calvins-dad · 1 year ago
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about to cry on this bus because it just hit me this morning how much of my current Problems are coming from work
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f0xgl0v3 · 7 months ago
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Calcedott tunnel makes my brain hurt; a list
Guys I read 38 pages of Tyrants tomb and already have beef with the extra forest that’s in a gorge next to a lake next to Calcedott tunnel and the highway that it presents. I’ll be talking about that, just you wait.
Okay, sorry, on the note of reading Tyrants tomb I have to get this off my chest. Here is a map that shows where the Calcedott maintenance tunnels are
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(I found this map from Research gate; I’d link this but linking things on mobile Tumblr is really weird and difficult)
Lester says they turn onto highway 24. Except unless Lester has decided to not tell us they drove all the way through Berkeley/oakland as well. It’s such a weird way of getting them anywhere. Not to mention the fact that they land at Oakland airport; that should make it easier, right?
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There’s Oakland international Airport. If we consider the route I will now try to draw a map of how they got there theoretically,
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Okay, great, I over drew it a bit but you get the gist. Now, here’s the fun part. That Gorge that Lester swerves into, it’s not real. He’s not in the tunnels yet to reach the service tunnel for Calcedott (because the tunnels themselves are a roadway through a hill I believe) but that summons some major issues.
1) there is no place to put the gorge and lake that Lester and Meg fall into without bending Bay Area topography to our will
2) everything about Calcedott tunnel immediately makes no sense seeing as it’s a roadway that hundreds of people are driving through where there is no walk space for like Percy to be running and literally anything.
Maybe I’m simply just not understanding this, but when (from my knowledge) things like Camp Half-Blood can completely make geographical sense without moving anything geographically whatsoever. Then Camp Jupiter should make sense, and yet it doesn’t. I’m not talking about the valley itself because magic demigod magic can be protecting it. But stuff like the next to gorge with eucalyptus trees and the lake and the hidden tunnel.
I just- there is no point to this post except being confused over how this works. If anyone has any ideas feel free to provide those ideas, or if I’m just being a bit dumb then also please tell me. Tyrants tomb has made the Camp Jupiter Re-imagined map so much harder.
Anyway on that note I’m also going to be probably posting some concept drawings for the Magnus Institute building (and maybe it’s American sister institute-?) because the thing I want to know most as of being on Mag 33 is what the hiring process for the Magnus institute looks like, what are the roles in the institute? What job experience do they want someone to have, what’s the average job for people of the different like divisions look like- how do they advertise for new employees? The boring stuff :3
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prismatoxic · 11 months ago
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ok. let's clear some things up.
so there's this callout post going around on twitter right now for someone who is, in a word, dangerous. they are a pro-contact MAP and zoophile and they run a mastodon instance that allows minors, NSFW, and people of all contact stances to share a space. very bad!
now, this person is extremely open about their stances, so callouts are kind of useless to start with because if someone is interacting with this person, they know damn well who they are. they're really not hiding it.
the main issue with these callouts, however, is the free advertisement they give to that mastodon instance i mentioned. that's right! to help people "avoid" this place, these callout posts blatantly spell out the name of the instance (as well as another like it), which... makes it very easy for people to find these extremely dangerous places!
that's advertisement. straight up. i don't care what your intentions were, you are giving people an easy way to directly go to these places. it's like antis who share CSEM in callouts. like... that's bad? don't fucking show that to people to prove your point.
so these callouts are ineffective at best and harmful at worst. and then people started trying to post them to aethy. (fwiw, we blocked both those instances ages ago, as well as anyone openly posting in support of them who had accounts federated with us/on aethy itself.)
so take into account the issues i've presented above, and now add to that rule number 3 on aethy:
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read that a few times for me. really let it sink in.
if you think an instance or user are a problem, report them to us. we will take care of it. if someone associates with a person like the one in these callouts, tell us about that, too! because we also have a rule in that vein:
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it is our job to keep our platform safe. help us do that. do not be a vigilante.
and furthermore, if you break a rule on aethy, and then you're shitty to staff about it? taullo does not have any qualms banning you. i may be a forgiving little doormat, but taullo owns the site and taullo does not take abuse lying down. some of you need to remember that aethy is not a big name platform like tumblr or twitter. taullo pays for it exclusively themselves. they code it entirely on their own as well. aethy is their house and if you are a shitty guest they have every right to kick you out. that said, such bans are uncommon.
in fact, only two such bans were made this month. so if you see one of those banned users claiming aethy is censoring detractors en masse and "imploding", do know that they are lying to your face.
finally, here's a reminder to read the rules of the sites you use. they do have meaning. even if you disagree with them, breaking them does mean staff has a right to inflict you with consequences. try to keep that in mind?
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moonlightrift · 1 year ago
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Fortnite Wilds - First Impressions
Loot pool is a STRONG improvement over MEGAs. While I hope we get some kind of mobility item later in the season, the current guns feel like they fit the theme a lot more, and none of them feel too strong or weak. This opinion may change given more time.
The new biome is GORGEOUS. I was really worried from the trailers and screenshots that it'd lack a strong visual identity, and that it'd all end up being that same overgrown temple look. I'm so glad it isn't just that. The new walkable canopy is going to lead to some insane fights in Zero Build, the prop density is insane, there's so many plants and trees making the biome feel properly lush. One of my complaints with the Neo Tokyo biome is that while the POIs were gorgeous, it felt really empty, and there wasn't enough making it stand out from the rest of the map. This biome avoids that problem, the terrain style, plants, etc, all are extremely differnet.
The lore. I'll keep quiet on this because no one wants to hear me nerd out but we're so back chat. I'm actually feeling the fires of speculation burning within me once again, which I haven't felt since Chapter 3 ended.
I've been far more critical of Chapter 4's visuals then most people, but with the new biome, the storm being purple again, the improved volumetric cloud systems (the storm looks terrifying,) it feels more cohesive. I certainly still have some problems, namely the trees, and lack of foliage, but I'm feeling it.
The new mechanics feel really solid. The vines you can grind on feel far more purposefully placed then the grind rails. They'll get you to a good vantage point, or across the biome. The mud makes sliding far quicker, which is great for mobility. The new plants make exploring the biome interesting, especially when you're low on shields. The new vaults seem.. weird, I need to mess with them more.
New augments feel good to use, the current augments list feels great to use, no filler ones. Hope to continue seeing useful and unique ones.
There's a list of new items that look to release this season, and unlike last season, they're not basically all collabs! One thing I'm really excited for is the synergy between the cloaking item and the Thermal DMR. It gives a GOOD REASON to pick up the item, beyond just enjoy how it plays. I love stuff like that, and I wish it was more common.
Job boards are cool.
Negatives:
My frames are so bad bro, constant dips from 60 to the 20s. :skull:
Chances are, we'll get very little map changes again, which kinda sucks.
The Kinetic Boomerang seems, okay? No mobility attached, nothing that really makes it stand out, beyond the fact you don't need to aim.
I've not seen any raptors despite them being one of the advertised features. Might just be me, maybe they don't spawn in the Jungle, for.. some rason.
I'm just not feeling the Battle Pass. I like one skin and set, and that's about it.
Wildwasp's seem completely useless, just like fireflies.
WHY IS SLONE ITEM SHOP GRAAAAAAAHHHHHHH
Losing the Auto Aim Pistol and Shield Kegs sucks, the first was one of the most unique items added in ages, and the other was great for squads.
The lack of any major movement / game feature this season is unfortunate, I was really hoping we'd see one of the leaked features such as First Person, Wall Running, or Hill Climbing releasing. The last one would fit really well with the crumbling item vibe.
There weren't enough unvaults. Things like the Flintknock, Infantry Rifle, etc. would fit perfectly this season. The fact they weren't included makes me really sad. I'm really afraid I'll burnout on the lootpool quick like last season.
Still no LTMs :lunadepressed:
I really should've wrote down notes while playing, cause it was a struggle remembering what I did and did not like. Despite it seeming like there's more negatives, I'm actually feeling really great about the season so far. I think it's gonna be be far better than MEGA was for me.
This is the most excited I've felt about Fortnite since early Chapter 4.
8/10, I hope the rest of the season is as great.
..I need to check out the lighting as well, it looked really foggy and weird in the jungle biome, and I need to know if the rest of the map is like that, or if they fucked with my precious volumetric lighting. We'll see!
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thiefpodcast · 2 years ago
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Service Design Principles for Small Content Creators
I sometimes struggle to talk to 1-person-shop content creators for whom some kind of financial metric is important - get some patrons, pay a bill, pay all the bills - because it seems to me that many in the community think of themselves as artistes rather than as business owners.
If the business metric is secondary and the art is primary, great - I am not talking about you. But if the business metric is important, I want to share some axioms I hold true as a primer for operating within this space - not as an artist, but as a business owner.
Obscurity
1. Your first problem is obscurity. The quality of your intellectual property is secondary -- even the quality of your game mechanics/writing/sound design ... -- to the fact that nobody knows about it. That's the first problem to solve. Being good probably won't solve it.
The "obscurity" problem can be thought of as market alignment. Product/market viability is just a fuzzy measure of whether enough people care about your thing for you to derive your strategic success. Want advertisers? You need a big audience or a niche audience with money.
A sprawling audience probably isn't required. Paraphrasing Amanda Palmer, a thousand fans are enough to leverage to pay some bills.
User experience
2. User Experience is critical unless you're the only one in the niche. When, for an internet product, distribution is free, businesses compete over consumer user experience. There's an industry dedicated to probably overthinking UX, but the idea's this: care about your users.
UX is fuzzy but it can be quantified. You can use things like the Kano model to map the features of your product to customer satisfaction. Ask: what are the basic expectations of an actual play podcast - and am I meeting them?
What features about your game, podcast, writing, or art go beyond basic expectations and are attractive? These are your differentiators. Differentiation can help solve the obscurity problem.
Now, software companies and other designers mess up all the time when they're thinking about UX for one core reason: they're not actually talking to their users.
"This is an [attractive feature]," one says. But you need proof or you're lying to yourself. If you over-invest in an attractive feature that prospective users don't actually want, then you're just burning capital - even if all you're investing is time.
Service, not product
3. The "product" matters less than the "service" you provide. A key tenant of service design is that, well, products don't matter, they're just the vehicles of service provision. Your actual play podcast isn't the thing people want in and of itself. It's something else.
There is a concept I really like called "the job to be done." The Job To Be Done is the reason for a user's choice to adopt a service. You don't go to Home Depot to buy a hammer, you're buying the thing that hangs the family portrait best.
You're not buying a drill. You're buying the mounted TV on the wall. You're not buying a milkshake. You're buying something easy to consume one-handed while driving in heavy traffic. You're not buying a book, you're buying the escapist moment.
You're not subscribing to Critical Role. You're subscribing to the sense of belonging to a community; the escapism; the distraction from the chore. That's your job to be done.
@criticalrole provides that service - through a bunch of products: the actual-play, the comic, the show ....
So for your writing, your art, your podcast, your maps ..., what is your audience's job-to-be-done - and how is the thing you're making solving that? There can be many jobs, this doesn't have to be mutually exclusive, but identifying that job is critical to success.
The product, then, is a means to an end - and that can be humbling to take to heart. The novel doesn't matter in and of itself, what matters is the efficacy with which it solves the readers' jobs to be done.
If it solves those jobs-to-be-done well, and if it so happens that many, many people have those jobs, then you'll find your market fit.
"Business"
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4. Don't get too hung up on "business," instead think of this just in terms of "mission success that requires other users." I'm a librarian, and librarians are always like "ew we're not a business" and eschew excellent product design best practices.
Choose words that you need to feel right but good user experience design applies to just about everything: whether it's a business, an activism campaign, battlemaps, lo-fi beats.
Good UX = Good Mission Metrics
If the end-user experience doesn't matter - then cool, business doesn't matter. It's that frank.
You can be an artiste - but you can't be an artiste for a living if you don't care about your users.
Probably.
Edge cases are outliers. You're probably not an outlier.
The takeaway
Epilogue. The maps, writing, podcast, videos ..., you provide aren't an end unto themselves, they are the vehicles of a service. You are providing a service to people who - need you.
You need to figure out why, and if you can align your product to that, you'll do well.
[Edit: changed the title]
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magicalmarauder · 4 years ago
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Broken Trust
Pairing: Jungkook x Reader
Warnings: I did not proof read this at all, so sorry in advance for any errors!
Word Count: 5k+
Summary: What happens when Jungkook betrays the trust of his girlfriend by sharing a highly personal detail about her life with his friends? How do you respond when the one person you trusted above anyone else does the very thing he vowed never to do – break your heart.
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Being best friends with seven overgrown man-children was definitely an experience. An experience you hadn’t quite foreseen in your future when you first moved to Seoul, Korea. Nevertheless, it was an experience that you wouldn’t trade for the world. Most days, at least, you corrected yourself ruefully.
Over a year ago, you had made the biggest, most adult-like decision in your life thus far and decided to pack up all that you had, leaving behind everything and everyone that you knew in favor of starting a new journey in a completely different country. You were hesitant when you were first offered the job opportunity, but quickly realized that turning down such an opportunity would be a decision that you would always look back on with regret. And certainly, looking back now, you could definitely say that you had made the best decision of your life in moving to Seoul. Not only had it led you to the love of your life, but also to the aforementioned crazy best friends, of whom your boyfriend was actually one.
You could only describe the meeting as fate as it was truly a scene straight out of a romantic comedy. It had been your first week at your new job, you had frantically been checking the map on your phone, trying to navigate the winding hallways in order to find the room where your two o’clock meeting was being held. In your distracted state, you had failed to notice the man in front of you walk straight into the door that he had been too preoccupied to notice was closed before promptly falling to the ground, serving as the hazard that had caused your own frantic descent to the hard floor.  
The man had been so sweet and apologetic, ensuring over and over again that you were unhurt. You assured him that you were just fine and not to worry, but he had insisted on making it up to you, stating that he couldn’t rest until he offered you what he claimed was the most perfect hot chocolate in the world. Before you could protest, he pulled you through the door, this time successfully opening it before attempting to walk through, and into what looked like a large recording studio area.
He quickly dragged you over to the back corner of the room that seemed to serve as the designated snack area as it was occupied by a mini-fridge, coffee maker, microwave, and toaster oven. He wasted no time in getting to work, pulling out a mug and various different ingredients and before you knew it, he was proudly presenting you with his hot chocolate creation with a large, endearing smile on his face. You had been about to protest, worried about making your meeting on time, but there was no possible way that you could refuse that face. He looked so eager and so, with a rueful smile, you gratefully accepted the warm drink and took a nice long sip, relishing in the rich, chocolatey taste.
His eyes never left your face, eyebrows raising expectantly after you pulled back.
“You were right,” you assented. “Definitely the most perfect cup of hot chocolate I’ve ever had. You have a real gift, kind sir.”
“Why thank you, m’lady,” he responded, giving you an exaggerated bow that set you off in a fit of giggles. This guy was just too adorable for his own good.
Before you could inquire any further as to his name or any other details about him, a loud flurry of noises sounded behind you as a group of boys walked into the room, laughing and joking and shoving one another. However, once they caught sight of you standing in the middle of the room with the man by your sight, their conversations quickly shut off, eyes simultaneously bouncing back and forth between you and the mystery man by your side.
“Who’s this?” One of the men asked curiously, stepping forward and glancing between the two of you with eyebrows raised.
You and the man exchanged quick glances, realizing that you had yet to formally introduce yourselves to one another.
Realizing this, you took a small step forward. “Hi. My name is Y/N. I’m new to the company. I just moved here last week and I literally ran into your friend here in the hallway,” you explained, gesturing to the man beside you, who had a faint blush covering his cheeks.
“Yeah,” the man said, sheepishly rubbing at the back of his neck. “I kind of ran into the door and took her down with me.”
The boys stared at the two of you for a moment before breaking into laughter, seemingly not even questioning the events of the story.
“Awww, such the charmer you are, Jungkookie-ah,” the man who had originally stepped forward to question your presence joked. “Only you could meet a pretty girl in such a way. This type of stuff only happens in movies.”
The man besides you, who you now supposed was named Jungkookie? blushed, ducking his head down to hide his reddening face. “Stop it, Jimin-ssi,” he pleaded, sending a rush through your heart. This man was just too cute.
Taking pity on their friend, the tallest member of the group took a step forward. “Welcome to Seoul and to BigHit, Y/N. It’s very nice to meet you. I’m Namjoon,” he introduced, reaching forward to shake your hand before the others followed suit one-by-one.
Once finished with the group standing in front of you, you turned to meet the gaze of the man at your side, who was staring at you with a sheepish smile. “Hi.” He smiled. “I didn’t get a chance to formally introduce myself earlier. I’m Jungkook.”
You grinned. “Very nice to meet you, Jungkook. Thank you very much for the hot chocolate, it was excellent,” you complimented. “But I really do have to get going. I’m running a bit late for my meeting.”
“Oh, of course!” He flushed. “I’m sorry to keep you. I really should have asked before forcing you to follow me in here.”
“No worries at all,” you reassured gently. “It was well worth it. Now I know just where to come when I’m in the mood for some delicious hot chocolate.”
Jungkook blushed again and you were really starting to believe that that was just the permanent state of his face before the mischievous one who had spoken earlier, and who you now knew was named Jimin, spoke up. “Why don’t you come back here after your meeting, Y/N. We’ll still be here. Since you’re new to the city, I’m sure you don’t know very many people. Let us show you around a little bit!”
The other boys chorused along their agreement with that offer, insisting that you allow them to take you out.
“Let us make up for our little maknae almost maiming you on your first week,” the man who had introduced himself as World Wide Handsome a.k.a. Jin interjected.
You let out a laugh. “There’s really nothing to make up for, but I’d love it if you guys showed me around a little bit. I haven’t had a chance to go exploring yet. I’d love to see your country through your own eyes.”
