#this piece is months old i’ve had it in drafts since february

[puddinpaw]

a new order

[misfit-fics]

Demon Rehab For Dummies

Summary: (Y/N) started seeing seven demons when she was 10. Through the years they all disappeared, all but one. Namjoon. A demon who has not so creepily, creepily, very creepily been in love with her for years.

Genre: fluff, crack, extremely minimal angst, idiots to lovers, romantic-comedy

Word count: 7384

Rating: Teen

Warnings: mentions of suggestive & kinky themes, a handful of cursing, a story with a plot but not doesn’t exactly have a plot, a stubborn (Y/N) who dismisses love confessions & genuine flirting, an unspoken confession

A/N: Hey! we're back, it's been a while. We're starting school in a while but it will be gamble if we'll be more active or not. Well... we ARE active but just not posting? Yeah, you know what I mean. This has been sitting in our drafts for a while now and we're posting it now... although it's pretty unedited, feel free to address any oopsies. Hope who ever finds this enjoys reading!

At the ripe young age of ten (Y/N) began seeing seven men. Which- would’ve (should’ve) freaked any kid out but you know (Y/N) is just kinda quirky like that so she didn't really mind much. The men were nice and played with her anyway, and the only weird thing was that sometimes they would bring her dead birds.

At age eleven (Y/N) noticed that one of the men was missing.It didn’t affect her much except for the fact that this particular one would help her find things and she’d lost almost all of her socks since he disappeared. Not to mention the increase of bug bites after he left. The darn things seemed like they multiplied exponentially after a month.

By twelve only two of the men had disappeared, at this point (Y/N) not only lived in sandals (she still couldn’t find her socks) but she also couldn’t explain why her hair was burning off every time she tried to straighten it (her lil demon friends didn’t want her to, you’d think after almost 3 years of having men following her around and telling her what to do she’d get with the program already.) Her dog her parents had given her when she was 9 started disappearing quite often after he left. He always came back with a single sock that would disappear the next morning.

By thirteen (Y/N) had developed a crush (more like unhealthy obsession) on one of the men, Namjoon. The third year was also the year when Jimin disappeared, taking all of her favorite shoes with him. That year she had prayed to whoever was listening because her parents really couldn’t afford to keep buying her socks and shoes, and because she definitely couldn’t afford to shave her head.

By fourteen, Hoseok, the man who had cheered her up whenever she needed it, had gone, leaving a tidal wave of bad luck in his wake. He had a great deal in keeping (Y/N) happy, although some of his antics made her want to punch him, it never turned out that way.

When she was fifteen no one left… except for the dog. Aside from that, the only thing that left was her social life (It wasn’t like she had one before but you know it was still a little rough). (Y/N) began to depend more and more on her demons. She had become great friends with the oldest, Seokjin, who cooked for her when her parents went on trips.

At sixteen Yoongi left and the nightmares began. And with the nightmares came the growth of (Y/N)’s relationship with Namjoon. Namjoon became her protector, along with sometimes Seokjin, who still cooked for her and cared for her altogether when she couldn’t.

At seventeen, (Y/N) was informed that when she turned eighteen Seokjin would be leaving, on account that they didn’t need each other anymore. (Y/N) had been torn up when he told her and even more when he left. He didn’t take anything when he left other than a piece of (Y/N)’s heart.

At eighteen, (Y/N) moved away from her parents house with Namjoon trailing behind her (He even had lil demon suitcases and everything,) following her every move.

“I really don’t understand why you had to follow me out of my parents house. I thought spirits are supposed to be attached to a general area…” (Y/N) took to unpacking a box in the small apartment she now lived in.

“(Y/N) how many times do we have to go over this, I'm a demon, DE-MON.” Namjoon clapped his hands with each syllable. (Y/N) rolled her eyes and flicked her wrist at the self-proclaimed demon.

“Demon, ghost, same thing.” She shrugged her shoulders, “same thing as to-may-to, to-mah-to.”

“It is not the same thing!” Namjoon looked at (Y/N) like it was obvious.

(Y/N) snorted, “Okay Casper.” She continued pulling out the items in the box.

Namjoon looked flabbergasted, “CASPER!?” Namjoon put a hand over his chest and widened his eyes. (Y/N) looked up at the demon with a raised brow,

“Geez Casper, why are you so offended? I’ve called you Casper before, Casper.” (Y/N) struggled to keep in her laughter, trying to keep a straight face as she looked at Namjoon.

Namjoon looked at (Y/N), “I think I shall simply cease to exist in your realm.”

(Y/N) looked back down at the almost empty box, “You wouldn’t do that, you love me too much, my dearest Casper.” She said in a singsong voice, “Oh hey I found a sock.” She pulled out said sock from the box, it had yellow stripes. :]

“I think Jungkook took the mate to that when he left.” (Y/N) threw the sock at Namjoon with a loud ‘FUCK!’

“I mean we could try and summon him to see if he’ll return your socks.” Namjoon shrugged.

“I wouldn’t even try.” She started putting the random items in their new places.

“You should put Juno on the window sill rather than the coffee table, I mean cacti do need sun.” Namjoon looked at the little green prickle plant.

“I’m sure if i didn’t tell you how to parent your child, it would’ve been confiscated by child protective services.” Namjoon crossed his arms and looked at Juno who had been (rightfully so) moved to the window sill.

“Casper- Juno is a cactus. There is no CPS (Cactus Protective Services).” (Y/N) looked at Namjoon with her own arms crossed over her chest and an eyebrow raised, “Now if you could- Can you please go unpack a few boxes?” (Y/N) shooed Namjoon away before her eyes widened and she added in, “NOTHING LABELED FRAGILE!”

“You know if we painted a wall or two in here, it would liven up the place so much…” Namjoon looked around the bland apartment, “Maybe an accent wall over here. A floor lamp over there. A new plant in the kitchen. It wouldn’t hurt you to give Juno some siblings.”

(Y/N) looked flabbergasted, “You want me to pop out another child?!”

“No I mean-” Namjoon’s eyes widened.

“-OUT OF MY WALLET?!? MY BARELY 21 DOLLARS!?” (Y/N) got her wallet out and zipped it open. She shook it in the demon’s face, about 26 pennies, 2 nickels, 1 dime, and a quarter fell out. It was followed by a single, folded, 5 dollar bill.

“I don’t think that’s 21 dollars, (Y/N)” Namjoon looked down at the floor, where one or more of the coins had caught onto his feet.

“I have a gift card.” She pulled out the cheap plastic, silver, $25 visa gift card (that didn’t have 25 dollars) with a bit of a struggle.

“How much exactly is on that gift card (Y/N)?” Namjoon eyed the flimsy silver object.

“You expect me to know- I mean probably more than 10 dollars!” Namjoon raised a brow at the statement. “Okay, maybe about 3.69.” Namjoon sighed, massaging his temples. (Y/N) bent down to put the money back into her wallet like a pigeon eating bread crumbs the old lady on the bench threw onto the floor.

Namjoon walked away from the pigeon-girl and grabbed a notepad and pen that was left on the kitchen counter. “We’re making you a to-do list.” He stated, clicking the pen.

“WE haven’t even unpacked all the boxes yet.” (Y/N) whined, pointing at the last large box in the middle of the hallway. Namjoon looked to where she pointed and shrugged.

“It says Christmas decorations.”

“EXACTLY! VERY. IMPORTANT.” she clapped her hands in between each word.

“It’s February.” He said.

“It’s still winter.” (Y/N) reasoned, finally done picking up the money. She plopped herself down onto the small brown couch.

“Okay so first off you need a job.” He wrote it down onto the notepad, the pen scratching being overlapped by a loud gasp from the human in the room.

“You dare ignore me?!” She yelled offendedly at the demon who glanced at her before looking back down at what he was writing.

“You also need to go to the supermarket.”

“I told you I barely have any money.”

“Your parents gave you some money.”

“Oh, you’re right.”

“And also, you should walk to the school and find a short route to get there.” Namjoon pulled out a literal map.

(Y/N) pouted, “I thought you were gonna walk me to all my classes to deter all the frat boys from coming my way…”

“I did say that,” he confirmed before continuing. “But I mean to get to the actual school grounds.”

“But we have a car.” She had drawnout the ‘but,’ trying to make her point that she didn’t need to walk.

“But you need exercise.” He reasoned, mimicking the way she had said her words.

“Are you calling me fat?”

“No.”

“Yes you are.”

“(Y/N) i’m not.”

“Yeah you ARE, Casper.”

“Would you PLEASE call me by my actual name for once?”

“Sure thing. Rap Monster.” She teased, the ground started shaking. (Y/N) let out a loud screech looking up at the demon who’s eyes were rolled back. “OH FUCK YOU!”

The shaking died down, Namjoon staring down at the girl who was now underneath the coffee table. “This is why you’re still here!” she cried.

“You want me gone?” Namjoon questioned, offendedly. (Y/N) army crawled her way from her ‘safe spot.’

“I DIDN’T SAY THAT!” She yelled, returning the offended tone.

“I’m out,” Namjoon pivoted on his heel, walking to the front door robotically.

“Noooo!”

“Will I ever see my socks again?” (Y/N) looked at Namjoon with hope, “I mean having shoes would be great too though.”

“What’s wrong with living in sandals? Birkenstocks are very comfortable.” Namjoon pivoted around with a candle in his hand.

“It’s winter.” (Y/N) frowned.

“You could always use mine?” He gestured to the shoes at the shoe rack at the front door. The ones that were closed toed…

“Your feet are too big.” (Y/N) looked over at the shoes, then looked down at her own feet, then at the demon.

“Size didn’t matter Last night with your sweaters?”

“That’s different, Namjoon.” (Y/N) rolled her eyes.

“Size.” Namjoon smirked.

“Different.” (Y/N) stood confidently.

“You know, you could always just go buy new socks?” Namjoon looked at her oddly.

“I usually wait to get them for Christmas, you should know this by now.”

“Independence.” He stated.

“You’re a hypocrite.” Namjoon let out a ‘huh?’ and (Y/N) continued, “You said independence when you’re dependent on me.”

“That isn’t my fault.” Namjoon raised his hands in defense.

“It kind of is though…” (Y/N) shrugged, Namjoon opened his mouth to retort but was quickly cut off, “I’m literally a rehab center for you.”

“Apparently you’re not a nicely rated one.” Namjoon shook his head.

“I’ve helped 6 other demons, Namjoon. You’re just being difficult.” (Y/N) poked his chest really hard before retracting her hand.

“Ouch,” he put his hand over his heart where she had poked him, “You shouldn’t be saying these things to your client.”

“I didn’t ask to get a client or even BE a rehab center.”

“The reason why you became a rehab center was because you decided that humans were ugly and disgusting.”

“The reason why you ended up with me was because you did something bad and you just now decided to be a good person and it’s not turning out well for you.”

“For your information, I could have left a long time ago.” Namjoon crossed his arms, with an audible exhale from his nose. He stared down at the rehab center.

“And why didn’t you, hm?” (Y/N) crossed her arms also with a raised brow. Namjoon kept quiet, debating how to answer, keeping eye contact as if it was an olympic staring contest.

“You.��� He said. (Y/N) snorted, ready to insult the patient. “-would’ve starved to death by now if I hadn’t stayed with you until now.” He finished, (Y/N) gasped, reaching up and hitting Namjoon on the shoulder.

“You. Jerk. Get. Away. From. Me.” She hit him harder every word before waddling away into the hallway from the chuckling demon.

“No problem,” Namjoon disappeared with a veil of sparkles out of view.

(Y/N) thrusted open the door to her new bedroom. Continuing her waddle to the end of the full size bed. Facing the head board, she plopped the top half of her body onto the bed front first. Namjoon reappeared about 6 feet away from her with a loud poof and a burst of sparkles scattering around the room.

“Go away.” (Y/N)’s face was still shoved into the mattress, “Seriously shoo.” (Y/N) lifted her arm off the bed to wave him off.

“I won’t go. You can’t make me.” Namjoon walked towards the bed hesitantly, scared to get fucking murdered by his prison warden, “Move over. Give me some room.”

“Go sleep in my closet.” (Y/N) flipped the demon off.

“You’d prefer nightmares over your dearest Casper?”

“Yes.” Namjoon sat down on the bed, his knee almost hitting the girl’s head. “I thought I said in the closet.”

“And I prefer the bed.” Namjoon leaned forward and took (Y/N) by her hands and pulled her closer to himself with an annoyed groan from her. She was pulled until her head was laid on his chest, wrapping his arms around her.

“I hate you.” (Y/N) grumbled into her demon-pillow.

“I know.”

“You live because I allow it, and that is it to be my flesh pillow.”

“Okay, now sleep.”

“But why do you have to leave?” (Y/N) looked up at her bunk buddy, her chin was impaling the person’s chest.

“I have to. I'm ready to go.” Yoongi looked crestfallen, “They said I could have one more night. But then, when I leave, I can pass on my role.”

“Could you maybe not steal my socks?” (Y/N) pouted at Yoongi who chuckled in response. “This is a genuine request.” She said with slight seriousness in her tone.

“You don’t have any to steal anyways,” he rolled his eyes with an endearing smirk that replaced his dispirited look just seconds before.

“Ok just- don’t go stealing any of my clothing, I need it.” (Y/N) clicked her tongue, not denying the fact that she was sockless.

“I won’t. I don’t need your clothing.” Yoongi shrugged, “I might take your guinea pig though. Meatloaf is cute.”

“YOU wouldn’t DARE take Meatloaf from me.” She glared

“I can and I will.” Yoongi crossed his arms over his chest and looked towards the cage that housed Meatloaf. (Y/N) groaned, unlatching an arm that was sandwiched between the bed and Yoongi’s back. She planted her palm smack in the middle of the demon’s face, covering his view of the poor guinea pig.

“No.” She patted his face, Yoongi’s eyes now squeezed shut.

“I can lick your hand.” he threatened, his voice muffled and jumpy from the wacky hand.

“You’re gross,” she moved her hand up, now only covering his eyes and revealing a gummy smile from Yoongi.

“It’s sleep time,” he declared. (Y/N) whined in response, “I’ll be here in the morning to say goodbye one more time okay?”

“Promise?”

“Never said that,” he hummed.

“You jerk,” she groaned, laying her head sideways. Her ear over his heart, engraving the sound into her mind.

Like a cliche love story, (Y/N) woke up to no one but herself on the bed. Through groggy eyes, she could see that poor Meatloaf was gone too.

“I tried to stop him from taking Meatloaf I swear.” Namjoon uncrossed his arms from over his chest when he noticed that (Y/N) was awake.

“Did you really?” (Y/N) sat up in bed.

“I did, I swear,” he said immediately, “I have proof.”

“By proof, do you mean you broke something?” Namjoon took a deep breath figuring out whether or not to say yes or no.

“I… never said that.” He decided on dying, his words drifting off in nervousness.

“So… you did?” She concluded, Namjoon nodded slowly, his eyes down on the floor.

“Yea…” (Y/N) sighed, trying to find anger to cover up a tsunami of sadness that was approaching.

“It’ll be okay. We can summon him every once in a while. Maybe while we’re at it we can try to get your socks back.” Namjoon smiled and hoped it would make her feel better while the reality of things had begun to set in for him. All of the boys loved (Y/N) with all of their hearts but he was the only one willing to stay for the long run.

“I don’t think people want to go back to a rehab center, Namjoon.” (Y/N) let the tears begin to pour.

“(Y/N) it’ll be okay…” Namjoon went over to sit on the bed next to (Y/N), “Seriously we’ll get through this.” Namjoon put a hesitant hand onto (Y/N)’s shoulder and began trying to comfort her.

“I know- I know but-” (Y/N) sniffled, “Hold on, my mascara will run.”

“You’re not wearing any?-” Namjoon raised a brow and looked at (Y/N) like ‘bih-’

“Shush.” (Y/N) shushed Namjoon before shaking off his hand and placing her head on his shoulder.

“You know you can’t prevent me from getting a boyfriend forever.” (Y/N) looked at Namjoon before continuing to pack her bag for school.

“I can and I will.” Namjoon slung his own bag over his shoulder. He was definitely a professor.

“You can’t make me be single forever.” (Y/N) rolled her eyes and slung her backpack onto her shoulders.

“Your preferences in men are horrible (Y/N), I'm not trying to prevent you from getting a man.” Namjoon said in a matter of fact voice, moving and opening the front door, letting (Y/N) pass through before he walked out behind her.

She scoffed, “maybe you should hook me up with someone, maybe then you can leave rehab.”

“I miss Meatloaf,” Namjoon said solemnly, changing the subject.

“Why do you always change the subject when I bring up my love life?” (Y/N) complained, stomping her foot as they walked down the hallway of the apartment building toward the elevator.

“Do you think Yoongi will respond if we try to summon him?” He ignored the question.

“Hey Joon? Is your dick ribbed? I heard all the demon dicks were ribbed.”

Namjoon stopped in his tracks, putting his feet together and staring down at the human with a face screaming ‘what-the-fuck?’ (Y/N) had a boxy smile on her face, waiting for a response. “Who the fuck did you hear that from?”

“A fanfic I read, it was a group called DTS,” she shrugged. “Is it right though?” she leaned forward slightly in high expectations.

“Well-” Namjoon paused, “uhhh…” his eyes darted around. “Mine… isn’t.”

“Damn- that’s really disappointing,” (Y/N) frowned, throwing down an imaginary hat onto the ground and continuing walking with Namjoon following behind her.

“Why is it disappointing? You’re a virgin.” Namjoon raised an eyebrow.

“Why would you think I’m a virgin?” (Y/N) looked offended. They stopped in front of the closed silver elevator doors, Namjoon hit the down button before responding.

“You literally had no social life in middle and high school and depended on demons who were attached to you by force in order to not lose your ability to speak in English.” Namjoon raised a finger, “Plus I’ve known you since you were ten and unless it was before that… I would know.” He slipped into the elevator, turning around and walking backwards. A know-it-all smirk plastered on his face while (Y/N) had an annoyed look on her own.

“Can we just- stop before we start arguing about my sex life?” She marched forward into the elevator like a preteen going into their room after an argument with their parents.

“How did you even become a professor?” (Y/N) looked at Namjoon confused. “Couldn’t you have just you know… poofed yourself from people’s view when I go to school?”

“I need something to do while you’re in class. I might as well teach asshole frat boys how to do business math amiright.” Namjoon chuckled.

“I mean… you can just be the ghost you are and haunt me n’ stuff?” (Y/N) suggested, “I mean you already do that, Casper.”

“That’s Professor Casper to you.” Namjoon laughed too hard at his own joke.

“Ew,” (Y/N) cringed. “I’d rather call you Daddy Casper.”

“Only in the bedroom.” Namjoon looked at the human.

“Sex doesn’t always have to be private.” (Y/N) stared back at the demon, flipping her hair back. “Wait- are YOU a virgin then?” She asked, bringing back the topic from earlier, but this time about Namjoon.

“Classified.” Namjoon glared.

“So you ARE a virgin?” (Y/N) snorted a laugh, “And you call yourself a demon.”

“Not all demons are incubi or succubi, your demon-racist.” Namjoon accused.

