#you have produced nothing of real value and the approval of strangers does not make *you* more valuable either

[smhalltheurlsaretaken]

nothing I find sadder on the Internet than people editing their YouTube comments to thank people for the likes

[popatochisssp]

Hello Poppy! I hope you slept well! Here is the reminder you requested to create a mob au hc post like the cowboy post. Have a wonderful day!

Thank you, it’s finally time! I’m gonna put it under a cut immediately because having twenty skeletons makes every post with all of them automatically a long one!

Full disclaimer-- none of the boys are bosses, that falls on the monarch(s) of their universes... but that doesn’t mean they don’t have their own roles to play~

(Warnings: mentions of crime, drugs, violence, sex, brief sexism [probably not the way you’d think] and ableism, plus all the usual mob-tropes I may have forgotten to mention)

Sans (Undertale): He’s a...humble purveyor of items, quality goods produced economically in order to pass those savings on to the crafty consumer who might not want to pay full, exorbitant price for ‘name-brand’ luxuries... Yeah, he’s the ‘you wanna buy a watch?’ guy and he spends most of his days (strategically) wandering around the city looking for customers to hock knockoff, lookalike watches, wallets and bags to. The fuzz know him by name but can never seem to find anything to hold him on, so he’s mostly just a harmless nuisance to be shooed along elsewhere if there’s been any complaints. (He’s real good at making friendly conversation with the law enforcement and keeping all eyes on him, and frankly, if there were any real shady business going on somewhere nearby... well, the cops certainly wouldn’t know about it, too busy hustling him along down the street, now would they?)

Papyrus (Undertale): An upstanding citizen, unlike his brother who’s always in some little trouble with the law or other. He is gainfully employed at a fitness center, and he commutes there by car, because paid for his license to operate one and practiced his driving skills and saved up until he could afford a very beautiful, shiny car of his own! It’s a very nice vehicle...so nice, even, that he doesn’t like to drive it for...recreational outings with friends, in case the paint might get scuffed. That’s why his friends let him borrow their cars when they go out, and let him drive very fast (but safely!) all over the city, even at strange hours or by ‘suspicious’ locations. He’s certainly never seen anything suspicious going on, he just waits outside, and if he happens to keep a First Aid kit in his glove-box, that’s just taking precautions, isn’t it? Accidents happen, you know! (He’s the best getaway driver in town and he knows it, but plausible deniability--the less he ‘knows,’ the better.)

Sky (Underswap Sans): Just your average, ordinary businessman, running a nice little bar for average, ordinary folks of all kinds. Well... he co-owns the place with a buddy of his, Grillby, but Grillbz is a free spirit and a real man about town, so really most of the ‘running’  is down to him. And he loves it! So many people (monsters and humans) to meet and chat with and serve... human food and alcohol, of course. Monster food and alcohol isn’t legalized yet to serve to humans, and a black mark like that against his little establishment would be just awful. He adheres fully to the rules and regulations set forth by human governmental agencies, no magic in anything he passes across the counter, skeleton’s honor! ...Total bullshit, obviously-- he’s running a speakeasy for humans who want to partake in a little monster food or booze, because it’s not harmful to humans and that makes it an even stupider regulation than prohibition was. Grillby taught him most of the menu and cooks on the rare occasions he’s in, while Sky handles the liquid menu and keeps an eye-socket out for snitches and inspectors trying to catch him in the act. He’s never missed a rat yet.

Paps (Underswap Papyrus): He works at his brother’s place. In the back. Only part-time, though, Sky’s got it mostly buttoned up there, so Paps has a lot of leisure time to wander around the city, hit up his favorite joints, chat with friends--and strangers that can become friends, he’s a friendly sorta guy. And if he’s ever seen sharing a cigarette or two with one of those friends, of course it’ll be a totally normal tobacco cigarette, and no exchange of money or anything else incriminating about the interaction. ...Doggo is the one that does the deals, he’s got the Dog Treat supply and a client base that’s steadily starting to include humans--but since Dog Treats are classed as Monster Consumables and illegal to distribute to humans, in spite of being non-addictive, only mildly affective, and non-irritant to lungs, things get a little more convoluted. Paps hits up Doggo at Muffet’s (a wholly monster establishment) for the Dog Treats and a client list, ‘refurbishes’ the Treats to resemble cigarettes, and then meets up with anybody who prepaid for their order real casual-like to fence ‘em. He gets a little cut of the profits, and a discount when he’s picking up for pleasure instead of business--like a (slightly) more illegal girl scout cookie racket.

Jasper (Underfell Sans): Him? He’s just an average joe in all respects. He’s got a little auto shop, spends his days tuning up cars and bikes and such as the like, and most evenings out having fun with anybody else who’s out looking to have a good time--food and drink and maybe a little gambling, but small games, low stakes, for charity, yanno? Nothing illegal, he’d freely assure anyone concerned about the law. Yep, he’s a perfectly normal, law-abiding citizen...as far as anyone can tell. If he does a little work on the side, when specifically requested to, by perhaps one of his monarchs or one of the parties they’d approved to ask for his...services... Well, he’s certainly too quick and clean about it to leave any hard evidence behind, and he’s always far away from...whatever may have happened...with too many witnesses all in agreement that he was there and couldn’t have been anywhere else, unless he could somehow make it across town in the blink of an eye. (His side-gig is as a hitman. He keeps his shortcut ability very tightly under wraps to make for perfect alibis, and takes his targets out with magic bullets which he can disappear afterwards. If he’s ever somehow implicated in anything, he’s happy to point out to the nice officers that he doesn’t even own a weapon. They’re free to look, but all they’ll find is a set of knuckledusters he keeps on his person, purely for protection--and look how shiny the brass is, never even been used, officers! Guess they’ve got nothing on him, after all...)

Pyre (Underfell Papyrus): A law-abiding citizen. He must be--surely one can’t get more law-abiding than a lawyer...right? He actually does keep his (lack of) nose clean, but studying the convoluted mess that is human law doesn’t leave time for much else--even when your studies are funded by royalty and you’re given everything you need to open up your own practice as soon as you’ve passed the bar. Still, his skill and knowledge in arguing the law is very valuable and his services are in high demand, so he’s well-compensated for his chosen career and lives his life outside of it both comfortably and legally. His clients...are innocent until proven guilty and it would be an extreme failing of his duty to give any of them anything less than his best in the courtroom, regardless of their character, their associations, and what they happen to have been accused of. (Yeah, he’s a mob lawyer, used almost exclusively by Asgore and Toriel to protect them and anyone they send to him and all of their collective...interests. He respects the law, but values justice above it, so in spite of having a lot of clients who are definitely criminals in one way or another, he has no trouble sleeping at night.)

Mal (Swapfell Sans): He’s an accountant, nothing more, nothing less. ...For Toriel, of course, so he’s paid well for his services. And he has quite a head for numbers and figures, so he plays the stock market and does quite well there, too, smart investments and reading the writing on the wall, and all that. It’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for his very healthy finances and his lavish lifestyle--fur coats, fine suits, fancy cars, shiny gold pocket-watches-- it’s all expensive and almost over the top, but hey, he is the money-man and all the numbers check out. It seems that he’s just very good at handling and investing his capital, it’s no wonder the monster-queen herself hired him on... (He is, of course, running several money laundering schemes at any given time, taking all the less-than-legally-obtained money earned by constituents of the [former] Empire and layering it through official channels to make it look legal in such a convoluted, complex web that it doesn’t raise any significant red flags. He’s got his claws in a lot of pies, and he takes what he needs off the top to live a little luxuriously, with Toriel’s knowledge and permission-- a perk for the necessary service he provides.) Whatever else may be true, it’s a simple fact that he’s very, very good at his job.

Rus (Swapfell Papyrus): With the lucrative career his brother has, the lucky SOB doesn’t have to work a day in his life if he doesn’t want to, but he’s using the safety net to pursue his passion in art. Subjective as it is, it’s hard to say if he’s really any good, but people seem to like what he produces well-enough--not a household name, but people passionate about the subject might recognize his work and his pieces sell with at least moderate success. For all that it’s probably not going to make him famous or rich(er than his brother), he’s dedicated to his craft and regularly makes bulk purchases of his supplies, canvas and reams of paper and paint and ink and the like, to keep up his steady work and art sales. He seems like an altogether normal and down-to-earth sort of guy, nothing suspicious about him at all. (He’s a counterfeiter and works in tandem with his brother--they even hit a Bureau together to lift a set of plates for the one and only active crime he was involved in--and his art is just a really good cover for why he needs so much ink and paper and other supplies on a regular basis. He does love and care about his art career, that part’s not fake, but he’s also got a good eye-socket for detail and steady hands to replicate it, and if fake human money that looks really real can help monsters, he doesn’t really see why he shouldn’t.)

Slate (Horrortale Sans): He’s...been through a lot. All monsters have, really, but he was hit kind of especially hard and... Whatever Gerson, or Undyne, or whoever’s running things now up on the Surface are getting involved in...he doesn’t really want any part of it. He gets regular stipends for some unspecified ‘service’ he performed for the Queen, Underground, and while no human (alive) knows what that was, it’s apparently enough to live off of relatively comfortably without being employed himself. He has a nice little place with his brother on the outskirts of the city and he lives there quietly, peacefully. He rarely goes into town, just the occasional walkabout, stopping at restaurants or scoping out the architecture. (Part of his one concession to being left out of whatever illegal, mob-type business may or may not be going on: he needs a good mental map of the city and at least a few landmarks that he’ll definitely remember, because he’s the emergency evac should...anything...go especially south. The house phone doesn’t ring too often in the middle of the night, but when it does, he needs to know where he needs to be, and quick.)

Papy (Horrortale Papyrus): He’s, ah... not involved in any ‘business’ either, but he does spend a little more time out of the house, at the local hospital. He was allowed to make a study of human medicine and become a nurse by Very Special Exception--mostly due to some friends (or at least one) in high places, and some very backwards human attitudes about parts that constitute a ‘man’ and how a skeleton without any parts could perhaps be allowed into nursing--and he’s proven himself a valuable member of staff and even made friends with all of his coworkers. He’s happy at his job, and with his life, and returns home to his quiet, peaceful house every night with a smile. (He has a go-bag ready by the phone for those late night calls, though, full of healing items and medical equipment he may have subtly nicked from the hospital, just so he has everything he needs to treat a monster or a friendly human that may have gotten hurt...somehow...and for reasons they have no need to specify, can’t risk going to a doctor.)

Ash (Undergloom Sans): Just a poor street musician...or at least, that’s what most people figure, ‘cause he doesn’t dress too well and the trombone he plays while sitting out on the sidewalk looks like it’s probably the nicest thing he owns. He gets a couple bucks from time to time, but rarely any second glances, and that... That works in his favor. You’d be surprised how much people talk about when they think nobody’s listening (or at least...nobody important) and he can pick up a lot of interesting information of what’s going on in the city just by setting up in the right spot and waiting for folks to talk business. He’s pretty quiet when he’s not tooting the ol’ horn and great at blending into the background, and that’s made him the guy to go to when you want to know something--like how much somebody else knows, or if there are any plans in place for say, a raid or a sting or some kind. (Law enforcement is the worst about keeping proprietary information ‘proprietary’ when they think their only audience is some nobody monster bum sleeping on a bench...) He’s also got something of a whole information network going on with the actual homeless people in the city, since he gives great tips about places who are hiring or somewhere to get a meal or a bed for the night and he always gives his earnings from busking to those who need it more than him. He’s paid for the service he provides and he’s got a home to go back to, it just seems right that the music-money goes to help somebody else.

Yrus (Undergloom Papyrus): He works as a nanny for the Queen! Not too long ago, she might’ve opted to just stay home and look after her newly adopted child herself, while Asgore handled business with the humans, but... They’re freshly split now, and Toriel wants to be just as involved in things as Asgore as much as she wants to s l o w l y ease into being a full-time mother again. Yrus is the solution, already fond of little Frisk and a very warm and trustworthy soul who stayed bright even in the gloom of the Underground. He happily takes the job when asked and splits his time between supervising and caring for Frisk, and tutoring them in all the important subjects (math, history, magic, et cetera). He finds he has a passion for teaching and thinks he might go into that someday, when Frisk is older and Toriel has a little more time and confidence to no longer need him as a buffer. (Whatever it is, specifically, that takes up so much of Toriel’s time and keeps her out so late that he sometimes has to wait around well past Frisk’s bedtime for her to come back and ask after them... Yrus couldn’t fathom a guess and isn’t going to ask any questions. That would definitely be out of his scope as a simple child-minder and even if he knew anything, it would be an extreme violation of the family’s privacy for him to tell tales, which he’s happy to point out to anyone with a lot of questions for somebody so close to two of the Dreemurrs.)

Brick (Horrorfell Sans): He’s on his brother’s payroll. It seemed like the best way to kill two birds with one stone: he’s a big, scary-looking wall of bone who isn’t well suited to a regular-joe sorta job, and his bro’s a very high-profile guy who needs somebody big and scary-looking to stand next to him and be a deterrent. Nepotism, maybe, but they’ve been looking after each other their whole lives already and it’s something Brick knows he can do--he’d do it for free, but if King thinks it’s better (and safer) to have it as his job description, he’s probably right, so Brick’ll take the paycheck for it. King’s also very likely the only one who could stop him if he...lost control...somewhere out and about, so sticking close to him makes Brick feel better and hey, maybe they’re actually killing three birds with this stone of an arrangement. Still, he mostly just goes about town with King, standing around and watching his back and staring people down when he needs to while his brother carries on with his conversations and business. He hardly ever has to do anymore than that...almost never. (One of his favorite places to go is a little hole-in-the-wall craft shop, where King always pretends to take longer than he needs so Brick can peruse the yarn and try to pick up a little sign language from the nice old deaf lady who owns the place.)

King (Horrorfell Papyrus): Yes, yes, he’s very high profile--he did lead monsterkind for a time, getting everyone up to the Surface and settled there--but he’s since stepped down. He’s retired, and anything his successor may be involved in... surely, he couldn’t say. He and Toriel are barely in contact and the money he receives from her on the regular is a gift of goodwill, mostly for medical expenses (his leg, and his brother’s...well). All he does these days is collect for a charity, a pet project of his, Monster Reparations. Lots of people give such generous donations when he goes around to ask for them, maybe impressed a little by his fame, but he can’t feel too terribly about using it for such a worthy cause... (It’s a thinly veiled protection racket and the people and businesses who buy into it tend not to fall victim to ‘mysterious’ criminal activity. Toriel may be officially calling the shots now, but King, as the monster who put her back there, is in a very unique position of power in having her ear, an unofficial underboss totally off the books. Some ‘donate’ more than necessary when he comes collecting, hoping to earn preferential treatment, and sometimes they get it and sometimes they don’t--it’s entirely down to King’s opinion of them personally. ...The old woman who runs the craft store pays about half the going rate, and the immigrant who imports the miniature trees he likes gets a heavy discount, too. The deli-owner he overheard hurling discriminatory epithets at a customer, however, pays triple. You get the idea.)

Merc (Horrorswap Sans): He’s a researcher. Highly confidential, he’s sworn to secrecy and even mentioning that he’s being funded by Elder King Shroomba is pushing the boundaries of what he’s allowed to talk about. Still, he has his own facility, and several assistants, monster volunteers and sometimes human ones--but they have to sign papers swearing not to talk about what goes on in the lab, too. From what they are allowed to say, the gist is just that it didn’t seem like anything sinister was going on; not even a blood-draw... Merc seems pretty happy to leave at the end of every day, though, and whenever it comes up, he talks very fondly about being able to finish the project. (He’s researching DT, specifically how it can be used to enhance monster physiology and make them more resistant to damage from intent. Merc’s misadventure with DT destabilized him, but from 1HP he’s now more durable than ever, and his second attempt with his brother had less dramatic but still noticeable and successful results. The king wants that safety net for more monsters, especially ones who are on the front lines of...potentially less than legal dealings...who could really be at risk. Merc is reluctant, but with the stipulation of informed, willing volunteers for DT extraction and infusion, he can’t bring himself to turn down the resources and funding to research his own condition and bring the possibility of being normal again ever closer. He still has a hard time with the idea of ‘enhancing’ monsters, but the fact that it’s at least being done safely, willingly, and with a whole team behind it this time helps a lot.)

Ell (Horrorswap Papyrus): He’s in a wheelchair but not letting it keep him down, and he’s running a modest little newspaper stand on the corner--papers and magazines and cheap books--nothing all that special but boy, what an inspiration, good for him that he’s got a job and can run the place by himself! All kinds come and go from his stand, and sometimes he closes it up for a little bit in the middle of the day to take a...er...roll, with some people who must be friends of his, but he’s never gone too long, so nobody says anything to the poor guy about the inconvenience. He’s a dedicated businessman, or trying to be; won’t even let people help him with those heavy-looking boxes of deliveries he gets, and for a fella with no legs, he seems to be doing his best! (...The whole thing is a low-key smuggling operation and he is making bank off it. There’s a system of code-words in place related to the publications he sells for a ‘customer’ to indicate whether they’re buying or selling, and what--magic consumables, stolen/hot items, imported goods, the works--and where and when they want things to go down. There’s even hidden compartments in his custom-built wheelchair for some of the riskier stuff, because he knows no cop in their right mind would force a guy with no legs out of his chair just to search it with witnesses around. And that’s presuming any law enforcement were to even catch wise to his set-up, which he kind of doubts: he’s sly and subtle and even if he weren’t, he knows people see the chair before they see him. Why not take advantage of that?)

Pitch (Horrorswapfell Sans): He makes his living as a boxer, and a subsequent minor celebrity. Pretty much any match he’s in is an exhibition match--not just a monster, not just a little guy (...relatively), but a short skeleton monster who’s blind, wow! You don’t see that every day, that’s a spectacle! Plenty of ‘ooh’s and ‘ahh’s in the packed stands every night the sightless skeleton scrapper is in the ring and nobody can figure out how he bobs and weaves so well that he hardly ever gets hit. He loses some matches, that’s to be expected, even for a ‘normal’ fighter, but hey, people love an underdog story, so when he wins, it’s an uproar every time. (For his part, Pitch hates most of his ‘fans’ who think of him the same way they probably think of a silly little dog who learned a funny trick, but the fame in general, and the thrill of the fight... Those are enough to keep him in the ring. Just... maybe not quite enough to keep him fighting clean. He’s as dirty as sportsmen come and he and a few other monsters regularly play his own odds with the bookies: he’ll subtly use magic to cheat and stay in longer, or go down when he could easily keep fighting, whatever’s more profitable with the over/under from match to match. If he’s going to be a circus act doing what he loves, he may as well get hazard pay for his dignity... and y’know, a couple of idiots who think being able to fight is a ‘trick’ because you’re blind aren’t nearly so annoying when you’re being driven away from them in a luxury car, to your expensive house in the hills decked out with all the amenities.)

Nemo (Horrorswapfell Papyrus): He’s got a place he looks after, keeps things running. Just a small joint, nothing fancy, a little cabaret variety show type place--singing, dancing, drinks on tap, that kinda thing. After dark, some of the...performances... might get a little more risqué, stuff that titillates like burlesque and striptease, but rest assured, his permits are all in order and everything’s on the up and up. Nothing illegal whatsoever going on here, just a bit of singing and dancing and everybody having a good time. (Most of the performers are sex workers--monsters, but some humans too--and patrons can negotiate private shows or off-the-clock ‘meetings’ at their discretion. Nemo opts to not know too much of the details of what his dancers do when he’s not looking, for legal reasons, but he makes sure they have a safe place to do it, are paid for their services, and don’t have repeat problem-patrons if any slip through. Being one of the gentlemen running such an establishment in the city that doesn’t happen to touch or steal from or mistreat the performers, his place is the place to get hired if that’s your line of work. He’s mostly just happy to be able to provide the job security and the job safety for a group that really seems to catch a lot of hell up here on the Surface just for how they make their money.)

Sunny (Gastertale Sans): He’s a busy guy, bouncing around from place to place, job to job... Being so scattered, you might think he’d be having money troubles by now, but while he may not be the type to stick with one thing and stay there for a good few years, nobody who knows him would say he’s unreliable--he’s the type of guy that you can give him a call anytime and if you need help, he’ll be right over, and he’ll get the job done well, too! Of course he lives with his fancypants brother, and the King and Queen probably spot him a loan or two now and then, since they’re friendly, so all in all, no one really wonders how he makes enough money to live so comfortably. The answer’s right there in their face...isn’t it? (Yes and no. He is the kind of guy you can call anytime to get a job done, and he will do it well, but the money he gets from Asgore and Toriel is less of a ‘loan’ and more of a ‘payment for services rendered.’ He’s a cleaner, the guy you call to make things go away, things that aren’t supposed to be there: stains, papers, weapons, evidence... He’ll get rid of it for you, and if you need a convincing coverup or an alibi for...whatever it is that you weren’t there doing, he’ll take care of that, too. If somebody’s calling him up for his special brand of help, they probably just want to put it all behind them and forget all about that nasty business. He’s happy to facilitate--after all, what are friends for?)

