#we live in some of the richest countries in the world. let’s slow down for a second

[susansontag]

no actually. some of you need to grow up and realise other people have different political convictions from you even if you can’t or won’t understand them. I’m not expecting to automatically change anyone’s mind about anything, but I reserve my right to write whatever the hell I want about politics on my blog. it’s got me in hot water every time I’ve done it but enough with this pathetic show of political intolerance disguised as being the only smart opinion given many bad options. I know the rest of us are just tankie freaks apparently but if you want people to take your own views seriously, you should start by practicing what you preach. this weird maliciousness seems entirely one-way lol

[thesinglesjukebox]

BEYONCÉ - "16 CARRIAGES"

You guessed it! (...did you?) It's B'Day! Let's end it off strong...

[7.44]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: An exponentially stronger B-side to the paint-by-numbers honky-tonk of "Texas Hold 'Em," "16 Carriages" is reminiscent of the widescreen ballads that Beyoncé hasn’t made in some time. There have been slow songs and Quiet Storm tributes, but few all-ages Bold Metaphor jams to flick your lighters up to. Usually, this isn’t my favourite of Knowles’ modes (give it up for a day-one "Halo" sceptic), but the frayed-family narrative and arena-size swell are moving. Compared to "Break My Soul" and its eye-rolling lyrics about quitting dead-end jobs, "16 Carriages" doesn’t make me balk at one of the world’s richest women singing about being “underpaid and overwhelmed." In its earnest hugeness, you can feel the artist reach for the mythic, or a theatrical archetype at the least. It’s strong character work. [7]

Rachel Saywitz: After an album bereft of slow-churning, sob-inducing ballads, it’s very satisfying to hear Beyoncé back in her element with “16 Carriages.” There’s a gorgeous tension to it, a slow buildup rich with narrative interiors—regardless of whether the track is pulled directly from Beyoncé’s life, its story shows in blistered verses frantic with stormy memories and repeated affirmations. I can sense, in her melodies and vocal runs, that there’s a rush to race ahead of the track’s patient lap steel and slow percussion thumps. Her voice grows in power so gradually that when the anticipation finally reaches its peak in that final chorus, it’s hard to feel relief. I want to keep living in the epic fantasy of the song’s tale, where strife is rewarded and fear begets a legacy.  [9]

Hannah Jocelyn: "16 Carriages" is billed as country, but it reminds me more of maximalist chamber pop like Perfume Genius’ No Shape with its drastic dynamic shifts and off-kilter orchestration. Beyoncé’s performance is virtuosic in its relative restraint, letting the crashing horns and strings do the heavy lifting. (Good singing =/= belting everything!) She recasts her history as an underdog story and sells it -- and for what it's worth, getting famous at an early age actually sounds pretty traumatizing! The oddly lo-fi production grounds the narrative. This obviously isn't a truly unpolished Beyoncé -- this is more self-mythologizing -- but it's great storytelling and worldbuilding. "Carriages" can't be narrowed down, always eluding any easy genre tag or even any easy answers in the lyrics. It's been a while since a pop star released something this weird, and even longer since they pulled it off. [10]

Jeffrey Brister: This one feels more in line with my expectations. "16 Carriages" isn't perfect—it has a repetitive melody, doesn't do nearly enough with the bluesy vocal, and feels a lot longer than its 3:53—but there’s enough to make it a distinctively country song. It also makes some smart choices with arrangements and productions -- the slight crunch and airy decay on the drums giving it an off-kilter feel, smartly knowing when to crash into climaxes and pull away to the spare beauty that shows off Bey’s voice. [7]

Dorian Sinclair: Releasing “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “16 Carriages” simultaneously was smart. Where the former is gleefully cluttered, “16 Carriages” is stripped-back and stately, letting the lead vocal line carry the track almost entirely on its own. It’s a risky gambit; the melody is repetitive, and without a commanding performance the song could easily feel stagnant. But we know Beyoncé can deliver a commanding performance, and she does so here, with a precise understanding of how to execute on all those little flutters, and how to make the moments when the melody does break out of its limited range and climb a little higher really feel exciting. It all works right up until the last 45 seconds or so — introducing a new melodic idea so late in the song makes the whole thing feel kind of formless and unstructured and the ending feel notably untidy. This might make more sense on the album, but for now it’s unresolved. [7]

Aaron Bergstrom: It's been almost fifteen years since 30 Rock taught us that "going country" is a totally legitimate career move, and yet I confess that abrupt genre-hopping still makes me question an artist's motives. It's easy to see the commercial justification for Beyoncé finding new worlds to conquer, and I do love that a Black woman succeeding in country music makes some of the worst people in the world tie themselves in knots trying to explain why they're (a) mad about it but (b) somehow not racist. Still, if all we're doing is running it back with banjo instead of house piano, then I can't say I'm all that invested. Luckily, "16 Carriages" shows that there's also an artistic justification: country music can be such a compelling medium for storytelling. This is a song that needs to shake off the dust before it gets going, a song that needs to unfurl itself, unhurried in its presentation. It evokes weatherbeaten grandeur and the way that an unbroken horizon can signify both freedom and isolation, both possibility and emptiness. It drags in places and never reaches a real emotional climax, both of which could be seen as purposeful artistic choices. But ultimately it's undaunted, or at least as undaunted as you can be when it feels like your dreams are escaping.  [7]

TA Inskeep: First of all, this ain't country just because it has some acoustic finger picking in it. This sounds more Lumineers-core to my ears, especially the way it gets stompy as the arrangement gets bigger and swells with strings near its end. The lyric could be more effective with better music and a less sweet vocal. Maybe bring it back for that purported "rock" album and let Jack White go loose, encourage Beyoncé to go full Tina Turner -- that'd work. [5]

Brad Shoup: Genius is calling this a "classic country anthem," which may be true if your classic country stops at "An American Trilogy". When the symphony blares down the steel, it feels like the song taking its true intended form. She's going asking it to hold up so much, so quickly: origin story and present-day triumph and private burdens. That may be the most classic country thing about it, actually. [6]

Taylor Alatorre: "16 Carriages" is a songwriting case study in the power of selective ambiguity. Why carriages, and why 16 of them, when Beyoncé gives 15 as the age by which her innocence had "gone astray"? Part of it could be the centrality of the "sweet sixteen" in American girlhood, but that hardly seems like the whole story, especially when the song is bent on depicting the precise opposite of a normal American adolescence. The subsequent use of "umpteen," an ungainly word that Beyoncé seems to roll her eyes through, confirms that this is not about a specific moment of lost innocence but a larger, hazier sense of loss that weaves its way through the cracks in one's life, lying dormant and then springing back up at unexpected moments. A long train of carriages riding off into the sunset is a dream image, some mirage-like melding of Wild West and rock 'n' roll mythology that hits at something primal and almost beyond naming. The passing of childhood, yes, but more specifically the closing off of a universe of choices that were once available to us and no longer are. This being a Beyoncé single, the mourning is laced with the requisite triumphalism, but this doesn't negate the message that every worldly gain is built upon worldly loss but strengthens it. Those bone-rattling surges of guitar and percussion, at once funereal and propulsive, provide the ideal frame for this balancing act, jolting us back and forth between reality and the reverie. We never find out exactly what dreams are being carried away by the carriages, but that's fine -- all the better to universalize this inherently exceptional case of the self-sacrificing celebrity. [8]

Jackie Powell: Ever since Beyoncé released “Formation” and subsequently Lemonade, a common criticism emerged about what her brand stands for, and a question was posed: can she currently relate to the stories about being a Black person in America? Ernest Owens’ column from eight years ago makes points that remain relevant. “Just know that Beyoncé is making bank off of a variation of blackness that she isn't currently living in or experiencing,” he wrote. With Renaissance, released six years later, there were questions about how Beyoncé could earnestly lean into the plight and earn profit from the Black queer folks that Renaissance pays tribute to. And with “16 Carriages,” a track written like a modern day “work song,” how does that factor into that discourse? Putting it simply, Beyoncé has struggled with being relatable, but “16 Carriages” challenges that. What was her life like before the millions of dollars and even before Destiny’s Child? I didn’t really know until now. She writes of sacrifice, something that is a part of everyday life for all. And she also writes of the struggles that people who choose a life of creative work are accustomed to. “Goin' so hard, gotta choose myself/Underpaid and overwhelmed.” That’s so real. “Sixteen dollars, workin' all day/Ain't got time to waste, I got art to make.” That’s also so real. “16 Carriages” is written like a poem in couplets, with Beyoncé placing accents after each clause or phrase. The most important words that she wants you to take away are what she accents. It’s intentional, just like a lot of the recent Beyoncé story. Could this be Beyoncé’s “Jenny from the Block?” It might be, but it’s a bit more sincere and much less silly. Beyoncé knows she’s not that professional teenager anymore. [8]

Nortey Dowuona: Atia Boggs once wrote the hook "oh, I don't recall, all the tears of them all, the children of men, children of men." She also wrote: "baby, I might let you go, baby, baby no matter what, and like I switch the other side of me, baby gotta lotta ride on me." She has been writing songs that take all sorts of shapes, but she is credited on this song, and those two feel close to it. The first is a Trae the Truth record where he and J. Cole tell sad stories of young black men being sucked into the prison system, and the hook memorializes their lives. The second is a trippy Childish Gambino acid trip with a girl with a cat who looks at him sideways and has a little ride on her -- which Boggs sings about before her words are once again cut up and scattered to the winds. "It's been umpteen summers, and I'm not in my bed, on the back of the bus in a bunk with the band." I figure that a longtime songwriter like Boggs and Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter can both resonate with this lyric: both of them have lost umpteen summers to the reality of being musicians, and both are still in the chase and still have dreams left to achieve, still remember the dulling ache of being young and chasing and fearing not keeping up with the elders who are ahead. "It's been 38 summers, and I'm not in my bed, on the back of the bus on a bunk with the band." Now they are the elders, the ones the younger singers and songwriters are keeping pace with, seeing the road begin to shorten, time running out. "Going so hard, now I miss my kids, overworked and overwhelmed." It's easy to forget that both Boggs and Beyoncé are human beings, especially when one is a longtime songwriting veteran with dozens of credits and one is the most revered people in black music -- in music, period, which is why you make songs like this. Not everyone is free to sincerely indulge, but everyone is free to grieve the shortening of the runway, afraid of running and coming up short, losing time with your children, wondering whether the overwhelming grind will actually end. For Ms Knowles Carter, hopefully soon. For Mx Boggs, the future is far more uncertain. [10]

Katherine St. Asaph: Authenticity arguments are generally boring. But I would be lying if I claimed it didn't lend some gravitas to "16 Carriages" that Beyoncé wrote it with a songwriter for Renaissance and not a songwriter for Fletcher. The song is a showcase of vocal interpretation -- which it has to be, because it's essentially one short melody -- and genuinely strange, a power ballad that Beyoncé's verses keep prodding and dodging until it sounds less inspirational than destabilized. More than anything she's released in a while, this reminds me of 4, a sadly-but-unsurprisingly underrated casualty of the album it preceded. [8]

Ian Mathers: Much more so than "Texas Hold 'Em," this feels like one of the high-drama Lemonade or Beyoncé tracks transposed to a more country backing -- not in a bad way, if anything in the "this is a real song because it works even if you do it real stripped down" sense. (Not that this is particularly stripped down; the bombast really works for me, actually.) The fit isn't quite as smooth as "Texas Hold 'Em," but that just means that one feels like an all-timer while this just feels strong. I suspect it'll work great on the album -- sequencing being yet another thing Beyoncé is generally great at. [8]

Will Adams: The "country" designation for "16 Carriages" doesn't really connect with me. Rather, the song stands as the ideal version of what Beyoncé was going for with the adult contemporary half of I Am... Sasha Fierce that ended up quite bland. With heaps more production value and maturity, she's finally sold it. [7]

Isabel Cole: I thought it was the melody that I didn’t quite like, but then I couldn’t get it out of my head for a week, and found I didn’t mind it there. The plodding beat makes sense conceptually -- evoking the drag of horses’ hooves, or perhaps the crack of a whip driving them on as they pull -- but it’s a little grating. The way the arrangement veers between sparseness and bombast feels like the song can’t make up its mind about whether it’s a vulnerable confession or a statement of pride. And, again, that’s the point, I know; and, again, it just doesn’t land for me. [5]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Bombast can in its own right become a virtue – if this were any smaller of a song I'd note the flaws in its construction more closely, spend more time trying to piece together where the core metaphor goes. In practice, "16 Carriages" leaves me with no time or resistance to consider such petty concerns; in every giant, resounding organ chord and wail of the steel guitar I am simply awed, bearing witness to Beyoncé at her most ideal form, a force of grace and power embodied. [8]

Michael Hong: Authenticity is wholly unimportant when it's this well-acted. With every shaky line reading and teetering run, she evokes the rickety journey of a carriage, bumping through the clunk of the guitar. It doesn't matter whether the lyrics are true to Beyoncé or any of the songwriters; you hear the lift when she looks upward.  [7]

Leah Isobel: I wonder whether the Renaissance project is about refraction - funneling Beyoncé's mythmaking through different genre prisms, seeing what aspects of her art and her life story are emphasized in each new mode. "16 Carriages" suggests as much. The Act 1 material felt like she had time-warped back into her youth, its energy libidinous and present-focused, its references rooted in the various forms of dance-pop that carried the early stages of her mainstream crossover. (Like, there are two Beyoncé songs that sample Donna Summer: one off Dangerously in Love, and one off Renaissance. Seems like a purposeful choice!) Here, though, her mode is more reflective, more "adult." The previous record's shifts in tempo and syncopation could evoke the time-shifting qualities of a great dancefloor, the way that the past and present and future blur into meaninglessness, but "16 Carriages" delineates clearly between what has passed and what is to come. Its instrumentation is built on harsh, regimented blasts of instrumentation that corral her vocal into measured units: you can hear her pacing out exactly how much melody she can fit in between each beat. It's like the ticking of a clock, or a step forward into the future. But it feels limited, somehow, by that regimentation. "For legacy/ If it's the last thing I do/ You'll remember me," she sings on the bridge, as if it's a self-evident value. Perhaps it's a peek inside what it takes to be an unbelievably famous and successful superstar after nearly 30 years: you cannot ever let yourself run out of steps forward. There is only the body and the road, pushing forward. I just wonder what it might sound like if she stopped. [7]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox ]

[lexiasmind]

The Compromise VII

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.

PAIRING.

Dark!CEO!Steve Rogers x Reader.

SUMMARY.

Love. What is love?

Maybe a lie by omission to protect someone we care about? Or, the celebration of a wedding, reuniting two people together for life? Perhaps, an emotion that bothers you deep down by seeing someone disappear behind the fakness of their smile?

Love is complex. And it can be manipulated into a fucking nightmare by the worst man on Earth.

A/N.

Political Relationship/Marriage? AU. Dark AU.

This is DARK. ANGST. Sorry for the end...😅

Here it is, the seventh (woah 🤯) part of The Compromise Series. I still love writing this story! Even though I write it very slow... A little surprise at the end. I already know what my next long series will be about...As always, thank you very much for reading! Don’t hesitate to leave your thoughts, comments, and feedback.

P.S: Gifs aren’t mine, credits to the owners and makers.

A lots of Love! Lex!xx 💕💕

WORDS.3642ish.

Steve Rogers was a happy man. Christ, the man didn't touch the ground. He had everything he desired. He was about to merge his company with one of the richest of the country making him the head of the largest technology and research industry. And, with his already competent communication, entertainment and renewable energy department, Steve Rogers would become the most powerful man in the country maybe the world. Having the responsibility of bringing, creating, and selling everything from the newest high-tech computer to electric cars while owning one of the biggest entertainment conglomerate corporations. Nothing could stop him. No one could say no to him anymore. Steve would be now considered one of the living Devil of New York City. Powerful, wealthy, and affluent. Joining the likes of Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and also the late John D. Rockefeller. Intelligent. Philanthropist. Fiendish.   Yes, Steve Rogers had everything he desired and wanted. And now, all was well. Almost. Steve knew he had to make some concessions to gain in this political and business game. Even when he didn't like the outcome, he had to play the part. And by agreeing to make you his wife, the blond-man thought that it was the small price to pay.   Lying to you about his feelings with pretty words, manipulating you by moving your furniture out of your apartment, chasing you down to your hometown and forcing your hand by meeting your parents were actions that he was willing to do. He was ready to anything for you to sign, quickly. Gaslighting you with love wasn't an issue for him. Steve didn't believe in love but he knew you would. And, blending these petty feelings with some kernel of truth will do the trick. However, things weren't right. Since you came back from your parent's house and disappeared for the entire afternoon and a good portion of the night, you came back, changed. Different. The CEO of the most important company in the United State didn't know if it was a good or a bad thing.

" I can't wait for you to see my dress. My mom cried yesterday and today when she saw me. You should have seen her face, pure happiness. It makes me so happy to see her happy. She's so emotional, I don't know if it's a wedding or being here in the big city. She's not used to the noise, people, and, let's be honest, the filth. My dad is quieter. But I know he's coming around to the idea of the wedding. He's a good man. I can't wait for him to see me in this magnificent dress. Oh, Steve, I hope the cost won't be a problem for you. Let me remind you that you were the one who told me to buy anything I want. Besides,…"

You were a constant chatterbox. Positive, making light of everything about the wedding, the living arrangement, your resignation from the company. Gone was the woman who put out a fight even weak for defending what she believed in. There was no more questioning but only agreeing with anything Steve said. Like his word was law and you obeyed them like a good wife. Seating on the barstool at the kitchen counter, the blond-man watched you cleaning the dishes of your last dinner together. In two days, you will be a married couple, then Steve would go to Oslo and when he came back Tony would officially step out of his company to let the merging begin. Nothing would be the same. But it was already, not the same. Watching you, talking without listening, the blond-man focused his eyes on your frame. Harsh lines had begun to appear under your eyes since you came back, and he had also remarked your considerate weight loss. Having been brought up in the high society of the Upper East Side, Steve knew women could lose weight during a stressful time like their weddings but even though he hated to admit this to himself, deep down, Steve Rogers knew you. A wedding, even a small one, to someone who was a persistent ass to you wouldn't make you positively happy all the damn time. Maybe angry, resentful, or even sad.

" You wouldn't believe it. She had the same dress! " You exclaimed looking at him above your shoulders, eyes wide with mirth and surprise illuminating the  tired lines of your face. You turned your head away to rinse the last bowl. " Don't worry, they both keeping it. I think…" " Y/N. " Steve interrupted you, putting his hands on the cold marble table in front of him. " What? " You turned your body to lean against the sink, a small smile appeared on your lips. " I don't want you to go to your parent's hotel tomorrow. " The blond-man ordered you, frowning his deep blue eyes , looking closely at your face. " Why? " You inquired, puzzled by his demand, shaking your head slightly. " My mom had organized something special for me and her. She told me she wanted me there. Besides, you have your stag night tomorrow too. " You recalled, confused. " I know. " He answered simply crossing his fingers together on the table. " And I plan to enjoy myself as my last night of single man. But we both know that if I wanted to have sex with another woman now, during, or after the wedding I would. "

Biting your lower lips, Steve watched you drop your eyes to the kitchen floor, your hands started to shake next to you. You balled them into fists before crossing your arms on your chest.  

" What I don't want to, his you going to your mom…thing. " He continued calmly his eyes were bright under the halo of the light of the room. " You would stay and sleep here while I will probably fuck a stripper. The next morning I will send a car to drive you to the ceremony and in an hour we will be married. " Steve explained, leaning his upper body above the counter, looking at you, your head still turned to the floor. " Is it clear? "

Waiting. Steve hold his breath waiting. It took less than a minute for you. But, for the man, it seems like forever.

" Alright. " You glanced up a small smile on your face. " I will tell mum tomorrow and I will stay in the night before the wedding. " You turned on your heels turning your back to him and started to arrange some pieces of utensils that were still wet on the racks.

There weren't many things that could shock Steve Rogers. He wasn't shocked to learn about Buck and Sam's sexual and dark experience with women. He wasn't shocked when he found out how his father treated his mother after she cheat on him. But right now he was stunned. With quick and graceful movement, Steve stood up from his chair and walked around the counter to stand behind you. His hand on your forearms, he forced you to face him, letting the plate you were holding shatter inside the sink. Startled you let out a small cry before raising your sight to meet his blue one.

" What's wrong with you. " Steve breathed out his face  inches away from yours. He raised his hands to take hold of your face inside large fingers. His gaze searching yours, his confusion was quickly turning into irritation. " W-What do you mean? " You replied, puzzled but with a faint smile on your lips, forcing your fears and demons away. " Where is the girl who would fight me or even try to coerce me to spend time with her mother? Where is your anger, Y/N? " Steve frowned, tilting his head back, forcing you to look him in the eyes. " I-I don't know what you mean. " You replied in a small and quiet voice, shaking your head slightly showing your confusion and trying really hard to not remembered. You blinked several time to held back your tears. No, later. " Don't lie to me. " The blond-man hissed, his voice low. " I-I stopped the pill. " You answered quickly, licking your lips, watching him , his grasps becoming loose on your cheeks. " Maybe that’s why my hormones are in…" " Wait what? " Steve took a step back, his arms dropping down. Anger became puzzlement. " You stopped it? " He asked scowling. " Yes. " You nodded your head, your fingers playing with your bracelet at your wrist. " When we came back from my parents, I finished the last pack and didn't go to the drugstore to buy a new one. " You confirmed, raising your shoulders slightly, waiting expectantly for his reaction a small smile on your lips.

Taking another step back , Steve turned around to face the bay windows. The light of New York's highest building blinked back at him. Pinching the bridge of his nose, Steve closed his eyes hard. For once, his mind was empty and not thanks to sex.

" And you didn't think of telling me this. " He whispered under his breath, biting his lower lip. " No, but that's what you wanted. " You said bemuse, looking at his tense back.   " Right? " " No. " Steve sighed opening his eyes and thrusting his hands through his hair.   " That was never what I wanted. " He murmured before leaving the open area of the kitchen and started to climb the staircase of the penthouse.

°°°

Increasing the pression of the water to the maximum you walked back inside the large shower , pushing your back against the icy marble wall of the lavish cabin. Naked, you started to slowly drop to the floor, trembling slightly and waiting for the temperature of the room to heat up. Biting your lower lip, you glanced at the door, assuring yourself that it was closed shut through the fogginess that started to creep up on the glass and your teary eyes. Facing forward, and fully seated, you raised your legs, to hug your knees to your chest, crying quietly against your skin. It has been your routine for the past week and a half. Your only reprieve from the madness of your life. You sniffed putting your chin on your knees hugging your legs tighter. Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Don't think abo-…

" His or mine. What's the difference? " The bang of the door. The blinding light. No!

Closing your eyes, you started to rock your body, trying to calm your bursting emotions. Shame and deep sadness weigh heavy on your stomach. You let your tears fall on your cheeks, secretly hiding one of your profound secrets behind a close door, the shower stall rinsing away the evidence.

°°°

Steve felt the bed tipped beneath him as you lied down. The blond man turned his back to you facing the large bay windows as you made yourself comfortable under the cold sheets. Lights from the city that never sleeps were pouring inside the room casting dark shadows on the bare walls. Sighing deeply, Steve didn't know what to do with what he felt for the woman next to him. He never felt so torn and confused by all these emotions. He despised that. All his life, he tried to ignore them or avoided any situations that might make him feel that way. But you were tearing apart every resolution, decision, and rule he had made for himself. Sighing deeply, Steve turned around, troubled by the lights of the others Manhattan's skyscrapers to face the wall. Only to meet your gaze watching him, expectantly. Everything, since you came back from your hometown, had changed. You looked the same but you weren't you anymore. And Steve's observation was confirmed once again as you reached for him across the bed, a small smile curving on your lips, your eyes twinkled with the light coming from the windows. Your hand landed on his white shirt. Your fingers started to gently stroke his tone chest above the soft fabric. Steve rolled his eyes, trying not to react to your touch. But his body wasn't align with his mind as his cock started to get hard inside his boxer brief. For Christ's Sake! Taking your wrist in a swift motion of his fingers, he pushed your hand aside, shaking his head.

" Not tonight. " The blond - man closed his eyes breathing deeply and moved to lie on his back. His voice echoed inside the darkroom casting a cold atmosphere between you. " Tell me what I need to do. " Your voice sounded small to his ears, feeble and uncertain.

Steve turned his head to the side to look at you. You bite your lower lips waiting for his order. Your desire to please him was the only emotion that could suppress any distress and hurt you were feeling. Sex with Steve Rogers could make your mind empty of any thought. How ironic.

" I want my old Y/N back. " " To fuck me when I cry?  " You stated smirking and casting your eyes down on your hands resting on the mattress. " There she is. " Steve faintly smiled before resting his head down on his pillow, closing his eyes.  

You turned your back to him, crossing your arms on your chest, feeling hopeless.

