#I’m just pretty good at coming up with logical ish ways things would make sense

[inventors-fair]

Satisfied and Satisfactory: Runners-up! ~

Our runners-up this week are @just--a--penguin, @little-red-rabbit, and @snugz!

@just--a--penguin — Kiora’s Daring

Minor Aftermath spoilers, I guess, but it doesn’t super matter. Unless we aren’t talking about that. First order of business is that this card’s super well balanced and a great rare to throw down. On turn four, your previous creatures can perchance get some evasive action in, especially if you have an awesome seafarer like a Welkin Tern or even a little trampler. The ramp is awesome and the draw is awesome. Turn eight, if you’ve got all your drops, you can just put this down and basically get a free 8/8 for four mana but with the time investment already put in. Not gonna lie: as crazy as that it, I really like how you balanced that!

The first big edit is the trigger wording. “At the beginning of combat on your turn, choose target creature you control. Until end of turn, it gains...” should be the proper wording, IMO, because you want the end of the quoted ability to have a period. That’s the precedent for all other abilities worded like this, although none quite as specific as this one for precedent, unfortunately. The second small non-edit is just that this card’s good for its mechanics and I do want to play it. I guess I’m just not excited for the flavor portion? I don’t have to be for this to be a good card, and don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a 100% flavor-only contest. Maybe I just don’t get Kiora as a character. Still, this feels like a card where the mechanics matter more, and I do like them enough for it to be here.

@little-red-rabbit — Desire

And here we are, Incarnation 2: Revengeance! I’ll be honest: this card might be a runner-up, but it’s the one I feel with the absolute most daring mechanics. “It comes under your control tapped and attacking.” That’s so cool! And I just had to check the comprehensive rules about it... Darn it. Okay, so, I really thought this was going to work, and unless there’s a comprehensive rules change, 506.4 says that a creature is removed from combat if its controller changes. Does that affect this card? Prrrrrobably. Possibly. I honestly don’t know because there’s never been precedent quite like this before. So you know what, I’m going to change my suggestions and say instead that this card is ambitious enough for a potential comprehensive rules change if an effect like this got printed!

Wow. This rarely happens, and it’s super cool. Thanks for making me delve a little into rules effects! So: how would we make this work with the CompRules as it stands? Perhaps make it a tap ability, a beginning of combat trigger, or even a pie-bending exile-return effect? There are a few ways to go about it. Fading is an interesting choice, but it makes sense here. I don’t know if we’ll see fading again in Standard, but as a resource, I would check out Mark Rosewater’s “Storm Scale” articles. I’m not sure where Fading stands, heh.

Just for polish, here are a couple minor edits:

You gave this card fading 2, but put “3” in the reminder text. Whoops! Things get switched in editing, fair enough.

I believe this should be “Whenever Desire attacks,” not “when,” since it can happen repeatedly.

Flavor text is decent! I think you can take away the quotes, take out the “c” in “satisfied,” and switch “it’s” to “its.” Spelling aside, it reads really well, actually.

@snugz — Mourning Mage

And here we are back to the grimdark. Well, ish! What I really like about the flavor angle here is the fact that the flavor text emphasizes how this character is channeling their mourning, how we embark upon our passions, not necessarily through logic, but through the energy of grief. Which is...pretty messed up, actually. I like it. The quote should probably be in quotation marks, being a quote. Really neat overall, though, and I guess they found a cure based on that activated ability!

Mechanics-wise, yeah, this card’s rad as hell. I think that having kicker and investigate as two potentially major themes (or at least two themes with some overlap) is asking a bit, unless you want to imply that investigation is minor, as it was in something like the most recent Innistrad block. Great wording on that first ability, BTW; DMU’s pseudomultikicker was really fun and I’m curious about how it would come back here. Backwards compatibility is important. Regardless, clue generation can come about in a few ways, and as a rare midrangey kind of card, I like it a lot! You’ve got a build-around-me rare that someone’s probably gonna have fun with and a flavored ambition to top it off. Still asking a lot of implications, but I’m sure it would play fine.

I'm writing this early enough to need food before doing more commentary, but it's being written! See y'all soon.

@abelzumi

[strange-lace]

Macaque

I was in the mood to make more content for Inverted AU, so here’s a short-ish fic of how episode 9 would go in this AU with Macaque, Wukong, and MK! Enjoy the shadowpeach!

Another demon defeated but still no sign of Sun Wukong. Macaque let out a sigh before rolling his shoulders to bring relief to tense muscles. Oh well, he'll just have to keep looking, not like he hasn't been at it for years now. At least this city he wandered to was quite nice with pleasant people, nothing too out there aside from demon attacks.

"Hey! Hey you! Shadow monkey man!" Macaque wouldn't deny that the sudden voice made him jump, considering he was on top of a pretty tall building. Apparently not tall enough to stop the young man from climbing up the side, somewhat out of breath yet that didn't deter from the determined look on his face. He simply brushed his messy hair out of his eyes and adjusted his teal backpack, which looked surprisingly heavy. Macaque couldn’t help but be somewhat curious as to what was in that thing.

Wait was that the Monkey King's staff in his hands?

Indeed it was, he'd recognize that weapon anywhere.

“Ah, you must be the Monkie Kid I’ve been hearing so much about, am I right?” That got him a look of suspicion before the young man also seemed to remember the staff in his hands, causing him to let out an amused huff at his own paranoia.

“Yeah, the staff kind of gives it away, don’t it? Name’s MK though. Now whomst is you? Most of the time, demons who ask me who I am are five seconds away from trying to kill me.” Macaque couldn’t help but chuckle at that, already finding that he was starting to like this little guy and his attitude. Perhaps if a person like MK was chosen to wield Wukong’s staff, then perhaps that meant his love had finally started turning things around for the better. Maybe it meant he finally stopped being someone he wasn’t all for the sake of keeping a memory alive.

“The name’s Macaque, though, the Six-Eared Macaque is actually my full name. But what brings you up here exactly bud? I doubt you’d climb up this high just for anybody.” MK’s face showed that he wanted to argue that point out of principle before remembering his purpose for coming up here.

“Simple, teach me.”

Wait what?

“What what?” MK scoffed at the question.

“I want you to teach me to fight, like how you fought that demon back there. I don’t intend on leaving you alone until you do and that is a threat!” Macaque didn’t doubt that he meant it that way and could very easily follow through on that. Sensing he wasn’t going to get out of this, he let out a sigh before giving MK a smile.

“You sure your mentor won’t have a problem with me teaching you?”

“Bold of you to assume Wukong’s disapproval will stop me.”

“Well alright then, I think we’re gonna get along just fine, bud.”

---

“I see what you’re trying to do, you’re afraid of holding back and giving your enemy the opportunity to win. But the first strike isn’t the most important one. Every strike counts. Other people may tell you that patience and focus don’t matter but a fool allows himself to rush without restraint. While you have power inside you, you have to use it carefully. Take the power to defend others, not just destroy those who stand in your way. You’re not a weapon kid, you wield the weapon above all else.”

---

It started with a fairly innocent question from MK after one of their training sessions, him slowly going through a water bottle given to him by Macaque while the monkey made them something to eat. He needed a distraction to stop himself from taking over the cooking, years of feeding others making him feel guilt the moment someone else took over.

“So Mac, how exactly do you know the Monkey King?” To his credit, Macaque only fumbled the slightest bit at that sudden question and was able to save the plate before it crashed to the floor.

“Oh um well… funny thing about that is, well… we used to be together actually. Like y’know… together-together,” he explained while he plated their food, wincing internally at how awkward he sounded. With his back towards MK, Macaque didn’t notice him go tense and grip the couch arm so tightly that the wood underneath cracked at the pressure.

“Used to be together, huh? What happened?” Macaque couldn’t help but shiver at the chill which traveled down his spine. MK’s voice was perfectly even and calm yet he was filled with an overwhelming fear that warned him to not turn around and remain perfectly still until the danger passed.

His ears twitched at the sound of sparks behind him, magic power permeating through the air.

“I… I messed up honestly. We had an argument about something, I don’t even remember what it was so long ago. But I had to leave to just get some space and air before I said something I’d regret, something I couldn’t take back. It was only meant to be a couple hours but some stuff out of my control happened and by the time I got back… Wukong was gone. I had been looking for him for centuries after that and then… well then you found me.”

“What, you hoped getting on my good side would mean that you’d win the Monkey King back?” His tone promised nothing good if Macaque kept digging himself a deeper hole.

“No! No, nothing like that at all. I don’t expect Pe-...Wukong to take me back or anything like that. I just… wanted the chance to apologize to him is all. If he wants anything to do with me afterwards, then I want that to be his choice. Nothing more, I swear.”

MK remained silent behind him before the sudden tension in the air dissipated as quickly as it appeared. Macaque let out a sigh of relief, slowly turning around to see MK still sitting on his couch, placing the staff back in his ear nonchalantly.

“Fair enough, sounds like you both were just idiots who don’t know how to communicate. If you actually intended on using me to get to the Monkey King, you’d have actually mentioned him during our training and yet you haven’t. And you can’t lie to save your life anyway. Just don’t be an idiot again alright? Monkey King… Wukong, he’s a mess and I don’t think he could handle thinking he’s been abandoned again.”

Macaque could feel his heart break at the idea that his Peaches, his love, thought that he had left permanently. He wanted nothing more than to run to him now and make things right. But that was Wukong’s decision to make, nobody else’s.

The two ate their food in silence after that.

---

Sun Wukong may have supposedly “lost his edge”  but he was by no means dense or oblivious.

And while he was certainly happy about his successor’s vast improvement over the past couple weeks, a part of him sensed something was off. Like his successor was hiding something from him. And those moves he watched MK use to absolutely demolish the old mural, the Monkey King swore he had seen them before.

But it couldn’t possibly be. He hadn’t seen him in centuries. Not since he… left, like everyone else.

“I’m impressed, my boy! Tell me, how did you do that? Have you been seeing another mentor perhaps?” Wukong asked, his typically serene smile straining the slightest bit at the idea of his son student learning from someone who wasn’t him. The sensible part of his brain was gently poking at him, reminding him that it seemed silly to get upset about such a thing as, if anything, MK had appeared significantly calmer during their training compared to when they started. This could be a good thing, it told him.

Yet it was silenced by the majority of his brain which ran on fatherly protectiveness and had immediately been plagued by images of the worst case scenario. A demon had approached MK, promising him to make him stronger while also poisoning his student as a bid to turn him against the Monkey King before stealing his powers or, Heavens forbid, harming him.

No, Wukong refused to even allow a chance of that happening, logic and reasoning be damned.

“Hey, you’re the one always going on about ‘patience and focus’, I’m just finally putting what you said into practice,” MK answered, the picture of being casual which only set off further alarm bells within Wukong’s head. But before he could question him further, MK’s phone dinged to tell him of a new text message which he quickly read over, his eyes widening slightly at the message.

“Welp, looks like I gotta cut things short for now Wukong, something came up and I gotta head out. See ya later! Don’t forget to eat something tonight and sleep, I will know if you don’t.” And with that, MK was off through the hole he had created in the wall where the mural was before the Monkey King could get a word in edgewise. 

Wukong waited long enough to allow MK to get a reasonable distance away before transforming into a bird, flying after his successor.

Something fishy was going on and the Monkey King was determined to find out what it was.

---

“Why exactly are we climbing up to this giant mountain again Mac?” MK wheezed, hating to admit it but this hike had genuinely winded him despite all his training. He had immediately gone to Macaque’s place the moment he got his text only to be told to follow the six-eared demon, leading them to where they were now.

“Well, consider this your ‘final exam’ bud! I want you to use everything I’ve taught you to fight against me, no holding back. Think you can do that?” MK couldn’t help the twitch at the corners of his mouth at the sight of Macaque’s genuine excitement as he explained, all six ears twitching while his tail was wagging like a dog. A demon who was centuries old and had fought countless powerful demons had no right looking that endearing, but here MK was looking with his own two eyes.

MK gave a chuckle before straightening himself out, wordlessly pulling the staff out his ear.

“You sure you’re comfortable getting your ass kicked by me, Mac?” With a smirk, Macaque summoned his own weapon in a flash of purple with the beginning of two shadow clones pooling at his feet. They shyly peeked from the ground from behind their master.

“Oho, a couple training sessions with me for a month and you think you have what it takes to defeat me, bud? Well then, bring it Monkie Kid!” MK didn’t hesitate to charge forward with Macaque mirroring him, weapons at the ready and adrenaline already running through their veins.

“Enough!”

A sudden force landed in between them with enough force to send them both flying backwards.

MK and Macaque recovered in time to see who decided to interrupt their duel.

Both of their hearts nearly stopped at the sight of the enraged Monkey King but for vastly different reasons.

“You have 5 seconds to explain yourself for trying to harm my-” Wukong’s rage quickly deflated as the dust cleared enough for him to truly see who it was he had thought was attacking MK. “Mango Flower?”

“Um… hello again, Peach Blossom. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” Macaque joked, voice weak as he restrained himself from acting out of bounds even if he wanted nothing more than to gather the other into his arms. It had been so long, far too long. 

He nearly broke at the sight of tears beginning to form in Wukong’s eyes.

His resolve finally shattered as the Monkey King ran towards him, arms outstretched, and before Macaque knew it his legs were moving on their own. The wind was knocked out of him at how tight Wukong squeezed him yet he returned the embrace back with gusto, ignoring the groaning of his ribs. He simply buried his face into the other’s fur, the smell of peaches still there even after all these years. Faintly, Macaque realized he was also crying once he felt a wetness on his cheeks.

Macaque let out a squeak in surprise as Wukong picked him up in the hug and spun him around, the sound of his laughter echoing throughout the mountain. The sight of such unabashed joy on his face was enough to make the six-eared demon to start laughing too, joy contagious in the best of ways. 

MK would deny it unless under the threat of death but he couldn’t help but smile as he watched the two monkeys get lost in their own little world. It made the guilt which nagged at his chest at having to manipulate the two to make this meeting happen ease up, seeing how happy the two were.

“It’s been so long…” Wukong whispered as he placed Macaque back on his feet, gently cradling his face as if afraid that if he stopped touching the other, that he’d disappear again. “But, why are you here? I had thought that you hated me, isn’t that why you…” Macaque went stiff in shock before taking the Monkey King’s hands into his own.

“What? No! If anything, I thought you hated me for leaving instead of talking things out and that’s why you were gone when I came back. I always intended on coming back to you Peaches, I swear on it.” Wukong’s eyes went wide at that, extremely close to crying again a second time that day. “I had been looking for you for centuries now to apologize.”

And now the warm feeling was gone, leaving MK to bite down on his staff to stop himself from screaming at how much those two had failed at the simple of communication.

“We’ve both been absolutely foolish, haven’t we?” Wukong couldn’t help but laugh at it all, which only worsened as he noticed all six of Macaque’s ears turn red in embarrassment.

“Yeah, I guess we have been-” His words were cut off as the Monkey King grabbed his scarf, pulling him into a sudden kiss that made Macaque jolt in surprise before he practically melted into the other’s arms. A purr rumbled in his chest and neither noticed their tails wind around each other.

The sound of MK clearing his throat, loudly, was enough to get them to break apart in embarrassment.

“If you two are done being romantic idiots, I have to beat the shit out of Macaque to prove that I’m better than him. I mean ace my ‘final exam’.” The grin on his face showed that he was lying through his teeth.

“Don’t think I forgot about all your trash talking, young man. How about it Peach Blossom? You willing to go all out with me and the kid?” 

Wukong’s face was the epitome of ‘Every part of my body wants to say yes but I shouldn’t.’ He was already terrible at saying no to MK and now with Macaque’s endearingly earnest face, he knew he was done for, at least with these two working together now.

“...Oh alright.”

The two mutual cheers at his agreement made Wukong feel slightly less guilty in letting his lessons go for a brief moment. But not completely.

But that was okay, Wukong was used to living with constant guilt.

[pappydaddy]

Mashed Potatoes and Joel Hoekstra (b.h.)

 A/N: This is for the lovely anon who wanted a Billy x Byers!Reader. I was so excited to write this one, I loved this request (I am loving ALL requests, but I’ve been loving these Billy ones lately!). Definitely very fun to write this one so thank you so much for requesting doll! Hope you love it lovely anon💛!

Pairing: Billy Hargrove x Fem!Byers!Reader

Show/Movie: Stranger Things

Requested

Warnings: Mean people, bullying, prejudice, the shits of the teenage years, but fluff in the end!

Remember guys! Your family name does not define you or someone else! It’s who they are that defines them, it’s who you are that defines you. It’s how you act, how you treat people, etc. Just like you don’t judge a book by it’s cover, you don’t judge a person by their name. If anyone tries to put you in a box simply because of a prejudice with your name, ignore them. I know it’s hard, I know - trust me, but they really don’t deserve your time. And if you feel trapped in a box because of your name, just know that you can break free from that box. My DMs are ALWAYS open if you lovelies need to talk💛!

masterlist | taglist | wips | navigation - not my gif - 

  “Billy,” Y/N’s soft voice broke the tranquil silence that had settled over the room. Her finger that had been tracing random shapes on his chest stopped moving, her eyes flicking around the darkroom as she waited for him to respond in some way. She knew he wasn’t asleep by the lack of snores lowly rumbling in his chest (which she also laid her head upon) and his breathing pattern. He hummed, the sound reverberating in his chest, his hand still stroking up and down along the dip in her back where her spine was. “We’ve been dating for a few months now-” 

  “Six months.” He interjected, pressing a warm kiss to the top of her head. 

