#and even though I’m not being paid to promote anything since I’m literally nobody on here

[mc-tummy-blur]

Realized it’s the 36th anniversary for The Lost Boys (released July 31, 1987) a.k.a the movie that fundamentally changed me as a child (in a queer way)

Usually I link my ko-fi to my art pieces but considering this is a movie distributed by Warner Bros., I’m not gonna cause even though I just draw for fun for a small amount of followers, I don’t wanna risk making money from this post specifically (as unlikely as it is). I don’t know how strict the lines are for fan content that are made by the companies being struck right now (both for new media and old media), I just know that you can’t take any deals that a company tries to make with you in order promote current work for the companies being struck. However, considering I want to work in the industry one day, I’m not going to risk it by putting the ko-fi link directly onto this post. I’m only using this fanart to express my love for how this movie was written and acted, as it is filled with so much queer subtext, iconic comedic lines, and genuinely scary moments. This movie would not be a cult classic without the writers and actors involved, and considering this movie is on streaming sites like Netflix, those actors and writers should be paid for what they are worth, and I want to express that.

[nightgoodomens]

Okay strange anon but the sheens and Tennants have been dropping sooo many hints lately it’s genuinley getting to the point where I feel like they don’t really care if anyone knows. Idk if that makes sense but I feel like they’re either building up to actually coming out as some form of poly or something (which still feels unlikely) BUT if they are actually poly that’s four famous adults and about 100 blonde children to all keep something a secret that they aren’t really trying to keep a secret so it’s almost like back for if/when someone does slip up and the polycule tm (however that looks) gets leaked.

I mean Michael and David have been so very obvious from the very beginning but I honestly thought they will never confirm anything.

Look what’s happening at the moment at the mere suggestions - people are being called sick and twisted and not normal just for saying that these two are in love. Fucking hell. People are even finding all the excuses for them being neighbours, they can’t even cope with that.

So I thought no way these two will want to deal with this shit.

But… fuck, something seems to be going on.

Here is my take on when I think things shifted, this is of course a very personal guess, so obviously I might be wrong about this.

So before I get to that certain day - at the time I was only watching things unfold and not commenting on the blog about it apart from dropping a little hint here and there, sorry lovely people who sent me asks then and I didn’t respond, but fuck it, I’m going to talk about it now…

Remember that day GT posted that unfortunate picture of her child and said she was a drunk accident? She bragged about sex.

Remember how Michael went a little insane on Twitter about David then?

Because I remember seeing that and it kind of hit me and I remember thinking… fuck, Michael is jealous. And Michael is no longer happy with being a complete secret.

If I remember correctly, after causing uproar on Twitter that day, he went dead quiet - apart from just showing up quickly the exact moment David was on stage presenting in New York and then he disappeared again.

And things have changed since then.

This is when we started having David talking about Michael, his outfits becoming more obvious, and his behaviour, GT going very hard on queer promo highlighting everything queer he wore, now the outfits being a clear response to Michael’s “Thin Dark Duke”, etc.

December.

Suddenly a private picture of DT and MS.

Suddenly a perfect picture of Michael and David sharing the most special look after Macbeth, like there’s nobody else in the room.

I expected damage control. Surprisingly no.

Instead we got Lapland. One big happy family. In their matching sweaters. And when the general idea was for a photoshoot of Family/Couple/Celeb-on-their-own - we got family and a couple… of Michael and David.

That was a lot within just a few weeks.

And that was PR, official photos. But not the damage control that I expected, instead another nod to the family thing.

Then Georgia starts promoting Anna’s paid for photoshoot and they’re playing wives which is horribly lame to look at because there’s such a lack of real sympathy between them that it only highlights to me how real MS/DT are. But! It does work to show the whole family thing, doesn’t it? It does push the whole we are one big family and nobody is a victim here.

(Also I think they hope she gets a job and goes, considering how miserable Michael looks by her side)

And now we are here. GT dropping on us that they’re neighbours. It’s only beginning of February.

And I see people doing mental gymnastics regarding whether it’s rented or bought and whether door by door… it literally doesn’t matter. At the end of the day the point is the effort to live close to each other.

My opinion though - there’s bigger probability that Michael and David discussed Michael getting something in London and David letting Michael know as soon as a house became available on his street - rather than a house miraculously becoming available to rent by David just when Michael needed it for NYE. Unless David owns another house and rented it to Michael. But - the specifics don’t really matter.

Curious now then… GT just dropped this before Michael’s Graham Norton show and David having something that day too I think?

So… we are either getting damage control next or we are continuing feeding the rumours.

At the moment to me it looks like they want people to realise that there indeed is something going on. Either so if something slips then they go “well… we never hid anything” or there will be some sort of confirmation.

But when I think about confirmation… There’s already been love declarations. What else is there to say?

[spaghettiramblings]

My descent into Hell as an English major

I have been enveloped in this feeling of dread, like my train car is flying off the side of a mountain and I can’t do anything to stop it. I don’t get why they promote being an English major. I know this is what I chose to do, and I knew about the risks. I am still willing to work hard to do anything remotely related to the subject I love. I’ve spoken to so many other English majors who feel hopeless. I probably sound like a privileged little teenager right now, but this is the truth. 

I think I knew from the beginning that my life was going nowhere. I always loved reading and writing, and I wasn’t exceptionally good at anything else (except foreign languages). When I looked at college programs, I only expressed interest in English and communications (which is my minor lmao). In freshman year of high school, I was bragging to everyone how I was going to be an English teacher, and how I was so committed to the craft that I didn’t care about the low pay. Meanwhile, I didn’t even like kids, and I did tutor some, but I wasn’t that good at it. A couple years passed, and at that point I was considering going into publishing to be an editor. One night after one of my night games, I went to my high school’s college fair, and I suddenly decided to be a lawyer. I figured I could major in English in undergrad, and go to law school. That way I could make money, right? Then I thought about it. I couldn’t spend 60k on law school. I thought law was soul sucking, as I had seen many accounts of stress from lawyers. I thought of being a paralegal, but I thought that it was too much for too little pay. 

Then I decided on editing. I was good at editing other student’s papers at school, so I decided I could get into publishing. I ended up going to college for English, and I was going to graduate a semester early. I was so excited about my English classes, and the future I was heading into. Since then, I have considered many other paths. At one point I decided to go to grad school to get a master’s, or even a PhD. I thought it would make me more marketable, and I'd get teaching experience. Then I thought “well I could go into the workforce instead of wasting time in schools some more...” I did some more research, and getting a grad degree in English does nothing for most careers (surprise surprise). I also never wanted to teach, and I feel like I keep trying to force myself to do it. I also thought of becoming a librarian, then I saw that most get paid minimum wage, and I decided against it. 

While I enjoy the readings and some of my writing, sometimes I feel like what I’m learning is absolutely useless. In the middle of an assignment, I'll be like “well who cares about this subject anyway? Nobody except me and some other nerds.” When a professor says “this was well written, this is so refreshing,” it brings me back. Someone’s opinion won’t really make me money, though. 

I never expected anything to be handed to me. I never expected to be rich. It’s just so fucking painful to see a publishing job that pays 30k get 600 applications. That’s literally minimum wage for a full time job that I can’t even get. I make more at my retail job and I do less work! I honestly might give up on publishing. I saw a post recently like “I interned for 3 years, can I break into the industry now?” My God... I shouldn’t have to slave away for 3 years, or cough up 10k for a 2 week publishing class in hopes that I can meet SOMEBODY who can give me a job. I give up. 

[arcaneranger]

Final Thoughts - Netflix Exclusives 2018

Oh my god you guys, I’m finally done. I’m free from the prison of 2018, just in time to actually finish my premieres for spring of 2019. But first, let’s talk!

2018 was the year that Netflix really went all-in on producing its own anime and picking up some big names, so we saw Devilman Crybaby made specifically for the service and high-profile shows like Dragon Pilot and Hi-Score Girl basically hijacked by the streaming service and delayed for months in the U.S. so that the biggest name in the game could release everything in bingeable packages. Unfortunately, bringing in an auteur like Masaaki Yuasa for Crybaby and throwing all the damn money at him worked so well that, long before any of these shows would even premiere, they decided to seemingly take any anime pitch under the sun, and wound up financing disasters like Hero Mask and B: The Beginning. Really, these shows kind of run the full gamut from garbage to god-tier, with an unfortunate tipping of the scale in the wrong direction. I haven’t gotten to see Ingress yet at the time of publication though, so we’ll have to see whether 2019 will start in a good direction.

ANYWAY.

DROPPED

WORST OF NETFLIX: Back Street Girls -GOKUDOLS-

I still don’t get how anyone thought this was worth promoting. The entire concept is offensive, and yet it was directed by a master and veteran of the medium (who is also a woman), leading me to just throw my hands in the air and resign myself to never having a satisfactory answer for why Netflix would pick this up to begin with. Dropped after 1 episode.

Hero Mask

One of the most incompetently written first episodes I’ve ever seen gave me absolutely no hope that Hero Mask was going to actualize into anything watchable or even average-looking. It was boring and unintelligible. Dropped after 1 episode.

Fate/EXTRA: Last Encore

What the fuck was Akiyuki Shinbo even doing on Fate? Did he do this at the expense of season 3 of March comes in like a lion or something? Probably not, but geez... This seems much more like someone attempting to copy his style than the genuine article, but nope, there’s his director credit. In the end, I suppose that Fate/EXTRA, despite being a very interesting game, was not ever going to be adapted well - the protagonist is almost literally a blank slate for a self-insert of the player, and their servant is also not set in stone - but I kind of would have rather had nothing than this. Dropped after 2 episodes.

SWORDGAI The Animation

Oh hey, yet another “the Animation”, it definitely doesn’t sound pretentious yet. I don’t have much to say on SWORDGAI, or at least not any more than anyone else - it’s stupid, very earnestly stupid, and doesn’t seem aware enough of that fact to be entertaining for more than a hate watch - and my hate plate is full already. Dropped after 1 episode.

