#i think rise and mm would look at 2012 and be like “where did you go wrong” ashahjdhasjhdjkaka

[the-sage-libriomancer]

i think it'd be really funny to write a crossover specifically between the latest three TMNT series bc the ingenuity and bold new directions of Rise and Mutant Mayhem leave 2012 - the one that's most faithful to the previous lore - looking like the odd one out.

because, like:

-Rise and MM both have the turtles explicitly call Splinter "dad", while 2012 sticks with the traditional "Master Splinter."

-Rise and MM both have a Splinter character who is neither an ex-martial arts master or Japanese, and in fact barely knows how to do martial arts in general, whereas 2012's Splinter follows the comic origins (a native Japanese man and trained martial artist).

-2012's Splinter also features a backstory element the Rise and MM versions don't: being explicitly related to Shredder.

-Rise and MM both have black/poc Aprils who are fairly similar in both personality and vibes, which makes 2012's April (who's the traditional redheaded version with the same basic "action girl who hangs out with the turtles" template but whose character traits are notably different) stick out uncomfortably in comparison.

-Rise and MM both show Raph as an easily excitable tank, while 2012's Raph is deeply rooted in the cynical guy with a temper from earlier incarnations.

-2012 gives the turtles genuine beef with each other (most notably Leo and Raph fighting over the leadership position). Rise and MM completely handwave that and all of their turtles are chill with each other outside of typical brotherly scrimmages.

-Rise and MM both portray the turtles as unusually skilled novices who win most of their battles by fucking around and finding out, while 2012's turtles are trained fighters with child soldier undertones and the mindsets to match.

i'm not saying there's a sharp divide between 2012 and the other two (there isn't) or that 2012 doesn't share anything with the other two shows (it does), but if you put all three casts of characters together and had them compare their own lore, i think the 2012 characters would seem like weirdos/odd ducks compared to the Rise and MM, which is very funny to think about bc they're the only one of the three who are actually like. recognizably drawing on the characters and concepts of its predecessors.

[my-name-is-bunnyfoxy]

I CAME BACK FROM THE MOVIE LIKE AN HOUR OR SO AGO- AND HOLLY CRAP- Here is some stuff I will say and I'll give my review at the end.

I love how to movie doesn't waste time and immediately jumps straight into action and also the backstory of it's soon to be main villain.

The designs are really nice I like them a lot. They are nice to look at. Maybe for some it might take a while to get used to but their decent at best.

I enjoy that right when we are introduced to the turtles they don't waste time showing their personalities.

This movie's angst inspiration definetelly came from the fandom lmao

like bro they just threw a bunch of angst in there.

Speaking of angst, I like how they immediately establish how much the turtles genuinely wanna be accepted into humanity and how they don't hold back on making sad scenes.

I don't mind Leo's crush. It's cute and I like how it's depicted. It's not that focused on which I don't really mind. I don't know where I sit with MM Aprilnardo, I'll wait until the series drops or we get a sequel and see what happens. If nothing happens between the two then I guess I won't be too hard into it. Unless maybe we see April and Leo both sharing feelings or something. Though if April politely rejects him I'll leave it at that. Again I still don't know where to sit with this ship.

Splinter is cool and funny. Also- we don't talk about that scene with him and scumbug-

The backstory for the characters is sad and I like how you can genuinely sympathize with them and it's not forced or anything.

I-I-I-I-I-I had to look away at the Puke scenes and the make out scene- Yeah I did get second hand embarrassment with this movie-

I enjoy how cringey it is- Like I get second hand embarrassment and yet it's funny to me-

MondoMikey shippers DNI. They are cousins in Mutant Mayhem.

I love how the movie's style is that of 87 and take more inspiration from the 87 version though to me the personalities for the characters were a mixture of rise and 2012 with some inclusion of 87 as well.

I actually watched this movie in my language not the english one. Sadly I didn't record any of the scenes so I can't show it to ya'll. :( Mainly cause I assumed it wasn't allowed to be recorded.

Shocked I didn't cry at certain scenes-

I enjoy that each character shines in his own way and all of them manage to do so.

Don't lay a finger on Leo... I will bite your legs off...

Sadly me and my papa didn't stay until the cliffhanger but I watched it on YouTube though.

The animation kind of seems messy but I do feel like it's something a little kid would design and considering this is a kids movie and all it's understandable. Though it gives us a lot of funny expressions xp

Story is unique, fight scenes really fun and amazing, the ending felt deserved and overall I enjoyed it.

Now, I know Superfly is a villain and all but if I'm gonna be honest- He didn't deserve death. I wish he got a redemption arc. He's just a broken villain who I ended up sympathizing and understanding. Yeah he wasn't doing the right thing but can you blame him?

Off topic but what gender is Leatherhead-? I kind of got confused ngl lmao

So in my opinion, it's either 8.5 or a 9/10. Mainly because there are some cringey scenes that I did cringe at and ngl I feel like certain scenes's pace was kind of a bit too fast. I don't know really-

BONUS: My papa's thoughts on the movie:

Found it cringe and stupid

He prefers the old TMNT

Prefers it when they stick to the shadows rather then go to high school

He thought Splinter was stupid and how he said the old one was a 'badass mothefucka'. His words not mine.

He prefers when Leo is really serious and calm, Raph a hot head and constantly wanting to smash things, Donnie being calm and smart and Mikey- Mikey he didn't mind since he said he is always stupid and a dumbass- (not really his words but close enough-)

He found the story not to be that really consistent and also the animation to him wasn't fluid. He didn't think it was the best or that good.

The story is interesting to him and unique and all though.

Don't hate my papa pretty please-

He pretty much grew on the 87 and OG comics. He kind of also probably had to deal with watching with me and my bro the TMNTs we grew up with. If anyone's curious, my bro grew up on the 2003 and kind of also 2012 since we both binged watched it a lot every time we came back home from school meanwhile I grew up on the 2012 but also in a way with 2003. Mainly since I have a few memories of seeing some episodes of it so I know some stuff.

Anyway- his score is a 6/10 for the movie and he says that is a VERY generous score.

Extra add in:

I realized my outfit looked similar to April's- Just- it had different colors and- I'm white as fu- Loved April a lot in this movie by the way.

I watched it with 3D glasses.

They were also selling masks of the TMNT. I only saw Raph, Mikey and Donnie but not Leo. I didn't buy one by the way-

I annoyed my dad with how much I was jumping and kicking my feet around.

And yeah that's all-

Loved the movie, I enjoyed it, I hope ya'll have enjoyed it as well and yeah!

[fabuloustrash05]

rank the canon love interests for each turtle, gO (i can't remember if you have already lol)

*cracks knuckles* It’s time for a lightening round of ship ranking!

Disclaimer: I’m rating these girls based on their romantic relationships with the Turtle that crushed on them/had a relationship with. This is NOT a ranking of their individual characters.

Leonardo

Unnamed Women/Yumi’s Mother (Mirage)

2/10

She was just a figment of Leo’s imagination so does she even count?

They have a daughter together which is nice, but also HOW DID THAT WORK??

Raven Shadowheart (Mirage)

7/10

Seems like a good ship

F in the chat for Leo, even when he has a GOOD relationship it can’t last long.

Lotus Blossom (1987)

10/10

The overall BEST Leo love interest.

The fact she gave him a flower to remember her by <3

Lotus deserves to make a comeback!

Can’t believe Nickelodeon chose INCEST over her!!

Karai (2012)

-1000000000000000000000000/10

WHY DID THEY HAVE LEO PULL A LUKE SKYWALKER?!

Koya (IDW)

2/10

I can definitely see the appeal and aesthetically they look good together but the CONTEXT of their relationship is BAD.

LEO IS THE REASON SHE IS DISABLED!!

Lita confirms they get together in the future, but WHY?? They have no romantic chemistry or hints that they like each other romantically. Maybe SHOW us instead of TELLING us!!

Toxic 95% of the time

April (Mutant Mayhem)

7/10

I usually heavily dislike April x Turtle ships, but I can’t deny that they were cute.

Leo’s moment of falling for her was actually kinda cute and funny.

His crush on her is not shoved down our throats like OTHER April x Turtle ships *cough* 2012 Apritello *cough*

I like that they went  to prom together <3

But again, I don’t think April should be shipped with any of the Turtles and I don’t see this ship lasting in the long term…

Seems like it’s a one sided crush like Dipper and Wendy from Gravity Falls, so I’m not convinced this will last in the upcoming show/sequel

Raphael

Ninjara (Archie Comics)

2/10

They’re cute but it’s not a really interesting ship

It looks too much like a cheap OC x Canon pairing

Mezcaal (Archie Comics)

7/10

The first and only time one of our Turtles boys have been married, congrats Raph!

A badass married couple

I hope her and Raph are forever happy together running that bar

Mona Lisa (1987)

10/10

Iconic!

Her kissing Raph then calling him “doll” is so cute!

She IS the ideal Raphael love interest. Her and this ship truly left a major impact on the fandom.

She is the go to Raph love interest people think of in any iteration (2003, Rise & MM fans all wanted and made their own version of her in the show)

Joi (2003)

1/10

Meh…

Idk if she counts but I added her cause some people shipped them

She is Raph’s only human "love interest" and it doesn’t feel right to me. 

Out of all the Turtles, Raph being with a human feels weird, the other Turtles I’m fine with being with humans. Raph has always been known to date non human characters so this ship doesn’t look/sit right to me, and doesn’t feel like a relationship that would go anywhere.

Alopex (IDW)

2.5/10

I just don’t like it

I guess it’s because I was introduced to Alopex in the 2012 series where in that she’s a 30 year old woman and Raph is a teenager, so this relationship feels weird to me.

Kinda toxic at times tbh but still cute when they need to be (which is rare)

She’s 17 and Raph is 20… But that was apparently “retconned” so Idk what to think

Y’gythgba/Mona Lisa (2012)

10000000000000000000000000000000000/10

THE BEST LOVE INTEREST AND SHIP IN THE ENTIRE SHOW!!

The ONLY GOOD and HEALTHY relationship in the show!

“What a woman…” ICONIC!!

Raph was loyal and Mona was devoted to him!

He falls for her because she punched him in the face. That is both hilarious and very in character for Raph XD

She’s as much in love with him as he is with her!

Badass warrior power couple!

Short King x Girlboss

I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE THEM SO MUCH!!

Donatello

Jhanna (2003)

3/10

Another “Meh” ship to me.

Similar to Joi, does she even count?? Apparently she does to some people and its a ship for 03 fans.

Fan versions of her and this ship from different interactions (1987 & Rise) are more interesting than the actual canon version of them in 03 tbh

I guess I’m just not convinced of this ship and I don’t like how they look together. It’s hard to explain.

April (2012)

4/10

Could’ve worked with a cute “friends to lovers” story but the writers ruined it.

Kinda cute in season 1, got worse after that. Season 5 was them at their best but that’s only because it wasn’t shoved down our throats by that point.

The love triangle brought out the worst in them (and Casey).

I like them better as best friends.

Hottake: Donnie was more of the problem than April.

Like I said in Leo’s ranking, April should NOT be a love interest for any of the Turtles.

Big Foot (2012)

-1/10

Why did this happen??

Batgirl (Batman Crossover Comic)

2/10

Got a thing for redheads, huh Don?

Not a huge fan of big crossover shipping like this, but his crush on her was cute so I’ll admit that. 

It was sweet she gave him a kiss on the cheek before leaving. So good for you Don!

Mona Lisa (IDW)

0/10

JUSTICE FOR RAPH X MONA LISA!!

Obviously not my cup of tea.

The Nerd x Nerd trope… wow, so original…

She’s a bitch to him at times and invalidates his trauma. 

I really thought her and Jennika were gonna be a thing (which I would’ve preferred more tbh), so her with Donnie as a massive disappointing surprise and feels so forced.

Michelangelo

Princess Seri (Mirage)

2/10

Tragic. She betrayed him. That bitch.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THEIR BABIES??

Also… MIKEY FUCKS??!

Kala (1987)

9/10

UNDERRATED SHIP!!

Two party loving teens who just wanna skate and have fun!

They keep pictures of each other as mementoes. THAT’S ADORABLE!!

Much like Leo x Lotus, we need this ship to make a comeback.

Buffy (1987)

0/10

FUCK THAT BITCH!! SHE TREATED HIM LIKE TRASH!!

Sara Hill (Image Comics)

4.5/10

I’m a sucker for the Turtles dating alien lizard woman.

I like the “friends with benefits” relationship they have. Feels like a Mikey thing he would do regarding his love life. 

I love how they bonded over their love of cartoons. Very cute.

She left him for another man though… WTF SARA?!?! YOU BROKE MIKEY’S AND MORE IMPORTANTLY MY HEART!!

Mitsu (TMNT III)

1/10

Bland and boring (Just like the movie!)

Princess Trib (IDW)

5/10

RESPECT TO MIKEY GETTING ALL THE PRINCESSES!! AND THE NEUTRINOS TOO??

Cute, but in the end I prefer him with Kala.

They are the only good Turtle ship (not counting Jennika and her girlfriend Sheena). But that ain’t saying much from me cause they’re still bland at times with little to go with.

How are they one of the better ships in IDW yet they are the most bland and uninteresting couple??

Renet (2012)

9/10

Very adorable!!

Works well romantically and platonically.

They’re both goofballs who are misunderstood by their peers.

Would be a 10 but Mikey was unfaithful...

Renet confirms they have some kind of future together.

I personally can’t see them staying together in the future, maybe having a friends with benefits relationship like him and Sara.

Shinigami (2012)

1/10

I like their dynamic, but not as a romantic one.

“Someone will die…” “OF FUN!” vibes.

Shini is obviously a lesbian and is dating Karai so…

Headcanon: They have playdates with their cats.

April (Bayverse)

0/10

WHAT DID I LITERALLY SAY IN LEO AND DONNIE’S RANKINGS??!!

The one Mikey crush that literally gives me the ick. I don’t like it.

C R I N G E

MIKEY SWEETIE SHE’S A FULL GROWN ADULT!! YOU ARE A CHILD!!

[imsoquarky]

OKAY IM GONNA TALK ABOUT TMNT MM NOW

WARNING FOR SPOILERS BELOW THE CUT!!! THIS IS A RAMBLE POST, I AINT TIPTOEING AROUND IT!!!

Also, probably gonna start making # for post types. I feel like I reblog so much stuff that it's hard to find my actual content-

♠️ - ♣️ - ♥️ - ♦️

Starting off the bat, everyone who said Rise lovers were gonna love MM were absolutely correct. I adored this movie with every fiber of my being and I really think it could bring new people into the TMNT fandom just as ROTTMNT did.

While I will always be sad that Rise did not get the merch it deserved, I am over the moon that MM is getting it. The toys I've seen and merch I've gotten are already extraordinary. For the most part they are very very well made and most of it doesn't look like they've seen their entire family be brutally ripped limb from limb.

But moving away from my opinions about merch which is a whole other bag of worms being the physical item lover I am. THE MOVIE WAS BEAUTIFUL!!!

The storyline, the characters, the voice acting, the line delivery, the writing, the comedy, and ofc most of all

THE ART!! OMG THE ART!!! I LOVED EVERY SINGLE BIT!!! I see so much dragging on the art of this movie because it's ugly BUT THATS THE WHOLE POINT!!! It's meant to be messy, asymmetrical, even uncomfortable at times. Every character is so vastly different from the last, including every single background character. Some of my favorite overall designs were Splinter, April, Stockman, Superfly, Mondo Gecko, and even that fuckin BEAST Superfly turned into at the end.