  “Right, yeah, we’ve been dating for six months,” She nodded, her already tangled hair tangling a bit more. Her voice was nervous, not knowing how he would react to her bringing this up. “And I was just thinking that maybe it would be time for you to meet my family,” She asked, her voice pitching up towards the end. “Maybe. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but it’s just everyone else I’ve dated has met them by now, but then again, everyone else I’ve ever dated left a few weeks after meeting them so-”

  “You’re rambling again, Bug.” Billy cut her off gently, knowing that she rambled and rants when she’s nervous and scared. Her cheeks heated up, burning as she settled back down to cuddle into Billy’s bare chest. 

  “Sorry.” She whispered. 

  Billy pressed another kiss to her hair, knowing that her ex’s all harped on her about her nervous rambles, making her snap her mouth shut and sink into herself. “Nothing to be sorry for, Bug, you’re nervous.” He reassured her. 

  She took a deep breath, calming herself as Billy gave her the silent support she needed. “Back on track,” She nodded her tone calm once again. “I still think you should meet my family because they are really important to me and you’re really important to me and I just really would like it if you guys got along,” She expressed nervously. The room was silent as she waited impatiently for his response, her breath was hitched, her mind automatically assuming that he was going to leave her right here, right now because he didn’t want to meet her family or worse, not feel the same about her. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to; if you’re not there in the relationship, that’s fine, we can take a few steps back if you’d like-” She started to shrink away from him, her mind panicking as it continued to imagine him leaving her like the rest - like her father. 

  “No-” Billy interjected softly, gently pulling her back to be flush against him. “I’ll meet your family only if you get some sleep, it’s late and you’re exhausted. He bargained, suddenly feeling nervous and wanting her to go to sleep for her sake and his. 

  “Okay, deal.” She yawned, closing her eyes, snuggling her cheek farther into his chest, listening to the beating of his heart. Billy squeezed his eyes closed as he tried to control his heartbeat so he didn’t alert her to his sudden nervousness. 

____  

  The next day was relaxed other than Billy’s increasing nervousness. He loved Y/N, he was at that place in the relationship where the only logical step would be to meet each other’s family, but he couldn’t help but feel a sense of doom. For one, meeting her family meant she would have to meet his family and he wanted to keep her as far away from Neil as possible. Secondly, the Byers family had a certain reputation around Hawkins High and Middle and Billy had heard all about it from his friends. Of course, he was stand-off-ish of Y/N before they started dating because of this reputation, but everything turned out fine with her so why wouldn’t her family be the same? 

  “What’s got you so quiet, Hargrove?” Tommy asked aggressively as they mulled around the locker room, changing after gym class. Billy jolted out of his thoughts as he just stood, staring into his locker. Looking back at Tommy, he blinked at him for a second before comprehending what his question was. 

  “Uh, nothing,” Billy shook his head, grabbing his shirt from his locker, slipping it on. “It’s just that Y/N invited me over to meet her family.” He had no idea why he was confessing this to Tommy and his other friends of all people, knowing how they feel about Y/N and the rest of her family. The words had tumbled out before he could even think about stopping them. 

  “Woah,” Tommy exclaimed, laughing as he pretended to back away from Billy as if he were carrying some sort of contagious disease. “Boys! Say good-bye to the Billy we all know because soon, he’s gonna be infected by the Weird-os.” His statement earned a chorus of laughs from the boys huddled around. 

  “Buzz off Tommy, they can’t be that bad. I mean, Y/N is great!” Billy said mostly to himself, closing his locker. 

  “Sure, she’s the most normal one,” Tommy shrugged. “But the rest of them man,” He shook his head as if telling some old wise tale. “They are complete basket cases. Completely messed in the head. Look at Jonathan for an example,” Tommy paused, walking over to Billy and slinging his arm over his shoulder. “Nobody talks to him, he sits in the back of the classes or in that stupid dark room, playing with his stupid little camera.” 

  “Y/N says that he’s quiet and works most of the time so he doesn’t have much time to hang out and the time he does have, he chooses to practice photography.” Billy pointed out, pushing Tommy’s arm off him. Tommy remained unfazed, leaning against the lockers as he continued.

  “Alright, if not Jonathan, then the younger one,” He paused, using his hands to set the scene. “He died, okay? Died and came back to life like in one of his freaky little movies he and his dork friends watch,” Billy glared at him, knowing full well that Max was one of his friends. “Much like his brother, he just sits there and colours and colours and colours. He’s in middle school and still colours like a pre-schooler.” 

  “He’s pretty talented, I’ve seen some of his pictures in the car when Y/N has it.” 

  “Now, let’s talk about the mother. She works at a general store, she dated that geek from Radio Shack, her husband left her, she had a meltdown in the middle of the street, she bought all the fucking lights in Hawkins because she thought her dead son was talking to her through them,” He paused. Billy opened his mouth to defend Joyce, but Tommy cut him off. “They are weird, Hargrove. They are completely nuts and you better prepare to be just as nuts because I am pretty sure it’s contagious.” 

  “Just look at Harrington and Wheeler,” Another guy piped up, making Billy look towards him. “They started to hang around with the Byers and look at them, they turned just as crazy. Constantly looking over their shoulders, Harrington only hangs around kids now, always having hushed conversations with them and Wheeler only talks to Jonathan now.” 

  “That’s not-” 

  ‘That’s not the same,” Tommy cut Billy off with a question. “It is exactly the same. Meeting the Byers is like the kiss of death. Kills your social life and makes you crazy-” 

  “Billy,” Y/N’s voice called into the locker room from the door she held slightly open. “Are you in here, we should really be getting to lunch, I’m starving!” 

  “Yeah, be out in a second!” He called to her, the door softly closing in response. He nervously looked at the door as Tommy clicked his tongue. 

  “It’s your choice, Hargrove, it’s your grave you’re digging.” Billy glared at him, shrugging on his jean jacket and leaving the locker room. His eyes met Y/N easily, seeing her talking to Steve excitedly. Though Billy still didn’t like Steve, he didn’t have the mental or emotional capacity at that given time to deal with his fluffy-haired nemesis, too busy fretting about what to do about meeting Y/N’s family. 

  “There you are, I was worried that you accidentally slammed your head in the locker or something,” She joked, not realizing that Billy was actually considering it. He didn’t want to make her think that he wasn’t ready to take the next step in the relationship, but I also was scared now. As much as he wanted to admit that he didn’t trust Tommy H and all the other guys, he really did want to say that he let their warnings roll off his back, but he couldn’t. “Come on, I want to eat, see you, Steve!” She grabbed Billy’s hand, pulling him out of the gym and into the halls. 

  “What were you talking to Harrington about?” He asked, hoping that it was completely unrelated to her having him over for dinner. 

  “About you meeting my family,” She chirped happily. Billy wanted to deflate right there. Of course it had to be about that. It couldn’t have been about anything else. Anything to take his mind off something so anxiety inducing. “He thinks it’s a great idea! He said that you would love my family and I really hope he’s right.” 

  “I really hope so too-” He muttered under his breath. 

  “What was that?” She asked, her brows furrowing as she leaned in closer. 

  “Nothing, Bug.” He told her, hoping she would buy it. She pulled a face, shrugging before regaining her giddy mood. 

  “Must have just been hearing things,” She chalked it up. “Anyway, I was thinking that you should come round to my place at seven? My mom is off today so she’s been prepping for this since nine this morning!” 

  “Yeah, about that,” Billy spoke slowly, dreading what he was about to do. He really didn’t want to do it, but he needed to buy himself sometime so he could figure out his next move. Find a way to keep Y/N while not having to meet her family. “I’m feeling a little sick to my stomach, Bug. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to go tonight.” 

  “Oh no,” She gasped, her hand squeezing his affectionately as she stopped in the hallway. “You might have overdone it in gym today, especially when I accidentally kicked that soccer ball right into your stomach, sorry about that by the way.” 

  “No, it wasn’t that, but you do have one hell of a kick on you,” He shook his head, not wanting her to blame herself. “I just think I’m coming down with something and I really don’t want to infect your family.” He lied through his teeth. 

  She awed, her hand coming up to cup his cheek sweetly. “That’s so sweet,” She cooed. Her hand slid from his face as disappointment flashed across her face, but it was gone as soon as it came, or at least she tried to fake it. Billy could see the disappointment she tried to bury, his heart pulling at the sight of it, knowing that he was the one who caused it. “It’s alright, I want you to worry about your health first. I’ll just go call my mom and tell her that there was a change of plans-” She paused, looking for a quarter as she tried to ignore the worry bubbling up once again. “Could I borrow a quarter? I think I spent mine calling her earlier to check up.” She asked, extending her flat palm, waiting for him to drop a quarter in it. 

  Billy tucked his bottom lip between his teeth. He could tell she was thinking that he was trying to avoid meeting her family because he just didn’t want to. While there was some truth to that, he couldn’t let her feel like he was pulling away from her. “You know what,” He pushed her hand back down to her side. “I’m going to go to the nurse and see if she can help me. I’ll see you before next period and update you, Bug.” He pressed a quick kiss to her forehead before running off down the hall. 

  “Okay-” She breathed out, shocked. She watched him run past Tommy and his gaggle of idiots, the group watching him run - laughing. 

  “Oh, the crazy is already starting to rub off on you, Hargrove!” Tommy yelled, but Billy either ignored it or didn’t hear it. Y/N eyed Tommy oddly before eyeing Billy’s retreating form. 

____

  The fact that Billy stood at the front door of the Byers’ house was a miracle in itself, considering how many times Billy considered swerving hard right into a tree in order to escape this night, but he pushed forward, knowing that Y/N was worth it. He tightened his grip on the bouquet of flowers, the thorns digging into his hand making him wince. Groaning, he switched holds, shaking his stinging hand out. He felt constricted in his clean cut clothes, his button-up buttoned more than usual, only the first two buttons being undone. The slacks itched his legs and made him feel like he was heading to a Sunday service. 

  Taking a deep breath, he raised his close fist, hitting his knuckles against the door twice in rapid succession. He could hear a scuffle from behind the door and Y/N’s distinctive voice pleading with her mother to let her answer it. The door was jerked open, revealing a breathless woman and a blushing Y/N standing in the back looking defeated. “You must be Y/N’s sister.” Billy used his normal line that worked wonders on mothers, but he was so off his game that he sounded a bit nervous, spitting the line out a few moments too late. The woman didn’t seem to mind, taking the compliment easily.  

  “Oh, stop it,” She flicked her hand, a wide smile nearly breaking her face as she laughed. “You must be Billy,” She continued to giggle, the laughter making her look youthful. If Billy hadn’t known that she had two teenagers and a pre-teen, then Billy would have thought she was much younger. “I’m Joyce, come on in, you must be cold,” She ushered him in hurriedly, her hand guiding him into the warm, cozy house as it rested on his upper back. “Standing out there in only a shirt in this fall weather.” She shook her head, closing the door behind him. 

  “Mom-” Y/N whined, embarrassed by her mother’s fussing. Joyce gave her a look, silencing the whine. 

  “You stop that and get this poor boy a drink,” Joyce insisted, leading Billy over to one of the couches. With a small groan in protest, Y/N ducked into the kitchen and out of Billy’s sight, sending him right on edge again. He sat on the couch, his clammy hands running over his slacks as his eyes watched Joyce. She was fairly gentle and normal looking for someone everyone called insane. “Will, go grab Jonathan from the shed, supper is going to be in a few minutes.” Joyce told the small looking boy who worked at setting the table for five, a mismatched chair added to the four that looked like they normally surround the table.

  “You have a lovely home Ms. Byers, thank you for having me.” He extended the pleasantry, seeing Y/N coming into the room with a glass of water. 

  “Please, call me Joyce,” She told him, waving him off once again. “And it’s no problem, Hunny. We’re glad to have you. You’re welcome anytime!” She reassured him, thinking that his nerves were from the donating task of meeting the family for the first time. 

  “Will do.” Billy nodded, gulping down his water. Y/N sat next to him on the couch, her hand naturally falling to his knee. Though his nerves lifted with each passing second he spends with them, he couldn’t seem to get Tommy’s warnings out of his head. 

  “You know, my mom was so excited for you to get here, she side-checked me out of the way to get the door,” Y/N told him, giggling. That seemed normal enough, they all seemed to have a good relationship with each other. It was more functional than his family and they were deemed normal. “And I definitely think you made her entire night with your comment.” 

  “Kids, dinner is ready,” Joyce called from the kitchen. Y/N patted Billy’s leg, standing up. Billy swallowed thickly, feeling like he was walking to his death as he neared the table filled with loads of dishes full of a beautiful home-cooked meal. “Billy, dear, you’re the guest so you can sit here,” Joyce patted the chair at the head of the table, before pointing to the chair next to it that sat between the wall and the table. “Y/N, you sit there.” She instructed her daughter. 

  “So, Billy,” Will spoke up, taking his place beside Y/N, looking directly at the blonde as he scooted his chair in. “Max tells me you like rock music. What’s your favourite band?” He posed the question, grabbing the pitcher of water and filling his glass up. 

  “Uh- I’ve been listening to a lot of Whitesnake lately, but I would say the Scorpions are my favourite band I guess.” Billy answered him, his hands nervously hovering over his plate, not sure what he should be doing. 

  “That’s cool, I like The Clash the most personally, but I like watching the Whitesnake videos, their hair is really cool-” Will nodded, accepting Billy’s answer. 

  “And where have you been watching Whitesnake videos, young man?“ Joyce perked in eyebrow at the youngest, making him shrink back slightly, but Billy could tell it was all playful banter. 

  “At Dustin’s.” He admitted, making Y/N laugh and nod as if it were to suspected. 

  “That was probably Steve’s doing, no doubt.” Y/N pointed out, filling up her own water before filling Billy’s glass automatically.

  “Yeah, it was Steve, he turned MTV on while he was watching us play D&D,” Will perked up at the mention of Steve. Looking right at Billy, he excitedly spoke. “I drew Joel Hoekstra a few months ago, but I made fire shoot out the end of the neck of his guitar. It’s insanely cool.” 

  “Billy, you haven’t gotten any food yet! Go on, you get some first.” Joyce noticed, holding a bowl of mashed potatoes to him. He looked at the bowl of potatoes, perfectly whipped. To anyone else at the table, it was just a bowl of starch and butter, but to Billy, it was the sign that they weren’t crazy. They were just not fitting into the box that everyone says you have to fit in. Looking at the bowl, he felt every bit of nervousness and apprehensiveness leave his body. Smiling, he gently took the bowl, scooping some out onto his plate, causing everyone to start putting food on their plates. 

  “Hey, Will,” Billy spoke up, causing everyone to look at him nervously. Jonathan eyed him, not trusting him yet. “Maybe after dinner, you could show me that drawing? Joel Hoekstra is my favourite member of Whitesnake.” He suggested, causing the boy to light up. Y/N smiled gently, her hand laying over Billy’s gratefully. Who knew that some mashed potatoes and Joel Hoekstra was all it took to see the Byers for who they were.

[kinsey3furry300]

5 ships I hate, why I hate them, how to (kinda) fix them, the better ships you should be doing in that universe, and why you should ignore me and keep writing them if it makes you happy.

Note: this is done for amusement, please don’t be offended; I’m not attacking your ship, I’m just listing some ships I do not always care for, and how I think they could be improved, and maybe made brilliant, by clever writing.

In no particular order, and focusing on ships that often annoy me, with no attempt by me to say anything meaningful or popular about the current state of any particular fandom. I’m also a firm believer in the idea that there’s no such thing as a bad ship, only a badly executed ship, so my objections to these is less a dislike of shipping, or the paring, and more that they raise writing issues that I think are difficult to fix in a satisfying way. That’s why in a lot of the examples below I prefer AU ships to ones that try to messily work it into the cannon. Anyway, enjoy... I guess?

 Marco x / anyone (Animorphs)

Why I hate it: Animrophs is an intensely character-driven story, where the tension of each book comes from the conflicts, external and internal, that the five Animrophs (and Ax) face during a long, hard, traumatic war.  And while several of the character are paired off romantically, it’s always to emphasise character conflict over their different points of view. Jake and Cassie are a pair because Jake’s struggle with having to make hard, grey, morally ambiguous choices as leader is highlighted by Cassie’s burning need to make the right choice, the lesser evil, the choice that leaves some small shred of humanity and dignity and kindness left in this bleak world. Tobias and Rachel are a pair as their arcs deal with literal and figurative loss of humanity, as the slow accumulation of trauma over time turns these happy(ish), normal kids into psychologically ruined husks of their former selves and destroys them slowly, one fight at a time.

