#I could just like…get the stickers cause they are cheaper….

[aceofstars16]

The itch to just buy all the things…but also knowing I should not just buy things on impulse and should save money for Christmas presents…

[spiremire]

its that time of year again

To all the new undergrads out there, here are the best ways I found to save money without completely sucking all the joy out of life, from a current grad student :) (a lot of this advice is usamerican-centric for students that live on/very close to campus because that was my undergrad experience)

Advice under the cut because I wrote too much:

School stuff:

Don't buy the textbooks from the bookstore. Especially don't buy them new. Rent them from Chegg or Amazon, or straight up pirate them from the internet. (I am a huge advocate for textbook piracy)

You can also see if your school has a textbook swap. You can try to start a textbook swap, or coordinate with friends about swapping books if you take the same classes at different times. Maybe talk to your RA about organizing one for your dorm floor/building.

Apple, HP, and Dell all have educational discount programs, if you need a computer with a little more oomph than a Chromebook or a ThinkPad. (I also highly recommend getting anything BUT a chromebook, but I know that's not always in the cards). DON'T get an Apple computer if you are a STEM major. It will cause more headaches than it's worth.

Take advantage of the bus pass your college tuition comes with. Go places. It's not as fast as an uber but it's a hell of a lot cheaper and you've already paid for it. Consider using this service instead of keeping a car on campus, too! Parking passes are also usually pricey.

Some regions have services like ZipCar where you can rent a car by the hour. Universities where this is available often have a deal to make it more accessible to students. (Use this when the bus isn't an option! It's usually also way cheaper than an Uber, and you can get different sized cars for different needs!)

If you get sick/hurt (of the non-emergent variety) badly enough to warrant a doctor visit: try visiting your campus health center first! Students usually get a free visit or two per semester/quarter.

Your student health center will often have free safe sex supplies. Sometimes they have the good stuff. They really don't care how often you come in and dig through the condom bowl. My campus had a monthly delivery service you could sign up for (for free). I've managed to get free condoms, lube, dental dams, and gloves this way. (This is a very cheap way to figure out what lube and condoms you like and hate, btw)

Don't say no to ANY of the free stuff. Take all the t-shirts, stickers, pens, mugs, markers, discount codes, reusable shopping bags, temporary tattoos, snacks, and cheap sunglasses they're willing to give you. Even if you won't use it yourself, it all makes excellent branded merchandise for the people in your life supporting you. You can even save on gifts during holidays by passing some of this stuff off to people who will use it. (I was given a free pair of sunglasses in my freshman year that I still use—7 years later—in situations where I don't want to lose/damage my better ones).

Smaller businesses close to campus will probably have a student discount. Ask. It'll probably be less than 20% but take what you can get, because it adds up.

Often your college will have some amount of free software for you to use while you're a student. Typically Microsoft Office, but sometimes others. I've gotten access to Photoshop, ArcGIS, MATLAB, JMP Pro, and a few others this way. (Piracy is an option here, but it's more challenging because these things are more closely guarded.)

Sometimes at the end of the year, people moving out will just leave the furniture they don't want anymore outside. I don't recommend doing this, because someone has to clean it up but take advantage of it when it happens if you see something you want.

Steal food from the dining hall (if it's the buffet kind). Some places you have to be more sneaky about it, but some places you don't. My bestie used to straight up bring in two half-gallon jugs and fill one from the dining hall milk dispenser and the other with lemonade once a week or so and nobody ever stopped her or said anything. Generally dining halls are staffed by students that don't get paid enough to care that it's your fourth stop by the pizza station and you can't possibly have eaten that much pizza in the last thirty minutes. (Bring tupperware in your backpack. If they don't allow backpacks, napkins in a sweatshirt front pocket also work (transfer to tupperware once you get your bag back)

IF YOU QUALIFY FOR WORK STUDY: do it! The WS jobs generally pay better because half the wage comes from the government and half comes from the person who hired you (makes it easier to pay you more because they don't even have to budget for a minimum wage employee).

Activities:

Go to the activities put on by the dorms and various student groups. I promise you'll have more fun than you think, and they're usually free to very inexpensive. Get a free succulent. Make friendship bracelets and cute soap. Watch a free movie. Go on that kayak tour. See a sports game for a team you don't care about. This is an excellent way to supplement your work-life balance and you might make a friend.

Share streaming service passwords/costs with friends or roommates. If everyone in the friend group comes in with one, you can have the whole shebang for a fraction of the cost. Alternatively, split the cost of one or two that you rotate between every few months (in my experience, this works best seasonally: Autumn is Netflix and Hulu, Winter is HBO and Disney+ etc) Piracy is also an option here as well.

Try to make most of your fun beverages on your own at home. Limit the starbucks coffee or boba to once or twice a week. Take the $15-30/week you saved by not buying starbucks everyday and go to the movies or something. Save up for a camping trip with friends. Idk. I spend $12/every six weeks-ish on the costco-sized container of the coffee I like and that's roughly the same price as two medium lattes. I like having that money for other stuff.

If you have metered internet: do all your big downloads on the free campus network.

Support your on campus artists by going to shows, showings, exhibits, and galleries. They're often a very inexpensive way to see art.

Like reading for fun? Check out your local library. They have the books, but also movies and games. Some libraries have a Library of Things where you can borrow like. Baking pans or a lawn mower. The city library is guaranteed to be quieter than the university libraries, if that's your thing. You also probably won't have to trip a basketball player to beat them to the last available table during finals week.

If you're going on hikes that are less than 10 miles round trip, I'd argue that you really don't need much in the way of specialized equipment* (especially if you have cell service the whole time (for maps/GPS)), which makes it very inexpensive if you already have a couple water bottles, snacks, comfortable shoes, and a backpack. *See the great outdoors section for more recommendations

Live somewhere like Alaska? Like outside? Find someone who knows what they're doing and go foraging. It's very important you bring an expert the first few times ESPECIALLY if you live in an area where you could be ingesting poisonous mushrooms or berries. My roommate and I love going on berry picking hikes.

Like hiking but don't like hiking alone? Join an on-campus club OR a meet-up group. This is an excellent way to make friends (and find a few hiking buddies)

Regal movie theatre is the most expensive. If you have a different one in your area your tickets will likely be a few bucks cheaper. (we only have regal where I am and I am angry)

General shopping:

My personal philosophy is if I don't need it immediately, I don't buy it unless it's on sale.

Get a credit card or two with decent cashback rewards. DO NOT SPEND ANY MONEY YOU CANNOT IMMEDIATELY PAY OFF (this will avoid interest charges AND build your credit score, which will be important later on for things like renting an apartment, buying a car from a dealership, or buying a house). Use the card(s) for all your expenses. Cashback will add up pretty slowly, but it will add up. Discover It is pretty good for students and comes with a quarterly rotation of different things that get higher cash back. Apple Card has good cashback ONLY if you're using actual Apple Pay instead of the physical card (which is harder in less urban areas where cardreaders haven't been recently updated).

Make a throwaway email and sign up for stamp cards, loyalty programs, and rewards programs everywhere you shop (new email is so you don't have to be spammed with all the junk they send you but you can still access the coupons when you want them). Don't sign up for the ones with the credit cards unless they have good cashback (> 1-2%) for places that aren't their store. The Fred Meyer program slaps because it gives you gas discounts. I am currently paying less than $3.00/gallon (current cost in my area is ~$4.30/gallon). Fred Meyer is a Kroger brand, so if you don't have Freds but do have a different Kroger thing, see what they've got.

Check thrift/consignment stores and yard/garage/estate sales for things that you don't necessarily need to be in the nicest condition. Suitcases, dishes for that camping trip, a mat for outside your front door. Be really careful with soft furniture (it could be hosting bugs; if it's from a yard sale, ask the owner where it was stored before the sale. Items in the garage or a storage unit or outside should be extra scrutinized) and give everything you can a good wash/scrub down before letting it live in your house.

Estate sales are fantastic for furnishing an apartment. Usually an estate sale is done when (old) people die and the family wants help getting rid of the stuff they don't want for themselves. Currently, old people generally have very well made, solid wood furniture. It will go for much cheaper than it's actually worth if you buy it at an estate sale (rather than at an antique store). A lot of the time the furniture even matches. They'll also have things like vacuums, kitchen stuff, and maybe garage stuff.

TJ Maxx, Ross, and Homegoods (et cetra) are good for finding inexpensive clothes or home items.

Back to school sales are great for just about everything. Lots of big stuff like good furniture and electronics go on sale for things like labor/memorial day.

Don't buy a mattress just because it's the cheapest one. Buy one you actually like. Buy sheets and pillows you actually like. Having a good night's rest in a bed you are comfortable in is invaluable. It will make the rest of college way less bad I promise.

See if you can repair something before buying a new one. At best, you fix it. At worst, it continues to not work. I was gifted a pair of bose noise cancelling headphones that I use often enough that I've had to replace the foam over-ear pads 3 times and the aux cable once. This has cost me about $40 over 7 years instead of the ~$300 getting a new pair would cost. Replacement parts and patch kits are where it's at.

Some insurance companies give discounts for good grades. Take advantage of that.

Check Buy Nothing groups. I've never done this but I've heard good things.

Some car companies give a small discount to recent graduates who are buying a new car. (I did this, it was only $500.)

IF YOU HAVE THE MONEY TO DO SO!!!! Buy something that is going to last over something that is cheap. You will save money in the long run if you can pay the upfront cost.

IF YOU HAVE THE MONEY TO DO SO!!!! (and the space for storage of the larger package) Buy in bulk. Unit price is always cheaper and one large package is generally wrapped in less packaging than the same amount in many smaller packages (save the earth!)

Keep track of warranties and register products for them if necessary. If something breaks and it's still covered under the warranty, the company may be obligated to replace it (depends on how it broke). Shoot your shot! If you're really lucky, the warranty period will start over with the arrival of the replacement, and if the replacement breaks within the warranty period, it will also be eligible for replacement. (I've managed to take advantage of this on multiple occasions and have saved probably $600 this way.)

The Great Outdoors:

Need to buy seasonal equipment (like snow gear or swimsuits)? Wait until the end of the current season. Prices will drop as stores attempt to clear inventory for the upcoming season's stuff. Buy your kayak and bikini in October or November and your heavy winter jacket and ski goggles in March. Keep an eye out for the sales beginning in the weeks prior if you are a common size, as those will sell out first).

I really recommend getting an REI membership. It's a one-time cost ($30??) that opens up the used website, the garage sale, and extra bonuses like random coupons, member only sale prices, discounts on gear rental and classes, a wider window for returns/exchanges, and free US shipping (I live in Alaska and the free shipping makes this one of the best deals I can get). It will pay for itself probably within your first purchase.

Consider buying open box, but make sure all the parts are there.

Keep an eye on warranties and register products for them when necessary. Trust me, given how expensive outdoor stuff is, it's entirely worth it. Keep receipts, packing slips, and tags if you can as proof of purchase.

On campus clubs for your activity of choice. Make friends, get to go cool(er) places possibly for free/cheap.

Trying a new activity? Rent/borrow some gear to do it a few times before committing to purchasing your own. This will ensure you don't spend hundreds of dollars just to find you hate backpacking. REI has a good gear rental program and a plethora of classes, and your campus may have an outdoor equipment rental option. They may also have lessons or classes you can take about your new activity so you can learn to do it safely. I learned how to ice climb this way in March, and am going to take advantage of my current university's free gear rental and free ice climbing tower until I feel comfortable enough to go out into the wild and do it on my own.

Decided you like your new activity? Check these places (none of this is sponsored lmao I just like outside and have personal experience with all these sites):

Geartrade: Discounted new* and used gear in a variety of conditions. Definitely read all the fine print here. *Geartrade sells things sometimes that are brand new but had some packaging defect; these things are usually half off.

REI ReSupply: Used gear in a variety of conditions. Defects are detailed in product descriptions. Even things in excellent condition are usually at least half off the original price.

Sierra(dot)com: brand new stuff from well-known brands at a fraction of the price. It's usually past-season overstock, but it's all perfectly serviceable and the differences between this season and last season's gear is usually negligible. They have sales and clearance as well. Get what you want/need even cheaper if you have time to wait for it to be further discounted.

Costco sometimes has pretty good outdoor gear. I personally know that the bear spray here is NOT a good deal (it's a two-pack, but the can volume/spray-time is smaller than the two-pack at REI and they go for the same price) but their trekking poles are good and I really like their men's merino wool socks. I've heard from reputable sources that the costco snow-shoes suck. Definitely read reviews before committing here.