“I am not demon-racist.” (Y/N) looked up at the tall demon, “I’m human.”

“You’re not a human, you’re the personification of the word ‘dumbass.’” He said, poking the proclaimed dumbass on the forehead.

“Rude of you to assume what I am, Casper.” (Y/N) smacked away his hand and pushed Namjoon not so gently on the shoulder.

“Now you’re the hypocrite,” Namjoon glared, “Professor Casper.” (Y/N) rolled her eyes, “Daddy Casper.”

Namjoon frowned, “If you’re so persistent on not calling me Professor, then just Daddy works fine.”

The girl shrugged, “I’d prefer to just call you Daddy Casper, but without the Daddy part.”

“But what if I want to be called Daddy Casper.” Namjoon wiggled his eyebrows suggestively as they walked through the gates of the school, the walk soon enough would be coming to an end.

“Woahhhh down bessie.” (Y/N) lifted her hands and moved them in a downward motion, “Save it for the student who’s gonna try to fuck you for their grade.”

Namjoon laughed again, “You say it as if it won’t be you trying to fuck for an A.”

“I don’t get how an idiot like you got a job as a professor.” (Y/N) punched Professor Namjoon on the shoulder who was still laughing at the insult he pulled out his ass against the girl.

“I don’t know how an idiot like you got into college.” Namjoon rubbed his shoulder and then pushed (Y/N) back with a grin on his face. The bell conveniently rang, ending the conversation and forcing the pair to speed their way over to the classrooms.

“You know I saw one of the sorority girls eyeing you, I think we’ve found our fuck-for-a-grade person.” (Y/N) looked at Namjoon, “You wouldn’t fuck her right?”

“I would never fuck one of my students.” Namjoon looked at (Y/N), “Plus I don’t like cheerleaders, I like depressed freshmen who can see demons and that double time as rehab facilities.”

“I am not a rehab facility. I am a struggling freshman.” (Y/N) clapped at Namjoon.

“No you’re not a rehab facility, you’re my rehab facility.” Namjoon smiled cheekily, “And the way I see it you are not a struggling freshman, you live with a professor that helps you with most of your homework.”

“Eh- The one thing you don’t help with is stress relief.” (Y/N) looked at Namjoon, “The least you could do is let me go out and find a boyfriend.”

“You HAVE a boyfriend.” Namjoon looked at (Y/N) seriously.

“WHERE? WHO?” (Y/N)’s eyes frantically searched the room.

“HERE! ME!” Namjoon pointed at himself and then widened his eyes.(Y/N) looked at Namjoon with a raised brow, her frantic eyes stopping and looking the demon up and down.

“I didn’t know you had a rental-boyfriend service?” (Y/N) said in genuine shock, “I don’t have any money though so-“

“You don’t have to rent me.” Namjoon scoffed, “I’m right here and I cost no money.”

“I don’t take charity work, sorry.” Namjoon groaned and covered his face with a hand.

“You’re literally the most stubborn person I know.”

“I’m trying to keep my single streak here, thank you very much.”

“Wait so we aren’t dating?”

“You thought we were dating?”

“You didn’t think that?”

“You like me?”

“You didn’t know?”

“I mean- you never said it-”

“I literally said it seconds ago, (Y/N).”

“Well yeah, seconds ago I guess but I mean before?”

“I literally confessed to you when we were looking for apartments to move out of your parents house.”

“When?-”

“What about this place then?”

“I like it.”

“More than you like me?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“Are you questioning my love for you?”

“Bitch, maybe I am.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“Why shouldn’t I be questioning it then, hmm?”

“I’m literally helping you look for a home that we both will move into.”

“That proves nothing.”

“Bitch- If that doesn’t say ‘I LOVE YOU’ I don’t know what does.”

“Oh, I don't know. Maybe saying ‘I love you’ straight up?”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

“I love you.”

“Nice.”

“Ohhhhhh.” (Y/N) smiled, “You meant that?”

Namjoon looked at her with a blank face. She stared back waiting for an answer that didn’t come.

“So… you do mean it?” She confirmed it herself. The demon nodded slowly, waiting for her to process it.

“(Y/N)? You good?” Namjoon waved a hand in front of her face.

“You know,” she started, finally having rebooted her system. “There’s a lot of things wrong with this relationship. First of all, you’re a demon and I'm a human.”

“Not the first time I've heard of that type of relationship.”

“Secondly, you’re supposed to leave soon considering you’ve delayed it enough. Even using my personified dreamcatcher as compensation to stay longer.”

“I’m pretty sure at this point, they’ve given up on trying to get me back.”

“Third of all, it’s weird that you’ve literally known me since I was ten.” She held up ten fingers, “How old are you again?”

“Not that old for a demon,” he shrugged.

“Exactly. For a demon, thank you for proving my point.” Namjoon went to retort but (Y/N) continued. “Fourth, teacher and student relationships are weird.”

“People roleplay it in the bedroom?” Namjoon shrugged once again.

“Exactly,” she said again.

“It’s technically not weird since you’re not my student though. You’re definitely not a business major so…” Namjoon weighed the pros and cons of being caught with a student even if said student isn’t even one of his.

“I’m an English Major- BUT that’s besides the point. You’ve still known me since I was ten.” (Y/N) poked Namjoon’s chest.

“Hey it’s not like I was creeping on you when you were a kid…” Namjoon raised his hands in defense.

“No you just started creeping on me when I was around sixteen.”

“It’s more acceptable than pedophiles!”

“You’re like three hundred!” She exclaimed, she threw her hands above her head to

“Add about seven-hundred years to that.” Namjoon added with slight hesitation.

(Y/N) stood there, mouth agape, trying to do the mental math.

“You’re one-thousand?!”

“Give or take some.”

“I- I’m going to remove myself from this situation.” (Y/N) walked away.

[:] I ran out of image things, so we get text from now on. [:]

“Maybe I should start sleeping in the closet.” Namjoon voiced his thoughts as he was grading papers one night.

“You don’t have to sleep in the closet.” (Y/N) looked at the demon from across the kitchen table.

“The closet is comfortable.” Namjoon shrugged before voicing his concerns about the student’s work, “I’m pretty sure this student is gonna try to suck my dick for an A. This work sucks ass. How did she even get x=34? The answer is x=0!”

“I’m bad at math, don't look at me.” (Y/N) jotted a note down on her work before closing her notebook.

“But anyway- Back on track. Why do you want to start sleeping in the closet?” (Y/N) raised a questioning brow.

“Because the bed is awkward now.” Namjoon sighed before writing a bold ‘10/35’ down on the paper and circling it. (Y/N) glanced over at the paper that was marked red at every inch of it.

“You should put ‘see me after class’ on it. Maybe she’ll suck your non-ribbed demon dick.” (Y/N) suggests as she puts away her notebook. Namjoon’s fist hit the table in annoyance with a loud sigh that definitely said ‘i’m not getting some dumb bitch to suck my dick.’ The girl snorted, “Geez, no need to be so rough on the table.”

“Stop bringing up my non-ribbed demon dick.” Namjoon glared across the table.

“You admit that it’s not ribbed? That’s rough, man.” (Y/N) sighed sympathetically. “Some people are into that, you know.” Namjoon facepalmed, a bit too harshly, a loud smack echoing in the cramped apartment. “No need to be so rough, Casper.”

“You’d probably like it rough, and why the hell are you so bent on the fact that my dick isn’t ribbed?” Namjoon glared, moving onto the next student’s paper.

“We’ve taken the god damn BDSM test together, Casper. You KNOW I'd like it rough.” (Y/N) said in a smart-ass tone, knowing for a fact that they’ve done the test before.

“That shit lies,” Namjoon declared, “I’m not a bottom.”

“We know sweetie, we know. The test did you dirty.” (Y/N) weighed her options before ultimately deciding not to cross the room to comfort her demon. “But you know, the test DID have some direct questions-”

“You mean like the golden showers?”

“Ew, why would you even bring that up.”

“You said ‘direct questions.'” Namjoon shrugged.

“That question was traumatic.” (Y/N) shuddered, “But anyway, You can keep sleeping in the bed. It’s only awkward for you. Plus you can’t even be a demon dreamcatcher from a closet.”

“I can and I will. Now go get ready for bed. I'll join you in a bit. I have to email the kids' advisor.”

[:] Oh wow, another spliter [:]

“What’s awkward about this?” (Y/N) asked, ignorant to the fact that it was very awkward. Her legs were wrapped around the demon’s waist, who was laying down as straight as a log uncomfortably.

“Everything is uncomfortable.” Namjoon tried to push (Y/N) off of him.

“This is where you’re wrong,” (Y/N) states. “Your chesticles are very comfortable.” She furthered her point, by moving her head and weirdly nuzzling her cheek into his chest.

“(Y/N) get off of me.” Namjoon was now really uncomfortable.

“No.” (Y/N) pulled Namjoon’s log-body closer.

“Please?” Namjoon wiggled some more, “Seriously (Y/N) get off.”

“No…” (Y/N) held Namjoon tighter, “Imma go sleep now.”

“Ok (Y/N).” With that Namjoon pushed (Y/N) up and off of him and climbed out of bed and into the closet.

(Y/N) whined, “Nooooooo!” She looked at the closet through her eyebrows. “Are you hiding something from me?” She accused the demon.

“Excuse me?” Namjoon opened the closet door a bit.

“Oh my god- are you a closet gay?” She gasped loudly.

“WHAT?” Namjoon looked at (Y/N) from the crack in the doorway.

“It’s okay! You don’t need to use a fake confession to hide it from me.” She comforted the demon, “I will support you 1000 percent.”

“I’M NOT GAY!” Namjoon wiggled around in the closet before emerging from the space.

“Okay okay- but just so you know, there’s nothing wrong with being gay, Casper. Closeted or not.” She hummed, her words being muffled as she slowly put her face into the mattress.

“It’s been awkward since you basically called me a cradle robber, you stubborn piece of shit.” Namjoon blushed at his confession.

“I thought you didn’t care about that earlier.” (Y/N) looked back up, taking a deep breath of air after almost suffocating herself.

“Well I did.” Namjoon huffed out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

“Well that sucks,” (Y/N) said blandly, “I was thinking of saying I love you.”

“The fuck- wait,” Namjoon’s eyes widened.

“Night night.”

[:] Cockadoodle-Doo it's morning [:]

The next morning came around quickly for (Y/N), though I wouldn’t say the same for Namjoon. Having him overthinking the “postponed” love confession from (Y/N). Meanwhile, though the night was quick, the morning dragged the girl by the toilet paper stuck at the bottom of her shoe.

Frown plastered on her face, seemingly deep in thought. She was unmoving in her seat aside from her wrist moving to stir the half eaten cereal in front of her. Namjoon sat across from her, “You can stop thinking, you’re going to hurt your head.”

The insult snapped the girl out of her concentration, she looked up and clicked her tongue. “I was just thinking about you. You want me to stop doing that?”

Namjoon raised a brow, “Depends on what you were thinking about.”

“I was wondering if we could summon the boys,” (Y/N) smiled before continuing, “Maybe get my socks back…”

“Are you saying you’d enjoy the company of your socks more than you with me?” Namjoon asked rhetorically with a shocked expression. (Y/N) gagged and rolled her eyes.

“Namjoon…” she said with a honey coated tone. “Are you saying you don’t know that I know you’ve used MY socks before?” The accused had a shocked look on his face that looked like he was on the verge of throwing up.

(Y/N) started snickering, amused by the demon’s expression. “As if I'd use your cheap ass yellow striped socks,” Namjoon aimed his nose at the ceiling. The girl laughed harder, finding the insult to her socks a bit too amusing.

“Okay, back on topic,” she said in between giggles, “We’ll get back to this later.” Namjoon shook his head, unamused unlike the person across from him.

The offended sock insulter cleared his throat, “We should have enough time before we need to go to the school to summon one of them.” He said in a factual voice, (Y/N) nodded as she took a glance at the time that read 7:23 am.

“What did we need again?” She got up from the stool she sat on, abandoning the poor soggy cereal. Namjoon got up also with a hum of thought.

“Candles and a lighter are the main things, obviously,” He says. (Y/N) nodded going into one of the kitchen cabinets for the items. “And if we’re summoning all of them, we’d need offerings…” Namjoon drifted off.

(Y/N) put down the candles onto the marble counter and looked at Namjoon questionably, “So… we need another hamster and dog?” This made the demon pause before nodding slowly, the situation becoming a bit more difficult than it needed to be now.

“And then what about Hobi? What he took wasn’t exactly… a physical object?” She also put it into consideration and clicked her tongue. “I’m still mad at you for sacrificing my literal source of happiness and good luck for yourself.” Namjoon’s jaw dropped.

“I thought we were past this!” He threw his hands up in the air, (Y/N) flipping him off simultaneously.

“Maybe you were,” she sassed, pointing fingers with a half assed glare.

“Technically, it wasn’t a sacrifice, (Y/N).” He said, crossing his arms.

“Well-” She was cut off by the demon.

“Nuh uh, It was just him choosing to leave and wanting to stay,” he snapped, not in a harsh way though.

“But-”

“You know what, let’s just try and summon them another day. I don’t think it’d work anyways.” Namjoon said, dismissing the topic by waving his hand, taking a glance at the tree outside.

[:] Wooshy flash back time I guess [:]

“Why are you still here?” (Y/N) looked at Namjoon, “I mean weren’t you supposed to leave this year?”

“I was supposed to leave instead of Hobi last year. I asked to stay.” Namjoon was sitting nonchalantly in one of the lounge chairs in her parents' living room reading the book she was supposed to be reading for school.

“Why didn’t you leave when you were supposed to?” (Y/N) looked at the demon, a look of confusion evident on her features.

“Who else is supposed to write your book reports for school?” Namjoon smirked while holding up the book before going back to reading said book.

“Then why did Hobi leave? Did he not want to be attached anymore?” (Y/N) began to tear up.

“It’s not that. I asked to stay because I felt I wasn’t ready to leave yet and Hoseok felt he was ready to leave. Most of the time, we leave when our time comes (Y/N). Hobi and mine were at the same time and I wanted to stay so I stayed.” Namjoon smiled at (Y/N).

“But why didn’t Hobi want to stay?” (Y/N)’s tears were flowing freely at this point.

“(Y/N)! Are you crying?” (Y/N)’s mom came rushing downstairs to investigate why her only child was crying.

“I’m fine.” Even (Y/N) wasn’t convincing herself, “Really Mom, I’m just over exhausted. I’m gonna go up to my room.”

[:] And back to the present :) [:]

“Are you almost ready to go?” Namjoon popped his head into the bedroom, “We have to leave soon if you want to be on time for school.”

“I’m almost ready, relax. And don’t you have a class to teach and a non-ribbed dick to get sucked by that one bitch for an A?” (Y/N) scoffed from where she was printing an essay that Namjoon had written the night before.

Namjoon started counting down from five, “Five- You better fucking get your ass in gear or you’re gonna be late. Four- Seriously (Y/N). Three- Professor Howard can’t give you another pass just because he likes you. Two-” Namjoon got cut off by (Y/N).

“I’m ready, asshole.” (Y/N) looked at him, “You better not let that bitch Brianna suck your dick.”

“I won’t let her suck my dick!” Namjoon raised his hands in defense, “What about my toes though?” (Y/N) looked at the demon with a face of disgust and looked at him from head to toe.

“Are you Namjoon or Taehyung?” She squinted, looking at his face.

“It was a joke!” Namjoon smirked, “But I'm sure she’ll do it for an A anyway.”

“I’m done with this conversation Casper.” With that (Y/N) slung her bag over her shoulder and left.

“Hey wait!” Namjoon grabbed his own bag before speed walking after (Y/N).

[:] Professor Casper or Daddy Casper? [:]

“SO.” (Y/N) sat down across from Namjoon in his office, “Rumour has it that you’re dating a cute english-lit major and are up for evaluation. What say you in your defense?”

“I mean I am dating a cute english-lit major. But I’m not up for evaluation, I used my demon charms to get out the punishment.”

Namjoon looked at (Y/N) seriously.

“Did you actually?” (Y/N) gaped at Namjoon.

“No. I explained that dating you is punishment enough.” Namjoon smiled, his dimples popping.

“Bastard.” (Y/N)looked at Namjoon.

“Bitch.” Namjoon smirked at (Y/N) before leaning over the desk and kissing her on the forehead, “I love you.”

“Good.” (Y/N) blushed.

There, through the window of the office, there were 6 peeping toms watching the couple.

“Adadada-uda,” Taehyung stuttered, “THEY’RE SO CUTE!”

“This looks like it’d turn out like a straight porn video on the hub,” Yoongi says bluntly.

Jungkook looked at Yoongi, “Ew straight.”

“Moving on,” Seokjin cleared his throat, “Does anyone remember when (Y/N) said I love you back?”

A series of “No’s” could be heard.

“Maybe we weren’t watching!” Jimin raised his hands, “But when were we not watching?”

“Oh I know!” Hoseok interrupted, “When they split up because of classes earlier. We left Yoongi hyung in charge just in case something happened.”

“I took a nap and must've missed it.” The guilty demon shrugged.

“No, (Y/N) definitely isn’t someone who confesses straight up.” Seokjin said, stroking his chin. The rest nodded in agreement.

“Yeah, that's why she didn’t have a man when we were still there.” Jungkook snorted.

“No JK, we all know the reason why (Y/N) was always single. Was because she was pining after Namjoon.” Jimin stated the obvious.

[:] Damn. Imagine having someone to kiss in public. Or at all. [:]

“So how do you reckon the staff caught onto us… I mean PDA really isn’t our thing.” Namjoon looked at (Y/N), “Who have you told?”

“I haven’t told anyone!” (Y/N) frowned, “Maybe someone saw us go home together? I bet it was that bitch Brianna. She gives off the stalker vibes.”

“I’m not gonna let her suck my dick.” Namjoon looked at (Y/N), “And she’s already failing my class so even if I did let her suck my non-ribbed punisher, she still would probably only have a D-.”

“Hey- I thought we stopped referring to your dick as non-ribbed.” Namjoon raised a brow, making a face that said ‘you’re-the-one-who-started-it.’

Reading his expression (Y/N) glared at the demon, “Technically you’re the one who started it because you freely admitted it freely.”

“What makes you find out the hard way that my dick isn’t ribbed?” Namjoon looked at (Y/N) suggestively before flopping namtiddie first into the couch.

“I think I would've preferred finding out the hard way.” (Y/N) flopping onto Namjoon’s hard back.

“So I can’t even have the couch to myself?” Namjoon groaned before realizing what (Y/N) meant by ‘finding out the hard way,’ “Are you saying you rather had found out in the heat of the moment after having prepared yourself for a ribbed demon dick?” Namjoon leaned his head up to bump (Y/N) who still had her fat ass on his back, “I can’t breathe, get off.”

(Y/N) rolled off of Namjoon before plopping herself down in front of Namjoon, “That’s exactly what I am saying.”

[:] Smh stalkers at every moment [:]

“And I got a big fat ass!” (Y/N) shook her ass while singing off-key.

“Your ass is everything but big, baby.” Namjoon passed (Y/N) to reach for the garlic from the spice cabinet.