Marco’s arc, isn’t about either of these things: Marco’s arc, is about the bright, clear line between A and B, between problem and solution. Marco is a utilitarian, a pragmatist: his concern isn’t the burden of leadership, or the cost of the decision, but about how to put that all aside and make hard decisions that actually work regardless of cost. It’s not about what to do, the path is obvious: the bright, clear line of ruthless logic, but how to do it. His match, his counterpoint, the other character who’s all about the logic of taking awful decision in a way that actually works for the team, and his foil, his female counterpart in this, is not a romantic partner, but his mother: Visser one, making the exact same hard, difficulty ruthless decisions using logic and maths, but for the other side of this war. A romantic paring gets in the way of this arc because a partner doesn’t help him with that bright, clear line, and worse, any attempt to pair him of with either Rachel or Cassie breaks up not only a cannon paring, but their respective character arc.

How to (kinda) fix this: Marco’s arc is, at the end of the day, a trolly problem. So make sure whoever you ship him with is one of the people tied to the tracks. Introduce a character he crushes on, and then in the second act reveal that they are either a Controller, or in the family of a Controller or the proximity of the target of their next mission in a way that will make them collateral damage ,and let Marco struggle with what happens when that bright, clear logical line from A to B cuts through someone he actually loves; you know, like it did with his mother. See, even trying to fix this ship is weirdly Freudian.

The far better ship you should be doing: Ax x / EVERYONE. Ax in human form is described as a worryingly pretty, worryingly androgynous male of indeterminate race. He is a literally Bishonen alien hedonist with no familiarity with human senses, poor impulse control in human form, and no knowledge or understanding of human courtship rituals, and he can shape-shift, including into other members of the core team if needed to compel a mission, he calls Jake his prince,  and he is incredibly close to Tobias, the lonely outcast woobie that the LGBT fans adopted as their poster boy. Come on, the potential for shipping, both with wacky hijinks and sad, tragic star-crossed lovers’ trope is endless. Every line dedicated to Marco shipping is a line of text that could be dedicated to Ax trying to eat a Cinnabon erotically on his first date as a human and hulking out mid way because he forgot just how good they are. What could be better than him leaning into to erotically kiss a team-mate, and then fucking up due to his failure to understand human mouths, making weird mouth sounds, and then licking crumbs of the table in the middle of the mall, in front of the entire school, while his crush awkwardly tried to pretend this is normal? What’s wrong with you Marco-shipper people, do you hate fun?

 Riz/Tem (beastars) Why I hate this ship: Okay, just to quickly ask a question, to people who un-ironically like this as a serious ship and not a dark joke, just one little question: What’s wrong with you? I mean,are you okay? Keep taking the meds: the show is VERY clear on that point.

It’s like those people who say Joker X Harley Quinn is their ideal dark, edgy relationship: no it’s not, it’s abusive! Morticia x Gomez is dark and cool but CONSENTUAL and HEALTHY. This… this is a deeply imbalanced person murdering someone and telling themselves after that fact it was special and rare and magical. ITS HOMICIDE! And even if you write that out (and you shouldn’t, because that changes the character arc of every other major character) it’s still got more red flags that a soviet military parade. This is the botulinum of a toxic, one-sided teenage infatuation. Riz’s entire arc is about how he projects his thoughts and feelings about himself onto this idealised, made-up version of his and Tem’s relationship which, from Tem’s point of view, never existed. Riz never loved Tem: he loved the idea of Tem, the idea that someone would see the real him, see his inner pain and accept him anyway, but he never once told Tem this. He didn’t warn him “Hey, because of you I don’t feel I need my meds any more, do you mind if I try not taking them and we can meet and talk about this in a safe, well-lit pace?” He’s not honest with Tem, and on top of that It doesn’t make sense from the point of view of either of the characters for them to be actually, romantically in love (although  they were clearly close friends), because it undermines and cheepens Riz desire to just be seen and accepted for his real self, and the cannon Tem X Els ship. It also doesn’t make sense from a story point of view: Riz is a shadow archetype for Legosi. He’s what Legosi would have become if someone hadn’t interrupted his attack on Haru. That’s why Legosi needs to beat Riz with his own hands: because then he’s beating the darker version of himself he’s been carrying with him, and he can finally move on with Haru guilt-free. Having Riz and Tem’s relationship actually be what Riz imagined it to be undoes that. It undoes Riz’s interesting, dark inner struggle between truth and fantasy, it turns Tem’s tragic, unsolved murder that sets the entire story in motion into a just sort of weird Romeo-and Juliet suicide. It’s ruins the character arc not only for Riz, but for Legosi, and also, by extension, Louis and Haru, because Legosi’s internal angst over whether or not herbivores and carnivores can have a relationship as true friends needs this example of a tragic, flawed, toxic, failed friendship to bounce off of.

How it could (sort of) work: an AU where Riz’s attack on Tem is interrupted and Tem lives with a slight arm injury, and doesn’t tell anyone out of his complex feelings for Riz. Meanwhile, that bunny girl from the gardening club had been brutally devoured and Rz and/or Tem are so horrified with how close this was to their own near-miss, they start to investigate the murder, and in doing so get caught up in Louis’ inner struggle. Because that’s how the story needs to work, it’s about duality and struggle: and if Riz takes Legosi’s role, and by dating a herbivore he de facto takes the role, so Legosi must take Riz’s. This could be a great AU!

The better ship you should be doing: Pina/Riz (with a dash of Pina x Els), no, seriously, I’m not shitposting. You want to give Riz a redemption arc with a cute woolly boy? How about a story where Pina, out of a need for closure about at happened to him, starts to visit Riz in jail and they talk, mockingly at first, confrontational at first, but later Pina slowly becoming more fascinated in Riz and Tem’s life and asking Riz for more and more detail until they both bond over their shared traumatic experiences and their sense of loss for Tem’s senseless death, Tem’s unfished life casting a shadow over both off them. Eventually, the two of them find, from Legosi who still has the diary, that Tem had planned out an elaborate and beautiful first date with Els that he never got to take her on, and Riz, guilt ridden and sad than Tem never got this beautiful moment, decides to ask Pina take her on that date for Tem, with Riz coaching him by phone cyano-de-Bergerac style, Riz finally getting some closure that he helped one of Tem’s wishes come true and finally acknowledging to himself that Tem had a life and loves outside of him that were cut of short by his actions, and just crying over his lost friend, as Pina and Els slow-dance in Tem memory. Or if you just want to see Tem awkwardly date a carnivore boy from school, why not something less creepy and more wholesome and ship him with Jack? That would be cute AF, and more importantly, not romanticize brutal murder. Or an AU where everything is happy and nice, I’d argue at that it’s no longer Beastars at that point, but if it makes you happy, go for it. Let’s not shame anyone here.

 Snape X Lilly (Harry Potter)

Why I hate this ship: honestly, it’s not for the reason you think; I just like Snape too much as a tragic character, and making him in any way happy destroys his arc in my opinion.  The objection’s others have raised: that Snape acts in a worryingly possessive stalker-ish way towards Lilly, and that if Voldemort had gone for Nevil rather than Harry as a child Snape would have remained a loyal death eater, are true and I acknowledge them as having some validity, but that’s not why I can’t stand this ship. Snape is supposed to be a morally and emotionally complex, tragic figure. That “After all this time?” line was the best line in the Deathly Hallows.  Snape is supposed to show the equality destructive and redemptive power of  love. It’s sort of trinity: Lilly shows the pure power of true, unconditional love in her sacrifice to save Harry, Voldy shows what self-destruction and cruelty a life without understanding love leads to, and Snape sits somewhere in the middle: his one-sided  un-requited love being both the cause of his darkest, and his greatest actions. His curse, and his redemption, fall and rise. Making him happy messes that up.

How to (kinda) fix this ship: make them miserable. Make them fall for each-other only to be pulled apart by circumstance (you know, like they were in the darn original source material). You’re serious about making this a tragic, dark romance? Don’t ship them when they’re at school: Ship them during Voldemort’s rise to power, in the 80’s, after Lilly is married. Have the original Order of the Phoenix send her to meet with Snape and use their previous relation to try to milk some information out of him. Have her feel conflicted about it, have James furious about it, but have her do it anyway for the greater good. Have her meet up secretly with Snape who is angry and distrustful, knowing his must be a trap, and talk. Have the relationship slowly build over time against the backdrop of a cold-war spy thriller, as Lilly slowly realizes that she has some lingering feelings for Snape, but can’t reconcile them her loyalty to the order and her family. Make this a love story of conflicted feelings, divided loyalties, and spy-work against the background of drawing war-clouds. Have Snape offer to leave Voldemort, if she’ll leave the Order, and run away with him, but by that point she knows she’s pregnant and chooses to stay, out of loyalty even though she’s crushing on Snape. Have him show up at the rendezvous expecting for her to be there only for James to lead an Order Ambush, and a fight to ensure, on top of Tower Bridge in the howling wind and rain, Snape surviving but having his spirit crushed and fleeing before Lilly can tell him her true feelings. Make it big, and melodramatic, but above all, make it tragic.  Because that’s the only way Snape works as a character. Always.

The better ship you should be doing: Ginny X Nevil or Luna x Nevil: You want tragic lovers, at school, with divided loyalties, who never get together in the main cannon because a Potter ruins it and gets the girl? Ginny X Nevil. Write what was happening that final year Harry wasn’t at school when they took Dumbledore’s Army and make it work in earnest. Heck, you could even have Snape, as headmaster, hated by them but secretly trying to protect them as a secondary character to their secret, forbidden love. You don’t want to break up Harry X Ginny? Luna X Nevil is sweet and wholesome, but also tragic as they never get a chance, having their school life taken over by the horror of that final year and the need to fight for their very souls in a school run by Death Eaters and the trauma of the Battle of Hogwarts meaning that in order to put away the past and move on, they need to leave each other behind. Hell, do an AU where they canonically end up together, why not? They deserve happiness.

 Dean / Sam AKA Wincest (Supernatural)

Why I hate this ship: They’re brothers. The show even makes a joke about how squick this is. Several times.

How you could (sort of) fix this ship: You can’t: They’re brothers. The show even makes a joke about how squick this is. I guess a body-swap arc could fix this, as it’s less squicky if its just their bodies with someone else’s minds,  but seriously, the reasons why this shouldn’t exist are extensively covered in the show, and it was hilarious.  To be honest, I don’t hate this ship done as a joke, but I have seen some dark spots on the internet, and I can say with all honesty it’s not always treated as a joke. Some folks are really invested in this, and all I can ask is, is your home life okay?

Now, done as a joke, I’m 110% behind this. This is exactly the sort of insane wacky bullshit that makes for a good crack-fic. For example imagine that the supernatural threat of the week was book that made anything written in it come true, and the brothers are trying to find and destroy it, but they keep getting distracted by their burgeoning romantic feelings for each-other, and suddenly realise that the owner of the book is a fan on the in-universe novels, and writing slash-fic in the book. They need to find the writer before they make them do something they’ll both regret, but it’s just so distracting when Sam’s beautiful eyes are right there and- dammit, Sam, it’s happening again! Make Sam less concerned and even a little amused, with it, but make Dean hate what’s going on. Especially when the writer’s description suddenly makes Sam noticeably better hung that him. Make the villain turn out to be Becky from “Sympathy for the devil” and end with them trying to take the book away as she writes frantically to force them to do her bidding, and you’ve got yourself a good fic.

The better ship you should be doing: Cas/Sam or Cas/Dean or Cas/Sam AND Dean fic. Duh. Once again the show-runners beat the fans to the mark and pointed out that this is the best ship, and then they took it away just to fuck with us.

 Any Katniss ship that ignores her obsession with Emotional Security Logic. (The Hunger Games)

Why I hate these ships: Katniss is, briefly put, a mess before the books ever start, her father’s death and harsh upbringing have arguably given her PTSD before she ever volunteers for the reaping, and it doesn’t get better from there.  In psychology, Emotional Security Theory (EST) is a hypothesis that the heightened emotions surrounding repeated violent exposures leaves children vulnerable to dysregulated distress responses and eventual psychopathology, aka, why Kat be so messed up.  Her internal monologue makes the books completely clear that her choice in partners is not motivated by normal affections, but by deep, deep fear. A fear of loss, abandonment and death that leads her to make every decision about what minimises her, and her sister’s, exposure to potential physical and emotional harm. It’s frantic, fraught, cold survivalist thinking. And the other characters in the book notice and acknowledge it! “Which of us will she pick?” “She’ll pick whoever she can’t survive without.” Kat doesn’t like herself for it, but she does eventually admit to herself that she makes her decisions like this.

How do we fix this ship: Ship Kat with whoever you like, but give her a good reason to pick them: and in Kat’s mind “A good reason” is based on Emotional Security Logic, she needs to have a pressing reason why this ship makes her and her sister safer. Do that, and you’ve got yourself a good Katniss story. Don’t do that, and while you may or may not have a good story, the person staring in it isn’t Katniss Everdeen anymore.

The better ship you should be writing: Finick X Annie. Or, Haymitch prequel ships

FinAnn. This, this ship has some real potential to it, and is criminally underutilized. Finick and Annie’s relationship is one of the most tragic and romantic in the story, and has so much to offer. Or, if you want to have a hard-bitten character from district 12 struggling with trying to find love in the hellish combat of the games, do a prequel in which Haymitch finds love in the capitol during training, but loses then in the area and turns to drink as a result. Heck, you could even have some fun with this and turn it into a dark comedy, or a great tragic love story, whatever you like. It’s got potential, and his backstory is vague enough you could do a lot with it.

So, tell me below why I’m wrong, and have fun with your writing: just because I hate that ship doesn’t mean you should. Enjoy yourselves.

I’m off to write awful Ax/Pina/Luna Polyjuice’d into Nevil/Cas/Finick fiction set at an anime high-school that fights a magical war against other fictional schools, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me. BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

[hanjo-love]

Now I became selfish and I hope the shard is showing Hanji being saved by Kiyomi or something. She go the worst treatment and if Isayama was afraid of the backslash like you said why make it even worse with those parallels with eremika? Is he preparing the Fandom for another levihan moment? I'm tired of EVERYONE surviving but her, Kiyomi's kindness really??? And Onyankopon, while I don't hate him, he survived a plane crash and he doesn't add much yet he is there for being the editor's favorite, Yelena is there after all she did and she adds even less, and the people titanized will revert to human (or at the very least Isayama's favorites will).

Oh anonie, you and me both my friend, you and me both 😔 Beware, a long rant-ish meta is ahead of you lol

I have absolutely no fucking idea why Yams decided to treat Hanjo like shit. You know, after a long time of denying her death, I was starting to accept it, because she was finally free, free of the burden and pain and finally reunited with the people she missed and longed for the most. But then Yams decided to slap us all in the faces saying there's no happy & peaceful afterlife in snk and Hanjo was probs only hallucinating because of her 4 years long depression? Well then, fuck you Yams! What was that even for? Isayama never backed off of showing us the horrors of death in snk, no matter how important the characters and how brutal their deaths really were. Still, he never showed us Hanji's actual death or dead body. He kept it misterious and his vague answers only made it worse. So it's only natural for us to expect a plot twist, right? That's the reason all of us gathered various hints in the manga, anime and his interviews. And lemme tell you, these theories are far more logical, better explained and have less plot holes than the entire final arc smh (yes I'm salty, fight me lol)

I hate to admit it, my inner self is still in denial and fighting, but Hanjo ain't coming back folks. We won't get any background story and the misterious shard will never be explained to us either. Yams had more than enough time to bring Hanjo back, if he truly wanted to. But he didn't. And now with only one chapter and so many unanswered questions left, there's no time for Hange's return. Why would he even do that anyways? Hanjo isn't important to him or to the story anymore. To us she is, always was and always will be ❤️ You know, I'm so fucking desperate to see her again, I'll even take one last panel of Levi remembering her, just like in ch136. Yams just let us see Hanjo one more fucking time 🙏🏻 I need to say my proper goodbyes to my one&only comfort character, who's influenced my life like no one else ever did ❤️

Back to Levihan (I don't think I can answer an ask without my biased and trashy shipper ass butting in lmfao): the question why Yams confirmed Levihan as canon if he didn't intend to bring Hange back and reunite her with Levi to make us him happy again? Well, isn't it obvious? This man is the devil incarnate. THIS MAN HAS NO FUCKING CHILLS lmfao JK y'all before someone declares war on me and my blog haha Well anonie, I feel like Yams really wanted to confirm his initially planned ships as canon, before the manga ends. And he chose the safest way possible. Easy as that. Also he said he is going for a bittersweet ending and what's more tragic (in this literal hell) than separating lovers, ergo Eremika and Levihan.

Now to something else, that's been bothering me for a while now and I'll use your ask anonie to share my thoughts with the world even though nobody asked lmao tbh I'm a bit disappointed with Armin. I love him, I really do. He's my precious cinnamon roll and my fave 104th kiddo. But honestly, I was expecting a bit more of the alleged "hero who will safe humanity". In fact, I'm sure Hanjo only died for Armin to become the new commander. That's it. That was the reason she had to die. Yams glossed over her to make Armin shine. But in fact, Levi's the one who's giving orders ever since Hange has left them. I might me salty, but I really hope the talk with Zeke (and probs Ymir as well, we still might have a chance to see the dialog that made Ymir change her mind) and his titan nuke weren't the only things he did as "humanity's hero" in this final arc. For some people this might me enough, for me it isn't. It wasn't worth Hange's sacrifice. Also what made me really sad was Armin himself glossing over Hanjo when he remembered Erwin Danchou, but not her. Like she didn't just pass away an hour ago to save their pathetic asses. Ugh this is making me hella mad, ngl. Hanjo didn't deserve this treatment! She gave her all for this! To save the alliance, to "pay the price" for her "sins" as the SC commander and to save humanity. I can't deal with how all of them and the fandom apparently forgot about that.

