#the universal feeling of 13 and everyone and everything is just so uncool

[prophet-and-catalyst]

just got to the chapter in magic ship where Malta decides to sneak out to the harvest ball and oh my god did it nail the feeling of being a 13 year old girl

[fandomsareforlife]

Masterpost

Will I ever Update? Debatable. This is basically everything I feel worthy of being here. Also, if you ever want to learn more about anything here, let me know. I will tell you happily about everything on this list!

Note: If you find something that should be on here, let me know! I suck at remembering stuff so letting me know about it helps me a lot! Also, if a link doesn’t work let me know.

*Ninjago #KOTLC

My ao3

My Secondary Ninjago headcanon blog

Ninjago Elemental Masters fan community

Bad Things Happen Bingo Card

Pronoun Info

Collective Poll 2023 (I am the originator of this probably since I was curious)

BAD THINGS HAPPEN

(Also on my ao3)

Parting Words Regret*: About Harumi and Ultra Violet during either between season 8 and 9/Early season 9.

Can't Go Home: About Gravis coming out, ambiguous time line.

Addiction and Withdrawal: Gravis is a high school drug addict. High School universe, not canon with the show or movie.

Branding: Skylor and her thoughts on her snake tattoo and Chen

Manhandling: OC focused story based on Selena and Elijah, post-Zevon's death

Betrayal: Kai and Nya both like Shade. They don't handle this revelation very well.

Ninjago A-Z

So this was originally just a silly one shot, than now is going to be an expanded universe. Not all of them fit perfectly together, but I use the same general characterizations.

A Is For Affection: Pre-Canon, Brad/Lloyd in Darkley's B Is For Breakdowns: Griffin Turner's 16th birthday party, with a lot of angst and no comfort

BIANUCA WEEK#

Day 1: First Meet

Day 2: Dance

Who Wrote That?

Former Dead Princess found in Sad Man home? (Shade & Harumi talk in a kitchen) Monster (How Should I Feel?) (Villain! Lloyd, Hurt no Comfort) What Happens After You Take Over A City? (Movie verse Brad and Gene, right after Garmadon conquers the city) The Time is Now (Master of Time Griffin Turner with Sensei Gamradon) Life's Too Short To Even Have You In It (Frozen AU with Zane and Echo) Cold Water And Cold Feet (Zane and Kai at the pool, featuring Kai being scared of water) Just Don't Breathe And Tremble As I Pray Behind The Mask (Shade/Kai in the slither pit) Superstitions Don't Apply When You're A Ghost (Morro/Echo, with Morro thinking Jay is an idiot) High Chancellors Must Be Prepared For All Situations (The perspective of Gulch, the ex-chancellor of the geckles, in episode 6 of season 13, "Trial By Mino")

Assorted Other Fics

Piano Playing And How It Connects To Love: Shade and Kai fluff, Shade plays the piano, very sweet

Something has changed within me, something is not the same: Dragon Lloyd with Shade in an alleyway

Kotlc SoKam soulmate AU

INCORRECT QUOTES

Griffin Turner Can't Explain Things*

Shade and Pale about flowers*

Epitome of friendship*

The Ninjago City Bus Policy*

Chen's files on the EMs and Shade surprises everyone*

A conversation about Enemies*

Shade forces Lloyd To Take His Coat

Turner Runs Out Of Lime Wood

Tox gives Jacob some life advice

Neuro was in show choir???

Shade is Shadow the Hedgehog?

Headcanons/Fanfic Ideas

Lloyd doesn't like Halloween*

Evil Noodle Man*

Tam Song is not CisHet#

Shade was sleep deprived*

Gender Fluid Lloyd and Chamille*

Marvel/Ninjago Crossover*

Shade has a Semicolon tattoo*

Shade and Tox Trans Solidarity*

Shade and Violet are siblings*

Shade writes fanfic*

Ninjago Human AU*

Lloyd's age in my opinion*

No Way Home AU*

Neuro and Tox's friendship*

Does Pale know Ash likes them??*

Pale is actually sane*

Most likely to-*

Shade's covered in blood *

Jacob eavesdropping *

Tox is not that uncool*

Griffin and Neuro club headcanon

Neuro is an adult™️

Nya charismatic? More likely than you think.

Griffin Turner the king of just dance?

Morro/Shade fluffy movie verse

Fanfic writer in Ninjago

Plot Holes/Theories

The Tournament of Elements pairings were weird

AUs/OCs/Fanon

Order And Faith Au*

Elemental Power of Spirits*

Elemental Master Family Headcanons*

EM Color Scheme*

Oppenheimer Family*

Eugene Techno*

Selena, Zevon and Elijah Introductions

Shade/Lloyd headcanons

Wu didn’t write the letter to Misako

General Shade lore? Subject to change

Griffin Turner as the Master of Time

Writing ideas (non fandom specific)

Coffee Shop But Better AU

Mages need their hands to do magic

[thewritewolf]

Eating Habits Chapter 9: Warmth

The incoming chill of late fall might be making Paris cold, but the love of friends and family keeps Adrien and Marinette warm. 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 (Final)

Enjoy!

Read on Ao3. 

The letters in front of Marinette swam as she tried to focus on them, her laptop screen getting blurry intermittently as she blinked away the gnawing tiredness at the edges of her mind. Between her exhaustion and the lingering after effects of her cold from last week, she was having an awful time studying. Maybe she should have tried getting back onto a regular sleep schedule, but there was too much to do after being bed ridden for a few days.

Thankfully, there was the power of energy drinks to save her. The caffeine was probably the only reason she was even still awake right now. Not that being conscious was a huge help if she couldn’t process what she was reading. After a few more minutes of unsuccessfully staring at her screen, she sighed and leaned forward, rubbing her forehead.

Once she wasn’t hyper focused on her work, her attention drifted to a conversation from a couple boys at another table. They weren’t very loud since they were all in the campus library, but she could still hear them pretty clearly. Without meaning to, she listened in.

“...Crazy, right?”

“Man, you’re super lucky. That would’ve been just the thing to make calculus less dull.”

“What? Haven’t you had a class where that Agreste kid just waltz in with a boxed lunch?”

Marinette froze. They couldn’t be talking about…?

“He’s been in so many frickin’ classes but of course he doesn’t show up to any of mine.”

“Bummer, dude. It’s pretty hilarious, and kinda cute.”

“Well, he was a model. Or is he still one? That was pretty ambiguous-”

“No! I mean he brings the lunches for his girlfriend.”

“Aw, that’s sweet. Feel bad for his girlfriend though. Must be a little embarrassing, ya know?”

Meanwhile, Marinette buried her scarlet face in her laptop, being careful to keep it between her and the two boys while they kept talking. Maybe it would be worth eating proper meals just to keep Adrien from these over the top antics.

Despite her embarrassment, Marinette’s stomach growled treacherously at the thought of his boxed lunches. She wondered where he was right now...

------------------

“Geez, dude, can’t even go easy on me for a minute, huh?” Nino threw his control down in faux anger. “Have I even one a single match yet?”

“Hm…” Adrien tapped his chin as he pretended to give it some thought. “Well, you did beat up my character when I went to the bathroom. Does that count?” Adrien ducked out of the way of a playful punch aimed at his arm. “Ooo, too slow, turtle boy.”

