#though since i can only have one video per post ill have to make two posts for some days. like today

[youtube-fucker]

Howdy! The name's Leif. Welcome to the little master post for what I'll be sharing for the UtY Anniversary!

First off: What I'm doing. Well, it's really simple. The mod I've been making for the past half a year. What's its name? It… doesn't actually have on yet lol. Suggestions would be appreciated, the only idea I have is along the lines of "Monstrous Yellow" Anyways, what are the changes? Well time for the mod overview!

Overview: 5 humans have travelled to Mt. Ebott and gone missing, and now a sixth is on their way. However, unlike the humans before them, they… do not make it past the first room of the Ruins. Luckily (or unluckily depending on your actions), a monster by the name of Clover came by shortly after the human kicked the bucket and absorbed their SOUL! So now, you play as Clover as you… basically do the plot of UtY but as a monster now. That's it. Credit to @howolonomy for this silly little goober who has invaded my mind and will likely never leave. You have cursed me, friend. I do not mind this curse.

Mechanics: Pretty much the same as vanilla. You can FIGHT, ACT, use ITEMs, use MERCY, use MAGIC-wait, what? That's right, as a monster you can use magic (available in the ACT menu) depending on what soul you're using (more on that later)! Over the course of your journey you'll learn many new spells, some offensive and some defensive depending on how you cleared the area boss (Steamworks not included for this ending difference). You will start with one (technically two) spell in your repertoire, but quickly learn more. Another new mechanic is the SOUL SYSTEM, in which you can swap between human and monster to change a few things up. But if you can't use magic as a human, what's stopping you from just using the monster soul the whole time? Well, we're playing by Deltarune logic here: Only humans can ACT (though I may have one exception for… reasons), meaning you'll honestly be using the human soul most of the time. Don't worry though, swapping which soul you're using doesn't count as an action and go into the monster attacking phase. So swap as much as you want, there is literally no downside to it.

The human: As this is in the world of Undertale, a human soul is pretty important. So making Clover a monster requires some human to fill the void. And that's where this one comes in! What's their name? You don't get to know! They do have one, but the closest you'll get is the first letter. (If you are one of my few friends who knows their name, do not tell. For the bit.) (Wait, I can be a pronouns lawyer since this is technically my own character. The human uses they/them and they/them ONLY, no he's, no she's, none of that please. If you do not respect this, I will blow you up with my mind. One million billion times. I've already had someone use he/him for them. Do not be like that person.) If you're curious about their design, here it is:

This design was made by @hollowgears, I was perfectly fine with keeping them like vanilla Clover but just look at them. Adorable. This little fucker can and will violate the Geneva Conventions if given the chance. Love that for them. And if you want, here's the sprite.

All colors (except for the mask thing for Genocide, the outline, and the vest) were taken from the original drawing to keep it accurate. Ignore the patch on the vest in the first one, I was given a sketch and first and assumed colors and other choices. It shouldn't be there in the final product... I think. I gotta double check

Other changes: A few silly little gags due to the existence of another character to do narration, an entire new area accessable in a route it normally isn't, and an entirely new ending for Pacifist!

The actual showcase: I'll be showing off a new thing each day via prerecorded videos (obviously), and they will all be linked here. Ruins Snowdin Dunes Steamworks Neutral Genocide Hotland/New Home In addition to the videos, I'll also be answering the main prompt for the day there as well as giving a fun fact for the area if I have one (I will, in fact, have one for each day).

Questions: If you have any questions, then be warned that some stuff won't be answered. I'll answer clarifying questions like "Why did x say y?" or "How did x know y?" or "What happened during x?" as well as any Behind The Scenes stuff you may want to know and a few other stuff like how I personally view a few cutscenes (as in, how I imagine them going in-universe) or things about the human minus their name, of course (Please ask about them, I wanna talk about them. You can use whatever name for them you want, just make shit up. Only names off the table are Ut(Y)Dr Characters because that might get confusing). But other than that, keep it to yourselves and have theories. I wanna see how crazy they can be. I may also allow questions to the characters (I feel mostly Clover or the human will be asked to, but the others are up) if I'm feeling up to it. It'll be a roll of the die on if I answer it or not tbh. Just be sure to provide context on the route you want just so I can answer properly, I will be assuming New Pacifist if no context is given.

Credits: The two mentioned above (don't wanna double tag them) as well as @freemonngo for help with coding. Like the spell system for instance. I am too stupid for most coding.

[thecaffeinebookwarrior]

Monster of the Week: A Writer’s Guide to Vampires!

The Basics: Vampires From Around the World 

Almost every culture has its vampires, and they go way beyond Dracula and Nosferatu. 

There are obviously too many to include in one post, so here are a few especially unique vamps to get you inspired and interested in learning more! 

The Penanggalan, Malaysia - Literally meaning ‘to detach,’ the Penanggalan is an exclusively (apparently) female creature. 

By day, she masquerades as a normal woman (and let’s be real, don’t we all.)  But by night, her head detaches from her body and floats around, entrails hanging like tentacles -- which they nightmarishly use to entangle their victims -- and preys on pregnant woman and babies.  Lovely. 

Creepily, the Penanggalan gravitates towards day jobs such as midwifery, so she can get closer to her prospective prey. 

The Manananggal, Philippines - Much like the Penanggalan, the Manananggal has an unfortunate habit of detaching parts of her body to fly around.  Described as an “ugly, hideous woman” (mood), the Manananggal can detatch her whole-ass torso to fly around like a bat. 

Like the Penanggalan, she preys on pregnant woman and unborn babies, with, creepily, her incredibly long tongue.  Some, however, prefer to seduce and prey on men -- preferable, to be honest -- in which case they appear young and beautiful.

The Upir, Eastern Europe - Ukrainian, Belarusian, Russian, Romanian, and Czech cultures all have mythos around this abnormally bloodthirsty vampire.  Not only do upirs drink the blood of their victims, but they bath and sleep in it.  They eat the flesh of their victims as well, and are especially partial to the heart.  In a uniquely sadistic detail, the Upir is thought to consume the children of a family and then the parents. 

The Alukah, Judaism - Literally meaning “horse-leach,” the Alukah is one of the earliest vampires, originating in the Bible.  

A fixture of Jewish folklore, and sometimes described as a demon or witch, the Alukah is unique in the fact that she is not undead but a living, shapeshifting being (according to the description in Sefer Hasidim.)

She can fly by unfurling her long hair.

The Brahmaparusha, India - This nightmarishly extra vampire will drink the drained blood of its victims from a skull (which it carries around at all times), before noshing on their brains and wearing their intestines as necklaces and crowns.  Worst of all, this vampire has an unusually ravenous appetite, and consumes several victims per night.  

The Callicantzaros, Greece - In Greece, children born between Christmas and Twelfth Night were thought to be bad luck (?) and susceptible to vampirism.  The Callicantzaros was considered to be egregiously unpleasant, equipped with devilish talons with which to tear victims to shreds.  Their first victims, post-transformation, were supposed to be their own siblings.

Unfortunately, this led to a degree of mistreatment and hostility towards children born during this period, as parents watched for signs of their progeny’s prospective vampirism.  In order to ensure that they didn’t become Callicantzaros, the children’s feet were dangled above a fire, like a reverse Achilles.

Vampire weaknesses: 

Garlic - This one’s not just particular to Western mythos.  Southeast and far Eastern vamps like the Manananggal are also vulnerable to garlic. 

Salt - The Manananggal is vulnerable to salt, as are vampires from most cultures in which salt is considered holy or purifying. 

Silver - A holy metal.  The origin of the “vampires can’t see themselves in mirrors” myth is because it used to be a component in mirror-making. 

Vinegar - Again with the Manananggal. 

Daggers/stakes/sharp objects - Especially through the vampire’s heart.  In many cultures, burning the heart is also advisable.  Be careful, though: sometimes, staking an upir will only bring them back to life stronger. 

Dismemberment and fire - Most vamps are susceptible to this, including the Penanggalan.  The only sure way to kill an upir is to decapitate them and burn the remains. 

Counting - Much like the Count of Sesame Street, vamps can’t resist counting things.  If you scatter some small, countable objects on the ground, the vampire will have to stop and count each one. 

The tails of stingrays - in the case of the Manananggal. 

Sunlight - Obviously.  Though not universal, this pops up in vampire mythology around the world, including the Manananggal. 

Detachment - when the Penanggalan and Manananggal detach their heads and torsos, their discarded torsos and lower bodies are vulnerable.  In the case of the Manananggal, sprinkling the discarded legs with garlic and salt.  The Mananggal will not be able to return to its lower body, and will perish with the rising sun. 

Starvation - The Alukah can be starved if she’s prevented from eating for long enough. 

Stupidity - In the case of the Penanggalan.  If you turn the Penanggalan’s body upside down, she’ll re-attach backwards.  I’m not sure what the purpose of this is, except the exhilaration of punking a vampire and making them walk around on their hands all day like a jackass.

Protection: 

Thorns around windows - Thorns will keep the Penanggalan from harassing you or your unborn children. 

Strings of garlic - Just make sure SOME IDIOT doesn’t take them down (RIP Lucy from Dracula.)

Pots of uncooked rice, ash, or salt - Repellent to the Manananggal.

Running away and hiding - Basically the only method of recourse against the Brahmaparasha.

Eating bread infused with an upir’s blood - Sounds kinky, to be honest. 

Stay on sacred ground - I.e. graveyards and churches.  Just be sure you’re not trying to avoid the kind of vampire that dwells in graveyards if you go for the latter.

Holy water, crucifixes, silver, et cetera - Anything sacred or holy.  Varies based on culture.

Imbibing the ash of a supposed vampire’s burnt heart - I’m not even going to joke about this one, since people actually did this during the vampire scare of New England (my homeland.)  I learned about it from a book about local vampire encounters at the Newport Public Library at age twelve, and it scarred me.

Dangle your baby above a fire - Actually, no, PLEASE don’t do that.  But that’s what seventeenth century Greeks did to prevent their kids from turning into Callicantzaros. 

Age of consent laws - Specifically for Edward from Twilight.

Don’t get a welcoming mat - Counts as inviting them in.  Duh.

Ways to Become A Vampire:*

*Ask your doctor if becoming a vampire is right for you.

Biting - Obviously.  Though if you read Dracula and early accounts of vampirism, it was more of a slowly progressing illness than a sudden transformation.

Reject Christianity - In the case of upirs.  More specifically, the church buried non-believers outside of graveyards, leading them to rise as servants of the Devil.  Honestly, I feel like the church kind of brought that on themselves. 

Be born between Christmas and Twelfth Night - At least if you’re in seventeenth century Greece.  

Be influenced by the Devil while dying - Another version of the Upir origin.

Be a demon possessing a corpse - One prospective explanation for the Brahmaparusha.

Making a pact to obtain eternal youth and beauty that involves not eating meat for 40 days and then breaking it like some kind of an IDIOT - One version of the Penanggalan origin myth.  I shouldn’t judge, my self-control isn’t great either.

Get startled by a man while meditating in a bath and jerk your head so hard that it flies off and at the interloper in fury - Another prospective version of the Pennangalan origin. Relatable, honestly. 

Be so bitter and jealous of couples that you go on an insane killing spree of pregnant woman and get publicly executed by being ripped in two - The Pennangalan, again.  She makes the Kardashians look tame. 

Chanting an incantation, anointing yourself with oil, and purchasing a black chick - In the case of the Manananggal.  The black chick reportedly lives inside the Manananggal, eating its innards while also acting as its life source.  Honestly, after all the drama of the Penanggalan’s origins, this seems reasonable.

Other Sources

Video Essays: 

The Power of the Vampire Myth - A superb sociological dive into the cultural significance of vampires. From the post WWI antisemitism of Nosferatu to their ability to subvert the Hays Code, vampires tend to reflect the shadows of every society. 

Dracula: A Brief History of Eternity 

CREEPIEST Vampire Legends from Around the World 

Vampires: Folklore, Fantasy, and Fact

How did Dracula become the world’s most famous vampire?

Vlad the Impaler: The Real Life Dracula

Influential Vampire Fiction:*

*That I’ve read/seen so far.

Dracula - Duh.  The greatest adaptation of which is, obviously, Dracula: Dead and Loving it.  

Nosferatu - It’s good to be aware of its antisemetic overtones, but it’s still revolutionary at evoking dread.

Varney the Vampire - A penny dreadful series that helped popularize vampires in Victorian England.  It gets bonus points for sounding like a children’s show. 

Camilla - The ORIGINAL lesbian vampire, predating Dracula by decades.  Became an adorable webseries and movie, which I recommend even more than the original novel.

‘Salem’s Lot - Serves as a study of what makes vampires scary in the modern era.   

Underworld - Aside from serving as a badass alternative in the Twilight era, it merits inclusion exclusively for causing my Sapphic awakening at age twelve.

What We Do In the Shadows - Has a unique understanding of the cultural significance of vampires, and why they appeal to societal misfits.  Also has vampire “children” who eat p*dophiles. 

Vampires in the Lemon Grove - The titular story is one of the most unique interpretations of vampires that I’ve seen in the modern era.  Beautiful language that evokes a powerful emotional response.

Twilight - Exclusively because it gave us Rosemary clocking shop in a wedding gown.  And the baseball scene.

Nonfiction:

The Encyclopedia of Vampires, Werewolves, and Other Monsters

From Demons to Dracula: The Creation of the Modern Vampire Myth

Vampires and Vampirism: Legends from Around the World

New Orleans Vampires: History and Legend

Mummies, Cannibals, and Vampires: The History of Corpse Medicine

A History of Vampires in New England 

Happy Halloween, and happy writing, everybody! 

[sarah-writes-marvel]

Don’t: Bucky Barnes x Reader (platonic)

S.S: Heyo, its been a while since posting a story so here you go! BE CAUTIOUS!!! This fic ca nbe ver ytrigger so read at your own risk! Thank you guys hope you all had a wonderful holiday season!

Warnings: !!TW!! cutting, depressive/sucidial thoughts, anxiety, bleeding, needles, MAJOR ANGST and some fluff

Word Count: 1,798

Again, please read at your own risk!! Thank you!!

MASTERLIST

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The events of Endgame had affected everybody. The loss of Tony, Nat, and Vision, the resignation of Cap, Thor off in space, and Bruce was somewhere in Europe helping develop cures for diseases, everything had changed. There were only a few who stayed around the reconstructed compound anymore. Those few including Bucky, Wanda, Sam, and me. 

It was usually quiet, sometimes Pepper, Morgan, and Rhodes stopped by to see how things were going. Peter always came after school to see if we needed help on missions. T’challa and Shuri always checked in over the video call, same with many of our off-world allies. Valkyrie even checked in every once in a while, per Thor’s request when he couldn’t. It was nice, but nothing would ever be the same, and everyone knew that.

We each had our own ways of coping. The four of us that lived in the compound did our best not to bother each other. Bucky usually locked himself in his room, Sam went on runs, Wanda meditated and I blasted music so loud that I couldn’t hear my thoughts. It probably wasn’t the best way to cope but if it helped, it helped.

It was one of those days where memories flooded and tears fell without a second thought, so I plugged in my headphones and laid back in my bed getting lost in the bass vibrating in my eardrums. I watched the blades of my ceiling fan turn painfully slow while the urge to eat crept on me. I turned to my clock and realized that it was around noon and I hadn’t eaten since sometime yesterday. So I wiped the few stray tears away and managed to roll out of bed, feeling the cold wooden floor beneath my feet.

I pulled an earbud from my ear, even turned the music down just slightly as I walked down the hall. Even though there was plenty of room to spread out the four of us decided to share a hallway, the close proximity giving some comfort in the time of difficulty. It was nice.

As I passed a certain door, the sound of a muffled cry reached my ear. It was Bucky’s door. I understood why it had been so hard for him to lose Steve. He had been Bucky’s anchor in life, and his comforter after the whole Hydra situation. He had to put on a brave face before Steve left to return the stones, knowing that the punk of a friend would stay and live his life. He had to bite back the tears when he saw Steve sitting on the wooden bench, hair turned white from age and skin wrinkled. 

I took a step closer, removing my other earbud and pausing my music so I could hear better, pressing my ear gently against the door. Another strangled sob came from the other side along with a guttural scream. I felt awful, I wanted to check in but I didn’t want to bother him if he just wanted to be left alone. But I went against the latter and gently knocked on the door.

“Bucky? Are you ok?” I asked. The only reply I got was muffled sobs. Maybe he hadn’t heard me. So I knocked again a little harder. “Bucky?” Again, nothing but crying.

I took a minute, maybe he just needed a minute before he answered. So I waited, listening to the pained cries until I couldn’t take it.

“Bucky, I’m coming in,” I called through the door. I turned the knob and opened the door to see Bucky on the floor, sitting against the side of his bed, a throwing dagger in his metal hand, and fresh bloody cuts along his flesh forearm.

“Bucky? What are you doing, you’re gonna hurt yourself.” I closed the door before moving towards him, tossing my headphones and phone onto his bed before kneeling beside him. I took the stained knife from his metal grip, tossing it across the floor to pick up later, and pressed my hand over his cuts to minimize the bleeding causing him to hiss in pain.

“Please, please don’t.” he cried, his metal digits wrapping around my wrist.

“Buck, I’m gonna help you no matter how much you might not want it. I’m not gonna leave you,” I told him, looking into his lifeless blue-grey eyes.

“That’s what Steve said, now he’s gone. How do I know you aren’t lying?” his voice was weak and quiet, scared almost.

“I’m not Steve, I’m not going anywhere. I swear on my life,” My hand still pressed against his bleeding cuts. “But this needs to be a mutual agreement, so you cant leave me either. At least not right now. So I need your help, alright? I need you to work with me here Barnes.”

His gaze was hazy but he nodded and let go of his grip on my wrist.

“We need to get you to the bathroom, and I know I might be strong but your much heavier than you look, no offense.” I smile, trying to bring some light to the situation. Luckily I saw a small smirk form on his paling face before he nodded again. 

I removed my hold on his arm, standing up and reaching my hands down to pull him up, which was successful as he used the bed to help. His left arm wrapped around my shoulder as we shuffled to the bathroom where I set him on the toilet.

I grabbed the darkest washcloth in his cupboard of towels, pressing it against his wrist and placing his metal hand over it.

“I need you to keep the pressure on that, please. I know it probably hurts but you gotta do it,” I commanded gently, squeezing his hand around his arm. He simply nodded as his eyes followed mine lethargically. I continued to look through the cupboards for his first aid kit.

“Top cupboard to the left.” He sounded tired and I didn’t blame him. I had walked in on him sitting in a small puddle of his own blood and the emotional toll this event has all taken on us was more than enough reason to be tired. I opened the cupboard he suggested and retrieved the kit from the shelf opening it quickly and pulling out what I needed.

Even when the blood had been dripping from the cuts I knew some were deep enough for stitches, so I pulled the needle and suture thread from the box, gaining a groan from Bucky.

“I’m sorry but I know those cuts are too deep. It’ll only be a stitch or two and ill make it as painless as possible Buck, you just gotta stay with me.” I replied, looking at him. He replied with a nod as tears streamed down his face. I quickly wiped one away before sending him a small smile and returning to my task.

“Alright hun, we need to clean your arm so I can make clean stitches,” I stated, standing in front of him holding my hands out again to help him to the sink. He took my hands and hauled himself from his position and made his way to sink and began washing the cuts under the running water, wincing at the stinging pain.

Once he was back on his seat, I carefully patted the area dry with the used towel and began stitching the larger cuts. I only paused when Bucky hissed in pain or jerked away after I had pulled the thread through. A chorus of apologizes came from my mouth, and from his.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry.” his usual stern, strong voice was broken and came out in whispers.

“Buck, you dont have to apologize. It’s alright, life gets hard, it’s only logical to find a coping mechanism. It’s ok hun. It’s not your fault.” I cooed, trying to calm him.

“But I do, I just tried to kill myself because, what? Because I’m sad that my friend left me to be happy? How pathetic is that?” He denied, shaking with anger and sadness.

“It’s not pathetic because it is completely valid.” I began pulling the last stitch tight. “Life gets hard, and you have been through hell and back too many times to count. We have to cope with it somehow and pain can be a distraction, though not always the best option.” I continued looking at his sorrowful tear-filled eyes.  “Steve was your rock, the person you went to with every issue. And now without him, you feel lost and your drowning under the metaphorical waves of life. So your feelings are valid, and your actions were valid, just not the right way to go about it.” I finished as I wrapped gauze and Coban around the fresh stitches.