Now on to "Kiyomi's kindness" lol I wasn't really mad at Gabi for saying this as most of the fandom was. I won't go into detail why she isn't really a rationally thinking character (yo guys, you do remember she's a 12 year old kid, right?), but it's a fact that she didn't care for Hange enough to mention her. I mean, why would she? She barely even knew her. Also we don't really know what's gonna happen with Yelena, Kiyomi and her delegation. I don't know if I'm reading too much into it, but I feel like Kiyomi accepted her death with saying "that's not enough atonement for what I did anyway". I mean they don't know if the alliance will win (they probably think they won't) and they're in the middle of literally nowhere. So I feel like Gabi said that because Kiyomi sacrificed herself (and the others on that ship) willingly, for Gabi, Falco and Annie getting a little chance of surviving and helping the alliance. But I get the rage of the fandom. Especially because no one, except for Levi, remembered Hange after her noble sacrifice.

As for Yelena and Onyankopon, there obviously has to be someone from outside of Paradis to survive the rumbling, otherwise it wouldn't make a lot of sense, I guess. I like Onyankopon a hecking lot ❤️ precious boi was literally crying for Hanjo 😭 Yelena on the other hand deserves what she got. Death would be too easy and kind for her tbh. She has to live with the consequences, just like Kiyomi, so I'm actually glad they survived. So my guess is, it's not really about who's Yams' favorite and what these people are contributing to the story, but it's rather about a logical ending and a good conclusion of the story.

I agree with you about the ones who have been titanized. They'll for sure revert back to humans. It's not really Yams' style to kill of an important character like Gabi, whose character development he's been forcing on us for quite a while now lol. I'm pretty positive about an ending with the titan curse being broken and bringing the titanized people back to human beings (probs also the millions of colossal titans?). It's only natural for Yams to end the story with the titan curse being lifted. Otherwise it wouldn't make sense to end his story at this point. But let's not forget what a big ass troll Yams is lmao you never really know what he's up to, so let's prepare for the unimaginable lmfao

I'll probably never forgive Isayama for what he did to Hange, his best written character, how he completely ruined her and threw her away as disposable, just to make other characters "shine". HER DEATH WAS POINTLESS AND IT DID NOT FUCKING CHANGE ANYTHING! That's the harsh truth y'all. Yams betrayed Hanjo and us AND FOR WHAT?

Thanks for the ask anonie and sorry I turned this into my personal rant lmao hope you still enjoy reading my thoughts on this ❤️

[lucefrs]

          tl;dr: luce thinks about how she should have never ended up at georgetown in the first place, and the domino effect it had on her life. after flunking out of gallagher, she savours the summer. her and scott break up sometime after new years. a quick onslaught of success makes her feel wary, unsure how to not take up space she doesn’t deserve after doing it so many times before. she performs her own song in the lower east side.

                                                                      insp for the song she plays at the end. 

BEFORE.

luce is a bright child but lacks in the area of self discipline and application. she would benefit from paying closer attention during class discussion.

she knew from a very young age that she was not smart. at least not by the metric that institutions measure by. the unlucky curse that has kept her in the stream of academia is this: luce frear is smart enough. to graduate secondary school because it’s a key that unlocks america’s golden arches. to pursue higher education when she gets the encroaching feeling that she’s going to be found out that she doesn’t actually have any family friend's as guarantors. at the time, she doesn’t know how impossible georgetown is. but finding herself in the company of a man who will pay for her to do well, with a tutor that makes the s.a.t’s boil down to a formula of memorization and deduction is a genius move. those three hours are brutal, she struggles but she struggles through it, proud that only a handful of questions were left unanswered. it’s only after she's sat for it that she realizes how impossible georgetown is with it’s fourteen percent acceptance rate.

she uses his mailing address to apply, so it’s him that greets her with a sealed envelope that makes her stomach turn as soon as she opens the door. out of the corner of her eye she sees a bottle of champagne sitting in a bucket of ice. she knows what the letter will say: her sat score’s a valiant effort, enough to get her into any state school, but by no means exceptional. bracing herself for his disappointment she pushes the folded paper towards him so she can pretend his disappointment’s directed at the words on the page and not at her. but the skin at the corner of his eyes pinches and there’s no crease between his brows and she knows something is very wrong. or very right. she’s not sure, at the time it’s all very muddled, thinking about how much she likes that there's no place for his smile to hide, and how that's going to be one of her favourite parts of getting old. his smile that runs right to the tip of his nose, bumps against her cheek when he kisses her. he’s kissing her. he’s happy. because of her. she’s made him happy. that's good. she's happy too. then he’s by the kitchen counter, shaking off the champagne from his hand that’s flows over the lip of the bottle and she’s saying things like, ‘   my sat scores were no where near the average,    ’ and he counters that she shouldn’t disregard the importance of supplemental essays and she makes fun of how he talks because she always does. a girl’s got nothing but a gut to trust, and every glass of champagne’s a fuck you to it. luce never pukes from having too much to drink. she pukes in his shower. luce is not smart, but she’s smart enough not to question how she got into georgetown university.

‘   god, you’re so smart luce. we could call it the boyfriend guesses my lip gloss challenge.   ’ she only hears the first part, boasting a smile that makes the apples of her cheeks swell, all rosy like. at the time gallagher had felt like a enticing romp, bound by infatuation, the glint of the dew that hung at the end of the school’s weeping willows sparkling so bright that her heart-shaped sunglasses couldn’t subdue it. luce has never waited for anything, but her first few months at gallagher felt like a gift the universe had hand-picked, oblivious of her christmas list doodled with music notes and brand names of dresses that cost seven hundred dollars, it felt like finding treasure. smart’s an understatement, genius is more apt. she lets this sentiment lead, when the offer to stay comes soaring towards at her like paper plane that falls right into the palm of her hands. it makes logical sense to stay. scott’s here.

she’ll adapt. but gallagher starts to feel worlds away, and as much as she digs her heels into the gravel, gravity starts to slip from her grasp. but how could she can complain? in outer space, anywhere she looks there’s an endless landscape of stars, bright and twinkling, beckoning her towards the nearly planet. but it makes her want to cry when she sees the blue-green dot recede into the distance.

PRESENT-ISH.

luce has her final exam tomorrow and she’s going to crush it. she’s so excited she can’t sleep. there’s no way she could fail it, unless she slept through it but that won’t happen because she has five alarms set and a scott for safe measure. she’s so excited her heart’s sprinting from her sternum to her stomach and it would be classified as nausea if she didn’t know it was just plain excitement. she winces at the brightness from her phone as she checks the time. 3:36. if she falls asleep in the next four minutes she’ll have a solid four hours, but as soon as she closes her eyes her heart runs like it’s just heard the start of the piston, and the percentage she needs to get in order to pass the class rings aloud and reverberates against her brain. forty six percent. she doesn’t even need to pass the exam in order to pass the class — she’s going to be a gallagher girl. whether she likes it or not. in the dark, her hand finds the nob of his bedside drawer, carefully sliding it open, her fingers tinkering inside to feel for whatever weed scott has, gifted joints or a prized gram for winning a dumb luck game. he always has something, even after he passes some of it on to seb. she doesn’t go far, slips out of his grasp and onto the lantern lit cobbled pavements, follows it strictly like she’s on a board in a game of snakes and ladders, stopping every time she takes a drag. she eventually falls against a bench like an abandoned rag-doll, limbs splayed every which way and falls asleep until she's woken up by the rev of a motorcycle engine set as her alarm. luce goes through the pre-test motions with due diligence, takes a shower and eats a proper meal, as though there's someone waiting to accuse her of self-sabotage. she picks up her tote that's packed from the night before and gives the test her all. it's not her fault that her focus wavered in five minute blocks, or that nerves make her feel as though there's an ongoing tussle in her tummy. she treats the residual high as something she couldn't possibly have controlled, it should've left her system by now. and she’s a hero for persevering through it. she tried her best. and in spite of it all, she still fails. thank god.

SUMMER.

she doesn’t want the summer to end. it does anyways.  

INTERLUDE

she's not the type to tuck herself into the booth, but harper’s gone to the bathroom and luce has a gnarly blister on the back of her heel, and her head’s been swimming in cheap liquor all night with no reprieve. she can’t get her head above water for more than a minute before falling back under. her gaze catches a couple in the corner, slow dancing to david guetta and her lips curl into a wry smile, his lips cushioned against his neck, murmuring something she’ll never know, and then they’re laughing — maybe about the fact that they’re slow dancing to memories, or because they’re in love, everything’s funnier when you’re in love. a tiny giggle, lost to the boom of the speakers escapes her, because she’s so in love too.

i miss you.   missing ur 🍆 spare nudes? 🙏🏼 ft? x

she holds down the backspace key and puts her phone away.

                                                         ***

‘   i don't know how to miss you in the right way,   ’ she says after a bout of silence, it makes her stomach lurch, like stepping off a ledge and finding the ground lower than expected. there’s no chance to blink back the tears, and she’s so in shock from what she’s just said that she makes no motion to cover her face from him, staring down the barrel of the webcam, like she’s on the brink of death. she’d give up the forty years of her life to get to the part where she can look back on this fondly, of a great love that once was. her child-like whimpers have her grappling for breath. ‘   it hurts.   ’ she manages to sputter out, and she knows it’s hurting him too. eventually, luce will blink away the last of her tears, because she needs this picture to really believe it.

SOMETIME, SOME DAY.

she's not so much herself as she is everyone else. there are pieces of her in the crescendo of what billboard deems the song of the summer. she’s etched in the familiarity of the bass in the last song played before last call — the resonant thrum of waking up blacked out on the front lawn of an ex best friend. the producer that the lead singer can't function without. the origin story of a grammy nominated album which started on the fire escape, exiled by roaches, a guitar slung like a rifle entering the wild wild west of cicadas and greeted by an empty ashtray save for a half abandoned spliff. a story deified for late night talk shows with parrot hosts and their fake squawks. it’s all made up names in CD booklets that no one looks at anyways. it doesn’t make her an enigma, she has a wikipedia page. record labels take her out for lunch, and she goes because she likes people, even the kind who gawk at her pretty face, drooling at the dollar signs in her doe brown eyes and blonde hair. of course, they love her, a girl who orders salad but doesn’t skip dessert — a reluctance toward fame but endlessly optimistic about the future of the music industry, splits the bill and turns a handshake into a hug when they express their keen interest in working with her. there’s a twinkling note of laughter when she pulls away and says, ‘    you’ve never even heard me sing. i’m not good enough.   ’ and she realizes with a twitch of bitterness that she doesn’t have to be, and things working out feels more like a curse when it isn’t deserved.

she talks but can't write unless it's in time signatures and treble clefs and if she does manage to write in a language comprised of letters ( which has only ever happened once ) she can't sing - unless it’s for boys she likes. so she poaches a voice, scrolling through the repertoire of people who have held her heart in their hands. her song is the last song of his set and it sounds like this. they smile through every note, she laughs at his falsetto in the last chorus. she plays her heart out with a vigour that leaves her palms moist, expecting that when the song ends there’ll be a silence broached by the slow clap of j.k simmons. luce lives in a movie and can feel the montage scene catch up to her. she can feel the lingering memory that never existed : a swollen belly and walls painted pink, a toddler that makes their white picket fenced garden a stomping ground, a cinematic pan across a fairy-lit paris, and night walks. when she looks over, she’ll see him, but she’s going to change the ending. her pinky hovers above the last key she played, letting the sound ring out into silence, before they’re met with fervent applause and whistles. this is the moment. luce looks into the crowd. she looks into the crowd and none of the faces are him because why would they be ? she hadn’t told anyone. the only person who knew was herself. it was hers. this moment is hers and she cradles it close, because she’s never had something of her own before. not really. but she likes the way it feels. the man who once held her heart in his hand kisses the top of her head and praises her with a plunging bow. she looks into the sea of strangers who watch her and she watches them back. this is the moment. hers alone. and she’s never felt less lonely.

[bandsanitizer]

Hello!🤍🐥

5, 20, 43 & 51 for the 5sos asks

hi!! thank you for the ask!! hope you are doing well 💖

5. top five songs overall?

this is a difficult question LOL based solely on my tastes and preferences etc I’ll go with (in no particular order outside of the only reason as 1st):

the only reason, story of another us, os/co, close as strangers, and high (honorable mentions to moving along, over and over, red desert, and kill my time)

20. a song that indulges your emo needs?

I’m going to say over and out? first because drums. second because alex gaskarth writing credits.

43. what color do you associate with each of the members?

THANK YOU FOR THIS QUESTION! I have so so so many feelings about 5sos and colors that I’m putting it in small text to save space. if it’s difficult to read pls let me know and I’ll make it bigger. it just got a bit… long and honestly I have more thoughts about like their ships/pairings as well

okay so easily Calum is dark green. like specifically dark green like forest green-ish in terms of like range of green between yellow and blue, as well. this is because Calum is very very much a cool color—but blue is too cool, like even teal isn’t warm enough to capture the grounding that Calum has, yet he lacks the energized aspects of the warm colors. he definitely has some yellow—he’s pretty friendly and he has his brighter moments, etc (I’d say a lot of his luke and duke interactions are this) but he’s an earthy color. he’s grounded. he’s thoughtful and introspective and while that can be self-orientated he’s very aware and observant. like he’s just… he’s the dark green that resembles the non-creepy sort of comforting surrounding of a forest/trees.

michael is red and I mean bright red like his hair. an unforgiving and unapologetic red. the kind of red that sticks to everything it touches and sticks out in a crowd. which seems odd for michael, but to me he’s always comes across as someone who doesn’t go down quietly or without a fight. someone who wants to know they done something with their life. which is pretty universal, but michael is such a driven dude and he’s 5sos’ number one spokesperson regarding pushing them towards bigger risks and greater chances (them dropping out and the killer queen recording are two examples) and that’s something I find to be bright red? that it’s a fiery sort of passion that can be burning or just a light? that michael is emotions in the sense that I’m sure he has a bit of a temper? but also is so… when he’s happy and proud? he’s so genuine about it? like in general he’s very genuine whether he tries to pretend like he’s not and that’s bright red bc there’s no hiding bright red? it sticks to everything and I do think something about michael is so specific that he leaves behind something with everyone he meets.

luke is blue, usually a sky blue, but a wide array of blues. like everyone has duality but luke does in a way that’s unsuspecting? in the way that blue jeans aren’t usually bold but a swipe of blue eyeliner is a whole statement. he’s blue in that luke moves a lot between softer and harsher sides, deeper and brighter moments. that there are distinctions between front man luke and interview luke and livestream luke and luke posting things on social media that are… subtle but stand out. that he can take up a whole arena with his presence but just from an interview? hard to tell he’s the lead singer sometimes. he’s blue in how blue is full of things. full of meanings from stormy seas to clear skies. full of capacities from making an outfit go from dressy to casual to stepping up an all black fit to a focused statement moment. he’s also just a cool color in the sense he’s introspective and logically led (which is how I associate colors) but he’s a lot more free? airy? than a grounded color like green. he’s mostly clear skies though. and it’s a warm and happy that’s not necessarily the full warmth from the sun on skin? more like that feeling of “today will be a good day” that he’s a star but night skies and bright lights or going unseen in the daytime. just a whole lot of duality in this man i’d say.

last but not least, ashton is a deep red. the kind of red that’s usually velvety or viscous. to start, he and michael are both red (in general) for the emotions I associate them with. they both carry an ability for warmth (think red and fire etc) and they both are emotion dudes. passionate af. they’re the kind of colors with something to say and won’t go unheard. that said, ashton is the “layers” deep red can have. which is like more so the way ashton has very purposeful personalities for situations (like I said with luke) but they’re very *line down the middle* sort of distinct. that he’s the dad friend and the uncle and the older brother and the snippy cousin who won’t talk to you at family reunions and also that other cousin who will start up a conversation out of no where. he’s full of opinions and thoughts and it’s deep red in the sense that he won’t always share them? but they pull or reach out and sprinkle in things he creates. idk if calum’s the open comfort of a forest then ashton is the embrace of a library or comfy couch in a dimly lit room.

51. realistically, what member do you think you’d get along with the best and the least (based on how they appear to the public)?

I can tell you that I would get along with Ashton the least. Particularly as current Ashton, while earlier 2014 Ashton might’ve been the best for this question. I just don’t think I’d vibe with him? We’d probably get angry at each other lmao

Maybe I’d get along with Michael best? He comes across as a friend you don’t need to have a lot of shared interests to maintain a friendship with and I’d say he comes across as pretty patient with people. I think we’d get along regarding these burst of wanting to talk to people and hang out but also having moments of needing space and some realm of alone that isn’t lonely.

5SOS asks!

[captain-aralias]

Life stuff

this feels kind of weird, because i’ve never used my tumblr like this, but i would have written something on my livejournal, and i want people to know - i just dont want to have to tell people about it, or really talk about it at all. 

but i also wanted to write this, idk. 

