#i become increasingly aware that normal people do not get as invested in shows as I do

[gch1995]

No one hates OUAT more than those of us in the fandom who actually watched it and/or followed it long enough to fully realize just how disappointingly awful, hopeless, and ridiculous the writing became in the piss poor excuse for canon the show devolved into the longer it went on, even though it was supposed to “be fun” and “give us hope.” At least all of its beautiful wasted potential became an outlet for far superior writing in our headcanons and fanfiction, though, no matter how shitty the actual show got.

I always feel so bad for newbies in the fandom who haven’t yet uncovered the horrific clusterfuck of bad writing this show ultimately devolved into. A part of me always feels like telling new fans to just spare themselves the pain, and to just quit watching after the Neverland arc. The majority of those of us in the OUAT fandom agree that the show’s writing ultimately devolved into a painfully biased, cheaply shocking, cheesy, wildly inconsistent, melodramatic, nonsensical, pandering, repetitive, and wildly ooc unsalvageable mess of bad writing that made us feel angry, betrayed, bored, and disgusted more often than not after that.

However, even after the show’s writing went completely off the rails beyond all salvaging, there were still those gold nuggets of wasted potential for characters, relationships, and storylines that could have and should have been amazing, if Kitsowitz and these writers actually had been able to be consistently competent and professional at their jobs. Particularly when looking back at the first two-and-a-half seasons of OUAT, I feel a great sense of disappointment at just how much beautiful and interesting potential they ultimately wasted in these characters and relationships in favor of blatantly biased, cheaply shocking, contrived, nonsensical, mutually toxic, wildly ooc, repetitive, and thus, character destroying magical soap opera melodrama.

There’s always this deep sense of disappointment in me over the amazing show that canon OUAT ultimately could have and should have been whenever I see all of those golden nuggets of tragically wasted potential Kitsowitz and these writers showed us in those moments when they were actually being competent show-runners and writers, particularly in S1-2A before they show got too distracted by the next big contrived magical thing to actually let the characters slow down, talk to each other, hang out with each other, and grow and react like in-character and relatable human beings. If only they were able to ultimately write and stick to a consistent, relatable, gradual, realistic, and organic course of character development that actually would have ultimately made these characters, happy endings, redemption arcs, and/or regression arcs actually feel well-earned and satisfying in the end.

Instead, they ended up erasing, minimizing, and/or outright romanticizing certain bad behaviors and choices of their characters at certain points and the negative consequences and/or effects they had in regards to those they hurt and/or victimized.

Instead, they ended up outright derailing most of their characters normally and/or consistently previously established complex, intelligent, and sympathetic characterizations and/or positive development at one point or another in order to rerail them over and over and over again more and more post S3 in increasingly abrupt, cheaply shocking, contrived, disappointing, flanderdized, horrifying, melodramatically toxic, and nonsensical ways that made them suddenly come across as uncharacteristically unsympathetic and stupid out of nowhere.

Instead, they created absurdities out of nowhere to inorganically force the characters to regress in ways that contradicted all previously established canon characterization, continuity, and previously established logic on the show.

Instead, they selectively bent, broke, and contradicted their own rules of magic with less and less fairness, rhyme, or reason as every season passed the first.

If only they had consistently and fairly stuck to their own rules and limitations of what magic could and couldn’t do. If only they treated their characters as complex and relatable human beings and equals with compelling, consistent, and realistic personalities, flaws, conflicts, regressions, redemptions, and resolutions that drove their stories consistently, gradually, organically, and realistically because of who they were and/or developed into as people, rather than because nonsensical asspulled twists and/or magical macguffins demanded that these characters suddenly become whatever they needed them to become a certain way to create cheap shock value, suspense, drama, and repetitive storytelling, regardless of all previously established characterization, continuity, development, and logic in their own canon.

Instead, they decided to cherry pick favorite characters and/or ships to frame as “redeemed” in the narrative, even though they may not have actually done anything to earn it and/or regressed without any negative consequences for doing so, just because Emma and the Charmings accepted them as “family.”

Instead, they ended up slapping increasingly biased, petty, meaningless, and shallow “hero” and “villain” labels on all of their characters, regardless of how objectively and needlessly harmful their choices, behaviors, and reactions may have been to others, in spite of being on the “right” side.

But we all ultimately sustained ourselves in the OUAT fandom by imagining just how amazing these characters, their relationships, and their storylines could have and should have been, trying to disregard the character assassinating bad writing in the piss poor excuse for canon that OUAT ultimately devolved into, taking Kitsowitz and these writers golden nuggets of tragically wasted potential for these characters, their relationships, and creating far superior works of art with those golden nuggests of wasted potential in canon with our headcanons and fan fiction.

OUAT isn’t a show that stuck with most of us because we were impressed by its writing in canon. In fact, most of us are fully aware that there were writing choices in the piss poor excuse of canon OUAT our favorite characters and relationships on the show that were inexcusably awful, biased, cheesy, cheaply shocking, gross, offensive, inconsistent, nonsensical, tone-deaf, wildly ooc, and/or repetitive at one point or another. Honestly, if the main character and/or relationship lasted past S3 in the main cast, then Kitsowitz and the writers destroyed your favorite character and/or ship with bad writing at one point or another.

After the writers unceremoniously killed off Bae/Neal, and resurrected Rumple from the show’s most consistently relatable, realistic, sympathetic, and well-earned two-and-a-half season redemption arc from S1-3A, it became clear thet they ran out of story to tell after wrapping up the Neverland arc, and had no idea where else they were supposed to go with Emma, Regina, Hook, Rumple, Belle, Snow, David, and even Henry’s individual characters or relationships anymore.

We know canon OUAT became a shitshow of inexcusably bad writing. We know it became horrifying and stupid. However, most of us didn’t actually remain in this fandom because we agreed with the writing on the show. We latched onto it so strongly because of its amazing main cast. We latched on to it so deeply because it showed us how to not completely fuck up amazing, relatable, and compelling individual characters, their relationships, and their storylines with biased, hypocritical, ableist, classist, homophobic, racist, sexist, petty, cheaply shocking, gross, wildly ooc, flanderdized, melodramatic, pandering, repetitive, and nonsensical lazy plot-driven writing. Granted, these problems were starting to show up in canon OUAT’s writing as early on as S1. However, after 3A, the show’s writing completely went off the rails for everyone in the remaining main cast that lasted past S3, and these characters and their relationships never fully recovered what made them at all coherent, compelling, magical, relatable, and enjoyable to watch and get invested in in canon from S1-S3, in spite of their obvious flaws.

Most of us have remained in the OUAT fandom because the show’s shitty writing choices and wasted potential inspired most of us to tell far better stories than Kitsowitz and their team of hacks ultimately did.

[mysmegrace]

hey i hope your game is working normally again , can i please request the rfa with an mc who has a part time job as an animator/artist ?

hello~ yes, my game is working well now! i think it might've been the network (i heard like a day later that something happened to it, idk exactly im not very tech savvy lol). i love the request btw.

RFA with an MC who Has a Part Time Job as an Animator/Artist

--- yoosung kim:

the pandemic had effect many things in your lives.

from his university classes to your late night outs.

one of the upsides you found in the time was the fact that you could work straight from your bed now.

you couldn't think of anything better

waking up ten minutes before your start time and sleeping in the comfort of your home during your breaks.

life was finally going in your favour.

and yoosung was in a similar position.

only he wasn't working, just attending university.

the sequence of events had led you to this moment.

you had woken up alongside the sun to start your work for the day, yoosung laying right beside you about to join a class.

you rose your head every once and while to give him a smile of encouragement, yet he wasn't getting the message.

did you want to do something right here?

right now?

while he's just joined a class?

with his cheeks becoming visibly more red, he reckoned a little affection wouldn't hurt.

it wasn't like the teacher could see him.

and he wasn't about to lie and say he was paying attention anyway.

going to wrap his arm behind your neck, he glances upon your project for work.

from the first second he laid eyes on it, it amazed him.

his curiosity was peaked as he started questioning your occupation.

he'd come to realize that he never actually asked about your job, he just knew you had one.

"i'm an animator, i only work part time though" you said with a hint of pride evident in your voice.

he was becoming increasingly more intrigued.

but after you explained many of the ups and downs of your part time job, he gave you his full support.

even asking if you'd be willing to teach him some time.

but nothing too hard, he doesn't want to embarrass himself.

after his class was over, you offered to show him your past works, in which he welcomes with open arms.

you continue to knock him off his feet.

hyun ryu / zen:

"zen zen, what do you think about this?" you ran up to him saying with excitement.

he looks up to meet your eyes after you caught his attention, before redirecting his focus to the tablet you held in front of him.

he was stunned.

it wasn't something he was expecting.

he never knew you were so good at drawing.

with his mouth hung slightly open, he began saying "it's amazing mc, how did you do this?"

he was truly floored, and you took notice of it.

"i've been drawing from a young age and now i make art part time for people who would like to buy my work" you explained.

he was insanely supportive from the get go.

knowing that you were able to make an income from your passion was comforting to him.

being glad you were able to achieve these accomplishments, he wouldn't want to let you work on your own.

granted he couldn't help you, his art wasn't one somebody would invest in.

but he could help in other ways.

hence why he offers to bring you supplies, help with project ideas, and love you from the sidelines.

jaehee kang:

"i've gotta make it to my other job now jaehee, but i'll see you later" you screamed as you ran to catch the bus.

the day was a success, going out with jaehee and shopping together.

however, your words had completely caught her off guard.

shes aware that you two haven't known each other for a long time, but it didn't change the shook that came over her when she heard.

sitting down, catching your breath from the short run you just came from, you decided to check your phone.

after all, there's not much else to do on the bus.

not too long after your departure, you receive a text from jaehee.

"i wasn't aware you had another job, what is your part time job?" it read.

oh, right.

you hadn't told her yet.

but what time was better than now?

"i'm an animator" you responded, waiting in suspense for the next text.

and you weren't waiting long, as the familiar sound of your messenger went off.

"animator? that's really awesome mc, can you show me some of your work?" it read.

you could feel as the smile creeped up your face, not able to hold back your excitement.

yet wasting little time, you send several screen recordings of your previous work that has done incredibility well.

"i'm speechless, that's so amazing" jaehee responded after a few minutes.

the overwhelming of positive emotions that had just come over you wasn't unwelcomed as you held the phone ever so closely.

knowing jaehee was proud of you was enough to make you cry tears of joy.

jumin han:

"but how was your day mc?" he says, changing the topic.

he had come home with the fatigue slowly overcoming him.

the fact that his father had introduced him to a new girl wasn't exactly helping either.

you wanted to talk to him about it more, but you knew better than to make him keep reliving the moment and experiencing the same emotions again.

hence why you took him up on his offer to change the topic.

"well, i finished my recent art project" you said, sipping the wine your husband had recently poured for you.

you watched as his eyebrows raised in curiosity.

"art project?" he questioned, encouraging you to elaborate.

and that you did, explaining how you made art for people as a part time job.

staying quiet for a second, redirecting his focus to the red liquid in front of him.

suddenly, he speaks up, saying "let me see it".

with a quick nod, you hop out of the seat to go pick up the project.

only to return a few seconds later, handing your artwork to him.

you watched intensely, following his eyes as he examined the piece in his hands.

"i'm quite impressed" he says, eyes not leaving the art.

"thank you" you mustered up in response through your excitement.

hearing that jumin was impressed by your skills made your day.

the conversation ended at the same speed it started, soon changing the topic.

but the new expensive supplies that laid in your little make-shift office was a reminder that he always had your best interests in mind.

as long as he could make you happy, life would be fine.

saeyoung choi:

"hey, i made that!" you practically screamed with excitement.

your time has finally come, the time you had been dreaming about since you were a little girl.

growing up on anime to seeing your animations being used in an anime made your life complete.

your attention broke as saeyoung reminded you of his presence, saying "wait, you made that?"

you turned to face his laying figure on the couch, nodding aggressively with a huge smile plastered across your face.

he always told you how contagious your smile was, and his point was proved as he began to duplicate your excited smile.

standing up to hug you, he started questioning you as if he were cosplaying an interviewer.

""when did you do this?"

"why did you do this?"

"how did you do this?"

you had to place your hand firmly on his chest to calm him down.

giving you time to explain your part time job as an animator.

how you've dreamed of this as a child and how grateful you were to be able to pursue your passion.

and saeyoung couldn't be prouder.

he felt like a father watching his child receive their first award.

your happiness made him feel incredible.

and your talent astonished him.

after the initial excitement died down, he offered his help in any way possible.

anonymous, of course.

he would do anything to make you happy.

achieving your dreams was something he never experienced until he met you, and he would never let you down.

---

00:32 AST - 08/10/21

[shoichee]

Red Rose

Part 3 of the Pun Fest collection!

Akashi x Reader

Word Count: 4,355

Synopsis: You made it a challenge for yourself as the esteemed 1st year class clown to get a reaction out of Akashi. Not just any Akashi, however. Boku-Akashi. Things quickly get too out of hand.

Note: I will be trying to avoid describing the “color” of Akashi’s eyes because they are actually a non-diegetic effect, where the animation/visuals are flashy/emphasized for the audience to see, but in the canon universe, they don’t actually look like that and no one will actually see said animations, and such.

»»—————　☼　—————««

“...and after that, his ass fell flat on the floor right in front of everybody! Can you believe that?”

As your voice chimed throughout the halls, your fellow classmates were stifling their laughter but chortles still escaped from their suppressed lips. Hayama smacked your head in utter embarrassment.

“You’ve already told that story to everyone, c-cut it out already!”

“Kotarooooo,” you pouted. “Not my fault that they kept asking for me to retell it again.” You stuck your tongue at him.

“Tch,” he clicked his tongue, figurative irk marks popping up on his temple. “You needa show some more respect to your senpais!” With that, he started grabbing your head to mess with your hair.

“H-Hey! It’s not my fault that you tried to impress a passerby 3rd year girl by doing a failed dribbling trickshot,” you vehemently protested, trying to rip his strong grip off your poor hairline.

Your classmates were either watching with complete entertainment or with concern for your safety as both you and the Uncrowned King were duking it out and sidestepping each other. 

… That is, until they grew increasingly uncomfortable after spotting a particular redhead walking in their direction. 

You and Hayama were too invested in the playfight to notice the unforeseen deathly silence and chilled air that accompanied it.

“Kotarō.”

With a simple call from his airy tone that still somehow glaciated the sunniest of atmospheres, he halted both of you (with his hand still fisted in your hair and you still pulling his cheek) to turn your attention to the person to whom the voice belonged.

