#also it’s just funny how different your priorities are as a high schooler

[doyouknowhoyouare]

ok but high schoolers are so interesting the way their minds work… lol

[plusultraetc]

👀👀 you mentioned a sports festival rant?

YES Sports Festival rant!! When I answered this ask about MHA favorites, I 'jotted down a couple of notes about the Sports Festival' which turned into like. A 1.5k word essay. In my defense, this arc truly does have it all, the good, the bad, and the ugly. There's so much to talk about here that 1.5k words doesn't even begin to cover it!!

The Good:

So until now I have been a predominantly anime fan who occasionally reads the manga when I need a quick refresher on something, or I just want to reexperience a chapter through a slightly different lens. That being said, I haven't read through the Sports Festival arc in its entirety, so my opinions are based on the anime, and in the anime, this is genuinely such a fun arc to watch. It has a similar low-stakes-high-energy vibe to Joint Training; the audience is properly introduced to so many new characters and their quirks; and there are some really great emotional beats throughout (shoutout to Todoroki vs Sero. I am HAUNTED by the entire stadium in awe of Todoroki's instant-win juxtaposed with Midoriya thinking 'In that moment, he looked very sad to me.' That split-second moment where Todoroki wonders if not using his father's quirk really makes him any less Endeavor's son? HAUNTED.)

MY PERSONAL FAVORITE PART OF THE ARC: Aizawa & Present Mic's stand up comedy routine in the commentator's booth. They had no reason to be as funny as they were. 'There you have it folks, Eraserhead is a terrible teacher' I mean. I did write a fic about the circumstances leading up to the comedy routine and it is,, not super lighthearted but let's ignore that for now and focus on the silly. I WILL SAY, something else Sports Festival does is constantly remind me that characters like Aizawa, Mic, Midnight, and All Might are products of UA and, in turn, of pro hero society. Those first three especially are products of an All Might-centric pro hero society, which adds another messy layer to the things they are willing to accept and even encourage. Huge brainrot about the pro hero house of cards balanced on the wobbly table that is All Might forever!!

Midoriya is really at his most Midoriya in this arc also. I personally think Izuku is at his best when his ingenuity and empathy are the focus (these are character traits that imo become less and less prominent as the show goes on and his focus shifts to becoming stronger. You can probably pinpoint the exact moment where his priorities change (at least I think so?) and then you could probably write an essay about trauma and responsibility and cry). ANYWAY, early Midoriya is Very Worried All The Time about doing exactly as All Might says, which is why it is so so important that he does not win the Sports Festival. The Festival is kind of a microcosm of the pro hero world, with the medal ceremony being the parallel/precursor for hero rankings. Coming in first place/being Number One is a big big deal in this arc, as always. Izuku's most impactful moment is when he prioritizes something (or someone) else over that coveted first place medal, in spite of how badly he wants to impress All Might and be worthy of his legacy. He was just a really good bean in this arc okay???

The "Bad" (but no less interesting!):

As wonderful as it was to see the pro heroes come to the rescue at USJ, the Sports Festival is here to remind us that, in so many ways, this world is a dystopia. It's not just because of the Hunger Games-esque nature of watching children fight each other & broadcasting it worldwide for entertainment and profit. When you think about it, the Sports Festival is kind of like college-level sports, just with superpowers and high schoolers (there's even a recruitment aspect. It's literally like MHA college football). And sure, fighting each other with superpowers is considerably more violent than your average sport, but they do have people with healing quirks like Recovery Girl on standby. Even serious injuries can literally be undone in seconds. What makes the college sports-ification of hero school so weird is the 'hero' part. Like, not only are you already indoctrinating your future heroes (who have so much relatively unchecked power & responsibility as pros) into the hero/celebrity culture super early on, but the students are competing to impress current pros, secure a good internship, and further their careers. Like. You're essentially teaching them that being a good hero = putting on a good show. Maybe if the point wasn't to 'win' an internship it wouldn't be so strange to me but as is? Wild. Really fun bit of worldbuilding. I am spinning it in my head like a carnival prize wheel.

I also want to take a minute to talk about the medal ceremony here. I thiiink that Bakugou being chained to the podium is meant to be comedic(?), kind of a 'look how mad he is, they literally had to drag him out here' moment, but the conflation of hero/villain imagery in this scene. Omg. Again, the medal ceremony is like a mini hero ranking (that he has won!!!) but the only other time we've seen a muzzle-like thing like the one Bakugou is wearing is on a villain in the first episode. To bring that back at this moment?? The bars of my enclosure. The bars of my english degree. Agh.

I actually mentioned this around the time I posted that very silly Sports Festival fic for Monoma’s birthday, but can we talk about how 1-A IMMEDIATELY turns on each other during this arc? Like?? They’re a MESS. Obv the writing reason for this is that there needs to be competition to make this competition arc interesting (and it succeeds!) but 1-A’s immediate willingness to go for the jugular gets Really Awkward when you realize they are literally the only class that does this—and, what’s more, that there is literally no reason for them to do this. Unnamed 1-C student #3 is right: the other first year classes are only participating in the Festival to make the hero students look good. We know this because the first challenge—the obstacle race—is literally designed to eliminate non-Hero Course students from the competition. Even if hero students didn’t have (generally) more powerful quirks and more training than everyone else, the very first obstacle in the race is the Hero Course Entrance Exam robots—ie, a challenge the hero students have already beaten, but that disqualified students from other courses from admission. Even deliberately hanging back and doing recon, 1-B is able to get all of their students through the obstacle race. Then, after the Cavalry Battle, we see 1-B once again demonstrating a level of maturity and support that the vast majority of 1-A severely lacks. I know I sound like Monoma rn, but I think this has a lot to do with the fact that, as we continue to see throughout the series, 1-A takes a lot of their cues from Midoriya and Bakugou and, to a lesser extent because he’s so quiet, Todoroki. Later, this is a good thing, because the mini big three pushes their class to be the best they can be, but here, these three characters are in shambles—insecure and off-kilter and desperate to prove something, and that energy very much spreads to their peers--which I personally think is great bc it makes for good TV and leaves lots of room for character growth!

The Ugly:

You have no idea how tempted I am to just put a picture of Stain here. He would deserve it for what he did to my man Tensei. I actually love Stain as a villain but SPEAKING OF WHAT HE DID TO MY MAN TENSEI.

The show tells you how important the Sports Festival is. Everyone treats it like it’s the Olympics, except fifty times more important. UA students are scouted by pro heroes and agencies during the event, and putting on a good show can literally change the course of your career (just as doing poorly can ruin it before you even get a chance to graduate). More sports analogies! This makes sense. But the thing is, countless pros show up to watch the event in person. Even more provide security. Literally my first thought was, if I was a criminal I would commit so many crimes during the Sports Festival. Who tf would be around to stop me? And then I had a good laugh because we actually see Shigaraki watching the Festival and I was like ‘oh, there isn’t a spike in villain attacks because the villains are watching it too lol.’

But THEN, Tensei gets attacked by Stain ON THE DAY OF THE FESTIVAL. So there are still heroes out hero-ing and villains out villain-ing, and it’s probably way easier to do the latter when everyone from All Might to Endeavor and beyond are watching teenagers beat the tar out of each other. But you’ve gotta scout those future interns and sidekicks so what are you gonna do!! Once again, the Sports Festival is a microcosm of pro hero popularity society—it’s this insulated little bubble where everyone is so worried about how they look, where they ranked, who they beat to that podium, while the real world carries on outside. Iida himself is distracted by that shiny first place medal until Stain attacking his brother body slams him back to reality.

[keefechambers]

so I don't have many other trg blogs to follow and my partner is not caught up lol so can I get your thoughts on the season??

Like how did you feel about the new characters?

Fave moment or episode? (Or least if you wanna go there too :p)

Favorite outfit or quote? Or maybe character arc?

How did you feel the stakes were compared to previous seasons? I kinda missed the crime element personally but it did seem to be more personal relationship stakes

AHh! Okay, I loved this season! I am inclined to slightly agree with you that I did miss the heavier crime element. Seasons 1 and 2 were very slick and self-contained in that way and I really enjoyed it, and I hope more of that comes into season 4. BUT I loved that it focused on Deepening the Lore of the family (since Danny has said he wants this to be a sprawling multi-generational epic) and the relationships. I love that the show isn't afraid to let characters actually end up somewhere different than they started.

Favorite new character? REDEEMER obviously!!! (Only halfway kidding)

Spoilers below~

I really really loved the Montgomerys. They really give a lot of insight into Eli's psychology (the same way Baby Billy does for Aimee-Leigh) that I think was necessary. We got glimpses of it last season with Junior and Glendon, but friends and bosses are different than baby sisters. I like that his relationship with May-May mirrored the difficulties that Jesse, Judy and Kelvin have with each other. I don't think it's a secret that Karl was my favorite new addition and I hope he sticks around, even if he's just a small part of continuing seasons as needed. I am a sucker for very large, very sweet men. I loved that Peter was a villain who wasn't, compared to season 1 and 2 where the bad guys were just outright, unrepentantly evil.

I liked the themes of taking accountability and forgiveness and that sometimes people aren't beyond saving a lot this season. May-May having to own up to her part in Peter's downfall, Peter getting away from the militia and realizing he'd become such a different person... I love that the militia fell apart the way it did because I research rightwing extremists and honestly, the petty in-fighting and the grudges and the stupid priorities are true to life.

I also hope we see more of the Simkins as like, ongoing nemeses because they were a very funny mirror to the Gemstones.

My favorite episode was probably episode 6! The fight scene between BJ and Stephen was really really well done and hilarious and the balance of earnest drama and funny jokes that don't undercut the emotional hits was just, top form. I'm ALWAYS a fan of the Interludes, though.

Favorite MOMENT, tho. Like obviously The Kiss is a big one. Top Tier. But really ahhh, I'm a suck for the Interlude bit where Jesse picks up and spins Amber. I love a pick-up and spin. But also Gideon and the Redeemer???

Favorite outfit is definitely Keefe's fire-dance fit, or his finale fit with the cropped sweater. Oh, and there's this peach suit that Martin wears in the episode where Peter disrupts church lunch that is FIRE. Martin might be, fashion-wise, my favorite after Keefe and BJ.

"It's Kelvin's friend, Chief" lives rent-free in my head, but it's quickly being replaced by "DID YOU FUCK DUSTY DANIELS?!"

Character arc wise, I think I gotta give it to Judy. Like. It was sincerely romantic and beautiful to see her go from this insecure high schooler who was terrified that no one would ever love her to an adult woman who is...terrified that she's driven away the person who loves her most it was just GORGEOUS and so well-written and well-acted. Like... I love her. I love her so much. Edi Patterson call me.

I really loved it overall. I think the plot was bigger and messier but I don't think that was a negative so much as a way to set up future seasons and for that, it wholly succeeded.

