#this is 1000% serious and totally not me projecting | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

buckyandberries · 4 years ago

Text

eavesdropping

Summary: the girls (y/n, nat, wanda and pepper) are having a little girl meeting/chitchat and the guys don’t like it... so they decide to eavesdrop

Pairing: Verymuchinlove!Bucky x Verymuchinlove!Reader

Warnings: FLUFF, mentions of sex? (wrap it before you tap it), probably swearing, gossip? idk bro RATED 12

Word Count: 909

A/N: I’m meant to be doing revision for Weimar Germany or something in History but no this is more important

sorry for the hiatus and thanks for the support :D we’re going back to school on March 8th, so I’m doing all the work I didn’t do during the lessons LMAO send help

please don’t copy my work, but feel free to reblog :)

“Wait, what’s happening?“ Bucky said to the guys as he found them huddled around staring at a screen.

“Every other Friday, the girls have a little ‘girls meeting’ where they basically talk shit about us,“ Tony said projecting the live footage of Y/N and Bucky’s room onto the big plasma TV.

“But they decided to just stay in because it’s cold, so finally we can hear what they’re saying!“ Sam said excitedly as Steve rolled his eyes.

“Guys, they have this ‘girl time’ because they’re always surrounded by us, and it’s their only time to not have us snooping and now-- it’s just-- back me up, Buck!“ Steve exclaimed as everyone else ignored him.

“So that’s why I’m not allowed in my own room, I see,“ he said, remembering the event prior where Nat shoved him out of his own room as Y/N gave him an apologetic smile.

“Yeah, they’re really serious about these meetings, it’s the only time they can complain about us,“ Clint said as Bucky furrowed his brows.

“Then why are we eavesdropping--“ he paused as he heard Wanda say his name. “Wait, turn it up! They said my name!“ he pushed Sam out of the way as Steve moved to the side, making Sam fall onto the floor.

“Hey, man! What the fuc--“

“SHHHHHH!“

“What do mean, ‘what about you and Bucky’,“ Y/N’s voice rang through the room as all the girls on the screen turned to look at her.

“What’s he like? I mean obviously, we know him, but he’s really quiet, and I can’t imagine what he’d be like in a relationship,“ Pepper said as all the guys turned to look at Bucky.

“Well,“

“Well,“ Y/N started. “What do you want to know?“

“What’s he like in bed?“

“Uh--“

“Is he really romantic and passionate? Or like rough? I bet he’s really good, and he probably has a lot of experience right?“ Nat asked like she didn’t know from their short-lived history. (damn I didn't mean to gun at my girl Nat like that, I just thought I'd mention it)

“Um--“

“Is he hung--“

“I don’t really feel comfortable talking about our sex life, it’s not really the type of couple we are,“ she said, not knowing that Bucky had just taken the largest sigh of relief.

“Wait, you haven’t had sex??“

“No! We have, it’s just, we’re really private, and I don’t think he’d want me to share this stuff,“ even though she didn’t know he was listening, she was 1000% right.

“Ok, that’s fine, how about-- what do you do together?“

“Well, we’re pretty simple and chill people, we’re usually always tangled up together somewhere, whether it’s on the couch or in bed, I think we just enjoy being around each other, regardless if we’re doing anything or not,“

“Awww,“ the girls said, as the guys started making fun of Bucky, other than Steve, who also aw-ed.

“That’s so sweet. Actually, now that I think of it, you don’t really show much affection towards each other around us,“

“Yeah, we try not to, because we want to stay professional, and we don’t want to make you guys uncomfortable, but we’re really cuddly when we’re alone,“

“Honestly, if you hadn’t told me you were dating, I wouldn’t have caught on,“ Pepper said as Wanda agreed.

“What do you love about him?“

“Uh-- I can’t really choose just one thing. I don’t know, I mean-- we’ve been together for what, a year? and every time I see him I get all giddy and nervous, and he always makes me blush by doing the smallest thing,“ she continued, as the girls listened in awe. “He just makes me feel like the most important thing at all times, and even though we don’t show it, he’s always making me feel special and-- I just love him,“

“I just love him,“ both rooms were silent as the guys stared at the screen. All of them, even though a few wouldn’t admit it, had gotten emotional. At that moment, Bucky felt like it was just him and her.

“I can’t-- I’m gonna fucking cry,“ Sam said, rapidly grabbing the tissue box.

“Have you told her you love her yet?“ Steve asked Bucky, placing a hand on his shoulder.

“No, I’ve been too scared to,“

“Well what the fuck are you doing standing here then?“ Steve said as everyone looked at him weirdly. “Go!”

At that, Bucky abruptly power-walked to their room. Once he got there, he burst into the room, ignoring the screams for him to leave, and dragged Y/N out of the room, taking them down the hall.

"Um, hi," she said wiping a stray tear. "What are you doing?"

"I love you,"

"I-- uh-- what?!" she said, confused at the weird timing. "I-- how did you--"

"We were eavesdropping on your girls talk and--"

"YOU WHAT?!"

"No, but that doesn't matter, because I was too scared to tell you, but I feel the exact same way," he said pulling her closer to him. "Y/N, I love you,"

"Well, obviously I love you too," she said as they both smiled. "So, uh-- how much did you hear?"

"All of it,"

"Oh- that's fine, I guess?"

"It totally isn't!" Steve said as they turned around to see everyone watching them.

"Get outta here!" Bucky said as they scrambled to leave.

"I love you, Bucky,"

"I love you too, Y/N," he said as their lips locked, fitting perfectly with one another.

#buckybarnes #bucky x reader #marvel #avengers

107 notes · View notes

agirlwithachakram · 3 years ago

Note

I like Druig a lot and your post about how his telepathy is intrinsic to his being but doesn’t make him particularly cunning or smooth is so true. I wonder if it’s the dry, hard outer shell and his tendency to needle people that makes some think he’s rougher around the edges than he is. All character interpretations are fine, of course, it’s just really interesting to me whenever I see that because I immediately read him as one of the softest of the group. Even more than Makkari, who I think along with Kingo and Sersi might be the most genial, but also seems slightly closed off emotionally.

Yes he's so squishy! I think he does have the gooiest insides, even more than Sersi (her emotional resilience is one of the reasons why she can get closer to humans and he can't). that's why he's such a jerk, it's because he doesn't feel safe with his family anymore (except Makkari), he doesn't feel supported. And, you know, I think there is pretty strong justification for them to disagree with his actions and even pull away from him personally, but either way, it's happening, and it's really painful for him. hence the protective outer shell and claws out.

okay sort of a side note but his powers being bigger than his cunning made me think like...how the FUCK did he handle the logistics of abducting all those people at once? There are children, there are probably old people and sick people, where is the food, the water, it will literally take MONTHS to get down to Peru, were they likely to run into Balboa, this is like 1000s of people, right? there were FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND PEOPLE in Tenochtitlan in 1519. In 1520, smallpox ravaged the population, leading to further deaths from famine (because people couldn't work the fields/chinampas) but I can't find good numbers on it. Still, there were at least thousands! Druig, that is so many people. plus the invading Spaniards. what is your plan here. And! it wasn't just Spaniards vs. Aztecs. There were local factions, there were alliances and rivalries and political issues. the man has his work cut out for him, is what I'm saying. the scene of him saying fuck it to Arishem's stupid plan and stopping the battle and leaving with all the humans is great, but like. did he text Makkari like "hey so uhhh i am in WAY over my head, don't suppose you could run to costco real quick" five minutes later.

/end tangent

and yeah Makkari is SO relatable to me. She's pleasant and friendly but she's TOTALLY closed off. she didn't see her family (aside from, i think we can safely assume, her boyfriend) for five hundred years! The first time we get a strong sense of what she's really feeling and thinking is when she's trying to kill Ikaris! She's very expressive but most of her serious emotions that she shows are about Druig. because like, when you find your person, when you have someone you can have all the feelings about, you can both do that and remain uncomfortable with fully expressing other feelings.

this is partly me projecting and I think this turned up in a different post and/or a fic I wrote or something, but yeah I think that's Makkari, she struggles to connect with humans and that has affected her willingness to open up in general.