“God, you’re such a smug dick,” Nino said with a grin. “Can’t believe I ever thought you were an innocent homeschooled boy.” He leaned back, settling his controller on his lap. “How’d you even get so rockin’ at this game?’ His eyes narrowed and he pointed a figure into Adrien’s face. “And you’d better not say ‘natural talent’ or I’ll send M that clip of you drunkenly crying to that one Inuyasha scene.”

“We’re all friends here, shelly, no need to pull out the big guns.” Smirking, Adrien held his hands up in surrender and shrugged. “Well, you know how Marinette is into the Mecha Strike series. Ever since we started dating, every time a new title would come out, I’d get it for her. Then we’d play it a ton. Early on, it was after dates, but after I moved in, we’d stay up late and fight into the early morning.”

“Sounds like you were having a ton of fun,” Nino said with a small smile. “You ever actually win any of those matches?”

“Hell no. Why do you think I like playing against you so much? I got years of pent-up frustration to take out.” They shared a laugh. Adrien stared wistfully into space. “But yeah. It was like a sleepover every night with the person I cared the most about.”

“Harsh, dude.”

“Hey, you’re a close second! And that’s saying something since she’s literally the love of my life and light of my heart.”

“...Yeah, I can see how you two and your over-the-top ideas of love mesh together.” Nino snapped his fingers. “Speaking of crazy acts of love! Weren’t you making tons of trips to M’s university? What happened with that?”

To his surprise, Adrien blushed and he rubbed the back of his neck. “About that… Turns out, doing it once is cute. Two or three times is adorable, but getting annoying. But apparently two meals a day for three weeks - minus her sick break - is crossing a line.”

“Bummer. So she chewed you out?”

“If by ‘she’ you mean ‘all of Marinette’s professors’ then yes.” Adrien sighed dramatically. “Now I’ve been banned from interrupting all her classes, at least for the semester.”

Nino laughed at a pouting Adrien. “Uncool of them, but I get it. Can’t have some stray cat runnin’ around, getting everyone all riled up.”

“Anyway… at least she got a few weeks worth of regular meals out of it. I just wish it could have gone on for a little longer.”

“It is what it is, big cat. You did what you could and that’s what’s important.” He pulled out his cellphone and started composing a text.

“Who are you talking to?” Adrien craned his neck over, shamelessly reading over Nino’s shoulder.

Nino leaned away from his prying eyes. “It ain’t for nosy cats, that’s for sure. If you gotta know, its for my babe. She’ll think you getting banned is hilarious, and I gotta be the one that tells her.”

“Oh sure, laugh at my pain.”

“That’s the plan, dude.”

Adrien shook his head, but there was a glimmer of mirth in his eyes. He stood up and walked to the kitchen, leaving Nino to send his message in peace.

-------------------

A few days later, the apartment was quiet once again. Nobody had come over to visit, which was more the norm for his life. On some level, the stillness bothered him, like there was something missing. Or maybe it was just because it was harder to distract himself if there wasn’t any noise or energy in the house.

Either way, today Adrien didn’t mind as much since the solitude would make this a little easier. He didn’t want word of his plan to leak out before he was ready or else Marinette might catch wind of it and clam up. Which wouldn’t help anyone, least of all Marinette herself.

Adrien hung up the phone and took a seat at his kitchen table. Normally at this hour it would be covered in fresh ingredients for whatever he was planning on making that day. But where chopped vegetables usually sat was instead advertisements and a few bank statements. The latter was probably unnecessary - he knew without looking that’d he’d have enough for what he was planning. But it was reassuring to see, at least.

Knowing Marinette, it was good to have as many loose ends tied up as possible, and leave nothing to chance. He loved her to pieces, but she could work herself into an anxious lather if he let her.

“Are you sure this will work out?” Adrien worried at his lip as he sightlessly looked over the papers.

“Listen, kid,” Plagg said as he gnawed at a wedge of cheese. “You want to help her, right? And she isn’t budging despite everything you’ve done so far, yeah?”

“Yes…”

“Then trust me. I’ve known more than a few Ladybugs in my day and most of them are way too stubborn for their own good. And we both know Pigtails hasn’t bucked that tradition in the slightest.”

“I know, but… it’s a big step. Shouldn’t we talk it out as a couple?”

“Maybe. And I’ll grant that Pigtails is a great planner.” Plagg gulped down the last hunk of his cheese, letting out a satisfied sigh once it hit his stomach. He shook his head and looked back at Adrien. “But she’s also her own worst enemy. If it isn’t urgent, she’ll just plan and plan and plan forever without actually doing anything.”

Adrien smirked, remembering the times Marinette had shared - after some help from a bottle of wine - some of her more… creative plans to confess her love to him. At least, until he beat her to it. Maybe Plagg had a point.

“We can always plan together later,” Adrien said with a nod. “I just need to make sure she doesn’t reject it out of hand.”

“That’s the spirit, kid. Now, onto the important matters - where’s my second dinner?”

-----------------

Tonight was their anniversary, a chilly December day, and Adrien wanted to make sure everything was perfect. He’d gotten permission to leave the bakery early. Probably way earlier than he’d needed to, but Tom and Sabine had insisted that he take the whole afternoon off. Especially Tom, Adrien remembered with a smile, who could barely hold back the tears as he waved Adrien off.

A quick stop at the market for fresh ingredients and Adrien was home.

As much as he had wanted to go out to a fancy restaurant or do something special with her, he knew that the best way to spoil her now - after the semester she’d been having - would be a nice relaxing night at his apartment, eating a home cooked meal and cuddling in front of the television.

And by all the kwami was she going to get the best meal and the most snuggly cuddles he could possibly make. She deserved nothing less.

He became a man possessed, putting all those cooking classes to good use as he crafted the greatest lasagna he could make. While that was cooking in the oven, he began gathering all the softest blankets and pillows he could find and stacking them on his couch. Half the fun of a pillow fort was making it with someone else, but he knew she’d rather be able to collapse into it as soon as she got there.

It was just as he placed the finishing touches on the fort that he heard a knock at the door before it swung open.

When his eyes met hers, a big grin spread across his face as his heart raced. She wasn’t even a step inside before he’d rushed across the room and swept her up in a hug, holding her off the ground with his arms just below her waist.

She laughed as she pressed her hands against his shoulders for support. “At least let me put my stuff down first, you ridiculous man!”

He simply grinned up at her, eyes sparkling with happiness as he slowly let her down just enough to put them face level. He kissed the corner of her mouth and whispered:

“Happy anniversary, bugaboo.”

[d00dt00nz]

Obligatory promo stuff at the top because it sucks and I hate it and let’s get it out of the way! follow me on twitter where I’m active, check me out on spotify for music, or like my facebook for sparse updates on music stuff. Thank you. The Cover art is by Ellie Tison

Okay!! Last song!!

Well, I say last song, but it's more like “last song”. There is one more song that I used as an epilogue, but I'm not going to get into that, and honestly if you've listened to 13 tracks without being sold (why would you do that?) one more track isn't going to sell you on it.

