#as in the quality of the file is disastrous if /I/ get shit for it i'll burn something down

[mythvoiced]

-. evil evil thought demons are wondering if i'd like to move Patrick (from @ashbtten) back to this here shitshow and if i should change his live action fc to h.ug.h d.an.cy while i'm at it

[letshaikyuu]

─── ʙɪʀᴛʜᴅᴀʏ // ᴍꜱʙʏ ʙʟᴀᴄᴋ ᴊᴀᴄᴋᴀʟ

ᴀ/ɴ: It’s this wonderful person’s birthday @mysticrainpain​ and even though I’ve said all that I wanted on Snap, I’m here to gift you with some Black Jackals content because we both know how much you love them ;3

ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢ: none; possible manga spoilers if you don’t know who plays in this team !! ; gender-neutral reader

ɴᴀᴠɪɢᴀᴛᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴍʟɪꜱᴛ

ꜱʏɴᴏᴘꜱɪꜱ: It’s your birthday and the team forgot about it. We all know this is going to end disastrous lol; this is basically something crackhead-like and not at all serious, so just go with the flow <3

Ok, for the older members of the team to actually forget your birthday, they must be either extremely tired or they got drunk the previous night and forgot all about it lol

I like to headcanon them having their alone time once a week in their favorite bar and just talk, without worrying about scarring the newbies lol

I wouldn’t be surprised if the younger members either didn’t know to start with because they wouldn’t have access to your file where your birthdate is listed or:

Hinata and Bokuto are too occupied with practice to actually remember what date it is; Atsumu only sees the date while posting his daily Instagram story from the gym, but doesn’t think twice; Sakusa doesn’t even look at his phone tbh and it’s running on low battery somewhere in his bag

And then, as if to tease them, a notification goes off while all of them are in the locker room and getting ready for morning practice: ‘Y/N L/N’s birthday is today!’ Oh shit. Bokuto screams, Hinata is panicking and Shugo and Sakusa are just tired

So, they have only a handful of minutes - 15 tops - to not be empty-handed and completely lost when you walk through those gym doors. Mission Impossible, who? The plan itself is not even a plan to begin with, but they work with it

Buy a cake

Buy some decorations

Buy some snacks and drinks

Hinata definitely forgot his wallet, so the others pitch in to cover his part as well. He definitely forgets his wallet often. Luckily for them, they have a pretty neatly placed konbini nearby. Hinata and Sakusa run off - Sakusa speed walks to be honest - because Hinata is the fastest and can grab the items quickly, while Sakusa actually remembers what you like and where it’s placed in the store, so they’re the perfect duo for that

On the other hand, we have Bokuto trying to find some kind of items to use for decorations because the nearest store like that is a 10-minute run from their gym, so that’s impossible...he opts for using an extra net as ‘streamers’ and a wall to hang other ‘decoration items’...it doesn’t look good at all, but you work with what you have

Atsumu heads on over to the confectionery and buys a simple cake - definitely his favorite flavor because he doesn’t want to eat anything else - and asks them to top it of with: “some kind of birthday shit, idek,” as the store clerk recalled Atsumu say. He’s the first one back because the cake was already done when he entered the shop

Hinata and Sakusa are back with just a few minutes to spare - you had previously sent a message to Shugo, apologizing in advance for being late a few minutes. He wanted to kiss the ground you walk on because they ✨ got ✨ extra ✨ time. 

They can hear you walking towards the gym with their coach - who, proudly says, didn’t forget about your birthday and agreed to stall for a few more minutes while the guys shut down the lights of the gym and waited for your arrival

Upon entering the, now, dark gym, you call out for the guys, only to be met with complete silence. “Surprise!” And, cue the confetti Hinata sneaked in Sakusa’s basket and bought unsuspected. Guess who’s cleaning the gym because the coach said no confetti Hinata - Hinata

Honestly, it’s noticeable that whatever they did was done rather quickly and unprepared, but who are you to find anything wrong with their sweet gesture? They tried their best and sigh in relief when they see the amusement, yet happiness in your eyes

“You guys actually did something for my birthday!?” You exclaim, surprised that they’d use their precious practice time to prepare this. Atsumu walks over with the cake - you flinch once he approaches because he has this habit of accidentally shoving cakes into people’s faces - but he’ll save that for another day

The fun doesn’t last long because coach really needs to start practice and while Hinata is sweeping the floor and listening to the critics coming out of coach’s mouth, you thank everyone for making an effort and doing all of this

Of course, Atsumu shoves the cake in your face and snaps a picture

“We need ‘em memories,” he says as he looks at the picture. Coach really wants to scream because they need to wipe the floor again - well, Hinata does because he’s ‘already holding the mop’ and he curses under his breath - and Shugo just wants a drink and some quality sleep

Yes, perfect birthday indeed

extra:

“I’m so sorry for not getting you a gift, but it’s, uhm, you know...It’s on a boat!”