This was the first iteration I watched where Splinter started out as a rat, being only into the more modern media, I had no idea that he was originally a pet. I could go on and on about MM Splinter and that is what I am going to do. I LOVED HIM. SO MUCH. He was such a dad, and an absolute badass when he wanted to be. Kicking ass to save his sons and just worried out of his mind about them. Despite his distain for humans, he was willing to take their help when it was offered. Instead of reprimanding his sons right then and there, he'd give them a hug and make sure they were safe beforehand. And when he saved them from getting their blood taken (I'm not calling it milking, please don't make me omg- /lh), he was like "I told you so!" but not in like.. a toxic way?? I never thought Splinter would end up as my favorite of any iteration, yet... here we are.

But y'all probably aren't all that interested in my gushing about Splinter yeah? Let's talk about the turtles, going from my favorite to least favorite (not to say I don't absolutely love them all, I just like some more than others.)

Raphael and Donnie are tied, but I'll start with just Raph. Raphael very much reminded me of when I was younger. Down to the struggled with volume & um... well, anger issues. Deep down, he loves and cares about his brothers, but he wants to branch out and meet new people. It's not that he doesn't want them to be there when he dies, it's that he wants to know other people outside of them. He loves them, but it's only natural to not want to ONLY have them.

Donatello was a silly guy, lots of playful jabs at his brothers and I just loved him. Also, the guy can DRIVE. Technically, being old enough, most places I know you can get a learners permit, so he probably realistically could drive. Despite complaining about having a "giant stick" much like 2012 Donnie, I found myself less annoyed by his complaints. Maybe I'm bias? Who knows. Point is, I loved him.

Leonardo, like Raph, was extremely relatable. With his upbringing and having a very anxious father, it makes sense to have such chronic anxiety. I swear, sometimes I feel like a mix between MM Leo and MM Raph. While ofc, I wasn't a fan of the little crush on April, it's not unrealistic. This is the first girl they've met and he has dreams of getting a girlfriend, obviously a 15 year old like that is gonna fall head over heels for the first girl he sees. Hell, when I first found out girls could like girls I honestly wasn't much different. (Ofc, I'm not a girl anymore, but that's besides the point here). But April shutting him down at prom was a relief, I'm hoping it just stays as a little puppy crush. It was handled SO much better than 2012 ever did, and I'm standing by that.

Now Michelangelo. Mikey was the SWEETEST OMG. Him and Mondo were an adorable duo and I'm hoping in future content we get more of them. Also, what is with Mikey and almost getting hit with cars in this film? I think the mans needs to keep away from the streets because he's like the critters down here in Kansas, very bad luck with cars. Only reason he's probably my least fav here is because I guess I don't have much to say about him, like, specifically?

Anyways. That's a lot of rambling, someone please talk to me about MM.

[14muffinz]

Hey! Yes pls, your fusion au is a delight and sending an ask is my pleasure!

I have a couple questions, how do you think things would change if it was only mm x rise? Considering mm are so Baby and stuff; they also seem to have a range of genre awareness, do you think any of the fusions would change due the extra lil input if just, you know, having considered fusions as a concept before? (I would think they do have a media presence nowadays)

And with other possibilities (12 seems to be the main one -In general, forced fusions are... interesting, charged with all kinds of fun stuff like identity issues, shifts And clashes in how you view reality, emotional (and all types rly) crisis, lack of trust in yourself, yk, the fun stuff. But, well, a rly beautiful part of (intentional/positive) fusion is being known completely, that full understanding and acceptance, recognizing the components but also the whole, a self that is more than the sum of the parts and becoming other without losing oneself, yk the other fun stuff –and some works even work to make that transition from the former to the latter, which I think would be really fun for a xover!

Would you have any intention of the fusions becoming aware and working through their issues first or would they stay as is? Is the allies' goal to separate them as quickly as possible, where we could then explore the aftermath? Or even leave them in an unstable space where it's on and off, or maybe just leaving the possibility of fusion (I might have missed that post, but is it even plausible to separate them?)

Speaking of both the rest of the gang and things I might have missed, but are they in the rottmnt verse or the 12 one? It seems both sets of allies and fam are there? Did they cross over looking for the missing turtles? How did they react to the fusions? (And any other tidbits you might have about the new relationships? :3)

Jsjjsjs I hope those aren't too many questions

Jsjjs

not too many questions, but i have a feeling it's gonna take me a bit to read all of this, hoo boy

OH MY GODS, I'VE BEEN WAITING ALL WEEK FOR SOMEONE TO ASK ABOUT THE MM FUSIONS. IT'D BE SUCH A DIFFERENT STORY I AM!!!! NOT NORMAL!!! Gonna put them under a cut at the end, because it'd definitely be different and lengthy

Yeah, steven universe is the only example of fusions in canon media that I know of, and usually fusions are shown to highlight the positive attributes of a character, and in a lot of cases seems to be the two characters controlling one body. I definitely have a third consciousness, that is the fusions, but they're a combination of the two people who fused into them ofc. But at the same time, being unaware that they're fusions, and seeing all of these inconsistencies in their memory and in themselves, it's certainly challenging.

Well, Donnie's already aware. Being the smart one, I feel like he would have noticed somethings wrong the quickest and would have fallen into a bit of a mad scientist spiral about it, at which point the supporting cast decided the best way to help them out was just to flat-out tell them that they're not supposed to exist. Which somehow helped for a bit? Wow. Yeah, they're going to be separated. I think at least Mikey and Donnie will know at that point, and Raph "knows" but is very much not taking to the knowledge. He thinks that it's some long-running joke and he forces himself to not think about it as much as possible. When they're separated, I do in fact like the idea that the fusions could come back, but only in the case of a very strong enemy showing up. They've got the ninjutsu skills of the 2012 turtles, and the ninpo from rise, awkward as it is to fuse they can't not use that to their advantage. (The Mikeys have a bit of guilt, because they feel like the fusions are a third set that they're keeping locked up, in a way)

They are in the rise dimension. Currently, the only way proposed for them to have fused in the first place was a spell put on them in the hidden city, possibly by one of big mama's henchmen The 2012 April and Casey are definitely there. I'm not sure if 2012 Splinter would be there (probably not, knowing him) but we haven't even established if this is post-series and he's dead or not. How did they react? Ohohoho, so the april's and caseys were the ones who found them in the first place, after rise donnie had sent out an emergency alert. They were... quite alarmed, to say the least. A third set of alternates? Where are the other two? Where are all their gear? Why is so much of their turtles' gear torn and on the ground... oh no

Alright, now for the mayhem fusions under the cut:

Leo: Sooooo much anxiety, omg. Where does he put it all? He needs to distract himself a lot, because if he's left to his thoughts for too long he notices a lot of weird things about them. His favorite distractions are Jupiter Jim, and hanging out with Donnie.

Raph: Avoids his brothers, a lot. He's definitely the biggest of the four fusions, and considering MM Raph flipped a van, they're pretty strong as well. He's also got MM Raph's sort of "I don't need you, i want to be my own guy" thing paired with rise Raph's hate of being alone, so I'd imagine that'd result in a lot of time spent in the hidden city, where he fits in more, or maybe hanging out with the MM Bebop and Rocksteady(?). We can always have there be a stable portal between the dimensions and say that they can't return quite yet. That also allows MM April to go to school which is probably important or smth

Donnie: Autistic. Just in case you think I would somehow remove that lol. He's got problems with loud noise, but also prefers to have music blasting when he works on a project, so he carries around MM Donnie's headphones pretty much everywhere, for when either situation arises. He's tried different enhancements on the bo staff, but ended up going traditional with it. Projects for them are probably on a smaller scale than Rise Donnie's, but if he managed to convince himself that he can make something on Rise Donnie's level. His shell is also the most fucked up of the four, we're throwing together the rise softshelled one that got ripped out of the technordrome and the mutant mayhem one that got crushed. No matter if the fusion is softshelled or not (not sure yet) they definitely a need battleshell. Also This one does not know they're fused I kept writing they/them on accident since that's what I usually do for this au

Mikey: Silly little guy. There's so much creativity stored in this turtle, he likes art and dancing mainly. Has a 'Dr Delicate Touch' and it's somehow more alarming of a switch. He's also great at masking, externally he's fine then internally he's just "wtf is going on in here???? Is this what old people mean when they say they don't remember their childhood very well???" He also follows the sleep schedule that MM Mikey does for school.

I'll do awareness judgements for them a little later, just gonna put this out there for now

[theblorboscalledtheturtles]

1, 13, 21 and 23 for the Turtle Ask thingy.

hiiii :)

How did you get into tmnt? SOOO... I never had tv growing up, but I saw two episodes at school: one where Raph gets caught in a net and the '87 yacht episode with Mona Lisa. Then, in middle school my big sister's friend had a tmnt phase and I learned the '87 theme song from her. That's also when I learned which turtle was which. But it was actually all the ads for Mutant Mayhem that got me. The art looked so cool and I wanted to see it! And let's just say.. I'm very thorough with my interests, so if I wanted to see MM, I'd have to watch/read... everything else. It's been really fun!

13. Which character are you most similar to? While I prefer support roles over lead, I think in temperament I'm the most like 2003 Leo.

21. Give one character a hug? Rise April! Her hugs would probably be so enthusiastic! 2012 Leo probably needs one the most tho

23.If you could have a tmnt crossover with ANY other series, which would it be? So many good options... but I bet Danny Phantom would be a lot of fun. They're both used to weirdness, and have a lot of action, while their skills are different enough that the teamups would be interesting. Plus that general air of mischief. Sam would adopt the turtles (animal rights!) and Leo would adopt Danny, and Donnie and Tucker would have a grand old time while Mikey befriends every giant evil ghost they meet. Plus, the key color is all green!

Send an ask!

[bruh-haikyuu]

A/N: Timeskip Lev make me go BARK BARK BARK WOOF WOOF AAARF ARF. P.S: For double the experience, read while listening to this

diapason. | haiba lev

summary: in which lev meets you again and you develop some sort of warm reconnection with your past underclassman. (Continuation of this fic)

word count: 4402

warnings: manga spoilers!!

(n.) a full, rich outpouring of melodious sound

Vienna, Austria. January 2022.

The Danube Canal in mid-winter reminds you of a lot of things:

The Shakujii River flanked with its timeless parade of cherry blossom trees. Christmas celebrations spent at home with your family, popping bottles of soda and whining about misshapen gifts. Your piano recitals played in utter devotion, like the winter would never end.

You’re a long, long way away from home, and you start to hope if anyone is missing you. If there’s a hole in your figure carved into someone’s heart back in Japan or some place in the other side of the world—

What am I thinking... you sigh, bashfully urging yourself to keep on walking.

Nestling deeper into the warmth of your wool scarf, you wonder if it’s the cold ambience of the night that’s making you feel all sappy. Twinkling lights, murmured chatter from late-night cafés, the occasional gust of wind against your cheeks. You never thought you’d get so nostalgic on your “vacation”, but perhaps you’re just like any other hopeless romantic.

“Come to Vienna! A whirlwind of budding love!”

You’d read that advertisement in one of the catalogues your symphony’s personnel manager had excitedly dumped into your lap the day she announced your personal invitation to spectate the Vienna Philharmonic live a few weeks ago. You didn’t think much of the slogan, but even so... you have to admit you’re a tad bit lonely, aren’t you?

You can barely remember a moment where you didn’t feel lonely. You had your family at home, but you’d considered it your fault for being such a shut-in for the most part of your life. The neighborhood kids weren’t exactly the nicest people. And school life hadn’t been much of an improvement either.

Of course, until him.

A colossal first year stumbling into the desolate Orchestra Club room, with a mouth just as big as his stature. Haiba Lev who had been anxiously lost that day you’d met. With such little sense of direction, you can’t help but laugh at how much times he’d managed to find you in that maze of your high school.

He’d find you, talk to you, laugh with you. And you’d never felt all the rushing feelings you’d felt when you were with this dewy-eyed boy. He was the perfect image of confidence—radiant, ambitious and all the more charming.

If only you can thank him. Your hero of sorts. Haiba Lev who poured into you all the faith he had so you could move forward—

“A-ah, excuse me?”

Whipping your head into the direction of the choppy English, a seething blush rises onto your cheeks when you zero in to the large camera lens pointed right at you.

The bearded man speaks again. “Eh... you’re Japanese, aren’t you? Sorry, but we’re having a photoshoot right now, and you’re in the way of our model. Could you maybe...”

Oh dear, you frazzle. Prostrating yourself incessantly at the camera crew, you blunder. “I’m v-very sorry! Waah, I must’ve ruined your picture!”

“It’s fine,” the man smiles kindly. “Things like this often happen anyway. Ain’t that right, Hafu-sama?”

The lean figure behind you laughs, and for a second, you feel your chest flutter in your throat when you hear him. “Yep! Don’t worry about it, Miss—”

You really wish you hadn’t turned around because the moment your eyes locked with a pair of emeralds, you swear that your heart leapt out of your chest. All feeling of chilliness lamented, you feel red heat stretching out across your skin.

“H-Haiba-kun?!”

Unable to keep your footing steady, a stagnant lump rises in your throat when the familiar man grins at you with galaxies in his eyes.

“Fairy-senpai!!”

══════ ⋆★⋆ ══════

Tokyo, Japan. October 2012.

“Senpai!”

Footsteps echoing down the corridor, a wave of frightened third years part to let the gigantic creature of a first year through. Haiba Lev, age 16, is excited. Haiba Lev, 194.3 centimeters tall, is burning with so much resolve that he pays no heed to the Discipline Committee member who is resentfully yelling at him to “stop running in the hallways, you hoodlum!”

But who could blame him?

When you turn around and jolt in surprise, Lev drowns in the tiny fairies that flutter in his chest.

“Haiba-kun? What are you doing here?” you take a moment to register his full presence—considering his substantial size, Lev would probably understand your current disposition.

Finally, you whisper in a low tone, highly aware of the crowd that’s pivoting towards your conversation. “... Did you get lost again?”

“Of course not!” Lev replies rather gruffly. “I wanted to look for you to give you this so I can thank you for when I got lost.”

Thrusting a daintily wrapped bento towards you, the tall boy is rather unabashed about the entire situation—lace cloth and all. There’s a fragrant steam seeping out from the gaps of the box, spooling and wafting (and you think your ears pick up the noise of someone’s rumbling stomach).

You’d thought of spending your lunch alone in your club room, or maybe even the rooftop if you were up for it... like the usual. But the moment Lev starts talking again, you completely forget the idea as a whole.

Innocently grinning, he asks, “Do you want to eat lunch together, L/N-senpai?”

How could you say no?

And thus, here you are in the courtyard with a titan first-year who is nearly twice your size, jovially chattering about as you quietly eat your lunch.

When was the last time you ate something so cute? Your parents stopped making you character bentos since you got into middle school (“Aah... sorry, Y/N. Dad’s hands aren’t as artistic as they used to be,” your father had told you that day, an utter look of guilt dancing across his face). You weren’t too confident in your own skills either, so bentos with endearing faces and shaped cut-outs of vegetables were simply a fragmented piece of the past.

First-years today are so talented, you think, shoveling down your meal in sheer politeness. “This is delicious, Haiba-kun! The chicken is so tender and the rice is so well-seasoned! I wish I had your sense for cooking...”

“My sister made it, actually. I tried to help her cut the eggs, but it ended up being a mess and she told me to just sit and wait in the dining room,” he replies sheepishly, a bubble of laughter slipping from between his lips. “I’m glad you like it though, Senpai! Just wait ‘til my sister hears about your reaction!”

