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tripstaysnoided · 4 years

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Flow Just Like Water

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Story and writing-related transparency update and my many shames...

The Question on Everyone’s Mind

“Hey you haven’t updated No Stars over Uptown in almost a year...”

Hmm, I hate it when you’re right. (This section has been rewritten ad-nauseam to curb back the bitchiness by the way)

So back in early/mid 2018, the idea was to divorce Uptown from a person who influenced it (and myself) heavily. She was my most important audience member, the closest friend I ever had, and unfortunately someone who used her power to bully, ostracize, and hurt others with my help. I cut contact when the hurt + some self-awareness finally reached me. Apologies were made and I feel like my work will never be done with it, but there was still Uptown.

Between censored comments, entirely recasting Axel’s save, different plot threads, and a load of disclaimers, there was nothing that would scrub her influence from the story. There was no way to cleanly drop everything because of how deep her influence went. It disgusted me to look back at it, and I had to private the blog because I feared what it endorsed, even if just in the past.

I pulled back from that sims writing community. I had its main thread on the Official Forums removed too (I guess if that was a mystery to anyone). It was a surrender that I never wanted to do, but I had it in my mind that if I was gone, then she wouldn’t be there either. Uptown became this cursed item, and as I quietly retired it, I noticed that she went quieter too. Not gone, but enough to make me sleep easier at night and even occasionally say hello to old friends.

And I hope deep in my heart that no one else is getting hurt in my place, but now this is gonna haunt me all day huh!

The two paths forward...

1) Complete Uptown rewrite that I’ve been threatening everyone with all year. While it won’t ever be clean because I can’t undo time, I do have a sound outline for a story that is much more true to my actual vision and how I’ve evolved, with a few necessary boundaries in place that are going to be there for all stories moving forward: no more casting calls and no more collaborative efforts. I am not going to open myself up to this happening again, even if the people have changed.

2) Same as above, but I continue the original Uptown as a favor to loyal readers alongside the rewrite. I would try to put the effort into it that I initially did, but with no promises on an update schedule and no advertising. I did ask myself “is there Patreon but without pledging money, just the private posts function” but it could operate as part of a private forum, a members-only part of a website, etc.

Also readers of the original would be beholden to a rule of “don’t spoil the rewrite for new readers, c’mon guys”. I mean, not really, but it is a good courtesy to extend to people.

Priority on this isn’t high but you at least will see what is!

I will probably make the blog public again either way due to the many broken links on my Tumblr but we’ll see. There are other things to deal with as I shall list!

Where Life’s Been Regardless

Been spending more time with my grandpa every weekend. Life’s pretty good and he’s warming up to my dogs.

Shiny New Webbed Site

Cucumber Fields Forever is a site I own now. We have a full domain, cucumberfieldsforever.com, a blog with one post, and the framework needed to host stories the way I want to and still through WordPress. The functionality of likes, comments, and following should still be the same but you know...I’ll take feedback too...

The main blog still has an undefined purpose though I do have drafts sitting around about:

The maybe/maybe not hoax band that was on the Metal Archives and the history of Funeral Doom Metal.

The curious case of when Sims 4 babies get their genetics and my only collaboration (read: was talking about it with a friend and might quote her if needed, it’s actually a bit of a doozy)

Amazon.com’s fake dried udon noodles, an actual issue by the way.

Things I’m reading! (This’d be a monthly feature if so)

For the sake of unity, I am thinking of solutions for hosting old and shameful content there including Uptown and for the real fans in my followers feed, Eight Cicadas...a world I totally have plans for too (not really). I don’t want them to be front-and-center, and that’s why I mentioned forums/members-only content. I finally have that power! Maybe.

Ooooh but what are the costs? Not too much to handle, that’s what. 😉 (Like really, I don’t need any hand-wringing about this, I can manage my finances)

Project Queue (In Order of Confirmedness)

Outrun the Scythe: have you seen me post out-of-context Sims 3 pictures? Did you want more? Did you hope it was Linda in Custody? If the answers are yes, yes, and “meh, whatever you want”, then you’re in luck.

Outrun the Scythe is a Sims 3-based tale of a young gay man and his zombie grandma, as they are both offered separate roles of being the undying intermediaries between the world of humans and the influence of a race of space daemons. It’s pretty familiar if you’ve been following me pre-Uptown, taking some cues from stories I’ve kept under lock and key like Eight Cicadas, The Chains of Lyra, and the not-so-locked-up Ironstar Immortals (of which Outrun is just the direct sequel to sans any retconning...ah the smell of early 2013 and performative heterosexuality)

Ah, back to my roots.

It’s a hybrid of gameplay, story, and lore about my little race of daemons with a lot of my own idiosyncrasies that I’m not really ashamed of: basing it off a super-polarizing Sims 3 challenge from a site I moderate, using a lot of EA’s pre-made townies and their genes, lots of unnecessary posemaking, stupid references. It’s a comfort to have in my roster.

While the first few chapters are in the middle of revision, I have around six in the queue and will be making this public when I have ten. I’m guessing December then?

Undocumented Black Widow Challenge: I just did this for fun/forum kudos (yes, in fact I have joined many forums), there was going to be a short story but it was quickly becoming something against my code of ethics. I mean, sims die and all. (read: I had to choose between “heterosexual widow” and “widow with some same-sex marriages that still end in tragedy, reinforcing negative stereotypes to the public for the sake of me not getting bored and detached during gameplay” so there were no good choices. Except for her affair with the mailwoman, 10/10) I hope to finish this before October ends and get my medal on Boolprop, I’m pretty far through it all. I might upload the sims involved anyways. This is for TS4.

I mentioned it because it’s keeping me busy. But not for long!

NaNoWriMo 2020: Dipping my toes into that again! It’s not sims-related, just a tale of lesbians, nosy neighbors, a haunted beach house, and some light murder and kidnapping. And I actually got my brother to scout out locations for me this weekend. If there’s any demand, I can share chapters as the rough drafts are finished, especially for the sake of proofreading.

Not saying I’m publishable, but wouldn’t it be nice? Will keep me occupied for much of November.

Untitled “Dear Diary” Challenge: Tired of feeling left out of the fun on the Boolprop forums, their “Dear Diary” challenge was the one that appealed to me the most on first glance. Why? Probably once I found an idea that let it be set in the early/mid-2000′s to begin with and explore some interesting characters through diary entries (which I have mixed feelings on as a literary device but I think that’s just me saying “well I didn’t like Dracula”, yes you get bonus points for writing it like a diary)

Also writing is the one skill I’m good at across multiple games. Wanna hear me bitch about the cooking skill tree in TS4 or riding in TS3? I’ll spare you.

I guess I could have included “spending time on Boolprop with old and new friends” in where my life has been. It’s a nice lil community if also a place with its own idiosyncrasies as well. So it doesn’t feel like I’m promoting another community if/when I make a thread there for Outrun the Scythe, I want to have a couple chapters of this ready to go by Outrun’s release, though it’s not gonna be the highest priority compared to it nor as long because I think I can blast through the gameplay quickly.

This one will be played in TS4 due to it having the easiest writing skill/I dunno variety is the spice of life. And hopefully another December release.

Defunded or Forgotten?: Oh shit I actually released stuff in 2020 and told no one? I do have a “mortifying ordeal of being known” sinking feeling whenever I get a site hit because it’s not my best work (but good enough) and veered sharply into issues I may be over my head in, though I try to be a good noodle with research and listening. Maybe hiding is bad after all.

Being based off a very flawed and incomplete Sims 3 challenge I found in the annals of the Official Forums, there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes work just making sense of things. And I’m scared of working on reconstructing the house but I haven’t abandoned the project yet. The story has eight chapters so far and is pretty game-based with some additions here and there. Scared of how long it could be though!

Date for this unknown.

Untitled Sunlit Tides Decadynasty: another year-long abandoned TS3 project with a much stupider reason why. Last update was about Hua getting ready for her wedding, and I wanted to do some poses for a bait-and-switch wedding chapter because to put it mildly, her real one was an absolute disaster.

Blender decided to fuck up its interface again, I got discouraged (this probably does account for some of the Uptown delays too), and when I decided to plow forward, it was for other projects instead.

Meanwhile I played all the way to Gen 5′s teenhood and the only thing stopping me is time (it takes almost 30 minutes to load the file right now, though they’ll be looking at moving towns in a couple gens) and maybe fear of the Logic skill.

Date for this also unknown but it’s easy to pump out updates once I’m in the groove for it. My third heir had a difficult life so maybe I’m just trying to bury it.

Also I just noticed the view count there was really good and probably because I linked it here on Tumblr last year. Thank you so much guys. I can’t really fret over views on Carl’s forum these days thanks to the years-long death spiral pretty much every forum anywhere has been riding on. But it’s a nice surprise. And it’s an alright little challenge recap to read during your lunch break or whatever.

The Wawas

I figured I’d end on the real news everyone wants! Both the chihuahuas are a year and a half now and reached their adult size around a year ago. For the most part, they are happy and healthy dogs.

#state of the uwunion #long post

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purplesurveys · 3 years

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1149

What is your age? 22, but there’s less than a month to go before I turn 23.

What annoys you? Literally every single person who still supports the government at this point. For context, we are back to square one and we’re under the exact same quarantine imposed in March 2020 because of the surge in cases. Nothing has changed and nothing has been done in the last 365 days while people are getting hungrier and poorer. I’m done feeling hopeful for this country and I cannot wait to abandon it forever.

Do you have any allergies? Apparently, grass. Can’t be exposed to it for too long otherwise the skin on my thighs turn red and occasionally even get rashes.

Do you know anyone named Billy? Kind of, but they’re girls with their name spelled as Billie.

When is your birthday? April 21st and spending it in quarantine once again this year...

Who is your best friend(s)? Angela and Andi.

What's your favorite candy? I like gummy bears and worms. As for sweets, I really like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Butterfinger, Twix, and the Hershey’s Cookies and Creme bar.

When was the last time you cried? Maybe a day or two ago while watching a snippet from Caught in Providence.

Have you been out of the country? Yes.

Do you daydream? Not so much these days. I’ve been better at keeping my focus at work.

What's your favorite kind of dog? I love alllllll dogs, but I’d usually be wary of smaller dogs because 87% of the times I’ve met some, they’re aggressive or a bit moody. I don’t like stereotyping dogs as much as possible but because I’ve had direct experiences to back it up anyway, *shrug*

What day of the week is it? It’s a Sunday.

How do you like your eggs? Scrambled, poached, or an omelette with lots of fillings. Balut is also great.

Have you ever been in the emergency room? Only when I was born, I’m guessing.

What's the easiest thing ever to do? Idk, what comes easy to me might not be the same for others. But my answer would be to smile, regardless if it were genuine or otherwise.

Have you ever flown in a plane? Yeah, many times. The child-like excitement I get whenever I get on one will probably never go away, either.

Do you use fly swatters? No, my mom usually uses old shoebox covers or rolled-up scratch papers we have lying around to swat them.

Have you ever used a foghorn?: Only in video games lol, never in real life.

Have you pet a goat? I don’t think I have. I’ve pet lots of animals before but I don’t think a goat has been one of them yet.

Are you a giver or a taker? Giver, but I’ve been allowing myself to take more these days.

Do you like gummy candies? Love them.

How are you? We’ve entered summer weather now, so I feel hot and miserable. It’s also Sunday and I am stuck at home, which doesn’t make me the happiest camper.

What's your height? 5′1″ or a tiny tiny tiny bit taller than that.

What color is your hair? It’s black but on extremely rare occasions I’ll catch a single light brown strand when I play with my hair.

What's your favorite ice cream? Cookies and cream and chocolate chip cookie dough. My friend Leigh actually started her own ice cream shop recently and I bought her coffee crumble ice cream, and it is sooooooooo fuckinggggggggg good??????? It’s so rare to find coffee ice cream where I live period, so I’m fucking stoked to have a close friend who makes literally the best one and in generous servings too.

Have you ever ice skated? Many times as a kid. I was never formally trained, but it was something I wanted to try from watching other kids play in mall ice skating rinks; and when I did give it a shot, I ended up enjoying it. Luckily my mom was encouraging and actually frequently dropped me off at a rink so I can practice gliding and all for a few hours while she ran errands.

Have you cheated the IRS? That’s like an American tax thingy, right? We don’t have that here and my employer handles my TIN.

What's your favorite jelly bean? Not a big fan but if I had to have Jelly Belly, I obviously would want to get the pleasant-tasting ones.

Do you tell jokes? Yes.

Do you wear nice jewelry? Only on special occasions.