" Goodnight Steve. "

°°°

Your dress was heavy and a little bit loose on the back. You caught your mom several times looking at the little space, frowning. She already tried to coerce you to eat during the dinner but you couldn't eat anything. All your energy since the start of the day was focused on avoiding that man. You wouldn't be able to contain your emotion if your eyes meet his cold ones. Especially the day of your wedding.

" Everything was lovely, Y/N. " Pepper, Tony's wife, smiled at you sipping her glass of champagne. " The ceremony, your dress, this venue. " She sighed looking around her at the priceless and numerous painting display on the walls of the room. " I can't believe you succeeded to snatch a date at The Frick and on short notice. " She beamed, visibly impressed. " I had a lot of luck. " You smiles tightly, feeling your limbs growing heavy with exhaustion.

The day had been long. Between avoiding someone, trying to calm yourself and your parents while monitoring that everything goes smoothly, the ceremony, the photos, the food…

" She's so modest. " An arm slowly encircle you from behind, gently pushing your body against a firm chest.  

And Steve.

" But before accepting to be my lovely wife, Y/N was my very competent assistant. She knows all the important people of New York. " The blond-man continued pushing his head above yours, his fingers stroking gently your stomach.

You smiled tilting your face to look at him adoringly. Pepper's smile grew on her face as Steve put asoft kiss on your lips. Giving you privacy, the blond woman walked back toward the tables where people were installed. Some were strolling around looking at the painting, others were still eating, seating at the tables expensively decorated for the occasion. A few were watching you. The happy couple who a couple hours ago, said I do's. Pushing your lips firmly against his own, you tried to deepen the kiss however he moved his face away nuzzling your nose with his before leaning his face up. You felt the coldness creeping inside your core as Steve's looked away to meet the gaze of the new person coming your way. Even though an unspoken agreement passed between you to act "crazy in love" when people were around you, the weird, cold and odd tension that crept between you since the night you told him about your pill didn't pass. No, it increased changing your already strange relationship into a co-existing partnership.

" Kent! " Steve nodded at the man stopping in front of you, he shook the hand of the tall, dark-haired whose amused blue eyes was turned towards you. You smiled at him despite your true desire to hide far away from here. " Rogers. " The man nodded smiling at you. 

Something was off with him. Something with his eyes bugged you and made you feel at ease.

" How an ugly face like you, made this woman accept to spend the rest of her life with you? " He inquired, dubious, frowning slightly. " With love. " Steve shrugged, he slightly and slowly put his body in front of yours, eyeing the man with irritation. " When did you arrive? " " A few minutes ago, I'm standing in for my father. " The dark-haired man explained, pushing his hands inside the pockets of his smart suit. " Daddy dearest sends his apology but being a Duke is more important than attending a small reception in the capital of the world. " He slowly smiled. " You're a Duke? " You asked dubious,  curiosity picking your interest. " I'm Clark. " Was his only answer tilting his head to the side to look at you behind Steve's imposing frame. " And you must be the lovely bride that my dear best friend hide from his own friend group. " " Y/N. " You smile faintly, still feeling uncomfortable by his gaze.

You were not surprised by his presence. You didn't knew half of the people that were invited to your wedding. Steve Sr's assistant had handled the invitation for the Rogers family. And as you promised yourself to stay away from this man, you found yourself in this peculiar position to smile and act in front of people who were so rich and elegant that their last names were plastered on the oldest and most important buildings on the East Coast. But a Duke's son? Steve tilted his body to the side almost hiding you from the sight of Clark who only laugh in front of his friend behavior.

" Come on, now, Steve. You used to share. " " Not. My. Wife. " The blond-man enunciated through gritted teeth.  

You felt warmth blossom inside your heart. Wife. You were his wife now. Not his assistant, not just someone with who he spent his nights. But his wife. Clark laughed once again. The sound boomed inside the room making several heads turn your way.

" Marriage does change a man, after all. " The dark-haired man chuckled, his blue eyes were illuminated with the soft warm spots of the room, delight and amuse. " Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to make a toast. " A loud grave voice announced above the many conversations.

Your back grew rigid and your bones chilled with fear.

" See you in Oslo, Rogers. " Clark said to his friend but winked at you before stepping back toward the tables.

You turned your face toward the man whose only presence repulse you only to meet the same shade of blue eyesight that winked at you a couple of seconds ago. Is it possible?

" S-Steve…? " You started to whisper only to be stop as your husband's fingers grasped your waist strongly.

A warning.

Your smile grew on your face as you tried not to flinch under the pain and the memories.

" Not now. Not here. " Steve murmured inside your ear, his sight turned toward his father standing, micro in hand before he put a soft kiss on your temple. " I would like to say a few words. " Steven Sr announced to the crowd, looking at everyone.

When his eyes landed on you, a small smile appeared at the corner of his lips before he turned his eyes away . You raised your hand to hug Steve close to your side, burying your cheek against his firm chest. Steve started to caress your as he feel you tremble beneath him. Frowning he looked down to watch you close your eyes briefly before setting them on his father who started his speech. A smile was painted on your face but in your eyes, Steve could see the despair and anguish.

"… was a special occasion. But unfortunately, the health of my wife prevented her to come and join us today. "

At the mention of his mom, Steve's eyes met his father's stare, cold like ice.

" However, as parents of our successful son, we are pleased to see him happy." The patriarch continued, a small smile tugging his lips. " Today, he chose to marry the woman he love, making me and my wife proud. " He nodded then turned his cold eyes toward you. " Y/N, " his smile grew on his lips, his voice softer. " We are also happy that from today you joined our family assuring the Rogers name a bright and long future ahead. " He added tilting his head towards you.

A tight lip smile appeared on your mouth while you pressed your body against Steve.

" Our ancestor came in power when this country was only land, savages, and gold. " Steven went on, his gaze traveling on every face in the room. " We made this country, we took control, rein in and develop this country. The Rogers family comes to power from nothing and through, coal, mines, gold, train, the newspaper then television, production, technological development, and resources, we made the United States of America. We are the United Stated of America. " He smiled with conviction, purpose, and determination before raising his glass. " So everyone, please, join me and raise your glass to the couple who  promise themselves to each other today. To our family, the Rogers, powerful in the past, present, and future. To America, who have always been great and strong. " He finished off, branding his glass of brandy above his head, content and all smile.

You saw Steve's father animated with passion and devotion for his words. Light brightening his eyes, his face flush with vigor and enthusiasm, pleased by the applause of his public. Steve and you joined him raising your glasses of champagne. But before you could take a sip as everyone else, you saw the expression on Steve Sr face.  The old man hadn't finished ruining your life. 

" And of course, congratulations to the couple. " The patriarch added, his voice still loud even though the clap of your guests died down. " To the new addition to our family! Make us proud with son! " He cried out before tipping down the content of his glass in his mouth, tipping his head back.

Fuck!

°°°

Tags: @chvntelle-99 @iloveshawnieboi​ @rebekahdawkins​ @preciouscupcake​ @dorothea-hwldr @onlyvisuallybasic​ @accioparadise​ @mandiiblanche​ @undecidedsworld @biiskuitx​ @mansaayyy-blog​ @tinynshykitten​  @mogaruke​ @roxyfan14-blog​ @v-crazyparawhore-v​ @wanessalopesqueiros​ @ntthuyy25​ @vampy-doll​ @syrenavenger​ @donutloverxo​ @dontbescaredtosingalong​ @what-is-your-wish​ @mogaruke​  @tinynshykitten​ @poucinette1333​

[rootin-tootin-cum-shootin]

Copper and Iron

Synopsis: Y/N finds themself working as a volunteer in an experiment being done by a famous Robotics company. An experiment on a new AI program meant to allow their autonomous androids to have emotions. However what both Y/N and the researchers didn't anticipate was for their new experiment to fall in love with her human.

Ship: Hinata Hyuga x gn! Reader

Word Count: 9,320

Warnings: Yandere, Emotional abuse,Toxic Relationship, Manipulation, Gaslighting, Blood (from a broken nose)

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There are many factors that go into creating something truly magnificent. Often it takes ingenuity, a creative touch, patience, and a lot of perseverance. Not to mention bravery. Sometimes the creations are timeless, whether that be for a practical purpose like the invention of the light bulb or for a more spiritually fulfilling purpose like music. Despite this innovations such as these change form slightly as time progresses, however if one were to go back and look at something like a table from as far back as physical historical artifacts can be found, it can still be recognized for the purpose that it serves. Whether the table is made of plastic from 100 years ago or even Dysprosil from modern day. However none of that matters in the long run, because as previously stated time continues moving forward and so does innovation. It is very rare that the best inventions are ever made, after all the best creations are always the ones where eventually society can no longer live without them. Imagining a world where the thing an individual is most dependent on is missing, is quite often devastating. That is especially the case when it comes to the newest form of AI technology. And it is on that note that our story truly begins. 

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The towering building of Baseline Robotics™ glimmered as the rolling holographic advertisement displayed along the outside shifted to the customary greeting message as the doors unlocked before Y/N. Walking into the surprisingly empty lobby they immediately noticed that the interior decorations seemed to be going for a theme of alien hospital. Everything seemed to be white or a reflective silver and it was very nearly maddening in it’s sterility. However what caught Y/N’s attention was a stiff pure white couch that laid empty. It seemed like nobody had ever sat down on it, whether that be from fear of staining it or how uncomfortable it appeared to be was yet to be determined. Despite this observation Y/N sat down, albeit hesitantly. Soon people began to enter the building and walk down one of the two brightly lit hallways, turning either immediately left or the right while not a single person entered the large door at the end of the middle hallway.  

They had never been to Baseline Robotics™ as they never really saw a need to before now. AI was an essential part of society and for that Y/N was grateful that robotics companies existed. Without the people who can make the AI that is essential to daily tasks like driving, or customer service life would be far more difficult. And thus cities like Canphia wouldn’t exist. However recently Baseline Robotics™ had begun the shift from functional robots and computer programs to fully autonomous androids. Androids of course had already existed for a few years short of two centuries, but never had they ever looked so realistic. The only thing preventing them from being fully human was the lack of emotions. But since most androids were expensive and thus they were employed as nannies and maids in only the richest households. Being able to get angry or excited would make them neglect their duties and so nobody ever considered creating an android capable of emotions. And thus Y/N had never even considered going into the Baseline building. Besides what would a college student ever need with a robot servant. 

“Greetings! How can we help you today?” A robotic voice asked Y/N as it wheeled closer to them. 

“I’m here to answer the ad requesting volunteers for an experiment,” Y/N responded carefully.

“Follow me!” The robot chirped as it turned abruptly towards the hallway behind it, eventually both Y/N and the robot reached the door that nobody else had entered. The robot whirred softly as it unlocked the door in front of it,”Please enter and someone will be with you shortly.” 

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“Hello, you must be here for the experiment. I’m Researcher Ino, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” The young woman was grinning excitedly at Y/N as she extended a hand towards them. 

Reaching a hand out to shake Ino’s Y/N introduced themself quickly before they were suddenly being taken down a hallway by conveyor belt. It led down a series of short confined hallways before abruptly opening up into a large production floor similar to the ones that create cars. 

“So Y/N before we get started with the paperwork I’d like to ask you some quick questions,” Ino hummed as she looked over the documents displayed on her Holo-Cast. 

“Go ahead Ino.” 

“Why did you want to sign up for this?”

“Well…” Y/N hesitated, to say they were embarrassed at their reasoning for signing up was an understatement, but figuring honesty was the best way to go they continued to speak. “I moved to Canphia about six months ago and it’s been very hard for me to make any meaningful relationships so most of my free time is spent alone at home. I figured that since I don’t really ever do anything I could dedicate my spare time to assisting the behind the scenes science that goes into creating the AI we depend on.”

“Is there anything in particular that’s been preventing you from making friends?” the researcher inquired pleasantly. 

“If you haven’t noticed yet I have a difficult time speaking Katlior so it’s harder for me to communicate.” Y/N confessed with a light shrug as they entered Ino’s office. 

“Well Y/N I believe that you will be a perfect candidate for the experiment. With your help we might be able to finally take the last step in advancing AI technology. Welcome to the team.”

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It had been eight months of working with Ino and Y/N was excited to finally see what all their work was being put towards. If someone asked them if their time spent in the labs was helpful, Y/N in all honesty would have answered no. All they did was take silly personality quizzes about themself and their relationships that inevitably lead nowhere interesting or have conversations with the same four bot programs. The strangest things that they encountered in the lab however were the days where Ino would sit with Y/N and eat a meal while they discussed normal things for two people who are getting to know each other, like hobbies, interests and ideal types of all things. And what made this the strangest of the lab days was the fact that Ino would always take notes during their conversations, so the conversations were always a little awkward. 

Nonetheless Y/N was excited as earlier today Ino had mentioned that they needed to come into the lab a day early. She wouldn’t tell them exactly why they needed to come in but she sounded very excited and that made Y/N excited. 

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By the time Y/N had arrived at Borderline Robotics™ Ino was very nearly bouncing off the walls from how exhilarated she was at what she was about to unveil to Y/N. When they walked in she immediately jumped on them, wrapping an arm around Y/N’s shoulders while talking a mile a minute. “Ah you’re here! I called you in because we’re finally ready to begin the next stage of testing, and I have a feeling you’re going to love exactly what this stage entails. So if you would follow me I need to brief you on exactly what you’re about to experience so you’re prepared for this breakthrough. Okay let’s go!”

“Ino where exactly are we going? Isn’t the lab the other way?”

“Yep but today we’re going somewhere else.”

“...I’m so confused,” Y/N shook their head as they walked down the otherwise silent hallway. Ino grinned as she unlocked a door leading to a spiraling staircase and ushering Y/N to follow her down. 

“We need to go to the lab with the highest security clearance today, after all it’s not every day where you get so far in creating the first autonomous AI with emotions. So yeah, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, that’s what all the testing has been for Y/N. We want to be able replicate emotions in our autonomous AIs. So the information you gave us was used to create a personalized android based off of characteristics that you favored in the tests, and from that we created a personality for your android. She is as realistic as possible and fulfills the purpose you wanted, with a little extra thrown in too!” Ino was still talking very quickly and when combined with the endless winding of the staircase it served to only further disorient Y/N. 

Frustrated at their lack of comprehension on the topic Ino was babbling on and on about Y/N grabbed Ino's arm and stopped her both from talking and walking. “Ino please slow down, I'm not following. What purpose did I ever say I wanted an android for?” Y/N said exasperated. Ino blinked at them, her mouth falling into an open o shape. 

Looking away from them she flushed, when she spoke her speech had slowed down considerably, “Well you didn't explicitly say you wanted her to have a particular purpose but I assumed that you would like it if her purpose was to be a companion for you. You did say that making friends was hard due to your limited language skills so with her you would always have a friend. And on top of that we also gave her the ability to speak every known human language, so no matter where you go with her, she will always be able to help you with the language of that country.” She looked back at Y/N with a shy smile and continued, “She is going to be a complete sweetheart to you. I can tell you that, I programmed her personally. If all goes well with us fully waking her up, you and the other participants will all be able to take home your personalized android to continue testing. Our goal is to see if it’s possible to have an android with a near full range of human emotion that would allow them to do jobs that are stressful, dangerous and need careful action, while still maintaining the capability to de escalate and comfort those in need. Like… search and rescue paramedics or firefighters! And by having willing participants take the androids out and fully immerse them in day to day life, it will definitely prove if it’s possible.”

“What happens to her if the experiment succeeds? After it’s over I mean. Will she be scrapped?” Y/N said as they stared at the door at the bottom of the stairs. 

“Of course not Y/N-san, she would continue living just like how she was before the end of the experiment, minus all the mandatory testings she needs to undergo… Oh that reminds me, before I introduce you to her there are some things you need to know, you know rules and the like,” she said now slowly descending down the remaining stairs to the door.  Y/N now relieved at knowing what was about to happen when they entered the lab, followed after her, ready to listen intently to the rules they needed to follow.

“So first of all since this is an experimental form of AI you are going to have to bring her in biweekly for the first four months for little check ups, as there might be some problems with either the physical body she inhabits or glitches in her programming. If you happen to find any before the next check up feel free to bring her in before then, and we’ll fix her right up! Number two, she needs to be charged every 32 hours. She is able to use the solar panels embedded into her skin to self charge in direct sunlight but if she doesn’t get any direct sunlight and her battery starts to get low, then you will have to plug her in. Number three, while charging with the cord in she is not to do any energy consuming activities, so laying down or sitting are the best options. Light activity such as walking a very short distance is possible but not strongly advised, listening to music or watching children’s television shows will be fine, just make sure she won’t be processing any heavy amounts of information or moving too much. The last thing is less important for you to know but nonetheless, number four she is waterproofed so she is able to interact with water without being damaged. However just because she can wash dishes, walk in the rain and shower does NOT mean she can be fully submerged in water. So no baths or going scuba diving with her. Wading in a pool or lake is possible although not recommended.“

Y/N nodded sincerely as they programmed the instructions into their Holo-Cast so they wouldn’t forget them after leaving the lab, and despite their focus and serious diligence in recording the rules Ino could tell that they were excited. After all they were barely containing a smile as she opened the door to the room where the androids were all just awakening. Y/N looked up from what they were doing as Ino motioned for them to follow her into the room. 

Once in the room Ino quietly greeted her two fellow researchers as she guided Y/N past all the other pairings in the room and over to the single lone android. Ino stopped a few steps from where the android was sitting on the table, there was nothing on the table beside her but the blanket that at one point covered her body before her awakening. Disappointed but not surprised, Ino nudged Y/N forward to meet her while she went to go get the bag of the things the android would need, “Hinata, I have someone here to meet you.” She said, causing the android to turn her head and look at the pair. 

“Hello, I’m Hinata,” she said inquisitively. 

“Hello Hinata, I’m Y/N. It’s nice to meet you,” Y/N responded enthusiastically albeit they did feel slightly uncomfortable due to the others around them already having extensive conversations.   

“Hi!!” Hinata said enthusiastically, she seemed to be a very bright and nearly childlike person and that made Y/N smile softly at her. They truly didn’t know what to say to Hinata and thus their conversations were short, and the silences between them long.  

Ino soon returned with a very large duffel bag and handed it off to Hinata’s waiting arms, “You’re going to be living with them from now on Hinata, that means you can leave the lab!” Hinata looked at Y/N intently and nodded slowly. She was starting to realize what the humans wanted from the other androids and she was wondering if Y/N was the same way. 

“Y/N one thing before you leave, feel free to bring her by anytime you want. We’d all love to see how you’re both doing. Okay?” Ino interjected as Hinata put on her jacket so the pair could leave. Y/N smiled graciously as they agreed to stop by sometime soon. And with that they left with Hinata in tow. 

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The pair were silent as they ascended the stairs, not a word was spoken between them until they got outside of the building at which point the bubble of awkward tension burst between them. Hinata reached out in a move that mirrored the one that Y/N did to Ino not even a half hour earlier. “What am I to you Y/N? I know all of us were created with a role in mind and I want to know the one you think I’m going to play.” Hinata said intensely, her eyes were locked on Y/N as she spoke. 

“It’s embarrassing to admit but I want you to be my friend. I moved here a year ago and despite spending time with my classmates after lectures I haven’t been able to make any real friends by myself due to a strong language barrier between us. I can understand if you-” 

Y/N had looked away from Hinata in shame while they spoke and they only looked back after Hinata’s once hard and quite frankly intimidating voice softened, “Do you really mean you want to be friends? You’re not going to make me into a servant or something?” 

Y/N blinked in shock at how quickly her attitude changed but nodded with a smile, "No Hinata, I’m not going to make you my servant. I want to be friends, although in all honesty I wouldn’t mind if you help with chores sometimes…” They trailed off as Hinata laughed brightly. She intertwined their hands and swung them back and forth as they walked away from Baseline Robotics™. 

“Can we go to a zoo? I want to see a real life hippopotamus Y/N!” Hinata asked excitedly. Y/N nodded as they giggled, Hinata was just so full of wonder at everything and it was endearing. 

“Of course we can Hinata, you little sweetheart.” 

They hadn’t gotten more than a block away when Y/N’s Holo-Cast lit up with a call from Ino. It was strange that Ino was calling them so soon after leaving but thinking it might be important Y/N picked up the call. As soon as they hit the receive option Ino’s frantic voice was heard, “Oh thank goodness you’re okay! You need to bring Hinata back here right now for deactivation befo-” 

“Deactivation? Ino what the hell are you talking about? Hinata hasn’t done anything to me other than hold my hand,” Y/N said while looking at Hinata who looked just as confused. 

“The other androids, they just... flipped out all of the sudden and attacked the volunteers. Most of the humans were sent to the emergency room from the damage the androids caused. We were supposed to have a program put in that stopped them from harming their humans unless they were in direct danger but the volunteers were all just trying to leave to go home and the androids just went crazy unprovoked… Y/N are you sure Hinata isn’t going to-” 

This time Hinata cut Ino off, “Why would I ever want to hurt my friend Researcher Ino? We are even going to the zoo together, I really want to see a real life hippo! Please don’t take me away from Y/N, i really like them… ” Hinata was pouting at the idea of not getting to spend time with her new best friend when they had met. 

Ino paused her pleas as she realized that Hinata must have not seen Y/N as a threat judging by the behaviour Y/N described and the way that Hinata spoke of them. 

In shock from Hinata at all but admitting that she would have lashed out in anger had their conversation gone differently,  Y/N looked at the small form of Hinata who was now crouched down and cooing at a pigeon, having been distracted from the conversation at hand by the small avian’s appearance. “She doesn’t seem to want to hurt me,” Y/N thought, “And if she was going to do it she would have done it when everyone else did. Plus she acts a lot like a child, so I doubt she would do it now.”

Ino sighed, “It’s your limbs that are at stake here. Fine, if you feel safe, then...carry on your way then.” 

The last thing Y/N saw before the call ended was Ino shaking her head in disbelief. With a chuckle Y/N called out to Hinata, “You heard the woman! Let’s roll out.”

“Okie Dokie!” Hinata affirmed, reaching for Y/N’s hand once more. Swinging their intertwined hands between them as they walked to the zoo.

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Two weeks later Y/N and Hinata went in for the first scheduled check up, where amazingly Ino found the same abnormalities in her code as the other androids displayed; and yet she still didn't attack Y/N. Outwardly there was no evidence of violent tendencies anywhere in Hinata. “But the code doesn't lie, so what made her refrain from attacking Y/N?” Ino thought aloud as she watched the physical portion of the check up from a safe distance. 

Everything seemed to be going how it should be going and despite the excitement her colleagues were showing at having a working android, Ino thought that she needed to be deactivated like the others or at least reprogrammed.

When the other researcher finished with Hinata, Ino got an idea. The best way to find out a person's reasoning behind their actions is the simplest way. To ask them. She took a deep breath and walked over, rehearsing what she'd say in her head on the way over. Putting a hand on Hinata’s shoulder Ino carefully asked her the question all the while trying to not to give away her true intentions. 

“Hello Hinata I'm happy to report that the physical evaluation shows you are in perfect condition, Y/N must be taking good care of you," That got a smile and a pleased nod from the android. Ino patted her shoulder and continued, "But I do have a question for you in regards to your code. You see when we were looking at your coding today during the psych testing, we found the same anomaly that caused the other androids to attack their human volunteers, in you, and yet you were the only one not to attack anyone. So I figured I'd ask you what all us researchers were thinking, why didn't you attack Y/N?” 

“They wanted me to be their friend, and I wanted to be their friend too! Friends don't hurt friends Ino,” Hinata said cheerfully. She looked towards Y/N like a child looking to their parent for affirmation of their good behaviour. Y/N smiled at her and squeezed her hand as they watched Ino take notes. 

“Well as much as I would like to take out that particular section of code that created the violent behavior, I have been ordered by the higher ups to leave it in as they don’t want to potentially compromise Hinata. Plus if she says she’s not going to act on it, I suppose we'll just have to trust her," Ino gave a good natured smile directed at Hinata before continuing, "However I will implement a tell that would allow you, Y/N to see if she's getting to a state where she would act violent.” Ino said as she plugged some of the cords that were laying next to the table Hinata was sitting on into the nape of Hinata's neck; quickly pulling out a tablet, Ino typed out a sequence of numbers and letters before setting the tablet back down. Turning back to the pair she grinned, "and now we wait for it to upload, Hinata just make sure to lay down otherwise your balance could get a little wonky. You'll undergo a quick recalibration of the senses and all that, and then you're free."

Hinata nodded and laid down carefully, Y/N kept a hand on her back to help guide her down. Their face betrayed a look of shock and a hesitation that looked closer to fear than worry to Ino as by now Hinata's eyes had turned a milky white to allow for the update to her code to complete.

"Don't you worry about the eyes Y/N, that's supposed to happen. Any update to her code or recalibration of her senses will limit her sight in order to not overwhelm her in the process.  You probably haven't had to charge her using the cord yet but you'll notice her eyes will do that when charging as well."

Y/N shook their head, shaking the image of Hinata sitting in a dark room looking limp with wires coming off her body and her eyes as empty as a corpse. In a quick attempt to permanently banish the thought from their brain they looked at Ino and spoke once more. “And what is the tell you put in, Ino? You're being very vague…” Y/N inquired, wary.

