurate measurement, though, because sometimes I stop writing for the day without saying goodnight. But anyways, from March 12 to today, July 16, is 127 days. As of that previous sentence, there are 42,549 characters in this LTE. 42,549 characters divided by 127 days equals about 335 characters per day. That's not very much at all. To get an idea of how short that is, the first 335 characters of this LTE consist of about 64 words and 8 sentences. As I predicted, the four months of no activity had a big impact on this number. But what if we ignore the 4 month gap, which was from March 15 to July 9, I've only been working on this LTE for ten days. 42,549 characters divided by 10 days is about 4254 characters. That's much better. It might be that big because of the 12,600 characters I wrote yesterday. I said I wouldn't do it every day, but honestly, I'm feeling like doing a goal again today. I think I might even go a bit higher than yesterday. Let's do 15,000 characters! I have zero life outside of this LTE, anyways, so I think I'll make it. As long as I keep typing about random stuff for the entire day, I'll probably get past 15,000 easily. I think I'm insane. Literally all I do anymore is write this LTE. My mom is almost certainly concered for me, because I was in my room pretty much all of yesterday and my sister told her about how I'm trying to write the longest text ever. But enough about my descent into insanity for now. Let's get this LTE to over 55,000 characters today! This is probably the most meta LTE in existence. Like I've said, I talk about the LTE itself as much, if not more than anything else. By the way, if I were to write as much as I did yesterday every day, I would reach my goal in just 15 days. Now I'm tempted to do that, even though I said I wouldn't set a goal like that every day. I think I might end up doing it subconciously. I kinda wanna convince some other people I know online to start their own LTE. Wouldn't it be fun if we all had our own LTEs? They would probably all die within a day, but at least I wouldn't be the only one writing an LTE in 2019... The most recently updated LTE I've seen is the RainbowFluffySheep LTE, which I believe was last updated in late 2018. That wasn't really that long ago, but still, I don't think it's being updated anymore. Now let's do an LTE Timeline! The original FlamingChickens LTE was probably started sometime in 2004, and Hermnerps was started the same year. The FlamingChickens LTE stopped in 2005, while the Hermnerps LTE actually lived on until 2009, although edits after the end of 2004 were rather sparce. The Kenneth Iman LTE was started in 2013 and was last updated in 2015. The RainbowFluffySheep LTE both started and was last updated in March 2018. And of course, the WhileTrue LTE was started in March 2019 and is still being updated today. Wow, 15 years of LTEs! I think my LTE is the only one still being updated. It would be nice if someone else was writing their own LTE along with me. But 'twill be hard to convince other people to waste their lives writing a useless wall of text. You never know, maybe an LTE that stopped being edited years ago will come back from the dead. That seems kind of unlikely though. Very strange fact incoming. A certain word has not been used since the very beginning of this text. Ready to learn what it is? I shouldn't tell you, actually. Of course, that would ruin it. Unless you want me to ruin a really cool fact. Surely you wouldn't want that to happen. Okay, I'll just tell you, because I'm probably gonna end up using it again someday or another. The word is "various". If you search for "various" in this LTE, you'll only find it at the very beginning as well as here. And I was gonna keep this a secret, but just now I did this thing where if you take the first letter of each sentence, it spells out "VARIOUS". Kinda clever... I guess? Anyways, for those who are insane enough to be reading this entire thing from the start Wow, you have quite the dedication. My LTE isn't even the longest yet, but perhaps in the future, when it is the longest, people will be challenging themselves to read the entire thing. And maybe you're one of them! Perhaps you're reading this long after I've passed my goal, in which case you still have quite a bit to go. So I wish you luck on your Longest Text Ever reading adventure! I've been talking about LTEs all day. For the past 6,000 characters, in fact. I need to find something different to talk about. But first, I just had an idea pertaining LTEs. I should compare this LTE to the longest joke in the world! The longest joke in the world is 56,554 characters long, which is about how long I'm trying to get this LTE by the end of today. So if I reach my goal today, this text will be longer than the longest joke in the world! That's pretty cool. I would also be a quarter of the way to my goal. But let's get back to finding something different to talk about. I can't think of anything. My sister is singing a song about wanting Subway. I will never understand her. What goes through her brain that makes her decide "Yeah, I think it would be a good idea to sing about how I really want Subway"? I don't get how her brain works. She also likes eating paper. I asked her and appearantly she was perfectly okay with me writing that in here. She probably thinks nobody's ever gonna read this. But she's gonna be wrong! Eventually. Now she's asking me to write about how she likes yogurt. "Because I didn't used to", she says. She's eating mango yogurt, and she has water in a Gatorade bottle. Now I'm asking her what else I should put in this text. She says I should write about how there's wild sage where we live. Now she's having hot chocolate. She didn't ask me to write that, but I told her I was going to write it and she said okay. My sister might start her own Longest Text Ever, again. She says it will have only one word repeated throughout the entire text. But I told her that it defeats the purpose of an LTE. In the original FlamingChickens LTE, one of the very first things that is written is "I will just type, and type, and never, ever use copy and paste". Okay, I just made a webpage for her LTE (it's gonna be an actual LTE this time). Stay tuned for "The Best Longest Text Ever", as she calls it. I think it should have just been called "KKs Longest Text Ever" or something, but whatever. She types really slow, but I hope her LTE will be successful nonetheless. Warning: if you do go and read her LTE, she spoils Spiderman: Far From Home at the very beginning, so be careful about that. In fact, she's basically typing the entire plot of the movie. Well, that's one way to increase your LTE's length, I guess. My sister is listening to her terrible songs instead of writing her LTE. Well, she has her LTE page open, but she's not writing anything and is singing instead. Actually, she's writing stuff now, so ignore everything I said previously. She's still writing the entire plot. Her LTE is now 2,000 characters, which isn't very long, but she's only been working on it for an hour. Plus she's a slow typer. She types everything with one hand. It might take a while for her LTE to get to this level. But assuming she keeps writing it and doesn't forget about it after today, it'll get pretty long eventually. I still need to write 7,000 characters today. My sister is watching a cringy video made by our old elementary school. They became a French immersion school after I left. She found one of the videos I was in... oh god, I can't stand to look at that video. It hurts me to think about those days. My sister's LTE webpage has text now! Maybe I should create a page linking to all the LTEs I know about. I think I'll do that. Boom, it is done. I think I'm gonna also put a link to it on this page. There, that's done as well. Guys, I'm not sure if I'm gonna make it to 15,000. I still have 5,000 characters to go (I was completely off earlier, I don't have 7,000 left to go), and there's not much left of the day. In retrospect, it was probably a bad idea to make a goal for the day in the first place. After all, LTE writing is supposed to be fun! Sort of. There's zero need to make unneccesary deadlines. I think it just reduces the fun, as well as the part of my life that isn't just writing huge walls of text. From here on out, I declare character-per-day goals abolished. I will no longer make attempts to write a certain amount in a single day. I should have listened to my past self, who said not to do goals every day. But I didn't, and now I regret it. But anyways, here's a fun fact about this LTE: excluding my upcoming usage, the pronoun "he" is only used twice in this LTE, and they both refer to my dad. On the other hand, the pronoun "she" is used forty times! Almost all of these refer to my sister. Only one refers to my mom. I guess I just really like talking about the weird stuff my sister does. But not as much as being meta and talking about my own LTE. Here's another fun fact: "LTE" is the fourteenth most common word in this text! That's insane. It's more common than words you'd expect to be common, like "you", "I'm", "for", "be", "about", "was", and so on. I really need to talk about other things once in a while. But since I have zero creativity, I always resort to talking about the same topics. From what I've seen, most other LTEs are pretty diverse, but mine isn't at all. Honestly, this is likely the most boring LTE to read. But my absolute lack of creativity means it's probably gonna stay that way for a long time. I'm tired, so I'm gonna go to sleep. Maybe I'll be more creative by tomorrow. Probably not. Anyways, goodnight. Hey, I'm back, and I don't feel any more creative. But I did have a dream last night, so I'm gonna talk about that. Last night, I dreamt that I was in one of our old houses, and I saw that someone made a video roasting Viesa. They talked about how you shouldn't say "dog" in Viesa, because appearantly "deeg" is bad or something? I don't know. Then they said the rule where W becomes V is weird, but I don't remember the reason they said it. I didn't really care about how they roasted my language. Then I watched a Minecraft video for whatever reason, and then the dream ended. How do other LTE writers have so many topics to talk about? All I ever talk about is either LTEs themselves, or the fact that all I ever talk about is LTEs. There's no diversity. I very rarely talk about anything else. And when I do, it's usually about languages and lasts only a few sentences. There, I deleted it. Oh, you don't have any context. Basically I wrote a bunch of depressing stuff, then I decided to delete it all. I knew I was going to regret it later, in the same way I regret writing all that stuff about furries. Not that I think there's anything wrong with being a furry, it's just that it personally makes me uncomfortable looking back on it. I'm not even into that stuff as much anymore. I don't watch furry YouTube, and I don't talk about how much I want a fursuit/go to a convention. That's a part of me that's slowly disappearing. Okay, I'm gonna stop talking about that, because I literally just said how I regret talking about it in this text. You know, I've been feeling kind of down about this LTE lately, because as I just mentioned, all I ever talk about is this LTE itself, there's no diversity, blah blah blah. It's especially been like that ever since the four month gap. In fact, I barely talked about LTEs before that gap. It's like I lost all my creativity after four months. You know what? I'm officially gonna say this: If, for some reason, you are reading this before you decide you want to start reading this entire text, READ EVERYTHING FROM "WOW, IT HAS BEEN A WHILE" TO HERE AT YOUR OWN RISK, BECAUSE YOU WILL LIKELY DIE OF BOREDOM DUE TO THE MONOTONOUS TOPICS! There, now I'm gonna try and forget that half this LTE is the same exact boring topic. I will also try to avoid writing about the same exact boring topic for the rest of this text. Let's celebrate the End of Monotonous Topics (EMT) by talking about how we (my sister and I) had lunch and did various other things with our grandpa! So grandpa asked if we wanted to have lunch and spend an afternoon with him, and we said yes. Then he picked us up, and we went to a nearby town where we had lunch, went to a museum which was a house built in 1909 as well as the town's first hospital, and got ice cream from what is appearently one of the best ice cream places in the country, according to grandpa. So today was a fun day. I'm gonna go now. Bye! Hey, I'm back. That's the fifth time I've said that. I need to come up with more original... nah, whatever. Anyways, I had a dream last night which was basically a whole movie I don't remember most of. All I remember is playing a keyboard at the store for some reason, and that the dream ended with a random car horn. Oh, and there was Minecraft involved in the beginning, which I'm pretty sure is becoming a recurring theme in my dreams. I don't know why that happened, because I rarely play Minecraft anymore. Do any of y'all remember the DVD screensaver meme? That was one of my favorite memes. