#finding out niche stuff is good to prank people

[mylackofgrammaristerrifying]

OC prompts!!! for both personality traits and whole ocs!!! trying not to stray too far into any specific genre bc i am a fantasy bitch, so adapt the prompts however you want (or don't use them at all! see how they sit with you):

An OC who hasn't ever been outside in their whole life for whatever reason, is completely out-of-touch with the world, and sees it as beautiful or horrifying.

An OC who knows how and when every person they meet will die. They're so used to death and being aware of when their loved ones will die that they've grown numb to it. But, they never know when or how they die - or if - and that and the guilt of being so detached haunts them.

Two OCs who absolutely hate each other but are forced to live together/share a body/work closely together. There's no tragic background or enemies to lovers stuff (unless you want that) - they just have personalities that clash horribly and both are incredibly petty. But they're stuck together for however long and are fed up, so cue pranks and mild inconveniencing. Maybe there's another OC sat on the sidelines who's on neutral ground and given up, or takes photos.

An OC who is a ball of stress and is terrified of their own voice, but the instant something scary does happen, they are the most calm and 'wow this is happening. oh well' type of people.

An OC who is used to having control (eg. is rich/bossy/influential, a hypnotist/boss/god, etc.) and if their authority is taken away, they don't know what to do to the extent of freezing up. Potential for angst if they like the control they have due to past trauma or fear of something going wrong.

An OC physically incapable of doing something essential to survival from a curse or a species trait, but still lives without (eg. can't sleep, drink, eat, etc.) and is constantly grouchy, foggy, or in pain but tries to cover it up (or doesn't).

An OC who keeps accidentally befriending or adopting people who are very very very traumatised and has become the Group Therapist (TM). They are also very very very traumatised, and are sometimes treated to their own therapy by their group - but they're so used to helping the group that they don't feel they really need it because they should be above it.

An OC who has the most niche, unheard-of, possibly problematic special interest you'll ever find and is obsessed with it, but tries to hold back infodumps. And an OC who loves indulging them and listening to them about it.

An OC who owns a cat café. That's it. That's the prompt. :3

A shapeshifter OC who either feels fully at home in their bodies or never does.

An OC who's stuck in a timeloop of however long and is desperate to get out, or has just got out of one and is processing stuff while trying to act clueless about the future. Angst potential for timeloop trauma and knowing about horrific events and when they take place - and knowing they can't stop some of the things because no one would believe them.

An OC who has trauma or self-hatred for some reason or aspect of them, who meets another OC who went through nearly the same bad stuff and came out the other end (for better or worse.)

Kinda leading on from the previous prompt but could be separate, an OC who meets the future version of themself and doesn't know who they are. Future them is resentful or overly happy for reasons they don't explain, so they either avoid them or become friends with them, to the future self's hatred or confusion.

An OC who is terrified of lightning, but loves stormy weather. Enjoying the torrential rain and wind until lightning flashes and then they're screaming.

Morally questionable OC. You know you want to :)

Uni's childhood friends (or lack thereof). Was it a good relationship and dynamic they had? Was Uni the leader of the group/two of them or were they a follower? Did they feel left out or did they accidentally/purposefully leave others out?

Uni's closest family member(s)!

The fighting OCs you drew - what are their fears? Weaknesses? Strengths? Why do they fight - out of honour, fear, bloodlust? Secret pining for the other? (/jk)

could do more but gotta do stuff........... will def send more in another time, but these are probably enough for now haha. stars i got carried away (and used caps??? what is this dark sorcery /silly)

may use one or two of these ideas myself tbh lol but if we both use the same ones then yay!! twinsies!!

hope these help! :D

OH MY GOSH I LLVE THEM ALL!! I’ll tag you in the drawings I’ll likely only use a few but I appreciate this so much! That’s artsy! And please do use these as your own because they are :))

[shelltasticday]

Halloween headcanons!

● I have the idea that halloween, besides when they go to conventions, is the day when our dearest turtles can go around the city as they please. Perhaps even some days before and a few after, since people would see them and think they're going to a costume party

● I like to think that a halloween night was one of the first (if not the very first) times that the four of them went to the surface to explore

● Maybe Splinter would go with them the first few years, and from then on Raph took on the torch of keeping an eye out for his brothers as they all went around asking for candy

● And I just adore imagining the little tots going hand in hand, as to not lose each other around crowded places, with costumes they made or got some other way

● Group costumes! So many group costumes and even more so after they met April!

● I feel like growing up wouldn't stop them from still going out that night, though even if they don't do group costumes as much anymore, they at least tell each other what theirs is going to be. Because last time they didn't, they all showed up as Lou Jitsu

● And I mean all of them, even April. It's funnier if you think that by that time they already knew Cassandra and find her as Lou Jitsu too

● Raph and Mikey are all in for the candy exclusively, but Leo, Donnie and April are not above a prank or two. They make up quite the trio

● One year they covered all time square with toilet paper, it was a team effort between April's creativity, Leo's strategies and Donnie's chaotic genius. It was the talk around town for a few weeks, it's still brought up every year and people wonder if the same prankster will strike again someday... and they will, they just need to prepare a bit more...

● They don't exactly have a door that kiddies can knock, so I'm thinking that maybe, most likely Raph, carries a big bag of candy now that he's older, and gives a handful to all kids that he sees while on their walk

● Speaking of candy, we know that Splinter would eat the boy's sweets. So I'm pretty sure they all have places where they hide them ever since childhood, and Raph starts guarding the give-out-candy a week prior so the stash is as intact as possible for the big day

● If a store or food place has some special promotion about getting a discount or free stuff if you go in costume, you BET they take advantage of it. Sometimes they even get compliments on how seamless the costumes are

● In other general halloween-y related stuff, I imagine that Leo even if a skeptic, likes watching horror movies, though I have a feeling that he'd enjoy slashers more

● Donnie would only like old school horror movies or very niche ones, because he hates how predictable every jump scare is and specially how dumb the characters are sometimes

● He's a more horror book type of guy, and he is that one person that corrects others each time they refer to Frankenstein's creature as only "Frankenstein"

● Mikey, we know, he's not too fond of ghosts, though he's curious and still watches movies with the rest… behind the safety of a big pillow or Raph

● Raph… I think that he's pretty okay with anything, if it's not about evil toys coming to life, I think he's good. Still would rather watch Coraline, Hocus Pocus, Nightmare Before Christmas and other spooky movies over scary ones

● Okay but, imagine them carving pumpkins

● Raph would do either something Ghostbear related, or, a very tiny kitty face. Leo would try to have his pumpkin be the scariest looking with a big wide toothy grin and all. Donnie uses his tech for it, I think him fully capable of carving his own face and have the flame be purple

● Mikey would have a very artsy one, he'd carve something more intricate, maybe a family portrait, or a character he likes, or like scary looking trees. The only one that uses actual carving tools. Maybe he paints some pumpkins too instead of carving them, idk it just seems he'd have a lot of fun

[blortch]

While talking to other rlmblr bloggers I realised I like RLM videos much much less but for some reason I’m the “bigger fan” (for lack of some better way to describe this phenomenon) because I have encyclopedic knowledge of the canon of all their dumb movies and shows.

[6okuto]

The way they write Mc in LL makes me die a little inside because I am so similar to Felix and if I were actually there I would be GEEKIN out about the freaking taxidermied animals and the bugs and cool shit in jars and cheesy romance novels and like dressing.. in a way. Idk. I wanted to know what ur thoughts are about how Felix would react if mc was super excited and supportive of his “weird” stuff and actively wanted to participate, or maybe.. you know. Pulled out some bones and a jar of dead bugs from their bag. Not that this is related to my real life items.. aha. Idk I wear mostly black and have bone and big jewelry and have shelves dedicated to creepy stuff so I feel like I would get along well with Felix

— felix with an mc similar to him

THATS SOOO . [HEART EMOJIS] ANON. [handshake My Man meme] if i had bones i'd carry them around in my bag smh. that's so cool you're really out here!!

this guy has never appreciated somebody more than right now.

the first time he sees you in what you'd usually wear he's like 🤨? someone like me? 🤨

he asks about your jewelry and thinks it's so cool. the first taste of the bonding that was going to happen

the scene where you first go into his room :(

you're looking around and staring and he starts panicking but then !! you're like "felix this place is so cool what the hell?" and he glitches because that definitely wasn't what he expected

he's kinda,, iffy at first because you could be pulling a terrible prank. "you don't have to lie to make me feel better. i know all of this is...odd."

but you ask about his taxidermied animals and he says "i, uh, did them myself, actually," and he can see how excited you get so now you're both excited

the things he truly enjoys? that he's been scared/insecure about sharing with people for who knows how long? being appreciated and related with? he never thought he'd be able to experience this

he takes the time to talk about anything you point out and he's so happy!! he's always wanted to infodump about all of his preserved bugs and books and taxidermy and everything else

he's the friend you can go to for very niche information. like when you email a researcher about their work because there's a paywall

imagine if like, there was species of bugs and stuff that weren't in their world and he brings up being curious about researching things from ours. oh man time to shine

"oh really? say no more" "what are you—is that what i think it is" "if you were thinking a jar of bugs, then yes." "What else do you just Have on you??"

you spend the next few hours going through and talking about it all

he'd love to hear about where you got everything, why you have specific items, what people think, etc.

"if i ever find myself in your world somehow, promise to show me your own things?" "i thought that would be obvious but of course"

i just know felix would love to know about the circles of people who would adore everything he has going on. you need to introduce him to that thought immediately

if you ever wanted to watch or help him with some taxidermy he's actually a very good teacher! unlike magic which he has a natural talent for, taxidermy was definitely a learning process so he can give instructions/tips

if you work on one together it's immediately his favourite. you should name it i think

ohh reading books together :[ the bonding that comes with reading at the same time and getting together to gush/complain/cry. he has very strong opinions on everything so be prepared

would definitely be up for reading each other's favourite novels or exchanging annotated ones if you do that

you end up making so many inside jokes that people can't even,, guess what you're talking about. you always make eye contact when something related comes up. i love telepathy

anytime one of you finds something you can add to one of your collections you both get excited. even if it's small

"look at this beetle i found outside" "hell yeah. where are you going to put it?"

the normalcy felix gets to feel with you around is so...freeing. he gets to be all giddy and excited about things without worrying about being judged and it's so !!!!!!!!!!!!

gifts go crazy. if you gave him anything he'd be grateful but then you go and get him a specific novel that he's been looking for? a piece of jewelry that matches something you have? this man feels genuinely honoured that you remembered and put that effort in

he has specific spots for anything from you on a shelf and his desk

he always tries his best to make sure you feel as comfortable around him as he does with you, and to give you gifts that are just as thoughtful

sage and anisa just watch both of you ramble without a single idea of what's going on. they didn't really expect it, but they're very appreciative that at least one person relates to their friend the way you do

[musicdork]

jjba social media/tiktok au!! (hcs)

there’s a lot about josuke im so sorry sfjlesfejk,, it started out as just him and then i was like “”,, what about other people?”” other’s are at the very end

it’s pretty fuckin long i,, im so sorry hh,, also my thought process was kinda Everywhere with this so like,, hope you can still enjoy this haha

[ edit ] this’ll be like,,, a masterpost or something for my hcs so this is,, very long,,

- you CANNOT tell me that Josuke isn't the kind of person who'd make thirst traps n him just being confident in his body like!!!

- tiktok josuke would be a blessing for me

- he'd make the thirst traps but in the caption be all embarrassed about it and like???? hOW ADORABLE!!!!

- i also feel like he'd make some gaming jokes,,,

- then ppl see jotaro a couple times and are like 👁️👄👁️💦

- OH MY GOD

- WHAT IF HE GOT OKUYASU N KOICHI TO DO SOME DANCES WITH HIM!!! or just them generally being dorks n they have a whole fanbase

- AND THE GIRLS AND THE GAYS GO BATSHIT LMAO (he's on gay tiktok, period. and like, other niche n weird spaces of tiktok)

- josuke's making a tiktok and it starts off in his room. he points up n text appears, "you guys wanna know how joot and i are related?"

- then he does a basic transition to where he's at jotaro's hotel room, having him and jotaro in frame with an arm wrapped around his shoulder.

- josuke's grinning

- jotaro has no fuckin clue whats going on

- a text appears above them, "say hello to my little nephew"

- i can see josuke doing povs, not the cringey kind but some that would be comforting for others;; who really need it.

- for his username my brain came up with starboy99 but he would definitely have his full name at the top of the screen

- probably part japanese to shorten the amount of characters he has to use (what i should've said is part KANJI n part romanji but hhh)

- i feel like he uses they pronouns too

- i have to think of his bio 👀

- definitely have his pronouns

- maybe a small quote? "just here to have a bizarre adventure! 💫"

- maybe something like that

- DEFINITELY have that he's a minor cause when he didn't have that,,, a lot of adults were simping for him and i feel that would make him Uncomfy

- he's adequate at transitions, but doesn't take too much time to learn them tbh. he's definitely the person to have vloggy type of tiktoks where he just shows a minute of his day

- absolutely would have okuyasu in his tiktoks with them doing dumb shit (like pranking rohan hehe) and them just being DORKS. a lot of ppl would think they're dating or just have a really good bromance

- he got a second of jotaro with his hat off and everyone died that day

- jotaro's in his tiktoks but very rarely

- when he is, people go BATSHIT with the simping

- i can see his following being fairly decent, and him getting decent traction but would also get shadowbanned a couple of times

- he definitely talks about retro games a lot and makes memes centered around them

- i can't say for certain what side(s) of tiktok he's on except for the obvious gay tiktok

- the more wholesome side, definitely activism, some povs, splash in some diversity, maybe japanese tiktok?? im sure that exists

- idk the more obscure sides,,

- he's a casual tiktoker for sure, maybe posting twice a week

- when he's especially bored he might post a couple times in a day, maybe an hour :'))

- i take that back, maybe three times? three times sounds fair

here’s a little break for your eyes lmao, there were a Lot more than i thought holy shit,,

-  JOSEPH (P2!) WOULD DEFINITELY HAVE TIKTOK SJSNS

- rohan makes two tiktoks

- they both blow up (and act like they don’t know nobodayy HAHAHA)

- he has a large following (mainly jap)

- but he barely uses tiktok after that

- i can't see giorno having social media tbh

-  he'd try to predict the algorithm based on the stuff he posts when he first gets the app.