Ino handed Y/N a sheet of paper as she spoke, “Her hair will lighten when she’s in a bad mood, and darken when she's in a good mood. The lighter it is the worse her mood is, the darker her hair is the better her mood is.  If she's sad, it will have blue in it. And embarrassment will create a pink tinge to the tips of  her hair. Both of the last two are because she has no fluids to convey those types of emotions, and with plenty of deliberation between the researchers we determined they’re both essential." 

Y/N was not convinced that this whole "tell" thing wasn't a predetermined plan instead of the on the fly programming that Ino was trying to make it look like it was. After all why else would she have a sheet of paper already printed off with a comprehensive guide to the colouring of Hinata's hair? 

Realizing that Y/N had caught on, Ino hurriedly got Hinata unhooked so that the pointed look Ino was being given wouldn’t turn into another question, "Okay you are both ready to go, see you in two weeks.

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“Y/N can we watch Iron Man again? Pretty please?” Hinata whined. 

“No, but only because you were whining again. Remember what we talked about Hinata, we don't whine to get what we want.” Y/N chided as they put on their coat. 

Hinata slumped down in the chair, she was disappointed in herself for making Y/N upset at her again. She was really trying to act more sophisticated and not like a toddler but everything was so new to her and she wanted to see it all, but it was just so hard to curb her enthusiasm for life when her wants were sidelined to more important things. But she would have to try harder so that Y/N wouldn’t be upset at her anymore. 

“Hinata! Sweetheart, I know you’re sulking out there. Get up and come put your shoes on so that we can go out, my friends are waiting for us at the restaurant and I don’t want to be late,” Y/N called out from in front of the door. Standing up, Hinata smoothed the wrinkles out of her clothes and walked over to where Y/N stood. 

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“Hello Sakura. How are you?” Y/N stood with Hinata beside them as they greeted the back of a person. 

  The woman turned to face Y/N as if she was surprised that they had spoken to them, when she locked eyes with Y/N she immediately began to smile. Sakura stood up, her short pink hair bouncing as she pulled Y/N into a hug,“Y/N! There you are, it felt like you were never going to meet up with us again. Sai and I were missing you.” After pulling away she looked at Hinata and spoke again, “Who’s this Y/N?”

Y/N grabbed Hinata’s hand as they spoke, “This is Hinata, she’s my friend and roommate.”

Hinata was pleased by finally being acknowledged by Sakura, she smiled timidly and waved at the girl, the ends of her hair shifting to a rosy pink , “It's nice to meet you Sakura.” Her voice was gentle when she spoke, she really wanted to appear as mature and polite as possible so that Y/N would be even more happy, so she let Sakura tug her down into the seat next to her. 

Y/N sat across from her and immediately turned to talk to the person next to them. His voice was deep when he spoke and had a strange way of pronouncing Katlio that led Hinata to believe he must be foreign, and therefore probably the Sai that Sakura mentioned. 

Sai had fully black eyes and his arms were covered in slowly morphing tattoos. Hinata was shocked, she didn't know that humans could come out like that, it made her feel very strange, she couldn't quite place the emotion she was feeling when she saw the human.

What she did know was she absolutely hated the way that Y/N was looking at him. 

“Examining his tattoos Hinata?” Sakura teased from beside her, “They are really cool I will admit. But still tell us about yourself. Where are you from, how did you meet Y/N, you know all the good stuff.” She tossed her hair as she spoke although it didn't go very far due to its cropped length. 

Y/N spun their head to look at Hinata directly in the eyes, they were silently pleading with her to not reveal that she was an android. Hinata didn’t like knowing she had to lie but she understood that she needed to do it to keep Y/N happy. So after sending a reassuring smile to Y/N she turned back to Sakura. Carefully and with practiced grace, as if she was a spider moving across the strands of it’s web to trap a still fluttering butterfly, she began to spin her lie, “Well…it’s not a very exciting story guys. I was born in Canphia but moved away when I was really young. I recently came back to the city and the two of us met through a mutual friend not too long ago and we hit it off. Y/N asked if I wanted to be their roommate after they found out I was looking for a place.” Hinata shrugged nonchalantly after she spoke, Sakura seemed pleased with her answer and thus turned her attention to Sai. Hinata immediately looked over at Y/N with the hope that she did a good job. 

Y/N smiled at her in relief and thinking she looked a lot like a puppy reached over and ruffled Hinata’s hair. So far, having Hinata around was going really well for Y/N because even though they still weren’t the best at Canphia’s unique language they got confidence in knowing that they had someone who would always be able to help them out. 

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When Y/N and Hinata arrived home from the diner, Hinata grabbed Y/N’s hands and stopped them from going inside the apartment. When they looked at her in confusion she giggled nervously, the tips of her hair going light pink for the second time that day, “I saw something in a drama and I want to try it. May I Y/N?” She tilted her head in inquisition and waited for their answer. 

“As long as it’s not going to hurt anyone then sure,” Y/N responded. 

Hinata smiled at them, went up on her tiptoes and placed a gentle, lingering kiss on Y/N’s forehead, “It’s not because I love you, it’s because I love only you. If it’s not you then I won’t have anyone else.” When she pulled away she was smiling very brightly, she had been wondering why the men in movies always did this sort of thing to people they like, but after doing it herself, she could completely understand why. It felt really nice to show affection like that, so much so that it created a small fluttering deep inside her chest.

After a beat of stunned silence Y/N blinked repeatedly at her as they spoke, “Are you quoting an old romance drama at me? Remind me to no longer watch sappy shows with you.” With a good natured eyeroll that Hinata could tell wasn’t genuine annoyance, Y/N dragged her inside. 

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Hinata and Y/N had been meeting up with Sai and Sakura every Saturday for months now and although the number of people who attended, the food ordered and the conversations had were always different, the one thing Hinata could expect during these times was to be ignored by the group of humans and only used as a translator by Y/N. She was always kept at an arm's length and unless she forcefully inserted herself into the conversation nobody would seem to notice she was even there, not even her best friend and roommate, the beautiful shining and incredibly social butterfly, Y/N. 

They used to do almost everything together. From grocery shopping and cleaning, to going out to the movies Hinata and Y/N were inseparable, no matter what they were doing they would always make it fun. Nothing was done around each other without trying to make the other laugh. Throwing popcorn, random tickle fights and long cuddle sessions on the couch when Y/N had a stressful day. Hinata cherished all of the moments they spent together, but now Hinata was not sure Y/N felt the same. 

But then it changed.

Soon Hinata practically had to beg for a simple good morning from Y/N. They had been coming home from school and immediately retreating into their room. They didn’t come out for anything and the light would stay on until very late into the night. Hinata tried everything to get their attention and yet no matter what she did none of it mattered because they never saw it. It was like she didn't even exist to her butterfly anymore. 

Afterall what is the spider who must stay grounded on her web to the butterfly with the freedom to explore not only the skies but the world below.

She even had to go to her last biweekly checkup without them, and those days were always spent together no matter how busy Y/N was. 

Then just that morning Y/N had asked Hinata to come with them to lunch and she was ecstatic, she dressed up nicely and did her hair just the way Y/N liked it. Soft bangs styled to frame her face, with the rest of her hair cascading down her back,  it was perfect for them to run their hands through, but that same hair which was normally a deep purple, nearing black was now a striking platinum blonde. 

She was at one point during the walk to the diner, hopeful that her relationship with Y/N would go back to normal and yet here she was still being ignored after months of the same torture over and over again. And any hope of waiting for things to go back to normal was crushed as the new guy, Neji wrapped his arm around Y/N's waist. He had been flirting with Y/N the whole time and what was making it positively intolerable was the fact that Hinata had to keep translating the flirtatious comments to Y/N. 

And what made it worse were the reactions Y/N gave. With every laugh and turn of their head to hide their flustered face, or the casual touches that Y/N would reciprocate Neji’s advances with, Hinata felt a sharp pain in her chest. Like a knife being shoved in and twisted. Hinata was starting to resent her creators for giving her the capability to feel. What exactly she was feeling was a mystery to Hinata but she knew that it hurt. It hurt a lot.

After over an hour of being positively miserable Hinata had finally had enough. Abruptly standing up she stormed out of the diner. As she left she accidentally knocked over the chair she was sitting in and the clang of the metal chair hitting the floor caused the conversation at her table to screech to a halt. 

 Y/N was extremely embarrassed by her behavioural changes and they apologized for Hinata. Excusing themself, they picked up the chair as they left, catching the door before it shut, thus the bell failing to ring again. When they got outside they were greeted with Hinata leaning against a light post while pouting. Normally Y/N would have simply talked to Hinata about her terrible behavior but they had never seen her hair such a stark white before. Sure they'd seen her hair a light brown or even a natural looking blonde but never white, immediately getting concerned and scared, Y/N walked around to the diner's alleyway where they could still see Hinata while not allowing her to see them. Y/N commed Ino on their Holo-Com to make sure she was available for an emergency visit. 

Hinata was even more miserable now, she was alone in the middle of the day and she had nothing to do. Now she couldn't even send dirty looks to that Neji guy who kept flirting with her Butterfly. The street was mostly silent save for the passing of vehicles along the road, which was a blessing. At least she had the quiet rhythm of the late afternoon traffic to help calm her down. Brushing her now blue bangs out of her eyes, she started to count the cars passing her on the street. At least that would give her something to think about other than Y/N and that stupid human man flirting with each other.

Behind her the door to the diner opened up, the bell above the door rang and soon the sound of footsteps followed. Whoever it was moved towards where Hinata was standing, watching the movement along the busy street. The footsteps stopped behind her and immediately Hinata knew who was standing there. 

“Hey Himiko right? After you left Y/N followed, have you seen them? I just want to see how-” Neji cut himself off as Hinata slowly turned around, something wasn't right with her eyes. They were soulless, empty, and not at all human. Neji staggered back as Hinata began to smile, a smile that didn't reach past her lips. 

Hinata walked towards Neji, enjoying how he was trying to pretend he wasn't scared of her. In a split second of panic Neji wound up and punched Hinata in the throat only to be met with something rock hard that hurt him more than it hurt Hinata. But that was all Hinata needed. In the blink of an eye Neji was on the ground, his nose broken and bloody. 

Y/N was watching this from around the corner in shock. Hinata with her snow white hair had just sent a man crashing to the ground with blood pouring from his face. She stood over the now unconscious Neji, blood dripping from her knuckles. Y/N was shaking in fear when Ino picked up the com they had sent. 

“Come here now,” Ino said before hanging up.

Y/N nodded and walked toward where Hinata was. They stood beside her and offered their shaking hand. “Hinata how about we go for a walk together okay? To clear our heads, maybe we'll go see our friend Ino.” Y/N said tensely. At this point Sakura had seen Neji and was rushing out to go help him thus Y/N felt comfortable leaving him. 

Hinata on the other hand was excited, she hadn't seen Ino in a while and her Butterfly wanted to spend time with her again. Clasping their hand in hers, they began to walk toward Baseline Robotics™. Y/N wanted to vomit due to the sticky feeling of Neji's blood on their hand.

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“So you're concerned because her hair turned white after you spent over an hour using her as a translator so that a guy could successfully flirt with you? And then she punched the same guy who was flirting with you after already being incredibly annoyed by him. Y/N you realize how ridiculous that is right? Hinata did that because she was jealous and didn’t know better than to lash out physically, especially since from what you said he threw the first punch. That registered to her coding as an immediate threat, so of course she removed the threat by incapacitating him,” Ino said as she sipped her smoothie. With a chuckle she set her drink down and motioned to Hinata who was playing with one of the robotic hands on the table while listening in.

“Y/N we made Hinata specifically so that she could emulate human emotions while still being fully autonomous. You have to remember, she's comparable to a puppy, she has you and that's about it at the moment. She probably feels very protective of you since she doesn't know anyone as well as she knows you, and because of that she is very attached to you. So when you bring her places with you and then ignore her in favour of other people it irritates her. Just like how you'd feel if the person you love was ignoring you constantly. She may have copper wires instead of iron in veins but she is essentially human so treat her that way. Then everything will be fine and you won't face that problem again. Okay?” 

Y/N nodded relieved and mildly embarrassed, walking over to Hinata who was listening intently to the conversation. “I-... I think that I owe you an apology Hinata. How I treated you today was unfair, and I swear I won’t allow it to happen again. Come on sweetheart let's go home, we can watch your favourite movie and cuddle, just… let me make it up to you?” Y/N said as Ino's words replayed over and over in their head. 

Hinata grinned widely, her hair slowly darkening at the roots, turning her whole head black once more, the bangs however still remained tinted blue, but in the dimmed light of the lab it was near impossible to notice. She dropped the disembodied arm and grabbed for Y/N’s hands and as the pair made their way home one thing in particular about what Ino said stuck out to Y/N. Did Hinata really do that to Neji because she was in with love Y/N? Y/N didn't really believe it, after all why would she, they were friends.

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Another lunch over and Hinata was excited to go home so she and Y/N could hopefully watch a movie together. Over the course of the week Hinata had been formulating a plan, a plan that she carefully acted on all throughout that day’s lunch meet up. She was just waiting for Y/N to come out of the washroom so they could leave when Sai and Sakura came over to say goodbye after lunch. 

“Hey Hinata before we go, we wanted to remind you to tell Y/N that next week we’re going to eat lunch at the cafe closer to campus. Oh and one more thing... thank you for giving us our Y/N back.” Sai said with an uncharacteristically soft voice before Sakura managed to drag him over to her bike.

 Hinata's hair lightened in the blink of an eye at the comment Sai made, she was on the verge of starting to scream at the pair when the familiar voice of Y/N interrupted her, “What did they say about me? I heard my name but couldn’t quite catch anything else” they asked sweetly. 

She plastered on a fake smile and shook her head, “You don’t want to know.” She laughed awkwardly and held out a hand for Y/N to take. Y/N frowned and took hold of her hand as they walked back home. 

“What. did. they. say. Hinata.”

“They told me that I was ‘too good to be stuck hanging around’ you,” Hinata sighed deeply, really uncomfortable with saying it.

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Y/N had been getting more and more suspicious of Hinata with every weekly lunch meetup. It seemed as though every time that Y/N didn’t understand a remark made about them during those times Hinata would frown and look away as if she was in pain. If they pressed her to say what she'd heard she would confess that the people they were with were insulting them. At first they didn't believe it but now they were starting to believe her, since they stopped getting invited group activities with their so called friends.

Y/N was actually getting lonely from the lack of contact they were getting in the brief amount of time they were actually invited to go and meet with friends. But the greatest sting was when not even a week after their exams finished, the people that Y/N thought were friends had ditched them. And the one person they thought they could rely on was being distant.

It was getting harder to fall asleep every night as the hole in their chest just kept eating away at Y/N, telling them that all their worst fears were true. They had cried themself to sleep as many as six times in the past two weeks. The worst part however was just how exhausting the isolation had become.

The clock read 3:45AM and Y/N was just starting to fall asleep when a loud crash was heard from out in the living room. Thinking it was an intruder, Y/N immediately thought of Hinata and how valuable she would be if some devious rival to Baseline Robotics™ had found out about her existence. Leaping out of bed in a panic to protect her, Y/N grabbed a heavy book and slowly crept their way into the kitchen. The noise continued while Y/N made their way to where the sounds were originating from. Once in the kitchen they continued to creep forward into the living room where they flicked the lights on ready to attack the intruder; only to see Hinata now standing over a now completely decimated roomba. 

“Hinata? What the hell are you doing to our roomba!” Y/N whisper yelled, Hinata only pouted in response and raised her leg presumably to stomp on it again. With a sigh Y/N put the book down and looked at Hinata in the eyes, they were fed up with life, exhausted, angry and very willing to take it out on her, “I'm going to ask you this one more time. What the fuck. Do. You. Think. You're. Doing?” 

Hearing the anger in Y/N's voice Hinata lowered her leg and the colour blue creeped into her hair, “I missed you and I wanted to see you again without having to be around those... humans,” she said softly. 

“But what does that have to do with the roomba, which, need I remind you, is nothing but a vacuum?” Y/N whisper-yelled, they were so very confused.

“Because you love it more than you love me,” Hinata screamed. She paused and ran a hand through her deep blue hair in an effort to calm down before she spoke again “Ever since you got it months ago you've been ignoring me, you said when we first met that you wanted to be friends. Now you ignore me unless you want to go see those humans you call friends when all they do is insult you to your face when they know you can't understand them. I hate the fact that despite being used as nothing more than a translator by you, I still can't find it in me to stop loving you… You're my whole world but I know I'm not yours and that scares me. I'm scared that you will leave me all alone…” Hinata hung her head, if she could cry, she would have. She walked off into her sparsely decorated room and shut the door with a heavy sigh. 

Y/N was left alone once more and as they stood in the oppressive silence of the living room, they realized just how much they messed things up. Their priorities clearly hadn't been straight in a very long time and instead of being the person Hinata needed, they were selfish and used her. “But even though all that, she still cares for me…” Y/N said in muted shock, a hand rushing to cover their mouth, it was sickening to realize, and Y/N’s stomach lurched at the thought. They attempted to look at the floor but everything blurred as their eyes filled with tears. All those feelings of abandonment, of isolation, of loss and desperation; like a butterfly desperately searching, flying high and low to find a particular flower to feed off of, these past few weeks could have been avoided if they had simply looked to their side where Hinata was waiting for them. Hinata, the shy violet that was consistently rooted in Y/N’s life even when they willingly became blind to her.

 Y/N didn't see it before but they truly did love her more than anyone else. And all that it took to come to this realization was facing the potential loss of the only person to still love Y/N even after countless weeks of neglecting both Hinata’s emotional needs, and their own. 

With a newfound determination they looked towards where Hinata's room was. The hallway leading to the bedrooms was still dark but despite this Y/N traversed it with the familiarity of their many months with each other, they needed to make right what they nearly completely messed up. 

Knocking on Hinata's door Y/N called out to her, “Hinata, sweetheart, I'm sorry. I want to apologize to you, I haven't been treating you very well recently and I'm so sorry for that. I got so excited by the idea that I would end up with more friendships than before and I ended up using you. I realize now that I made a huge mistake. The people who I wanted to impress the most turned their backs on me and instead of spending time with you I became a recluse. Everything I thought I knew about the people I cared about was a lie. And I've been so damn blind to all the signs around me that even though I knew that you loved me, I never even realized that this whole time, I loved you back. Avoiding you even though you were the only person who was ever truly my friend was the biggest mistake I could have ever made. And I did it… I don't expect you to forgive me… I just- ... I just really want you to know that I am so sorry for how I've treated you, I never deserved to have someone as kind as you in my life.” 

Y/N's face was hot with shame as tears rolled down their cheeks. Their strength was suddenly missing from their legs and they slid down the wall next to her bedroom door that they had been using as a crutch. 

When the door opened Y/N heard soft whimpers that weren't their own, in the doorway stood Hinata looking like she was on the verge of tears. Everything was silent for a moment as the pair just stared at each other. Y/N knew that in that moment if Hinata could cry, she would have been.

“I-I forgive you Y/N. But y-you have to promise me th-that you won't do that to me ever again. I would never leave you all alone, so if you're feeling upset you could always talk to me. Just don't shut me out again okay?” Hinata hiccupped. She knelt down and put her head on Y/N's shoulder and an arm around their side as tears continued to make their way down Y/N's cheeks. “One more thing… I want you to say that I'm yours. Like they do in all the dramas.” she said gently, she wanted to improve the mood somehow and at the moment that seemed to be the best way to do it. 

“I will, but only if you're going to do the same,” Y/N murmured as they clung onto Hinata's pyjamas. 

Hinata's arms reached around and pulled them into a warm and tender embrace, allowing Y/N to take comfort in finally seeing that they were not alone at all. The duo stayed just like that until Y/N became tired enough that they fell asleep, their hand still bunched up with a fistfull of Hinata’s nightgown. 

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When the beginnings of the golden light of the sunrise entered their apartment Hinata couldn't help but look down at her sleeping lover. They looked so peaceful, so sweet, so pretty, so delicate, just like a little butterfly; lying there with their head on her lap as they clutched onto the hem of her nightshirt in their sleep. Hinata wanted to live in that moment forever. The warmth of the sun hitting her face made her feel energized and the soft fluttering feeling was back, much stronger now, like the beating of one thousand pairs of wings. This time it filled her up so completely she imagined that she had lots of little birds flying through her chest.  As silly as it sounds, to Hinata anything and everything felt possible in that moment. 

It was wonderful, although a small dark flicker passed through her mind. She didn't let it affect her pleasant mood though, after all she did spend so much time carefully weaving her little web. It had taken months for her to carefully weed out the people who were taking her Butterfly from her. Hours upon hours of listening to meaningless conversations, waiting for a phrase that could be twisted around to become insulting or demeaning and then relaying that information back to Y/N in her native tongue. And all of it so that they would realize that she was the only person for them. They didn't need anyone else if she was by their side. 

It was so adorable that they maintained their naïvety throughout their life, but it was also just as dangerous. If she was able to manipulate Y/N so easily then who else would see that and try and take them away from her. Especially because they fell for every word she told them hook line and sinker without suspecting anything at all.

“Yes it is far safer for them to have only me,” she thought as she stroked Y/N's cheek with her thumb. And yet it still weighed heavily on her mind, afterall she was taught that lying to the people she cared for was very, very bad. She didn't like that she was forced to do such a thing to the person she loved more than anything else, but plenty of relationships where one person lies to the other work in movies. After all love is stronger than everyone and everything that would attempt to get in the way of it. Hinata knew that they would be an example of this now that she finally had Y/N all to herself. 

Hinata hummed a soft tune as she picked up Y/N to put them in their bed. They were soon gently slipped under the covers with it, tucked snugly around their body. 

Sitting next to them for a moment Hinata lingered a while, they looked positively delectable afterall. Irresistible in fact. So gathering what courage she had and mixing it with that light floaty sense of contentment she felt, Hinata leaned down and with a soft smile kissed Y/N's forehead as they slept. Torn between wanting to surprise them when they woke up and staying to watch them as they slept; eventually after much deliberation the android stood up to go make them breakfast.

Savouring the moment for a little longer she pet Y/N's cheek fondly, as she thought aloud, “Ino was right, we aren't so different at all. In fact we are perfect together. Copper and iron.”

[giorgiastastes]

El hoyo (2019)

"The message needs no carrier" (spoiler: it actually does)

"There are 3 kinds of people; the ones above, the ones below, and the ones who fall. "

I've just watched this small masterpieces and here's my own interpretation.

Obviously the whole movie is a big metaphor. Both an analogy about our society and one about the Afterlife are present.

First of all, in my view, the place they're kept into is like a Purgatory between heaven and hell. The protagonist entered there voluntary because after the six months trial he would have expiated his sins and would finally be ready to enter Heaven. The old man is an accidental killer, therefore he doesn't deserve Hell, but definitely can't go into Heaven either, and his punishment is longer than Goreng's because he did in fact end a life.

Also Goreng is referenced multiples times as the Messiah, and his travel towards this purge tower is quite similar to Dante's one.

Each prisoner wakes up the first day of the month in a different position, which represents our birth. Some are born in better environments, families and countries and all of it is just luck, fate.

Then, since everyone knows that each of higher floors will likely take advantage of their position, our selfishness takes the best of us.

The higher floors know that the lower ones will literally eat their leftovers, while the ones under know that they better take as much as they can, otherwise they won't be able to survive. There's no altruism or generosity in the society.

You're placed high, you sh*t on who's below. You're below, you dream to reach above.

Each of the characters represents something.

The first roommate, the old man, is someone who's very aware of their surrounding, who's tired of fighting and knows very well how the world works because he's been in a better as much as a worse situation.

The lady coming from the Administration is a middle class representative, trying to change the world but also completely unaware of what's happening right under her nose.

The fact that she keeps on saying that a baby cannot be there and there are 200 floors is just further proof that we blindly lie to ourselves that things can't be that bad, that the world isn't that evil and the rules are respect, being delusional of course, to help us sleep at night. That's why when she hits lower than what she was told was possible, she killed herself.

She's also a vegetarian, with a big love for animals. She obviously represents both an activist that is trying to tell others that they shouldn't eat more than they need, because that means that who's lower won't have anything left, which is such a big innuendo to climate change, but at the same time she's also a privileged person who's never been lower than a certain point and thinks that anyone can easily "just eat less" without caring about other's issues (it reminded me of some vegans who cannot accept that veganism is not accessible or sustainable for the majority of the would population)

The last roommate, the one with the rope represents a religious person, who endures the hardship without giving up because of his faith.

Another pragmatic sequence in my opinion was the one where the two, while descending the tower, met an ill man with a companion with the Down Syndrome (I'm sorry if I'm sounding insensitive is just that I don't know how else to better describe the scene to make it recognizable to you) who said that he will proceed to suffocate his cellmate to also eat what went into his stomach even while being no more hungry himself, I mean, can you better descrive greed than this sentence?

