#and I want to say it’s an advertising issue but like four years ago there were 40 applicants

[apleasurableillusion]

A grand total of one viable candidate applied to be our articling student this year which is insane. Like aren’t there supposed to be too many law students and no one is going to get a job???

[kjack89]

Back to Where We Started (Chap. 2/?)

The E/R Mr. & Mrs. Smith AU continues. Read Part 1 here (tumblr | AO3)

Modern AU, established E/R.

Three Years Later

The village president heaved a sigh so loud that it actually caused feedback on the shoddy microphone system set up in Village Hall. “The Board recognizes Mr. Smith for public comment,” he said with a reluctance usually reserved for someone agreeing to a root canal. 

Enjolras stood to head up to the podium, but before he could even inch away from his seat, a board member raised her hand. “Mr. President,” she said shrilly, “I would like to remind the speaker that public comment is limited to three minutes per speaker.”

She had the audacity to smirk at him, and Enjolras ground his teeth together as he glared at her. He was well aware of the rules, especially since the so-called ‘Smith Rules’ had been voted into effect only the prior year, and only after he had successfully filibustered the village board into not renewing an entirely unnecessary TIF district.

Of course, he was also well aware that the local ordinance on public comment was in direct violation of state statute, just as he was equally well aware that he had no ability to fight it lest he do the exact opposite of his intended purpose and draw attention to himself.

After three years, Enjolras was fairly certain that this was his personal hell.

Still, he took a deep breath and forced his expression into something slightly less murderous as he stepped up to the microphone. “Good evening,” he said. “Four days ago, the village library board of trustees voted in a meeting that was not advertised to the public – in violation of the Open Meetings Act, I would add – to remove a number of books from the shelves without any public input. These books—”

“Mr. Smith,” the village president interrupted, sounding bored, “if you have an issue with the library board, you should take it to the library board.”

Enjolras gritted his teeth and counted to five in his head before continuing, “As much as I would love to take it to the library board, that board has implemented even more draconian rules when it comes to public comment, including submitting a request to comment five days in advance and then subsequently denying such requests. Therefore, I would like to use my time here to make sure the public record reflects—”

He was again interrupted, this time by a different board member. “Motion to table public comment,” he said.

Enjolras’s scowl deepened. “You can’t table public comment—”

“Seconded,” another board member said.

“All those in favor?” the village president said quickly, before Enjolras could say anything else. He didn’t even wait for any of the board members to speak. “The ayes have it and public comment is tabled. Turning now to our committee reports…”

Planning how to best simultaneously firebomb the entire village board’s houses using nothing but common household goods was the only thing that kept Enjolras from losing his entire mind on the drive home. 

Grantaire glanced up when Enjolras stomped inside. “I’d ask how it went, but…”

Enjolras snorted and flopped down on the couch. “I think putting bamboo shoots under my fingernails would be preferable,” he said dryly.

Grantaire nodded. “Want me to take your mind off of it?” he offered.

Enjolras sighed, considering it for a moment. “Yeah, ok.”

“You know,” Grantaire said about twenty minutes later as he looked for wherever he had tossed his boxers on the living room floor, “if it bothers you that much, you can always just not go.”

Enjolras propped himself up on his elbow, frowning. “What?”

“I’m just saying,” Grantaire said with a shrug, tugging his jeans on. “You don’t have to go to every single village board, library board, school board, whatever the fuck board meeting in this town.”

Enjolras stared at him. “But then how will things get better?” 

Grantaire gave him a look. “You tell me.”

Now Enjolras sat up, his frown deepening into a scowl. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Just…” Grantaire sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “You’ve been doing this for how long now? And has anything gotten demonstrably better?” Enjolras opened his mouth to respond but Grantaire beat him to it. “And don’t give me that, the arc of the moral universe thing—”

“Yes, Dr. King is generally fairly difficult to argue against, so I can understand why you wouldn’t want me to bring that up,” Enjolras said coolly.

Once upon a time, this would have devolved into an argument, the kind that had them shouting at each other and usually ended with them fucking on the floor until one or both of them had rug burn. Now, Grantaire just shrugged his shirt on and buttoned it with nimble fingers. “Anyway,” he said, “I’m gonna go order food. The usual?”

“Yeah,” Enjolras said, a little dully. “The usual.”

Grantaire nodded and headed into the kitchen and Enjolras got up off the couch, grabbing his own clothes and putting them on mechanically, his mind elsewhere. 

Mainly on continuing the argument he and Grantaire should’ve been having in his head. Where he always won, of course, though it wasn’t nearly as satisfying this way.

He started to follow Grantaire to the kitchen but paused in the hallway in front of one of Grantaire’s photos, blown up and framed. It was one of Enjolras’s favorites, a close up of an elephant sloshing through mud, and a sudden memory popped in his head, unbidden.

Grantaire pressed a kiss between Enjolras’s shoulder blades as they lay tangled in the sheets in their hotel room in Nairobi. “What are you thinking?”

“Mostly that what we just did could get us sentenced to jail,” Enjolras told him.

Grantaire laughed lightly, reaching down to lace his fingers with Enjolras’s. “Yeah, but it was worth it, right?” He didn’t wait for an answer, trailing kisses up Enjolras’s neck until Enjolras turned over to kiss him properly. “But I don’t think our committing illegal acts of sodomy is the only thing on your mind.”

It hadn’t even been two days and Grantaire already knew him better than anyone in a long time, and Enjolras sighed, scratching his fingernails lightly across Grantaire’s stubble. “It’s not,” he admitted, “but what I’m about to say is going to sound stupid in comparison.”

Grantaire turned his head to brush a kiss across Enjolras’s palm. “Try me.”

“This whole time that I’ve been in Africa, I never got to see an elephant.”

“Seriously?” Grantaire said with a light laugh, though his expression softened when he saw the look on Enjolras’s face. “I’m sorry. That’s not stupid.”

“You say after laughing,” Enjolras grumbled.

Grantaire leaned in and kissed him, slow and sweet. “How about this?” he said softly. “I’ll bring you back to Africa one day, and we’ll see all kinds of elephants.”

It was a ridiculous thing for anyone to say after only two days, but for some reason, Enjolras couldn’t find it in himself to make fun of him. “Ok,” he said instead. “That sounds like a plan.”

But they never had made it back to Africa, or anywhere else for that matter. Combeferre had seen to that, in perhaps some kind of extremely thorough retribution for Enjolras going just slightly rogue.

He had seen Combeferre exactly once since returning stateside three years prior, on the day he and Grantaire went to fill out the paperwork for their marriage license, when Combeferre had brought him a driver’s license, and nothing else.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” Enjolras asked, almost insulted, as he squinted at the driver’s license Combeferre had just handed him.

“Nothing,” Combeferre told him, unusually dry. “That’s sort of the point.”

Enjolras frowned at him. “You’re not even going to give me a passport?”

Combeferre just gave him a look. “I give you a passport and at the first sign of anything exciting happening in some country halfway around the globe, you’ll be gone, defeating the entire purpose of this little exercise.”

He was right, of course, not that Enjolras would ever admit that. “So, what, I’m just stuck here for the rest of my life?”

“Only for the next three to five years.”

Combeferre didn’t say it harshly but Enjolras still flinched, the reality of what faced him hitting for perhaps the first time and settling like dread in the pit of his stomach. “But what am I supposed to do for the next three to five years that’s actually worthwhile?”

For the first time that morning, Combeferre looked like he was trying very hard not to laugh, or at least smile. “Have you ever heard the expression ‘act locally, think globally’?”

Enjolras stared at him, incredulous. “You want me to change the world from here?”

“No,” Combeferre said honestly, “but I suspect you’re going to try regardless.” He fixed Enjolras with a stern look. “Just as long as nothing you do gets absolutely any media attention outside of this town, county at the most, you’ll be fine.”

“Do you have any idea—” Enjolras started hotly, but Combeferre cut him off.

“This was your idea,” he said, matching Enjolras’s tone. “Don’t blame me for trying to make sure it gets executed properly.” He paused, giving Enjolras a searching look before adding, deliberately casual, “Unless you no longer want to go through with this.”

Enjolras’s stubbornness more than anything kept him from admitting that he’d been thinking just that. “I didn’t say that.”

Something flickered in Combeferre’s expression, and he shrugged and looked away. “Fine,” he said. “Then if you do want to go through with this, this is how you do it. You stay here, you keep your head down, and you don’t draw any attention to yourself.”

Enjolras swallowed and nodded. “Fine,” he said, tucking the fake driver’s license into his pocket. “Then I’ll see you in three to five years, I guess.”

But of course, all of that was easier said than done, and not just because dealing with the village board and all the other nominally elected boards in the village were enough to drive Enjolras to drink the way that Grantaire did. There was also the small matter of Grantaire, who had apparently taken his promise to take Enjolras back to Africa seriously.

They had spent much of the first few weeks of their marriage lying in bed next to each other, Enjolras’s head pillowed on Grantaire’s chest as Grantaire enthusiastically told Enjolras all of the places that he planned on taking him for their honeymoon, or on vacation.

And every time, Enjolras would demur, or hedge, or make up some reason why now was really not a good time. Until, on the fifth time Enjolras had suggested that they should instead reupholster the living room furniture, Grantaire had rubbed a soothing hand down Enjolras’s arm.

“I just want you to know,” he said, his voice quiet, “I understand, and I want to try to help you.”

Enjolras frowned, rolling onto his side to look up at him. “What do you understand?”

“Your PTSD,” Grantaire said, and Enjolras stared blankly at him. “I wish I had put it together sooner, but…that’s why you don’t want to leave, because of what happened in Burundi.”

“No, that’s not—” Enjolras cut himself off and pushed himself away from Grantaire, his blood inexplicably pounding in his ears. “I don’t have PTSD.”

Grantaire watched him with something wary in his expression. “Ok,” he said, though he didn’t sound like he believed Enjolras even remotely. “Just know that I’m here for you, in whatever way you need me to be, and for however long it takes.”

But it hadn’t taken long for Grantaire to stop asking altogether, and as their life together settled into a well-worn and, to Enjolras at least, miserable pattern, the gulf between them had grown to the point where they might as well have been in separate countries, if not continents. Enjolras spent most of his time on his computer or phone; Grantaire spent most of his time at work or in his dark room he’d set up in the garden shed; and neither of them said anything to fill the space between them.

Maybe that was just how marriage was supposed to go.

“Food’ll be here in twenty,” Grantaire said, breaking his reverie so suddenly that Enjolras flinched, startled. Grantaire frowned slightly, his brow furrowing. “What are you doing?”

Enjolras jerked a shrug. “Just looking at this picture,” he said, before throwing caution to the wind and asking, “Do you remember promising to take me back to Africa?”

Grantaire’s eyes slid to the picture then away again, his expression unchanged. “Yeah,” he said shortly, before telling Enjolras, “Don’t forget, I have an early start tomorrow morning.”

“Right.” Grantaire nodded and started to brush past him but Enjolras reached out, grabbing his arm. “Grantaire, wait. I—”

He broke off as Grantaire looked back at him, something almost pained in his expression. “What?”

Enjolras’s throat felt tight, and he shook his head. “Never mind,” he said. “Food’ll be here in twenty?”

Grantaire nodded again. “Yeah.”

“The usual?”

“Yeah.”

After three years of marriage, what was even left to say?

— — — — —

Enjolras woke up the next morning alone in bed, and it took him a moment to remember what Grantaire had said about having an early start. He rolled over onto his back and stared up at the ceiling, trying to summon the motivation to get out of bed for yet another day of the same exact thing.

Without warning, he heard the shrill sound of his cell phone ringing, and he heaved a sigh, turning onto his side to reach for his phone on his nightstand. 

But that phone was silent, its screen black, even as the piercing ring continued, and Enjolras was suddenly reminded of the only other thing Combeferre had given him.

“Here,” he said, a little gruffly, handing over a small black flip-phone. “Paid for in cash, entirely untraceable. Use it if there’s ever an emergency.”

Enjolras scrambled out of bed, dropping to the floor to paw through the storage bins under the bed until he found the phone in question, plugged in underneath the bed where he’d put it almost three years ago. 

With trembling fingers, he opened the phone and held it up to his ear. “What happened?”

“Good to hear your voice, too,” Combeferre said, and Enjolras allowed himself about thirty seconds of smiling at the automatic relief of hearing his best friend and partner-in-crime’s voice after so long.

“It is,” he said. “Good to hear your voice, I mean, but I don’t think you called just because of that.”

“I didn’t,” Combeferre confirmed, suddenly serious. “Someone leaked a number of top secret documents relating to foreign, namely American, interference in Burundi.”

Enjolras went very still. “With Lamarque?”

“Yeah,” Combeferre said. “The documents included a redacted file on Lamarque’s killer.”

Enjolras stood instantly, his heart pounding. “Then it’s go time,” he said. “Three years are long enough for the moral universe. Time to get some justice on our own terms.”

“Enjolras,” Combeferre said, something strange in his voice, “the documents were leaked.”

“So?”

“So someone wanted us to find them. Counted on us finding them.”

Enjolras shook his head, not following where Combeferre was going with this. “And?” he said impatiently.

“And I need you to remember that,” Combeferre said, his voice low. “Whatever was released was deliberately chosen by someone and leaked in such a way that they knew we’d find it. That you’d find it. And they had a reason for doing so.”

“Combeferre what—”

“It was Grantaire.” 

Combeferre delivered the words with solemnity, like he was dropping a bomb onto Enjolras’s life, and Enjolras paused, trying to understand what he was saying, and what Grantaire could possibly have to do with any of this. “What was Grantaire?”

Combeferre took a deep breath. “Grantaire killed General Lamarque.”

>>Read Part 3 Here>>

[assenavlp]

Oprah and AI

I watched this primetime ABC propaganda sh¡tshow so you all don't have to.

AI AND THE FUTURE OF US AN OPRAH WINFREY SPECIAL

I hadn't heard or seen any press for this show, and just happened to see the listing as I was trying to find something to watch, a few nights ago, but I wasn't sure if I really wanted to watch it or not - lol - so I scheduled it to record, just in case. Finally bit the bullet, yesterday.

The recording caught the last bit of a political ad, before the show began. It warned that "Biden & Harris want to force you to buy an electric car". LMAO And awayyyy we go…

The show (and segment one, of five) cynically begins with a group of everymen/women expressing confusion, doubt, ambivalence, and suspicion. All the better to commence giving you the soft sell, my dears…

THE AGENDA

Oprah: "I was Bedazzled, Fascinated, Curious, and also Concerned. But there is no doubt, it is Here."

She began by breezing through a very basic timeline of the notion and progress of AI, over the last 70 years, and promised, a couple of times, that the show would be "not so technical".

It should be noted that in this hour and four minute-long programme, at no time do they speak of the mass theft of art, music, or literary works (let alone personal data and images shared on social media). 'Cuz who cares about them highfalutin artistic types? Gatekeeping snobs and weirdos, man. 'Ah don't know anything about art, but Ah know what Ah like.' They don't even touch on the issue of likeness theft. They do speak of it, in regards to fraud, later on, but not in regards to creative works, for which there was that whole actor's strike. I see you going to the SAG Awards, Ms. Winfrey. [Buh Gok!] Nor do they speak on the mass of false advertising. They also don't get into the massively detrimental environmental impact. Shocking.

Meta admits scraping every adult Australian’s public post to train AI, no opt-out https://www.diyphotography.net/meta-admits-scraping-every-adult-australians-public-post-to-train-ai-no-opt-out/

Without further ado, the woman who brought us all such greats [chuckle] as Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, and the book, "A Million Little Pieces", now brings (to the general public) the so-called Effective Altruist*, OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman.

At about 7 minutes in, in the most earnest, pandering tone, he says, "the most important thing that will happen here is, everyone in the world will be able to create at a level that is still hard for us to imagine. This is gonna be an enabler of human ability to create, to flourish, to make new things, to create new companies and services like we've never seen, and we want eeeeverybody to get to do that, not just the white dudes", as he stares directly at Oprah. LOL

Oh, the sweet, sweet 'democratization of art', you bad, bad, racist and ableist anti-AI folks. [rolling eyes]

Of course they allow him to express concern as he pays lip service to safety and regulations, as fellow sociopaths Elon, Jeff, and Mark, all grace our screens, and he speaks of regularly working with the Executive Branch. Mm hmmm. The folks who love their corporate donors. Okay. Go on.

Oprah: "How do we know we can trust you?"

Sam: "The bar on this is clearly extremely high, um, the best thing that we can do is to put this technology in the hands of people, talk about what it is capable of, what it's not, what we think is gonna come, what we think might come, give our best advice about how society should decide to use this. Um, say when we think it's important to not release something, which we also might get wrong, and build up that trust over time. But it is clear that this is going to be a very impactful technology, and I think a lot of scrutiny is thus super warranted."

Oprah: "I actually saw a headline, that said you were the most powerful, and perhaps most dangerous man on the planet, and I'm wondering how that sits with you."

Sam (holding back tears - really): "I…. It's definitely strange to hear you say that. It doesn't… I don't feel like the most powerful person or anything even close to that, uh, like I feel the opportunity, the responsibility in a positive way to get to nudge this in a direction that I think can be really good for people. And that is, like, that's like a serious… exciting, somewhat nerve-racking thing, um, but it's something that I feel very deeply, and I, and I, and I, and I realise how I'll never get to touch anything this important again."

We really needed some violins, here.

Oprah goes on to express her "concern" over the "nefarious" ways some have already used the technology, but then goes on to gush how "calllm" and "relatablllle" he is, and thus, "it seems like everything is okay"…. And he, in turn, replies that he doesn't want to give anyone "a false sense of security", that "there will be bad, too", and that they'll "mitigate, as much as we can" [whewwww, lol] acknowledging full well that "this technology will be misused"… Then he quickly slips in another one for everyone's AI-Bro Bingo card: "like every technology before it…"

Oh, how they love that canard.

*Effective Altruism: letting billionaires amass their fortunes, untaxed and unregulated, so that they can 'benefit' society the way THEY, alone, see fit. Yeah, no.

Then there's a commercial break and they bring back the common folks, for segment two, gushing about their kids using AI to "draw" (yeah, no) dinosaurs, and using the simplified AI filters on TikTok (See? Folks are already using AI, no biggie, lol), using it to generate 'reference' material for sermons, but "never" actually using the raw product (no, of coooourse not), and their fears, shock of all shocks, are slowly being allayed. Apprehensions of "how it will eat you alive" now gone, by "talking to it". Who could have seen this miraculous reversal coming? LOL

HOLY S*** (Their asterisks, not mine.)

Next on the docket is Marques Brownlee, YouTube tech-expert, displaying the exponential improvement of fake videos, in just the past year - of course to Oprah's shock and disbelief - explaining how they're generated by referencing millions of photos. He did explain that "there really isn't any good set of rules" despite some embedding watermarks or meta data so that those who know how to look deeper will know it's fake. i.e. maybe 5% of the people looking at this crap, and at the moment, those folks can tell just by looking anyway.

Then Oprah plays at being the everyman, too, by expressing real concern, especially after he demonstrates a voice generator with his own voice, but of course, she gives him the opportunity to allay those fears; going back down the well-worn 'we've seen this before with new technology' trail that every tech-bro loves to travel, including Sam, in the previous segment. Am I sensing a pattern?

Marques: "I'll say I've seen this story before. Cars, in general, went through this; smartphones, of course, went through this; computers went through this; the Internet went through this; where at their very formative years, they're really, really confusing and potentially amazing but potentially horrible, and eventually, you know, humans sort themselves out, to lay the rules down in a way that we can actually trust that will be better than it is bad. So I've seen this story before and I'm hoping it plays out the way it's played out before."

Oh, that makes me feel so much better, because this all-encompassing technology is absolutely no different than any other technological advance we've seen throughout all of recorded history. No, not at all. [cough]

Next up are Tristan Harris, Technology Ethicist, and Aza Raskin, creator of the Infinite Scroll, talking about the incredible speed of the tech, the ills of "social media addiction, doom-scrolling, and polarization", and how he, Aza, "learned the hard way" that his "good intentions as an inventor just wasn't enough". Ya don't say. He did challenge the aforementioned "every tech" narrative by pointing out that the various problems of cars (eg. seatbelts) took decades to resolve. Of course he doesn't mention that cars, even still, are killing us every day, from their planned obsolescent over-production and resultant waste, to the continued fossil fuel dependency and pollution (or all the rare earth mineral mining devastation that electric alternatives will incur)….

Aza: "Once AI can do anything, people start to use it to do everything."

Tristan: "That's what's so confusing about AI, is it's going to give us all these benefits at the same time that it's undermining the foundations that we depend on, and you can't separate the promise from the peril, so I think instead of getting caught up in the question, "is AI gonna be good or is it gonna be bad", it's about, "is it happening at a pace that our society can respond appropriately."

Oprah: "But guys, it's here. It's why I started this programme by saying it is here."

Tristan: "Open AI's stated goal is to be able to build systems of AI that are even smarter than humans because there's trillions of dollars to be made on the other side…."

Oprah: "What do you want to see happen, now?"

Tristan: "OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, they need to be held accountable for the harms that they would create so that they're all incentivized to pull back, and go at the pace that they can help society be prepared and not be overwhelmed."

Oprah: "And who is holding them accountable?"

Tristan: "We need laws."

HA!

Back with some more everyfolks, segment three begins with the spectre of real life scams and the harm they cause.

BAD GUYS

FBI director Christopher Wray is trundled out to talk more about deepfakes and scams, and ch¡ldp0rn and sext0rt¡on using faked images.

Oprah: "Do you think we have the laws or regulations in place, now, to keep Americans safe from all that's coming, all the AI threats?"

Christopher: "I would probably leave legislating to the legislators, but what I will tell you from an FBI director's perspective, um, is that this is a type of technology that we see manifesting itself in more and more situations, more and more types of crimes, more and more types of threats, uh, and there's a degree to which, overall, our laws haven't kept pace with the technology."

Oprah: "Does that frustrate you?"

Christopher: "Sure, yeah, sure. What I worry about is the day, which is coming, it's not here but it's coming faster than we would like, where those, um, elite bad guys will find AI sophisticated enough to take their game to a-whole-nother level."

Oprah: "And the elite bad guys are doing what?"

Christopher: "So the elite bad guys are the ones, you know, for example, conducting the most sophisticated cyber intrusions. To me no country, no country represents a broader, more severe, more comprehensive threat to American innovation, American ideas, to our Economic Security, and ultimately our national security, than the Chinese government. China has a bigger hacking programme, already, than that of every major nation combined, and has stolen more of Americans' personal and corporate data than every nation, big or small combined. The scale of the threat is significant. If you took the FBI's programme, and just said forget Russia, forget Iran, just do nothing but China, the Chinese government's hacking programme, they would outnumber us 50 to 1.

Oprah: "We've got an election coming. Do you think this election cycle will be compromised by disinformation?"

Christopher: "I fully expect to see, um, disinformation by foreign adversaries. We are finding, all too often, that something on social media that looks like Bill from Topeka or Mary from Dayton is actually, you know, some Russian or Chinese intelligence officer on the outskirts of Beijing or Moscow."

Don't worry about the homegrown stuff. [shhhh]

Oprah: "What should we be on the lookout for?"

Christopher: "All Americans should try to be, you know, more discerning consumers of information. It is incumbent on everyone in America to bring an intensified sense of focus and caution to the use of AI, and how AI can be used by bad guys against all of us, but not to panic I don't think this is a time for panic."

So, in sum: Chinese and Russian AI, baaaaad. [furrows brow] American AI, goooood. [thumbs up] Nothing to see, here!

Back to the everypeople, and the fear of job losses, immediately followed by the old 'but there will be newwww jobs' cliché, and then the folks who were suspicious but they looove it, now, and the folks who aren't worried because they're "irreplaceable".

HEALTH, EDUCATION & JOBS

Oh! Bill Gates! Quell surprise.

Microsoft's Hypocrisy on AI https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/09/microsoft-ai-oil-contracts/679804/

Long story short: medicine is going to be sooo much better. And education, too!

Bill: "We can see it's already working pretty well."

Oh, really?

Kids who use ChatGPT as a study assistant do worse on tests Researchers compare math progress of almost 1,000 high school students. https://www.popsci.com/technology/kids-who-use-chatgpt-as-a-study-assistant-do-worse-on-tests/

And robots can do the blue collar jobs, too! (Including fruit-picking, on all that farmland he's been buying up.) Yayyyy, replicants! [facepalm]

Oprah: "What are the jobs that you believe are going to be undisturbed? What skills are going to persist in these, in this new world?"

Bill: "Yeah, that's very hard to make a prediction. I mean there'll be aspects of creativity, there'll be aspects of appreciating, uh, people [said as if under duress, lol], you know, social work, the teacher really engaging that student in the rich way. Even then I can't guarantee that software won't eventually get good at that, but you know, for the next generation, the more human, the more engaged you are with other people [so, not artists], that is a skillset that is in such short supply, whether it's mental health or education, that we can never have enough of that."

I dread to imagine what his visions for future mental health services are.

Oprah: "I mean I've expressed several of my concerns, but do you have none, do you have no…"

Bill: "I have significant fears about the risks. This is the first technology that is happening faster than even the insiders expected."

Oprah: "It's happening faster than you guys thought?"

Bill: "Absolutely."

Oprah: "Do you think that your company, that, that Microsoft, and other companies that are gonna make a lot of money off of AI have an obligation to help us manage and navigate through this change?"

Bill: "Absolutely. The fact that there will have to be regulation, that the way we think about taxes will have to change quite a bit. If the companies are working with the government, then at least we can craft something that's, that's not just profit-driven."

Regulations that you and your lobbyists craft? [chortle]

Oprah: "But what did we miss with the Internet and social media that we can use to apply now, to this moment of AI?"

Bill: "Well, I, I would say, speaking for myself, personally, and, I think, many others, that we were a bit naïve."

Ya don't say.

Stephen Fry: Musk and Zuckerberg have 'polluted culture' ""I’m the chump who thought social media could change the world," he told his audience at the Digital Futures Institute." https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ceq5q3jlnz3o

Bill: "We thought the Internet, the availability of information would make us all a lot more factual. The fact that people would seek out kind of a niche of misinformation, we were a bit naïve."

Okay, then.

Back to the everyones… and what it is to be "human". HA! "As a religious person, one of the things that I reflect on is "be careful about comfort because too much comfort is actually going to make your life worse, not better, because it'll decrease your over all capacity." (An actual good point.)

IRREPLACEABLE HUMANS

The final guest, Marilynne Robinson, novelist, is the lone 'creative' on the show.

