#obviously you can completely disregard the results if you wanna

[flustersluts]

‘M at a month now… still Dunno how long I’m g’na last… really really tempted to give up now.. buuuttttt also- kinda wanna see how long I can go…

-bubblegum 💕

Congratulations on one month! 🎉🎉 you must feel sooooo pent up and needy now though you poor thing!!! I bet you wanna cum so so bad... but it'd be a shame to give up now!! there's only one thing for it 😔😔

[ghostlyandcoastly]

The Dusty (dramione marriage law fic)

Hi I posted my first real dramione fic (other one is probs dead and abandoned) last night I figured why not post it here too! You can read it on AO3 or read it below

Chapter One: Ginny brings the wine

Hermione returned to her flat drained of all energy. She was not a witch easily defeated. She fought Voldemort throughout her school years for Merlin’s sake! It took a lot for Hermione Granger to have the fight in her body and brain depleted. And this? This was what broke her.

She’d been in a twelve-round legislative battle. As a legislative aide to the Minister of Magic, one of the youngest and brightest, she’d been working against a certain bill. A bill Hermione saw as the end of peacetime. A bill that Hermione would go to her grave cursing. A bill Hermione thought immoral and suspect. It was a Marriage bill. Although she supposed now, she would have to come to terms with the fact it was now a Marriage Law.

She had made valiant legal and moral arguments. She had lobbied members of the Wizengamot. She had garnered support in the wizarding media. And yet, when the cards fell, she was on the losing side. She was not used to losing. It did not feel good.

The bill- the law, she corrected herself mentally- was called The Decree To Unite Wizarding Society Through Espousal (DUWSTE or “the dusty” as Ron and others had taken to calling it). It mandated that every unmarried witch and wizard ages 21 to 35 be married. Yet this was not the only mandate. It required pureblood wizards to marry muggleborns or first-generation half-bloods. And still, yet, this was not the most repulsive thing about the law to Hermione. The second most repulsive thing about this would be that the pairs would be determined by magic. The members of the Wizengamot who initially proposed this law had charmed a goblet (which reminded Hermione of the disastrous consequences of a certain goblet of fire in her fourth year) to spit out names “appropriately” matched. The pairs would be revealed in a ceremony in one week’s time. The worst item in the proposal- now law- was the Child stipulation. Couples must produce at least one magical child within three years of marriage. There were invasive measures to be taken which would determine levels of fertility and whether the couple has made attempts at the child-making process. Hermione found this despicable. No matter how sterile the language was, the details were reprehensible. The idea that any man or woman would be forced to stand by, having their privacy completely disregarded in such a crude manner was shameful.

Hermione accused the law of depriving wizards and witches of agency and publicly ridiculed the idea that whatever charm the proponents had placed upon the goblet would result in “loving and harmonious couples” as a farce. 

But all of her fighting was for not because the bill had passed, although narrowly. She had been biting at her nails as the final votes were cast. When Wilhemina Walters cast her yay vote, Hermione had nearly broken down in tears. There were two more members to vote after that but Wilhelmina, one of the swing votes, had put it in the pocket of the bill’s proponents. Once the final result was called, (“The Decree to Unite Wizarding Society Through Espousal has passed the Wizengamot for immediate enactment. Notices to the relevant wizards and witches will be sent out on Monday via the Minister of Magic’s office. This session of the Wizengamot is hereby adjourned.”) Hermione fled from the chamber and found herself bent over the toilet, throwing up her guts like her lunch was slugs and she was Ron in second year.

Hermione shook her head as she felt another round of tears welling up. She could not believe this was happening. In one week, she would find out who she was marrying. Her mind drifted thinking of the possibilities. There were few men she actually liked and was comfortable around. There was obviously Harry and Ron whom she loved. But neither of them was an option. Harry and Ginny had been married a year and a half ago. Ron was engaged to Susan Bones as of seven months ago, prior to this bill being an issue. The Dusty (she was now resolved to not give it more respect than it deserved) had a stipulation that if you were engaged prior to the enactment of the law with proof of the date, you were not subject to the matching “service”. However, if you submitted a waiver under the engagement clause you must marry within three months of the enactment of the law. The other male friends she had were similarly tied up in relationships. Neville proposed to Hannah Abbott a month ago- not because of the law, but because they were in love. Although Hermione had her suspicions about whether Neville and Hannah rushed it because of the law. There was George who had eloped with Angelina Johnson (now Weasley) a few months ago. They both outright admitted that it was because of the law. They did not see any purpose of waiting if they were going to be forced to marry. There were Dean and Seamus but they’d been married since the day after the Battle of Hogwarts. 

The only single male friend she had was Blaise Zabini. Zabini was also a legislative aide to the Minister of Magic. They’d fought together against the bill but he hadn’t been quite so invested. He proposed to her daily, knowing she was annoyed at the prospect of marrying not out of an abundance of choice and love. The proposals were never serious. Blaise had said if the bill passed, he was sure he could put up with whoever he was matched with. He knew he was charming and he didn’t really believe in true love after all. Blaise made fun of Hermione for being a closet romantic. She huffed but she knew it was true.

A knock at her door pulled her from her reverie. She made her way to the door without much enthusiasm. Looking through the peephole which glowed green for “safe and familiar”, she saw it was Ginny. She opened the door to her friend’s too bright expression.

“I have wine and I have chocolate. Let’s mourn the end of your singlehood.”

Hermione felt her eyes well up.

“Oh, no. Don’t do that. Drink!” Ginny shoved her way into her flat and pushed Hermione to the couch and went about getting wine glasses from the kitchen, leaving the large bag of chocolates on Hermione’s lap. Hermione sighed deeply before tearing into a hazelnut vanilla chocolate.

They spent hours gossiping about anything other than the law. They got drunk and they ate chocolate and called for takeout delivery. But once properly lubricated, Ginny broached the topic.

“Soooo… at least this means you’ll finally get laid again.” Ginny said with a slight but noticeable slur to her voice. Hermione, being a lightweight, had a loose enough tongue to not just shake her head at Ginny.