Do you want to kill anybody? I don’t want to kill anybody but I certainly wish a good number of public officials would finally die.

Do you want to have kids? Yes. I really wish I could still have a future with them. Thanks for the trauma, my real asshole of an ex.

Where did you have kindergarten? Somewhere.

Are you laidback? I doubt my friends would use this to describe me. I for sure lean more towards the uptight side of the spectrum.

Do you lie? Eh, occasionally.

When is the last time you sent a hand-written letter? I have no idea. Christmas 2019 maybe?

Ever talked in a microphone? Sure. Many times.

Do you still watch Disney Movies? I very rarely get in the mood for them if I’m by myself, but yes, I’d gladly sit down and watch should an opportunity come.

Do you like mangoes? No.

Do you have a nickname? 99% of people call me Robyn while my family calls me Byn, but there are a select few friends who’ve stayed long enough with me to catch other names I’ve gotten over the years, which have since become inside jokes/nicknames. There’s Reben and Rolayn, and literally just yesterday ‘Roby’ happened when I ordered food for lunch so that will probably catch on as well.

What’s your favorite number? 4.

Do you prefer night over day? Absolutely.

Are you an only child? No, I’m two siblings away from that status.

Do you wish this was over? I haven’t felt that way, no.

What is the closet orange object near you? An orange tumbler my Kuya gave me as a Christmas gift in 2019. There is also orange tape wrapped around the charger adaptor of my company laptop.

What one fear are you most paranoid about? Waking up in the middle of surgery and being unable to speak nor move.

Do you play any instruments? Nope.

Do you think you are pretty? Some days.

Are you quick to judge people? No, unless they are already blatantly showing their character like being rude towards service staff, tossing their trash to the ground, or cutting in queues. Whenever those things happen I give myself the space and freedom to guiltlessly judge.

What do you keep quiet about? How dysfunctional my family really is, and the things I really want to say about Gabie.

Do you have any quirks? Food-wise, I like peeling off the breading from fried chicken and placing them on the side of my plate so I can eat them last, because they’re my favorite part.

What’s a good reason to cry? Frustration. Crying can be really helpful in lessening stress.

Do you think you're always right? No.

Do you watch reality TV? Not religiously, but I love watching snippets of reality shows on Facebook because they’re all so embarrassing and it’s hilarious to watch hahahahah. Literally last night I was watching clips of Big Ed on 90 Day Fiance.

Are you a social person? More so now than I was years ago.

What states have you lived in? I lived in Manila briefly but it didn’t take long till we transferred to another city for a more peaceful life in the suburbs.

What is your favorite season? I wanna say winter because of what I’ve seen from it in movies and shows, but I’ve never actually experienced it before.

When did you last sleep in a tent? Sometime in March or April last year.

Do you like tomatoes? Mostly in diced form. Tomato sauce is fine but I don’t really like it in my pasta. Bloody Mary also tastes rather awful.

What time did you wake up? 8:30 AM.

Do you have an umbrella in your car? I think so, yeah. I finally placed one in there lmao.

Do listen to Usher? Eh, not really. 2000s R&B isn’t my thing, save for Beyoncé.

Describe the underwear your wearing? It’s light blue.

What’s the worst veggie? I never learned to like pechay. I’d still eat it, but only because I like cleaning up my entire plate.

Do you like movies with violence? Some. Like I hate action movies but I enjoyed A Clockwork Orange and Scream lol.

Where do you want to go on vacation? I recently bookmarked an Airbnb in Zambales and the accommodation is basically this super cute line of tipi-styled huts by the beach. I'd love to have a solo trip push through once this Covid mess subsides.

Ever been on a wave runner? No.

Where do you work? I work in a PR company.

Do you wish on stars? Just sometimes.

Have you ever had an x-ray? Only for mandatory medical exams.

Do you own a xylophone? I think I had a toy one as a kid, but it’s not with me anymore.

Have you watched the x-games? No, not interested.

What did you do yesterday? I stayed at home; ordered food for Angela as a surprise; debated if I should buy a pair of Air Maxes – and ultimately decided I’ve already spent too much this month to deserve a new pair of shows lol; and just settled to buy a new night lamp for my bedroom. I also watched the newest episode of 2 Days 1 Night and ate more of Leigh’s ice cream while doing work.

Do you like the color yellow? Only in mustard yellow. I also like the song Yellow, heh.

What year were you born?: 1998.

Do you believe in the zodiac? No.

Has your bank account been at zero? No. I remember when I was first opening my own account at the bank and the clerk told me to make sure I don’t go below P2,000, and my intensely by-the-book ass has been following the rule ever since, even though my dad has told me it’s absolutely fine to go below it so long as I have P2,000 back in the account after a month hahaha.

Ever been to the zoo? A few.

#survey #surveys

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rhimorechill · 4 years

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1-30 can i just have your opinion on all of them please

KDHSKHFKFB whoever u are anon ur actually my only follower ever

1. are you of the “tom nook is a crook” or “tom nook is an honest businessman” opinion ?

HES AN HONEST BUSINESSMAN !!! ur loans have NO interest and he was handing out 100k interest/month for a good while there !!!!! the only reason it dropped to 10k is b/c i accidentally made a mil while tryna get dreamies ok. the whole "nook inc owns the entire island" thing is KINDA WEIRD but like ! i mean. its still a pretty sweet deal

2. do you play as yourself or a made up character ?

i play as me !! and then everyone tells me my character is cute which ROCKS

3. where is your house located ?

well CURRENTLY. its just at the center of the island. but once i get terraforming (which will be as soon as i get lolly, mitzi, and purrl) it will be on its own little island in the middle of the island

4. who were your first villagers ?

hamlet and renee ! and bea and agent s and broccolo. oh and quillson. theyre all gone now but i moved bea into a friends island so i can visit her later !!

5. preferable method of earning bells ?

turnip runs babey !!! srsly i will pay like 500k tips and make a million in PROFIT (per run !!) its fucking awesome. i never use turnip exchange tho that shit website always stops telling me where i am in the queue

6. what villager personalities do you typically get along best with ?

i love all of them. so much. normal and lazy villagers might take the cake, but ankha was on my island for 2 days and nearly stole my heart, so snooty villagers r up there too. smug villagers ? like i mostly have experience w raymond b/c i fucking HATED quillson and keaton n ed i barely paid attention to (ed gets points tho. he shares my bday) but that goddamn nerd has a war with slugs. we love to see it. peppy villagers rock (i have THREE on my island rn... but ugh i gotta kick out merry sometime..... i love her but i just !! have too many). i CANNOT hate jock villagers those guys just wanna work out !!! and talk abt working out !!!! theyve done nothing wrong in their whole lives. uchi villagers are great too and cranky villagers r trying their best !!! every villager is good is what im saying. even quillson (i guess)

7. who is your current best friend in the game ?

MGHGSHGD felicity or raymond !!! they send me mail all the time and also i really like raymond. b/c hes such a fucking NERD of an accountant. and felicity was the first of my dreamies to move in so im 💚 when it comes to her...... SOMEDAY. lolly will also be my bff. lolly come home

8. is there a villager you want to get rid of ?

MERRY WHITNEY VELMA. PLEASE GO AWAY. U R ALL SWEETIES BUT NONE OF U MADE THE CUT. ONLY ONE OF U IS EVEN A CAT. (if you want whitney or velma pls dm me !!! someone asked for merry already but id love for them to be on islands where ppl love em)

9. do you hoard a lot of items ?

YES. i did a purge the other day and laid a fuckton of items out to give away. it did not fit and i had to shove some on the cliffs. i still have a big pile waiting to be taken. meanwhile my storage gets new items added

10. take medicine or save & restart ?

medicine is for chumps.

11. where is your favorite spot in your village ?

HMMMM i rlly like my entrance !!!! its rlly neat and has green AND pink mums + trees..... and fencing and a path. IDK i worked hard on it and think it turned out rlly well !!!! other than that maybe my shopping area ? i dont have terraforming yet so theres a lot i Havent Gotten To wrt my island (like my cliffs are almost entirely undeveloped b/c i havent placed any inclines. so theres no pathing)

12. what achievement do you want to hit the most ? (ex: golden equipment, all fish / bugs, etc)

its not REALLY an achievement but i want all my dreamies real bad. after that i want a 5 star island !! i would like a lily of the valley. or 20.

13. do you know any secret tips ?

HMMM i dont think so ?? i dont really know any secrets. ive been trying out campsite cycling and it has Not been going well tho. if u need tips on tting to move villagers out or smthn i can help w that !! this is such a vague q that im like DO i know smthn ??? that is a secret ?????? i also vaguely know abt *m**b* sp**f*ng but im not allowed to do that soooo. thats a pipe dream. fun fact: its not a secret but gardening is SO fucking complicated theres genetics n shit. its wild. thank god someone straight up gave me blue roses so i dont have to go thru that shit. also do not tt backwards when dealing with turnips. not even 30 mins to save ur 600+ prices frm closing time. They Will Change

14. who are your dreamies ?

THESE CATS (i know major shocker from tumblr user pumakittycat. app is acnh life)

15. favorite furniture item ?

HMMMM THIS IS A TOUGH ONE. maybe mum cushions ? those r cute as fuck. i love every flower item, honestly, frm garden wagons to flower stands to pansy tables to hycanith lamps to. idk the bonsai shelf ? i have one of those. i also love my sea globe. its great. WAIT DO RUGS AND WALLS/FLOORS COUNT THERES NO QUESTIONS ABT THOSE i love so many FUCKING items. also autumn woods wall, if ur out there,

16. favorite clothing item / outfit ?

my green clover dress !!!! its the best thing EVER. my full outfit also consists of a silver tiara, a cherry blossom pouchette, white fishnets, and green rubbertoed sneakers. and, ofc, clover facepaint. ALSO FOR CONTEXT. my island is named clover bay thats why im like Clover Time. Theyre Important To The Aesthetic. im also an aro bitch who loves overall dresses. b/c they slap

17. favorite museum room ?

I LOVE THE LITTLE BUTTERFLY ROOM do not even TALK to me unless ur the butterfly room in the museum THERES SO MANY AT ALL TIMES ITS SO NICE

18. cedar, fruit, or palm tree ?

FRUIT. i literally chopped down every single hardwood tree on my island and replaced them w orange trees

19. favorite fruit ?

.......Oranges

20. favorite fish ?

HM. bitterling has a special place in my heart for being my Only fish model. whale sharks also rock tho. and thats only of the ones ive caught !!! i also love frogs, turtles, and obligatorily catfish. oh and seahorses and bettas

21. favorite bug ?

HM. ladybugs maybe. and both birdwings ! maybe also emperors butterflies. possibly others as well

22. favorite flower breed ?

MUMS !!!!!

23. favorite crossbred rare flower breed + color ?

GREEN MUMS.

24. favorite villager personality ?

havent we been over this ? im a dumb bitch who likes all of them way too much

25. favorite time of day to play ?

i uh. play. all the time. i tt a Lot tho so i like setting my time to 1pm ? idk it Feels like a good time

26. favorite special visitor event or reward ? (ex: selecting an art piece from redd, aiding guliver and getting a special item, etc)

SAHARAH. im obsessed w the fucking rugs and the tickets and the lottery. i also love celeste, and gulliver has a spot on the faves list for providing lucky cats sometimes (also a fave item) and for having been to space

27. favorite kk song ?

call me basic, but bubblegum kk plays at all times in my living room

28. favorite animal crossing game ?

ACNH lmao. i never really sat down and got Dedicated to city folk, which is the only other game ive played

29. if you’ve played animal crossing before, are there any animals you’re nostalgic for ? if this is your first game, has any animal in particular left some effect on you ?

ROVERRRRR come home :( also harriet.... i Miss Her. and resetti (i REFUSE to use rescue services dont @ me). and also the bus driver guy who took u to the city. If You Were An NPC In City Folk I Miss You Now

30. share a story from your gameplay

SO. i love the little alien easter egg. i set up a photoshoot and made like a little storyline abt the aliens and stuff. i even got a flying saucer and put that down and used it. and every fucking time !!!! i do shit with aliens !!!!!!! gulliver shows up on my beach. i know he went to space in cf n stuff (I GOT FLAVOR TEXT ONE TIME-- DURING NH-- ABT HIM NOT WANTING TO GO BACK EVEN) so i think its fucking hilarious that the aliens show up.... so does he

#rhi's asks #anon #acnh #LMAOOOOO thank u for asking so much....... heres a brick wall of text

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ambivalent-auguries · 4 years

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Blog clean up & preface!!