Marilynne: "The impulse behind it seems to be to eliminate the human hand, the human eye in the making of the reality that we inhabit to the farthest extent possible. With the effect of, of, um, concentrating power in the sense of the control of this strange fantasy, uh, within very few people's hands and consolidating masses of capital, and masses of natural resources devoted to this very dubious project. It's just a human impulse to escape from its humanity, which is something that happens over and over again, historically. The impulse to say, uh, that there's nothing intrinsic about a human person, that cannot, in theory, be replicated by something that, frankly, works cheaper, works faster. I don't know why it is but it's part of our human lot to be uncomfortable with our humanity, and to mechanize it, you know, out of existence in some way. We're not enough in love with our own existence, and we're not enough in love with everyone else's existence, and I think that's very dangerous." [chef's kiss]

The same reason transhumanists are so obsessed with living longer and more artificially. They don't love - or respect - the time they have here. They want more, more, more.

Oprah: "What is the thing that concerns you the most?"

Marilynne: "I'm afraid that there will be so much investment of every kind into this project, that it will have its consequences before it really deserves them, and so there will be all kinds of cutting back on all kinds of employment and so on, anticipating this insurgence of, of AI, and then it will turn out that it's a, it's a bad project, you know, that it's more dangerous than it is valuable, and so on, and so we will have a disrupted economy on the one hand, and an unusable technology on the other."

Mic drop!

Oprah, ignoring the words of the preacher before the segment, persists…

Oprah: "But it's also going to, no question about it, it's going to make life a lot easier for a lot of people, so what's wrong with that?"

Marilynne: "American schools ask for a lot of written work from students, and that's a very good thing. It's an autonomy-creating exercise, you know. But what we don't do, we don't tell them that this is a discipline, like an athletic discipline that they have undertaken to strengthen themselves, not just to bring themselves over some arbitrary line of sufficiency."

Never mind the physical process of writing, learning cursive, etc., which too many deemed unnecessary, despite all the literature demonstrating otherwise.

Oprah: "That it's the discipline of doing the work and the thinking process."

Marilynne: "Exactly. And students say writing is difficult, which of course it is."

Oprah: "It is."

Marilynne: "But difficulty is the point."

Oprah: "And so if you were in charge of this whole AI movement, what would you be doing or what would you advise?"

Marilynne: "I would advise that it be used for, you know, the kind of research that produces drugs and immunizations and so on."

Sure. With MUCH oversight. But then again…

Revolution, interrupted One of the promises of machine learning was better drugs, faster. A decade in, AI has failed to live up to the hype https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-artificial-intelligence-drug-research-hype/

Marilynne: "I would, uh, I would make a fantastic library. I would use it very, very judiciously to replace work that is drudgery without the arrogance of replacing the work of people who, you know, who are of very great value, you know, just because they are the substance of our ordinary interactions with the world."

Oof. There's MY personal sticking point. "Eliminating the drudgery." She was careful to make a distinction but I fear that nuance will be lost on most of the people already sharing that hackneyed meme. Everyone wants a replicant to do the stuff they think they're above doing. Doesn't end well.

Oprah was still desperately trying to make the case, though, retreating to the same old "fear of the new" and "nostalgia" arguments, asking how this time is different. Sometimes I thought, maybe she's just playing Devil's Advocate, with some of these questions? It was interesting that she gave the final word to someone who had the most philosophical viewpoint. But nahhh. Marilynne then compared it to The Manhattan Project. HA! Another mic drop.

And then Oprah's final thoughts, on this peak Boomer TV:

"A special thank you to everyone who spoke with us, tonight. I hope that they have left you with a clearer picture of what is coming. Artificial intelligence is still beyond our control, and to a great extent our understanding, but it is here. We're going to be living with technology that can be our ally as well as our rival. It is something that no other generation has ever experienced. This moment requires a different level of alertness, awareness, about who we are, and where we're going, what's real, and what's not, what's artificial intelligence and what is human wisdom, authentic intelligence earned through study and experience. We are this planet's most adaptable creatures. We will adapt again but keep your eyes on what's real. The stakes for all of us could not…..

And then the recording cuts out. [GUFFAW]

-30-

[dankusner]

After backlash, expect less Pride merch in ’24

Target scaling back but some brands say they’re not adjusting their plans

Love-themed Mickey Mouse backpacks.

Pronoun pins.

'Not a Phase' hoodies.

'So gay for each other' greeting cards.

Every year, national brands cozy up to LGBTQ+ Americans with colorful merchandise for Pride Month.

But this June, those displays may not be as loud and proud.

'Especially during Pride season, most companies like ours are pretty busy working on Pride projects. I can tell you for myself, I have not been, and I think it’s across the board,' said Matt Skallerud, president of Pink Media, which helps brands reach the LGBTQ+ demographic.

Mainstream brands used to brush off anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment.

That changed last year when conservatives organized boycotts online that slashed sales.

National retail chain Target moved its Pride displays from the entrances to the back of stores after conservative activists confronted employees and vandalized displays.

This year, Target is scaling back its Pride collection and won’t carry the collection in all stores.

Bud Light, owned by beer giant Anheuser-Busch, is still struggling after conservative blowback in 2023 over a social media campaign with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.

'The goal is to make ‘pride’ toxic for brands,' conservative commentator Matt Walsh wrote at that time on X.

The strategy worked.

Activists rallied supporters using hashtags and slogans like 'go woke go broke' and held boycotts and other actions they called 'Bud Lighting.'

Not only did sales suffer from the right, some in the LGBTQ+ community turned away from Target and Bud Light too, for bowing to conservative pressure.

Now brands are navigating the volatile political climate more gingerly.

Expect fewer rainbow logos, Skallerud said.

'Nobody in the media, marketing and advertising world wants to admit how heavy and hard this has been,' he said. 'Ever since Target and Bud Light had their fiascos last year, a tremendous number of brands have decided it would be much better to sit on the sidelines and let this sort itself out.'

The economics of Pride

Observed every year in June, Pride Month commemorates the 1969 riots following a police raid of the Stonewall Inn in New York. Over time, the community’s activism helped turn corporations that were indifferent or hostile into powerful allies in the fight for gay rights.

There’s a business argument for that: The LGBTQ+ community is a huge customer base, representing trillions in potential sales, according to Anders Jacobsen, co-founder of investment adviser LGBT Capital.

And LGBTQ+ identification in the U.S. continues to grow, with 7.6% of U.S. adults now identifying as a sexual orientation other than heterosexual, up from 5.6% four years ago.

The proportion of younger people who identify as LGBTQ+ is even higher: more than 1 in 5 Gen Z adults.

Research also suggests that Americans are more likely to patronize brands that support the LGBTQ+ community.

A 2023 GLAAD/Ipsos poll found that Americans were nearly twice as likely to say they would support companies facing criticism for supporting LGBTQ+ people rather than their critics.

Two out of 3 Americans are neutral to positive about Pride merchandise in stores and nearly three-quarters of Americans are neutral or feel positive about a company offering Pride merchandise, the poll found.

Opposition from some conservative quarters is common, but bursts of outrage usually fizzle quickly.

In fact, before last year, companies were more likely to face criticism for 'rainbow-washing': using Pride promotions to signal support for the LGBTQ+ community without making meaningful commitments.

That’s not the case anymore.

So, after years of weighing in on divisive topics, business leaders are trying to steer clear of the nation’s culture wars.

Transgender issues in particular have emerged as a conservative flashpoint.

Hundreds of bills restricting LGBTQ+ rights have been introduced and dozens have passed.

Harassment and violence targeting gay and trans people has surged.

Last year’s Target backlash was driven by false allegations that it was selling swimsuits for children with features for trans girls.

Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData, said mainstream brands know they can’t please everyone.

He expects they will celebrate Pride in moderation, toning down the merchandise and keeping promotions under the radar. 'If you promote Pride, some people will be unhappy with it. If you don’t promote Pride, some people will be unhappy about that. It’s not a battle you can win completely, which is why some retailers and brands are taking a middle-of-the-road approach,' he said.

Survey finds some companies not changing plans

Some companies said they were staying the course.

Levi Strauss & Co. told USA TODAY it has no plans to scale back its Pride Month celebration.

'This year’s Pride collection marks ten years the Levi’s brand has been celebrating Pride. … We are excited about this year’s collection and our plans,' the company said in a statement.

Wells Fargo, another longtime supporter of the LGBTQ+ community, said it would celebrate Pride Month by putting on employee events, supporting LGBTQ+ organizations and sponsoring parades across the country.

'Our plans this year are not scaled back,' Wells Fargo said in a statement.

Jared Todd, senior press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, said his organization is not yet seeing many corporations back off their support for Pride Month.

'Granted, many companies have yet to announce their Pride plans publicly, so things could always change,' Todd said.

Similarly, Gravity Research recently surveyed 200 executives and found that most brands are not adjusting their Pride plans, said Luke Hartig, president of the firm.

Thirteen percent said they were unsure.

'This indicates to us that corporations view last year’s anti-LGBTQ+ backlash as more noise than signal,' Hartig said.

But where brands are pulling back, it’s because of pressure from conservative activists, he said

[spoekelse]

I joked earlier that Tumblr wasn't founded as some kind of communist alternative to Twitter, and we shouldn't expect it to behave that way, but looking into it, it seems that it was founded to be much closer to that than I'd expected. I'm going to drop a few excerpts from a 2011 interview with Tumblr founder David Karp by TechCrunch that illuminate what I mean.

Tumblr CEO David Karp recently sat down with Chris Dixon for a Founder Stories interview in which explains how he started Tumblr four years ago as a reaction to other blogging tools out there. “All blogs took the same form,” he notes. “I wanted something much more free-form, much less verbose.” People wanted to express themselves and blog, but he felt that the standard blogging platforms available at the time—Wordpress, Blogger, TypePad—were too complicated. “These tools I just don’t think worked for most people. It’s a commitment, you need to sit down for an hour and hammer out a post.”

He is quick to add that “WordPress is the best tool in the world for that” kind of publishing. But for someone like him who “doesn’t enjoy writing,” it was the wrong tool. So he created Tumblr instead, which is designed to help people get their thoughts and images up as quickly as possible, and to lower the barrier to publishing even more.

But don’t Twitter and Facebook lower those barriers even further? They do, but they lack a strong expressive identity, argues Karp. “They are not tools built for creative expression,” he says, adding: “Nobody is proud of their identity on Facebook.” Okay, he’s got a point there. Tumblr, in contrast, is built to be a place you can be proud to call your online home. It’s very design-oriented and you can customize your Tumblr to reflect your personality, but not in a cheesy MySpace way. For Twitter and Facebook, “expression isn’t necessarily something they care about.”

It’s a common criticism of popular Web services that don’t yet make a lot of money: Where’s the business model? That criticism has certainly been lobbed at Tumblr, the short-burst publishing platform all the kids are flocking to these days. Tumblr generates billions of pageviews across its networks and is growing at more than 250 million pageviews per week. “Making money off of Tumblr would be incredibly easy,” CEO David Karp tells Chris Dixon in the Founder Stories video above. A cheap AdSense ad on every member’s dashboard would make Tumblr “wildly profitable.”

So why doesn’t he do that? As he goes onto explain, he’d rather find ways to make money that also “enhance the experience for our users.” Tumblr does charge for things like being featured in its directory or $9 themes users can buy to spruce up their Tumblog. Karp notes that some theme designers are making tens of thousands of dollars month. Still, these seem more like ancillary revenue streams than what will end up being Tumbr’s main revenue source down the line. Fortunately for Karp, he has patient investors and just raised $30 million to keep scaling the service and figure out a more natural business model.

You can watch the full interview here. At about 4 minutes in, he starts talking about Tumblr in relation to Twitter. They talk about how things seem to be designed with the users and community in mind. At around 15 minutes in, they talk about how there's a tension between Karp's vision of Tumblr as a place for self-expression and advertisers and investors.

Here's another article that talks about the monetisation issue.

"I thought I could totally beat the system and have this cool product that I would never need to raise money for, I would never need to sell out, because [Tumblr] would bring all the attention to this [consultancy] business where people would ask us to build them a website," he says. And it worked – for a few months. Karp kept up his consultancy gig until Tumblr began doubling its number of users every few weeks. "Our clients eventually got more and more pissed off because I wasn't returning their calls and at that point I was just totally fucking it up. Clearly they could see Tumblr was my one and only and they were getting shafted."

It was time for Karp and Tumblr to grow up. Investors were circling, but Karp's youthful defiance prevented the internet firm being shipped across to the startup factory of Silicon Valley. Karp did sell 25% of his one-year-old company as part of a $4.5m funding round from Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital in late 2008. But he repeatedly turned down offers to move the company to the "hyper-competitive" West Coast, where he says entrepreneurs spend their time worrying whether Apple, Google or Facebook are going to steal their most talented engineers. New York is a more supportive city for startups, Karp argues, even if it does not have the obvious allure of Silicon Valley.

In conversation, Karp could evangelise on the force of creativity for hours. At times he will suddenly pause, before retracing his steps and continuing with animated zeal. Karp says he loves Twitter, is lukewarm on Google+ ("I don't see any tools for creativity in there") and is not the biggest fan of Facebook "as a product". And YouTube? "The only real tools for expression these days are YouTube, which turns my stomach," he says. "They take your creative works – your film that you poured hours and hours of energy into – and they put ads on top of it. They make it as gross an experience to watch your film as possible. I'm sure it will contribute to Google's bottom line; I'm not sure it will inspire any creators."

No doubt Google would disagree, arguing that a significant chunk of the 60 hours of video uploaded to the site each minute – an increase of 30% in the last three months – contains or inspires some form of originality.

But Karp is unconvinced. YouTube, he says, "was the opportunity to tell every aspiring filmmaker that if they worked really hard and really went for quality they could create great stuff. The stuff YouTube is incentivising is: build a huge subscriber base, put out a lot of videos, do the math and get as big a cheque as possible."

Google recently did the math and found that YouTube pulls in about 4bn views a day – and has now boosted promotion of its "Partner" programme in a bid to increase the quality of videos. "YouTube offers the opportunity but they sacrifice the tools in such a major way now," Karp continues. "YouTube is one of the most amazing creative tools in the world and I think it's gotten a lot worse for creators." No doubt the point is that Tumblr can close the gap.

Like many of the hottest internet firms, Tumblr has no proven business model. The company's "lack of revenue" prevented some major Silicon Valley venture capital firms from participating in its latest $85m funding round in September last year, according to the Wall Street Journal. John Maloney, the president of Tumblr, who is the business foil to Karp's user-led brain, indicated in a recent interview that the company needs to attract "hundreds of millions" more subscribers on its route to profitability.

For his part, Karp describes technology journalism's obsession with funding as "turpitudal" and insists his company is not in a financial arms race with Facebook, Twitter or other internet sites.

Nor is Tumblr about to be acquired by a multinational media firm, he says. In 2008, when Karp became $750,000 richer by virtue of selling a 25% stake in the firm, the fresh-faced founder laid his intentions bare. "We would really rather not be gobbled up by a big media company," he spat, in an interview with the New York Observer.

Unlike most other hot internet companies, Tumblr has not been plagued by buyout rumours – but that does not mean there have been no offers. Four years on, is Karp still adamant? "We were constantly tested along the way," he admits. "Particularly in the first three years, there were a lot of [mergers and acquisitions] people who would pull you aside and you'd think 'Well, shit, I could be a pretty rich 23-year-old with very little effort'". But he held firm. "We stuck it out. I won't say I really knew why."

All these articles are old, they're relics of the past. But it's an interesting angle.

It's interesting. Karp seems to be a genuinely decent person- he works at Planned Parenthood now, and when he was still CEO of Tumblr, he tried to use it to promote Planned Parenthood.

I'd like to see Tumblr go back to its roots. I'd like to see it stop trying to be Tiktok or Instagram. I'd like it to be fully functional, with all the gimmicky quirks staff keeps introducing but none of the weird algorithms and promotion of Tumblr Live. I'd like it to invite NSFW back onto the platform in a way safe for artists.

[discotreque]

LwD 2.05: An Embarrassment of Dooplers

So I was a little nervous about this one! I hadn’t heard any spoiler-spoilers, but screeners have been out for weeks now, and I’d heard a bunch of individual, vague, non-spoilery hints about (1) big character moments, on the scale of a mid-season finale even though the show’s not taking a mid-season break; and (2) an ending that would make me cry.

I guess I imagined something relatively serious and dramatic, like “No Small Parts”? This show makes me cackle with laughter and giggle with nerdy glee and “d’awww!” at heartwarming friendships every week, but it’s only ever made me cry once—and then I was impressed that they were going to get there from the wacky hijinks we saw in the brief teaser.

The lack of a cold open made me apprehensive too—in my experience, that’s typically a sign that there’s so much plot in the rest of the episode that they need that extra scene—but after ~21.5 minutes of aforementioned hijinks, I was having so much fun that I’d completely forgotten about the alleged tear-jerker at the end…

…and they were not the tears I was expecting.

I didn’t think I’d be smiling and crying!!!! That was wholesome as SHIT!!!!!

I almost can’t believe they earned that—but they totally did.

After a Mariner–Tendi episode and a Boimler–Rutherford episode, we’re back to the “usual” Season 1 pairings… except the relationships between these characters have changed since Season 1. Mariner still feels thwacked in the abandonment issues by Boimler bailing for the Titan, and Rutherford’s having a tiny little existential crisis about losing an entire year of his life.

Both of which are extremely understandable and very heavy situations—and both of those situations get resolved because everyone in them is vulnerable with each other and honest about their feelings—AND that honesty and vulnerability brings both pairs of friends closer together. Are you kidding me?? I would watch SEVENTY seasons of that shit. Put it in my veins.

Onto the notes:

So basically Dooplers are Tribbles, but for cringe comedy instead of slapstick? Ohhhhh boy.

Look at Ransom the diplomat, tossing his own fork on the floor! I like that he’s actually a pretty competent Starfleet officer, despite also being a completely ridiculous person.

Wait a second, is that—OH HOLY SHIT, THE DOOPLERS ARE VOICED BY RICHARD KIND.

It makes sense that B. Boimler would find William annoying—who likes seeing their own flaws reflected back at them? And who could be a better reflection of one’s flaws than one’s literal duplicate?—but most interesting to me is that it implies on some level, Bradward knows the stick up his butt is a flaw. (Does William?)

Why does the Cerritos model have working phasers?!?!

I’m loving hot pink as the currently en-vogue colour for “dangerous sci-fi energy” in animation (cf. almost every previous episode of this show; Into the Spider-Verse; other stuff I can’t remember right now). As a former child of the 80’s, I’m living for it… but as a former teenager of the 90’s, I can’t help but wonder if it’s going to age as poorly as the harsh neon green of The Matrix, every Borg appearance on Voyager, and like 80% of the websites I made in high school…

SKANTS! SKANTS! SKANTS!

That fake-out joke with the fly-by over the Cerritos model was in the season trailer weeks ago, and I was so enthralled by that handsome lady that the sticker coming into frame still got me good 😂😂😂

BECKY Mariner????? omg yes

Some top-quality Boimler screams in this one. Poor Jack Quaid must drink gallons of throat-coat tea when he records.

One of the great things about Star Trek to me is that you never know what you’re going to get from any random episode. A murder mystery? A road trip? A spooky thriller? A cheesy romance? Broad comedy? Body horror? Didactic political screeds shrouded in tissue-thin science-fiction metaphors? Brain and brain, what is brain??? And after this many years of watching, you’d think I’d be hard to surprise. But if I ever told you I thought I’d see a Blues Brothers–style car chase through a frickin’ shopping mall on an episode of Star Trek, I would have been straight-up lying to you. I loved it, it worked for me, my jaw was on the floor and I was clapping with joy—but I’m definitely comfortable calling this one “unexpected.”

It’s CAPTAIN SHELBY!!! And an ancient babydyke crush rose from the depths of my childhood subconscious… (Also I think her Number One is based on the original makeup—eventually deemed too complicated—for Saru? Now that’s a deep cut.)

In 20th-century Trek, you almost never got to see what was going on inside a starship from the outside. Even after they switched from physical models (where it was next to impossible on a single episode’s budget) to CGI (which was still in its infancy, still not exactly cheap, and still broadcast in SD anyway), it was a rare thrill to see any meaningful interior details in an exterior shot. Disco’s modern VFX have given us some tasty, tasty treats in that department, but nothing quite as sublime as all the pink Doopler light glittering through the Cerritos’s windows.

Mariner says she’ll take her contact Malvus down with her, and threatens that they’ll end up “in the same cell.” Malvus is a Mizarian, a species introduced in TNG’s “Allegiance,” in which Captain Picard is held in a mysterious prison with one. I think I see what you did there, McMahan?

Bartender… so hot… lesbian circuits… overloading…

The Tendi and Rutherford C-story was, well, a C-story within a 22-minute episode, so there wasn’t much to it, but the one scene that mattered actually mattered a lot. I’m ambivalent on whether they should end up romantically involved—I’d prefer they don’t, but they’ll be one of the cutest couples in Trek history if they do—and as long as they keep that pure, sweet friendship between them at the heart of whatever else happens, I’m on board.

Carol Freeman was already one of my favourite captains before this season, and she’s been steadily moving up the list. The quiet throughline about her ambition to be on a better ship has been fascinating so far, and it’s starting to actually make me feel a little conflicted: I’m of course rooting for Captain Freeman to recognize her worth, make Starfleet recognize her worth, and become the ass-kicking captain of a hero ship that she’s clearly ready to be—but that almost surely means she’d be kicking ass off-screen, because LwD isn’t about those kind of adventures, and I’d be devastated not to have Dawnn Lewis on the show every week. So I’m kind of on the edge of my seat about this one!

I had so many favourite jokes this week I put them in a separate list:

“Even the replicated water on the Titan tasted better” is a low-key brilliant dunk on people who can’t shut the fuck up about the cooler places they used to live.

“Ooooh, they have a Quark’s now! That used to just be an empty lot where teens would make mistakes!” ← That’s literally me every time I go back to where I grew up. I felt so Seen™ I almost hid under a blanket.

“I would never go down the stairs!” (evil grin) (goes up the stairs)

The “well, shit” expressions from Mariner and Boimler as their crashed car sank right into the water… which started to bubble innocuously… and then the bottles of Data bubble-bath popped up, paying off a joke I thought had already been paid off—that was the one that woke up my poor cat this week. Just exquisite timing.

“YOUR PAGH IS WEAK, AND IT DISGUSTS ME!” “I don’t even know what that is, but I don’t like your tone!”

“Okona’s in there? He’s not even Starfleet! This is outrageous!” made me shout “NO!” at the screen like I was scolding my cat for scratching furniture. (She did not wake up that time.)

Best background joke: the neon sign at the dive bar advertising FREE SHOTS & BEERS. (Get it? Because they’re on a Federation starbase? Where nobody uses money?)

And of course Quark merchandised DS9.

This wasn’t just a standout episode of Lower Decks, this was a brilliant episode of Star Trek, period. The Dooplers, though extremely silly, are nevertheless also a clever sci-fi metaphor for real and relatable personal/interpersonal issues, and an effective plot catalyst for meaningful character growth from all four of our ensigns and the captain.

The jokes were hilarious, the action was kinetic, the A-, B-, and C-plots linked up thematically, the visuals were consistently and thoroughly gorgeous, the character beats—between Mariner and Boimler, Tendi and Rutherford, Mariner and Capt. Freeman—were all genuine, heartfelt and wholesome, and the references to other Trek canon were both deep and deeply affectionate.

Only 15 episodes in, and this series knows exactly what it is, exactly what it wants to do, and knows that it can knock our socks off doing it. Mike McMahan has said in recent interviews that the back half of S2 (and the apparently almost-fully-written S3) is a straight line uphill in quality from here—which surprised me at first, because McMahan seems like a pretty chill dude who doesn’t normally brag about his own work like that.

But then the Prophets sent me a vision of my space dad Ben Sisko, who reminded me of the words of 1930’s baseball player Dizzy Dean:

“If you can do it, it ain’t bragging.”

[Thanks to cygnus-x1.net for the screenshots this week—I was too lazy to do my own.]

[a-knight-in-shining-rainbows]

I set up a booth at a “Club Fair” today, advertising a local SAGA (Sexuality and Gender Alliance) I run. When I first joined this club, kids ran up to the booth, scribbled their name, and ran off - no one wanted to be seen standing at the “gay” table. You’d wait until the end to give your name, or say it was just a general diversity club, or say you did it for a prank - gay marriage had just been legalized, and no one wanted to be seen on that side of such a sensitive issue, especially teens. We were lucky if we got 5 kids to join per fair, which meant a very small club.

Today, when I set up my booth, parents came by to say thank you. Kids with dyed hair and rainbow socks bounced over with their older siblings in tow. Kids with they/them pins and different names and stars in their eyes, came over with their friends in groups of four or five, came over to sign up together or cheer their friend on if only one joined. Parents came over to ask normal club questions - what is the time commitment, what about transportation, etc - with no second glances or “so….is this the *gay* club?”

18 kids signed up. Eighteen. This club is 6 years old, and I’ve watched our community slowly accept us. The difference between even two years ago and now is astounding. And I’m sure we’ll have some rough patches coming up, but leaving today with a full signup sheet really proved to me, if nothing else, that it is getting better.

It might not always feel like it. But it is getting so much better.

[saebyeog-i]

bitter brews (i) | syh

“Johnny laughed again, eyes crinkling at the sides. Your mind wandered briefly to a half formed thought about how endearing that was. “Maybe so, but despite your efforts to make me an enemy, I think you’re actually a really good person. You even guessed my favorite coffee drink, so that has to count for something.””

genre | not quite a coffeeshop!au, (mild)slow burn, this thought about being an adversaries to lovers fic for six minutes

rating/warnings | a stupid amount of exposition about coffee plants, catch me throwing in the random recipes that have been my go-to for cooking during quarantine, is this angsty?, discussions of mental health issues {see tags for details}, overall mature content/themes {foul language, alcohol consumption, references & discussion of masturbation, awkward boners, future smut}, some soft moments, and some good ol’ tooth rotting waxing poetic nonsense fluff. Don’t expect too much out of this I just got tired of editing this part so I’m finally posting it.

word count | 19.6k (I meant for this to be a super long one-shot but it’s turning into a story in parts for the sake of ratings w h o o p s)

pairing | Johnny Seo x fem reader

writing playlist | Egotistic - Mamamoo, Black Swan - BTS, Sober - HYO, I Blame On You - Taeyeon, Heartbeat - BTS, Close to Me (Red Velvet Remix) - Ellie Goulding feat. Red Velvet

—

“So, what you mean to say is… you’re not coming? Like, at all?”

The bright yellow plastic of the rotary phone was slightly cool against your overheating skin, which was constantly veiled in a thin layer of sweat whenever you stayed on the farm property instead of the main house on the opposite side of the island. It was the first week of May, which meant it was already humid again. If it wasn’t the time for the daily afternoon rain showers, it might as well have felt like it was raining with how saturated the air was.

“I’m sorry, Bean, I just can’t get on a plane right now. I thought it would be fine it we stretched out the time between flights, but all my doctors are saying I need to just stay here between now and the birth, so…”

Your sister’s voice trailed off and you had to wait for a moment to be sure it wasn’t the poor reception for the phone call running across the four thousand miles that separated you— the four thousand miles that would continue to separate you for the rest of the summer.

