#and less on the sky but u get the gist

[voidcat]

Hi Danyl, would you mind writing some Dazai headcanons? <3

Hi my dearest Kat, for you? Always<3

Despite the impression he gives off, Dazai is a serene driver, who drives like the world outside the vehicle does not exist.

Its a fact only few are aware, as it is an rare occurrence that he is driving— and one is willing to hop in. After all, considering how he acts on the daily, not many trust him behind the wheel.

Night comes with no trains left and an urgency waiting you on the other side of the next day, Kunikida calls out to Dazai, knowing he is slacking off already. Drivers duty is nothing compared to the towers of files waiting on his desk after all, and wait long waiting wrath of Kunikida on the other line, Dazai swiftly goes out, already waiting for you inside the car.

The full moon hung in the dark night sky and earphones in your ears, you steal glances at the normally enthusiastic and loud man besides you— now drown in complete silence, eyes fixed on the road, with an expression not quite blank but not burdened with any thoughts eating away.

Eyes back on the moon, you notice it’s bigger than usual if your perception isn’t deceiving you— and presenting itself wrapped in rainbows, a halo of yellow, red and slight green, the light of the moon itself offering the missing blue for this little art piece.

No matter how proper or rocky the roads may be, the car drives swiftly; you have to think for a second to recall the last time you have experienced a car ride this smooth, safe and sound; you have forgotten just how peaceful these can be, remembering once more why some people drive the night away to clear their head.

With music slowly taking over, the moon shining like this is its last day in the universe, the pitch black sky as if in a pocket dimension, and Dazai, now a completely different man next to you, you are nulled to sleep.

Only when the music has come to an end and Dazai is nearing a resting spot does your eyes open again, watching the moon light dance on his face— a new side to him, a new sight of Dazai Osamu you have reached the honor of witnessing.

[spring-heeledjack]

Tagliatelle al Ragù

@a-c-u-l-o-s ask and ye shall receive

you are here - next->

btw there is a brief mention of an oc of mine, castillo. He's from Best Friends. The gist is hes another crimelord heir and has known artemis since they were eight anYWAYS-

        Artemis picked at the tagliatelle al ragù on his plate as the boy across from him chattered on. He seemed to be boasting about all of the women (mainly models) who had attended his nineteenth birthday party. La Costruzione Di Un Amore by Ivano Fossati was playing, while finely dressed Italian celebrities chattered with each other over gossip and forced smiles.

        Artemis gazed longingly out the window and into the Sicilian night sky, stars winking at him tauntingly. God, how he wished he could be anywhere but here.

        "You wouldn't believe the money Padre had to spend to get Armanda Esposito and Piera Bianchi to show up. Could've gotten about three more restaurants with that money, you know what I mean?" He said, gesturing with his fork. Absently, Artemis nodded. If Holly thought he talked a lot, wait until he told her about one Anthony Rossi the Fourth.

        "You know, Artemis," Anthony started. "They told me you were quite the talker, and yet you've barely said a word this whole time! Something going on in that famous brain of yours?"

        "I'm fascinated, I really am, Anthony." Artemis chuckled dryly. Anthony's chest swelled. "Please, Artemis, call me Tony. All my friends do."

        "Tony." Artemis said. "I'm fascinated, Tony. We've been on this date for a little over two hours and this is the first time you've asked me anything about myself."

        There was a beat of silence. The two boys looked at each other. Then, Tony laughed heartily. Artemis continued to stare at him. He could see his uvula swinging in the back of his wide mouth.

        "They didn't tell me you were a comedian, Artemis." Tony said after a while, wiping a tear from his brown eye. "I mean, sure. This is what most people would call a 'date', but this isn't really what this is, is it? It's more of a business meeting of sorts, wouldn't you say? My parents couldn't care less if we dated, they just want a bite of that Fowl fortune, everyone does. Surely you know that, Artemis?"

        Artemis sighed. It was true, he was aware of the true meaning behind this 'date', though he wasn't certain on Tony's thoughts on the whole charade. At the very least, Artemis was hoping this little outing could be at least slightly enjoyable.

        "Besides," Tony started, taking a long sip of his bellini. "I don't like men."

        Artemis straightened. "If you don't like men then why am I here?"

        "Like I told you, Artemis," Tony said, wiping his mouth with a napkin. "This is a business meeting. The two of us pretend to be happy little boyfriends and the Rossi's get access to some of your money, while you get a little bit of mob protection. How does that sound, Irlandese?"

        Artemis merely raised an eyebrow at him. "Hey, don't give me that look." Tony said with a shrug. "You can sleep with whoever you want, I don't care. You just have to pretend to be with me, understand?"

        "N-no that's not what I-" Artemis stuttered, his face reddening a couple shades.

        "And maybe," Tony said, cutting him off. "I could 'introduce' you to Armanda and Piera. Those girls have a type for black hair and blue eyes, and I'd say you fit the bill, amico!" Tony laughed loudly, reaching across the table to slap Artemis on the arm.

        With a huff, Artemis stood from the table, pushing his barely eaten plate of tagliatelle al ragù to the side. "I see now that this was a mistake. Perhaps I should have realized that a little over two hours ago. I'll be taking my leave now. I'd say it was nice to meet you, Master Rossi, but I am no liar."

        Artemis turned to leave, but Tony grabbed him by the wrist roughly. Artemis winced. He could feel the bruise forming. "I don't think you really understand, Irlandese. This isn't a date and you're not leaving." He shoved Artemis back down in his booth seat.

        Artemis looked around the restaurant. No one was paying them any attention.

        Sighing, Artemis said, "Please, Anthony, do not make me cause a scene."

        Tony laughed again, wide-set eyes brimming with tears. "Really, Artemis, I love you. You're a funny guy." Artemis sighed again.

        "Butler." He called.

        There was a man sitting by himself at the booth seat behind Rossi, wearing a nondescript shirt and dress pants. Not too simple that he stood out from the fancy dresses and three-piece suits, but just simple enough that he didn't draw any attention to himself.

        Slowly, the man stood, large hand grasping Anthony Rossi the Fourth firmly by the shoulder. 

        Artemis smiled his vampiric smile as he watched the color drain from Rossi's face. He stood again, and this time Rossi did not try to stop him.

        "I'd stay where you are if I were you." Butler growled. Rossi did, indeed, stay where he was as Artemis and Butler walked out of the restaurant.

        "What a disappointment." Artemis said to no one in particular. A part of him knew the evening was going to end badly, and yet another part was truly disappointed. That part of Artemis was hoping that he would find someone he could truly bond with, perhaps even start a relationship with. He should've known by now there wasn't anyone who he could feel that close to, not in that way. Sure, he had Butler, his mother, Holly, and Castillo. Still, a part of him wanted that ambiguous 'special someone' that everyone was always talking about.

        "He seemed like a respectful young man." Butler responded, sarcasm rolling off of him. Butler's comment pulled Artemis out of his thoughts.

        "Did you hear the way he spoke about those models?" He hissed as Butler opened the passenger door of the Bentley. "I did," Butler said. As he climbed into the driver's seat, he quietly took out a notepad and pen, crossing off something at the top of the page.

        "What is that, Butler?" Artemis asked.

        Butler pursed his lips. He was hoping Artemis wouldn't see. "Something your mother asked me to take along with us. Nothing important."

        Artemis narrowed his eyes at his bodyguard. He held out a hand.

        Reluctantly, Butler placed the notepad into his charge's waiting hand. "Alright, fine." He said. "But you're not going to like it."

        Artemis looked over the notepad which was covered in his mother's handwriting.

        Anthony Rossi the Fourth: Nineteen years old. His family isn't as straight and narrow as I'd like, but he seems like a sweet boy!

        Isabella Maria Martínez: Eighteen. Her mother and I were very close a couple years ago. Although I haven't seen little Isabella since she was in diapers, I'm sure she and Arty will get along fine!

        Yuma Tanaka: Nineteen. My friend Saoirse told me about this young woman. She seems nice enough.

        Antoine Archambeau Esquire the Fifth: Foxworth recommended this one. I don't know much about him.

Artemis gawked at the names on the paper. "I have to do this four more times!?" He asked incredulously, whipping around to meet Butler's guilty look.

        "I know today wasn't great, Artemis, but give them a chance. They can't all be as bad as Rossi." Butler said as they started on the main road.

Artemis merely grumbled, sinking lower into his seat.