So... I know I mentioned in passing Imma clean up my blog this weekend. I want to give some context around why I’m doing it and have this post almost as a to-do list so I and whoever has an interest in this can keep up with what I’m doing.

REASONS:

1. I have too many threads. It’s not a... 100+ number, hell I’ll bet it even reaches the 30 mark, but they get overwhelming, especially because I HATE being slow with replies. It makes me feel bad and stressed out and until I publish that reply it sits at the back of my head nagging me. Right now, I write both in the morning and evening and sometimes in my work breaks... That’s A LOT. I find myself not having time for my other hobbies and it just... Overwhelms me.

2. Some threads I have I am just not feeling 100% plus I have inactive threads. I get it, life is busy for other people as well and I try to be very patient, but at some point, I need to cut my losses. This will also make sense in the context of me capping my threads for each muse. As for not feeling some threads, it’s my own fault on that. I probably said yes to a thread while not feeling the idea or the other muse and now I’m suffering. Me dropping our thread will NEVER be a reflection on your writing or your muse - just poor decisions on my part when making the thread.

3. Overwhelming amount of mutuals. I only have like 50 mutuals, but it’s already too much. I will get a bit more stingy with how I follow people back as well. Unless I 100% feel like we can interact, I’m not following back, sorry.

4. I felt like removing muses because they never get to interact. And I think that is because of all the reasons above. I put a lot of work into my muses and I’m sure everyone who’s ever made an OC knows just how many hours can go into one character. I really put a lot of effort into making sure my characters feel as real and rounded as possible. So I tend to have for them everything from aesthetics, to posts in my queue with their style, house/apartment, detailed bios and headcanons, I cut and make a lot of my own icons etc. So for me to feel like all that work is good to go down the drain, something is really wrong with my blog. And I’m not having it.

TO-DO LIST:

- Thread clean up: I will make a post with ALL the threads that I have and have categories for: inactive, dropped, maybe and active. The ones in the maybe pile I’m thinking will stay in the maybe pile for like... A week and if I don’t get anything else from the mun to give me a reason to continue, I will drop.

- Thread capping: All my muses will have a cap of 5 threads. That means that if I have 5 threads for Roger, for example, which I do, that means that muse is no longer available for interactions unless one of the existing threads is dropped or becomes inactive. This may or may not extend to secondary threads with the same muse. You can still send asks and memes for them, but they will NOT be turned into threads. This is so I can give all my babies a chance to have their own interactions. This will appear in their bios and will be updated regularly and might also make an interest checker.

- Following list clean up: I will carefully go through every blog I follow and remove inactives or archives, then soft block all blogs I don’t see interacting with. I will make a post in advance to let you know when soft blocking will happen and if you really believe we can have something good going on, please follow me back and will re-asses. I know this is a bit of a cold move, but I need to be more selective.

- I will TRY to make GDocs for my muses: I know a lot of you hang out on mobile, so I’ll try and get this done just to make it easier. Time for me to step into the 21st century lol

ADDITIONAL:

- I’m making colour palettes aesthetics for my muses hooray haha

- I’m making word aesthetics for some of my ships; not taking requests, tho, cause that will overwhelm me lol

- I MIGHT write some poems for my ships as well, depending on writing inspo lol

- Making some astrological based aesthetics for my muses

- I might make short playlists for some of my ships, depending on how my time management goes lol

#ooc #long post #i know this is a lot lol #but i needed to put my thoughts in here #again this is nothing against any of y'all #it's for my own sanity #but yes #busy busy weekend lol

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charmingpplincardigans · 5 years

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If le petit prince Crowley is your fourth favorite thing about Good Omens fandom, I implore you to share the first three! (Also, what fictional character do you have the same energy as: I can't figure it out because I associate people too strongly with their favs! DO YOU have Crowley energy? Is that what the kids these days call "vibes"? But if I got creative I could absolutely justify saying you have Crowley energy anyway so moot point!)

Oh god. I don’t know if I have Crowley energy. I certainly have ‘asking-too-many-questions, wanting-to-sleep-for-literal-years, past-me-constantly-inconveniencing-future-me’ energy, but I don’t know if I can claim that certain je ne sais Crowleyness of him. He really is relatable for a demon though, right? Like, I too just want to drink wine with my friends and have my plants be verdant and be left alone by my boss to FUCKING PINE. The cute girl I like that I rudely turned down because of my rude brain posted an internal profile to the department the other day and I was just sitting at my desk going ‘OH NO, SHE’S STILL CUTE AND GREAT, FFFFFFF.’ I’ve done this to myself, but then so did those dummies.

Anyway! KL’s Top Three-ish Favorite Things About Good Omens Fandom 2K19!

3. How it just fucking, rose from the depths!! I was mostly a lurker in Good Omens fandom back in the late 00s. I wrote some (VERY BAD, DON’T FIND IT) fic and I roleplayed Crowley in a multi-fandom game where he got to terrorize Cesare Borgia a bit, but I didn’t really feel like I was a part of it. Probably because I was in Too Many Fandoms at the time. But now this has happened and I’m just. SO. ECSTATIC. There’s so much new art and fic and headcanons and discussion-and and and-for this book turned tv show that I absolutely love to pieces and have for YEARS. There’s so much art in particular that I queued that Le petit prince post a month and a half ago and when I saw your ask I had to stop and go ‘WAIT, WHAT WERE THE OTHER THREE THINGS??’ My queue is groaning. My drafts folder is burgeoning. MY PLANTS ARE WATERED AND MY ANGEL IS FED.

And mainly, mainly my favorite thing about all of this is that I haven’t seen a single person try to make a distinction between book fans and tv fans or “real” fans and “new” fans. We’re all just in here crying about these idiots (and I certainly mean Crowley and Aziraphale, but also everyone else HEY ANATHEMA, HEY I LOOOOOOVE YOOOOOU) together and it’s beautiful and I’m so happy.

2.5 The David Tennantssance. Look. I’m just. If you need me I’ll be huddled in my blankets re-watching that whole four seasons of Doctor Who again and also everything else he’s ever been in. Just yesterday Audible informed me they had a voice play of Carmilla with him in it and I cackled to myself in my bed for close to a minute. Like yes, lesbians, vampires, and David Tennant, the true trifecta of common interests.

2. ALL OF TIME AND SOME OF SPACE. Don’t get me wrong, there was always fanwork for Good Omens that utilized historical moments (for all the characters I believe, because why not). Especially that much detested fourteenth century. But now I feel like that cold open gave us carte blanche to just go ape shit by breathing a little more context into those moments. Never have I been so pleased to see so many people utilizing their hyper specific knowledge/education/interests/upbringing when it comes to depicting these characters because it all works! It’s all on the table! Pick a time period! Pick an occupation! Pick a favorite dessert or type of flower! Pick a PLACE IN THE SKY BECAUSE CROWLEY HELPED BUILD THAT NEBULA. God, I am never going to get over that stupid, single line. I am here for Crowley among the stars, especially outside of time and space. TV!Crowley hits so many of my buttons and I AM ABSOLUTELY LIVING.

1.5 ALL OF ART HISTORY IS AN OPEN BOOK. God you guys, I am just, never getting over fandom’s decision to redo EVERY PIECE OF ART with Crowley and/or Aziraphale in it. It’s AMAZING AND BRILLIANT THANK YOU ALL. I’M JUST SO HAPPY. And I’m still trying to think of a reason to ask fandom to redo John White Alexander’s Isabella and the Pot of Basil with Crowley because I am IN LOVE with the lighting in the fucking painting and of course I want to put Crowley in it.

1. Gender? I don’t even know her! WHAT DID I JUST SAY ABOUT MY BUTTONS? Because like, what even is gender? Fuck if I know. I once asked a salesperson at Kiehl’s that after they apologized for trying to sell me on a men’s moisturizer and they did NOT have an answer either! (Probably they thought they did not get paid enough to deal with that, but I don’t care what side of the store the moisturizer is from, my man, just moisturize me! *spritz spritz*) I’m just out here living in the world being both fine with and affronted by the way strangers read me day in and day out like. It depends, but also WHY DO THEY HAVE TO?

So I love every fucking discussion post about Crowley’s gender presentation in the show and outside of it. And I imagine much of that was the work of the costume department with notes from GNeil et al, but it works because, honestly, why would non-euclidean beings give a toss? They have to blend in, so they do, but for all they’ve come to love us they’re not us. Which leaves them free to do whatever, which fandom has fucking run with. My heart grows another size every time I see art or fic of both Crowley and Aziraphale (especially Aziraphale, hedonist extraordinaire) depicted in a way that embraces that, however the artist or writer chooses to depict it.

And outside of the aesthetics of it, at the risk of being Serious here for a sec, I love the way that lets other fans explore and express themselves. Here are these characters that canonically love humanity but sit outside of it, so why shouldn’t they navigate those spaces of gender and sexuality to the fullest? For research or business or pleasure or whatever? (I mean, also, more angels-are-monsters interplanar weirdness in your sex scenes 2k20, but that’s a separate issue.)

And I think they as characters should be allowed to do that in the works we create with them because I feel like it’s a very human thing to want to explore and for some people fandom is the safest place to do that. I’ve always been a big proponent of fandom as catharsis, or even as expression of joy that can’t be shared with the outside world for whatever reason. Which is why I go so fucking feral for Michael Sheen telling off jerks on the internet who think fandom is loving this thing The Wrong Way. Mostly, the wrong way to love something is to assume your way is the right and true way when [rant about the nature of art and ownership and belonging redacted]. Kindly fuck all the way off indeed.

Anyway, I want people to feel safe to find themselves. Honestly, this is a selfish desire, because I’m in my 30s and I also just want to be safe to keep finding myself for however much time I have left. And I think this is a canon and a fandom sort of uniquely positioned to allow for all of it. So we should continue to celebrate that.

#z-bot #errrrr...this is a lot #sorry not sorry #i just have a lot of feelings about #good omens #and also gender and art and the way all those things interact #also i apologize to the dude from kiehl's for being so insufferable #because i've worked retail and i'm sure he's had customers who complained about that #but in my defense it's fucking weird that anyone cares what side of the store their moisturizer is from

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jchichibu · 5 years

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Things that God told me.

Hi, this took me a little long to pen down. It’s not because I’m too busy or I’m procrastinating – but simply because I am someone who tends to rank priorities wrongly. Penning down my thoughts about my 7-month journey in SOT (School of Theology) was something I was tasked by Lester, but something I really wanted to do even before he asked for it. Take it as a reminder for me, and take it as a 17-minute read of my 7-month endeavour for anyone who is interested.

My name is Jasmine, better known as Chichibu or CCB (Titus 1:15 lol) and I am 24 this year (it’s still 2018 as of 6:43 PM 31 December 2018 as I pen this on my way home from Malacca on the coach :P). I graduated from City Harvest Church’s School of Theology Class of 2018, and the course began from 26 Feb and I graduated on 30 Sep. As quoted by one of my favourite persons in my life Claria, I am certainly the “last person ever you will think of going SOT”. True, SOT never once crossed my mind even being in church since I was 16 and every year they ask you to tell your neighbours “Join SOT!”, but I never wanted to, or never thought I needed to. Throughout my Christian walk, the OG and most tangible thing was the love of God. I was never the most holy, most spiritual, most caring, most enthusiastic person for Christ and I might feel somewhat stagnant in my walk (but I was contented honestly). I was becoming lukewarm. I forget to read the Bible, spurt vulgarities or flash finger signals I probably should never ever have, think or covet for things I should not and did things I’m not proud of. I sometimes would not want to show I am a Christian because I don’t want people to think badly of Christianity. I am just not a standard girl you would expect to want to go SOT.

However, a week before the closing of registration of SOT I had a push from God to join SOT. I went for a jog and I remembered clearly at the uphill of Toh Tuck Rise I made a decision to register for SOT. Yea, people who are not from my church will think I really sot, I just got lifted my burdens of having 4 private tutees out of my full time job, and now am I really doing this to myself? To burden myself with SOT, full time job and attempting have a social life? I was also motivated to have my routine of working out every morning and even had plans to sign up something with Ling Hui at the gym. SOT is a commitment and yes, I have to wake up at 7 AM everyday for SOT at 8.45 AM and end work generally when the sky is dark. Ok la obviously I just yolo-ed and ‘took a leap of faith’, said goodbye to chill 2018 and registered for SOT!!! Through it all I know that God will carry me through and nothing is too hard for Him. Though at that moment I really can’t believe I’m doing this to myself.

