#this is the piss on the poor website anyway where most of you are happy to twist things out of context to paint someone as evil

[cassowariess]

I genuinely hate internet censorship where people have to defang words on most social media platforms to avoid demonitization etc, but I think it would actually be really funny if an algorithm was implemented where everytime someone told you to "kill yourself" it changed to "unalive yourself."

You can still use the word "kill" but if you put "yourself" after it then it becomes the phrase above, and makes you look like the most embarrassing mfer ever when you're trying to seem threatening.

[versegm]

I originally wanted to post this zine, which is a beginner-friendly introduction to what "intersex" means, but tumblr did that funny little thing where the post was invisible from dashboard, presumably because it was deemed nsfw. Sorry for using real words on my educational post instead of censoring myself I suppose.

So yeah. Instead you get this zine, which I made because I am pissed off that every single time I look up "intersex" anywhere I run into misconceptions that could be corrected by reading the wikipedia page on intersex people. Because I fucking guess "making a post about a group of people and actually looking up said group of people" is too much to ask.

And because this is the "piss on the poor" website: yes, I am well aware that most people are genuinely ignorant and don't mean any ill. Yes, I know it must feel really bad to see a post about a random person yelling at you about an issue you weren't aware of until now. This isn't about you. This is about me. This is for me, because every six months I make the blandest most sanded down "btw remember that intersex people exist :]" post and I feel like I'm yelling into the uncaring void. I am tired. I am so very tired of being the "friendly educational blogger who is understanding of everyone's circumstances." I'm more than that. I should be allowed to be more than that.

Anyways. Happy pride. Read up on every letter of the LGBTQIA+ acronym. At least the wikipedia page. Come on. Just the wikipedia page.

[followerofmercy]

I totally see where you're coming from with 'how do we make a power imbalance this extreme work' and that's where most people get the father/son dynamic. That (and the fact that I like other Xiao ships more) is probably why I lean more towards a platonic reading but the romance angle is absolutely fascinating. Especially when you bring up the PEARLROSE. (Readmore because LONG)

YOUR MIND. I mean I already kinda knew and agreed with the zhongxiao put comparing it to Pearlrose puts everything in its place. People have a hard time leaning into the fantasy "you are my only reason for existing" paired with "please find a reason to exist besides me." It's both romantic and terrifying. It's deeply unhealthy in a real world scenario but when you've literally watched the world die and lived for millenia, the boundaries for 'healthy and normal' change a little bit lmao. I've noticed a similar trend with, like, Freminet and Lyney's sibling relationship. People act like Lyney is sooo overprotective of his sweet soft cinnamon roll little brother and MY GUY. THEY KILL PEOPLE. It's infantilizing and irritating how some people try to shoehorn them into neat little big brother/little brother boxes.

Which, yeah that is blatant mischaracterization most of the time. Xiao and Zhongli both are incredibly complex characters ruled by grief, duty and... actually no just grief and duty asdk. It seems like people particularly struggle with characters with violence as a prominent trait. There's no good way to sanitize them. It's the same way Childe gets condensed into either a sadistic killer or a doting brother with no nuance.

Also I think Zhongli feels no small amount of guilt for how Xiao is. He rescued him just to put him right back into a different kind of servitude in the Archon War, one that Xiao was happy to endure, (one that killed off most of his found family), and it seems like there's very little Zhongli can do to get him to start viewing himself as a person instead of a weapon. Xiao would lay down in acid if he asked him to. But like you said, Zhongli's one of the people most aware of this and is very, very careful with how he handles Xiao. Especially if it's only recently that Zhongli has come to grips with him being his own person instead of Liyue's God, ya know? This 'person' shit is new to him too.

But yeah basically there is no way for Zhongxiao to be happy and fluffy and wholesome and easily digestible, nor are they utterly miserable and toxic. Fandom has a hard time appreciating anything that falls between the two extremes. There is no such thing as casual enjoyment of this ship asdkf You have to be insane about them as individuals and together, AND you have to have a good amount of critical thinking which…. Tumblr is the website where we piss on the poor.

Anyway I love your mind. Your brain is wrinkly and your analysis is good

I would read your zhongxiao codependent yuri Like, I do generally picture them as a vaguely father/son dynamic BUT THAT IS NOT CANON. It's just as much fun to view them through a romantic interpretation! Idk why people can't view the same characters in different kinds of relationships without being weird about it.

Anyway I love your vision and would love to hear more about it lakdjs

THANK U SO MUCH Im not sure if I’m gonna write zx in the future since I’ve tended to be shy about posting my stuff relating to them for over a yr now, but I did post this fic with them last year while trying to get a hold on how to write them (mind the tags it’s pure angst omg). I was too shy to tag it as ship since it didn’t feel shippy enough, which is kind of funny to me in hindsight bc I reread it and am like. Man I think only a zx shipper would write this NUFNVJVJV

Post got kind of lot Im gonna go on a tangent about them under the cut

Honestly my theory for why ppl r very set on the father/son interpretation is everyone’s immediate thought on to how to make the power imbalance between them seem less uncomfortable is to apply a parental interpretation to it. Which is fine ofc, I get it, but the way ppl push it as canon a lot kind of grates on me a little bc they’re usually incredibly passive aggressive and pushy even if u clearly designate ur post as ship OTL

Also not really a fan of the characterizations either since ppl tend to treat Xiao like a moody teenager Zhongli has to reel in (this is hilariously reminiscent of the post I made about how ppl handle scaramouche and nahida a bit ago haha). And idk I just feel kind of polarized about the headcanon overall bc I associate it with people being really uncomfortable and frustrating about zx

I just like how there’s sort of an imbalance to them, some zxs like them being more fluffy and functional but I sort of like it where it’s not like, entirely dysfunctional but I’m prioritizing a specific kind of character study over romance. This tends to be how a lot of my ships go ngl I just sometimes enjoy the intensity/intimacy of romantic feelings thrown into the mix if it makes it interesting but I’m not often interested in a lot of my ships following more standard romance plots(?) I guess? Unless it’s specific ones. Which sounds clinical when I put it like that but this is just bc I am very aromantic NHFBVJVJ

When I say codependency in zhongxiao honestly it’s sort of a theoretical(?) codependency—not sure how to word it? I think Xiao would be really fucked up if he didn’t have Zhongli in his life suddenly but I don’t think his relationship with getting attached to people invokes what people would majorly think of when they think of codependency in a ship I suppose. It’s moreso I just feel Xiao could be at his worst with dehumanizing himself in comparison to other people with Zhongli, because said mental state is driven by how he feels about debt, service, and duty which are very closely tied with devotion and how he would feel about someone he considers his god and leader, as well as someone who saved him

It’s fun this is paired with Zhongli who generally knows how to work with Xiao kind of understands the self destructive depth Xiao’s loyalty/devotion comes with. Also fun they have been around each other for a very long time and Xiao as one of the adepti is familiar with the past I think Zhongli appreciates having around. They work but it’s also a case where Zhongli is in such a position of power over Xiao its kind of very delicate situation that’s hard for both of them to navigate. Which is fun to explore. I esp love contrasting it with other Xiao pairings (actually i think i still have that xiaoven fic up on my ao3 where I tried to convey a specific interpretation of them in a similar exploration vein too)

I totally get why people wouldn’t like it (I feel a lot of my opinions on xiao ships just clash with a lot of fandom consensus so bad all the time And it’s just bc I’m like this I’m not even trying to be contrarian or anything. HELDINCJD) but I just tend to handle shipping in a specific way. It’s not I don’t enjoy fluffy or lighthearted zl and xiao stuff I actually enjoy it a lot I just like there being layers. This makes it feel more impactful when I think about how Zhongli looks out for Xiao in canon or how Xiao gets like textually flustered talking to him (lantern rite 2023 was so tailored to my tastes it’s not even funny)

[hyucksong]

nct dream as roommates

a/n: *romantically calls you bro* 

lee mark 

the roommate that walked in on you taking a shower on the first night you moved in and avoided you for a week afterward

he even went as far as browsing different apartments to live in because baby boy was too afraid to face you

sometimes wakes up before you and he always prepares your coffee or tea and sets it by your bed for you when you wake up…sometimes sits on the edge of your bed to watch you

asks you to do his laundry because he doesn’t know how to separate the colors

you’re fine with doing them because he tries his absolute bestest with everything else, and it’s so cute

the first time he did the laundry you were sick…and you got a whole new wardrobe of pink clothing the next day

always does the dishes and you do the laundry…he’ll clean the living room and kitchen if you clean the bathrooms…he’ll go grocery shopping…only if you go with him

asks you to do his hair when he meets up with his friends, and if you say no he says “okay” and then pouts until you agree

you really like photography but hiring models is expensive so you always ask mark to model for you

and he always agrees, blushing while doing so

make-up artists are expensive too, so you also get him dressed up and add whatever you want to his face

(once you did a fairy photoshoot and he had freckles and pink cheeks and your heart did the thing) 

this time you need him to sit still for hours because it's supposedly a big photoshoot with a few other photographers coming too, so there’s a lot of looks to get through 

you do the first look before you get to the photo site to save time

he thinks nothing of you curling his hair until he looks up at you and time slows as his heart stops…

because you smell like vanilla and your nose is scrunched in concentration…because your breathing is heavy as you run to the bathroom to get more things before you’re late…

because you’re biting your lip while looking at him, admiring your own work, proud of the way the make-up came out, but a little disheartened because it looked like you put a little too much blush (even though you only put a little) 

and mark thinks,,, oh no

fuck

huang renjun

your best friend since you were a child

you’re used to ‘living with him’ because you practically lived with him as a kid; you were always at his house spending the night or vice versa 

he wakes you up an hour after he gets up because ‘he needs his peaceful time’

claims that ‘you’re the worst person to live with’ but refuses to look for another apartment because ‘no one else can handle you but me’

(in reality, he knows that there will never be anyone else he’ss comfortable with as you) 

he wakes you up by throwing a pillow in your face and or flopping on your bed next to you and bouncing a few times

once got really scared because you weren’t waking up no matter what he did, and when he started to tear up you opened your eyes and pushed him off the bed 

you just didn’t want to be woken up that day and tried to ignore him, but apparently, you ignored him for too long because he genuinely freaking out on the inside

he’s watched ‘what’s eating gilbert grape’ okay he was SCARED

he didn’t talk to you for three days after that....only started to wake you up again because you made the effort to wake up before him and make him breakfast in bed with hot tea

he expected you to leave his room after you gave it to him, but you just looked at him for a minute before sitting on the bed next to him, getting under the covers with him 

he focused on the fact you were taking up all the space instead of the now-familiar thrum of his heartbreak against his ribcage

(he’s felt it for the past fewyears, he’s gotten used to drowning it out) 

“y/nnnnnnn what are you doingggggg”

“shut up i made the breakfast, can’t i at least sit next to my favorite boy?”

...he’s your favorite boy?...okaythatwasreallycutebuthe’llneveradmitit

“o...kay...”

blushes when you lay your head on his shoulder in bed, watching whatever he’s doing on his phone, because your cheek is warm against his shirt and its bleeding through onto his skin and weiowioegfhowieh

but also yells at you when you take a bite of his toast and bolt out of the room, giggling

“yAH y/N”

lee jeno

the roommate that was awkward for the first month because he didn’t really want to room with a girl because then he can’t spend saturday with the boys 

then he brought them home one day without telling you and was expected to get his ass Whopped but you were drinking vodka and crying while watching Cars so

yeah you were the perfect roommate for him

you drink together

saturday may be for the boys but sunday is for drinking your problems away with your roommate 

can’t cook but will make BOMB desserts for you both every friday...also fridays are pizza nights and you both order a large cheese pizza with ranch on the side and a pint of dr.pepper

yall have the same diet but he has a six-pack and you don’t so you call bullshit on health and everything it is

both of you fall asleep on the couch all the time, TV still playing the game soundtrack with the controllers on the floor, blinking from low battery

jeno alwayswakes up before you, and he doesn’t admit it, but he loves to watch you sleep

you just look so...ethereal 

even with the drool

ANYWAY

you are one of the bros...he’s even taken a shit when you took a shower before -- that’s how close you are 

then one day you get dressed up real pretty and he’s making fun of you, laughing “you never look this nice who’s holding you at gunpoint”

“i’m going on a date jeno hop off my DICK”

“,,,what”

immediately felt defensive and was questioing who could like you and why you were going on a saturday night when it was busy on the streets and also please call the guy and cancel the date because he wants to watch toy story with you and eat pasta why are you going out with someone has he met him why haven’t you told jeno about this guy you know what you should just not go

and it’s when you walk out the door rolling your eyes, promising to be back home before 9pm with a cute shirt on and nice perfume on when jeno realizes 

that damn he hates to see you leave,,,but he loves to watch you go

(and he might have the teeniest, weeniest crush on you) 

lee donghyuck

the type to never clean the dishes and always makes you do them even if he cooks because he hates the feeling of wet food

then one day he sees you v e r y stressed over school work and he just...cleans the whole house

you come back from the library and you’re like,,,the fuck where’s haechan and what have you done with him

in turn, you buy him a headset that he’s been wanting for the past year...and you think he’s about to propose to you after you give them to him

but in all reality he’s just so happy that you even remembered something so trivial...like he talking about them once (1) and you remembered?

...cute bitch

he’s a big prankster, but in an endearing way, so whenever he goes too far you never really stay mad because he’s just a little unaware of the anger his pranks cause

plus you always get back at him 

always :)

you both are basically the same people; you’re passionate about your studies and he’s passionate about gaming and dancing

yall are the bad bitches that no one messes with 

BET that yall wear matching fits whenever you two go out together

you get together to watch his favorite youtubers do let’s plays of popular games

one day yall sit down to watch some outlast 2

and boy

did you underestimate the scare factor

so now you’re three episodes deep into the let’s play and your head is buried in haechans stomach because you’re laying down facing away from the TV, clinging to the poor boy

he doesn’t know if his heart is beating so fast because of the jumpscare or because of the way you look up at him when you ask if the scary part is over yet

he doesn’t like seeing you scared with tears in your eyes...but the way you’re clinging to him makes him want to watch a thousand more scary episodes...

...if it means you’ll cuddle with him

na jaemin

the best roommate you could ever ask for

he loves to clean and cook, not to mention he’s an absolute sweetheart!!!!!!!

you started to live with him because you had posted an ad on a website for a roommate and he sent back a reply

but the texts used so many of (=｀ω´=) these emojis you just assumed it was a girl

he was not

every night before you go to bed, he’ll walk into your room and whisper “good night, sleep well” to you before petting you head and walking out

people always wonder if you’re dating, but you always reply that it’s just the way he is

until one night you invite your (asshole) project partner to your apartment and she flirts with him endLESSLY,,, not doing her work or anything, just talking with jaems

like it’s pissing you off, and you think it’s pissing him off, and you’re about to send her home when you notice the storm outside and you realize,,,, you’re too good of a person to do that

so she sleeps on the couch, and you do the same, just so you can keep an eye on her and so that she isn’t left alone with jaemin at any point (poor boy looked like he’s about to combust if she tries to talk to him again) 

and jaemin does his usual routine even with the extra company, stroking your head and even going as far as to place a kiss on your forehead

“what about me, do I get a kiss” the girl annoyingly asked

“no, you’re not yn” and hE WALKS AWAY AND CLOSES THE DOOR TO HIS ROOM 

there’s silence in your head as you process his words, a little shocked and confused as to what he means, but most of all, your thoughts consist of;

oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit

you might have just fallen for him (let’s face it, you’ve been in love with him (just not as long as he’d been in love with you)) 

zhong chenle

not going to lie, you two did NOT get along in the beginning

you were each other’s first roommates, and you knew he was extroverted, but you underestimated the differences between your personalities

like,,, no please don’t invite the dreamies over again for the eighth time this week I can’t focus on homework with all the screaming

but even with all the head-butting, the chores are split evenly because he’s practicing to ‘be marriage material for his future wife’

you don’t care as long as he just does what he’s supposed to, and you two aren’t exactly the closest

but there are times when you connect, like on lazy Sunday afternoons where you both just relax on the couch...anywaY

and he always rolls his eyes, telling you that ‘you need to stop being a hermit and make some friends’

‘get some confidence’

‘why don’t you put any effort into how you dress’

it hurts a little...you know you’re not the prettiest and you don’t really try anyway

but to have it pointed out to you just...stings

and after a guy rejects you (after you built up courage for a whole years to confess to him) your confidence is at an all-time low (he said no because ‘you were too bland’ like wtf fUCk you)

and you’re just crying and eating spaghetti o’s, telling chenle as oon as you walk into the door that you’re ‘too sensitive for his bullshit today’ 

to which chenle doesn’t care... then he sees your puffy eyes and asks wha happens

you tell him, and he just gets...angry

(and jealous?)