“Does your sister always make your lunches for you?” you ask, curiosity subduing your reserve.

Lev takes a moment to swallow the lump of rice in his mouth.

“Mm, sometimes. If she’s not having a lecture in the morning, she’ll make breakfast. Otherwise, the teriyaki set at the cafeteria is just as good!”

Cafeteria. You shiver. That hellhole of shoving and scrambling and incessant talking... You’re thankful the school had decided to set up a few more vending machines close to campus when you entered your second year.

And then you think of Lev. With that extreme height and intimidating presence, he wouldn’t have to put his foot on the line every time he wanted melon bread, right? And he is definitely the type of person to be able to talk to the loud cafeteria lady without dropping his change.

Confidence. Recklessness. Bliss. All the prime features you wanted, right in front of you—and yet...

“Hey, L/N-senpai?” you snap awake from your thoughts. A dash of concern flashes over your underclassman’s features before he repeats his muted question. “Can I have one of your sausages?”

Peering down at the cluster of uneaten octopus sausages, you quickly nod, face reddening once you realize how close Lev is breathing near you. “G-Go ahead.”

Chirping out a “thank you for the food!”, the silver-haired boy swoops down on a miniature octopus, a sound of immense satisfaction humming in his chest. He’s like a child, you laugh to yourself. A young boy with no sense of care of the world, no concern of what’s going to happen to him unless he really does it.

Leaning back on the bench, you sigh, a smile dawning on your face. “You didn’t have to force yourself to eat lunch with me, you know. I usually eat by myself anyway.”

You’re being apologetic again. You want to punch yourself for even thinking of it. But your habit precedes your intentions, and you can already feel the mood turn sour—

“Why not though?”

Looking up at him incredulously, you can barely string together a coherent response before Lev pipes up again.

“Isn’t food always best when eaten together?”

How pretentious.

There are already valleys of flowers blooming in your stomach at his innocent reply. The same kind that sprouted the day he’d burst into your private practice room. You really hoped you wouldn’t get ahead of yourself anymore. Not with the risks that it carried. But this guileless first year was a much more difficult case than you’d imagined, and thus the flowers go into full blossom.

You smile, the faint blush on Lev’s cheeks going unnoticed. “Yeah. We should eat together more often.”

And so you did. Tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. The passage of time a trivial shadow beneath your budding happiness.

══════ ⋆★⋆ ══════

Vienna, Austria. January 2022.

“You work in a symphony?! Senpai’s job is super cool!”

Under the amber light of the cafe’s chandelier, you can’t help but feel a certain déjà vu at your current situation. Perhaps it’s the fact that you’re having tea with your high school underclassman, or maybe it’s simply the residue of your more recent wistful thinking.

Yet again, it still hasn’t registered into your mind how you’d miraculously manifested Lev into proximity just from your sheer yearning... You kind of feel selfish.

“It’s just a freelance job though, it’s probably not as impressive as being a model,” you say.

Lev crosses his arms huffily, and you worry if you’ve started to offend him. Until he opens his mouth again. “Modelling is suuuper embarassing. Sometimes, I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that ‘that’s my face!’ or ‘I made that pose with that other model’. The agency’s really harsh on the way I dress too—I mean, what’s wrong with wearing a shirt that says ‘HERBIVORE’ to go to Lawson’s?”

You stifle a giggle as he rambles on about “the time I had to cross-dress as a woman because the female model quit on the day of the shoot”. For someone who had grown up to be a lean, rather attractive figure, you can’t shake your head away from the thought that the 16-year old Haiba Lev is still stuck inside the body of a corporate slave. There’s a sense of relief that accompanies the feeling, and memories of your high school days slowly come into picture—

“One black tea and a latte for the lovely couple?” a kind-looking waiter gently sidles in between you, cutting Lev off from his rant, and you from your reflection.

Turning a vivid shade of crimson, you stutter, “O-oh... we are not—”

“Thank you,” Lev grins dashingly, enough to make your heart race and a few passers-by to stop in their tracks.

Once the waiter retreats back into the pantry, the man across you slowly leans forward to whisper endearingly. “My sister wants me to practice my English while I’m abroad. You think I got my message across, Senpai?”

“You did well, Haiba-kun.” There are a lot of things you want to ask him really. If he really knew the meaning behind the waiter’s sentence. Or if he realized he’d nearly pronounced ‘you’ with an extra ‘th’.

... Or why he’s pouring in a mound of sugar into your cup of tea.

“H-Haiba-kun, that order’s mine...”

“Hm? Yeah, I know,” he mutters, the soft clinking of the spoon against glass echoing in your head. “You like your stuff really sweet, right? Man, I used to be really worried the first few times we had tea together.”

That’s right, you gulp. The endless hours you’d spent together in the Orchestra Club room... he really did learn a lot of things about you that time, didn’t he? Although you had merely been friends, Lev had grown on you, as if he’d always been there from the start. And you wonder: what else does he remember about you?

“Ah, by the way,” Lev starts. “Are you still thinking about setting up that music store you wanted?”

“Of course,” you mumble. It was only a naïve dream was what you meant to say, but in the presence of such a captivating man, all the gears in your head seemed to... dislocate.

Lev smiles a simple smile. Boyish at best, but still enough to enrapture you into his lingering gaze.

“I’m glad.... I’m glad you haven’t given up. You know, the old L/N-senpai would’ve called it quits because you thought you weren’t good enough. But look at you now! Soon enough, you’ll be off to teach music to the world.”

Your heart is already doubling in size at his words. Any more and you’d probably explode... You’d lost it. You’ve lost all the capability to keep your heart in control, and now you are smiling like a maniac in front of the last person you wanted to see in this state.

But he only laughs. Youthful and full of color. Unchanging from all those years ago.

“Wahahaha! You finally smiled! We should celebrate, you know. Just a small holiday from all that hard work. Say... are you still going to be in Vienna in the weekend?”

“I’m free on those days. But what’s all this about?”

Hiding his bashful smirk behind his cup of coffee, Lev murmurs. “We have some catching up to do, don’t we—Uwaah! Hot!”

Unchanging indeed, you shake your head, calling over the waiter for an extra set of napkins.

══════ ⋆★⋆ ══════

Tokyo, Japan. February 2013.

There is a tea party set stashed between the two cardboard boxes filled with sheet music and spare melodicas. They’ve been left behind by your graduated seniors, who insisted that tea, “as the prime component to a good host”, was to be kept in the club room at all times, case there were any visiting guests.

...Of course, such things never happened. And you always ended up drinking the tea by yourselves. But even with the departure of your beloved seniors, you can never shake off the habit of drinking and restocking the supplies whenever required.

So you wonder if you should really be thanking your tea-loving upperclassmen for the free beverages.

“That’s a lot of sugar!” Lev gasps in awe, the emeralds in his eyes twisting and shining with the cascade of crystals falling into your cup of tea. “I bet you have a lot of cavities in your mouth, Senpai.”

“I brush my teeth very well so I don’t think anything like that’s every happened to me,” you say, irritably trying to ignore the tactless comment from your starry-eyed underclassman. “It’s been a while since you’ve been in my club room, hasn’t it? I’m glad you didn’t get lost trying to get here.”

He grumbles, crossing his arms in faux-anger. “Geez! I won’t get lost like that so easily! Besides...”

Lev takes a moment to drink in the warmth of the club room’s solace. The grand piano in the corner. The orange light streaming through the open curtains. Your curious face, like something out of a fairytale book.

“This place is full of good memories, isn’t it? I don’t think I’ll ever forget something like that.”

You chuckle at his monologue. “You sound like my grandfather, Haiba-kun.”

Lev’s face warps into something reminiscent of a prune.

“Senpai, we’re only two years apart!” he fumes. “You didn’t invite me here just to crush my self-esteem, right?! C-Come on, aren’t you going to show me the audition piece you wanted me to hear?”

There is a burning urge inside of you that’s telling you to “pull at his leg just a little more...”, but nevertheless, the artist within you says to keep your audience at bay. And so, the curtains open and your fingers dance on familiar keys.

You’ve played for him before. Songs like ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’ or ‘Ma Mère L’oye’. Songs that you love, much like the one you’re performing for him right now. But you’re shaking in your seat. Wondering, anticipating, fearing.

He’s staring so much, you bite your lip, trying to avert your focus from Lev’s unbreakable gaze.

A single spectator wracks your brain even more than a theatre full of different kinds people—enthusiasts, university scouts, onlookers. But in your dismal, little club room, there is only your underclassman. Someone who knows nothing of music, but lacks so much knowledge that you know any of his critique would come from honesty alone.

...Why do you care so much about one person’s opinion?

You don’t realize how long you’ve been pondering until your train of thought is abruptly thwarted by the end of your song. You finish on a satisfying note and your endearing onlooker suddenly springs on his feet to shower you in applause.

“What the heck—that was so cool! I’ve never seen anyone play like that before!” Lev stumbles, everything and anything he’d planned to say pouring out as a blubbering mess as your face grows hotter from the attention. “Senpai, you’ll definitely pass the audition if you play just like that.”

“Y-You really think so?” he’s probably just being nice, you think. But for a spare moment, could you simply imagine that he means every word?

“I know so!” he smiles, the palpitations in your chest growing intense by the second. “You just have to keep going, won’t you?”

Even if you’re not brave enough to believe it, you want to believe that there’s a single Haiba Lev in this unyielding universe who believes that you, a mere side character who wishes for more, can and will.

You feel invincible.

══════ ⋆★⋆ ══════

Vienna, Austria. January 2022.

Did you know that swans mate for life? As a symbol of love and affection, they’re widely known to curve their necks together in a shape of a heart when courting. A form of elegance at its finest... until they start hissing.

“They’re so big! Senpai, come take a look at the swans!”

Folding the brochure into a tiny square, you return to your companion’s side, peering over the railings of the bridge to catch a glimpse of the thrush of white feathers down below.

You gulp. They are much larger than you expected.

“They’re surprisingly loud, aren’t they?” you mutter, watching a cygnet waddle its way out of the water onto the banks of the canal. You didn’t want to say, but it slightly reminded you of Lev the first time he’d waddled his way into the the Orchestra Club room.

With the constant squawking of the swans, the both of you find yourself in silence. For you, at least, the past two days viewing all sorts of Austrian sights with Lev had been strangely more gratifying than you’d fathomed. Lev, who’d been as excitable as he’d always been, breathes in peace, plumes of white forming from his mouth.

“This weekend’s been nice, hasn’t it?” you break the silence, observing the smooth junctures of his face. Lev turns to you slowly, his voice squeezing out.

“Don’t say that.”

Your blood freezes. “What?”

“Saying things like that...” Lev sighs wilfully and turns back to the view of the canal. He frowns. “I don’t want to think that this weekend is going to be over soon.”

You want to cry out. Me too. Me too, me too, me too. Your entire body is so full of butterflies you want to double over and pass out. But he continues.

“Travelling and talking with you is so fun, I never want it to end... It’s kind of embarrassing,” he says, eyes sparkling. “D-Do you think so too? Am I a selfish person for thinking that?”

You shake your head. “It’s not embarrassing, Haiba-kun. I—”

Are you red? Are you blushing? Your face feels so hot, you can’t even finish your sentence. He’s so close. So close to you. You want to be reliable, you want to reply, but you can’t. Under his bewitching gaze, you’ve fallen so deep.

When Lev opens his mouth again, it’s like everything around you—the bridge, the people, the swans have entirely vanished. “L/N-senpai, c-can I tell you something? Something I wanted to tell you for a long time.”

Eh?

“I’ve always liked you, Senpai. I really, really like you.”

Blank. Your mind goes blank, even when you whisper a small, “Really?”

You’re happy, you’re so happy you want to jump and shout to the world that you love him. Awfully. Dearly. It’s all like a train had crashed into you headfirst, and you can’t settle on a proper response before the floodgates burst open.

“Wh-Whoa! Don’t cry!” he flails his arms in panic as more tears dribble down your cheeks. “Geez, Senpai, at least reply to me first...”

“Sorry. I’m sorry,” you laugh, wiping your eyes with the edges of your scarf. “I’m just so happy, I didn’t know how to react.”

Lev’s chest inflates for a moment before he lunges forward to encapsulate you in his embrace. Between the persistent layers of clothing, the beating of his heart resonates deeply against your face. It’s quick and lively, warm enough to remind you of the swirled feelings that you harbor for one another.

“Oh, thank god...” Lev grins, burying his face in your shoulder. “You feel the same way...”

Humming calmly into his ear, you revel in the closure. “I really, really like you too, Haiba-kun.”

And none of you lets go—save for when a swan makes its way up to the bridge to peck at Lev’s boots.

══════ ⋆★⋆ ══════

Tokyo, Japan. March 2023.

“... Lev, wake up.”

Feeling a slight nudge on his cheek, Lev tethers over opening his eyes to wonder at your beautiful smile or bury his face even deeper into the sheets.

It’s not like he didn’t favor you, but as of now, the comforts of your shared bed was more important. And thus, Haiba Lev, age 26, shrouds himself under the plush duvet and focuses himself on the sweet dream he was having about you.

“Lev, I know you can hear me...” he hears you sigh, long and airy, just enough to lull him back to sleep. “You have a fitting today, don’t you? You’re going to trouble Matsuyo-san and Alisa-nee if you arrive late.”

Isn’t that on Thursday? Actually... what day is it today? He isn’t very good with dates and formalities—that’s why he considers himself lucky to have you! A cute lover to bring him back to land during the day, and to shower with love and to cuddle with during the evening.

Yawning widely, Lev owlishly wrenches his eyes open, the crystalline sunlight from the bedroom window illuminating your face like a halo.... and was that his shirt you were wearing?

Lucky me~ he grins goofily.

Pressing his lips together, Lev pulls you by the wrist and before you can avoid the sudden attack, you’ve collapsed once more into a tangled mess of limbs and crooked sheets, with your boyfriend’s arms wrapped tightly around your waist.

“Let’s just stay in bed today, Y/N-san~” he slurs, nuzzling closer to you. How catlike, you think. “I want to be lovey-dovey and kissy-kissy again...”

He yawns again, a few stray tresses of silver falling over his face. As if he wasn’t as attractive every hour of the day, you really have learned how to take control of your extreme heart palpitations around him.

Your adorable younger boyfriend, ah... he really is your weakness, isn’t he?

“I’m really sorry, but I have to open up the shop soon,” you reluctantly peel yourself away from him, eliciting a small whimper from the Leviathan in your bed. “I’ll make it up to you when I finish teaching my evening lessons and when you come home, okay?”

Stubborn as a goat, Lev grumbles. “I’ll come back early, you know. Can you not do your evening lessons today?”

“Hm? Why not?” your raised eyebrow is cynical, but is juxtaposed by the gentle strokes of your palm on the crown of his head.

As much as Lev loves you (he does, he really does!), it’s rather annoying when he can’t tell if you’re seriously being oblivious or simply teasing him. He hopes for neither, but in his case, you’re an addict to his gags and without a doubt, you’re definitely messing with him right now.

“Those damn brats... I don’t like the way they stare you up during your classes.”

You laugh, raucously. And Lev considers leaving you to catch a break from the constant jeering. When you finally pipe down, you shift closer to him and press your head onto his bare chest.

“Lev, they’re nine. How else are they going to learn to play if they don’t watch me do it first?” you chuckle. “You shouldn’t worry so much about me. You should be worrying about that fitting you have in a few hours.”