- its mainly just him being a goof with a couple thirst traps thrown in there once he realizes "oh shit, i have simps?"

- caesar is featured once n already has a fanbase under joseph's acc (joseph's not jealous or anything,, nooo,,,,)

- like he's in the mafia,,,

- wait

- or maybe he just takes really good pictures of nature,,, i can see that

- a lot of people ask "where is this dude's parents,,,"

- narancia,, is the one who has tiktok (in bucci gang)

- mista would always (not ALWAYS but very. often.) find ways to be in them/photobomb

- i can see his (narancia’s) fyp being like super wholesome with some dumb memes but also popular music covers

- like rock covers or sumn similar

i deadass thought i had a couple for johnathan and erina too but!! can’t find them so,,

-  so one day he makes a tiktok, inside the turtle lmao

- at first he's like "why are you guys asking where my parents are;;"

- the camera flips to abbacchio and bruno

- "they're right here"

- cue a chuckling giorno and a laughing mista

- they do all the couple tiktoks together,, all the cute ones at least. i can see them doing the more wholesome dances too! they would all around just be the cute couple everyone else aims to be

- also thought i had some part 3 hcs saved?? wtf my saving skills are terrible,,

- polnareff is the one with tiktok. he would go around filming small snippets of stuff that happens with the crusaders (ignoring that,,, tiktok Did Not exist at the time haha)

- jotaro and kakyoin were definitely featured in his tiktoks!! i can see avdol with his arms folded being like “...we have better things to do--”

- but pol is like “but the fans, avdol! think about the content they’ll be missing out on!!”

- he’s hopeless LMAO. but honestly?? he'd make a good vlogger too!! his charisma would definitely be to his advantage

- you bet your ass that oldseph photobombs any chance he gets lmaooo he’s also the guy that a small part of polnareff’s fans simp for. 

- actually, each crusader has their own small fanbase within pol’s tiktok account. i feel the majority would be fans of jotaro and polnareff (it is his acc,,)

- jotaro’s fyp, when he reluctantly gets tiktok, consists of animals,, animal facts, funny animal tiktoks, ocean tiktoks for sure, just a lot of naturey stuff!! but he barely uses it though haha

- kakyoin uses tiktok every now and then! i feel he would prefer instagram more. he mainly posts his artworks, and the occasional retro game case hehe. he does the Dumbest shit on his “close friends” story, it’s great. i feel that’s also where he goes to ramble about whatever’s on his mind

- avdol definitely has a work instagram, only using it for his fortune telling business and trying to network with different tarot readers and fortune tellers. he likes the small community he has,, hehe,,

whoever read all this I'll cry in your arms

[adamgeorgiou]

Arthur, My Cousin and Me

I don’t know how to detangle Arthur from myself enough to write dispassionately or accurately. Instead, what follows is something like half him, half me. It’s more journal entry than elegy. To a general audience, that might make this less interesting than it otherwise could be, but it’s what I’ve got. Remember this if and when you get to the end. 

Anyway…

I feel like I knew Arthur. Then I heard what others had to say and saw what others had to feel. Following his death, I still feel like I know him. In certain ways better than most or all. But there’s a part of me that’s often strained to believe that I was in more of his inner circle than I actually was, and his death exposed the truth of my position.

It’s a practical observation, not a dramatic one. I’m not saying he had a dominating and hidden alter ego or that he pitied me. It’s simpler: his death revealed my confidence in our bond as an illusion innocuously leftover from being kids together, from back when we actually spent serious time together. I want him back now like I’ve continuously wanted back what we lost long ago, but now it’s double-permanent and legible. Before it was remediable and blissfully hidden — embarrassing in hindsight, like most nostalgia. 

But he also had that same nostalgia and held onto it, too, which makes me feel better. That mutual thread to our shared past was strong for both of us. It gave us a lot to lean on, but we leaned on it a little too heavily. Without that crutch, our adult lives were mostly opaque to one another, but also we were getting close again, involving each other again. Building anew. The left hook following the right. It’s a shame we weren’t closer than we were, when he died. It’s a shame our getting closer was cut short. 

I guess it makes sense, generally: as adults, we’re all doing niche things, and niches are small and excluding, so everything else trends towards becomes small talk. (And that’s fine and right, because focus is necessary for growth. Just try and stay loyal, which Arthur did and my cousins do.)

Maybe it wasn’t so much that I was uniquely outside of Arthur’s confidence, but more that we had both (or all) grown a bit into our own isolation. In any case, I mourn the loss and its new finality.

So that’s him and I as adults, apart. Who was he, though? What can I tell you?

Well, I’ll briefly start with me, for context. Who I am is still him, the result of his influence, for sure. Of growing with, then adjacent to him, then apart, then converging again (more on the converging, later). If you distilled me down and got rid of all the litter and trivia, the rare and potent stuff remaining would be similar to what I knew of Arthur. We had the same essence, as I saw it. So I can show you that reflection, and you can tell me if it’s accurate (See: first paragraph’s disclaimer). (Also, note my calling out our similarity is carefully placed right before I go on to flatter him best I can — tactics, baby — but don’t read my ego into this. What follows is all my cousin.)

Arthur and confidence. Old saying: the pro fails more often than the amateur tries.

The subtleties of his personality were sophisticated and complicated. He could spar at an exceptional level from an early age. But he started out lazy and overthrowing a lot of his punches, gassing out quickly. 

As a kid, he was autistically independent, preoccupied and hyper focused, but without any of the social hangups. He could talk to anyone and impressed everyone. He was adored, and rightfully so, but he also marched to the beat of his own nunchucks, exclusively. You couldn’t bullshit him, and you couldn’t placate him unless he was genuinely fascinated with what you offered. This is how kids should be, insatiably curious and wild. It was my favorite era of his, and where we spent the most time together. I was such an asshole to him, and he still always hung out with me. And we followed each other into a lot of similar interests.

Then he got his first hit of testosterone, and followed a phase where he literally held a fist up in every photo taken of him. Ha. Puberty’s a bitch. That didn’t last long. Reality checked and he stabilized. The important thing is that he knew he wasn’t going to watch, he was going to play. I loved him here, jealously and from a further distance. I couldn’t hang.

Then maturity: The firm handshake, the direct eye contact, the bright teeth, the smiling cheeks. Approachable, but not daffy. If anything his charisma was a prank and shrewd tactic; a car salesman during the first act, a playful subversion before the intellect and wit made their debut; or, worse for you, they didn’t. You’d start talking to Arthur and think you were walking in on a frat-boy breakfast table, then he’d go on to tell you why your problem was really because of what Robert Moses did back in ‘56, or he’d ask if you thought the The States were in a similar stage of decadence as Rome before its fall.

To him, your reason was more important than your choice, which is an axiom of all good conversation, one that most people are afraid to admit because doing so requires the ability to tread water. It’s easier to talk about the weather or watch sports. But Arthur wasn’t afraid of going deeper, and he had the tact to know when it was the right thing to do.

He was a man of appetite. A true traveling gourmand. He could scoff at you from within a seersucker, but he never compared oysters. If a menu offered Seattle’s or Rhode Island’s, he’d reply, “keep ‘em coming” and demand littlenecks or (and) crawfish to follow. He was less interested in varieties of wine, more in varieties of tomato and whether you had a good coarse salt.

He was spoiled rotten — as we all were, and mostly by the same sources — but he lacked pretension, except for that deliberately wielded for ironic effect. Underneath all his developed and developing taste was a lot of comical stoicism — laughing at gross injustice and absurdity, but also doing something about it, literally. His principles were conjured up from experience with the trappings of pleasure, with readings of history, with a variety of surprisingly worldly stories. I always wondered where and how he got it all. The guy had seen things, but not that many things. How was he always so versed? I don’t know, but if you’ve ever watched him eat a box of clementines straight up, wide-eyed in a wrinkled rugby shirt, then you would also know he was more pensive than pleasure seeking.

Entertainment was a defense, one he was growing out of as he realized it interfered with his goals and their requirements. A defense against what? I don’t know for sure, but I suspect the typical. On one hand, a lack of patience and a petulant refusal to be bored. On the other, the existential and solipsistic. A defense against the subconscious shame and pain of cynicism. Was love real? Was wealth worth anything? Was the world bogus? Was anyone authentic? Ethical? Himself? Others?

Look, I’m not saying he was overwhelmed with this gooey crap. He was a thinker, not a navel gazer. I don’t know if he even said any of this stuff out loud, but anyone with a brain is going to ask some questions about the life they’re living and the society they’re in, and most of us don’t like the first obvious answers we come up with. Then we do something about not liking those answers. We put fingers in our ears some of the time, we do what’s easy some of the time, and we do what’s difficult some of the time. And also, anyone with any talent is going to find themselves bored among the average, and falling short of their own standards. These were Arthur’s struggles, I think. At least, they’re kind of my struggles, and Arthur seemed to harmonize with me when we’d commiserate. Or maybe we were both pompous assholes, wannabe aristocrats from the suburbs. Or maybe that was just me. Ha.

To some, it might seem appropriate to haunt him here in this postscript, as if to justify his death as the terminal approach of a depression into cessation. Let me be clear: this was totally not the case, from my vantage. Instead, the above attitudes are more like the required cost-of-entry to a great show. If the unexamined life isn’t worth living, it does not mean the examined one is easy to live. The alternative is Judge Judy and a monogrammed armchair. Not for Arthur. Caulfield eventually quits his bitching, but he has to eat a lot of shit first. Siddhartha finally leaves the brothel, but he had to walk in that door in order to walk out of it later. Hard times are the prerequisite to epiphany. Painful and confusing; but hopeful, not despairing. 

And you could tell Arthur was among this company because the personas he employed became increasingly sophisticated, useful, attractive, and comfortable. From the brawling, pack-leading, indulgent, jokester/show-off into the relaxed, independent, luxurious, conversationalist who wasn’t as afraid to let his guard down, who was increasingly responsible. He was cultivated. He had a tamed self-consciousness (as we all aspire). It was impressive to watch him pull his own strings, to compare that with your own attempts and be humbled.

And thus, as I see it, the irony, hard to swallow, is that Arthur was finding answers to life’s hard questions in fistfuls. Love was possible. Work was worth it. Viktor Frankl was right. And he was learning patience and conviction, already better at their practice than most (e.g. me). As Dan put it, he was just taking off. He jumped and then a hand reached up from the almost escaped gravity and cut him by the heel.

A complete, but simple tragedy.

Complete, because the good guy lost. 

Simple, because Arthur’s life was not some melodramatic airport novel. His death was a lightning strike, a deus ex machina in reverse. A two sentence accident, not an assassination. Not much more to be read from it. Mortality is hard, right? (See: Genesis).

And for all my elaboration, I don’t even think Arthur was all that noxiously introspective or exceptionally self destructive either. The guy knew how to love and be loved. How to let his hair down, appropriately. How to shift gears and drive forward. How to resist temptation. How to find and be good company. How to stare at a fish tank. How to sit and read. How to eat fruit in the sun. He was typically bright, with a lot of flair and personality. I know he was grateful.

Or I’m wrong. Maybe I’m inventing a story to make sense of something more concealed or of pure chaos. I don’t know. I don’t think so.

In any case, it’s a tragedy. And regardless of what is true, I’m still glad I got to hear his story and be part of some of it. He was and remains a good influence to me, a fellow bright eyed boy attempting to sustain himself in the body of a straight-backed man. He’ll live on for a long, long time. And I keep talking to him.

That’s some of what I knew of him. And given this is my catharsis, forgive me further, but more about me:

Sadness, gratitude, and disappointment. 

I’m sad. Still? Yes. Always? Probably not. The inevitability of death hits a certain emotional bedrock after enough love is lost. I’m probably not there yet, still more distance to fall, but things are tapering off, in the aggregate. Maybe I’m just cold. 

Sadness is the least interesting. I am separated from someone I love, and that sucks. We all have people we’ve loved, and we are all damned to lose them. But yes, I get those black bile clutches to the chest as I’m reminded that Arthur (et al.) is gone. And I wanna hold your hand, if you’re feeling it too.

It’s a curse that requires gratitude. Time keeps on slipping, and the portion of time that one spends with good people is shorter still. I’m thankful for Arthur’s good company. From childhood to peerdom. This is what I’ll try and focus on. It’s the mantra I’ll repeat. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Then there’s the sulking disappointment. My head slowly shaking, my eyes unfocused contemplating the loss of the unpredictable conversations, the refreshingly interesting trivia, the uniqueness, the independence, the honed never impersonated taste, the great breadth of knowledge, the artful ball busting, the avoidance of cliches, the shared recommendations, the belly laughs. Obnoxious mutual indulgence — food and talk — during Thanksgiving at Stacy’s table, the shared past at Everit Ave, the just started planning. The feeling of a just missed answer to the question of how to get it back, continuously nagging.