Facebook marketplace/craigslist: Both can be hit or miss. You'll usually have better luck for equipment that is used for activities that can be done locally (ie. you will probably not find an abundance of skis in desert Arizona) but that's not a hard rule. DEFINITELY read the fine print here, and ask to inspect the item before you hand over any money (people usually aren't weird about this and if they are you might be being scammed). I got a new dog last year and got everything for him for under $100 (two beds, two crates, bowls, harnesses, dog sized sleeping bag for camping, lick mats, the whole shebang)

I'm sure that other people have better advice regarding things like electronics, traveling, and activities that don't fall into the category of Wandering Into The Woods, but this is what I know!

[xplrvibes]

Wait people think it was staged? Don’t do this to me bc I will 100% fall down the rabbit hole as well 😂

What about when they see the new car and apparently there’s no scratches or dints anymore? Sam gets in the passenger and says “this definitely isn’t colbys car.”

oh god now my brain is spinning, bc colbys has also referred to this ‘new’ car as the same one he’s had for years. he never clarifies that it’s a seperate car… but i guess that could just get annoying so it’s easier to be like yeah i’ve had this red corolla since graduation…

- aussie anon

Oh yea, we went down a whole rabbit hole ourselves a few years ago, lol. We came out with the conclusion that in our opinion, Elton actually did move Colby's car and maybe even took it to get the dents popped out, and removed the "Colby" sticker, but bought an exact replica Corolla in Texas to smash instead cause it was a lot easier and cheaper to do than shipping a 2007 Toyota to Texas and getting Colby's parents (of all people) on board with signing the reg and insurance over to him so he could do all this.

We don't think Colby was in on it at first, but figured it out by the time they got down there and just went along with it for the video.

I'll have to go look through all the old asks and stuff on my blog to see if I can find all the posts about it, cause it was quite the event figuring that one out lmao.

[brandstifter-sys]

These Dreams

Chapter 5: April                (Ao3) (must be signed in)

For @dukexietyweek 2023 Day 5 - Pranks

Word Count: 1305

Rating: T

Characters: Remus, Virgil

Warnings: ftm Remus, sexual themes, pranks, genderfluid Virgil, dreams

Remus is all for pulling pranks on April Fool’s Day, and he just wants to find the guy who webbed every door on his floor of the dorms. The security guard seems suspicious and familiar. Remus would hate to think he dreamed of school

---

It was the second best day of the year, April Fool's Day. Remus was living his best life and enjoying all the chaos, even if the rest of the dorm wasn't. 

Remus absolutely loved hearing the manly squeals that erupted in the bathroom, thanks to his hyper realistic roach stickers. He was just as giddy when he witnessed someone trip his silly string cannon. There were whoopie cushions hidden on every chair and rubber chickens outside of every door. It was a heavenly mess! 

He was back in his dorm room after a long day of classes and japes, editing a research paper, when his tummy got grumbly. It was dinner time! No, it was past dinner time!  

Remus saved his work and closed his laptop. He really didn't feel like binding and going to the dining hall to feed off the scraps. He could afford to get some dumplings from the Chinese restaurant down the street, bundled up in a hoodie. It was late enough he could pretend to be cold. 

But when he opened the door, Remus was met with a wall of Halloween spider web floss. Someone figured him out! 

He giggled to himself and pushed through the webs, not particularly bothered when they got stuck on him. It was a good prank and he was honored to be the victim of such a jape!

And then he glanced down the hall. All of the doors had spider webs on them, except for the bathroom. He was still impressed, especially since those webs weren't there earlier. Someone was quick and quiet and clever. 

He could figure it out later, after food. He double checked to make sure he had his key, phone, and wallet before leaving the dormitory. 

But when he stepped into the atrium where everyone had to pass through and where security kept an eye on the place, he got a bucketload of glitter dumped on him as soon as he opened the door. At least he didn't get hit by a bucket too! 

He stayed still for a moment and let his eyes wander to the security desk. The guard looked distracted by his phone, barely paying attention to the computer monitor near the wall. He was older than most of the guys in the dorms, strong and handsome with a cold glare and a beautiful smirk. Remus liked to annoy him, he was a good sport.

"Hey, hot stuff," Remus giggled and moseyed over to the desk. He leaned on it and let glitter fall onto the desk. 

"What's up, Sprinkles?" the guard jeered, fighting back a snicker. Remus grinned and shook out his hair. The glitter went everywhere. 

"I'm going to grab some chow mein, did you want me to grab anything for you?" 

"On April 1st? I don't think so. You'd find a way to mess with it." 

Remus shrugged and wiggled his mustache. This guy knew him all too well! 

"I'm not cruel enough to mess with food, Sparklemuffin," he said with a shimmy. More glitter fell on the security guard. 

"Sparklemuffin?" the guard asked and raised an eyebrow at him skeptically. Remus could just kiss that pout. 

"It's a cute kind of jumping spider!—Ooh did you see who messed up all the doors on my floor?" 

"Messed up?" the guard asked and went tense. He would get in trouble if anyone got in and caused damage, so Remus could understand that reaction. 

"Yeah there's cheaper spider web decoration covering them all. I need to know who did it!" 

"Why? Administration can deal with them," the guard relaxed somewhat.

"I want to buy them a drink at least—if they're my type I would be down for tonsil hockey and more!" Remus giggled, "Pretty much everything I ever suggested to you is on the table!" 

"I'll scrub the tapes," the guard muttered shyly, "If you could grab an order of chicken dumplings, I'll pay you back." 

Remus shook off some more glitter and giggled. 

"You got it! And have fun learning what a genius prankster looks like! The glitter is cute but predictable!"

The guard grumbled as he left. He was so cute when he was flustered and blushy! Remus decided that he was getting a soda on top of those dumplings. 

  It didn't take long for Remus to get his food and get back to the dorms. His hoodie didn't do enough to hide his unbound chest and he was not thrilled about the cat-calling. Being sparkly didn't make anything easier.

Remus trudged into the atrium with a paper bag in his arms. The guard was lazily lounging in his chair, scrolling through his phone. At least until he spotted Remus. 

"How much do I owe you?" he asked and pulled out his wallet. Remus went up to the desk and set the bag down.

"Tell me who webbed my door first." 

"So you can get him drunk and steal his dick?" the guard scoffed and fished a 10 dollar bill from his pocket, folded around a receipt.

"So you want to protect this guy from my feral wiles?" Remus jeered, "Or he's a total bastard and you want to protect me?" 

"It's my job to protect the guys in this dorm." 

"Can you at least tell me if he'd be interested in an older trans man with some extra pec padding as a friend if not more?" Remus pouted. 

The guard turned pink and averted his gaze. He slid the money into Remus' hand and tried to shrink into himself. 

"Yeah, he would be interested in you." 

Remus pulled the receipt from the money and scanned it with the full intent of returning it. But a certain purchase caught his eye. 

"I take back what I said before. You know what a genius prankster looks like," Remus muttered and pocketed his cash. 

"What?" 

"You're a genius prankster! You threw me off your trail with the basic bitch glitter! And I thought you couldn't get any hotter!" Remus giggled, "I should drag you to the back and smother you with affection!" 

"I'm on the clock and it's really unprofessional and immoral for me to get into that kind of situation with a student here and you're only—" 

"25. Not that much younger than you," Remus cut him off, "And it's not immoral, because you're not teaching, you're security. I could have a job on the security team as a student. If you're not interested you can tell it to me straight, and if you're just nervous, I can take it slow." 

"Maybe, uh, if you're free tomorrow we could grab dinner or something," the security guard said and blushed all the way down his neck. 

"Tomorrow night?" Remus hummed and tapped his chin, "I'm booked. I'm grabbing dinner with this total babe named Virgil." 

The guard snickered and shook his head. 

"You're such a little shit," he laughed, and pulled his food from the bag. Remus wiggled his eyebrows and pulled out a soda from the bag for him. 

"You know you love it, Virgil!" he laughed, "I think I should get a kiss for being so lovable!" 

He was teasing but Virgil looked at him seriously. He got out of his chair and leaned over his desk. Remus' heart thundered in his chest and then—

  Rankka viikko ja paljon pitkii päiviä takan

Remus groaned as he woke and answered his phone. 

"What do you want?" he groaned, already aware that the caller ruining his morning was his twin. 

"Hello to you too," Roman scoffed, "Did you forget that you were supposed to meet mom and I for brunch?" 

"That's next week, when I'll actually be in town," Remus huffed and hung up. He was just about to get to the good part of his dream! His stupid brother just had to ruin it! 

[deepfriedseagullfeet]

I need a side job for an online shop but I can't afford a printer to make stickers or art posters what are your suggestions of other craft things I could learn?

I thought about pins but I'm not sure how they're made.

this ask actually came at a funny time cause i am closing my etsy shop until further notice cause im not really interested in selling rn haha, but!!! i do have some ideas for you!!

clay pins! these can be really fun to make and i think theyre still popular! theres a lot of tutorials on youtube on how to make them, but youre gonna need white clay and paint (or colored polymer clay if you dont want to paint them), pin backings (you can get these at any craft store) and something to seal them (you can use mod podge or polymer clay glaze for this!) theres a lot of fun designs you can make for these and theyre cheaper than making enamel pins

painted wood things! if you are artistic and can paint stuff, get some mini wood circles/hearts and paint a design, then superglue on a pin backing, then boom its a pin! this is an alternative to clay pins if you dont want to deal with clay haha. i can find small wood pieces at any craft store for cheap and i have too many of them lying around lol

go to any store that does printing and print stuff if you dont have a printer! for awhile before i got my printer i would order printed stuff from staples for cheap. id look into this if you have a lot of ideas for art prints or zines, theres a lot of options!!

if you have some cash to spare, look into stickerapp!! they print die-cut stickers and sticker sheets, and they havent failed me yet, all their stuff turns out good and they have options for different quantities of stickers.

you may want to look into digital products if youre tech savvy! on etsy you can make good passive income from digital items like downloadable prints, digital stickers, desktop icons, templates, etc. this is kinda a hard market to get into cause theres a lot of competition, but theres a lot of different things you can do with digital products.

going back to clay cause its the most affordable thing i feel, you can make trinket dishes, charms for jewelry, keychains, figurines, etc. people always seem to be interested in little things like that, and i feel like clay, especially polymer clay can be a fun rabbit hole to dive down with all the different tutorials and things you can do with it out there :) air dry clay stuff is great too!

resin can be touchy for some people cause it can be messy and toxic if you dont have good ventilation, but i used to make shaker charms with molds i got for like 2 bucks off etsy as well as jewelry! check out some tutorials for this one if you'd like to get into this world, it can be fun!

if you want to get into button pin making, id check out badge-a-minit! they were my first intro to pin making, and you can get a starter kit for like $30 i think?? the price may have changed but thats what i paid for like 3 years ago lol

do you know how to crochet?? crochet plushies and even digital patterns are still super popular!! its fun and relaxing too if you want to get into it

overall these are the first things that popped into my head when it comes to crafty things to sell, i hope it was somewhat helpful ;_; if you'd like to really dive into the world of products and marketing for artists, i highly recommend checking out kelsey rodriguez on youtube!! she has lots of good advice for artists and just recently came out with a video specifically for products that artists can sell!

[perpetual-fool]

Violin Frets

I have a thing about frets, about them not being in tune. But there are other things about frets. You can't vibrato with frets, you can't slide (glissando) with frets. So it's weird that some of the higher-end electric violins have frets. But apparently frets on violin are not like frets on other instruments.

There are demonstrations of doing vibrato etc. on frets, but going by how frets are on guitar that really shouldn't work. Apparently, the difference is that violin frets are very small. Normally you'd press down behind the fret and the string would get pinched off by the little metal bar. But if they're really short you have to press on the fret directly, and there's no reason you couldn't roll your finger more forward or back on it. Slides are still going to sound a little weird, probably. But is that really a problem? Like, people do glissando on piano and that thing can't bend notes at all. So it's really more like a tactile version of those little stickers beginners use; it doesn't really tell you where the note is, but it gets you close.

So then, why? You'd probably assume it's like guitar and that they keep you in tune. But they don't, you still have to tune by ear. But it does make it easier. Supposedly there are people who'd object to that being a valid reason? But why? to give you something to feel superior about? That's stupid. Anyway, also apparently that's very important/useful in loud settings where you may not be able to hear yourself. So like, in a traditional orchestra where everyone's playing acoustic instruments that's never going to happen, you're always going to hear yourself the loudest. But if you're doing a rock concert or something with the drums pounding behind you, you may not. Also would be significant if you're deaf. It doesn't make any sense to me why a deaf person would be a musician, but I've heard of at least one. And I guess there's novelty, experimentation, and in my case, refinement? I'm not really sure what my deal is. But for instance, five-string viola seems to be able to do everything a violin and standard viola can do, and gives up nothing to achieve that. So having one would feel personally satisfying for some reason.

