#there are three classes that are at various points on the spectrum between “need to take it” and “want to take it”

[sunfoxfic]

mother why hath you forsaken me (<- she did not answer my phone call)

[cyberphuck]

So, about the story of how I met my dad and why I love him so much

@qthewhatever asked me to talk about my dad, how he became my dad, and our relationship. I thought this was going to be a fun jaunt through good memories, with maybe a few grateful tears along the way. But the story of why my dad is so special to me can't be told without the context of why my mother *isn't* special to me, and the stark difference between how he treats me, and how I was treated by her. The cliff's notes version (do they even have those anymore?): Dad became my dad kind of by accident, when Seb and I started "pretending" to be siblings in order to be able to rent a room together. Dad is Seb's dad, so it follows that since I'm Seb's sibling, Dad is my dad too. Then he just... fell into the role, because dads gotta dad. He is always proud of me, no matter what, and no matter how badly I fuck something up he could never, ever stop loving me. He cares about me and doesn't get annoyed by the ups and downs of my moods. He lets me cry when I need to. He lets me take a break when I need to. He loves me, *really* loves me, so totally and completely that even though we look absolutely nothing alike, no one who has ever seen us together doubts that he's raised me from birth. That's not what it was like with my mom. I only got so far through recounting her decades of abuse before I found that I couldn't do it anymore. I'm still going to post what I have, because I think other people should read it and maybe become comfortable talking about their abuse *as* abuse and not "I'm sure I was doing something wrong somehow, and it was my fault they were always so angry at me." Also, I spent a long time working on it. This is not a happy story. trigger warnings: child abuse, emotional abuse, verbal abuse, mental illness, mentions of suicide, mentions of self harm, mentions of various serial killers, mentions of psychiatric hospitals, autism portrayed in a negative tone, fatphobia, and brief mentions of drugs and drug use. (this story is also not complete; it stops when I'm around 27, but I added an epilogue.)

My family had been in various financial situations throughout my childhood, but I was raised upper middle class, which was the same tax bracket that my mom had been raised in. My biodad, Ichiro (Dave) left when I was three, and I saw him once ten years later and then never again. So mom raised my older brother Nick and I by herself (except for a 3 year stint with Chris the Coke Addict Who's Dead Now) up until I was thirteen.

I'll admit I was not an easy kid to raise. I was (and still am) weird and awkward and autistic and prone to oversharing with strangers as well as long crying spells over seemingly low-importance things. Nick was also sensitive and somewhere on the spectrum, but it was me who was the loud one, the hyper one, the one who people politely said was a "late bloomer" and "marched to the beat of their own drummer" (at one point my mom told me I was "marching backwards.") I refused or forgot to eat so often that at six I became malnourished enough to warrant a visit by CPS. I was always being called into the principal's office for doing weird shit at school, like making potions out of shampoo and throwing them at passing cars or lion-roaring at boys I didn't like or whatever. When I got sick, I got VERY sick, like the time I straight up got Scarlet Fever and almost died, or the time I had a fever so high I started convulsing, or the lots of times that I had to do fasting blood draws every month because I had a very low red blood cell count and no one could figure out why.

Bottom line I was very weird. Mom was weird too, my grandparents were weird, but they knew how to "show" in public. I didn't. Nick's nickname for me was "The Spaz." Worse, I constantly craved attention and had absolutely no concept of Stranger Danger (I still kind of don't), and the year I was born, Richard Ramirez was active and killing in Southern California where my mom and Dave lived. In 1992, Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested and his apartment full of chunks of Milwaukee's queer community was broadcasted all over the news. In 1978, when my mom was a young woman, Mary Vincent was attacked by a man who picked her up while hitchhiking. He assaulted her and then attacked her with a hatchet, cutting both her arms off above the elbow. She has hooks for hands now. 

To keep me by her side and not wandering around out in the open, mom told me about all this. Everything-- that Dahmer was killing and eating people, that Ramirez tortured and murdered people, and how Mary Vincent had asked a strange man for a ride and now she had no arms. There's a scene in the beginning of *A Time to Kill* by John Grisham where a young black girl is being raped and tortured by two white men. It's a page or two long, but very graphic, and when I was eight my mom sat me down and made me read it to show me what could happen to me if I went anywhere alone.

At the time, we lived in Lausanne, Switzerland, which is not exactly a hotbed of violent crime.

All that aside, I was a cute kid and a good-looking teenager. I was adorably freckly with never-neat red hair, and then grew into a curvy teen with long red hair and wore cute clothes. Mom bragged to people that I was an author and an artist, and she would often tell me that she loved how 'cool' I was. (cool, in this sense, meant wearing the clothes she bought me and not styling my hair in any way she found ugly. She often pointed out ugly people on TV or on the street, and say something like 'I'm glad YOU don't dress like that.') 

I was smart-- I didn't get good grades because I could never get around to doing my homework, but I scored high on tests and most teachers liked me. I wasn't one of the popular kids, but I was always the leader of whatever little gang I was in, deciding where we went and what we did, and mom loved that, too. And she really, *really* wanted me to go into medicine.

Junior and senior year was where it all started to fall apart. 

Mom's husband is a veteran with severe PTSD. 2001 - 2005 were the worst years with him; he was overbearing at the best of times and the fact that he was a boomer from Brooklyn and I was a millenial from LA really didn't help us see eye to eye. But he had a hair trigger and would back me against a wall to loom over you  and scream in your face. Nick, who was taller and angrier than me, would scream back. Once, Nick was sent to the store for parmesan cheese and came home with the powder kind in the green can instead of the tub of the fancy grated cheese, and the resulting shouting match almost ended in a fist fight.

My depression started getting really bad when I was 17. By 18, I started self-harming, and for the first time had the thought that if I died, if I was gone and were nothing, everything would be better. I also had my first hospitalization.

I'm at 21 inpatient psychiatric stays now.

Worse, I was an adult now and had not transferred gracefully from high school to college (to go into medicine, nothing else was enough for her). I didn't even have a graduation-- I tested out of school in early 2003 and the only pomp and circumstance I got was a half-sheet of paper with 'CALIFORNIA HIGH SCHOOL PROFICIENCY EXAMINATION' printed on it. I had gained a lot of weight, partly due to meds and partly from depression and post-school downtime. She told me my hair looked like a rat's nest and once remarked to her husband, 'look at the size of her!' I no longer wore cute clothes and was not actively trying to turn my art or writing into a profitable career. 

Mom and her husband told me that I absolutely had to go back to school again, or they'd kick me out. The closest community college was two counties away (counties in California are really big). They told me they'd only take me to the nearest bus stop (still an hours' drive) and then I'd have to take a three-hour bus ride to the campus. The absolute earliest bus left at six am, which meant that I could only take classes starting at 10 am, and then had to leave by 2 pm to take the bus back home (the return bus did go all the way back to my area, but didn't run as often). 

They treated my trek back and forth to campus every day not with pride or pity, but contempt, as in "this is what you get for not succeeding." I had two more hospital stays.

After a particularly bad episode with mom's husband where he tried to force his way through a door and I had to climb out a window to get to neighbor's house and call 911, I moved out to stay with Nick, who had left about a year earlier. I was determined to be an adult and build a life for myself, but my depression and self-harming got steadily worse, and though I had several jobs and tried to go to college, every few months I'd do some serious damage to myself and end up back in the psych ward, pushing all my plans back to zero.

Nick moved in with his girlfriend, leaving me to shoulder the rent on our room on my own. I managed for about six months, but I couldn't stay at any job for long. I went to live with Skittle, where my depression took such a nosedive that a lot of nights were just spent huddled in a ball and sobbing. I felt worthless. I felt like I was nothing. 

Skittle and I broke up, and with nowhere to go, I moved back in with my mom. There were short periods thereafter that I would move out again, but basically, after I turned 23, I didn't get away from her again for five years.

Mom was never really happy with me again. I helped out wherever I could, going with her to the ranch where her horses were and volunteering to do all the dirty or hard tasks so she could have more time to ride. I did not and still do not like horses and have no interest in riding them. I went to make her happy. I wanted to do whatever I could to make her like me.

(Mom's ranch friends loved me, because I had been taught to show well in public. With them, I was witty and hard-working, and so sweet to come there to help my mom. Didn't I want to get on a horse, just once? No?)

I brought my mom breakfast and her meds when she woke up, so she could lay in bed while they took effect instead of having to hobble to the kitchen. I did chores around the house. I took the laundry to the laundromat twice a week, and brought them home clean and folded. I walked the dogs and took them to the park. 

My mom told me that I was a draw on finances. I started cleaning houses, and eventually lucked into a job cleaning weed for a hefty sum of money. I made enough money in one three-day weekend to buy my own car, which was a good thing since mom's truck was repossessed not long after. I'd gotten the trimming job in November. I sometimes stayed over at the weed guy's house so I could do two or three days of trimming in a row. In December mom told me that all I cared about was money.

Early the next year, my boss was between sales, so he was late paying me. I owed my mom two hundred dollars (I can't remember for what), and she treated me with open hatred for every day I didn't have it. Bitter and upset, I posted something on facebook to the effect of "does anyone know where I can find two hundred dollars so my mom will love me again?" Mom saw it and sent me a message: 

"you want to play this game? better not call for a while I better not see you for a while. a person must learn to keep family business private [Jaydee]."

I also got:

“Just sit there and pretend you’re not here.”

“I’m trying to reminisce about happier times, before all this.”

“You know you think it’s all about you, but I had your brother first.”

“If you don’t like the things I say to you, leave and find someplace with someone nicer.”

“Go get a shrink and figure out why you’re like this all the time.”

[epilogue: the next year, I was planning to commit suicide because I saw no other way out. Seb offered to let me stay with him in Texas; my options were Texas, or death. I pondered that for a while. A few weeks later, I got a refund of a Pell Grant from my college that they'd mistakenly taken two years earlier. Mom and her husband made it expressly clear that as soon as the money hit my account, I was to hand it over to them. Instead, I bought a plane ticket, pulled out the rest of the money in cash, wiped my ass with her husband's face towel, and snuck out with two suitcases in the middle of the night. I had left a note for mom saying I didn't want to be abused anymore and told her I was going to stay with a friend in Central California to throw her off my trail. I also told her that if she ever tried to find me, or bothered any of my friends to get information, I would put all of her secrets and records of her abuse on facebook for all her friends and relatives to read.

I didn't see her or speak to her again for nearly ten years, until this May. Then I flipped her off.]

[csanoopjain1]

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[teddy06writes]

Can I request a Karl x Alex x Nick x Reader fic in which the reader is a teacher and they bring their boyfriends in for career day? I just thought it’d be so cute to see them interact with little kids.

sapnap x karl x quackity x reader

trigger warnings: none

premise: pretty much everything from the ask, although I know nothing about children so..., sorry lol

requested by the person above as well as @eliasxxk who asked for more karlnapity x reader

(y/n/n)- your nickname

(y/l/n)- your last name

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

“Career day?” Nick asked.

You nodded, quickly packing up the last of the assignments you had finished grading and tucking them into your bag, “Yeah, remember how I was planning the different stations and stuff for the kids?”

“Oh yeah, I thought you had all that stuff sorted?” Karl handed you your laptop from across the table.

“We did,” You sighed, “But someone backed out and now we have a slot to fill. So, one of you, all of you, I don’t care, we still need someone to do it.”

Alex frowned, “What would we have to do for that?”

You ran a hand through your hair, “Make a presentation on what you do? We were looking for a broad spectrum and the guy who backed out was someone’s cousin who did like, animation or something.”

As you gathered the rest of your things you explained that one group or person would be set up in each classroom, and that kids would rotate through, not just the fifth graders you taught, but the whole of the elementary school.

Karl grinned, “What time would we have to be there?”

“The welcome thing for the speakers is it 9 ish on Friday, so I can bring back the forms you’d need to fill out today to get them in on time.”

Your boyfriends agreed, and with a smile you pecked them all on the lips, “Alright, I gotta go. I’ll see you later.”

“Love you!” Karl called as you started out the door.

“Love you too!”

~~

After practically zooming through your first three units, ELA, Math and History, and sending your kids off to PE, you headed down to the admin offices to make copies and grab the forms.

“Hey Sadie!” You greeted cheerfully.

The secretary smiled, “Hey mx. (y/l/n).”

You moved over to the copier, starting your copies, “Do you have any of those forms? For the people giving the presentations on career day?”

“You found someone?” Adam, the sixth grade teacher who had been organizing the career day asked as he entered the office.

“Three someones actually,” You smiled, “Alex, Karl and Nick said they could.”

“Oh, that’ll be interesting.”  Sadie laughed.

“Minecraft youtubers,” Adam mused unenthusiastically, “I’m sure the kids will love to hear about people without real jobs.”

You rolled your eyes, “They pull just as much if not more than me every year, plus Nicky and Alex are still in college.”

Adam cocked an eyebrow as you grabbed your copies, and then the forms from Sadie, “Well at least I can’t complain, your saving my ass.”

“Damn right I am,” You scoffed starting out of the office, “You owe me.”

Heading back down the hall and then up the stairs to the fifth grade hallway you pulled out your phone, sending a text to the ‘loves <3′ group chat, ‘the files have been secured’

Back in your classroom you began to set out the Novels your class had been reading, and set up the last of the things you would need for the mini science lab that would happen later in the after noon.

~~ The next few days passed quickly, and soon you were pointing your boyfriends in the direction of the library, where the volunteers were supposed to be meeting before heading up to your classroom, greeting the kids who were already inside.

“Hey guys! Are you excited for today?”

A few kids nodded.

“Which presentation are you most excited to see?”

“Probably the actor!” Damien exclaimed.

“The actor? Any reason why or you just think they’d be cool?”

“I wanna be an actor.” He said.

“Yeah?” You chuckled, “What about you Sam?”

The girl through for a moment, tapping at her desk absently, “Probably the firefighter, I want to save people like them some day.”

You nodded, “Calum? Any your excited for?”

“Well I was excited to Ricky, he’s my cousin and an animator but he couldn’t come.” The boy pouted.

“Aw, well I’m sorry about that, but I’m sure there’ll be plenty of interesting people for you to see.” You looked over the schedule again, answering a messege from Adam, willingly surrendering yourself to running around and helping wherever needed during the day, instead of watching the presentations with your kids.

The morning announcements came and went, and the teaching aid who would be taking your place, touring the kids around came in, “Alright guys! We’r~~e going down to the auditorium so that the principal and Mr. Alderton can explain the plan for today, and so that the people who are going to be in these rooms have time to set up!”

She herded the kids out of the room, smiling at you as you grabbed your phone, following them out, but turning down a different hall to the library.

Adam breathed a sigh of relief as soon as you got inside, “Oh thank god! Okay, I need you to get these lovely people to there rooms, Adda is already going around to set up projectors.”

You nodded, taking the papers from him, “Okay people! If you’d follow me, we’ll get you into these classrooms on time!”

The group of various adults followed you out of the library as you started calling out names at each floor, in between the intersection of grade level hallways, pointing out room numbers.

By the time you had made it to the cross roads between the fifth and sixth grade, Adam was already frantically messaging you about being late so quickly you called out the last of the room numbers, pointing various directions and telling the people to let themselves in.

You turned to your boyfriends, “Right you guys are in my room, it’s at the end of the hall, my computer should be unlocked.”

“You’re not like, staying to hang out or anything?” Karl asked.

“I’ve been roped into over seeing this thing. I might be in and out at various times through out the day,” You pressed a kiss to each of there cheeks before starting back towards the stairs, “Have fun!”

~~

You spent your day running around, delivering different things to various classrooms and basically doing Adam’s bidding.

A little way into the last rotation of kids around the building you finally got the chance to take a break and head back up to your room, slipping in and sitting in the back as Karl tried his best to explain streaming to a group of kindergarteners.

They may not have fully understood what he was talking about, but they sure did find him funny.

You watched quietly as your boyfriends interacted with the kids, opening up for questions sooner than they had with the older kids, and patently answering each one.

“What are you going to college to learn how to do?” A young girl asked.

Alex smiled, “Well I’m going to get real smart to be a lawyer, and Mr. Sapnap here is learning about computers.”

“What’s a lawyer?” Another kid asked.

“My uncle’s a lawyer,” someone two desks away offered, “My mom says it’s someone who works in a court!”

Alex chuckled, “You are absolutely right Big Man, lawyers defend people who go to court.”

“If you and you are goin to college,” A boy near the front pointed at Nick and then Alex, “Then what’s he learning at college?” He pointed at Karl.

“Karl isn’t in college anymore.” Nick said simply.

“Not honking smart enough.” Karl grinned as kids laughed at his use of the word honk.

They continued to joke around for a while, until the pa crackled that it was time for everyone to head back to there normal classrooms, and you moved back to the front of the room, “That was entertaining.”

“(y/n/n)! This was awesome!” Karl exclaimed.

You nodded, glancing at the clock as you began to re arrange your desk, “Theres like, maybe ten minutes to the bell, you guys want to hang out in here?”

“Sure.” Your class began to file back in as Alex spoke.

“Mx. (y/l/n)! Why didn’t you tell us you were dating famous youtubers?” Damien asked.

You groaned, looking at a shrugging Nick, “Why have you done this?”

You class laughed at your displeasure, and you were about to start asking everyone how there days had gone when Karl beat you too it.

“Who was your favorite?”

“It better have been us!” Alex stage whispered.

The kids laughed, and you sat back, content to watch your boyfriends entertain the class.

[samwrights]

I’m sorry but ukai with a breeding kink😳yes PLEASE

I swear I saw another ask that asked for Ukai with an impreg kink

*ahem* anyways—WOW this one was a doozy but holy shit did I have fun writing it. 11k words you guys. 11. K. It is a lot so grab some cocoa or coffee and a blanket because this is a read. It even has to be split into two parts because I hit the fucking text limit, BUT this also means there is no actual smut in this portion. You can find that here.

If you guys need some ear candy, I recommend the following:

Day N Nite (Crooker’s Remix) by Kid Cudi

Pursuit of Happiness (Extended version with Steve Aoki) by Kid Cudi

Breaking Me by Topic

C’Mon by Ke$ha

Flannel by The Cardboard Swords (it has to be sad somewhere)

Magic in the Hamptons by Social House

Fun fact: Ke$ha was actually the primary inspiration for this fic and for DJ!Ukai. God bless her.

Warnings: language, nicotine and alcohol consumption, implied drug use, implied emotionally abusive relationship, breeding/impreg kink, dirty talk, rough sex, risky sex, road head, slight dub-con, praise, multiple smut scenes, 3rd person POV reader-insert—because the word ‘you’ just didn’t seem to fit.

Without further ado, please enjoy the filthy depths of my brain followed by a relatively happy ending that I’ve titled, “Between the Lines’” :-)

“You’ve been more tired lately, and you’re showing up right when practice starts. Is everything okay?” Was the question that Takeda had asked Ukai Keishin that haunted him for years to come. Sure, he had wanted to gain more independence from his parents, wanted to start being more adult-like and take over the mortgage and the bills so his parents could finally rest. At the age of twenty-six, it seemed like a good idea at the time. With four years passing, however, Keishin was so damn tired, but it wasn’t like he could just stop working.

He was still tending to crops every morning, tending to the shop, coaching for Karasuno, but in the four years time, he had adopted one more job on the weekends—Ukai Keishin was a local nightclub DJ. He’d discovered the job opportunity one fateful night that he was out with his friends from the neighborhood association. To this day, he was still unsure of why he was approached with the job, especially considering he didn’t know the first thing about being a DJ, but the woman who had offered him the position had taught him everything he needed to know.

It turned out that he had a natural affinity for the position, seeing as he was still at it years later under the alias Spira. Ukai kept telling himself that he would quit the gig eventually because there was no way he could continue working four jobs—it was inhuman and the money didn’t even really matter to him. Okay, that last one is a lie; his DJ gig has been a substantial contributor to his savings funds to the point where he was even able to afford a newer, larger, (and slightly) used SUV in full compared to his tiny, old yellow beater. Even his mortgage bills were starting to look less daunting with the current cash flow.

Who needs sleep anyway? Ukai survived and thrived off of nicotine and caffeine anyway. Besides, sleep was the last thing on his mind whenever he set foot into the club. It was impossible to think of anything other than the writhing bodies of sweaty, young adults that were already drunk or high or were practically fucking each other with their clothes on. Perhaps that was part of the reason Keishin felt the need to quit this job—he was envious. Envious of the fact that he never got to indulge in his youth like these kids did; he started working and helping his family out right away after college. Sure, he went out here and there, but these twenty-something-year-olds were living their best life, while he was thirty and catering to their whims.