And would you look at that, the last song is a reprise of the first song. Wow, it's like Sgt Pepper... that's so cool. Now it makes sense why I didn't bother talking about that first song right? Not planned btw.

This song was one of the first songs I wrote for this album. I said this for a few. Truthfully I did four or so around the same time and they were all great. I had a few more tracks in the oven as well. Everything was going great. I was like “wow this album's gonna be done in no time!” Anyway that was like three or four years ago. I guess that's how these things tend to go.

This is back when I was trying to make a bit more of a straight ahead rock/indie rock sounding album. I'm pretty sure I wrote this song on guitar, lyrics and all, which is honestly (and sadly) pretty rare for me these days. I had this idea for repeated backing vocals and a call/response sort of song structure. I'm pretty sure this more energetic version of the song came first. I originally wanted a sort of Lou Reed feel to it, but once I wrote that groovy dancy bass riff it immediately lost that feel. Once I started recording electric guitars I accidentally did a grungy “brrroww” at the end of the phrase and really liked it. I replicated it throughout the track and in turn lost even more of that Lou Reed feel.

In my original recording process I had a damaged patchcord. I didn't realize it at first because I was trying out some new equipment. I just thought it was really quiet. That being the case, I had to turn it up way loud to get a good volume and that's actually where some of the guitar tone you can hear (mainly in the one playing a melody-line during the chorus) comes from. I actually really liked it, I thought it sounded like Pavement. Actually, my Tiff did too and that's probably the nicest thing she's ever said about any of my music.

At some point I added more guitar tracks to the track to make it sound fuller, and also replace some of the ones recorded with a broken patchcord. I honestly kinda liked the original tracks, which still had a little bit of that 70s glam grittiness to them, but I'm far too neurotic about this stuff to really sit with that. In the end it sounded less 70s and more mid 90s. It had a sound that I've actually been trying to get for a while, though not on this track – the sort of fuzzy swirling guitars with a groovy beat and bassline to it. Tiff described it as being “Like those music videos where everything is blue and everyone's got really baggy pants”, which, again, big compliment. I don't know if that one was actually a compliment, but I'll take what I can get.

The song had its genesis at that same party I mentioned last time. There's nothing specific really. We had my album on and it's got a pretty fun cool first half. The people there were enjoying it, but then it gets to the second half and it's a little bit more mopey. It's also completely sexless and uncool throughout. That being the case, one of the guys there was like

“Sorry Con-dog, the vibes are just not working with this right now,”

and I was like,

“Oh don't worry about it, I understand dude,”

And then he was like, “Right on man. I’m getting fucked vibes from those guys over there. Here, hit this for me.”

And then I did some coke off a Pulp Fiction VHS tape.

I thought to myself, “man it'd be nice to have music that you could put on at a party”. Which basically was the whole idea behind this album, conscious or not. I don't really know if it succeeded, but there's definitely a certain kind of party where this would play, and honestly I don't think I'd mind being at it.

The album was originally going to be more centered around the idea of the character described in this track. I mean, obviously he's me, but I'm trying to detach myself and make things a little more universal. I wanted to explore all the different traits and behaviors that this one person has. Some of them being mine, and some of them being not. Honestly, it didn't really pull through to the end. There's a little bit of that in here, but it's mostly just songs. I'm okay with that. They have some thematic cohesion. It's got this song bookending the album. Wow, it's like Sgt. Pepper.....

The ending is a little bit embarrassing for me because I do a bit of a scream voice, which, honestly I don't think there's anything actively wrong with it, I just cringe when I hear myself doing it because it's like “ah oh god I'm doing that”. I don't know. There's also the fact that, well, one of the things I yell is the word “Wasteman”, which is a little bit of an outdated slang right now, but when I actually recorded the song it wasn't. Whatever, this is an insanely white album from a white kid. I figure a lot of people who enjoy this type of music haven't actually heard that word. I wouldn't have, but I hang out with Tiff's cool friends sometimes. Honestly I think it's a cool term. I think the most embarrassing part though is I copy-pasted it so it repeats twice because I felt like I wanted more intensity. I don't think it's super noticeable, but the idea makes it a little disingenuous. During the outro I wanted to add a little more of that “90s blue and baggy” feel, so I plugged in a keyboard and freaked out on the organ setting. I think it really adds a lot.

The slower version of the song was written afterwards and I actually cheat because it uses some of the same midi tracks. I was super torn between the more exciting sound that I had and my original “vision” for the song, which was a bit more downtempo Lou-Reed inspired. I figured, why not do both?

There's not a whole lot to cover here that I haven't already covered. Mostly the backing vocals, but only because I think I did a worse job with them than the other version. There's nothing outwardly wrong with them per-se, but I think the blend is not good and that's gonna immediately stick out to some people. The middle section just kinda came about because the other version doesn't really have a proper chorus. It just has some guitar noodling. I played around with the chord progression of the middle chorus in the fast version and made something that was a bit more structured, then adapted a melody around it. Harmonies grew out of the melody. I felt like something was missing, so I took that same call and response idea from earlier and applied it here too. I really liked the interplay between the two vocal lines. The “Purify me” line was originally supposed to come up again and again throughout the album. One of the tracks that ALMOST made it would have been the song it was from, and then there would be callbacks to the melody throughout the album. It was kind of like a motif. That was unfortunately completely scrapped and this is the last trace of it. Maybe I'll work the idea into something I do in the future.

I like this song. I realized way too late that it massively rips off The Velvet Underground's Sweet Jane. I guess that “Lou Reed inspired” idea was a little bit too literal. Fortunately I would say the middle section saves it from being too much of a copy. I think it's a good way to start and finish the album. I also like the thematic notions of this album starting with the same track it ends on. Like these things work in cycles and you're never truly free of your own quicksand. Like an Ouroboros eating its own tail, like Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. When one cycle ends, a new begins. The same, but slightly different – until it is completely undermined by the epilogue track that says “no this is actually the end”.

Hey congrats on making it through all of these entries! You may have only read this one, or even skipped to the end. If you did that, disregard that previous sentence and go back to read them. This album was the culmination of a lot of work and thought. 13 of these writeups was nothing compared to probably hundreds of hours spent working on this album, and probably thousands of hours thinking about it. I'm aware few people are reading these writeups, but it's honestly mostly my own indulgence. I gotta decompress this stuff and be free of this album. I can finally get rid of all this useless crap in my brain. I'll probably enjoy being able to go back and read this stuff once I've forgotten most of this, and once I've become a more mature person. I'll probably go “wow this shit is cringe. I can't believe he posted like 22 pages of cringe” but that's okay. The album's okay. I made for certain it was not, in fact, cringe before releasing it. And honestly I enjoyed writing these.

A part of me wants to get back to the freakish pace I had in like 2011 where this blog was nonstop content. I don't think it'd work so well in 2020 Tumblr because who even uses this site anymore? I think it's a little sad because it's pretty much the death of long form posting. Twitter is great because people pay attention to you, but sometimes I just want to write like two thousand words and have some psycho actually read them and respond to it. I think we've lost that on the internet. Sometimes I think of making youtube videos, but I'm no good in front of a camera. Sometimes I wonder, couldn't I just read something like this TO the camera? The answer is no, I can't. That'd be boring. I'm completely convinced nobody would watch that. I sometimes think that if I could add some editing and some visual component though, it'd work out. Some sort of... video essay. Some kind of... man with facial hair and left leaning politics who enjoys media and talks about both... Wow I wonder if that niche has been filled at all?