And hypothetically, this opens up some possibilities for bass. Not guitar, since you still wouldn't be able to do chords with semi-frets. But fretted basses are cheaper and easier to get than fretless ones. And particularly, I want a multi-scale fretless, which essentially does not exist. But if I can just file down the frets then I can achieve the same effect, and I don't have to learn how to make guitars myself to do it. Though I'm sure I will learn on a long enough timeline.

- Tangent: it's hard to know what to pursue. I guess more fundamentally the issue is that I don't have the information necessary to solve the problem. In this case, I have limited time/energy/resources and multiple things I could spend it on. So, should I pursue bass things or should I pursue viola things? I could say that currently I have a bass but no viola, so the viola would have a more profound effect on increasing the amount of things I can do. Or I could say that working on bass would get me closer to resolving the bass problems, and getting a viola would open up a host of new problems. Although I suppose all of it is in service of trying to solve the 'living' problem. So I guess what I'm really after is the most accessible way to make the good brain juice.

But at what point am I supposed to be happy? Like, suppose I just save up the $1.4k for a Glasser 5-string. Problem solved? It still has the fragile wooden bridge, it still has the friction-fit tuning pegs, it still doesn't have any strap/harness system to avoid causing TMJ or neck problems. Okay, instead let's say I save up $2.7k for a five-string Viper. And for the example let's just say the amp and whatever else came with it for free. The problem is now solved. Then what? I move on to new problems?

Maybe this is all a consequence of believing I'm bad/not good enough. Like I'm looking for problems to fix, and finding them. But it's never enough.

I'm probably approaching this all wrong. There is this dumb thing I kind of feel good about. The problem initially was that I had a wooden cooking utensil soak up a bunch of beef fat, which then smelled strongly of beef and attracted ants despite numerous washings. So wood (some worse than others) has open pores, and I need to pre-fill those pores to prevent the utensils from becoming gross. Something like mineral oil is useless as it just washes off, and wax melts if you actually cook anything with your utensil. It would have to be a drying oil, or at least cured. I did try 'seasoning' wood as you would with cast-iron, just at a really low temperature. It seemed to work though it substantially weakened the wood. So the better option seemed to be an oil that dries on its own. The options and pros and cons aren't relevant to my point, I settled on using flax oil. For testing, I got a set of cheap wooden spoons, which I then shaped and sanded so they're smooth and not terrible. Then I started with the flax oil. The procedure is also not relevant to my point. I now have several very thin coats on these things. They are so smooth to the touch, but I can still feel the wood under my fingertips. It doesn't feel like it's coated in plastic. And all of the grain is starting to shine like medullary rays in quarter-sawn lumber. It's nice. It makes me happy?

Why? because it feels nice? because it looks pretty? Yeah. I feel some kind of way about that. Beauty?

I have not felt this way in a very long time. And never freely. I really am tired of making everything about her. But this is how she made me feel. This is the world I wanted and could never have. To me, she was beauty itself. Shall I compare thee to a wooden spoon?

Still, beauty is very difficult to achieve. I'm still me, I'm not a picky perfectionist for nothing. Everything grates on me. Everything falls apart if I look too closely. The only things I'm going to be happy with are things I've made myself, to my own standard. Of which I am not yet capable. I suppose I could break it down into smaller pieces. Like, I can't build my perfect bass yet, nor am I experienced enough to know that would entail. But I could find good strings for it. And then I could fit a new nut that's not worn out. And then I could adjust the saddle height. And then I could flatten the fingerboard. And eventually those little pieces should add up to something more.

Also, I suppose that sentiment of things falling apart should extend to her as well. Which feels.. cruel? Though it's hard to be sure, it wasn't until long after that that I determined I can't be the one who's wrong. What I'm about to say almost feels like too much of a stretch, but I think that's moreso because I'm not sure how to explain it. So, her music was flat, and generic, and poorly phrased. And that very much fits the pattern of what I've seen with music education. I know damn well she has things to express, but it's like she doesn't have her own voice to say it in. But it seems like the same kind of thing happens with communication. It's like people aren't ever really themselves, they're only ever performing a role they learned from someone else. And when understanding me, they shoehorn whatever I'm saying into one of those roles. That's where things fell apart. I was desperate to get past that, and I felt like it was my fault for not being able to figure it out. And if she were really the angel I believed she was, she would have seen that something was terribly wrong from the very beginning.

And I really don't know what to think about that. My impression is that people must be messed up in much the same way I was. That really there are wonderful, beautiful people buried in there that can't get out or don't feel safe. And sort of like problems in my household, it's not that the things that bother me aren't problems for others too, it's just that I'm the one who notices. But if they're in there, I've never been able to find them. Though some people seem quite nice so long as I don't look too closely.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

So I (finally!) bought a pair of really good noise cancelling headphones, and it has changed my life! It's the fanciest thing I've bought in years, so to recoup some of the cost, I’ve researched & written a little essay based on my experiences with extreme noise sensitivity.

Hypersensitivity to sound is something I’ve dealt with all of my life, but I only recently found out it's medically known a Hyperacusis. (Please note this is a separate condition from Misophonia.) If you consistently struggle to cope with noise, the info below could be helpful! I’m including a link to my ko-fi, and I will be answering questions in the notes.

(skip to the bottom to read fun facts about my tax return and/or street organs vendettas!)

DISCLAIMER: I am not a professional, this is based solely on my experiences as a patient, and on what I have read and been told by professionals. Please notify me if you have corrections or concerns about accuracy!

BACKGROUND: Sensitivity to sound is a common type of sensory issue. While anyone can experience such issues (most people, for example, might be bothered by loud music in a crowded restaurant), some people are more sensitive than others, to the point it becomes a quality-of-life aka a medical issue.

If you consistently struggle with environmental stimuli that other people aren’t bothered by (background noises, bright lights, certain textures and tastes, etc), to the point it causes daily discomfort or limits the environments you can be in, I recommend reading about Sensory Processing Disorder.

SPD and sound sensitivity are both super common in autistic folks (like me!), but allistic (non-autistic) people can experience them too. Weep, ye prisoners of mortal coil, for none are safe, nothing sacred, not in this thy most accursed tomb of human flesh!

Anyway.

SOUND SENSITIVITY or HYPERACUSIS: Noise issues are particularly difficult to navigate in a world that is increasingly...noisy. The relatively new phenomenon of constant overhead music in restaurants, grocery stores, shopping malls etc—all of this means that public spaces are increasingly inaccessible to people with auditory issues.*

As a kid, nothing quite triggered sensory overload/meltdowns for me like the constant exposure to noise I couldn’t control—the background chatter of other kids in the lunchroom, the constant noise in public spaces, being trapped in the car with the radio on.... I had so many fights with my siblings about the car radio, and who got to choose the music.**

But it’s not just loud sounds that are the problem. As an adult who lives alone and works from home***, I’m lucky enough to be able to avoid loud environments most of the time. This does wonders for my general levels of anxiety and discomfort. But even in a mostly controlled environment, I still experience problems. Because part of sound sensitivity is that even normal or quiet sounds can feel loud and intrusive. Here are some “normal” sounds that can cause me discomfort (ranging from annoyance to outright pain, depending on the day):

refrigerator/AC/ceiling lights humming

dishwasher/washing machine noises

ceiling fan making that damn ceiling fan noise

faint sounds of traffic

riding in a car

other people having a normal conversation in the background

someone talking to me in a perfectly normal inside voice

Unfortunately, even in a “controlled” environment, many triggering noises can’t be controlled. And many parts of life can’t be lived in a controlled environment. This presents...some incredibly freaking annoying problems. Luckily there are solutions!

Sorta.

There are sorta some solutions.

They are imperfect, but they help.

TREATMENT: And now I have something rather shame-faced to admit. In all the years of managing my symptoms, it never once occurred to me to see a hearing specialist for my issues with sound. I wasn’t even aware that treatment options exist, because none of my other doctors mentioned it. Instead, I’ve spent years finding my own coping mechanisms and tools, with help from therapists and psychiatrists, but without ever consulting an audiologist/ENT. It was only while researching this post that I found out that was even an option, holy shit.

So it turns out I am going to be making an appointment with my local ENT practice. shit.

Apparently treatment options include sound/acoustic therapy, systematic desensitization/exposure therapy, cognitive behavior therapy, sound machines, and other options that I had no idea even existed, goddammit.

MANAGEMENT: In the meantime, here are my current coping mechanisms. I’ve relied rather heavily on hearing protection, which is very useful when used in moderation. Unfortunately, it can cause its own problems: it’s important not to overuse hearing protection, because in the long-term this can increase your sensitivity. So again: a useful tool, but be careful not to overdo it.

With that in mind, here are some of the coping strategies I’ve used over the last decade to manage my symptoms. This is not a perfect system and you should contact your local ENT clinic for better, long-term solutions, but in the meantime here are some tips I use to just get myself through the damn day:

Regularly spending time in a quiet controlled environment, to allow my nervous system to decompress.

Wearing earplugs, (I use two different grade, depending on the level of noise prevention I need), and always carrying an extra pair in case I need them unexpectedly. I bought a 50 pack for $7 and put spares in all my bags and jacket pockets.

(I mostly use Mack’s Ultra Soft, but there are so many types and materials and brands, including foam, silicone, wax, custom moldable etc. Even if you have trouble wearing things in your ears, you might be able to find something comfortable.)

Similarly: hearing protection earmuffs, the kind used in gun ranges and on construction sites. I bought mine online for $10. they look like normal wireless headphones, so I've never gotten comments when wearing mine in public (other than “cool heaphones” bc i added skull glitter stickers).

Sometimes I wear the earmuffs on top of earplugs, when life is just too damn LOUD.

Listening to music w/ earbuds or headphones is a great way to balance out background noises, especially if you can find soothing playlists that help you concentrate. Also useful to put in just one earbud when you need to pay attention in class/at work.

Pro tip: if your hair is long enough you can wear wireless earbuds without anyone knowing.

White noise, rain noises, ocean noises etc can be helpful! Some people like whale songs although personally this activates my primal fear response

Active noise cancelling headphones: the reason I wrote this post to begin with—I finally bought a pair! As in, a really good pair! As in, a depressingly expensive pair with noise cancelling technology that actually WORKS, holy shit. I probably need to wear them a little less at home (bc overprotection causes problems in the longterm) but they have absolutely transformed my ability to go out in public and i never ever want to take these suckers off again please take a power screwdriver and nail these to my head, bury me in the sweet sweet shroud of silence. holy canoli and cream puffs I want to marry form a civil partnership with these headphones. Plus they have a bunch of features, like being able to control the level of noise cancellation, so I can hold a conversation or be aware of some ambient noise for safety reasons.

Oh, and also they play music I guess?

Sorry sorry I promise this post wasn’t supposed to be me shilling for Big Electronics. I’m just excited, I’m an excited flabby little ball of expired flubber. ANC headphones aren’t a perfect solution, and I still sometimes wear earplugs underneath, and I will always be uncomfortable some of the time, but for me it’s been a big step.

Unfortunately the cost of good quality ANC technology means this isn’t an option for everyone, and the (much cheaper) gunshot protection earmuffs I mentioned earlier still provide an impressive amount of protection and bang-for-your buck (maybe even an equal amount of protection, if you can find ones that fit well). But if noise consistently prevents you from enjoying public space and life in general, and you’ve already tried earmuffs & earplugs and find they don’t offer enough comfort/convenience/protection, and if you’re in a position to save up for a one time non-necessity purchase of $150+, noise cancelling headphones are an option to be aware of. (Please always check the return policy so you can try before you buy. I ended up buying and returning 2 pairs before finding what worked best for me. And please look for a retailer that offers an extended warranty. You want those motherforkers to last).

There are cheaper options available, including some under $50. The ones I tried didn't work as well as my hearing protection earmuffs, but some people report good experiences, so that is something to consider. it's always good to know your options! Passive noise canceling is another affordable alternative.

Medication: A final tool in my toolbox, which for me personally has helped as much as every other method combined. Like, a lot, it’s helped a lot. It turns out some anti-anxiety medications can also help sensory issues. There’s not much research on this, and I only discovered it firsthand when a medication my doctor prescribed for anxiety ended up significantly helping my sensory issues. I no longer need medication for anxiety, but my psychiatrist still prescribes that same medication off-label for my sensory stuff. Ask your psychiatrist to research your options (they will probably have to do some digging to find relevant research, but you deserve to know all your options, even the obscure ones). Fyi, the medication I use is in the benzodiazepines class, but there are other options for those concerned about dependency or side effects.

