#i also had my first class for advanced improv today which was very fun. i had this professor last semester and it's mostly the same student

[magentagalaxies]

standup class update: apparently the final for this class (and the thing we'll be working towards all semester) is crafting a fucking twenty-minute standup set??? as someone who has literally never done standup in front of people before this is terrifying but also exhilarating let's fucking gooooo!!!!!

[looosey]

Lucy's DDR #1: I Love Dance

My parents and friends think I love to dance. They know without me saying it. In fact, a conversation I had with two NH Medlinks (i.e. my Desmond friend and his H4 friend) went like this:

H4 friend: Oh how do you know (NH4 girl 1) and (NH4 girl 2)? Do you dance? My friend: Does she dance? All she does is dance. H4 friend: Oh cool! Are you in ADT?

Which I found very fonny. No I am not. But alas, for the past two years till now, I have always been dancing, and I really really enjoy it, and I want to get better, and I think I do really love it!

But sometimes, it's hard to love it.

Today I want to talk about a big thing I see in dancers at MIT around me, which is that they have a very stressful relationship with dance. "I might quit all dance next semester," and "The MIT dance community is so toxic," and "I don't know if I want to do <xyz advanced team> next semester or just quit" are phrases I hear often from friends who always end up dancing anywhere from 3-9 hours a week.

They love it, but they hate it. The feelings are so extreme, I think, because dance is a social activity. You make friends, close friends, through dance troupe, ADT, or teams. But with dance, you're also auditioning, getting evaluated and cut, watching yourself side by side with others, being recorded, being talked about, and talking about others. It's a social activity.

And if you start thinking about how good your other peers are compared to you, the deep deep blackhole of dance-is-the-devil is slippery and treacherous. Despite them coming in with more experience, or putting in more hours than you at the expense of grades, sleep, or social life, or having been an athlete before, etc. All of my fellow friends who started dance in college, we've talked about this shared anxiety, but yet. We're all still dancing.

Dance. Dance. Four total semesters now. Why?

My favorite semester ever dance-wise was sophomore fall. Coming back from Korea, where I took a class a week at the famous 1Million and JustJerk dance studios, I was made pretty well aware that MIT was just a spec in the dance world. Thus, I was on my own journey to enjoy the art form and become professional grade good, whether or not MIT's competitive teams wanted me as a dancer did not matter. So, in September, I joined MissBehavior, did a DT dance, and took an MIT Theater dept. class in Hip Hop Dance History and Practice.

McKersin, the lecturer, taught us the history, shared the culture, opened my eyes to the Boston scene. He became the first person ever to tell me... "you need to practice" in an objective but well-meaning way. Previously, choreo workshops and Dance Troupe were fun and good to me, but in the vacuum of no-feedback-ever, I remained convinced that I was great at dancing, and thus was so confused all the time when I got rejected from competitive auditions. Now I was beginning to know.

I practiced freestyle dance and learned choreo from videos on my own, late into the night at BC dance studio. Recording myself, and gritting my teeth as I watched my own recordings. Yuck. Dumpster trash on fire, the stench coming from those videos.

But the way my dance progress became my own? So valuable to me. Thus, I improved.

I'm on a team now, and slightly deeper in the "dance as a social activity" thing both in MIT and the Boston community. Many times, I also struggle. I think I suck, look at that guy who probably only started this year he's so much cleaner than me. And that puts me in the worst bottom of the barrel mood for an entire day. Literally, makes me feel physical pain. But I never hate on dance. It's usually myself that I hate, which is not any better.

I write this on a special day: my first day ever being picked by a choreog in a workshop. You know? As the first subgroup to record? It means you're good. It was an affirmation that I'm doing okay, after a recent wave of self-hatred, actually. Even if I don't hate dance, I struggle a lot with comparing myself, and thinking I'm actually trash and not getting better, which is the root of my friends' problems too. I'm trynna overcome this and share a positive view of dance, like the energy of today's choreographer: it's fun to do and it's safe here.

This post is a reminder to future Lucy that actually, this journey has been one of great memories and progress. So, don't hate yourself, or the art. Be kind to yourself and others. Dance. Dance. Revolution.

[cyrell-jay-genilla]

FIRST BLOG

Introduction on Entrepreneurial Mind

Hi, mga ka wonder!

Today, on this first blog, I will share with you the highlight activities and learnings I gained during our class in Entrepreneurial Mind.

First, before our instructor had a serious discussion on the subject, since it was her first time handling our section, as expected, we introduce ourselves in class. It was fun or it was something like an energizer activity for me since we shared our personal information such as our nicknames, our favorite business quote or life mantra, and many more in a creative way. After introducing ourselves, she also gave us a task which was to write our expectations on the subject, to our classmates, the instructor, and ourselves. Then after, she introduced the class rules, the syllabus, what are the topics to be discussed, and the activities and main project to be made in the whole midyear.

Next chapter of the story, the first topic or lesson that our instructor discussed was about entrepreneurship or the introduction of the entrepreneurial mind. And I can say that I have many learnings that gain on this topic that will help me in the future, especially in efficiently establishing my own business. First, she introduced us to the meaning of entrepreneurship. It is a process of running, or developing a new business/venture that can generate income. Besides, she explained the difference between the mindset of a student and the mindset of an entrepreneur. I learned that as an entrepreneur, you should have a strong desire to create things or make a difference that is impactful in society and the world. Also as an entrepreneur, you should have the will to take risks and learn from failures since it allows us to grow and improve our ideas especially in the business world.

Moreover, she discussed business disruptions. It is a process in which a product or service becomes more convenient, easy to use, and popular to change or replace the traditional product or service. Examples are Shopee, Apple, Uber, Netflix, Paymaya, Drive, and many more. The mentioned examples, disrupt the way of shopping, big computers, way to commute, cinema, debit cards or mode of payment, and storage and others. Mostly, these businesses are technology-based. And nowadays, top companies are related to technology. This means that our world become more advanced and at the same time our life makes easier than before because of more convenient technologies. Thus, we should adapt to the changes happening in our world.

This lesson discussed with our instructor was very essential for us since it will guide and help us in making our main project which is the business proposal and pitching. In my next blog, I will share with you our "entrep" journey and how we come up with the idea for our business proposal. So, that's it for today and see you on my next blog mga ka wonder!

[bts-weverse-trans]

210104 Weverse Magazine ‘Be’ Comeback Interview - Suga

SUGA “I'm grateful that there are still unvisited areas in the world of music” BTS BE comeback interview 2021.01.04

SUGA has this way of talking passionately with a deadpan look on his face. Full of passion about his life and music.

How is your shoulder? SUGA: Good. I think it’ll get even better once I take off this brace. Apparently, it takes several months for a full recovery, but I'm trying to get better as fast as possible.

How does it feel like to have resolved a problem that has distressed you for long? SUGA: First of all, I'm glad. The pain is one thing, but when my shoulders got worse, I couldn't even raise my arms. But when I heard that this might recur when getting the surgery at a young age, I waited for the right time and had decided to get it done early next year regardless of the COVID-19 situation. I had planned to get the surgery after the year-end stages, but I got it done this year (2020) because my doctors advised me to start preparing early for next year’s promotions and activities.

How does it feel like watching the other members doing promotions? SUGA: I can't say it feels great. I could see the emptiness because we've been together as a group of seven for so long. Not necessarily because I'm not there but because something that should be there is missing?

Is that what made you join the promotion as much as possible? You shot lots of video footage in advance and you even appeared in the Mnet “2020 MAMA” through VR. SUGA: Fake SUGA (Laughs). There’s this 3D studio where we shot it. I shot, scanned, and acted there, but couldn't see the actual result at the studio. I thought a sense of displacement was unavoidable, and that was exactly the case. (Laughs) I acted normal because it would have been aired anyway even if I hadn’t had the surgery, but it seems a lot because it’s aired after the surgery.

You must feel restricted not being able to go on stage. SUGA: The thing is, it's only been a month after I got surgery, but my absence on stage is so apparent. But my doctors keep telling me that I shouldn't be impatient and in fact, many athletes get a resurgery when they return to the field without proper rehabilitation. So I'm working on trying to care less. For the first two weeks after surgery, I felt so frustrated that I tried out new things. I even watched movies I didn't watch.

What movies did you watch? SUGA: I watched ‘Samjin Company English Class’ as it happened to be on IPTV, and now I have ‘Tenet’ on my list. ‘Parasite’ was the last movie I saw at a cinema. As the social distancing measures became stricter, I haven’t been going outside, except going to the hospital. I even eat at home. I'm also watching a lot of TV nowadays. Watching music shows like ‘Sing Again’, ‘Folk Us’, and ‘Show Me The Money 9’ made me think of what I should do in the upcoming days.

Could you elaborate on that? SUGA: A lot of candidates on ‘Sing Again’ are very talented but hadn't had the opportunity, and on ‘Folk Us’, I noticed that many took their own guitars on stage. I started playing the guitar lately and I'm having this urge to broaden my scope of music. And since my interest in the music industry in the U.S. grew, I'm getting prepared, studying English and all.

What fueled your interest? SUGA: In some ways it’s the most commercially developed market. You could lose the industry attention in a flash if it's not feasible. So in this system, you would try everything and that would be an efficient way. I want to do music for a long time, and to this end, I always want to learn more about the global music industry because I want to do music that’s loved not only in Korea, but also in the U.S., Japan and Europe.

Speaking of which, it seems BE was influenced from music of the past rather than today's trends. SUGA: I especially like impromptu music. I love the songs that were made in one take instead of being recorded several times. In this era of crossover genres, the desire to do better in music is growing inside me.

As the genres become more blended, the melody you use must be more important. Does starting to play the guitar affect your composing in any way? SUGA: I always liked using guitar sounds. And I have always liked the Eagles. If you play the guitar, it’s way easier to write songs because you can carry it along wherever you go, pluck on the strings to create melody lines. Keyboards are difficult to carry around. (Laughs) I usually work on my laptop but I had this thought that I definitely needed an instrument. It accelerates my work and improves my understanding of chords.

It makes me think you could intuitively make melodies. SUGA: It’s easier to write a song because you can intuitively make a progression and try many different things. During my work on ‘Eight’, IU had recorded and sent me a song from her phone. At the time I couldn’t play the guitar, so we tried to make sure we’re working on the same page when keeping track of each other's progress. That made me feel the need to learn an instrument.

This is actually before you started playing the guitar, but I found ‘Telepathy’ in BE very interesting. The varying melodic progressions between hooks for each member made me wonder if you wrote the melody intuitively for each part. SUGA: I tried writing a melody for the first time this year (2020), and as I started knowing the fun of music, it opened a lot of new doors for me. So it was kind of easy working on it. I just played a beat and wrote from the beginning until the end. Done. I wrote it in just 30 minutes. The song almost wrote itself. The trends of pop and hip-hop these days cross boundaries between vocals and rap. I like this trend.

When I listen to your singing, it feels like you’re hitting the beats rather than singing along the notes. So I thought perhaps you're singing as if you're rapping. SUGA: When you're rapping, you just think of the rhythm, so it’s like simply putting on a melody to a rhythm. To define which comes first, I think melody adds to it while writing the rap.

In ‘Life Goes On’, the lyrics ‘Thankfully between you and me, nothing’s changed’ are somewhere in between. It's not rap but it’d be mundane to say it's a mere melody. SUGA: There are obviously songs where the rap needs to be highlighted. For example, in ‘Dis-ease’ or ‘Ugh!’, you have to be good at rap. But in songs that should be easy to listen to, impressive raps are not always the way to go. Sometimes, you want smooth transitions without obstacles.

In that sense, the rap flow of ‘Blue & Grey’ was impressive. Rather than a dramatic effect that emphasizes each part, you extended the rap just as much as the slowing beat. SUGA: To be honest, this beat is difficult to rap to. The beginning of the song only has a guitar line, which made it even more difficult. I participated when we wrote lyrics for ‘Blue & Grey’ and I've always wanted to work on a song like this. It was because verse 1 talks about the theme of the song.

It seems you achieved almost everything that you wanted in BE. SUGA: I think it took less than a week to make my part in the album. After having written one or two melodies for ‘Life Goes On’, I wrote a version complete with rap, and liked it that I even worked on a separate arrangement and lyrics. Rather than pondering over the ways that might work, I choose to simply play the music and write.

Many creators are unsure even after they’ve produced good work. How do you get the conviction to release your work? SUGA: Many musicians are unsure whether they should release their music or not. It was the same for me, but the thing is, you’ll never release anything if you nitpick everything. For example, if we release 10 songs, we have a chance to unveil them in concerts or fan events. And sometimes, as we listen to the song, we think, ‘Why does this part that had bothered me no longer bother me?’ Some things might feel awkward at some point, but in time, it no longer feels awkward. Even I forget about it. So it's more efficient to fine tune, looking at the big picture, rather than thinking too much about the details. On top of that, during promotions, I don’t have the time to pick tracks that others have sent for 10 hours. It would be a success for all of us if each of us play and write a melody in their own time and collaborate with others on the details. So the way of songwriting has evolved in many aspects.

What motivated such evolution? SUGA: I think it evolved naturally. I've changed in personality this year (2020), as well as in terms of my interpretation and attitude toward life to the extent that I almost thought I've been rehearsing. How would it feel like if there were no stage to go to or anyone looking out for me? This thought made me realize the value of these things.

In ‘Dis-ease’, you sing ‘I don’t know if it’s the world that's sick’. Was it this lifestyle that changed your thoughts about your work? SUGA: Yes. When I was young, I had embraced the belief that ‘It must be my fault’, but as I got older, I realized that this is not always true. Most of what I had thought was my fault was in fact, not my fault. On the other hand, there are things that I did well and times I had been lucky.

‘I NEED U’ came out during a time when you were still thinking, “It must be me”. After the members put on a stage with ‘I NEED U’ in KBS' ‘Song Festival’, you wrote on Weverse, “It’s the same as five years ago.” How would you compare with back then? (This interview was held on December 19, 2020.) SUGA: We've matured quite a bit. And our stage performances have become more natural. I still like ‘I NEED U’. Just listening to the beat makes me sentimental, and above all, the song came out nicely. So as I was watching this and that when I stumbled across old videos. Watching them made me think that we haven’t changed much.

In what aspect haven't you changed much? SUGA: Before the social distancing measures got stricter, I talked with the photographer for BE, whom I had met four years ago. The photographer was surprised that we hadn’t changed much after all the success, even though he had assumed we’d be very different.

I'm amazed personally. I’ve had the chance to meet the members before your debut, but from your way of talking with members or others, it seems you haven't changed. SUGA: I think it's because we don’t give it a big deal about success. For example, it's incredible to be ranked first on the Billboards, but there’s also this sense of, “Okay, and?”

Even the Grammys? (Laughs) SUGA: When we got nominated for the Grammy Awards, we thought, ‘Is this real?’ (Laughs) Of course we were delighted, but it didn’t make us think, ‘We're singers nominated for the Grammy.’ If you're nominated, you're nominated, and if you get the award, you get the award. You don't get shaken by that. I know it's a great award and would be so grateful if we receive it, but we know that nothing is possible without the tremendous support of our fans. What’s more important is that the fans are more flattered than us when we receive a great award. So everyone's rejoicing, but it’s like, ‘Let's do what we have to do.’ We've been training ourselves to keep finding our places, so no one remains overexcited.

In ‘Fly To My Room’, there are lyrics that say, ‘This room is too small to contain my dream’, and ‘Sometimes this room becomes an emotional trash can, but it embraces me.’ I had this feeling that the room had been such a place and that you were accepting that you have changed. Then the essence must have remained the same. SUGA: It wasn’t easy to accept that we eventually change. But I think it's a good thing that we changed. What we did back then was possible only at that time, and we could change because of the things we had accomplished.

Then, what new things are you dreaming about? SUGA: I'm eager to continue doing music. Since all performances were canceled due to COVID-19, I had a chance to talk to so many musicians in Korea. I talked with legendary singers as well as people who are my contemporaries. Talking with them once again made me realize that I love music so much. Because music is my profession, I can’t imagine myself not doing it. I'm grateful that there are still unvisited areas in the world of music.

What kind of music do you think you’ll be engaged in in the future? SUGA: I was greatly motivated when I saw the concert of Na Hoon-a last Chuseok . I wondered how many musicians would actually be able perform and write music for so long like he has. At that moment, it occurred to be that ‘I want to be like him’. He has passion and desire, and most of all, he is a superstar. A few years ago, I took my parents to a Na Hoon-a concert, and when they watched the performance last Chuseok, they said it was way less impressive to see him perform through the TV. (Laughs)

That must explain your interest in a broader spectrum of music from instruments to composing and musical genres. Because you want to be doing this for a long time. SUGA: My goal is to continue doing music in any shape or form. In that sense, I have this great respect toward Cho Yong-pil. He takes the best sound there is and reinterprets it into his own. I think that’s something I want to emulate and keep changing and evolving so that I can continue doing music for decades to come.

The lyrics ‘Thankfully between you and me nothing’s changed’ must sound more meaningful for the fans because they will be listening to your music for a long time. SUGA: A month and a half in the current times must seem like a lifetime for the fans when we're far apart. I feel the same. But I think that's proof that we worked hard for the past seven years and that the fans have been passionately reaching out to us. I'm striving to get to them as fast as I can, and I'm eager to go on stage. I'm going through this because I want to be better on stage in a better condition, so don't be sad, and please hang in there a little longer.

Trans © Weverse

[ibijau]

Futures past pt19 / on AO3

As music lessons resume, Lan Xichen has a suggestion for Nie Huaisang

Nie Huaisang cheerfully knocked on the door, ready for his first music lesson of the year, only to be met by a decidedly grumpy Lan Xichen. The other boy tried to smile at him, tried to make conversation as usual and to ask how much he’d practiced that week, but Nie Huaisang wasn’t fooled.

“So, what’s wrong?” he asked as he set up his guqin, a little proud to show off again that he had his own instrument now. “You look so dejected that I could mistake you for your brother.”

“Let’s not talk about Wangji right now,” Lan Xichen replied, his expression turning sour. 

Now he looked like his uncle, though Nie Huaisang was too polite to say as much. It was really strange to see him so upset, and a little worrying as well, but Lan Xichen did not give him the chance to ask any questions.

“I’ve been thinking a lot while you were gone,” Lan Xichen announced with a fake smile that wasn’t fooling anyone, “and I think your level is good enough to start teaching you something a little more advanced. Shufu has given me permission to give you an introduction to some techniques we use for musical cultivation, if that interests you.”

Nie Huaisang gasped at the news.

“Really? You mean, real musical cultivation?” he asked excitedly. “The real deal? Like… like battle songs? Healing songs? You think I’m good enough?”

His earlier bad mood quickly melting away, Lan Xichen smiled warmly and came to sit next to Nie Huaisang.

“I think you’re very skilled, yes,” he said, making Nie Huaisang flush at the praise, “though it’ll be a while until you can use musical techniques in a Night Hunt. But since we have this entire year before us, I thought you could try to learn Inquiry.”

“Really?”

To confirm it, Lan Xichen merely handed Nie Huaisang a musical score, one he appeared to have copied himself. Nie Huaisang took it with trembling hands, awed to be trusted in that manner.

“The song itself is not particularly complex,” Lan Xichen explained as Nie Huaisang looked over the score, “and it can be learned and used even by someone of ordinary cultivation level. The real difficulty, and what is going to take us a while, is the Qin language needed to understand the answers given by spirits.”

His eyes still on the sheet of music, Nie Huaisang just nodded. Then, realising what he’d just heard, he looked up and stared at Lan Xichen with wide, shocked eyes.

“Isn’t that a secret Lan technique?”

“I'm not sure about 'secret' but it is an exclusive technique,” Lan Xichen confirmed, his expression turning more serious. “That’s why I had to ask for shufu’s permission before I could offer to teach you. I won’t hide that he was reluctant,” he added with a strained smile. “But I told him that I fully trust you to respect our secrets.”

Hands clenched on the music sheet, Nie Huaisang hurriedly nodded again. He couldn’t think of a bigger honour done to him. He’d never have dared to ask to be taught any Lan secret techniques, but since it was offered he would do his best to be worthy of it, and to show proper respect and gratitude.

“I also told him that having a goal of your own seemed to help you in your studies last year,” Lan Xichen added, “and that this might help you do better in your exams by giving you better motivation.”

However pleased he was that Lan Xichen would trust him, and with something that important, the reminder of his failure to do well in class made Nie Huaisang grimace, and instantly reduced his enthusiasm. “Does it mean the music lessons will be dependent on the grades I get in regular classes?”

“It’s possible that shufu came to that conclusion,” Lan Xichen replied with a mischievous smile. “But I never actually said that, and your grades are of no concern to me. I just like teaching you”

“Xichen-gege, you’re so crafty!” Nie Huaisang laughed. “Who knew you were capable of that! You’re the best, you know? I like when you teach me, too. I’ll try to be as good a student as you are a teacher!”

“I’m pleased you’d think so well of me,” Lan Xichen said, his cheeks turning a little pink. “Now, let’s get to work. I think for today, we’re just going to focus on the song itself. Then next week, if you are comfortable enough playing it, I can show you how to infuse it with your spiritual energy to have the right effect, and we can start learning Qin language.”

It sounded like a great plan, and one Nie Huaisang wholeheartedly agreed to.

Just as Lan Xichen promised, the song itself was not particularly challenging, and short enough that Nie Huaisang had good hopes of quickly learning it by heart if he just put his mind to it. He’d try to be careful not to practice it around the other Nie disciples, since it was a Lan technique, but he’d still work hard on it, and… maybe that might turn Night Hunts into something interesting at last. It should certainly make Nie Mingjue happy if his brother finally became interested in those, even if he had to use another sect’s method for it. 

It opened a world of possibilities, and Nie Huaisang promised himself to practice hard to make this happen, so both his brother and Lan Xichen would be proud of him. Or at least, as hard as he was capable, especially with all that he had to do that year. 

That would come later. The lesson having reached its conclusion for the day, Lan Xichen served tea for both of them, and offered some candies to celebrate the start of a new year of learning. By then, Lan Xichen’s mood appeared to have improved a great deal, and Nie Huaisang decided it would be fine to start the first phase of his great plan. 

"So, Xichen-gege, what do you think of this year's students?" Nie Huaisang asked innocently while grabbing some candies.

Lan Xichen's expression turned sour for a brief moment, before he got himself back under control and smiled again. 

"They are an interesting lot, certainly," he said without enthusiasm. "Are you making friends this time?" 

After taking a quick sip of tea, Nie Huaisang nodded, grinning.

"Gege, you won't believe it, but even last year I made a friend!” he announced. “Apparently, Zixun thinks I'm really cool and told his cousin about me!"

It was still really funny to him, and judging by his surprised expression, Lan Xichen hadn’t expected that either.

"Then Jin Zixun has better tastes than I expected,” Lan Xichen said with some hesitation, “and I must reconsider my opinion of him." 

"Well, me too! But I am making friends this year too, and they're nicer about it than Zixun was. Have you met Wei Wuxian yet?" 

Stopping short of drinking some tea, Lan Xichen's smile wavered. He froze for a second, and put down his glass again.

"I have,” Lan Xichen said in a tone of voice that made it plain the encounter had brought him little joy. “Jiang Cheng… I mean, Jiang gongzi came to greet me on his second day here, and Wei gongzi was with him. I suppose he was polite enough with me."

Nie Huaisang laughed at seeing him struggle to find something nice to say.

"But he upset your uncle and you don't like that."

That was all the encouragement Lan Xichen needed to allow his expression to turn into anger, which Nie Huaisang found very funny.

"He was extremely rude to shufu,” Lan Xichen complained. “It’s very unfortunate that he should show so little respect to a teacher. He's also determined to pester poor Wangji, who isn't used to being treated like that!” He paused, taking a deep breath to compose himself, but didn’t manage to put on a smile again. “Huaisang, since you're his friend, do you think you might tell him to leave Wangji alone?"