he goes on a tangent, mocking the guy, saying that ‘you’re the most doen-to-earth natural beauty’ he’s ever seen and that ‘any guy who doesn’t fall in love with your cute sarcastic personality’ is dumber than a rock

he grumbles for the rest of the night, sitting and watching movies with you; it makes your heart swell that he’s getting so mad for you

and at the end of the mini-movie night, and he strokes your hair saying  that you’re ‘his little introvert’,

you decide that ‘opposite attract’ is 100% true

(and chenle notices that you have very pretty lips)

park jisung

you two are dorm roommates at a dance school, and y’all are so cute all the teachers LOVE you

like you both just spend so much time together it’s ridiculous

yall walk to class together, then from class to class together, eat lunch together, after school activities, walk back to the dorms, meet each other’s friends, go out on the weekends together...everything

it feels weird to not be with him

(the teachers have a bet that you’ll be dating before your senior year)

the dorm is just a studio apartment with two bedrooms (your parents both pay a lot for space) 

so chores aren’t too hard, in fact, you both usually spend the last few hours of daylight on Sunday nights straightening up your apartment from the hectic week before, to start off completely fresh and new

nothing big ever happens on Sundays around the home, but one day jisung (who went to hang out with chenle (he invited you but you pouted and said you had too much hmwk)) found a little puppy on the side of the road

and then proceeded to sneak into the dorms with it, hiding it under his shirt

when he showed you what he found, you couldn’t be mad...it was just so cute (both jisung’s little smile and the puppy) 

but you noticed it was shivering, and you whined, ‘jisung you didn’t even notice it was cold oH My GoD, go get it some water and food’ while you set up a nest of blankets for the little guy

hours later when the puppy had eaten and subsequently fallen asleep in your lap, you turned to jisung

‘let’s name it mousie’

‘what that’s dumb’

‘it’s not dumb! i wanna name it that because it looks like you whenever you sleep! it's so cute hehehe’

you thought jisung was WHAT when he slept

jisung didn’t talk for a whole minute, drinking in your words and thinking about them over and over again, in the meantime you were just smiling down at the puppy

your cheeks were red with happiness and your nose was a little red from sneezing (because the puppy was covered in pollen from being outside) and your gaze was filled with such love that jisung shivered

you let out a sigh and plopped your head on his shoulder, and all his feelings he’d ever had for you exploded in his chest, and he tensed (though if you noticed, you didn’t day anything)

you just kept and petting the dog

and damn did jisung want to be that dog

[tartrazeen]

Random HankCon Reverse AU Post

I wrote this on Discord some months back, and very luckily somebody fantastic helped me out by finding it! <3 <3 <3 The context was around the HK series already being a canonical type of android in the game: it's a housekeeper model, like the HK-400 Connor hunts down in his first investigation with Hank. So from that, everyone was discussing a reverse AU where Hank was an HK housekeeper, Connor was an overworked older brother taking care of his younger brother, and one of them was proposing that Connor just rent an HK to help around the house and take the load off. And from that, I came up with this roughly described - but still fun and angsty - concept. Picture reading it as I wrote it: mid-conversation, and butting in to slap this idea onto everyone. :D

Omg - Hank helping out enough in just a few ways by making lunch or something, or dinner for the next night, and Connor actually having time to go to sleep and spend time with both of them. Or Hank activating a Cranky Child Up Past His Bedtime protocol and making Connor go to bed, because the poor guy doesn't have an off-switch when every single case just needs a 'few more minutes' for him to crack it.

Connor having such a rough week that his little brother saves up cash from - pfft, I dunno, what's stupidly diabetically sweet enough for this - recycling beer bottles from around the neighbourhood, purely to rent Hank for Connor's sake AND THEN IT BECOMES LIKE SOME KINDA WEIRD-ASS DATE THAT NEITHER OF THEM SEEM TOO INTERESTED IN ENDING But then - then - they get into a bit of a routine like that. Connor's happy enough to rent Hank when his little brother needs him, but now it's grown into a... "Okay, fine, if I need him too, then that just helps both of us. That's okay." ... And then one day, his little brother's staying at a friend's house or something, and Connor's - just... bored? Lonely? Tired? He's not sure. But he flicks over to a website, sees Hank is available, and decides to rent Hank really just for himself. And it's the first time that's ever happened without a kid in the house or without Connor himself being too exhausted to function, so it officially becomes a weird-ass date of them hanging around. Maybe going outside to get air. Whatever happens. Now here's where I can draw upon some more IRL bullshit: water heater rentals. These things last ten years, you pay $40 a month to rent them, but at the end of the tenth year, you'd still have to pay to buy it out. And that - despite everything you pay - could still cost like $6,000. Even if you bought the thing outright, it would've cost $5,000.

I say that because I imagine Connor getting to the point where he's thinking... he might buy Hank. Whenever rental products go up for sale, there's usually a steep discount, so he thinks it won't cost too much. No one else rents Hank as much as he does anyway, and he's not sure how much he's spent, but surely that would knock the price down. He's still very much trying to think of this as a practical transaction to manage the purchase of a machine, after all. Except Connor is the one asking to buy Hank. The company isn't offering. So the sticker shock at the price is - just... unbelievable. To the point that Connor very much regrets even opening his mouth. And the nanny company says it's that or they throw Hank out, because - just the IRL - they can't be seen selling Hank cheaper or giving him away when they're done with him, or they'd never make any money. "People would just wait until he's thrown out and go dumpster diving." So now we have a ticking clock and Connor has a bill to pay. We could do two things from here: 1) Connor gets the money (spoiler). It isn't easy. He's already doing all the overtime he's allowed because he's volunteered for it - he can't afford to let something like sleep get in the way of catching a murderer - so he's making the most that he can. He doesn't have any vacation or sick days to cash in because he's used them all whenever he's burnt out; that's probably why he looked into getting Hank in the first place. And it's not like he has time to get a second job or anything. It's his little brother that asks, "Do we really need a car?"

So they both start selling everything. They don't really need a crappy couch. This table's been wobbly since day one. A garage full of crap that is coated in dust and grime is just enough to get them over the edge of it. And it's a weird feeling, bringing a nanny-bot back to an almost empty house. Connor might comment on how there'd be a lot less to clean, which is bullshit, but the best he can in defence of it all. So Hank takes it for what it is, slowly appreciating exactly what this meant for all of three of them. It's an empty house that's quickly become a full home. 2) Connor doesn't get the money (yesssssssssssss) Because there's just no way to pay that. It's ridiculous - even if he could afford it, he should still be arresting these people, because this is an obvious robbery. He can't make that last leap to admit this is more than a machine to help around the house, and the company - just... "Okay. You have three days to change your mind if you're interested." His little brother tries to get him to. He asks if Connor can just sell the car. Not only is that a bad idea, because how else is Connor going to get to work, but who's going to pay that much for it anyway? It's not worth it, Hank is a walking piece of plastic programmed to be friendly, and if they need a nanny-bot so bad, they can buy a new one for a third of what the rental company is charging. On the second-last day, his little brother tries the ol' "Rent Hank for Connor's sake" trick. It's a last-ditch effort to get Connor to admit that they would all feel awful losing Hank, machine or not. He's real enough to them, right? Wrong. Plastic. Money. Facts. Connor's more pissed that his little brother wasted more cash that could've gone towards paying a price they would never be able to afford anyway, and walks off to let his little brother hang out with the android for a last night. He doesn't want to draw this out for himself, and Hank had better be gone by the time Connor comes home.

Connor doesn't do much. He mostly just walks around for hours. And for way too long - eventually, he's at a park, and there's Hank emerging from the snow (oh yeah, it's snowing) to gently wait there in silence. That goes on for long enough for Connor to accept that he's going to miss Hank. It's a short conversation, and Hank's used the Cranky Kid protocol for Connor to know to start heading back, but that's all Connor says: "We'll miss you, I guess. Thanks." Hank is gone by the time Connor wakes up. The house is quiet, his little brother has his breakfast, and Connor has his lunch made. And that is what really gets to him. Hank - over and above his programming - once again took care of Connor, too. Those walls that were already dropping finally drop the rest of the way, and knowing perfectly well that he's too late, he calls the rental company up to ask if there's a payment plan or some extension or anything he can do to keep Hank. There is! Fortunately! And if Connor would like to arrange that for any of these other rental androids, the company can certainly help. What about Hank? Well, this is a business. They had a deadline and costs around that deadline, so they couldn't keep waiting around forever in the hopes that some family changed their mind about buying a standard android. It's unfortunate, but yes, Hank was appropriately disposed of. Would Connor like to buy another android that looks like Hank instead? Connor hangs up before they can give him the full sales pitch. His little brother notices. His work notices. Everyone notices that Connor's different lately. He's reached an almost terrifying level of laser focus on his work. He has all the time he wants to catch all the bad guys he feels like, and he does because who's going to stop him, really? And it goes like that while his little brother keeps asking for Connor to rent a different android, or to just buy one that's like Hank. On and on and on and on and on and on and on until Connor finally just loses it, dumps his phone on the ground, tells his brother to do whatever the hell he wants so long as he shuts up, and storms back out. He's out there for hours in the cold, half to spite Hank's memory - that he's become painfully reliant on for reasons he ascribes to guilt - and half because he knows it's not only guilt he's feeling. Everything tingles. His fingers, his nose, his ears, and he's at least considering going home to his car so he can warm up without having to do a walk-of-shame back inside. He's saving that for when his brother's asleep. This is roughly a minute before he notices Hank walking out in the snow. Not Hank. Not exactly. It's another android that looks like Hank, and that jolt in Connor's chest twists into a searing ache again. He's changed his mind and he's out here entirely for spite now, because his little brother must've called his bluff and rented another nanny and sent him to drag Connor home.

He's committed to that until Hank mentions the number of times Connor's tried to fight him on going to bed, and the grand total of zero times that Hank's lost this fight. Hank's very good at this. He's had to deal with a lot of rough families and teenagers. Hank remembers that because each family has a profile saved based on every visit: preferences, schedules, the kids' needs, memories... They've always been backed up. It's a business, after all. It takes Connor a few minutes to get it. He's still trying to decide if this android is real or not, let alone... his Hank. And Hank is perfectly willing to keep coming back to convince him. And he will, every time, for as long as Connor keeps a copy of his memories. ... But it is going to be after Connor is in bed. Connor's never been happier to get dragged away, kicking at this 1.98m cuddle-bear the whole time.

[echodrops]

Kicking the Hornet’s Nest...

I’m procrastinating hard on other tasks, but in chit-chatting (both on tumblr and on Discord) about my stance on criticism of fanfiction, I realized that there’s a very low-hanging analogy I can make to explain my thoughts on this, so…

Uh first, please remember this is my personal blog and just my personal opinion. If you think that giving unsolicited concrit is the worst, I promise I’m not here to grab you individually, shake you by the shoulders, and try to change your minds. We can agree to disagree; I’m fully aware my opinion is unpopular on tumblr but also fully aware of the irony of people giving unsolicited criticism on a post about why unsolicited criticism is a good thing.

And second, please note that the analogy used below is only an analogy and not meant to be a one-to-one comparison–obviously the issue of vaccination is a far more critical, serious, and solemn issue and the topic of criticism on fanfiction (of all things) is not equal to a global health crisis that has cost real people’s lives. I’m drawing radical comparisons to thought processes because it’s shocking, not genuinely comparing fanfiction comments to moral and ethical world health decisions because I think those two things are equitable in importance.

Uh and third, please don’t respond unless you’re going to read it all. I'm happy to take your constructive criticism after you're finished with the whole thing. I get so tired of people rushing to my inbox after only getting half way through my arguments–90% of the time, I already addressed the thing you wanted to come yell at me about and you just didn’t make it there, promise.

So, at the risk of pissing off just about everyone who thought they respected me before this:

The current anti-concrit mindset stems from a similar logic to the one used by anti-vaxxers.

(This analogy lasts a grand total of five paragraphs or something, don’t get your jimmies too rustled.)

Most people on tumblr are happy–downright gleeful–to mock anti-vaxxers. The average anti-vaxxer is considered close-minded, self-centered, and under-educated. Although the issue of anti-vaxxing is probably more complicated than we paint it here on this website (to be fair, I wouldn’t know if it’s more complicated, since I agree that anti-vaxxers are generally stupid and don’t look into their arguments very often), almost no one on tumblr has any issue with anti-vaxxers being dragged up and down the block for their bad choices.

Usually, the logic of anti-vaxxers is understood to work something like this:

Anti-vaxxer: I don’t want to expose my child to something potentially harmful, so I am not going to vaccinate them.

Literally everyone else: You’re exposing your child to far greater risk in the long-term by not vaccinating.

Or:

Anti-vaxxer: My child doesn’t need to be vaccinated; they’re fine as they are. Those diseases aren’t a big deal anymore.

Literally everyone else: This mindset will make those diseases a big deal again.

On paper, sometimes anti-vaxxer logic works out–it is true that some children suffer very painful and awful reactions to vaccinations. It IS true that poorly made or contaminated vaccinations have killed children and will continue to do in the future. It IS true that vaccinations are painful and stressful for children in general and can even–depending on how the children respond to pain and how their doctors/nurses treat them–result in long-term phobias and health care aversion. There can be serious lasting consequences from vaccinating.

But most of us laugh in the face of anti-vaxxers. Why? Because we know that in comparison to the number of benefits, the risks are minimal. In the long-term, the number of people helped by vaccines far, far exceeds the number of people hurt.

I hope you can see where I’m going. At its core, the issue of giving unsolicited constructive criticism follows a similar pattern of short-term risk aversion. Authors who don’t want constructive criticism and choose to actively refuse it are following a similar thought process to anti-vaxxer parents:

Author: I don’t want any constructive criticism. Criticism can be painful, and my writing doesn’t need to be exposed to that.

Or:

Author: I don’t need any constructive criticism because my writing is fine as it is and I’m just doing it for fun anyway.

The general attitude seems to be that exposing fanfiction authors to unsolicited constructive criticism carries more risk than it does reward. And please be aware that I’m talking about genuinely constructive criticism here, well-intentioned and polite comments (the vaccine in this analogy), not troll comments deliberately designed to hurt people’s feelings (which would be equivalent to say, an injected contaminated drug in this analogy–no one should be okay with those).

But like anti-vaxxers who insist that the short-term risks of vaccines are more dangerous than the long-term risks of major diseases… is there really any evidence that genuinely constructive criticism, even when unsolicited, really does discourage and upset a large number of fanfiction authors? Or, more to the point of the analogy–is the number of people who would be entirely discouraged from writing ever again by some constructive criticism really greater than the number of people who would benefit from getting some (again, polite) tips for improving their writing? Which is the greater risk–being hurt in the short-term or losing out on the opportunity for growth in the long-term?

Clearly there are different opinions on this and I suspect that my opinion is heavily colored by the fact that I am older than the average tumblr user and therefore have many more years to look back on to weigh on the scales of this debate.

But I will always, always argue that the long-term benefits of helping other writers where you can far, far, far outweigh the short-term risks, for a couple reasons.

1) The world is a shitty, disappointing, stressful, and painful place. We encounter harsh criticisms every single day. Your teachers will give you poor grades. Your bosses will tell you your work isn’t up-to-par. Your friends will tell you the new top you bought and absolutely love… actually makes you look like you’re wearing a potato sack. If you’re into relationships, you’ll probably experience at least one break-up in which you hear that it’s YOU, not them, who is the problem. Your feelings will be hurt by callous comments from others an uncountable number of times. Your confidence will be shaken, if not actively crushed. I’m sorry to say it, but for almost all of us, having some miserable, anxiety-inducing and extremely discouraging moments in life is part of the unavoidable human experience. (And this is doubly, maybe triply true when we are starting out new hobbies or first entering a new field. Anyone who has ever tried to learn how to skateboard and gotten laughed at by experienced skateboarders knows exactly what I’m talking about.)

The world is full of truly awful things. And I’m not the kind of person who thinks we should just be exposed to all of them right from the get-go and fuck you and your snowflake feelings or things like that. I highly urge people to tag for triggering content and am on the record again and again telling people to block characters or ships that make them uncomfortable.

But many fanfiction authors are young authors, some of whom are posting work for public consumption for the very first time. Still more have no positive experiences with constructive criticism in the first place, and the extent of their literary criticism knowledge comes from really awful and boring high school English classes. When budding writers encounter a sudden explosion of access to readers–from having maybe one or two friends read their work to suddenly having their words in front of the eyes of thousands of strangers on the internet:

It’s disingenuous to give starting writers nothing but positive feedback. Only hearing positives about your work actively discourages change and self-reflection. It gives writers an unrealistic picture of their work that can result in far more serious disappointment and embarrassment later. When someone is awful at singing and they’re only told how nice their voice is, eventually when they sing for a more serious group of strangers, they’re going to be in for a very, very miserable time.

It’s a terrible missed opportunity for young writers to get a glimpse of what “professional” writing is like. Everyone benefits from genuinely constructive criticism–both the person getting it and the person giving it. We create young writers who are passionate about improving their writing by inducting them into the culture of planning, drafting, bouncing ideas off each other, finding beta readers, and taking others’ advice to grow their abilities, and oftentimes, one of the first experiences a person has with that process is someone spontaneously going “Hey, what if you tried this instead?” People often become inspired to become doctors and nurses after witnessing a family member experience a medical crisis–people often become inspired to become writers after receiving thorough feedback on things they have written. It’s impossible to really know whether or not you want a piece of constructive criticism until after you have heard what the criticism is, and adopting a “no unsolicited constructive criticism” policy as a whole creates an entire generation of fan writers who would miss out on opportunities for growth and inspiration.