You exhaled and twirled the aged spiral phone cord that could barely hold its shape around your index finger, staring at the concrete floor and scrunching your toes. “Well, I’m already here, obviously… do you… you want me to stay here then? Take care of stuff?” You asked hesitantly, already having a feeling of what the answer would be.

A crackly sigh of relief came through the other line. “Little Bean, you are the best, Yunho was worried about asking you to stay and man the farm for the summer harvest but I knew you would just offer! You’re the best like that, you know?” You gritted your teeth and forced a smile through, even though no one was there to witness it. “Okay, so we’ll ship out the supplies in the next few days. Yunho is gonna email you a list of delivery dates of materials for the projects he had planned for the summer and a few contractor contacts…”

Her voice warbled on, and you could only nod your head and vocalize an ‘mhmm’ every so often, listening to her rattle off instructions and information that you knew would be sent in an email too. You’d been looking forward to spending the summer with her— you hadn’t gotten a proper chance to visit for more than a weekend since she and Yunho had gotten married about two years ago— but it turned out this wouldn’t be it. You couldn’t blame her though; she was approaching the third trimester of her pregnancy. You’d do anything for her, even this, even isolating yourself on a farm for four months. Alone.

Not exactly the leave of absence you’d been hoping for from work, but it would have to do.

✧ ✧ ✧

This was supposed to be a vacation. A break. Some much needed time off, away from your job, your career, and your “normal” life. You told yourself over and over again you were looking forward to it. And besides, it would all be worth it, because of all the time you’d get to spend with your sister after so long.

And then she had to betray you by going and getting fucking knocked up, with twins no less.

Fucking happily married couples with their god damn healthy ass sex lives and family planning and wanting to raise children. What the fuck was that all about?

It had been so long since your last vacation. Years, in fact. So long, you had over two months of paid time off accrued at work, and back at New Years you’d made the preliminary plans to spend a month on the farm in Hawaii with her, bonding and just relaxing. Sure, it would require some manual labor for the business here and there, but mostly just to rest.

What a joke that turned out to be.

The farm in Hawaii. You know, the coffee farm your brother in law bought four years ago on a dare from your sister, because he said he could totally pull it off as a side hustle, and she said he wouldn’t be able to? Yeah, that one. Fast forward to today and the side hustle became a full fledged passion that roped in a good amount of the family into the business. Siblings, cousins, parents, all involved in different aspects of package design, social media marketing, distribution and wholesale— everyone except you, who stuck with your soul sucking job in advertising, the same industry your brother in law had since left behind.

The farm and roasting wasn’t an overnight success by any means, but in the last year the brand had really taken off in the craft coffee scene. After all, Kona coffee was well sought after, and one could only claim the name ‘Kona’ if it was grown on the same two thousand or so acres of land on Hawaii’s big island. You know, the same area of land you were living on for the remainder of the summer?

Right. The whole summer.

It was just supposed to be the month of May. And then it turned into May and some of June, when you’d asked your sister to make more concrete plans, and she kept brushing it off. And then the week before you actually got off the plane, you hadn’t booked the return ticket, because you were still waiting for her answer. And then the phone call, and now, this was… indefinite? No, that was being too dramatic; if anything, it would be up through the birth. Based on the number of projects Yunho had planned for the farm, through the remainder of the summer was how long everything would take. Just you and a little over five acres of land and the summer heat. The thought of an extended isolation had your breath catching in your throat, but the last thing you wanted to do was complain or call for help. Stubborn and proud, you wouldn’t have made the offer to stay if you didn’t mean it, if you didn’t think you could handle it. There was no way you were backing out now.

When Yunho had first bought the farm, it had been a rough first few years of refining the coffee plants that had been on the land and uncared for for a number of years, but the last two summers had provided a steady increase in the harvest yield. There was a small farmhouse on the property, with two small bedrooms, a shower, and a small kitchen and living area. A few miles down the coast was the nicer, newer condo that the business had bought, a multi-bedroom unit with some better amenities for when more of your family wanted to visit. It felt weird spending time there— it was too nice, too clean, and quite frankly you had enough to keep yourself busy with on the farm property, you’d rather not have to spend time driving back and forth every day. So you opted to spend most of your nights sleeping here, even though it meant only ceiling fans and no air conditioning.

The farmhouse had very shitty, very limited wifi and a grand total of three electrical outlets outside of what was used to power the oven and refrigerator. One of those outlets was, of course, dedicated to an espresso machine on the kitchen counter, which you had gotten acquainted with over the last two weeks. It was an older model and a little temperamental (the one at the condo was much nicer), but it was still from a decent manufacturer, and you could still use it to pulled a decent shot.

Most of the time you worked in silence, and most of the time you were never too aware of how much time had passed, other than when the sun went down and it was suddenly dark out. You weren’t always this absent minded, you swore— maybe it was a byproduct of being alone for so long—

A loud, high pitched whine filled your ears, followed by some scratching at the door that lead to the lanai outside. You sighed, standing up from the kitchen table and walking over to face the monster that had made it.

“What? What do you want now?”

Staring back at you from the the other side of the screen door was what you’d affectionally referred to as The Thirty-Three Pound Menace— the medium sized stray dog that your brother-in-law so conveniently forgot to mention had been living on the farm for the last few months. It had been waiting outside the farmhouse when you first arrived, and you’d learned from the neighbors that Yunho had taken a liking to the stray and had arranged for them to feed it in his absence. But now that you were here, taking care of the dog was added to your list of daily chores. It seemed to not want to leave the farm property unless actively accompanied by you, with the assurance that you’d be bringing it back with you.

With a roll of your eyes you hip checked the door open just enough to let the dog inside the house. It circled you several times, sniffing at your knees before sitting and panting, staring up at you expectantly. In the two weeks you’d been here, the majority of your conversations were between you and this, a being that couldn’t talk back. Maybe you liked it that way. “What, dinner? Fine, fine,” you grumbled, shuffling to the cabinet and pulling out a can of wet food.

Your meals had consisted of relatively simple dishes, but today you were cranky at the confirmation that your summer was not going to go as planned. Tonight’s dinner featured a bowl of cereal and a coffee mug full of cold white wine.

You ate in silence. You drank in silence. The only noise came from the hum of the ceiling fan overhead, and the occasional sound of the dog, cleaning its paws and laying by your feet protectively. Why it seemed so determined to win over your affection, you had no idea.

After sitting in silence with only your thoughts and the now sleeping dog to keep you company for what felt like hours and downing a second mug full of wine, you found yourself letting out a loud yell, startling the dog and waking it. In a fury, you pulled out the laptop you had for the sole purpose of checking once a day for emails from Yunho and connected it to the shitty, sub-par wifi with just enough patience to navigate to an airline’s website and search flights back to the states. You were looking for the cheapest, most reasonable one you could find. After all of five minutes of research and a quick round on mental math, you clicked on a date and hit the ‘book now’ button before you could second guess yourself, slamming the computer shut once the payment went through and shoving it away from you across the table.

“September 10th,” you grumbled out loud for only you and the dog to hear. Standing from the chair, the legs scraping loudly against the floor, you crossed the room and stopped in front of the wall calendar your sister had put up the last time she’d visited the farm just after New Years. You lifted a few pages and flipped forward to the month of September. Red marker in hand, you found the date and circled it rather aggressively, several times over. You looked down at the dog, watching you patiently with its head tilted. “You got that? I’m getting off this fucking island on September 10th.”

✧ ✧ ✧

The day your life fell apart came twelve days later just before nine in the morning.

Mondays were the delivery day, that’s what Yunho had laid out in his instructional emails to you. Your only source of personal transportation was an older jeep, one you didn’t enjoy driving, given that it had no top and needed some mechanical work done. So you’d made arrangements and had your groceries delivered on Monday mornings, buying mostly direct from another farm on the other side of the island, and they were always kind enough to act as the courier for whatever additional miscellaneous supplies you’d request, regardless of where they’d have to go to procure them.

There was a winding driveway that lead up to the house from the main road, and a larger, wider drive up a less steep hillside for larger vehicles for delivery. You were fully expecting the truck that lumbered up the delivery road and came to a stop just outside the barn which housed the massive coffee roaster and stored most of the processed green beans from harvest. Even though it had only been three weeks, there was a routine that had slowly been settling into place: the sound of the truck coming to a stop riled up the dog, the dog came running from wherever and started barking, you’d get your groceries and any other assorted items, the dog would get a treat because your delivery boy had a soft spot for the creature, and you’d pay for your goods. “Hey Jin,” you called out over the barking from the front of the barn, hands currently full with a sack of processed coffee beans you’d hoisted over your shoulder. “You can just leave the groceries on the porch, I’ll put them inside in a few. Did you manage to get me the bags of fertilizer and some wood stakes?” A loud thud sounded as you dropped the bag to its resting place on the concrete floor.

“I mean, I can go put these inside if that’s easier. And yeah, there’s ten bags to get us started, we can have more delivered next week if you still need ‘em.”

You whipped around to face whoever had just spoken, because that voice was most certainly not Jin.

He was tall like Jin, had wide shoulders like Jin, and his hair was kept just a bit long and looked ridiculously shiny and soft and like you could run your fingers through it like Jin’s. It was a lighter brown with some honeyed highlights running through it, compared to the dark brown almost black of Jin’s. You tensed, seeing him carrying a brown paper bag with a loaf of bread and the leafy green tops of carrots sticking out the top. He wasn’t looking at you, rather, he was far too occupied with bending down slightly and scratching behind the ear of the dog who was currently whining and wagging its tail at his feet. Some guard dog it was.

Without a second thought, you reached for the first sharp object you could find, which happened to be the box cutter you used to cut open the burlap bags the beans came back from the processing plant in. “You’re not Jin,” you said tersely, holding the utility knife by your hip defensively.

“Chill out killer, he’s harmless,” a more familiar voice called. Seokjin, your regular delivery driver whose family owned the farm you bought directly from, came into view carrying another two bags of produce and a small pile of envelopes. “Picked up your mail on my way up, the box was practically overflowing. Do you ever check that thing?” You’d first met Jin two years ago when you’d come to visit your sister and Yunho for a long weekend. He’d become a good friend of Yunho’s and was one of the people who would take turns feeding the dog when no one else was here.

Ignoring the unknown man, you relaxed your shoulders slightly and placed the knife down on the table behind you. “Thanks,” you grumbled, taking the small pile of letters from him. Admittedly, you hadn’t checked the mailbox since the day after you’d arrived on the farm, mostly out of sloth and spite. You sifted through the letters— mostly junk mail, with a few bills and notices relating to the business. You put those in front so you could look through them later, when you’d finished the physical work for the day. You tore one envelope open in particular when you noticed it was addressed directly to you and had your sister and Yunho’s Illinois address in the upper corner. It was a letter postmarked from two weeks ago, which struck you as odd, because what the hell would he bother writing in a letter that he couldn’t just send you in an email or a text or a phone call? You started reading aloud softly to yourself.

“‘My Dearest Bean… First of all I want to apologize for the change in plans, but with your sister’s condition her doctors just don’t recommend her traveling,’ God, he’s so dramatic she’s not terminally ill she’s just pregnant. Blah blah blah, I don’t care, you’re full of absolute shite, Yunho,” you began skimming through his lengthy pre amble, looking for the purpose behind the note. Without reading the middle you flipped the stationary paper over to see his handwriting covered the entire back of the page, too. “God, he’s so long winded. Oh, here we go, the very end— ‘I promise we’ll make it up to you, thank you for running the farm and taking care of Puppy, please be nice to Johnny and treat him well, he seems like a good kid.” You stared at the words written on the paper and looked up at Jin. “Who the fuck is Johnny?”

The man next to him cleared his throat and held his hand up. “Johnny! I’m uh, that’s me. You must be _____— I’ve heard a lot about you from Yunho! I’m Johnny Seo, it’s nice to meet you,” he said with a smile, reaching a hand out.

You eyed it but made no move to reciprocate the action. “Cool. You know Yunho. Lots of people know Yunho, he’s a huge fucking flirt, social butterfly of the century, the man never shuts up. Why should I be nice to you?”

He shifted on his feet and his outstretched hand retreated. “Oh. Uh. I’m uh, here for the summer,” he explained, sounding almost confused. “Didn’t— didn’t Yunho tell you?”

Your eyes bugged out and you looked over to Jin. “Jin who the fuck is this and why is he on my farm?” You whispered.

Your friend laughed. “You read the end of Yunho’s letter. I’m sure if you read the whole thing it would explain more. This is Johnny, and he’s here for the summer. He’s gonna help you out! I know the list of all the projects you need to finish this summer is lengthy, and plus look at the guy, he’s jacked! You could use the muscle for manual labor. More work for him, less for you, right? And look, the poor dog you refuse to give a name to even likes him!” Jin gestured comically at Johnny. You looked over, sizing him up some— Jin wasn’t wrong. The stranger was muscular on top of being tall, and under the capped sleeves of his tee shirt you saw his arms that looked the size of your head. The dog was still circling him, sniffing and begging for attention.

Johnny tried smiling again. “Yunho mentioned there was a lot of construction type work to do. I uh, had nothing else planned so he said I could stay on the farm for the summer and work in exchange for food and a place to sleep. I take it he uh, didn’t run that by you first, did he?”

Your grip on the papers in hand tightened and you felt your jaw tense involuntarily. “No, he managed to not mention that once to me. How did you even get here?” You hissed back.

“I picked him up at the airport this morning,” Jin answered calmly, “Yunho gave me a buzz a few days ago to ask if I could bring him here with this week’s groceries.”

“So he managed to arrange for him to get on a plane and secure transportation to the farm but couldn’t be bothered to call me and let me know?”

Jin only laughed, his eyes crinkling. “I’m pretty sure he knows you well enough by now to know that this would have been your reaction whatever way he told you.” Despite the kinship you’d felt growing between the two of you, Jin was Yunho’s friend first, and it only made sense that his allegiance would be to him first. Of course he’d side with Yunho on this matter. “And yes, like Johnny said I did bring a bundle of plant stakes and ten bags of fertilizer— they’re in the back of the truck bed.”

“Oh, I could get those—” Johnny started, moving to step towards the truck.

You could barely think straight. First they bailed on you unexpectedly to spend the summer on the farm alone. That was fine— you’d gotten that through your head, and had come to terms with that. But suddenly springing a plus one on you, without your consent? Absolutely the fuck not.

“Yeah. Don’t need help. Thanks,” you spat, grabbing the bags of groceries from him and brushing past, stomping your way back to the farmhouse.

Johnny stood frozen for a moment before stammering, looking from Jin to your retreating figure and back again. “I should— I should talk to her, right? Or do I—”

“Whoa, don’t think too hard there handsome, I can smell wood burning. Don’t stress about it. She’s just a little… touchy. Let me talk to her,” Jin patted Johnny on the back before heading up the path to the farmhouse after you.

You’d stormed into the house and slammed the groceries down on the counter and let out a screech of rage before picking up the receiver of the yellow rotary phone and dialing. Tapping you foot incessantly, you waited as it rang.

“He-llo~?” The singsong voice that came through the other end was far too amused with itself, more so than usual, and that’s how you knew he knew why you were calling.

“Jung Yunho you better be thankful you knocked up my sister because if it weren’t for the babies in her womb I would fly myself across the Pacific and flay you alive,” you seethed through gritted teeth.

In true unbothered fashion, your brother in law only laughed at your threat. “Ah, so I take it your employee has arrived safely! I’ll have to thank Seokjin for getting him from the airport. Can you give the Kims a pound of the special medium roast as a token of my gratitude?”

“No!” You yelled back, “No! I will not! I’m already beyond frustrated that I’m on this island alone for the entire summer, I’m doing this as a favor because we’re family! I’m not your slave, Yunho! Where was my warning, huh? When were you going to ask if I was okay with you sending some stranger to live in the same house as me, huh?!”

The familiar ache in your chest started to swell, and breathing became difficult. ‘Not now,’ you thought bitterly, ‘Please not right now-’

You curled your free hand into a fist and pressed your nails into your palm, hard, grounding yourself. Yunho’s voice on the phone blurred out and by the time his words started making sense again, you’d already missed what he’d been saying. “I’m not saying you have to like the kid, just show him some hospitality, yeah? You just said it yourself, you didn’t want to be alone this summer, and now you won’t be. I know you’re a good cook so that’s why I told him food would be included. Don’t worry, I’ve already sent some pre-payments to the Kims, so your grocery orders are doubled for the rest of the summer.” His voice went quiet for a second. You rubbed at your temple in frustration, squinting your eyes shut and forcing the mere thought of tears deep back into the recesses of your brain. “Bean? You still there?”

“Don’t get all pretend concerned, Yunho. And stop using my childhood nickname any time you want something from me.” Your voice was quieter now, the intensity of your emotions subsiding, but the betrayal you felt still running strong. “Fine. I’ll tolerate him. But there better be a case of wine in next week’s groceries to make this bearable.”

“Done and done! You’re gonna love him Bean, he’s really great. He’ll be good company.” The continued use of your childhood nickname from anyone other than your sister always gave you pause.

“I said tolerate not befriend. There’s a difference,” you clarified quickly. A knock at the door startled you, and you jumped and looked to see Jin standing by the front door, a roll of wooden stakes under his arm. You rolled your eyes and waved your arm to shoo him away, pointing at the phone pressed to your ear. “Look, Yunho, I don’t know what you’re hoping to see me get out of this, but if he drives me insane I can’t promise that he’ll walk away from this unscathed.”

His laugh echoed through the receiver and reverberated against your skin. “I just think it would do you some good to have some human interaction, that’s all. Your sister too. She says hi, by the way,” he added softly, “And so do the little ones.”

You scoffed. Yunho always brought up your sister as a way of diffusing your temper. He knew it would always work. “They’re still in embryonic fluid, they can’t talk and they certainly don’t have cognitive function.” Sometimes you wondered if even Yunho had that with the wild ideas that went through his mind.

“Ever the romantic, you are. You know, soon they’ll be able to think! And they’ll be thinking of their favorite auntie, and how much they can’t wait to meet her! So she can’t be arrested for murder between now and when they’re born, because babies can’t go to prison!”

“I’m telling your sister you said that,” you challenged. With an exhale, you did your best to let go of the frustration and tension inside and politely ended the phone call. You were trying to clear your head and collect yourself before heading back outside when you heard a yell that sounded all too much like Jin’s voice.

“What fresh hell—” you started, shuffling back outside in the direction of the commotion where you saw Jin, somewhat struggling under the weight of two bags of fertilizer, and Johnny, now with a baseball cap turned backwards on his head, easily hoisting a stack of four bags without slouching.  

Your eyebrow ticked up upon the realization that it was almost seventy pounds that he was slinging around like it was nothing. “Anywhere specific you want these?” He asked innocently, looking up at where you stood on the lanai just outside the door. You almost cursed him out when he blinked at you twice.

You pointed your left arm down the hill, the opposite direction of the way to the barn. “Shed. Next to the vegetable garden.” You wrinkled your nose at him. “And lose the hat. Or at least don’t wear it backwards. Makes you look like an ass.”

Johnny’s mouth hung open for a moment before he hummed and winked. “You got it, Boss! Come on handsome, if you can carry those good looks you can carry some dirt,” he called back to Jin, who was currently grumbling about how manual labor wasn’t a part of his delivery arrangement.

The hairs on your arm stood up on edge as you watched Johnny laugh deeply as he ambled his way in the direction you’d pointed. The thirty three pound menace next to you whined and wagged its tail, panting as it went from watching you to watching Johnny’s retreating figure. You looked down and made eye contact. “If I survive this, I’m going to kill Yunho.”

✧ ✧ ✧

There was no case of wine in the grocery deliveries the following week. The reasoning Yunho gave was that per Jin’s investigation, the liquor stores were all out of your favorite wine, so there was no point in sending you a sub par alternative. It was absolute crap, but you had better things to do than chew out your brother in law over the phone. Took way more energy than it was worth.

So far, Johnny was making good on his word and earning his keep. At first, you’d tried avoiding him as much as possible, intentionally waking up hours ahead of him and starting your day when the sun rose. You never made much noise in the mornings, the loudest thing you did was make coffee, and lately you’d opted for a pour over versus pulling shots of espresso. You weren’t personally one for breakfast, choosing just coffee and maybe a piece of fruit instead. This morning you felt a little hungrier than usual, so you thought you’d get yourself a bowl of cereal. Peering into your pantry, you saw that on the shelf where there had been a stash of cereal boxes, there was now nothing.

“Where the fuck are my cocoa pebbles?” You swore in shock, not realizing you weren’t alone in the kitchen.

“Shit sorry, I ate the last of those yesterday.”

You whirled around to see Johnny, still seemingly half asleep and with some gnarly bedhead, yawning and rubbing at his eyes. His lips were so perfectly pouty, one small part of your brain almost thought he looked cute like this.

But no, he wasn’t cute, he was a thief— he’d stolen all of your cereal stash. “Did you seriously eat through four boxes in a week?” You asked incredulously.

“It was three and a quarter! And yeah I don’t know, I’m always hungry and just one bowl of cereal isn’t filling enough, so I usually have two, or three...” He mumbled, voice trailing off as he rubbed a hand behind his head sheepishly.

You snorted. And then a thought came across you. “Johnny,” you said calmly, the feeling of his name on your tongue foreign and strange. Was this the first time you’d addressed him by name since his arrival? You couldn’t remember. “Do you not know how to cook?”

He hummed thoughtfully for a second. “No-pe!” He popped the p sound in the word. How was he this cheerful, even first thing in the morning? “I mean, I can like, boil water and cook pasta and stuff like that. I think I successfully grilled pork belly once, though it was probably doused in too much oil and too many spices. My college experience was funded almost exclusively on instant dinners and takeout for two years, and then for the second half one of my roommates was an actual chef, so, no one was allowed in the kitchen ‘cept for him.”

“Honestly, I am shocked that you haven’t perished in some tragically strange idiotic accident yet,” you sighed and shuffled to the fridge, pulling out a carton of eggs and a pack of bacon. You grabbed a frying pan from the cabinet under the stove and clicked the burner on, reaching for the oil bottle that lived on the counter top and drizzling some in the pan.

Johnny shuffled closer to inspect what you were doing and let out a gasp of appreciation. “You’re making me eggs and bacon?”

“I’m making me eggs and bacon,” you corrected, “But I guess I’ll make enough for you too,” you said as you peeled the strips off the packaging and placed them into the pan with a sizzle. You reached for a few eggs and cracked four into the pan directly, cocked your head at the amount of food, and then grabbed two more eggs and added them in before taking a fork and scrambling them all together, adding salt and white pepper to the bubbling liquid. You glanced up at Johnny, still watching you, slightly curious. “I don’t trust you. You say you’re an adult but you eat like a teenage boy still. There’s never any leftovers.” After a few minutes you flipped the strips of bacon over and then quickly chopped up a green onion and scraped it onto the scramble just before the eggs finished cooking.

Johnny watched you the whole time, and you felt only slightly uneasy under his gaze. When you turned off the stove after plated your food and stepping away to pour yourself some coffee and he didn’t move, you gestured at the pan in a fashion as if to silently ask him ‘What?’

“Oh!” He gasped out lightly, springing into action and plating the food for himself. You hadn’t bothered to sit down at the table, instead holding the plate in front of you as you leaned against the counter and ate. Johnny followed your lead, taking a bite and groaning audibly in enjoyment at he chewed. He smiled and his eyes shone, almost sparkling. You watched him curiously for a moment before he mumbled out “Your cooking is really good! It uh, reminds me of my mom’s. She’s a great cook.”

You kept your lips tightly shut at the apparent compliment. “It’s just eggs, you weirdo. Finish up and do the dishes. When you’re done meet me by the shed. Today you’re stripping off the old paint and removing any of the rotting boards and disposing of them,” you instructed while placing your empty plate in the sink. His tasks for the day were the next phase in slowly rebuilding the dilapidated shed on the west side of the property to make it useful for storage of all the tools you used to tend to the fruit trees and vegetable garden nearby.

He flashed a smile at you and gave a mock salute. “Aye-aye, captain, I am at your service.”

“Oh shut up,” you grumbled, downing more of your coffee before trudging off.

It was going to be a long summer.

✧ ✧ ✧

“I’m telling you Wendy, I’m going to need an alibi, I really am going to murder my brother in law.”

“What, for giving you live-in eye candy for the summer and hinting that he thinks you need to get laid?”

“Ugh, no, that’s not— hold up, you don’t agree with him, do you?”

The sound of your best friend’s laughter through the phone had you dragging your hands over your face and pulling down at your eyelids dramatically, as if she could see your reaction.

On Thursdays, you finished up your work for the day around 4pm so you could pull up a chair next to the rotary phone and make time for the weekly scheduled phone call with Wendy. She’d insisted on the arrangement after you went six days without texting her, which you’d insisted was because service was spotty, but she’d accurately called you out on being cranky and stewing by yourself.

You and Wendy had met during your freshman year of college. By graduation, you’d lived together for three years, and made a vow to move to the same city together post grad, hence why she was still your roommate now— or was, seeing as you were on the island instead of back in the two bedroom apartment you shared. There was a five hour timezone difference between Hawaii and Chicago, so you’d figured out a schedule that worked for both of you. The calls had a tendency to last for several hours, and depending on how much wine you’d drink while on the phone with her would include bathroom breaks and you inevitably swearing at whatever you were cooking for dinner than night.

“Honey, please. I love you. Dearly, and against all other advice, you’re my best friend— but you need to get laid. You haven’t been this tense since our last finals week of senior year. And clearly you’re not opposed to the idea of Eye Candy banging your brains out, otherwise you wouldn’t have described him as, and I quote, ‘dumb hot and stupidly ripped’. When are you gonna send me a photo so I have something better to work with?”  

“Okay but are you sure you’re not the sexually frustrated one here and you’re just trying to live vicariously through me?”

Wendy’s hum sounded through the line. “I mean, can’t we both be desperately horny and in need of getting some? It’s not ideal but it is possible. Plus, I’m not the one that didn’t pack her vibrator—”

You let out a whine interrupting her as you leaned back in your chair, swirling the wine in your glass a few times as you held the phone to your ear with your shoulder. “Shut up stop reminding me! I regret it but no I’m not letting you send me a new one, especially not with a guy living with me. Come on, my stories are boring, it’s the same thing every day. I wake up, I feed the dog, I tell him what to do and then I hide away doing my own chores. When are you gonna tell me more about that girl you were seeing— what was her name, Joo-something?”

“Nice try, we’re not changing the subject with my dating life. Seriously, babe, you should just think about it.”

“And what, make it awkward for the rest of the summer? No thanks,” you shot her idea down quickly.

“I’m willing to bet money you’ll cave before the end of the summer. Plus, who doesn’t love a good ol’ summer fling? And who says you ever have to see him again once it’s all over?”

As much as you’d loathe to admit it, Wendy had a bit of a point there. “Cute, but you and I both know I’m too high strung for a temporary fling. Plus, I’m not in the mood to catch feelings right now.”