The girl turned and looked at Namjoon with an offended look, “You know. As my rental boyfriend, you’re supposed to be nice.”

Garlic forgot, Namjoon turned to (Y/n) and grabbed her waist, “I’m not your rental boyfriend and you know that.”

(Y/N) laughed, “Okay go off I guess, not my rental boyfriend.” (Y/N) rolled her eyes before pushing Namjoon away.

“Woman,” Namjoon placed a hand over his heart, “You wound me.”

(Y/N) turned around and smiled at her demon, “I could argue that you’re the one that wounds me.”

“I do not wound you.” Namjoon scoffs, “But I could very well wound you if you keep saying i’m a rental boyfriend, love.”

“Well we wouldn’t want you to wound me now would we,” (Y/N) smiled up at Namjoon before leaning in and placing a quick peck to his lips, “I love you.”

Namjoon smiled before returning (Y/N)’s peck with a chaste kiss, “I love you too, baby.”

*Meanwhile from the dining room 6 men were watching from not so afar*

“Hyung! Hyung! Did you see that!” Jungkook excitedly pointed towards the couple in the kitchen.

Yoongi groaned, “See what?”

“Le gasp! How could you have missed that!” Taehyung held a hand over his heart, “(Y/N) initiated affection for once!”

Jin smiled, “It really was adorable.”

[:] Oh look, you're at the end. [:]

“Every kiss begins with consent.” Namjoon wiggled his shoulders while grading papers at the table.

(Y/N) smirked before leaning over the table and planting a large whet kiss on Namjoon’s cheek.

“Rude.” Namjoon scoffed before pulling (Y/N) in for a proper kiss.

“You know that kiss didn’t have much of my consent in it.” (Y/N) smiled before leaning in for another kiss.

“I don’t think I consented to that either though.” Namjoon smiled.

“Get back to work baby.” (Y/N) nudged Namjoon towards his pile of papers.

“Yeah yeah.” Namjoon smiled before looking down and putting a big red ‘F’ on a paper clearly marked Brianna Simms.

“When will she just drop the class?” (Y/N) chuckled, “Dumbass.”

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do not repost, translate, or claim as your own. :]

[swan--writes]

BJ’s V-Day

In which BJ fucks with reader’s chocolate, and reader is Upset.

It’s still Valentine’s Day in some places, right? Shut up. It’s been a busy day.

Warnings: food, swan-typical language

It started at the coffee shop. (Of course it did.)

You ordered the same coffee that you always did, from the same barista you always saw, but something was different that day. The coffee was darker and colder, and more viscous than usual. It was almost sour, and the way it sloshed around in the paper cup made your stomach churn. When you frowned at the barista who had made it, he gave you a too-wide grin and an unnerving wink. (His teeth were so pointy, was that normal?) You scurried out of the shop and onto the street of your small Connecticut town. You had not been back since.

That was only the first of February.

Next came the florist’s. You had been to the florist every week since you moved to this small town. It was cozy enough that you didn’t feel pressured to place a massive order, and you preferred small business flowers to the grocery store selection. And you loved fresh flowers. (Everybody has their thing, this was yours.)

Now, you would swear that when you chose your bouquet, it was beautiful. The blooms were fresh, the leaves were perky, and the roses were vibrant.

By the time the florist had packaged it for you, it was a red and black mess right out of an early My Chemical Romance music video. Great for art. Kitchen counters? Not as much.

Of course, you were too nice to say anything. You simply had to contend with half-dead roses, wilting on their stems. They were all blackened edges, wrinkled petals, and falling leaves. The florist gave you an even wider grin than the barista had, and you walked out even faster than you had the coffee shop.

It was only day four.

After the roses – which had only lasted two days in your house before the blooms fell dead away (literally) – was the truffles. This was almost your breaking point.

All of the convenience store chocolate was discounted for Valentine’s Day, just five days away now. It was on your way home from work, and you couldn’t force yourself to just drive past it. So, in you went, and there you bought, and then you went home. You had gone through the self-checkout, but one of the cashiers kept giving you sidelong looks.

At the convenience store, you had tried to ignore them, but they were all you could think about when you bit into the first truffle. The chocolate shell was mostly fine, if a touch bitter. The filling was dust. (Literal, actual dust.)

So, like any rational person, you spent the next fifteen minutes gagging over the sink, then grabbed a knife. You sliced clean through every single truffle. Most of them crumbled from the pressure of your knife, and all of them were the same. Truffle after truffle – two full boxes – were all filled with dust.

Well, all but one.

In the center of the second box, there was one truffle that did not crumble. It was densely packed with a thick, old piece of paper. The paper felt leathery between your fingers when you picked it out of the chocolate shell, almost like parchment.

When you saw what was written on it, you all but stabbed your knife through it.

Bad coffee? Okay. Dead flowers? Fine. But nobody fucked with your chocolate and remained in your good graces.

The next five days only upped the ante.

Your trusty diner somehow dropped every single Valentine’s Day éclair on the floor as soon as you arrived. Your supervisor lost her box of valentines before she could hand them out at your office. Your set of Valentine’s decorated mason jars somehow fell from your entertainment center and shattered when you walked by. (A good four feet away from the table, because that made complete sense.) But the final straw came on day fourteen, first thing on Valentine’s Day. (Of course it did.)

When you opened the door to take the trash out, you felt it knock something over. It was mostly dark outside, and you didn’t fully see what it was until you brought it inside. Once you were under proper lighting, you saw that you were holding a black teddy bear about the size of your torso.

When you shook the bear to make sure there was nothing inside, however, the head immediately twisted off and flew away to who knows where? A foul-smelling green slime began oozing from the severed neck. You shrieked and dropped the bear. Slime and wet dirt spilled onto your kitchen floor.

“Oh my--no, y’know what? Fine,” you groused. “Fine! I give up.” You backed away from the decapitated bear and stomped through the kitchen to your living room.

Your house was old, and you could hear the creaking of the floorboards underneath the banging of your steps. You could hear the sizzle of whatever the slime was doing to your kitchen floor. And you could hear the wind that kicked up when you spoke the words from the parchment you had found in your discount truffle.

“Beetlejuice!”

Something in the house groaned – a low, ominous sound.

“Beetlejuice.”

A layer of fog covered your windows. (Several layers.) It crept in at your window corners with a draft, and a gray murk. It nipped at your ankles, and leapt at your wrists, and seemed to amplify the sizzling in your kitchen.

You swallowed. “Beetlejuice!”

Lightning flashed. You closed your eyes, but it didn’t do much good. The wind whipped around you. You tried to turn your face against it, but it was everywhere and coming from all sides. Without thinking, you covered your ears and stumbled back a step.

Then, all at once, it stopped.

When you opened your eyes, you saw your demon boyfriend leaning on the doorjamb with his back to you. Beetlejuice gave a low whistle when he saw the teddy bear he had left you eating a hole in your floorboards.

“Damn babes, you’re gonna have to get someone out here to fix that.”

Rather than humor him, you glared at his back. His suit jacket was barely holding together, and you could see a long, thin strip of his shirt through it. “The mason jars? Really? You know I loved those.”

Without moving his feet, Beetlejuice’s head turned fully around to face you, nose wrinkled in a grimace. “Those cheap old things? C’mon baby, you can find a hundred of them at literally any Purgatory yard sale.” His eyes lit up. “In fact–”

“Oh no, I’ve had enough of that place. And hey, what have you been doing in town this month anyway? You said you’d be tied up until March.”

“Oh I was, sweet cheeks.” Beetlejuice waggled his eyebrows at you. You walked up to him and slapped his arm. “Whoa, babes!” The force of it seemed to radiate through his entire body. (Corpse?) His knees wobbled, his hips jostled, and you could swear you heard rattling from somewhere near his ribcage. “Easy! I’ve been doing a lot of strenuous physical activity this month.”

“Oh yeah? Fucking with me almost every day has been strenuous?”

“Hey, you coulda just summoned me when I asked you to.”

“You didn’t ask, you ruined my bargain-bin chocolate.”

“Oh, forgive me.” You rolled your eyes at his tone.

Beetlejuice turned around on his feet, facing you with his shoulders. Then he groaned, reached up, and spun his head around. “Whoa!” he cried. His head rotated a few times on his neck before finally coming to a stop.

When he brought his hands down again, Beetlejuice was holding the oozing teddy bear’s head. He held it out to you.

“I’m sorry for fucking with you all month.”

You gave him a look, but melted when you saw the pink creeping through the roots of his otherwise green hair. “Fine,” you conceded. “But you owe me.” Against your best self-preserving judgment, you took the stuffed head from him. A few clumps of wet dirt fell from the bottom where it was still severed and onto the floor. You kissed its cheek anyway, and only winced a little from its coldness.

Beetlejuice took the head back, flung it back over his shoulder, wrapped his arms around you, and dipped you. You gave a very undignified squeak that you would never admit to later.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, babes,” he growled.

“Happ--mmf!”

.

.

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[dlamp-dictator]

Allen X’s Gacha Rules for a ‘Good’ Gacha Game (Featuring Arknights)

Hey look, that Arknights essay came quicker than I thought.

Continuing on my goal of finishing up all my years-old drafts by the end of February, I think it’s pretty damn convenient that I glanced over this half-finished opinion piece just in time for the next limited banner for Arknight’s CN server to be announced. This is a topic I’ve been wanting to cover for awhile now. If there was anything that was a decent marker for Allen X’s gaming experience these past 4-ish years it was the fact that he got real into Gacha Games. I’ve dipped my toe into quite a few different Gacha phone games over the years. AFK Arena, Granblue Fantasy, Girls Frontline, and even an Ikkitousen gacha game at one point. And of course Arknights, which is my current main gacha game at the moment.  

Honestly, the only thing I didn’t play was Fate/Grand Order, and for damn good reason, but one thing at a time.

Anyway, with all that time I spent playing these games I’ve slowly given myself a ruleset and mindset for how I handle these gacha games. And I figured I’d talk about how I go about playing some of them, some of the experiences I’ve gained, and what I look into when it comes to the money portion of playing a ‘free-to-play’ game. I’ll mostly be talking about Arknights since it’s the main gacha game I’ve been playing for the past year and I don’t play two of these at once for damn good reason. 

So, with that all said, let’s start off with... 

Point 1: Methods of Ten-Pulls

For those new, the typical loop for most gacha games is to roll for rare characters and use them to complete segments of the game, whether for their looks, stats, or playstyle (but mostly looks). The characters themselves are usually drawn in an attractive and appealing way, along with having abilities and statistics that are desirable from a gameplay perspective, at least those of a higher rarity. The more you pull and buy into the gacha, the higher the chance you get for a rare character. Some games have deals where you pull can pull for free with some in-game resource like Girls Frontline, and more commonly the game encourages you to pull 10 at a time to increase your chances. 

For any good gacha game, I feel you should be able to pull for free at a fair rate. That varies a lot depending the game mechanics at play, how the game handles duplicate pulls, the rarity rate of gacha pulls, and so on, but in general if you can pull 10 times every two weeks I’ll consider the game fair, at least on that front. 

Arknights is actually a pretty good example of this. Headhunting aside, you can pull 4 times a day using in-game resources in the recruitment section of the menu, but those pulls tend to be a lot more common and not viable in the endgame like some of the ones you get in headhunting. And even without the recruitment section you can usually ten-pull about twice a month if you do the daily and weekly missions plus the weekly Annihilation missions. When I first discussed Arknights in this regard I had some confusion about how Annihilation worked and assumed it reset monthly. I apologize if I misled people with that statement. 

Anyway, by doing all the activities and missions that give you Orundum, the gacha currency, you should be able to collection about 10,000 Orundum every month, which is one guaranteed ten-pull a month. This is a little under what I would had preferred for Arknights and there’s a good chance I’m missing a free source of Orundum somewhere (and I’m rounding down to play it safe), but... it’s fair enough. 

But onto my second point.

Point 2: Premium Currency in Relation to Real-World Currency.

In short, I should have a clear idea how much it cost to pull a character if I was going to whale. Typically, in most gacha games you can purchase a premium currency in order to pull characters with real world money. The amount can vary from game to game, but there should be a clear idea of how much it cost to pull for a character. 

As a free-to-play game, most gacha games do need some kind of reliable income. Let’s be real here, this game doesn’t run on happiness and sunshine and I don’t mind giving money to products I want to see succeed and continue, but if it takes 20 bucks to ten-pull I’m going to find that ridiculous unless the gacha rate is in highly my favor.

Arknights uses Originium Prime as it’s premium currency, an item that can be transferred into 180 Orundum per unit. One Originium Prime costs one dollar. You need about 33 Originium Prime to get the 6,000 Orundum needed to pull ten times, or a little over 3 Originium Prime to pull once using 600 Orundum. This means on average it costs around $33 to pull on command.

This is absurd for a tower defense game.

Now, Originium Prime does a lot more than let you engage with the gacha, but the brass tacks of this is that for every ten-pull you do you could just as easily get 3 games off a Steam sale, maybe more. I also think I should note that Arknight’s store lets you buy 40 Originium Prime for $30 as a bundle, cutting that cost to about 75 cents per Originium Prime. There’s also an option for 66 Originium Prime for $50, but that for just a little over 75 cents per Originium Prime if my math is correct. Either way, Arknights is asking for quite the price to engage in one of its main mechanics. 

And yes, you can gain Originium Prime in game by perfect-clearing stages and clearing the challenge modes, but there’s a finite a moment of those stages and events maps are pretty scarce in Arknights, coming around once every two-ish months with about 15-20 chances for Originium Prime. As a casual player this is... fine, but for folks that rush the endgame this is... a tad much. 

Now, I’m a casual player. I don’t rush to the latest content and I don’t try and min-max a gacha game of all things. As much I mostly just buy a monthly pack that grants me about 300 Orundum for free daily for 30 days and 6 Originium Prime upon purchase. This makes the grind a little easier and it’s a cheap way to show monetary support to the development team. However, I do recognize there are people that do these min-max and rush content and my opinion of these folks aside I think those folks probably spend the most money as well, undeservedly so. But this is more a discussion of the individual person and not the gacha community as a whole.

So... moving on...

Point 3: Late Game Viability as a Free-to-Play

To me, it should never feel like you need the gacha to finish the game or get to the endgame content. For a free to play game, you should be able to at least finish the initial pre-update content without needing to try and a pull a rare character to get you through a hard segment of the game. Events and Post-Launch stuff have a bit of wiggle room, but overall I don’t think you should need a team of the rarest characters to just beat the game, at least not a meta-team. That doesn’t mean the desire to pull can’t be there, but at least for the launch-content, you should be able to finish it out as a free-to-play player. Thankfully, most games (most good games) will give you a pretty decent team to work with if you truly have bad luck with rolls. Girls Frontline is a good example of this.

Arknights... isn’t as generous as I’d like it to be.

In Arknights, by the end of Chapter 4, with limited engagement of the Gacha, you’ll have handful of 4-Stars that can be leveled to the late game with decent stats, Amiya, and an assortment of 3 stars that can technically get you through those first four chapters if used and placed wisely. But some four stars like Gavial, Courier, and Dur-nar are time-limited if I remember correctly, so as of me typing this there’s no reliable way to get some of those characters.

Meanwhile, in Girls Frontline you got most of team Anti-Rain by the mid-game pre-updates, a group of 4-star guns that had already great utility and with half of their members being in the meta of the pre-update endgame content, and are still viable to this day if I remember correctly. 

This is a major point of contention I have with Arknights. I think they’re fairer than most gacha games, but I’ll admit they don’t like giving handouts, not as many as I’d prefer anyway. Even the stingy AFK Arena gave you more stuff after maintenance updates and the like, and I hate the fact that I complimented AFK Arena on anything.

But onto my last point.

Point 4: 5-Star/SSR Rates Must be Around 4% or Higher.

This is the main reason I’ll never touch F/GO (along with other reasons). Every gacha game should, statistically, guarantee a five-star/SSR/highest-tier rarity after 30 pulls. Any more than that and you’re playing with a rigged slot machine by my standards. Like I said, the main goal of most gacha games is to get you pulling for these are fancily drawn jpegs and pngs, and while those characters technically have gameplay function and even limited animation in certain non-gameplay settings, they’re still pictures nonetheless. And if I have to dip more than 30 times to get something good then what’s the point.

Again, using Arknights, their 5-Stars are at a rather generous 8%, but their 6-Stars being at a tad crueler 2%. By all accounts, I shouldn’t be touching Arknights because of this, but due to the nature of how busted Six-Stars are and a few other details like base functions, potential levels, and some other factors in Arknights gameplay, I let this slide for the moment.

Regardless, I shouldn’t take more than 20 pulls to get a highly rated unit of some sort. The details of the specific unit can be discussed at a later date, but my point remains.

Also, any gacha game that mixes accessories and characters in the same pull pool is equally unplayable. Characters have utility and gameplay functions that can be used for multiple strategies and methods, along with out-of-game benefits ala the base mechanics of Arknights depending on the game. Accessories and items are stat buffs in game where grinding levels is already purposely tedious. Anything making that act more of a hinderance is honestly trying to rob you blind and should be avoided like the plague.

Now... one more thing to talk about. 

About Arknights Specifically

You know... between me bitching about Chapter 7, bitching about Chapter 6, bitching about 7-18, and bitching about Code of Brawl I get the feeling you all think I hate Arknights. 

Trust me, I only whine and moan because I love this game and the people who made it, I wouldn’t waste my breath or keystrokes otherwise. 

That said, I would like to see some things change about Arknights on a foundational level. I’ll try and keep this short, but no promises.

Endgame Team for Free

This is the team you have to work with for 6-7 because of story reasons and I think this team should gained for free to by the end of chapter 6, everyone in this squad should be in your rooster by the end. Even Blaze, her kit is good, but not as busted as Silverash so she wouldn’t shatter the game’s difficulty. This team overall is very well balanced for end game content and has all the essentials to get through it. E2 medics and guards, cheap vanguards and defenders for last minute placements to stall, a good sniper that can do solid burst damage, some specialists just in case you need to manipulate enemy movement and path detection. I believe you can get Rope, FEater, and Myrrh free, but Blaze and Greythroat for reliable lategame damage feels like a must. And I see nothing wrong with giving out those two for free anyway, especially for what was near endgame content at the time and how pivotal Blaze and Greythroat were to the storyline of Chapter 6. And yes I feel the same way about Rosmontis in Chapter 7 too. She’s actually a pretty niche unit and a 6-Star that’s expensive to upgrade, just having her in your pocket wouldn’t shatter the game like it would be if you gave us, again, Silverash.

Gacha Rates

I think arguing for cheaper prices with the Originium Prime is a fools errand because corporations will never listen, but I’ll at least say this. The rules of the gacha that followed the WWE Banner should be for all future banner. You should get a banner-specific currency that lets you outright buy the rare units on said banner if you have bad enough luck. You needed to pull 300 times to get W or Weedy and about 50 times to get  Elysium. I feel like both of these should be cut in half. Going by the math I previously did counting that requirement in half would mean only doing 15 ten-pulls, about 495 Originium Prime (89,100 Orundum) or a little over $370 for a limited operator.