Now, coming to the final scene, which left many of the viewers disappoint or confused, here's my idea.

The deranged girl who claims to have a daughter is definitely crazy, but not completely gone. I do believe there is a baby there, and the Administration is probability unaware of that because there's someone higher than them, and they're being lied to, also. But I don't think the protagonist actually saw the little girl.

I think that he reached such a place of histeria that he convinced himself that the baby was alive, hallucinating, to have a last strand of hope as he was dying. Notice how the baby is perfectly clean and well nourished, that would be impossible. The little girl is long gone and dead God knows in which floor but he convinced himself that he saw her as a way of also hoping that some kind of humanity is still left, that they wouldn't kill and eat an innocent and innocuous creature. But that's not the case.

Notice how he reaches the 333th floor and then walks like he doesn't even have a scar. Now multiply that number for each room residents, which are two. He's dead and has now reached Hell. There he finds his first roommate who's also in Hell since they both damned themselves letting their selfishness take over. The lady is obviously absent, since she never hurt a thing or specifically ate someone's flesh.

The baby was all part of his imagination and she doesn't reach the 0 level, simply because she was never there in the first place.

The girl could have been the message if she reached the top, since it would have proven how flawed the system is, but she never will. Some people claimed that it is not possible to reach the top because of how fast the platform goes, that it will just crash on the ceiling. I do not agree. There's no point in letting the platform crash each time so it will probably slow down enough to reach level 0, in facts we don't even know how tall level 1 is.

Someone also claimed that it's impossible that no one else ever reached the top through this method, which means to go all the way down to then come back up. First of all, it could have happened and that person could have been sent back down, but what I find most reasonable is that no one knows how deep the hole is, probably up to hell, and no one is brave enough to do it because no matter how bad your situation is, you're still afraid of having it worse. It's a suicidal mission which led to crazyness and then death even our brave characters.

Another reference I've loved is when it's mentioned that usually the poorest kill each other's to survive, while the richest have the highest rate of suicide. Why is that? Easy, they have nothing to endure, to live for, they have everything, they're not longing for the hope of food plus there's frightening in knowing that the next month it can only worsen.

So now the question remains: What is the ending then if the baby doesn't reach the top? The finale guys was right in front of our eyes, around the middle of the movie. Remember when the chef complains to other cooks about the hair in the pannacotta? That's the real ending: the pannacotta reaches the top (further proof that the platform won't crash) as the message but instead of being interpreted as a statement of insurrection, the level 0 workers believe it was sent back because there was a hair in there. This is the ultimate slap in the face, the final proof that those people are so out of touch, so blind towards what's happening downstairs that they think that was the issue, the hair in the pannacotta, without realizing that people are literally eating each others down there.

So, there was actually a satisfying finale which gave us answers, it's just that the finale was not at the end as usual.

[ghostiewriter]

I had an idea for 39, I can picture them dress shopping for a kook event kie has to go to and shes getting jjs opinion on them

Ahhh I’m sorry this took so long but I hope you like it! Also thank you for saving me having to come up with something totally alone 💀😂

Word Count: 2.3K

Prompt: “What colour do you like better?”

“So, what is this one for again?”

“The annual country club charity gala.”

“I thought that was last month.”

“Yeah, they have multiple galas, dude. Catch up.”

Kiara was appreciative of the life she was given. She understood her privileges, and she as grateful to live in a world where she didn’t have to worry about the food on her plate or the roof over her head or the money in her account. Her parents had worked hard and it paid off. When she met the pogues, her appreciation grew but she also learnt that she didn’t have to be the only one with these privileges. The boys were stubborn though, so most of it was subtle and never made them feel like she was treating them like charity cases. And the boys also appreciated that despite her background, Kie wasn’t like the usual kooks who rubbed their money in your face. She was humble about it. She used her privileges for good whenever she could.

However, it was easy to forget that Kie was a kook sometimes. Even she, herself, forgot sometimes. She was a pogue at heart, through and through. But then she was thrown into the deep-end of the kook lifestyle by her parents and it was always a harsh reminder. The worst ones were the galas—because what else did rich people have to do in their lives other than have countless parties and events they claimed were for charity and the greater good but was just an excuse to dress up and show off? The answer was nothing. They had nothing else better to do.

Kiara despised these events with a passion. She was all up for raising money for charities and supporting the local organisations that could achieve so much with enough funding. In fact, Kie had dragged the boys down with her to help in local beach clean-ups and charity events where they could help support. However, these kook events just sucked the charity out of the galas and left her with a night of dealing with passive aggressive comments and nosey adults who needed to mind their business.

But no matter how hard she tried, she could never get out of them. It seemed like her mother always had the perfect blackmail to use against her, she knew the perfect things to say that trapped Kiara and gave her no choice but to go to these galas. It was how she now found herself in the mainland boutiques, searching for a new dress. Originally, she had planned to drag Sarah with her but the other claimed she was too wrapped up on event planning that she didn’t have enough time. So, Kiara took her next best options: JJ Maybank, the only person who was free to join her on a day trip to the mainland.

However, dress shopping was a little out of JJ’s comfort zone. When Kie said that they were heading to the mainland, he was expecting something a little more exciting or action packed, not following Kie around some small boutique as he carried the dresses she was picking out of the racks and ignoring the judgemental stares he was getting from people far more appropriately dressed than he was. Apparently the rich weren’t huge fans of tanks and khaki short and combat boots. Sucks to be them.

“They really have no life beyond playing dress up, do they?” JJ muttered as he watched Kie pick up two dresses: one silver and one a light pink. She tilted her head, looking them up and down before she slipped them back onto the rack.

“It’s all they are good at.” She retorted with a snort, not giving JJ much warning before she began to head to the other side of the store.

“You know, for someone who is adamant that she hates these things, you sure take them seriously.” He commented, glancing down at the pile of dresses he had been lugging around since they entered the shop around forty minutes ago.

“Unless I want my head bitten off by my mother, I kinda have to.” She said with a shrug as she took out two dresses before turning to him. “What colour do you like better?”

He glanced between them. One was black—long sleeved, low back and the hem was brushing the floor despite the fact she was holding them up. The second one was red, and JJ noted the long slit that was running up the left side of the dress. The image of Kiara in either of them made him clear his throat a little, hoping that his cheeks weren’t noticeably burning up. “You look hotter in red.”

“Charming.” She deadpanned but she placed the red dress in the pile before she continued to move along the racks. Eventually, Kiara decided she had enough options and dragged him to the dressing room.

JJ sat on the small couch across from the dressing room, head leaning against the wall as his fingers tapped aimlessly against his thighs. “Kie, it’s been like two hours. How much longer?” He whined.

“It’s been like two minutes, dumbass.” She retorted from behind the curtain. “Just gimme a sec.”

“How long does it take to put on one dress?” He muttered. “You know, if you need help undressing, I am happy to offer my assistance.”

“I’m gonna pretend you want to keep your balls and didn’t say that.”

“Ooh, mama’s mad.” He could almost imagine the glare she was sending him through the curtain. “All I’m saying is—” But the words were lost the second the curtain opened and he saw Kiara on the other side.

She was wearing the red dress—the one on the top of the pile. JJ didn’t even know where to focus: on the slit that ran up her leg and made them look never-ending, or the way that it clung onto her body so perfectly like it was made for her, or how the crimson colour complimented her skin and made her look absolutely stunning. He was pretty sure some higher power was laughing down at him and the stuttering mess he had become.

“Uh, yeah,” He mumbled, scratching his nose. “You...it…yeah.”

Kiara smiled a little. “Yeah?”

“That one, should definitely wear that one.” He finally got out, gulping a little before he finally looked up at her.

“I still have five more dresses to try one.” She narrowed her eyes at him before she turned back around, closing the curtain behind him.

“Jesus fucking Christ.” He let out a sigh, running his hands over his face. He could barely survive one dress, let alone five more.

The next hour or so seemed to pass excruciatingly slow. JJ was pretty sure he was in hell and this was his torture, having to watch Kie model all these dresses and look jaw-droppingly beautiful and not be able to do anything about it. It was like the universe decided being stuck in the friend-zone wasn’t bad enough.

Eventually, she was done and sent him to wait outside whilst she paid for the dress she chose. He wasn’t sure it was a blessing or not that he didn’t know which one she would wear. Maybe because he knew that he wouldn’t be the only one that would see her in that dress, and unlike himself, maybe they had a chance.

When Kie exited the store, she gave him a grin before she began tugging his hand as they headed towards a store across the street—further away from the dock where he suspected they would be going.

“Did Cinderella remember she needed some glass slippers?” He teased, wiggling his eyebrows.

“No,” She turned to give him a wink. “She just remembered that her Prince Charming needs a suit.” He tried to ignore the butterflies in his stomach as he convinced himself that she was just joking back with him.

You see, JJ was so caught up on the dazed state he felt after seeing Kie in all those dresses that it took him up until he was being shoved into the dressing room that he realised what it all meant. She was taking him to the charity gala. He was her date to the charity gala. And just when JJ assumed the torturing couldn’t get worse.

That was how JJ found himself standing amongst some of the richest people on the island, champagne glass in hand as he and John B tried to ignore the judgemental glares being sent their way. They had been told they would meet their dates at the gala, and now both of them were really regretting that plan.

“I don’t know, dude, she never said she was taking you as a friend. Maybe it does mean something.” John B suggested, sparking a little flame of hope in JJ that he quickly extinguished.

“She also never said that we weren’t going as friends.” He muttered with a shrug, downing the rest of the bubbly liquid with one gulp.

“You both are the most oblivious people, I swear.” John B huffed with a shake of his head. “And that’s coming from me of all people.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“THAT!” John B exclaimed, although after receiving some pointed looks, he quickly lowered his voice. “You just proved my p—holy shit!”

JJ’s head snapped around just in time to see Kiara and Sarah at the top of the stairs, however, the blond couldn’t even bring himself to look at the middle Cameron, his eyes were completely drawn to Kie.

And she was in that fucking red dress.

If JJ was struggling for words when he saw her in the dressing room, he was absolutely rendered speechless now. She looked beautiful—no, better than beautiful. She looked like a goddess. JJ had to pinch himself as she walked down the steps towards him just to make sure he was actually alive and hadn’t just died and went to heaven.

And when she stepped off the final step, she couldn’t help but smirk as she placed a finger under his chin. “Better shut your mouth, you’re catching flies, Jay.”

Oh, he was definitely dead.

JJ wasn’t sure how long had passed but he could barely take his eyes off her, and it seems like the other guests couldn’t either. He hated the jealousy that flared up inside him, mostly because he knew that he had no right to feel this way. But that didn’t stop him.

He tried to be subtle about it: stayed by her side for the whole night, casually had his arm around her in any situation he could, made sure to give slightly pointed looks to anyone that stared a little too long at Kiara. He thought he was being subtle but Kiara noticed. Of course she noticed, she wasn’t blind.

They finally had a moment together when they were on the dance floor, a slow song playing around them as the couples populated the dance floor. They were surrounded by people and yet, they still felt like they were in their own bubble.

“So, how pissed is your mum?” He asked, a small smirk on his lips. However, he noticed her confused glance and quickly continued. “You know, that you brought me and not some kook eye candy.”

“I’d say you offer better eye candy than any of them could.” She commented with a small laugh. “But, surprisingly, she wasn’t too bothered. She expected it.”

His eyebrows furrowed together. “She did?”

“Jay…” She trailed off, her hands around his neck faltering a little as she stopped moving, now just staring at him.

“Have I told you how breath-taking you look?” JJ spoke up, desperate to change the topic of conversation. “I mean, I hate to say I told you so but you do look pretty hot in red—”

“JJ.” She said in a soft but firm voice. “Why do you think I brought you as my date?”

He gulped a little, putting on that usual smile he used whenever he was uncomfortable or hurt. She hated that he was using it with her. “Just thought you wanted to get some revenge on your mum since she dragged you to this thing.” He said with a shrug. “Who better to bring into the kook-fest than good ol’ JJ Maybank, right?”

“You can be really dense sometimes, Maybank.” She muttered, her words contradicting the soft expression on her face.

“What?” His voice barely a whisper. They both stood still in the middle of the dance floor, faces inches away from each other.

“I like you, Jay.” She whispered, smiling at him. “And I invited you because I thought you’d finally catch the hint.”

JJ looked at her, mouth slightly agape as he tried to process what she saying. “Y-You like me? As in, like-like me?”

She laughed a little, nodding her head. “Yeah, I like-like you.”

His grin grew a little. “I like-like you too.”

“Good, because otherwise it would be really awkward if I did this.” She murmured before she took his face in her hands, bringing his lips down to her own.

His hands instantly tightened their hold on her waist, tugging her a little closer. They became wrapped up in one another, neither one bothered by the judgemental looks and disgust from the people around them. In that moment, it was just JJ and Kiara. Just Kiara and JJ.

When they finally pulled away from each other, foreheads pressed against each other and matching grins on their faces, JJ found himself once again believing he was dead and in heaven. “I’ve been waiting so long to do that.”

She hummed. “Me too.”

“And to tell you that your ass looks great in this dress.”

“Always the charmer.”

“Only for you.”

“Your ass looks great too in those pants.”

“I know.”

[haveanotherkpopblog]

Vive la Revolution

Prologue

Genre: Cyberpunk!AU, Dystopian!AU, Gang!AU, Rivals-to-Lovers!AU

Pairing: TBA

Word Count: 2.5k

Warnings: Sexual Situations

Masterlist || Next Part >>

Society fell when the game came out. It was supposed to be a game for children, where they could let their imaginations run rampant. The game was meant for them to have an escape from everyday life. But then they didn’t stop playing. They spent all day in the game. Nothing else mattered except the game.

The game--the game wasn’t like other games. It was the future of virtual reality. It was a game where you didn’t need to stop to sleep or even use the bathroom. Your consciousness was transferred into the game, putting you in a deep slumber, a coma almost. The only downfall was you had to leave, until you didn’t have to.

The kids turned to the black market for medical IV’s so they could keep playing. Crime began to rise significantly over the mere months since the game’s initial release. The police did their best, but with limited resources and limited money, there was only so much they could do.

Then the adults started playing. In an attempt to save their children, adults entered the game. The only problem was, they never left. The curiosity of what had captured their children’s minds so effortlessly and quietly. Slowly, the adults stopped leaving the game. They followed in their kids’ footsteps, buying IV’s and locking themselves away in the game.

Businesses began shutting down from the lack of customers and the employees seeming to vanish into thin air. Life began slowing down, the only thing thriving in the dying country was crime. The police slowly began to stop doing their jobs, letting the country run rampant with illegal activities.

The worst of it was in the capital. The most powerful people, the socialites, lived there, including the manufacturer of Virtual Paradise-- the game responsible for capturing half the nation’s mind. The game went world-wide, and soon everyone who was anyone had purchased the game. People, desperate to escape their lives, stole the game from anywhere they could get it. The company, Tempestechnologies, had become the company.

However, that was the capital and all major cities of the world. What was really scary was the rest of the country that couldn’t afford the game. Or if they could, they were smart enough not to buy it. With the world and the nation in chaos, the country had been divided into three districts.

The first was the JYP District. It covered most of the coastline and was the mediator between the other two districts. The leader of the District referred to herself as Queenie. As the only female leader, she gave herself a fitting title. While rather small in size, she was a force to be reckoned with. She and her husband had made a quiet, but successful, living working mainly with oversea gangs. She kept the other two districts as close allies.

The second was the SM District. This District covered the northern side of the country. It just also happened to be the richest amongst the three Districts since the Capital fell within their territory. The leader was Leeteuk, a successful businessman turned into an even more successful gang leader. He knew where the game would lead the country from a young age, and he’d been preparing ever since for the inevitable.

The last District was the scariest. YG District was made up of the southern side of the country and what little bit of the coastal region JYP didn’t control. The crime rates were so high, the police had completely given up and worked for the District’s leading gang and the leader. The leader--the leader was so many things, finding one word to describe him was impossible. G-Dragon had done so many unthinkable things, had seen the unimaginable, and he had laughed at it all.

Now while Queenie had aligned herself and JYP with SM and YG, the two didn’t like each other. In fact, if it hadn’t been for her, there certainly would have been a civil war unlike any before. That’s where the story started, at the end of a feud that started before either of them reached double digits.

Queenie sat in one of the clubs in her District. For the best outcome, everyone needed to meet on neutral territory. That meant her territory, which she didn’t mind at all. Her turf, her rules. She smirked, eyes scanning the club, skimming every face she recognized and every face she didn’t. She watched as A, one of her informants, flirted with some random guy at the bar. He wasn’t bad looking, but Queenie knew A was simply biding her time.

“Are you sure they’re going to show?” JB, Queenie’s second in command, sat perched at the edge of his seat. He was staring directly at her, his eyebrows halfway up his forehead. His drink sat on the table in front of him, barely touched as the ice slowly watered it down. She smirked, reaching to grab her own glass off the table.

“Have patience. They’ll show up.”

As if on cue, Mandu, JB’s personal bodyguard, escorted four men in. Mandu had dark brown hair parted away from his face. His muscles bulged against his tight shirt, giving everyone a clear image of his strong physique that detoured most people, as long as he kept his mouth closed. Once he opened his mouth, any intimidation the other party felt disappeared. Even with his deep, intimidating voice, Mandu was simply too sweet and kind for his own good.

Leeteuk sat in the chair opposite of Queenie. His pink hair fell into his eyes, making him squint and occasionally toss his head. His suit jacket was undone, revealing the tight, black dress shirt that hugged his toned chest. It was a well known fact that he had quite the fascination with her. Whether it be because of her stunning beauty or the power she held was of little consequence.

Next to him was Suho, his second in command. Suho was to keep himself more put together than Leeteuk did when she was around. His black hair was combed away from his face, and his suit was well-put together, albeit more casual than what he usually wore. They were supposed to be more casual, relaxed, with each other. Hence them meeting in some bourgeois club. And that was strictly on Queenie’s request.

Behind them were their bodyguard, arms crossed over their chests as they eyed Queenie and her subordinates half-heartedly. They never saw her as a real threat. Whether it was because of their alliance or because they truly believed she wasn’t a threat to anyone was unknown to her. But she knew she could handle herself, and should the time ever come, she would show them just how well.

“Gentlemen. Welcome. I hope the journey wasn’t too hard,” she greeted.

“Seeing you again is worth every second,” Leeteuk said, shooting her a wink. Queenie peered over her glass, sparing a glance to Suho who was staring at Leeteuk with a slight scrunched face. He rolled his eyes, taking a prolonged sip from his cup. “I only wish it was under better circumstances.” She carefully set down her cup.

“I think these are the best circumstances. You’re finally putting that silly little feud behind you,” she said. She leant forward, placing a delicate hand just above his knee, giving it a light squeeze. “You know how much I dislike conflict.” He watched her hand with a dark gaze, his leg tensing under her touch. Suho and JB shared an unimpressed look before they both took a sip of their drinks. Queenie pulled back, crossing her legs as she observed Leeteuk.

Leeteuk observed her too, taking in her now short hair, the subtle makeup around her smoldering eyes and luscious lips. His eyes trailed down her body, admiring how the dress hugged her curves and even gave him a glimpse of what the thin fabric was covering. She was temptation. He knew that, she knew that, he knew she knew that, and he was more than aware she used that knowledge to her advantage, yet he let her pull him in. What they knew was of little consequence to them.

“I see they’re just letting anybody in here now.” Queenie and Leeteuk looked away from each other to the three people that had entered the room. DaH, Queenie’s personal bodyguard, had brought in two more people for their little celebratory party. Her long blonde hair fell down her back as she shot a harsh glare to the pair she’d brought in. DaH wasn’t built like Mandu, she was small and petite, but she made up for her lack of bulging muscles with speed and agility. And unlike Mandu, when she spoke, her words were laced with venom.

G-Dragon gave DaH a cheeky wink, to which she replied by narrowing her gaze more. She shot Queenie an unimpressed look before moving to stand behind her. G-Dragon oozed confidence. His hair was a disheveled mess, dark marks covered his neck and most of his chest from what could be seen of his unbuttoned shirt. She gave Queenie a sly smirk as she stood to greet him, a smirk of her own on her face.

“Well we let you in here don’t we?” she teased. G-Dragon chuckled, leaning forward to place a kiss on her cheek. He shot Leeteuk a wink as he did so, enjoying seeing him get worked up from a small action. Suho leaned over to whisper to Leeteuk, calming him down somewhat.

CL, G-Dragon’s second in command, sat next to Suho. She had at least followed Queenie’s request. Her curled, blonde hair fell over one shoulder, exposing her back and drawing attention to cleavage.  She kept her eyes focused between Queenie, Leeteuk, and G-Dragon. She flicked her wrist, glancing down at her watch.

Suho, despite his best efforts to keep a bored air around him, watched CL carefully. He took in her poised posture and the unreadable mask that hid her emotions too well. He took in how her dress exposed her back, letting his eyes trail down the length of her spine. He felt his blood heat up the longer he stared at her back.

“I’m so glad we could have this little sit down,” Queenie said. She watched both men carefully, observing their subtle glances at one another. “I think it’s about time you two put this silly feud to rest.” Both men tensed at the statement, avoiding each other’s eyes. “JB, if you will.” JB cleared his throat, regarding each man and their associates.

“Queenie and I agree that the best way to show peace is to build trust. We’ve talked with each of you separately and from that we’ve come up with a plan. G-Dragon is being gracious enough to send someone to stay in the SM District for one year with absolutely no contact.”

“How exactly does that establish trust?” Suho inquired, leaning forward so his arms rested on his knees. “If anything, that causes more trust issues. One year to gather information to be used against us? I’m failing to see how that works in our favor.”

“Well firstly, the agreement is that our person lives with you for a year without any harm,” CL said, turning to look at Suho. “Meaning if you want to keep them locked in a dungeon, as long as they’re fed and clean, you can do so. Second, we’re not sending just anyone. He’s sending in his only living relative to live with someone he hasn’t gotten along with in years. If anything, that’s the most trust I’ve seen him give anyone.” Suho and Leeteuk both stared at her in shock.

“I wasn’t aware you had any family,” Leeteuk said.

“It’s not something I like to advertise. People like to use them against you. I’m sure you more than anyone can understand that,” he replied. “Now I’m sending them to show my complete trust. If and when they return, as long as they’re in good health and have been treated with respect and dignity they deserve, then I will let bygones be bygones.”

Leeteuk regarded G-Dragon carefully. Something wasn’t sitting right in the pit of his stomach. This seemed too easy. After years of them being at each other’s throats, G-Dragon was going to gift wrap his own blood to him? Leeteuk narrowed his eyes slightly, his fist tightening around his glass.

“I wouldn’t read too much into such a generous offer,” Queenie said. She leant forward, facing Leeteuk directly. “He’s giving you unsupervised access to the closest person to him, and all you have to do is keep them healthy and safe. If anything, I think you’re getting the better side of this deal.” She placed her hand on his knee again, tilting her head slightly and staring up at him with her big, round eyes.

“Unsupervised?” Suho said.

“Yes. One whole year of unsupervised access to them. YG will have absolutely no access to them while they stay with you,” JB said, shooting Queenie a pointed look.

“Don’t mistake me for a blissfully blind fool, Leeteuk,” G-Dragon said, pulling Leeteuk’s attention away from Queenie. “I don’t expect you to trust me or my family. So as a sign of good faith, they’re going in unaccompanied. Even their own personal bodyguard won’t be with them. That’s how you’re going to show me your trust. Return them to me unharmed and in good health, treat them like family, or at least better than the men you’ve so graciously returned to me before, and I won’t murder everyone in your district.” Leeteuk clenched his jaw. Suho leant over, lowering his voice.

“Wait. We can use this to our advantage. How much information do you think our people could get out of him? Who would know his deep secrets better than his own blood?” Leeteuk weighed Suho’s words carefully, slowly relaxing into his seat.

“So you want me to keep them for one year, three-hundred and sixty-five days, and then return them safely?” Leeteuk clarified. G-Dragon nodded, moving to lean back into his seat. Leeteuk drummed his fingers on the armrest, staring at G-Dragon thoughtfully. Something still didn’t feel right, but Suho had a point. His second in command gave him a subtle nod. Leeteuk smiled smugly, tossing his hands up slightly. “I have to agree with you Queenie, I’m definitely getting the better deal.”

G-Dragon smirked, outstretching his hand. Leeteuk grabbed it, giving him a firm handshake. Queenie clapped her hands together, a genuine smile on her face. JB let out a shaky breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Suho and CL shared a knowing look before turning back to the two leaders.

“I’m so happy everything’s worked out,” Queenie said, moving to stand up. “Now, I believe you gentlemen and lady have earned a night of relaxation. My club is all yours to enjoy.” She turned to G-Dragon, a smirk on her face. “I believe A is waiting for you downstairs.” G-Dragon returned her smirk, running a hand through his hair. Leeteuk held his hand up to the two District leaders.