A moment of silence filled the bathroom as I finished wrapping his arm and cleaned up the supplies that had been used.

“How are you so good at this? Why weren’t you phased?” he questioned, breaking the eerie silence.

“That, my dear friend, is a conversation for another time. You need to focus on yourself right now.” I said with a smile while I watched my hands.

He looked away, down to his bandaged arm flexing his fist as the muscles shifted the bandage.

“Thanks,” he said quietly. “For helping me.” His eyes looked to mine, the small spark of hope back in his irises.

“It’s what friends do,” I replied. “Now you need some sleep,” I said helping him from the toilet and leading him back to his bed. Moving my phone and headphones out of his way, he settled onto his bed grabbing the fleece blanket from the foot of his bed and pull it over himself.

I carefully help before grabbing my phone and the knife on the floor and turning to leave. 

“Wait. I-uh- could you stay? Please.” he sounded like an innocent little boy who was scared of the monsters under the bed.

“Ya, of course I can.” I smiled, crawling into bed next to him. I sat with my back against the headboard, Bucky’s head on my lap, and his bandaged arm wrapped over my legs. My fingers found their way through his brunette locks as his breaths became heavier.

“You know you can always come to me,” I said quietly, leaning my head against the backboard. “I’ll listen, always.”

“You can come to me too. Tell me anything and everything,” he mumbled through his tired state.

“Love ya Buck. Sleep well.” I hummed quietly, closing my eyes.

“Love you too Kenz.” he murmured quietly before the room was filled with soft snores from both the soldier and me.

Things might not go back to how they were but they will get better.

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

THanks for reading. IF you ever need someone to talk to if you ever have thoughts like these dont be afraid to send me a message! Im alwasy willing to talk through lifes troubles with soemone if it helps them! Also know that there are hotlines that you can call! 

[officialwagnerrant]

Wagnerrant Review #1: Double Parsifal

(Picture Source: here)

Work: Parsifal House: Vienna State Opera Date of performance: 11.04.2021

Team:  Director: Kirill Serebrennikov Conductor: Philippe Jordan With:  Jonas Kaufmann, Nikolai Sidorenko, Ludovic Tézier, Stefan Cerny, Georg Zeppenfeld, Wolfgang Koch, Elīna Garanča

Notes: This is not technically the first review posted on this blog. Still I decided to tag it as the No. 1, as it’s the first review ever since I (Admin Dichterfuerstin) decided to post reviews somewhat regularly. By that I mean that I plan on doing on or two per month, depending on my schedule and my mood. Most reviews will feature productions that have been around for longer, but I promise that I will watch and review every new production I can. I also take requests.

Trigger warning: The following review of the new Vienna Parsifal discusses self-harm as it’s a prevalent element in Serebrennikov’s production. I ask you to keep this in mind when reading my text or watching the production. Don’t do either of this if you know you currently cannot deal with the subject.

Review: @dichterfuerstin

In the matinee talk preceding the premiere of the Vienna State Opera’s new Parsifal, director Kirill Serebrennikov announced a production that rather caters to an audience that doesn’t find the idea of devoting one’s whole live to serving a grail particularly appealing and struggle with the heavy role religion plays in Wagner’s monumental final work: According to Serebrennikov, his Parsifal portrays physical salvation just as in Beethoven’s Fidelio rather than religious one and focus less on myths and religion than on the development of the titular character, which is achieved by featuring two versions of the character. It is a rather radical concept, turning away from Wagner’s idea and calling for Serebrennikov’s own characters and storytelling. The director delivers a strong set-up in act one, but can’t avoid plot-holes and flat arcs.

The opera begins with Jonas Kaufmann’s face on a video screen. He appears on stage shortly after, as the old Parsifal, that watches act one from the front of the stage, reacting to all of his younger self’s decisions, mockingly lip-syncing Gurnemanz’ lines and singing his owns. He is supposed to recollect the events from act one and two and is already remembering, even though his younger self only goes on quite late into act one.  Until Parsifal’s entrance according to the libretto, the young Parsifal only is present on screens above the stage, where he is eventually shown killing another prisoner nicknamed “Swan”. Having Parsifal kill a human instead of an animal works. Not only because it fits Serebrennikov’s setting better. It also creates a bigger contrast between the young and the old Parsifal. However this is the only occasion where the projections on the three screens serve the plot. During the rest of the opera they show images underlining the cruelty of prison life, creating an atmosphere but having no impact on what happens on the stage whatsoever. By act three they’re even somewhat distracting.

Behind Kaufmann, under the screens, is the huge and elaborate set, a prison, in where the young Parsifal such as all the knights are inmates. The audience watches them working out, fighting, and bribing the guards for cigarettes. One prisoner sleeps on a bench, to give Gurnemanz a prompt for his wake up-call. Even though Gurnemanz’ position is lower than usually, when he’s not a prisoner but instead the factual leader of the grail’s knights, he’s the character changed least in this production. He may hide his cigarette’s from the guards, but he still commands over the knights and pages, and tells the story about Amfortas, while tattooing the other prisoners with mythical and religious symbols to remind the audience of Wagner’s plot and setting, and maybe to establish Gurnemanz as a somewhat religious character, as he proceeds to proclaim Parsifal the new king in a very holy service-like ceremony in act three, after singing at a random metal pole, since a spear isn’t needed in this production. Amfortas, some kind of a leader of the resistance, as we learned in the matinee talk, was never hurt by someone else but instead suffers from mental illness and self-harms. He needs to be saved from himself. Amfortas’ father, Titurel, is long dead, he seems to speak to his son from above. He is partly responsible for Amfortas’ illness The unveiling of the grail is substituted by a mental breakdown, in which the prisoners try to stop Amfortas from giving himself even more wounds and pain.

The last main character to appear in act one is Kundry, in this staging a journalist investigating the prison and smuggling medicine for Amfortas. She is sung by Elīna Garanča who delivers an impressive role debut. While some journalists who had the opportunity to see the opera live claim that she seemed to struggle with combining the staging and the score, both her singing and her acting came across amazing on the recording. She plays Kundry not like a singer but like a good actress.

It’s not Garanča’s fault that the character of Kundry eventually falls flat. According to Serebrennikov she was supposed to be a strong woman with a conflicting past, but not much of this is present throughout the opera. She starts out as the seemingly independent Journalist, who later turns out to be an employee at Klingsor’s magazine “Schloss.” He assaults her, she shoots him. This is also Klingsor’s entire role in this Parsifal. He doesn’t have any interaction with Parsifal and also seemingly no impact on him at all, a consequence of stripping the plot of Parsifal of important story elements such as the grail, god, and the celebacy of the grail’s knights. Kundry seems interested in Gurnemanz’ tales, collecting pictures of the prisoner’s tattoos, being clearly interested in the myths and the prisoners, but we never learn her motivations. Eventually her arc is completed by her walking off the stage, arm in arm with Amfortas, who freed himself from his father by throwing out his ashes and was then healed through Kundry’s kiss. This would be a satisfying ending for an action film, considering the source material and the set up from act one it’s a lazy, far to easy way to resolve both of their character arcs.

Unfortunately, the entire ending is dissatisfying. Parsifal returns to the prison as his old self, yet his young alter-ego appears later on and kisses Kundry, the old Parsifal doesn’t mind, no matter how determined to separate them he was back in act two. After that Serebrennikov makes a surprising return to the libretto: Kundry washes Parsifal’s feet, he is made the king and baptises her, before fulfilling the production’s premise as a salvation opera. All the prisoners can finally leave the prison and reconnect with freedom, this production’s holy grail. Gurnemanz even takes his time to wave Parsifal good bye, who remains inside the prison. It’s a symbolic ending, in the libretto Parsifal is now responsible for the grail, a prisoner of the grail if you will. However this third act end ending fail to connect with the preceding acts.

The production falls flat on more than just a few occasions, however the cast and music manage to make up for it. Most outstanding is Georg Zeppenfeld as Gurnemanz. Not only is his beautiful bass voice made for this characters, no other Wagner role is so incredibly fitting for him, he also manages to combine the prisoner and commanding Gurnemanz through his acting. Overall the acting is strong for a bunch of opera singers, who still have a reputation for being great singers but struggling with acting. There’s  Elīna Garanča delivering her impressive role debut, as well as Ludovic Tézier as Amfortas, appearing perfectly hurt and pained as he drags himself over the stage. Parsifal Jonas Kaufmann is neither a debutant nor a born Wagner-Singer. His approach to Wagner’s music is rather italien, he values emotion and beauty over heroicness. It’s melancholic, well-fitting for this old Parsifal remembering his youth. Kaufmann and his alter-ego actor Nikolai Sidorenko work together to create a character and they do it well. The only downside of having two Parsifals, besides some confusion on who is the active parsifal especially during act three, is that next to the fantastic actor Nikolai Sidorenko it becomes obvious that acting isn’t Kaufmann’s strong suit. He often resorts to a preset set of gestures, other than most of his colleagues who are their characters throughout the whole four hours long performance. Last but not least, it’s the orchestra that is the center of nearly all of Wagner’s music. Philippe Jordan, the new musical director of the Vienna State Opera, leads his orchestra through this exhausting opera fluently, making every single Leitmotiv and their variations perfectly clear. But especially the solo parts stand out. But it’s also the unexcelled charm and emotionality of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra that makes this performance so fitting and so beautiful. Even on screen, through speakers, this orchestra feels live, and alive.

This Parsifal is mostly worth listeing to, but also worth watching. While Kirill Serebrennikov couldn’t quite do justice to the setup for a deep and thoughtful story he created in act one, he was able to create a captivating production, with an ending that is good for Parsifal nights, where you want to leave the theatre or laptop with the feeling of having watched a happy ending instead of having been confronted with four hours of Wagner’s music-religion. 

[abigailnussbaum]

The Boys 5x06, “The Bloody Doors Off”

I’m generally quite positive about this episode, but before I get to that, this really needs to be said: the trope of “doors open at the asylum, murder and mayhem ensue” is really poisonous to the mentally ill, and should have been discarded a long time ago. It’s particularly common in superhero stories, which are, after all, very fond of the setting of a superhero asylum. Off the top of my head, both The Gifted and Batwoman have employed it in the last two years. Which means that even as it’s patting itself on the back for skewering the tropes of superhero stories, The Boys is indulging in a particularly vile one. And while we’re on the subject of things this episode should have been above: that joke about transgender strippers. It’s not as bad as it could have been, because the gag isn’t “she’s got a penis!” (and MM’s response is immediately “I don’t care for strippers regardless of their genitalia”). But it’s still fetishizing the trans body - which, I suppose, is hardly surprising given the show’s generally judgmental attitude towards kink.

That being said, this is probably the best episode of the season, largely because it plays to the show’s strengths: tight thematic and plot coherence (finally justifying the decision to move the show to a weekly format after weeks of shapeless installments), strong characterization, and a willingness to complicate seemingly black and white situations that belies the show’s reputation as an outrage machine. So yes, this is an episode that features Homelander crushing a man’s skull while in the throes of passion (apparently we need to have at least one of those per season), not to mention a man with a giant, prehensile penis. But it’s also an episode that deepens our understanding of Frenchie, introduces us to a new character who is almost instantly compelling (while also complicating that reaction significantly), and forces us to reexamine our feelings towards Maeve without telling us anything new about her.

The common theme running through the episode is the things you’ll do for the people you love, how you live with the consequences of those choices, and what they make of you. We finally get to meet Lamplighter, the boogeyman whose murder of Mallory’s grandchildren broke the Boys apart years ago and has hung over Frenchie in particular. And we find out why that is - Frenchie was supposed to be keeping an eye on Lamplighter, whom Mallory had just recruited to her investigation of Homelander, and left his post to tend to a friend who was ODing.

Shawn Ashmore is inspired casting for Lamplighter. He’s got the sort of look that can just as easily convey sympathetic concern as selfish entitlement, and slide between the two with ease. Which makes Lamplighter both less hatable than we might have expected, given what we know of him, but also hard to trust. (To be fair, I’m reading a lot of Johnny Jaqobis into the performance, and that was Aaron, not Shawn; but honestly, those two are surprisingly similar for how solid both of their careers have turned out.) But the episode really belongs to Frenchie, who not only takes on Lamplighter’s admission that he didn’t know Mallory’s grandchildren were in the room he set on fire, but finds enough common ground with the man to confess his own part in that night’s disaster. When Lamplighter asks “did [your friend] live?”, it’s a moment of human connection that we don’t often see between the Boys and their quarry (and leads to Frenchie’s heartbreaking revelation that Jay lived, only to die of another overdose shortly after). The episode ends with Frenchie begging for Lamplighter’s life from Mallory (and also trying to make peace with Kimiko, who is otherwise sorely underused).

At the same time, the episode doesn’t encourage us to feel uncomplicated sympathy towards Lamplighter. As MM points out “I meant to murder an innocent woman, not her grandchildren” is hardly a defense. And even more disturbing is Lamplighter’s repeated refrain to Frenchie, “why didn’t you stop me?” Whereas Frenchie doesn’t want to be let off the hook even though he had a good reason for abandoning his assignment, Lamplighter is looking for someone else to blame for his own actions, even to the perverse extreme of blaming an opponent for not fighting back. And, as we see in the present, he’s still killing innocents, burning experiment subjects who don’t pan out or refuse to play along, while claiming that he’s being forced.

Which ties into Maeve, who for the first time is called to account for her part in the plane crash last season. Maeve sees the video of the crash as indicting Homelander, which is also how we’ve been trained to think about it. But when Elena watches it, she sees a woman she’s been taught to think of as heroic abandoning others to save her own life, begging fruitlessly for mercy but finally just saving her own skin. Like Lamplighter - and more importantly, like Annie earlier in this season, when she was about to kill Hughie at Homelander’s command - Maeve might reasonably say that she didn’t have a choice. But she still did those things, and hid them. Her final line to Elena - “why are you looking at me that way?” - sums up the episode’s core message.

It’s a message that is also echoed in the Annie-Billy-Hughie storyline, though it’s a bit more wobbly in that context. The idea of having Annie and Billy bond over their shared love of Hughie is a solid storytelling beat, but I’m not quite sure what to make of Annie’s “he’s too good for either of us”. Annie kills the driver to save Hughie, and the show doesn’t let her off the hook for that (her long look at the baby seat in the car once she gets in). But it’s still a choice she made in order to save someone. Hughie killed Translucent for no reason at all - or really, because he wanted to feel strong and powerful after weeks of stewing in grief and rage over Robin’s death (and Annie, though she knows the Boys were responsible for Translucent’s death, still doesn’t know that Hughie is the one who pushed the button). I’m not sure he’s too good for anyone. 

(Meanwhile, the fact that Annie was on the verge of killing Hughie to save her own life just a few episode ago seems to have been memory-holed, even though it would have been a really obvious thing for Billy to throw in her face during their fight early in the episode.)

The other big thing that happens in this episode is that we find out Stormfront’s background, and between what she says to Homelander and what Lamplighter reveals to the Boys, it seems clear that her plan is to create a superpowered neo-Nazi army and use it to take over the world. It’s good to finally have some answers (and I admit that this is a more interesting turn of plot than the one I anticipated last week, a false flag terrorist attack). But I also feel that the show is in danger of outthinking itself. Having Vought be a company with roots in Nazi Germany was a clever touch earlier this season, but making Stormfront a German Nazi herself - and making the entire genesis of superheroes a Nazi project - undercuts a lot of what the show has been saying about American racism and how much its superheroes are rooted in it. Suddenly we’re back to that familiar trope, invasion by an army of foreign and foreign-inspired Nazis. It’s not unlike the way that Winter Soldier whiffed its central revelation, choosing to focus on a fifth column of hidden traitors instead of admitting the more terrifying truth, that after seventy years there’s really no way to disentangle “good” SHIELD from “evil” Hydra, because the former has been hopelessly corrupted by the latter.

When I wrote about last week’s episode, I praised it for skewering rainbow capitalism in its depiction of Vought’s plans to “sell” Maeve’s queerness and her relationship with Elena. Since then, several people have pointed out that The Boys was speeding well ahead of the actual industry it’s lampooning - in a blockbuster market dominated by superhero movies, there are currently no queer superhero characters (though there are several on TV). Which means that the show’s satire can end up missing its mark - instead of pointing out how capitalism squeezes everything good into an easily-digested, marketable form, one can easily read this subplot as saying that a gay superhero would be bad, full stop. 

I think a similar dynamic is at play when it comes to Stormfront’s secret plot. An army of superpowered neo-Nazis is scary, but is it really scarier than the President of the United States not only refusing to condemn white supremacists on stage at a national debate, but addressing them directly in terms that can only be taken as an instruction to riot if he loses the election? Is it scarier than videos of police that repeatedly show their sympathy towards white supremacist, to the point of standing by when one of them fires into a crowd of people? It doesn’t take superpowers for fascism to take hold - it didn’t in Nazi Germany, and it doesn’t today. By pretending otherwise, The Boys is neutering its social commentary exactly where it should be most trenchant.

[sugarandspice-games]

I guess this is becoming a trend... I’m popping in before the actual intro to clarify-- if the text is in italic, it is me (Sugar) talking and regular is Spice. Alright? Cool. And so--

So, one night I’m going through youtube and I come upon this one shitposty video about some random anime that I’ve never even heard of. After doing some research, I discover that it’s actually based on a dating sim that I’ve also never heard of. As a joke I was like “Hey Sugar wanna watch this as a joke, it might be funny” and so we did. And uhm. Well.

Today we’re gonna be reviewing Brothers Conflict, aka Sweet Home Alabama 2: Electric Anime Boogaloo aka the anime that ruined our lives. [Again, disclaimer: neither Sugar nor I condone incest and/or pedophilia, two themes which are uh, very rampant in this anime which is why I cannot recommend it in good faith. It’s not good, don’t get me wrong. I can’t really say that I liked it even if watching it and ragging on it was kind of enjoyable, and I did get attached to some of the characters because that’s the kind of idiot I am. Also, we’re not shirking our duties to write I swear please don’t kill me--] Anyway, an obligatory SPOILER WARNING though this probably isn’t going in the main tag bc I do not want the fans to publicly stone me. Why are we reviewing this? Bc we need to talk about it somewhere. Though I say review lightly bc this... is really more of a critique.

ALSO we only watched the anime, idk if things are different in the game. There is no full english translation for the games and most of the LP channels have been copyright striked, so please don’t come at us for not knowing anything. I also know that otome games and dating sims don’t tend to translate well to anime, and I will be addressing this later.

So, dear god, where do I begin.

Where do we begin indeed? How about the fact that her name is Ema and I had to google to remember the heroine’s name? Also, she is seventeen.

Our plot, or well... what you COULD call a plot, I guess, if you REALLY wanted to give this anime that much credit, focuses on the aforementioned seventeen year old Hinata Ema, who has an absent father who apparently FOUND THE TIME TO FALL IN LOVE AND GET MARRIED BUT NEVER HAS A SECOND TO SPARE FOR HIS ONLY CHILD, RINTARO I SWEAR TO GOD I AM TAKING CUSTODY OF YOUR CHILD. HAND HER OVER-- Anyway. He’s getting married to a woman who has 13 sons (jesus christ ma’am have you ever heard of a condom?) and he decides to move her in with them because... I guess he has less braincells than I have balls, which is to say, zero. Hi, I’m trans.

So, Ema moves in with them... along with her talking grey squirrel, Juli. Juli is... interesting and by interesting, I mean-- ABSOLUTELY PUZZLING. He, apparently, has seen the majority of Ema’s life from babyhood to teenagerhood and can talk but is only understood by Ema (who he calls Chii) and Louis, the eighth son in the Asahina family. It is never explained why, or how Chii came across him or how in an episode, a single episode, he becomes human because why the hell not, I guess??? (Also, he is pretty. YES. I said it. Fight me.) [Quick Spice intervention, this squirrel can talk to people, transform into a human, enter dreams, and live way longer than a squirrel should since the average lifespan of a squirrel is like 6 years in the wild. Juli is apparently a god as none of this is EVER explained.]

And when she meets the Asahina family, it’s pretty much immediately chaos because these heterosexual (I guess? They look like a bunch of twinks to me but there goes anime trying to convince me that straight people are real and not a lie made up by Trump) men have NEVER and I mean NEVER known a woman in their entire lives, since they seem to want to bang their stepsister immediately. And most of them are GROWN ASS ADULTS. Only three of them are actually minors (though Iori is 18 and only one year older so I guess??? It’s okay??? But still weird) and one of them is a 13 year old who looks and acts like he’s 8.