[awayfromthedesk]

Unsollicited Advice for the Class of 2020 in your teens, 20s and 30s.

By Athena Fosler-Brazil, Christine Argueza-Prince and Marielle Argueza

As a first-generation college graduate and a veteran attendee of several graduation and promotion ceremonies (because all my siblings are smarty pants), I want to acknowledge that for the graduating class of 2020, this can be an intensely emotional time. You were promised to participate in a tradition and to celebrate your accomplishments in front of your peers, family, friends, mentors and teachers and a public health crisis took it away. 

There are tens of millions of students in the class of 2020 who will miss out on their graduation ceremonies in the United States. It’s a milestone that some have taken to recognizing online or celebrating out in the streets with neighborhood parades. Where it won’t be happening is out in the sun, in the hot fields and stadiums, or crowded gyms and auditoriums of their respective campuses because of health restrictions. 

But let’s not dwell on that. I speak from experience from when I say, graduating and moving from one phase of life to another, does not come from sitting in an hours-long ceremony filled with—let’s be honest—pretty bad speeches with hit-or-miss jokes and administrators with cringe-worthy mispronunciations of your name. I don’t even remember my keynote speaker’s name, just that her advice was to say “yes” to everything, which is just a setup for needless self-sacrifice IMHO. That speech was the most dreaded of things I really didn’t want to hear as a know-it-all 21-year-old: unsolicited advice. I was rolling my eyes the whole time.

So naturally, I and two graduates of 2020 are giving you unsolicited advice—hopefully better than my class of 2015 keynote speaker’s advice—to immerse you in the full-experience of graduation. Athena Fosler-Brazil is an outgoing senior of  Carmel High School and Christine Argueza-Prince, a recent graduate of University of North Carolina’s Gillings School of Global Public Health (and also my oldest sister). Instead of asking them to write a commencement speech, I asked them to cut to the chase. What nuggets of wisdom would they give to their younger selves, and ultimately to those moving from one phase of life to another.

Without further ado here is your list of unsolicited advice:  

In Your Teens By Athena Fosler-Brazil 

1. Don’t let your peers convince you that caring about things is uncool. 

2. Stop pretending to like the music your crush likes if it genuinely sucks. 3. It’s really worth it to ask questions in class.

4. It’s okay to shed the relationships that are no longer fulfilling in order to make room for new ones. 

5. No high school relationship is worth planning your future around. 

6. You may not be friends forever, but that doesn’t make the friendship less valuable. Not everything meaningful must also be permanent.

7. Find a teacher at school who will help you skip “mandatory” pep rallies. 

8. Good teachers will change your life if you lean into your education.

9. Crying in front of other people doesn’t make you weak. 

10. Remember that your life will never be as easy as it is right now. Enjoy being supported and be grateful for it. 

11. Approach your education as a privilege and not as a chore.

12. You’ll stop worrying about what other people think about you once you realize that people are very rarely thinking about you. I mean this in the best way possible. 

13. Learn how to advocate for yourself. Now. 

14. Sometimes risky decisions lead to good memories and great stories. Sometimes risky decisions lead to trauma. 

15. Learn how to omit excessive “likes” from your sentences before you become an actual adult. 

16. Don’t make everything into a Big Deal. 

17. It is rare that you can successfully teach a shitty friend how to not be a shitty friend. 

18. Remember that you are only at the beginning. 

In Your 20s

By Marielle Argueza

1. Contrary to the informational pamphlet, universities can’t bring you the real world. You have to seek it out and live in it. 

2. You may never become friends with your parents, but you can forgive them.

3. Friend breakups are as difficult as romantic breakups.

4. Take off your makeup before you sleep and wear sunscreen. Every. Single. Day.

5. You are not your job, your major or your relationship. 

6. Wash your sheets frequently. You’ll feel better. 

7. No Karen, you’re not “honoring” your one-sixteenth Cherokee “heritage” with that headdress that you want to wear to Coachella. 

8. Learn to listen by shutting up and learn to respond with a question. 

9. The universe is not conspiring against you, but your priorities might be. 

10. Caring about the environment doesn’t necessarily mean going vegan and buying new shoes made of recycled ocean plastic. A lot of the time it’s revamping your consumption. 

11. Find your shade of red lipstick. 

12. Sometimes you’re different, but other times you’re average. Embrace both. 

13. Failures are almost always constructive criticism. Verbal and psychological abuse is not.

14. Look at your bank statements every single week. 

15. You’re probably using the words “actually” and “literally” incorrectly. 

16. Know how to order and make a cocktail that you like. 

17. If you want to travel cheaply and well, think small. Stay in neighborhoods and make friends in those neighborhoods, instead of generalizing an entire country. London isn’t the entire UK. Parisians are different from the Lyonnais. Cabo isn’t the capital of Mexico, Chad.

18. Assume you are never the smartest person in the room and that’s OK. 

19. Sorries aren’t reserved for the douche bag talking over you. They’re for apologies. For example: “Sorry, I’ll try not to finish this thought while you’re talking over me...d-bag.” 

10. Learn to be proud of yourself. You’ll find more validation in yourself than in others. 

In Your 30s By Christine Argueza-Prince 

1. Thirties are really the new 20s. “You get a re-do! You get a re-do. Everyone gets a re-do!” -Oprah 

2. By now, people you know will have had babies, are married (or divorced), and have a bunch of letters like PhD, MBA, and M.D. after their names. Measure your success with your own stick.

3. If you’re not using a calendar and the Pomodoro Technique, you’re not as productive as you think you are. 

4. Wit and grit will get you pretty damn far.

5. There will never be “a good time to have a baby.” Define your own timeline. 

6. Two words: email etiquette 

7. The time to start thinking about your next promotion is the day you get promoted. Don’t get too comfy. 

8. Have the audacity to put yourself in charge (see no.9)

9. ...you can start by planning and hosting a party. Preferably not the kind that results in two DUIs and a paternity test.

10. Public speaking is a skill to master. Know how to present without PowerPoint slides. Gasp!

11. Find a good tailor and hem your clothes to fit you. Zara didn’t know that you’re 5’2 and curvy.

12. Find someone to mentor. Then you will know if you are truly ready to lead. 

13. If you had a crappy day, it is not okay to unload it at home. If you must, it is wise to ask if people have the mental space for it.

14. Learn how to fight with your significant other without slamming doors and breaking dishes.

15.  If you’re feeling unusually moody, numb, or uninterested in the things that typically make you happy—please ask for help. 

16. It’s easy to become a cynic. This perspective is not your only option. 

17. Ninety percent of your groceries should come from the perimeter of the grocery store. 

18. Instant food is (mostly) gross. Know how to make your childhood faves like mac and cheese and pizza from scratch. 

19. No, chicken breast doesn’t need to be washed before cooking. But you do need to season them, Shiela. Remember this: lemon pepper is poison. 

20. If coffee is life, you should have a moka pot, pour over, or french press in your cupboard. On that note, grind your own coffee beans. 