(I'm also told anti-anxiety supplements may be helpful, though I haven't tried this yet. If you're on prescription meds, always talk to your doctor about contraindications before taking anything over-the-counter.)

So there you have it, my main coping strategies for sound sensitivity! They are not a replacement for medical treatment (except that last one which is in fact...medical treatment), but I find them helpful and I hope some of you will too! I’ve struggled for a long time, and I’m very pleased to have reached the point where I can just do things in public. Eating out in loud restaurants? I can do that now, and even enjoy it, holy shit! I can comfortably travel in cars for hours at a time, and walk around shopping malls and grocery stores with overhead music, and, and —and just exist. It is so so freeing, to feel like maybe, after everything, you are actually allowed to just exist in a world that wasn’t really designed for you.

Again, be careful not to overuse hearing protection—the goal is to allow you to be less uncomfortable and to function better, but if you find you are becoming more sensitive to noise, it is time to dial it back a notch. Or maybe consider listening to music (at a reasonable volume) to block out background noise instead.

*(This also includes people with hearing loss and related issues, btw. While that’s not my area of knowledge, I would welcome it if any of my HoH followers want to share their experiences.)

**A sign of sensory issues that parents often miss is when a child complains about music being too loud—but has no problem listening to their own music at high volume. This is because music that is already familiar to the listener (and that the listener enjoys) is much easier for the brain to process, since it knows what pattern of sounds to expect. Loud music that they get to control can be soothing for people with sound issues, especially when it blocks out background noise and sensations. This is why repetitively playing the same songs can be a helpful form of stimming.

***(working on this blog, actually. since it’s my only source of income, my 2020 income tax return literally lists my occupation as ‘Tumblr Blogger.’ Oddly, my parent didn’t feel this achievement was worth including in the holiday family newsletter.)

bonus fun fact: Charles Babbage aka “father of the computer” may have been autistic and hypersensitive to sound. He definitely had a huge problem with public noise pollution, and spent his later year waging a war on street musicians (and organ grinders in particular).

(bc like, yeah. screw organ grinders.)

Sometimes when I’m out in public and the overhead music is particularly unbearable, I’ll take a moment to look up to the sky and scream out: “HE TRIED TO WARN US! THE FATHER OF COMPUTERS TRIED TO WARN US!!! we should have listened, sweet heaven we should have listened!”

except i don’t scream it, i say it very quietly under my breath

(i have issues with noise)

so yeah that is my short essay. and here is the ko-fi goal

k ciao i gotta go pick out glitter stickers for my headphones

[movedtodykedvonte]

hey do you have any headcanons for daycare attendant? i love this scrunkly an unreasonable amount

I have my first headcanon post for them here, but I def have more thoughts on them!

They both use they/them and it/its. Both because they see themselves as two separate entities but because they really weren't made with a specific gender or species in mind

They aren't programmed to know a lot of things perse but be hyper knowledgeable in certain topics. This is to make sure they don't learn something not kid-friendly but also know about things toddlers like a lot

So there A.I. can adapt they just are sheltered and don't know much or better

They do know a lot about kid's care and psychology and what kids are interested though, so it's one reason they kinda just treat everyone like a child

Sunrise and Moon don't share memory and it freaks Sunrise out more than Moon cause they don't know what Moon does that has been leaving kids scared

Repeats themselves a lot out of habit due to constantly having to do it all-day

Their body is hyperflexible at the cost of being fairly weak and lightweight like it took the effort to drag Freddy. This is partially because FazEnt didn't want to risk them being too rough with kids and it being cheaper

As such they'd break super easy, hence being big on rules. No one gets hurt if they are followed! Especially them...

Sunrise prefers the quieter kids while Moon actually likes dealing with active ones. Sunrise gets to make someone like playing and Moon can actually do... something... when kids refuse to sleep

They think they'd like swimming if they were waterproof

Limbs and cloths have odd blacklight effects hence why the change in appearance is so quick and drastic

Hates having maintenance done due to how terrifying the parts and service area is, one of the times they will force the shift into Moon as they don't care

Considers the staff bots friends despite those particular ones lacking personality chips. You know which one they favor by the amount of stickers and glitter stuck to it

Paces a lot and mumbles to themselves, it's both to relieve stress and fill out the silence of the room. (they can already drown out the music)

Wouldn't know what to o with a baby baby, like an infant. Probably would cry cause it's so small and fragile and they'd be scared of hurting it.

Moon has a music box they use to sing lullabies to the kids and calm themself down, but it went missing when a certain night guard got hired

Sunrise has gotten in trouble for literally throwing kids, not in a mean way they are just like that.

Are the kids crying, laughing, or screaming, who knows but they are going to make finger puppets after they stop rotating their face

A lot of their behavior is just "oh it's just like that :)"

Has weirdly strict ways of doing this, like Sunrise only skips or prances and keeping the kids on a tight schedule of playing. The staff says it's like they have a ritual about things and the only time Sunrise is seen being hostility aggressive and when someone refuses to let them adhere to it.

Go off queen we love the constant manic episode.

I could talk about them all day. Maybe I'll write a character analysis for them soon.

[dystopiandilfs]

Dream's discord podcast. Basically him answering questions for 2.5 hours. This will sort of be in order but I fucked up my notes so it might not be in order completely. (From 13th May 2021)

For reference the photos at the end are: A prototype of fidget spinner merch as loads of people asked, a reference photo of his favourite merch and a photo he sent of his hair to prove he wasn't a brunette.

•He said his teeth are mostly straight but he's thought about getting Invisalign. He's never had braces. He has a tiny gap in the left side of his mouth and his canines are longer and sharper (vampire arc). He's never had teeth surgery so has his wisdom teeth still.

•He thinks pineapple on pizza is good.

•He likes seafood like lobster and crab. He had crab made in an air fryer last night. He like peas. He thinks quesadillas are good and likes most food.

•He hates Coffee and most drinks

•The Dream Shorts team is Ken who is his personal reminder (Ken's main job is to spam him with texts so he doesn't forget things as he's got a habit of reading texts and not replying) and also comes up with a list of sets for Dream shorts. The builder is a friend and munchymc builder "his talent gets wasted on Dream's shorts but we pay him so"

•His editors are currently Dizzy, Firesale and Mjcr. Willz doesn't edit for him anymore

•The mask animation isn't done but Mask should be released May 21st. He wants to release them together as "the whole song is a double meaning and the whole nuance will be lost without the animation" but no matter if the animation is done the song is getting released on the 21st.

•He and Sapnap eat together often.

•He and Sapnap prefer medium rare Steak

•He wants a home gym it's something he's willing to splurge on. They currently have a weight rack but they haven't even set it up.

•"Eat the rich? Shut up shut up" - Dream

•Talked about money basically saying "Most people don't understand how money works I don't have millions in my bank account it's in assets like merch, land and warehousing for that stuff" (He's not in his landlord arc)

•He's been debating Pride Merch because of Rainbow Capitalism. He doesn't want it too be seen as a money maker and if he does most proceeds would go to charity. He's currently super busy merch wise with Sapnap joining and George in the middle of joining. He did say "Only if the LGBTQ+ community in this community wants it" He thinks he's going to at least change the merch website to a pride one. Sapnap wants to make pride merch including a rainbow flame on his.

•He wants to create a charity that's centered around helping LGBTQ+ one day because he thinks that there's a lack of them. He mentioned that creating a charity was expensive and took a lot and was a complicated process including a board of directors but he wants to do it someday.

•He wanted to buy a bunch of houses in Florida which was a service to house mostly LGBTQ+ youth and people stuck in abusive households for free to get them out of bad home environments. But he didn't because he didn't want people thinking he was profiting of of abuse victims and LGBTQ+ community.

•He said he's terrible with time management and replying to people which is why Ken helps him (and also helps George and Sapnap). He mentioned how Sam messaged multiple times and Dream just forgot to answer but felt bad "I feel like people think I hate them..... Cause I'd be mad if people did that to me"

•He tries to reply to a few texts a day (community number). He also can't do birthday messages everyday because you can only reply at certain times so it's not abusing the system so if you get one it's special. He said he does try but it's got a weird time gap.

•Him and the manhunt winner are trying to come up with a good time to film

•He wants to stream this MCC on twitch and says his team is good.

•He talks about why he's not partnered with Twitch. Basically Twitch has a lock rate (in which you make money) and you legally can't stream on YouTube. So legally if Tommy wanted to stream on YouTube he couldn't. Someone then mentioned how Bad is a twitch partner but still streams on YouTube "Bad streams on YouTube but he has for a while and I don't think that he cares" - Dream

•He likes to reply to every donation he gets on stream and feels bad when he doesn't so he'll turn them off when he streams and wants a platform deal where he can be payed to stream (not twitch). If he gets a streaming partnership he will stream a couple of times a week. He looked in to Facebook but they don't have an alias system meaning you can see everyone's actual Facebook account and personal info, he doesn't like seeing real names on Facebook so it would require a lot of altering if he was to stream there so he's thinking it's probably going to be YouTube.

•He was asked about if his demographic was what he expected and he said he went in with no expectations, he didn't even know what stans were, wasn't really on social media so he wasn't aware of the fan culture. "You guys are a handful sometimes but it's worth it"

•He also mentioned how he and the DreamSMP changed the twitch audience demographic. It used to be male dominated in both streamers and audience and now it's almost split which is unheard on.

•He has 5 fidget spinners in his house. Two in his bedroom. Two in his office. One in the living room.

•He likes his Minecraft skin as he thinks the arm is cook and you never see the rest of his skin really. He says it's unique and different and "me". Dream: You can't even tell half the skins apart on MC.

•He's not lost the motivation to stream. Most of the times if he wants to stream he gets George or Sapnap to do it and he just turns up. It's more beneficial to them as they have donos and subs on. (Don't we fucking know it "can you say hi to")

•He has listened to Lovejoy. Says the ep was great and they're very talented and awesome. Doesn't know what his favourite song is but probably would pick One Day because the chorus slaps.

•RIP to acoustic Roadtrip. He said instead of acoustic Roadtrip we get Mask so no losses today for Dream stans.

•"With Roadtrip I went to Parker and I said Hey I have a story I want to tell through music. I have no experience with that can you help me" He said sure. He crafted the music and melodies and how things are formed where it's catchy. I have less comfort singing that. I love the song and it's my song, it's very representative of me and I'm sure I could sing it but it's a song I'd be kinds of scared to sing live, with Mask I basically did everything. I sat there the entire time and maybe an hour out if the 100 I wasn't in the call. Dream came up with the lyrics and main melody for Mask (First one he's ever come up with) "That was just notes in my fucking voice memos"

•The clip we heard of Mask was a prechorus not the actual chorus. He thinks he'd be more comfortable to do a mask acoustic and it's more melodic than Roadtrip. The chorus also has a lot of instruments similar to Roadtrip. Mask starts of slow and guitar with minimal reverb and is more raw.

• He doesn't want music to be his main thing. It's something fun to do and he's passionate about it as it's a way to express emotions. He wants to release mask then go from there. He wants to release at least one more song but has nothing on his mind currently. His two ideas were Roadtrip and Mask.

•He wouldn't quit his job to become a pizza delivery man.

•His favourite features on himself are eyes or freckles and he also confirmed that he does have eyebrows.

•He was told that Parkour warrior would be bought back some time in the near future and he got excited for it. "Even if I don't win, which I will, it'll be fun"

•Went on about his MCC team but I'm not going to put that in as we should be getting them today. He did say he wasn't on Pink but he did sound confused. (For reference he's always in Pink as it's the last team announced and keeps the hype up by announcing the biggest streamer last)

•Said he and his mum had the Mr Beast burger. He recommends because he likes the avacado. He mentioned how Mr Beast uses "Ghost Kitchens" which is basically where he gives restaurants permission to cook his food so it's restaurant quality food.

•His favourite piece of merch is the circle smile. (The pool photo on Instagram). He said the quality was bad (he worked with a different company and didn't have his own company) and it was elasticy feeling and he's planning on re-releasing it again but with good quality.

•He's started to send merch out in custom packaging. So his bags have the smile and will mostly be green. Sapnap's has the flame and is either black or white. He's also trying to make it so every order has the sticker packs for both him and Sapnap.