Oh, and did I mention that out of these boys, only the adult triplets and the abusive asshole 16 year old get any kind of characterization AND character development? I mean, Subaru gets an “arc” if you can call it that, but really, they don’t give him much... personality. You could replace him with a cardboard cutout and it’d be the same. I feel bad for him (but not really because dude you are 20 and she is your sister, what the fuck--)

But if there’s anything good about this anime, it is the characters themselves. Several of the boys have redeeming qualities and interesting personalities and quirks, as well as interesting relationships and dynamics with each other. Yes, some of them are lacking in the plotline department while others may have decent plotlines and lack personality, and then some of them are just given absolutely nothing (COUGH Masaomi COUGH Ukyo COUGHCOUGHCOUGH Iori, and by the way, what the fuck is that game plotline bc I read the wiki since I wanted to know more about him. We don’t have time to unpack the mento illness luv. But you’re telling me they had all this meat to work with and they threw it in the trash and gave him nothing? What the hell?) And if anything, I feel as if the characters themselves are crippled by the plotline. If given a different story, perhaps, they may have room to shine, because a lot of them are compelling if not lovable (though some may not be... lovable. COUGHFuuto, at least not for me.) If you want to see our review on the characters, we’ll put out another post.

Iori... Iori has a hell of a plot in the game, according to the Wiki but I can’t blame the writers for not exploring all of it because whoa. It is dark and not in a good way. But back to the subject at hand... I agree with Spice. I do/did like quite a lot of the characters... provided the entire romantic plot is taken away but we will go into more of why the plot is problematic below. All I can really add is: There is a baby in this dumpster and canon has been taken out back to be shot like a lame horse.

This brings me to a point in which I would like to pause the character discussion and bring up a glaring flaw with this anime in general (aside from the... plot. Look, I’m not a huge fan of weird stepsibling stuff but I think that if you want to do something like that, there are ways to do it and ways not to do it. This was the way not to do it, which I’m getting to). The biggest thing that made this anime so uncomfortable was the imbalance of power dynamics. Why is the protagonist 17 when most of the love interests are 18 and older, and I mean much, much older? And she’s not any 17 year old... she’s a lonely, neglected girl who is starved for the love of a family. This makes her easily manipulated by the brothers, who clearly desire her for less than wholesome reasons, and that makes it skeevy. I’m not sure why there’s such a fetishization of nonconsent in media, as if it’s fine for as many men to lust after female protagonists as the writer desires BUT the woman can’t want a single one of them in return. It’s creepy, and quite frankly, I am very much over it. I also get that the age thing is probably a product of the protagonist of a teenager oriented dating sim not translating well to an anime (because really, all otome game MCs are meant to be a neat little pair of shoes for the player to imagine themselves in), but why are we fetishizing a teenager being groomed by adults anyway? Especially adults who have this much power over her to begin with? The power dynamics bring this plot from ��Oh, this might be kinda trashy but it could be entertaining” to “This is extremely creepy and rapey and kind of a dumpster fire.”

This is also true. If we were to take age into consideration, Fuuto, Yusuke, and Iori would be the three candidates left for Chii. This is taking out the youngest as well, who is... thirteen, I think? But anyway, (I know I am probably going to get some hate for this but go for it), I am into stories that explore the stepsibling thing and it can make a good narrative-- but before everyone gets uppity: There is a line between FICTION and REALITY and I do not condone real life incest but a story is a story and there are ways to frame it that make it clear that it is not a romantic thing, or acceptable. This anime does not do that in it’s dynamics because some of the brothers do start off in that very firm caregiving, family role and it is a sharp turn into romance that makes you go, “?” or in Fuuto case, a blending that does lean into fetishization.

All in all I think the plot maybe could have been okay? I’m not saying it isn’t problematic, because we all know it is, who are we kidding? But I don’t think it’s wrong per se to explore family dynamics with romance and to understand where the line should be drawn, and maybe exploring the definition of family itself. I have seen fanfictions with similar tropes ask those questions and explore the concept beautifully without romanticizing or fetishizing incest and unhealthy power dynamics. It could have been good, and I get that perhaps I’m barking up the wrong tree by expecting mature themes in an anime based on an otome game, but it also could have been a lot less... creepy (I have used that word so much that it looks wrong now) even if it wasn’t the greatest thing ever. But again, what was I expecting? I watched this whole thing as a joke and ended up attached to the characters like a fool... That tends to be a trend here, and this is why we are so salty all the time. So anyway, stay tuned for our review of the characters! We may not cover all of them since some of them don’t really get anything, but we’ll cover what we found interesting.

[heamarvel]

Holiday Movie Challenge Prompt and Badge lists

Hellooooo shippers of all Marvel ships!

This marks the kickoff to HEA (Happily Ever After) Marvel’s Holiday Movie Challenge! If you don’t know us, we’re a group of crafty mods under the direction of our own personal Pepper Potts ( @betheflame​​ ), so really, this is going to be great fun, and we hope that you’ll join us!

A brief intro to our event:

At no point do you need to sign up for this event. You are not beholden to post anything, even if you say that you will. This is a guiltless, fun event!

Pick a prompt, any prompt!

Interpret the prompt any which way you wish. We have prompt examples available for people to peruse on our blog and on our Discord, if you’re in need of a few examples.

Write (or art, podfic, or moodboard, etc.) any ship you want, even polyamorous relationships of any number or type (even if the prompts contain just two characters!).

Include additions from our badge list if you wish! They function like video game achievements (think World of Warcraft, or Xbox) and you will be rewarded with little achievement badges designed by the wonderful @kocuria​ that you can display anywhere you please.

The collection will open on November 1st and close on December 24th.

Around then we will provide a Google form to submit the badge info and other info for your fic.

BUT REMEMBER! All contributions to this event must have a Happily Ever After as per holiday movie standards (doesn’t mean there can’t be tons of angst and pain in the middle, though).

For any further info, please check out our Holiday Movie Challenge page, our Prompt and Badge page, our Frequently Asked Questions page, or ask us questions on Tumblr, Twitter, or on Discord! (Links on Tumblr.) 

But that’s enough mod-splaining, let’s take a look under the cut at the prompts and badges that we’ve been eagerly waiting to share with you!

*We have included both (1) images to download and save as well as (2) text for those who prefer or need that medium! The images are at the bottom of this post.

Here’s a separate post with just the images.

Prompts

1. Character A is a big city lawyer who swore to never go back to their hometown. Suddenly, their grandfather dies and leaves them the family Christmas Tree farm. They’re determined to go back and shut down the farm. Character B runs the farm and is determined to save it.

2. After losing their job as an au pair in New York, Character A accepts a position as a nanny in the castle of a small European principality no one has ever heard of. Character B is a single parent & ruler of the country.

3. When architect and Christmas amateur Character A finds themselves hosting their family for Christmas, they recruit holiday coordinator Character B to bring holiday joy to their home.

4. A high-powered executive reconsiders their priorities when car trouble leads them to Christmas Valley, a town in love with Christmas.

5. Two new students at nearby university, Character A and Character B, meet the first day of classes and become study partners. A local bookstore becomes a close part of their lives as their relationship grows.

6. Character A - a famous author who writes about how to stay single - is forced to look after their niece and nephew over the holidays. With the help of their Christmas-loving neighbor, Character B, they learn to find love and the Christmas spirit.

7. A young royal (Character A) escapes their entourage to explore New York City over Christmas. They meet Character B who shows the beautiful stranger their side of the city.

8. As Christmas approaches, Character A (the Lizzie Bennet character), a New York event planner, is sent to a quaint, small town to organize their holiday festival. When they arrive, they find Character B (the Darcy character), a high-profile billionaire lacking in holiday spirit, in the process of selling the charming estate they hoped to use as a venue.

9. An anxious bride-to-be (Character A, “bride” is non-gender assigned) throws in with broken-hearted and cynical Character B and a happily married couple for an emergency ride to NYC from New England.

10. Character A has to go to their cousin’s holiday wedding that’s taking place a year to the day they were left at the altar. Unable to face going alone, they con Character B into going “just as friends.”

11. When a restless young married Character A is granted a wish by a Christmas Angel to be single again, they soon discover their new life isn't what they bargained for, and embark on a quest to win Character B back.

12. Character A and Character B have been archrivals ever since a memorable fight over a coveted Christmas recital solo in elementary school. Now adults, they work side-by-side at the same school where they still constantly compete over everything. As the holiday season approaches, the entire school is getting into the spirit with the annual fundraising festival, which will feature an exciting new event - a teacher Christmas Cookie Bake-Off, judged by a tough five-star chef.

13. Character A inherited a toy factory. The town needs the factory to stay open, but they have no interest in being tied to their hometown. Especially when they find out that Character B - who broke their heart in high school - is the town’s mayor.

14. A WWII era nurse (Character A) is transported in time to 2019 and meets Character B who helps them discover the bonds of family and that the true meaning of Christmas is timeless.

15. Stranded at an airport at Christmastime, Character A accepts a ride from Character B, who has just rented the last car in town.

Badges

Length

500

1k

5k

10k

15k

20k+

Ships

We’ll be custom-making the badges for whatever ship you choose to bring to the table! (Just keep in mind our limits: no underage, no non-con, no nazis.) Popular ship or rarepair+, this group of multishipping mods would love to see whatever you choose to write!

General fic elements

Baking/Cooking

Needing a passport

Non-abled character

Neuro-diverse character

Passes the Bechdel Test

Set outside the United States

Addresses a legitimate societal ill/charity/cause

Character learns a craft as a coping mechanism

Someone eats popcorn in a dramatic scene

Mention or include a Hallmark store or movie

Character is tracing their genealogy

Character writes fanfiction

Character learns a new skill

NSFW

A/B/O

Sentinels & Guides

Soulmate-Identifying Marks

Historical AU: Scottish or Irish clans

Historical AU: Ancient Rome or Greece

Historical AU: Regency or Victorian

Historical AU: American West

Inclusion of animal other than a dog, cat, or horse

‘It Takes a Village’ (town or community helps them hook up)

Use of holiday other than Christmas - including non-winter holidays

One sentence or more spoken in a language other than Russian

Discussion on classic literature and/or classic rock ‘n’ roll

Write a pairing you’ve never written before

Holiday Movie and general tropes

Inversion/Subversion of any trope

Main character has a cuddly dog

Presence of a small town festival

'And they were roommates!'

Fake Relationship

Only One Bed

Snowball fight

Ice skating or Ice hockey

Interrupted first kiss

Stories from childhood

Sassy/nosy best friend

Conniving co-worker

Kid as matchmaker

Single parent

Holiday specific

Yule log

Playing Dreidel

Holiday movie pick: Die Hard

Use of the phrase “Santa! I know him!”

Home Alone style shenanigans, serious or not

Trying to balance an egg on the Solstice

A non-Jewish character mixes up Passover and Hanukkah

Writing format/style

Outsider POV

First Person POV

Text Message/Chat Room

3+ perspectives in one story

Dialogue Only

Epistolary

Avengers stereotypes/fanon

Thor is foreign

Bots as children

Tony has insomnia

Tony Is Worthy (of Mjolnir)

Tony as a non-Iron Man mechanic

Ceiling vent Clint Barton

Budapest Explanation

Natasha is a scary spy/likes sneaking

Super-Nanny Phil Coulson

Peter Parker being a klutz

Peter and Shuri team up on Tony

Bruce has anger management problems

Avengers Movie Night

Darcy uses her taser

Bucky speaks Russian

Steve and/or Bucky need to play catch up on modern and pop culture

Shrunkyclunks (Modern Steve/CA & non-Avenger Bucky)

Shrinkyclinks (Modern Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier & non-CA Steve)

Side Character speaking role (any apply): Dr. Doom, Reed Richards, Galactus, Ghost Rider, Frank Castle, any Inhuman, any Runaway, Sif or one of the Warriors Three, Frigga, Amora or Lorelei

Set in a Marvel canon universe (even if not canon-compliant), for example: 1872, Noir

Mod Requests

Supernatural creatures

Gender swapped MC

Someone wears a tiara

Someone wears a kimono

Long-distance relationship

Snuggling to keep warm

1940s AU

Disclaimer: The above plot summaries in the prompt list belong to numerous movies in the Hallmark catalogue. We do not claim to own them, and are not making any money off of this, nor are we being paid by Hallmark to run this event.

Additionally, as of December 14th, 2019, we are no longer associating with Hallmark even in name, due to their poor choice to cave to pressure and remove an advertisement of a gentle, loving same-sex kiss occurring at their own wedding. We cannot and will not abide that.

[chaoticgeminate]

Freedom

This is the third part of the Outfoxed Series, my Lila Salt series that I started on a whim and got a ton of notes and likes. This is the last bit following the main plot of the series, which is the exposure of Lila and the fallout of that exposure, but I may consider exploring other POV’s like I did with Mrs. Rossi in the side story ‘Shattered’ posted to AO3.

The link below is to the AO3 page of this story, if you don’t want to deal with the Read more button.

[AO3]

Lila's arrest sent shock waves through Collège François Dupont, from the sexual harassment charges to the truancy and even the unlawful photography, anyone associated with her on a friendly level was scrutinized and that meant the class of the former teacher Caline Bustier.

Thanks to the school board there had been numerous counselors and therapists on site, to combat potential akuma victims from the accusations and anger that were sure to be part of the fallout, with a new security system installed with no blank spots in any hallways or rooms. Excluding bathrooms, of course, but there were cameras above bathroom doors pointing straight down to track who entered and when.

Nino wasn't at all surprised when Adrien was transferred out of their class, his Father definitely blamed them for playing a part in the mess and the teen DJ couldn't fault him for once, it was easy to see from the glimpses in the halls that his best bud was happier than ever now. He had managed to apologize to both Adrien and Marinette, telling them he wasn't asking forgiveness but that he wanted them to know he now realized he screwed up and had to work on some things, the pair had thanked him and that had been it.

As much as he wanted to go back to how things were, when they were all together and Alya was scheming her plans to hook them up, Nino was more than aware that if he wanted them to trust him again it had to be on their terms and he was okay with that. He'd believed in Lila because Alya did, no matter how strange the stories sounded, his girlfriend always researched everything so if she wasn't questioning then he didn't have a reason to.

Or so he thought, but Alya wasn't perfect and he'd made a mistake by not questioning it himself, Nino had promised he would do and be better for himself and his girl as well as his friends.

Alya walked into the room late, sliding a note onto their teacher's desk, after her blow-up in the cafeteria at Adrien the school put her on mandatory counseling sessions. For as tenacious and driven as she was, something he admired, Alya was stubborn and quick-tempered; in this case, though, she refused to allow any blame on herself. Lila was the liar in this and Alya had been loyal, Marinette hadn't told her the whole truth, Adrien hadn't told her the whole truth; but it was still Alya that hadn't done her research or trusted her friend.

He slid a note onto her desk, a simple love poem he'd found, he wasn't ready to give up on her as a girlfriend and he knew that once she accepted she'd made a mistake that she'd do the right thing and at least apologize.

He was a sweetheart, someone truly amazing that was far too mature for his age, Nino's poem made her heart race even if she'd seen it on Juleka's facebook page two weeks earlier. For the first time in a long time she felt lighter, her pocket no longer weighed down with her cellphone, the device submitted for evidence for her own lawsuit against Lila.

Aya wasn't an idiot, she hadn't believed a damn thing Lila Rossi was putting out, but she was too quick tempered and had moved far too quickly against the Italian. Giving the new girl a chance to fess up had led to a rabbit hole of trouble, Lila hadn't even tried playing clean and as soon as she had her ammo it was over, Alya hadn't thought the girl would follow her around for months in secret while she'd supposedly been traveling.

Lila had gotten video proof of Alya sneaking around with Nino, steamy make-outs in fairly public (though not in the open) places while they were supposed to be babysitting, and worst of all she'd gotten a series of photos with Alya and Nino in a VERY compromising position in the school.

'All I want is your support, you don't have to believe me but you do have to make the others believe me, I won't tell anyone or show these otherwise.'

It sucked but Alya had danced to Lila's song and done what she asked without question, it would ruin her and Nino's records and their parents would have a meltdown, she expected Lila to eventually make a mistake after all and even if Alya supported her that didn't mean one of the others was trapped by her web. Alya had tried hard to support Marinette, Lila's chosen target she soon learned, but after the first attempt at getting the designer expelled had failed Lila wasn't giving any leeway.

The second attempt worked far too well, after Lila took the picture of the funeral right from Alya's phone, and the reporter found herself doing the unspeakable at Lila's behest. Every article had her in tears and the public backlash made her sick to her stomach, if she wasn't terrified of the result from Lila it might've been easier to delete the Ladyblog entirely, and finally it all drew to a close with Lila's arrest.

Finding out Adrien had known all along, that he'd just said nothing, had ignited a fire in Alya that she couldn't extinguish and she tore into him for his inaction; the entire time he could have done something, he could have saved her from her own ruin. But now, finally, Alya had come clean on every last detail to her parents and the school; her parents, as disappointed and hurt as they were, contacted the AGRESTE lawyers with their own evidence of blackmail to add to Lila's charges once they spoke with Officer Raincomprix.

Nino was still in the dark, though not for long since his parents were contacted too in regards to the nature of the pictures and video, and several people had said her intentions to protect her boyfriend were noble even if she had done wrong. But Alya had a long way to go in order to forgive herself before she'd ask forgiveness of anyone else, she started with hand-written letters to be mailed out to a lot of people, her phone and computer taken and she was under house arrest for quite a while per her parents.

Focusing on the board, as their teacher talked about their assignment for geography, Alya scribbled her notes as the rest tapped and typed away on their tablets.

"BREAKING REPORT

BLACKMAIL CHARGES CONFIRMED AGAINST LILA ROSSI

As of Wednesday, we have word that more charges are being added to the already extensive list for Lila Rossi. The Italian student, living in France on a VISA due to her mother's work, has already been accused of a long list of charges by both the Agreste family and the Dupain-Cheng family as well as the school board. Sexual harassment, truancy charges, unlawful photography, bullying a French citizen, and now there is evidence surfacing of blackmailing a French citizen.

The Césaire family have come forward with very serious evidence that indicates Alya Césaire, the founder of the Ladyblog, was being blackmailed by Lila Rossi the entire span of her time at Francios Dupont and during the period she was skipping classes. E-mails, text messages, and threatening messages through Facebook and Snapchat depict Rossi as having compromising photographs and videos of Césaire and her boyfriend that could result in their own criminal charges.

When we asked Otis Césaire his thoughts on the matter he had this to say:

"My daughter was wrong in her actions, I will not try and say she was only a victim because she could have come to us before this started and we would have helped her, but I am appalled that the school officials were so easily fooled and allowed a girl to come in and manipulate them so thoroughly. They were supposed to protect their students, regardless of how much money the families of those kids have, but I see that their concern was elsewhere."

Alya Césaire herself is being reviewed for her own criminal charges based on the content of the photographs that were found on Lila Rossi's devices and has asked that any charges that might be applied to her boyfriend be dropped as she was the primary instigator for each incident. The AGRESTE legal team is asking that any other students, parents, or parties victim to any schemes of Lila please step forward so that they can compile a full list of charges and get this case closed."

The voice of Nadja Chamak played softly in the background of the office as Mayor Armand D'Argencourt adjusted his tie and looked around the bleak space, it was only a matter of time before the school board pursued the Mayor for his own corruption and Andre had paid out a hefty sum to avoid prison before being removed from office, the new election had come and Armand had taken post over Madam Lauren Richards.

As one of the few teachers not involved with Rossi, aside from Physical Education, he hadn't been questioned much and even then he never once allowed her any special treatment; if she cited an injury he made her go to the nurse, any conditions she claimed he would ask Miss Kensington for proof and there never was any. But his claims and reports to Phineas had gone unanswered and blown aside, as any with Miss Bourgeios often had, his reports to the school board had been added to the Dupain-Cheng case as had Priscille's own reports.

A knock on the door made him clear his throat. "Come in." He left the office door open, unlike the Mayor had, the knocking was just a courtesy. His secretary, Monsieur Hemsley, held a stack of papers and folders.

"I'm afraid to say there is a lot more of this, sir, but this is the start of what Mayor Bourgeios cited as unnecessary for Paris." The man looked apologetic and Armand shook his head, accepting the stack of things with no ill-feelings.