More on that: I’m dealing with a huge mess of unanswerable questions and impotence. There’s so much broken by his leaving, least of all in me, and I can’t fix any of it. No way to organize it. I can’t even help others fix it. Acknowledging the impossibility of the situation seems better than ignoring it, so I will (…acknowledge that death breaks the world and makes inconsistent a lot taken as granted). Arthur’s death is an oily surreal void in the middle of the road. A portal to nowhere. And sure, life will go on. We will preserve. Time heals all wounds. That’s all true. But any schmuck can offer a platitude. I want to be responsible for what he’s left behind, in precise detail. I want to pick up the slack, fill in the blank. But what was his remains his, locked up behind whatever door his soul is now shut. It’s maddening.

I went so far as to tell Olivia that I was her brother, too, and that I would be there for her. Idiot. I love her, she knows I love her, I know she loves me. Yada, yada. I need no pity for my vomiting on the rug. My point is: I can’t be Arthur. I can’t even be close to Arthur. Adam — while still pretty good — isn’t a substitute for Arthur. I apologized for being so naive and sloppy, but the moment taught me what I was trying to say above: that I am ignorant of so much of Arthur’s life, and in ways that can’t be remedied by interviewing his friends or reading his book or wearing his shoes, sort of speak. A lot of it isn’t just unknown, it’s unknowable.

This requires more thought. Surely something can be done. Entropy can’t be rewound, but duct tape can keep a plane in the air. So here’s something I’m going to try: I’m going to be more vulnerable. I’m going to expose myself the way a brother or a son might, and see what happens. It won’t transform me into a replacement, and I’ll probably make a clown of myself. But it’s worth a shot. To build different connections, instead of replicas. I can already see that the cousins have been hammered stronger by this. Now it’s time to be deliberate, and keep that train going, if possible. And yea, I’ll do the practical stuff. You can’t call Barb, enough. And I’ll call Liv, too, but with finesse, without overdoing it. And the rest of our family, as well, because we all lost something. For some a spleen; for others, more vital organs.

Moving on.

It’s further maddening to have Arthur’s death aligned and intertwined with so much of my pleasure. I’m a week into marriage. I’m ecstatic and overwhelmed by the potential of my future. I’m also newly terrified of losing a child not yet even conceived. That’s a fun one. Probably a lot more neurosis to come. But, yea… it’s a violent set of waves to endure and ride. It’s exhilarating and crushing, and guiltily I’ll admit, more of the former. I’m pronoid.

The guilt compounds as I realize that I’m only comparing the conflict between my pleasure and pain, when the actual accounting includes my pleasure, my pain, and all the pain of all the others he left behind, those we both loved. What about Alexandra? Barb? Liv? Dan? A dominating, trailing factor; ego-hidden and selfishly deprioritized. What would Jesus do? Not have a wedding during shiva, although I appreciate all the encouragement and insistence from the also mourning invitees.

Back to Arthur and I having grown apart and then, more recently, back together:

There exists a line separating most relationships. On one side of the line you have people who have a reasonably complete model of you in their head. (See: Theory of Mind.) On the other side of the line are people who have a functional model; they know what they need to know to get the job done, but they don’t know, perhaps have never seen, the whole thing. For ex., a spouse vs a colleague (most of the time). 

The line is called intimacy, and relationships on both sides of the line can be valuable, but the intimate ones have more potential in both directions, fat tails; the intimate ones can yield fortunes and bankruptcies. Acquaintances are tepid.  

I described it above, how Arthur’s and my relationship moved from the intimate to the distant. I’ll skip further detailing that transition, and just get to the thing that hurts now: we were getting markedly closer, again. I could see the trajectory of our friendship and would bet on our returning to intimacy and confidence.

If the isolation of vocation and growth drives most bourgeois adults apart and into impersonal silos, then eventual mastery and plateau allows room for a focus on humanity, again. And humanity is universal and objective. People can stand on it, together, and get to know each other (again). That’s where I felt Arthur and I were.

I felt like Arthur and I had taken two separate tracks at a fork 15 years ago, and just recently those two roads started to merge back into the same path. We had stories to tell each other, of our time in the wild. It was the basis for a new bond, perhaps stronger than the old one.

Unsolicited phone calls. Talks of marriage, health, wealth. Suggestions of books and podcasts that were actually followed through with, instead of disappearing into the void like most cocktail party prescriptions. We’d follow back. Not rushing each other past awkward silence. Being patiently invested in one another. Showing up. Talking about vulnerable topics, like fears and aspirations for careers, and relationships, and family. And then, right during the peak of this rekindling, this jubilee, he died. And I doubt that I was the only one whose newfound growth and compatibility were cut short. You’re not alone.

So I hurt for the spent love, yes, like that of most grief. But I hurt more for the lost potential. I had so many fresh dreams that included him. It’s disappointing and sad.

To be clear, I’m disappointed in what’s lost, not disappointment in him. I blame him for nothing, even if maybe I should or others do. But any of his mistakes could have easily been mine, and so I sympathize. I’m not angry. Ambition implies risk. Vice is vice is inevitable. Growth means growth from something. Different contexts, need not apply.

Anyway, what else? The thing I linger on now is a weird faith. I have little faith or rather I have difficulty finding faith. I scrutinize faith until it’s demoralized. And yet, the discontinuity introduced by Arthur’s absence gives me faith, illogically but compellingly. I don’t strive for it, it’s simply there, point blank. I can’t explain it, but I can describe it.

Arthur is gone forever, and Arthur is part of my future. Both irrevocably true, yet incompatible. What to do about it? Apparently, not much. My mind absolutely and happily refuses to budge. The feeling that Arthur is part of my future supersedes the knowledge that he’s not. Knowing he’s gone does nothing to my belief that my future includes him. So it continues to. Sue me, I can’t help it.

See you in the funnies, Arthur. (More trivia: I never called him Artie or Art or Archo. He was always Arthur to me.)

Lastly, some good, more recent memories (skipping some that have already been shared):

The last thing I spoke to Arthur about was extensive advice, over the phone, on how to structure a prenup. “Don’t put anything about kids in there, because the courts won’t accept that you understood what you were agreeing to, prior to actually having the kids.” Smart. “Everyone should get one! The courts encourage it! Helps ungunk the works.” Ha. Kelly and I never got a prenup, but the candid advice on such a touchy subject makes me laugh.

Eating a whole pig at a communal table, biergarten style, at Saxon and Parole, in New York. Arthur talking the whole table’s ear off about everything, and then after discussing eating brains, we asked the chef to bring the pig’s over, and he did. Afterwards, walking to our trains, jolly, drunk.

Visiting Arthur in Scotland. Going out to some Uni warehouse party, and me getting lost with some bird. I didn’t have a working European phone, and so when I got home at dawn, seeing him and his big bravado looking like a worried mother goose made me laugh and proud, like a big brother again. Him cooking the two of us mussels and linguine with three whole heads of garlic. Delicious. Steak in Edinburgh, and him showing me the castles like he was himself a duke, personal friends of Hume and Smith.

I wished we went on more walks together.

Us planning on going to Joe Beef, in Montreal, with Alexandra and Kelly.

Him calling me to tell me Anthony Bourdain had died, and subsequently talking about it. “If he can’t make it, who can?” There’s that cynicism again. But it was a candid moment. And we ended that talk, more or less, believing we could make it, even if Bourdain couldn’t.

Discussing whether we were fated to end up like our parents. 

Him shooting the .38 up in Gilboa.

Legos, spanky, ice box bedroom, V8-turbo toilet, the pool, the trampoline, the screen porch and its green furniture, endless chicken rolls followed by cold pizza, karate in the basement (no shoes on the mats), rolling on the carpet (i.e. roll mosh), forts, the Barbie game on the gateway computer in Izzy’s room, Snood, army men in the mud ripping up sod by the square foot unit, jealousy listening to Timberlake camp stories, the suburban with 100 blankets in the third row and Don McLean on the radio, toxic farts, the Pokemon store, the Pokemon cards I’d steal from him after going to the Pokemon store, a million cups of Lipton at Barb’s table, Rage Against the Machine in Dan’s car, lanyards, fishing in the Hewlett Bay, Harry Potter, him never sleeping over my house and getting rides home at 2am after attempting to (me pissed), hiding in that lone pine tree in the front yard, making window art out glitter glue, salamanders, watching him attempt to ride a bike in the driveway.

A menial history, but ours. Anyway…

Arthur, you were great. It’s not for me to say that you’re now resting in peace, because I think you were pretty zen while you were alive, in your own pastel-colored kimono kind of way. So instead, I hope you’re as satisfied there as you were interested here. I’ll see you soon, and until then, I’ll try and hold the line for you. Love ya’.

[catubarca]

Harry Potter Next Generation Headcanons

im bored. im full of emotions, and am rly missing the HP world... i just want to write down my headcannons for the next gen kiddos tbh.

please remember these are just my opinions? its okay if yours are different. im just bored and want to share my thoughts,,

Teddy Lupin

his name is Theodore Remus “Teddy” Lupin. it’s just what it is

I don’t care what JKR says, to me his name will always be Theodore

i can’t do this “Edward” stuff im so sorry,,,

h u f f l e p u f f

proper school uniform? never heard of it

messy hair, messy clothes

punk rock child

we’re talking like,,,at least two (2) lip piercings ok

absolutely terrible in herbology. do not leave this child alone in a greenhouse, bad things happen

fuckin hoards chocolate

its a problem

dating Victorie Weasley

random bursts of dancing

keeps a lock of hair pink for his mother

lives with the Potters, enjoys pretending to be Ginny to ground his siblings

“Lily, why aren’t you coming out of your room? Dinner’s ready?” “You said I’m grounded! You tell me!” “What? Oh, for the- THEODORE REMUS LUPIN-“

s m i r k s

effortlessly cool,,, but so so dorky,,, in a cool way

Victorie Weasley

ravenclaw!

looks a lot like her mother, Fleur, but inherited those Weasley freckles

a little confused a lot of the time

absolute sweet tooth (teddy abuses this fact a lot)

Mom Friend™

will help you with your homework

always got a book on her

super beautiful and like,,,, the absolute nicest person,,, but

cannot dance

like at all

adores Charms class

a softie you don’t want to cross

“I’m the oldest”

Dominique Weasley

inherited the Classic Weasley Red Hair™

idolises her Uncle Charlie

“I wanna save animals and work with cool dragons, just like Uncle Charlie does!”

Bill almost has a heart attack

always bringing stray animals home

(“is that a lizard in your pocket, Dominique?” “Yes! His name is Blob.” “You know how your father’s afraid of reptiles, sweetheart, you can’t bring it inside.”)

Gryffindor child

favourite class is definitely Care of Magical Creatures, she and Hagrid like to talk about proper care methods for rare creatures

perpetual dirt stains

BIG middle child vibes

doesn’t really label her sexuality… just kinda does what she wants rly

all the pets in Hogwarts love her

rumours are she’s got an innate, natural magical ability to make them all love her

(she feeds them under the table)

it’s a mystery

big advocate for animal rights

f e m i n i s t

willing to throw hands at all times

usually all smiles though

one of those people who use their whole bodies to laugh

kind of an accidental heartthrob

romcoms

Louis Weasley

looks the most like his mother

ravenclaw

absolutely filled with curiosity. always reading or talking or learning

random facts

(how do you even find that sort of information?

you don’t want to know)

coffee boy

sort of musically talented?

he and James Sirius preach the importance of skincare to all who will listen

secretly full of sass and dry wit

vry graceful and fluid

e y e r o l l

awkward smiles? can never smile properly in photos

on the ravenclaw quidditch team

Ravenclaw Prefect

(“You might be older, but I’m taller.” “Fuck off!”)

only watches High Quality™ tv shows/media

kind of a disaster, despite the gracefulness

Molly Weasley

Classic red hair

comes across as a bit uptight, like her father

I don’t care what you think. (She really cares what you think.)

E y e b r o w s

death glares

drinks like 5 cups of coffee in the morning

studies,,, like a lot

definitely a Gryffindor though

mom jeans

always ready to debate a topic. will destroy opponents.

has been trying to start a successful Debate Club for like 4 years now

naturally falls into the position of a group leader

would be a teacher’s pet, if she wasn’t ready At All Times™ to debate the relevancy of the course syllabus or outdated teaching methods

got into a fight with Severus Snape’s portrait in Headmistress McGonagall’s office.

(Dumbledore’s portrait was laughing, until she turned and ragged on him for a bit. Minerva thought it was absolutely hilarious, so she just let Molly go at it for a while).

full of rage towards everything, but wears a very careful mask of aloofness

to calm down, she likes painting her nails

she’s very good at it

she’s also very good at painting and art in general, weirdly enough

Lucy Weasley

G R Y F F I N D O R

adores shitty puns and has a terrible sense of humour

brown hair, not red

loves to prank people, which makes her Uncle George very proud

Percy complains about her behaviour, but makes sure he knows he’s proud too

(charming all the cauldrons in the potions classroom to scream whenever they’re stirred takes a more complex understanding of spell work than one would expect).

a pit of a punk streak

rly loves hip hop

high key drama queen

does she ever stop yelling? we’re yet to find out

average grades in terms of theory, but she’s the best in terms of applying information

especially for her pranks

has allies throughout the castle, from the portraits to the students

the bigger the prank, the better

but is a firm believer in “confuse, don’t abuse”

all her pranks are mostly harmless

is a surprising lover of older literature, like Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, an influence of her sister

a bit rebellious

Fred Weasley II

name isn’t officially “the second”, but it sounds cooler

James Potter, Lucy Weasley, Molly Weasley and Fred Weasley are like the Marauders 2.0

says “squad” and “lit” unironically

niche humour

hipster vibes

avid music lover

smiley sunshine child

takes after his mother the most in looks, just like his sister

a chill type of gryffindor

plays quidditch, and is an excellent chaser, just like his mother

the absolute undisputed King™ of puppy-dog eyes

just,,,, beautiful

the True teacher’s pet

hands in his work on time,, asks lots of questions,,, likes helping students understand their work,, what a boy

can hella nyoom

runs so fast

look at him go

as you might expect, loves a good prank. always down for a laugh

Roxanne Weasley

Gryffindor and pROUD

absolute Queen tbh

was definitely Head Prefect or Gryffindor Prefect at some point

loved by the school

absolute legend

G I R L   P O W E R

infectious laughter

has a soft spot for Louis Weasley and Scorpius Malfoy

these poor disaster children,,,, they need a Mother

M O M

big mom vibes

mothers the hell out of all the first years

a feminist through and through

can be found nodding aggressively to Molly Weasley’s semi-deranged, furious ranting

YAAAASS

loves slang. uses so much slang. always up to date with trends and memes

has all the gossip

becomes a mess around pretty girls

absolute blushing, stuttering disaster around cute girls oh my god

her eye make-up game is killer

sparkly

Distinguished Lesbian

Rosie Weasley

did someone say Weasley™?

red hair and freckles and curls oh my

on the autism spectrum, has trouble socialising sometimes

hella passionate about stuff

hangs out with Scorpius and Albus, the Golden Trio 2.0

f em ini st

her jokes are the best. high quality sense of humour.