Aster (Gastertale Papyrus): Like his brother, he gets on well with the King and Queen. (They both feel like they’ve known the monarchs much longer than they actually have...somehow...) But in any case, unlike his brother, Aster is very well-organized and thoughtful, so he’s a natural choice as an...advisor, of sorts, when monsters surfaced and it was...decided that perhaps there would be some...activities and...ways of doing things that...should remain unknown to the humans. Not unknown to Aster: he keeps track of everything, reminding the monarchs of little details they may have forgotten, pointing out things they may not have noticed, making educated suggestions for courses of action with likely positive outcomes based on past experiences... He’s the linchpin between Asgore and Toriel that makes them terrifyingly more efficient than they would be without him, a consigliere-equivalent who certainly isn’t a boss himself, but he has the bosses’ trust and their ears and that makes him a person of great interest. But...no one can get anything useful out of him: he’s loyal, above all, and much as he values truth, he also realizes that perhaps not everyone deserves to know the full truth of everything, especially not those who might use that truth to bring some sort of harm or misfortune to his friends...or to monsterkind at large. ...And trying to directly seize his extensive notes on the private and personal business-doings of the Dreemurrs is an even more doomed endeavor--he writes them all in a strange jumble of symbols that no one’s ever seen, and the code-breakers never have it long enough to decipher anything useful before its back in his hands, reclaimed quite speedily after unlawful seizure of private property containing confidential information. Lots of well-meaning law enforcement have their sights set on him as some sort of criminal white whale, but the simile is all too accurate-- they’ll never catch him, and even if they do, there’ll be nothing to hold him on. He simply has too many friends (and family members) in very high, very useful places.

[arecomicsevengood]

More Movies I Watched. Should I Just Join Letterboxd?

Is Letterboxd fun? Not really sure if anyone gets anything out of these posts being located here, but also not sure I have any desire to join a website I’m not sure anyone I’m friends with is on, don’t necessarily feel a yearning to be around more people with too many opinions, who are maybe trying to parlay their “expertise” into writing jobs.

Portrait Of A Lady On Fire (2020) dir. Celine Sciamma

I’m going to consider this a 2020 movie as that’s when its wide release was in the States; also, this movie’s great and if considered a 2020 movie is easily the frontrunner for best of the year. Well-shot enough I felt I was in good hands from the very first minutes, which feel vaguely reminiscent of The Piano (which I don’t remember super-well), this movie ends up also have a very intense relationship with music as well. This is a lesbian love story between a woman betrothed to be married to a man she’s never met and the painter who is making her portrait for the approval of said man. The painter is initially working on the portrait secretly, the film’s attention is tuned to the two leads’ furtive glances and studies of one another, the gaze intensely felt, but returned and mutual. Lots of great stuff, real delight taken in faces, the ability to change another’s expression by making them laugh. the power of music, the incommunicable aspects of subjective experience. I watched this director’s other movie, Girlhood, but don’t remember it, and this is a lot better. This is also a lot better than Blue Is The Warmest Color, where the only thing I remember is the long and graphic sex scene. This movie has no such scene. One of these actresses led the walkout when the French film industry gave Roman Polanski an award.

Summer Hours (2008) dir. Oliver Assayas

Just did an IMDB search and found out Assays cowrote a movie with Polanski a few years ago? That sucks. This one’s about an artist’s estate being sold off after a widow dies, as the kids need money. Plenty of nice bits about the subjective value of art and nostalgia. Assayas is not my favorite filmmaker by any means but he’s consistent enough. I guess Personal Shopper is my favorite of his?

Two Friends (1986) dir. Jane Campion

TV movie about two teenagers, told somewhat in reverse order for seemingly arbitrary reasons. Not great.

The Day Shall Come (2020) dir. Chris Morris

Beginning with like a series of “establishing shots” of Miami that eventually get to college kids partying is such a terrible way to begin a movie, really signals a degree of indifference to the language of film in favor of a a product of constant churn of content that “television” once served as shorthand for. Chris Morris comes from TV, of course, so I should know what I’m in for, and British comedy of a subversively-intentioned sort puts it in the wheelhouse of things I pay attention to anyway. That’s not to say I laughed at this thing, but I sort of observed it and its intentions — it never really wants you to be comfortable enough to laugh, and while the posture it takes to its black leads is sympathetic there’s still a feeling of anthropological indifference as part of its satirical thrust. Film comedies are meant to work in a theater because of the contagious properties of laughter, and when you lose that you end up with a thing that, even if I don’t want to subject it to “Hm, this seems kinda racist” thinkpieces that are the worst-case scenario, everything about the movie seems like the best case scenario is a reaction of “I see what you did there.”

Midnight Special (2016) dir. Jeff Nichols

Fits into the tradition of not-a-superhero-movie-but-basically tradition of Scanners and The Fury, but while those are basically the X-Men, this kid, kept from the sunlight because his dad think it will hurt him but really it’s good for him, is basically The Ray, of the 1990s Christopher Priest series I didn’t read consistently but liked a few issues of. The first half of this movie, spent speeding down streets at night, while some weird things happen, involving government agencies and a cult, is considerably better than the payoff, which is the child (a kid from Room and later, Good Boys) is an angel and is going to ascend to heaven. Part of it is so low-key and tense (but in a way where it feels like if it were on mute nothing would appear to be happening) and then the other part of it has these special effects that are fairly corny? So while the whole “indie guy makes a more mainstream movie” thing generates some interest, the idea of what constitutes a mainstream movie at this point in time (while also being a throwback in some ways to eighties Spielberg, or riding an It Follows/Stranger Things wave) means being forgettable.

Atlantic City (1980) dir. Louis Malle

This was a rewatch, which normally I avoid doing, but it turns out I had forgotten basically everything about this movie, besides vague memories of shots of stairwells, the sprawl of its plot, the roaming camera. That, still, is sort of the main thing to take away, because I love how the plot sort of swirls around this apartment building, and the streets of the city, the casino where Susan Sarandon works. She plays a woman whose husband left her for her sister, and they have rolled into the city with a large amount of cocaine. Burt Lancaster plays Sarandon’s neighbor, who lusts after her, but watches after another neighbor in the apartment, an old gangster’s ex-lover. Maybe I would suggest this as a good first Louis Malle movie to watch? Then you could watch Au Revoir Les Enfants, Murmur Of The Heart, Elevator To The Gallows, and My Dinner With Andre, and some of those are maybe better movies but this is arguably the most “accessible” in terms of its relationship to gangster/crime stuff while nonetheless feeling expansive and deeper than that. It relates to Burt Lancaster’s larger career but also has such a depth of feeling it’s not just a film history thing. Wallace Shawn has a cameo as a waiter also, it’s nice to see him.

Cat People (1982) dir. Paul Schrader

This movie’s a rewatch but I remember it being “watchable” but not really good, at least not nearly as good as the original. If memory serves, this has pretty much nothing in common with the original, but there’s a scene in the original that’s very memorable that’s reprised here. There’s a lot of gratuitous nudity in this one, and it even ends with a scene that seems perverse enough it should be memorable- Where Nastassja Kinski’s limbs are tied to a bed in a bit of bondage before she has sex and gets turned into a panther, so she can safely be put into zoo custody, but I didn’t remember at all on account of it feeling more perfunctory than indelible. Also I thought there was a scene where you see a naked man climb out of a cage at the zoo but maybe that’s in another movie too. Remember when Paul Schrader made a facebook post asking whose were the best tits in the history of art?

Affliction (1997) dir. Paul Schrader

When there was a little featurette documentary on Criterion Channel where Alex Ross Perry interviewed Schrader, Schrader cited Affliction as one of his best movies. Takes place in a snowy landscape reminiscent of Fargo and A Simple Plan, the vision of small-town life feels slightly familiar from Twin Peaks too — all of these things feel “nineties” in a way. About the cycle of domestic violence being passed on from fathers to sons. Stars Nick Nolte, with Willem Dafoe as his younger brother, who narrates intermittently. Mary Beth Hurt plays Nolte’s ex-wife, Sissy Spacek plays his current lover. James Coburn plays the abusive father but I kept thinking it was Rip Torn.

Rancho Notorious (1952) dir. Fritz Lang

Another solid Fritz Lang movie, that I believe was a favorite of the French new wave filmmakers? (Who didn’t like his German stuff for some bullshit reason.) This one’s a western. A man’s fiancee gets murdered, and he tries t to track down the guy who did it, in search of revenge. There’s a recurring bit of a song narrating his desire for revenge that’s pretty bad. It turns out there’s a large ranch, run by Marlene Dietrich, where criminals can hide out if they don’t ask questions of one another and give her a share of their haul. He forms alliances, does some crimes, gets his revenge, there’s some great technicolor shots of landscapes, it’s unclear how real his feelings are for Marlene Dietrich or if they’re partly put on to win her affections, I don’t think Dietrich is that appealing personally. The thing that makes this movie cool or interesting (and maybe makes it feel particularly American, but seen from an outsider’s perspective) is this sense of bonhomie that is maybe just a total front for long-standing resentment, with love as a conditional thing.

Slightly French (1949) dir. Douglas Sirk

I found this one pretty watchable. A rough-around-the-edges fairground actress is recruited to play a French ingenue in the press as part of a long play for a director to get his job back with a studio he was fired from after alienating the original lead actress and everyone above him. The director basically only cares about making movies, and is sort of a psychopath, but she falls in love with him. The director’s sister, who warns that she also has no feelings, ends up being paired off with the producer who competes for the star’s affection for a while. Written by a woman, and feels very psychologically insightful and unjudgmental about women’s tendency or willingness to fall in love with people who treat them poorly, and to allow for the movie/genre expectations to respect that choice as the right one.

A Scandal In Paris (1946) dir. Douglas Sirk

Apparently Sirk considered this his best movie. It’s before his melodrama period, and is based on a memoir, so there’s a bit of a biopic quality to it, though it does try to be fairly concise and well-structured. About a criminal who solves a crime he committed in order to become chief of police, ostensibly to become an even bigger criminal who pulls off a huge robbery, who then goes straight instead. The criminal is also a casanova type, who seduces a series of women and makes them fall in love with him and forgive him his crimes. I would probably have liked this movie more if it was a stylized seventies thing and/or liked the actors better.

Story Of A Cheat (1936) dir. Sacha Guitry

This movie’s wild! One of the best credit sequences I’ve ever seen, establishing a pattern that the whole thing will be told mostly via narration, and this narration goes on to tell so much of the story that the visual storytelling almost seems redundant, or illustrative of the text, in a way I’d never seen in a movie. It’s structured as a man writing his memoirs, and is more literal about that structure than we normally see. But then there are parts where his writing gets interrupted and these scenes use dialogue and employ elision to discreetly set up punchlines… Really cool. Criterion’s website says this was an influence on Orson Welles, and maybe they mean F For Fake?

The Immortal Story (1968) dir. Orson Welles

I hadn’t seen this one, despite being an Orson Welles fanatic, I guess because most people would not consider it a feature film, as it’s under an hour long, and made for French television. It’s not great, kind of feels like a long short film. Welles plays an old rich man who hates the existence of fiction so much he tries to make a story that’s basically a Penthouse letter become true, casting Jeanne Moreau in the role of the woman and a much younger man as the dude who has sex with her. Based on a story by Isak Dinesen, which I’m just learning now was the pen name of a woman.

If You Could Only Cook (1935) dir. William Selter

So I kept on watching Jean Arthur movies, binging them before they left Criterion Channel at the end of June. You would expect them to blend together, and maybe they will in time but having just watched this one it’s great. Totally absurd premise becomes legit funny. The master chef from History Is Made At Night here plays an Italian gangster. The two movies would be a pretty solid double feature, as both feature pretty involved, absurd plots, based around love stories, but also featuring this weird comedic element. This one features Jean Arthur as a down-on-her-luck woman who strikes up a conversation with a guy on a park bench, convincing him they should get a job together working as a butler and cook team. He is secretly rich, and gets lessons in being a butler from his butler, and falls in love with her, a week before he is scheduled to get married to a rich woman he doesn’t actually care about. This movie is just over seventy minutes long. I am pretty unfamiliar with the screwball comedy genre and really wonder how they play with a different lead actress.

The More The Merrier (1943) dir. George Stevens

This one’s great too. Super comedic, with sort of intricately choreographed visual gags, but then the romance culminates in a scene that’s wildly horny, bordering on the pornographic despite the absence of any nudity. That’s a seduction shot in close up, where a sort of oblivious and distracted conversation occurs absentmindedly as kisses move from hand to neck. Jean Arthur rents a room to a domineering older dude (Charles Coburn, the guy from The Devil And Miss Jones, who’s funnier here) who then rents half of his room to a man he thinks would be a good for her. Feels like a big part of the comedy in these is people being absolute nightmares who force other people into going along with things they absolutely hate, and as much as I hate the idea of being someone who can’t handle an old comedy because of my modern cultural mores, such scenes are pretty nerve-wracking to me. Still, there’s something to the storytelling in this, how the initial gags build on themselves when it’s just the two of them, then the introduction of the second man sort of continues the sort of jokes that were already being made, how the comedy sort of snowballs but then takes the shape of this very real romance.

The Impatient Years (1944) dir. Irving Cummings

This was originally conceived as a quasi-sequel to The More The Merrier. It is a weird one, with a vaguely comedic premise it takes a pretty emotionally intense first act to set up. The first half hour has these long dialogues filled with tension of people not really being able to communicate. It’s written by a woman and you can really tell, holy shit, it’s closely observed. But the whole premise is fucked! Begins with a court hearing for a divorce. Jean Arthur has been hit by her husband, and her father (Charles Coburn again) who witnessed it says he can’t recommend a divorce, because then the judge would have to give a divorce to all the couples who got married too quick before the man shipped off to war. A flashback structure shows him, freshly home, smoking cigarettes above the crib of the child he’s never seen before and pretty irritable. The father argues the issue is the married couple has forgotten while they’ve fallen in love. Coburn basically sucks too- he’s in all these movies as this railroading paternalistic figure, and apparently was in his real life a white supremacist? And while The Devil And Miss Jones shows him learning to not be a piece of shit, this movie basically takes his side and argues for him being right. The judge agrees with this plan that they should spend four days retracing the steps of when they first met, before he shipped off to work. And it works, they fall back in love in the movie’s second half. But basically Jean Arthur’s whole behavior at the beginning of the movie is predicated on her having the responsibilities of a mother? And the movie just sort of argues that she’s got to learn to be a wife too, and she agrees, pitching it as this sort of romantic thing, but the actual central cause of tension is never resolved. So this movie is flawed and kinda nonsensical, but it’s interesting, partly because the beginning is like Bergman-level brutal before the contortions of a plot push it into this unnatural light comedy shape.

Arizona (1940) dir. Wesley Ruggles

This one has Jean Arthur as the female lead, opposite William Holden, but is more notable for its scope as a Western. A pretty good example of the genre being about society in microcosm, being forged from this conflict between the wild and domestic spheres. Jean Arthur both brings this semi-feminist sense of freedom to all of her roles, and she also built up a body of work of populist politics and class consciousness. This one has her as a rugged individualist frontierswoman, who runs a series of businesses as a way to make more money and accrue wealth, which ends up being a good vehicle, from a storytelling perspective, to increase the scale of action consistently. The villain runs a series of scams/conspiracies to win a profit via dishonest means. This culminates with a wedding where the man leaves his bride immediately afterwards to murder the person who’s been trying to take over her property. Probably the best western I’ve seen where the threat of Native American violence is a major plot point. It does lack the sense of atmosphere and landscape I value in a western, favoring a more storytelling more focused on plot and characters. Ends with a scene where a dude gets married and then immediately leaves to go kill someone waiting in a bar for him. (I should try to track down the George Stevens western Shane, that also features Jean Arthur.)

Whirlpool (1934) dir. Roy William Neill

This isn’t as top shelf as the other Jean Arthur movies but it’s pretty good. A man goes to prison, fakes his own death for the sake of his wife so she’ll move on. Jean Arthur plays the daughter, who meets him once he gets out, but needs to keep him a secret from her mother, who has remarried but would probably wreck her life for the other man’s sake. This is a pretty weird movie, both structurally, and because the father-daughter relationship feels quasi-incestuous: She abandons dates with her fiancee to spend time with her father, etc. The movie handles it semi-innocently, but I guess I had just been hearing about how when things like this happen in real life, and adult children meet their parents for the first time as adults, there often is an irresistible desire between them. So the movie kind of feels like it’s basically about something super-fucked-up but is trying to depict it as innocent, but also just the raw emotion Jean Arthur displays as she cries when they meet for the first time is really intense! She doesn’t even show up until like 1/3 of the way through the movie but she gives it such emotional weight.

Party Wire (1935) dir. Erle Kenton

This movie’s charming and watchable but yeah not one of the better ones. It’s about a pretty interesting thing- In small towns in this era basically cheaper for there to be a telephone line everyone can listen in on. This ends up being a movie about small town gossip and resentment, where the villains are old women with too much time on their hands. It’s also about Jean Arthur being a wildly charming “real” person who wins the heart of a rich man who every woman is after, so while she’s good in the part there’s an element of formula executed better elsewhere. Here she has a father who’s drunk all the time, his alcoholism is a big running gag that gets a little exhausted. Also apparently there’s an app now that’s basically a party wire?

The Whole Town’s Talking (1935) dir. John Ford

Felt pretty ambivalent about this one too, which is more of an Edward G Robinson vehicle. This is meant to be a comedy, but I don’t really think the jokes come off that well, and the sense of reversals feels a little pat. Realized my best friend from high school looks sorta like Edward G Robinson now and worked out a way to remake it starring him. The Robinson version is about a guy who works as a clerk in an office, writes on the side, but learns he is the doppelganger of a killer gangster who just escaped from prison, who’s played by Robinson as well. This leads to his worldly coworker he has a crush on developing an interest in him, but also a lot of cases of mistaken identity with the police, who give him a note saying that while he looks like the person they’re trying to arrest, they’re not the same guy. The gangster then reads about this in the news and breaks into his apartment to get this “passport” from him. The remake I envision plays off of the fact that people are no longer famous for doing crimes enough to attract the attentions of a savvy young woman. But what if it was some dumb Youtube prankster, who is constantly committing crimes, that has the police after him? And then it’s basically the same movie.

Public Hero No. 1 (1935) dir. J. Walter Rubin

More of a heavy-duty crime thing, about the head of a gang busting out of prison, reuniting with his gang to do crimes, not knowing the cellmate he broke out of prison with is an undercover cop. Jean Arthur ends up caught in the middle, falling in love with the cop (not knowing he’s a cop) while being the sister of the criminal she hopes goes straight. She enlivens the movie quite a bit but it’s a  familiar enough plot to still come up a little bit short. Would maybe benefit from more atmosphere in the crime bits and less comedy bits about an alcoholic doctor slowing it down.

You Can’t Take It With You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939) dir. Frank Capra

Watched these for Jean Arthur, though they are classics for being Frank Capra movies, Jimmy Stewart movies, and sort of archetypal in their depiction of sincerity and the opposition of the rich and powerful. So that is to say that while my favorite movies I’ve watched recently have felt genre-less, or like they participate in every genre, these feel far more like you know where they’re going pretty much from the start: In the case of Mr. Smith Goes To Washington that’s partly because of things like there being an episode of The Simpsons that parodies/reuses it.

Mr. Deeds Goes To Town (1936) dir. Frank Capra

Also has Jean Arthur as the female lead, here playing opposite Gary Cooper. When they remade this as an Adam Sandler vehicle, Winona Ryder took the Jean Arthur role. Gary Cooper inherits money, comes to the big city, everyone wants the money, Jean Arthur writes news articles mocking him as a rube while slowly falling in love with his sincerity. In the end his decision to give the money to the poor outrages everyone in power and they try to argue he’s not mentally fit. All these Frank Capra movies are longer than the other Jean Arthur movies, (two hours, as opposed to an hour and a half) and also are not really focused on her, though she’s the best part of them.

Ball Of Fire (1941) dir. Howard Hawks

Billy Wilder cowrites this, and it’s maybe his best comedic script? Lot of good jokes in this, feel like this would’ve blown people away in 1941. Gary Cooper plays a naive nerd grammarian who in the course of realizing he needs cover modern slang for his encyclopedia runs into Barbara Stanwyck, as a gangster’s moll, hilarity ensues, they fall in love, both leads are great, supporting cast is big and funny, Gary Cooper in Mr. Deeds plays a somewhat naive hayseed, the character here is similarly out of his element but it’s because he’s a big nerd, which is a lot funnier. Stanwyck’s world-weariness giving way to affection for a bunch of old people while continuing to use language they don’t understand and sort of run all over them as they fall over here is a great bit. Really well-written, there’s a Billy Wilder movie starring Jean Arthur (A Foreign Affair, from 1948) I haven’t seen but would like to track down. Sort of fascinating preoccupation with gangsters in these movies, but also positing innocence as a virtue, but in a way that runs counter to “virgin/whore” reductionism. I guess a lot of this comes about because it precedes the post-war mass migration of white people to the suburbs? Organized crime was a big part of people’s lives. I hadn’t seen any Howard Hawks movies until recently I think? Unless I saw one of his westerns or screwball comedies in college. He’s good!

The Sniper (1952) dir. Edward Dmytrk

This one’s interesting in terms of feeling very ahead of its time but also like it would never be made now. About a dude whose misogyny causes him to shoot women with a sniper rifle, the same rifle that apparently any ex-soldier would carry. Probably a pretty tough and upsetting watch, as it’s just about a dude being insane, hoping the police arrest him, and him having interactions with women where he very quickly becomes upset when they realize he’s weird, so he follows them with a gun. Director was blacklisted, the only real overt political sentiment is “get perverts and people who assault women serious mental health care after their first offense.”

[blackwoolncrown]

curious to hear your thoughts bc i think they're sharp, as a person still figuring out fandom. what do you think of the moral okayness of thorki (the ship)? they're brothers, but gods.... godly incest? at what point does "ship what you want" stop applying?