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, many DVD players had this screensaver where it was a DVD logo bouncing around the screen. The big moment that everyone anticipates is when the logo hits the corner of the screen perfectly, because, well, it's just so SATISFYING! I used to watch a livestream that was literally just this screensaver running endlessly. And when it hit the corner, it was a huge celebration for both me and everyone else watching. I got so excited when the logo hit the corner. My computer's screensaver is even still a DVD screensaver. But nowadays when I see it hit the corner, I don't have as much enthusiasm as I used to. I've just seen it too many times for it to be exciting anymore. Plus, the meme isn't even a thing anymore. I doubt that livestream is even still running. But you never know, so I'm gonna check to see if it's still going. Oh wow, it is! That was the last thing I expected to see in July 2019. But only four people are watching it, which makes sense. The title now says "DVD Logo Screensaver For 1 Year", even though it hasn't quite been going on for a year. But when it hits that point, perhaps that's when it will finally end? It should have ended months ago, if you ask me. Yup, I was right. There's a countdown on the livestream to when it ends, and it says 181 days, 9 hours, 12 minutes, and 3 seconds. Wow, the corner hit and wall hit numbers are much bigger now. The most corner hits I'd seen is around 1400 or so, but now it's at 4776! The wall hits used to be in the hundred-thousands, now it's at over two and a half million! Hello, I have returned. There, I came up with something original to say! Anyways, I just combined every single LTE I know of (including this one) and put it onto one single page on a Wikia wiki called "No Rules Wiki". That wiki exactly as you would expect from the title. I found it a while ago, and I thought it was about time I made a contribution, even if pasting over half a million characters into a single article is breaking some rule... I've been wanting to make Viesa an actual conlang for so long now. I think it's long overdue at this point. Hey, I'm back again. These sections are getting shorter and shorter each day. But oh well. I just discovered how much I like the word "number". I don't know why, but it's just so fun to say! I think I've liked that word ever since I was a toddler learning my numbers! I remember thinking it was a fun word even back then. At that time I had two little electronic toys: one was orange and for numbers, and one was purple and for letters. I'm pretty sure those were the colors. I also vaguely remember having a fan that lit up and displayed custom messages. I haven't seen anything like that since then. All I hear right now is Baby Shark being blasted upstairs. You know that song, right? I don't know who doesn't know it at this point. I can't think of a single person I've seen that doesn't know what that song is. Dang, ever since the EMT I haven't been writing as much in this text. Looks like LTEs were all I could talk about. Oh well. How many times have I said "oh well"? Probably a lot. About eight times, in fact. I'm back again. I went a full day without writing anything into this LTE yesterday! There were a lot of things happening that day, so I didn't feel like writing. I could've written at least a little bit, but I didn't. Time for me to use this LTE as my dream journal yet again! I had a dream where my domain was "exin" (or something like that) instead of "whiletrue", so that was a thing. I also had a dream where there was this game that I thought existed in the real world, but it didn't. Dreams do that sometimes. I don't remember much about the game, but it involved the Simpsons, I guess? Also, I was in a weird store where they had an... iCarly laptop? And a bunch of gift cards. That's all I remember. For now, at least. My sister does not like synthwave. She says "it's repetitive", "the sounds they use don't sound like music", and she doesn't like how it doesn't have lyrics. First of all, she's hypocritical because she always listens to the same songs on repeat. And why does it matter that it doesn't have words? Why does she think every single piece of music in existence has to have words? YOU BETTER WATCH YOUR OPINIONS THERE! (That was a reference to a cringy GoAnimator that no one reading this will get, unless you came to this website from my YouTube channel which you subscribed to during my OS video days). Anyways, synthwave is objectively the best genre of music. I remember hearing HOME - Resonance for the first time in a Discord voice chat, and it was magical. I wish I could listen to that song for the first time again. That was how I got into synthwave. You know what my favorite color combination is? Yellow text on a magenta background. Oh, and don't forget the Comic Sans. That is just pure beauty right there. In fact, it's used in the first frame (well, close enough) of "history of the entire world, i guess", which makes me love that video even more. We're at 60,000 characters, 1,000 sentences, and 12,000 words! Weird how all those counts hit such round numbers in one day, huh? I need to stick to the EMT, so I should stop talking about that. My sister is attempting to build a Lego city. Her goal is to have three buildings, since she doesn't have THAT much Lego. Have you noticed how quickly I've been switching topics in this text? That's because I can't talk about anything for a long time. That is, unless that thing is languages or LTEs. I am currently trying to revive a language my sister and I started making a while back. Sometimes my sister has days when she doesn't hate languages for some reason, then she ends up starting one. But of course, she regained her hate and abandoned it. Now I'm the only one working on the language. By the way, the language is called Lazay, which was the successor to Zula, the first language we made together which is now deleted. We started writing the language on paper, but then I started a Google Doc. I'm sure the papers are still here somewhere. I'm just too lazy to find them. I’m back again. I haven’t been ending these sections with goodbyes recently. But whatever. We’re on our way to IKEA to get a dresser for my room. We’re listening to Queens of the Stone Age right now, and I’m just waiting for “Fortress” to come on. I sing that song in Viesa, but I make up half of the lyrics. It goes: Ванавар јак фиртрас кува, ма башег ђара, ја сок. Try and translate that! The song is playing now. I like this song. We’re back from IKEA now. Actually, we’ve been home for hours now, and we’ve already built the dresser. My computer crashed (but don’t worry, I started writing this in Google Docs on my phone), and now Google Chrome won’t open. So I have to use Microsoft Edge for now. I’m gonna sleep now. Goodnight! Hello, I'm back. My sister is brushing my back with a hairbrush, and I don't know why. I asked her what I should write about (because I have zero creativity), and she said I should write about that. I'm gonna type whatever comes to my head now. Hi, I'm a boring human being who has zero creativity whatsoever and still happens to be writing an LTE. Isn't that insane? How could this be? Nobody knows, and nobody will ever know. It is a strange mystery that has yet to be solved. Hmm, I wonder if I should go and eat pancakes now? I'm so random right now. In fact, there's an entire subreddit for that: r/iamsorandom. You should check it out! I mean, you don't really have to, but it would be nice if you did. I use Reddit a lot, but I only use it for language-related stuff. Well, I make posts in language-related subreddits, but the non-language subs that I look at are ones that I don't post anything to, because I know nothing about literally anything that isn't languages. And heck, I don't even know much about languages! I only make English codes and call them "conlangs". Sort of. I usually don't actually call them conlangs, but I use them for such purposes. I speak Viesa as if it were a real language, but it simply is not. Why did I make Viesa in the first place? Well, you see, it all started out as a joke for April Fools' Day. I called it "the new universal language", despite it literally being a cipher of English. What!? A cipher of English being a universal language? How silly! What a funny joke, right? Maybe? Somewhat? Anyways, I then made a SECOND VERSION! DUN DUN DUN! This second version had CLICKY SOUNDS which, spoiler alert, dissapear in the next version of Viesa. Sad, right? RIP CLICKS 2018-2018 NEVER FORGET! I also added WACKY GRAMMAR STUFF and PRONOUNS! WOAH! How crazy! Then I made the next version: VERSION 3.0! This version added CYRILLIC! (you know, that alphabet the Russians use, as well as the Serbs, whose version of the Cyrillic alphabet I stole for Viesa. Hehehe!) And that's the entire history of Viesa, explained in a Zany way! Do you like how I capitalized "Zany" there? Aren't capital letters so cool? They let you YELL AND SCREAM AT THE TOP OF YOUR LUNGS! They add EXCITEMENT! And most of all, they let you capitalize words like This. lowercase letters are also cool. without them, we'd all be yelling and screaming all the time. That would be pretty tiring, wouldn't it? I see two water bottles. One is empty, while the other still has some water in it. The empty one is blue, and the one with the water is pink. I should also mention that the blue one is mine, while the pink one is my sister's. I got that water bottle because I lost my other one at school. But GUESS WHAT? I FOUND IT IN THE LOST AND FOUND! Wow! Now I had two water bottles. How Wacky and Crazy and Zany and Bizzare and all those adjectives that perfectly describe this epic moment! Wow, writing your mind is a great way to increase your LTEs length! Before I was actually THINKING about what I was writing. But now I barely do, and it's greatly improving my LTE! Except the overuse of capital letters might throw the reader off guard a little because of how sparingly I've used them in the past, but oh well. I could fix it, but I don't feel like it. I want to continue writing, but I need to sleep now. Goodnight! Hi, I'm back again. My computer crashed AGAIN, and I was ignorant enough to not save my work, so that means I have to start this part of the text all over again. That's quite unfortunate. But did I mention that my Google Chrome is working again? That's the good news. It's good news because Google Chrome has all my logins, websites, and stuff like that. Hopefully you know what I mean when I say that. Maybe you do, maybe you don't. I don't even know what I mean right now! I'm probably insane right now. Especially since I'm writing this right now, as I have been for about 18 days minus the four month gap... I think. I hope I did that right. As I've said before, I'm bad at math. My sister just read the entirety of what I've written today for some reason. My sister just sang "I want your computer to crash again because I'm evil". She IS evil if she wants my computer to crash. At least I'll have this section saved. In fact, right now I'm pressing Ctrl+S after every sentence! Including this one. And this one. Also this one. I think you get the point now. My sister keeps typing into this LTE without my consent, and I keep having to delete it all. It's pretty annoying. Hey, flashback to when I said that way at the beginning of this text! You know, the part where I talk about the Teen Titans Go episode called "Waffles" where the word "Waffles" is said a hundred-something times. You know what else is said a hundred something times (in this LTE)? The letter J. So far it's been used 115 times in this LTE. That's your Interesting LTE Fact of the Day! Well, not really "daily", but whatever. Here's a story: Once upon a time, people got tired of starting off their stories with "Once upon a time", so they stopped doing that. But one person decided not to stop using "Once upon a time", and used it at the beginning of this story. And that person is ME! The end. Wasn't that a lovely story? You're probably not thinking that. Again, I'm not creative in any way whatsoever. That's why I don't usually write stories and instead write giant walls of text full of meaningless information, like the one and only WhileTrue's Longest Text Ever that you're reading right now. Hopefully nobody died of boredom from reading between "Wow, it has been a while" and the EMT. That's the most boring part of the LTE! 90% of it is just me talking about LTEs themselves. How uninteresting is that? Very uninteresting. Penguins. What are they? I don't know. What am I even writing right now? I haven't a clue. Isn't it weird that I said "haven't a clue" like that? Normally "haven't" isn't used if it's alone as a verb, as in "I haven't my keys". Who says that? Nobody, that's who. And yet "I haven't a clue" is an actual thing I've heard people say. Anyways, AFRICA! That was random, but let's discuss it anyway. Africa is a well-known song by Toto. It's a good song. I can kinda sorta play it on piano? Maybe? I don't know. Another song I can play on the piano is All Star by Smash Mouth. You know, the Shrek song? Anyways, I once made a video called "All Star but it's played on a Sesame Street piano" and it got almost a million views. It's been stuck at 900,000 for what seems like forever now. I'm gonna check to see if it's at a million now. I doubt it, though. Nope, still at 926,000 views. And I doubt it's gonna get any more, to be honest. It had a good run though. My sister is chugging applesauce. She thinks she's epic because of it. I don't know anymore. I seem to keep saying that after everything I type at this point. It's strange. Hello, I have returned after yet another long absence. When was the last time I added to this? I think it was somewhere in July. So yeah, it’s been three months, as it is now October 17, 2019. The end of the decade is approaching fast. I’m a bit excited, because I’ll have significant memories from more than just one decade! My earliest significant memories started in Kindergarden, which was in 2010. This means that I only really remember one decade. But now that an entirely new decade is coming up, I’ll be able to remember another! Part of me feels like I shouldn’t be excited over this, since the boundaries between years is arbitrary, and a decade is 10 years only because we count in base 10, so if we counted in base 12 or something, a decade would be 12 years long. That was kind of a run-on sentence, but I don’t really feel like making this text perfect, anyway. Have you heard of the Library of Babel? libraryofbabel.info is a website containing every possible combination of the lowercase letters a-z, space, comma, and period. The library is divided into hexagonal chambers. Each hex contains four walls. Each wall contains three shelves. Each shelf contains 32 volumes. Each volume contains 410 pages of 3200 characters each. Everything you could ever say or write is on this website. Even this LTE! See for yourself: https://libraryofbabel.info/bookmark.cgi?lte. Okay, that’s only the first bit of it, but every other bit of this LTE is somewhere in the library! In fact, here’s the next bit: https://libraryofbabel.info/bookmark.cgi?lte:1. It’s split up into about 20 different pages. I don’t feel like putting links to all of them here. It also removes punctuation that the library doesn’t use, like the exclamation point, question mark, colon, and so on. But it’s pretty mind-blowing stuff, if you ask me. If you try and browse the library yourself though, you probably won’t find much more than total gibberish. It’s crazy to think that everything we could ever possibly say or write is massively outweighed by meaningless strings of letters and punctuation.