It was a new challenge. "I want to start with everything from the past year, Thomas, I've no doubt there were plenty of things he ignored or blew out to keep his hotel running and himself in office." Finding the corruption was the first step, all the business owners with an in that were paying into the Bourgeios to keep themselves on top, Armand wasn't going to fail his family's post or his city.

He glanced at his calendar. "Remember to keep tomorrow afternoon clear, I've got fencing to teach at the Agreste manor after school hours tomorrow." Thomas nodded and went to bring the next batch of papers to him.

"It's been quiet."

Sitting on top of Notre Dame, legs swinging freely as the lights illuminated the dark city below, Chat couldn't help but hum in agreement to the soft statement his partner whispered. With Lila's arrest and the continual charges being brought forward against her, as well as the fallout from the students, he'd expected much more in the way of akuma. "It's worrying, as much as I don't want it to be." He wanted it to be a good sign that there hadn't been problems with Hawkmoth, he wanted it to be an indicator that they were due for some peace and quiet, but they couldn't relax.

Ladybug's eyes were focused on the light at the Town Hall where his fencing instructor, now Mayor, was working diligently through years of corruption from Chloe's father in office. "I've been talking with Tikki and the other Kwami, they all agree that something feels... off. We have a lot of theories but nothing concrete, if I wasn't so afraid to bring the Miracle Box out in public I'd have brought it tonight with me." He almost choked with how deep a breath he drew in, that was not at all what he'd expected.

"You want- but you're the Guardian. Why would my-"

"Your thoughts and opinions are always important to me, Chat, we're partners. You just have horrible timing to be a flirty tomcat as well as an issue with the word no."

He opened his mouth to argue but didn't, she was right, he had no valid excuse for his behavior in the past. "I, uh, you don't have to worry about that LB. I have a girlfriend, outside the mask I mean, I won't tell you her name but she's incredible and I'm really happy with her." Chat could feel her looking at him and her expression was soft, fond and friendly, love without the romantic aspect of it.

Such a familiar look and he didn't even know why. "I'm really happy for you, Chat, you deserve someone who brings you happiness." He felt his cheeks warm, Marinette made him more than happy, he felt loved and like he was home when he was by her side.

But his expression schooled into something playful as his partner looked away, her own face pink. "Oh, is that a blush? Thinking of your own special boy?" Her scowl was lacking any real anger or annoyance and it twisted into a bright grin.

"The boy I like, the one I told you about, he asked me out and we're together now." At one point that would have hurt him, made his chest ache, but it just indicated how incredible Marinette was that he didn't feel anything but happiness.

His mouth spit out the phrase before he could even stop it. "Oh? So, the Bug has her Boo? I guess when you're on a date you're Bugandboo?" Her squawk of outrage had him laughing as he got up to run, delighting in just being able to play, a few people who were still awake cheered him on while others admonished him playfully for irritating the heroine.

By the time patrol ended he was sporting a sore arm, a hoarse voice from laughing, and the annoyance of being filmed falling off a roof into a dumpster when one of Monsieur Ramirer's pigeons flew in his face. But it was a good night and he promised to keep his eyes open for trouble in the form of butterflies.

Marinette knocked and waited for an answer, meeting surprised expressions, her own lips a flat line. "Can I...?" The nod was gentle as Marlena hugged her, whispering an apology of her own, but Marinette didn't blame her at all. Nora's hug was more like a wrestling move, cracking a few joints too, the twins were subdued for once. Walking to the open door, since Alya wasn't allowed to have her room closed off at all, Marinette knocked on the frame.

"Just cleaning my- oh." Alya emerged from her mess of clothes, the closet's contents emptied on the floor and sorted into piles, her expression guarded but somehow open.

Before she could lose her nerve, the designer cleared her throat. "I'm angry at you, for not telling me the truth about what was going on and then attacking my parents when you could have come clean before it got that far, but I'm sorry that you were a victim to her schemes too. I can't forgive you, at least not right now, but I respect you for trying to protect Nino even if I was the sacrifice because I don't know if I would have done anything different in your situation." Alya's eyes were watering and Marinette knew she was close to crying too, she'd decided that she wasn't going to hold onto grudges or anger any longer and had spent the day visiting her former classmates.

Part of moving on was deciding what emotions to hold onto, Wayzz and Longg had helped her come to terms with her lingering doubts and hurt emotions, she refused to be chained by the betrayal and hurt more than she needed to be. "Thank you, I always could trust you to be honest with me, for what it's worth I am sorry that I hid the truth from you." Marinette nodded at Alya and her grip on the doorframe tightened a little.

There wasn't a lot to say between them. "I want to trust you again, Alya, you inspired me to be better and to stand up for what was right and in a weird way you tried to protect me and Nino. Please do better so I can have my best friend back." Marinette's eyes watered and Alya's tears slid down her cheeks as she nodded, the designer opened her arms and the hug was everything she expected when Alya nearly tackled her, but it was what they both needed.

After their impromptu cry session, monitored by Nora to watch for butterflies, the two students said their farewells. Sliding under her Papa's arm as she exited the building, he'd insisted on coming with her to visit her former classmates, Marinette wiped her eyes with the offered handkerchief. "Feel a little better, dumpling?" He had been skeptical of this whole thing but supported her choice to do it.

"Yea, Papa, I do. I really do."

"Good, I'm glad. Now, I know you like to make all your clothes and for good reason, I've got a secret assignment of my own. You see, your Maman and I agreed I would know just what sort of dress you need to take Adrien's breath away for your date tonight. So, dumpling, we're going shopping." Marinette wanted to be upset but it had been a long time since her parents ever got to buy her clothes, a really long time actually, so she didn't argue as he caught a bus to the shopping district for them.

But she had to admit she didn't expect some of the choices he handed her to try on. Marinette might have accused him of asking Gabriel for help if not for the fact that all of the choices were all colors her father knew she liked and not things that were considered complimentary to her skin tone. After trying on what felt like hundreds of dresses, even if it was only twenty according to Tikki, Marinette and her Papa found one they both liked.

Pale rose in color with a fit and flare shape, the bodice was solid color with very short sleeves made of the same georgette lace that covered the knee-length skirt, she felt really cute in it and it wasn't too short or revealing. Marinette had white, round-toe, heels that she could wear with it and wanted to wear her hair down with loose curls. Her Maman, on their return home, admitted that out of the two of her parents it was her Papa that had an artist's eye and had often picked all of the dresses that Sabine herself wore on their dates.

Marinette hadn't known, though she decided it wasn't that surprising given her Papa's decorative skill, but she was glad that her Papa was happy for her relationship. "You have two hours to get ready before Adrien gets here, dumpling." That made her rush up the stairs and hurry to get ready since this was their first unsupervised date.

'That boy needs his Dad. Not his Father, Gabriel, or his boss. Adrien needs you in his life and if you don't shape up then I will report every last shred of truth on how you break labor laws and pull him from school illegally for photoshoots.'

Leonard's threat had hung heavy between the two men since the initial stirrings against Lila, the black eye Gabriel had sported for two weeks had been hidden with make-up but the bodyguard hadn't feared repercussions or assault charges, as a parent Gabriel respected Leonard and as a friend he respected him even more for doing what he'd done. Watching his son smooth down the jacket of his suit, planning to take his girlfriend to a restaurant known for their private settings so they could avoid the spotlight for some time, Gabriel was proud of Adrien and knew now that he had missed quite a bit.

Leonard met his gaze as the teenager rambled about his nerves, Nathalie busy reassuring him that Marinette would be thrilled to bits, the very slightest of nods from the man expelled most of the tension. Gabriel handed Adrien something he'd kept for his son, for quite some time, a delicate silver chain with loops for charms waiting. "You are under no pressure to accept this, or do what I had done, but I know you're nervous and hope that maybe this will help you with your own ideas for Marinette." Adrien's eyes were just as curious and warm as Emilie's were, it was both heartbreaking and so very amazing.

"Emilie had a book that she bought, I gave her a single flower on every date, she would press the flowers to preserve them; this is the start of a charm bracelet, I think perhaps Marinette would like something she can wear as a reminder of your affections." It was a guess but the girl proved to be very affectionate, though not incredibly handsy in public and it was a trait he appreciated, with her own anxious tendencies it would be best to have something tangible she could carry. Adrien grinned and nodded, looking at the time on his watch.

A smile on his face and a tight hug, Gabriel was nearly bowled over with the strength in his son's sudden motion, Adrien thanked him with a teary smile. "I already have plenty of ideas, thank you so much Dad!" Gabriel managed to hold off until Adrien left but the moment he was gone the tears started, it had been so long since he heard that title, Nathalie's hum was soft and Gabriel appreciated her quiet comfort. After a moment or two, managing to calm himself down, the man looked at Nooroo as the Kwami peeked out from behind the hall.

"Nooroo, if I were to give you back your Miraculous would you be able to find the Guardian?" The Butterfly hesitated but nodded, looking miserable to even admit that much. Gabriel removed the brooch and Nathalie only nodded as she took Duusu's brooch too, the two Kwami accepted them back with curious looks. "Nooroo and Duusu, I release you to be free and return to the Guardian. I am truly sorry that I allowed my grief to blind me to what I was losing and led me to abusing you as I had." The Butterfly Kwami offered a wavering smile, gratitude visible on his face as Duusu fluttered about energetically.

The Kwami nuzzled him. "I knew you were a good man, Gabriel, you just lost your way for a little bit. Thank you for setting me free." The two Kwami disappeared through the door and Nathalie followed him to what once was his lair, the butterflies and cocoons had disappeared, leaving just an empty garden and the glass chamber. Emilie had been embalmed in private, following her death, which was the reason she was in the state she was in now. Nathalie left him then to give him time to say goodbye, for the last time, Gabriel had no more tears to give and only apologized for losing his way.

"I will always cherish what we had, Emilie, I will never forget you; but I won't disappoint you any longer, I cannot allow myself to cling to us and continue to put Adrien in danger or push him away." As he placed his hand on the top of the glass, chest heaving with a deep breath, he contacted the burial company that had done the embalming. They hadn't thought much of his basement being a mausoleum of sorts, it was not new to plenty of the upper-class, once he activated the tinting on the coffin it looked just like any other.

Within the hour his wife was buried in her family plot, with the rest of the Graham de Vanily, and Gabriel gave himself the night to grieve. Free of the burden of the brooch, the burden of being chained to the past, and free to pursue a future beside his son once more.

Sabine laughed as Tom and Gabriel battled, with Adrien and Marinette on their date the two had contacted him and agreed to have him over, Leonard and Nathalie were on either side of her nursing hot drinks and their own chuckles. Having the man request to learn how to play Ultimate Mecha Strike had been a shock but he admitted that he wanted to be able to play with Adrien, he didn't know what his son was really fond of doing and needed a gateway of sorts, Sabine hadn't been able to help hugging the poor man and promising to help.

Watching him now, as he grunted with his hair free of styling products for once, she could tell there was something a little different about him this time; he ran another hand through his hair as he got locked into an animation sequence as Tom's mech unleashed a combo. "Take that you old pincushion." In the past she might have been worried but Gabriel never ceased to surprise her.

"Keep talking, you stale cream puff, once I figure this game out I'm going to make you eat those words." Gabriel was competitive, not that she was surprised by that, fashion was a cutthroat industry; but he wasn't to the point that he was a sore loser. In fact he appeared to be having fun and it warmed her to see a man trying to do better, especially after subjecting his son to harassment by that horrid little liar, Sabine glanced at her phone as it chimed.

Marinette and Adrien had both sent a picture, an adorable selfie of the two of them at the theater, they had done dinner and Adrien had gotten tickets for them to see Wicked together since it was currently playing. "The kids just reached the theater." Earning two non-committal sounds from the men, once again not surprised, the woman responded with a 'have fun' before leading Nathalie to the kitchen as Leonard continued to read his comic books.

"I've never seen him this relaxed, your family is quite amazing."

Sabine met the woman's gaze and smiled. "I like to think so too, shall we prepare some light snacks?" Nathalie nodded and Sabine was pretty happy to relay the ongoing news that Nadja learned from the interviews and messages flooding TVi.

“You mean-“

“I think he’s found it more important to prioritize what he has over what he’s lost.”

Chat Noir was quiet as Nooroo sat in his hands, Duusu perched on Ladybug’s shoulder quietly, the two Kwami had appeared in Ladybug’s room and she’d called him the following evening in order to give them time to rest. “I don’t understand why he’d do what he chose to, though I can’t say I wouldn’t do the same since I don’t know how I’d react, but I guess I’m glad he’s decided enough is enough.” Ladybug heard the sigh as she leaned on her partner’s arm, her own face wet with tears, she had taken one look at the tome that the two had brought with her and knew exactly where they came from.

Something she’d have to tell Chat Noir, she trusted him and didn’t want to keep him in the dark, but she knew how hard he’d taken it when she theorized her idol and boyfriend’s father as Hawkmoth the first time around. “I know who he was, these two coming to me only confirmed it, I am going to respect his request for a second chance. For me to have this make sense, Chat, you’ll have to know that I was one of Caline Bustier’s students at Collège François Dupont.” His eyes widened and he held out a hand for a moment, silencing her, then he cupped her chin and made her look at him.

Ladybug didn’t know what he was looking for. “Princess?” The hope in his voice sent a touch of warmth through her, making her throat tighten as she licked her lips.

“Mhm.”

Words escaped her then as she waited for his reaction, his pupils blowing wide and round, her heart thundering as her hands started to shake. She felt vulnerable and exposed, weightless as his silence kept her teetering on the edge of delight or misery, a part of her theorized who he was ever since Chat Blanc and she needed to be right. His mouth curved into a wide smile and his eyes glistened as green formed around him, leaving Adrien in his place, she’d never been happier to be right. “It’s you! It’s always been you! No wonder you’ve been wearing gray and pink a lot, you sneaky little bug mouse.” His weight crashed into her as she dismissed her own transformation and Tikki giggled above her as Plagg rolled his eyes, her mouth meeting Adrien’s in a frantic kiss.

Once they both laughed over how badly they had danced around each other, with promises to tell each other everything, Marinette knew it was time to finish what she’d been saying. “They brought me a book too, Adrien, the book Lila stole from you that got you pulled from school.” Adrien’s arms tightened on her waist and she squeezed his body a little, to remind him she was here with him, but there wasn’t any sort of anger on his face.

A weak acceptance, exhaustion, maybe some hope. “You want to give him a second chance?” Marinette nodded and cupped his cheek.

“I think we can do that, now that we know the truth, Chaton; he deserves that much, he’s been trying hard to be there for you.” He was learning how to play video games, the two were taking cooking lessons, Marinette had seen him at every photoshoot and he promised dinners with her family every other week as well as an appearance at the Parent’s Dinner the school was having for this year’s graduation award presentation.

Adrien’s eyes watered. “Thank you, Bugaboo.” He kissed her again and she giggled.

“I told you to stop calling me Bugaboo, Chaton, I like Princess more.” His eyes twinkled and he nodded as he cradled her close. “I’m glad though because I thought I liked two boys, I’m really happy it’s just one.” His chuckle into her collar made her giggle.

But he had a warm mischief in his gaze when he let her go. “Isn’t Chaton a little telling, I’m sure Aurore will connect the spots quickly.” Marinette poked his nose with a wink.

“I’ll just have to call you mon Chevalier.” He flushed and she transformed with a grin. “But, for now, I have to go to bed; I have school and I recall being promised fancy coffee and a wake-up kiss.” He tried to shout after her but she swung away with a whoop. The real surprise came nearly half-an-hour later, after a shower and changing, when her Maman said she had company.

Adrien had an overnight bag and a grin as he joined her in her room, the door left open per her parent’s request, they snuggled under her comforter and she cuddled Plagg as the cat Kwami snuggled against her neck. “A cat could get used to this, I’m moving in too Sugarcube.” Tikki’s giggle made Adrien hum as he agreed softly, cradling her close to him as Marinette felt her eyelids droop.

“So what now? No Hawkmoth or Mayura, you have all the Miraculous, just patrol and stop petty crime?”

Marinette grinned. “We learn how to be Guardians, not all threats are corrupt holders, I think there might be something bigger on the horizon now that the circle is closed again.��� Adrien hummed as he nodded against her head, promising to study hard, sleep drawing them in and peace making it easy to feel at ease.

[alexsmitposts]