[bluepluto03]

Atla modern/yt au: no one except toph knows that Aang is the avatar

Things I didn’t need to do: spend four hours world building a whole modern/atla fusion au for a yt au

Things I did do: take a guess

Anyway I need to get out some Context b4 I explain the “only toph knows that aang is the avatar” thing

- basically I wanted to make a atla yt au w/ bending, but like an idiot I can’t just leave things alone so I made a whole modern world/atla world fusion

- I have another post focusing more on the yt aspect, this post is more focused on world building, including how aang affects the world by not being the avatar until much later

- so in this world the 100 yr war never happened. Roku defeated Sozin and the war + the air nomad genocide never happened. Someone else was the avatar after Roku, and aang wasn’t born (yet)

- instead Aang’s born a couple thousand yrs later in the equivalent of modern times in the avatar world, as is like everyone else for obvious reasons

- but in the time between a lot of different + important things happen

- for one a very parinoid Roku pulls up mountain ranges all around the edges of the earth kingdom cus he’s very worried about the fire nation attacking.

- And then lowkey disappears into the woods for fifty years

- at first ppl are kinda tense and thankful but over time and under a new fire lord ppl chill out. They start to realize that maybe being completely cut off from each other isn’t very good for them??

- a ton of earthbenders get together to level out this one massive area near the fire nation and northern water tribe. So they at least have room for one port instead of zero. over time a few other spaces are opened up but they’re small and not as well placed.

- The first port grows into a massive city that becomes a sort of combination of the four nations. There are different areas that have specifically fire, water or earth architecture/aesthetics, and a lot of areas where those different aesthetics are combined in different ways. There’s definite air nation influence but it’s the smallest in comparison to the other nations

- as this is going on Roku is just chilling in the woods going a little bit crazy?? Though he lives a mostly peaceful and happy life until he passes away when he’s nearly 200

- the next avatar (an air bender who is not aang) is kinda annoyed by what Roku did?? They’re mad about the whole separating the nations thing and set out to fix it

- they end up doing 2 major things. 1) removing a lot of the mountains Roku made and 2) basically setting up a universal education/apprenticeship system

- it gets expanded on a lot over the years, but the gist of it by the time the GAang are born is this:

1) u can sign up any age from 6-14, and advance as u pass classes. Ur required to sign up b4 age 14. (Aka why the gaang are all freind’s dispite being dif ages, they’re in the same ish classes)

2) the school teaches basic skills like reading, writing, math, etc to make sure everyone knows it but ur fam can teach u before hand if that’s what they want

3) everyone who goes is required to learn the basics and ideology behind all 4 bending styles. Even if ur a non bender. The point is to like keep everyone connected and build understanding between cultures

4) the school does provide free lessons with bending masters but students are allowed to seek out someone else if they wish. Or they don’t even need to learn past the basics if they don’t wanna

- anyway the avatar after Roku basically sets up the base of that whole system, plus a way for ppl to become certified as master benders. This post is getting real long tho so I’ll save that explanation for a different post

- the only other important thing that happens that I need to mention is the construction of the Central Air Temple

- the central air temple is built right near the port/city. it’s built kinda in 2 parts, the more private/religious area as well as a more public area where others can come to learn about air nomad culture, more reformed air Nomads might live, and where some businesses are set up. There’s plenty of both open and mountainous land in the area so there’s plenty of room to care for sky bison

- aang is born and grows up in the central temple. He (like a lot of air nomad children) doesn’t go to school until a lot later than children from other nations, around age 11-12

- he goes to school in the city and ofc meets the rest of the gaang who have moved to the city for various reasons, as well as others like teo and Haru

- also side note- in this Teo’s mother was a less religious air nomad and he grew up in the more modern lower half of the central air temple 

-ANYWAY the reason I needed to explain all that was bc a) I spent too much time on it not to share and b) u need to understand it to understand why aang has no clue he’s the avatar. (This poor stupid babey I love him)

- basically after the school system was implemented, they stopped testing to find the Avatar. It wasn’t needed if everyone was going to be learning the basics of all four elements! The avatar would obviously figure it out from that

- except uhhh,,,, whenever they’re doing that training they do it in big groups. And aang has awful adhd

- so yeah. He’s actually like.... bending water and fire and stuff but he doesn’t realize cus he’s not really trying too?? And there are a ton of other benders here! It must be from one of them, right?

- like, yeah when he does the fire bending poses he bends smoke, but obviously he’s accidentally bending zuko’s! Air and fire are similar enough. And yeah Sokka ends up mysteriously soaked, but Katara never admits when she does it, so it was obviously her

- and since he has the attention span of a elephant koi and no one else is paying attention it basically flies under every one’s radar

- everyone except toph, who thinks it’s fucking hilarious and refuses to say shit

- anyway they don’t figure it out until they’re in their mid 20s and everyone is like aang babe wtf

[merrrcurius]

some step-papashi for you hoes

i’ve written several scenes for myself and i’m having a lot of fun with this au, but i’m not sure if i should add to my growing pile of wip’s on ao3 lol... lotta pressure, but i’m down if y’all are?

the gist: kakashi is a fine-ass soccer coach who cares. the following circumstances bring our two fav people together.

Fingers thrumming against the steering wheel in rhythm to the rock song playing on the radio, Kakashi drove down the winding exit of the park debating the pros and cons of cooking dinner or picking up takeout. The barbeque colored street lights illuminating the road made him crave some type of meat, but that would take too long to cook and he was feeling particularly lazy tonight.

Dealing with his latest team of brats tend to put him in the mood to sloth out for an indeterminate amount of time. Tonight had been rough. It was only the third week of practice with his new team and already he wanted to strangle these kids. They were a bunch of little shits that needed an ass-whooping, especially Tenzo’s team. Unfortunately, he could only dole out so many laps and exercises as punishment before the kids began complaining to their parents and then the parents started complaining to them…

Kakashi had to remind himself that he actually enjoyed coaching.

Whatever his food choice, or lack thereof, a hot shower and some smutty fanfiction on the back porch would conclude his day. Forget answering emails, cleaning his cleats, or managing the gym’s finances. All of that could be saved for tomorrow. He'd rather starve than waste any precious time relaxing, especially since The-Toad-Master's new chapter should have updated during practice if the last author’s note was anything to go by. Kakashi glanced at the clock on his dash and shift impatiently in his seat. Oh yeah, I'm way late.

Slowing down for the stoplight at the end of the drive, the man looked both ways out of habit despite the empty highway only to do a double-take at the sight of one of his U-10 soccer players sitting on a bus bench. Yanking up the mask he'd left hanging around his neck to hide his “degeneracy”, Kakashi rolled down the passenger window and called out to her. “Yo." 

She was either really smart or really stupid for ignoring him. Kakashi cleared his throat as he turned the knob down on the radio and said a bit louder, “Sarada.”

“Coach!” The little brunette startled, fumbling her flip phone like a football before turning to gape at him. “Ah - hi! It’s you!” She squeaked and tucked her phone away. “W-What're you still doing here?"

“Aa?” Kakashi cocked an eyebrow and withheld the amused chuckle bubbling in his throat. "I could ask you the same thing."

"Oh, um, this…" She gestured to the bench nervously and stuttered out, "I… I was just… er, you know… waiting."

“By the highway?” Kakashi asked and set his forearm on the steering wheel, giving a discreet glance around to emphasize that this was not acceptable. He cocked a brow. “What happened to the ride picking you up at the pavilion?”

Sarada pursed her lips angrily for a moment and tugged on the sleeves of her red jacket as if she were uncomfortable. Then muttered. “Er, s-something came up…”

“Okay…” Kakashi trailed off with a frown pulling at his mouth. Narrowing his eyes, Kakashi wiggled his fingers against the gearshift. Who the fuck leaves their - “But, wouldn’t it be safer to wait back at the field?”

“I’m fine, Coach! Really!” 

“Maa," Kakashi sat back with sigh and ruffled his hair as he thought about what to do in this kind of situation. He wasn’t fit to be a parent - or a coach really - hell, this whole gig had only started out to log hours for community service. Considering that, did he have any right to judge another parent for something like this? He cast an uneasy eye at the kid. Yes. Yes, he did. Consternation coloring his tone, he said, “I dunno if I can let this slide. Come on, I’ll drive you back. We can practice drills while we wait for your ride.”

Sarada scrambled for the laminated square hanging on her backpack as she tried to explain her situation and said, “You don’t have to, Coach! I take the bus all the-”

Perhaps he had been to open handed with his instructions. Kids these days.

“That wasn’t a question.” Kakashi interrupted firmly and stared at her. The girl crossed her arms and attempt to hold a glare, refusing to move despite the nervous bounce to her leg. Kakashi raised an eyebrow at her attitude and stated grimly, “If you make me step out of this car, you won’t be playing in next week’s game, Sarada. Get in.”