Last Hope

I remember almost nothing about Last Hope other than that it was both pretentious and nonsensical, which kind of illustrates why Yoshiyuki Tomino is wise enough to stay out of anything that isn’t his beautiful Gundam baby, and it’s a shame that Kawamori (father of Super Dimensional Fortress Macross) doesn’t stick with what he knows, which is mech design. (No, seriously, he’s got a ton of credits on MAL and they’re almost all for that.) Dropped after 1 episode.

BAKI

Oh, BAKI, it’s okay, you’re a remnant from a different time. That time was right around when Mars of Destruction seemed like a good idea. It’s not that bad so I shouldn’t really mention them in the same sentence, but the hyper-violent imagery of this show is on the level of the Berserk manga. It’s unfortunate that I had to leave it after one episode because Netflix picked up a sequel that relies heavily on your pre-existing investment (just like with the Dragons TV show, for the record). Dropped after 1 episode.

A.I.C.O. Incarnation

I stuck with this one longer than any other that I didn’t drop, but in hindsight I shouldn’t have wasted my time. It’s one of the worst-looking Bones productions I’ve ever seen and the plot is a dumb ripoff of a much better science fiction series. Dropped after six episodes.

B: The Beginning

Probably the biggest waste of money on this list, B has such lavish animation that you can almost forget that you have absolutely no clue what’s happening or what the context of the story even is. It tries really hard to be both Psycho-Pass and Death Note at the same time to the point of cutting between them multiple times per scene, and it just ends up a badly jumbled mess, albeit one with really pretty colors. Dropped after 3 episodes.

Kakegurui

I still don’t have much to say here because the topic has been so thoroughly covered by The Anime Pope, so I’ll resummarize here - this is a show about gambling where the stakes seem utterly meaningless, even though it tries to impress us by showering money on the characters.

Children of the Whales

It’s so pretty, but it’s so boring. Children of the Whales succeeds in looking beautiful, but fails as a story that wants to be grim and apocalyptic but comes across as a soft-hearted small-village story that gets surprisingly violent four episodes in. This should have been the tone from the beginning, and the entire thing needed a good kick in the pants. Dropped after five episodes.

FINISHED

Sirius the Jaeger (6/10)

One that I waited a long time for after seeing the PV at Anime Central last year, and wound up pretty disappointed by in general. It looks nice (...at first), given that P.A. Works at least knows how to make a show visually appealing on a consistent basis, but the plot jumps so far into cliched stupidity by the end that, even though it had a few twists I wasn’t expecting, they couldn’t save it from being something I won’t recommend to anyone with as much anime experience as myself.

Lost Song (7/10)

(Author’s note: Yeah, apparently nobody on all of Tumblr has made a GIF of this one...)

Lost Song was a pleasant surprise that I wasn’t expecting to be invested enough to finish. One of the best of LIDENFILMS’ output, it manages to weave together a decent fantasy Symphogear AU fanfic, with interesting third-act twists peppering the last few episodes that made it memorable despite looking pretty generic. There’s a sequel due this year, too!

Hi Score Girl (7/10)

A very visually distinctive show with a neat concept that didn’t dive far enough into the heavy subjects it brings up, Hi Score Girl sits in a place where I like the presentation of it a lot more than I like the story. Don’t get me wrong, the romance is certainly cute, and I won’t begrudge a love triangle if it’s meant to be the primary conflict of a show, but the fact that it spent most of its last episode setting up for later robbed it of the chance to give us a satisfying place to leave off until the next part of this adaptation. Luckily, it got a second season, hopefully to finish the adaptation later this year.

Forest of Piano (7/10)

A good first try by a fledgling studio, but not one that lives up to what it really wants to be due to some very bad habits. I still distinctly remember the constant character shilling, and it feels like the story could have happened a little faster if not for the breaks every few minutes to heap praise upon the protagonist. Also, the mo-cap piano playing still looks weird. I’ll probably watch the sequel though, to see if it gets concluded well.

Dragon Pilot: Hisone to Masotan (8/10)

I literally just did my write-up for this one, so I don’t have much new to say here, but I’m pleased that Dragon Pilot turned out as well as it did despite not being what I quite expected from it.

Aggretsuko (8/10)

A fantastic and rather unorthodox look at what it’s actually like to be an adult in the Japanese workforce, Aggretsuko was an early darling of the year, and the only things that could have made it better were a more interesting visual presentation and a less squirrelly ending. Shame that the Christmas Special was...not good.

Devilman Crybaby (9/10)

It was so, so good...right up until the end. Yeah, that’s the only thing holding this back from a perfect score - I really, really hate the ending, and it needed to be changed. I know that, for most people, the best show of the year was either this one, or the most conspicuous work that hasn’t yet appeared on this list, though, so…

BEST NETFLIX SHOW OF THE YEAR: Violet Evergarden (10/10)

Oh God, what beautiful cry-porn. I hope that Kyoto Animation was paid well for their best show in years, and I’m kind of shocked that the two shows that made me sob the most this year both came out in the same season (thanks, A Place Further Than the Universe). I won’t spoil more than I did in my original review, but Netflix should be pushing this to literally everyone who would be even casually interested in watching it.

And that’s it! Last but not least, the last list won’t be a roundup of the whole year (since, you know, I’ve already done that in big chunks), but a list of the Class of 2018 Superlatives. Look forward to it!

[violetsystems]

#personal

I guess tomorrow will be a month since I was let go from work.  The severance finally deposited along with the payout for my paid time off.  The way unemployment works today would have been the earliest I could have applied.  As everyone reads in the news about America, the extra benefits expired this week.  My situation is very unique but it’s not without precedent.  I’m simply not eligible.  Which means I have to adopt the term “self-employed.”  The CARES act did have some less than obvious help for my situation though I had to do the digging.  The last four weeks I’ve had little or no help from anyone other than the counsel of my parents and here.  So the good news was that I spent the last four weeks trying to work through the financial ambiguities.  I learned a lot about tax law.  I set up a brokerage.  I divested my entire life from the last twenty years of my career.  And nobody said anything.  I’m sure people wanted to say things.  Yesterday I had to narrowly avoid two interactions with some people who haven’t talked to me in over a year.  It was obvious that someone wants me to talk out in public.  It was also obvious enough to avoid altogether.  Like someone is always trying to set up these quasi “magical” encounters with people who could literally just reach out and call.  They don’t.  That’s a clear sign of either social engineering or a flat out scam on my public identity.  I’ve travelled around the world at this point and had hundreds of such street interactions.  It’s not worth my time to play catch up about something that I’ve already started healing from.  It’s baggage to me.  Just like the tax burden I’m facing making sure I don’t get caught up in an election year spectacle.  Everybody is talking about people “like me” but nobody bothers to address my situation by name.  If all I were was my job then I’d be a failure right now.  But I spent the last week building an investment portfolio after rolling out of bed sleeplessly at three thirty in the morning.  I ended the week twenty five dollars down.  Blizzard leading the top of my modest leads.  I invested in both AMD and Intel.  Throughout the research on the Internet I read about these companies and products I purchase.  Stocks are supposed to be fun.  No one would know because everyone talks over each other just like in real life.  But investing in these times is a lot more.  Savings accounts don’t yield near anything due to the interest rates.  Money is held onto all the time which doesn’t really help the liquidity of the markets or the economy.  Greedy companies don’t help either.  Intel was the market leader.  Also had one of the highest paid CEO’s.  Also has a processor delayed a year in a market surrounded by wolves.  Apple has the ARM.  AMD has the Ryzen.  The computer I built does too.  The laptop I’m currently on is a coffee lake i7.  Matched with the 144hz refresh on the display, it plays Overwatch on a clip I’ve never experienced.  It’s butter.  AMD is affordable.  AMD is also making the jump from hobbyist darling to OEM distribution.  I invested in both because of a simple fact.  Both companies are now led by women.  AMD is led by Lisa Su.  Intel’s  Ann Kelleher will lead the initiative for the future to bridge the industry gap and opportunities for women.  These are the things I’ve been connecting my money with after twenty years of maturation.  And mostly how I’ve been “wasting my time” the last four weeks.

Not that anyone would know other than from what I’ve written.  People are friendly enough.  I’ve been out on my bike trying to clear a path in my life for the next six months.  I’m in a situation in which incurring any more income this year makes things more difficult.  And when I skim the jobs on LinkedIn I see more of me sidelining my life to make other people money.  Stability is a weird thing.  In America, you think it’s your job.  But it really is just money.  The way things work out I have amazing health insurance for a year at a price.  I also have the option to add a spouse and child at any time during that period.  It’s expensive.  I could have shopped around.  Skimped on dental or vision.  But in the end, I could afford to sit things out.  And in a time of complete and utter desperation, I come off cool and calm to a point.  The reality is I could just sit here and play games at the kitchen table.  I could write to my friends.  I could keep following the same love in my heart that I’ve been following for a few years.  I was more impressed that I could broadcast where I wanted to work on LinkedIn more than what opportunities are out there.  I selected Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and China.  I’ve been treated as human capital for years without my consent.  I’m worth more than this.  I’m sick of listening to people talk about themselves and do nothing about it.  They compare and contrast.  They plot and they scheme.  They gossip and backstab.  And every year they’re more and more buried.  In their emotional baggage.  In the problems they won’t dare face head on.  In the debt they accrue.  Silently yesterday I ended all my credit card debt in a series of transactions.  I still have a small loan which will be paid come September.  I have never sat quietly and never had to owe anyone money I didn’t have.  I spent twenty years at a salaried job weighed down by lifestyle creep.  When you aren’t happy in a job, you spend more to compensate.  This happens to medical students often.  They get great jobs out of school but are also in debt from loans.  They burn out on spending.  The debt piles up.  And there is no escape other than to work harder.  The same goes with student loans, home mortgages, and whatever else ties you down to revenue generation for someone else.  I’m not there anymore.  And I don’t really have any interest in going back.  The brokerage account was a late night brainstorm.  I talk less about politics now.  The politics don’t help me.  I talk to myself about tax law and investment.  I write about it here but I would never talk about it in public.  Just like I’d never discuss magic the gathering strategy with a person who wants to talk about celebrity gossip instead.  I see change in my life when I act for myself.  And excuses don’t pay the bills.