(TW: impending death of a parent)

my mum has cancer. 

it’s a rare form of cancer, called peritoneal cancer, which is similar to but different from ovarian cancer - i think it mostly gets diagnosed (like my mum’s) when it’s too late to do anything about it. all the treatment has been palliative only i.e. letting her live as long and as comfortably as possible.

she was diagnosed in september last year - about a year ago, a few months after running the ‘virtual’ london marathon on the isle of wight, where she lives, and obviously deep in lockdown. 

as someone undergoing chemo, she was deemed extremely vulnerable to covid, and so she spent most of the early pandemic isolating. she also said she didn’t see any point in my brother and i visitng her, particularly given the risks, because we could talk via facetime - which is fair enough - all of which meant my brother and i didn’t go to visit her until May this year, after she’d done the first lot of chemo and was already doing much better again. 

a few months after that, we found out that while she’d responded really well to the chemo, her cancer wasn’t responding at all to the maintenance drugs that were suposed to stop it coming back, so she came off the drugs completely. medical advice was basically chemo is as effective whenever you do it, so you might as well enjoy your life for a while, we’ll monitor it every month, and when things start to get too bad, we’ll put you back in chemo. 

it’s friday tomorrow - so two fridays ago, i saw my mum in london after she’d just seen hamilton with her partner, graham. both of them loved hamilton. her hair had grown back, she seemed pretty normal. about a week later, she was in A&E - and she’s been in the hospital all week. she’s got a total bowel obstruction, which means she can’t eat and hasn’t eaten since last week.

now in a weird situation where there are a few tricky, difficult options (including being moved off the island back onto the mainland to a bigger hospital) that will mean that she stays alive long enough to get the chemo, which will probably get her back to hamilton-watching strength, or ... she could die really soon. like, in a few days. 

we can’t visit. her partner can’t visit because covid - there’s this really sad-making photo of him looking happy on the phone through a window to my mum, also on the phone, inside the hospital. 

i feel...

???? :( :( :( ....

i guess this is the main point of the post. i’m not writing this crying, i’m writing it pretty neutrally - because my brain isn’t really processing it right now, and mostly doesn’t process it. 

i did cry earlier today while on the phone to various people, and then i went back to work. i hate crying, i hate being sad, and i dont like people comforting me, because it makes me realise that i have something to be sad about. 

i’ve known she had cancer for a year. i haven’t been able to hang out with her most of that time. i would say, we are fairly close, although not nearly as close as some families. we don’t talk every week, but we talk regularly, and have seen each other regularly. 

i’m so incredibly privileged that nothing that bad has ever happened to me, even though i’m 35. i’ve never been to a funeral, which seemed like a major life win and now i think was a mistake, i should have gone to funerals for people i card about less to help get used to it. 

the literal only comparison i have to how i feel is when my cat Anton died suddenly  about 3 years ago - i handled it with a mix of not thinking about it, being intensely sad for as brief a period as i could, and probably by thinking about how sad my girlfriend was about it, and sort of sidestepping my own feelings in comparison. 

i remember when my last remaining grandparent died - and i was about 14 or something - i wasn’t sad for myself, i was only sad for her my dad being sad. for ages, i worried that i was not going to be sad enough about this - and i still sort of am. 

but i also passionately hate the idea of being sad and i know i’ll look to avoid it as much as possible, and try and get on with my life. 

i know my mum dying isn’t about me - when people write after death it’s about the person who died, obviously. that makes sense. but this post isn’t about my mum, who is a very cool person, much cooler than me - it’s about me. because i am self-obsessed and this is going to wreck my life for a while.

it’s weird, because i can see it on the horizon but it’s not happening yet. and i dont know whether that’s good or bad - i feel like it’s good, in a way. someone ages ago told me that the grieving period starts when you get the news. that seems very true to me - but also, i know that it’s going to ramp up, and so i’m like in the expectation of true grief right now. 

it’s sort of like she died, but also is still going to die, but also i can magically still talk to her. which is really nice, in a way, it’s like a second chance, because i know i didn’t reach out enough before she had cancer. and i’m aware enough of my own actions that i know this is what’s been going on in my head the past year - i should reach out more, because she has cancer, but i dont want to make it seem like i’m reaching out because she has cancer, even though she knows i know she has cancer....... and also, i’m busy writing this fic. /o\

the fact that she seemed to recover (even though my mum insisted on saying ‘i am not recovered, i’m going to die soon’ like several time as a day as a disclaimer) also totally messed with my head, because i knew logically - ok, it’s happening. but also, things seemed so normal when we speak. even when i called her today, and she hasn’t eaten for a week, it seemed normal. 

btw - i realised this week i had no idea how cancer killed people. my mum is a scientist and has looked up all kinds of things about what’s killing her; i’m clearly a simon snow and didn’t want to think about things i can’t help. if you’d asked me, i’d have said like... it poisons you or something, or blocks bloodflow to your brain. not what i think will actually do it which is.... starvation. or being too weak to survive being pumped full of the poison that is intended to kill the cancer. (that one i guess i could have predicted.) man - cancer sucks. i mean, we all knew it. 

(i failed to get into cambridge university at interview stage, many years ago. the man who interviewed me gave me some extremely memorable feedback, which is that i needed to dial back the ‘defensive irony’ - which i thnk in that context meant i put myself down and tried to make a joke of everything. i remember when i got the phonecall to say Anton, my cat, was dead, i literally did not know what to do with my voice - because my instinct was to try and make the vet feel better, and also to present myself as bright and capable, and yet this unexpected and devasting news had just come through. rainbow wrote something sort of similar because she’s a good writer, for shepard as he tells penny about his curse. i feel like that.) 

what else did i want to say? 

i thought i had more time. ‘hamilton’ will probably always be tied to this moment in my mind, because of how much i’ve spoken to my mum about it in the past few weeks (i sent her the remix - she liked it, she listened to it in hospital while trying to drink more than 100ml of fluids) but yeah - this is basically a line from hamilton here. whatever. don’t make me feel my own feelings, let me just quote things. i dont like my own feelings. (no, i dont want to go to therapy - they’d make me talk about my feelings all the time, i’m british for god’s sake.) 

i’m 35 - my mum is 68. i didn’t think she’d die this early or that i’d have to deal with this yet. but then i also don’t think bad things are ever going to happen to me - because mostly they haven’t, see above. i wear a mask and am double vaccinated because i’m not an asshole, but i dont really believe i’ll get covid because bad things don’t happen to me. i didn’t think my mum would die - maybe ever, but definitely not yet. she’s been retired a decade after teaching (science) and has enjoyed it. 

i thought i had time to not have kids yet - which is the other thing (like hamilton) that this moment is really tied up with for me. i feel like 35 is getting quite old, but also not that old to still not have kids, but intend to maybe have them. my feelings about kids were basically like - up until like 25, i thought, yes, definitely. i mean, before i had a realtiosnhip (22-ish), i just assumed i would probably have a het marriage and have kids etc, like people do, but after that we were still talking, yes, children at some point. 

didn’t prioritise it for a few reasons - none of my close friends had children until quite recently, so it just didn’t seem like an urgent thing in the way that it probably does for people with different friendship groups. waiting to be settled enough in a job to be able to take maternity leave without it feeling like a rip off for my employer. waiting for a good time in erin’s PhD writing cycle. and then pandemic. and then a few years ago, maybe as i turned 30, i thought - maybe we won’ have kids, because we still haven’t - and i vocalised that to erin. 

also, i know a lot of people are gay and have children, so it’s not like it’s a thing that is impossible at all, but it’s much much harder if you have to leave your home and your relationship in order to get a child. it has to be a very very conscious decisions. i have friend who are men who have good genes, but we’re not so close i want to ask them for their sperm/to be involved however remotely in making a child - and (i was surprised to discover) (what a lot of things i dont know anything about) you an’t really just buy sperm, it’s not truly legal except through a clinic. and it’s extremely expensive to get inseminated in a clinic, and the NHS don’t really do that, so you do have to pay it. i thought kids would be expensive after they were born, but not before. and i REALLY wanted a house, much much more than - i think even today - i’ve ever wanted a child. i REALLY wanted a house - and now we have a house, and it’s pretty good. but - that’s where the money went, until the pandemic - thanks pandemic - so now we do have some disposable cash at last, because i didn’t commute. 

but now erin is worried about climate change - and wheher it’s right to bring more children into the world, and other things. and.... i think i do want to be pregnant, it’s what i’m planning for - don’t leave this job (which admittedly i also really like, and pays me well - i dont thin i need to leave) because next stop maternity leave, but..... 

i don’t know whether i am thinking, time ot have kids because my best friend just had a baby (the baby’s name is horatio - for real, i actually love this name) (i also haven’t seen her or the baby except over skype, because anna - my friend - is, like my mother, also scared of pandemic) and my brain is like - ok, well, if anna is doing it, i guess the time is here 

AND - i know there’s a large part of me that was like, gotta be pregnant and ideally have the baby before my mum dies so she gets to see that she had a grandchild. my brother and i are both queer, btw, in case you were wondering - he’s considering whether he wants to transition right now (but is still happy with he/him pronouns) and - you may find this astonishing, but i genuinely don’t know whether he’d consider himself ace, or has been in relationships. he’s very private, he has OCD and is in therapy - but anyway, he’s probably not having kids anytime soon (i think!) and graham - my mum’s boyfriend/partner of 10+ years. -has grandchildren, but my extremely middleclass white (but definitely not conservative voters, always 100% not-tory) parents ended up with me and my brother.... and i don’t know, as i say, i don’t know whether my brain is saying ‘have kids before it’s too late’ - although i know by now that it will be too late. even if my mum recovers from this, this time, i don’t think i can produce a child before she dies - and she isn’t asking me too, she’s not like that, but i would have liked her to be there. i thought she would be. 

so - i’m thinking about that. also, about getting a dog. i really want a dog - although i don’t want to upset the three cats (one we’ve had for eight years or so, the other two we got after Anton died). it’s ALSO really hard and expensive to get a dog. you’d think with all these ‘a dog isn’t just for the pandemic, a dog is for life’ type adverts around, that it would be easy to adcidentally get a dog - i’ve looked! you ccan’t get a dog unless you have no cats and you’re super experienced and can take a dog with lots of trauma or medical problems, or you’re willing to pay thousands of pounds. like - even for a regular not even pedigree dog - at least a thousand. pedigree dog - several thousand. i dont want a puppy either - i want a dog. 

and - this is embarrassing to admit, but i’ve alrady told erin - i genuinely had a phase of being super annoyed when i’d read fics where someone just ‘got a dog’. it’s not that simple!!! it’s fiction, it doesn’t matter - chill out. the baby thing too - although weirdly not fics where magic meant it was possible to get a baby, weirdly it was smut. i had a brief week or so of crazy (and i don’t think i am that crazy) where i’d read about fictional semen and just be like - wtf, it’s so hard to get hold of that shit. (it’s not real, this isn’t real semen being wasted, calm down - and i dont even really know if i want kids, i might just think i do.) 

the other thing about the bad thing being soon but not yet (but also being all the time, but not if you dnt think about it) is that i’m thinking - should i prioritise writing my remix now, in case my mum dies and i’m too sad to do it, and then i didn’t do my remix? i was definitely thinking this while writing classroom politics (i hope my mum doesn’t die becaue i dont want to be too sad to miss the deadline) and in the run up to AWTWB .....

today i wrote a list of things for work that would need to be picked up if i have to unexpectedly stop working, either because i’m too sad, or because i have to do funeral stuff, or .... i guess legal stuff about settling the estate. (i guess this happens to a lot of people, too, but it’s also a bit of a mindfuck that my brother and i will inherit her house and a bunch of cash when she dies - i’m pretty well off, my brotehr does virtual reality theatre stuff so really isn’t - we’ve talked about how much easier both of our lives will be with a huge injection of cash, and how we dont know what to feel about that) (great news, dogs and kids are really expensive! time to find out whether i really wanted to spend my money on those.) told people i like at work that it’s coming, and that i dont want to talk about it. and mostly just... carrying on with life, really. until it happens. 

it’s so weird how easy it is to carry on most of the time.i know my mum’s partner is not doing nearly so well - he has to cope with an empty house and he’s retired. i’ve had periods - including right now - where i wake up every morning and check my phone to see whehter someone called me or texted me to tell me it’s over. but most of the day i’m actually really fine. i even had an ok day today. and i don’t know whether i want that to be the case, or whether i shouldn’t let myself do that. i dont know what i should prepare for in terms of where i’ll be - will i want lots of stuff to distract me (this is my guess) and work is very good for that, or i will want to clear time and space because i can’t operate and dont want people to offer me comfort. (FYI - this post isn’t written to make people say anything to me, i definitely dont want to talk about it, so please don’t feel you either have to comment or check in on me - i don’t really want you to. it’s enough to have written it, in my own time, in my own space.)

i think i wanted to write this post in a way because i thought i probably wouldnt want to write it after my mum died - because i probably wouldn’t want to say anything about it at all, for a few years. 

my mum keeps telling me about the show ‘jane the virgin’ - which she’s half way through. shhe asked me to give it a try, so i did (she often tells me about shows on radio 4, which i rarely listen to. i thouht i had more time.) i’ve watched an episode (because she has cancer, i should listen to her recommendations)(but i dont want her to know that’s why i did it) and i do quite like - it’s light and frothy and well cut together (although about kids and artificial insemination, of course). i guess in a worse case scenario where i’m too sad to work or write, i will probably watch a lot of this show - which is incredibly not sad - and feel sad about how my mum never finished it. 

BUT ALSO SHE MIGHT BE OK. for a while. 

i dont know how i feel, blargh. anyway. this was a long post. i think i wrote it mostly for me. feelings are weird. covid really sucks and so does cancer. 

going to order some chicken and watch inuyasha.

[wisteria-lodge]

lion primary + slightly burnt lion secondary (badger secondary model) (bird secondary model)

i hope you’re having an amazing day!! here’s my SHC dilemma:

i know my primary is lion, and it feels a little exploded, at that, but at least i know what’s up. but im still extremely confused about my secondary. i tried looking through other submissions, but i didn’t really find anything i vibed with 100%, but then again i have adhd and im really struggling going through all that text, it just kinda blurs together at some point

so, my secondary. taking the test, i always get burnt, often with a vague hint towards bird. at first i immediately adopted that and decided i was a burnt bird, but the more i go the less that feels right to me and i think it might be some sort of model.

Yeah. “doesn’t feel right.” Definitely see the Lion in your sorting.

working by elimination, im pretty certain im not a snake secondary. that ish doesn’t even sound real to me, i know there are people like this because i know a couple, but it’s just so weird to me that some people are just able to improvise so effectively, and seemingly change themselves like that, and they?? enjoy it?? it does sound dope, like i admire it, but wtf. 

Lion secondaries can get very *does not compute* when trying to get their head around Snake secondaries. I’m considering Lion for you. 

i do act differently in different situations or with different people, but i don’t think i have “personas” as much as degrees of awkwardness 

I see the burnt secondary. You’re definitely talking yourself down here. But the way you talk about “degrees of awkwardness” does make me think about the way Lion secondaries “change faces” by modulating intensity. 

depending on how much my anxiety is acting up, and the more anxious i am, the more i act like a doormat and revert to the proper manners i was taught, but like… that’s not me, and it’s not done on purpose, i don’t enjoy it. 

Looks like somebody’s got an unhealthy Badger secondary model.

it feels gross not to be able to act like myself, whatever the hell that is.

And you didn’t vibe with the Lion descriptions? This is the first time I’m reading though this and… very interested to get to the part where you talk about why you think you’re not a Lion. 

im also convinced im not a bagder - my mother is, and there are a lot of those in my community, so i was raised thinking that was the best way to be, an ideal to work towards, but it’s just not comfortable for me, i don’t wanna do it.

Yeah, this would that  unhealthy Badger secondary model you were talking about. ^

i don’t even think i *can* do it. i mean, “showing up and doing the work” is pretty hard with adhd, and not even the most efficient way of getting stuff done (at least for me), and thinking of the group and what i can do in that group is annoying. also i get that asking for help is important sometimes but it still feels like that’s just admitting i can’t figure out how to do it myself, which, yikes (don’t come at me i know it’s unhealthy)

Hey, breathe. It’s okay. Nobody is going to make you be a Badger secondary. Clearly you’ve spent enough time struggling under the weight of a model that doesn’t suit you, and now you’re pushing back against everything Badger extra hard. 

id rather find a group im a good fit for instead of molding myself to please others. 

See, that’s an exaggerated, caricatured way of conceptualizing how a Badger secondary works… but I’m not surprised that you think about it that way.

whatever i do, it needs to come from me.

… you’ve got a very loud Lion secondary. 

anyway im somewhere between lion and bird, and at first i thought i was a bird because i do in fact fricking love learning everything i can, i wouldn’t naturally call it “collecting”, i’m just doing whatever’s interesting in the moment

You mean you learn by improvising? :) Like a Lion? :) 

but sure, why not - i like collecting languages, knowledge about different cultures, books, music, space, countries, medicine, anything and everything, and i sometimes spend hours researching random stuff that im never actually gonna use “just in case im stranded in the wilderness and need to make soap” you feel? but it’s not actually because i think it might be useful (though i do get random bouts of anxiety over not knowing how to do certain stuff “in case” even though the probability id need them is infinitesimal).