Sarada attempt to hold her ground a few more seconds until she heard his car door open and the overhead light came on. With a yelp, she ran to the passenger side door and yanked it open. Moving some binders for their stats and strategies out of the way, Kakashi eyed the large overnight bag she situated on his floorboard wondering if she was homeless but quickly dismissed that ridiculous thought. She was ten years old. And she had a mom. Although, that had never deterred him as a child...

Sighing inaudibly to mourn the chunk this would take out of his reading for the night, Kakashi twist in his seat to look for any cars behind him before pulling a u-turn in the entrance of the park. The ride back to the soccer field was quiet and tense; Kakashi pondering whether he had been too harsh on a child that wasn't even his about something not even sport related and Sarada embarrassed, worrying if opening the car door count towards her suspension.

Parked once more near the fields they'd claimed earlier in the evening, Kakashi reached under the seat to pull the lever and scoot his seat back for extra space to put his cleats back on. They were wet and muggy. He sighed.

“So, that’s what that smell was…”

Kakashi shot Sarada a look and retort. “More like your upper lip.”

Sarada blew a scoff through her lips to hide her laugh and turned away, crossing her arms defiantly. She muttered to the window, “What a lame comeback.”

“You’re just mad you don’t have anything to comeback with,” Kakashi mocked sassily, bobbing his head as he bent his leg for a better angle. Once his socks were snug in wet ass cleats again, he grabbed a ball from the backseat and stepped out. 

Sarada didn’t budge from her spot. 

Glancing back, Kakashi shrugged and decided to juggle while they wait. He couldn’t care less if she sat in the car and ignored him. After removing the doubts of his behavior, he'd decided it would simply be irresponsible of him to leave her by the highway and there was no way around that fact, even if Sarada chose to be stubborn about it. Perhaps, if she’d been smart and waited inside the pavilion like she’d originally said she would do... they wouldn’t be here. To think he had thought everyone was picked up. How had she managed to walk all the way to the exit without him noticing, anyways?

It didn’t take long for Sarada to get bored. She climbed out of his 4runner and stomped across the sidewalk to join him, a scowl maring her face. When he didn’t acknowledge her, she called out for him to pass. Looking all the world as if he were blatantly ignoring her, Kakashi turned away to take in the field with his hands on his hips. It was another cold night in January, a fine mist settling on some of the fields. He was glad the city park kept the lights on after dark, otherwise they would be in a pickle.

When asking didn’t work, she huffed and puffed before charging to take it by force. Kakashi smiled and adjust his mask as he await her approach. Her pigtails were whipping around her shoulders. Poor form. He needed to teach these kids how to run properly otherwise this season was going to suck. When she was close enough, he kicked the ball through the open stride between her feet at the last minute and walked around her.

Spinning to face him, Sarada growled impatiently, “Why won’t you pass? You said we would practice!” 

“Why should I?" Kakashi teased as he dribbled circles around her. "It’s no fun passing to a grump.”

“I’m not a grump! You’re a grump, old man!”

“Old man, eh?” A chuckle huffed through his mask as he backpedaled away from her, dragging the ball with him as he taunt her. “At least, I can keep the ball.”

“I’ll show you!” Sarada yelled and dove in, leaving her stance wide open when she ran up. 

He nutmegged her a second time and kept running toward the goal in case she tried to kick him like a savage brat. These kids were vicious. He called over his shoulder, "Maa, what was that, Sarada-chan?"

Now, normally, he’d feel bad for showing up a little kid, but not tonight. Sarada and Boruto had argued all two hours of practice about something completely unrelated to soccer. She deserved it for giving everyone a headache. Everyone being him and Tenzo. The kids thought it was hilarious.

“What a coward! You can’t run away!”

Stopping short with one foot on the ball and one hand rubbing his masked chin, Kakashi looked to the sky and said, "What were you showing me again? I can’t remember.”

Sarada bellowed a funny little shannaro he'd learned the girl favored over the last few weeks before he heard her running at him again.

Kakashi tucked his hands in his sweats as he waited patiently and listened to her cleats tearing into the ground. He had to admit, for a nine-year-old with poor form, what Sarada lacked in defense, she made up for in speed when she got going. Glancing behind him to confirm her position, he wait three more seconds and rolled the ball behind him, effectively nutmegging her again with his back turned. She squeaked and ran straight into him since he didn’t move. He glanced over his shoulder and smiled. “Hmm… how should I put this? You suck, Sarada-chan."

“O-m-g, whatever! I’m done!” Sarada yelled and kicked the grass angrily. “I should have caught the bus. This is stupid!”

“You’d be waiting till six in the morning for that.” Kakashi said, idly dragging the soccer ball back and forth under his foot as he watched her throw a fit.

Sarada stopped suddenly and looked up at him. “What? Why?”

“The bus doesn’t run this late, goofball.” Kakashi crumpled his brow and said incredulously, “Maa, you weren’t kidding when you said you were new in town.”

“Seriously?” Sarada cried and threw her hands in the air as she fell back on her butt. “Why is this place like this! What am I supposed to do now? Mom will have to drive all the way across town just to pick me up now. This is terrible!”

Kakashi hummed quietly, allowing his judgemental confusion to bubble for a moment as he swayed back and forth with his hands in his pockets. Then, he asked, “Doesn’t she usually?”

“Yes sir, but not this time.” She mumbled and crossed her arms angrily. 

“Well…” Damn, now he had to know. Sarada’s mom was pretty exotic and hella feisty. She punched one of the dad’s in the head at open tryouts for saying something or another. He’d never seen anything like it. It was one of the only times Kakashi wished he indulged in gossip with the parents. After a moment of deliberation, Kakashi adjust his mask nervously, afraid of overstepping boundaries and asked, “What about your dad?”

“Um… He’s not...” Tiny fingers pulled at the grass beneath her, ripping patches out until she found words. She looked across the fields and said quietly, “Around… very often.”

“Aa, I see...” Kakashi said, gaze flickering between her face and her angry sundering of the grass. He hadn’t known Sakura was a single mother, although he shouldn’t have been surprised. Both parents usually showed up for Opening Day, took turns picking their kids up, or showed up to watch the first game at the very least, but he hadn’t seen any male that fit the description. “And you don’t have anyone else to pick you up? Maybe a grandmother?”

“We don’t have family here. My mom was offered a better job at the hospital, so… we moved.” Sarada shook her head at the ground, too busy cleaving grass in two to notice his awkward inner dialogue. She ducked her head and sniffled. “I’m really sorry, Coach. I didn’t mean to… for this...”

Mild panic shot through his system realizing this little girl was about to cry. Fuck. Why? It wasn’t that big of a deal. Things like this happened. It couldn’t be helped. Kakashi sucked in a breath of air as he crouched in front of her and plucked a few grass strands of his own. He wasn’t good at small-talk or emotions, he knew this and that was fine. Coaching was easy in a way that allowed him to be a hardass, strict and precise without all the extra stuff, but this… He really should work on his people-skills if he wanted to continue working with kids. 

What could he say? What exactly should he do? The girl claimed she rode the bus often, she even had a laminated bus pass, although it was for a different city, but leaving her unsupervised was just… not his forte. Children weren’t supposed to be left alone so young. It was strange that her mother would allow this and yet it seemed she actually wasn’t, somehow. “Sarada... next time your mom has to work late, just hang out at the field. Alright? It’s no big deal, I’ll wait until-” 

“No! It’s not her fault this time! Please don’t kick me off the team!” Sarada cried out suddenly, big watery eyes gazing up at him imploringly. “Dad was supposed to be here, to-to pick me up f-for dinner - but... but something came up-” Sarada snapped her jaw shut and looked away, face twisted with all the fury of a child betrayed. Tears steadily dripped down her chin despite how fast she was attempting to wipe them away.

Kakashi rotate his jaw as he bowed his head to give her a moment of privacy, and if he also happened to be avoiding her emotional display, well, he never said he was a good coach. Her words weighed heavily on his chest, uncomfortably close to his own childhood wounds and he didn’t want to think about it. He pressed his thumbnail into a blade of grass and watched it split.

“It’s just… It’s so embarrassing! I don’t want everyone to know and I didn’t want them to think I was getting extra p-practice like my last team. They started a whole crap ton of drama and Boruto w-would only make fun of me and call m-me a loser if he knew.”

“Hey, don’t worry about that butthead.” Kakashi said as he tossed his grass blades at her, jumping on the chance to turn this conversation elsewhere. “If they thought you were getting special training, they’d probably ask me for extra on the sly, too. You’d be a trendsetter.”