And then there’s the awful reality that people still think they know better.  This is a dangerous time in that respect.  People forgot about me the whole last month.  I literally had no real human contact via email after the 15th.  I missed the window to clear out my office waiting for this laptop.  People really expected me to use all my psychic powers to read into what they want me to do with my life.  I’d rather save the telepathy for the girl I like.  In that respect, not really trying to change my agenda.  My agenda isn’t hidden or anything.  People just don’t ask me the right questions.  People don’t ask questions at all.  In the last month, I’ve felt the most human and been treated the least humane.  And that is just life.  Would the girl of my dreams really want to see me break down and cry for help?  Or would it be better to see how no matter how hard I get thrown I always land on my feet?  I’m more than on my feet.  I’m on stable ground and a little tired of the world and its bullshit.  I’m also not really mad about it anymore.  I’m just me.  I have some time to organize my life for a change.  I got new glasses.  They are Versace.  I have time to take care of myself.  I have a monthly and yearly cash forward budget.  It is very necessary to know your expenses first when looking for a job.  It is the key to negotiating a salary and benefits.  Ironically LinkedIn solved the problem for me.  It thinks I should be making 10k more than I was.  And more in New York.  Nobody told me that outright.  I had to figure it out for myself.  Because the difference between what you want to do and what you can afford to do is a real line.  I worked for a non profit for years and barely got a raise or promotion.  The salary wasn’t industry standard at all.  And now the position just doesn’t exist.  I can’t comfortably say I can even work until I consult a tax lawyer.  That was a decision that I made for myself.  There’s a lot of decisions I make for myself that nobody gives me a warm hug in public for.  Nobody is privy to them because they either are afraid to treat me like a human being or they don’t read these journals.  This is to say that I realize nobody “really” cares.  If they did I wouldn’t have gone through any of this.  I wouldn’t feel forgotten.  I wouldn’t have taken that rage and moved on.  Being angry is dumb.  You saw it on my face for years.  I was stressed.  I was strained.  I listened with genuine concern and intent to the feelings everyone had.  I accepted everyone face value.  I worked to make people feel included.  And in the end I was excluded for whatever reason.  I didn’t fit in.  I always had to surrender my identity to the “discourse” that was more interested in using me a punching bag than an ally.  I don’t have to be the beacon for a lawsuit anymore.  I don’t have to raise my blood pressure for people who would rather see me drop dead.  I can just stay out of the way completely.  And in a time when American politicians on either side have no real answers, I’d rather rely on myself to get through.  I’d rather wait for people to recognize how utterly horrible I’ve been treated in terms of my value as a person.  I am not human capital.  I am a fucking person.  And the one thing I know is that my value over time here is not wasted.  And the time I’ve spent writing to you has made me who I am.  Impervious to hipster bullshit.  <3 Tim

[dominicvail]

in another world, ncis:la feeds us with actual Au episodes every now and again, but our world is imperfect and we just have to imagine this stuff here, but like, if this did happen i would Require these au’s;

A Bowling Au. Everything is played with exactly the same tone as the actual show, so it’s usually laughable but Sometimes super dramatic except instead of like, a terrorist attack, a rival team bowled a strike. Sam used to be on a super militant and well respected team and hasn’t gotten over that half the time people don’t know the name of this new one. He believes bowling balls should be polished before repacking, Every time, that Deeks just shoves his in the same reusable plastic bag he’s had for 8 years Pains him. G’s back story is Identical to the show except this isn’t a spy genre anymore so ppl just think he’s like, the super above it all edge lord because of it all. 

Teacher AU. Sam teaches all kinds of advanced math, G is a gym teacher who acts really stupid all the time to stop people giving him responsibilities he doesn’t want. Despite this, he is often dragged in to cover for language classes because somebody figured out he’s a language like, genius or something. He covered a drama class one time, too, and was scarily good at it. Deeks actually Is the drama teacher, the kids all Love him. Kensi teaches all kinds of physical design classes, like, anything to do with engines, she does woodwork, things like that, she’s not As liked among the student body (i mean, the boys and gays love her, but her jokes are Weird) but she isn’t classed as one of the asshole teachers. Eric teaches IT or whatever u call computing, he’s friendly, won’t put up with crap, but like, next to nobody understands him because he’s not good at dumbing things down. Nell doesn’t teach at first, was just an administrator dealing with all the complicated things, but sometimes substitutes, she’s tiny and Scary and is not a substitute u can walk all over, the ones who tried can’t figure out How she got them to behave??? but it happened. Mr Deeks and Ms Blye are the ‘will they or won’t they’ teacher couple of the school only for deeks to accidentally let slip that his wife is better at long distance running than he is and they all work it out that they’ve been married the whole time. Mr Beale and Miss Jones become the next will they won’t they couple except it embarrasses them so much all they do is blush at each other now. Hetty is the principal/head teacher. She is rarely seen, to be feared, but always watching. 

Star Trek AU; Hetty is the captain of the ship they’re on, but the show is more about the main away team. Is the team’s reputation as bad as section 31 (the shady(tm) part of starfleet), No! Is their reputation necessarily good? No. In fact, they frequently butt heads with section 31 (we’re calling them the equivalent of the cia in the show, they can be friends but... yeah), however their results are rarely questionable and they save many, many lives. It is highly unlikely anyone will ever be promoted. Sam is a Vulcan, calm waters... except if you make him snap, Vulcans have deep running emotions. Deeks is just. The Most Obnoxious Human to him Ever. G is half betazed, it’s why he’s so good at reading people.  Eric is a member of a species that is super social but have few social graces similar to humans so is always super awkward. Kensi has a tragic backstory where she thinks the borg got her dad when she was a kid but it was a Cover Up. I would make Nell non human also, but i will be honest, i am running out of trek aliens i can make her (klingon nell is a Hilarious concept tho). Hetty is Bajoran. 

James Bond AU. Everything is the same except they all use bad english accents the whole way through the episode. 

I am a massive fan of alternate takes on soulmate au’s, i don’t like romantic soulmate au’s, but unusual takes on them are my Jam. In this one, people have soul marks from people who will have the most profound effects on them in their lives on their bodies. This doesn’t necessarily mean the effects will be good, just profound and altering. The team realise they all have marks from each other on their bodies, and are elated to find out all those marks are Positive effects. 

Though i will admit the ‘see in colour when you meet your soulmate’ one would be hilarious with legitimately Any of the partners on the show. Kensi: See’s deeks, learns what blue is. Kensi: spirals into deep denial and yells at him a lot. 

Queer Eye AU where the Fab 5 are called in when Hetty nominates her team for a makeover! Bobby redecorates the boat shed, is asked by hetty to keep what is already bulletproof, bulletproof. And to keep the trap door. And not to worry about any bloodstains and how they got there. Tan’s discovers how hard it is to style around Sam’s muscles. Tries very hard to stop Nell from mixing prints. Experiences horror at Eric’s wardrobe, Nell is shown in BG laughing. Every single man exhibits true, actual horror at the idea of JVN changing their hair and pack into Sam’s car and run away to hide in the woods. Nell and Kensi enjoy the salon appointment in their absence. Karamo manages to negotiate getting paid literally twice his previous rate by just having to try to fix these idiots’ lives and deserves every penny. Antoni trying to teach them to make fun and not disgusting food doesn’t end well. Deeks can cook but likes to Experiment and 97% of his food is awful. Sam can cook, but it’s all bland muscle building/health food. The rest of them are incompetent, set the kitchen on fire, are caught ordering chinese on the sly, ruin 5 pots and pans with burn marks. They open the new boatshed design by interrogating a criminal they just picked up on a case, he points out how fabulous the decor is as he’s led to the interrogation room. Everybody cheers. The team provided snacks in said interrogation Could be considered a torture technique, tho. 

The team go on jeopardy. I have never seen this game show and have no idea how it works, but i bet it would be funny so it is a bullet point. 

Buffy the vampire slayer au, Kensi is a vampire slayer who Happens to just be an ncis agent. She does her normal job but also tries to keep the vampire world a secret from her team mates. Callen: uh, kensi... why do you spend so much of your free time hanging around cemeteries? Kensi: uh... Bat watching???

Superhero AU but they all have really dumb powers. Sam can raise the temperature of any body of water from a lake to a puddle by ten degrees in temperature whenever he wants. G can spontaneously grow and un-grow his hair, if he gets drunk and makes it super long he has ringlets. Deeks can hover exactly one foot in the air, no higher, is designated ‘grab that off the high shelf’ guy. Kensi can sense sugar. This helps in no ways but essentially makes her a human version of one of the medical alert dogs for diabetics. Eric can make anybody around him mildly sleepy if he wants to. He never wants this. It doesn’t even send them to sleep, they just yawn more often and that makes Him yawn more. Nell can speak to cows, since she lives in the middle of Los Angeles, this is not helpful. Plus, cows mostly just talk about grass and are really very boring. Granger could create rainbows out of thin air which was obviously in perfect sync with his personality. Hetty can detach her toes at will. This is only useful in the case of uncomfortable shoes, but can be awkward if somebody routinely searches your bag and finds them in there and arrests you for being a creepy toe cutting off serial killer. 

i would watch it, s’all i’m saying.

[5sosbitchfest]

Okay. I know you’ve all been waiting patiently for us to talk about the Michael and Crystal engagement, and since it’s been three days we feel like we’ve gathered enough information that we can talk about it. We know this came as a shock to some people, but honestly it didn’t come as a shock to any of us. We knew this was coming. And after it happened, all the puzzle pieces started to fall into place. I, Link, will be heading up this post. I’m going to talk about all of this. It’s all going to be under a cut because this is going to be a very image heavy post. 