“Geez, fine,” he groans. “A kiss before I shower?”

You know exactly where this is going. “Just one.”

Lighting up like a Christmas tree, Lev makes quick work of his hands and tenderly cup your cheek before placing a timid kiss on your lips.

No morning breath, you notice. As expected of a professional model.

“One more...” he whispers, swooping down on your lips once again.

Two, three and maybe seven kisses later, Lev has you caged between his arms, his looming figure propped proudly over you as he continues to pepper you with affection. The moment he starts to lap up your bottom lip, you know you’re not going anywhere anytime soon.

“It’s so early, Y/N-san,” he mumbles, pleading eyes making your heart turn to jelly. “We have a few more hours before we really have to go, don’t we? So... in the meantime...?”

Sighing, you can only turn a deep red—he really has you around his finger, doesn’t he? Oh well. You suppose it won’t hurt to push back your morning lessons for a few minutes, right?

[agoodroughandtumble]

Hold the Line - Bucky/Reader AU Part 7

Status: Incomplete Pairing: Sixth form (18yr old)/journalist Bucky x reader Summary: You and Bucky liked each other during sixth form. And then everything went wrong. Six years later you’re working at a newspaper and a new colleague makes your head dizzy and your morals questionable. (Modern AU) Warnings: 18+. Language, some implied smut straight off the bat and later on, all the cliches, potentially horribly OOC canons 

Read Part 1 [here]

[Masterlist]

*

 2012.

You grabbed your phone and immediately called Natasha. The redhead answered chirpily. “What’s up?”

“Weirdest thing just happened.” You paused, not entirely sure yourself what exactly had happened. “Bucky just came over.”

“Did you jump on him?”

You rolled your eyes, but there was an amused smile on your lips caused by your friend’s question. “He gave me a pen.” There was a pause. “Apparently your pen.”

This time the short silence was caused by Natasha who seemed to be considering this. “So he clearly likes you.”

You scoffed. “Yeah, okay.”

“No, seriously, it’s obvious.”

“Because he gave me your pen?” The disbelief was obvious in you tone.

“You’re an idiot. The pen was clearly just an excuse to see you.”

“You think so?” You asked, trying to keep the hopefulness and desperation out of your voice.

“Mm-hm.”

You sighed and laid on your back, fiddling with a few strands of hair. “Well what am I supposed to do now?”

“Flirt with him, obviously.”

“Obviously.” You repeated in a sarcastic tone.

Natasha tutted down the line. “He’s clearly interested – just let him know you’re interested too.”

After twenty minutes or so of Natasha bestowing her man based wisdom on you, you said your goodbyes and you hung up, phone discarded on your pillow. You stared up at the ceiling, a million thoughts fighting for dominance in your head. Part of you wanted to believe what Natasha had told you, that Bucky did in fact like you. But you didn’t want to get your hopes up only for both of you to be wrong. Bucky was flirty with everyone, all the time. You couldn’t make a fool out of yourself (because, really, who were you kidding about your ability to successfully flirt?) based on a pen that wasn’t even yours. You sat up, hugging your knees to her chest when a thought occurred to you, and before you could convince yourself it was a bad idea your mouth opened and you were shouting at the door.

“Ciaran! Come here a sec!”

A few moments later your twin brother approached with a confused but friendly smile, tugging his earphones out and shoving them into his jeans’ pocket. “What you want?”

You patted on the bed beside you, and he took the hint, sitting down side on to face you. “I need a favour, before I decide how stupid this is.”

Ciaran eyed you suspiciously. You had been acting weird for the last couple of weeks and he didn’t like the feeling of not knowing what you were thinking. “Okay,” he nodded slowly, “What do you need? And how stupid?”

You started chewing on you bottom lip, suddenly too nervous. Ciaran and Bucky were friends, after all, what if Ciaran knew something you and Natasha didn’t, or what if he just didn’t want to help because they were friends. “Nat thinks...” you let out a shaky breath, “Nat thinks Bucky likes me.” At this, Ciaran’s eyebrows shot up and you smacked his arm. “Shut up. I just...I don’t know, I-”

“You want me to spy on him for you?” There was an annoying smirk on his face. You could feel the heat rising in your cheeks.

“Well, yes.”

There was a pause, and then he grinned at you. “Okay, let’s do this.”

*

2018.

Bucky let his forehead fall against the wall with a groan and a thud. Part of him had been amused when you had practically shouted at him about your relationship with your boss. You couldn’t lie for shit. And then whatever the hell had happened just then had happened and now Bucky no longer knew what was going on.

He sighed, enjoying the cool wall against his almost burning skin. There was no reason for him to be jealous – he knew that, of course he did – but that just made the situation all the more unbearable. You and he had only shared one night, six years ago, and then he’d run away. His head collided with the wall once again. Maybe if he did it hard enough he’d knock himself out and not feel anything for a few hours. Surely that was preferable to having confusing feelings for a woman he hadn’t spoken to in six years.

The door opened behind him, causing him to jump and desperately try to compose himself.

Torrin was eyeing him suspiciously.

Bucky tried to look nonchalant. “Thought you’d be enjoying the spectacle.”

Torrin shrugged, “Not my thing.” There was a pause, and then the blonde decided to test his theory. “Besides, (Y/N) asked me to see where you’d gone.”

Bucky’s jaw clenched. He was determined not to show any emotion. “Is she not too busy being serenaded?”

A small smile passed across Torrin’s lips. “He’s doing Hooked on a Feelin’ now.”

At this, Bucky couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “Is this going to a common occurrence?”

“Fuck knows.”

An awkward silence fell upon the two men. Torrin watched Bucky, trying to work out what he was thinking and drawing a blank. He took a gamble. “(Y/N) told me you know each other.”

Bucky remained stoic.

Torrin tried to push a little further. “And what happened...that night.”

Bucky shrugged, surprising himself with his own composure. “Did she tell you it wasn’t a big deal?”

There was something about Bucky’s shrug, and then quickness of his brushed off response that made Torrin suspicious. He still didn’t like the man, and honestly, you must have been off your tits because that was the only explanation he could come up with as to why his friend would chose the man standing in front of him. And yet, there was something Torrin couldn’t quite figure out about him. His words and his body didn’t seem to be in agreement. He crossed his arms over his chest, eyeing the dark haired man up and down, which wasn’t as intimidating as he’d hoped it would be given the height difference between them.  

Bucky clearly noticed this. “What?”

“Nothing,” Torrin lied and relaxed again, “Just looking out for my friend.”

There was a raised eyebrow, and a look Torrin could only describe as amusement on Bucky’s face. “I thought that was Rex’s job.”

[armeniaitn]

Rising Democratic Star Mari Manoogian of Michigan Gets a National Stage

New Post has been published on https://armenia.in-the.news/politics/rising-democratic-star-mari-manoogian-of-michigan-gets-a-national-stage-52827-27-08-2020/

Rising Democratic Star Mari Manoogian of Michigan Gets a National Stage

HK: What keeps you going day in and day out?

MM: Especially during COVID what has been really helpful is just being in touch with the community. We’ve been doing a lot of phone banking and touching base to make sure people are OK, seeing if there’s any different services we can get them, or questions they might have. That’s something that’s really been great, but I do want to highlight, especially this week [the week of her appearance on the virtual Democratic National Convention] it’s been kind of a whirlwind of events. What has been really great is to see how many young Armenian girls were excited about seeing me on TV, and talking about how they kind of see that there’s a possibility for them, not just in politics, but in doing something as big as this, and just seeing that, I can even serve as a small inspiration to kids is a huge deal for me, and definitely keeps me going when times are difficult.

HK: Has there been a situation where you felt you made a real difference?

MM: Right now, there are a lot of challenges with some people getting access to their unemployment benefits because the system has been so overwhelmed. One of the big challenges in government just generally is that it’s clunky and antiquated, and, our computer systems are updated, and things crash all the time. They’re not super user-friendly, so it makes it really hard for people to have trust that the system’s actually working for them. And so truly, anytime I’m able to get somebody access to a benefit that they were deserving of … I have a close friend in the Armenian community whose teacher pension for some reason was messed up. We were able to fix that for her. It’s these small things, that are seemingly small, they are not big pieces of sweeping legislation but they’re meaningful differences in people’s lives and that’s what this is really all about.

HK: Who are some of your mentors in terms of your career? Who are some of your role models and why?

MM: Rep. Kristy Pagan who is from Canton, she is a third-term representative, and she has been a mentor of mine since I announced my run for public office. She’s someone who was also an underdog who won a really tough primary and a tough general election, and she’s actually my seatmate on the floor of the house. It’s really beneficial to sit next to her and talk about different legislation and different ideas we have. I serve as the treasurer of the Progressive Women’s Caucus and she’s the chairwoman so we spend a lot of time together. And of course, Governor [Gretchen] Whitmer and I are pretty close. I’m really fortunate to have her in my corner and she’s been incredibly supportive of me this week, because I was quite nervous before what aired for the DNC speech (laughs) so it was really great to have her. And then of course my parents have been super supportive and the work that my mom did in her field, although it’s not exactly the same thing, she’s such a role model and inspiration for me. She’s someone who got her education later in life. She went back to school when she had two kids and got a PhD. She’s served as a role model and inspiration for me as well.

HK: Do you have any sort of political role models when you were getting into politics at a young age, was it like, “oh I want to make a difference like this person…”

MM: Yes, I mean there are certain figures in politics that I’ve looked up to. I really was inspired to get into public office because of Barack Obama’s historic presidential run. He had a campaign office in Birmingham down the street from my house and it was the first presidential campaign I saw actually make an effort to talk to people in Birmingham. That said, I worked for Congressman John Dingell on the Hill in 2012 and the work that he did and the work that his wife continues to do for conservation and for the environment is something that’s super important to Michigan and it’s an issue that I continue to champion. We secured $120 million for replacing lead and copper service lines [for water] around the state and I like to think that’s something that the late Congressman would have loved to see done.

HK: So that ties into the whole Flint crisis, they had lead still in their pipes which was causing the problem.

MM: Yes, yes.

HK: That’s interesting that you mention environmentalism with Dingell, because most people hear Dingell and think of the auto industry.

MM: Yes, there’s a wildlife refuge actually named after John Dingell in his district; it’s a huge deal. He was an avid outdoorsman, an avid hunter. When we would walk into the office there was an amazing picture of him and Bill Clinton in a duck blind, which was hilarious, and when you walked into his office he had stuffed deer mounted on the walls and things, but you know what’s kind of surprising that people don’t really understand if they’re not from Michigan is, you know, folks who are hunters in our state are huge outdoorsmen and they’re very much into being conservationists. They understand that the sport of hunting is that, it’s a sport, but it’s really important to protect the environment so you can continue to practice your sport.

HK: That’s like a Teddy Roosevelt [idea]…

MM: Yes, it’s very much, exactly! The first memo I wrote when I was an intern there [for Congressman Dingell] was about Zebra Mussels and their expansion into the Great Lakes and sort of what we could do to prevent ships from dropping ballast water into the Great Lakes, because they would take their saltwater that they had put into their ships and they would dump the saltwater into our Great Lakes, and with that, all of these mussels and basically invasive species that live in the ocean were introduced to our ecosystem. It’s totally changed the ecosystem of the Great Lakes. The fisheries are totally impacted by a changing ecosystem, absolutely.

In this image from video, former Georgia House Democratic leader Stacey Abrams, center, and others, speak during the second night of the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2020. (Democratic National Convention via AP)

HK: You were one of just 17 young Democratic Party VIPs from across the US in the first virtual DNC convention. Why were you picked and how did you feel when you were asked?

MM: (laughs at being referred to as a VIP) So, I think, I can’t really say why I was picked necessarily. I got a call from the deputy political director on Biden’s campaign that I’ve been working with since Joe Biden campaigned in Michigan to win the Michigan primary. From the beginning, from endorsing Vice President Biden prior to the Michigan primary, I told his campaign, “My family, my dad in particular, has been a longtime fan of the Vice President and whatever I can do to lend my voice to assist him getting elected I’m more than happy to do.” When the opportunity presented itself, I was just really excited to accept the offer to speak. (You can see her in action at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rNwOH7jxsE)

HK: Were you nervous about speaking before millions?

MM: I don’t know that I was that nervous. Obviously I was worried about how the speech would turn out and how people would receive it but as a young elected official, I’m asked to give speeches all the time. The other day I spoke on the floor of the Michigan House about a resolution to request Congress to get aid to Lebanon to rebuild Beirut. And I saw that as an opportunity to get a practice in, and it’s important to speak on that issue, but it’s part of my job. Obviously there are always butterflies when it’s before a big stage but I view speaking in public and being an effective communicator as an important part of the job.

HK: I think from a lot of peoples’ perspective, someone at the DNC just wrote that whole script, but you told me that you actually wrote some of that stuff, on issues that you thought important.

MM: Yes, so we worked with speechwriters to make sure that we were effectively representing our communities. There was a question about “what did I want to speak about,” and I said, I specifically wanted to highlight small businesses in our district because we have a really thriving downtown area, and you know, I grew up in downtown Birmingham so I thought it was really important to highlight them and shout them out. Also, obviously as a native Michigander, the auto industry’s really important. If I had to think of things that reminded me of Michigan and Joe Biden, I would think the auto industry and what happened in 2008 [the federal bailout]. And then of course also, the issue of healthcare. It affects everybody, so to be able to deliver the punchline of the whole speech was really an incredible opportunity, and as much as it was a silly moment, people are talking about it, and if it gives Americans an excuse to talk about healthcare, I’m here for it. [Manoogian delivered a punchline in the convention speech about Biden’s support for healthcare reform, by leaning into the camera as if telling an inside joke and then saying “That’s A Big Effing Deal,” which was a humorous yet pointed reference to Biden’s accidentally saying the same thing on a hot microphone — but using the real “f-word” — during the passage of the Affordable Care Act]. My good friend [Representative] Colin Allred tossed me the alley-oop on that one.

I didn’t expect it to be what it turned out to be, and now I’m like a meme on Twitter. If it gives people an excuse to talk about the risk that we have — just this week it was announced that the Supreme Court is hearing the case before them that could repeal the entirety of the Affordable Care Act — I’m here for it, I’m happy to make that joke.

State Rep. Mari Manoogian at her swearing in

HK: What sort of feedback have you gotten?

MM: It’s mostly been very positive. Both from Armenians and non-Armenians alike, people in the district. My dad is a huge volunteer, and he drops off the yard signs to peoples’ homes, and he was out in the community dropping off yard signs just a couple days ago. And someone said to him, “you know, obviously I really love what she’s doing and I’m happy to count on her to do the right thing but we’re just really grateful that she’s now a national voice for the issues in Michigan.” And so, you know to be able to shine that spotlight on our district and our community … and the things that we are doing here that are amazing, that make us a really strong community, and the things we need to do to improve it, I think is really great.

HK: We saw on Twitter your message about the negative comments you get from your own Armenian community, particularly some men. How do you cope with that?

MM: Oh boy…(laughs)… I mean, seriously, this is the thing that is really important to understand, that Armenian women have been the backbone of Armenian history since the dawn of our people, and for me, I see that [negative commentary] as, people view me as a threat because I’m an Armenian woman with power. I know people don’t always agree with what I do, and that’s completely OK, but the most important thing here is that Armenian-Americans have a voice in government in a way that they may not have had before. And I always try to center being Armenian whether it’s implicitly or explicitly. And so, for example, if you are Armenian and you tuned into the speech you saw that I was wearing an Armenian necklace. You knew that I was here for the community; you could see it in my name but you saw it implicitly in what I was doing. And to have Armenian young girls look up to the speech, that’s how I deal with the negativity. There’s so much more positive reaction that drowns that out. And “haters gonna hate.” And you can put that in there. Armenian women stepped up for me and went to bat in a way that was something I’d never seen in the community before. They totally rallied behind me and just shut these guys down.