This is still absurd for a tower defense game, but it is a far more fair than the original system.

Other Small Quality of Life Changes

A quick pull for recruitment operators so we don’t have to see the bag animation 4 times over. Girls Frontline had something similar by the time I left and it was all the better for it. 

A similar form of auto-play to Girls Frontline where you can send in one of your 4 squads to auto play a map off screen a number of times and come back later when they’re down for materials at the cost of extra sanity. 

Have a Orundum be a log-in reward. Again, something Girls Frontline did and I think coughing out 1,000 Orundum once a week wouldn’t kill anyone.

Buff Amiya goddammit. Either remove/shorten the stun on her S2 to make her have reliable (if random) magical burst damage or remove the instant retreat on her S3 so she can become a hard-hitting damage unit at the cost of a high SP cost and cooldown timer. Don’t give major drawbacks to your only non-event free 5-Star when Silverash exists. When Click and Haze has more viability than your main character you have a problem.

Anyway, that’ll be it for me. Next time... I talk about something that isn’t me bitching.

[angst-in-space]

december ‘20 writing progress (and yearly wrap-up)

december progress:

words written: 15.2k

yearly total: 248.8k 

projects worked on:

- sylvix dreamscape fic - edited/posted the sylvix xmas fic, “where the love light gleams” - finished writing the altea rising recap - worked on a couple secret projects

december goals: - reach my yearly goal of writing 250k words....*sweats* (ok i didn’t quite get there but i’ll give myself credit cuz i was only like 200 words off) - finish/submit final draft of piece for long live zine - finish editing and publish the sylvix xmas fic! - finish/publish [redacted] and [redacted] - work some more on the sylvix dreamscape fic  - finish the altea rising recap summary (and....maybe work a little on chapter 19 if i have time)

notes:

well, december was....a very busy month. had kind of a hellish start to the month what with a health-related thing (not covid, don’t worry i’m fine dkfjdl) so that kinda sapped my energy for about a week. then ofc there was the holidays and everything. aaand on top of that i had like four writing deadlines (although like....two of them were postponed so that was good haha). 

but anyway! i did at least manage to finish a couple of things––mainly my sylvix christmas fic (“where the love light gleams”), finishing/submitting my “long live” zine piece, FINALLY finishing the altea rising recap summary ... and also finishing one secret thing that is not published yet, but it’s for a fandom i’ve never written before and i’ll be very excited to publish it once i can!

other than that, i mostly worked on the sylvix dreamscape fic and on a secret santa exchange fic that i still have not finished (we extended the deadline to end of january bc like...no one in the group had finished by end of december lol). 

i didn’t quite reach my goal of 250k words for the year, but i mean my initial goal was 150k and i only ended up being about 200 words shy of 250k SO i still think that’s a big win lol. 

as for what i’ll be working on next: top priority is finishing the secret santa fic. but i also hope to keep working on the sylvix dreamscape fic. aaand hoping to edit/publish the klance hotel au by the end of january maybe, since uh i finished a draft of it in november and STILL have not finished editing that so OOPS. and mayyybe will finally delve into finishing the last few chapters of altea rising, and maybe at least start editing chapter 15 but that’s pretty optimistic of me lmao.

2020 wrap up:

total words written: 248.8k most words written in a month: 50.1k (november) least words written in a month: 14.1k (march)

works completed:

- want your fire on me - i know a place we can run - illumination - cover my skin with your sunkissed light - where the love light gleams - klance hotel au (not published yet) - [secret project] (not published yet) - miles to go (my zine piece for “long live”, not published yet) other wips:  - sylvix dreamscape fic - altea rising - secret santa fic - planning my wlw YA sci-fi novel 

2020 goals:

- write every day - write at least 150k words - focus more on my multichaps  - finish altea rising - finish a couple of my kl standalone fics?? not sure which ones yet, but yeah! - finish galolio fic - write burning hearts piece - work on wangxian fic w jessie! - maybe start writing something original??

notes: 

all in all, a very productive year! there were some yearly goals i did not reach (i.e. finishing my old klance multichaps.....rip) but i mean, i also ended up getting involved in (and writing fic for) several other fandoms, so i couldn’t really have anticipated that at the beginning of the year. i’m really happy with the two sylvix fics i’ve published so far, and i hope to write a lot more for them this year! 

so yeah... i have a few big projects i want to tackle in 2021. firstly the sylvix dreamscape fic is...already over 30k and i’m estimating it’ll probably end up being a total of somewhere around 50k-60k so uh yeah that’s gonna be a big commitment lol. but i think i’m gonna do the same thing i did with “cover my skin...” and make it a chaptered fic. not sure when i will start posting it but i’m hoping ideally sometime in like late february or early march, depending on a few things. 

i have a few other sylvix fics i also hope to at least start writing sometime this year. one in particular i have had fully planned out for months but ironically have not started it yet even though it was the first sylvix fic idea i came up with... but yeah i might start that one after the dreamscape fic is done. i also have a couple aus that i might tackle, but they both need a lot more fleshing out before i even begin writing them so hmm we shall see. 

besides that... i do really honestly want to finish my klance multichaps even tho it’s been...over a year since i updated either of them and idk if anyone even gives a shit anymore but i’m a completionist at heart and just wanna see them through sooo yEAH. i have at least finished writing up a (very long) summary of everything i’ve written of altea rising so far, mostly to recap myself to make sure i tie up all the loose ends in the last few chapters. i did work a bit on actually writing it in 2020 although tbh i like kinda fell off the rails once i fell into fe3h/sylvix hell BUT i still intend to get back to it because i do still have a soft spot for it and want to finish it. and long story short, i’ve decided to divide up what i’ve written of the last part into like...5-ish chapters so yeah, hopefully i can start posting those at some point in the near future. ....and uhh i don’t think i worked on red skies at all in 2020 which makes me sad bc i still love that fic dearly and want to complete it as well, it just may take me a few months to get back to it but hey if i’m able to update it at all in 2021 that would be great haha.  another thing i’m hoping is to possibly open commissions in 2021, something i said i would do in 2020 and never did but....kinda wanna give it a try, especially because i am funemployed once again. :’) AND LASTLY...i’ve been planning an original wlw YA sci-fi novel for like two years and i would really love to start at least the first draft of it this year....that would be neat. 

so yeah this post is starting to get insanely long but i’ll just wrap up with my 2021 goals and january goals, and...yeah. 2020 sure was a weird year, here’s hoping 2021 is (at least..slightly...??) better. 

2021 goals: - write every day - write at least 150k words - finish the sylvix dreamscape fic - start on like 1 or 2 other sylvix multichaps...? - finish altea rising - work on red skies again - do some fic commissions - continue planning my novel and maybe start the first draft january goals:  - finish secret santa fic - publish [redacted] - work on sylvix dreamscape fic - edit klance hotel au (hopefully send to betas by end of month at least?) - maybe work on altea rising ch. 19

[ev--writes]

Master wip Intro Post (I’m so sorry lol)

I mentioned in my last post that I had notes for upwards of 15 projects in a ton of different formats (side note to myself:whyyyy). Ergo, I thought it would be helpful to do a short overview of all of them, as I’ll probably be doing update posts for all of these at some point.

Also: Thank you for 6 followers already??? I honestly didn’t think anyone would see my last post (especially as I had no idea how tags worked until after I posted it).

Novels

GRACE

“After the sudden death of her childhood best friend and crush Vicky, Robin is invited to spend the summer with her estranged father, his new husband, and her half-sister at their Maine cabin. As her relationships with her father’s family and a fellow vacationing teen Claire grow, her relationships with her remaining friends and mother back home begin to fracture.”  

Oh boy does this book have a backstory.It’s a little complicated to get into right now (I’ll talk about it in my post for this wip), but I got the idea for the original version of this book in April 2016, and it’s been through three major overhauls since then. I’ve done enough planning to start drafting the newest version, but I’m waiting to get a few mostly-complete projects done before I jump in. 

Attic (working title)

“The discovery of a dead body in the attic of Theo’s new house puts a damper on his fresh start. When a singular death becomes a series, Theo and his new friends decide to investigate and discover that the explanation isn’t able to be explained.”

This story also has a long history. I wrote this for NaNoWriMo 2017, overhauled it for NaNoWriMo 2019, and overhauled it again in the middle of that month. I’m currently stuck with a certain aspect, so I’ve put it to the side for the moment.  

Pinewood Guild

“A group of scholarship students at an elite private boarding school obsess over the seemingly unexplainable death of a fellow student.”

This is very much a baby idea, from April of this year. I was having a grand old time writing a different project Three Can Keep a Secret (which I’ll get to later), and I wanted to write another book about terrible people being horrible to each other. I don’t have very many plans for this book at the moment. 

Blood in the Water

“Paul returns to his hometown for the first time since high school to attend the funeral of his brother when he starts to receive anonymous letters. What starts as innocent and quirky quickly turns dark and potentially deadly”

I got this idea in February of this year, as I wanted to write a novel with the letter format. I was supposed to start this project as my “I’m Leaving Highschool Emotional Support Book”, but I’m not sure if I’m going to actually do that.

The Lion Tattoo

“Jordan bonds with classmate Cade over their shared foster care status. As Jordan starts to spend more and more time with Cade, they see a darker side to the boy. When one of Cade’s adventures ends with them sent off to different foster homes, Jordan must turn their life around.”

This is a very old idea that I honestly forgot about. However, there’s still a lot I want to explore with this story, so I’ll probably get to it someday.  

Anthologies

Sunny

“August ‘Sunny’ finally gets engaged to her long-time girlfriend Tatsu, sending her back to the beginnings of their relationship as camp counselors.”

This is a short set of vignettes I wrote as a birthday present to a friend. As it was just for shiggles, it’s not my most sophisticated story, but I’m okay with it. You can actually read this on my Wattpad if you’d like (I’ll add a link here when I figure out how to do that). I also adapted it as a short film because I was bored, if I’m being honest. 

Hypocrite

This is my poetry collection! Some of these poems are based on real life experiences (for example, the poem I named the collection after was based on a friendship that exploded), and others are completely fiction. This might just be my favorite project I’m working on, if I’m being honest. 

Short Story Collection

I can’t title this wip for the life of me, so the name is relatively self explanatory. I’ve written four stories for this so far, and I have three brewing in the notes app.

Safety Orange

“When an accident kills her father and sends her mother into a coma, Angie and her brother Oliver are sent to live with their Aunt Marie. Romance should be the last thing on her mind when a local barista Natalie catches her eye.”

This was my “Quarantine Emotional Support Book”. I had two simultaneous itches--to write something cute and fluffy, and to try out prose poetry. These two ideas birthed this story. I want to get a printed copy for me and my mom, but I don’t have any plans for it after that. 

Three Can Keep a Secret

 “Hattie, her girlfriend Regan, and her best friend Vincent return from a weekend camping trip to discover their town has been ravaged by the undead. Sophie and her brother Joseph are driven from the military’s safety by a tragic accident. Aspen discovers something wrong with her younger sister Paris that might prove more difficult to handle than the walking bodies around every corner.”

This was my other “Quarantine Emotional Support Book”, written for Camp NaNo 2020. It’s technically a short story collection, although I structured the stories with chapters. I also enjoyed the little flash pieces that appeared in-between each story. Like Safety Orange, I want to get a printed copy of this book, but I don’t think I’ll seek publication for it. 

Screen

Horror Web Series

“Outcast sisters Heaven and Eden make a new friend--one that gives them special abilities. While Eden is more timid about her powers, Heaven is almost too excited and drags her sister along on her quest for revenge.”

This is another one of my projects that I just Cannot Title.The description makes it sound kind of lighthearted, but it’s one of the darkest ideas that I’ve come up with. Right now it’s outlined on my phone, and really all I need to do is dedicate a day to pounding it out. 

Video Games

I’m Sorry This Happened

“Archer’s attempts to cheer up her girlfriend Helena accidentally awakens Sylvia, a playfully violent ghost who convinces the girls to get revenge on the two boys that caused her death almost half a century ago.”

This is a visual novel my sister and I are teaming up with to create. We’re still not sure whether we’re going to publish it, but nevertheless I’m having a grand old time writing it, and I guess that’s what really matters. 

Swanhill Convenience 

“A misfit crew of the local gas station convenience store have a strong customer base. When new employee Pearl becomes suspicious of the group, the whole town’s careful facade crumbles.”

This one needs...more time to brew. There’s a lot of basic details that I’m having trouble making solid decisions on (for example, whether the store is a coffee shop or a convenience store), so this will probably have to sit until I have an epiphany or something. 

[I can’t put the working title here because it’s a blatant spoiler]

“You should not have gone into the forest. Now escape, however you can.”

I debated whether to put this on the list because it’s so hard to talk about without ruining the whole thing. It’s a puzzle solving game that I think has some really interesting lore that I can incorporate. I think that’s literally all I can say lol. 

Wow, that post was LONG. Thank you for reading all the way through! Each of these projects will get dedicated post when I start working on them more frequently. Moral of the story: I have absolutely no self control when it comes to starting projects. 

Note: Any photograph used that I did not take myself came from Unsplash.

See you around,

-Ev

[halberdierminister]

July Monthly Goals Check-In

1. Write 250 Words Each Day Well, I started out very faithful to this. But sometime around the middle of the month, I got pretty choppy. I honestly don't know exactly how many days I skipped. I'm gonna try to write a fair amount today when I can and hope that it is enough to make up for it. Which is fine. It has been an otherwise very productive month in many other ways, so I cannot be too upset about it. I may start running a wordpress blog with a friend of mine, and if I do that may keep me more on track with these.. We shall see. We shall see.

2. Read 55 Books This Year I finished reading 55 books in May! Last month I read 10 more books. THIS month, however… I read 31 books. That brings me to a total of 97 books read for the year!!! A lot of them have been VERY short books. Lots of poetry collections, manga volumes, graphic novels, etc etc etc. But not exclusively!! I was hoping to get to 100 books by the time I wrote this but the last couple days, I have not been able to make the magic happen. But that's fine! That's TOTALLY FINE. This will be a very significant get, but I have months to get over that hump. By the time you hear from me on this goals check-in next month, I will undoubtedly be decently well over 100 books, and I can talk about why that personally feels so good then!

3. Get A Full Time Job I did not get a full time job this month. BUT. I applied to 38 full time jobs. Got a bunch of rejections. HOWEVER, I have scheduled EXACTLY ONE JOB INTERVIEW so far so that is good news! And that would be a VERY good job if I were to get it! Some of these jobs are actually pretty exciting things and I feel confident for the first time in a while that I might actually find a good job IN MY CAREER PLAN!!!! Also I almost lost my part time job but the library director was able to convince the village to let me stay on as a substitute, and it has paid off surprisingly well. I've been working two to three shifts a week on that, which is more than any of us expected. So I guess what I'm saying is I am making good progress again and I hope I can have something positive to report by the time I'm thirty. Eugh.

4. Move Out Speaking of being almost thirty. I really do not want to be here. If I get the job I interview for, I would be able to move in with my friends in Milwaukee just about as soon as possible. So that is good news. Every day it gets more tempting to just say "screw it" and live down there. But that won't help me find a job. And the job really is the important thing.

5. Drink Less Soda I mean yeah. Occasionally, I drink-a the soda. But not too much. I am good at drinking less soda than I did last year or the years before that. That's because I would have several sodas each day, to the point where it worried some of the people I know.

6. Get Something Published Just found out that I'm getting something else published today! So that is one new poem published this month! I also had my fic in the Lalonde Zine come out, but it turns out that the Lalonde Zine was more of a shared Google Drive folder than an actual zine. Maybe I should offer to compile the zine into one document? I should do that. That would be a good thing to do and it would give me a lot of experience with doing that, something I haven't really done in a while. So the practice would do me good! And then I would feel better saying that I got published there too. But yes so besides the Lalonde fic, I have had two poems published in zines, one poem published in an online literary journal, and one fic published in an online fanzine this year! If you include the articles I wrote for school newspapers, I have gotten at least one thing published every year for the past fifteen years. If you don't count the articles (or the Lalonde fic yet), I have had 30 pieces of fiction and poetry published since 2005! That's pretty neat! I want even more though!!!!!! I found a publisher's website that accepts unsolicited manuscripts. I'm going to try to put together an honest to god actual collection of my poetry, one bigger than either of the two digital chapbooks I have made. I have a friend who is a professional editor -- not of poetry, mind you, but I might be able to convince her to give it a shot -- and I would honestly hire her at full price to take a look at it. I actually will need to seek a lot of feedback from a lot of people, so if you want to read a document full of a bunch of my poetry, lemme know and I will show you what I've got when I've got something.

7. Finish Writing A Legitimate Businessman Finished in April! No new news. But just because I completed this goal doesn't mean that is the end of it! I do still have the sequel to work on, even though I haven't done any of that this month. And one of these days I am going to get around to sitting down with the printed copy and a pen and editing the shit out of it so that I can write draft #2! I think I'll probably throw draft #2 up on wattpad (why not?? I've been curious about that website and know absolutely nothing about it) and maybe I'll make a nice looking e-book out of it that I can distribute on noisetrade or itchio or something! I wonder if I could get it printed on demand or something. Obviously not for profit. But like, maybe I have friends I want to send a nice printed copy to.

8. Write More The Revelation of Takaya According to Jin Finished in Februrary! No new news. A friend of mine has offered to bind a copy of it when he has access to the materials, and I think that'd be dope as hell. I ought to work on compiling it into a nice document. I don't know if that's what he would need. He would probably want to do that work himself. Sometimes I think about the concept of making an illustration for it? I don't know. I can't draw. But I might not need to draw for the thing I have in mind. Really I should be consulting with him on that. Ah well. Either way, I hope that ends up happening. That would be so friggin cool.

MINOR GOALS

9. Finish Playthroughs Of 1. The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild: Finished in January! 2. Persona 1 Main Quest Good Ending: I didn't do anything on this whooooops. Getting into the second half of the year without once having touched it. I ought to get back to this. 3. Pokemon Sword: Finished in March! 4. Pokemon Let's Go Eevee: Finished in February and March! 5. Persona Q2: I have finished the fourth dungeon and gotten to The Twist!!! It's weak. This really is the kids' version of a Persona game. Minus like… the fact that it's still rated M for partial nudity. There was exactly one moment of horror and even that was like… just a bit scarier than The Nightmare Before Christmas. But I did some of the side quests and those are actually decently fun. So I have the final dungeon left. I just wanna sort of power through this. I'll worry about completion when I do new game plus, whenever that might be.

10. Record More Ukulele Videos I did not do this. I want a new microphone. These are not inherently related things, as I do have a microphone already. I have everything I need to do this. I just haven't done this. And I would like a new microphone. Also, an amp for the uke would be nice. I should text my old coworker, see if he still has one to sell.

11. Record Let's Plays Neither did I do this. How could I? My parents think video gaming is the Devil's Lettuce. And they are always home. They would notice if they heard me talking to my computer. And that is assuming that I had something I could play on my computer that anyone would want to watch. I need a better computer. A gaming computer. An editing computer. I'm lucky that these are the same thing.