Loving knowledge does not make you a Bird secondary. I’m hearing you talk about about a thing you do for fun, and - this is key - a thing you use as  a mechanism to cope with anxiety. ADHD can sometimes make you feel very scattered, going too fast, and your Bird is giving you [the illusion of] control. And I’m not going to knock that. The illusion of control is important. 

i just like knowing things and being able to use those things to do stuff. i wanna be “that guy” you can come to with the most obscure problem and they’d have some way of dealing with it. doesn’t that sound pretty bird?

Okay. Here’s the deal. You like Bird secondaries. You think they’re cool, and badass. Maybe you’d like to be one. But I’m still not at all convinced you are. I haven’t heard you use it to solve problems. 

but i can’t actually do that stuff. i think i used to, when i was a teenager? but depression and undiagnosed adhd kinda kicked my ass, among a few other things, and now i don’t really have the brain power for it and i feel like im not actually able to learn things as well, or to even think straight.

Wow. That is some burnt secondary talk. I can’t do things. 

(I promise you, people with ADHD have absurd brain power, and can learn things crazy well, although not in the same way as neurotypicals. You are right about not thinking straight, which I am interpreting as “in a straight line.” ADHD people think in webs and corkscrews and I love it.) 

 or if i did, i can’t learn as *many* things as i need to feel accomplished? which idk what you think but it kinda just sounds like burnt bird to me. 

Feeling like the secondary you have isn’t good enough can be a Burnt thing... but feeling like you need to manifest a specific secondary *more* (which is what this feels like) is usually a sign of a model. 

but here’s the thing. all of those sound real nice. and cool. and a good way of doing things, maybe even the “right” way, even though i know that’s subjective. but lion just feels more comfy, and idk if that’s because im a burnt bird modeling lion or if it’s smth else.

… you mean… like being… a Lion?

cause the “collecting skills and knowledge to solve problems” thing sounds cool, but it’s actually more just the first part that i vibe with? the part where i get to learn stuff! but when actually solving problems, i don’t usually think too long, i just vibe. i see where my instinct is taking me and i apply reason *after* that, or like, as a secondary, support thing. im not a dumbass either, im good at puzzles and logic problems, i can totally think things through and use my skills! but that’s not really how i approach problem-solving. i just jump into the situation and see what part of it is closest and start there, or what’s convenient, or what just feels right or nicer or whatever.

This is a perfect description of a Lion secondary with a supportive Bird model. Like a LOT of neurodivergent people (hi!) you built yourself some scaffolding using the Bird toolbox.

and on one hand it could be that im not confident in my skillset enough to do things the bird way, but on the other hand, thinking back to my childhood and teenage years, when i had better executive skills and i wasn’t as completely scatterbrained as i am I now (i was, but not as bad in some ways), i still did this? like, all of my major life decisions where made on the spot based on instinct and nothing else

I’m definitely seeing the Lion primary come though as well. 

whenever i have a problem of the interpersonal sort i just face it and talk to the person and don’t bother hiding or sugarcoating things even if it means hurting that person because i don’t want to lie or come off as something i’m not, when i need to work on a project i don’t bother planning, i just jump in and a strategy forms in an organic way as i go, you know what i mean? isn’t that what this “charging” business means?

Yes.

anyway i have no idea which one is a model and which one is actually mine. i love learning things but i don’t care about actually using them. i mean i like it, of course, but it’s whatever. planning is tedious and it kinda gives me validation because im meant to be “smart” and i guess planning is what smart people do, but it’s annoying and nothing ever goes exactly to plan anyway so you just have to pause and plan again or whatever, and that’s just so boring and frustrating??

I get that you like Bird secondaries, and I get that the picture of “smart person” in your head looks like a Bird secondary but just like… come on…

why not just do the damn thing?? and then what you have to do will be obvious anyway?? and sure, if you planned ahead, maybe you’d already know what you need to do and you’d have prepared it and you’d do it better, but who’s got the time for that?? i can’t use my brain like that! i need to live the thing before it actually feels real enough for me to think about solving it.

I have never read anything more Lion secondary in my entire goddamn life.

i hope this actually made sense and i gave enough relevant information, my head kinda feels jumbled right now. i mean it makes sense to me but i don’t know how this reads from an outside perspective. maybe i should have planned this like an essay or whatever lmao

thanks a lot for answering these & running this blog!!! it’s dope and you give really good insights and you’re just a super cool person!

<3 <3 <3 

[x-authorship-x]

On his chakra system compared Kakashi with his implant since it’s more natural and he already magically knows the limits and how it works. Theres also a giant parallel with Minato, another genius who Obito (probably) admired and aspired to be like. Kamui is such a broken ability, aside from Kks, it would be impossible to infiltrate or find. Now, Mokuton. It’s half plant matter, so he photosynthesizes lmao? Just soak in the river for a few minutes and then take a nap in the sun and thats his food for the day. It’ll also be pretty difficult to somehow get food stuffs during a war without being found out or appearing suspicious especially since Madaras would only be able to send out the zetsus so photosynthesizing would probably solve that issue. And having half of foreign substance substituting for actual body parts might put trauma/pressure on organs (I know nothing medically related so this is just wishful logic) and bodily functions. I reject cannon Obito appearance bc it makes zero sense for him to be that TALL with how his growth plates were maybe altered and honestly a short compact ball of rage appearance suits him more. I think it’ll be if he was suddenly distinctively shorter than Kakashi when he’s always been taller. Obito also manipulates plants more than wood, and it seems he has free control over what the plants he can make does. This is such a good technique for traps??? Especially in terrain like Konoha where trees and shit are everywhere. He can plant (Fuck year hallelujah) vines and trees n shit and just KNOW when someones coming through. Also going back to your fic lands there Hashirama chakra everyone in the forests, so does that mean Obito can kind of tune into that???? Like some sort of sensor abilities with trees n shit??? Plant hermit Bito. Oh shit I almost forgot about the fucking HEALING FACTOR. In the kks vs obt fight his cheek scratch thing closed in three seconds so he has an unnaturally fast healing factor, but I don’t thats necessarily a good thing since if he got like a blade stuck in his arm or broken bones it’ll just automatically heal around with that intact? Ouchie. That’ll be so annoying to have ot treat later. think that’s all I have to say on Kamui and Mokuton. Also, unrelated but I just realized theres a word cap on words per PARAGRAPh not the entire ASK hahaha i’m not intelligent enough to understand this website. Plus the amount of sense in this ask has marginally degraded, so I’m taking this as a sign to Stop. Thank you for listening to my rambles and responding to them. :D

TEA 🍵 ITS THE TEA 🍵🍵🍵

(I'm gonna go on tangent here) i have... Such *tosses hands so hard i fly into space* URGH with what we know about Minato. Minato, Minato, i love your ideas (no one hate me please) but you make no SENSE. Minato is super fast? I'm sorry but, in the anime especially, everyone moves faster than light so Kishi really shot himself in the foot. Logically, we're supposed to know that Minato is the fastest Shinobi alive but all Shinobi have a speed that is WACK so??? Also the Rasengan, that's all we really see Minato use and, when Naruto masters it, it's seen as THE power up but... Look at all the other characters??? The Bijuu's fighting is literally just PURPLE RASENGAN??????? i wanted to see FERAL ANIMALS i wanted Kurama to act like a goddamn raccoon fighting for dumpster turf!!!! WHERE IS THE TEETH?!! YOURE TELLING ME THAT OBITO, WITH UNDETECTABLE TELEPORTATION AND CAN BECOME LITERALLY UNTOUCHABLE, COULDNT JUST SHOVE HIS HAND THROUGH SOMEONE'S CHEST AND REFORM TO GRAB THEIR HEART ETC??? make it make SENSE

Yessss, also the trees and shit should all love him, i said what i said, i want the flowers to TURN towards him 😤 grass grows where he steps and the trees sway

The healing etc.... It could be that Madara somehow, without a lab or a scientific background or ANYTHING, actually genetically ALTERED the rest of obitos DNA to behave in a more mokuton-ish way? Like the regeneration, growth, etc etc etc but then would that make Obito less fire resistant, would he stop eating over photosynthesis, would it affect his aging.... This is very very bad science lmao

[wuzzupketchup]

UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN

This drama came out in 2019 but it’s only now that I got the time and energy to watch it. I’ve had a lot of recommendations from a bunch of people to check this one out. Finally, I did. This is gonna be a full-on review so brace yourselves. Warning: Spoilers possibly ahead.

Time and again, I’ve told people that I am a sucker for great storytelling. Toss me a line in your opening sequences and if I like it, I’m gonna grab on and sink into the story with you. What happened here was that I kept tugging at the line and wasn’t able to sink until about Episode 4.

Okay. The show actually has merits. I’ll list them down one by one.

1. Great concept. Right off the bat, it is nice to see a BL defy the norm. The soulmate/reincarnation theme was something that we normally get to watch on heteronormal media. Really refreshing to see it incorporated into a BL series to separate it from the “usual” themes we have in this genre.

2. Cooking/cuisine. I love the fact that we are introduced to Thai cuisine, specifically, desserts. My knowledge of Thai food is just basically limited to pad thai and tom yum. So it’s nice to get educated in this area especially international viewers like me.

3. Soundtrack. The series has pretty decent music. It’s not the most outstanding, but it was enough to put you into the mood to watch the scenes/episodes. The upbeat song they used for the more cheerful scenes was my favorite.

4. Dean/Pharm relationship. I’d have to say that this was in fact a very healthy relationship. I liked that boundaries are explicitly established and that even if they were together, consent was still a major factor.

5. Side couple supremacy. I’m sorry but I was really more interested in the Team-Win duo. Eventhough they had such limited screentime, they actually managed to steal my attention. Every single frame that Buon is onscreen, he effortlessly grabs the attention. Prem, on the other hand, was so natural that I had his character as my most favorite. The way he was overprotecting Pharm like he was a baby was just so endearing to me.

6. No girlfriend to ruin the story. I’m so done with stories that incorporate a girl just to stir things up. That being said, the female support in this series was so good to watch (well, maybe Manaow can be a bit irritating most of the time lol).

Now, where do I begin for the not so positive points? For the record, I was meaning to drop the entire show after Episode 3. It wasn’t doing anything for me. But thankfully, I chose to stick it out. Although, I don’t recall watching another BL show where I had to fast forward scenes more than this one. I’ll talk about it later. Here goes the list of minus points:

1. Opening sequences. Good Lord. I wasn’t prepared for it. Like, it literally shocked me I had to stop watching after just 5 minutes in. Once I got over the initial shock, I came back and just started shaking my head. The entire opening was devoid of logic and badly executed. But hey, I can forgive this bit because the whole story is hinged on it.

2. Korn and Intouch. Pivotal characters but sadly, falls short, by a long shot. I should say first and foremost, they were miscast. Not the actors’ fault though, more on the production’s side. There was literally no chemistry between Kao and Earth. Now here’s one major problem for me. I didn’t feel connected with the supposedly OG couple to even care about their reincarnated souls. I had to fast forward their scenes because I found them borderline disturbing and cringey. I was looking for clues as to why Korn fell madly in love with Intouch but I didn’t find any. Intouch, to me, was annoying and creepy. Emotional investment was really hard to come by with this series.

3. Pharm. Oh Pharm. You were cute with your shyboy demeanor at first, but I was mildly irritated once the series progressed. I felt like he had a rather boring personality. Had he not been the reincarnated Intouch, would Dean even bother? That’s a question I was waiting to be answered in the end but I think I’ll just draw out my own conclusion.

4. It’s awfully long, to the point it has already become dragging. Literally, it was a struggle to finish the whole thing. I mean, 17-45 minutes-ish episodes are nothing compared to your normal dramas but from a BL standard, it’s rather long. Some scenes could have been chopped off but still would push the narrative forward. Was this fan service? I don’t know really.

5. Dream sequences. Okay. These were important to the story but midseries, I was so done with them because it seemed like nothing was coming out of it. Fine, Kao and Earth story arc was the focus. And that it was to establish that Dean and Pharm were the reincarnations. But other than that, what was accomplished? Just have some random nightmare and then hyperventilate? At least Dean made a move by having Korn and In investigated but Pharm? What did you do about your nightmares? Me thinks it was just a ploy to have Dean by his side.

6. The final revelations were anti-climactic. Imagine building up the events of the tragic past, only to have a resolution that seemed too convenient. Why say so? Was it just me or did any of you feel like all the obstacles that were supposed to be in Dean and Pharm’s way were consciously removed? This was where I felt super underwhelmed with the writing. The OG lovers had hell to deal with but the reincarnated lovers seemed to have a walk in the park. I’m not saying that they should also go through hell but seriously, there was no real conflict to resolve by the end. Hence, it was a let down.

7. Switching families. Korn being reborn into In’s lineage and In being reborn into the other. I didn’t actually get the point here. I was predisposed to the notion that reincarnated souls tend to come out in the place where they felt they were most loved. Or did I not get the memo it has already changed? Lol. But yeah. It didn’t make sense for me for the OG couple to be reborn in the other side of their respective families. I mean, where’s the familiarity there? It wasn’t even shown that each one had a deep seated connection with members of the other’s families to merit such occurence.

Overall, I enjoyed the story for the most part. I’m sorry if the points I raised in here differ from yours. But the thing is, I watch not only to be entertained. I was constantly trying to find logic to what was happening onscreen especially towards the end when the revelations started coming out. The writers, I have to say, had a penchant with creating unnecessary moments.

Kudos to LineTV and Wabi Sabi for coming up with this very out of the box series. Although I had a lot of reservations, I was still able to appreciate the effort. There were moments of brilliance, but sadly, it was inconsistent.

Would I rewatch it? Hmm. Maybe Team-Win sequences only.

I’d give this a 6.5 out of 10 stars. ⭐️

[spytap]

That Time I Maybe Accidentally Slid Between Universes On The Lower East Side: A Modern Pizza Brigadoon

Okay, we’re trying this again. With the words. Let’s give it a shot.

I was telling this story over the weekend, and it struck me that it’s something I’ve never really written down. But I think it’s worth documenting - you know, for science.

I guess I have to preface this by saying that I’m not the type of person to accept the unexplainable. In the Mulder/Scully matrix of assumptions, I lean much more Scully, assuming that most things have a reasonable explanation once more data is uncovered or known. I say that just so that I can say that one time while on a business trip to New York, I’m pretty sure I drunkenly dropped back and forth between parallel universes Sliders-style while trying to grab a slice.

Right, so let’s set the stage of our merry little fever dream of a play, shall we?

It’s 1:30am and I am drunk.

Wait, let’s be clear: I’m not just “I’m in New York and let’s have some fun” drunk, I’m “we’re at a digital media event and it’s the late oughts” drunk. I think it was the Webbies, but who knows. It could have been social media week or any number of other things. But if you were in the DM scene at the time, you remember (or not…) that any event which brought together the weird crossover between tech, social media, and nascent web video had, at its intersection, going hard in the motherfucking paint, if you get my drift.

The late oughts were where SXSW got its reputation as an epic and riotous shitshow where long term memories went to die. Companies lived and died by the parties they threw way out in the wasteland that was “anywhere off of sixth street.” It set the scene for an arms race of irresponsibility that wouldn’t peter out until about 2012. And New York, being much larger than Austin and with a scrappy underdog of a tech industry, had a reputation to uphold.

So that’s how I find myself at my third after party, in a bar called (I think?) Ford’s, on the lower east side, surrounded by the technorati, glitterati, and all other manner of descriptive terms for young, pretty, newly and soon-to-be rich people, before we discovered that they were called “influencers.”

This bar is a proper dive. Not quite “you could destroy everything in here and you’d be out like fifteen bucks” but still well into “you’re gonna need more than a new paint job once the artisan cheese shops roll into this neighborhood.” Put in 2009 money, we were still getting five dollar beers in Manhattan, so do with that what you will.

Back to the story: right around 1:30AM, I’m thinking three things: 1) I would very much like to slam an inordinate amount of pizza into my mouth, 2) I probably need to use the restroom before I do so, and 3) The four or five people I’m with are probably feeling the same way. So I check in with my crew, tell them I’m gonna hit the head and then we’re gonna hit some pizza. First things first though: I gotta get some crucial info from the bartender.

I saunter up to the bar and ask where I can get a slice. The sole bartender, a man who is both younger and exponentially cooler than me, tells me “New York’s best pizza is two blocks up and one left.”

“New York’s best?” I clarify, because wouldn’t that be a coincidence?

“Yep, New York’s best pizza. Two blocks up, one left.”

Well, I know that everyone thinks they know the best pizza in town, but this dude looks like he’s a perpetual trend setter, so it feels like it has a higher-than-average likelihood of relative goodness. Besides, I’ve assaulted my sense well past the realm of good taste, so as long as it’s not cooked on a literal garbage can, it should serve it’s purpose. I pop the directions into the old memory banks, and wander off through the broken door that indicates relief (and, in retrospect, possibly tetanus.)