[fbfh]

leo x reader relationship and intimacy hcs pt 2

As with all steamy/nsfw works all characters are 18+

1.2k

Sooo

Let’s get started ‘,:)

Aight i’m gonna say it if i haven’t before i genuinely don’t remember-

Leo and Nico are tied for first place in terms of stamina

Percy is in a close second and he’s very salty about it

And pretty much everyone else is within the reasonable to high stamina zone

So this boy could just

He’s non stop

Relentless

Insatiable if you will

Aka at least a little horny all the time 

But like in a sweet way

He loves you so much it’s always coming from a place of wanting to be close to you and make you feel good

Loves to go down on you

A lot

Like could spend hours between your legs

And has at least once or twice

Goes apeshit when he’s going down on you and you grab his hair

I have a personal headcanon that he’s great at rapping seamlessly between spanish and english so uh 

Do with that what you will

To quote min yoongi, Leo’s got some tongue technology

And knows how to use it

You never fail to return the favor though

The only word that comes to mind for him is euphoric

He’s come to the conclusion that he can’t compare which is better, when he goes down on you or vice versa

It’s apple orgasms with the hottest person in the world and orange orgasms with the hottest person in the world

They’re different but both fucking fantastic

He holds your hand a lot in the bedroom

Like he’s pretty grabby

We can all agree on this

But as soon as one of his hands finds yours, he doesn’t let go

The other one will kind of roam around jumping from place to place cause he can’t get enough of you

But his other hand will be locked with yours, fingertips brushing lovingly against your knuckles, thumb rubbing the side of your hand

Makes out with you a lot when things get heated

Like a lot

He’s very kissy

Doesn’t like positions or situations where he can’t kiss you nearly as much

If you get embarrassed or flustered by eye contact he kisses your neck and collarbones more

You being comfy is his top priority

Also I feel like I need to mention

Demigods either have massive horse choking schlongs or ultra gorilla grip coochies

Like “shouldn’t logically be able to fit but can bc of god magic” kinda dicks

I’m talking exclusively buying durex xxl xtra wide xtra long condoms

This goes for all the fellas

You can pry this headcanon from my cold dead hands

Or could if I was capable of being killed

Anyway

Shopping for stuff is always fun with him

You two end up laughing and giggling like middle schoolers in a sex ed class

Not in like a tee hee sex is scandalous way

But I feel like being able to laugh abt stuff w your partner is rlly important 

Also sex doesn’t always have to be super serious all the time yk??? 

“raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens” “sticking my dick in rotisserie chickens” is funny for a reason yk

Plus there’s not much you wouldn’t be able to laugh about with Leo 

I ended up writing a one shot about last minute condom shopping with leo by accident so i’ll link it once it’s posted

God help me

He dances with you a lot

Does he feel you up and grind a little??

Or a lot???

Yes

More like a lot

Definitely a lot

Especially in the kitchen

He thinks dancing in the kitchen is really cute

You’ve gotten a lot better at dancing since being with him

He also likes giving you piggy backs cause you have full access to his neck

Do with that what you will

Especially if it’s neck kisses and hickeys

Any way shape or form he can be physically close to you he will

And he loves it

Still doesn’t 100% expect you to reciprocate his feelings

Little ones like loving to cuddle you and instigating it

Cause like

Have you met you

Thinks you’re so fucking beyond incredible

He still doesn’t really know how he got you

He can’t think about it too much or it freaks him out

He just ends up giving you a lot of attention when that happens

Usually pulls you aside somewhere to make out

If you get asmr tingles easily

He’ll take full advantage of it

He’ll whisper shit really close to your ears and you just like

Get anime spiky shivers all over your body

Emotional intimacy is also like a huge turn on for him

Like that one scene from new girl (2:10)

So like dirty talk is fun or w/e

But if you really wanna get him riled up

Just kinda run your hands up and down his chest 

Rest your head on his shoulder

And whisper about how much he means to you

“I love being around you”

Leo: on

“You make me really happy”

Leo: on

“I dunno what I’d do without you”

Leo: on

“You’re so important to me” 

Leo: on

Punctuate it with a kiss and nuzzle your face into the crook of his neck

Leo: fucking on

Make sure to take a lot of pictures and videos of him and the two of you

Cause he gets a lot of pictures of you

Like a lot

He likes using a polaroid cause he can physically hold them, yk

He has one or two physical pictures of his mom that mean a lot to him

Once you got a butt ton of copies of those two pictures made for him

“Just in case something happened, this is too important to lose”

He hugged you so fucking tight

He’s surprisingly good at photography and shooting videos

Like he has good instincts behind the camera

You’re really surprised when you notice there’s not one picture he’s taken of you that you hate

You each probably have at least a few hickeys somewhere at any given time

Also if I haven’t brought this up yet

Leo in just his boxers is uuuuuh

Really really nice

You usually see him like that one of three (or four) times

He’s either gonna be hovering over you with his hair in his face taking in the sight of you before things escalate further

Lying on his stomach tangled in your sheets first thing in the morning, still reeling and blissed out from the night before

His back muscles also look especially nice then

Or standing behind you kissing your neck while you pour some coffee, his hands on your waist under his shirt you’re wearing

Or, bonus, when you’re straddling his hips, his face bright red as you roll your hips just the right way to get him to buck up a little, and he stops biting his lip to tell you to stop teasing him

To which you happily comply

A lot

I’m gonna stop here or i’ll just go on and on forever and never stop

Just like leo

[fruitlicense]

Driving in Legend of Korra

@kiyomizuki and I were talking about how different characters would drive because we were wondering what would happen when/if Bolin learned to drive and this was the result

Disclaimer: as queer people ourselves, we went into this knowing that gay people can’t drive and also that it’s a joke, this whole thing is a joke

The Krew

Korra can’t drive because she’s gay (bisexual but the point stands)

Asami can drive the best out of all of them, but she also likes to drive fast, so she’s maybe not the ideal teacher

Mako can drive well but he has no patience on the road. If he’s “cool under fire” when bending the stress has to come out somewhere and that somewhere is ROAD RAGE

Bolin can’t drive because he’s Bolin (sorry Bolin, but this is funny)

Pabu is banned from the front seat on Mako’s orders after he jumped onto the steering wheel and almost killed them

Naga can’t even fit in a car, but yes she absolutely would hang out the window with a blissful doggy smile

Republic City & Air Temple Island

Wu doesn’t know what a steering wheel is. Just kidding, he actually knows a ton about cars (rich kid thing?), he just can’t drive

Lin can drive, but where do you think Mako picked up the road rage from? She’s used to car chases where saving the car is low priority and she can hang out the window throwing rocks at people

Bumi can drive, but no one’s ever seen him do it and they don’t believe him when he says he can

Kya claims she can’t drive or do math because she’s gay. Bumi drives her places, but she also perpetuates the “Bumi can’t drive” rumor

Tenzin knows how to drive in theory, but he’s been traveling by sky bison for so long that his knowledge is useless

Pema is one of the the few safe drivers Korra knows. She’s a mom, so this is correct

Kai and Jinora drive like your average high schoolers on their learner’s permits (badly, but they’re trying their best)

Ikki is a distracted driver who blasts music, but it’s good music

Never put Meelo behind a wheel ever

Rohan’s a baby, he can’t drive

The Metal Clan

Baatar Sr. is a good driver too. I can’t tell you why, he just seems like a safe driver.

Suyin is the LoK version of a soccer mom with a minivan and shit music taste, don’t give her the aux cord (we love her, but seriously, don’t)

Baatar Jr. has road rage worse than Lin and Mako’s. He also drives Huan places to answer for his war crimes

Huan doesn’t give a fuck about cars until Ikki suggests painting them. He goes on a two-week-long spray painting spree with the Zaofu jeeps

Opal knows how to drive, but she hasn’t driven since she became an airbender, so she’s a useless driving teacher. She told Bolin she couldn’t teach him and there was a terrifying week or so where he went to Wei and Wing before Pema and Baatar Sr. intervened and took over

Wei and Wing are a danger to the public behind the wheel, near-Korra levels of Bad. Every grocery run is NOT actually a race, but you wouldn’t know it based on their driving

Kuvira can drive, but she doesn’t do it often because she says it ruins her aesthetic. She knows how because it’s a useful skill, she just doesn’t and it pisses Baatar Jr. off to no end

The Gaang

The only person worse at driving than Korra is Toph. Yes, she has attempted to drive on multiple occasions, and no it was not a good idea

Even Zuko is a better driver than Korra, and he’s gay and half-blind. He has a dragon though, he doesn’t need cars

Aang never learned to drive and he’s fine with that, he has Appa

Sokka is a decent driver, but just bad enough that you notice. He definitely takes corners too fast and merges lanes like an asshole, but he’s a better driver than Toph and Zuko so you take what you can get

No one thinks Katara can drive but she’s pretty good at it. Maybe a little slower as she’s aged, but she’s average. Tenzin is jealous

Suki is a good driver. She knows the rules of the road, follows them when necessary, and also will drive down empty highways at 95 miles an hour because she’s just that cool 

Water Tribes

Tonraq can drive a snowmobile but not a car? He seems fine with it

Korra: dad you need to learn to drive Tonraq: on what road

Varrick can drive, but he doesn’t listen to the rules of the road and he blasts fuckboi rap

Zhu Li drives, mostly, because she’s a law-abiding citizen

Eska and Desna have a chauffeur

Fire Nation

Does Izumi drive? We’ll never know

Iroh II has only ever driven military jeeps. He can drive a getaway car, but he doesn’t know what a traffic light means. He can drive boats and planes though (drive isn’t the word but I don’t know what the word is)

[unproduciblesmackdown]

even more prompts catchup

April 5th: What was school like for you, or what is it currently like for you if you are still in school? Elementary, high school, post-secondary?