[21st-centuryliability]

You’re My Sunshine - Ben Hardy X Reader - Chapter 2

A/N: Sorry for the really really reaaaaaally long wait ...my bad!

Summary: Reader is the niece of Roger Taylor and the assistant to the BoRhap boys. Joe is jealous and the others like to tease him.

Chapter 2

You never did like it when morning rolled round and you found Bens side of the bed empty. You figured you’d woken up not long after Ben had left as the bed was still warm and the mug of tea on the bedside table was still steaming. Ben loved to leave you little notes, whether it was with your morning tea, on the bathroom mirror for you to see when you finally decided to take a shower or simply attached to your favorite sweet treat in the fridge. Although Ben wasn’t next to you when you woke you were never completely alone. Frankie’s favorite thing to do once Ben had left was to curl up next you, every now and then licking you to wake you. Nothing made Ben happier than seeing you bond with Frankie, you were his girls after all.

���Alright I’m up!” You turned to Frankie who was now laying on her back, all four paws in the air awaiting a well deserved tummy rub “Happy now?”

After taking your first sip of tea, tea that Ben made exactly how you like it, you looked at the note, bound to be full of cheese and fluffiness.

‘My Sunshine,

I hope you and Frankie have a lovely day together. Can’t wait to come back to you both later!

I love you forever

Ben x’

Even though you had told Ben he really didn’t need to prove his love, you couldn’t help but smile when he did. Technically you and Ben weren’t living together despite you spending pretty much all your time at his and him often telling you to move in already. You spent the morning prancing round the flat in one Bens hoodies that drowned you, playing with Frankie and making the most of your day off as you waited for Bens return. Occasionally taking Frankie down to the ground floor to go to the toilet you had decided you weren’t going out, making Bens hoodie and your pj shorts a completely acceptable choice of fashion. In the middle of your normal routine of crappy tv shows your phone begins to ring, a video call from Ben.

“How are my girls?” Ben’s husky voice bellowed down the phone making Frankie’s ears prick up in excitement.

“We’re good aren’t we Frankie?” You cooed gently kissing the top of Frankies head as she curled up in your lap.

“Awh my girls” Ben smiled before being rudely interrupted.

“Hi Y/N!” Joe shouted, jumping up on Ben and scaring him.

“Hi Joe” You sighed a little as you laughed.

“So I was thinking about later...” Ben started his sentence before being cut off by Joe.

“Later yep...” Joe nodded along to wind Ben up.

“Do you mind?” Ben groaned as you laughed quietly at Joe.

“Not at all” Joe really was full of it.

“What was you going to say my love?” You smile sweetly at Ben, trying your best to keep him calm.

“I was thinking we could make dinner together” Bens lips curled slightly.

“What did you have in mind?” You replied, speaking softly and a little seductively even if Joe was still lurking behind Ben.

“Pizza?” Ben suggested knowing full well you had had pizza the night before.

“I like pizza!” Joe chipped in.

“Someone say pizza?” Gwil suddenly appeared, wearing his long curly wig in all its glory.

“Bloody hell!” Ben grumbled making you laugh a little.

“Well I better let you get back to filming” You grinned further winding up Ben.

“I’ll see you soon my sweet” The warmth of Bens voice radiating through the speaker.

You waited out the hours until Ben got home on the sofa with Frankie as usual, not knowing whether it would just be Ben walking through the door or if Joe had invited himself over. After a while you begin to drift in and out of sleep until the clang of keys in the door woke you. Frankie leapt of your lap and headed straight to the door.

“I’m home” Ben walked through the door greeted by Frankie at his feet.

“How was work?” You smiled, your heart melting watching Ben cuddle Frankie.

“I don’t know ask work, it appears to have followed me home” Ben rolled his eyes with a smile as Joe walked in.

“Y/N, how’s it going?” Joe grinned as he threw himself in a slump on the sofa.

“Erm hi Joe?” You looked at Ben for help as another voice appeared.

“Where do you want these Y/N?” Gwil smiled holding up a big bag of groceries.

“Erm ...on the worktop” You stutter, your unexpected guests made themselves comfy.

“You can be mad at me later, come here” You couldn’t resist Bens sweet smile as he walked over, gently placing his hands on your butt as he scooped you towards him.

“Ben we have guests?” You whispered knowing full well you were being watched.

“Awh come on, not cool guys” Joe groaned as Ben gave your lips a gentle peck.

“If you wanted someone to grab your arse Joe, all you had to do was say?” Gwil smirked as you and Ben laughed while Joe slumped into the sofa even more.

“Somebody’s jealous!” You sang as Ben tightened his grip around you, sway you gently in his arms.

“My god I love you” Ben spoke quietly in your ear with a light chuckle.

“Face it Joe, you’ll never beat Y/N when it comes to Ben” Gwil added further insult to injury.

“Shut up” Joe crossed his arms and tried to pout but he could stop the smile that was creeping across his face.

“Joe knows Y/N is my everything” Ben looked down at you still nestled in his arms, not wanting to let go you decide to take the wind up a step further, holding his face in your hand as you run your thumb along his jawline, your eyes locked on his.

“Gross!” Joes face contorted to resemble a shriveled prune.

“Alright alright that’s enough” Gwil called the end.

“Oi you’re in my house remember?” Ben smirked as the boys rolled their eyes.

“Are we making pizza then or not?” Joe reminded everyone.

As Joe and Gwil scrambled to the kitchenette, Ben suddenly but gently lifted you up and sat you on the worktop after all you needed to watch over these three crazies. While Gwil laid out the ingredients and Ben tried to remember where he kept certain utensils, Joe starting recording on his phone.

“So you crazies asked for more behind the scenes non-scripted stuff and today we’re making pizza!” Joe smiled, spinning the camera round to introduce everyone else “I’m at Ben’s with Gwil and of course the lovely Y/N, someone has to supervise after all”

"And clean up the mess” You laugh.

After an eventful evening of pizza making and eating, Joe and Gwil finally left, letting you and Ben enjoy the rest of the evening together ...once the aftermath of making pizza was cleaned up.

“Joe knows the flour is supposed to go in the bowl right?” You smile as you wipe the last flour covered piece of the worktop.

“Yeah I don’t think Joe knows how to not make a mess” Ben chuckled as he finished up the dishwasher “but hey, my pizza was good right?”

“Yeah it was ok” You teased Ben a little.

“Hey don’t lie...” Ben smiled as he stood behind you, holding you tightly firmly against as he spoke softly in your ear “You loved it!”

“Yes alright” You laughed quietly as Ben placed a gentle kiss on your cheek.

“Now the boys have gone and everything is cleaned up...” Ben twirled you round with a grin before picking you up and placing you on the worktop like he had earlier but with a different plan in mind.

“I know that look...” You smiled as Ben looked up at the ceiling, trying to playing it cool as his hands found your hips as he stood between your legs to meet his.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about?” Ben smiled sweetly as you gently run your thumb across his cheek “But guess what?”

“What?” You spoke softly as Ben gently let his nose rest against yours, your arms finding their way round his shoulders while his held you tight against him.

“We’re not filming tomorrow” Ben replied placing a quick peck on your lips “which means we get to spend the day together ...alone ...just the two us!”

“Yeah we both know Joe will find a way to be our third wheel ...he always does!” You smiled as Ben chuckled.

“Actually I already spoke to him and told him that I’m spending the day with you and you only” Ben grinned, making you melt a little as he held you tightly in his arms pulling you into a passionate kiss.

“Shall we take this to the bedroom?” You spoke softly as Bens lips began to curl into a smirk.

“God I love you!” Ben replied as he lifted you up from the worktop and carried you to the bedroom.

You were both excited at the thought of spending a whole day together just the two of you even though you knew realistically Joe would turn up at some point. Days that were just you and Ben were far and few between, you loved to time with the boys and so does Ben but sometimes the two you needed some alone time together...

[creek-cryptid-deluxe]

So, It’s been awhile. There’s a reason. The last week or so has been... a week. jesus christ. I shall regale you of my tale, not in chronological order necessarily because that’s how I roll. BUT if you suffer through it, you shall be rewarded with an outdoor plant update post after. Bribery. 

So. Early last week, The Spawn sat down with me and presented a proposal, a well researched proposal, advocating for her starting her own residential cleaning business because she finds it incredibly satisfying and relaxing to clean stuff and she does quite well. So we sat and brainstormed, researched, and talked about how she planned to advertise. She needed a business gmail (and all the tools that come with that), logo, business social media, website, and flyers. 

Being her age, she doesn’t have the skill or knowledge to do these things. So, I volunteered to help with these things so that she didn’t have to spend money hiring someone. I created the email account, put all the brainstorm stuff into a google doc that saved to the biz drive, which included a to do list and the basic info needed. I created a logo. (At which point, she called me a wizard while watching me do so.) I helped her try to create a biz facebook account, but facebook immediately flagged it as breaking the rules. like literally as soon as I created it. So I appealed it & The Spawn wanted to wait to see what came of that before I went further. So she took me with her to shop for the things on her supply list, and we decided to go grab some of the smaller stuff still needed for J’s appt at the same time. This was Friday. 

Saturday, I got a text from J in the early afternoon saying that he needed me. I quickly packed a ‘just in case’ bag, since I didn’t know what to expect or how long I would be there. Now, you have to understand that in the 7 years we’ve been friends, while he has discussed things with me via phone or text, in person he is like me, incredibly stoic. Hell even via text or phone, he always insists that he’s fine and responds to my reminders that i’m here if he needs someone, and to just let me know, he responds “I appreciate it, but I won’t”. So him reaching out like that is a MASSIVE thing. I showed up, let myself in, and he just walked up to me, wrapped his arms around me and started sobbing. I stayed the night, alternating between being comforting and being distracting. It was extremely disarming to see such raw emotion from him repeatedly over the course of the night and to hear him say the things that he is usually uncomfortable articulating. 

The next morning he seemed better, thanked me for coming (to which I responded “Of course I came. I’ve not ever been lying when I’ve said that I’d come if you needed me, day or night, but you have to let me know.”) and apologized for ‘being a mess’. I told him every time he apologized (which happened quite a bit over the course of the night) that there was no need for an apology because this wasn’t something to be sorry for. He was struggling, as people do, and rather than embrace the darkness or fight it alone, he asked for help from someone he trusts and loves that he knows reciprocates. That i know how hard it is for him to do that and that I am proud of him. 

Sunday afternoon the kids (The Spawn and The Bf) picked me up because she needed to take him home but didn’t want to leave the dogs alone. I got in the car after The Bf got into the back, insisting I take the front seat. We hadn’t even gotten out of the parking lot of the apartment complex when The Spawn casually asked “So are ya’ll fucking?” 

that’s how I learned that I was the subject of a bet. Apparently, The Bf asked where I was when he came over and out of convenience, not wanting to really explain the relationship, The Spawn said I was at my boyfriend’s. I guess he went on about how how come I’m never hanging out with him, etc, so The Spawn explained the actual nature of our relationship. At the end The Bf said “Nah, they fuckin’ but your mom isn’t telling you.” The Spawn said, “No, she’d tell me because when I started high school I asked her about her past encounters and asked about what stuff was, if she’d done it, and if she enjoyed it, and she was always honest with me. That’s how I know she likes it up the butt.” He insisted that J and I were banging so The Spawn, knowing the truth, took advantage of this and made a bet. It was an easy win for her. SO...