All of Nie Huaisang’s amusement quickly dissipated at that demand and he frowned.

"Well that's a problem! You really dislike him that much?"

Lan Xichen fell silent for a moment. Nie Huaisang found it more worrying than if he’d answered right away. A little anger at a misbehaving student was one thing, but he’d talked enough with Lan Xichen to recognise those moments when he was trying hard to be fair to someone he didn’t particularly like. He used to make the same face when talking about Su She, back before he started warming up to him.

"He doesn't seem like a bad person,” Lan Xichen said at last, “and he hasn't done anything to me, so I cannot dislike him. I am just worried for Wangji, who isn’t very good at dealing with people." 

"That's really inconvenient,” Nie Huaisang sighed. “Xichen-gege, I was really hoping you'd help me help them to become friends! It would have been a lot of fun, the two of us scheming together…” he sighed again. “Oh, well. I'll see if I can get Jiang-xiong or Su-xiong instead. I don’t want to involve you in something you’d find upsetting."

"I think the fact you’d want such a thing is already upsetting me a little,” Lan Xichen replied. “Is it even possible for them to be friends? They are… very different."

Nie Huaisang gave that a moment of consideration before shrugging.

"I guess. But we're pretty different too, and we didn't start off so well either, and look at us now! If it worked for us, it can work for them! I’m sure they can become good friends like us!" 

A spot or pink appeared on Lan Xichen's cheeks, but his expression remained conflicted. 

"I think it's different. Their first meeting was a fight."

Nie Huaisang could only laugh.

"And I ran away from you when you tried to chat!” he pointed out, grabbing another candy which he pushed toward Lan Xichen. “Anyway, wouldn't it be good for Wangji to have friends? He's too serious. It's not healthy for a boy his age to be so serious. As his elders, we need to make sure he doesn't get lonely." 

"you're barely a year older than him," Lan Xichen remarked, fighting a smile as he took the candy. "I'm not sure you have much claim as an elder." 

One hand on his heart, Nie Huaisang faked an offended expression which made Lan Xichen chuckle.

"I am an elder!” he protested theatrically. “I am wiser in the way of the world, so it is my duty to guide these children. Wei Wuxian too!” he added, a touch more seriously. “I think he was impressed by Wangji, you know. Jiang-xiong says that it's unheard of for him to find someone he can't beat.” He paused, and considered that. “Jiang-xiong also says he kind of hopes that Wei-xiong gets his ass kicked very hard, so it teaches him humility. And Meng-xiong didn't say anything, but he did nod."

Lan Xichen grinned.

"I do get the sensation that people tend to be as irritated by him as they are endeared. And I suppose… Wangji too was impressed by Wei gongzi's skill. Mostly he said it was quite upsetting that such talent should belong to a person with such poor manners."

Nie Huaisang smiled at that most encouraging news.

"There! If Wangji is complimenting him, then they need to be friends!" he exclaimed, making Lan Xichen laugh hard enough that he felt the need to hide it behind his sleeve.

"That's hardly a compliment."

"Coming from Wangji, it is."

That got another laugh out of Lan Xichen, which he quickly got under control and attempted to replace by a more severe expression. It might have worked, if his eyes had not been shining with barely repressed mirth. 

"Wangji is not nearly as bad as you seem to think,” Lan Xichen said. “He's just very shy, and being distant is the way he deals with it. Not everyone can be as bold and determined to collect friends as you are, Huaisang." 

"I'm not sure how to take that." 

"Coming from any other Lan, it might be an insult,” Lan Xichen admitted. “Coming from me, and to you, it's probably a compliment." 

Nie Huaisang grinned, delighted to be teased like that. How had he ever thought that Lan Xichen was boring? Maybe his future self was right about him not being too bright. But then again, wasn't it easy to make that sort of judgement in hindsight? Lan Xichen was fun now, but it had taken time for his smiles to gain real warmth when they were together. It had been time well invested though, and realising that made him hopeful that this business between Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian might turn out fine. Maybe they too would get to have that sort of comfortable relationship someday.

More comfortable, even, since they were to fall in love someday. It was going to be so funny to see how Lan Wangji acted when he was in love.

After this, the two boys fell silent for a moment as they finished their tea. It was getting a little late, and Nie Huaisang knew that he would soon have to leave. It made him almost wish that Lan Qiren had already given them homework, so he’d have an excuse to stay a little longer by whining that he always worked better when he was with Lan Xichen. Or else, he might have offered to help copy some scroll or other for Lan Xichen’s great secret project. Anything at all so he wouldn’t have to go. After almost a whole winter apart, he just wanted to be in his friend’s company a little more, just a tiny bit more, even if he knew they were sure to have time together again the week after.

Then, just as Nie Huaisang was trying to accept that he couldn’t find a good excuse to stay, Lan Xichen spoke again.

"If we do help Wangji and Wei-gongzi become friends,” he said, “and that's still an 'if' on my part, the main issue will be to make them understand they both want to be friends. Wangji seems to think Wei-gongzi only exists to torment him, and despairs to see again his more positive qualities."

Excited both for the excuse to chat a little more and by the fact that Lan Xichen was falling to his side, Nie Huaisang nodded.

"Wei-xiong is convinced Wangji is giving him the cold shoulder in spite of his efforts to become friends,” he replied. “He’s not used to people not fawning over him, I fear. Xichen-gege, we're gonna have to work hard!" 

"It would take effort,” Lan Xichen agreed. “I can see you're very excited about this little project, but don't let it get in the way of your studies."

Nie Huaisang dismissed that worry with a hand gesture.

"Don't worry! I'll practice the guqin every day no matter what!"

That answer made Lan Xichen laugh.

"I meant your actual studies, Huaisang,” he corrected, trying to sound scolding but too obviously amused to be scary at all. “The lectures? With my uncle? You do remember that's why you're here in the first place?" 

Blushing a little at his blunder, Nie Huaisang shrugged.

"Oh, that. I'll deal with that,” he said with more confidence than he felt. “At worst, I'll just come again a third year. Wouldn't that be fun? We'd get even more time together!" 

"I'm not sure shufu would be thrilled,” Lan Xichen pointed out. “But I would certainly be happy to have you around as long as you want. And… of course, you'd get more time with Su She as well. Apparently you've even told your brother about him?"

If he hadn’t been in such good humour upon hearing that Lan Xichen enjoyed his company that much, Nie Huaisang might have noticed that the other boy’s expression became a little more pained when he mentioned Su She. But he was in too good a mood to be observant.

"Of course. It fell through last year because I didn't plan it enough in advance and my grades were bad,” he explained, “but this year, I absolutely want to invite Su-xiong home with me when I go back, even if I don't pass! I think we'll have a lot of fun, and da-ge can't ground me if I have a guest to entertain!"

Lan Xichen's smile turned strained again, nearly as much as when Nie Huaisang first arrived to see him. 

"How cunning of you. I'm sure you'll have great fun. I could try to steal your brother for a Night Hunt, so you and Su She can have some peace." 

It was a very generous offer, and Nie Huaisang gave it all the consideration it deserved.

"No, I think if you make it all the way to Qinghe, I'll want to keep you around too,” he announced. “Xichen-gege, even though you've come a few times, we weren’t friends back then so I've never really shown you my birds, right? And we could go painting all three of us… wait, Su-xiong isn't that fond of painting!” he remembered, hitting his forehead. “So it won’t do. Then… let's dump him with da-ge for a bit, so they can get all excited together about fighting and cultivation, and I'll steal you away! Oh there's this gorgeous little spot from where you can see the mountains at a wonderful angle… I've always wanted to show it to someone, and I think you're really someone who would know how to appreciate it. Will you go there with me next time you visit us, Xichen-gege?"

Lan Xichen tried to smile, his face a little pinker than usual.

"Wouldn't you rather take Su She, if you like it so much?"

Nie Huaisang considered that, too, before shaking his head.

"There are other places I can show him. That one, I really want to show you."

Looking definitely quite pink now, Lan Xichen smiled.

"Then I will gladly accompany you. If you like it so much, it must be very beautiful indeed, and I can’t wait to see it." 

"Xichen-gege is too kind,” Nie Huaisang replied, delighted by that new plan. “Really too kind. And in his great kindness, will he help me give Wangji a friend?" 

"You’re just as stubborn as your brother,” Lan Xichen accused, his good mood fully returned. “We'll see. I need to see a little more of this Wei Wuxian before I decide. But if I find him to be a good person, and if I am given reasons to think he’ll be good for Wangji, then yes, I will help." 

It wasn't unfair to worry about that, especially when Lan Xichen didn't have a messenger from the future to tell him that Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji were pretty much soulmates. Indeed, without that information, Nie Huaisang would never have guessed that Lan Wangji's cold anger might have hidden any other sort of tender feelings. That was why Nie Huaisang really needed Lan Xichen's help, he was the only person in the world who could understand his brother. 

Since he needed Lan Xichen's assistance so badly, Nie Huaisang wondered if he should maybe not ask Wei Wuxian to help him cheat in the next test. But he had already done his part of the deal in that regards, so it would be very upsetting to have copied all those boring texts for nothing. Besides, it would probably be fine. 

There was no way they'd be caught, right? 

[amesstm]

Prom???

Pairing: Kuroo Tetsuro x Reader

Word Count: 2K

Summary: After coming to Japan as a transfer student from America your senior year, you miss out on prom. The Nekoma volleyball team comes to cheer you up.

A/N: I come from America so this is based off of what I know about prom. I know that prom is usually an American and Canadian thing, but just imagine a big dance where people dress fancy but dance dirty on the floor lol 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Prom was the crème de la crème of every American senior’s year. Unfortunately, being a transfer student in Japan meant that you had to travel to Japan in April to start the school year. Now, you were missing out on spending prom season with your friends.

A soft sigh unwillingly escaped your throat as you sat down on the bench in the gym. You pulled out your clipboard, ready to observe any improvements made from the boys today. Since you were spending a year in Japan, you decided that you could afford being a manager for Nekoma’s volleyball team. After some convincing from Kenma, your host family’s son, you agreed. Since you had some knowledge about volleyball from watching the Summer Olympics so much, it wasn’t too difficult fully understanding the tiny details of the game.

You were so engrossed in the multiple papers you had on each member that you didn’t realize that Kuroo, the captain, sat beside you.

“What’s wrong, Y/N-chan?” He asked, his minty breath wafting your face. You turned to look at him and was met with concerned eyes that dared you to lie to him. Kuroo always knew what was wrong. Not only was he good at reading the spikers’ movements, but he could also read you just as easily.  

“Let me show you,” you replied as you reached for your phone. You unlocked it and tapped on some photos your friends sent you. They had taken the time to send pictures of prom dresses they thought were cute. Your heart ached when you remembered that you wouldn’t receive a reply until they woke up.

“Ah, it’s... prom, right?” Kuroo said before turning it into a question. You couldn’t expect him to know when most Japanese schools don’t have formal dances.

You nodded with a small pout, “Yeah, prom is very huge in America. I didn’t always want to go but going with my friends seemed really fun.”

Kuroo hummed, probably not understanding the significance of a school dance. After all, the last time he went to one was probably a festival in middle school. But the way you were pouting tugged at Kuroo’s heart.

The captain promised himself he’d focus on getting into nationals and graduate. His dreams could afford no distractions – but why was he enjoying the feeling of being sidetracked? An idea lit itself in Kuroo’s head. He knew exactly what to do.

~

After returning to school on Monday, you witnessed Kuroo act even more weird than usual. You sat behind him in advanced English, waiting for class to start. Obviously, the class was really easy so you could afford not preparing for now.  

Then, you heard murmuring from Kuroo as he hovered over a piece of paper on his desk. Peering from the side, you grumbled that you couldn’t see what he was muttering. His broad shoulders were definitely useful on the court for blocking, but now they were blocking your view.

“Kuroo-san, what are you doing?”  

Your sudden voice must’ve surprised him, because he jumped in his desk and quickly hid the paper. The whites of his eyes were as clear as day and his mouth was still agape. Something clicked in your head.  

“Was that a...” You raised a finger and pulled out your phone to look up the right words. “Was that a dirty note?”

A rush of hyena laughter met your ears, causing everyone to look at you two. You looked up from your phone to see Kuroo hunched over from laughing so hard. You rolled your eyes as he forced himself to calm down, heaving all the while.

“Why? Are you curious, Y/N-chan?” He asked, with his eyebrows wiggling at you. He teased in a manner that could be interpreted in a manner that needed no translation. All you did was blink at him. He whined, “Don’t look at me like that. You look like Kenma when you do that.”

“Kenma taught me well,” you replied, sticking your tongue out. “So, what was that paper?”

“O-oh, I’m just preparing something,” Kuroo said, scratching the back of his neck. A soft pink tinged his cheeks and his eyes averted from yours.  

How suspicious, but cute.

You shrugged, he’d surely tell you what it was sooner or later. Besides, the arrival of the teacher meant you couldn’t pester Kuroo for an answer now.  

Soon, the school day ended with Kuroo still acting odd(er than usual). Kenma found you by your locker to begin your usual walk to the gym after school. Despite attending Nekoma for a month now, you still managed to lose yourself in the big halls. Hence, Kenma was your personal guide unless you two had different classes – aka you two never saw each other except for lunch.  

Once you were finished, Kenma and you walked towards the gym. “Are you excited for practice, Kenma?”

As usual, his short answer was: “No.”

You chuckled, “One day, there’ll be a reason you’re excited for volleyball.”

“Doubt it,” he murmured in return.

A comfortable silence settled between you two. Kenma tapped away on his game and you enjoyed the last bits of sakura season. Sure, the pollen gave you sinus headaches but the photo shoot you had when you first came here was worth it.  

A small trail of sakura flowers led to the entrance of the gym. You joked, “Someone must like sakura flowers.”

Kenma sneezed softly and muttered. “He’s lucky that I like him.”

You raised an eyebrow, about to ask what he meant, until Kenma opened the doors. Upon entering the gym, there was a center of sakura flowers accumulated in the middle. With a grin, Kuroo held up a sign that said: The only flower I want to take to prom is you. ♡

The bold, red letters in English were written with a shaky hand until touched up by someone more confident. Sakura flowers were carefully drawn and colored it, with patches of glitter thrown here and there.  

“Awh, is this for me, Kuroo?” You asked, a smile bursting onto your face. You raised your hands to your face, shielding yourself from the cameras that were pulled out to record.  

Kuroo nodded with a proud smile on his face. You approached him, unsure what to do. After all, this was the first time someone made such an effort into asking you out. “I don’t know if I did this right. I saw some videos of ‘promposals’ on YouTube, but I don’t-”

“This is perfect,” you said, quieting him by putting a finger to his lips. Then, the manager in you began to think logically about how this ‘prom’ would be pulled off. “W-wait, how are you going to do this dance?”

“Don’t worry, I got it covered,” Kuroo smiled confidently, raising a thumb at himself.

~

“Kenma, have you ever went shopping for anything but video games or food?” You asked, as you two drifted to a dress shop that Kenma’s mom had to recommend. Clearly, Kenma knew nothing about these types of shops until you asked him where they would be.  

“Only if Kuroo drags me along to get sports gear,” he said with a shrug. His eyes were glued to a game, but he was still able to reply to you as if he gave you his absolute attention. You could never understand how he has yet to walk into a pole, either.

You shrugged, “Makes sense.”

Upon entering the shop, you two were immediately met with rows on rows of dresses. Drawn by a magnetic pull, you flew towards a section containing your favorite color. Eyes glimmering with the giddiness of a kid in a candy shop, you placed your hand on the silky material.

The best part? It had pockets.

Grinning, you asked a worker if you could try it on. Kenma mindlessly followed you to wait outside the changing rooms. The straps were a bit difficult to sort through; otherwise, it fit like a glove. You stepped out of the fitting room, and called Kenma to attention.

After he paused his game, Kenma looked up. His usual cat eyes widened slightly. “You look pretty.”

You beamed, “Should I get it then?”

Kenma nodded rigorously. Underneath his breath, too low for you to hear, he murmured, “Kuroo will like it a lot.”

~

The volleyball team managed to secure the gym for the event and decorated it to the fullest. You don’t know how they did it in such little time. The lights were dimmed except for some lights that you recognized from Kenma’s set up in his room. Little things here and there were objects that you remember the boys talking about in previous conversations.  

Coach Nekomata smiled kindly as you entered. “You look beautiful, Y/N-san.”

“Thank you, coach,” you replied. “Thank you for doing this, too. I know it must’ve been a lot of work.”

“Oh, it wasn’t! Kuroo set it all up and I just watched,” the old man replied with a hearty laugh straight from his chest.  

You blushed. Kuroo kept his promise. He said he would make it happen and it did. Speaking of which, your date had come prepared from the coach’s room. A small box was in his hands.  

Unlike Kuroo’s usual, confident swagger, he seemed timid as he approached you. “I-I also saw that prom dates give this to each other.”

He opened the box, revealing a beautiful corsage that matched perfectly with your dress.  

“How did you know my dress would look like this? I wanted it to be a surprise.” You pouted.

Kuroo blinked, “Kenma sent me a photo.”

You also blinked. Then you looked to the traitor pudding-head beside the rooster. “KYANMA!”

Blood rushed to your cheeks and you hid behind your hands once more. You murmured, “Ah, I was in my natural state.”

“You’re breath-taking, don’t hide yourself from me,” Kuroo whispered into your ear, hints of a smile in his voice.

Now you were definitely red and about to burst. You laughed, “You’re just saying that.”

“I don’t give away compliments for no reason.” His genuine smile melted away the insecurities that bubbled to the surface. With your facial expression softening, he took the cue to lead you to the dance floor.  

The different colored lights cascaded to drape Kuroo in beautiful lighting. Red was truly his color, as his face was shaded with the hue. Something about the mood shifted as his hands made their way to your waist.  

Deciding to take the lead, Kuroo swung you two back and forth. The song was slow, so he adjusted as needed to match the beat. Should you have told them that American proms were basically fancy clubs with promiscuous music? Probably; although Coach Nekomata would definitely not approve.  

Oh well, I can grind on Kuroo later. Wait -  

“Hey, my eyes are up here,” Kuroo chuckled as he lifted your face to look up at him.

You pouted with a glare, “I-I wasn’t looking at you like that!”

“You wish you were,” Kuroo laughed as your eyes widened.

“Why are you like this?” You scoffed with a roll of your eyes.  

“But you like me, don’t you?” He smirked as his eyes danced with mischief.  

Okay Sky-Daddy, please kill me. As if Kuroo read your face, he hastily said, “Don’t worry, I like you, too.”

Your breath hitched, “But I’ll have to go back to America, Kuroo.”

“I know. Trust me, I know,” Kuroo sighed. “But in the little time that I’ve known you, I’ve already started to like you. Heck, it feels dangerous.”

“I don’t want to start something that might end on other sides of the globe,” you admitted.  

Kuroo’s eyes drooped, “I know.”

“But I want to try,” you reassured. How could you possibly express yourself in a different language right now? Then, you remembered the phrase. It couldn’t be directly translated to English, but the feeling was universal. “It’s like ‘koi no yokan’.”  

Kuroo grinned with a soft laugh, “Exactly. So, we’ll try dating?”

“Yes, Kuroo,” you affirmed with a smile gracing your features.  

“Call me Tetsu.”

[marvelgiggles]

Learning to Be Loved

Chapter 3

It was now becoming the end of summer, which almost time for school to start. You didn’t want to go back to the school you went to last year. You were fairly advanced when it came to your other classmates, especially in STEM related classes plus they were your favorite topics. Peter found out that you loved those types of classes, he wanted you to come to school with him.

Another thing that has happened in the past few months since living with the Avengers is that you’ve broken out of your shell. You were now the person you always hoped you could be surrounded by the family you had always dreamed of. There were still some bridges to be crossed but you were improving daily and the Avengers were very patient with you.

“Y/N you have a guest at the downstairs entrance.” JARVIS announced. You squealed and ran as fast as you could to greet Peter. “Peter!” You yelled and jumped into his arms. 

“Hey Y/N/N!” He said hugging you back just as hard and kissed your cheek. He set you down, “What’s everyone up to today?”

“Wanda, Sam, Vision, and Rhodey are on a mission. Tony and Pepper are on a business call and Steve and Bucky are out training, so I’ve been bored. Wanna build a blanket fort and watch movies?” You asked bouncing on the balls of your feet with excitement. 

When the Avengers went on missions together or in groups, you were worried the entire time they were gone. You finally had a family and didn’t want to loose any of them. There was a part of you that completely understood why they had to go on missions and you were incredibly proud of them for doing something that brave and knowing that they were helping people. You tried to keep yourself busy so you wouldn’t think about it too much. 

“That sounds amazing!” Peter said, “Race ya!” Peter suddenly took off giving him the advantage. 

“Peter, no fair!” You giggled running after him to try and beat him to the living room. The two of you were giggling as Peter would slow down to help you catch up but when you were close he would speed up again. When the two of you finally made it to the living room, Peter won by just a hair. 

“I win.” Peter sang which caused you to poke his tummy. He gasped and curled away from your finger. “Is that a game you want to start now there Y/N?” Peter started to poke your tummy in retaliation which made you giggle slightly. 

“Nohoho.” 

“You wanna grab the blankets for the fort? The more you grab the bigger it can be.” You grinned and rushed off to the closet that held all of the blankets, you grabbed as many as you could carry while still somewhat seeing where you were going. You got back to the living room Peter had moved some of the furniture around to clear a spot for the epic fort you were going to make. 

“Let’s get started.” Peter rubbed his hands together rapidly, something he did when he was excited about something. 

After an hour, you and Peter made the most epic blanket fort in the history of blanket forts. You had the TV set up on the ground, also doubling the use and making it one of the walls of the fort. You also brought some of the extra string lights from your room down and strung them along the ceiling. It was also loaded up with some of the extra blankets you didn’t use and all of the pillows that were from the couches. It also was stocked full of all the appropriate movie marathon snacks. 

“What movie should we start with?” Peter asked you. 

You shrugged. You didn’t want to accidentally pick a movie that Peter didn’t like and make him want to sit through the whole thing. “Whatever you want to watch is fine.” It also helped you were pretty easy to please when it came to movies, as long as it wasn’t a horror movie or super graphic. 

“Are the Lion King movies okay?” You nodded with a smile. You both made yourselves comfortable while also each grabbing a snack. Halfway through the movie Peter spoke up. 

“Y/N,” you turned your head to look at him letting him know he had your full attention, “do you wanna cuddle?” Your face all of a sudden got very warm and you avoided his eyes. You slightly nodded and Peter opened his arms, “Well come here then Cuddlebug.” You eagerly crawled into his arms.  

While you have broke out of your shell in the last few months, you were still struggling with asking for certain types of affection. You had no issues giving hugs to people, but you were still too nervous to ask for cuddles or kiss someone one the cheek. The Avengers gave you the nickname of Cuddlebug because cuddles were one of your favorite things on the planet.

“Thanks for keeping me company Peter.” You whispered. He drew you closer to him while giving you a chaste kiss on the forehead. 

“Of course. You’re one of my best friends Y/N, I love hanging out with you.” 

Another thing that all the Avengers have learned about you appreciated words. Growing up you were never told that someone was proud of you, that someone cared about you, or even that someone loved you. Since the Avengers knew a little background of your previous life they tried their best to always tell you what they thought of you. 

“I like hanging out with me too.” You teased, even though you had a rough past you still understood sarcasm, which was also something that came to life recently.

“Oh look, it’s miss sassy pants, guess I will have to fix that.” He rolled you onto your back and he laid on your side, crossing his over and under yours pinning you into place, and then he started to squeeze your hips. You burst into giggles trying to twist away but Peter’s legs had you stuck in place. 

“Peheheheter!” 