#eternals #marvel #ask response

4 notes · View notes

livlepretre · 3 years ago

Note

Hi! You probably get asked this all the time and I haven't had the the chance to see it. What's your advice about gaining confidence about your writing? I have moments when it just flows; I enjoy it; and what I write feels true to me. But sometimes I go back and I second-guess everything and accuse myself of being pretentious. It's my current cycle. I'm asking because I love your writing and you seem to have a healthy relationship with it.

Ask away, friend :)

Honestly the main thing that's going to give you confidence is probably just time-- I find it much easier to let my former anxieties about my writing roll off my back now at 31 than I did when I was 21. The longer you write, and keep at it, the more you will figure out what you like about your writing, or other people's writing, and the more you will find yourself dismissing things that are supposed to be "good" but which leave you cold, and being attracted to things which are "hokey" or unpopular just because you really really like them. Writing really isn't about "good or bad" so much as "do I like this? does this make me feel things? think interesting things? is it fun?" Who cares what the popular opinions are on the matter?

BUT here are some things that could be proactively useful:

1) Give yourself permission to write however you want! It's only pretentious if you find it pretentious-- and pretension, in my personal experience, tends to arise out of dishonesty on the part of the writer. If you're writing something you find meaningful, and truthful, then it can't be pretentious-- it's anything but. So what if it's lofty stuff? GO FOR IT! We need those sorts of stories! I used to have a lot of fear about writing "purple prose" and also about being melodramatic in my writing-- and then I was reading a novel, really enjoying it, and realized that it does all of the things I had held back on in my writing out of fear and anxiety and that I should just say to hell with it and do the things in my writing that I wanted. Like, be as emotionally devastating and really linger on those things as much as I desired, because that's what I like to write. So, just give yourself permission to be "pretentious," but know that you aren't being pretentious at all because you are writing from a place of truth.

2) Not every writing project needs to have the same "bar" for yourself-- I find it helpful to decide when I start a fic whether I'm going to obsess over every little detail (hello Fairytale Ending) or whether I'm going to intentionally keep it casual, and write and publish messy first drafts that kind of meander and explore random tangents and just be satisfied with the writing being imperfect but fun ((The Stars Were Brightly Shining) is mostly a writing exercise I designed for myself to destress because I just write a short 1300 word or so chapter and then publish, so a lot of the time I can get a chapter out after only an afternoon of writing, vs. in FE where it might take me weeks to publish one 8000 word behemoth of a chapter that is compulsively worked over). So, basically, let some writing be more serious, and some more just for the fun of it. This can really help get things flowing.

3) Don't write if you don't feel like it. Unless you're writing for your work. But if it's a hobby-- keep it a hobby. Write when you want to, and don't let it feel like an obligation, because it's not. It should be for fun, when you have the headspace and the desire.

4) Find a time of day when you write best. This can really help you feel like writing more. For example, I'm best at writing in the mornings-- thoughts are clearer, words flow much more easily, and scenes that totally stump me when I pull open a story in the evenings flow like a miracle if I open the document up right when I wake up. Obviously, most of the time I can't write in the morning-- but a couple of days a week, sometimes more often than that if there's a holiday, I can, so I try to make an effort to if I'm excited about the idea of writing. This time for you might be late at night, when there are fewer distractions from other people, or it might be right after school/work, or on your lunch break, or only on Sunday afternoons when the light is just right. But find that time, and it will really help you to think.

5) If you're going through a funk, try Gentle Writing as a technique. This is for when you want to write-- genuinely-- but you're having a ton of trouble getting the words out. The idea is this: instead of trying to meet a high and ultimately arbitrary word count which can add unneeded stress and anxiety (I have to write 1000 words today or it's not writing!), give yourself permission to write however much you actually want to write and be content with that. That might mean writing a paragraph, a few lines of dialogue, or maybe just one sentence. The idea is any writing is writing. It could even be just adding in a word, or switching a word or a phrase out on something you've already written to something that sounds better. It could be just rereading what you already have, or jotting down some notes on your outline. It's called Gentle Writing because it's gentle on yourself, of course, but also because it's about rearranging your relationship to your writing and doing away with the arbitrary stressors that tells us you're not a real writer! Because of course you are. This is probably the form of writing that I practice the most often, with those spurts of furious inspiration where everything just flows only happening occasionally.

6) Accept and embrace the inherent imperfection of the craft. I prefer writing fic and self-publishing in many ways to submitting work for publication in other forums because that medium embraces the messiness of writing-- it's okay to have typos (I have them, you have them, everyone has them) and it's okay to be totally experimental and have clunky formatting and change your ideas midway through the process-- posting chapter by chapter tends to encourage those sorts of changes, and the "learn as you go" approach and it's easy to see it in fic-- but all of this is also true in published works, it's just that what we see when we read a book is far from the original manuscript-- many revisions past. Fic helps me to remember that all writing has its flaws, its failures, and its inadequacies, but that the whole process is really a big learning process, and hopefully the next fic or even the next chapter of the fic is written a little bit better. It's actually super freeing to realize that writing is always going to be imperfect-- for me, that's what helps me move on from past mistakes and keep swimming forward.

I hope some of this might be helpful. Good luck with your writing!!

#anonymous #on writing

9 notes · View notes

litwitlady · 4 years ago

Text

Love Out Loud

Okay, so I was trying to write the S3 wish fic, but got really frustrated and deleted 1000 words. I wrote this instead. Inspired by Tyler’s scruffy little selfie yesterday and my ferocious need for Michael to be overwhelmed by his desire for the beauty that is Alex Manes. Very slight sexual situations ahead. Set in the near S3 future.

Michael Guerin is distracted. He’s supposed to be working on a new piece of alien tech to keep Mr. Jones restrained outside of the turquoise mines. But Alex is sitting no less than a foot to his left and it’s all Michael can do not to make those twelve inches disappear.

Alex is on vacation. A leave of absence after his father’s death. Bereavement. He hasn’t taken a single day off since joining the Air Force unless you count the time his leg got blown off or that other time his father and his brother abducted him.

Holiday Alex is a wonder to behold. He’s gone several days without shaving. Michael wonders what the overgrown scuff would feel like against his skin. The thought is overwhelming and makes him squirm in his seat. Alex is completely fucking oblivious.

The Project Shepard base had been permanently shut down after Jesse died. So, Alex has moved everything into Michael’s bunker. Which had seemed like the obvious solution at the time, but now Michael realizes new and unexpected problems have arisen. Like the way Alex smells.

Also, his hands. They are beautiful. Even just flicking back and forth through the Caulfield documents and old newspapers trying to find mention of a Mr. Jones. Sometimes, Alex reaches out and touches Michael’s arm, wanting him to read something he’s found. Michael stops breathing every time.

Currently, things are in crisis. Alex is leaning forward on his stool and his t-shirt has ridden up in the back. The merest slice of olive skin is on full display and Michael’s heart is racing. He worries he might actually start drooling. Drawing his eyes away, he pinches the tender skin on the underside of his forearm and tries to refocus on his work.

Because the thing is, Alex is seeing Forrest. Casually – that’s the word Alex had used and the word Michael recites daily like a prayer. Casually means not serious. Casually means off and on. Casually means not forever. It implies a lack of feeling, a lack of investment. But it also implies sex. Sex with someone who is not him. The thought haunts Michael.

Don’t worry; he knows he’s a hypocrite.

For a time, he manages to focus pretty well. There’s a brief moment of panic when Alex has to bend over and retrieve his pencil. Michael recovers quickly. Until the unthinkable happens and Alex slides his stool as close to Michael as possible. ‘Hey, take a look at this. I think Mr. Jones might have gotten captured for a time.’

Michael hears Alex’s voice distantly in some far-off land, but the blood rushing through his body is entirely preoccupied with how Alex’s entire jean-clad thigh is pressed against his own. He swallows and stares at where their bodies meet, burning from hip to knee. He cannot for the life of him recall what Alex asked only two seconds ago. Lord help him.