“No way! I don’t wanna get ministry-mandated-sex for the rest of my life! I should-” She hiccoughed. “I should have gotten laid more often.” She sighs.

“You should have. But you were too busy fighting the damn dusty to do much of anything except eat, sleep, and be dragged for-forcibibibily to social gatherings on the weekend sometimes by my husband and me.” Ginny finished her statement and Hermione was about to reply indignantly (she didn’t have to be dragged per se) but Ginny sat up abruptly. “I have an idea! An excellent idea!”

“Oh no. What?” Hermione knew to be on guard when drunk Ginny had an idea.

“You still have time! You have a week til you get your partner. Even then, who says you can’t have a fling before you get married? It’s not like it’ll be a particularly romantic relationship in the three months they give you to get to know each other before marrying you off.”

“You want me to have a fling?”

“I want you to get laid. I want you to have sex that you won’t hate. I know you. No matter how nice the guy is, how attractive he is, or how big his cock is, you won’t be satisfied with ministry-mandated sex!”

“That’s right at least. It’ll always be in the back of my mind that this is something that I didn’t want, that would be forced upon me.” She sighs, expecting tears to come but they don’t. Maybe she’d run out.

“So that’s that. Tomorrow we’ll go out for a girls’ night, inviting Luna and Susan and Hannah, that will result in you getting laid at some bloke’s apartment and us married and engaged folks will go home and get laid by our husbands-fiances.” Ginny lacked tact sober. When drunk, she certainly didn’t pull punches. “One, way to put a fine point on it. Two, you expect me to have a one night stand?” She said doubtfully. “How am I gonna find someone? I know all of wizarding London pretty much. I’ve been out with a couple of people and either they were deeply uninteresting or uninterested in me.”

“I doubt the latter was true for anyone, first of all. Second of all, we’ll go to a muggle club. You can have hot, completely noncommittal sex with a muggle and it’ll be fun! I promise!” Hermione looked at her friend with doubt, amusement, and a bit of insecurity in her eyes. “I promise!” Ginny repeats. With that, they move on to other topics but the idea Ginny has planted has taken root in Hermione’s mind. She had one week of freedom where she wouldn’t be government-mandated engaged. She’d spend it having fun and thumbing her nose at the ministry.

That had been a Wednesday night. Hermione woke up Thursday with a hangover and owled in sick for the day at work. She wasn’t ready to show her face. If she saw Joanna Gibson or Todd Travers, she might have punched their pretty little noses. Joanna and Todd were both legislative aides of Norris Baumbach, the senior member of the Wizengamot who was responsible for pushing the bill through. Hermione despised the two of them. Travers was the cousin of a convicted Death Eater and his Slytherin ambition was crystal clear to Hermione. Travers would do anything to clear his family name- and that included playing dirty, provided he wasn’t caught. Joanna Gibson was an obnoxious Ravenclaw half-blood who, while she wasn’t as dirty as Travers, was significantly more a bitch. Hermione didn’t want to see their smug expressions. All the legislative aides worked on the same floor and there would be no avoiding them once at the ministry.

She spent Thursday eating fast food and peanut butter cups. She watched The Notebook and caught up on a muggle romance novel she’d started months ago. She received several owls from friends with good wishes but she didn’t have the energy to respond. She promised herself she would wake up early tomorrow and reply but today was a day that she reserved for herself.

On Friday she woke up early like she said and responded to everyone.

To Harry, she wrote,

I’m fine. Ginny should keep her mouth shut. I know you’ll always be there for me and I appreciate it. I’m getting ready tomorrow at yours so we can talk more then. Love you.

To Ron and Susan (though the note from them had been distinctly Susan with a postscript distinctly Ron), she wrote,

I’m fine. I always knew it was a possibility. Love you guys. We should meet for lunch next week. Trust me, I’m determined to have this damn thing affect my life in the least amount of ways possible. Speaking of, Susan, would you like to join Ginny and a few others and me on a girls night out tomorrow? Also, Ron, I happily accept your offer to blow my future husband’s bits to smithereens if he lays an unwanted hand on me. Love you guys too.

She answered Luna, Kingsley, and Neville’s notes next before moving on to the final one. The one from Draco Malfoy. They rarely spoke. Malfoy was occasionally around the office when he came to visit Blaise and they had worked together once when Hermione was working on legislation that she needed a master potioneer’s help with. Hermione found him to be every bit as arrogant and obnoxious- though even she could see he was not the boy he once was. For one, he was very much a man, as loathe as she was to admit such a thing. Yes, Draco Malfoy had grown into his pointy features and his skin no longer looked unhealthy- though it was a far cry from tanned.

The note from Malfoy had been short and had sparked a fire in her that had previously been put out.

Granger,

Blaise tells me you owled in sick to work. Never thought you’d be so easily defeated. All these years of poking at you and you let a little thing like a ‘lowly despicable immoral’ law that cast shade on all our futures defeat you. Tsk, tsk. What’s that muggle saying? Don’t let the bastards get you down? Get back up, Granger.

She was irritated. She was mystified. She felt like she had been confunded. So she wrote back to the best of her ability.

Malfoy,

Firstly, you made an inaccurate assumption. I simply wasn’t feeling well. Don’t presume to know me. Secondly, why must you Slytherins be so shady about your meaning? I can’t tell where you stand on this law. You certainly never spoke out against it. Nor in favor of it. Though I’m guessing your bigoted little mind would be against it- poor Draco Malfoy could never sully himself with a muggleborn, surely it’d be beneath him. Curious that you didn’t speak out. Or did you just not want to be on the same side as me? Thirdly, you made a common muggle mistake. The actual phrase is don’t let the bastards grind you down. Don’t worry, happens to the best of us. Fourthly, I will be back at the ministry today but not simply because you told me to so don’t go getting a big head thinking your words of wisdom somehow prompted my miraculous recovery. Fifthly, why are you writing to me? What do you get out of this?