Akashi Seijuro.

“C-captain!” Hayama separated from you at an inhumane speed that rivaled his lightning dribbling. You stiffened yourself straight like a plank.

You’ve heard the rumors. From whispering gossipers to personal testimony from your blonde best friend, you knew his presence meant anything but pleasant. 

“Did you forget that we had practice today?”

Holy shit. You glanced in the corner of your eye to see Hayama paled before he gulped. Was he gonna be okay?

You dared not move a muscle from where you stood, hoping not to attract the basketball captain’s attention, but you knew you stuck out like a sore thumb after seeing how all the students huddled closer to the walls while you were stuck in the middle along with Hayama and Akashi.

“I knew that you forgot, so I came by for your sake so we can all start practice together as an absolute team.”

Ah… there was his infamous favorite word.

Akashi flickered his catlike gaze to you. He didn’t miss the way your body was paralyzed by fear, but he slightly narrowed his pupils at the fact that you almost looked curious about him.

“We’re going.” He gracefully pivoted around to walk the opposite direction in where he came from.

“I-I’ll see you later, dummy,” he whispered, giving you a playful wink before he strode up to Akashi’s pace, but you knew from his tense back that he was scared shitless of whatever inevitable punishment drill he was going to be tortured by.

You recovered from your stupor and tried to ease Hayama with a joke. “Don’t act all tough, Kota! I know you’re gonna akashit your pants!—” You snorted trying to finish your one-liner but finding your own joke funny. “P-pf-pfft, don’t slip on the floor again, okay?”

And just like that, with your words, the students around you eased up and let out soft chuckles.

Hayama turned back around even as he continued walking. “Oi! Watch it, kid!” He made the motions of pointing his eyes to you, but you knew that he was grateful for you in trying to unravel his bundle of nerves.

Akashi, still walking, merely glanced back at your figure, unamused at your “joke” but nonetheless almost impressed that you actually had some type of leadership charisma to be able to uplift a crowd’s mood in an instant.

. . .

Everyone released a huge sigh of collective relief once the basketball-player duo was out of sight.

“Are you insane, (l/n)?” Another good friend of yours went up to your side. “You had the balls to literally say such a thing in front of him? Of all people?”

“Well, it’s not like, I’d get sent to the faculty office because of him…” you muttered. On second thought, you probably would. This was Akashi Seijuro you were talking about.

Everyone started clamoring as they all started seeing you in a much higher regard; some of them even looked at you with starry eyes and others swore to be your new admirers. The rest, though, thought you had just sealed your fate by getting under Akashi’s radar.

“You’ll be missed and honored,” a classmate said, giving a solid pat to your right shoulder. “What type of flowers would you like for your funeral?”

“Hmmm,” you hummed, pointing to your chin and staring at the grand ceiling. You turned to them. “Roses as red as Akashi’s hair and the blood of his victims.”

“(l/n), you did not—”

“Oh my god.”

“Is it too late to become religious just to pray for your wellbeing?”

You just summoned chaos in the hallway for the next hour.

---------

The next morning was just another indication of a mild, warm day in Kyoto as you walked past Rakuzan’s school gates. Or at least, you thought the morning would be fine. Even with your thick uniform blazer, you swore that you felt cold chills running down your spine every now and then when you were strolling your normal route to your class.

There’s the cold chills again. 

You stopped and looked around your shoulders and behind your back. No one shady was near; they were all too busy chatting with their friends or changing their shoes in their lockers to care much for your presence. Those who noticed you nearby had already given you a friendly greeting.

You hesitantly walked again, being your usual carefree self but now being hyper aware in tracking the students around you. Your eyes widened.

There.

Had you blinked in that moment, you would have surely missed it, but a flash of red flitted around a corner of a hallway. You sighed and groaned inwardly.

Your classmates were right: you were going to die by the hands of a certain redhead.

This was the price you had to pay for not passing up the perfect opportunity for an iconic line.

---------

“Say,” you said turning to your friend once you entered your classroom. “Has Akashi ever shown a side other than being a calm freak?”

“I don’t know if you ever wanna see anything different than that,” she replied, looking up from her homework.

“Imagine him laughing, though. That’d be news of the century.”

“Dear god, I can’t imagine him laughing other than the kind of scheming cackle you’d get from the TV show villains.” You bursted into a fit of snorts while other students, who were secretly eavesdropping out of curiosity after hearing Akashi’s name, snickered.

Another student wedged himself into your conversation. “No one’s ever seen him show any side of him though. Honestly, he’s like a demon.”

“He’s a 1st year student just like the rest of us,” you chided. “Come on, he’s human too. He wasn’t born to be a calculating machine.”

Everyone in the vicinity gave you incredulous looks (for valid reasons, to be fair).

“Hmph!” You crossed your arms. “I’ll prove it to you guys! He’s not as stone-cold as you think!”

“(y-y/n)-san…” Your friend from earlier tugged onto your sleeve. “You’re really fun to hang around with and all, but…”

“Yeah, um… We know you’re competitive and don’t like to back down, but I think you shouldn’t tread into this type of… dangerous territory.”

“Did you already forget what happened with Hayama-senpai yesterday?”

Pretty soon, a large chorus of agreements and mumbles spread throughout your class. Irked, you pouted as you continued to cross your arms.

“I’m gonna make him laugh, and I’ll do it.”

“Uh..”

“Um…”

No one had the heart to disagree with you when you looked like you sparked a fiery aura around yourself as you raised your fists, ready to take it as a challenge for yourself. 

Your classmate sighed. Welp, there’s a reason why you got along with Hayama so well in the first place.

You were both so overly enthusiastic and reckless.

---------

You’ve been thrumming your fingers on your desk throughout your classes, staring blankly as you start stringing up ideas on how to accomplish your “challenge.”

Succeeding in making Akashi laugh is like Hayama agreeing to let the dentist extract his snaggletooth. You’re basically asking for the impossible.

Maybe you should’ve settled for a more realistic goal, but then again, this entire ordeal was an entire miracle on its own.

Ah ha. You stopped your finger taps, hitting a fist to your palm in realization. Maybe you just need to get a reaction out of him, and the rest will eventually fall into place.

At the same time, your friend looked at you in worry; you were making odd hand gestures and mumbling to yourself as you went too deep within your thoughts to regard your surroundings.

Oh dear.

---------

Once lunch began, you immediately left class after incoherent chants of “seeyah” and “gotta go” to go look for Hayama’s corpse and pay your respects for the poor 2nd year after yesterday.

You bought sweet bread from the student store for his offering before you went to look for him.

At the sight of the completely lethargic Hayama, you ran up to him in mock grief.

“Ah, spirit-sama!” you cried out, bowing with your hands clasped together (the bread secured in between). “Please at least tell me that Kota died peacefully—” He interrupted you with a chop to the head.

“Ow! Please don’t curse me, spirit! I didn’t treat him that poorly when he was alive…” You winced, rubbing your head in an attempt to soothe the impact. 

“I’m not dead, idiot!” he retorted, but his banter lacked bite, and both of you knew why.

You sighed before you flashed him a genuine worried expression. “Are you okay, though?” You promptly handed him the bread, and he immediately did a 180, hooting and having starry eyes at the package.

“Of course I am,” he said, munching on the bread. “Not! He made me do so many extra drills and exercises that I seriously thought I was gonna die!”

“Okay, before you totally freak out, but please don’t freak out,” you started. You told him about your plan about Akashi.

“You’re gonna WHAT—”

“SHHHhhhHHH—” You clamped over his mouth despite him still chewing. “What did I just say?”

“Reo-nee! Ei-chan!” he called out while you still attempted to close his yapper. “Save meeeee!”

The said Uncrowned Kings nearby eyed you two before looking at each other and shrugged; they strolled up to you.

“Oh? (y/n)-chan?” Reo tucked his strands behind his ear. “Has he been causing a ruckus?”

“I have not—”

“Actually, since you’re here anyways, I wanna ask you all something,” you said. “What do you know about Akashi personally?”

“Huh?” was all you heard from the Uncrowned Kings.

“Well…” Reo hummed. “I might know a thing or two about Sei-chan…”

“I’ll just go get lunch,” Nebuya called out.

---------

Day 1 of the Challenge.

Thanks to Reo, you knew most of Akashi’s schedules so you can find the perfect opportunities to “safely” encounter him.

You waited behind a corner of the hall that you knew Akashi would walk through to get to the student council room during lunch. Peeking out, you looked for scarlet hair, ignoring the judgmental (and curious) glances thrown your way here and there. 

The moment you saw that everyone instantly collectively vanished, you knew Akashi was extremely nearby. You took a huge breath, expanding your chest to the point of exaggeration, and turned around the corner to finally meet the infamous emperor. 

You casually strolled, putting up an impeccable act that you were naturally there rather than staking out the same spot for 20 minutes. 

There he is. 

You purposely got closer, hoping the closeness between you two would catch his attention. He walked without a change in expression, however, impassively eyeing you before turning his gaze back to the front. That’s when you saw your opportunity.

You almost bumped into him, but you jumped away at the last second while putting your hands up in surrender.

“W-whoa! Wahh, sorry, Akashi-san!” you quickly apologized in a bow. “Luckily, I had my emperor’s eye to foresee the future and prevented any mishap on my part.” You peeked up from your position to see him standing with his back to you, head turned to the side. 

A few beats of silence passed before he said, “Your head is too high.”

“Huh?” You were thrown off. That was the last thing you expected him to say. “Wouldn’t my head not be high because I’m bowing?”

He was still assessing you from the corner of his eye, and you willed yourself to return his stare.

“Stay out of my way.”

“Then you should take your own advice,” you huffed, getting up from your bow. “Yesterday morning, I knew you were watching me at some point before you disappeared.” 

But he just turned his head back to the front and continued his intended course for the student council room.

Day 1 Results: he scared the daylights out of you instead of you trying to unnerve him.

---------

Day 2 of the Challenge.

What the hell did he mean by “your head is too high?” You still couldn’t decipher his cryptic line. Maybe he just said it to everyone, but that would be really corny of him; he wasn’t that type of person.

Did he think you were too much of a peasant to even talk to him?

You gritted your teeth. You weren’t gonna give up any time soon.

When everyone was dismissed after school, Hayama let you accompany him to Rakuzan’s spacious gym, under the belief that you were going to go home right after.

As soon as you were both in front of the bulky front doors, you marched right in, catching the blonde off guard so much at the fact that you waltzed in there (full knowing Akashi was in there). He couldn’t yank you out in time even with his lightning reflexes, and you skipped around, being careful to stay near the gym walls to not disrupt anyone. You plopped yourself on one of the further benches where you knew none of the players would ever sit, and as soon as you knew Akashi was in earshot (who was ignoring your existence), you smirked.

“Hey Kota!”

“Huh?” He looked up from rummaging through his duffel bag.

“I’ve heard shogi is being played a lot more by people our age for once, but don’t you think it’s such a dread to play such a dull hobby?”

“Yeah, righ—oh.” He swallowed back his answer in seeing Akashi behind you a few meters away, being as still as a statue.

You gleefully looked behind you, hoping for any entertaining response.

Without moving, he slinked his pupils to you before grabbing a water bottle and leaving.

“C-c-can you just drop this entire thing already?” Hayama runs to your side to give your shoulders a firm shake. “I swear to god, you’re not gonna live at this point!”

“You’re right,” you said. “Just for today, I’ll have to retreat before I’ll die.”

“Not just today!” He shook you harder. “I mean stop this for good!”

“Kota, I already signed a death certificate the moment I bumped into him yesterday. Might as well go all out.”

“Oh god, you started this yesterday?”

“Well, I gotta go! See you tomorrow!”

“... More like see you never.”

Day 2 Results: his reaction was inconclusive, but it was more of a failure than success.

---------

Day 3 of the Challenge.

You were pondering about how to annoy Akashi next, both excited and terrified about where this was going to end up.

“(l/n).”

“Y-yes?” You stood straight up from your seat the moment your homeroom teacher called you.

“During lunch, please make your way to the student council room. You’re needed.”

What in the world was going on? 

You fidgeted in your seat for the next few hours, shooting anxious glances at the clock every so often. All your classmates’ words of encouragement went through one ear and out the other.

“You’ll be fine!”

“I’m sure a teacher just wants you to help out with some workload…”

“We’re rooting for you!”

As the lunch bell rang, you braced yourself before you promptly made your way to the room that reeked of that particular chilled atmosphere that repelled most students away.

You prodded the door open, slipped in, and softly clicked the door shut before turning around to face the poker-faced terror sitting on his desk, watching your every move.

“Right on time.”

“You called me here?”

Akashi paid no heed to your outburst and continued. “I’ll admit. I’m quite interested in you. You have the innate sense of magnetism that draws others in.”

D-did he just compliment you?

“I would like to put your leadership to the test. You’re now vice.”

“What? You can’t just make a decision like that!”

“I ordered him to quit. There shouldn’t be a problem.”

What the hell?

What the hell, what the hell, what the hell—

Akashi looked at you like he was peering into the depths of your conscience and simply gave a civil smile.

“I hope you will contribute greatly to this school.”

Day 3 Result: a miserable failure.

---------

Day 4 of the Challenge.

You’re stressed, and it’s all Akashi’s fault.

Which made you even more determined to ruffle his feathers and rile him up.

When news broke out of your new “promotion” as vice president, your classmates celebrated for you and your already high popularity skyrocketed. Your teachers didn’t want to hear you talking about quitting when you “haven’t tried anything yet to know if this job was for you.”

The Rakuzan’s basketball starters (minus Mayazumi) were initially ecstatic for you as well… until you told them about Akashi’s string-pullings. 

“I’ll make sure Sei-chan won’t do anything, okay (y/n)-chan?”

“Thanks a bunch, Reo-kun… or should I say… Reokunma (Rilakkuma bear)?” You snapped your fingers at him. He just stared at you and patted your head, totally disregarding the fact that you made a pun.

“Just pack in the muscles and you’ll have nothing to worry about!” Nebuya flexed his biceps before getting a scolding from Reo.

“Shortie! Call me whenever you need help!” Hayama dropped his elbow on top of your shoulder to emphasize his point.

“Argh, Kotarō! You’re not that much taller than me at all!” You rolled your eyes. “If anyone, why don’t you say that to Akashi?”

“Say what.”

Oh fuck.

“S-Sei-chan!...” Reo walked over to Akashi. “If you’re here for us, I thought practice didn’t start until much later!”

“I am here for (y/n).” 

His irises contracted, highlighting his feline pupils. “I am depending on you as vice president to make this school an absolute powerhouse.” 