So let’s go:

This started well before the Guess trip with Michael’s post on IG on NYE

With the statement that it was going to be “the best year of all of our lives”. Forget the fact this doesn’t sound like something Michael would say because whatever. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but after the engagement happened it seems he was very heavily hinting that something big was coming. 

They of course, got to Bali for the DesitnationGUESS trip and more and more pics were released of Michael and Crystal throughout the trip. They focused extremely heavily on Michael and Crystal despite the fact there was at least one other couple on the trip. Yes, it could be argued that this is because Michael is the most famous on the trip, but that argument in my opinion is weak because he’s just not that famous. Not only did Guess focus heavily on Michael and Crystal, but so did the people on the trip. Michael and Crystal were also featured heavily on the stories of the ambassadors on the trip. Like...very heavily. There were at least six stories posted from people about Michael and Crystal “singing” together, all with little messages about them being their favorite couple or the cutest couple, etc. Now, I don’t know about you...but I don’t know anyone who is that obsessed with another couple. People just don’t do that unless in the case of clout. Interesting right? 

So let’s take this moment to talk about the elephant in the room: the Guess trip being an all expenses paid promotional trip. Yes, Michael proposed to Crystal on a trip to Bali that neither of them paid for. How romantic right?? I know that’s what I would want...to have the “love of my life” propose to me on this sort of trip. They claim it’s because Bali is where “it all began for them” when yet again...that was another all expenses paid trip and she was cheating on her boyfriend, Spencer, at the time (if you believe the official narrative). LOL. Really, bitch? And y’all actually support her knowing she’s also a racist, fat shaming xenophobe. Amazing.

So that brings me to the engagement announcement.

Now, I would like to point something out. This announcement was made FIVE DAYS after the alleged proposal happened. According to US Weekly, Michael proposed on January 11th. 

This was two days after Slapgate happened. And for the next several days, Crystal didn’t wear the ring because you know...they were hiding it. The article then goes on to talk about Guess, the resort, they name several of the Guess ambassadors, the 1975 and even the chef that cooked the dinner for this evening! WHY? Why does anyone care about that? They don’t. This was all promotion. 

Oh, of course there’s this as well

A picture of Michael and Crystal sharing a kiss while all the Guess ambassadors look upon them adoringly. 

Friends celebrated this special moment with the couple, but there are three very important members that are missing: Luke, Calum and Ashton. Michael’s three best friends since childhood who weren’t even invited to this “special moment”. 

One more quick thing I wanted to point out: note the name of the photographer, Ryan Fleming. 

Ryan Fleming is Crystal’s close friend and, for all intents and purposes, personal photographer. He has shot several of Michael’s and Crystal’s “couples” photos over the course of their relationship. He’s been part of this farce since the beginning.

Okay, moving right along to the plethora of articles this “engagement” spawned. 

Not seconds after Michael posted about the engagement that US Weekly posted an article with an exclusive of the proposal and unseen photos. SECONDS. This was planned. Now, okay...lots of celeb couples sell their pics to articles for the publicity. That’s not unusual. What is unusual; however, is the amount of publicity that Michael and Crystal got

At least ten highlighted articles spawned from this engagement, including one with an exclusive. I want to draw attention to this because I want you to keep in mind that Crystal is literally a nobody. She is in no way famous, and Michael is a C list celeb at best. They got ten articles while Josh Dun and Debby Ryan (who I am using as comparison because they’re the most recently engaged couple I can think of) got four. FOUR. Four articles about a couple that include two people who are exponentially more famous than Michael and Crystal with no exclusives. None. They each posted about their engagement a day later with little fanfare. And yet these two...get ten highlighted articles?

And then this happens:

Guess posts a story (the top pic) about the engagement happening and the story is linked directly to the US Weekly article. Then they make an IG post all about “reliving the magical moment” of this engagement in a post. 

Wow. Talk about massive promo for Guess because now they’ve got the attention of a LOT of people. I wasn’t aware that designer brands were so invested in the relationships of their ambassadors. I’ve literally never seen such a thing before. 

So okay, we’ve got the syndicated articles, the Guess promotion, the fans falling all over themselves about this engagement and you think...well this is it right? 

But oh it isn’t! Because then this happens

Do you know what that is? THAT IS A FUCKING NEWSPAPER ARTICLE!

A newspaper article! I’m sorry, but did Michael and Crystal become the Carters while I wasn’t looking??? Or perhaps the West-Kardashians??? What the hell is happening here? How does a nobody and a C list celeb get a newspaper article about their engagement??? Can you even believe??? (FYI, I don’t know what newspaper article this is. I haven’t been able to find the source yet. I got this off a tea account on IG.)

This sparked my interest and I did a Google search only to find even more articles about this engagement. There are at least 30 articles about this engagement, including articles in publications such as The Knot and Brides, who usually only cover A list celeb weddings. 

So please...someone explain to me how this happens??? Clearly, Crystal and Modest forked out a lot of money for this kind of publicity because Crystal isn’t famous and Michael isn’t famous enough for this kind of exposure. Something is very, very off with this. 

So how does this tie into the Lie To Me video being released? Well, funny you should ask because this was posted just before the premiere of LTM, garnering a lot of attention. Conveniently, Crystal was silent about this entire thing (save for one story about being so grateful for all the support wank wank) until after the release of LTM. One hour later, she posted about the engagement. How very, very convenient that is. Of course, Michael liked the post within moments, but has yet to actually post anything about LTM because you know...why would he support his band? So far, it’s only been retweets which is just like...the bare minimum amount of promotion he can do.

So let’s move onto the next section: Ashton’s shade. 

Thirty minutes before Michael’s post about their engagement, Ashton posted this. It was deleted a little bit later. A song in Russian called Te Amo. Te Amo is Spanish, not Russian. What I think is that Ashton was equating this fake song to a fake romance: Michael and Crystal. Ashton has never been quiet in reference to how he feels about PR stunts. He’s spoken about them with disdain. Of course, this Tweet could be up for interpretation, but that’s what I think. Ashton is very good at throwing shade. 

This is the next Tweet we got from Ashton, just a little while before the LTM vid premiered. You can clearly read what it is he says. I believe Ashton was referencing the PR stunts these boys are forced to go through. I think he was not only speaking about Arzaylea and Luke, but about Michael and Crystal as well. I don’t care what anyone says, Arzaylea and Luke were just as much PR as Michael and Crystal and now Luke and Sierra. It wrecked Luke because Arzaylea was a terrible person to him, even though their whole relationship was contrived. But guess what...she was Crystal’s protege. Yeah, chew on that. 

So now Ashton has to watch another one of his best friends be wrecked by this bullshit. Just because these relationships are business doesn’t mean they aren’t toxic. Toxic relationships aren’t just romantic, they can be platonic and business as well. 

But it seems that not everyone is convinced that this wasn’t a total con. The following is an excerpt from the Jezebel article:

Huh. Imagine that. Not everyone is looking at this through rose-tinted glasses, and even if this author doesn’t believe that their relationship is fake she still recognizes the “spon-con” for what it is. You can read the whole article HERE.

Of course, one of my favorite things about this whole sham is how fucking awkward Michael is with Crystal, like so

Hella YIKES. Be more awkward, pal. We realize you’re not used to kissing her because you know...she’s your co-worker and all, but damn. Where those acting skills you learned from that acting coach you hired?

And then of course, there’s this gem which was the pic posted in US Weekly zoomed in

Why does he look like he’s in physical pain to be doing this? 

Now we’ve come to the last part of this whole charade that is the biggest red flag for me:

NONE OF HIS BANDMATES HAVE COMMENTED, LIKED, OR CONGRATULATED HIM PUBLICLY ABOUT THIS ENGAGEMENT.

Oh, I can hear the arguments about this now that will include “they don’t have to, they can do it privately” or “maybe they were just busy” or “why does it matter?” 

Except that all of those arguments are fucking weak because with the amount of famous people that took time out of their busy day and schedule to congratulate them is paramount. Even Doug the fucking Pug congratulated them. So you mean to tell me that Luke, Calum and Ashton couldn’t take a few seconds to comment or even like the post? On either IG or Twitter? They have been dead fucking silent about this whole thing. Why? Because they obviously do not like Crystal. They haven’t for awhile, and she clearly doesn’t like them. Which is hilarious considering she’s their PR manager. 

There is a very obvious disconnect between Michael and his best friends/bandmates right now. It’s been three days and they’ve been totally radio silent about this. This disconnect is because of Crystal, I guarantee it. When I call her the Yoko Ono of 5sos, I mean it. I find it funny that all these people are predicting things like 5sos in tuxes and who’s going to be the best man. Do you guys really think any of them are going to be in the wedding party if there’s an actual wedding? I highly doubt it. They weren’t even invited to the engagement event. Hell, at this point I’m pretty sure they weren’t even invited to Michael’s last birthday party and ended up crashing it. If Crystal has to choose one of them to be in the party, it’s likely the one she hates least and I think that’s Calum, personally. 

I don’t know what this is going to mean for the future of the band. I don’t know if Michael is going to leave the band at some point or not. He seems to be quite caught up in his influencer life all of a sudden. I can’t say I’m not worried because I am. I’ve tried to deny the separation between him and the rest of the band, but I really can’t anymore. 

In conclusion, this changes nothing that I believe or think. I still believe this is a massive PR stunt. I still believe it’s partially to cover up Luke and Michael’s relationship, and I think it’s going to get even more ugly before it gets better. 

Alas, my co-admins and I aren’t going anywhere. We’re going to see this shit through till the end. 

ETA: Crystal read the article that Jezebel posted about their engagement being a spon-con and promptly emailed the writer to “clear up” the perception. 

It’s just...so laughable that it’s almost sad. She got so offended by an internet article that she felt the need to email them and clarify that all that was said wasn’t true. If you ask me...that’s just more proof that that is is FAKE AF.