HK: Well, and I mean, this is the problem with the internet, anyone who wants to say something completely off the wall, comes on the Internet.

MM: Well, and, a few weeks ago I kind of went viral on Instagram because I explained what was going on between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and Khloe Kardashian reposted it, and it became a thing, Armenians and non-Armenians read it because there was a lot of exposure to it. And I actually had to work with Instagram and Facebook to monitor the comments because we were getting death threats in the office from Azerbaijanis.

HK: So, like a hundred years after we’ve been living in this country still, there’s…

MM: There’s still really gross negative misogyny and hate that’s out there and I have to educate my staff about how to deal with it, I have non-Armenian staff that work for me, so I’ve talked to them about all of this and sort of explained to them about it all. And that’s the thing, it’s sort of an interesting challenge, and I don’t mind it, I understand that that’s what comes with the territory, but, you know I want folks to understand, yes we have to work twice as hard because we’re doing our job but also dealing with this other sideshow insanity.

HK: Well, that leads to the next question. Please speak a little bit about your background: family, schooling, previous jobs.

MM: I’m really honored to represent the district I grew up in. I grew up in Birmingham, went to Birmingham Public Schools, graduated from George Washington University, started at Michigan State and transferred so I have the experience of being at an in-state school as well. I have a bachelor’s and master’s degree from the Elliott School of International Affairs at GW. I previously worked for Congressman John Dingell; it was my first job in politics as an intern, and then I have also worked for Ambassador Samantha Power at the US mission to the UN in 2013, and also worked in a couple different offices at the State Department prior to moving home and running for office.

HK: What do you plan to do when it comes to the Biden campaign in the coming months?

MM: Frankly, whenever the Biden team needs assistance on social media, or they need someone to write an op-ed or anything like that, I’m more than happy to stand in and help with that. A lot of what I’ve been doing is for their ethnic communities engagement, so helping lead their outreach to the Armenian-American community, also help a lot with young voters as well, and basically helping to rally the troops to get people to volunteer with the campaign, phone bank, etc. They also ask my opinion on policy every once in a while, which is nice.

HK: On your website, you put your personal phone number and email address. How many calls/messages do you get? Is it unusual to have such openness?

MM: I don’t know that it’s ever been that open in this district before but we get text messages and calls all the time. Even in the past week, I think I might have received — I get maybe two or three phone calls a day, and I get text messages even more frequently than that, and we maybe receive probably between, I don’t know, 10-15 emails a day. And that’s just on the campaign side.

HK: Do you think Armenians are involved enough in politics? If not, how would you encourage them to become more active? Why does it matter to get involved?

MM: Well in this district they are! In this district they’re very involved on both sides of the aisle. You know I think, relative to the population, for as small of an ethnic community as the Armenians are, we have an outsized role that we play in politics. We’ve seen Armenians get elected to governorships, we’ve seen them throughout different posts in the executive branch all the way up through presidential appointments, and even the 40th district, I’m not the first Armenian to represent the 40th district before, in Michigan, which is unusual. [Republican John Jamian was State Representative of Michigan’s 40th District from 1991-1996] And so I think that, while I say all of this, there could absolutely be a ton more engagement. I’m really fortunate to have a lot of Armenian-American volunteers that had never volunteered on a campaign before but they knew me, and they knew that I was running for office and so…friends of mine from St. John, they knocked doors for me in the rain two years ago when I was running. There’s always a bigger role that Armenians can play but, I think what’s really important is, yes Armenians are volunteering and doing all that good work, but I want to see more Armenian-Americans run for office because that’s truly where we can really push and have a true Armenian-American agenda, at all levels of government.

HK: But you think we are pretty active in this area, and do you think…the rest of the country?

MM: Mm-hm, yes, in Glendale the majority of the City Council is Armenian, I think at this point it might be entirely Armenian. And there are Armenians that are elected to the California State Assembly; the Speaker of the House in Maine is Armenian [Democrat Sara Gideon], and she’s running for Senate, so we may have our first Armenian-American Senator. And I will also say this; it’s a she. Right? You have Anna Eshoo, you have Congresswoman Jackie Speier, Sara Gideon is running for the Senate seat in Maine, so there’s a lot of, particularly a lot of elected Armenian-American women. And that’s a huge deal for our community.

HK: Do you speak to young people, both Armenian and non-Armenian, about getting involved with politics?

MM: Frequently, almost every day. I get messages – I’m very frequently active on Instagram, I get tons of DMs from kids who are in high school all the time, that went to my high school, asking about how they can get involved in politics, like I said they pitch me on bill ideas, they ask a lot of really good questions, it’s wonderful.

HK: That’s really interesting, so that shows the positive side of the internet, there’s so much more connectivity, and people are all of a sudden – it’s not as difficult to talk to somebody like you and get in touch, and then, like whoever heard of a high school kid pitching a bill idea 30 years ago, or 20 years ago?

MM: Well, and this is the thing that I really like to emphasize, is the way I ran my campaign I was super accessible. I knocked on 10,000 doors across the district in 2018 and, was very serious and it wasn’t just a line that I said about being accessible, you mentioned that I have my phone number and my email online; and also just my DMs are open on Instagram and so, there can be negative things that are said but by and large it’s a lot of positive things, especially young women who are messaging us, just saying how grateful they are to have representation. We have a really robust shadow program. So, prior to COVID happening, once a month I would have two students from the district come up and shadow me in Lansing, they’d spend the full day with me, I’d take them to lobbying meetings, I would take them on the floor and introduce them to the whole House. So they would get to see everything in action, I would show them my notes and how I know how to vote on things, they’d come to committee with me and see me debate bills. One of the things I really wanted to set out to do, which for me, being an elected official is not just about passing legislation, it’s about using the “bully pulpit” of my office to make a difference in the community, and making the office as accessible to the people as possible, and one of those things was making sure our young people had a lot of opportunity to be interacting with their government. With regard to the Armenian-American community, I’ve travelled the country speaking to young Armenian-Americans, different groups ranging from ACYOA to AYF have invited me, I spoke at a conference in California a year ago about this in particular, and it’s just a wonderful opportunity.

HK: How would you characterize our current era, when we have outspoken demonstrators for human rights as well as COVID and an administration that seems to be ignoring both issues.

MM: I think Joe Biden outlined it probably the clearest I’ve ever seen a politician outline it last night [Thursday, August 20], where he spoke about the big crises that our country is facing. We’re facing a pandemic. We’re facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. We’re dealing with the issue of joblessness as well, and dealing with the issue of racial injustice, and all of these things sort of created this perfect storm where Americans are sort of fed up with the way things have been, and none of these issues will be solved overnight. I think that’s something that needs to be really made very clear, but the reality is people are very tired and elections are often based on this, are you better off than you were two years ago, or four years ago, and that’s, I think, a really important way to frame the conversation. I was super inspired to see young people who graduated from the same high school I went to, and never in a million years did I think they would be able to shut down Woodward Avenue and have protest for racial justice in Birmingham [Detroit’s northern suburb Birmingham, Michigan], one of the whitest cities in my community, and yet thousands of people showed up. I think it’s just a testament to people being sick and tired of the way that this administration has just bungled the response to the virus. You know, I had a lot of hope that we’d be able to get it under control … but the unfortunate reality is we don’t have enough testing right now in our country, we’re not able to get the virus under control, and people just want to go back to their regular lives and I’m really hopeful that we’ll be able to get it under control soon.

HK: That leads to the next question, how has COVID-19 changed your life and your approach to both life and work?

MM: So, I’m just going to be really open and honest about this, the first six weeks of this were horrible. I live alone; I have parents that are older. My dad, he specifically said, “you know, we’re on the older side, if you’re going to be out in the community and you have to go work,” which I do as an elected official, I’m obligated to be there for votes, and I’m not going to miss a vote, but [Manoogian’s parents said] “we need to be protective of us.” And so, I didn’t see my parents for three months. And that was a huge challenge. Because the crisis came in a tidal wave, our office was inundated with questions. In the first weekend of the pandemic and schools shutting down, we received 3,000 emails. And we responded to every single one of them. We’ve done town halls on Zoom, have spoken to small business owners in digital round tables, and continue to try to do that kind of outreach that we have been known.

State Rep. Mari Manoogian speaks at the Michigan House of Representatives.

HK: What are your hobbies?

MM: Do I have any hobbies? (laughs) I mean, I bought a basketball last weekend… I work out a lot actually, it was an investment but I bought a Peloton before COVID hit…. I take out my aggression on my bike, when I’m stressed out it’s a really good place to escape and I’m glad I made that purchase before things got really shut down, because I’m someone who was a figure skater and a basketball player when I was growing up and really appreciate being active, and truly, being able to stay active even though I had to stay inside was a huge escape. I also read, but who wants to know that?

HK: What is your ultimate goal in terms of politics?

MM: Truthfully I didn’t think I was going to run for office in the first place, so overall…I think what happened this week was an incredible opportunity, and it continues to be an incredible opportunity to, A., talk about the things that are really important to my district and my community, and B., give our district a voice that it’s never had before on the national stage, and so, whatever opportunity arises from it, I am hopeful that we continue to be able to have outsized impact on policymaking, and in a way that is meaningful to people here in our district, and so in whatever capacity I can do that, whether it’s as a State Representative or otherwise, is something I’m happy to entertain.

HK: What are your plans for the future decade?

MM: Hopefully I’m finishing up my third and final term in the House, and from there we’ll have to see. We’re excitedly looking towards redistricting, we’re unsure of what that may look like, but at the end of the day I’m just excited to run for re-election and sort of see where things go from there.

  HK: Thank you for the interview!

      Read original article here.

[starwriterulia]

Forgiveness, Thankfulness and Remembrance: Chapter 3 - Homeroom Thoughts

From my Quotev.

-❄❄❄ September 6, 2017. 9:01 AM  ❄❄❄-

        I look up from my phone as a cute, somewhat short male student with silky, light brown hair and beautiful brown eyes passes me. Oh, isn't he the second guy who passed us in the hallway? He gives me a brief, small smile as we make eye contact. He quickly reaches the fifth and final row to sit in the desk near the window. Ah, so this is our main protagonist.

        "Uh, good morning, Baekhyun." Mrs. Mok says, making a slight face as she turns on the SMARTboard behind her. Is this not his usual morning behavior? 

        He turns to her from looking outside for a moment. "Hi, Mrs. Mok."

        "Are you feeling OK today? You usually sit in the front, right beside where Eunju is sitting."

        Baekhyun catches my eyes that paced between him and Mrs. Mok. "Your name is Eunju?"

        "Yes, I transferred here from Canada for my last year. It's nice to meet you, Baekhyun."

        Baekhyun's chest slowly sinks as he exhales. "It's nice to meet you, too." He gives another little smile, but his expression reflects anguish. Should I... ask? 

        As I open my mouth, Mrs. Mok takes my place. "Baekhyun, are you feeling alright?"

        "Yes, I'm fine." His tone doesn't make it seem that way. Just as Baekhyun finishes his sentence, more students file in, filling the seats. I guess it's not my business to ask what's wrong, but I still can't help but wonder if his mood has something to do with the student he was walking with, this morning. The bell chimes again, then shuffling comes from the speaker on the ceiling's corner to the left of the door.

        "Good morning, SGHS." Oh, this is the secretary's morning announcement. "Welcome back from summer vacation, we hope you all had fun. Today's block rotation is 1-2-2-3-4 after homeroom. As a reminder, you only have to be in homeroom before the first block for the first week for attendance."

        "The first dance of the year is on the last Friday of this month, the 29th. The theme is Fall Fair, so dress in denim and plaid if you want to. As always, there is a small prize draw, and admission is ₩8200." That equals about $10 CAD. "You can preorder your copy of the yearbook starting October 1st by the office."

        "They are ₩45, 600 until December 1st, then they will then be ₩53, 900." That equals around $55 and $65 CAD. Ugh, my other high school had overpriced yearbooks, too. "That is all for today's announcements. This has been Seo Jeonghae, your secretary in the office. Have a wonderful day."

        There's a bit more shuffling as Jeonghae ends the announcement, then Mrs. Mok rises from her seat. "Alright, good morning class, I'm Mrs. Mok." She begins to write her name in Hangul on the SMARTboard with the black pen. "As Jeonghae said, welcome to the 2017 school year." Mrs. Mok adds her name in Hànzì underneath.

        "Mr. Jeup and I teach Korean, Japanese, English and Mandarin, so we collaborate our classes." She writes her name in Hiragana and English, then sets down the pen and puts her hands at her sides. "Our students often share one language and wish to learn another that a peer knows. It's a trade that has shown to be enjoyable and educational for everyone. Language has helped people communicate for generations, and it's my job to help you communicate wherever you go."

        "How many people here are looking to learn English?" A good half of the class raises their hands, and everyone looks around like curious puppies to see each other. I notice that Baekhyun is one of these people. "Ah, a big number, like always." Mrs. Mok smiles.

        "Good, very good. Who is here to learn Korean?" A small portion of the class raises their hands. "Mm, good. How about Japanese?" Another small portion raises their hands. "And, Mandarin?" I raise my left hand with a third small portion of the class.

        "Excellent, everyone here is looking to learn something different. Mr. Jeup and I enjoy posting videos of students talking to each other in their newly learned languages on our school's YouTube page. We have a collection of playlists that has been growing since 2012. We will teach you through various games, exercises, and activities. At the end of every week, you will be tested by talking with me using what you learned that week. If everyone does well, you all get ice cream. Does that sound good?"

        We cheer and applaud collectively, laughing at ourselves. "Now, may our new student come to the front and introduce herself, please?" I rise from my seat and walk to Mrs. Mok's left side. She gives me little nod and smile. "When you're ready."

        I huff, nodding firmly, then turn to the class. "Hello, my name is Young Eunju, I'm in this class to learn Mandarin. I am in twelfth grade. I am a transfer from Canada on two scholarships. I enjoy writing and can make friends easily because of my personality. I look forward to knowing you all; please treat me well." I bow to finish my speech, and the class gives me a warm applause, Baekhyun included, who looks a little interested and a little relieved of stress.

        "Thank you, Eunju. You may return to your seat, now." Mrs. Mok says, and I nod in response, doing so. "Now, let's go over the course assignments and begin the first assignment." Mrs. Mok picks up the keyboard on her desk and closes the application, Word 2017 beneath it.

        She puts down her keyboard and hands a stack of booklets to the leftmost student in the front row. "Please take one and pass it on." After everyone had taken one, Mrs. Mok proceeds to go over the assignments for the course. Our first assignment was to create a poster in our chosen language, with help from Mrs. Mok, of a small self-introduction. We would present them to the class on Thursday, then they would be posted to the bulletin board outside for a week.

        We began to work on our projects, making rough drafts on lined paper about what we wanted to put down. I met Hyejae, who's in twelfth grade, during the class's Q&A time featuring me. She was adorable and idol-image-material with big, dark eyes and short, black hair. We clicked right after I mentioned we were both lactose intolerant, knowing the struggles of not being able to find vegan ice cream so easily.  She turned out to be vegan as I am, and she cosplays as Kagamine Rin, so we got excited about Vocaloid, too. 