Something must be wrong with him. He’s spent the past year barely thinking about Alex. Sure, there’s been the occasional dream. And there’s been a few times he’s picked up the phone to call him. Once he drove to his house and even knocked on the door. A time or two he’s jerked off to the thought of Alex’s mouth wrapped around his cock, but that’s perfectly normal. Right?

Wrong.

Everything he’s told himself concerning Alex for the past year is just so many lies. Alex is always the most attractive person Michael’s ever met and sex is always on the table even when it’s not. Maybe even especially when it’s not. Like right now with his criminal fucking thigh.

A memory surfaces. Of Alex home from leave after his second tour. Michael swears he won’t go to him. Will sit in the airstream all by himself no matter how long it takes for Alex to be gone again. But then. A knock at the door. Those sparkling hazel eyes. The freckles scattered across his cheeks. That sweet fucking mouth. Clothes thrown everywhere. Alex spreading Michael’s legs with that same villainous thigh.

Jesus fuck. Michael is in trouble.

Alex is calling his name, shaking his shoulder, concern evident in his voice. Michael tears his eyes away from where their thighs touch and looks up at him. He knows he must look slightly unhinged – eyes heavy-lidded, chest heaving, mouth parted wantonly. But Alex doesn’t seem to notice the sex of it all. ‘What’s wrong?’

Michael swallows several times and clears his throat. ‘Um, nothing. What’s up?’

It’s the best his brain can manage.

Alex is not buying what he’s selling. And before he can stop him, Alex’s hand is on Michael’s thigh, his thumb rubbing back and forth in soothing circles doing the absolute most but not soothing a goddamn thing. ‘You’re sweating. What’s wrong? Should I call Kyle?’

Michael is on the verge of doing something ruinous. He is teetering on the very dangerous ledge of want, need, desire. And love. In utter desperation, he stumbles backwards off his stool and ends up on his ass. When Alex kneels beside him in a panic, Michael scoots as far away from him as possible. ‘Stop, Alex. Please.’

They sit there for several long moments. Alex in total confusion. Michael willing his cock to go back to sleep. This cannot go on. Eventually, Michael stands up and moves his stool to another table. Alex watches as he gathers all his various tools and moves them to the other table. He plops back down on his seat, his back turned to Alex’s innocently filthy presence, and resumes his work like nothing happened.

He hears Alex shuffle around. Hears him head to the ladder. ‘I’ll work at home. Didn’t know I was bothering you.’ His voice filled with hurt.

Michael sighs and turns to him. ‘No, Alex, please don’t go.’ Alex pauses but doesn’t turn around, hand still clasping the ladder. ‘You aren’t bothering me. I swear.’ This time Alex does turn back to him. Michael hates the way his eyebrows furrow at him accusingly. When was the last time he’d made Alex smile? He can’t remember. It’s a damning realization.

Taking a deep breath, he gets up and approaches Alex slowly. He wants to buy some time – work out what to say in his brain. Unfortunately, the bunker is not that big and not 30 seconds go by before he’s as close to Alex as he dares. Michael wants to open his mouth and say ‘I love you’. He wants to say ‘stay with me, forever’. But what he does say is ‘I’m sorry’. It’s barely a whisper.

‘Sorry?’

‘Yeah. Sorry that you believe you could ever bother me. That I’ve somehow made you believe that.’ Michael grabs the strap of Alex’s cross-body bag and pulls it back over his head. ‘Stay. I’ll go grab us some lunch. We can talk. I want to talk.’ A distant memory echoes between them. He steps back, clutching Alex’s bag to his chest, and waits for his answer.

‘I’d like that.’ Alex returns to his seat and Michael releases his breath. He smiles to himself and thinks about what a relief it will be to finally love Alex out loud.

#malex #malex fic #michael guerin #alex manes #where is all this michael pov stuff coming from?

136 notes · View notes

pollylynn · 4 years ago

Photo

Title: Proprium WC: 1000

“Do you ever look back on something you’ve done and it’s like somebody else is doing it?” — Alexis Castle, Limelight (6 x13)

He’s never regretted his past. He has a million reasons why, in his whole life, he has truly never regretted his past, beginning with the truly superficial: His past was a hell of a lot of fun.

He’d discovered early the need for transgression—not just the willingness to transgress, but as the scholarship kid who needed constantly to demonstrate his right to exist at this boarding school, at that prep school, he had learned to lead others into transgression. He was the laugh riot, the total lunatic, now recruiting those who were up for absolutely anything. It had its consequences, but it was fun.

And then came a modicum of fame, and that first little burst of wealth. There was Kyra, then, and maybe he regrets that a little. She was an anchoring, tempering force, and maybe it’s more accurate to say he’s embarrassed by that. He’s embarrassed at the cliché of needing a good woman to keep him from complete excess.

And then there wasn’t Kyra. Kyra was gone, but he’d learned not to be quite so stupid with his money, and that still left over quite a tidy Transgression Fund, and Richard Castle picked up where little Ricky Rodgers had left off, and he really doesn’t regret any of that—not even the police horse, though possibly he regrets things in his permanent medical record born of the unwise decision to ride his mighty loaner stallion truly bareback.

He doesn’t regret Meredith—even without taking into consideration that he could never regret the relationship that gave him his daughter, he doesn’t actually regret the high-profile volatility of it. He doesn’t regret straightening himself up and remaking his image into something much more kid friendly when it became clear that Meredith was neither going to remake her image nor become more kid friendly. He doesn’t regret the stiff, cultivated Gina years any more than he regrets the release valve years in between.

He has always believed this narrative of himself—his regret-free legend—but current events seem to be shaking its foundation. Mandy Sutton shakes its foundation, because she is a hot, miserable mess. But she’s also a familiar mess, to a point, at least.

He’s searching back through the young woman’s recent and not-so-recent true tales of hangovers and trashed hotel rooms for the case and for himself—and also so he doesn’t have to write Pi’s impossible recommendation. He’s searching back, and all of it rings a bell. He sees in the photos and the clipped, angry quotes how unhappy Mandy Sutton was, has been, is, and he remembers with sudden and startling fidelity, what it was like to be that lonely, to be always falling forward into the next messed up moment.

It’s worse for her. His projection or nostalgia or whatever it is goes only so far. It’s exponentially worst for Mandy because she’s exponentially more famous, because she doesn’t have even the daffy, intermittent support of Martha Rodgers, she has a personal assistant and a mother whose made herself into a distant work friend. She has skeevy exes coming out of the woodwork, and it’s another cliché, but the Jesse Joneses of the world are always going to be more of a nightmare than the Merediths, the Ginas, and so on.

He’s caught up in empathy for Mandy Sutton that surprises him in how far beyond nostalgia it goes, how far beyond any kind of extended paternal feeling for this young woman who is just a few years older than his own daughter. He’s caught up in something that might be belated regret for the years he spent emotionally treading water—transgressing to keep everyone’s expectations low, not least of all his own.

He’s so caught up that he misses whatever it is that Ryan and Esposito are laughing over as they come strolling into the break room. He hears Beckett and Facebook and Dad. He might hear Aunt someone or other, but he’s distracted. His mind isn’t on the two of them, until it is—until the name of Aunt someone or other resolves in his mind—Aunt Theresa who has memorized every scandalous act he has ever committed and several he has not committed. Aunt Theresa who hates him. He puts the pieces together.

“Beckett was talking to her dad?” He twists around on the to face the boys and nearly tips over backward.

Ryan has the good grace to look a little sheepish, but Esposito finds it all hilarious. “Oh, yeah, Castle! Your fling with your ex-wife? That’s all over the Beckett net.”

He closes the lid of his laptop with key-crunching force. He leaves it sitting on the high top and goes in search of her. She’s at her desk, her pen moving furiously over a legal pad. She’s engrossed, but he risks interrupting. He feels suddenly like he has to.

“I’m sorry about the Page 6 thing.” He sinks into his chair. “Kate. I’m sorry.”

Her head snaps up. She’s annoyed that he’s interrupted her train of thought, or she is about to be annoyed by that, but she sees that he’s serious. She sees that his regret is sincere and takes a breath to clear as much of it from her voice as she can.