True to its dive bar requirements, this restroom is super classy you guys. Just above the pee trough (like an actual six foot long trough that horses would drink out of) (in other circumstances) there’s a mirror where someone has carved “Smoke Beer” - a particular exercise that I contemplate for far too long. Is this a flavor profile of some cheeky new porter? Are they suggesting you replace your bong water with Budweiser? Or is this an actual “get a beaker and some burners and let’s get high in the science lab” situation?

Regardless, my attention turns back to the core mission: Operation Pizza Face Hole Intersection. So I push away the culinary suggestion, zip up, and return to the main room to find…no one.

I don’t mean my friends were gone. I mean that when I left to pee, there was somewhere between 150 and 200 people in this bar, and now there were two. And I was one of them. The other one is a bartender, but very crucially, not the bartender I was just speaking to one or two or five hundred billion minutes ago. This is a new bartender. He’s older. And has a beard. This is very distinctly a different person, but I’m still hung up on the reality that there is no one else in this bar except for him and me.

I look at this new bartender. He looks at me. I look around to see if maybe my friends are hiding behind something, but this place doesn’t even have tables, let alone hiding spaces. I look back. He’s still looking at me. So I do the only logical thing to do in this scenario: I run away.

Outside, I pull out my blackberry (shut up) and call my friends. Voicemail. Every one. No one picks up. I text them “where the fuck are you assholes” but drunkenly, on a keyboard the size of a postage stamp, so they don’t write back, even to clarify whether I just had a stroke.

Something has definitely gone horribly wrong. I am very drunk in a strange part of a strange city. Everyone I know and several dozen complete strangers have been Thanos-snapped into the ether of the universe. I am alone and have no real understanding of how to get home from here. But, you know, I also still really want pizza. So I do the only thing that truly makes sense in this scenario: I start walking towards pizza.

One block up, things start getting weird(er). Now weird in nighttime Manhattan isn’t quite as weird as it used to be, and I’ve spent a fair amount of time in Venice Beach, so my weird meter is a little skewed compared to most people. But it’s as-near-as-matters-2am now and the streets of the lower east side are deserted, except for…

Look, there’s no way to say this without sounding like I’m writing a David Lynch spec, so I’m just gonna say it and you’re gonna have to trust me here.

Directly in front of me there is a group of a dozen or so seven to ten year old girls playing double dutch in the middle of the street. A totally normal sight at 2pm - less so at 2am. There are no adults here. Or anywhere. Except me. And right as I notice them, they notice me. They don’t stop their monotone chanting, they just continue to do so while swiveling their heads to follow me like a leopard follows a [whatever leopards eat - I’m not looking it up on Wikipedia right now.]

So once again: empty streets in the LES, except for me and a gaggle of girls wielding a pair of twin jump ropes. And chanting. I briefly wonder if they’re okay and why they’re out here all along performing what’s starting to sound more and more like some pagan ritual before I keep fucking walking because there’s no scenario in which any good comes from me stopping and hanging around. But I start thinking that I need a witness here.

The blessing of living in California and spending a lot of time in New York is actually time. More specifically, that you can call your girlfriend at what’s almost your 2AM and she’ll still be up and wondering what the absolute fuck you’re talking about when you open with “I hope I didn’t wake you but everyone disappeared and I’m kind of scared because there’s this creepy group of girls playing double dutch but I think it’s going to be alright because I’m walking to get pizza.”

We’d been together for a while at that point, so thankfully I’d build up a reservoir of good graces to pull from in moments like these.

Witness achieved, I told her precisely (ish) where I was, so the police could find my body, and continued my Epic Pizza Quest. Two blocks up, and one block left, where I found…

New York’s Best Pizza. That’s the goddamned name. Motherfucking hipster bartenders.

It’s open, for some reason, and empty for good reason, but after some back and forth that includes “well I don’t have any and I’d have to make a full pizza” and “I understand but I don’t want a full fucking pizza, I just want a slice” I get a couple slices and, for lack of anything better to do, decide to head back to Ford’s.

Now you might be asking yourself, dear reader, why I would march back through a fae revelry towards a crack in the universe, and that’s a very good question. The answer is that I was very drunk at the time.

So back I went.

The children were still there, still playing double dutch. (In my memory of this, they’re doing everything slowly and in a minor key, but it’s likely they were normal speed and tone, and I was just perceiving things slowly for chemical reasons.) My phone comes out again and I subtly (HA) narrate my way through this gauntlet to my girlfriend (and for the police report) and back towards the bar/Tardis.

Which brings us to our climax. See, there’s something even more disconcerting than leaving a restroom to find an erstwhile packed bar with naught but tumbleweeds, and that’s coming back to the deserted bar and finding it full again. Like packed full. Like normal full. Like Digital Media Event after party full. You know, like you remembered it pre-restroom (which is as weird a sentence to type as it is, I imagine, to read.)

I immediately run into my friends, who not only know nothing at all about the empty bar, but proclaim that they’ve been looking for me for “like an hour.” They’ve called and texted me, they say, which is ludicrous because I’ve been using my phone and I would have…

I looked at my phone. I had seven missed calls. A dozen texts. None of which were on my phone when I used it just moments ago, but all of which were timestamped over the past hour-ish.

I call my girlfriend again. Please pick up.

“Did you just talk to me and did I just tell you about everyone disappearing and the bar being totally empty and the weird creepy double dutch girls and getting into an argument with the pizza guy at New York’s Best Pizza?” I shouted into the phone, to the absolute horror of my friends (who were probably wondering what legal obligations they had to return me to my hotel and/or the insane asylum before I hurt myself.)

“Yes…” she responded, probably wondering what obligations she had to guide me to my hotel and/or the insane asylum before I hurt myself.

“Good!” I shouted, and promptly hung up, having proven my sanity, but really testing the depths of that aforementioned reservoir of goodwill. She would later tell me that somehow the second phone call was weirder than the first.

Moving past my friends, I stormed back into the bar. The bartender (the first one, the hipster one, the human one) clocked me coming in, but before he could open his mouth to ask what was probably going to be a very friendly question about whether I found the pizza place, or did I want to close out the tab I’d left open, instead got to be on the receiving end of me shouting “You sent me to a really fucking weird pizza place!” before marching out the door; thus cementing my reputation as a gifter of bizarre and inexplicable social interactions, and the probable punchline to someone else’s very different story.

For the rest of the week, my friends would swear up, down, sideways, sober, and drunk that no, the bar did not empty out; no, this was not a prank; no, they didn’t see me leave; and yes, they were in the very full and active bar the entire time I was gone.

It’s ten years later, and I don’t have an explanation for this event. I wouldn’t say it haunts me, but it’s definitely one of the weirder things that’s ever happened to me. And weirder still, in writing down this modern pizza-driven Brigadoon, I looked up Ford’s and New York’s Best Pizza just to see if I remembered their names right - and I can’t find any trace of either of them.

I’m still with the same girlfriend, and she still remembers the phone calls (vividly), but no one else was actually there, so no one else can verify the very weird set of events and circumstances that happened late that night, and into the early morning, across a series of overlapping universes.

Somewhere, out there in the ether of the multiverse, I imagine one version of me is still wondering where everyone went and yearning for a slice of New York’s Best Pizza.

[legionofpotatoes]

Who exactly is your Shepard? What choices did you make? What was their background? Do you have any personal headcanons about them that the games didn't provide?

Hey nonnie, another big question in my inbox! I have a hard time believing y’all genuinely care about all this from me, but flattered nonetheless :D

Also I don’t have a good answer to this question? Couple of reasons there but main one’s that the last time I touched the OT was probably 2016-ish, which is why I’m so excited for MELE because I’ve been actively trying to forget as many little details as possible so I can have a nice, relatively fresh experience. It won’t work of course and all of that obsessive playthrough mania will bust out my memory box the second I boot it up and hear vigil, but like the thought keeps me warm.

Another reason is because I’m not uh great at creating original characters in videogames? Without turning them into vessels of my own values and temperament, more or less? Which is to say I haven’t made up too many personal headcanons that I can recall, no. My main was a colonist war hero, I don’t remember if I gave her a unique name at all. She was an empathetic team leader who tried her best to fix the wounds of dissent whenever she encountered them, but held nothing back when dealing with scumbags (I don’t think I ever really held Garrus back from vengeance, maybe once as an experiment. Never made a deal with the Dalatrass, even though the war was essentially at stake. Stabbed the stinkman much like everyone. Furiously supported the geth and very nearly trampled over the quarians for their sake, before coming to my senses a bit :D). She loved her crew, kept them loyal and together as much as she could, and chased after that turian booty when it was time to bone down. The ending was a LOT, and the two things I remember for sure is that she did all she could to keep the Crucible safe, and that she never chose Synthesis. Her survival stopped being a factor at that point, and she had gone for both Destroy and Control at various points. I think the latter is what I truly believe in deep down, in that naive trusting-life sort of way. I never subscribed to that indoctrination theory or any other esoteric concept that was not in the text; I found the thematic execution of the end choices pretty clunky, but functional overall. That’s kind-of where my Shepard’s psychology was at as well.

I overall enjoy finding nuggets of thematic coherence within these stories without focusing on characters too much (who had their own thematically rich arcs of course). In that vein, I did have this one headcanon that I semi-followed through via my Shepard’s decision-making; the text doesn’t REALLY support it, it’s kinda dangerously naive, but nothing overtly refutes it either. My Shepard always considered that the Crucible, much like the Relays and the Citadel, was also a concept seeded secretly by the Reapers, a goose chase task they tailor-made for each cycle to test the condition of empathy over apathy within the galaxy, to eventually discover an instance outside of predicted organic patterns and then work with its population on a way forward. Building, transporting, and docking the thing to the Citadel with an emissary of life present on-site would be the signal of success. The entire non-practicality and theatricality of the harvest would also make sense as an intentional demoralizing performance testing the weakest links of organic behavior that usually led to the self-destructive patterns in the first place.

In essence, the harvests weren’t just a reset button on intelligent life, they were also an accelerated worst-case scenario pressure test to reexamine the pattern theorem itself and hopefully find gaps. Hence the relays, hence the citadel, hence the crucible. Accelerating conditions. Because an AI’s mind would have to leave itself some margin of error; it would not just stand there surprised that Shepard showed up on the Crucible. It would be hoping for it every single cycle, because that would mean its prediction wasn’t accurate 100% of the time; it would mean that its logically shackled mind would finally let go of this catastrophically violent solution and undo the rat maze experiment the milky way had turned into.

Or at least that’s what I and my Shepard hoped the case was. The thing about this theory is that nothing really would have to change. The kid would still need to act surprised, the harvest would still need to proceed without any hindrances, life would still need to be tested to its limits. The music would still play and we would still have to dance, but this framework gave it all a moral purpose beyond just raw survival for Shepard. Because as important as defeating the Reapers was to her, it was almost as important for her to prove them wrong. Whatever their reasons may have been. And so I like to imagine she received that absolution in her conversation with the Starchild. I just like it when theme unabashedly leads everything, and when it doesn’t quite get there I just push and prod until I find some textual reference point to force it out :D This was mine.

(this all started forming in my head during the discussions with Hackett where he’d say no one was really sure WHAT the Crucible did, only that it required the help of every single race in order to be built and sheltered. Sounded like a textbook togetherness test to me! Of course it turned out to be a big fuel tank for the Citadel’s cool relay laser beam in the end. But I like to think it never really needed the Crucible to fire. It only needed it as a gesture of a cycle breaking through and earning the power to shape their own destiny. Which is why I also love the idea of the relays and citadel getting wiped out in the end; as individually tragic as it is for the characters, it is also the ultimate roll call of life’s liberation from apathy. The rat maze falls).

Hey this was another needlessly long answer to a very simple question huh! I don’t like it either!! Sorry!!!

[mbtifork]

ITZY Personality Analysis

Somebody requested for me to do Itzy’s personalities, so here it is! Sorry for the late response and inactivity. 

Do note that I’m not a MIDZY, so I only relied on one series to type them - 2TZY on Youtube. I tried watching a Yuna Vlive, but it wasn’t subbed, so I just came to the conclusion that ITZY Vlives weren’t subbed, which is a pity.

Preface: To those who don’t know MBTI, there are 8 functions in four pairs. The judging functions (Fe-Ti and Fi-Te) are used in decision-making; Fe-Ti considering personal knowledge (Ti) and the opinions and feelings of others (Fe), or using hard logic and fact (Te), and a personal moral compass (Fi), while perceiving functions (Si-Ne and Se-Ni) are used for taking in information from surroundings (Se or Ne) and storing it in your “database” (Si or Ni)

As for enneagram, there are three triads: head triad (5, 6, 7) reveals how one deals with fear; heart triad (2, 3, 4) reveals how one deals with shame; and gut triad (8, 9, 1) reveals how one deals with anger. Each person has a tritype, and has one fix each from each triad.

In order from most to least confident in:

Yuna

ESFJ

This was somewhat obvious to me because of how the other members described her. Yuna enjoys complimenting people and lifting others up, and she’s extremely in tune with the emotions of people around her, which led me to think Fe-dom. She can be extremely nurturing, and she constantly says stuff like “You guys take care of me, so I should take care of you!” Then it led me to two choices - ESFJ and ENFJ. However, I barely saw Ni in her; she’s a lot more upbeat and excitable, which could be the tertiary Ne. She’s also pretty good at recollecting details (Si) and has that groundedness along with the sunny disposition of most ESFJs. Yuna also said she usually says stuff without much thought: predebut Yuna after hearing Dalla Dalla approached predebut Ryujin and went “Hey, isn’t this song soooo GOOD?!”, which leads me to go for inferior TI at the moment, though a weak example.

As for enneagram, I was thinking she could be a 2 with how much she enjoys helping others and how adept she is at it. Probably a 9 fix somewhere, and 7 head fix with how excitable and optimistic she is. Between 2w1 and 2w3 I’d go for 2w3, as Yuna mentioned that she’s a competitive person, which is a trait of most 3s. She also isn’t as hard on herself and doesn’t have strict principles to conform to like 1s do.

In conclusion: ESFJ 2w3 297

Yeji

ISFJ

Yeji has a pretty... Si-ish sense of humour. Dad jokes and puns, it’s cute when she laughs at it haha. As for Fe, she’s very in tune with the emotions of her other members, and talks a lot about how when she notices they want something, she’ll give it to them; sort of similar to the way Yuna gifts compliments. Yeji talks a lot about other people and their opinions, but her Si is more careful - Ryujin goes “lol let’s hug her’, while Yeji says “I would have had second thoughts before hugging someone” (dom Si and inf Ne). She’s also careful and meticulous, Si-dom traits, and like Chae, they’re both perfectionists who have a work-before-play mindset. There’s also an intriguing bit - Yeji talks about how people told her she dances by-the-book. Si is pretty adept in mimicking the moves of others while Fe is good at noticing this, so without Fi it would harder to add her own flair in, which seems like a pretty ISFJ struggle. Her inferior Ne shows when with Ryujin, when they both had to assign seasons to each other. (Yeji: “What if we chose the same seasons?” Ryujin:”Then we chose the same seasons”)

I’m guessing 9w1 for her enneagram. Easygoing, perceptive, positive-thinking. Her w1 lies in her perfectionistic and dedicated nature, and she does seem to be more hard on herself compared to the more chill 9w8. I’m guessing 6 fix for her which makes her more grounded and dependable and 2 fix because of how much she enjoys giving and caring for the members.

ISFJ 9w1 962 (??)

Chaeryeong

ISFJ 

Compared to Yeji, I see more Ti in Chae than I do with Yeji and see more Fe in Yeji than Chae, but both are still there. I feel like when Chae tries to explain things, she often talks more about her personal understanding and elaborates on it while Yeji talks more about the impacts it has on others. There’s this bit with Yuna, where she goes “Why would you do that?”, and Yuna goes “Just do it!”. Her Si-Ti can make her a lot more skeptical than Fe-Ne Yuna even if they have the same functions. She also seems to be good with her details of her memories, remembering acutely her routine. Inferior Ne I don’t know for now.  Her Si can make her seem pretty grudgeful although that seems to just be her humour and wit, but there’s that Fe that pokes out that makes her enjoy compliments from others.

I’m guessing 6w5 for her enneagram. Unlike Yeji, who’s more easygoing, Chaeryeong has more of that nervous undertone and is a lot more head-centred. She also kind of relies on self-depreciating humour at times? But at the same time, she’s dedicated and hardworking. w5 over w7 as I see her as more private and withdrawn than w7, who’d be a lot more outgoing. I chose 3 fix with how dedicated she is to her job as an idol, but I’m not sure whether she’d have a 9 fix (easygoing, pushes back anger) or 1 fix (perfectionistic and strict with their ideals)

ISFJ 6w5 639/1

Ryujin

ISTP

Unlike the rest of them, Ryujin is a thinker. She’s more rational, and contrasts to Yuna this way as they both have opposite dominant functions (they even address being opposites). Ryujin when called out has this tendency to give reasonings for why she did it (dom Ti). If something doesn’t align with how she thinks it is, she’ll call it out (”That isn’t really a fight though”). Compared to the rest of the ITZY members, Ryujin doesn’t seem like she has Si - no meticulous attention to detail, rather jumping into things, which seems more Se to me. She also can be pretty witty, with her double entendre (Ni), and there’s this time where Ryujin talks about wondering whether Dalla Dalla would be a hit when she heard it predebut, which would make her more forward thinking (tert Ni). Her inf Fe is interesting - she has this side of her that likes messing with people and getting reactions from them, and she also seems to secretly enjoy attention, oof. Her birthday message to Yuna also seemed inf Fe - “I think I might have been awkward with you and sometimes not so caring, but thanks for being by my side”

Frankly speaking, however, I don’t have much of an idea for her enneagram. I originally guessed 9w8 for how chill she seemed, and the 8 in her makes her somewhat competitive, but then I’m also considering 8w9. So I don’t know what her enneatype is. I’m guessing her heart fix is 3 and her head fix is 7.