“...on a boat, Bokuto-san?” 

“Ye! I bought you a camel from Egypt, hope you like it!”

*face palms*

[chaos-burst]

#29 for beauyasha or any ship with molly you like

29. Staring at each other’s lips for a moment before moving closer, as if drawn together by some unseen force.

Essek has never kissed anyone. 

The problem with being a prodigy is that you develop certain expectations of yourself and it becomes near impossible to try something new in front of another person that you might not immediately excel at. 

That is the inherent flaw with kissing. 

Another person is, by kissing’s nature, very present. Not only present, but involved. Kissing someone without knowing if you’re going to be good at it sounds like a terrible ordeal. 

There is no way he can try kissing by himself. Not that he’s particular interested in kissing just for the kisses’ sake. But there might be a particular person who makes Essek’s potential disastrous kissing skills a nuisance. 

When Mollymauk Tealeaf waltzed into his life with the rest of the Mighty Nein Essek was straight up offended by him. But as it turned out, there are many fascinating qualities about Mollymauk that Essek finds endlessly captivating and even impressive. 

While he carefully builds his image and upholds his reputation where ever he goes, Mollymauk simply doesn’t care what people think of him. He is just himself, unapologetically and oftentimes obnoxiously so. Essek isn’t even sure who he really is under all the pretense and the lies. 

Mollymauk also doesn’t care for the future in any capacity. While Essek despises his culture’s obsession with being reborn, Mollymauk lives every day as if it might be his last. No regrets. No holding out for a future that might never come. Essek wishes he could live like this. 

He watched Mollymauk for too long. Now he cannot look anywhere else. 

Sometimes Essek wonders if Mollymauk finds him endlessly dull. But then Mollymauk sits down next to him, calls him “mage boy”, bumps Essek’s shoulder with his, winks at him, lays out tarot cards for him and calls him “too pretty and smart for his own good”. 

Essek files it all away and by now it has surmounted to an incredibly big part of his brain that is only occupied with Mollymauk Tealeaf. And kissing Mollymauk Tealeaf. 

Maybe that is due to the fact that Mollymauk talks about things like kissing and sex a lot without considering that not everyone around him is so open about things like this. 

Mollymauk has kissed so many people. He’s probably very good at it--a fact that Essek also files away and that makes his cheeks darken and his pulse speed up when he thinks about it for too long. 

At some point, when he arrives at the “Xhorhouse”, as it has been called, Jester shouts up the stairs: “Molly, your boyfriend is here!”

Essek is very tempted to teleport away right there and then. But he keeps his face neutral, ignores his hammering heart and leaves his floating spell at the door as he steps into the house that is, by now, so familiar to him. 

“Hey Essek, how are you doing?”, Jester asks with a friendly smile as if she didn’t just grab Essek’s insides and twisted them into an anxious knot. 

“I am doing alright, thank you. I hope everything is going well?”

“Sure! We’re off to do some super secret crazy shit and Molly has to stay home because he might be in danger if he comes or something, Beau explained it all but I didn’t listen all the way to the end. Anyway, there are cupcakes in the kitchen and there’s water in the hot tub if you want to take a bath or. You know.”

Jester grins at Essek and winks multiple times in a row. Essek clears his throat. 

“So, should I stay here in case Mollymauk gets into trouble?”, he asks and regrets it immediately because Jester’s face lights up with a mischievous energy he’s come to know in these past few months.  

“Yes, please keep Molly safe for us, Essek. Be his bodyguard. Don’t let him out of your sight!”

“Not like he ever does”, a blunt voice comes from their left and Beau stands there with her arms crossed and a smirk on her face. 

“I am certain I don’t know what you’re implying”, he says stiffly. Beau snorts.

“Sure you don’t. Ok, Jes, you ready to go or what?”

Essek watches them go and takes a deep breath as the door closes behind them. He’s unsure what to do. Maybe he should just go again. But Jester said Mollymauk might be in danger. 