It’s not so much about where it stops applying. Understand that I actually never have said what people should or shouldn’t read- only that what a person chooses to focus on in general (and therefore including what you write, watch, or read) is indicative of something and in many cases of certain taboo* or violent material my heavy suggestion is that that something is ultimately meaningful.

It’s not ‘just’ fiction.

So like, me personally? I often don’t actually care what someone is into (with some logical exceptions), I care whether or not they’re aware of why, because often people would rather not inspect the why so they can keep enjoying problematic media (and also my actual Big Thing is I don’t approve of situations where someone engages in activity they are not fully aware of, because to me if you aren’t aware of the consequences or origins of your actions, you haven’t fully consented to what you’re doing and that makes me sad. Example: Do you smoke cigarettes? Fine! It’s your body; as long as you aren’t exposing non-smokers to second hand smoke, no one should have shit to say. But if you start smoking bc you believe that cigarettes aren’t actually bad for you and there’s no downsides, you haven’t fully consented and now I wish you either a) inspected your motives and actions or b) stopped).

Overall I suspect that many of the most vociferous defenders of ‘fiction is just fiction!’ are people whose interests often veer into what we often call taboo (I think that word is so ineffective) who don’t want to ask themselves why. My other general rule is that people are most doggedly defensive about what they get off to. There’s also the issue of people having already brought to question their fictive interests and instead of wanting to find out the answer, deciding There’s Nothing To See Here, Fiction Is Just Fiction! Or, on the cusp of identifying a maladaptive interest and feeling as if that’s an action of self-judgment, they identify with their fictive interest because to them judging it means judging themselves.

Ideally neither is necessary. You can just understand that you got into something at a previous time but you’ve grown past it, learned from it, and can walk away from it without shame. After all, it’s ideally just your business. All I’m saying is that you know what the fuck your business is, pardon my french, because people who don’t know themselves are….well, it’s an issue.So to answer your question, here’s another question: If Thor and Loki were not brothers, would you care as much? Imagine a situation in which Thor and Loki are not related, but still share a lusty rivalry. Is something missing? What is it? What about them being gods absolves, in your mind, the impact of their siblinghood?Often, something like sibling incest (which to me is, honestly, not my bag but obviously way less awful than parent/child due to a whole slew of issues with imbalance there) is exciting to people simply because either a) the incest is the barrier to love and in general barriers to love make ‘good’ stories because two people overcoming the bounds of a romantic limitation is a more moving story than two people who can love freely (bc we love suffering and strife! it seasons things, I guess lol) and the incest is just an easy yet huge barrier b) because we have a hard time working through something without sexualizing it and who could write or would want to read about two brothers’ having a heartfelt love/hate brotherhood? Very few people, apparently, because that’s not a valued interaction. Thus, add some fucking into the story and Thor and Loki can work out their antagonistic feelings without getting to the bottom of them because we imagine sex is an equalizer and a balm (it’s not, but I understand the idea has a huge place in erotic fiction and absolutely use it myself when I write for fun).That speaks, to me, of an issue (and I’m going to be specific here) with not really having the language or familiarity with the social concept of brotherly love to make a story about it and its struggles interesting. We don’t have the language and thus cannot conceive of brother/brother reconciliation without sex. And this again speaks of a larger issue our society has with sex and the huge void of emotionality between strangers and lovers (friendships, loyalty. non-sexual bonding? What’s that?). We cannot conceive of a way to intensify, for the sake of adult (in age, not nature) entertainment, something like siblinghood without using sex.

It’s just cheap writing.

On the other hand, the very real ramifications of this easy-route conflict writing is that it sexualizes and normalizes sibling incest (or other things in the case of other stories) and I think it’s incredibly callous to want to ignore the voices of SA victims in this regard. People like to retort that ‘well YOU might not be able to tell fiction from reality, but I can’ but here’s the thing: Your subconscious mind can’t. If your brain wholly knew that the fiction you were reading was Not-Reality the information would be irrelevant and would fail to produce an emotional response. The reason we are excited, aroused, sad, scared, angry, tense, etc during movies and books is because while we are focused on them our mind is interpreting the happenings as actual happenings. To the extent (!) that media ‘pulls you in’, your  subconscious believes it, validates it, and signals responses accordingly. That’s why it’s entertaining.

I say this because something many fans of certain content don’t want to face is that the consumption and support of, and proximity to certain types of violent or taboo content starts to lessen your reaction to them. I’m not speaking as an outsider, here, and so I caution you and anyone else to second-guess the awareness of anyone who says ‘there’s no way that’s true!’. What you repeatedly experience becomes normal for you. This doesn’t apply as heavily with Thorki or similar ships bc of the conceptual complexity (it’s pretty far-removed) but there are certainly fetishes/ships  where repeated exposure lessens your reaction to that concept in general. As if that doesn’t seem to be problem enough, since this is an issue of entertainment, this also means that a person seeks more of the content. After all, what fic fan reads just one story about their scandalous OTP? You need more, or more extreme versions. And I’m not talking out of my ass here- people for some reason love incest- it’s one of the top-searched terms on any adult media site for general consumption. On sites that it’s not, that’s only because the term itself is blacklisted and users use some other coded term. In the absence of pearl-clutching, we must recognize that smutty fiction and tube sites’ activities are largely the same. b/b m/s and f/d incest continue to draw attention and I honestly don’t know why. 

And this is why I pay no mind to people who say that fiction has no effect on reality. Even if it didn’t, it arises from our reality. The real minds of real writers in the real world. And I’ve seen the results. I work with sex and fetishes- it’s my job. I know what people as a whole are into and I’m begging y’all: UNPACK THIS BAGGAGE. Soooo many fetishes are just maladaptive coping mechanisms, so talk of ‘fiction being just fiction’ are literally bullshit. Fetish, and the relative psychology of it, is my job, to the point that it’s also what I have to navigate to try and ensure my safety (by avoiding volatile fetishists) and income (my first job, for instance, was a porn artist, and by now I’m an adult content producer and prodomme). And again, many fetishes are the back end of intense or subconsciously formative moments in our lives. The attraction is not ‘the thing’, it is a thread us leading back to that moment, to learn from our experiences, to resolve past issues with the wiser perspective of our older selves.Again, there’s not much going on in terms of Thor/Loki here but on a wider scale there is. Often in fandom, for instance, it’s not really about the ship so much as the fetish. It’s disguised in the language of fandom, but people who have a bunch of incest ships are incest fetishists, full stop. There’s no difference in motive between them and the ~gross pervert guys~ reblogging porn gifs and adding incest prose to them. If geeks could more often find porn gifs that looked like their taboo OTP rest assured they’d do the same damn thing, most of them. Ficlovers like to act like their position is somehow more morally acceptable because there are no ‘real’ people involved like in porn, but whether or not a physical body is used to represent the characters/roles is a pedantic and nebulous distinction at best. Your interest is still your interest. And people are going to hate this, but it sounds so much like pedophiles on 4chan  who say that their ‘fetish’ is okay because the characters aren’t real. Furries into cubs (not the gay dude kind but the baby animal kind) feel justified the same way because the figures are fantasy creatures. But they’re still expressly coded as the infantile versions of adult characters, and again, the motive is the same. I’m not saying ALL of these things are one to one, I’m saying it’s a similar logic: “This is a fantasy and as such it says nothing about me. It would only matter if I physically did it.” Which is dishonest and illogical bc one’s fantasies  and interests arise out of their own minds. Porn consumption is a night map of the human social psyche. It’s not ‘nothing’.

Sure, most of those people would probably never touch a child, but that’s because the real world provides consequences the fantasy world doesn’t- not because they’re not interested. I know bc I’ve seen them say that themselves, many times. I was a 4chan teen. What was normal there would make a well-adjusted person puke. But I was maladaptive, impressionable and young at the time and it became normal for me. So many forms of incest, rape, pedophilia, bestiality etc became normal in the ‘shock makes things acceptable’ speed-posting culture of neverending offensiveness there. And that’s not just a 4chan thing. It’s a group anonymity thing. Any imageboard vet can tell you that. When you’re in the anonymous group, what the group does is what you do, and you go along with it, continuously being desensitized until you suddenly go WTF or…keep going. And having seen these arguments before, I’m wary of those who go to battle on the idea of all erotic fiction being totally beyond judgement, because often what is going on is that people whose interests should be judged, at the very least by themselves, argue against that so that there are other people who feel the same way who don’t realize they’ve been manipulated to cloak the offenders in their community.

But I digress.

Since my feelings on Killmonger fans* started this, I’ll offer an example of my own: I think AoU Ultron is hot. But I don’t actually want to fuck him. I wouldn’t be interested in any ‘reader x Ultron’ narratives. Why? Because despite my love for and identification with  many villains (usually bc of their victim’s rage and queer coding which always leaves them far cooler and better dressed than the hero) and my love for robots, I can’t ignore that Ultron is a heartless, people-hating, death-machine. He has no interest in love, doesn’t care about anyone, and if he bothered to fuck a person (I fucking doubt it) he’d gladly fuck them apart. And since I love myself, I don’t find that appealing. If I found the idea of being fucked to death by a robot arousing, that says something about how I feel about my existence. I know bc I am strangely fascinated by the idea of armageddon (another reason Ultron appealed to me). Spoilers: it’s just easier to feel like you want the whole world to end when you’re so certain there’s no other solution and you yourself are afraid of the emotional responsibility of weathering the world and social interactions. When you love yourself and other people, the idea of seeing the world burn stops being so entrancing. So sure it’s an enthralling literary concept. Is it something I dedicate my blog to or obsess over?

No.

Other things I’ve examined- my love for robots. Do I find myself attracted to robots because they are humanoids you can objectify free of moral conflict? No, and that sucks for me bc that’s why most people like them and that affects the kind of adult media made about them (can you tell im bitter), it’s because I find humanoid robots to be something I can identify with, I see them as symbolically human, and relating to them is, to me, acknowledging that a human is also a construct with both programming and a will of its own it uses to explore and often fight that programming. My attraction to the concept of an automaton stems from my early realization that my own body is but a fantastic collection of parts, electric signals, programmed genetic data, pulleys and fuel. Amazing! Now that I know that, have I stopped consuming robot fetish media? Well yes but only because I can’t find any I like…but in general, no. I’m not ashamed of my attraction, I’ve unpacked it, faced it, and go on about  my life. It actually did lessen the obsession, though.

So, to stay on point, sibling incest as a concept is IMO not ‘wrong’ to write/read about objectively but it is questionable to perpetuate, romanticize, fawn over, collect, celebrate, etc.  Most problematic to me is the issue of how these ships are identified. Generally any time there are 2 handsome brothers in a piece of media, some not-small-enough contingency of the fandom assumes they’re fucking, and sees all forms of affection or antagonism between them as evidence of their lust.

What does this say about your ability to recognize sibling love? What does it say about the social value (or lack thereof) of the same? When ‘all feelings lead to sex’ is the overarching theme of our entire society, I can’t really say I am uncritical of concepts like hatesex and incest being so intensely attractive to people over, say, romantic love between two people who are not related by blood. A bit of a tangent but similarly while I get the chemistry appeal, the fact that ‘hatesex’ as a concept (two people who often express aggression, hatred, intolerance etc of each other being interpreted as actually masking feelings of attraction) is so popular is ripe for questioning. How far removed is it from “He picks on you  because he likes you” and other maladaptive forms of “loving someone means hurting them…a lot” which are real actual problems people suffer for right now?

Plus, it begins to suggest as I said before that all forms of affection/relationship end in sex. Even if sex never happens, sex must logically be the apex of love if two characters who have any kind of affection, even if that affection is also seen in the presence of aggression (!) or a moral barrier (family bond), are easily assumed to be sexually compatible to the extent that fandom perpetuates.

So back to your point, this is again not really an issue (as far as where I’m coming from) with what’s right and wrong. It’s an issue of people needing to take responsibility for themselves and being curious about their own issues and interests. I’m not advocating for censorship- I’m advocating for people to enlighten themselves about themselves in which case a lot of ‘taboo’ media would be produced in a lessened capacity.

I find it interesting that when I ask “Why are you into ____?” people don’t answer that question, or seem unwilling to, since their first reaction is to flip out and cry censorship. No one seems to notice that that’s not what I’m actually saying lol.

I don’t care what people do, if it’s not hurting someone. I care that people know why they do what they do. I am critical of things and of myself. I think people should just dare to be critical. It’s a great tool for self-healing that doesn’t involve perpetuating damage.*I dislike the term taboo because it and the moral judgment it applies is a nebulous term that is used far too broadly. Incestuous pedophiles soften their interest by calling it ‘taboo’, but interracial relationships are also classed as ‘taboo’, thereby suggesting that the term is as loose as ‘whatever many people think is wrong’, which is clearly far too transient and easily-influenced. Often, I find, it’s used as ‘something that is morally objectionable for reasons we’re not going to explore, we’re just going to lump all this shit together indiscriminately as taboo’.

*Again, I don’t care about people who mainly think MBJ is hot as Killmonger, that’s totally logical. I question people whose fantasies specifically extend to Killmonger THE CHARACTER being seen as sexually attractive **because** of/specifically on the grounds of his general character (i.e. radicalized, violent, murderous, apathetic) and what kind of person would fantasize about being subject to a man like that.

[himalayaz]

Title: I hope the fact that I voted makes this an easier read 😬 

By: Miliaku Nwabueze

 Part One: Examine the Self

I was appalled at the cognitive dissonance in movement thinkers this summer. I witnessed “radical” organizers, activists, and thought leaders encourage members of the rebellion to channel their rage and frustration with state sanctioned violence into voting. Simply and unilaterally, “Vote!”, was the universally agreed upon call to action. Folks rarely identified whom to vote for or on what which ironically symbolizes the meaningless nature of their compulsing. The investment into state infrastructure puzzled me. 

Organizations and individuals that do land acknowledgements before meetings know whose territory they’re on, but insist on realizing freedom through participating in state systems of governance that further solidify the state’s occupation. I’m not feeling that folks can legitimately have a decolonial or anti-coloniality orientation while they are actively advocating for voting and other methods of change-making that involve the state over autonomous, localized, and collective organization of meeting human needs: the commons. 

The work of feminist scholars such as Donna Haraway, Patricia Hill Collins, Nancy Hartsock and others teach us that we know our world from what identity-as-spaces we occupy. Marginalized people have insight to build consciousness about their worlds and their oppressor’s because their positionality within them is defined in relationship to the violences of structural hegemony (i.e. woman to man, colonized to colonizer/settler, undocumented to citizen, black to white, etc.). Mahmoud Keshavarz builds on this theory by asserting “One’s class gender and/or ethnicity shape [their] being, interactions and inhabitations in the world...” 

Aspiring revolutionaries “often present themselves as being critical, political and radical yet, in practice, and by what they produce, remain innocent, neutral or, merely well-intentioned.” People trying to design existences different from our status quo consistently give way to reform. I feel this is because we have not collectively nor individually interrogated our cognitive dissonance. We have not killed the cops, the state, the capitalist, the oppressor, the aspiring winner in our own heads. We have treated the means of allowing for the emergence of generative deviations from our trajectory of global, ecological collapse as somehow separate from the ends. Kehavarz continues: “...designers cannot simply engage in such complicated issues without a complex political understanding of their own position in terms of gender, class and ethnicity as well as how the contemporary orders of capital and the bodies serving those orders are organised by dispersed material articulations such as passports, camps, and borders, all configured by design.” Our failures to develop self awarness are the precursors to reform.

Part Two: “We Want to Do More Than Survive”: Self Examination

As Imani Scott-Blackwell penned so eloquently in a Facebook status about the 2020 Presidential election:

“While y’all mourn the results, I’ll continue grieving the fact that rather than using our resources, time, and talents to fortify local mutual aid networks that can sustain and protect us regardless of who the elected official are, we instead put that into elections, pamphlets, yard signs, social media tech company coffers, Halloween candy and snacks for the sake of “voter outreach”.

……

I’m really just confused like what are we actually doing.....what is it we actually want? Because impact > intent and we seem collectively committed to the wrong solutions and though I do see people that are critical of electoral politics few seem ready to talk about what we really need to do here.....divest from electoral politics all together.”

The amount of people encouraging other people to vote this year was historic. In my personal experiences, strangers with my private information texted and called me, knocked on my door, and hand wrote me letters urging me to engage in the spectacle of emergency voting. In meetings with grassroots and change-oriented organizations, people are doing land acknowledgments, and discussing indigenous sovereignty. These same meetings that begin with land acknowledgement often ended in encouraging attendees to vote. 

But, aren’t the state and its power inherently colonial? So how does a strategy that envisions freedom and/or sovereignty for black, incarcerated, indigenous, and/or undocumented people include actions that codify state hegemony?

The first type of cognitive dissonance that “hit me in the head” was W.E.B DuBois’ Double consciousness in high school; in an English class with the only black teacher. It applied so directly to my experiences as a working class black girl packaged and scholar-shipped into a wealthy, predominantly white private school with a college acceptance rate of 100%. I took so much pride in this despite constantly having to be “twice as good to get half as much”. I spent so much time explaining I tested into Detroit Country Day, that I wasn’t there because I was good at sports. I spent so much time laughing on the outside while crying on the inside at insensitive jokes and comments. I spent so much time embarrassed by being dropped off in my father’s rumbling work van. Upon understanding W.E.B DuBois’ theory I realized all that time was wasted. I made an instantaneous shift in my consciousness. Learning about my positionality disrupted how I speculated my future.

In becoming aware of my own cognitive dissonance I was able to immediately re-imagine myself off of the trajectory of becoming a black femme agent of white supremacy. I leaned into my queerness, I continued to wear my hair as it grew out of my head, I defended myself and others against racism, and became increasingly disinterested with seeking the approval of my white classmates. One might have seen a Condeleeza Rice as my future, but I became an unemployed, overworked, weed-smoking, mushroom tripping (okay, only like twice), hippie dippie black abolitionist, gay ass radical. I changed my belief system and praxis to incorporate what I was learning about myself in relationship to the structures that dominate our lives, and the trajectory of my life was disrupted.

Part Three: The Theory 

Again, can we who believe in freedom from US hegemony have a decolonial orientation while encouraging engagement in state infrastructures? Is channeling mass frustration with state violence into voting a decolonial framework? I ask, declaratively. Decolonization is a speculative disruption and a deviation from the trajectory laid out before us, requiring the abolition of the state. I believe this is an issue with speculative design - it’s failure to disrupt our thinking and how we might imagine life after now.

Professor Jamer Hunt at The New School once summarized a point by Arjun Appadurai from his piece “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Economy”: “We lean on sameness, really, to understand if we’re doing things right.” We do this in the most mundane of ways. If you got the same answer as me then I must have gotten it right! Right?... In her iconic work, “The Master’s Tools will Never Dismantle The Master’s House,” Audre Lorde teaches us difference is a practice of discovery. However, we respond to differences -not the status quo as difference within marginal contexts- as if it's a disruption. As a deviation in need of discipline. We then, sometimes, rely on our conceptions of hierarchy to determine “rightness”: young over old, literally any racial-ethnic identity over black, teacher over student, man over woman, etc.

Sameness can build a nation. Appadurai asserts a nation is a set of communities based on shared cultural values. In the US that culture is whiteness. That is the “nation” in the “nation-state” on Turtle Island. The dash is the “articulatory” piece. “Nation” and “state” were intentionally intertwined and can be separated and destroyed. 

The job of the “state” in “nation-state” is to spread itself. Colonization (direct and indirect) is what makes/made this possible; coloniality is what makes it enduring. After all, a state is simply a condition or what “is”, and white supremacy is what articulates and unifies this being. Therefore, one can only conclude that on turtle island, the “United” “States” is the product of spreading white supremacy in all shapes and fashions, enduringly. This has shaped identity, positionalities, and mobilities and thus speculative design(ers). Statist thinking is thwarting possibility and distorting it into limited likelihoods. This is a trap door to reform. This is where decolonization, returning land to the not only indigenous people, but indengous life--the commons--is transformed into a metaphor to live in infinite land acknowledgements and celebratory, meaningless court decisions. The endurance of the state’s illusory nature forces us to endure, feeling as though nothing will change nor end. Right? Nope, that’s not the answer I got.

In Design Politics: An Inquiry Into Passports, Camps and Borders the most fire book on design right now, Mahmoud Keshavarz asserts the non enduring nature of statehood: “The State is designed”. He says, “Refugee, settlers, displacement,” and I would add colonization and racism etc. is realized via statehood. Statehood will not be the liberating variable in these narratives as these positions are diametrically opposed to the ever demonstrating settler, colonial, capitalist, and violent interests of the nation-state.

Advocating for divestment from state infrastructures is unfamiliar, different, and possibly unsettling. Unsettling is our future state if there’s anything real behind your land acknowledgements. To summarize Yang and Tuck in Decolonization is Not a Metaphor: “What is unsettling about decolonization” is the literal unsettling. To “Unsettle” is to disrupt. As designers think about futures we must be aware of our standpoint, reorient, and think about what decolonization, anti-racism, undocumentedness, anti-capitalism, etc. wants - designing from this standpoint is where speculative disruption is born.

Part Four: Speculative Disruption

Speculative Disruption begins where reform ends. Speculation, unimaginatively, has become a practice of prediction. A space we’ve let our data-driven culture of determining likelihoods colonize (Lol, jk.) imagination in service of accuracy. We let our obsession with predicting outcomes, performing certainty, and being “right” be conflated with and distort possibility. 