This is waxing REALLY philosophical, but bear with me here, because this is also a well-documented concern of mine: we are entering an age in which people are no longer responsible for the media choices they make, where the internet is no longer viewed as a the equivalent of yelling into a crowd of (potentially dangerous) strangers, and the onus for protection is shifting away from self-preservation “I need to not put myself near upsetting things” to “other people have the responsibility not to expose me to upsetting things.” I’ve seen a lot of people say “If authors want constructive criticism on their fics, they can just say that in a note!” My ladies. My guys. My non-binary buddies. This is the utter opposite of how the internet functions. When you put anything on the internet, you are literally putting it before a crowd of an absolutely uncountable number of strangers and there are no rules (barring the laws of their home countries) dictating how they can respond to the things you put out there. Posting your writing on the internet is explicit consent to receive constructive criticism from anyone at any time unless you take actions to prevent that in advance. Sites like AO3 actively grant you the power to dictate who can SEE your work, comment on your work, give you the power to remove messages, screen comments before they appear, block comments entirely, or simply write in any of your notes sections that you do not want constructive criticism. (If it’s that easy to write “I want constructive criticism!” why is not seen as equally easy to write “I do not want constructive criticism!”?)

Public spaces on the internet are opt out, not opt in.

Why do many (though lord knows, not all) tumblr users easily agree to the idea of “If you don’t like a ship, you should just block it” or “If you see properly tagged content you don’t like on AO3 and you click it, that’s your own fault for not reading the tags,” but have the complete opposite mindset when it comes to constructive criticism? “I’m submitting my work in a public place where anyone can express their opinion on it… But even though there are multiple tools at my disposal for discouraging and blocking opinions I don’t agree with, it’s actually other people’s responsibility not to say anything that might upset me.”

As I said, waxing philosophical here, but this is kind of a scary mindset. The ability to enter a public space–and the internet is the MOST public space in the world–and then declare that you simply don’t want to listen to dissenting opinions is scary. I mean, this is how we get a common anti-vaxxer mindset–I don’t want to listen to your opinion because I have my source telling me I’m right and that’s all I need. “I put my work out in a public place and left it accessible to everyone, but I don’t want to listen to what everyone says about it.” I don’t mean to jump off the slippery slope, but this issue is a slippery slope in and of itself. Down this way lies a dark future. “It’s other people’s responsibility to curate my social experience for me.”

But really, after all this… I just flat out think it’s important to give genuinely constructive criticism to each other without people needing to ask for it because it just kind of sucks to see a fellow writer struggling with something and not say something about it. It’s not about feeling superior or thinking you know better than someone else; we all have our own strengths and weaknesses, and spotting something that could use a bit of work in someone else’s writing doesn’t make you a better writer, it just means that’s not your particular weakness. When someone is struggling to learn to swim, you don’t just leave them to their own devices and assume they’ll figure it out–even if they swear they’ve got it. When someone is learning to sew and you, who has sewed that exact thing before, don’t offer any advice, that’s not encouragement, it’s apathy. There will be many, many, many times in your life where you did not know you needed advice. Where you did not know HOW to ask for advice. Where you might have known you needed advice but not really wanted to admit that. Where you might have known you needed advice and been too shy to ask for help. Where a piece of advice completely from the blue changes the course of your life. Fandom as a whole–fan creators as a whole–cannot become a culture that closes the door to that vital form of communication, rejects willingness to not only uplift but also help each other grow even when we least expect it.

Anyway, I’m literally just writing this to avoid real responsibilities, but the point I’m trying to make is:

Most writers, even very young writers, will not be discouraged by polite, well-intentioned criticism. They may not like it. They may not take any of the criticism to heart, but most people, even young people, are far more resilient than tumblr (which on the best of days is a negative feedback loop that can romanticize a victim mindset because having the saddest backstory makes you immune to cancellation) wants to give them credit for, and a vast majority of writers will not be traumatized or scared away from writing by people trying to offer them genuine advice. Remember, no one here is advocating for asshole trolls who post comments like “Your writing sucks and you should delete your account.” A majority of writers, even very young writers, will be able to weather the storms and tosses of even really rudely-worded advice and recover. Sometimes it might take a while, but human beings have survived as a species because we’re really, really persevering.

(But some people aren’t! you might say. Some people really will give up writing if they’re criticized! And you’d be correct. There are people who will give up, even if all they are faced with is a single gentle, well-intentioned piece of criticism. But the truth is… People give up on hobbies for all kinds of reasons! Not every hobby is for every person! Every hobby carries with it its own challenges, its own share of risks, and its own pains. Learning a new hobby consistently requires putting yourself out of your comfort zone. Wanna learn how to ride a snowboard? You will get bruised. Wanna learn how to play chess? You will lose. Wanna learn to draw? Someone will make fun of your early drawings. You will make fun of your own early drawings. Wanna post your writing on a public platform? Someday, someone is going to say they’re not a fan.

And that leads me to address the point that just keeps coming up and coming up in this issue: People aren’t always posting their fics to improve as writers! A lot of times people are posting for just fun or for personal reasons.

Yeahhhhh bullshit. No, no, hang on–I don’t mean that people don’t have fun writing and posting fics, or that fics can’t help you through traumatic experiences because everything I’ve ever posted is basically me dealing with my own personal shit–what I mean is that there’s always an additional dimension to posting your fics on large-scale public websites. People write stories and share them with their friend groups for fun. People write characters overcoming trauma and share them with their therapists (or the friends who help to fill that role) for healing. People post their stories publicly, where anyone can respond, for validation on top of their fun and healing. There are ways to hide your fics entirely on many sites. You can leave things in drafts. If a fic is appearing as unmoderated and open to the public on a major fic site such as AO3, Wattpad, ff.net, etc., it’s because that fic’s author wants responses from others! They want views. They want subscribes. They want kudos. They want comments. There’s literally no reason to post publicly except for your work to be viewed by the public.

The fun one has writing a fic is often tied directly to the thrill of seeing a comment or kudos notification pop-up in your inbox. We love seeing people enjoy our fics–it absolutely makes my day when someone sends me a message telling me they re-read my fic for the third time.

It’s NOT fun to write something and get no response.

Writing something and getting no response is actively discouraging, actually.

So whenever someone says “They’re not writing fics to improve as writers; they’re just doing it for fun!” I have to laugh a bit–because when the concept of “fun with fanfiction” is tied so closely to the experience of having your work viewed and enjoyed by others, the fastest and surest way to increase the fun you have with your fanfics… is to improve as a writer. The more you write, the more you improve. The more you improve, the more loyal readers you gain. The more loyal readers you gain, the more excited people you have to gush about your fics with. Want a Discord server full of people willing to help you brainstorm ideas for your favorite AU? Write well, attract followers. Want fanart of your writing, probably the most fun and exciting thing I can think of as an author? Write well. Just plain old want more friends in the fandom to talk about your favorite characters and fic ideas with? Make writer friends.

People have fun writing about their favorite characters and post publicly to receive responses and validation for their creations… Responses increase the fun writers have because they make the hard work of writing worth it and give you people to keep writing for and with… Improving your writing increases the number of people attracted to your works and the number of people willing to spend time responding to them… The bigger the response you get, the more invested you become in your fics, the more fandom friends you make, and the more you want to write–it’s a process that is self-fulfilling, but also one that exposes you to criticism by its very nature. The very act of seeking responses from readers means that you’re open to responses that you don’t necessarily want to hear.

And I actually don’t mean this in the way of “If you can’t handle the heat, don’t jump into the fire.” What I mean is that it is impossible to create a world in which everyone who starts writing sticks with the hobby and keeps churning out works for us to enjoy forever. It is impossible to create a world in which no young writer will ever feel discouraged and give up. The writer you decided not to give constructive criticism to might just as easily become discouraged and quit writing because they didn’t receive enough response.

The first time you give your child a new vaccine, you cannot predict the results. Your child might suffer an allergic reaction. They might die. Every year, numerous severe reactions to vaccines do occur. But the majority of people don’t question the effectiveness of vaccines because we understand that the number of people who have severe reactions is very low in comparison to the number of people who benefit from the vaccine. The number of people who will be discouraged from writing by genuine, polite, constructive criticism is minuscule in comparison to the number of people who will either 1) benefit from it directly and be thankful you gave it, 2) not benefit but not be upset by it, 3) be mildly upset by it but then benefit, or 4) just be mildly upset by itself and then move on with life unharmed because sometimes people say things we don’t like but that doesn’t ruin our lives every single time it happens.

I’m not saying that providing polite constructive criticism doesn’t have risks, just that its risks are smaller than its benefits.

And I’ve successfully whittled enough time away with this now that I can go to sleep without guilt over the things I didn’t finish, but I started this by saying the long-term benefits outweighed the short-term risks and I feel obligated to defend that…

The long-term benefits of well-placed constructive criticism are enormous. Sometimes people need ego checks. Sometimes we need wake-up calls. Sometimes we need a gentle helping hand and didn’t even realize other people could be the help we needed. Sometimes we need a reason to get fired up–even if that reason is spite, trying to prove a critic wrong! Sometimes the answer is glaring us in the face and we don’t notice until someone else points it out. Sometimes we just plain out make mistakes. Sometimes we need a teacher because the ones in school let us down. Sometimes (oftentimes) other people bring incredibly unique perspectives to our stories that we would never have been open to on our own. Sometimes we write something unintentionally hurtful and need some gentle correction. Sometimes we could be having a lot more fun if we knew the tips and tricks others had to offer. Sometimes improving ourselves is hard but worth it. Sometimes bitter medicine is the only thing that will cure an ailment.

Shots hurt. People avoid them because they aren’t fun–what parent wants to expose their child to the painful, stressful situation of getting stabbed with needles? (What parent looks forward to the yearly flu shot themselves?)

We naturally flinch back from criticism. There are many times when we swear we don’t want it, don’t need it, can’t bear it! In the moment, it is incredibly difficult to be confronted with someone basically implying that you should change something integral to yourself–your art. No one likes to feel like they’re being picked apart for weaknesses, definitely not.

But sometimes a single comment can make a massive difference in your life–even when you didn’t want it at first.

All my life, I have been helped along by teachers, family, and friends who refused to settle for patting me on the back. The people who mean the most to me, who I most credit with getting me where I am today, are not the people who just told me I was good at things. They’re the people who told me I was good at things BUT. They people who challenged me to not just sail through life or even coast in my hobbies, content with the level I entered on–they’re the people who had faith in me and trust that I could refine my skills, could have even more fun IF I took that next step, challenged myself to go a bit harder… They’re the people who took the time not just to skim over my writing and slap a thumbs up on it, but the people who thought hard enough about it go: “This story was good, but have you thought about…”

Today, I’m a professor of English because I started writing fanfiction when I was 11 years old. Because I started posting fanfiction when I was 13. Because at 14 years old, someone–without being asked–taught me the correct way to format dialogue and how to strengthen my dialogue tags. Because at 15, someone flat out laughed to tears at a cliche metaphor I’d extended too far and I was ashamed, but they taught me something else to try instead. Because by 18, I’d received–and taken–enough unsolicited writing advice to land myself the highest paying on-campus tutoring job my university offered. Because by 19, someone challenged me to write something I told them was impossible for me. Because by 20, that impossible writing became the sample that got me accepted to grad school. Because by 21, I was furious enough at the criticism I received from my creative writing masters classmates to write a thesis so feverishly overwhelming that it inspired one of the foremost postmodern poets in the country. Because by 27, it was brutally honest criticism that gave me the gall to finally leave an abusive job and apply for a teaching position. Because by 30, I got to sit at a public literary journal volume launch and watch an entire class of my creative writing students become published authors.

And even though I joked about why I was writing this, and even though I’m really not, at the heart of it, trying to persuade any one person over to my side, I hope it’s clear how much of a labor of love this post is. How passionate I am about this topic.

This whole thing is a drawn-out plea: Please, do not let fandom creation sites become a place where no one offers advice unless it is begged for. Do not miss your chance to help someone else improve. Do not close the door to criticism that could change your life. Do not let fear of short-term discouragement prevent you from seeking long-term growth. Do not let the immediate side effects cloud your view of the global benefits.

Inoculate yourselves with good advice as a shield against the very hard future.

A dearth of criticism will not make fandom a better place. It will just make it a quieter one.

[ginnyzero]

Completely Harmless Ch. 31

Completely Harmless An SSO SilverGlade Re-imagining Story (Or Fix it Fan Salt fic) By Ginny O.

When Lily and her friends wanted to buy horses and were directed to the Silverglade Manor and its myriad of problems, they didn’t expect to start a revolution. They were just a bunch a stable girls. Completely harmless. Right?

A/N: Things are only canon if I say they’re canon. Pre-Saving the Moorland Stables compliant for the most part. Posted in its entirety on my website. Posted in 2000 to 4000 word bits here. Rated T for Swearing Word Count 177,577

Chapter Thirty-One Last Minute Rainbow Week Preparations

Even though Linda had posted that the Riding Arena was going to be closed, Sabine still had an argument with Lily that morning over the affair. Lily had stood firm. The Riding Arena was closed. Sabine’s obsessive need to practice was going to have to go to someplace else.

She saw them lining up their horses and insisted that they were just hogging the show jumping ring for themselves. Lily told her to stick around.

They led their horses inside and first they took the poles off the racks of the jumps and then took the racks apart and laid the pieces out before stacking them on the horses’ rumps.

They rode out of the riding arena with the equipment on their horse’s backs.

The look on Sabine’s face and the way she turned red was priceless in Lily’s opinion. The girl stomped over to her horse and rode off looking like she was going to yell at someone.

If she went to yell at the Baroness, Lily would have paid to be a fly on that wall. As it was, she sent a text warning Judy and Linda that Sabine was coming and she was pissed about the closed Riding Arena.

Once they had everything cleared out, including a table with what looked like an old cd player in the back, they stared around the empty room. The table and cd player went to the tack room. The showjumping equipment went to Thomas Moorland who had come to pick it up at the Manor in his truck.

Then they returned to the Riding Arena to face what was left.

“When do you think the last time this was cleaned?” Brittany asked.

They all looked at her.

“Valid question!” she protested.

They broke into groups.

Bjorn helped hook up the pressure washer to the faucet so they could wash the outside of the building getting the walls and the windows and washing down the parade ground outside the doors.

They were able to wave at the girls washing the inside windows on ladders with large amounts of ammonia and newspapers instead of paper towels. (Something about it doing a quick polish on the thick glass.) Another group of girls raked the dirt smooth.

After the back breaking work of putting in furniture in the wine cellar the day before it was almost relaxing. Though climbing up and down ladders to hang up the plants had been fun as two girls steadied the ladder and one girl climbed. There had been much giggling. The best part of doing the Wine Cellar had been putting in the neon sign over the back bar. Then the greatest part had been having an impromptu tasting party to give Aaron feedback on his menu. It had all been delicious including the rose and lavender ice creams. They weren’t soapy. That was always a big fear with rose and lavender. But Aaron wanted them to be specials for the grand opening!

They swept up the stands on the dressage side. Then they washed the stands down. Vacuumed the walls before washing them with sponges and buckets of soapy water. They took down the signs on the walls too. Because after that, they had to tape off the windows and cover parts of the floor near the walls and paint.

The walls were going from being white to a lovely light lavender color.

Outside, dirt and pollen and grit seemed to slide off the marble faced walls and they had to work extra hard to get it out of the seams where the columns met the walls between the windows and the border under the windows that was a series of Silverglade Clan swirls instead of a traditional Greek key or wave pattern. They cleaned out the eaves as well. Bjorn muttering about gutters. Once everything was clean, including the urns, they were able to paint the urns up. Bjorn had them help inspect the walls for any cracks.

A closer look and Bjorn pronounced that the marble had been treated with something to keep it looking pristine. That’s what made it easy to clean. Marble was notoriously porous stuff.

The girls muttered about how they wouldn’t want the place to fall apart or be defaced.

“Maybe a guard dog?”

“But do guard dogs get along with horses?”

It was a good question. The better question of course was, would the Baroness mind guard dogs?

“Ducks aren’t great guards. Geese are,” one girl observed. “But not necessarily ducks.”

“Corgis are cute and good with horses but not exactly guard dog material unless they are in swarms. I mean, they’re too cute and fuzzy to be intimidating. Plus, they’re super friendly.”

“Someone,” Bjorn reminded them, “is going to have to take care of this dog. Walk it. Feed it. Clean up the messes.”

The nearest pet show was in Fort Pinta and no one really had time at that moment to go and inquire.

“It might not be necessary,” Abigail said.

“Now that’s tempting fate,” Stacey warned her.

“Don’t say things like that, you’ll jinx it!” Brittany waved her arms. She had the hose so she sprayed water all over them.

They squealed and ducked getting wet anyways.

“Brittany!” Stacey shouted.

Abigail tried to wrestle hose from her and succeeded. Brittany yelped, let her have it and ran away. “It was an accident!” she shouted.

“Get back here!” Abigail shouted back.

Bjorn grinned and didn’t reprimand. Let the girls be girls.

After lunch from the Silver Glade courtesy of Tony with the doors fully open so the paint could dry, Agnetha appeared with new showjumping equipment. Thankfully, for everyone’s piece of mind, it wasn’t 100% purple. There was plenty of white in the jumps. Though the bars came in lavender (a light blue purple,) grape (dark blue purple,) lilac (the light red purple,) raspberry (medium red purple,) and mulberry (dark red purple.) Nothing was overly bright or garish, much to everyone’s relief.

“Now, the Baroness has declared she wants a garden style jumping ring,” Agnetha said. “And I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant but she had pictures.” Agnetha made a face.

“Oh dear,” Pauline murmured.