[drexodthegunslinger]

Why is it only Cayde you focus on? What about other destiny characters?

Okay, that’s a fair point. Let’s go shall we?

1: The Speaker.

Said literally three things in the entire franchise. He told you to fight but that we can’t win, he gave a speech nobody listened to because we were all thinking “is this it? Really?”, and then he told Ghaul to kill himself. Yeah the Speaker dies but who really gives a shit? We’re not given any reason to care are we?

2: Zavalla.

Apparently this boy does not understand promotions. “We killed all the Cabal leaders, why are they not gone?” Idk mate, maybe because that’s not how that works. “We stepped into a war with the cabal” yeah and you’re doing pretty shit mate. Sure he’s supposedly busy managing and planning shit, but really it doesn’t translate well in game. He might as well have two lines in the entire game where he alternates between “mah walls” and “we stepped into a war with the cabal” and he’d be the same.

3: Ikora.

Good in the crucible apparently? All she does these days is stand around looking stern and running an intelligence group that can be brought to a grinding halt by a fucking storm. Ikora, listen, if your satellites can’t withstand a storm they’re not much use are they?

4: Cayde.

TLDR, Bungie killed your fave.

5: Eris.

Creepy Hive lady. Very convenient for her to turn up in time for the Hive DLC’s and then disappear when they weren’t at the forefront. Will admit, I was mildly surprised she wasn’t brought back for the Warmind DLC because it has Hive. What did she really do though? She gave us some advice on Hive, had her shit stolen, and was looked down on by pretty much everyone. Only redeemable feature I can thing of is the rule 34 fan art of her which is great if you like generic rule 34 art where the woman’s chest and ass are exaggerated to shit.

Speaking of which, Bungie, I know the Destiny Franchise takes place in a period where food shortages are probably frequent, but mix it up with your fucking character designs. Not everyone is the same height and build you cowards.

6: At this point my mind went blank and I had to google “destiny characters”

7: Ghost.

Look at what the Speaker did. It took a multitool and gave it sentience.

The Ghost is really inconsistent, let’s be real. You want me to hack a lazer grid on earth, sure but that’s going to take precisely three waves of enemies and you’d better not miss one. You want me to access Cabal consoles on our very first time accessing the computer shit of an alien that likely has a numerical system that works off of base 3? Easy shit, no waiting involved.

Yeah, the “talk to your ghost” thing was great and honestly, I liked that. It was a moment for you to sit down ant talk to your Ghost, the one constant companion you have. It was a good moment.

And then they go right back to alternating between being a torch and a lockpick.

Bungie really fucked up with the Ghost-Guardian interaction in vanilla D2. The two of them nearly died, Light was lost, and the two don’t sit down and have a “talk to ghost” moment at any point? That’s theft of a possibly great emotional moment.

8: Crota

He is bad because he kills people

9: Oryx

He is also bad because he kills people and he’s mad you killed his son who he can bring back because We didn’t destroy Crota’s soul or something?

10: The EXO Stranger

In going to find the tweet I wanted I found something worse. Luke Smith had said he felt they had wrapped up her arc and quite frankly I haven’t heard a more objectively wrong thing come out of a human beings mouth with regards to games in a long time.

But it gets worse. Because 4 fucking years later, bungie dropped clues to who she might be if you paid enough attention to the shitshow of the Warmind DLC. According to lore from the dlc and the rasputin arg, there are hints that the EXO Stranger is Ana Bray’s sister who went back in time from the future as an exo to?

No, you know what. That’s bullshit. Bungie thought they finished the exo stranger arc, which was a shambling corpse of writing itself, then learnt actually they were wrong and tried to wrap it up.

Except none of it’s confirmed and explains nothing. Fuck the stranger, and fuck everyone involved in the creation of her character and her arc, learn how to write a story.

11: While we’re here, Ana bray.

Bungie’s first confirmed non-straight woman. I don’t know if it was confirmed if she’s a lesbian, bi, pan, or what so I’m using non-straight until I get confirmation otherwise. Had her girlfriend introduced on the fourth day of pride in a comic where she died. Great start.

But what about Ana herself?

Honestly, I couldn’t tell you. I tried to play Warminds but the Hive ruined it because Bungie is quite frankly not great at writing their own game are they?

12: Ghaul

Quite frankly, my favourite character. I dropped enough money on D2 to get the collectors edition cabal book which gave quite a lot of backstory to the campaign, however I’ll keep this to what Bungie actually make accessible in their game.

He’s an arsehole. He’s just the antagonist of the day, let’s be real. To understand that his behaviours and attitudes might somewhat stem from how he was shunned in mainstream cabal society and how this loneliness and bitterness from being an orphan as well as a runt was used to manipulate him into being how he is today, is completely lost on anyone who didn’t read his lore.

The game doesn’t put any significant thought into him on the actual disc that you play because, like Crota, like Oryx, like Skolas, he’s just an episodic villain.

13: Osiris.

Local Man Who Says He Doesn’t Need Help, Actually Needs Help.

How bad was this dlc? I mean, sure, we ran through the same area repeatedly, killed a Vex reskin of Oryx, and watched a Cabal jump on a vex. Twice. Once in a mission and again in a strike.

I can’t think of what Osiris did in this DLC except think he was able to do this himself, and then be the only reason we could damage Oryx- I mean, uh Panoptes.

Wait. Did they give a Vex guy that tries to simulate all the universes a name after an ancient Greek figure who was the source of the “eyes of Argus” stuff? I think they did.

14: Panoptes.

Bungie aren’t even trying at this point. He’s just Vex Oryx.

15: Amanda Holiday.

She has a robotic leg, an american(?) accent, and didn’t stop Cayde from doing his stupid bullshit plan that she knew was illegal. She also had a quest for an exotic shotgun that makes her different from other vendors. I get that as a vendor she doesn’t need an in depth backstory but Bungie, come on. If you’re going to make her important to parts of the story, give us reason to care about her.

16: Tess Eververse

Is there an actual ingame reason for her to be there? Is Silver explained? Is Bright Dust? As far as I can tell, no. Literally bolted on because Activision couldn’t let EA one-up them in microtransaction bullshittery.

17: Mara Sov

Cold, aloof, had fallen as pets. Was it confirmed how dead she is?

18: Uldren Sov

The only episodic villain I like aside from Ghaul. Uldren is great once you realise that he is how he is because of a bitterness towards Guardians. I mean, we turned up in his house demanding stuff, and the City on at least one occasion, let the Reef take a big loss for us with no acknowledgement. I can understand why he’d be pissed off in the first place and if he was somewhat possessed then sure that’s not going to help.

Most people are just pissed with him because he killed Cayde, but now he’s back as a Guardian that anger seems to have calmed. I’ve stopped playing the game since Warminds and I can’t say for anything that happened since, and while I hope Uldren as a Guardian grows as a character I won’t hold my breath.

19: Variks.

He stayed loyal to the reef and was helpful for a brief stint before we all shamed him for his mine dismantling kink.

20: Is that it?

I can’t think of anyone else. Sure, there are vendors and other side characters, but honestly, those are cardboard cutouts of a character with no depth of anything to them.

Sure, you could say “but drexmun, what about The Drifter, or the Spider, or Obb the Soulcarver?”

And I would say “yes, but two of those are from after I stopped playing the game and I can’t make an analysis on characters I know nothing about, and also you leave Obb out of this.”

[piracytheorist]

Reactions to this post hating on fanfic, that the original poster/hater will never read. Sadly.

(I'm doing this partly in a live-blog fashion, so keep that in mind.)

1) But I/we aren’t trying to make any money out of it!

Well, see, this is where “illegal” comes in. You can’t break into somebody’s house, even if you don’t mean to steal anything. You can’t camp in someone’s backyard without permission, even if you aren’t raising a marijuana crop back there. And you can’t use someone’s copyrighted characters for your own purposes, no matter what those purposes are.

That's bullshit. This is bullshit. And btw, the law isn't always right, let's not forget. You can't compare those things; you're practically saying every musician who ever played a variation/remix of an existing temporary music piece without asking for the rights to use them but also without demanding money to show their work, are criminals. I guess say goodbye to street musicians. You're saying anyone who paints themselves a copy (or a variation) of Picasso's Guernica and hangs it in a public space (say, a coffee shop) is a criminal. Bullshit.

Oddly enough, the notion of using someone else’s characters never occurred to me. I just tried to do it on my own. Surprise! It worked.

Oddly enough, not everyone's like you. Surprise! The world doesn't turn around you.

[...] are you getting positive feedback because some fans are so hooked on the characters that they’ll read anything involving those names (whether the writing accurately reflects those characters or not)? One real easy way to find out. Write anything you want, using Jamie Fraser, Edward Cullen, Harry Potter _and_ Dr. Who….and then change the characters’ names before you post it. Simple. Find All: “Jamie Fraser”. Replace with: “Joe Kerastopolous”. No problemo, all your own work, and any praise you get is duly earned.

How does this even make sense? The only thing this woman cares about are what names we use in fanfiction? If we don't then everything is solved?

4) But nobody would read stuff I wrote if it wasn’t about characters they already like!

Possibly true, possibly not. Depends on how good a writer you are, and how you go about displaying your work once you’ve written it. But—allowing for the moment that this argument holds water—what you’re saying is that a) you deserve an audience, no matter what, and b) you’d prefer to exploit someone else’s talent and hard work, rather than go to the trouble of making your own way.

Way to encourage newbie writers!

I already mentioned the shit she said about Donald Duck being created by Carl Barks. And she was paid by the Walt Disney Corporation, for crying out loud.

[...] if you want to write stories for the Silver Surfer or Superman, go talk to Marvel or DC, and see if they’re taking new submissions or would let you write a sample script.

You know, not everyone wants to be a full-time writer. Some only want to do it in their free time after a work that has nothing to do with writing. What she's saying is to either dedicate yourself fully to writing or not at all. Again, way to encourage newbie writers.