I get asked this question & I look at her, eyebrows raised because she knows how our relationship is (granted if I were physically able and he was willing, I would definitely jump back up on that horse) and said, “No. Mom is no longer physically capable of fucking without risk of severe injury. Plus, despite having ridden that horse previously, I’m not into endangering our besties status. I would go into further detail and commentary but I don’t want to make The Bf uncomfortable. These are things you know, so why do you ask?” She told me of the bet, Then i promptly text J about it because I knew he’d get a laugh out of it. And I was right. 

By the end of Sunday, she recieved an email stating that facebook was upholding the ban, so she and I talked and decided to make a webpage via WIX and after getting a few clients, she could upgrade her account with them to get extras that are offered, including her own domain (rather than the name.wix address) and a lack of wix ads on her page.  And then it all went downhill from there.

Monday through Wednesday (yesterday) had The Spawn breathing down my neck more than any boss I’ve ever fucking had about when her business shit would be done. On top of what I’d already done, between Monday and Wednesday I:   set up her google voice account for a business number, wrote her a “first time client” script, created a google sheets quick reference client database, created a google forms for detailed client records (all in a folder together that is searchable by client name, which would be the title of the form), set up the calendar, downloaded and edited/collaged her before and after photos she took via cleaning some of our spaces, and built her a 7 page website including the photos, facts, and little blurbs that go along with it. It went live at the end of yesterday. 

Throughout this process, rather than just checking in and thanking me for doing it all to save her money, she asked me every couple hours what still needed to be done. When I was not as far along as she felt I should be, she got progressively more hostile. Yesterday morning she had the balls to text me “What all do we still need to do before I can get rolling?” I responded with “ ‘We’? hahahahaha *I* still need to [list].” 

I’m sure you’re saying to yourself, “Am I missing something? Did you forget to list something in the list of stuff you did between Monday and Wednesday? You mentioned flyers....” You are correct. But yesterday while I was being driven to my 2nd vax appointment by my father, I basically told him that I’m fried. If a flyer just included facts, I’d be fine, but the part where I need the potential customers to be drawn in and want to learn more is not happening. The creative well has run dry to the point that it is reminiscent of the dust bowl. And I reminded him that there is a reason I no longer do this type of shit for a living. I mentioned that thinking about The Spawn’s company is making me stress puke and that any time The Spawn approaches me to talk about anything, I immediately feel incredibly nauseated. 

Now it should be noted that when I mentioned this in a multi paragraph text earlier, he responded with “Just take a step back from it for awhile, then go back to it.”    

and everyone wonders why on earth I don’t speak up when I hit my limits and why I just push onward despite the damage it does to me. THIS. THIS IS WHY. Everyone is all for me not pushing myself too hard... until it is inconvenient for them. So I basically screamed in the car. On the way back he said he’d help. Ok. cool. 

Except that every fucking idea he had legit just tripled the amount of work I was going to have to do. I mentioned being burned enough that I was considering just paying a freelancer to do it. This motherfucker chimes in with “Oh! [Cool Ex Employee Who Left to be a Stay at Home Mom with her First Baby] does stuff like that. Let me reach out to see if she’d be willing to.” BRUH. That should have been the first thing out of your mouth after my original texts! Jesus Christ. I agreed but with the caveat that HE had to tell The Spawn and say it was his idea because he sees me getting overly stressed and has put his foot down. And he had to do it that night because I knew that if he didn’t, the first thing I’d hear today was “So when are my flyers going to be done?” and I am absolutely not dealing with that shit. The only thing I am doing from this point forward is showing her how to use her database/client files/calendar and I will be happy to answer questions or give advice, but that’s it. This isn’t my company and I’m not employed by her, so I’ve already put in far more work than should have been expected of me, with very little thanks outside of after I finished her logo and a couple times she came down and watched, then told me I’m a fucking wizard. 

Really It was good in a way because I had been doing that thing lately where I wonder if I’m just being dramatic because admin type stuff isn’t that hard and if I could do it from home, I should be able to manage... but this put me back down on earth, where I absolutely am not being dramatic and I cannot fucking do that shit 40 hrs a week for some random asshole. Shit, this was for my own child and I was ready to give up, stab her, then tell her to go fuck herself.

so...that’s been my last week and a half for so. Also, my only side effects from Vax 2 (pfizer) is feeling more tired/run down than usual and a bit of extra joint pain... but those might actually be related to the stress and hell I just went through. who knows. 

as always, don’t steal my shitshow. get your own shitshow. suffer through your own crap. 

[readerinsertfanfiction]

Three Ways

Fandom: Naruto

Character: Kakashi Hatake

Prompt: I ought to give Kakashi some love since Naruto is refusing to do so. A series based on some wisdom shared by a wise uncle.

4/6

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

You met Kakashi again over the back of Guy. Literally, as you were seated onto the back of the Green Beast of the Leaf when you ran into the copycat ninja.

“Hello Kakashi,” Guy smoothly greeted in which you followed, making sure to strike the same pose to put emphasis into the act. It looked as horrendous as you expected it to be, the blank look of the receiver giving you all the information you needed. 

“Guy. Name,” the man greeted back, cool as ever. Though the lilt in his voice was enough to give away his surprise at your appearance.

Might Guy brushed off the reaction, immediately turning down to business as he gave Kakashi yet another smirk. “Kakashi,” the man repeated, launching a dramatic pause before he made a wild gesture, “I wish to challenge you, again!” he announced loudly, a finger prodding into Kakashi’s direction.

Clinging onto Guy’s shoulders you rapidly tapped your hand, hoping that the man would soon realise that your legs were not secure. Feeling yourself slip away you couldn’t help but feel a little worried for yourself.

“If it is carrying [Name] you seem to be already losing,” Kakashi coolly offered as he gently slipped you off his overzealous rival. With a good view of the contours of his face up close and his usually apathetic eyes you suddenly felt yourself grow conscious as Kakashi looked down at you in his arms. 

“Bridal style, how bold,” you managed to get out, reviving yourself as you slipped into your wheelchair that Guy had set down earlier.

Kakashi kept quiet, smiling that infamous eye-smile of his again. Before you could fill the silence Guy interrupted once more.

“I hate how cool you always are, Kakashi,” the man exclaimed, hands balling up as he realised his mistake. Never defeated it actually invigorated him even more. “Enough of your adorable moment! I want my challenge and I challenge you to a battle of friendship!” Guy exclaimed, another flashy pose following to which you were glad to be off his back.

Feeling your face grow hot once more you started to sputter against the man. “What ado--” you tried, but Guy never let you finish, following on:

“Since we both recently met and befriended [Name] we shall have a battle to see who is the better friend. It will be a battle to the death!”

There really was no stopping the man once he got all fired up. With Kakashi unable to forego any challenge with the man the battle was a fact, a thought that made you grin to yourself. Neither of the men had seemed to notice your obvious struggle and it suited you just fine. That if Guy could stop spouting nonsense.

It was only natural that you knew about both jounin and their personality. The huge amount of intelligence you had under your servitude was not to be mistaken, after all. However, when you had read about Might Guy’s over-zealously you had mistaken just how extra the man could be.

“First!” the man exclaimed as he pulled out a scroll. “In order to better understand [Name] we need to experience [Name]’s world!”

Unscrolling the rolls Guy summoned two wheelchairs, your eyes widening at the implications of the script you had discussed. It was definitely not what the two of you had discussed before. Winking at you the male gave you a fat thumbs up before seating himself down in one of the chairs, gesturing towards Kakashi to do the same.

“How exactly will this determine who is the better friend, Guy?” Kakashi questioned asking that what you both were wondering. Even if the two of you had your suspicions to what the answer would be it wouldn’t hurt to hear it from Guy himself. Though, it seemed that no matter the answer Kakashi was going to roll with it as he seated himself as well. 

“Choosing a friend is not an easy matter, Kakashi,” Guy started, already wheeling himself up and down to try out the wheelchair. “We can’t just ask [Name] to choose between us, that would be unfair!” Tested against the logistics of the man himself it was a sound reason and neither of you decided to argue against it. That if it wasn’t for the extra line he had to add. 

“Besides, we can’t expect [Name] to be able to choose between two handsome men!” he exclaimed loudly, another big fat meaningful wink heading your way.

Whatever counter you had went ignored. Too excited as the man was Guy had already proceeded.

And so the challenge started. Kicking off with a wheelchair race Guy had managed to force everyone to spend the day together, splitting the challenge up in several rounds.

“You are pretty adept at wheeling yourself around,” you complimented Kakashi, the two of you leisurely following the overexcitable Guy. “Though, what else is there to be expected from the one and only copycat ninja?” 

Not soon after the race had started the man had announced that he would use his arms instead if he had no legs to use. With neither of you having the heart to call his instant loss in the race you left Guy to be. Besides, it gave the two of you some leisurely time. Something that you had found little off despite the break you had called in for the mission. 

“I had the perfect subject to observe,” Kakashi responded, earning a scoff from you. “It turns out that it also makes for an excellent practice for chakra control,” the jounin continued, forever thinking of ways to teach his students new skills.

Eyeing him curiously you stopped in your tracks, lips pursing in thought. “I don’t think I have ever seen your sharingan,” you mused, wondering when the man had ever lifted his mask to use his infamous technique on you. There had been no reason to do so after all. Your job wasn’t meant for the frontline, thus leaving out much of the excitement in which a sharingan could be prompted to be used.

You would have missed the pause in his movements if it weren’t for the wheelchair. Shoulders tensing Kakashi threw you a lazy look, another hidden smile directed into your way.

“I didn’t need my sharingan.”

Stumped you weren’t sure how to respond, instead you stared after him. You knew that naturally Kakashi would have shadowed you for a bit. Just to make sure that you weren’t suspicious and you had known when he did so. However, you had never expected him to observe you to the extent of figuring out your technique without the sharingan. It begged the question what for? 

Occupied with that piece of information the second round started. Bowls of ramen with an assortment of side dishes set out in front of the three of you.

“[Name], I will pay for your meal if you pay for mine,” Guy smirked as a first attempt in an offer.

Returning the smile with a scoff you rolled your eyes. “Might as well pay for myself,” you countered, amused at the format of the new challenge. Whoevers meal you ended up paying for would be the winner of the challenge. It turned out that the entire format was quite simplistic after all. 

“Then I will pay for both to show off our youthful friendship!” Guy exclaimed, never dissuaded.

To this you had even less of a response. “How nice of you to offer,” was all that you said, earning yet another loss for the man.

Guy’s attempt to make you pay for at least one of his meals had failed, leaving the stage to Kakashi.

“Are you going to sweet talk me into paying?” you challenged. You knew of the track record he had, charming his comrades into paying, but you were prepared. You were also prepared for him to have known that you were prepared, leaving this to be the real battle to start. It really was a matter of who would give in first, or corner the other. 

“Yes and no, you know I can sweet talk anyone,,” the man calmly responded. A fact that you laughed heartily at. A challenge it was. 

Pausing the man turned towards you in his seat, his eye suddenly serious as he faced you. “I just wanted to say that I really respect you as a comrade,” he started, “not just because of the mission, but also as a ninja. ” Sparing no moment the male started his attack on your wallet. 

It was a line you had expected Kakashi to start with. Keeping quiet you gave him a look, waiting for him to continue. 

“Will you pay for the meal, [Name]?”

It was as if he had been proposing. A proposal at which you rolled your eyes at with yet another scoff.

“As comrades shouldn’t the senior pay?” you teased, amused at the attempt made. Determined to make both parties lose you weren’t about to let a free lunch go either. Besides, Kakashi knew he needed more to tug at your heartstrings. 