12. Duolingo? I was SUPER gung ho in the end of June and the beginning of July, but before too long I petered out. I've used a couple streak freezes and have really been doing mostly the bare minimum to not drop out of the emerald league. But I've got a streak of about 208 days, and that is nothing to sneeze at! Do I feel like I'm learning? I dunno. But I am at least interacting with Spanish just about every day so that… that's got to be helpful, right? right?

This was over one thousand five hundred words. Wait! Sixteen hundred exactly.

[purplesurveys]

711

How fast can you say the alphabet? I can say it quickly without my accent failing me, I guess? I’m too lazy to time it. What are you allergic to? None. How many serious relationships have you had? Just one. If you could read one person's mind, who would it be? I wouldn’t want to target one person like that. I’d only be picking my dog’s so I can hear what he thinks of me, ha. If someone dared you, what dare would you be afraid to attempt? Eating/drinking anything rotten.

How do you like your eggs? Scrambled or over easy. What's your most expensive piece of clothing? Probably my shoes. Most of them are several thousand bucks. What was your last big achievement? The last objectively big achievement I made was finishing the first half of my thesis and getting the go signal to finish the rest of it. But if we’re counting tiny steps that feel like big achievements, it’s having an article published in my org’s publication this week. I co-wrote it with JM and Rick, but it still feels nice to get to say I was productive during the quarantine. What famous person's memoir would you like to read? I’m willing to read anyone’s biography/autobiography since it’s one of my favorite genres. But at the moment I’m probably most willing to read something about Kim Jong Un since it’s generally hard to find material in North Korea as it is, and it would be fascinating to hear about their life and culture there. Have you ever had a "false alarm" moment, what was it about? Sure. A few months ago I was in Manila for a workshop and my car wouldn’t start when it was time to drive back home. Pressing any button on the key fob wouldn’t work and I couldn’t open the doors, so I was pretty much just locked out. I was already stuck there for a while and I was starting to panic, so I called up my parents to ask for help and they were already getting dressed to drive all the way where I was. Right before they left the house Jhian was mysteriously able to make stuff work and opened my door and I gave my parents the happiest “false alarm” ever haha. Do you know how to ride a bike? I don’t. My dad recently pumped air into the wheels of the bike that we have in the house so I can practice riding it throughout the quarantine, but I just can’t. I never did learn what my friends say when they tell me to just “find my balance.” If you could breed two species together what new animal would you create? No thanks. What 5 world leaders would you make sit down in a room to discuss issues? Isn’t that already the point of UN? If you were in the hospital who are the two people you'd want by your side? Gab and my dad. When was the last time you cried and what made you cry? Ooh ya got me. With this quarantine not letting me go anywhere and giving me new experiences, I’ve had no reason to cry lol. 

The last most vivid reason I remember crying was that one Wednesday in February where everything went wrong  – Andrew and I got red marks all over our thesis and we got practically yelled at over how bad our work had been so far; accidentally spewing peanut sauce all over the said thesis draft immediately after it was returned to us; almost losing this one thing for the org that I 100% WAS NOT allowed to lose, and having to ask Andrew to go back to campus at mid-fucking-night just to retrieve it and feeling shit the whole time for asking that of him; and having to deal with an unresponsive source for an article I needed to write and finish ASAP. I cried nonstop until like 2 AM that night. If you could ever take a street sign, what sign do you want? It’d be such a pointless steal, so no thanks. What is your favorite ride at any amusement park? Haha anything mild and for kids tbh. My stomach can’t handle rides. Have you ever raised money for charity? I haven’t spearheaded any fundraisers but I’ve donated for some, like whenever workers from exploitative corporations go to UP to visit some classes, talk about their struggles, and ask for support. How do you feel about growing older? I’ve got little time to be scared of it because getting old just happens all the time and constantly. I just take it for what it is and learn along the way. What wild animal scares you? Probs lion. I’ve never seen one in real life and movies and shows have conditioned me to think they’ll attack any human that comes close enough, soooooooo no thanks. I’d love to be corrected and to find out that they’re big softies, though. Do you think actors and athletes are overpaid? I can argue that for some actors, but definitely not athletes. Athletes bust their ass day in and day out and are in constant need of training, transportation, and the adequate gear, equipment, etc. Some actors just have to sit pretty and they wouldn’t even be good at it. Have you ever been alienated, if so for what? This was me for most of what you’d call middle school. People were starting to be more conscious of trends and using it as a basis for who to hang out with, so while everyone had a Blackberry, got side bangs, and listened to The Summer Set, I was struggling to fit in a place where my love of wrestling would be accepted. Of course there was none, and I felt left out for a while.

More recently, this was also me in applying for AIESEC but I’ve already touched on that a couple of times here. The alienation was so bad my friends and I just resort to laughing about my experience whenever it gets brought up. Have you ever not returned something you borrowed and if so what was it? I have a couple of Gab’s jackets, but she doesn’t mind me keeping them since I get cold quicker and more often. When you pack your lunch, what's your favorite packed lunch? Loooove when my dad makes curry for me to bring to school. What was the one most important thing you learned from your parents? It’s impossible to start at the bottom and work your way to the very top. I’m constantly worried about staying at the bottom, so it’s always comforting to see how far they’ve come.

On a parenting note, I’ve learned that I should talk to my future kids the way they are – kids. Ever since I can remember my mom has always gotten mad at me as if I was already an adult, so it’s made me permanently terrified of all adults/the idea of pissing anyone off. She would always just get mad, banging stuff around, and never explain to me what I did wrong, so to this day I get very self-punishing when I feel like I’ve done something wrong but don’t exactly know what it was I did.

How fast can you run? I used to be good as a kid which is what landed me on the track team in grade school, but I didn’t enjoy running so I did it less and less every year. Now I’m just meh at it. Have you done something you worry could come back to haunt you, what? Nothing that bad, no. What is your most favorite feature of your favorite electronic device? I’m very happy with the battery life of my laptop, considering how 1) my old Macbook Air only had a battery life of one hour, and 2) the laptop I had before had a damaged battery to begin with so I couldn’t even use it/bring it anywhere unless it was plugged in. The 10-hour battery life for my current one is a fucking dream for me lmao. If you had to build a small ark, what 7 animals would you save? All the endangered ones so like an elephant, Philippine eagle, panda, orangutan, tiger, and a rhinoceros. I’d save the last slot for a stray dog. What is your favorite Christmas or holiday tradition? I love going over to my mom’s cousins’ place and have our tradition of exchanging gifts singing My Monito/Monita. What novel would you love to be transported into to live out your days? I prefer non-fiction, soz. What is your favorite hiding place? MY CAR. It’s seen my worst breakdowns, my sleeping sessions in the middle of the day, and the days where I’m okay but simply need a break from everyone. If I feel like being alone I just head inside, recline my seat, and tune out the whole world. What is something your parents love that you actually love too? Indian food. Have anyone ever said "I love you" and you couldn't say it back. This is me with my mom. I’ve stopped saying “I love you” ever since I came to terms with the fact that she has brought a lot of trauma into my life and it would be unfair to the both of us (mostly me, heh) if I said it back. Have you ever ridden a camel? I haven’t. It would be very difficult to find a camel on this side of the planet.

What's been the hardest loss you've had to take? My grandfather and Nacho. What emotion is your least favorite and the one you are not in touch with? I hate feeling embarrassed obviously, but I’m regularly in touch with it because there’s always at least one event a day where I fuck up and I feel extremely embarrassed. Do you think facial moles or freckles are cute? I don’t mind them. They’re not a common facial trait where I live, so I’m more fascinated by them than anything else. Would you ever pick up a hitchhiker? I’ve read too many accounts of serial killers where hitchhikers were involved to feel skeptical about them but I know I’d also feel bad if I ignored them. I honestly don’t know what to feel about them as I don’t live in a hitchhike-y area.

What was your funniest computer or phone wallpaper? Eh, I don’t really pick wallpapers to find them funny. If you're searching for a relationship, where is your go place to look? Unapplicable for my demi ass. When and where are you happiest? Either anywhere with Gab or Skywalk with my orgmates. What was your favorite age, so far? 16 has so far been the year with the least fuckups. What is your favorite part of the day? Typically, it would be the moment I realize I’m done with everything that needed to be done for that day, like if my last meeting has ended or if I’m finished with my last class, and all that’s left to do is to drive home. What book have you read multiple times? The Septimus Heap series up til the 5th book (there are 7) only because in the past I had always made plans to restart and finish the whole series, but I never did get around to finishing it so I’ve only just kept restarting and restarting the books.   Do you keep a budget? No budget. What matters to me is at least being able to have savings at the end of the week, which is tbh not the smartest thing to do. Have you ever test driven a car you knew you weren't going to buy? Nope, I’ve never gone car shopping like that. Pretend you're doing an interview, what's the first question? Uhhhhhhhhhh idk depends on what the interview is for? What do you have a hard time visualizing? Everything. I’m not a very visual person and creativity is my weak point, so I genuinely struggle if I do have to imagine anything. Abstract reasoning has always been my least favorite part of tests. What makes you feel uncomfortable in group settings? If all of them already know each other and I am just starting to try and fit in – it’s worse if they’re all loud and extroverts. The former is what made my internship hard for me in the beginning, but thankfully they were all very nice and could tell I was shy so they knew not to overwhelm me by being too loud. What was your worst date ever? I haven’t had a bad date. Have you ever gotten in a bidding war on Ebay, if so for what item? Nope. If you had to pick one food to eat everyday for life, what would it be? Risotto or chicken wings. For dessert, macarons. Are you supportive of your friends even if you don't agree with them? As long as their choice doesn’t entail stepping on human rights, e.g. not being pro-choice or supporting a president that supports killing the poor, I’ll be fine with the disagreement. Have you ever used the opposite sex restroom in an emergency? Yeah I had a bad nausea attack one time and needed to vomit but I only had enough time to run to the men’s bathroom before I started throwing up everywhere, so that’s where I ran. What did you think was stupid until you tried it? Ube cheesecake. I really hate ube flavor and I hate everything it’s in, but I gave it a chance when a local bakeshop incorporated ube in cheesecake since it’s my favorite kind of cake. I ended up really liking it and now I often look for it when we have family get-togethers. What subject do you and your parents never see eye to eye on? Politics, duh. Where do you see yourself in 1 year's time? Having a job, out of the quarantine, maybe saving for a trip. How scared of the dark are you? I’m fine with the dark as long as I’m not somewhere that’s meant to be haunted. What is your favorite type of seafood? Crab fat, sashimi, eel, and sea urchin. What triggers your inner shopaholic? I don’t really have a trigger. I don’t even consider myself a shopaholic. I just shop for new clothes once I feel like I’ve been repeating my clothes too much. What is the rudest thing a person can do to another person in your opinion? Insulting dead parents is one. Except if you’re the Marcoses, heh. What public figure do you disagree with the most? President Duterte, obviously. I wanna barf just having to call him President. Do you think you could ever be a firefighter, why/why not? Nope, because I’m terrified of fire and I don’t have half the stamina needed to carry the shit they have to lift when they have to put out fires. What is/was your favorite bedtime story? I don’t have any. My favorite kids’ book was Corduroy, though. What was the last thing to make you feel happy? My dog going down the stairs and going straight to me for pats once he was done. What is your opinion on rats as pets? Rats are pests here so I find it pretty disgusting. I think hamsters are fine, though. What is something you're afraid to try? Cliff diving, bungee jumping... anything that would give me the sensation of leaving my stomach behind lmao. What cartoon character best describes you? Mr. Peanutbutter from BoJack Horseman. What keeps you interested in your goals or dreams? The fact that I went through so much shit as a child/teenager that I absolutely have to make myself happy in the end, and I can only do that by achieving my goals. What is your favorite actress beginning with the letter J? Jessica Chastain. What song makes you dance uncontrollably? Crazy in Love by Beyoncé, heh. If you wanted to live off the radar where would you live? I was gonna say Sagada but everyone knows it’s my favorite place so it’d probably be one of the first areas they’d start to look... so I’d go with Batanes. That place can’t get any more secretive with their sporadic phone signal and nonexistent internet/data connection. Do you like nachos, if so what topping is a MUST have? Melted cheese. Do you have any subscriptions? Netflix and (technically) Spotify. Which is better, Mario or Sonic? Mario. I’ve never played a Sonic game and I’ve only ever encountered him playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which is a Mario-themed game to begin with. Who is the most creative person you know? Alex, someone from my high school who can recreate any. thing. Art is in her blood; she was my seatmate for one sem and she was constantly doodling and drawing and making new stuff in every class we were in. Besides a pickle, what is your favorite thing pickled? I hate pickles and anything pickled :/ Not really in the Filipino palate. What did you do for your 21st birthday? If not, 21 what are your plans? I celebrated it mostly alone because Gab couldn’t be present. Angela made me feel better by taking me to dinner and an arcade.

Are you a role model for anyone in your life? I dunno. I hope so, for at least one person. What song do you hate the most? Any song by The Vamps or Meghan Trainor. Do you think you need to slow down and enjoy life more? Isn’t slowing down what we’re all kinda forced to do right now? Can you impersonate anyone famous? Eh, sure. It’s fun to copy Gordon Ramsay for one hahaha. If you could go back in time to change one thing what would it be? Going out of my shell as early as freshman year and avoiding the semester-long breakdown/depressive episode I had. Can you honestly say you're enjoying your life right now? I can’t say I’m unhappy lmao. I have no problem doing nothing at home for more than a month – besides, this already serves as the break I planned to have shortly after graduating. After this I’ll be really ready to start looking for a job. What is your favorite salty snack? Pringles. What is your favorite restaurant? Yabu, Torch, Pound by Todd English, or Frankies. Idk man, I’m craving so much shit now that I haven’t eaten out for more than a month.  Have you ever been in a play for school? Yeah, we were all required to be in all the annual school productions from kinder to senior year.

[nikatyler]

No way, simmeronnie is doing replies again? :o It’s been a month, I know. It’s been hard, exams and all that. I’ve talked about that a lot. Now I’m in so much better place. I’ve read what I wrote in my diary a few months ago (February and March to be exact) and wow...just wow. If you compare me from now to me from those months, you wouldn’t even believe we’re the same person. Right now, I’m the happiest I’ve been in a while. Back then, I’m honestly surprised I didn’t give up. I was so tired of everything.

Onto something else. I thought I’d catch up on a lot of blogs now that my graduation is done, but actually, I got carried away reading a good book (and therefore I didn’t actually catch up on too many blogs). Guys, you all need to read Illuminae. I finished the trillogy today and man, it was so good. Don’t get intimidated by how big the books are, yesterday I read over 400 pages and I didn’t even know how. It’s just so good. Read it. Seriously. I hope you like a good plot twist because these books are full of them. It’ll leave you speechless.

I’m just excited I can read books that have nothing to do with exams again, okay? Tomorrow I’m starting...I’m not sure. Probably The Burning Maze by Rick Riordan. FINALLY.

Anyway, blog stuff. I thought I’d only do the latest replies since my activity feed was broken, but now I was able to scroll down a lot. I wasn’t paying attention and suddenly I was at comments from April. So yeah, that thing I screamed about this week, apparently it’s fixed itself. Though I’m still not sure if it shows all of the comments. Oh well. I worked with what I was able to get.

By the way, in these replies, I did not include the “congrats” comments when I said I got through my exams. But I saw you all, and honestly, thank you so much. I was thinking about this the other day, and I think one of the reasons why I made it through high school was simblr. This is my happy place. Most of the time.

autistichatkid replied to your photoset “Oh no. OH NO. Guys I fried another one of my sims.”

ronnie pls be more careful you know how these things go

*looks at my own sunburnt arms* I won’t ever learn

starburstshores replied to your photoset “Nerine no that’s not the way”

Jesus can walk on water, Nerine can swim through land

she’s a Reverse Jesus

starburstshores replied to your photoset “Nerine: “Wakey wakey…” Regan: “Huh? Wha - Nerine? What are you doing...”

This is some Edward Cullen shit she’s pulling ��

Let’s be real, even with how Regan and Nerine’s story is going, it’s still a better love story than Twilight  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Hold on, do people still say that?

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your photoset “Regan: “Hi mum! What’s up?” Miracle: “Regan, you might want to sit...”

OMG WHAT"S HAPPENING OMG

alfalfalegacy replied to your photoset “Regan: “Mum?” Miracle: “Yes sweetheart?” Regan: “He’s going to make...”

Yoo he better make it ����

autistichatkid replied to your photoset “Regan: “Hi mum! What’s up?” Miracle: “Regan, you might want to sit...”

oh god no

I can’t explain how I felt writing this. I’m not too empathetic when it comes to other people (and it sucks), but when it comes to “ok how would my character feel in this scene”, I’m immediately in their shoes, and let me tell you, I actually cried, even though I knew damn well how it was going to end. But I also knew what was happening next, and that’s why I cried too. Writing is weird sometimes.

alfalfalegacy replied to your photo “Coming soon…”

Marie looks super pretty in this!!

Thank you. I forgot she was this pretty. I couldn’t believe that when I loaded her for the first time after all these months. I mean, in the regular legacy, I don’t even see her around anymore too much.

vintageplumbobs replied to your photoset “Nerine: “I hate to be doing this, but it’s the only way. I’m sorry...”

Eeeeeeeeeshk.

pxelatedtrash replied to your photoset “Nerine: “I hate to be doing this, but it’s the only way. I’m sorry...”

I stopped liking her when she would always shut Regan down but now I really don't like her and i hope beyond belief that Regan can get away.

dandylion240 replied to your photoset “Nerine: “I hate to be doing this, but it’s the only way. I’m sorry...”

Wow I didnt like her before I definitely don't like her now.

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your photoset “Nerine: “I hate to be doing this, but it’s the only way. I’m sorry...”

Ahem

Hmmm I had a feeling that thee was something wrong with their fast developing relationship

There indeed WAS something wrong with her. I hinted at it a few times, sometimes it was just a little thing that probably only I saw as foreshadowing, but it kept getting more and more obvious towards the end. And wow. Yeah. She really went that far.

Also, can I just say, I weirdly enjoyed seeing how at first, everyone was like “yaaaaas, mermaid girlfriend”, whereas now it’s more like “oh no. OH NO. STAY AWAY FROM OUR GIRL”.

dandylion240 replied to your photoset “Regan: “Because…because I love you. You’re right. You’re all that...”

Nerine is awful! Someone please save Regan!

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your photoset “Regan: “Because…because I love you. You’re right. You’re all that...”

EXPLAIN DIS NERINE!

fishingforsims replied to your photoset “Regan: “Because…because I love you. You’re right. You’re all that...”

My brain rn is just “!!!!!”

She just wants her. That’s her explanation. She doesn’t care about anything else, as long as her beloved human will stay right there in Isla Paradiso.

I’m just now thinking, how the hell did I go from the first story idea for Regan to this. In the original story, there were no creepy psycho mermaid girlfriends. There was...a lot of Bridgeport...some cheating...a lot of guilty feelings...more feelings towards Courtney...Felix didn’t end up with her in that storyline but there would be a love triangle with another person...and considering I’m not actually the biggest fan of love triangles, I as a writer am glad I somehow ended up with a psycho mermaid girlfriend story. It was way more interesting to figure out and write.