“Then it’s settled!” Namjoon declared, a broad grin stretching across his face. “Come back here after your meeting is done and we’ll head out!”
“Ok, sounds like a plan,” you nodded. “I’ll see you guys soon then!”
***
And that had been that. At the time you hadn’t known that they were the most famous K-Pop group in the world, which they had teased you mercilessly about. Considering you worked for the company that employed them, they had found it unbelievable that you had had no idea who they were. But all the same, they found it refreshing to talk to someone who knew nothing of their background or their fame, someone they could have a normal conversation with and just be themselves around.
The eight of you had quickly bonded, meeting together often for meals, going out after work to explore the town, or even attending game nights at their shared apartment. Your relationship with each one of them had solidified so quickly, finding your own common ground that bonded you with each member. However, there was one that stood out from the rest. Jungkook. Ever since that first meeting, there was a spark between the two of you, something that the others were quick to pick up on. They were constantly teasing the two of you and scheming for opportunities to get the two of you alone together. So, with all of their plotting, it was no surprise that you quickly found yourself growing closer and closer to Jungkook each and every day. He quickly became your closest friend and greatest confidante. Therefore, when he had finally mustered up the courage to ask you out on a date, you hadn’t wasted a second before agreeing.
It was nothing but history after that. Your date had gone fantastic and you had been together ever since. There was no one you trusted and adored more than Jungkook and vice versa. Although you had never expected to fall in love with an idol, you wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. Jungkook was your other half, complementing you perfectly. Your relationship came with its fair share of heartaches and challenges, but the two of you were a great team, solving each new trial as it came your way.
The boys welcomed you into their family with wide open arms, agreeing that you were perfect for their little golden maknae. They teased the two of you relentlessly about your relationship, but always out of love and affection for you both.
Despite the fact that you were extremely close with all of the boys, there were certain things that you only confided in with Jungkook – one of which being your relationship experience, or rather lack of. Jungkook was actually your very first boyfriend, something that you tried not to advertise too much. You weren’t ashamed of your past and your decision to prioritize other things in your life up until this point, but you recognized that to the outside world, it was a very rare and weird occurrence that usually resulted in people asking what could possibly be wrong with you if you went twenty or so years without having a significant other.
You tried not to dwell on it too much, after all you had a boyfriend now and you were very happy together. All of the waiting had absolutely been worth it. However, with your lack of experience came a certain shyness. This was all so new to you and you wanted to take things slowly, something that Jungkook absolutely understood and never once made you feel guilty or insecure about. Sex was something that was completely off the table for the moment.  As you probably guessed, you were a virgin and had no plans of changing that status anytime soon. You loved Jungkook more than you could express and taking that step was definitely something you could imagine happening with him, even more frequently now as time continued to go on. However, that was still a huge decision and one you were not yet completely ready to make.
When you had finally opened up to Jungkook about that personal detail about yourself, you had been so nervous as to how he would react. You of course had had entirely nothing to worry about, though. Jungkook had been the absolute sweetest and most understanding person in the world, admiring you for sticking to your convictions and never compromising your values simply because others around you may or may not have been engaging in certain activities.
Although this was a part of your life that you accepted and something that you had had no regrets in sharing with Jungkook, it was also something that you found highly personal and didn’t want advertised, especially to your rowdy group of friends who you loved dearly, but who often did not know when a joke was being taken too far. You had asked Jungkook to keep that personal detail about yourself between the two of you and he had been quick to agree, pressing a sweet kiss to your mouth and promising that your secrets were always safe with him. You had had no reason to doubt him, believing wholeheartedly that he was 100% genuine and would never go back on his word to you. However, that unfortunately all changed one night as the eight of you were all hanging out together as was usual on a Friday evening.
While you and Jungkook were frequently in your own little couple’s world, you never forgot to make time for your best friends as well, not forgetting that if it hadn’t been for them and their incessant meddling, you and Jungkook might never have gotten together. That was why it had almost become ritual for the eight of you to gather together after a long week of work and relax, choosing to watch movies, play games, or simply just eat your weight in junk food.
And this night was no different. You were all gathered on the luxurious couches in their apartment, buried in blankets and snuggled in together. You were pressed firmly into Jungkook’s side, arms wrapped around one another, completely at peace in each other’s presence. Every so often, Jungkook would lean down and press a soft, sweet kiss to your face, alternating between your forehead, cheek, neck, and so on.
“Eh, Y/N?” A voice asked, pulling you out of your Jungkook-bubble.
“Huh?” You questioned, having missed the conversation that had been going on around you entirely. However, you felt like you couldn’t be blamed for your lack of attention. It was all Jungkook’s fault and his perfect, distracting kisses.
“Is that accurate?” Jimin asked, a teasing smirk on his face as he gestured to the movie playing on the screen, which you honestly hadn’t even paid a bit of attention to since it had started. You truthfully weren’t even sure what movie they had chosen. When taking a vote at the beginning of the night, you hadn’t cared too much. You usually spent your movie nights exactly as you were right now, wrapped in Jungkook’s arms and completely distracted and consumed by his presence.
“What?” You asked, looking around the room at the various teasing expressions of your friends, wondering what you had missed. You looked back up at Jungkook’s face to notice that his expression was just as mystified as your own, clearly having been just as wrapped up in you as you were in him.
“Is the movie portraying with accuracy the reality of being a twenty-something year old virgin?” Jin clarified.
Behind you, you felt Jungkook tense up while you merely furrowed your brows in confusion, not yet quite understanding why they were asking you this question; however, as you heard the sharp intake of breath from Jungkook behind you, your mind began to connect the dots, reality setting in as what you had believed to be impossible was actually coming true.
“What?” You whispered, still in a state of shock, your mind trying to catch up to what was going on around you.
“The movie,” Taehyung explained. “Is it accurate? We know Hollywood tends to dramatize these things. I’d never actually met a fully grown adult virgin before to confirm; however. Well, until we met you. I have to say, I was quite surprised though. I didn’t really believe Jungkookie at first when he told us,” Taehyung continued on, clearly not realizing the massive hole that he was currently digging for his friend as you mutely listened on.
“Jungkook told you?” You questioned, still not quite believing it. There was no one that you trusted more in this world than Jungkook. You had never had a reason to doubt his sincerity or trustworthiness, which was why your brain was now having trouble believing what was clearly being spelled out in front of you by your friends and their teasing grins as well as the suspicious silence from the man in question.
Reflexively, you moved away from Jungkook’s embrace, his hands following desperately after you only for you to move further away from him on the couch, silently communicating that being touched by him was the last thing you wanted in this moment.
Namjoon, Yoongi, and Hosoek exchanged glances, quickly realizing what was going on and that this was a piece of information that you had never intended to be shared with the whole group. Quickly, they tried to communicate this to the other members, but with no luck. They were finding too much entertainment in poking fun at you while you just sat there, at a loss for words.
“Hey, that’s enough,” Namjoon finally interceded, no longer able to ignore the look of distress on your face or the utter guilt consuming Jungkook’s own.
Numbly, you finally turned to face your boyfriend, accusation clear in your eyes. He gulped in response, knowing that he was in for it, and rightfully so. However, as you continued to gaze at him, the anger that initially consumed your features was replaced by something so much worse – hurt and betrayal.
“You told them?” You questioned in a broken tone. “After you promised me you understood how personal that was for me to share? That you wouldn’t talk about it with the others?”
The laughter quickly died off as the remaining BTS members realized what was happening, guilt rapidly beginning to form in the pits of their stomachs. They hadn’t realized that this was something you weren’t comfortable with sharing. They had figured that if you had shared that information with Jungkook and he had in turn told them, that it was something you were okay with discussing. They hadn’t meant to hurt your feelings at all. But clearly, the damage had already been done.
“Jagi,” Jungkook began, but then quickly broke off, not having an acceptable answer to your question. He had screwed up, a fact which was made quite clear by the pain in your eyes. Your happiness was one of the most important things in the world to him. He couldn’t stand to see you upset, much less when he knew that he was the cause of your hurt.
“No,” you cried, cutting off whatever useless defense he had been about to muster up. “I can’t believe you, Jungkook. I trusted you. This is exactly the situation I wanted to avoid and you knew that. You expressly told me that you wouldn’t say anything to the other boys, and then what? You go right around and do exactly what you had promised not to. I can’t believe you, Jeon Jungkook.”
“Y/N . . . I – I,” he broke off, completely at a loss, wanting to go over and comfort you, holding you in his arms and gently wiping away the tears that were rapidly forming in your eyes. But he couldn’t do that. Not this time. Not when he was the source of said tears. This was a position he hadn’t found himself in before. You and Jungkook were amazingly compatible. In the months that you two had been dating, you had had very few conflicts and those that you did have were always solved with discussion and an exchange of opinions and feelings. He had never made you cry before and it was a feeling he never wanted to experience again.
“No,” you declared, biting your lip and trying your best to hold in the cries that were trying desperately to leave your body. “I can’t be here anymore.”
Quickly, you stood up, making your way to the doorway and wasting no time in putting your shoes on and grabbing your bag before exiting the apartment, slamming the door with a resounding bang, that clearly communicated you did not want to be followed.
Jungkook was too in shock to even process this as he stared at the doorway you had practically just raced through. The other boys were in much the same predicament, not quite knowing how to respond, not only to your hasty departure, but also to the argument they had just witnessed. As previously mentioned, you and Jungkook never really fought, not in private, and definitely not in public. They were used to you and Jungkook being in perfect sync, the ideal couple, and the perfect counterpart for one another. You completed each other so perfectly that this was a scenario in which they never imagined witnessing, much less being a part of.
“Jungkook…?” Namjoon prompted gently, feeling sorry for the youngest member and the look of despair on his face, completely at a loss with how to process and handle this situation.
“What just happened?” Jimin interrupted. “I didn’t realize that it was a big secret?”
“I hadn’t either,” Hosoek chimed in. “Not until I saw the look on her face.”
“Why’d you tell us that, Jungkook?” Jin questioned, voicing the thoughts of everyone else in the room. “It sounded like she expressly told you not to share that bit of personal information, which I can honestly understand, especially considering that we did exactly what she had been trying to avoid.”
The boys looked down, ashamed at their actions. Yes, they had genuinely believed that this was something you were fine with openly sharing and therefore joking about, but they never should have poked fun at something so personal in the first place. They each resolved in their own minds to apologize to you the next time they saw you, hoping that you weren’t too upset with them.
Taehyung moved over to Jungkook, placing a hand on his shoulder and giving him a slight shake, attempting to rouse him from his bewildered stupor. “Jungkook?”
Jungkook jerked away, coming alive at once and finally tearing his gaze away from the door that you had left through.
After taking a quick glance around the room and the various expressions of concern and guilt on his friends’ faces, he jumped up, grabbing his phone and his keys before rushing out of the room after you, vowing to make this right with you.
***
After about an hour later and having gone to a number of different locations in order to find you, yet coming up empty, Jungkook walked through the entryway of your apartment, desperately praying that he would find you here. He would go insane if he didn’t find you soon and know that you were safe.
“Y/N-ah!” He called, receiving no reply in return.
His heart sank, ready to lose it completely as endless possibilities of what could have happened to you ran through his mind. However, he was able to sink fully into that mindset of despair, he heard a faint sniffle coming from the bedroom. Hurriedly, he stood to his feet, practically sprinting into your bedroom, only to find you curled up into a tiny ball at the center of the bed, surrounded and covered in pillows and blankets. His heart lurched at the sight of you crying and in pain, but at the moment, his relief that you were okay won out over anything else.
“Y/N!” He breathed, rushing to your side and enveloping you completely in his arms, moving the blankets out of the way so he could see your face.
However, he wasn’t expecting for you to push him away. He didn’t think you had ever turned down any sort of physical contact with him. You were usually the one to initiate it, in fact, always grabbing his hand, leaning your head against his chest, snuggling into his side, and so on. You shying away from him threw him off and gave him a feeling that he never again wanted to experience.
“No,” you whined, when he hesitantly reached towards you again. “Please leave,” you begged. “I don’t want you here right now, Jungkook.”
If Jungkook’s heart hadn’t broken before your previous actions, it absolutely shattered at your words to him now.
“Baby, please, I –“he struggled to express, trying and failing to come up with the words that would get you back in his arms, right where you belonged.
“I don’t want to talk, Jungkook,” you cried. “You really hurt me. Maybe you think I’m being dramatic, but this is a really big deal to me. You knew how hard it was for me to open up to you,” you accused, finally pulling the blanket away and revealing your broken form to Jungkook, his heart sinking at the sight of your red, tear-stained cheeks. “You knew exactly how personal that was and how much I wanted it to stay between you and I,” you continued. “You promised that you wouldn’t say anything and then you immediately went back on your word. How much time did it take for you to go running off to tell them? Did you all mock me together?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Jungkook exclaimed, shocked at where your thoughts were taking you. “Just wait a minute!”
You sniffled, jaw set stubbornly, but making no move to interrupt him surprisingly.
“We did not mock you, I would never do that,” Jungkook began, ignoring your quiet scoff of disbelief at his words. “And I know you have absolutely every right to not believe me,” he noted. “But I truly didn’t mean to break your trust. I did and I do understand how hard it was for you to open up to me and I appreciate and value that trust more than you know. I understand that I betrayed that trust that you had in me, and for that I am deeply sorry. I wish I had a good explanation, but I truly don’t. We were just hanging out one night and it kind of slipped out. I didn’t mean to tell them your private business, but once it was out, I couldn’t take it back, but I knew if I tried to convince them not to say anything that that would make them want to bring it up in front of you all the more. I was hoping that if I played it off that they would assume it was no big deal and never mention it again. Clearly, that was a very stupid plan, and I see that now. I should have been up front and honest with them and with you as well. But Y/N, baby, never doubt that I love you and that I have your back – 100%. I may mess up from time to time, in fact, I know I will,” he corrected. “But that doesn’t mean that I love you any less,” he breathed out, voice and eyes pleading with you to understand, to forgive him.
“I love you so much,” he confessed. “Don’t let my idiocy and insensitivity ruin what we have,” he begged. “I promise I won’t ever betray your trust like that again. Let me show you how much I mean it. Let me make it up to you.”
You simply stared back at him, wide-eyed, not quite expecting such a passionate apology from him.
“Say something,” he pleaded, unable to handle your silence.
“I’m not quite sure what to say,” you admitted, still a little in awe from his words.
“Then say you forgive me,” he requested, hand hesitantly inching forward to grab onto your own, taking it as a positive sign that you hadn’t pulled away from him once again.
You looked down at your intertwined hands, your heart thumping in response to his thumb gently stroking the skin along the back of your hand.
“You really didn’t mean to tell them?” You questioned in a small voice, your anger slowly melting away at both the heartfelt words and the adorable doe-eyes that were begging you for your forgiveness.
“No, baby, I didn’t,” he promised, squeezing your hand. “I would never do that to you intentionally. It was just one of those moments where I wasn’t paying attention to what I was saying and it slipped out. I knew right away that I had messed up, but I didn’t know what to do. I should have come to you right away though and confessed what had happened. We could have avoided this entire situation if I had just been honest with you.”
You nodded, unable to deny that before glancing down at your clasped hands once again. Although you were still upset with him, you couldn’t deny the sincerity in his eyes. You believed him and you believed that he understood the severity of what he had done. You knew that he loved you and would never do anything to intentionally harm you. Your relationship was something that was too precious to the both of you and although you were hurt, you knew that this would be something that you would be able to work through together. Seeing your smaller hand clutched in his larger one, you couldn’t deny that you and Jungkook just fit together. Everything was right when you were with one another.
Jungkook, having must have sensed your anger slowly melting away, prompted you softly. “Do you think you’ll be able to forgive me, jagiya?”
Without replying, you leaned forward to place your lips against his own in a gentle kiss, expressing all that you wanted to without words. And Jungkook, your other half, understood perfectly, returning the sentiment by pouring his own love and sincerity back into the kiss. The two of you continued on in your sweet embrace, allowing all of the hurt and anger to be swept away by each new kiss.
A few moments later, Jungkook gently pulled away, pressing soft kisses to your face, eliciting a sweet giggle from your lips.
Jungkook grinned in return, overjoyed and at perfect peace to be back in harmony with you – his love, his other half, his perfect partner in everything.
“I love you so much, Y/N,” he expressed, eyes gleaming and heart full. You were the only one who could make him feel like this and he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I love you too, Kookie,” you echoed, once again leaning into him and allowing yourself to be swept away in the sweetness of his embrace, exactly where you belonged.
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dreamcatcherjiah · 3 years ago
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Tight Hearts | JHS Part 12
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💞Tight Hearts (Idol!Hoseok x Reader)
Plot: The red string of fate was visible when our grandparents were children. They would play around, following the strings from one person to their soulmate and laugh happily when these two people inevitably found each other. It was a reason for happiness. But little by little, people stopped seeing the threads. In bad times, it was dangerous, it was a liability, so people stopped seeing them to protect each other from harm. When I was born, nobody saw them anymore, they just felt their soulmate. Anxiety, happiness, sorrow, love, the hearts of the soulmates are one, feel the same things, but it is almost impossible to find your soulmate, now that the threads cannot be seen.
Tight Hearts Masterlist
Part 12
A/N: AND SO IT BEGINS! The first of my July updates guys! I hope you guys liked this part as much as I loved writing it! Let me know your thoughts!🥺♥️ If you want to be added to the taglist, send me an ask!
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Three weeks later.
Sitting in the kitchen island with your laptop open and your work email mocking you from the screen, you pulled your hair and you wondered what, apart from Hyejin, was keeping you working for that company. 
After some nasty negotiations with your boss by BigHit’s lawyers, you had been allowed to work from home while the situation normalised itself and you could be on the oposite side of town away from Hoseok without feeling pain. If you had known the middle aged man who called himself the soul of the company and took advantage of your absence would spam your mailbox with thousands of emails a day, you wouldn’t have had second thoughts about quitting. Damn the company and damn getting paid, you would think about finding a job using the time you were wasting answering all those emails. But no, you were a very headstrong woman and you would be damned if all the efforts you had put into securing that job went down the drain because you had happened upon a patronising asshole of a boss. 