There’s a saying circulating around radical communities: “abandon the capitalist, king, and the economy to govern an empty house”. Designers can materialize the future right now. “...Zoom out and start with new realities (ways of organizing everyday life through alternative beliefs, values, priorities, and ideology) then develop scenarios and possibly personas to bring it to life (173)”

This is deeper than designing what we “want”. Folks love to metaphorize colonization in the following phrases: “decolonizing our desires” or “decolonize our minds” though I think they mean our thoughts have been co-opted by the enduring nature of the nation-state and reinforcing of sameness and correctness. What we want is influenced by what we want to destroy as evidenced by the cognitive dissonance rampant through change making institutions. “VOTE!” But “Police are bad”, “So we have to vote for the people who vow to hire them!” [I’m not making this up]. Or immigrants or black people who defend their piece of the settler pie while feeling “it’s a shame what happened to the ‘natives’”.

My friend Sasha once said we need to organize to make things possible and impossible. This is the speculative and disruptive process of designing the unfamiliar -- the being that does not replace what we have and is not an evolution of the existing. The word unfamiliar comes from the Latin and Old English words for servant and family, respectively. Humans need to prepare for freer worlds that don’t currently serve our present ways of thinking and that are non-proximal to us. The designs for free worlds will come from the wants of the subaltern who have consciously refused to endure. We need to design the abolitionist mechanisms that will make a commons possible while making the empire impossible. 

Speculative disruption speculates the unsettling, the deviation from where we are headed and the orientation towards the directions in which we hope to journey. I ask declaratively: How can we learn to be okay with what is not familiar to us and how can we allow that which does not serve the current and dominant trajectory to inform what we create? How can we engage in a radically feminist practice of embracing uncertainty by acting without fear of consequences we are also uncertain of? 

[acryptocurrency1blog-blog]

Make Money Using Crypto Currencies

The Future Of Banknotes And Preventing A Cashless Economy

Bitcoin is a comparatively new kind of currency that's Best Crypto Currencies only begun to strike the mainstream markets.

Critics state that using Bitcoins is dangerous since -

They have no authentic Price

They Aren't regulated

They can be used to make illegal transactions

Still all the significant market players discuss Bitcoins. Below are some good reasons why it is worth using this crypto currency.

Quick payments - When payments are made by using banks, the transaction takes a few days, similarly wire transfers also take quite a long time. On the other hand, virtual money Bitcoin trades are normally more rapid.

"Zero-confirmation" trades are instantaneous, where the merchant takes the risk, which is still not approved by Bitcoin block-chain. If the merchant requires an acceptance, then the trade takes 10 minutes. This is significantly more quickly than any inter-banking transfer.

Inexpensive - debit or credit card transactions are instant, but you're charged a fee for using this privilege. From the Bitcoin transactions, the fees are generally low, and in some cases, it is free of charge.

No one can take it away - Bitcoin is decentralized, so no central power can take away percentage from your deposits.

No chargeback - After you exchange Bitcoins, they're gone. You cannot recover them without the recipient's approval. Therefore, it becomes hard to commit the chargeback fraud, which is frequently experienced by people with charge cards.

Folks purchase goods and if they find it defective, they contact charge cards bureau to create a chargeback, effectively reversing the trade. The credit card company will do it and charges you with expensive chargeback fee ranging from $5-$15.

Safe private details - Credit card numbers get stolen through payments. A Bitcoin trade doesn't require any personal details. You will have to combine your personal key along with the Bitcoin crucial together to do a transaction.

You just have to ensure that your private key is not obtained by strangers.

It is not inflationary - Federal Reserve prints bucks, whenever the economy is sputtering. Government injects the new created money into the economy causing a drop in currency value, thereby triggering inflation. Inflation decreases people's power to get things because prices of products increase.

Bitcoins are in limited supply. The machine was made to quit mining more Bitcoins on reaching 21 million. This means that inflation will not be a problem, but deflation will be triggered, at which costs of goods will collapse.

Semi- anonymous surgeries - Bitcoin is relatively private, but translucent. The Bitcoin speech is revealed at the block-chain. Everyone is able to look in your pocket, but your name will probably be invisible.

Easy micro-payments - Bitcoins allows you to create micropayments like 22 pennies for free.

Substitute of fiat currencies - Bitcoins are good option to hold federal currencies undergoing capital controls, and high inflation.

Bitcoins are receiving valid - Important institutions like the Bank of England and Fed have opted to take Bitcoins for trading. More and more outlets like Reditt, Pizza chains, WordPress, Baidu, and a number of other small companies are currently accepting Bitcoin payments. Many Forex Currency trading and Forex agents also let you trade with the Bitcoins.

Ah but it's Digital currently". "Digital" a note whose origins lie at the latin digitalis, from digitus ("finger, toe"); today it's use is interchangeable with computers and televisions, cameras, music players, watches, etc, etc, etc.. However, what of electronic money or even electronic democracy?

The printing press caused a revolution in its time, hailed as a democratic force for great by many. Books open to the masses was really a revolution and now we have e-books and technological instruments to read them with. The simple fact that the original words are encoded into a numerical type and decoded back to words does not mean we trust less the words we are reading, but we might still prefer the joys of a physical book than a bit of high-tech plastic that needs to have its battery billed to maintain working. Can digital currencies such as bitcoin really provide a contribution to positive social change in as spectacular a manner?

To answer this we have to inquire what of money, how are we to know it, use it and integrate it into a sustainable model of a 'better world for everybody?' Cash, unlike any other form of Property, is unique in that it may be used for anything before an event even occurring. It implies nothing, yet may be used for great good or great evil, and yet it's only that which it is despite its many manifestations and consequences. It is a one of a kind but much misunderstood and misused commodity. Money has the simplicity of easing buying and selling, and a mathematical sophistication as demonstrated by the financial markets; and yet it has no notion of egalitarianism, moral or ethical decision making

It acts as an autonomous entity, yet it is both endogenous and exogenous to the global community. It has no personality and is readily replaceable, yet it is treated as a small resource in the world context, its growth regulated by a set of complicated rules which determine the way in which it may act. Yet despite this the outcomes are never entirely predictable and, moreover; a commitment to social justice and an aversion to moral turpitude isn't a requirement of its usage.

In order for a currency to effectively do the financial functions required of it, the intrinsic-value of money has become a commonly held belief by those using it. In November 2013 that the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs confessed that virtual monies are a legitimate means of payment, an example of this is Bitcoin. Due to the very low transaction fees charged by the 'Bitcoin system' it delivers a very real way to permit the transfer of capital from migrant workers sending money back to their families without having to pay large transport fees billed by companies. An European Commission calculated that if the global average remittance of 10 percent were decreased to 5 percent (also the '5x5' initiative endorsed by the G20 at 2011), that this could lead to an additional US$ 17 billion flowing into developing countries; using this blockchain would reduce these charges near to zero. These cash transfer businesses who extract wealth from the system might become dis-intermediated through the usage of such an infrastructure.

Possibly the main point to note about cryptocurrencies is that the distributed and decentralised nature of the networks. With the growth of the world wide web, we are maybe just seeing the 'tip of the iceberg' with regard to future inventions that might exploit undiscovered possibility of permitting decentralisation but at a hitherto hidden or unimaginable scale. Thus, whereas previously, when there was a need for a large network it was only achievable using a hierarchical arrangement; with the effect of the requirement of broadening the 'power' of the network to a small number of people with a controlling interest. It may be stated that Bitcoin represents the decentralisation of cash and the transfer to a simple system strategy. Bitcoin represents as significant an advancement as peer reviewed file sharing and internet telephony (Skype such as).

There is very little explicitly produced legal law for digital or virtual monies, however there are a wide assortment of current legislation which may apply depending upon the nation's legal financial framework for: Taxation, Banking and Money Transmitting Regulation, Securities Regulation, Criminal and/or civil law, Consumer Rights/Protection, Pensions Regulation, Commodities and shares law, along with others. So the two important issues facing bitcoin are if it can be regarded as legal tender, and if as an advantage then it is classed as land.

It is common practice for nation-states to explicitly define currency as legal tender of another nation-state (e.g. US$), preventing them from recognising other 'monies' formally as money. A notable exception to this is Germany which allows for the idea of a 'unit of account' that can therefore be applied as a kind of 'private money' and can be used in 'multilateral clearing circles. In the other context of being considered as real estate that the obvious discrepancy this is that, unlike land, digital currencies possess the potential for divisibility into much smaller amounts. Developed, open markets are usually permissive to digital currencies. The USA has issued the most guidance and is highly represented on the map below. Capital controlled economies are effectively by definition controversial or hostile. As for most African and a few other countries the topic hasn't yet been addressed.

Beginning In the principles of democratic involvement it's immediately apparent that bitcoin doesn't fulfill the positive societal impact component of such an objective in so far as its value isn't one it can exert influence over but is subject to market-forces. Yet any 'new' crypto-currency may provide democratic involvement once the virtual money has different rules of government and issuance based upon more environmentally based democratic fundamentals.

So what if a "digital" currency could provide a valid alternative to existing types of money in performing the role of contributing positively to: the goals of promoting a mutually inclusive civilization, the equality of opportunity and the marketing of mutualism; which as their very name implies are alternative and/or complementary to an official or national sovereign currency? Virtual cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are a new and emerging dynamic in the machine; though in their infancy, the speed of innovation within the field of cryptocurrencies were dramatic.

There are many factors that determine the 'potency' of cash to bring about positive social and environmental change; pervading political ideology, economic surroundings, and the desire of local communities and people to pursue alternative social outcomes whilst trying to maximise economic opportunity, construction of social funds, and lots of others. If a regional digital currency could be designed to construct extra resilience into a local economy and enhance economic outcomes then launch to a more widespread basis merits investigation. When the current economic system fails to provide it's manifested in such manner as: increased social isolation, higher crime rates, physical dereliction, poor health, a lack of a feeling of community, among other undesirable societal impacts.

Crypto Currency is digital money that's no specific nation rather than created by any government-controlled bank. These electronic currencies are also known as Altcoins. They're based on cryptography. This money is created by a mathematical procedure so that it will not lose its value as a result of large flow. There Are Various Types of Crypto Currency for example Litecoin, Bitcoin, Peercoin and Namecoin. The trades using the electronic currency are carried out using the mechanics of mining. People who wish to perform this procedure, generate the currency in their computers with the help of the software meant for this use. When the currency is created, it is recorded in the community, thus announcing its presence

The value of Altcoins went to amazing levels throughout the previous couple of years and consequently, its mining is now an extremely profitable business. Many companies started making chips that are exclusively used for conducting the cryptographic algorithms of the process. Antminer is a popular ASIC hardware utilized for drawing out Bitcoin.

Mining Bitcoins: Antminer Includes different specifications such as U1 and U2+. The two U1 and U2+ are about the Exact Same size. While U1 includes a default hash rate of 1.6 GH/s, U2+ gets the hash speed of 2.0 GH/s. The practice of inputting the Bitcoins trades in the public ledger is known as Bitcoin mining. The brand new They are introduced to the system by means of this process. The Bitcoin miner can make transaction fees and subsidy for the recently created coins. ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) is a microchip made specifically for this procedure. When compared to previous technology, they're quicker. The service offered by this Bitcoin miner is based on specified performance. They provide a specific level of manufacturing capacity for a set price.

Mining Altcoins: Even though this process is extremely easy, they're of much lesser value when compared to Bitcoin. Due to the lower value Altcoins aren't as popular as the other. People who want to make from their Altcoins may run the right program in their PCs. The Altcoins use the mining algorithm known as 'Scrypt'. They cannot be solved using the ASIC chips. The miners can then spend the currency or swap them for Bitcoins in the Crypto Currency Exchange. For producting Altcoins, the miner must write a short script for the command prompt. Those who write the script are ensured of succeeding. One must decide whether to join a pool or to produce alone. Joining the pool is the perfect choice for Altcoin miners.

[rentahomeinmalaysia]

Finding Affordable Lace Wigs

Like a rough diamond, an affordable lace wig is a great find. Luxury and quality are no longer just for those with a lot of money to spend on human hair lace wigs. Discount lace wigs and affordable full lace wigs are available to everyone. The only problem is where to find them. Many women search but end up with the same tangles, fake glitter, and the unrealistic part they had with traditional wigs. The key to finding cheap lace wigs lies in these simple tips.

Brick and mortar stores still have value

In this day and age, everyone flocks to the World Wide Web for information on her lace wig. You're reading this article right now, right? Although the Internet offers a wealth of information, nothing is better than seeing for yourself what you are buying. While you can find the perfect lace wig at a neighborhood beauty supply store, don't count on Virgin Human Extensions .

Luxury beauty supply stores are often very expensive, but the key to shopping at these stores is timing. With fewer people shopping at these high-end hair providers, they commonly have more stocks to sell. Visit these stores at the end of the month to find bargains. The lace wigs themselves are high quality but only have discounted prices to empty inventory. You can also visit manager days to request when sales will take place.

Do your research

For those of you who enjoy the convenience of shopping online, there are many options for you. The only thing to consider is making turn-based websites. These sites that only promote affordable full lace wigs and cheap lace frontals are questionable. An established site should have customer reviews, photo galleries, and detailed information on each lace wig. If you can't communicate with a real human when you call with questions, your main goal is to make money and not have satisfied customers.

As a general rule, if the hair gallery with real clients looks poor in quality, then expect poor quality. It is better to research popular online stores and contact reviewers on the site itself. Even if you are very knowledgeable about lace wigs, ask employees questions. The red flags should indicate if you have more knowledge than the person selling the product. These cheap lace wigs are the best example of "you get what you pay for". Many women have made the mistake of mistaking lace wigs for low quality lace wigs and have lost a lot of money for it.

Reach out to your stylist

The salon stylists jumped on the lace wig wagon and really helped many clients. Instead of buying your lace wig from a stranger whose primary goal is to make the sale, contact your stylist. A stylist's reputation depends on word of mouth and returning customers. It is very rare for a stylist to approve low quality lace wigs. It is a good idea to find a stylist who does not sell your own lace wigs and only select one for you. By selecting just one for you, the only advantage they have comes from producing quality work and quality choice.

Like all beauty products, stylists receive special offers, discounts, and exclusives that consumers don't get. This will increase your chances of finding a high quality lace wig that is affordable. Your stylist can help you choose the length and color that works best for your lace wig. They can also help you select the right texture, size, and hair type. Today, some stylists even handle custom accessories and applying lace wigs.

[dans-les-fleures]

Find Our Way

Summary | For every hundred reasons for him to leave, there’ll always be that one reason for him to stay: you.

pairing: jimin/reader genre: fluff/light angst; skater boy au word count: 16.230

.

Park Jimin doesn’t know what it means to stay. At least, he hasn’t known since he turned eighteen and realized that there is a world that lies beyond the little bubble of his hometown that he’s spent way too long occupying. As soon as he figured out that freedom is not just some intangible concept, that freedom is achievable and something that he craved more deeply than a desire to remain rooted, he had packed up his belongings and left. He didn’t even think twice about it, for there was nothing keeping him around in the suburban landscape—a few close friends, sure, but hardly a family. There are faces and names, but it just serves as a reminder than his life has lacked so many things because of them.

All of those things were fine with him, serving as one of the main reasons why he didn’t bat an eye to applying to the universities hundreds of miles away, why he didn’t stick around for the goodbyes as he committed to the first university to accept him, why he just loaded his car and drove off without looking back.

It’s been nearly three years since that evening, since he packed his trunk in the middle of the night and drove until the sun crept over the horizon; three years since he left a house that’s never been a home, yet he doesn’t regret a single moment of that. There’s a certain joy that comes with solitude, in stepping onto a train and not knowing what the destination entailed, of not knowing what stop to get off of, of knowing that no matter how far he goes or how long he disappears there will be no one waiting for him.

Well, almost no one waiting for him.

Jimin curses under his breath, tisking to himself as he digs his fingernails into his chin, his elbow propped on the windowsill, eyes fixed unblinkingly on the sight before him so he can take in the rush of landscapes and blurring colors that lay beyond him. He spares a quick glance at his dufflebag and his skateboard occupying the seat across from him, the only sound that can fill the silence of the air around him is the humming of the light rail making its way down the track. The noise isn’t necessarily a comfort or a distraction, but something that keeps Jimin from drifting too far away from reality.

He can’t believe he’s doing this, can’t believe he’s returning back to a place that smells too much of his childhood. It isn’t the house that he’s returning to, not that dreaded place with the one floor and the fading blue paint of his bedroom, that one broken spot in the tile in the bathroom that was never replaced, that one cabinet that could never open properly, the long endless nights alone that never seemed to end. Someone would have to offer something of very high value to get Jimin to do something that stupid and even then he would never do it. The thought of even setting foot in that place is enough to get ants to start crawling up his skin.

In a way, perhaps it isn’t fair to attach the downtown, city, urban area to his life, considering how small of a role it played and how it actually made certain days a little bit brighter than others in accordance to his memories. Sure, he remembers the intense colors that flicker during the night, the lights of the window displays glimmering across the sidewalks, but he also remembers his mother bringing him along simply out of obligation, how she refused to let him oogle over any of the clothes or toys or anything of interesting merit, how there was no where else he was needed or wanted at anyways.

He shuts his eyes, digging a fingernail between the bridge of his eyes, a punishment for allowing his unconscious to bring up such memories, memories he hasn’t had to think about in years. It’s his fault for allowing his mind to wander like this.

No. He removes his hands from his face, feeling his glare hardening, knowing perfectly and completely well that he should have just cut Kim Taehyung out of his life while he had the chance, if only to save himself from situations like these.

Taehyung is one of those aforementioned close friends from his childhood, one of the only people he felt bad about leaving behind and one of the only people Jimin couldn’t turn down when the former tried to reach back out to him. He had let Taehyung back into his life, albeit a little hesitantly and unsure about what would follow, yet it’s safe to say that for the most part it’s not entirely too bad—save for the occasional unexpected visits, texts, phone calls, and requests: requests like these.

Taehyung had decided to stay close to home following high school graduation, so he lives in that downtown city district area and for some reason—maybe a brain tumor or some accident that completely alters the psychological changes of one’s personality—thought it would be best to invite Jimin to some party he was hosting with his roommate. In the city. In the place Jimin had swore off, claimed he would never visit again for the rest of his life.

He remembers thinking all those things, saying all those things to Taehyung and anyone else who cared enough to listen, yet here he is: on a train, heading back into the city for a few days, completely oblivious as to what he was going to do and why he was doing this in the first place. He tries to pretend that it entirely has to do with Taehyung’s persistent calling, texting, emails, pleading; how Taehyung doesn’t approve of Jimin’s ideal of life; how he’ll shake his head to Jimin’s shrugs about where he’s going and how difficult it is for him to stick around in anything that reminds him of home. However, it most likely had to do with the fact that he’ll always hold some kind of soft spot for Taehyung, if only because he does something that no one else in Jimin’s life has done before: care for him.

The thought puts a strangely twisting knot in his stomach, so he does what he’s best at. He pushes the thought to the back of his mind, sinks lower into his seat, and prays that the week he’s spending in the city will be over in a heartbeat.

.

The whole situation doesn’t seem real, even as the light rail pulls into the station and Jimin can easily pick Taehyung out from amongst the crowd of people. The pair of them meet gazes through the window, across the space of distance between, and it doesn’t take long for the bright grin to spread itself across Taehyung’s face.

Jimin can only manage a half-hearted wave in comparison to Taehyung’s arm producing an arc of greeting to showcase his level of enthusiasm—and he wonders if it’ll be too late to turn back now and return the way he had arrived. However, the train stops, the people start exiting the transportation vehicle, and Jimin knows that there is no escaping the situation. He closes his eyes, puts on a brave face, and straightens up to exit the train.

Taehyung is standing in the same place when Jimin steps down off, but the smile does not stray and neither do the eyes as Jimin slowly makes his way over to the younger boy. “Jiminnie!” Taehyung calls, covering the space of distance between the two of them in just a few steps, immediately throwing an arm over Jimin’s shoulders and remaining completely oblivious to Jimin’s personal definition of personal space. Not that Jimin would do anything to brush Taehyung off—the boy hardly listens anyways. “How was the ride over?”

Jimin manages to readjust the strap of his dufflebag. “Long, but not that bad.”

“Are you excited to be back in the city?” Taehyung inquires happily, leading the pair of them out of the station, the bright sun shining down upon the pavement, such a difference from seeing the light from inside the confines of a light rail racing down track, yet the autumn breeze does good in preventing the heat from growing too overpowering.

Jimin merely grunts in response. “It’s only been three years,” He finds himself replying, unsure why tacking on the only was necessary, maybe just to make it seem like he hasn’t thought too long or too hard about what it would be like to return back to this place. It has been three years, but it’s more in the sense that it feels like lifetimes have stretched out, like he’s become this whole different person, like the memories of his time in the city and in his hometown were those of a past life.

“True,” Taehyung agrees with a nod. “It has only been three years—but lots has changed. You’ll get to see my apartment in the city, it’s really awesome.”

“Are you sure your roommate is okay with me crashing?” Jimin inquires, allowing Taehyung to take his bag and skateboard in order to place them in the trunk of his car.

“My roommate? You mean Jungkook?” Taehyung asks back, shutting the trunk close and flashing Jimin another grin. “Jiminnie, you’ve met Jungkook before, stop acting like you guys are strangers or something.”