“If I find a way to replenish your wine supply, would that help?”

You groaned dramatically once more. “Not with the sexual frustration, but with my overall wellbeing, yes, yes it would.”

Wendy squealed on the other end of the phone. “Ha! So you admit it, you are sexually frustrated!”

“Woman, when in the years that you’ve known me have I not been at least some kind of frustrated?” You acknowledged.

Your best friend laughed in agreement, understanding she wasn’t going to get much more out of you about Johnny, and began a lengthy and detailed story about her last three dates with a girl she’d met through a friend of a friend. As you listened to how her voice held a dreamlike quality to it when she talked about her, you couldn’t help the pang of jealousy you felt and a sinking feeling in your gut that you’d been lying through your teeth earlier, and that maybe, subconsciously, you did want to catch feelings.

Maybe.

✧ ✧ ✧

“So… is there a story or a reason why you’re here instead of Yunho?”

You lifted your head from your focused task of sorting out the peaberry beans from the regular beans. It was tedious, time consuming, annoying as all hell, and made you want a drink stiffer than the coffee that you were certain made up more of your body fluids than blood or water did at this point. “Yes,” you said curtly after studying his face for a minute, not providing any further explanation. Johnny had his hands in his pockets and pursed his lips, nodding for a moment where he stood in the entrance to the barn.

You had set up your mad scientist level organization for the process all across the concrete floor of the refinished barn. Over the last week, Johnny had finished replacing the boards on the siding of the shed, stained the wood, and sealed it with a protective coat. He even managed to remove all the broken glass from the windows without sustaining any injuries, which you hadn’t thought possible for him. This morning you had him weed the vegetable garden, prune back the hedges along the back side of the house, and clean the deck of the lanai. How did he possibly still have any energy left? He was definitely a harder worker than you’d first given him credit for— you shook your head, not wanting to continue a spiral on Johnny and any detailed thoughts about him.

Back to your task at hand.

The harvest had been divided into several metal basins of five pounds of beans each, and in front of each basin you’d placed two dishes on either side. The point was to be able to weigh how many beans ended up being peaberry from each five pounds of harvest, and to see if you could leverage a steady average from the yield and better plan for how many pounds of the limited roast you could advertise for and set the price per pound accordingly. You wore a face mask and nylon disposable gloves while sorting, and despite being an annoying task, after a while it became a way for you to zone out and let the hours pass by. When the dishes were empty and you first started sorting them, there was a distinct echo of the small beans hitting the metal dish over and over again, until enough beans were lining the bottom that it started to dull the noise.

“Sigh.”

A slight puff of air washed over you. Did he just say the word ‘sigh’ out loud? And was he hovering over your shoulder?

“Can I help you?” You asked, pausing your sorting for only a moment.

“Isn’t it my job to ask you that question? I’m not some layabout, I am trying to earn my keep, you know,” Johnny said in response, rubbing his hands together and eyeing the basin of beans in front of him. You were almost inclined to hand it to him. Over the last four weeks, you’d gotten a lot of decent work out of him, even if you did feel somewhat micro-manage-y half the time with the tasks you did give him. “Okay, how does this work?”

You groaned exaggeratedly and excessively, rolling your eyes. When you didn’t answer, he reached forward and plucked a single coffee bean from the basin and examined it closely. “Hey, this one’s funny looking!”

“Don’t touch them with your bare hands, that’s just going to waste them.” You swatted the bean out of his hand and then looked at your own gloves and sighed. “If you’re insisting on helping, fine. But you need sanitary gear to handle them. Go wash your hands, there’s masks and gloves by the sink,” you grumbled, standing up and taking off your own gloves to dispose of them and replace them with a fresh pair.

Johnny followed obediently, trailing behind you a little too innocently for someone of his size. “Yes, the beans still need to be roasted and that’ll kill any bacteria, but I just like to be extra cautious, okay? Because it’s a mutation there’s no rule to how much of a yield I’ll get with each harvest so I don’t like wasting even a single bean,” you reasoned, settling back down and folding your legs back at the now half-sorted metal bowl.

“So, we’re just sorting the weird ones from the normal ones?” He asked while picking up another peaberry bean, this time with gloved hands and a mask over his mouth and nose.

You took a quick glance and nodded to confirm that yes, the bean in his hand was one of the weird ones he should be looking for. “They’re called peaberry. Normally, a coffee cherry has two seeds in it, or beans. Those two seeds mature in the center of the cherry and you get one flat side and one side touching it. Sometimes people call them ‘flat beans’ but those are the ‘normal’ beans, as you said,” you explained, sifting through your bowl rather quickly. “But the peaberry ones only have one bean inside. The bean is round, so that’s where the name ‘peaberry’ comes from, because—“

“Because it’s round so it looks like a pea, oh I get it! That’s funny,” he laughed, examining the rounded bean in front of him. “Okay, got it, so we’re sorting the peaberry from the flat beans?”

“You proud of your new vocab words?” You snorted, listening for the well known tink of a bean hitting the empty metal bowls. He giggled in acknowledgement.

You worked in relative silence, a small rhythm growing between the two of you. Johnny worked at about half the speed you did, but you couldn’t knock him for it, as it had taken you a while to pick up the pace when you first started hand sorting like this.

“How do you even know Yunho?” You finally asked. Four weeks since he’d arrived, and you’d never bothered to get to know him well enough to listen to the full story of how he’d ended up here.

Johnny shifted in his seated position, clearly a little taken aback that you’d bothered to ask him anything, given your track record. “Oh. Met him in Chicago when I was home visiting. At a local coffee shop, where my buddy Jaehyun is the manager. I went to go bother Jaehyun at work and he was just, shootin’ the shit with one of his coffee suppliers who was doing a visit. That supplier was Yunho. Started talking about how he owned the farm where the beans were grown, and that he wasn’t going to be able to spend the summer out there like he’d planned, so he was looking for some reliable help to uh, take care of things. Mentioned someone else would be on site and in charge, but offered the whole ‘room and board in exchange for copious amounts of physical labor’.”

“And you said yes? Just like that, no questions asked?” It seemed a little too easy, but then again, Johnny had proved to be a little too easygoing.

He shrugged. “Well, yeah. That’s kinda the point of my whole year. Just, go with the flow.” You glanced over, but Johnny was looking down, focused on the task at hand.

You nodded and hummed and turned back to your own basin to continue sorting. A few beats passed by before you couldn’t help yourself— “You’ve said that before. ‘Go with the flow’, or that you ‘had nothing else going on’. What do you mean by that?”

Out of the corner of your eye you saw Johnny’s ears perk up, followed by movement of his cheeks implying the curve of a slight smile. “I’m on a gap year, I guess is what the kids would say. Or maybe sabbatical? Though it’s not like I have any tenure enough to qualify for the real meaning of the term. But yeah, anyways— year off from work. Not getting paid or anything, but, when it’s over if I want it, my old job is waiting for me.”

“How come? That seems so—”

“Impulsive?”

You frowned. “Yeah, exactly.”

“Yeah, exactly,” he repeated, but not in a mocking manner— it was in agreement. “I guess the best way to explain it is this: I was a huge workaholic. I’ve only had my one job post grad after studying business, and I woke up one morning a month before my twenty-fifth birthday and realized it was sucking the soul out of me. It was all I ate, slept, breathed, and it wasn’t even what I wanted to be doing with my life, I realized.”

His pain started sounding all too familiar. “What is it you wanted to do instead, then?”

Even under the mask covering the lower half of his face, his smile reached his eyes. “Photography. I got into an art school when I was applying to colleges, but it just seemed so… risky. I would’ve had to take out loans and instead I got almost a full ride for a bigger university, so I went for that instead. Studied business, managed to grind through undergrad and grad school in four years and walked out with a combined BS and MBA. Took classes every summer to make it happen. I think after graduation, I went back to my parents house and passed out and slept for twenty-three hours straight,” he laughed, clearly recalling a specific memory. “I felt really accomplished when it was over, and even had the job offer already lined up. But I wish I had had more courage to study what I was truly passionate about.

“So after an almost three year long stint at the company and a vested 401k, I decided to take a year off to just, travel the world a bit. I grinded so hard through college I never got the chance to do study abroad, so I guess I wanted to make up for that? I never used to act on impulse or follow my heart, so, that was the goal for this year. To do only that.”

His words struck you differently. This was a whole new side to Johnny that you really weren’t expecting— not that you had a particularly three dimensional view of him to begin with. “And your heart lead you here… to my brother-in-law’s coffee farm?”

He laughed again, trying to hide just how thrilled he was that you were actually engaging in a full on conversation with him. “Well, sort of. My year off started back in February, day before my birthday. Got on a plane and did a few months backpack trip around Asia. I had no clue what would be next, thought maybe Australia, maybe Europe, but when I got off the plane in Chicago to see my mom and regroup on my packing, I decided to go straight from the airport to surprise and bother Jaehyun at his coffee shop. That day I met Yunho. That was a little over six weeks ago. And now I’m here, with you.”

There was something about the way he said that that didn’t sit well in your stomach— with you, like it was a good thing, like he liked it. You didn’t deign him with a response to the end of his story. Like an extension of the current state of your mind, your hands were reaching, feeling around for something, but you were only met with the flat surface of the bottom of the basin.

You looked down to see the last of the metal bowls was empty. Somehow, you’d managed to sort through all twenty pounds of coffee beans. You pulled the face mask down under your chin as you stared at the metal surface for a moment before standing abruptly and turning on your heels.

Confused, Johnny called your name out after you questioningly. “It’s getting late and I’m hungry. You uh, bag up the peaberry and set it aside and then wash out all the metal trays,” you gave him his next set of tasks quickly to make your escape back to the farmhouse to put some distance between the two of you.

A little over an hour later, you’d put together a curry on the stove with some stew meat and a base that included apples, carrots, potatoes, and melted dark chocolate for a more mellow sweet taste to balance it out. You thought about the first time Johnny complimented your cooking when it was just eggs, and how he’d continued to compliment it with every new meal you’d make. You wouldn’t call yourself a chef by any means, thinking that enjoying your go-to recipes would be a more acquired taste, and were in the midst of serving yourself when Johnny came inside with the dog trailing behind him. You didn’t bother saying much, you never did when you’d finished cooking a meal; just a grunt acknowledging his presence and a head nod at the food before you took your bowl and went through the door to go sit on the lanai by yourself. Absent-mindedly, you whistled for the dog to follow you.

Johnny kept to himself that night, eating at the kitchen table, content with looking up out the bay window to see you hand feeding small chunks of meat from your bowl to the dog, even going so far as to pet its head. He shook his head to himself thinking about how you pretended to be so opposed to the dog, and how you still hadn’t given it a name, and smiled as he took another bite.

✧ ✧ ✧

At five weeks, you stopped watching Johnny like a hawk, and started giving him more lengthy tasks that you, quite frankly, just didn’t want to do yourself. Though, if you were being honest, every task you gave him was one you didn’t want to do yourself.

Such as his current one, which was to prep the ground for a new row of sapling fruit trees. You’d walked down from the farmhouse over the hill to the open area next to a row of lemon and guava trees where you’d set him to the task of digging a row of four foot wide, four foot deep holes. The week after next, Jin’s delivery would be a much larger one, and include a number of sapling fruit trees from his family’s farm— rambutans, limes, and mangos, to name a few. You wanted to make sure the holes got dug and the irrigation system set in place properly well in advance.

When you came to a stop at the end of the row of freshly dug holes in the ground you blinked once. Twice. A third time. The sight before you was impossible to comprehend. Because not only was Johnny finishing digging the last of ten massive holes having taken less than three hours to do so, but he had been digging them shirtless.

“What. What?” You asked, staring, eyes wide and brow furrowed.

“Huh?” He asked, looking up from the bottom of the last hole and swishing his head to get his bangs, matted with sweat against his forehead, out of his face. The sun had crested over to this side of the hill now and it was blisteringly hot out. Standing in direct sunlight, doing physical labor, obviously he’d worked up a sweat.

You had to tear your eyes away from the shine on his torso and return them to just his face. “Where the fuck is your shirt?”

He pointed to where a lump of fabric was off to the side next to a water bottle. “It’s fucking hot out, I was dying,” he reasoned.

“You’re hot,” you mumbled under your breath, turning on your heel to give yourself reprieve from the onslaught that was Johnny’s unexpected number of defined abdominal muscles that were usually covered by cotton t shirts.

“What was that?” He called, squinting up into the sun from the bottom of the hole.

“I said, put a god damn shirt on before you come back in my house,” you called back, already wrapping your arms around yourself and heading back to the farmhouse. “And dinner’ll be ready in twenty, so finish up,” you added, trudging off before he could respond.

What you would have seen if you’d turned back around was an open mouthed smile curl across his face, as Johnny hummed to himself at the joy he felt for this, the first time you’d bothered to warn him when dinner would be ready.

✧ ✧ ✧

Ever since you’d seen Johnny shirtless, you’d be restless.

Well, restless was the polite word. The word to better describe what you’d been feeling was… frustrated?

Distracted? Peeved? Worked up?

Horny.

The word you were avoiding was horny.

Wendy had been the one to get you to admit it during your last weekly phone call. You told her about the shirtless incident and the first thing she asked was if you had plans to throw out the washing machine and instead start doing your laundry on Johnny’s abs, which did not help your predicament any further. It was also Wendy who had pointed out that you’d been alone on this farm for almost two months with a dog and a man too pretty for his own good, and despite how he represented everything you were annoyed at in life at the moment, after seeing his half naked figure, it would only be natural for you to have been a little turned on. And a little turned on was exactly where you were— for the last week, you had been going on runs every night to release the excess pent up energy you suddenly had.

The last time you exercised this much you were still in college. Back then you went on hour long runs through the city with your phone on ‘Do Not Disturb’ because it was the only way you weren’t constantly bombarded with an on onslaught of messages from classmates, friends, family, or your on campus job that took up way too much of your time. And now, you found yourself returning to old habits, this time because what, you were too proud to just rub one out like the rest of humanity? (That phrasing, too, was courtesy of your best friend, when she again reminded you of your failure to pack your vibrator.)

After another eight miles up and down the road outside the farm that ran along the island’s coast your legs felt like absolute jello when you finished, but your head was empty enough that you were able to return to the property and exist near Johnny in peace. You walked by the barn on your way up to the farmhouse, sticking your head inside briefly to look for him. You didn’t hear any noise, and didn’t find him at first glance, but didn’t think much of it as you went back inside.

The dog was already in the kitchen, so that should have been your first clue. You opened the fridge and peered inside, pulling out a number of assorted ingredients to make a lemon cream sauce for pasta with chicken.

You set a pot of water to boil, turned the oven on to preheat, and began melting butter, garlic, oil, and a variety of herbs in a sauce pan. That plus the low hum of the overhead fan meant just enough noise that you couldn’t hear the water running from the small shower on the other side of the house, and you didn’t think twice as the heat cast off by the appliances made you feel even stuffier post-run, and you peeled your shirt off your body and rolled the waistband of your shorts down an inch, pressing your bare feet flat against the hardwood flooring to try and get some semblance of cooling relief.

It was only a few moments later, with the water boiling and pasta cooking inside and the chicken already seasoned and in the oven, when you peered over the bubbling sauce pan and dipped the edge of your pinky into the mixture to bring just a taste up to your mouth. Just like you’d hoped, it was light and had a kick of citrus to it from the lemon, but not so much that it was overpowering. You closed your eyes and hummed in appreciation as you licked the sauce off, which, in retrospect, probably sounded far too much like a moan for your own good.

“Jesus fuck—”

And suddenly, you realized you weren’t alone inside the house.

You screamed at first from the shock of being startled by the noise, and then again when it registered in your brain that Johnny was standing in the kitchen, hair dripping wet, chest bare and abdominal muscles just as defined as the last time you’d seen them, face flushed in some sort of embarrassment with a bath towel wrapped around his hips.

Johnny was fresh out of the shower, nearly naked in your kitchen, clutching his clothes balled up in his left hand.

You scream again.

“What are you doing?!” You shrieked out, raising your voice over the dog’s excited barking at the commotion the two of you had begun making.

He stammered for a moment, clearly frozen in place. “I was just! You were gone, and I was done for the day, so I took a shower but I— I forgot my change of clothes in my room and these towels are small and just— Jesus why are you wearing so little clothing?!”

Your fury returned full force at the comment. “Why am I wearing so little clothing? You’re in a towel for fuck’s sake! This is my house, I live here! I should be the one asking you where your clothes are!”

“They’re here, in my hand!” He yelled back, waving the bundle around frantically. “I just said I forgot them when I went to shower!”

Your eyes bugged out of you head as your gaze traveled down, taking in the entirety of the figure before you and— oh.

“Are you… are you hard right now?” You asked in bewilderment.

The way the color drained out of Johnny’s face and the speed with which he moved the bundle of clothing to hold it over the space between his legs answered your question.

“Oh, my god.” Exasperated, you slammed your eyes shut and held your hands up by your sides. “What the fuck, John.”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean— fuck, shit I made it weird— please don’t get mad, I can totally fix this,” he started spewing apologies, and you heard him take two steps closer to you. “Wait, were you looking at my dick?”

“Ah!” You spat out, turning away from him. His question was valid but you had no intention of acknowledging it. “Out! Get out of my house, go… somewhere else until that goes away or you can, I don’t know, take care of it!” You instantly thought of the implication of your words and then yelled again. “No— don’t— fuck, don’t do that! Jesus for the love of god don’t take care of it while I’m standing here—” you were stammering and beyond flustered. How the fuck were you supposed to talk to someone who had just gotten a fucking boner by looking at you, sweaty in a sports bra, while sucking a cream colored substance off the tip of your pinky?

You exhaled deeply, eyes still closed. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You are going to go to your room. I am going to finish cooking my dinner. You will be absolutely silent until you hear me leave. I will be staying at the condo for the next week. You will either ration the leftovers or fend for yourself, I do not care. Got it?” You signed out again, eyes flicking open. Johnny held his bundle of clothes in front of his legs and nodded his head once, not bothering with any comeback before he shuffled to the guest room and shut the door quietly.

It took another twenty minutes for the meat to finish cooking and the dish to be full prepared. How you managed to keep your head empty and shut off your internal monologue during that time, you’ll never know, but you were thankful for it nonetheless. You packed two servings into a Tupperware container for yourself before shoving some clothes in a duffle bag and grabbing the keys to the jeep you hated driving. It was only about ten minutes down the road to the condo, but it was almost fifteen miles, so you figured this was the lesser of two evils. You whistled for the dog to follow you, and it was all too excited to jump in the passenger seat of the car. The farmhouse was now dry of liquor, what with Yunho not making good on his promise a month ago and your weekly wine dates with Wendy, but you knew the condo definitely had some spirits stashed somewhere in a cabinet. You were going to need that and a nice hot bath to destress after that encounter.

Meanwhile, Johnny sunk down on to the floor inside the guest room, his back pressed against the door. When he heard the sound of the jeep’s engine turning over, he sighed in relief and ran a hand through his hair. There were no better words to describe it: he was truly and utterly fucked.

✧ ✧ ✧

You stayed at the condo only for three days, and did little other than sleep, binge watch some TV since there was better electricity and internet here, and eat your way through slightly stale bags of chips and frost bitten freezer dinners that were months old. Because you couldn’t just open the door and let the dog out to run through the property for whatever exercise or bathroom needs it had, you had to actually walk it with a leash and everything. You paid less attention to how domestic the action of clipping the leash on to the collar you’d found in an unopened delivery package on the kitchen table was, and thought more about how slothful you’d felt over the last 60-odd hours of self isolation, especially after two months of working outdoors every day.

It was childish to keep hiding from Johnny. It’s not like you could prove that he’d gotten hard looking at you, and really, shouldn’t you take it as sort of a compliment? (Well, maybe you wouldn’t go that far.)

It was Monday when you returned to the farm, parking the jeep back by the barn and hip checking the door shut after the dog went running off in search of Johnny. It found him carrying pruned branches of trees down to the area where you burned excess brush, and you could hear the excited sound of his voice at the return of the creature as you walked slowly down the hill towards him.

“I missed you! It’s been so lonely without you, but I guess I’m glad your mommy had you with her, huh?” He cooed at the dog, rubbing its face in his hands after dropping the bundle of branches and flopping its ears from side to side. Hearing Johnny refer to you as a mother, even of the animal, had you grimacing.

“Ew,” you said, making your presence known. He stood up suddenly, possibly just a little embarrassed.

“Oh! You’re uh, you’re back.” You nodded, lips pressed together in a flat line. Your hands were full, carrying two takeout coffees from a shop down near the condo you’d stopped at on the way back. You’d forgotten how much the farm felt like a different planet, a different space in time almost, because of how isolated it felt. The act of ordering a coffee to go rather than making it yourself in the morning was equal parts bewildering and soothing.

You had no idea what compelled you to order an iced americano along with the cortado you’d gotten for yourself. You didn’t really know much about Johnny beyond the one conversation you’d had about how he ended up meeting your brother in law and crashing on the farm with you in the first place. But somehow, ordering the drink had felt right, and you thought of it as a potential peace offering to cut the tension.

“This is yours,” you said plainly after some thought, trying to remove any and all emotion from your tone.

He blinked a few times before taking three steps towards you and reaching his hand out to take the drink. He mumbled a soft thank you and sipped without bothering to ask what was inside.

“You’re just going to take the drink a stranger offers you, no questions asked?”

“Ooh!” His eyes perked up when he tasted the coffee. “I mean, I’ve never questioned any of the food you’ve made me so far, why start now? Besides,” he shrugged, taking another sip, “I trust you.”

You snorted. “That’s a stupid thing to do.”

Johnny laughed again, eyes crinkling at the sides. Your mind wandered briefly to a half formed thought about how endearing that was. “Maybe so, but despite your efforts to make me an enemy, I think you’re actually a really good person. You even guessed my favorite coffee drink, so that has to count for something.” He nodded to the paper cup in your hand. “What’s your poison?”

“Cortado,” responded curtly, ignoring his comments that were cutting a bit too deep for ten in the morning.

“Ah, a strong espresso pull with a balance of steam milk and a touch of foam. Nice choice. I can definitely appreciate one, but I’m a little too impatient and drink them too quickly— I think that’s why I love americanos so much, because it lasts a little longer.”

You tilted you head to the side, puzzled. “Wait. You… actually know things about coffee?”

“I mean, yeah,” he laughed, “What do you think I spent three hours talking with Yunho about the day we met? I did my time as a barista in college. Free coffee every shift was hard to pass up when you’re doing almost a double course load every other semester. I’ve always been curious about the growing and roasting process, and I know a lot of people do home roasting as a hobby but I just never made the time to explore it.”

Well, duh, you thought, that actually made sense. “Oh god, and here I’ve been making my lame ass bitter pour over all summer— you know how to pull a shot of espresso then I take it? You’ve seen the La Marzocco on the counter, how come you’ve never used it?”

He pouted his lips out in a flat line and shrugged comically. “Dunno. I mean, I’m a guest and a worker first, and it’s not mine, so, I didn’t wanna make any assumptions. But if this is an open invitation to use it, I’m more than happy to accept.”

You chewed on the inside of your mouth for a moment. You could feel it in the air as the hairs on your arms stood up slightly, goosebumps running down your skin. You hoped in wasn’t too noticeable. Maybe this was it— maybe it really was time to extend an olive branch and have more than half a conversation with him every four days. “It’s a little older and sort of temperamental, but it’s still a good machine. I’ll… show you the quirks tomorrow morning, or whenever you want something to drink,” you offered.

It was then that you discovered this: Johnny was not a great actor. He wore his heart on his sleeve. You figured this to be true because he could barely contain the smile that spread across his face, and the energetic nod he gave, and the mild soft exhale (squeal?) of excitement. You rolled your eyes gently and turned away, drink in hand. “When it cools down later after dinner, I’m roasting tonight. You’re welcome to join.”

You gave him the benefit of not bearing witness to the fist pump he made as you walked away.

Dinner that night was stir fried ground pork with carrots and zucchini from the garden served over rice. It was one of your comfort dishes, easy to make and easy to clean up after, since it used only two pans. As soon as you’d finished eating, this time sitting at the table together with Johnny, he’d cleared the dishes and got to cleaning up right away. You stretched your arms overhead and leaned back in your chair far enough to crack your back slightly with a loud pop.

“Oof, that sounded like it felt good,” he laughed from the sink. You hummed in agreement. “So what’d you do before this? Desk job hunched over a computer like the rest of us?”

“Mmm something like that. You may have been bored out of your mind in business, but I sold my soul years ago to work in advertising.”

“Why does that like, fit?” He asked, turning the water off and drying the pan you’d used for cooking by hand.

“You saying I have no soul?” You challenged.

He shrugged. “Hey, you said it, not me. We’re both just cogs in the machine that is late stage capitalism, I guess.”

You didn’t know how deeply you wanted to get into it with Johnny just yet. Maybe eventually, but, not right now. “Yeah, well, I was just a Project Manager, not like a Copywriter or anything. Did you know Yunho was a staff Art Director before he switched to the coffee business full time? We used to work at the same agency a few years back.”

Johnny snapped his fingers and pointed at you. “Ah, that’s right! I remember him saying something about that, made the same jokes about having no soul. You two are a lot alike for not being related by blood.”

Well, he wasn’t wrong; sometimes you wondered if you’d become closer with Yunho that you were with your sister at this point. “Enough about that. If you’re done follow me, it’s probably cool enough to fire up the roaster. I just want to do a test batch of like, five pounds with the regular beans to see how this year’s harvest takes to our standard roast,” you explained, heading to the door and slipping on your sneakers. “Don’t let the dog out, it gets scared from the loud noises and I don’t need it freaking out.”

Johnny dried his hands and followed after you to the barn. You flicked on the lights and went straight for the sink to pull your hair out of your face, wash your hands, and put on a pair of gloves and a mask. Johnny followed your lead, even going so far as to tie up the top layer of his hair on top of his head. “Hey look! It’s like an apple,” he bobbed his head from side to side to make the tiny ponytail move back and forth, and you couldn’t help but snort as you tried to suppress your laughter.

“Dork,” was all you said. You went to the storage racks to pick up one of the sorted burlap bags of beans and hoisted it over your shoulder to carry it to a metal prep table where you carefully opened it and began scooping out the green beans and pouring them into a bowl on a metal scale that had been zeroed out. “So  obviously you know that coffee is counted by weight in pounds. That monstrosity,” you jerked your head in the direction of the massive eight foot tall machine in the corner of the room, “Can handle up to twenty-five pounds of beans in the barrel at a time. Because it’s so big, it’s best to not do super small batches, otherwise you risk burning the beans. Since I’m going for five pounds, it’ll be okay, but if I was doing any less I’d use one of the table top roasters, since they have a smaller barrel.” You finished weighing out five pounds and handed the container to him to carry.