Ravenclaw

likes to read. it’s quiet in the school library, which is nice.

abysmal at herbology

surprisingly good at Care of Magical Creatures though? Animals are just,,, so much easier to deal with

overall, really good grades though

bit of a silent type, but she’s actually a riot to hang out with

actually pretty good at quidditch? She’s not on the team, and she’s not super interested in playing, but?? She’s not bad??

She can land a solid hit with a beater’s bat

(eyes you judgementally over the top of a book)

dry wit humour

will throw hands over chess

Hugo Weasley

hufflepuff

unbeatable at chess, like his dad

a lost puppy

someone please help this child

softie

kind of low-key emotional

so supportive!! and loyal!! high-key best friend material

foodie. loves food. please feed him.

takes a bit more after his dad appearance wise

loves to cook. spends lots of time with grandma Molly and his dad in the kitchen

Professor Longbottom is his favourite professor, because he’s more chilled and laidback.

other professors and classes fill him with Distress™

loves astronomy too

maths whizz, so good at arithmancy

(“uh, actually-“)

a little bossy, like his mother

is trying so hard

maybe a little too hard

a bit insecure and nervous, but so soft

please treat this child carefully and with love

James Sirius Potter

Gryffindor

L O U D

a fucking disaster child

what’d you expect, putting “James” and “Sirius” together?

DRAMATIC GASPING

flails his hands around when he talks

s t r u t s

bisexual mess, had a crush on both the Longbottom children at some point

is better than you at everything

including being a different gender

fuck you that’s why

so pretty

he’s so pretty

is thIS CHILD EVER NOT LAUGHING AT SOMETHING OH My god

laughs at everything

all the time

always

high-key emotional

badly timed finger guns

looks like a model in photos? wtf?

gets invited to Girls Nights™

wears nail polish and makeup

loves to yell at people about gender roles and defying stereotypes

TEA SIS

not on the quidditch team surprisingly enough, even though he’s pretty good

prefers to be in the stands, doing A+ commentary on the games

if he can get Fred to stop mid-air due to unbearable, suffocating laughter at least once a game it’s a win in his books

has it OUT for the hufflepuff quidditch team and no one knows why??

definitely makes puns on his name

it drives everyone insane

harry always replies he’s just making his namesake proud

that also drives everyone insane

smug lil shit

Albus Severus Potter

“It’s just Al.”

S L Y T H E R I N

will always find a way to get what he wants, eventually

“dad, why did you name me this way?”

unimpressed

sigh

hella smart. is topping at least five classes

Aunt Hermione is his favourite. She’s the fucking Mistress of Magic! All that power, the ability to make change and improve the Magical World as a whole-

sass master

the reason headmistress mcgonagall keeps a bottle of scotch under her desk at all times

the only potter child to inherit The Eyes™

absolute insomniac

kind of emo, but turns into a fucking softie around Scorpius Malfoy it’s hilarious

adverse to violence. prefers a verbal beatdown method

really tall? despite having shorties for parents??? no one saw it coming

(especially not Teddy. He’s always scared of losing his last few inches of height)

Functional Gay

he’s on the slytherin quidditch team, as a seeker

Lily Luna Potter

Gryffindor

FEMINIST

do not mess with lily luna potter

she may seem cute and sweet, but she will destroy you

inherited her father’s black hair

disaster lesbian

transfiguration is her favourite subject, by far

has no idea what she wants to do with the rest of her life.

Existential Crisis Father-Daughter Bonding Time™

do you ever sleep?

takes after Ginny the most in personality

also, kind of the most like James Fleamont Potter in personality, too?

Loves to help her brother out with pranks, laughs at him when he gets caught and she gets away with it

The only one of the Potter Children who hasn’t got into a fight with Severus Snape’s portrait

because she just ignores him instead

loves talking to the portraits around the castle

Super good at Quidditch, is on the team as a Chaser

Quidditch Captain at some point

adores Hagrid, but who out of the Potter children doesn’t?

Idolises Minerva McGonagall

just as oblivious as her father

Scorpius Malfoy

Actually in Ravenclaw, not Slytherin, much to many people’s surprise

abSOLUTE DADDY’S BOY

super close with his dad

Draco is just so supportive of like everything he does (unlike his father)

classic blonde malfoy looks

actually really funny?

a cuddler. loves hugs. always leeching warmth off of someone

he and Rosie sometimes finger-tip-touch which is their version of a hug, because he know’s she’s not super comfortable with touch

was basically adopted by the Weasley’s and Potter’s

James Sirius will murder for this child

booknerd, always rambling to Al and Rosie about new books coming out he’s interested in reading.

has had a crush on Albus Potter since like 1st year

always worried about making his dad proud, and keeping up the Malfoy name

sweet tooth

he’s just,, soft. just a warm, happy child. he wants love, and affection. someone tell him he’s doing okay, please.

needs,,, validation,,,

he’ll tell you out loud that he has no favourite aunts or uncles, but he secretly really likes spending time with his Uncle Ron

they had a talk, once, in like the middle of the night at a sleepover with Rosie and Al, about feeling insecure in comparison to others, and learning to be proud of yourself for your achievements

there were a few tears, but it was nice

Ron was actually the third person he told, besides his dad and Rosie, about having a crush on Al

openly a disaster romantic. trash taste in romance novels.

always welcome in the Potter-Weasley households

[fanfiction4thesoul]

What I See Part 3

Pairing: Roger Taylor x Reader

Word Count: ~1.9

Warnings: None

Summary: You’re headed back home to London after a few years in America. You’ve got a new job at EMI, thanks to your best friend Freddie and you’re ready to start the next chapter of your life. But navigating life is far more interesting when you see far more than anyone else.

A/N: You guys. I did homework the entirety of my spring break. And there’s still some stuff that I’m procrastinating on soooo I hope you’re not too upset that I took so long. This chapter is like, the final set up before Reader and Roger can really start to get to know each other so I hope you enjoy! Thank you to everyone still sticking with me as well as every single one of you that likes/comments/reblogs!!

Part 2

You stared up at the quaint library in front of you, admittedly a little nervous. Roger had tossed you his keys to the van this morning with a wink, reminding you not to explore anywhere else without him. You got directions from the owners of the studio and made the journey into town. The library was bigger than you expected for a small town like this one though you supposed that was a good thing. 

The inside was just as quaint as the outside and almost empty. The stern looking woman behind the information desk gave you a look as you entered but otherwise didn’t say anything. 

You took your time looking through the shelves trying to find what you needed. But it felt like looking through a needle in a haystack. You weren’t familiar with the Dewey Decimal system enough to know where your small, niche topic would be hiding. It took you 20 minutes to admit defeat and go to the front desk to ask the woman. 

If anything, her face got even more pinched when you told her what you were looking for, but she gave you the call number and pointed you in the right direction. When you got there, though, you practically knew it was going to be useless. Most of the titles you were looking at were things like Haunted Places, My Venture into the Afterlife, and 100 TRUE Ghost Hauntings. 

There was a rather large book though that might have something. It was titled Occult: A How To Guide. You pulled it off the shelf and went to settle in a chair in the back, away from the view of the front desk. There were no chapter titles so you started skimming through. The book definitely contained some interesting information like magic and practices (which you never really believed in but hey, you talk to dead people so who knows?) and of course supernatural creatures.

You were trying to be thorough in your skimming so it definitely took you longer than expected to reach the chapter about ghosts (chapter 15, page 392). Once you got there, you took the time to actually read the chapter, not wanting to miss any information. A lot of it explained what spirits were and all the theories about the afterlife or what plane of existence they seem to live on, as well as how they communicate with the living. 

Just as you were getting to the part about psychic mediums, someone spoke up behind you. “Whatcha readin’?”

You jumped in your chair, dropping the book to the floor with a dull thud. Whirling around, you were met with Richie, smirking up at you while he leaned against a bookcase.

“What the hell are you doing here?” you growled out at him. You shifted to look down the stacks to make sure no one was coming to check on the noise you just made. “Didn’t I just see you a week ago?”

“Well, yeah. But I got bored and everyone kept pestering me ‘bout you, so here I am.” He waved his arms out, looking far too pleased with himself.

“Alright, you found me. Now what do you want?”

“Well I wanted to know what you’re reading.”

You felt your face heat up a bit as you looked down at the occult book. “Uhh, just researching, you know.” Was it weird to tell a ghost you were reading about their… species? Being? Whatever they are?

You tried to pick the book up quick enough but Richie was already reading the cover. “Occult? (Y/N), you’re reading about magic?” He seemed confused, brushing his hair out of his face as he looked at you.

“Not… not really no. I’m--I have a bit of a problem,” you confessed.

“What do you mean?”

You explained to Richie the spirit that’s attached to Roger, from his outburst the first night to the continued negativity that he spreads around wherever he goes. “And, I don’t know. I was hoping there might have been a book here that would have, like, remedies? Kind of? To… ward him off or keep him away or just do something. So, yeah… occult.” You lifted the book awkwardly as if to prove your point.

Richie was silent during your explanation, brows pinched together as he focused on your words. “(Y/N), you're telling me that you’ve gone your whole life not knowing about--about anything? How have you been protecting yourself?” He seemed irritated as he started pacing in front of the stacks.

You just gaped at him. “Wha--what--how was I supposed to know about protection? I’ve never needed protection.”

Richie stopped his pacing to stare at you. “You’ve never met a negative spirit before? Never?”

“No!” You said, a little too loudly. You glanced down the stacks again before answering. “No. Every spirit I ever met was nice. Well maybe not nice-nice. Some of them did like friendly pranks or whatever, but no one was ever mean.”

Richie stared at you a moment longer before closing his eyes and shaking his head. “First off, that’s crazy. Secondly, you need sage.”

“Sage,” you repeated dumbly.

“Yes, sage. You burn it around the area you want to cleanse and tell the spirit to leave. That should do the trick.”

“Where… do I buy sage?”

Richie sighed, “Jeez (Y/N). At the apothecary. Or any herbal store.”

“Right…” You felt your face heat up again. “Is it… is it weird that I never met a negative spirit?” You felt so dumb at the moment on a topic that you thought you knew so much about. 

Richie must have sensed your hesitation because his face immediately softened. “It’s… odd. There’s a lot of them out there and with you so intune to spirits, it’s a little unusual that you’ve never seen one. Doesn’t make it bad. But someone should have told you how to protect yourself. Or you should have learned more yourself. Before you actually met one. You didn’t know though, so it’s okay.” He smirked at you, the twinkle back in his eye, “This is just a nice piece of dirt to gossip about back home.”

You groaned, “Oh, Richiiee. Don’t, please?”

“Not a chance, sweetheart. Now you better get going. Go buy some sage before the stores close.”

You glanced out the window, noticing for the first time the orange sky and when you glanced back, Richie was gone. 

~O~

The sage was surprisingly easy to find and, since it was at a herbal store, nobody looked at you twice for purchasing it. You got back to the farm shortly after the sun had set, the lights from inside the main house guiding your way. Everyone was gathered together in the sitting room, including Paul, Ratty, Crystal and, of course, your resident ghost.

“(Y/N)! There you are. We were starting to get worried,” Freddie said, pulling you into a hug. “Rog thought you drove the van into a ditch.”

“I did not!” 

Freddie winked before turning around with his hands on his hips, “Alright, but you did think she might’ve broken down.”

Roger’s face heated up slightly making you smile.

“I was worried, so sue me.”

“Are you hungry, (Y/N)? We just finished eating and saved you a plate.” John asked you quietly, moving the attention away from Roger and back to you.

“Food sounds great, yeah,”

The boys wanted to sit and chat which you participated in while you ate. You were still uncomfortable, but you were also really anxious to try out the sage. There was no way you could just pull out a bundle of sage though and waft it around without everyone thinking you were bonkers.

You left with the excuse of exhaustion, tossing Roger his keys back on your way out. As soon as you were outside, you beelined to the studio. Pulling out the sage and a match, you lit the tip and waited until it was smoking, burning away slowly.

Richie said to burn it around the area, so you walked around every inch you could, holding the burning sage out. He also said to tell the spirit to leave, but it wasn’t like he was here to listen anyway. So you took your time walking around, going over the couch, soundboard and into the studio. You even wafted it at the Red Special, just in case.