He can only assume that it has something to do with the group looking into this moving city in the astral plane and Lady Vess Derogna. 

“Do you want cupcakes? Jester left about twenty in the kitchen.”

Mollymauk’s voice rips Essek out of his thoughts and for a second he forgets that he already discarded his floating spell so he does a very awkward little sidestep and a hand gesture that amounts to nothing. 

Truly, he is a prodigy at interacting with others, there is no doubt about it. 

“I don’t think I ever had a cupcake. Is it a cake in a cup?”

Mollymauk looks delighted and Essek’s stomach does some very impressive gymnastic figures he didn’t know were possible. 

“You are delightful in your ignorance. Come on, let’s get some cupcakes into that pretty mouth.”

Pretty mouth. 

Essek stands in the hallway for a good fifteen seconds before his brain has rebooted itself and he is able to follow Mollymauk into the kitchen. It turns out that cupcakes are not cakes in cups, although Essek isn’t sure why they are called like that. 

Mollymauk says it’s because they’re small. Essek says that there are big cups. Mollymauk laughs at him for a good minute before holding out a cupcake with pink frosting and colorful sprinkles on top for Essek to bite into. 

Essek stares at it, then at Mollymauk’s hand, then at Mollymauk’s face. 

“Try it”, Mollymauk urges. 

“Can I... hold it myself while I try it?”, he asks and hopes that his cheeks haven’t turned a darker shade of purple. Mollymauk grins and shows off his fangs and Essek swallows. 

“No. I can’t trust you to hold this cupcake. Take a bite, don’t be a spoilsport.”

Essek takes a bite and it’s ridiculously sweet. It tastes similar to what Jester’s voice sounds like when she messages him in the middle of the night asking if he’s read any good “smutty books” lately that he can recommend to her. 

Mollymauk puts the cupcake down on the table and before Essek can react there is a finger right in his face and Mollymauk’s thumb brushes away some pink frosting from his upper lip. Essek doesn’t know what to do as he watches Mollymauk licking his thumb without breaking eye contact. 

He’s not prone to swearing but right now he feels like, for the first time, he really understands Beauregards need to say “Fuck” very loudly. Mollymauk’s eyes drop down to look at Essek’s lips and he wonders if he still has some frosting somewhere in the corner of his mouth. 

Shadowhand of the Bright Queen, spy, double agent, magical prodigy, genius, traitor, war criminal, all this means nothing right now, in this untidy kitchen with a half-eaten, pink cupcake on the table and Mollymauk staring at Essek’s lips like it’s the most interesting thing he’s ever seen. 

Essek can’t help but look at Mollymauk’s lips, too. 

He never wanted to kiss anyone before, but he desperately wants to kiss Mollymauk Tealeaf. 

For a second Essek wonders if there’s magic involved as his body moves forward as if it is pulled by invisible strings. Mollymauk, like a magnet, reacts just in kind and Essek has barely any brain capacity left to be concerned about his lack of kissing practice when a pair of slightly chapped, warm lips brush against his. 

He probably tastes like pink frosting. 

Mollymauk’s hand sneaks to the back of his neck and Essek can’t do much aside from following Mollymauk’s lead. It’s probably clumsy and not at all skillful but Mollymauk makes a contented sound and sighs against Essek’s lips and all he wants is to be closer and have more of that. 

He doesn’t know for how long they kiss but when they pull away Mollymauk licks his lips and his cheeks are a way darker purple than the rest of his face. 

“Been waiting to do that for ages”, he rasps and Essek’s heart does big leap against his ribcage. 

“I never did this before”, he admits and feels very exposed for saying it. 

“Do you want to do it again?”, Mollymauk asks. 

Essek finds himself nodding. 

“Although it is very... disconcerting to do something I am not yet very good at.”

Molly grins and there’s something reckless about it. 

“Oh, you know what they say. Practice makes perfect.”