To this Kakashi had an answer as he continued his mysterious way of eating with a mask on.

“There is no seniority in respect and I certainly respect you the most, [Name].”

Another killer line. Leaning over to the man you put your hand on his shoulder, patting it as you nodded solemnly.

“Quite right, Kakashi,” you started. “Then the next meal shall be on you.” Raising your hand you then ordered yet another luxurious bowl from the good chef, leaving both men unanswered in their challenge and both your bowls paid. 

Silence fell between the two men as they contemplated their next move, eyes meeting each other before turning back at you. The challenge was far from over and the two men had known each other for much too long to just leave it at that.

“Sounds like a date,” Kakashi casually exclaimed, rusing your attention once more.

Wide eyes blinked back at him in confusion before your last words dawned upon you, a chuckle escaping you. Now that you hadn’t expected. Though, as always you were quick to recover. 

“In which the gentleman pays, right?” you winked, knowing full well that you were playing right into Kakashi’s hands.

Shrugging Kakashi finished his bowl, enjoying the blush you were trying to hide as Guy tried to fill in the gap in which he had fallen. Scrambling up the man shot up from his place, his voice beaming all over the shop. 

“Let me take you on a date as well and teach you all about youth!”

Scrunching your face up you eyed the man. “I will pay you not to,” was your immediate response though your eyes were amused. You had to give it to them both, they were entertaining. 

To this Guy smacked Kakashi soundly on his back. “I won, old comrade!” came proudly, his face sparkling despite the earlier rejection. “[Name]’s bias for you has facilitated my advantage!” 

To this you tried to argue again, feeling another blush rising as you realised what had transpired. “Two dates is a bit much, isn't it?” you tried to defend yourself, but found that it was of no use. The pairs of eyes that were on you, not only of the two men but from the rest of the shop as well bore witness to the scene. 

Those two were going to be the end of you. 

[migleefulmoments]

Abb/y has something to s/ay

Let me premise this by reminding everyone that Abby -like Trump-doesn’t “get” comedy. They literally do not understand jokes, punchlines, or humor. So a satirical show about the Hollywood song writers falls flat. Her time away did nothing to sway her conspiratorial aspirations or her misogynistic hatred of Mia. She watched Royalties not once, but twice... not to enjoy Darren’s creativity and performance, not to support the celebrity she stans, and not even to crack up at the humor, no she watched twice because she was looking for confirmation bias. She wanted to document all of the ways Darren wrote his CrissColfer truth into Pierce’s life and she obsessively listened to all of the diss-tracks he wrote to attack his wife.  

Let me also premise this by saying I loved the show. I thought it was funny and the songs are so damn catchy.  The lyrics are quintessential Darren- funny, very clever, and raunchy.  

******************************************

R/oyalties, the Tale of Two Shows with a Heaping Side of Meta

ajw720. So I just finished watching R/oyalties for the second time, this time solely focused on the meta.  Look, we all know, the show is not good, it was not well written and the short format didn’t help as there was no option to develop character or plot.  But D knew it would not be good, he apologized for it back in January 2019.  And I think the effort he put into acting was the effort it deserved. Ok.

But his songs were genius.  As were the videos, hence why i call it the tale of two shows.  It truly was like watching content made by completely different people. I concur with MH, D is “intensely talented.”  And the part of this show he poured his blood, sweat, and tears into, the songs, are evident of this.

But this is a post about that Heaping Side of Meta. I think D, knowing that that show would not be made in the manner he envisioned, instead used it as a vehicle to make some bold statements and parallels with his career and public life.  Shall we begin?  And please, unlike the perfect song, this is not a perfect post and after the second round of watching i canceled my Quibi subscription and never plan to look back, so please feel free to add. I know some of these have been pointed out but I thought it was valuable to have one post.

One idea to inpsire the song?  A tiny FROG on a dime.

D’s shirt 1st seen in Episode 2: “It is hard to soar like an Eagle when you are surrounded by turkeys”

And of course “Call me Goldilocks bitch”  Remind you of something?

How about the entirety of Episode 3 when we are told that an artist is completely the product of the team.  That no matter what the artists expresses they want, it doesn’t matter because the Label/manager/publicist/on camera agent/legal will always have a say. And how it will play in America or the Foreign market are key metrics of how the product is produced and presented.  I love the line of the songwriter that tells P/ierce and S/ara to “get out while they are young.”  Or the line by one of her team “we don’t want something different, we want something the same that is different.”  And in the end P&S simply took one of KK old songs and reworked it, making something different that is not different and her team loved it.  

And of course, the line that was an utter slap in the face to the most over praised “director” of an indie band video ever when D reminds her of the real director in his life, the man set to direct major motion pictures, “you know who would be perfect to direct? C/hris.  C/hris would shatter this.”

Not much in Episode 4, but the gorilla suit in my opinion was mocking of a certain MMR video where we watched Swiller and a banana in a song about a gorilla.  Images I never need to see in my head again.

Episode 5, a gem, I am still so fucking proud of D and how he mocked her throughout the entirety of the episode.  New lines I love of that amazing song he wrote about her (in addition to those i posted previously here) “Some people say I’m a  genius, which comes from the greek word for Latin, and other people will say, alright in fact i’m a fuckin’s genius” “I’m not saying I’m a god, but I’m not saying I’m not a god.”  Mocking at its finest made all that much better by the band’s name “Switchback Jacket” that D describes as “butt rock emo” that is performed by a band that doesn’t actually sing, they are just the public image.  He literally told us that what we see is an image created for the public and that it is completely fake.  And he used his beard to make this statement. Just brilliant.  I cannot praise him enough for this, stealing her moment in the sun and making her look like an utter fool, telling us just how narcissistic she is.

Also some wonderful lines from that episode that are beyond telling:

“Power, it felt good to remind Kevin that I hold power over him. You always want to be the one with power”

“p/ierce wouldn’t know where to take a shit if I didn’t tell him.”

“she is like my wife except we don’t have sex and we are friends.”

“alright boss, I am ready to record that song, but where should i take a shit?”

“You will do anything to succeed.”

Episode 8 starring “Poly Amorous and the Unicorn Guild” an episode used to shine a light on how absurd it is that people believe D&PBB lived with platonic roomie B/enny for something like 4 years.  3 grown ass adults, all of whom have money to spare lived together in a relatively small house for four years.  It is pure comedy that anyone would believe that this is normal.  But hey these are the same people that explained away the infamous arm around her while at an awards show with D looking on:

And the cherry on top of this episode, the inclusion of C/huck (for some background, see my post here).

I really like the one bit of dialogue between P&S, where D pretty much tells us once again that M will use anyone to get what she wants:

“Did it ever occur to you that maybe just maybe, I don’t like where we are now? There were a lot of really great things about the way things were.  Things that are worth preserving.  Not that you just take and use and through out.”

Episode 9 had some really impactful lines:

“you think i wouldn’t steal for my career? You think I wouldn’t lie?  I would do anything.”

The Neils being the nameless individuals, nothing more than a number, who are the ones who actually create the product.  And then the song, some of the translations are D telling you how he feels, because sometimes i think in terms of his public image he is just a Neil trying to escape the cage that has been built around him:

“I dream about getting away, I have been locked up in this cage wishing i could make my escape. I hate that I need you.”

And finally Episode 10, where we learn the Neils get no credit and no royalties. This reminds me of a script C wrote that never saw the light of day but suddenly the next season of AHS had the same theme as his script.

And that is all i got, if you have more please add. I think the fact that D took what he knew would be a mediocre project and projected his voice and story throughout it was pretty genius and a smart way to utilize this vehicle, that was clearly payout for so many that have used him for years and to shine a bright light on the truth.

elicc  The “perfect song”’s performer is called Bailey Rouge, a clear link to TLOS.

He is a genius.

ajw720   @elicc damn, that was on my list and I forgot. And we all know who Red is inspired by, so seems fitting Bailey Rouge would get the perfect song.

ajw720. Just adding one more I thought about putting in my original post but admittedly think it’s a stretch. But maybe not? Just adding here for fun.

When Theo tells P to bottle up all his romantic feelings I couldn’t help but think of a certain chapter in a book

*******************************************

Oy Vei! Abby didn’t use her time away getting any therapy or perspective.  She hasn’t learned any lessons. I have no doubt she’s been reading just as much as she did before and she’s speaking to Cassie, Flowers et al all day. It’s really sad. It’s sad that she can’t see how silly she sounds, what an asshole her version of Darren is. If she could restrain herself even a little bit it might come off less unhinged because turning every single moment of Royalties into some crisscolfer wet dream reeks of desperation. 

Abby hates Royalties. In last week’s “Dear D” she had the audacity to say 

....Fans that are beyond devoted and mainly because of the way you have treated fans with respect and a level of caring that far surpasses the majority of public figures.  And while I am not enjoying the show itself, the music shows how diverse you are as a writer and how you can virtually write for anyone or any genre. The songs are fantastic.  Memorable.  And really fun.  

She knows the the Langs wrote the show and Darren wrote the songs but what she can’t seem to comprehend is that Darren IS Royalties. Everything in the show is Darren’s.  

Staying in the closet would be less painful than trying to express oneself through a short-form satirical comedy.  Can you imagine trying to express your devastation and pain through Kick Your Shoes off or Break It In? 

“I’m the king of the hard fuck....pile drive the bed like a young buck...if you like feathery shit thats pretty cool but I don’t need that...people say I fuck too soft, saying that I can’t please a woman” 

BTW Abby- “call me goldilocks bitch” isn’t a reference to TLOS it’s a reference to Goldilocks and Three Bears because because he fucks perfect, not too soft, not too hard. It’s much more believable that he is referring to a random nursery rhyme than it is to believe he is referring to a children’s book his lover/husband/boyfriend wrote 8 years ago. You might love the book but Chris has moved on and written new things. 

Darren wrote funny lyrics. I loved Kick Your Shoes Off because it’s written by a man whose watched his wife and female friends wear painful shoes for the same of fashion even though its painful as fuck.   

“Yeah, I’m a bad bitch so don’t be mad bitch. I turned the room into a catwalk like a sad bitch. I can’t feel my toes in these stilettos. when I walk out my roomate says you’ll regret those....Beauty is pain but oh I look amazing.  You won’t hear me complaining but oh my instep (inside?) is screaming...kick your shoes off (kick em off) ooooooo I do what I want..(Kick em off) ooooo Hey I can’t walk in these, blisters start to bleed now both my feet are swollen. Kick your shoes off (Kick em off).....It’s like i feel so good when my shoes are on, but like i also feel sooooo good when they are off” 

Abby’s convinced I am So Much Better Than You is straight up about Mia because Mia is in the video. She listened to it on repeat the day after it came out. In her “Letter to D” last week she said 

Especially after you made an effort to mock her for the entirety of Tuesday when her episode aired (and for the record I am still really, really proud of what you did with that episode and how you handled the roll out, that is the fighter I admire and that inspires me.  I listened to I am so much better than you on repeat on my drive home from work yesterday).   

Good Lord  The lyrics are as silly as all the other songs: “My mirror wants to bone me (but it can’t because it’s a mirror)” How did Abby miss the obvious TLOS mirror/ Halloween costume reference here?  

“You keep doing push ups while I get buff eating mac and cheese (with overpriced lobster and truffles because I’m worth it)”  

“Some people say I’m a genius (which comes from the greek work for latin) Some other people will say yeah I’m right I’m a fucking genius (I’m not saying I’m a god but I’m not saying I’m not a god). 

“And even when you sneeze, God blesses me, he blesses me. And even when you sneeze, god blesses me, he blesses me, he blesses me”

“I’m am so much better than you at everything”. 

She believes Darren would be- and stay- married to a women that he publicly ridicules and attacks. I don’t get why she thinks that is something admirable . 