Sincerely sod off,

Hermione Granger

Hermione made a noise at the back of her throat, proud of her note but distinctly uncomfortable that Malfoy had contacted her about this. Even more so uncomfortable that he was encouraging her. Albeit in a very arrogant way. Could she expect anything different from Draco Malfoy?

She shook it off and hurried off to the ministry, determined to turn her legislative tide. She was at her desk for only a few minutes before Blaise sat down across from her and slid a steaming cup of coffee her way.

“Oh, bless you!” Hermione gushed. 

Blaise smiled and replied, “I didn’t sneeze but you’re welcome.” Then his expression changed from jovial to sober which was a disturbing trend as Hermione had so rarely seen that change. “So how are you feeling?” Hermione huffed at this question. She’d probably be fielding it a lot for a little bit.

“I’m fine.” She insists. He gives her a look that says don’t lie to a liar. “I’ve made a plan. All I’ve ever needed was a plan.” Blaise snorted.

“You’re not running off with Potter to defeat You Know Who.” Even after all these years, many still wouldn’t say his name. No matter how often she would insist to Blaise that fear of the name blah blah blah. “You’re going to be married. And he could be the most charming bloke and you’re going to despise him. You’re not fine.”

“Ginny said something similar.” She blushed remembering Ginny’s comments about her mystery husband’s dick. “There’s nothing I can do about it now. There’s no more fighting it. At least not outright.” Blaise squinted in a very Slytherin manner.

“What exactly do you have planned Golden Girl?” He asked.

“Wouldn’t you just love to know.” She winked at him. He leaned back and grabbed his heart in a sarcastic but friendly manner. She laughed at his antics. “Back to work, back to work.” She made a shooing motion with her hand and he rolled his eyes at her.

Hermione was working on another Goblin fair pay bill because the last one had come out so toothless its supporters waned and its antagonists still voted no. Getting the Goblins to work with her on it had been a beast of a task in the first place. Now she had to go back to Moregi, the appointed Goblin liaison to the ministry, and beg for his cooperation once again. He was a cynical creature, to begin with, and with the latest defeat, he was growing more so. She couldn’t blame him though. It was rather defeating.

She shook her head and ran her fingers through her hair. It seemed nothing was going right. She knew when she took the job that it would not be easy and she was not the kind of person who could leave work at the office and not pour every ounce of herself into what was in front of her. Before The Dusty, Hermione had fantasized about true love, being the closet romantic she was. She had dreamed of a partner to come home to, a partner who would make her want to leave it all behind her when she stepped through the floo. Her heart twinged as she kissed this fantasy goodbye. She’d be chasing work even harder than usual once she had her ministry-appointed husband in her ministry-assigned place of residence.

“So is that what you do all day to get it to look that way?” A distinctly arrogant voice pulled her out of her reverie.

“What are you on about this time Malfoy?” She groaned, not looking up. He came around from time to time despite not having any official ministry position. Malfoy was the first of the Malfoy men to take up an actual career that wasn’t flitting about in politics and investments. He was an apprentice to Ollivander. Hermione always did wonder about that relationship given that Ollivander had been trapped in his family’s dungeons.

“Your hands. Mussing about in the mess you call hair.” He drawled. She looked up at him and gave him a cruel look.

“I imagine your hands spend plenty of time in your hair, massaging the pounds of hair product into it.”

“Yes, and I imagine it would take absolutely massive pounds of hair product to tame your hair an inch.” He tossed back.

“Pounds can’t be massive. It’s a definitive measurement, you can’t qualify it.” She informed him, satisfied with herself. Malfoy opened his mouth to retort but found himself interrupted by his best friend.

“What are you annoying Granger about this time, Draco?” Blaise asked.

“Oh, we all know Granger’s apparent annoyance at me is all just an act for how much she fancies me.” Blaise raised an eyebrow at this. Malfoy just smirked.

“You possess the charm of an acromantula to me, Malfoy.” She put her head down, back to the legislative work that awaited her. Blaise laughed at his two friends and sat back with his feet up on his desk.

“What brings you this way, Draco?” Blaise asks.

“Checking to see that Granger hadn’t offed herself yet and to take you to lunch, Blaise.” Draco said casually. Hermione looked up sharply and stood in the next second.

“I’ll have you know I’m doing perfectly fine!” She’d reached her wit’s end of everyone treating her like she’d suffered a personal tragedy and Malfoy’s casually cruel comment set her off. “Or I will be, very soon.” She said more to herself than the two men in front of her.

“Ah, yes. The plan.” Blaise said.

“Yes. The plan.” Hermione turned up her nose, resisting the urge to stomp her foot.

“What plan are you referring to?” Draco asked Blaise, knowing he wasn’t likely to get a response out of her.

“She won’t tell me. Just something that involves her indirectly fighting The Dusty.” Blaise informed Draco.

“Zabini!” Hermione reprimanded. She didn’t need Malfoy peering into this. Meanwhile, Malfoy just scoffed.

“The language of the law is quite precise. You know it damn well. What could you possibly do?”

“I’m taking back control of my life.” She said vaguely.

“What does that mean?” Blaise asks, unable to resist a puzzle.

“It means… well…” She wasn’t sure how to continue this. But Malfoy’s eyes were challenging her and she was always up for a dare. A Gryffindor, indeed. “The law says nothing about a pre-marital fling.”

She waited while the boys digested this. Then they looked at one another and burst out laughing. This led to her hands situating themselves on her hips in a haughty manner.

“What is ever so funny?” Hermione hissed.

“Your plan is to become a hussy?” Malfoy smirked, still chuckling.

“Excuse you!” She nearly screeched, causing the few in the office to look over at them. Well, those that hadn’t been looking before.

“C’mon, Hermione. It doesn’t exactly seem like you.” Zabini added.

“Yeah. Come off it. Haven’t you already turned to ice and stone from the lack of taking control as you put it?”

“You don’t think I’m capable? Neither of you?”

“Of casual, adult fun? No, I don’t.” Malfoy shrugged.