He still somehow made that sound extremely condescending, like a king encouraging a mere peasant. 

You were scared out of your wits, but you weren’t going to crumble so easily. Not until Akashi did first.

“Buh-bye, everyone! Good luck in practice later!”

. . . 

The walk back to the office was painfully silent. You decided to break it.

“I’m not taking back what I said, prez, you’re a shortie.”

He paused in his steps. “You run your mouth while knowing no bounds.”

“You’re just a spoilsport, y’know.”

“My orders are absolute.”

“You know, you’re scary as shit, but the whole ‘absolute’ line kinda grows old when I hear it every time I talk to you.”

Palpable silence blanketed between the two of you once again at your words.

This guy can’t even crack no matter what you do.

You stepped into the office and followed him to his desk. He walked to grab a pen from a drawer before he approached you.

He stepped forward, thrusted the sleek, black fountain pen to your face, and jerked back the writing instrument at the last millisecond. 

You froze, forgetting to breathe as you felt the pen nib harshly prodding the tip of your nose.

“Do not make me repeat myself. My orders are absolute.”

He then gave you some paperwork and assignments to complete like nothing ever transpired. 

Day 4 Results: you thought being relentless in your attacks would prove beneficial, but you’re starting to regret everything.

---------

Day 5 of the Challenge.

Maybe you needed to avoid direct confrontation, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t get a reaction from him in other ways.

One small perk of being vice was the fact that you no longer needed to tail around Akashi in order to bump into him “coincidentally,” but you’re not sure if this sole advantage could outweigh the disadvantages, particularly one that might result in your early death.

You’re frankly not as scared as you should be, even though you definitely were at those times you were with Akashi. If anything, it pissed you off that he’s always able to get you to jump out of your skin.

He’s just a 1st year. He’s just a 1st year.

You went to the student council room early to tape on a note to his desk, so there wouldn’t be a chance that it would “fall off his desk” and that “he didn’t see it.”

Roses are red,

I suppose you’re “absolute.”

You’ll still be knocked dead,

And there’ll be no dispute.

You snickered. It was too funny to pass up.

Before you left, you took the time to survey around and get a solid look at the office interiors for the first time (since Akashi’s presence made it impossible for anyone to not pay attention to him).

It was ridiculously tidy, all the wooden furniture polished to the point where their mahogany varnishes shined. Books were meticulously ordered by alphabetical order and genres, and they looked like they were all dusted at every free chance. The rugs showcased simple circles, but the minimalism of them added to the office’s air of crisp cleanliness. The gray curtains gently framed the wide window behind Akashi’s desk. But what really caught your eye was a board of shogi and its pieces tucked away in a corner on a high shelf.

Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to try knocking on Death’s door again.

. . . 

Akashi’s shoe clicked on the floor as he opened the door. His steps continued to echo throughout the small room as he walked to his desk to start his work, that is, until he saw your note.

“Oh?” A grin snaked its way onto his face by the time he read the last line.

He severely underestimated you. You unexpectedly had tenacity.

No one has ever defied him repeatedly so openly before.

His expression put the notorious Cheshire cat to shame, his ulterior smile occupying half his face as his eyes widened in excitement equivalent to a predator.

Feeling pumped for the first time in a while, he decided to expend his energy on shogi. He carefully brought down the board and placed it onto his desk, going through the familiar motions of unpacking and setting up a game, before he froze.

There were various pencil doodles on each shogi piece. All of them were variants of :/ and :). 

You were taking a jab at his personality as well as his mannerisms.

He barked an amused harsh laugh. 

. . . 

Day 5 Results: truth be told, you were too scared to see him face to face right after your double stunts; since you knew his schedules, you only came into the student council office when you knew he wasn’t inside.

---------

Day 6 of the Challenge.

Continuing to avoid him would already confirm to Akashi that you were actually shaken up by the high possibility of him retaliating, and you definitely weren’t about to give him the satisfaction. 

You went to class as always, and by break, you feigned innocence as you strolled into the council room, seeing Akashi leaning against the table.

“Good morning, Akashi.”

He nodded in acknowledgment before he gave a full, predatory smile, his pupils focused on you. 

“To continue to fuel diligent work, it’s beneficial to recognize one’s efforts by giving gifts.”

What? Was he not going to bring up what you did yesterday?

He pulled out a single red rose and gracefully tilted it for you to take. You warily plucked it out of his hand.

In a different context, it would’ve been sweet or even romantic, but you knew Akashi ticked a different tune.

“I do hope that you will continue to stay and become even more efficient with your work.”

You gazed at the rose at your hand, confused, as Akashi started walking back out, heading for the door.

You gasped.

“... Did you overhear our conversations the other day in the hallway?”

He chuckled. 

“I know the future, because I am absolute.”

“Bastard.” You clicked your tongue, turning to Akashi. “You knew the entire time?” 

“Shogi is easily applied to every aspect of life. Move the correct pieces and you will always win.”

You turned back around to avoid letting Akashi see you in an embarrassed state. He played you like an absolute fiddle. 

You scowled, and you were about to cross your arms in defiance until the sunlight from the window cascaded on something where your “note” used to be.

“Akashi, what’s that on your desk?” You tentatively walked up to the table to see a stainless glass vase with a single dark burgundy dahlia resting daintily against the inner rim.

His hand was on the doorknob before he turned back to face you.

“Dahliang,” his tone of voice light, almost mockingly saccharine. “Do be careful from now on.”

He left.

Day 6 Results: he completely destroyed you at your own game and sealed the final nail to your coffin with a pun.

---------

End Note: Black dahlias (which are actually dark burgundy in color) symbolize signs of warning, betrayal, and other negative emotions.

[linkspooky]

Ten Favorite Female Characters

I was tagged by @midnight-in-town​, so now I have to show them how much I love my favorite women. 

Name your favorite female characters from 10 different Fandoms and tag 10/or the amount you wish people

Tagging: @hamliet​ @amonmahboi​ @inumaqi​ @thyandrawrites​ @kaibutsushidousha​  @harostar​.. yeah, I don’t know ten people. 

Enoshima Junko 

“Hope is harmony. A just heart, moving toward the light. That is all. Despair is hope's polar opposite. It is messy and confusing. It swallows up love, hatred, and everything else.”

Junko wishes she was a psychopath. She’s spent her entire life pretending to be a crazy psychopath, because living that life is just so much more interesting than the one she’s stuck in. Enoshima Junko is just too smart for the world, and everything is too easy for her, and rather than try to dumb herself down a little bit she’s decided to knock everything else down. She’s a girl kicking down sandcastles because building them out of sand all alone is no longer doing it for her. 

Junko’s interesting because of the weird logic and loops she runs her brain into. There’s a complex character behind the whole “I exist only to spread despair” thing. She’s perfectly capable of forming emotional attachments to people, and genuinely caring. But the people she likes are generally far worse off than the ones she doesn’t care about. 

Junko wants so badly to, just not be human. She does the most inhuman things possible to prove that she’s not human. What really made me love her is the lengths she’s willing to go, to the point in Dangan Ronpa Zero where she basically took a screw to her own brain and started acting like a normal girl only when all of her memories were removed. 

Junkos relationship with Matsuda shows two conflicting sides of her character. How much she's humanized by her love of him,  and also how much she wants to completely destroy that part of herself. It's like she physically can't be a normal girl. Or rather she doesn’t want to be to such extremes she’ll break everything and then herself. 

And if she can’t be normal than Junko decided that self destruction is her next best bet. There’s just nothing that will satisfy Junko, and it’s interesting to watch someone that empty decide the world is going to end, or she’s going to end herself and she doesn’t really care which. 

Ajimu Najimi

“Call to me with affection, Anshin’in-san. Well, I don’t really care what manga characters call me.” 

Hey, I put Junko on this list twice. Both Ajimu and Junko live in a world that is too easy for them, and therefore they have no reason to get emotionally invested in others or try to attach themselves to anything. Which is why it’s fun to see Ajimu attempt the same thing as Junko to kill herself in style and eventually get saved from herself.

Medaka Box is such a meaningful manga to me because they take the weirdest characters and no matter how deranged they are they find the parts of them that are relatable and go, well guess what you’re human too. Ajimu literally calls herself a non-human and she’s just as human as all the rest in the end. 

The best part is it’s not her good points that make her human, it’s all her flaws. It’s easy to feel like the world isn’t real, that nothing in the world is worth living for, to feel no emotional attachment. Those are all human emotions. Not because they’re good and shining, but because they’re petty and terrible. Ajimu is this brilliant character, but she’s also kind of just a petty little girl using a ‘fiction is reality’ lens to cope. She’s not that special actually, she’s just suicidal, and kind of awful in general. It’s nice to see that human side behind the mastermind character. 

Azula

“My own mother thought I was a monster. She was right of course but it still hurts.” 

Azula is someone thoroughly dehumanized by everyone even the “good” members of her family (Uncle Iroh, Zuko, her Mother). I like how Azula in some part seems to be aware that both her brother, and mother seem to kind of consider her the “bad sibling” and she just decides to embrace it. Like it’s... not emotionally healthy in any way and it’s terribly tragic but there’s something about characters who actively make the decision to be a monster that gets me. 

There’s something about Azula’s writing that makes me uncomfortable, and it makes me sad that Zuko like... continually associates her with his father’s abuse, and demonizes her like she wasn’t also a kid going through the exact same situation, but Azula getting increasingly unstable is at least an appropriate response to that. 

Even if her brother, her mother, or her father won’t see her as her own person and they all see her as an extension of her father’s abuse on her, Azula is just so determined to be her own person even if it means burning the world, or herself A common theme I guess, but a lot of these characters have narratives about not being allowed to be their own person or shown any kind of humanity or normalcy. 

Morrigan

“Well, well, well what do we have here?”

Morrigan is mean, and nasty, and grumpy and bitchy and witchy. She’s allowed to be unlikable, because Morrigan never bends to anyone. Her survival, and freedom will become first before anything else. 

It feels like Morrigan is the main character in her own story, and you just happen to be a part of it for a short while. You may even be an important character to her, she may be attached, but ultimately you’ll never be more than support to her. 

Morrigan is such an ambitious an singular entity that her character development is letting you be a part of her life and not the other way around. She'll always survive on her own.  Morrigan is irrevocably shaped by her environemnt, and yet she craves freedom in that too because she doesn’t want to be bound by her past or shaped by her mother. So much of herself is dedicated to being better than the environment that she was raised in that she defeats her mother not by killing her, or freeing herself, but rather by being a better mother than her. 

Raven / Rachel Roth

“Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos...” 

Raven is fun, because a bunch of monks thought the best way to teach her to handle her emotions was to never allow her to feel any emotion ever. So, Raven is eternally running on a zero. She’s terrified even a small amount of happiness will end the world. She’s not allowed to be her own person, neither her bastard father, nor the monks treat her like one.

Raven is so gentle, and selfless, and emotionally perceptive and sensitive to others needs but she can’t ever display almost any of these good traits because she’s internalized the idea that she’s such a bad person. She always believes all the time that she exists to hurt others and that makes it so difficult for her to connect to others. 

Which is why her true friends bond with the Teen Titans is so meaningful, because Rachel found a family in spite of all of that. She has friends who think she’s a good person unconditionally despite the fact that Raven continually tells herself she isn’t. There are people in the world willing to navigate the maze of walls that Raven has built around herself, and that her environment forced her to build and closed up, and she’s so happy to have them. 

Midna

“Some call our realm a world of shadows, but that makes it sound so unpleasant... The twilight there holds a serene beauty... You have seen it yourself as the sun sets on this world. Bathed in that light, all the people were pure and gentle...” 

Midna just steals the show. Her story now. The game’s not called Legend of Zelda anymore now it’s Legend of Midna. Not only is she the most important character in the game she appears in, but she’s also in character someone so selfish she’ll always prioritize herself over everyone else. However, only because she feels that she can’t exist as anything other than the princess of the twilight and has to prioritize her survival for the sake of her people. Midna even says so at the start of the game, she can’t be kind because she wasn’t spoiled like princess Zelda in the bountiful kingdom of the light. 

Midna is so selfish and yet doesn’t really have her own wants and needs as a person outside of the role she has to play for her people, which is why she’s so terribly lost without it and just because this terrible selfish little gremlin. Link and Zelda affect Midna so much because they humanize her. They both sacrifice themselves to save Midna the person and she doesn’t get why. She doesn’t get why two people would help someone who has been so unkind to them and who has failed them this much so far. 

That act of selflessness moves her, and also freaks her out. She even says she didn’t want to be saved by either of them. Which is what makes her redemption in the second half of the game so interesting, because Midna really improves herself so she can become someone worth their kindness. She doesn’t want the selflessness of people like Zelda and Link to go to waste, and because of that begins to care about things outside of her kingdom and her role as princess 

Vriska Serket

“After all of this is over. Do you want to go on a d8?”

Unfortunately one of my top 3 favorite characters of all time comes from a really terrible source material. Vriska is everything I like in a character.  She's a mess. She's really hard to swallow. She's a character that's not meant to be liked.

Nobody really likes Vriska and it's all her fault for being such a horrible person, nobody wants her damage. Which is so interesting because usually main characters get forgiven over and over again. Everyone leaves and if they don't Vriska will burn those bridges herself. No character better embodies what it's like to be stuck in a self harming cycle

Authors are always so obsessed with making characters look good or showing what a good person they are few characters are allowed to be just plain unlikely in ugly ways. It’s what lets Vriskas genuine desire to be better actually seem like a struggle. 

Kocho Shinobu

“Are you angry? Yes, I’m angry Tanjiro. I’ve always been angry.” 

Shinobu is just all pleasantries on the surface, but so full of negative emotions in ways women aren't allowed to be. I love the medicine / poison dynamic to her character and how it rots her to the core. Too much medicine is a poison, while poison can be a medicine when applied to the right situation.

Shinobu is, two faced. She’s beautiful and kind, and full of ugly emotions and empty. She nurses people back from the dead, she sees no point in living herself and purposefully throws herself into a suicide in her plan against Doma. There’s just such a destructive dance between extremes for her because Shinobu is such a unique individual, trying to deal with all of these emotions she just can’t deal with. She can’t be noble, or better than her trauma, she just pretends to be a good person while she slowly rots away inside.  

Shinobu can put on smiles all day -

But she can't be like her sister.  She can't love people like her sister can. Maybe she could once but all that's left now is anger. Bitter, unpleasant, and completely in denial of it and still masquerading as a good person. The most beautiful kind of poison of all.