She thinks Also You is referring to Ben living with them.  Where to start with this one? She says

“Episode 8 starring “Poly Amorous and the Unicorn Guild” an episode used to shine a light on how absurd it is that people believe D&PBB lived with platonic roomie B/enny for something like 4 years.  3 grown ass adults, all of whom have money to spare lived together in a relatively small house for four years.  It is pure comedy that anyone would believe that this is normal.  But hey these are the same people that explained away the infamous arm around her while at an awards show with D looking on”

I’m gobsmacked.  Also You is about Polyamory. She doesn’t even understand her own theories if she thinks that is the message Darren wants to share about Mia and Ben.  In no world would someone try to proclaim their wife was cheating on them with a live-in houseguest by writing an episode called Poly Amorous and the Unicorn Guild.  Also, someone needs to explain cuckholding to her because her theories about Ben and Mia make Darren a cuck.  

OMG I just realized that Darren is a cuck and Royalties proves it.  He hired Kether to be his costar in Royalties,...Kether is in You’re the Worst as Lindsay.  Lindsay cuckholds her husband. Bam! mic drop.   

Why isn’t Perfect Song about Mia, you know, if we are playing confirmation bias “No one is as good as you because you're my perfect song” 

[accidentally-logince]

I NEED MORE AXEL RONEN AND WINTER! I'm drawing Ronen right now.

Ask and ye shall recieve, anon (also if you were the one who submitted the drawing yesterday, I loved it)

Word Count: 1.6k

—

Axel had noticed for a while now that his Daddy had a ring. He knows that he used to hide it under his shirt, because Axel has seen the string around his neck, and he’s seen him pull it out to sit on top of his shirt. Axel also knew that his old Mommy and Daddy had rings that kinda looked like that one, but they were on their hands. Wedding rings. Axel’s Daddy had a wedding ring. But his Papa didn’t.

Winter had just hopped into the van on the way back from an “errand” (that’s what Axel still called their little outings, even though he had been told long ago what was actually going on) and the telltale lurch of the van as he slammed his foot onto the gas was the hint to Axel that they were being chased.

Even though Axel knew he was supposed to stay in the back when the police were following them, he stumbled up to the front, leaning out from behind Winter’s seat.

“I have a question, Daddy,” Axel said, and Winter started in his seat, turning around quickly.

“Guppy, you know you’re supposed to stay in the back,” Winter said, turning back to peer through the sideview mirror.

“Yeah, but I wan'ed to ask you a question,” Axel repeated.

Winter worried his lip before caving. “Okay,” he said. “But stay behind the seat so no one sees you.”

Axel quickly ducks behind the passenger seat before asking, “is the ring ‘round your neck from Papa?” Axel watches Winter’s expression soften the tiniest bit.

“Yes, it is,” he answered, a smile playing on his lips.

“Is it a wedding ring?”

“Uh, yeah, you could call it that. I mean, we never actually–” Winter was cut off when a loud bang came from outside.

“Why doesn’t Papa have one too?” Axel asked, ignoring the loud noise.

“Y'know what, Guppy, I think maybe you could ask your Papa that question, I’m gonna need to focus, okay bud?”

Axel nodded, stumbling back to the mattress where Ronen sat, his eyes trained anxiously on Axel as he came back to meet him. “Is everything good up there?” he asked. Axel nodded, plopping down next to Ronen.

“Why don’t you have a ring?”

Ronen barked out a laugh. “Oh? Where’d that come from?”

“Because Daddy wears one around his neck but you don’t have one,” Axel pouted. “Did you lose it?”

“Trust me Guppy,” Ronen said. “If I’d gotten a ring from Winter, I would never dare take it off.” His eyes wandered to Winter in the front seat, a smile starting to push at the edges of his mouth. “No, the reason I don’t have one is just that he never got me one. I don’t really need one,” Ronen said with a little shake of his head. 

“But in the movies they put the rings on each other at th’ wedding! How did you do that if you didn’t have a ring?”

“We didn’t have a wedding,” Ronen says with a shrug, but Axel’s little eyes went wide.

“Why not?”

“We couldn’t legally set one up without being caught and put in jail.”

Axel stuck his tongue out in thought, brow furrowing. “No, I’m gonna make you a wedding,” he says a determined look in his eye. “Cuz if you love 'chother, then you deserve one!”

Ronen lets out a soft laugh. “You don’t have to do that, Guppy–”

“Nope! It’s too late,” Axel said matter-of-factly. “I made up my mind. Ronen laughed. 

"Okay then. I’m going to be expecting a top notch wedding though,” he joked, but Axel nodded enthusiastically.

“It’s gonna be th’ best wedding ever!” Axel hopped to his feet, stumbling across the van to dig in one of the storage bins for his notebook and a pack of glitter pens. He plopped down on the floor and opened to an empty page, starting to scribble furiously.

Ronen let out a laugh, pushing to his feet and moving to sit in the passenger seat, leaning over to give Winter a kiss as he sat down.

“It would seem we have a wedding planner on our hands,” Ronen said, peeking out the window. Winter chuckled. 

“Do we now?” he said with a grin. “A wedding for years after the proposal? That’s got to be some sort of record.”

“Far as I’m concerned, we’re already married,” Ronen says. 

“Oh, don’t get started,” Winter says with a playful roll of his eyes, “'I bought you a ring and I kissed you’” he says, repeating the words he’d heard from Ronen so many times. 

“In my rulebook, that’s about as married as we can get,” Ronen says. “And plus, I just really fucking love you~” He leans over and smiles sappily at Winter, who laughs, the tips of his ears turning pink.

“Shut up, you dork.” he giggles. Then he says, “I love you too.”

—

When they stopped the van later, they found Axel still huddled in the back, writing in his book.

“Can I see what you’ve got so far?” Ronen asked. Axel tucked the book against his chest, shaking his head.

“It’s a secret,” he says. “My eyes only.”

Ronen grinned. “Okay Guppy. Keep working hard.” He leaned over to ruffle Axel’s hair, and Axel giggled as he went back to writing.

“So what are we gonna be doing for our honeymoon then?” Ronen jokes, laying down next to Winter where he’s splayed out on the mattress.

Winter grins. “I’ve always wanted to go to the Bahamas.”

“I will do everything in my power to bring you to the Bahamas then,” Ronen said with a joking grin. Winter rolls his eyes playfully and leans over to give Ronen a kiss.

—

“Axel!” Ronen pushed the van door open. “We’re–oh, my God.” He stared at the back, Winter holding in a laugh behind him.

“Wedding day!” Axel was sitting in the middle of the van, absolutely swamped in balloons. He threw his hands up, knocking a few into the air for a moment.

“Guppy,” Winter said, still trying to suppress his laughter. “Where did you get all of these?”

Axel pointed behind them, towards the little shopping center they’d just returned from after finishing their errands. “Dollar store! And I got cupcakes too. I paid with my bottle money!” They’d started giving Axel a monthly allowance of whatever money they got going through bottle depots. Axel would find bottles on the ground near the van and bring them in after Winter told him they were worth ten cents each. 

“Come with me!” Axel pushes himself to his feet, stumbling over the balloons to hop out of the van and lead them around to the other side, where a little box of cupcakes was laid out on the grass. “You gotta stand under those trees,” he told them, pointing to an arch formation made by two trees that had grown too close together. 

“Guess nature wants us to get married too,” Ronen jokes, before taking Winter’s hand and leading him beneath the arch.

Axel clapped his hands excitedly, running over to stand in front of them. He opened his book and started to read, then cut himself off. “Wait,” he says, digging in the pockets of his overalls and producing a ring. Winter’s eyes go wide as Axel hands it to him. “You give this to Papa,” he whispers, grinning as Winter takes it and inspects it. “I tried my bestest to find one that looked like yours.”

“Where… where did you get this, Axel?”

Axel frowns. “I wanted to buy it with my bottle money, too, but they make them so ess-pensive,” he says. Then his face lights up. “So I stole it!”

Both of them stare at Axel. “You.. stole it?” Ronen asks, and Axel nods his head proudly. “Damn. I don’t know if I should be proud or concerned.”

“Baby’s first theft,” Winter mutters with a half smile. making Ronen snort, “But don’t steal again, okay Buddy?” Then, worried he sounds like a hypocrite, he adds, “maybe we’ll teach you when you’re older.”

“Okay, now we can start,” Axel say, opening his notebook again and clearing his throat dramatically, but he frowns again and asks Winter, “am I 'llowed to call you and Papa by your real names? It’s in the script.”

Winter has to hold his hand to his mouth to keep from laughing. “That’s okay, Guppy.”

“Okay! So… d'you, Winter Naven,” Axel giggles after saying his name, “take Ronen Koster t'be your husband?”

“I do,” Winter says, deciding not to mention that Axel definitely missed a few lines there.

“And d'you, Ronen Koster–”

“I do.”

"I didn’t even finish,” Axel giggles.

“Yeah, but I already know that I want to marry him,” Ronen says, and the tips of Winter’s ears go pink. “I’m just waiting for us to get to the kiss.”

“Ronen!” Winter hides his face in his hands, a flustered smile pushing onto his lips.

“You gotta give Papa the ring first,” Axel says. 

They were definitely doing this out of order, bu nonetheless, Winter takes Ronen’s hand and slips the ring on. Something about the gesture feels special. A wedding in their sweaters, with an eight-year-old as the minister, and a stolen ring. But he couldn’t help grinning at Ronen as he slipped it past his knuckle.

“I now pronounce you man and… um… shit–”

“Don’t say shit.”

“Man and man! You may now kiss the groom,” Axel says, closing his book. Ronen cups Winter’s face, pulling him in to capture his lips. Winter wraps his arms around Ronen’s waist, grinning into the kiss. After a few moments, they pull apart, noses still touching. Winter’s whole face has gone pink.

“I love you,” Ronen mutters.

“You’re such a sap,” Winter giggles. “I love you too.”

—

Tag List: @roman-sing-despacito @lovesupportandcookies @actiongirl2005 @ab-artist @internetwhy @obsessedwith83514 @zorakaseko @book-r-the-best @lee-knows-it @noahisanidiot @thekeytohappiness-is-you @daenerysblackriddle @friendlyfatherfigment @sunflower-shitposts @brownie-aunt @dra-logan-w @superwholocked-for-life @ananonsplace @kcthestarkid @imforeveranoob @ts-famderartist @spellboundnora @deceitifullies101 @milkshakethouart @porcelain-dionysus @that-smol-tired-gay @king-cookiex

[ayakashiramblings]

What the Foot: Kuya the Debut and Finale

Author’s note: Read this in Sir David Attenborough's voice, please. Actually, I would be still impressed you managed to read this mess. Also, I still don’t know how to use colour fonts, help.

                                      The Mystery of Kuya’s Shoes

It is at this mansion where evolution’s most impressive feat is documented: Kuya’s legs. 

So defined and long. Both can be contorted into any position should the user choose to execute any sort of movement. Little do people realize that the tengu does not even know what they are called because he has never learnt how to use these fine, magnificent specimens in his feeble life. In fact, the only reason why they move is because of sheer desperation in those mad, mad golden eyes to avoid doing work.

Right now, it seems that he has achieved his greatest wish at this warm verandah. There, he slumbers with wings tucked securely against him, curled up for comfort… the only things that stand out are… the shoes... 

Ipponba-geta (one-tooth-geta) or tengu-geta due to Japanese folklore depicting tengu goblins as the most popular wearer. The tengu-geta are mostly used as ceremonial footwear because they give the impression that they are hard to walk with and dangerous. Recently though, studies have shown that such footwear has promoted strength in muscular training...

Yet, none of these solid reasons offered seem to apply to the gentleman Kuya, for he... is rather subdued by nature.These very shoes are more alive than user as even though it is subtle, one can hear the slightest slapping sound as he occasionally shifts sleeping positions...