To say he was a bit bitter would be an understatement.

Bitterness aside, however, it did him good to see the youth enjoying exactly that—their youth. They got to do as they pleased between exams and becoming functioning members of society and, while he was jealous, Ukai was proud to be able to contribute to their pleasure.

He’d arrived to the club early, as he often did, to try to grab a drink before he was due for stage time. Ukai was thankful the bartenders knew him enough that he didn’t have to verbally order considering the music was too loud to hear him in the first place. A rum and coke manifests itself in a small, plastic cup that the blonde raises in thanks before weaving and bobbing around the various partygoers. For the most part, he’s successful in dodging the flailing bodies as he mutely notes the very upbeat remix of some female pop artist playing.

But only remotely successful as Keishin attempts to salvage his drink from spilling as he raises it over his head as one of the partygoers is pushed into him. “Hey, careful!” He snaps toward the younger, [hair color]ed woman. She only looks half-offended by the scolding, but otherwise unperturbed. If anything, the dominating expression on her face was confusion.

“Coach Ukai?” He’s surprised to hear both his given name and his title, let alone coming from a club patron, as they all knew him as Spira. Recognition slips his mind entirely—he’s never met this girl in any way that he can remember. Certainly, he would never forget crossing paths with this beauty, even if she was dressed in a similarly juvenile fashion to the other ravers. Tight crop top tee cinched together by a knot at the midriff, with army green high-waisted shorts attempting to cover the bare skin, face painted with makeup, glitter, and sweat; even underneath the garb, she brought forth no recollection. “Uh, d-do you remember me?” It’s a challenge to hear over the music, but she presses forward close enough that her lips are right in Keishin’s ear.

“Can’t say that I do,” he yells right back into hers.

“Karasuno class of twenty-twelve, I was Sugawara’s girlfriend.” Oh.

Oh.

Now he remembered, vaguely, but he doesn’t ever remember her looking like this. The last four years had been incredibly kind to her, in more ways than one. Back in her Karasuno days, [name] had always looked pleasant, for lack of better term. But there was always a lifeless, matted, dull glaze to her eyes that screamed she was searching for something more. While it was still somewhat present, there was a substantial joyous air around her. It looked good on her. However, as much as Ukai wanted to stay and admire, he had to go get set up for the evening. Or rather, that was the excuse he used when he said he would catch her after the show. “[name], did you know who that was?” The woman in question gives a nod, confused at the sudden star struck gawks that her friends held.

“Uh, yeah? My ex-boyfriend’s volleyball coach?���

“No dude, that was the DJ, Spira.”

“What?”

Being the closing act meant a lot of different things to Ukai Keishin. On the negative spectrum, it meant he was going to have to tend to crops as soon as he finished cleaning up his set. That also meant he wasn’t going to get to go to bed until nearly eight in the morning after his shift at the farm. Yet, for him, the positives greatly outweighed the negatives. For Keishin, watching the audience lose themselves in euphoria, albeit probably a drug-induced one, just hit different for him. It was a sense of satisfaction that only came from a select few activities, with coaching volleyball being the other major contributor. There was just something about the way the crowd was overwhelmed and screaming the second underground remixes of old Kid Cudi tracks with his own twists overtook the speakers that granted Keishin a sense of enlightenment.

For him, being a DJ allowed an audience to flow and vibe with the journey of his life and all its constant up and down motions while under the guise of anonymity. As Spira, Ukai opened up the complexity and conflicting feelings of his inner mind and brought it to fruition through his mixes. He felt that in his soul, he’d done his art of storytelling justice. The audience felt it. Hell, his mom at home probably felt it. Perhaps it was one of the main reasons this dingy, hole-in-the-wall club kept asking him to come back every weekend.

His mind wanders further as he clutches an electronic cigarette in his hand, mixing beats on the turntable while taking hits of nicotine in between. He wonders if the girl he had ran into just a few minutes prior had been frequenting here as often as he had. Then, thinking back to what little information she supplied earlier, Ukai’s mind drifts off to the former third-year setter from when he first started coaching. Sugawara was a nice boy with a firm, almost parental, hand that walked dangerously along the lines of being a partner and being a control freak. When it came to his relationship, things had to go his way. And while his girlfriend that came to every tournament was much more outspoken yet easy going, she was opinionated and didn’t shy from confrontation.

Now that the coach had given it more thought, it was a wonder that one tolerated the other at any point in time. If anything, Ukai imagines the two of them would typically be at each other’s throats. From the few times he had interacted with her, she was always more free spirited and couldn’t be weighed down by any one else’s opinion, but seeing her now was different—she was in her element in the dingy, dark club with the glitter on her cheekbones refracting light off of her face. There was laughter and true, unabashed joy on her face. She had a light of her own—like she was ray of sunshine in the center of a storm.

Three hours past midnight when the club closed was always Keishin’s sign to leave, regardless of the countless attempts to attend the after party he’d been invited to. He had to go to work, after all. Sure, a part of him had always been a little green with envy at all the DJs that got to hook up with club patrons after, but after being at this gig for a few years, he figured that the right girl for him would eventually come to him if he continued working on himself. After all, he didn’t want to just have a string of one night stands with a bunch of fresh adults that could barely function after the small drop of Malibu rum—he was too old for that.

“Uh, coach?” [name] felt strange calling him that, but she didn’t feel familiar enough with him to address him otherwise. He was halfway in his car, the blonde ready to leave for the weekend to go back to his regular day-to-day work. “You coming to the after party?” [name] asks when Keishin only looks at her in question, cigarette hanging betwixt his dry lips.

“No, I actually have to go to work right now.”

“Oh,” she doesn’t mean to express her disappointment, but it slips anyway, “guess I’ll catch you later then?”

“Uh, yeah.” A tight lipped hybrid of a pained grin and grimace crosses her wet, gloss covered lips. Without another word, Ukai closes his car door, a little more brusquely than he intended to, before backing out and leaving the young woman to her own devices. His mind wanders once again with him humming absentmindedly to the soft acoustic punk playing over the car radio. His eyes are focused on the passing greenery, the cars that are weaving and bobbing off the freeway—hell he even noticed the way the tendrils of the sun are just barely starting to peak over the horizon because it reminded him of her. A thought he banishes immediately because he feels creepy for even thinking that.

Yet no matter how much scenery flitted through his honey eyes, his mind keeps traveling back to one thing, or rather one person, only.

Goddammit.

On Monday’s practice, Ukai Keishin’s mind is flooding and drowning in memories of his first year as the volleyball club’s coach. It was as if his mind was coercing him to attempt to reach out to the girl that plagued his mind for the last forty-eight hours or so. Though, he had no way of contacting her. Instead, with every step along the wooden floors, he can remember the way she would walk Suga to practice, almost physically seeing her standing in the doorway to kiss the third-year setter goodbye. As if he could see her sitting underneath the third window from the left, quietly doing homework and exchanging small talk and airy laughter with Kiyoko and Daichi. As if he could see the same sunny smile she gave in the audience from Saturday night at the club between the lines of the woodwork in the floorboards.

It was a repeating pattern day in and day out that was beginning to make Ukai question his sanity.

“Hey, man,” his assistant coach and fellow Karasuno alumni, Tsukishima Akiteru, places a hand on his shoulder and looks at him in worry. “Are you okay? You’ve been out of it all week.” In what world did a week translate into three days, the older blonde coach didn’t know.

“I’m fine, just tired,” Keishin all but bites back. He didn’t want to admit his conscious had been running rampant with thoughts of a girl he’d briefly met at a club. It felt almost as disturbing and perverted as it sounded in his mind.

“The team’s worried about you. Why don’t you take an early weekend and get some rest? We’ll see you back on Monday, yeah?” Normally, Ukai would have vehemently refused. However, his circumstances were far from normal and he was gracious for an assistant coach he trusted wholeheartedly to do the work that needed to be done. And so, Ukai heeded Akiteru’s advice and went home before practice even began on Thursday afternoon.

It was slightly disorienting for him to go home and nap, but he was incredibly thankful for the gift. Waking up just before he was technically supposed to start his shift at the shop, Keishin jumps into a cold shower to bring him to life before heading downstairs. A bellowing yawn passes his lips through his teeth as he starts his evening. Maybe his team was right—he really did need a break. Thankfully, he knew that the second the doors to the Sakanoshita were locked, he was done for the evening and wouldn’t need to reawaken until three the following morning. Just a few more hours until then, he thought.

With it being a slower evening as well, Ukai was able to kick his feet up on the counter as he always did, pull open the newspaper from earlier in the morning and casually flip through. Briefly, he considers giving up one of his four jobs because this was something he missed doing. But consideration aside, he was far too in love with the cash flow and the thought of paying off his mortgage to entertain the thought for long. Maybe one day, he would finally sell the Sakanoshita store or quit helping on the farm—

“You still work here?” Huh. Her voice sounds different when it isn’t drowning under the speakers of a nightclub.

“I do own this place, you know.” Ukai snarks at the woman who’d been consuming his brain for the last week. She looks different without glitter reflecting off of her unreal cheekbones or the heavy layers of foundation and eyeshadow. Even more than before, Keishin definitely recognized [name] now. “What are you doing here anyway?”

“Shopping,” she snorts as if it were the most obvious thing, “why else would I be at a store?”

“Dunno, maybe you’re just here to see me.” Ukai responds without skipping a beat, turning the page of the paper to play into his guise that he wasn’t the slightest bit surprised at [name]’s presence.

“Uh...actually...” her voice is quiet, prompting the coach to quirk a brow and fold up the paper he was now pretending to read. It wasn’t like he could focus on anything right now outside of the woman standing before him, spearated only by a thin counter. Without talking again, his brown eyes lock with hers, silently goading for her to continue speaking. “I-I just...I don’t know. It was just really weird to see you at the club and then to find out that you’re Spira on top of that. I haven’t seen anyone from Karasuno since I graduated and—“

“Woah, kid, breathe.” Ukai interrupts her before she can continue spewing word vomit at a hundred miles an hour. “So what if I’m Spira? Though, you better not tell anyone that. My stage name is a secret between us, alright?” For a moment she’s quiet, gears turning in her head. The secrecy didn’t make sense to her because, if anything, he should be proud of the fact that he’s rather well known in the underground electronica scene. Or at least, she was in his stead, because [name] would have been proud of Ukai regardless of whatever occupation he held.

She supposed it came with the territory of having an unrequited crush on the coach years ago, that continued well beyond high school and even university, back when she was still dating Sugawara Koushi. It was the reason she had even bothered to come sit in on his practices and partially the reason she would come to his tournaments and matches. Not that she didn’t want to be supportive of her then-boyfriend—it would have been a fight had she not—but seeing the hot older coach was definitely a bonus in her book. “But why?” She offers, not wanting conversation to end despite her not having actually bought anything.

“If the school ever caught wind of me doing that, I could lose my position as the coach. Some shit about Karasuno’s image or whatever.” [name] gives a small nod, fidgeting subconsciously, as an attempt to shake her nerves and anxiety, by sifting through various candy bars that were in front of her before grabbing her favorite. Without a second thought, she peels the wrapper before placing the candy between her lips, the puffy pink skin greatly contrasting the chocolate coating. “Ya gonna pay for that, kid?” Ukai irks, his honey brown eyes steeling over in irritation. The nickname she’s given hits the final nail on the coffin and seals away [name]’s trepidation. Instead, her own sass comes out to join the fun.

“Nah,” she hums playfully, the chocolate-covered wafer cookie crunching between her teeth. “Quit calling me kid, coach. I’m a lady,” the irony isn’t lost on either of them as she speaks with her mouth full.

“Still a kid, kid. And quit calling me coach, I’m not your damn coach.” The familiar, grumpy attitude of his brings [name] back to the Ukai she knew back in high school. In a mix of nostalgia, warmth washes over her as the haughty tone in his voice sent shivers down her spine like it did a few years back.

“Sure thing, coach,” she teases again before tossing the wrapper of the stolen candy bar into the nearest bin. “You’re at the club tomorrow, right?” The question adds a bit of context and confirmation to Ukai—it seems she knew when Spira was performing, meaning she must have been a patron for a decent amount of time. Part of him wonders how she never realized who he was before, another part wonders how he’s never noticed her considering she could make all traffic stop if she stood in the middle of a freeway. At least, that’s what looking at her did to his heart.

“Yeah?”

“Maybe this time, you’ll join us at the after party.” Without another word, [name] pushes herself away from the counter she’d been leaning on while talking to the blonde man. With Akiteru giving him the weekend off, he actually entertained the thought of attending this time. Even if her invitation was rather blasé and indirect, he didn’t see the opportunity of him attending one presenting itself any time soon. He may be old, by his own standard, but there was a unknown allure to the thought of showing up to a wild party with a woman that was so adamant of his attendance.

Or rather, adamant in his mind. Whether she actually wanted his company remained to be seen, but the curiosity was gnawing at him, and was something he would have to unearth sooner rather than later.

Having an entire night, or a day’s worth, of rest was a rather disorienting, yet pleasant feeling for Ukai. After tending to crops and returning home in the early hours of the morning, the blonde coach was able to catch a solid nine hours of sleep before his shift at the Sakanoshita store with another chance to nap before he needed to head to the club. Despite knowing he had the ability to do so before another restless night, his mind felt the need to keep him awake and alert. Even after showering and styling his blonde tresses into their usual mane—mundane acts that usually came to him automatically—he was hyper aware of the slightest unruly flyaways.

Ukai Keishin was nervous.

He didn’t know what to wear or if there was a dress code or if anything he typically wore would be deemed worthy of an after party. A part of him wanted to leave it alone and let him sport his usual white track pants and tight, maroon muscle tank, but that part of him immediately drowns in the ocean of his anxiety. Another string in his brain prompted him to dress up just a little bit to help him look the part—it had nothing to do with impressing a certain club patron, no—he tried to convince himself. A miserable attempt, but still one nonetheless.

Eventually, he settled on crisp, dark-washed jeans that hugged his muscular legs without being suffocating, paired with a vibrant, crimson muscle tee that hugged his biceps all the same. Ukai still felt a little out of place in the attire, as he often had back when he first assumed the alias Spira, but headed out the door of his apartment before his conscious could dispute it.

He was early again, even more so than normal. Desperate for a drink to calm his nerves and replace his blood with liquid courage, Ukai worms his way around to the bar, signaling the attendant for his usual. Rum and coke in hand, the DJ stands off to the side, hiding like a wallflower, while he studied the sweaty, dancing bodies. Did he know why he was looking for her—no. Maybe partially to tell her she owed him for the candy bar, maybe to tell her he was joining in on the after party this time around.

Maybe to just see her.

Keishin banishes the last thought with a shake of his head before skulking off to the attached patio to smoke. Pulling a cigarette from his pack and a lighter from his pocket, the flame torches the end of the filter at the same time the blonde inhales. Forcefully pushing the smoke out past his lips, Ukai takes a hearty sip of his drink until it’s nearly gone. He was going to need something stronger tonight.

“Is it that time already?” The older man’s head snaps to the voice that had been haunting him subconsciously.

Part of him wishes he didn’t look.

As if to play into her question, [name] checks the large, rose gold watch on her right wrist—an incredibly stark contrast to her outfit for the evening. Maybe it was a hunch when Ukai felt that he had been underdressed, as if his intuition knew that she was going to be dressed to the nines in a black skater dress. Even with a modest neckline, the lace cut out detailing on the sides of the dress accentuated her curves impeccably, playing well with the volume of the skirt, while the open back she was sporting dipped dangerously low.

It took everything in Ukai to not throw every milliliter of restraint and inhibition out the window and fuck her right then and there.

Taking a lengthy drag of his cigarette to hold himself back, Keishin inhales deeply, the smoke billowing past his lips emerging densely and grey in color. “I’m a little early—needed an extra drink today.” The man manages to choke out, downing whatever is left in his little plastic cup for added emphasis.

“Need another?” [name] chirps politely; almost too politely as if to deliberately dispute the salacious thoughts flooding the coaches mind.

“I can get—“

“I owe you anyway,” she reminds him, alluding to the candy bar she had eaten without paying for from the previous night. “Pick your poison.”

“Double rum and coke.” He concedes. [name]’s lips twitch upward slightly at the corner before she plucks the empty cup from Ukai’s hand. He doesn’t miss the way the shellac on her nails grazes against his skin, leaving the whispers of contact to run warm. Immediately, the blonde man uses the nearly dead cigarette between his teeth to light a fresh one—heaven or hell knows he needed the nicotine right now.

Given the silence, Keishin takes the opportunity to absorb his surroundings. From the general direction that [name] initially came from, she wasn’t around any of her friends or really anyone that he knew. That was good at least; there wasn’t anybody else that knew of his presence. [name] returns, two clear plastic cups in her hands and surrenders the darker of the two to the man awaiting. “Hold mine for a sec?” Without thinking, Keishin holds his cigarette between his left index and middle fingers, his drink in the same hand, while taking hers. To his surprise, she pulls out her own pack of menthols and a torch lighter, setting the leaves ablaze before taking her obvious vodka cranberry back.

“You took up smoking?” The older of the two asks in surprise, noting the way her lipstick leaves the slightest bit of residue along the brown filter. [name] gives a shrug.

“Surprised you didn’t notice it sooner, coach. I’ve been smoking since second year.” Ukai gives a roll of his eyes at the use of this strange pet name he’s been dubbed by her. But he thinks about it, thinks about how Suga must have felt probably knowing that she did. Thinks how it just added to this strange, sassy yet happy, wild and free exterior she now had. And [name] notices instantly the very same look Ukai had in his face when he was trying to strategize, trying to figure out a way to navigate a conversation with his team about becoming better—she knows what’s coming next. “Yeah, yeah, I know I should quit or whatever. Suga lost that argument a long time ago.”

“Can’t really tell you what to do when I’m just as guilty.” Ukai gives a laugh—one that is embedded with bitterness and envy at the mention of the third-year setter—yet is just as vivacious as he is. A sound entirely different than she’d ever heard leave his lungs before. She likes it.

After finishing his smoke, Keishin gulps down a hefty swig of his drink before patting [name] on the shoulder before announcing his departure. “I’ll see you inside,” the girl, woman, calls out thoughtfully as she gives a small wave with her cigarette filter between her fingers. Ukai doesn’t verbalize the same sentiment. He doesn’t want to slip up and admit he’ll be looking for her.

But it’s painfully obvious that he is when he takes over the booth. Unable to hide the fact that with every chance that he looks into the audience, he’s searching for that black skater dress that hugs her all too perfectly, [hair color] locks swaying as she moves in the crowd. Ukai can’t hide it at all—not behind the turn table or new remixes meant to get the crowd moving.

He can’t hide the urgency he feels to find her outside in the crisp evening air, smoking on the back patio of the club after his set. [name] is talking and laughing with her friends while thin grey smoke billows from her open mouth before her eyes land on him. Some of her friends take notice to the tension and their shared gazes, some of them whispering his alias in excitement. But [name] just smiles knowingly, if not a little cocky, because she can see that urgency, that desperation, that Ukai was trying to hide. “Wait, [name], do you know Spira?” A bystander asked. Clearly, they weren’t present the last time this was brought up.

“Yeah, I may have met him once or twice,” the woman in question snickers as she strides over closer and closer to the aforementioned DJ.

“Cute,” Ukai sneers teasingly at her jab before instinctively reaching for the half-gone cigarette she pulls to her stained lips. At first, she thought he was going to put it out, considering their little conversation from a few hours ago. Instead, the volleyball coach puts the filter to his own lips, noting the damp fabric probably from her freshly applied lipgloss, and takes a drag. It tasted like watermelons and mint.

“Cheeky,” [name] returns, plucking her cancer stick back from the blonde man. While her friends are still behind her murmuring about the familiarity between the two of them, Keishin and [name] are lost in their own little world. “So since your set is over, and considering you’re still here, I’m assuming you’re joining me for the after party? Or do you have to go to work again?”

“I told them I’d be out of town this weekend,” Ukai tries to play it off as nonchalantly as he could, ties to swallow it down his nerves with rum and nicotine. It proves rather difficult considering the coy smile on [name]’s face is wearing and cracking through his resolve rather quickly. But at least, to him, he could confirm his mind was not playing tricks on him and [name] was just as adamant about his attendance as he initially thought. Even more so with her next statement.