“I wouldn’t count meeting-over-a-phone-call as meeting at all,” He shoots back, letting himself into the passenger side of Taehyung’s car, waiting a moment before the former takes the position in the driver’s seat.

“Well, he wants to meet you in person,” Taehyung replies, feeding the key into the ignition and starting the car up. “Jungkook actually brought up inviting you to the little get-together that we’re hosting,” He continues. “And, of course, I wasn’t about to complain. I feel like I’m always the one visiting you and seeing where life has taken you after you left so I think, you know, it would be good to for you to come back just to see what you’re missing out on.”

“It’s just for a week,” Jimin points out, resuming the position of resting his chin in the palm of his hand, if only to keep himself comfortable while studying the new passing landscapes. He doesn’t remember much, can’t place the cities with his past, yet it hardly matters. It doesn’t matter if he remembers any of those locations or not, because the week can go by in the blink of an eye and soon he’ll be leaving as quickly as he had arrived and he’ll feel no regret or remorse because it was impossible for anything to truly change over the course of a week, right?

He’s confident in his decision, in the knowledge that things simply did not change overnight. His desire to leave his hometown and everything he grew up with didn’t change, his family’s desire to make things different and better didn’t change, Taehyung’s choice to reach out to him hadn’t changed—all in all, it was difficult for such a short period of time to sustain permanent damage, and that’s why Jimin does not fret or worry about what can happen.

Taehyung is quiet for a moment. “A lot can happen in a week,” He whispers, signalling to exit the freeway and Jimin has to pretend like he hadn’t heard the younger boy.

There is a silence that envelops them as Taehyung continues with a variety of new twists and turns, the overlooming buildings serving enough of a distraction that Jimin can busy himself with gazing out of the window. Although Taehyung lives in a different area of the city than where his mother use to work, there is still the sensation of nostalgia that clings to every corner and every glimmering window, every display and shadow that they cross underneath.

He perks up slightly when they drive by a skate park, one that Jimin remembers very well for all its piping and underturned domes, the place he use to linger on for hours when his mother had to fill in last minute shifts at the office. It’s here that he practiced his tricks, learned and trained and recognized something that comforted him, something that he was good at.

It still has the same touch, the same feeling, the same equipment, same reckless nature that seems to linger in the atmosphere; even if the people and the layout is just a little bit older, a little bit more used, a little bit more worn down.

“We’re here,” Taehyung exclaims cheerfully, and Jimin blinks enough to realize that the pair of them have entered the space of a parking garage and Taehyung seems to have long since found the appropriate spot to house his vehicle.

Jimin turns. “How far away is that skate park?” He inquires, trying not to seem as desperate as he probably is just to get a taste of the good parts of his memory.  

Taehyung is in the middle of trying to unbuckle his seatbelt. “About a ten minute walk. You just take a right when you exit the building.”

Jimin nods, mentally noting this for future reference. He follows Taehyung out of the car, grabbing at his belongings when the latter opens the trunk. Once the car is locked, he makes sure to follow his friend out of the garage and into the lobby, a simple walkway with the exception of mailboxes that line the wall. All of them are secured with a key, yet it’s not hard to locate which one belongs to Taehyung and Jungkook, with the big, bright, bold JEON AND KIM lettering across the surface. He does not speak of this, however, he simply lets Taehyung lead him up the stairs to the third floor.

As soon as Taehyung unlocks the door to the apartment, it’s hard to miss the blaring of video game noises, the clicking of controllers as certain explosions and gunshots could be heard in correspondence to certain movements. “Jungkook, I’m back,” Taehyung calls, as if the process of simply opening the door hadn’t been enough of an announcement for his presence.

As it appears, it’s really not enough after all. Jimin’s very first glimpse of Jungkook is seeing the boy’s gaze fixated entirely on the screen before him. His hair is black, fluffy and sticking up in a variety of different directions, draping over his forehead with the exception of a small parting to expose some of the skin. It appears as if he’s playing some first-person shooting game, yet it’s hard to measure how successful the boy is doing just from simply watching.

Jimin chooses to linger in the hall near the front door, watching Taehyung easily maneuvers his way to the couch. The light is pouring in through the window, where Jimin can see a balcony overlooking a busy city street filled with people and cars and the structure of other neighboring buildings; however, that view is distracted when he hears Taehyung’s voice break through his consciousness. “Jungkook, I brought my friend.”

“Yeah…” Jungkook replies in an airy voice, shooting a few more fires at the different people on the screen before hitting the pause button. He turns around, facing Jimin, lips quirking up into a polite yet exciting smile. “Hey, you must be Jimin, I’m Jungkook.” He sticks his hand out across the couch, beckoning Jimin forward in order to shake his head. They exchange the typical introduction greeting about one’s day and the how both of them are feeling, before: “Taehyung says the two of you went to high school together?”

Taehyung’s eyes light up at the mention of high school as he practically throws himself on the couch. “Jiminnie! Speaking of high school, do you remember Kim Namjoon and Jung Hoseok?”

Jimin wrinkles his nose at the mention of the two vaguely familiar boys, seniors to his sophomore, and yet—!

“Well I’ve recently reunited with them so they’re coming tonight! I’m sure they’ll be happy to see you again.”

Jimin turns his head slightly to run a hand through his hair, mind momentarily reeling as to why he had even accepted the offer to join Taehyung and this party, since just the mere thought of seeing people from high school, seeing people from this city, is enough to leave him queasy.

“D-Do you mind if I put my stuff in your room, Taehyung?” Jimin asks, already making his move to step away from the couch, step away from Jungkook and Taehyung, to gesture down the hallway that he assumes leads to the bathroom.

If Jungkook and Taehyung notice his discomfort and his slight panic at having to see people, they don’t seem to take notice in it. Taehyung simply nods, giving the direction in pointing out which room belongs to him. Jimin follows the directions, taking him into Taehyung’s room—with its video game posters and anime collection and books that line the shelves. His desk is cluttered with all different types of belongings and there is a corkboard along the wall that is filled to the brim with photographs. Although Jimin’s objective had simply been to drop off his duffle bag and then perhaps take refuge in the bathroom, he finds himself gravitating towards the board.

The object is overfilled with colorful photographic memories involving all sorts of different people and places. Immediately, Jimin recognizes Jungkook, he sees aforementioned boys Namjoon and Hoseok, some photos are them altogether or individual. He sees Taehyung’s family, other friends that he doesn’t know and can’t identity. He sees a girl, eyes glimmering like the sunset that crinkle in the corner when she laughs, the way she appears to just wrap her arms around Taehyung like they’re best friends. Or dating.

Jimin shakes his head. Taehyung’s relationship status is, frankly, none of his business. Not like he cares. Not like that girl in the photographs catches his eye or anything like that.

He has to tell himself twice to look away from the photograph, to look away from that girl whose face suddenly becomes imprinted in the back of his mind. He exits Taehyung’s room, entering the living room only to find that both Taehyung and Jungkook have become emerged once again in Jungkook’s video game.

“Hey,” Jimin calls, eying his skateboard by the door. “I’m gonna go to that skatepark down the block for a few hours.”

Taehyung turns around on the couch. “Just make sure you’re in time for the party!”

“Right, right…” Jimin says back, giving both boys one last lingering glance before he grabs his skateboard and makes his way out of the apartment and down the hallway, praying that he’ll remember how to get back to the space once he steps foot outside.

He tries to find little pieces here and there to serve as a guideline as he makes his way to the stairs and out of the building, following Taehyung’s directions of taking a right and following the sidewalk pathway. It doesn’t take him long to find the skatepark, since it is rather hard to miss anyways. It’s not entirely spacious, but Jimin doesn’t mind. The sun on its descending path means that soon, the younger kids will start to make their departure.

Even with the various age ranges around him, Jimin doesn’t find it hard to manage his bearings, strangely enough. At the skatepark, he usually didn’t have problems keeping to himself and maintaining that solitude. As soon as he set forth on that board and kicked off, he usually gets wrapped up in his own little world regardless. He doesn’t even focus on doing any tricks or trying to be better than anyone else in the park. In a way, skateboarding just allows him that miniscule amount of freedom that he’s always longed for—it helps put a label to what sensation makes him the most comfortable.

He performs all his twists and turns with ease, gracefully making his way through the curves around the inward dome, bending his knees around each slope and jumping onto the protruding blocks. His lips twist into a rare smile, glad that he’s in a position where he can feel just the fraction of comfort and ease to engage in something that’s always been with him when no one else was.

Time always has seemed to fly by in a fashion too quickly for Jimin to comprehend, especially when it comes to the time he sets aside for his hobbies. But alas, the sun long dips below the horizon before he mentally agrees that it’s time to head back to the party. It had been Jimin’s main reason for coming out to the city in the first place.

With a sigh, he gathers his skateboard underneath his arm and leaves behind his favorite pastime, making his way across the street and down the pavement, back towards the apartment. The street lights do well in helping Jimin find the entrance, realizing a few hours too late that he had forgotten to get the code or some sort of way to enter the apartment building from Jungkook or Taehyung.

He curses his inability to think things through, how he probably won’t be able to simply sneak into Taehyung’s room and spend the majority of this party within the space of a private area. He momentarily plays with the idea of trying to find his way to the balcony, yet that comes with a whole other avalanche of problems that make him write away the problem before it even has a chance to settle.

With a sigh, Jimin fishes his phone out of his back pocket, scrolling through his list of contacts and selecting the one he’s looking for before—!

“Jimin!” Taehyung cries from the other side of the line. “Where are you?”

“I’m stuck outside your apartment,” Jimin reports, glancing over his shoulder and hoping that no one would report him for suspicious behavior. “I forgot to get the code from you so…”

“Oh okay!” Taehyung exclaims. “I’ll be down in a few seconds to let you in! Stay where you are, okay?” There’s something a little off about the way he speaks, almost as if he’s yelling everything, but Jimin never gets to ask the question.

He counts to twenty before the door to the apartment building swings open to reveal Taehyung, a flush dusting along his cheekbone and a glassy complexion to his face leaving little to the imagination.

“Are you drunk?” Jimin says by way of greeting, noticing that his tone is way more exasperated than he originally intended.

Taehyung smiles that boxy smile, a whole lot more careless with the way he presents it that doesn’t leave any doubt in Jimin’s mind regarding the mental and physical state of his wellbeing. Especially when the boy opens his mouth to utter: “I’m not drunk!”

“Okay, sure,” Jimin brushes off, entering the apartment building as Taehyung opens the door wider for him to enter before following him towards the stairs.

“I’m really not,” Taehyung protests. “Not yet, at least. I only got in a few shots before you called.”

“Well, it’s nice to know that you’re being responsible,” Jimin points out dryly as he follows Taehyung, the latter thankfully stable and conscious enough to know the direction to his apartment. Although, as the pair of them approach closer and closer to Taehyung’s corresponding apartment number, Jimin realizes that it would have been hard not to notice where the place is. There is music humming against the walls, seeping through the door, and he wonders if Taehyung and Jungkook have received many complaints about hosting such parties.

“You’ve come back at a good time though,” Taehyung appears to be in the middle of explaining as he manages to fish out his keys. “Mostly everyone is here.” He unlocks the door with ease and opens it, stepping through confidently. Jimin follows in nervously behind him, immediately taking in the handful of people lingering about, the conversations plaguing the atmosphere, alcohol lining the kitchen countertop. He notes the different groups of people: some at the counter doing shots and shouting incoherent nothings at one another, others playing video games or board games scattered about the living room floor, some on the balcony engaging in conversations, others in the hall. There are people all throughout the apartment, barely giving Jimin a breather before Taehyung is announcing their presence.

It’s easy to pinpoint Jungkook in the kitchen, downing another shot and laughing loudly at something a taller broad-shouldered boy is saying. There are other people from the past Jimin had no recollection of until Taehyung gets all the introductions in order. He remembers Kim Namjoon and Jung Hoseok, not just from the previous conversations but also from the time spent in high school—memories of classes together or spending time out on the field, or how Jung Hoseok’s original usage of a skateboard had peaked Jimin’s interest.

The pair of them briefly converse, certain topics coming up like high school graduation and the things that follow, how Namjoon and Hoseok stray away from asking about Jimin’s own life—the boy strongly suspects that Taehyung has something to do with that—and how Hoseok and Namjoon are spending their time in the city.

There are other people too, other names that slowly get lost in the back of his mind amidst all the greetings and momentary handshakes. There are individuals he vaguely remembers seeing from the photographs, and he wonders if it’s weird that he’s seen another dimension to the lives of people he barely knows. Still, it’s overwhelming at times. He doesn’t even know how long it is before he’s finally alone enough to accept the drink Taehyung is offering to him.

“You seem to be doing well,” Taehyung notes proudly, the grin plastered across his face and yet he seems distracted. He’s craning his neck, clearly looking for someone amongst the crowd of people. “And, you know, getting along nicely with everyone.”

Jimin manages a shrug long enough to take a sip of whatever Taehyung had prepared for him. Surprisingly, it’s a soju and doesn’t burn—instead, it leaves behind a lingering taste that reminds him of peach. There is a slight buzz that comes along with the sensation, if only to help loosen him up just enough. “Everyone is fine, I guess.”

Taehyung doesn’t appear to have heard Jimin’s statement, because he is suddenly too preoccupied in grinning brightly at something new that has decided to interject into the conversation.

Turns out this something new is someone new, yet someone vaguely familiar and it hits Jimin like a bucket of ice cold water because this couldn’t be, this had to be some play on his imagination, unless—!

“Ye Sol!” Taehyung greets, wrapping his arms around the figure that has magically appeared by his side: a girl, flushed and happy and excited and a direct reflection from the photographs you were in along Taehyung’s wall. It’s almost embarrassing how quickly Jimin is able to place you from his memory, given how well he’s taught himself how to write away people and how no one is ever entirely permanent (it helps with not making things emotional, something he surprisingly learned from his mother). Yet, he remembers, as he stands there staring at you openly, his eyes giving away the fact that he knows how you look when the sun hits your hair just right, how you look when you’re the happiest you could possibly be, and he wishes for nothing more than to stab the nerve of curiosity weaving its way through his body.

“Hi Tae!” You say back, pulling back to grin up at the boy, all smiles and no remorse and there’s something so charming about the way you present yourself that Jimin simply finds himself staring.  “Where have you been? I was doing shots with Jungkook and you weren’t with him!”

“Well, you see Ye Sol,” Taehyung starts in a rather extravagant matter, momentarily leaving your side just to swing an arm around Jimin’s shoulder, immediately shifting your attention from Taehyung to Jimin. “I’ve been showing an old friend around.”

“Oh that’s right!” You exclaim, eyes lighting up as you flash your classical kind smile he remembers from your photograph. “You must be Jimin. I’m Ye Sol.” You stick out your right hand and he takes it. Your grip is firm, not overwhelming, yet there is a flicker in your eyes that makes him wonder how much you truly know about him. The pair of you pull away, and you open your mouth to make brief conversation, until Jungkook’s voice is calling your name long enough to distract you. “Oh I think Jungkook is doing another round. I’ll catch up with you guys later!” You throw the pair of them one last smile over your shoulder before you’re bounding off towards the kitchen, Jimin’s eyes following your retreating figure. Unconsciously, he licks his lips.

“Isn’t she great?” Taehyung drawls, leaning against Jimin. “We met through Jungkook—the two of them went to high school together, but we’ve gotten pretty close too.”

“A-Are you two dating?” Jimin asks, then curses himself for displaying any level of interest on the subject. He’s not supposed to care about Taehyung’s life, not supposed to care about anything that could make him develop some sort of emotional attachment to the people in this city, not supposed to care about anything that’ll make him want to stick around.

Taehyung laughs at that. “Oh no, she’s just a friend.” He cranes his neck to look at Jimin, a glint of knowledge flickering in the corner of his eyes. “Why?”

“No reason,” Jimin brushes off, distracting himself with a long gulp of the soju. This time, it burns just a little bit more. “Just wondering how such a free spirit like yourself could have thoughts of settling down.”

“Says the guy who never likes to be anywhere for more than a week,” Taehyung grumbles underneath his own breath.

.

Hours into the party finds Jimin ducking behind the curtains that lead out into the balcony, the small area thankfully empty given that everyone else is inside playing board games or inside trying to sleep away their alcohol or inside trying to vomit it out instead. Everything seems to have quieted down in correspondence to the late night, the moon in the sky, the lights across the city, the exhausting touch in the air.

It’s the perfect time for Jimin to make his escape. Taehyung, who has spent the entire evening dragging Jimin here and there, is too caught up screaming over whatever card game he’s playing with the other members of the party to notice as Jimin silently removes himself from the couch and steps onto the balcony.

There is a breeze tonight, one that helps him breathe, as he rests his arms along the railing and inhales quietly, trying to picture what the next few days of this is going to consist of. He tries to play with the idea of leaving early, of coming up with an excuse to get on that light rail early—but it cost money for the ticket and it would cost more to attempt boarding at some time different from the one originally set. He sighs.

He jumps when he hears someone else joining him out onto the balcony, whirling around in time to see you opening the glass door. Rather than looking equally as surprised to see him, you smile just a little bit brighter than you had the first time. If that’s even possible. How can someone’s eyes crinkle in the corner like that, glimmering in a shade even more dazzling than the city lights?

Something leaps in his chest, a feeling and a sensation he hasn’t felt in years—maybe even in his life, and he curses wildly in his mind, tearing his gaze from you and silently trying to write away the unfamiliar emotion: the kind that makes him want to look at you, makes him want to see the real curve of your smile and hear the melody of your laugh, makes him want to know more about you, makes him want to stay and figure it out.

He bites the inside of his cheek. “What are you doing out here?” He asks, turning back out to take in the view of Taehyung’s apartment. It’s relatively low to the ground, not high enough to see the rainbow of colors, but just enough to look down the street and see something.

“I thought you could use some company,” You remark, your voice softer and smoother than it had been back inside with all the noise and the people. “Taehyung can get really distracted when he’s drunk.”

Jimin shrugs. “I actually enjoy the peace and quiet.”

“He’s mentioned you a few times,” You say suddenly, something in your voice saying that you’ve gone over how to say this before actually opening your mouth. “He said you guys went to high school together.”

“It wasn’t anything special,” He answers, looking down to play with his fingers.

“Must not have been,” You return, situating yourself next to him. “He told me that you left.”

“Yeah, well, that’s not really any of your business,” He retorts before he can stop himself, immediately clamping his mouth shut as he turns to gaze out at the view once more. He closes his eyes, wondering what kind of expression would be dawned across your feature. He tries to picture a defensive scowl, a disappointed smile, a shocked parting of your lips, and has to put in more effort than normal into not feeling guilty.

He doesn’t have to try too hard, however, because your small exhale of laughter melts away his apprehension—yet, he cannot tell if that is a good thing or not.

“Right,” You say after a moment, your tone not implying significant sadness or aggression, but rather a gentle understanding that he is not use to. The realization makes his head spin because were you really not going to roll your eyes at his tone like Taehyung would? Were you really just going to stand there and be brushed off and not ask him more questions? What the fuck?

Jimin can’t process his confusion or his relief, doesn’t know how to categorize the sensation of his feelings, which immediately leaves a nervous itch in the pit of his stomach. One aspect of being alone and having to mature at a young age was this idea of being in control and of being able to recognize his feelings as well as work out how to go about handling aforementioned feelings. It’s a system that has always worked well with Jimin—whose breadth of emotions is limited to dealing with stress or shitty group members, how he functions on just three hours of sleep or harboring that desire to run as fast and as far as he legs were willing to carry him.

When he can’t understand a feeling, he tries to write it off as an annoying brush, tries to pretend like it could go away with a few unnecessary comments or doing whatever he could to get someone off his back.

“I think Tae might have mentioned this already, but I met Jungkook first,” You say after a moment, smoothing your palms over the railing, your sudden voice shifting Jimin out of his trance. He had been expecting you to leave after seeing how unwilling he was to open up about things. “We went to high school together and immediately clicked. It might have something to do with the fact that we had a crush on each other for a semester.” You laugh. “Neither of us really acted on our feelings so those went away but our desire to keep a friendship going never did, so it’s nice to have a piece of something from home to carry with me.”

Jimin turns his head towards you, if only to continue listening to you talk. You have a nice sort of voice, not too loud or obnoxious or demanding or something that makes him feel like he has to return the level of intimacy you’re sharing with him. It’s relaxing and draws out in a way, like a melody, not too forceful but accompanied with the occasional breathy laugh that makes his heart do this annoying fluttering thing in his chest.

It doesn’t stop there, because he soon finds that you really don’t stop talking. Like, ever. Soon, your encounter with Jungkook turns into a variety of stories from high school both on and off the campus. You talk so fast, so much, so easily, like you don’t think twice about disclosing information about your personal life with someone who thinks twice about sharing a last name that Jimin really just does not know what to think of you.

He tries to tell himself that the initial feeling that fills his mind and his body is one of irritation because the last time he let someone in who felt the need to fill the air of silence with words, it’s led him back to this balcony in a city that makes him think that ants might start crawling up his skin. Yet, the longer he stands there, hearing you go on and on and on about the time you fell off a tree and still have the scar on your knee to prove it, the longer he realizes that he doesn’t particularly mind you sharing tales of your past. He realizes that you don’t even have to be talking about anything of substance, and he would still crane his neck just enough to catch even the smallest whisper that dare leave your lips.

Jimin isn’t even conscious of how much time passes before Jungkook’s laughter is drifting, sailing from inside the apartment to outside, the sound of the glass door opening and closing before the footsteps follow shortly behind. “You guys look cozy up here.”