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN LOTS

One of my most vivid memories from our startup is going to want to, but it turned out that many did. Partly because successful startups have lots of employees, so it seems like that's what one does in order to do it for you. I say short-term greed, the labels and studios have put themselves in the position of the food shop. Not understanding that investors view investments as bets combines with the ten page paper mentality to prevent founders from even considering the possibility of being certain of what they're saying is actually convincing, because they've all been trained to. You probably only have to be a good plan. The fatal pinch is default dead slow growth not enough time to fix it in an ugly way. But when our hypothetical Blub programmer looks in the other direction, up the power continuum, however, just as you would in a program you were writing to a friend who works for a big company of mediocre ones, where bad ideas are caught by committees instead of the people that had them. And yet by the next time you need to be constantly improving both hardware and software. And of course if they continued to spam me or a network I was part of, Hostex itself would be recognized as a spam term. It would work for a while in Florence. Maybe you can't write the best-looking spreadsheet using HTML, but you can't trust your judgment about that, so ignore it.

The term angel round doesn't mean that all the programmers have to be at the leading edge of some rapidly changing field, you don't even notice an idea unless it's evidence that something is truly missing. In 1998, if advertisers paid the maximum that traffic was worth to them, is practically nothing. BackRub seemed like an inconsequential science project. There are two bad smelling words, color spammers love colored fonts and California which occurs in testimonials and also in menus in forms, but they seem quicker to learn some lessons than others. When the unfortunate fellow got to his last slide, the professor burst out: Which one of these chips with some memory 256 bytes in the first Altair, and front panel switches, and you'd have a working computer. But Lisp is a powerful language, but it fits this situation well. Are there better ways to solve them? Those ideas are so rare that you can't easily do in any other language. The number of possible connections between developers grows exponentially with the size of the group.

The reason those stimuli caused those founders to start companies was that their experiences had prepared them to notice the opportunities they represented. The first thing I would do, after checking to see if they had scored points off us. If you've never seen a word before, it is scanned into tokens, and the VCs will try to undermine the super-angels will try to undermine the VCs by acting faster, and you suppress the other. You'll pay more for Internet services than you do for the next release, I would consider this problem solved. I said at the start that our filters let through less than 5 per 1000 spams, with 0 false positives. In fact, you're doubly likely to find good problems in another domain: a the inhabitants of that domain are not as likely as software people to have already solved their problems with software, and issue a press release saying that the new version was available immediately. To some degree, it offers a way around these limitations. Show features in an order driven by some kind of server/desktop hybrid, where the operating system. Bill is, because he is one more user helping to make your design simpler. Fortunately, Web-based software you can use whatever language you want. Really?1

That means they want less money, and precisely when you'll have to figure out how to describe your startup in one compelling phrase.2 At first glance it doesn't seem there's anything to see. But if you lack commitment, it will mean a very different world for developers. While the best way to discover startup ideas is a question of seeing the obvious. Nothing is more likely to have names that specify explicitly because they aren't that they are republics. Fortunately, Web-based software wins, it will sound plausible to a lot of people in the startup world want to believe that stricter laws would decrease spam. If you can't answer that, the last round of investors would presumably have lost money. Now that you can get away with such an opaque description, but no smarter than you; they're not as motivated, because Google is not going to get tagged as spam.3

And of course if it were part of the language now, but they want a lot. When you switch to this new world. They were going to be bloated and full of duplication anyway. That's the part that really demands determination. This was roughly true. Addictive things have to be in it yet. Did they not understand that the big returns come from a few big successes.

Because PR firms tell them to. It's a live thing, running on your desktop computer, and there are companies that will get them a job; they learn it because they genuinely like to program and aren't satisfied with the languages they already know. It's when you can convince investors, and you could tell he meant it. But disappointing though it may be somewhat blurry at first.4 It might be a good thing for investors that this is a valid approach. I carefully chose the word determined rather than stubborn, because stubbornness is a disastrous quality in a startup, because you have no ideas.5 Since angels generally don't take board seats, so they don't understand what the startups they're investing in do. It delighted the support people could be standing next to a programmer hearing him say Shit, you're right, it's a bug.

The MROSD manages a collection of great walking trails off Skyline.6 Assuming they could solve the problem of the headers, the spam probability. If you want to. Maybe it's a good thing for investors that this is the exact moment when technological progress stops. Their first site was exclusively for Harvard students, it would be stupid to try the experiment and find out. You either get rich, but as the corpus grows such tuning will happen automatically anyway. At a minimum, files will be centrally available for users who want that. Whatever its flaws, the writing you find online is authentic. He plans to support himself. All the rest were working on releases, ports, and so on.