Sarada’s face lit up with a small giggle, but it died out quickly. She wiped her nose and looked up at him nervously. “S-Still, wouldn’t you have to wait here the whole time? I mean, my last coach got… he got really mad when I had to stay late and eventually told my mom to stop bringing me... I-I don’t wanna h-hic-old you up…”

Kakashi frowned at the thought of a nine year old taking the bus in a city as big as Konoha and wondered what in the fuck was wrong with whoever she’d had last year. Coaches had a duty to the kids while they were in their care, they owed that to the parents. To abuse or neglect those unspoken vows was just... wrong. Kakashi suddenly felt lucky to have had the kind of coaches he did growing up. He took a deep breath and prepared himself for his next words. If she had no one else to tell her what was wrong with this situation, then he would have to. That’s something he had loved about Minato-sensei. The man never let bullshit fly. 

He picked at the bottom of his mask nervously, wishing he didn’t feel so constricted, wishing he felt more confident. Failure wasn’t an option, though. Lessons like this were imperative to learn at a young age, no matter how uncomfortable. Leveling a finger at her, Kakashi said perhaps too blunty, “Screw that guy. And your dad. It isn’t safe to sit by yourself next to the highway of all places, especially at this time of night… Do you understand what I’m trying to say, Sarada?”

Sarada looked down at her twisted hands and nodded meekly, eventually managing to croak out a weak ‘yes sir’ as another trail of tears dripped down her cheeks. Kakashi felt his insides twist painfully at the wobble in her lip. He hadn’t meant to make her feel worse or feel like it was her fault because it damn sure wasn’t. Maybe he should have worded it differently? 

Running an anxious hand through his hair, he tugged at the ends as he bowed his head and tried to think of what to say to make her feel better, at the very least, turn this conversation to something easier so as not to end on a bad note. How would this look for her mom to drive up and see her daughter crying? There would be hell to pay, for sure. She may even take her daughter off the team and Kakashi couldn’t afford that. They only had two substitutes this year… He didn’t have kids, but he considered his soccer team to be pretty close to what it would feel like to have some and he didn’t want her to quit the team because of this or have hard feelings towards him and he hated to think of what she might be going through at home.

“Listen,” He began, dropping to his ass to mirror her as he took on a more gentle tone so it wouldn’t sound as if he were attacking her. “You don’t even have to say anything next time, okay? Just kick the ball around and if you haven’t left by the time everyone else has, I’ll understand what’s up. And I promise - Hey, look at me,” Kakashi wiggled a cleat in her line of sight and ducked his head to catch her watery eyes past the glare of her glasses. “I promise I won’t be mad. Or kick you off the team. That’s stupid.”

“Really?” Tears welled up in her eyes again as her face screwed up with emotion. Then she held out her pinky and wheezed out. “Pinky promise?”

“Aa,” A quiet, uncomfortable chuckle escaped him as he looked down. “My big toe’s stronger. How about that?”

“Ew, no! I’m not touching your big toe!” Sarada giggled a bit hysterically and scrubbed under her glasses to wipe her eyes. 

“Are you sure?” Kakashi asked quickly and wrangled off a cleat to wiggle a sweaty sock at her. “Perfect timing. Big toe soup right here.”

Sarada shrieked and jumped up to run around him. He couldn’t help snickering as he pulled his shoe back on. Good. Things were… better. Okay, at least.

They passed the ball around a bit and he attempted to explain how to time a nutmeg until her mom arrived.

===

now that i’ve put this out, i’m debating whether or not to add their meeting when Sakura picks her up... i dunno yet. lemme know whatcha think peeps!

[ao3feed-davenzi]

by TalkingAboutTheWeather

It’s the last days of May, summer is on the verge of beginning and Matteo loses himself in his thoughts and memories.

And yet the world seems to pull him back to reality, again and again.

Words: 3915, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: Druck | SKAM (Germany)

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Characters: Matteo Florenzi, David Schreibner, Amira Thalia Mahmood, Jonas Augustin, Carlos Schmidt, Abdi Ates

Relationships: Matteo Florenzi/David (Druck)

Additional Tags: Depression, depression tw, theres lots of thinking and reminiscing, less talking but that too, it was actually quite cathartic writing this, i just love matteo so much i hope i have done him justice, and david too obviously, and amira as well, i mean i cant write in general but u get the gist, away i go then

[fagderolo]

starboy bullshit! 

these were all discord messages w some minor editing fr my own convenience fbhbdfhbhf

u can read this if yr like, rly curious abt some sourceless past life of mine, but like or smth if u do and dont rb

After the human i loved was gone my brother was just like "come on, humans die all the time" "and do gods die all the time too?" from me which was Maybe overdramatic but yknow

N he looked so taken aback n I felt almost smug bc it serves him right for undermining all of this n then he looked like he didn't believe me n I felt angry and then he squinted at me for a while n his eyes widened and he looked sorta horrified n I felt guilty

he said in a weird voice that he could feel it when he focused on it like, that I wasn't right? and that I wasn't as strong and that I was different and he could Tell i was dying when he knew what to look for, maybe not all of that in those exact words but it was the gist of it

Somethin about me seemin less bright n like there was somethin tangled or twisted or some other word like that inside me I dunno what he meant really I was just sad He went between sticking to me and then distancing himself when I got mad at his lack of empathy (n prolly for other reasons but idk them as well) toward people and it wasn't like he wasn't trying he just didn't get it I don't think he Wanted to believe I was dying idk as annoying as he was he was my family n he wasn't as bad as our parents were n I feel guilty for leavin him alone like that bc we were Twins hes not really meant to be alone idk if that world was right again, wonder if people saw the stars go all weird at all or if I didn't even affect anythin for humans n it was all god bullshit father n mother were. suspicious. father especially w like "you're going to regret this" "your family should be your priority and you're throwing it away for some human that you won't even remember in a thousand years." "You don't understand what you're doing you insolent child and you will be taught a lesson" n something!! tells me the lesson was killing the person i loved. n father took one look at me and knew that he'd acted too late n looked so disappointed in me and sent me away Idk where all I can remember is a white void but it feels like it's blocked out of my memory somehow Jus that's where my brother found me t try n "comfort me"

n with parents I can feel it like tonally Father disgusted and quietly angry and entirely let down by me I don't even. Know what he or mother looked like aside from regal important powerful vibes Just his voice was loud and all encompassing and seemed to echo N mother seemed soft n gentle but she was stern underneath it, if not a bit more understanding to a certain degree Felt pity for the “horror stories” of gods that developed too much humanity by loving in a human way too much "We are meant to understand devotion but not love. Humans are funny that way, caring can hurt them so deeply. We can't afford that" Laughing like it was a somewhat sad joke that was unfortunate but ultimately something trivial Mother would hum a lot and could make flowers grow and sometimes I wished I was like her and could make things beautiful She told me she was old and that one day I'd be able to create new stars and galaxies and whatever else my little heart desired but first I must be patient and diligent and listen to your father he knows best! Told my brother he'd be able to inspire humanity with the last rays of sun that colored the sky and that if he tried hard he'd be able to feel it, the life that the sun could give Told me people down below wrote poems of me and I didn't know what a poem was n she told me it was a declaration of love and devotion, but I only needed to worry about the devotion Love is very human and it goes hand in hand with devotion for them but don't be fooled, they are not the same and love can hurt you

back when i First fell in love it was like my brother knew nothing before my parents did but one day father sorta narrowed his eyes at me n said, idk Somethin abt love being on or in me? idk, the kind of "you reek of it" vibe but mb not those exact words 

[gutterspeak-remade]

Since you’re open to request could I ask for a lil rhyiona thingy? Maybe something short and sweet? Thanks in advance unless u can’t do it in which case just ignore me lol

They’re standing at the base of an old signal tower, light from Elpis shining down on the flats around them and reflecting off the parts of the metal framework that aren’t rusted to all hell.

“I don’t like heights,” Rhys informs Fiona for what must be about the hundredth time as they both consider the structure in front of them.

He can see her nod in his peripheral. “I know you don’t.”

“Is that why you neglected to tell me until the very last second that the fuse you needed me to replace was at the top of goddamn Barad-dûr?”

“The top of… what?”

Rhys sighs, bringing up a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Never mind.”

A cool breeze rolls through, making him shiver. As if it wasn’t already bad enough that Fiona dragged him all the way out here at whatever unholy hour of the night it is right now. He genuinely has no idea how she even convinced him to do this in the first place, considering he has a pile of overdue paperwork collecting dust on his desk and a meeting with a potential investor first thing tomorrow morning.

There’s plenty of other things he could be doing right now. Plenty of other things.

And yet here he is, standing around in the middle of nowhere with his shoulders hiked up around his neck and bouncing on the balls of his feet to try to generate some semblance of warmth like a jackass.

“Sooo.” Fiona bumps her hip pointedly against his. “Are we going up or what?”

Rhys scoffs in her direction, fisting his hands in his sleeves. “Somewhere along the line, I think you started severely overestimating how much I’m willing to risk my life for you.”