Both you and Jimin look over your shoulder to acknowledge the new guest, yet Jimin immediately flickers his gaze to you, watching as you flash Jungkook a grin: a private smile that crinkles the corner of your eyes, that leaves little doubt about the level of fondness you hold for Jungkook no matter the current status of your relationship with him.

A feeling spikes through Jimin, a burning, brewing sensation that makes his heart rate elevate in a way that is noticeably different than before. Unlike being alone with you, when he felt as if he could float up to the sky, the sight of seeing you and Jungkook feels like poison and daggers and a weight sinking him back down to reality where he belongs.

“Hi Jungkook,” You greet as Jungkook joins at your right. “Did it get boring taking shots with Tae?”

“He finished the whole bottle,” Jungkook reports, and Jimin turns to study the younger boy’s expression. He’s got a light-hearted smile dancing across his features, the bright red along his cheeks evident of the level of alcohol he’s consumed throughout the night. He’s surprisingly well-spoken for someone who had been downing shots of vodka throughout the night, but Jimin supposes that Jungkook sobers up rather quickly—like you. “Everyone else is starting to leave anyways.”

“Huh.” You look over your shoulder to find that the apartment is slowing emptying of people, individuals once unconscious on the couch have slowly started to find life again, courtesy of Taehyung’s not-so-kind shoves and shakes on the shoulder. You turn back to Jungkook and smile. “Well, I guess that’s my cue to take a leave then. What time is it anyways?” You fish out your phone, making a noise in the back of your throat when the number registers in your mind. “Oh wow, three in the morning should be a new record for me. I should get going before it’s too late.”

“Are you sure?” Jungkook inquires, eyebrow raised, the once glassy complexion in his eyes fading away at the words of your departure. “You don’t have to leave, you know, you’re more than welcome to stay.”

“It’s alright,” You say with a smile. “You already have company, and I would hate to overextend my stay.” You turn to Jimin, who had been relatively quiet throughout a majority of the conversation, yet he remains as alert as ever as you give him another smile—as if he never brushed you off, as if the pair of you had been friends forever. “It was nice to meet you Jimin, I hope you decide to stick it out for a few days here—the city really is a beautiful place to be.”

He gazes over to study you, to take in the endearment of your words, how you truly mean what you say. Your words reek of commitment, yet it draws him forward like bees to honey and he momentarily plays with the idea of saying yes, of staying, and seeing that smile light up your expression once more.

He rips his gaze away from you. “We’ll see,” He says.

The last thing he sees of you is that smile, no anger or disappointment flickering in your eyes at his dismissive words, before you’re stepping towards the glass door separating indoors from outdoors.

Jimin watches as Jungkook eyes your retracting figure. “Let me walk you to the door,” He says, opening the glass door for you and leading you to the front of the apartment. This once again leaves Jimin alone on the balcony as he had desired all those hours ago.

Somehow, it feels just a little bit more empty—and the realization washes over him like ice cold panic as he desperately formulates just what the fuck he was going to do about this, about you.

.

According to Park Jimin, the best way to rid of a problem is to ignore it entirely and do whatever he could in his power to ensure that he could put as much physical distance between himself and aforementioned problem as humanly possible. Most of the time, he does well with the situation. It helps that a lot of the issues he tries to avoid either involve tangible, lifeless objects or assignments that can’t come back to haunt him in his dreams or individuals who have no qualms are trying to mend any sort of friendship with him whatsoever.

So, given his track record, it makes sense that he would think the situation with you would not be any different. It makes sense that he would think that as soon as you walked through those doors and exited his life, it would be a first and last time scenario.

Clearly, he did not know you as well as he thought he did—not that he ever prided on knowing your motives in the first place, he just assumed that his attitude made it clear that he was not keen on making friends throughout his trip, that he would just rather keep to himself beyond his association to Kim Taehyung and Jeon Jungkook.

However, it doesn’t take him long to realize that even the association gives him a disadvantage.

In fact, it only takes about a day.

Taehyung and Jungkook have classes throughout the afternoon, something that Jimin has no problem with whatsoever. Rather, he enjoys the peace, enjoys waking up with no one else in the apartment and knowing that he has a small number of hours to collect his thoughts and breathe—so he does the only thing he knows how to do: he grabs his skateboard and takes his leave.

With no plans, it gives Jimin a lot of legroom on how to go about the day. He dodges through the crowds of people, entering the space of the skatepark and immediately feeling at peace. The morning weekday crowd makes him feel more comfortable and connected with those around him, given that most of them look to be his age, college students who are using this window of free time not occupied by classes or work. Not much greetings or exchanges are given, not that Jimin is expecting any, as he plugs in his headphones, readies himself on his board and takes off.

He notes how different the sensation is between skating out in an opened space and skating within the city, how much more constricting that is. There is a restriction that comes along with it; yet, in a way, it’s not nearly as lonesome as he pictured it would be from his memories. It’s almost comforting to picture that these people are like him: just trying to figure it out.

His eyes catch a figure attempting to perch herself along the ram at the edge of the park, her hair like a curtain. The mannerism she displays is familiar, too familiar, as he finds himself turning his head to try and catch a glimpse of the stranger.

He’s able to catch a full-body observation and he almost chokes with the way the words lodge themselves into his throat. Without a warning, he changes his course, performing a sharp 180 degree turn and making his way over to the passerby who has attempted to make herself comfortable, making his way over to—!

He rips his earphones off. “What are you doing here?” He asks, furrowing his eyebrows, definitely not enough to display a certain level of exasperation, because what the actual fuck?

You smile shyly. “Hi Jimin.”

His frown deepens, unsure what kind of emotion his body is trying to convey to him and even more unsure how to display it. “What are you doing here?” He repeats.

You don’t seem shaken over the fact that he isn’t displaying any excitement at seeing you again. “I thought I’d come by to see if you decided to stick it out just a little longer,” You answer, craning your neck slightly. “I guess I got my answer.”

He shrugs. “Taehyung begged me to stay.”

You brighten slightly, a teasing curl threatening to spill out across your lips. “So it must have worked this time—trying to convince you to give the city a chance.”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” He retorts, looking out at the other skaters flying out and around the inward domes and he can’t tell if he would rather stay out in the park with his own thoughts or spend more time with you. The fact that he can’t come up with a solid answer is frustrating.

You shrug. “Sometimes, hope is all we have.” You’re watching him carefully, fingers gripping loosely at the railing behind you. Your eyes look conflicted, as if you can’t figure him out yet you desire strongly to do so.

He’s never had someone looking at him like that before.

“How did you know where to find me?”

“Ah, Taehyung told me you’d be here—he said that you were eying it when you guys got here and might have stayed longer yesterday had it not been for the party.”

He nods slowly, knowing better than to be surprised over Taehyung often knowing his motives better than him.

“How long have you been here?” You ask after a moment.

“Uh.” Jimin looks at his watch, only slightly surprised to find that nearly three hours have passed since he stepped out into the skatepark. The time always seemed to fly by, and it’s clear that today is no exception. “A few hours, I guess.”

You grin at that. “Did you want to to take a break? There’s this great sandwich place a few streets down that I think you might enjoy. Have you eaten lunch yet?”

He shakes his head. “I can’t remember if I ate breakfast, I think I was just trying to rush out of the apartment as quickly as possible.”

You exhale in a breathy laugh, flashing them a shyer smile—one that he notices you get a lot when he says more than two words to you. The fact that this is something about you he’s managed to pick up is frightening, but he swallows the thought down before it could manifest into something more. “Just my luck right?” You continue, shoving your hands into the pocket your military green denim coat. “C’mon, we should head over before the lunch crowd.”

You take a few steps forward in order to exit the perimeter of the skate park before stopping and looking over your shoulder to see if Jimin was going to follow you. He debates for a second, mentally writing off that he was only following you for the potential promise of a free lunch, before he slowly trails after you.

“Taehyung told me use to come here a lot when you were younger,” You start, turning your head to watch the passerby of cars, waiting for the lights to switch around so you could take your pathway down the street.

Jimin gives you a side glance. “You know everything about me now, huh.” The words come out dry and less like a question and more like a statement, which had not been Jimin’s intention.

“W-Well how else am I supposed to know more about you if you won’t tell me anything?” You return, a slight waver to your voice, enough of what Jimin had not been expecting you to reply with—so much so that he fixes you with a more lingering stare to see your side profile and the way you’re biting your lip and is that a flush along your cheeks—?

He clears his throat. “You never ask me anything,” He starts slowly, already feeling the weight of his words pressing down on his chest.

You turn to gaze up at him, eyebrows raised. “Are you implying that you’ll answer a question of mine then if I asked?”

He winces, vaguely remembering how he had nearly bit your head off the last time you decided to ask a question—the apprehension in your eyes tells him that you’re still only too aware of that and don’t wish to put him in a position that makes him feel uncomfortable. The fact that you’re so considerate of Jimin’s feelings and the wall he’s built around himself is startling, yet reassuring and comforting and perhaps it wouldn’t hurt just to—!

“Why don’t you find out?” He asks back softly, so quietly that he’s afraid that you didn’t hear him and he would have to repeat himself and lose his nerve.

But your eyes don’t stray from his, the slight parting of your lips telling him how surprised you are that he’s relented so easily to your request—the shock soon turns into a smile that looks like it’s trying too hard to contain itself. “How long will you be in the city?” You ask.

The question is short and simple and objective and so surprisingly different than what Jimin had been expecting you to ask that he can’t help it: he lets a breathy laugh escape from in between his lips, momentarily letting his lips curve up enough to flash his teeth.

You inhale sharply at the sight, your lips pressing together as you swallow, eyes taking in the expanse of his smile as if to commit it to memory. It’s hard to miss to crinkle at the corner of his eyes, as short and brief as it may seem, because you find yourself yearning for it again when he bites his lip to diffuse it.

“For a week,” He answers, trailing after the crowd of people when the light turns red and the crosswalk sign flashes white.

You follow, having to move a little quicker to match paces with him given that his legs were slightly longer than your own. You don’t complain, you merely smile. “Do you have any plans throughout the week?”

“I’m not too sure,” He says, watching the way you watch take in the city landscapes around you—probably keeping an eye out for that sandwich place you previously spoke about. “I’m sure Tae has some ideas in mind, but I just wish that I could spend all day at the skatepark.”

“I mean you could probably go skating whenever you want,” You point out, gazing over at him nervously. “It’s always better to leave a place not wishing you had done something different.”

He gives you a side glance, watching as your eyes light up at the sight of the pair of you approaching the familiar sandwich deli. The interior is not too packed, probably because the lunch hour has passed, yet you guide yourself into the scene as if you’ve been going to this deli for your entire life. This wouldn’t surprise Jimin too much, considering that Jimin knew Jungkook went to the high school in the next city over and how you wear such a naive lense on the world around you. How else could you carry on looking like reality has yet to harden you?

Or, maybe it has and you just have a really good way of hiding it.

Fuck—he was thinking too much about you again.

He shakes his head, swallowing the need to panic, simply subjecting himself to following after you as you set yourself in line to place an order. Despite the fact that it was never agreed upon, you pay for the meal and settle into a booth next to the window, while you smile brighter than the sun outside and Jimin has the best sandwich in his entire life.

.

Day three in the city follows a similar pattern: he shows up early morning at the skatepark, filling his head with absolute nothingness as he weaves himself in and around the court of people, of strangers. He’s just starting to get into a positive rhythm of things when he catches your figure drifting into the skatepark. This time around, he doesn’t get as surprised as he was the previous day to see you. Rather, it feels just a little bit more natural to roll up over to you. “Hey,” He lets out as soon as he reaches you, gripping the skateboard lightly in his hold as your grin widens—maybe at the fact that he’s greeting you with a statement rather than a question like last time.

“Hi,” You say back. “Are you hungry?”

He agrees with a shrug of his shoulders, but it doesn’t matter because it’s still a yes and it still has you laughing as you report knowing a good, small, quaint pizza place at the corner of one of the more quiet areas of the city. The pair of you agree to walk together where, once again, you get caught up in your recounting of more stories from your childhood. As you pass by different buildings, you provide your own independent history of those locations and landmarks. Most of them are small, seemingly insignificant anecdotes that he finds himself latching onto regardless.

“I remember this place,” Jimin points out, pointing out a cupcake shop as the crowds of people slowly start to die down, meaning that the pair of you must be getting closer and closer to the shop you were referring to. “I use to pass by a lot when my mom brought me into the city—she only let me have a cupcake once so I only got to try the red velvet but I’ve always wondered what other flavors they had…”

It’s such a quick observation that he thinks you’re not paying attention, even when you reach the pizza parlor and he is immediately taken away by the heavy spell of grease and meat and cheese in such a way that has his mouth positively watering. He can even feel the way his eyes light up when he takes that first bite and letting the saltiness sink into his tastebuds as he finds that he is a feeling he hasn’t felt in years: content.

His eyes flicker across the booth to see the way you’re smiling at him, as if you can feel his joy and he looks back down to study his pizza, not for the first time feeling that racing sensation in his chest, as a small voice in the back of his head whispers that he could make this a regular part of his routine and his life and he would not mind.

It’s definitely unconscious, definitely enough to make the panic settle in and stick harder and faster than anything before. Comfort between himself and those around him shouldn’t be allowed because comfort leads to friendship and friendship leads to staying and he can’t stay in this city—not when his goal has always been to leave even before he was forced on that train in the first place.

He doesn’t do well with nerves and the trying to feel detachment when he’s really feeling everything, so he does the only thing he’s truly capable of knowing, the only real and tangible thing he learned from his parents: how to push away something he can’t understand, something he can’t bear to let slip past his walls.

Day four in the city opens up to a sunny morning, one much brighter than normal. Jimin feels it in the sunlight that streams in through the window when he wakes up, in the warm heat that beats down as he exits the apartment and makes his way to the skatepark. He doesn’t think he could ever get tired of that freeing sensation, of rolling in and out and his own pace and not feeling that usual weight of his anxiety crushing at his windpipes. Even though he’s in a much more enclosed space in an area that is always occupied by people, it’s easy to tone them out and pretend that just for a moment, it’s him, his skateboard, and the empty air around him.

That is, until he sees you making your way into the park and the reality comes crushing down at his windpipes, making him remember the situation that you’ve put him into. He can’t help but notice how domestic the whole thing looks. You: standing there with a bag of something tucked underneath your fingertips with a logo that he can’t seem to make out from the distance, waiting for him like clockwork like a pattern like a commitment—the potential of what could be makes him sick.

He does well in ignoring that natural sensation in rolling up to you, yanking the headphones out of his ear as he overcomes a state of panic long enough to choke out: “What are you doing here?”

You blink, momentarily confused over his state of mind, especially considering how quickly he had seemed to roll up to you like nothing else mattered. “W-Well,” You stammer, displaying the first sign of flustered emotions since meeting, looking less confident than you had been a few seconds ago. “I thought we could hang out again, since… you know… that’s what we’ve been doing for the past few days. I-I even brought you something—!”

He yanks the bag from you, not even applying that much force in his suddenly aggressive behavior but it still makes you jump. “Well those days were different,” He retorts, frowning and trying to ignore that stuttering feeling in his chest when he takes in your diffusing smile. “Today I just—you just shoved your way into my life again like you always do and I felt bad those past few days but now it’s just… it’s ridiculous. I feel like I can’t even take a piss without you looking to see what I’m doing for the day or where I’m going or why I’m here in the city. I’ve only been here for four days but I can already feel you breathing down my neck—you’re just like Taehyung and not even in a good way and I just—I need a day alone, okay? Just one day.”

His grip on the bag tightens, so much so that the rough paper digs into the palm of his hand, the pain keeping him grounded as he tries to tell himself that this had been the right thing to do. What were you expecting out of this friendship anyways? Why were you chasing him around all the time and asking questions to him and about him and why were you so persistent and caring and it should drive him absolutely mad but he can’t get you out of his head at the same time and it confuses the fuck out of him and—!

“Okay.” You let out.

Jimin flickers his gaze over to you, clenching his teeth together as he takes in the fact that you won’t even look at him this time around. Your eyes are trained to the floor, and he looks away as soon as he sees the rapid blinking.

“Okay,” You repeat, taking in a breath, forcing yourself to look at him, and giving him a tight smile. There are no tears in your eyes, but the embarrassment is still leaking off your body like steam as Jimin takes in your facial features and realizes that he really really really really really fucking hates seeing you like this. “Okay, I got it. I’m sorry. I’ll just… I didn’t know that’s how you really felt but now that I know I just—I’ll leave right now.”

He stays quiet as he watches you step away and out of the skatepark, how you run to join the crosswalkers and disappear across the street, not even turning around to see if he would follow you. This leaves Jimin alone on the edge of the park, gripping his skateboard and the bag in his hands that remind themselves of their presence when he regains enough consciousness to feel the weight in his hands. He looks down, resting his skateboard on the floor and digging around to produce a box of cupcakes. Suddenly, the memory of his slipup the previous day weighs on his shoulders as he opens the box enough to see twelve cupcakes in every flavor that hung in the window display. He can’t believe you remember what he had said when he can barely remember what he himself says.

The sweet smell practically floats off the wrapper, making him feel like the biggest jackass in the world—definitely a first.

He really didn’t need to yell at you.

“Dammit,” He hisses under his breath, placing the box of cupcakes back into the bag and jogging out of the skatepark, taking a few starting steps before he slides the skateboard in front of him, mounting it with ease as he crosses the street and mirrors the same path you had taken a few seconds ago. He doesn’t know where you had gone or even if he’ll get this right but every time he blinks he sees your watery smile and he just knows that he fucked up.

He looks up, heart practically giving out on the spot when he spots your backside making your way to Taehyung’s apartment. He notices your hunched form, how you’ve drawn your jacket just a little bit tighter around you even though it’s not even that cold and while he hates that he can tell how upset you are, he hates it even more that he’s the one who made you this upset in the first place.

He swallows thickly. “Ye Sol,” He calls out as soon as he sees you approaching the apartment building, forcing himself to speed up. You don’t appear to hear him at first, you merely keep looking ahead and keep walking forward, even as Jimin grows closer and closer to you, dismounting his skateboard just to make a grab for your wrist yet the action is so sudden and so without warning that he really shouldn’t be surprised when you scream.

He winces, even when you whirl around and stop by clamping your mouth shut. You stare up at him, not angry or defensive, but you do look slightly more wary and careful—yet with you, anything less than a smile makes feel incomplete.

“Jimin…” You whisper, eyes trailing down to the spot where his fingers are curled around your wrist, but he doesn’t pull away. He refuses to let himself do that now, even when it feels like his heart and his nerves might eat him alive.

He closes his eyes for a moment—once again seeing your face behind his lids—and lets out a breath, before opening his eyes and his mouth and doing something he hadn’t done since he was ten.

“I’m sorry,” He says, willing you to look up at him again and when you do he’s almost surprised to see how open and vulnerable you appear. Your eyes always use to hold such a hazy happiness, as if nothing could get under your skin, but the fact that there’s actually a hint of apprehension and nervousness touching at the corners makes him hesitant in return. “I’m sorry for yelling at you. You didn’t deserve it, and I just have a lot on my mind, and being in the city freaks me out sometimes.”

Your silence to his confession worries him, makes him think he’s doing something wrong.

“I-I was wrong earlier,” He hastily tacks on. “You’re not annoying or overbearing and you never make me feel like you’re breathing down my neck. You’re… probably one of the nicest things about this place.”

You flicker your gaze downwards, and your lack of response makes Jimin panic.

“Uh, here.” He lets go of your wrist and digs into the bag, producing the box of cupcakes you had given him. “We can share the cupcakes—or, fuck, I-I mean, you can have them back, not because I didn’t like the gesture I really did, it’s just that you always do such nice things for me—not that I hate it it’s just that—ah, fuck.” He scratches the back of his neck. Jimin wasn’t sure what he was picturing when it came to apologizing to you but it definitely had not been this. He’s not even entirely certain the words leaving his lips could count as an apology to begin with.

You gaze up at him for just a moment longer, waiting for a second, watching his sanity fall apart right before your eyes, before you laugh.

Jimin stills at the noise, turning his neck to stare at you with a wide-eyed gaze, watching as you lips curl back up into that dazzling smile, the exhale of laughter leaving from in between your teeth as you continue to watch him. “Keep the cupcakes,” You say, taking the box from him and placing it back in the bag. “You said you wanted to try every flavor, right?”

“U-Uh.” He stands there, momentarily speechless, unsure how to react in light of your response to his apology-that-also-doesn’t-feel-like-an-apology. “Y-Yeah.”

You smile. “I accept your apology, Jimin,” You reply, showing teeth this time as you take a step closer to him in order to lightly nudge his shoulder with your own. “Don’t be so tense, it’s okay.” You tilt your head back. “I have to get home though, I have this killer essay I have to work on and it’s gonna take me awhile to figure out what I’m going to write about.”

Jimin stares at you, watches as you move to step away from him; however, the gesture feels too soon and he finds that he’s not ready to leave you yet. Without meaning to, he reaches out to grasp your wrist again.

You stop immediately in your track, parting your lips slightly as you look over at him again, the question present in your eyes, a look so endearing that he momentarily can’t remember why he had stopped you in the first place.

“W-Will you be back tomorrow?” He manages, swallowing thickly and trying not to seem as nervous as he actually is. He’s never asked people to come back, never once wasted a breath on his vocal chords to request for someone to return back into his life, so he doesn’t really know the protocol on how to ask. Because of that, he doesn’t know the protocol on how you’ll answer the question.