You let your head fall to your hands. Tomorrow was going to be a long day, Hoseok and the boys had to be in three different places throughout the day, filming advertisements, recording for their comeback and getting ready for the different end-of-the-year performances. You would have to tag along, posing as Sejin’s new shadow, manager in training he called it, so people wouldn’t be suspicious of the new addition to BTS’s entourage. According to the head manager, if you just kept a low profile and didn’t stop tapping away in your computer, no one would think to question what your were doing. But for you to be able to calmly tap away in said computer, you needed to get all the phone calls done before you left the apartment. 
Some arrangements had been made so you could stay in they guys apartment the nights when there was an early schedule and Hoseok couldn’t stay with you in his own apartment. Taehyung was now Jimin’s new roommate and he had kindly (not unteasingly) offered his room for you and Hoseok to share when you simply couldn’t waste time commuting to the dorm and then the company. 
You could hear the cheery voices of the boys in the living room, watching some movie about a train full of zombies on its way to Busan. How they had managed to rope Hoseok into watching the movie was beyond you but you guessed that, since you two had been spending huge amounts of time together, it made sense that now that you could stand further apart, Hoseok spent time with his brothers. Your heartbeat accelerated and that was all the warning you needed before a shrill scream that sounded suspiciously between a mixture of Yoongi and your soulmate reached you in the kitchen. Chuckling, you put your phone down and listened while holding your breath for the next round of groans and complaints. What a big bunch of babies. What you did hear were some rapid footsteps approaching you and you didn’t bat an eyelid when two slim arms snaked their way around your waist and the head of your soulmate settled on your shoulder. Hoseok had taken to hugging you from behind when you weren’t paying attention to him, the uncertainty and nerves that you felt through the bond letting you know that he was still uneasy about invading your personal space or distracting you. Every time you noticed how he was about to extract himself from you, you would hold his wrist and tighten his hold around you, nesting against his chest. This time was no different and you let go a small sigh when you relaxed against his frame, your head finding purchase on his shoulder. You let your head roll to the side, ghosting a small feather-like kiss on his ear, making him giggle.
“Why do you leave me alone with all those adrenaline-junkies, horror-movie-lovers when you are just here scowling at your computer?” He asked as he moved your bodies side to side in a playful manner. “How long do you think you still have before you can come to the living room with us?”
You raised your hand to his head and caressed his brown hair out of his eyes.
“I don’t want to be in between you and the boys, I have done that for almost a month already,” you told him, a smile tugging at your lips at how he started shaking his head no the moment the words were out of your mouth, “go back to them, I still have to make some calls.”
He disentangled himself to you and, turning the stool where you were sitting, put his hands on your shoulders. His lips formed a small pout. That was something you had started noticing as the weeks went by. He was reserved most of the time, keeping contact to the minimum and only opening up when the two of you were alone. You guessed that falling asleep one in each side of the bed and waking up in each other’s arms had something to do with his (and your) gradual openness. But when it was late and he was tired, he became clingy and tended to use his cute face to get what he wanted from you. Usually it would be to turn off the lights or to get him a glass of water from the kitchen before you went to bed; but tonight he seemed to have a different plan.
“You are not in anybody’s way, do you hear me?” He sternly chastised, waiting for your nod to continue, “the boys were the ones who asked me where you were and invited you to join us in movie night. Now, what have we told you a million and one times about not isolating yourself?” His chin up and a fake angry look on his face, he was enjoying himself way too much with the whole telling you off thing, but still, you could not just not humour him. Not when his brown hair was tossed in every direction and looked as fluffy as it did right now.
“That I am part of the family now and I have every right to be anywhere with you guys as long as I don’t hide food from you and don’t try to isolate myself…”
His face lighted up like a christmas tree and he proceded to exaggeratedly motion to your work set-up.
“And what are you doing right now?” He question, eyebrow nearly reaching his hairline.
With a cheeky grin you booped his nose and took advantage of that brief moment when his face turned all shades of red and he looked at you open-mouthed to turn back around and answer your phone as it started ringing. I am working, you mouthed to a still malfunctioning Hoseok, with a wicked smile pulling at the corners of your mouth.
While you talked on the phone, you could see him look back towards the living room at the same time that a bit of uncertainty reached you through your string; at watching the movie or leaving you alone in the kitchen alone, you wouldn’t know.
Then Hoseok walked towards you, kissed the crown of your head and began cleaning the kitchen. It was a weird feeling, the both of you being in the same room, you working and him organising cabinets full of ramyeon, in companionable silence. It felt domestic. That word would have scared the living daylight out of you a few weeks ago; thinking only of the strong reactions you had when you thought that meeting your soulmate was automatically loosing your independence made your head spin. That had been only three short weeks ago, when you had been so guarded against this sweet man, who would buy four different bottles of shampoo in case he didn’t buy one you liked, the man who would put his life upside down for you, going as far as spending every possible night in his own apartment away from his brothers in case you felt uncomfortable living with seven men. You knew that somewhere deep down, he felt guilty for keeping you from your life as it was before you found him, he sometimes felt violent when some gesture or caress felt more a produce of the bond than natural and genuine. He felt sad when he had to say goodbye to his brothers when the managers dropped them off at night, and felt imposing when you had to follow them around to three or four different schedules in a day. In fact he had been mulling over that last one for the past few days; it wasn’t as if you could read his mind, you had just learned to map his emotions and the second he started looking at you sideways and feeling anxious you knew it was because of the busy schedule they had the next day.
Voices distracted you from your musings and you focused on how two sets of footsteps neared the kitchen accompanied by two hushed voices.
“… but I don’t want to interrupt her, hyung. She is working and that is her first priority…” whispered Yoongi.
“Well, if you had been a bit longer around her instead of being buried under your huge pile of self-imposed work, you would know her boss is an a-hole,” answered Jin. They were not walking anymore, they had stopped near the kitchen entrance, thinking they were whispering low enough for you not to hear them. You couldn’t help but agree with Seokjin. “I am this close to making her quit and hiring her myself, even with our workload she would be less stressed. Now kindly shut up and help me pry those two from the kitchen and take them back to the sweet delights of watching Joon internally scream.”
Pretending not to have heard anything, you swallowed a giggle and, noticing Hoseok hadn’t realised his brothers were coming, you went back to your laptop playing the oblivious victim too.
“Oh the joys of working over-time!” Exclaimed Seokjin as a way of making their presence known and he managed to startle Hoseok into dropping the cup he was rinsing into the sink.
“I promise I tried to stop him Y/N, you can keep working,” said Yoongi, who cleared his throat and, seeing Hoseok’s frantic movements behind your back, added, “But on the other hand, since you have been working very hard these past few weeks, I think it’s time you take a small break.”
His face was a sweet confused picture, torn between his desire to let you know that you could keep working if so you wanted and the one to please Hoseok.
“Come on, you two. Hobi, drop that cup, if you keep cleaning it you’ll turn it transparent. And Y/N stop being an excuse for him to get out of watching the movie,” Jin’s eyes, gleaming with mischief moved from a fumbling Hoseok to you and you rolled your eyes.
“Let’s go, it’s about time I clocked out at…” you looked at your watch, “well, 11pm.”
Hoseok walked up to you, nerves reaching you from his side of the bond, and guided you behind his brothers to the living room where Jimin got closer to Namjoon to open up a spot for you both.
The rest of the boys didn’t even flinch when Hoseok hugged your waist and rested his head against your collarbone; they all knew Hobi needed some sort of support to get through the rest of the movie and while he might have relied in one of the boys to get that emotional help in the past, none of them seemed to care you had now become his buffer. In fact, they all seemed to be smiling happily and content when you joined them.
The movie was in full swing now and, more than once Hoseok had opted to hiding his face against your neck, letting small whimpers linger in his chest. His body was tense and you could feel his lips pouting against your neck.
To try and calm him down, maybe take his mind off the movie, you started caressing his neck with your nails. Any other person would have started giggling at being tickled, but not Hoseok. He told you one morning when you woke up with him wrapped around you with his head on your chest that when he was a child, his mother and sister would caress his arms and his chest to get him to fall asleep. Since that particular piece of information had been incorporated into your knowledge about him you hadn’t been able to use it until now; running your nails in circular motions at the nape of his neck, up behind his ears and down to his shoulders. His body slowly started unwinding and relaxing against yours, his eyelashes fluttering against your skin and his slowing breath lulling you slowly to sleep. You wouldn’t know who fell asleep first, but soon you were drifting off. 
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Hushed voices arose you from your deep sleep but too comfortable now nested under Hoseok’s arm you didn’t stir. The voices were gaining more definition as the seconds passed and becoming easier to understand.
“… and you were out hyung, like a log,” was saying Taehyung.
“I didn’t expect you to be so comfortable with her so quickly, if I am to be honest,” continued Namjoon and you tried not to tense up.
Hoseok took a deep breath and dropped a small kiss to your head.
“It’s not the bond, if that’s what you’re getting at Joons,” he told him firmly, “she is IT, guys. Her personality is brilliant, she can keep up with us, she knows just what to do when I am tired or frustrated… Just the other day she took a look at me, dropped her bag and latched herself to my studio chair with me. I just worked but she was there, steady, dependable, sweet. She doesn’t crave attention, mine or anyone else’s, she’s just happy being there. I can’t put into words what she makes me feel, but the fact that she’s my soulmate is only one more certainty for us. I can see me perfectly falling hard for her when we get to know each other more, that’s how I feel.”
Silence had fallen over the room as his brothers processed what Hoseok had just said, and you were happy enough to repeat your three word confession inside your head, not knowing Hoseok felt and reciprocated the same feelings through the bond. Verbalising is taken for granted, but you two had your own way of showing love.
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soulvomit · 3 years ago
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stuff with gender anguish about not fitting in with today’s current gender constructions
From another post I made: I need to talk about 20th century gender norms at some point as a living breathing 20th century fossil and how different it was. To most straight people, being gender non conforming meant gay, trans was on the far end of the gay spectrum, and gay was associated with being socially Not Normal at a time when you had to be Normal to get a white collar job. (The whole Normalhood thing im gonna talk about is VERY connected to mid-late 20th century construction of the white middle class.) Apropos of gender specifically... I’m not sure how 90s/00s genderfluid/genderqueer map to NB, or whether they do. It’s a big reason I am weird about IDing as NB - because it seems to mean something else than my particular understanding of my identity as it was formed in the 1990s. (Another thing is my social world being more people over 45 at this point and also I’m in a hetero relationship.) Part of 90s GQ stuff was that you could identify as a man part time, a woman part time, you could contain multitudes. “Woman-identified person with a male side” was a legit identity within that, so was “man-identified person with a female side.” You could be one person in the streets and another in the sheets. You could be several people in the sheets, especially if you were aligned with kinky culture. (And for a long time... I was.) There was a greater sense in the 90s and early 00s in genderqueerness culture that you could be GQ for no other reason than wanting to be and it wasn’t assumed to be bundled with physical dysphoria or even desire to change your public social identity. Some spaces - like West Coast geek culture and goth culture - had enough flexibility baked in that we didn’t really need to go to LGBTQ culture to explore our identities, and there was a whole geek queer sensibility that was evolving alongside of the broader LGBTQ culture that was definitely its own... thing.  And while people *say* that NB doesn’t mean any one particular thing or any of these things, that’s not always the message I get when visible NBs on TV/in film are almost always at present one very specific image or “type” of person, and that doesn’t resemble me. NB representation on TV amounts to presenting NB as a third gender with very specific codified behaviors (androgynous AFAB person who binds and has body dysphoria).   The message I get is that whatever my experience is, is better described some other way. Also the discourse around relationships with NBs is that a relationship with an NB is necessarily a queer relationship yet having been in relationships in and out of LGBTQ culture, I’m not really sure how to distinguish “a queer relationship.” My relationship is non-traditional in lots of ways and we’re both gender non-conforming in lots of ways though it doesn’t parse to most people because it’s along the lines of stuff that shouldn’t have ever been gendered in the first place. What my partner does not ever question however is his actual gender identity.  The thing is, actually publicly identifying as anything but a woman would create weird problems in my life in terms of social dynamics, and other stuff, and probably an unpredictable series of ripple effects downstream. But - that... just means I’m closeted, right? And closeted doesn’t mean your identity doesn’t exist or isn’t as unreal as someone who isn’t? And what if - as a “shapeshifter” - my relationship to myself within my relationship *is* part of that shapeshifting?  One of the things is that I’m in a heterosexual relationship. My relationship *is* one of my few spots where I’m happy in my skin, let alone happy in the world and I have no complaints with how I’m perceived in this relationship, and part of it is that practically every assumption about my gender is true, or has been true at some point, including the fact that I’m fine with being seen as a woman in the context of my relationship.  It’s in other spaces besides the intimate, that gender stuff makes my skin crawl. My deep interior gender identity is “pixels floating in the ether, which can assume any shape or form.” My gender identity among other people in non sexual friend spaces is “friend.” My partner identifies as a cis het man. I don’t feel like my relationship has any special quality that’s different from queer relationships I’ve been in, other than identities people have. If my partner doesn’t feel our relationship is queer then I don’t feel it is, either... though it’s not exactly *traditional.*  I don’t feel like our relationship is different from our hetero neighbors’ relationships regardless of whatever history I have. I have no way of knowing what my ostensibly-female ostensibly-heterosexual neighbors’ interior identities really are, or what their history is. And because we’re monogamous, it just never ever comes up. Our social world is about half queer and half not so nothing has changed. After decades of only dating people who had LGBTQ identities, and having a particular social world, now I’m with a cis het man from that same social world and nothing really has changed about the shape of my life.   I’ve moved between different spaces my entire life, sometimes I perceived myself as a boy in a girl’s body, but sometimes I didn’t, and don’t. And gender is one of the spaces in which I feel like a chameleon. There seem to be a ton of gender expression based communities that disappeared since the 90s that either disappeared or were erased from discourse and that makes this weirder/harder to talk about.  Another thing is that a lot of the discourse around pronouns (if pushed I’ll say I’m she/they but I am literally comfortable in anything, depending upon context) makes me really uncomfortable. Even in LGBTQ spaces it makes me uncomfortable. There’s the me that my friends know, and some of my family knows, and it’s a big enough world to contain that part of me at this point. I would rather not put my identity under a microscope in any space that matters. It’s weird but I wish I could just be “they” in the work, creative, etc, spaces, without the loading of what “they” means. I wish it meant nothing about the people who love me, or who I love, or how I love, or how I live my life, besides what pronoun I use. But it doesn’t mean nothing. That is why I hope more cis identified people will actually identify as they in the public sphere. There are plenty of spaces in the public sphere that I don’t think should be gendered at ALL. My wanting to be a “they” is in some ways more about wanting public anonymity and having formed my sense of self - at a tender time - online, than about my gender identity. Which means I’d be potentially appropriating “they” from people for whom it IS a deep identity, and yet... haven’t I spent half of my blog talking about how I’m not exactly the gender identity I advertise?? Haven’t I spent a long time up to now advocating for “they?” Isn’t feeling like a they, evidence that I’m a they?  And the thing is, this is such a YMMV issue and the problem is that EVERYONE has competing access needs with EVERYONE ELSE. Anything one queer person wants or needs seems to oppress some other queer person, and it sucks. But sometimes I wonder if I even need to just recognize how cis het passing my life is and acknowledge my privilege. The thing is though at that point... is it how much oppression we’ve experienced or are currently experiencing, that alone makes our identity? That’s as silly an idea as saying I’m less of a Jew because I haven’t personally experienced a hate crime. And yes there’s a lot to shared oppression experiences forming group identities, but I’m not talking about group identity. I’m talking about personal feelings of identity.
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starr-fall-knight-rise · 4 years ago
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HASO, “Angel Wings.”
Setting up for some other stuff really quick, don’t worry I am going to finish the krill arc, I just needed to jump away from it really quick. Hope you enjoy today’s story :)
“I am not willing to take unnecessary risks.”
“We don’t have enough men to cover all that area.”
“We will do what has to be done.”
“With all due respect, Admiral, do you understand how big space is?” There was a silence in the room, twenty or so men and women stood around a large dark table. All around them on the walls light up star maps and ship configurations glowed blue in the dim holographic light. On the table before them a star map had been laid out casting shadows upon the faces of men and women.
Admiral Vir was sitting partially facing admiral Massie who was half standing, his heavy frame leaning palms flat against the table.
The two stared very intensely  at each other, the older man trying to dominate the younger with the sheer intensity of his presence. It was rather unfortunate for him that after two years of almost continual active service in space, Admiral vir was used to being stared down by Adaptids, Starborn, Drev warriors, and --on occasion-- space dragons, so this rather portly man in a funny hat was unlikely to get a rise out of him.
“You better watch your tone, boy.” The man hissed quietly
Admiral Vir looked back at him unblinking, “This is the 41st century Admiral, and that superiority bullshit isn’t going to stack up to experience, so I will watch my tone when you sit down and realize that what you are suggesting, not only puts our entire fleet, and all of the fleets of the GA at risk, but it's also based on outdated military naval strategy from a thousand years ago that does not take into consideration that space is, in fact, three dimensional.”
The men and women about the table shifted awkwardly in their seats, unsure how to proceed.
To some degree superiority DID fly, especially within the Office of Galactic Intelligence, where Admiral Massie was head officer, but out there, among the stars, where Admiral Vir had spent nearly 90% of his career, the ability to question your superiors could be a matter of life and death.
In the end it was Admiral Kelly, a strong political supporter of Admiral Vir, and his long time ally who leaned forward in her seat, “I think Admiral Vir does have a point. He is, after all our resident expert in galactic warfare.” She looked around the table, “I don’t see anyone else here who has been involved in a pitched space battled?”