“Not that you’re incapable… just not necessarily comfortable doing something like that.” Blaise countered.

“I-I! Well! I’ll have you both know that I am not some sexless amoeba. I am an adult woman perfectly capable and willing to have a tryst with a man.” She resolutely exclaims.

“Alright. I’m sure you are.” Blaise held up his hands innocently, admitting defeat. Malfoy had not gotten the stand down memo.

“Prove it.” He says.

“Excuse me?” Hermione balks.

“Come to the pub tonight. We’ll pick a fellow out and you have to seduce him. Unless you’re incapable and unwilling.”

“Well, as shocking as this may seem to a prejudiced fool like you, Malfoy, the plan is to go to a muggle club. I’ve found them to be much more attentive than wizards anyways.” She added the last part, trying to make him blush as much as he was her.

“Well you have fun with that, Herm-” Blaise is cut off from his peacemaking efforts.

“We’ll come.”

“What?!” Blaise exclaims.

“We’ll come to your muggle pub. Meet you at the Leaky at nine?” Malfoy challenges her. She squints at him, trying to determine his game here.

“Sure. If you can stand to breathe all those muggle germs.”

“You know nothing about me, Granger.” He says cryptically before turning to Blaise who looked stricken, an uncommon occurrence for him. “Ready for lunch?” Without another word, he turned and started walking out the door. Blaise sighed heavily and stood to follow him but stopped at Hermione’s desk.

“Do you want me to talk him out of this?” Blaise asked, giving away his secret that he is actually a good friend.

“No. It’ll do the both of you some good to experience some culture that’s not prickly wizarding society. And do me some good to the surprised look on your faces when I do snag a man.” Hermione said more confidently than she felt. Blaise smiled and kissed her cheek.

“I’m sure this will go swimmingly.”

Hermione slumped to her chair. She was really going to do this now, wasn’t she? The thought of The Dusty popped back into her mind- her reason for this whole plot to begin with. A twinge in her gut reminded her how sharp the loss still was. The nervous fluttering in her stomach reminded her how very trapped she felt by it all. But the solid beat of her heart in her chest reminded her that she was a Gryffindor and Malfoy had baited her- she wasn’t about to back down.

[overhighways]

final spn thoughts

the memes have me rolling with laughter, because after a finale that bad all you can do is laugh but, i also can't stop thinking about the fact that they said the perfect ending for dean, the depressed character who finally became stable and built a found family, was to die without any family or friends around besides his brother that really... was yikes...

so i initially quit the show on the episode that kevin died. i had stuck it out thru so many sexist and/or racist deaths and acts of violence on the show but that was kinda my breaking point. additionally, looking back over my old liveblogs and op eds on tumblr, i was getting really tired of the fact that for the 8 or so years of the shows run the brother's had never grown emotionally, and continued a constant cycle of being dangerously codependent but also continuously lying to each other and hiding things from each other which always resulted in some catastrophe, causing them to come into conflict. it was bad writing and a bummer for someone who liked the universe and the characters but wanted a satisfying change in their state of being from the beginning to the end of the narrative.

for a hot second in college i dropped out, because one semester cos i was just so depressed, and in between bringe drinking and smoking i thought i should watch supernatural but i literally only made it like half a season further then my initaly quitting point before being like "wow this is shit and i feel bad maybe i should stop and get help". so i really hadn't thought of the show except for when i saw a funny meme clowning superwholock for about five years now but then all the posts about 5.18 tricked my gay clown ass into sitting down and marathoning all of the episodes i had missed so i could watch the finale live.

and what i have to say is i know they experienced a couple shifts in show runners and head writers over the past five years so it was still inconsistent in quality (its a CW show so like, who is surprised?), but they actually really broadly improved the show i think. i remember that the first 5 seasons or so were more carefully planned and ben edlund provided so much good writing, that i think when edlund and kripke left the show lost its way for a while, and there were moments that were decent, but when they finally brought cas into the bunker and jack was brought in as a main character it felt like they got back on track. they were able to refocus the show on family while also allowing the dean and sam to grow as people and build a much healthier found family. the three of the boys bring in claire novak as their charge, jodi and her hunter family become regulars; the show kind of felt like it was closer to reaching its potential, like back when we all thought bobby and ellen were gonna be forever main characters, and dean and sam would have a family and semi normal hunter lives. so i kind of felt like sam's arc was mostly complete seasons ago, he was a pretty normal dude who was gonna end up with eileen and that was cute and lovely. but for dean i really think it was more complex and the whole final season being about killing god and truly giving everyone full free will to create any possible future they wanted, was gonna tie in more to dean's struggle to define himself outside of the role of his father's blunt instrument and his brother's protector. but instead they establish this amazing free will for everyone, cas literally dies to give dean the chance to finally be free, and then they wrote a finale that essentially says "free will doesn't exist and you will always be bound to certain expectations". like dean dying on a hunt is fine and arguably in character, but to not include any of the family that he painstakingly learned he could have? bullshit. they just completely disregarded all of the character growth they spent the last five to ten seasons giving us. also i find it nearly impossible to believe that sam would not specifically be searching for eileen after literally killing an entire coven of witches to get a spell to bring her back from the dead, so his weird faceless implied wife was confusingly bad writing as well. and dean not trying to get cas back? the dean winchester who had a complete emotional break down every time he thought he had abandoned cas or failed him or let him die? bullshit. jack not immediately bringing cas back to them? bullshit!!

and it felt like a really odd ending for cas, whose entire character arc has also been about learning how to act of his own free will and not be a mindless soldier of god, to just disappear and be implied to have suddenly returned to being... a mindless soldier of god. like i know its a new and better god who is also his son but like... you are telling me cas was really okay with abandoning his friends on earth and just sitting in heaven doing boring celestial paperwork for eternity? the writers threw away the potential narrative symmetry of having dean pull cas from the empty the way cas pulled him from hell, they threw away the potential symmetry of implying that jack brought cas back and having cas appear in the barn and save dean to mirror his first appearance in the barn where dean summoned him... and okay say misha didn't wanna risk covid and flying back to canada, they threw away the ability to literally just have a prerecorded line where cas found dean in heaven and said his iconic "hello dean" line. idk very bad writing. like obviously i had always assumed that at the very best the sbow would end with sam having the most normal life, and dean kinda fucked up but finding peace and dying on a hunting trip, but the execution sucked.