But if Regan could decide, I’m pretty sure she’d rather end up in a love triangle 😬

Let me tease you though: There’ll still be a lot of Bridgeport later.

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your photo “Gwyneth Ellen Clare flirty | perfectionist | family oriented | neat |...”

Was it cliffhanger? Le gasp

Anyway I'm looking forward to see you BRP!

Oh I just saw the tagsXD Don't mind me I think I have to go to bed

Wait still a cliffhanger. Just not as big as I initially thought. Don't mind me��

Haha no worries, this happens to me all the time, I forget to read the tags or caption and then I’m like huh??? What’s happening?? :D But I’m glad you’re looking forward to the BPR, I’m happy to be finally posting it. I’m not sure if it’ll be just as fun as my NSB, but it certainly won’t be as sad as the current story. You guys deserve a break.

Oh, another teaser: Guess what you guys will get in my BPR? An idiot to yell at. Not Ross-level idiot, but still an idiot.

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your photo “Coming soon…”

*patiently waits*

It’s coming...very soon!

cloudberry-sims replied to your photoset “Nerine: “Now. You were supposed to move out of the houseboat by the...”

Oh that's evil Nerine...

‘Cause baby she’s a nightmare dressed like a daydream

I’m sorry, I can’t stop referencing Taylor Swift, that’s just who I am

melien replied to your photoset “Regan: “This place is heaven on Earth.” Nerine: “Wouldn’t it be great...”

So yeah this was the post where I kind of figured out something seems off... if I'm not mistaken there were also posts where George warns her but I didn't think much of them

One of the things I enjoy doing when I finish the first draft of something is going back and making hints. Tiny little pieces of foreshadowing. And then it grows and grows and gets more obvious. This was never going to end well. I think I already hinted at it when Regan was saying goodbye to her family before going to Isla Paradiso, though I’m not sure. But I think I left first little clues there.

melien replied to your photoset “Nerine: “I hate to be doing this, but it’s the only way. I’m sorry...”

I first saw pics, then the text... and thought wow damn can mermaids do this? But yeah I love where this is going. I like this kind of creepy

Yeah I had to help myself with Photoshop here, there would be no other way to make it clear that she enchanted/brainwashed her. But damn, it would be cool if something like that was actually in the game. Sea creatures like mermaids don’t always have to be nice. What about sirens from the old mythology? I mean, what they did was getting people killed.

sinfulwunders replied to your post “Today is my graduation day and I’m already almost crying even though I...”

My graduation was last month and I was balling my eyes out �� I understand how you feel

Ahh yes...I was in a car today and we were driving past my high school. I started thinking about it all again and I just can’t believe that just two months ago, we were still sitting there in a classroom, praying for it all to end. And now it’s over and it’s weird and I want to go back because somehow I miss it.

dandylion240 replied to your photoset “George: “I’m worried about you. There’s something wrong. This isn’t...”

George take her away before it's too late!

He kinda...I don’t want to say he fucked up at this point, but if he hadn’t walked away, things could’ve really been different, huh?

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your photoset “George: “Regan, what the hell is going on?” Regan: “You wouldn’t...”

Girl you are definitely not feeling well and this isn't love:/

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your photoset “George: “I’m worried about you. There’s something wrong. This isn’t...”

Girl you do sound like zombie!

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your photoset “Regan: “You say that as if it was a bad thing. Get lost, George. I...”

Whaaaaaa?

There better be a wizard near you to un-zombie you, Regan!

That’s how it is with brainwashed people, isn’t it?

No, all jokes and dumb remarks aside, when I wrote Regan in this brainwashed state, it was so hard. Not that writing was hard, handling my feelings was hard. I knew she was hurting everyone and I had to keep going because I wanted to tell this story. Like I said, writing is weird sometimes.

Also, speaking of wizards...how convenient it is that her brother is one now? :D Which actually...I didn’t plan for him to become a wizard just to save her. I didn’t plan for him to befriend a fairy just to save her either. It just all sort of happened. Just like life, huh? Nothing is perfectly planned, you just have to play with whatever you have, and I was lucky this time.

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your photoset “Weeks had passed since my last meeting with George. Things got better....”

Yeah I wonder why? Maybe because they are worried about you, too? You never came and anything could happen to you!

She doesn’t care about that. Well, she does, but she doesn’t know that with this whole “your family is useless and I’m the only one who matters to you” haze Nerine put over her.

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your photoset “Regan: “Hey mum. How’s life?” Miracle: “What did you just say?” Regan:...”

Miracle, come and get 'er before it's too late!

She would. Honestly, I believe she would, if things weren’t already hard at home for her.

Can we just take a moment to appreciate Miracle for everything she’s gone through? She was “unwanted” at school because she was half alien, she had to share a room with an awful bully at university, then when that hell was over, she became a mother to six children, and now this...when I think of all that has happened, I realize how strong she actually is, because none of this made her give up.

I’ve had so many issues with her story, but looking at her from this perspective, maybe I shouldn’t have.

dandylion240 replied to your photoset “Miracle: “Regan - he was asking about you. He was looking forward to...”

Ugh your girlfriend doesn't want you. She wants to control you. There's a big difference.

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your photoset “Miracle: “Regan - he was asking about you. He was looking forward to...”

Sure your girlfriend WANTS it not YOU!

SAY IT LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK AND HOPE REGAN IS ONE OF THEM

I shouldn’t joke about these things but...it’s how I cope

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your photoset “Will: “Sorry I left you waiting. I was with my mum.” Roan: “That’s...”

Nerine happened, Roan

Pretty much

autistichatkid replied to your photoset “Will: “What do you mean?” Roan: “Most mermaids - or so I’ve heard from...”

IM SO GLAD WILL AND ROAN ARE THE ONES TBAT ARE GONNA GO RESCUE HER AAAAAA

I was so happy when I figured that out too?? Honestly I thought Will and Roan were going to have the least interesting story but then they prove me wrong and uhhh

I love them so much??

melien replied to your photoset “Miracle: “Regan - he was asking about you. He was looking forward to...”

Poor Regan, I believe she's strong enough to get out of this mind funk... or someone cares about her enough to save her

It’ll all be revealed soon...

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your photoset “Will: “What do you mean?” Roan: “Most mermaids - or so I’ve heard from...”

Omg

OMG

I actually really like when supernatural creatures have their let's call them quirks which define their difference to humans! That's really really cool!

Actually, me too, even when it means bad things for the main characters!

[alunclewe]

Recomputered

Well, I haven’t posted anything for a while, and as usual, I have an excuse, and it’s maybe not even quite as bad as my usual excuses.  I’d been without a laptop for more than a month; I’d posted before about the issue with my laptop, but, well, it took longer to get any sort of resolution than I had expected.

I won’t go into all the details of the reasons for the delay, but to make a long story short: The e-mail updates from Best Buy’s Geek Squad say that "It's important to us to keep you informed during every step in the repair process."  This is a lie.  The old laptop turned out to be irreparable, which didn’t come as a surprise, but which I should have been told about a lot sooner.  I’m still getting it back, though, because aside from the broken screen it’s still perfectly good, and there are still uses to which I can put it.

Anyway, I have a new laptop now, with more RAM than my old laptop, albeit a smaller hard drive, although it’s an SSD drive, which... I guess is good?  And I’ve got all the software I use the most often installed on my new laptop: the Adobe Creative Suite, Blender, Microsoft Office, Finale, Final Draft, Notepad++, browsers that aren’t Internet Explorer or Microsoft Edge...  (Not Toon Boom Harmony or Storyboard, though, because I can only have those installed on one computer at a time, and it makes the most sense to have it installed on my desktop since that’s what has the bigger monitor attached to it and, more importantly, my Wacom Cintiq.  I didn’t have it installed on my old laptop, either.)

And yeah, on the one hand you could argue that not having a laptop shouldn’t have prevented me from updating, since I still have my desktop, and I do almost all my art on my desktop anyway.  However, not having a laptop still limited my productivity for two reasons: first, that obviously I can’t take my desktop with me and work on the go on it, and second, that when I was home I had to use my desktop to do what I’d normally be using my laptop for.  Also, typing was kind of hard on my desktop because it has a cordless keyboard which has been very glitchy lately, which is probably just because its batteries are low, so I really ought to find the new batteries that I know I have around here somewhere...

So, now that I have a laptop again, I should once again be able to ramp up my productivity.  Which includes but is not limited to the following items:

Inktober.  Yes, I know October is over.  But I only got through the first five days of Inktober, and I figure I may as well eventually finish the rest.  Better late than never?  (That doesn’t mean this is going to be a high priority for me, though, so there won’t be a new drawing every day.  Maybe I’ll shoot for at least every other day, though.)

NaNoWriMo.  I have completed novels for Nanowrimo three times, I think?  Two of those times were novels that were, ah, based on existing IP so I couldn’t really publish them even if I wanted to.  The third time, though, resulted in a novel that’s in serious need of rewrites (yet another thing I really need to get around to), but that with some rewriting and polishing I think really stands a good chance of publication. But having completed NaNoWriMo three times, I decided to set myself more of a challenge now and start completely from scratch.  That is to say, the three times that I succeeded I’d had a basic outline of the plot and characters before I started, although they evolved quite a bit during the writing.  This time, I figured for a bigger challenge I’d approach it like 24-Hour Comics Day—that is, I’d go in with no idea of what I was going to write, and all the plotting and outlining would be done within the time limit (the 24 hours for 24-Hour Comics Day, the month of November for NaNoWriMo). This is not the first time I have set myself that challenge, and... I admit, I haven’t yet succeeded.  I think maybe I tend to be a little overwhelmed and sabotage myself.  But I’m going to try again and see what happens this time.  And I think what I need to do, maybe, is approach it more, again, like 24-Hour Comics Day.  On 24-Hour Comics Day, I don’t plan and thumbnail the whole comic before I start.  I plan out my general idea, maybe I plan the ending or maybe I have no idea how it’s going to end until I get there, and then I just get started and make up the details as I go... and so far, despite every year worrying that this will be the year I don’t finish, I have yet to fail to complete a comic.  I have a general idea for my NaNoWriMo novel this year now; I have names and basic concepts of the six main characters; I think it’s time to start writing.  Yeah, I’m getting a very late start on that, but I just need to write at least, let’s see.... 2,500 words a day.  Yeah, that’s definitely doable.  It should be noted that in my last successful NaNoWriMo attempt, my novel was about twice as long as the 50,000 “required” by NaNoWriMo, so I actually wrote more than three thousand words a day... so this isn’t unprecedented.

The Very High Seas.  That’s that animated pilot project (that isn’t Teras Terrace) that I’d been posting about lately.  I have plans to pitch it, but at this point realistically I think I’m shooting to have the pitch ready by January or February 2020.  Even so, I want to have a completed pitch document, a pilot script, and a complete pilot animatic (this last item is probably overkill, but eh), so if I want to get it done by then I have a lot of work ahead.

Speaking of which, I do hope to update with one new piece of art later today, so I have a recent post that isn’t just a wall of text like this one.  But it’s such a relief to finally have a laptop again...

[gryndboxstudios]

Artist Profile: Boton de Rosa

I have been following Boton de Rosa, (or Mirsa, as I know her) since we were both in high school and I can say with confidence, she is one of the most talented artists I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. Seeing the evolution of her art has been awe-inspiring, and I have no doubts that we’ll be seeing her art everywhere in a matter of time. I had the pleasure of asking her a couple of questions as part of our first ever artist profile!

First off, do you prefer Boton de Rosa or Mirsa? Where’d you come up with that name?

I like Boton de Rosa! It’s a nickname my mom gave to me when I was little, it’s Spanish for “rose button”.

I know you’ve been drawing since before I met you in high school, did you ever see yourself making prints, stickers, commissions, etc. Did you see yourself becoming a professional illustrator?

To be honest, I saw myself being a zoologist or something in the veterinary field when I was in high school. I completely put the idea of ever being a professional illustrator aside. I knew I was a decent artist, and most of my friends encouraged me to do something in the animation field or have a career with art. I just didn’t think of that as a possibility. When I took my gap semester in between high school and college, I started to reevaluate what I wanted, and since I wanted to go through a technical college instead of an actual university, I looked at their course curriculums to see what they had to offer. Digital media was the closest thing to anything I like, so I took that route. Best decision I ever made. It was until I moved to Brownsville that I actually started to get a small following, and my partner at the time was very pushy about “getting me out there”.

Would you say you have any overall themes in your art, any parts of yourself you like to put in your pieces?

I think a lot of my pieces just reflect emotion. For the most part, I tend to create bigger, significant pieces when an emotionally important part of my life has occurred. Theres a few undertones of heartbreak, betrayal, things like that.

What artists inspire you or taught you how to be better?

I started following Audra Auclair a couple of years ago, she’s one of my biggest influences. She is actually one of the main artists that got me into doing this again. Corpsetits is also amazing, Matt Bailey, Alex Pardee. I’ve been following him ever since he did an album cover for The Used, the bright colors and the grotesque. I live for it haha. Gabriel Picolo is also someone I started following more recently.

How has the criticism you gave yourself when you started different from the criticism you give yourself now?

I’m always criticizing myself, but I will say it’s gone down quite a bit. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I’m a lot happier with where I am now compared to where I was three years ago. I can see that reflected a lot in my art, I do always push myself to do better.

Are you happy with your art? Are there older pieces you wish you did better?

So far, yes! To be honest, I am very much a people-pleaser. As much as I do this for myself, just the feedback I get is more than enough. And yes, there’s a Bee and Puppycat fanart sitting on my old laptop I want to redo completely. Plus a million other sketches I have in my old sketchbook, all in due time haha.

What do you think about people buying your art? Would you buy your art?

It blows my mind! It makes me so, so happy, I put a lot of love in my work, so it means the world to me. I think I would, I always try to draw things that I would like to have. Not gonna lie, I have three of my stickers on my car and a few others in miscellaneous places.

What frustrates you while drawing?

As I mentioned before, I tend to draw some pieces when I’m in a certain emotional point in my life. Sometimes I run out of that “juice” and I have things sitting on my mac for weeks. I have a piece I haven’t been able to finish for the past month, I just haven’t found myself in that mindset anymore. I’m also somewhat of a procrastinator, so that always sabotages me in the worst of ways.

How often do you draw, be it doodles or projects?

Multiple times a day, I have a scratchpad full of doodles in the office where I work. Plus sketchpads scattered across my apartment and in my car for whenever I get some inspiration.

Would you ever consider any other mediums?

I really would like to! I’ve always wanted to have an anime series or something of the sort. When I lived in the valley I started writing rough drafts of a zombie apocalypse short called “Maya-Pocalypse”. Basically, it would be a small dog (inspired by my own Maya) surviving the zombie apocalypse and trying to find her way back to her owner. It was great, but I never set time aside to do research on how to animate or maybe have it set into a comic.

What are some of your other hobbies?

I love to take my dogs out on hikes, write poetry, play ukulele (albeit badly), and occasionally play video games.

When do you know when a piece is finished? 

I don’t think I’m ever finished, haha. Even when I send something out to print, I sometimes add little details here and there. There’s always something changing.

I know you do both traditional and digital, what’s your setup for digital look like?

Digital art consists of my iPad Pro, Apple pencil, my Mac and the magic mouse. I use Procreate and Illustrator Draw on my iPad, which is really useful. I really recommend the iPad Pro, it lets me start off a drawing in the app, then I can transfer it over via the creative cloud and I can finish it up on my mac.

Where do you start when starting a piece?

The eyes, eyebrows and eyes help me set the tone to what I’m drawing.

Where can you see your art going?

I’m hoping to get it on an album cover someday, or even on a movie poster.

What are you working on now? Any big plans for your art, have you considered entering shows?

Yes, I’ve been invited to do two shows, one in February and another in March, so I’m hoping to have something really neat ready for those two. I want to sell my work at a vendor spot sometime this year. Just to be able to get over my shyness and talk to people and sell them my art would be cool.

That’s about all the questions I have for you, anything else you’d like to add?

I would like to say that no matter how many times you get stuck, don’t ever stop! We all have our own creative processes and just take a little while to get where we need to be. Trust yourself and just keep going!

You can follow Mirsa on Instagram to keep up with her art here! Follow Gryndbox Studios as well for cool shit here and there! IG TWITTER

[kaitkerrigan]

HOW TO RETURN HOME - The Millennial Problem

I really pushed myself into a corner this weekend when I promised a teacher that I’d write about “How to Return Home”. Most of you don’t know the history of this song, which is a pandora’s box. 

I’ve long been planning to write a post about THE FRESHMAN EXPERIMENT. At the time of conception, this is how we defined it: 

living musical ['liv[ng] 'myü-zi-k&l]

a musical based on the lives of living people

a musical existing in real time

a musical created on the internet by the award-winning writing team Kerrigan and Lowdermilk based on the lives of two young bloggers as they share the story of their freshman years of college 

I’ll leave it at that for now and come back to this in depth in another post. 

ChristineCoke, the handle of one of the freshman writers, was an incredible voice. She wrote these earnest and beautiful posts that flowed into some of my favorite songs that we’ve ever written:  Last Week’s Alcohol My Heart Is Split (and you guessed it) How to Return Home. 

It’s funny how memory works. I had created a fiction about exactly what we got from ChristineCoke when she first wrote about going back to her home for Thanksgiving break, but I just went back to our website archive and found this (and everything else you’re about to dig into): 

I pulled my luggage into a house that is exactly how I’d left it - dirty and empty with a silence that gently hummed in my ears. There was no one to greet me so I ran up the stairs calling out the names of my siblings and mothers. More silence and peeling wallpaper.

And this is how I wanted to return home. My barefeet sliding along the wood floors as my cat criss crosses her way through my legs. To sit on my bed and wrap myself up in the thin blanket that could barely warm me during the winter months. Slowly, I came back into a place that I hadn’t truly thought about until I was five minutes away.

Eventually my brothers and sisters came filtering in and our home had a pulse again. Then Mamajay came and I ran to her before she had time to open the door.

I had a three minute fight with my brother today. It feels great to be here.

A couple weeks after this first post, Brian posted this - with audio that I can’t find: 

hey it’s brian. so i wrote this thing while i was home for thanksgiving and didn’t have a chance to post it until now. i played it for kait at some point and she was pretty underwhemed - possibly for good reason. the lyrics aren’t great, and they depart a lot from what CC was talking about. but this is emotionally what spoke to me, and i think the music might be interesting. (sidebar: lots of time kait and i start out with a song that i write music and lyrics to and then she swoops in and redoes the lyric) So these may be dummy lyric, and i may also just start from scratch musically on something else. Particularly because while I was home for t-giving my sister and i listened to a lot of dashboard confessional. so in addition to a) being a song fragment and b) not very good, this is also potentially c) a little too much like a dashboard song. wow. yea. but i definitely think there’s something to be done w/ the phrase “How To Return Home.” And this is certainly something…

“I’m pulling my luggage into a house that is dirty and empty A house that is just how I’d left it Dirty and empty and silent. A silence that’s gently humming in my ears. And I’m waiting for you to come rush down the stairs. I’m calling, I’m waiting, I’m watching the driveway. Hoping that something is still the same. I’m calling, I’m calling your name.