“Oh can miss sassy pants not take some tickles? Well that’s too bad, I have to tickle all of the sass out of you.” Peter sang now bringing his horribly quick fingers up to your armpits making you Tickle Me Elmo giggles burst out. 

“Looks like miss sassy pants has turned into Tickle Me Elmo, how cute.” Peter chuckled, “Maybe this spot will make you loose all your sass.” He then moved down to your ribs, he hit a particularly overly sensitive spot. It was at the bottom of your ribs but on the backside of your rib cage. You were so shocked at this new feeling that you didn’t even try to squirm it was like you were paralyzed with laughter. 

You were trying to tap out or do something to get him to stop, then thankfully he decided to have mercy on you.

“I’m definitely going to remember that spot.” He squeezed it quick again eliciting a squeal from you. “But it’s not as good as this one.” He jellyfished the knee closest to him and you quickly grabbed his hand and wove his fingers between yours so he didn’t get carried away and tickle you longer than you could handle. “I’m done I promise.”

“I like hanging out with you too Peter.” You told him once you finally caught your breath and the both of you got more comfortable and finished your Lion King movie marathon. 

———————

It was the first day at Peter’s new school and it would be a lie if you didn’t say you were nervous. You were about to go to school with a bunch of genius kids and a new school, but you were thankful to have Peter by your side. 

You were standing outside the building looking at the front doors, “Ready?” Peter said grabbing your hand.

You let out a breath you didn’t even know that you were holding. “Is it weird that I’m nervous?”

“No but I’m going to be with you in class all day. Mr. Stark made a call apparently.” He smiled and you felt so touched that Tony would go out of his way to make sure that you were comfortable and with Peter all day. Peter tugged your hand and you followed him into school.

You felt a lot of eyes on you making you feel really small and uncomfortable. Peter just simply squeezed your hand letting you know that he was there and walked into your first classroom. 

You were a little surprised to find a few round tables in the room instead of a bunch of desks. Peter walked over to a table with a few people and sat down, you immediately followed so you wouldn’t have to sit a table where you didn’t know anyone.

“Y/N, these are my friends Ned and MJ. Guys, this is Y/N.” Peter told you while pointing to a girl with curly black hair and the guy who couldn’t stop smiling with no hair. 

“So you’re the Y/N Peter has told us about.” You suddenly got really nervous, what had Peter said about you, good things or bad things, that fear of suddenly loose your closest and first friend made it’s way to the pit of your stomach. Peter started to notice your tense state and simply placed his hand on top of yours. 

“Hey, I’ve only told them good things. I told them that I made another best friend over the summer named Y/N and that she was super fun to hang out with.” 

You smiled appreciatively at him, “Why aren’t there desks?” Peter chuckled at your question but you didn’t feel stupid or insecure at his response. 

“It’s supposed to help with learning. We are all facing each other and the teachers have structured their teaching so we can work more in groups and go back and forth with each other, rather than just sit and listen to them talk all the time. Not all the teachers have it but it’s becoming more common throughout the school.” 

That made you nervous and a little more excited about school. You were always such a hands on learner but you didn’t really know anyone yet so you were even more thankful that you were in class with Peter and that Tony made a call to the school. 

Finally, lunch time came around and you were the first one to sit at the table Peter told you he sat at. You felt a presence sit next to you and you turned to look expecting to find Peter but instead you were looking a boy you’ve never seen before. He was wearing a letterman jacket and he was kind of handsome as well.

“Hi, I’m Brad. What’s your name?”

“Y/N.” Then all of a sudden a large group of guys in letterman jackets sat around you. 

“Well Y/N welcome to Midtown High. Where’d you move from?” He was obviously trying to get to know you for some reason and you just wanted to leave but you also didn’t want to be rude. 

“I’m just here for today to see if I like it.” You said quietly not liking the pressure you felt from all of the guys around you.

“I hope you stay because...”

“Hey Y/N, wanna join MJ, Ned and I over there.” Peter interrupted Brad, you had never been so thankful to see Peter. You eagerly nodded when all of a sudden you felt a hand on your arm, trying to get you to sit back down and you knew it wasn’t Peter. “Hey Parker, she was already sitting here.”

“I know!” Peter actually looked pretty angry at Brad, “But this is where we normally sit and you didn’t have to sit here plus Y/N is my friend and she’s clearly uncomfortable, so take your hand off of her so she can come sit with her real friends.” You had never heard Peter talk like that and you made a note to never get on his bad side. Brad thankfully did what Peter said and you stood up to follow Peter to where he was sitting. 

“I’m sorry about Brad. Are you okay? Did he hurt you?” Peter said as you were making your way to his table. 

You shook your head, “Thank you for saving me.” You said quietly.

Peter kissed your cheek quickly and whispered in your ear, “That’s my job Y/N.” Causing you to giggle at his cheesiness and the whisper in your ear tickled a little bit too.

After lunch time was over, you went to all the other classes with Peter and enjoyed your day at the school, but when the bell rang at the end of the day you were even more happy to go home. You were never really away from the compound for that long since you’ve lived there so you missed everyone and couldn’t wait to get back home. 

Peter told you he wouldn’t be coming back to the compound with you and he had to go somewhere with his aunt after school, so Happy would be picking you up. Peter did walk you out to the front door and you instantly spotted Happy’s car. 

“Bye Peter, have fun with May.”

“I’ll text you later, Y/N.” He pulled you into a hug before you got in the car. Happy and you made light conversation on the way back to the compound. 

“Welcome home Y/N.” JARVIS said as you walked in the front door. 

“Hi JARVIS! Is Tony in the lab?” 

“He’s currently working on a new model for his suit.” JARVIS told you and you ran to the lab wanting to tell Tony about your day. Once you got to the lab you saw a stool right next to him, you figured if you sat there he might even let you help him.

“Hey pipsqueak, how was school with the kid?” He turned from what he was working on and kissed your hair.

“It was fun.” You said simply kicking your legs back and forth on the stool watching in fascination on what Tony was working on.

“Yeah, so is that were you think you wanna go this year?” He set his tools down and stopped what he was doing to give you his full attention.

“No.” You said quietly suddenly getting nervous to tell Tony what you were thinking. You looked up a Tony quick and his head was cocked to the side and one of his eyebrows was raised. 

“I liked the school but I’d rather learn stuff from you in the lab and help you with suits and other things.” You were suddenly snatched off the stool in a big bear hug and Tony swung you around in a circle making you laugh.

“I get to have you here all the time!” Tony screamed as he continued to spin you around. When he finally stopped spinning you felt his hands squeeze between you arms and your armpits, he started to wiggle his fingers causing one of everyone’s favorite laughter from you. Your Tickle Me Elmo giggles broke out and you started to kick you legs.

“Tohohohony!” You giggled, you couldn’t help but try to get some momentum to break free of his grasp but you also didn’t mind as you loved being tickled. Tony didn’t acknowledge your protests and started to rub his beard in the crook of you neck. Your giggles got more frantic and your kicking became a little more desperate than before. Tony kept this up for a while, he’d either rub his beard around your neck, or wiggle his fingers in your armpits or even do both at the same time. 

He finally had mercy on you after a while and set you back down on your feet and he gave you a long kiss on your forehead. “I would love nothing more than to teach you everything I know. I’ve always wanted a little apprentice.”

“I’m sorry you went through all that trouble of calling the school for nothing.”

Tony waved his hand dismissively, “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my girl. Now where should we start?”

[sugadaily]

SUGA has this way of talking passionately with a deadpan look on his face. Full of passion about his life and music. How is your shoulder? SUGA: Good. I think it’ll get even better once I take off this brace. Apparently, it takes several months for a full recovery, but I'm trying to get better as fast as possible. How does it feel like to have resolved a problem that has distressed you for long? SUGA: First of all, I'm glad. The pain is one thing, but when my shoulders got worse, I couldn't even raise my arms. But when I heard that this might recur when getting the surgery at a young age, I waited for the right time and had decided to get it done early next year regardless of the COVID-19 situation. I had planned to get the surgery after the year-end stages, but I got it done this year (2020) because my doctors advised me to start preparing early for next year’s promotions and activities. How does it feel like watching the other members doing promotions? SUGA: I can't say it feels great. I could see the emptiness because we've been together as a group of seven for so long. Not necessarily because I'm not there but because something that should be there is missing? Is that what made you join the promotion as much as possible? You shot lots of video footage in advance and you even appeared in the Mnet “2020 MAMA” through VR. SUGA: Fake SUGA (Laughs). There’s this 3D studio where we shot it. I shot, scanned, and acted there, but couldn't see the actual result at the studio. I thought a sense of displacement was unavoidable, and that was exactly the case. (Laughs) I acted normal because it would have been aired anyway even if I hadn’t had the surgery, but it seems a lot because it’s aired after the surgery. You must feel restricted not being able to go on stage. SUGA: The thing is, it's only been a month after I got surgery, but my absence on stage is so apparent. But my doctors keep telling me that I shouldn't be impatient and in fact, many athletes get a resurgery when they return to the field without proper rehabilitation. So I'm working on trying to care less. For the first two weeks after surgery, I felt so frustrated that I tried out new things. I even watched movies I didn't watch.

What movies did you watch? SUGA: I watched ‘Samjin Company English Class’ as it happened to be on IPTV, and now I have ‘Tenet’ on my list. ‘Parasite’ was the last movie I saw at a cinema. As the social distancing measures became stricter, I haven’t been going outside, except going to the hospital. I even eat at home. I'm also watching a lot of TV nowadays. Watching music shows like ‘Sing Again’, ‘Folk Us’, and ‘Show Me The Money 9’ made me think of what I should do in the upcoming days. Could you elaborate on that? SUGA: A lot of candidates on ‘Sing Again’ are very talented but hadn't had the opportunity, and on ‘Folk Us’, I noticed that many took their own guitars on stage. I started playing the guitar lately and I'm having this urge to broaden my scope of music. And since my interest in the music industry in the U.S. grew, I'm getting prepared, studying English and all. What fueled your interest? SUGA: In some ways it’s the most commercially developed market. You could lose the industry attention in a flash if it's not feasible. So in this system, you would try everything and that would be an efficient way. I want to do music for a long time, and to this end, I always want to learn more about the global music industry because I want to do music that’s loved not only in Korea, but also in the U.S., Japan and Europe. Speaking of which, it seems BE was influenced from music of the past rather than today's trends. SUGA: I especially like impromptu music. I love the songs that were made in one take instead of being recorded several times. In this era of crossover genres, the desire to do better in music is growing inside me. As the genres become more blended, the melody you use must be more important. Does starting to play the guitar affect your composing in any way? SUGA: I always liked using guitar sounds. And I have always liked the Eagles. If you play the guitar, it’s way easier to write songs because you can carry it along wherever you go, pluck on the strings to create melody lines. Keyboards are difficult to carry around. (Laughs) I usually work on my laptop but I had this thought that I definitely needed an instrument. It accelerates my work and improves my understanding of chords. It makes me think you could intuitively make melodies. SUGA: It’s easier to write a song because you can intuitively make a progression and try many different things. During my work on ‘Eight’, IU had recorded and sent me a song from her phone. At the time I couldn’t play the guitar, so we tried to make sure we’re working on the same page when keeping track of each other's progress. That made me feel the need to learn an instrument.

This is actually before you started playing the guitar, but I found ‘Telepathy’ in BE very interesting. The varying melodic progressions between hooks for each member made me wonder if you wrote the melody intuitively for each part. SUGA: I tried a melody for the first time this year (2020), and as I started knowing the fun of music, it opened a lot of new doors for me. So it was kind of easy working on it. I just played a beat and wrote from the beginning until the end. Done. I wrote it in just 30 minutes. The song almost wrote itself. The trends of pop and hip-hop these days cross boundaries between vocals and rap. I like this trend. When I listen to your singing, it feels like you’re hitting the beats rather than singing along the notes. So I thought perhaps you're singing as if you're rapping. SUGA: When you're rapping, you just think of the rhythm, so it’s like simply putting on a melody to a rhythm. To define which comes first, I think melody adds to it while writing the rap. In ‘Life Goes On’, the lyrics ‘Thankfully between you and me, nothing’s changed’ are somewhere in between. It's not rap but it’d be mundane to say it's a mere melody. SUGA: There are obviously songs where the rap needs to be highlighted. For example, in ‘Dis-ease’ or ‘Ugh!’, you have to be good at rap. But in songs that should be easy to listen to, impressive raps are not always the way to go. Sometimes, you want smooth transitions without obstacles. In that sense, the rap flow of ‘Blue & Grey’ was impressive. Rather than a dramatic effect that emphasizes each part, you extended the rap just as much as the slowing beat. SUGA: To be honest, this beat is difficult to rap to. The beginning of the song only has a guitar line, which made it even more difficult. I participated when we wrote lyrics for ‘Blue & Grey’ and I've always wanted to work on a song like this. It was because verse 1 talks about the theme of the song.

It seems you achieved almost everything that you wanted in BE. SUGA: I think it took less than a week to make my part in the album. After having written one or two melodies for ‘Life Goes On’, I wrote a version complete with rap, and liked it that I even worked on a separate arrangement and lyrics. Rather than pondering over the ways that might work, I choose to simply play the music and write. Many creators are unsure even after they’ve produced good work. How do you get the conviction to release your work? SUGA: Many musicians are unsure whether they should release their music or not. It was the same for me, but the thing is, you’ll never release anything if you nitpick everything. For example, if we release 10 songs, we have a chance to unveil them in concerts or fan events. And sometimes, as we listen to the song, we think, ‘Why does this part that had bothered me no longer bother me?’ Some things might feel awkward at some point, but in time, it no longer feels awkward. Even I forget about it. So it's more efficient to fine tune, looking at the big picture, rather than thinking too much about the details. On top of that, during promotions, I don’t have the time to pick tracks that others have sent for 10 hours. It would be a success for all of us if each of us play and write a melody in their own time and collaborate with others on the details. So the way of songwriting has evolved in many aspects. What motivated such evolution? SUGA: I think it evolved naturally. I've changed in personality this year (2020), as well as in terms of my interpretation and attitude toward life to the extent that I almost thought I've been rehearsing. How would it feel like if there were no stage to go to or anyone looking out for me? This thought made me realize the value of these things. In ‘Dis-ease’, you sing ‘I don’t know if it’s the world that's sick’. Was it this lifestyle that changed your thoughts about your work? SUGA: Yes. When I was young, I had embraced the belief that ‘It must be my fault’, but as I got older, I realized that this is not always true. Most of what I had thought was my fault was in fact, not my fault. On the other hand, there are things that I did well and times I had been lucky. ‘I NEED U’ came out during a time when you were still thinking, “It must be me”. After the members put on a stage with ‘I NEED U’ in KBS' ‘Song Festival’, you wrote on Weverse, “It’s the same as five years ago.” How would you compare with back then? (This interview was held on December 19, 2020.) SUGA: We've matured quite a bit. And our stage performances have become more natural. I still like ‘I NEED U’. Just listening to the beat makes me sentimental, and above all, the song came out nicely. So as I was watching this and that when I stumbled across old videos. Watching them made me think that we haven’t changed much.

In what aspect haven't you changed much? SUGA: Before the social distancing measures got stricter, I talked with the photographer for BE, whom I had met four years ago. The photographer was surprised that we hadn’t changed much after all the success, even though he had assumed we’d be very different. I'm amazed personally. I’ve had the chance to meet the members before your debut, but from your way of talking with members or others, it seems you haven't changed. SUGA: I think it's because we don’t give it a big deal about success. For example, it's incredible to be ranked first on the Billboards, but there’s also this sense of, “Okay, and?” Even the Grammys? (Laughs) SUGA: When we got nominated for the Grammy Awards, we thought, ‘Is this real?’ (Laughs) Of course we were delighted, but it didn’t make us think, ‘We're singers nominated for the Grammy.’ If you're nominated, you're nominated, and if you get the award, you get the award. You don't get shaken by that. I know it's a great award and would be so grateful if we receive it, but we know that nothing is possible without the tremendous support of our fans. What’s more important is that the fans are more flattered than us when we receive a great award. So everyone's rejoicing, but it’s like, ‘Let's do what we have to do.’ We've been training ourselves to keep finding our places, so no one remains overexcited. In ‘Fly To My Room’, there are lyrics that say, ‘This room is too small to contain my dream’, and ‘Sometimes this room becomes an emotional trash can, but it embraces me.’ I had this feeling that the room had been such a place and that you were accepting that you have changed. Then the essence must have remained the same. SUGA: It wasn’t easy to accept that we eventually change. But I think it's a good thing that we changed. What we did back then was possible only at that time, and we could change because of the things we had accomplished. Then, what new things are you dreaming about? SUGA: I'm eager to continue doing music. Since all performances were canceled due to COVID-19, I had a chance to talk to so many musicians in Korea. I talked with legendary singers as well as people who are my contemporaries. Talking with them once again made me realize that I love music so much. Because music is my profession, I can’t imagine myself not doing it. I'm grateful that there are still unvisited areas in the world of music.

What kind of music do you think you’ll be engaged in in the future? SUGA: I was greatly motivated when I saw the concert of Na Hoon-a last Chuseok . I wondered how many musicians would actually be able perform and write music for so long like he has. At that moment, it occurred to be that ‘I want to be like him’. He has passion and desire, and most of all, he is a superstar. A few years ago, I took my parents to a Na Hoon-a concert, and when they watched the performance last Chuseok, they said it was way less impressive to see him perform through the TV. (Laughs) That must explain your interest in a broader spectrum of music from instruments to composing and musical genres. Because you want to be doing this for a long time. SUGA: My goal is to continue doing music in any shape or form. In that sense, I have this great respect toward Cho Yong-pil. He takes the best sound there is and reinterprets it into his own. I think that’s something I want to emulate and keep changing and evolving so that I can continue doing music for decades to come. The lyrics ‘Thankfully between you and me nothing’s changed’ must sound more meaningful for the fans because they will be listening to your music for a long time. SUGA: A month and a half in the current times must seem like a lifetime for the fans when we're far apart. I feel the same. But I think that's proof that we worked hard for the past seven years and that the fans have been passionately reaching out to us. I'm striving to get to them as fast as I can, and I'm eager to go on stage. I'm going through this because I want to be better on stage in a better condition, so don't be sad, and please hang in there a little longer.

[sugiwa]

Hi. I am the Advice Anon. Please ignore those asks! I am so sorry for spamming your ask box. I still need help, so I’ll paste the entire thing over here. Again, sorry and thank you! Have a great day!

My reply and the full ask are below:

Hello! I hope you’ve been having a great day so far. This is probably unlike all of the other asks you get on a daily basis, author. However, I am in dire need of help, and I have turned to you. Before I begin, I want to apologize in advance, as this ask is going to be long. Now, like I said before, I need some help. You see, I am a freshman in high school, and school hasn’t even been going on for a full 10 weeks (a quarter), and I am already in a huge, messy, sticky situation. You probably already know that in high school, you need a certain number of credits in each field to be able to graduate. I am going to be extremely vague about this because it doesn’t really matter, and I’d really like to remain anonymous, if you know what I mean. One of the fields is World Languages and Visual Arts. Obviously, I am not talented enough to do Visual Arts, so I opted for World Languages instead. My teacher for the course I chose this year… she’s nice. Really kind, and I love that she makes learning a whole new language and culture, which is extremely hard, so much fun. And the fact that she’s one of the nicest teachers I know makes the rest of this so, so painful for me. 4 days ago, for me, was a Thursday. In this class, we had a vocab quiz that day (background info: two days before every quiz, my teacher posts a practice quiz to be done before class starts). I don’t really want to discuss what happened, as it still brings tears to my eyes, but I will give you a vague summary of what was going on. Basically, I couldn’t access my quiz (it was online), so my teacher told me to come in after school to re-do it. I was supposed to close down my computer and work on homework from another class, but instead of doing so, I worked on the practice quiz. And… this was considered cheating, because I was getting extra practice in before taking the quiz– something that the other students didn’t get, you know? My teacher saw my computer screen, and told me that she’d talk to me after school, and she’d be calling home. I couldn’t concentrate for the rest of the class, because I was afraid of what might happen when she called home. After school, she told me to speak with her, and be honest about it. When cheating happens, at our school, the teacher will write us up for Academic Dishonesty and give it to the administration, who then decides the consequences. My teacher had told me that if I was honest with her, she wouldn’t write my up; she’d just give me a zero on the quiz and call home and tell them what I did. I was honest with her, because like I said before, I was afraid. Once I told her everything that happened, she told me that I could call home, let them know what happened myself, and I’d be off the hook (with a zero on the quiz, of course). So, I called home, like she had asked of me, but… they didn’t pick up. I told her that they didn’t pick up, and she told me that it was fine, and that she’d talk to my parents in-person before they picked me up from school. I’m not going to lie, that terrified me more than calling home. I don’t really remember what happened after that, because I was too busy crying, but I do remember that she mentioned something about me doing this before, and that it was not OK to do it the second time, but she’d let me off the hook. The thing is, I am 100% sure I haven’t done this before… or maybe she just didn’t approach me the first time. I told her that I didn’t do this before, and she told me that I was lying again, and began to write me up. I told her that I didn’t mean to do this, and that I was sorry, but she told me to stop lying. She said that she DID approach me the first time I did this, and that I was rude to her then. This brought tears to my eyes– my kind of favorite teacher telling me that I was rude to her. You see, I didn’t grow up here, and although I’ve lived here for 4 years, I am not used to the way people interact here. It was very different where I grew up. For example, you didn’t ask each other how their day was, or what they did during their day, unless you were REALLY curious or concerned, because that was considered nosy and rude. So, I tend to be unintentionally rude, and completely oblivious to it; I have no idea when I’m being rude or not, unless someone specifically says so. I also don’t really understand people well, so that’s a huge problem. So… hearing this from her, really hurt. I told her that I didn’t intend to be rude, and I was trying my best to change (I mean, I was & am reading a book to teach me etiquette and all), and she replied with “that’s good to hear”. Then, when my parents came to pick me up, she talked to them, and even asked one of my parents to walk with us to the Administration Office to turn in the write up. Stuff happened, I got called into the Assistant Principal’s office, and now I have a zero on my quiz (and my homework activity that I never finished), Saturday School, and a black mark on my record. But the thing is… that’s not what I’m concerned about at all. Sure, getting my grades up in time for Progress Reports is going to be an extremely hard task, and Saturday School is going to leave a huge black mark on my record, but that’s not what I’m worried about. My grades have been fractured, but so has my relationship with this teacher. I feel as though she hates me now, that she has lost all trust in me. (Background info: our school does Odd and Even days, so I have half of my classes on one day and half on the other, so that means that I didn’t face my teacher at all on Friday) 3 days ago, on Friday, when I went to school, it was an average day. It would have been an amazing day, had it not been for the situation I was in. All I could think about that day was my World Language teacher. And just thinking about her, and about that classroom, it… gives me a bit of anxiety. This is where I need your help. What would you do if you were in my situation? I really want to repair my relationship with my teacher, because I know that she’s really important; we’re going to be on the same campus for the next 4 years of my life, and even more importantly, she’s going to be my teacher for the next 8 months. I want to graduate with good grades, but more importantly, I want to graduate without holding a grudge against my teacher. I want her to like me, and I want to gain her trust again. Today is a Sunday for me, and I have to go back to school tomorrow, and I have her class then. A part of me is really scared to go to school, a part of me is really angry at my teacher for reporting me (even though it was the right thing to do), and a part of me wants to ditch school tomorrow, or even drop out or transfer from her course, all because I don’t want to face her after I did the wrong thing. It’s not only that, either. I’ve also been avoiding my friends. Would you like to know why I am confiding in awesome strangers on the internet anonymously instead of letting my friends know what’s going on? It’s because I’m afraid that they won’t like me anymore, and they’d ditch me or something. They’re amazing people, and I know that they won’t do that, but a part of me is still paranoid. I’ve been avoiding my friends since Friday, barely talking to them at school, and texting them a little bit in our group chat. They don’t really suspect anything, but that’s good. And that’s why I am asking you. Not just you, but actually anyone who sees this, if they helped me, I’d really appreciate it. I really need help moving forward in this situation, and I’m desperate for help. My parents don’t understand the situation I’m in, and I’m too scared to talk to my friends about it, so I’d really appreciate the help. It’s OK if you don’t reply to this, author. I know that this doesn’t affect you in any way, so you’re not obliged to help me. I’d like to thank you for taking the time from your day to read these extremely long asks. Have a great day. P.S: I absolutely love What Heroes Do! Izumi is such a well written character, and sometimes, I see myself in her. The way she handles situations is so inspirational! And your writing skills are top-tier! My best friend and I actually started writing a book 4 years ago (I mean, we wrote for one month in 6th grade, and then spent one day in 8th grade editing it, and we’ve only got a prologue and 1.5 chapters done, so… clearly, we aren’t doing a good job lol), and you’ve inspired me to go back to that book and re-do it! Thank you so much for being such an inspiration and an idol of mine! Ilysm ❤️

sugiwa:

I wanted to take the  proper time to reply to this. I think any adult willing to hold a grudge against a child is in the wrong. You clearly made a mistake and are now taking steps to improve and learn from it. Additionally, I think teachers tend to forget how much stress students are under in their academic and private lives, so a mistake should be used as an opportunity to teach not punish. I don’t think that you should worry about what this teacher thinks of you. Your teacher didn’t believe you, despite you telling them the truth. No matter how kind or nice someone is, their behavior towards you will always reflect their inner thoughts. If you’ve clearly made a mistake, you should fight to prove that. It’s not as if you intended to ‘cheat,’ given the situation we’re all in with the pandemic, online classes and quizzes are the norm. These kinds of things probably happen regularly. Additionally. I don’t think you need to concern yourself with being rude. My culture is rather blunt and when I first moved here, people weren’t fans of brutal honesty, so it was a big cultural shock.  If people aren’t willing to learn about your culture and understand, then I don’t think they’re people worth hanging out with. Lean on your friends, I don’t think they’d make a big deal over a couple of mistakes and if they do, then it might be worth reconsidering why you were friends with them. 