i Hate/d school lmfao......like i do Like To Learn and Know Shit, and of course Sometimes / on some occasions it was like, hey i'm having a good to pretty great time at school, but those were usually Special occasions or teachers going out of their way to give us you know, fun projects / go beyond the Standardized Testing curriculum, which natch they couldn't always do / did require sort of going Above & Beyond, rather than being the constant, guaranteed experience of like hooray for school......it's like, oh hooray re: the Play Scenes my fourth grade english class did that was like, an Extra thing, where we got to audition and i just had a great time like oh right, clearly Theatre in retrospect, or hooray re: the field trips, or projects we did In Class, since i hated homework.......i was always that accursed (i mean, not accursed for Me, but) combination of "really a terrible student but also gets great grades" lmao i forever do things Last Minute but like, when i was At school, in class, i'd just power through whatever work there was then & there usually, and in middle school would sometimes do hw on the bus, as i was the last on the bus route to be picked up in the morning or dropped off in the afternoon, but as soon as i got home i was in Home Mode and yknow. didn't just sit down and continue School Stuff asap. also hardly ever Studying unless it's the night / morning before a test lmfao but i had a great memory for that stuff, so studying that last minute was like "yep, i Do remember this from going over it 2 seconds ago" so yknow, despite hating school / no good Study Habits(tm) or anything, i did fine. i also read a ton, at home or at school and at any other point. so i was also like, quiet and generally ~well behaved~ or whatever lol (the like "how are kids (or anyone) supposed to stay focused and on task for 7+ hours a day..." thing), segue into next paragraph

i also remember like, 3 day a week preschool being the first time i was, you know, in some sort of School and also around other kids that much, i did have this sense that like, somehow there were Rules that i wasn't following, not re: Classroom Rules or something, but wrt socializing with peers, like that everyone else had something going on in how they interacted which i wasn't gonna get right, & i had this sense of like, not really being Allowed to interact lmao, even being 4 years old i have a few distinct memories re: this of like, a) choosing to play by myself in the classroom or when outside, and b) my "best friend" being the one person who just like, chose to hang out with me lmfao, but i was like oh cool Having A Friend lmao, like i didn't Not want to have friends, i was just already aware of like, i don't feel like i can just up and interact w/these people and i don't feel like they want me to, and c) re: that being aware of whatever Rules Of Interaction existing and that i wouldn't meet them / abide by them and thus there'd be some kind of repercussion for not meeting those rules, and not being allowed, i remember that like. there was this other indoor playspace in the lower level and there were toys i wanted to play with but Refrained from, and it was like, why did 4 yr old me get the idea i Wasn't Really Allowed, and most of what i can theorize is that it was like, well other kids might want to play with that, and the Normal / Better kids should get priority lmao, and/or being nervous that it just might otherwise lead to some sort of Interaction i wouldn't feel ready for.....and d) sitting at a table with like whatever 4 or 5 other kids or something and amongst ourselves someone was like "oh put your foot in the middle if you're [x]" and i tried to join in on a technicality lmfao and also just in, you know, active efforts to be Participating with these other kids on their terms, and it did not pay off, something that repeated uhhhhh, forever i guess lol. insert that post like can allistic people be normal for 5 seconds.....

like in elementary school i wasn't really making friends either, incredibly, i was Amicably Tolerated by many people then & like, again also at any point after at least lmao (and it helps that i was generally in teachers' good graces, not that i narced on anyone ever, but i had like, my Niche as the Academically Successful One, and also i was the kid who draws, another shoutout to some post and tweet about how being The Drawing Kid was like, some measure of respect but also disdain lmfao...) and sometimes people would again like. choose to interact with me repeatedly, and i'd sort of be nonplussed at best b/c it's like, okay thanks but in this situation i didn't Choose this any more than i choose [Trying to be in the group but being rejected/excluded], so it's kinda weird, i was friends with someone for a few years in elementary school but we just were Coincidentally in the same class for those years, when we were in different classes in 3rd or 4th grade and just weren't seeing each other it fizzled out, in middle school i made another couple friends where we were all being Funny lmao, but i didn't go to high school, so once again we weren't seeing each other, and [At School] was where i always had most Interactions with people, didn't see people much outside of school even if we were hanging out / being friends During school, for [a whole tangent] reasons, so. guess the good news is i'm still in touch / friendly acquaintances with some people from school from college, but even then, there was Some more social success or whatever, but not all That much, and i was still unhappy like, not having many friends, often being like "i'm going to the cafe a block away b/c i have no social occasions here and i want to get out of the dorm / be around people," that if i was with more than one other person i could end up the third wheel friend lmao or nobody is paying attention when you talk or oh no i put myself out there hanging with a friend group but maybe people thought you were a joke or something, thanks. smh

and that like, speaking of college, i went early but this was, for my part, truly primarily driven like "well i hate school so if i can Not go to high school, okay" and like, while i got in and everything it was still like "tf is college, i've never known what i Want To Do so i wonder if i'll figure this out, but i'm not expecting to last past the first semester / year b/c this is college and i'm a terrible student actually lol" but then turns out i kept doing well enough like A's & B's like oh woops i guess i'm still here, then, hope i can figure out what tf "credit hours" means (finally did lol).....then sophomore year was a bunch of just Agonizing over "what tf do i major in," something i never figured out, wherein i might bring something up & it got parentally shot down like "never heard you talk about that" like what tf Did you hear me talk about? are you thinking i had my life figured out by age 9, b/c i didn't think that, i'm only 15/16 even Now, even being the Regular college age it's like, nobody's figuring their life out then. also i didn't tell my parents things, so. and then i settle on something that sure, Might've been of interest, but also it was like, a) a program that barely existed and req'd taking classes at a like 30 min away campus and also the head of department had Just retired and the most heinous teacher in the related fields was now in charge, brilliant and b) the sort of thing you'd just wanna start taking prerequisites for like as soon as you set foot on campus, like, great. and c) i was like, hardly feeling all the Academic Ambition anyway b/c i never had, b/c i hate/d school, and b/c i still didn't Know what i wanted to major in, and i was stressed n depressed and also realizing oh right, i'm not cishet, and oh right, i'm never going to get along with my family b/c [long tangent] reasons and that's kind of concerning, here i am impending Being 18 and like, how do i get out of this b/c it's becoming clearer that i'm not just gonna start getting along with the 'rents now that i'm not an elementary schooler and also now that i'm realizing the Reasons being at home sucks. guess i learned stuff in college lol but also it was like, the experience of getting to be Away From Home and existing every day without parents literally / figuratively over my shoulder at some point every day, and getting to do shit on my own and figure things out while Not At Home.....i also had a lot of fun taking a couple classes from this one music prof lol. he was this weird really enthusiastic and really knowledgeable guy lmao like great, these evening classes where we go over to the arts building and he plays things on the piano off the cuff and tells a lot of tangential stories while we're learning about like, beethoven technically, or folk music. didn't need those classes but they were great, i've had these teachers who were totally into whatever they were teaching and had a great time with that

also acknowledgment to the fact i was a No Extracurriculars person all through school, k thru 6 and college alike really, although i took dance class for that k thru 6 period, just that was separate from school actually (and another fun "being away from home" thing and Theatresque performance thing i enjoyed) but besides that it was like, how do i figure out what i want to do without committing to joining this whole thing, i don't know How to sign up for stuff really either, and it'd probably entail "asking for stuff" and needing to coordinate more rides and etc and that's just a hassle, and i wanna go home from school asap anyways, and then like, when it came to college, i was again at first thinking like "well idk what i'm doing and i hate homework so i'll probably mess it up in this first year anyways" and figured that doing anything Extra outside classes was just gonna be too much, and also, it's like, i've never been in these kinds of groups before and why am i gonna start in college, where there'll probably be all these people who Have done this stuff before, and are also 18? e.g. even though it was like "hey you're away from home and don't have to ask/tell anyone else anything to do this club stuff or whatever!" supposed ideal environment for trying stuff out, it was like, maybe i'm theoretically interested in auditioning for the fall theatre production, but the last acting experience i had was like, "2 month drama class in middle school" or "that 4th grade [section of a] play" so like, not really Any education or experience or Training re: any of that stuff, and a bunch of 18 yr olds who might've, or [age peers] who were theatre people who had already done stuff so they weren't getting Lead Roles or anything but they were getting cast / taking classes / joining an a capella group while i'm like right on, i'm over here with some sort of Grade Honor Society (??) saying my gpa qualifies me to join and be able to experience some further academic rigor/requirements lmfao and i'm like absolutely not. get away lol. anyways so bit of a chaotique Post K12 Zone Education Experience there lmfao, all kinds of things i'd Like to Learn and even take classes on, but didn't like, right i love learning languages but never took classes, love math and shit but only got to a certain level of calc and even then seemed to miss some Lore, never did anything re: theatre, etc and so on. so you wonder if some advantages re: high school would be like, more chances for those extracurriculars (or regular curriculars) but, as though i wouldn't have the same qualms about getting in on any of it, and as if i wouldn't've still hated school but also still been at home, F. and i think people can be a lot more normal to each other when it's college and you're Not stuck in one building together 8 hours a day lmao, got some gentle "occasional Bullying style attention" in middle school, but had juuust enough like, [that Niche of good grades / kid who draws] and people who Were friendlier to me that it was you know, unpleasant, but didn't have to be that huge a deal, and then i was outta there soon enough. also, in college many people are 18 or older, as opposed to 11 to 13. anyways the rest of my school story was that in the end the problems were "i don't know what i want to major in and also now's a worse time than ever b/c i've realized my existence At Home is untenable, and naturally i am quite depressed & stressed about things, and i gotta say absolutely virtually every adult presence was either totally unhelpful to Counterproductive here lmao, like, not much anyone could do really but it's helpful when someone is like, i'll treat you like a person vs simply just going 'uh why are you not doing the academic stuff good enough'" lmfao like. the whole time Not having friends i'd wanna talk to through class and happening to get good grades in part b/c i somehow Could as easily as i did and also i was afraid of getting C's or worse b/c "tfw i wasn't even yet in a grade that gave you A thru F grades yet but my older sister caught shit for getting a C

like :/" and etc means adults are like My Student Is Fine, and also, what are you gonna do even if they aren't, i guess. i just had to figure out completely for myself Why and How i really wasn't Fine and that was quite difficult and also took a long time. then there was a mutual prank of "i drop out of college at the tail end of things" and "now i have to be at home with parent/s more resentful of your obvious Waywardness (insert: not being cishet, and the fact it occurs to me that my being autistic was always causing 'problem' behavior i was getting shit for like, the whole time lmfao, even if nobody knew / labeled it like oh this is for ND reasons, or if it was both true i tried to come out (smh, thought i Had to b/c that was part of Not Being Cishet) and it was simply ignored / unaddressed and yet it sure fueled further specific resentment of my not Performing Gender properly, or "worse," so that went well, in that i eventually abruptly left and did not maintain contact, in the interest of "the levels to which i was thriving was like, that if i bailed and like died 50 hrs later it'd still be what i want to do," true to that i did not / don't regret it. and what do you know, i was first able to bail to a relatively nearby friend from college's home, whose family also liked me lmao. shoutout to school still being where i made Any friends, except a friend i made who was a coworker of several years. and Online Friends, which, another school connection, that like, i can more readily Connect w/people via talking about interests, something that happened Sometimes at school in person lmao but not much, but also that i Talk About Interests in a way through Drawing, which, well shoutout to doodling in the margins of papers throughout school lmfao, it didn't hurt! that's my saga.