When you were finally satisfied, you used far more sage than you thought you would. Maybe you overdid it? The room didn’t feel any different, but you supposed you would find out tomorrow. You stuck the stick back into your pocket and turned to leave.

“(Y/N)?”

“Shit!” You jumped. Crystal was holding the door open, halfway through the entryway. “Shit, Crystal. You scared me.”

“Yeah, well you scared me. Thought someone broke in or something. I thought you said you were tired?”

“I am. But I wanted to make sure everything was set for tomorrow. I know the boys are anxious to do some actual recording.” You made up a lie on the spot, grateful the sage was out of sight.

But Crystal didn’t seem suspicious. He actually agreed with you.

“Ha, yeah. They’ve got so much going on in those heads of theirs that sometimes bringing it out and putting on paper can be a real challenge. God knows I want to bash their heads together sometimes.”

“It can’t be that bad,” you said, following Crystal out of the studio. You walked the short distance to your house going back and forth about the weird creative process the band does when writing.

“You’ll see,” he said, stopping before his bedroom. “Once they actually start recording, you’ll see. Then I can say ‘I told you so.’”

You rolled your eyes. “Yeah, alright. Night.”

“Night”

As you got ready for bed, you fished out the sage and put it in the bottom drawer of your dresser. You might do your house and the house the boys were staying in. That is, depending on how well it actually worked. You didn’t think Richie would lie to you, but you also didn’t want to get your hopes up if it didn’t.

Mostly, you just wanted to be able to laugh with Freddie again and get to know Roger more without your shoulders tense and your mood sour.

~O~

The next morning, you were in the studio first thing, doing some actual tinkering before the boys came in. You had a bunch of nervous energy while you waited though. 

The bang of the door opening made you jump and you watched as the boys filed in, already arguing lightly about a song. But after they all came in and the door swung shut, that was it.

No one came in behind Deaky, who was the last to enter.

No oppressive energy.

No ghost.

“What’s got you so smiley, love?” Roger was staring at you questioningly. The other boys were already in the booth area leaving you two behind.

“Nothing, I just… I just feel like I can finally breathe easy, ya know?”

“Hmm, yeah. Walking in here felt like a breath of fresh air. Just makes me more excited to start recording, yeah?” He gave you a wide smile, leaning in closer. “Ready to help us make a killer album, love?”

You matched his smile, starting to get excited “Yeah, let’s do this.”

Part 4

~

Taglist: @jennyggggrrr @crazylittlethingcalledobsession @rogahs-drowse @butlegendsneverdie @the-moving-finger-writes @leghy @juliarvra

[deafchild2000]

I Never Really Liked Rikki

Alright before y'all go on and say I'm "shitposting" or degrading your favorite mermaid, just let me let it out!

Rikki Chadwick is one of the 5 mermaids (yes, counting Bella and Charlotte) on H2O: Just Add Water. When she she became a mermaid, she got heating powers, essentially leading to actual fire and lightning powers in Season 2.

On the Wikia, she's described as: Rikki is quite rebellious, independent, sarcastic and carefree, making the two argue often.Rikki frequently speaks her mind without euphemism or without care that her opinions might hurt other people's feelings. She has a hard time sympathizing with people who are in pain, as seen in "Dangerous Waters." She can be very stubborn and has a short temper. Rikki has a strong adventurous streak and is the first to fully embrace the possibilities of the girls' new powers. Despite their arguments, Rikki and Emma do get along a lot of the times, and Rikki genuinely cares for her friends. This is demonstrated when she takes Emma and Cleo out on a shopping spree with her new money in "Dangerous Waters." To make up for her previous blunder in the same episode, she also does her best to buy Cleo the perfect new fish (as thanks, Cleo dubs the fish "Hot Stuff," in honor of Rikki). Rikki also shows her care for Emma when Rikki prods Byron to apologize to her friend in "Sink or Swim," revealing that Emma is not as tough and thick-skinned as she lets on.

Not only does Rikki shows her rebellious nature freely, but she encourage it in her friends as well. In "Pressure Cooker", Rikki encouraged Cleo and Emma to rebel against Charlotte Watsford and her mother, Annette Watsford who were invited by Don Sertori to stay over for dinner. Thinking that Don is getting remarried and that Charlotte will become Cleo's step sister, Rikki encouraged the others to use their powers to ruin the food, not knowing that Annette was only invited as a business partner. Despite her carefree nature, Rikki is capable of displaying a sense of responsibility especially when it comes to money. In the episode "Hook, Line and Sinker", Rikki attempted to look for some financial security for her family by attending Harrison Bennett's seminar, only to find it to be a scam. In "In Over Our Heads", Rikki attempted to help her father by trying to find a lost treasure for the reward money because her family was struggling with the bills. During her stay as café manager in season three, she was able to show her ability in running a business successful. When Rikki left after breaking up with Zane, the café started to struggle despite Sophie replacing her as manager, showing her organizational and monetary abilities.

But the things is, I never connected to her. Actually, I could never relate to any of the trio, but Rikki at most (ironically it's Charlotte and Bella that has my favor.).

See, by technically, I should like her because I'm sarcastic, independent, rebellious, stubborn, easily vengeful, unapologetically blunt at times and savvy business-wise (side hustle - jobs- for money). Plus I've been borderline homeless and raised by a single parent.

But for myself and others, I had needed to be more than that. Where I'm sarcastic, I am concerned and loyal when it needs to be regardless of circumstances. Where I'm independent, even I have to admit defeat and ask for help because I accept I don't know everything. When I'm stubborn, while admitting for fighting in what I believe in, I do my best to set it aside when need be or else Karma would be on my ass. For my rebelliousness, I have to know when I draw the line and go too far. Same goes for being vengeful, but I at least have someone (mom and uncle) on my corner to steer me away and even get a good laugh out of it while I can still reverse it. I'm legit working on being blunt since past experiences taught me sugarcoating isny always the best option, but I do have basic understanding why people do it. Sometimes the bandaid does need gently peeling to get the job done - especially if it's for the sake of a child.

So in comparison, between me and Rikki, felt that aside from a few glimpses of her realizing her mistakes and vulnerability, in those 3 years of being a mermaid, she never really took on the lessons she learned and developed Empathy. Empathy is all about understanding someone and their feelings, especially if their in a place you've been before. And considering that Rikki had a bunch of friends to pull her from the dark side of her personality, no one really bothered to do that when her personality took a turn for the worse in Season 2. Season 3 was when she nearly reached the point of No Return if Will hadn't intervene to stop her from borderline killing Ryan in the moon pool.

Then, I've talked to friends about this and perhaps it originally stemmed from the mermaid aspect of her life. Yes, H2O is just a tv show, and it aired years before I entered my own teenhood, but people are drawn to it because they can relate to the girls in the show. So, when it came to being a mermaid, I believed that it was because all teenagers struggled with being different and that what usually (or generally) sets them apart from their peers.

Now, I live in the US, and I'm an African-American female who's smart (book and street-wise) and has an internal, physical disability: I'm deaf in my right ear. Add in a potential fact that I might have Aspergers (a form of Autism), I never really stood a chance growing up. I knew how to be apart of a group (most of the time), but I was essentially a wall flower in it. There was/are time when I had to dive into things trending for pre/teens just so I had to understand what the big fuss was about. (Plus watching people deal with unnecessary teen drama has always been a turnoff for me.)

Thus leading me to believe Rikki never really had to fight for anything. Yeah, she was pure but not poor enough to live in a single house of multiple strangers (which was my life in 5th grade). She didn't have to struggle to fit in, whether or not that was the case, since she basically had her own little niche of mermaid sisters and (a) boyfriend. In my case, that's more than anyone could ever get in high school- minus the mermaid aspect. But if you add that in, Rikki literally had a whole separate life all to herself where she could get away and in my case, I never had that. Reading and writing was the only escape I had from reality and there were times even that wasn't enough.

So, during that time, if I was one, being a mermaid, like Rikki, would be embeaced but with the rightful amount of shock of the situation would also be there as well.

And maybe I would be prone to abuse my powers, who wouldn't? Having a supernatural ability, using it as I see fit to work for me or against others? I actually thing having something no one else has tend to make anyone else selfish, whether they are all alone or in a small group of those like them. It's Human Nature to be like that. Besides, look when the trio had done so on multiple occasions, yet were hypocrites in regard to Charlotte when she did so to Nate. (Which I will happily point out all the times Rikki did just that, like when she found out she was a part of a fish scheme and all the other times she blantatly almost killed someone with her powers.)

However, I also knew that "With Great Power, Comes Great Repsonibility" is true, regardless of fictional or realistic obligations. If I did want to just pranks someone, I would do it so obviously- with potentially witnesses- and then make it a recurring gag.

(To be honest, if I did and did it so often to a sibling like Kim Sertori, well, let's just say I'd accept responsibility If I got found out because I had it coming for doing said pranks in the first place.)

If I had wanted to use my powers like a weapon to harm someone, I knew I better have a damn good reason to do so, especially if said powers were as dangerous as Rikki's. And then question if that said person was a threat or just someone I really didn't like. And add in the fact if it was on purpose or a genuine accident (like, for example, how I'd like to believe Emma was traumatized after realizing ahe had frozen Miriam alive. Sure the girls saved her in time, but still, that should have been a hint to the girls to not only expand the knowledge of their powers, but become increasingly aware of how dangerous they are. So if they hadn't saved Miriam or Rikki ended up killing her....)

Basically summarizing above, Rikki was shown on more than one regard just how careless and irresponsible she is with her powers and then had the nerve to be self-righteous and hypocritical when someone else does it, and it's someone she doesn't like.

However, while I admit to giving her cudos on some of her ocean adventure - definitely as she's a career diver as an adult- I don't think she really took into account just how much of an advantage she had as a mermaid. While she wasn't a full-on superhero, she probably spent more time in the ocean more than anyone else since getting her tail. Meaning you'd finished being more awareness to the issues on the ocean such as trash and oil spills, taking in for granted having a rich boyfriend could technically help achieve resources to do so. Yeah, they shouldn't be drawing attention to themselves, like at all, but if the ocean is your second home, you can't tell me you'd wouldn't try to help keep that home alive and healthy.

So maybe the producers didn't show it or it just never occurred to them (or in Rikki's case, until her job profession), but if I had mermaid powers and a tail, Lord knows I would have been kept busy for all my teen years cleaning the beaches and pulling up trash after trash to at least somebody caught onto it and started taking action themselves. Not starting a trend, but a chain reaction. And it wouldn't be a seasonal thing either. Basically, if you had the ability to be a live like a fish, you use your human life to bring awareness to sustain that life. We caught maybe a few glimpses btwn H2O and Mako Mermaids, but that would have been a great way for Rikki to express just how much she clearly cared about being a mermaid. But thus she didn't, so I have no reason to believe she did or had a basic understanding of what oppertunities she had offered to her as a mermaid.

I would see it before anyone told me.

And sensing that I'm going off topic, I'll just steer myself back to the point: All other reasons aside, here are my main reasons I never liked her:

Rikki never really grew to have Empathy, or understand when someone is in a place where she once was. She stayed mentally the same as she grew up and it wasn't until she was an adult and found herself back where she started, that she finally developed it.

She actually had more than any other teenage girl can want and more. A roof over her head to call her own, friends and a chance for a significant other? Plus an amazing double life you had to see to believe? For someone like me, who has to fight through obstacles everyday between my race and disability, everything about that spells something worth taking for granted.

She never really took responsibility for her powers or learned from the trouble she caused. Maybe at the time, things seemed necessary, but overall, she was extremely careless and selfish in regards for it. And then some, in regards for using her powers in public and nearly exposed herself, especially when nearly seriously hurting someone, but then had the nerve to berate someone who did just that when she'd done the exact same or worse (adding in potentially murdering someone in the midst of her anger). Season 2 was the so best example of how bad that got and frankly, turned me against her completely to be honest. And Season 3 was basically like Season 1, only Cleo was in Emma's place plus a crazed obsession with protection the moon pool. (Which proven right considered how many damn people found it in the show's history, but still!)

While debatable, she never shown and consideration to the environment ( the Ocean) until it fit her needs. I can name a hundred of ways she could have shown concern and and helped environmental impacts and sea animals affected by it, and do it anonymously, especially considering her future job as a diver.

Like all stories, the 2000s H2O trio is supposed to be 3-dimensial characters who change throughout the story - or in this case, a show - where Emma was a responsible girl who learned to enjoy life, Cleo was a kind girl who learned to grow a backbone and Rikki was a loner who got friends.

As a child, it's easy to see it that way. And considering how Rikki is viewed as someone you'd want to grow up into -Strong, opinionated, stand firm in what's right - who wouldn't idolize that. Anyone, even young girls, should be like that because, in the real world, values like that are rarer than your led to believe.

But when you take into to account of whether or not Rikki is the type of role model you should look up to, then that's why I labeled and the things she's done under:

Static Character.

Rikki started and ended H2O as a mermaid with a rebellious streak. But though she's made mistakes and apologized, she never changed who she was and truly learned from her mistakes, leading me to believe she just kept getting things without any real consequences, thus no character developement.

As I'm ending this, I will acknowledge that I know this sounds like a rant degrading Rikki - and someone will chew me out defending her for it- but after watching all the seasons and how taken Rikki into consideration I came to see if she was real, we'd never get along. So while I'm not going "I hate her so much!" or "She's so ugly!", I'm simply stating why that I don't believe Rikki deserves all the fanfare she's got over the years.