“What that meant, I suppose, was she wanted flowers under the jumps, shaped bushes as jumps, and either trained roses, or rose urns on the sides of the jumps. We’re compromising.”

The girls all looked at each other. They all wondered how much of an argument Agnetha and Anabella had had over this concept called compromise. Bjorn’s lips twitched and he surreptitiously sent them video he had covertly recorded for them to watch later. (There would be many gasps and a lot of giggles.)

Agnetha hefted a larger jump side out of her truck, It was a swirled design painted in raspberry. “We have two variations of these, this one, poor thing, is supposed to be a horse head.”

The girls giggled. The swirls were in the shape of a horse head. They did recognize it.

“And the other, I think for you girls, is lavender and in the shape of a duck’s head.” Agnetha rolled her eyes. “She special ordered these and we’re to train the roses on them.”

The girls nodded. That made sense and would be pretty.

“Now, we’ll be using some more standard configuration jumps and having smaller urns in them with miniature roses to keep them seated in place being heavy and all.” Agnetha continued. “Then there’s to be at least one or two jumps, I’m not sure how many jumps there actually are in this course that will be the big urns with the roses in them. I’m sure you’re sensing a theme.”

They grinned.

“Lastly, we’re going to be using some of the shrub roses to create ‘formed’ jumps. I argued for lavender, but you know how she is.” Agnetha rolled her eyes. “Now, some of the ground roses will be going under the jumps to, and I quote, tie everything together. Now, I think that if she wants a garden jumping course, she should leave the garden aspect to the experts, but no one asked me. There will also be two rose arches that are going to form the entrances and exits of the riding tracks. I guess so everyone knows where to start and where to end.”

They giggled and nodded.

“And you can bet dollars to donuts, that she will want a rose arch jump in the middle of the track once she sees it, so we’re going to get ahead of her and do it anyways.”

“Understood, Agnetha,” Lily said.

“I also have new signs, white with grape lettering and fancy roses and grape corners.” Agnetha rolled her eyes. “In about an hour, the contractors are going to be here to change out the seats for new Mulberry and Grape ones. So, we’re to stay out of their way and let them work.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem if we’re doing the jumps on the showjumping side.” Linn said.

“So, I hope you’re all finished eating because work starts now,” Agnetha announced, hand on one hip.

A couple of the girls took the signs and Bjorn’s favorite battery powered drill and went to put up the new signs where the old ones had been. The grapes and roses were embossed silver bits around the edges. They were really quite pretty and added a bit of flair to the place. They were long out of the way by the time the contractors arrived.

Inside, they had to mark everything out and set things up to see how they’d look aesthetically. Sure, the Baroness had given them a number of jumps and which jumps in each place were supposed to have so many bars, but she hadn’t said which jumps were to be what type of décor.

And Agnetha was fussy. So, they kept having to move things around until she was happy with it all. So, if the ones around the edges happened to be more shrubs and no fancy sides than the ones in the middle. (Though Agnetha had decided to turn a least one of the horse head or duck head jumps into shrub jumps instead of bars.) Then, it was only because the jumps were so close to the edge of the walls.

Or that’s what they’d tell the Baroness.

They were simply following Agnetha’s directions. They had no say in anything, nothing at all.

When they were finished, Linn tested it out.

She wasn’t in her showjumping uniform. They were all dressed for work in their pretty winery clothes that could take hard work. Linn thought it was a challenging set of jumps.

“It’s beautiful,” the Baroness said from the door.

They all turned to her.

Everyone wanted to heave a great sigh of relief.

The Baroness smiled ever so slightly. It was better than she could have imagined. She nodded at them and left.

“Is it bad that I want to give her a hug?” Tyra asked. “Like, things around here have been bad so long and now, I don’t know, I want to give her a hug and tell her it’s going to be okay.”

They all laughed at that.

“It’s not bad.” Regina said.

“I doubt she’d accept.”

“Group hug!” Shouted Brittany.

They gathered around to hug each other. Because sometimes, you needed to get the hugs out.

--

They all woke up excited, grabbing toast and dashing around to do all the clean up chores (and protecting their toast from hungry horses who liked bread.) It was decoration day! Today was the day that they were going to turn their bit of South New Jorvik County into the most rainbow celebratory festival that anyone had ever seen.

Without being tacky.

They knew the baroness would make them tear it all down if it was tacky.

But they were excited. They felt they had the right to be excited. Prying open boxes of decorations with crow bars, they hoped they had enough. Because there were plenty of hearts, and rainbow hearts and big fluffy cloud lights, and bows. Specifically, there was a large box of rainbow sequin hair bows they were to hand out to the girls they met and tell them to go see Jojo Siwa over at Moorland.

And all the bows, sequin or not, had roses with light purple crystals in the middle of them.

Giggling, they helped each other put hair bows on and put an armful of each into their saddlebags. They broke into groups, grabbing decorations, because there were a lot of them and every place needed to be decorated from the Silver Glade Restaurant, to the stables, to the gardens.

They were lucky, the lamps of the manor had arms off of them. So each lamp got a bow at the junction of the arms, a pearl studded heart on the arm nearest to the road affixed in rainbow order from one lamp to the next, and a chain of hearts wrapped around the pole (hearts also in rainbow order instead of being rainbow striped.) There were a lot of lamps.

The birch trees got decorations of hanging small clouds with trails of hearts dangling from them like it they were raining hearts. They also had lanterns with heart shapes cut out of them to hang.

They decorated the bridges with bows and the heart streamers going from bow to bow.

They found a broad board and braced it against the columns in the fountain.

Lily eyed it. “I’m not sure it’s safe.”

“Then be careful not to fall in,” Pauline teased. “Or you’ll get wet.”

“Thanks,” Lily said.

She carefully walked over to get the clouds and hearts in the trees. Linda also gave her lanterns with heart cut outs to hang up.

More of these lanterns got placed into the flower beds and hidden in the urns.

They put the hearts on the doors and in the windows. The heart streamer swags went across doorways and were draped in the windows, across the stall tops on the interior of the stable. They put bows on the fences and bigger studded hearts in the middle of the fence with the heart streamers draped between them. And they put the bows on the lower half of the exterior stall doors of the horses, chiding them not to nibble on them.

They made a display of bigger studded hearts using fishing line in the archways to either side of the main doors of the Manor.

They put up the cloud lamps in the dome of the stables, two girls holding the ladder in place as another perched precariously near the top of it. There were big clouds and small clouds and they created a grouping of them. They turned on the lights after, the LEDs in the clouds a bright white, while the big ones had LED strands in rainbow colors that faded in and out.

They liked it so much they put some over the aisles in the stables and took them down to the riding arena to do as big of a display as they could by bunching big ones together in the dressage side. Using transports, they were able to go get sun catchers and stained glass decorations from Cape West and New Hillcrest to put in the windows of the Riding Arena. There wasn’t any hay in there after all.

Rainbow heart streamers got draped around the railing of the bandstand in the garden. Pearl studded hearts hung from the arches. And more clouds were put under the dome.

They added clouds to the dome in the rooftop restaurant and more studded hearts. They put the lanterns in the middle of every table rearranging the flower vases so they made more sense. Flower boxes got a studded heart in the middle of them, with rainbow hearts swags to each side. They put bows on every fence section.

Someone decided to hide the heart streamers in the rose arches of the long archway. Along the back of the benches, they put the heart streamers, bows, and one of the big studded hearts.

The entire time they were running around, they’d run into girls their age that were riding horses or leading horses or all in all wandering about. They passed out the hair bows. “Come see Jojo Siwa and stand together this Rainbow Week!”

Reactions were mixed but no one as quite willing to refuse a sparkly sequin rainbow hair bow. The hair decorations multiplied.

FOR THE ACCOMPANYING IMAGES PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE MY WATERMARK AND CONTACT INFORMATION. THANK YOU. I get it. Some of you might get excited and want to see this stuff in the game, especially the clothes, tack, and pets. However, the only way I want to see this in the game is if I get paid for it. If I see it in the game and I’m not paid for it, there will be hell to pay. You think I’m salty. I’d be angry. Personally, I’m not going to send this info to SSO. If you do, leave my contact information there! Don’t give them any excuses to steal.

Now, I’ll know you haven’t read this note if you leave me comments about how ‘salty’ I am about the game and if I hate it so much I should do something else. I am doing something else. It’s called Mystic Riders MMORPG Project. Mystic Riders however is a very baby phase game. You can check out our plans on the game dev blog. (Skills, Factions, Professions, Crafting, Mini-Games, 25+ horse breeds!) If you know anyone who would be interested and has money or contacts about game making, direct them to the blog.

[prorevenge]

Want to be a horrible co-worker to me and steal from the company? Hold my beer while I ruin your career.

So, I've read so many stories on this sub and never once thought about sharing one of the most satisfying days in the history of my professional career. This is a long one but had fun reminiscing.

Straight out of college, with a degree in graphic design, hungry to find a good job in a horrible economy (2009) I applied all over the place. I ended up settling for a decently paid internship instead with really good company. A beer distributor, for a large and legendary macro-brewery. I was pretty ecstatic. Even if this was a part time internship it had great potential to turn into a full time job. I was hired in to be a graphic designer for their in house print shop and I would be working one other person, this girl Alice (name changed for anonymity).

My first day working I met Alice and she seemed really nice, knowledgeable and passionate about graphic design. Due to seniority she was technically my supervisor. After a few days working I learn a few things about her. Obsessed with running, obsessed with horses (she was a horse girl), home-schooled her whole life, and overall realized she was just an awkward person. Nothing wrong with that, some people are awkward, it's ok but all day everyday I would hear about running and she was obsessed with competing with her sister. It's all she talked about. Her obsessions were just draining to hear about some days but the obsessions come back later in the story...

Anyway, I dealt with the awkwardness for a while. I just learned of ways to ignore it. After a couple years is when the real trouble started. By this time I became a full time employee, not an intern anymore. We were pretty much equals when it came to rank in the office. Only thing she did more than I did was ordering. She would order ink cartridges for our printers, paper, print heads etc... that's all she did more than me. She still delegated work, but I didn't mind.

At a certain point I was put in charge of reorganizing our office and helped move everything around with my boss. The catch was that I got to pick where I sat, got to choose my desk and location if I helped move. Alice knew this, didn't care and said she was too busy to help with the reorganization. I was happy to help. The way our office was organized after the change was she sat in front of me with her back facing me and I would be all the way in the back of the office by the printers. So basically I could see everything she was doing on her computer, IF I wanted to or cared to. But we always got our work done, browsed the web for personal reasons occasionally throughout the day, it wasn't abused by either of us so no big deal. Like I said, she was my superior so she would designate jobs. We would get job requests from the salesmen and they would differ in difficulty and time to complete them. Everything was equal. We would bust ass and have an equal amount of work always....until I went on vacation for a week.

I go on vacation for that week and come back into the office to see her sitting in my desk...I'm immediately confused. I then notice her computer, picture frames, desk organizer, all her shit is now moved from her desk to mine...and all my stuff is moved to where she was sitting and was thrown everywhere. This bitch literally went through all my stuff, unplugged my computer and everything I had and switched desks with me while I was on vacation. No text/call, email or notice about it or why she did it. I look at her and say..

Me: "Uhhh, what happened to my desk?"

Alice: "Oh, so while you were gone the printers keep jamming up and I had to get to them quicker so I just switched desks with you since your desk is closer..."

Me: "Ok, I don't understand it's only like a 5 foot difference between your desk and mine..."

Alice: "Yeah I know, but they were jamming up and every time they would do that it would take too long to boot back up and restart everything."

Me: (in my head, total bullshit) "Yeah ok, I don't get it but whatever."

I didn't get, It was fucking weird and I was pretty pissed all my shit was moved and our desks were switched. Not only that but IT had to get involved to switch our phone numbers to our desk...that took a few days so I kept getting all her calls and she got mine. It was ridiculous. I didn't care after a few minutes when I saw the pile of work to do for the day. There were jobs backed up and the whole sales team was asking where their job orders were. Alice kept saying, "Oh it was so busy last week with just me here. Couldn't get it done. So we had to bust ass and play catch up for a few days...

One key part of all this is that we have a printing program that files and filters all the print jobs we send. It has date, time, file name, number of copies, time it took to print etc...I was curious so I go back one week to see what she did while I was gone, absolutely nothing. A couple of the days I was gone there were only a few files sent to print and they were projects that would have taken at most 15 minutes a piece to do. Even if the printers were jamming there is absolutely no way she could have done that little without slacking off the entire time. You can always work on projects and send them to the printer queue to send later.

As weeks started to pass after she moved the desks I noticed productivity started to go way down. Even worse I started to get a ton of projects sent to me, twice as many as usual. I was at the point there would be days I would stay 2 hours late just to finish things up. Not only that, but Alice worked out a deal with our boss she could start coming in one hour earlier (before anyone else is in the office) and leave an hour earlier at the end of the day because she had cRoSs fIt and bOot cAmP for running and needed to train for a marathon. That's fine except she wasn't doing her job.

The printing software we use to track everything was showing she actually wasn't doing jack shit. I don't get how clueless she could be to think she would get away with this either...we can both see every job that is sent (or not sent in this matter) to the printers. Showing for every 10 jobs I would send to her 1. Ahh...now I know why she moved the desks, so she could be where I was without anyone looking at her screen. I also noticed every time I would get up to go by her to grab something from the printers she would grab her mouse really fast and click away from whatever website she was on wasting time instead of doing work. I would also check to see what she did during that hour she would come into work early while no one was here...nothing...I would look to see what she did during the hour I was gone for lunch...nothing.

So here I am, coming in on time, busting my ass, doing a ton of work, staying late while she would waste an hour in the morning, waste an hour during my lunch and not even do the bare minimum while there. I had enough. Up until then I had to put up with her awkwardness and that's whatever but I was no longer going to put up with her laziness and poor work ethic.

I knew she was going on a long weekend trip in a couple weeks to run a marathon. I started taking screen shots of the print jobs on our system's queue every day at the end of the day showing what I did and she didn't do. Shows how she slacked off and gave me all the work to do and didn't do anything. It was more than enough proof to show she was abusing company time severely.

The Thursday she was gone I gave her a taste of her own medicine. I moved our desks back. I moved everything from my desk back to my old desk she stole from me and all her shit nicely put back on her desk. I kept everything nice and organized as if nothing was changed besides the location of the desks themselves. Even further I went and located extra long telephone cords so I didn't have to bother IT to switch our phones back again. I held on to all the screenshots I took of her slacking off and didn't show them to my boss. I wasn't going to unless she raised hell about me moving our desks which why would she? It was my desk originally, the printers obviously were not jamming ever, it was a bullshit excuse and I never got mad at her or made a big deal when she did it...so why would she get mad at me for doing the same thing? I didn't even care about the desk itself, I cared that she was slacking off and not doing her job where she was in a spot no one could keep track of what she is doing. She was supposed to be my superior, someone who can manage and delegate work, instead she took advantage of me and the company.

I didn't want any huge surprises so at the end of the work week I sent her a text:

"Hi Alice, just wanted to let you know I ended up moving our desks back to their original location. Figured it wasn't a big deal but I just wanted my original desk back that I claimed after I was given the option for helping organize everything. Just didn't want you to be surprised on Monday. Have a good weekend!"

I gave her more of a courtesy than when she did that...so I figure it wouldn't be an issue (there was). I didn't get a response or anything. So I walk in Monday morning after she got back from her long weekend and I just say hi, walk past her and go to my reclaimed desk.

Me: "Not sure if you got my text but I let you know I moved the desk back to their original spots, figured the original issue of the printers jamming up was fixed so I just wanted my original desk back

Alice: (turns around to look at me, clearly pissed) "Yeah, I got your text...btw we're going to have a nice long talk with Jim (our boss, name changed for anonymity) about this."

Me: "...ok, what's the issue? I just wanted my desk back? You moved them without even telling me before and there wasn't an issue. So why are you mad?"

Alice: "We'll just go talk to Jim about all this..."

Me: "sounds good, let's go"

Alice: (turns back to her computer, then turns back at me again) "Why do you have to be so Honoury!?"

Me: "Honoury?"

Alice: "YES! Honoury!?"

Me: "You mean ornery? And if you did intend to call me ornery, I'm not...at all, I just moved our desks back...exactly what you did before."

She just turned back around and we were called into my boss's office. He clearly didn't give a shit and was just fed up with Alice's BS since this wasn't the first time she brought up a total non-issue up to him before. She complained constantly, would bring up nonsense about the office all the time about things that just didn't matter one bit. This was another one. She goes on explaining how I just want to cause issues for no reason. Then Jim asks me, "Well why did you move the desks anyway?"...that's when I whipped out the stack of screen shots showing her lack of work and how I was being overworked and doing the work of two people.

He looks over everything and was pissed and frustrated. Questioned why this was going on and why the work wasn't delegated properly. He also mentioned he would notice how I would be here late all the time. She had no answer. Alice made up excuses how she was busy placing orders for supplies and doing other projects that were not all printed work that couldn't be tracked. He wasn't having any of it and just said to keep the desk the way they are and not change anything again. So I got my desk back.

Funny enough, now that I could see everything she was doing all the open jobs were delegated properly...WEIRD...all the workload was split evenly, SHOCKER...and all the bullshit from before stopped.