oh and that footnote, i also really enjoyed the "in middle school you either take language classes or 4 Electives you rotate through each year" and those electives sure featured some more varied and hands on activities i had a great time with. shoutout to like, cooking, and to shop class, my Car Designs were great apparently, idk how. shoutout to my Intuition re: engineering or something lmaoo.....very fun to just end the schoolday in that big garage space where you could actually open that garage door right to where all the buses were, beautiful. Oh, and that's another footnote, when my last class of the day in 8th grade was english, i'd sometimes finish work early and my teacher would let me go to our spacious library, with the v nice librarian who'd recommend books to me she thought should be checked out more often b/c she knew i liked to read that much, and also just generally had teachers / other adult staff kinda wandering in at the end of the day, talk about "i don't really relate to other ppl my age" where i did generally prefer to be around adults, so that was fun. oh and also shoutout to hating school lmao wherein during like, middle school when the schoolday started at like 7:30am or smthing disgusting and i just learned to like, view whatever time it was in a "at least it's almost [x]" like well okay, first period is math and that kinda sucks but at least once it's over this hardest part of the day will be over, then next class is kinda more chill at least, and then it'll be the last period before lunch, etc etc etc where i could sort of keep up that stamina like telling myself at any point it was Almost [a more encouraging time of day] lmao like. kinda fucked up to have to be dragging yourself through the weekdays like that, but

Oh! goddamn and i didn't even get into that if i ever got in ~trouble~ in elementary school it was stuff like Not Paying Attention, but where half the time that might be some other kid beside me messing around lmfao and i'm not gonna be like "uhhh follow the rules!!!" (and that even when i was In Trouble like go sit in the chair where you have to be quiet there for like 10 min i might say something to some other kid in that zone and they'd be like "um it's the quiet chair you have to be quiet!!" or "uh we're getting into the next lesson and you have to put that book back asap" like wow these other kids are dweebs about Rules lmfao) and there'd just be times like, it's 1st grade and i know how to read pretty well already but we're going over the alphabet like stoppp i know the Phonics already........or the ways ND people can kind of Intuit some stuff more successfully, like in third grade learning multiplication i neverrrrr studied but just broke it down like, okay i remember the Fives b/c of telling time, i know the 2x table and stuff, i know the commutative property, if we're all the way at the 8x and i haven't Memorized stuff, i can still like, break it down to say, [5 x 8] + [8 x 2] or something when i see 8 x 7, even if it takes a second lmfao.......and stuff like the tragedy of when i Did make a friend in like, 2nd grade, who i think we didn't even talk to each other ever?? i was playing legos or smthing by myself once during Indoor Recess and she just started playing agreeably along with me, aka someone socializing on My Terms apparently as our Introduction, and we just were friends past that but one time, not even during a Lesson Session, we were messing around quietly making each other laugh as the incredibly important process of "put papers in your folders" was going on, and since we were Not Paying Attention for some reason the teacher made a whole example of it where i had to carry my desk across the classroom for the Shaming Element of it and also so that i had to permanently sit way further from that friend, so that was kind of discouragement re: interacting at all. thank you to that teacher, who'd later once Gesticulate to me from across the gym that i should put my arms down at my sides rather than being crossed (we were rehearsing some class performance) & i had no idea what she was trying to convey, so afterwards she told me i had to have Reduced Recess Time or some shit because of Ignoring her instead of putting my arms down lmfao. and i was irritated at having been misinterpreted / my Intentions dictated to me and punished like that, but i was also used to it from adults lmfao and did not bother explaining myself lol like yeah god forbid i left my arms crossed on purpose and now i have to read some more during recess. tl;dr school has so much nonsense & i def had some Times re: being autistic & also just being someone who hated school forever lmao, think it was Also 2nd grade where one arbitrary sunday night i just cried out of frustration at having to go back for another normal school week. classic. oh and that also, while i wasn't like "oooo booksmart people who hate not having a Definitive Correct Answer to things &/or ohhh autistic ppl So Good at math, in a way everyone hates and disrespects, but they suck at Literature/Arts which requires you to reflect on humanity and shit," like, not only was i the drawing kid but i was also apparently ahead of the curve as it were at like, Literary Analysis lmfao where there was a few times in elementary school i'd be the kid providing the Interpretation like "what's this poem about / what's the theme or Symbolism in this story," but from elementary school to college it's like, for god's sake don't ask me to come up with a story / work with some really open ended prompt, i don't Invent in that way, and when i try to draw on Inspiration i'll get stuck on some specific source and be unable to do anything but just rip it off really lmao. but then again i was prolific in "it's 1st grade and you write and illustrate a little short story or smthing in these booklets

that we then have a simple little binding process for" like ohhh fancy, i got a tootsie roll lollipop at Awards Time for writing a shit ton of those lol. but that's like, when you're too young to have that much of a Creative Process anyways lmao. but then, my older sister, whose Thing was writing, has an incredible 2 Volume like, noir mystery saga from those elementary school times, it's a classic lmao. anyways once again so much to say about School lol closing the door after meandering on that one for this long lol

April 6th: Are you able to drive? If so, was it difficult to learn? What was difficult about it? If not, do you use any alternatives?

i did learn to drive, tbh just universally it's like, at any point you're driving there's A Lot to pay attention to at once, even if you think you're Good At That or whatever, which i sure don't think i always am lol, and it's pretty wild we just, you know, let everyone go around as fast as they want in machines that can kill you or someone else, and this is also Unnecessary b/c like, let's have accessible & reliable public transit so that everyone can travel without Needing to have a car / someone else who will drive them. i didn't think i had too much trouble learning to drive, but it had to help that i just took it very seriously from the start lmao like, well, i'm quite aware i could kill someone with this. the driving classes i took were alright, i remember the instructor being pretty chill and friendly lol. rip to the fact i could be tense when driving with parent/s, when driving a manual i'd always like screech the tires when accelerating out of a Stop, until all at once it was like "and i'm driving that manual car alone on a road trip & wouldn't you know it, only literally once did i have that issue of not getting out of a stop smoothly enough" lmao like the Anxiety......really like yeah i had an alright time learning and think i'm solid enough at driving / like doing it, theoretically, but Driving Is Wild just in general and let's have that public transit

April 7th: How are you with sarcasm and/or metaphors/figures of speech? Do you interpret things very literally?

i think i Usually get what people mean with these Devices but i can't really say lol, but anytime you know, someone is being more Implicit in what they say, plenty of times i can infer one implication and only later realize they probably meant a different one, or yknow, i make whatever initial inference i make and can be stuck like "???" and have to like, mentally run diagrams about the interaction lol......meanwhile i'm not always remembering that like, if i'm shifting context mentally that's necessarily able to be inferred by whoever i'm talking to lol, whether it's about getting into some adjacent topic or like, i don't think it tends to be very clear even in person when i've started being sarcastic lmao, like i know that can be true for anyone but it's like well, guess i gotta make it clearer i'm doing a bit......flipside of that or something lmao that people are more Obvious than they think they are sometimes about like, idk, when someone is sort of making some sarcastic remark to you but the sarcasm is also sort of only to themself, aka just like okay i know you mean this more dismissively / disparagingly than re: what you're saying just at face value lol like. just always fun >:/

[inkedberries]

I got to ask! For your mob pyscho ageswap! How does Toichiro feel with Shou having romantic feelings for Mob and vise versa?

HECK

dude this is probably gonna be a bit long bcos i have like.. a whole scenario for this lmao. i also have a whole thread about how the feelings kinda started so imma put that here too for context.

again, let me warn you, this is going to be long

OKAY HERE WE GO!!!!!!!

age swap shoumob would be so funny bcos sho would think that he's off his game. a single dad in his late thirties with a rebellious teenage psychic of a son?? yeah not really what anyone would want to get tied to.

and he's also got his hands full with toichiro so he cant really see himself getting back into the dating scene. with shigeo, he'd think that he's not sho's type. thinking that sho would want someone more mature and more exciting.

so it's basically just them squashing those feelings the first time they appear but failing bcos they see each other on a daily basis bcos seri keeps inviting toichiro to shigeo and tome's office. and sho's gotta pick him up so small talk happens.

sho finds himself enjoying talking to shigeo about toichiro. he doesnt seem to get bored when he talks about his son, not like the dates he went to in the past. and shigeo enjoys listening to sho ramble about his son bcos it reassures him of what a good father sho is to toichiro.

it basically starts off like that. them asking each other how toichiro is because that's the common interest, like the link that got the two of them to start talking to each other.

and they have made up their minds that that would be it. like, as i have mentioned before, they gotta shut those feelings down right now so they try to not talk about anything outside of that. outside the pleasantries and small talk.

but since i'm running this story i say they cant help it and since it's toichiro they're talking about, and how big a part he plays in sho's life, shigeo got to learn a lot about sho. shigeo feels guilty knowing. it's like he broke a secret agreement the two of them shared. 

so he tells him a little bit about himself. only to make it fair of course! that's it. nothing else. of course. it's not like sho would suddenly see him a different way when he tells him these things!! of course not! so he tells him. boring little things really nothing to worry about!

okay!!! so now you have the context, here is the scenario and basically the answer to your question too!! jdkffh

toichiro sees that there’s something going on when sho and shigeo talk when his dad’s in the office. toichiro doesn’t like that neither of them is making a move that would even imply that they’re into each other even when they so clearly do. 

so toichiro takes the initiative to get things moving and that’s asking sho not to come pick him up from the office anymore. toichiro can walk home by himself, thank you very much. that means there’s no reason for sho to come over anymore. (i would like to think reigen, seri, shinra and tome are in on this too just bcos)

so sho’s like..... okay??? and looks over at shigeo bcos oh no they wont get to see each other anymore. but that’s what they want right?? not to let these feelings grow any further?? so he’s cool. this is okay. not

when they get home, toichiro confronts sho that if he wants to keep on seeing shigeo then he’d have to be clear with his feelings and to go over there. talk to him. and not make him [toichiro] as an excuse for coming over. 

and sho’s like.. embarrassed.. bcos he’s getting dating advice from his teenage son?? but at the same time kinda proud bcos look at his boy. he’s grown so much!!!! jdkghkd

TL;DR toichiro wants his father to be happy. all his life, sho has been making him his priority. putting toichiro’s happiness above his own. but now that he’s grown, he wants sho to know that he’s alright. he can deal with his dad dating. just.. “dont dance around each other like high-schoolers with a crush you can’t hide bcos it’s embarrassing for all of us. you’re adults for crying out loud.”

[svtskneecaps]

Where is Your God Now

Ok the title was meant to be a placeholder but here we are.

Vernon x reader ish

man idfk i was tired

i didn’t mean for this to be a chaotic fic, but with the narration style i picked for this it honestly might as well be

Warnings: nerf guns, words that would make a grandma run for her soap, jokes that probably have no place in the house of God, calling a game of capture the flag a war the whole damn time and two awkward high schoolers.

Words: a lot (2801 i wasted more words in less time on this than i did on my essay oh my god)

Main Masterlist

So usually you weren’t really one for the whole ‘youth group’ thing. Sure, you came, you cracked open your Bible, you spouted answers you didn’t truly mean simply because they sounded right, and you kind of wished you could go home. Even the cute boy that sat in the row behind you couldn’t make you more interested in being there.