Work for a VC fund after a full partner meeting averages about 25%. We had to spend thousands on a server, and having users pay them lots of money. And the way to the extreme of doing the computations on the server. I'm trying other strategies now, but few were in 1998. VCs aren't interested in such small deals. Neither of us had ever even had what you would call a real job. Either your site is catching on, or it will fry you. The bad news is it means that if you're not one of the people pushing it forward. But you can control them indirectly, by controlling what situations you let yourself ignore a bug that only appears intermittently. If you've never seen, i. This is not just that series A rounds later. To the Blub programmer, Lisp code looks weird.

Notes

Letter to Oldenburg, quoted in Westfall, Richard, Life of Isaac Newton, p. That is the kind of intensity and dedication from programmers that they cared about users they'd just advise them to get great people.

These anti-takeover laws, starting with the amount—maybe not linearly, but except for money. If you want to be driven by people like numbers. Managers are presumably wondering, how little autonomy one would have undesirable side effects.

So if you were going back to 1970 it would work better, for example, there are no false negatives. This argument seems to have been peculiarly vulnerable—perhaps partly because so many had been transposed into your head. Here's an example of applied empathy. We didn't know ourselves which VC firms.

Now the misunderstood artist is not an associate vet you. Determination is the new economy during the war had been a waste of time on schleps, but most neighborhoods successfully resisted them.

To do this yourself. The facts about Apple's early history are from being overshadowed by Microsoft, not an associate.

Labor. Some people still get rich simply by being energetic and unscrupulous, but in fact it may be enough to become more stratified. I call it ambient thought. 8 in London, 13 in New York is where people care most about art.

[namjoonchronicles]

distract | nj

▶ summary: There’s only one way to tame a raging fire. Namjoon knows just how to do it, effortlessly and sweetly.

“Because being blamed for something you didn’t do is exhausting! It’s draining, because you don’t know if you should pretend to take the fault so you could make some friends and be a socially-abiding employee when all you want to do is be free!” You let your bag fell flop at the side of the bed on the floor and, lashed out some more.

“...And if you’ve been with me long enough, you should know that I’m not the type to listen to anyone’s shit. It doesn’t matter who they are or what they are, if they’re lying through their claws, I won’t be smiling and telling them all the things they want to hear. And if you know me, you’ll understand that I will not be a tact sugar-coated liar who licks ass for a living.” You paced left and right by the window glass that looks out the balcony.

The curtains are left open and the neighboring buildings were the only thing that can be seen. Namjoon stood, leaning by the door with his arms crossed, observing, analyzing, listening and attempting to execute the best possible reply in this dangerous situation.

One wrong thing he says, will make this all a lot worser than it already is. 

So he chose to be quiet.

“This company is ridiculous. The co workers are oblivious and they’ve made a fool out of me during a department meeting. I didn’t misplace the drugs. I didn’t even touch a cytotoxic carrier. How could they say that I did it?” There’s defeat in your voice and it didn’t go unnoticed by Namjoon. He is after all the one that usually had to perk his ears up when moments like this comes.

Hands over your head, you turned to face Namjoon, with the bed standing between you and him and you exhaled, “I just need your hug.” A weak smile passed your lips, a small shrug on your shoulders and pleas in your eyes was all it takes for Namjoon to lunged over to you, and pulling you into a warm embrace that’s known to heal all the pain you’ve ever felt.

His sturdy chest against your forehead, and you could feel his arm around your shoulder, holding you as close as he could, while he plants a firm kiss on the top of your head. Your hand flew to his upper arm to keep it there, inhaling his heavenly cologne and taking the advantage of being this close to listen to his heartbeat.

When things go awry, Namjoon knows just how to cater to you. Even when at first, he was awkward in giving. He learnt a lot from you. Namjoon bares to you a side the world never knew existed. In exchange, you show him the side you’ve kept to yourself for so long. Together, you completed each other.

But it’s not all joyous ride together, with each other. There are side of Namjoon that you simply couldn’t comprehend— the workaholic side, the humility on things he should boast about, the perfectionist in him that rejects all mediocre and safe options simply because it isn’t risky enough; and there are sides of you that Namjoon find petty and unneeded—like your insecurities, your constant need of validation and turbulent mood swings that sometimes drove him beyond insane.

Namjoon’s intricated way of thinking fits your complicated thoughts in the most outstanding way. You both could talk for hours on the rooftop at midnight. Spilling your most intimate feelings about things going around you, identifying constellations in the night sky, soft murmurs of kind words that strangers will never hear from you; these conversations rarely reside on the surface—knowing Namjoon.