She’s not her sister, but she’s also not really her own person. She doesn’t know who Shinobu is, doesn’t know who Kocho Shinobu lives for. She just doesn’t imagine herself living past her revenge, and even though she’s surrounded by love she’s just so cracked it all pours out of her and absolutely nothing could be worth prolonging her life after everything she’s lost. 

Toga Himiko

“What exactly is a normal life? I also live a normal life, you know.” 

Himiko Toga is a girl who lives entirely on her own terms. Which is just so rare for a female character, you know? It’s so genuinely subversive to know that Himiko was once a nice girl, who always smiled, always put other people’s feelings first, and that sort of ‘good girl’ behavior drove her completely insane.

Toga deciding to be true to herself is an act of rebellion against the world. 

For Himiko everything is flipped. What others regard as psycho behavior is her normal. She doesn’t let other people define her story as a tragedy, and even murders the one person who tries to control her story. In a story where female characters constantly downplay their own importance to support the male characters Himiko is the only character important enough to be the center of her own story. Himiko’s story is so subversive as well, both of how society treats her, and how the story treats characters like her. 

Himiko is such an excellent yandere, all yanderes wish they were himiko. She comes off as this batshit stabby girl,  but then you find out that shes actually emotionally perceptive. She first comes off selfish, bratty, and self-centered but she turns into one of the most sensitive characters in the manga. She eschews the ideals of being a good girl that was forced down her throat, but that doesn’t mean she’s not empathic, or that she’s not capable of goodness. She’s good to twice. She’s good to the people who accept her. 

Himiko no matter what will always be a deviant. Always be an outsider. Instead of trying to make room for her her parents forced her to lie and wear a mask until her identity became completely shattered. I like Toga because under the knife wielding psycho she's a normal girl. Then under that normal girl there’s also a knife wielding psycho ready to fight back, and both of them are the real her. 

Ihei Hairu

“I saw the reaper, he was very beautiful.” 

Every character from the garden is just fundamentally broken.  Hairu and Rize are interesting foils, because if you think of about it a loveless childhood turned them both into ruthless killers. It’s just they decided to live for different things, Rize lived rejecting love and Hairu lived chasing after love. However, fundamentally they are the same. They are children starved for any kind of love or nurturing.  Hairu is so desperate she devotes her entire life to the first person who acknowledged her. However, the same sort of desperation to live, that tragic need to make the most out of the few short years they have exists in all garden children.

Hairu wants so badly to be a person, but she’s not a person. She’s half ghoul. 

There's just something about a girl who was never meant to be born and never meant to live, still trying.  There's a dark side to her character, she's violent and inhuman exactly like the environment she was raised in but she was also still a child at heart seeking love.

Which is why though her narrative is a thoroughly unhappy one, it does make me happy that there was someone who loved her in the form of Koori Ui. There is someone who wanted her to live longer. Her life was short, but she did live, and it’s that struggle to connect to others that made her truly alive. 

[olderthannetfic]

It’s International Fanworks Day and also the 30th and final post in this series. If you follow my tumblr, you know that my true fandom isn’t buddy cops or Highlander or any of those things. No, my true fandom is...

WANK

No matter which bitchy piece of fujo-course nonsense you’re looking at on tumblr, no matter which debate about WNGWJLEO or women in slash or fanfiction vs. media you're reblogging, your grandma was having that fight in a zine somewhere in 1985 and at Escapade in the 90s.

Here’s a vid review from 2002:

"History Repeating," [...] was an Amanda vid. In-fucking-credible. Who knew? Who knew I could like Amanda? Who knew there were fresh HL clips I hadn't seen a thousand times before in HL vids? (Of course, as someone pointed out, she had her own spin-off.) This rocked--sharp, fast cutting and pretty, pretty shots, with a hot bisexy vibe running through it. And, you know, people like to say that there's all this self-hating misogyny in fans--you know, that women hate shows about women, hate women characters breaking up the OTP, etc. But when you see a femme-centric vid like this bring down the house, you really have to wonder. Is it misogyny, really, or is just that we usually see a bunch of crap representations of women in media and resist them?

So on the theme of There Is Nothing New Under The Sun, here is a selection of past Escapade panels on gender, representation, and problematicness:

1993 - Anti-Feminism in Slash Fandom (Or, how 'it was never this good with a woman' syndrome... where are the women, and why do we care?)

1995 - Why Lesbians Read Slash - (What's the attraction? Why do they care? Why do they write it?)

1996 - Character Bisexuality: Convenient fiction or character trait? (Is this a good compromise between "We're not gay, we just love each other" and "I was gay all along and just faking it with women"? Or is this too easy? Special mention for the stereotypical bisexual villian who's evil, sexy, and can come on to everyone.)

1996 - Female Heroes: Female Empowerment, or male power in women's bodies? (Give a woman a gun and make her really tough. Wow, cool! yes, or no? Are we celebrating women, or are we merely putting breasts on male action heroes? Heroines under discussion may include (but not be limited to) Sara Connor, Ripley, Vasquez, Thelma & Louise.)

1997 - Gender Astigmatism (The Gender Continuum: in what we read, in what we write, and what we are, there is always a connection with a point on the gender continuum. How do our definitions of "feminine" and "masculine" influence our creativity? Where do bisexual characters fit in? (besides there, you dirty-minded person!)

1998 - Xena: Does Girl-Slash Get Us Going? (Xena is the first show with a feminine couple to be really popular. What kind of slash fans are interested? Does gender orientation matter? Or do slash fans love slashy couples regardless of their gender? Can m/m fans be 'converted' to f/f fans?)

1998 - Bastards & the Women Who Love Them (When Methos says, "you live to serve me," any normal '90s woman says, "I don't think so!... or does she? A happy contemplation on the virtues of handsome thugs.)

1998 - Slash: a Continuation of Women's Writing, led by Constance Penley (In case you didn't know, in her recent book NASA/TREK (yes, the slash is intentional), she addressed slash as a continuum of women's writing, combining women's romance, and the male quest romance. Join her for a discussion of slash -- where it was, where it is, where it might be going.)

1998 - The Trauma of Slash Fans in Het Fandoms (Or, what to do when find women doing all that cool, tough-guy stuff you love.)

1999 - Male Slash Fans - Welcome Voice, or Infringement? (Slash is written by women for women — or is it? The Internet has attracted new fans, including the "male slash fan". Who is he? What does he think of what "we" do? Do we care?)

2002 - Femslash (General discussion on female/female slash fiction. If Buffy wanted something cold and hard between her legs, why didn't she just choose silicon?)

2003 - Slash: Feminist political act or really good porn?

2005 - Where have all the lesbians gone? (When some slash lists explicitly state m/m only, where do you go for femslash? Are there any hot femslash couples? Pimp your femslash fandom here, or bemoan the lack of strung female characters in the current conservative social climate.)

2007 - Femslash: The Other Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name (Femslash. It's a work that makes some of our hearts leap for joy and inspires complete and total disinterset—or even dislike and disdain—in others. Where can we find the good stuff? What makes it good? And what's up with the haters?)

2007 - SGA: The Women of Atlantis (What do we like about how the women of SGA are written and portrayed, and what makes us wince? What do we think about how their issues are being woven into the show's narrative?)

2008 - Gay is Not Slash (...even though slash is sometimes gay. The current argument about m/m romances by women as taking recognition *away* from male gay writers, depends on m/m writing being intended as gay lit. And slash, for one, isn't, even if there can be overlap. What overlaps? What doesn't? What examples do fans like?

2009 - Female Character Stories: Halfamoon, Full Moon or Just Moony (F/f slash, and other stories centered on female characters, are gaining visibility in fandom. Are there things fens will write about women that we won't about men? (Given MPreg, *are* there?) Should f/f be like m/m, or is it unavoidably different?)

2011 - My ***** is Not Ideologically Driven, But is it Homophobic (Slash fandom often sees itself as a mostly liberal community. IDIC, right? But recently there's been a slash backlash: it's anti-feminist, a 'symptom' of internalized misogyny. We're 'erasing' the women characters after all. Is slash homophobic? Does slash fandom appropriate gay culture? Is it awesome and ennobling as it makes us happy in our panties, or is all that self-hatred bubbling just beneath the surface of our porn?)

2012 - Natural Woman (We've lamented the lack of strong, believable female characters (who dress appropriately). But now we have them: Gemma Teller and Audrey Parker; Salt and Haywire; we've got Bechdel-passing women who look like they can throw a punch. Still, most of them are in the sci-fi or action genre, so are we really seeing progress? And what are we doing with them, as fans?)

2012 - Don't Call It a Bromance (It's Just Canon) (TPTB are increasingly aware of slash, and bromance is regular fare on TV canon these days. Does overt bromance make the fic and art hotter or just vanilla? Is there an anti-slash backlash in our shows? Is the emphasis on men's relationships making women disappear? Inquiring minds want to know. If you have answers, theories, or just want to squee, join in the fun!)

2014 - (The End of?) Ladybashing in Slashfic (Slashfic used to regularly feature bashing of female characters. Now, blatant bashing seems less fashionable. If you recognize this trend, let's talk! Were most ladybashing fics ones for juggernaut pairings in megafandoms, or were they everywhere? What's causing the change: more women in leading roles/ensemble casts, fic writers being more conscious to avoid bashing ladies even if they're not their favorites, more willingness to blame show writers' bad writing (instead of the character being just bad/evil/stupid) for bad female characters, or something else entirely?)

2015 - Fifty Shades of Fandom (Fifty Shades of Grey has become the representation of fan fiction in mainstream culture. It’s bad fan fiction, and it’s being used to ridicule women while making millions off women readers and viewers. Can we connect with these women: proto-fans who would love to read, and maybe write, great fan fiction if they found it? Can we use the FSoG phenomenon to expand our community? Does keeping our doors closed and our mouths shut perpetuate both monetization of our fan culture and misogynist scorn?)

2016 - Who Are We? (How do we define ourselves in this age of so many OT3s and team orgy pairings? Does m/m/f count as "slash"? Is slash-only space slipping away? (And would that be bad?) Do m/m and f/f belong together more than they do with m/f? Is "Media Fandom" a valid term any longer? Who are we if we start shipping het?)

2016 - Ladies Loving Ladies. (There would seem to be enough queer women in fandom to write/want more f/f. Do lesbians write f/f, m/m? Both? Do straight women? Or are we still missing the iconic female characters and relationships that create a great slash fandom? Did they figure out the answer to this question at TGIF/F and if so, what is it?)

2016 - By Us For Us (Fic, even kinky slash, is practically mainstream these days. The ebook revolution puts publishing within reach of almost anyone. Sundance hits have been filmed on iPhones. So why aren't fangirls making more media? Or is it happening right under our noses? Is this a place where our women's gift economy does our community a disservice? Discuss what's out there, what we'd like to see, and what's holding us back.)

2017 - LGBTQIA+ in Slash Fandom (Queer fans have always been here. In a subculture often defined as "for" straight women, what do we as fans have to say about non-straight, non-cis, and non-conventional sexuality and gender in fanfiction, in fandom, and in the larger culture?)

2018 - Confronting the Tensions Between Slash and Queer Representation (Slash fandom thrives on homoerotic subtext. Many queer fans are unwilling to settle for this quasi-representation. Part of every slash fandom seems loudly invested in their ship becoming canon. Some are queer fans who want actual textual representation in their favorite shows, and some are fans using queer politics to fight ship wars. Then the “slash is not activism” posts make the rounds. Is slash activism? Is advocating for slash ships in canon the same thing as advocating for queer representation?)

2018 - Representing Slashers (What does "representation" in the media mean to us? We know what more gay or POC representation means, but what about slash fandom, which is largely female and focused on bodies that don't resemble our own? Would better female characters in media better represent us? Or male characters written for a female audience? Come talk about the intersection of slash, personal identity, and media representation.)

2018 - Anonymity in Slash Fandom: Choosing to Hide (Why do the majority of slash fans hide their hobby? Is it fear of blackmail? Embarrassment? Fear of losing employment? How does this affect your happiness? How does this affect your security? What would an ideal world look like? Who would/have you told about your interest in slash? Who would you never, ever, tell?)

2019 - Fandom Post-Slash? (In an era of "ships" and #pairing #tags on Tumblr and AO3, has the "slash" label lost its meaning? Same-gender pairings are as popular as ever and fans still ID pairings with a virgule between the names, but how many fans still call m/m and f/f slash or femslash? How many fans identify as "slashers?" Het and slash were opposing binaries which few fans crossed. Are these barriers breaking down? What purpose has the term "slash" served? Has fandom moved

past it and, if so, what does that mean?)

[aetherbunny]

Here we go. Olympic AU stuff

This is stuff that was developed to potentially make it into the fic, that was cut out of the fic or I needed to develop it in order to write something that DID make it in lol. The fic itself is here, just in case you’re seeing this post first...

Minor characters cut from the story were Gabe’s Olympic roommate Alexander “Sandy” who was a bit of a weirdo and followed Gabe around making it hard for him to spend time with Prince.

Uriel is barely mentioned as the fencer Gabe knows and not by name. She models to better fund her fencing, and Gabe has been in front of the camera a few times himself. they met that way. She was going to be Fish’s original target until Gabe introduced her to Mikey.

The Mikey and Fish bits were unfortunately cut. I could not decide what I wanted Mikey to be like and she was really inconsistent in her characterization. So to keep her well done I had to keep her short.

Lyle (Ligur) is the the member of the Judo team FIsh references. Harry (Hastur) runs the marathon. They’ve been together one way or another for as long as anybody can remember. 

ON to the childhoods, they were developed slightly, because maybe there would have been calls home or mentions of family... going to put this under the cut because it’s so much...

Dorothy “Fish” Fischer, was an only child for a while and then wound up with a younger step-brother. Other than that she had a remarkably average childhood. She realized she was a lesbian pretty early on and so did her parents quite frankly. No real issue when she finally came out.  She’s known Prince since they were in high school. They were low key bad girls, skipping classes, smoking under the bleachers, the occasional fight. Ya know. Her mom had a problem with that, and made her pick an extracurricular to take up some of her time She picked swimming and the rest was history.

Elizabeth Prince is second last in a family of 7 kids. I was actually “challenged” to make up her whole family. My pre- reader called my bluff on something, and I had to. More on all of the Princes later.

Ezra Fell had a nice peaceful childhood! He’s an only child and his parents love him very much! His mom is a seamstress and his dad does woodworking. They participate in a lot of historical re-enacting events and make props and costumes for the local theater! Mr. Fell used to weight lift when he was younger and Ezra thought he’d give it a try. For the time being he still lives with them and will still do historical re-enactments! Adam and Them live near the Fell’s and occasionally show up to the historical things and ask increasingly silly questions about whatever is going on. The organizers have little patience for it but the Fell’s like the kids and keep them out of everyone else’s hair.