“Oh, come on,” she says. “It’s not that tall. You wouldn’t die if you fell. Well, okay, you probably would. But it would be quick and painless!”

He rolls his eyes. “That is sooo not reassuring.”

Huffing impatiently, she stomps around to stand right in front of him and plants her hands on her hips. “Look, I told Sasha I would take care of this before tomorrow because we all know how cranky everybody gets when the radio isn’t working. August opens his stupid mouth way more often and Athena threatens to kill everybody at least twice an hour and Sasha spends so much time trying to pry those two apart that nothing ever gets done. Annoying pop music is the only thing that keeps us all from self destructing.”

Rhys thinks- and not for the first time- that he is very lucky to have his own private office. “If you were going to take care of it, then why am I here?”

“Because,” she starts, and then falters for a moment before continuing, “I… sort of broke it even more and now I don’t know how to fix it.”

He blinks a few times. “Broke… what, exactly?”

“The fuse? I think?” she says, but it sounds more like a question than a statement. “It was stuck in there pretty good so I tried to rip it out, but, well.”

She makes this vague hand gesture that he’s not sure actually conveys anything meaningful, but he thinks he gets the gist.

“I know it’s a lot to ask for,” she continues, “but I could really use your help on this one. Plus we’re kind of already out here and it’s a half hour walk back to base, so.” She steps forward to lay a hand on his arm. “Please.”

Shaking his head and trying to fight back the impending sense of doom twisting his stomach into knots, Rhys motions towards the very unsafe looking ladder on the side of the tower. “After you.”

It’s a long way up, the structure creaking and groaning ominously around them and the metal railing shuddering with every tiny shift of their weight. He half expects the entire thing to come crashing down before they even make it to the maintenance platform, but the structural integrity of the tower remains sound and they get up to where they need to be in one piece.

It’s colder and breezier up here than it was down below, but at least the view is sort of nice in its own barren and desolate way. The flat desert around them is cast in a purpley hue, sporadic gusts of wind kicking up sand clouds all across the landscape. Even the sky looks different, somehow more vast and unending than it had looked from the ground.

The ground that is. Very far away. He can see that once he makes the grave mistake of looking all the way down.

Shit.

He stumbles backwards until his back hits the central beam of the tower to get a safe distance away from the edge. Which might have been way more helpful had the platform they’re standing on right now been made of something solid instead of grated panels, because he can still see just how high in the air they are through the slats. He squeezes his eyes shut, willing his heart to stop pounding and his breathing to slow because dammit, he’s fine, nothing bad is going to happen and everything is fine.

But what if it’s not? What if the supports start collapsing, or what if the rails around the perimeter give way and one of them falls, or what if what if what if-

“Hey,” Fiona says softly as she takes his hands from where they’re clenched into fists at his sides and carefully works her fingers between his. “Hey. Look at me.”

“I don’t like heights,” he tells her again without opening his eyes. “I really, really, really don’t like heights.”

“I know.” She runs her thumb over the back of his knuckles, and her hands are so warm compared to his. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t- I didn’t know this would be-” He can hear her take a breath and blow it back out. “It’s okay, Rhys. You’re okay.”

That’s funny, because they’re, like, hundreds of feet in the air right now, which definitely doesn’t feel okay. But he forces himself to focus on the sensation of her tracing shapes over the back of his hand until he feels less panicky and more just incredibly, nauseatingly anxious. Which, frankly, still sucks, but at least it’s a considerable step down from before.

Once he feels like he’s able to, he cracks open his eyes enough to look down at her. She’s watching him so carefully, so tenderly, green eyes wide and searching as she continues to hold his hands in her own. And then she smiles up at him, a little hesitant, a little crooked, but still full and warm and earnest.

“Better?” she asks.

He’s not sure how to answer that. It still feels the same- the paralyzing fear of being in danger of plummeting to his death at any moment. But it’s also different, somehow. Farther away. Like he’s here with her and everything else is just a step or two behind them, looming right over his shoulder and chattering viciously in his ears but never quite able to catch all the way up.

So. Maybe not better, not in the sense that it’s all magically gone away. Maybe just… easier.

“A little,” he finally decides to say for simplicity’s sake, and then clears his throat a bit awkwardly. “I, uh. Might have to throw up here in a second, but-”

She takes a very generous step away from him at that. “Over the railing, not on me, please and thank you.”

Wow. He guesses he just found the limits of her helpful patience. Brutal. Rhys gives her the flattest look he can muster. “I was kidding.”

Fiona gives him an even flatter look in return, clearly disbelieving. “If any of it gets on me, I swear I’ll push you over the edge.”

He doesn’t doubt it. After he’s actually sure he really isn’t going to puke, he turns to make his way around the platform towards the fuse box. Fiona attempts to explain what she did as he struggles to figure out how in the hell she even jacked it up this badly. The fuse she tried to pull out wasn’t even the one that was busted. He tells her as much but she doesn’t believe him, insisting that she, quote, “Knows a blown fuse when she sees one, goddammit.”

Which she clearly doesn’t, otherwise he wouldn’t be having to fix her mess right now. She doesn’t have a lot more to say once he points that out. But she does shoot lots of dirty looks in his direction as he finishes the job she attempted to start, like it’s his fault that she can’t handle the cold, hard truth.

Once he replaces the correct fuse and fixes the one Fiona messed with, the lights on the tower come back on and everything seems to be functional. Rhys lets out a deep sigh of relief when they finally get back down on the ground where they belong, swearing to himself up and down that if Fiona ever asks him to do anything like this again, he’s changing his name and moving to the Southern Shelf to dig a complex tunnel system in a snowbank so he can live out the rest of his life in relative peace.

He’s so busy fantasizing about his future as a hermit that he doesn’t notice Fiona creeping up behind him until she pokes him in his ribs to get his attention. “Hey.”

“Hey,” he gripes back, spinning around to catch her hand before she can jab him again because dammit, she knows how ticklish he is.

But it doesn’t appear that her intention is to start a tickle fight, because she rolls her eyes and shakes her wrist free of his grip to twine their fingers together instead.

“I didn’t get to say thank you before you were hauling ass down the ladder,” she says, taking a few steps closer. “So, you know. Thank you. I mean it. And I’m sorry for tricking you to get you out here in the first place.”

Sighing, he brings his free hand up to tuck a loose lock of hair behind her ear. “You do know if you had just told me, I still would have helped, right?”

“Would you have, though?”

Rhys has to think about it for a second. Like, really think about it. “Okay, yeah, no. Probably not.”

She grins and stands on her toes to press her lips gently against his. He’s not sure if she means it more as an apology or just as an incentive to stop being mad, but either way, it’s surprisingly effective. She lowers herself down to stand flat on her feet again after a minute and he follows her, making her huff out a laugh against his mouth that turns into a sigh when he runs a hand up her side. Her breath catches when he pulls her closer by her hips, and he swallows a groan when she closes her teeth down on his bottom lip. When she starts to pull back, he catches her, pulling her close again and again to give her fleeting kisses until she swats him away with a laugh.

“That was easy,” she tells him as she moves both her arms up to wind them around his neck. “One kiss and I’m already forgiven. I’ll have to remember that for next time.”

“Hey, don’t you dare make me feel cheap,” he pouts as he slides his hands past her coat to run his thumbs along the seams of her vest. “And who said you were forgiven? I’m obviously still furious. Seething with rage, actually.”

She nods. “Right. Of course. Luckily, I know exactly what buttons to push to get back on your good side.”

He raises an eyebrow at her dubiously. “And… what buttons would those be?”

“I don’t want to spoil the surprise,” she says. “But I’ll give you a hint.”

“Okay, shoot.”

“Two words.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You and me.”

“Right.”

“In your bed.”

Rhys makes this big show of mulling it over before gasping dramatically and releasing her to grab her by the shoulders. “Pillow forts?”

Fiona laughs so loud it echoes across the plains, taking him by the hand and not letting go the entire way home.

[sagarbiswas]

#MAR #MAKAUT #lockdownactivities #MandatoryAdditionalRequirements Name of Activity: Review a Movie Name of the Movie: Interstellar

My Review: To infinity and beyond goes “Interstellar,” an exhilarating slalom through the wormholes of Christopher Nolan’s vast imagination that is at once a science-geek fever dream and a formidable consideration of what makes us human. As visually and conceptually audacious as anything Nolan has yet done, the director’s ninth feature also proves more emotionally accessible than his coolly cerebral thrillers and Batman movies, touching on such eternal themes as the sacrifices parents make for their children (and vice versa) and the world we will leave for the next generation to inherit. An enormous undertaking that, like all the director’s best work, manages to feel handcrafted and intensely personal, “Interstellar” reaffirms Nolan as the premier big-canvas storyteller of his generation, more than earning its place alongside “The Wizard of Oz,” “2001,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Gravity” in the canon of Hollywood’s visionary sci-fi head trips. Global box office returns should prove suitably rocket-powered.