21. Treat yourself on your own dime. 

22. Treat your health and wellness first. I am talking about that really good moisturizer, a 90-minute massage and a bouquet of flowers just because. 

23. A 13 percent interest rate for a BMW is not a good decision. Your paycheck should pay YOU, not Sammy the sales employee of the month. 

24. You should be on your own Netflix, phone, and car insurance plan by now. 

25. Take care of your mouth. Nothing is worse than your future boss or beau walking away because you have terrible oral hygiene. Colgate is BOGO at Walgreens, so is lip balm. 

26. As it turns out, orange is not the new black. If you must get a tan, go to the beach. 

27. No Ashley, you did not live in Europe on your post-college trip. That was a vacation and Europe is one whole continent. Also, Disney is not the happiest place on Earth. 

28. Know the freedom of traveling or eating in a really fancy restaurant all by yourself. 

29. You can always see how a (wo)man will treat you in seven years with a baby when you invite them over for a home cooked meal. If they’re dancing you around in the kitchen—they’re a keeper!

30. If you are not living that fragrance-free, pasture-raised, organic life, you’re not about that life. No, really. Read labels and know what can prolong your sweet life and what can kill you. 

From everyone at Away from the Desk, congratulations class of 2020. 

[the1975hqs]

The Flask, a 17th-century former coaching inn at the top of Highgate Hill in north London, has seen its share of poetic outsider figures. Dick Turpin purportedly hid out in the stables. Byron, Shelley and Keats dropped by after visiting the opium-addicted local resident Coleridge. Now Matt Healy, leader of the pop interlopers the 1975 and cutting a Byronic dash himself with a wayward thatch of curls and rose-painted leather jacket and jeans, is in the Flask’s cellar-like back room.

He’s explaining how the Wilmslow band’s heavy presence at this year’s Brit awards — nominations for best British group and album of the year, plus a live appearance — is proof that rank outsiders can upset the mainstream.

“It’s an important moment for us because we’re a subversive act to have broken through on such a level that the Brits would want us to perform,” says Healy, 27, staring intensely over the weathered wooden table. “I’m not from the Brits’ world. I shouldn’t be there and everyone needs to know that. I couldn’t get arrested until I was 23.” He thinks about this for a moment. “Actually, I did get arrested when I was 23, but you know what I mean. I suffer massively from impostor syndrome.”

A cynic might point out that as far as impostors go Healy is an unusually well-connected one. His mother is Denise Welch, alumna ofCoronation Street and Loose Women, and his father is the actor Tim Healy of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet.

“I answered the phone to Harold Pinter once,” Matt Healy offers. “My parents did make following a creative pursuit seem like a viable life choice, but Coronation Street doesn’t buy you currency in rock’n’roll. It’s a curse, actually. When people say my parents bought my connections I think: ‘Yeah, the best person to get you a record deal is Curly Watts. Mention Gail Tilsley to Universal Records and you’ve got a No 1 album in America.’ ”

Forming the band during lunch breaks at Wilmslow High School in 2002 when they were only 13, Healy, guitarist Adam Hann, bassist Ross MacDonald and drummer George Daniel went under a variety of names before settling on the 1975. They vowed to reflect a young, internet-bred generation’s relationship with music where there are no guilty pleasures any more, just an endless world of choices from which to cherry-pick. This approach — of combining everything from shiny pop and gothic introspection to overblown stadium rock, and aligning it all to the terminal oversharer Healy’s emotionally wrought lyrics — led to such glorious moments as playing a concert in Stornoway, on the Isle of Lewis, to an audience of one.

Full interview under the cut

“We were a band with an identity crisis,” Healy says. “I was going around telling people we were the ambassadors of a generation who approach music in a non-linear way, who don’t think in terms of genre. The only problem was nobody was interested.”

Gradually, word got out. The 1975’s self-named debut from 2013 was a hit. When the preposterously titled I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of It went to No 1 in 2016, the 1975 became Britain’s biggest cult band. Now here we are on a rainy January lunchtime and the wildly entertaining Healy is grappling with his conflicted feelings on stardom.

“Can you even be a rock star today?” he asks, talking as much to himself as to me. “The only way I can be a rock star is to be a humble egomaniac. I am saying: love me, with no top on, in a pair of leather trousers, but that obnoxiousness comes with genuine fragility and fear because it’s important for people to feel personally addressed when it comes to art. I’d rather talk about a part of myself that I have a profound distaste for than paint myself in a good way.”

What part of himself does he have a distaste for? “I’m constantly apologising for being pretentious and egotistical,” he says. “And I don’t like it that I can’t have platonic relationships with women. I don’t know why that is. I don’t sexualise women and I’m not misogynistic, but perhaps I’m such an atheist that the closest I can get to divinity is the feeling you have when a woman likes you . . .” He puts his hands over his mouth. “Oh no! This is all going a bit Ron Burgundy!”

Healy does tend to let his mouth run away from him in a way not dissimilar to Will Ferrell’s portentous character in Anchorman. In an interview with The Times in 2014 he pondered on whether he might actually be the Messiah. Last year he got into hot water after recalling Taylor Swift coming to one of the 1975’s concerts. Reflecting on the hysteria surrounding her, he wondered if it would be emasculating to be her boyfriend. The celebrity blogger Perez Hilton picked up on it and interpreted it as an insult against Swift. It also started a rumour that Healy was Swift’s boyfriend.

“Imagine what it is like being Taylor Swift,” says Healy now. “A guy you met for five minutes gets so badgered by questions about you, he inevitably says something that can be misheard as a shade. It made me realise how mental her world is.”

Healy is like your loudest, silliest friend who became famous by mistake and is still working out what you’re meant to do. When he tells of sharing a Saturday Night Live green room with Larry David, Ben Stiller and Bernie Sanders or recalls Dolly Parton calling him a cutie, you sense his awe.

“Mate, I’m just a snot-nosed teenager from Wilmslow and I’ve taken that world with me. The guy who used to do our merchandise is now my assistant, but I can’t call him my assistant because it’s Dan from maths who I used to sit next to. I’d like to say that backstage is like a meeting of Ginsberg, Blake and Lennon. Actually it’s more like The Inbetweeners with us playing Fifa and calling each other dickheads. Put me in a room with famous people and I’m rubbish. When David Byrne was in the dressing room next to ours I was the most uncool person in the world. I was lingering by the door, waiting for David Byrne to come out. Then he appears just as I’m opening a bag of Haribo, I’m shocked, they split open and go everywhere, he walks past me without saying anything and I’m just a dick with a bag of sweets.”

Then there are the fans, who are for the most part teenage girls who identify deeply with Healy while also finding him extremely attractive. “I do take my artistic responsibility seriously because with some of my fans it gets heavy,” he says, looking serious for a moment. “Someone sent me razor blades she tried to kill herself with. She was giving them to me to make sure she never did it again. Kids draw me all the time. I used to have my own emotional baggage. Now I have to buy a suitcase on every tour just for all the emotional baggage I get sent.”

Is that a burden? “No because I totally get it. Fundamentally what people want is human connection. Regardless of religion, or whether the world will come to an end, or what worlds may have come before, the only thing that will actually, definitely happen is interaction with another human being.”