But there was one thing you enjoyed about youth group, and that was the annual youth group lock in, where people spent the night in the church, got either Chinese food, Little Caesars, or Joe’s BBQ from the mom and pop shop across the street from the church, and were allowed to crawl into cupboards and on the floor of the sanctuary and use the supplies in the church left over and either almost unusable or reusable from the fundraisers they’d held since they’d cleaned out the storage room last.

Which was how you found yourself crouching in the blank concrete stairwell at the back of the building at three in the morning with a nerf gun and some old face paint some kids had mixed together smeared under your eyes, waiting for your attack team’s scout to return.

You took capture the flag very seriously.

The door at the top of the stairwell opened slightly and Chan slid in. The freshman had taken to the strange lock in antics like a fish to water, with only minimal complaining. Mostly he was glad Jeonghan was on the other team. The senior had the tendency to baby him.

“How’re we looking?” the strategist of your group, a senior called Wonwoo, asked.

“They’ve got their flag in the sanctuary.” Chan hunched down with his nerf gun cocked. “Five guards, three watching the doors, one watching the flag.”

“Where’s the flag specifically?”

“Up in the the choir alcove.”

“There’s a back entrance in the alcove,” Jihoon said from where he was watching the door at the bottom of the stairwell. “I’ve used it for choir before. Was anyone watching it?”

“No, just the front entrance.”

“Okay so here’s the plan.” They clumped closer to hear Wonwoo. “We’ll have some people go in the front and start warfare. Meanwhile, one or two people sneak in through the back entrance and get the flag back to base unnoticed.”

“Okay we’re gonna need more than four people though,” you said.

“We’ll grab a couple allies.” Wonwoo said it like it was obvious. You guessed it kind of was. “You and Jihoon keep watch for now, we’ll be back.”

You’d thought maybe it’d be awkward, waiting in a dark stairwell with an upperclassman you really didn’t know all that well, but it wasn’t. Somehow. Wonwoo and Chan were back soon enough, with Mingyu and Seokmin. You split into two teams, with yourself and Jihoon going ‘behind the curtain’ as it were, sneaking around the back. You glanced around the corner, peering between the legs of the chair with your dark hood pulled up to hide your face.

Just your luck; the cute one was watching the flag. And he might’ve seen you. Oh no.

Shouting erupted at the other end of the sanctuary, echoing off the high ceiling. You’d never heard it ring with anything but hymns. It was an experience, to say the least, especially because Soonyoung’s battle strategy was to throw himself bodily at the enemy while screeching at the top of his lungs, but you didn’t have time to think too much about it, throwing yourself forward to crawl under the seats towards the flag. The chaos distracted the cute one (you didn’t actually know his name; you were a little too intimidated to talk to him) and you snatched their brightly colored flag from the chair and frantically backing up. It was harder than you thought

The chair screeched louder than the baby with the dumbbell in that vine you’d seen the other week.

You froze. He turned.

Nerf bullets began flying around you. Evidently Jihoon had jumped out of hiding and begun shooting. You heard the cute one bounding up the choir risers as Jihoon thundered down the other side. Game rules said you had to get tagged to get out, no matter how many nerf bullets you got hit with, although they stung like a bitch sometimes so you weren’t eager to get hit by any. You tried to stay as still as possible as they leapt off to sprint around the sanctuary. You had one priority and that was to get this obnoxiously colored bandana back to the first grade sunday school classroom.

Which was surprisingly easy, actually, after Jihoon’s brilliant (if unexpected) sacrifice play. You were through the choir door in a second, using the back stairs again and at your base even before the battle was won. The youth leader who’d chosen to place their bets on your team texted the other leader, and that was it. The round was over.

But the war became the least of your worries, because in the thrill of victory you’d forgotten that the youth leaders each got to choose one person to switch teams. And from the little whispers and the side looks from the other team’s huddle, you had an idea of their pick.

Your team ended up picking a linebacker looking Junior whose name you’d sadly missed when you were deciding, since you were a little bit distracted by the other huddle. And in the end it didn’t matter that you didn’t know the Junior’s name because the other leader stood up, smirked, squared his shoulders and called your name.

Just your luck; now you’re on a team with the cute one. Hurrah. At least you might learn his name now.

Your new teammates huddled in the sanctuary, talking strategy. You did your best to avoid looking at the cute one at all costs. The war was more important than your hopeless crush.

“I think now we’ve built our allies enough to make a stealth attack.” Seungcheol, it seemed, was their strategist. “So what I think is we send Y/N and Vernon to steal their flag as we create a diversion.”

That seemed simple. You’d just successfully completed an attack like that. You weren’t sure who Vernon was. You were just hoping he wasn’t an asshole.

“We should send out a team to see where they put their flag first, though,” Minghao suggested with a thoughtful frown.

“I think that might be too big a risk.” Soonyoung tapped his nerf gun against his leg. “We don’t want them to know we know or they might move the flag and we’d be back to square one, and then they’d get time to steal ours.”

You glanced at the flag, a neon orange bandana tied around the head of the life sized plastic Jesus left in storage from the Christmas decorations. Soonyoung had insisted that it would be less conspicuous there. You weren’t so sure about that. It just made Jesus look like a biker. Or a fashion disaster.

“You have to think like the enemy.” It took you a minute to remember the long haired Senior’s name (Jeonghan). “What was their strategy?”

Heads turned to you. Oh right. You’d forgotten you were a reformed enemy. You shifted under the eyes. “Well, we split into two groups, one based on defense and one on offense, and the offense group split to do some recon, because two people are less conspicuous than five. Once we’d done recon we planned and launched the attack, two people to grab the flag and one to create a diversion.”

“That’s a good plan.” Soonyoung nodded. Minghao rubbed his forehead like he had a headache.

“So the question then is, who’s going on the scouting team?” Seungcheol asked.

“I think Y/N, and someone else.” Joshua hummed slightly as he thought. You only really knew him because he sang in service sometimes. “Y/N because they know about where the team set up base last round.”

“I think Joshua,” the cute one said. Wow. He had a nice voice.

“I was actually thinking you.” The elder smiled a little. “You’re much better at acting casual than I am.”

He had to be kidding. Your plan was to work as a team with the one guy you find attractive to the point of anxiety to infiltrate the other team’s floor by acting casual?

You were dead.

“But Jeonghan’s better at lying,” the cute one protested.

“He’s also more recognizable. Not that you aren’t. Recognizable, I mean. But in the dark, it’s easier to see that Jeonghan’s not on their team.”

He was right, the Jesus hair was kind of a dead giveaway. You didn’t realize you’d stated your thought out loud until they laughed. Oops. At least they found it funny, and not blasphemous. Curse your terrible humor and poor filter.

“See, even the enemy agrees.” Jeonghan indicated you as he spoke. The cute one blushed. He was even cuter when he blushed. That shouldn’t be possible. You called bullshit.

“Okay, I guess we’ll go. If Y/N’s okay with that.”

If you were okay with that? Or maybe you wanted to stress a different syllable. If you were okay with that? You felt nauseous even being this close and you didn’t even have to interact with the kid yet. “Of course,” you said. God fucking damnit, you were dead weren’t you. Curse his handsome face and your inability to say no.

And now you’re back in that blank, dark stairwell with the kid who’s so attractive he gives you anxiety to infiltrate an enemy fortress in the middle of a war and you don’t even know the kid’s name.

Okay maybe you were exaggerating the stakes a little more than a little, but that was how it felt.

“Where did you guys set up shop last round?”

Oh right, war.

“In the first grade classrooms.” You had your pistol out as you approached the door at the bottom (it wouldn’t do much, but it was comforting). You checked the hallway with the Pre-K classrooms, then surveyed him for a quick second. “You need face paint. I hope you’re not allergic?”

“No.”

And now you’re both in the Pre-K classroom as he smudges face paint lines under his eyes.

How the hell did this happen again?

“Um- sorry, but I don’t know your name.” You were seriously considering packing your things and fleeing the country but somehow you managed to ask the question you really wanted the answer to.

“Oh, it’s Vernon.”

Damn, it sounded as nice as he looked.

Wait.

“Cool.” You smiled, mentally berating yourself. Cool. Seriously?

“Does that look good?” He turned to you, the face paint making it look like he hadn’t slept in weeks.

“Perfect.”

And now came the hard part. You walked down the hall, a hand on your nerf pistol listening so hard you were about to go deaf. You swore to god you were so paranoid that if he said anything you were gonna snap like a rubber band and shoot him in the face.

“There,” he whispered.

Okay so you were a dirty liar, but at least you found the flag.

They’d moved it under the main staircase, the brilliant green bandanna sitting on the windowsill. That would be too difficult to launch a stealth attack on. You weren’t sure the old strategy would work.

Actually you were sure the old strategy wouldn’t work. You weren’t getting in there undetected.

Unless...

You retreated to the sanctuary where the rest of the team was waiting. Evidently your old team had kept the same strategy because Chan was sitting in the pvc pipe construction used for the children’s puppet sermon while sunday school wasn’t in session, which your new team was using as your jail (“For extra humiliation factor.”).

“We caught him snooping around,” Seungcheol explained.

You just nodded. Vernon explained your findings, which was helpful. Now that you weren’t slinking around behind enemy lines your brain was focused right back on your crush and it wouldn’t have gone well if you’d done it. You were resisting the urge to slap yourself.

“So here’s what I’m thinking.” The attack team had moved to the nursery to plan where Chan couldn’t overhear. Seungcheol sketched the bottom floor plan in brown crayon. Jeonghan made a small dot in lime green where the flag was. You found it ironic that two Seniors were drawing serious battle plans with huge crayons. Seungcheol switched to red. “We split into teams and attack from two fronts.” He drew arrows from the hallway and the stairs, then set the crayon down to pick up an orange one, drawing another arrow from the stairs. “Then we’ll send two people in with the sole job of getting the flag.”

“Minghao has to be on the combat teams.” Soonyoung wrote the boy’s name on the edge of the sheet in purple. “They have Jun guarding. I’ll be on combat too.” He wrote his name underneath.

“Josh can grab the flag.” Seungcheol checked if it was okay before writing the boy’s name in orange.

Eventually they’d finished splitting the teams. Apparently the Almighty was trying to send you a message because you were on a combat team with Vernon. Joy of joys. At least your nervous energy was more potent than coffee. You were waiting by that damn stairwell for them to finish putting face paint on (it would confuse the other team).

“Hey.”

You shot him in the face.

Okay maybe you weren’t a dirty liar after all.

“Oh god I’m so sorry!” You would’ve dropped the nerf gun if you weren’t in the middle of a war. “You startled me!” And he’d practically ASMR whispered it in your ear.