America Under Total Censorship Lockdown as it Circles the Drain The United States is under a broad censorship lockdown. News from regional press is blocked from national coverage, stories are crushed, certainly Facebook and Google ban and delist, but now at a level that should be unimaginable. The stories run in two areas, seemingly unrelated, that being BLM protests and the other COVID-19. Both are political issues for sure. One strange, certainly inexplicable move has been made by the Trump regime, starting July 16, 2020. Trump has ordered defunding of COVID-19 testing, something that will certainly cripple efforts to rein in the pandemic, and he has also ordered massive cuts to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), ending their ability to report test numbers, hospitalizations and deaths. He then issued an executive order to hospitals to stop reporting COVID-19 data to the appropriate agencies and to channel data directly to his political staff. This will be the painful story as there is a reason for these actions, ignored entirely by the press, but first we need to establish the extent and severity of censorship from the ground up. We will cover a number of stories that should have been followed, certainly investigated and ask some hard questions. Real news reaches a very few and with it warnings, to be careful. Even the FBI, once the enforcers of corporate rule in America, is left out of the loop. There may well be a hideous secret being kept from Americans and the world about how bad things are in the US and any who threaten that secret may well face the fate of so many who have died reporting facts that make the Deep State uncomfortable. As a journalist, I regularly get whistleblower reports, certainly on a daily basis. Many are outrageous and conspiratorial and weeding between credible and insane is taxing in a world where “insane” is the norm. However, a pattern has made itself perfectly clear. Let us take a few anecdotal issues and see where we go. This week, in Detroit, a man convicted of two murders was released. It seems the police detective who handled the case back in 2002 faked everything, witnesses were coached, evidence fabricated, a man spent 16 years in jail and was obviously innocent. The story was reported but what wasn’t reported is that the same Detective Sergeant had done this before. All complaints were quashed by police officials, and many of his fake cases were featured on reality television. Up to half of the “solved” murder cases in Detroit, once “Murder Capital of the World,” involved this corrupt cop, who is still “on the job,” meaning hundreds are in prison for decades, even life, who are innocent. It also means this is still going on. Worse still, who did the killings? We now suspect that a criminal group within the police may be running a “murder for hire” organization and has been doing so for years. There are no investigations, and no one is asking why. Who are their clients? On a broader national issue, there is a huge but largely unreported controversy in Portland, Oregon. President Trump and Attorney General William Barr have sent several hundred armed personnel to Portland to act as fake police against protesters there. No one is sure where these men come from, the fake police, not the protesters, though this is a valid question also, but they seem to be prison guards. It is illegal in the US for the federal government to send police to a state. It is illegal for prison guards, who are not police, to exercise arrest power outside the walls of a prison as they are not “certified” and “sworn” law enforcement officers within the state where they are, in this case, deployed. This is a massive constitutional crisis. Then something more curious happened. Senator Ted Cruz, a comic figure, tweeted a photo of those arrested by these fake police. Photos of a dozen young men, all white, claiming they were Antifa operatives. In the Tweet, Cruz referred to their “mullet” haircuts. The “mullet” is a style often ridiculed. Those wearing this hairstyle are invariably rural, deeply conservative, and poorly educated. They are classic “Trump base.” There was little evidence, other than sketchy news stories, that Antifa even existed. It is now clear that the all-white violent demonstrators are hired thugs from among the rural poor, hired from “Trumpland.” This is a common GOP practice dating back to Watergate and Donald Segretti. The same story came up in Grand Rapids, Michigan when violent demonstrators began looting during a Black Lives Matter demonstration in June. Those arrested were white, had arrived from across the state, and had been paid $300 each by political organizers. Guessing whose political organizers isn’t too difficult. These facts were delisted by Google, the Tweets were taken down and Facebook posts were erased as well. No press follow-up was done and both police and prosecutors have since “disappeared” those arrested. On June 1, 2020, a Ukrainian truck driver who had worked for a CIA sponsored militia fighting against Donbass separatists, plowed his vehicle into protesters in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Bogdan Vechirko failed to kill anyone, but shocking video showed 2000 peaceful demonstrators running for their lives. All reporting ended there. We found that Bogdan Vechirko was not jailed and that no legal action has been taken. Worse still, no one has asked why. A month later, in Seattle, an Eritrean immigrant plowed his white Jaguar into protesters killing two. His family has strong ties to CIA sponsored war lords. The video is among some of the most horrific ever filmed with those he struck at 100 miles per hour flying high in the air. He was chased down by a witness who pulled his vehicle over miles away. Press was told he is under arrest. No details are available. He may be out on bail; no details are available. Where he lives, anything about his family or background is withheld. He is a ghost. Only days ago, a Trump supporter entered a convenience store outside Lansing, Michigan. State law requires anyone entering a store to wear a mask. When confronted by a shopper, the Trump supporter pulled out a large kitchen knife, just the thing used for buying cigarettes and milk, and stabbed the 77-year-old shopper repeatedly. The video from the store is withheld as is the name of the victim and any witnesses. It gets better. In moments, police found the perpetrator and an officer pulled his car over. This was in an affluent neighborhood, in front of the perpetrator’s home. The perpetrator got out of his vehicle with a butcher knife in one hand and a large screwdriver in the other. The police officer, a woman with 22 years’ experience, demanded he drop his weapons. His replies, maniacal and haunting, are unforgettable, like something out of a horror film. As he ran toward the officer, she fired more than a dozen shots, hitting him 8 times as he slashed at her. He barely went down even then but died at the scene. Now the incident has been “un-happened.” There are no facts about who this was, why this happened or how the perpetrator, a well-paid state employee, became a terrorist. We have dozens more such incidents daily in the US, some are legitimate, angry people under pressure while others are theatrical with the perpetrator’s ghosts. As a juxtapose, when a wealthy couple in St. Louis pointed weapons at demonstrators near their magnificent home, media reported on every aspect of their lives, story upon story for weeks. These are all tabloid level stories that should have driven media to shake every tree, question families, show photos of victims and bloody crime scenes. This is how the media makes money, as the saying goes, “if it bleeds-it reads.” Not anymore, not when perpetrators are clearly not what they seem to be. Where are we going? Well, we are certainly going to take this one home. So, why is there a massive crackdown on reporting? Is it tied to police murders? Yes, maybe it is but we don’t think so. Is it tied to COVID-19? We have held off thus far in asking questions about censorship of COVID-19’s impact on the US. We will ask some of those questions now. We have both facts and “alternative facts” hitting the media regarding the pandemic. As COVID-19 levels skyrocket in states like Arizona, Florida, California and two dozen others, reporting becomes, not just contradictory but insanely so. In Florida the governor, DeSantis, claims that 98% of the state’s hospital beds are currently empty. The graphs he publishes are all over Twitter and Facebook, placed there by political trolls. At the same time, however, the largest hospitals in Florida report that they are at 119% of capacity and are overrun with COVID-19 patients. Rebekah Jones, a medical statistician fired for disputing faked data ordered by Governor DeSantis, says deaths are being not just underreported but on a large scale. Easily available video of overflowing hospital wards and licensed “real” medical professionals complaining of lack of medicines and equipment, can be found but are never reported on mainstream media. We do know this, the only drug that treats COVID-19, Remdesivir, is virtually unaffordable, is totally controlled by Jared Kushner and that the State of Florida, in the midst of a massive outbreak of COVID-19, exhausted all supplies over a week ago and Washington isn’t sure when they can release more. This isn’t being reported either. We are also told that those who die are often over 80 years old but massive anecdotal evidence, including regular reports by experts, cite the large number of young victims who are seriously ill. However, their serious illness and hospitalization is not reported and their deaths, if they are dying, are unreported as well. In fact, none of the data received can be depended on, not just in Florida but in dozens of states that seem to be “sitting on” numbers hospitalized and even fatalities. This censorship is driving many to openly shun needed precautions leading to massive increases, all documented, of COVID-19 infections. Why? Conclusion As a test against censorship and misreporting, algorithms are run, based on total tested, total tested positive, total hospitalized, total cured and those who die. As more are tested, more with lesser symptoms, the percentage of infected who later die is continually lowered or was until the beginning of July 2020 when numbers hit a plateau. When COVID reporting began to yield usable data, around mid-April 2020, death rates of those infected were at an unrealistic 36%. Testing levels, through presidential interference, were extremely low, something that would seal America’s role as a failed state. As testing increased, the percentage of recovered compared to deaths followed a predictable curve, which would flatline at some point. With testing levels, after months of interference, substantive enough to give a meaningful result and death levels somewhat modified by the use of Remdesivir, the death percentage “flatlined” at 7 percent. Thus, if a state like Florida were to have 10,000 new cases in a day, with an average of 7% dying, this would mean that eventual death levels would hit 700 a day for this state alone. This figure would be modified by higher or lower numbers testing positive or by lower death rates for larger numbers of younger infected. No such figures are reported. Using figures already proven, many states are reporting very inconsistent figures when looking at testing-hospitalizations-recoveries and deaths. Simply put, they are lying, underreporting by as much as 50%. Florida is clearly one of these. It is clear that the press has yet to do any statistical analysis on COVID-19. Why? There is also significant evidence that the medical community is aware of these inconsistencies. Respected medical professionals have come forward repeatedly with claims of underreporting and, more serious as well, their own theories that COVID-19 is a biological weapon. Attempts to debunk professionals by medical quacks and charlatans backed by conservative think tanks fill the media, while respected professionals are boycotted entirely. Could the US be hiding 100,000 additional COVID-19 dead? A recent leak from the CDC now predicts 800,000 dead by the end of 2020. From the Daily Beast: “If someone had suggested five months ago that we would be seeing more than 3 million cases and 135,000 COVID-19 deaths in the US by mid-July, I wouldn’t have believed it. But now it’s distinctly possible that, five months from now, half of all Americans could have been infected with SARS-CoV-2, and more than 800,000 Americans may die in this extraordinary outbreak. That is what many of our most prominent public-health experts now expect.” However, as of this writing that figure is 143,042, or is it? Is there a lie so big that the United States would find it offensive to perpetrate? I think we all know that answer.

[purplesurveys]

851

How have you been feeling lately? Have you been doing ok? Uncomfortable because of period cramps and the heat WHICH IS STILL HERE, even though it’s supposed to be gone right about now and it’s supposed to be raining at this point. I wish I was kidding saying this but we literally have three electric fans turned on just for the living and dining rooms. It’s crazy and stupid and it shouldn’t be this hot anymore. I’m doing better mentally and emotionally, so at least that balances things out lol.

Are you currently in quarantine? Still am. While all countries are slowly going back to normal, our Covid cases continue to get higher and higher everyday because our government hasn’t done anything except to make us stay home for three months. No mass testing, no alternate public transport plans, and for some reason Duterte keeps borrowing billions of dollars’ worth of loans from the World Bank nearly every week, and we have no idea where the stupid fucking money goes. Our government is convinced they’ve been doing everything right so they’ve loosened up quarantine protocols, so with malls and restaurants being open again we’ve done nothing but reach record high cases almost every day.

Do you wear a mask when you go to the store? I’ve gone outside a total of three times since March and I wore a mask for two of those times. The first time I went out I just genuinely forgot to bring a mask, but in the end it was fine because I only had to stay in the car.

Does your state require people to wear masks in stores? As far as I know it’s not a requirement per se, but fortunately everyone follows the safety precautions anyway.

Do you know anyone who’s had the coronavirus? Yeah, my mom’s former boss. This is a bit of a stretch but I also know someone personally who had immediate family members that tested positive.

What was the last sweet treat you ate? I had a peanut butter doughnut from J.CO! Soooooooo good.

Was it a nice day out today? No, it’s too hot. Even if life was normal rn I’d prefer to be indoors with air conditioning, like a mall.

Is the weather nice where you live usually? Fuck no. It is disgustingly hot, sticky, and humid 3/4 of the year.

What was the last thing you ordered online? I don’t do a lot of online shopping. When I get something online it’s usually to get food delivered, and the last time I did that it was me and Andrew getting Hong Kong noodles.

Are you expecting a package right now? Nopes.

Have you ever ordered anything from Wish? If so, what did you buy, and did you feel it was worth it? No, though I remember Good Mythical Morning featuring it in a couple of episodes. I don’t feel comfortable buying from stores or sellers that sell things for a lot cheaper because they could always be fake, so I wouldn’t feel comfortable buying from that site.

Are you a youtuber? If so, are you consistent with uploads? and how many subscribers do you have? I’m not, but I do have my own channel. I just use it to like videos and subscribe to my favorites, though.

What is one thing you hate about summer? The weather. Honest to goodness I’d really rather live somewhere that gave me -40C weather everyday.

Did you go outside today? No. My dad wanted to bring Cooper to my grandma’s place and I planned to come along, but at the last minute he changed his mind and did just the errands he was supposed to do.

What is the name of your youtube channel, if you have one? It’s just my full name because my YouTube is linked to my Google account.

What was the name of the last store or restaurant that overcharged you? I don’t know any instances where that would happen. I don’t find service charge inconvenient because I know that directly goes to the servers anyway so I don’t mind how high it gets most of the time. Is your room more often messy or clean? It’s clean most of the time but sometimes when I’m busy I won’t be able to keep it clean and it’ll be clean-messy? Like I’ll leave stuff around but I’ll still know where everything is lol.

Who is someone you miss? ALL MY FRIENDS BRUH

What is something you miss? Being able to go out and freely do activities. Life Pre-COVID < Life pre-COVID, perfectly put. I miss getting an allowance, being out until midnight, having dates with my girlfriend thhe most.

Do you feel like your emotions are often haywire? Not necessarily, but they can get pretty unstable sometimes.

Have you ever received a misdiagnosis from a doctor? Nah but I’ve been given a prescription that didn’t work. We went to our family doctor who made me take a certain medicine for three days, and I started getting worried when three days had passed and I still had my fever. I went to Angela’s mom and she was super quick to tell me that that medicine wasn’t the right one to take for a UTI and prescribed me with something else; and that second one ended up working like magic.

Have you ever been “diagnosed” with a mental illness from an online friend? who is not a doctor? If yes, isn’t that frustrating? That’s never happened before, but if it did I wouldn’t let my frustration get the best of me. I’d just tell them that they should avoid doing that if they’re not a professional because they could very much end up seriously harming people.

Do you have any friends that you can trust and tell everything to? All of them.

What was the name of your favorite roommate you’ve had? Kimi :)

Do you have a favorite book that you’ve read multiple times? Yeah when I was a kid I would reread this book that an aunt had given me for Christmas as much as I could. For many years I forgot the title but after painstakingly Googling the few keywords I could remember I finally found out it again – it’s a series called Three Girls in the City by Jeanne Betancourt, but I only ever read the first book because it was the only gift I got. It’s not my favorite book, but I’d be so happy if I got to be reunited with it again because I don’t think we got to keep it around when we moved houses.

What’s one book or book series that you’ve read multiple times? ^ That, multiple wrestling memoirs, and Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. I’ve also reread the Twilight Saga once.

What was the name of the funniest kid you’ve ever babysat? I never babysat anyone other than younger relatives, but the one I enjoyed taking care of the most was my cousin Lucas. He was the smartest kid I babysat so it was fun talking to him, plus his yaya was always nice to me, they had a playground and sandbox at home, and all I had to do was keep him company while he watched Thomas and Friends over and over.

Do you enjoy babysitting? Just the younger relatives that were smarter and more behaved. I didn’t like the kids who thought kicking and being rowdy were fun.

Do you have any big regrets? One big one.

Are there things about your past that bother you? Of course. My entire childhood is one.

What was the last thing you saw or read on social media that made you angry? OMG get ready for this one. Our dumb as a rock presidential spokesperson was talking about how happy he is that the country beat UP’s (my school, which the government hates because we always talk shit about them lol) prediction of 40,000 Covid cases by the end of June if the government doesn’t do anything to prevent more cases. How many cases do we have? Fucking 36,000. Our government is happy because they finally beat our school over something for the very first time and they are technically happy that we got 36,000 cases, which if you round up will give you 40,000 anyway. My school had a fucking FIELD DAY over it and now he is a national meme.

Do you often post about controversial topics on facebook? At first I didn’t but that’s because I wasn’t active on Facebook in the past anyway. After I realized that I had a bigger friends list on Facebook I decided to put it to good use and post about controversial topics to educate others. It’s made a bunch of conservative family members uncomfortable and that’s the goal, son. 

Do you think it’s a good idea to post about serious topics on social media? or do you think that it’s better to discuss serious topics in person? It definitely is. In person is good too but you don’t always get that opportunity, so sharing stuff through social media doesn’t hurt too as long as information is accurate. For instance most of my relatives life far from me, so if I want them to get a piece of my mind about Trump or BLM or abortion, sharing informative graphics and tables is always convenient.

What was your favorite book you had to read for school? Without Seeing the Dawn by Stevan Javellana is my absolute favorite. It’s probably the closest thing to being my favorite book. Number the Stars by Lois Lowry is a good runner-up. On the other hand, Dekada ‘70 by Lualhati Bautista is my favorite that was written in Filipino.

Have you ever failed a class and had to repeat it? Nope. I really believe I was meant to fail algebra in my freshman year in high school because I failed every exam, but I think my teacher just took pity on me and gave me a barely-passing mark at the end of the year so that I didn’t have to go to summer school. As for college, I’ve never failed a class.

What class in school did you hate the most? In college I hated my economics elective. I still don’t know why that’s mandatory for us journ students... I also dreaded a couple of journalism classes, but it was more because of the teachers than the classes’ topics.

Have you ever wanted to be a teacher? I don’t think so.

What’s one childhood dream that has stuck with you, and one that has not? Having a big house; becoming a firefighter.

Would you want to re-live your childhood over again if you could? I’ve already said it on this survey, but: fuck no. I’m ok where I am now, even if I am a clumsy adult.

Which do you like more: being an adult or being a kid? Being an adult. Being a kid meant having to stomach the smell of hard alcohol and cigarettes from morning to evening everyday; being caught in the middle of screaming matches between drunk relatives; and being cramped in a single-floor home with 12 people. Like I said, I love where I am now. The amount of independence I gained in college was freeing and felt so nice and I’m glad my parents never tried holding me back. I’m also glad that I didn’t fall into the same alcohol trap, and that I know how to deal with my alcohol responsibly.

At what age were you when you started to feel like you were mature enough to offer others advice? Around college-age, so like when I turned 18.

Did your parents smoke or drink when you were growing up? Neither of them did, because we had enough alcoholism happening at my old home. It was actually my drunken relatives that finally drove my mom out of that house.

Do you enjoy bonfires? I’ve only been to one and I was like 9 years old then, so I wouldn’t know how I feel about them now.

Have you ever stepped on a sparkler? Nope.

What, do you know of, are you allergic to? No allergies.

Have you ever ridden in an ambulance? Also nopes. I always feel bad for the ambulances that I see because I live in a very traffic-heavy city and they always end up getting stuck and crawling through traffic like the rest of us. We do try to swerve, but our roads are so tiny and always cramped that there’s little space left for us to move out of the ambulance’s way, so even though we’re able to make a path for it, the space is not big enough for the ambulance to drive in the speed it’s supposed to.

What is your favorite version of the Bible to read, if applicable? That’s a big no thanks from me.

Do you follow trends? or are you a trendsetter? Yeah, I follow some of them if I think they are nice.

Has anyone ever described you as a trendsetter? Nope, because I am not.

Do you know anyone who used to be loving, but then turned cold? List three people you’ve known whom this has happened to. My mom, Athenna, Macy. The only person I don’t resent out of these three is Macy, because I know she turned distant due to mental health issues and because she wants to fix herself first, which is responsible.

What SAT subjects, if any, did you get a perfect score in? We don’t have SAT.

What were your best subjects in school? and what was your favorite subject in school? I loved taking history electives in college, and I performed the best in them too. I also did well in international relations, which was under the political science department.

Have you ever been abused by a parent or legal guardian? I’ve been verbally and emotionally abused by my mom ever since I can remember.

Do you have a lot of wounds from your past? If we’re getting visual then I’d rather say that I have one ugly, infected gash that gets bothersome from time to time. My past isn’t made up of little tiny scattered wounds.

Has anyone ever called you a jerk? Behind my back, probably.

Are you a jerk? I can be, so I don’t mind being called it. I never said I was the nicest person.

What color were your bedroom walls in high school? They have always been white. My mom doesn’t let us have control over our own rooms, so in the beginning it’s always been plain boring white. Don’t get me wrong, I like my room but sometimes it just feels like living in a cell.

Is there a girl or guy you wish you hadn’t let slip away? I wish I was still close with my high school friends, and I remember saying how they were for keeps in my old surveys so that makes me extra sad haha. I’m civil with most of them, but no longer close. And I only ever talk to them if it’s their birthdays or if they achieved something big. The only people I’ve remained close with from that original group are Angela and Hans.

Is there an old friend that you miss and would like to reconnect with? Not really. Sofie and I have grown apart from each other now and we’re both very happy, so there’s no need to change that. I’m okay with seeing her once or twice a year.

Who has hurt you the most? My mom.

Have you been bullied? Yeah in kindergarten. Long-lasting effects though.

Which talent show, if any, would you most like to audition for? and have you auditioned for one? No thanks. I don’t have the kind of talent that I can show off, like singing or playing an instrument.

Do you know anyone who’s auditioned for American Idol? I don’t think so. But my mom knows someone who auditioned for our local version of America’s Got Talent. He’s a ventriloquist that my mom used to get for our parties. As far as I know he got into the grand finals, but I’m not sure if he won.

Is there someone you think should audition that hasn’t yet? American Idol’s been over for a while now.

What time of day do you usually feel your best? I love the evenings.

What’s one way in which you’ve changed within the last ten years? I was in sixth grade then, I’ve graduated from college now. My mom was purely verbally abusive to me then, now we have brief stints of having an actually healthy relationship. I had one dog then and I have two dogs now; I had no friends then and I have tons of them now. There’s been a lot of tiny changes but nothing that were life-changing.

Do you feel like time goes by fast, or slow? It goes both ways depending on how stimulated I am or how much fun I’m having.

Who do you know who has died of cancer? One of my great-aunts.

Has there been cancer in your family? Yeah, ^ that. Other than her I’m not sure if we’ve had other cases. My family tends to be hush-hush about cancer and only ever call it ‘c’ or ‘the big one.’

Have you ever stayed overnight in a hospital, and if so, what for? Yes, once for a low platelet count.

Have you ever been a victim of police misconduct? No but the cops here are just as corrupt as the ones in the US, so I can very much be a victim any time. It’s just a matter of being in the wrong place at the right time.

Have you ever been so angry you wanted to sue someone? Not so much that I wanted to sue someone, no.

Have you ever been a victim of racism? My country isn’t diverse at all and we’re all Filipinos here, and I’ve only ever traveled to Asian countries, so no. But racism is a big reason why I have no plans to go to other countries known for it.

Have you ever deleted a friend on Facebook for making racist comments? I’ve unfriended those who were being little bitches about BLM and George Floyd’s death, so I guess that kinda counts as being racist. I still have a few racist Facebook friends that I keep around, but that’s because they’re family members.

What was the last thing you ate? Binagoongan.

What was the theme of your senior prom? Clair de Lune, so like the moon and shit.

Did you go to prom? It was mandatory, so I had to go even though I really had no interest.

Have ever been engaged or married? I have been neither.

Are you an aunt or uncle? Nah but I’m a godmother to one of my cousins.

Do you live to glorify God and to do His will? LOL no

Are you happy with the way you are living your life day-to-day right now? It could be better and more filled with activity. But I’m not miserably depressed right now and that’s more than enough for me.

Do you feel like your life was better or worse six years ago? It was slightly better. I feel like 2014 was my best year.

Have you ever made a huge, catastrophic mistake? Not anything that ruined my life or someone else’s, no.

Do you feel like you are currently in a state of suffering? and that not all of your basic needs are being met? If so, how long have you been in a state of suffering? Basic needs?? So you mean poverty? No.

Do you hate social injustice? Absolutely. Anyone who tolerates it is automatically a gigantic prick, I’d say.

Are you happy with the current social class you are in? No. I don’t know how it translates to English, but in Filipino we have this term called naghaharing-uri that comprises the very very very very tiny top of the social pyramid and it’s made up of top government officials and their families, heads of corporations, old money families, etc. It’s no secret that it’s this 1% that exploits the 99% remaining in the pyramid, so even though I’m relatively comfortable in my class, I hate that, when it comes down to it, we’re only being used by this 1% for their own benefit.

Life isn’t fair. True or false? True.