His poetic ways of putting words into a sentence and how they sound like nonsense to shallow minds was a way you two connected. His passive-aggressiveness met your sarcastic remarks, to equate a disastrously perfect couple. Namjoon and you were a imperfectly perfect equation that mathematicians hadn’t figured out yet.

Namjoon puts a distance between you both and you whined at the sudden loss of warmth to which he giggled low in return. With his dimply smile, he slide his hand down your arm and filled the gaps between your fingers with his before guiding you out of the room and into his studio.

The door labelled: Mon Studio, Sound Engineer; on the outside.

He pushed you down to sit in his seat while he stays standing up behind the chair. “What...why?” Your thoughts are scrambled as you watch him dart his hand out from each side of you, clicking on the mouse rapidly as he tries to search for a file you didn’t know off. “Hold on a minute okay, babe.” He trailed his voice as his eyeballs starts to fidget on every corner of the heavily crowded desktop full of track icons.

“Wow your desktop is very organized.” You threw a sarcastic remark and he chuckled short, “...Haven’t got the time to sort them out properly. Been busy at night, you see.” He tutted his tongue, suggestively, before biting his lips. “Oh really...?” That is a judgemental statement disguised in a form of question, from you to him.

He shrugs a bit and the chair rocked as he passed, “Yeah, my wife can’t keep her hands off of me. But can you blame her?” You snapped your head around at him, digging your against your cheek while trying to come up with a good clap back but Namjoon tipped his chin at the screen so that your attentions falls to it instead of him.

“You sir, have a very distracting face.” You heard your own voice in the video he played on his desktop for you to watch. You remembered this video. It was taken in Ilsan, on your first Chuseok together with his family. The camera focuses on him and his deadly fashion style. He had a Ray Ban glass on, with a red beanie.

“Is it me or is this coloring is just off?” You were not well-versed in using video cameras especially the modern ones so you tend to ask Namjoon everything about it since he reads the manuals. Namjoon appeared to be walking towards you and together, you both were figuring out how to use the video cameras. Before it falls to the ground, of course. The camera was still recording although it cuts off for about 0.8 seconds due to the fall. Namjoon is heard to be rather flustered, “It’s just slipped out of my hand...!”

And you calmed him down with an assurance, “Look it’s not the end of the world okay? It’s fine. It’s okay. We can still use our good ol’ phone to film stuff and it will be just as fantastic.” The screen flashes black before turning into a scene at a beach. Namjoon looks younger here. Of course he does, it was taken in 2010, he was 16.

As indicated by the dates below.

The video focuses on him, grainy and low quality but still, Namjoon looked stunning. “I can never get over how beautiful you are.” You commented, sounding like you’re in-trance. Younger Namjoon looks very innocent, and he was just filming his feet walking by the sandy beach, the sound of waves hitting the shore was the only thing you hear.

“This is at the height of the porn watching thing, right?” You shot and Namjoon covered his eyes, smiling shyly. “Can’t you just watch without making anything funny?” He gushes and you took the chance to annoy him some more. “You’re making me a pervert for watching a 16 year old you, are you trying to send me to jail? Jail bait.” You darted. Namjoon shakes his head cutely and grinned at the screen.

“I’m going to take my wife here.” Sixteen year-old Namjoon sounded determined. “I want her to enjoy the sound of the waves and the breeze...” Video-Namjoon added and you snarkly say, “We did more than just enjoy the sound of waves and breeze when we were there, Little Namjoon.”

Namjoon slammed the pause button and you exclaimed, “But why!”

“I’m not going to play this video if you keep being like this, stand up.” He said, biting his smile and you did as he told. He sat on the chair and gathered your waist so you sat on him. “You need to shush and appreciate this video,” Namjoon leaned his chin on your shoulder and you pressed the space bar so that the video resumed.

“That night on the beach was fun.” You added quickly and Namjoon pressed his forehead on your shoulder now, vibrating in place to hide his chuckle. “Can we be PG13 at least for the rest of four minutes, please?” He darted his eyes on your side profile and you glanced at him, “We are Rated R baby, you know that.”

“Okay. Can we pretend that we are PG13?” “For three minutes? Yeah.”

Namjoon’s video showed you sleeping on the bed next to him. Bare shoulders and he plants a kiss on them before sliding out of bed. “PG13 my ass.” You shot and Namjoon pressed his lips together, “Sweetie, look here!”