That wasn't even the pro-revenge part of the story! Needless to say, after this fiasco there were issues upon issues between us. There was a rivalry and we got along enough to just get the work done and that's it. I could care less about her, she would be nasty to me all the time and just say bitchy comments. Whatever...I could care less. I wanted nothing to do with her. I knew she had poor work ethic and did what she had to to keep her job by doing the bare minimum to make it seem like she was working.

Now, remember when I said I worked for a beer distributor? Pretty sweet gig. We got to try a lot of new beers we would distribute before they came out, even would tap kegs in the morning and have it available throughout the day. They would let us drink on the job, to a point. Just be responsible doing it. One day we have a new beer tapped outside in the warehouse and were able to drink in the morning. I had a couple and Alice kept going back to drink more. I was around her enough times drinking where I could tell she was getting buzzed or sometimes drunk. When this happened she would be forgetful and slack off (another shocker). When lunch time came around she barely did anything that day. I wouldn't say buzzed, but she was definitely in that lazy state of drinking a few beers.

I went to lunch and came back after an hour. I noticed she was gone already and had gone to lunch before I got back. Looked like she just got up and left. Computer was still logged in, crap all over her desk, half beer sitting there and probably just didn't care since she was in that lazy state of drinking.

-The Pro-Revenge Part-

I walk up to our normal printer to grab a couple emails I printed out, not on the expensive HP printers we print banners on, just our normal printers. I notice a couple pieces of paper sitting there under what I had just printed out. I look to see what it is and it's an invoice from eBay. I didn't think much of it but i did a double look after noticing one of the pictures is of the ink cartridges we use on our big 36" HP printers...these are typically $150-200 a toner cartridge depending on the color, and there were 10 total for each printer when being used.

"...No fucking way..." I thought to myself..."Is she selling these on eBay and pocketing the money?" I look up the seller name on eBay which was something like RunnersWorld347 or something running related (red flag). Turns out she has been stealing ink cartridges and selling them online off and on for over 3 years. On one transaction she made over $1,000 right before Christmas, probably to buy Christmas presents or something. Another was before her marathon she did earlier in my story. Probably to pay for that and her trip to go running. There were transactions for running shoes she purchased on there that I have seen her wear in the office on casual Fridays before, something horse related but forgot exactly what it was...it was hard evidence she was stealing product from the company and selling it on eBay. Since she did the ordering and inventory of all the printing supplies she could take advantage of it pretty easily, and she did. How stupid can you be to leave that kind of evidence sitting on a printer? Pro-tip, don't get tipsy and print off invoices of stolen property you're selling on eBay and forget about it.

I brought up all this information to my boss and showed him exactly what she was doing. He couldn't believe it and to be honest I couldn't either. Being a shitty co-worker and employee is one thing but stealing/selling thousands of dollars worth of company property? Really messed up. Jim ended up giving Alice the chance to come clean. He first called me into the office to let me know he will be talking to her and giving her the option to come clean about everything before showing her the evidence against her. I walked back to my desk and all I remember her asking me is "Uh what's going on, is everything ok?" after she noticed I was called in to talk to Jim. I just shook my head and said "Yeah, idk.." and a second later she was called into his office.

About 5 minutes pass and I see Alice walk back into the sign shop crying with tears running down her face. Doesn’t say anything to me as I watch her start to pack up her belongings in a box, that’s when i knew she just got fired. Half way through packing up Jim comes by and says, “are you done yet?” She replies no and starts going on her computer while Jim promptly stops her and says, “No! Don’t go on your computer, those privileges are revoked and you can not be on our computers or network anymore. It’s a liability” he allows her to get a couple personal files as he watches her like a hawk. She picks up her box of shit and is escorted out of the building. Last I ever saw of her. Best part of all this was done in front of all the sales team and managers. About 20 of them. They all watched this happen and all watched her be escorted out of the building.

About 10 minutes of people asking me what happened I realized 99% of people there absolutely hated her for related reasons revolving around her poor work ethic, nasty attitude and awkwardness towards everyone. I got a couple slow claps and hand shakes too.

I was called back in to Jim’s office a little while later. He explained they confronted her about the theft. Gave her the option to confess to everything and they wouldn’t press charges and allow her to resign. She confessed immediately. I ended up getting a raise right then and there and was promoted to sign shop manager and was put in place of finding a new team member to interview and hire in and was able to work closely to HR and hiring department to find the right person.

Long story short after that I stayed for another few months and got a great opportunity at a new job. But I was able to hire in a really good employee that was a quick learner and got her setup to be efficient and get shit done. It was almost like a “I must go now, my job is done, someone else needs me” moment when i left. Turns out she was just a toxic employee to most people well before I started there but was once untouchable because of her intimate relationship with a manager there. Never knew this, but once they weren’t a thing anymore there was no protection.

TL;DR worked with a god awful employee who made my work day miserable, didn’t do her job, wasted company time, went through my belongings and moved my desk and ultimately got caught stealing company property by me and I got her fired...then got a raise and promotion because of it.

(source) story by (/u/Purplepunch36)

[littlecatlost1]

Why can’t I be happy for Mark and Sean?

That title isn’t meant to be any kind of statement. I’m genuinely wondering. Why can’t I be happy?

I’ve been feeling pretty bad ever since the two of them announced Cloak Brand yesterday. I think it’s great that @markiplier and @therealjacksepticeye have made something they can be so proud of and so passionate about. And I hope that they’re successful and I wish them luck in this venture.

But, I don’t know, the whole thing just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

When the announcement came out yesterday, my emotions went on a downward slope which started with just some mild disappointment when it turned out that it wasn’t some kind of fun, entertainment related project like I was expecting. It comes out and it’s like, “Oh. It’s just some overpriced premium clothing brand.” I don’t really care about fashion, so, whatever.

I clicked the link to the Cloak Brand website and it’s there that my mood went down that sharp slope from being mildly disappointed to highly disappointed to even feeling angry and slightly insulted.

Okay, I’m going to step away from Mark and Sean for a second because this really doesn’t relate to them. I have never been a fan of these big name super expensive clothing brands. It just reeks of elitism. And status symbols. “Look at me! I’m better than you because I can wear [Insert brand name here]! Where’s your [Insert brand name here]? Aw, too poor? HA HA! Loser!”

Oh, my god! Who fucking cares!? It’s just clothes!!

I am not calling Mark and Sean elitists. Because they’re not. I know that that isn’t what they’re about and I know they only have good intentions. I just never expected them to do something like this. It feels so weird and out of character to me. I guess that’s part of why it’s bothering me.

I’m a little worried that this will create a similar mindset of “You’re not a real Markiplier/Jacksepticeye fan unless you wear Cloak Brand!” I’ve already seen little signs of it in the replies to their tweets. Someone brings up the high prices and someone else will reply with something along the lines of “You’re just mad because you can’t afford it.”

And this isn’t even about the prices, which I agree are kinda outrageous. Because I get it. I understand that these clothes are made of high quality materials and are custom cut, custom fit and that all of this costs a lot of time, effort, and most importantly, money, to produce. So, yeah, I get that they have to charge these kinds of prices. I get that it’s not the same as the other merch they usually do.

I think the problem for me is the marketing, the way they’re selling it. It really pisses me off. “This is YOUR brand!” is the big slogan at the top of the website. I go into the Our Story page and I watch the video and I read this message from Mark and Sean which contains phrases like:

Mark: “What’s best for you, specifically.”

Sean: “Because there has never really been a brand out there for people like us. People who game all day.”

Mark: “A real, honest clothing brand that gave you guys a voice.”

Sean: “We want to see you guys wear it. We want to represent you.”

The whole claim that this is “for our community.” Yeah, right! You mean the RICH SIDE of your community. These clothes are not for everyone, no matter how much they try to spin it otherwise. It sounds like they’re trying to say that these clothes were designed with the people in their community, their fans, in mind. It also sounds like they’re trying to sell it to gamers in general. “A brand for people like us.” But that’s the issue. Most of us are not like you. I’m pretty sure the majority of the people in your community don’t live as well as you, and can’t afford to simply throw down $80-$85 for one hoodie or $35 for one t-shirt.

Another sad thing is that a lot of people will do it anyway just because Mark and Sean’s names are attached to it. Many of which are probably kids and teens.

I don’t know. I can’t and won’t speak for everyone. ‘Cause maybe I’m wrong. I’m probably wrong. I’m stupid.

I’ve been watching both Mark and Sean since 2014. They’ve been a good distraction and a comfort as I suffer with severe depression and anxiety. I like that they’re both such humble and genuine people. It kinda feels like I’m sitting right there next to them, having fun like just another friend. I can at least pretend to know what that feels like when I watch them.

They’ve both been so great about interacting with their fans and making everyone feel included and that everyone matters. Generally just making the fans feel like they care. Sean, especially, who’s become such a wonderful advocate for mental health.

Which is why this whole idea that these clothes are for us or for the community rubs me the wrong way and makes me sick. Like all those great ideals they’ve built up over the years which came out the goodness in their hearts are almost being used as a sales pitch. I know they aren’t lying and I know there are zero ill intentions here. I believe in both of them. It just feels disingenuous, is all I’m saying.

I’ve seen people say some harsh things. Some people are saying that they’re treating their fans like gullible cash dispensers. I don’t agree with statements like that. I just don’t like this.

At least with the other merch it actually sorta meant something. Whether it was supporting a charity or supporting these awesome people. And right here, I have to give a highlight to Sean’s message of PMA. Ever since the start of 2018, Sean has done an absolutely beautiful thing with his Positive Mental Attitude movement. It’s so great. When I wear this, I feel like I’m promoting something that feels good instead of just wearing his brand. It felt like it was worth the slightly higher price tag.

This just feels like business. And icky.

I like the slick, clean design of the logo. I’ll give them that much. But even if I could afford to burn $85 for a hoodie, I still wouldn’t pay it. Because it is NOT worth it!

I don’t know. Why is Cloak Brand even a thing? Did we really need this? I imagine the average gamer wears clothes that are a fraction of the cost and are just as comfortable.

I don’t know what to think. I feel let down. I feel like this belief I have of Mark and Sean being just regular people who just want to make people happy and don’t care about money has been stained, just a little bit. There’s a small disconnect there that wasn’t there before. I don’t know why I’m so bent out of shape. I’m a fucking idiot!

I still love these boys and I will continue to enjoy their content. I’ll say one more time that I wish Mark and Sean luck with their new clothing line, but I can’t support it.

I’m scared that I’m going to get burned for pouring out my thoughts. I just hope people will realize that’s all this is. Thoughts. I’m not a hater. This is not an attack against Mark and Sean. So, please, don’t attack me back.

[swordarkeereon]

Keeping Silent: Shutting Your Mouth For Every Occasion

I started working with Daemons back in 1984. I was a stupid, smart-assed, know it all kid back then.  I read every book I could find on the subject, coined myself an occult expert among all my friends, and considered myself special because surely – no one knew as much about the occult as me. Four years later, in 1988 – my ego got knocked down a few pegs when I discovered that there were other, more experienced people involved in the occult. And things I thought I knew were not things I had discovered on my own, and what I actually knew was very little compared to some of these people who’d been doing this longer than me. But I was still an egotistical, bratty little bitch (as teenagers are) and managed to secure some training by these more experienced people. By 1994 – I’d worked my way into a real live Daemonolatry group and was even given tasks that usually only clergy (in other traditions anyway) were allowed to do.  Like set up the altars, construct the ritual space, or help with abyssal communion and rite of imbibement.  But even by that time, having practiced for 10 years, I was still pretty wet behind the ears. By 2004 – 20 years after beginning my initial journey, I’d started to get my shit together and finally started viewing my practice in a more mature, adult way, even though I still felt the need to share my opinion with anyone who would listen. In some instances I probably sounded like some crazy dogmatic magician who was intolerant of certain beliefs or practices. Perhaps I was. By 2014 (30 years after I had begun practicing working with Daemons), I’d gotten to a point where I finally decided to fully step back and STFU. And to listen.

I’ve watched people come and go in the world of online Daemonolatry since 1997.  I know everyone who has been around for more than 10 years. It’s not a big community – especially in the world of those who work with Daemons.  Only a small fraction of the Daemonolaters online today will be practicing 10 years from now. For most people it’s a passing fad.

I’m pretty laid back. I have a live and let live mentality. I tend toward those who follow a tradition similar to my own.  Nothing wrong with that.  That’s my personal preference. I have A LOT of opinions about Daemonolatry, but for the most part I keep them to myself these days. I wasn’t always like this, but after fifteen years sharing my opinions online and realizing I was just pissing in the wind –  I learned that it’s a much quieter, more spiritual existence keeping one’s opinions to oneself.

I could tell people who the old school practitioners are (as they walk among us) in public online forums, but why?  It makes it more entertaining when one of the people new to the scene takes on those who have been around for awhile. Trust me – in private, at coven meetings, or at in person gatherings – we laugh about this stuff.

I could tell you who’s new on the scene and pretending to be an old school practitioner (because I’m not just on the in in the online community – but I know who’s who in the Daemonolatry world offline, too), but again – not my business to publicly point that out. Besides, if you sit and listen — you’ll be able to pick the noobs (and by noobs, that’s anyone who’s been practicing under 10 years) out rather quickly. Let’s just say that MOST of the people in the public online groups these days haven’t been practicing more than five years, even if they tell you otherwise. Their participation, questions, comments etc… speak volumes. Likewise – I can tell an armchair magician from someone who is actively practicing. There are longtime armchair magicians, too. People who are far more interested in theory, psychology, and philosophy than anything else.

I hear and see a lot of wrong information out there, but with UPG, I let it go because what’s right to me may not be right to someone else and no one is going to change anyone’s mind. In my humble opinion it’s best to let people do what they want because they don’t want rules or ideas, or traditions they don’t like,  and I don’t have time for confrontation with strangers that, when it’s said and done, is pointless. Do what you want as long as it makes you happy. But never forget that there’s a difference between traditional Daemonolatry and what passes off online as Daemonolatry. I know what those differences are, but I don’t dare point them out because that’s not what kids today want. They want to do what they want and say they’ve got the “in” on Daemons.  If that makes them happy, so be it.

I see trends in Daemons that everyone is working with come and go, but I don’t point it out. I usually just laugh, shake my head, and walk away. Last week it was Paimon, this week Claunek, I’m pretty sure Belial was all the rage there for awhile, and who knows which Daemon will be flavor of the moment next week. Poor Daemons — even they only get their five minutes of fame.

I watch young people discover something old about Daemonolatry that all the old school practitioners know because our traditional training taught us that stuff in the very beginning and I giggle to myself as they try to pass it off as something *they* alone have discovered, and that no one else knows. But I shut my mouth.

I watch people who are brand new to the practice opening websites and shops, and blogs, so they can teach other beginners. Watching the blind lead the blind can be rather amusing, too. Of course it’s not funny when some beginners start ass-raping other beginners  (or people who just don’t know any better) by selling them Daemons in rings, demon lovers, and other nonsensical shit.  Still, it’s not my place, so I say absolutely nothing.

I’ve also watched as other seasoned practitioners sat by and said nothing. We often give one another nods of acknowledgement from across the virtual room, or pass a virtual sigh or eyeroll between us when we see some of the insane, crazy shit we see.  But we generally bow out of the conversation.  Some beginners have made it very clear they don’t give a shit what the elder Daemonolaters think and that they don’t value our opinions, ideas, or thoughts and so they don’t want us to weigh in on conversations. So we don’t.

This is why we end up so often not participating in online groups – because we’re not wanted there as some of these younger people posture and jockey for position within the online occult groups they dominate with their excessive talk and, at most, beginner knowledge.

Keeping silent means you see a lot, you hear a lot, and you know a lot more about what’s going on than people think you know.  Today has been one of those days where I saw enough in the last 24 hours that I’m ready to keep silent for another year.

[carolightpenvenys]

unknown number- penvenys au

thanks for your patience, relax and enjoy, leave some feedback x

Unknown Number 6:58 where's the dog food?

Caroline Penvenen 6:59 oh what the fuck sorry you must have the wrong number- i have dog food but maybe not what you're looking for?

Unknown Number 7:00 Ross quit playing I know it's early but I have a shift!! Where's the damn dog food I need the damn dog food. It's your bloody dog I'm pet sitting I just can't believe

Caroline Penvenen 7:02 can absolutely guarantee this isn't ross ! sorry xx

Unknown Number 7:03 Oh. No Ross would never use kisses I'm so sorry But you wouldn't know where my mate Ross has put the dog food?

Caroline Penvenen 7:05 do i look like i would

Unknown Number: 7:05 Potentially, I can't actually see you

Caroline Penvenen 7:06 touché xx

Unknown Number 7:09 You can't say someone doesn't look like something when you can't see them

Caroline Penvenen 7:10 what

Unknown Number 7:10 Never mind

Caroline Penvenen 7:12 no i wanna understand come onnnnnnnnnnnn :( X

Unknown Number 7:20 Search memes Just to let you know! Found the dog food!

Caroline Penvenen 7:21 you use way too many exclamation marks gives a girl a headache but congrats on the dog food, stranger x

Unknown Number 7:23 I think we are more than strangers now. And if I didn't have a shift starting in about a quarter of an hour, I would definitely tell you a little bit about myself So bye Until then Stranger

Caroline Penvenen 7:45 omg no i was in the shower come backkkk my name is caroline and i am tall blonde and handsome!!!!!

Caroline Penvenen 10:10 fuck Caroline stared down at her phone screen. Who cares if they woke her up at the crack of dawn, she really thought they had something going there.