“I guess I deserve that.” Vernon laughed, rubbing the red spot on his cheek and dislodging his crumbling face paint.

“I’m still sorry.” You shifted foot to foot, glad your painted cheeks hid your blush. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine.” He picked up the dart, handing it to you with a shy smile. “It’s a lucky dart now,” he joked.

Well the face paint wasn’t covering your blush anymore, you could guarantee that. Damn this kid and his sweet gesture and good joke.

“No kissing, we’re at war!” Jeonghan called down the hall.

Oh. So you were being obvious about it. Actually, that wasn’t too far fetched.

Was he blushing?

“Nobody’s kissing anybody,” he defended.

He was blushing.

Your team assembled, you, Vernon, and Minghao. Reportedly, Jeonghan was being a perfectionist about his face paint so they were going to take a little longer. You sat in the storage room just off the hallway you’d be charging out of on Seungcheol’s signal. It functioned both as craft storage and puppet storage. Gordy the off brand muppet boy hung on the hatrack turned puppet stand with his mouth hanging open and felt pupils seeming to stare right at you. He was freaky.

“Don’t worry about him.”

Was your crush a fucking mind reader?!

“Jeonghan, I mean.”

Oh. False alarm.

“He’s just trying to make me flustered,” Vernon continued. Evidently it had worked; he seemed pretty fidgety. “I’m sorry you got caught in the crossfire. He only said that because he knows you’re my-” He checked himself.

If he was about to say what you thought he was going to- well you weren’t sure what you’d do. Maybe cough butterflies because there were too many in your stomach. Well, you’d gone out on enough limbs to strip a tree tonight, might as well fall out. “Do you want to get coffee sometime?”

He looked shocked. Should you backtrack? It would be tactical to backtrack.

“I’ve just- had a crush on you for a long time.” You weren’t a strategist. You didn’t know tactics. Or care about tactics. God this was going to be a firestorm. “And I really want to- um- get to know you better.”

He fished around with his mouth open long enough that you wanted to take back what you’d said, but it was too late, you’d gone too far on the damn limb. Now you were just waiting for it to snap.

“I’d like that.”

Oh.

You couldn’t stop smiling, and it didn’t seem like he could either. Minghao groaned, snapping you back.

“Are you done? We’re kind of on an important mission.”

“Is Jeonghan done?”

“Yes, now stop being lovey dovey.”

Your new team may have won the round, but you’d won a battle of your own, ending a two year war you’d been having with yourself. For a second, it felt like capture the flag wasn’t important.

And then you were back in game mode. This was war, dammit, but now you had a new ally.

and less anxiety.

[pedagrouchy]

Stimulation, Aesthetics, and Education

1. Robinson discusses the the state of being "fully alive" as one that stems from aesthetic experiences allowing our senses to operate at their peak.  How can we use multigenre writing in the classroom as a way to wake our students up?  How can we help our students investigate writing as aesthetic experience?

As someone who spends an obnoxious amount of time worrying out loud about aesthetic experiences in the English classroom, I’m appalled I’d never even half-noticed the etymological kinship with “anesthetic” and “anesthesia.” To me it states the point better than almost anything else: the experience of (here literary) beauty is one of un-numbness, of clarity, of being awake. I’m not totally sure I accept Robinson’s limiting of this to the senses -- I think the feeling can exist just in thought, too -- but otherwise he’s dead on.

What he has to say about stimulation is perceptive too, in that students today are “besieged” by information at a historically unprecedented scale. And he’s right to draw the comparison between something like social media or advertising (highly stimulating) and whatever’s going on at the front of the classroom (inevitably way less so). What I think gets complicated is the assertion that the front of the classroom needs to be fully competitive in the battle for students’ attention -- in part because I suspect it never will be. Students are, after all, still required to be at school, and that seeds the atmosphere with a certain amount of boredom I don’t think you’ll ever totally purge. Not to mention that classes are at least an hour long where TikToks are a minute, that teachers tend not to all be young, gorgeous, cool, and funny all the time, and, worst of all, that they almost always expect something from you in a way that a Reddit thread never will.

Which is a roundabout way to get to the point that I think stimulation can be exactly as anaesthetizing as boredom. It seems like Robinson, and especially his animator, got this. But I’d like to have heard more from him about how teachers might navigate that space -- whether our responsibility, for instance, is to cater to our students’ fragmented attention spans or to try to expand and nourish them. I figure the answer is probably both. But how? And at what times? Is there any hope anymore of teaching students the pretty hard-won point that sometimes boredom is the path to aesthetic experience? That being alone with their thoughts for long stretches of time, while terrifying, is also as vital as a healthy diet? Sometimes I’m really scared by the paradox that seems to emerge here: that preaching the gospel of boredom might inevitably make you too boring to listen to.

Anyways, none of that was about multigenre writing, which is its own interesting way to approach the question. I tend to forget that writing is an aesthetic experience in its own way, and that probably at its best it can give the same satisfaction of clarity or un-numbness in reverse, reordering the thoughts in your head to say something deeply true rather than reading something deeply true that, however slightly, reorders the thoughts in your head. This seems like an awfully hard thing to get across in the classroom, though. Aesthetic experience seems to have a lot to do with understanding -- like when a movie hits me with all its weight exactly at the moment when the pieces fall together in my head, and I see “oh, so this is what it’s saying.” If I cry at a movie, that’s usually the moment. But to have that kind of understanding of a movie requires you to feel a certain amount of comfort in the world it’s created, and I suspect that to have that kind of understanding as a writer requires an awful lot of comfort in the written word. Which for reasons probably to do with all that above-mentioned stimulation, not that many high-schoolers have. I think cultivating that should be our first priority.

2. Robinson argues that we need to think differently about human capacity and the capacity for divergent thinking.  How do you see yourself using multigenre writing with your future students as a way to support their capacity for divergent thinking?

Duke writes that “When you teach genre with purpose, many -- sometimes all -- students become wrapped up in that purpose” (11). I think this ties both to the paragraphs above and to Robinson’s discussion of divergent thinking. Because the aesthetic experience of writing really is the experience of being wrapped up in purpose: of having a vision, and a high degree of control as you navigate toward it. And in my limited experience, that state of wrapped-ness is the quickest way to get back to childhood’s freedom of divergent thought. Once you feel both purpose and confidence at your back, the paths in front of you branch and multiply. You see connections between things, and you understand how your writing might best follow them.

My bet is that different students would approach this feeling best in different genres, and that all of them would benefit from the widening of their writerly vision that multigenre work prompts. And my hope is that a carefully structured multigenre curriculum might, at least some of the time, open students radically onto the aesthetic experience of good writing.

[surveyjunkie]

i wish the tide would take me over

The 5000 question survey part 7

601. Do you have a lust for life?

Not at the moment, no. 602. Do you want to get more out of life?

Of course. I just don’t have the means at the moment.  603. Would you want to learn to: Convert to Buddhism?

I’ve considered it. 

Cure a hangover?

It’s not really that hard to cure or prevent a hangover. Just take a multivitamin with a glass of water. Or drink pickle juice. 

Lie persuasively?

I already know how to do that. << 604. What character from a movie is most like you?

Kristen Wiig’s character from Bridesmaids.  605. Are you comfortable with the idea of your own death?

No, is anyone? 606. How do you feel about arranged marriages?

They’re fucked up. 607. What do you hate that everyone else seems to like?

Diet Coke or IPAs  608. What do you like that others seem to hate?

Sour beer 609. If you had to be named after a month, which month would you pick?

April 610. Is time more like a highway or a meadow to you?

Highway

611. What is your favorite movie?

Silver linings playbook.  612. Which would you choose to be back in the day: a warrior, an alchemist, a minstrel, a bard, an oracle, a peasant, or a merchant?

I’d chose to be an oracle, I think. <<  613. What is your favorite song lyric?

I don’t have just one, that’s too hard. 614. What will you never run out of?

"I forgive you”s 615. If you could force someone to fall madly in love with you, (anyone you choose) would you do it?

I already have who I want.  616. Have you ever seen the Disney movie The Black Cauldron?

Long long ago.  617. Have you ever read The Black Cauldron by Alexander Lloyd (or any of his other books in the Prydain Chronicles)?

Long long ago. 

618. Have you ever written a paper the night before it was due? Yup…

How about the day it was due?

Yes.  619. Is there a movie you have watched so many times that you can quote it line for line?

Maybe Mean Girls, or Coming to America.  620. What is your favorite season?

Late spring/early summer 621. Do you mind being described as cute?

No. 622. What is the tackiest object in your home?

I’m not sure.  623. What do you think people are most ignorant towards?

Mental health 624. What is it that makes you an interesting person?

Other than my background, I don’t really think anything about me is interesting.  625. What makes other people interesting to you?

I feel like that’s a loaded question. I’m usually always the most interested in people who don’t talk very much because they come off as mysterious, but I also think a person’s personal experiences or views on life make them interesting too. 

626. How open to suggestion are you?

Fairly open

627. Is Michael Jackson black or white?

Black.  628. Are you often lonely?

Just when I’m at work. These surveys are a personal escape from the bleakness that surrounds me when I’m here.  629. What’s the most unusual pet you’ve ever had?

Bearded dragon, but they’re not considered unusual anymore.  630. Have you ever threatened an authority figure?

I don’t think so 631. If you had to choose would you rather make all your decisions henceforth with your head only or with your heart only?

Head only 632. How imaginative are you?

Fairly 633. Do you like the Counting Crows?

They’re okay 634. If you took this survey from the diary (5000 Q Survey V2.0) did you note me so I could read it?

I did not. 635. Are you more tense or laid back?

A weird combination of both 636. Does your happiness depend on anyone else, or are you happy no matter what any one says or does?

Somewhere in between? I think it definitely depends on my loved ones but I also know I need to create my own 637. What do you think of the idea of putting the bible into the format of a fashion magazine to attract the interest of teenagers?

LOL. 

638. How often do you drink to get drunk? Once or twice a week

639. Would you consider yourself to be diplomatic?

Too diplomatic sometimes. 

640. Do you think that most of the classes you have taken were taught in such a way as to make plain the relevance of the subject matter in your everyday life?

I majored in psychology, so yes. 

641. Do you remember Crystal Pepsi?

No, I’m too young. I’ve heard of it though. 

642. When was the last time you spent a night away from home?

Whenever I was last at Josh’s. 

643. Some people say that there is no such thing as a stupid question. Is that true?

It’s somewhat true. If you ask a question it means you are seeking knowledge rather than claiming you know something.  644. What is the most interesting TV channel?

I haven’t had cable in a couple of years now, but I thought TLC always had some pretty interesting/wacky shows. 

645. Name one song you could live without hearing ever again:

Probably every single twenty one pilots song. (sorry)

646. Do your pets understand you when you talk?

Kind of, yeah. I think they know when I’m talking about them.  647. What are three things you HAVE NOT done that might surprise people?