my final addition is that i have read quite a bit about all the drama behind the scenes but i genuinely cannot forgive the show's head writers and producers for queer baiting their audience like that. it would have been one thing for dean and cas to remain implied, but to confirm offscreen that they were in love and never acted on it, mention it only briefly onscreen before killing off their only on screen confirmed queer leading man, and then never resolve dean's sexuality was... quite hateful. and to know that you won't resolve it, but dangle the possibility of a resolution in the hopes of getting better numbers on your finale is... incredibly hateful. my heart goes out to misha, jensen, and berens who apparently worked very hard to get the little representation viewers were granted, and who subsequently were treated very poorly by the show's main writers and the network.

its been a hell of a 15 years...

[localbooktrash]

Hi! Even though I would never consider myself a 'stan', I do enjoy reading some sjm. But I acknowledge her flaws (and there are a lot of them). While I don't agree with everything you say, you do raise good points, and I just wanted to add on to the pile of 'bad rep' because there's one thing that bothered me: the mating bond retcon. While I'm super happy we got some LGBT mates in the third book, it felt completely forced and retconned, specifically /1

/2 Because she went out of her way in book two to give the mating system the most heteronormative rules possible. So I feel like it was kind of the same as the East-Asian Manon, I would love it if it didn't feel like second-thought rep she didn't really want to include, but felt 'forced' to add to counter her critics and be able to say 'no, look, I do think about LGBT/ poc readers wanting rep'. And I'm sad about it because that's not how I want to be represented."

Hey first of all you're ABSOLUTELY VALID!

I don't ever wanna give Fans the feeling that this isn't a space that they can come to and start a conversation or even rant about things that bother them to let off some steam. Because opposite to you, while I am an Anti I still enjoy parts of Sarahs writing, some of her characters, plotpoints and jokes. And to do that and to have my respect you absolutely don't have to agree with everything I say because obviously I also do mistakes and sometimes let my emotions control what I write so it's not unbiased and fair.

I don't think that when she made the mating system she intentionally did it with ill-intend towards the LGBT+ community and it's members

I think it was just disregard and a kind of ignorance that she has due to being secluded and inside her own heterosexual, mainly white bubble of a world.

Although the second book of her trilogy was published in 2016, and you'd think we're at a point where people have been vocal enough about diversity and representation.

And I absolutely agree: The way she handled the backlash later on was really bad and resulted in unprofessional writing.

In my opinion I absolutely hate the mating bond, not because of what it represents but because of how Sarah choose to execute this great concept of "Soulmates". At some point the two mates could just speak through Telepathy and it was never mentioned why or how.

Not to mention the predatory, weird animal behaviour that MALE mates have

[eerythingisshaka]

I made this post on Monday, and just now got around to edit and post

I’m basically going through the whole plot of Endgame and how I felt, I just had to hammer it out.   If you haven’t seen it yet, please come back when you have! First things first, I did not cry!  I feel like I’m in the minority, and I swear I am a devoted MCU fan and love Tony and Cap and them, but I did not cry and I’m so disappointed with myself!  I got more emotional thinking about it in the days leading to the premiere than I did while viewing.  I think it was too entertaining for me to find it sad?  Not like movies I cry at aren’t entertaining but the action and substance was making my nerd heart pitter patter so much, I was over the moon and couldn’t come down.  I will say though, ever since watching Endgame, every past Marvel movie makes me somewhat emotional.  This whole thing is like a high school graduation, like I’m never gonna see my friends together again like this, an era is over!  All I have are memories, aaaaggghhhh!

That being said. the movie grips me from the beginning with the song Dear Mr. Fantasy by Traffic.  Marvel has some pretty good picks for songs to set the tone for their movies, to this day this song kinda pulls at my heart strings because of its message 

 Dear Mr. Fantasy play us a tune

Something to make us all happy

Do anything, take us out of this gloom

So of course, we all felt this way with the ending of Infinity War, having so many of our faves being sacrificed to dust for Thanos’ plan of rectifying what he saw as the decrepit state of the universe.  Walking away from part one with the villain winning was a fresh slap to my face and a year of agony to find out how the heroes pull this off in the end.  Take us out of our gloom Marvel! 

And the characters must feel the same, as the film opens with Clint and his daughter doing some archery in their yard as a very American lunch of mayo and mustard hot dogs are being served.  As his daughter Lilah is putting things away, Clint calls out to her only to see dust and turns again to his family with the same result.  So much for freedom from our gloom, right?  In case you somehow forgot, this little scene gives us a friendly reminder of what we were left with in 2018.  If that’s not enough, Nebula and Tony playing the little hand goal, paper flick game that is just darling to witness.  Nebula plays like a rehabilitated puppy still unsure about being around humans as Tony instructs her like a child on every development of the game.  Her little perk up when he announces her win is so cute as they shake hands, finally sealing her character development from ruthless, blood-thirsty appeaser of a sadistic father, to a more stoic, regretful soft spoken but hoarse matured version of herself.  All the while, Tony is beginning to starve from being malnourished and depleting oxygen.  Nebula sets him in a piloting chair as he drifts off, losing consciousness until the homie we have all assumed would be coming appears as a glow in his irises, Carol Danvers aka Captain Marvel.  

Carol flies the ship back to Tony’s compound where Cap, Rhodey, Natasha, and Pepper wait for him to descend.  We get a moment with him and Cap that is sweet as Cap walks him down, Tony tells him he lost Peter Parker, an obviously huge loss for this to be the first thing he mentions.  The warmth is lost quickly though as the next step of Tony’s grief comes afoot: anger and finger pointing.  Tony, on an IV and all, is relentless as he festers in bitterness while lashing out at Cap and company that the fight was lost and even encouraged by Cap because they were together.  This optimism is obviously not enough for Tony, who grows weary of Cap’s positivity, opting that he finish the work alone or that Danvers takes on the task herself before collapsing from exhaustion.