You continued explaining the full process of roasting and science behind it as you flipped switches, checked that the exhaust was hooked up properly, and set the dials for the heat and time on the industrial roaster before pulling the door to the funnel open and having Johnny slowly pour the beans inside. “God you’re a fucking giant, I always need a step stool to reach that high,” you commented as he made the reach with ease.

You weren’t kidding when you said the roaster was loud when it was running. Thankfully with the size of the machine and this batch, it was only eleven minutes of the two of you standing just a few feet away in case anything went wrong and you had to hit the emergency stop, holding your hands over your ears to block the sound. Johnny began jokingly exaggerating mouthing something out, and you felt almost like friends as you laughed at his antics. You were never the best at reading lips. Especially not Johnny’s, they were too full and distracting on their own for you to make sense of the mouth shapes. When the machine came to a grinding halt and the noise suddenly stopped, he was still shouting words and his voice echoed around the space in the absence of the noise, “I said, I think you’re— oh, wow, that was fast,” he quickly diverted, catching himself from finishing whatever it was he was about to say.

Your heart skipped a beat at the thought of trying to pry out of him what he was in the process of saying under the protection of the loud noises. You shook it off mentally and showed him how to remove the beans from the roasting chamber. “So you take them out like this, and then they’re still going to be warm for a while, so it’s best to let them rest for a bit. If you were to brew them right away, the flavor might not be what you’re expecting, so if you wait for them to sit for a few days, you’ll notice a considerable difference in the flavor profile—”

You stopped suddenly, a sound in the distance suddenly registering to you. You left Johnny standing there with the roasted coffee in hand and trailed to the edge of the barn and then you heard it more clearly— the sound of the old rotary phone ringing. “Oh, shit,” you swore and took off running back up to the house. The only person who had the number for the landline other than Wendy were Yunho and your sister. Wendy didn’t call you outside of your Thursday night appointments. You did the math in your head— it was the end of June, your sister’s due date wasn’t til the end of August, but early labor was always something you’d heard about, especially with more than one baby.

Hands shaking, you got to the phone on what could have been the last ring and panted out a greeting of Yunho’s name, already knowing it was him.

“Oh thank god you answered, I’ve been calling for the last twenty minutes, where were you?” He chastised immediately. You felt uneasy at the tone in his voice.

You stammered in response. “I— we were in the barn, I was roasting so I couldn’t hear the phone— what’s wrong? Is she okay?”

Yunho sighed out heavily and was quiet. “She’s going to be okay, but there was a… scare,” you could tell he was choosing his words carefully. “I don’t want to freak you out, but I don’t want to not tell you either. She slipped getting out of the shower, landed on her hip. Started having lower abdominal pain right after. We thought maybe it was going to be now, but, she’s fine. The doctors think they were phantom contractions? Whatever they were they’re gone now. The babies are fine, but she’ll most likely be in the hospital until the due date. If she starts experiencing any kind of contractions between now and then, though, they’ll want to induce labor.” You could tell he was still stressed and worried, but you nodded and listened as he explained some of the medical details a bit further. “Anyways, all this to say, the next time I call, it could be to tell you that you’re an auntie.”

From the moment you heard the phone ringing this late at night and calculated that it was almost two in the morning in Chicago, the tightness in your chest had been building. Listening to Yunho speak delicately about your sister’s condition was one thing— you thought it was a sigh of relief when he said that everything was fine, but then it was most certainly not fine when the gravity of his last words really hit you.

“Little Bean are you listening? Is the signal bad? I know the connection isn’t always great—”

You inhaled sharply as the pressure inside came to a head. “Yunho I gotta go,” you gasped out, barely able to make sense of thoughts to get the words out.

Before you could hear his rebuttal you slammed the phone on to the receiver to end the call and covered your face with your hands still in their nylon gloves. Despite standing in an open space, you suddenly felt like the room was spinning and the walls were closing in on you. Out, out, you had to get out—

“Hey, everything okay in here?”

Fuck.

Johnny was standing in the door, a look of concern on his face. You heaved into your hands and choked out a sob, feeling the wetness in your eyes building. No no no, everything was most certainly not okay in here. You shouldn’t have made eye contact, you should have known better, because looking at his face, his stupid perfect face and his genuine care for your wellbeing, it set you free falling over the precipice.

You were spiraling, and hard, and needed to land. It was instinctual, the way you cried out and ran pushing past him before breaking into an all out sprint down the hill to the fruit trees. Your legs barely kept up with the velocity of running at a decline, stopping short of tumbling and falling forward. The only thing that you knew to help this, the thing that had worked for you in the past, and you raced through the grove of trees for the larger one at the very end. It was one of the older trees, well mature and established with its root system, so you could always expect it to produce fruit.

But you’d harvested a large amount of the fruit in the last few weeks from the lower branches, and the only remaining fruit that would be ripe enough for your purposes was on the higher branches just out of reach. Over the sound of your pained sobs, you couldn’t hear Johnny’s approach or him asking what was wrong, your one track mind just trying desperately to jump and reach, fingertips barely brushing on the fruit you were reaching for.

“Hey hey, calm down, what are you—” he started.

“Shut up! Just shut— don’t tell— don’t tell me calm— calm—” you couldn’t make the words make sense, in your head you were screaming don’t tell me to calm down, but the act of translating that into words on your tongue was downright Herculean right now, it just wasn’t happening. Your knees began wobbling and standing too started feeling impossible. The tightness in your chest had expanded to reach your back, and though you were clearly still getting air by the fact that you hadn’t passed out yet, you felt like you weren’t breathing at all. You were crying outright now, tears wet and hot and painful as the sobs escaped your throat.

It didn’t take a genius to figure that you were trying to reach a fruit on a branch just above your wingspan. Johnny placed one large hand against your back gently and reached all the way up, fingers wrapping around what he assumed was the object of your fixation, before twisting and pulling to release it from the tree. “Hey,” he said softly, “This what you need?”

As soon as you made sense of the object in front of you you seized it from his hands, biting directly through the rind of the lemon. A muffled sob came out as your knees buckled and you sank to the ground. The bitter rush of citrus did part of its job, and brought your consciousness back down to earth. But your breathing didn’t steady, and your heart was still pounding, and the tears were still falling.

It wasn’t working, your grounding technique; not like it had the previous times, like the night you’d first gotten the phone call from Yunho saying they weren’t coming, and not like the time you bit into a lemon in the kitchen at work after first getting the phone call that your sister was pregnant, and even the time before that when she told you she and Yunho were moving, or when Yunho had asked you if he could marry your sister. If you were more with it, you would have thought for a moment longer about how all of your largest panic attacks of the last several years seemed to be linked to things about Yunho and your sister. Biting into a whole lemon had been your go-to for years, and suddenly, it wasn’t working.

“Fuck!” You cried out, spitting the lemon into your palms, “Fuck fuck fuck! Why isn’t it— why isn’t it working?!” Your words were absolutely frantic, and you were yelling at yourself more than your companion who, quite frankly, you’d forgotten was even there.

Until you felt a shadow pass over you in the moonlight and a pair of arms enveloping you in an embrace.

The top of your head was pressed against his chest and his hands found their way to the planes of your back and began rubbing soft circles. Softly he tutted out a shushing noise, voice barely above a whisper, steady. “Come on, let it out, I’m right here. I’ve got you, you’re not alone,” he said calmly, “You’re gonna get through it. Try to take a deep breath, that’s good now hold it as long as you can— okay, that’s okay, try again, try to hold on to it and let it out slowly this time.”

You’d never had anyone physically with you and help you through a panic attack before. You’d had them around people in the past, but no one had ever made a move to help you through it— not like this, not like him, not like he was doing right now by attempting to guide your breathing. The one time you had one in front on Wendy, you’d locked yourself in the bathroom and refused to answer her while you came down, and she never pressed you about it afterwards.

You had no idea how much time passed as Johnny held you in his arms, keeping a steady rhythm of his palms on your back and letting you cry it out into the fabric of his shirt, your hands wringing the material so strongly you thought you’d tear holes where your nails were.

One hand traveled to the back of your head and he stroked that too. “I’ve got you, I’m right here,” he said again.

After a longer period of silence, your ears stopped ringing and you could finally make out the chirping of the crickets in the night. You sniffled and rubbed the last of the trails the tears had left on your cheeks into his shirt, mumbling an apology into it.

“Don’t do that,” he said softly, keeping his voice low, almost as if he was afraid he’d scare you off if he raised it any higher. “I mean— haha, don’t apologize. It’s okay, whatever it is, it’ll wash out. If it doesn’t, it’s just a tee shirt, I can always buy another.” His tone was even paced and calm, and in pressing your ear against his chest you could hear the reverberations as he spoke.

The humid summer air was heavy as usual, even this late at night. You don’t know how long you sat there in silence, wrapped in Johnny’s arms listening to his heartbeat, but eventually you acknowledged that your heart was beating in time with his. Whether you liked it or not, he had been the thing to ground you, and not a stupid fucking lemon.

You shifted slightly, making a move to stand, but Johnny stopped you. “Whoa whoa, hang on lemme get ready— okay, hold on to my shoulders, that’s it.” Your fingers dug into his arms as he adjusted his legs and hooked one arm under your knees and the other around your back and stood up, taking you with him.

“Shit,” you mumbled out, head rushing at the quick movement and the realization that your legs were still bent over his arm, and Johnny was now carrying you. “Hey, heavy,” your words were still soft.

“Mmm, nah, nothing I can’t handle,” his response was easy, dismissive of your complaint, but not in a bad way. “You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to but— anxiety? Panic attack?” You sucked in a breath at the word. You hated that word. That word made you feel weak, even if it was exactly what this was. You dug your nails into his skin slightly on a reflex of bracing yourself, not with this intention of inflicting damage. “Got it. I get it,” he had approached the house and walked to the door, reaching for the handle with the hand under your knees. “I’ve had a few myself. Not recently, but back in college, maybe two or three? Don’t think they were ever as strong as that, though. I tried the lemon trick once, it actually worked pretty well for me. Didn’t make the next time I did a tequila shot all that fun though, couldn’t enjoy citrus for at least a month after that.” His soft laughter shook his chest and you leaned in further. Listening to his voice was comforting. It was keeping you steady. It made you feel safe, and in this moment, you were too tired to think about how you probably should have hated that. “Think you could swallow some water? Rehydrating is important.”

Your head nodded. “Okay, I’m gonna put you down now.” He used his foot to push one of the chairs away from the table and set you down on to the seat gently. The dog was immediately at your knees, whining lowly and attempting to give as many kisses as you’d accept. “Here,” he said gently, crouching down in front of you and holding a glass out. “Drink what can, but not too fast. There you go, that’s it,” his large hand clasped over your knee, thumb rubbing circles on the side. “Feeling any better?”

“Yeah,” you rasped out, voice raw from all the crying earlier.

Johnny smiled softly. “Good, that’s good. Okay, I think you need to get to bed, yeah? Or do you wanna take a shower or something first?” You shook your head. “Okay, just washed your face then?” You nodded. Your conscious monologue was returning, but bringing words from your mind to your mouth was still proving difficult. Johnny didn’t seem to mind. Instead, he offered you his hand. “Need help getting up?”

You answered by gripping on to his hand and using his shoulders to help you stand up. Johnny walked you to your room, holding his arm out for you as a guide. You were able to bear weight on your feet now, and though your steps were slow, you made it to the bathroom to wash your face and and change into sleepwear. Johnny waited by the door, averting his eyes for privacy for you, and returned to your side to help you into bed.

When he leaned over you to pull the sheets up, you reached for his wrist and asked, “Why are you being so nice to me?”

His face went blank before it softened into a smile. “Because. I told you earlier, didn’t I? You’re a good person. Should be simple as that, yeah?”

You didn’t have a response for him, only shifting deeper into the pillows. He turned off the light and retreated to the door frame. “Try and get some rest. Call me if you need me, okay?”

Your head managed a nod, and Johnny finally left, leaving the door to your room slightly ajar. You listened for the sounds of him milling about the house, his footsteps softly shuffling against the floorboards, a few mumbled words to the dog that followed at his heels, until you finally fell asleep.

When you dreamed that night, you dreamt of him, the sound of his voice, and the way your blood felt on fire whenever he looked at you and smiled.

✧ ✧ ✧

Johnny never asked you about the panic attack.

He didn’t bring it up, he didn’t ask what caused it, he didn’t even allude to it in any conversation over the next week. The next day he was just a little bit more gentle with you with the tone and volume of his speaking voice, but when you showed no signs of still be affected from the previous night, he let it go and didn’t bother you about it.

You couldn’t tell if you loved him or hated him for it.

Confusion on your feelings aside, as June came to a close and the morning of July 3rd came, you woke up to the sound of the espresso machine running. Johnny had very quickly proven that he was worth his salt as a barista, even though it had been several years, and had a very nice shot pull. He even figured out the steamer, which was the most finicky part of the machine, and had been making you cortados every morning. That’s what you were sipping now from a metal camper mug, as you walked with him to the shed.

“I think that all that’s left is nailing down that last sheet of roofing and then we’re done,” he hummed cheerfully, inspecting the building. It looked brand new, a marked improvement from the broken windows and bleached paint job it had sported two months ago.

Two months. Was that really how long he’d been here? You didn’t want to think too much about it, about how those two months gone meant you had reached the half way point, and that there were about two months left.

Two months…

“We should celebrate,” he said suddenly, and you looked up puzzled.

“We?”

“Sure!” He exclaimed, “I had no idea what I was doing. I just did what you told me to. This was one of the biggest projects for the summer, right? And plus, not that I care too much for the holiday, but won’t there be fireworks and stuff for the Fourth? Come on, this house has been dry for weeks, let’s go get some booze and live a little, huh?” He prodded your side with his elbow and began needling at you, saying huh, huh, huh over and over until you groaned and relented.

“Fiiiiiine, let’s go before the stores get crowded when everyone realizes everything’s gonna be closed tomorrow.”

The dog was less than pleased that you’d sent it back into the house when you picked up the keys to the jeep. Usually you took it with you, but this time you decided against it, since you weren’t sure how the liquor store would feel with you bringing the stray dog off leash into the store with you.

“All you, big guy,” you said to Johnny as you tossed the car keys at him.

“Aren’t you gonna ask if I know how to drive first?” He quipped back quickly while walking to the driver’s side.

“Nah,” you shrugged comically, hoisting yourself up by the frame of the car. You buckled yourself in and watched as he did the same and adjusted the mirrors for his height. “Besides,” you looked down to inspect your fingernails as if they were the most fascinating thing on the planet, “I trust you, or whatever.”

“Bit of a stupid thing to do, but alright,” he smiled, echoing your words back at you. “Kidding, I’m an excellent driver. Alright, co-pilot! You have the most sacred duty bestowed upon you—”

“Navigation?”

“No, music selection, duh,” he scoffed and handed you the aux cord and pulled out a cell phone you’d never seen him hold before. You stared at the device as he unlocked it and pulled up his music library. Johnny noticed your surprised expression out of the corner of his eye. “What, it’s not like I have a use for it out here. Your wifi sucks and I’m not about to rack up a huge cell phone bill, so it stays off in my duffle bag most of the time. Anyways, this is a test! Pick whatever your heart desires.” The smirk on his face was beyond mischievous as he handed it to you.

You sighed and settled into the seat and began scrolling. What to pick, what to pick…

Surprisingly, there was a decent number of songs you recognized, and one album in particular you were a fan of. You scrolled down the track listing to about the half way point and pressed play.

The sounds of The Killers and the familiar guitar chords that were practically sewn into your DNA began to filter through the speakers. Johnny smiled and started clapping as the car reached the bottom of the driveway and he flipped on the turn signal. “Oh my god, Mr. Brightside, excellent choice! Okay, you passed the first test. But do you know the words?” He teased.

You gasped in feigned offense as the lyrics came to the chorus, and as he accelerated up to speed you began to belt the words out as loud as you could manage. For once you weren’t thinking about how you hated that the jeep had no top while the wind whipped past you on all sides as Johnny sped down the highway. As the song played, the magic high of belting the words to something fifteen years old that were still imprinted in your brain didn’t seem to wear off like you’d expected it to.

“Alright, chop chop what’s next maestro!” He called over the sound of the wind as the song came to a close. You already had something queued up, something a little more recent, and you smiled as the words to the next song began filtering through the speakers, letting the music carry the drive and not belting along with it this time. You tried to not think too deeply about the lyrics of the chorus as it played.  

'Cause you're the last of a dying breed Write our names in the wet concrete I wonder if your therapist knows everything about me? I'm here in search of your glory There's been a million before me That ultra-kind of love You never walk away from You're just the last of the real ones

As the bridge played and you neared your destination, Johnny tilted his head towards you while keeping his eyes on the road. “Growing up, it was like, a badge of honor as a Chicago kid to have gone to a Fall Out Boy show when they still played the smaller clubs. I snuck into one when I was 16— it was an 18 and over show— felt like I was hot shit when I got away with it.”

“Don’t know why, but you don’t strike me as a Fall Out Boy fan,” you admitted. From your scroll through his music library, you saw most of their discography saved to his phone.

“Hey, I had my embarrassing wannabe emo phase too.”

“Had?” You couldn’t stop yourself from teasing. Johnny didn’t give a response to that one, and as another Fall Out Boy song played through the speakers you let yourself rest in a comfortable lack of conversation, instead sharing the music with him as he drove. It only took to the end of that third song to reach your destination and based on how he handled the drive and parking, true to his word Johnny was an excellent driver.

Johnny followed you closely once inside, his eyes scanning up and down the shelves of the tiny liquor store before he reaches and picks up a six pack of pilsner. “You ever try this one?”

Your nose wrinkles in disgust. “I don’t do beer.”

Johnny blinks twice in response and plops the six pack back down on the shelf. “Noted. What do you drink?”

“If I’m picking?” He nods. “I’m a slut for rosé or champagne. Any sparkling wine, really, it makes me feel fancy and you get to turn basic days into little celebrations.” You follow him as he walks down the aisle to where the selection of wine was shelved and starts looking through the options. “Hang on, you’re not gonna grill me about the beer thing?”

“You say that like your friends usually give you shit for it.”

You crossed your arms and shuffle your feet underneath you. “Well, yeah. Usually.”

“Then I would say,” he trails off for a moment, bending and squatting to see a label on a lower shelf before picking up two bottles of the same brand, “You need new friends. Or that your current ones need to learn boundaries, take your pick. How’s this look for one option? Since this is a celebration and all,” he says with a wink.

Leaning forward, you study the label on the bottle for a moment before nodding in approval. You agree to his point that since they were 15% off if you bought six or more bottles, it only made sense to buy more, and besides, “It’s not like you won’t drink them eventually when you’re on the phone with Wendy.”

Your eyebrows shot up at that. “How do you know her name?”

“I’m quiet not deaf, and you’re louder than you think you are,” he says matter-of-factly before heading to the cashier to pay for your selection. You bite your tongue then, hoping to whatever deity was watching you (and probably laughing) that he’d overheard one of the conversations that wasn’t about Wendy insisting you should bone him.

Johnny picks the music on the way back, opting for some Bleachers and Paramore now that he knew at least part of your music taste and how it aligned with his.

Your new selection of wine goes into the fridge as soon as you get home, and Johnny heads to the shed with a ladder in hand to climb on top and finish nailing down the roofing. You opt to help with this task, spotting from the ground and continuously yelling for him to ‘be careful’ and ‘you better not fall and break your neck while I’m watching’. It takes a little over an hour, and it’s late afternoon when he finishes, but when you climb the ladder yourself as he holds it steady from the ground to inspect his handiwork you have to say you’re impressed.

“You sure you never did construction work before? You’ve got shockingly good craftsmanship for a newbie.”

“My dad’s pretty self sufficient so he was always doing the handiwork around the house. Picked stuff up here and there from him growing up, but anything I didn’t know I could just look up on the internet.” You shoot him a pointed look. “What! I said your wifi was shitty not that I didn’t use it every now and again. There’s a YouTube tutorial for everything these days.”

Johnny insisted on cleaning up the last of the debris on his own while you worked on dinner— another pasta dish, orecchiette broccoli rabe, and while that was cooking you boil a pint of blackberries with water and sugar to make a flavored simple syrup. Since you were celebrating tonight, it only felt right to put in a little extra effort even to the drinks of choice. Kir Royales were typically made with a blackcurrant liquor, but it was a niche product you hadn’t found in the store, so the syrup and a slice of lemon for garnish would have to do.

While you waited for Johnny to finish up and take his shower (after the last time, you gave him plenty of space out of an abundance of caution whenever he showered), you started rummaging through the pantry cabinets and making sense of the dry ingredients you had on hand. You had time to kill, why not make a dessert with it?

You hadn’t talked about it much with Johnny, but you actually did enjoy cooking and baking. Something about spending time and energy making something and having someone consume it and tell you they liked made you feel good. You still remember the first time you made breakfast for a hungover Wendy in college and she raved about it for days, though you were pretty sure back then it was because the carbs soaked up the remaining alcohol in her system and stopped her from puking.

Dinner was finished when Johnny finally came out of the shower, this time fully clothed and his hair more dry. You explained that you’d gotten bored and made cookie dough but the oven hadn’t finished pre-heating yet so nothing was baked.

“Fuck it, cookie dough is always better than the cookies themselves,” he shrugged.

“But salmonella—”

Johnny held up a hand jokingly as he stopped your interjection and turned off the oven. “Still convinced that’s a myth parents made up to stop kids from actually enjoying childhood. Plus it’s hot as balls, chill the dough while we eat and then it’ll be even better after. Plus, you haven’t poisoned either of us yet, I think your track record is pretty good so far.” (There he went again, referring to you and him as an ‘us’.)

So you did just that, putting the cookie dough into the fridge and taking your dinner outside with the cocktails you’d made. You didn’t have any wine glasses here at the farm house— after breaking one stemmed glass during your first phone call with Wendy you’d moved the rest to the condo and replaced the drink ware with mason jars because the clean up was too annoying. Plus, you didn’t want to risk the dog stepping on stray shards of thin glass and getting them stuck in the pads of its paws. (You were still decidedly apathetic towards it, but that didn’t mean you were cruel).

So it was in the wide mouth Kerr jars that you poured your blackberry syrup and a half a bottle of champagne, after a comical exchange of Johnny insisting he wasn’t scared of the pop! that corks made coming out of pressurized bottles and the yelp he let out anyways when it happened as expected. The lemon slice garnish was more of an aesthetic touch than anything but you liked it nonetheless.When Johnny pulls out his phone for the second time that day and insists on playing music and making a dramatic toast before you could drink, you could only laugh and agree.

“To the best Boss I’ve ever had,” he said with a raised glass, “Even though you used me for cheap labor and to do all the hard shit.”

“Rude! I cook every day, look at all the chances I’ve had to poison you and how many times have I done it? Absolutely none because I am a saint and you know it.”

You weren’t sure if it was the alcohol, the music, the low hum of crickets, the starry night sky, or the summer heat that did it, but time flowed so easily, and so did the conversation and teasing banter. Over the course of one meal you’d exchanged more words with Johnny than you had in the whole two months you’d known each other. Two hours later and you’d finished all the dinner (of course there were no leftovers, Johnny was still Johnny, but the amount of manual labor he did in a day made sense of how much he usually ate, you’d come to realize). The bowl of cookie dough was now sitting on the step of the lanai and you and Johnny were side by side on the deck, looking out over the farm and taking the occasional spoonful of dough into your mouths. He was right— the dough did taste better than the baked cookies probably would have, especially after it had chilled for a bit. With the way the stars and moon were hung in the cloudless sky, you could see the soft glow of their reflection in the water beyond the highway and the cliff leading to the beach.

“You ever go down to the shore?” He asks suddenly, and it feels out of nowhere and like he’s inside your head because how else would he have known you were just thinking about the ocean? But then you register that Andrew McMahon’s voice has just crooned something about Venice Beach and the California summer in the music that had still been playing through the speakers of Johnny’s phone.

You hummed for a moment before answering. “Not really. I should make more time for it, but I rarely ever leave the farm, as you probably noticed. I know this place is paradise for so many people, the vacation destination on a lot of bucket lists, but I think my… circumstances made me bitter towards the island, conceptually speaking anyways.” You watched the water with a bit more focus as a few waves crested, but you couldn’t see enough of the shore to see them actually crash. “I know I don’t talk about it much but, I needed a break from my work too. That’s… part of the reason I’m here, why I was waiting for my sister and Yunho to come out. It’s a much less interesting story than yours, so I won’t bore you with the details,” you wanted to reroute the subject before any questions started getting asked, but deep down you knew Johnny wasn’t going to press you for anything you weren’t ready to share. He’d figured that much out about you anyways.

“Anyways, maybe you’re on to something, Seo. Maybe I should take some time to actually relax a bit, seeing as now that I’ve tricked you into finishing the most difficult and time consuming of the summer projects Yunho had planned,” you stuck your tongue out between your teeth jokingly in an effort to mask the vulnerability you’d briefly shown.

Johnny took the hint and changed the subject. “The Killers, Bleachers, Paramore, Fall Out Boy… not saying I don’t like your taste in music, but I’m surprised it’s your picks were so astoundingly pop-punk-rock. Woulda taken you for a—”

“If you finish that sentence by saying ‘country kinda girl’ I’m locking you out tonight and taking the cookie dough with me,” you warned.

He laughed and shook his head. “No, you strike me as too high strung to enjoy country. Like it’s typically too slow for your tastes, or something like that.”

“Oh I’m obnoxious about my taste in media, if you couldn’t already tell. I’ve listened to mostly the same artists for the last ten years. In high school I was that kid that thought making it known that I ‘didn’t listen to the radio pop main stream’ was a personality trait, whatever that meant.”

“Oooh, so edgy and mysterious, did she used to cut her own bangs too?” He giggled into his mason jar, taking another sip.

“Nooo, that was only one time and I swear it was on a dare and not because of a break up!” You jokingly wailed out, throwing your head back in exaggeration. “Although I do regularly trim Wendy’s bangs for her because she can’t be trusted with sharp objects. Knives, needles, scissors, none of it, girl’s a total klutz,” you took another sip and uncorked the bottle again to refill your jar. You held the remainder up for Johnny to see, silently asking if he wanted a top off to finish the last of the second bottle you’d opened.

Johnny was a big guy— tall and muscular, you were sure it would take him a bit more than a bottle or two of shared champagne to get him tipsy. That’s why you didn’t think too much of it as he stared into the reinvigorated fizzing bubbles as he quietly said, “I’d like to meet her someday. Wendy, I mean— you talk about her so fondly, she seems like a great person. Like she’s good for you in your life.”

Why did you feel a little uneasy at the way he spoke about Wendy? He had no idea what she looked like, it was only from the stories you’d been telling that he knew anything about her. And it wasn’t even the real her, it was just her as she existed to you, so what was there to be uneasy about? You were overthinking again, so you had to come up with an answer to fill the silence you’d created— “Yeah well, Wendy’s sick of dick, she’s very bisexual and I’m pretty sure she’s head over heels in love with this Joohyun she started seeing recently, she’s just too much of a chicken shit to tell her how she feels,” you hid behind you glass and drank deeply, not minding as the floating slice of alcohol soaked lemon rested against your nose.