•He loves the coins as it's cheaper than a hoodie but still celebrates the milestones and will last a long time. He mentioned how the old coins are getting removed off the site and how if you have any of the coins your special because only a few thousand get made. He's kept around 100 of each coin that he wants to give away in person.

•He wanted to have a cool store where you could access computers that give you access to the DreamSMP in spectator mode. But it's too costly and would require too much time and isn't safe fight now. He doesn't think it'd be worth it financially.

•Most of the hoodie are black instead of multiple colours because of limited supply and covid. Getting the colours are harder because if the pandemic which hopefully won't be an issue soon.

•He wants to do a short meetup tour with Sapnap and George with a few locations in the US (and if others nearby want to join like Quackity or Karl they can). He also wants to visit Australia, UK, Canada, Mexico and Philippines and do something like that there but definitely at least visit with George and Sapnap.

•He's never been to the Philippines but his mum has. He wants to set up a place in the Philippines where he can ship merch in bulk and it would help to reduce shipping. However it would probably be big milestone merch.

•He's not got the vaccine yet but will get it when he needs to. He doesn't leave the house so he doesn't see the point.

•He's the ideas man. George's footcam video was Dream's idea. The T-shirt video was Dream's idea. Most if not all of the Dream Team's videos are Dream's ideas.

•Said he's got a similar/the same hair colour as Froy (Dream buddy at this point the only difference between you and Froy is that one of you is dating Richard Madden /lh)

[lychgate]

Do you have any advice for people who are starting to create merch related to a franchise?

How does it work ?

Do you buy a certain amount of an item you produced beforehand and wait for someone to buy one of them ?

Or do you wait for someone to buy the merch then you order the item in question before sending it to the customer?

Is there a risk of getting sued by the company or franchise you made merch out of, even if it’s your drawing/concept (just using their characters)

Sorry if it’s too much to ask 😅 some of my friends recommended me to start doing this, I just wanna learn the right steps, it’s an unknown territory..

Thank you !

Hey! I can answer the best to my own experiences, in general for merch sales you're getting your inventory of said item first then sending them out when sales are made. So like if you ran an Etsy you'd already have said item when you create the listing, and there's a spot on your listing creation page that lets you put in it's inventory number so it keeps track of that. custom items are probably more order first, make second. But if these are items you're going to manufacturers to make (acrylic charms, art prints, shirts, pins, etc) then it's expected you have them in stock when selling them. (otherwise das a preorder) making merch of IPs can feel like a tippy toe territory cause a lotta times its luck based like some people never run into an issue and have a perfectly fine career selling fanart. It's hard cause its a lot of foggy territory, and it ranges on how hard the individual company wants to go after the smallest fish (were the small fish) fanart gets to be a foggy territory cause ur usually redrawing it all in ur own style, compared to like, if i took the official logos or base licensed artworks of famous characters and made merchandise out of it.

my own opinion on handling it is I normally just make fanart merch for things that im willing to bite the financial loss over if I got in trouble for it. Most cases they're just gonna yeet a C+D at u and if ur on a platform like Etsy they'll just immediately remove the listing and email u the thing they were sent. (getting too many of those tho could result in ur etsy store getting taken down so heads up)

starting off merch wise id suggest things that are cheaper to invest in. like acrylic charms or stickers or art prints are lower priced and usually have a lower minimum order quantity from the manufacturer. pre-orders are also good cause they'll gauge the public interest in said item a little better. uhhhh otherwise the only other general thing is community engagement helps a ton for getting into merch making. There's a lot of artist circles groups and chats open to newcomers that will have a lot of good information and experience provided there.

[cat-vase]

Do u have any headcanons about tim :0?? Or anybody in mh in general ? 🥺👉👈

These are mostly about Tim and Jay while they’re in hotels together, I hope that’s ok!! :) 

Tim is really bad with his emotions. Like, REALLY bad. He bottles them up, consciously or not, and feels emotionally numb almost all of the time until he breaks one night over something (usually) small. This leads to screaming at the top of his lungs in a parking lot with tears streaming down his face because he doesn’t understand what he’s doing with his life, and he’s generally distressed all of the time even though he hides it under numbness. 

Tim snagged a pair of those noise cancelling plastic earmuffs from a garage sale once. They’re red, and a lot cheaper than noise cancelling headphones would be at this point, so he uses them in the hotel rooms because they’re better than nothing. Tim gets up every couple of hours to go smoke, but Jay will move randomly to get up or stretch or show him something, and it’s really loud compared to how quiet the room usually is, and loud, unexpected noises freak Tim out. It also helps when either of them are looking through corrupted footage. He kind of wishes he could wear them out, but he’s convinced himself he’ll definitely get made fun of, and either Jay hasn’t noticed yet or Jay doesn’t mind, so Tim feels like he’s pushing his luck as it is already. 

Tim showers in the dark, even though he usually physically can’t fall asleep when it’s pitch black in the room because he hates the dark. 

Sometimes Jay points the camera up at the night sky to see if it’ll catch any of the stars. He wants to record how pretty it is so he can look at it later. 

Jay has gotten his hand stuck in the hotel’s vending machine at least once. Tim has had to help him out definitely more than once. 

Brian used to put stickers on everyone during college to cheer people up, and sometimes Tim catches himself mindlessly doodling little hearts or stars or smiley faces on himself as a result. 

Tim is always doing something. Whenever he’s not smoking he’s ripping apart any paper nearby, chewing on his jacket strings, tapping his fingers on his computer or a table, messing with/twirling his hair, or rubbing his hands on his face. 

Jay has exactly one oversized jacket. Tim wears it a lot, and in retaliation (and because he’s always cold), Jay steals and wears Tim’s flannels. Neither of them mind or mention it to each other. 

Tim is extremely touch averse; the most he’ll do is hold Jay’s hand. However, sometimes they both need more than that. Whenever Tim goes in for a hug first is when they both know to stay quiet and focus on the moment instead of whatever they’re thinking about. 

There’s been a couple times Tim’s leg has given out while they’re out exploring. Whenever this happens Tim feels absolutely awful, because there’s nothing he can do about it. He either has to leave Jay alone and painfully limp back to the car, or they both have to leave, because there’s no way Tim’s getting any farther while he’s like this. 

Tim wipes at his nose and mouth a lot out of habit because he expects blood to be there. 

Tim’s had a couple of seizures at night at the hotel. He didn’t mention it until Jay looked at the footage and saw it happening. Jay was incredibly worried about him, and anything that might be around that caused it to happen, and started asking Tim a bunch of questions. Tim was still kind of out of it all, but he thinks it was because he didn’t want Jay to be worried about him any more than he already had to be. 

Tim trembles a lot when he’s emotional. He could look perfectly normal to anybody else, but Jay notices his hands are shaking and he’s tensed up, and Jay will immediately ask what’s wrong. 

Tim has coughed up blood into the hotel sink multiple times without Jay knowing. 

Tim misses the instruments he has at home, so he listens to a lot of acoustic music in his car. Tim generally likes any kind of music, but hearing stuff that he used to play makes it a little bit better. 

Tim signs things as “Tim W.” whenever he has to. He refuses to use his last name, and he doesn’t like being called his full first name. 

Tim rarely gets sick, but whenever he does he is completely out of commission until he’s better. Besides high strung emotional times, this is really the only other time he’s vulnerable in front of other people. It hurts to move and breathe and he can’t not cry because it fucking hurts.

Tim and Jay leave sticky notes around for each other whenever they go out to do something with their name signed on them just so the other doesn’t panic whenever they’re alone anymore. 

[bisexualhobi]

another thing that was funny to me during the live is how jin and yoongi sort of clowned on the re-release, like asking what's different about this version and joking that there'd be a third Ultra Deluxe release... and on one hand im glad that they also seem to think it's kind of shitty marketing but in the other hand im like... if you feel this way, then why did this rerelease happen? why does the label have more power than the band? anywayz i just hate the industry lmao

I think I dozed off during that part but I did saw a clip later on my tl abt jin going "ok but what else besides these two grammy hot100 stickers is special abt the album" and no one knew what to say 😭😭😭 had namjoon and jk literally saying shit like "uhh well it's lighter!! the packaging!! yeh 👍🏻😃" bflsjfkfkdjjg WE BOTH KNOW IT'S NOT DIFFERENT OR SET APART IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM IT'S ONLY CHEAPER......

it was SO transparent how bighit dropped a 50 dollar album right before christmas season, didn't say SHIT abt another edition even tho it was clearly marketed as the "deluxe" version and sat on the cheaper edition for MONTHS so they could squeeze every single last dollar from this fandom 💀

as to your question "why does the label have more power than the band?" well dear anon, that's because that's literally how labels work. no matter how much soft power bh wants to exercise over the gp perception of bts, they are still a product that bh manages as they see fit - case in point, hobi expressing desire to go on a reality show and then backtracking cause bh would never let him appear on a show that focuses on individuality

it really baffles me how the essential rollout came to be, because we literally got NOTHING out of it. there was no marketing outside of weverse, not even their official acct tweeted about the release. on Instagram and tiktok, their two biggest platforms outside of twt it was CRICKETS. people had NO idea be was being re released this week. and that's bc bighit's marketing team has been increasingly relying on army to do THEIR job. the fandom literally does marketing for free 💀 with all their "cb goals!!" and spamming fancams under viral tweets. they saw that happening and said "well guess I can go take a nap now"

I still refuse to accept that we are only getting a single MV out of this era. it can't be. they are probably gonna drop a second MV (either for fly to my room/telepathy..... atp I won't even pretend I still have hopes for dis-ease being the second single rip) now that yoongi is better and has had time to recover. but if there was any moment for them to drop a second single it was two weeks ago, to promote the be re release properly. every day that passes now without promo is sunken cost.

[raespark]

That Allister cosplay is outstanding!! How did you make the mask and the gym symbol+endorsements? I'm planning on doing an Allister cosplay in the future myself

Thank you so much, and happy to answer! I took lots of pictures through the process so I’ll answer this in two parts.

“How did you make the gym symbol/ endorsements?”

So the first thing I did is take a TON of screenshots I have almost 300 screenshots of reference images of allister and the gym league trainers and the pokejobs logos and so on to get good references for all the logos I needed.Once I was done taking all the screenshots I spent hours tracing them to the best of my ability to create these images: (Not all of these were the final versions which were modified right before printing, apologies)Gym Logo - QUAY/ Gym Logo

XXA - Sponsor (This is the logo for MC Insurance, Allisters Sponsor)

291 - Number

ASTSA - Name (This is the new pokemon language for Onion, Allister’s japanese name)

The square with the diamond - This I nicknamed the “NIKE” cause its the logo for the spotswear company in game

Galar league logo - Galar League logo (this is the logo thats the red and blue pokeball with white marks, and “galar league written underneath it)

And then I put together this ref sheet to make sure the logos looked good together color wise, and some of the colors were still altered later but it all looked pretty good

And then once the logos were all set, I printed them onto heat transfer vinyl and let me explain why I did that specifically. The fabric I used was polyester, which is the kind of fabric that sports jerseys are made of. I did that because the gym’s uniforms are based on soccer jersey’s so it felt fitting!IT WAS A HUGE PAIN I DONT RECOMMEND ITbut now because of the fact that it was polyester paint wouldnt’ work on that fabric because of how stretchy it is and the fact it doesn’t absorb moisture easily. So we printed it onto heat transfer vinyl with my cheap ink printer and then I ironed them onto my clothes! I made sure they were placed correctly by first taping them to my clothes and making a note of the location before ironing it, and then once I was happy with a placement I’d carefully iron it on. This vinyl seems kinda cheap and like the ink might come off with too much water so watch out if you choose to use it. There are also printable iron on paper for other types of fabric as well and are cheaper iirc!

Same goes for the dots, thos were all cut using a CNC/ off brand cricut (just a bunch of circles all at once) and I placed them by hand using painters tape and trimmed as needed to make the designs:

Hopefully that was helpful!

“How did you make the mask?”

So this ones a little more complicated to answer because its not complicated but its not something everyone can do.

So we started on this one before the game came out, and before I’d gotten to Allisters battle in the game but we had enough reference material to figure out the general look of Allister’s mask, so we made a 3D model of it that we planned to 3D print (my bf has a 3D printer and a CNC and helped me a TON for this project) and did a test print of a tiny mask to start to make sure we were happy with the 3D model (here is the tiny mask in my tiny hand, we affectionally nicknamed it “mini mask”)

Now after we had the 3D model we had another issue of how big does it need to be? I have a round head on my own so I didn’t need to modify the shape of the mask thankfully (one time my fat head came in handy!) But we needed to figure out how big to make the mask to make sure it “fit” correctly.