“Cool. Your car or mine?” It took him a minute to process her words even—lust thickening and constricting the flow to his brain at the vague question. Ukai was getting far too ahead of himself, but goddammit how could he focus when the fabric of her skirt hit her mid-thigh and framed her like a Venetian goddess—“I don’t mind driving there.” She adds to coax him away from his silence.

“Nah, I got it. We’ll take mine.”

“Lead the way,” [name] chimes sweetly as she wraps an arm around the coach’s forearm. The physical touch is everything he’s been fantasizing about for the last few days—hellfire and brimstone and sunlight and goddammit why did he wear jeans that were only getting tighter and tighter?

Ukai opens the passenger door to his SUV, supporting the woman as she clambered in cautiously so as not to stumble from her heels. Getting settled in, the coach surrenders his unlocked phone to allow her the entirety of his music library. The irony of the DJ surrendering DJ rights to the passenger was not lost on either of them. Much to his surprise, [name] put on soft acoustic punk as he usually did on his way home from the club. The kind of softness one would turn on to accompany the fragile pitter-patter of rain against the windshield. “Cardboard Swords?” Ukai asks in surprise, more than familiar with the band.

“Flannel is a favorite of mine. I’m kind of surprised it’s in your library.” She adds after she begins directing him to this evening’s party location. From the corner of his eyes, he can see the way her full lips are moving along each word with expertise. He sees the way her [eye color] orbs soften slightly and he can tell this song hits home for her.

She’ll never say why—she’ll never tell him this was the song that helped her move on from Sugawara Koushi while restoring her inner peace.

But Keishin is no fool. He can tell that this is physically hurting her—crushing her soul into the leather seat of his car and, instinctually, he wraps a large hand around hers that’s resting in her lap. “I came out tonight to have fun with you, so don’t you go getting sad on me.” He means each word with innocent intent, yet he cannot ignore the almost hidden, salacious drip to each syllable and neither can she. How could she when his touch sent volts of electricity through her skin?

“Right, right,” she says in a conceding tone, switching the audio to something much more upbeat and a little flirty. “Why did you agree to go out tonight?” If Ukai had an answer, then it died on his lips as he let go of [name]’s hand to reach for another cigarette. The process of lighting the tube, inhaling, and exhaling bought him an extra minute to come up with an excuse; her doing the same giving him another thirty seconds.

“I don’t know.” It’s a blatant lie—a lie that [name] believes all too easily—but Ukai can’t bring himself to admit the truth. He can’t admit out loud that she’s the only thing that’s been on his mind all week or that he jumped at the opportunity, created one even, to be able to have a one-on-one moment with her. Keishin can’t admit that he can tell there are intricate webs spun in her mind and that all he wants to do is untangle them one by one.

And he certainly can’t tell her that even the mere sight of her sends his brain into overdrive and all he wants to do is repeatedly fill her over and over with his seed until she is entirely his, inside and out in mind, body, and soul. There was no way in the nine circles of hell that Ukai Keishin was going to admit to his sinful thoughts.

“It’s just up here.” [name] points with gaunt fingers, cigarette between them as her voice is half choked from inhaling her own smoke. Mirroring the man’s actions earlier, she indulged in her own nicotine habit to quell the budding disappointment from Ukai’s lackluster response. They drove up a slight winding hill and as the trees pass by, the itch for her truth and her history was gnawing at him. He wanted to know why this rambunctious party girl invited him all week to these elusive after parties. Why Flannel ate away at her insides like it did his. Why did her and Sugawara breakup?

But he decides against it for the moment.

“Where are we?” Ukai asks. There’s cars all lining the sides of the road of varying worth—he felt even more out of place than normal with his older SUV, even if it was an upgrade for him, considering the large number of luxury vehicles.

“Bevelle’s house.” [name] says simply, pointing to an empty space in the streets as she throws the butt of her cigarette into the road. The casual way she name drops the owner of the club makes him gawk, catching flies in his mouth had there been any at the hour. With a satisfied, cheesy grin, she hops out of her seat and walks in the grass to meet Ukai on the other side as he clambers out of the vehicle as well. In familiarity, she grips into his forearm once again as they walk towards the forest mansion.

Keishin wasn’t sure what to expect when the two of them walked in, but a home full of people screaming his pseudonym and her name was not on that list. Younger hordes had surrounded [name], greeting her warmly and telling her how glad they were to see her again for the evening. Others were approaching Ukai, telling them how rare and a momentous occasion that the infamous artist Spira was amongst their midst.

“Glad to see you could join us, Spira.” His boss and club owner, Bevelle, approaches the mismatched couple. Bevelle was an alias used by the middle aged woman, her real name unknown to those that didn’t know her know her, and was once upon a time her stage name. While she had chosen a quiet location in the Miyagi prefecture, Bevelle was quite known in the underground scene. Granted, Ukai didn’t know any of that when he’d taken the job. If anything, it was all thanks to her that he was able to learn for his own success as well as granting him the opportunity to learn in the first place. “Good to see you too, trouble.” Bevelle affectionately goes to muss at [name]’s hair, to which she only replies with a cheeky grin.

“How do you know Bevelle?” Ukai presses his lips towards the ear of the woman still hanging onto him as she expertly leads the way to the kitchen. The car ride left her feeling slightly uncomfortable, ashamed even though she would never admit to that, and she knew she definitely needed a drink after it. Part of her was heavily rebuking herself for trying to pry into his mind by asking why he came along, even more so when she put on the one song that shattered her heart every time she heard it. It just excited her that he had it in his library, that he even knew who The Cardboard Swords were, and that he enjoyed the same obscure taste in music as much as she did.

“She’s a close family friend!” The chirp that [name] gives isn’t entirely convincing, like she isn’t telling the truth. Regardless, Ukai washes down his doubt with the beer he was handed, figuring she probably had her reasons. And as soon as the plastic is in each of their hands, [name] downs the contents immediately, hoping to drown out the nerves ebbing from her stomach with vodka. She should have been ecstatic—her old high school crush, her unrequited crush, was here with her, drinking side by side but she can’t help but feel the tension between them—sexual or otherwise.

Just as the two of them down their second round, a piercing voice cuts through the thicket of the masses, calling out her name and capturing her attention. “It’s your song! Come on!” A shrug and a smile crosses [name]’s features as she’s all but dragged away to a different part of the mansion. Much to his surprise, she grabbed onto Keishin to drag him along as well.

The two of them are presented with a myriad of sweaty, rolling bodies—much more gone than Ukai had ever seen at the club itself. It was oddly...sensual, if it could be called that, to see the fluid movements between party goers. Sensual, intimate, strange—all of them could be used interchangeably at this moment.

[name] is dancing with another woman, mouthing all of the words to the current pop song while bobbing and jumping around excitedly before her eyes lock on his. She’s in her element now. All sunshine and smiles like Ukai had seen from on occasion from years ago or most recently at the club, but they’re directed at him for once as she pulls him closer onto the dance floor. The taunting beats and repetitive call of “come on” and the way [name] loosely wraps her arms around his neck as she dances brings Ukai to the realization that this was the end of the line.

The end of the line, because Keishin can’t hold himself back anymore.

Not with the way her hips are grinding against is and she’s laughing warmly and heartily at his slight discomfort and her teeth are glittering off the lights in the dark room like stars in the night sky. Not with the way her head is thrown back and her dress drops low enough to flaunt the expanse of bare skin of her neck and collar bones that are just begging him to sink his teeth in. Not with the way her [eye color]ed orbs are locked with his as she sings along with the music, oddly enough alluding to some form of confession of her feelings.

He can’t fucking take it anymore.

The large hands he has on her hips move just under her arms to hoist her up, [name] instinctively wrapping her legs around his waist to keep her balance. Their eyes are locked, honed in on each other with the rest of the party melting into the background. With her deepest, most wild high school fantasy driving her actions, she grins. “Hi,” is all she says before Ukai cranes his neck back to cover her lips with his.

His kiss is everything she imagined it would be after years of pining. The smell and taste of smoke and wood floods her senses as his tongue laps at the watermelon lip gloss on her bottom lip before seeking refuge within her mouth. His hands, now wrapped around her thighs give intermittent squeezes, either to keep them grounded in reality or just because he needs something to clutch at—she’s unsure of which. In response, her manicured fingernails tangle into his messy blonde locks. Their kiss pours out their desperation, laying it all out on the table for the both of them to see clear as day.

The only thing that prompts them to break apart is the ending of the song.

“You wanna get out of here?” Ukai asks as he tenderly puts [name] back on the ground. As if he weren’t just making out with her moments ago, the motion is delicate and gingerly and almost loving.

“Not yet,” there’s a knowing, smug lilt in her voice as she turns on her heel and throw herself back into the throng of party people. Or rather, attempts. While she’s attempting to flee, Keishin snatches her wrist, pulling her closer until their chests are flush against each other.

“Nuh uh,” the blonde man tuts, “you’ve been asking me to join you at a party all week, now here I am. The hell makes you think you’re leaving my side tonight?” [name]’s grin only grows wider.

“I’ve waited for years for this opportunity, coach, so if you think I’m not gonna have fun with it, you’re dead wrong.” The word ‘years’ constricts the man’s heart—forces his pupils to blow into dilation with her modest, yet blunt confession.

“Years?”

“Years,” she repeats, “ever since that first practice you stumbled into the Karasuno gym as the temporary coach. Why do you think I came to every single exhibition match and tournament? Or came to study and do homework while you guys had practice?” This girl was grinding at every steel line of self-control that was left in Ukai’s body because every word spilling past her lips added an additional ten volts to the sexual tension between them.

“We’re leaving.” He bites out despite the delicate tone. Wrapping his hand around hers once again, Keishin tugs her along time dodge the party goers that threw the two of them curious glances, wondering why they were quick to leave shortly after their arrival. Just to tease him further, [name] almost wants to offer a rebuttal and tell him that they should stay longer and enjoy the show. However, she knows she’s done enough waiting and if he was taking her home, she wasn’t going to argue.

While urgency and desperation was their game, Keishin didn’t cut corners when it came to presenting himself as a gentleman as he helped [name] back into the car. Hormones be damned—he was still going to help a lady into the passengers seat. “You never did tell me why you finally agreed to come out tonight.” She says quietly, as if the two of them hadn’t been making out and dry humping a few minutes prior. “And it’s clearly not because you knew I had a crush on you all throughout third year—“

“Don’t act like you’re the only one with feelings in this.” Ukai grits out, speeding much faster back home than he did on the way to Bevelle’s house. Paying that no mind, [name]’s ears perk up at his own wayward confession. When she asked for clarity, a rumbling groan shakes his chest as he patted down his pockets in search for his nicotine sticks. “I didn’t recognize you the first night at the club because you look different now. Happiness looks good on you.”

“Happiness?” She echos confusedly, turning to face Ukai fully after lighting her own cigarette.

“You used to always look content back then—just barely content and nothing more. And I can’t stop thinking back to those days because you’re this ball of sunshine, kid, and I can’t stop wondering what the hell Suga did to you to dim your shine that badly. I haven’t stopped thinking about you all week.”

[name] is quiet for a moment at his own rendition, his own version, of a confession and she’s stunned. And she can’t tell if she wants to cry or kiss him because this is not that way she ever fantasized this conversation going. It was going better than she dreamed. Better, because the words that Ukai is saying adds an entirely new layer to his amped up personality—he wasn’t just the sexy volleyball coach that she used to pine over. He was a person with deep rooted feelings for justice in the sense of wanting to understand how someone could inflict damage to the innocent and he wanted to rectify said injustices. He wanted to know how someone like Suga could try to dampen her sunlight instead of allowing her to thrive and bloom.

She wants to kiss him, she decides, but since he’s driving, she settles for placing a chaste one on the corner of his mouth. “Serves you right,” she jokes when she pulls away, “it’s been a long four years for me. It’s your turn to suffer.”

“Trust me, this car ride is torture enough.”

[ next ]

[samueldays]

Remarks against Liberalism

(in large part open letter to @mitigatedchaos​ and his ideas of liberalism)

Abstract: 

A while back I posted “and there is another systemic complication that classical liberalism rests on a knife-edge between "let the underclass suffer" right-libertarianism on one side and "needs more social programs" left-liberalism on the other” in a chat, which miti took as a good criticism, and I made a note to expand it later. This is my expansion, presented as three main theses.

Liberalism is unstable. It is particularly vulnerable to wokism.

Liberalism is tiny. It exists in a narrow band between sweatshop libertarianism and welfare leftism.

Liberalism is in part a mirage, resulting from projections of a superstructure without its fundament.

These are interlocked theses, but I will try to set each of them out on its own.

Liberalism is unstable.

One of the liberal ideas is a sort of market competition. Products, goods, services, arguments, ideas, professionals and so forth should have to compete on their simple merits. Not on their bloodlines, not on their credentials, not on their personal traits, not on government subsidies, not on regulating competitors out of existence, and absolutely never on violence. The market, including the famous ‘marketplace of ideas’, is a public space where everyone gets to offer their goods and everyone gets to make their own purchases.

A first source of instability in this idea is second-order markets. The Apple App Store, for example, banned Gab. In theory consumers could choose to buy a non-Apple device if they wanted Gab; in practice there’s lock-in and transaction costs and transfer friction.

Second is various degrees of monopoly power. Partly, this is second-order markets but worse. Imagine if Apple could effectively ban apps or sites from most of the Internet. Partly, it allows for cross-market influences as well, to deny important services to people transacting with disfavored outlets.

The intuitive fix is “Regulate the megacorporations into not doing that” but then you’re quickly off into regulatory leftism, and this sort of regulation is one hell of a drug. Alternatively, authoritarian rightism, if you come at it from a punitive more than contractual angle.

Racial discrimination is another example of instability. The original arguments for affirmative action were very moving when they said that a level playing field was hardly “fair competition” to a group that had to start the race so far behind, if you’ll excuse the mixed metaphor. The development of affirmative action gradually turned into increasing degrees of wokism and racial quotas and black privilege, with no clear dividing line.

(Personally, I think the Civil Rights Act was unconstitutional. How far back do you want to repeal?)

Liberalism seeks to have equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome.

But the moment one man seizes opportunity better than the next, by whatever that man will almost certainly start trying to pass on some of his superior outcome to his children, giving them superior opportunities! A trivial example, perhaps, but one that compounds and repeats a million times.

(Again, these theses are interlocked; I will address inheritance in both the other points from different angles.)

To maintain liberalism against inheritance, then, one slides easily into State-funded schools and State-managed curricula and State-guaranteed opportunities, thereby ceding a different part of liberalism. Nor is there a strict delineation between equality of opportunity and equality of outcomes. If one man is born 30 IQ points smarter than the next, in what sense can they be said to have equal opportunity? The law in its majesty forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, etc.

Wokist claims find purchase on liberalism in part because wokism is not conjured from thin air, it is aggressively expanding liberal precedents. Laws against voter intimidation lead to “Silence him, he’s triggering me”, alternate exam formats for the blind lead to educational videos being taken down because they’re not captioned, laws against overt racial discrimination lead to laws against thinly veiled racial discrimination lead to laws against disparate impact.

Liberalism is tiny.

I struggle to think of better terminology for this. Being tiny is not by itself a mark against an idea; there may well be a short sweet spot on a long spectrum of policy.

But there seems to me to be something about liberalism that is historically contingent as well as small; it’s a moving target as well as a hard target; it’s in some respects like being a “moderate” between leftists and libertarians when last century’s moderate is by now an extreme libertarian. To quote Moldbug,

Moderation is not an ideology. It is not an opinion. It is not a thought. It is an absence of thought. If you believe the status quo of 2007 is basically righteous, then you should believe the same thing if a time machine transported you to Vienna in 1907. But if you went around Vienna in 1907 saying that there should be a European Union, that Africans and Arabs should rule their own countries and even colonize Europe, that any form of government except parliamentary democracy is evil, that paper money is good for business, that all doctors should work for the State, etc., etc.—well, you could probably find people who agreed with you. They wouldn’t call themselves “moderates,” and nor would anyone else.

The center is tiny, the fringes are endless.

Again I come to the matter of inheritance. What is the liberal position on the acceptable degree of hereditary privilege? Why is this the position that gets called ‘liberal’? How many millions of dollars can I leave to my son, at what tax rate? What if I put them in a NGO? How many millions can I spend preparing the way for him before I die? Will you respect contracts that people swore to my as-yet-unborn-son?

It’s not that I think you haven’t thought about this. It’s that I have a hard time seeing your surely carefully considered opinions on this subject as something that can be turned into a mindset or an idea separate from you. Do you have a Liberalism separate from Mitigatedism that other people can hope to converge on? Convergence is harder for things that are tiny, which is a reason why I use that word.

Liberalism is in part a mirage.

Liberalism (as historically read) for nobles, or for another well-to-do class, is fine and good. Underperforming or misbehaving class members can be kicked out. Overperforming non-members can be inducted. Liberalism for everyone seems to me to have some generalization difficulty.

Similarly, the idea of a free and open market, competitive without the pressures of mafias or megacorporations, was often the result of an imperial writ or royal guarantee. Having a monarch in charge is fairly illiberal, but abstracting away the king for a sort of ideal liberalism easily results in the entrance of other illiberal factors that the monarch was suppressing because it benefited the monarch to have a liberally run subdomain.

(If I were king, I would absolutely have liberal subdomains. They’re profitable.)

Liberalism is unstable, as argued above, and an obvious stabilizer is a king with some degree a liberal vision saying “Keep it liberal in here”, but then it’s anchored on an illiberal fundament. The king can’t fully liberalize the kingdom without giving up his own power... indeed, I would expect he can’t even half liberalize the kingdom before people start demanding he yield the rest of his powers, whether by becoming a figurehead or becoming beheaded.

And again with the inheritance question. From the mirage POV: liberalism (historically) worked between relatively similar class members who were not too far apart to begin with, or in homogenous outbred countries. But if you try to universalize it, what liberalism is there if I can buy my son such great advantages he might as well have hereditary privilege, and what liberalism is there if I can’t spend my own money on my own son? What liberalism is there if a tightly bloodbound clan refuses to play by the rules, and what liberal means exist to break up clans?

(I am not in principle opposed to breaking up clans. But I question how this would be handled in a way that is meaningfully the way of Liberalism, rather than the instrumental goal of some other ideology.)

[raleighliving]

Pros and Cons of College Life in Raleigh

Last time I wrote about colleges in Raleigh generally and how it’s not like other college towns. This time, I’m gonna be speaking a bit more about the pros and cons so it should be a little more specific.

Before that, however, I wanna make this clear: Raleigh is not somewhere you should move to for college unless the school you’ve applied to is your dream school.  

In terms of academics, there are better choices than NC State or WPU. If you wanna study biology or medicine, schools like UNC-W or Duke would probably be a better fit for instance. If you live in Raleigh, don’t pick a school just because it’s close; if you live in another part of the states and you want to attend an east coast school there are options all along the east coast that you should consider.  

Raleigh is a great place to live and work, and there are plenty of friendly people here; but a degree from the right university can make or break your career (depending on the field and other aspects of course).

As a person suffering from anxiety, the question “Do you want the good news or bad news first” has always been a terrible one for me. Up until I hear the bad news, it could be literally anything regardless of what the person asking was doing or how much of the task they were on I’m familiar with.

Similarly, living in Raleigh (or really anywhere for that matter) is going to present a lot of subjective pros and cons. Please keep in mind this is gonna be super subjective, but I hope you enjoy reading this even if we disagree.

But you didn’t come here to read three paragraphs of disclaimer. So lets start by listing the good stuff.  

Raleigh is a city full of vibrant color, culture, and cool shit. You can find cool things almost anywhere you look, regardless of where you are in Raleigh. I mean, all of the pictures (including those in this article) I use for this blog I’ve taken in Raleigh or nearby it. As a result, the first pro has got to be the beltline highway system.  

The beltline is a highway system composed of I-440, I-40, and parts of I-540 that encapsulates all of Raleigh. It connects north and south Raleigh while having downtown in the center, letting travelers easily reach nearly any part of Raleigh. 

I’ve lived on the border of Durham, Cary, and Rolesville at different points in my life. I’ve had to make trips to Garner and Apex for various reasons. At no point in my 20+ year stay have I ever had to make a city trip that lasted longer than a half-hour (one way). It makes working in Raleigh especially easy, since the abundance of highway access points and the convenience of the loop design means I’m never too far from that loop. 

It even helps with adjusting to your new environment if you move here (for school or other reasons) since if you’re ever lost, the highways can act as a point to re-orient yourself by. I know I’ve had to do it plenty of times in the past, and it can really save you from looking like an idiot if you excuse your lost-ness by just saying “Oh yeah mate, I was just tryna get on the highway. Saves so much time.”