This is, btw, one reason why fan-fic versions of popular characters so often seem superficial; they lack the depth that the Real Thing has—the writer has merely grabbed at the broadest impression of the character, not built them in complex layers.

Did she just ditch the entirety of fanfiction on the basis that they aren't as DEEP as the Real Thing? Even if in a lot of cases the opposite applies?

I understand the urge to take a story that’s fired your imagination and carry it on or explore other avenues that it might have taken. ¬_Everybody_ does this, when they’ve seen a movie or read a book that captured their imagination [...] Giving people intriguing possibilities is one of the hallmarks of good fiction. But what you do in the privacy of your own imagination is a matter of total freedom; what you do in public is not.

So... we have no freedom of speech then? I mean, I get calling out someone who is talking rude in public, but that's still this asshole's right, as it is my right to call them out.

Beyond the specific arguments against the concept remains the unfortunate fact that a terrible lot of fan-fic is outright cringe-worthy and ought to be suppressed on purely aesthetic grounds.

So are so, so many published books that had no connection to fanfiction whatsoever. Didn't see you going against publishing in general.

Now, I don’t go looking for fan-fiction written about my characters; in fact, I try _not¬_ to see it. But now and then someone sends me a link to a site displaying it [...]

See, if the writer didn't send you the link themselves, you shouldn't blame them for you getting exposed to it! There's a reason the majority of fanfiction writers don't want to send their writings to the original content creators. But you would’ve known that, had you asked the fanfiction community first before you tried to paint us as horrible people.

Now, look. Human beings are hardwired to be interested in sex. We just _are_. Any kind of sex, performed by anyone, anytime, anywhere. Bad sex, good sex, poorly depicted sex, elegantly drawn sex…it doesn’t matter. We have a genetic compulsion to _look_. We’ll look at _anything_ having sex, human or not.

And on your right side, you can see erasure of asexuality.

But…imagine opening your daily mail and finding a letter detailing an explicit sexual encounter between, say, your twenty-one-year-old daughter and your forty-eight-year-old male neighbor---written by the neighbor. At the bottom it says, “Fiction! Just my imagination. All cool, right?” This would perhaps prevent your calling the police, but I repeat…ick. I wouldn’t like people writing sex fantasies for public consumption about me or members of my family—why would I be all right with them doing it to the intimate creations of my imagination and personality?

Is she actually comparing her protective feelings to her fictional characters with the protective feelings to her own family? Is this woman mentally okay?

And personally, I would have called the police.

[...] Emmett someone (who I _think_ is from Twilight; I sort of hope it’s not the willowy young “bottom” from the TV show “Queer as Folk”…)

I'm treading carefully here since I haven't watched the show... but I do get an air of homophobia and discrimination against people who are into BDSM. Wouldn't surprise me, tbh, but I can't be sure.

I also mentioned the fact that she was angry someone wanted to write a fanfiction with her character in order to raise money for a charity. Hm. And then tried to cover it. Of course she would.

People in the book end of the trade watch these developments with a lot of interest—and some apprehension, knowing what happened to the music industry with the advent of Napster and file-sharing. The music industry still exists, of course, but it’s a lot harder for the creative people who _make_ music to make a living from it.

Dude, file-sharing harms the music industry because they take the original content and give it to the world for free. Writing fanfiction isn't copying the entirety of your book and giving it to the world for free. That's still file-sharing, blame the pirates. Fanfiction can fucking promote your work without you having to offer a single penny.

People who read my books tend to be both intelligent (not just because they like _my_ books, but by and large, it takes a fair amount of intellectual resilience to want to take on 1000-page books of any kind), and creative.

LOL honey, get over yourself already. Also, the Twilight series consist, overall, of over 2k pages. Does that mean anything for the people who read it? I read three of those books. Am I intelligent and creative too?

Characters—good characters, “real” characters—derive their reality from the person who created them. They _are_ the person who created them, refracted through the lens of that writer’s experience, imagination, love, fear, and craft. Another writer seeking to duplicate that character might equal—or conceivably surpass--the craft; they can’t touch the essence.

When you mess with my stuff, you’re not messing with my characters—you’re messing with _me_.

Who are the writers of the Outlander TV series again? Oh that's okay because you're making money out of it?

readers occasionally _do_ stumble over bits of fan-fiction, and—while they realize they’re reading fan-fiction at the time— still incorporate these _faux_ stories into their comprehension and memory of the real series.

I wonder if the script for the Outlander TV series is exactly, word-for-word the same as the script in the book series. Has she complained about that? (I’m actually asking this, though, I’ve no clue) Why should she complain about fanfiction? Because she doesn't make money out of the latter?

There is also the issue of a fan at some point writing a piece that inadvertently picks up a plotline that I have myself written, but that hasn’t yet appeared in print—and then turning around and claiming that I’ve stolen it from him/her [...].

*them. Also, that's one problematic behaviour. She's literally judging all fanfiction writers based on one problematic behaviour, what a grown-up.

Anyway, yeah, even if at some point I would have wanted to give her books a try... now I know I never will, purely out of spite. 

[hollamd]

The Story of Us - Peter Parker

Summary: Peter and Y/N break it off at the end of high school, leaving them both heartbroken. 4 years fly by, and their paths cross at a press conference, with Y/N being a reporter and Peter being the person in question. Will the story of Y/N and Peter end?

Warnings: None, maybe like 2 swear words?

Word Count:  2743 (I didn’t mean for it to be THAT long)

A/N: So this is kinda based of off Taylor’s song The Story of Us. I’m not a big fan of her, just this song. I recommend giving it a listen if you read the story. I was gonna have the story end a different way but it ended up like this??? Anyway if this isn’t a flop I’ll a part 2 so if you want a part 2 comment :^) thanks for reading and it might be messy, I didn’t proofread it. 

The Story of Us

Chapter 1: When it all broke down

“I’m saying goodbye, Peter. I have to.” Y/N was trying her hardest not to cry. “High school is over…And…And so are we.” Peter on the other hand, already had tears starting to pour out of his eyes. “Y/N, baby please I know we can handle it. You won’t even be that far, I can still see you everyday and-” “No, Peter.” She took a sharp breath in. “This…Us… It’ll only ever be  part of my childhood.” “Are you kidding me? Was I just a toy to you? A heart you could throw around until it breaks?” Peter’s voice cracked. “No, that’s not what I-” “Y/N, I’m not gonna fight for you if you don’t even care to let me.” He hung his head and turned around.

“I still love you.” Y/N whispered. He walked out of her life that day, and she’d never regret anything more. Did she mean it? Of course not. Did she need to do it? Of course not. Y/N still loved Peter, but for some reason she thought it’d be easier to start a new life with no strings attached. How wrong she was…

Chapter 2: So many things that I wish you knew

4 Years Later Cutting all ties with Peter was a process for Y/N. First she was in denial, thinking he’d come back and understand why she did it. Then she experienced heartbreak, and thought she was never good enough for him in the first place. Then she experienced anger, blaming it all on Peter for pushing her away (She later realized the pushing away was all her doing). And after a few months, she accepted it. He was gone for good. Of course there were moments, where she’d see news of Spider-man on the television, or she’d see a shirt she knew he would’ve loved… Or maybe someone would even mention Star Wars, and her thoughts would immediately go to Peter. Her heart would ache for his embrace. After a year of getting over him, she had finally taken the last step, and moved on as best as she could from Spider-man. She had just been promoted from being a paid intern to a full on assistant to Scarlett Magazine’s Executive Editor, Sylvia Sloane. Y/N made an amazing best friend through the job, Gina, whom she shared an apartment in NYC with. The two girls told eachother everything. Y/N eventually told them everything about Peter, except the fact that, well, he’s Spider-man. Y/N was quickly promoted to an actual writer for the magazine, as she was actually quite skilled at writing, and enjoyed informing the readers. A year into the job and she’d already achieved so much, with all her celebrity interviews, fashion tips, and for even exposing one politician! One day Y/N was starting to type up an article on “Why Being Strong Doesn’t Make You a Diva” when Scarlett Lynn, the Editor in Chief, told her she had a new assignment. “Tony Stark apparently has an announcement regarding the Avengers, and our readers just eat anything with super-heroes up!” Scarlett talked with such confidence and authority that nobody would dare defy her. “I want you to go to that Press Conference being held on Sunday.” “Yes, ma'am, I understand, but-” “But what? You’re one of the best interviewers on the team! You’re so pretty and charismatic Y/N, I have nobody else to send but you!” Y/N couldn’t exactly turn her boss down, so all she mustered out was “Okay, I won’t disappoint.” Later that night at their apartment Y/N started to complain to Gina “Gosh, I hate press conferences, especially with superheroes!” Ginaust rolled her eyes. “Y/N, you’re literally going to be in the same room as the Avengers, what’s the problem?”

“The problem is…” Y/N let out a deep breath. “Nevermind… You wouldn’t understand.”

“Get over yourself! So many girls would kill to be in your position! Especially if you get to see Spider-Man, I heard he’s around our age…” Gina winked

“He’s the worst one!” Y/N felt the blood rush to her cheeks. “He just looks dumb, he’s not even an avenger.”

“Ugh, just go to bed already.” Y/N lied in her bed, trying to not think about Peter. She had no idea what he was doing now, because she’d tried to avoid any mention of Spider-Man at all costs. Her mind was racing of all the possibilities, but then realized he might not even be there. Y/N was still overthinking everything until she fell asleep.

The two days before the conference she only spent avoiding any thoughts of the conference, and before she realized it, Sunday was here. Y/N spent a little too much time getting ready, and she knew why. She wanted to impress him (if he was even there), and show just how much she’d changed. She pulled her y/h/c locks up into a messy, wavy ponytail, and made sure to do her makeup nicely. Y/N slid into a maroon bodycon dress, and black strappy heels. She grabbed a black clutch and went out the door with a recorder in hand.