“Castle. I don’t seriously think you were gazing lovingly at your ex-wife.” She gestures at the spread of paparazzi photos of Mandy fanned across her desk. “It’s not your fault tabloid journalism and gossip columns exist.”

“No,” he says, “But my past . . . who I was. Anything they write about me is plausible. And it’s not just about me anymore. It’s about you, too.” He’s casting about for the words to convey this strange state of mind he’s in. “And I’m sorry for that.”

She’s giving him an odd look, but she snakes her hand across the desk and gives his fingers a discreet squeeze. “Hey. Don’t be, okay? Who you are now. That’s what matters.”

A/N: Castle. Introspection. Super not a thing.

Images via homeofthenutty

17 notes · View notes

jeonsweetpea · 4 years ago

Note

Hey bubs. Just so you know, I think people who are going to judge and criticize you for something that makes you happy SUCK. A lot of things that girls (especially young girls) enjoy are often ridiculed... But as I've gotten older I've realized it's bc of this long standing belief that our hobbies and interests aren't as important. Which is total bullshit. Have you expressed how much it hurts you that they aren't respectful of your interests? I would hope that your loved ones would :( today sounds like it was a rough day, here's to hoping tomorrow will be better 🥃

🥺❤️ Oh my love, you are always so wonderful to me and I’m thankful you take the time to read my posts and talk to me. Thank you! Today was definitely a lot better b/c I got to see my bf. Hehe. But I’ll be answering your question under the cut b/c it might be long and negative~.

I’ve always been judged for liking K-Pop since my junior high days (when I first found out about it). But I ignored the haters b/c they weren’t my friends and imo, it was their loss if they didn’t want to give K-Pop a chance. Haha. Back then, my bff was also into K-Pop and though we were into different fandoms, we understood each other. I’ve known her since we were practically born and it was something we bonded over among other things.

But once high school hit, so many things happened and our friendship went through a lot of obstacles. But we pulled through. However, she stopped getting invested into K-Pop as much as I did and I completely respected that. Then we started college and our majors kept us apart. Still, we tried to hang out whenever we could.

She’s always been career-oriented, extremely talented, so she put 1000% into her studies. I found it hard to understand what she was going through in terms of stress/projects, but I was still there to comfort her. And she said she’d be there for me too... yet it never really felt like it.

Because I’m so invested into K-Pop and more specifically BTS right now, she felt like she couldn’t understand me. At all. So she never tried to comfort me whenever I was feeling down because of something K-Pop related. Heck, she avoided it all together just because she “couldn’t understand”. I never asked for her to understand. I just wanted her there for me.

A great example was when I was depressed about my horrible BTS concert experiences and my stress over getting tickets for the concert that was supposed to happen in May 2020. It was also around the same time I got wrapped up in a toxic friend group situation and had to drop them. And my bff and I, we don’t really text that much tbh unless we have something light-hearted to say or we really needed one another.

She did far from comfort me when I was depressed b/c of my concert experiences and through her words, I knew she was judging me for letting it affect me so much. It hurt.

And then I was called a delusional BTS fan from a close family member, so that added more to my pain as well.

Have you expressed how much it hurts you that they aren't respectful of your interests?

Sad to say, but if I even tried to express myself, somehow the opposite party gets offended or angry and as a result, drops me. I really can’t share much with people anymore when I’m hurt or something without them making it all about themselves.

Something dumb happened between my bff and I recently, it shouldn’t have been a bigger deal than it was. But it opened my eyes to the fact that she is only there to comfort me whenever it’s something trivial and “easy” to understand. Whereas when I really need her for something serious (to me), she’s nowhere to be found. It made me realize all of our issues and that I’ve been clinging on to a friendship that’s probably best if we were just acquaintances. Sad to say it. But I’m done with people who don’t try as much as I do.

#dl #negative #lcksndkys #thank you for reading if you choose to lol #there's been too many hits on my mental health this year #and too many ppl who hurt me

2 notes · View notes

fantasyresident · 5 years ago

Text

The Complaints About Pokemon Sword and Shield Are Getting Ridiculous

For a while after the release of the first trailer introducing these new games, fans were actually pretty hyped and excited for the game’s release. Then we had the reveal of the Wild Area around the time of E3, which for whatever reason pissed some people off?? But then when it was announced that not every Pokemon would be in the game, that’s when the chaos began. Whiny fans who wanted all 1000-something Pokemon shoved compactly into this already busy and ambitious game took to the internet and created a storm of negativity about these games that in the eyes of a level-headed person are looking pretty damn promising and stunning. Sure, there are small things you can pick and choose to say “hey, that could be better”, but these so-called “fans” are completely destroying the once positive energy surrounding this game. They are misconstruing FACTS and spreading false information and in turn are spreading doubt among fans who would otherwise really like the games. What they don’t realize is (or maybe they do) that this is actually damaging the fanbase of Pokemon. When you spread false fears and get people to not buy these games for reasons that go beyond normal stupidity, you are being destructive. And yes, if you’re one of those over-the-top “fans” who says there’s nothing promising about these upcoming games, you are not only fooling yourself, but you’re being a fool. If you have criticisms, be fair and kind about them. When people work this damn hard on a game and they show that they are actually listening to the fans in many senses, you shouldn’t NITPICK small little things like the EXP. Share situation (if you’re not familiar with this, go look it up) or the National Dex “crisis”.

Game Freak has been super transparent when it comes to their reasons for doing these things and fans shouldn’t be this disrespectful towards them. They nearly doubled their original team size for a reason, and this shouldn’t go unnoticed. For those of you not buying the game because you can’t turn EXP Share off, or because you can’t have 1000 newly textured, newly animated, creatures that would have to be balanced with all the other ones they’re putting in the game, then go ahead, be my guest, miss out on the experience of a lifetime and bull about things they’ll likely fix in the future. When you finally have your way like you must always want, you’ll look like a total fool for sitting out Sword and Shield for these small little reasons. Now this isn’t to say that anyone with any form of complaints or grievances about the game are spoiled pests to the community. Not at all. If you have respectful criticisms for the game that are positive and if you’re providing other methods that they could use to fix a problem, then GOOD FOR YOU! Seriously, constructive criticism is welcome in any situation. But if you bomb a game before all the details even come out about it and not provide any better solution in a kind, understanding way, then the shame falls on you, not what you’re complaining about. You know who you are.

The truth is, this game already has many great features that improves upon past elements. While not much is known about the story, what we do know is sparking quite a lot of speculation and interest, and I believe that the story will not disappoint, because for me it never has thus far. The story has been constantly evolving with the gameplay. Sure, it’s been small steps sometimes, but Game Freak should be given credit for never going backwards like so many other games are doing these days. Game Freak understands the importance of multiple elements being good in a game, not just the graphics. So all of you griping about that infamous tree, you can calm down. It’s not final game footage and its not like that tree is going to be the center point of the game. I can’t believe I have to say that. When so many good advancements are being made to Pokemon like having the camping feature, advanced online cooperation between other players, far better customization of your character, 18 gyms (1 for each type), a huge cultural world, and yes, the graphics are the best they’ve been in my opinion (ASIDE from the goddamn tree. -_-) then fans shouldn’t be nitpicking and basing whether or not they’re going to buy the game off of those things they nitpick about. If you’re going to complain about something the game has to offer (which is an increasing amount of things), then offer solutions, offer constructive criticism to Game Freak. A company working that honestly hard on something doesn’t need to come out of their sweat shop just to hear unruly fans whining about how they don’t like the way a tree looks out in the wild or how they don’t want multiple Pokemon getting experience (Oh no, the end of the world), or how they think they’re stupid for not including every Pokemon in the game. The game will likely not be perfect, but it sure as hell is looking really great to say the least and many aspects of it are breathtaking. From the good world building and cultural themes, to the changing weather patterns in the wild area, to the diversity of areas to explore, it all looks so damn promising. Like it or hate it, its an ambitious project that Game Freak is serious about making the best they can make it.