“As much as I would love to, I should get back.” He and Suho, along with their bodyguards, headed towards the door. He paused briefly, turning to look back. “Just one quick question,” he said. “Who exactly is this relative of yours?” G-Dragon smiled, a genuine, scarily normal smile.

“My baby sister.”

[hyunsracha]

be okay — lee minho

word count: 2.4k

summary: two kids who know nothing about the real world run away together. but they’re not scared; they have each other, after all.

your father always told you that you were blessed to live such a full life. you always thought your father was an idiot. he was like a robot; so caught up in the order of things that he never thought about the feelings of himself or others. you didn’t even think he had feelings.

the only thing you liked about your house was the view of the town below. you lived on top of a hill, and when you looked out your bedroom window, you could see the whole town and even a little bit past it. you had only ever been out of your town twice: once to go to your cousin’s wedding a few towns over, and once to go to paris. you thought the paris trip would be fun, but you had to practically memorize a french dictionary and shadow your parents at their meetings.

you didn’t think there was anything wrong with being unhappy where you were; how could you not be? you went to university in the same town you grew up in, and your driver only took you to school and back home. your father said that it was best that way; that you wouldn’t get distracted by outside forces. it’s hard to be distracted when you were never focused in the first place. you tried to talk to the kids you grew up with about this, but they never understood.

“what’s wrong with what you’re doing now? you’re gonna graduate next year, and then you’ll take over the company! the whole world is basically being handed to you, y/n, don’t be ungrateful.”

how could they not understand? how could they enjoy sitting in their houses on top of the hills, not moving, forever? how could they just live a mundane life, never wanting to see the world?

these were your thoughts as you stood against a wall in the corner of the ballroom, an empty champagne flute in between your fingers. you were at another one of your town’s idiotic parties, where only the richest of the rich were invited. looking out the window, you could still see the town, and you wondered what the people down there were doing.

“hey.” weird. no one ever talks to you at these things, unless they want a business deal or money from you. you look over to the source of the voice.

“lee minho. only child of the lee family, one of the most eligible bachelors in town, kind of annoying but needing attention because your parents never payed attention to you. this is your graduation party isn’t it?”

“i see you’re as analytical as ever, y/n.” minho chuckled. the two of you weren’t friends, but you had never considered yourself friends with anybody. you two grew up together; albeit you were in different grades, as he was a year older.

you clicked your tongue, “unfortunately,” you placed your glass on a nearby table, swiftly grabbing a new one from a tray that a waiter was carrying as he walked by. you didn’t quite enjoy being so ‘analytical’, as he called it. in fact, you were perfect for your future career. you were smart, and good at reading people and their intentions, and you were blunt.

“we haven’t spoken in years. you want something from me. what is it, minho?”

“woah! can’t i just say hi to the lovely people who attended my graduation party?” he tilted his head to the side, a cocky smirk taking over his features.

you grinned, “no.”

“you don’t seem to be having a lot of fun.”

“the most fun i’ve had lately was in high school when i got hit in the face with a dodgeball and had to skip 4th period to hang out in the nurse’s office.” your voice was monotone, but the smile didn’t leave your lips as you gulped down the little champagne in the glass. you hated the taste, but it was better than nothing.

“just as i thought. you hate it here. i can tell.”

“i’m glad you have eyes, minho.”

“i hate it here, too.”

now that was strange. from what you’ve seen of him, minho seemed quite dedicated to the lifestyle set out for him. he took full advantage of the money he was born with, only wearing the most expensive clothes and driving the most expensive car. he had graduated university with his business degree, coming out on top of the class. he seemed perfect for this life, how could he hate it?

the same way you did, you supposed.

“so what if...you and i...left? and never came back?” his eyes were pleading, and you were more and more confused every second.

you were going to leave with him, that was for certain. you couldn’t leave alone; you didn’t know how to drive. your father insisted that you didn’t need to know how to drive because you would have a chauffeur your whole life. you just couldn’t understand why minho would want to leave with you, of all people.

you nodded, “okay.”

stealing money from your parents was a lot easier than you thought it would be. you assumed a multi-millionaire would hide his money well, but the password to your father’s safe was the birthday of his only child. you also assumed he wouldn’t keep a fuck ton of money in a single safe. you were wrong again. you filled your many backpacks with bricks of the cash, minho spinning around in your father’s fancy desk chair.

“so, where do you wanna go?” minho asked, shuffling through some of the papers on the desk.

“dunno. a place where no one knows us. and stop fucking with those. there’s probably something important in there.”

“you mean like...last year’s stock report?”

“MINHO.”

you don’t know why you cared so much. you were literally about to leave this life and all those papers behind. nonetheless, you walked over to the desk and pulled the stock reports from minho’s grasp, shoving them into a random drawer.

after you collected all the money you thought you needed and packed a bag of necessities, you threw all the bags into the backseat of minho’s car.

“somewhere no one knows us, huh?” minho mumbled as you got in the passenger seat. you nodded. minho snapped his fingers, “got it. buckle up, babe, we’re gonna be on the road for a while.”

minho was right. you were on the road for a while. 8 hours, to be exact. not that you were counting. you learned a lot about minho in that time. you played 20 questions to lessen the awkwardness between two young adults who weren’t friends running away from home together. you learned that minho taught himself how to dance, liked pineapple on pizza, and wanted at least 3 cats.

“why three?” you had asked.

“two cats could get lonely. three makes them a squad, you know?”

you two had a lot more in common than you thought. you believed that your only similarity was your social status, but it went deeper than that. you had the same sense of humor, knew that aliens were real, and binged watched cooking shows at 3 a.m. you put on your road trip playlist of throwback songs (that you never got to use) and minho knew every song. 8 hours was all it took for you to connect with someone like you have never connected with anyone in your entire life. you trusted minho more than you trusted your driver, and he had spent 20 years driving you around safely.

the sun had been up for almost two hours when minho pulled into the parking lot of an old motel.

“wow. this place looks rough.”

“i know!”

you two were way too excited to be staying at such a run-down place. but you had never stayed anywhere less than ‘perfect’.

minho paid for a room (“what a cute couple! going on a honeymoon road trip?” “u-uh yeah!”) and handed you the keys. you practically ran to the room, excited to see what it looked like. the two of you were used to five star hotels with lavish balconies that overlooked beautiful cities.

there was a double bed with puke green bedding. there were two counters in the room; a dresser that had a small tv on it, and a round table fit for two. a small bathroom was attached that would be too small for you to lay down on it. not that you would. it was just a sizing thing. there was a window on the far wall that overlooked the dusty street you had just driven on.

“are you tired?” minho was suddenly behind you, looking out at the street over your shoulder.

“no, i think i’m too excited to sleep. let’s go to that diner over there!”

and that was the beginning of your journey together.

driving for hours to get to new towns, staying at low-rated motels and eating at diners that all gave off a similar vibe. you would get milkshakes and throw your fries at each other and talk to the waitresses about the town you were in that day. when they asked for your names, sometimes you gave them fake names, and they never questioned it. that was such a good feeling; being able to tell people whatever you wanted to tell them without them already knowing everything about you. you had spent your whole life under the magnifying class of people who worked for the company. now you were just you, whoever you wanted that to be for the day.

the waitresses always thought you two were dating, but you never said anything about it. you were only in town for a day, what did it matter what they thought?

you also sort of liked the thought of minho being your boyfriend, but that wasn’t the point.

you two would drive to the nearest gas station and fill up on gas and snacks, minho’s smile even brighter than the fluorescent lights as he laughed. you two were like little kids, running around town and messing with each other. then you’d go back to the motel and watch old soap operas while you snacked. and your head always would up on minho’s chest, and his arm was around you, but you never said anything about it.

summer was coming to an end, and you were across the country. you had enough money to probably last a month or two, but you were slowing running out.

“minho,” you spoke up, rubbing your thumb over his knuckles. this was normal now: you holding his hand as he drove, “we should probably settle down, don’t you think?”

he pulled his bottom lip between his teeth as he thought, “yeah. yeah we should.”

you two took a tour of the city you were in, making sure it was to your liking. it was cute, and decently big, perfect for you two.

“oh, look over there!” minho squeezed your hand, pointing to a building across the street. it looked like an office space. “i can get a job there with my fancy business degree i hate.”

“won’t you hate that?”

“don’t most people hate their jobs? it’s just for money. oh my gosh, y/n,” minho grabs your shoulder, turning you so you were facing him, “i’m gonna hate my job!”

it might’ve sounded silly, but he was genuinely excited. it was just another one of those things that made him feel normal. just an average guy. except minho wasn’t average in any way. not in your eyes, at least. and seeing him all excited over something like this made your heart flutter, but you never said anything about it.

“oh!” you smacked his shoulder, pointing behind him at a small cafe, “and i can work there!” you had dropped out of university. not officially, but abandoning school to run across the country and never come back is kind of the same thing. you would go back to school, eventually, once you decided what you actually wanted to do. you were going to live your life for you now. and for minho.

“yeah! aw, we’ll work across the street from each other,” minho pouted, “that’s so cute. we’re so cute.” he pulled you closer, draping his arm across your shoulder as he starting walking again.

you’re laying in another motel room, staring up at the ceiling. minho is laying next to you, staring back at you.

“minho,” you start, “do you love me?”

“yeah.”

“like. love love me?” “what are you, twelve?” you feel his hand sliding across the mattress, intertwining his fingers with yours.

“i dunno. i’m kinda scared.”

“i thought you were excited?”

“i’m excited and scared. like when you go on a rollercoaster, you know?”

“no, i don’t go on rollercoasters. too scary.” you can hear the smile in his voice, and it makes you smile, too, “but our lives together have been kind of a rollercoaster, haven’t they?”

you nodded, your smile growing wider at the thought of all the memories you two shared.

“you have no reason to be scared, my love. we’ll stay here until we have enough money to get a small little apartment, perfect for you and me...and eventually our cats. and i’ll work at the office and hate my job, but come home and love my partner. and our cats. and eventually we’ll have a family and we’ll be able to just...live. live and love and not have to worry about whether our kids are good enough to take over the family business or not.” minho lets go of your hand, turning over onto his stomach and wrapping his arm around your waist. he presses his lips to your cheek for a moment before resting his head on his pillow and shutting his eyes.

“we’ll be okay, baby.” his words are muffled by the pillow, but you can hear him clear as day. you smile, placing your hand on his arm for comfort. you two were still like little kids: kind of dumb and unsure of how the world works. but you matured a lot during that summer, growing and changing and learning what it was like to be young. to be in love. to be free. and now it was time to settle down, start your adult lives. but you knew you wouldn’t lose anything you had learned with minho.

“yeah. we’ll be okay.”

[relationshipsandpolitics]

How I Alienated My Potential Readers Part #2

And we’re back.   Here’s how we are looking after Part 1:

Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Corey Booker, Bernie Sanders, Julian Castro, Beto O’ Rourke, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, John Delaney, Pete Buttigieg

Well, some things have changed so we can just go ahead and remove Beto, which is a shame because I had a good rant about him sucking.  Alas, my genius will have to wait.

Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Corey Booker, Bernie Sanders, Julian Castro, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, John Delaney, Pete Buttigieg

I debated where to put climate change in this breakdown.  For me, climate change is issue #1b for me.  If a candidate denied it, that would be an automatic disqualifier. It should be for every voter.  But I am surprised about how we all agree this is a dire issue that needs to be dealt with immediately, but the only candidate who made it their chief issue, Governor Jim Inslee, got virtually no support and was one of the first to drop out.  We really talk out of both sides of our mouth on climate change.  We all agree it is going to kill us, but we don’t seem to prioritize it, do we?   I have some thoughts about that, but I digress.  

The good news is all remaining candidates agree climate change is happening and that we need to act. The bad news is many of the candidates do not appear willing to take those drastic steps needed to stave off the worst outcomes. This is a problem.  Even the remaining candidates who are best on this issue leave a lot to be desire.  As it stands, I’m not removing anyone because no one is Republican levels of awful on the issue, but also no one meets the bar that needs to be set on genuine change. But seriously, we are all awful on this issue, me included.   We need to be taking steps in out personal lives to cut back on carbon emissions, and we need to be willing to pay more to save our planet.  The truth is if the leading scientific minds announced that to save our planet, we needed to raise taxes by 2% on everyone, we’d instead spend double that to buy front row seats to the end of the world.  We as a people truly suck.

Now let’s finally get into the issues that differentiate the candidates. This is really the whole game for me.  Because there are certain issues I care about tremendously, issues that I feel we need to address if this country is going to survive or if we will slip fully into the oligarchy we seem destined towards.  I’m talking about corporate power and workers’ rights.  Look, we all know the stats.  Income inequality is worse now than at any time since the Gilded Age.  That preceded the Great Depression.  Billionaires and corporations hold more power than the bottom 95% of the population combined. They can write a measly $5,000 check and get face time with the most powerful politicians in the country, and another $5,000 check gets them their full support.  I know this because part of my job is to write those checks.  I don’t try to get into too much about what I do, but suffice it say I work within politics very much behind the scenes. I don’t like what I do, even if I believe in the interests I advocate for.  People like me should not exist, but our corrupt political system not only enables me, but empowers me.

We all want a candidate we can trust to act in the average American’s best interest.  But we so willingly elect people who knowingly fuck us over in favor of the rich and corporate interests that it’s a wonder they even bother going through the motions trying to appease us.  And what have we got for it?  Unions have been decimated as lawmakers pass corporate-sponsored Right to Work laws.  Wages have stagnated while wealth for the top 1% has skyrocketed.  Americans are more productive than ever but seeing a smaller share of that productivity.   Compared to all other industrialized nations, we offer no guaranteed paid vacation, family leave, or health care. This is despite being the richest nation in the world.   College is a necessity to obtain a well-paying job, yet it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to obtain, meaning anyone graduating with loans will be paying them off until they retire. Or die.

These developments are not a coincidence.  They are the results of deliberate efforts by monied interests.  Next, they will come after Social Security and Medicare, claiming we need to reign in the deficit.  And both Republicans and Democrats will heed their call, and we will buy their sudden concern about deficits.  They’ll vote to raise the retirement age and cut benefits, we’ll get mad, and then re-elect them anyway.

How does this rant relate to the upcoming 2020 elections?  It relates because the next decade will mark the point of no return, in my estimation.  Either this country will wake up to getting screwed and finally vote to do something about it, or it will cement its acceptance of the status quo.  Our descent into oligarchy has been relatively gradual because even the Democratic administrations have done little to stem the tide.  They’ve just slowed it down by promoting policies benefiting the rich while throwing tokens of support to the working class, which is everybody else.  They bump up the income tax rates slightly while ignoring the ways the rich really make their money.  They threaten anti-trust lawsuits but never follow through.   They bail out the banks and refuse to prosecute the heads of those banks.  Then they appoint them to run the Treasury Department. Republicans do these same things; they are just more brazen about it.  Whereas Democrats will announce tighter regulations on businesses but include weak enforcement and huge loopholes, Republicans simply get rid of the regulations. Republicans cut the taxes of the rich, Democrats keep them at the status quo.  

The next president has a unique opportunity to finally right the wrongs of decades of neo-liberal fiscal policy.  They can bring the country in line with the rest of the democratic world by pushing policies that help the poor, working and middle classes.   Young parents would be able to afford to have a child.  College graduates would be able to afford to buy home and have a crazy thing called disposable income because their college debt was wiped out and college itself became affordable.  People would stop fucking dying because they don’t have health care. Seriously, on this last point, what in the ever-loving fuck is wrong with people for not being willing to raise their taxes to fund universal health care?

We need to begin assessing potential candidates by what they want to accomplish to fix this issue.   And we can best determine if they will remain mired in the status quo of empty gestures and corporate checks, or if they will fight for us, by their words and actions.  With that in mind, I’m going to base my choice on whether the remaining candidates can be expected to support the fundamental restructuring of government and wealth equality.  I think you all know where I’m going with this one.

Corey Booker, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, John Delaney – The Technocratic Legislators

Here you have some good moderate Democratic legislators.  Booker, Harris and Klobuchar are sitting U.S. Senators while Delaney is a former Representative.  I don’t really have an issue with any of them, save maybe Delaney.  They all are effective legislators, even if they may be more moderate than I’d like.  I particularly like Booker and Harris as people if not politicians.  But at the end of the day, I can’t really rely on them to push the things that need to be front and center.  I don’t exactly know what their broad policy even is.  Sure, they will come out with a good sound bite or a good proposal on some smaller but still important issue.  Booker is doing great things on tackling issues facing inner city youths.  Harris is good on gun reform.  But Booker is way too closely tied with Big Pharma.  Harris has an awful record on criminal justice and did nothing to help homeowners defrauded during the housing crisis.

They both illustrate a major concern we should all share.  When you have a record of being too cozy with some terrible industries, it shows that the voters can’t truly trust you to have their back.  Campaign contributions are par for the course.  You need them to win elections.  But when you take a disproportionate amount of money from very specific industries, it means you are probably bought by them.  Don’t be surprised if Booker nominates a Pharmaceutical lobbyist to head up CMS.  And when private equity managers donate to Harris, as Blackstone’s Tia Breakley did in March, 2019, they are doing so because there is a reasonable belief that Harris and others won’t come after them.  

Again, I think Harris and Booker are good people and good legislators.  And the critique about money is not limited to them, as I plan on thoroughly ripping into Buttigieg and Biden on it.   But when you take these facts along with the truth that neither candidate is pushing the sort of structural reforms needed in this country, I think it’s fair to say their presidencies would be rather unremarkable.

Amy Klobuchar and Jon Delaney share the money problem, but they have so much more going for them!  Klobuchar treats her staff like absolute shit, which only matters when you remember that we are relying on her to protect all low-level workers.  She clearly has contempt for people beneath her on the career ladder, and a wise woman once said “when a person shows you who they are, believe them.”  

Klobuchar and Delaney have spent their entire campaign advocating not for what they believe, but for trashing other candidates who dare to dream. Klobuchar and Delaney come from the school of Democratic politicians who believe things are too hard to try, and we might lose Republican voters by trying to be Democrats.  The Klobuchar’s and Delaney’s of the world would be happy to adopt every major Republican fiscal position if it meant they got to be President.  Also, Delaney is the moron who thought it was a good idea to trash Medicare for All at the California Democratic convention.  

I would vote for Harris and Booker and not feel bad about it.  I’d feel weird about voting for Klobuchar, and Delaney has as much chance of the nomination as Scott Baio.   They are out.

Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Julian Castro, Pete Buttigieg

We’re going to go after the young guns now.  The candidates we all secretly wish were just a bit better so that we didn’t have to choose from three candidates in their 70’s.  But these candidates are ultimately empty shells of better candidates who seem too concerned with appearing like the rational voice in the room to have a vision for our country.

Let’s start with Mayor Pete Buttigieg.   I was talking with my mother about who she was going to support in the primary.  Let me be clear that I did not initiate this conversation.  I’d literally rather talk to my mother about our respective sex lives than politics.  But my mother has a bit of a control issue, and this blog was cheaper than therapy.

Anyway, my mother said she was supporting either Biden (shocking, I know) or Buttigieg.  She said she liked that he was young, and it was great he was gay. I asked my mom what positions of his did she support, and she couldn’t really name any except that he didn’t support Medicare for All.  This was a selling point for her.  See, my mother represents a huge segment of the Democratic base that is upper middle class, socially liberal (except Kaepernick should’ve stood) and fiscally moderate (aka conservative but they swear they have homeless friends).  What this really means is they are Democrats when it doesn’t hurt them to be.  They think what’s going on at the border is abhorrent, but they know someone who was mugged by an “illegal” and we need a wall.  And they support the idea of everyone having health insurance, but no way will that mean they have to pay more in taxes.   They agree housing is too expensive, but then they’ll oppose affordable housing development in their neighborhoods because they attract a “bad element.”  For these people, Buttigieg is the ideal candidate. They get to keep their money and nice gated communities, but because he is gay they can call themselves progressive.   Plus, we know Buttigieg won’t do anything monstrous like keeping refugees locked up or denying basic rights to LGTBQ people, so how could anyone not support him?

Well, let me be the first to say that Pete Buttigieg is awful.  First, keep in mind this guy is the Mayor of South Bend.  That’s less a city and more a place for Notre Dame fanboys to “romance” the gold helmets in a sleazy motel.  He won his last election with 8,500 votes.  And he still managed to piss off a sizable number of his constituents by botching police relations with the black community.  And now people think he can run a country.  But he’s taken seriously because he raised a boatload of money and the pundits (also rich white people generally) like him.  Never mind where that money is coming from and what favors he now owes to those people, right?

Mayor Pete came out for Medicare for All but decided when it was political opportune to trash it using Republican talking points.  His actual healthcare plan is truly awful.  Pete Buttigieg is the darling candidate for voters who don’t want anything to change, like my mother. They have good health insurance.  They own their house and see it as an asset, not a noose.  They don’t have any student debt, mainly because they attended college when it cost the equivalent of an iPhone.  Buttigieg is a technocrat with a nice haircut. He is a lot like Obama, minus the everything. But his message is one of comfort to the people who own vacation homes in upstate New York and tie rainbow bandannas around their dog’s neck for Pride Week. Under a Buttigieg administration, civility will return and nothing else will change.  If the biggest criticism of Sanders and Warren is they have pie-in-the-sky ideas, then Buttigieg’s biggest critique is he has no ideas.  It’s just sad how little that matters to the people who will decide this election.

Julian Castro: you’re next. Here’s someone I kind of like.  He is great on housing, one of the core issues keeping Americans from feeling secure.  I live in an area once considered cheap for housing.  But that’s changing.  They keep building and building but rents still shoot higher and higher.   Sometimes I feel the laws of supply and demand don’t work with housing.  I mean, it works when there is low supply and high demand like in Los Angeles and San Francisco.  But where I live, there is plenty of supply, yet rents are increasing as much as 10% year over year.  Likely this is because demand is still high to live near an urban center.  It doesn’t matter if there are tons of vacant units. Renters are willing to pay the cost and don’t do a good job shopping around.  Also, as rents continue to soar while jobs continue to navigate towards major cities and people continue to need to live near those jobs, our commutes will get longer and longer.  This means more cars on the road, more pollution in the air. Solving the housing crisis means putting a huge dent in climate change. No one seems to understand the impact of not having affordable housing, but Castro comes fairly close.  I think I would go for him if he wasn’t so milquetoast on every other issue.  He gets completely lost in the shuffle.  I think Castro supports Medicare for All? I mean, I do know where he stands because I follow this stuff closely, but it should be clear to the average voter.  Castro is young, attractive and is relatively progressive compared to the field.  But he isn’t charismatic.  He doesn’t articulate his message clearly enough, and my big concern is whether he can create a narrative that gives his administration a chance to pass meaningful legislation.  It’s not that I can’t get on board with Castro based on policy, but I just don’t think he has the chops to get it done.  Castro’s other problem is he doesn’t speak to workers’ rights issues enough. He pays them lip service, and I’m sure he believes in increasing union membership and raising the minimum wage. I just can’t envision him fighting hard for those issues once in office.  I, quite frankly, see him as another politician pushing incremental change on some areas and tackling the low hanging fruit issues of the Democratic base rather than swinging for the fences.

Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders

And then there were three. I think we all knew it was coming down to these three.  Let’s not kid ourselves here.  We know who is getting the next ax, but the bottom line is these are the three true contenders and until things change, they are the only horses in the race.  So we will tackle them together in Part 3, which is hopefully coming soon.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

#1yrago If this goes on... The 1% will own two thirds of the world by 2030

The House of Commons Library has published research projecting the post-2008 growth of inequality until 2030, arriving at an eye-popping headline figure: at current rates, the richest 1% will own two thirds of the world's riches by 2030. I think that number is too low. Here's why.

The years since 2008 have been boom times for inequality: the collapse of debt markets and the trillions in state bailouts were a bit like the collapse of the USSR, a moment in which public assets and public money could be massively shifted into the hands of super-rich people who just stole shit like crazy, and got away with it, even when they were caught red-handed.

The House of Commons Library projections assume that inequality will progress linearly, without accelerating, but there are accelerants aplenty on the horizon. No less than the Wall Street Journal predicts that we will see massive, bursting debt bubbles in domains like student debt, scammy bonds overrated by captured rating agencies, upside-down markets dominated by index funds, and a resurgence of "complex" (Wall-Streetese for bullshytt) financial instruments.

All other things being (ahem) equal, these impending crises pose major opportunities for accelerating inequality. When the banks are blown up by student debt defaults or cascading collapses of scammy bonds, governments will face more pressure to bail them out, not less -- because the decision to bail out (rather than break up) the banks in 2008 has made the failure of even one of the world's major banks into an immediate systemic risk that far outweighs the prospective, speculative benefits of diversifying and down-regulating the finance sector as a whole as a volatility-reducing measure.

The banks have not gotten any better since 2008, after all: they're still stealing like crazy, at every level and every opportunity, with no consequences to speak of, ever (don't hold your breath waiting for better from the  Democrats: they're long on oligarchy).