Does this mean Raleigh has the best transportation network of any city? Hell no. Does this mean that Raleigh has the best highway system? Not even close. But it’s still super nice, especially for students. You’ll run into the problems any urban place has like rush hour or crash delays, but this is mitigated by the fact you’ll be using it for our second pro: Everything happens in Raleigh. 

Well, not EVERYTHING everything but as I’ve ranted about before; there’s plenty to do and see in the city of Raleigh (even if you’re a student). 

For instance, according to raleighnc.gov, Raleigh is home to over 200 public parks. Not a fan of parks? Into more electronic entertainment? Then visit our very own “Arcade of Thrones” downtown and get your game on with your fellow nerds

Boring stuff like restaurants and night clubs aside, Raleigh is home to literally thousands of businesses and social clubs for you to partake in. Farmers markets, gun and knife shows, fishin’ holes and public church barbecues are available for that classic southern charm; but don’t forget to make use of our barcades, art festivals, concerts, comedy clubs and sport centers. 

The only reason why I’m not going into more detail about examples like First Friday, the downtown cultural festivals, PNC arena or other more specific events is because I want to write about them in-depth in the future.  

Of course, students having things to do and places to go is only part of the college experience. If you’re gonna come to Raleigh for college, the best pro I could possibly mention is the support network.  

Not to say that we’re exactly all one big happy family here, but in Raleigh you get that nice blend of metropolitan city life with your rural state. Orgs like the LGBT Center, Goodwill, Raleigh Missions, and more support locals in need constantly and provide for the many different groups around here.

Libraries and civic centers share the same city as mosques and churches which neighbor women's shelters and LGBT+ advocacy groups. If you’re a republican or democrat, that’s fine but be prepared to meet the other members of the political spectrum since groups like the Democratic-Socialists of America (DSA) are active downtown as well.

If you need help or want to help others, there’s a 98% chance that you’ll find someone or something out there that meets your needs. Join a community through Facebook or Nextdoor and you’ll see every diaper drive, garage sale, and community recommendation pop up whenever one is needed.

Of course, this brings us to our first con. Raleigh may be home to some of the nicest people I’ve ever met but it doesn’t mean you won’t run into some problem people sooner or later.  

There’s of course the typical collegiate douchebags, the upper-middle class young scions of no import who fumble through life with no regard for others because mommy and daddy will perpetually care for them, but being a red state you’ll also run into the more colorful republicans.

Every year there’s an anime convention called “Animazement” downtown and every year there’s a small herd of fundamentalist Christians warning all the otaku who’ll listen that they’re going to hell. Drive around town long enough and you’ll find a few different businesses that have made their opinions on things like masks and social distancing clear, not to mention there’s no shortage of QAnoners and alt-right sympathists. 

Of course, you shouldn’t let others dictate the quality of your life or the area you live in but you should be aware that these people exist. Raleigh is more liberal than other parts of North Carolina for sure but it’s not the leftist paradise those other parts would say it is.

Other than the coinflip that is neighbors, Raleigh is kind of a pricy place to live. The cost of living is on average higher than other cities in the US, cheaper still than New York of Californian cities, but pricey nonetheless.

Rent in Raleigh for a one bedroom apartment is on average $975 according to bestplaces.net and can go as high as $1200 depending on the complex and location. 

That, with a federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, means you’ll need 

>Multiple jobs >Multiple roommates >A good paying job

or any combination of the two to be able to afford rent, utilities, and food beyond cup ramen. There’s housing programs like Section 8 and military housing initiatives to help, but for students you’re looking at some pretty steep housing costs for anywhere that’s not student dorms. 

You can get a good job that pays decent, of course, nothing’s impossible. However, finding one that won’t require roommates would demand full time hours (which might be difficult to make on student scheduling) or a degree (which you’re probably at college to get). Most living spaces require you make at least 3x the advertised rent to even be considered as well, which may limit students to seedier student living complexes like University Village or The Proper (Formerly Vie, formerly wolf creek).

Finally, if you move to Raleigh for college be prepared to drive. A lot.

As I mentioned earlier, the beltline is a god send for students and people looking to explore; but it’s also practically mandatory for moving around Raleigh. Public transit in Raleigh isn’t non-existent but it’s pretty damn close.  

Live between 10-15 minutes from your desired destination? Taking the bus is gonna be anywhere from half an hour to a full hour, and that’s if you even live near a bus route. If you’re like myself and habitually on the edge of Raleigh, be prepared to drive for a bit before you even see a GoRaleigh bus let alone a stop. 

The buses do at least run pretty late (Closing normally around 11PM), but the lack of public transit lines and bike-able roads means that you’ll be adding to the urban congestion more likely than not.

Okay with driving? Hope you’re okay with paying another arm and a leg, because at most schools down here tuition doesn’t cover your parking pass. 

NC State prices range from $105 to over $400 depending on your credit hours and where you’re staying at. Other schools like William Peace only charge a flat $130 for their parking decal, but most of the schools require you throw them an extra Apple Pencil or two for the privilege of being able to park your own vehicle close to the actual campus.

There are workarounds, like parking off-campus nearby, but those carry risks and penalties that can add up over time. The audacity these schools have to take thousands in tuition and then demand that you pay and additional fee to just use the parking lot.

Hopefully, though, regardless of my thoughts if you live in Raleigh or North Carolina in general and you’re considering attending one of the fine establishments here; I’ve provided you some food for thought. 

College can be a scary experience for many, and the area around it can really make or break your experiences. We don’t have the biggest party schools or the most glamorous cityscape; but if I had to go through the collegiate system again I honestly couldn’t imagine doing it anywhere else.

Next time I’ll be talking about some alternatives to College though, so stay tuned for that.  

Special shout out to the DSA of Raleigh as well. They didn’t help write any of this or communicate with me during the production of this article, but they’ve been doing some amazing work downtown with the homeless during the pandemic.  They are some of the most amazingly hard working individuals who care immensely for the community and you can check them out on dsanc.org.

[skywardsoul]

Dianakko Week 2019!

Day 1: Star-crossed Lovers/Soulmates!

@dianakko-week is finally here, and this year, I’m throwing my hat back into the ring and participating again! Hope you all enjoy my submission for day 1 and look forward to the rest of the week! 

Read on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20391742/chapters/48365332

Read on FF.Net: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13372417/1/Dianakko-Week-2019

“Don’t worry Diana! Astrology is one of my best subjects! With your help, we’ll be done with this project in a jiffy!”

Luna Nova’s prodigy offered a giggle and a playful roll of the eyes in response to Akko’s loud boasting. Professor Du Nord had assigned them the task of studying various forms of divination spells and writing up a report detailing their results. Honestly Diana had intended on completing the project by herself but that all changed when her professor announced they could work in pairs. It must have been mere seconds before Akko had raced over to her seat, sparkles in her eyes. Of course there was no way Diana was going to say no after that. Besides, Akko had become rather diligent in her studies as of late, and Diana found the two of the actually worked quite well together.  

She recalled a few of her classmates being rather stunned when she so readily accepted. In a way she couldn’t blame them. Afterall, her close friendship with Akko was more of a recent development. Once the noir missile crisis was over, things changed between the two young witches. It’s amazing how easily one gets to trust another once they've stopped a world ending threat together. As frightening as the event was, Diana guessed she owed it a level of thanks. Her friendship with Akko had become rather important to her, and she wouldn’t have it, at least not as easily, were it not for impending doom.

What was that saying? The strongest bonds were born out of turmoil? It was something to that degree, but Diana couldn’t quite remember it. A Diana of the past might have been annoyed by that, but if the Diana of now had learned something from her brunette friend, it was that sometimes it was okay to not sweat the small stuff. The excitable witch in question walked happily alongside her as the two continued on their way back to her dorm. They had gone to borrow several needed astrology texts from the library, as well as some supplies from their professor. 

“I really need to remember to buy a new scrying mirror,” Diana thought off handily to herself.

Eventually they reached the blue team’s dorm, and Diana opened the door for her friend.

“After you, Akko,” Diana said with a smile.

“Why thank you my lady Cavendish,” Akko said, with an exaggerated posh accent. “How very gentlewomanly of you.”

For some reason, Diana felt something in her chest tighten as Akko said ‘my lady Cavendish.’ Figuring it was best to ignore that for the time being, Diana enter the room after Akko, and quietly closed the door behind her. As she turned around to face the room proper, the sight that greeted her didn’t surprise her in the least. She had to suppress a giggle as Akko threw herself onto her couch with an exaggerated sigh. Thankfully Akko had the sense to set down the many books she was carrying before doing so.

“You know Akko, I may only be a student like yourself, but that doesn’t look like working on our project to me,” Diana teased as she sat opposite of her sprawled out friend. 

“Well yeah, we just got out of class Diana! It’s the weekend! We should take a bit of break first!” Akko argued.

“Akko, classes let out more than an hour ago.”

“Okay but we went to the library and to Chariot’s office right after. Still totally felt like we were working.”

“What happened to finishing this project in a jiffy?”

Akko rolled over onto her stomach and turned her head towards Diana.

“We will! Which is why we have time to relax!” Akko said with a bit of smugness. This time, Diana couldn’t suppress the laugh she felt bubbling up. Only Akko could find such logic so sound.

“Counterpoint,” Diana said. “If we complete the assignment now, won’t we have more time to relax later?”

Akko let out another exaggerated groan but conceded Diana’s point. “Yeah I know. But you’re buying us icecream later!”

“Deal,” Diana said, satisfied. Forget all her debate training. Winning an argument with Atsuko Kagari was all Diana needed to prove she was a master of words.

As Diana got to work opening books and laying out things to write notes with, Akko sat up and lightly smacked her cheeks in an attempt to get into her, “focused mode,” as she had once put it.

“Alrighty! I'm ready to work!” Akko declared confidently. “What, uh, should I do first?” her early confidence sure didn’t last. Diana raised an eyebrow at her friend. She had a sneaking suspicion about something.

“Akko, you are aware of what we have to do for this project, right?”

Akko let out an awkward cough and suddenly found the wall of the room quite interesting.

“Of course I do,” she said somewhat indignantly. 

Suspicion confirmed. Akko had no idea. Diana figured she probably only tuned into Professor Du Nord’s words the second she said ‘partner up,’ and hadn’t heard much else. Diana found that she didn’t care all that much though. That just meant Akko was excited to have her as a partner in this didn’t it? That she was excited to spend more time with her. The tightness in her chest from earlier returned. Thankfully, Akko shook her from her thoughts before she could ponder on it.

“If did need a refresher though, which I don’t! What were we supposed to do again?” Akko said sheepishly, turning back to face Diana.

Figuring that was about as much pride she was gonna get Akko to swallow, she took out her notes from class.

“Professor Du Nord has instructed us to select three different divination rituals and record our findings once we’ve properly conducted them,” Diana explained.

Akko tilted her head slightly in confusion. “Wait a minute. Don’t we need stars to do that?”

Diana shook her head. “While many astrological divinations do require observation of the patterns of the stars, there are several that do not.”

Flipping through one of the books they borrowed, Diana stopped on a page and turned the book towards Akko. “Palm reading, for example, uses the natural lines of one's hand in combination with magic to predict certain things about their future life.”

Akko had begun reading the book Diana had handed her, but snapped her attention up the second she heard Diana say “future.”

“Woah! Can you really tell someone’s future? I thought divinations, was more like, suggestions of destiny and stuff. Like the one we practiced in class.” Akko asked.

“Well you are correct in a sense. No divination can one hundred percent tell someone's future, but the more powerful the spell, and the more concrete the ritual is, the more certain one can be. Star-scrying is on the lower end of the spectrum in this sense,” Diana explained.

Akko sure seemed eager to try out a divination now. “Well then what are we waiting for? Let’s tell some futures!!”

And with that the two launched into their assignment. It wasn’t a terribly difficult one, so they were making good progress. It seemed that Akko’s early boast of “finishing in a jiffy,” was looking to be a reality. The most time consuming part of the project, if anything was the setting up of each ritual. Diana had tried to steer them clear of any particularly difficult and powerful spells, but even the midrange ones required a fair bit of precise preparation. Still, one palm reading and one water gazing later and the two witches were close to wrapping up their assignment. Akko had gone back to laying down on the couch, her feet kicking in the air idly as she thumbed through a book on plant divnations, looking for their last target. Diana was looking through a larger, much older tome. This one seemed quite focused on soul divination, reading one’s very magical energy to obtain a glance at the future. The concept was intriguing for sure, but most of the spells in the book were very high level. Most of these could only be done by a heavily accomplished astrologer. Professor Du Nord herself might even struggle with some.

As she flipped through the book however, something caught her eye. She hadn’t really meant to linger on the page for as long as she did, but something about it gave her pause. Written in thin cursive letters at the top of the yellowing page was the words, “Amor Meam: discovering one’s soulmate.”

The spell apparently required little to no actual set up surprisingly. That being said, it did require a high level of soul bending ability. For the spell to work the caster had to practically connect themselves to the world’s leylines. When it was successfully done, it would allow the caster to sense others magical energies. Which ever one felt the strongest to them, no matter how far away that energy was, was said to be their destined love. It was certainly an...interesting prospect, but surely not one Diana had any need for, right? As she thought this, she found herself looking up at Akko. The heart started to race with a vengeance. Quickly Diana turned her gaze back to the book. Nope, this spell was not useful to her at all. Besides, it was probably too difficult. It was best to turn close the book and simply forget-

“Woah!” Came Akko’s voice, suddenly from over Diana’s shoulder.

Diana felt her heart leap into her throat as she turned around startled.

“Akko! Wh-what, where...when did you!?” Diana stuttered uselessly, a crimson blush beginning to paint her face.

Akko, to her credit, seemed to make sense of her startled friend’s babbling. “You were reading really intenly a few seconds ago, so I wanted to see what about.”

An excited sparkle entered Akko’s eye as she picked up the book that Diana now realized she had flung in her panic.

“Can this spell really tell you your soulmate? That’s so cool!!” Akko squealed a bit excitedly before turning back to face Diana. She knew exactly what her friend was about to say. “Diana! We gotta try it!”

Thankfully Diana had a bit of time to recompose herself, and was ready with an answer. “I’m afraid that wouldn’t be a very good idea Akko,” She tried to ignore the deflated expression on the Japanese girl’s face. “It’s a very high level spell. One that I’m not even confident I could pull off.”

Akko however, wasn’t going down without a fight. “Oh come on Diana! You’re the best witch in our grade, hell probably the whole school! If anyone can pull it off it’s you!”

“I don’t know Akko. Soul bending is rather tricky, it’s-”

“Please Diana! Can’t we at least try? Don’t you want to know about your soulmate? Isn’t that like, super romantic??”

Diana knew she had lost this argument as Akko affixed her with her best puppy dog eyes. There was no way in hell Diana was going to fill those eyes with disappointment. Damn. What had she said earlier? That she could win an argument with Atsuko Kagari? Ha! What a joke. With a resigned sigh Diana took the book from Akko’s hands and laid it on the table in front of her.

“I suppose it couldn't hurt to try,” Diana relented. “I could use the soul bending practice anyhow.”

“Yay! Thank you so much Diana!” Akko cheered. “What should I do?”

“This doesn’t really require more than one person, so feel free to sit quietly and wait,” Diana said. Despite her current nervousness, a bit of playfulness made its way into her voice.

It was weird to think about, the fact that she was nervous. What was she? Did she not want to mess up the soul bending? No, that couldn’t be it. This particular spell was fairly harmless. Messing it up wasn’t dangerous in the least. Did she not want to disappoint Akko. No that wasn’t it either, but Akko did seem to be at the center of it. Why did she immediately look to Akko the second she read what the spell did? Maybe she wanted Akko to ask her about it? Maybe, deep down she wanted to try it too.

Whatever the reason for its cause, Diana couldn’t afford to focus on being nervous right now. Soul bending required a large amount of concentration. Slowly, Diana took a deep breath and drew her wand. As she felt her breathing even out and her inner energy grow stable, Diana brought her wand in front of her face and spoke at a near deathly quiet,

“Amor Meam.”

The sensation the followed was strange, but not unpleasant. Diana had done some low level soul bending before, so the feeling wasn’t entirely alien to her. It felt a bit like a warm hug. Once she got a hold of her own magical energy, the tricky part came next. Now she had to connect it to a leyline. Thankfully the was one fairly close to Luna Nova. Slowly Diana felt for it, searching for the surge of magical energy she knew she would feel once she found it. For a few minutes, Diana thought she had failed, and that she wasn’t a strong enough soul bender to seek it out. All of a sudden, however, she found it.

If manipulating your own magical energy felt like a warm hug, then connecting it to a leyline was like stepping into a heated room after having been out in the cold. The world’s magic surged through Diana’s body and in that instant, she knew. She had actually pulled the spell off! Slowly, Diana opened her eyes.

For a split second, Diana feared that she somehow blinded herself. A powerful, white light shone in her eyes, blocking out nearly everything else from her vision. What was that? She soon got her answer. Gradually, the glow began to fade, and as Diana regained more and more of her vision, she realized it’s source: Akko. The brunette witch eagerly watched Diana, her fist clenched in anticipation as the glow of her magical energy slowly subsided. Immediately the text of the book played back in Diana’s mind.

“Who’s ever magical energy glowed the brightest was the caster’s one, true, soulmate.”

“Well!?” Akko asked suddenly, ripping Diana back to reality. “Did it work!? What did you see?”

In that moment, Diana had no earthly idea how she managed to put up a semi-normal facade.

“No, Akko. It, uh didn’t. I didn’t see anything,” Diana said.

“Whaaat? Aww man!” Akko said with a pout, crossing her arms in disappointment. “Guess you were right Diana. That spell was too tricky.”

“Yes. Quite. Let’s find another one, shall we?”

“Yes ma’am!” Akko said, turning back to her book.

She took no notice of how hard Diana’s heart was pounding, or how flushed her face was becoming. 

[ace--writes]

To Reach a Journey’s End - 2 (of a Soulmate AU)

Authors’ Note: Hello all! This is a collaboration with the incredible, the imaginative, quite obviously the backbone of this fic, @emo-does-things!! Here is the second instalment (aka chapter) of the story we are weaving!!

Again, we don’t know how America works for the most part, so if we make a  mistake please let us know!

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Relationships: Eventual LAMP

Warnings: Again, none come to mind. If there is something we need to add to the warning be sure to let us know!