#game freak #pokemon sword and shield news #no national dex #experience share #pokemon game #pokemon sword #pokemon shield #pokemon sword and shield controversy #pokemon controversy #grookey #sobble #scorbunny

66 notes · View notes

idolish7rabbitchats · 5 years ago

Text

Nanase Riku: Wonderful Octave Rabbit Chat Part 2

Tsumugi: Everyone, thank you for gathering when you’re busy! I thought that I would collect requests for “RADIO STATION ‘Twelve Hits!’” here.

T: To manage the chat and check the contents, us managers will also participate. Please take care of us!

7: I’m looking forward to the requests from everyone! Please take care of me!

100: It’s worth thinking about the request if you say that~!

8: Eh? You’re thinking of it now?

100: I already thought of it tho. (ゝ∀・＊)

1000: You already thought of it huh.

7: Momo-san’s requests are fun ones that always hype up the show! I always think they’re amazing!

100: Riku, you’re cute. (*>ω<)ω<*)

100: What kind of request would be good? Shall I ask for your order as an exception?!

1: Excuse me. Can you please not spoil our center?

9: Please do it as usual.

3: Denied by the guardians lolololol

2: They shut it out immediately (lol)

7: Iori and Tenn-nii, are you guys always going to treat me like a kid?!

7: [Angry Kinako Stamp]

100: I’ll go with the request I thought about properly lol

T: I’m looking forward to what requests there will be! Then, this time I will ask starting from the youngest again.

T: From Tamaki-san please!

4: Kay.

4: Tell us your unfailing funny stories.

7: That means the funny story which makes everyone laugh no matter who heard?

4: Yeah yeah. Your best one.

7: Got it! What should I talk about? I have a lot of funny stories!

6: Requesting for Riku to tell a funny story… Tamaki is a gambler huh.

3: When Riku says, “I have a funny story so listen!” sometimes it’s something we don’t really understand lol

7: Eh! That doesn’t happen right?!

4: Totally does.

1: It does.

7: Eeeeeh?!

1: Nanase-san, you laugh too easily sometimes.

2: Last time when you were talking about mishearing “ikura” and “okura,” you were talking like it was really fun right? Even we laughed infectiously too (lol)

10000: Since you talk with laughter, it’s fun to listen huh.

4: Rikkun talking passionately is funny and I like it!

7: I thought everyone laughed because the stories were funny...

7: And Sougo-san?! You think my stories are funny right!

5: Eh.

5: R-Right. It will be really catchy for some people!

7: Seeee!

3: Riku is positive huh! lololol

6: Sometimes, Sogo’s kindness is sharp as a knife.

T: Ikura and okura’s unfailing funny story amused me…!

T: Next is Iori-san please!

1: Yes. From me it’s “Try the request with all your might.”

1: There are a lot of fans who like to see an energetic and hardworking Nanase-san. I’m still thinking about the request, but as a radio show, it will be something huge.

2: Oh, as expected. It’s a good request that can show Riku’s nice appeal.

9: It’s a wholesome, fresh request that’s suitable for teen male idols.

7: Your request huh. I wonder what it will be!

1: It would be nice if it’s something like playing musical instruments like we have done in “IDOLiSH Night!”

1: I just thought about it but for example, mimicking the voice of the bunny at the production office.

9: I feel like that’s totally different tho.

Anesagi: It is.

1000: Doesn’t that just mean you want to see that Riku-kun?

10: I see, I get it! Because Riku-kun copying the bunny would be cute huh!

1: Inot

1: It’s not like that.

1: It’s just an idea.

1: I just wrote it down the idea that listeners would like because I thought about it.

7: If Iori wants to see it, I’ll mimic Kinako!

7: Myu! Myu~!

1: I’m saying it’s not. (Mad) (Mad) (Mad)

T: There will be many things you can do, it will be hard to choose…! Is there anything that Riku-san wants to try?

*T: Like a super hard recipe?

7: Like making curry from spices? We could do a curry party with everyone after the on-air!

1: Isn’t that too hard to try over the radio?

7: Right! Cuz it has to be something that can be understood with just the sound huh.

8: I thought making soba would be good but it seems hard huh.

4: Making pudding?

7: Everything seems interesting!

3: It would be hard without any visuals. Let’s keep those ideas for “IDOLiSH Night!”

1: I’ll think of something short and that works with only the sound for “Twelve Hits!”.

7: Thanks, Iori! Copying Kinako is fine too!

T: Iori-san, thank you for the specific idea! Next is Riku-san’s request for yourself please.

7: Yes! My request is “I want to show what I like about IDOLiSH7!”

7: I want to hear what IDOLiSH7's good points are and what the members like and such!

6: It’s a wonderful request! :-) Please thoroughly talk about what kind of me you like :-)

3: We’re talking about everyone! lol

7: A point I like about Nagi is even though you are older than me, you’re sometimes acting spoiled; I have lots of others!

6: Thanks, Riku. To makes you happier, I will become Riku’s younger brother from today onwards. I’ll be spoiled as much as you want.

6: Riku-oniisan.

7: Waaah! I’m happy! Doesn’t Nagi being a younger brother sounds amazing?!

5: Just hearing how he called it, it’s more like a neighbor than an actual brother…?

4: Nagicchi, me too!

6: I will gladly call you. Tamaki-oniisan.

4: Oooh! Somehow good!

4: Nagicchi, you have a younger brother talent.

7: I get it!

6: :-)))))

7: How about Iori asks him?!

1: Please don’t play weird games.. I’m fine.

6: Don’t hold back. Iori-oniisan.

7: That’s great huh, Iori! That you’re a big brother!

4: Isn’t it great.

1: What is this conversation?!

3: Our kids are cute lololol

10: It’s lively and cute. It feels like I’m seeing my brothers in my hometown!

100: Being like a big family is nice huuh!

1000: Everyone wanna be our kid?

2: Hahahah. It’s an interesting joke huh.

100: Yamato’s face is straight isn’t it lol

6: If I have brothers like everyone, I won’t get bored everyday X-)))

T: A big i7 family seems fun! lol

T: So then, next can we hear the request from Kujou-san please?

9: From me, “I want to hear Nanase-san’s goal for now.”

7: Goal meaning as an idol right…?

9: Of course. How do you want to be as an idol from now on, I wanna hear from Riku.

100: Suddenly it’s serious!

8: Like Tenn, it’s a serious one huh.

10: Yeah. It’s something only Tenn would ask huh.

7: My goal as an idol huh…

7: I want Tenn-nii to hear me too. About how I feel when I’m on the stage and what I want to deliver to them when I’m singing!

7: I want Tenn-nii to understand my way.

7: I’ll definitely pull this request!

9: If you actually pull this request, I’ll listen to your determination seriously.

7: Expect a lot from me!

T: Kujou-san, thank you for the serious request!

T: Next how about a request from Nagi-san?

6: From me it’s “Please tell me what ice cream you like.”

7: Ice cream? It’s fine but, that’s your request?

6: It’s because I ate Riku’s wafer ice cream the other day. I’m sorry… For an apology, I’ll buy what Riku likes.

6: It was an unavoidable tragedy. Please complain about this to the summer heat.

7: It’s been really hot lately huh! Lol I thought I ate it without realizing cuz it was so hot!

2: It’s only Nagi who could bring this request in this serious atmosphere.

6: Wafer ice cream is godly. (∩´∀｀)∩

8: And he’s not regretting at all (lol)

9: Even though Gaku did something similar recently.

8: I did? I don’t remember eating someone else’s ice cream.

9: It wasn’t ice cream. You didn’t remember so it means you don’t feel sorry after all.

10: Maybe, was it when Gaku mistook Tenn’s toothbrush and used it?

8: Huuh? It’s about that again? I noticed that right before I use it, it’s fine since I didn’t actually use it right?

9: Huh, now you shift to a defiant attitude?

10: Well well. We’ve written everyone’s names properly on them now so they won’t be mistaken anymore!

5: TRIGGER-san writes their names on their toothbrushes?!

7: Did he write “Tenn” on it…?

10: He wrote “TENN”!

9: Ryuu, you don’t have to say it.