[howtohero]

#206 Rural Superheroes

When most of picture superheroes they picture brooding men and women with capes draped around their shoulders and standing on buildings doing their best gargoyle impressions. Or you see them swinging and slinging around crowded streets using buildings as anchors. Or you see them hunched in a sewer eating pizza with their sewer-gator sidekicks after a long day of fighting crime. You definitely don’t imagine them standing next to a big pile of hay and holding a pitchfork and wearing overalls. (Guys I’m talking a huge pile of hay. Like the kind that looks like it’d be amazing to be dropped out of an airplane onto.) If you’ve never imagined a superhero stopping some disgraced middle school guidance counselor from rewriting reality and then going back home to milk the cows and tend to the corn then you’re just part of the problem. You need to reevaluate your personal biases. That’s right people, you heard it hear first! Superheroes can be countryfolk! And that’s a fact!

For some reason, lots of people think that the only reason any superhero would be in a rural area was if they were like, I don’t know, hiding their secret family on a secret farm. But that’s simply not true! In fact, that’s a terrible idea! Rural areas are not a safer place for your family to be, you know what kind of crimes go down in rural areas? Really weird ones. I’m talking like cow-related crimes. (Once the evil Cowcatcher built a giant cow robot to roam about rural Kansas just mooing really really loudly and scaring the stuffing out of everyone! That was a heck of a Thursday!) That’s just not normal! Don’t set up a secret farm to keep your family safe, just have a normal secret identity like everyone else and your family will be fine. 

So if you live in a rural area and have been looking around at all the insane cow-crimes that happen in your neighborhood and felt that you had no choice except to throw your hands up, shake your head, and exclaim “Aw shucks, if only there could be superheroes in rural areas!” Then you’re in luck! There can be superheroes in rural areas! I’m serious, we had our interns check the laws and there’s nothing saying that it can’t be done! (Except for the laws about vigilantism and stuff but they’ve got those laws in the cities too and nobody seems to care!). 

If you’re going to be a rural superhero though, you need to know that you’re going to have to operate a little bit differently than an urban crime fighter, but that doesn’t make you any less super! (What makes rural heroes less super is the fact that their are just less toxic-waste corporations in Middleofnowheresville, USA than there are in Heartoftheactionsville, USA.) For starters, you’re going to have an entirely different wardrobe in the country. Instead of grays and blacks you’re going to want to go with beautiful verdant greens and some mud-like gritty browns. If you’re going to be prowling around vast empty fields patrolling for cow-tippers and and goat-suckers, you’re going to want to look like a field. Glue bits of grass onto your costume, tape a live pig to your back, roll around in some manure. If you’re going to protect the farm you need to become the farm. 

Living in a rural area also drastically changes the options for both superhero hideouts and supervillain lairs. While urban heroes might find their superhero adventures taking place in corporate offices with mysterious secret floors or abandoned subway tunnels that have become home to an evil rat hive mind, for rural heroes it’s gonna be all barns all the time. Barns make for rather spacious superhero hideouts, there’s plenty of room for any gear or computers you might need for crime stopping and conducting illegal investigations, you can convert any stables into holding cells or trophy cases, and if any civilians wander on by all you need to do is cover everything with a layer of hay and no one will be the wiser! Rural supervillains are also very likely to use barns as their lairs, their’s will just be littered with disemboweled animals and fake cobwebs from the halloween popup store because they have a taste for the creepier things in life. While a barn might not be as glamorous as a time-displaced spaceship or a high-tech cave, they are competent and cost-effective hideouts and are good enough for any countryside-crusader. The only think you have to look out for is Jhonny McBarnburner whose entire thing is burning barns and would probably be more than happy to set a superhero’s barn on fire. That’s like a double-whammy, and such opportunities are rare in Jhonny McBarnburner’s life. Honestly, you should’ve been there when he first discovered that some barns were actually secret superhero hideouts. It was actually kind of adorable. His whole entire face lit up, it was as though he’d finally be validated for his extremely niche modus operandi after all these years. So honestly, I say you capitalize on his newfound enthusiasm for barn burning and frame uninhabited barns for being superhero hideouts. This can be as simple as just putting a sign in the ground that says “superhero hideout” in front of random abandoned barns. That should throw him off your scent for a while.

Getting around rural areas is very different from getting around crowded cities. There’s not a lot of people around so you’re not likely to run into a lot of traffic, but at the same time, populated areas are very far from each other. Even the distance between individual houses is much larger than the distance between any manmade structures in a big city. There are also a lot less superheroes per capita. All of this means you’re going to be responsible for protecting a very large open area. Which means you’re going to need a very specific kind of super-vehicle. You need something that’s fast, something bright so people will see it on poorly lit country roads, something that’s doused in cow-repellant or whatever to keep animals out of your way. It needs to have off-road capabilities, because if there’s a crime being committed in the middle of a farm or on top of a mountain, you don’t want to have to ditch your vehicle and jog to the crime. That’s a great way for crimes to happen. You really should not put so much faith in your jogging abilities. You can’t jog up a mountain, but you can drive an obscene vehicle up one. That’s what makes it obscene. You also might as well drive something fuel efficient, something that runs off of vegetable oil or something, there’s plenty of it around. 

Rural superheroes are also often, believe it or not, the first heroes on Earth to encounter alien invaders. Aliens just love alerting mankind to their presence through carving crop-circles and stealing cows. Depending on the species this can be anything from a harmless prank to a signed declaration of war. (Often the cow thing is because to most alien species, cows appear to be the most intelligent species on Earth. I mean, they live in their food, that’s just smart.) So you need to be prepared to single-handedly fight off an invading force at a moment’s notice. So I hope you’ve got some corn-powered laser blasters at your disposal, because you’re gonna need them sooner rather than later.

When it comes to crime fighting partners, you may find yourself in short supply. Heroes like Old MacDonald-Man or Crop-Top describe the loneliness as the most difficult part of rural crime fighting. In big cities you can’t walk more than five feet before bumping into someone who spends their nights wearing spandex and laying the smackdown on evil puzzle enthusiasts or finger-puppeteers. But in the country you’re likely to never run into another superhero in your neighborhood. That’s why you need to take on an animal sidekick. Fortunately, rural communities are a great place to find some domesticated animals that would be down to come fight crimes with you. In order to determine which farm animals would be the best crime fighting partners we actually took a husbandry course. (Ok, you got us, Dr. Brainwave got engaged and we all chipped in and paid for him to go to a husbandry course so he could learn how to be a good husband and the rest of us went for emotional support but it turns out none of knew what husbandry was and we were not in the right place but we learned a lot and had fun and it turned out that Dr. Brainwave’s engagement was fake and part of some villainous scheme to poison the concept of weddings or something so it didn’t matter anyway.) During this course we learned a lot about the breeding of crops and animals and we have scientifically determined that the best possible animal sidekick for a rural superhero is a goat on roller blades. Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Are you idiots joking? You guys go on and on and on and on about how roosters are the best animal sidekicks and now you’re going to come at me and say that goats are the best animal sidekick for a rural superhero? Are you kidding me? Is this a joke?” First of all, yeah, everything we say is a joke. This is a comedy blog. And second of all, hey tone back the attitude why don’t you? Gosh you’re being real hostile about this. Roosters are the ideal superhero sidekick for urban or space-faring superheroes. But they’re useless for rural superheroes. Roosters are great for waking you up? Rural-superheroes already wake up with the sun to tend to their crops, don’t need a rooster. Roosters can fly? No crimes are committed in the skyline of a rural community. There is no skyline. Anybody can scramble to the roof of the local post office or pitchfork wholesaler, don’t need a rooster. Roosters can attack your enemies with their sharp beaks and talons? Uh, hello, pitchfork wholesaler? There’s no shortage of sharp farming tools that rural superheroes can use in lieu of a beak or talons, don’t need a rooster. A goat on roller blades on the other hand, can thoroughly mess a criminal up. Imagine all the rage and power of a common goat, but with the speed of roller blades? You rural criminals may as well just pack it in, you’re not getting away with anything with Thunderbolt Cannonberg, goat superhero, on the scene. 

Crime is everywhere, even in the idyllic countryside. So don’t be afraid to be the change you’d like to see in your community and start fighting back against the chupacabra or Terrence, the kid who steals pigs. If you follow these tips, and take a moment to appreciate the beauty of the land and sky around you every once in a while, you should have a wonderful and productive career as a sylvan superhero.

[amirulcseiu09]

How To Grow YouTube Channel Fastest Way

Wondering how to grow your subscriber count on YouTube? There’s a simple formula I use to get tons of free YouTube subscribers. We’ll cover each step in detail in the following sections. 

 Key points:

Delete old, poor-quality videos from your channel

Create videos people actually want to watch

Consider your channel branding

Create a super-engaging channel trailer

Come up with a pitch

Design eye-popping thumbnails

Capture the viewer’s attention in the first 10 seconds

Create YouTube shorts

Collaborate with other You Tubers with similar audiences

Cover the hype, but don’t try to create it every time

Share your videos in niche online communities

Encourage binge watching

Use YouTube cards to suggest other videos

Maintain consistency

Invest in YouTube SEO

Add CTA’s like end screens and cards into your YouTube     videos

Use video SEO techniques to optimize your video for search

Leverage YouTube shorts.

Ask viewers to subscribe.

Create videos that are around 10 minutes long.

Ask people to leave comments (this is how you go viral).

Respond to every comment with an answer and a question.

Promote your video hard in the first 24 hours through email and push notifications

Upload a transcription of your video 

Create the 3 Types of Videos People Love

There's no shortage of YouTube video ideas to get more subscribers. The challenge is finding ones that make viewers return to your channel and hit subscribe.

Over time, we've found that four videos never go out of style on YouTube:

Reaction videos

How-to videos

Versus videos

Make the Optimum use of Meta Tags

If you want your videos to be displayed in the YouTube search results, metadata plays a vital role. If you want to understand what meta tags you should use, go to some of the popular YouTubers’ videos and see what they have done with their meta tags. Don’t just copy, be creative.

Avoid takedowns and copyright issues

When you’re delivering content and collecting all the assets, it’s easy to fall foul of copyright rules. Whether for images, video, or music, YouTubers can risk a takedown if their content violates copyright – that’s not a great look for anyone looking to get more subscribers on YouTube.  

Avoid posting selfish content

You might want to stream games, set up pranks, be a travel blogger, or something else entirely. That’s all fine, but it has to be for someone other than yourself. YouTuber and entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk talks about ‘selfish’ content and the binary functions of YouTubers: to entertain or educate.

YouTube is the second-largest search engine globally, and 65% of people use it to solve a problem. So, if you’re not educating them, you need to make sure that what you’re doing is valuable enough for people to subscribe.

Use subtitles to ensure your channel is accessible and inclusive

A key part in attracting subscribers sits with the user experience. Beyond just making it look ‘nice,’ you can lend your channel a more accessible and inclusive feel with relative ease, giving viewers the confidence to subscribe and regularly watch your content.

Directly ask viewers to subscribe

It sounds obvious, but it always helps to ask people directly to subscribe. It doesn’t need to be salesy if that’s not your style – just tell people they can sign up for all the cool content you have planned and that you have a catalog of great stuff they can check out in the meantime.

Post consistently

Established YouTubers will often stick to a schedule, giving subscribers something to look forward to. It’s good practice to get this up and running as soon as you can, as the YouTube algorithm doesn’t tend to work its magic until you have around 35 videos in the bank.

Naturally, you still need to prioritize quality over quantity. If you set yourself a target of one video per week, which then becomes unachievable, then that’s fine. Just make sure you let your viewers know what the deal is.

Make sure to reply to everyone

It’s always good to reply to viewers’ questions, compliments, and criticisms – no matter how popular your channel becomes.

YouTube’s own internal data clearly states that encouraging audience participation can result in a larger fanbase; make this a habit as soon as you begin, and keep it up. Viewers who feel they’re listened to and valued by a creator will be more likely to subscribe.

Do your keyword research for titles, descriptions, and hashtags

Understanding YouTube SEO and knowing which keywords related to your subject matter people are looking up on YouTube will help you title your new videos and choose the right hashtags. But it might also lend inspiration for your next video topic.

Similar to platforms like Facebook and Twitter, YouTube also allows for video targeting based on interest, demographics, and/or in-market audiences

 Invest in YouTube Advertising

The time has come to take your wallet out. You didn’t think all of these tips would be free of charge, did you?

Take a deep breath, I’m not asking you to shell out too much cash, but putting some budget behind promoting your YouTube channel is a pretty full-proof way of increasing your subscription base. The internet is a crowded space, and money talks, so it’s important to invest some of your marketing budget behind your channel.

YouTube makes advertising your channel very customizable with a variety of ad formats, including:

Display ads

Overlay ads

Skippable and non-skippable video ads

Bumper ads

Sponsored cards

   Read more.......

[norgad-vcd]

COPY: First Revision

Introduction.

What goes on, online?

Anything and everything. It’s a beautiful and vibrant mess of human interaction. Everything from trivial and thoughtless acts to the most sincere and genuine deeds. It’s grounds for the vicious and the virtuous alike. The internet is what you make of it; A tool as good or bad as it’s wielders.

What this book is

It’d take a thousand lifetimes to see it all.

How about a quick glimpse instead?

Hiya, I’m Tom! I’ve spent enough of my life online that I can confer some of my findings to you. This book is a smörgåsbord of experiences, phenomena, and memories I’ve been witness to and participant in during my time here. While not a full picture, it should help you navigate the ballpark of possibilities out there. My experiences are just one sample from billions; perhaps after this you’ll seek to venture out further into that world-wide web, or - at the very least - understand a little better those who do.

Heads-up

Listen a moment, before you go.

I am only one person. My field of view is limited, as is my foresight. Take my advice with a grain of salt, I can’t prepare you for everything. There’s so much more out there waiting for you, some good, some bad; be sensible.

Who am I, online?

Personas and the separation of meatspace and cyberspace.