There was murmuring and the shuffling of feet.
She Adjusted her cup of coffee lightly where it sat on the desk, “In fact the only person here who has ever flown a ship, being me, would have no idea how to go about galactic combat, so Admiral Vir, please proceed.”
Admiral Vir stood and nodded to Kelly before taking his stand at the head of the table.
“As I was saying earlier, putting warp gates too far out near the border of the system is inadvisable and extremely risky. Even if those warp gates were to be accessed through a security code on the ship itself, I wouldn’t trust that someone wouldn’t be able to hack them. Which is why I suggest keeping the warp gates towards the center of the GA system, but not near planets themselves. There are only a few ships galaxy wide that can approach a planet unknown and unseen, those being the major command vessels used with most GA species. All other ships would require access to a warp gate, or be forced to do multiple warps before reaching the system giving viewers enough time to ready for an attack. My suggestion is, instead of trying to protect the entire GA system, we make hub nexuses around the most important sites, planets, colonies, stations, and warp gates. Then we station smaller military vessels around those areas to keep enemies out. If we were trying to cover the entire area, the only people who might be able to show up in time to defend against an entire arriving fleet are myself and a select few others. If that were to happen we might be completely taken out in one fell swoop. No, better to reinforce likely areas of attack, defend and use the warp gates for what really matters, and allow ships like mine to free float and provide support when needed.”
There was silence about the room as the other men and women nodded.
Admiral Massie glowered at him from the other side of the table.
Admiral Vir ignored him.
He played politics, but only so far as not playing was playing. He wasn’t looking to move up in the ranks, and he wasn’t looking to make enemies. Everyone in UNSC command knew and understood that he had only one goal, and that was to keep his people alive and well. While his unsheathed interactions with some of the other Admirals made him unpopular, particularly within the ranks of some of the older generations, it was hard to deny that he did his job well.
Then again he and Admiral Massie had been at each other’s throats since the start of Vir’s command.
Massie was a planetary isolationist and had opposed joining the GA since the beginning, while Admiral Vir was a staunch supporter of intergalactic cooperation and alliance. Admiral Massie was under the impression that Admiral Vir had romanticised the idea of extraterrestrial life to the detriment of earth itself, and Admiral Vir thought Admiral Massie was a pompous jack-off with more interest in his political career than he was in the lives of his men.
Both of them may have been right to a certain degree.
Either way the other admirals, while being somewhere middling on the spectrum, tended to lean towards agreeing with Admiral Vir when it came to discussions about planetary defence. He was, after all, the only one with personal experience in the area, and they didn’t really have time for Massie and his superiority complex.
It was for many of these reasons, that their meeting eventually steered itself towards a discussion on isolationism versus GA involvement.
“It isn’t our job to deal with THEIR problems. We lose trillions of dollars every year to the defence of alien species, and for what? What can they do for us that we cannot do for yourself as a much lower cost.”
“If it weren’t for our intervention, Admiral, the entire GA system would be overrun with Burg, and we would be next.” Admiral Vir cut in gently pounding his fist against the table for emphasis.
“Not if we fortify our own strongholds.” The man continued to argue.
Admiral Vir felt his skin going hot under the collar, but took a deep breath to calm himself, “You forget about the over ten human colonies that exist within GA airspace. This may have been an argument two years ago, but with those colonies in existence as of now, we cannot abandon them for an isolationist principle. Furthermore, we need the cooperation of the GA in order to buy and sell the materials needed to keep the economies of those colonies running. Without them we don’t have the resources, the time or the labor to be isolationists.” He relaxed back into his seat and allowed the other Admirals to jump in with their two cents.
He would have liked to stay quiet and just listen, buthe found he was actually a poor hand at keeping his mouth shut when someone was saying things that could be potentially harmful to the good of humanity.
He was only partially paying attention when a soft voice came in over his shoulder, “Admiral.”
He turned to look, finding a smartly dressed young lieutenant waiting at his side.
“The UN President is almost done with her address, and you’re up next.”
He nodded and took to his feet quietly excusing himself from the table as he followed her down the hallway. The automated catwalk whirred to life, and the two of them stood next to each other as they were carried off down the long hallway. On either side of them rain slashed against the windows in great sheets. The sky overhead was dark and overcast,and the green of the lawn was soaked in great frothing puddles.
He reached into his uniform pocket and pulled out his note cars glancing them over once more before putting them back in his pocket.
At the end of the catwalk two marines were waiting for him.
Ramirez grinned at him and Maverick raised an eyebrow as he stepped off the catwalk, “That’s a lovely expression.:” Maverick commented, “Are the Admirals not playing nice.”
He snorted slightly, “Most of them, but there are a few who just don’t seem to understand how space works, but I guess thant can be expected when you spend your entire career behind a desk.”
The two Marines nodded and fell into step beside him as he made his way towards the outer lawn where the press conferences were being held. A massive black tent had been erected just outside on the lawn, and the sky overhead was soon to grow dark. In the distance he could see the glowing neon of advertising signs hovering over the highway. Those same bright neon lights lit up the tent itself, and projected inflated pictures of the UN President onto the walls as she spoke.
Secret Service agents milled about on the lawn in the rain their jackets soaked and spitting water in a glistening halo of white. Even from here he could see the little strips of clear white tubing that marked their earpieces.
“A shit day to give an address.” He muttered as he was led towards the back entrance, taking a seat by the door as they waited for the president to finish. Rain continued to drum loudly on the tent and the windows at his side. The door was slightly cracked open, so he could just hear the sound of her voice over the pouring rain.
Off on the other side of the room Maverick was watching the address on her implant through her eyes were glazed with boredom.
Ramirez didn’t even pretend to pay attention and was, instead playing holographic paddle ball on his device.
Admiral Vir smiled a little and shook his head at the antics of some of his favorite marines before pulling out his notecards again and giving them a once over. This was becoming more common as his position became more and more political. When he was younger he would have balked at the idea of getting involved in politics, but somehow he had found himself to be the lynchpin holding intergalactic relations together, which turned out to be a very political position to have.
As it seemed his enthusiasm for joining the GA was not shared by everyone, and if if wasn’t for his popularity, and ability to hold their enemies at bay, talks and interaction with the GA might not have gone nearly as far as they had. The thought that he might be the only thing holding intergalactic relations together was nauseating. He was sure that wasn’t entirely the case, by now people understood that in order to have colonies, they had to have cooperation, but that didn’t mean he still wasn’t an important part of all this.
It was his fault after all, and he would probably be blamed if things went south.
Outside cheering rose up, and he lifted his head and stood as the UN president was ushered back inside on a wave of applause.
Most of the secret service agents went with her, but security still stayed behind as he stepped past her and up to the lectern. WHen he had said tent earlier, he had not fully grasped the size of the place. It might as well have been an indoor auditorium with places to sit at the back and large projection screens.
A dim blue light fell over him from the side, and he tried not to look at how own awkward figure as he appeared on screen. Cameras flashed below him as reporters vied for the front seat. He set his notecards on the lectern  and began to speak.
His heart hammered and his leg wobbled nervously, but that was common for him these days.
He was a decent public speaker, or was becoming proficient, but that still didn’t stop his nerves.
“The GA has asked me to take the time and announce that they have begun peace talks with the Lumin and the alien species known as the Mikes, who contacted us through long distance laser transmission just last week. The conferences will be held on the GA hub, and life updates will be broadcast to the GA website for the duration of those talks. As someone who has been active on the intergalactic stage since the beginning, I urge you all to-” His eyes drifted over the crowd as he continued with his speech, discussing the importance of voting for their representatives as a new election period was coming up. He stressed also the importance of a couple of economic bills which might strengthen their political report with the Tesraki. He had practiced this speech hundreds of times, and so the words flowed from his mouth with no real issue as he stared down into the crowd. He scanned his eyes over their faces, some of them smiling, some of them concentrated, and others downright annoyed with the words coming from his mouth.
He would have estimated that the ratio of pleased to displeased was three to one, though that percentage was still pretty high 33.3% wasn’t nothing.
He continued to scan the crowd eyes trailing up and towards the center of the crowd where a strange sort of commotion had started. The people parted, and as they did it was like watching a dog run through a field of grass where the stocks began to bend sideways under their weight.
His eyes tracked down to the source of the disruption even as he was speaking.
And found a figure dressed in a heavy black raincoat, face covered.
His voice was just beginning to trail off as the man or woman lifted their head and raised their arm.
Water dripped from the ceramic barrel, and the screaming began just as a loud CRACK erupted in the room.
And then he was plowed into the ground by what felt to be a speeding freight train. THe wind was knocked out of him as he landed on his back. His ears erupted into squealing static which drowned out the sound of secret service men running into the crowd and people screaming. The muzzle flash had left spots in his vision.
Was he hit?
He gasped for air unable to breath for two horrible seconds as the breath came flooding back to him. When his hearing came back the chaos was almost deafening enough to leave his ears ringing again.
A figure knelt in front of him.
Someone else Dived to his side as security flooded onto the stage with them.
Maverick grabbed his shoulder, “Are you hit.”
He looked down at himself, and his pristine grey uniform looking for a spot of red.
He ran his hands over his body, “I…. I don’t think so.” But if the bullet hadn’t thrown him to the ground than what….
He looked up to see Ramirez still kneeling in front of him. He must have seen it coming and tackled Adam to the ground before the shot was fired.
But something…. Something was wrong.
Adam crawled into a kneeling position and grabbed Ramirez by the shoulders. The other man hadn’t moved.’
Frantically he began to look Ramirez over, “Ramirez! Are you hit?”
The other man raised his head and his eyes were glassy, “I….I don’t know.”
The crowd had tightened around them, and he waved security off as he looked his friend over. As he scooted forward, grabbing Ramirez by the back of his uniform, he felt something wet and sticky against his hand.
He drew back…. Only to find his hand drenched in blood.
“SHIT! SOMEONE GET A DOCTOR!”
Ramirez swayed, and Adam caught him around the shoulders gently lowering him to the ground, “Woah, just, relax alright, you’re going to be ok. HE’S BEEN SHOT!”
Ramirez grunted still staring glassily into space.
“Help me roll him.: his voice was tight and strangled, as Maverick grabbed Ramirez by the shoulder and rolled him into his side. Adam could see the blood now, a large stain on his lower mid back.
He pulled up the shirt just to see the bullet hole oozing dark red, already smearing over the other man’s tanned skin, “Shit, shit, shit, Ramirez….. ANGEL!”
Angel grunted, “If you wanted my shirt off, you could have just asked nicely.”
“Is he going into shock?”
“I dont know I’m not a fucking doctor. Just keep him awake. Keep him talking!”
Adam ripped off his uniform jacket, wadding it into a tight ball which he pressed against the oozing wound. Maverick had pulled off her jacket and rolled it under Ramirez’s head. He groaned in pain as Adam applied pressure.
“It's alright, buddy, you're going to be alright, just hang in there.”
“That looks like it went through his kidney.” Maverick muttered.
“Shut up and keep him talking!”
Maverick nodded and patted Angel on the cheek, growing annoyed he wasn’t responding and then lightly slapping him. His eyes fluttered open, “Ow.”
“Stay awake damn it.”
“Bossy.” Angel muttered.
Just then a crack medical team burst through the line shooing everyone out of their way as they did. Adam backed up hands out speared with blood and as he let the professionals take over.
He listened to them talk, heard words coming out of their mouths but didn’t understand what they were saying. He was grabbed by the shoulder and urged to go inside where it was safe, but he shook them off vision fixed on his friend lolling helplessly on the ground, covered in blood.
The men and women removed  his bloodied uniform jacket and pulled a blue cylinder from somewhere. It was shoved into the wound and a button was depressed. There was a sharp hissing noise and Angel groaned in pain, though when they withdrew the cylinder he was no longer bleeding.
Adam was dragged back as men rushed forward with a stretcher transferring his injured friend onto it and hurriedly dragging him away. Adam was waylaid by the security detail that dragged him into a safe room as everyone tried to figure out what had happened.
Angel’s blood began to dry on his hands.
The shooter hadn’t gotten far, and when detained it had been pretty clear that that bullet wasn’t just meant for the marine.
It had been meant for Adam himself.
Even though he knew that was likely the truth, that revelation still came to him as a shock, and his skin grew clammy and cold with the realization.
Angel had saved his life, and taken the bullet that was meant for him.
***
This realization still haunted him hours later as he sat in the waiting room at Mercy Core Hospital heavily guarded by a crack SWAT team and a small military garrison. He stared down at his hands, at the blood that had turned brown and was now flaking off in his hands and onto the waiting room floor. Blood stained the white shirt he wore underneath, and his tie hung loose and undone around his shoulders.
The commotion of footsteps out the door and he lifted his head towards the voices. He tried to understand what they were saying but, somehow, couldn’t. He chalked it up to his brain just not functioning correctly until the door burst inward and a short dark-haired woman burst into the room followed by a grey haired older woman, and a young girl.
They looked too much like Angel to be anyone but his family, and as they walked in Adam stood sharply nearly knocking his chair over in his haste. He realized now why he couldn't’ understand them before, they were speaking Spanish.
The middling woman’s eyes fell on him instantly and she rushed forward grabbing him by the wrists, “What, what happened, what do you know, is my son ok.”
He hadn’t truly grasped what had happened until just now, and fought hard to bite back the tears as he gave her the details, “He was shot, the doctors had to bring him into surgery about an hour ago…” Her eyes went wide with horror and shock, his throat squeezed tight causing his voice to rise in pitch though he tried to fight it down.
“He...he has the best medical care you could ask for…. Our ship doctor arrived…. Arrived on scene thirty minutes ago…. He… hes the best surgeon in the-galaxy.” He could barely speak now, his throat thick as if it was stuffed with cotton.
She put her hands over her mouth and turned in a distressed circle.
His eyes fell on the older grey haired woman and her eyes pierced into him like she could read his sole like a book.
He had heard enough stories about this woman to know who she was immediately.
Angel’s Abuela, the family matriarch.
Adam shrunk under the intensity of her gaze
Mother and, what must have been Angel’s younger sister were sitting together hugging each other for comfort. Adam stood awkwardly hands at his sides not wanting to intrude on grief that was…. Not his own, grief that was, in fact, caused by him.
It was his fault.
Angel had taken that bullet for him.
He should have been in that operating room. He bit the inside of his cheek took a deep breath and stared up at the ceiling, willing the tears to absorb back into his eye.
The older woman was still watching him, and as he watched she walked over, and touched his arm gently, “What happened.” He opened his mouth to say he already told her but the expression she gave him made it pretty clear he had not given enough details, “I was giving an address to the crowd just outside UNSC headquarters. I was about halfway through when there was a disturbance in the crowd. I saw someone pull a gun, and then Angel tackled me to the floor just as it fired. We didn’t know who had been hit at first but, he…. It looked like it got him in the lower mid back….. I I tried to stop the bleeding but I… and then the paramedics came…. And I…. I…. I’m so sorry.” his voice hitched but he bit it back with gargantuan effort, “It should be me in there not him.”
He turned to look down at his feet 
But then the hand came and touched his arm again, “It wasn’t your fault, boy. That’s just our Angel.”
And with those words he couldn’t fight it back, and warm hot tears began spilling down his face and onto his shirt. His vision blurred and he could barely see, but he felt arms wrap around him patting him on the back as the old woman’s voice came softly, “There there, he’s going to be alright, our Angel is strong. He’s going to be ok.”
He didn’t try to pull away from the old woman.
Her arms were warm and comforting, and he desperately wanted to believe her.
.
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docholligay · 4 years ago
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SM rewrite: any of haruka's first times meeting the inners
EPisode 92! 1960 words, I hope you enjoy, I AM HAVING FUN TODAY
“He’s SO HOT, Mina.” 
Usagi was off on yet another one of her larks, talking about some guy she’d seen at the arcade. She’d thought, at first, that she was talking about Motoki, who Mina took to be her current obsession who was not Mamoru of the moment, but maybe that had been several moments ago. It was hard to tell with Usagi. 
People always took her and Usagi to be alike, and if that gave Mina the benefit of being underestimated, that was fine with her. And it was true, that they both liked attractive people, in a way, but Mina was more of a freelancer, moving from this flower to that like a brilliant butterfly with no particular link to any one person, while Usagi fell in love with every man she ever met. 
That too. Usagi was still under the impression that she was straight, and the delusion might yet follow her all the way to the wedding altar. That, in particular, was none of Mina’s business, who had realized since the age of 12 that attractive was attractive in her eyes, which became the fact that a bedroom was a bedroom, as she got older, and what it might say on someone’s driver’s license or facebook held little notice for her when it was time to go home. 
Dating, on the other hand--well, she wasn’t bold enough to tell Usagi to never date a man, if she had other options, not while she was still enamored of Mamoru, but she certainly thought it hard enough. Mina had learned that lesson quickly. Men were like riding a roller coaster, exhilarating and fun, for a quick ride, but eventually you just get sick. 
Usagi had not yet learned this, and it was in this that Minako allowed her to keep your youthful naivete. She had time yet to learn. 
“His name is HARUKA,” she swung her bag around, “I heard the cashier say it. Isn’t that dreamy?” 
Mina chuckled, “It’s one of the most popular names in Japan, Usagi. I go to school with like, 4 Harukas.” 
“Well, it seems different on him!” She gave a little scowl and a stomp of her foot, but then smiled brightly and whipped around, “Come to the arcade with me and see him!” She narrowed her eyes playfully, “We can compete to see who he’ll fall in love with.” 
This was the point at which Rei would have chimed in that Usaig had a boyfriend, if she had denied to leave off from her shrine duties and hang out with them after school, but she hadn’t, and Mina didn’t see why something like a boyfriend should get in the way of a good time. 
“Amazing. I hope you like losing.” Mina cackled as she swanned toward The Crown. She hadn’t been in a while, not for any particular reason, other than she was doing a bunch of back work for a hostess club, which she hoped would hire her as a hostess the absolute second she turned 18. Unfortunately, they were too above-board to hire her for anything at the front right now. It was less than a year. She’d live. 