Do you hate that life is so unfair? Sometimes, if it’s for stuff about social injustice and how some people have to be homeless, why homophobia exists, etc. But if it’s for tiny problems, I feel like they’re necessary sometimes so we can learn from them.

Name a few people who seem to have everything handed to them. Some richer kids that I know.

Who do you go to when you’re upset? Sometimes myself, sometimes Gabie.

Do you pray less or more than you did 5 years ago? A LOT LESS, thank fuck I got out of that trap.

Do you pray a lot? Definitely not.

Do you frequently have back pain? Yeah, haha. Kinda expected considering I have scoliosis.

What’s the worst side effect you’ve experienced for a medication? and what’s the worst withdrawal effect you’ve experienced from a medicine? Nothing worse than diarrhea. I’ve never experienced withdrawal.

Have you ever used an epi pen? Nopes.

What’s a name that you like but probably wouldn’t use for one of your kids? Isabella because I’m already an Isabelle and my girlfriend has a sister named Isabela.

What’s your name, and do you like it? Robyn. I like it now.

Would you prefer to give your kids common names or unique names? Common, more old-school names. I just feel like they sound super elegant.

Do you feel like anybody values you in the way that you deserve? Angela, Andrew, and Gab.

Who have you felt the most valued by? ^ Them.

Have you ever been treated like you were inferior? For sure.

What was the name of the biggest bully in your high school? Oh my god this survey is so long... we didn’t have bullies in high school. We had mean girls and mean girl cliques, but as long as you weren’t involved in drama with them you’d be fine.

Do you ever sleep outside? Nah. I’d sleep at the rooftop but there are sooooo many mosquitoes at night.

How many siblings do you have? Two.

Are you the oldest, youngest, middle, or only child? Eldest.

How many kids do you want to have? One or two would be great.

Do you want to get married? Yessssssss.

Best date you’ve been on? Probably that time we went to BGC so we can feel fancy and have a fancy dinner, then when we meant to walk back to our car to go home we ended up having impromptu drinks at like 11 PM when we randomly found a jazz bar loudly playing live music in the area. OH and that time we went museum hopping in Manila and we ended the day having delicioussss Italian food.

Dream date? Traveling out of the country.

Ever kissed someone on New Year’s? Nah. We celebrate New Year’s with our respective families so there’s no chance of that happening. Which is fine, because New Year’s is traditionally a family-centric holiday here so it would be weird for anyone to ditch their families.

Have you ever had an experience so good you felt like you were flying? Sure.

Have you ever been in so much pain you prayed that you would die? YES, with my toothache last year.

What brings you the most joy? My dogs.

What is your passion; what is it that would bring you the most joy and fulfillment in life? I’m at a point where it still keeps changing, so I don’t wanna give an absolute answer to this just yet.

Have you ever laid your dreams aside because someone else wanted you to? That’s never happened to me. I only ever gave up on one dream because it realistically wasn’t attainable, when it came down to it.

Who supports you in everything you do? My two best friends.

Who always tries to stop you whenever you try to go after your dreams? I haven’t had anyone bar me, but if someone tried to they would definitely hear from me.

Do you believe in following your heart, in going after your dreams? Not always.

Do you wish other people would want you to be happy? Of course.

Do you wish you had someone who loved and supported you? I already do.

[officialthiamlibrary]

Meet The Mods - iftheskyisthelimit

We’ve had a few requests to do something similar to our “Behind The Screens” features in order to introduce ourselves, and we felt that after around a year of running this blog, and having another few people come on board along the way that now would probably be a good time to do it! 

The idea is that we’ll each take a turn at filling out and posting one of these so that you guys can to know us all a little better including our own personal tastes/preferences and get a little bit more of an idea of how we all work and what we each bring to the team etc…

About You

Username/Name: 

iftheskyisthelimit / Lisa

AO3/Tumblr: 

https://archiveofourown.org/users/iftheskyisthelimit / http://iftheskyisthelimit.tumblr.com/ 

How did you find your way to the Thiam fandom? What about them drew you in? 

I’d lurked in the Teen Wolf fandom for a while on Tumblr, and became really interested in Theo’s character and his story since he’d shown up in Season 5 (okay at first it was his looks that got me interested… let’s be honest), which evolved into being interested in his backstory when we found out a bit more about him. It wasn’t until his return in Season 6 that I enjoyed watching their characters together and their interactions and started looking around more on Tumblr for their characters that I discovered it wasn’t just me... then I randomly came across the Thiam ship through seeing some fics on Tumblr and found the Official Thiam Library as result of that... 

Using a sentence, where the word count is either equal to or less than the number of letters in your two favorite Teen Wolf episode names, tell us about yourself. (ex, Motel California + Werewolves of London = 33 ; Raving + Galvanize =15)

Memory Found + Apotheosis = 21 - I’m slightly quirky but serious, love music, reading and travelling... kinda funny and always overly organised. Can’t ever cut something short...

What’s one thing about you or your life that we’d be surprised to know about?

Do you want serious, interesting or fun facts? I’ll do both as they might surprise people. Serious/boring: I have at least 3 chronic illnesses which tend to floor me, hence my long absences between writing & updating what I’m working on. Interesting: I can speak/read/understand around 5 languages and I’m a bit of a different cultures & sociology nerd.

One other thing I guess is when I get interested in a topic I get interested and have to know aallllll the ins and outs of it and thoroughly research it, so I’m probably full of boring random facts about a bunch of things that come in handy on general knowledge quizzes, but which no-one has any interest in knowing...

Other Shows/Movies You Follow:

Does too many to mention count as an answer? No? Okay… In no particular order *deep breath* 

Shows: The Handmaids Tale, Animal Kingdom, The 100, Vikings, Stranger Things, All American, Riverdale, Scream, Supernatural, Parks and Rec, Vampire Diaries, Big Bang Theory, Modern Family, Twelve Monkeys, Shadow Hunters, Game Of Thrones, Reign, American Horror Story, Buffy… There are literally a ton more but I really can’t think on them at the moment….

Movies: I can’t really say that I follow movies per-se… if I had to choose I’d say Marvel movies though if that counts as an answer? Umm… genre wise I like a wide range but mainly gravitate towards comedy, action and thriller movies. Or something with a good twist in the story where it either throws what you thought you were watching on its head, or you get an “aaahhhhh that’s was happening” moment. To watch a horror, it has to have that something that makes me want to watch it or get invested in it… whether it’s a character I really relate to or can get invested in, or a really good story. My favourite horror is probably Haunting In Connecticut, and I saw Midsommar recently and thought it was really amazingly done!

Other Fandoms You Follow:

I don’t really follow a lot of fandoms if I’m honest. I would probably say after Teen Wolf I follow the Marvel, The 100 and Supernatural fandoms more. Mainly the Captain America/Steve/Bucky fandoms. I love a good discussion about Animal Kingdom too!

Other Favourite Characters from shows/movies?

Uuuuhhhh…. Okay you asked for it, I was going to explain my reasons for why I love each but I’d be here all day and this part alone would end up turning into an essay.

Steve Harrington (Stranger Things), April Ludgate (Parks and Rec) , Sam Winchester (Supernatural), Craig Middlebrooks (Parks and Rec), Mickey Milkovich (Shameless US), Bucky Barnes (Marvel), James Cole (Twelve Monkeys), Jack Kline (Supernatural), Michael Langon (American Horror Story), Catherine de Medici (Reign), Constance Langdon (American Horror Story), Dean Winchester (Supernatural), Alec Lightwood (Shadow Hunters), Anya Jenkins (Buffy), Raphael Santiago (Shadow Hunters), Stephane Narcisse (Reign), Kai Parker (Vampire Diaries), John Murphy (The 100) 

What do you like to create (writing/art/videos)? 

I’d really love to be creative enough to make art or videos, but I’m really not! I’m far more comfortable with writing… I find it a lot easier to plan a story, or just to start writing and let the words flow that way and see where it goes. It’s a good way for me to express myself and to work through feelings or to just switch off for a while and create words on a page.

Do you only create for Teen Wolf/Thiam?

I have written for Supernatural in the past and I’m planning to write a Raphael fic for Shadow Hunters at some point and maybe a John Murphy one because I’ve not found many for him that cater to my angsty tastes when there’s so much that can be explored... But at the moment yes it’s only for Teen Wolf. I’ve also posted one Sceo fic which I would like to continue as well!

Which genres do you prefer reading and creating for?

Angst, angst, angst… did I mention angst?? It just feels right to me to write angstier fics, the words and ideas just seem to flow really well, which is a surprise as I’m not really an angsty person in life. It’s just what I’ve always gravitated towards writing and I find a lot better to express myself in that way. I have a humour/angst WIP which I decided to attempt a while ago and I did quite enjoy writing something a little different from what I normally do and people seemed to enjoy it.

If your creative process was a person, what type would they be? What would they do? Wear? Listen to? How do they handle conflict?

Quite probably the most disorganised messiest person alive… No not really… just sorta… kinda… maybe… In all seriousness, they’d be half organised and half “ lets see where this road takes us”. They would probably wear all black all day every day, and be a half emo kid who listens to punk pop and emo music from their teens with a healthy mix of dance and sad songs. Handling conflict? We don’t do that here… we bottle up our feelings and hide them away until they come out in the wrong ways. No really… I think they’d express themselves pretty clearly with 1000 words instead of 100.

Official Thiam Library

How did you find the Official Thiam Library?

I found the Official Thiam Library through searching the Theo Raeken tags on Tumblr and seen the page name pop up a few times, I had a look at the page not long after and followed pretty quickly, I needed my Theo/Thiam fix and this page covered it very well!

First impressions?

“Woah, they’re on the ball!” and then when I saw a few of the events the page done I was really impressed at how often they posted recommendations and how they could organise it all.

How did you come to be involved on the mod team?

I filled in the form for Beta Readers and Helpers for the Thiam Big Bang, I’d have loved to have participated but I didn’t know if I’d have been able to commit to having such a large work completed on a deadline, so I thought I’d offer to help in another way, having helped to run the Supernatural SummerGen for a few years. Tiffany got back to me pretty quickly about it and I came on board at that point.

What do you feel that you bring to the team?

Uuuhhh… I hate these types of questions haha! I really feel like I mostly bring my organisational skills, along with the way that like to try and help out where I can in the background with writing/explaining things or getting back to people with asks/emails etc... With the Big Bang I brought my experience of things I’d learned from the Supernatural events I’d worked on too which I think/hope was of use?

How do you help out?

Mainly what I’ve answered above applies to this question too I think?

What would you like to see for the Official Thiam Library over the next year?

I’d really love to see the page continue… continue on as is, doing a few more fandom events, grow as a page and fandom... also to help keeping the fandom going which is important right now I think… we’ve managed it so far though! We were just speaking about how thrilled we are that the fandom is still going strong. I also think it’s important to give older and newer fandom creators the recognition & cheer that they deserve too, which can be done through reblogging/recommendations and different events too. 

 Cute BTS Questions

Let’s imagine you’ve landed in a Zombie apocalypse, Walking Dead/Zombieland style. You’re among seven survivors–yourself and six characters from Teen Wolf. Which five would be your first choice for survival, entertainment, etc? And who would be the sixth character, the one you’d willingly push in front of a rage-filled zombie mob given the first chance? 

I can’t help but feel that my choice for the last part will be unpopular but here goes:

Theo and Chris for survival… they seem like they’d both be good to have around in this sort of situation, Stiles for entertainment because he had his funny moments and would keep everyone going I think. Melissa because we all need a mother figure who knows when to be tough but can also provide you with the loving support you need. Scott because… well… he’s a the alpha and we’d need someone to lead our small group and take charge when needed. 

Who would I willingly throw to the zombie mob given the first chance? Allison and Kira are both a tie here. Can’t I throw them both?? I never really liked Allison as a character… I don’t even really know why I just never gelled with her as a character I would like or could even get behind. Kira… ugh… just ugh… I feel like she was quite a forced character, they tried too hard to make her this cooky/funny character who could also kick ass and it just came off wrong to me… I never really warmed to her as she just felt forced. 

If you could read only 5 fanfictions for an entire year, which would you choose? Thiam or another fandom, if not Thiam, which fandom? 

In no order at all because I never tire of reading any of them:

1 - Airplanes by Captainmintyfresh - Teen Wolf - Thiam fanfiction

2 - Despite The Threatening Sky And Shuddering Earth (They Remained) by praximeter (Zimario)  - Captain America - Steve/Bucky fanfiction

3 - The Call by DemonzDust - Teen Wolf - Sceo fanfiction

4 - The Crow On The Cradle by Refur - Supernatural fanfiction

5 - Gotta Have Faith by arxiver - Captain America - Steve/Bucky fanfiction

You are our sensei and us your pupils, can you impart any life/writing wisdom? 

Life wisdom: Don’t sweat the small stuff... seriously… it wastes so much time and energy that you could be using for other things. If you can’t control it or you don’t feel it’ll be bothering you this time next year, then don’t let it bog you down.    People will come and go, that’s a part of life, take the lessons that they taught you from their time in your life (whether positively or negatively) and use them wisely. 

Writing wisdom: Don’t force yourself. If you’re having an hour, a day, or a week where the words or ideas won’t come then don’t force it to happen, you’ll only feel worse. Step back, put on some music which suits the tone of whatever you’re writing and try to get in the mood of your story that way, it’s amazing the words that can come or the complete change in direction you can go from doing that. 

Finally, what’s next for you?

Hopefully getting back into the swing of things with the Official Thiam Library and writing more again, getting ready for the Reverse Big Bang, and planning a few things in my personal life, like a few trips, my wedding and a house move (yes… I’m becoming a boring adult and it’s a scary new world!)

[kanasmusings]

[Translation] TsukiPro Special CD - Starry Sky Collection Track 2

Yay~! This time, it’s VAZZROCK!! Next one is Mamoru and Koki’s and then the rest of the Yaminabe series dramas ww

Thank you once again to Deea for the files~! Please don’t ask her as per her request, thank you!

Also, Sho briefly mentions the story behind Lyra the constellation so, please do give it a read to understand it completely ^^

※ Please don’t re-post these translations without permission. Instead of reposting, please just like/reblog instead ^^

Under the cut, enjoy~!

Track 02: [心揺さぶる音楽を -こと座 ベガ-] “Music that Shakes the Heart – from the Constellation of Lyra – Vega”

Mamiya Takaaki, Kira Ouka, Onoda Sho, and Nadumi Ruka

[0:00]

  MAMIYA: Everyone, thank you very much. We’ll leave the rest to you.

SHO: We’ll leave it in your care.

SHO: We’ll be taking our leave now.

OUKA: Thank you very much for today.

RUKA: Thank you~!

  SHO: Now then, thank you for the hard work once again.

MAMIYA: Good work.

OUKA: Great job.

RUKA: Yay~! We all did well!

SHO: With this, VazzRaji’s first season recording is now finished.

SHO: Our party with the staff is over as well and now all we need to do is return to the dorms.

SHO: I heard that if we go straight home from here, it’s not that far but…

SHO: Takaaki, do you want to call a taxi?

MAMIYA: Ah, that’s right. Let’s call for one by the main street.

MAMIYA: But, uh… Can I ride a different one (from yours)?

OUKA: A different one? Where do you plan on going?

MAMIYA: Don’t look at me with such cold eyes~ I just feel like going for a little walk.

MAMIYA: If I walk from here to the dorm…

RUKA: If we’ll trust the map application, it’d take about 10 minutes!

MAMIYA: See? That’s what he said. It’s not really that far.

MAMIYA: I was just thinking of walking around to feel a bit refreshed.

MAMIYA: That much is fine, isn’t it?

RUKA: Ah! Then, I’ll do the same~! I don’t really like the smell of taxis and I try avoiding them as much as possible.

RUKA: Also, I ate a looooott of meat and rice so I wanna exercise a bit!

RUKA: And so~ Takaaki-kun, can I go with you~?

MAMIYA: Of course, you’re welcome to~! Let’s take it easy together, ‘kay?

RUKA: Alrighty~!

OUKA: (sighs) Ruka, if you walk back to the dorms from here, won’t it override your calorie intake?

RUKA: Non, non, non, Ouka-kun~ Doing things when you feel like doing them is important, too!

RUKA: In other words, there’d be no feelings of guilt lingering!

OUKA: Is it like that?

RUKA: Yes, it is! It’s kinda the same as when women go shopping.

RUKA: “Oh, I might find some use for this,” they say and then they end up buying more than intended~

RUKA: In my case, I say “I’ll lose it all in practice tomorrow” and then I eat as much as I can!

RUKA: If you say that, you won’t feel as guilty! Doing the things you love sometimes is important, too~

RUKA: It’s essential, right~?

OUKA: I see… That’s deep.

MAMIYA: By the way, I only want to walk, okay?

SHO: Yes~ I don’t really have any feelings of guilt but, can I join you for your night walk?

MAMIYA: Oh~ Sho, you wanna walk, too?

SHO: Yes, I’m the same as you, Takaaki.

SHO: Heading straight back to the dorms feels like a waste and somehow, I’m in the mood to walk, too.

SHO: I had so much fun a while ago that I feel like wanting to enjoy your company for a while longer.

MAMIYA: In Sho’s case, isn’t it just because you had too much to drink?

MAMIYA: You’re looking quite pale, y’know~? See? (Mamiya touches Sho’s hand) Your hand’s a bit warm, too.

SHO: (chuckles) Is that so? Well, maybe it is, since Takaaki’s hand feels cool and nice.

RUKA: Were you bad at handling your alcohol, Sho-kun?

RUKA: Like, your head feels floaty whenever you drink?

SHO: Hmm… I don’t think I’m particularly bad or good.

SHO: Though, it’s true that my head feels kind of floaty but, it doesn’t really go beyond that.

RUKA: Heh~ I’ll remember that~

SHO: Hm? Why would you want to remember that?

RUKA: When I know what my friends’ limits are, I can help them when they’re troubled about what to drink next or when they’re about to pass out, right~?

RUKA: I can handle my alcohol well so don’t hesitate to rely on me, ‘kay~

SHO: Thank you. Ruka’s very kind and reliable, huh?

MAMIYA: ROCK DOWN’s bonds are so dazzling~

MAMIYA: Alright! Then, Ouka will go home first in a taxi and then—

OUKA: Wait. Do you really think I’m that much of a loner to go home by taxi when you’re all walking?

MAMIYA: Yeah.

OUKA: (Ouka grabs Mamiya by the necktie) You should at least lie in a situation like this.

MAMIYA: (with a pained voice) O-O-Ouka-kun… Ouka-kun? Don’t pull my necktie…! My neck’s gonna fall off…!

MAMIYA: My neck’s gonna snap…!

RUKA: (smiles) VAZZY’s bonds are so tight, huh~!?

SHO: Ouka, calm down~

OUKA: Tch.

RUKA: So, that means~ Ouka-kun’s gonna walk with us?

OUKA: I am. Now that that’s decided, let’s get going.

OUKA: Let’s go. Hurry up and go.

RUKA: Yes sir~

MAMIYA: Y-yes…

[05:00]

  RUKA: (singing) ♪ Let’s go on a walk, let’s go on a walk~! ♪

RUKA: (singing) ♪ I am the great Ruka-kun~! ♪

SHO: (chuckles) Ruka’s in a good mood, huh?

OUKA: I’d understand if that was his energy after drinking but, I’m surprised that he’s naturally like that.

OUKA: In a way, he’s pretty energetic.

MAMIYA: That’s to be expected. Ruka’s a stage actor after all.

MAMIYA: I think he’s got more energy than a certain someone here~ He’s got pretty great stamina.

OUKA: I see.

SHO: I’m so sorry, Ouka. We ended up going home by walking.

OUKA: Ah, no. If I’m being honest, I was the same as everyone else. I felt like going for a walk.

OUKA: That’s why you don’t have to mind it.

MAMIYA: Oh my~! You’re quite honest with Sho, aren’t you, Ouka?

OUKA: If someone tells me something directly, I answer as honestly as I can.

OUKA: That’s all there is to it.

MAMIYA: In other words, you’re rebellious when it comes to me?

RUKA: (smiles) Walking like this together with everyone feels kinda nice, huh~?

RUKA: The food and alcohol during the staff party was great, too! I’m extremely satisfied~

RUKA: I’m super happy!

OUKA: Ruka, your voice is too loud.

RUKA: (laughs) I’m sorry, Ouka-kun.

RUKA: I’m feeling good and the wind feels so nice~ I just got taken in by the atmosphere. (to Sho) Right~?