Gaku, are you getting this on the camera?

How can I not? He is just lying there like a couch.

Point taken, maybe we should wait for him to wake up.

Why am I doing this again?

Because Yura wants to see a homemade movie.

Yes, but why this topic?

Because aren’t you curious?

At the fact that you’re dropping the British accent while speaking in Japanese?

No, I mean Kuya’s attire. Like, if he really wanted to be comfortable, why that footwear of all things. 

Well...

Besides, according to Koga who got it from the maid who got it from Nachi who got it from the fish vendor who got it from Oji, Kuya should be forced to wake up...

In exactly 29 seconds, this particular male tengu shall be roused by the burning urge for sustenance at the chicest restaurant.

Chic?

Ok, you’re right but I’m not going to correct myself because I am getting tired of this position. How did you even get the camera here?

What? Isn’t it obvious?

No, it... wait, darn, we missed his flight. He’s on the move, after him!

Tensions are high as the tengu confronts another member of the Dawn Faction. 

Aoi from the quaint Milk Hall, Raccord. As a Satori Seer, he wields the ability to peer into people’s hearts... and their afternoon schedules or lack thereof. He stands as the tengu’s lone but powerful opponent against the ever-so-coveted... Oji-san’s omurice.

Oh wow, you really made the camera capture it. 

Erm... actually, it really is glistening and there are sparkles around it.

... On that topic...

It should be noted that within the ayakashi community, there is a clear divide between the ones who do 95% of the work with sensible but fashionably questionable shoes and those who do 5% with weird and fashionably questionable shoes. 

It does not help that Kuya flew all the way over here without being spotted somehow except by Aoi.  

Now, it is no secret that Aoi is a sharp-tongued young man with a caring disposition. It is only his inability to be honest with himself and those around him that plagues him. Thus, he relishes the rare opportunity to be completely vulnerable and engage in a secret hobby that is to be captured on the camera for the first time.

Fighting with Kuya. 

“Hey, deadbeat, we have actual customers so don’t sleep here!”

How is that a secret?

The secret is that he likes it. Now, hush and aim.

Kuya... seems not to care, nodding absent-mindedly to the tongue-lashing he is receiving. Will he finally rise to the occasion? Will he take flight? Will he fight with all of his might?!

Hey, quiet! 

Oh, sorry.

“Shh... I’m sleeping while waiting.”

Kuya alas remains aloof and detached as he lays into a fuming seer, never letting his opponent get a word in. Maybe this is the power of the shoes? 

After all, legend has it that once the tengu bestows his footwear upon a human, the receiver will be able to fall easily and get rich with each fall he takes until he becomes too short to even lift his profit. 

Who knows if Kuya is utilizing the knowledge left by his descendants with something of equal value but with a bitter price — an “I do not care about anything you said to me” attitude obtained only by reluctantly gaining an “I do not care about anything.” attitude as well. 

Then, there is a sound much like a bell’s ring, signalling all present members of the species to return to their dens for more customers and the proprietor of the place.

Seems that the Domeki has abated the crackling animosity over laziness with... more laziness. And asking about tengu-branded cigarettes? Either way, Aoi is distracted by the long-awaited cooking oil.

... This is proving valuable content for my brother, I guess. 

... I kind of want...

No food yet, we are recording it until the end now. Hush.

Ugh, you’re right, ok, zoom in on Kuya’s feet.

Notice that the tengu has propped his feet on the furniture. But wait, that’s not all. Nay, one must observe the new angle taken to accommodate those shoes. So why does he bear such a burden? Is this to justify his lethargy? The sheer struggle against some geta?

Wait, how did he finish his omurice so fast?

My god, he literally inhaled it. 

Fascinating...

His stretch causes big, onyx wings to expand widely outside. Jet-black feathers fluttering about the room for Aoi to clean, as if taunting.

... Oh wow, that is actually a legitimate theory.

You are the one coming up with the script, why are you so surprised?

Wait, look at that. He just took off! How?

... Oh, I think I know why now. 

What? 

Finally, the mystery has been unravelled by the marvellous...

“We don’t have to narrate anymore.” “But this is marvellous...”

“Ugh... fine. But I’m doing it.”

Now, observe this exclusive footage of a tengu gracefully taking flight. The takeoff is the most energy-demanding part. So does the naturally tired creature summon the required force? See how he braces himself.

Due to his large wingspan, he must take a small run up to generate sufficient airflow. Thereafter, comes a significant jump upwards and propped by those shoes. Notice how the single tooth provides the exact position needed that would have required him using another muscle.

Now, he soars, his shoes somehow securely still on him... 

Why is he coming closer?

... Run...

It was too late though once MC had collided into his chest. With an arched eyebrow, the tengu mumbled, 

“What are both of you doing?”

Even Gaku flinched. The times they exchanged furtive, accusing glances, offensive fingers and switching whoever was nearest Kuya was enough for the tengu to roll his eyes, take off his shoes and dangle them in front of the pair.

“So, do you have a better close-up?”

Defeated, MC was the first to squeak out a mortified, “... Yes...”.

“Good, say hi to Twin Number one when you show this to him. Now, do the closing thing or whatever. I’m going back to sleep.”

As they stared at Kuya’s retreating form in the sky, MC-chan chose to do the most important thing...

Tune in for the next episode of WTF, What The Foot!

Italics: MC still pretending to narrate but interrupted

Bold: Gaku having to narrate for his beloved brother but interrupted

Normal Text: Either one of them narrating unless accompanied with quotation marks

                                                          Epilogue

Yura found this hilarious and decided to use the only camera in the house to film animals. One day, the camera broke thanks to a deer. The damage was beyond even Gaku’s control. 

[xain-russell]

New Year’s Resolution: Maybe Act like a Professional or Something.

Okay, 2020. Start of a new decade. And even more so then usually in a new year, I feel the need to refresh myself and make plans for what’s to come… that usually end up being a coin flip as to whether or not I’ll follow through. But, making plans is the first step to achieving them so let’s give this the old college try shall we?

1. Make a Schedule and stick to it.

Let’s face it, I’m really inconsistent in terms of my content output. There will be weeks where I roll something out almost every day and then there’ll be months where my blog’s are barren save for one or two sketches. So putting together a schedule and then sticking to it has got to be priority number one going forward. I’m going to start small and try to add more as the months go on, but here is the bare minimum what I have in mind:

One sketch every day

One fully completed piece a week

Patreon Commissions and Sketch’s done by end of the month 

Now I’ve been doing this thing lately where I’ll post a bunch of sketches together and have you guys vote on which one I finish and I would like to make that the regular way of getting you guys content that you actually want. Starting with this week, I’ll post the poll on every Saturday, run it till Monday, then post the finished piece on Friday. I want to get into a steady content loop that involves my audience and this sounds like a reasonable way to do it.

2. Start Livestreaming again.

On the subject of involving my audience, I’d like to get back into livestreaming Art and Video games at least once a week. This is not a priority however, merely another way of reaching out to you all. The roadblock with this is limitations on what exactly I can do for livestreams. For one, I can’t stream for longer than 2 hours because of my tablet’s questionable battery life. And Game streams would be limited to PS4 until I can get a working PC computer. Either way, I’ll have to actually do some streams before I decide if it’s something worth putting money into. I’m going to wait until after classes start up again and I know more about how my schedule is going to pan out before I commit to a specific day of the week, but I absolutely want to live stream KH3: ReMind when it comes out, so I’ll get some more information out on the 20th of January.

3. “Dragonology” and “The Way I See It” Videos

This is a little out of my wheelhouse, but hanging around video essay makers for almost a decade has given me a lot of ideas for what I’d want to do for some of my own. I dabbled in making videos this last fall with a class project, and I liked it enough to want to do it again. The two idea’s I like the most are a series of scripted videos talking about Dragons in modern media, in a style similar to Overly Sarcastic Productions’ stuff; and a more laid back series where I just talk about whatever’s on my mind while a sped up process recording of something relevant I’ve drawn plays on screen, something like Plague of Gripes’ videos. These would be one a month things, and I’ve got an idea for what I’d want to do for the first ones, so I’m going to make a crack at getting them put together by the end of February. 

I absolutely believe I can accomplish this much, even while I’m working and going to university (I may even Livestream my studio work now that I think about it). It’s not much, some of it is even stuff I’ve already kind of been doing, it’s just a matter of actually DOING it, and DOING it in a more structured manner. 

[janephillipsblog]

Happy New Year! 2019 Reflections, 2020 Resolutions

This is the time of year to reflect on everything that has happened in the past year and look forward to the new year and perhaps make some resolutions. We are also entering a new decade, which is something that I have never thought much of in the past. The 2010’s have been interesting and life changing for me that is for sure. Going back even further to the beginning of the millennium, it’s certainly been quite a journey. 1999 was the year that I took up theatre as an adult so 2019 marks the 20th year that I have been doing theatre. It has been quite a ride and the road has been long, winding, and often quite bumpy! Relationships, pets and business ventures have come and gone, whereas other aspects of my life have remained constant or improved.

In 2018, I had made a commitment to myself that whenever I had money to spare I would enroll in classes and workshops for acting or personal development. I got 2019 off to a good start by taking the Essentials of Film and TV class at Company of Rogues starting in January. That month I also volunteered as an usher for the One Yellow Rabbit High Performance Rodeo. My blog post about the festival resulted in a feature on me as a volunteer in the One Yellow Rabbit newsletter. Rehearsals also started that month for Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Princess Ida” with Morpheus Theatre. I also started as a volunteer with the Alberta Animal Rescue Crew Society (AARCS), mostly as a cat caregiver. I volunteer at the animal shelter about 2 to 3 times a month.

I turned 45 years old in February. I also took a stunt combat workshop with Adrian Young Action Services which was fantastic. I also did a story slam workshop one evening which was something a bit different as I had never done any sort of oral storytelling before. I also participated in the Dead Cold Run, a 5K run in South Glenmore Park. I am looking forward to completing the run again in 2020.

In March I joined the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers (CSIF). To date, I haven’t done much with my membership other than volunteer one evening, but the intention to do more with it and get involved is there! I took Bruce Horak’s creative workshop, Tendencies, which was fun and I also volunteered as an usher for the Festival of Animated Objects which was very enjoyable. I also participated in the Rogers Insurance Run for L’Arche and ran my first 5-mile race (8K), a new distance record for me. March also was the official end of my relationship with my boyfriend of the past 4 years.

Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Princess Ida” with Morpheus Theatre opened in April and ran until May for a total of 14 performances. I participated in the Onesie Run in Prince’s Island Park and also started seeing my current boyfriend during this month.

In May, “Princess Ida” finished its run.  I started getting regular IATSE 212 stage call work. The film industry was getting busy so permittees such as myself were able to get more work. I took the Bouffon Intensive Masterclass workshop this month which fulfilled its promise of pushing my boundaries and challenging me as a performer. I also participated in the Rocky Mountain Soap Company’s Fast and Female women’s run (completing the 5K distance) in Canmore. This was challenging as there were hills and Canmore is at a higher altitude. I hope to participate in it again in 2020.

In June, I ran my first 10K in the Huntington’s Run for Hope, I also started to work on the summer trains for Aspen Crossing and did a day on set as background for Tribal. I also volunteered at Horror Con selling tickets. This was also the month I started to put the wheels in motion to find employment within the film industry, submitting my application for permittee status with IATSE 212 in film.  

In July, I started a series of vocal lessons with Naomi Williams. I took the set etiquette workshop with IATSE 212, a requirement for the film permit and at the end of the month I took the production assistant workshop with the Director’s Guild of Canada, Alberta District Council. July was also a great month for stage calls with IATSE due to the Calgary Stampede. During the Stampede this year, my boyfriend and I checked out several bands on the Coca-Cola Stage - Metric, Bishop Briggs, Dear Rouge and Death Cab for Cutie - and played the midway.