We begin somewhere in the American farm belt, which Nolan evokes for its full mythic grandeur — blazing sunlight, towering corn stalks, whirring combines. But it soon becomes clear that this would-be field of dreams is something closer to a nightmare. The date is an unspecified point shortly, close enough to look and feel like tomorrow, yet far enough for several radical changes to have taken hold in society. A decade on from a period of widespread famine, the world’s armies have been disbanded and the cutting-edge technocracies of the early 21st century have regressed into more utilitarian, farm-based economies.

“We’re a caretaker generation,” notes one such homesteader (John Lithgow) to his widower son-in-law, Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a former NASA test pilot who hasn’t stopped dreaming of flight, for himself and for his children: 15-year-old son Tom (Timothee Chalamet) and 10-year-old daughter Murphy (Mackenzie Foy), the latter a precocious tot was first seen getting suspended from school for daring to suggest that the Apollo space missions actually happened. “We used to look up in the sky and wonder about our place in the stars,” Cooper muses. “Now we just look down and wonder about our place in the dirt.”

And oh, what dirt! As “Interstellar” opens, the world — or at least Cooper’s Steinbeckian corner of it — sits on the cusp of a second Dust Bowl, ravaged by an epidemic of crop blight, a silt-like haze hanging permanently in the air. (Some of this scene-setting is accomplished via pseudo-documentary interviews with the elderly residents of some more distant future reflecting on their hardscrabble childhoods, which Nolan films like the “witness” segments from Warren Beatty’s “Reds.”) And as the crops die, so the Earth’s atmosphere becomes richer in nitrogen and poorer in oxygen, until the time when global starvation will give way to global asphyxiation.

But all hope is not lost. NASA (whose massive real-life budget cuts lend the movie added immediacy) still exists in this agrarian dystopia, but it’s gone off the grid, far from the microscope of public opinion. There, the brilliant physicist Professor Brand (Michael Caine, forever the face of avuncular wisdom in Nolan’s films) and his dedicated team have devised two scenarios for saving mankind. Both plans involve abandoning Earth and starting over on a new, life-sustaining planet, but only one includes taking Earth’s current 6-billion-plus population along for the ride. Doing the latter, it seems, depends on Brand’s ability to solve an epic math problem that would explain how such a large-capacity vessel could surmount Earth’s gravitational forces. (Never discussed in this egalitarian society: a scenario in which only the privileged few could escape, a la the decadent bourgeoisie of Neill Blomkamp’s “Elysium.”)

Many years earlier, Brand informs, a mysterious space-time rift (or wormhole) appeared in the vicinity of Saturn, seemingly placed there, like the monoliths of “2001,” by some higher intelligence. On the other side: another galaxy containing a dozen planets that might be fit for human habitation. In the wake of the food wars, a team of intrepid NASA scientists traveled there in search of solutions. Now, a decade later (in Earth years, that is), Brand has organized another mission to check up on the three planets that seem the most promising for human settlement. And to pilot the ship, he needs Cooper, an instinctive flight jockey in the Chuck Yeager mode, much as McConaughey’s laconic, effortlessly self-assured performance recalls Sam Shepards as Yeager in “The Right Stuff” (another obvious “Interstellar” touchstone).

Already by this point — and we have not yet left the Earth’s surface — “Interstellar” (which Nolan co-wrote with his brother and frequent collaborator, Jonathan) has hurled a fair amount of theoretical physics at the audience, including discussions of black holes, gravitational singularities and the possibility of extra-dimensional space. And, as with the twisty chronologies and unreliable narrators of his earlier films, Nolan trusts in the audience’s ability to get the gist and follow along, even if it doesn’t glean every last nuance on first viewing. It’s hard to think of a mainstream Hollywood film that has so successfully translated complex mathematical and scientific ideas to a lay audience (though Shane Carruth’s ingenious 2004 Sundance winner “Primer” — another movie concerned with overcoming the problem of gravity — tried something similar on a micro-budget indie scale), or done so in more vivid, immediate human terms. (Some credit for this is doubtless owed to the veteran CalTech physicist Kip Thorne, who consulted with the Nolans on the script and receives an executive producer credit.)

The mission itself is a relatively intimate affair, comprised of Cooper, Brand’s own scientist daughter (Anne Hathaway), two other researchers (Wes Bentley and the excellent David Gyasi), and a chatty, sarcastic, ex-military security robot called TARS (brilliantly voiced by Bill Irwin in a sly nod to Douglas Rain’s iconic HAL 9000), which looks like a walking easel but proves surprisingly agile when the going gets tough. And from there, “Interstellar” has so many wonderful surprises in store — from casting choices to narrative twists and reversals — that the less said about it the better. (Indeed, if you really don’t want to know anything more, read no further.)

It gives nothing away, however, to say that Nolan maps his infinite celestial landscape as majestically as he did the continent-hopping earthbound ones of “The Prestige” and “Batman Begins,” or the multi-tiered memory maze of “Inception.” The imagery, modeled by Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema on Imax documentaries like “Space Station” and “Hubble 3D,” suggests a boundless inky blackness punctuated by ravishing bursts of light, the tiny spaceship Endurance gleaming like a diamond against Saturn’s great, gaseous rings, then ricocheting like a pinball through the wormhole’s shimmering plasmic vortex.

With each stop the Endurance makes, Nolan envisions yet another new world: one planet a watery expanse with waves that make Waimea Bay look like a giant bathtub; another an ice climber’s playground of frozen tundra and sheer-faced descents. Moreover, outer space allows Nolan to bend and twist his favorite subject — time — into remarkable new permutations. Where most prior Nolan protagonists were forever grasping at an irretrievable past, the crew of the Endurance races against a ticking clock that happens to tick differently depending on your particular vantage. New worlds mean new gravitational forces, so that for every hour spent on a given planet’s surface, years or even entire decades may be passing back on Earth. (Time as a flat circle, indeed.)

This leads to an extraordinary mid-film emotional climax in which Cooper and Brand return from one such expedition to discover that 23 earth years have passed in the blink of an eye, represented by two decades’ worth of stockpiled video messages from loved ones, including the now-adult Tom (a bearded, brooding Casey Affleck) and Murphy (Jessica Chastain in dogged, persistent “Zero Dark Thirty” mode). It’s a scene Nolan stages mostly in closeup on McConaughey, and the actor plays it beautifully, his face a quicksilver mask of joy, regret, and unbearable grief.

That moment signals a shift in “Interstellar” itself from the relatively euphoric, adventurous tone of the first half toward darker, more ambiguous terrain — the human shadow areas, if you will, that are as difficult to fully glimpse as the inside of a black hole. Nolan, who has always excelled at the slow reveal, catches even the attentive viewer off guard more than once here, but never in a way that feels cheap or compromises the complex motivations of the characters.

On the one hand, the movie marvels at the brave men and women throughout history who have dedicated themselves, often at great peril, to the greater good of mankind. On the other, because Nolan is a psychological realist, he’s acutely aware of the toil such lives may take on those who choose to lead them, and that even “the best of us” (as one character is repeatedly described) might not be immune from cowardice and moral compromise. Some people lie to themselves and to their closest confidants in “Interstellar,” and Nolan understands that everyone has his reasons. Others compensate by making the most selfless of sacrifices. Perhaps the only thing trickier than quantum physics, the movie argues, is the nature of human emotion.

Nolan stages one thrilling set piece after another, including several hairsbreadth escapes and a dazzling space-docking sequence in which the entire theater seems to become one large centrifuge; the nearly three-hour running time passes unnoticed. Even more thrilling is the movie’s ultimate vision of a universe in which the face of extraterrestrial life bears a surprisingly familiar countenance. “Do not go gentle into that good night/Rage, rage against the dying of the light,” harks the good Professor Brand at the start of the Endurance’s journey, quoting the melancholic Welshman Dylan Thomas. And yet “Interstellar” is finally a film suffused with light and boundless possibilities — those of the universe itself, of the wonder in a child’s twinkling eyes, and of movies to translate all that into spectacular picture shows like this one.