I’ve never surfed, been to overnight camp, or gotten my tonsils removed 648. Have you ever had a secret admirer?

Kind of...more like a stalker I suppose.  649. Have you been to a museum this year?

No

650. Do you ever watch porn?

I used to on occasion.  651. Do you think that it would be a good idea if people served in the army, navy or air force for a while before they were allowed to vote?

No. 652. If you were required to do this to vote, would you?

I wouldn’t be allowed in the army for various health reasons, so it doesn’t matter. That’s part of why I don’t think it would be a fair requirement.  653. Do people often give you weird looks?

No 654. Do like Japanese cooking?

Yes.  655. Do you care for stray animals?

Whenever I can, I try to. I’ll put out food for stray cats if they’re wandering around the neighborhood.  656. Which animated movies have you seen and what did you think of them: A Charlie Brown Christmas, A Garfield Halloween, The Secret of Nimh, The Last Unicorn, The original Lord of the Rings cartoons

I’ve only seen A Charlie Brown Christmas, and I thought it was okay. I’m not big into Peanuts. 

657. Are you ambidextrous (equally good at using both hands)?

Nope, I’m right handed. 658. Do you always say; “bless you” after someone sneezes, or do you hesitate?

Not always, but most of the time.  659. If you and your friends could go away for 2 days over Halloween weekend where would you go?

America, probably. I feel like Halloween in the US is intense. I’d love to go to one of those really fancy haunted houses. Don’t Universal have one each year? << Yes, we are super into Halloween here, it’s one of the few things about the states that I love! You can find crazy haunted houses just about anywhere.  660. Which of these animated movies have you seen and what did you think of them: Watership Down, As the Wind Blows, Grave of the Fireflies, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Spirited Away

How The Grinch Stole Christmas was missing something to it, but it was entertaining. And Spirited Away was fucking amazing.  661. Do you feel that society is male dominated, female dominated, or neutral?

Male dominated.  662. What words offend you?

Words don’t really offend me, actions do.

663. They’re just words. Can you get over it?

I said they didn’t bother me :)  664. Have you ever looked into different religions?

Buddhism and Judaism  665. Which ones have you looked into?

^ 666. What do you think of Satanism as a religion?

A lot of them are more chill than some Christians are...but I don’t really agree with them.  667. Do you like it better when your classes are taught sitting in rows or sitting in a circle?

It depends on the class.  668. Have you ever read your own tarot cards?

I have not. 669. Which ones do you like better, the three old star wars movies or the 2 new ones?

Old 670. If you scream in outer space does it make a sound?

No, I don’t believe so. But I could be wrong.  671. If you saw The Queen of the Damned did you want to be a vampire/Goth afterwards?

Haven’t seen it. 672. If you saw SLC Punk did you want to be punk afterwards?

Haven’t seen that either. 673. What is your favorite zombie movie?

21 Days Later! 674. Best kids birthday party: ceramics, chuck-e-cheese, roller rink, bowling, sleep over, movie theater

Roller rink and sleep over 675. What were your parties like when you were a kid?

Small outdoor parties. Sometimes by the pool.  676. Best teen (about 15-16) birthday party: ceramics, chuck-e-cheese, roller rink, bowling, sleep over, movie theater, house party, catered in a hall, restaurant, family trip, concert

House party or catered.  677. What are/were your 15-16 year old parties like?

Mine were always just dinner and a movie, but my wealthier friends would have big Sweet 16′s at like venues with catered food and DJ’s.  678. Best 18th birthday party: ceramics, chuck-e-cheese, roller rink, bowling, sleep over, movie theater, house party, catered in a hall, restaurant, family trip, concert, club, pool hall, college party

College party. Because college was so cool to me as a high schooler hah. 

679. If you are 18 what was your party like?

We went to Benihana’s and then the hookah bar

680. Best 21st birthday party: ceramics, chuck-e-cheese, roller rink, bowling, sleep over, movie theater, house party, catered in a hall, restaurant, family trip, concert, club, pool hall, college party, bar, Atlantic city/Las Vegas trip

Las Vegas trip sounds pretty lit. <<<

681. If you saw The Craft were you interested in wicca/paganism/magic afterwards?

Haven’t seen it.

682. What are your top 3 priorities?

Mental health, relationships, school/work. << 

683. If you saw fight club did you want to get into a fistfight afterwards?

No

684. What is your favorite smell?

Coconut

685. Give everything below a humor rating (1 = laugh your ass off, 2 = lol, 3 = smile, 4 = lame, 5 = not funny, 6 = offensive): People falling

2

Rape jokes

6

Sarcastic comments

2

Blonde jokes

5

Dirty jokes

2

God/religion jokes

3

Long-ass jokes

3

Death jokes

3

Pain/sickness jokes 5

Animals doing cute stuff

1

Bodily functions

3

Knock jokes

5

Ethnic jokes

3

Puns

2

Ironic situations

1

685. If you saw Cruel Intentions did you want to have lots of meaningless sex afterwards?

No.

686. Do you get at least three hugs per day?

From the same person, yes.

687. What should someone never say to you/call you if they want to remain on your good side?

A cunt or a bitch? Lol 

688. If you saw Trainspotting did you want to do drugs afterwards?

I haven’t seen trainspotting

689. Do movies have a great influence on you?

Sometimes

690. Do you have a favorite reality TV show?

Not anymore, I used to love reality TV back when I had cable though. 

691. Are there certain roles that people are pressured to play in society or can they basically do whatever they want?

There are definitely roles in order to feel “accepted” or “normal”. It’s all bullshit. 

692. How does the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake compare to the original movie?

I don’t think I’ve seen either

693. Have you ever held a magnifying glass over an insect to burn it?

Nope, that’s kind of a creepy thing to do.

694. Have you ever pulled the wings off a fly, butterfly or any other insect?

^

695. What would you think of a guy (if you’re into guys) or a girl (if you’re into girls) who wanted to take you to the park to feed the birds and look at the turtles and fish in the water on a date?

I mean, sure. 

696. Do you use public pools?

Yeah, but I prefer not to.

697. Do you use public bathrooms?

Yup.

698. Do you use public showers?

Yup.

699. How old will you be in 17 years?

41 years old 0_o

700. Would it effect you at all if you knew that a very large meteor was headed towards earth that would impact in 17 years?

Yeah, that would suck

[blockheadbrands]

Why the Women of Broad City are the Stoner Heroines We’ve Been Waiting For

Jennifer Boeder of High Times Reports:

As we embark upon the premiere of the final season of Broad City, we recount all the reasons why Abbi and Ilana are the weed queens the world so desperately needed.

When the cultural history of marijuana is recounted, the women of Broad City will be ranked alongside Willie Nelson, Dennis Peron, Bob Marley, and Jeffrey Lebowski as some of its most groundbreaking and influential 420 icons. Lead characters Abbi Abrams and Ilana Wexler (played by the show’s creators, Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer) have given us a completely original entry in the cannabis canon: a female Stoner Duo.

Stoner Heroes have been with us since the release of Easy Rider in 1969. The archetype arose with the ’60s counterculture, but much like cannabis itself, the trope evolved into an array of countless strains. Cheech and Chong’s Up In Smoke, however, spurred a seismic change in stoner screen-history. Released in 1978, the film not only invented the stoner comedy genre, it expanded the archetype of the lone Stoner Hero into the even-more-iconic Stoner Duo.

Up In Smoke laid the blueprint for Half Baked, The Big Lebowski, Pineapple Express and a plethora of other films. It birthed iconic duos like Bill and Ted, Craig and Smokey, Method Man and Redman, Harold and Kumar, Jay and Silent Bob, and Shaggy and Scooby.

While these onscreen Stoner Duos have been remarkably diverse in terms of age, race, and socioeconomic status they’re almost inevitably male. Historically, the rare stoner chicks we’ve seen in film and television are bit players, adjacent to male leads. Exactly one woman made Ranker’s Top 20 Most Influential Stoners In Film History: Annie Hall, a Woody Allen character from 1977.

All of the above explains why, when women saw Broad City for the first time, millions of us nearly dropped our bongs. Finally, we were seeing ourselves onscreen for the first time–and not as desperate suburbanite widows driven to drug-dealing; or cute, pixie sidekicks to leading male characters. Broad City puts fully-realized lady dope fiends center stage. 

The show also treats pot differently than any series that came before it. While weeddrives the plot of some episodes, it’s also just a part of the landscape–like bodegas, graffiti, and the subway. Whether Abbi and Ilana are partying, FaceTiming, masturbating, working, eating, managing sprained ankles, or coping with heartbreak, getting stoned is portrayed as essential– but also ordinary. Like regular trips to Bed Bath and Beyond as well as the love and loyalty of dear friends, cannabis is experienced as an integral accessory for the human condition.

In honor of this iconic, trailblazing duo (and the fifth and final season of Broad City), here’s a breakdown of the ways in which Abbi and Ilana are the weed queens we didn’t know we needed:

Abbi and Ilana Take Pot Seriously 

In Season 1, Episode 2, Abbi embarks on the heroine’s journey of buying her own pot like a grown adult—a quest inspired by the sight of Ilana pulling a bag of weed from her own vagina.

In Season 2, Episode 9, Ilana plunges into a fiery romance with Adele, a mirror image of Ilana who seems perfect in every way—but when Adele wrinkles her nose and announces that she doesn’t smoke pot, Ilana promptly shows her the door.

Men might compromise on this issue, but weed queens have their priorities straight.

Fast forward to Season 3, Episode 4, in which Ilana throws a party at her apartment to raise funds for a rat exterminator. She rummages through her belongings, apartment, and hair in search of spare nugs she can sell. And the weed bar she assembles is truly a sight to behold.

They Also Overdo it

In a quest to be an adult who purchases her own pot, Abbi gets mistaken for a weed dealer and ends up scoring from a middle schooler. Then, she decides to smoke in the bathroom at the dentist’s office– and triggers the smoke alarm and sprinkler system. Then there’s Ilana, who frequently smokes joints before napping at work and is known to steal office supplies that she uses to barter for grass.

Then there’s the time in Season 2, Episode 9, when the duo gleefully vape at their coat check job and lose Kelly Ripa’s coat. There’s also that classic moment while attempting to swipe an air-conditioner from an NYU dorm room in Season 2, Episode 1, that they decide to teach some undergrads about “the dangers of ripping underage bongs.” How they do this? By ripping bong hits with them, of course.

Obviously, no one should steal, or vape at work, or purchase weed from eighth-graders, or get underage boys high; yes, these are unarguably foolish decisions. But it’s liberating to watch female fuckups act irresponsibly. Male stoners onscreen (and in real life) have always had permission—nay, encouragement—to be libertines and jackasses. As Broad City’s executive producer Amy Poehler noted, Abbi and Ilana’s transgressive behavior is intentional: “Women always have to be the eye rollers, as the men make a mess. We didn’t want that. Young women can be lost, too.”