But you smile, nodding as if this should have been obvious all along. “Of course,” You return, using your vacant hand to reach out and grasp Jimin’s shoulder. You give it a reassuring squeeze. “Same time,” You add, pulling away as Jimin lets you slip out of his hold. “See you tomorrow!”

“Right,” He says, nodding as you give him one last smile before you’re turning around and walking away. There is a bit of a beat in your step this time, your chin is raised just a little bit higher, your hair flying out like a curtain caught in the wind as you pace down the street back to your apartment and Jimin finds that he is simply content just watching you go.

As soon as you disappear amongst the throngs of people, Jimin tightens his grip on the bag of cupcakes, taking those few additional steps to Taehyung’s apartment, enters the code, and lets himself into the building, mounting the stairs and following the directions he now knows by heart after only just four days.

He knocks on the apartment, the call answered no later than a second by Taehyung, who swings open the door and presents forth his usual bright and happy smile. “Hey,” He greets, opening it wider for the other boy to step through. “Oh, what’s in the bag?”

“Oh.” For some reason, the question brings a defensive desire to surge through his being as he finds that his grip tightens slightly on the strap holding the cupcakes. “Nothing.”

“Are those cupcakes?” Taehyung inquires, of course, feeling that need to look into the bag regardless just to satisfy his curiosity. “Are you celebrating the fact that it’s day four and more than halfway until you get to leave?”

Jimin stills at that, honestly having forgotten about the date of his return approaching at a speed he had not been anticipating which is surprising considering that all he’s ever wanted to do since arrival was return, how he simply could not wait for the return on his ticket to match the return in a real time setting. But now that it’s actually happening and happening so soon, the weight in his hands almost leaves him hesitant and unsure. Now that he’s fixed things with you and the air feels lighter and a part of him likes that a lot.

It makes him want to know the feeling, if anything, of making a friend.

“U-Uh, actually,” He starts, scratching the back of his neck. “I was thinking of maybe… staying a few more days. Like maybe until next week or something.”

Taehyung positively glows at the news. “Really?” He inquires, clapping his hands together. “Jimin that’s great to hear! What changed your mind?”

Jimin thinks about the smile that shines brighter than the sun, the heart full of purity and acceptance and understanding, the cupcakes in his hand that represent something and someone that makes him feel something no one else in his life has made him feel.

He swallows. “I guess there’s just more to the city than I realized.”

.

Much like your promise, you meet him outside the skatepark the following day with a backpack and a proposal: to have a picnic near the lake. He doesn’t believe you at first when you tell him about the lake, how any body of water can be near or in the city but you remain insistent and tell him with a smile to just believe in you.

And he does, although he doesn’t admit it out loud, and allows you to guide him. This place is further than any other location the pair of you have visited in the past, meaning that you have to take the underground subway to get there. You guide him there to the station with ease, teaching him how to purchase an access card and seeming to know exactly which platform to stand on, how many stops it’ll take to get there. You talk about visiting the lake many times throughout your childhood, how there’s this amazing park that seems to stretch on for miles across that you speak so highly about he finds himself getting excited about the prospect.

You lead him out at the corresponding stop, taking him up the stairs and as soon as the pair of you make contact with the outdoor breeze again, he sees it: the trees that grow up as high as the nearby buildings, the pathways filled with people and bikers of all ages. Beyond the pathways lay hills of grass that look so soft and smooth and peaceful that Jimin can feel his lips parting at the sight. To think that something so calming lay in such a hectic city is something that he can barely wrap his mind around yet here he is standing in the scene and taking in everything.

“C’mon, the lake is this way,” You say, reaching out to grip his wrist, probably noticing his distracted mindset, as you guide him down the path. There is a naturality that settles from your gesture, something that Jimin simply lets you carry away with because he knows that if he were to lose sight of you, he would become lost in his thoughts and then lose track of your location and he doesn’t wish to do that to himself.

He doesn’t say anything as you take him by the wrist, leading him through the hills and patches the grass, stepping around tree branches that weave through the ground. The lake is situated towards the center of the park, but as soon as the trees start clearing up and the light glimmers without the obstruction of branches, he sees the lake. Even with the city landscape and the continuation of trees all around the water, there is still something secluding and remoted about the sight before you.

The pair of you take seats underneath a tree, the grass underneath his leg surprisingly not hard or prickly but rather soft and making him desire nothing more than to just lay down and watch the world pass him by.

He stays quiet, even as you pass him his sandwich and start going on about stories of times spent in the city and the park. He notices that you never run short of tales to tell, or anything that’ll make him laugh or smile or keep him interested—which is normally a difficult job to do.

You tell him about the bike riding opportunities, the horse carriages, the different tours, the limitless possibilities and how the city doesn’t shy away from anything. He listens and agrees and keeps quiet because there are so many things about this place he thought he knew well enough, a place that often plagues his nightmares because of what it represented throughout his childhood.

His only guide to the city and this town he’s grown up in use to only be his memories—memories of being abandoned or forgotten or neglected, of being dragged somewhere simply for the stake of obligation, of feeling his own individualism getting lost in the haze of the big city.

Yet being with you, talking to you, listening to you, it makes him feel like he’s the only thing that truly matters. The way you look at him draws the tiniest of butterfly flutters in the pit of his stomach, makes him feel like the city around him isn’t enough to swallow him whole.

He emits his first sarcastic comment to you that afternoon underneath the hazy sun that doesn’t burn, and your laugh is more charming than the leaves overhead brushing against each other. When you lean into him, he feels your warmth and doesn’t tense up—rather pushing down the fear and willing himself to accept the gesture.

It doesn’t stop there. Over the course of the next few days, you take him all over the city: from the art galleries to the museums to your favorite tea places or record shops or anything that takes on a big scale concept or a small scale idea. It truly feels like Jimin is building a special type of connection and bond with you, one that is defined by the lingering stares and the way you trust him enough to disclose the information that he is comfortable with sharing, the way you tend to hold his wrist for a minute too long in order to guide him someplace, or even the way he starts to reach out for your wrist to keep you from running off too quickly.

He learns a lot more about you: like how you always find yourself returning back to the city no matter how far your family vacations take you, how you like to eat and drink and gush endlessly about things that you’re passionate about, which turn out to be a rather long list of things. He doesn’t know how someone could have a heart so big for so many different aspects of one’s life, especially when he feels as if his own heart is barely big enough to house his desire to leave and never come back.

Yet, perhaps the swelling sensation he feels when you smile at his agreement to go to some flea market with you or his agreement to stay a few extra days in the city could be enough to fit something (someone) new.

Jimin turns to look at you as you gaze over across the brightly lit sidewalks, the night time air biting into his skin as he watches the way you take in everything around you. Maybe you’ve seen these streets before or these window displays before, yet the way you see the world makes it seem like you’re looking at everything for the first time. It’s not naive or repetitive or irritating but rather endearing in the sense that you never want to close yourself away from all these different aspects of the world.

For the first time, he realizes that above your good heart and his increasingly natural inclination to be with you is the fact that he admires you. You remind him of that person he wishes he could be, the person he wishes he could have grown into had it not been for every other factor in his life weighing him down. He wonders if it’s too late to turn back, to make things better.

He stops in his thoughts, realizing that the pair of you have halted in the middle of the sidewalk and you are staring at him. He blinks. “What?”

You roll your eyes without contempt. “I said,” You repeat, smile etching itself across your face. “Look at this window display! The way they incorporate the lights overhead is not too dramatic and those paper butterflies aren’t too overpowering to make sure the attention doesn’t move away from that center fixture—!”

Damn, even the way you talk about front window displays is enough to get his heart to race, his head to turn towards you, his gaze to flicker across your face: starting from the glimmer of excitement in your eyes to the curve of your nose at side profile, to the softness of your lips. He forces himself to look away before you could catch on to what he is doing.

Both of you linger near the display before you stare at him. You tilt your head to the side, smiling gently. “Ready to go?”

For a moment, Jimin doesn’t say anything, simply settles with turning to look at the lowly lit interior, not as exciting as his childhood once painted it out to be yet somehow just enough that he needs to feel better.

“It’s late,” He observes. “C-Can I walk you home?”

Your eyes widen just a fraction, but the look disappears as quickly as it had come. “Sure,” You answer, taking your usual position as the guide as you lead him down the path.

It doesn’t take long for him to remember that he has never visited your apartment before, never was even aware of where you lived or spent the hours not previously occupied by Taehyung, Jungkook, or him. He doesn’t process how nervous he actually is until you stop outside a building that looks like a slightly more modern take on the complex Taehyung and Jungkook live in. He watches the way you punch in the code, the way the door opens for you. He follows you inside, up the stairs, down the hall, the only sound he can hear being the loud beating of his own heart.

At last, you stop outside what he can assume is your apartment door, whirling around to face him. “W-Well, this is me.” You say, rubbing your hands down the sides of your denim jeans, gazing up at him, a question in your eyes that he doesn’t know the answer to yet. “Thank you for walking me.”

“No problem,” He manages, somehow doing well to mask the anticipation laced in his bloodstream. “J-Just wanted to make sure you got back safe.”

You laugh. “Wow, what a gentleman—what changed?”

You clearly mean this as a joke, something he can immediately tell from the glimmer in your eyes and the curl of your lips, and Jimin knows his role could be to return the smile and the ever polite fuck you right back at your face, but it doesn’t feel right this time. This time, there is a tension in the air that clogs at his throat and his wellbeing and practically forcing him to utter the next word: “You.”

The smile slips off of your face at his confession, your lips parting in a way that draws his eyes to the gesture and he doesn’t look away this time. His heart might burst, his legs might give out, his vision might blur, yet there is a rush to this emotion, one that gravitates him closer and closer to you until holy shit were you always standing this close to him?

“Are you going to kiss me?” You whisper and he notices now that he can only see your eyes with how close the pair of you have gotten. Your breath fans against his lips and his heart lurches, his natural reflex telling him how much he wants this and how he’s never strongly desired something like this before.

Your question startles him slightly back to reality. “U-Uh, sorry,” He manages, consciously putting an effort to pull back as quickly as he could but it’s not fast enough. “I-I didn’t mean to—!”

“No, it’s okay,” You interrupt, reaching over to grip at his shoulders, his jawline. “I want you to.”

Then, it’s you who kisses him first, it’s you who leans forward to close the ocean of space between you, you who presses your lips against his; yet it’s him who feels as if the world has just been dragged out from underneath his feet. He inhales sharply through his nose, immediately greeted with that familiar smell of lavender that he has naturally accustomed himself too but it’s stronger and powerful and intoxicating. He’s had his fair share of kisses in the past, hazy memories from middle school and those awkward years featuring just as awkward mouth-to-mouth exchanges that make him cringe, but this is different. Kissing you is like capturing the past few days in a singular moment: it’s flying and falling and living all at once—and he finds himself being consumed by it.

It’s new territory, just like everything else that involves you, but it feels like the most natural gesture in the world to find his hands at your waist, pulling you to him to try and bring you closer but it’s not close enough. His grip tightens on your waist, stepping forward and unintentionally slamming you against the front door of your apartment. You make a shocked moan, your lips parting for a gasp that he allows, pulling away from you to dust his lips against your cheeks, your jawline. He finds home in your neck, baring his teeth to nip lightly at the skin that draws shivers up your spine and whimpers from your lips.

“J-Jimin,” You groan, a long whine accidentally escaping when he finds that spot underneath your ear that makes the breath come out like pants. His mouth finds yours again, hands refusing to leave your waist, unconsciously making its way underneath the confines of your shirt to feel the soft skin of your hips.

He pulls away from you feeling dizzy and uncontained, like he’s lost his bearings and can’t seem to get a grip on them again, his breath coming out in short puffs. You are directly in front of him, lips a brighter red color, cheeks flushed, eyes glassy and fixed on him and only him—the realization that he’s made you like this makes a surge of possessive nature overcome him.

“My roommate isn’t home,” You whisper, a question implicated in the statement and you are nervous about his response.

He’s too drunk on his attraction, his adoration for you that he can only manage a nod. You turn around, fumbling with the keys. You can only get through fitting the key into the keyhole before Jimin is spinning you back around, cupping your face with his two hands to kiss you again. It’s different getting to guide the pressure of your mouth against his, the sensation of your face underneath his touch where he can feel the humming of your heartbeat and the heat of your cheeks. He thinks you’re trying to mumble something against his lips, but he doesn’t care. It’s like all these feelings he’s unknowingly harbored for you after all this time have desired nothing more than to escape and he can’t stop himself. He doesn’t want to stop himself.

Somehow, you manage to unlock the apartment door and push it open, Jimin guiding your movements as he leads you inside, kicking the door closed behind him. He pulls back just enough for your lips to brush against his and you whisper the directions to your room. He can’t remember how the two of you manage to make it, but you do, and the spell in your bedroom is overpowering in a way he’s never experienced before.

Your lips are barely brushing, the only sound being the heavy panting that echoes through the room, when you both fall atop the mattress of your bed. At first he worries about his body weight crushing you, but your fingers are curling tightly at the fabric of his shirt and there are no mumbles or complaints slipping past your lips so he lets you be. He doesn’t think about it for too long anyways, especially with the way he can feel the heat of your body warmth seeping through your clothes.

It leaves him dizzy with desire, so much so that his hands trail down your neck to settle upon the hem of your t-shirt, pulling up in a desperation to feel more of you as quickly as he could. As his fingers brush over your stomach, the sharp inhale you make in response makes his heart lurch in his chest because goddamn, the things you did to him and how he could probably spend the rest of his life just buried in your arms and inhaling your scent and—!

Wait.

He stills on top of you. The rest of his life.

The rest of his life—it’s just five words yet reeks of commitment and devotion and promises, something that he hasn’t had to ponder over once in his entire life. Never once has he had to worry about someone tying him down or someone being concerned over his well being or someone willing to truly be there for him when he needed them to be. Why would someone want to be there for him anyways? All he does is take and leave and take and leave with no disregard about who he hurts and who he leaves behind. What if he did that with you? What he left you behind and hurt you? Would you care? Would he care?

His mind is reeling as he throws himself off of you quickly and desperately as if you’ve burned him, and in a way he feels like he’s been burned anyways with the fantasy of what had been about to happen. The questions of reality start to roll in shortly after that. What was going to happen after this? Would the pair of you start dating? Did you know anything about relationships? Did he? Could he be the type of person in your life that you deserved?

“Jimin?” You whisper, straightening up into a sitting position, your shirt draping back down as you move to try and reach him. “Jimin, are you okay?”

The words get lodged in his throat, the panic over what was going to happen after this, what this meant for his present and his future initiating fight or flight adrenaline to surge through his bloodstream. He scrambles off the bed to give you a wide-eyed stare.

You stare right back at him, but you don’t reach for him, don’t make a move to comfort him, instead hanging back and waiting for him to make a move. He wonders what he must look like right to have you frozen and unable to help him. But you do, however, part your lips to utter his name. “J-Jimin.”

The sensation of his name on your lips seem to trigger something inside of him, immediately springing him into action. Yet, it only seems to drive him further away. He shakes his head. “I-I can’t do this anymore.”

You blink. “Jimin it’s okay! We don’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with—!”

“No,” He cuts in, tearing his gaze away from your eyes, running a hand through his hair, trying to will himself to calm down to little success. “I-I can’t do this anymore.” He gestures between the two of you. “This—everything about this is just not what I wanted when I came into the city. I never wanted to stay, I never wanted to be here.” He inhales sharply, feeling his body desperately trying to recoil away from anything that could feel safe or comforting or like home.

You must see the defeated look in his eyes because you slide yourself off the bed, gingerly placing your feet on the soft carpet below you as you choose that moment to move towards him. “What’s going on?” You whisper, taking slow and steady steps towards him. “Jimin, talk to me.” You reach towards him, trying to reach for his hand to keep him grounded, to keep you grounded.

He jerks away from your hold sharply; the fact that you are still so compassionate and understanding and still willing to stay with him is something that should frustrate him but it hurts more this time around. “Don’t you get it?” He yells, raising his voice for the first time in his life, never having found something else in his life to speak so strongly about until this moment. “Everyone leaves, everyone fucking leaves, and one day I’ll leave and I can’t do that to you, okay? I’d rather leave and never come back over hurting because I care about you too much and I love you too much to do something like that to you.”

You look taken aback by his confession, shown most in your parted lips and wide eyes. For a moment, neither of you say anything, and the potential rejection is enough to cut Jimin’s heart right out of his chest. “I should go.”

“Jimin, wait,” You plead gently, trying to reach out for him again, but barely miss him as he practically throws himself out of your apartment.

.

Jimin basically storms into Taehyung and Jungkook’s apartment, shoving his way past Jungkook in a way that has both boys raising an eyebrow. “Uh, Jimin?” Jungkook inquires, leaving the door open for a moment in order to look over his shoulder and address the older boy. “Are you okay? I thought you were with Ye Sol?”

“I’m fine,” Jimin brushes off, heading straight to Taehyung’s room. “I think I should leave now.”

“Leave?” Taehyung echoes. “Jimin, it’s too late—the trains aren’t running anymore. And your ticket isn’t set to leave for another two days. Did something happen?”

“I thought you were with Ye Sol,” Jungkook repeats, closing the door and following Taehyung down the hall. “Did something happen with you guys?” A glint goes off in his eyes. “Did something happen to her?”

“No,” Jimin interjects, packing his bag regardless of Taehyung’s truthful statement. In truth, he doesn’t know what he’s doing now or what he’s going to do afterwards but the memory of yelling at you and knowing his confession, while admitting the feelings he’s been bottling up for weeks, just feels like he’s burned any and all chances of getting you to return.

He barely notices the knock on the door, only noticing Jungkook take a leave to go answer it. The door opens it, followed by a rush of movements until the footsteps from the door find themselves lingering in the doorframe of Taehyung’s bedroom.

Jimin turns towards the noise, completely expecting Jungkook to have returned but he does not expect to see you standing outside the room. You look out of breath as if you’ve just run a very long distance over a very short period of time, judging from your pants and flushed cheeks and your hair sticking up in different directions as your eyes immediately find Jimin’s across the room.

Your eyes harden like you’ve just set your goal on something. No words are spoken as you pace towards him, crossing the distance, locking his face in your grip, and pulling him into a kiss. It’s brief, much too short to cherish or process or stop, before you’re pulling away and reaching your arms around the back of his neck to keep him there if only to get him to listen to you this time. “I don’t care,” You whisper.

He blinks, still trying to take in what the past few seconds have consisted of, before he remembers that you’re really here in front of him and not just some figment of his imagination. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the bewildered expressions upon Taehyung and Jungkook’s face—both boys who, while aware of the large amount of time the pair of you were spending together, were probably unaware of the depth your relationship managed to touch. He focuses back on you. “What?”

You sigh, tilting your head to the side as you give him a look. “I don’t care if you leave,” You repeat, only indulging in just enough information to make him aware of the fact that you’re referring to his little explosion back at your apartment but still leaving him in the dark enough for him to raise an eyebrow. What did you mean you didn’t care if he left? Did you not care about him? Why would you kiss him then?

So, in response to those questions in his mind, he comes up with the most appropriate remark to sum up his feelings: “What?”

“If you leave,” You start, beginning to sound a little embarrassed and exasperated that you had to explain your feelings in such detail. “I’ll leave with you.” You say the statement with such finality, like you’ve barely had to ponder coming up with such a seemingly obvious answer. “I’ll go wherever you go because I love you too.”

Jimin doesn’t think he hears the last four words correctly. Of course he doesn’t. So his eyes flicker over your features, making sure that you’re serious. He reaches out to cup your face, thumb brushing over the skin of your cheekbone. “Say it again,” He whispers.

Your eyes don’t waver, and neither do your words as you repeat them. “I love you too.”

“Again.”

Your eyes crinkle slightly in the corner. “I love you Jimin.”

Without a warning, he crushes you to his chest, burying his nose into your neck as he closes his eyes, taking in all the lavender and cotton and the floral perfume that rolls off your skin. He breathes in, breathes out, focusing on the way you smell but also the way you’re running your fingers through his hair.

No one says anything for a little while, everyone simply letting the moment sink in, before Taehyung steps forward. “So, what about your bags, Jiminnie?”

The pair of you pull away as you throw Taehyung a quick look over your shoulder. Jimin’s hands at your waist keep you from moving too far too quickly. The question brings on a whole new set of tension, one that causes you to switch your gaze back to Jimin. There is a question in your eyes, a question that will determine the new steps of this newfound relationship.

Jimin is scared. He has every right to be so, but he thinks that this time will be different because he’ll have you—and that’s all he really needs right now.

So he bites his lip and manages a shrug, but it’s all worth it if he gets to see you smile like that at him for the rest of his life. “I guess it won’t hurt to stay for a little while longer.”

[arkhamsandwich-blog]

It turns out, I was partly best while being totally incorrect. Roblox is about utilizing your creativity, playing games, having a good time, and, sometimes, making it through.