Usagi rushed into the Crown, ever with the perfect idea of how to act casual, and gazed immediately over to the racing game in the corner, hand under her chin as she leaned against an old copy of Pacman. 
“There he is!!!” she stage whispered, hissing as she grabbed Mina’s hand. 
She sighed and turned to tell Usagi that he was going to hear them, but he didn’t look over even at all, and Mina’s brow twitched as she noticed it. His hearing must not be anything to write home about. He was wearing a blazer over the top of a sweater, over the top of a collared shirt, which seemed a bit like overkill to Mina, but hey, maybe he was cold. 
MIna walked over to him, Usagi half-tiptoeing behind in a way that Haruka would find either cute or incredibly unsettling, and based on that, Mina would change her strategy. It was all a sort of chess game, flirting and seduction, and with men maybe it wasn’t even chess. Checkers, or something.
“Hi!” Usagi popped up, “Good afternoon! We saw that you were playing alone here, and were wondering, you know!” 
Mina looped her arm across the back of the car seat, and leaned against it. “Care for a friendly game?” 
Haruka ruffled his hair, and looked up at her, and Mina nearly burst out laughing. She hadn’t noticed, with the bulkiness of the blazer and other entrappings, and she hadn’t looked hard enough when she’d been standing with Usagi, but looking now, there was no mistake. Haruka wasn’t a man at all. Oh, she was tall, and gangly, and even given the sweater probably fairly flat-chested, but there was the unmistakable fullness of her lip, the softness of her brow, the way she looked at Usagi and Mina. Mina was a bit of an expert, in these matters. 
She looked over to Usagi. No reason not to let this play out. Why not, she’d earned some fun. Maybe Usagi would have a moment of realization--Mina doubted she’d ever seen a butch lesbian outside of Takarazuka, and those women were made up to the high heavens, more drag than the genuine article. 
So she smiled. 
“Just a race or two.” 
Usagi started to stammer, and step in front of her, but Mina dodged it effortlessly. Why have one bit of fun, when she could have two? Besides, Usagi may have been wrong about Haruka being a boy, but she wasn’t wrong about a certain quality of rough handsomeness that she carried, that sort of young, gentlemanly way, with a touch of insecurity, that Mina sometimes found very winning about the younger butch set. She could have a worse time. 
“Sure,” Haruka smiled, and nodded, then added, “I always like to play with a pretty girl.” 
Her voice was deep, but not overly so, and Mina found the feminine lilt at the end of her sentences quite charming. She rather liked butches, when it came down to it. They had a habit of picking up the charming parts of masculinity while letting the rest rot where it belonged. 
MIna slid in next to her. She smelled good, like sandalwood and maybe a touch of motor oil, which Mina wouldn’t have thought would be charming. Usagi was salivating as they put their coins into the slot, but she stood and watched Mina. She’d played this game plenty of times, and beaten Usagi at it nearly every time, save when Motoki accidentally spilled a drink on her in the middle of a race. This wouldn’t be too hard, but she would be careful not to humiliate Haruka, and maybe even let her win in the last stretch--
She looked over to the map. Haruka was already out in front, her car on full manual and effortlessly gliding through it, swinging the wheel and tapping on the brake and gas at perfect intervals. 
Minako, for a moment, became just a little enraged. She hadn’t even wanted to win before this moment, but for her to be beaten so easily, by whatever putz of a nerd was too old to be hanging out in an arcade but clearly WAS hanging out in an arcade, on an afternoon, and didn’t she have a job or college or something to go to? 
She slammed down on the gas, trying desperately to catch up, to make a better showin, but Haruka just kept going and going, hitting checkpoints without a second thought, not even the slightest amount of wrinkle to her forehead. 
Besides all that, Usagi was laughing and clapping her hands like the damn fool she was. 
Mina tried to weave around the fake traffic in her way, but ended up broadsiding a bus full of fake schoolchildren, and she imagined their fake screams echoing her own as the Game Over flashed across the screen. She quite forgot her seduction, in the moment, as she slapped the middle of the steering wheel and laid her head down on it. 
“I can’t believe I lost that bad!” 
Haruka chuckled, “No, you actually did pretty good.” 
Mina straightened up, smoothed her hair, and tried to regain herself. 
“Sorry, it’s just,” she giggled, “I get so competitive. The uh….heat of the moment, you know what I mean?” 
Haruka looked at her with a slightly confused sideways grin. “Sure.” 
“Oh but I am sorry, Haruka, mother was forever at lunch, sometimes I swear she asks for things only to see the human limit of what a waiter will bear before smoke begins to run from his ears. It was never my intention to keep you waiting.” 
“Oh, that’s okay.” 
Mina saw Game Over flash across the screen a second time as Haruka looked at the woman who had just entered. 
She was unquestionably beautiful, with a delicately rounded face that suggested a touch of foreignness at the eyes, eyes in green or blue but also somehow both, shifting a bit as the tides. Her hair was elegantly curled to her shoulders, and her carriage was straight and practiced, a show dog out for the afternoon with all the regular mutts. She wore a finely tailored blouse of silk with a demurely pleated skirt, round toe leather on that fit her perfectly on her feet, a bag at her side that was the sort of designer you wore if you were too polished for garishness of advertising that you wore designer. The whole of her felt wrong in the crown, like placing Italian marble in a kid’s playplace, and she smelled of rose and jasmine. 
But none of that was what stopped Mina in her tracks, no, wealth and polish was not enough to frighten her off. It was the look Haruka gave her, that wide-eyed gaze like a tourist standing in front of some great masterwork, and the softness with which she had responded. Mina didn’t know if they were together, or if they weren’t but she knew one thing for sure: 
Haruka was desperately smitten. She could have competed with Usagi for stupid in love, at that point. She and Usagi were getting nowhere with this one. 
Haruka rose to her feet, taking her bag and tossing it over her shoulder in one motion. MIchiru turned to leave the arcade, and Haruka gave a nod back to Usagi. 
“Hey, uh, you with the buns,” She smiled and tossed her hair, “We should play next time.” 
Usagi’s eyes damn near became hearts, but Mina just gave a half-hearted wave and a nod. There were fights you could win, and fights you couldn’t win, and Minako Aino didn’t ever throw effort straight into a fire. She had more of a sense of self-preservation than that. 
Haruka turned to walk next to her companion, who gave her the smallest closed-mouth smile. 
“Well, aren’t we making friends so quickly today?” 
Haruka chuckled. “You jealous or something?” She looked at the woman with what Mina noted was a mix of hope and fear. 
“Oh, terribly.” she answered. This woman knew exactly what Mina knew.
Haruka shook her head, unable to keep up the ruse. “They’re high school girls,” she shrugged, “ They seem like such little kids. But they’re cute, right?” 
“As kittens.” Noted the elegant woman, as they breezed out the door. 
There was a pause for a moment as even Motoki stood beside them to watch them leave, the perfume still hanging in the air as if the entire place were surrounded by petals. Usagi put her hands on her hips. 
“Is it just me, or were they both ridiculously good-looking?”
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waywardbeanie · 4 years ago
Text
A Man of Letters - Chapter One
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Pairing: Dean Winchester x Female Reader
Summary: It started as a simple hunt for Sam and Dean Winchester. Dean didn’t realize that this single case would change his life forever. Now they are on the biggest mission of their lives, and without the use of cellphones, the only way he can communicate with the love of his life is through old fashioned letter writing. He has done everything in his power to keep her safe, but will it be enough?
Word Count: 2428
Series Warnings: Language, slow burn, angst, smut, alcohol consumption, fluff, SPN typical violence (individual chapters will contain relevant warnings)
A/N: This series has been rattling around in my head for a while. It would never have made it to the light of day if it was not for my beautiful group of friends with whom none of this would be possible! You know who you are and I love you all!
If you’d like to be tagged, my list is open. Just send me an ask HERE:
Spotify Playlist : A Man of Letters
This series is ongoing!
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Y/N,
It’s been two days since I left your sweet ass laying in that bed alone. I decided I’m just going to share my thoughts with you. Have you ever noticed it is so much easier to write them down than it is to say them out loud?  You have no idea how long I stood leaning against the door frame of your bedroom watching you sleep. Don’t laugh, it’s one of the most beautiful things that I have ever seen, I don’t know how long I’m going to be gone and I wanted that memory seared into my brain.
I’m sitting here in a hotel room; I’m supposed to be cleaning our guns while Sam has gone to get dinner. I’ll get to it, but I wanted to write to you first. As Sam and I were driving this first leg, he was filling me in on the case but between you and I, I really wasn’t listening. Sammy knew it too, but he kept spewing out facts anyway. Driving down the highway, Zeppelin in the deck. 
All I could think about was the night we met. You busted me staring at you so many times and each time you would just smile that dazzling smile at me.  Remember when I asked you to dance? You looked up at me through your lashes, tucked your hair behind your ear and smiled that sweet shy smile of yours. “I can’t, I’m working,” you said. I just laughed because you had no idea I was too. If it wasn’t for that nest of Vamps, I would have never met you. Thank God for Vampires!  I need to cut this short; I have guns to clean and Sammy will be back any minute. Please write me back, you can just send it to Bobby’s old PO Box in Sioux Falls, people in the group (usually Jodi) checks it all the time and will make sure I get it.  I miss your voice and your laugh. Stay safe until we are together again. 
I Love you,
D
3 years ago
Y/N had just moved to Lincoln, Nebraska 6 months before. It was where the dart landed when she closed her eyes and threw it at the map. This was her new lease on life, she promised herself that wherever the dart landed is where she would go to open her photography studio.
 “Ugh, corn,” she groaned to herself. That’s all she knew about Nebraska is that they have corn…and pigs. She was going to be so mad if all she took pictures of was prize winning pigs at the 4-H Fair.  
She picked up her camera and took a picture of the map. She would blow it up and hang it in her new studio to remind her of her new lease on life. She pulled the map from the dingy motel room wall, folded it and put it in her backpack.
Zipping it up she thought about one of those inspirational posters she saw once that said “The greatest adventure is what lies ahead”. Walking out, the heavy motel room door slams behind her, almost as a sign that she was never going to look back, only forward.
She threw her backpack in the passenger seat of her 2008 black Jeep Wrangler hardtop that was already packed with her camera equipment and the few belongings that she had. She pushed the Spotify app on her phone, “More Than A Feeling” by Boston began to play and she pointed the nose of her Jeep west, towards a new life.
Six months, Y/N had been in Lincoln and business was finally picking up. The owner of a honky tonk and blues bar called The Zoo wanted her to come take pictures for their new advertisements. Y/N walked through the door shabby club at 6:00pm on a Thursday night. It was country night, the first night of a 3-day shoot. She had her black skinny jeans tucked into a pair of black cowboy boots with black stitching and a knee length black jacket over a white form fitting T Shirt. She fit in, but not too much, after all she was a little more Rock-N-Roll than country.
Walking up to the bar she saw Travis, the owner, immediately. She set her backpack on the bar and leaned over to shake his hand. “Nice to see you again Y/N, glad we could put this together.”
“Me too,” she smiled back. “Can I just stow my bag behind the bar so I can be hands free to get the shots we talked about?” “Of course.” Travis nodded. Y/N unzipped the backpack to retrieve her camera, closed it back up and handed the bag to Travis with a nod of thanks. Turning her back to the bar she scanned the crowd. She could not believe it was already half full so early on a Thursday.
The band just walked on stage, welcomed the crowd and dived right into “Country Girl” by Luke Bryan. As the dancefloor began to fill up, Y/N once again scanned the crowd. Her gaze stopped at two tall men over at a table in the corner, one has longish hair almost to his shoulders and the other is just an inch shorter than his company. She locked eyes with the man who is of smaller stature as he brought a bottle of beer to his lips. She could feel the heat creeping up her face and she smiled at him.
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 As he pulled the beverage from his mouth, the side of his mouth quirked up and he winked at her. She looked down at her camera quickly, fumbling with the lens cap. She could feel her cheeks flush as a tiny bit of sweat popped up on the back of her neck.
 “Holy shit,” she breathed. That man was beautiful. Starting with his black work boots, up his Levi clad legs, to his fitted white T-shirt under a red and white open flannel. His hair was brown but what shook her were his piercing eyes. She was too far away to see their color, but they were laser focused. It was like he looked right into her soul.
“Shake it off,” she chastised herself, “you’re here for a job.” She slid the lens cap in her back pocket next to her phone and brought the camera up to her face. Pointing at the crowd she began to take pictures; she took a few shots of the whole crowd but then began to focus on individual couples and the band on the stage.
 Throughout the night as she moved around the bar to get different shots, she would try to sneak a glimpse of the stranger in the corner. Each time she would catch sight of him, he was watching her. She would quickly smile and look away. They played this game most of the night.
As the band came back to the stage from their last break of the night, she had just returned from the back of the office area where she was showing Travis the pictures she had taken to confirm she was capturing the ambience he wanted for the promotional push. She glanced up to what she now referred to in her mind as “The Hot Guy Corner”. Her stomach dropped immediately; he was gone.
 Y/N didn’t know what she expected but she expected...something. “For God’s sake, he was staring at me all night,” she thought. Shrugging to herself, she plastered a smile on her face to chase the sadness away and scanned the crowd looking for the next set of shots. 
“Hey, sweetheart,” a deep voice rumbled, the breath warm against the shell of her ear. Y/N gasped and stumbled backwards into a hard wall of chest. Two large hands grasped her shoulders to steady her. “Sorry,” he chuckled next to her ear. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Straightening her spine, she turned around. Looking up, she peered into the most stunning moss green eyes that she had ever seen.  “H-H-Hey,” she stuttered, “you just surprised me that’s all.” She stepped back out of his grasp.
“Yeah, again sorry about that.” He smiled. Looking down at you he continued, “so I was wondering, would you like to dance?” She tucked her hair behind her ear like she always did when she was nervous and looked up at him smiling. “I can’t, I’m working.” She gestured with her camera.
“Well I figured it was close to the end of the night, so you might have time for a dance, ya know, just one.” He indicated to the dance floor. “Um, yeah I’d like that. Can you catch me at the last song of the night? That way I can finish up the shoot and put my camera away.”
“Sure.” He grinned, “I’ll find you for the last song.” He reached over and lightly squeezed her free hand, turned on his heel and walked back towards the corner table.
Before she knew it, the band leader was thanking the crowd for joining them on a Thursday night and that they would now close the night with “Colder Weather” by the Zac Brown Band. Y/N felt her heart begin to beat faster as she quickly put her camera back into her backpack behind the bar. She zipped up the bag and as she stood her eyes drifted to the dance floor.
There he stood in all his handsome magnificence as he locked eyes with her, smiling as he began lifting his hand towards her. She smiled back as the butterflies were riotous in her stomach and her body began to tremble. Walking over she took his outstretched palm as he led her to the middle of the dance floor.
 As they turned to each other, she put her left hand on his shoulder and her right hand in his as she felt his palm rest on the small of her back. Looking up at him through her lashes, she smiled. “Hey again,” he grinned. She huffed out a laugh, “Hey yourself.”
She concentrated on moving her feet to the music and prayed her hands didn’t get sweaty as his enveloped hers. She feels his touch lightly on her back as he leads her through the dance, and she swears it is burning a hole through her clothes. They didn’t speak after that, moving around the dancefloor as if they had done this together a million times.
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The song was over too soon, and she was mentally kicking herself that she hadn’t taken this man up on the offer to dance an hour ago. As the final cords of the song came to an end, Y/N reluctantly stepped back. As she did, this denim and flannel clad man held gently but firmly onto her hand.
“I wish I would have asked you to dance sooner,” the corner of his mouth lifted in a half smile.
“Well, unfortunately I was still working.” She wasn’t sure why he was still holding her hand, but she couldn’t look at them for fear she could actually see the sparks zinging off their linked fingers. Hesitantly she let go, finding comfort in the front pocket of her jeans.
“Thank you for the dance.” She stood there awkwardly for a moment. When she looked up at him again, he was just staring at her closely. She smiled uncertainly at him and then turned on her heel to walk to the bar and grab her bag.
“Wait!” She stopped in her tracks and looked back over her shoulder. “Can I walk you to your car?”
“No, it’s ok.” She shook her head with a slight smile, “I parked under a light.”
She grabbed her bag quickly off the bar where Travis set it and with a quick wave she headed toward the door. As she made it out of the bar into the parking lot, she began taking deep gulping breaths of fresh air.
 “Why did he make me so nervous?” she asked herself. It’s just ridiculous. As she rummaged through her bag for her keys, she looked up to notice her dance partner’s tall friend leaning against a dark colored muscle car, parked a few spaces away from her Jeep. He wasn’t watching her exactly, but she could feel eyes on her. With keys in hand she unlocked the door and glanced toward the bar.
Standing in the doorway, leaning against the doorframe watching her was “Smoking Hot Flannel Guy”. He lifted his hand in a wave, she smiled and waved back. She jumped in her Jeep, cranked the engine and with Bob Seger’s “Her Strut” blaring from the speakers, she peeled out of the gravel parking lot with the silliest grin plastered on her face.
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The roads were deserted this time of night as she drove like a bat out of hell, which is normal, no concern there, towards her little two-bedroom bungalow. Suddenly a light bulb went off in her head and she slammed on her brakes in the middle of the two-lane road. Quickly she looked in the rear-view mirror to make sure someone wasn’t about to plow right into the ass end of her Jeep.
She began banging on her steering wheel “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!” Y/N couldn’t believe it. She never even asked him what his name was. She was a people person, she always asked people their name. His mere presence made her so unsettled she forgot to ask a simple question. He didn’t ask what her name was either. “Well,” her mental dialogue began “maybe he would have if you let him walk you to your Jeep.”
“Ugh,” she thumped her head against the head rest. “This is what happens when you rarely find someone attractive.” She shook her head slightly. “You totally forget how to construct a sentence like a basic human being.”