I am not going write about what SOT is about, but I am going to pen my revelations. I did keep a dated record of things that spoke to me throughout my journey and I hope some of these will relate to some of you and serve as a reminder for me as the year closes. Hopefully the (long) introduction above gave you some sort of context as to who I am, and now I begin: Things that God told me.

1. It is not by my might that I am saved, or that God loves me. You can rely on Jesus to forgive you, but do not take it for granted. Cheap grace is not what we are looking for here. When God forgives, remember to learn something from it and avoid the mistake again.

2. Since 16, I recalled every moment that I prayed for something, gets it eventually and forget that it was God. Countless times with my knees bent worshipping God in SOT, I was reminded of how smooth my life has been. I remember when I was 18, I was praying to get into a local university because my results were not fantastic. I was scared. But look, I got accepted into my first choices for the 3 local unis. I remember when I was 21, I got into exchange programme without even meeting the critieria of cGPA 3.5 (lol). I remember when I was 22, I was so anxious after my paper because I felt I would fail the paper and that means I will retain and not graduate with my peers (Ely do you remember us drinking Tiger at ahlian? Haha). Look, I scored a D or something in the end but I graduated as planned.

3. I’ve disappointed God several times, I am in church but I feel like shit, you know. I have had bad days, where I feel freaking unworthy of God to love me and I want to run away. Having the revelation that God has not disappointed me a single time makes me more mindful how mighty He is, and how weak I am, and how much I needed to stop disappointing God. We cannot not sin, truth is, we all have. But we can make a decision everyday to rely on God. The authority to defeat Satan is in me. God loves me so much. So so so so sosoososososososoooooo much what is my next move?

The woman was left alone. Jesus stood up and spoke to her. “Woman, where are they? Does no one condemn you?” “No one, Master.” “Neither do I,” said Jesus. “Go on your way. From now on, don’t sin.” (John 8:9-11)

4. Learn to wait upon the Lord. Those who know me personally know I am a relatively fast paced person. I do not really like to wait or queue up for things and I speak super quickly.. I know Jeremiah 29:11 very well but I still plan things for myself anyway. Is this lack of faith/disbelief in God that I am experiencing? But I know God has a plan for me. You see, it gets very conflicting, for fear that my impatience will ‘spoil’ God’s good plans for me. As 2019 becomes less fast paced and I become older, may I calm my tits down and tarry in the Lord. It means to stay longer than expected and be patient in hope. Because for the record, God’s plans has always been good to me – when I see the big picture now for the uncertainties I felt in the past, everything makes sense. I need to truly believe that God will provide, God is truly the overseer of my life, God’s timing will come.

But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. (Matthew 6:33)

5. Be thankful to God and always be. If you are thankful, you will always find your way back to Jesus. Take thanksgiving to God more seriously, EVERYDAY. And I thank God that every night before I sleep I always have something to be thankful about up.

6. Right values and right spirit translates to right actions. I’ve learnt to set boundaries for my value system, not everything is okay, even if my free-spirited soul tells me “aiya yolo” countless times. Spirit wise, I need to talk to God more consistently. The Holy Spirit is something I learnt to engage more in SOT, and I need to remember to communicate with it more (considering how slack I was in the past and it has yet become a habit). I am a reflection of my own routine.

7. To not find ways to see how close I can go without stepping over the line. Instead, think how far I can be from that line. This was mentioned during one of Pastor Ed’s session, struck a chord in me since then. People like me, free-spirited, come-what-may kind of personality, running away from things I deem as fun (but not exactly morally upright) is hard. I crave excitement and adventure. I need to learn, not everything that makes me happy is beneficial for me. I am responsible for my own freedom. Deliberate habitual sinning makes us okay to cross this line and it’s scary. I forget that it is actually not pleasing to God, I forget that it will hurt me, because I’ve gotten used to it, I’ve gotten immune to it. I do not feel bad anymore. And that itself, is toxic.

8. Repentance, I need to repent from things in my life. Inward change + outward action = repentance. I feel constantly that I’m doing both half-heartedly. It’s hard to truly 100% repent if I continue this way. Deal with the heart problem.

9. Life is worth living for the Lord. Quit thinking that life without acknowledging is my Saviour is better. I used to have thoughts that life would be better without being a Christian – I don’t have to feel shitty about having done something bad, I can sleep till super late on a Sunday, look my friends who are unchurched are living alright too… I envy them sometimes. Then I realised I need to be secured in my identity in Christ. I am a child of God, and knowing Jesus should be one of the best decisions of my life. Yes, people who do not know God can lead a good life too. But I should not think that knowing God has compromised my happiness and freedom in life. God gave us free-will and there is freedom in Him. Quitting Jesus will likely mean I am not returning.

You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh ; rather, serve one another humbly in love. (Galatians 5:13)

10. If we think closely about most of the things in our lives, there must be an exchange. I gave the auntie my 3 dollars in exchange for a plate of chicken rice this afternoon. The handicapped uncle busked in the streets in hope that someone could give him some money in exchange for his time. Jesus died in exchange for the forgiveness of our sins. I cannot keep taking for granted that I will go to heaven if I keep doing things not according to the will of God; I need to exchange something. Is it my lack of discipline, is it a person, is it a hobby? Surrender.

11. My life should not be a paradox. Make my words precious. From my heart, motives and mind, I need to understand why things cannot be done. Does my verbal profession translate to moral obedience? My life is the most powerful message for people. No one has seen Jesus but they have seen me. Live my life for Christ. Be mindful of what I speak about, don’t say or do things I don’t mean. Treat people genuinely. I should learn to not just receive God’s love, learn to give God some love too by loving His people. He deserves it. When people say my name, what do they say about?

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear! Those who hear and don’t act are like those who glance in the mirror, walk away, and two minutes later have no idea who they are, what they look like. But whoever catches a glimpse of the revealed counsel of God—the free life!—even out of the corner of his eye, and sticks with it, is no distracted scatterbrain but a man or woman of action. That person will ﬁnd delight and afﬁrmation in the action. (James 1:22-25)

12. I can live at my own level of faith. I always categorise my friends as upz and never felt equivalent to them. You see, I don’t speak or edify people so much, I don’t lead people, I speak whatever comes my mind (#uncensored) and I am not a standard example of a holy person. Then I talked to some people I deemed as upz and I realised we are all human beings with real temptations and fears; whatever I face they face too, just differently but we have inadequencies. Maybe I’m just more vocal about these things, but everyone’s fighting their own battles even if they looked perfect on the exterior. I learnt that God did not create robots, but created us in His image… and we can be comfortable with who we are. I do not need to be whoever for God to love me more, God is happy with who I am, as long as I live my life with integrity, offline and online, real life or secret life. I can just stay rooted in Him based on my own pace. God isn’t impressed by human strength. If I want real and divine strength and power, first I have to be weak by the standards of this world. When I’m weak by the standards by the world, then I can get the grace to become strong in God. I need God.

For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith. (Romans 12:3)

13. Leadership is not about title, leadership is about influence. Note to self about my life as a teacher or colleague or friend. I want to influence positively, I want to be someone who honours my word, that what I believe in is in sync with how I act out and live out.

14. God does not waste every experience I face in my life. No one knows the full shit I’ve experienced, the real training that I’ve been through but when the situation calls for it, I can be useful to people around me. Don’t come out of experiences empty-handed, instead bring treasures of darkness.

15. Read the Bible more, spend time with the Holy Spirit more, pray more. I was forced (ok, at the last feel moments of SOT I was truly forced due to time constraints) to complete the Bible and I realised how much wisdom the Bible has and how little I’ve read it through my years. Contradicting isn’t it? I fail to read the sole thing that was given to me to know God better. As I said earlier, my relationship with God is based on experience – experiencing His love. What if one day I stopped experiencing God’s love during sessions, will I still follow Jesus? The word is indeed important, in times of need I can become a blessing. I beat myself up for the fact that I lost time in my years as a Christian not reading the Bible as much as I should have, but may 2019 be a year where I find time on my own to look deeper into His word and know His word.

Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. (II Timothy 4:2 NKJV)

Pray until inadequacy leaves me. Pray until my prayer is answered. Pray until my burden is lifted. Be close to the Holy Spirit and ensure that when God knocks at my door, I am available and present to answer it. My thought pattern is developed through years and I need to undo this thought pattern by the Holy Spirit, prayers and word of God.

But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. (Matthew 6:6)

16. Make decisions when you are not emotionally unstable. Decisions is rooted in your character. Learn to stop acting on impulse. Learn to say no at times. Align my decisions with the will of God.

17. Whatever I focus on grows. Become wiser this year about the people, the finances, the health, the things i spend my time on...

Get wisdom—it’s worth more than money; choose insight over income every time. (Proverbs 16:16)

18. God loves me so much… through SOT, I am certain of the love of God. Now remember this and know that nothing I do or not do can make God love me lesser or more.

19. I can decide what comes into my heart. Let what is worth it come into your heart.

Keep vigilant watch over your heart; that’s where life starts. (Proverbs 4:23 – 27)

20. Be secure in myself, no need to strive to prove myself. If I’m good people can see.

21. If God speaks, will I be willing to listen?

Sooooo, is SOT necessary? To be honest, no. I was so tired at that time, thankful that my dad was able to send me to work straight after SOT at 1 PM. I had no time for myself at all, there was something to do that I cannot cancel everyday. SOT was more of a routine that I learnt to follow, a controlled environment for me to know God more. I had to praise and worship every morning, pray with my peers, read the Bible, complete assignments to graduate. It gave my life some sort of order because everyday I am put in an atmosphere that allows me to meet God. However life after SOT is what really mattered the most. Certainly I got distracted and travelling a lot during my holiday did not help. However, the experiences and revelations in SOT, those are things that cannot be taken away from me... that I just need to regularly be reinforced in my head and heart. My biggest takeaway for me is that nothing will make me leave God and nothing will make God leave me.

May life after this see me becoming more matured, where I have self-realisation as to what is good and bad for me, having a mature love for God that knows no fear because I’m fully convinced that God loves me sooooo super much. Live life with integrity!

This is by no means a 2019 New Year Resolution post because I don’t want that shit anymore (typing this on 31 Dec simply ‘cuz yo girl kept forgetting to do it since 30 Sep after graduation). I’m sure I am bound to make mistakes and bound to screw up and get lost again in my life time but I just want to live my life to my best. Life never really turn out the way it is planned – some parts better than you planned, some parts worse than you planned. A general word for 2019 though, Gr. Apokaradokia: To wait with expectation with head raised and eyes ﬁxed over the horizon –

+ Apo: Means to turn away with concentration. Ignoring other interests.

+ Kara: Means head.

+ Dokia: Means to stretch forward.

Two of my favourite verses throughout my SOT times and have a blessed year ahead.

But he’s already made it plain how to live, what to do, what God is looking for in men and women. It’s quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbor, be compassionate and loyal in your love, And don’t take yourself too seriously— take God seriously. (Micah 6:8 MSG)

God , your God, has blessed you in everything you have done. He has guarded you in your travels through this immense wilderness. For forty years now, God , your God, has been right here with you. You haven’t lacked one thing. (Deuteronomy 2:7 MSG)

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cerberosthehellguard · 6 years

Text

Panic! at the hook-up (part 3)

Rating: M (this is a lie, It should strictly be T)

Pairings: AkaFuri. Slight Nebumibu, Murahimu and Midotaka.

Characters: Akashi Seijuro. Furihata Kouki. Mibuchi Reo.

Word Count: 4700+ words (this is NOT the final chapter, unfortunately)

Tags: Aged-Up Characters. One Night Stand AU. Fluff. So much Fluff. Awkward conversations are awkward. Dorks who don't know how to get their shit together. Reo the Angel Incarnate. Author is very sorry for splitting the chapter. Okay not so sorry. Just feeling Evil.

Parts: Part 1/Part 2/Part 3(here)/Part 4(coming soon!)

Summary: Akashi woke up after a drunk one night stand feeling at peace with the world. Unfortunately the brunet in his arms doesn’t seem to think the same way. (or an AU where Furi and Akashi have been scarred by terrible relationships in the past that one never wants to get into them and one waits in vain for someone to love him back)

Author’s notes : |||orz terribly sorry for cutting the chapter short! Its just got wayyyy out of hand and I didn’t want to dump too much in one go. So.....splitting into two! As always, thank you so much for reading and following this story!! It all ends with the next update! (which will be posted soooooooon!!)

AO3 Link right here!

Seijuro rapped his knuckles impatiently against the metal door of the nondescript building. The area the address had indicated looked like something anyone would miss in the passing, not offering a second glance. It had no discernible boards or colourful nameplates that made it stand out to the passerby. Nothing, to show that it was an art studio of one of the most sought-after names in the Art World. And yet, Seijuro stood in front of it, rather irritably, for more than twenty minutes in the frosty weather.