Words: 2590

Links: Tumblr Chapter 1         Ao3 Chapter 1         Ao3 Chapter 2

~~~~~

Lunch was a glorious respite from the classes of the day. The break itself still didn’t quite leave Virgil’s sliding scale between ok and awful, but Patton would be there, so that levelled it up to being classified as good. 

The day’s rating, outside of Patton, was slowly seeming to morph from ‘ok’ to ‘just barely tolerable’, ‘awful’ to ‘the actual end of his small world’. 

After English, he had a feeling it was only going to get worse. 

At least he managed to escape English without having to talk to that Roman guy again, and with the minimal amount of death glares he could hope to receive. He’d fled the room first, knowing that Patton would assume he’d just booked it to their spot after all that. 

He grabbed his lunch and all but ran to their place under the most secluded tree, where he and Patton had been sitting together since Patton had befriended him three years ago.

He slumped back between the roots and against the trunk, pulling his knees up and burying his head in his arms.

He takes a moment to breathe and try to remember all the different methods he’s learnt to calm down.

None of these tactics seems as effective as when he hears footsteps he recognises instantly.

“Awe, what’s got you all gloomy kiddo?” Patton asks as he settles down next to him. 

Somehow it’s that overly chipper, rather redundant question, that manages to reduce his anxiety. It does not, however, stop his sardonic reply.

“I dunno Pat, maybe the fact that I got into a huge debate with the new kid in English on the first day back, and now everyone that likes him has it out for me because we just ended up insulting each other,” he muttered sarcastically into his folded arms. 

“I’m sure it won’t be that bad Virge! I mean, sure you guys argued, but it’s just like Mr Terrance’s normal debates, don’t you think? And hey, the day’s only half over! Plenty of time for things to go better if you’re still worried,” Patton said, and Virgil could exactly picture the expression he would be wearing without having to look up. 

He’d be smiling, fond and sappy and encouraging, but there would be that faint crease of worry between his brows that he would always get whenever Virgil was upset or anxious.

Virgil glanced up, resting his chin on his arms instead of his whole face, and blew the bangs from his face. He was exactly right about the expression on Patton’s face, but honestly, visualising it still didn’t do him justice. His imagination would never be able to quite replicate the sparkle in his green eyes or the cute dimple in his smile or the sheer amount of emotion he could show on his face with such little movement and- wait no stop. Now was not the time to wax poetic about how cute his best friend looked. 

He could not let himself stray too far into that territory. Patton probably had a wonderful soulmate out there waiting for him, with a beautiful face and a shining personality to match his, and most importantly someone who was not a mess, like Virgil. 

“So,” Patton began, leaning back into the roots to relax, “What do you think we’ll be doing this year? For Drama Club.”

Virgil took a moment to think, while he pulled out one of his sandwiches.

“Probably one of the really old ones. We did Be More Chill last year, so Mrs Dollary will probably want us to do something ‘classic’. I hope it’s Shakespeare,” he said, smiling slightly at the prospect. 

“Oh, I hope so!” Patton gasped happily, “The costumes are so fun for our Shakespeare productions!”

Virgil grinned, “Yeah, the sets are so much more interesting too.”

It was easy to let the rest of the day's worries drift away then, sitting with Patton, chatting about something they were both passionate about. They ate lunch, they smiled and laughed, and he appreciated the moment away from the rest of his classes. 

It was a brief respite from the rest of the day that would be broken next by a class that Virgil usually included at the bearable end of the spectrum. Science itself, as a subject was interesting enough, and the various methods and measures were at least consistent.

The problem this time would be that he had no idea what his new teacher was like. She was apparently new this year.

So, Virgil made his way to Science with Patton, hoping to god that this would not add another subject to his ‘awful’ list. 

They were some of the first to arrive, with only two other students being in the room, both standing up the front next to her desk. They were still holding all of their belongings.

The woman that stood behind the desk, seemed to be their teacher, as she looked through the roll and glanced up at them occasionally. She had striking green glasses and a short black bob and a posture that seemed to scream seriousness.

“Name?” She asked as soon as he stepped through the door.

“Virgil Picani,” he answered as soon as he unfroze from the shock.

Patton grinned, “Patton Morgen, hello! How are you?”

She nodded, ignoring the greeting, “As I was saying to the others, I’m going to be assigning seats when the rest of the class arrives. For the moment, you can wait.”

Virgil knew very deep down and very sincerely, that nothing good would come from this. 

As the class trickled in Virgil only grew more anxious. He began to crack his knuckles in an attempt to ease the tension, but that was quickly stopped by a gentle nudge for Patton. He began to tap his foot next, along with biting his nails as he began to get pushed further and further into the blackboard. 

Eventually, the teacher stepped from behind her desk to address the whole class, “Hello seniors. I am Miss Hamasaki, and I will be your Science teacher for the foreseeable future. As you are likely aware, I will be assigning seats, based on who arrived first, first impressions, and what I decide appropriate. There will be no switching of seats unless I instruct you to do so, understood? All right then, Logan Croft please take this seat.”

A boy far more sharp and put together than any highschooler had the right to be, especially as a senior, stepped forward. He was tall, lanky, and wearing a tie despite their school’s lack of uniform. He had rectangular glasses, and a folder, which led Virgil to a thrilling conclusion.

Nerd. 

“Melissa Trainer,” Miss Hamasaki called, to reveal a shy, short girl who rushed to her allocated seat. 

“Patton Morgen.”

Patton nudged Virgil in a friendly manner as he passed, clearly trying to bestow some level of comfort. He was allocated a seat in the middle, two rows behind the Logan kid. 

“Virgil Picani.”

Please be next to Patton, please be next to Patton, he chanted. As the teacher looked up, clearly about to seat him behind Patton, she stopped. Her eyes narrowed in a calculating manner and Virgil did not like it.

“Hm… Yes, a nerd and a troublemaker,” she muttered to herself, but Virgil heard, “You’ll sit there, Mr Picani. I want you up the front.”

He shuffles forward, scowling a little, but slumps into his seat nonetheless. 

“Salutations,” said the boy he was seated next to now. 

“Hi,” he muttered back.

Oh. In that moment, several memories jumped back at him, and Virgil recognised his new desk partner. Yeah, he’d just heard his name, Logan Croft, but he remembered sitting with him in other classes, forced together by some group project or another. 

Virgil also remembered that his previous assessment was bang on, Logan was, in fact, a nerd, but one of the better ones. He did the work he was supposed to in a project and didn’t pretend that anyone else was lesser if they didn’t understand, he would be happy to explain anything he could, but still tended to use big words all the time. He also seemed quiet, most of the time. 

There could definitely be worse partners, he thought, and was promptly proven correct when the last person in class standing, waiting to be seated, was the new kid, Roman, from earlier. 

“And Mr Miller, with Mr Morgen please,” Miss Hamasaki, pointing towards Patton. 

Fuck. He thought. Shit, Patton was going to make friends with him, and Virgil was never going to be allowed to complain about him again. Fuck, what if Patton started talking to him and he decided he liked him better. He was after all, very much like Patton, seeming loud and excitable. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!

No. Stop that. You’re doing that thing that your therapist told you about. What was it called again? Cognitive distortions or something… Anyway, stop, it will be fine. It will be fine. His thoughts argued, but slowly he pulled himself away and tried desperately to focus on anything but the excited conversation between Patton and Roman just two seats back. 

“Now I know that many of you will be disconcerted by the separation with your friends. However, from this experience, I am sure that you will either make new friends, or do much better in my class than you usually would. You have five minutes to get to know your new partner, if you don’t already, starting now,” Miss Hamasaki said, returning to looking at papers behind her desk. 

Her attention didn’t wander so much that people got away with being overly loud, or behaving inappropriately, though, as Patton, Roman and several other people found out when she glared at them and shred them. 

“So…” said Virgil, awkward as ever.

“Indeed,” muttered Logan.

They both stared at each other for an uncomfortable amount of time. Virgil coughed awkwardly into his sleeve and stared at the floor.

He could hear Patton and Roman talking from where he sat, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. He could just tell Patton’s (ever-familiar) and Roman’s (ever-annoying) voices apart from the rest of the crowd.

He found himself slowly twisting around so he could stare back at the two of them, clearly having a very animated conversation, happily getting to know each other. Virgil could practically feel the jealousy on his face. 

He could Practically hear Remy whispering in his ear, “Green is not your colour, honey! Besides, no ones taking our second son away from us.”

It was mostly the first half, but he added the second because he figured that he might as well be true to life, even in his thoughts.

“You don’t need to worry,” a rather monotone voice broke him from his thoughts. 

“What?” he blinked at Logan, probably a little bit stupidly and more than a bit dazed.

“You don’t need to worry. Anyone that’s seen you and Patton knows that you mean the world to each other. Both of you,” he said smoothly, although Virgil could almost tell that he was uncomfortable with the concept, “It is highly improbable that Patton would choose now to leave you, over a different assigned seat in class.”

“Improbable does not mean impossible,” he muttered petulantly, already conceding Logan’s point, and they both knew it. 

“That is true, they are not synonyms. However, ‘highly improbable’ and ‘very unlikely’ are, and thus my point stands.”

Virgil wasn’t sure whether to be very annoyed or very amused. Nine times out of ten he would choose the latter, but before he even realised it his face was falling into a grin. He took a moment to school his features, trying to at least appear somewhat serious- after all that’s what logan seemed to be doing.

“Yeah, well your ‘point’ isn’t made with full evidence,” he sighed, continuing the mock discussion for the sake of something to talk about.

“Well, then what am I unaware of that would change my conclusion?” he asked, actually seeming curious.

“Well, the fact that Roman- that's the new kid by the way-”

“-Yes I had heard his name being called”

“And I have a little thing going where I hate him and he almost definitely hates me.”

“Almost definitely does not mean certainly,” Logan said a slight smirk on his face.

“Didn’t we just have this conversation about schematics in the opposite direction?” Virgil asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I have no idea what you are talking about, Virgil,” Logan said, smirk fully formed on his face, the most emotion Virgil had ever remembered seeing him wear, across every project they’d ever done together.

Before he knew it, Virgil was actually laughing. He wasn’t sure what finally set him off- the absolute ridiculousness of his jealousy or Logan’s deadpan comment, but he guessed it must be a combination of the two. 

Logan, for his part, seemed both pleased with himself, and surprised at Virgil's reaction, again, more emotion than he had ever seen before. He didn’t seem half bad, although Virgil had no idea why it had taken until this conversation for him to realise it.

“Maybe this arranged seating won’t be the end of the world after all,” Virgil said slowly, grin still in place. 

“There is a slim to none chance that the end of the world would be brought about by Miss Hamasaki seating us together,” Logan said with a frown, and Virgil sighed.

“I meant, like, figuratively. You know, that we’d never get along, and that I'd have the worst time ever being forced to sit with you,” Virgil said.

“Oh,” said Logan, “well, I am glad that you do not think I am the worst possible person to be seated with.”

“Understatement much. I’d get into a fight with a quarter of the people in this class, and be too nervous to talk to the other three quarters, so you’re definitely up there.”

“But that adds to a whole, where would I- and for that matter Patton, as I’m sure you neither want to fight him or are afraid of him- fit into that?” Logan asked, once again seeming legitimately confused.

“I meant them as rough fractions, not perfect estimates. If there was a Venn diagram there would be one average size circle for ‘people i would fight’ and then a much bigger one with ‘people I am afraid of’  and then there is a third, very small circle, which is actually just labelled ‘Patton, Logan and that one girl I had to do a history project with last year’,” Virgil said, making the motions of drawing circles with his hands as he spoke.  

“Ah, well… That seems to be high regard, coming from you, Virgil. I am… Satisfied with your opinion of me,” Logan said slowly.

“Sure thing, L,” Virgil said, immediately panicking upon using the nickname but trying to play it off as he turned to the front as Miss Hamasaki called their attention. 

If Virgil had looked, and seen Logan’s reaction, he might not have been able to judge the emotion there, as Logan himself seemed to struggle to. 

If he had looked, he might have seen the strange quirk to his lips that wasn’t one that often appeared, considering Logan wasn’t often one for displaying- or feeling as he would say- happiness. 

But Virgil didn’t look, and he didn’t see the happy expression there, as Logan silently sat surprised at the prospect of maybe, just maybe, finding a friend.

Tag List: @deathshadowrules @i-have-n0-idea-what-im-d0ing 

[umbrahighpriestofgiratina]

Heroes After All Chapter 7

Oof, five months. Worldbuilding June and Artfight ambushed me and made me lose track of fic stuff. But I've got a chapter here anyway! Hope you enjoy:

Chapter 7: Encounters

Aaron had taken some time to himself to explore the monastery. Partially because he was bored, and partially because the monastery was just that huge - there were various facilities and nooks and crannies, spiraling towers and sprawling courtyards, that he was certain he hadn't uncovered all of yet. It wasn't long, however, before he got a bit lost. In his hapless wandering he turned a corner and bumped straight into a Scyther. The Scyther let out a startled buzz and brandished its scythes as Aaron yelped. A pale, dark-haired boy quickly approached. "Easy Rook it's just the dweeb." Rook blinked and then shrunk back from Aaron sheepishly, clacking his scythes together. "Er, sorry about that," said Aaron. "It's not you, for once," said Louis. "Rook's startled pretty easily." "Don't worry," said Aaron. "I... I wasn't scared." Louis raised an eyebrow. "You sure?" "Positive!" A mischievous smirk appeared on Louis' face. "Is that so? Well then, why don't you take a gander at... Him?" Lewis pointed dramatically over to a patch of grass by the greenhouse. Upon that patch of grass sat a snoring Rhyperior. "See him? That's Andalas. Legendarily grouchy Rhyperior. If you're not afraid of a Scyther surely giving him a poke isn't too scary." Aaron gulped. "That's... That's diff-" He shook his head. "I can do that! Just you watch!" "Good luck," said Louis, snickering. "You're gonna need it." Rook just nervously looked between Aaron and the sleeping Andalas. Aaron looked at Louis again, then to Andalas, then started slowly creeping toward the latter. He eventually got close enough that he could see the fine details of the massive creature. He was still sound asleep, his rocky body subtly heaving with each breath. Aaron reached out a finger. It would be OK, he thought. The Rhyperior's rocky hide probably wouldn't even feel it. He touched it. It felt like rock yet somehow... warm, and alive. He quickly drew the finger back. Andalas was still asleep. He looked backward. Louis and Rook were gone. He looked back to Andalas. Still asleep. Aaron almost sighed in relief, but held his breath to avoid waking the Rhyperior up. Then Andalas' eyes snapped open anyway. A rocky paw lunged itself in Aaron's direction. Aaron instinctively yelped and raised up his hands, an Aura barrier forming. The paw bounced off the barrier harmlessly, but Andalas' other paw swung around and grabbed him from behind. Aaron screamed as Andalas yanked him upward and brought him close to his face, dangerously close to his two horns. Aaron whimpered. "I'm so sorry mister Andalas! Please forgive me!" Andalas opened his mouth.  For a second Aaron thought he was going to swallow him whole. Then Andalas started making Pokemon noises at him - a careful mix of "rhy"s, "perior"s, and strange high-pitched whinnying bleats. Aaron almost felt as if the massive Pokemon was scolding him. ~Put him down.~ Andalas turned, pulling Aaron around with him, letting Aaron see that Polly's Metagross was standing next to the both of them. Andalas gave a bleat and a "rhy" at Metagross. ~He's my responsibility.~ Andalas grunted in annoyance, tossed Aaron in front of Metagross, then stomped off. Aaron lay on the ground in shock for a few seconds before picking himself up. "T-Thanks..." ~Don't mention it. Andalas wouldn't have hurt you but he probably would have kept lecturing you for several hours.~ "...Really?" ~He's like that.~ "...Huh." ~Anyway, I'm not just here to save your ass from Andalas. Class with Polly is soon.~ "Oh! I forgot! Thank you for reminding me!" He made to move off, then stopped and turned back to Metagross. "Which way?" There was a long, drawn-out mental sigh. ~...Follow me.~ And Metagross led Aaron off. ---------------------------- Aaron was sitting at the back of the class. As usual. People were less likely to notice and pick on him back there. Polly arrived at the front of the class and looked around at the assembled students. "Alright. Today's lesson... well, let me get something out real quick. She dug within a desk drawer and pulled out a strange, crystaline flower. Aaron leaned over his desk, curious. "This... Is a Time Flower," said Polly. "It actually gives the monastery its name." Aaron raised his hand. "This place has a name?" Polly gave him a look. "Yes. This place is called the Time Flower Abbey. You didn't pick that up?" Aaron did not reply, just lowered his hand sheepishly as the other kids giggled. "Anyway," said Polly. "Ought to show you how these things work..." She waved her other hand over the Time Flower as her palm glowed with Aura. The Time Flower immediately responded, projecting an illusion of Polly giving a similar lecture to a different class. The class oohed and aahed. "Time Flowers are crystalline life forms that bud from a bigger crystalline life form, the Tree of Beginning. They grow through this whole area and are a major export - precisely because they can generate Obscuric illusions that record sound and images. At least, if you have a human on the Auric spectrum or Pokemon to activate them." Callie raised her hand. "Are the illusions like a Zoroark's?" "Yes, precisely. Why they react this way to Aura is still unknown. But they take root anywhere there's rock and their illusion abilities are useful for messages, so they're worth a lot of money." Polly chuckled. "In the old days me and Metagross used to go on Time Flower runs." "How did you meet Metagross anyway?" asked Eve. "He seems so strong..." Polly thought a bit. "Metagross has been with Time Flower Abbey as long as I can remember. His species lives a very long time. I... I didn't actually choose him as my partner Pokemon. He chose me. After-" She shook her head. "We're getting off-topic. Right, we were on the Tree... It's not just a resource. People make pilgrimages to see it in the name of Xerneas and Mew, though they never go inside for... reasons I mentioned before." Aaron gulped. "You see, the people of Kalos and Galar and nearby nations had their own Tree, not too far away. They made pilgrimages to that instead. Then the Demon King AZ came into power and fired his Ultimate Weapon. The weapon devastated that tree to the point most thought it was dead, and so refugees headed off across land and sea to this Tree, as I mentioned before eventually forming Rota. Eventually a band of heroes found the old Tree still clung to life and saved it, but the Rotans remained, and the Genesis Mountain Aura Guardians made this monastery to aid them, as well as..." Polly looked around and sighed. "Alright kids, time for the awkward part. Which of you are Obscurics?" Dead silence. Then slowly kids started raising their hands. Aaron did not - he was a Fighting Auric apparently. "Right," said Polly, "I'm not gonna ask you all to share your stories just yet. But you all know about discrimination. Aurics, Psychics, it depends on the place but most of us can at least survive. Obscuirics... They're hunted. Executed. Slaughtered. And that's why we're here. To protect all people on the spectrum." Aaron was taken aback. He had dealt with enough being an Auric, but apparently the Obscuric kids had it even worse? As Polly changed the subject to the abbey's architecture Aaron resolved to ask his Obscuric bunkmates about it. ------------- After class, Aaron looked around for two people in particular. Eventually he found them - Callie and Atta, talking with each other about lunch. Munchkin and Stabby were arguing about... something. "Hey? You two?" he asked. Both girls gave Aaron puzzled looks. "Yes?" said Callie. "This better be good," said Atta. "Remember what Polly mentioned in class about Obscurics having a hard time?" said Aaron. "What was that like for you guys?" "Oh! The Necrozma cult loved Obscurics!" said Callie. "They were good vessels for the Blinding One because they canceled out the Psychic energy!" She frowned. "But... Some mean people... They killed most of the cult... Took me... The Aura Guardians had to rescue me..." "Same here..." said Atta. "Parents abandoned me because I was Obscuric. Bisharp took me in, raised me with his Pawniard pack. Aura Guardians found me, Bisharp sent me and Stabby with them." Munchkin and Stabby, overhearing all this, lowered their heads sorrowfully. "O-oh," said Aaron. "That's... not good." "What happened to you Aaron?" said Callie. "My dad died... I don't wanna talk about why," said Aaron. "But other than that I've mostly been bullied." "Chump," said Atta. "Atta you can't just say that!" said Callie. "N-no, it's fine," said Aaron. "You both have been through a lot..." He gulped. "We should probably go get lunch now." "Sure!" said Callie. The three, as well as Munchkin and Stabby, headed off to lunch. Even so, Aaron thought to himself. Guess I'm not the only one who wanted to escape... but... things haven't changed much... ----------- Polly was winding down at the end of the day, heading to the back of the kitchen to get a snack. As she did, however, she noticed a rustling in one of the bags of apples. Sighing, thinking it was probably a Ratatta or a Bidoof, she grabbed a broom and lightly thwacked the moving lump. What emerged from the bag, however, was decidedly not a Ratatta or a Bidoof, but a smal purple creature with a large pointy head, which buzzed and sprayed sticky goo in Polly's direction. Polly, just barely stepping out of the way of being sprayed, gaped in shock. "Hey! You're one of those portal varmints!" The purple creature snickered at her distress and flew off. "Oh no you don't!" Polly gave chase, running after the creature until she emerged in an open courtyard, the setting sun barely illuminating the scene. "Damn it... where did the little brat go?" She saw a flickering. "Aha!" She swung the broom at the flickering. With lightning speed, Polly's broom was knocked out of her hand and she was pinned to the ground. She could make out a cloak, a mask, something almost... tasting her. Then the being let go, faded from corporealness, and was gone. Polly lay on the ground gaping for breath. "That... Definitely wasn't one of the portal varmints." After a bit she got up, grabbed her hat, and booked it to Ryan's quarters. This could be a lead on the killers. But she wondered. If that was the case why did they let her live? -------------------- Riolu walked down the streets of the busy human town, the roofs and bricks seeming to stretch far beyond what he expected. His Aura feelers flared and eyes peeled for any sign of danger. So far there were none, but the humans and Pokemon here alike sometimes gave him funny looks. Speaking of the latter, Riolu was astounded by the variety of Pokemon on display, countless species he had never seen in the mountain forests. One Pokemon that seemed to be a chunk of solid ice with a head and limbs trudged by him, giving him a chill. That chill gave way to a rumbling stomach. Riolu realized he needed food. Looking around, he saw some apples sitting at a bazaar. Surprised they were just laying there, he reached out to grab one. "Hey!" said a human. "You gonna pay for that?" Riolu paused. The food was right there. But apparently he had to do... Something for it. "Pay? What is pay?" "Don't yap at me!" said the human. "Pay up!" The human couldn't understand him? Weird. Different Pokemon could understand each other, apparently humans were an exception. How could he communicate with this human? Then he had a realization. His kind could communicate via Aura... Maybe if he tried that with a human... ~What... Is... Pay?