Anathema has a gigantic extended family. Some of them are, uh, in a mostly harmless, self contained cult? Agnes did still write that book after all but none of it is actually coming true. Her immediate family knows a lot about the “cult” but doesn’t participate. Her family is also still incredibly rich, due to some excellent investing choices. Her parents are lovely, attractive people who dote on their daughter. Anathema is also the only one of the gang competing for a country they don’t live in (full time)! Adria has dual citizenship in Puerto Rico/US so I can imagine Anathema does too. With that she chooses to compete for Puerto Rico (after qualifying of course).

Newt is very much the same. He lives with his mom, his dad was just never in the picture, but the two of them are perfectly happy. Ms. P is a grade school teacher, and the kids and parents love her. After Newt met Crowley she might as well have had a second son, and she’s perfectly happy with that.

Crowley had a pretty bad childhood. His mom died when he was very young and his dad was a piece of shit and left him to fend for himself most of the time. He became very resourceful even if it involved petty theft. He saved Newt from getting beat up (by getting beat up himself) and then they became nearly inseparable. Crowley just calls Ms. P mom, since she basically was.

If Crowley couldn’t be with the Pulsifer’s for whatever reason he was with “Auntie Tracy” or Shadwell. They broke up the fight that introduced Newt and Crowley.

Auntie Tracy is pretty much exactly her book counterpart. When she was “Busy” Crowley would go across the hall with Shadwell who only pretended to dislike him. Shadwell would never tell him but he actually knew Crowley Sr. and thought he was an asshole and it was no surprise he didn’t care about his kid. So Shadwell “begrudgingly” taught Crowley things he’d need to get by.

Both Crowley’s surrogate families knew about each other, and Mom and Auntie had a sit down about everything and worked it all out.

Crowley moved out of his house as soon as he could and moved into the apartment building with Shadwell and Tracy. The Dowlings also live in the apartment block. They’re ex-pats who moved for Mr. Dowling’s job. They’re not bad parents per-se but they could be a lot better. Their son Warlock has taken a shine to Crowley and hangs out with him sometimes. Crowley knows what it’s like to be a kid uncomfortable in his own home so he lets Warlock in whenever.

Crowley works as a mechanic when not diving, he has a pet ball python named Eden he spoils, and he’s obsessed with astronomy. He loves  kids and happily volunteers for things at the school when they don’t have enough parents. He’s ambivalent about his gender and sexuality.

Gabriel Herald also had an unfortunate childhood. His dad was in the military and had every hope his son would follow in his footsteps. Gabe, and his mom were not so keen. Gabe was a gentle affectionate kid and she knew that did not make her husband happy. Mr. Herald was a short tempered, verbally abusive man and took most of it out on his wife. Mrs. Herald was a kind woman who loved her son and did everything she could to make sure he never got the brunt of his father’s temper. They moved to the UK when Gabe was young and lived off base.

However it happened they met the Fell’s and spent a lot of time there. Ezra was too young to know what was going on and Gabe never said, but the adults were well aware. The Fells gently talked Mrs. Herald into considering divorce or at the very very least therapy for everybody. Luckily she took their advice to heart. They moved back to the states before the Fell’s knew what happened.

She did get her and Gabe some therapy and was eventually able to divorce her husband. Gabe met Michelle, who was in the US with her military family, at a catholic high school. She had a fairly normal childhood with no huge tragedies. She and Gabe actually dated for just a little while before she realized she wasn’t into men. They proceeded to fake date the rest of high school so the faculty wouldn’t catch wise. Her family took a little adjusting when she came out but accepted it in the end. Gabe and Mikey have been close friends ever since.

Gabe got into boxing right about the time of his parents divorce. His therapist suggested some kind of physical activity and teenage Gabriel wanted to be able to protect his mom in the event his dad got physical…

Mrs. Herald eventually remarried a very kind man who loves her (and Gabe) very much. And Gabe couldn’t be happier. None of them are in contact with Mr. Herald any more.

There was going to be a little scene where Gabe calls home to talk to his mom. Because he’s a mamma’s boy if that wasn’t obvious lol.

Now, for the entire Prince family…I was “required” to give them all names…

Martha and David Prince are now retired and have been for a while. David was a postal carrier, Martha worked at a nursing home. They never pushed their kids to do anything, just supported what they enjoyed. They have no idea how ALL their kids wound up so successful and even with all their love and support they’re overwhelmingly serious and introverted. They’re slightly relieved their youngest is happy to be “something boring.”

Arthur has numerous paintings hanging in fine art museums. He lives on a little farm and cares for his animals in between paintings.

Katherine (Kath) is a sought after architect with her own firm. She’s the second most athletic, keeping in good shape and occasionally running marathons.

William (Will) is a heart surgeon, Martha and David live in his detached cottage.

Charles (Chuck only to his family) Is a property lawyer, and relatively laid back compared to his older siblings. He’s more introverted than serious.

Benjamin (Ben/Benny) is quite friendly and outgoing compared to his siblings. He’s a violin virtuoso and has played around the world.

Elizabeth (Lizzy ONLY to Eleanor) is a world champion archer several times over, and has multiple Olympic gold medals. She teaches lessons but her teaching style drives all but the most dedicated away. She’s not cruel or aggressive, she’s just incredibly blunt.

Eleanor (Nora) is the most bubbly and outgoing of the family. She’s in school getting her higher mathematics degree and will likely become an accountant. She and “Lizzy” are especially close. There was going to be an ongoing text conversation between the two.  Nora is also pretty good friends with Fish.

Katherine, William, and Charles are married with kids. Elizabeth and Gabriel get married a few years into their relationship. Ben is in a long term relationship, but neither of them are in a hurry to get married. Arthur and Nora are single. Arthur has no desire to marry and Nora is just too busy with school to devote time to dating.

Also I know this is in the back of some of your minds, the medal breakdown!

Fish and Newt take bronze

Crowley, Gabe and Anathema get silvers

Ezra and Prince take Gold, Ezra nearly breaking a world record for his lift!

and sadly the UK women’s volleyball team does not medal at all.

[storyunrelated]

Candidate for Completion - Run For It!

Run For It!

After all, the next best thing after actually being able to stand outside in the glorious sunshine is being able to gaze longingly out of the window at someone else who is. Yes? 

Yes.

WHAT

Up! Up! Always up! Never slowing for an instant!

Up! Up! Always up! Never again to befoul our eyes with the sight of what we left behind us!

Yesterday is dust! Tomorrow, the heavens!

Always up!

It is the future. Things are better now than they were because it is the future and in the future things are better.

There is a city. There may be other cities but they do not matter.

In this city life is perfect. All is provided. The city is vast. All anyone might ever want or need is held within. Without? Unimportant. The walls protect those who live in the city from the dangerous world beyond, keeping at bay the storms, the blizzards and those disgusting people who live just outside.

In the city there is an event. It is called the Run. It is meant to happen annually but the list of those who put into the Run (known as ‘Entrants’ while participating, ‘Participents’ once they’ve died and ‘The Winner’ if they’re the winner) is put together by a machine no-one understands, so it happens somewhat randomly.

The list of Entrants is thousands long.

The Run is a series of events wherein which the list of Entrants is whittled down. These events take many forms. All are lethal. All are recorded, broadcast and viewed. Events continue until there is a winner. Then the Run stops.

Then everyone forgets about it and moves onto whatever they can find to entertain them next.

And then it happens again.

And so it was.

WHO

We mean well, we’re just not heavily invested in the results. That’s all.

Originally, in my old version of this before it became longer, all of the characters were deliberately nameless. In this longer version this is not the case, and the idea is for the story - such as it is, being made up of lots of little bits - to be full of characters with odd, random names who are developed enough so that when they die (and they WILL die) it matters just that little bit more. And so it was.

In this the only two that really stick out for me in my mind are an old married couple who inexplicably make it right through all the way to the end and a grandfather and granddaughter who both got entered together, the grandfather making it his mission to ensure his granddaughter gets through alive.

Just so he can fail, obviously.

WHERE

“And here’s one of the Entrants now! So, you’re one event in - how are you feeling?”

The Entrant - a young woman - was wide-eyed, rocking backwards and forwards while staring at nothing, trembling like a leaf. She still had a little dried blood on her face that the hoses hadn’t managed to get off, but it didn’t look like it belonged to her, so it was probably fine.

“I have to go home,” the Entrant muttered, not having heard the question at all. “I have to go home I have to go home. If I win I can go home. If I win I can go home. I just have to win. I win I can go home. And so it was and so it was and so it was and so it was and so it was and so-”

She trailed off, but they’d heard enough.

Always good to see such enthusiasm and positivity at so early a stage.

So where exactly is this story supposed to go?

It actually does - in my head at least - have a beginning, a middle and an end. The beginning consists of some fairly slower bits that exist to convey the mood and function of the world, show the Run being setup, show some of the characters getting puled int.

The middle consists of the events, at which point the bodycount really kicks in.

The end consists of none of it having mattered at all. And so it was.

Bits and pieces of it are done (as evidenced by these quotes) it’s just a case of doing enough to give it structure, seeing what holes remain and then filling those up. Then standing back to, uh, admire the results?

WHY

“You’re a person until it no longer benefits us to consider you as such, at which point you are a problem. Problems are solved, at which point they are forgotten about. At which point we are all much happier.” 

Run For It! exists primarily as a vehicle for me to meditate on and articulate my disgust and contempt for the human race.

In it, people are at best a very basic level of benign and what benevolence does exist is completely smothered by a world run by the greedy on a foundation of the indolent. Most people are lazy, and most others exploit this laziness because exploiting it is easy and rewarding.

The suffering of those Entrants involved in the Run - the Entrants people are watching die - is not especially moving, not unless they’re someone personally connected to the viewer, at which point is becomes important. Otherwise it is not important. No-one cares anyway.

All problems are someone else’s problems and, besides, this is the future so, hey, all those nasty problems are in the past anyway. Things are perfect now and things are the way they are because they are the way they are because they are the way they are. Nothing should change, nothing can change.

The Run doesn’t happen for a reason. It’s not a show put on by the Powers That Be to keep the population distracted from their flagrant corruption - the population are aware of it and are also aware that it’s just the way things are.

The Run doesn’t happen to keep the population cowed or scared - the population doesn’t really care what happens to it, or at least doesn’t care as long as it isn’t happening to them directly.

The Run isn’t some futuristic attempt at poulation control or anything like that. The city continues to rapaciously consume what remains of the planet much like it always has. It doesn’t care.

The Run happens because the Run happens because the Run happens. One time they tried to stop it and people got upset. Because if the Run didn’t happen then it didn’t happen, and that can’t happen because the Run happens.

And so it was.

WELL

Willard did his best to try and disengage and open up his harness, to get out, but his harness had not been designed to do this, and so Willard got and went nowhere. That his efforts became increasingly frantic the closer the flames crept did not help him.

“Let me out,” he said to himself, fingers trying to twist a catch that had been welded shut, fingers cutting themselves when the catch abjectly refused to budge. “Let me out let me out letmeoutletmeoutletmeOUTLETMEOUT!”

I’m not the best judge of these sorts of things but even by my standards I kind of get the feeling that Run For It! isn’t exactly a story to fill people with sunshine and enthusiasm.

Given that the story includes:

 - Cannibalism.  - Weeping teenagers having to hack the heads off their significant others with machetes.  - An ad-emblazoned robot breaking every bone in someone’s body because they asked if they could go to the toilet.  - A man being unable to escape from a burning car because the safety harness is welded shut.  - People being shot in the face.  - Viewers gaining sexual gratification from watching the suffering of strangers.  - A machine that calculates how long the dying will take to die in a hospital so they can be thrown into the gutter and the family charged for whatever time they would have taken up otherwise.  - A man using a very expensive drone to fire very expensive missiles at people who have done nothing wrong and feeling a delicious thrill as he watches them get blown to bits.  - A lot of crying.  - People wetting themselves in terror/because they’re so engrossed by watching strangers suffer they forget to go to the toilet and end up just licking the screen and sitting in their own sodden underpants.  - A man mastubrating while being watched by the corpses of people he just had shot but finding it doesn’t make him as happy as it normally does.

I’m struggling to think of who the audience might be.

Other than, you know, me.

So this one is kind of a pet project more than anything else, really. Oh well.

And so it was.

[pestcontrolorlando]

Nuisance Control Insecticide Exposure

In light of the ever expanding "compound awareness" in Lancaster, PA, I chose to perform increasingly more of my administrations from the outside of homes and organizations. "Is this supported?", one may inquire. Before I answer that question, I'd prefer to address something that worries me much more: property holder elimination.

If its all the same to you, I'd prefer to get straight to the point here. Most people know the EPA directs which items can be "splashed", "hazed", or "tidied" inside an involved structure. What's more, as one may expect, that doesn't mean the items are being utilized by mark particulars, so client blunder can make pointless presentation issues. As an expert, I have seen substantially more poisonousness issues with individuals who have bother issues before I ever show up on the scene. Presently, I need to grant them for their courage as they use jars of void bug shower, "homeopathic methods, for example, red pepper, moth balls, biting gum, and so on (and I've seen it!). Yet, I truly get concerned when I see that in their enthusiasm, they have presented their family to pointless degrees of bug sprays or other family unit items that aren't even labled for bugs (or rodents).

OK, since I have gotten that out my framework, we should discuss proficient nuisance control. There has been a genuine pivot in the previous 15 years in proficient irritation control that has made us be increasingly dependable and progressively intense with our medicines. A model would be what we call IPM (Integrated Pest Management). "What's that?", you inquire. Try not to feel awful, there is some irritation control folks who don't know either. IPM is the specialty of utilizing a blend of procedures to wipe out vermin without utilizing pesticides only. A model would be this: Say we have a rodent pervasion at a dumpster close to our preferred café. Rather than tossing lure all around the dumpster outside, IPM would disclose to us that we should move the dumpster away from the structure, presenting the rodents to normal predators. At that point, request that the café proprietor have his/her workers lock the entryways shut on the dumpster aside from when it is being utilized (sanitation). At that point, and at exactly that point should a protected rodent lure station be utilized next to the dumpster, and observed routinely. Click here to read more Termite Treatment Orlando

Notwithstanding IPM, the greater part of our pesticides are being defined to have for all intents and purposes no scent and make lower dangers of introduction. A model would be miniaturized scale embodiment, a technique whereby the dynamic bug spray has a silicone "bubble" around it to diminish separate from light and dampness. Additionally, there have been a few items have been accessible over-the-counter for pets that are know being utilized in proficient irritation control items. I realize it doesn't bode well, yet general society can utilize a focus on their canine, yet can't buy a similar dynamic fixing to be utilized multiple times more vulnerable on their termites (mortgage holders don't have the hardware to utilize the item at any rate, so don't get energized). I notice this just to demonstrate that the irritation control items we use are typically more secure than most the stuff you have under the kitchen sink. What makes us so extraordinary at that point? Preparing. Also, we in the bug control industry aren't eager to lose our permit over mis-application.