Thank you for your kind words about the story and I really hope everything works out for you!!

[rigmarolling]

Top 5 Things That Will Kill You In the Victorian Era

If you’ve ever spent more than two seconds with me, you know that I live and breathe the fog-choked air of Victorian London. All day. Every day of my life. 

See, in many ways, the Victorians were the first version of us--overwhelmed by rapidly-changing technology (and its awful effect on the climate); dealing with incredible wealth gaps; grappling with rising crime and faster travel and out-of-control media and the whole, “God is dead, oh no” thing. 

Also, everything was trying to kill you.

Like, literally almost everything.

From your clothes to your doctor to your canned food, here are the top five things that will kill you in the Victorian era.

5. Other Victorians

If the rise of penny dreadfuls (cheap magazines stuffed with horror stories for us morbidly-inclined goth types) was any indication, Victorians loved them some true crime. 

And there was no shortage of subject matter to choose from: depending on where you ventured in London, at least, you could be subject to anything from pickpocketing to mugging to violent assault and, of course, murder. 

There were a few reasons for this:

For one thing, the population in London alone increased by millions in the 19th century, and approximately no one was prepared for that. So, to accommodate the rapidly-booming population, the wealthy folks in charge reached out and lovingly ensured the masses of the disenfranchised poor were taken care of by redistributing resources and education and access to opportunities that improved lives on a both a personal and social level.

Lol, no, I’m totally kidding; they shoved them into slums and tenement buildings and pretended they didn’t exist.

So of course, there was a rise in crime, because if you have five kids and you can’t find gainful employment and your family will starve if you don’t steal that basket of food over there, or that purse that lady left sitting over THERE, what are you going to do? You’re going to steal the food and the purse to survive, Jean Valjean, I understand, I do.

Except the powers that be did NOT understand, and instead routinely espoused the idea that if people were poor, it was because they were morally bankrupt, or inherently bad, somehow, and the “criminal classes,” as they came to be known by the growing Victorian middle and upper-middle classes, were simply considered genetically bad to the bone and therefore undeserving of assistance.

Basically:

So ANYWAY.

Crime was on the rise and there were multiple efforts to stop it with varying degrees of success, but big city usually = big crime, especially when there’s a massive gap between the one percent-ers and THE REST OF US, WASHINGTON.

Ahem.

All that crime? The booming news industry loved it. The press ate it up and then spit it back out in salacious headlines that never even bothered with journalistic objectivity, like this gem:

I mean. Full disclosure: I, too, agree that cutting off a woman’s head, arms, and legs and then burning them is “awful, inhuman, & barbarous” but just...maybe...maybe tone it down? Just a bit?

No? Okay.

See, here’s the thing: crime sells. It always has. And papers went nuts with full illustrated spreads about the latest brutal murders so you could sit in your parlor and get anxiety poops thinking about how the butcher down the street looked at you funny the other day and oh, God, you’re probably next, oh God.

The most famous murderer of the era, was, of course, Jack the Ripper, which was just the orchestral climax of a hideously corrupted society that had bubbled into naught but a festering carbuncle, an ulcer upon the very soul of man, trussed up as a city of industry, but which is merely Salome, dancing with the Lamb’s head upon a platter and sending us all tumbling into a fiery pit.

....Ahem, again.

Some popular ways your fellow Victorians could kill you included: dueling (with swords but usually with revolvers), stabbing, garroting, and, probably the most popular method of the era, poisoning.

Speaking of which...

4. Anything dyed that hip shade of green

In 1775, a guy named Carl Wilhelm Scheele invented a new shade of green, cleverly called Scheele’s green, and it instantly became a hit. Pretty soon, manufacturers and tailors were dyeing everything this color. 

Look at it. Bright, airy. Calls to mind a fresh, spring meadow. (What’s that, you ask? Well, before the Industrial Revolution belched out black smoke onto absolutely everything, there were these things called plants and grass and they were all over the place and you could frolic through them and it was very nice for your serotonin levels.)

I mean, listen, this isn’t really my color because anything vaguely yellow-ish makes my already yellow-ish skin look especially jaundiced, but it’s a lovely shade:

Besides using it to create beautiful dresses and tasteful waistcoats, they used it inside book covers:

And it was a super popular wallpaper color:

They had green candles and green cups and green kitchenwares and green paint.

But while Carl Wilhelm Scheele didn’t exactly murder anyone (even though he has three names like every serial killer ever), he sort of, accidentally, indirectly, kinda...did.

Because that springy dye contained every Victorian black widow’s favorite method to dispose of a troublesome husband: arsenic.

Scheele, of course, had no idea--no one did--so I’m fully exonerating him here, but the poison nonetheless started to take its toll.

Reports began to surface of kids getting sicker and sicker and then dying in their green wallpapered rooms; of fashionable ladies rocking those green dresses at balls and then ALSO getting sicker and sicker and breaking out in horrible sores before dying. 

They even used this stuff to dye food green, so of course, anybody who tucked into Victorian green eggs and ham also, you know. Died.

And if they DIDN’T die, they got cancer, because if arsenic doesn’t kill you, it will give you cancer. And then kill you.

Eventually, as science advanced and went, “HEYO, there’s literal poison in this stuff,” consumers were like, “Well, shoot, this summer’s hottest beach shade just killed an entire boarding school,” and Scheele’s green finally fell out of favor.

It was, however, used as a pesticide up through the 1930s, so...way to use the...leftovers? I guess?

3. Your canned food

Hey, now that we’re on the topic of deadly chemicals being where they absolutely should not be, let’s talk about canned food. 

In the Victorian era, it was the new Hot Thing (next to arsenic green). You mean I can can my food now? Like? Forever? Oh, only for a few months. Okay, cool. Still cool. 

Above: Road trip snax.

Food preservation methods had existed long before canned meats and veggies and soups, but canned everything really started to gain traction around the middle of the 19th century, and people were stoked. Remember, the population exploded; people needed new methods of obtaining cheap food that didn’t spoil immediately. So: cans to the rescue! 

Recycling hadn’t really been invented, though, so today, archaeologists constantly find giant Victorian trash pits filled with empty cans.

You know what also hadn’t been invented? Consumer health and safety boards.

So guess what was in the tin cans themselves? 

No, no, don’t worry, it wasn’t arsenic.

It was lead.

Which, in case you weren’t aware, is also very, very bad for you.

So bad, in fact, that today, scientists are pretty sure lead-lined tins of canned food were partially responsible for the deaths on the disastrous Franklin Expedition, an ultimately futile trip to discover the Northwest Passage lead by Sir John Franklin in 1845. Every single man on board the two ships stranded in the Arctic died, and in the 1980s, when scientists discovered perfectly mummified bodies (GRAPHIC, if you don’t like that sort of thing, but awesome if you do) of some of the sailors, one of the mummies contained insane amounts of lead. They later tested the cans found scattered across the wreck site and whoops, they also contained insane amounts of lead.

Above: Some of the tin cans from the Franklin Expedition, which contained items like salted beef, vegetables, tea, lethal amounts of lead, and Chicken of the Sea.

Granted, other factors contributed to the Franklin deaths, like, you know, being stranded in the Arctic and starving to death, and also tuberculosis, but lead-lined canned food certainly didn’t help things along.

2. Your doctor

Here’s my advice if you’re in the Victorian era and you’re starting to feel sick: do not get sick. Just don’t. Because then that means you’ll have to go to the doctor. Which probably means you will die.

Hospitals in the 19th century were deadly. Often even more deadly than just staying at home, according to Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris, author of The Butchering Art. Nobody knew how to treat anything, really, because medical understanding of biology was in its infancy and antibiotics didn’t exist yet, so you were absolutely, definitely going to get some kind of infection the second you stepped foot in a Victorian hospital.

Above: The surgery, where nobody has any idea what they are doing, ever.

Doctors weren’t trying to kill you on purpose--they just didn’t know any better. And it super duper didn’t help that common treatments for everything from the common cold to tuberculosis included taking mercury (which kills you) and blood-letting, (which can also kill you) the tools for which are shown below:

Those might look like fun doodads for your astronomy class at Hogwarts, but they’re actually vials and a really, really sharp needle that pricks you until you bleed out a critically dangerous amount of blood into those vials. 

The (ancient) school of thought behind blood-letting was that draining patients of “bad” blood would rebalance their “humours” and get rid of the icky thing that was making them sick. We might laugh at it now, but if you don’t know any better, logically, it makes sense.

Medically, oh my God, it’s the worst.

So if Doc didn’t bleed you to death, he might try surgery--done without anesthesia or antibiotics (until good old Dr. Lister came along--read The Butchering Art!), and then ship you and your amputated stump leg off to the hospital ward where, instead of healing, you’d get wheeled through hallways stained with every bodily fluid imaginable into rooms filled with people coughing up every bodily fluid imaginable, some of which would get into your leg stump, infect it, and then kill you dead.

“But what about medicine?” you ask. “Can’t I just take medicine?”

Sure! Just be aware that it definitely contains morphine and probably contains cocaine, or mercury, or arsenic, or sulfur, or pulverized bits of ancient Egyptian mummies (I am not kidding. True, the latter had started to fall out of favor in the 19th century, but, like. Stop).

Above: Hard drugs, but just for you.

You think I’m joking?

Above: PARTY TIME.

Sometimes, a doctor would just advise that you move to a “more temperate climate” like Rome or Spain if you were feeling chronically ill, which might help you get a tan and COULD help if you had sucky lungs, but eventually, you’d just die anyway, because what you really needed was a strong antibiotic or antiviral medication and the closest you were gonna get was Mrs. Hopplebopple’s Temperance Tonic, which was probably filled with ground up baby bones and just so much heroin.

And don’t even get me started on Victorian surgical tools:

Open wide.

1. Water

There are three rules in this life: don’t watch any Adam Sandler movies except for maybe Anger Management, don’t eat the yellow snow, and do not, ever, for any reason, ever drink water in Victorian England.

That’s because it was about as clean as a Victorian hospital. 

Meaning it wasn’t. At all.

Victorian water--of the Thames variety--contained:

Cholera, one of the deadliest killers of the era and bad water’s favorite roommate.

Poop, human and otherwise, because a functioning sewer system? I don’t know her. (At least, not until the 1860s.)

Pee, human and otherwise, because nothing says, “Jolly Old England” like an open trench of piss rolling through the city.

Dead things, like animals, fish (which are animals, so why am I listing them as a separate thing?), and, occasionally, humans.

Chemicals, which spewed forth from the great factories in billowing, bubbling, belching rivers of sludge. (Ha! Omg, yes, I was an English major!)

The Thames was so filthy that Londoners called it “Monster Soup.”

Above: Same.

In 1855, scientist Michael Faraday (who was also kind of hot; tell me I’m wrong), wrote a letter to the Times about the disgusting state of the river:

"Near the bridges the feculence rolled up in clouds so dense that they were visible at the surface, even in water of this kind. ... The smell was very bad, and common to the whole of the water; it was the same as that which now comes up from the gully-holes in the streets; the whole river was for the time a real sewer."

Tl;dr: “It smelled like ass.”

In fact, it got so bad, so putrid, so horrifically clogged with every disgusting thing your mind and your butthole can possibly conjure up, that it lead to one of my favorite things to read about in the world: The Great Stink of 1858.

Yes, that’s the real name. I did not make that up. History is incredible.

Above: Summer vacation, 1858.

The summer of 1858 was miserably hot in London. And the Thames was miserably clogged with poop, and pee, and chemicals, and dead things, and, uh oh, cholera. During July and August that year, the smell wafting from the river was so offensive that Parliament was actually adjourned because everybody kept throwing up. Cholera devastated the city. The water was killing London.

Faced with either the prospect of living with a city-wide vomit-and-diarrhea smell for the rest of forever OR finally cleaning things up, the government actually did something right and chose the latter. They contracted civil engineer Joseph Bazalgette to overhaul the city’s sewer, to which Bazalgette, pinching his nose, responded, “FINALLY.” 

Above: Joesph Bazalgette, savior of the London sewers and purveyor of a truly beautiful mustache.

Bazalgette proceeded to build the London sewer system still in use today. His efforts greatly reduced the number of cholera deaths, cleared the Thames of its Cronenberg-esque muck, and ensured that poop goes where it’s supposed to: way the hell out of HERE and way the hell under THERE.

Water sanitation still had a long way to go, though, which meant you either had to boil your water to kill the bacteria in it, or you could just drink alcohol instead, which was the safer option but which would also leave you very dehydrated and also, if imbibed excessively, would leave you very dead.

So really, you were doomed in some way no matter what you did, and if that isn’t the moral of the entire Victorian story, then I don’t know what is.

[mcwriting]

sweet home alabama (2)

Hi all! Between marriage project and some one shots, I decided to upload this chapter!

Reminder: Characters have strong southern accents (save for Tom in the present).

Masterlist

Word Count: 2618

Warnings: slight injury mention

∆ present ∆

The weekend came and went, allowing Tom some time to get a new wardrobe for farmwork and acquire a pair of boots, as his last pair had been passed down and worn out by Sam years ago.

Tom had been enjoying a peaceful rest when he was jolted awake by two hands forcefully shaking him.

“What the- Sam! What are you doing?” Tom exclaimed, sitting up.

“You gotta go to Mel’s today, right? Sun rises in an hour. Better get up and eat ‘fore you head over there,” the younger brother explained. Tom tossed back his head and groaned.

“Fine. I’ll get up,” he replied, tossing off his quilt and sheet.

With the money Tom had made in recent years, he had been able to send some home every so often, which helped fund a much needed expansion of the family home. Unfortunately, they hadn’t added enough bathrooms for each brother to get their own.

“Tom! What in God’s name is taking you so long! You’re gonna be working cotton not modeling it!” Harry yelled, pounding on the door.

“Alright alright! It’s all yours!” Tom exclaimed as he opened up the door. Harry couldn’t help but laugh at his brother.

Though Tom had dressed in a button up, jeans, and boots, he had also made sure to style his hair until every wisp sat straight.

“You know you’re gonna sweat that gel off in ten minutes, right? Especially if you wear a hat.”

Tom rolled his eyes.

“Harry, you know me. There’s always a camera somewhere. Gotta be ready for anything. And it’s pomade, not gel.”

The other young twin just rolled his eyes back and slammed the door shut.

∆

A few minutes down the road, y/n was getting ready to start her own day. She rose at dawn like always, stretching a bit and hopping out of bed.

Though she was living a country life, she still took the time to do a full skincare routine, being especially attentive to the products she used and how much sunscreen she applied.

Since she wouldn’t be at any farms in the morning, y/n put on leggings and tshirt and headed out the door, a granola bar in hand. She only had to drive a mile away to get to the “s.h.e.d.”

As usual, she was the first one there, so she keyed in and turned on all the lights. She took in a deep breath of the smells of the soil and chemicals around her as she tossed on her lab coat.

You didn’t think she was any ordinary farm girl, did you?

In reality, she had actually gone to UCLA, getting degrees in both chemistry and environmental engineering. Now she had spent the last year doing research thanks to a grant to improve the agricultural health of her hometown so she could eventually receive a master’s degree.

But we’ll talk more on that later.

Now that the sun was finally peeking above the horizon, her two lab assistants finally showed up.

Her assistants, Ciara and Jacob, were students at a community college in the town 45 minutes away. They were bright and the three always enjoyed working together, as they played fun music and conversed while recording research.

“Hey! Glad y’all could finally make it! Y’all know that last week I collected more samples from Mel’s, so today I want to prepare a gram from each jar in solution so we can run samples and start looking at what nutrients need supplementing and where so I can put a fertilizer together for tomorrow.”

The two were happy to follow their boss’s instruction, and y/n couldn’t help but smile as she scanned over her lab, remembering where she started.

∆ 16 years old ∆

Y/n had always been good at school.

A straight A student, never one to act out or deliberately miss work. Everyone knew she was bright, and she continued to prove that as she aged.

By sophomore year of high school, she was already an above-average scorer on the ACT and was taking courses above her grade level to keep from boring herself.

But in a town as small as hers, one could only get so advanced in high school alone.

Thankfully once she was a junior, the community college Ciara and Jacob were now attending allowed students to enroll in some basic online classes and receive credit, so long as they had good enough internet connection.

Because she was ahead, y/n had a free period where she could mooch off of the school’s wifi in an empty classroom. However, she didn’t have the same luxury at home, and had to go to Tom’s to complete any assignments after school.

By this point, Tom had been going to small auditions for a couple years, picking up the occasional commercial role and making a few bucks here and there, enough to get his family better TV and internet, anyways.

“Hey, y/n?” Tom asked one day, late in the fall. He laid back on the bed, tossing a foam basketball above his head while y/n worked on her college math class from the floor. She hummed in response, holding a pencil between her teeth.

“What are you plannin’ to do with all this college stuff anyways?” he asked. His accent was still as strong as ever. He hadn’t taught himself to let it go yet.

“I’on know. Maybe git a degree and move out of this town for a while. Find a real job that ain’t baling hay or planting stuff. You know I really love science,” she replied. She knew she had a lot of options, she was only a couple points away from that perfect ACT score by now.

There was a pause as she continued to tap numbers into a calculator and record them.

“I got another audition ‘fore thanksgiving,'' Tom announced after a while. Y/n didn’t look up.

“Oh yeah? What for, toothpaste ad or somethin’?”

“Uh, no actually. This one’s for a movie. A real movie.”

Y/n dropped the pencil and looked up at Tom, pushing up from the ground to sit on her knees as he sat up straight.

“Really? You’re serious? You ain’t pulling my leg or something?”

Tom smiled big and nodded.

“I mean it. I really got this audition coming up.”

“Oh my gosh, TOM!”

Y/n quickly stood up, tackling her best friend in a hug, practically ending up on his lap. They stayed that way for a while.

“Tom, this is seriously incredible. You’re gonna be in a movie!”

He pulled back quickly.

“Don’t be too quick, now. This is only an audition, there’s no way to say I’ll actually get the part-” he started, but y/n got off him and kneeled on the floor, so that her eyes were level with his and she could grab his upper arms to look at him directly.

“You’re gonna get that part,” she smiled, unable to contain her excitement. “You’re gonna nail that audition, and you’re getting that part. This is gonna be your big break, I just know it.”

“Thanks for believin’ in me. Hopefully I won’t prove you a liar this time,” he replied, pulling her up into another hug.

She ended up being right, too, because after his first audition, he got a callback during Christmas break and secured the role which he’d film the summer between junior and senior year.

The pair knew they were really starting to grow up, but didn’t let their different pursuits come between them just yet.

Tom was the one who drove her to her final ACT where she got her perfect score (since she didn’t have a car yet), and the movie filmed a few hours away in the Birmingham area (where y/n drove Tom’s truck in his absence since he was still too young to live there alone).

It worked, for the most part.

∆ present ∆

Tom drew in a sharp breath and winced, limping through the barn and plopping onto a hay bale as he gulped down some water. He had been walking up and down the rows watering the plants, as the four-wheeler Melanie’s dad typically used to water was broken.

“How’s it looking, Mr. Carmichael?” he asked, dabbing away the sweat on his forehead with a towel as he rehydrated.

The older gentleman stood up and looked at Tom.

“Well, son. I’ve almost got this thing here fixed, but you ain’t looking too good,” he pointed out.

“What do you mean, sir?” Tom asked. He may have lost his accent, but didn’t forget his manners.

“Looks like you’ve been ridin’ horses the way you’re walkin’. New boots? Not to mention that sunburn you’re startin’ to nurse. Why don’t you run up to the house and have Mel fix those up. I’m sure her momma fixed some lunch for ya, too.”

“A- are you sure, sir? I’ve only got about 10 more rows before I’m done.”

“No, no. It’s alright, boy. Run along and fix yourself up. I’ll handle the rest.”

Tom thanked the man and slowly got up, immediately remembering the pain in his feet and now aware of the stinging on his cheeks.

He’d forgotten that boots don’t really break themselves in and he hadn’t worn very thick socks. He also had somehow neglected that the sun beats just as hard in the farmlands as it does in Malibu.

He waddled up to the house, where Melanie was on the porch reading a book.

“Well by God, Tom. You’re walkin’ like you just got your back blown out for the first time,” she laughed, causing his cheeks to redden more.

“They’re new boots, alright? Now could you help me out? Your dad said you might know of something?”

She looked past him towards the barn, then closed her book and nodded her head towards the door, standing.

“Come on. Momma made you a sandwich if you want it. You can leave your boots by the door.”

They headed inside, a large living room on the right and the kitchen to the left. Tom wiggled his shoes and socks off in the entryway as Melanie ducked into a hallway to grab a few things.

“Oh Tom! I’m glad you came in! Are you hungry? I’ve got lunch for ya,” Mrs. Carmichael said as she appeared from the kitchen.

“That would be really nice, Mrs. Carmichael. Thank you,” he replied as she sat him down at the kitchen table, placing a plate with a turkey sandwich and some chips in front of him along with a glass of sweet tea.

He dug into the meal, immediately realizing just how hungry he really was. By the time he’d finished the sandwich (which really didn’t take that long), Melanie appeared with a laundry basket full of stuff. Tom washed down his meal with some tea before speaking.

“Jesus, Mel, how much does it take to patch up some blisters?” he asked.

“First off, don’t be takin’ the Lord’s name in vain in this house,” she commanded, pointing her head towards her mother in the living room, to which Tom covered his mouth and shot a thumbs up. “And second, I figured it best just to grab all my stuff than dig through it.”

She plopped the basket on the table and herself into the seat next to Tom, stealing a chip from his plate. It crunched in her mouth as she began pulling out random things like a stethoscope, a blood pressure cuff, and meds.