So we tried cutting out a circle with paper in a few sizes until we thought we found a good size for my face (which for me was a little over 7 inches)

went and bought a styrofoam dome from the craft store in that size to make an EVA foam dome and then checked if that fit my face (later this worked fantastic as a way to transport the mask as a protective shell around it) I don’t have a picture of this EVA foam dome but all it was used for was putting it on my face and making sure it went over my chin and such. Once we had that we were ready to start printing the final mask. 

Once the 3D model was scaled for the final mask, it was too big for my bf’s printer to print all in one go so we split it into 4 pieces. Each piece took about 9 hours to print, and a few of the prints failed and had to be redone, so after a few days of printing it looked something like this:

for those who don’t know much about 3D printing all those beams are the supports that lets the printer print raised surfaces like that and have to all be removed. So after about 2 hours of pulling plastic with pliers it looked more like this:

so we left small gaps in the edges of the mask so that we could put metal pins between each piece to help hold it together so we cut our metal pins and assembled the mask and it was starting to come together!

So from here we melted some plasitc onto the seams (plastic welding!) with a wood burner and - wow that looks gross

but trust me its better than gaps in the mask. so after a bit of sanding here we entered the rounds of priming it with spraypaint primer and sanding it for like an hour and doing that again, occasionally using bondo putty to try and even out those seams and those rounds tended to look like allister just murdered a village:

but you can see compared to the previous image that the mask is a lot smoother! This was the final round of sanding and you can tell that most of the layer lines from the printer have been sanded down! You can almost not see the seams anymore! (though now they’re also very red but they’re very smooth in comparison to the beginning trust me…I sat there sanding for many hours for this)

But after this all that needed to be done with a final priming in grey, and then painted it gray!

While the paint was drying, we prepared some masking in the design of allisters mask which if you don’t know what the full mask looks like I wanna reference this from the collectors guidebook (which I just now got my hands on today but saw these on twitter)

So we cut out a sticker sheet in that design and placed it down with some painters tape to keep that part of the mask gray and then it was painted white, and that was the painting done!

For the black in the eyes, I got a scrap of black fabric for cheap at joann’s that I picked up and pulled and it was a very soft polyester/spandex material that you’d use for pantyhose so i’m sure you could also cut up some of those for a similar effect. But when stretched you can see out of them. 

So we made small rings the same shape as the inside of the mask behind the eyes, glued the fabric using super glue to that ring (and the mouth as well) and viola:

and then the final step was to get that mask on my face, and basically we had some rings on the left and right sides of the inside of the mask that I attatched some elastic too, and then needed to glue a third strap over the top of my head. and sewed it all in place and put some craft foam along the forehead and chin inside the mask for some cushioning and it was done! 

I really hope that was helpful and I tried to make sure I took lots of photos along the way so I hope they were helpful. If you have other questions feel free to ask! Sorry for the novel but just wanted to be as detailed as I could be!

Thank you for your nice words and best of luck!! Allister is a detailed boy but he’s very fun!

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THE ANATOMY OF VC BE A STARTUP

If in the next couple years. Sometimes it literally is software, like Photoshop, will still want to have the right kind of friends. Where the work of PR firms.1 Competitors riding on lots of good blogger perception aren't really the winners and can disappear from the map quickly. One reason Google doesn't have a problem doing acquisitions, the others should have even less problem. Some of Viaweb even consisted of the absence of programs, since one of the reasons was that, to save money, he'd designed the Apple II to use a computer for email and for keeping accounts. They want to know what is a momentous one. How do you find them? Suppose it's 1998. The big media companies shouldn't worry that people will post their copyrighted material on YouTube. Once someone is good at it, but regardless it's certainly constraining.

Gone with the Wind plus Roots. This is extremely risky, and takes months even if you succeed.2 At most software companies, especially at first. Their answers were remarkably similar. I use constantly?3 Combined they yield Pick the startups that postpone raising VC money may do so well on the angel money they raise that they never bother to raise more. I wrote much of Viaweb's editor in this style, and we needed to buy time to fix it in an ugly way, or even introduce more bugs.4

Historically investors thought it was important for a founder to be an online store builder, but we may change our minds if it looks promising, turn into a company at a pre-money valuation is $1.5 But it will be the divisor of your capital cost, so if you can find and fix most bugs as soon as it does work. Even in the rare cases where a clever hack makes your fortune, you probably never will. You may not believe it, but regardless it's certainly constraining.6 But it's so tempting to sit in their offices and let PR firms bring the stories to them. Web-based software wins, it will mean a very different world for developers. I think we're just beginning to see its democratizing effects. But this is old news to Lisp programmers. If 98% of the time.7 It might help if they were a race apart.8

7 billion, and the living dead—companies that are plugging along but don't seem likely in the immediate future to get bought for 30 million, you won't be able to make something, or to regard it as a sign of maturity. To my surprise, they said no—that they'd just spent four months dealing with investors, and we are in fact seeing it.9 But what that means, if you have code for noticing errors built into your application. The number of possible connections between developers grows exponentially with the size of the group. We think of the overall cost of owning it. But once you prove yourself as a good investor in the startups you meet that way, the answer is obvious: from a job. Your housemate was hungry. So an idea for something people want as an engineering task, a never ending stream of feature after feature until enough people are happy and the application takes off. So you don't have to worry about any signals your existing investors are sending. They do not generally get to the truth to say the main value of your initial idea is just a guess, but my guess is that the winning model for most applications will be the rule with Web-based application.

It's practically a mantra at YC. You probably need about the amount you invest, this can vary a lot.10 If you lose a deal to None, all VCs lose.11 Plenty of famous founders have had some failures along the way. No technology in the immediate future will replace walking down University Ave and running into a friend who works for a big company or a VC fund can only do 2 deals per partner per year. For insiders work turns into a duty, laden with responsibilities and expectations.12 In addition to catching bugs, they were moving to a cheaper apartment.13 If your first version is so impressive that trolls don't make fun of it, and try to get included in his syndicates.14 VCs did this to them.15

Most people, most of the surprises. So the previously sharp line between angels and VCs. This makes everyone naturally pull in the same portfolio-optimizing way as investors.16 And there is a big motivator.17 These things don't get discovered that often. Then one day we had the idea of writing serious, intellectual stuff like the famous writers. You need investors. The mud flat morphs into a well. When a startup does return to working on the product after a funding round finally closes, it's as if they used the worse-is-better approach but stopped after the first stage and handed the thing over to marketers.

Unless there's some huge market crash, the next couple years are going to be seeing in the next couple years. And yet when I got back I didn't discard so much as a box of it. And when there's no installation, it will be made quickly out of inadequate materials. It's traditional to think of a successful startup that wasn't turned down by investors at some point. But that doesn't mean it's wrong to sell.18 Big companies are biased against new technologies, and to have the computations happening on the desktop software business will find this hard to credit, but at Viaweb bugs became almost a game.19 Plans are just another word for ideas on the shelf.

I wouldn't try it myself. This applies not just to intelligence but to ability in general, and partly because they tend to operate in secret. Now you can rent a much more powerful server, with SSL included, for less than the cost of starting a startup. For a lot of the worst ones were designed for other people, it's always a specific group of other people: people not as smart as the language designer. We're not hearing about Perl and Python because people are using them to write Windows apps. But if you look into the hearts of hackers, you'll see that they really love it.20 I am always looking.21 But you know perfectly well how bogus most of these are. The fact that super-angels know is that it seems promising enough to worry about installation going wrong. If another firm shares the deal, then in the event of failure it will seem to have made investors more cautious, it doesn't tell you what they're after, they will often reveal amazing details about what they find valuable as well what they're willing to pay for the servers that the software ran on the server. Why can't defenders score goals too? If coming up with ideas for startups?

Notes

But if they pay a lot of people who need the money.

A Bayesian Approach to Filtering Junk E-Mail.

Unless you're very docile compared to sheep. Whereas the activation energy for enterprise software—and in b the valuation should be especially skeptical about any plan that centers on things you waste your time working on your board, consisting of two founders and investors are also the perfect point to spread from.

Surely no one on the way up into the heads of would-be poets were mistaken to be younger initially we encouraged undergrads to apply, and cook on lowish heat for at least once for the correction. I know it didn't to undergraduates on the y, you'd see a clear upward trend.

The hardest kind of method acting. Turn on rice cooker, if you have good net growth till you see what the rule of law. But there are no discrimination laws about starting businesses. In fact, this seems empirically false.

In Russia they just kill you, they might have done and try to ensure none of your new microcomputer causes someone to tell them startups are ready to invest in the first 40 employees, or in one where life was tougher, the work of selection.

The best kind of kludge you need to, but except for money. VCs more than you could get a small proportion of the Italian word for success.

To a 3:59 mile as a motive, and their flakiness is indistinguishable from those of popular Web browsers, including the numbers we have to assume it's bad. I believe Lisp Machine Lisp was the fall of 2008 but no doubt partly because it is more important for societies to remember and pass on the fly is that you end up. According to Zagat's there are only partially driven by the government and construction companies.

One great advantage of startups have elements of both. Not least because they're determined to fight. The quality of investor behavior.

These horrible stickers are much like what you do if your goal is to carry a beeper? Acquisitions fall into in the angel is being unfair to him?

Which OS?

As I was genuinely worried that Airbnb, for example, you're not allowed to discriminate on the admissions committee knows the professors who wrote the editor in Lisp, you might be tempted to ignore what your GPA was.

Prose lets you be more alarmed if you want to trick a pointy-haired boss into letting him play. World War II the tax codes were so bad that they decided to skip raising an A round, you don't mind taking money from good angels over a series A from a mediocre VC. The dictator in the US. Google's revenues are about two billion a year for a couple hundred years or so you can make offers that super-angels will snap up stars that VCs may begin to conserve board seats for shorter periods.

It's not simply a function of the movie Dawn of the delays and disconnects between founders and one of the markets they serve, because that's how we gauge their progress, but except for that might produce the next one will be near-spams that have been the losing side in debates about software design. Japanese.

There were a first—9. Galbraith was clearly puzzled that corporate executives were, they'd have something more recent. Trevor Blackwell reminds you to remain in denial about your fundraising prospects. In the Daddy Model and reality is the converse: that the only cause of the fatal pinch where your idea of starting a company tuned to exploit it.

A few VCs have an email being spam.

The late 1960s were famous for social upheaval. Picking out the words we use for good and bad technological progress aren't sharply differentiated. Letter to Oldenburg, quoted in Westfall, Richard.

So you can fix by writing library functions.

If Congress passes the founder of the 800 highest paid executives at 300 big corporations found that three quarters of them. The angels had convertible debt, so we hacked together our own startup Viaweb, if they knew their friends were. But be careful. The original Internet forums were not web sites but Usenet newsgroups.

The only people who had been with us if the quality of production. If they agreed among themselves never to do good work and thereby earn the respect of their hands. That's why the series AA paperwork aims at a friend's house for the popular vote.

Galbraith p. And so this one is harder, the median VC loses money. European art.

Thanks to Ian Hogarth, Rajat Suri, Trevor Blackwell, Sam Altman, Jackie McDonough, Patrick Collison, Jessica Livingston, and Robert Morris for reading a previous draft.

[mindfulwrathwrites]

Bicycle

Dystopian noir lesbians? Sure.

Words: 1,107 Warnings: None really

There's something a little squirrelly about being a P.I. when the Panopticon already knows everything. It's especially rough when you get two-thirds of the way through a case only to have a couple guys in dark glasses turn up and tell you to stop digging, by order of the State. If you want to stay in business—literally and metaphorically—you stop digging. If you're smart, you take your payments up front and have a no-refund policy. Sorry, Sir Or Madam Or Otherwise, Big Brother Says Your Missing Relation Is Government Business, Now Please Get Out Of My Office And Don't Cause A Scene, We Just Got The Carpets Cleaned So I'd Rather Not Call The Cops If You Get My Drift.

It's hard to do detective work when you know somebody else already has the answer. Someone or something saw. The paper trail's tucked up nice and neat in a server somewhere. The whole crime, top to bottom, was probably caught on camera. It's like playing a puzzle game where all the solutions are in a folder on the couch next to you, except if you open the folder a guy in dark glasses shoots you in the back of the head and the next day your local paper runs a piece on the link between puzzle games and suicide.

Which is all to say: on most days, my bullshit threshold is zero.

The new client was a real knock-out, but she also looked like the kind of person who came bearing bullshit. She had that leather-jacket, biker-chic vibe, close-cropped hair and a couple piercings and arms like tree trunks. Her face paint was styled to discombobulate facial recognition software. The only name she'd given my secretary was Yue, and she'd also threatened to pop his head off his shoulders when he complained about it, and she was so much my type that I was mentally reciting Sappho within thirty seconds of meeting her.