I guess I’m learning How long I’ve been gone I guess I’d forgotten I miss these walls Now I’m relearning everything All about silence And how to return home”

Brian says I was underwhelmed but it was a long time ago, so I don’t actually remember. Isn’t it weird to imagine the songs that never were? I bet that my response was more to the music than to the lyric. As he said, I often would change the lyrics anyway. I do remember both of us really struggling over how to use the hook. How do you put “how to return home” into a sentence. It sounds like a recipe title, not a song hook. I remember really arguing over how it could function in the song. 

Anyway, the next significant step was Brian again and this wasn’t until February (so I bet we had some off-line conversations): 

Okay, so here’s a new version of How To Return Home I’m trying, music first. There’s a PDF and a terrible scratch vocal of me singing. Not sure how much this will mean to anyone, but hopefully Kait will write some lyrics - and then the whole thing will mean a bit more!Happy February everybody…

He posted music that is EXACTLY the music that makes up the verse and chorus of the song now. That is magic to me. It’s one thing to piece together the perfect words, but to somehow knit together the language of a melody into something iconic and memorable - and in one go? How do you do that??? 

Then the writing started to pick up speed. A week later also in February I posted this: 

Here are the lyrics to at least the first draft of the beginning of “How to Return Home”:

Your bare feet sliding on the old wooden floorboards, Home at last and silent but still you’re shaken, like walking into a museum, somehow out of time. It’s all the same except the girl in the hallway, Where she’s been and who she will ripen into, Your childhood’s on the other side of a gulf to damn wide to climb.

Take silent breath. Hold in the change. Tell yourself you still live here. It’s the only way you’ll get through this holiday. Count the hours. Pick some flowers. Make a nice bouquet.

Clearly, the dumby lyrics come at the end, but I’m still not sure about the entire chorus. I’m kind of thinking that it probably changes based on whatever happens at the end of the chorus. Plus, it has to work throughout the song, right Bri? This probably doesn’t change each time since it’s such a pop chorus. Perhaps 2 lines change - the “it’s the only way to get through…” which I would assume will change too. And I’m pretty sold that we want something more like “get through this day” with the three notes on day.

Anyway, this is where the song is at currently. Updates to arrive throughout the weekend. I think I’ll have the whole thing done by Sunday or Monday at the latest.

You guys, this is where you get to see our baby pictures - or my baby pictures. I vlogged this lyric in 2008, so quite literally ten years ago. Kudos for me for not giving a good goddamn about my hair or anything. This was before the days of vloggers really. We were early adopters to be sure and so I had little awareness of the idea that looking presentable might be, er, helpful to our cause. 

Oh my god, did you watch it? Those pre-mac days were rough, let me tell you.  We definitely hadn’t figured out how to use the hook yet. A week or two off-line, where we inevitably went back and forth on that hook (and the occasional pop-misaccent of “how to REturn home” which gave me agitas). But here comes another draft on March 1st in a post called “HOW TO REVISE”: 

I feel pretty good about this one. I’m not going to sing it for you today - unless I miraculously learn how to play the guitar (doubtful). My changed lines are in italics.

Before you read on, I feel like I need to say something about perfect rhymes. I’ve been thinking about them a lot because this song both begs for them and also eschews them if they aren’t precisely what you mean. So I’ve definitely struck a bit of a deal with them - borrowing from pop, country, folk, and musical theater to figure out what to do where. But as I thought about these things and did my research, I’ve come to the conclusion that perfect rhymes are having a resurgence. Surprising, I know. Nothing ever seemed more lame or unlikely until lyrics became virtually unmemorizable and rap reclaimed rhyme’s significance. In addition to the rappers (too many to mention but Eminem and Blackalicious still being among some of my favorites for clever - without sacrificing meaning for the sake of - rhyme), the popularity of Fiona Apple, Regina Spektor, and new to my itunes line up Vampire Weekend (thanks Rachel Lowdermilk!) all mark a significant upswing in real rhyming’s trendiness. Of course, none of these writers act like hall monitors on the subject. We musical theater writers still have that all to ourselves - remarkably we act like narcs about it whether pro or con.

Now, back to the previously scheduled reveal of new lyrics! I think this is really fun to sing Brian’s melody. We will, of course, test drive sometime this week.

How to Return Home

Your bare feet sliding on the old wooden floorboards, Home just as you left it but still you’re shaken, like walking into a museum somehow out of time. It’s all the same except the girl in the hallway, Where she’s been and who she will ripen into, Your childhood’s on the other side of a sprawling divide… too wide.

Take silent breath. Hold in the change. Tell yourself you still live here. Take your bags upstairs.  It’s the only way you’ll get through today. Count the hours. Take a shower. Wash yourself away.

The house is pulsing with an alien heartbeat, Was it always here but you never listened? It’s calling you to be the girl that you were way back then… again.

Take a silent breath. Hold in the change. Tell yourself you still live here. Take your bags upstairs. Put away your clothes, take it nice and slow.

Be their daughter. Nothing’s harder when nobody knows

How to return home, and how to survive, There’s no written guidelines. How to go back, How to show up and unpack. How to show up.

How to grow up. How to take a breath. Take a silent breath. Hold in the change. Tell yourself you still live here. Take your bags upstairs. You still share a name

But you’re not the same. You don’t fight now. You don’t hide now. It’s a whole new way of how to return home.* How to return home. How to return home.

Your bare feet sliding on the old wooden floorboards, home just as you left it but still you’re shaken.

*I originally had “It’s a whole new game. How to return home.” Which I’m pretty sure I don’t like but sometimes I get something right and then go straight past it. This adds a pick up before the “how” but I think the meaning is much better and it’s a little less played out / more unexpected and leads to a better conclusion for the song.  The only other thing that I tried and rejected is replacing “Take a shower. Wash yourself away.” with “Only hours. Teach yourself to pray.”

Thoughts?

It’s nice and rare when you get a resounding yes to the thing you made. How sweet to have that back and forth captured in the comments: 

BRIAN: wow that’s gorgeous. i’ll write more, and probably sing it back to everyone either later tonight or tomorrow morning. amazing work, kait. KAIT: Maybe tomorrow after the cap thing? I’ll bring my camera. Maybe they’ll let us steal a piano for a bit? BRIAN: since we had plans for natalie weiss to make a recording for us anyway, want to ask her to do this? later this week? and yes, let’s record tomorrow. this thing f-ing rocks. KAIT: Maybe. Let’s mull it over as we sing through it today.

Oh, Brian and Kait, you so-n-sos. Always so on brand. Kait ever cautiously low-key, Brian so deeply enthusiastic and raring to go. 

Do you care about any of this? All of this is about how a song got written, not about how it landed itself as a center piece of THE BAD YEARS. What is THE BAD YEARS? A song cycle? An immersive house party? Both? What does that have to do with the alien heartbeat of this house and ChristineCoke? 

Everything. “How To Return Home” found its way into a song cycle we made called TALES FROM THE BAD YEARS, which was the brainchild of a conversation that we had with a licensing company that wanted us to make something commercial that could go directly to licensing. Would that not have been lovely? It didn’t pan out. But the idea that we hit - to write a show about the people around us - the generation of millennials who would never fulfill their parents’ American Dream, did pan out and evolve. 

“How To Return Home” was always one of the songs that felt like a linchpin to these songs and as we built it out, it became something that parents of millennials would hear and grab us by the arm and say “Thank you for telling me what my daughter is going through. She just moved back in after college.” We realized that in writing something a bit broader than just about coming home for Thanksgiving break, we were writing about the larger lack of employment after college, the depression of a generation who didn’t have the opportunities that they assumed they’d have. We leaned into this. 

When we had the opportunity to take TALES FROM THE BAD YEARS and turn it into an immersive house party, this song was both beguiling and bewildering. It does not take place at a house party. But the sensation of being at your family’s home in the center of a party can be beautifully transfixing. The song became a centerpiece for Rachel’s arc. 

Rachel was an optimistic and ambitious millennial who’s surprised to discover that the world wasn’t waiting for her. She is one of the youngest at the party and she is just beginning to realize that she’s going to have to claw her way into the world rather than have it handed to her. In more recent drafts, the house has actually become more and more of a character. The history of the house is also oppressive. This is a place where some bad things happened and it’s going to be destroyed. But right now, Rachel is facing her own nostalgia smashed up against the glass of her reality. 

Ultimately, “How to Return Home” is about the simple sensation of walking into a house after having grown up there and feeling like the whole place is smaller, different. The fun house affect of your reality having outgrown your childhood cocoon. I moved around a lot. I haven’t been back to a single place that I grew up except my grandmother’s house. Every time I walk in, I’m struck by how low the ceilings are, how small the kitchen is, how narrow that backyard that contained my fantasies is. Once upon a time, my whole world could fit inside that kitchen. I remember a graduation party (something that I also can barely believe ever happened  - my grandmother entertaining) and sliding past adults through the back door to get to the refrigerator. But even as I say that, my memory is wavering. She remodeled her kitchen a few years ago and moved the back stairs and I have to consciously conjure that old set up. My memory has transformed to adjust to her new layout. I remember a couch that was long and s shaped in her music room. The room is so small. Where exactly did it go? Memory is so slippery but the visceral feelings you have when you return to a site of your childhood - especially the dark looming ones - is not. It’s immediate and pulsing and both familiar and alien at once. 

The question of how to return home is really a question of how to hold onto your slippery sense of self when you’re just discovering who you are and I think the answer (or at least the answer that we landed on in this song) is mindfulness - mindfully telling yourself to breath, to hold in the things you know to be true about yourself in spite of all of the old neural pathways that are lighting up with triggers. 

[newsfact]

World Series Game 5 could mark end of eras as Freddie Freeman, Carlos Correa become free agents

ATLANTA — It’s hard to imagine Atlanta baseball without Freddie Freeman. It’s also hard to imagine baseball in Houston without Carlos Correa. But with the Braves holding a 3-1 lead in the World Series, only one win away from claiming the title, Sunday night’s Game 5 could be the end of the road for both players, who will officially become free agents five days after the World Series ends. 

Both players were drafted by their current teams as teenagers, made their big league debuts at 20 years old and quickly became star players at the highest level. They are beloved by their fan bases. And yet, the business of baseball shows us year after year that things change. 

“I’m trying to not think about that,” Freeman said before Game 3. “Yeah, I did — I was talking to my agent yesterday actually, and it kind of came up that this is three more games here. I haven’t envisioned playing anywhere else because I haven’t gotten to that point yet.”

FOSTER: If Braves win World Series, give Kyle Wright the honorary MVP

In his 12th season with the Braves, this is Freeman’s first trip to the World Series. For Correa, it’s his third trip in seven big league seasons. For all three of those trips — 2017, 2019 and 2021 — he was the shortstop in an infield with Jose Altuve at second, Alex Bregman at third and Yuli Gurriel at first base. That type of consistency and cohesion is rare in today’s game, and that’s one reason it’s hard to imagine Houston without Correa. 

“We’ve enjoyed all of the years we played together,” Correa said before Game 4. “We’ve done some great things. We’ve made history. I love that group of guys with all my heart. So right now we’re just focused on the now and try to win this series. Then we can talk about all that later.”

There will be no shortage of teams interested in both players. 

When the Sporting News free-agent rankings are released later this week (spoiler!), Correa — who just turned 27 last month — will sit atop the list and Freeman will be solidly in the top 10. This is both players’ first time on the free-agent market, though it will be Freeman’s second lucrative deal. Freeman, who turned 32 in September, and the Braves are at the end of an eight-year, $135 million extension they signed in February 2014 that bought out multiple arbitration and free-agent seasons. 

“I’ve put on this uniform since 2007, (when) I got to put on a Braves uniform with the Gulf Coast League team,” Freeman said. “It’s all I’ve ever known. But it is a little weird that by next Sunday, Monday, I could be a free agent, which is very, very weird to me. It hasn’t hit me because I’m trying to put that off because a little bit more important things at task right now.”

MORE: Full list of 2021 Sporting News MLB Awards

For years, Freeman wore the unofficial mantle as “the most underrated player in baseball” because, despite his success, the Braves weren’t factors in October and Freeman didn’t receive as much support in MVP voting as Atlanta fans thought he deserved. Those days are gone, though. Freeman won the 2021 NL MVP and now has his Braves on the precipice of the World Series championship. 

“He means a lot to this franchise, to me personally, to our organization, to that clubhouse, our team. There isn’t a way to quantify it,” Atlanta manager Brian Snitker said. “Just what he brings is so important. But we all know when this is over, we’ll see. Hopefully, he’s back. But I don’t know how all that will work. It’s not my area really. Would I love to have him back? Absolutely. I think everybody in that room would love to have him back, but I also know this is a business and things happen.”

And what does Freeman think? He’s not exactly showing his poker face.

“I think everyone in this room knows I want to stay here,” he said. 

Correa was the No. 1 overall pick in the 2012 draft, and in many ways he was the most important piece in Houston’s complete rebuild. Houston had the No. 1 overall pick three years in a row; they picked Correa in 2012, Mark Appel in 2013 and Brady Aiken in 2013. Appel’s career was derailed by injuries and Aiken didn’t sign, after a dispute between the player and team about medical issues. 

It’s important to note, though, that the Astros picked Bregman No. 2 overall the next year with the compensation pick for not signing Aiken. In the same month that Bregman was picked, Correa made his MLB debut. That’s one hell of a month for the club, eh? 

MORE: Dansby Swanson finally got his game-changing postseason moment

Correa took to the big leagues immediately, winning the AL Rookie of the Year award despite playing only 99 games. He’s had some injury issues — he’s only played 140 games or more twice, including 2021 — but there’s no about about his value to the team. 

“He’s a very, very intelligent person and ballplayer. He’s very dedicated,” manager Dusty Baker said. “He’s not the oldest, but he’s — you know, has tremendous leadership qualities. He’s ahead of the game in most areas of the game that day, the previous day, and the ensuing days. I mean, this guy, his attitude is always the same. You can’t tell when he’s up or when he’s down, he’s going good or he’s going poorly. He’s a guy that these guys gravitate towards and look up to.”

In his 77 career playoff games with the Astros, Correa has 18 homers and 57 RBIs, to go with an .845 OPS. He’s struggled a bit at the plate in the World Series, but he’s made several outstanding defensive plays, and his strong arm has been on display several times, especially when turning double plays. Correa’s defense — he was named the Fielding Bible’s best shortstop in 2021 — is yet another reason he’ll land a massive contract somewhere. 

“We obviously know that’s a reality that it could be the last series we all play together. Hopefully not,” Gurriel said. “There’s still the hope that he comes back. Since I’ve been here, I’ve felt really comfortable and felt really good with the infield we have here. So I still have hope that it’s not the end for it.”

He’s not the only one — in Houston or Atlanta — hoping for the star to stay home. 

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[dorevenge]

where ignorance is bliss - chapter 12: the heart is hollow

SUMMARY: Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. is a go, and Howard and Maria work with Dr. Wendy Lawson, Carol Danvers, and Maria Rambeau and research the Tesseract. [AO3 LINK]

CHAPTERS: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 [12] 13 14 15 ☆

August 17, 1981 – Mojave Desert, Nevada, Joint Dark Energy Mission Facility

“Here we have Maria Rambeau and Carol Danvers, our two volunteer test pilots,” says Dr. Wendy Larson, having given us directions to the Joint Dark Energy Mission Facility in the middle of nowhere, taking us a very long car ride to get there. We had scans of our irises and fingerprints taken and documented before we were even allowed in the front doors, signed countless pieces of paper promising nothing we see or hear in there will ever be spoken of, and all the things we may be tried for should we try to. I know most of the conversation will go over my head and that I was just there as a formality, anyway.

“I didn’t know they allowed girls in the Air Force,” Howard says upon our introduction to the two women before us.

“They don’t,” says Carol, a fiery blonde-haired young woman. She crosses her arms.

“Hey, don’t get mad at me, I’m a feminist. I think everyone should be drafted fairly,” Howard attempts to defend himself.

“Mr. Stark, I’m Maria Rambeau. We’re not allowed to fly in combat,” Maria says, sticking her hand out to introduce herself. Howard and I shake her hand. “That’s why we’ve volunteered for you and Dr. Larson’s project. She hasn’t told us much about it, though, so we’ve been really looking forward to this tour.”

“Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S., that’s what we’re calling it.” replies Howard. “Stands for Potential Energy Group/Alternate Sources/United States. It’s a mouthful, but we sure do love our acronyms at S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“Are we technically going to be S.H.I.E.L.D. agents after this?” Carol whispers to Maria.

Larson steps forward, “Mr. Stark was kind enough to lend us the Tesseract, under his careful supervision, to perform our experiments. We’re going to try to harness its energy to help us start to explore the galaxies. Although we landed on the moon only twelve years ago, I want to see space travel become affordable. We can get businesses to invest in it by marketing it as a potential new, untapped market for tourism, new housing markets to get funding, when it’s really all for the benefit of mankind and science.”

“This is gonna be the best thing since the hover car,” Howard grins. “Which I invented, by the way. In ’43.”

“As far as I know, all of our cars stay firmly planted on the ground,” Carol again whispers to Maria. Maria hits her shoulder softly, with a shh followed with a smile.

Larson starts our tour of the facility, as she’s the one who designed it from the ground up. She talks about the materials used to build it, resistant to explosions, how much impact or force they can take. Carol pauses to admire one of the rockets from a previous mission, covered in black ash, with broken fins and cracked windows. It completely captures her attention.

“Come on, little sparrow,” Maria laughs as we continue walking, leaving Carol behind. She runs to catch up with us.

“How did you two get involved with Dr. Larson’s project?” I ask Maria, as Howard and Larson talk about the technicalities of the project and the details involved.

“We volunteered. What else is there for us to do here?” Maria replies. “We can’t go on missions with the boys, yet we’ve been training for just as long as them, longer for some. Carol and I have worked our asses for the last year with all kinds of planes, and nothing to show for it. We’re better than most of them. Larson always has the coolest birds; she lets us take them for a spin every once in a while, and one day at lunch she asked us if we were interested in Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S.”

Carol joins in, “Maria’s the fastest pilot the Air Force has ever seen. Or, haven’t seen, I suppose. That’s why we all call her Photon. Nothing can keep her down. If they let ever let her in the air, she’d show up all of the boys over there.”

Maria smiles, embarrassment rising to her cheeks. “Anyway, we’ve been test pilots for Larson for a little while now, but she kept talking about this light-speed engine she’s been dreaming about for years, and we’d do anything to help her. So, of course we said yes.”

“What’s a light-speed engine?” I ask.

Maria shrugs.

“Some technology that’s gonna change the future. If Larson believes in it, I believe in it,” Carol offers. She doesn’t seem to care about the details of the project, as long as she gets to fly something.

“Something about clean energy. That’s why Mr. Stark’s involved, he’s supposed to be the expert on it,” Maria says, then pauses. “Sorry, I didn’t mean any offense.”

“None taken. This is all out of my depth, too. I’m just the accountant and the wife.”