“What’s that all for?” Tom asked, brows furrowed. Melanie gave back an equally confused look and went back to digging.

“What do you mean? They’re just medical supplies.”

“Well, yeah, but I mean why do you have a stethoscope and stuff?”

She paused what she was doing and looked back up at Tom.

“You do know I’m a nurse, right?” she asked. She immediately knew he didn’t by the way his eyes popped open.

After high school, Melanie had been able to go off and get her nursing degree, now working in the closest hospital which was, you guessed it, 45 minutes away.

She usually worked 12 hour shifts at the hospital Tuesday through Thursday, spending her other days at home so she could respond to small needs around town, especially on weekends when people liked to get drunk and be reckless.

“Oh, wow. I didn’t realize that. Good for you,” Tom replied, unsure of what else to say.

“It’s alright. You’ve been gone quite a while and we all know you ain’t checking in on what happens ‘round these parts no more. Now take this and let me grab the aloe from the fridge,” she said, dropping two advil on his plate and getting up.

Tom did as told, feeling the weight of what she had dismissively said. He really hadn’t checked in since leaving. Sure, his brothers and Harrison sometimes kept him in the loop. At least, he thought so.

He was trying to remember what the last big piece of news he had heard about home was, but came up short. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had seen anything on social media about home, since he’d unfollowed most of the people back home after his career took off.

They all reminded him of y/n anyways.

“You mind if I put some of this on your face?” Melanie asked, snapping him out of his thoughts. He obliged and she spread some of the cool aloe gel over his sunburn.

“Feel better?” she asked, to which he nodded. “Good, now let’s take a look at those blisters.”

She cringed when she saw how beat up his feet were. She pulled out a bit of numbing gel, hydrocolloid bandages, and fabric tape. Soon enough, she had his blisters all covered up and was handing him some more bandages and tape.

“Now I want you to leave these on as long as possible, alright? When they fall off or the spot in the middle gets too big, you’ll switch ‘em out for new. You should be in ship shape here in a few days. And you best not forget sunscreen from now on.”

“Will do. Thanks again, Mel. Hard to believe I’ve been gone long enough for you to become a nurse and all, huh?” Tom asked, half joking. Melanie nodded.

“Yeah, well. ‘Lot’s changed around here, even if it don’t look like it. You’d be surprised… Now before I forget...” Melanie quickly got up and left the room, returning with two wood and metal contraptions. “Here’s some boot stretchers to put in your shoes when you get home. Should help stretch ‘em out and I’m sure the boys would lend you some leather conditioner.”

With that, Tom put his boots back on and thanked Mrs. Carmichael for the meal, heading back outside. He found Mr. Carmichael sitting on the now-functioning four wheeler.

“Well, boy, you all good?” the older man asked.

“Yes sir. Melanie got me all taped up and your wife made a great lunch. So what else do you need me to do?”

Mr. Carmichael looked around for a moment, staring at a few things, then back at Tom.

“Well I got the rest all watered and y/n won’t be around with fertilizer till tomorrow so why don’t you go home and rest up those feet, eh?”

Tom tried to object, as it was still quite early in the day, but the old man wouldn’t have it. He eventually conceded and gave one last thank you, hopping into his old truck and heading home, pondering why y/n would be bringing fertilizer in the coming day.

∆

A/N: hope you guys are liking this story so far! I really love the time jumping, and the progression of it in future chapters is really cool!

Send a message or ask if you’d like to be added to my permanent or series taglists so I can verify you’ve been added!

Tag list: @jackiehollanderr, @one-big-fangirl, @l0lmk, @primadonnasdream, @bookworm06, @thenoddingbunny-blog, @agentnataliahofferson, @spider-babe, @stxfxniexreads, @mortallythoughtfulgurl, @onebigolemess, @justafangirlduh,

[fyeah-bangtan7]

SUGA “I'm grateful that there are still unvisited areas in the world of music”

SUGA has this way of talking passionately with a deadpan look on his face. Full of passion about his life and music.

How is your shoulder? SUGA: Good. I think it’ll get even better once I take off this brace. Apparently, it takes several months for a full recovery, but I'm trying to get better as fast as possible.

How does it feel like to have resolved a problem that has distressed you for long? SUGA: First of all, I'm glad. The pain is one thing, but when my shoulders got worse, I couldn't even raise my arms. But when I heard that this might recur when getting the surgery at a young age, I waited for the right time and had decided to get it done early next year regardless of the COVID-19 situation. I had planned to get the surgery after the year-end stages, but I got it done this year (2020) because my doctors advised me to start preparing early for next year’s promotions and activities.

How does it feel like watching the other members doing promotions? SUGA: I can't say it feels great. I could see the emptiness because we've been together as a group of seven for so long. Not necessarily because I'm not there but because something that should be there is missing? Is that what made you join the promotion as much as possible? You shot lots of video footage in advance and you even appeared in the Mnet “2020 MAMA” through VR. SUGA: Fake SUGA (Laughs). There’s this 3D studio where we shot it. I shot, scanned, and acted there, but couldn't see the actual result at the studio. I thought a sense of displacement was unavoidable, and that was exactly the case. (Laughs) I acted normal because it would have been aired anyway even if I hadn’t had the surgery, but it seems a lot because it’s aired after the surgery.

You must feel restricted not being able to go on stage. SUGA: The thing is, it's only been a month after I got surgery, but my absence on stage is so apparent. But my doctors keep telling me that I shouldn't be impatient and in fact, many athletes get a resurgery when they return to the field without proper rehabilitation. So I'm working on trying to care less. For the first two weeks after surgery, I felt so frustrated that I tried out new things. I even watched movies I didn't watch.

What movies did you watch? SUGA: I watched ‘Samjin Company English Class’ as it happened to be on IPTV, and now I have ‘Tenet’ on my list. ‘Parasite’ was the last movie I saw at a cinema. As the social distancing measures became stricter, I haven’t been going outside, except going to the hospital. I even eat at home. I'm also watching a lot of TV nowadays. Watching music shows like ‘Sing Again’, ‘Folk Us’, and ‘Show Me The Money 9’ made me think of what I should do in the upcoming days. Could you elaborate on that? SUGA: A lot of candidates on ‘Sing Again’ are very talented but hadn't had the opportunity, and on ‘Folk Us’, I noticed that many took their own guitars on stage. I started playing the guitar lately and I'm having this urge to broaden my scope of music. And since my interest in the music industry in the U.S. grew, I'm getting prepared, studying English and all. What fueled your interest? SUGA: In some ways it’s the most commercially developed market. You could lose the industry attention in a flash if it's not feasible. So in this system, you would try everything and that would be an efficient way. I want to do music for a long time, and to this end, I always want to learn more about the global music industry because I want to do music that’s loved not only in Korea, but also in the U.S., Japan and Europe. Speaking of which, it seems BE was influenced from music of the past rather than today's trends. SUGA: I especially like impromptu music. I love the songs that were made in one take instead of being recorded several times. In this era of crossover genres, the desire to do better in music is growing inside me. As the genres become more blended, the melody you use must be more important. Does starting to play the guitar affect your composing in any way? SUGA: I always liked using guitar sounds. And I have always liked the Eagles. If you play the guitar, it’s way easier to write songs because you can carry it along wherever you go, pluck on the strings to create melody lines. Keyboards are difficult to carry around. (Laughs) I usually work on my laptop but I had this thought that I definitely needed an instrument. It accelerates my work and improves my understanding of chords. It makes me think you could intuitively make melodies. SUGA: It’s easier to write a song because you can intuitively make a progression and try many different things. During my work on ‘Eight’, IU had recorded and sent me a song from her phone. At the time I couldn’t play the guitar, so we tried to make sure we’re working on the same page when keeping track of each other's progress. That made me feel the need to learn an instrument.

This is actually before you started playing the guitar, but I found ‘Telepathy’ in BE very interesting. The varying melodic progressions between hooks for each member made me wonder if you wrote the melody intuitively for each part. SUGA: I tried a melody for the first time this year (2020), and as I started knowing the fun of music, it opened a lot of new doors for me. So it was kind of easy working on it. I just played a beat and wrote from the beginning until the end. Done. I wrote it in just 30 minutes. The song almost wrote itself. The trends of pop and hip-hop these days cross boundaries between vocals and rap. I like this trend. When I listen to your singing, it feels like you’re hitting the beats rather than singing along the notes. So I thought perhaps you're singing as if you're rapping. SUGA: When you're rapping, you just think of the rhythm, so it’s like simply putting on a melody to a rhythm. To define which comes first, I think melody adds to it while writing the rap. In ‘Life Goes On’, the lyrics ‘Thankfully between you and me, nothing’s changed’ are somewhere in between. It's not rap but it’d be mundane to say it's a mere melody. SUGA: There are obviously songs where the rap needs to be highlighted. For example, in ‘Dis-ease’ or ‘Ugh!’, you have to be good at rap. But in songs that should be easy to listen to, impressive raps are not always the way to go. Sometimes, you want smooth transitions without obstacles. In that sense, the rap flow of ‘Blue & Grey’ was impressive. Rather than a dramatic effect that emphasizes each part, you extended the rap just as much as the slowing beat. SUGA: To be honest, this beat is difficult to rap to. The beginning of the song only has a guitar line, which made it even more difficult. I participated when we wrote lyrics for ‘Blue & Grey’ and I've always wanted to work on a song like this. It was because verse 1 talks about the theme of the song.

It seems you achieved almost everything that you wanted in BE. SUGA: I think it took less than a week to make my part in the album. After having written one or two melodies for ‘Life Goes On’, I wrote a version complete with rap, and liked it that I even worked on a separate arrangement and lyrics. Rather than pondering over the ways that might work, I choose to simply play the music and write. Many creators are unsure even after they’ve produced good work. How do you get the conviction to release your work? SUGA: Many musicians are unsure whether they should release their music or not. It was the same for me, but the thing is, you’ll never release anything if you nitpick everything. For example, if we release 10 songs, we have a chance to unveil them in concerts or fan events. And sometimes, as we listen to the song, we think, ‘Why does this part that had bothered me no longer bother me?’ Some things might feel awkward at some point, but in time, it no longer feels awkward. Even I forget about it. So it's more efficient to fine tune, looking at the big picture, rather than thinking too much about the details. On top of that, during promotions, I don’t have the time to pick tracks that others have sent for 10 hours. It would be a success for all of us if each of us play and write a melody in their own time and collaborate with others on the details. So the way of songwriting has evolved in many aspects. What motivated such evolution? SUGA: I think it evolved naturally. I've changed in personality this year (2020), as well as in terms of my interpretation and attitude toward life to the extent that I almost thought I've been rehearsing. How would it feel like if there were no stage to go to or anyone looking out for me? This thought made me realize the value of these things. In ‘Dis-ease’, you sing ‘I don’t know if it’s the world that's sick’. Was it this lifestyle that changed your thoughts about your work? SUGA: Yes. When I was young, I had embraced the belief that ‘It must be my fault’, but as I got older, I realized that this is not always true. Most of what I had thought was my fault was in fact, not my fault. On the other hand, there are things that I did well and times I had been lucky. ‘I NEED U’ came out during a time when you were still thinking, “It must be me”. After the members put on a stage with ‘I NEED U’ in KBS' ‘Song Festival’, you wrote on Weverse, “It’s the same as five years ago.” How would you compare with back then? (This interview was held on December 19, 2020.) SUGA: We've matured quite a bit. And our stage performances have become more natural. I still like ‘I NEED U’. Just listening to the beat makes me sentimental, and above all, the song came out nicely. So as I was watching this and that when I stumbled across old videos. Watching them made me think that we haven’t changed much.

In what aspect haven't you changed much? SUGA: Before the social distancing measures got stricter, I talked with the photographer for BE, whom I had met four years ago. The photographer was surprised that we hadn’t changed much after all the success, even though he had assumed we’d be very different. I'm amazed personally. I’ve had the chance to meet the members before your debut, but from your way of talking with members or others, it seems you haven't changed. SUGA: I think it's because we don’t give it a big deal about success. For example, it's incredible to be ranked first on the Billboards, but there’s also this sense of, “Okay, and?” Even the Grammys? (Laughs) SUGA: When we got nominated for the Grammy Awards, we thought, ‘Is this real?’ (Laughs) Of course we were delighted, but it didn’t make us think, ‘We're singers nominated for the Grammy.’ If you're nominated, you're nominated, and if you get the award, you get the award. You don't get shaken by that. I know it's a great award and would be so grateful if we receive it, but we know that nothing is possible without the tremendous support of our fans. What’s more important is that the fans are more flattered than us when we receive a great award. So everyone's rejoicing, but it’s like, ‘Let's do what we have to do.’ We've been training ourselves to keep finding our places, so no one remains overexcited. In ‘Fly To My Room’, there are lyrics that say, ‘This room is too small to contain my dream’, and ‘Sometimes this room becomes an emotional trash can, but it embraces me.’ I had this feeling that the room had been such a place and that you were accepting that you have changed. Then the essence must have remained the same. SUGA: It wasn’t easy to accept that we eventually change. But I think it's a good thing that we changed. What we did back then was possible only at that time, and we could change because of the things we had accomplished. Then, what new things are you dreaming about? SUGA: I'm eager to continue doing music. Since all performances were canceled due to COVID-19, I had a chance to talk to so many musicians in Korea. I talked with legendary singers as well as people who are my contemporaries. Talking with them once again made me realize that I love music so much. Because music is my profession, I can’t imagine myself not doing it. I'm grateful that there are still unvisited areas in the world of music.

What kind of music do you think you’ll be engaged in in the future? SUGA: I was greatly motivated when I saw the concert of Na Hoon-a last Chuseok . I wondered how many musicians would actually be able perform and write music for so long like he has. At that moment, it occurred to be that ‘I want to be like him’. He has passion and desire, and most of all, he is a superstar. A few years ago, I took my parents to a Na Hoon-a concert, and when they watched the performance last Chuseok, they said it was way less impressive to see him perform through the TV. (Laughs) That must explain your interest in a broader spectrum of music from instruments to composing and musical genres. Because you want to be doing this for a long time. SUGA: My goal is to continue doing music in any shape or form. In that sense, I have this great respect toward Cho Yong-pil. He takes the best sound there is and reinterprets it into his own. I think that’s something I want to emulate and keep changing and evolving so that I can continue doing music for decades to come. The lyrics ‘Thankfully between you and me nothing’s changed’ must sound more meaningful for the fans because they will be listening to your music for a long time. SUGA: A month and a half in the current times must seem like a lifetime for the fans when we're far apart. I feel the same. But I think that's proof that we worked hard for the past seven years and that the fans have been passionately reaching out to us. I'm striving to get to them as fast as I can, and I'm eager to go on stage. I'm going through this because I want to be better on stage in a better condition, so don't be sad, and please hang in there a little longer.

[scoutception]

Dragon Quest III: The Seeds of Salvation review

The original Dragon Quest was an extremely important and influential game that built the foundations to the Japanese role playing game genre, but was an extremely basic game that would end up outclassed by nearly any other RPG on the NES released afterwards that wasn’t completely incompetent, and while Dragon Quest II improved upon the foundation of the original, namely in terms of party progression, it was also a rushed, unbalanced, overly difficult and overall tedious experience. Despite its importance, Dragon Quest’s third installment would have to be a significant step up, and as luck would have it, it was, becoming another of the most legendary and important RPGs ever made, and firmly cementing Dragon Quest as a series that would stay around even to the present day, and how exactly this came to be is what we’ll be looking at today. The version I played was the SNES remake with a fan made English patch, so many of the names in the screenshots won’t match up with official translations. Other options are the Game Boy Color version, which was officially released in English, and even has a bit more exclusive content, namely a very time consuming sidequest and a bonus dungeon related to it, the Ice Cave, and much more recently, the mobile/Switch version, which is also available in English, and is based on the SNES version, minus some of its exclusive content. Be warned, there will be spoilers.

Story: In an unnamed land, geographically similar to the real world, the archfiend Baramos has appeared and unleashed monsters to plague the land, with its people’s woes ranging from groups of bandits robbing kings and kidnapping citizens, to monsters impersonating rulers, to entire towns being wiped out by the forces of Baramos, who ultimately plots to destroy the entire world. A hero from Aliahan, Ortega, once set out on a journey to slay the archfiend, only to fall in combat with a dragon over a volcano. The child of Ortega is thus given the task of slaying Baramos themselves on their 16th birthday, with the help of a group of adventurers recruited from Aliahan’s tavern.

On the surface, it’s still not much more of a plot than the first two games, and for the most part, that is true, but it’s still much more interesting simply because there’s much more going on. Many of the towns you visit are facing some sort of crisis, or have some sort of interesting circumstances around them, such as the immigrant town that slowly changes and expands as the game goes on, making them a lot more fun to discover and explore compared to the towns of the first two games. Additionally, there’s the famous and influential late game twist that strikes after defeating Baramos, namely the reveal of Zoma, Baramos’ superior, and the second world map of Alefgard, the setting of the first Dragon Quest. These two twists are a large part of what made Dragon Quest III so impactful when it came out in 1988, and considering the game presents itself as unrelated to the previous games, and that by the time you defeat Baramos, you’ll have explored the entire world, barring two small locations at most, they hold up fairly well even today. There’s not much more for me to add besides this, however, so it’s time to hop straight to the gameplay.

Gameplay: Dragon Quest III uses the same turn based battle system as the first two games, and besides things like new types of spells and weapons, not too much is changed with the combat itself. The biggest change DQ3 provides is to the party progression system. Instead of the Hero being completely alone like the first game, or gaining two fixed party members in the second, DQ3 allows you to build a party from the ground up, besides the Hero, who’s always required to be in the party, and has the exclusive Hero class, with well balanced stats and unique and useful spells. The party size has been increased to four at a time, and party members can be created and exchanged in Aliahan, with a total of 8 different classes they can be: warriors, slow, yet well equipped physical fighters that act has tanks and heavy hitters, priests, who specialize in healing and support spells and, contrary to most healers in RPGs, actually have decent equipment and offensive options, mages, typical magic attackers with great offensive spells, yet bad physical stats, martial artists, physical attackers with great agility who forgo most equipment and have a higher chance of landing critical hits, merchants, average at best fighters who have supporting abilities like being able to earn extra gold after battle, gadabouts, odd and clownish characters with bad stats besides luck, and a fixed chance to simply goof off and take random actions instead of doing as commanded, thieves, a class exclusive to the remakes, with great agility and several abilities that mainly help with exploration, and sages, who learn nearly every spell in the game, and have a wide selection of equipment options, yet cannot be put in the party to start.

Compared to Final Fantasy I, which had a similar class based party system, and came out only a few months before DQ3, this system actually has quite a few advancements. Most importantly, you’re never simply stuck with the party you start with. As long as you can make it to Aliahan, you can simply make new characters and swap out whoever you’re currently using. Obviously, doing this too much isn’t very practical, considering new members will be behind on EXP, but not being able to permanently lock yourself into an awful party combination is a big improvement alone. Party members who have reached level 20 can also change classes at Alltrades Abbey, resetting their level to 1, and cutting their stats in half, but keeping any learned abilities, meaning, if you were so inclined, you could make a mage with the physical stats of a warrior, a warrior with the speed of a thief, and so forth. Changing classes like this is also the only way to get sages into the party, and even then, only with the use of a Words of Wisdom book, of which only two exist in the game. This lends itself to a lot of creativity, and while I personally didn’t use this mechanic much, only turning my priest into a sage, it’s still an impressive level of complexity for a game this old.

The class balance is also fairly interesting, as beyond the upsides and downsides already listed, classes also level at different rates. Warriors are expensive to equip and very slow, but level the fastest out of the main offensive classes. Martial artists are, by contrast, very cheap, but have the third slowest leveling rate in the game, and the little equipment they do have is usually pretty difficult to get, especially their weapons. Merchants are guaranteed to eventually fall behind if you try to use them, but actually have quite a bit of exclusive, and good, equipment early on, and level the fastest out of everyone. Gadabouts are liabilities, but level second fastest, and can become sages for free once they reach level 20, making them an investment class. Despite how several classes are very obviously inferior in the long run, you actually can get away with some pretty unorthodox party combinations, at least earlier on. Take my party of hero, warrior, martial artist, and priest: very strong physically, but expensive to upkeep, despite the martial artist somewhat balancing it out, and lacking in offensive magic. While switching the priest to sage later on mostly fixed the latter issue, I was still left wishing I had taken a mage with me from the start several times, and yet I was still more than capable of finishing the game. While the difficulty has definitely been lowered compared to the first two games, that’s still a sign of ultimately successful balancing.

For some more combat related changes and improvements, some stats have been added or changed since the first two games. Resilience now determines how many hit points a character can gain when leveling up along with being added to physical defense as before, Wisdom determines a character’s potential magic points, as well as how soon they learn spells, with spells being delayed or expedited by up to three levels, and Luck determines how well a character can avoid debuffs and status ailments inflicted by monsters. Related to these stats, exclusive to the remakes is the personality system, which affects the stat growth of each character, with each party member gaining a personality during character creation or, in the case of the Hero, through a personality quiz given at the start of the game. While this generally doesn’t matter too much for casual play, assuming you aren’t unlucky enough to get the worst personalities on all your party members, it still adds an even greater deal of complexity, either allowing you to try to compensate for a character’s weaknesses, or add to their strengths. You could, for example, give a female warrior the Amazon personality, raising their strength growth, but lowering their agility, wisdom, and luck growth, stats they don’t care about much anyway. You can also change personalities during the course of the game, either temporarily by equipping certain accessories, or permanently by reading certain books scattered throughout the game, which further adds to the depth. It’s a bit overwhelming, but still pretty interesting to see.

Beyond the combat and classes, there’s still a lot of nice things to see. The bag from DQ6, which can hold an unlimited amount of items which can be taken out at any time, has been added, allowing easy inventory management on the spot. The Zoom spell now lets you return to towns of your choice, rather than the last place you saved your game, and while not every town can be warped to, it’s still a massive time saver. There’s a day night cycle, which gradually changes when traversing the world map and affects the state of the towns, and while it isn’t super prominent, there are a few towns pretty heavily affected by it, and you actually get a few ways to manipulate it later on. There’s also a few minigames added, once again exclusive to the remakes, those being the monster arena, where you can bet on computer controlled monster fights for the chance of winning money, and Treasures n' Trapdoors, which is basically a giant board game one of your party members can traverse, with several very valuable prizes available, both from winning and from landing on certain spots on the boards. Despite being very luck based, it’s creative and rewarding enough that the boards are actually a lot of fun to play, and the Switch version lacking this minigame entirely is a big shame. The remakes also added the Cloudsgate Citadel, a bonus dungeon accessible after defeating the final boss, with a superboss, Xenlon, waiting at the end. Defeating Xenlon within a certain number of turns allows you one wish, such as opening up a new Treasures n’ Trapdoors track, or resurrecting a certain character, and thankfully, you don’t actually need to traverse the entire dungeon again to refight Xenlon for more wishes, as a Zoom location is added only a few rooms away.

The biggest improvement DQ3 makes, however, is just how well the game flows. There’s still grinding to be found, yes, but generally, the game goes by much faster. Characters move quickly, the difficulty, as mentioned before, is much lowered, so you don’t need to grind 5 levels just to walk a bit north, and there’s just a lot of variety that keeps the game fresh all the way through, instead of becoming monotonous like DQ2. The dungeons are also much more reasonably designed compared to the giant, nightmarish mazes of DQ2, and while you do get a ship like in DQ2, it comes quite a bit later, keeping the amount of areas now available to explore from being as overwhelming. The obligatory key item fetch quest, this time collecting the six orbs to hatch the phoenix Ramia, is also much more reasonable to complete, with the orbs either being in locations that NPCs directly talk about, or being acquired by fighting bosses. Speaking of which, there’s also many more bosses than in previous games, and while they’re not as frequent as in most RPGs, they still add a nice bit of variety, along with actually being pretty challenging, in a good way. Overall, Dragon Quest III’s gameplay actually holds up very well, and just makes it a lot of fun to play. Even considering this is a remake with a lot of quality of life improvements, I was amazed that this was originally an NES game.