Online, your real-life identity isn’t attached to you by default. Of course there’s places where the expectation is indeed a connection to real identities - like Facebook for example - but this is not a requirement. I’m not known as ‘Tom’ online, people know me by my username, and t.

It’s not a fake me, or a way to lie to people, it’s just an alternate expression of myself. We act differently to different people in so many social situations, - from time with family, to at work, and to hanging out with friends - the internet allows even more possible ways to express parts of ourselves. For me, it’s liberating to exist in a state that’s disconnected from the tangle of my real life self, and to keep the tangle of my internet presence away from real life as well.

Equal ground, just another user.

On the internet, nobody knows who you are.

Unless you divulge them, your identity, physical appearance, background, nationality, gender, race and so on are completely unknown; this is the great equalizer. Free from biases based on your physical self, you can be perceived as purely another person.

Still a person, despite appearances.

A clean slate can tempt some however to act recklessly. If an identity and stigma can be shed so easily, some people feel emboldened to act without the threat of consequences; verbally beat someone up, and then wash your hands of the whole incident.

It’s important to remember that people online are still people; while their faces might be obscured, they still have thoughts and feelings.

In general, talking to people online has the same potential as real-life to be great, awful, or somewhere inbetween. It’s just luck of the draw who you’ll encounter.

Who else?

I’m hanging out with my friends.

“Go outside and spend time with your friends!”

What a classic line. Truth is I’m already spending time with my friends, just on the computer. It can be hard to organise in person meetups sometimes, and meeting up online can be much more spontaneous. All it takes is noticing someone else is online and flicking them a message, Boom, instant hangout, and before you know it you’ve got all the boys bantering away.

Over the first lockdown in 2020 me and most of my real-life friends started a minecraft server together and played through it for the duration of our stint stuck at home. It was like a little clubhouse, each time we logged in and saw things change slightly since last time. We left each other notes and set up gifts and pranks for when people left and returned. It was a great way to keep in touch when we were otherwise very isolated from social contact.

Guest speaker, Josh

[Josh text]

In general, hanging out online is pretty great. It might not be perfect, and sure we could get a little more sunlight, but for what it’s worth it’s good for the soul and sometimes the best thing on hand. Friendships don’t care about how you nourish them, just that you do.

[WHY ARE YOU STILL AWAKE?]

I don’t know the names of some of my closest friends.

What about friendships that never were from real life, rather that grew from the internet.

I don’t know the names of some of my closest friends.

That doesn’t mean I don’t care about them; it’s just we all know each other by our usernames and whatever funny profile picture we’re rocking at the time. I still know their personalities, their sense of humor, what they like and don’t, and everything else you’d know about a friend. We still have inside jokes, favourite group pastimes, and all the rest.

This has caused some strange moments though. When I was younger and my parents would ask who I’m talking to on the computer, I wouldn’t know how to respond. Do I tell them “I don’t know” and spark images in their heads of catfishers and criminals? Do I tell them my friend’s username and get told “that’s not a real name”? There really wasn’t any good solution in my head at the time, so I’d just say “someone from school” and pray the topic of the conversation would change as fast as possible.

A couple of times an internet friend has accidentally let their real name slip in a conversation, and that instantly got met with waves of banter about how “you’re not an Alex” or whatever the name was. We’d quickly forget about it though, we still see each other as the identities we met each other with; someone’s real-life name doesn’t change how we see them. In that sense, I suppose usernames are like a self-determination thing; you get to pick a name for yourself, based on who you see yourself as.

Timeless zones.

Because everyone lives in different time-zones, it can often be difficult to pre-plan hangouts. Oftentimes me and my friends have planned to have a movie night at a specific time, and then once that time rolls around, one or two people are still offline, probably asleep. Oftentimes whoever was missing will come online several hours later and be sorry and upset that they held everyone up and wasted everyone’s time. Of course, we had all just postponed the movie night and just hung out and chatted instead.

Perfect is the enemy of good. Oftentimes we have to accept that it’s near impossible to have everyone hang out at the same time; it’d require half of us to be up at god awful times or to wake up at 4am for something. Instead of trying to plan big ‘everyone’ events every once in a blue moon, we try to have frequent but smaller hangouts. It might mean that we don’t get to see everyone at the same time, but it’s still workable. If we were to hold out till everyone was free at the same time, we’d never end up hanging out at all.

My version of the morning paper is skimming what my mates have been talking about in the group chat. Most of the time it’s pretty coherent and I can tell what was going on, but sometimes it dissolves into a mess of completely unrelated images and text that doesn’t read like a conversation at all. Using my expert detective skills I have deduced that our two culprits were actually talking in a voice chat, and were just using the text chat to show each other stupid pictures of dogs.

That time my friend went missing.

A while ago, someone in one of my friend groups noted that someone hadn’t been online for two weeks. Dread set in. We all knew that our friend was very prone to getting ill, and we didn’t want to say it but we were worried she might have died. Since we don’t know each other in ‘real life’ it was entirely possible that someone could drop dead one day and we’d never get any confirmation; just left wondering what happened. We asked around in common friend circles, and nobody had heard from her, coming up on about three weeks at that point. We had to do something.

Multiple friend circles of people from all around the world, scrambling to find any scrap of information about our lost friend. One person had ‘maybe’ an address that they sent something to once, but it might have been an old house. We found about three different possible legal names, and had no way to be sure which was right. We ended up sending a letter addressed to three different names ‘or the family of’. It was a desperate shot in the dark, but we were worried sick.

It turned out she was alright, but she had been stuck in hospital for a while and didn’t have access to a phone. We all had a laugh over how everyone overreacted, but it really did scare me. I’ve learned to really value the time I get to spend with my online friends; next time might not be so lucky, and if something were to happen it’s hard to ever get closure on it.

Wider World.

Community

One thing the internet’s really helped with is connecting like-minded individuals. Before the internet, if you had a niche hobby, you were probably the only person you know in your town with that hobby. Kinda lame, yeah? Nowadays, you can reach across the globe and connect with everyone who’s into the same stuff as you! Mainstream topics can have gargantuan communities, but what I find even more interesting is the weird obscure hobbies and groups, the kind that would never survive without the internet.

My personal favourite is the community around the video game ‘Space Station 13’; it’s a simulation roleplay game that’s been kicking around for about 18 years at this point, kept alive by a cult following of obsessed players. The programming sucks, and the controls are horrifically obtuse, but it’s got a charm that I can’t deny. It’s not for everyone, and I think that’s great. It’s not for everyone, but thanks to the internet enough people can still get together that they can enjoy it.

Someone sends me a funny picture. There’s three layers of delight. The first - of course - is that the picture is funny. Beyond that, there’s also the impulsive knowledge that I know who else I could send it to that might like it; it’s a chain letter that for once isn’t a scam. And the third layer is knowing that whoever sent the picture to me first got it sent to them and thought “Hey, I know who might like this”!

Random people

Strange patterns can emerge after lurking and watching from the sidelines.

In the rules discussion channel of a board game group I’m in, I swear sometimes it’s like I’m stuck in a time loop. I watch a random person ask a common question about the game, and then someone else will get the rules clarified for them. A few hours will pass, the conversation drifting elsewhere as people drop in and out. Suddenly, I spot it; the same question from before, but from a different person. Like clockwork, another nameless devout will rise up and deliver the answer. And again. And again. It’s like a two-line stage show where the audience is also the cast, over and over and over.

Since profile pictures and usernames are self-selected you do get a weird little keyhole view of who you’re talking to might be like. This person has a picture of a cat as their profile image. Is it their cat, or did they just think the cat looked nice? Their username is ‘Millie’, is that their real life name; maybe? Or what if it’s the cat’s name? Are they pretending to be their cat? Are they a cat?

Getting popular, online presence & all eyes on you

Having a large presence online - that is, having other people follow or be ‘fans’ of you - is a mixed bag. For me it’s been really good in allowing me to get my art out there and get clients, but it’s also weird. It feels a bit like I’m up on a stage sometimes, everyone’s watching me. I’ve lost the feeling of being ‘just another guy in the crowd’. What if someone reads something I posted the wrong way? Do I keep being aloof and carefree, or will that hurt my image. Should I care?

Getting weird; parasocial relationships, doxxing, and personal armies.

People with large presences can feel familiar, friendly, like you’re already friends.

I’ve caught myself falling into this in the past. Parasocial relationships. There was an artist I really admired the style of. The brain’s great at filling in the details you want to be real. I realised that I had it written in my head that this person was super cool and the best and that it’d be really cool if we hung out. All extrapolation. While it’s entirely possible that they were everything I had imagined them to be, until it’s tested it’s all just imagination and fantasy. If you’ve never talked to them, how could you know?

Guest speaker, Chai

[Chai text]

Connecting with meatspace

Back down to earth. What happens when the digital and the physical self have to intersect? The two identities are from the same person, but they’re not the same.

My family found my twitter.

One time, my parents sent me a text: “Lucy showed us your art, looking really cool Tom!”. How. I’d never sent my family any of my online profiles. I check my Twitter; sure enough in front of my eyes the screen tells me my sister has followed my twitter account. Abject horror. How much did they look at? What did they think? Should I start looking for a flat?

It’s not that I had anything to hide, it’s just that it felt… misaligned. Like two worlds coming together that shouldn’t. I’m sure for them it was just “Wow, look at our son go!”, but for me it was a wave of confusion and dread.

Visiting internet friends. (They weren’t murderers.)

One time, I was lucky enough to have a few of my internet friends visit in real life. I was showing them around my house, when I ran into my mum. It hit me. Who do I even introduce these people as? We all know each other by our online names and had been using them in conversation minutes earlier, but that would make no sense to my poor mum. And so, awkwardly, one by one my friends rattled off a set of names entirely alien to me. We all kept straight faces as each of us discovered “Wait, this person’s called WHAT?”.

We all promptly forgot each other’s names within about two minutes.

LDRs

Thanks to the internet, I met my partner.

Almost four years later, we’re still going strong. It helps a lot that a lot of our common interests can be done online, chiefly gaming and watching shows. But even the other stuff, we can still do together in some aspects. We always say good morning and goodnight to each other on the phone, and fill each other in on what we’ve been up to that day. If we go somewhere and see something cool, we can still share pictures and videos. If I make a really nice dinner, I can send them the recipe and they can have a taste (though that last one might depend on their cooking skills).

Of course, it’s not identical to an in-person relationship, and it can be more stressful. You have to put a lot more effort into reaching out to each other and making time to hang out and talk; it won’t happen by accident. We’re both really looking forward to being able to move together, but until then, being together apart isn’t all that bad.

Signing off.

[whoneedsapublisher]

Headpats

The niche crossover returns! MagiKilo x Soft and Shattered!

Words: ~600

Summary: Peyton is not, it would seem, very good at breaking the ice. 

Also on Ao3

******************************

Lana was a little surprised to see Ray again. Sure, they were friends, but after everything that happened with Cat and the Cogs, Ray had seemed like they wanted to just walk out of town and leave a lot of their past behind. Lana couldn’t blame them for it. It wasn’t like they’d ghosted the group or anything- they all still talked to them in group chats and stuff. But them coming back in person was a surprise. Even more surprising was that they brought back a girlfriend. And… two other partners.

Lana was open minded, but she… was a little surprised at that. She had barely expected Ray to find one person they were interested in a relationship with, let alone three. And when Ray had casually mentioned that “oh, they’re also magical girls, but like, not Cat magical girls” Lana had thought this was some kind of prank. And yet, there they were in front of her, with their gang of lovers.

And one of them in particular was standing in front of her, looking at up at her nervously.

Lana was not tall. She’d never been tall, and she was probably never going to be tall. But this girl was a lot less tall than her.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m Nalaya. Um… you’re Lana, right? Ray told me about you.”

“Um, yeah, hi!” Lana said. “I’m Lana. Sorry, you knew that. But hi! Nice to meet you! And stuff!”

God, she was already fucking this up. She glanced desperately over at Ray to save her, but unsurprisingly, Ray just raised an eyebrow at her.

“Just pat her on the head, she loves it.”

The person to the right of Ray spoke up. Maybe the reason the girl in front of her was so short was because this person stole all of her height, because they were towering.

“Oh? O-Okay!” Lana said, quickly reaching down and patting the short girl on the head.

“Um,” the girl said.

“What the hell,” Ray said.

“...That was, ah, a joke. My apologies,” the tall person said, dipping their head apologetically.

“Oh my god, Peyton? You totally set her up. That was amazing.” The person to Ray’s left was grinning ear to ear, and Lana sunk down into herself, feeling mortified. Oh god, what kind of impression had she made on these people already? God, Ray had trusted them enough to bring their partners back to meet them, and she’d already screwed up this badly. She wanted to run away and hide already.

“D-Don’t worry!” the short girl said hurriedly, seeing her expression. “I-I liked it!”

“Nalaya, oh my god,” the person to the left of Ray choked out between bursts of laughter.

“Jesus, literally no one I’ve ever met is normal…” Ray muttered, massaging their temples in irritation.

“My apologies again. It… seemed like the kind of joke to make. To break the ice,” the tall person said. “I appear to… have misjudged, somewhat.”

“God, whatever,” Ray said. “Look, the joker over here is Peyton, they’re agender, and over here is Lucie, who could probably tell you herself that she doesn’t care what pronouns you use if she’d stop laughing at my friends.”

Lana smiled nervously at the rest of them. “Um. Good… to meet you too?”

Peyton looked her directly in the eyes, and Lana squirmed under their intense gaze.

“...If you would not mind, I would also like my head patted.”

Lana was going to die. Although Lucie might laugh herself to death first.