Carol, Thor and the gang have a slight dick measuring contest on kicking Thanos’ ass once and for all before Nebula offers to take them straight to him.  And where is he?  Why on a farm on a planet in the galaxy, nursing his wounds from the snap.   His entire right side is burned to a crisp due to the snap, and at the same time has obliterated the stones much to their dismay.  Thor wastes no time in chopping off Thanos’ head, a little too late but satisfying none the less.  However, in the end, the stones are nowhere to be found, the last person to have them is dead, and no one from the snaps is back yet.  Cue music!

So, the gloom we are supposed to be rescued from, when does that start right?  Not for another five years according to a time lapse card.  Our heroes have no means of figuring out the solution to the snap; Cap forms a support group for survivor’s, Natasha has grown out her blonde hair and is constantly checking in on happenings around the world, and universe since the snap, jumping at even the mention of an earthquake.  Rhodey briefs her on a terrible killing spree of gang members that appear to have a style that is well known to them as Clint Barton’s aka Hawkeye.  Despite Rhodey’s hesitance Natasha insists he keeps an eye on him, inferring that she may track him down eventually.  (Quick side note here, something to be seen as a possible plot flaw:  Hawkeye’s bloodlust and disregard for lives after losing his whole family in the snap isn’t dug into very deeply after this.  Rhodey said it’s so bad he didn’t even wanna find him!  But there wasn’t any in fighting or push back after that between them.  He has one instance of almost interacting with his family on a test run for time travel which is against the rules, but other than that he isn’t killing people recklessly or even triggered to tears or drinking incessantly over his loss.  But more on Thor in a minute). 

If it hadn’t been for that rat running across the panel in Scott Lang’s van to activate his return from the Quantum realm who knows how long, if ever, would they figure out the means of traveling back to get the stones.  I was so glad I watched Antman and Wasp right before seeing Endgame, so I knew the van, Cassie, and a little bit about the Quantum Realm.  I’m actually upset that I didn’t realize the realm could be used for their benefit because I was always betting on the Time Stone being the corrector in all this, but anyway.  Scott returns highly confused as he realizes the state of the world since his entrapment in the realm.  Seeing his baby girl become a young lady was a powerful scene to witness, and had my heart dent a little bit, but I held it together.  Soon after that, Scott makes his way to find Cap and Natasha, explaining how 5 years was really five hours for him, so time is different in the realm which could possibly mean something for them getting the dusted back.  At one point in the movie, I’m blanking on which comes first but for now I’ll dive into this bit, we are reintroduced to Bruce Banner as Hulk…as one person.  I completely forgot that we didn’t see Bruce in trailers, which is for this reason.  Comic book followers would know, but there is a iteration of Bruce Banner becoming Professor Hulk, so he functions as his normal scientist self, while also being a big green being.  Oddly enough, it does not take long for me to grow accustomed to The Bruce Hulk hybrid, he is hilarious and sweet and more confident even then he was as a regular man despite his appearance.  He has fans, people love him and this is a far cry from when we are introduced to him in the original Avengers as Nat tracks him down somewhere in Southeast Asia, a nervous wreck loner who is quick to anger.  I could see this Hulk being fanfic fodder, not my cup of tea, but he was just that damn appealing, I could see it.

But even with Bruce’s brain, time travel isn’t exactly hammered down as an absolute possibility so they reach out to another source on the matter.  Which brings me to my love/hate relationship with Tony.  I ADORE that he finally had a baby with Pepper, Morgan “Cussin Queen” Stark.  Tony is living his best life in the natural air in his log cabin, as off grid as he possibly can be before Black Widow, Cap, and Lang pull up to question the possibilities ahead of them.  The strength of his cold shoulder gave me an insatiable chill down my spine.  Tony is the King of Petty, but rarely passive so I was surprised by that moment of mean girl attitude from him.  But luckily he served up something to drink (I’m thinking it’s iced coffee or chocolate milk.  I’m still confused by what that held.)  Tony basically tells them they are crazy and hoping for nothing, because he’s good where he is.  He has his girls and no stress which is honestly what the Avengers always seem to guarantee for him since joining the group with SHIELD under Nick Fury’s insistence years ago.  I do wish I could remember the theories and scientific laws he said would be fucked up with their plan, just to see if they are real ones but also I love when Tony just spouts his knowledge like it’s IKEA instructions.  He makes it seem so simple until you have to break it down, and up until this point Scott seemed like the smartest one on the team but really Tony could’ve been figured this out if he wasn’t so granola now, which is great and happy for him, but he really did give up very quickly.  Once again, probably good reason, self-care.  But still.

Gotta say, I love a selfish Tony though.  Quick shoutout to Robert Downey Jr. in showing his chops by bringing the emotional fortitude to this Disney movie.  The man has been THROUGH IT and has had enough.  Tony only has so much optimism in him that the cheerleading squad can provide before his is completely done and baby was DONE.

But without Tony’s help they test run moving through the quantum realm only to discover what Tony says later, that time kept moving though Scott instead of him moving through time, making him a baby, and old man, a kid again, and back to an adult.  But with a fancy time GPS Tony doctor’s up on the fly after discovering that the group isn’t crazy about the time travel being an option, they are good to go like it’s day one!  (Another side note to Paul Rudd aka Scott Lang giving us much needed comic relief.  I have never laughed so hard at my precious baby trying to eat a taco in my life. Also, Cap’s yeehaw attire in this scene?  The checkered white shirt with his dark jeans pulled up?  Truly save the horse and ride the cowboy instead man.)  