"Maybe he couldn't hear you. Isn't there a bell around here somewhere?" Reo was next to him, puffing clouds of air into his gloved hands before rubbing them. His hair was pulled back into a stylish yet unkempt ponytail, few strands tugged loose to drape his cheekbones artfully, giving him the Gallery Owner Look (whatever that meant, Akashi had waved it off when Reo started to explain enthusiastically), and the side clips had been abandoned - courtesy the aforementioned Look.

Seijuro huffed slightly, straightening his coat - his trench coat that still smelled faintly of alcohol and sex, in spite of the cologne he had sprayed on it. He hadn't been able to let go of it long enough to give to Reo for dry cleaning. Yet. "I don't know. Why don't you give it a try?"

Reo shrugged and looked around, careful not to touch anything lest it dirty his feather-soft leather gloves. Not even Eikichi was allowed to touch them. He teased Akashi more than once on his intolerance of tardiness during meetings. Besides, he needed Akashi in a nice enough mood to handle the client today. “Oooh, you are prickly today, Sei-chan. i wonder what has gotten into you today. Or,” he waggled his eyebrows suggestively and leered at Akashi, "should I say, I wonder what you missed getting into today."

Ugh. This wasn't going anywhere.

"Reo." One mild glare and a single word command. It was ample to shut up Reo. He knew what Reo was doing. And he knew, Reo had a point. He cannot go to this meeting without being calm. No matter how much he burned with the urge to go home now.

Seijuro took a few deep breaths. The awkward morning, the acute absence of a proper shower, the slight - slight, tiny - stock dip in one of the Northern branches that had sent his phones and emails flying with notifications before he could set it right and mediate long enough to placate everyone involved and now, the actual act of getting a commission from one of the most finicky - and possibly too introverted, if he was being honest - artists he had had the misfortune to encounter, was getting on his frayed nerves. He just cannot let his mood get any worse. Not if he wanted this meeting to go well. Especially with this one. Especially for Father. (Which added to the irritability factor, but that’s a story for another time).

This artist had been fickle to a point where even Akashi, the Master of Negotiations and Diplomacy and the Embodiment of Patience and Politeness, was compelled to chuck the phone at the wall imagining it to be the artist’s face.

Furihata Kouki had refused, even after countless wheedling on Reo's part - who was gifted with a silver tongue, so honed, strong enough to make the Devil dance to his wishes - to visit their premises, refused to take them up on the offer they proposed and kept mumbling about "too many people crowding him" and "money-minded midgets" and "suits made him wary" and “lawyers are untrustworthy leeches”. Akashi was ready to fling him bodily across the ocean and he hadn’t even met the man yet.

It had been troublesome, tiresome and whole other -somes, but not impossible if it meant, for them to come to him with their offer and seek him out on his home ground, on his own questionable terms. They had had to pry him with a dozen phone calls to get this appointment and the bastard wasn't even opening his door. Seijuro swore.

Akashi, normally, wouldn't have bothered with this Diva-type attitude, would have cast him and his newfound fame away like yesterday's newspaper. When he could have had thousands of artists who would willingly queue up around the block and answer to his beck and call, just to have a minuscule - one in a million - chance at displaying one of their pieces at the Akashi Gallery, this seemed like trying too hard for something that might not even be worth all that effort.

It was the newest, spiciest, freshest talk of the business world - The Akashi Group opening a huge gallery that displayed artworks from all over the world, portraying just one theme.

Love.

Be it any genre, any medium, any form of Love, Akashi Gallery would have it shown, after personally approved by none other than Akashi Masaomi himself. It was the brainchild of both Seijuro and Father, to give the Gallery as a gift to Shiori as a celebration of 30 years of marriage. A small token of appreciation as an anniversary gift to the woman who flawlessly managed to keep them both in line for all these years.

And Father had apparently seen a work of this artist abroad and was immediately impressed (which had never happened before, and Akashi could second that statement veritably) and insisted Akashi to bring him in.

"Use any means necessary. I need the best work of his to be the Centerpiece at the Atrium." He had looked straight into Seijuro's eyes and calmly said, "Don't fail me, Seijuro."

Akashi internally bristled, recalling the meeting.

It was for Mother.

All this was for Mother.

He chanted that a few times in his head, to calm himself and not show any indignation towards this Furihata Kouki guy, who had already pissed him off and he hadn't even seen his unfortunate face. And that wasn't the only hurdle he had to tackle. No.

For anyone to be this private about their private life was good and respectable and all that jazz but in a business context it aroused nothing but suspicion. Reo had conducted thorough background checks but apart from a few cursory details from previous galleries where his works had been displayed, he hadn't been able to snatch a photograph of him anywhere. His contacts - extensive and exhaustive in their right - hadn’t been able to make out anything other than “an ordinary skittish guy who looked like any other struggling artist and worked only through commissions and was too choosy”. Believe him, he knew how ‘choosy’ Furihata Kouki was.

Akashi did not like dealing with the Unknown. As a principle. He couldn't gauge his further actions that way, apart from a few calculated guesses and made-up possibilities. He liked to speculate sure moves beforehand and he, terribly, did not care for going blindfolded to this fight. And, if Furihata’s Diva-ness was any indication, there definitely would be a fight.

So, in a word, frustrated. Added to the incidents leading up to this day, he was more on edge than anything.

“I can’t take this anymore. Let’s go.” Seijuro nodded decisively to Reo before he pushed open the metal door and walked inside. Reo followed, a little stunned at the informality of his actions.

The sunlight from the open door rushed to stream in to fill the darkness, as there was only one light switched on inside the huge studio. The sole overhead light was enough to illuminate the table underneath and cast shadows over everything outside of its circumference. There were strange whirring and thumping sounds coming in from the back but otherwise the spacious room was annoyingly unoccupied.

“Those noises must have droned out the knocking.” Reo mused, stepping in carefully.

Seijuro curled his lip slightly, “If it didn’t, and he is playing with us, I am walking out of here. Father’s request be damned.”

“Now, now, Sei-chan,” Reo pushed one wayward lock of hair behind his ear and reached to pat his free hand on Akashi’s shoulder reassuringly, “Let’s not be hasty. He might just turn out to be alright.”

“Hasty?” Seijuro shot a glare at him out of the corner of his eye. He was still near the periphery of the studio, with his back to the outside world as he tried gathering his strength to face the man, “He has been testing my patience for months, Reo. And, not to brag, but I have dealt with far worse and had come out unscathed. Yet, something about him is getting me more hacked off, by the minute. And we haven’t even seen each other!”

Reo sighed, “I know. How could I not, Sei-chan? I was there for all those phone calls too, wasn't I?" He rubbed a tired palm over his face and took a deep breath, “Just try to give the guy the benefit of doubt, would you? We need him and he might just turn out to be a normal, scared-of-the-Big-Corporate-Guy, starved, validation-hungry creator for all we know. Now come on in, we can’t mope there all day.”

They didn't bother closing the door as they shuffled in, observing the silent chaos of the studio. The windows were grilled shut, layers of newspapers stuck to them to avoid any form of light or dust to enter. The floor space and the numerous tables had art works on them, littering every inch. There were canvases - covered and uncovered and blank - and paints and brushes and tarpaulin and wood chipping and saw dust and knifes and paper mache - Akashi feared they had hardened to the bucket more times than they had been used - and marble and granite and rocks of various sizes and varieties and hammers and tools of every kind in a chaotic mess (Arrangement? This mess was by design? Akashi wondered, disbelieving) across the room.

Reo gave an impressed whistle. Even Akashi was amazed.

“Usually artists dabbled with one medium, but this one seems to be versatile. Isn’t it good luck to find him here, Sei-chan? Now we know he is definitely worth his salt.”

Seijuro nodded grudgingly, “Either he was trying to be creative in everything he wanted to play with or he had an unreliably short attention span.” He moved around the room, judging the work propped directly under the light, “Based on the unfinished drawings and half finished sculptures, I am inclined to believe the latter.”

Reo caught on, hiding his smile, “But you can see how Akashi-san was impressed so quickly, can’t you, Sei-chan.” It wasn't a question. Reo knew. Akashi knew too.

Seijuro said nothing as he turned his face away. The sounds continued, coming in from the back. They both strode gingerly towards it, the sole ceiling light in the studio not helping them much in maneuvering around the works. There seemed to be another room, off the far wall and nearly hidden behind the large shelves, the noises increasing in their volume as they neared it.

Reo nodded to Seijuro before he opened the door and stumbled back slightly as a strong wave of heat engulfed them from the other room. They stood at the doorway as they watched the artist - definitely the artist, because he was also known for not engaging any assistant or student, as he had so snootily, Akashi might add, stated in one of their numerous, altogether unhelpful, phone calls - bang metal against metal, the heat from the continuous thwacks sending sparks flying every time the hammer attacked it precisely where he wanted.

Akashi cleared his throat rather pointedly and loudly over the din, announcing their presence. Furihata Kouki just raised a gloved hand like a stop sign and continued with his work. He was fully protected, the metal mask and the vest and gloves showing wear and tear and he didn't take his concentration off his task.

Reo put a hand on Akashi's shoulder and made him take a step back, a small hesitant smile on his face. Akashi acquiesced. They could wait a little longer, he supposed. Furihata Kouki wasn’t going anywhere. No where to run anymore, he thought with glee.

This sobered him enough to breathe easier. He felt relaxed now. In control.

Akashi watched with concealed interest, as the guy expertly molded the metal to what he deemed to be content with - to Akashi, it still looked mangled but he wasn't the expert here and he admitted, with grace, that an artist would probably see things that he couldn't as a layman - and set the burner in a safe place slightly farther away and dip the hammer and other tools including the work piece in a tub of water. The water bubbled rapidly at the heat, fizzing angrily and sizzling at the surface.

The artist didn't acknowledge them as he walked past the doorway to the main studio, closing the door behind him and moving to remove his thick, sturdy, workman gloves, one by one off each finger with his back facing them. Akashi and Reo exchanged a look as they watched him, deciding whether he was purposefully ignoring them or waiting to talk to them without his gear on.

He swiftly pried himself off his protective vest when Reo spoke up, unable to be quiet any longer. "Furihata-san, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you in person! I am a huge fan of your works! Good job with that wrought iron! What is it going to be, might I ask? A unicorn like the one shown in the Okinawa gallery?!"

Furihata turned with helmet still on, and chuckled warmly. “Ah, a fan? Thank you so much, it makes me happy you like that one - wait, let me get this off, I am being rude.” He shifted, taking off his helmet and letting the messy brown locks free. Some stuck to the back of his neck and the light sweatshirt he was wearing - which Akashi noticed, seemed a little too big for him - stuck to his lithe frame, due to the heat he had been in. That was a rational explanation. No need to salivate over a sweaty lithe body at all. No reason at all, Seijuro. Why was this affecting him, anyway?

He stretched his back, highlighting his lean muscles, popping the kinks in his shoulders loudly with a satisfied groan - Akashi shifted subtly, thanking the shadows for hiding his blush - and faced Reo who had walked over to stand at his side. “I have been working on that one for a while now but, I don’t think it’s listening to me properly.” Furihata added with a rueful laugh, “Or, maybe, I don’t think I am hearing it right.”

Reo smiled understandingly, “Oh, but I am sure, you will get it right soon, Furihata-san.” He added, with a pointed look in Seijuro’s direction, “We all need to have a little bit of faith, don’t we? And besides,” Reo demurred, his smile turning coy as his eyes slid to Furihata again, “I never thought the artist of so many great works would be this cute!”

“Look at you! So young and so talented, Furihata-san!” Reo prattled on, it coming to him like a charm, “You had us believe you were an old man, scared of the young generation, with all those calls. I was half convinced I would be shouting the entire proposal to you to get you to hear. See! I even brought my tiny magnifying glass for you to check things with.”

Furihata rubbed his nape, blushing at the praise and vainly trying not to laugh at the tall, beautiful man with a ponytail - a ponytail, fuck - and dazzling turquoise eyes, “Ahh. Um. Thank you, I, uh, enjoy making things with my hands ha ha. Been always creative, my mum used to say. And ahhh, you shouldn’t say I am cute when, um,” - he scratched his cheek, eyes looking away from the tall, beautiful, skinny - fuck, he could give Tatsuya a run for his money - man who stood next to him - “you, yourself look like that. I mean, um, wow."