[crow-caller]

have a throw away book idea/world

I’m trying to be more marketable with my new books, since my current writing tastes are too niche to be established (blah!)

anyway. writing a dystopia/future thing based on a more realistic vision of the future... so no strict silly laws, yes bad pollution and a weird mix of corporate+gov stuff. and severe rich/poor polarity

I have chap one ish, where three poor kids, on the last day of public school (after which they will likely be forced to work til death/go into the army) sneak into a private school to raise havoc

I’m trying to think more of a full plot tho. I think maybe I’ll have the three MCs be rebels, but they’re not hoping to make a change- just go out with a bang, since they feel the world is so odded against them. but instead... maybe they live and are seen as heroes and the big corp is trying to then capitalize off them?

like

3 MCs- sneak into to fancy private school, pull some pranks, probably take over some tech stuff and broadcast revolutionary messages and then escape. shits and giggles. they of course are caught, but their antics have gone viral in a positive way, so instead of being punished they are celebrated- brought to late night talk shows, get to travel, boons for the families... they even get to meet some politicians who jokingly deal with them as viral, cute things

their five minutes of fame starts to fade and they find themselves struggling to figure out what to do. stand up against the unfair system of reap the rewards? they vow instead to try and take it down from the inside while keeping in as ‘media darlings’

I feel like there’s room for a time skip. anyways, one becomes a video blogger with a gov-santioned channel talking about fixing income inequality... of course it is all bull and publicity stuff. another teen becomes a model/starlet praised for her ‘natural’ beauty (since like all rich people are genetically edited from birth). last one, narrator, is seen as the more bull-headed/mysterious member, but she announces she’ll be a judge on a popular reality show! aw!

secretly, of course, they are all still trying to balance the niceness of upper class fancies with remembering the slums they came from. MC MC is especially on this reality show (The Ascension, a dating show for the mega rich to meet super poor and find ‘honest love’) because one of the other hosts/judges is a famous politician’s son and she aims to seduce him for the connections

I think there can be some stuff of, oh no, he’s genuinely nice, rich people can be nice!! but still MC is kinda heartless because rich people suuuuck. it’s nuance and complicated but that’s the short of it.

the three of them are known as some fancy title and sell merch and local heroes of school but did change really come? how can you change something so messed up??

hmm I’m just rambling. it will be called ALL GLITTER ALL GOLD I think for now

I want more action/suspense, so I bet there’s some gov agents who are onto them and questions of you can trust, and also wondering if one of the trio has turned spy

trio also:

Anastasia- leader, she has frivolities and a weird thought process but is very stubborn and has little sympathy for the upper class. she’s a trans girl, and in this society that is sanctioned via early medical screening, meaning from a very young age she’s been required to be on various drugs and have medical procedures so she can be ‘normal’. it’s both progressive and not! this forced transition, even if she does ID as a woman, put her family into XTREME debt which pisses her off. when she’s 18 she’s due for top surgery as the ‘final step’, but even once she makes viral fame she puts it off. I wanted to talk about identity and debt and also a society that is both liberal (trans people exist) and not (we will help you transition by making you transition and charing you in advance :) you will be happier this way :) )

(I’m not anti transition at all lol I just want to write a future story that is confused and nuanced)

Right- Artist, high energy and impulsive. her talents are in art and singing, but neither is valued in society really, at least not at the level she does it. Because of this she feels she has no future or hope for happiness at all. An only child because her family is significantly poor (and you can have to buy the right to raise a child)

Kensington- a failed clone of someone very fancy and famous. They have a lot of pre-selected genes, making them immune to many common diseases, attractive, good metabolism, etc. However, they have something that wasn’t able to be pre-screened (some sort of mental illness?) and they were abandoned at a young age and sold to an orphanage. Their middle class family adopted them and went bankrupt because of it, hedging all their bets Kens would use their good genes to be successful and make them their money back. This is a lot of pressure.

-

-

An alt is that instead of doing a harmless stunt, they actually go to violence/killing, but that seems way more extreme. I was thinking the story instead of the above could just be a hostage situation/hunger games type scenario

[theoppositeofprofound]

The Janna/Heckapoo thing I’ve spent way too much time thinking about. 

They meet through Marco. Specifically they meet by both laughing at Marco at the same time at some big victory party. They bond over making fun of Marco. Then Marco goes and turns it around by being really nice to them, goshdarn him, and they have to bond over being slightly-but-not-really awkward about being mean to Marco.

They get over it fast, have two sodas and a laugh then part ways with each other’s cell-phone numbers, or at least the cell phone numbers of a dimensional pizza place and the CIA. It’s a fun goof. 

They meet the next time at the Party Place (replacement of the Bounce Lounge) and Janna tries to pick Heckapoo’s pockets, get thoroughly scolded, blames it on Pony Head and bounces before she can get in trouble. 

Heckapoo dimensional scissors to her house to smack her upside the head and steal her favorite breakfast cereal, because really people cannot start thinking they can pull one over on a member of the Magic High Commission. 

Janna retaliates by stealing someone’s scissors and finding her way to Heckapoo’s house to get her cereal back, because what’s a scary flaming lady from space going to do with it?

Thus begins an epic prank war that spans several years and ends when Star, fresh out of  Earth college, appoints Janna as her head minister of Spooky Stuff and asks them both to stop it, for the sake of professionalism. She can’t be having her best friend/advisor feuding with the MHC. Not in a serious way. Keep the hijinks mild but hilarious, guys.

They reluctantly restrict themselves to post it notes that say “Kick Me” and some gentle ribbing. It helps that they’re seeing a lot more of each other now. Star is training to be Queen and Janna is tagging along because she doesn’t know what else to do with her life. Heckapoo has her own job, which is pretty boring usually and she’s happy to have a challenge in her life. 

They slowly and surely become friends who mess with each other, and Heckapoo realizes a year or two late that this is a Grown Up Human Mortal now and starts flirting on automatic. That’s what she does. It’s her niche. None of the rest of her colleagues are into relationships in the mortal sense, although Omnitraxus gets hit on by a lot of quantum magical physicists. But she figured out a long time ago that she’s more vaguely people shaped than the rest Glossaryck’s creations, and she does get attention and flirting back is a good way to mess with people. 

She’s slightly startled when Janna takes her way too seriously. She’s never dealt with anyone for long enough to get involved like this. Mortals in her realm either die or go home and slowly forget, and the Queens of Mewni are usually boring. But Janna is way too interested and they see each other every few eons Heckapoo-time. Practically every week This.. is new. 

Janna is also way too interested in the mechanics of the time dialation in Heckapoo’s home dimension and suggests some tests. Just a few weeks, you know? It sounds freaky, she wants to see it for herself. 

It’s an interesting few weeks. 

They settle into a pattern. Janna is a nice family girl, she doesn’t want to leave her folks behind for too long, but she can go weeks or a month. They chill. Explore the dimensions, play lots of video games. The company is strange, she’s never had anyone but herself around like this before. She misses it a lot when Janna leaves for centuries. 

They do five years once, and it’s scary how much it hurts when Janna forgets most of it. 

It’s a weird relationship and frankly it isn’t until they’re getting seated together at dinner parties that Heckapoo realizes she’s kind of dating someone. Casually, for sure, after all they can go millenia her time without seeing each other, and Janna has her own thing going on. But it’s dating for sure. She likes it. 

Janna is already trying to figure out how to limit the time dilation difference. She’s no slouch now that she can get her hands on real magical stuff, she’s pretty much living her childhood dreams. and she’s ready to punch dimensional physics in the face to make her scary immortal fire girlfriend made of magic happy. 

[topicprinter]

Hi /r/Entrepreneur, it's Pat from Starter Story, where I do interviews with successful e-commerce entrepreneurs.Here is my interview with Travis Peterson, the founder of Joker Greeting, a prank greeting card inspired by a joke with his brother.Travis has an awesome story. He is earning $30k/month and running the business mostly by himself:Background.I am Travis Peterson and started Joker Greeting. We make original prank gifts and prank non-gifts for friends, family, and offices. It all started with a non-stop musical greeting card that looped for 3-6 hours.For 2.5 years, I have been working on making musical greeting cards interesting again. To be clear, I never intended on making a greeting card or joke company, but we launched on Kickstarter and raised $92,073 in 30 days with no marketing, so I decided to give it a shot.Here's an example of one of our greeting cards. It plays cricket sounds for 8+ hours straight :DHow the idea came about.My background is in finance. I worked in investment banking for six years in New York. I loved the job, the people, and the hours. But as a service job I wanted to be making things not just helping others make things. This desire has led me to where I am today.My brother and I have always loved to make fun of everything. Around 2014, we visited my mom’s house and she had this musical greeting card. We thought it was annoying. We asked each other, "Who wants to listen to this!?" Then Nick asked, “What if it didn’t stop?”That was it. Nothing more. No market research.So the plan was to make a funny musical birthday card that looped non-stop with no off switch. Seriously, no off switch. It would just loop non-stop for 8 hours. We set a goal to make $1,000 in profit - that was it.We picked Kickstarter because my brother had used it to fund some short films he directed. He raised $10k to $30k already on a few of them. Neither of us had ever made consumer products like this. But we are both creative and starting this didn’t seem like a giant leap with any huge upfront costs.Creating the product.This was the real challenge is remains to be the biggest hurdle. While some people did mention that “musical greeting cards are dead, don’t do it”, I just ignored that and moved forward. Googling “custom musical greeting cards” leads to zero results. We were able to get some quotes, but they were absurdly expensive.Eventually, we found a broker. We pay more for the product than we originally wanted, but they are great and help me achieve all the crazy ideas we have. It’s been a great experience so far, and they deliver a super solid QA process. They mostly focus on designing our ideas (the internal engineering), and we create the look and aesthetics, and then make a few iterations. Simple ideas need a lot of work too. Once we had the first iteration of the product, we were able to push the boundaries and add new features. It was fun.I bought 1,000 units and received them about eight weeks later. We thought we could only sell about 750 units and we would use some for marketing and personal use.We launched on Kickstarter - we didn’t have a brand, website or anything.We hit our $7,500 goal in 3-4 days after being picked up on CNET, and ABC News. Later it was BuzzFeed and Gizmodo and more. This was when I learned what “going viral” truly meant and how making a great product can matter so much more than making a just a good product.I have no tips or tricks for going “viral.” In our case, it was 99% organic luck and 1% blood, sweat and laughs. We sold way more than 750 units and ended up making 15,000 units and making some small improvements and shipping those new ones. I don’t think we actually shipped any of the original batch to backers (they worked but we wanted them to look better). We designed some packaging for the cards with instructions and some marketing material and that was it.So how did we go viral? I don’t think anyone can narrow it down. We launched on April 1st (April Fools Day) - I think that might have helped. Was it a joke or was it not a joke? The video was great and new and that helped.We also created some funny videos content to go along with it. We had a video showing the card not break - it had 300,000 views. I had an 8 hour video of the card playing non-stop on YouTube - it had over 100,000 views.Also, I think Kickstarter projects received a lot more attention at the time than they get nowadays.Here's a video to show how indestructible our greeting cards are :)How we attract new customers and grow the business.We were very lucky when we launched. But it’s not like we didn’t have a plan. Our plan was to make something unique that people would want to talk about. And it happened! The plan was to make a great product that was unique and shareable.Today we focus 95% of growth on Facebooks ads. I get the most traction and results from videos and like this one. Google is pretty good but it’s not the best for me.We also work with retailers and wholesale. We push very hard to reach out, but I’d say that 80% of our buyers are organic. Kickstarter really helped Joker Greeting get noticed by retailers and inbound requests were pouring in. Then, it was a matter of competitors seeing Joker Greeting and more requests coming in. Keep in mind, stores and retailers are always looking for new ideas that have strong sell-through. Every product on their shelf goes stale at some point. To find those retailers that were not inbound, I just had to call and email all the time; some of my bigger vendors are from these cold calls. They thought our product was a gimmick - it took 1-2 years to land those deals.My thoughts on competition.It's not a huge market, but it is niche enough that we have owned SEO since BuzzFeed and Gizmodo and ABC News used the words “Prank Greeting Card”.A few websites have tried to copy us, but they could never beat us on SEO. And since they are startups, they have little to no capital - they aren't going to be able to outspend me with ads.As for the bigger boys - I am a blip on their screen and they aren’t too interested. If people are buying my cards, they must be not buying from our competitors. It will be interesting to see who comes up.I just keep making great products and keep my customers happy - sometimes at the expense of short-term capital.Plans for the future.In 2017 we sold nearly 40,000 units. We could have sold more than that but each holiday I sold out like valentines, Mother’s and Father’s Day and Christmas as well. I kept ordering and selling through. 2017 sales were nearly double 2016.Looking forward, 2018 is already stronger looking at Valentine’s Day compared to last year, and through overall wholesale and web sales. And I have ordered 3x Mother’s Day Cards. I could see 50,000 and 60,000 units being sold, assuming no new vendors. However, With a more robust product line I will also visit trade shows for the first time so upside is higher. Not bad for a single employee.I like to make stuff. In 2018, I will be launching a fantastic new product. Greeting cards is a platform and I just need to keep expanding our concept within the greeting card market and other paper goods. I am just going to test some pins and designs with my brother; it will be fun.Tools I use.I use Shopify. It has been great and I have no plans to change. It’s excellent for multi-channel sales, and it’s cheap. Also, their 3rd-party App Store is superb. It's super simple to add new features to your store.Judge.me has been great to get user reviews, although I’m sure many others are just as good.Advice for others getting started.Make a product people want to buy not one you want to sell. If you are pushing too hard to make a sale it’s probably wrong. You will know when you have something great - the product will sell itself. You will see a much better ROI.Interview on Starter Story.