It’s hardly surprising that “Interstellar” reps the very best big-budget Hollywood craftsmanship at every level, from veteran Nolan collaborators like production designer Nathan Crowley (who built the film’s lyrical vision of the big-sky American heartland on location in Alberta) and sound designer/editor Richard King, who makes wonderfully dissonant contrasts between the movie’s interior spaces and the airless silence of space itself. VFX supervisor Paul Franklin (an Oscar winner for his work on “Inception”) again brings a vivid tactility to all of the film’s effects, especially the robotic TARS, who seamlessly inhabits the same physical spaces as the human actors. Hans Zimmer contributes one of his most richly imagined and inventive scores, which ranges from a gentle electronic keyboard melody to brassy, Strauss-ian crescendos. Shot and post-produced by Nolan entirely on celluloid (in a mix of 35mm and 70mm stocks), “Interstellar” begs to be seen on the large-format Imax screen, where its dense, inimitably filmic textures and multiple aspect ratios can be experienced to their fullest effect.

[ethicsorgbeh]

Hi there! Welcome to our first blog entry ever. To start things off, we had the first two sessions of our Ethics, Organizations and Society Class and we are super excited to share our thought and ideas with you guys.

Many of you have probably heard of normative ethics before, not everyone will know the name but once we get into it you will see that normative ethics is something many have learned about before. Normative ethics is the study of ethical action, so simply put, the study of distinguishing what we do is right or wrong. There are basic principles that were established in order for us to better judge our actions and if what we intend to do is actually good. One example is virtue ethics, it looks at the person rather than the action, meaning that if you do something bad with the intention of being good, your action can still be considered good. We personally dislike this way of thinking. Of course, the original intent of a person needs to be taken into account when looking at their actions, but you cannot disregard the actual action. So, for example, if someone opens a cage in a zoo to release an animal held in captivity, which is a noble thought, but this leads to property damage, maybe even personal harm. Then this action cannot be good in our opinion, no matter how noble the original thought. This example is a bit extreme as it goes against laws, but the gist is, if someone does something bad, it does not become better because the intent was good, or because the person normally is good. A wrong action remains wrong, even if the person doing it isn’t. 

This is another extreme example, three women wanted to launch lanterns into the sky as part of a new year’s celebration and by accident lit a monkey exhibit on fire and killing the monkeys. The idea to celebrate the new year like that isn’t wrong, but the outcome is, and their good intent does not make up for killing dozens of monkeys.

A normative ethics theory that we actually really like though is consequentialism. It basically judges an action by its outcome and consequences, where bad consequences mean bad actions. We believe this is something very simple and can really serve as a foundation for people to not break the law and go absolutely nuts every now and then. If we were to rob a store and get caught, we would be prosecuted and might have to go to jail depending on the severity of our actions. This fear of going to jail is the main thing keeping us from going store to store taking what we want, that and our consciousness which would be screaming in pain if we did that. But what if we do not get caught and except for the fear of consequences our mind is good with it, does that make robbing a store good because of no consequences? NO! Of course not. The shop owner will have to take up new security measures, will lose profit on the items we stole and will feel less safe in his own store. Our action would not have consequences on us at first, but on the people involved.

All this talk about theories led to session two, ethical decision making. This session was more about what we do and why we do it. What moves a person to behave differently? What happens every day that changes companies and organizations form within? We watched a great video which still stays on my mind from time to time. Basically, the professor said that there are common misconceptions with the way we see business ethics. People misunderstand both business and ethics. If you think business is solely about profits, there’s your first misconception. Furthermore, ethics is about how we strive together not by ourselves, so there’s number two. And lastly, people are complicated. Not one person can cooperate the same with everyone, and no business process can run as smoothly with humans as it would be with machines, but that is a good thing because humans push innovation and lead to development. We highly recommend the video, so go watch it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7yjQzRcf-U).

We further discussed decision making and the ethical influence on it and let us tell you, decision making cannot be easy. It never is and never will be but that’s okay, because we can help each other. Hard decisions might come easier to some people because of their situation and their circumstances, but everybody can make a decision and if we make mistakes, we can help each other out when trying to fix it. We think one of the best examples is the corona pandemic going on right now. Some governments took it more strictly than others and profited from it. Some countries sadly are doing rather poorly with the pandemic affecting their people harshly, but other countries can help. China for example, sent doctors to Italy when the pandemic slowed down for them but continued in Italy. By now, almost every country is in full lockdown mode, but once this is over, we are sure we can help each other build up what fell.

If you want our opinion on ethical decision making, we don’t think there is a possibility to make the perfect decision. There will always be someone affected in a way that was not intended, or someone not gaining from a decision. Making the best possible decision is all we can do, and try to do, but under uncertainty that isn’t easy most of the time. Therefore, we have to collect information, consult with other people and accept the possibility of making a mistake. Only then can we learn and make future decisions the best we possibly can.

Picture retrieved from: https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/383650462002699211/

[mpbase]

MPBASE GIST: Check out things SwitchGame review about himself in an interview

Hypeman Clement So SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy let's know u

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SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy My name is Ifenna Chris from Anambra state. I live in Jos, Plateau. I'm a student in the University of Jos, I'm from a family of four and the third born.

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Hypeman Clement SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy wow so why the name switchgame

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Hypeman Clement What's the inspiration to the name

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SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy After my clash with an artiste named Pages in Plasu, I was embarrassed and choose to Switch the Game!

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Hypeman Clement SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy wow clash tell us about it

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SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy Imagine going to a show and hearing someone answering the same name you are? Totally not cool. I taught of something different and outstanding. Like why can't I be different? Ace #Ace Recordz#the magic finger helped me out with the name and my slogan "thewolfisapuppy"

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Hypeman Clement SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy wow feel the pains

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Hypeman Clement So did you choose the name out of frustration

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SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy Thanks boss😎

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Hypeman Clement What's the inspiration to the name SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy

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SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy Nope I did not. I choose it to make a difference

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Hypeman Clement SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy wow

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Hypeman Clement Now you have a new name, having a new name is like having a new identity

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Hypeman Clement What's your plans or next move now u have a new identity

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SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy True but not just a new identity also a new rebranded me. Watch out!!!

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SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy Work work work!!!

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Hypeman Clement Work that's true it takes lot's of work or hard work to make a name

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Hypeman Clement SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy so tells in the music or entertainment what gin of music u do?

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SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy And also the grace of God. I'm ready.

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Hypeman Clement SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy yes bro nothing goes smoothly with out him, seem u are a Christian

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Hypeman Clement SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy love to know ur gin of music

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SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy Yes I am

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SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy Rnb, dance hall, afro and rap depending on the vibe😜 but I'm in love with all of this I have mentioned 😎

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Hypeman Clement SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy wow means u go with the beat and vibe

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Hypeman Clement So do you have any song on ground u working on

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SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy That's the point! I love music and I believe I can do anything through Christ who strengthens me😋

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SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy Of course!!! Ace said have patience. So we're on it. Big moves😃

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Hypeman Clement SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy ace? are you in any record LABEL

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SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy No I'm not basically. I'm on my own doing my thing. I've got allies 😎

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Hypeman Clement SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy so u are saying u are not in any record LABEL, so what's the deal with Ace record and u

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SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy No deal at all. We're just allies trying to make something good out of what we've got passion for. He's a producer and I'm an artist. No limitations to whom I work with or collaborate with. He gives advises basically

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Hypeman Clement SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy wow

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SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy Yeah

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Hypeman Clement So ur new music how far are u arming

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SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy My dad said to be on top you've got to aim for the sky then make friends with the birds. I think this drop is about connecting to people and the fans. Making a new world like "I'm back" After that, we keep getting better and better until we're on top of the game and industry

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Hypeman Clement SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy because one thing I know is, how far u want to grow determines what you invest, time and resources

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Hypeman Clement So are you working with anyone on that SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy

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SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy Mostly resources can be the major challenges of up coming artiste but then the time is there which is very essential. What we have financially is what we put in and end it up with "Better days ahead"😎

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Hypeman Clement SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy what have been ur challenges so far?

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SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy Seriously. Like I'm doing almost everything to see I'm making sense. So many untold sacrifices just to get online. Just to see there are changes in my career as an artiste

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SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy Money! Who else wouldn't say that?! Crazy right? But money is a big challenge. When money is there, everything is made easy 😉

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Hypeman Clement SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy nice, so apart from Facebook what other social media platforms can ur fans reach u

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SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy On Instagram and Twitter. Truth is every up coming artist are limited to so many things like what to post, no clothes, expensive chains and stuff like that but I'm about the content of what I offer all those stuff comes behind.

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Hypeman Clement SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy but one may say, relationship is better than money

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Hypeman Clement I mean, ur social media handle for ur fans to connect with you

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SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy True! I learnt that from you guys and believe me it is absolutely the truth. When we keep good relationships, we get to realize we spend less on the platform. So I agree with that

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SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy Twitter:@switch_game Instagram: @iamswitchgame

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Hypeman Clement SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy nice having u here, before we let you go please drop ur social media handle

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Hypeman Clement Ok sir we look forward to have u again SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy

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SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy Twitter: @switch_game Instagram: #iamswitchgame

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SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy Thanks and I sincerely appreciate the time you made out here for the interview. Awesome!