She sighed, truth was, she was really lonely. She had some half arsed friendships with Demelza and her so called boyfriend Ross but after cutting her family out, she was left with very little to do. A text on her phone was rare.

She sat watching Horace dig a hole in his bed and she sighed, deciding sitting on her phone waiting for the stranger to text back was just too sad to contemplate.

Didn't mean she wasn't going to do it.

She had put her hair in a messy bun but lay in bed still, her MacBook in its Cath Kidston case on her lap as she furrowed her eyebrows, trying to look at “memes.”

She got a text from Demelza asking if she wanted to come to a party tonight- there was someone she might want to meet.

Fed up of terrible matchmaking, Caroline declined without a second thought.

This was just about the worst party Dwight had ever been to.

It was one of those ones, you know the ones where everyone who is invited as a bit of an agenda, where people are invited tactically rather than because they're actually liked.

And he was actually done with watching the sad affair that was George Warleggan and Ross Poldark’s relationship as he sighed, sinking into the couch with his lukewarm beer and phone in hand. After an 8 hour shift he'd pretty much like to be anywhere else.

“Hey!” Demelza sat down, speaking drunk and enthusiastically. “Having a great night?”

“Yeah.” Dwight replied half heartedly.

“Well you look like you're having a shit night.” She leaned in closer. “Youwannaknowasecret?”

“Last time you told me a secret Demelza it was that you were wearing granny pants.”

“And I still am!! Anyway. I know you're so depressed and lonely and your only friend is Ross’s dog who he lets you pet sit because you're lonelyyyyy.”

Dwight would contest this later. “Continue.”

“So I invited my beautiful model friend to set you two up and she RSVP’d no… how sad!”

She continued to babble but Dwight was looking down at his phone where he'd just received a text.

Unknown Number 22:06 found a meme btw when they don't text you later xx

“Yeah.” Dwight smiled up at Demelza. “Tragic.”

Caroline was sat on her bed, watching Ten Things I Hate About You and contemplating how Kat was a feminist icon when she got the text.

Unknown Number 22:07 I am at the world’s worst party so at least I can be happy knowing I taught you about memes.

Caroline Penvenen 22:07 omg spill how awkward is the party! It’s probably more fun than my night that i spent alone with m&s pasta and illegal streaming websites for films js not porn never porn X

Unknown Number 22:10 I just changed your number in my phone to “Unknown who is NOT using porn”

Caroline Penvenen 22:13 that is way too long i am changing yours to stranger plus you know my name is caroline !!!!!!!!

Stranger 22:14 silly me “caroline who is NOT using porn”

Caroline Penvenen 22:15 have fun explaining that to anyone that sees your phone xxx

Stranger 22:18 After much thought and consideration “Caroline”

Caroline Penvenen 22:22

Stranger 22:23 I regret telling you to research memes.

Caroline Penvenen 22:30 goodnight stranger X

When Dwight opens his phone about 24 hours later after perhaps the longest shift of his life, he’s bombarded with about 37 texts from Caroline.

Dwight Enys 22:00 Sorry I’ve been working all day! Hope you had a good one.

Caroline 22:01 what are you?? batman?

Dwight Enys 22:03 Close, I’m a doctor.

Caroline 22:05 wHAT that’s so cool what a wonderful day for saving lives people!!

Dwight Enys 22:08 What?

Caroline 22:08 it’s grey’s anatomy!!! you would definitely be dr mcsteamy or mcdreamy or whatever i don’t know i don’t watch it

Dwight Enys 22:10 Imagine though like Dr Dwight McSteamy hahaha

Caroline 22:10 dWIGHT your name is DWIGHT that’s adorable really you sound like a little old man that reads newspapers and puts too much milk in his tea

Dwight Enys 22:13 Well not that far from the truth… I mean how much milk is too much milk

Caroline 22:15

Dwight Enys: 22:16 Ok that tea looks cold for a start Not really fair on me But yeah Would drink Ps. Does this mean you’re in love with me??????

Caroline 22:17 you’re disgusting p.s. piss offfff  takes more than that to charm caroline penvenen.

Dwight tried to fight it but he was just too curious. He turned the Facebook app on and was ready to scan for infinite Caroline Penvenens.

Turns out it didn’t take him that long.

Caroline Penvenen

25 mutual friends including Ross Poldark and Demelza Carne

Dwight was absolutely stunned.

Like literally stunned.

He scanned through her photos even back to 2008 and she was still the most flawless human being he had ever seen. It couldn’t be the right Caroline.

It just couldn’t be,

How did Demelza and Ross even know her? How hadn’t he heard about her?

Well to be honest, he did massively zone out of all of their conversations.

Her profile was surprisingly open and he saw the last place she’d checked in was about five minutes from his house.

Not that he was stalking.

“Oh my god.” He sighed. “I’m being catfished by some kind of ethereal woman.”

Caroline 22:35 ok have given you adequate stalking time!!!! did you find me!!

Dwight Enys 22:37 Ok Caroline this is going to sound so weird but… You know Ross and Demelza??

Caroline 22:38 um yes i didn’t realise you’d stalked me with that much intensity should i be worried?

Dwight Enys 22:41 Oh God no sorry let me explain myself. Ross is actually my best friend He’s coming up as a mutual And so is Demelza haha

Caroline 22:42 omg who are you dwightttttt i am gonna stalk the hell out of you!!!

Dwight Enys 22:42 No please don’t

Caroline 22:43 it’s only fair brb omg let me send a screenshot is this you???

Dwight Enys

25 mutual friends including Verity Poldark and Ross Poldark

Caroline 22:47 hey dr mcsteamy your radio silence makes me feel like i have found you which makes me wonder how have we not met though?? maybe this is fate intervening like um guys it’s about time you met or whatever anyway guess the jig is up wow it’s going to be soooo awkward when we finally meet trust i am such a good actor no one will know i ever met you if that’s what you want ok bye

It took about a week before they undoubtedly crossed paths.

Horace was ill and Caroline was screaming down the phone to Demelza that she needed someone to come and sit with her whilst waiting for the vet.

“I will be all of two minutes, I still have my pyjamas on and I’m getting in the car!” Demelza insisted before hanging up and Caroline wept into her silk pyjamas with CP printed on the pocket as Horace continued to groan in pain.

“My poor baby.” She stroked his inflamed stomach. “My poor poor baby.”

Her doorbell rang and she raced to get it but there seemed to be an animated conversation happening as she opened the door.

“Demelza, I’m pretty sure this isn’t Sainsbu-” The voice cut off when they locked eyes with Caroline.

Dwight Enys as she lived and breathed.

“Where’s Horace?” Demelza demanded, marching straight in, a brush physically wedged in her hair and dinosaur onesie on.

Leaving Dwight and Caroline stood either side of the door, smiling awkwardly, barely able to make eye contact.

“Hi.” Caroline barely whispered. “Come in.”

“Thanks.” Dwight’s smile was tense but genuine as he followed her upstairs where Demelza was already stroking Horace.

She looked up. “Oh yeah sorry. This is Dwight. Dwight Caroline, Caroline Dwight.” She waved between the both of them and they shared a pained smile. “I offered Dwight a ride to Sainsbury's but he's a doctor so he could be of some use here I guess.”

“Well. I don't really do animals.” He shrugged. “But wouldn't hurt to try.”

He kneeled down next to Horace who immediately growled at him.

“That's so weird.” Demelza shook her head. “Horace is normally lovely.”

“Eh,” Caroline shrugged. “He's got a side.”

Dwight placed his hands on Horace’s stomach before nodding to himself. “It seems his stomach is a little inflamed from too much rich food.”

“I told you Caroline!” Demelza pointed accusingly. “Dwight she feeds him steak!”

“I can't believe you just ratted me out.” Caroline recoiled. “Only occasionally.”

“Well don't.” Dwight laughed a little. “Horace isn't seriously ill. The vet will give you a few things to make the inflammation go down but honestly, just stick to dog food.”

“And you say you aren't a vet.” Caroline teased, testing the waters.

“I'm really not. Would really appreciate a second opinion from an animal expert right now if I'm honest.” Dwight shrugged but he had a smile on his face.

“Well now we have tranquilized Caroline, we may as well go and buy you your ryvitas and other vegan shit you eat.” Demelza told Dwight. “But I've desperately got to go to the loo first. Meet me downstairs.”

She left in a hurry and Caroline stood up, suddenly very aware how much of a mess she looked with puffy eyes and creased pyjamas covered in dog hair.

“Well thank you anyway.” She looked him right in his cool blue eyes this time. “Dr Enys.”

He followed her down the stairs and she explained. “I knew we were bound to meet one day, I just didn't think I would look like,” she indicated to herself, “this.”

“Like what?” Dwight was honestly confused. “If my dog was ill, I would look a whole lot worse than you do. You should actually see me after a twelve hour shift.”

They both laughed at the thought before Dwight spoke again. “You know, I think Demelza has been trying to set us up for a while.”

Caroline began to link the dots in her head. “Seems about right.” She shook her head. “She's too cunning for me. But you never replied to my texts though.” She shrugged.

“Because I couldn't think of an answer. Maybe until I met you.”

She stood closer to him, slightly cutting his personal space. “Do you have one now?”

He replied. “No, but I have a question. Without the interference of our friends and fate, would you like to go on a date with me?”

I think we all know the answer.

Dr McSteamy 12:07 x

Caroline 12:08 xxxxxxxxxxxxx

[jack-thepumpkinking-blog1]

Jack Skellington -- Character Sheet

everybody's waiting for the next surprise / skeleton Jack might catch you in the back / and scream like a banshee / make you jump out of your skin / this is halloween, everybody scream

won't ya please make way for a very special guy / our man Jack is King of the Pumpkin patch / everyone hail to the Pumpkin King, now!

Archetype — The Hero Birthday — October 31, 1960 Zodiac Sign — Scorpio MBTI — ENFP Enneagram — 7, the enthusiast Temperament — Sanguine Hogwarts House — Slytherpuff Moral Alignment — Chaotic Good Primary Vice — Pride Primary Virtue — Charity Element — Air

[tw -- miscarriage mention, implied abuse (but v vague)]

Overview:

Mother — Eve (nee Meyer) Schildkraut (deceased) Father — Benjamin Schildkraut (deceased) Mother’s Occupation — homemaker Father’s Occupation — construction worker Family Finances — Poor (until Jack got rich.) Birth Order — Only child. Brothers —  None. Sisters — None. (Had a miscarried sister.) Other Close Family — Fern Bristlecape (second ex-wife) (FC: Sarah Michelle Gellar), Nemesis Hellsplat (first ex-wife) (FC: Katey Sagal), Hecuba Hellsplat (daughter, 32) (FC: Natalie Portman), Luna Bristlecape (daughter, 22) (FC: Emmy Rossum) Best Friend — None. Other Friends — None. They all dropped him when he fell out of favor, think about THAT. Enemies — None, tbh. Anti-Magick people probably. Pets — None. He should probably get a dog or something. Home Life During Childhood — Rough. His dad was a drinker and spent all their money, and he wouldn’t listen to his wife about needing to save any of it. Jack was always a...creative boy and his father saw it as emasculating, so he didn’t really tolerate Jack’s love of theatre. Which is why he moved out at such a young age (18). Once he had the money, he tried to convince his mom to move to LA with him, it didn’t work. Town or City Name(s) — Swynlake, England (born), LA, California, USA (where he’s lived most of his life.) What Did His or Her Bedroom Look Like — POSTERS. POSTERS EVERYWHERE. Jack spent the meager amount of money he did make as a young boy mowing lawns to go to the movies and to buy posters to decorate every surface of his room. Any Sports or Clubs — Drama club, secretly. Football, outwardly. Wasn’t actually half-bad but he got benched a lot because his heart just wasn’t in it. Also! Plays jazz piano. His mumma taught him. Favorite Toy or Game — Make-up. Dress-up. Dolls, so that he could act out his favorite scenes from movies. Spent a lot of time just--memorizing shit and monologuing to his mother while she cleaned the house. She called him her little parrot. Schooling — Went to Swynlake Primary and Secondary. No university. Favorite Subject — English and Drama. Popular or Loner — Popular. Definitely. Important Experiences or Events — Moving to LA! His first job! All his subsequent jobs! The birth of his daughters! The destruction of his career. Nationality — British Culture — LA (yes, that is a culture fight me.) Religion and beliefs — Jewish, but nonpracticing. Believes in hardwork.

Physical Appearance:

Face Claim —  Jeff Goldblum Complexion — Darker skin tone but still fair. Hair Colour — Salt’n’pepper, used to be black. Eye Colour — Hazel. Height — 6’4 Build — Skeletal Tattoos — None. Piercings — None. Common Hairstyle — Coiffed. Clothing Style — Eccentric, loves a good turtleneck. Mannerisms — Very Loud and wiggly. Is never sitting still for long. Likes to climb on furniture. Doesn’t sit in chairs properly. Usual Expression —

Health:

Overall (do they get sick easily)? — Nah, he’s in good health. Physical Ailments — None. Neurological Conditions — None. Some depression? Allergies —  Probably seasonal. Grooming Habits — Pretty good, ofc. Has to keep in Tip Top shape, even if he no longer has stylists Sleeping Habits — Has a bad case of insomnia. Eating Habits — Eats well, he’s a vegan. Exercise Habits —  Exercises more or less regularly. Does yoga mostly. And like...cycling. Emotional Stability — Has a lot of shit going on underneath but pretty chill outwardly. Body Temperature — Runs a little cold actually. Always has cold af hands. Sociability — Super social! Though mostly for his own benefit. Addictions — None. Drug Use — Used to be heavier. Probably smokes weed, but also do we want a Jack high on the marijuana? Alcohol Use — Frequent but not abnormal.

Your Character’s Character:

Bad Habits — Talking over people, being self-centered, being insensitive. Good Habits — He tries !! and he’s very healthy aha Best Characteristic — He CARES, he’s just not great at showing it Worst Characteristic — Literally does not care. Worst Memory — Getting absolutely destroyed by all media outlets and falling from grace. Best Memory — The premiere of hemlock hill ofc! Proud of — His career. Embarrassed by — Not much, really, but deeply upset about his career being trashed. Driving Style — Erratic lmao Strong Points — He is a very good teacher, when he actually focuses properly. Temperament — Always good-natured! Unless you really piss him off, he can turn really cold and vicious almost without warning. Attitude — Happy-go-lucky, outwardly anyway. Weakness — Caring too much what other people think, while also not listening to anything people say when they give advice. Fears — becoming irrelevant. Phobias — None. Secrets — That he is Deeply Unhappy. Regrets — Lots of things, mostly not having a good relationship with his daughter, Hecuba, which is why he has a better one with Luna. Feels Vulnerable When — People drag up the shit that made him lose his career and fame. Pet Peeves — People not recognizing him or being purposefully obtuse. Conflicts — Wanting to continue to be famous v refusing to change. Motivation — To be Famous. Short Term Goals and Hopes — To be Famous again. Long Term Goals and Hopes — To be Famous again. Sexuality — Straight, but he can be convinced, probably has had dalliances with men. Exercise Routine  — Does yoga every morning and evening. Day or Night Person — Night owl, for sure. Introvert or Extrovert — EXTROVERT. Optimist or Pessimist — Optimist.

Likes and Styles:

Music — Jack can play the piano and was in a jazz band for a while, so he loves music, especially jazz! But, really, he can get into anything. He tries to stay #hip for his students. Books — His book, of course, you should read it. Also reads a lot of plays/scripts. Magazines — Any magazine that mentions him. Foods — He’s a vegan! So, vegan food. Loves a good tofu. Has to eat well to keep his svelte figure. Drinks — Tall, half-caff, soy latte at 120 degrees. (I have absolutely no idea what this means but I googled “complicated starbucks orders” and this is what came up.) Also, likes tea. The like one piece of British culture he retained. Animals — Jack is very fond of strange animals–like okapis or the maned wolf. Animals that are just truly bizarre looking. Bonus points if they are obnoxiously large like giraffes. Sports — Played football in secondary. Wasn’t that bad. Social Issues — Magick Rights! Also, considers himself a feminist. (He’s not a terrible ally...but he’s also not perfect by any means.) Favorite Saying — “Acting is not about being someone different. It's finding the similarity in what is apparently different, then finding myself in there.” ~ Meryl Streep Color — Jack is a big fan of black and white–a solid, classic combination that you can’t go wrong with. That’s not to say he doesn’t love color, because he ABSOLUTELY does. It is just that black and white is his favorite combination. Clothing — Loves to dress brightly and fashionably! Jewelry — Not a whole lot. Wears nice watches, probably some rings/necklaces. Websites — His website, which I should make lmao. TV Shows — Hemlock Hill. Movies — His movies, Greatest Want — To be famous. Greatest Need — To learn.