ISTP 8w9/9w8 8/937

Lia

ENFP?

Okay, so Lia is probably the biggest mystery for me from all the ITZY members. I’m unsure of her type, and I’m unsure of her enneagram. I’m just taking a guess, so take note this may not be correct. 

Lia is pretty witty - she enjoys humour that most of the other members don’t find as hilarious, and she tosses in these snarky remarks here and there. She likes tossing in these random sayings that I have never heard someone say before (“Your butt will become hairy if you laugh while crying”), which comes off to me as Ne. Her Ne also makes her pretty easily distractible (eg joining a conversation as soon as an interesting topic comes out, neglecting her food). I guessed Fe with how caring she was, but that would make her xNTP (NeSi FeTi) and that didn’t sit right, and comparing her to the rest of the group, she didn’t seem as Fe, so I settled for Fi. This particular bit sounds like Fi-Te - “I’ll work hard (Te) so that I can proudly call myself Yuna’s sister (Fi)”, though not necessarily. Her Fi-Te can also be how firm she is on her opinions. I’m guessing inferior Si with how nostalgic over the future she is, and she has a lot of developing Si thoughts, like taking Yuna to drink wine, or admiring Yuna in her wedding dress. But I also considered INFP because the inf Te can make her more slothful, but I’m settling for ENFP for now, as she does seem to be Te>Si.

As for enneagram, I’m considering that her more slothful and lenient nature is attribute to 9. She seems relatively peaceful and easygoing like Yeji, mostly going her own pace. She finds tasks like moving overwhelming because there are things to pack and unpack.I’m not sure about her wing, but I don’t see the w8 anger/need for control in her, so I’ll go for 9w1. Strong 2 fix makes her more nurturing. I’m guessing her head fix to be 6.

So, ENFP 9w1 926

So yeah, that’s it for my mini analysis of their types! If there are any idols you want me to analyse, let me know :D

[funkymbtifiction]

This has been a long ask, I am appreciate for your patience

Looks like it is necessary to make sure the function type first. I am happy to stay home months alone, rarely seek random talk with others, and only prefer do thing I see meaning there. I also have tendency forgetting eat, sleep and time (reading 10 hrs and thought it’s only 5min) when I am high on new information, so I guess high Se is relatively impossible. When I have discussion about how to deal with / organize /identify categories a problematic situation with my friends, one sentence I use most is “It depends on whether it works / You could think that way, though the fact still is there”, and I think that’s not how Ti (that’s my friend, tends to argue about if the thing logically fits right) thinks. I am pretty sure I am Fi, since I am the typical low sympathy but high empathy, I feel down when I THINK one is suffering, despite I totally recognize that the person self isn’t unhappy, and evaluate what factors shape the situation meanwhile. The Ni is actually rather difficult to describe since, well, it’s just there. I could tell what public would say today and how the trend would build itself up 6 years ago. I could naturally mimic any authors’ tone as long as I read two lines of their work as the structure of their inner logic is out there, and this could be done about real person as well (though I think this is Ni+Fi+9-ish).

My temper, I think it is different with how type 8 and type 1 (my mother) have anger, because it usually burst out from nowhere. I don’t have this kind of violent temper with people or argument, oppositely, even if I am impatient or frustrated, I always stay calm when I am dealing with outside. I lost myself when… nothing happened but it just felt wrong? When I’m on bus, suddenly the air smelt wrong and annoying. When I was doing my home work, one letter just looked not coordinated in the word and that made me wanna destroy the whole note book. Sometimes just nothing, I could feel something was heating up, and I knew the temper was coming. Though I hardly did anything irrational and unhelpful to the condition, it did make me exhausted when I was child. I think, somehow, when I was much younger, I had decided to do nothing and be nobody since adult people annoyed at whatever I said ( or it’s about the way I say things) and neither adults or peers really understood what I mean. My mother loves me but she is busy and highly likely a Si-dom and neither of us really good at (emotional) communication, so :) I had focused on stay in peace (if something annoys me I try to find a way to explain it in my “philosophy”, so that I could agree with it), at say things but say nothing, at do things I was asked to do but only go as far as necessary. At least that was what I did for a long time, until I have decided to try another way recently. So I have to deal with my floating mind space and unnecessarily unstable physical mood now.

Hope these long words makes sense to you :)

———————-

You sound like an INFP 9. You have a dissipating ‘it depends on the situation…’ approach that comes with being a core 9 and a Ne user. You can stay ‘calm’ in negative situations and appear calm to other people even if you feel angst inside (another 9 trait), you decided to ‘do nothing and be nobody’ like a 9 to avoid being misunderstood / conflict when you could not clearly explain what you mean. You ‘lose yourself’ when things just feel wrong (gut type, 9). 9s repress their anger and then have occasional ‘outbursts’ that feel really violent to them, because they’re not used to putting that level of intensity out into the world.

I don’t see INTJ at all. Most of your examples stem from how you feel about things (and repulsion to certain wrong aesthetics, which suggests tert-Si) and your personal experiences. Wanting to destroy an entire notebook because one letter was messed up seems like an inferior Te response combined with Si fussiness (a lot of INFPs will become frustrated with things not going ‘right’ and want to throw it all away because it’s been such a laborious process of doing something and they feel angry if it’s not working right – it’s a low Te thing). INTJs are usually good at explaining themselves because they simply outline the facts of the situation, but an INFP has way more trouble translating their internal sensations into words; as a 9, you would have even more of a struggle to actualize them.

IMO - INFP 9w8 so/sp.

[painted-crow]

Submission time #17, with Varna

Hello Paint,

(Sorry if this is the second time you see this, I think my internet lagged the first time, I'm not trying to be annoying. I'm sorry.)

No problem! It only showed up once, your Internet did indeed lag.

Can I ask for your opinion on what my sorting could be? There's a possibility that even if I will hit the right answer I'll doubt it and run myself into another session of overthinking and I will never settle down on my sorting. This is one of the reasons why it's hard for me.

Huh. Sounds like if you have any Bird, you're not trusting it to settle on conclusions.

Other one is that I don't really see my morals a lot. Feelings, thoughts, wants, cravings, prejudices, yes, but not really motivations. The more I get new information the more I get stuck.

Burned Bird is looking like a potential candidate here.

For example, your last answer about what primaries need to be stable — badger sounded familiar, because I really don't feel I can make any positive change. It's true I always wanted to have a group of friends, but I do not have a community. Apart from a couple of friends and my family, there is no active community I'm a part of, or at least that I realize I am. But I really resonate with the wish to feel connected.

Okay, there's some big Loyalist stuff happening here.

My inner world is too messy to be a raven primary.

Hmm, I don't know about that. Firstly because every Bird looks different, but secondly because if you are a Bird, you're pretty Burned and may have been for a while. I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand, is all.

I don't know how much my inner people are important to me. Part of this is the fact that I view my family as always being on the side that will need the help most, I know how much we have, what we need, what are the inner thoughts and feelings. This view of mine seems to have a reason, not just simple 'it's my people', so that's why I don't know where I stand with snake primary.

That is interesting. It sounds kind of Badger: "these are the people who need help most."

I am messy inside, I base my actions and views on feelings a lot. I'm probably an internal based primary from this, but sometimes I really wish I'd be Badger.

I've been reading ahead a bit. You might be a burned Badger.

I will try to base this on the quiz, if it's alright.

Ambivalent answers:

If people in your family or community disagree with you, is it hard to act against their wishes?

If me and my family would disagree on something, like a big life decision or something life changing, yeah, I would care. I know I tend to see things only from one side or miss something important, so kind of need someone to come in and check the 'wiring'. But I guess I would push my point if I really know and think I'm right. It would be harder to act against their wishes, I think.

I never think this question is about 'right things' until I read that answer xD silly me. I think doing something and just disagreeing could be two different things in my head here. But I guess even if you don't see yourself as an active community member, the disapproval would still get to you.

The quiz answers that read to the effect of "I don't care, I'm gonna do what I think is right" are Lion answers. I don't get a Lion vibe from you; I get a mix of Bird system, Loyalist drives (particularly burned Badger, which tends to look Snakey), a whole lot of confusion, and some self-distrust.

"I tend to see things from only one side" I have a hard time believing this is true of you. You keep coming in with all this burned Bird stuff, even though your motivations are so Loyalist flavored. Current hypothesis is that you're a burned Badger with a burned Bird model.

Alternatively, you might be a burned Bird with a system that includes a lot of Loyalist ideals, and you consider those the most stable parts of your system so you're hanging on tight to them.

But I think it's more likely that you're a Badger who Burned and started leaning heavily on a Bird primary model, and then you burned that too--but you've been using it more recently, it's closer to the surface, and it shows up in your thought and language patterns.

Someone points out a flaw in your logic. Their argument makes sense, but there's something about it that just bothers you. Do you change your ways because of what they said?

In a high stakes situation, I probably would. I'd think about it, I'd try it in the other way, maybe continue or go back to my own because I've got experience and now my feeling might have a base. In a low stakes one, I would probably not care much.

Interesting. This supports the "Bird is a model" theory, I think.

What if everyone you loved left you? They betrayed you, abandoned you, or died, and you're hurting. What keeps you moving forward?

I'd get into work just, so I could cope. I don't know what to answer on this. There would be nothing to keep me moving. How can you wish to trust someone again when someone you loved betrayed you? You might want it, but not hope to.

It's not like I get to see and do stuff even if everyone I love is ok, so that would not really change anything. Work to not have to feel things and hope some sweet and warm community will adopt you, so you could start to heal.

This answer is so Burned Badger and it also makes me want to hug you. I get this feeling like this isn't entirely a hypothetical for you.

You're at a crossroads in your life. You've made your pro-con lists. You've talked to people you respect. Choice A looks like the right choice. It's the one everything is telling you is the right choice-- your lists and your advisers tell you it's the right choice, but it just feels wrong. So you choose Choice B.

I don't know. Only the situation show what my reaction would be. It would be selfish, but if something inside me nagged...

Interesting, this is the first Lion-ish thing you've said so far. It's normal to have a few answers that don't match though.

Do you think you're a good person?

So, no. People are nice, kind, not good. And not me.

🥺 the burned Badger is strong with this one

Or you can imagine the snarkiest snake secondary smile cheekily saying 'Oh, please, define good for me' just to avoid answering the question and to make the other party talk about this. You'd better listen to them talking about all kinds of ways a person can be good, that's how you hate the question and don't know how to answer it or don't find the answer.

I know the answer is not intended to be seen like this, but that's the image my mind paints to me.

Vehement answers:

What's your top priority?

For me this will be a very Lionish answer — my goals. I want to find my own place, I want to find something I love to do, something I'm passionate about. Not only find, but be able to take it and have it actively in my life. The skeptic in me wants to ask — who's still trying to make the world a better place? The same voice keeps asking who thinks like a lion? Confirmation bias would say I am a snake here.

I don't think either of those is you, from what you've written so far. I think you're trying to find your place in the world, somewhere you fit, and it's hard. You want somewhere stable to land so you can seek out connections without worrying about them slipping away. I might be reading too much into this.

Would you lie to an acquaintance to save their peace of mind? Would it make you feel grimy to do it?

Most likely I would not lie, but tell it in the kindest way possible, if there is such. At the same note, I would like to be both truthful and kind. Would I actually? This part of me is talking, but I know I'd do anything to avoid anything that is uncomfortable, and I'd lie if it wouldn't be a high stakes situation, and also lie in the high stakes one too.

Again, you don't trust yourself to do the right thing. Yikes, you're Burned.

There's also a big chance that if I don't know this person very well, I would maybe not even notice that it was a situation like this. Yeah, so that's why I can't sort myself, I get too much into this, plus I can say one thing but do or decide on a different thing on the spot.

Let's say I would not want to lie. It's better to know, and I believe how people speak, communicate with you things like that can mean a lot, and they can make it better or worst.

This whole answer is very burned Bird.

When you're making a decision and you're stuck, what should you do?

I'd want to go to my friends, if I could, to speak and talk it through, to see how I react to what they say and maybe for them to tell me what I do not see or talk me to do the thing I don't want to do. Nope, I'm not a raven.

No, but you do have a burned model. I'm starting to sound repetitive. I might end up trimming a few questions here.

Do you listen to your intuition?

I guess I do.

Lions are not this indecisive about it, unless Burned. But I don’t think you're a burned Lion. Or a healthy one for that matter.

You can’t help everyone in the world who needs it, but you wish you could.

So with this question I think I really can sense some dehumanization happening. I do care. But I know there is not much I can do. I don't think about this, I numb whatever is not helpful or needed.

Burned, burned Badger.

What's the point of me worrying and feeling bad about stuff while I can't do anything? None. So I worry and feel in the situations, where I can do something. When I can help and do something I feel better, maybe even, yeah, a good person. But if I only feel bad about something, without an action, this would make me feel bad about myself, that part is true. But I choose to help and feel good about that what I can do.

Here we're getting to the heart of things, I think--this is how you propped up your Badger with your Bird model. You set some reasonable, logical conditions under which you'd let yourself care.

But it doesn't seem to have worked for you. Shutting yourself off from caring ultimately seems to have made you feel worse.

If you were a Bird with a Badger model (like I was), and you tried to do this (like I did), you'd probably have been fine (yep). But you're not a Bird, and this is so intrinsic to you, and it's so much harder for you.

There are other healthy limits you can set on a Badger primary. I don't know if the ones I set for myself will work for you, because mine are pretty Birdy and you've already tried that.

Consider, though:

"But if I only feel bad about something, without an action, this would make me feel bad about myself..."

So far it seems like you've been avoiding this by trying to shut off your empathy in situations where you can't help, and that isn't working for you--it's hurting you not to let yourself feel.

Maybe instead, you could try to let go of some of the responsibility you're putting on yourself. You find someone you can't help, you wish them well, pray for them if that's something you do, but try to train yourself out of feeling shitty about not doing more. It's not your job to fix the whole world--there are other people who care about it too. Your impact matters, but caring for everyone has to be a team effort, you know?

Not taking action for every cause you see doesn't make you a hypocrite, and it doesn't mean you don't care. It means you know you have limits. You can't pour from an empty cup.

(I know, there are plenty of organizations and activists who will try to make you feel like an uncaring hypocrite for not giving them time or money or whatever. If you believe this, you'll end up feeling bad no matter what, because there are way more people doing this than any person could ever keep up with. They're just trying to guilt or shame you into focusing your energy on them specifically, and I have... limited patience with this tactic. They're in the wrong, not you.)

On a related note, maybe watch less news. It's designed to get an emotional reaction out of you--specifically, "everything sucks, this is horrible, I have to keep track of it by watching more news, I have to spread this news link in the hopes that someone who can help will see it." The news is designed to sustain itself, not to give you an informed view of what the outside world is like. It reports disasters, not kindness.

Quiz thinks I'm Lion, I don't know why I don't believe it.

Probably because you aren't.

I'm still afraid I'm Snake.

You're not a Snake. Snakes are okay with being Snakes (unless Burned). You're afraid you're a Snake because burned Badgers look like Snakes, and you're afraid that Burned is your default state of being.

The quiz really doesn't show that, but I really wish to have a big snake relationship. When I'm far from home I feel it's not my place, not my home, not my people, but I feel ok at home. I do think people only care about their and you have to become someones' special person to be cared about.

This sounds like sad Badger to me. You wish the world would be more universally caring, but you don't expect it to be.

I do trust my people to be honest and warm inside our relationship and after that trust is lost, I still can be glad for them, communicate, but I can't be vulnerable and honest anymore. There's like a special title, a VIP ticket that lets them see all of me. It hurts to interact with these people, you know something has died.

This is something I've heard Snakes say, but it also makes sense coming from any Loyalist whose trust is fragile due to life experiences.

And then there's family. It's not only that it is family, but everything, all of your experiences, I don't know what it is but it will probably take a lot for a couple of them to lose the VIP title. Actually I think apart from family not even friends get to that place. One did, no one after them did. I do not have that really important person in my life, but my closest family is important.

This does sound Snakey, but I don’t think you're a Snake.

But I am important to myself too, my freedom, my heart, my goals.

That's a good thing. Wonder if you've picked up a bit of a Snake model? You could do a lot worse than that.

This is my short ramble why I think I might be a snake.

I wouldn't say you couldn't be, but I don’t think it fits. You sound too careworn, for (mostly) the wrong reasons, to be a Snake.

Thank you for your opinion.

I'm really sorry if this got submitted twice.

Nope, all good! Hope this was helpful.

Hugs, and good luck!