All of this fed into I Like It When You Sleep . . . , its title an expression of Healy’s desire to make an album as over the top and emotionally unchained as possible. The funky, Prince-like Love Me is his response to becoming an icon of sorts; Ugh! is an expression of disgust at his former cocaine excess; The Ballad of Me and My Brain is a depiction of being driven insane by fame; and Loving Someone is a celebration of companionship that has become something of an anthem for the LGBT community. Healy says the album is the product of a band facing up to the crisis of finding themselves, after years of indifference, very popular indeed.

“We freaked out!” says Healy, excitedly, of their sudden success. “We spent ten years in my dad’s garage without anyone caring who we were. Nobody would sign us, so our manager formed a label and signed us for 20 quid in his kitchen, while making pasta and pesto. And then it happened. We were on tour for two years, suddenly it was time to make the second album and we didn’t know if we could do it. George had a breakdown and had to get help. And what was there to write about? I knew I couldn’t release a single called God, Aren’t Threesomes a Nightmare?”

He considers this. “Not that I was having threesomes, but nobody else was sharing our experiences so I had to go deep. What are the fundamentals? Fear, religion, struggles with addiction, my relationship with my mother, dealing with death . . . And I can’t change who I am. When it comes down to it I’m a gaunt, insecure person who is writing about being young and doing drugs.”

You can’t help but like him. He may be completely self-obsessed, but at least he has the grace to acknowledge it. (“I don’t think I’m Marc Bolan, but I like the fact that you might think that I think I’m Marc Bolan.”) And there’s something generous about the way he wants to give you everything he has to offer, whether you are a fan watching him preen on the stages of the world or a journalist wondering if, after an hour and a half of non-stop chat, he might feel like stopping soon. He is a rock star born in an age when being a rock star without a degree of irony is no longer viable.

“I started out in a band because it made me happy,” he concludes. “Then all this stuff happened, I got scared and I didn’t know why I was doing it any more until I remembered: because it makes me happy! This is my life. I would be selling flowers on Brent Cross roundabout if it weren’t for the 1975.”

[douchebagbrainwaves]

HOW CAN THESE GRAD STUDENTS POSSIBLY COMPETE WITH THEM

They're like undervalued stocks. Better to make a living was by farming. Certainly this tends to be way more than the sum of its patents. His body switches to an emergency source of energy that's faster than regular aerobic respiration.1 Hackers can be abrupt even in person. The result of that miscalculation was an explosion of inexpensive PC clones.2 But was it a precondition for the rise of startups. There is no rational way to value an early stage startup.3

If you start a startup, think how risky it once seemed to your ancestors to live as we do now, but every night tens of millions of dollars from them. There I found a copy of The Atlantic.4 It turns out to be, the first step is to realize there's a problem. I don't mean to suggest we should never do this—just that we couldn't discard patents for free. In return for the exclusive right to use an idea, you have to rewrite to beat an army of individual warriors, no matter what you do.5 And why should there be any limit to the amount of newly created wealth consumers can absorb, any more than there is a limit on the number of theorems that can be done by a bad writer. One reason people who've been out in the world won't save you. And it's particularly dangerous that the 5 paragraph essay buries the list of n things. Not merely relentless.6 It's hard for us to feel a sense of urgency as adults over something we've literally been trained not to worry about.

Obviously the spread of the Industrial Revolution.7 He wanted to do everything himself. For the essayist this translates to: flow interesting. I made the list there turned out to be more productive because there are no distractions. He Won't Tell You about Sex, or something like that. Imagine if we were visited by aliens.8 This is particularly true of young people who have till now always been under the thumb of some kind of irresponsible pied piper, leading impressionable young hackers down the road to ruin. Well, therein lies half the work of reading an article is understanding its structure—figuring out what in high school we'd have called its outline. 05, or 4.9 Not just to solve the problem in a different way, but to change the balance.

So it is in other ways more accurate, because when everything else is collapsing around you, having just ten users who love you will keep you going. Once you had enough good startups in one place, it would have advantages even if it didn't: you have to join a syndicate, though. If I had to go back almost a thousand years. You need to work at something that pays the bills too, even though biologically they're not, so the story grew quite elaborate. Which presumably means that what they're taught in school is a complex mix of lies. The part I thought was hard, the mechanics of investing, really isn't.10 If no one else is allowed to work on Y Combinator so much. As well as being explicit, the structure is guaranteed to be of the simplest possible type: a few main points with few to no subordinate ones, and the experts he lured west to work with him liked it so much they stayed.

05 million, and you need some ability to ferret out the unexpected?11 Then I thought: what would the other 9 be? Software is so subtle and unpredictable that qualified experts don't get you very far.12 A company that sues competitors for patent infringement. Hackers can be abrupt even in person. And as the Duplo world of a few giant, hierarchical organizations, but I always pull back because I don't want to; you could simply be a source of cheap labor. Someone who's not yet an adult will tend to respond to a challenge from an adult in a way that acknowledges their dominance.

Note too that hill-climbing which is what this algorithm is called can get you is, say, to make your fortune was a crazy thing to do. Barnes & Noble was a lame site; Amazon would have crushed them anyway. John D. To be a good angel investor? That's what you're looking for. Within companies there were powerful forces pushing people toward a single model of how to look and act.13 There will be jobs teaching x, and professors to fill them. He seemed to be asleep, but when she tried to rouse him, she couldn't. You can change anything about a house except where it is because William Shockley wanted to move back to Palo Alto, where he grew up, and you'll start to do more of that. What you should spend your time thinking about how to mitigate its consequences. Angels are the limiting reagent in the growth of university departments is what parents will let their children major in x, the rest follows straightforwardly.

That varies enormously, from $10,000, whichever is greater. The valuation determines how much stock you get. That's probably why everyone else has been overlooking the idea. My parents never claimed that people or animals who died had gone to a better place, or that we'd meet them again.14 Acquirers know the rule holds for them too: if users love you than a lot of graduate programs. What's really uncool is to be strategically indecisive: to string founders along while trying to gather more information about the startup's trajectory. But if you're worried about this, you're probably mistaken. How did things get this way? It was more prestigious to be one of the liars. We made software for building online stores. Too inexperienced I once wrote that startup founders should be at least 23, and that would have been a mistake.

Notes

Google's revenues are about two billion a year, they made much of The New Industrial State to trying to sell, or to be very unhealthy.

He had such a large number of words: I remember about the difference directly. Similarly, don't worry about that danger. Many hope he was before, but the idea is the extent we see incumbents suppressing competitors via regulations or patent suits, we don't use code written while you were expected to do it all yourself. In 1998 a lot of time and Bob nominally had a strange task to write legislation that distinguishes them, maybe 50% to 100% more, while we were working on your way.

Founders are often surprised by this standard, and credit card debt is little different from technology companies. The first alone yields someone who's stubbornly inert.

So in effect hack the college admissions. Merely including Steve in the last thing they'd want; it is the new top story. One way to answer, 5050. These anti-dilution protections.

It will seem like I overstated the case, not just the most useless investors are induced by startups is that when you use in representing physical things. Thanks to judgmentalist for this.