Reo was practically vibrating in place, barely restraining the urge to hug the poor, hapless artist, at that point when Akashi gave him the Look, reminding him of their business. Reo can flirt in his own time. Akashi needed to get back to the office, as soon as he can wrap this up, lunch be damned. It was already noon and who knew how much longer the negotiation will take.

“And ahhh, I am so sorry! I didn’t mean to be rude or anything! It may have sounded that way, but I, uh, I am very wary, you know?” Furihata rambled on, genuinely apologetic by his tone, and Reo nodded companionably by his side at proper intervals, “Wary of who is handling my stuff and I don’t want to deal with a lot of people because I get nervous easily and yeah....pretty much that’s why I make people come here. To the studio. So I can be relaxed when I deal with them. Well. Tiny bit relaxed, I guess?” He looked at Reo and smiled shyly when Reo sent him a winning smile in return.

Hook, Line and Sinker. Furihata Kouki had fallen. As if there had been any doubt.

This was Reo’s biggest selling point. Put the client at ease, charm them enough lower their guards, before Akashi went in for the Kill. Akashi stood further away, unseen by the dim overhead light of the room, observing the brunet.

It looked like he had seen him somewhere, but he wasn’t completely sure. His voice, his body, and that bloody infuriatingly apologetic tone most of all, seemed too familiar, but he just couldn’t place it. The thought nagged him, too much, adding to his increasing frustration and worsening mood.

Calm. He needed calm now. He had the upper hand. Always.

The Akashis had the upper hand and they were always Calm and Collected.

Deep breaths, Seijuro.

And, definitely, don’t think about the brunet from last night, now.

Fuck, that’s not helping.

Or how Furihata’s messy hair reminded him of the brunet.

Seijuro, No.

Inhale.

Did the brunet also have a large sweatshirt that made Seijuro want to fuck him in it?

Exha-Fuckkkk.

"Ah~ before things get out of hand," Reo gestured to where Akashi stood; and with an artsy head tilt, his hair dancing like they had been scripted to, he went on, "I would like to introduce myself, Mibuchi Reo - you can call me Reo-nee, please, won’t you, Furihata-san?" he pouted at the blushing guy, "And would like you to meet your prospective client, the one and only, Akashi Seijuro.”

Reo stood to his full height and beamed at Furihata - he was starting to like Furihata, a lot, already - and with a sly wink, “And we, at Akashi Corporations, would certainly be immensely pleased if we had the utmost honour to display one of your illustrious works at our new Gallery.” He dipped his head in a slight bow, ending with a dramatic flourish.

Perfect Reo, Seijuro smiled fondly before schooling his features to a polite indifference. The upper hand, he reminded himself.

Seijuro straightened at his name, stepping into the range of light, mentally going over the countless things he could say to placate the artist into commissioning a piece. It didn’t matter if he was dealing with the Unknown, he still had his contingency plans in place for each carefully evaluated scenario. He would just have to be flexible with the dealing now and craft a concrete plan that Father would approve. He would excel today.

Furihata flushed and gaped at Mibuchi-san? - Reo-nee, now, his mind unhelpfully supplied - and slowly spun to where Reo was gesturing, a polite smile stretching on his face, braving himself for hours of bargaining and rightful pricing. God, he hated bargaining, but he would get paid shit if he didn’t. Necessary evil and all that.

Red met brown.

And time froze.

Reo’s eyebrows were in the danger of being swept into his hairline.

One look at Sei-chan, and Reo came to startling realisation that Furihata Kouki meant something more than just an investment, badgered into by Akashi-san. The totally, too cute to be true, badly in need of good food and sleep, artist was frozen at his side, quite possibly just a scant few seconds away from hyperventilating, but Sei-chan - King of Poker Face, his normally unfazed Sei-chan - looked like the wind had been, frankly, punched out of him. Now, that was quite a revelation.

Shock was written all over his face but also...a tinge of hurt (??!!) before it was carefully masked by his perfect Professional Façade. Reo did a back-take.

Hurt??

Sei-chan?

By....Furihata-san?!

His instincts rang off little alarm bells as he whipped his head around so fast, to analyse the person who had dared to bring about such a look on Sei-chan. He once-d over the artist with a different view now - a very critical, judging one - to pinpoint in what way he could have hurt Sei-chan.

Furihata was looking like a fish out of water now, opening and closing his mouth wordlessly and staring at Akashi in horror. Or sheer terror, maybe. Reo pursed his lips and scrunched his brows to figure out what the hell had happened between them, delectable artist or not.

There was no chance they had met previously - Reo was the only one close to Sei-chan since their school days, and nothing went past him without notice - and he knew Sei-chan's previous flings too, worthy, distinguished, well-known men all including that nearly invisible and awfully sarcastic man, but none had caused this much of an impact on Sei-chan. Not even when they left Sei-chan, and all of them had; Sei-chan had never slagged once in his competence and conduct, never truly showing what he felt. Despite all the fruitless prying on Reo’s part.

Reo would have missed them if he wasn’t scrutinising with scary attention, when he noticed the nearly invisible reddish marks along the line of Furihata’s bony neck. Teeth marks, they had to be, for sure.

Then.....this person could only be...Oh.

Oh.

Ohhh.

Oh my.

Sei-chan, you lucky bastard.

Furihata Kouki at the precise moment, seemed to have gathered his power of speech and spoke in that cute, adorably squeaky voice of his, “Ehhh...ummmm, He-hell-lo...?”

Thankfully, Reo had more control over himself, otherwise he would have started giggling at the way the brunet blushed to the tips of ears and down his neck and gripped onto the table until his knuckles turned white. He was staring at Akashi similar to something straight out of a horror film, and he was trying really hard not to run away. Reo wanted to hug him or snicker at his face. Or both. He couldn’t decide.

Oh. The sheer drama.

Deciding that these two wonderfully oblivious idiots needed a moment - a lot more than a moment, he corrected, hastily - alone, and they probably, most definitely, had already forgotten Reo was there - if the way their eyes never left the others' was anything to go by - he excused himself and walked away from the scintillating scene in the studio. It was hard, dreadfully hard walking away, but he did. He deserved a medal.

Closing the heavy door noiselessly behind him, he leaned against it and cast his eyes heavenwards. And burst out laughing. He clutched his sides, leaning forward and felt tears prick his eyes.

Of all the places in all of Japan, he shook his head.

Only Sei-chan.

Fate’s favourite child, Shiori-san would say.

Yeah. Favourite.

Reo tried in vain to control as the next set of helpless peals of laughter threatened to spill out of him. His stomach hurt and his eyes were moist. And the peeling paint of the building was dangerously close to touching him and tainting his expensive coat. He heaved heartily and gulped lungfuls of air and brushed himself off any imaginary lint that might have dared to land on him. He peered up at the building from the pavement, sighing to himself.

What he wouldn't give to witness and document the drama that was about to unfold inside.

But.....some things were better heard as a retelling than seen first hand.

Besides, he still had to extract the full story, piece by excruciating piece from Sei-chan before he got to the current part. He did not particularly care for spoilers, even though he could foresee the ending of this particular situation. He prayed for Sei-chan to not fuck up now. Or Reo would have to kill him. Slowly. Painfully.

And as an added bonus, he would get the story from Furihata-san as well, after Sei-chan eventually gets closer to the him. If, Sei-chan doesn’t fuck up and actually talked stuff now. Dear god, he better talk. Or else.

Perhaps he should go back and make them talk.....no.

They would figure it out. They were adults. Nearly 30. Oh, his Sei-chan was almost 30. How time flie-Anyway!

They would talk. Sei-chan won’t let go of the contract. Akashi-san had been almost adamant about it.

And Furihata-san was interested enough to commission for them.

So, they would work things out.

Hopefully.

Maybe.

He should take a peek, just in case. Check if things are going smoothly.

No, Reo. No.

He sighed again and sent a fervent prayer to any of the Gods who could hear him. Although....

If this turned out well, he would have a happy Sei-chan, a pleased Akashi-san, an impressed Shiori-san and most importantly, an adorably messy haired and ridiculously easily flustered Furihata-san. His Sei-chan would have a date now. A date who very well had Reo’s Stamp of Approval stuck on him. A boyfriend, hopefully. He could easily imagine him and Eikichi having dinner and movie night with Sei-chan and Furihata-san. Who would probably then be.....Kouki? Kou-chan? Kou-chan. Nice. Would it be too soon to call him that now? He would ask Sei-chan tomorrow.

Humming a happy tune, he started walking leisurely, adding a little skip to his step from time to time. A couple of women passed by, glancing at him shyly, judging his artsy hair and expensive clothes and movie-star looks. He winked playfully at them as they tittered secretively. The meeting would go well, he was sure of it. Well. 79% sure. But, hey, that was better than a 50%.

Concluding that he didn't want to wait outside in the chilly weather, he fished out his phone and tapped off a quick message. Besides, he was absolutely sure that Sei-chan wouldn't be back for at least a few hours. Maybe he would go out for lunch. That would speed things up quite nicely, he smiled to himself.

Pick me up?

The reply came almost instantly.

I thought you were with Akashi?

I was, but he will be busy for a while and.....my work here is done. So...

Reo bit his lip, Eikichi had a relatively free day today but what if he was on call soon? And, it was Reo’s turn to cook tonight so maybe he could get some shopping done before he got home. He was just about to send a “No need, I will come home on my own. You have a nice da-” when his phone pinged again.

Shoot me the address. Ll be there in five.

Smiling to himself, he texted back and pocketed his phone. He could go grocery shopping with Eikichi now and be home with plenty of time to prepare pork cutlets for dinner. Maybe he should make some more and keep it aside for Sei-chan.

Just in case.

31 notes · View notes

westgameguide-blog · 4 years

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West Game Cheats

West Game Guide

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This factory is responsible for traps, trap repairing, and the guards. You can build traps using this factory and assign heroes on the guard slots. Keep upgrading it - build traps for the intruders, assign heroes on the guard. Command center is responsible for the rally attacks. These events are an easy way to get Gold, speed ups and all kind of goodies. Make sure you pay attention to the active events and consider using speed ups or Gold to complete research projects, buildings and troop trainings, especially if you can win more than you spend. Each 6 hours you get a number of daily, alliance (if you are part of an alliance) and vip quests. The number depends on your vip level. While online you should start and collect as many as possible. 2. Store all silver, and any resources that exceed your warehouse protection level, in the alliance warehouse. Only withdraw it when you need it (for research, building upgrades, etc). Sorry if i missed it, but is it possible to build two buildings at a time or are you restricted to just one throughout the entire game? At low levels there's only one queue for building. I never made it higher than level 12, so i don't know if you eventually get more queues for that. One provides amazing territory boosts or help store and protect your resources, while the other offers abundant resources for alliance members! Work together to complete these buildings construction. It's time to make your territory a lot more attractive. Alliance research is the central element to increase the alliance strength. Teamwork with one another and you can unlock the power of alliance research! This is all about justice and honor - unite all your alliance members together and deal with the most vicious crew, the bull gang. The game features 6 levels across two difficulties, with 3 challenges in each. [1] the wii version of wild west guns received "mixed" reviews according to the review aggregation website metacritic. [13] official nintendo magazine praised the variety in settings and the interactive envIronments, and the simple point and shoot gameplay, though they felt genre experts might find it too easy. [10] nintendo life felt the game was "addictive and attractive" and "very well executed", and highlighted the depth in gameplay that requires players to carefully choose their shots to score the most points. Diplomatic board is where everyone can post and view the messages. Make the most of diplomatic board to make your alliance have tight connection with others. Want to help your ally become stronger? Are you a surprise maker? Now ally gifts function is opened! Use item to unlock the ally gifts and choose a special gift for him & her! Loaded with full of challenging tasks, and wonderful rewards, the battle pass is a great opportunity to win fortune and glory!

#westgame #westgamecheats #westgamegold #westgamecheatsiron

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thiamfresh · 6 years

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2, 7, 8, 13, 28-30

2. Talk about your first kiss

Oh god. Okay, so my first kiss I was five, and i’m not talking cute peck on the cheek here I’m talking actual tongues grossness kissing. I had a ‘boyfriend’ who was in my class and his older brother and his friends bet us we wouldn’t and ‘showed us how it was done’ and then we did it. So Yeh, five years old, surrounded by a bunch of like 11 year olds who were chanting ‘kiss kiss kiss’

Very romantic.

7. Talk about your biggest insecurity.

Fucking everything? Like..i am the most insecure little bean jesus. But probably like..abandonment issues is number 1 insecurity, always thinking i’m not worth caring about, or not likeable so people will leave me.