She clutched the steering wheel and jammed her foot on the gas toward home. Her euphoric mood quickly dissipating. Y/N was never going to see the tall, handsome stranger again and she didn’t even know his damn name.
Chapter 2
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scottymcgeesterwrites · 4 years ago
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Final Fantasy XV Review
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Year: 2016
Original Platform: PlayStation 4
Also available on: PC (Steam), XBox One
Version I Played: PlayStation 4
Here we go. The final Final Fantasy review of the main single-player games. I just want to say, first off, we’ve been waiting for this game since 2006. It took them ten damn years to finally release this game. I clearly remember the teaser trailer they released when it was called Final Fantasy XIII Versus, and my next-door neighbor and I were so hyped for this game when we were freaking teenagers. After years of delays, Square Enix revamped it into Final Fantasy XV.
Did it live up to the wait? Well, read and find out.
Synopsis:
Noctis Lucis Caelum is the heir to the throne of the kingdom of Lucis. On his birthday, he sets off with his three best friends and bodyguards (Ignis, Prompto, Gladio) to marry his betrothed, Lunafreya. The marriage is supposed to be a political one, though Noct and Lunafreya had grown up together and become fond of each other. But peace turns to war as the empire of Niflheim betrays Insomnia and invades. Noct, now on the run, has to reclaim his right to the throne by collecting the necessary family heirlooms which will banish the darkness.  
Gameplay:
Open-world Final Fantasy.
That is the big selling point for this game. 
A MASSIVE step up from Final Fantasy XIII’s gameplay, Final Fantasy XV has you roaming around and attacking enemies on the field in real time. The battle system returns to something slightly more conventional by having you cast spells and use items. It seems like this is what Square really intended to do after Final Fantasy XII. Looking back, Final Fantasy XIII feels like some prototype before Final Fantasy XII, so it really becomes apparent that Final Fantasy XIII’s gameplay comes off as a huge mistake.
This game’s major’s strength comes from the player engaging with a massive world. You camp. You take on hunts. You take on a bajillion sidequests. You run across the world. You drive across the world. You can ride a chocobo across the world.
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However, the dip in the gameplay comes from how easily accessible these sidequests are. The map tells you exactly where you go 24/7. I started to have an existential crisis around my 50th sidequest in a row. Why am I doing this? What’s the point? I go here to kill a thing, or go there to help someone by giving a potion or taking a picture. You start to realize that a good bulk of sidequests are either hunting daemons or fetching an item. You start to deconstruct the meaning of playing a video game as you think to yourself, “Why do I play video games?” while also thinking “But wait, one more and then I swear I’m done.”.
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I get it, not everyone has the time nowadays to figure out a huge game like this. I get it, video games are now marketed to everyone for ease. At the same time, I personally love a good challenge. I mean, I’m the guy who has Dark Souls as one of his favorite video games of all time, so my opinion on the matter might definitely be skewered compared to most. I generally want to feel like I actually figured something out by myself rather than following a tracker on the screen and walking from task to task and then saying, “Okay done. Next.”.
Too much of that and playing a video game starts to feel like a 9 to 5 job to me. This game is great to play during quarantine, but at one point I saw playing this game as feeling like an actual job. Wake up, eat breakfast, time to hunt some daemons.
This is the growing conflict some people have with story-driven games versus open-world games. I see the argument focused too much on words like “linear”, but in reality we should be talking about “automation”. If a video game is too automated, then did you really play a video game? Or did you watch a movie that allows you to control the camera angle? At first, the idea of driving around an open-world Final Fantasy game sounds amazing. Isn’t that what fans always dreamed of? In reality, you don’t really drive around at your leisure. Even when you have the car set to “manual”, you can’t speed up, drive off-road, or pull off a sick drift like in The Fast and the Furious. Your car still automatically stays on the road wherever you’re going. It’s not so much “manual” as it is “I can control where and when to stop and which road to take”. Riding chocobos at your leisure is much more fun, but becomes increasingly impractical as you can just fast-travel to necessary locations in your car.
The sights and sounds of the fictional world of Eos are enough to gloss over these shortcomings though. It IS still fun to roam around and fight monsters and save the day. My bottom line is, “You don’t think about just how mindless the tasks are unless you keep playing for many days straight.”. And I poured hours into this game day after day because of the 2020 pandemic quarantine.
Graphics:
Obviously the best thus far. However, in-game facial expressions on the NPCs are still quite stilted and awkward. This game made me realize that we’ve yet to jump a hurdle when it comes to in-game graphics. The game is so polished but there are still limitations when it comes to giving the characters natural movements, both in body and lips. So an NPC could be shouting “WOW THAT’S AMAZING!” but have a straight face jumping up and down, despite the fact that the character model is the most realistic we’ve created so far in a video game. I was looking back at in-game cutscenes of Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, and found it ironic that they can portray body movements so much better, but that’s the trade-off. Less graphics power to portray realistic bodies, but the graphics power can then be allocated to focus on natural movements. Nowadays, all the graphics power is focused on making things look good, but that hardly leaves room for making things move naturally.
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Story:
After the overly-complicated plotline of Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XV feels like a breath of fresh air. On the surface, it’s a straightforward tale of a boy seeking to become a king after his father is brutally murdered by enemy forces. The bromance between the young king and his bodyguards is endearing. Each character feels distinct and genuinely makes you laugh. The setup sounds like prime real estate for an emotionally charged storyline.
Unfortunately, it falls apart somewhere around the last quarter. What should have been a strong and straightforward story turned into a rushed, hasty mess by the final act.
The story started SO strong, they practically had it in the bag, but then it became apparent that many important elements were glossed over - especially when it came to the main villain. I realized that some things required me to read between the lines, or even were only explained in character dossiers in the archive section of the menu. Supposedly, the movie Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV explains more, but do you really expect me to have to watch a separate movie to understand the actual game? The final quarter of the story feels like someone was trying to finish NaNoWriMo, realized they were running out of time, and quickly jumped from scene to scene to reach that 50k word goal. The ten-year time-skip is a joke. The final chapter is sorely disappointing.
The ending was appropriate though, and even beautiful. However, the overall story didn’t have the necessary emotional weight to really make me feel anything. I thought to myself, “I feel like I should be tearing up but instead I feel nothing.”. Even Final Fantasy XII, which lacked a romance, had me swelling up at the end. Final Fantasy XV didn’t make me swell up until literally the last few seconds of the post-credits scene.
People complained about the advertising (Coleman, Cup Noodles) but that didn’t bother me.
What does bother me is the lack of variety in the main cast, and in numerous ways. There were so many interesting side characters that didn’t receive much screen time, or use at all in the story. The strong focus on only the four male leads made it a sausagefest. I was craving more out of Aranea Highwind and Iris Amicitia. They are important but don’t get any screen time at all in the final chapter, nor do we ever hear from them ever again after the time-skip. Aranea Highwind was such a cool character, but once again ends up being wasted potential.
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The main cast lacked distinctive styles. When I first saw the main cast, I had a hard time telling them apart. They looked like a k-pop band. Compare the main cast of Final Fantasy XV to literally any other Final Fantasy main cast and you can immediately spot the difference.
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The four main leads do have distinct personalities, and I quite loved hearing their comments and banter. It felt realistic, but at times it became ridiculous. I rolled my eyes when Prompto would say things like, “Hashtag sorry not sorry.” That was a bit too on the nose, and came off as Square trying to pander to the current generation.
But what really rubbed me the wrong way is the incredible lack of non-white characters in the entire game. Lestallum feels so wrong to me as a Hispanic. Lestallum is supposed to be modeled after Havana, Cuba.
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Its music, its buildings, its activities. It has a tropical climate, and yet every single denizen is pale white. Every. Single. One. I am not exaggerating. It feels so absolutely wrong walking around that city and not seeing anyone with the slightest shade of brown. This isn’t some uncalled-for SJW rant, it’s a simple fact. Tropical climates breed tanner skins. My brain naturally did a double-take when seeing the all-white population, saying, “Hmmm, something’s wrong here.”. For God’s sake, Final Fantasy XII, made over a decade earlier, did a better job at displaying the various nuances in skin tones, and that was on the PlayStation 2! Final Fantasy X, even older, seemed to properly portray tropical beach populations, inspired by the Philippines, with the character Wakka.
I noticed that they really took the time to incorporate elements from virtually every single Final Fantasy game. Aside from the crystals, the modern settings, and other obvious elements, four male leads are reminiscent of Final Fantasy III, the sinister chancellor hearkens back to Kefka from Final Fantasy VI, the enemy Yojimbo resembles Final Fantasy X’s version of Yojimbo, a certain boss battle reminded me of Cid Raines from Final Fantasy XIII.
Also, there’s Dino. Quite possibly the most annoying Final Fantasy NPC ever.
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The overly obnoxious Italian stereotype made me want to punch his face, and also took me out of the experience of the fictional world. Every time you spoke with him he's all like "HEY HOW YOU DOIN WELCOME TO OLIVE GARDEN YOU TALKIN TO ME BADA BING BADA BOOM SPICY PIECE OF MEATBALL CAPISCE? AMIRITE??"
Square seemed to treat this game as a milestone in the series, alluding to everything the series ever did. It’s a shame that the story itself wasn’t quite up to snuff to be held in such regard.
Music:           
The game’s major lyrical song is copyrighted, which is a first for a Final Fantasy game. It makes sense why they chose the song “Stand by Me”, both in literal and figurative terms of the story.             
The score to this game is quite fantastic. The series has its first female composer, Yoko Shimomura. I have absolutely no complaints about the music. Nobuo Uematsu didn’t even pop into my head during the entire game. It’s the first time since Uematsu’s departure that I felt immersed in the score. The motifs are distinct and strong. The battle music is vibrant and an orchestral orgasm to listen to.    
Notable Theme:            
“Somnus”  
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The main theme of the game. It plays right away in the main menu. I love how it is incorporated into the rest of the score, and my brain kept wanting to hear it to its completion.   
Direct Sequel?           
Nope. However, there is downloadable content that fills in the gap of events within the game. Supposedly, Final Fantasy XV is loosely connected to Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy Type-O, all sharing common themes and possibly set in the same universe. You can also watch the prequel movie, Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV.
Did it Live up to the Hype?           
Eh.           
Yes, and no.            
It was cool to play around, but the rest is a flaccid attempt at being a notable entry in the series “for fans and first-timers”, as the words proudly display every time you load the game. It’s not the worst in the series, but certainly not the best. It’s somewhere in the mid-to-low tier.
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stoplookingatmeblog · 3 years ago
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twenty-one
1.
It was around that time that all my friends went to work in different chapters of what you can call ‘the filming industry’. P-G shot beer adverts which used some kinds of robotics to get the right shot, flip the bottle right, and then slept with this girl who offered him a paid internship in managing pretty much everything on sets of a bunch of movies, ads and whatnot. My own mother, finally getting out of the convenient but unemancipated housewife life, got a job in supervising the shoot - making sure the costumes were right, the scenography, all that stuff. It was pretty much, you could call it, the time of Life On Set Then - everywhere you went, ads, movies, Netflix series, all of it wrapped up in fake police ‘do not cross’ kind of tape, horses and knights from our beer-bottles riding the streets, and the catering busses with food that was (mother told me) ‘absolute horeshit’. Whatever. The time was of living in a reality created for money, by money, with money, because of money, giant heaps of money, distributed unequally (of course) to all my student friends who didn’t even need the money except for that feel of ‘life on their own’.
I didn’t have a job. Before not working, I worked a couple of cafes, restaurants and the like. That was the vibe. I hated it. Each time I began working in one of these places, I ended up sleeping with someone (first time a guy, and then a girl or woman that was honestly too old for me) and that I hoped marked the end of relationship with gastronomy for me. So I didn’t work, deciding not to decide what to do next, not putting myself on the road to one kind of future or another. I didn’t want life to go anywhere directed. I thought about writing but then I thought about the seriousness and stiffness of writing, whether or not it’s a purely natural act, all that, and decided on trying to squeeze the last drops of childhood (it was adolescence, but adolescence is really a final sigh of childhood) and live what was left of the kid-life to the fullest.
I was twenty-one years old. 
A group of friends convinced me to go with them surfing (on my parents’ money), to Victoria, a place which location doesn’t really matter, except that I thought, and still do, that the spot is an actual a piece of heaven on earth. A nearly imaginary point on the increasingly smaller map of this melting planet. My age, too, was melting away like icecream - not having a job and surfing in Victoria, like a teenage pimple, some place that popped up and presented itself in its complete and vulgar form and purpose that you initially didn’t believe and then wept after at that airport because you could never come back. It was an actual speck of heaven on the map. 
Even though everyone was younger than us - four of us, me, P-G, J, and Stone (the last one, a tired intellectual I could never get tired of, except you could see he was really both bored and exhausted by being born and living as himself. And his nickname surprisingly not derived from the astronomical amounts of weed he smoked but his actual god-given surname (which he thought of changing, because of his father) - even though everyone who came to Victoria was younger than us by something like three or four years, we surprisingly didn’t have trouble at least getting along, and at most sleeping with girls there. It was even more grand in that way, even if absolutely not true, when you saw yourself in their eyes as someone older and somehow experienced, who somehow kept going on, and somehow knew what was going on. The same lie made most of us, (excluding me, as I mentioned) get a job around that time. In movies and advertisements, with no creative input or control, but like actors that nobody knew about, playing their own invented parts backstage.
I was twenty-one years old and completely aware of both how small and how big that was. I knew about the kinds of things I probably should be doing and that’s why I sometimes did them, for a minute putting my feet into that creek too, but most of the time staying at the bank and just watching. I knew what being twenty-one meant, so I decided to sit back and watch it.
My friends all surfed a lot, which would normally bother me because I did it only for the first week of our month-long stay, but quickly dropped it and decided to stay at the beach and read, and drink and look at some really beautiful girls who passed me by, and for once enjoy that stranger-life. By the second week, after seeing in a restaurant a shirt with a ‘SeXsurfing ‘00’ inscription on it (‘00 being the year we were born, which made us inspect our parents’ lifelines to check for the possibility that at that time some of them were in Victoria), and in the twenty-one-year-old drunk epiphanius inspiration, all four of us decided that we would lead the ‘SeXsurfing ‘21’ lifestyle, not thinking about the ‘42 and the ‘63 and all that shit. 
I wasn’t the most successful one when it came to girls, but I can say that the stories I had with them were the most absurd and worthy of telling. Even though it was J who (and he too asked himself why in the world that was) was able to talk with someone new every evening, somehow perhaps betraying my unwanted by nonetheless existing monogamous attachment, I slept with only one girl over the course of the last week, picking her up (or perhaps her picking me up) through a conversation about our shared borderline-sociopathic or rebellious outlook on reality. That was very twenty-one. 
Our first meeting (like every meeting since) was going to one of the three tourist shops on the beach and stealing something. And that too was very twenty-one. We were rich enough (our parents were) and far away from home enough to do all that. And we were both young and beautiful enough to want a mugshot we could keep from an arrest by a Victoria Police County Jail or whatever it might have been called. We were never caught but we did steal something every day, and then get drunk in the evening, and then fuck in the night. While my friends had these singular, although beautiful, encounters I would drunkenly burst into the closed restaurant with my temporary girl-friend, steal absolutely vile icecream from the fridge, and then play chess with her on the hotel rooftop at four AM. 
The four of us were twenty-one years old and born in the year 2000 which in the same way made sense - our lives were easy to calculate, clearly-definededly started, and even if they had to end with no thing coming back or being repeated, the twenty-one points we scored didn’t mean anything except the joyride and experiment, and meaningless game that it was. We were taking our shot at living, taking our shot at playing, and even when we didn’t win, it still didn’t mean anything. We lived on our parents’ money, or on advertisement money, or cafe-sleep-with-someone-there-and-then-leave-because-you-don’t-need-money money, all of it a mystification, but that those twenty-one years led to nothing we suddenly did not care. 
Well, and then being woken up by the police, although surprisingly not because of the icecream dream but for the crime of sleeping in a hammock on the dunes which (I learned) was territory of both the military and part of some natural park.
What made me go home with something in the end were the conversations we had at that time, and in particular the conversations with Stone. Like me, Stone had a feeling of injustice done to him by his family, not having a real father and hanging down on the tired gray hair of our housewife mothers and all, and it made us connect on a level we didn’t with either P-G or J, who were most often busy surfing or thinking about the jobs they had or would one day have, and the girls they met that weren’t my girls so I didn’t care that much.
Stone kept affirming that both of us (although him in particular) were in possession of superior intelligence, which I instinctively tried to discourage him from saying (because I didn’t like sucking my own dick like that), but nonetheless accepted as at least potentially or partially true. In my case, it was not intelligence that me connect with Stone but some kind of a shared understanding of what was going on, that we were twenty-one and what that meant, like a filthy two-pigeon flock of pigeons flying above the waves, knowing the fact of the creature swimming underneath the surface. I thought, and still do, it had to do largely with coming from an unhappy or non-existent family, which really makes you understand that all you do, with even the most meaningful and beautiful things, is just this game that you play but holds no particular meaning beyond it. That and that love, no matter how beautiful or true, can slip away from you like shit. 
‘It is completely lonely’, he said one night as we chugged down the bottles of beer drunk rich kids left behind running away from the police - bottles half-empty to me and I think half-full for him, but I still haven’t quite figured that one out, ‘Because you never really see things the way the rest of them do, and each conversation almost the same, you begin to think the only way to be is to be alone’
I agreed. I usually did, being aware that he was slightly more intelligent than me.
‘Back when I was in the Institute, they told me I would have problems with getting out of relationships with people what other people get from other people because what I want is to be understood and that is problematic when you think you want it but also think it’s impossible to ever understand anything’
I too thought you could never understand anything, but had a sense he perhaps only said it to keep me on the same page. Stone chugged down another half-full beer and kept talking. I stayed silent, in part because I would probably say the same things he did.