In the Guardian's coverage of the report, they quote George Freeman, a Tory MP, to get the official line on why inequality just isn't that bad: "mankind has never experienced such rapid increases in living standards. Around the world billions of people are being lifted out of poverty at a pace never seen before." I have heard these words uttered so many times, by so many Kubler-Rossing capitalism apologists who are beyond denial ("OK, wealth inequality is really a thing"), and moving smartly into bargaining: "But surely you have to admit that inequality isn't a problem in and of itself -- it's only when the rich make everyone poorer that inequality matters, but since inequality is just the result of uplifting the job-creating ubermenschen, it's the price of admission we as a planet will have to pay for 'being lifted out of poverty.'"

It's far more likely that letting a tiny number of crooked, ruthless plutocrats have an outsized role in policy choices has slowed the growth of human progress, rather than accelerating it. After all, the more a country is dominated by its super-rich, the more its policies are aimed at increasing the wealth of the already-wealthy. Policies that uplift poor people only fit through the Overton window if they don't gore some rich person's ox.

Then there's the outsized role that rich peoples' irrational prejudices play in the policy sphere: whether that's Wahabism and its systematic oppression of women, or American hydrocarbon barons' climate denial, Mike Pence's Dominionism, Gwyenth Paltrow's multi-million-dollar science-denial business, Putin's violent aggression against anyone who criticizes the Russian Orthodox church, or Prince Charles's absurd belief in homeopathy. When the richest of the rich can swing policy outcomes just by insisting that they're right and everyone else is wrong, evidence is unceremoniously dumped and we all have to survive the shear where uncaring reality meets uncompromising ideology.

It's worse than that, actually, because when the shear occurs, the rich don't just admit they were wrong and move on. They jail people who point out their mistakes, get their paid-for lawmakers to defund research into their pet theories, and deny, deny, deny, until the seas rise and measles kills all our kids.

https://boingboing.net/2018/04/07/optimistic-projection.html

[spywriter27]

The Interview Emilia ll Luke

He’s laughing brightly, the laughter almost makes it seem like the room is brighter as we continue. “You find it funny. The whole world was waiting in anticipation of this big, grandiose wedding and then we find out. You’re actually married, not to the woman we’ve been calling your fiancée for the past year but to a complete unknown, middle class girl who works for a competitor.”

“I wouldn’t really call Christian a competitor, we get along just fine. It’s actually by chance that she works for him. I had a pretty rough day and my neighbor was concerned, something a lot of people in my life had been. None of them voiced this concern though, because that would have been, proper.” I can see the annoyance on his face, its something that has come up before in an interview when he was younger. People expecting him to read their minds. “People assume because you have wifi in your head you know what they’re thinking. I’m a genetic hybrid, not a psychic and it bothers me a lot that people get the two mixed up.” Was what he told me last time, I checked on his insistence.

“So you just met at a random party. How normal of you. Was it love at first sight or did you actively try to flirt?” I can’t help it, one of the original four hybrids, the only one known to have human emotion, it’s for science. I’ve known him for years and the thought of him flirting is more funny than adorable. This is the man who can tell a dictator where to stuff it but crumbles when his mom tells him it’s rude.

“Tease all you want Michelle, I did end up with her number at the end of the night. We met up for coffee, talked, normal things. You should be proud, it’s all annoyingly human and mundane. Went to the movies a few times, walked through the park. It’s a bit insane how no one knew until Rachel threw a fit. I mean, it wasn’t a secret, we were out there actively being us for the world to see and no one cared until the princess of slander got mad.”  The princess of slander, an interesting way of calling his ex out on all the effort she’s put in to dragging them through the mud. Most hybrids hide their thoughts well and Luke is no exception until it becomes a topic that get’s him frustrated, like math or in this case, Rachel. She seems to be a frustrating person, everyone wants to be in her friend group but those that have left have nothing nice to say about it. If you can even get them to talk about it.

“But you were still seeing Rachel. A lot of people feel like you did her dirty, cheated on her. I know a few of them have confronted you in person. Does it bother you or your wife? That you essentially cheated on Rachel with her.” I get the devil’s advocate glance but I know you all want the answer too. For the last three years every form of social media has been flooded with images for the two of them. For the last year it was near impossible to log onto anything and not know about their future wedding. Then overnight it all changed, the tone of their relationship changed and he came out looking pretty bad.

Luke Montgomery smirked, he actually smirked at me. A rare event his mother once described as the first sign of the apocalypse for revenge. “I didn’t cheat on her. I’d have actually had to have been dating her to cheat on her. Before you ask, I never proposed to her either. There’s a fifty page print out of us fighting over that and her telling me to just ‘go with it. Its what’s best for our companies’. Rachel was, is, she’s always been a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It’s no secret that my father became very sick a few years back. He assumed he wouldn’t make it and told me things about where I came from and I nosedived into a place that I hope I never go back to. I didn’t know who I could trust, I barely slept. It was a dark place and then, she was there. She told a few corny jokes, we had some drinks. One day I woke up in her room and couldn’t recall what happened the night before. The last thing I could remember was leaving the office.” He’s taking deep breathes, what he’s saying is hard for him. It’s almost as if his anxiety is telling him to keep quiet.

He’s messing with his wedding band, he doesn’t know it’s silver, not that he cares but you can see the wear it’s taken already in just these few short months from him messing with it. “She cornered me on a street, in an alley actually, right around the corner from my place. Told me she was pregnant. I did what a lot of guys do in that situation. I panicked, said I’d be there for her and I was. Then she said she lost it a few weeks later. It broke me a little, I had just started thinking about it, toying with the idea. What kind of dad would I be and stuff you know? Turns out she was lying the whole time. I tried to cut her off a year later, after I found out. Just ghost her you know. I couldn’t handle it, it’s almost like I could see what she was doing and tried to stop it but failed. I’d stopped sleeping, didn’t really eat much, stopped doing things that made me happy. I was only doing what she wanted me to do, only eating what she let me eat. She hates dogs, I sent mine to live with my parents, she hates traveling, I didn’t see my family for three years. She kept showing up everywhere I went though, it was freaky and she just kept inserting herself into my life no matter how I tried to run. I gave up. I know, it’s weird to admit that out loud but it’s what actually happened. I gave up trying to run away from her but I never reinstated the relationship, we never did anything more than sleep under the same roof, our rooms were down the hall from each other.”

If you’ve ever imagined what it looks like when his runs his fingers through his hair I can tell you it’s everything you’ve thought it to be and yes, he does the exasperated sigh along with it as he’s trying to focus himself from telling me more than he wants. “Emilia it was like, it was like a switch flipped. She’s a hobby photographer.”

“You did that too, you already had so much in common.” He’s wearing a look that both says ‘shut up’ and ‘please don’t’ at the same time. It’s an interesting thing to see and even more interesting to try and read.

“I used to. Rachel, doesn’t do pictures or people with ‘camera’s for fun, honestly why?’” His Rachel voice is the highlight of this interview along with his casual dress. I’ve been interviewing him for years and I’ve never seen him this relaxed. “It was weird, like, when I stopped posting on Instagram everyone just went with it. When I started posting again people were just like ‘where have you been? We missed you’ and my personal favorite ‘can you post more pictures of your doggo’” He laughed, “It was like everything I had to give up to appease Rachel I could have back. Why wouldn’t you want to have things that made you happy? I could meet up with my friends, visit my family, travel, go to the island.”

“I have to ask, has Emilia been to the island yet? I semistalk her Instagram and it hasn’t shown up there yet. I feel like there’s a lot more to that place than your boat and the beach. If she hasn’t been will you guys be going soon?” It’s a reasonable question, she seems to take pictures of everything. The video’s of his dog seeing him after three years can make you cry. If you haven’t watched them yet, bring tissues. If you’re reading this online the link is below.

“She hasn’t yet, we’re actually leaving for it tomorrow. So if you wait a week or two to publish you might get some pictures from her soon. I’m excited about it. I mean, I know it’s been taken care of by the staff when they visit I just. It’s been so long and she’s never been on the ship before. It’s weird, I mean, I grew up in this lifestyle so I’m used to it all but she didn’t. So everything is new, like the flight out to England, she’d never been on a plane before. I like traveling and as a lot of people know I like my rich guy toys. Getting to share them with her is just as fun and amazing. I’m sure it’d still be this way even if she grew up with the stuff but getting to see her enjoy these things for the first time is awesome.”

I made a note to put off publishing this as long as possible for photographs, my boss wasn’t having it so we all loose out. Sorry. She has a blog though as I  have been informed but someone, Luke, wouldn’t tell me what it was so we just have to hope all the pictures end up on insta.

“You know you’re one of the few rich people who can brag about their wealth and people don’t get upset. Is there a reason why or do you think people are afraid to piss off one of the richest people in the world?” A question I’ve been dying to ask for far too long so you can all just give me this one and we’ll get back to the cute couples in a minute.

“There’s a reason. As much as I brag about my toys and vacations. I don’t actually vacation, I might be on a beach but I have an office a hundred yards away, same with the boat, office is there. I work hard for my money but I think the big reason people pay it no mind is because I’m pretty philanthropic. Shelters for both people and animals. Schools in war torn countries. Helping people whose governments are letting them down. Coconut trees are something I’m dealing a lot with right now. Did you know if you plant them close enough together that you can slow and in some cases stop beach erosion? How awesome is that? Governments though, they don’t care. So what’s a few thousand coconut trees to help save beaches and inject a little money into the local economy? It’s nothing off my back or my bank account. The way I see it, we were charged with making the world better than how we found it. So far we’re doing a pretty shitty job. If you send a copy of this to my mum you better change that word or I’ll never hear the end of it.” He sighed, he was serious too, I changed it in her copy. “If I can help make it better, why wouldn’t I? I have the money and resources to do it so I owe it, not just to myself but to everyone else to try and make it better. To slow climate change if I can’t stop it. You can recycle your soda cans all you want but if big business doesn’t turn their companies green it’s not going to make a difference.”

“Are you sure I can’t have her blog name?” One last try to get all of us more cute pictures. He didn’t cave but he did tell me the exact site but I have a domain and that’s a start. People may think it weird, granted my openness about cyberstalking them is a little weird but I’m a reporter whose job is to write about them every day. If you think I’m weird for it than you are reading the wrong interview, it’s my job.

“There’s really nothing amazing on there though. I mean, to us it’s a bunch of awesome stuff but I doubt you want to see it. All the cool stuff is on Instagram. Our more homey things are on her blog.” He keeps trying to get me away from it but honestly, seeing more humany, homey things of them is what everyone wants “I mean, do you really want to look at a dozen pictures of this?” He’s honestly adorable when he brags, he doesn’t even realize he is doing it. If every man was this oblivious with these things life would be sweeter.

It’s a picture of them at home on the terrace, it’s dark but you can see the telescope. Candid’s of them both looking through it and watching the stars. It’s so sweet my teeth hurt. I want to see hundreds of those. I leave empty handed regarding her blog but now I know what I’m missing and I might double my efforts to find it if for no reason than to see my friend having a good life. After three years of Rachel essentially abusing him he’s found someone who showed him what he was missing and I couldn’t be happier for it. While the everyday public might think they’re a fraud, simply because we didn’t see what was before our eyes. Those of us who know Luke Montgomery couldn’t be happier for him. No matter what sludge Rachel throws on the papers about them you can see it in their eyes. Neither of them could be happier with anyone else.

@adauntlessangel

[douchebagbrainwaves]

I'VE BEEN PONDERING PG

It's very common for startups to present to them. Do people live downtown, or have some sort of exit. There is less stress in total, but more as an exploration of gender and sexuality in an urban context, etc.1 I think the goal of this rule; if you can't explain your plans concisely, you don't worry that it might come out badly, or upset delicate social balances, or that can incorporate live data feeds, or that you won't be demoralized if they seem pointless.2 One YC founder told me that it wasn't worth investing in. The patent pledge doesn't fix every problem with patents.3 I can tell from the case. This site isn't lame. They wouldn't all grow as big. It will be easier in proportion to an estimate of your company's value that you'd both agreed upon.

Then you could, I don't care what he says, I'm going to name them: type A fundraising is when you can do, you don't see the opportunities all around us is that we get on average only about 5-7% of a much larger number.4 In most fields the great work is: very exacting taste, plus the ability to direct the course of adding some feature they were asking for.5 Most hackers are employees, and this trick merely forces you to clean up your apartment, writing something that you'll be able to say whether he should be classified as a friend or angel.6 Don't say anything unless you're fairly sure what you want to reach; from paragraph to paragraph I let the ideas take their course. Sometimes a competitor will deliberately threaten you with a business background, and he will automatically get paid proportionally more. Not all of them had never seen the Web before we came to tell them to stop.7 If you're free of a misconception that everyone else is crazy. Most startups that raise money and the kind of alarms you'd set off if you operate like Columbus and just head in a general westerly direction.

As we were in the old sense of managing the round. Technology is a lever. Modern literature is important, but I suspect that most of them a part time job. In the Bay Area would be the answer. But let someone else start those startups. They're not necessarily trying to mislead you. Like a lot of people will make them.

But if you make something they like. 05 PM subject: Re: Revenge of the Nerds on the LL1 mailing list.8 American universities currently seem to be a media company to throw Microsoft off their scent. Java white paper, Gosling explicitly says Java was designed to be a missile aimed right at what makes America successful.9 Different users have different requirements, but I don't think that's the right way to do it. But this is merely an artifact of the rule of law.10 All you'll learn is the words kids are allowed to use. That's the way to the close.11 It did serve some purposes: reading a talk out loud can expose awkward parts. What investors still don't get is what insanely great translates to in a larval startup.

When I talk about humans being meant or designed to live a certain way out of habit or politeness. Hackers & Painters that hadn't been online. Incidentally, the switch in the 1920s to financing growth with retained earnings till the 1920s.12 And the programmers liked it because they don't like to have it. What counts as property depends on what works to treat as property. But this is wrong. What's a prostitute?13 Everyone by now presumably knows about the danger of premature optimization. Essentially, they lead you on. That will change the way they treat the music they sell through iTunes.14

So tablet makers should be thinking: what else can we give developers access to? White said, good writing is rewriting, wrote E. Almost four decades later, fragmentation is still increasing. The more people you have to do it than literally making a mark on the world. Investors looked at Yahoo's earnings and said to one of the principles they teach you is to align the car not by lining up the hood with the stripes painted on the road, but by trying to use mass lawsuits against randomly chosen people as a form of evolutionary pressure. People think that what you want. In principle anyone there ought to have multiple founders who were already friends before they decided to build recipe sites, or aggregators for local events.

Better Bayesian Filtering. They may play some behind the scenes as adults spin the world for a while, can make visual perception flow in through his eye and out through his hand as automatically as someone tapping his foot to a beat. If you looked in people's heads. They are all fundamentally subversive for this reason. I sat down and calculated what I thought was hard, the groups all turned out ok. Election forecasters are proud when they can get it, at this stage.15 The danger of symmetry, and repetition especially, is where the richest buyers are, but figure out precisely where you lose them. If they didn't know what language our software was so complex. 2:21 AM subject: Re: meet the airbeds PG, Thanks for the lead Fred to: Fred Wilson date: Mon, Feb 9,2009 at 11:42 AM subject: Re: airbnb There's a lot to start a startup. And yet they can hold their own with any work of art ever made.

Leonardo?16 It is, as far as possible prevent them from having fun. Doesn't that show people will pay most for?17 After thinking about it than most, but almost everywhere the trend is in that direction. Till then they had to ask permission to release software: the last thing you changed. But fortunately in the US are more conservative than Boston ones.18 People are all you need is to be battered by circumstances—to let the days rush by. But that's something you can fix later, but you can't evade the fundamental conservation law. And yet Apple's overall market share is still small. Though the Web has been around for a millennium is finished just because of its prestige, but because they were ambivalent about threatening their cash cow, mainframe computing. I mean efforts to protect against cosmic rays.19

Notes

Even as late as 1984. Incidentally, Google may appear to be at a large company? Plus one can have escaped alive, or to be good?

To do this all the poorer countries. Ed. But it was the least correlation between the Daddy Model may be a sufficient condition.

And in World War II to the rise of big companies can afford that. And while this is to try to be a win to include in your classes as a result a lot more frightening in those days, but I call it procrastination when someone gets drunk instead of happy. I'm talking mainly about software startups are now the first digital computer game, you can probably write a subroutine to do would be better at opening it than people who might be a good problem to fit your solution. Look at those goddamn fleas, jabbering about some disease they'll see once in China, during the war on drugs show, bans often do better, and instead of the world of the most famous example.

Plus one can ever say it again. When I catch egregiously linkjacked posts I replace the actual amount of damage to the founders' advantage if it was 94% 33 of 35 companies that can't reasonably expect to make a fortune in the case, not because Delicious users are stupid.

But you're not allowed to discriminate on any basis you want to get going, and oversupply of educated ones come up with elaborate rationalizations. I also skipped San Jose is a meaningful idea for human audiences. Though in fact had its own mind about whether a suit would violate the patent pledge, it's not enough to defend their interests in political and legal disputes.

What Is an Asset Price Bubble? This doesn't mean easy, of the river among the bear gardens and whorehouses. They act as if you'd just thought of them could as accurately be called acting Japanese. Many more than 20 years.

It's hard for us!

2%. If a prestigious VC makes a small proportion of the things you're taught.

Doing things that don't scale.

Now the misunderstood artist is not limited to startups. There's not much use, because few founders are willing to provide when it's done as conspicuously as this place was a false positive rate is 10%, moving to Monaco would only give you more than the previous round. Cascading menus would also be good startup founders tend to get going, e.

Emmett Shear writes: True, Gore won the popular vote he would presumably have got more of the flock, or at least, the government and construction companies. People only tend to damp this effect, at least guesses by pros about where that money comes from ads on other investors doing so because otherwise competitors would take forever in the case of heirs, professors, politicians, and everyone's used to place orders.

His critical invention was a kid that you'd want to sell them technology. I'm not dissing these people make the people working for startups, because it aggregates data from so many trade publications nominally have a lot of reasons American car companies have little to bring corporate bonds to market faster; the point where things start with consumer electronics and to run on the firm's site, they're nice to you. Not only do they decide on the young Henry VIII and was troubled by debts all his life. Distribution of potentially good startups, who've already made the decision.

Maybe that isn't really working bad unit economics, typically and then scale it up because they couldn't afford it. An investor who's seriously interested will already be working to help a society generally is to let yourself feel it mid-sentence, but you get an intro to a clueless audience like that.

But it is dishonest of the country turned its back on industrialization at the start, e.

The need has to be employees, or editions with the buyer's picture on the back of Yahoo, we actively sought out people who'd failed out of the things attributed to Confucius and Socrates resemble their actual opinions. The speed at which point it suddenly stops. And when a startup to engage with slow-moving organizations is to write every component yourself, but also very informative essay about why something isn't the last step in this essay I'm talking here about everyday tagging. If not, greater accessibility.

In 1525 he was made a bet: if you hadn't written it? I saw this I used thresholds of.

Especially if they were to work your way up. I managed to find a broad range of topics, comparable in scope to our scholarship though without the spur of poverty are only locally accurate, because those are probably the last step in this respect.

So how do you use that instead of Windows NT? How did individuals accumulate large fortunes in an absolute sense, if you make something hackers use. On the face of it.

But it's telling that it would be to say that it had no idea what's happening as merely not-doing-work. But they've been trained. So far, I preferred to call them whitelists because it depends on a weekend and sit alone and think.

[the95liner]

06. redamancy (pt. 1)

(n.) the act of loving the one who loves you; a love returned in full

→ mxm, jimin x jeongguk✨ ; arranged marriage au / fake marriage au ; slow burn ; eventual smut ; eventual mpreg ; strangers to lovers ; pinch of angst ; sex humor ; stubborn assholes ; park jimin is a little shit ; jeon jeongguk is a little shit too ; top!jimin ; bottom!jungkook ; ceo!jungkook ; ceo!jimin ;  → cowritten by @touchmybangtan → AO3 Link

The suit he wears is nothing more special than what he’d wear on a day he’d roll into work. His sleeves smell faintly of herbs from the tea company as Jeongguk wears his cufflinks, fiddling as he closes the whale back studs. Jeongguk is taking his time, locking and unlocking the jewelry to stall the inevitable. Today, in respect to the media, this is the happiest day of his life. A young CEO marries to another company in the case of a hidden, modern day romance, sparked in secrecy and “shockingly revealed” with faked engagement rings that suspiciously matched. 

The real story is that Jeongguk had come home to his parents holding a gift box. They hadn’t even looked guilty when they told him to wear it out in public, to go to a coffee shop where there were tipped photographers waiting. Every little detail to this relationship of Jeongguk’s has been planned out for him. Jeongguk thinks he’s only met his groom once or twice before today. 

Music plays outside and the twenty-something groans. He cannot stomach weddings, and now he was only minutes from walking into his own. Jimin narrows his eyes at the clock in one of the massive churches dressing rooms. His time is money and he’s  wasting millions by attending this wedding. His wedding. Why is his marriage even happening in a church? This is not a union of two people, but rather a union of two companies. A courthouse would have sufficed. Clearly, the elder Jeon and Park wanted an opportunity to make the front page of the newspaper. What better way than the marriage of two of the richest heirs in the country? He couldn’t believe his parents had the audacity to arrange this marriage for him. As if Jimin were not an adult, as if he didn’t have feelings. There was always the option of a divorce…but there wasn’t for a Park. Parks don’t get divorces: they stay married for life. In a few moments, Park Jimin would be tied down to Jeon Jeongguk until death tears them apart. Jimin purses his lips. Jeon Jeongguk, he’s handsome enough; Jimin thinks back to the doe eyed, thin lipped man that he had the brief encounter with two weeks ago. He would give him beautiful children and perhaps it would be bearable to live with him. Senior Park knocks on the door, then comes inside. Jimin rises to his feet as his father fixed his three-piece tuxedo. “You look lovely, son.” His father says, smiling widely. Although his demeanour was friendly, Jimin heard the threat as his eyes bore into him. ‘Don’t fuck this up.’ They screamed. The young CEO smiles tightly back at him, before exiting the room and walking towards the main hall of church. He stood outside the french doors waiting for his future husband to join him so that they could walk together to the altar. Looking into a mirror, Jeongguk stares himself down. It’s almost like any morning, but he looks different, and his skin feels too tight on his body. The wedding isn’t a small one, with the press invited and the guests all high-profile persons. It’s meant to be beautiful and dramatic, something for the public to eat up and tabloids to milk for the next few months. Jeongguk doesn’t doubt they’ll be skipping honeymoons for interviews and returning to their offices. Growing up, Jeongguk expected that finding a partner would be a lot more romantic. He grew up with a genuine sparkle in his eyes, and now he only looks back on those pictures on the walls and pities the child in them, because now the door behind him is opening and he meets eyes with his parents through his reflection. All pairs of eyes are full of malice, dark and warning to each other. “I’m coming,” Jeongguk says, not waiting for one of them to speak. He already knows what to expect from them now. Closing his cufflinks for the last time, Jeongguk brushes past his father and ignores the way his mother ghosts a hand over his shoulder. Park Jimin is a petite man. His figure surprises Jeongguk every time his eyes fall on him. Today is their third meeting. They’ll be seeing each other a lot more after this, they might as well act as they’ve known each other much longer. As he walks up, Jeongguk gives him a smile, a practiced one like he had given him on their mock date just a few weeks prior. Jimin still smells the same: like a rich CEO. It’s the scent of overpriced cologne and harsh chemicals, meant to smell fresh and nice but Jeongguk can hardly stand it. There’s plenty of ears to catch his complaining, eyes and cameras to catch the discontent on his face. So instead, Jeongguk bows shallowly and adjusts his grin.

“Hey.”