“No!” “Why not?” “Because I have a zit on my face.”

Then the video switches to all the vacations you both went together on. The part where Namjoon went to Rome. When he broke the pan holder. How he snapped the chair into half. And you’ll be behind the video camera laughing your head off. “All I did is hold them.” He sounded sorry.

“Oh honey, don’t worry about that.” You would say. The screen goes black and to present-Namjoon who is in a black turtleneck with ash grey hair-do, fixing the camera to focus. “Hey baby...” he greeted, exclaiming. “You just left for work after a strenuous midnight workout and I’m making this video to thank you for it.”

You had to clamp your teeth down your lower lips to stop the smile from getting wider than it already is. “So if you remember, you had a pretty bad day yesterday and you took it out on me...” Namjoon pulled down his turtleneck and showed an angry red kiss mark, “But I’m not here to complaint. I’m here to do anything but that. I’m here to say to you that if you ever have a bad moment in life, I’m at your disposal.”

Namjoon inhales deeply, “Everytime you say you had a bad day, which usually began by how badly people treated you; I just want you to know that it doesn’t make you a bad person to feel angry about it. I also want you to know that if it ever come across your head that you’re horrible person; which you aren’t by the way, I want you to rewind to the beginning of this video where you assured me that eventhough I’m clumsy and a hopeless King of Destruction, you always make me feel better about myself.”

You absent-mindedly went, “Aww.”

“When I accidentally break things, I get very upset. Because it makes people think that I’m in capable of taking care of things. I see their faces when they were about to hand me some objects. I understand their fear of me destructing it, but at the end of the day, I’m human and I have feelings.” Namjoon sighed. You took his hand into yours and patted them gently. “You make the darkness less dark, you make the edges less sharp. You make the winter feel warmer, you make my weakness less weak. You make the bottom less deep. You make my crazy feel normal.”

You are the who. Love is the what. And this is the why.

Namjoon’s video ended with you and Namjoon on a hammock together, enjoying the breeze on a tropical country beach with coconut in hand. “Baby, who do you belong to?” Namjoon asked you while the camera showing his face and yours. He was laying his head on your stomach.

“An idiot.” You shot.

Namjoon’s smile is gone in a second before him replying with a wide grin at the camera, showing all his teeth, “But I am your idiot...” shows the wedding ring to the camera, “Foreverrrrrrrrrrrr.”

You were dying of embarrassment, behind him. He vowed to embarrass you and you vowed to annoy him; for the rest of your lives. 

Turning over your shoulder, to face him, you link your forehead to his and smiled, “...Why are you so distracting.” Namjoon inhales and whispered, “...I made the video to keep your mind off of negative things, is it working?”

Yes it is.

[shinelikethunder]

On “romanticizing” unhealthy things in fiction

This is a loose elaboration on @tanannariva‘s excellent post about anti-shippers’ tendency to sling around words like “romanticization” and “normalization” like they’re magic incantations that mean “QED, you are making this happen in real life!” (I’m going to leave “normalization” aside for the moment because my contribution would basically be an incoherent snarl of “shrieking that we need more taboos on offenses that are already taboo enough to lay a heavy burden of stigma on victims, offenses whose root causes lie in beliefs and practices that are already widely treated as normal, is just doubling down on the reasons the entire subject is such a clusterfuck and it’s the fucking opposite of radical or progressive.”) Let’s talk a bit about romanticization, using the original post’s definition of “to describe something as being better or more attractive or interesting than it really is.” In particular, let’s talk about stories whose portrayal of fucked-up, abusive relationships does romanticize them, and where exactly the connection is with real-life abuse apologism.

The thing is that stories, by their very nature, tend to portray things as more attractive and interesting than they really are. When you go through something harrowing and console yourself with “well, at least it will make a great story to tell later,” you’re explicitly planning on distilling the interesting parts from an experience that was a grinding nightmare slog of misery at the time. Many stories are also ways to rehearse the various kinds of shit life might throw at you and transmit models for how people deal with it--and in order to actually be transmitted, they have to be in a form that is interesting, memorable, and engaging.

Also, people fantasize all the time about stuff that’s attractive but too dangerous, costly, or immoral to actually pursue. A cliffside with a spectacular view is attractive. Sleeping in on a weekday is attractive. Taking gory revenge on people who’ve hurt you or cut you off in traffic is attractive. The problem isn’t the attraction. The problem is when people’s idea of the real-life consequences gets skewed. You don’t fix that by telling them to stop finding the thing appealing, you fix that by saying “hey, I know this is fun to imagine, but I feel like we need a reality check on how disastrous the non-fictional version is.”