Let me utilize a case of an issue with community to proficient vermin items: Before the EPA took Chlordane off the market in the 1980's, it was accessible over-the-counter, in concentrate. That implies that anybody approached a substance that was dynamic in the dirt for a long time at the weakened rate! I have met individuals who gladly flaunted slaughtering a Carpenter Ant home in their terrace tree stump by pouring Chlordane focus legitimately on the province. While this likely doesn't mean anything to the normal individual, somebody acquainted with the nuisance control industry is recoiling directly about now- - this implies potential ground sullying for quite a long time, killing anything from valuable creepy crawlies to fish in close by streams! The EPA likely made the best decision, accepting that on the off chance that they made it limited use (for business utilize just) a bootleg market would be made since nobody could envision existence without Chlordane, particularly for termite issues. I point here is that poisonousness has consistently been a lot higher with open utilization, in any event, when the items were considerably more risky.

On the off chance that you are worried about pesticide presentation, it would be ideal if you recollect that you will probably require bug control eventually, and on the off chance that you are thinking about handling an irritation issue yourself, if it's not too much trouble recall the threats to introduction of poisons are a lot more prominent when you do-it-without anyone's help. Irritation control administrators don't generally fall prey to the idea "On the off chance that a little works great, at that point a ton will work extraordinary!" Actually, we know better. Also, we need to remember concoction expenses and keeping clients!

I began by posing the inquiry, "Am I supported by rewarding the border of a home more frequently than rewarding within?" I accept that it is more for cognizant purpose, since bug control professionals experience the ill effects of two significant catastrophes: auto crashes and stepping stool mishaps. In all honesty, synthetic harmfulness plays almost no issues with bug control work force. The greater part of that is because of preparing in item dealing with, transportation, and application. However, because of market patterns, I trust it is ideal to tune in to your clients. Furthermore, it can't damage to invest more energy keeping vermin from entering from the outside of homes and organizations, before they get in where they become an issue and wellbeing hazard. This leads me to my next point: most don't have the foggiest idea about the risks of not having nuisance control! While most consider bother control as an extravagance administration, history is loaded with times that bug control was or could have been the appropriate response. Let me give a few models: The "Dark Death" or Bubonic plague that murdered 33% of Europe in the late 1340s could have been forestalled or dispensed with by bug control. Rats conveying the plague pervaded insects moved them all finished, permitting them to bounce off and chomp people. Today, most don't endure rodents, and that is because of the nuisance control industry increasing the expectations.

Another case of vermin control that really tackled a significant issue occurred during the development of the Panama Canal. Jungle fever and Yellow Fever were transmitted by a substantial mosquito populace and executed numerous specialists. It wasn't until they utilized mechanical methods (nets, standing water disposal) and the utilization of bug sprays, that they picked up control and had the option to complete the waterway.

In light of pesticide presentation, kindly don't hazard doing-it-without anyone else's help on the off chance that it implies trading off your family's wellbeing. Also, a large portion of us in the bug control industry have your wellbeing as a main priority - keeping the bugs out, and guarding you!

[positivetransmessages]

Beauty Brands Want to Sell Queer Expression, But It Shouldn’t Be for Sale

Writer Riley R.L. on the risks that come with cosmetics brands capitalizing on queer narratives.

Riley R.L

In this op-ed, nonbinary writer Riley R.L. shares the impact of makeup on their identity, and the risks that come with cosmetic brands capitalizing on queer narratives.

October 21, 2019

“They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” Lady Gaga declares in the launch video for her new makeup line. “But at Haus Laboratories, we say beauty’s how you see yourself.” The video features Gaga surrounded by a racially diverse, gender nonconforming group of models showing off glittery eye makeup and bold lip colors. Its message is about freedom, specifically the freedom to express your identity however you want to. “We want you to love yourself,” Gaga concludes, and she’s got just the thing to help us do it: For $49, you can get a trio of lip products in a variety of color combos, which the brand’s website calls “tools of self-expression and reinvention.”

The Haus Laboratories launch is just one of many examples of how the cosmetics industry has been using identity narratives to market their ads with LGBTQ consumers in mind. Through pride campaigns and inclusive marketing, brands like Morphe, Milk Makeup, and M.A.C are trying to push the cultural conversation around makeup forward by bringing queer, trans, and gender nonconforming faces to the forefront, apparently as a way to help normalize the varying expressions of our community.

This mirrors a larger shift in the beauty space. LGBTQ creators like Gigi Gorgeous, Jeffree Star, and Nikita Dragun have gained huge audiences online and created successful product collaborations, while major beauty publications like Elle, Cosmopolitan, and Allure have covered the rise of queer beauty influencers and gender-neutral cosmetics brands. It’s clear that the world of cosmetics is trying to move away from the conventional standards it was previously associated with to promote an aesthetic of freedom, however ambiguously defined that may be.

For many LGBTQIA people, makeup can play a valuable, if not complicated, role in exploring gender, something that rings true in my own story. The first time I wore eye shadow out of the house, I still largely identified with the gender I had been assigned at birth; I spent most of that night worrying about what wearing makeup while presenting as male might open me up to. I feared ridicule, harassment, even violence — things that, fortunately, had not been an average part of my day-to-day life. Wearing makeup that first time was the most aware I’d ever been of the grip that gendered expectations had on the way I lived, and that realization made me feel weak and unfulfilled; all my life, I could suddenly see, I’d been under the control of beliefs about gender that I didn’t agree with, and that I had internalized without ever choosing to.

Thankfully, nothing out of the ordinary happened that night. As a kind of resistance to those feelings of weakness, I made an effort to start wearing makeup more often, and became increasingly comfortable with choosing to present and express myself in a way that was more unconventional. Ultimately, makeup was one of many things that helped me come to terms with the fact that I felt more at home outside of traditional gender roles than I did within them, and that my identity fit better under the umbrella of nonbinary than it did under male.

For me, that revelation came with a reduced emphasis on how I presented. Nowadays, I rarely wear much makeup (neither do most of my trans and nonbinary friends). But as queer identity seems to become more and more intertwined with the cosmetics industry, I find myself shying away from sharing the role that wearing makeup—a purely aesthetic part of a deeply internal process—played in that time of self-discovery. When I watch someone sell makeup under the auspices of queer self-love, regardless of how well intentioned they might be, I can’t help but feel as if a story like mine is being packaged and sold to young queer people desperate to find confidence in their own identity.

“Sometimes beauty doesn’t come naturally from within,” Gaga muses on the Haus Laboratories website. “But I’m so grateful that makeup inspired a bravery in me I didn’t know I had.” The narrative is clearer than ever: If conventional aesthetic “beauty” is no longer a marketing team’s focus, then something like “bravery” must be; rather than encouraging consumers to fit in, it’s now about using makeup to help reveal “who you are.” These brands are leveraging LGBTQIA narratives to maintain relevance in a competitive market, thanks to the very real and very complicated relationship that trans, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming people like me have with cosmetics.

An example like Sephora’s “Identify As We” campaign, full of ethereal imagery and moving ideas about freedom and identity, is certainly a progressive alternative to the kinds of advertising I was exposed to growing up. It’s easy to recall the history of hypermasculine marketing for products like Axe, whose goal was to play on conventional gender roles to make sales. Today, some brands would like us to believe that they can do better, and that by focusing on the expansive understanding of gender the LGBTQ community provides, companies can push progress forward rather than reinforce tired stereotypes.

Recently, Jonathan Van Ness, one of Queer Eye’s fab five, revealed that he’s nonbinary to Out. “[Gender is] this social construct that I don’t really feel like I fit into the way I used to,” Van Ness shared. Couched in this personal revelation was Van Ness’s sponsorship with nail polish brand Essie, something he hopes will help inspire young people: “I always used to think, Oh, I’m like a gay man, but I think any way I can let little boys and little girls know that they can express themselves, and they can, like, be... making iconic partnerships with brands like Essie no matter how they present is really important and exciting.”

Van Ness and Essie, like many of the brands mentioned, seem to operate under the assumption that visibility alone can bring much needed change in how our culture regards gender nonconformance. And maybe they’re right; but as a nonbinary person, I can’t help but question: Would my self-perception really have been different had I seen someone like Van Ness wearing nail polish on a billboard while growing up? Would I have come to understand my identity sooner had I seen a gender nonconforming person on a cosmetics display?

Many queer people grow up with a longing to be seen and validated by popular culture in the way our straight and cisgender peers are. When we come to adulthood, I worry that lingering desire may leave us with an inability to protect younger generations from the potential risks that putting value in “visibility” can conceal. If we place our trust in advertising to advance our cause rather than sharing our stories on our own terms, we’re passing them over to those whose primary goal is to profit from them. These sanitized, corporate narratives run the risk of leading young queer people to believe that embodying their identity is as simple as buying the right lipstick or wearing the right nail polish, instead of expressing themselves in whatever way feels true to them.

By creating a narrative of self-actualization based on a product, it’s easy to erase the pain that can come too. For many queer and trans people, embodying your gender is not always fun, freeing, and transformative; it can also make you a target of discrimination and violence. Every time I choose to walk out the door with makeup on, I’m choosing to do so in spite of the world I’m walking into. At its best makeup was often a grounding ritual that helped me come to terms with my own experience of gender. At its worst the reactions it caused — condescending compliments, strange looks, yells of “faggot” from passing cars — could make it feel like a way of inscribing the dissonance between my body and identity on my skin. Those experiences, like those endured by many in my community, are the ones you aren’t so likely to hear about in a beauty ad or the next big pride campaign, because they don’t fit the right narrative. We can’t ignore that these brands are more invested in their own survival than they are in ours, and we owe it to ourselves — and to those who’ll come after us — to be careful with how we allow others to use our stories.

- - -

Source: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/beauty-brands-queer-expression-makeup

[thedigitalpen]

5 minute anime review: “Babylon”

What it’s about? How does one even begin with this one? Well, the description I gave a friend of mine was as follows: It's a show that starts off rather normally but, essentially, becomes a story that revolves around two people (main protagonist and antagonist) and an additional player whose endeavours serve as the plot device. The plot device character is a politician who wants to instate a "suicide law" in a new, autonomous district of Tokyo, i.e. legalising the act of suicide and providing people with a government-assisted way to die through use of a newly developed euthanasia drug. The antagonist - a strange and evil lady with a supernatural ability to shapeshift and influence people - is backing the politician, manipulating people in the shadows on his behalf, and our protagonist - a special investigations prosecutor - is trying to find a way to stop them. The beginning of the story starts with our main protagonist investigating the creation of this euthanasia drug and, through his investigations, he comes to know all the players in the game and the complex political maneuverings going on behind the scenes. While the issue of the "suicide law" runs in the background as an overarching storyline - informing the smaller arcs in the story, it pretty much boils down to a game of cat-and-mouse between the evil lady and the prosecutor who wants to bring her to "justice". 

What I liked? Man, when I started this one, I was all in. The first, and even most of the second, arc were pretty darn good in the way it started out like a regular crime investigation type anime and then moved into the political arena a bit, intermingling the two. The whole concept of a "suicide law" was interesting and sparked some internal debate as I watched. And that philosophical trend continued as the show brought up questions like, "What is justice?" and "What is it to be good or evil?" Those questions become increasingly pertinent as the series continues, manifesting as a game of sorts between our two MCs as they put their opposing thoughts/theories into action. She - by committing evil acts, and he - by trying to stop her. The characters themselves are well-defined in their roles and well executed too - able to evoke some emotional responses here and there, depending on your level of investment. However, only the prosecutor gets any actual character development. The plot and the violence/gore clearly place this in the seinen genre, which I, personally, enjoy so this seemed like an ideal show on the surface of things. And, for the most part, it was a rather interesting show with plenty of plot twists and unexpected events/happenings which kept you on the edge of your seat. The whole show was imbued with high tension because you never knew what to expect and the stakes were always pretty high. As I watched, I could see a likeness to other shows that I've enjoyed in the past, the most notable being "Psycho-Pass" (season 1), "Subete ga F ni Naru" and "B: The Beginning". All of these shows give off a similar feeling - a bit dark but with a philosophical edge that drives the story forward. And, in some respects, "Babylon" attempts to do the same but... that's what leads me to the next section, as I explain what I liked a little less.  

What I liked a little less? "Babylon" had all the makings of a really great show. However, once you stop to really consider what's happened with regard to the actual storyline, that's when you'll notice that you may have actually wasted most of your time watching this show (if you were interested in the actual story). It's in the third arc that the show loses the plot - quite literally. The focus becomes mainly about the hunt for our evil antagonist and we get lost in answering the question of what defines good versus evil - to a point where everything else just gets left behind. While the issue of the suicide law is there in the background, that whole debacle regarding what the politician was planning to do using this law ends rather inconclusively. And, as for our antagonist - her "supernatural" factor increases to a level where it starts to feel unrealistic for us, and like some sort of fever dream for the protagonist (which is probably accurate at that point). I mentioned some other shows (above) which are similar in feel to this one, but the difference between this and them is the offering of a satisfying conclusion. I have to wonder whether the one cour time limit played a part here and whether additional episodes would have helped to flesh things out but, as it stands, while the plot of the show sets out to achieve a number of objectives, it ends up doing almost none of it and leaves you wondering what the point of watching this actually was. 

Could, should or wouldn’t watch? While I have mentioned that you might feel cheated by this show because of its somewhat empty and ambiguous conclusions, I would still say that this is a "could watch" - but only if you're one who prefers a philosophical anime that delves more into theoretical concepts and such, without worrying too much about what happens to the actual story along the way. If you like the sort of anime that makes you think about the hard questions, and you're willing to overlook logic/plot gaps, then I think you may enjoy it. However, if you like your anime to address what was set out as the premise of a plot and follow that story through to a conclusive and logical end, then take this recommendation with a handful of salt and please know what you're getting into. For myself, I'm in two halves about it - the first/second arc was really entertaining but the final arc really let me down. And as for the final ending scenes - don't even talk to me about it. As a friendly warning, if you’re sensitive about topics such as suicide and you’re not into extreme violence/gory death scenes, please be aware that this show contains both. Overall, it was an interesting concept but it's just a pity that it got lost along the way. 