“Sounds familiar,” Johnny said quietly. “I… can relate, I think,” he mumbled out, and you glanced over in time to see him place his now-empty cup on the wood beside him. “Sometimes you just feel the way you do and you don’t really have a reason for why, but you can’t even put it to words to the person it matters to.”

This time when your breath caught in your throat, it wasn’t because of a mounting attack, but in anticipation of what Johnny would do next. The space between you had slowly waned as you’d been drinking, your bodies inching closer to each other without you even realizing it, almost like the way the moon pulled the tide to the shore over and over again. When your eyes traveled from where his hand was pressed into the deck flooring up to meet his hooded gaze, you don’t really know what you were expecting, but Johnny’s parted lips shining slightly (probably from that last drink of wine) was not it.

You knew this feeling. This was when you were supposed to lean in, right? That’s how this usually went. Your hand shifted closer towards his for a moment and then pulled back, and the end joint of Johnny’s fingers flexed as he pressed his fingertips into the deck.

You didn’t lean in. Your heart was hammering in your chest far too loud for you to be able to do so; instead, you look away, his eye and his lips and his face and his everything suddenly too much, and your turned your cheek to him instead.

Instead, he leaned in, and for just a brief moment the crickets stopped chirping, the distant ocean stopped moving, the music stopped playing, and your heart stopped beating as Johnny’s perfectly pouty lips pressed against your cheek, and then your temple, and then your throat. And then his head tilted down and his nose brushed against your skin delicately, leaving a trial of burning in its wake, and time didn’t start turning again until the snort of his laughter broke the silence and he fell into your shoulder in a giggle fit.

It took all of your patience and self control to make your lungs continue to function as you listened to Johnny giggle so much he stopped making sounds until he was spewing out between fits of laughter ‘The bubbles make everything funny, why is everything funny with bubbles?’

‘Why indeed’, you wondered silently, letting the clearly tipsy Johnny rest his head on your shoulder as he continued his giggle fits, stroking the palm of your hand against his back as he’d first done for you under far different circumstances, trying to not think about how much faster your heart was beating while doing so, and how if your accelerated heart rate was from his proximity to you, you didn’t mind.

How long did you stay like that, in such a familiar embrace with Johnny? Long enough, it seemed, for the playlist on his phone to come to an end and for him to start dozing off while resting against you, his light snores the thing that finally made you disturb him so you could go back inside. It was late anyways, nearing midnight you said softly and you tried to wake him gently—

A surprisingly loud boom shook the sky followed by a burst of light and color. Immediately the dog inside woke up and started barking, and Johnny bolted upright, eyes darting around in search of the source of the noise that had disturbed his snoozing.

“Fireworks,” you breathed out, more to yourself than to him. “Guess it’s midnight already.” Johnny didn’t say much, but his eyes twinkled as he watched in earnest as a few more went off before you tugged on his sleeve and insisted that he needed to make his way to bed and sleep. There were sure to be more tomorrow, and he could watch them then.

You didn’t sleep for hours that night. After helping the mildly intoxicated Johnny to his bed, you sat on the floor of your room, knees pulled into your chest and a hand laying flat against your cheek where he’d planted his trail of kisses. “He was just drunk, he’s just a flirty drunk, that didn’t mean anything,” you repeated to yourself over and over again.

But something about the way Johnny’s lips felt against the apples of your cheek and the hollow of your throat when he’d been nuzzling against you stayed with you all night long, sending a shiver down your spine and igniting a flame where your heart lived. You pressed the heels of your palms into your eyes and inhaled deeply, breath shuddering on the exhale.

Against all your hopes and intensions, Johnny Seo had slowly chipped his way through your armor and into your heart.

You had to get him out. Fast.

tbc.

—

author’s note | Me: this first part is gonna be like, I dunno, 5k? 6k? Also me: writes 19,000 words. We call this ✨processing your own trauma through writing as an outlet✨ Originally this was going to be one really long one shot and then I decided to split it up for ratings purposes because I am a thirsty whore for Youngho. The ending is rushed but honestly I was so sick of editing and overthinking this lmaooo. No I have not spent a summer living in Kona working on a coffee farm. Most of my coffee knowledge is second hand from the time my brother in law bought a coffee farm and started a roasting business because my sister dared him to by saying “do it you won’t” (an exact quote I shit you not). There’s more to this story and uh I dunno I’ll maybe post it eventually if people don’t hate this one *shrugs*

[cheri-translates]

[CN] Kiro’s R&S - Youthhood (Eng Translation)

🍒This R&S (少年时代) was part of the Dream Heart Lake event which will unlikely come to EN🍒

Cancelled Kiro’s R&S:

> top experimental subject (by another user)

> stunning young idol

> youthhood ♡

> heaven’s home for children (by another user)

[ Chapter 1]

Kiro sits on the highest flight of steps of TKTS. With the scorching sun directly overhead, he’s queuing to purchase discounted tickets to “Wicked” with Pei En.

TKTS, which sells discounted tickets, is located in the bustling Times Square in New York, USA. Behind it is the NASDAQ screen, and on both sides are shops selling Disney products and all sorts of fast fashion brands. The buildings in front and in the surroundings have gigantic, neat and pretty advertisements.

Among them, a gigantic “The Avengers” poster above the subway is the most attention grabbing.

This is a representation of the era. It’s a symbol of the 20th century, and is also similar to the cyberpunk world of “Blade Runner”.

“I’ve got the tickets!”

Pei En waves the two tickets to “Wicked” in his hand. Pei En is the guitarist in his band. Kiro’s agency formed a band for him, and most of the band members are French locals. Only Pei En is of mixed blood like Kiro - a child from a Jew and an Asian.

“If the performance had gone smoothly, we would have reached earlier!”

They have a final performance in New York as part of their tour, and would have to leave after, rushing to Los Angeles, California.

“This time, I’m going to hide the donuts in an even more secret location so the person who inspects the tickets wouldn’t discover them!”

While Kiro says this, he finishes the donut in his hand.

Donuts from Dunkin’ Donuts are very sticky. Only Kiro can treat such things as delicacies.

His ringtone sounds. With a glance at the number on the screen, he hangs up immediately. Pei En is very curious to know who the caller is. He has expressed curiosity regarding everything involving Kiro, and Kiro knows why.

“Is it that fellow Lawrence again?” Pei En asks. Lawrence is the agent of their band.

“Nope, but it’s definitely a harassment call.”

“It should be.”

Pei En seems to be a carbon copy of Kiro. Aside from his hair not being golden coloured, he is extremely similar to Kiro in terms of bubbliness and openness, and how simple-minded he is. 

-

[ Chapter 2 ]

After purchasing the tickets, both of them return to the agency. Lawrence is at the side, looking through the program booklet for their performance tonight. Lawrence is overwhelmingly ambitious. He won’t give up until he bags a Grammy Award for the band.

“Did you know? Another group of strange people came to look for you again.”

The moment Lawrence sees Kiro, he pulls the latter to a corner. Pei En curiously watches on.

“What kind of people did you provoke? They look like they shouldn’t be trifled with.”

Kiro shakes his head. “What do you mean by ‘they’? Fans?”

When Lawrence sees the innocent and harmless expression on Kiro’s face again, he knows that his questions wouldn’t get him anywhere. Kiro always manages to find ways to conceal himself.

“How’s the preparation for the concert? You’re the lead singer, and all the girls are flocking here for you!”

“I’ll definitely perform even better than usual!”

Kiro looks to be full of zest and in high spirits. He genuinely loves being on stage, and loves how he radiates brilliance. Who doesn’t like seeing fans go into a frenzy over them and be captivated by them? It enables Kiro to fully feel that he is still living on this earth. And that on this earth, there are still so many people who like him...

“I’m guessing you went to buy a souvenir again today.”

Lawrence comes to such a conclusion after glancing at Kiro’s bag. Kiro has a hobby - to buy some souvenirs wherever he goes, whenever convenient.

From Paris to Munich, Zurich to Stockholm, Vancouver to Montreal - wherever he goes on tour, he would buy local fridge magnets and postcards, and he would always buy two sets.

He wants to collect these things, so if a day comes when he can meet her again, he would show them to her, and say:

“Look! This world is so beautiful, and you no longer have to be afraid.”

But till now, he has yet to find her. He remembers her eyes. One day, he will find her in a vast sea of people. 

“Did you know that the agency from China has sent someone to negotiate with us? They want you to sign on with them, and the amount they’re giving you is basically--”

Lawrence’s tone is exaggerated. “How are people in China so wealthy!”

“What if I said that I wanted to go to China?”

“Hey, buddy, the band can’t do without you.”

“Haha, Pei En is much more outstanding than I am.”

At this point, Pei En is still watching them. Kiro understands him too well. He’s much too curious. Also, he’s only curious about Kiro, which could very quickly expose Kiro’s hidden identity.

Did that group of people actually send Pei En to monitor him...

He kind of underestimates Pei En though.

“But that fellow is always so absent-minded. God knows what he’s thinking about.”

-

[ Chapter Three ]

Americans enjoy overstating things. At one moment, they go “only God knows...”, and at another moment, they go “for the sake of God...”. Some people can’t stand it, but Kiro finds it very interesting.

Very quickly, Kiro begins rehearsing with the band. His style of singing changes a lot. When they were in Europe, they mostly played rock music. When they reached America, they started playing country or jazz music.

Kiro likes the southern accent of the keyboardist from California. But Lawrence prohibits it. “The southern accent is the most crude and coarse form of English! Why can’t you learn the way the British speak?”

Lawrence has always favoured people who can speak eloquent British English - to him, only such people are refined and elegant. But Kiro grew up in France. When he first started learning English, he tended to pronounce “ch” as “sh”. Actually, French is genuinely elegant and pleasant to listen to. And English tinged with a slight French accent can make one absorbed in it.

-

The concert ended smoothly.

The fans are cheering in a frenzy outside, wanting them to perform one more song. But the agent has already told them to leave.

Pei En and Kiro take a car and rush to the theatre to watch “Wicked”. This is the final Broadway show they want to watch, and it was a shame that Kiro didn't get to watch the well-known Hamilton.

At the entrance, that group of fellows stopped him again. 

The person standing at the forefront is a Caucasian woman. She walks up to Kiro elegantly and greets him, signalling for the person next to her to bring Pei En away.

“I’ve already given you a response through e-mail, and I hope you won’t disturb me again.”

The Caucasian woman proceeds as usual, showing him an FBI ID.

Kiro grumbles in his heart.

“I swear I won’t disclose the contents of ‘The Avengers’. Even though I’ve already watched it on my laptop, I’ll definitely watch it again in the cinema!”

The Caucasian woman laughs.

“Mr Kiro, you’re very humorous. Even though we know that apart from Disney, you’ve also hacked into Universal Studios and Paramount Pictures, we’re not here to talk about this.”

She continues: “KEY - that’s you, isn’t it?”

-

[ Chapter 4 ]

Kiro doesn’t respond, his eyes widening as he glances around. 

“In order to track down your IP address, we had to destroy four computers.”

“Are you looking for me to make compensation for the computers?”

“Mr Kiro. Ten years ago, you expended no effort to hack into our computers, and left behind a string of mysterious characters.”

The Caucasian woman smiles at him amiably. Kiro’s expression grows serious. Ten years ago, that KEY who hacked into their organisation wasn’t him...

“Ten years later, you’re back again. I think you're trying to provoke us.”

“I don’t have such an intention.”

“Whether or not you do, we can’t let you continue this way. Mr Kiro, this is a serious issue. We are now sending you a sincere invitation, and we hope to work together to do more noble things.”

Kiro is silent. He had previously found a clue leading to his own master. Finding out that he had entered the American FBI website and left behind a series of symbols - he thinks this is message to him from his master. As such, he entered it as well, and found that series of symbols, but until now hasn’t been able to decipher it.

It’s a series of very strange symbols, reminiscent of a new language formed using Latin and Roman symbols. He managed to decipher it a little, and it appears that the series of symbols seem to be pointing him to a location.

And the FBI had found him quickly, sending him an e-mail. It was a solemn reminder that if he was unwilling to be enlisted by them, he would lose his rights to use a computer forever.

“You’ve stated these things clearly in the e-mail, and I’ve already replied.”

“I don't think you have considered the severity of this matter. Mr Kiro, we can detain you.”

"In that case, I’ll just sing in jail then!”

Seeing the displeased look on the Caucasian woman’s face, Kiro continues smiling simple-mindedly.

“I hope you wouldn’t regret this in the future.” The Caucasian woman leaves a final statement that is often found in a script for a classic villain. She leaves with the large group of people. 

Pei En walks over frantically, and Kiro walks towards him as well.

“Tell them that I’ve met with some trouble, and will need to leave America immediately.”

Pei En pretends to be puzzled.

“You understand the meaning in my words, don’t you?”

For the first time, Kiro looks at him seriously. During serious moments, he doesn’t smile. 

“Where do you plan to go? We can send you to Russia.”

Pei En is no longer smiling. His expression changes, along with his entire aura.

As expected, Pei En is much too similar to him. If Kiro were to leave the band, Pei En could take over his position as the lead singer, and that group of people had considered this fact too.

-

[ Chapter 5 ]

The face of the little girl surfaces in Kiro’s mind again. 

The girl is lying with him, and is all smiles as she looks at him.

“Don’t be afraid. When I’m out, I’ll buy you donuts, okay?”

The girl draws the shape of a donut in the air.

Back then, Kiro didn’t speak. He just stared at the ceiling in a dazed state.

“Don’t worry that I won’t have enough money. My dad will give it to me.”

Kiro remains wordless, quietly listening to the little girl speak.

The little girl struggles to pull on his hand.

Their fingers lace together, the warmth from her palm gradually coursing into Kiro’s heart.

“Don’t be afraid. I’ll protect you.”

Kiro turns to look at her - to look at her determined brown eyes, to look at how the corners of her lips angle upwards. Kiro slowly learns how to curl the corners of his lips from her. It’s the first smile to appear on his face. 

Suddenly, the door is flung open. A group of people wearing doctor’s coats enter and drag him away. The little girl watches him in a daze, and he stares back at her. They agreed to go out to have donuts - can they still eat them?

-

“I want to return to China.”

Pei En shakes his head, alarm in his eyes. “Why? There’s so much freedom here, and I’m the only one who monitors you. And I’m inclined to trust you more now. You won’t betray us.”

“No... I still want to go back.”

Not just for the little girl. The symbols left behind by his master seem to point to a certain location in China... Where exactly is it? And why did he leave the symbols with the FBI? Could it be the place he’s hiding at right now?

No matter what, he wants to solve this riddle.

“All right. I’ll handle it for you as soon as I can. I think you’d have to use a false identity this time.”

“As long as everything goes smoothly, it’s fine.”

“Don’t worry, there’s nothing they can’t do.”

He wants to wait till he returns to China before telling Lawrence about what happened. Lawrence will definitely be extremely frantic. After all, he’s been following Kiro ever since he debuted in France.

And Pei En will definitely be happy. He can finally take over Kiro and become the favourite member of the group, and obtain love from the fans.

Kiro is someone who doesn’t lack love. But he always subconsciously wishes that he could obtain even more love. More and more...

-

[ Chapter 6 ]

Before Kiro retuned, Pei En gave him materials pertaining to the agency in China.

“Your agent is called Savin. He doesn’t seem as eager for instant success and quick profits as Lawrence. Mr Savin is a very amiable person, and you should be very happy interacting with him.”

“Is he one of your people?”

“I don’t know.”

“You really don’t know?”

Pei En shakes his head. “I rank too low, so I don’t have the right to ask. I’m just an elementary spy.”

Kiro nods, taking his luggage and preparing to leave. He’ll set things straight eventually.

“Kiro, I don’t think you’re transparent. They say that what’s in your heart is easy to guess, which is why they put me by your side. But I think they have underestimated you.”

Kiro looks at Pei En’s troubled eyes, then showcases his signature sunny smile.

“How can that be? Do you want a postcard? When I get to China, I’ll mail you one. I also want to mail them to Lawrence and the members from the band. Treat it as an apology.”

Like Kiro, Pei En showcases a sunny smile. “In that case, we’ll wait for your news. You’ll definitely be at the height of popularity in China.”

“Let’s work hard together.”

“Yes!”

After parting with Pei En, who has been with together with him from morning to night for so long, Kiro lifts his luggage and embarks on an unknown journey. 

As what Pei En said, he isn’t transparent. His brilliant smile conceals something underneath, just as the brilliant sun shrouds darkness underneath.

Hidden in the depths of his secrets are things even darkness doesn’t know of. If darkness had a mind of its own, it might think it doesn’t fit with this pure and simple youth.

Just as how everyone think he’s a simple, innocent Kiro, the sunlight casted on him can pierce through him completely, the rays of light refracting onto the floor. 

Actually, since a very long time ago, he was no longer a youth...

But, for her sake, he's willing to become a youth again.

“Don’t be afraid, I’ll protect you.”

He once again recalls what the girl said to him.

“This time, I’ll be the one protecting you.” Kiro says excitedly. He stands outside the JFK Airport, his eyes staring directly at the sun.

“I’ll find you, and protect you. I even have a mountain of souvenirs stored in my luggage. I’ll give them all to you. And my purest heart - I’ll give it to you too!”

-

Other cancelled R&S: here

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Facebook vs Australia

There's an old Irish joke whose punchline goes, "If you want to get there, I wouldn't start from here." That's basically how I feel about the so-called Australian "link tax" and Facebook's retaliation.

Let's start with the fact that it's not a link tax - it's a form of arbitrated collective bargaining that's meant to correct an imbalance in negotiating power created by monopolization.

The problem that the system is supposed to ameliorate is that the ad-tech platforms cheat. They lie about the reach of their ads. They lie about the performance of their ads. They rig markets so they can price-gouge. They collude to rig prices.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3500919

They design their systems so publishers leak intelligence to them, then they exploit that leakage to gouge the publishers further. It hurts advertisers, readers and publishers, and it's the result of an illegal, collusive, corrupt ad-tech duopoly.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/06/surveillance-tulip-bulbs/#adtech-bubble

The existence of an advertising duopoly, meanwhile, is the result of lax antitrust enforcement. Facebook and Google were permitted to execute a long string of anticompetitive mergers and acquisitions, producing the hyper-concentrated market we see today.

The obvious remedy to this situation is to break up the monopolies, but that is off the table (for now). 40 years of neoliberal orthodoxy says that monopolies are efficient and breakups don't work, so we're left yanking on other policy levers.

For example, ad-tech pioneered a long, accelerating trend to surveillance. Their reach meant they could gather data on nearly everything that happened online (Facebook Like buttons, Google Analytics). Their capital meant they could strangle privacy laws in the cradle.

Eventually this became too much to bear. The EU passed the GDPR - but without breakups or other explicit antimonopoly measures. The result was that FB/Goog had to look down the back of the sofa for change to pay for compliance.

Meanwhile smaller, EU-based competitors (who were much dirtier than FB/Goog because they needed to behave worse to be economically viable in the cracks left by the duopoly) were driven out of business, handing even more market-power to Googbook.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3477686

Which brings me back to Australia. It's undeniable that publishers get ripped off by Googbook. Their ad marketplaces are frauds from top to bottom: fake metrics for fake users seeing fake ads, run on bid-rigging and self-dealing.

Publishers that complain about this get slammed: Googbook uses the fact that they have created anticompetitive, vertically integrated cartels to tie a willingness to submit to crooked ad payments to traffic.

That means that publishers who make a stink about being ripped off - or who take measures to prevent leakage of their internal business data - have their traffic switched off. This is possible because regulators permitted vertical mergers between search/social and ad-tech.

This vertical integration is the source of confusion about whether this is a link-tax. The goal of the regulation is to clean up the ad markets, but Googbook use links as a stick to beat up publishers when they don't submit to corrupt ad practices, so links get implicated.

But the regulation's primary levers are transparency: it forces Googbook to disclose which data it harvests from publishers and how it uses it; it forces Googbook to disclose algorithmic changes that will result in significant changes to ad performance.

Just as importantly, it forbids Googbook from using their search/social business to retaliate against publishers who object to bad practices in their ad-tech units.

At Matt Stoller writes, the idea "is to mimic a healthy market, where there is transparency of data and a robust set of buyers and sellers instead of a few dominant platforms."

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/facecrook-dealing-with-a-global-menace

The hope/wish is that all this transparency and guaranteed of non-retaliation might means Googbook ending their market corruption so publishers will get a fair price for their ad-inventory. And if they don't, there's an arbitrator who hears both sides and sets prices.

This is how collective bargaining often works - when you have one side of a deal who has all the power (like a big employer) and a diffuse set of actors who lack power (like workers), an arbitrator hears both sides and hands down a deal that's meant to be fairer.

But of course, this isn't a negotiation between workers and employers: it's a bargain between a cartel of news organizations and a search duopoly. That's not ideal! For starters, it means that the government gets to decide who is a "news organization."

That's *ripe* for abuse. News organizations are expected to report on the government *and* the government gets to decide whether they are entitled to participate in collective bargaining with Googbook, which could mean the difference between financial viability and bankruptcy.

Remember, one of the problems this system is supposed to resolve is powerful entities (Googbook) using their power to punish news organizations for complaining about their behavior - governments were in that game long before Googbook came into existence.

And there's another problem: the structure of the Australian news market, which is yet another highly concentrated industry, dominated by a rapacious billionaire who uses his power to manipulate politics: Rupert Murdoch.

Murdoch conquered Australian media the same way Googbook conquered the net: through anticompetitive conduct that was waved through by collusive regulators who never met a monopoly they didn't view as efficient.

It's not wrong to say that the only reason this regulation got off the drawing-board is that Murdoch viewed it as a way to shift a few balance-points from Big Tech's side of the ledger to Big Media's side.

Can't we - journalists, readers - hope for something better than being dominated by a different set of giants and praying that the new boss drops a few more crumbs than the old boss?

Goddamned right. The Australian reg tries to get a fair shake for the independent press as well as the Murdoch press, setting out some objective criteria for who is entitled to enter the bargaining unit.

But the fact is that monopolies reproduce themselves. As David Dayen describes in MONOPOLIZED, when a monopoly forms, all the other participants in the supply chain have to monopolize or die.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/29/fractal-bullshit/#dayenu

Big Pharma gets monopolized and squeezes hospitals. Hospitals monopolize to fight back and squeeze insurers. Insurers monopolize and squeeze...us. We're the only ones who don't get to organize to push back.

The people's countermonopolistic entity is the democratic state.

The state's job is to prevent monopolies from forming, and it has failed to do that job for 40 years. Now it's stuck trying to fix the effects of monopoly without fixing monopolies themselves.

40 years ago, we got rid of the idea of fighting monopolies because they corrupted our governments and working lives - we replaced it with the neoliberal idea of "consumer welfare," which held that only "bad" monopolies should face enforcement.

What's a bad monopoly? It's when companies conspire to raise prices. That's why the US government clobbered the Big Six publishers when they leaned on Amazon to stop engaging in predatory ebook pricing.

But while the "consumer welfare" monopoly enforcement is aggressive when two or more companies collude to set prices, it has n*o problem* if those companies merge with one another and then do exactly the same thing.

When the CEOs of two companies conspire to set prices, it's illegal. When they merge their companies and engage in the same conspiracy, it's not. Collective bargaining is out, monopolization is in. That's why the Big Six publishers are now the Big Four.

"If you wanted to get there, I wouldn't start from here." The highly monopolized news sector is mainly controlled by extremist billionaires and private-equity looters. The principal beneficiaries the Australian regulation are part of the problem.

That doesn't change the fact that Googbook are a corrupt, collusive duopoly. It also doesn't change the fact that there are a *bunch* of indie news-outlets that got to ride on Murdoch's coat-tails in this regulation.

As with the GDPR, the question to ask is whether this will strengthen or weaken monopolists, and there, I think, is some cause for hope. Forcing Googbook to reveal their data-collection and algorithmic practices and prohibiting retaliation is a solid anti-monopoly move.

Likewise, establishing a precedent for inter-industry collective bargaining is a useful harm-reduction measure for dealing with a monopolized market while we muster political will for breakups. It sure beats the alternative of merging every industry into its own monopoly.

It's a confusing issue. Link-taxes are bullshit and they're *pro*-monopolistic, since big companies can afford them and little ones can't. But this isn't a link tax - the only reason it seems like one is because links are the stick that Googbook beats its supply-chain with.

Image: IPWAI (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:An_Australian_newsagency_Pinewood.jpg

CC BY-SA: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[fantasyfandommaiden]

ML Counsellor AU: It’s not photoshopped

One of the downsides to being the owner of the ‘Gabriel’ brand was that he had the final say on all advertisement pictures before they were released to the press… however the more he looked at the latest photos, the more he found that something… wasn’t quite right.

~~~~~~

Gabriel was fighting a massive headache that even tylenol wouldn’t fix. He honestly just wanted to crawl into bed and sleep, but if he didn’t approve of these photos by the end of the day, than they would be late to the magazine release and he wasn’t going to allow that to happen. 

They were mainly for the new fragrance line, as well as some of the winter clothes (it was currently late Summer, early Autumn but if they didn’t get those photos done now than it would be late for the season) however there was something… off about the photos that he was having an issue with. Adrien’s face seemed sharper than usual with the close ups, and his body was more lean. 

He looked like he was a fair bit thinner than he should be. Gabriel actually brought up photos taken several months ago to make sure that his eyes weren't playing tricks on him, but no, he did look far thinner.  

Gabriel called Nathalie into his office, still looking down at the photos with a scowl on his face. “... Something wrong with the photographs sir?” Nathalie asked with her usual professional tone. 

“... The latest photographs, did they go through our photoshop standards already?” Gabriel asked, still looking at the photo. 

Nathalie raised an elegant brow at the question “... Yes sir. Elle did it to your standards, with only color and lighting corrections, as well as getting rid of any obvious blemishes.” Nathalie stated calmly.

 Gabriel hated how many fashion models (who were already far thinner than they should be) were often photoshopped to be thinner or had any birthmarks, freckles, or scars were made to disappear. He actually had a female runway model who had a large birthmark across her eyes that almost looked like a mask. She had been one of Gabriel’s first models for the brand, and although she was almost 30, he had no plans to ‘retire’ her unless she wished to. He did plan to offer her a chance to be a modelling coach however. 

He also knew that Elle, who was one of the best editors he had in the brand, would never make this dramatic of a change to the photos without contacting him first. He closed his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath before standing. “Has Adrien returned from fencing class?” he asked Nathalie, looking at her. 

~~~~~

Adrien was in his room, working on his homework when there was a knock at his door. “Come in.” he called, turning in his chair as the door opened. His eyes widened when his father entered the room, looking at Adrien. “F-Father… Hello!” he said as the man walked over to him.