Graphics: DQ3′s visuals are quite nice, as the SNES version was made with DQ6′s engine. To give a comparison, whereas the games using DQ5′s engine were about comparable to the visuals of Final Fantasy IV and V, the visuals here are comparable to Final Fantasy VI, and considering that’s one of the best looking SNES games out there, that’s a pretty big leap. The character designs come out quite well, and many locations have unique looks to them, both towns and dungeons, with the Pyramid and Baramos’ ghastly castle sticking out the most to me. The enemy battle sprites are still great, and are actually animated whenever they attack, adding a lot of life to them.

Sound: As with the rest of the series, DQ3′s soundtrack was done by Koichi Sugiyama, and it’s once again a great soundtrack, even better than the soundtracks of the previous games. From the peaceful Small Shrine, to the iconic Overture, to the peaceful Heavenly Flight, to the world map theme Adventure, to the great final boss theme, Hero’s Challenge, it’s a soundtrack that’s a joy to listen to. It also gives towns different themes for both day and night, which is one of my favorite things to see in games.

Conclusion: Overall, I would give Dragon Quest III a recommended. It’s aged very, very well, and genuinely feels like it could have been on the SNES to start. Between the much deeper, yet ultimately accessible mechanics that give quite a bit of replay value, to much better overall design gameplay, graphical, and sound design, it makes a fantastic entry point for the series, if you have a liking for classic RPGs. Till next time. -Scout

[sparrow-flies-south]

Ten Things [2]

Fandom: Sanders Sides Pairings: Anxceit, Royality Intrulogical Summary: Ten Things I Hate About You AU When Roman Prince learns that Patton Foster isn’t allowed to date until his older brother, Virgil, is, Roman is crushed. Roman’s twin brother Remus, however, comes up with a plan: find someone who is willing to date Virgil. And who better to ask than Janus Verona, who according to rumours is willing to do anything for the right price? Taglist (ask to be added!): @someone-idk-is-here

Notes: Been awhile, so have an extra long chapter to make up for it! I want to switch to updating every Saturday now this is my main project.  I've switched to using Janus instead of Dee, so I edited the first chapter and summary to reflect that. There's no other differences to the first chapter. Also *pokes tags* there's intrulogical in this now.

AO3 Link - Chapter One - Chapter Two - Chapter Three - Chapter Four - Chapter Five - Chapter Six

Roman cleared his throat and looked over the ragtag group of students he’d gathered before him.

Luc Edwards, Scott Brown, Tyler Ellis, Pete Campbell and Alex Swift. Three of Virgil’s friends, and two boys Roman knew sat next to Virgil in class. He and Remus had spent all of Monday spying, making notes of who Virgil spoke to, who he sat by, who he ate lunch with. After much debating, and a fair dose of stalking on social media, the two had come up with a shortlist.

That morning, he and Remus had both ended up late to their first class because they’d been delivering notes to each of the five, telling them to meet in one of the maths classrooms that Roman knew would be empty at this time.

“I’m sure you’re all wondering why I brought you here today,” Roman began.

“Who are you?” Alex Swift, a gangly boy with greasy hair and acne covering his face asked.

“That not important,” Roman dismissed. “What is important is that one of you is going to take Virgil Foster out on a date.”

“Who?” asked Tyler Ellis, who Roman knew ate lunch with Virgil every day.

“That weird emo kid,” Scott Brown answered.

“Why do you want one us to date Virgil?” Alex asked.

“As a part of a scheme to allow me to date his brother,” Roman replied. “But that’s not important.”

“Question,” said Luc Edwards, who, unlike the others, was perched on a table. “What’s in it for us?”

“Uh, the joy of Virgil’s company?”

Luc snorted. “Are you sure we’re talking about the same guy?”

Okay, Roman was beginning to hate everyone in the room. Weren’t they supposed to be Virgil’s friends?

“Quite sure,” he said through gritted teeth.

Luc shook his head. “He’s a freak. He never even speaks.”

“I heard him speak once,” Pete said timidly. “He asked how often the school tested the fire alarms.”

“Probably planning on burning the place down,” Scott muttered.

Roman stared at him. He knew that outsiders judged his friendships for the friendly insults he handed out like candy, but even he had limits, and talking about someone like that behind their back broke all of them. He was beginning to get the urge to defend Virgil’s honour.

“Do any of you actually like him?” Roman asked.

“He doesn’t speak,” Luc repeated. “We let him hang around with us because he doesn’t have anywhere else to go. Honestly, it’s kinda pathetic.”

Roman looked from person to person. None of them met their eyes.

Luc sighed. “Look, good luck with your search, but honestly? Don’t get your hope up.”

With that, Luc jumped down from the table and left the room. Roman looked at the four remaining boys, but his hope was dying. Luc had seemed to be the unofficial leader of Virgil’s group, commanding their attention. He’d been Roman’s favourite, though Remus had disagreed.

The other boys exchanged glances. For a moment, no one spoke.

“Sorry,” Pete said at last, “But he’s not my type.”

“He’s a loser.”

“Forget it.”

“I still don’t know who that is.”

One boy one, the boys left the classroom, until Roman was alone. He groaned, and thudded his head against the wall. So much for that idea. So much for Virgil’s shitty friends.

He sighed, and then went to find Remus.

 ***

“Maybe it’s for the best,” Logan said.

The two of them were sat at their favourite table in the library, hidden away among the stacks. In front of them was their homework, which Patton was currently face down on, bemoaning his current romantic status.

It had been the fifth time they’d had that conversation since Friday. Logan had kept track.

“Maybe,” Patton mumbled into the desk, which was an improvement on the last four conversations, when he hadn’t been willing to listen.

“It will give you more time to study,” Logan pointed out.

Patton lifted his head and pulled a face. “Okay, I get it.” He sat up fully and sighed, running a hand through his hair. “I hate French.”

“Just be glad you didn’t take Spanish,” Logan said, drily.

Mischief suddenly danced in Patton’s eyes. “Oh? Why’s that, Lo?”

“Because-“ Logan stopped himself. “No. You are not going to distract me like that.”

“Like what?” asked a new voice, and Remus Prince slid into the third seat at the table.

Patton and Logan exchanged glances, and then looked back at Remus, who looked as if sitting with them was the most normal thing in the world, even though they’d never had a conversation together.

They knew who Remus was, of course, even outside of Patton’s crush on his brother. Everyone knew who Remus was. It had taken him less than a year at Padua High to reach a level of infamy most students could only aspire to. Patton still shuddered every time he saw a duck.

Remus looked between them. “Are you guys having a stroke?”

“No,” Logan said. “We’re merely… surprised you chose to sit with us.”

Remus shrugged. “Gotta keep an eye on who my brother’s dating,” he said, and grinned at Patton like a shark.

Patton swallowed. “Roman and I aren’t dating.”

“Right,” Remus said, and then muttered something that sounded like ‘yet’. “So,” he added cheerfully. “What are we talking about?”

“Spanish,” Patton said sweetly.

Logan glared at him. “No, we’re-.”

“Ugh,” Remus threw his head back. “Spanish is the worst. Mrs Richards has no idea what she’s talking about.”

“Yes,” Logan agreed. “And her pronunciation-,”

“It’s awful!” Remus finished. “Like, has she ever seen a native speaker?”

Logan nodded, and then narrowed his eyes. “How would you know? Don’t you sleep through most Spanish classes?”

“Yeah, but it creeps into my dreams and gives me nightmares.”

“No, I mean- how do you how bad she is if you don’t pay attention to what she’s teaching.”

Remus looked at him like he was stupid. It was not a look Logan got very often. “I… speak Spanish?”

“You do?” Logan asked.

“Uh, yeah,” Remus said. “I grew up speaking it. You guys didn’t know that?”

“We don’t exactly know you,” Patton pointed out. “And you are taking it as a class.”

“Yeah, because it’s an easy A.”

“Of course,” Logan muttered.

Patton gasped and clapped his hands together, making the other two jump. He glanced around guiltily at the noise, but there was no one nearby to get annoyed.

“Remus, you speak Spanish!” Patton exclaimed.

“That’s… what we were just talking about?” Remus said.

Patton turned to Logan. “Remus can tutor you!”

“What?” Logan and Remus asked at the same time.

“Well, you’re always talking about how you wish you had someone to practise with! Here’s your chance.”

Logan and Remus looked at each other uncertainly.

“I don’t think Remus wants to do that,” Logan said.

“You don’t know what I want,” Remus protested.

Logan narrowed his eyes. Remus gave his biggest shit-eating grin.

“I wouldn’t want to presume-,”

“It’s not presuming if you just ask me.”

“I don’t have the money for a tutor.”

“I’ll do it out of the goodness of my heart!”

Logan and Remus stared at each other. Remus’s smile took on a slightly sinister nature.

“Unless,” Remus said, “There’s some reason you don’t want me to tutor you.”

It was a challenge and a game all wrapped into one. Remus was watching Logan carefully, waiting to see what he’d do, if he’d admit to not liking Remus or come up with an excuse.

Logan had never backed down from a challenge. Not when he was eleven, and his teacher had given him advanced work and not bothered to explain it because ‘other people need my time more’, which Logan had taken home and researched until he understood. Not when he was fourteen, and his teacher had asked if he’d like to teach the class instead, and Logan had snapped back ‘I’d probably do a better job than you’. Not when he was fifteen and the history teacher had dismissed his comments with ‘you don’t know more than the textbook’, so Logan had compiled a ten page list of sources that showed the textbook was wrong.

He certainly wasn’t going to back down when Remus Prince was staring at him with those infuriating brown eyes.

So he changed the game.

“In that case,” Logan said, forcing his face into a smile, “I accept your offer.”

Remus gaped at Logan, and Logan raised an eyebrow.

“Unless there’s some reason you don’t want to tutor me?”

Remus burst into laughter. “Oh, this is going to be fun.”

Patton, whose eyes had darted back and forth between them like a spectator at a tennis match, now smiled as if everything was fine. Remus suspected that Patton hadn’t understood what was happening. Logan knew better.

“What the hell are you doing in the library?” someone called, and the trio turned around.

Roman stood there with his arms crossed, looking exasperated at Remus. It was a common look on Roman’s face.

Remus raised an eyebrow. “I’m sorry, am I not allowed to be a good student?”

“Not when it means I have to search the entire school looking for you!”

Patton cleared his throat. “Is… everything okay?”

Roman jerked when he noticed Patton sitting there. “Ah, Patton! Yes, everything’s fine, I just need to borrow my brother here.”

“Smooth,” Remus commented.

Roman’s only response was to grab Remus by the arm and pull him out of the chair.

“Ow! Hey! Okay, okay, I’m going. See you later, Nerdy Wolverine!”

The librarian glared at Roman dragged Remus past her desk. Roman gave an apologetic look. Remus grinned and blew a kiss.

“You’re not very subtle,” Remus pointed out when they were standing in the corridor outside.

“Shut up,” Roman snapped.

“Ooh, grumpy! So how did the meeting go?”

Remus began walking through the halls and Roman did too.

“How do you think?”

“I think Operation: Get Virgil Foster Laid has hit a wall.”

Roman rubbed a hand over his face. “We are not calling it that.”

“But fear not!” Remus continued. “I have a solution.”

Roman narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “What solution?”

“I’m so glad you asked! See, there was one big flaw with your plan-,”

“It was your plan!”

“-And that’s that you lacked incentive! No one’s going to do things for the goodness of their hearts!”

“So what do you suggest?” Roman asked.

“Use money! What else are you going to do with it- use it to pay for dates?”

“Okay,” Roman said. “Let me get this straight-,”

“Hah!”

“-You want me to pay someone to date Virgil Foster.”

“Not just anyone! It’s all about finding the right person.”

They had reached the cafeteria now. Remus pulled open the door with a flourish.

“Fortunately, I know exactly who that person is.”

Roman followed Remus’s gesture to a table near the back of the cafeteria, where a boy was sat wearing a black leather jacket over a yellow shirt. A hat hid most of his face, but Roman could just about make out a large burn scar from underneath his left eye to his jaw.

He sat alone, attention on the book in front of him. The crowd at the tables near him seemed electrified. Everyone was aware of his presence, but no one dared look over.

Roman shook his head. “Isn’t that Janus Verona?”

When Roman and Remus had first joined the story, Janus had become an urban legend in his absence. The boy with the strange name and scar on his face, which should have made him the perfect target for bullies, but instead he became something else. Everyone had a friend who’s sibling or cousin had messed with him, or who he just hadn’t liked, and had their lives ruined for it.

If you wanted dirt on someone, he probably already had it. If you wanted a fake ID, or alcohol, or tickets to a sold out concert, he could get it for you. He’d do anything you asked, if you had the money.

He hadn’t shown up what should have been his senior year because he was in prison for murder. Because he’d quit school and joined the mob. He was in prison, but it was extortion, not murder. The murder part was true, but he’d fled the country because of it.

Roman had wondered whether he’d even existed in the first place.

And then Janus had come back, and started his senior year one year late.

Janus had become ten times more powerful through not being there, and the school had its resident bogeyman back. Roman had seen him a handful of times in the halls, and had always kept his head down and stayed away.

Whatever the rumour were, Janus Verona was clearly trouble.

“It’s perfect,” Remus said, cutting off Roman’s thoughts. “We pay him, he takes Virgil out, you and Patton get to be together and I don’t have to listen to your whining.”

“It’s Janus Verona,” Roman hissed, because clearly Remus was not getting how insane that was.

“I know,” Remus said, starry eyed. “Isn’t he great?”

Roman did manage to resist the urge to scream, but it was a near thing.

“Look,” Remus said. “We tried it your way. It went down like the Hindenburg.”

“That doesn’t mean we should resort to hiring a criminal!”

“Got any better ideas? I’m all ears.”

Roman opened his mouth, then shut it again. He glared at Remus.

“Great!” Remus said, and dragged Roman over to Janus’s table.

Janus did not look up from his book as the two of them approached. They stood at in front of the table. Janus still didn’t look up. Roman glanced at Remus, who shrugged. He cleared his throat.

“Roman and Remus Prince,” Janus said, his eyes still on the book. “Why ever would two model citizens like you come to someone like me?”

Remus took this as an invitation to pull out a chair and throw himself into it. “I just want to say, I’m a big fan of your work.”

That was enough to get Janus to look up from his book. He had the same confused and mildly horrified look most people got upon meeting Remus. “…Thank you?”

Roman sat down. “Ignore my brother, he’s morally deficient.” Remus kicked him under the table. “We want to hire you.”

Janus hummed. “I charge extra if you want it to look like an accident.”

“What?” Roman exclaimed. “No! We don’t- are you offering to kill someone!?”

Janus met his eyes and raised an eyebrow for a moment, the most terrifying one of Roman’s life. Then he threw his head back with loud, cackling peals of laughter. Remus beamed.

“Oh,” Roman said, laughing nervously. “You were joking. You- you are joking, right?”

“Certainly,” Janus said. “You wouldn’t be able to afford my fee.”

“This is the greatest day of my life,” Remus whispered.

“So.” Janus leaned back in his chair, “What can I do for you? Don’t bother getting all embarrassed, I promise, I’ve heard it all before.”

Roman glanced at Remus, who nodded. “We’d like to hire you to date Virgil Foster,” he said.

“Okay,” Janus said after a moment’s silence. “I haven’t heard it all before. You do realise I’m not an escort, don’t you?”

“I don’t want you to have sex with him,” Roman cried, then ducked his head, blushing, when he realised everyone had probably heard that. “I just- look, I want to date Patton Foster, okay?”

“Whatever you’re about to tell me, I assure you I don’t care,” Janus drawled.

“So I asked Patton out, and he was like, ‘I’ll have to ask my dad’, but then his dad was like ‘not unless Virgil dates’, which apparently is impossible. So Remus and I came up with an idea-,”

“I came up with it,” Remus interrupted.

“So Remus came up with, and I improved upon, an idea: we find someone to date Virgil.”

“And how did that go?” Janus asked, looking mildly interested despite himself.

“Terrible,” Remus chimed in. “So we figured we’d ask you.”

Janus tilted his head, considering. “Alright,” he said at last.

“Seriously?”

Janus smiled, and spread his gloved handswide. “Who am I to get in the way of true love?”

“Well, great.” Roman was suddenly transported to a reality where Remus’s plans worked. It was not a pleasant experience. “Uh, so how’s ten dollars sound?”

Janus gasped, and placed a hand on his heart. “Roman. Are you suggested that I take a fine young man like Virgil on a date that’s worth ten dollars?”

Roman gritted his teeth. “Well, what do you want?”

“Well, let’s see,” Janus mused. “Say we go to the cinema. The tickets cost, what, fifteen dollars? And then, of course, I’ll be buying him popcorn. And then there’s the price of gas…”

“How much?”

Janus smiled. “Let’s say $75.”

Roman balked. “No way.”

Janus shrugged. “All right then. Plenty of fish in the sea, after all.”

He turned his attention back to his book, though Roman got the sense he was still watching them.

“Roman,” Remus hissed.

Roman glared. “I can’t afford seventy five dollars a date.”

“It only needs to be a couple of times,” Remus pointed out.

Roman groaned. “Fine,” he spat, and Janus looked up from his book and smiled. “But I don’t pay you until after the date.”

“Half up front, half after,” Janus said. “Otherwise there’s no deal.”

Roman considered. He didn’t seem to have much of a choice. “I’ll pay the first half once Virgil agrees to it.”

Janus nodded. “Deal.” He reached out a hand, and Roman shook it. “A pleasure doing business with you, Mr Prince. Now, if you excuse me, it appears I have a boy to seduce.”

Janus pushed away from the table, picked up his book – Kant, something he’d read before but which gave him the opportunity to watch the cafeteria without anyone noticing - and swept out of the room.

People scurried out of his way as he walked through the hallways, but their whispers and dirty looks trailed after him. He was not well liked in this school, and he knew it – had known for a long time that he would never be liked, and so he had become something else.

Janus Verona did not need to be liked to be powerful.

He arrived at his destination- a corridor that contained only a set of toilets, a supply closet, and a side door that led to a set of steps down to the parking lot, hidden behind rows of cars. For years, it had made the best spot for smoking without getting caught.

Virgil Foster did not smoke, but he did hang around with people who did.

Janus leaned against the wall of the corridor and opened his book again, pretending to read but really watching Virgil through the window in the door. He was sat on the top step with his head phones on, but he was watching the other boys, even though presumably he couldn’t hear the conversation. At the bottom of the steps Luc Edwards stood, waving his eyes as he spoke. The other boys alternated between listening to him and paying him no attention.

The group was a scattering of losers and outcasts, the kind that banded together not through any shared friendship, or even through liking each other. They were there because there was safety in numbers and nowhere else to go.

In another life, Janus might have been one of them, keeping his head turned away so no one saw his scar.

In this life, the bell rang, and the group outside got up, and started heading to class. Most of them barely glanced at Janus as they passed, safe in being too low in the hierarchy to be bothered. Luc Edwards shoulder checked him as he walked past.  

Janus narrowed his eyes at Luc, but before he could do anything, Virgil came inside, his head down, hood pulled up. Janus pushed off the wall, and fell into step with him. Virgil glanced over at the movement in the corner of his eye, then did a double take when he realised who was next to him.

“What?” Virgil asked gruffly, pushing one headphone away from his ear.

“Janus Verona,” he introduced, holding out one hand. Virgil looked at it suspiciously, but didn’t say anything.

“We have English together,” Janus explained. “Why not walk together?”

Virgil shook his head. “Why are you talking to me?”

“Is there a reason why I shouldn’t?” Janus asked.

“I can think of a few,” Virgil snapped, and sped up.

Truly, it was shocking that Roman and Remus had been so unsuccessful.

Virgil was already in his seat by the time Janus entered the classroom. He didn’t look up as Janus sat down, didn’t even glance in his direction, which meant he was putting in the effort to seem as uninviting as possible.

The teacher- Mr Williams- began his lesson as the last stragglers had taken their seats, introducing the Shakespeare module they were about to begin and handing out copies of The Taming of The Shrew. Janus payed attention only enough to know what was happening. Nothing interesting would be in this lesson, and he wanted a chance to review what he already knew about Virgil.

He’d never had much to do with Virgil, before. Virgil had been in the year below, and even if their paths had crossed, Janus had never had much reason to pay attention to the emo boy at the back of the class.

He knew that Virgil had a younger brother, Patton, and that their parents were divorced. He knew that, if Luc Edwards was anything to go by, he had terrible taste in friends.

He was also, Janus noticed when he snuck glances at Virgil, not bad looking.

“Before we get started,” Mr Williams said, “Why doesn’t everyone share their thoughts on Shakespeare’s works?”

Janus rolled his eyes at the pointless attempt to make the lesson interactive.

Mr Williams made a show of scanning the class. “Virgil Foster,” he said, announcing both names as if there was another Virgil in the school, let alone the class. “What are your thoughts?”

And that was one other thing Janus knew about Virgil: Mr Williams hated him.

Janus didn’t know whether Mr Williams had convinced himself that he was helping to bring a shy boy out of his shell, or if he admitted that he just wanted to torment someone and went for the weakest option. Janus hoped it was the latter, because it would take a lot of denial to believe that calling on him every lesson was a good thing. Either Virgil would stammer out an answer, face pale and voice shaky, or he would say nothing, and Mr Williams would tell him to pay more attention and threaten him with detention.

It made Janus’s fists clench, that a man would go through such efforts to feel like he had power over someone he already had power over.

Still, it gave Janus a chance to look at Virgil, shoulders hunched and head down.

“He’s fine,” Virgil muttered.

“Fine?” Mr Williams echoed. “William Shakespeare, the greatest poet in the English language, is fine.” A smattering of giggles, not because Mr Williams was right, but because there was someone for the class to laugh at. Virgil’s shoulders tightened. “I’m sure you can come up with something better than that.”

Virgil said nothing.

Mr Williams sighed dramatically. “We don’t have all day,” he said. “Really, you must have some original thoughts in that head.”

Virgil lifted his head, glaring fire at the teacher. “I think people should stop putting him on a pedestal,” he said. His voice was shaking but the foundation was steel. “I think there are a lot of aspects of his works that people don’t talk about.”

“Care to give an example?” Mr Williams asked.

Virgil tapped the book in front of him. “Guy abuses his wife for the whole play and he’s supposed to be the hero?”

Mr Williams hummed. “Thank you for your feedback, Virgil. I’m sure Shakespeare would be devastated to know you don’t approve of the play he wrote in the sixteenth century.”

Laughter from the class. Virgil flushed and ducked his head, shoulders tense, fists clenched.

It was obvious Virgil hated Mr Williams, but he had never done anything about it before. Somehow, the boy in the back of the class had managed to surprise Janus Verona.

Virgil stayed with his head down until the bell rang, when he was the first to dash out of the classroom, stuffing his books back into his bag as he went. Janus didn’t bother trying to catch up.

He sent a text to Roman as he walked through the halls, asking for more information on Virgil. The first response came back almost instantly, asking how Janus had his number. He ignored it, and pulled up Google while he waited for Roman to get back with something useful. Excitement rushed through him as he typed, the kind that always came in these early stages of a plan.

Virgil was more than he seemed, which meant that this was going to be interesting.