It’s casual, modern. It’d be romantic in some bad teen romance. Jimin glances up at Jeongguk in acknowledgment. His cheeks tint pink as their eyes meet, Jimin’s memory had dwarfed the younger man, and as he stood beside him, Jeongguk’s proportions screamed his masculinity. “Hi,” Jimin’s voice is confident with a hint of anxiousness, exactly what the media wanted to hear. His lips curve into a small smile as he reaches to grasp Jeongguk’s hand, stepping closer towards the younger. His hand is cool, slim, but soft. Compared to Jimin’s, Jeongguk’s hand is large, practically engulfing Jimin’s. Jimin wrinkles his nose as he breathes in Jeongguk, the scent a mixture of the entirety of a forest. It’s as if Jeongguk rolled around in the mud before arriving. Jimin didn’t like it. Jimin watches as their parents laugh, joyously hugging for the cameras then proceeded to walk into the church to take their seats, but not before turning to give both of them a meaningful look. The message the media would take away is strikingly different from what Jimin and Jeongguk understand. Atmosphere now chilled, both men stand with taut muscles and uncertainty masking their features. Jimin’s grip on Jeongguk’s hand constricts with anger before it relaxes only moments after. Clearing his throat, he whispers a quiet apology incase he hurt the younger man, his gaze flickering to him. As the french doors open, Jimin allows a vibrant smile to grace his lips, just for the cameras that start flashing immediately. Jimin interlocks their fingers as the music starts playing. As they begin to walk towards the alter, the camera shutter becomes louder. Every bit of reminder of this publicity stunt is amplified, yet still only obvious to those in on the secret. The air is tainted with money and greed, almost too thick to drag into the lungs. Jeongguk feels blinded by the lights, the alter barely visible in between flashes. Quietly, his dips his head down closer to Jimin’s as they walk. It’ll look good on the cover of a magazine, his smile partially hidden and face hidden behind his bangs. The press will never have to know the uncertainty that passes through him. “We don’t really have to kiss, do we?” Jeongguk tightens his hand around the one in his as he asks. There’s no good reason for them to put on that much of a show. Maybe Jeongguk can kiss his cheek instead, smudge icing on the other side of his face once they get to the cake: It’d seem like a camera-shy act instead of them blatantly avoiding each other, but his parents may not agree. After the wedding, Jeongguk would have to worry about moving his things. For the past month, he’s been boxing up the luxury apartment his dad bought him when he entered the company. He’s only lived in it for two years. It makes him wonder how long this has been planned. The company hasn’t been failing, not that Jeongguk knows of at least. Their teas still sell and they’re comfortable enough to release new blends seasonally. Was it the Parks that was failing? Or is the only goal bigger figures for the both of them? Mulling it over, Jeongguk can see how great of an idea it is, but he’d still rather have all his freedom back. “We do,” Jimin said curtly as they reach the altar. Jimin lets go of Jeongguk’s fingers so he may face the man he’s finally marrying. The smile ever present on his lips, the pastor begins the ceremony and the guests fall quiet under the booming voice. News workers hold cameras from the end of the aisle, capturing a video to broadcast over and over again until the horse is dead and put in its grave. Jimin could not let his eyes stray from Jeongguk’s because of the audience, but he lets his mind wander. It has only been a few weeks, three to be exact, that his marriage to Jeongguk had been set in stone but already his life is changing. The day after his engagement, his father sent over a moving company to alter the layout of his bachelor pad into an apartment suit for a newly wed couple. It didn’t matter that he lived in a 1+1 condominium that would force him and Jeongguk to share a singular bed, in fact, that seemed to be the reason his father pushed the movement. His living arrangements were one thing he had decided to himself, his first home bought with his own money. And now, Jeongguk has robbed him of his privacy, as well as his freedom. Jimin listens as the pastor’s cues carefully, holding Jeongguk’s hands in time to recite their vows. “I, Park Jimin, take you, Jeon Jeongguk to be my husband from this day forward and these things I promise you: I will be faithful to you and honest with you; I will respect, trust, help, and care for you; I will share my life with you; I will forgive you as we have been forgiven; and I will try with you better to understand ourselves and the world; through the best and worst of what is to come, and as long as we live.” 

Although he didn’t know it yet, Jimin meant every word of his vows. He finished with a vibrant smile, his eyes never straying from Jeongguk. Jeongguk’s vows are similarly structured, if not spoken with a bored and emotionless tone. His head is tipped down, an effort to meet eyes with his very soon-to-be husband. If it wouldn’t be considered lazy, he would have slouched to be closer in height. Pursing his lips, Jeongguk listens to the pastor babble on further. Each passing word is a twist in his gut, because when they say “I do” their fate is sealed, and Jeongguk’s freedom is gone. He won’t be able to stay long hours in the office, or have drinks with his employees late in the night. Instead, he’ll be packing up early to go see his husband, and take him out for dinners so everyone will know that they’re real. They’re not real, though. Jeongguk is kicking himself for not arguing against his parents for this. He feels like property, handed off into another family for a couple more stacks of money on the table. When the pastor finally slows down again, his heavy voice weighing down on Jeongguk’s shoulders, Jeongguk doesn’t think he can do it. Jimin might be a nice guy, he’s not sure, but he really can’t fucking do it. Breaking eye contact, Jeongguk’s gaze travels. He looks at his expecting parents, all the guests that he really doesn’t know. He swallows the lump in his throat. “I do.” Jeongguk’s voice is small, coming out soft. He’s looking back at Jimin now, holding eye contact once again. His lungs can’t get enough air, his chest hurts. If this isn’t the beginning of some panic attack, Jeongguk is sure he’s about to just die altogether.

Jimin hears the hidden misery in Jeongguk’s soft tone. The younger man didn’t want this as much as he did, that much is clear, but here they both are. As Jimin parrots the two words that bond them forever, the pastor announces what the pair had been dreading since the beginning of the ceremony.

For most married couples, it was just a kiss. But right now, the kiss that Jimin and Jeongguk would share held enormous power. Jimin would bet his entire inheritance that it would be plastered on every newspaper and billboard for the rest of the month.

Jimin stares up at Jeongguk, unsure of who should make the first move. But as Jeongguk was frozen in place, his eyes wide as he stared at Jimin like a deer caught in the headlights, Jimin tilts his head and stands on the tips of his toes, slanting his mouth over Jeongguk’s. He moves to place Jeongguk’s hands on his waist before cradling his husband’s face, palms warming the already hot cheeks.

The church erupts in cheers and a loud applause, and Jimin leans away from Jeongguk’s mouth, pushing their foreheads together. His eyes remain closed, nose brushing against Jeongguk’s with a small smile gracing his lips. The perfect picture for the headlines.

Jeongguk’s hands tighten briefly around Jimin’s waist, his own eyes fluttering shut. It’s so odd to be this intimate with a stranger, to hold them close like they mean something. Still, Jeongguk allows himself to slouch, just a little bit, and bumps their noses together before moving to kiss Jimin’s forehead. He sells the act just as well as the other man does, desperate to make his parents and inlaws happy. As soon as they leave they’ll get some distance, but for another couple hours, they’ll be at each others side. Together they’ll thank guests with plastic smiles, and someone will cut the cake that would taste too sweet. Pulling away, Jeongguk stares down at his husband, eyes gleaming with tears that will probably be left unshed. Cameras flash and highlight all the wrong features on his face, and Jeongguk can already read the headlines. “I’m sorry.” He whispers, hands traveling to rest over the ones pressed to his cheeks. The intention is to remove them, so he locks their fingers together and brings their hands to rest between them. Jeongguk wants to yank away, the skin contact burning him in an unpleasant manner. He can’t, however, so he just holds on tighter and wishes for a quick night. Jimin smiles brightly at Jeongguk, before tightening his grip on his hand briefly. The cameras flashes attack the pair as they blindly walk straight towards the exit where their limousine would await them to escort them to their wedding party. The rest of the night becomes a blur. Although Jimin and Jeongguk spend the entirety of the party next to each other, they barely speak to one another. They were so busy entertaining their guests and making it seem as if everything was normal, as if they were delighted that today has finally happened, that they did not get a moment to themselves. As the night finally ends and Jimin sits down in the limousine, he let out a deep breath which feels more like getting rid of the weight of the world off his shoulders. He slumps against the back of the seat, closing his eyes as he loosens his tie. “God, what a nightmare.” They’re finally able to detach from each other. Jeongguk takes the liberty of sitting as far as possible, shrugging off his suit jacket to make the ride more comfortable. He checks his phone, briefing over news headlines before shutting the device off and sinking into his seat. “Whoever suggested you buy that cologne lied to you,” Jeongguk mentions, head rolling back. His head aches. The movers hopefully transported his things safely, though admittedly it wasn’t much. Jeongguk wasn’t allowed to bring much of his furniture, if any at all. Boxes of clothes should be the bulk of it, and he’s already dreading the challenge to find something to wear tonight. Too tired to bring himself to be angry over Jeongguk’s statement, Jimin just laughs. It’s dry, unkind.

“If I wanted your opinion I would have asked for it,” Jimin speaks without opening his eyes, hands against his lower abdomen. “You don’t need to ask for it, Hubby. We’re one in the same now, remember?” Jeongguk’s tone comes off as mocking, eyes bitter when he takes a peak at the other. They’re both tired, both exploited. They probably have a lot in common, but Jeongguk still can’t stand him. “And my opinion is that it stinks.” The other statement had just been a fact. “What I said was a more polite way of telling you that I really don’t give a fuck about your opinion, husband.” Jimin snorts at the term. Jimin glances at Jungkook through hooded eyes, then turns his face away from the younger. Stretching his legs out, Jeongguk leans forward against his knees. An amused smile turns the corners of lips up. This is the Jimin he remembers, the man he met at a small coffee shop with matching rings on their fingers. Jeongguk takes up a lot of space in the limo, daring the other to challenge him for it. “You’re prettier when you smile. Are you sure I just married you?” “It’s been more than 5 hours since we got married, but hey who’s keeping track? we only have the rest of forever today.” Jimin says sadistically. The smile upon his features smoothly melts into an ugly frown, aging his youthful features in a matter of seconds. Nudging Jimin’s leg with his foot, Jeongguk sighs. His styled hair is slowly falling down onto his forehead, proof of his worrying hands and the stressful hours that had dragged on the day. “You can at least look at me, it’s not like I proposed to you.” Jimin then turns to face Jeongguk, “Happy?” Before turning back to look outside the limousine, “I’m just keeping at an eye for the paparazzi. We’re getting close to my condominium.” Jimin turns back to face Jeongguk and smirks, “I hope you’re not expecting me to carrying you over the threshold.” “I won’t get my hopes up then, thanks for letting me know.”  

Unlike earlier that day, the way Jeongguk holds Jimin’s gaze is cold. Stubbornly, his chin tilts up, ankles coming together to cross. “I don’t think you’re enough of a big guy to carry me anyways.” Jimin’s rather petite, maybe has a bit of muscle hiding under those sleeves. Jeongguk knows it still wouldn’t be enough to lift him off the ground.

Flashing a charming smile, a brow arches. “Do you want me to carry you in, sweetheart?” Neither of the pair are surprised to see the paparazzi waiting for them to arrive in front of Jimin’s residence. The limousine comes to a halt and the cameras begin their horrid song.

“Yes actually, I do. Do you think you’ll be able to pumpkin?“ Jimin leans over and presses his forefinger against Jeongguk’s nose. When he steps out of the vehicle, he turns around asking for Jeongguk’s hand to escort him into his new home. It’s Act II. Gathering his things, Jeongguk takes Jimin’s hand only to kiss his knuckles before climbing out of the vehicle himself.

"Lead the way, pudding.”

Out of pity for himself, Jeongguk drops his husband’s hand, tucking his arms under his suit jacket instead. It’s rather dark outside now, but the flashes of the cameras provide more light than usual. Surely, it’s been awhile since Jeongguk has dealt with this many cameras. The last time had probably been the day he had started working for his father at the company. Jimin flinches as Jeongguk’s lips scrape across the back of his fingers. Thoroughly flustered, he walks towards the building checking back to ensure Jeongguk is still behind him as they enter the building. The security guards open the doors escorting the pair into their building then into Jimin’s condominium which has been transformed from his bachelor pad to a couple’s nest. Jimin purses his lips and commands the security to check the flat for any strays invading their privacy. Jeongguk stands behind Jimin, his frame towering above the other. He looks over his new home, eyes landing on unpacked boxes that have yet to be moved into the bedroom.

“That’s a bit excessive, isn’t it?” He asks, watching after the security guards dividing themselves throughout the home. “I don’t think anyone likes you that much, sweetums.”

His features are not nearly as tight as Jimin’s, the exhaustion making them as firm as jelly. Really, he’d enjoy a hot bath and then a cup of tea right now over anything. The kitchen looks promising, Jeongguk is already yearning to wrap his hands around a warm mug. It’s magical until a dainty paw steps around the corner.

Gracefully, a cat steps into view, its tail held obnoxiously high and oh. Jeongguk hates that. “It’s just precautionary measures, babe. I don’t think you want pictures of our wedding night all over the internet.” Jimin says, before his eyes are on his kitten. He bends forward stroking the kittens thick coat and scratching under her chin.

“Good Evening Friday, did you miss me?”

As if responding to his question the kitten let out a loud purr, rubbing against Jimin’s leg. She circles around the limb before resting her eyes wide green eyes on Jungkook. Her tail swishes elegantly behind her as she watches the other man. The witty response fails to leave Jeongguk’s lips as his stare is met by the cat’s. Friday. That was such a stupid name and Jeongguk can’t even tell if he’s surprised.

“The cat sleeps with you.” And nowhere near him.

Cats haven’t been Jeongguk’s thing ever since childhood: they’re far too mischievous and manipulative. Dogs, on the other hand, are loyal and just want to the best for you. Jeongguk would much rather shower attention on one of them and see the affection returned than petting a cat and having them walk away. “The cat sleeps wherever she wants, Jeongguk,” Jimin replies, a bit too coldly. As he speaks, he levels his eyes to meet Jeongguk’s.

When the security guards confirm the condominium is clear, Jimin thanks them before dismissing them. He then turned to his new husband, “We need to discuss some technicalities.” “Yeah, the cat sleeps with you. We trade turns with the bed until I buy one for myself.”

Sitting his coat down on the counter, Jeongguk is walking towards one of his boxes. His main priority is to get out of this suit, and he refuses to be distracted by some talking garden gnome. “I don’t care what you do, we both have jobs to worry about. It’s doubtful that we’ll have to interact all that much.”

Pausing, Jeongguk shuffles around in a box before pulling out a pair of sweatpants. “I might have a place to stay anyways, so don’t expect me home every night.” “I repeat, the cat will sleep wherever she wants. There’s no reason to disrupt the life of an innocent creature just because our lives got fucked up.”

Jimin walks towards the kitchen, pouring himself a glass of apple juice. He watches the younger man, sucking his teeth as he listens to him speak.

“I care what you do. I don’t want any scandals. If you’re not coming home, at least text me so I can have an excuse.” Jimin turns to put away the juice in the fridge but stops, “Where exactly are you going to fit a second bed?”

Jimin’s condominium was a bachelor pad, he never had the intention of getting married to anyone. His place had his bedroom, his small study and the living room. There was no room for Jeongguk to fit a bed. The man simply shrugs, working on unbuttoning the top of his shirt. “I’ll find room somewhere, don’t worry about it.”

Cloth falls off his shoulders, collecting at his elbows. Jeongguk is exhausted, fingers fumbling. “There’s not going to be any scandals, I know how to handle myself.”

It’s not like he grew up without having any fun. Jeongguk has learned how to hide himself and pay off journalists: staying undercover will be easy. “Anything else, your majesty?” Jeongguk glances over his shoulder, lips tilted in a smirk. His teeth pull a bit of the soft flesh between them, proposing a challenge as he unbuttons the rest of his top and slides it off. Jimin rolls his eyes.

“You know I have a bathroom for you to change in?” Jimin turns on his heels towards the bedroom. He hopes Jeongguk misses the reddening of his ears at the sight of his half naked husband. He steps into his walk-in closet and picks out his night clothes, a simple pair of boxers and a white t shirt. He bites his tongue upon noticing how his housekeeper had adjusted his closets to fit on one side to allow Jungkook’s to fit on the other side. He dresses quickly, then returns to the living room.

“You can have the bed tonight, you look like you need it.” Jimin doesn’t look at Jeongguk as he begins converting the small couch into a bed. “This isn’t your first time seeing someone naked I hope, I mean otherwise…” Jeongguk trails off, changing into his sweats languidly. His belt jingles in the silence between them, hitting the floor with a thud. Pants follow its path soon after, Jeongguk reaches for his sleepwear.

“What time are getting up in the morning?” Theyre going to have to adjust their schedules for each other, Jeongguk may have to change his alarm. “I’m having someone drive my car over in the morning. I can take you to work.” “I’ve seen both men and women naked Jeongguk, I just have no interest in seeing you naked.” Jimin scoffs, he turns on the tv as he settles into his bed, the couch and smiles as Friday comes to rest with him naturally. However, the cats eyes seem to shift to Jeongguk frequently.

“You’re going to drive me to work? Why would you do that?” Jimin looked at Jeongguk and raises his eyebrows. His eyes light up, even at the insult thrown towards him. Jeongguk stretches his arms far above his head, shameless as he wears no top. For this body, he’s put in a lot of time. Dedication. He likes showing it off when he can, whether it be a morning jog or more intimate exercise.

“I don’t believe you at all, for the record,” Jeongguk says, nonchalant and uncaring. “We just got married. We’ll have cameras following us for the next six months. Just trying to give them something to write about, sweetheart.” “Huh, says the person who doesn’t expect to be home every night,” Jimin huffs turning his attention to the tv. “You don’t need to drive me to work, I have a chauffeur. Just do us both a favour and stay out of trouble.”

He leans back against the couch pillows, closing his eyes. Jimin couldn’t sleep without white noise, whether it be from the tv or the person speaking, he needed something to distract him from his thoughts. “And buy some chapsticks, your lips are really rough.” At that, Jeongguk actually laughs. The sound is breathless and straight from his chest, and Jeongguk hasn’t had that genuine of a laugh in a while. Tip toeing around the furniture, Jeongguk avoids the cat laying on his husband’s lap by shooing her away gently.

“I’m driving you, you’re going to make it obvious if you’re gonna avoid me.” Leaning forward, Jeongguk’s bangs create a curtain for his face. If there’s any nosy cameras outside somewhere, this is would be some great mysterious shot for the magazines. Their noses brush. Jeongguk’s teasing him. “You’re the only one that’s complained.” Jimin places his palm flat against Jeongguk’s chest. He tracing the flawless expansion of skin with his fingertips. He glances up at Jeongguk through his lashes, his fingers travelling up his neck and across his jaw. Jimin licks his lips teasingly, his fingertips now at Jeongguk’s lips before he pinches his cheeks roughly, like you would to a child.

“Don’t play with fire Jeongguk,” Jimin says lowly. He pushes Jeongguk away from him, waiting for Friday to return to his lap. “You can have it your way, I leave at 7AM.” He’s left rubbing at a sore cheek, his expression fading into one that could rival a hurt child. It’s not that he’s sensitive (he is), but it was unexpected. “You sure you don’t want to go to bed? Its yours after all. My stuff is in here anyways.” It would be easier to get ready in the morning, and he trusts Jimin has enough money to pay for a sofa that won’t ruin his poor back. “You won’t fit on the couch,” Jimin defends himself with an exaggerated huff. He wraps the blanket snuggly around him.

“Just let my cat sleep wherever she wants,” Jimin mumbles, his eyes are closed again as he evens his breathing out, the hectic day finally catching up to him. It’s almost endearing how easily the other falls asleep. Scoffing, Jeongguk makes sure the pillow is under his head properly. He walks along the walls until he finds the right light switch, flipping it and dousing the room with shelter for the shadows. Its awkward, strolling across a strangers home to a bedroom that isn’t home — alone, at least.

Jeongguk gives one more glance over his shoulder before he disappears, shutting the door behind him and feeling for the bed. Once he’s found it, the man spends only a short amount of time tossing and turning before he falls asleep with sore eyes.

[b0blegum]

Redamancy [END]

Author: b0blegum

Pairing: CEO Yoo Kihyun x Reader

Rating: G

Genre: Romance, Drama

Status: On Going

Part: Pilot | One | ch. 2 TEASER | Two | ch. 3 TEASER | Three | ch. 4 TEASER | Four | Five | Six | Seven | SEQUEL TEASER

Words:

Summary

He was so broken and afraid of Love. Never thought he would return one’s love in full anymore.

Limos and luxury cars were stopping by at the lobby, dropping off their ultra rich owners as the door were being opened by the hotel staff with a big fake smile plastered on his face.

Those ultra rich car owners were heading to one place. The Grand Ballroom. That’s where the party was being held. The wedding of Yoo Kihyun, CEO of Yoo Holdings and Kim Yoona, the only daughter of Kim Dae Hyun, owner of DH Engineering, a rising company that now has over 50 branch offices across the globe and supplying its products to thousand companies, one of them is Yoo Holdings.

People were dressed exquisitely. Silky gowns, thousand dollars suits and ties, perfectly polished shoes, shiny jewelries and don’t forget the money they threw to pay their hair stylist to fix their dry dyed hair. “Please show us the invitation, Ma’am,” said one of six tall women who were standby in front of the massive door, checking the invitation of those who came one by one before letting them in to the ballroom.

“This way, Ma’am.” She pointed to her left, guiding the woman who was dressed in the latest collection of Chanel’s Haute Couture to find her table. She stepped in the soft carpet that spread out the entire ballroom with gold ornament swirling all over it.

Broken white curtains were covering the windows and got lit by the purple lights that played a big role in adding the ambience to this ballroom. Drinks and snacks were being served by the waitresses who walked here and there. Sometimes the lucky snacks were picked by the guess and immediately eaten.

Some people were waiting for the groom and the bride and some were just sitting there enjoying the drinks and admiring the setting of the ballroom while having light gossips with others.

After a while, the lights were dimmed, classical music was played and the door swayed opened. Everyone’s attention turned to one; the entrance of tonight’s owner.

“Hey, (y/n). Are you sure you don’t want me to come?” Your bestfriend peeked at the door, looking at you who was still getting dressed.

“Yeah. I’m fine.” You lied. She came in and snatched the wedding invitation at the table.

“Yoo Kihyun and Kim Yoona,” she read. “You know, i really could get changed now and go with you to the party–“

“I told you, i’m fine coming alone.”

She sighed and put the invitation on your bed before she helped you zipping up the dress you were wearing.

“Thanks.” You mouthed. “I’ll be home late, so you don’t have to wait for me.” You grabbed your heels and wore it before you fixed your hair a bit and walked to the front door.

“Sometimes i wonder why he dumped you and marry that girl. Look at you,” your bestfriend’s sentence made you stop turning the doorknob. “You are stunning.”

“Thanks, but that’s life. We don’t always get what we wanted.” You replied before swinging the door opened. “I’m going. Bye!”

You lied about being fine going to the wedding. I mean, who feels fine going to the wedding of someone who you used to love? Or in your case, someone who you still love. In the cab, you tried your best not to spill any tears that was already pooling at the edge of your eyes. Sometimes thinking of going back to your bestfriend’s apartment and just fell asleep.

“The only daughter of DH Engineers is finally going to tie the knot tonight. From what i heard, she is going to marry the richest young man of our country, Yoo Kihyun. What a wonderful life they’d have in the future, don’t you all think? Oh... if only i live in a fairytale and could marry someone like him...” You sighed hearing the radio talking about him, but you agreed with something, the live in a fairytale. Yes, only in a fairytale you could marry someone like Yoo Kihyun. In this world that we live in, only the richest marry the richest and the poor marry the poor and have to accept the fact that the richest set the life of the poor.

“There you go. That’d be ten thousand.” The cab driver stopped the fare and slightly turned his head to the backseat. You gave him the amount of money he said and get off the cab. “Hope you have a pleasant night, Miss!” You faked a smile.

You walked in the hotel along with other guests that just came. Everyone had smile plastered on their face, except you.

“Ms. (y/f/n).” Startled, you turned your back to found the owner of heavy voice that just called you by your family name.

“Y- yes?”

“Please come with me.” He said as he nodded. He turned his back and started to walked. You followed him walking to the quieter part of the hotel, where you couldn’t see the guests anymore.

“Excuse me, may i ask where we are going?” You said after both of you standing in front of the luggage elevator.

“You’ll know, Ms. (y/f/n).” The elevator dinged and he gestured you to get on first.

It was quiet for a minute. Only you and this big built man dressed up in a black suit with an earpiece connected to something behind his neck.

A marbled table with a vase of fresh flowers greeted you once the elevator door was slid opened.

“This way, Miss.” The man took the lead again. Walking through the dimmed hallway with a slow music coming from the invisible speaker, until he stopped at one door at the end of the hallway and gave it a light press on small button next to the door.

“Come on in.” A muffled voice was heard. You look at the man and he gave you a single nod as a sign for you to come in. You gave a light press on the door. It swung revealing a bright room inside. The sound of morning news on the television made a contrast to how quiet the room was.

You took a step in to find a young man standing against the window. Hands buried inside his pocket. Slowly he turned around to meet you who was standing still after figuring out who is this man.

“Close the door.” He asked. You did as you were told.

He walked to you with a straight face. “It’s been a long time, is it not?” He forced a smile as he brushed the back of his hands against your cheek.

“Kihyun,” you pushed down his hand. “You’re about to get married,”

“With the girl i never loved. Yes, i am.” He snaked his hand around your waist and pulled you closer. “How can i marry someone i never loved? Tell me.”

“It will start to grow, don’t worry.” You said.

His other hand pulled your chin up gently. “Look at me,” he said. “Tell me you are against this marriage.”

You stayed looking at his eyes for a few seconds before you threw away your gaze. “Look at me and tell me!” He snapped.

“I–“ The words were simply stuck in your throat eventhough you really want to scream them out.

“Tell me you love me and you are against this fucking marriage.” You could tell his hand trembled in anger.

“Kihyun, i–“

“You love me, don’t you?”

“I love you, i do, but loving you will not stop this marriage. You did realise that, Kihyun.”

“So, you’re not against this marriage, is that what you were saying?”

“No, it’s–“ he pulled you off and took a step back.