~ The human jumped a bit. "You can talk? You don't look like a Psychic type. Anyway pay is money. You got money?" ~N-o?~ "Then you can't take the apple." Riolu paused, looked at the human, then at the apples, then at the human, then at the apples again. Then he grabbed one and ran. "Hey!" said the human, giving chase. Riolu ran through the streets, dodging left and right as if that Charizard was still chasing him. That said, that human didn't look too tough. No claws, no fangs, what could it even do to him if it caught hi- "Maurice, get him!" There was an unholy screech of "Hey! That's my human's apple!" as a Staraptor swooped in from overhead. Riolu's eyes widened as he booked it further. The Staraptor lunged as Rolu ducked out of the way, just in time, taking cover under a shop stand. Crawling desperately while still clutching the apple, he emerged on the other side and kept running. "Hey! Over here!" said a voice. Riolu noticed a strange orange lizard Pokemon gesturing to him from an alleyway. Riolu ran toward him, ducking behind him. The lizard grabbed him and pulled him inside a barrel as the Staraptor flew past. Seconds passed before Riolu punched and kicked at the lizard, trying to get out of the barrel. "Woah woah woah buddy," said the lizard. "I'm not gonna eat you, or your apple. Looks like you came straight from the woods." "...I did," said Riolu. "It doesn't work that way around here. No predator-prey stuff. Pokemon help each other, and humans take care of food and shelter." "They... do?" "Yeah! Listen, you did a good job nabbing that apple. I know some folks who'll like you." "Oh?" "Come on." The two climbed out of the barrel and headed off. ---------------- Eventually, Riolu and the lizard reached an abandoned building. It was crumbled, worn, with eaves falling inward, and a door hanging ajar. The lizard slipped in, Riolu following. Inside were an assemblage of different Pokemon; a froglike Pokemon counting Berries, a green and white biped cutting vegetables with his scythes, a monkey with a flaming head reading a book, and a smaller monkey with a flaming tail watching. "Hey!" said the lizard. "I found someone interesting!" The others turned to look at Riolu. The large monkey in particular scrutinized him with his green eyes. "Aww, it's a little puppy!" said the frog. "Meh. Do we have to clean after it?" said the biped. "H-hi," said the smaller monkey." "Hmm. And you are?" said the big monkey. "I'm... I'm Riolu. What are you all?" "I'm Grog! I'm a Toxicroak!" said the frog. "I'm Vallant, the Gallade," said the biped. "I'm Shifty the Scrafty!" said the lizard. "I'm... I'm Nicolas the Chimchar, nice to meet you," said the small monkey. "And I am Koba the Infernape, the leader of this little band. We call ourselves... The Wonderful Fighting Thieves." "The humans provide and we take anything we want!" said Shifty. "And we work together to do it!" said Grog. "It's a good gig, I suppose," said Vallant. "Dad makes sure everyone's taken care of..." said Nicolas. "This Riolu was doing some nice work nabbing an apple from old man Victor and his Staraptor Maurice," said Shifty. "He could do some nice work for us!" "Hmm... He probably has a lot to learn, but I'll allow it," said Koba. "Riolu, you'll get food, shelter, company for your services... If you're willing to stick with us of course." Riolu stared at the others, feeling their Auras carefully. He took a moment to look down and think to himself, clutching the apple, before looking back up. "...Sure." ***

[sofiabraun79-blog]

Greatest Practical Tips to Write Better Essays

Good Ideas for Writing an Great Essay: Completing research papers or lengthy essays will be difficult for anyone. Do not base your work on a word that you do not understand. Dictionaries may help you to a sure extent, as they provide their users with different examples of utilization. But you won't write a superb definition essay until you understand the word and its meanings. The most effective essays come out of effectively-thought-out matters. However, do not underestimate the importance of dictionaries, as they can assist you and push you to some interesting ideas about your future essay.

Your writing ought to provide a context inside which the reader learns about who you're and what has brought you to this stage in your life. Try to tie your account into how this has made you develop as an individual, good friend, family member or chief pay someone to write my essay (or any role in your life that's necessary to you). You may also want to make a connection to how this has impressed some part of your educational journey or your future aspirations. Remember the fact that your analytical essay ought to include talking points concerning the difficulty underneath your consideration. Don't write from the primary individual. You additionally should not use the second particular person, i.e. you shouldn't handle the reader immediately. Also, exclamatory and interrogative sentences should not be overused. Keep in mind that there is a massive distinction between quoting and paraphrasing. A direct quotation presents part of an original piece of textual content and should include a reference to the unique supply in accordance with the format required.

Astounding Suggestions on Writing an Effective Essay

Writing an essay typically seems to be a dreaded task among college students. Whether or not the essay is for a scholarship , a class, or possibly even a contest, many students usually discover the duty overwhelming. Whereas an essay is a large mission, there are various steps a scholar can take that will assist break down the duty into manageable components. Following this course of is the simplest approach to draft a successful essay, whatever its objective might be. Based on Kathy Livingston's Guide to Writing a Primary Essay , there are seven steps to writing a profitable essay. Another approach to work in your expository essay is to make separate clusters in which you'll work in your essay's topics. Here you possibly can decide which a part of your essay wants extra time to work on. This may enable you management your assignment, which signifies that you won't miss any parts of your essay. Additionally, thoughts your word alternative. Examine with a dictionary for terms you do not know. Along with the essay, most faculties fee "character and personal qualities" as extraordinarily important in their admissions selections. Your character reveals up in three places on the application: the interview (if in case you have one), your involvement in extracurricular actions , and your essay. Of the three, the essay is the most fast and illuminating to the admissions folks as they learn through 1000's of applications. Bear in mind, faculties aren't looking solely for straight "A"s and excessive SAT scores. They are searching for good citizens for their campus communities. Unless you're writing a timed essay, it's best to have loads of advance discover regarding when your work is due. Good academic essay writing takes time, so use yours properly by avoiding procrastination. Put aside reasonable blocks of time to analysis, plan, write, and rewrite. Most clients are achieved with the method in a minute or two. The cost choices are all confidential, transparent, and secure. We guarantee you that the essay will be written exactly in line with your directions, and you may be entitled to free revisions for 14 days. Get skilled help of our ewriters. Conclusion: Writing an essay does not have to be simply a way to earn a good grade. As a substitute, it can be a method of discovering fulfillment. It's time to prioritize. If that is the time when you can't write your essay without help, order it! Simply browse for ‘write my paper' and choose a dependable custom essay writing service. On-time deliveries. Professional writers can tackle really urgent orders. If the demands of your order are realistic, you'll by no means be late. They train the simplest writing strategies. One thing that tends to happen in some writers is they can get caught up in bringing only one emotion to their essay. That is especially true for those who write about heavy or troublesome subjects like illness, tragedy, or loss. We recognize the vulnerability that comes with writing about such topics and applaud these of you who take that on in your essay for us. But we also want to remind our applicants that essay writing is all about steadiness. So in case you're selecting to put in writing about a topic that is on the heavier facet of the emotion spectrum, try to insert a point or two of levity, humor, or another kind of lightheartedness in the essay, too. In terms of your personal education, the picture varies considerably. You might be allowed to get assist, however solely the kind prescribed by an instruction. If you need faculty essay writing assist , you possibly can seek the advice of your teacher. Your teacher cannot always help you, especially for those who've already missed something necessary. In this case, you have to get help some place else. You may't presumably ask your family or pals Write my essay for me!” Why would they? The one logical method out is a customized paper service. College students, similar to young dad and mom in the earlier example, determine for themselves if they need to pay money to get their essays accomplished. Their choice to purchase a paper will hardly be supported, so that they really feel like they do not have that proper.

[berniesrevolution]

How democratic is the United States? According to a poll released by the bipartisan Democracy Project in June, a clear majority (55 per cent) of Americans consider US democracy to be “weak”, with two-thirds (68 per cent) saying it’s “getting weaker.” Half of Americans believe the nation is in “real danger of becoming a non-democratic, authoritarian country”.

In February, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) classed the United States as a “flawed democracy” for the second year in a row. The US ranked 21st in the EIU’s Democracy Index, behind 20 “full” democracies including Germany, Canada and the UK.

“Popular trust in government, elected representatives, and political parties has fallen to extremely low levels in the US,” the EUI analysts wrote. “This has been a long-term trend and one that preceded the election of Mr Trump as the US president in November 2016.”

Indeed it did. The sad truth is that Donald Trump is a symptom, not a cause, of the United States’ democratic dysfunction.

Consider his own election victory: Trump secured the presidency in November 2016 despite winning three million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. Turnout stood at a miserable 55.7 per cent; more Americans stayed at home than voted for Trump and Clinton combined.

Consider the president’s latest appointment to the Supreme Court: the scandal-plagued Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed by the Senate, in a 50-48 vote, earlier this month – the narrowest confirmation vote since 1881. Not only did a majority of Americans oppose his appointment, but the 50 senators who put him there represent states covering just 44 per cent of the US population.

Consider the Senate itself: each state is guaranteed two senators, regardless of their size. Yet, given current demographic trends, by 2040, according to calculations by Baruch College political scientist David Birdsell, “70 per cent of Americans are expected to live in the 15 largest states … That means that the 70 per cent of Americans get all of 30 Senators and 30 per cent of Americans get 70 Senators”.

Consider also the upcoming midterm elections, on 6 November, described by former White House strategist Steve Bannon, no less, as “a referendum on the Trump presidency.” Thanks to Republican gerrymandering, reports the Washington Post, “some independent analysts think Democrats will need to win the popular vote by seven to 11 percentage points just to get a bare majority” in the House of Representatives. In 2016, Republicans managed to secure 55 per cent of the seats in the House with less than 50 per cent of the vote.

Minority rule, therefore, is the order of the day. Despite winning fewer and fewer votes, Republicans have amassed more and more political power across the various branches of the US government.

For how long should Democrats tolerate this fundamentally undemocratic, and anti-democratic, state of affairs? In November, they could win back control of the House, and maybe even the Senate too, in an anti-Trump “blue wave”. Would that provide a long-overdue opportunity – perhaps bolstered by a Democrat in the White House come 2021 – to address this broken democratic system in the United States? To slowly restore faith in the nation’s elections and institutions?

If a backswing brings us a Democratic government with a mandate for reform, here are eight simple steps they could take to try and fix, reform and improve our “flawed” democracy.

1) Abolish the electoral college

“The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.” So said Donald Trump on election night in 2012, when it looked for a brief moment as if Mitt Romney might win the popular vote against Barack Obama. Today, of course, Trump sits in the Oval Office as a result of that very same electoral college – which, unbeknownst to many Americans, was created to boost the political power of slave-owning southern states.

Since the start of this century, the United States has elected two Republican presidents – Trump and George W Bush – who lost the national popular vote but won the majority of electoral college votes. How so? The electoral college elevates smaller, rural Republican states at the expense of bigger, more urban Democratic states. Compare California to Wyoming: the former has one electoral vote per 712,000 people, while the latter has one per 195,000 people. That means a vote in Wyoming has 3.6 times the impact in the electoral college as a vote in California.

The core of democracy is supposed to be the principle of one person, one vote, but the electoral college makes a mockery of that principle. And guess what? Most Americans agree. In June, a PRRI poll found that two-thirds (68 per cent) of Americans would prefer electing their presidents on the basis of the national popular vote, as opposed to the electoral college.

Abolishing the electoral college won’t be easy. It would need a constitutional amendment, which itself requires a two-thirds vote in both the House and the Senate and the ratification of three-quarters (38) of the 50 states.

There is, however, an alternative to outright abolition. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) is an agreement between a growing number of US states to pool their electoral college votes for the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote. The agreement is supposed to take effect once the participating states represent at least 270 electoral votes, the minimum number required to elect a president. As of October 2018, the NPVIC had been adopted by 11 states which, between them, have 172 electoral votes or 32 per cent of the total Electoral College.

2) Pass a new Voting Rights Act

Turnout in the United States is abysmally low by international standards – according to a Pew study in May 2018, the US came 26th out of 32 OECD countries. But Republicans are bent on reducing it even further. Voter suppression has become an integral part of the GOP’s election strategy at the federal and state levels. Take Georgia, where Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp – who, as secretary of state, also doubles as Georgia’s top election official – is trying to block 53,000 people from registering to vote, nearly 70 per cent of whom are black. His Democratic opponent, Stacey Abrams, is black.

In 2013, conservatives on the Supreme Court gutted a key section of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act which had required state and local governments in areas with a history of racial discrimination to obtain federal “preclearance” before making any changes to their voting laws. The Democrats, if they retake the House and the Senate, should immediately pass a new, beefed-up Voting Rights Act, which would:

– Prohibit racist voter ID laws at the state level. Over the past decade, more than a dozen Republican-led states have introduced restrictive voter ID laws. Their justification? To combat (mythical) voter fraud. The reality? A 2017 academic study found “a significant drop in minority participation when and where these laws are implemented”.

– Mandate that every state automatically register every voter. Thirteen states plus the District of Columbia have already approved automatic voter registration (AVR). In 2016, after Oregon introduced AVR, the state’s turnout increased by 4 per cent compared to the 2012 elections.

- Restore the right to vote to ex-felons. In the swing state of Florida, more than one in ten people of voting age – and a whopping one in five black adults! – are barred from voting due to a felony conviction. In total, and nationwide, around six million Americans with a felony conviction are currently disenfranchised – some of them for life. As the Sentencing Project points out: “We know of no other democracy besides the United States in which convicted offenders who have served their sentences are nonetheless disenfranchised for life.”

– Make election day a federal holiday. Countries such as Germany, France, Spain, Brazil and India either vote at the weekend or recognize election day as a public holiday. One recent study found that “creating a national holiday for election day would increase voter turnout by about 16 percentage points” and cause “voter turnout in the US to be consistent with other developed democracies.”

3) Ban gerrymandering

Is there anything more brazenly anti-democratic than redrawing the boundaries of electoral districts to secure a partisan advantage? That’s gerrymandering.

Take Pennsylvania. In November 2012, according to the Washington Post, “Democratic candidates for the state’s 18 US House seats won 51 percent of their state’s popular House vote. But that translated to just 5 out of 18, or a little more than one-quarter, of the state’s House seats.” How come? Because Republicans had drawn ridiculously-skewed district maps the year before.

Republicans in control of statehouses and governors’ mansions across the United States have gerrymandered their way to the “the most audacious political heist of modern times,” in the words of investigative journalist David Daley. Remember, as political scientist Lee Drutman, of the New America think tank, observed in January, “Gerrymandering is largely a US phenomenon … We’re the only country that uses single-member districts but doesn’t use independent districting commissions to draw them.”

Americans from across the political spectrum have expressed their dislike of gerrymandering. A bipartisan poll conducted by the Campaign Legal Center in September 2017 found that 71 per cent of respondents, including 65 per cent of Republicans, want the Supreme Court to define “clear, new rules” that end blatant partisan gerrymandering.

(Continue Reading)

[incorrectdanganronpaquotes]

“Ultimates Play” (a.k.a. Let’s Player AU)

Hey, Mod Snake here! So I realize that I’ve been sort of lax on my part in the 2K celebration. This has been mostly to the fact that I’ve been working on my senior thesis, and it’s been absolute hell trying to motivate myself to do anything with that nightmare hanging over my head. But now the thesis is officially over and I can finally get around to posting something I’ve been meaning to post for a while: an AU concept called “Ultimates Play!” The idea of this AU is similar to the Talent Development Plan ‘verse, except that the DR1, SDR2, and NDRV3 characters share a gaming channel on YouTube called ‘Ultimates Play’. Over the years since it started, the channel has evolved into sort of a Rooster Teeth-style project, with dozens of different series done by many different hosts. There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s just jump right in! 

General Concepts:

As you can imagine, Chiaki was the one to set up the channel; in fact, the channel was originally called “Chiaki’s Gaming Corner”, and the channel URL still reflects this. Hajime quickly became involved in the editing process, since Chiaki would frequently fall asleep before uploading the videos. Chiaki then gradually began introducing her fellow classmates, who had become interested in the games during Class 77’s meet-up times (everyone involved refuses to call them “classes”), as hosts of their own series; before long, this spread to other classes entirely. And thus, Ultimates Play was born.

Junko in this AU is still technically in despair, but the passion for video games she developed after spending some time with Chiaki helps keep her Ultimate Analyst abilities occupied, preventing her from becoming bored enough to lash out at the world. She is still extremely competitive and aggressive, particularly towards Mukuro, but in general it is typically safe to be in the same building as her.

This AU uses the “Class 79” canon for the V3 kids, similar to the Ultimate Talent Development Plan, since the Tragedy doesn’t happen in this AU.

As the channel started to get big, the group decides they need a headquarters in which to stay; they end up building it a few blocks away from Hope’s Peak. Very few of them live in the building full-time, but the building is equipped with dozens of beds anyway just in case they all happen to crash there overnight at the same time. There are also multiple TVs, so that different students can record series at the same time.

The channel is one of the top 10 most subscribed channels on YouTube, due in part to the variety of content. Of the series, Chiaki’s and Ibuki’s typically have the most views, while Celeste’s and Hajime’s have the least views.

Even though Komaru isn’t technically an Ultimate, Makoto and Toko both begged Chiaki until she was allowed to join the channel.

Individual Series:

Makoto and Kyoko have “Detective Training,” in which they play mystery games together; typically these consist of point-and-click adventure games, although sometimes they’ll do other genres if there is a sufficient mystery element. Kyoko almost always figures out the entire mystery from the start, so she basically spends the whole time trying not to spoil the twists and puzzles for Makoto. Shuichi occasionally guest stars, but he’s too self-conscious around Kyoko to make regular appearances.

Sakaya and Kaede share a series where they play rhythm games like DDR, as well as general music-themed games like Rockband; they alternate off randomly between which one is the host, never appearing in the same episode.

Toko’s primary series is “Toko’s Shovelware Spectacular”, in which she plays the worst of the worst games on the iPhone and Android app stores. Komaru makes an appearance every time there’s a multiplayer game, or whenever Toko is so genuinely shocked by a game’s shittiness that she needs a second person to confirm she’s not imagining things.

Neither Togami nor the Ultimate Imposter have a consistent theme for their series (although they tend towards real-time strategy games); however, there is something of a running joke between them. Every time Togami uploads a video on a game, Twogami will then upload a video on the same game, starting off from the same place Togami left off and claiming to be the next installment. Togami is consistently infuriated by this, but he can’t figure out how to stop it. There’s a running debate in the comments about whether the ‘second Togami’ is actually a distinct entity or just Togami playing an elaborate practical joke; this, for Togami, is the worst part of the whole thing.

Ishimaru has a series called “Upholders of Justice”, in which he plays crime-themed games (GTA, Saint’s Row, etc.) while breaking as few laws as the game will allow him to. If you’ve ever seen the Saints Row the Third episode of Monster Factory, it’s sort of like that.

Hifumi and Kazuichi have a shared series called “Love Quest 3000”, in which they play dating sims together; this is ostensibly for the purpose of figuring out how to get better at real romance, but they have yet to achieve any success in this field.

Celeste has a recurring series on gambling games, such as video poker and virtual slot machines. To her eternal fury, they are by far the least-viewed videos on the entire channel; this may be because she always wins, or because her commentary consists almost entirely of A) ‘advice’ on how to win at gambling (which boils down to “be lucky and don’t panic”), and B) reiterations of how successful she is.

While Junko doesn’t actually have a standalone series, there is a playlist named “With Junko” on the channel. This is because, rather than star in her own series, Junko will occasionally crash episodes of other series and serve as a guest commentator for the episode, typically without the approval or knowledge of the players in question. HOWEVER, Junko does co-star in a regular series called “Rose and Thorns”, in which she and Mukuro play co-op games like Portal 2 and New Super Mario Bros. You can probably imagine how well their interactions go.