At the beginning of August, I was offered a role in “Babette’s Feast” with Fire Exit Theatre, which I of course accepted. I did the performer set etiquette course offered by ACTRA and also did a couple of days as a background performer on “Ghostbusters: Afterlife”. I did a road trip with my boyfriend to Grande Prairie to see his parents, returning to Calgary via BC, staying in the fabulous Three Valley Lake Chateau for the last night. At the end of the month, I left the legal industry for good and began work as a production assistant in the locations department on a TV series called “A Teacher” which was shooting until October.

In September, I participated in the Pride Parade with ACTRA and DGC. Rehearsals started for “Babette’s Feast” and I would be playing Babette. I went to Ontario to visit my family for my Dad’s 80th birthday. My sister was also there and I hadn’t seen her for 15 years so it was a fantastic reunion.

In October, I worked on the Train of Terror as a scarer for Aspen Crossing. I also had a day on set as a background performer for “A Teacher” and towards the end of the month worked as a locations PA on a Canadian feature film called “Chasing Justice”.  I also accepted a role in “Clue: The Musical” with Dewdney Players. I also got to see Morrissey and The Interrupers live in concert this month.

In November, I took the mermaid course with Adventures in Scuba. I did a day on set as a background performer for “Winter in Vail”, a Hallmark movie. I also had a few IATSE stage calls.

Photo Credit: Jen Carty

In December, “Babette’s Feast” with Fire Exit Theatre opened at the Engineered Air Theatre in Arts Commons and ran for 7 performances. I also worked on the Polar Express for Aspen Crossing. On a personal note, I also made the last payment on my car loan.

Generally, over 2019, I formed and maintained some great habits. I was happy to have continued regular exercise and increase my running distance, however, after I stopped being a full-time office employee with access to a gym at lunch, I stopped running for a few months. It was also difficult to maintain an exercise program when working 14-hour days on set as a PA, however locations work can be physically demanding and IATSE stage calls certainly are. I discovered that I enjoy physical work much more than office work - it’s great to get paid to work out! I have recently started to run again and finding the 5K distance easy to do and looking forward to all the races that I can participate in next year.

I am happy to say that auditioning has become a habit. I auditioned a lot last year. It took 18 auditions (screen and stage) before I was offered a role in “Babette’s Feast”. The role of Babette was definitely worth persisting for, because I admit, after rejection after rejection, that negative little voice inside my head kept suggesting I give up, that being an actor is too hard. I am glad that tenacity took over and I kept on going. As far as auditioning goes, I felt very happy that I was invited to audition for Vertigo Theatre twice last year. Those experiences have made auditions in general easier and not so scary. I have three theatre auditions lined up for January 2020 already.

Writing is developing as a habit. I have been keeping a journal on and off since a teenager and I try to write in my journal every morning. I completed a short story in November, which I submitted for a competition (still waiting to hear), and am working on several scripts. I am learning to focus more and work on one project at a time - taking on too many projects has definitely been my downfall in the past and I have many incomplete ones.  

I have also seen a lot of live theatre this year. 52 shows!  I have been able to see this many shows as I volunteer as an usher as much as I can. I have learnt so much as a performer and writer from the shows that I have had the privilege of seeing this year. Here in Calgary we certainly have a vibrant scene both amateur and professional. There seems to be a great demand for it as well as many shows sell out even with long performance runs. There was only one show that I did not really enjoy (which shall remain nameless - it was more to do with the actual story than the production itself), but my ten favourite shows this year were, in no particular order, “Cafe Daughter”, Alberta Theatre Projects (part of the High Performance Rodeo), “Deathtrap” - Vertigo Theatre, “Tria Fata” - La Pendue (part of the Festival of Animated Objects), “Giant” - Ghost River Theatre (part of the Festival of Animated Objects), “Avenue Q” - Front Row Centre Players, “Boom X” - Rick Miller at Theatre Calgary, “The Invisible” - Catalyst Theatre/Vertigo Theatre, “Iceland” - Theatre Calgary, “Monster” -  Seadreamer, and “A Christmas Carol” - Theatre Calgary. “Deathtrap” was my overall favourite for total entertainment value. 

2019 was not a great year for real estate. It wasn’t for a lot of Realtors. For me, working full time and trying to run a business was not easy, but now I have the time to focus more energy into my business, to help more clients and hopefully bring more results!

2019 was a not a great year for me in terms of background work either, especially compared to 2018. I only had 5 days on set as a background performer this year. This is one of the reasons I decided to pursue work as a crew member, which I found fulfilled the desire to simply be on set.

So what does 2020 have in store for me? I guess I will have to wait and see with 20/20 vision! My main resolution is to continue with the work I have been doing. To keep exercising, keep running, ride Stardust more, more mermaiding, swimming, walking, exploring. For acting to keep taking workshops and classes when I can and keep auditioning and hopefully get more auditions in film and TV. I am going to continue to write and complete things, allowing others to read them. I have a short film script that I would love to see produced next year. I hope to do more real estate, more PA work, more IATSE work and more background work. I also want to travel. I would dearly love to go to Ontario for my mother’s 70th birthday in March and for my brother’s 40th in December. I also want to visit my cousin in New Mexico. But mostly I resolve to stay true to myself, to not accept second best and to keep striving for excellence, inspiring others and myself at the same time.

Happy New Year!  

[pravin1224-blog]

Once upon a time I used to know a 13 year old boy who was convinced that he was destined to become something spectacular in life .

Then one day, he grew up.

Soon, the day slipped into years . And the years into decades . Until one fine morning when he looked into the bathroom mirror and found a stranger in there. A stranger who reminded him of a typical non-hero character out of a Woody Allen movie, someone who was standing at intermission and unable to account for the thousands of days that had slipped by, taking all his innocent and absurd dreams with them.

That 13-year old boy used to be me . Or maybe he used to be you. The you, you left behind – at misty bends and messy ends, as you went about earning your scars and chasing illusions you mistook for real life.

Time is indeed a queer commodity that is reconstructed in memories and deconstructed in regrets as it goes by. Most of us sleepwalk through our youth in trying to win some kind of identity . Then we stumble upon middle age & scramble to preserve that identity . And suddenly, standing at mid-point , we realize that somewhere in this medley of all the artificial races we were enlisting in, we have quietly let go of our greatness. Partly by default , partly by design. The first pangs of urgency hit us. We know this is no dress rehearsal. It is our own life that is gliding past. We straighten up and reach for it. 

In many ways, 2019 has been that year for me. The year of pause and reset. The year of recalibration so as to find my personal 2.0. Agree, it might not fetch me that Olympic medal or get me a phone call from Stockholm in this lifetime, but it should at least bring forth the best in the rest of me. Someone had written somewhere that one day in your journey, the you who you became will come face to face with the you who you could have been . This year, and in the years ahead, I have chosen to test this out with my personal toolkit, my realizations from having lived a life of sorts. At least I owe it to the 13-year old who I would like to see eye to eye as we shake hands on the other side of the finish line.

Here’s my 2.0. Do let me know if it matches with yours ?

Find your song – Like Rocky says, ‘Fighters fight..’. Likewise, painters paint. Poets write. You were born with your own song inside you, a song no one else can sing as well as you. Find it. Don’t show up at the finale with your song still unsung.

Toss it up – As we get older, we become suckers for conformity. We join the herd, and get trapped in time capsules that we legitimize as our rule book. And in the process, we lose our fluidity and edge. Find ways to toss your days. Every day is different. Each day has its unique flavor and rhythm. Discover it. Savor it. Live it.

Subtract your busyness – In today’s super connected world, it is very easy to get zombified by irrelevant chatter and numbed by FOMO ( fear of missing out). Get off the bandwagon of manufactured busyness. If anything really needs your attention, it will find its way to you somehow. You don’t need to check your phone every 30 seconds for that.

Be the best first hand You – When people talk of you in your absence, there should be 5-6 consistent things that they recall about you. That is your own personal brand. Work on it, nurture it and protect it. This is what should make people love and respect you beyond your day job title. In 2019, I de-linked my brand from my day job. Its not that I do not love my organization or my job. Far from it. But I prefer an identity that is my own. And I feel glad that I have so many friends, connections and well wishers out there who don’t care what I do as my day job.

Find your well – My favorite among Haruki Murakami’s many metaphors is the ‘bottom of a well’ thing , a place his protagonists often retreat into. We all need a well as we do our 2.0. This is where we need to disappear periodically, to lose ourselves in dark silence every day, so as to find ourselves better. You are not ready to deliver your swansong till you know all that you must know about you.

Don’t be the dinosaur in the room – Keep pace with trends & technology. There is no scientific evidence suggesting that our brains become less capable to embrace newness as we grow older. In fact, I think it is the reverse. We actually develop a wider perspective to apply new things as we have a larger platter of past experiences to draw from. Most people get stuck in the ‘good old days’ syndrome and squander off their precious 2.0 in cynicism and nostalgia. As the saying goes – The good old days were not that good. The good new days are here. And better days are coming.

Don’t be a corporate robot – Most people out there wake up, grimace at the morning news, eat breakfast, drive their Toyota Corolla to work , sit nodding in endless & pointless meetings, grumble about life's unfairness at the vending machine, ‘Like’ their boss’s stupid posts on social media, criticize Trump and Modi, go back home, watch TV and go to bed. Don’t be most people. Your 2.0 should be about finding your unique way to add value. To yourself, to your workplace and to the world you live in.

Find the smaller meaning of life – In pursuit of some unnecessary profound, we often miss the necessary ordinary. Each day is an opportunity to do our own small things for this world. Find few small things to do each day. If each of us took care of the small things, the big things will take care of themselves.

Stop chasing credit for the work you do - The world is a fair place. Every honest effort gets noticed, recorded and applauded in due course of time. Your time shall come.

Find your Zen - Human beings, by nature, are designed for stability and coexistence. This whole discourse on disruption is overrated and temporary . It will soon pass. And life will go on.

Get fit -If you miss your workout for a day, no one will notice. If you miss it for three days, you will notice. If you miss it for a week, others will notice. One of the things you need for an effective 2.0 is robust health. Respect your body. And it will pay you dividends as you slug it out there and compete in the relevance battle with people half your age.

Dress sensibly - Don’t buy skinny jeans. Donate your light coloured suits. No one might tell you so, but they make you look silly.

Decode love - In 2.0, you discover that love is not a few nice words from a Rumi’s couplet , but rather, it is a person we uncover as we grow older – in someone else, as well as in ourselves. Love during your first innings is often impulsive, hormonal & stupid. Love during 2.0 becomes something that grows & triumphs over time and circumstances. Make sure you love your partner. Also make sure you remember to tell your partner that you love her / him. Nothing silly in that.

Draw out your circle of dignity – Youth is about misadventures and compromises. Hungry to get an appreciative nod from the world, we keep making allowances. Each such allowance leaves us with a vague vacuum within, a discomfort we cannot explain . One of the things about 2.0 is plugging the vacuum by drawing your own circle of dignity, your personal code of conduct. This is the line you won’t cross, no matter how big the repercussions be.

The dude in the sky - Mark Twain ( in his 1916 classic ‘ The mysterious stranger ’) wrote – “Humanity has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug—push it a little—weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.” Loosen up. Every once in a while, connect with your eccentric friends. Or with your own eccentric self. You are but just a speck in the scheme of the universe which again is only a speck in the larger scheme of a drama being scripted by that brilliant playright in the sky . Don’t take yourself too seriously.

 Live fair. Stay kind. Have fun. Finish well.

============================================