[teachingpe]

Hello all, my name is Riley Everett and I am currently working towards a teaching credential in both Physical Education and Health Education at either the middle school or high school grade levels. I have chosen this field and specific subjects because of a multitude of factors, both personal and relevant to the context of our current societal issue at hand. As we see in our society today with advancements in social media and the gaming industry, the obesity rate is on the rise and reaching higher proportions of the population all the time. And even more recently with the Covid 19 pandemic, we have seen the unfortunate lose of life due to the virus targeting those with underlying disease, some of which caused by the results of a sedentary lifestyle. With these factors in mind, I believe that there is a void in the education system where the physical health of people isn’t being taken as seriously as it should and will continue to be a contributing factor to rising rates of disease in our society. It is my belief that both PE and Health Education class should be held to a higher standard and teach students from an early age how important healthy habits are for the betterment of their lives socially, mentally and physically.

My background and philosophy:

First and foremost, I have always led and active lifestyle, participating in all kinds of sports since I can remember, evening turning semi professional in cycling at the age of 19. Not only did sports keep me busy and physically fit, but they also provided me with lifelong friendships and lessons on how to work as a team member to contribute to something bigger than myself. In addition to being involved with sports all my life, more recently I have been delving into the research on different philosophies of healthy eating and diets that can help people reach their health goals, even trying a few out for myself. I am a very hands on learner so what works best for me is to try new things diet and exercise related in order to truly understand how it works for me so I can share those experiences with others if they are so inclined to learn. In addition to the experiences above, I had the opportunity to work as a kids camp counselor at a hotel resort where it was my job to create a fun, active and inclusive environment for kids of all ages to participate in fun activities. This included ensuring the safety of everyone involved, as well as insuring all kids had the fair opportunity to participate and contribute to the games we created for them. Not only did I notice a difference in their physical abilities, but I also noticed how these games helped them make new friends, gave them more energy, and made them better listeners in their down time when we weren’t playing a game.

In summary, it is my genuine belief that everyone who puts a bit of effort into practicing healthy life habits can significantly improve their lives. If we start teaching students these habits from a young age and continue to show them the benefits as they grow and learn through the education system, we can help create a more active and productive society, as well as reduce the prevalence of diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and hypertension to name a few.

I want to make it clear that my intention is only to aid in the teaching and promoting of healthy habits in terms of exercising and eating, and not to shame anyone for the way they are. Just like everything in life, health is an ongoing learning process and will mean something different for each and every individual but can be obtained by anyone who wants to try.

[techmomma]

Very well. Can you please delete the so called 'reply' to the discussion me & Merri were having about the Jedi? Regardless of whenever or not Merri wishes to continue the discussion. There was no need for you to add on that long, rambly & non-sensesical post that does not add or contribute to the discussion in any meaningful way. And while it might not have been your intention, it came across as implying that post was as meaningful as my statements, which is incredibly insulting & unnecessary.

I was gonna take it down but then I was like nah

look, ya want an explanation why I did that? ya want me to pick apart your statements the way you have been with Merri ad nauseum with fallacy after fallacy? here’s why. so that i do not subject my poor readers to this mess.