1. It's type of like Minecraft Roblox Minecraft Kind of Similar At times, Roblox looks and feels a great deal like Minecraft. credit score: Jason Cipriani/Techwalla Roblox is a multi-faceted game, where players can produce worlds, video games, and challenges. Because feeling, Minecraft and Roblox are very comparable. There's really two different applications for Roblox on a computer system, the video game itself, and Roblox Studio. The former is where players could connect, compete, and also make buddies. The latter is where worlds are made and also developed. 2. Yet not at all like Minecraft Roblox Donut Tycoon A Minecraft duplicate, Roblox is not. credit: Jason Cipriani/Techwalla

The similarity with Minecraft, nonetheless, quits with the ability to build using nothing greater than their imaginations. Roblox individuals aren't required to mine, craft, farm, fish, or search zombies (unless, naturally, you're playing in a Roblox video game that simulates Minecraft, that's another story). As a matter of fact, a Roblox player never ever needs to develop unless they intends to. 3. You can utilize it on numerous platforms Roblox platfomr schedule. Roblox is offered on nearly every system. credit history: Jason Cipriani/Techwalla Roblox is available on iphone, Android, Amazon.com's Application Shop, Xbox One, and Windows 10, as well as Mac. The RobloxStuido app is just readily available for Mac and Windows users. 4. It's totally free Yes, you read that right. Roblox is complimentary to play. You will have to tolerate ads, and also approve that not all attributes will be readily available unless you, or your youngster, pays for a regular monthly subscription. 5. However cash and also registrations will purchase you extra options Roblox Builders Club prices. Roblox Builders Club can be paid for monthlt or yearly. credit: Jason Cipriani/Techwalla Roblox makes its cash from monthly memberships, varying in rate from $5.95 a month to $19.95 a month. Annual plans range from $57.95 to $129.95. For your real money, Roblox boosts the number of teams a player could sign up with, includes the capability to create your very own groups, gives you a day-to-day stipend of Robux (the games' online currency), as well as shares a greater percentage of revenue from things customers develop as well as offer within a video game. 6. "Robux" is the money Buy Robux. Digital money is needed for some video games in Roblox. credit rating: Jason Cipriani/Techwalla The core video game is free, and generally, gamers could escape without ever investing a dime-- online or real-- and also still have a great deal of fun. Nevertheless, some games bill gain access to fees. In order to pay to play, a user will should acquire Robux. You don't need to sign up with Builders Club to get Robux. Present Robux prices can be discovered right here. 7. You could personalize your avatar Roblox Avatar Customizer. You could create and customize your avatar until your heart's web content. credit history: Jason Cipriani/Techwalla Individuals can completely customize the look of his or her in-game character. From using an "R15" avatar that has relocating arm joints and also knees, or the initial "R6" avatar that's more of a block figure. Players could create and create personalized garments and devices, then sell their creations in the Roblox directory. 8. After creating, getting, selling or trading different garments as well as devices, items are stored in a user's inventory Roblox Magazine Roblox Directory of garments and also assorted accessories. credit: Jason Cipriani/Techwalla What makes this important, is that when a thing is not available for acquisition, there's a second-hand market where the value of products rises. For instance, state Individual A created a hat and also it came to be popular. Individual An ultimately decides to quit offering it, users could then market the thing to another Roblox individual at a price he or she picks. In other words, it's a way for Roblox users to earn Robux by acquiring restricted version items. 9. Games open on demand Checking out Roblox video games. When you locate a video game you wish to try, just click Play. credit score: Jason Cipriani/Techwalla Instead of compeling individuals to download and also take care of the amount of storage maps and video games utilize, Roblox depends on a Web link. After setting up Roblox, you check out a catalog of games and faucet or click on Play. The app will after that attach to the video game, packing each element of the map from Roblox servers, positioning you in the game with other gamers. 10. Customers are the developers RobloxStuido Example. Producing a world of my very own in Roblox Studio. debt: Jason Cipriani/Techwalla The games are developed by fellow users, not just Roblox developers. When you install Roblox on a Mac or PC, RobloxStudio is included. Through the workshop, you could produce your own globes as well as video games. At first, it's a little bit frightening being taken into an empty space where your imagination is the only limitation. Yet Roblox includes some standard game themes for customers to tailor as well as build off of. If absolutely nothing else, the layouts are an easy means to obtain the basic idea of building controls. Builders can check his or her world on demand, consisting of on another gadget, then publish the game for various other users to check as well as play in. 11. Among the a lot more preferred games you'll find on Roblox is hide-and-seek Exactly what makes hide and seek so much fun in Roblox is that customers are put into numerous globes, such as a movie theater, where they could after that develop into a box of candy, bag or snacks, or 3D glasses. The goal is to choose as well as thing, and also an area for the thing, that doesn't look out of location. As candidates walk around the map trying to find you and your other gamers, you can taunt and also move. When you are located, you become a seeker and afterwards maintain going. 12. Another prominent type of game you'll discover on Roblox is a Tycoon-type game. At the top of the advised games checklist is McDonald's Magnate, Retail Tycoon, Lumber Mogul 2 as well as lots of, a lot more. These games normally entail entering a globe, starting a company then offering items to earn loan. Sadly, that implies it takes Robux to earn Robux, as well as if you're not marketed on purchasing your child some Robux, then these video games will not offer much. 13. Most of the video games outside of hide-and-seek or tycoon-type video games are parkour-inspired games Parkour in Roblox Parkour in Roblox can be found in all shapes and sizes. Right here, aiming to run away the within an iPhone. debt: Jason Cipriani/Techwalla A series of blocks and also products are put in front of users, that after that need to jump as well as very carefully steer through the world to conclusion. 14. Checkpoints can be difficult Roblox Checkpoint. Roblox Checkpoints are usually a square block. credit score: Jason Cipriani/Techwalla If you or your kid are having problem making it through a level, ensure you are stepping on the checkpoint or spawn ceramic tiles. Doing so indicates you aren't positioned back at the start of the level should you pass away. 15. You could talk with various other gamers and also send out good friend demands Roblox Messages. Roblox Messages, where customers could connect with good friends. credit: Jason Cipriani/Techwalla Roblox does permit users to send out close friend requests as well as chat with each other throughout gameplay, or privately after the reality. Initially, I had not been comfy with this. After reading through the parent's overview, I have actually offered it a reservation. The secret is during account creation is enter your kid's birthday, indicating he or she is 12 or more youthful. When a player is under 12, Roblox instantly secures personal privacy settings to obstruct call from complete strangers. Just after adding an individual to a good friend's listing, could the two people personal message or play on private servers. 16. There's a Roblox University For the children that are severe about building games and various elements inside, Roblox has actually published a series of video clips it called Roblox www.rbx exchange University. Each video walks visitors through different facets of RobloxStudio, from creating a race auto to scripting gameplay.

[aroha-nui-blog]

It turns out i was partly right V4

It ends up, I was partially right while being entirely incorrect. Roblox has to do with utilizing your creative imagination, playing games, enjoying, as well as, sometimes, enduring. 1. It's kind of like Minecraft Roblox Minecraft Sort Of Comparable At times, Roblox looks a lot like Minecraft. credit scores: Jason Cipriani/Techwalla Roblox is a multi-faceted video game, where gamers can produce worlds, video games, as well as difficulties. In that feeling, Minecraft and Roblox are extremely similar. There's actually 2 different apps for Roblox on a computer, the game itself, and Roblox Studio. The previous is where players can engage, complete, and also make friends. The last is where worlds are developed as well as produced. 2. Yet not like Minecraft Roblox Donut Tycoon A Minecraft duplicate, Roblox is not. credit: Jason Cipriani/Techwalla The resemblance with Minecraft, however, stops with the ability to build making use of nothing more than their creativities. Roblox individuals aren't forced to mine, craft, ranch, fish, or quest zombies (unless, obviously, you're playing in a Roblox game that resembles Minecraft, that's an additional tale). Actually, a Roblox gamer never ever needs to construct unless he or she wants to. 3. You can utilize it on multiple platforms Roblox platfomr accessibility. Roblox is readily available on nearly every system. debt: Jason Cipriani/Techwalla Roblox is offered on iphone, Android, Amazon's Application Store, Xbox One, and also Windows 10, as well as Mac. The RobloxStuido app is only available for Mac and also Windows individuals. 4. It's free Yes, you check out that right. Roblox is free to play. You will need to bear with advertisements, and also approve that not all attributes will be offered unless you, or your youngster, pays for a monthly registration. 5. However loan and also subscriptions will buy you more alternatives Roblox Builders Club pricing. Roblox Builders Club can be spent for monthlt or yearly. credit report: Jason Cipriani/Techwalla Roblox makes its loan from monthly subscriptions, ranging in price from $5.95 a month to $19.95 a month. Annual plans range from $57.95 to $129.95. For your real money, Roblox enhances the number of teams a player can sign up with, adds the capacity to produce your personal teams, gives you a daily gratuity of Robux (the video games' virtual currency), and also shares a greater percentage of profits from things customers develop and also market within a video game. 6. "Robux" is the currency Purchase Robux. Digital money is required for some video games in Roblox. credit: Jason Cipriani/Techwalla The core video game is cost-free, as well as generally, players can get away without ever before investing a penny-- virtual or actual-- and also still have a lot of fun. Nonetheless, some video games charge access charges. In order to pay to play, a user will certainly have to acquire Robux. You do not need to join Building contractors Club to obtain Robux. Existing Robux rates can be located here. 7. You could tailor your avatar Roblox Character Customizer. You could create and also tailor your avatar till your heart's web content. credit scores: Jason Cipriani/Techwalla Individuals could totally tailor the appearance of his/her in-game character. From using an "R15" character that has relocating arm joints and also knees, or the original "R6" avatar that's even more of a block figure. Gamers can create as well as develop personalized clothing as well as accessories, and then sell their creations in the Roblox catalog. 8. After creating, getting, marketing or trading various clothing as well as devices, things are stored in a customer's stock Roblox Directory Roblox Brochure of clothes and assorted devices. credit scores: Jason Cipriani/Techwalla Exactly what makes this vital, is that when a thing is no more readily available for acquisition, there's a second-hand market where the value of things goes up. As an example, say Individual A made a hat and also it became popular. Customer An ultimately determines to quit marketing it, customers can then sell the product to one more Roblox user at a price they selects. In other words, it's a means for Roblox users making Robux by buying restricted edition products. 9. Gamings open on demand Checking out Roblox video games. When you find a game you want to try, just click Play. credit report: Jason Cipriani/Techwalla Instead of forcing users to download and install and take care of the amount of storage space maps as well as games utilize, Roblox depends on a Net link. After installing Roblox, you view a directory of video games as well as faucet or click on Play. The app will certainly then connect to the video game, packing each aspect of the map from Roblox servers, positioning you in the video game with other players. 10. Customers are the developers RobloxStuido Example. Developing a world of my very own in Roblox Studio. credit report: Jason Cipriani/Techwalla The games are produced by fellow individuals, not just Roblox programmers. When you set up Roblox on a Mac or COMPUTER, RobloxStudio is consisted of. Via the workshop, you can develop your very own worlds and also games. In the beginning, it's a bit daunting being taken into a void where your creative imagination is the only restriction. However Roblox includes some basic game design templates for customers to personalize and build off of. If nothing else, the design templates are a simple means to obtain the basic idea of building controls. Building contractors could evaluate his/her world as needed, consisting of on one more device, then publish the game for other users to examine and play in. 11. One of the extra prominent video games you'll locate on Roblox is hide-and-seek What makes conceal and seek so much fun in Roblox is that customers are put into different worlds, such as a movie theater, where they can then develop into a box of candy, bag or snacks, or 3D glasses. The goal is to pick and item, and a spot for the product, that doesn't look out of location. As applicants walk around the map trying to find you and your other players, you could tease and move around. Once you are located, you become an applicant and afterwards keep going. 12. An additional prominent type of game you'll discover on Roblox is a Tycoon-type video game. At the top of the suggested video games listing is McDonald's Mogul, Retail Tycoon, Lumber Mogul 2 and also several, a lot more. These video games commonly include going into a globe, beginning a business and then marketing items making money. However, that suggests it takes Robux making Robux, and also if you're not sold on acquiring your kid some Robux, after that these video games will not offer much. 13. The majority of the games outside of hide-and-seek or tycoon-type games are parkour-inspired games Parkour in Roblox Parkour in Roblox comes in all sizes and shapes. Below, trying to leave the within an iPhone. debt: Jason Cipriani/Techwalla A collection of blocks and things are positioned in front of users, that then need to leap and really meticulously steer through the world to completion. 14. Checkpoints can be challenging Roblox Checkpoint. Roblox Checkpoints are generally a square block. debt: Jason Cipriani/Techwalla If you or your youngster are having difficulty getting through a level, ensure you are stepping on the checkpoint or generate floor tiles. Doing so implies you aren't put back at the start of the level ought to you pass away. 15. You can chat with various other gamers and also send pal demands Roblox Messages. Roblox Messages, where customers could connect with friends. credit rating: Jason Cipriani/Techwalla Roblox does enable individuals to send close friend demands and chat with one another throughout gameplay, or independently after the fact. At first, I wasn't comfy with this. After going through the parent's guide, I've provided it a second thought. The key is during account creation is enter your child's birthday celebration, suggesting they is 12 or more youthful. When a player is under 12, Roblox automatically secures personal privacy setups to block call from strangers. 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In Depth Review of Logic’s ‘Everybody’

by Sadé

It’s been three weeks since the release of Logic’s highly anticipated third studio album, and here is my review for Everybody.

The production of the project is top notch. Executive produced by his partner in crime 6ix, the album also includes production from Logic himself, No ID, and a couple others. Features include the likes of Killer Mike, Khalid, Alessia Cara, Black Thought, Chuck D and more. The album did great in its first week in sales, debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.And although it didn’t do so good in its second week, who cares? Logic is one talented guy, and this is a super elaborate concept album. 

A post shared by logic301 (@logic301) on May 4, 2017 at 11:16pm PDT

Logic faces some pretty serious themes, more so than any other project. We have the three main topics of religion, race and politics. Logic also dives into some other things: love, violence, life and death. There’s everything for Everybody. When you first hear the album it is a lot to digest but it is in Logic’s delivery that makes it so seamless. Conceptually, this project is seamless and just on point. Logic’s execution of not just his bars but the execution of the overall concept of the album is amazing. You can't just take the album at face value. There are so many layers that the Maryland rapper so intricately weaves together.

The Plight of The Biracial Man

Logic in the past has addressed that he’s biracial and his experiences growing up as such but never quite so much as in this project. This is a new side to Logic. He’s always been very open with his fans, but this project is Logic, or Bobby, on another level. 

"This is who I am. That’s why I’m so happy for this album because I finally do and say all the things that I was told I should be ashamed of." 

- Genius Verified

A lot of criticism on the album for solely focusing on the fact that he’s half black and white, but it’s more than that. Logic does speak on his plight as the biracial man but what other way could he speak on such issues? The emcee uses his experiences in order to emphasize the main message of finding that happiness within yourself in spite of others. Once you live with the album, you realize Logic is more so talking about just accepting yourself for who you are. Accepting yourself for what you love and where you come from. 

Everybody is for Everybody. 

Taking a Walk With God

“I know you need to Open your mind” - Hallelujah

Logic opens up with “Hallelujah” and it’s the perfect opener. He’s telling you to just be open minded and prepare yourself for what he’s about to dive into. You just know this project is going to be different from the other. The track ends with a skit starring astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson as God and former radio personality Big Von as Atom. Yes, Atom - not Adam. Derived from Andy Weir’s 2009 short story "The Egg,” the skits appear throughout the album. They serve as the essential backbone to this album.

Logic and his team made very minor changes to the original story, simply giving the character a name, the dialogue is more up to date, and added a speech from God that emphasize the album’s overall message.

To sum up: Atom dies in a car accident and meets God in a waiting room (purgatory) - actually the track “Waiting Room” is where this story unravels. He takes a walk with God, just shooting the breeze and finds out he’s the whole human race. He is just one soul traveling back and forth in a universe created for him as a teachable moment by God in order to mature into a god-like being. Think about it: Your kind actions are done to yourself, and your hateful actions are done to yourself. You were Hitler and “the millions he murdered." Like, what? I find the story very profound, and trippy nonetheless.

Did you get why Logic “Atom” and not just “Adam”? He’s the building block of every soul that ever was and will be. Dope shit.

I dig Logic owned the story and how he just morphed an album around it. He takes the idea that we are just one soul and makes this album that is literally Everybody. 

Walk In My Shoes

Where tracks like “Everybody,” “Take it Back” and “AfricAyaN” are from his point of view of the biracial man, he does speak from several different perspectives in order to relate to Everybody. 

“Every perspective that you hear me rapping from…I am either that person, have that experience or it was my sister’s, or my mother, or my brother or my friends, my wife, or their cousin. These are all real people that exist. I’ve just given them a fictional scenario to paint a bigger picture for the listener at home to hopefully be able to relate to.”

- Genius Verified

Here are three perspectives that stood out to me the most.

“I’ve done so much wrong I don’t know if I could ever be right” - Confess

Logic, with the help of Killer Mike, speaks from the perspective of a man who breaks into a church and confesses his sins. This guy feels as if he’s just a piece of shit and yells out to God, “I’m so tired and I don’t know what else to do.” He doesn’t even believe in God, but he’s hit rock bottom and maybe repenting will “save” him.

“I ain’t got a pocket full of money, but I’m full of hope” - Mos Definitely

Here Logic is the normal fresh of out college kid who is suffering from crippling debt and has none of the experience those jobs require. This was inspired by a close friend who came out to work with Logic and took the risk because all he had were student loans and eviction notices. I relate to this and a lot of 20-something year olds do too.

“I feel like my life ain’t mine Who can relate?” - 1-800-273-8255

This track is his darkest and most moving song. Logic takes on two perspectives, a suicidal person calling the hot line and the operator on the other end of the phone. The caller talks about how they don’t want to be alive. Then the operator explains why life is so important and why they should want to live. By the third verse the original perspective turns around and says “I finally want to be alive.” With help from Alessia Cara and Khalid, the message is so powerful. Logic has met fans who proclaimed that he and his music saved their lives. Hearing all of those stories affected him and has explained that he wasn’t even trying to. However, he’s worked on this track to actually do so and hopes it reaches more than just his fans.

I’ve chosen songs that really stand out, but he steps in the shoes of several more people. The perspectives either take over a whole song, or there's a subtle switch in the midst of a verse. We hear from a black single mother, a person who suffers from debilitating anxiety, a gay man, a misunderstood teenager looking to Logic as an idol. We even hear his take on the point of view from his mother. These point of views are real. Logic takes inspiration from those he knows so nothing about this album is contrived.

Easter Eggs-Galore

Logic was keeping a couple secrets from us in the making of this album. There are many, several easter eggs in the album’s cover alone, let’s focus on the music itself. For instance, the ending of the last track, “AficAyaN,” will have you shocked. Let’s start with the embedded secret verse from J. Cole. It’s self Logic has titled “Acceptance.”

“Fuck approval from strangers, that shit is dangerous as hell”

J. Cole is an artist that Logic has looked up to. His earlier music sounds a bit like Cole’s and well there is the being biracial thing. Logic spoke with Hard Knock TV’s Nick Huff about his overall relationship with J. Cole and how the secret track came into fruition. 

“I spill my soul into a microphone With poems written in blood In hopes that it’s enough for you”

The two did talk about working together for this project. Logic first presented “Take It Back,” to Cole. The track is told from Logic’s point of view that dives in deeper into his own past. Although he’s biracial, Cole didn’t exactly relate; “That’s your story...a story I didn’t know.” After some time, Cole eventually sent Logic his verse via voice memo. Filled with bars of “Acceptance”, J. Cole starts it speaking in the perspective of Logic then switches it up to talking directly to Logic.

“Nigga, my advice, fuck the black and white shit Be who you are, identify as a star”

He then reached out to Cole asking if he could keep the track as is, and a secret. No tag, no marketing. We also came to realize the easter egg in the album cover, an attribution we speculated but had no proof till the album’s release. This was a huge moment for Logic. As a product of J.Cole’s earlier music, to now having a secret track from the man: "This is my idol accepting me.”

The Ending of All Endings

Before we hear J. Cole’s letter to Logic, which was just amazing, Logic drops a bomb on us. At, what we believe is the end of the album, we hear some nature sounds and two people walking and talking. As Thalia, a staple in Logic’s work “concludes the program,” we’re brought back (or forward) to his last album The Incredible Story with Kai and Thomas.

Kai: Damn man, we’ve been walking forever

Thomas: Well, Thalia’s tracking system says we’ll be there in just over an hour

Kai: Shit, at least we got good walking music or is that it?

Thomas: Oh no, man. I’m cueing up the fourth album now, his final one

Now if you don’t know, the story in his last album was set 100 years from now. Kai and Thomas are just going through Logic’s albums in their walk to Paradise. At the end of the final album we’ll find Kai and Thomas at the final destination. Logic had this to say about his final album.

“Doesn’t mean I won’t necessarily be involved in hip-hop community...I’m just done with albums and it’s going to be the last one so you motherfuckers better buy that shit and tune in and see what it’s going to be about cause it’s going to be very special. I’m going to do something that has not been done in hip-hop before and I mean that conceptually as well. ... It must live in that ‘Incredible True Story’ universe and it’s going to be a story to end all stories including my own.”

- Genius Verified

Damn.

Everybody is for everybody. His plight of the biracial man may have thrown people off but it just means they’re just looking to the exterior. All the perspectives Logic takes on, including his own, are all lives Atom has lived. He may not know in the moment, but from each life he matures and learns a little something as he goes along. They’re just skipping by on the surface not diving in. Utilizing the story of “The Egg” as a backbone allows Logic to play around in new territory which may have scared the average listener. His main message to his listeners is peace, love, positivity...and “Acceptance.” 

“Remember that right here in this moment is all you are guaranteed, and the fact that you are living is what life is all about. So live your life to the fullest, according to your happiness and the betterment of all."