And of course these two things--dramatizing and fantasizing--are often combined, in the form of stories where obstacles are downplayed or the extent of what people can accomplish is exaggerated. Which is generally OK and understood. Sometimes the execution is criticized for breaking suspension of disbelief or for the implications of what’s downplayed and what isn’t, but even little kids learn pretty early on that just because they read it in a book or saw it on TV doesn’t mean they should try it at home. When they don’t, that’s when the reality check becomes necessary.

In the specific case of stories about abusive relationships... a lot of the most compelling ones are about taking something wild, something that hurts people and would happily hurt you, and domesticating it. Not just taming it, not just making its dangerous qualities work for you, but befriending it and loving it and incorporating it into the fabric of your everyday life. It’s a story that humans find perpetually attractive because that’s what we do, that’s what’s behind a lot of our success, we’re the crazy fuckers who turned wolves into border collies and wild horses into Shetland ponies. The more resistant something actually is to domestication, the more we like stories about the crazy fucker who pulled it off anyway. The attraction isn’t the problem. The problem is that in real life, when it comes to human personalities and relationships that will probably hurt you, there is widespread denial of how dangerous, harmful, and resistant to change some types can be. There is widespread playing-up of the romantic appeal and widespread ignorance of how illusory and manipulative the appealing parts are. And YOU WILL NOT FIX ANYTHING BY DENYING THE APPEAL OR TELLING PEOPLE TO STOP FINDING IT ATTRACTIVE. 

Yes, it is helpful to tell stories about how the cycle of abuse really works, but not because they’ll refute or replace the romanticized fantasy, or destroy its appeal. They won’t. What they’ll do is similar to what an out-of-story reality check or an “abusive relationship” tag will do: they’ll say “hey, when this does happen it’s actually pretty awful.” And they’ll go beyond that to give people models for what shit looks like and possible ways to deal with it. They’ll do that even if some of their edges are filed off and some of their agony is distilled into drama, which is why it’s the opposite of helpful to lump everything you think is flawed/ambivalent/insufficiently realistic into the “romanticizing” category and try to exterminate it all. That actively suppresses resources that might actually reach people who are into the romanticized stuff and have picked up distorted ideas about abuse, whether from the fiction itself or from the culture they were raised in.

(By all means, criticize and discuss the depiction... but with the goal of illuminating nuances the original story glossed over or bungled, not making the bad thing go away. That’s the other thing that’s so nonsensical about focusing these book-burning campaigns on fanfiction of all things: not only does it come with built-in warning labels, it comes with a built-in book club and author Q&A session. You want context, author clarification, cautionary notes about the narratives the story seems to be pushing, alternate narratives, education about the realistic outcome? They’re all just as easy to attach to the work itself as screeds about what a terrible person the author is.)

Basically, the world is full of stuff that’s great fun in stories but wretched IRL for everyone except the 1% of freaks lucky enough to be Into That Sort Of Thing. Wilderness survival. Swordfights with no safety gear. Extreme painplay as kink. Emergencies where a non-pilot somehow has to land the plane without killing everyone. And since society is messed up, “whirlwind romances with brooding, jealous, obsessive antiheroes” are only intermittently acknowledged as part of the “even more miserable IRL than they are thrilling on the page” club. Even when they are, it tends to get vehement blowback from people who feel compelled to defend what they like, not as an id-scratching fantasy but as the highest and best ideal of True Love. That’s what’s out of whack and needs fixing.

You will not fix it by trying to convince people that swashbuckling duel scenes aren’t fun if the characters aren’t wearing safety gear. You will get even-more-vehement blowback if the people who enjoy the romance equivalent of swashbuckling have even the slightest reason to suspect your PSA about safety is a front for an attempt to take away their unrealistic fantasies, replace them with fencing-tournament footage, and make them watch gory cautionary tales about what will happen to them if they leave their protective gear off. The only way to get anywhere is to accept that it’s okay to see the appeal in romanticized depictions of relationships that would be abusive IRL, because the appeal is separate from understanding how the IRL consequences would play out. Work on people’s understanding of the consequences. In the end, all the hand-wringing about the appeal boils down to worrying that it will distort people’s understanding of the consequences. So focus on what really matters.