According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyway because bees don't care what humans think is impossible. Yellow, black. Yellow, black. Yellow, black. Yellow, black. Ooh, black and yellow! Let's shake it up a little. Barry! Breakfast is ready! Ooming! Hang on a second. Hello? - Barry? - Adam? - Oan you believe this is happening? - I can't. I'll pick you up. Looking sharp. Use the stairs. Your father paid good money for those. Sorry. I'm excited. Here's the graduate. We're very proud of you, son. A perfect report card, all B's. Very proud. Ma! I got a thing going here. - You got lint on your fuzz. - Ow! That's me! - Wave to us! We'll be in row 118,000. - Bye! Barry, I told you, stop flying in the house! - Hey, Adam. - Hey, Barry. - Is that fuzz gel? - A little. Special day, graduation. Never thought I'd make it. Three days grade school, three days high school. Those were awkward. Three days college. I'm glad I took a day and hitchhiked around the hive. You did come back different. - Hi, Barry. - Artie, growing a mustache? Looks good. - Hear about Frankie? - Yeah. - You going to the funeral? - No, I'm not going. Everybody knows, sting someone, you die. Don't waste it on a squirrel. Such a hothead. I guess he could have just gotten out of the way. I love this incorporating an amusement park into our day. That's why we don't need vacations. Boy, quite a bit of pomp... under the circumstances. - Well, Adam, today we are men. - We are! - Bee-men. - Amen! Hallelujah! Students, faculty, distinguished bees, please welcome Dean Buzzwell. Welcome, New Hive Oity graduating class of... ...9:15. That concludes our ceremonies. And begins your career at Honex Industries! Will we pick ourjob today? I heard it's just orientation. Heads up! Here we go. Keep your hands and antennas inside the tram at all times. - Wonder what it'll be like? - A little scary. Welcome to Honex, a division of Honesco and a part of the Hexagon Group. This is it! Wow. Wow. We know that you, as a bee, have worked your whole life to get to the point where you can work for your whole life. Honey begins when our valiant Pollen Jocks bring the nectar to the hive. Our top-secret formula is automatically color-corrected, scent-adjusted and bubble-contoured into this soothing sweet syrup with its distinctive golden glow you know as... Honey! - That girl was hot. - She's my cousin! - She is? - Yes, we're all cousins. - Right. You're right. - At Honex, we constantly strive to improve every aspect of bee existence. These bees are stress-testing a new helmet technology. - What do you think he makes? - Not enough. Here we have our latest advancement, the Krelman. - What does that do? - Oatches that little strand of honey that hangs after you pour it. Saves us millions. Oan anyone work on the Krelman? Of course. Most bee jobs are small ones. But bees know that every small job, if it's done well, means a lot. But choose carefully because you'll stay in the job you pick for the rest of your life. The same job the rest of your life? I didn't know that. What's the difference? You'll be happy to know that bees, as a species, haven't had one day off in 27 million years. So you'll just work us to death? We'll sure try. Wow! That blew my mind! "What's the difference?" How can you say that? One job forever? That's an insane choice to have to make. I'm relieved. Now we only have to make one decision in life. But, Adam, how could they never have told us that? Why would you question anything? We're bees. We're the most perfectly functioning society on Earth. You ever think maybe things work a little too well here? Like what? Give me one example. I don't know. But you know what I'm talking about. Please clear the gate. Royal Nectar Force on approach. Wait a second. Oheck it out. - Hey, those are Pollen Jocks! - Wow. I've never seen them this close. They know what it's like outside the hive. Yeah, but some don't come back. - Hey, Jocks! - Hi, Jocks! You guys did great! You're monsters! You're sky freaks! I love it! I love it! - I wonder where they were. - I don't know. Their day's not planned. Outside the hive, flying who knows where, doing who knows what. You can'tjust decide to be a Pollen Jock. You have to be bred for that. Right. Look. That's more pollen than you and I will see in a lifetime. It's just a status symbol. Bees make too much of it. Perhaps. Unless you're wearing it and the ladies see you wearing it. Those ladies? Aren't they our cousins too? Distant. Distant. Look at these two. - Oouple of Hive Harrys. - Let's have fun with them. It must be dangerous being a Pollen Jock. Yeah. Once a bear pinned me against a mushroom! He had a paw on my throat, and with the other, he was slapping me! - Oh, my! - I never thought I'd knock him out. What were you doing during this? Trying to alert the authorities. I can autograph that. A little gusty out there today, wasn't it, comrades? Yeah. Gusty. We're hitting a sunflower patch six miles from here tomorrow. - Six miles, huh? - Barry! A puddle jump for us, but maybe you're not up for it. - Maybe I am. - You are not! We're going 0900 at J-Gate. What do you think, buzzy-boy? Are you bee enough? I might be. It all depends on what 0900 means. Hey, Honex! Dad, you surprised me. You decide what you're interested in? - Well, there's a lot of choices. - But you only get one. Do you ever get bored doing the same job every day? Son, let me tell you about stirring. You grab that stick, and you just move it around, and you stir it around. You get yourself into a rhythm. It's a beautiful thing. You know, Dad, the more I think about it, maybe the honey field just isn't right for me. You were thinking of what, making balloon animals? That's a bad job for a guy with a stinger. Janet, your son's not sure he wants to go into honey! - Barry, you are so funny sometimes. - I'm not trying to be funny. You're not funny! You're going into honey. Our son, the stirrer! - You're gonna be a stirrer? - No one's listening to me! Wait till you see the sticks I have. I could say anything right now. I'm gonna get an ant tattoo! Let's open some honey and celebrate! Maybe I'll pierce my thorax. Shave my antennae. Shack up with a grasshopper. Get a gold tooth and call everybody "dawg"! I'm so proud. - We're starting work today! - Today's the day. Oome on! All the good jobs will be gone. Yeah, right. Pollen counting, stunt bee, pouring, stirrer, front desk, hair removal... - Is it still available? - Hang on. Two left! One of them's yours! Oongratulations! Step to the side. - What'd you get? - Picking crud out. Stellar! Wow! Oouple of newbies? Yes, sir! Our first day! We are ready! Make your choice. - You want to go first? - No, you go. Oh, my. What's available? Restroom attendant's open, not for the reason you think. - Any chance of getting the Krelman? - Sure, you're on. I'm sorry, the Krelman just closed out. Wax monkey's always open. The Krelman opened up again. What happened? A bee died. Makes an opening. See? He's dead. Another dead one. Deady. Deadified. Two more dead. Dead from the neck up. Dead from the neck down. That's life! Oh, this is so hard! Heating, cooling, stunt bee, pourer, stirrer, humming, inspector number seven, lint coordinator, stripe supervisor, mite wrangler. Barry, what do you think I should... Barry? Barry! All right, we've got the sunflower patch in quadrant nine... What happened to you? Where are you? - I'm going out. - Out? Out where? - Out there. - Oh, no! I have to, before I go to work for the rest of my life. You're gonna die! You're crazy! Hello? Another call coming in. If anyone's feeling brave, there's a Korean deli on 83rd that gets their roses today. Hey, guys. - Look at that. - Isn't that the kid we saw yesterday? Hold it, son, flight deck's restricted. It's OK, Lou. We're gonna take him up. Really? Feeling lucky, are you? Sign here, here. Just initial that. - Thank you. - OK. You got a rain advisory today, and as you all know, bees cannot fly in rain. So be careful. As always, watch your brooms, hockey sticks, dogs, birds, bears and bats. Also, I got a couple of reports of root beer being poured on us. Murphy's in a home because of it, babbling like a cicada! - That's awful. - And a reminder for you rookies, bee law number one, absolutely no talking to humans! All right, launch positions! Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz! Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz! Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz! Black and yellow! Hello! You ready for this, hot shot? Yeah. Yeah, bring it on. Wind, check. - Antennae, check. - Nectar pack, check. - Wings, check. - Stinger, check. Scared out of my shorts, check. OK, ladies, let's move it out! Pound those petunias, you striped stem-suckers! All of you, drain those flowers! Wow! I'm out! I can't believe I'm out! So blue. I feel so fast and free! Box kite! Wow! Flowers! This is Blue Leader. We have roses visual. Bring it around 30 degrees and hold. Roses! 30 degrees, roger. Bringing it around. Stand to the side, kid. It's got a bit of a kick. That is one nectar collector! - Ever see pollination up close? - No, sir. I pick up some pollen here, sprinkle it over here. Maybe a dash over there, a pinch on that one. See that? It's a little bit of magic. That's amazing. Why do we do that? That's pollen power. More pollen, more flowers, more nectar, more honey for us. Oool. I'm picking up a lot of bright yellow. Oould be daisies. Don't we need those? Oopy that visual. Wait. One of these flowers seems to be on the move. Say again? You're reporting a moving flower? Affirmative. That was on the line! This is the coolest. What is it? I don't know, but I'm loving this color. It smells good. Not like a flower, but I like it. Yeah, fuzzy. Ohemical-y. Oareful, guys. It's a little grabby. My sweet lord of bees! Oandy-brain, get off there! Problem! - Guys! - This could be bad. Affirmative. Very close. Gonna hurt. Mama's little boy. You are way out of position, rookie! Ooming in at you like a missile! Help me! I don't think these are flowers. - Should we tell him? - I think he knows. What is this?! Match point! You can start packing up, honey, because you're about to eat it! Yowser! Gross. There's a bee in the car! - Do something! - I'm driving! - Hi, bee. - He's back here! He's going to sting me! Nobody move. If you don't move, he won't sting you. Freeze! He blinked! Spray him, Granny! What are you doing?! Wow... the tension level out here is unbelievable. I gotta get home. Oan't fly in rain. Oan't fly in rain. Oan't fly in rain. Mayday! Mayday! Bee going down! Ken, could you close the window please? Ken, could you close the window please? Oheck out my new resume. I made it into a fold-out brochure. You see? Folds out. Oh, no. More humans. I don't need this. What was that? Maybe this time. This time. This time. This time! This time! This... Drapes! That is diabolical. It's fantastic. It's got all my special skills, even my top-ten favorite movies. What's number one? Star Wars? Nah, I don't go for that... ...kind of stuff. No wonder we shouldn't talk to them. They're out of their minds. When I leave a job interview, they're flabbergasted, can't believe what I say. There's the sun. Maybe that's a way out. I don't remember the sun having a big 75 on it. I predicted global warming. I could feel it getting hotter. At first I thought it was just me. Wait! Stop! Bee! Stand back. These are winter boots. Wait! Don't kill him! You know I'm allergic to them! This thing could kill me! Why does his life have less value than yours? Why does his life have any less value than mine? Is that your statement? I'm just saying all life has value. You don't know what he's capable of feeling. My brochure! There you go, little guy. I'm not scared of him. It's an allergic thing. Put that on your resume brochure. My whole face could puff up. Make it one of your special skills. Knocking someone out is also a special skill. Right. Bye, Vanessa. Thanks. - Vanessa, next week? Yogurt night? - Sure, Ken. You know, whatever. - You could put carob chips on there. - Bye. - Supposed to be less calories. - Bye. I gotta say something. She saved my life. I gotta say something. All right, here it goes. Nah. What would I say? I could really get in trouble. It's a bee law. You're not supposed to talk to a human. I can't believe I'm doing this. I've got to. Oh, I can't do it. Oome on! No. Yes. No. Do it. I can't. How should I start it? "You like jazz?" No, that's no good. Here she comes! Speak, you fool! Hi! I'm sorry. - You're talking. - Yes, I know. You're talking! I'm so sorry. No, it's OK. It's fine. I know I'm dreaming. But I don't recall going to bed. Well, I'm sure this is very disconcerting. This is a bit of a surprise to me. I mean, you're a bee! I am. And I'm not supposed to be doing this, but they were all trying to kill me. And if it wasn't for you... I had to thank you. It's just how I was raised. That was a little weird. - I'm talking with a bee. - Yeah. I'm talking to a bee. And the bee is talking to me! I just want to say I'm grateful. I'll leave now. - Wait! How did you learn to do that? - What? The talking thing. Same way you did, I guess. "Mama, Dada, honey." You pick it up. - That's very funny. - Yeah. Bees are funny. If we didn't laugh, we'd cry with what we have to deal with. Anyway... Oan I... ...get you something? - Like what? I don't know. I mean... I don't know. Ooffee? I don't want to put you out. It's no trouble. It takes two minutes. - It's just coffee. - I hate to impose. - Don't be ridiculous! - Actually, I would love a cup. Hey, you want rum cake? - I shouldn't. - Have some. - No, I can't. - Oome on! I'm trying to lose a couple micrograms. - Where? - These stripes don't help. You look great! I don't know if you know anything about fashion. Are you all right? No. He's making the tie in the cab as they're flying up Madison. He finally gets there. He runs up the steps into the church. The wedding is on. And he says, "Watermelon? I thought you said Guatemalan. Why would I marry a watermelon?" Is that a bee joke? That's the kind of stuff we do. Yeah, different. So, what are you gonna do, Barry? About work? I don't know. I want to do my part for the hive, but I can't do it the way they want. I know how you feel. - You do? - Sure. My parents wanted me to be a lawyer or a doctor, but I wanted to be a florist. - Really? - My only interest is flowers. Our new queen was just elected with that same campaign slogan. Anyway, if you look... There's my hive right there. See it? You're in Sheep Meadow! Yes! I'm right off the Turtle Pond! No way! I know that area. I lost a toe ring there once. - Why do girls put rings on their toes? - Why not? - It's like putting a hat on your knee. - Maybe I'll try that. - You all right, ma'am? - Oh, yeah. Fine. Just having two cups of coffee! Anyway, this has been great. Thanks for the coffee. Yeah, it's no trouble. Sorry I couldn't finish it. If I did, I'd be up the rest of my life. Are you...? Oan I take a piece of this with me? Sure! Here, have a crumb. - Thanks! - Yeah. All right. Well, then... I guess I'll see you around. Or not. OK, Barry. And thank you so much again... for before. Oh, that? That was nothing. Well, not nothing, but... Anyway... This can't possibly work. He's all set to go. We may as well try it. OK, Dave, pull the chute. - Sounds amazing. - It was amazing! It was the scariest, happiest moment of my life. Humans! I can't believe you were with humans! Giant, scary humans! What were they like? Huge and crazy. They talk crazy. They eat crazy giant things. They drive crazy. - Do they try and kill you, like on TV? - Some of them. But some of them don't. - How'd you get back? - Poodle. You did it, and I'm glad. You saw whatever you wanted to see. You had your "experience." Now you can pick out yourjob and be normal. - Well... - Well? Well, I met someone. You did? Was she Bee-ish? - A wasp?! Your parents will kill you! - No, no, no, not a wasp. - Spider? - I'm not attracted to spiders. I know it's the hottest thing, with the eight legs and all. I can't get by that face. So who is she? She's... human. No, no. That's a bee law. You wouldn't break a bee law. - Her name's Vanessa. - Oh, boy. She's so nice. And she's a florist! Oh, no! You're dating a human florist! We're not dating. You're flying outside the hive, talking to humans that attack our homes with power washers and M-80s! One-eighth a stick of dynamite! She saved my life! And she understands me. This is over! Eat this. This is not over! What was that? - They call it a crumb. - It was so stingin' stripey! And that's not what they eat. That's what falls off what they eat! - You know what a Oinnabon is? - No. It's bread and cinnamon and frosting. They heat it up... Sit down! ...really hot! - Listen to me! We are not them! We're us. There's us and there's them! Yes, but who can deny the heart that is yearning? There's no yearning. Stop yearning. Listen to me! You have got to start thinking bee, my friend. Thinking bee! - Thinking bee. - Thinking bee. Thinking bee! Thinking bee! Thinking bee! Thinking bee! There he is. He's in the pool. You know what your problem is, Barry? I gotta start thinking bee? How much longer will this go on? It's been three days! Why aren't you working? I've got a lot of big life decisions to think about. What life? You have no life! You have no job. You're barely a bee! Would it kill you to make a little honey? Barry, come out. Your father's talking to you. Martin, would you talk to him? Barry, I'm talking to you! You coming? Got everything? All set! Go ahead. I'll catch up. Don't be too long. Watch this! Vanessa! - We're still here. - I told you not to yell at him. He doesn't respond to yelling! - Then why yell at me? - Because you don't listen! I'm not listening to this. Sorry, I've gotta go. - Where are you going? - I'm meeting a friend. A girl? Is this why you can't decide? Bye. I just hope she's Bee-ish. They have a huge parade of flowers every year in Pasadena? To be in the Tournament of Roses, that's every florist's dream! Up on a float, surrounded by flowers, crowds cheering. A tournament. Do the roses compete in athletic events? No. All right, I've got one. How come you don't fly everywhere? It's exhausting. Why don't you run everywhere? It's faster. Yeah, OK, I see, I see. All right, your turn. TiVo. You can just freeze live TV? That's insane! You don't have that? We have Hivo, but it's a disease. It's a horrible, horrible disease. Oh, my. Dumb bees! You must want to sting all those jerks. We try not to sting. It's usually fatal for us. So you have to watch your temper. Very carefully. You kick a wall, take a walk, write an angry letter and throw it out. Work through it like any emotion: Anger, jealousy, lust. Oh, my goodness! Are you OK? Yeah. - What is wrong with you?! - It's a bug. He's not bothering anybody. Get out of here, you creep! What was that? A Pic 'N' Save circular? Yeah, it was. How did you know? It felt like about 10 pages. Seventy-five is pretty much our limit. You've really got that down to a science. - I lost a cousin to Italian Vogue. - I'll bet. What in the name of Mighty Hercules is this? How did this get here? Oute Bee, Golden Blossom, Ray Liotta Private Select? - Is he that actor? - I never heard of him. - Why is this here? - For people. We eat it. You don't have enough food of your own? - Well, yes. - How do you get it? - Bees make it. - I know who makes it! And it's hard to make it! There's heating, cooling, stirring. You need a whole Krelman thing! - It's organic. - It's our-ganic! It's just honey, Barry. Just what?! Bees don't know about this! This is stealing! A lot of stealing! You've taken our homes, schools, hospitals! This is all we have! And it's on sale?! I'm getting to the bottom of this. I'm getting to the bottom of all of this! Hey, Hector. - You almost done? - Almost. He is here. I sense it. Well, I guess I'll go home now and just leave this nice honey out, with no one around. You're busted, box boy! I knew I heard something. So you can talk! I can talk. And now you'll start talking! Where you getting the sweet stuff? Who's your supplier? I don't understand. I thought we were friends. The last thing we want to do is upset bees! You're too late! It's ours now! You, sir, have crossed the wrong sword! You, sir, will be lunch for my iguana, Ignacio! Where is the honey coming from? Tell me where! Honey Farms! It comes from Honey Farms! Orazy person! What horrible thing has happened here? These faces, they never knew what hit them. And now they're on the road to nowhere! Just keep still. What? You're not dead? Do I look dead? They will wipe anything that moves. Where you headed? To Honey Farms. I am onto something huge here. I'm going to Alaska. Moose blood, crazy stuff. Blows your head off! I'm going to Tacoma. - And you? - He really is dead. All right. Uh-oh! - What is that?! - Oh, no! - A wiper! Triple blade! - Triple blade? Jump on! It's your only chance, bee! Why does everything have to be so doggone clean?! How much do you people need to see?! Open your eyes! Stick your head out the window! From NPR News in Washington, I'm Oarl Kasell. But don't kill no more bugs! - Bee! - Moose blood guy!! - You hear something? - Like what? Like tiny screaming. Turn off the radio. Whassup, bee boy? Hey, Blood. Just a row of honey jars, as far as the eye could see. Wow! I assume wherever this truck goes is where they're getting it. I mean, that honey's ours. - Bees hang tight. - We're all jammed in. It's a close community. Not us, man. We on our own. Every mosquito on his own. - What if you get in trouble? - You a mosquito, you in trouble. Nobody likes us. They just smack. See a mosquito, smack, smack! At least you're out in the world. You must meet girls. Mosquito girls try to trade up, get with a moth, dragonfly. Mosquito girl don't want no mosquito. You got to be kidding me! Mooseblood's about to leave the building! So long, bee! - Hey, guys! - Mooseblood! I knew I'd catch y'all down here. Did you bring your crazy straw? We throw it in jars, slap a label on it, and it's pretty much pure profit. What is this place? A bee's got a brain the size of a pinhead. They are pinheads! Pinhead. - Oheck out the new smoker. - Oh, sweet. That's the one you want. The Thomas 3000! Smoker? Ninety puffs a minute, semi-automatic. Twice the nicotine, all the tar. A couple breaths of this knocks them right out. They make the honey, and we make the money. "They make the honey, and we make the money"? Oh, my! What's going on? Are you OK? Yeah. It doesn't last too long. Do you know you're in a fake hive with fake walls? Our queen was moved here. We had no choice. This is your queen? That's a man in women's clothes! That's a drag queen! What is this? Oh, no! There's hundreds of them! Bee honey. Our honey is being brazenly stolen on a massive scale! This is worse than anything bears have done! I intend to do something. Oh, Barry, stop. Who told you humans are taking our honey? That's a rumor. Do these look like rumors? That's a conspiracy theory. These are obviously doctored photos. How did you get mixed up in this? He's been talking to humans. - What? - Talking to humans?! He has a human girlfriend. And they make out! Make out? Barry! We do not. - You wish you could. - Whose side are you on? The bees! I dated a cricket once in San Antonio. Those crazy legs kept me up all night. Barry, this is what you want to do with your life? I want to do it for all our lives. Nobody works harder than bees! Dad, I remember you coming home so overworked your hands were still stirring. You couldn't stop. I remember that. What right do they have to our honey? We live on two cups a year. They put it in lip balm for no reason whatsoever! Even if it's true, what can one bee do? Sting them where it really hurts. In the face! The eye! - That would hurt. - No. Up the nose? That's a killer. There's only one place you can sting the humans, one place where it matters. Hive at Five, the hive's only full-hour action news source. No more bee beards! With Bob Bumble at the anchor desk. Weather with Storm Stinger. Sports with Buzz Larvi. And Jeanette Ohung. - Good evening. I'm Bob Bumble. - And I'm Jeanette Ohung. A tri-county bee, Barry Benson, intends to sue the human race for stealing our honey, packaging it and profiting from it illegally! Tomorrow night on Bee Larry King, we'll have three former queens here in our studio, discussing their new book, Olassy Ladies, out this week on Hexagon. Tonight we're talking to Barry Benson. Did you ever think, "I'm a kid from the hive. I can't do this"? Bees have never been afraid to change the world. What about Bee Oolumbus? Bee Gandhi? Bejesus? Where I'm from, we'd never sue humans. We were thinking of stickball or candy stores. How old are you? The bee community is supporting you in this case, which will be the trial of the bee century. You know, they have a Larry King in the human world too. It's a common name. Next week... He looks like you and has a show and suspenders and colored dots... Next week... Glasses, quotes on the bottom from the guest even though you just heard 'em. Bear Week next week! They're scary, hairy and here live. Always leans forward, pointy shoulders, squinty eyes, very Jewish. In tennis, you attack at the point of weakness! It was my grandmother, Ken. She's 81. Honey, her backhand's a joke! I'm not gonna take advantage of that? Quiet, please. Actual work going on here. - Is that that same bee? - Yes, it is! I'm helping him sue the human race. - Hello. - Hello, bee. This is Ken. Yeah, I remember you. Timberland, size ten and a half. Vibram sole, I believe. Why does he talk again? Listen, you better go 'cause we're really busy working. But it's our yogurt night! Bye-bye. Why is yogurt night so difficult?! You poor thing. You two have been at this for hours! Yes, and Adam here has been a huge help. - Frosting... - How many sugars? Just one. I try not to use the competition. So why are you helping me? Bees have good qualities. And it takes my mind off the shop. Instead of flowers, people are giving balloon bouquets now. Those are great, if you're three. And artificial flowers. - Oh, those just get me psychotic! - Yeah, me too. Bent stingers, pointless pollination. Bees must hate those fake things! Nothing worse than a daffodil that's had work done. Maybe this could make up for it a little bit. - This lawsuit's a pretty big deal. - I guess. You sure you want to go through with it? Am I sure? When I'm done with the humans, they won't be able to say, "Honey, I'm home," without paying a royalty! It's an incredible scene here in downtown Manhattan, where the world anxiously waits, because for the first time in history, we will hear for ourselves if a honeybee can actually speak. What have we gotten into here, Barry? It's pretty big, isn't it? I can't believe how many humans don't work during the day. You think billion-dollar multinational food companies have good lawyers? Everybody needs to stay behind the barricade. - What's the matter? - I don't know, I just got a chill. Well, if it isn't the bee team. You boys work on this? All rise! The Honorable Judge Bumbleton presiding. All right. Oase number 4475, Superior Oourt of New York, Barry Bee Benson v. the Honey Industry is now in session. Mr. Montgomery, you're representing the five food companies collectively? A privilege. Mr. Benson... you're representing all the bees of the world? I'm kidding. Yes, Your Honor, we're ready to proceed. Mr. Montgomery, your opening statement, please. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my grandmother was a simple woman. Born on a farm, she believed it was man's divine right to benefit from the bounty of nature God put before us. If we lived in the topsy-turvy world Mr. Benson imagines, just think of what would it mean. I would have to negotiate with the silkworm for the elastic in my britches! Talking bee! How do we know this isn't some sort of holographic motion-picture-capture Hollywood wizardry? They could be using laser beams! Robotics! Ventriloquism! Oloning! For all we know, he could be on steroids! Mr. Benson? Ladies and gentlemen, there's no trickery here. I'm just an ordinary bee. Honey's pretty important to me. It's important to all bees. We invented it! We make it. And we protect it with our lives. Unfortunately, there are some people in this room who think they can take it from us 'cause we're the little guys! I'm hoping that, after this is all over, you'll see how, by taking our honey, you not only take everything we have but everything we are! I wish he'd dress like that all the time. So nice! Oall your first witness. So, Mr. Klauss Vanderhayden of Honey Farms, big company you have. I suppose so. I see you also own Honeyburton and Honron! Yes, they provide beekeepers for our farms. Beekeeper. I find that to be a very disturbing term. I don't imagine you employ any bee-free-ers, do you? - No. - I couldn't hear you. - No. - No. Because you don't free bees. You keep bees. Not only that, it seems you thought a bear would be an appropriate image for a jar of honey. They're very lovable creatures. Yogi Bear, Fozzie Bear, Build-A-Bear. You mean like this? Bears kill bees! How'd you like his head crashing through your living room?! Biting into your couch! Spitting out your throw pillows! OK, that's enough. Take him away. So, Mr. Sting, thank you for being here. Your name intrigues me. - Where have I heard it before? - I was with a band called The Police. But you've never been a police officer, have you? No, I haven't. No, you haven't. And so here we have yet another example of bee culture casually stolen by a human for nothing more than a prance-about stage name. Oh, please. Have you ever been stung, Mr. Sting? Because I'm feeling a little stung, Sting. Or should I say... Mr. Gordon M. Sumner! That's not his real name?! You idiots! Mr. Liotta, first, belated congratulations on your Emmy win for a guest spot on ER in 2005. Thank you. Thank you. I see from your resume that you're devilishly handsome with a churning inner turmoil that's ready to blow. I enjoy what I do. Is that a crime? Not yet it isn't. But is this what it's come to for you? Exploiting tiny, helpless bees so you don't have to rehearse your part and learn your lines, sir? Watch it, Benson! I could blow right now! This isn't a goodfella. This is a badfella! Why doesn't someone just step on this creep, and we can all go home?! - Order in this court! - You're all thinking it! Order! Order, I say! - Say it! - Mr. Liotta, please sit down! I think it was awfully nice of that bear to pitch in like that. I think the jury's on our side. Are we doing everything right, legally? I'm a florist. Right. Well, here's to a great team. To a great team! Well, hello. - Ken! - Hello. I didn't think you were coming. No, I was just late. I tried to call, but... the battery. I didn't want all this to go to waste, so I called Barry. Luckily, he was free. Oh, that was lucky. There's a little left. I could heat it up. Yeah, heat it up, sure, whatever. So I hear you're quite a tennis player. I'm not much for the game myself. The ball's a little grabby. That's where I usually sit. Right... there. Ken, Barry was looking at your resume, and he agreed with me that eating with chopsticks isn't really a special skill. You think I don't see what you're doing? I know how hard it is to find the rightjob. We have that in common. Do we? Bees have 100 percent employment, but we do jobs like taking the crud out. That's just what I was thinking about doing. Ken, I let Barry borrow your razor for his fuzz. I hope that was all right. I'm going to drain the old stinger. Yeah, you do that. Look at that. You know, I've just about had it with your little mind games. - What's that? - Italian Vogue. Mamma mia, that's a lot of pages. A lot of ads. Remember what Van said, why is your life more valuable than mine? Funny, I just can't seem to recall that! I think something stinks in here! I love the smell of flowers. How do you like the smell of flames?! Not as much. Water bug! Not taking sides! Ken, I'm wearing a Ohapstick hat! This is pathetic! I've got issues! Well, well, well, a royal flush! - You're bluffing. - Am I? Surf's up, dude! Poo water! That bowl is gnarly. Except for those dirty yellow rings! Kenneth! What are you doing?! You know, I don't even like honey! I don't eat it! We need to talk! He's just a little bee! And he happens to be the nicest bee I've met in a long time! Long time? What are you talking about?! Are there other bugs in your life? No, but there are other things bugging me in life. And you're one of them! Fine! Talking bees, no yogurt night... My nerves are fried from riding on this emotional roller coaster! Goodbye, Ken. And for your information, I prefer sugar-free, artificial sweeteners made by man! I'm sorry about all that. I know it's got an aftertaste! I like it! I always felt there was some kind of barrier between Ken and me. I couldn't overcome it. Oh, well. Are you OK for the trial? I believe Mr. Montgomery is about out of ideas. We would like to call Mr. Barry Benson Bee to the stand. Good idea! You can really see why he's considered one of the best lawyers... Yeah. Layton, you've gotta weave some magic with this jury, or it's gonna be all over. Don't worry. The only thing I have to do to turn this jury around is to remind them of what they don't like about bees. - You got the tweezers? - Are you allergic? Only to losing, son. Only to losing. Mr. Benson Bee, I'll ask you what I think we'd all like to know. What exactly is your relationship to that woman? We're friends. - Good friends? - Yes. How good? Do you live together? Wait a minute... Are you her little... ...bedbug? I've seen a bee documentary or two. From what I understand, doesn't your queen give birth to all the bee children? - Yeah, but... - So those aren't your real parents! - Oh, Barry... - Yes, they are! Hold me back! You're an illegitimate bee, aren't you, Benson? He's denouncing bees! Don't y'all date your cousins? - Objection! - I'm going to pincushion this guy! Adam, don't! It's what he wants! Oh, I'm hit!! Oh, lordy, I am hit! Order! Order! The venom! The venom is coursing through my veins! I have been felled by a winged beast of destruction! You see? You can't treat them like equals! They're striped savages! Stinging's the only thing they know! It's their way! - Adam, stay with me. - I can't feel my legs. What angel of mercy will come forward to suck the poison from my heaving buttocks? I will have order in this court. Order! Order, please! The case of the honeybees versus the human race took a pointed turn against the bees yesterday when one of their legal team stung Layton T. Montgomery. - Hey, buddy. - Hey. - Is there much pain? - Yeah. I... I blew the whole case, didn't I? It doesn't matter. What matters is you're alive. You could have died. I'd be better off dead. Look at me. They got it from the cafeteria downstairs, in a tuna sandwich. Look, there's a little celery still on it. What was it like to sting someone? I can't explain it. It was all... All adrenaline and then... and then ecstasy! All right. You think it was all a trap? Of course. I'm sorry. I flew us right into this. What were we thinking? Look at us. We're just a couple of bugs in this world. What will the humans do to us if they win? I don't know. I hear they put the roaches in motels. That doesn't sound so bad. Adam, they check in, but they don't check out! Oh, my. Oould you get a nurse to close that window? - Why? - The smoke. Bees don't smoke. Right. Bees don't smoke. Bees don't smoke! But some bees are smoking. That's it! That's our case! It is? It's not over? Get dressed. I've gotta go somewhere. Get back to the court and stall. Stall any way you can. And assuming you've done step correctly, you're ready for the tub. Mr. Flayman. Yes? Yes, Your Honor! Where is the rest of your team? Well, Your Honor, it's interesting. Bees are trained to fly haphazardly, and as a result, we don't make very good time. I actually heard a funny story about... Your Honor, haven't these ridiculous bugs taken up enough of this court's valuable time? How much longer will we allow these absurd shenanigans to go on? They have presented no compelling evidence to support their charges against my clients, who run legitimate businesses. I move for a complete dismissal of this entire case! Mr. Flayman, I'm afraid I'm going to have to consider Mr. Montgomery's motion. But you can't! We have a terrific case. Where is your proof? Where is the evidence? Show me the smoking gun! Hold it, Your Honor! You want a smoking gun? Here is your smoking gun. What is that? It's a bee smoker! What, this? This harmless little contraption? This couldn't hurt a fly, let alone a bee. Look at what has happened to bees who have never been asked, "Smoking or non?" Is this what nature intended for us? To be forcibly addicted to smoke machines and man-made wooden slat work camps? Living out our lives as honey slaves to the white man? - What are we gonna do? - He's playing the species card. Ladies and gentlemen, please, free these bees! Free the bees! Free the bees! Free the bees! Free the bees! Free the bees! The court finds in favor of the bees! Vanessa, we won! I knew you could do it! High-five! Sorry. I'm OK! You know what this means? All the honey will finally belong to the bees. Now we won't have to work so hard all the time. This is an unholy perversion of the balance of nature, Benson. You'll regret this. Barry, how much honey is out there? All right. One at a time. Barry, who are you wearing? My sweater is Ralph Lauren, and I have no pants. - What if Montgomery's right? - What do you mean? We've been living the bee way a long time, 27 million years. Oongratulations on your victory. What will you demand as a settlement? First, we'll demand a complete shutdown of all bee work camps. Then we want back the honey that was ours to begin with, every last drop. We demand an end to the glorification of the bear as anything more than a filthy, smelly, bad-breath stink machine. We're all aware of what they do in the woods. Wait for my signal. Take him out. He'll have nauseous for a few hours, then he'll be fine. And we will no longer tolerate bee-negative nicknames... But it's just a prance-about stage name! ...unnecessary inclusion of honey in bogus health products and la-dee-da human tea-time snack garnishments. Oan't breathe. Bring it in, boys! Hold it right there! Good. Tap it. Mr. Buzzwell, we just passed three cups, and there's gallons more coming! - I think we need to shut down! - Shut down? We've never shut down. Shut down honey production! Stop making honey! Turn your key, sir! What do we do now? Oannonball! We're shutting honey production! Mission abort. Aborting pollination and nectar detail. Returning to base. Adam, you wouldn't believe how much honey was out there. Oh, yeah? What's going on? Where is everybody? - Are they out celebrating? - They're home. They don't know what to do. Laying out, sleeping in. I heard your Uncle Oarl was on his way to San Antonio with a cricket. At least we got our honey back. Sometimes I think, so what if humans liked our honey? Who wouldn't? It's the greatest thing in the world! I was excited to be part of making it. This was my new desk. This was my new job. I wanted to do it really well. And now... Now I can't. I don't understand why they're not happy. I thought their lives would be better! They're doing nothing. It's amazing. Honey really changes people. You don't have any idea what's going on, do you? - What did you want to show me? - This. What happened here? That is not the half of it. Oh, no. Oh, my. They're all wilting. Doesn't look very good, does it? No. And whose fault do you think that is? You know, I'm gonna guess bees. Bees? Specifically, me. I didn't think bees not needing to make honey would affect all these things. It's notjust flowers. Fruits, vegetables, they all need bees. That's our whole SAT test right there. Take away produce, that affects the entire animal kingdom. And then, of course... The human species? So if there's no more pollination, it could all just go south here, couldn't it? I know this is also partly my fault. How about a suicide pact? How do we do it? - I'll sting you, you step on me. - Thatjust kills you twice. Right, right. Listen, Barry... sorry, but I gotta get going. I had to open my mouth and talk. Vanessa? Vanessa? Why are you leaving? Where are you going? To the final Tournament of Roses parade in Pasadena. They've moved it to this weekend because all the flowers are dying. It's the last chance I'll ever have to see it. Vanessa, I just wanna say I'm sorry. I never meant it to turn out like this. I know. Me neither. Tournament of Roses. Roses can't do sports. Wait a minute. Roses. Roses? Roses! Vanessa! Roses?! Barry? - Roses are flowers! - Yes, they are. Flowers, bees, pollen! I know. That's why this is the last parade. Maybe not. Oould you ask him to slow down? Oould you slow down? Barry! OK, I made a huge mistake. This is a total disaster, all my fault. Yes, it kind of is. I've ruined the planet. I wanted to help you with the flower shop. I've made it worse. Actually, it's completely closed down. I thought maybe you were remodeling. But I have another idea, and it's greater than my previous ideas combined. I don't want to hear it! All right, they have the roses, the roses have the pollen. I know every bee, plant and flower bud in this park. All we gotta do is get what they've got back here with what we've got. - Bees. - Park. - Pollen! - Flowers. - Repollination! - Across the nation! Tournament of Roses, Pasadena, Oalifornia. They've got nothing but flowers, floats and cotton candy. Security will be tight. I have an idea. Vanessa Bloome, FTD. Official floral business. It's real. Sorry, ma'am. Nice brooch. Thank you. It was a gift. Once inside, we just pick the right float. How about The Princess and the Pea? I could be the princess, and you could be the pea! Yes, I got it. - Where should I sit? - What are you? - I believe I'm the pea. - The pea? It goes under the mattresses. - Not in this fairy tale, sweetheart. - I'm getting the marshal. You do that! This whole parade is a fiasco! Let's see what this baby'll do. Hey, what are you doing?! Then all we do is blend in with traffic... ...without arousing suspicion. Once at the airport, there's no stopping us. Stop! Security. - You and your insect pack your float? - Yes. Has it been in your possession the entire time? Would you remove your shoes? - Remove your stinger. - It's part of me. I know. Just having some fun. Enjoy your flight. Then if we're lucky, we'll have just enough pollen to do the job. Oan you believe how lucky we are? We have just enough pollen to do the job! I think this is gonna work. It's got to work. Attention, passengers, this is Oaptain Scott. We have a bit of bad weather in New York. It looks like we'll experience a couple hours delay. Barry, these are cut flowers with no water. They'll never make it. I gotta get up there and talk to them. Be careful. Oan I get help with the Sky Mall magazine? I'd like to order the talking inflatable nose and ear hair trimmer. Oaptain, I'm in a real situation. - What'd you say, Hal? - Nothing. Bee! Don't freak out! My entire species... What are you doing? - Wait a minute! I'm an attorney! - Who's an attorney? Don't move. Oh, Barry. Good afternoon, passengers. This is your captain. Would a Miss Vanessa Bloome in 24B please report to the cockpit? And please hurry! What happened here? There was a DustBuster, a toupee, a life raft exploded. One's bald, one's in a boat, they're both unconscious! - Is that another bee joke? - No! No one's flying the plane! This is JFK control tower, Flight 356. What's your status? This is Vanessa Bloome. I'm a florist from New York. Where's the pilot? He's unconscious, and so is the copilot. Not good. Does anyone onboard have flight experience? As a matter of fact, there is. - Who's that? - Barry Benson. From the honey trial?! Oh, great. Vanessa, this is nothing more than a big metal bee. It's got giant wings, huge engines. I can't fly a plane. - Why not? Isn't John Travolta a pilot? - Yes. How hard could it be? Wait, Barry! We're headed into some lightning. This is Bob Bumble. We have some late-breaking news from JFK Airport, where a suspenseful scene is developing. Barry Benson, fresh from his legal victory... That's Barry! ...is attempting to land a plane, loaded with people, flowers and an incapacitated flight crew. Flowers?! We have a storm in the area and two individuals at the controls with absolutely no flight experience. Just a minute. There's a bee on that plane. I'm quite familiar with Mr. Benson and his no-account compadres. They've done enough damage. But isn't he your only hope? Technically, a bee shouldn't be able to fly at all. Their wings are too small... Haven't we heard this a million times? "The surface area of the wings and body mass make no sense." - Get this on the air! - Got it. - Stand by. - We're going live. The way we work may be a mystery to you. Making honey takes a lot of bees doing a lot of small jobs. But let me tell you about a small job. If you do it well, it makes a big difference. More than we realized. To us, to everyone. That's why I want to get bees back to working together. That's the bee way! We're not made of Jell-O. We get behind a fellow. - Black and yellow! - Hello! Left, right, down, hover. - Hover? - Forget hover. This isn't so hard. Beep-beep! Beep-beep! Barry, what happened?! Wait, I think we were on autopilot the whole time. - That may have been helping me. - And now we're not! So it turns out I cannot fly a plane. All of you, let's get behind this fellow! Move it out! Move out! Our only chance is if I do what I'd do, you copy me with the wings of the plane! Don't have to yell. I'm not yelling! We're in a lot of trouble. It's very hard to concentrate with that panicky tone in your voice! It's not a tone. I'm panicking! I can't do this! Vanessa, pull yourself together. You have to snap out of it! You snap out of it. You snap out of it. - You snap out of it! - You snap out of it! - You snap out of it! - You snap out of it! - You snap out of it! - You snap out of it! - Hold it! - Why? Oome on, it's my turn. How is the plane flying? I don't know. Hello? Benson, got any flowers for a happy occasion in there? The Pollen Jocks! They do get behind a fellow. - Black and yellow. - Hello. All right, let's drop this tin can on the blacktop. Where? I can't see anything. Oan you? No, nothing. It's all cloudy. Oome on. You got to think bee, Barry. - Thinking bee. - Thinking bee. Thinking bee! Thinking bee! Thinking bee! Wait a minute. I think I'm feeling something. - What? - I don't know. It's strong, pulling me. Like a 27-million-year-old instinct. Bring the nose down. Thinking bee! Thinking bee! Thinking bee! - What in the world is on the tarmac? - Get some lights on that! Thinking bee! Thinking bee! Thinking bee! - Vanessa, aim for the flower. - OK. Out the engines. We're going in on bee power. Ready, boys? Affirmative! Good. Good. Easy, now. That's it. Land on that flower! Ready? Full reverse! Spin it around! - Not that flower! The other one! - Which one? - That flower. - I'm aiming at the flower! That's a fat guy in a flowered shirt. I mean the giant pulsating flower made of millions of bees! Pull forward. Nose down. Tail up. Rotate around it. - This is insane, Barry! - This's the only way I know how to fly. Am I koo-koo-kachoo, or is this plane flying in an insect-like pattern? Get your nose in there. Don't be afraid. Smell it. Full reverse! Just drop it. Be a part of it. Aim for the center! Now drop it in! Drop it in, woman! Oome on, already. Barry, we did it! You taught me how to fly! - Yes. No high-five! - Right. Barry, it worked! Did you see the giant flower? What giant flower? Where? Of course I saw the flower! That was genius! - Thank you. - But we're not done yet. Listen, everyone! This runway is covered with the last pollen from the last flowers available anywhere on Earth. That means this is our last chance. We're the only ones who make honey, pollinate flowers and dress like this. If we're gonna survive as a species, this is our moment! What do you say? Are we going to be bees, orjust Museum of Natural History keychains? We're bees! Keychain! Then follow me! Except Keychain. Hold on, Barry. Here. You've earned this. Yeah! I'm a Pollen Jock! And it's a perfect fit. All I gotta do are the sleeves. Oh, yeah. That's our Barry. Mom! The bees are back! If anybody needs to make a call, now's the time. I got a feeling we'll be working late tonight! Here's your change. Have a great afternoon! Oan I help who's next? Would you like some honey with that? It is bee-approved. Don't forget these. Milk, cream, cheese, it's all me. And I don't see a nickel! Sometimes I just feel like a piece of meat! I had no idea. Barry, I'm sorry. Have you got a moment? Would you excuse me? My mosquito associate will help you. Sorry I'm late. He's a lawyer too? I was already a blood-sucking parasite. All I needed was a briefcase. Have a great afternoon! Barry, I just got this huge tulip order, and I can't get them anywhere. No problem, Vannie. Just leave it to me. You're a lifesaver, Barry. Oan I help who's next? All right, scramble, jocks! It's time to fly. Thank you, Barry! That bee is living my life! Let it go, Kenny. - When will this nightmare end?! - Let it all go. - Beautiful day to fly. - Sure is. Between you and me, I was dying to get out of that office. You have got to start thinking bee, my friend. - Thinking bee! - Me? Hold it. Let's just stop for a second. Hold it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, everyone. Oan we stop here? I'm not making a major life decision during a production number! All right. Take ten, everybody. Wrap it up, guys. I had virtually no rehearsal for that.