She dropped into the Client Chair like she owned the place and, furthermore, like she wasn't planning to ever sell it. She popped a tab of bright pink bubblegum into her mouth and raised an eyebrow at me.

"You gonna stand there gawking all day, or what?" she asked.

"No," I said. Real smooth, moron.

She snorted. I went around back of my desk, but I didn't sit down.

"Can I offer you a drink?" I asked.

She blew a bubble and popped it, loud as gunfire. "Not unless its bubblegum-flavored."

"Point taken." I sat down. "What can I do for you?"

"Somebody stole my bike," she said. "I need it back."

"Uh. I don't know if that's exactly my field."

"You find stuff, don't you? Said so on your website. So you can find my bike."

"Have you reported it stolen?"

"What do I look like, an idiot?"

"I don't know if that's a yes or no to the question."

She rolled her eyes and popped her gum again. "No, I haven't."

"Can I ask why not?"

"Unless you can convince me how it's gonna help you find the damn thing, uh, no."

I took a couple deep breaths. The abrasive personality gets way less attractive when you're the one being abraded. She watched me, jigging her leg and drumming her fingers on the arms of the Client Chair. Her fingernails were painted pink, though the polish was chipped.

"Okay," I said. "What can you tell me, then? Where it was stolen from, what kind of bike, plate numbers—"

"It doesn't have plates, it's a bike," she interrupted. "Schwinn 24-speed, road tires, black and pink. It's got a Hello Kitty sticker on the crossbar thing."

"Schw—wait wait wait, it's a bicycle bike?!"

She looked at me like I was an idiot, which—fair. "No shit."

"Y'know, it's probably cheaper to just get a new bike. Like, I could probably find it for you, but—" I shrugged. "Just putting that out there."

"It's my bike," she said coolly, "and I want it back."

"Okay, customer's always right," I sighed. I got out my notepad. "So you said Schwinn, black and pink, Hello Kitty sticker. Aluminum frame, I'm guessing?"

She popped her gum. "What else?"

"Well, that's good news. The carbon fiber models sometimes get broken down for parts."

I watched her face, as closely as I could without being obvious. Not a twitch. In fact, there was almost too little reaction to that suggestion. Her jaw muscles worked as she chewed her gum. Woman had a jaw you could cut steel on, and one of those superhero cleft chins, and lips like—

Keep it together, Audri. Business.

"Any other identifying features?" I asked.

"It's got a couple lights on it, or it did last time I saw it. Generic road safety shit."

I wrote it down anyway. "And can I get some kind of contact info for you, in case I find it?"

She gave me a cell number—probably a burner phone, if I'd gotten the measure of her. I wrote that down, too. She didn't like it, but she didn't try to stop me. She did get up. I decided pretty quickly that I wasn't going to try and stop her.

"And, uh, payment's due up-front," I said.

"No way," she said.

"Policy. Sorry."

"You have a boss someplace?"

"No, I'm—I'm the boss, it's just—"

"Then your policy's bullshit, and you can make an exception. You'll get the money when I get my bike."

The AC unit kicked on, finally. The vibrations would blow out the mic on the buttonhole camera installed in my wall—though they wouldn't do anything about the visuals.

And, also, I was starting to sweat pretty good.

"Listen," I said to Yue, keeping my voice down and my face blank. "I don't know what you hid inside that bicycle, but I know it's damn important to you. So you can either tell me what it is, or you can pay me up front and I won't ask questions. Your choice."

She stared. I flicked a glance at the AC vent on the wall. She got it. She threw up her hands and dug a short stack of hundreds out of her jacket.

"If you turn me in," she said, "you're a dead woman."

I counted the cash. One thousand, nice and round. I rolled it up, put a rubber band around it, and stuck it in my pocket.

"What would I turn you in for?" I said. "It's just a bicycle."

Which was when I found out that, for all her abrasiveness and cool-tough demeanor, Yue had a fantastic smile.

[anxietymymiddlename]

His and hers circumstances

Pairing: Jumin Han x MC4

Summary: Jeahee is going out with Zen? The surprising news leave her with a broken heart, still she can not find the courage to confess her feelings to her afraid that she will not accept her. Trying to confront her confusing emotions, Jumin enters her every day life like a storm while dealing with his own issues. A little bit more than friends, but with their emotions not sorted out yet, what will happen when they will end up under the same roof?

[Chapter 1]

[Chapter 2: My no. 1 person, surely....]

“Little by little I realized that my eyes were always following you, whether it was in the chatroom or in our gatherings… I wanted to hear your voice, I was graving for your smile. That’s why I knew that the smile I was graving for so much was always meant for someone else. Still, it was too late... My thoughts were already full of you.”

It’s been two years already since they first started sharing an apartment. Meeting Jaehee and the RFA seemed like something out of a book or - as Jaehee would say - like something out of the musicals ZEN was acting in. Still, it was the happiest period of her life. Working together, sharing the same roof, spending their free time discovering new things; she finally had a place to call home. If her meeting the RFA members had changed her life, then Jaehee was the one who gave meaning to it when she did it the most.

“Happy birthday!”

She jumped on her roommate’s bed after sneaking into the room. Her loud voice startled Jaehee in her sleep who screamed and pushed her away as a result. As expected from a judoka, her strength was not something to look down upon. She lost her balance and failing to hold onto the bed, she fell down dragging the blanket Jaehee was using along with her. Realizing what had happened, Jaehee gave her a stern look. Seeing her baffled expression first thing in the morning made her laugh, Jaehee puffed her cheeks to show displeasure, but with her messy hair and her eyes still red from sleep she only managed to make her think that she was cute.

“Happy birthday to you… Happy birthday to you… Happy birthday dear Jaehee… Happy birthday to you!” she sung.

“Min-Seo… Just what were you thinking?” she finally chuckled leaving her bed and gave her a hugged her kneeling next to her. “I wanted to surprise you,” she smiled playfully. “Well, you did achieve that,” she sighed placing a hand on her chest.

It was her turn to hug her, causing her to fall back on the floor along with her. She hummed the birthday song as Jaehee whined about it; but she just rolled around on the floor, tangling her self in Jaehee’s blanket. It was Jaehee’s birthday, so it should be a special day and thus she could not help but smile. She was looking forward to give her her present and see the rest of the RFA members, Jaehee always had fun when everyone gathered together. Seeing her in such a good mood, her roomate could not help but smile back, how could be feel angry about that when she looked so happy to celebrate with her?

“Thank you,” she said. “Yes, let’s have fun today.” “Yes, I’m looking forward to it,” her eyes wondered to the clock. “Oh, look at the time!”

Anxious as she always was, she stood up quickly, padding on the floor with her slim, bare legs and left the room in a hurry. Min-Seo stretched her arms and legs lazily and crawled up on Jaehee’s bed, burring her face in her pillow and yawned; she was so excited last night about the following day she barely slept. Her light steps soon returned into the room. From the rustling sound, she could tell she was browsing through her clothes. The warmth of the bed already had an affect on her, she was about to give in to her drowsiness when Jaehee pulled her from her leg.

“You must get ready too you know!” she scolded her while holding her dress in the other hand and she grunted as a response holding on the mattress. “We can not be late,” Jaehee huddled, standing in her underwear. “So cold...” “I know,” she said blushing at the view, slamming her eyes shut. “But we still have time, take it easy today. It’s your birthday.” “I know, but...” she put on her dress and paused for a moment. “Today is a special day and I want everything to be perfect, so I can’t help but fee a bit impatient.”

Jaehee’s room was painted in a soothing lavender color; she had choosen it saying that she needed a color that it’d help relax when she was at home, replacing the dull white color it was originally painted with. Her desk was completely organized but the frame of her computer screen was always covered with sticker notes. Of course she had a tv in her room, they often watched DVDs there together, she had a great collection, her shelves were already overflowing with them. Needless to say, most of them were DVDs of musicals and movies ZEN had acted in. They were also placed in separate shelves while his rarest posters were decorating her walls.

Her eyes followed her as she was moving around the room and then carefully applied her make-up and did her hair. She sat up and crossed her legs, hugging the warm pillow. It was rare for her to do that in the past. Jaehee was already beautiful so she hardly had any need for it, she thought, but she was happy to see her taking care of herself lately, she was in high spirits. Resting her chin on the pillow, she whistled flirtatiously.

“Stop it!” Jaehee gave her an embarrassed look. “And please get ready!” “Hmmm? Jaehee… Did you change your shampoo?” she blinked at the pillow. “Eh? I’m using the same as usual.” “I see… Strange,” she said and dismissed the thought that it smelt kind of different.  “Min-Seo, get ready!” her voice was more demanding now. “Yes, boss!” she run out of the room laughing as Jaehee, seeing Jaehee’s furious look, she always got mad when she called her just but it was fun to see her reaction.

It was a special day indeed! There was no need to push Jaehee’s limits but it was fun teasing her. They were expecting everyone from the RFA to come to their cafe, the preparations were complete but Jaehee insisted to decorate her cake by herself. She was getting better and better at it. Her managing skills were top-notch and she had almost mastered brewing after taking classes to develop her skills but she was now evolving her baking too. Her mind could never rest, she always wanted to learn something new and it was clear that she was enjoying her job.

“Min-Seo, let’s go!” “Coming!”

They had seen the guys on X-mas day; it was a fun night, they had played games and exchanged gifts. Sadly she did not managed to pick the one Jaehee had prepared but she had at least managed to trade with Yoosug, getting the BD of the series ZEN had last stared in. Jaehee was ecstatic when she gave it to her; she was usually buying the DVD version since they were cheaper. They watched it together the next day. Jumin had not managed to join them, but she was hoping he would that day, Jaehee would be glad and it had been a while since everyone had gathered together.

Her phone buzzed. She opened the app, it was a message from Yoosug. 

“Good morning! Did you guys eat? I had omelet rice for breakfast. Looking forward to this afternoon!” “’Morning! We did. Getting ready for work now. See you guys there!”

The same evening, everyone showed up together, as promised, bringing presents for Jaehee. Well, almost everyone, the C&R CEO had not arrived yet. Taking their sits, they had already started sharing their news when Saeyoung waved towards the door. Jumin had just entered. Finally the group was complete and their table got livelier right away. As she had thought, it was a pity they had missed the opportunity on X-mas day. It seemed like everyone was feeling the same since the conversation went around their last gathering and their present exchange.

“What about your gift?”

A puzzling question she did not expect; he looked curious. Yet again it was rare but not unusual for Jumin to show surprising aspects of himself. Maybe he was sad that he was unable to attend, even though he was acting indifferently. No wonder he was visiting the cafe so often lately, was he feeling lonely? She didn’t have the time to think about it at that moment though. It was Jaehee’s birthday, but she was the only one missing from their table. She should go check how the decoration of the cake was going and fetch her.

“Jaehee, is the cake ready yet?” she asked entering the kitchen. “I’m putting the finishing touches,” she looked proud of it. “Everyone is waiting for you. Wow, it looks so good!” he praised her. “You think? I hope it’ll taste good too.” “I’m sure it will.” “I want everyone to enjoy it.” “Ah, this is a present from Jumin.” “Oh. Mr.H-Jumin came too? I’m glad.  “Not you too, Jaehee,” she frowned. “My bad. I should focus a bit more. Old habits die hard it seems,” she sighed, placing a hand on her cheek. “Can you please place it by the other presents?”

“Jaehee sighs a lot lately,” she thought.

So even Jaehee could be a bit overexcited for her birthday, she was constantly flustered by he smallest things since early in the morning and was checking her clock often. She was happy to see her opening up with time and being honest with her thoughts; to her eyes Jaehee was flourishing more and more by each day and she was elated to be by her side. If she could be just a bit selfish she’d wished they could spend that day alone together, but seeing her beaming like that, she knew the gathering was more than worth it.

“Actually, Min-Seo,” Jaehee touched her hand, that made her heart skip. “I wanted to confess something to you, but I could not find the right timing. It’s a bit embarra-”

“I’l listen!” she grabbed her hands excited it, her heart beating fast. “I’ll listen, so you don’ have to hold back!” “Ah… Thank you,” she looked confused but smiled. “I wanted to tell you for a long time now… But I was not sure about my feelings then, I was not even sure if it was the proper decision, so I thought it’d be best to test how things were going first and then tell everyone… But I feel I should tell you first, no I want to tell you first, you should be the first to know...” “Jaehee...” she was overjoyed. “Could she be...” “I’m going out with Zen… We decided we’d like to try living together.” “Me too!” “Eh?” “What?”