SHO: Hm? Yes~ (to Mamiya) Right?

MAMIYA: (to Ouka) Right~?

OUKA: Ruka and Sho aside, when Takaaki does it, it’s disgusting.

MAMIYA: So mean!

RUKA: Alright~! Sho-kun and I passed!

MAMIYA: Discrimination is not good, Ouka.

OUKA: Don’t hold on to me, you drunk.

MAMIYA: I didn’t drink any though~

MAMIYA: I only drank like, one beer and about two or three ciders.

RUKA: Me, too! Normally, I’d drink so much more but, I have to wake up early tomorrow.

RUKA: Hm… But, Takaaki-kun, Ouka-kun, Sho-kun, and I are kinda a rare combi so—

RUKA: Going home so early just kinda feels like a waste…

SHO: Even though you say that Ruka, Gaku asked me to take you home safely.

RUKA: Ack! That bastard…!

MAMIYA: As expected from his partner! He can read you like a book~

OUKA: You laugh at him and all that but, you need to wake up early for filming tomorrow, too.

OUKA: Walk properly, get home, and then go to sleep.

OUKA: Don’t tell me, “let me watch one video before going to sleep,” got it?

MAMIYA: (groans)

SHO: (laughs) Looks like he can read you well, too~

SHO: Although Takaaki takes his work seriously, there are times when he indulges himself, huh?

SHO: Just like me~

RUKA: I-I don’t think that’s something you should be smiling about, Sho-kun… (laughs nervously)

OUKA: Good grief… So, our leaders have the same weird tendencies.

SHO: Please don’t abandon me.

[08:19]

  SHO: (gasps)

RUKA: Hm, what’s wrong, Sho-kun?

SHO: Look, Ruka. Since there are no buildings around, you can see the stars properly.

RUKA: Ah! It’s true!

RUKA: Woah~! Since when did I last see the stars like this~?

OUKA: We might have seen them but didn’t really notice them much.

MAMIYA: So, they can be seen properly even in the city, huh~!

OUKA: The stars I saw from my relative’s house when I was younger were even more amazing.

MAMIYA: Heh~ In the countryside?

OUKA: In Okayama Prefecture’s prefectural border.

OUKA: I was in elementary school back then probably. I went there about 2 or 3 times during summer vacation.

OUKA: In any case, the stars were so beautiful that I’d lay down and look up at them until my mother came to scold me.

OUKA: It’s such a vivid memory that when I close my eyes sometimes, I feel like I can still see them.

OUKA: The scent of incense, the squeaking of the wooden floorboards, the sound of the wind chimes, and the starry sky spreading from the night sky.

RUKA: When I imagine Ouka-kun with stars, it makes for such a perfect picture that I get scared~

RUKA: Ouka-kun, you really love stars, huh?

OUKA: I guess. I love them.

OUKA: Not just the stars but the universe in general. When it’s shown on T.V. I end up watching it completely.

MAMIYA: This is my first time hearing that~

OUKA: Have I not told you…?

OUKA: Don’t you generally prefer conversations where you can talk of anything compared to half-hearted ones that don’t fit your interests?

OUKA: It feels good to be able to talk about what you love, doesn’t it?

MAMIYA: I see~ That’s such a great reason that’s so fitting of you, Ouka.

RUKA: I love stars too but, not on a realistic scale, I guess.

RUKA: I love things with star designs! They can be cute or cool~!

RUKA: Oh, and they’re good luck~!

MAMIYA: Oh! Now that you mention it, I feel like a lot of your t-shirts and bags have star designs on them!

MAMIYA: Don’t you have shoes like that, too? Ya know, the ones designed with stars for buckles and stuff?

RUKA: As expected from Takaaki-kun! You’ve observed well, huh~? Those are my favorite~

RUKA: It’s the one I decorated with the make-up artist backstage! It’s the only one of its kind in the world~

RUKA: I wear them to feel in the mood before a play!

SHO: You really take acting seriously, huh~ Leaving it to luck is not manly, was it?

SHO: Though, you give me the impression that you would leave it to your own abilities.

RUKA: (laughs) That’s correct! That’s exactly it!

RUKA: Whether it’s luck or abilities, the one that wins in the end is the me who practiced a lot.

RUKA: The only superstition I believe are good luck charms, I guess.

RUKA: I usually feel like giving it my all when I’m acting since I can~

RUKA: Though, there are a lot of people on stage who believe in superstitions.

SHO: True. I think I have the same way of thinking. The world is not so simple that we can win on luck alone.

SHO: But, we can’t completely undermine luck and being lucky. That’s about it, I guess~

RUKA: Yep~! Samesies~

[11:43]

  SHO: (chuckles) Hey, does everyone know the legend of Vega from the Lyra constellation? It’s one of the brightest stars in the Summer Triangle.

MAMIYA: That’s pretty sudden~ The Summer Triangle constellation is uh… Altair, Vega, and… Ah, Deneb! It’s that one, right?

MAMIYA: The only thing I know about it are the stars’ names.

OUKA: I’m the same.

RUKA: Wow, you’re amazing! I didn’t even know the stars’ names!

RUKA: I only know the words “Summer Triangle”.

SHO: (chuckles) That’s exactly it.

SHO: Lyra is the constellation that’s shaped like a musical instrument. It’s the lyre that appears in Greek mythology.

SHO: The story goes is that it’s Orpheus’s lyre up in the sky.

SHO: The legend says that Orpheus went to the Underworld to reclaim his departed wife.

SHO: He offered his music to the King of the Underworld and managed to charm him.

SHO: Though, it seems like he failed with his initial plans of bringing his beloved back.

SHO: I’ve been told this story when I was young and I remember admiring the music that was supposed to have swayed even the King of the Underworld’s heart.

SHO: I just remembered that suddenly.

RUKA: I feel like Sho-kun’s violin can shake the heart of the King of the Underworld, too~

SHO: No, no. I still have ways to go.

SHO: I think that the violin is something that I still have to learn for quite a long time.

SHO: It’s never-ending and it makes me feel a bit scared but, it has its own charm, too.

OUKA: It might be quite similar to the reason why I admire the universe.

OUKA: Something that we want to chase for an eternity.

RUKA: Ah, that kind of phrasing is perfect for my ideal stars!

RUKA: Something that we admire for eternity is something that we’d yearn for for a long time!

RUKA: Isn’t that cool~?

MAMIYA: I feel you. Though, it’d be a plus if I can make mine shorter.

MAMIYA: See? Just like those stars spreading above our heads right now.

MAMIYA: I can see them all the time and I feel like I can reach my hand out to them. They’re always watching over us.

MAMIYA: I was just thinking that it’d be nice if the fans thought of us like that, too.

OUKA: “Watching over” is so like you.

MAMIYA: Right?

SHO: Right now, we are the ones being watched over by the stars, huh?

SHO: Let’s continue to do our best so that we can become those kinds of admirable people~

RUKA: Yeah!

RUKA: (singing) ♪ Let’s go home, let’s go home~! I am the great Ruka-kun~! ♪

OUKA: Like I said, your voice is too loud.

MAMIYA: Alright, let’s sing together in a moderate tone then~

MAMIYA: Alright, Ouka, you too~!

OUKA: I won’t sing.

  SHO: (chuckles) We’ll continue to make music that will shake your heart one day.

SHO: Beautiful and dazzling music just like the stars that’s dedicated for you.

  ==END==

※ Please don’t re-post the English translations without permission.

If you like this, please consider buying me a ko-fi here to support my work. (o^▽^o)Thank you!!

[boy-porridge-vent]

Day 1

***Trigger Warning for most of this post!*** :(

 New vent account, I just have a lot to get off my chest, not right now per-say but in general, a lot has happened and I’m not coping well.

To start off, I’ve relapsed into self harm again

Not only cutting, but nearly everything I was able to get myself to stop doing.

 * I’ve begun to cut again, it’s now to the point where it gets deeper & messier each time I have a panic attack/breakdown (whatever the difference is).

* Im scratching & biting a lot more

* Punching myself until I bruise

* Weighing myself constantly, about 3-10 times a day, it’s in secret though since the scale is kinda hidden in my basement ever since my parents took it away

* Ive begun to check calories & count them. Before this past month, Ive never done this before & now it’s almost like a nervous habit! :(

* I’ve relasped into my an*rexia urges again. I’ve been having trouble with my body image & eating since about 5th grade; not to get too personal, but my mom was & still is hard on me, always called me ugly or fat because of an early puberty that made my body change quickly in a pretty gross way. Had a lot of acne since 4th grade;;; anyways, because of all that, and finding Onision, I was obsessed with his UhOhBro channel around 5th grade & took some of his more serious videos related to starvation & self harm to mind and tried it on myself because, despite him having a stone-cold hatred for it, I was a dumb kid and didn’t listen. So yeah, 5th grade I would starve myself or eat very little; 6th grade I kinda stopped but struggled with my clothing choice/identity more; 7th grade I struggled with gender; 8th grade was when an*rexia came back, more severely than ever, but it happened in short bursts over a few months, I also started cutting but very rarely; 9th I was much more happy & settled down just a bit, really figured out who I was; 10th things weren’t exactly the best, cutting came back & began to be more frquent but not deep; 11th was the worst, I’ve now been eating very little ever since school started, first day back wasnt exactly the best & I ended up cutting again for the first time in months moments after I got home.

 A lot more has happened since then and it’s only gotten worse. I don’t know what to do anymore

I don’t mean for any of this to make anybody upset or possibly relapse/get urges themselves when reading all this, I get so sad when I see others struggling too, I always try to help any of my friends or even random people online if they post a vent. I love bein there to support & help, even help get people to come out of serious relapses! But when it comes to myself, I tend to feel no pity, like I deserve this. There’s something wrong with me in my head, this has been gong on for years, every year feels worse than before, and yet everytime Ive gone to my dad, principles, teachers, or school counselors, they never help! They tell me off, saying Im fine, I dont need a therapist because therapists are scammers, or that I just need to be more positive & get over it.

Ive been told this for years, so maybe… it’s just me who’s to blame. Im the only one who sees what’s happening because it’s not really a big deal. I just make it seem wore than it is in my head. I have friends who care & ask if Im okay, ask if they can help, but honestly they cant help. They can support & I’ll vent to them but it doesn’t fix anything, I vent but it doesn’t fix my mind or my empty stomach or my hand reaching for my same used razor. Nothing has helped and I’m worried that after a while Im going to end up killing myself, whether it’s on purpose or it happens on accident when I go too deep. I have a lot I wish to do in my life, but at the same time, with all this shit that’s happened and how my life feels as if it keeps getting worse everyday, I will admit that at this point if I DID die, I guess I wouldn’t be too upset. I am scared of what will happen after death, nobody knows what happens, but I know that I am legally an organ donor, and I do have part of my will typed up in the case that I do die suddenly one day, so I guess it isn’t too bad.

I will be honest, Ive never been exactly suicidal before, but these past 4 months I think I’ve been legitamately suicidal and ready to go whenever I have a breakdown. Everytime I relapse I think of just ending it all right then and there, but then pussy out because I think about my few friends, my followers on other social media, my pets, my plants, and other people I wish to change the lives of in the future. I want to adopt a kid someday and give them what I didn’t get, treat them as I wished to be treated, help them grow up into the person I wish I had by my side growing up. They’d be my child, I’d be their parent, but we’d also be best friends. I wanted to start my own show, my own comic, my own booth at cons, meet so many people, get married, do music, so many things

but honestly, I don’t think I’ll live much longer after my senior year of highschool. I’m planning on finishing this year out, trying to finish my senior year, graduate, then I’ll leave this Earth with a bang. Maybe literally, or maybe through some other way of suicide, I don’t know. I might even do it sometime before I graduate. Not to make people sad, not for attention and pity, but because I can’t continue on like this, and I want the people who’ve wronged me to see what they did. I want those who refused to help, even when I was in front of them screaming & begging them to get me some kind of therapy or help, to see what they caused. I want them to see that I wasn’t just some sensitive crybaby that needed to get over himself, I want them to see that mental illness can run rampant in anybody & they need to be open to helping those who really need it.

 Ive been through so much. Ive been bullied, made fun of by my own mother, neglected by her, pysically/emotionally/mentally/VERBALLY/and even sexually abused by an ex partner of mine, Ive been literally harrassed, Ive been used solely for sex by nearly every single ex of mine, Ive been manipulated/guilt tripped/gas-lighted/made to feel as if my abuse was my fault, Ive been punished by my school for being abused by my ex! Yet everyone who has ever hurt me in these ways always got away with it scott-free. Why? I have no idea. I like to say that they’re let off the hook because I don’t come to school with black eyes, broken bones, bruises, and mascara running down my face. Abuse is abuse, it doesn’t have to have visible signs. Yet, mine does. I have self harm wounds, not because I blame them for making me self harm (as one of my exes once did), but because of trauma I still deal with that stemmed from their treatment of me. I have nightmares about my ex and her treatment toward me. I get SCARED when my mom comes home. I get nervous walking into school. I hate being touhed physically because it reminds me of so many people from the past getting physical and leaving me in the dirt afterward, even when I trusted them with everything. I hate saying I love you to anybody because of how little it means when others say it to me. Many partners would send hearts & “I love you"s, then throw me out like I was garbage.

I’m so tired of it all.

But maybe it’s all my fault. Maybe Im the problem. Im too quiet. Im too much of a pacifist. I hate confrontation. I hate violence. I hate hating people. If Im hurt by someone, even being abused, I always forgive and let them back in, and I get hurt again over and over. But on the rare chance that I dont forgive, when I do hate them with every cell in me, then for some reason, I can’t get them away, I can’t get them out of my life. They’re always around as a constantly reminder of what happened and how I was used and how I will never change, I’ll never be able to stick up for myself.

 if all that is going to happen in my life involves me being used for sex, money, or compliments to make others feel higher about themselves, then I don’t want to be around anymore. But I can’t just kill myself on a whim and call it a day.

I wouldn’t exactly say this is why I self harm, my self harm isn’t a choice, it just… kind of happens. It’s an addiction; scientifically, it has been proven to have addictive tendencies, which is why it’s so hard to stop once you’ve started/relapsed. I self harm because it’s an addiction that I can’t help, and becaue of bottled up, unresolved trauma that gets worse with every new day that I keep it bottled up for.

 This isn’t going to get better. Sorry for typing out so much too. I have an issue with piling all my thoughts and how I feel into multiple huge paragraphs, so there’s much more of that to come.

Also to come, weight updates & keeping track of what I eat/how long I can go with no food whatsoever. So far I’ve gone about 1/ maybe 2??? days straight, though I stayed home today so I did have to eat dinner, which caused me to gain 1 pound. But I lost 4.5 pounds in that day of not eating, so I can lose that 1 pound pretty quickly. Plus my metabolism is very very fast, so even if I did eat a lot I’d lose all that weight in a few hours/a day or two, depending on how much I ate.

This is day 1 of my further decline.

September 01, 2019

[ayearofpike]

Strange Girl

Simon Pulse, 2015 413 pages, 19 chapters + epilogue ISBN 978-1-4814-5058-4 LOC: PZ7.P626St 2015 OCLC: 936552329 Released November 17, 2015 (per B&N)

There’s a new girl in school, and something about her is unbelievably interesting to Fred Allen. Maybe it’s the way she carries herself. Maybe it’s the way she refers to herself as merely a vessel for conveying the knowledge she seems to have about our greater nature. Maybe it’s the remarkable power she commands, the way that happiness and healing ride in her wake everywhere she goes. Or maybe it’s her sweet ass. Whatever it is, she seems to connect with Fred just as quickly, elevating him to a greater happiness than he’s ever known. Of course, as with any powerful girl that people don’t understand, this happiness is fated to flee just as quickly when she pushes herself beyond what her body can handle.

Or, shorter: It’s Sati. It’s Sati set in high school with teenagers. It’s Sateen.

Part of the reason I took on this project is that I felt like my own writing was stagnating. Time was I couldn’t sit down without pumping out a thousand words of my own universe, my own characters and plots and desires and ideas. But at a certain point, I started to try to focus on bettering and refining one of my main tales, one I’d revisited off and on since sixth grade ... and I just burned out. I realized that I simply could not rework this story again, that it wasn’t ever going to be what I wanted or do what I wanted, or at least not in this fifth attempt in ten years. I couldn’t keep talking about the same thing again.

This might be indicative of why I’ve had a hard time pushing through as A Year (And A Half Now, Almost) Of Pike has approached its end point. There’s no denying that the man is a killer storyteller, and that some of his ideas and worlds were stunning and even revolutionary within the genre. But thirty years is a long time to stay in the game, especially when you’re pumping out more than three books a year for the main part of your popularity. It’s admirable that he was able to keep that up for so long without resorting to the James Patterson model of hiring someone else to write the books that have his name in large type across the top. But then, when you’ve only got one brain working on all these extensive ideas and under these onerous deadlines, you’re invariably going to start to repeat yourself. 

Almost everything Pike wrote after the start of Spooksville (I can’t even be charitable and say after his car accident) has repeated or revisited some major theme from an earlier work (mostly his own; I see you, Black Knight). And as I’ve pushed through and read every single one of his published works, I’ve started to feel that same fatigue that I had when trying to rewrite and repair something I’d spent so much time on of my own. See, this is why I can never actually be an academic despite being a composition teacher: so much of studying English is finding your niche and continuing to write about the same topic for your entire career, and I don’t think I could ever devote that much of my professional life to writing about the same thing. I just got tired of my ill-researched writing about the complete works of my favorite childhood author, for fuck’s sake. 

Still, if any book was due a revamp, Sati fits that mold. It was his first adult novel, it kinda got buried to all except his most devoted fans, and maybe it would be timely to publish a book about kindness and introspection and acceptance just as the muckrakingest American election in recent history was getting underway. But most of all, it’s still a relevant look at how we act and what we think about when we consider faith and religion and God. Considering how audiences and the book market have so drastically changed in the last thirty years, it totally makes sense that Pike might want to revisit the concept for a new generation. And honestly, I’m a victim of my own age and literacy here — nobody else who might be interested in this YA book in 2015 is reading its spiritual predecessor from 1988.

I’m mostly going to blast through the summary, because it’s been more than three weeks since I finished the book and I don’t actually want to reread it to remember specifics. Fred is a high-school musician living in Elder, South Dakota, and just like any other teenager in a small town is dreaming of escape. His parents own a hardware store and just barely maintain a rocky marriage, though all we know about that is what Fred specifically tells us. His best friend Janet, the presumptive valedictorian, has her own messy home life, but they always have each other’s backs, which is why Janet pushes Fred toward the new girl.

This is Aja, a beautiful Brazilian who relocated to South Dakota for some reason three months ago but didn’t start school until today. The teacher in the class they share is unreasonably mean to her for apparently no reason, but it doesn’t put Fred off buying her lunch and trying to learn more about her. He’s unsuccessful, largely, but she does learn about him and his band and their work before she takes off. They’re doing a gig at a nearby Air Force bar on the weekend, and everyone knows Fred is the real talent and pressures him to perform a little more of his original and quieter work at the show. This here is Fred’s difficulty: he wants it, he has the talent and the drive, but he second-guesses how much people actually want to hear his voice.

Aja gets kicked out of the class they share when she’s accused of cheating on her entrance exam (what?), so Fred doesn’t see her again until after their gig. The crowd is getting raucous and angry, and the drummer doesn’t take well to that, so the evening is just starting to devolve into a brawl when Aja stands on a table and tells everyone to calm the fuck down. She also helps out one of the servicemen, who has taken a whiskey bottle to the head but now isn’t even bleeding. Weird, right? 

A local reporter sure thinks so. She posts a video of the event, with a suggestion that maybe Aja is more than she appears to be. Can she heal people? The folks at their next gig have the same question, surrounding her and generally pestering until Fred manages to pull her away. They drop her off at home, the biggest house in town, and Fred finally asks her out, sort of, by responding to her question about his unhappiness by saying she should stop accepting dates with other dudes. Like, possessive much already? But on his way to work the next day, he sees the teacher in the cemetery, near her son’s grave, and decides to talk to her about Aja. This opens a floodgate: the teacher blames herself for her son running outside and getting hit by a car, and apparently Aja knew more than she should have, which was why the teacher was so salty with her before. So what else does this girl know?

Fred goes to pick Aja up for their first official date, and ends up talking to her guardian, where he finally learns more about her past. It seems that Aja was a feral child living near a village in the Amazon, and she had a reputation as a magical healer and talent. The guardian was compelled to the village for some reason, and appointed herself the caretaker of the girl, and only uprooted them to South Dakota because Aja said they needed to go there. The guardian only has a vague idea why, but she’s pretty sure it’s related to Fred.