Hajime did an Undertale LP.

In her continuing effort to be the most meta human being in the universe, Ibuki has only a single ongoing series: “Ibuki Plays Danganronpa”. At no point in the series does she comment on the fact that her fellow Ultimates- and indeed herself- appear in the games; the closest she comes is her DR2 LP, in which she off-handedly remarks on the similarities between herself and Ibuki in the game. There is only one exception: every time game-Ibuki’s corpse is on-screen in Chapter 3, real-Ibuki goes absolutely silent until the scene changes or she turns away. None of the other Ultimates can figure out where the hell she got these games, and she refuses to provide a straight answer.

Hiyoko and Mikan, of all people, have a shared series entitled “Super Bestest Friends Play!”; it consists pretty much entirely of Hiyoko forcing Mikan to play the weird Flash games you find on various “gaming” websites (i.e. bootleg Frozen games and the like). Hiyoko uploaded the first episode without permission from the others, and promptly found herself being threatened with stabbing by Maki, who is always on watch to make sure things don’t get too upsetting for Mikan; every once in a while you’ll hear a soft click in the background of the episodes, at which point Hiyoko will immediately and urgently apologize to Mikan and suggest a tamer game. Also, every once in a while the situation gets shaken up a bit: on at least a couple of occasions Mikan very visibly starts getting aroused by the games in question, which freaks Hiyoko out more than anything else the other Ultimates have ever seen (this is the main reason they allow the series to persist).

Gundham and Sonia have an ongoing series in which they play horror games together. Gundham constantly pretends not to be freaked out by the jumpscares, even though he is. Sonia constantly pretends to be freaked out by the atmosphere, even though she’s not. They are exactly as adorable together as you can imagine.

Gundham also has a recurring Pokémon series, covering at least one game from every Generation. He makes a dedicated effort to capture one of every Pokémon, and at the end of each playthrough he hacks in any that he can’t obtain legitimately that Gen. His videos are each at least an hour long because he can’t make himself stop playing with his Pokémon. He also cites Pokémon-Amie as the single greatest innovation in the history of the franchise.

As more and more shows started appearing on the channel, Chiaki started putting out less and less content- which suits her just fine, since it gives her more chances to play games with herself and her friends, without having to worry about making entertaining commentary. Her only ongoing series at the time of the AU is a gaming news show, where she reports on announcements about games she’s interested in, as well as discussions about what she’d like out of future games. Hajime is a recurring guest star on the series.

Komaru has a series where she plays whatever games she happens to like at the time; most of these are Nintendo games, and almost all of them are on the casual end of the spectrum. Toko regularly drops in without warning.

Mitarai has an ongoing visual novel review series, which frequently devolves into tips about drawing and commentary on anime he likes or dislikes.

Himiko has a series of RPG playthroughs, many of them unfinished. The only playthroughs she will consistently finish are Final Fantasy games, since they’re Tenko’s favorites. She also did exactly three episodes of a Kingdom Hearts LP before abandoning it, citing the story being too confusing.

Maki has a recurring series in which she plays first-person shooters in order to test their accuracy. To the hastily-suppressed delight of Kokichi (and the well-disguised amusement of everyone else in the building), Maki usually turns out to be absolutely terrible at these games, being so used to real combat situations that she can’t adapt to the artistic license of most FPS’s.

Kokichi Oma has only one series, which is entitled “Kokichi Plays Minecraft”. The series is well over a hundred episodes long, and not a single damn second of that is from Minecraft. Instead, every episode is taken from a different game, with no apparent pattern; each episode has Kokichi acting as if he’s been playing this game for several episodes, as well as alluding to various incidents that happened previously in the game (which, of course, the audience doesn’t get to see).

Tsumugi’s series is literally just makeup tutorials for cosplayers. She doesn’t seem to realize that it’s otherwise pretty much exclusively a gaming channel, and no one else has bothered to tell her.

There are plenty of other series not listed here, including some that pop up without warning and only air one or two episodes before ending. In general, every character from the games has at least one recurring series, each with wildly different schedules. 

One series in particular doesn’t have a single consistent host; it’s called “Ultimate Date Night”, and the commentary role shifts between various couples within the group- Akane and Nekomaru, Himiko and Tenko, Sonia and Gundham, Kokichi and Shuichi- as they play various cooperative and competitive games together. There is also a spin-off series called “Double Date”, in which two such couples square off in team-based competitive games.

Other Headcanons:

At one point, Hifumi and Kazuichi definitely played Doki Doki Literature Club, and spent the second half of the series alternately screaming and crying. They were not ready.

For one April Fools’ Day, everyone on the channel traded series for the day; Makoto and Kyoko hosted “Love Quest 3000”, Celeste and Ishimaru hosted “Super Bestest Friends Play!”, Hiyoko and Mikan hosted the horror game series, Maki hosted “Detective Training” (with special guests Kaito and Maki), and so on. The only exception to this was Kokichi; the thumbnail for his video showed Mukuro as the host, but Kokichi introduces himself as usual at the start of the video and does his usual thing. Also, Junko cameoed on multiple series that day.

Makoto and Kyoko definitely played through Ghost Trick together, and Makoto cried multiple times throughout the game, particularly near the ending.

The only time anyone in the group has ever seen Junko legitimately cry is that one time when Mukuro beat her at Mario Kart 8. Mukuro has never let her forget that day.

Maki was banned from “Double Date” after her first and only appearance ended with extensive property damage and Fuyuhiko (who was on the other team with Peko) being rushed to the hospital with multiple broken bones.

Games Komaru has played include Super Mario Galaxy (finished, though not 100%), The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (unfinished), Thomas Was Alone, and Miitopia.

Chisa regularly visits the Ultimates Play headquarters, bringing snacks and encouragement. Everyone is happy to see her, even Togami and Kokichi.

Himiko was the first non-Class 77 member of the channel; no one is quite sure how she ended up joining, least of all Himiko.

Let us know if you like this idea, and if you have other headcanons regarding this AU! Maybe you’ll get featured in a follow-up post or something; who knows? Anyway, hope you enjoyed whatever this was! 

- Mod Snake 

[bestflyerprinting]

The Facts About Label Adhesives

The most important part of a label is what is underneath it, the adhesive. Underrated and often forgotten, beverage label adhesives will absolutely make or break your label. Dramatic? Maybe. Wrong? No way. We want to make sure you know exactly what you’re getting into when it comes to customizing your beverage label, and that begins with the all-too-essential sticky stuff.

There are many types of label adhesives

The first step to nailing down the perfect adhesive is deciding what you will need it to do. You can choose between a permanent, removable or repositionable label adhesive.

Permanent label adhesives are fairly self-explanatory. These guys have tattoo status: they can be removed but not without a fight and a little bit of damage. Permanent label adhesives are usually the most cost-efficient and create the strongest bond between label and product. These are a great option if you need your beverage label to withstand any and every condition.

Next up: removable adhesives, who rock more of a temporary tattoo status. They can be removed without causing harm, but are definitely susceptible to temperature and humidity, so they’re not the best idea for beverages or bottles that will encounter condensation or be stored in extreme cold or heat.

Finally, repositionable adhesives are in a class of their own. While they do what their name suggests, and allow you to remove and reapply without leaving a residue, after a certain amount of time, they acquire a level of permanence more on par with our permanent label adhesives. What are these labels good for? If you’re applying your custom beverage labels manually, repositionable adhesives allow you to correct the human error as long as it’s within the allotted amount of time; before permanent adhesion. (That’s right, no more crooked labels!)

In order to make sure these adhesives do their job it is very important that you consider all of the environments that your labels will be exposed to throughout their life. Where will they be stored prior to application? This is important because low temperatures and high humidity can affect their performance (if you are storing them in a warehouse that isn’t climate controlled, for instance). What is the environment at the point of application, high-speed bottling line, semi-automatic, or by hand?  Are the bottles being filled with a hot or cold liquid? This can affect the bond the label makes with the container. Is there heavy condensation or overspill where the label is being applied? How is your product going to be stored after it is labelled? On a store shelf, in a freezer, an ice bucket, in a shower, outside in the UV rays for an extended period of time, in an industrial atmosphere with various solvents and chemicals? All of these questions factor into selecting the perfect adhesive for your project.  

Label adhesives are either acrylic or rubber-based

Narrowing down the sea of options for you is the chemistry of your label adhesive. Acrylic adhesives are synthetic and are created to stick to a wide spectrum of surfaces, including glass and metal. These adhesives are great for surfaces that will encounter wet, rigid and/or uncertain conditions, as they hold up well under a myriad of circumstances. Rubber-based adhesives are a little less versatile. They are the most cost-effective of the two options, but if your product encounters humidity or extreme temperatures, this adhesive will break down over time.

Label adhesives perform in three ways

Regardless of the type of label adhesive you choose, whether it’s acrylic or rubber-based, all options have to answer to the three following factors:

Tack: the stickiness to the container without any outside help.

Adhesion: the strength of the bond after help from external pressure.

Shear: the label’s staying power, in essence, as expressed through time.

Hey, you wouldn’t buy a diamond without checking out the cut, colour and clarity, would you? Make sure you’re measuring your label adhesives by the KPIs that truly matter.]

Article source: https://printingcapetown.wordpress.com/2021/10/28/the-facts-about-label-adhesives/

[painandinjury]

How I Got Trigger Finger and What I Did to Treat It

In my case, I have trigger finger in the middle and ring fingers of my right hand, mostly in the A1 and A2 pulley, and less in the A3, with the middle finger being more problematic. Pain is most pronounced in the middle of the night and upon waking, then gets better rather quickly in my case, in the first waking hour of the day.  This is because as you sleep, there is less movement of the joints and less synovium produced, causing them to be stiffer.

I have the classic symptom where there is locking of those fingers when I move them from the natural, half-open relaxed hand to fully extending the fingers.  As I force them past the locked angle, they snap at the A1 and A2 pulleys, then straighten out.  It’s momentarily painful, but tolerable.  But for some people, it’s a lot worse.  All those weeks of sustained power gripping and twisting caused the flexor tendons and synovium to rub excessively against the ligaments holding them in place, causing microtears and initiating the inflammatory response.

TREATMENT FOR TRIGGER FINGER

The medical standard of care for trigger finger is corticosteroid injection below the affected ligament.  This quickly knocks down the inflammation, and in some cases, symptomatic improvement happens within seconds.  However, some patients report pain following the injection, and slower or no results.

Splinting is sometimes attempted.  The idea is that if you immobilize the tendon, inflammation will stop and the tendon will shrink and heal, bringing things back to normal.  However, this is not always the case.  Sometimes inflammation takes a life of its own, and prolongs long after the injurious event ceases.

If neither corticosteroid injection nor finger splinting fail to correct the problem, surgery is an option.  Direct, open surgery and percutaneous (minimal incision, special surgical tools) surgery are the two options, with direct surgery usually having better results.  This is where the ligament is cut to provide more room for the tendon to move.  This is possible because the adjacent ligament serves as a backup; for example, the A2 can back up A1 if A1 needs to be cut/ split apart.  However, as you can imagine such destruction of a functional component means some strength and stability are sacrificed.  I’m sure those having this kind of surgery lose some power in their grip.

MY TREATMENT STRATEGY

As I write this article, my trigger fingers have improved about 75%, from their worst presentation.  It could be that my connective tissues are in pretty good shape; my healing capacity is strong; my injury was not very severe; or my treatment regimen is helping accelerate healing.  Some sufferers don’t see such a quick pace of resolution.

Here is what I’m doing:  as I mentioned, the symptoms are most pronounced in the middle of the night (when I get up to use the bathroom) and upon waking.  In the middle of the night, I simply don’t move my fingers, and go back to sleep.

In the morning, I run cold water over my hand for 2 minutes, and gently move my fingers.  I get the snapping, but it dissipates shortly after.  I still feel some stiffness and soreness in my knuckles throughout the day, but no snapping.

I get localized cryotherapy done on my fingers.  Cryotherapy is extremely cold air, as in sub-zero, for 3 minutes.  The cold not only slows inflammation, it is said to cause a shock to the sensory nerves, which causes the central nervous system to respond by increasing blood flow, fibroblast activity, and nutrients to the area.

Note:  the image above is a localized cryotherapy session on my hand, for a previous complaint.  The red dot is not red light therapy; it is a laser thermometer the technician uses to measure my skin temperature so that it doesn’t too low (his hand is visible in the picture). Localized cryotherapy can reach temperatures of -30 degrees F.

Lastly, I apply red light therapy.  I’m an advocate of this therapeutic technology and have written articles about it.  Red light therapy is actually an electromagnetic waveform (600-880 nanometer wavelengths) that appears red to the human eye.  It’s not the red you get from shining a light through a red lens; it’s a specific waveform in the electromagnetic spectrum generated from an LED (light-emitting diode).  The device I use uses three LEDs, one of which emits a waveform closer to infrared and therefore does not appear to be red as it is invisible.  The electromagnetic energy is at a frequency that gets absorbed by cell mitochondria and other structures, which can result in changed oxidative states that lead to cell signaling that initiates reparative processes, such as increased ATP production and increased membrane permeability.  This lessens inflammation and stimulates healing.

I anticipate my trigger fingers to fully recover, to pre-injury status.  I will continue to do these therapies, as I feel they are partly responsible for my good results.

BOTTOM LINE

Prevention is the best cure:  if you know you are going to be using your hands a lot, such as starting on a do-it-yourself project involving power tools and hard gripping, know that this can cause trigger finger.  Do what you can to minimize the stress to your hands—take frequent breaks; don’t overdo it/ don’t hold a power grip for more than a few seconds; and rest and stretch your hands often.  Don’t rush it.  Trigger finger creeps up on you, and by the time you notice it, it is too late.  The presentations are different from person to person, depending on age, health, fitness and so on.  I am lucky as my condition is resolving; others are not so lucky and wind up getting surgery and permanent percent loss of hand function.  So make sure you keep prevention in mind.  If you do get it, try the treatment methods for trigger finger described here that have worked for me.

It’s been a while since my last article.  Between the weekly-changing COVID restrictions in my area and major house renovations, I have been delinquent with my life mission of helping others manage and heal their pain and injuries, on their own.  But today, I’m back on track.  Today, I’ll talk about a peculiar condition known as Trigger Finger.

But first, a little background:

For those who ever engaged in do-it-yourself home renovations such as landscaping, fence building, paver-laying and bathroom and kitchen remodeling you know how much stress it can put on your body.  This is my story of how I developed trigger finger for the first time in my life, and serves as a “lessons learned” opportunity for others so that they can be spared the inconveniences of this condition..

For the last 10 years, I would categorize my daily physical activity as “moderate.”  I would go the gym and lift free weights (reps over max); do various cardio fitness classes such as the Les Mills classes and Bootcamp; and run 3 miles about 3x/week.  My average time in the gym I would say was 60-90 minutes, with about half of that actual exercising.  At home, I would be working on my website and producing videos.  This did require prolonged sitting, but I would get up every 30 minutes or so to walk around to relieve pressure to my lumbar spine.

Starting the second week of this past July, I started the aforementioned home renovation projects.  I basically went straight from moderate activity to short bursts of sustained intense activity, daily for over four weeks.  Since I didn’t have any major musculoskeletal impediments other than a chronic right AC (acromioclavicular) joint sprain, I moved freely as though I was in my 20s, which wasn’t such a good idea.  The combination of the intense movement patterns my body wasn’t used to, plus my age, took a significant toll after four weeks.

Here are some of the heavy labor activities that I engaged in:

Carrying heavy lumber from Home Depot and loading into a pickup truck, about 10 trips

Carrying 50 and 80 pound bags of concrete mix and sand, for my paver project, about 5 trips.

Used a 2-person auger (about 120 pounds; gasoline powered) to drill several 3’ deep post holes

Shoveled piles and piles of dirt (pickup truck loads—about 10x)

Hauled away bulk trash to the dumpster

Carried 100 clay 12”x12” paver squares (bricks) from a truck to my yard and positioned them carefully

Used hand tools that required hard gripping and/or twisting including various types of saws, wrenches and screwdrivers

Used vibrational tools including a miter saw, reciprocating saw, drill, and nail gun

By the third week, I was starting to feel pain at my right AC joint, my left wrist, and both hands especially my right, dominant hand. Thankfully, despite frequent bending at the waist my lower back wasn’t affected.  I attributed the AC join pain to aggravation of the old strain (I rate it a Grade 2 or 3 sprain – partial tearing, but intact). What happened is the heavy lifting placed a repetitious load on that unstable joint, causing the acromion and distal clavicle to aggravate surrounding soft tissues, particularly the supraspinatous tendon, and the insertion points of the ligament.  My doctor suggested my pain was impingement syndrome—compression of the supraspinatous tendon where it passes below the acromion– which could be occurring, but I’m certain most of the pain is emanating from the joint itself because I can reproduce the pain simply by pressing it with my fingertip.  I’ll tell you how I’m treating this in the next article.

I believe my left wrist pain is a Grade 2 strain of the flexor ulnaris tendon where it inserts into the distal ulnar’s styloid process; caused when I lost control of the auger.  The auger is a very powerful machine that requires two people to operate (see picture above).  Not being familiar with using one, I wasn’t prepared for the powerful torque it generated, and lost control of it, hurting my wrist.

The third problem that I’m dealing with is trigger finger.  This is the first time I’ve had it and let me tell you, it’s not very pleasant.

Trigger finger is so named because as you attempt to straighten out your finger after closing your hand, the finger “catches” mid-way, and pain is felt in one or several joint capsules usually on the palmar side.  Then, as you power through the restriction the pain increases and a popping/snapping sensation occurs right before it straightens out, just like how a gun trigger offers gradual resistance then suddenly releases at a point.  See the short video below of my actual trigger finger taken this morning that explains this.

Trigger finger is a stenosing tenosynovitis disorder.  Stenosing means narrowing of a passageway in the body; tenosynovitis refers to inflammation of the tendon and synovium.  The synovium is a specialized layer of tissue surrounding the tendon in areas where it rubs against other structures in the body.  Synovium secretes synovial fluid, a biological lubricant that helps reduce friction where the tendon moves.  Synovium also lines the synovial joints of the body which include the hips, knees, shoulders, elbows, spine and joints of the hands and feet.

There are three, main populations of trigger finger sufferers:  young children (up to 8 years old); trigger finger as a comorbidity to a primary disease; and adults experiencing trauma/ stress to the hands, typically in the 40s-50s.  It tends to affect women more, and the most common finger is the thumb although it can occur in any finger, and in multiple fingers at the same time.

In children, trigger finger is believed to be due to uneven growth rates of the hand flexor tendons and the ligaments, where the tendon growth outpaces the growth of the ligaments that hold them against the finger bones.

Trigger finger is observed to often occur alongside certain other diseases such as carpal tunnel syndrome, diabetes, hypothyroidism, gout, rheumatoid arthritis, and amyloidosis; each probably having different etiologies involving the dysfunction causing the primary disease.  Diabetics seem to be affected by trigger finger at a higher rate than the regular population, and it is uncertain why.  With diabetes mellitus, there are high levels of glucose in the blood, and usually high insulin levels.  Insulin is considered an anabolic hormone associated with tissue growth, so this may be a possible explanation for the increased incidence of trigger finger in diabetics, if the growth leads to tendon hypertrophy (enlargement).

For the third group, which the rest of this article will address, trigger finger is caused by hypertrophy and inflammation of the finger flexor tendons at the synovial sheath, typically from repetitious hand movements, especially those involving power gripping and vibration, making them chafe against the ligaments that hold them down to the finger bones (phalanges).  (Remember, ligaments connect two bones, while tendons connect a muscle to a bone; both are components of all moveable joints).  Imagine these ligaments as slips of Scotch tape forming a tunnel over the bone.  As the hypertrophied (enlarged) section of the tendon enters the narrow tunnel during extension (straightening out of the finger), it gets stuck in that tunnel momentarily; much like how a big person trying to climb out of a small bathroom window can get stuck before being able to make it through.  Then, as the tendon makes it past that entrance, it causes the popping sensation.

Orthopedic specialists identify the tendon-ligament structures involved in hand movement as pulleys.  Remember from basic physics, a pulley is one of the simple machines (the others being a lever, plane and gear).  This is an appropriate name because the tendons and ligaments accomplish work just like the cables and pulleys used in cranes.

Image courtesy of OrthoBullets.com

The A1 pulley is at the metacarpo-phalangeal joint, commonly called the knuckles.  It’s where the proximal phalanx connects to the respective metacarpal bone.  This is where trigger finger usually occurs.  Those who have it here feel the pain and popping/snapping on the palmar side of the knuckle.

The A2 pulley encircles the proximal phalanx, or first finger bone, from the knuckle.