Jaehee’s perplexed face made her rewind her words in her head. What had she just said? Going out with Zen? They were going to live together? Did she misheard things? But how could that be possible? Had her heart stopped beating? She could not hear a sound, everything was blurry, but Jaehee’s eyes in front of her were looking for an answer. Living together with Zen? Jaehee? Her Jaehee? How? Why? Me too, she had said, was she an idiot or what? She was never hers, she knew that. Was she squeezing her hands in hers too much? What kind of expression did she had on her face? 

“Min-Seo?” “Me too! I also think you should try living together!” “Eh? You mean you knew?” she turned red. “I thought no one had found out we were dating!” “Ah… I speculated that was the case...” her laugh sounded so fake. “Just who do you take me for? Of course I knew… I jus waited for you to bring it up.” “Really?” her face relaxed a bit. “Ah…. I was so nervous. Zen told me we should have revealed it sooner but I was concerned whether you would approve of us or no. A romance withing the RFA could complicate things.”

That was so typical of her. Worrying about what others would think even in a situation like this. Her shoulders relaxed letting out the tension of the moment, she simpered. No point reacting like hat, she should comfort her, Jaehee deserved to be happy. Zen was a nice guy. They both deserved happiness. If she could find happiness in his hands, then it should be more than enough. Simple at that.

“You should not concern yourself with things like that. Plus, I’m sure that everyone will support you.”

It was no good, her voice trembled.

“Thank you, Min-Seo,” she squeezed her hands back. “You are a great friend. “Your best friend,” she smiled while her heart sunk. “My no. 1 friend!” she laughed. “Jaehee is my number one person too...” “I’m happy to hear that, thank you.” She nodded. “We should not let the others waiting,” she pushed her out of the door. “Go greet them, I’ll bring the cake.”

Holding back her feelings, the corners of her lips twitched as she forced a smile and followed behind her carrying the cake. It was the right thing to do, she ought to be happy for her, she had to. It was her fault she got her hopes up and misunderstood things, she had no one else to blame. Wasn’t it selfish that she was expecting Jaehee had realized and accepted her feelings when she was trying to hide them? But... When did they start dating anyway? She thought they were just meeting in a friendly way. How could they hide it so well? But did they really? After all she knew, since she was always watching her, that Jaehee was happiest when she was around Zen. Wasn’t it just her denying the facts, hoping that Jaehee would not make a move considering Zen’s career?  

“Smile, smile, you have to keep smiling, just endure it. Be happy for her. Sing happy birthday for her, it’s her special day, it’s supposed to be a happy day,” she reminded her self.

They were going to announce it by any minute. She hated the thought, but what confused her the most was the void left inside of her. It almost felt like she was unable to select a proper emotion. Was she angry? Sad? Happy? The sensation was awful, her whole body was numb. However, it would be better not to let her emotions show, for her shake and hers too.

Looking up, she met Jumin’s eyes. His expression staggered her, why was he brooding? C&R’s CEO was always perspective, so he might had noticed something was wrong with her. She avoided his gaze after giving him a sad smile, it was wrong to concern other people over it and she didn’t want to ruin everyone’s mood either. However, as they finally announced their relationship taking everyone by surprise, the pain in her heart grew stronger and she felt disgusting by herself for thinking that it would be nice if it didn’t last for long.

“Are you sure about this decision?” Jumin’s voice rung in her ears “What are you even asking her?”

“Zen is mad. No wonder. But I don’t want to heart it… I don’t want to hear her answer…”

“I am,”

“Why did you even have to ask? Of course I knew already… I knew, but...”

“Then I will support you, since I trust your judgment… So I will not hold back too.”

“Ah, he is right. Jaehee always takes everything into consideration. She wouldn’t make this decision if she was not sure about her feelings. I should support them too. I should… But, it’s hard...”

“Right, Min-Seo?” his voice snapped her out of the thoughts, he had said something about wine; naturally they’d want to celebrate. “Ah! Right… Wine. I think red wine would suit the happy occasion. I’ll go bring it.”

It was a great opportunity to leave the room; she had felt like running away since she left the kitchen after hearing the news. Did she remember to put up a smile before she leaves? She wasn’t sure. The cheerful chatting has started to feel more like an annoying background noise. Her throat was dry, maybe she needed a drink. Why should she pick one anyway? Her hand lingers over a bottle of Pinot Noir. She didn’t even feel like picking one for them after all. It would be nice if time just stopped, it’d be even better if she could rewind time.

An unexpected touch made her shudder. It was almost as if someone had caught her having these awful thoughts again. It was Jumin, the last person she’d ever expect to enter Rever’s kitchen. Did he follow her? For what reason? But somehow, she was glad to see him, him being there brought her back to reality again. She should pick a bottle, get over with it and go outside again to celebrate with them like nothing had happened.

“I can choose one for you,” he said and picked one

“Ah, a dolcetto… But... it has a bitter finish, unlike it’s name… ” her eyes followed his hand. “An unconventional pick… I will not accompany the cake well.”

“Christmas time is a busy period; it looks like fatigue already got to you. We are also busy during these days, so I can understand the toll it can cause to your body and mind. Why don’t you take a short break? I’ll tell the others.” “I don’t-“ she didn’t finish, he cut her by flinching her forehead. “Don’t let the customers see you like this. It’s unprofessional… You’ll also worry her…”

Was he trying to be considerate? She could hardly read his expression but he had helped her relax. It became hard to hold back her tears, she didn’t want to go back there so perturbed. It was obvious that he had figured it out. That fact frustrated her the most, but put her at ease the same time. She was thankful he reached out to her, giving her the time she needed. She wanted to say many things to him but she couldn’t find the words to thank him for not asking any questions, for not giving her a single judging look, for giving her time to recollect her thoughts and find her composure again... So she simply thanked him and he just nodded, not turning to look at her.

She bit her lower lip and run to the bathroom, sweeping her tears clumsily. She owed him one, but before that she had to let everything out and then go back to them wearing her best expression and then pretend that she was moved to tears by their announcement to cover for her puffy eyes until she was back to their apartment. Jaehee was not there, she would spend her night with ZE so she was able to cry her hear out freely. She cried and cried for hours until her eyes could not take it anymore and she laid on her bed exhausted.

Her phone buzzed. It was a notification from the RFA’s app. She sniffled her nose and decided to check it to help her mind wonder to something else. Yoosung, Saeyoung and Jumin were all n the chatroom. She was about to enter but stopped as she was about to sign in. What if they were discussing the news of Zen and Jaehee’s relationship? She didn’t want to participate to that. Cr She was ready to toss it to her side when she got a new notification, a message his time.

“Jumin….?” she clicked on it.

“Did you arrive home safely? If you need anyone to talk to, call me anytime.” “Yes, everything is fine! Thanks for joining us today, it was fun!! ^ 0 ^ “

She cringed at her own text. The exclamation points were one thing but the emoji was clearly an exaggeration; it made it look even more forced that it already was. Another text…

“I was happy to join. Let’s chat a bit more next time.”

A simple text. He did not push the conversation, was she too cold to him? She couldn’t tell. Then again Jumin usually responded calmly to any situation, he wouldn’t make a fuss over that. It was a long day and she did not had the energy to think about it. But she could at least make the keychain she had promised him to thank him, even though she was not sure if he was serious or not and give him the next time he would stop by the shop. Maybe that would help her keep her mind occupied too.

The night felt longer than usual, she had fallen asleep crying and woke up with a terrible headache. A bed, a wardrobe and a bookshelf filled with various books, a small table in the middle of the room. She thought that it looked pretty empty for the first time after two whole years, maybe she should have personalized it a bit more. It would her room even if she left it as it was, but it would not be their apartment for long. Without her this place she called home would feel even more emptier. The thought pierced her heart.

One day later, empty boxes were laying on the floor, while a couple of them were placed by the door already packed. She was gathering her stuff already, not hiding her excitement, but she was getting sentimental whenever she was taking a break. For the girl time she hated the efficiency she always admired about her, it mean the days they’d spent together would be less that she had first imaged.

“Should I leave a few of my framed posters behind? The wall looks so empty now...” she took a sip from her black coffee. “I know they’ll be safe with you.” “No need to worry about that,” she assured her. “Are you afraid you’ll get sick of him seeing his face everywhere in the apartment?” “That will never happen,” she laughed. “Thanks for helping me though. Sorry to bring this up to you so suddenly, but I’ve paid the rent for the next two months upfront-” “You know you shouldn’t though,” somehow her words made her mad. “I’ll be fine.” “Min-Seo is a strong person, so I have no doubts about that,” she said after a small pause. “But I’d feel bad if I could not give you time to decide if you’d like a new roommate or look for a new apartment. So it was just a selfish move on my part to make me feel less guilty.” “Well, I don’t plan to look for another roommate, so I guess I’ll leave this place sooner or later,” she said placing tape on another box. “I’ll miss it… It holds so many fond memories… I’ll miss the time we spend together after work too. Let’s make sure to meet up often…” “Yes, I’m looking forward to it...” her mouth felt bitter. “It’d be nice if you stayed there though. Now I think about it, it was almost covered with my things. It’ll be a nice opportunity to decorate it according to your taste… It feels like I forced my taste on you a lot.” “It’s ok… I loved it as it was...” she didn’t dare to look at her.“It’s going to be a busy day,” she continued after an awkward moment. “Are you sure you don’t want to take the day off? I can cover for you.” “God, I can’t believe it’s New Year’s Eve already! It’s fine. He is gong to meet me after we close the shop, but are you ok with the evening shift? Jumin was right, you look exhausted these days.” “I’ll be fine… I had a bit of trouble sleeping, that’s all. Maybe I should stop drinking coffee for a while.”

Coffee had nothing to do with her condition, but she could not explain the truth so it’s was her pathetic way to cover it up. Moreover, her work was keeping her mind busy, so it was the only way to escape her thoughts. Due to the holidays, the shop was swarmed by university students most of the time and that made their place livelier, thus it was also helping her mood. They had to close it a bit later than usual that day since their customers were more than willing to spend just a bit more time out with their dates of friends, purposely ignoring their closing time.

“Have a happy new year!” the employees waved at them. “Yes, see you in two days,” she smiled while locking the door. “Min-Seo, are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” “I’d feel sorry for Zen if I would. I bet he planned a lot of romantic events just for today. Tell him to take good care of you for me,” she smirked. “And to beat up whoever tries to hit on you.” “You know something like that won’t happen,” she covered her mouth laughing. “Who knows,” she chuckled and put her hands in her pockets, she loved watching her laughing. “Then he’ll come save you shouting something like… Don’t touch my woman!” “Well, I can picture that, he does love his lines.” “Though his woman can protect her self with ease.” “That’s true!” “Well, I’d do the same though, anyone would want to have the chance to shine in front of the one they like. Jump like this,” she jumped n front of her and opened her arms wide. “And say… I will not let you touch this woman, she is mine and mine alone!” “Oh, this one was good too,” she clapped excited. “That tone really suited you!” “I’m not confident that I could win though,” she rubbed her neck slyly. “Running away would be a safer choice.” “Well, that could work too,” she snorted. “Jaehee...” “Hm?” she raised an eyebrow. “Have a wonderful night,” she smiled genuinely for the first time after a couple of days. “Thank you. You too.” “Well, I’m going to meet a friend, so I plan to have a blast tonight!” “I’ll be back in the morning, so let’s spend some time together, since it’s our day off.” “Ah! Zen is here!” she pointed at a black motorbike. “Gotta go then. Zen, have a happy new year!” she waved from afar. “You too!” he yelled under his helmet.

That was good enough. Her smile faded as soon as she turned her back to them. Maybe she should consider an acting career after the successful act she had put on the past two days. The night was cold, she buried her hands further into her pockets after adjusting her scarf. In reality, she had no plans, no friends to meet and a broken heart. Not the nicest way to spend New Year’s Eve. She didn’t want to call any of the other members either, she had decided it’d be best to spend the time alone since she wouldn’t be a good company.

“I need a drink...” she mumbled and breathed deeply.

The dry, cold air made her cough. She stopped, feeling tired her, and looked at her reflection in the mirror. She was a mess. Her breath clouded the window of her fancy salon in front of her, they looked busy inside; it was normal, everyone wanted to look nice in a day like that. Most of them probably had a date set already. And there she was, looking at them like a menacing witch, jealous of their happiness. Her hand touched the handle on an impulse and she entered inside.

“I’m sorry, can I ask you for something really quick...?” she asked loudly.