Chapter 3: Alone in a crowded room

The conference was filled with reporters, all there for the same reason Y/N was. This was a reason why she dreaded attending; it was just a sweaty pit of people asking questions. A million other magazines would be writing just the same things she would.

However, the main reason she dreaded this conference specifically was because of the possibility he might be there. She probably wouldn’t even see his face, but just knowing that they’re in the same crowded room, and not even speaking would break her heart. Y/N understood that it’s been four years, and that this shouldn’t even bother her, but she can’t help but imagine what she would say to him.

He won’t be here. Y/N kept telling herself. He’s not even part of the Avengers, he turned it down. Plus, isn’t it just supposed to be Tony Stark? Her heart sank. She didn’t realize that before and was almost sure he wouldn’t be here now. But what if he does show up? He probably won’t even see me, all of these reporters are bigger than me… She kept overthinking and only increased her conflicted feelings.

While she was lost in thought, Tony Stark appeared from the dark curtain, with a confident and charming smile on his face. The murmurs of the room came to a hush once his presence was noticed. People began taking out their iPads and phones to record, and Y/N just took out a little notebook.

Cameras began flashing, and Y/N sat up straight to see over the people seated in front of her. Her seat was somewhat near the front, three rows away from the table. Of course, there was another row of photographers in front.

Tony Stark had taken a seat at the table, with a microphone and water in front him. There was another set up to the right of him. Y/N could feel her heart speed up in her chest. Tony Stark began speaking, but the girl was oblivious. She was too focused on the fact that Peter could actually be here? Y/N wanted to get up and leave, she didn’t want him to see her.

“I would like to welcome Spider-Man to the Avengers.” Was all Y/N had heard from Tony’s introduction speech. She threw away all thoughts of leaving the room and froze where she was. In walked a hero in red and dark blue spandex, with gold lining. Spider-Man’s costume was a lot more glamorous than Y/N had remembered.

Her eyes were glued to the man who had emerged from behind the curtain. He had the same lanky yet muscular body frame, but she couldn’t tell if he looked the same. She wanted to rip his mask off, throws her arms around him and tell him just how much she missed him… But all she could do was stare.

“Hello everyone.” Spider-Man gave a small wave and cleared his throat. “I’m, uh, Spider-Man. It’s a huge honor to be welcomed to the team and I’m just really excited to be here.”

Chapter 4: I was losing my mind when I saw you here

“We’ll be taking questions now.” (UmMmmM Idk how press conferences work exactly BUT lets just imagine these are how they go o k??)

A man raises his hand behind you, and Tony nods to him “I’m Joshua and I’m from California. I was wondering if you were ever going to reveal your identity?”

Spider-Man shook his head. “I don’t see it happening anytime soon, no. It’s something I like, because I can still be a normal guy while still being a superhero.”

His voice hadn’t changed, and it was still pretty high-pitched, just as Y/N remembered. She always loved Peter’s voice, even though he self-conscious over the fact that he “sounded like a girl.” She loved his fruity laugh, and it always managed to put a smile on her face.

The conference continued on, and Y/N would write down answers and questions on her notebook. The questions were somewhat the same:

“Do you think you’re talented and strong enough to share the weight of the world with the Avengers?”

“Well that’s a big question. I’d say I’m prepared, yeah, but is anyone ever really strong enough?”

“Don’t you feel like you’re a little too young, compared to the rest of the Avengers?”

“Well, at first yes, but not now. I’ve been in this superhero business since I was in high school. After six years it’s nothing new.”

There was, however, one question that really stood out to Y/N:

“Does Spider-Man have a Spider-Woman?”

“Is that you asking if I have a girlfriend?” Peter chuckled.

“Yes.”

“Well to answer your question, no. The last relationship I had was four years ago.”

Once Spider-Man made a comment about one relationship, other questions came flooding in:

“Why haven’t you dated anyone else since then?”

“You see, this girl was a big part of my life, and it took me quite a while to get over her…” He scratched the back of his head. “Also, life has been pretty busy and I just haven’t found room for a woman in my life right now.”

“So this girl, you two broke up… Why is that exactly?”

“Um I’m not really going to go into details but we broke off at the end of high school. Our lives were going in different directions and it was just easier to end the relationship there than see it fall apart.”

Y/N’s cheeks were red the entire time, and she kept her face down. She didn’t come here to hear Peter tell people about herself.

“So, Spider-Man, the girl-”

Tony Stark interrupted the man trying to speak, “Okay enough with the relationship questions please! He did just join the Avengers you know?”

Questions resumed on the path that they were before. Y/N checked the time on her phone to see she had gotten a message from her boss, Sylvia.

I’m watching the livestream, and the relationship topic is interesting. I’d much appreciate it if you could ask what type of girl he likes? Our readers would love that!

Y/N sighed. She didn’t want Peter to even look at her, let alone speak to her. This was the one thing she was avoiding for so long, and she wasn’t going to break the silence now for her boss. She began to type a reply.

Ms. Sloane, we were asked not to ask anymore questions about his relationships. I’m sorry, but I did write everything down!

Y/N, dear, I don’t like asking twice, and I don’t like doing this to you. Ask the damn question or you’ll be demoted back to my assistant. I took a leap of faith making you a writer, don’t make me regret it a year in!

The girl’s heart pounded in her chest. She couldn’t lose this job, she loved writing. She only had one option. She lifted her hand up, and waited to be called on like she was in elementary school again.

Tony Stark saw her and said, “Yes, the little lady with the ponytail.”

Chapter 5: Is it killing you like it’s killing me?

Y/N stood up slowly and plastered on a smile. “Um hi, I’m Y/N from Scarlett magazine.”

The girl took a deep breath and looked directly at Peter. “My question for you, um, Spider-Man… What type of girl… What’s the thing you look most for in a woman?” She said the last bit rather fast, and she was quite nervous.

Peter’s eyes were wide under the mask. This was the last place he wanted to see her… He didn’t even know she was a writer for Scarlett magazine… She loved that magazine in high school. He couldn’t help but feel proud of her.

“Look, I said no more relationship ques-”

“Mr. Stark, it’s okay. I’ll take this one….” His voice faltered. “Hi Y/N. Um what do I look for in a girl? I like a girl who can make me feel better on a bad day, one who’ll tell me everything will be okay because… We have each other. Or someone who will nerd out with me when we watch movies, or when I make science jokes…A girl who’ll patch me up after the worst of fights… Is that too specific?” Y/N couldn’t quite see his expression, under his mask, but she sure could hear the grin in his voice. She couldn’t hide her shy smile from him like he could from her.

Peter described her. She’d constantly tell him when he felt bad, that it’ll work out; they had each other. They had movie nights every week and would watch Star Wars, or some Disney movie. She’d laugh at his dork science jokes. He’d come to her window sometimes, with a small cut from a fight, so Nurse Y/N would make an appearance and patch him up. Memories from high school surfaced in Y/N’s brain…

“No, it’s perfect. Thank you.” Y/N sat back down in her chair.

Peter’s eyes were on his ex for most the interview after that. He couldn’t believe Y/N was here… He wanted to talk to her afterwards, he had to. Spider-Man tried to stop staring at her, but he couldn’t help himself. He hadn’t see in her so long, and look at her now. She was a writer for a magazine!

Y/N looked down at her phone, seeing a few new messages from her boss.

Great work Ms. Y/L/N! I’m trying to schedule a one-on-one interview with Spider-Boy.

Thank you Ms. Sloane. I appreciate it.

Y/N let out a deep breath. She’d done it. She’d spoken to Peter and pleased her boss.

The conference wrapped up shortly after, and Y/N was on her way out when her phone started buzzing.

“Hello?”

“Y/N, it’s Sylvia. I did get the interview scheduled for you. It’s in 30 minutes. They denied me at first, but then they said it was Spider-Man himself who agreed to it. Be ready.”

“But-”

Then line went dead. Y/N really couldn’t catch a break.

Chapter 6: How’d we end up this way?

Y/N timidly walked up to the table, and walked behind the curtain that Peter and Tony Stark appeared from earlier. There was a body-guard right behind it.

“Oh um. Sorry. Hi…” She tucked her hair behind her ear. It was her nervous habit. “I’m Y/N Y/L/N, from Scarlett magazine? M-My boss told me…

“Right this way Ms. Y/L/N.” He nodded toward you, and you followed him to a some weird hallway. “He’s waiting for you in there.” And then the bodyguard walked away.

She hesitated. She grabbed the door knob. It’s just Peter behind that door… Just- “Peter..” Y/N huffed out. She’d opened the door to find Peter standing there, in the Spider-Man attire, without his mask. Y/N looked into his deep chocolate eyes just as she did many years ago.

“Hi Y/N…”

To be continued…

Next

Masterlist

[swiftsgetawaycar]

Dearest Taylor,

Hey, how are you? I’m Sara, my closest friends and family call me Sar, and to put it simply, you’re my everything. I’m sorry if that sounds like a lot seeing as you don’t know me but your music, and the person that I’ve gotten to know and love over the years, has been everything from a friend to a hero to a muse to a member of what I refer to as my village, and that means more than everything to me so you are literally my everything. Anyway, I am well aware that the likelihood of you actually reading this is tiny but, there is the smallest chance, and I think that a chance is better than none at all so I’ll take what I can get.