Where and How Does Your Character Live Now:

Home — A large, eccentric mansion on top of a hill. I like to think that it is across from Cruella’s house. It is, of course, called the Skellington Mansion. Household furnishings — An eclectic combination of modern with like the skeleton of a Victorian mansion, so like really ornate, heavy curtains--but a white leather sofa. Favorite Possession — His Emmys. Most Cherished Possession — Is this not the same thing - Jack Neighborhood — The Woods Married Before — Twice! Once to a sorceress-actress, once to a fairy-model. Significant Other Before — Lots of girlfriends probably (all Magicks). Children — Hecuba Hellsplat and Luna Bristlecape Relationship with Family — Estranged for the most part. He barely, if ever, speaks to his ex-wives. Talks with Hecuba very rarely. Has the best relationship with Luna. She’s his bb girl. Car — Some speedster probably, a nice fancy, flashy car. Career — Actor. Dream Career — Actor. Dream Life — He had his dream life. Cry. Love Life — More or less nonexistent. Talents or Skills — Excellent at memorization. A good parrot (can mimic mannerisms/speech patterns really well.) Can play the jazz piano! Intelligence Level — Quite high on certain things, absolutely clueless on others. There is not a lot of in between, really. Finances — Still wealthy af, he has like a successful 40 year career to live off of for the foreseeable future.

[sasuhinasno1fan]

Making Iverson pay

So, this is the last day. I hope this last one is good. Thanks for an amazing fluff week and hopefully, I’ll be posting another story on here soon. Pranks

Keith stomped into his room. He wanted to scream but his roommate was still in the room. He dropped down on his bed and opened his bedside drawer and pulled out his phone.

Are you out of class?

He tapped his finger against the side of his phone waiting for a reply. Finally, the phone buzzed.

Got out of flight simulation practise with Shiro. What’s wrong?

It’s Iverson. He accused me of cheating on my last test. I swear after I helped you get into fighter class, he’s been after my ass. This is getting ridiculous.

Why don’t you tell Shiro, you know, the guy who is friends with guys who are just as in a high position as Iverson?

I’m not going to let him get involved. He might have friends, but Iverson can still end him. I just need to get back at him, nothing bad. Have any ideas?

Oh mullet, you came to the right person. Just got back to my room, it’s empty. Come over.

Keith decided to change first. He grabbed his jacket and headed to the door when his roommate asked, “uh, are you going to come back tonight?” Keith looked at him. The guy shrugged, “you haven’t come back the past couple nights and I kinda wanted to invite my girlfriend over?”

Keith sighed. “Anything happens to my side of the room and I’ll introduce my knife to you.” He didn’t bother to see the expression on his roommate’s face as he left. It didn’t take long to get to the door and knocked.

“Come in.” he pressed the button for the door and it slid open. He walked in to see Lance in the middle of pulling his uniform shirt off.

“Showing off?” Keith asked as he closed the door.

Lance just smirked over his shoulder as he pulled his baseball shirt on. “Only for my favourite mullet.” Lance walked over and wrapped his arms around Keith’s neck, Keith’s hands automatically going to Lance’s waist. “So straight laced golden boy wants to cause some trouble? And all for my honour?”

“Iverson has had it out for you after I helped prove that you were good enough to be fighter, because he likes his choose at cream of the crop and doesn’t want to admit he missed one.”

“Well I am still taking simulation lessons from Shiro, which isn’t amazing as I thought. Not bad, really, cause I get to know Shiro, who is awesome, but not amazing as I thought.” Lance pointed out

“Most lessons are Lance. But seriously, he can’t do this but pissing him off by calling him out on it is just going to make it hard on you.”

“Aww, babe, you care.” Lance sounded like he was teasing but his eyes said different. Lance was on his way to being a cargo pilot but Keith went to the people who decided who went where and fought for him. Iverson was against it, but the other high ups decided to give him a chance. Lance’s grades were good, it was just his placement test was a very points short. Iverson wasn’t happy and decided to try and mess with Keith almost to get back at him.

“I just want to get back at him without the messy things.”

“So a prank. Alright, I might have a few ideas.”

“Just remember, nothing insane. I’m trying not to get us expelled, or extremely disappointed by Shiro.”

“I’ll try my best, but now do I get to spend time with you?”

“There is something I’ve been wanting since you walked in.”

Lance’s smile showed he caught on instantly, “oh well. Maybe I can figure out what it is. Did you want a hug, something to drink? Or maybe…” Lance was quick to plant his lips on Keith’s. The kiss was just what Keith needed and he pulled his arms around Lance’s waist to kiss him for longer before Lance pulled away. “Maybe that?”

“That works just fine.” Keith said, before stealing another kiss. “Ok, but what do you plan to do?”

“Well, the new website is going up tomorrow right? Iverson’s supposed to have a big picture and my dad would be very disappointed if all the web design stuff he taught me wasted away just because I’m training to be a pilot.”

“How do you plan to do that?”

“My laptop, the stuff Pidge taught me and if you still have the school wide text of that old picture of Iverson, that would be amazing.”

The two curled up on Lance’s bed as he typed away getting into the school’s mainframe before opening the html to edit the page.

“How mad do you think Iverson will be?” Keith asked as he watched Lance type away in what he guessed was code. Web design was not his thing.

“Hey if he tries to yell at us, we’ll most likely be around most of the students and other teachers. He can’t do much.”

Keith rested his head on Lance’s shoulder still watching his boyfriend type away. “I like this. We should try and plan more pranks together.”

“Oh trust me babe. Stick with me and you’ll fall in love with it. But you do it to me and you’re declaring war.”

Keith stifled his giggles as he watched the home page of the new website was plastered on all of the TVs. The fonts were changed to the annoying symbol ones, pictures of generic aliens replacing some of the pictures of students in training. The best one was the high school Iverson picture, full of braces, crooked glasses and poor outfit choices.

“Was the Iverson picture too much?” Lance asked, hiding his laughter in Keith’s shoulder. No one knew they were going out but people weren’t paying attention to how close they were being right now, their attention on the TVs.

“Well they see he’s not so scary after all so no, this is perfect.  You are amazing.” Lance gave a big smile in return.

“KOGANE!” everyone turned to see a fuming Iverson stomping down the hall, his eyes locked on Keith. Shiro, who was nearby, followed after. “Alright, I know you were behind this. You get into a huffy fit yesterday and then you’re not found in your room last night. I know it was you.”

“Keith was with me.” Lance said.

“And why would he be with you McClain?”

“What, I’m not allowed to spend time with my boyfriend?” Iverson seemed stunned, and Lance and Shiro looked surprised anyway. Keith just shrugged. “What? People were gonna find out soon anyway. We haven’t been as secretive as before. Besides, I want people to see I stand by those I care about.”

“Aww, babe.” Lance planted a wet kiss on Keith’s cheek, making him wildly react and glare at him a bit.

“Sir, I can confirm they’re together. The website was being put up today. You can’t really blame this on them. It could have been anyone.” Shiro offered

Iverson couldn’t deny that. He left with a glare and a huff. Shiro turned to the two fighter pilots.

“Keep the pranks to a minimum you two.”

“No promises.” Keith said

“If it’s a good date idea, then well…”

Shiro feared for the next time Iverson pissed Keith off. He feared so much.

[top1course]

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What Robert Kiyosaki Taught Me About Money and Business Success – Dan Lok

I want to share, a little lesson they have learned with you, what is this, before I got into business there’s a great saying it’s not what you know is what, who you know how many heard that before, i got into business that’s, what’s my belief, not what you know it’s who you know it’s all about having the right places, then once I got into business I would have been livid about business I found out it’s actually not, who you know and who knows you, it’s not who you know and who knows you, because there are a lot of people, play Sail on the internet, or even in this audience, i love you both that I don’t know them personal Court allowed to enjoy that I do know we personally, but there’s a lot of it I don’t know personally, but that love people know me that I don’t know them that that does that make sense, So it’s a personal branding it’s your reputation and us, you you you put yourself out there as you promote your brand as you promote your business, multiple with no u, and you leave a bigger Liz and you have to email Liz of your social media I mean out of the thousands and thousands of people at me on face, plug-in this and that everyday something, it’s not about who you know and it’s who knows you, then, what I realize is, there was, but most of you know if you know my background I make most of my money on the internet, eventually basically hiding behind the computer, that’s that’s how I made most of my money, that I had, number of years ago in my mid-twenties, i was attending a three-day event, scottsdale, call the psychology of winning, By Robert Kiyosaki, 3D man, and a Time Robin was still teaching I’m going to go to Robert Kiyosaki, at a time Robert was you teaching all freely from self, so when do the event and with a good probably with, 300 people or so, we all pay about $3,000 to be there, very high quality group, so when do the event and by, interstate, and the second day, morning, while Robert was talking on stage, i was sitting in the back, and I was I don’t know, what I was thinking but I was kind of, doing my own thing, we can see Cassie like I’m not paying attention and, and I’m just kind of, in my own little world, and suddenly Robert stop, he was yelling at me like what the fuc, you punk, you think this is all about just yourself in your own little world and your own internet s***, Pictures of beautiful people.

Get the f*** out, but it was like I was pissed cuz I was already pretty successful, talk to me like that, brussels Griffon, so anyway so I went to my hotel room packing myself I was like I’m done like, this guy is rude he’s like who the hell he thinks he is my stuff, something, ask me to stay, a part of me seeing you know what, maybe there’s some truth to that guess the truth is I wasn’t paying attention, i was in my own little world, and I wasn’t connecting with people, i was just saying it and quite frankly, the first day I was a little bit, erica, because I feel like you know these guys and I’ll make more money than they do and look at how young I am the oldest, like I thought, it was it wasn’t right, It wasn’t right, so then I’m like, so went back to you, after lunch I went to Robin, personally, apologize, as apologize you were right, i wasn’t paying attention I was in my own little world, i would if you can give me the opportunity I would love to to stay for the rest of the couple Days Inn, i promise I’ll be hundred percent, form participation Photon plate photo, can I stay, and he looked at me and laughed at, you don’t stay stay, and the funny thing is for the rest of those 2 days I got way more out of event, i’ve got way more than I was connecting with people I was meeting with you, let me do it let me tell you why, unete an NFL football team in the NHL, football player I met the director, the movie The Negotiator, director Hollywood movie director, I met another entrepreneur who does so his company for $20, because now I’m open to networking is that make sense, who the hell what is people with the first name, but I wasn’t open, so that experience taught me something, so, i make good money, hiding behind my computers, but I make a fortune, actually actively meaning, and connecting with people, the question is looking back if this one thing that I would change in my career, if one thing that I would change, what would that be, and I would say the number one thing I would change looking back is I wish I had, be more proactive, out there and meeting with people, and connecting with people, malaysia, chips that there was a puerile time I wasn’t doing that, which is making my money, do my email thing do my internet unit website very happy to be alone nobody I unplug my phone, I don’t care who call and I just, nobody bothers me, most people don’t have my phone numbers, don’t that’s the way it was, and sometimes people ask me for lunch, and at the time I philosophy at the time I’m not proud to admit it by the time I philosophy was, there’s no such thing as a free lunch especially with me, i talked about at lunch with people, that’s where is two hundred bucks and it’s in a box and it’s a thousand bucks, because I had to waste a lot of time people picking my brain, eliminate 9% of people, that’s the one good thing came out of it however however, what does that also eliminate, yes Connection in other opportunities, and what a notice is when you charge people, yes and sometimes people might pay you and steal my pay more attention, But that relationship is transactional.

They meet with me hey you know it’s like hey now don’t they looking at the clock, then I’ve got now where I pay you let’s go, well can I just order the appetizer let’s go, but okay, and that wasn’t right either, that wasn’t so after all these years he’s whatever, now that I’ve understood business and life I believe is not who you know is who you are, please write that down, it’s not who you know it’s about who you are now what does that mean then, he’s what I mean, who you are attracts, the people, that you know in your life, your personality, your character, your integrity, your, personality, show me your friends and I’ll show you your future, show me your friends I’ll show you your future, so is about who you are so if you’re at a point of your life we’re well you know what how come the people that I hang around with, Where’s that kind of, not where I want to be the people I surround myself with, maybe it’s time to, upgrade your peer group to upgrade the people you hang around with, 10 times your finances 10 times your business 10 times your marketing, sometimes your life hit the Subscribe button now.

from WordPress https://top1course.com/rich-dad-poor-dad-what-robert-kiyosaki-taught-me-about-money-and-business-success-dan-lok/

[onlinemarketingcourses]

Left is Right & Up is Down

Probably the single best video to watch to understand the power of Google & Facebook (or even most of the major problems across society) is this following video about pleasure versus happiness.

In constantly seeking pleasure we forego happiness.

The “feed” based central aggregation networks are just like slot machines in your pocket: variable reward circuitry which self-optimizes around exploiting your flaws to eat as much attention as possible.

The above is not an accident. It is, rather, as intended:

“That means that we needed to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever … It’s a social validation feedback loop … You’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology … [The inventors] understood this, consciously, and we did it anyway.”

Happy? Good! Share posed photos to make your friends feel their lives are worse than your life is.

Outraged? Good! Click an ad.

Hopeless? Good. There is a product which can deliver you pleasure…if only you can…click an ad.

Using machine learning to drive rankings is ultimately an exercise in confirmation bias:

For “Should abortion be legal?” Google cited a South African news site saying, “It is not the place of government to legislate against woman’s choices.”

When asked, “Should abortion be illegal?” it promoted an answer from obscure clickbait site listland.com stating, “Abortion is murder.”

Excellent work Google in using your featured snippets to help make the world more absolutist, polarized & toxic.

The central network operators not only attempt to manipulate people at the emotional level, but the layout of the interface also sets default user patterns.

Most users tend to focus their attention on the left side of the page: “if we were to slice a maximized page down the middle, 80% of the fixations fell on the left half of the screen (even more than our previous finding of 69%). The remaining 20% of fixations were on the right half of the screen.”

This behavior is even more prevalent on search results pages: “On SERPs, almost all fixations (94%) fell on the left side of the page, and 60% those fixations can be isolated to the leftmost 400px.”

On mobile, obviously, the attention is focused on what is above the fold. That which is below the fold sort of doesn’t even exist for a large subset of the population.

Outside of a few central monopoly attention merchant players, the ad-based web is dying.

Mashable has raised about $46 million in VC funding over the past 4 years. And they just sold for about $50 million.

Breaking even is about as good as it gets in a web controlled by the Google / Facebook duopoly. 😀

Other hopeful unicorn media startups appear to have peaked as well. That BuzzFeed IPO is on hold: “Some BuzzFeed investors have become worried about the company’s performance and rising costs for expansions in areas like news and entertainment. Those frustrations were aired at a board meeting in recent weeks, in which directors took management to task, the people familiar with the situation said.”

Google’s Chrome web browser will soon have an ad blocker baked into it. Of course the central networks opt out of applying this feature to themselves. Facebook makes serious coin by blocking ad blockers. Google pays Adblock Plus to unblock ads on Google.com & boy are there a lot of ads there.

Format your pages like Google does their search results and they will tell you it is a piss poor user experience & a form of spam – whacking you with a penalty for it.

Of course Google isn’t the only search engine doing this. Mix in ads with a double listing and sometimes there will only be 1 website listed above the fold.

I’ve even seen some Bing search results where organic results have a “Web” label on them – which is conveniently larger than the ad label that is on ads. That is in addition to other tricks like…

lots of ad extensions that push organics below the fold on anything with the slightest commercial intent

bolding throughout ads (title, description, URL) with much lighter bolding of organics

only showing 6 organic results on commercial searches that are likely to generate ad clicks

As bad as either of the above looks in terms of ad load or result diversity on the desktop, it is only worse on mobile.

On mobile devices organic search results can be so hard to find that people ask questions like “Are there any search engines where you don’t have to literally scroll to see a result that isn’t an advertisement?”

The answer is yes.

DuckDuckGo.

But other than that, it is slim pickings.

In an online ecosystem where virtually every innovation is copied or deemed spam, sustainable publishing only works if your business model is different than the central network operators.

Not only is there the aggressive horizontal ad layer for anything with a hint of commercial intent, but now the scrape layer which was first applied to travel is being spread across other categories like ecommerce.

Ecommerce retailers beware. There is now a GIANT knowledge panel result on mobile that takes up the entire top half of the SERP -> Google updates mobile product knowledge panels to show even more info in one spot: https://t.co/3JMsMHuQmJ pic.twitter.com/5uD8zZiSrK— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) November 14, 2017

Here are 2 examples. And alarms are going off at Amazon now. Yes, Prime is killer, but organic search traffic is going to tank. Go ahead & scroll down to the organic listings (if you dare).And if anyone clicks the module, they are taken away from the SERPs into G-Land. Wow. 🙂 pic.twitter.com/SswOPj4iGd— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) November 14, 2017

The more of your content Google can scrape-n-displace in the search results the less reason there is to visit your website & the more ad-heavy Google can make their interface because they shagged the content from your site.

Simply look at the market caps of the big tech monopolies vs companies in adjacent markets. The aggregate trend is expressed in the stock price. And it is further expressed in the inability for the unicorn media companies to go public.

As big as Snapchat & Twitter are, nobody who invested in either IPO is sitting on a winner today.

Google is outraged anyone might question the numbers & if the current set up is reasonable:

Mr Harris described as “factually incorrect” suggestions that Google was “stealing” ad revenue from publishers, saying that two thirds of the revenues generated by online content went to its originators.

“I’ve heard lots of people say that Google and Facebook are “ruthlessly stealing” all the advertising revenue that publishers hoped to acquire through online editions,” he told the gathering.

“There is no advertising on Google News. Zero. Indeed you will rarely see advertising around news cycles in Google Search either.

Sure it is not the ad revenues they are stealing.

Rather it is the content.

Either by scraping, or by ranking proprietary formats (AMP) above other higher quality content which is not published using the proprietary format & then later attaching crappier & crappier deals to the (faux) “open source” proprietary content format.