Abbi and Ilana are messy, and while their weed-fueled debauchery may not always be wise, it’s both subversive and funny-as-hell. And it’s genuinely refreshing to watch women who don’t care about their jobs get high and eat cereal. Abbi and Ilana DGAF about the grind: they’re too busy looking for the grinder.

Abbi and Ilana are Role Models for Women

Okay, capitalists. Maybe they’re not role models in terms of their non-striving, just-lie-and-leave approach to their jobs. And, sure: they probably shouldn’t have gone on that creepy Craigslist, housecleaning-in-your-underwear job to raise funds for a Lil Wayne concert. Or substituted weed shakes for Vicodin post-surgery. Or made out with super-stoned minors. Or tried to sneak pot into Israel by hiding bags of weed in their vaginas. These are all horrible ideas.

But I would argue their defiance, rule-breaking, and risk-taking is admirable and something females need to see more of–regardless of age. As Abbi Jacobson told theNew York Post, “Maybe not a lot of women on TV act the way we do—but a lot of the women we know act that way.”

Broad City hasn’t just broken boundaries around sex, nudity, queerness, and bodily functions– it’s also shattered the archetype around who’s allowed to be a slipshod stoner.

Weed is part of Abbi and Ilana’s unapologetic pursuit of pleasure, which is radical and deeply feminist. But their love for the herb pales in comparison to their love for each other. Their adoring friendship, both in front of and behind the camera, truly makes our Grinch heart grow three sizes.

“Where people of my rapidly advancing age had Jay and Silent Bob, millennials have Abbi and Ilana as their Stoner Superheroes, and thank Weed Jesus for that,” says Samantha Irby, comedian, blogger, and New York Times bestselling author of Meaty and We Are Never Meeting In Real Life. “It’s a shame that it feels revolutionary to see female friendship depicted in such a real and honest way, but it totally is. Abbi and Ilana have filled a little nug-sized hole in my heart and for that I’m forever grateful.” 

The Duo Prove Pot is a Feminist Issue

Season 4, Episode 1 opens with Abbi and Ilana strolling whilst casually discussing hairstyle choices. The camera pulls back to reveal they’re actually escorting a woman through an enraged throng of pro-lifers to the door of an abortion clinic. Ilana bids the woman farewell by saying, “Your body, your choice”—and then whips out a bowl and lights it. A protester yells at her, causing Ilana to blow dope smoke in his face and shriek, “You don’t know how much you need that!”

Abbi follows suit, exhaling smoke all over the infuriated crowd. Ilana puts the bowl in her pocket, and they walk off into the sunset, chatting with smiles on their faces. The camera cuts to the first protestor, standing in shock: “Why are we doing this?” he says to himself, munching on a cookie.

It’s 59 seconds of pure, smoke-laden genius. In under a minute, Abbi and Ilana somehow manage to convert a religious nut bag with the power of pot. They show us that young women can be stoner slackers while still stepping up to take direct action to defend women’s rights. The sight of them smoking grass in their clinic escort shirts is like manna from feminist stoner heaven.

Broad City is first and foremost an absurdist comedy. But despite its surreal silliness and ridiculous antics, it’s had a real impact on women.

“I can definitively say that if it weren’t for Broad City, I might not be in the cannabis industry today,” says Tiara Darnell, Oregon’s 2017 Budtender of the Year and host/executive producer of the podcast High, Good People. “These weed queens busted through the D.A.R.E. wall in my mind and helped me define my relationship with the plant. In the show and in real life, Abbi and Ilana have inspired me to define ‘normalization’ on my own terms and to create the smart stoner content I want to see in the world.”

And that’s exactly what the ladies of Broad City have instilled in canna-loving women across the world: be the Weed Queen you want to see in the world.

Jennifer Boeder is a content specialist at Grasslands: A Journalism-Minded Agency. She writes about cannabis, music, politics, and culture. Her work has appeared in Cannabis Culture, The Weed Blog, Oxygen, Chicagoist, Wonkette, Built In Chicago, Cuepoint and The Urbaness. She lives in Los Angeles.

TO READ MORE OF THIS ARTICLE ON HIGH TIMES, CLICK HERE.

https://hightimes.com/culture/why-women-broad-city-stoner-heroines-weve-been-waiting-for/

[lapuntaalta-blog]

Snap Chat is Changing Youth’s Communication

What comes to my mind when I hear ‘style’ is a complete head-to-toe outfit that oozes a fast-forward thinking. But I’ve heard of ‘style’ used in other forms other than fashion. Style can be referring to the architecture of a building, the moves of a dancer, or a celebrity’s behavior. Style is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “a distinctive manner of expression (as in writing or speech), a distinctive manner or custom of behaving or conducting oneself, or a particular manner of technique by which something is done, created, or performed.” Style is how we choose to live and do everyday things- it can be applied to anything. In today’s modern society, we follow stylistic codes and systems that have been built upon over the centuries. I will be delving into a new style of communication, Snapchatting. 

Snap Chat is a multimedia messaging app that can be used globally. Its founders, Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie brown all former students at Stanford University developed this application. It was released in September 2011, seven years later and it has 150 million users snapping every day. The company, Snap Inc. has gone public with its IPO as SNAP on the New York stock exchange; they relay to investors and the public that Snap Inc. is a camera company, “We believe that reinventing the camera represents our greatest opportunity to improve the way people live and communicate. We contribute to human progress by empowering people to express themselves, live in the moment, learn about the world, and have fun together.” These two sentences make up their company profile under investor relations, below it has their contact information. As simple and to the point this is- Snapchat has created a new style of communicating that college students and high schoolers have picked up and made their own. As snapchat states they are a ‘camera company’ they have become much more with new features they have added to the application. Some of these include; new filters when taking photos, a messaging option, call and video calling, a global map to see where your friends are, and a discover page that shows all current news and events. This application offers its users real time news coverage while communicating with friends either individually or in a group. 

As innovative as this is- it has cultivated a new code of style that we implement. Rather than asking for someone's phone number upon meeting a new friend- its asking for their ‘snap,’ each user has a username which can be shared or a snap code, similar to a bar code that one can scan and then become connected. Instead of texting someone individually or in a group chat, people are messaging through this interface. Similar to texting in a group chat, snapchat has a similar option, multiple people can be in a group snap allowing photos and messages to be sent to everyone- this adds pressures to participate and be part of such ‘group’ that you identify with. Lastly, if you snap someone everyday, a ‘streak’ will be established- a number will show up next to the persons username showing how many days you have corresponded to one another. There is additional pressure here to not lose the streak, but to keep it alive- even if that means sending a random photo of your dog to keep it going. These four pinch points that have occured because of snapchat are part of the larger narrative- the style in which we communicate. We are ditching texting, calling, and talking in person for a less intrusive form of talking; but is it? In any social setting, people always have their phones out, documenting what friends are doing or taking a selfie to prove to others that you are ‘fun’. When posting a story or sending a snap, we can see who views our story and see when someone opens a snap we send. The anticipation of waiting for specific people to view it feeds into our selfishness and need for instant gratification. Snapchat offers short bursts of communication through photos and messages, you don't really get to know someone to the same extent as having a real in person conversation with them. So why do we ask people for their snaps? Are we afraid of commitment? Is a phone number too concrete? Perhaps it's partly due to the hookup culture that has manifested across college campuses. A stream of texts can be read and reread over and over, but a snapchat disappears- so maybe it’s because college kids are worried about the risk that communication can be too ‘real’. When posting a story, regardless of the content, we hope that someone will respond to it- we are seeking attention while justifying it to ourselves. We put off having a conversation and wait for others to initiate it, if it were texting- we would have to respond to a message and add to the conversation, something my generation struggles with. We want instant gratification and not have to work for it. Although it can be seen in snapchat, it goes further into how we as humans behave. Our ‘style’ of communicating is centered around instant gratification- we want it now- thus the convenience and speed added with the transparency that snapchat offers. We can see this concept go beyond snapchat and how we communicate, we don’t want to put in the work to become successful, we just expect that it will happen. We have become impatient in setting short and long-term goals for ourselves in order to set us up for successful jobs, financial security, and relationships. Maybe my generation has adapted to getting almost everything we want now without having to do much for it. We can order things on amazon and get it that day, we can pay someone to do our homework for us, and we can send out snapchats to get responses that feed into our need to be accepted and liked. We have made ourselves a priority for others and make it only convenient for us not them. I myself tend to text people rather than snap message them. I find it easier and faster for someone to respond to me and I can see what the conversation is about. If snap messaging, the content disappears- so it can be difficult to remember what you said or what someone said to you. I have decided to ask some freshman why they use snapchat more than texting to gain more insight into the style of snapping versus texting. 

I invited seven freshman boys over to discuss the difference in snap messaging versus texting. They noted that it was less formal than texting and easier when going out to ask a girl their snap. I was curious and proceeded to dig deeper- they noted that “Texting is more serious, snapping is faster and less formal” thus the ease and reduce stress to snap someone a photo of themselves or a snap message if they were interested. They also talked about the college hook up scene- in that it was easier for guys to reach out to girls without being nervous about them responding. If they did not respond, it wouldn't be as big of a deal if they did through text- if a girl did not respond to their text it would be taken more to heart and upset them more. I found this intriguing. Young men tend to use snapchat as a stylistic code to reach women and get to know them. It's easier and takes off the pressure as it is more socially acceptable and less intrusive- yet they realized it's still personable when sending a photo of themselves- ironic? Snapchat also offers the function of being in a group. I am in multiple snapchat groups, throughout the day my friends and I will send snaps of photos with text showing something that's funny or explaining something with photo evidence. Being part of one of these groups is more than just four girls sending photos to each other. We identify as a group because of our friendship, so how do other ‘groups’ use snapchat in identifying themselves? I asked a senior who is part of a frat on campus how his snapchat group with his brothers defines himself. The style in which men and women communicate with each other differs within these groups, how are guys and girls talking to each other in these groups? How do we as individuals find our own style? Do we create a collective style? As I talked to a senior in a fraternity, he noted that there were multiple snap groups he had with specific brothers. There’s one for each year of brothers that graduate, this keeps them in the loop and continue the idea of brotherhood even when they are gone. Being in a snap group does not equal pressure into responding, its funny photos and messages of what brothers had done the night before. He told me that he will only reply or contribute to the group if he wanted to add something that he felt necessary to the conversation. In interviewing multiple people, I found that snapchat has its own rules and regulations that people will follow. In asking the freshman, in which most of them born in 2000--- snapchat has been a way of communication since middle school! It's easy, convenient, and allows for a suave way to become integrated within a friend group and with girls. Snapchat has proceeded text messaging in a way that is revolutionary. We choose to communicate to others through a platform that eliminates the pressures of society.

- A.L.H