Now at this point we have to check in on Thor, our sweet pirate angel.  How has he fared?  Him, Valkyrie, and the surviving Asgardians establish their own town  on Earth.  Thor and Rocket go to find him, with a preview from Valkyrie of what Thor’s mental state is by the piles of beer kegs outside.  So, when they enter his home, giving a wave to Korg and Miek playing video games on the couch, Thor tumbles out behind Thor and Rocket reaching for another cold on, camera to his back.  By now we can see his hair is overgrown and greasy, and his midsection has a new pair of love handles we aren’t used to seeing on our svelte, brutish god of thunder.  So when he turns around, audience erupts in the theaters, as do I, to see him now looking like a melted ice cream cone with a beer belly that somehow still has some toned abs on top if you look closely, paired with some man titties to complete all billowing over his pajama pants to complete his depression ensemble.  This was more shocking to me than the Hulk/Banner hybrid reveal.  We hadn’t seen an image of Thor outside of him giving Carol Danvers the Stormbreaker scare test in the previews, so thanks for another surprise.  Despite his crumbling emotional stability at even the mention of Thanos’ name (tip of the hat to Chris Hemsworth for making my heartache with every crack in his voice), I have to get on my soapbox and say Thor’s body is beautiful!  He is a supreme King, deliciously made who can still smash any pair of cheeks to ash and dust with the power Mjolnir in each thrust quicker than any counterfeit gauntlet.  Just watch him later on, you’ll see!  I’d have that belly slapping on top of me in a quantum realm millisecond after he takes a shower and attends therapy.  A lil pudge ain’t killed no part of his power, whew.  Don’t make me shout.

Back to plot, with the promise of beer, Thor the Dude tags along to start the plan of going back to retrieve infinity stones.  After a synopsis of each one and where they were located, the crew drums up the plan to retrieve each stone from the past, bring them back to the future to put into a new gauntlet  and snap the other half of life’s creatures back.  This part of the movie is so stellar because if you have watched past Marvel movies (the first Avengers, Gaurdians of the Galaxy, Captain America First Avenger, and Thor Dark World) you will recognize the scenes that are featured with their past selves going through their past-current scenes.  Natasha and Clint go to Vormir for the Soul stone, which I am surprised Nebula did not warn them that someone would have to die to retrieve it.  What if two characters that didn’t love each other went for the Soul stone, is it over and done?  But luckily, or unluckily, Clint and Natasha are able to get the stone with a sacrifice of Natasha’s life (who honestly sacrificed herself but it counted.  And I need so much more clarity on the specs of the soul stone, it ain’t even funny.  Will we ever see what the realm Gamora and Black Widow are in is like?)  These two characters have been last on my list always so the scene was crazy watching them battle back and forth for a chance at ending their lives but the end result didn’t hit my heart but still great.  I kinda would’ve wished little Gamora was there again to talk to us.  

Then Hulk has to go see Ancient One to retrieve the time stone, which she will not relinquish until Hulk says that Strange gave it up willingly.  On his word alone, she gives it to him, sensing the imminent danger that could come that is worse than the alternate reality she faces for not having the time stone with her.  Then Rhodey and Nebula go to Morag for the Power Stone.  So this is the first sign of overall trouble in their plan because apparently having two Nebula’s mix memory frequencies that reveal the whole entire plan to Thanos.  I thought for sure at some point that Nebula’s eye was gonna have to be dug out to ensure the completion of the mission but it winds up that Nebula and Gamora take her hostage before past Nebula takes current Nebula’s place with the crew going back with their stones, none the wiser.  Not even Rhodey gives her a check in like “why did you not come back with me when I jetted back to the future?  what happened?”  Nothing!  The death of Natasha kind of takes precedent over anything else and leave Nebula to finish off bringing Thanos back with her to wreak havoc.  

Lastly, Cap, Tony, and Scott are in New York circa Avengers number 1, fighting the space aliens and keeping Loki from the tesseract.  And I am not exaggerating when I say this part of movie is possibly the greatest cinematic feature I have ever seen, or will ever see my natural life.  You have Tony, creeping in the shadows to get Antman ready to help retrieve the tesseract, all the while admiring Cap’s ass!  He does it, critiquing that his outfit does nothing for his ass, when we all know nothing holds back them cheeks from making an appearance.  Scott, ever the voice of standom, downplays Tony’s critique and coins his rear end as “America’s Ass”.  I EXPLODED.  Ever since Captain America: the First Avenger, I have pined, no, thirsted, nay, LUSTED for that man in Marvel cinema.  He has the BAWDY to be Cap, and never slacks.  I have also always been a big fan of Tony and Cap having a torrid love affair that Marvel refused to implement but teases anytime they stare deeply into each other’s eyes or argue feistily until they are nose to nose, just get a room you two!  Ten points to Gryffindor for feeding the fans what they want!

So, New York is the only place that doesn’t go smoothly, as Cap retrieves the scepter containing the Mind Stone after a quick “Hail Hydra” to throw off the double agent SHIELD opponents from Winter Soldier.  All this time, Tony and Scott lose the tesseract in a freak incident that causes the case to fall into Loki’s vicinity, who picks up the cube and disappears to God knows where.  And it is never figured out where past Loki goes, or what timeline he creates for himself now that he has the tesseract at his disposal with no one to oppose him.  That is another thing I would love to know, all these alternate realities that have been constructed due to them tinkering with time, what happens?  What damage is done to the Ancient One without time?  What does Loki do with space?  How is Jane and Asgard without the reality stone ravaging her?  (Rocket got it btw as Thor got caught up talking to his mother, which was a very sweet scene and really amplified her character for me to love her more than I already had).  But at least Cap got the scepter until he is met with his past Cap, leading to my most favorite fight scene in the MCU.  Something about those two classic suits running at each other with the cacophony of the shields, and current Cap saying some choice expletives now and getting tired of the bullshit while past Cap still has all that giddy up and pure heart and “I can do this all day” attitude is an exceptional treat to be had.  I love Cap’s development, as much as he has stayed the same, he has changed, grown more into his age even, getting weary with the world but never losing his positive outlook, just shifting his focus gradually.  But to correct the tesseract blunder, Tony and Cap go back to 1970 to get the original tesseract from SHIELD in its infancy.  Both Tony and Cap have a soft moment.  Tony see’s his father who talks to him about his expecting wife (aka baby Tony) and Cap sees Peggy again in her youthful glory, panging our heartstrings.  But in the end, the supplies are collected and they move on.