‘When I was seventeen and worked in a factory, I gained a sort of awareness of how my life would look like’
‘What kind of a factory?’, I asked
‘A cake factory, I would work in the hot section and pull out cakes out of the oven and then fill some of them with cherry, and some of them with apple-cinnamon. And then, because I was seventeen and my work was fundamentally illegal you could say, they’d let me work in the cold section in the night, and I applied sugar coating on these doughnuts, you know’
‘Yeah’
‘And then wrap them up in plastic covering, you know’
‘Yeah, yeah’
‘when the coating was dry, and send them to another section of the factory. And so over and over.’
‘So, what does your life look like because of that, do you think?’
‘I don’t know…’, he took a puff from one of the cigarette butts we found that night in the ashtray, ‘... I guess working in the factory was a kind of almost psychedelic experience that really made me aware what my attitude towards suicide is. You’re young, and you step into that thing, and you do those things because you want to, you don’t need to. Well, you might need to but the need is still your choice, it isn’t honed into your life like… Like I recognised at some point that each cake I filled with the stuffing or coated was an expression of the same kind of thing I did when I smoked weed (a lot), or drunk (a lot) or had sex. That, ultimately, I would never be able to not think about it.’ 
‘I mean, I think the position we are in - if I understand you correctly - of being relatively well-off - I mean our parents - would make you unable to really plunge into anything that you’re doing, right? Because you ultimately don’t have to do anything, like, really, like here, you always sort of treat it as a game’
‘Not even a game’, he said, and the sun was already slowly creeping up the mountain in front of the shop where we were sitting, ‘But just not a challenge. Because of our intellect, both yours and mine, the only challenge you really face is whether to continue being or not, and the rest is just, you know, stuffing these cakes. But that decision, you know The Myth of The Sisyphus?’
I did.
‘Yeah, so that decision you have to and always will have to make fundamentally alone. And so either go and work - work in any kind of way and do those things and hand them over to others to complete them and you don’t really ask questions (but we can’t do that, neither you nor I) or you step out of the factory and face the living sun, like you’re definitely going to feel after we leave this place, and decide whether you’re more happy alone or with others, or whether you want to keep on handing things to others or not, and all that.’
‘I mean this is the reason I think people shouldn’t have children - I’ve written a piece about it, you should definitely read it - because it’s kind of like juggling with a hot potato and handing it to someone else, so that they have to confront these questions, instead of you, but what you really do is give up.’
At that point I don’t think I understood his cake factory metaphor or didn’t want to believe that I did in the fear that it wasn’t very profound.
‘So what do you think you’d like to actually do?, if you could pick anything at all?’
‘I don’t know’, again inhaling another cigarette butt and handing one to me. And the sun almost rolled its own boulderous weight to the top of the mountain. ‘I think I would like to have a family, especially since meeting May (he was the only one of out SeXsurfing quartet with a girlfriend), I started thinking that maybe I can, and I’m recognising this, give someone something that my father never gave me, hoping to do it right this time’
‘Yeah, I mean that’s literally the ending of my book - have I told you already I’ve written a book? - that the main character thinks he can do it right this time and he of course fucks it up, but I don’t know if I still think that. You know, life is sometimes surprising.’
‘Exactly’, he exalted the smoke, and the sun, previously rolling up the mountain to sunrise, seemed to have fallen back again to the bottom of the mountain, and began its journey anew. 
‘I mean, when I was seventeen I worked in a factory…’
‘What kind of a factory?’
‘A psychedelic cake factory’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I worked in this factory and I worked in the hot section and my job was to take the cakes out of the oven and then pump them full of acid, or pot, or sex, or anything you could get your hands on. I guess it was illegal, but then again I was seventeen so my work was all fundamentally illegal.’
‘Where did the cakes later go?’
‘Later? Well in the factory I sent them to another section that I never really saw, but later later to homes, parties, rich people who really wanted to try the kind of stuff their kids were taking, I guess’, he chuckled, ‘It’s interesting, I wonder if my father ever tried one. Maybe in some alternative universe or something. Maybe he ate it and became like me, and dropped everything and went to work in a factory and in that reality they stuffed the cakes with shit like cherry and coated them with sugar, you know, maybe that was the right reality, and later he dropped that job, and went outside of the factory, and made the choice and threw himself under a bus or something.’
‘The right reality. 
Maybe.’
2. 
Lou from the restaurant (the SeXsufring tshirt we found was in that restaurant) was the kind of man you’d always want to be. We travelled to him for dinner hitchhiking from the beach, in twos, usually P-G and J, and then me and Stone, around seven, or all together if we could sit in the trunk of the car when we travelled in one of the rich-kid rented cabrios, and you would feel the day (same day, every day) a winding road under our feet (like gods, treading on forever) cutting through the mountains and the sunset rolling his boulder somewhere and when you finished eating you’d lie down on the warm good night asphalt with a can and listen to music on one of our phones and wait for someone to take you back to the beach. 
But gods that we were, Lou from the restaurant was the kind of man you’d always want to be. It was always a show, too. He would come by people’s tables (our table in particular, because he knew and we knew), this enormous older man dressed in a white sweaty shirt with eyes that looked blind but saw everything, and told us stories about all that he knew, which was pretty much the town, and the town hall, and the restaurant, and everything. And the girls also came there to eat, and everyone too. And everyone knew Lou from the restaurant.
I always ordered things I could not afford because P-G and J were always happy to lend me money, so I ate octopuses and steaks, and everything was everything you’d ever want to eat. There were half-blind, strangely-speckled cats that roamed under the tables, not even expecting guests’ dinner cat-food enjoying the company, like we did, and there were kid cats and mother cats and they would fight on the backdrop of the white-painted summer trees, and some girls would say the cats’ were really poor and imply their lives were wretched and miserable to which I would reply with something like natural selection and they would say that’s a horrible thing to say and then all of us would bite into the steaks that Lou brought us. 
After P-G  asked him to tell us his version of the legends we heard of from the girls, about his old restaurant, and how someone ruined it and how the paradise moved from Victoria to this new town (I don’t know the name, but it was simply Lou’s town), and it seemed like god himself was telling us the story, dusting it off, driving away the spiders and the snakes, an old book or a chapter in a book that everyone on the beach talked about but it seemed nobody actually heard. Except the four of us.
‘Well so you know I’m really electrician’, he began, ‘but at one moment I tell my wife - let’s build restaurant. So I go to the town hall, here’, and he pointed to a building not ten meters away, ‘and the auction close at 12, I go in at 11:56 and the price is 12000 and I go in and say 60000. So I get the restaurant and everyone crazy and angry at me but I have it.’, I cut out the portion of the steak and chewed on it orgasmically. Everything Lou cooked was good as hell. ‘So I build restaurant…’
‘But not here, right, on the beach?’, P-G, who heard most versions of the story interrupted
‘Yes, the beach. So I build restaurant and first year I make so much money I put it in…’, his broken eyes and mad half-blind english were both looking for the word, ‘like bags, plastic bags, trash bags, and it is so much I count it then in winter, because I have no time in summer. So it is good, so much money, going great. And then in year two thousand and… two thousand just, maybe, I go away for holiday and they call me “your restaurant is destroyed”, I say “no you’re kidding me”, and they say “no, no, they burn restaurant down, come back”. So I come back, and true, the restaurant is destroyed, and you cannot build it again because the law that was there changed so you cannot build now.’, as he was telling the story, Lou’s eyes stayed monotonously bland, bright and staring somewhere beyond. A true restaurateur, he never stopped looking at what was going on at the other tables so at that point he stood up, saying ‘I finish the story in moment’, and went to take care of something in the kitchen.
Then when he finally came back, he said:
‘So where was I now tell me.’
‘Your restaurant was burned down when you were out of the country’, I reminded him
‘Yes. So I move here and build new restaurant, and it is small but people come like before and they even fight for to eat, and they ask “you finished already, let us eat”, and my restaurant again now is doing well, very well, and people come, and still I don’t have space, but people come’
‘And is it going better or worse than in the previous location?’, P-G asked
‘No, there there was more money but here is good. Very good.’, he waved his grubby big hand at all the tables packed with people, girls, others like us. And he laughed with his tongue flying up and down in his mouth in a way some people find repulsive, but to us it was Lou from the restaurant, and Lou from the restaurant could honestly laugh in whichever goddamn way he pleased. 
‘Ok, I’m sorry but I have to go again, the people’, he pointed to the kitchen, ‘don’t know what they do’
Our twenty-one year old quartet replied ‘of course, of course’, in unison and for a while we sat there chewing our steaks, and fish and octopus, and another steak, silently, only saying a couple of words of admiration for Lou from the restaurant, the man you’d always want to be.
‘There are snakes and scorpions here’, P-G told me one time we went to the more rocky part of the dunes near where our tent was pitched. ‘So we have to be super careful, especially during the day. In the night they sleep in their wretched little caves or among the rocks, they won’t bother us in our sleep.’ 
But they will bother us when we’re awake, or when we think we are, but are someplace else, like Lou from the restaurant who went for holidays. You stop paying attention to what is slithering or crawling in the sand and one time as you are looking for a nice and fresh cigarette butt lost in the sand, BAM, and you are dead, like that (Lou’s grubby old hand falling down on the wooden table with a thud).
We were twenty-one years young and on holidays from either a job in advertising or not yet having a job in advertising, and there were girls and waves, and sand, and scorpions, and it was all a joyride so we didn’t really think about that. Well, to be honest, not much could go wrong - another day, like groundhog day, would be more or less the same, always better and better and better. And the shrinking, melting map - warmer and warmer and warmer. 
The worst that could happen, we knew, was the police coming in and chasing us away from the dunes (because it was both military grounds and a national park at the same time). But that wasn’t that bad, after all, it was police in paradise, and we felt so much love for them as we did for the scorpios and the snakes and it was just impossible for them to not love us back.
Well, hen one day it happened. It was after I woke up with her, for the first time in two weeks sleeping in an actual bed, but more importantly for the first time in perhaps a year sleeping with a warm body next to my heart, next to me, in my hands, falling asleep with my lip still in her teeth. I woke up in the morning and having the bare level of awareness of my state, that I must stink and will not be fun to be around in the morning (although the fresh air made hangovers impossible - what can I say, it was paradise), I decided to go back to the our camp on the dunes and sleep off the night in a hammock I usually inhabited. 
There were usually some locals (working in restaurants and the shops I stole flip-flops from) who like devils crawled out in the night and tried to party with the twenty-one year old us, drinking our booze and smoking our smokes, so when the white-poloed guy woke me up like bad sunrise saying ‘Police, wake up, police’, in sly english and a broken smile, my instinctive reaction was to reply with a classic ‘Shut the fuck up, you’re not police’, but after seeing one of them who definitely was police, with a uniform and gun and all, I complied with their request for my ID and let them write me a pink slip of paper demanding a fine so astronomic that none of them could not possibly believe I’d actually pay it. A younger policeman (also not uniformed) asked me what happened to my neck and, explaining a bruise that could only look like a love bite (and indeed it was), I replied that I was bitten by a wild animal (and indeed I was). He said that with that bruise-like love bite and a half-unbuttoned shirt I looked like a ‘star, rock star, you know’, and we both laughed, and I decided none of it was that bad after all. He looked like a ‘star, rock star, you know’, as well, slightly unfashionable but at the same time completely incredible in bluish sunglasses, a pink polo shirt and slightly silver but naturally black hair. In Victoria, the snake, too, was quite handsome, and what he ruined, at the end of the day, was only an hour of my sleep.
I met Lou from the restaurant - he saw some creature, and its wretched work, destroying his restaurant, but his bright, half-blind, all-seeing eyes burned with nothing but love. And mine, slowly but surely, started to shimmer with it too. The days, or the same day, grew brighter and brighter, and the nights drunker and drunker and the driving drunk on the beach got faster and faster, and more and more people fitting into one car, with no winding-road end in sight.
3. 
There was no hangover in Victoria, but going anywhere in the morning was especially difficult, as if the gravitational force doubled, or thriced, or quadrupled.
Stone, who had an admirable ability to make contact with any kind of an alien species of a person (that I really envied), found himself one night in a conversation with a russian maths student (the Russian started university well before the usual age, he was like 17), and when the next day we asked what the two talked about Stone only said ‘I think we are a week away from merging the theory of relativity with quantum mechanics. But give me another bottle and it will be one day.’
The Russian, Stone told us, was one of the ‘exceptionally intelligent’ ones (which Stone, had the habit of identifying and cataloguing into his set of people ‘worth talking to’). The Russian was younger than us - perhaps sixteen or seventeen, as I mentioned which really gave everything he said an additional benefit of seemingly prodigy-like, but also made Stone wonder whether he was a kind of a father-figure to the exceptionally intelligent maths student, that considering leading Stone to the two days later declaration that it was undoable, stemming from Stone’s own desire to redeem his father’s abusive absence et cetera et cetera. 
The Russian was so socially inept, that even I was doing quite well (it was not superior intelligence, that barred me from connecting with others, as Stone asserted). A prodigy, the Russian spoke not just maths and Einstein, but quite good english, french (from my limited knowledge I could confirm also quite good), spanish and bulgarian (which I had absolutely no idea about but he sounded possessed and speaking in tongues when he presented his abilities to us). He could play giftedly most instruments you could think of, but playing, he said, never really excited him. He was one of those kids who know and can do so much they would really rather not do it at all.
Because of our groups’ incidental and unexpected but intense interactions with girls, the Russian treated us with an unjustified reverence, but it was not any kind of envy, with a mind like that you don’t really envy anything except being able to rest from what’s in your head and for once have a good night’s sleep. There is a scene in the movie Beautiful Mind where the main character, a schizophrenic, lays out to a girl he likes, very systematically, astrophysically like, why she should sleep with him. I bet that’s what the Russian would do too in the future.
There is another scene in a movie - Interstellar where a group of astronauts looking for humanity’s potential new home (the map contracting, the world getting small since the year ‘00, now twenty-one, then ‘42 then ‘63, warmer and warmer and warmer), the group of astronauts lands on a planet, of constant, unending sea, sees in the distance what they think is the great mountains of a new found land. After a couple of minutes of advancing towards the mountains, Matthew Mcconaughey says in hollywood style ‘these are not mountains. These are waves’ and the four astronauts have to flee the slowly approaching catastrophic demise of the wave, which, due to a fucked-up gravity on the planet, rose to that catastrophic height. 
At six AM, after one of the exceptionally drunk nights, with the sun already in full swing, and the alcoholic gravity fucked-up in their heads, Stone and J went to catch a wave bigger than at any time of the day. 
While I was sleeping off the night in the hammock, with God knows what dreams, or maybe even no dreams at all, and P-G tossing and turning in the tent, and Stone and J surfing the morning wave, the Russian sat solemnly and alone on the sunrise beach and looked up at the starless sky, wiped clean by one gigantic white star which at that point (he knew, we didn’t know) was so big and close to the contracting map that it sucked out some of the time and some of the space from the air, making the tide rise more than at any time of the day. He knew why that was and we didn’t know but we were looking at the same thing, the earth getting warmer and warmer and warmer, and the wave growing higher and higher and 
And we would sometimes go away from Victoria, to a nearby town where the waves were always bigger and we marvelled at how they whip-cracked, splash-fell and rocked against the concrete-lined shore and drowned the air underneath with all their might, worked it into white foam. He knew and we didn’t, and while we lay down with girls looking into the stars and talking about constellations (only to then laugh about how drunk and absurd it is to think three stars can possibly represent the shape of a great bear or big dipper or any kind of stupid shit like that), The Russian tried to crack the code written in the stars. Looking for a new home for us. The four of us walked the shore and wondered about the origin of colorful pebbles spat out by the lapping magnificent waves, and he could probably tell us everything about each of them, trace lines from each falling star to each stone we cast mindlessly into the sea.
He could explain the shifting realities when the morning came, and why, at seventeen, you have to do certain things and not the others, and now, too, why we did all those things, why we worked in psychedelic factories and sung our hearts out to the bass of the speaker. Why we ran after girls beach-length and back, why we hitchhiked to Lou’s restaurant, why we came to Victoria in the first place, why we had jobs in advertising, why we were twenty-one, but Stone was right about one thing - the Russian was ‘fundamentally alone’
There is another scene in Interstellar, the next one after the giant wave, where Matthew Mcconaughey comes back to the spaceship waiting in the orbit of a water-mountain-these-are-not-mountains planet, discovers that time, tied with an invisible string to the fucked-up gravity) passes differently on the surface of the planet, in its orbit, and in general completely differently back on the contracting earth’s map where he left his children. How old were at the time he left in that movie - I can’t remember, let’s say twenty-one. Having spent only half an hour on the surface, he now plays the received messages from back home and sees his children’s lifetimes growing older and older and older and finally sees them surpassing them in age. He breaks down in tears and I suppose you could say he, too, was ‘fundamentally alone’
The Russian, Stone told us, was taught privately by a tutor who’s line of mathematical origin could be traced all the way to Gauss or someone. He could speak Einstein, french and spanish, and although his tongue got tied in human conversations, one day, as we drank beer on a small patch of grass in front of the local hotel, he proclaimed there was something very important we wanted to tell us. Concluding that the Russian was most definitely possessed by something (you could tell when he spoke bulgarian), we all decided listening would do no harm but at worst would be so incredible that we would not believe it. 
‘You guys are now young and strong and you surf and all, but seriously, you have to do sports’, he began, ‘I don’t mean just any sport but something that really puts weight on your muscles. Like rowing or pumping on the bench, you have to train and now prepare for the rest of your life. And cardio, too, it will save you from heart disease and such.’ - and you can imagine mine, our surprise and feeling of absurdity that a being like that was uttering sentences such as these at that moment. 
And that was it, the only normal set of words he ever uttered in front of us, which in his mouth was not normal at all - this man, trained by Gauss himself, had one recommendation to us and it was to do sports because it will help us to stay healthy in the future. 