“So, you are fine seeing me and her standing on the altar, giving rings to each other, promised to be with each other until a fucking death separated us and you are fine seeing me kissing her in front of fucking everyone. You are fine with that, are you not?”

“Ki...”

“I am not fine with all of them! I am not!” You cried. Just imagining things Kihyun just said teared your heart. “I am not fine at all, but there is nothing i can do to stop this marriage, Kihyun!”

“There is.” He said. “There is something that can stop this stupid thing.” Kihyun smirked.

Everyone’s eyes were all fixed to the groom, who was walking rather calmly with a huge smile set on his face.

Following him and his family, the bride finally was making an appearance. A beautiful white gown with long tail, designed like a petal was worn by her. She looked at the groom from afar, probably already imagining how is life going to be after this sacred ceremony.

The groom took her hands once she was standing across him and they both looking at each other, sometimes giggling while hearing few sentences from their friends and families, recollecting memories from before.

And you were there. Sitting alone, next to someone who wasn’t even once trying to took a glance at you and just pretend that as if you weren’t there. “He looks amazing.” You whispered, seeing Yoo Kihyun from afar.

After awhile, it was finally the time for them to exchange vows. The moment everyone had been waiting for, except you, of course. You had your hands clasped tight, wishing this was all just a dream.

“I, Yoo Kihyun, take you, Kim Yoona, to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till...”

Kihyun stopped midway. He looked at everyone in the room. His eyes kept wandering until his eyes met yours. He smiled and let go of Yoona’s hand.

“I’m sorry. I can’t do this.” His voice echoed throughout the room, sending everyone gasped in shock. They began asking the person beside them, wondering what was this all about Kihyun was up to.

“I’m sorry, i can’t continue this ceremony. I’m sorry, i can’t marry the beautiful Kim Yoona.” He continued. Kihyun’s mother shot him a death glare which he replied with a soft smile. “I can’t marry someone i don’t love and besides,”

The staffs were seen busy sending few invited reporters out and the families from both parties looked as confused as everyone in this room.

“I already have someone i love and she is pregnant with our baby.” Kihyun closed his statement with a shocking words.

Everyone, again, gasped in more shocking news. Especially Kihyun’s family, because it’s really a disgrace if someone in his family is pregnant or impregnate before the marriage is being held.

His mom came with fury and without thinking, slapped her one and only son. “How could you!” Kihyun’s dad came to stop his mom from slapping him for the second time.

“She’s sitting right there.” Kihyun ignored his mom and avoiding his dad. He took a step down from the altar and walked to your direction.

Everyone was probably have guessed that it was you, by looking at Kihyun’s eyes that stared directly at you.

He pulled out his hand and gestured you to took it and stand up. Pulling you closer to him, he circled your waist with his hands and pressed his lips onto yours gently.

“She’s (y/n). The one i’ll marry.”

Thank you so much for all of you who were willing to patiently wait for this chapter (and hopefully next chapters). It’s just a lot was going on and i couldn’t find the time to write and post it. 

And for this chapter, i actually really intended to end Redamancy on 7th chapter, not because i ran out of ideas and decided to just end it now, no. 

As i said on previous chapter, i wrote that the end of this story doesn’t really mean the end & you might noticed that i put ‘SEQUEL TEASER’ on the chapter list, so yeah. Starting next week, a chapter will be posted once a week (but i can’t give you the exact date anymore, sorry).

So, i hope you all like how it ends for Redamancy and see you at the SEQUEL!

xo, b0blegum.

[newstfionline]

Wednesday, January 27, 2021

The pandemic destroyed 225 million jobs worldwide, but billionaires got richer, reports find (Washington Post) At least 225 million full-time jobs disappeared worldwide last year because of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a report published Monday by the International Labor Organization, losses four times worse than those from the global financial crisis in 2009. But the ultrarich have seen their wealth soar. According to another report released Monday, by the anti-poverty nonprofit group Oxfam, the combined wealth of the world’s 10 richest men has risen by more than $500 billion since the crisis began—enough to vaccinate the entire planet and then some, according to the organization. Both sets of findings identify rising inequity as one of the pandemic’s principal outcomes. “Job destruction has disproportionately affected low-paid and low‑skilled jobs,” which “points to the risk of an uneven recovery, leading to still greater inequality in the coming years,” the ILO found. That unevenness is already apparent: Global poverty could take 14 times longer to return to pre-pandemic levels than the recovery of the world’s wealthiest, according to Oxfam. Last year, 8.8 percent of global working hours were lost, according to the report by the ILO, a U.N. agency. It found “unprecedented disruption” among global labor markets, and that women and young people have felt the worst impact.

US virus numbers drop, but race against new strains heats up (AP) Coronavirus deaths and cases per day in the U.S. dropped markedly over the past couple of weeks but are still running at alarmingly high levels, and the effort to snuff out COVID-19 is becoming an ever more urgent race between the vaccine and the mutating virus. The government’s top infectious-disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said the improvement in numbers around the country appears to reflect a “natural peaking and then plateauing” after a holiday surge, rather than the arrival of the vaccine in mid-December. The U.S. is recording just under 3,100 deaths a day on average, down from more than 3,350 less than two weeks ago. New cases are averaging about 170,000 a day after peaking at almost 250,000 on Jan. 11. The number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients has fallen to about 110,000 from a high of 132,000 on Jan. 7.

California lifts virus stay-at-home order and curfew (AP) Gov. Gavin Newsom lifted stay-at-home orders across the state Monday in response to improving coronavirus conditions, a surprising move hailed by beleaguered businesses but that prompted caution from local health officials concerned the public may let down its guard. The turnaround puts California in a starkly different place than it was last month, when some Southern California hospitals overwhelmed by virus patients were crafting emergency plans for rationing care. Newsom crafted the stay-at-home order in December as coronavirus cases worsened and in anticipation of surges from holiday gatherings. He divided the state into five regions and ultimately four of them had the order imposed because their ICU capacity fellow the stat mandated 15%. Only rural far Northern California stayed above the threshold. The lifting of the stay-at-home order allows restaurants to serve diners outdoors and places of worship to offer services outside. Hair and nail salons and other businesses may reopen and retailers can have more shoppers in their stores. The state also is lifting a 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew, but San Francisco is keeping it in place.

Tornado rips through Alabama, killing 1 and injuring at least 20 (Washington Post) A tornado devastated Fultondale, Ala., and other areas just north of Birmingham late Monday, killing at least one person, injuring another 20 and causing significant damage for miles. The storm touched down at around 10:40 p.m. in Jefferson County near Interstate 65, and a tornado soon ripped through Fultondale, a city of more than 8,000 located eight miles north of Birmingham. The tornado cut a path nearly a quarter-mile wide, severely damaging Fultondale High School and multiple businesses in a period of about 30 minutes. Debris is estimated to have carried to around 15,000 feet in the air. About 12,000 people were without power in the state early Tuesday.

Agent Orange lawsuit (Foreign Policy) A French court is to hear a case brought against a number of international companies involved in the development of the toxic chemical defoliant Agent Orange during the Vietnam war, with possible implications for the United States. The case was brought by Tran To Nga, a 78-year-old French-Vietnamese woman, who alleges that the companies—which include Monsanto and Dow Chemical—played down the herbicide’s toxicity and misled the U.S. government. The companies named in the lawsuit maintain that it was the U.S. government that ultimately designed Agent Orange, leaving the firms blameless for the severe illnesses, birth defects, and other medical problems experience by those who were exposed.

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte to resign (Washington Post) Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte is planning to resign Tuesday, in a move that extends the country’s political chaos and risks complicating the coronavirus response. Conte’s decision leaves Italy with no straightforward path to reestablishing a workable government, all while the country tries to manage the pandemic’s health crisis and a vaccine campaign that has slowed because of Pfizer-BioNTech shortages. Though Italy is known for short-timer prime ministers and regional divisions, Conte had become the face of a surprisingly top-down pandemic response, announcing lockdowns and decrees in late-night news conferences. For a while, the pandemic had created an uneasy peace among Italy’s political factions. But that broke apart this month when a former prime minister, Matteo Renzi, pulled his small party’s support for the ruling coalition. Renzi cited inadequacies in how the government was managing its economic recovery. But many pundits—as well as the majority of Italians—felt Renzi was instigating the crisis out of his personal contempt for Conte, a fellow centrist whom he views as a competitor for voter support.

New India-China Border Clash Shows Simmering Tensions (NYT) Indian and Chinese troops have clashed along their disputed Himalayan border, according to media and military reports on Monday, as Beijing quietly intensifies pressure against its southern neighbor with new incursions into territory claimed by both sides. Details about the latest skirmish remain foggy, and Indian officials played down the events. Indian media outlets and independent military analysts said that the clash happened several days ago, and that soldiers on both sides were wounded, although no fatalities were reported. Though details were scant, reports of a clash show that tensions are still simmering between the two Asian giants, which fought a war in 1962 and have been eyeing each other warily across their unresolved frontier ever since. Tensions burst into the open in June, when troops from both countries engaged in a deadly brawl along the border of the Ladakh region in northern India. No shots were fired in that battle, stemming from a tacit understanding that neither side along the tense Himalayan border should use firearms. Still, the deaths of more than 20 Indian soldiers and an unknown number of Chinese troops exposed the increasing aggressiveness of both countries, which are governed by nationalist leaders with little political incentive to back down. As many as 100,000 troops from the Indian and Chinese armies are now facing off across inhospitable mountain passes in subzero temperatures in the Ladakh region alone, military experts estimate.

Farmers back at protest camp after deep challenge to PM Modi (AP) Tens of thousands of farmers who stormed the historic Red Fort on India’s Republic Day were again camped outside the capital Wednesday after the most volatile day of their two-month standoff left one protester dead and more than 300 police officers injured. The protests demanding the repeal of new agricultural laws have grown into a rebellion that is rattling Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. On Tuesday, more than 10,000 tractors and thousands more people on foot or horseback tried to advance into the capital, shoving aside barricades and buses blocking their path and at times met by police using tear gas and water cannons. Their brief takeover of the 17th-century fort, which was the palace of Mughal emperors, played out live Indian news channels. The farmers, some carrying ceremonial swords, ropes and sticks, overwhelmed police. In a profoundly symbolic challenge to Modi’s Hindu-nationalist government, the protesters who stormed Red Fort hoisted a Sikh religious flag. “The situation is normal now. The protesters have left the streets of the capital,″ New Delhi police officer Anto Alphonse said Wednesday morning.

China to conduct South China Sea drills (Foreign Policy) China is to conduct military exercises in the South China Sea this week in what appears to be partly in response to a U.S. carrier group entering the area on Saturday. On Monday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian admonished the U.S. government, saying the U.S. operations were merely to “flex its muscles.” “This is not conducive to peace and stability in the region,” Zhao added.

New Zealand’s borders may stay shut for most of the year, PM Ardern says (Reuters) New Zealand’s borders will remain closed for most of this year as the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, but the country will pursue travel arrangements with neighbouring Australia and other Pacific nations, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Tuesday. “Given the risks in the world around us and the uncertainty of the global rollout of the vaccine, we can expect our borders to be impacted for much of this year,” Ardern said at a news conference. For travel to restart, authorities either needed confidence that those vaccinated don’t pass COVID-19 on to others, which is not yet known, or enough of the population needed to be vaccinated so people can safely re-enter New Zealand. But both possibilities will take some time, she said. “In the meantime, we will continue to pursue travel bubbles with Australia and the Pacific, but the rest of the world simply poses too great a risk to our health and our economy to take the risk at this stage.”

Student-run free grocery store helps feed town’s hungry (AP) Traditional school stores might offer snacks and knickknacks, school gear and notebooks—but the one at Linda Tutt High School in Sanger, Texas, has a very different inventory and clientele. At Linda Tutt you can get everything from produce, milk and eggs to pasta, peanut butter and canned goods to dishwasher soap and laundry detergent. Students and staff can shop there, but on Tuesdays the store is open to the community. And it’s all free. “I like seeing their smiles, seeing how appreciative they are, and knowing that they are thankful that we’re doing something like this,” said Hunter Weertman, a 16-year-old junior who stocks shelves and takes inventory at the store housed in an unused art room. It has been open since November. The idea is to provide students with job skills, and at the same time help students, staff and local residents who are in need. And the store has one more purpose: teaching the youngsters the value of giving back to their community. “I’ve really seen the students take pride in working in the store,” principal Anthony Love said. “They’re excited about coming to school. They’re excited about helping in the grocery store and just being a part of it.”

[satisfaction-explorations]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/canadian-hospitals-expanding-covid-19-care-facilities-1.5516559I started reading about what’s happening in New York at the moment, and I don’t know what to say... it sounds very tough for the people there.

I put quite a lot of things this week that may hopefully be of some use, but I don’t know yet with much certainty because I just started reading about it.

They need a list of- e.g. the 500 overall and specific most effective strategies for anything coronavirus related (within a coronavirus budget- which still needs to be quite high considering how many people’s friends and loved ones are dying and at risk), strategies which you create and find over days, weeks, months, and the year, and as you aim for finding the #1 to #10 methods (be really tough with where you rank things- if you think it’s #1, put it as #50), and slot in more as you find them with estimations of effectiveness results- finding 5-30 high ones a week seems like a great goal (even 5 high ones is better than 1, 2 or 0). There could be the 500 best strategies, ranked, the government does, and a separate 500 best strategies, ranked, the people add to and do (especially for the goals of flattening the curve, influencing people, figuring out the top 20 skills people need to learn and encouraging this, and helping the media to support optimal help and prevent/stop panic, getting people in the optimal frame of mind for problem solving, and helping the most vulnerable with how they earn or get enough money for rent and food). 

One of the big questions for the government would be, who are the 30-50 types of people who are at risk of suffering the most in the medium and long term, and what strategies can be added to protect them better and better? Another thing to be really aware of is not only New York and the US itself, but vulnerable countries all over the world, as well as vulnerable areas throughout the US? Why? The US is one of the best off countries in the world and has a strong public health system. Flattening the curve as much as possible is strongly needed to minimise people getting rejected from hospitals. However, areas all over the world are 1000x less prepared, 10000x less prepared to protect their citizens from the coronavirus than the US. It may be impossible to stop the spread of the coronavirus in the US because it is such an open country, but to give the most vulnerable countries as best an opportunity as possible to prepare for this. For example, Australia is under a near complete lockdown (can only leave the house for work, medical care, groceries and exercise with 1 person, not allowed to having social gatherings with more than 1 person, thorough clear resources on the primary government website, clear memorable messaging on TV for habits, and police giving out fines for specific not-allowed activities). A big part would be strongly training people to learn the top 20 habits that would keep people as safe as achievable, and asking the media to send out 10,000 memorable ripples for the people who care the least (e.g. criminals) to learn these. But without stressing people out too much, because that impairs thinking and memory. How can the media best help? And what are they doing now that they need to do less of (e.g. expressing things in a way that encourages panic rather than problem solving, focusing on what you can do, and appreciating the rest of your life that’s still happening)? 

Another example is that it seems places where there are vulnerable or at risk people (I called them Level 2-10 people in a post further down) need to be the best protected, which could be done by legal methods (e.g. banning people from going to nursing homes, heavy fines for not following government instructions to protect people, and setting up video conferencing in all homes so nursing home residents won’t be killed by loneliness rather than the virus) and by strongly (and ethically/ non-stressfully) motivating anyone in contact with nursing homes to do exactly what they need to do. You might need a team of 20 extremely effective researchers, specialists and data analysts (e.g. someone who has worked with every aspect of retirement homes over the past 20 years and knows all the details extremely well), each researching recommendations and data, and also giving very good reasons for why for each recommendation. And getting people who will disagree with each other (in an amicable way) working together so they can spot flaws in each others evaluations (i.e. so big and medium mistakes can be prevented more effectively).

You can’t demand perfection (i.e. 100% of people), because you will stress yourself out too much and reduce your abilities, but you can constantly improve (e.g. aim for 10 big improvements a day- even if you fail- 1 big improvement is bigger than 0) towards the required goals.

One thing seems clear though... there is something called ‘wartime production’, where the government pays- or pays and legally forces- certain companies- e.g. ventilator companies, facemask companies, quarantine gown companies, people glove companies, hand sanitiser companies, to produce a tonne of what is needed. And some can be reused every 5 days, right? If you put it in boxes? What do medical experts say- is this safe? 

Especially ventilator companies. If various countries have built hospitals in two weeks, then it is definitely achievable to expand ventilator production an absolute tonne (i.e. build additional factories right now and run them 24/7). And once the epidemic peak is finished in the US, you can give or sell the ventilators to the other 213 countries that need them.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-medical-supplies-procurement-1.5516068

"The entire world is trying to get its hands on the various equipment needed to fight this virus. That is why we know that it will be important to have made-in-Canada solutions," he told reporters.

On March 20, the federal government announced its intention to provide monetary support to manufacturers that can retool their assembly lines to make ventilators, masks and other personal protective gear, and to help those already making such products quickly scale up manufacturing capacity.  "This is a priority for our government and we will continue to source new solutions every day," he said in his prepared remarks. “However, If you >>>stay home and >>>follow public health recommendations, you can slow the spread... (and reduce the likelihood of Intensive Care having to reject people who need to be in Intensive Care)". "This is all hands on deck... our government is leaving no stone unturned." The hardest to influence citizens (e.g. criminals) need to be encouraged to meet all requirements as well. 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/canadian-hospitals-expanding-covid-19-care-facilities-1.5516559

If someone is hooked up to a ventilator for an average of 1 week, then 1 ventilator might save something like 50 lives, which is a LOT compared to 0 ventilators. So, if ventilator production is increased from e.g. 10 ventilators being produced a day to 10 factories being built by government funding (and you’re one of the richest countries in the world- this funding is 100% there) this means 100 ventilators will be produced a day. Yes- flattening the curve by sending out 10,000 extremely effective (and ethical/ non-freaking people out) waves to influence the hardest to influence people (e.g. criminals) is the best way. But ventilator production is definitely the other half of the coin. What if there are future pandemics from e.g. unethical behaviour (let’s all do our best to influence the hardset to influence 5% to make sure that never happens)? This is all skill building, training and resources for how effective you are with that as well. 

Although it would be a very good idea to take this one day at a time in terms of worrying, or even one hour/ half an hour at a time if you need to. i.e. plan ahead for the future, but your responsibility is your actions over the next day or half hour (planning is an action). 

And all senior decision makers need to regularly get enough sleep and food, and to get serious help with anxiety/ worry (e.g. medication or refusing to worry in your recovery hours/ giving full responsibility to second and third in command during recovery hours). It would be excellent to also hire additional extremely effective people from a variety of relevant fields as problem solvers (even if 90% of the time they don’t get anything and 10% of the time they come up with highly effective strategies), or at least schedule e.g. 1 hour a day (of non-recovery time) to problem solving. 

It would also be an extremely good idea to have a list of the 200 best self protection and mental health protection methods (while still being extremely effective), ranked in order, which you actively research and slot in. This is absolutely necessary for these times. Yes, it’s sad that thousands are dying frequently but the only thing you can control is the effectiveness of your inputs. You must put boundaries. And minimise trauma to yourself after this happens. As well as minimise any legal liability as well (while prioritising the people, which will protect your mental health at the moment.

I don’t really know at the moment. You wouldn’t be able to focus on perfectionism, just on attempting to make 10 huge leaps on the current strategies each day. Or hiring people who will achieve this. 

And definitely getting people to research what other countries are doing for if any steps are useful or relevant. If your job is to protect your people in the best way possible, while also doing your best to give poor, vulnerable countries as much time as they can to prepare (as their hospital systems will be anything like 1/10th, 1/100th or 1/1000th of yours- time to prepare will help them a lot), then definitely find out and use all of the best methods from all of the countries all over the world. One idea is to see the ways that the poorest countries prepare- e.g. government orders to protect nursing homes and the most vulnerable, getting people to optimise their habits around coronavirus AND  getting all level 2-10 people to do 20x500 things to optimise their lung and immune system health before the coronavirus and applying it to your most vulnerable populations.  I also have a friend in New York who has a collapsed lung- I wonder what specialists would say that the best 20x500 things that people with specific health conditions (like this one) can do to optimise their health before the illness. I think that accepting fate is crucial to protect your own mental health, but I also think that everyone who is Level 2-10 should give it their absolute best to do 20 things x 500 times each to pre-prepare as best as possible... it’s just figuring out what those 20 things are, and I think medical specialists would know what they are the best, as well as general immune and lung optimisers, like taking multivitamins, getting enough sunlight, becoming more and more skilled at meditation, getting your immune system and lungs to the perfect strength and the strongest immune and lung intelligence. 

Also, with closing schools- people have to work, because they have to pay for food and >>>rent (what can be done to help the most at risk renters? This would need it’s own ranked list of 100 things to slot in). Some people can work from home, but others can’t. The idea is that everyone who can pull their kids out of school should, but people who have to go to work? Maybe they would get their kids babysat for free by someone? What people could do this and what people couldn’t? With schools, there would need to be ways to protect teachers and their families though (without scaring little children). 

I also particularly recommend seeing the measures Australia has done, for everything as well as the best methods that all the countries around the world have done. We’re all in the same boat with this so best practices are universal and should definitely be used to save as many lives around the world as humanly possible. Definitely, definitely, find the best methods from around the world and see of what % relevance they could be (or if they could be modified to be as effective as possible for your specific context). Don’t worry about ‘taking’- if this is something you’re worried about, you can help them with something else (e.g. influence) after all this is over. Focus on saving as many lives of your own people as you can possibly achieve within your capacity (while also protecting your own health), and worry about everything else later.

Who are the 30 to 50 groups of people at risk of the highest suffering from the coronavirus, and what can be done to protect them? It may be very hard to put emotional boundaries around that (i.e. block yourself from feeling bad- sympathy, understanding and respect- with strong emotional boundaries- are much more adaptive and healthy in this situation than empathy). However the above would probably be the most important way to minimise harm from the coronavirus. And prevention is usually many, many, many times easier than after effects. Maybe another method is giving people clear, memorable instructions on what they need to do. 

And optimum emotional states for the things they need to do... anxiety might be making people act irrationally- e.g. putting them in fight or flight mode/ generalised anxiety disorder, which makes it harder to access the thinking parts of their brain. What clear instructions can people be given for the top 20 skills they need to learn to prevent the coronavirus from spreading? And how do you motivate the hardest to motivate 10%- and 5% of people?

And stoicism. Stoicism is an excellent mental health supporter (i.e. actually reading books by stoicists). As well as many other types of mental health support. 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/covid-19/italy-covid-19-outbreak-lessons-1.5517520

This sounds a bit hippy but what about if Intensive Care Units and hospitals play super-healing lung & immune system music quietly in the background? Patients can ask to turn it off, but to have it playing continuously in the background. This has the risk of making hospital workers tired (as when you are healing your energy goes to your immune system rather than your legs and arm), but this will help patients a tonne. Maybe it can be done like in airplanes, where patients can plug earphones into something for super healing music? And that it’s available 24/7? So hospital workers have lots of energy but their immune system is boosted as well. 

Boosting hospital workers immune systems with music like this that allows motivation and music more is an excellent idea, and where patients can put in earphones into really superhealing rest music that covers the hospital workers quiet background motivating & immune superhealing music? It sounds hippy but I think this might help severe symptoms heal faster. e.g.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8wzTdaGjac

I really don’t like people suffering too much, and that’s why I help people. 

But if you’re someone who can’t accept help unless there’s reciprocity, there are three areas that seem connected that are especially close to my heart:

Helping Puerto Rico untie the aid, bureaucacy and social requirements for the rebuilding funding promised for Hurricane Maria. Hurricanes batter their island each hurricane season, and unrepaired houses are at much higher risk of getting more broken. If it takes 10,000 waves to untie the category 5 aid they need so much to rebuild their priorities, it would be so very helpful to add to these waves to help them get it. And maybe to help them figure out how to rebuild houses if there has been 1000 earthquakes and a big earthquake expected every year. Would this be an area of engineering that needs to be created? Or does California know how to do this? It needs to be hurricane surge proof as well. 

Helping Haiti be a politically neutral country, like Switzerland- they really don’t have much power or influence, so being a really strong friend and ally to them while, at the same time, allowing them to work a lot with Venezuela, who provides them with crucial trade and oil subsidies (which they very, very strongly need) and allowing them to work with China, who provide them with funding for infrastructure projects, which will help them an absolutely huge amount. Haiti really does not have much power or influence internationally, so making them like Switzerland would have little impact on the US’s needs or influences. So, being a big help to them, even if they also accept help from Venezuela and China. They are the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and 90% of their people live below the poverty line, so everybody should be allowed to help them... Let’s win their support via who helps them the best, rather than threatening to withdraw allyship. Apparently Haiti and the US have a strained relationship, so this would need to be healed somehow though. 

Any way to help the Rohingya find a big picture and short term solution. <3 <3 <3 If it takes 1,000 methods to complete the puzzle of a win/win solution for them, any methods contributed would be hugely helpful. I don’t know how, but any contributions to help them find a big picture solution that is good for everyone would be hugely appreciated.