They go back to his house, because his parents are out, and he plays her a song almost off the top of his head that she’s inspired. Before they can start gettin’ freaky, Fred’s phone rings, and apparently his hot-headed drummer has gotten into it with some drug dealers and cops in a nearby town and is in critical condition in the hospital. So Fred and Aja go there, but when he calls the guardian’s valet (or whatever this dude is; it’s kinda muddy) to tell her what’s up, he gets pissed and freaked out and orders Fred to make Aja leave the hospital. Only he can’t find her. And when he does, she’s all dizzy, and passes out on the ride home, and when he drops her off the valet screams at him and slams the door in his face.

But the drummer wakes up, and when Fred goes to see him, he hears a story of two beings visiting him, and his realization that this was the end, only he wasn’t ready to go because it would cause too much pain. This is the only real mention of the subplot that the band’s bass player is gay and in love with the drummer, and even though the drummer is straight (I mean, I guess he could be bi, Pike doesn’t really go into details, but the point is they don’t end up together) he cares too much about his friend to just kick the bucket. So the smaller of the beings picked up on that and touched him, and then he woke up. 

There’s also a reporter there trying to talk to Fred and his best friend about the miracle that Aja performed, and they do their best to brush her off only she isn’t giving up. In fact, she’s using a YouTube channel to promote the idea that Aja is a goddess or something, with a video of the way she ended the bar brawl and testimony from a nurse in the hospital that she touched the drummer not long before he arose from life-threatening injuries. Fred agrees to meet with the reporter and actually gets more information than he gives up: namely, Aja has been curing and healing people since her days in Brazil and that she spoke with all of the villagers about her decision to leave for the US, saying there was an important reason to do so.

Before he can confront Aja and her handlers about it, her guardian dies. The valet says she’s written a letter to Fred, but he can’t seem to find it. So while we wait, let’s go on a date! Only someone in the restaurant recognizes Aja and insists she heal her daughter. And this is where we find Aja’s limitations: she can’t help this girl; her fate is to live for a short time. 

In blasting through the summary I might be glossing over Aja’s description of her connection to the cosmos and how her powers and abilities work. A lot of it ties back to the same things Pike loves to revisit when thinking about metaphysics: the oneness of Buddhist nirvana, letting go of desires and selfishness to connect to the unity of humanity, and being able to tap into superhuman powers once you’re linked. Aja calls the overarching all the “Big Person,” and her abilities come from what the Big Person tells her is necessary. She can act out of her own human desires, respond to the Little Person, but when she does it takes a toll on her health, which is what happened with the drummer. But how does someone so young get tapped into a consciousness so vast and lose her childish selfishness? We’ll get there.

Anyway, Fred goes to a band rehearsal the next day and is stopped on the way by a family who has another sick kid in the hospital, desperate for him to put them in touch with Aja. He doesn’t want to do it, knowing what he knows, but his friends accuse him of being overprotective. The best friend compares a lot of what Aja has said she does with practices she’s learned through yoga and meditation, to draw an explicit line for those in the audience who haven’t just read 94 other Pike books and didn’t look more deeply into Eastern religion because of it. And then Fred’s phone rings, and it’s the family, and they already talked to Aja and their daughter is feeling better so he doesn’t have to put himself out. What? The kid was in the hospital in another state. Aja explains that she’s not actually the vessel: the Big Person does the work, and all she’s doing is making it aware and asking the question of “can we?” 

The will reading for Aja’s guardian comes up, and in addition to splitting her (holy crap immense) wealth between Aja and the valet, she has also left instructions with her lawyer that Fred should get an audition with a record label in LA. The laywer also has the letter, which basically says that Fred can’t protect Aja from the infirm and ill, and he shouldn’t try. I guess this lady would know, right, having taken care of the girl for something like ten years. But word is getting out, more and more people are asking Aja for help, national reporters are starting to show up, Fred has a weird encounter with a spooky fortune teller in a graveyard, and he can’t help but be concerned. So he helps the valet hire a private security firm to keep these people away from Aja, which (when they follow her to school on Monday) prompts an emergency community meeting about the disruption of education by these horrible rumors.

As it turns out, this is actually a racist move by the principal, who has a reputation as an evangelical Christian and has unfairly targeted minorities (especially our drummer, who is Mexican) for years. He’s trying to get a lynch mob together without exactly saying as much. Only too bad for him a lot of people in the community (the more open-minded ones, the ones who have actually spoken to her) already support Aja, because of their own first-hand experience with her help. But enough people are screaming about Jesus that they’re just about ready to light up torches and drive Aja out of town. Until she reveals the racist principal’s big secret: he had a child with a black woman, and could never reconcile his love for them with his love for pointy white hoods or whatever, and then the kid died and he has always regretted it. And Aja holds his hands, and talks to him, and suddenly here comes the creepy fortune teller who it turns out was the mother of Racist Principal’s child, and they embrace and apologize and forgive, and the meeting is suddenly over.

Somewhere in all the Aja hullaballoo, the best friend took off to New York to live with her mother. She won’t answer Fred’s calls, she won’t respond to texts, and Aja (the last one to see her before she left) insists that she can’t be the one to reveal her confidences. So Fred goes to see her dad and try to get more info. Now this isn’t the first time Best Friend has left with the mom: the first was right after they got divorced, only she moved back a year later without any explanation. And the divorce was just as sudden and explanation-free, only the dad just accepted it. And Fred realizes, while he’s standing there in the living room and picking up hints from the dad and looking at old pictures where both women look uncomfortable: he’s a sexual predator. He touched his daughter inappropriately, because his wife and her mother was somehow loveless (leading to the girl coming back the first time) and so he partook of some fucked-up urges. Only the girl has never been able to accept that it wasn’t her fault, and in talking to Aja and exploring herself is she just getting there. So of course she needs to not LIVE with the motherfucker while she’s coming to grips.

Fortunately for Fred so he doesn’t stab a bitch, the trip to LA is nigh. Aja goes with him, and he plays his demos live, finishing with the new song he’s still writing for her. Of course that’s the song they want, and they hustle him into a recording session with an engineer to lay down a single. On the way back, Best Friend calls and asks if she can stay with him and his parents long enough to graduate high school with her friends, and as their flights land within a couple hours of each other in Sioux Falls, they plan to drive home together. Fred and Aja get there first, and he has to intimidate the dad away from the airport before his friend gets there. Only that can’t work for the whole state: he’s waiting for them to drive out of the parking lot, and attempts to run them off the road to take back his little girl.

Did I mention that it’s winter in South Dakota? The interstate is a sheet of ice, and these assholes are playing chicken at 100 mph. Of course they wreck the cars, and the kids get off with minor bumps and bruises. The dad isn’t so lucky:  his car has overturned and trapped him inside. Now the best friend is upset with him, but she’s not a sociopath and he’s still her dad, so they work to pry him out of the car before it explodes. But the way he’s bleeding and choking, he’s probably going to die anyway, so she wants Aja to heal him. And this is Fred’s great test of faith: do I argue against this and risk losing my best friend, or do I go along and risk losing my girlfriend? He finally agrees to let her listen to the Big Person.

Of course Aja collapses immediately upon laying hands on the molester. But by the time emergency response gets to the accident, he’s feeling better and Aja is fading fast. She can now finally tell Fred about her childhood, her past, which she has long avoided. It turns out that her dad was a drug dealer who stole from his bosses, and as punishment they sent three strongarms to kill the whole family. Only when they murdered Aja’s mother, her soul fled her body, leaving a gap for connection to the Big Person. The female enforcer sensed this and took the kid and ran ... and this female enforcer ended up being Racist Principal’s baby momma. No, I don’t know how it works, get your own globe. 

But now she’s given her all to Molester Dad and is on her way out. Still, her reason for coming to South Dakota was a good one: love. She knew that Fred needed her, and she knew that he would benefit from the connection she might provide to the Big Person. And even though her time was fated to be short, she feels happy that she completed her mission of love, and trusts that Fred will continue to spread the message. One last kiss, and she’s gone.

They end up at a hospital, and of course they want to do an autopsy on Aja to see why she died so suddenly and unexpectedly. The valet is firmly against it, and manages to get custody of the body and take it home, where he and Fred say one last goodbye before he lights the shit on fire. It’s a good thing she already filled out a will, that gave all her money to Fred, and that the lawyer has a copy of it!

There’s a long-ass epilogue that talks about what happened to everyone. The best friend has kids of her own and almost never talks to her dad, the two other band members founded a holistic medicine company in San Francisco and got married but to other people, and Fred himself was never able to leverage his meeting and audition into his own performing career but now writes hit songs for other people. But I guess none of them are about Aja, because now he had to write a book about it? And it’s done! The end!

See what I mean? This shit has been done before, almost beat for beat, and by the SAME AUTHOR. Now I’m not averse to reading a book again (cf. this whole goddamn project), but at least I’m going into the book knowing it is what it is. I’m not expecting to see something that is labeled a new work that actually retells a previous story that I literally just read. Maybe James Patterson can get away with that, but I don’t read his books either. 

At any rate, this post is finally done. I have this monkey off my back, and maybe now I can reflect and give some closure on the whole project. But I’ll save that for another post.

[cerulean8looded]

25!!!!!!!!

okay that one i literally made bc i look like john, love just dance, and want to be loved but here we fuckin go

25. John being a just dance twitch streamer and all the boys being gay for it i mean youtubers au

so im thinking that all of them make WILDLY different content. lets start with the beta kids.

so john has a gaming channel, clearly, and he decides he wants to lose some weight in a fun way that also helps his channel, so he starts the just dance thing. other than that, he mostly plays things like minecraft, five nights at freddys, all your basic bitch stuff, along with a fair few horror games. he really likes minecraft and sims 4 though.

rose has a witchcraft channel. she practices witchcraft and makes videos about spells and sigils and crystals and all the other cool stuff that goes along with that. i dont know much about witchy stuff anymore, its been a while since i was into that stuff, so id have to do a bunch of research for her.

dave has two channels: irony channel and music channel. the ironic one is where he posts anything to do with sbahj, and just generally fucks about, does weird trends and stuff. he never shows his face on his music channel, never shares his name, and it’s all remixes, so no one hears his voice either.

jade has the most chaotic but pure channel. she does anything she feels like doing, from kids show reviews to “Look at this cool pumpkin i grew” to “heres my favourite gun”. she has no theme, and never plans to change this.

Trolls

aradia is similar to jade in chaotic energy, but she tends to stick to stuff like creepy antiques she finds, weird animal bones from the fields she just wanders about in and that kind of odd stuff. she also talks about dark conspiracy theories a bit.

tavros mostly focuses on animals; animal care, animal facts, how to spot animal illnesses, how to deal with hostile but injured animals in the wild, what to do if you see an animal you think might have rabies, all that kinda shit. theres always at least one animal in every video, whether its a ferret in his lap, a cat walking over him, a snake around his neck, a guinea pig on his shoulder, and so on.

sollux does a gaming and tech help channel. he plays any game that people claim is difficult and tends to beat them so fast people think he’s hacking. he slaves over every fnaf game to try to beat the custom night first. as for tech help, hes basically that guy who runs the channel on how to fix discontinued apple products.

i lost my fucking karkat paragraph, im furious. basic recap of what i lost: he does general content like dan howell and phil lester kinda, with a couple staple series, such as his rant series, where his followers give him a topic and he rants about it for about twenty minutes (after editing). he also does livestream versions which can sometimes last for several hours per rant.

nepeta does cosplay videos with whoever she can rope into helping her (usually terezi, vriska, equius, or feferi) plus a lot of fandom videos in general. she usually comes off really lighthearted in her videos, but she also makes a lot of important comments about fandom culture and shipping wars etc. on her second channel she does vlogs, which exposes her absolute gremlin side. these vlogs often feature things such as her climbing up a tree, getting stuck, and screaming until equius saves her.

kanaya does makeup and fashion advice videos, mostly with a vampire theme to them. occasionally she’ll do cosplay makeup too. her favourite videos to do are when her subscribers send in pictures of themselves and their closets, along with some general information on what they wont wear and all that, and she gives them advice on how to spruce up their look a little and declutter their clothes, etc. she likes feeling like shes making a difference to people.

terezi focuses on true crime mostly; cold cases, current cases, sometimes she runs through the process of solved cases. she prefers to do unsolved stuff, since it gives her the ability to talk about her own theories on it, and she does often get it right, but for particularly interesting cases she will do a video anyway. she also does a little bit on mental health and the reasons behind crimes and shit.

vriska is another kinda general youtuber. she does whatever the hell she wants, plus anything anyone says she cant do. she also lets some of nepetas fandom stuff leak into her content. no one really knows how she got so many subscribers. she also has the most merch out of all of them.

equius makes videos on whatever happens to be his current hyperfixation at that moment. hes the most inconsistent. one week hes picking apart the homosexual subtext in certain scenes of jaws, the next hes teaching you how to put together a microwave. he does a lot of lgbtq+ videos too; his most popular video is of him and nepeta and some others at pride and most peoples favourite part is nepeta racing around a small clearing with equius on her back while vriska cackles behind the camera

no one is really sure what gamzee actually does. his videos are all filmed on a phone camera and are never edited. he doesnt have an intro or an outro. sometimes it seems like he forgot to start filming until halfway through whatever he was talking about, but he never repeats the bits the camera missed. theres no theme, no clear goal, no one knows whats happening and theyre pretty sure hes high in every video. one time he posted a video that was over 48 hours of the phone just pointing at a wall, which appeared to be covered in blood just out of sight of the screen (as in you could see the edge of it but not the actual blood) and there appeared to be a hand sitting at the corner of the screen. everyone was fucking terrified for a while, but the next video posted to his account was karkat explaining that hed had a bit of a mental break and thrown a jar of jar at the wall (the “blood”) and that the hand was just a doll. hed taken out his phone to film a vent video, but promptly forgot about it, dropped it, and went to do something else. he finally remembered over two days later, posted it without thinking and called karkat. a few weeks later he started posting again like the whole thing never happened.

eridan’s content mostly focuses on harry potter and magic (which he definitely doesnt believe in because that would be ridiculous), but he makes a lot of environmental PSA videos about littering and pollution and stuff. in his fandom videos he comes across as just really excitable and doesnt seem like he cares about much else, but he really shows off his intelligence in PSA type videos. he also posts a lot of videos of him just talking about whatevers going on in his life, usually whenever he gets a new crush. his most popular video is the one he made right after seeing johns just dance streams for the first time, because he looked like he was about to cry or scream the whole time.

and feferi! her content mostly focuses on social and political issues. she talks out against “canceled”/purity culture a lot and tends to end up involved in discourse for it. shes that person in the middle of the argument whos literally only stating facts and saying that we shouldnt jump to unnecessary conclusions, but somehow ends up being accused of being jack the ripper or some shit for it. she isnt afraid to share her honest opinions and makes sure to remain as polite and level-headed as is humanly possible when responding to others.

i was gonna do the alpha kids and dancestors too and like share some plot and that kinda stuff but this is long as fuck, so we’re gonna stop here for now! feel free to request again for even more info dumping. also i just wanna say that i planned none of that gamzee stuff i had no idea what i was doing when i started that

[aliceparsons22-blog]

How to Design a Million Dollars Playing Video Poker

Ill level bearing in mind you  if I knew some ordinary method for making a million dollars on video poker, I wouldnt be blogging right now. Id be in the Alaskan wilderness catching salmon or just sitting on my urge on porch cracking gain access to a beer.

So how can you become a video poker millionaire? The unchangeable is, there is no one unnamed method scr888 malaysia that will slant you into a video poker millionaire. Im suspicious of get-rich quick ideas of any variety. As a general rule, the less do its stuff something requires, the less full of life it is.

I can think of a few outside-the-box ways to put two commas in your bank account playing video poker:

You could win a million dollars playing higher video poker. Of course, youd have to win an unlikely number of future jackpots to sum $1,000,000  video poker later jackpots are considerably smaller than slot machines, resetting to with $500 and $1,500, and rarely paying off more than two or three time the reset amount. Dont forget how scarce difficult video poker games are  you wont find a single cutting edge video poker game on the Vegas Strip or anywhere in Atlantic City. You could sit on putting child maintenance in the machine until you hit an uncanny streak of luck. Lets say youre betting max, $5 per tab and $25 credits per hand. If you could string together sufficient $30 payouts in a row, youd eventually win a million bucks. It would endure 200,000 straight 6-credit wins (to offset the coast of each rounds maximum bet), and would totally lift some eyebrows at the IRS, but I suppose its technically (given plenty decimal places) possible. You could have a essentially gnarly slip-and-fall accident though playing a video poker machine. If its found that the casino was negligent in inspecting and maintaining their property, youll be entitled to compensation, damages, and (in rare cases) a punitive praise expected to tutor the casino a lesson they wont easily forget. Its within the realm of possibility that you could win a million-dollar settlement. Of course, this is abuse of the system, and it would make you a horrible human being. It may backfire too  the court may toss the warfare out, especially if there is no evidence of negligence. Those three ideas are beautiful far outdoor the realm of possibility. otherwise of slipping in a spilled drink, waiting for a mathematical miracle, or losing your shirt chasing progressives, I recommend a more level-headed approach.

The Three Basic Tenets of the Video Poker Millionaire The three tenets listed under arent exactly secret. Theyre freely-available every over the Internet. I can vouch for this fact, as Ive written dozens of blog posts upon these topics beyond the years.

Once youve moot how to function video poker, every you need to realize to (one day) create a million bucks playing the game is follow these three easy rules:

Learn Basic Strategy If you desire to have fun in Vegas and dont mind eventually giving your entire $100 bankroll to the casino, you dont habit to badly affect roughly strategy.

If your plan is to earn a million dollars from video poker, you have to become a graduate student of gambling. It helps if you have a fine library near your home, past some of the books youll desire to get into arent all that genial online. In fact, if you rouse close a own up the academy next a decent research library, youre a step ahead.

While youre at it, subscribe to some gaming magazines. If youre mostly going to gamble in Vegas, subscribe to some Vegas content, too. belong to a couple of forums. Depending upon where you live, you may be accomplished to find seminars in your area teaching legitimate video poker and additional game strategies. By the way, this isnt something you can attain when or twice a year for a couple of years and be curtains as soon as it. subsequently new games arrive extra strategies, and past additional casinos arrive new opportunities for advantage gambling. Youll essentially obsession to become a lifelong student of gambling and game strategy.

Choose Player-Friendly Games Unfortunately, the heyday of +EV video poker is long gone. You can yet locate a few high-paying titles that make a special trip to a specific casino or website worth your time. Specifically, theres plenty 10/7 Double extra and full-pay Deuces Wild upon casino floors in the gambling Meccas of America to save things interesting. If you are absolutely determined to earn a million bucks from video poker, you should probably stick to these titles only, past any new titles are going to keep too much of your maintenance more than time.

If you dont mind gambling a little (or waiting a few new years to earn your million), you can accomplishment some of the 99%+ titles that casinos still host. These are generally available whether youre online, in Vegas, in Atlantic City, or elsewhere in the USA. The so-called Not consequently ugly Deuces games (which we call 25/16/10) is well-liked and gives the casino a less than a quarter-percent edge, as complete most casinos versions 9/6 Jacks or Better, and the venerable 8/5 other Poker next a recompense of approximately 99.1%.

Casinos love to put sub-99% video poker games sharply adjacent to identical games set high. This is especially legal in the few casinos where you still locate full-pay titles. This means you absolutely have to inspect every pay table since you play.

Manage Your maintenance (and Earn Comps) The nice of dedication it takes to become a gambling millionaire means that it shouldnt be hard for you to rigorously control how much you spend on video poker. But past you should always bet maximum, your wager size and scope are lovely limited. instead of unbearable roughly bet sizing, focus on earning those crucial other relief casinos have enough money their loyal customers. That means joining the players club, exchanging club points for cash, scoring multiple-points promos, entering raffles and drawings, playing in video poker tournaments, remembering to mail in those bounce-back rewards clipping coupons, and pretense every those irritating things that tend to make a casino trip less fun.

In exchange for a tiny bit of what always feels afterward wasted time, youre putting a big dent in the casinos edge. If youre already playing +EV games, using comps basically extends your tiny edge. Not a statistically-significant amount at first, but more than time, it makes a huge difference.