        I received many questions from students about my home country and town, which is Vanderhoof, located in the geographical heart of British Columbia, scholarships, dwarfism, and the way I walk. Of course, this lead to a brief explanation of my knees for the upteenth time. I discussed my other interests, starting with Pokemon and my preference of Water and Fairy types and favoritism of Mudkip and Sylveon, and Project Diva, and that I like music and can sing but wouldn't sing then and there. I talked about Minecraft and why I don't play online or Story Mode, cosplaying, and that I don't own a maid outfit and sew the costumes myself, and how I play Magic: The Gathering casually and attend Friday Night Magic.

        Everyone who asked me questions and listened seemed thrilled to meet someone as unique as me. It didn't surprise me because I knew my appearance alone would raise questions. I noticed that Baekhyun was among the intent listeners, quietly working and smiling a little when I talked about how I adore Miku and all of her possibilities, and why I'm not a great Magic player: unlucky decisions. After everyone had asked their burning questions, I thought about Baekhyun and the student I saw him with. Baekhyun's face was red, and the way the other person was holding his wrist was a clue that something was happening.

        Maybe someone did something to anger the other person, like try to... take... Baekhyun away. Oh my God, I think they might be a couple. Pretty fucking sure that guys don't hold each other like that unless they're gay. The latter being totally fine to me, I mean, hell, gay and lesbian etc. people can be just as wonderful as straight people. They probably went somewhere more private than a bathroom, they missed two of them by the time I stopped looking their way and missed if they turned the right corner or went down the stairs at the end of the hall.

        I think the former option is most likely because Haeun told me that the door to the fenced school rooftop is always unlocked. The door follows the Information Technology and Law classrooms, on the right, and the third set of stairs, on the left, at the end of the hallway after the turn. The History, Social Studies, and Planning classrooms are on the left wall as well. They might have went there and had a talk. Oh geezums, now I'm curious and worried, when it's none of my business.

        I quietly sigh, looking to Baekhyun from the protection of my hair over my desk. I hope everything's OK, he seems to . Also pretty sure that if I asked someone about the two, I'd get some raised eyebrows. Or, maybe I wouldn't. Hm, I'll observe people in the school a little more, see if I can spot Baekhyun with anyone. Or, maybe I'll meet someone who knows Baekhyun and what's going on, and they'll tell me. I... I fucking hate being an author, I overthink things way too easily. Eh, at least I've got a plan. 

        I feel like a fucking cool-ass teen detective too, like Nancy Drew, but with brown hair and green eyes. Even though I'm naturally a dark blonde, so there's that, too. After everyone was working for fifteen minutes, the bell rang. "Alright, I'll see you tomorrow for the double block." Mrs. Mok says, standing from a helping a student at their desk while everyone hastily packs up.

        I wait for everyone to file out so I don't get run-over, insisting to Hyejae and a few other students that I was sure of my choice. Yeah, I'd say this is going pretty well. Mom's gonna be glad to hear about this. I look over my left shoulder as I watch Baekhyun approach me. "Hi, Eunju."

        "Hi, Baekhyun. Did you need something?"

        "No, I was just wondering what your next class is."

         "Oh!" Not a question I expected from him. "After ASWM, I have Visual Arts."

        "Really?" Baekhyun gives a light huff. "I have those courses, too. Do you wanna go to math, together?"

        "Sure, I wouldn't mind." Baekhyun nods, then we take a right to the staircase that way.

        "So, ASWM, huh? You're not good with math, either?" I chuckle.

        "No, I'm not very bright in math or science." He lowers his shoulders. Oh, something's telling me his parents may have high expectations for him. 

        "Are you good at art?"

        "I'm not bad at scenery painting." Baekhyun answers as we descend the staircase. "I'm good with people and gardening, too. I might go into social work, or my parent's business at the greenhouse." I give an 'mm' in reply. "What are you going into, Eunju?"

        "Something with writing, if I'm lucky. I have a business certificate, and I've worked at a bank before, so I could work in an office, too. Something where I'm not up on my feet all day." Baekhyun nods a little in understanding. "By the way, what grade are you in, Baekhyun?"

        "I'm in twelfth grade, too." He answers, waiting for me at the bottom of the first set of stairs. "So, your knee incident actually happened?"

        "Yeah," I answer, starting the final set. "I'm wearing black pantihose to help hide my scar. I mean, I shave, but I had a habit of scratching at mosquito bites as a kid, so I have circular scars all over my arms and legs. That's why I chose to wear the long sleeved uniform." Baekhyun gives a low 'mm' in understanding.

        When I was a little more than halfway down the stairs, the student that Baekhyun was with this morning halts in front of the opening into the hallway from the right. I never realized how tall he was until now, and his face is kind of baby-like, his eyes are very dark, piercing brown. "There you are, Baek. Are you coming?" Whoa, that’s a deep voice, if I ever heard one.

        "Chanyeol, you still have to go to class, after homeroom." Baekhyun replies, reaching the bottom. "We have to wait until break to..." He pauses, then shakes his head a little as I finish descending. "...To talk on the roof."

        "Just for a minute, come on..." Chanyeol whines.

        "Nope, we're going to class." Baekhyun replies, taking Chanyeol's left hand and pulling him along as we go to the math classrooms down the hallway. Chanyeol's face holds this bewildered, judging and pleading expression, telling me that they're a couple, and that Chanyeol is the masculine figure who is currently confused at his partner's actions. He's also judging me because he may think I have something to do with it, and pleading to be released from Baekhyun's hand so he can recapture it and away with Baekhyun. Just... just fuck my analyzing brain; I'm thinking too much, and I have math, next.

-Forgiveness, Thankfulness and Remembrance-

WE: 2260 words, yes, very good. To clarify, if an idol is born before '95, they are in tenth grade. '95 liners are in eleventh grade, and '94-'90 liners are in twelfth grade. There are many exceptions for the sake of ship-relevancy for idols who are in twelfth grade. Yep, you heard that right. Ship-relevancy. Thanks for reading!

[michaeljtraylor]

It’s getting scary out there

Editor’s Note: This edition of Morning Money is published weekdays at 8 a.m. POLITICO Pro Financial Services subscribers hold exclusive early access to the newsletter each morning at 5:15 a.m. To learn more about POLITICO Pro’s comprehensive policy intelligence coverage, policy tools and services, click here.

Things are looking scary — Apple issued a rare profit warning late Wednesday citing a sharp decline in Chinese demand for its expected lower first quarter numbers. The company blamed, in part, “rising trade tensions with the United States.” This, to a degree, is a win for President Donald Trump, as he wants China to feel pain from tariffs. But it’s also a reminder that many big U.S. companies generate close to half their profits overseas.

Story Continued Below

The spooky salvo from Cupertino tanked Apple shares by 7 percent in after-hours trading, sent U.S. futures lower and could weigh heavily on U.S. stocks on Thursday even as the partial U.S. government shutdown is slated to roll on with no end in sight.

So the trade war has to end — In the latest POLITICO Money podcast, Leuthold’s Jim Paulsen explains why Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will have to made a deal by March 31: “I think personally that the trade war is coming to an end and there is really nothing Trump can do about it.”

Wall Street eyes the 2020 field — MM talked to a couple of Wall Street Democrats about where they think the industry will wind up in the crowded field to take on Trump. More on this below but Mike Bloomberg tops the list, followed by Joe Biden and then a wild card. Read on to find out who.

GOOD THURSDAY MORNING — Sounds like many of you dig the new faster MM. Keep the comments coming to bwhite@politico.com and follow me on Twitter @morningmoneyben. Email Aubree Eliza Weaver at aweaver@politico.com and follow her on Twitter @AubreeEWeaver.

THIS MORNING ON POLITICO PRO FINANCIAL SERVICES — Zachary Warmbrodt on what to watch on Capitol Hill in 2019, in the financial services world. To get Morning Money every day before 6 a.m., please contact Pro Services at (703) 341-4600 or info@politicopro.com.

New Senators and House members will be sworn in this afternoon for the 116th Congress and will immediately begin yelling at each other about the shutdown. House Democrats still plan to pass a funding bill with no wall but it’s DOA in the Senate (even though the Senate previously approved such a measure unanimously).

… ADP private sector employment report at 8:15 a.m. expected to show a gain of 180K … ISM Manufacturing Survey at 10:00 a.m. expected to fall to 57.6 from 59.3 …

WHAT WALL STREET DEMOCRATS WANT IN 2020 — Per an email from a plugged in Wall Street Democrat: “Most of them would love a Bloomberg presidency but have some doubts about his ability to withstand a Democratic primary. Biden not particularly well known on the Street but a safe pair of hands and has a credible path to the nomination and a general election victory.

“Don’t think Beto will run the kind of campaign that attracts centrist Democrats. The other possibility — if he runs — is [former Virginia governor Terry] McAuliffe who is pro-business, well known from the Clinton years and has demonstrated that he can win the kind of swing state Dems need to carry.”

From another: “Bloomberg for sure. Biden too. I think [New York Senator] Kirsten [Gillibrand] will get some of the Wall Streeters. Maybe Cory too. Everything is so up in the air.”

Top tweet — From Josh Brown @ReformedBroker: “Chinese demand wrecked Apple’s quarter. Your friendly reminder that 40% + of the S&P 500’s 2019 profits are expected to come from overseas. Call Kudlow and remind him too. You break it, you bought it.”

Bob Rubin weighs in — Former Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin in a NYT op-ed argues that the climate of animosity between the world’s two largest economies could get incredibly dangerous.

How growth could crash — Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zenter in a client note: “In 2019, fading stimulus and tighter financial conditions bite. We expect full year growth to come in at 1.7 percent … sharply slower (the slowest since 2012) and much lower compared with consensus (2.3 percent) and with a low point of just 1.0 percent in 3Q2109.”

WARREN LAST NIGHT— Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) last night on Rachel Maddow’s show on MSBC took direct aim at prospective self-funders like Mike Bloomberg and Tom Steyer: “People should not be self-funding and they should not be funded from PACs from other billionaires.”

BERNIE SANDERS HAS A PROBLEM — Per the NYT, his 2016 campaign was rife with sexual harassment and pay disparity complaints and he did nothing about it. Read more. And he told CNN he didn’t do anything because he didn’t know about it and was too busy.

ROMNEY SAYS HE’S NOT RUNNING — Incoming Sen. Mitt Romney said Wednesday he wasn’t running against Trump in 2020 but might not support his reelection: “I think it’s early to make that decision and I want to see what the alternatives are,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper.

WHAT TO THINK — Romney could still run. He’s changed his tune plenty of times on Trump so far, what’s once more? And the world could look totally different in a few months. Romney probably can’t win a primary challenge to Trump but he’s still in the game, as our Alex Isenstadt explain here. And our John Harris on why people like Romney don’t bother Trump very much, because he always crushes them.

STOCK MARKET KICKS OFF 2019 WITH MORE TURBULENCE — AP’s Marley Jay: “The roller-coaster ride on Wall Street resumed on Wednesday, the first trading day of the new year, as stocks plunged early on, then slowly recovered and finished with a slight gain. The Dow … dropped as much as 398 points in the first few minutes of trading after more shaky economic news from China. But it gradually recouped those losses, and a small rally over the last 15 minutes of trading left major indexes a bit higher than where they started.” Read more.

But the first day of stocks doesn’t really mean much — Bloomberg’s Lu Wang: “It’s tempting to assume that as today goes, so goes the year. But history shows that using the year’s first day of stock trading as a premise for an annual view of the market is baseless.”

INVESTORS EXPECT THE FED TO PUMP THE BRAKES — WSJ’s Daniel Kruger and Nick Timiraos: “Investors increasingly believe the Fed … won’t raise interest rates in 2019, a sign of fading confidence that the U.S. economic expansion will continue at the stable pace the central bank foresaw just two weeks ago.” Read more.

TAKING STOCK OF THE WORLD’S DEBT — WSJ’s Aaron Kuriloff: “The world has never had as much debt as it has right now—nearly $250 trillion. That figure is three times what it was two decades ago, according to a Citigroup analysis of data from the Institute of International Finance. The biggest borrowers: the U.S., China, the eurozone and Japan, which have more than two-thirds of the world’s household debt, three-quarters of corporate debt and nearly 80 percent of government debt.” Read more.

TRUMP AND STOCKS — The latest Bloomberg Businessweek goes long on Trump’s impact on the stock market with a piece by Peter Coy.

QUARLES WANTS TO OPEN THE BLACK BOX — Our Victoria Guida on Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Randy Quarles and the stress tests: “In outlining his thinking for how the Fed should improve the stress tests, Quarles said he does not want to ‘rewrite Genesis,’ but he does want to make the exercise more transparent. That’s welcome news to bankers, who often refer to the tests as a ‘black box.’” More for Pros here.

Victoria also has a look-ahead on the year for financial regulations and Zachary Warmbrodt has the view from Capitol Hill.

And Victoria scoops that Pentagon Federal Credit Union has acquired Progressive Credit Union in an emergency merger, a move that means PenFed will now be able to serve anyone in the country.

DEMS FIGHTING THEMSELVES — Our Rachel Bade and Heather Caygle on progressive fighting with leadership over a rules package the left fears could make it harder to vote for Medicare for all and other big ticket items.

THE YEAR AHEAD LOOKS SCARY — Mohamed A. El-Erian on Bloomberg view: “The world enters 2019 with a lot more uncertainty about the prospects for global growth. The excitement a year ago about a synchronized pickup in global growth is replaced by angst that was initially focused on China and Europe but is increasingly spreading to the U.S.” Read more.

PREPAID CARD GROUP REBRANDS — New year, new name. The Network Branded Prepaid Card Association — whose membership includes companies like Visa, Mastercard and Discover — is starting 2019 off fresh and has officially rebranded itself as the Innovative Payments Association. Read more here.

Source link

from RSSUnify feed https://hashtaghighways.com/2019/01/04/its-getting-scary-out-there/ from Garko Media https://garkomedia1.tumblr.com/post/181702774674

[nicholerestrada]

It’s getting scary out there

Editor’s Note: This edition of Morning Money is published weekdays at 8 a.m. POLITICO Pro Financial Services subscribers hold exclusive early access to the newsletter each morning at 5:15 a.m. To learn more about POLITICO Pro’s comprehensive policy intelligence coverage, policy tools and services, click here.

Things are looking scary — Apple issued a rare profit warning late Wednesday citing a sharp decline in Chinese demand for its expected lower first quarter numbers. The company blamed, in part, “rising trade tensions with the United States.” This, to a degree, is a win for President Donald Trump, as he wants China to feel pain from tariffs. But it’s also a reminder that many big U.S. companies generate close to half their profits overseas.

Story Continued Below

The spooky salvo from Cupertino tanked Apple shares by 7 percent in after-hours trading, sent U.S. futures lower and could weigh heavily on U.S. stocks on Thursday even as the partial U.S. government shutdown is slated to roll on with no end in sight.

So the trade war has to end — In the latest POLITICO Money podcast, Leuthold’s Jim Paulsen explains why Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will have to made a deal by March 31: “I think personally that the trade war is coming to an end and there is really nothing Trump can do about it.”

Wall Street eyes the 2020 field — MM talked to a couple of Wall Street Democrats about where they think the industry will wind up in the crowded field to take on Trump. More on this below but Mike Bloomberg tops the list, followed by Joe Biden and then a wild card. Read on to find out who.