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Hypeman Clement SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy ok sir

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SwitchGame Thewolfisapuppy And you too Hypeman Clement

via Blogger http://bit.ly/2W5pMb2

[mediafocus-blog1]

The Worst Internet In America

New Post has been published on https://mediafocus.biz/the-worst-internet-in-america/

The Worst Internet In America

o force the duration and breadth of Saguache County, Colorado, is a dangerous assignment. The roads, as a minimum in spring, are lonely, clean and straight — “power 30 miles then take a left” is the gist of maximum map directions. But the perspectives are what can pressure a person to distraction, veering recklessly over dotted yellow traces. There are hay fields drowned in water, blue and glassy so it looks like the sky fell on them, football fields complete of black farm animals standing stock-nevertheless like museum statuary, symptoms along empty stretches advertising meet and greets with the “Happy Gilmore” alligator, and crop planes that totter and swoop perilously over electricity strains earlier than misting fields so green you think they may have invented the colour.

The beauty of Saguache County may be an inconvenient one, although, particularly within the twenty-first century: It has some of the worst nets inside u. S . A .. That’s in element because of the mountains and the isolation they create. Saguache (sah-WATCH’) is nestled in among the Sangre de Cristo and San Juan stages, a 4-hour pressure southwest of Denver. Its populace of 6, get three hundred is unfolded across 3,169 rectangular miles 7,800 toes above sea level, but on land that is mostly flat, so that you can nearly see the overall scope of mountain levels as you force the county’s highways: the San Juans, melted into gentle brown peaks to the west, and the Sangre de Cristos, sharp, black and snow-capped, thrusting almost violently upward to the east.

FiveThirtyEight analyzed every country’s broadband usage the usage of information from researchers at the University of Iowa and Arizona State University1 and discovered that Saguache changed into at the lowest. Only five.6 percentage of adults were estimated to have broadband.

But Saguache isn’t alone in missing broadband. According to the Federal Communications Commission, 39 percent of rural Americans — 23 million human beings — don’t get admission to. In Pew surveys, folks that stay in rural regions were approximately twice as possibly no longer to use the internet as city or suburban Americans.

The FCC now defines broadband internet as the ability to download facts at 25 megabits consistent with 2nd and to add it at 3 megabits in step with 2nd. This sort of connection enables a person to do the things that most Americans with domestic net love to do — watch Netflix, play video games, and browse on a line with out interruption even supposing more than one gadgets are on the equal connection. For around $30 a month, New York City internet carriers offer basic programs of one hundred Mbps provider. In Saguache County, this kind of connection is rare; if a family needs a download velocity of 12 Mbps with an upload velocity of two Mbps, they are able to expect to pay a whopping $ninety.

This would be much less of a problem if the internet weren’t so valuable to fashionable existence. But taxes, activity applications, payroll operations, banking, newspapers, buying, university publications and video chats all are ubiquitous online. Saguache County’s students are expected to take their nation exams on line even though an administrator at one college that houses K-12 college students informed me that until the last yr, the internet frequently went down for more than one hours or maybe all day within the building.

The tide lengthy in the past grew to become from paper to virtual in American life, and but the disparities in getting admission to the net in elements of the united states of America may be stark. Rural communities frequently face logistics issues installing fiber-optic cable in sparsely populated areas. In Saguache, net problems are both logistical and financial; the county is three times the size of Rhode Island, at the same time as 30 percent of citizens live beneath the poverty line.

Some would argue that the social settlement has changed and that speedy net isn’t just a luxury — it’s a right of all 21st-century Americans. If that’s the case, we’re a long way from making sure it. Just spend some days hopping from metropolis to metropolis on Saguache’s long stretches of an avenue.

The U.S. Has a protracted record of trying to bring application get right of entry to all Americans. In the early 1930s, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt installed the Rural Electrification Administration, ninety percent of American farmers lived without power. Many families could not get entry to going for walks water, warmness and mild for the home. The price of running electric powered trains to the united states’ most faraway areas turned into prohibitive for income-looking for corporations, but the REA determined eager partners in rural electric cooperatives that had started out to spring up in small groups with an eye fixed towards modernization. The government commenced offering the co-ops loans to construct out their electric powered networks, and via the quiet of the Nineteen Forties, most farms in the united states of America had strength.

With clear eyes brought by 80 years of hindsight, it’s obvious that Americans need to have to get right to entry to electricity — u. S .’s monetary and social properly-being depends on it. Advocates of generic broadband argue the same will be said of the rapid net. Already, the law says that all Americans need to have to get right to entry to net offerings, thanks to the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which multiplied the belief of widely wide-spread carrier beyond simply the proper to phone provider. In 2017, many co-ops see bringing the high-velocity net to the maximum remote locations within the United States as the 21st century’s solution to rural electrification.

Shirley Bloomfield, CEO of the Rural Broadband Association, says rural America have to have fast broadband, in an element, as it’s proper for commercial enterprise.

She touted a 2016 study from the Hudson Institute that observed that sixty-six percent of the financial effect of rural broadband went to city economies in preference to rural ones, for the reason that most of the resources needed to construct these remote networks are sourced from urban regions. The equal have a look at predicted that if broadband was as true in rural areas as it is in urban ones, on line retail sales would be “as a minimum $1 billion higher.”

But there’s additionally a less-quantifiable social appropriate that rapid net gets right of entry to for all may carry to the use of a. Larry Downes, assignment director of the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy and an internet enterprise analyst, said that via a distinctive feature of except some, the net’s price as a network of connection was being diluted. “Any time we add one greater man or woman to the net, we get that many extra possible connections of humans, in order that has a greater cost.”

More pointedly: “The more you create 2d-elegance citizens, the greater we simply hold to look some of those political divides,” Bloomfield said. The closing election was proof of a breaking factor. “I think rural America sort of sat again and roared a little bit.”

the town of Crestone, Colorado, sits off Kingdom Route 17, on the give up of an extended avenue that cuts thru scrub-stuffed land at the base of the Sangre de Cristos. When I pulled in one early morning in late May, I didn’t see a soul, so I browsed the nearby bulletin board — a wooden range on the market, a lacking younger woman, yoga lessons — and surpassed plenty full of yurts and something that looked a lousy lot like a satellite tv for pc dish. Crestone has become domestic to a positive type of character, keen to live out of the 2017 mainstream, and the metropolis is filled with nonsecular retreat centers and transplants from out of the kingdom.

It’s additionally where Colorado Central Telecom has an office. The small operation gives net and make contact with plans to citizens in Saguache County and neighboring Chaffee County and has tailor-made its carrier to the wishes of the extra remote net consumer. While maximum urban and suburban companies use fiber cables laid inside the ground, rural companies often use some thing called fixed wireless network to keep away from the set up of miles of expensive cable. When the office opened, a technician named Joshua confirmed me a returned room packed with the equal form of satellite-looking dishes I had visible on the yurt. If a home wishes Colorado Central Telecom’s provider, the dish is hooked up to it and pointed within the course of the nearest constant wireless tower so that a sign can be beamed to the house. The dishes should be inside the line of sight of the tower, which can get intricate if trees or different obstructions are within the manner.

Maisie Ramsay, head of commercial enterprise development for Colorado Central Telecom, set out to expose me over the route of the morning the form of the route that airborne net signals have to tour around Saguache County. From Crestone’s center, we drove to a massive tower in a subject simply out of doors the city, then to a school in Moffat, a few minutes to the west, wherein a dish sat discreetly on the back of the building as children performed out the front. The excursion ended in the metropolis of Saguache, on the northern quit of the county, with Ramsay and I stare up at a tower on Cemetery Hill, a barren mound overlooking the tiny metropolis. A lady named Pat Miller came out to invite if we had been misplaced, and it turned out that she turned into a Central Telecom consumer. “CenturyLink, you’ve probably heard, simply became no longer going to present us the service,” Miller said, relating to the big telecom that services a few components of the San Luis Valley, in which Saguache County is situated. “It turned into horrendous.”

This type of complaint is commonplace in Saguache County. In 2011, Ralph Abrams, the previous mayor of Crestone, founded Colorado Central Telecom in direct reaction to bad service he said the town become getting from any other huge provider, Fairpoint. “Originally this started because Fairpoint was not supplying extra than half a [megabit],” Abrams instructed me. “Which is unusable,” Ramsay stated. According to Abrams, the metropolis turned into determined for the internet and the corporation became started because “none of the larger companies care about small rural regions.” The Internet is a software, Abrams said, and “utilities are a right for each person like street and sewer and water and energy and we will convey it.”