[kseniya-911-blog]

Yes, occasionally celebrities might make blunder. Nonetheless, every person makes mistake. What we have to do is find out via their errors. There are no people don't perform the huge mistake. Additionally, many of them are individuals that are good. For example, Taylor Swiff, One Direction. They donate money to the poor. A number of folks may think that invest a lot of time and cash on celebrities. But, they will learn through a huge mistake. They will understand that one day. Besides, the children are able to understand that dreams are able to flock correct if you choose to work really hard. Furthermore, whenever you choose your celebrities as your good purpose version, you should Google them and subsequently see if they're an excellent person or perhaps a bad woman. Nowadays, most celebrities are not good purpose versions! Exactly why, you ask, since they are person and humans make mistakes. The difference, though in between the normal man or woman as well as a celebrity is but one big aspect, each switch they pull in, good or bad, illegal or legal, immoral or hero-like is scrutinized by the media. These days, it's tough to generally be a role type as the blunders they generate are found each time. What's a kid to enjoy? Hunt up to Dad or Mom, a peer, a young sports figure or perhaps actor which isn't tarnished by fame, a teacher, or coach. We should expect the heroes are able to deal with the stress usually they fail.

Winnie Harlow is pushing the whole world to redefine what it stands for to remain wonderful. Harlow instructed Glamour that beyond sharing the vitiligo of her, she's advocating that the modeling marketplace advance of conditions of becoming inclusive. Winnie is proud that she symbolizes an alternative standard of what individuals usually think about beauty. We cardiovascular Rihanna for her size-inclusive lingerie type as well as beauty-inclusive cosmetics company. Right after Fenty Beauty unveiled 40 different foundation tones, it looked like Rihanna had completed all she can to show the desire of her to satisfy the elegance needs of all ladies. Read more contained see here celebshistory.com.

I really mean, enables be honest, whether the celebs like it or otherwise, youthful men & females are permanently gon na watch as many as them as function versions. The followers of theirs are younger also just originating into their own. With modern culture how it is, possessing increasingly more households with both parents operating, or numerous single parent families, numerous children remain to fend for themselves afterschool. Precisely why wouldn't they look for the figures they see plastered all over the publications and tv sets within the lack of various other figures at home or perhaps in their life? Obviously the celebs did some thing properly in their lives to have the ability to get on television or in the magazines. Exactly who wouldn't wish to follow their footsteps? I am aware I did and I'd a stay static at home mommy. In most cases, young adults aren't brainless. They are able to appreciate a well known individual without any attempting to replicate their day. In the same way my development did not shave the heads of theirs as well as bring married during an impulse due to Britney, women inside their teenagers at this time aren't about to routinely think that receiving pregnant will be painless along with fun because Kylie Jenner did it.

[iminclinedtowriting]

Love Yourself (Chapter 3)

title: Love Yourself summary: A lot of things about Dan’s life are pretty great. He gets to make the music he wants, he’s got a great fanbase, and his manager is his best friend. A few things about his life suck a bit more. He’s currently lacking inspiration, he’s rather lonely, and he’s stuck in a rut. Dan’s been going to the same coffee shop for years. It’s quiet, it’s quaint, it’s near his home. Most importantly: none of the employees give a shit that’s he a world-famous singer. Things change when he meets the new barista. chapter words: 3.3k story words: 9.1k (so far) chapter: 2/? genre: singer!dan, coffee shop au, barista!phil, slow burn [[ao3]] [[previous chapter]] [[first chapter]]

The third and the fourth and the fifth time Dan came to the coffee shop were increasingly normal. Phil found himself falling into an easy routine. Dan came in, sometimes tired, sometimes not. He ordered the same coffee, sometimes one for a friend, sometimes not. He always lingered a bit, sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes for twenty. Sure, Phil still kind of sucked at making frappuccinos, but he’d become a right professional at making a triple espresso with one sugar

The sixth time Dan came in, however, he broke the routine.

It was nearing one o’clock — and the end of Phil’s shift — when Dan finally showed up. Phil breathed a sigh of relief. Dan hadn’t come in yesterday, and the previous day had been Phil’s day off. Weirdly, Phil was missing time with Dan, even though he was just a customer.

Well, there wasn't anything just about him.

“Morning Phil!” Dan seemed more chipper than normal this afternoon. His curly hair was peeking out from a pale pink beanie -- a weirdly soft color choice for him, particularly with his black skinny jeans and jumper.

Phil smiled back at Dan, acutely aware that his smile might have been betraying how eager he was to see Dan again. "It’s afternoon, Dan. The usual?"

"Yeah," Dan dug his wallet out of his front pocket. Those damn heavenly tight jeans were just too tight to be functional. "And a blueberry muffin. For here."

Phil's hand stilled over the to-go cup he was reaching for. He smiled but didn't risk looking up to meet Dan's eyes. He wasn't sure he could contain his excitement about Dan committing to sticking around for a bit.

When he'd recovered from the shock, he teased, "Actually staying here? Does that mean you're not late for once?"

"Ha. Ha. Ha." Dan gave him a playfully annoyed look. "I'll have you know I actually have nothing on my schedule today, so the only thing I could have been late for was getting here."

Phil’s head cocked to the side in confusion. "How can you be late to a coffee shop?"

"Well, I didn't know when your shift ended and I wanted to be here before it. I just couldn't manage to get myself out of bed before noon today for some reason."

Phil was eternally grateful for the fact that he didn't have anything in his hands at that moment because, surely, he would have dropped it.

Why would you care about getting here during my shift?

Do you like chatting with me too?

You have a day off and decided to come here?

Despite all of these — valid — questions running through Phil's head, all he managed was a perplexed, unintelligible "oh."

Great conversation skills, Phil.

Luckily, Dan didn’t need any more encouragement to continue talking. He sat down on the bar stool in between the cash register and the espresso machine. "When I have the day off, I have a tendency to not leave my house at all and end up not socializing with anyone. I'm too much of an introvert for my own good sometimes."

Finally, Phil found his voice again as he sat Dan's muffin down in front of him. "Same, actually. That's mainly why I picked this job. I figured it'd force me to have some human interaction. Maybe meet some new people in London."

Dan raised his eyebrows and popped a small bit of the muffin in his mouth. "And how's that working out for you?"

Phil poured the right amount of beans into the espresso maker and shoved the mug under the spout, accidentally smacking it against the machine. "Not too bad. Emmalee — you know, the other girl who works here? She's pretty cool, we have a lot in common. And—" Phil paused apprehensively "—you, which has been really nice. So, there's two new nice people at least." Before he could hear Dan's reaction, he flipped the machine on. The loud whir of the beans grinding was too loud to talk over, mercifully.

When the machine stopped, Phil looked back up at Dan. To his surprise, Dan's gaze was focused on his muffin, not Phil, and his cheeks were tinted light pink, almost the same color as his hat. Did I make him blush?

Dan stared at the muffin for a full minute while Phil finished making his coffee. If it weren't for Dan's rosy cheeks and the corners of his lips quirking up, Phil would be worried he’d said the wrong thing.

Finally, finally, when Phil set Dan's drink next to his picked-apart muffin, Dan looked back up at Phil with a bright smile. It was the big, toothy smile that Phil was getting used to seeing, not the tighter, more reserved one that Phil saw in the media and on his instagram (not that he would ever admit to knowing as much as he did about Dan's public life, if avoidable).

“For what it’s worth, I’m glad you picked this job, too. I was also in need of a new London friend.”

Friend?

Did Dan consider Phil his friend?

Dan didn’t appear to notice Phil was in shock. “I didn’t leave my house at all yesterday — which is fully your fault by the way. I started watching Food Wars. I know you said not to watch it when I didn’t have good food at home, but I did.”

He’d take friend.

Phil laughed — properly laughed. On instinct, his hand raised up to cover his mouth. He thought he saw Dan’s eyes follow the movement of his hand, but he couldn’t be sure. “It’s so good right?”

“I might not have left my couch for 6 hours.”

Phil laughed. “Yeah? I’m not surprised. The first few episodes are kind of awkward to get through, and I’ll admit I still hate Nakiri, but Yukihara and Tadakoro are definitely keeping me invested.”

“What? Nakiri is the best character!”

“Excuse me?” Phil demanded. “She’s the one with so much pride she failed Yukihara despite him making her the best “pedestrian” food she’d ever tasted!”

“I mean, fair point. She is rather prideful, but that’s only because she’s not used to being around other people. Can you really blame her, when she’s been considered a food genius for so long? I can’t imagine she has many people skills.”

“You’ve got that right,” Phil snorted. “But that doesn’t mean she should be failing people who fully deserve to go to the school! She has a responsibility to both the students and the staff to make sure only the best of the best get in, and Yukihara is definitely the best of the best!”

“Sure, but how do you explain Tadakoro getting in?”

Phil’s jaw practically fell open, and his cheeks heated up as he realized he’d been beaten. Tadakoro often didn’t seem like she really truly belonged at the culinary academy, but still. “At least Yukihara isn’t too prideful to actually help the other students!”

Somewhere during their heated debate, Phil had completely lost track of the time. Dan was so easy to talk to; it felt like they just clicked. He liked that they had seemingly endless shared interests, but had opinions that were just different enough to keep the conversation interesting.

The door chime caught both Dan and Phil’s attention. Phil expected to see a customer, but it was Emmalee.

“Philip, I am here to relinquish you from customer service hell.” She dropped her backpack on the counter. If she was surprised to see Dan sitting at the counter, she hid it well. “Hey, Dan.”

Dan smiled politely and nodded hello before turning his attention quickly back to Phil.

“Is your shift over?”

Phil glanced at his watch. 14:25. Apparently him and Dan had managed to talk for nearly an hour and a half.

“Yeah, actually, looks like I’m off in five minutes.”

Dan looked almost disappointed. Or at least Phil thought he did. He was slowly getting better at reading Dan, but sometimes he wasn’t sure if the feelings he picked up were actually Dan’s or if they were just a hopeful projection of his own.

“I suppose I should get going anyway. I promised my Mum I’d ring her today. It’s my sister’s birthday this weekend and I think she wants to make plans.” Dan dropped a bill on the counter— Phil realized that he’d never actually taken Dan’s money earlier. Oops. “I’ll see you soon, Phil. Have a nice afternoon Emmalee.”

Phil waved goodbye to Dan. The bill on the counter was a twenty. Again, an over fifty percent tip on his tab of two coffees and a muffin.

Emmalee gently butted Phil out of the way of the cash register so she could clock in.

“He asked after you, you know.”

“Huh?”

“The other day. He came in when you weren’t working and he asked where you were.” Emmalee looked up, a mischievous glint in her eye.

“Oh.” Phil couldn’t come up with anything better to say.

“If you ask me, it seems like somebody has a bit of a crush.”

Phil felt his cheeks and neck heat up. “Oh. I — uh. He has a girlfriend.”

Emmalee shrugged, cashing the twenty for him. “Right, like that’s ever stopped anyone from having a crush.”

“Wait, are we talking about me or him?”

Emmalee laughed. “Does it matter? My theory’s the same either way.”

Upon getting back to his apartment, Dan looked around and surveyed the damage from nearly 36 hours of not leaving the house. Somehow, there were four mugs on the coffee table. Four.

Did I really have that much coffee yesterday?

In addition to the four mugs, there were two half drank glasses of water, his dinner plate, two different gaming controllers, and his laptop. As much as he preferred his house to be tidy, this happened every time he hibernated. With an exasperated sigh at himself, Dan gathered the dirty dishes and carried them into the kitchen. He piled them on the counter and set his phone next to them, a safe distance from the sink.

“Hey Siri, call mum on speaker.”

While the phone rang, Dan started unloading the clean dishes from the dishwasher.

“Daniel James Howell, I told you to call me hours ago.”

Okay, so maybe Dan was always late for something, regardless of what he was trying to convince Phil.

“Sorry, Mum. I was being social. For once.”

“That’s good, I get worried about you when you stay inside playing video games for too long. With Louise or Isabella?”

“Someone else, actually. I do have more than one friend and a girlfriend, you know.” Technically.

“Not that I’ve ever heard of, dear.” She was teasing, but Dan could hear the ever-present undertone of concern in her voice.

“I… well… yeah.” Dan wasn’t sure what to say on the matter. He didn’t know how to explain that really most of his friends outside of Louise and Isabella were completely surface level but that he’d recently met a person he thought could be a real friend. Somehow, he doubted his mum would really believe him when he said that he was actually making friends with his barista.

Best to just change the subject. “What did you want me ring about?”

“Oh! Adaline’s birthday is Friday.”

Dan put the last clean mug away — jesus is all I drink coffee? — and started loading the dirty dishes. “I know, I have a reminder set. What do you want to do?”

“I was thinking we could come up to London for dinner. I know you said you’ve gone to some lovely restaurants. I’m sure she’d love to eat at one of those nice places. You can pick which one you think she’d like the most.”

“Yeah, okay. What time should I make a reservation for?”

“Does seven work for you?”

Dan headed to his room to round up any more dirty dishes, remembering at the last second to shove his mother in his back pocket.

“That’s fine. Is it just the four of us?” Dan asked absently. “Is Adaline still dating whats-his-face?”

“Mark? No. I think they broke up, unfortunately.”

“He was an idiot, Mum. Actual rocks are smarter than him.”

“He was such a nice boy, though. Sure, he wasn’t as smart as Adaline, but he had wonderful manners and he treated your sister right.”

“I suppose. Still doesn’t mean she has to date him.” Dan rolled his eyes as he picked up the glasses on his bedside table. “So just the four of us, then?”

“Actually dear—” Uh oh, I know that tone. “—I was thinking you could bring Isabella. We’ve all been hoping to meet her for a while.” Dan just about dropped the glasses.

Are we there yet? Are we at the meet the parents stage?

“Er—” Dan fumbled for an excuse. “I don’t want to step on Adaline’s birthday, I’m sure she wouldn’t appreciate that.

“It was her idea, actually.” Unlikely. “So, will you bring her?”

“Oh. Um. I guess I’ll talk to her and see if she’s free.”

“Lovely, I can’t wait to meet her. Text me tonight to confirm that she’s coming, please. Have a good night, dear!”

Apparently, making birthday plans and dropping that bomb was all his mother wanted, because she hung up almost immediately. As soon as he was off the phone, Dan rang Isabella. No point in putting off asking her.