7: Tenn-nii, it’s in English huh! So adult!

1: It’s more like a child though.

8: I wrote Yaotome.

10: I wrote Ryuu!

Okazaki: TRIGGER’s gap makes us feel their affinity!

Anesagi: You guys are not kindergarteners right... Please make now’s conversation off the record.

T: Y-Yes! I got it! Next is the request from Sougo-san please.

5: Yes. From me it’s “Let me hear a scary story.”

5: Since it’s summer, I thought a chilling request would be nice. Riku-kun has a sixth sense, so it seems like you have a lot of stories.

7: Feels summery! Please leave it to me!

4: I woooooon’t!!!!!!!!

3: This time it was canceled by Tamaki!

4: SO-CHAN WHY YOU DO A SCARY REQUEST?!!!!

5: I-Is that bad? I thought it’s seasonal and nice...

7: It’s fine, Tamaki. I won’t do that scary of a story! It’s not like ghosts are always doing scary things anyways.

7: Just last week, something interesting happened in the dorm bathrooms!

3: I said no bathrooms!!

2: No to the bathroom.

1: Bathroom is not good...

7: Eh, is that so? Then, I’ll talk about the bath!

3: That doesn’t really change it lololol

1: Um, Yotsuba-san froze like a rock...

7: Waah! Tamaki, I’m sorry! I didn’t intend to scare you..!

5: I’ll prepare earplugs so that Tamaki-kun doesn’t hear.

10: Sougo-kun, you think about your partner huh!

100: Is plugging your partner’s ears and continuing to talk about the horror stories thinking about them…? lolol

1000: The attitude of not changing the request is so rock, nice.

7: So that Tamaki won’t feel scared, I’ll tell a fun ghost story…!

10000: That’s not a horror story anymore lol

T: I’m a little interested in a fun ghost story... 3: But anyways, Tamaki seriously doesn’t move..!

6: Let’s wait for him to reboot :-)

5: I’m sorry. Can we take a little break?

5: After Tamaki-kun recovers, I’ll give him a presentation of the summer horror stories and demands as a radio show project. If it doesn’t work, I’ll think about different request.

7: Sougo-san, let’s give him a presentation together! Because it’s a request you thought up for me!

5: Thanks, Riku-kun.

T: So then, let’s take a little break!

7: I’ll contact you when we can start again!

V2:

T: There will be many things you can do, it will be hard to choose…! Is there anything that Riku-san wants to try?

T: How about a farming experience?

7: I think it would be super hard but I wanna try! Freshly harvested vegetables seem especially delicious!

1: Isn’t that too hard to try over the radio?

V3:

T: There will be many things you can do, it will be hard to choose…! Is there anything that Riku-san wants to try?

T: Tap-dancing Riku-san seems cool!

7: I-Is that so? Since you recommended it to me, maybe I’ll try it…!

1: Isn’t that too hard to try over the radio?

#Idolish7 #idolish seven #Takanashi Tsumugi #tsumugi takanashi #Nanase Riku #Riku Nanase #idol #game #gaming #rabbit chat #translation #japanese #english #game app #idol game #Rhythm game #Wonderful Octave #12 hits

48 notes · View notes

youzicha · 5 years ago

Note

could the Chernobyl disaster have happened outside the Soviet Union or the communist bloc? was there anything socialist or autocratic about it? or could it have happened in any similarly-dangerous and similarly-complex engineering project?

My immediate reaction is to group the Chernobyl accident with other high-tech accidents like plane crashes, industrial fires, or radiation incidents in the west, but maybe that’s because I like to read step-by-step accident descriptions which focus on the technical aspects! It was definitely the case that Soviet nuclear power plants were much less safe than the western ones, although it’s not obvious if that is due to authoritarianism…

From an outside view, I think the various western incidents should make us less comfortable that it couldn’t have happened here.

• The radiation releases from the Fukushima accident were ten times smaller than at Chernobyl, but it still represents a failure of reactor containment. Apparently quite a lot of Cs-137 was in fact released from Fukushima (like a third of the Chernobyl release), but most of it went into the Pacific ocean rather than the atmosphere.

• The Three Mile Island accident showed that U.S. reactor operators can make mistakes too. I used to dismiss it—in the end there were no big radioactivity releases, so no big deal, right?—but after the Fukushima accident maybe we should re-evaluate it. TMI had a core meltdown and a hydrogen explosion, much like Fukushima, so I guess it could have gone badly.

• The Windscale reactor was also graphite moderated, so the 1957 Windscale fire might have developed into a miniature version of the Chernobyl accident. (The physical size of the reactors were similar—180 tonnes uranium and 2000 tonnes graphite at Windscale, versus 190 tonnes uranium and 1700 tonnes graphite at Chernobyl 4—but the Chernobyl burnup was 10.9 MW-d/kg while a typical value for making weapons plutonium is 0.5 MW-d/kg, so the Chernobyl reactor contained 20 times more radioactivity.)

At Chernobyl the core was scattered and caught fire, and then over the course of a few days almost all the graphite burned and the radioactive material was dispersed in the smoke. At Windscale, the graphite caught fire inside the reactor and there were no plans for how to extinguish it. According to the post-accident report,

[After the fire had been going on for about a day] the use of water was first considered. Two hazards had to be examined: first the danger of a hydrogen-oxygen explosion which would blow out the filters, second a possible criticality hazard due to the replacement of air by water. The Management were informed, however, of the danger of releasing high temperature Wigner energy if the graphite temperatures were to rise much higher than 1200°C. It was thought that this might well ignite the whole pile.

Happily the water worked well and the fire was put out before it spread to the rest of the core, but the filters in the air stack basically did nothing, so a large fire would have created a major radiological disaster.

Chernobyl was much bigger than all western accidents, but to me it feels like an extreme point on a spectrum.

If we take an inside view, the Chernobyl accident happened because of a combination of operator error and poor design, and we could try to trace either of these to Soviet authoritarianism.

As for the operator errors, there were three fateful decisions. First, the Chernobyl chief engineer Nikolai Fomin approved the plan for the turbine draw-down experiment, classifying it as an “electrical” experiment which could be signed off locally. In hindsight, because the experiment involved manipulating the power level of the reactor and the flow-rate of the cooling loop, it affected the dynamics of the reactor and should have been referred to physicists at Scientific Research Institute of Power Engineering (NIKIET) and the Committee for the Supervision of Nuclear Power Safety (Gosatomenergonadzor) for analysis and approval. It’s unclear if that would have changed matters, because the experiment would have been safe if executed according to the plan, but the physicists could perhaps have drawn attention to the safety aspects. As it were, the Chernobyl staff were quite complacent—perhaps because they had already tried it several times before, making various adjustments to the turbine control logic each time. On the day of the accident they seem to have treated it as a routine matter, and Fomin did not even notify plant director Brukhanov.

Maybe you can see the Soviet penchant for centralization here. I don’t know how it works in America, but Swedish nuclear power stations employ staff physicists who carry out calculations about how the plant will respond to various abnormal scenarios. That seems like it may be helpful for ensuring that the operating staff has easy access to physics expertise, compared to the Soviet system where those calculations where done far off in another city, and under a separate bureaucracy (NIKIET was under the Ministry of Medium-sized Machinery, while the reactor staff was employed by the Ministry of Energy).

Then in the reactor control room, deputy chief engineer Anatoly Dyatlov gave two crucial bad orders. First, he had the operators deviate from the plan and start the experiment from a 200 MW power level instead of 700 MW. It’s unclear why he would do that—at the trial it was suggested that he might have thought a lower level would be safer, although it actually made the reactor dangerously unstable. Then, when the reactor was inadvertently shut down, he insisted that the operators violate regulations and start it up again, which created the conditions for the explosion. Interestingly, Dyatlov’s position was administrative, outside the operational chain of command, so formally he had no authority to give orders to the operators on duty, but he still expected to be obeyed and threatened to have them fired if they didn’t comply.