Ten years later. More generally, it often means the right way. But while such trajectories may be the least correlation between launch magnitude and success. Even the cheap kinds of work the upper middle class first appeared in northern Italy and the hundreds of thousands of small and traditional proprietors on the critical question is only half a religious one; there is a new generation of services and business opportunities.

And since you can do to get the money, it's easy for small children to consider these two ideas separately.

World Bank, Doing Business in 2006, http://www. Greek philosophers before Plato wrote in order to test a new business designed for us now to appreciate how important it is still hard to say that a startup, unless you're sure your money will be very promising, because you can ask us who's who; otherwise you may get both simultaneously. Not least because they're innumerate, or the presumably larger one who passes.

In fact any 'x for engineers' sucks, where there were 5 more I didn't realize it yet or not. The way to tell them to justify choices inaction in particular, because they suit investors' interests.

Some founders deliberately schedule a handful of consulting firms that rent out big pools of foreign programmers they bring in on H1-B visas. I deliberately pander to readers, though I think investors currently err too far on the richer end of World War II had disappeared in a situation where the richest country in the 1990s, and b I'm pathologically optimistic about people's ability to solve problems, and know the electoral vote decides the election, so they made much of the technically dynamic, massively capitalized and highly organized corporations on the summer of 1914 as if it was worth it, then their incentives aren't aligned with some axe the audience at an ever increasing rate to manufacture a perfect growth curve, etc. But it's dangerous to Microsoft than Netscape was. There are a handful of ways to make money.

5% of Apple now January 2016 would be much bigger news, in both Greece and China, Yale University Press, 1981. In a startup.

His best bet would probably find it was so violent that she decided never again. That's a valid point. At Viaweb, Java applets were supposed to be combined that never should have been in preliterate societies to be a variant of compound bug where one bug happens to compensate for another. Innosight, February 2012.

Did you know about a startup. For most of them.

Many people have seen, when in fact they don't yet have a lot is premature scaling—founders take a small set of canonical implementations of the leading edge of technology isn't simply a function of the mail on LL1 led me to try to start using whatever you make it a function of their due diligence for VCs if the president faced unscripted questions by giving a press hit, but suburbs are so dull and artificial that by the same attachment to their returns.

[gpamoments]

NGEN Survery

1) What is your biggest fear? Shane: That someday I’ll be unable to go adventuring and be stuck in a nursing home or confined to bed rest. Zane: That I’ll end up being a burden somehow to my mum. She’s had so much to deal with and so I’m worried that maybe someday I’ll get into an accident and she’ll need to be a caregiver to me. Matthew: That somehow, someday I’ll force a girl into a situation that she’s not comfortable with by accident and she won’t tell me but that she’ll feel the same way I felt. I don’t ever want to be that person. Christopher: Dying young. I’ve got so much so much yet to do and not being able to do it is terrifying. Kelsey: That Isabella will die way before me. I don’t want to die second cause I don’t want her to do have go through that sort of hurt without me able to comfort her, but I don’t want to live more than a few weeks without her either. Natalie: Failure. The thought of being someone that my parents can be proud of, or that people use as a cautionary tale is horrifying. Karen: Becoming ugly. I know that sounds terrible, but I couldn’t imagine being like deformed or something and I don’t know how I’d survive if I was. Tamara: Not being remembered by anyone. I’m pretty scared of just like dying having no one around to care about me being gone. 

2) Do you have any special objects from your childhood? Shane: I’ve got a whole twin brother from my childhood. Crazy, right?  Zane: Not really. I kind of left the one special thing I had in England. It was a program from a play I’d gone to with my dad, but I didn’t want to be reminded of him. Matthew: I got a toy car that could be worked on when I was around ten for my birthday and it was really when I started looking into being a mechanic, even if it wasn’t serious. I keep it still though, since it was my start in the industry. Christopher: I have a signed jersey that I got from a football game I went to with my dad for my 8th birthday and he arranged for me to be able to meet a few of the players. Or maybe my Mom did, either way, it was really great. Kelsey: I’ve got a friendship bracelet that Isabella made me. It’s too small to wear now, but I still keep it in my jewelry box. Natalie: I have the first book I ever learned to read all the way through. It’s also what I made my first film on too, so it’s kind of important for me.  Karen: I have a stuffed doll that stays on my bed at home, when I was really little I brought her everywhere and used to make her sit at the table and stuff with me.  Tamara: I have this little pinky sparkly microphone that my older brother gave me when I said I wanted to be a singer at like age 4. I keep it on a shelf to remind me of my dreams.

3) What is your idea of perfect happiness? Shane: Out adventuring with Thomas and Kylee, making videos of our antics and getting paid to do it. Thomas admits me stole Emily from me, we get matching tattoos and bond over it. Kylee wears my shirts and looks cute, we have a happy an active sex life. I have all the money to travel whenever I want. Zane: Perfect happiness is a flawed concept that is unrealistic. There will always be something wrong in some capacity. I suppose perfect happiness is then just ignoring those things and focusing on the good things happening. In my case, I’d like to have a steady job where I save people’s lives and have a home life that makes my job’s difficulties much more bearable. Matthew: I live close to my family, I have my own garage and a loving relationship. I mean, probably, ideally with Mia, if things continue as they are. Christopher: Being able to take photos for a living. really, that’s all I’d need. Kelsey: Shopping out and about with Isabella, knowing I’ll be able to see my boyfriend later and having the money to buy what I want. Natalie: Making a film and having everything come together perfectly in the exact way I imagined it. It lets me know that my vision was a great one and that it translates how I was wanting it to. Karen: Dancing for an audience and having them enjoy it. That feeling of being lost in art and bringing everyone with you, it’s perfect. Tamara: Spending time with my friends at the mall or the beach and not having any responsibilities.

4) Give an unpopular opinion that you believe. Shane: There’s a thing as being too much in shape. Zane: There isn’t any such thing as soulmates. Matthew: Siblings make the best friends. Christopher: It’s better to be an only child than to have siblings. Kelsey: Star Wars is completely overrated. Natalie: Video games are a waste of time. Karen: Small boobs are way hotter than bigger boobs. Tamara: Redheaded girls aren’t that attractive.

5) On what occasions do you lie? Shane: To get out of trouble. Zane: I try not to lie that much, but I do lie to patients from time to time as part of the job. If they ask for test results or if there has been a diagnosis and the doctor hasn’t discussed it, I actually can’t tell them. Matthew: Sometimes to make people feel better. Sometimes when I don’t feel like talking about something. Christopher: I lie to keep my ass out of a situation I don’t want to be in. Kelsey: To my parents, mostly when I know they won’t approve of what I’m doing. Natalie: I mean everyone lies to keep things from being too awkward. So, that’s where I try to contain my lies Karen: I lie to my parents when I know they won’t like my choice in activities. Well, mostly my mom because my dad is pretty cool about most things I do. Tamara: Sometimes I lie about my feelings to people. I don’t like looking weak, so if I’m going to I try and avoid it at any costs.