8. Talk about the thing you are most proud of.

When I was three and my brother was four we told a mean old lady to fuck off in unison and made an entire queue of people and the check out lady in the story cry wth laughter.

13. Talk about the first time you have sex/how you imagine your first time

So, i haven’t had sex but imagine wise..like..i’m very like..skittish? around sex. I’ve had some bad experiences and they’ve left me firmly in the ‘asexual’ column for now because the idea of me and sex just makes me want to throw up. But like if i thought about it?? I wouldn’t want some gentle slow bullshit i’d want the to rock my fucking world like all spontaneous and fun but also so like “i trust this person with my life” because otherwise you need to get the fuck away from me.

28. Talk about your fetishes

29. Talk about what turns you on

30. Talk about what turns you off

Ummm. What counts as a fetish? Like?? Leather jackets are hot i guess but that might just count as what turns me on? i’m not sure so..stuff i find attractive

Leather jackets, the second someone is in a leather jacket they get like 98340x more attractive to me. like..love bites or just nek kissing/biting in general, maybe it’s just necks? idk. but yeah, that’s known to get me to stay with the kissing for another minute or two before running for the hills.Maybe hair pulling? never had it done but it doesn’t sound awful in the right context?? But like..who knows??

Turn off’s..just touching in general?? Please stay away from me.

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hyperfashionist · 7 years

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Hannifashion September Challenge: 30 days of Alana Bloom

Day 19: Fromage - “Since you’re not my patient”

@fannibalgrowingcircle

This is Alana’s second of two outfits in Fromage.

To put the title remark in context: she had seen Will having auditory hallucinations the day before. To cover his embarrassment, Will “flirtatiously change(d) the subject”.

Now she is stopping by on her way home, in a personal rather than medical capacity, as she indicates by the “you’re not my patient” remark. For the second time she finds him hallucinating, having demolished part of his living space in search of an animal that was never there.

The average person would probably be weirded out by this, but not recognize it as a medical emergency indicating something seriously physically wrong. We can however safely assume that Alana recognizes this.

Realizing, himself, that he is hallucinating and Alana knows it, Will once again “flirtatiously change(s) the subject” by kissing her.

Oh um and why am I making this post again? Because of what she’s wearing. There’s that solid red with black-and-white, which signifies what? The start of a new game. What is the game this time? The opening of romantic negotiations with Will. It is not clear what the endgame might be, or whether there even is one.

ETA: what about that Karpman Drama Triangle? How do they make this work with only two of them in the room? Well, Will gets to be the Victim (of course), and in an unusual move, Alana casts *herself* as Persecutor by dint of refusing to take the Rescuer role (not that she’s thinking about it in terms of physical safety, even though that’s warranted in the moment, but as a role in a psychodrama). Implicit in the “I think you’re unstable... until that changes I can only be your friend” is that it is Hannibal who can change Will from unstable to stable. Thus Hannibal is cast in the Rescuer role, and sure enough Will makes a beeline for him.

The scene ends with Alana asserting her grip on reality, and turning Will down on the grounds both of basic incompatibility and his mental status. As far as Will’s medical emergency goes, looks like he’s on his own, since he’s not her patient but she was just being a good neighbour, or some kind of neighbour.

Fortunately, Will and his obvious neurological dysfunction can still hop in the car, for which not one of the queue of romantically fixated psychiatrists trooping through his living room thinks to revoke his license at any point, and drive for an hour to burst in on Hannibal and his dinner date, who jumped out the window and ran off into the snow, as dates are wont to do. Until I saw this episode I thought it was just me. This is yet one more way in which this show has made me feel less alone.

Alana’s coat: red wool single-breasted coat, longer than kneelength, with a tie belt closure. Unknown brand.

$$ My coat: okay, I can explain. Alana already has a knee length red coat in season 2, and if I’m going to get a longer coat, it should be long enough to cover a good whack of hem lengths that the knee length coat can’t reach, as well as the ability to conceal a reasonable number of Red-Bearded Dwarfs when crossing state lines. Unknown German brand, vintage (gee, what do you think, maybe 80s?) via eBay.

Alana’s scarf: white with an abstract curvilinear black pattern, looks like silk, unknown brand.

$ My scarf: black and white silk cravat with abstract curvilinear leaf pattern, unbranded via thrift store.

Everything else, as before except my bracelet broke and when I went to unwrap the spare, it was broken too. So I’m waiting for the spare spare to arrive. I clearly need a more rigorous approach to inventory control.

youtube

Running total Alana outfits: 19

of which unique outfits: 17

garments worn more than once: 4

of which, worn more than twice: 1

Running total wrap bodices: 13

of which dresses: 8

Wrap bodice percentage so far: 68%

of which dresses: 62%

wrap dresses as percentage of total: 42%

Oh and here’s a new thing to count - Running total coats: 4 well this comes in handy considering it’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere

Back to previous day

Forth to next day

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nancydsmithus · 5 years

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Improve Your JavaScript Knowledge By Reading Source Code

Carl Mungazi

2019-07-12T12:30:59+02:002019-07-12T11:18:48+00:00

Do you remember the first time you dug deep into the source code of a library or framework you use frequently? For me, that moment came during my first job as a frontend developer three years ago.

We had just finished rewriting an internal legacy framework we used to create e-learning courses. At the beginning of the rewrite, we had spent time investigating a number of different solutions including Mithril, Inferno, Angular, React, Aurelia, Vue, and Polymer. As I was very much a beginner (I had just switched from journalism to web development), I remember feeling intimidated by the complexity of each framework and not understanding how each one worked.

My understanding grew when I began investigating our chosen framework, Mithril, in greater depth. Since then, my knowledge of JavaScript — and programming in general — has been greatly helped by the hours I have spent digging deep into the guts of the libraries I use daily either at work or in my own projects. In this post, I will share some of the ways you can take your favorite library or framework and use it as an educational tool.

My first introduction to reading code was via Mithril’s hyperscript function. (Large preview)

The Benefits Of Reading Source Code

One of the major benefits of reading source code is the number of things you can learn. When I first looked into Mithril’s codebase, I had a vague idea of what the virtual DOM was. When I finished, I came away with the knowledge that the virtual DOM is a technique which involves creating a tree of objects that describe what your user interface should look like. That tree is then turned into DOM elements using DOM APIs such as document.createElement. Updates are performed by creating a new tree describing the future state of the user interface and then comparing it with objects from the old tree.

I had read about all of this in various articles and tutorials, and whilst it was helpful, being able to observe it at work in the context of an application we had shipped was very illuminating for me. It also taught me which questions to ask when comparing different frameworks. Instead of looking at GitHub stars, for example, I now knew to ask questions such as, “How does the way each framework performs updates affect performance and the user experience?”

Another benefit is an increase in your appreciation and understanding of good application architecture. Whilst most open-source projects generally follow the same structure with their repositories, each of them contains differences. Mithril’s structure is pretty flat and if you are familiar with its API, you can make educated guesses about the code in folders such as render, router and request. On the other hand, React’s structure reflects its new architecture. The maintainers have separated the module responsible for UI updates (react-reconciler) from the module responsible for rendering DOM elements (react-dom).

One of the benefits of this is that it is now easier for developers to write their own custom renderers by hooking into the react-reconciler package. Parcel, a module bundler I have been studying recently, also has a packages folder like React. The key module is named parcel-bundler and it contains the code responsible for creating bundles, spinning up the hot module server and the command-line tool.

It will not be long before the source code you are reading leads you to the JavaScript specification. (Large preview)

Yet another benefit — which came as a welcome surprise to me — is you become more comfortable reading the official JavaScript specification which defines how the language works. The first time I read the spec was when I was investigating the difference between throw Error and throw new Error (spoiler alert — there is none). I looked into this because I noticed that Mithril used throw Error in the implementation of its m function and I wondered if there was a benefit to using it over throw new Error. Since then, I have also learnt that the logical operators && and || do not necessarily return booleans, found the rules which govern how the == equality operator coerces values and the reason Object.prototype.toString.call({}) returns '[object Object]'.

Techniques For Reading Source Code

There are many ways of approaching source code. I have found the easiest way to start is by selecting a method from your chosen library and documenting what happens when you call it. Do not document every single step but try to identify its overall flow and structure.

I did this recently with ReactDOM.render and consequently learned a lot about React Fiber and some of the reasons behind its implementation. Thankfully, as React is a popular framework, I came across a lot of articles written by other developers on the same issue and this sped up the process.

This deep dive also introduced me to the concepts of co-operative scheduling, the window.requestIdleCallback method and a real world example of linked lists (React handles updates by putting them in a queue which is a linked list of prioritised updates). When doing this, it is advisable to create a very basic application using the library. This makes it easier when debugging because you do not have to deal with the stack traces caused by other libraries.

If I am not doing an in-depth review, I will open up the /node_modules folder in a project I am working on or I will go to the GitHub repository. This usually happens when I come across a bug or interesting feature. When reading code on GitHub, make sure you are reading from the latest version. You can view the code from commits with the latest version tag by clicking the button used to change branches and select “tags”. Libraries and frameworks are forever undergoing changes so you do not want to learn about something which may be dropped in the next version.

Another less involved way of reading source code is what I like to call the ‘cursory glance’ method. Early on when I started reading code, I installed express.js, opened its /node_modules folder and went through its dependencies. If the README did not provide me with a satisfactory explanation, I read the source. Doing this led me to these interesting findings:

Express depends on two modules which both merge objects but do so in very different ways. merge-descriptors only adds properties directly found directly on the source object and it also merges non-enumerable properties whilst utils-merge only iterates over an object’s enumerable properties as well as those found in its prototype chain. merge-descriptors uses Object.getOwnPropertyNames() and Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptor() whilst utils-merge uses for..in;

The setprototypeof module provides a cross platform way of setting the prototype of an instantiated object;

escape-html is a 78-line module for escaping a string of content so it can be interpolated in HTML content.

Whilst the findings are not likely to be useful immediately, having a general understanding of the dependencies used by your library or framework is useful.

When it comes to debugging front-end code, your browser’s debugging tools are your best friend. Among other things, they allow you to stop the program at any time and inspect its state, skip a function’s execution or step into or out of it. Sometimes this will not be immediately possible because the code has been minified. I tend to unminify it and copy the unminified code into the relevant file in the /node_modules folder.

Approach debugging as you would any other application. Form a hypothesis and then test it. (Large preview)

Case Study: Redux’s Connect Function

React-Redux is a library used to manage the state of React applications. When dealing with popular libraries such as these, I start by searching for articles that have been written about its implementation. In doing so for this case study, I came across this article. This is another good thing about reading source code. The research phase usually leads you to informative articles such as this which only improve your own thinking and understanding.

connect is a React-Redux function which connects React components to an application’s Redux store. How? Well, according to the docs, it does the following:

“...returns a new, connected component class that wraps the component you passed in.”

After reading this, I would ask the following questions:

Do I know any patterns or concepts in which functions take an input and then return that same input wrapped with additional functionality?

If I know of any such patterns, how would I implement this based on the explanation given in the docs?

Usually, the next step would be to create a very basic example app which uses connect. However, on this occasion I opted to use the new React app we are building at Limejump because I wanted to understand connect within the context of an application which will eventually be going into a production environment.

The component I am focusing on looks like this:

class MarketContainer extends Component { // code omitted for brevity } const mapDispatchToProps = dispatch => { return { updateSummary: (summary, start, today) => dispatch(updateSummary(summary, start, today)) } } export default connect(null, mapDispatchToProps)(MarketContainer);

It is a container component which wraps four smaller connected components. One of the first things you come across in the file which exports connect method is this comment: connect is a facade over connectAdvanced. Without going far we have our first learning moment: an opportunity to observe the facade design pattern in action. At the end of the file we see that connect exports an invocation of a function called createConnect. Its parameters are a bunch of default values which have been destructured like this:

export function createConnect({ connectHOC = connectAdvanced, mapStateToPropsFactories = defaultMapStateToPropsFactories, mapDispatchToPropsFactories = defaultMapDispatchToPropsFactories, mergePropsFactories = defaultMergePropsFactories, selectorFactory = defaultSelectorFactory } = {})

Again, we come across another learning moment: exporting invoked functions and destructuring default function arguments. The destructuring part is a learning moment because had the code been written like this:

It would have resulted in this error Uncaught TypeError: Cannot destructure property 'connectHOC' of 'undefined' or 'null'. This is because the function has no default argument to fall back on.