I’m writing now because something strange, and monumental has just happened to me and I want to share that with you because without you, I would not be here and by here, I mean alive, and as much as I wish I was just being overly dramatic, I’m not. I first heard ‘Love Story’ when I was nine years old and I sang it at the top of my lungs for weeks but I’ll admit my knowledge/love for you didn’t span much beyond that, other than wishing I had your blonde curls. At 9, I was blissfully ignorant to the harsher realities of my life. I was raised in a huge, marvellous house and I had whatever I wanted, I was, and am, incredibly lucky. But, like they often say, you never know what goes on behind closed doors, even when they’re made of gold, and what went on behind my front doors was not pretty to say the least. But at 9, I didn’t fully know that – what I knew was that naughtiness equalled punishment which equalled pain. Well, skip forward to when I was 11 and I became a swiftie for real and I started to know what was going on, problem was nobody talked about it and how can an 11 year old really be sure of anything? What I did know was that blasting ‘mean’ on repeat and screaming along when I was home alone (noise for a long time equalled naughty) and singing it in my head at school as kids called me names, helped a lot and made me feel less alone in the world when I thought I was the only one. I felt so connected to your song that I realised I should probably try to connect to you, too, so I watched every video I could, listened to every single song you had out at the time on repeat and hung up posters of you on my walls. Red came out when I was 12, and I cannot think of a better way to describe that year than the colour red. When I was 12, it all clicked and I realised my father was an alcoholic and the punishments I had been receiving since birth was abuse. I also realised that people don’t like to believe things that they cannot see. My father was well-liked by basically everyone and is a very powerful lawyer so it may not surprise you nobody wanted to take him on. At 11/12/13, with no one in my corner and a lot of emotions to deal with after revelations that changed everything, I began to do stupid, toxic things that I’ll never be able to undo – one of which made me miss your concert in Sydney but that’s another story.  Anyway, by the time 1989 came out, I had run away, well sort of. I got sent to boarding school in Canada (seeing as I am an Aussie, it’s about the farthest you can get from Sydney) and despite all the hard, awful things I had to endure to get there, Canada was where I shook it all off. The 1989 era was when I learnt how to love myself and my life, although it was challenging and I was in and out of the hospital a lot. Your album, the one you have described as your rebirth, became the soundtrack to mine. I went through a lot, but your music and you got me through it because you made me feel valued, loved and wanted. In 2015, after going back home to Australia, I took my little sister to your concert in Sydney. I cannot say I’ve ever screamed as loudly or cried as much as that night. At that point, I had kicked my father out of our house by coming back from Canada and although there were a few incidents, only one involving a hospital though, it was the best few months I had ever had in that house. So I made it very clear to my mother that she couldn’t be afraid of the truth anymore because she had to protect my little sister from what I went through, and I was able to blast your music loudly and proudly without any punishment. In December of 2015, my mother got a promotion to a job that had never been held by a woman before and would grant her financial independence from my father, and we jumped at it. Only catch was that the job was in London, England. So, I moved again to the other side of the world and I’ve been here ever since. My father, however, was less than thrilled by this and his loss of control on all of us, and so he began to file law suit after law suit, claiming my mother had brainwashed us or that my mental health (most of which is the result of my childhood with him) made me a liar or that every father has the right to see his children no matter what. Over the past few years, I have had to fly back to Australia to testify, write letters, speak to court appointed social workers and have a psychological evaluation but today that all paid off, because the last and biggest of these court cases has been waiting for judgement for some weeks now. But during the most recent of these proceedings, ‘Look What You Made Me Do’ came out, on my little sister’s birthday actually, and it became my anthem for surviving the days where I was forced to delve back into the past and relive my most harrowing moments to ensure she didn’t have to live through them too. And today all that paid off because it worked, we won. I never have to see or hear from my father again unless I want to, neither does my sister. Never do I have to go back to being the nine-year-old who sang ‘love story’ as a lullaby to her little sister as her father smashed glasses and yelled at our mother. I am free of him, and I feel more relief than words can express. And through the past 9 years, through my worst and best days, you have been there and you’ve kept me sane. You have provided me with an escape from things no one should have to go through and you have made me feel normal when I felt like an alien. So, I guess this long letter is a very roundabout way of saying thank you for never giving up on me and giving me a reason to keep going when I really didn’t want to. I will never be able to thank you enough but I want to at least make a start and I want you to share this moment with me too because I don’t think I would’ve been brave or strong enough to get through it without you. Thank you, @taylorswift. I love you so, so very much - and I will forever be grateful for all you’ve given to me. Take care and I cannot wait for everything you have planned for the future.

All My Love,

Sar xx

PS: Thanks for the playlist on Spotify too, I was listening to Better by SYML when I got the news and it perfectly captured everything. How do you know these things?!?

PPS: Please give Mer and Olivia, Mama swift, Austin & Scott my love too!

[watermeat]

Just remembered what it was like to work at n*tw*st bank, and how if I was treated like that today, I’d ensure I made a scene during rush hour in front of all our regular customers who liked me, and quit on the spot.

Highlights include:

- Straight up lying to me and one of my team leaders by moving us to another branch that was an extra 40 minute drive/hour long train ride away, by telling me it was so I could get a promotion, and by telling her that it was only temporary whilst she trained me up, and then she’d move back once I was done. - When we shifted they told her not to train me because this was now her work place + I wasn’t getting the promotion, and if we didn’t like it we could both quit. - This wasn’t actually the job’s fault, but I couldn’t drive, and my team leader offered me lifts every day since she drove past my house anyway, and wanted to charge me £10 a day for it. Like what the fuck no thanks I’ll take the train. - Being told I had to arrive at work 58 minutes early every single day, because the time my train arrived made me 2 minutes late, and they docked me an hours pay multiple times. - Keep in mind, the hours we were scheduled were always 15 minutes before we actually had to be WORKING to arrange for set up time, so it never actually impacted my work. So basically I was “only” turning up 13 minutes early for my shift and that wasn’t good enough. - Eventually I pointed out that my set up time was usually enough to make up for the 2 minutes because I always pack light, so I didn’t need to go to the lockers, saving me the 2 minutes, anyway. - The way they “fixed” this heinous problem was by specifically shifting my time by half an hour, so I was FORCED to arrive 28 minutes early (or 32 minutes late) every day. - Because of the 15 minutes rule, I was actually showing up 43 minutes before I was actually needed on the tills :) - Being consistently told that because I didn’t achieve my sales goals (SALES GOALS AS A BANK TELLER), that I was a bad employee in ALL aspects, including ridiculous mental gymnastics on my manager’s part. - Having my manager go through every positive point I’d made about myself in a personal review + explain how ACTUALLY they’re negatives because my sales figures were bad. - “Actually you can’t say that you’re a fast worker, because you’re not achieving your sales goals, which means that you’re only doing half your job.” - “You can’t say you give good customer service, because part of the customer service is the service of providing them with our insurance, savings accounts, and loans” - “You can’t say you’re accurate on the till + don’t have many cash differences, because you’re cutting corners in your transactions by not hitting your sales goals, so it’s easier to stay on top of the cash” ????? This one doesn’t even make SENSE. - “So basically I have no positives?” “I didn’t say that.” “So what are my positives?” “This is a self review, you have to tell me what you think they are” “I just did.” “And I just told you you were wrong :)” - It was LITERALLY gaslighting. - That one time I had a literal emotional breakdown in front of customers + had to cry in the staff room for about half an hour, and once I was done, my team leader had a short meeting with me where everyone (including me) was assuming it was going to be a check up to see what happened and how I was doing, but instead she told me how she’d received complaints from other staff members that I consistently smelled bad and needed to work on my hygiene, in a way that’s made me paranoid about my smell for well over a decade now. - Like I was already humiliated, did you need to throw that into the mix too? - When I came back everyone was SHOCKED that she would actually do that and nobody would own up to being someone who complained about it, so either they lied to my face, or my team leader actually didn’t receive any complaints about it. - This was the same team leader who offered to carpool with me so I guess the £10 a day she wanted to charge was tax for putting up with my revolting smell or some shit, I don’t know. - To be honest, apart from the £10 car pool, and that one moment (which was fucking AWFUL and literally traumatising) she was generally pretty supportive of all of us. It was our manager who was fucking awful. - That one time 2 of us found £30,000, that we easily could have stolen and it would have NEVER gotten back to us. Basically it was accounted for in a place neither of us had access to, and 6 other people did, but those 6 people cut corners and didn’t actually COUNT the cash like they were supposed to + just said it was all fine. - The evening shift said the money was put in the safe (when it wasn’t), and then the morning shift clarified that it WAS in the safe (which it wasn’t), so if we’d have taken it, neither of us had access to the night safe, so it COULDN’T have been us, because SIX people clarified in writing that it had been in there. - None of those people got any sort of punishment for almost losing 30k, and we didn’t get anything for finding it, so we should have just stolen the fucking cash. - “Rewarding” the girl with the best sales figures by shifting her to a job that didn’t require any sales, and was SOLELY customer service based. She didn’t even get a raise for it. She was just as confused as the rest of us. Surely it would make sense to move the guy who was shit at sales + had great customer service? But ok. - Eventually, I got a diagnoses for depression + my manager straight up did not want to deal with it, and refused to do any meetings with me, and fobbed my one to ones off on one of the other managers who I didn’t even WORK with. She never actually SAID it, but it kind of felt like par for the course when it came to anyone having any mental illness. - She was great though, my happiness in the workplace skyrocketed once she started doing my one to ones. - I eventually got fired because someone committed fraud and I happened to be the guy on the till. - The girl I did one to ones with said that I’d be on paid leave whilst they investigated, and in one of the only times I felt like I was treated as an actual human being in that work place, she said that she didn’t think it was my fault at all, but I should start looking for other jobs anyway, because she thought the way they treated me was AWFUL, and they were probably just using this as an excuse to fire me regardless of any wrong doing. - To this day I’m not sure if they wanted to get rid of me because I was marked as a “bad employee” or because I said I had depression, but it was VERY soon after. - She legitimately seemed really angry and upset about it, but she actually had NOTHING to do with my job + no control, she was basically just the messenger. She CLEARLY had opinions on my manager. - Also during the time this happened, there was stealing going on, it was a whole massive thing going on, and everyone was a suspect, so I was really worried that they thought it would be me, but she basically said that even the manager who HATED me was certain it wasn’t me. - Like I was SO not a suspect that even someone who hated me and wanted me gone couldn’t accuse me LMAO. But yeah anyway, that’s the worst job I’ve ever worked at, and I would never put myself through that again.