Isabella answered on the first ring, sounding relieved and a little bit upset. “Oh thank god you saw my text.” Quickly, Dan pulled the phone from his ear and put Isabella on speakerphone so he could figure out what the fuck the text was. “Please tell me you’re free tonight, baby.”

Dan scanned Isabella’s texts. Most of them seemed pretty mundane — she was ranting about her assistant again. Ah, wait, there it is. The last message seemed to sum up the problem.

Isabella: So obvi, i had no choice but to fire her & now I’m like totally screwed. I mean like Fashion Week is NEXT MONTH

Probably a beat too late, Dan responded, “Izzy, that sucks, I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do to help?”

“I have to sort through resumes tomorrow, but right now I’m just…” She let out a long exhale. “I’m just stressed. Can we, like, go have a drink or something? Maybe at that place down the street from my place?”

Dan was already searching through the pile of clean laundry for a button down. “Of course, babe. When do you want me to be there?”

He thought he heard Isabella sniffle. I hope she’s not crying. “I’m already home, so can you just text me once you have a table at the bar?”

“Yeah, I can do that.” He pulled off his beanie and grumbled at the way the hat had made his hair look. He thought briefly about putting the hat back on, but the bar was too nice of a place for that. Oh well, nothing to be done about it now. “I’m leaving in just a few minutes, so I should be there in half an hour, okay?”

“You’re the best, Danny. Mwah!” Isabella hung up before Dan said goodbye.

The bar was more crowded than Dan had expected for four pm on a Wednesday — although Dan figured that was probably what Isabella liked about this place. He’d learned early on that she always preferred lively, crowded places when they went out.

Dan had barely made it through the door before the hostess rushed off to set up his and Isabella’s favorite table. Dan waited to text Isabella until the bartender had served them their usual drinks — a gin martini with a twist for Dan, and a vodka martini with a lemon peel (because olives are just too fatty) for Isabella.

By the time Izzy arrived, Dan was already halfway finished with his martini. Isabella came through the door uncharacteristically quietly. Normally, she stopped to talk to at least three people on her way to their table, but today she made a beeline for Dan. She didn’t even wait until she was fully seated to start telling him about her day.

“Babe, today was a mess!” she said.

Apparently, her assistant had given Isabella’s measurements to all of her tailors wrong, and all of her clothing had come back too big. Dan wasn’t sure why, but Isabella seemed to interpret that as a personal attack against her, and assumed her assistant thought she was fat.

Dan drank two and a half more martinis while Isabella told him the rest of the story. Truthfully, he wasn’t fully convinced her assistant deserved to be fired, but he wasn’t stupid enough to say that out loud. Forty-five minutes later, Isabella finally seemed done ranting, and Dan decided to broach the topic of Friday night with her. He considered waiting until tomorrow to talk to her about it, but he knew his mum would pester him later if he didn’t confirm tonight that Isabella was coming.

“Hey, Izzy, I know this probably isn’t the best time to bring this up, but Friday is Adaline’s birthday.”

“What the fuck, Dan?” Isabella exploded.

Dan recoiled. Woah, that’s not the reaction I expected. He was afraid that anything he said would make the situation worse, so he wait for Isabella to continue.

“Who the fuck is Adaline? You told me you weren’t seeing any other girls!”

Oh, clearly she doesn’t remember who Adaline is. Dan reached across the table and covered Isabella’s hand with his own. “I promised you I’m not seeing other people, Izzy, and I’m not. Adaline is my sister, remember?”

Isabella smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. Clearly she wasn’t entirely happy about something he’d said. “Oh right, silly me. I knew that.”

Dan squeezed her hand and gave her a small smile. “It’s okay, I know you’ve had a rough day. I shouldn’t have brought this up right now.”

Perhaps as a sign of forgiveness, Isabella flipped her hand over and interlaced her fingers with Dan’s. “So what about her birthday? Do you need help, like, finding her a present? I’ll go shopping for you!”

Her willingness to help made Dan happy. “I already have her present. Actually, I was wondering if you’d like to come to her birthday dinner with me? My parents and her are coming to London on Friday to celebrate.”

From the wide smile on her face, Dan never would have guessed that Isabella had been nearly crying fifteen minutes ago. “Danny!” she squealed. “I would love to come! I’ve been dying to meet your family. Honestly, I was, like, getting a little annoyed that you hadn’t introduced me to them yet.”

Dan tried his best to keep his surprise off his face. “Well, it’s only been a few months, and I’ve been really busy with work.”

“But they’ve been such totally perfect months. Whatever, it doesn’t matter now. What matters is that you’re taking me to meet your parents on Friday. This is an exciting step, babe!”

It’s a step, alright.

Dan just wasn’t sure it was a step he was ready for.

“This calls for a celebration, I think. I’m going to go to the ladies’ room, you take care of the check so we can go back to my place. I’ve got one of those nice bottles of champagne in the fridge and I think we deserve it.”

Isabella primly sat her folded napkin on the table and stood up. Before heading to the loo, she stepped around to Dan’s side of the table, moving in close. Her hand landed on his knee and teasingly ran up his thigh, stopping just centimeters from his hip. Her lips brushed his earlobe when she leaned in to whisper in his ear.

“I think you deserve something too, babe.”

She punctuated her statement with a suggestive squeeze of his thigh before she sauntered away, her hips swaying with every step.

On second thought, maybe this step was a brilliant idea.

thanks for reading! please like or reblog if you enjoyed :) i’m still planning to stick with the wednesday update schedule, so get excited for more hot content 

thanks @snowbunnylester for helping me tons and talking about food wars, which i’ve never seen oops.

[williamdbellb]

World Plumbing Day 2021: SNIPEF highlights plumbing heroes

As plumbing and heating professionals around the globe prepare to celebrate World Plumbing Day (Thursday March 11), SNIPEF has highlighted one of the industry’s heroes and asks what it takes to make such an important contribution in an increasingly critical sector.

Michael Cairns is managing director of Celsius Plumbing and Heating, Edinburgh, employing 17 members of staff:

HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN A PLUMBER AND HOW DID YOU GET STARTED?

I began serving my time in 2003, and unfortunately qualified just as the financial crisis hit in 2007/8. I was made redundant, so really circumstances dictated that I should have a go at starting my own business. I took on my brother as an apprentice and he now trains people himself and brings them on.

There was, of course, a lot of uncertainty in the economy when we started out – rather similar to the way things are now. But in many other ways, they were different days. The technology for self-employed people was much less developed, and we had to learn everything about business by ourselves.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE PART OF THE JOB?

I’m not really on the tools these days, but still muck in as and when needed, which I really enjoy. Our company Value ‘willing to sweep floors’ means no matter your position in the company, everyone is willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done. I have worked really hard over the past four or five years to build a business that can run without me being continually involved in it. I want to work on the business, rather than in the business. So, I have invested heavily in putting systems and processes in place which, for a trade-based business, is quite unusual. I did not want Celsius to be over-reliant on me. What I enjoy most about the job at the moment is dealing with internal processes, how we automate and how we employ technology.

WHAT IS THE GREATEST CHALLENGE IN YOUR JOB?

Very early on in the pandemic, we recognised that although people’s confidence was low, we still had to have access to their homes and workplaces. But we were only carrying out essential work and anything non-essential had to be placed in a backlog of work. This was quite difficult, since we are a reactive company – work comes in, we get it done and we invoice. Once we came out of the first lockdown, we were very busy clearing the backlog and once we emerge from this one, we will use the lessons we have learned to catch up with the work we have had to postpone.

HOW HAS THE PANDEMIC CHANGED YOUR DAY-TO-DAY?

Safety has always been an over-riding priority, but the last year has placed an emphasis on making sure that our customers, as well as our team, feels safe. Early last year, we created a COVID Response Video which is communicated to our customers when our engineers are on the way to them so that they know what to expect. We have to go into a lot of elderly people’s homes and it is vital that they feel safe and confident in us. I am super-proud of the team – you just have to look at our reviews.

HAVE YOU IMPLEMENTED ANY CHANGES DURING THE PANDEMIC THAT YOU WILL CONTINUE AFTER?

We knew that cashflow was going to take a hit because we could only do essential work. One solution we have implemented, and it has been really successful, is that we now take payment in advance for work. It is not normal in the trade. It shows a remarkable degree of trust from our customers, who have been very supportive of our situation. We will continue to do this after Covid.

HAVE YOU DONE ANYTHING TO HELP DURING THIS DIFFICULT TIME?

As key workers, we have managed to keep most of the team in full-time employment, but when people were furloughed we felt it was really important to keep in touch with them to make sure that they were coping. Tradespeople are naturally busy, and suddenly, overnight, they were confined to the house and not doing anything.

We wanted to let them know that they were not forgotten about and, as well as Zoom meetings, we instituted a Friday check-in. We all know that mental health in isolation has been a major issue over the past year and the feedback from the team has said that our efforts have been very helpful.

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY HAS JUST PASSED. HOW ARE YOU HELPING FEMALES INTO THE SECTOR?

Women are valued members of the team. They are an integral part of our organisation, and we couldn’t do without them. We have three with us at the moment: Monique is an engineer, who specialises in water and Legionella testing and certification; Ailsa, who is a senior maintenance co-ordinator; and Ailie, who started as an apprentice junior administrator and is now a maintenance co-ordinator. We have a blog on our website about their contribution.

WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE TO PEOPLE STARTING OUT OR THINKING ABOUT BECOMING A PLUMBER?

For a small business, we try to do our bit for apprentices. We have helped 10 youngsters in the 14 years we have been going, and we will continue to be ambassadors for apprenticeships.

Obviously, we cannot take on every applicant, but when young people approach us, we always get in touch with them and offer advice about what they could be doing to find an employer. We are going to have an apprentice page on our website, to which we can direct people, and other people in the industry can send applicants to it.

We would advise would-be apprentices to establish a LinkedIn page – it’s free to use and connects you to people in the industry. They should be aware that four years can seem like a long time, and like hard work, but once they are qualified, they have a skill for life. A qualified plumbing and heating engineer should never be out of work.

WHAT HAS BEING A SNIPEF MEMBER BROUGHT TO YOU?

Credibility, in a word. The team at SNIPEF is always on hand to answer any difficult questions we may have and their support for apprentices is first class. When we were taking people on at first, SNIPEF’s advisers were able to guide us in areas such as contracts and employment law. We wish we had joined sooner.

The post World Plumbing Day 2021: SNIPEF highlights plumbing heroes appeared first on Heating & Plumbing Monthly Magazine (HPM).

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Car Lease -  A Near Term Car Lease

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FEATURE: A Tonal Change Gave the New Digimon One Of Its Best Episodes Yet

  WARNING: SPOILERS FOR DIGIMON ADVENTURE: EPISODE 16 AHEAD

  For the most part, episodes of Digimon Adventure: are driven by progressive action — the characters are always meeting someone new and traveling somewhere else and conquering their insecurities while their monster partners are evolving into more powerful forms and taking down increasingly strong enemies. More than any Digimon series before it, Adventure: is marked by its need to be constantly getting somewhere. If you were playing it as a video game, you'd be ignoring side quests left and right as you rush to the next event and boss battle. 

  And then we hit Episode 16, which is the first Digimon Adventure: to be driven primarily by inaction, an abrupt change in tone that is both refreshing and a little creepy. In it, Taichi, Koushiro, and Mimi suddenly find themselves in Tokyo, with the city seemingly rescued from the power outages that have plagued it for the last dozen episodes. Of course, this is dramatic irony — the audience knows that Tokyo is not even close to being saved (the DigiDestined haven't even gotten to the Holy Digimon or taken down Devimon yet) so this is all some kind of trick or illusion. But the characters don't know that, and it's this sense of static confusion that helps create what might be the best episode of Digimon Adventure: so far.

    From the very beginning, we know something is off: There are tons of people walking around, yet no one seems to notice the trio of two-foot-tall monsters hanging out with elementary schoolers in their midst. The fact that the kids aren't rushing to shove Agumon and Palmon into trench coats like they did in the original series ensures that we're aware of the problem. But rather than allow the kids to find out immediately that this isn't the Tokyo they call home, the episode continues to linger on the unease. 

  There's constant, nervous distance and quiet, and the angles used instill a sense of disorientation. The close-ups invest us in the emotion of the characters, the comfort of arriving back home blended with the encroaching terror that it's not the world they left. And the wide shots, which feature the kids and monsters together, juxtapose the crowds of Tokyo with the building loneliness. We also constantly see the characters reflected in glass, hinting that the Tokyo their seeing is just a mirror image and far from the real thing. 

    When the world starts to truly fall apart though is when the kids approach adults, who, when you're that young, serve as both caretakers and authority figures. Often framed in ways that accentuate their size and reverse the habits that would normally provide order to the lost and curious, these soon-to-be-revealed monsters play havoc on the children's sense of control. Up until now, they've been faced with a series of gigantic, ominous monsters, beasts that, even at their most pitiable, seem to be constructed to be eventually slain. But these adults, no matter how much their digital facades fall and reveal the battle creature underneath, cause another kind of panic — one far more insidious than the one caused by the appearance of a huge, fantastical monster.

  The episode also calls into question the kids' idea of themselves as heroes. While sitting on the eerily silent subway, heading to what they think is home, they wonder if this is truly their final stop. That was it? The real world is back to normal? They didn't even meet the Holy Digimon or save the Digital World yet. Of course, making it back home is a goal, but is it worth calling a victory if they didn't finish their quest?

    It's this dissatisfaction that makes us realize that even if they were to somehow go to actual Tokyo now, it wouldn't be a triumphant or even welcoming return. The characters are now irrevocably tied to their mission to save the Digital World, not just by destiny but by will. A motivation once given to them by ancient beings has become ingrained in their personalities.

  The climax of the episode is stunning, with the villain Eyesmon creating obstacles and projectiles out of the data that it's copied from the real Tokyo. And the three children are only able to defeat it when joined by the other three in their group, showing up out of nowhere to provide necessary reinforcements and additional firepower. But the end shows that Eyesmon has not been beaten and has evolved further into Orochimon, an eight-headed beast based on Japanese mythology that is next in line for the kids and their monsters to face.

    Thus, it looks like the next episode will return to the thrill and momentum of previous episodes, but despite the flip in tone, Episode 16 helps push the series forward with renewed vigor. We got both an interesting horror-themed episode and an exploration into the dedication of the kids in their journey, and I haven't been more excited to see where this series is going since the beginning.

  What do you think of Digimon Adventure:? Let me know in the comments!

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  Daniel Dockery is a Senior Staff Writer for Crunchyroll. You can follow him on Twitter!

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features.

      By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com