GOOD THURSDAY MORNING — Sounds like many of you dig the new faster MM. Keep the comments coming to bwhite@politico.com and follow me on Twitter @morningmoneyben. Email Aubree Eliza Weaver at aweaver@politico.com and follow her on Twitter @AubreeEWeaver.

THIS MORNING ON POLITICO PRO FINANCIAL SERVICES — Zachary Warmbrodt on what to watch on Capitol Hill in 2019, in the financial services world. To get Morning Money every day before 6 a.m., please contact Pro Services at (703) 341-4600 or info@politicopro.com.

New Senators and House members will be sworn in this afternoon for the 116th Congress and will immediately begin yelling at each other about the shutdown. House Democrats still plan to pass a funding bill with no wall but it’s DOA in the Senate (even though the Senate previously approved such a measure unanimously).

… ADP private sector employment report at 8:15 a.m. expected to show a gain of 180K … ISM Manufacturing Survey at 10:00 a.m. expected to fall to 57.6 from 59.3 …

WHAT WALL STREET DEMOCRATS WANT IN 2020 — Per an email from a plugged in Wall Street Democrat: “Most of them would love a Bloomberg presidency but have some doubts about his ability to withstand a Democratic primary. Biden not particularly well known on the Street but a safe pair of hands and has a credible path to the nomination and a general election victory.

“Don’t think Beto will run the kind of campaign that attracts centrist Democrats. The other possibility — if he runs — is [former Virginia governor Terry] McAuliffe who is pro-business, well known from the Clinton years and has demonstrated that he can win the kind of swing state Dems need to carry.”

From another: “Bloomberg for sure. Biden too. I think [New York Senator] Kirsten [Gillibrand] will get some of the Wall Streeters. Maybe Cory too. Everything is so up in the air.”

Top tweet — From Josh Brown @ReformedBroker: “Chinese demand wrecked Apple’s quarter. Your friendly reminder that 40% + of the S&P 500’s 2019 profits are expected to come from overseas. Call Kudlow and remind him too. You break it, you bought it.”

Bob Rubin weighs in — Former Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin in a NYT op-ed argues that the climate of animosity between the world’s two largest economies could get incredibly dangerous.

How growth could crash — Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zenter in a client note: “In 2019, fading stimulus and tighter financial conditions bite. We expect full year growth to come in at 1.7 percent … sharply slower (the slowest since 2012) and much lower compared with consensus (2.3 percent) and with a low point of just 1.0 percent in 3Q2109.”

WARREN LAST NIGHT— Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) last night on Rachel Maddow’s show on MSBC took direct aim at prospective self-funders like Mike Bloomberg and Tom Steyer: “People should not be self-funding and they should not be funded from PACs from other billionaires.”

BERNIE SANDERS HAS A PROBLEM — Per the NYT, his 2016 campaign was rife with sexual harassment and pay disparity complaints and he did nothing about it. Read more. And he told CNN he didn’t do anything because he didn’t know about it and was too busy.

ROMNEY SAYS HE’S NOT RUNNING — Incoming Sen. Mitt Romney said Wednesday he wasn’t running against Trump in 2020 but might not support his reelection: “I think it’s early to make that decision and I want to see what the alternatives are,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper.

WHAT TO THINK — Romney could still run. He’s changed his tune plenty of times on Trump so far, what’s once more? And the world could look totally different in a few months. Romney probably can’t win a primary challenge to Trump but he’s still in the game, as our Alex Isenstadt explain here. And our John Harris on why people like Romney don’t bother Trump very much, because he always crushes them.

STOCK MARKET KICKS OFF 2019 WITH MORE TURBULENCE — AP’s Marley Jay: “The roller-coaster ride on Wall Street resumed on Wednesday, the first trading day of the new year, as stocks plunged early on, then slowly recovered and finished with a slight gain. The Dow … dropped as much as 398 points in the first few minutes of trading after more shaky economic news from China. But it gradually recouped those losses, and a small rally over the last 15 minutes of trading left major indexes a bit higher than where they started.” Read more.

But the first day of stocks doesn’t really mean much — Bloomberg’s Lu Wang: “It’s tempting to assume that as today goes, so goes the year. But history shows that using the year’s first day of stock trading as a premise for an annual view of the market is baseless.”

INVESTORS EXPECT THE FED TO PUMP THE BRAKES — WSJ’s Daniel Kruger and Nick Timiraos: “Investors increasingly believe the Fed … won’t raise interest rates in 2019, a sign of fading confidence that the U.S. economic expansion will continue at the stable pace the central bank foresaw just two weeks ago.” Read more.

TAKING STOCK OF THE WORLD’S DEBT — WSJ’s Aaron Kuriloff: “The world has never had as much debt as it has right now—nearly $250 trillion. That figure is three times what it was two decades ago, according to a Citigroup analysis of data from the Institute of International Finance. The biggest borrowers: the U.S., China, the eurozone and Japan, which have more than two-thirds of the world’s household debt, three-quarters of corporate debt and nearly 80 percent of government debt.” Read more.

TRUMP AND STOCKS — The latest Bloomberg Businessweek goes long on Trump’s impact on the stock market with a piece by Peter Coy.

QUARLES WANTS TO OPEN THE BLACK BOX — Our Victoria Guida on Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Randy Quarles and the stress tests: “In outlining his thinking for how the Fed should improve the stress tests, Quarles said he does not want to ‘rewrite Genesis,’ but he does want to make the exercise more transparent. That’s welcome news to bankers, who often refer to the tests as a ‘black box.’” More for Pros here.

Victoria also has a look-ahead on the year for financial regulations and Zachary Warmbrodt has the view from Capitol Hill.

And Victoria scoops that Pentagon Federal Credit Union has acquired Progressive Credit Union in an emergency merger, a move that means PenFed will now be able to serve anyone in the country.

DEMS FIGHTING THEMSELVES — Our Rachel Bade and Heather Caygle on progressive fighting with leadership over a rules package the left fears could make it harder to vote for Medicare for all and other big ticket items.

THE YEAR AHEAD LOOKS SCARY — Mohamed A. El-Erian on Bloomberg view: “The world enters 2019 with a lot more uncertainty about the prospects for global growth. The excitement a year ago about a synchronized pickup in global growth is replaced by angst that was initially focused on China and Europe but is increasingly spreading to the U.S.” Read more.

PREPAID CARD GROUP REBRANDS — New year, new name. The Network Branded Prepaid Card Association — whose membership includes companies like Visa, Mastercard and Discover — is starting 2019 off fresh and has officially rebranded itself as the Innovative Payments Association. Read more here.

Source link

Source: https://hashtaghighways.com/2019/01/04/its-getting-scary-out-there/

from Garko Media https://garkomedia1.wordpress.com/2019/01/04/its-getting-scary-out-there/

[garkomedia1]

It’s getting scary out there

Editor’s Note: This edition of Morning Money is published weekdays at 8 a.m. POLITICO Pro Financial Services subscribers hold exclusive early access to the newsletter each morning at 5:15 a.m. To learn more about POLITICO Pro’s comprehensive policy intelligence coverage, policy tools and services, click here.

Things are looking scary — Apple issued a rare profit warning late Wednesday citing a sharp decline in Chinese demand for its expected lower first quarter numbers. The company blamed, in part, “rising trade tensions with the United States.” This, to a degree, is a win for President Donald Trump, as he wants China to feel pain from tariffs. But it’s also a reminder that many big U.S. companies generate close to half their profits overseas.

Story Continued Below

The spooky salvo from Cupertino tanked Apple shares by 7 percent in after-hours trading, sent U.S. futures lower and could weigh heavily on U.S. stocks on Thursday even as the partial U.S. government shutdown is slated to roll on with no end in sight.

So the trade war has to end — In the latest POLITICO Money podcast, Leuthold’s Jim Paulsen explains why Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will have to made a deal by March 31: “I think personally that the trade war is coming to an end and there is really nothing Trump can do about it.”

Wall Street eyes the 2020 field — MM talked to a couple of Wall Street Democrats about where they think the industry will wind up in the crowded field to take on Trump. More on this below but Mike Bloomberg tops the list, followed by Joe Biden and then a wild card. Read on to find out who.

GOOD THURSDAY MORNING — Sounds like many of you dig the new faster MM. Keep the comments coming to bwhite@politico.com and follow me on Twitter @morningmoneyben. Email Aubree Eliza Weaver at aweaver@politico.com and follow her on Twitter @AubreeEWeaver.

THIS MORNING ON POLITICO PRO FINANCIAL SERVICES — Zachary Warmbrodt on what to watch on Capitol Hill in 2019, in the financial services world. To get Morning Money every day before 6 a.m., please contact Pro Services at (703) 341-4600 or info@politicopro.com.

New Senators and House members will be sworn in this afternoon for the 116th Congress and will immediately begin yelling at each other about the shutdown. House Democrats still plan to pass a funding bill with no wall but it’s DOA in the Senate (even though the Senate previously approved such a measure unanimously).

… ADP private sector employment report at 8:15 a.m. expected to show a gain of 180K … ISM Manufacturing Survey at 10:00 a.m. expected to fall to 57.6 from 59.3 …

WHAT WALL STREET DEMOCRATS WANT IN 2020 — Per an email from a plugged in Wall Street Democrat: “Most of them would love a Bloomberg presidency but have some doubts about his ability to withstand a Democratic primary. Biden not particularly well known on the Street but a safe pair of hands and has a credible path to the nomination and a general election victory.

“Don’t think Beto will run the kind of campaign that attracts centrist Democrats. The other possibility — if he runs — is [former Virginia governor Terry] McAuliffe who is pro-business, well known from the Clinton years and has demonstrated that he can win the kind of swing state Dems need to carry.”

From another: “Bloomberg for sure. Biden too. I think [New York Senator] Kirsten [Gillibrand] will get some of the Wall Streeters. Maybe Cory too. Everything is so up in the air.”

Top tweet — From Josh Brown @ReformedBroker: “Chinese demand wrecked Apple’s quarter. Your friendly reminder that 40% + of the S&P 500’s 2019 profits are expected to come from overseas. Call Kudlow and remind him too. You break it, you bought it.”

Bob Rubin weighs in — Former Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin in a NYT op-ed argues that the climate of animosity between the world’s two largest economies could get incredibly dangerous.

How growth could crash — Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zenter in a client note: “In 2019, fading stimulus and tighter financial conditions bite. We expect full year growth to come in at 1.7 percent … sharply slower (the slowest since 2012) and much lower compared with consensus (2.3 percent) and with a low point of just 1.0 percent in 3Q2109.”

WARREN LAST NIGHT— Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) last night on Rachel Maddow’s show on MSBC took direct aim at prospective self-funders like Mike Bloomberg and Tom Steyer: “People should not be self-funding and they should not be funded from PACs from other billionaires.”

BERNIE SANDERS HAS A PROBLEM — Per the NYT, his 2016 campaign was rife with sexual harassment and pay disparity complaints and he did nothing about it. Read more. And he told CNN he didn’t do anything because he didn’t know about it and was too busy.

ROMNEY SAYS HE’S NOT RUNNING — Incoming Sen. Mitt Romney said Wednesday he wasn’t running against Trump in 2020 but might not support his reelection: “I think it’s early to make that decision and I want to see what the alternatives are,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper.

WHAT TO THINK — Romney could still run. He’s changed his tune plenty of times on Trump so far, what’s once more? And the world could look totally different in a few months. Romney probably can’t win a primary challenge to Trump but he’s still in the game, as our Alex Isenstadt explain here. And our John Harris on why people like Romney don’t bother Trump very much, because he always crushes them.

STOCK MARKET KICKS OFF 2019 WITH MORE TURBULENCE — AP’s Marley Jay: “The roller-coaster ride on Wall Street resumed on Wednesday, the first trading day of the new year, as stocks plunged early on, then slowly recovered and finished with a slight gain. The Dow … dropped as much as 398 points in the first few minutes of trading after more shaky economic news from China. But it gradually recouped those losses, and a small rally over the last 15 minutes of trading left major indexes a bit higher than where they started.” Read more.

But the first day of stocks doesn’t really mean much — Bloomberg’s Lu Wang: “It’s tempting to assume that as today goes, so goes the year. But history shows that using the year’s first day of stock trading as a premise for an annual view of the market is baseless.”

INVESTORS EXPECT THE FED TO PUMP THE BRAKES — WSJ’s Daniel Kruger and Nick Timiraos: “Investors increasingly believe the Fed … won’t raise interest rates in 2019, a sign of fading confidence that the U.S. economic expansion will continue at the stable pace the central bank foresaw just two weeks ago.” Read more.

TAKING STOCK OF THE WORLD’S DEBT — WSJ’s Aaron Kuriloff: “The world has never had as much debt as it has right now—nearly $250 trillion. That figure is three times what it was two decades ago, according to a Citigroup analysis of data from the Institute of International Finance. The biggest borrowers: the U.S., China, the eurozone and Japan, which have more than two-thirds of the world’s household debt, three-quarters of corporate debt and nearly 80 percent of government debt.” Read more.

TRUMP AND STOCKS — The latest Bloomberg Businessweek goes long on Trump’s impact on the stock market with a piece by Peter Coy.

QUARLES WANTS TO OPEN THE BLACK BOX — Our Victoria Guida on Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Randy Quarles and the stress tests: “In outlining his thinking for how the Fed should improve the stress tests, Quarles said he does not want to ‘rewrite Genesis,’ but he does want to make the exercise more transparent. That’s welcome news to bankers, who often refer to the tests as a ‘black box.’” More for Pros here.

Victoria also has a look-ahead on the year for financial regulations and Zachary Warmbrodt has the view from Capitol Hill.

And Victoria scoops that Pentagon Federal Credit Union has acquired Progressive Credit Union in an emergency merger, a move that means PenFed will now be able to serve anyone in the country.

DEMS FIGHTING THEMSELVES — Our Rachel Bade and Heather Caygle on progressive fighting with leadership over a rules package the left fears could make it harder to vote for Medicare for all and other big ticket items.

THE YEAR AHEAD LOOKS SCARY — Mohamed A. El-Erian on Bloomberg view: “The world enters 2019 with a lot more uncertainty about the prospects for global growth. The excitement a year ago about a synchronized pickup in global growth is replaced by angst that was initially focused on China and Europe but is increasingly spreading to the U.S.” Read more.

PREPAID CARD GROUP REBRANDS — New year, new name. The Network Branded Prepaid Card Association — whose membership includes companies like Visa, Mastercard and Discover — is starting 2019 off fresh and has officially rebranded itself as the Innovative Payments Association. Read more here.

Source link

from RSSUnify feed https://hashtaghighways.com/2019/01/04/its-getting-scary-out-there/

[cheryljustinqa]

Should Education Marketers Use QR Codes?

Should Education Marketers Use QR Codes?

QR codes are growing in popularity. But should higher ed marketers use QR codes in their marketing strategies? I definitely think so. Here’s why.

Like barcodes, QR codes are symbols that convey information to computers visually. And like a barcode, QR codes require an application to read and translate the data for the computer.

This is what happens each time you or the clerk scans a barcode at the store. The scanner reads the code and translates it into the product information and price you see on the screen.

(Go ahead and scan the QR code in this picture with your smartphone! If you have an iPhone, all you have to do is take a picture of it.)

But the limitations of barcodes (which could only hold about 30 alphanumeric characters) created problems for retailers in Asia who needed codes that could contain Chinese and Japanese characters as well as Roman alpha characters.

Thus, the QR code was born and released in 1994.

It was called the “Quick Response” code because although it could hold up to 7,000 numerals, it could be read more than 10 times faster than other codes, even if the scanner were held at different angles.

The Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of QR Codes

You might remember seeing QR codes everywhere for a brief time around 2011 to 2012.

But then, they suddenly began to disappear.

Despite all the technical benefits of QR codes, there were some major problems with making this a viable marketing tool.

For one, many people didn’t know what these black and white block images were for or how to use them.

Secondly, you had to download a QR reader app from the Apple or Google app stores.

While this only took minutes, many people didn’t know how to do it or didn’t want to deal with another app on their phone.

And then, what app did you choose? Was one better than the other? It was just a hassle.

Thirdly, most stores and public places in the early 2000’s and all the way to the 2010’s did not have public WiFi access. If you didn’t have a lot of cell data, it just wasn’t worth it.

And the last and most important reason they kind of disappeared is because most marketers just didn’t give people a good reason to download the scanner app and scan the code.

Many of them sent mobile users to a home page or other generic site that wasn’t very helpful, creative, or relevant.  More on this later.

For all of those reasons, QR codes looked like they were  going to be lost to tech history as just a fad.

The Comeback

But it wasn’t a fad. QR codes never actually went away. They were just not being used in visible, consumer marketing like they were in the early 2010’s.

QR codes kept being used extensively in packaging, logistics, and other industrial applications where information on individual products and packages needed to be scanned at various points across the supply chain.

However, Apple has recently released an iOS update that includes an active QR reader in the camera app. That means over 50% of the 1 billion iOS devices out there now have the ability to read QR codes natively.

This has opened the door for a big QR-code comeback in marketing of all kinds.

No longer do people have to figure out where to get a QR code reader or how they work.

The technology is now embedded in the operating system so that it’s just a matter of taking a picture of the code.

Why Use QR Codes?

QR codes have numerous marketing benefits that higher ed marketers can take advantage of.

Your target audience is already using it.

Companies like Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Spotify, Twitter, and Kik have been marketing using QR codes for some time now. Many of these are platforms where large portions of your audience are hanging out.

You can do almost anything with them because they encode many kinds of data.

Just look at the kinds of information you can encode in a QR code with over 7,000 characters. It’s a really long list!

Text

Hyperlink

Telephone number

SMS/MMS message

Email (Send message)

Contact entry (vCard or meCard)

Calendar entry (vCalendar)

Product details

Offer details

Event details

Competition details

A coupon

Twitter, Facebook, and other social media page URL’s

A link to your YouTube video

You can place them on a wide variety of mediums.

QR codes can be easily scanned on many different surfaces. Pretty much any surface you can take a picture of with your phone.

Newspapers

TV ads

Billboards

Temporary tattoos (Think of the fun recruitment reps could have visiting high schools with QR code tattoos!)

Product packaging on school merchandise and swag

Clothing labels

Webpages

Emails

Social media posts

Images that you upload to Pinterest or other social media platform

Tradeshow banners

Banquet decorations like table cards

Signage on your campus

You can track QR codes.

Each QR code is unique, making it easy to track when they are scanned by your audience. By tracking your QR codes, you can literally see which locations, surfaces, and times produce the most traffic from your various campaigns.

Think of it. You can now track the metrics on your billboards and other print campaigns!

You can pique curiosity with QR codes.

By their nature, QR codes come with a promise: “Scan me and I’ll show you something you’ll like!”  If you place a QR code next to a picturesque view of your campus, people will scan it to find out what more they can learn about dorm life, cafeteria and food options, student activities, etc. They don’t know exactly what they’ll find, but the promise is there.

How to Leverage QR Codes

I hope your head is already spinning with the possibilities QR codes have for your higher education marketing strategies. But here are some suggestions you should keep in mind as you implement them.

Make sure your QR codes are worth scanning.

Every QR code holds the promise of something fun, useful, or creative on the other side.

Your prospective student or family is choosing to interact with your marketing message by getting their phone out of their pocket and scanning the code.

So make sure they’re not disappointed when they arrive at wherever you’re sending them!

Don’t send people to your homepage from a QR code. This needs to be a highly personalized, unique experience that ties in to the marketing message from which they’re scanning the code.

Take a look at how this museum in Poland used QR codes to attract young people to their museum.

Not every QR code needs to link to something this spectacular to be effective.

The takeaway here is that the museum marketers had thought carefully about the experience people would have when they scanned the code.

They created something interactive. Something that made their codes worth scanning.

Scan me for a special message!

At the very least, your QR codes should be relevant to the marketing message on which they’re placed. So if the QR code is next to a picture of your campus, they should find more information about your campus or campus life waiting on the other side.

If the QR code is next to a message about how affordable you are, then the code should send them to information about financial aid or something like that.

Make each QR code part of a unique and relevant marketing micro-campaign.

Make sure your QR codes are creative.

Right now, QR codes are still on the edge of technology and therefore, a part of youth culture. You’ve got to get a little creative on this.

That’s why I love the idea of temporarily tattooing a QR code onto your enrollment representatives’ arm or head before they head out to a high school recruiting event. It’s zany, fun, and stands out from the other colleges and universities.

If the prospective student scans a code on your enrollment rep’s temporarily tattooed arm, make sure they go to a landing page that offers them something in exchange for the action you want them to take.

Cool swag for signing up for a campus visit

A chance to win a scholarship for signing up

A free meal in your amazing new dining hall

Tickets to your next sporting event

Also, integrate personalized messaging or video to give prospective students a unique experience with your education brand. It could be a video testimonial from a current student like your prospective student.

So yes, higher ed marketers should seriously consider using QR codes in their marketing strategies. But don’t do it unless you’re ready to get a little creative and create unique interactions for your prospective students.

Want to Improve Your Digital Marketing Results?

Then you’ve got to know how to write for the web. That’s why we want to send you our latest ebook: Writing for the Web: 7 Secrets to Content Marketing Success for Education Marketers!

With this helpful resource from Caylor Solutions, you’ll learn how to:

Grab your reader’s attention immediately

Pull your reader’s attention deeper into your content

Write so that Google (and other search engines) find you easily

Increase your website’s conversion rates

In short, you’ll be able to write the copy that makes your digital marketing strategy work for you. Download your copy today!

Featured image by Bloomicon via Adobe Stock

This post was originally published at: https://www.caylor-solutions.com/should-higher-ed-marketers-use-qr-codes/

The post Should Education Marketers Use QR Codes? appeared first on edSocialMedia.

https://ift.tt/2yXgdys

[chipwin08109]

Should Education Marketers Use QR Codes?

Should Education Marketers Use QR Codes?

QR codes are growing in popularity. But should higher ed marketers use QR codes in their marketing strategies? I definitely think so. Here’s why.

Like barcodes, QR codes are symbols that convey information to computers visually. And like a barcode, QR codes require an application to read and translate the data for the computer.

This is what happens each time you or the clerk scans a barcode at the store. The scanner reads the code and translates it into the product information and price you see on the screen.

(Go ahead and scan the QR code in this picture with your smartphone! If you have an iPhone, all you have to do is take a picture of it.)

But the limitations of barcodes (which could only hold about 30 alphanumeric characters) created problems for retailers in Asia who needed codes that could contain Chinese and Japanese characters as well as Roman alpha characters.

Thus, the QR code was born and released in 1994.

It was called the “Quick Response” code because although it could hold up to 7,000 numerals, it could be read more than 10 times faster than other codes, even if the scanner were held at different angles.

The Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of QR Codes

You might remember seeing QR codes everywhere for a brief time around 2011 to 2012.

But then, they suddenly began to disappear.

Despite all the technical benefits of QR codes, there were some major problems with making this a viable marketing tool.

For one, many people didn’t know what these black and white block images were for or how to use them.

Secondly, you had to download a QR reader app from the Apple or Google app stores.

While this only took minutes, many people didn’t know how to do it or didn’t want to deal with another app on their phone.

And then, what app did you choose? Was one better than the other? It was just a hassle.

Thirdly, most stores and public places in the early 2000’s and all the way to the 2010’s did not have public WiFi access. If you didn’t have a lot of cell data, it just wasn’t worth it.

And the last and most important reason they kind of disappeared is because most marketers just didn’t give people a good reason to download the scanner app and scan the code.

Many of them sent mobile users to a home page or other generic site that wasn’t very helpful, creative, or relevant.  More on this later.

For all of those reasons, QR codes looked like they were  going to be lost to tech history as just a fad.

The Comeback

But it wasn’t a fad. QR codes never actually went away. They were just not being used in visible, consumer marketing like they were in the early 2010’s.

QR codes kept being used extensively in packaging, logistics, and other industrial applications where information on individual products and packages needed to be scanned at various points across the supply chain.

However, Apple has recently released an iOS update that includes an active QR reader in the camera app. That means over 50% of the 1 billion iOS devices out there now have the ability to read QR codes natively.

This has opened the door for a big QR-code comeback in marketing of all kinds.

No longer do people have to figure out where to get a QR code reader or how they work.

The technology is now embedded in the operating system so that it’s just a matter of taking a picture of the code.

Why Use QR Codes?

QR codes have numerous marketing benefits that higher ed marketers can take advantage of.

Your target audience is already using it.

Companies like Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Spotify, Twitter, and Kik have been marketing using QR codes for some time now. Many of these are platforms where large portions of your audience are hanging out.

You can do almost anything with them because they encode many kinds of data.

Just look at the kinds of information you can encode in a QR code with over 7,000 characters. It’s a really long list!

Text

Hyperlink

Telephone number

SMS/MMS message

Email (Send message)

Contact entry (vCard or meCard)

Calendar entry (vCalendar)

Product details

Offer details

Event details

Competition details

A coupon

Twitter, Facebook, and other social media page URL’s

A link to your YouTube video

You can place them on a wide variety of mediums.

QR codes can be easily scanned on many different surfaces. Pretty much any surface you can take a picture of with your phone.

Newspapers

TV ads

Billboards

Temporary tattoos (Think of the fun recruitment reps could have visiting high schools with QR code tattoos!)

Product packaging on school merchandise and swag

Clothing labels

Webpages

Emails

Social media posts

Images that you upload to Pinterest or other social media platform

Tradeshow banners

Banquet decorations like table cards

Signage on your campus

You can track QR codes.

Each QR code is unique, making it easy to track when they are scanned by your audience. By tracking your QR codes, you can literally see which locations, surfaces, and times produce the most traffic from your various campaigns.

Think of it. You can now track the metrics on your billboards and other print campaigns!

You can pique curiosity with QR codes.

By their nature, QR codes come with a promise: “Scan me and I’ll show you something you’ll like!”  If you place a QR code next to a picturesque view of your campus, people will scan it to find out what more they can learn about dorm life, cafeteria and food options, student activities, etc. They don’t know exactly what they’ll find, but the promise is there.

How to Leverage QR Codes

I hope your head is already spinning with the possibilities QR codes have for your higher education marketing strategies. But here are some suggestions you should keep in mind as you implement them.

Make sure your QR codes are worth scanning.

Every QR code holds the promise of something fun, useful, or creative on the other side.

Your prospective student or family is choosing to interact with your marketing message by getting their phone out of their pocket and scanning the code.

So make sure they’re not disappointed when they arrive at wherever you’re sending them!

Don’t send people to your homepage from a QR code. This needs to be a highly personalized, unique experience that ties in to the marketing message from which they’re scanning the code.

Take a look at how this museum in Poland used QR codes to attract young people to their museum.

Not every QR code needs to link to something this spectacular to be effective.

The takeaway here is that the museum marketers had thought carefully about the experience people would have when they scanned the code.

They created something interactive. Something that made their codes worth scanning.

Scan me for a special message!

At the very least, your QR codes should be relevant to the marketing message on which they’re placed. So if the QR code is next to a picture of your campus, they should find more information about your campus or campus life waiting on the other side.

If the QR code is next to a message about how affordable you are, then the code should send them to information about financial aid or something like that.

Make each QR code part of a unique and relevant marketing micro-campaign.

Make sure your QR codes are creative.

Right now, QR codes are still on the edge of technology and therefore, a part of youth culture. You’ve got to get a little creative on this.

That’s why I love the idea of temporarily tattooing a QR code onto your enrollment representatives’ arm or head before they head out to a high school recruiting event. It’s zany, fun, and stands out from the other colleges and universities.

If the prospective student scans a code on your enrollment rep’s temporarily tattooed arm, make sure they go to a landing page that offers them something in exchange for the action you want them to take.

Cool swag for signing up for a campus visit

A chance to win a scholarship for signing up

A free meal in your amazing new dining hall

Tickets to your next sporting event

Also, integrate personalized messaging or video to give prospective students a unique experience with your education brand. It could be a video testimonial from a current student like your prospective student.

So yes, higher ed marketers should seriously consider using QR codes in their marketing strategies. But don’t do it unless you’re ready to get a little creative and create unique interactions for your prospective students.

Want to Improve Your Digital Marketing Results?

Then you’ve got to know how to write for the web. That’s why we want to send you our latest ebook: Writing for the Web: 7 Secrets to Content Marketing Success for Education Marketers!

With this helpful resource from Caylor Solutions, you’ll learn how to:

Grab your reader’s attention immediately

Pull your reader’s attention deeper into your content

Write so that Google (and other search engines) find you easily

Increase your website’s conversion rates

In short, you’ll be able to write the copy that makes your digital marketing strategy work for you. Download your copy today!

Featured image by Bloomicon via Adobe Stock

This post was originally published at: https://www.caylor-solutions.com/should-higher-ed-marketers-use-qr-codes/

The post Should Education Marketers Use QR Codes? appeared first on edSocialMedia.

https://ift.tt/2yXgdys

[14muffinz]

first off, ive been reading your rise fics for a while now and really enjoying them, especially wouldn't it be easier (the mystery of why leon is here, seemingly alone, and going to school of all things is very compelling, and i love how he's just like. this mysterious, cool friend that you don't really know anything about but he's always there when you need him) and im excited to see where you go with that

second off, re: turtle ask game, i got a couple for you lol:

14. Which character would you want to be friends with? 18. Did any of their voice actors really stand out to you?

Which character would you want to be friends with? Not a Donnie or Raph. I hate feeling stupid or otherwise inferior. I hate loud noises. I'm low energy. I occasionally have trouble differentiating between humor and bullying.

Shit, wait, that eliminates Mikeys as well.

2012 Leo I think would be pretty chill, depending on where we are timeline-wise. Being friends with those turtle's definitely implies trauma that I don't got time to deal with

Mutant Mayhem, currently, has the lowest chance of me facing a tragic demise. April and Leo over there are pretty chill, but MM Mikey I think is my final pick.

Look. He has fellow autistic energy, speaks at a respectable volume, and I feel like he'd be able to gently guide me into trying new things.

Did any of their voice actors really stand out to you? Mayhem Leo's stood out, because everyone originally thought he'd be voicing Donnie. Tbh, I like MM Donnie's voice better.

Both 2012 Leo and Bay Leo's swaps of course caught my attention, just because they were new voices.

Ben Shwartz (the only name i can remember) i loved for rise leo, and the fact he's around Donnie's VA on ducktales is amazing

Bat Mikey has a GREAT voice. Kudos to that VA, he did the character justice for sure.

Rise Saki being voiced by 2012 Splinter, and Rise Splinter being voiced by 2012 Tigerclaw DEFINITELY needs to be discussed

The mrbeast cameo in MM??? Caught me off guard fr

And ofc Rob Paulsen (the parentheses are liars) as a trillion diff voices, especially 87 Raphael and 12 Donatello. That man is everywhere

FUCK WAIT ALSO alex hirsh as scumbug is incredible