Note: For more on this, you can read David Walsh’s article. Some learning moments may seem trivial, depending on your knowledge of the language, and so it might be better to focus on things you have not seen before or need to learn more about.

createConnect itself does nothing in its function body. It returns a function called connect, the one I used here:

export default connect(null, mapDispatchToProps)(MarketContainer)

It takes four arguments, all optional, and the first three arguments each go through a match function which helps define their behaviour according to whether the arguments are present and their value type. Now, because the second argument provided to match is one of three functions imported into connect, I have to decide which thread to follow.

There are learning moments with the proxy function used to wrap the first argument to connect if those arguments are functions, the isPlainObject utility used to check for plain objects or the warning module which reveals how you can set your debugger to break on all exceptions. After the match functions, we come to connectHOC, the function which takes our React component and connects it to Redux. It is another function invocation which returns wrapWithConnect, the function which actually handles connecting the component to the store.

Looking at connectHOC’s implementation, I can appreciate why it needs connect to hide its implementation details. It is the heart of React-Redux and contains logic which does not need to be exposed via connect. Even though I will end the deep dive here, had I continued, this would have been the perfect time to consult the reference material I found earlier as it contains an incredibly detailed explanation of the codebase.

Summary

Reading source code is difficult at first but as with anything, it becomes easier with time. The goal is not to understand everything but to come away with a different perspective and new knowledge. The key is to be deliberate about the entire process and intensely curious about everything.

For example, I found the isPlainObject function interesting because it uses this if (typeof obj !== 'object' || obj === null) return false to make sure the given argument is a plain object. When I first read its implementation, I wondered why it did not use Object.prototype.toString.call(opts) !== '[object Object]', which is less code and distinguishes between objects and object sub types such as the Date object. However, reading the next line revealed that in the extremely unlikely event that a developer using connect returns a Date object, for example, this will be handled by the Object.getPrototypeOf(obj) === null check.

Another bit of intrigue in isPlainObject is this code:

while (Object.getPrototypeOf(baseProto) !== null) { baseProto = Object.getPrototypeOf(baseProto) }

Some Google searching led me to this StackOverflow thread and the Redux issue explaining how that code handles cases such as checking against objects which originate from an iFrame.

Useful Links On Reading Source Code

“How To Reverse Engineer Frameworks,” Max Koretskyi, Medium

“How To Read Code,” Aria Stewart, GitHub

(dm, yk, il)

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theworstbob · 7 years

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the thing journal, 6.11.2017 - 6.17.2017

capsule reviews of the pop culture i took in last week. this week: venice, witness, 1989, gilded, punch-drunk love, sucker, bloody bloody andrew jackson, gone now, boomiverse, melodrama, before sunrise, pinata, whiplash

1) Venice, by Anderson .Paak: Paak might be really close to Greatest Living Songwriter status. Like, Malibu and Yes Lawd! are both undeniable classics, but this is ALSO so solid, solid enough that I feel like, if we get someone in the room with Paak to say, "Hey, dude, maybe don't put a bad butt pun in this one?" Paak could be running the world. Every second of this album is wonderful. Like, .Paak makes songs that make an indoor kid like me wish he was at the beach, that's like the only thing I can say about this album. .Paak' great. I don't have enough words to describe what makes him great.

2) Witness, by Benjamin Booker: ...So, this is the last thing I'm writing? And this was a nice, bluesy rock album that made a Sunday morning slightly doper. I liked it, it was nice, listen to it if you like nice rock albums.

3) 1989, by Tay Tay: I sure do have a lot to say about this album that wasn't said two and a half years ago! I liked it. The first five songs are as good as any five songs on any album that's ever been, and then the rest of this album... Exists? Like there's no way I'm going to call an album with "Shake it Off" and "Bad Blood" on it a classic, and after hearing Lana del Rey songs I can't get behind the Lana del Rey impression that is "Wildest Dreams," like it was already an enh song but knowing it was ripping off an enh thing gives it a firm "no," but any album with "Style" and "Blank Space" and "Style" deserves plaudits, and the album does pick up with the last two tracks, which are up there with the first five tracks as the best stuff Tay Tay has ever done. End of the day, though, To Pimp a Butterfly still should have won Album of the Year, and if at the end of 2014 Catch-Up 1989 is still in the top ten for 2014 (#9 as I write this), I'd be stunned.

4) Gilded, by Jade Jackson: This? was somehow recommended to me by Amazon because I enjoy the music of Paramore. I cannot claim to have heard the Paramore in this. I heard a pretty decent if slow-moving country album! That was a fun surprise! One of my favorite things about country music in 2017 is how, like, we typically associate rebellion with punk and rap, y'know? Loud music that moves fast and is always shouting. And rebellion in country is sitting with just an acoustic guitar and singing sad songs about small towns. Like, a lot of country music is about what a small town home town dirt road party it is to be in the sticks, so the outlaws have to slow it down and reflect on whether they're truly happy where they are. So like, this album has incredibly little in common with Paramore from a music standpoint, but they share an attitude which has to manifest itself differently because of their respective genres. Basically, I'm incredibly down with this album.

5) Punch-Drunk Love, dir. Paul Thomas Anderson: hey. hey guys. did you guys know about this paul thomas anderson dude. he's pretty great. like, everything about that scene where he asks the woman out, the warehouse collapsing, the calls from the phone sex scammer, his sister haranguing him, the woman not knowing how to respond to this, him clearly not knowing how to handle the situation, the pudding the so much pudding, the score building as everything falls apart, it's so fucking good. i remember, when i was 12, this movie had like two whole shelves at hollywood video, and when my dad and my family were looking at this movie, we were like "we love little nicky! but this might be more serious? and poor innocent caralin," and i just, i wonder what a younger me would have thought about this film. i wonder how i would have reacted to this, if we actually had pulled the trigger on punch-drunk love before i was anywhere near ready to handle it.

6) Sucker, by Charli XCX: hahaha i need to do theme weeks or something like i'm supposed to think about a paul thomas anderson joint and then try to come up with a decent opinion about a fine, just a tich below great pop album. i should've eased myself into this, it should've gone punch drunk love, the kimbra album i added to provide the bridge from film master class to pop, and THEN charli xcx. i mean, i enjoyed this a lot, i had a solid, solid bus ride, but like i just need to structure the sequencing of thing journal better. like, maybe don't put the slap-hitting second baseman after the cleanup hitter, but the jason kubel type in the fifth spot, the chunky dude who kinda sucks at baseball but hits dingers more often than not. gotta think about my lineup, guys!

7) Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, wr. Michael Friedman: Well, this was good stupid fun. I think "Ten Little Indians" is a standout track, so clear a standout that it honestly belongs in a better work. It's a distillation of Native American history that doesn't seem to have any place in a musical recasting one of the shittiest presidents as a vain, morose emokid rock star, but then again, I listen to soundtracks and don't watch the shows, so fuck do I know about context. So, yeah, I dug "Ten Little Indians," and then everything else was fine and silly and took itself just unseriously that it never felt like American Psycho. Theatre in general isn't a good home for irony, but at least here, the sarcasm wasn't subtle, it was waving a giant flag the whole time saying "THIS IS DEF JOKES."

8) Gone Now, by Bleachers 9) Melodrama, by Lorde See, if I were a decent listener, I might have tried following up Gone Now with Melodrama. These reviews aren't being indexed in chronological order; I listened to Boomiverse before I gave Melodrama a spin, and looking back, I should've saved Gone Now for Friday to do a Jack Antonoff Power Block. I wonder if my opinion on these albums is colored by the interview I read where Jack Antonoff says he originally imagines all his songs for female voices, he writes his songs for women, then pitches them an octace down should they become Bleachers songs. And I found both Strange Desire and Gone Now to not really resonate with me, neither album really hitting me in the way an entity such as Bleachers should hit me. Bleachers is fun, '80s-inspired pop music -- I love that! But there's this weird disconnect I feel between the voice and the music, and I can't tell if that's a conclusion I arrived at on my own or if it was informed by that article, because while I didn't like Gone Now, I really loved Melodrama. Lorde and Antonoff work perfectly together, her voice gives life to a lot of things I heard but wasn't enthralled by on Gone Now, and they had a vision for this album -- songs have part twos! There's a reprise! ("Liability" is DOPE in the context of this album, y'all) -- which they executed sublimely. It's a complete, cohesive album that feels so much bigger than 11 songs, so full of weird ideas, and while I'm not sure how the mainstream is gonna react, I thought this was dope as hell, "dope as hell" being the highest praise my limited vocabulary has to offer.

10) Boomiverse, by Big Boi: One benefit of being just a dude on tumblr chronicling his experiences is that I didn't have to listen to and write a thinkpiece about a 70-minute Lil Yachty album. I only have to experience Lil Yachty through his features on other people's songs, do not have to contend with the totality of his vision. But, it is disappointing that professional music people DO have to write extended thinkpieces about Lil Yachty, when those words and thoughts and energies would have been far better spent on this album. This album is just good. There's no frills, minimal use of the obligatory Atlanta trap beat, clever rhymes, only occasional misogyny, and maybe the most jubilant rap track of 2017, "All Night." I honestly can't remember the last time I heard a hip-hop joint as joyous as "All Night." So much of my favorite hip-hop of the last few years hasn't been happy, and not even the justifiable "shit's fucked up" unhappy, the "sadness is the only valiid emotion" unhappy, and "All Night" is a statement that darkness is nothing without light.

11) Before Sunrise, dir. Richard Linklater: "Hey! I've been up since 1 AM, and it is presently 4:30! I'm going to put on this quet movie about a quiet night in Vienna so I can watch Before Sunrise before sunrise, LOL!" Yeah so I fell asleep during this one, team. Not long enough to feel like I missed a lot, not long enough for this film to lose its impact, but enough to feel like I failed this film. What I was able to see was great. It was like someone shot a podcast in Vienna, and that sounds like an insult, but I'm into movies that are just two people talking to each other, and I'd be into a podcast where two strangers try to fall in love in two hours, two people bullshitting about love and relationships and the future while wondering if they could be happy with the other person outside of the podcast. It didn't feel at all tempered knowing there's a sequel in the queue. Like, knowing these two people see each other again is disappointing, only in the sense that I don't get to live with the ending for 10 years before learning about the sequel, but at the same time, the characters don't know they're going to see each other again, and that last goodbye at the train is so heart-wrenching, the way she disappears behind the wall and the guy just follows her, trying to stay as close to her as possible.

12) Pinata, by Freddie Gibbs & Madlib: I will let nature review this album for me: I live in a garden level apartment, and outside my bedroom window, where I stationed my new computer, there's a bucket beneath the gutter in which water rests. Squirrels will occasionally come through, take a sip, and bounce. But as I was listening to this album, I saw that the squirrel was lingering outside my window. I assumed it was responding well to the vibrations created by Freddie Gibbs' pleasant, deep-voiced flow and the low-key production, and that it was enjoying the things it was feeling. This is music squirrels can enjoy, man, what more do you want. And then a Danny Brown feature came on, and that squirrel RAN, man. Like, I get it? I wouldn't expect a squirrel to respond well to Danny Brown, but I still feel that squirrel is missing out.

13) Whiplash, dir. Damien Chazelle: When I listen to music, I've found I connect to the drumming more than anything but the lyrics. Part of the reason I still listen to pop/punk is because literally every single pop/punk drummer is amazing, drumming so so fast every time. I also watch sports and speedrun streams, and one of the things that fascinates me is the maniacal drive to be great, this obsessive need to push yourself to some limit most would find unnecessary. So of COURSE I'm into a film which would marry the two, and which had the performance of a lifetime from JK Simmons, JK Simmons deserving all the plaudits he got for playing Malcom Tucker's long-lost American twin. I think Miles Teller was cat perfectly for the scenes where he's with JK Simmons, an arrogant nothing-boy who can convey talent and cluelessness, but Miles Teller is such a zero that the scenes with his family and girlfriend, where we're supposed to say "no nice boy don't isolate yourself from your loved ones to drum so good," just felt like "god shut the fuck up you whiny jerk." The film also didn't really address a couple of questions I thought might be relevant to the JK Simmons character. Does music still retain its meaning if you obsess over it to the extent that Fletcher does, do people still respond to his performances on an emotional level, or do they appreciate it on a purely technical level? There's that dinner scene, where someone in Miles Teller's family asks, "How can you have a music competition? Isn't it subjective?" and Miles Teller says, "No," but it never explores the idea of what chasing the parts of music which can be judged objective does to the music. The other question is, what right does Fletcher have to the next Charlie Parker? How does this white dude think he can own jazz? But I've spent more words finding what's problematic about the film than I did on what I liked, which is usually the sign of a great film, one I wanted to spend a lot of words thinking about.

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