The A3 pulley is at the PIP, or proximal interphalangeal joint—the first joint from the knuckle connecting the proximal and intermediate phalanges (first and second bones of the finger).  This is also a common area of trigger finger.

The A4 pulley encircles the intermediate phalanx (second bone of the finger from the knuckle).

The A5 pulley is at the DIP, or distal interphalangeal joint, the furthest joint of the finger connecting the intermediate and distal phalanges (second and third bones of the finger, from the knuckle).  Although triggering can happen here, it is less common.

Since the thumb is comprised of only two phalanges, it has an A1 and A2 pulley only.  Trigger finger affecting the thumb almost always occurs at the A1 pulley.  Unlike the other fingers, your thumb can move in multiple planes, much like the shoulder joint.  It has a unique pulley called the oblique pulley that allows it to touch the pinky, a movement called thumb opposition.

In my case, I have trigger finger in the middle and ring fingers of my right hand, mostly in the A1 and A2 pulley, and less in the A3, with the middle finger being more problematic. Pain is most pronounced in the middle of the night and upon waking, then gets better rather quickly in my case, in the first waking hour of the day.  This is because as you sleep, there is less movement of the joints and less synovium produced, causing them to be stiffer.

I have the classic symptom where there is locking of those fingers when I move them from the natural, half-open relaxed hand to fully extending the fingers.  As I force them past the locked angle, they snap at the A1 and A2 pulleys, then straighten out.  It’s momentarily painful, but tolerable.  But for some people, it’s a lot worse.  All those weeks of sustained power gripping and twisting caused the flexor tendons and synovium to rub excessively against the ligaments holding them in place, causing microtears and initiating the inflammatory response.

TREATMENT FOR TRIGGER FINGER

The medical standard of care for trigger finger is corticosteroid injection below the affected ligament.  This quickly knocks down the inflammation, and in some cases, symptomatic improvement happens within seconds.  However, some patients report pain following the injection, and slower or no results.

Splinting is sometimes attempted.  The idea is that if you immobilize the tendon, inflammation will stop and the tendon will shrink and heal, bringing things back to normal.  However, this is not always the case.  Sometimes inflammation takes a life of its own, and prolongs long after the injurious event ceases.

If neither corticosteroid injection nor finger splinting fail to correct the problem, surgery is an option.  Direct, open surgery and percutaneous (minimal incision, special surgical tools) surgery are the two options, with direct surgery usually having better results.  This is where the ligament is cut to provide more room for the tendon to move.  This is possible because the adjacent ligament serves as a backup; for example, the A2 can back up A1 if A1 needs to be cut/ split apart.  However, as you can imagine such destruction of a functional component means some strength and stability are sacrificed.  I’m sure those having this kind of surgery lose some power in their grip.

MY TREATMENT STRATEGY

As I write this article, my trigger fingers have improved about 75%, from their worst presentation.  It could be that my connective tissues are in pretty good shape; my healing capacity is strong; my injury was not very severe; or my treatment regimen is helping accelerate healing.  Some sufferers don’t see such a quick pace of resolution.

Here is what I’m doing:  as I mentioned, the symptoms are most pronounced in the middle of the night (when I get up to use the bathroom) and upon waking.  In the middle of the night, I simply don’t move my fingers, and go back to sleep.

In the morning, I run cold water over my hand for 2 minutes, and gently move my fingers.  I get the snapping, but it dissipates shortly after.  I still feel some stiffness and soreness in my knuckles throughout the day, but no snapping.

I get localized cryotherapy done on my fingers.  Cryotherapy is extremely cold air, as in sub-zero, for 3 minutes.  The cold not only slows inflammation, it is said to cause a shock to the sensory nerves, which causes the central nervous system to respond by increasing blood flow, fibroblast activity, and nutrients to the area.

Note:  the image above is a localized cryotherapy session on my hand, for a previous complaint.  The red dot is not red light therapy; it is a laser thermometer the technician uses to measure my skin temperature so that it doesn’t too low (his hand is visible in the picture). Localized cryotherapy can reach temperatures of -30 degrees F.

Lastly, I apply red light therapy.  I’m an advocate of this therapeutic technology and have written articles about it.  Red light therapy is actually an electromagnetic waveform (600-880 nanometer wavelengths) that appears red to the human eye.  It’s not the red you get from shining a light through a red lens; it’s a specific waveform in the electromagnetic spectrum generated from an LED (light-emitting diode).  The device I use uses three LEDs, one of which emits a waveform closer to infrared and therefore does not appear to be red as it is invisible.  The electromagnetic energy is at a frequency that gets absorbed by cell mitochondria and other structures, which can result in changed oxidative states that lead to cell signaling that initiates reparative processes, such as increased ATP production and increased membrane permeability.  This lessens inflammation and stimulates healing.

I anticipate my trigger fingers to fully recover, to pre-injury status.  I will continue to do these therapies, as I feel they are partly responsible for my good results.

BOTTOM LINE

Prevention is the best cure:  if you know you are going to be using your hands a lot, such as starting on a do-it-yourself project involving power tools and hard gripping, know that this can cause trigger finger.  Do what you can to minimize the stress to your hands—take frequent breaks; don’t overdo it/ don’t hold a power grip for more than a few seconds; and rest and stretch your hands often.  Don’t rush it.  Trigger finger creeps up on you, and by the time you notice it, it is too late.  The presentations are different from person to person, depending on age, health, fitness and so on.  I am lucky as my condition is resolving; others are not so lucky and wind up getting surgery and permanent percent loss of hand function.  So make sure you keep prevention in mind.  If you do get it, try the treatment methods for trigger finger described here that have worked for me.

[patriotsnet]

Which Republicans Voted Against The Tax Reform Bill

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/which-republicans-voted-against-the-tax-reform-bill/

Which Republicans Voted Against The Tax Reform Bill

An Affinity For Small Business

Petitioners ask Upton to vote against GOP tax reform bill

Passing a law that helped fuel increases in stock prices wasnt the only way Republicans enriched themselves. The new law also contained a 20 percent deduction for income from so-called pass-through businesses, a provision called the crown jewel of the act by the National Federation of Independent Businesses, a lobbying group.

Pass-throughs are single-owner businesses, partnerships, limited liability companies and special corporations called S-corps. Most real estate companies are organized as LLCs. Trump owns hundreds of them, and Public Integritys analysis found that 22 of the 47 members of the House and Senate tax-writing committees in 2017 were invested in them.

Pass-throughs can be found in any industry. They pay no corporate taxes and steer their profits as income to business owners or investors, who are taxed only once at their individual rates. Despite their favored treatment as a business vehicle, the 2017 tax act did them another favor: It allowed 20 percent to be deducted off the top of the pass-through income for tax purposes.

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Sign up for the Center for Public Integritys weekly Watchdog newsletter.

No doubt. Johnson, with his wife, held interests that year in four real estate or manufacturing LLCs worth between $6.2 million and $30.5 million, from which they received income that year between $250,000 and $2.1 million, according to his financial disclosure form.

Democrats Attack Republicans For Lack Of Transparency

At the Senate floor and on social media, Democrats criticized their Republican colleagues for lack of transparency. They pointed out that there wasnt enough time for them to read 479-page legislation with unreadable handwritten amendments.

Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri tweeted, This is so bad. We have just gotten list of amendments to be included in bill NOT from our R colleagues, but from lobbyists downtown. None of us have seen this list, but lobbyists have it. Need I say more? Disgusting. And we probably will not even be given time to read them.

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois also tweeted, Trying to review the #GOPTaxScam but they are making hand-written changes to brand new text as we speak can anyone else read this?

TAGS

What’s Wrong With The Status Quo

People on both sides of the political spectrum agree that the tax code should be simpler. Since 1986, the last time a major tax overhaul became law, the body of federal tax lawbroadly definedhas swollen from 26,000 to 70,000 pages, according to the House GOP’s 2016 reform proposal. American households and firms spent $409 billion and 8.9 billion hours completing their taxes in 2016, the Tax Foundation;estimates. Nearly three-quarters of respondents told Pew;four years ago, that they were bothered “some” or “a lot” by the complexity of the tax system.

The Pew Research Center reported in early April 2019 that there is a growing partisan divide over the perceived fairness of the tax system in America.

An even greater proportion;was;troubled by the feeling that some corporations and some wealthy people pay too little: 82% said so about corporations, while 79% said so about the wealthy. While the new tax law cuts a number of itemized deductions, most of the loopholes and giveaways;that were slated for repeal in earlier bills have been retained in some form.

The individual tax rate schedule, which Trump would have cut to three brackets, remains at seven. In other words, this legislation may do relatively little to simplify the tax code. The other issues that the Pew survey indicates that bother people the mosttaxes for wealthy individuals;and corporationsare likely to be exacerbated by the law.;

Don’t Miss: Who Is Better Republicans Or Democrats

Rep Elise Stefanik Of New York

She joined her New York GOP colleagues in opposing the bill due to the;changes made to the SALT deduction. The second-term congresswoman is head of recruitment for the;National Republican Congressional Committee. She is also a DCCC target. Trump;carried her upstate New York district by 14 points in 2016, and she was re-elected by 35 points. Inside Elections rates her race Solid Republican.;

Paul Ryan: ‘don’t Forget This Is A Big Tax Cut For Families As Well’

A day earlier, speaking on the House floor moments before the vote, Ryan said the legislation will “help hard-working Americans who have been left behind for too long.”

“Today, we are giving the people their money back,” he said, adding that a typical family would get a $2,059 tax cut next year.

Democrats opposed bill as a boon to the wealthy while offering little for the middle class, with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., calling it “the worst bill to ever come to the floor of the House.”

There were a number of protesters in Congress on Tuesday, on both the House and Senate sides. Protesters interrupted the Senate’s final late night vote numerous times, at one point shouting, “Kill the bill. Don’t kill us.” One protester interrupted Ryan in the House when he was speaking.

The GOP bill lowers individual tax rates, including the top bracket to 37 percent from 39.6, while doubling the standard deduction and replacing personal exemptions with a $2,000 partly refundable child tax credit. It eliminates various deductions while limiting others on state and local taxes and mortgage interest. It also exempts larger inheritances from the estate tax, doubling the thresholds to $11 million for individuals and $22 million for married couples.

Congratulations to Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, Kevin Brady, Steve Scalise, Cathy McMorris Rodgers and all great House Republicans who voted in favor of cutting your taxes!

Donald J. Trump

Benjy Sarlin is policy editor for NBC News.

Don’t Miss: How Many Republicans Are In The House And Senate

Rep Frank A Lobiondo Of New Jersey

A member of;the;moderate Tuesday Group, LoBiondo opposed the tax bill because of the;changes to the SALT deduction and said in a statement it would be detrimental to New Jersey residents. LoBiondo, who also opposed the GOP health care bill, recently announced he is not running for re-election, making his seat more vulnerable to a Democratic takeover. Trump;carried his 2nd District by nearly 7 points in 2016. The race is rated Leans Republican.

Rep Peter T King Of New York

King also voted no due to the SALT deduction changes, and he warned that passing the tax bill would cause Republicans to lose House seats next year. The 13-term congressman is a new DCCC target though Trump;carried his;2nd District by 9 points. One of the Democrats hoping to take on King, Tim Gomes, has loaned his campaign $1 million. Inside Elections rates the race Solid Republican.

Don’t Miss: What Republicans Are Voting Against Trump

House Passes Massive Gop Tax Cuts

Its a victory for Trump and Ryan, though getting a bill through the Senate wont be easy.

House Republicans passed a $5.5 trillion tax bill Thursday, in a major step toward rewriting the nations tax code and providing a sorely needed legislative victory for President Donald Trump.

The bill passed 227-205, with 13 Republicans breaking with leadership to vote against the legislation. Not a single Democrat backed the bill, highlighting the sharp partisan split as the tax fight moves to the narrowly-divided Senate.

“This is about giving hardworking taxpayers bigger paychecks, more take-home pay… It’s about getting this economy to grow faster, so we get bigger wages, more jobs, and we put America in the driver’s seat in the global economy one again,” said Speaker Paul Ryan.

The legislation would slash the corporate tax rate to 20 percent starting next year, down from 35 percent. It sets the top small business rate at 25 percent for pass-through entities and also includes a far lower rate of 9 percent for some types of small businesses on the first $75,000 of profits.

For individuals, it axes a number of popular deductions, including the state and local tax deduction, medical expenses deduction and student loan deductions but would double the standard deduction and condense the seven tax brackets into four.

By KAITLYN BURTON

That’s why California Republicans Darrell Issa, Tom McClintock and Dana Rohrabacher all voted against the bill.

Student Loans And Tuition

Marco Rubio to vote against GOP tax reform bill

The House bill would have repealed;the deduction for student loan interest expenses and the exclusion from gross income and wages of qualified tuition reductions. The new law;left these breaks intact and allowed 529 plans to be used to fund K to 12 private school tuitionup to $10,000 per year, per child. Under the SECURE Act of 2019, the benefits of 529 plans were expanded, allowing plan holders to also withdraw a maximum lifetime amount of $10,000 per beneficiary penalty-free to pay down qualified student debt.

Recommended Reading: How Many Electoral Votes Do Republicans Have

Republican Tax Bill Moves Closer To Passage As Key Holdouts Come On Board

Bob Corker and Marco Rubio say they will vote in favor of $1.5tn bill

Donald Trump wants sign controversial legislation before Christmas

The GOPs $1.5tn tax reform bill is heading toward a final vote and possible victory before Christmas with support from key Republican holdouts who had raised concerns about the deficit and a child tax credit.

Bob Corker of Tennessee, a frequent critic of Donald Trump and the only Republican senator who voted against the legislation in the Senate, announced Friday that he would back a final version of the bill despite his concerns about the deficit. Corker said: I believe that this once-in-a-generation opportunity to make US businesses domestically more productive and internationally more competitive is one we should not miss.

Senator Marco Rubio, of Florida, also said he would back the bill, a day after he threatened to vote against it if lawmakers did not expand access to a child tax credit for lower-income families. He tweeted that the legislation would allow a higher percent of a child tax credit to be refundable, calling it a solid step toward broader reforms which are both Pro-Growth and Pro-Worker.

For far too long, Washington has ignored and left behind the American working class. Increasing the refundability of the Child Tax Credit from 55% to 70% is a solid step toward broader reforms which are both Pro-Growth and Pro-Worker.

Marco Rubio

Gop Members Most From High

House Republican leaders cheered passage of their sweeping tax overhaul Thursday, but;13;GOP lawmakers;bucked;their party and voted against the bill.;

All but one of them hailed from New York, New Jersey and California each a high-tax state. These lawmakers largely opposed the legislation because it;curtailed the state and local tax deduction,;also known as SALT. The measure caps the;deduction for property taxes at;$10,000 while eliminating the tax break for state and local income or sales taxes.;

Six of the lawmakers are in competitive races in 2018 based on ratings by Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales.; Eleven of the 13 Republicans are being targeted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Here are the Republicans who voted against the tax bill:;

Also Check: What Caused Republicans To Gain Power In Congress In 1938

Rep Dana Rohrabacher Of California

Rohrabacher told Roll Call before the vote that his vote would be determined by how his constituents would fare if the bill became law. He is one of the most vulnerable House members in 2018, in part because of his ties to Russia. He is a top DCCC target. Clinton;carried his 48th District by;2 points in 2016 while Rohrabacher won re-election to a 15th term by 17 points. Inside Elections rates the race Tilts Republican.

Sen Corker Is The Only Republican Who Voted Against The Tax Reform Bill

In the early hour on Saturday, the Senate voted 51-49 on the GOP tax reform bill. The only Republican who did not support the legislation was Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee.

On Tuesday, Sen. Corker voted yes on the tax plan, thereby passed the Senate Budget Committee. He supported it after reaching an agreement with the Senate leadership on a trigger mechanism to ensure fiscal responsibility.

However, during the final approval on the Senate floor, Sen. Corker remained concern about the deficit. He found out that the trigger he demanded would not pass Senates rules and would not be included in the legislation. He eventually voted against it.

In a statement, he explained, This is yet another tough vote. I am disappointed. I wanted to get to yes. But at the end of the day, I am not able to cast aside my fiscal concerns and vote for legislation that I believe, based on the information I currently have, could deepen the debt burden on future generations.

Sen. Corker fought to keep the tax legislation from worsening the countrys rapidly increasing $20 trillion debt.

Last month, the House of Representatives pass their version of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.; The two chambers will have a conference to reconcile bot legislation.

Also Check: What Is The Principle Of Republicanism

Republicans Sprinting Toward Tax Cuts Deficits Be Damned

WASHINGTON House Republicans are moving closer to adopting the Senate budget this week, a significant step toward the GOPs ultimate goal of cutting taxes. But Republicans still havent settled many of the details in their tax proposal, even as they vote to increase the debt by $1.5 trillion.

The House is tentatively scheduled to vote Thursday on the Senates budget proposal, which is needed as a legislative vehicle to carry out tax reform by reconciliation a process that allows the Senate to pass a bill by a simple majority.

Yet the tax proposal remains in a paradoxical state: simultaneously written and unwritten. Republicans have a framework, they apparently have legislative text, but theyve left some major decisions undecided.

Weve been writing for the past year on this, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady told HuffPost on Tuesday, while noting that Republicans are still making adjustments.

The tax bill clearly has some momentum right now, after the Senate approved its budget and House conservatives agreed to simply take the Senate language instead of trying to conference differences between the House and Senate.

One conservative lawmaker told HuffPost that members of the Freedom Caucus cut a deal with leadership, exchanging their votes on the budget to speed up the tax bills release by at least two weeks, possibly three weeks;so it will have a better chance.

Claims Made By The Administration

The Administration and its Council of Economic Advisors have made several claims in advocating the Act during 2017, including:

Reduction in corporate tax rates from 35 to 20%. Also, immediate full expensing of non-structure investments will increase GDP growth rates by 3 to 5 percentage points over the current baseline projections of around 2%. This could begin as early as 35 years from the tax cuts or further out in time. This projection excludes other tax cuts in the Act, such as those for individuals and pass-through entities, which may have additional GDP impact.

The mechanism for this increased growth is at higher business investment levels due to the additional after-tax income available.

Further, this GDP growth would represent an average $4,000 annual increase in wage and salary income for households.

President Trump and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin have stated the tax cuts would pay for themselves.

Trump economic advisor Gary Cohn stated that “The wealthy are not getting a tax cut under our plan” and that the plan would cut taxes for low- and middle-income households. Further, Trump stated that the tax plan “…was not good for .”

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State And Local Tax Deduction

The new law caps the deduction for state and local taxes at $10,000 through 2025. A number of Republican members of Congress representing high-tax states opposed;attempts to eliminate the deduction, as the Senate bill would have done.

The Senate bill was amended on Dec. 1, 2017, apparently to win Susan Collins’ support:

The Senate tax bill will include my SALT amendment to allow taxpayers to deduct up to $10,000 for state and local property taxes. Sen. Susan Collins Dec. 1, 2017

Gop Real Estate Owners Make Out Big

2 California Republicans vote no on tax reform bill | ABC7

Besides the laws benefits to real estate pass-throughs, real estate in general was hugely favored by the tax law, allowing property exchanges to avoid taxation, the deduction of new capital expenses in just one year versus longer depreciation schedules, and an exemption from limits on interest deductions.;

If you are a real estate developer, you never pay tax, said Ed Kleinbard, a former head of Congresss Joint Committee on Taxation.;

Members of Congress own a lot of real estate. Public Integritys review of financial disclosures found that 29 of the 47 GOP members of the committees responsible for the tax bill hold interests in real estate, including small rental businesses, LLCs, and massive real estate investment trusts , which pay dividends to investors. The tax bill allows REIT investors to deduct 20 percent from their dividends for tax purposes.;

Who We Are

The Center for Public Integrity is an independent, investigative newsroom that exposes betrayals of the public trust by powerful interests.

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A Major Step Forward For The Republican Tax Bill

The House on Thursday approved its legislation in a surprisingly drama-free vote. But hurdles await in the Senate.

House Republicans on Thursday approved legislation overhauling the U.S. tax code, slashing rates for corporations while more modestly cutting taxes for individuals, and scaling back a host of popular deductions and exemptions.

And they did it without so much as a hint of drama.

The party-line, 227-205 vote is a victory for President Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan, who took a major step toward enacting their top domestic priority and salvaging what has been a lackluster first year of unified Republican power in Washington.

What was most surprising about Thursdays result, however, was how easy it was.

There was no last-minute arm-twisting or back-room buy offs, no desperate calls from the president to wavering lawmakers, no 11th-hour amendments. The vote occurred on schedule, and when Trump trekked to Capitol Hill for a final pep talk with GOP lawmakers on Thursday, his visit seemed oddly perfunctory. Just 13 Republicans voted against the measure, leaving a comfortable buffer for the party leadership even without a single vote from Democrats.