The Chernobyl tv-series tries to sell this as part of Soviet authoritarianism too—they insert a fictional scene where plant director Brukhanov pressures Dyatlov to complete the test so that Brukhanov can get a promotion—but that still would not explain the 200MW order. Perhaps some of the blame should go to Dyatlov’s personality: his coworkers say he was knowledgeable but stubborn and intolerant of dissent. Either way, it’s hard to believe that that overconfident, authoritarian managers were unique to the Soviet Union. I don’t have any examples from the nuclear industry, but maybe you could look at e.g. ship captains—it is easy to find examples of captains making bad decisions, either because of pressure from their bosses or because they are just being stupid.

Meanwhile, the reactor design also suffered from several problems that contributed to the disaster. On paper, this should not have happened. The Soviet nuclear energy industry was monitored by the USSR State Committee for the Supervision of Nuclear Power Safety (Gosatomenergonadzor), who produced a set of Nuclear Safety Regulations for Nuclear Power Plants (NSR), and then approved the technical safety report of a reactor design. The Chernobyl plant was approved in May 1975.

It shouldn’t have been. A 1991 report points out that the regulations include NSR Article 3.2.2, the total power coefficient of reactivity is not positive under any operating condition, and NSR Article 3.3.26, the reactor’s emergency protection system must ensure that the chain reaction is automatically, quickly and reliably terminated—which point to the two major flaws which caused the accident. At the time of the approval, Gosatomenergonadzor was part of the Ministry of Medium-sized Machinery, and the same ministry also controlled the NIKIET and the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, the two main designers of the reactors. In this way, there was very little external checks of what the (notoriously secretive) Ministry was doing. Former Chernobyl physicist Vladimir Chernousenko writes:

How could a reactor with so many defects be built and put into operation? Firstly, no-one analyzed the RBMK plans at the design stage (that is, there was no independent, external scrutiny). Secondly, the designers themselves did carry out an analysis, but on a very superficial level (because of the poor experimental facilities, the chronic backwardness of the available computer technology, etc.).

Thirdly, thanks to the monopoly that exists in Soviet nuclear science, the RBMK reactors, unlike airplanes, automobiles, etc., were not subjected to any serious tests or trials of their durability. That is why 16 reactors were brought on line without even a Technical Basis of Safety of Reactor Installation (TBSRI) or a TBS of Nuclear Power Stations (TBSNPS) certificate.However, with these obligatory parts of the project missing, it is illegal to not only operate a nuclear power station, but even to build it (GSG §§1.2.3, 2.1.14). It was only in 1988 that the chief designer made an attempt to officially certify the safety of the second- and third-generation RBMK stations.

As for why the design had these flaws in the first place, both of them can be traced to schedule pressures and cost-cutting. First, the choice of a water cooled/graphite moderated reactor is inherently risky, because a disruption of the water supply can cause a power surge. When drawing up the plans for civilian nuclear power the Ministry of Power had considered three possible designs named RMBK-1000 (water-cooled/graphite-moderated), RK-1000 (gas-cooled/graphite-moderated) and WWER-1000 (water-cooled/water-moderated), and in September 1967 they announced that the RK-1000 had been selected. However, this was too technically ambitious to meet the schedule, and one year later they instead opted for the RBMK-1000, which was similar to the reactors already used to produce weapons plutonium.

A graphite moderated reactor has a positive void coefficient, and as it turned out, when the control rods were fully withdrawn this could get big enough to overwhelm the thermal coefficient and make the overall power coefficient positive. This effect had not been anticipated ahead of time, but was noticed experimentally when the reactors were taken in use:

Neither the designers, nor the plant operators, nor the regulatory body attached proper importance to the large positive coefficients of reactivity which became apparent from experiments, and they did not attempt to find acceptable theoretical explanations. The obvious discrepancy between the actual core characteristics and the projected design values was not adequately analysed and consequently it was not known how the RBMK reactor would behave in accident situations.There are a number of explanations for the poor quality of the calculational analysis of the safety of the design. These include the fact that, until recently, Soviet computer techniques were chronically outdated and the standard of computer codes was very low. Three dimensional non-stationary neutron-thermal-hydraulic models are required in order to calculate the physical parameters of an RBMK reactor under different operating conditions. Such models first became available only shortly before the Chernobyl accident and were not really developed until after the accident.

Second, the scram rods were poorly designed. In addition to the too-short graphite tips (which makes the reactor explode instead of stopping), the system was much too slow—the rods were forced through a water-filled channel and took 18 seconds to fully deploy. Actually, the 1969 technical drawings had neither of these problems, because the scram rod tubes were water-film cooled, so the rods could be inserted in 2.5 seconds and did not displace water. Film-cooled channels are more difficult to construct and more expensive, and the final design reused the water-filled channels for control rods for the scram rods as well.

In addition to the above two flaws, western publications after the accident generally pointed at a difference in design philosophy. Western power plants follow a “Defense in Depth” philosophy, with redundant systems designed to handle multiple simultaneous failures. The USSR took a “different” approach:

The Soviet philosophy of safety with both breeder and conventional reactors places heavy emphasis on excellence of design, reliability of equipment, and careful operating procedures to prevent any releases of radioactivity to the environment. Special containment structures are not thought to be justified because of the improbability of any serious accident, and such domes are therefore judged to be costly and superfluous precautions. The design-basis accident also does not include loss of coolant in the core, and thus the reactors do not have a special emergency core cooling system. Soviet writers question the philosophy of designing redundant systems, for:

“An excess of such backup systems, where the need or the reliability is not clearly assured, introduces operational complexity and reduces over-all safety.”

It is acknowledged that some types of accidents might release radiation accumulated in the coolant, or possibly even some of the activity from unsealed fuel cans, but such releases are not projected as exceeding the daily permissible releases from power stations (1,000-10,000 Curies or less).

The Soviet equipment reliability was far from excellent, so I guess this difference in outlook was mainly due to a more relaxed attitude to radiation leaks. In the 1957 Kyshtym disaster the USSR had suffered what was then the worst radiation accident in history, and successfully kept the whole thing secret.

Indeed, the first six RBMK reactors (Leningrad 1&2, Chernobyl 1&2, and Kursk 1&2) had no structures at all to contain water/steam leaks, so any break in the cooling circuit would lead to a radioactivity release. (A 1991 report about post-Chernobyl safety improvements comments, “The main aim in these units must be to reduce the probability of large diameter pipe breaks to a point where such accidents may be termed hypothetical. With this in mind, some computerized and experimental research was carried out into the processes which cause cracks to appear.”)

Later RBMK reactors, including Chernobyl-4, added some containment structures more similar to Western reactors, by enclosing parts of the cooling circuit in pressure-tight concrete rooms that vented into a pressure-suppression (bubbler) pool. However, the reactor itself was too big to contain in this way. It was given pressure relief pipes, but they were only dimensioned to handle breaks in at most two of the 1661 fuel channels—the pressure from more extensive breaks could tear apart the entire core. NIKIET estimated the probability of a simultaneous two-channel break as 1e-8 per reactor-year, and three or more as negligibly improbable.

Although a lot of western publications after the accident highlighted the lack of containment, it is not known if a western-style containment building would have prevented the disaster—it’s impossible to say for sure, since it is not even known exactly what caused the explosion or how big it was. But in any case, it clearly shows the higher Soviet risk tolerance.

The risk tolerance is even more visible in the way that accidents were treated. The positive power coefficient was noted soon after the first RMBK reactor (Leningrad-1) was started, but never properly investigated. There were about 10 major accidents at Soviet nuclear reactors between 1970-85, killing at least 17 reactor workers and leading to multiple radiation releases to the environment. RBMK reactors suffered partial core meltdowns at Leningrad-1 in 1975 and Chernobyl-1 in 1982, proving that the supposedly unlikely simultaneous fuel channel rupture could happen quite often. And in 1983, the positive reactivity effect of the scram rods were noticed at both Ignalina-1 and Chernobyl-4. These accidents were more serious than Three Mile Island, and in the west any one of them would had prompted big efforts, but in the USSR they were kept secret.