“Adrien, stand up.” he stated, and Adrien instantly stood up, wondering what this could be about. Gabriel looked intensely at his face, than slowly looked down at the rest of him, actually lifting his hand to look at his wrist, a slight scowl on his face. “... Adrien, have you been eating the full meals provided to you by the chief?” he asked. 

Adrien blinked at the question “Yes father.” he responded quickly, but that answer seemed to cause him to scowl even more, so he guessed it was the wrong answer “I-Is there a problem?” 

“I was looking at your photos from your latest shoot, and noticed you are far thinner than last time.” Gabriel explained “Have you been doing other physical activities beside fencing and basket ball?” 

“No, not really.” Adrien stated rather quickly. Too quickly, and Gabriel could feel a spike of panic and guilt… he was lying. 

Gabriel looked down at Adrien with a stern expression “... Adrien, you shouldn’t lie to me. I know when you're lying. It’s important for me to know these things so that you are eating enough for the amount of calories you use in a day.” he responded to him. “I realise that your diet is very strict, and you have been enjoying your freedom, but you are clearly losing weight, and I refuse to allow this to continue because it is very bad for your health.” he stated to him.

Adrien looked at him wide eyed, bitting his bottom lip slightly “... Okay, so, with all of the akuma attacks that have been happening lately, I have started learning how to do parkour with some friends.” he stated slowly, looking at his father. “I realise that Gorilla- I mean, my bodyguard, is always there to protect me, but sometimes, like when it happens during school, we need to evacuate quickly, so me and some classmates thought that learning parkour would help us escape the situation more quickly.” 

Gabriel looked at him with a raised brow “... I don’t recall signing any forms for you to take on more lessons.” 

Adrien winced slightly, resisting the urge to fidget “It’s not a formal class or anything. During our breaks between class, it's usually like ten minutes, me and some of my classmates will go over some basic moves in the gym. Two of my classmates, Kim and Alix, are very athletic, and have been teaching us stuff like how to fall properly and do proper techniques. Kim is actually a junior lifeguard and swim instructor, and Alix has been doing this since she would walk so, also there is always at least one teacher in the gym to supervise … I just figured it would be something good to know. I didn’t tell you, because it’s not a formal class, it doesn’t take up much of my time either.” Also, you wouldn’t approve had gone unsaid. 

Gabriel looked down at him for a long while, before sighing and pinching the bridge of his nose. “Adrien, parkour can be very dangerous if done incorrectly.” the man began and Adrien was just waiting for him to say ‘these children are bad influences on you, and you should stay away.’ 

“However, the fact you took initiative with your safety is good.” Gabriel complimented. “I wish you had told me sooner, because I am guessing this has been going on for awhile, yes?”

Adrien nodded “Shortly after the Stoneheart incident.” 

Gabriel scowled, remembering the first akuma that started this all with the face off against Ladybug and Chat Noir. “Yes, that. So for a long while, meaning your dietitian has been unknowingly underfeeding you. How often do you have these… ‘lessons’.” 

Adrien blinked, not believing that his father hadn’t pulled him out of this yet… but then again, this was an activity having to do with his safety so maybe that was why. “Um… it’s not very formal, but usually three maybe four times a week? During breaks that would amount to…. Four extra hours of physical activity.” 

Gabriel nodded “Very well, I will have Nathalie book another appointment with your dietitian, where I expect you to tell him in full ALL of the physical activities you do so we can have throughout the week Adrien.” he stated, looking at his son now realising that on top of him losing some weight he seems to have grown taller. A small, ghost of a smile appeared on his face “... I would have had to call anyway, if you're anything like me, you're bound to hit your growth spurt soon.” 

Adrien’s eyes widened as he looked at his father “... So, you’ll allow me to continue?” “I should have been informed about this before you started, seeing it can be dangerous and I don’t like being deceived, but since you are learning it so you will be able to get out of situations with akumas more quickly, I will allow it, on the condition that you wear proper safety equipment.” 

Adrien blinks “... Like, a helmet?” he asked slowly, dreading the thought of his friends comments on him going to one of their hangouts wearing a bike helmet. 

“No, helmets would get in the way with somersaulting if not built correctly and would cause damage to the neck. I mean things like wrist and knee guards. Also to wear loose clothing, and long pants so when you do fall, your less likely to scrap yourself against the ground.” Gabriel stated in a matter of fact tone. 

Adrien looked at his father in shock “... How do you know this stuff father?” 

Gabriel was quiet for a long moment before replying in a monotonous voice “During my time in design school we had a project were we had to design active wear, so I did extensive research on the topic. It appears even after all these years I still retain some of the information.” he stated evenly before turning around “I will make sure that the chief gives you some extra helpings tonight so we can get your weight back to normal.” 

“Ah!” Adrien called out and Gabriel looked over his shoulder with a raised brow. Adrien almost lost his nerve but began to speak anyways “Could I request lasagna for dinner tonight?” 

Gabriel looked at his son for a long moment. “The cooking staff has already prepped tonights meal and started when I came up to speak to you, it would be rude to have them change the entire meal plan so late now.” Adrien slumped slightly, nodding. “... Of course father.” 

Gabriel stood where he was for a moment longer, still looking at his son over his shoulder “I have some more work to attend to tonight, so I won't be joining you for dinner.” to which Adrien just gave a solemn nod, expecting that really. 

“... However, I will request that the cooking staff make lasagna tomorrow night.” Adrien perked up slightly, looking at his father who still had a fairly neutral expression. “And provided that I get all of my work together, I may join you.” 