As Google grabs the content & cuts the content creator off from the audience while attaching conditions, Google’s PR hacks will tell you they want you to click through to the source:

Google spokeswoman Susan Cadrecha said the company’s goal isn’t to do the thinking for users but “to help you find relevant information quickly and easily.” She added, “We encourage users to understand the full context by clicking through to the source.”

except they are the ones adding extra duplicative layers which make it harder to do.

Google keeps extracting content from publishers & eating the value chain. Some publishers have tried to offset this by putting more ads on their own site while also getting further distribution by adopting the proprietary AMP format. Those who realized AMP was garbage in terms of monetization viewed it as a way to offer teasers to drive users to their websites.

The partial story approach is getting killed though. Either you give Google everything, or they want nothing.

That is, after all, how monopolies negotiate – ultimatums.

Those who don’t give Google their full content will soon receive manual action penalty notifications

Important: Starting 2/1/18, Google is requiring that AMP urls be comparable to the canonical page content. If not, Google will direct users to the non-AMP urls. And the urls won’t be in the Top Stories carousel. Site owners will receive a manual action: https://t.co/ROhbI6TMVz pic.twitter.com/hb9FTluV0S— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) November 16, 2017

The value of news content is not zero.

Being the go-to resource for those sorts of “no money here” news topics also enables Google to be the go-to resource for searches for [auto insurance quote] and other highly commercial search terms where Google might make $50 or $100 per click.

Every month Google announces new ad features.

Economics drive everything in publishing. But you have to see how one market position enables another. Google & Facebook are not strong in China, so Toutiao – the top news app in China – is valued at about $20 billion.

Now that Yahoo! has been acquired by Verizon, they’ve decided to shut down their news app. Unprofitable segments are worth more as a write off than as an ongoing concern. Look for Verizon to further take AIM at shutting down additional parts of AOL & Yahoo.

Firefox recently updated to make its underlying rendering engine faster & more stable. As part of the upgrade they killed off many third party extensions, including ours. We plan to update them soon (a few days perhaps), but those who need the extensions working today may want to install something like (Comodo Ice Dragon (or another browser based on the prior Firefox core) & install our extensions in that web browser.

As another part of the most recent Firefox update, Firefox dumped Yahoo! Search for Google search as their default search engine in a new multiyear deal where financial terms were not disclosed.

Yahoo! certainly deserved to lose that deal.

First, they signed a contract with Mozilla containing a change-of-ownership poison pill where Mozilla would still make $375 million a year from them even if they dump Yahoo!. Given what Yahoo! sold for this amounts to about 10% of the company price for the next couple years.

Second, Yahoo! overpaid for the Firefox distribution deal to where they had to make their user experience even more awful to try to get the numbers to back out.

Here is a navigational search result on Yahoo! where the requested site only appears in the right rail knowledge graph.

The “organic” result set has been removed. There’s a Yahoo! News insert, a Yahoo Local insert, an ad inviting you to download Firefox (bet that has since been removed!), other search suggestions, and then graphical ads to try to get you to find office furniture or other irrelevant stuff.

Here is how awful those sorts of search results are: Yahoo! was so embarrassed at the lack of quality of their result set that they put their logo at the upper right edge of the page.

So now they’ll be losing a million a day for a few years based on Marissa Mayer’s fantastic Firefox deal.

And search is just another vertical they made irrelevant.

When they outsourced many verticals & then finally shut down most of the remaining ones, they only left a few key ones:

On our recent earnings call, Yahoo outlined out a plan to simplify our business and focus our effort on our four most successful content areas  – News, Sports, Finance and Lifestyle. To that end, today we will begin phasing out the following Digital Magazines:  Yahoo Food, Yahoo Health, Yahoo Parenting, Yahoo Makers, Yahoo Travel, Yahoo Autos and Yahoo Real Estate.

And for the key verticals they kept, they have pages like the following, which look like a diet version of eHow

Every day they send users away to other sites with deeper content. And eventually people find one they like (like TheAthletic or Dunc’d On) & then Yahoo! stops being a habit.

Meanwhile many people get their broader general news from Facebook, Google shifted their search app to include news, Apple offers a great news app, the default new tab on Microsoft Edge browser lists a localize news feed. Any of those is a superior user experience to Yahoo!.

It is hard to see what Yahoo!’s role is going forward.

Other than the user email accounts (& whatever legal liabilities are associated with the chronic user account hacking incidents), it is hard to see what Verizon bought in Yahoo!.

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[byron1]

Microwave door bouncer to keep you from eating garbage. "Where do we Go now" guns & roses/ picking a restaurant Fallout joke: I was at work while you cheating all day. Punchline: I never even got to cheat AND she would tell me about her bounty EVRyday SKIT: Danielle cooking pie (or anything really) and you have headphones on improve rapping to her and it sounds good to me but cut to her with no music and she looks at me very annoyedly Opener: Walks on stage, grabs mic and lays down. "Instead of stand up up I'm gonna try "lay down", it's way more comfortable.. That joke needs a Mitch headberg voice" repeat joke in Mitch headberg voice "com-fort-able" Hotel TV remotes have never been cleaner. Everybody on the phone watching porn and Netflix. The last person to use a hotel remote for porn died years ago Terminator cop in San Diego -what it felt like on mushrooms (terminator slo mo walk by) -what really happened (cop just walks by and shrugs) "Whenever I start dating a girl I buy her a really nice, big purse as a gift. ...Cuz she's gonna be carrying a bunch of my shit around for the next 4 1/2 months" - jack bliss Old west - duel going on in the middle of town. Mayor stops everything -"what are you guys arguing about" "is it worth dying over? I mean I can look this up on my phone" Mayor looks it up on the phone and who ever was wrong gets shot with no countdown ..Watch a little porn. Once you get too familiar with a site you drift to the lesser known porn sites ...This particular website has a top 50 viewed videos.. And you can sort em by 1 day, 7 days, 30 days, and my favorite, "all-time". ..That's just a buncha like minded individuals helpin' each other out.. But you can always tell when a bunch of likeminded weirdos find the site cuz for the 1 Day Most Viewed, it's just a ton of videos of people peein' on each other. And now it's like "maaaan, now I'm not even in the mood. AND I'm disappointed in you PornoTime, I didn't even now that was so prevalent on your site!" And it's usually on a Sunday... All you pee heathens jerkin off on the toilet with your computers on your laps should be at church! But then I'm like ".....let's see what all this hype is about" If I eat Asian food and drink a glass of milk, will I explode? Asians they don't drink milk! I think it's cuz they know. It's like when you have Indian or real African neighbors and that food smell just permeates ev-er-y thing. Unpleasant for the most part. Asians think white people smell like rotten cheese or like the cow aushwitz off the 5. <----Cowlinga. Nasty place. I was on a road trip with my wife and "she's tired" (bitchy voice) so she wants to stop for the night. At night she couldn't tell but in the morning when that sun came up?.. And that stink starts stinkin?.. She's like "oh those poor Asians. We should stop eating cheese for them" And then she puked. Friendricks Smitreaux - hands too small, not allowed in Burger King. Has quarrels. (Jack) Calling GameStop, having a nerdy conversation, with a funny voice. Rb movie voice could be a thing. Do you have x y z Round table pizza local interview podcast Wife's mom with gigantic fat pet and gets scolded by vet. Mom is pissed new underwear lint gets stuck to your dick. About to get a blowjob and she freaks out cuz there's fuzzy berries all over your jimmy wang dong. (Explain in between these sentences how fuzz sticks to your dick when you have new unwashed out of the box underwear) I've done this to my wife since we started dating "Chivalry Gone Wild" - pushing girls out of the way to open the doors for them. Later girl has chivalry ptsd (now she shivers when a guy reaches for the check at a restaurant) "Once I got roofied..." Story ensues "Once I had a crazy dream..." Story ensues Either way you're bored Went into the bank, for the candy of course, why else would you go inside these days. As I reach for the candy, the lady behind the counter says "DON'T TAKE THAT CANDY!...... It's super old.. Here take this, I have a 'secret stash' back here" I was like "You Smoke Weed, huh?" No I didn't say that, I just did the stoner laugh, which basically communicates the same message I have road rage. Like.. bad. But they're really cracking down on that now. I mean you can't even throw the bird these days. So I'm trying to advocate this, in place of the bird, you hit the rear window spray 2 times. (doesn't work if your window is dirty) I'm trying to spread this so people know I'm insulting them..... Also the "up hand", thumbs up is for assholes...... I just don't want road rage to go away, you know?! Went to the grocery store at night and someone was sleeping in the car I parked in front of. I see a middle finger come over the dash. I quickly kill my headlights and the middle finger turns into a thumbs up and recedes below the dash. I like that person.. Soccer needs timeouts like catholic priests need to be able to fuck. Flopping soccer players = selabate priests Lost lake truck sinks into water. Guy goes back for cigarettes brings one pack instead of the ENTIRE CARTON White people now can only do other ethnicities voices while reading a name. (List 3 different "ethnic" names) Buttercup story: weed in New York Trying to get a random buddy to be the third player in the game of RISK is like trying to get a random girl to come back to your house and suck you AND your buddies dicks. "Wanna play a game of risk?" Shit no Instead of people saying "Grizzly Adams DID have a beard" I think we should change it to "Kurt Cobain DID have a gun" "no I swear I don't have a gun" ...too soon?! Liqueur Control Board. Two young kids walk into a bar. They order jäger. Liquor Control comes in and says to the bartender: "do you those kids you served are underaged?" Bartender says "you're out of your Jurisdiction!!! Call the Liqueur Control Board!!" Liqueur Control Board shows up lookin like French cops "(( assholeish French accent thing here))" I work construction..... (Frown face) You THINK you want to shit in a freshly clean porta-potty. But that's not the case. You drop any size turd in that blue water and it's coming back up to splash your asshole. You need a big pile of turd to cushion the blow. I frequent a sports bar, and they allow kids in a certain section and sometimes you don't see these children behind you. So you day-drunkenly yell out "well I can't exactly tit fuck 'er, but they're perfectly shaped!" ((Rule of thirds here, needs 2 more examples)) History Lesson: •Good at art cuz no porn - there was much better art, and I mean paintings, back in the days of yore. Do you know why so many iconic paintings come from this era?! Because there was no porn. You think these guys (Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Monet) weren't drawing weird sex stuff in their spare time?! Of course they were. People think porn took over in vhs days but it's gone back much further than you think Way back in the day, I don't think they had the ADA (American Dental Association), but if they did it would be The Association of Guys that Own Pliers. If you had a tooth ache in the 18th century, your barber would pull your tooth!.. Guess the barber had a set of pliers.. therefore making him.. also a dentist. Hatred for people with red hair bleed over from hatred for the Irish? I just found out I'm Irish.. My dad was adopted and he just did the genealogy thing. Piss on a stick, or something.... I may be thinking of something else.. Anyway, it makes a ton of sense cuz my mom was Swiss. And if you know anything about the Swiss, they don't tend to takes sides, (hmhrph wwii). So when I get high, I'm Swiss: "hey whatever your views man, let's just have a dialogue.. Orrr not, I really have no stance on the issue." But when I drink whiskey: ..I wanna fight people. And I'm not a big guy soooo, I try not to drink whiskey.. I try to test myself against my friends, but they are all bigger than me so it never ends well. There is one guy who's bigger than me, but I can just psychologically break him down, and it's all true so I always win. And those other big guys are around and laughing so I have some protection. Things like "good thing those chicks can't see how many times you swipe right, otherwise they would call you a "Desperate Bitch!" Or: "you're so pathetic, how do you not have a crescent wrench?!" Things like that. One Friday night, He was a coward and attacked me while I was fall over baby deer legs drunk. We shut the bar down and as we're walking out he shoves me and I go flying into the ashtray. Butts are flyin.. I was not happy with him and I think I had some whiskey that night because I plotted revenge for the next day, I say "I'm gonna fuck this guy up". Saturday morning we always go back to the bar for breakfast. He says "you gonna be at the bar for breakfast?" I say "yeah buddy, 20 minutes". That's when I start loading the quarters into the sock. But yeah, whiskey makes me angry, I guess. Did anyone notice how the hitler youth haircut came back right around the time most of the wwii vets were pretty much all dead? The hipsters were scared of some old vet having a flashback to the war. "YOU.. NAZI.. BASTARD!!!" So my wife says to me while we're in the kitchen, out of nowhere, and I quote, "yeah I drop craisins" I'm thinking this is some new thing the kids are doing. Then she points to the floor and..there is a craisin. She says "watch this" and shoves a gigantic handful in her mouth and a few fall on the floor. She then walks away Slava drug store story. "What kind of a name is that?!" Shia vs. Tink The wiener dog comes in the house, if it smells the cat, he goes crazy. (Killed the neighbor tea cup something or another) the cat hears his collar and jumps up out of range and watches us shower the dog with love. ((Cats reaction is the punchline)) "What the fuck, that dude is trying to kill me!! Benedict friggin Arnolds" Danielle: "Willy Wonka" is like "Saw" for kids Never touch a mans belt buckle. Cuz they drape their balls over them while taking a piss "Hey lesbians, do you have your gloves in the car? They said yes. Well let's get a pickup game going! Hunters heroin people story - "she's sucking his DICK!" MMA fighter goes back in time to 1907. Breaks 1907's guys wrist because of his dumb boxing stance Lady at rite aid going through gender reassignment. I use my chip and she tells me to slide. I say "yeah we're going through a transitional phase right now" instantly realize what I just said Back to the bar. Being a smoker you know everybody's car.. you've seen them come and go enough because you're that much of an alcoholic and smoke on the half hour for the six hours you're there. (Well not you, me) So you'll walk up to the bar and be like "oh hello, jacks car, let's just lift up your windshield wipers there buddy" or "oh yup, Old Man Roy parked like a dick again.." Or "Hey look! there's Kevin's truck, let's draw a dick on it". <---Another thing about being a smoker that brings me joy, is watching the horror on people's faces when they scape the plastic underneath their bumper when pulling to close to the curb. I always give a look implying "you just fucked up your bumper!" Bar, Interior: If I'm on my phone and you come sit next to me at the rail, do not get on your phone, cuz then I feel like we look like assholes and I put my phone away.. But I still have shit to do so you're really being a real monkey wrench in my operation People who do bird calls: trying to trick birds? Stock internet passwords make you seem like an insane person. Jolly ocean 3, rapid pineapple 0. An insane person looks at it and goes "....that works. No need to even change it.." Bevmo event planner needs an option for your alcoholic friends. 3 pictures. What do your friends look like at the end of the night; 1. Someone smiling 2. Hot mess 3. Just a toilet Sleeping in the wrong car overnight My wife put my jerk off blanket out for people to use. "You sicko!! You were gonna let my friends use that blanket" I'm thinking of the scenario where somebody goes to grab and I say "oh that's my baby blanket, I don't know how that got out here, let me get you another one.." And..((eyebrow)) I wouldn't be lying about the baby blanket thing. Old men's memory's are bad because their spank banks are 70 years full. Head Bobbers of Noddingham My wife said "you know how I know you're an alcoholic? Because your handwriting is shit but your numbers are beautiful. Signing tabs everyday for the last 10 years will do that" You know what really freaks out the ladies? When you immediately realize what you did wrong. You start apologizing too soon and it somehow makes things much worse. So if you one day have an immediate realization about something you did wrong... Play the dumb card for a day or 3 to make it seem like you've put deep thought into your mistake. Skinny guys dating fat chicks: what if she gets cold, how can you share your jacket?! My dad was adopted and finally did that genetics test •"spit"• hey, we're Irish. That makes a ton of sense. Too much whiskey and all of the sudden I get ridiculous agry Power went out in target. Here's how weird I am: I stole a snoop dogg cd and a Björk cd. To all women: if one is partaking upon a banana in public, use a knife. This will discourage onlookers. #yesallwomen Anyone old enough to send away "proof of purchases" for a prize from the back of a cereal box? Had to ask your mom for $2.50 to cover shipping and handling.. Waiting for it made you realize there is no true instant gratification. The waiting! Everyday: did it arrive, mother?!... No? (sulk away) then FINALLY when your 6 piece Lego set shows up you think: "I'm 27 I don't care about Legos anymore!" (Needs a tag) ((maybe:)) but I forgot to pull out when I was 21 so my 6 yr old will enjoy it) Old phone when unlocked will have a random screen of something from earlier. Sometimes it's porn. Gotta be careful Nowadays you see an old lady walking around and you think "that lady looks as old as my grandma when I was 9. She's got the old lady hair, the old lady sweater, old lady shoes, old lady jewelry" but then she has some rockin' tits! They do a "facelift" for those titties Gotta be careful watching porn with headphones. The getting caught factor isn't even what I mean, I leave one ear off for that. I only do les porn with headphones. cuz you don't need some dude "ugh ugh ugh! Oh Ya baby suck that cock" RIGHT IN YOUR ear. Not what I'm goin for there. White people always put housin sauce in the pho. Next to the bar I go to is a pho place. Smoking with Paul Teaching us how after we go in drunk.. (Housen sauces for dippin the meat)((white people put it in the broth)) "oh really?? Cut to me at home- it's delicious!!" Free bottle of siracha Pouring the old pho in the toilet ("how else do you get rid of old pho?!") How pissed off are you when someone in a Tesla SUV doesn't open their back doors? "Lemme see that back to the future sheeeit!" Old guy coughing sounds like someone taking crap to you. "What the hell did you say to me, old man?