The reactor designers at NIKIET were notified of the scram anomaly, and started to consider improvement to the rods to eliminate it, but it was not treated as a priority; the Chernobyl-4 reactor was to be upgraded after the next shutdown in 1986. They sent out a short and inconspicuous notice to the reactor operators. NIKIET also revised the operating instructions for the RBMK-1000, specifying a new minimum “operational reactivity margin” (ORM), i.e. a limit on how far the control rods may be retracted. In 1980 the ORM limit was set to 10, and then in 1983 it was increased to 15. (After the disaster, it was increased again to 30.) If this limit had been respected, it would have kept the power reactivity coefficient negative and prevented situations where the scram-rod could cause a reactivity increase, so the NIKIET engineers might have considered the two main flaws of the reactor solved. But the updated manual only stated a number for the ORM; it didn’t flag it as a safety-critical limit. The RBMK reactors were plagued by shoddy workmanship and the operators were in the habit of constantly improvising to work around issues.

So the safety standard of the Soviet reactors was low. But are these failings particular to east bloc authoritarianism? For each cause I listed above, it seems one can find examples of the same thing happening in the west.The RBMK designers assumed there would be no safety issue as long as the reactor operators followed the ORM in the manual; this seems very similar to how Boeing reasoned about the 737 MAX. Very low failure probabilities were invented out of thin air; much like in Feynman’s description of the space shuttle program. Equipment was in disrepair forcing the operators to improvise; much like in the U.S. Navy. Reports of safety incidents were ignored; when the crew was evacuated off the Deepwater Horizon, the installation manager was heard shouting “Are you fucking happy? Are you fucking happy? The rig’s on fire! I told you this was gonna happen” into a satellite phone.

And there was trouble even in the western nuclear program. The 1944 Hanford B reactor was also water cooled/graphite moderated, and it was placed in remote location since the core might explode. In the 1950s there was several core meltdowns in small American research reactors. And as we saw above, the Windscale reactor was rushed into service with no containment at all. Instead of asking why Soviet reactors were shoddy, perhaps we should ask how the western reactors became safe.

Part of the credit must go to the open society. From 1954 onwards, the U.S. government invited commercial companies to build nuclear power plants. Unlike secret military reactors, the application to build such plants were public, as was the Atomic Energy Commission’s decisions to judge them safe or not. And the first serious study of a worst-case nuclear accident, WASH-740, was done because Congress was considering a law to indemnify nuclear power companies.

But the nuclear industry is not unique in being regulated in this way, and nuclear power plants still seem safer than, e.g., oil rigs. Perhaps the other part of the credit belongs to the anti-nuclear movement. The very first commercial nuclear power plant was planned to be built at Bodega Bay near San Francisco—local activist started to organize against it already in 1958, and in 1964 the public pressure forced the AEC to reject the plant. In other words, from the very beginning, America has had a third party which reviews the government/industry decisions and pressure them to take safety seriously. And reading the Wikipedia historical description,

By the early 1970s, anti-nuclear activity had increased dramatically in conjunction with concerns about nuclear safety and criticisms of a policy-making process that allowed little voice for these concerns. Initially scattered and organized at the local level, opposition to nuclear power became a national movement by the mid-1970s when such groups as the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, Natural Resources Defense Council, Union of Concerned Scientists, and Critical Mass became involved.[43] With the rise of environmentalism in the 1970s, the anti-nuclear movement grew substantially:[42]

In 1975–76, ballot initiatives to control or halt the growth of nuclear power were introduced in eight western states. Although they enjoyed little success at the polls, the controls they sought to impose were sometimes adopted in part by state legislature, most notably in California. Interventions in plant licensing proceedings increased, often focusing on technical issues related to safety. This widespread popular ferment kept the issue before the public and contributed to growing public skepticism about nuclear power.[42]

In 1976, four nuclear engineers -three from GE and one from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission- resigned, stating that nuclear power was not as safe as their superiors were claiming.[47][48] These men were engineers who had spent most of their working life building reactors, and their defection galvanized anti-nuclear groups across the country.[49][50] […] These issues, together with a series of other environmental, technical, and public health questions, made nuclear power the source of acute controversy.

it is striking that every single aspect here—the grassroots organizing, the ballot initiatives, the whistleblowers—would be impossible in the Soviet Union. So according to this story, democracy is not sufficient to create a safe industry, but it is a necessary condition; without it, you can’t get the environmentalist movement.

The U.S. environmentalists got things done. Starting in the mid-1970 there was a dramatic increase in construction costs of nuclear power plants in the U.S., with the capital costs increasing several times over, and in the 1980s companies basically stopped building plants. (You can’t get any safer than that!) Although there are several reasons for the cost increase, the most commonly cited factor is increased safety regulations. Lovering et al. show the following graph, and analyze it as follows:

Between 1967 and 1972, the 48 reactors that were completed before the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 began construction. Their OCC rise from a range of $600–$900/kW to approximately $1800–$2500/kW. These reactors follow a trend of increasing costs by 187%, or an annualized rate of 23%. Phung (1985) attributed these pre-TMI cost increases to emerging safety requirements resulting from pre-TMI incidents at Browns Ferry and Rancho Seco. Two outliers, Diablo Canyon 1 and 2, cost about $4100/kW in overnight construction cost, and were completed 17 and 15 years later, in 1984 and 1985.

A break in construction starts is visible around 1971 and 1972,which is likely attributable to a confluence of events affecting nuclear power construction in the late 1960s and early 1970s. These include the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1971, and the AEC’s gradual loss in public trust and its eventual replacement by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in 1975. Golay et al. (1977) determined that 88 reactors in various stages of permitting, construction, and licensing were affected by the 1971 Calvert Cliffs court decision resulting in revised AEC regulations that included back-fit requirements.Finally, the last 51 completed reactors represent a set that began their construction between 1968 and 1978 and were under construction at the time of the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. For these reactors, OCC varies from $1800/kW to $11,000/kW. Thirty-eight of these reactors fall within a mid-range of $3000/kW to $6000/kW, with 11 between $1800 and $3000/kW and 10 between $6000 and $11,000/kW. From the OCC of about $2,000/kW for reactors beginning construction in 1970, OCC increases another 50–200%, or an annual increase of 5–15% between 1970 and 1978.

In particular, the safety factors Phung (1985) highlight for the mid-1970s cost increase were as follows.

Phung also notes that due to new safety regulations, power plants that had already been completed in 1978 then had to be back-fitted to fix issues that had been discovered during the 70s, which increased the cost by 28% on average compared to the original construction cost. This is a rather glaring contrast to the Soviet experience, where reactors were notably not back-fitted to fix the multitude of issues that were discovered. As late as 1983, one Soviet offical boasted that “the evolution in capital cost of Soviet WWERs has no comparison with the increase of pressurized-water reactor costs in the West during the same period.”

Anyway, the environmentalist story seems convincing as long as you only consider the the U.S. and the USSR, but I still kindof doubt it. Environmentalism and the anti-nuclear movement came to the U.S. first, and didn’t really emerge in Europe and Japan until in the first half of the 1970s (with a strong inspiration from America), when it would be too late to have a big effect on the main nuclear build-up. In Sweden, the reactor fleet was designed in the 1960s, by experts who knew best and didn’t particularly talk to outsiders. (Holmberg and Hedberg describe an Edenic state of affairs: “In the beginning of the 1970s all parties in the parliament supported a plan to build eleven nuclear reactors in Sweden. No debate, no conflict, everything calm. At the time energy policies were the topic for experts and a very limited number of politicians. Mass media were silent and the general public ignorant. In this atmosphere, the first Swedish reactor started operations in 1972.”)

Similarly, Lovering et al. notes that the pattern of construction cost increases in the U.S. is somewhat unique, and in other countries you either see more moderate increases (France, Canada), or no clear pattern of increases (Japan). You can see a small increase in French construction costs after the Chernobyl accident, but nothing like the huge jump in American costs after Three Miles Island, so does that mean that the reactor designs also didn’t benefit from the additional democratic scrutiny? By the above logic we would expect the Swedish reactors to be as crappy as the Soviet ones, but as far as I know they are actually perfectly fine…

#xhxhxhx #chernobyl #nuclear power

138 notes · View notes