Adrien grinned widely “That would be great father, I look forward to it!” 

~~~~ 

Sadly, there was an akuma attack that afternoon and Nathalie had to be the one to inform Adrien how his father was too busy to join him for dinner. The lasagna, which he had no doubt was very good, didn’t taste as nice as he believed it would.

[drariellevalentine]

Medically Inevitable

Meet Our Mc- Arielle Valentine

(This is after Chapter 7)

Name:- Arielle Cerise Valentine/Raines (professionally known as Dr. Arielle Valentine, celebrity-wise as Arielle Raines)

Birthday:- June 5th, 1995 (Age-25)

Zodiac Sign:- Gemini

Face Claim:- Nina Dobrev

Background:- Part Italian and French

Education:- Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

Main Profession:- Intern at Edenbrook Hospital, residency of Internal Medicine

Side Professions:-

Actress- Played a leading role in a medical drama during high school

Model- Models her sister-in-law’s clothing lines whenever she can

Influencer- Has over 40 million followers on Instagram, posts about her daily life

Singer- Has sung and posted on YouTube with female icons like Ariana Grande, makes a guest appearance in some of her MV’s. (Don’t worry, you’ll see how later!)

Nicknames:-

Rookie (Ethan)

Ari (Elijah & Sienna)

Elle (Bryce)

Sunshine (Naveen)

Cherry (Mark & Adrian)

Family:

Adrian Raines

Brother

Age- 31

Background- Italian and French

Profession- co-owner of Carson & Raines and Criminal Defence Attorney

Married to Alyssa, father to Arabelle

Relationship- Extremely close with each other. Whether it’s personal problems or work issues, he’s the first person who Arielle turns to for advice. He would do anything for his sister, and so would she.

Alyssa Raines

Sister-in-law

Background- American

Age- 28

Profession- CEO and Head Designer of Fashion Empire ‘Flair’

Married to Adrian, mother to Arabelle

Relationship- Very close to each other, Arielle considers Alyssa as her older sister. Lived with each other for two years when Arielle was in med school. Later, Alyssa moved in with Adrian as her company expanded and Arielle bought her own apartment.

Arabelle Raines

Niece

Age-5

Background- Part American, French & Italian

Nickname- Belle (everyone)/Amorina (Arielle-means little love)

Relationship- Arielle’s and Arabelle’s relationship is one of a kind. Both of them love each other so much, Arielle looks at her like own daughter. Alyssa jokes that her daughter is very lucky, not because they are well-off, but that she has two amazing moms. Arielle loves to spoil her, but makes sure she learns the importance for everything.

Mark Raines

Cousin- (Arielle’s father’s brother’s son)

Profession- Professional chef, owner of several restaurants and chains in various areas

Age-31 (older by four months from Adrian)

Background- Italian

Boyfriend to Blair

Relationship- This pair is very notorious and well-known in the family for their prank wars from a very young age. They still play pranks on each other, but not as much. Once Mark learned that Arielle’s middle name stood for cherries, and she just happened to be snacking on them at that time, he gave her the nickname ‘Cherry’, which caught on to Adrian.

Blair Carson:-

Best friend/cousin’s girlfriend

Profession- co-owner of Carson and Raines (Blair’s and Arielle’s father originally founded the law firm. Two years ago, Blair’s father died and she took over his position) and Women’s Rights Attorney

Age-26

Background- British

Girlfriend to Mark

Relationship- These girls have been joined to the hip at a very young age, due to the fact that Blair was left at Arielle’s house when both their fathers had to work. Their emotional bond and connection only increased when Blair’s mother died when she was 3, as they both relate to never have had a mother’s love.

Amelié Valentine:-

Late mother

Professional singer/pianist

Background- French

Relationship- Amelié died just a day after Arielle was born. Though, all of her family members say that Arielle is a striking image of her mother. They share the same vivid violet eyes, perfectly pink lips and numerous other resemblances. Naveen is the one who told stories about her to Arielle.

Alessandro Raines:-

Father, although not on speaking terms

Profession- Retired, co-owner of Carson & Raines (multinational law firm)

Background- Italian

Relationship- Arielle and her father have not been on speaking terms for 7 years since their huge fight on her 18th birthday. Although she was not close with her father during her teenage years, they were quite close during her childhood.

Naveen Banerji:-

Godfather, although Arielle considers him as her actual father

Profession- Retired, former Head of Diagnostics Team, Edenbrook Hospital

Background- Indian

Relationship- Naveen and Arielle were like father and daughter until her second year of med school. He taught her everything there is to know about life, love, and laughter. The two are slowly mending their broken bond, even though their love and affection for each other has never diminished.

Bennet Wilson:-

Ex-boyfriend

Profession- Neurosurgical Intern at Mass Kenmore

Age- 27

Background- British

Relationship- The pair met at Johns Hopkins, Bennet was in his 2nd year and Arielle just started. They graduated at the same time, as Arielle completed her education in only 6 years. The pair went to great heights with their relationship, made it official for almost 4 years and Bennet was also planning to propose later that year. Then he learned that Arielle had gotten matched with Edenbrook, as she wanted to work with her medical hero and inspiration, Dr. Ethan Ramsey. But he hadn’t, he was extremely disappointed as Dr. Harper Emery was the main reason he had gotten into neurosurgery. This lead to huge fights and disagreements, leading to Bennet cheating on Arielle with her best friend. The pair broke up three months before the start of their residency.

A to Z with Arielle

A is for Actress

Arielle is known for playing a leading role in a medical drama during high school. She plays a young paediatrician on the show, and is known very well for handling kids on set. The cast would joke about her being an actress and babysitter at the same time!

B is for Blush☺️

If there’s one one makeup product Arielle never needs, it’s blush. She blushes quite easily and sometimes for no reason (according to herself), though I’m sure you know why!😏

It also is her favourite colour. Her bedroom, from top to bottom, is a picture perfect aesthetic of the colour blush, with hints of gold and a shimmery pearl. Fun fact, Arielle painted her bedroom herself and chose all the furniture and decor with Alyssa. She wants her room to be perfect, as it’s home and should be a place of comfort and solace at the end of her tiring shifts.

C is for Chocolate🍫& Cerise🍒

Chocolate- Arielle absolutely loves and adores chocolate. She cannot go a day without eating something which has chocolate, claiming that instead of coffee, she prefers a sugar rush. She jokes that her first love wasn’t Bennet, but chocolate.

Cerise- ‘Cerise’ is the French word for cherries. Her mother named her ‘Cerise’ because the moment she was born, her lips were cherry red (after that they weren’t though) and her main pregnancy cravings her cherries. Fun fact, Arielle hates maraschino cherries and anything cherry flavoured. She only likes juicy, fresh cherries.

D is for Dance💃🏻

Dance- Arielle loves to dance, whether it’s under the stars swaying or learning BLACKPINK’s new dance from their MV’s. She is quite flexible, and has been dancing from a very young age. Arielle also dances as exercise, saying that it’s a fun way to keep your body fit, while at the same time jamming out to your favourite tunes.

E is for Exercise

Exercise- This is something that is really important to Arielle, especially since she gained a bit of weight when she was 12 or 13. Since that, Naveen had taught her healthy ways to watch her diet and to easily exercise. Arielle says that her yoga sessions with him were one of the best, and she still continues till today. She is never embarrassed about her weight when she was young, and actually has talked about it on some of her guest appearances on shows and her Instagram. Moreover, she loves to encourage and motivate people to lead a healthy lifestyle. She isn’t much of a fan of sports but is a great swimmer.

F is for Fame

Fame- Arielle is known for many things, being a top influencer, an actress, a model, an icon for fashion and her beautiful voice. One of the things that fans like about her is she is very down-to-earth and never hides away about the problems she’s going through. Also, fans like that she doesn’t advertise different brands or products, nor always posts with a full face of makeup.

G is for Gelato

Being part Italian, it’s only fair that Arielle’s love for gelato is real. She prefers gelato rather than ice cream, although that doesn’t stop her from binge-watching and finishing a tub of rocky road with her friends.

H is for Helpful

Arielle loves being helpful. She goes to great lengths to provide care for her patients. When a friend’s in trouble, they always know that they can count on Arielle for helping them.

I is for Instruments

Arielle learned to play the piano at a very young age, as for singing, it was something that just came naturally to her. She later learned to play the guitar, but not as well. She was classically trained for 10 years on the piano, before she stopped and only learned her favourite tunes.

J is for Jewels

Arielle does love a little bling now and then, and treats herself to a few accessories sometimes. Her family members, who know this, love to gift her with a pair of earrings on a special occasion. She also spares no expense in picking out something for her loved ones. But any accessory she picks always has a meaning to it.

K is for Kids

Arielle is a natural with kids, she absolutely adores them having a niece of her own. The funny thing is Arielle was the one who cried when she found out that she was going to be an aunt. Alyssa shed a few tears at first, later full on sobbing because of the hormones.

She always keeps her pockets full of candy, and always keeps a stash in her locker. She loves handing out candy or even sing whenever she gets a younger patient. In addition to that, she loves going to the paediatric ward and giving everyone a little something.

L is for Looks

Although Arielle doesn’t believe in covering her face full of makeup, she always makes sure that she’s dressed to the nines for every occasion. Her style is quite feminine and flirty, though she does like to rock some badass outfits.

M is for Medical Hero

There’s no doubt that Naveen was her main inspiration to become a doctor. But later on, the person who inspired her that she could be able to make a difference in people’s lives was Dr. Ethan Ramsey. After she met him once when Naveen had taken her to one of Edenbrook’s charity galas, she was even more inspired and in awe.

N is for New York

Arielle was born and brought up in New York City, New York. Although having lived there for most of her life, many people don’t believe her due to the fact of her very kind and affectionate personality.

Being a true New Yorker, she loves going there once in a year or two. She’s been to Central Park, Times Square and the Statue of Liberty many times, she doesn’t remember.

O is for Optimistic

One of the things about Arielle is that she’s very optimistic, and always sees the good in everyone. Being optimistic for a person for someone like Arielle is a huge challenge, especially when having been through so many traumatic events. But Arielle likes to see the positive side of things. She believes that if she always focuses on the negative, she’ll miss out on life. Although,sometimes her sunny optimism can lead her into trouble.

P is for Protection & Polyglot

Ever since being kidnapped during the second year of med school, due to the fact her brother was dealing with a very high profile case, she vowed to make sure she knew how to handle a gun. She currently owns 3. One near her nightstand, one in her car, and another extra just in case she goes out somewhere. Nonetheless, she has been learning self-defence for quite a while. Though she doesn’t like hurting people, she admits that it always provides a feeling of security.

Arielle is very fluent in English, French and Italian. She can understand and converse in Spanish and Hindi, Naveen having taught her. Surprisingly, her desi accent is quite on point!

Q is for Class Queen

Arielle here was the Class Queen in college. Working very hard to ace all her classes, she still managed to find time a create a social status for herself. She was known as the Center of Attention because of her background, even though she is kind and affectionate.

She later on earned a name, Triple Threat. This was given when she completely roasted one of her bitchy classmates. Also, she was known as the Heartbreaker among the boys.

R is for Relationships

Arielle dated one of her co-stars when she was acting in high school. It later ended in a mutual breakup, saying that they both wanted different things in life but are still friends. Currently, he is now one of the most top paid actors.

Her fist love was Bennet Wilson, which ended 7 years later very horribly. Though she says that being in that relationship had taught her something, “If you have worked hard to earn your place where you are right now, no one, and I mean absolutely no one should have the right to tell you what to do.”

Her friendship with Dr. Ethan Ramsey is quite close, but it might turn into something more... although both of them are completely unaware, except for their best friends, Sienna and Naveen.

S is for Singer

Arielle has an exceptional voice, she can sing quite high and belt out quite a few notes. Her meeting with Ariana led to both of them being huge friends. They have filmed and uploaded a few videos of them on YouTube. Some of them duets on Ariana’s songs and a lot of other crazy battles. The fans absolutely love the friendship between these two icons, especially when both of their personalities and dynamics match!

Arielle loves to sing, she says that it’s a way to express yourself and what you’re feeling. She sings when she’s happy, sad, angry, and somehow manages to beautifully showcase her emotions in every song she sings.

T is for Traditions

The Raines’ family have quite a bit of traditions. Every Christmas, they all make different types of hand-rolled pasta as a family. They all play Secret Santa, although everyone ends up getting a gift for everyone. Arielle is very particular when it comes to gifts, she doesn’t care about the price, she always takes a long time choosing something that is meaningful and personal. Another tradition is going on a huge shopping spree and picking out tons of clothes for children, then donating them to orphanages, along with small gifts.

One of Arielle’s favourites is the feast they make for Thanksgiving. Between Mark and Naveen, with a little help from others, the food they end of making is delicious, even if somehow Arielle’s the only one ending up looking like she just played the ‘Eat it or Wear it Challenge”!

For New Year’s, they all share their achievements and regrets by writing them on a paper, and then folding them into a boat, they let them go at the lake near Naveen’s house.

Even though Naveen is the only one who is Indian, the whole family celebrates Diwali together. Naveen picks out a dresses and outfits for every single person, with Alyssa’s approval of course, and somehow manages to make mountainloads of desserts.

U is for Unwind

When Arielle has time to unwind, she has a lot of methods. When she’s alone and it’s a beautiful summer day, she goes for a long swim. If it’s a day off with her friends, she loves to indulge in self-care, making a whole spa day at home. And last but not least, Arielle loves to colour. Some might find it childish, but she loves to pair colours with each other. Playing a list of soothing tunes, she finds solace.

V is for Vegan

Vegan- Arielle cannot imagine being vegan for even one meal. She’s a huge fan of seafood and meat, but doesn’t eat much red meat, and has a crazy love for cheese. Her friends joke about her eating so much cheese, but still staying so fit.

W is for Watch

Arielle loves to wear watches as part of her accessories. Although she has many watches, she never uses them to tell the time, mostly only as a fashion statement. She doesn’t like to wear them to work, because then she’ll be checking the time every five minutes!

Y is for Youngest

Arielle is the youngest in her whole family, excluding Arabelle of course. But oftentimes, Arielle’s the one handing out advice and hosting get togethers. She’s never been seen as the youngest and everyone in the family has a huge level of respect for her, especially after what she’s been through.

Z is for Zealous

If you asked anybody who knows Arielle and ask them to describe her in 10 words, zealous or determined would definitely be one of them. Her zeal and perseverance is one of her main factors what got her this far in life, and it will continue carrying her through life.

[doesitsparkjoytho]

"The Happy Harpy Post" - Medieval Craigslist

(**For anyone not in the U.S., Craigslist is Facebook Marketplace's janky, super sketch predecessor, basically an online site to list items for sale, jobs, "Missed Encounters," etc.**)

[For Sale / Trade]

Realm's most powerful -- and evil -- sword

Just in time for that long-awaited conquering!

The realm's most notoriously blood-thirsty sword has reappeared from the dark abyss yet again. The last band of heroes battled death to cast it into oblivion some centuries ago, but like a merciless rash, it will not stay banished.

Features:

Authentic blood stains and nicks

Possessed by an extremely evil and demeaning spirit, rumored to be that of Lord Archbane himself

Crafted from the finest dragon's bone and titanium, ensuring years of slicing, thrusting, hacking, mutilation and general intimidation

This weapon is not for the faint of heart. If the latter is not black as pitch, I assure you that the blade will drive you mad in its attempt to corrupt your soul. I stumbled upon the sword but three weeks past, but already the power of this dark artifact threatens to consume my being. However, one with the strength of spirit to master it stands to gain an instrument of unimaginable potential.

Willing to trade for guaranteed safety during new owner's reign of terror, a residence in owner's general vicinity, and a small (negotiable) re-homing fee for myself / the sword. ***And please note: the sword has attached itself to me in ways that I dare not speak of. If you try to kill me and take the sword in place of a transaction, it will be lost for many more centuries. It has assured me of this.

If interested, please find or send for innkeeper Finbar Ruild of Heshire, Eastern Province.

Free Pulsating Crystal Thing

Are you a dark being of some authority seeking an artifact of unknown power and antiquity to enhance your castle/cave/fortress/tower/dungeon's mystical atmosphere? Are you perhaps also wishing for a handful of random occurrences to shake things up, or to rid yourself of a few pesky, traitorous, or bumbling minions too curious for their own well-being? Then look no further! This strange, eerily glowing crystal pulsates as if containing life and is sure to amuse and amaze guests. In addition, this nifty crystal can easily lull one to sleep with its deep, otherworldly and ominous croonings. I guarantee you won't stumble upon another artifact of such myriad uses and features. I'm only parting with it because the lady of the keep has suggested that I have one too many "unique" trinkets.

Serious inquiries only (No minions, peasants, slaves or other lowly beings, as I dread the repercussions of this falling into the wrong hands). Please contact Lord Vasuvian at the black tower. You can send a messenger by horseback, pigeon, falcon, hawk, bat, dragon, etc. I promise its safe return.

[Services]

Haircuts for Heroes

Are you a hero? Do you want to be? Nothing says "hero" like a unique hairstyle. I offer dying, cutting, braiding, and lime-washing. Be the first to try out my new Dark and Dangerous dye, made from a fermented leech and vinegar mixture which is entirely unique and promises the darkest, longest lasting black available.

Stop announcing your triumphs and displaying your spoils to earn the trust of the town and start standing out!

My shop, Haircuts for Heroes, is located in North Ghestfel.

Live-in Mage for hire

Have you ever wanted life to be a little easier than it is? Do you ever find yourself wishing that your floor would clean itself, that your fire would stay lit through the night, or that those pesky birds would cease pecking the thatch from your roof to build their nests?

Now you can make your wishes come true! Mage with 20+ years of experience in the Way is willing to lend his talents in exchange for room and board. His only request is that you don't treat him as a servant and allow him time for his own studies between your requests.

If interested, please send word to Octulus Drolp so that we may arrange a meeting and home viewing.

[Missed Encounters]

At the smithy - M4W

You, dearest woman, had four children in tow and were berating each of them as they touched everything in the shop. I smiled at you, but you were too busy to take full notice of me. Your voice was the sweetest music to my ears. I doubt a lovely lady such as yourself with four energetic children would be without husband, but if that is indeed the case, I beseech you to come and find me!

Make inquiry for Will at the stables.

O4H

To the ruggedly handsome human who passed through the southern Fivhren woods yesterday morn:

As I emerged from my cave, sleep still crusting my eyes like fairy dust, I was struck by a most unusual but welcome sight. Upon the knoll beyond my cave, a dark-haired man (you) knelt by his steed. My orcish heart pattered- and I am not easily moved, particularly by those of diminutive form. A dark green cloak enfolded your manly form, and you seemed intent on starting a fire, perhaps to make your breakfast.

Not wishing to startle you, I went about my morning as routine demanded, beginning with my rejuvenating spritz in the creek just beyond my cave. I began to hum to catch your attention. When you spotted me, I tried to act alluring, splashing my heaving green bosom with water from the nearby creek and rubbing my face sensually. In reality, I was merely taking my morning bath and desperately attempting to remove the morning crust from round my black orbs- but I figured 'hey, why not kill two birds with one stone?'

I locked my gaze unto yours, and your visage was overcome with- dare I hope- alarmed intrigue? You quickly gathered a few of what I assumed were your belongings, leapt onto your steed and rode away. Without me.

I am sorry if my forthcomingness frightened you away. I am willing to take things slowly, if you are lacking a mate and or have any interest in lady orcs. I enjoy, I imagine, many things you humans do: fishing; rolling in the mud and baking in the sun afterward (it's good for one's skin); eating and cooking (I prepare an astounding seared pig, and my frog-eye soup is unmatched); clubbing and stoning small, pesky animals; and, last but not least, dancing.

If you ever pass my way again, don't hesitate to peek your beautiful head into my cave and holler. But you'd better holler fairly loudly, as I'm a heavy sleeper.

Sincerely yours,

Ghrus'yula

[Community Notices]

Your Daughter Is No Treasure

Dear Lady Fitz,

Please cease advertising your daughter as the most enchanting creature in the land. I had the misfortune of crossing her path in the market this Saturday past, and she was neither lovely, endearing, soft of voice, or willow-thin. In fact, I have seen female trolls more alluring. If you were to place her in a tower for one to rescue, those stupid enough to brave the perils set before them on faith of your word alone would, upon seeing her, leap to their deaths or fall on their own swords before they carried her out of there with them. I am not trying to be rude, I am merely pointing out the truth which I think you should know. If you really wish to marry your daughter off, be honest. It also might not hurt to throw in some gold.

Sincerely,

A man saving fellow men from unhappy futures

To my neighbor to the east and south, the marauding tyrant

Dear kindred conqueror:

Being a power and land hungry tyrant myself, I acknowledge that certain consequences can be expected from claiming new provinces. For example, I realize that valuable farmland will likely be laid to waste in the process, forest burned and the animals inhabiting it slain, and villagers and townspeople dispatched from their homes.

However, it is the latter which concerns me. Far be it from me to advise you on proper warmongering, but your actions have brought the consequences of war to my borders. In the towns and villages dotting our shared borders, beings fleeing your terror-inducing campaign are piling in by the hour. However, that's not the main issue here. No, what concerns me is that these humans, orcs, elves, etc. are crossing my borders and falling dead in my towns, creating an awful sight and stench which, in the end, I am left to deal with. Not only that, but my denizens are becoming worried that I might gather my army again and attempt to take the few provinces I have allowed them to keep. I have worked hard at gaining their newfound trust in the last few years following the end of my campaign, and your actions are threatening the fragile halcyon of my new kingdom.

If you would kindly see to it that more of your soon-to-be subjects did not escape your borders, or at least died within them, I would be most grateful. If you do not comply, a few thousand of my most sickly denizens may somehow find their way into your lands just when you think you've established yourself in your new domains.

Yours to the west and north,

Lord Belus III

--------------------------------

So I used to write. A LOT. Before fanfic, I was an aspiring fantasy novelist, and I wrote pretty much all the time. I'm trying to get back into it, so I've been looking at my old pieces and taking stock of what I like/don't like. This is one of my all time favorite pieces so I thought I'd share!

[cycbean]

Hello there

Wanted to dip my toes into this pairing. Don’t mind me...

This is a really (really) rough draft of the first chapter of a concept I had. 

Quiet Minds

Chapter 1

‘…there she stood in the doorway,

I heard the mission bell,

And I was thinking to myself,

This could be heaven or this could be hell…’

“Sir? Is that all?”

The cashier behind the counter looked at Ichigo expectantly. Ichigo couldn’t hear her thoughts but there was definitely disapproval in her eyes, probably due to the fact that he had not removed the headphones from his ears when he had come up to the counter, and his music was so loud that she could undoubtedly hear some of it. Ichigo was unbothered by this. He was already used to receiving this look.

He nodded. “Sure.”

“That’ll be four-hundred yen, then.”

Ichigo watched the way her lips formed the words and withdrew the correct amount of cash. Waving off her proffered plastic bag, he pocketed the cigarettes and gum and stepped out of the convenience store to the sound of Don Felder’s electric guitar.

When he was a bit away from the store he retrieved a cigarette and lit it, trying to relax himself.

Standing on a street corner, he watched the other people milling about. Some of them were also freshmen and would be his peers for the next year, and perhaps even the next four years. He considered, briefly, if he should remove his headphones and listen for a bit. Three years ago, he had similarly stood before the front gates of Karakura High School and thought the same thing. Back then, he hadn’t started smoking yet.

Ichigo put the cigarette out, stuffed a piece of minty fresh gum in his mouth and headed off to the Student Accommodations office.

&&&

“I’m sorry, Kurosaki-kun, there’s nothing we can do.”

The bespectacled woman, Ise Nanao, her staff badge read, shuffled through his papers like there might appear information there she hadn’t already been through.

“Though your circumstances do seem somewhat special, it’s not enough to warrant any special kind of accommodation.”

Though Ichigo still hadn’t removed his headphones, he had turned the volume down, so he could hear her voice a little. She sounded genuinely regretful.

“I understand,” he said. “Thank you, though.”

He got up, accepting the file of his documents from the woman. She gave him a sympathetic look.

“Although,” she said suddenly, “If there is a short number of lodgers this semester, I can make sure that you get a room to yourself. However, I don’t want to get your hopes up for this. Admissions this year has already reached capacity, so it’s unlikely it will happen.”

“Thank you,” Ichigo said sincerely before he left.

When he had been applying for universities far away from his hometown, he had known that this would be an issue. The dorms didn’t allow for single rooms, not for freshmen at least. To be by himself, he would have to rent outside the campus, something the rich kids did with ease but which was too expensive for Ichigo, considering he would be paying for it himself given that his scholarship only covered tuition and books. He had expected, with his luck, he would end up rooming with someone. Despite this expectation, he hadn’t quite figured out how he was going to survive that yet.

Outside Ise Nanao’s office was a small reception room. Walk-in meetings took place here, with more staff members seated behind small wooden desks with a few chairs before them. One meeting caught his attention.

It was a small family, what looked like a grandmother and two grandchildren.

The grandmother and her granddaughter, a pretty young woman, were seated before the staff member. Behind them stood the grandson, a boy about a head shorter than Ichigo but probably around the same age. He stood out by his rather stark white hair.

At first, Ichigo just gave them a passing glance. But as he did this, his eyes caught the movement of the young woman’s lips and he stopped short.

Able to read lips.

That was what she was saying. It struck Ichigo as funny that the thing she was talking about was what he was doing to her right then. Intrigued, Ichigo continued to observe her, basically eavesdropping. From his angle, he could only see the face of the young woman and the staff member.

From what he could gather, the young woman was describing a person who could at least be able to read lips, while the staff member was, regretfully, informing them that that was a skill they had no way of knowing if other students possessed, as it wasn’t usually mentioned on any official documents.

The staff member could only suggest that they put out some sort of advertisement for such a roommate.

This caught Ichigo’s attention. So, one of the grandkids was a student then, and they needed a roommate who could at least read lips. Though he couldn’t hear her, it seemed like the granddaughter could speak and hear just fine, so it probably wasn’t for her. It had to be for the boy then.

Ichigo lingered longer. At this point, the granddaughter shifted her body and Ichigo could no longer see her face. He hesitated for a moment and then did something he hadn’t done in public in years—

He took off his headphones.

Hanging them around his neck, he was immediately assaulted with the sudden influx of noises—a copier somewhere nearby whirring, the squeaky wheels of an office chair being rolled across the floor, and of course, the indistinct sounds of people chatting. Worse than that, though, were the sounds of thinking.

Lucky for Ichigo, there weren’t many people around. Behind him, he thought he heard Ise Nanao think about whether she should have lunch with her uncle or not. A maintenance man working on an elevator nearby was wondering where his screwdriver was. And of course, there was the family before him.

Ichigo focused in on the granddaughter, just in time for him to hear, quite distinctly, Poor Tōshirō.

Tōshirō, he assumed, was the white-haired boy.

The staff member: I wish I could help, but I can’t do anything for you.

The grandmother: Tōshirō, this school is so big, will you be okay here?

The granddaughter: Don’t worry, Shiro-chan, it won’t be so bad. We’ll put a message up on the freshman Facebook page and work something out.

Ichigo couldn’t pick up anything from the boy himself, so he tried to focus on him, almost burning a hole into the back of his head.

But there was nothing. Not even white noise.

But then the granddaughter thought something that lit a lightbulb in Ichigo’s head.

Shiro-chan’s been deaf since he was born, he’ll have to get use to things like this sooner or later.

As Ichigo watched, the girl turned to the boy and signed this to him.

So he was deaf, and had been since he was born. Was this why Ichigo couldn’t hear his thoughts? Because he had never learned how to verbalize them?

Ichigo would have continued to listen, but then the door behind him opened and Ise Nanao stepped out. Ichigo became aware of her presence because he distinctly heard her think Oh, Kurosaki-kun’s still here, and he swung around.

“Kurosaki-kun? Was there something else?”

Ichigo quickly returned his headphones to his ears, to which she raised her eyebrows.

“Is there a freshman Facebook group?” he asked.

“There is,” she replied, surprised. “There’s a flyer in my office of all the social groups, give me a moment.”

She quickly retrieved the flyer and handed it to Ichigo. By this time, Tōshirō and his family were leaving the office. Ichigo watched them go, catching sight of the other boy’s face for the first time.

He had a very young face, one that hadn’t yet lost the last of its childish roundness. His frown made him seem very serious though, thin white brows furrowed over rather large green eyes. He was signing something to who Ichigo guessed was his sister, though they didn’t look alike, so quickly that Ichigo was only able to discern Don’t bother.

“Will that be all, Kurosaki-kun?”

Ichigo turned his attention back to Ise and nodded.

“Yes, thank you.”

Ichigo didn’t see the small family when he walked out of the building, but he took the flyer with him back to his aunt’s car, slipping it into the folder with his other documents.

When he was safely inside the car, he finally took his headphones off and tossed them in the passenger seat. It was a long drive back to his aunt’s house and he was looking forward to relieving his ears of the headphones. Instead, he turned the radio on.

Adele’s Rolling in the Deep was just getting into its first chorus. He turned the volume up to a level he knew couldn’t be heard outside the closed windows and pulled out from the parking lot.

When Ichigo turned into his aunt’s driveway, his uncle Ganju was waiting for him.

This uncle of his was born too late for Ichigo to call him uncle—he was only a few years older, after all, though when the man wanted to be a special pain, he’d harass Ichigo about his lack of respect for his elders.

Ichigo quickly put his headphones back on, clicking the little Bluetooth button to connect to his phone.

The heavily synthesized beats of Cher’s Believe slowly built up in his ears, effectively deafening him to the sounds around him. Ichigo retrieved his things from the car and stepped out.

“About time you got back,” Ganju greeted him, holding a hand out for the keys. “I’m late for a movie with the boys!”

Ichigo dropped the keys into his palm. “You sound like a girl,” he said flatly.

“What was that, you punk? What part of boys sounds like a girl?”

“Whatever.” Ichigo walked away from him. It didn’t look like his aunt was home yet, so if Ganju was going out then he’d be alone for a few hours.

Behind the wheel, Ganju laid on the horn for a moment, the only way to get Ichigo’s attention when he wasn’t facing him.

“What?” Ichigo yelled at him over his shoulder.

“Give. Bonnie. A. Bath.” Ganju enunciated to him.

Ichigo rolled his eyes. He was pretty sure his Aunt Kukaku had told Ganju to bathe Bonnie this morning.

Bonnie, the little pink pig, was in her playpen in the living room. Neither Kukaku nor Ganju had children, but they did have a pig.

Bonnie squealed and bounded up to Ichigo when he came in. He reached down to pet her head, smiling.

Animals couldn’t think, at least not in a way Ichigo could pick up on, so he removed his headphones and set about filling the bathtub with water. While Bonnie happily splashed around, chewing on some squeaky rubber toy, Ichigo pulled out his phone.

He had been staying with his aunt and uncle for a week and had been mostly ignoring the texts and messages from back home during that time. He had only replied to the ones in the family chat, since it was usually Yuzu checking up on him and it wouldn’t be in his best interest to needlessly worry her.

But his friends had been sending him messages too, and Ichigo had left those unread.

The most recent was from Tatsuki in the group chat: Let us know what time you get back into town, we’re having dinner at Orihime’s.

Ichigo hesitated, but the message had already been open so, at least in a group chat, they would be able to see that he had read it.

Not sure, might be very late, he replied and then quickly put his phone away.

While Bonnie was rolling around on the towels Ichigo had laid out for her on Ganju’s bed, he opened up his laptop. He wasn’t much of a Facebook person, preferring platforms like Reddit and Discord for his online socializing, mostly because he didn’t know another person who used them. But he kept the account around because his friends and family were very much active on it. Bypassing the unchecked notifications, updates, and game requests, he retrieved the flyer and searched for the university’s freshman Facebook group.

It was a very active page, mostly stylized, preppy posts by the admins welcoming the new students and advertising the freshman orientation events that would be running for the next week or so, and also people asking questions.

It seemed like Tōshirō’s sister had wasted no time putting a post up on the page. Her name was Hinamori Momo and her post was asking for a male roommate who knew sign language or lip reading who could room with a deaf person for the next semester. If they were interested, they could contact her via her Facebook profile.

There wasn’t much engagement on the post, a few likes and reactions, but no replies. Ichigo figured anyone serious about it would message Hinamori-san directly. Clicking into her profile, he found pictures of the young woman he had seen at the office before. He had to trawl her page for a moment before he found one with the white-haired Tōshirō.

The picture had been posted only a year ago but had been clearly taken long before. Momo and Tōshirō were much younger, probably in their early teens. They were sitting behind a Harry Potter themed birthday cake, dressed in Harry Potter robes (complete with the pointed hats and all), with Harry Potter decorations in the background. Tōshirō was wearing the iconic round glasses and he was holding a wand. His face was serious even back then but one side of his mouth was tilted up in a little half smile.

Hinamori-san’s caption was:

‘Spent my day celebrating with this guy. Don’t blame me for the picture guys, this is the only one I have. Yes, really.’

And then she followed up with a line of smiling, laughing, and birthday-themed emojis.

Unfortunately, Tōshirō wasn’t tagged in the photo, and a search of Tōshirō Hinamori didn’t yield any results.

Nevertheless, Ichigo opened up a chat with Hinamori-san and quickly typed up a message, letting her know that he knew sign language and lip reading, and was looking for a roommate himself.

He left it at that and closed the laptop.

Bonnie had taken up chewing on the edge of the magazine Ganju kept hidden under his pillow. Ichigo picked her up and brought her back downstairs. The front door was opening, and Ichigo scrambled to get his headphones on while balancing a squeaky pig.

His Aunt Kukaku stepped inside, toting in a few shopping bags.

“Ah, Ichigo, come help me with this.”

Ichigo deposited Bonnie on the couch and went over to her.

“How was registration?” she asked.

“Fine, mostly hassle-free. My move in day is next Wednesday.”

Kukaku leaned a hip against the kitchen counter. “That doesn’t give you much time to spend at home,” she said thoughtfully. “Maybe you should leave today. I don’t mind driving you tonight.”

“No, it’s alright,” Ichigo quickly said. “It’s already late and you just got home from work. Plus, there’s an issue with my roommate I want to sort out here first before I go back.”

“You didn’t get through with the administration then?” his aunt asked, frowning.

He shook his head. “It won’t be so bad though,” he reassured her. “I think my roommate is a quiet guy. I’ll manage.”

Aunt Kukaku looked like she wanted to say more but Ichigo turned away from her, putting away the groceries.

After they had eaten dinner and Ichigo had showered, he opened up his laptop again. There was a message from Hinamori-san.

‘Hello, Kurosaki-kun! Thank you for messaging me! We’ll be on campus tomorrow…how about we have lunch together at the café in the Student Building? Around 12? Let me know. Looking forward to seeing you!’

Hanging his towel over his shoulders to catch the rest of the water dripping from his hair, he quickly typed out a reply:

‘Sure. See you then.’

&&&

Oh, my God, they were roommates. What Hogwarts House would Toshiro be in?

[shadowfromthestarlight]

The moment a group of people stormed the Capitol building last Wednesday, news  companies began the process of sorting and commoditizing information that  long ago became standard in American media.

Media firms work backward. They first ask, “How does our target demographic want to  understand what’s just unfolded?” Then they pick both the words and the facts  they want to emphasize.

It’s why  Fox News uses the term, “Pro-Trump protesters,” while New York and The Atlantic use “Insurrectionists.” It’s why conservative media today is stressing how Apple, Google, and Amazon shut down the “Free Speech” platform Parler over  the weekend, while mainstream outlets are emphasizing a new round of  potentially armed protests reportedly planned for January 19th or 20th.

What happened last Wednesday was the apotheosis of the Hate Inc. era, when this  audience-first model became the primary means of communicating facts to the population. For a hundred reasons dating back to the mid-eighties, from the advent of the Internet to the development of the 24-hour news cycle to the end of the Fairness Doctrine and the Fox-led  discovery that news can be sold as character-driven, episodic TV in the  manner of soap operas, the concept of a “Just the facts” newscast designed to  be consumed by everyone died out.

News companies now clean world events like whalers, using every part of the  animal, funneling different facts to different consumers based upon  calculations about what will bring back the biggest engagement kick. The  Migrant Caravan? Fox slices  off comments from a Homeland Security official describing most of the  border-crossers as single adults coming for “economic reasons.” The New York Times counters  by running a story about how the caravan was deployed as a political issue by a Trump White  House staring at poor results in midterm elections.

Repeat this info-sifting process a few billion times and this is how we became, as none other than Mitch McConnell put it last week, a country:

Drifting apart into two separate tribes, with a separate set of facts and separate realities, with nothing in common except our hostility towards each other and mistrust for the few national institutions that we all still share.

The flaw in the system is that even the biggest news companies now operate under the assumption that at least half their potential audience isn’t listening. This leads to all sorts of problems, and the fact that the easiest way to keep your own demographic is to feed it negative stories about others is only the most  obvious. On all sides, we now lean into inflammatory caricatures, because the  financial incentives encourage it.

Everyone monetized Trump. The Fox  wing surrendered to the Trump phenomenon from the start, abandoning its  supposed fealty to “family values” from the Megyn Kelly incident on. Without  a thought, Rupert Murdoch sacrificed the paper-thin veneer of  pseudo-respectability Fox  had always maintained up to a point (that point being the moment advertisers  started to bail in horror, as they did with Glenn Beck). He reinvented Fox as a platform for  Trump’s conspiratorial brand of cartoon populism, rather than let some more-Fox-than-Fox imitator like OAN sell the  ads to Trump’s voters for four years.

In between its titillating quasi-porn headlines (“Lesbian Prison Gangs Waiting To Get Hands on Lindsay  Lohan, Inmate Says” is one from years ago that stuck in my mind), Fox’s business model has  long been based on scaring the crap out of aging Silent Majority viewers with  a parade of anything-but-the-truth explanations for America’s decline. It  villainized immigrants, Muslims, the new Black Panthers, environmentalists —  anyone but ADM, Wal-Mart, Countrywide, JP Morgan Chase, and other sponsors of  Fortress America. Donald Trump was one of the people who got hooked on Fox’s  narrative.

The rival media ecosystem chose cash over truth also. It could have responded to  the last election by looking harder at the tensions they didn’t see coming in  Trump’s America, which might have meant a more intense examination of the  problems that gave Trump his opening: the jobs that never came back after  bankers and retailers decided to move them to unfree labor zones in places  like China, the severe debt and addiction crises, the ridiculous  contradiction of an expanding international military garrison manned by a  population fast losing belief in the mission, etc., etc.

Instead, outlets like CNN and MSNBC took a Fox-like approach, downplaying issues in  favor of shoving Trump’s agitating personality in the faces of audiences over  and over, to the point where many people could no longer think about anything  else. To juice ratings, the Trump story — which didn’t need the slightest  exaggeration to be fantastic — was more or less constantly distorted.

Trump  began to be described as a cause of America’s problems, rather than a symptom,  and his followers, every last one, were demonized right along with him, in  caricatures that tickled the urbane audiences of channels like CNN but made  conservatives want to reach for something sharp. This technique was borrowed  from Fox,  which learned in the Bush years that you could boost ratings by selling  audiences on the idea that their liberal neighbors were terrorist traitors.  Such messaging worked better by far than bashing al-Qaeda, because this enemy  was closer, making the hate more real.

I came  into the news business convinced that the traditional “objective” style of  reporting was boring, deceptive, and deserving of mockery. I used to laugh at  the parade of “above the fray” columnists and stone-dull house editorials  that took no position on anything and always ended, “Only one thing’s for  sure: time will tell.” As a teenager I was struck by a passage in Tim  Crouse’s book about the 1972 presidential campaign, The Boys in the Bus, describing  the work of Hunter Thompson:

Thompson  had the freedom to describe the campaign as he actually experienced it: the  crummy hotels, the tedium of the press bus, the calculated lies of the press  secretaries, the agony of writing about the campaign when it seemed dull and  meaningless, the hopeless fatigue. When other reporters went home, their  wives asked them, “What was it really like?” Thompson’s wife knew from  reading his pieces.

What Rolling Stone did in  giving a political reporter the freedom to write about the banalities of the  system was revolutionary at the time. They also allowed their writer to be a  sides-taker and a rooter, which seemed natural and appropriate because biases  end up in media anyway. They were just hidden in the traditional dull  “objective” format.

The  problem is that the pendulum has swung so far in the opposite direction of  politicized hot-taking that reporters now lack freedom in the opposite  direction, i.e. the freedom to mitigate.

If you  work in conservative media, you probably felt tremendous pressure all  November to stay away from information suggesting Trump lost the election. If  you work in the other ecosystem, you probably feel right now that even  suggesting what happened last Wednesday was not a coup in the literal sense  of the word (e.g. an attempt at seizing power with an actual chance of  success) not only wouldn’t clear an editor, but might make you suspect in the  eyes of co-workers, a potentially job-imperiling problem in this environment.  

We need  a new media channel, the press version of a third party, where those  financial pressures to maintain audience are absent. Ideally, it would:

not be aligned with either Democrats or Republicans;

employ a Fairness Doctrine-inspired approach that discourages       groupthink and requires at  least occasional explorations of alternative points of view;

embrace a utilitarian mission stressing credibility over ratings, including by;

operating on a distribution model that as  much as possible doesn’t depend upon the indulgence of Apple, Google, and Amazon.

Innovations like Substack are great for opinionated individual voices like me, but what’s  desperately needed is an institutional reporting mechanism that has credibility with the whole population. That means a channel that sees its mission as something separate from politics, or at least as separate from politics as possible.

The media used to derive its institutional power from this perception of separateness. Politicians feared investigation by the news media precisely because they knew audiences perceived them as neutral arbiters.

Now there are no major commercial outlets not firmly associated with one or the other political party. Criticism of Republicans is as baked into New York Times coverage as the lambasting of Democrats is at Fox, and politicians don’t fear them as much because they know their  constituents do not consider rival media sources credible. Probably, they  don’t even read them. Echo chambers have limited utility in changing minds.

Media companies need to get out of the audience-stroking business, and by extension  the politics business. They’d then be more likely to be believed when making  pronouncements about elections or masks or anything else, for that matter.  Creating that kind of outlet also has a much better shot of restoring sanity  to the country than the current strategy, which seems based on stamping out  access to “wrong” information.

What we’ve been watching for four years, and what we saw explode last week, is a paradox: a political and informational system that profits from division and  conflict, and uses a factory-style process to stimulate it, but professes  shock and horror when real conflict happens. It’s time to admit this is a  failed system. You can’t sell hatred and seriously expect it to end.

Matt Taibbi is one of the only people I subscribe to. He’s one of the few journalists I like because I actually believe he’s genuine.

[aleeciawalsh]

Aleecia Walsh | How to Choose a Personal Life Coach

Aleecia Walsh | With increasing regularity nowadays, I find myself getting enquiries from people asking how they should go about choosing a life coach.

Of course, being in the business of training people to be great life coaches, I find it very gratifying to know that the demand for personal coaching services is growing rapidly in my native South Africa. But it’s hardly surprising, given the unquestionable power that coaching has to transform lives.

A few years ago, while I was still in corporate life, the concept of executive coaching was gaining in popularity. Companies felt it entirely appropriate to hire coaches for their most senior executives and even some of their middle managers in important roles. After all, the benefits of even a small improvement in divisional performance would render the cost of coaching quite trivial.

The rise of personal coaching | Aleecia Walsh

Until comparatively recently, personal coaching – or life coaching – was largely the domain of wealthy celebrities in the US. Nowadays, many people around the world are enjoying the benefits of having their own personal coach to assist them in achieving what might otherwise remain poorly defined and elusive goals and dreams.

How to choose?

The law of supply and demand dictates that as the demand for personal coaching services rises, so will the supply. The key question, then, for many individuals already convinced of the benefits of coaching, is: “How do I choose the coach that’s just right for me?”

My advice would be to make your choice in four simple steps, applying four ‘filters’ to ensure you get the best match for you.

1. Demographic matching | Aleecia Walsh

The first and relatively easy step is what I call “matching the demographics”.

If you’re set on face-to-face coaching then you’ll need someone who you can reach within a reasonable traveling distance. Now, before I move on, let me assure you that being coached by telephone (Skype is very popular for those with broadband internet because it is a free service) is an option that you should not discount lightly. Believe it or not there are actually a number of benefits to being coached by ‘phone – but that’s a topic for a separate article.

If you work best with people of your own – or the opposite – gender, then this too will influence your choice.

There are many excellent, vibrant and surprisingly wise young coaches around, but you may feel uncomfortable with having a coach who is half your age. Alternatively, as a young person, you might prefer to have a coach that has extensive life experience to draw on; someone who’s ‘been there and done that’!

Coaching fees come into the equation too, of course. But if possible, I would encourage you not to restrict the field by applying this filter right up front.

Look past the advertised fees, if you can. Find the ideal match using the steps I have outlined and then negotiate with your preferred coach if you need to, to fit your budget.

Many coaches are negotiable and some will offer substantial discounts if the client is prepared to pay for the entire coaching program in advance. My advice is to look at what you will pay over, say six months, and then consider how worthwhile that will be if you achieve one or two of your most desired goals.

2. Niche matching | Aleecia Walsh

The next step is more difficult. I call it “matching the niche”.

Let me ask you this: If you own a house that is built out of timber on the side of a steep hill and you decide to add an extension with an overhanging deck, who would you be more likely to contract with; a general builder – or a builder who specializes in timber homes and cantilevered decking?

When you hire a life coach, you generally do so with a knowledge of the key issues or areas of your life you specifically want to focus on improving. And it may well be that you’ll find a life coach whose specialist niche matches perfectly.

I recommend to all coaches who want to build substantial and self-sustaining practices that they choose a niche market based on their underlying skills and passionate interests.

I know of life coaches who have been very successful focusing on niches like ‘personal empowerment’, ‘intimate relationships’, ‘self-confidence’, ‘youth development’, ‘career building’, ‘retirement’, ‘financial freedom’, ‘childbirth’, and so on.

3. Skills matching

OK, so once you’ve decided on a rough demographic profile of your ideal coach and the niche (if any) that you fall into, you can move on to step 3. I call this “matching the skills”, although this is about more than just skills.

Remember that there is, at least currently, no form of regulation governing the coaching ‘profession’ in South Africa, or, for that matter, most developed countries.

To my mind this is a good thing in that there are no barriers to entry into an industry where having a passion for people and a gift for helping others achieve their dreams is far more important than a raft of high-falluting academic qualifications.

On the other hand it is also a bad thing in that any ‘Tom’, ‘Dick’ or ‘Harriet’ can write ‘coach’ on his or her business card and set up in practice without necessarily having the skills, techniques, experience and structure required to back up their coaching.

Now, I firmly believe that good quality life coaches are self-selecting. As a life coach you won’t survive long in business without good word-of-mouth endorsements and client testimonials. You’re either really effective at helping people transform their lives – or you’re not!

And this is my point. Always ask any prospective coach for testimonials or references – and check them out. Ask the coach where and in what method they have been trained. Ask to see their certification and do some research on the coach training provider to check their reputation.

How passionate are the coaches you are considering about the calling they have chosen? Are they registered with any body that promotes ongoing coach development? Do they subscribe to any relevant code of ethics?

4. Vibrational matching | Aleecia Walsh

The final step is, I think, the most important of all. I call it “matching the vibration”.

Choosing the ‘right’ (as opposed to ‘good’) coach is, arguably, a more important decision than choosing the ‘right’ doctor or dentist. Whereas a ‘good’ doctor will make the correct diagnosis and prescribe effective medication without necessarily doing it in a way that has you warming to him or her, a ‘good’ coach (i.e. a well trained, equipped and ethical coach) with whom you are unable to build a great rapport, will be unlikely to do much for you.

Rapport is vital to the coaching relationship. Establishing an emotional bond with your coach based on mutual liking and respect, trust, and belief in each other, is the foundation for the achievement of great things through coaching.

Great coaches will have that something special that allows them to empower their clients to go well beyond the normal and yet still be compassionate and caring in their approach.

How do you establish whether there’s a ‘vibrational match’ with your coach? Great coaches worth their salt will offer a free first session that may range from a basic introduction to a client assessment to a full blown goal-setting session in some cases. This is a great opportunity to see if you and your coach are an ideal match.

Coaches need coaches | Aleecia Walsh

A final thought. If you’ve ever doubted the power of coaching, think about this. Every great coach will tell you that the one thing crucial to their success is having their own personal coach!