In space, the state of weightlessness makes the unused muscles grow weak, and the astronauts have to use the special gym machines installed on their spaceship so that their bodies don’t entropy, and heart is a muscle, too, I think, and I wondered, briefly, after what the Russian told us, if it too can die with no gravity. And it seems that time is a muscle too. It contracts and then it unfolds, it squeezes and releases and lets you breathe and suffocates, and ultimately things seem neither good nor bad but just what they ended up being. Time can definitely die away and fall from you like a dead leaf. Or it can end up a pretty stone under the feet of a giant wave. You don’t feel how it squeezes and unfolds, how it lays you down in a warm bed in the arms of someone you didn’t ever know but who reminds you of everything. 
Matthew Mcconaughey - seeing messages from the future, past, present, now, never, always, and breaking down into tears, his heart breaking from weightlessness.
I was twenty one and I knew what it meant. 
And in a year I would be twenty two, and in another year twenty three, and in three years twenty four. And the astrology girls, going with us skinny dipping in the midnight water, they will disappear somewhere under the waves and start slowly fading away from our lives like an unused muscle.
J loved quoting this one scene from Matthew Mcconaughey's first movie: 
‘You know what I love most about college girls? I get older - they stay the sameeeee age’
And each time he said it, he laughed with the greatest, purest laughter you could find on this now planet.
4. 
‘And I got caught one time’
‘For what?’
‘Well, maybe two, but only one time involved the police. Second time. And that was me trying to steal an album, well, it was called Steal This Album’ - I was lying, although I did also steal that album, but having trouble with the police was for an attempted theft of headphones though that didn’t sound as sexy. And for some reason which made me feel real good I was flirting with the most beautiful girl under the good sun by us recounting our thefts both real or invented.
We both quickly settled that we had some borderline immoral thread running through our veins but drew the line at actually killing someone. We were rich and young enough to say those things and be all sexy about it. We knew we didn’t have to steal but arranged we should do it together and some point (‘ok, why not tomorrow?’) and it was beer first, and then flip flops the next and then another day a pink swimming mattress from the backseat of some rich and young and abandoned rented cabrio. And we took it swimming, drunkenly in the night. Rich and young, and full of stars.
We stepped into the calm sea, small waves, shallow, and took off our clothes, most of them, and took our pink stolen mattress against the waves, her covering small breasts with only her hands, our sociopathic personalities meeting somewhere under ridiculous notions of astrology. We kissed, and that was that. 
The mattress lay once again abandoned (has someone left the rented cabrio just as we left the shore?) where our friends would say it was ridiculous to steal it. We only stopped kissing when she said we have to look for the damn pink abandoned thing (apparently it was rented by one of her friends) after which we dived deep into the shallow sea.
I remembered all those things other than sex best. The kiss in the sea. The conversation about stealing shit, the hand covering breasts. And after sex, the interruptions of it by my taking sips from a big bottle of booze, and playing chess on the rooftop of the place we stole from. 
‘And I got caught one time’
‘For what?’ 
‘Stealing mattresses, and flip flops, and beer, but it was good, the time I did treated me well’
‘How long were you in for?’
‘Hmm I don’t know, around eight decades’
‘Woah, how old were you when you got caught?’
‘Like, twenty-one’
‘Shit, but you say it was good?’
‘Yeah. It was good life’
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cesarcwqr668 · 3 years ago
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Data 606: Capstone In Information Science.
This course presents information monitoring as well as information preparation with a focus on applications in massive analytics projects using relational, document, as well as chart database systems. Pupils discover the relational design, the normalization procedure, and organized inquiry language. They learn more about information cleaning and assimilation, as well as data source programming for extract, transform, and lots operations. Trainees deal with unstructured information, indexing and scoring documents for effective and also pertinent responses to individual inquiries. Students create programs for data prep work and also extraction making use of different information sources as well as file layouts.
Individuals make use of Spark SQL to fill, check out, clean, sign up with, as well as assess data as well as Trigger MLlib to specify, train, review, tune, as well as deploy artificial intelligence pipelines. They study the foundations of the Glow style and execution model necessary to effectively set up, keep track of, and tune their Flicker applications. Participants likewise learn how Spark incorporates with essential elements of the Cloudera system such as HDFS, YARN, Hive, Impala, and Shade along with their favorite Python or R bundles. This one semester course will certainly expose trainees to an analytical shows language such as R. There will certainly be an assumption that pupils have actually completed previous stats programs to the level of multiple regression evaluation. The work of information researchers influences everything from product advancement to advertising and marketing projects.
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xwestcoastwassyx · 4 years ago
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Week #10 - Due: 10/28/2020
1) What is a Troll? What is “subcultural trolling”?
      In the class reading, The Origins of Trolling – Chapter 1: Defining Terms: The Origins and Evolution of Subcultural Trolling, by Phillips we can see that trolling has been a big issue and can be traced back to the early-mid 1990s. Trolling can be best described as individuals who use the threat of deception to purposely enrage and invade online culture (Phillips, 2015). The trolling community has created a level of discomfort due to the fact that they uninvitingly invade user blogs and other online chatrooms – such as AOL – and behave and act in disruptive ways. Phillips argues, “...even the possibility of the existence of trolls, makes community member far less likely to trust outsiders or to tolerate those who haven’t yet mastered the community’s norms” (2015). This shows that the trolling community has created anxieties and paranoias on the global, online culture.
       Subcultural trolling, on the other hand, can be referred to as a group of individuals who actively invade, harass, and threaten online blogs and chatrooms. Phillips mentions that the reason why trolls are given the term “sub-“ in “subcultural” is because “culture is already fragmented before the imposition of subcultural categories” (2015). This implies that there is a smaller group of people – within a larger culture – who share similar belief systems. However, Phillips notes, “…given trolls’ simultaneously symbiotic and exploitative relationship to mainstream culture, particularly in the context of corporate media, it seems appropriate to frame trolling as fundamentally subsidiary” (2015). Within subcultural trolling, it is noted that trolls act out in ways that are similar to those of capitalism. It is similar to capitalism because its main goal is to invade an online chatroom – or blog – and through it off (overruling) by exploiting disturbing comments, videos, or images. This subculture invades and disturbs media through exposing inappropriate nude images and other unwanted images like a person having explosive diarrhea.
2) Is it appropriate to distinguish the act of “trolling” as its own subculture within the digital media? Are the development of memes a form of capitalism?
      There is the online culture and then the subcultural trolls – the smaller cultural group that lies within the online community/culture. Trolls come together on internet blogs – like “4chan’s /b/ board” – and connect with other “trolls” to elaborate on their disruptive doings. Although internet blogs like “4chan’s /b/ board” are not responsible for the creation of Internet trolls, this blog is still home to the subcultural trolls – considering that this is where they meet up and share their ideas. The fact that there are trolls who come together on internet blogs like “4chans /b/ board” proves that it is appropriate to place trolls in their own subculture. Websites like 4chan have allowed for the subcultural trolling to exist and to establish the foundation of the meme. Phillips states, “…subcultural trolls on and around 4chan’s /b/ board were responsible for creating, or at the very least amplifying, nearly every popular meme on the Internet…” (2015). Tracing back to the correlation between internet trolls and capitalism, the creation of the meme serves a valuable purpose in the corrupt subculture because memes are being passed down by the Internet culture on social medias and blogs. For example, the people – or in this case, consumers – see an image or a video of explicit and disturbing content (a meme) on Twitter, laugh at the image, and pass it down to expose another person. This can be traced back to an act of capitalism because the internet trolls are using their creation of memes as a consumer product that is formulated to disturb and hurt the online culture. However, the meme is advertised as a funny artifact online that can be fun to engage in – sneaky and corrupt because the creation of the meme was originally structured around the threats of deception.
3) What are the main differences between “proto-“and “early-modern” trolling on Internet technologies? Were trolls a threat to the early web?
      As discussed in the class reading The Origins of Trolling – Chapter 1: Defining Terms: The Origins and Evolution of Subcultural Trolling – by Phillips – we can see that are a differences in the act of trolling between the past – or “proto-“and the current day. When the online global culture weas exposed to the act of “trolling” they did not know what is was or who was acting out on the disturbing messages. Philips argues that people online saw these “trolls” as hackers, online impersonators, or a group of people who were purposely acting out in disruptive ways – they were not given a solidified name just yet. He claims, “Because these early disruptive behaviors and people’s descriptions of these behaviors were so variable, and because there was no clear center to the trolling universe, a great deal of overlap existed between proto- and early trolling spaces…” (Phillips, 2015). This shows that trolls have continued to progress and develop into something far worse than they originally started out to be. Their threat of deception went beyond – into the development to the meme – to spread their toxic and disruptive doings in cyberspace. However, the crystallization of the term “troll” – in modern technology and cyber culture – became solidified towards the early 2000s when their presence became strong on online social medias and when they progressed into their developments and spread of the meme. As previously mentioned, the meme is advertised as a “fun”, “jokingly” image that can be passed on from internet blog to blog to spread laughter and job. That is what trolls would want you to think – this proves that they act out on corrupt behaviors that represent capitalism. Techno logical developers saw trolls as a threat to the early web because they knew the intensions of trolling were to disturb and make people who are online feel uncomfortable and unsafe. Technological platforms are supposed to make people feel like they can escape the harassment and wrongful doings that they experience offline. However, through the “proto-“exposure of trolling, we have seen that modern trolling has successfully done its job in invading chatrooms or web blogs to continue to harass online culture, creating no safe haven online or offline.  
4) Could it be possible that online trolls are members of the White Supremacists Movement?
      Leslie Jones and other black women have been victims of horrific, online abuse via social media platforms such as Twitter. In the article “A Timeline of Leslie Jones’s Horrific Online Abuse” – by Anna Silman – we can see that trolls continue to invade and hack user profiles to discriminate against them with racist remarks. The act of the “hateful meme” is mentioned by Silman when she notes that trolls hacked Leslie’s Twitter account and expose a meme of a dead gorilla, Harambe (2016). The trolls have also explicitly exposed Leslie Jones by placing nude photos of the celebrity all over her Twitter account and exposing other personal images of Jones. Leslie Jones expresses the fact that she is used to this type of abuse and states, “’What is scary about the whole thing is that the insults didn’t hurt me. Unfortunately I’m used to the insults. That’s unfortunate,” she told Meyer. “But what scared me was the injustice of a gang of people jumping against you for such a sick cause”’ (Silman, 2016). Leslie decides to stay off of Twitter for a period of time – which is a normal reaction to what anyone would do if they are a victim of hate speech. The disturbing thing about this is that Twitter’s CEO continuously mentions that he and his team are continuously “looking” into detecting hate speech on Twitters platform. However, I call this claim to be fake because the only thing the CEO of Twitter does is “temporarily” suspend the abusers account – which is not fair and could be the reason as to why these online trolls continue to act out in the ways that they do; they get no real punishment. Another famous celebrity, Gabby Douglas, becomes a victim of online trolling. She, too, is a Black woman which raises concern in my eyes. If there are trolls who act out in capitalist behaviors and act out in the forms of discrimination and racisms, it is possibly that these trolls could be members of the White Supremacist Movement. While trolls continue to “hack” and invade people’s social media accounts, internet CEOs continue to “investigate” and “temporarily suspend” the abusers account.
Bergstrom, K. (2011). Don’t feed the trolls: Shutting down debate about community expectations on Reddit.com. First Monday, 16(8). 
Phillips, W. (2015). Defining terms: The origins and evolution of subcultural trolling. This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture. pp. 55-57.
Silman, A. (2016). A Timeline of Leslie Jones’s Horrific Online Abuse. The Cut: Online Harassment. 
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mistytpednaem · 4 years ago
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So, what’s up with Another Me?
Honestly, I tried to draft this post, but the mental block made me decide to just go for it stream-of-consciousness style. Which I hope doesn’t bode poorly or anything. But here goes!
The Past and the Present
As you may know, I’ve been at this for a while now! Since 2014, in fact. In that time, I’ve gotten through the prologue and... most of chapter one (fun fact: I do have the entirety of this story mapped out! We are transitioning into what should be the final scene of this chapter. Originally, I wanted to make this post - or something along these lines - once I finished the chapter, but I figured since the year was about to end I’d be better off doing it now).
Now, let’s not mince words: that is a long time. I have six chapters total (not counting the prologue) mapped out for this comic, and there is more I’d like to do beyond it (what I like to call Arc 2, or, as you may or may not know:  The Part Where My Pet Character Marco Evangelisti Actually Shows Up). If I keep going at the current pace, I will probably not be done within my lifetime. So, if I’m aware of this, what gives?
... I mean, damn. There’s a lot I could point to; I was finishing my degree until 2016, and I suppose that takes something out of you. I have unreasonably high expectations for myself, as the people closest to me know. “2020 was a bad year for everyone,” I tell myself, before I also go on to say, “but even though updates slowed down even more this year, it’s not like they’ve been particularly speedy for the past couple of years, and I haven’t had that bad of a year anyway, so that’s a shoddy excuse.” And then some semblance of reasonable thought comes over me and reminds me my grandfather had a stroke in March of last year and passed away in early June of this year, and I’m like “I mean, okay, I guess I’ve been through SOME things.”
But lighthearted reflections aside, there are more actionable problems I have identified - such as, in an overarching sense, my attitude. My friends made me realise this some time late last year, and while I’ve been trying to work on it, I have to admit I’ve made very little progress: at some point, I developed a seriously unhealthy relationship with my art. Here is how my workflow has tended to go:
Start scripting update. I have a small readership, but that’s okay; I am grateful for every suggestion, I can work with this, and I AM building towards something that excites me.
Script done, regardless of insecurities. It’s time to start working on the actual panels. This sketch didn’t come out exactly the way I intended, but hopefully it still works (alternatively: this sketch looks promising! I am excited about this sketch. Sometimes, I do feel happy with my sketches).
Oh dear. I was hoping the lineart would help a little (alternatively: oh dear. the lineart completely ruined this perfectly fine sketch). Maybe it’ll still look alright with colour?
Oh no. I hate it, actually. I suppose I’m too sloppy; I should be more careful next time. 
(Repeat for however many panels i have planned for an update, typically with mounting guilt the longer I take on each one, because I keep taking longer and longer and, to my eyes, there is no improvement.)
Well, as my friends keep reminding me, done is better than perfect. Let’s post it!
The update is posted to a small readership and a quiet response, which, again, is okay, but leaves me wanting for feedback that I cannot get because I am reluctant to spread the word for several reasons, one of them being that I’ve convinced myself my work isn’t good enough.
Rinse and repeat, with the process continuing to be slow - if not turning exponentially slower - because apparently when things make you feel bad your brain starts wanting to protect you from them.
Apologies if this is a little harsh, but it is genuinely the most sincere breakdown of The Whole Deal that I can produce.
The good news is there are things I can do about this! Not easy things, granted, as they tie deeply into a lot of the recurring neuroses in my life, but in theory, the more I embrace imperfection, and the less I worry, the faster I should be able to work, and I should start getting some serotonin out of the whole thing again. In theory. This is not the only issue, however, and I have good and bad news about the other issue I’ve identified:
I don’t think the forum adventure format is working in its current shape.
It’s not about the suggestions - I love working with suggestions! Reader interaction is fun, it’s already shaped a good number of things and I hope it continues to do so. It’s more of a matter of visibility. Tragically, forums are not the most In Vogue things these days, and that reflects itself in, well, poor visibility. I’ve tried to remedy this by allowing suggestions through MSPFA, Tumblr and Twitter as well, but honestly, it hasn’t helped much. I think I’ve only gotten one or two suggestions through MSPFA? And don’t get me wrong, I’m sure this is in great part because of my passive role in getting the word out! But it’s all contributing towards this strange, shrinking spiral of a feedback loop.
The good news is that, since I have identified this problem, there should be an actionable solution. The bad news is I’m not quite sure what form that solution should take just yet.
The Future
Whew, that was a lot. So, what’s in store for 2021 and beyond?
Well, er, like I’ve implied, I’m a little unsure. But that’s my default state of existence, so let’s go over what I think.
When I finish chapter one, I would like to find a proper hosting place for AM. As I said, I don’t think the forum thing is quite working out, and MSPFA is a wonderful website, but I feel AM has little to do with most of the content on it beyond the second-person narration and the script-style dialogues. Whether that means a change in format is needed along with the change in hosting, I’m not sure; I would like to keep the whole “one panel per page with text underneath it” deal, which... should be doable on most places, but in this current year, I’m frankly not sure how it would come across, haha.
(I’m also not sure what this hosting place should be, mind you; potentially a wordpress blog with a layout tailored for comics, but drawing isn’t actually my day job, so I’m not sure how viable paying for a domain name might be. Or hosting, for that matter, should I need it - but imgur has been friendly enough of an image host so far.)
What I do know is that I want to keep the suggestions, even though I’m not entirely sure how well that will work without a forum structure. Comments on a post, perhaps? Maybe. But we can’t forget that this doesn’t solve one of the other big issues, which is my reluctance to advertise. And there’s still, you know, my unhealthy, unreasonably high standards affecting my entire workflow.
... But that all kind of comes back to one thing, doesn’t it? The fear of taking the plunge? That’s what I need to overcome. Plans are a good first step, but they mean nothing if I don’t act on them. Which is part of the reason I’m talking about all this - so people can hold me to my plans.
(Plus, like, offer feedback and opinions. That’s very valuable too.)
This whole Future section is a whole lot more uncertain than, I think, even I hoped for when I started writing this post. But I hope what I’m trying to say comes across in some kind of way - not just in the sense of this being elucidating (which, don’t get me wrong, hopefully it is!), but also as far as conveying my feelings to my friends and readers is concerned.
I’m going to keep trying, and I know I’m a little lacking in the Doing department, but now you all know what’s been on my mind. Thank you all for the support, stay safe in These Trying Times, and hopefully we can all keep growing together.
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