“I was always told I’d be just a girl, too, but I’ve learned there’s no such thing as just as unless you let people put those restraints on you,” Carol says, then stops herself. “Oh, well, I guess you grew up in a different time. I don’t want to sound preachy.”

I can’t help but laugh to myself. “Yes, it’s a different time. My parents were shocked when I said I wanted to go to Columbia, and, by the time I told them, I had already been accepted.”

By now, Larson and Howard are so far ahead of us, I can barely make out the words they’re saying, not that I’d understand what they were talking about even if they were still in earshot. I catch some words, “theoretical” and “particle” and “accelerator.” They seem to be arguing, in a light-heartened way, about science that doesn’t exist yet. Maria, Carol, and I visit with each other for the rest of the tour, following Howard and Dr. Larson.

The tour ended back at the front doors, having done a full circle inside the facility. Inside Wendy’s office, Howard opens the specially built case for the Tesseract, with a hefty security system and a code only he and Wendy know. An orange cat snakes around his ankles as he handles the glowing blue cube with thick gloves and sweat on his brow.

February 20, 1982 – Mojave Desert, Nevada, Joint Dark Energy Mission Facility

“Everything looks good. Perfect, even. You girls are cleared for takeoff,” Howard says, the last test results in his hands. He locks the Tesseract away one final time. “Your batteries are charged and installed, and you should be more than prepared for a two hour trip, enough to go outside the Earth’s atmosphere and back. “See you two tomorrow morning,” he pats Carol and Wendy on the back. Maria was originally set to join the mission with Carol and Wendy, but a surprise positive result in a routine pregnancy test has grounded her. She’ll still be an invaluable asset from Wendy’s office, talking them through take-off and landing over the radio. Maria will have her turn in space here soon enough once she can.

Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. is tentatively a success. Tomorrow, Carol and Wendy will take to the skies with the newly built engine. Six months of rigorous testing and long hours has led up to this day. The five of us, and Wendy’s cat, are gathered in Lawson’s office, having just gone over the final results of testing. As excited as I am for the mission itself, I’m more looking forward to having my husband back.

“We’re going out to Pancho’s tonight to celebrate, if you’d like to join us,” Maria offers. “If you don’t drink, they have the best nachos in Nevada.”

“I can’t wait to tell little Rambeau about all of this,” Carol says, gesturing to Maria’s rounded belly. “I still think you should name it after Goose.”

“Thank you,” I decline. “However, I have a twelve year-old home from boarding school that I have to go mother. Have fun, girls.”

As they turn away and head towards the exit, Carol clears her throat in mock disgust. “God, Maria, promise me you’ll kill me if I ever have to mother something.”

“Don’t worry, babe. I won’t let you. You weren’t made for mothering,” Maria laughs. “Now a godmother, on the other hand…”

“I’m gonna be the coolest goddamn godmother. Saturday morning cartoons, pizza and ice cream for breakfast all that good shit. As long it doesn’t come out of me, we’re out of the woods.”

“It? Stop calling my developing child an it, Carol.” They laugh to themselves, arm in arm, leaning into each other as the front doors close behind them.

It broke my heart to hear that, the following morning, Carol and Larson’s prototype crashed, neither one of their bodies recovered. Wendy must have taken the Tesseract with her because it disappeared along with them, with absolutely no hope of finding them.

Notes: Carol’s nickname “Sparrow” comes from the boys’ baseball team she played on as a girl, and “Photon” was Maria’s callsign in the Air Force. The events of Captain Marvel continue from here. | At this time, Tony would be attending Philips Academy Andover. I looked it up and their winter break extends through the end of February.

[junker-town]

How elite athletes have struggled with the long-term effects of Covid

For some athletes, the road back to 100 percent isn’t a straight line.

Covid does not discriminate. Even elite athletes competing at the highest levels of their sports are susceptible to the virus’s long-term effects.

It’s been nearly a year since Covid changed everyday life as we know it. People have committed to slowing the virus’s spread by staying home, socially distancing, and wearing masks as vaccinations have slowly been rolled out. While progress has been made, there is still so much we don’t know about this virus.

Across multiple leagues, stories of athletes diagnosed with Covid have circulated, and everyone’s recovery has been different. Often, the road back to 100 percent isn’t a straight line.

From struggles with conditioning to discovering after-effects that threaten to derail promising young careers, Covid has wreaked havoc on athletes amateur, professional, and otherwise. These are the struggles certain athletes have had coming back from a positive test.

Mo Bamba and Jayson Tatum struggled with conditioning at 22 years old

Mohammed Bamba of the Orlando Magic and Jayson Tatum of the Boston Celtics are two NBA players who have openly discussed the long road back from Covid. Despite each recovering and showing no symptoms, they have found it hard to get their wind under them as they work themselves back into top form.

Bamba, known for his elite shot-blocking ability, was drafted No. 6 overall in 2018 to the Orlando Magic. Despite the talent he brought to Orlando, he played limited minutes and had marginal production due to the Magic’s crowded front court. Bamba was diagnosed with the virus on June 11th, 2020, but tested negative before reporting to the bubble, where he played a total of 10 minutes. Nearly six months later, he still had not fully recovered.

Steve Clifford, when asked about Mo Bamba: "There's no real timetable for him to be able to come back and fully participate. I think that he'll be able to do some things that are more organizational and everything. But he's a ways away, and there's no timetable on his return."

— Josh Robbins (@JoshuaBRobbins) December 1, 2020

Leading into the 2021 NBA All-Star break, Bamba has only played 16 games for the Magic and has spent most of his time out of the rotation. Like many, his initial symptoms were loss of his senses: lack of taste and smell. He also dealt with fatigue and muscle soreness, but his conditioning has held him back though he is cleared to play.

Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum has also had issues getting his wind under him after his return. Tatum tested positive for the virus on January 9th and returned to the floor after missing more than two weeks later that month. Tatum detailed his struggles to feel 100 percent, saying: “Just running up and down the court a few times, it’s easier to get out of breath or tired a lot faster. I’ve noticed that since I’ve had COVID. It’s just something I’m working on. It’s gotten better since the first game I played, but I still deal with it from time to time.”

Jayson Tatum said he is still dealing with the after-effects of COVID-19 more than a month after he initially tested positive for the virus. "Just running up and down the court a few times, it's easier to get out of breath or tired a lot faster." pic.twitter.com/hnW7sVZeN4

— NBA on ESPN (@ESPNNBA) February 16, 2021

Yoán Moncada and Kenley Jansen had a hard time reaching their pre-Covid production in baseball

Outside of affecting athletes’ conditioning, Covid can also impact overall performance throughout the season. That was the case for Yoán Moncada, the 25-year-old White Sox third baseman.

Moncada, one of the top prospects in baseball, finally had a breakout season in 2019 when he hit .315 with 25 home runs for Chicago. He tested positive for the virus before starting the shortened season the next year and saw his numbers steeply decline. Moncada ended 2020, hitting .225 with six home runs. His OPS fell from .915 to .705. He detailed his experience with the virus in September 2020:

“Definitely my body hasn’t felt the same after the virus. I feel a lack of energy, strength, it’s just a weird feeling. It’s different.”

“When I got to Chicago, before I tested positive, I was feeling strong and with energy. Now, it’s like a daily battle to try to find that strength, that energy to go through the day.

In the same vein, Kenley Jansen, the Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher, tested positive in June. During recovery, he said,

“It definitely takes a toll on your body. It’s not a virus to play around with.”

Janson was right, it took a toll on him, and he has glimmers of the player we knew he could be, but it was few and far between during the 2020 season. Though he ended the season in a better place than he started, Covid did play a major part in his struggles throughout the year.

Tommy Sweeney and Ryquell Armstead ended their seasons due to Covid complications.

Tommy Sweeney of the Buffalo Bills was one of the first NFL players to develop a season-ending condition from Covid complications. He developed myocarditis, which is inflammation of the heart muscle. This is often developed after viral infections and goes undetected in many people.

TE Tommy Sweeney will be out for remainder of season after a cardiologist discovered he has myocarditis, a condition connected to COVID-19. #BillsMafia pic.twitter.com/GRokB9lmk6

— Buffalo Bills (@BuffaloBills) November 23, 2020

Because the heart muscle never rests, stress to the heart or raised heart rates can be problematic. Fortunately, Sweeney’s condition was detected, as myocarditis is the cause of 5 to 22 percent of sudden cardiac death in athletes under 35 years old.

Coach Sean McDermott said:

“He’s had a rough year, with the injury, Covid and residual piece of the Covid, unfortunately. We know he’s a good football player and a guy that we believe in and can’t wait to get him back on the field when he can in the offseason.”

Ryquell Armstead of the Jacksonville Jaguars was hospitalized twice due to complications. Set to be Leonard Fournette’s replacement, he decided to return the following season to leave ample time for recovery.

College athletes have had varying side effects from the virus

At the college level, athletes from various sports have battled the virus and recovered, but just like the pros, recovery is not always linear.

Travez Moore, an outside linebacker at LSU, lost a significant amount of weight necessary for his position while infected with Covid.

Xavier Thompson, a defensive end for Clemson, decided to redshirt due to the virus’s negative effects on his mental health. Thompson had battled both strep throat and the virus, and head coach Dabo Swinney said not being able to work out due to the virus “put him in a bad place mentally as well.”

Asia Durr’s professional career is in jeopardy due to Covid

Unlike many of these athletes, Asia Durr has seen more than a dip in performance, a few missed games, or one forgone season. She is a Covid long-hauler, someone who survived the virus but didn’t completely recover, and she has no timeline for her return.

Many of the symptoms associated with long-haulers are developing brain fog, vertigo, debilitating fatigue, and difficulty breathing. Due to these symptoms, Durr and other long-haulers have no timetable for returning, and there is a chance it won’t go away.

Stay Safe ✊ ❤️ -AD pic.twitter.com/StcOHWMBML

— Asia Durr (@A_Hooper25) July 7, 2020

Durr was the No. 2 overall pick in the 2019 WNBA Draft and was drafted by the New York Liberty. At 23 years old and with the potential for a full career ahead of her, Durr described her symptoms. She said,

“There’s days where I feel great, like I could go out and go to the store or I could clean up. And then there’s days where I’m like, ‘I just have to stay in the bed,’ and you just feel like you got hit by a bus.”

She went on to say,

“I haven’t been able to (pick up a ball and play). It’s really challenging for me. But I’ve talked to doctors and they’ve told me I’m not cleared yet. I’m not cleared to be able do anything physically, which could cause flare-ups. That’s what’s really hard for me. Because in life whenever something was hard, I would go play. I can’t even do that now. I can’t even shoot a free throw.”

While we have heard many stories of athletes recovering and carrying on with their seasons and careers, it is evident that is not the case for every athlete. Even in peak physical condition and in their early to mid-20s, athletes are dealing with the virus’s harsh effects and extended complications. It’s important to shed light on the reality of what is going on and the risks associated with Covid, even for the most physically elite.

[troutfishinginmusic]

Interview: Tim Kinsella (2012)

In 2012 my life was chaotic. I was working on my degree at Wayne State University and working two jobs. I was also going through some trauma in my personal life, which I’ve only recently sorted out. During all of this, I interviewed one of my favorite artists. Tim Kinsella has been a part of numerous musical projects (most notably Cap N’ Jazz and Joan of Arc). I was lucky enough to interview him when he did a limited run of living room shows at the time. I wrote an article from the interview for my college newspaper. I really don’t like how it turned out. This interview appears on another Tumblr page I made at the time and have since forgotten all the login stuff (including the email). Joan of Arc recently concluded after over 20 years, so I thought it would be fitting to post it again with a bit of light editing. The interview happens at a creative high for JOA and a commercial low. Kinsella currently performs in Good Fuck.

 What made you want to tour living rooms?

It was really a very practical decision.  I’ve been working as an adjunct teacher around Chicago and I have a better job that starts in February.  I didn’t want to go back to my old job yet and get lots of music done.  But by the time I found out I wasn’t working it was too late.  It was too late to book clubs; to do a normal tour.  It was very much just a backwards kind of a panic.  Dave Bazan of Pedro the Lion and Tim Kasher have been doing this. So I got hooked up with the guys who booked those.  And I’m excited this is the first one.

What subject and where did you teach?

I taught two semesters at the Art Institute [of Chicago] teaching a weird first year seminar. I taught classes on Utopia that I made up.  But that’s just while I was in school there.  But then I taught at Harold Washington, which is part of the Chicago City colleges, and I taught popular culture and mass media studies sorts of things.  In February I start teaching experimental fiction writing at the University of Chicago’s night school program.  That’ll be more exciting for me, teaching writing classes.

Are you going to write a follow up the “Karaoke Singers Guide to Self Defense”?

You know I just finished the second one and I can’t find a publisher.  I actually just finished a first draft of the third one in the last two and a half months.  So that means it’s still about two and a half years away from being done.  I sent out the second one to 28 different publishers and have gotten 12 or 13 rejections so far and haven’t heard back from the other 14.

Why not put it out with the last publisher?

That’s part of there deal they don’t do two books by anyone.  Half the people they put books out by have deals with bigger publishers, so this is like their weird side project thing.  So they’re helping me find people to send it to.  And I’ve become really good friends with them.  So they’re on my side but they won’t do the book.

I saw in another interview that you were starting to move away from song-based albums to larger instrumental pieces.  On the new self-titled album there is one side devoted to song-based material.  Do you see yourself continuing to move away from that in the future or is it kind of up in the air in terms of Joan of Arc?

It’s hard to say.  I remember when Joan of Arc Dick Cheney Mark Twain came out in 2004 and, when we finished mixing it, we met this friend of mine who’s in this band called Disappears, who’re really awesome, and telling him how excited I was about the record and gushing about how it does this and it does this and how we balanced it’s so crazy.  He was nodding along patiently and he was like ‘you know it sounds like you just described the first Joan of Arc record to me.’ And I went ‘oh…right. I guess so’ But I don’t know I feel like I’m getting better at the craft of song writing.  They’re very separate disciplines in my mind; song writing and playing music.  I feel like I’m getting better at both, but they’re definitely separate disciplines in my mind.  

Does it feel strange doing very different things under the same banner?

Yeah, from my perspective it’s very unified.  Ideally, it should have contradictions.  I don’t know. Have you ever seen a really depressing movie or read a really fun book and think ‘oh man I want to make something like that.’ That never lets up or never goes one way or the other. Realistically, I’m sad a lot of the time and I’m funny a lot of the time.

You wouldn’t want to box it in or anything?

If it’s going to representative then it needs to be multi- dimensional.  So I’m comfortable with it.  I understand it’s hard to sell.  And at the same time when I feel like I’m getting better at these things, but the business aspect of it has never been worse.  Our audience is shrinking and shrinking as I get better and better at what I mean to do.

Were any of the east coast shows canceled due to hurricane Sandy?

I guess I’m doing them. I’ve talked to all the hosts. There was one show at a friend of mine’s house in New Jersey that we moved to Brooklyn anyways so we could sell more tickets there. His street was destroyed but that show was canceled anyways. The only show that would’ve been canceled was already canceled…so it might be weird getting in and out of places…but I don’t know.  Yeah I’ve been in contact with all of them and they’ve said ‘no you have to do it everything’s fine.’ I guess it’ll go neighborhood to neighborhood.

Are you going to make another film after Orchard Vale?

It’s a thing I think about a lot.  Both novels started as script ideas.  I found I have an easier time realizing the thing when it was just me, a laptop and a notebook.  The movie was very frustrating.  It didn’t turn out like I hoped it would.  The tension of it ended my marriage because me and my ex-wife made it together.  My girlfriend now is an experimental filmmaker and she’s really great, so we collaborate on some little things.  I’ve done some music for a couple of her films and we’re constantly talking through ideas, but I don’t think…I mean I would love to, it would be my dream.

What made you want to soundtrack the Passion of Joan of Arc film?

This festival asked us to do something, it could be whatever we wanted.  But they wouldn’t tell us how much money they had.  They said ‘well how much do you guys want?’  Well for this little bit of money we’ll improvise to a 10-minute experimental film, for a lot of money we’ll do an original score to the Joan of Arc movie.  It just popped out of my mouth.  I didn’t think about it.  They said ‘oh that sounds cool let’s try that.’  The one time we preformed it was in an old church this old church that was really perfect.  There were stained glass windows, some people sitting in pews and a big pipe organ sitting to the side. We tried riding with the pipe organ, but we couldn’t get things in tune with it.  The a-lot-of-money turned out to be very little money considering the amount of time we had to put into it. They called my bluff.

How much did the film influence the band name?  Did it feel like it was coming full circle to do that?

It did feel great to do that.  My relationship with the name Joan of Arc has gone back and forth a few times over the years. At first we thought it was a good idea because we wanted this familiar thing.  Then there were some years where I was like this is a stupid band name, why are we stuck with this?  It felt like claiming it as our own.  I mean obviously it belongs to everyone.  Our original idea was Sony.  But our first label wouldn’t let us be named that.  We just wanted a name that everybody knew that we could change the meaning of the name to certain people.

How’s the Owls reunion going?

It’s going great. It’s really fun.  It took us a really long time to get momentum Sam [Zurick] moved back to Chicago last Valentine’s day. He was living on my couch so he needed to find a job and had to find a place.  Then my brother had a second baby.  I think we wrote the whole record twice and threw it away.  It just wasn’t working.  It had been 12 years since we all played together even though all of us play in Joan of Arc some of the time.  Now we finally have momentum.  We have enough songs where we’re throwing songs away.  I think if we had to record next week we could but we’re waiting until the spring because we’re enjoying playing together and not tweaking things or making it a public thing right now.  It’s fun for us to cultivate.

 Did you plan to release three albums in a year?  Is it hard to do that or is it more of a natural process?

No we’re totally backlogged right now, the labels hate us.  Two years ago we did 113 shows we were all just miserable and exhausted. So we were like OK let’s stay at home and figure things out.  It was a good year we all enjoyed it, but it’s difficult to sustain it.  We’re just staying home but we still like playing music. Most days of the week we play music together.  We throw away a lot of stuff you know.  

The three records are very different: the soundtrack is a very specific thing, Pinecone is a very specific thing and this acoustic record.  There’s three records for next year too.  We aren’t trying to, it’s just how it kind of naturally occurs.  I mean there’s the Owls record and our main focus has been our soundtrack to this performance art piece.  We did it in London in April I guess and that’s a very specific thing.  We’ve been doing this funny greatest hits record of rearranged old songs.  The label’s saying you sound better live than you ever have, you should make a record as a live band.  

They’re very distinct. And that’s a music industry thing really, I mean if you love what you do you’ll want to do it every day.  It doesn’t seem weird to me.  I understand the labels hate it because the records come out in very small pressings now.

Do you still bartend at all?

You know, I just started again and it’s fine.  I was miserable the first couple shifts, but I’m just doing it until I can start teaching again. I’m just not used to being up that late.

Did that inspire the book at all?

I’ve lived above the bar I worked at.  I’m not in there very often when it’s open and crowded unless I’m working.  But the owners and managers there are my best friends. So I guess I’ve just been around the bar.  And my Dad was a governor of a Moose Lodge, so he was like a bar manager too.  So I’ve always been around bars I guess.