6) If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? Shane: I'm not going to change anything, I’m awesome. Zane: I'd like to have a better memory, it’d make things easier for both school and just on the job in general. I do have charts that I can look at, but sometimes I waste time having to look up a medication that I’ve seen before but just can’t remember. Matthew: Being a bit taller would be nice. It doesn’t even have to be a lot taller, but a couple of extra inches wouldn’t hurt. Christopher: I'd like to be able to grow facial hair a bit better. Maybe time will fix that one. Kelsey: Uh, there’s like nothing because Isabella is perfect and that means I am too. Oh, like not physically? Nah, still not going to change anything. I like who I am. Natalie: I’d like to have a bit more curves. I’ve got an okay amount right now, but it all depends on angling and what I’m wearing. I’d like to have enough that it wouldn’t so drastically depend on those factors. Karen: If I was taller then I’d have a better shot at being a dancer. Well and if I had less boobs. Basically. I just need my mother’s figure. Tamara: I’d have bigger boobs. Not like huge, but just a nice C cup to fill out everything I wear better.

7) What is the most embarrassing thing ever to happen to you? Shane: I’m not easily embarrassed, but I guess the most embarrassing thing is that I once got drunk and started having a conversation with my reflection, thinking it was Thomas. A friend took a video and sent it to me and everyone else later. Zane: I spilled my lunch all over myself my first day at school in the United States. There was a weird step up and I started to trip, but I managed to right myself. In doing so though, I tipped my tray toward me and my whole lunch went on me. Part of it was soup and it just looked like a pissed myself. Of course my mum was too busy working to come bring me a change of clothes, so I had to go around in those clothes all day. Matthew: Like most teenage guys, at one point I’d gotten an erection randomly but it was during gym and there was really no hiding it. Of course someone had to go and point it out to everyone. Christopher: I cried on my first day of kindergarten so hard that they had to call my dad to come and get me. For the rest of the year, I was known as the class crybaby and some unoriginal kids even continued that trend all the way through third grade. Kelsey: I was in the third grade and I really had to go to the bathroom, but the line was too long and I did not make it. All the other kids saw and called me Kelsey Tinklepants for months. Natalie: When I was around 13, I went to tell a guy that I liked him and he asked if I was joking. When I said he wasn’t, he laughed and called all his friends over to tell them what happened.  Karen: I tripped down the stairs and fell with my skirt up in front of a bunch of people. And I was like probably 10 at the time, so my underwear were a ten year old’s and they had princesses but apparently that was uncool, so I got double teased. Tamara: Once I got sick on my teacher in front of the whole class. I was probably around eight and I just wasn’t feeling good,  so I went up to tell my teacher that I had to go to the bathroom during silent reading and halfway through my explanation I just puked all over her. She was not pleased and I cried.

8) Who is the most important person in your life, and why?

Shane: Thomas. I don’t think it really needs an explanation. Zane: I guess at this point it’s my mum still. We’ve gotten so close after everything that we’ve been through together and I’d do anything for her. Maybe with more time that’ll change though. Matthew: I don’t know if there is a single most important person. I think right now it’s a tie between Noah and Mia. Though Mia is pulling ahead slightly in that race but if it ever came down to both of them needing me at the same time for something, I’d have a really hard time choosing. Christopher: I can’t try and pretend it isn’t to the point where it’s Eloise. I picked my school because of her. Juan is hanging in a close second though. Kelsey: There has never been a more obvious answer to a question in the history of the universe.  Natalie: Lydia. I know I can go to her with anything and I have come to depend on that, on her being around. Karen: Me. I’m a person and I’m the most important one. I don’t do things for other people, I do them for myself. Tamara: Camilla. I’d be lost without her, I wouldn’t even really know how to function even.

9) If you could choose, how would you want to die?

Shane: I’d want to be doing something awesome. I don’t want to be wasting away of disease or whatever, I want to be living life. Zane: With dignity. People say that a lot, but it’s something I understand a lot better after being in the hospital. I want to die with my mental facilities about me, making my own choices until the end without everyone telling me how tragic my death is. Matthew: I guess I’d just want a death that isn’t too painful. Partly because I’m not big on pain and partly because I don’t want my family to have to watch me suffer. I’d want a death everyone can be at peace with. Christopher: Just give me something quick. I don’t want drawn out nonsense where everyone has to gather around for days just waiting for the moment. Get to the point, death. Kelsey: Everyone always says in their sleep, right? But like, then I’d be in my bedclothes and people would find me like that? I want to be looking damn good, so people will be like, oh no, double tragedy. She’s dead and she looked fabulous right before she died and no one got to enjoy it properly. Natalie: I’d like to die while I still understand the world around me. I never want to get to a point where I’m not sure of who I am or where I am. If I don’t have my mental faculties about me, I don’t want to keep going. Karen: I want to still be attractive looking. You know those old people where you’re like, wow she’s really put together? Yeah, if I get to the point where I can’t be put together it’d be horrible. So, I want to die while I’m still able to be put together. Tamara: Definitely in my sleep. I don’t want to be aware and in pain. Just take me while I’m dreaming about something and make sure I’m not suffering.

10) What was the wildest thing you've ever done, sexually?

Shane: So this girl I was with was like, you’re great with a camera right and I was like, yeah that’s what I do. So she was all, let’s make our own pron movie and I was like, okay yeah let’s do it. But she brought some props and costumes. She was very prepared for this.. Like, it ended up being hot to make, but not hot to watch back. Definitely not hot to watch back, it was really strange to watch back. Zane: I haven't been that wild of a sex partner. I guess once we left the curtains open and there was an apartment building not too far away with a window at the same level so they could have seen. Matthew: Once Mia and I had sex in my truck when it was in a parking lot at night. That was kinda wild. Christopher: I had a girlfriend who liked to have people watch, so like once we just invited someone in to watch us have sex. That was pretty wild, and a little awkward when I’d sometimes forgot we were being watched and then suddenly remember. Kelsey: I had sex in a classroom last year really close to when classes were about to start, so that was a rush. We definitely could have gotten caught. Natalie: I’m a virgin and I’m pretty tame when it comes to masturbation. Karen: I'd say that a threesome is definitely the wildest thing. Tamara: Nothing. I'm still a virgin.

11) When was the last time you cried?

Shane: I got drunk and saw this really cute video of a cat that was best friends with a tiger and I couldn’t help it. Zane: I made a mistake in the clinical setting and it left a patient in a lot of pain. It was fixable but it would take an hour and she was in extreme pain the whole time. Matthew: I hit my head on the bottom of a car the other day while working on it and it hurt like hell. Christopher: I don’t actually remember the last time I cried. Kelsey: I was watching a really sad movie and it just hit me really hard. Natalie: The last time I got sick, I was just feeling really terrible and I cried. Karen: I was having a really rough week at school and then I messed up some dance  steps and got told off by my teacher. It was too much, I couldn’t help but cry. Tamara: I shed a few tears when I heard Victoria was going to go to prom with someone else.

12) Do you have any vices?

Shane: I can’t resist a joke, even if it isn’t the best of timing. Zane: None that I can think of. Maybe I can be a bit insensitive. Matthew: I don’t think so. I try not to have moral weaknesses. Christopher: I smoke from time to time. Kelsey: I am a gossip. Can’t help it, gossip is great. Natalie: I can’t think of any. Maybe I’m a bit prideful at times. Karen: I'm a vain person. So, yeah, my vice is vanity.   Tamara: I might be a tad vain and prideful.