So after they get the stones, they construct the gauntlet out of Tony’s suit Iron man material and it is decided that Hulk must do the snap since gamma radiation is part of the stones and so is he. It is not a simple easy thing as he writhes in pain and burns under the pressure of power but does the snap anyway and successfully brings back half the world.  This win is shortlived once Thanos bombards the compound and sends Nebula off to retrieve the stones.  This is the start of the longest game of flag football/hot potato/rugby adjacent.  Hawkeye has the gauntlet at first as everyone tries to pull themselves from the rubble (side note:  seeing Rocket so distressed shook me.  He is usually so cool and wily, getting out of so much bullshit that his helplessness when he couldn’t breathe almost sent me over).

So since they retrieved the stones, it’s not like they change their past, just create alternate realities.  Once they return them, things go back to normal again.  So Hulk uses the gauntlet to bring back the rest of the population again, we just don’t see them yet until later.  Past Nebula gets killed by current Nebula after Gamora helps current Nebula out to stop Thanos because as we know from Infinity War, Gamora never wanted Thanos to find them all.  Thor, Cap, and Tony all team up to spar with Thanos who was waiting patiently for the gauntlet to be brought to him.  Much to my dismay, the fight is very even, no side truly overpowers the other.  Thor really wants to put in work, but can’t quite get through until Cap does what I have been waiting for since Ultron: HE PICKS UP MJOLNIR!  (which Thor took back from Asgard in his time travel).  Wheew, I coulda passed out when I saw Cap wielding that thing like it’s his the star spangled banner itself, sending lightning down on Thanos, busting him upside his head and all!  I was spent and feeling aftershocks until Thanos gets the upperhand again and bombards his shield with that weak ass helicopter blade sword thing.  It breaks the shield up!  Which is made of vibranium!  THE STRONGEST METAL IN THE UNIVERSE!  This how I know Russo’s were just grasping at straws; the only thing I can say is since Tony made him that one after the snap, he probably used bootleg vibranium because obviously nobody called Wakanda for input on a damn thing to make this mission happen which is a rant I can say on a completely separate post.  Sure, take T’Challa and Shuri in the snap, it’s not like the whole country isn’t composed of melanated geniuses that could give y’all a lesson on quantum physics that would make your central nervous system dry out.  No, don’t call Wakanda to make vibranium anything for y’all to help in the fight, it’s cool cuz y’all didn’t try and clean up anything after shit hit the fan!  I wanted a 10 minute Wakanda clean up scene: I got DUST.  The underutilization of such a great people while at the same time using them frivilously is a *blink blink* mindfuck.  But I digress again!

Once Cap seems to be against the wall, he tightens his shield band around his arm and says slap me bitch.  But before it continues,  Sam gives him a quick “on your left” signaling the return of everyone, with first none other than our Wakandan royalty: T’Challa, Okoye, and Shuri.  Dr. Strange’s portals open up as populations come to join the fight from Gaurdians and Asgard, Wakanda and other Marvel movies.  The fight scene that begins I can’t wait to own at home becuase I know I have to pause and slow motion to capture everything.  Someone said Howard the Duck is in the fight which I HAVE to see. Can you imagine getting your ass impaled by a cartoon space duck? 

The game of keep the gauntlet from Thanos continues as Spiderman, T’Challa, and others all have a go at running the guantlet away from Thanos.  This is a part that I kind of have to think to remember.  I know that Antman and Wasp had to spark up the quantum realm van and I think the plan was to send the gauntlet into it, but I’m not sure.  Eventually Tony is alerted by Strange that the one in 14 million chance at winning is upon them and Tony goes ham to get the gauntlet from Thanos, who nearly succeeds but Tony yeets them off the glove and onto his suit, proclaiming himself as Iron Man one last time before snapping the bad half of the population into obliteration.  All the bad aliens and Thanos dust away, leaving the original population the watch them float away.  However Tony’s sacrifice is his life as he dies after goodbyes from Peter, Pepper and Rhodey.  

The funeral occurs with everyone there, even the kid from Iron Man 3.  This is a really emotional scene, especially seeing Tony left a last message in case of his demise, ending it with telling Morgan “I Said What I Said” Stark that he loves her 3000.  Once again, I almost got choked up there, but it just wouldn’t happen. One thing that took me out were Wakanda’s outfits at the funeral.  All black everything, but the fit and the make of Okoye and Shuri’s dresses?  With the gold accessories????  I can’t mourn when all that beauty is in my face!

And in the end, Cap goes back in time to send the stones back to where they belong but stays in the past to reunite with Peggy, finally bust her open and returns as an old man to give his shield to Falcon and that is it!

I almost got choked up just now thinking about that last scene but I still didn’t cry.  A tear came down when the end credits showed the actors pictures and their signatures of the original Avengers though.  There will never be a better Cap or Iron Man bruh, taking that to my grave.

 I’ve been in this MCU life for just about the whole length of it; watching these amazing superhero action flicks for the fun of it before recognizing the structure of each film forming towards an ending so grand. “You see where you’re going? Now let’s focus on how you get there.” This is a statement that is about to be my mantra for life! This is a huge project for a studio to put together properly, having all of our superheroes in one place, sewn together with the journey of the infinity stones to take out the big purple meanie Thanos who is hellbent on controlling the universe the easy way (50% of all living creatures annihilated) or the hard way (100% gone, starting from scratch).

But Marvel has given me so much great entertainment to look forward to.  Ever since I graduated high school, it’s been the May or November of each year, what’s Marvel putting out next? And it’s gonna be tough not expecting an Avengers film anymore, but I’ll be here for the new build up of superheroes, supporting Black Panther still of course as well.  I will miss the Cap thirst, wardrobe really did their part in this one with the Black sweater, the grey Henley, the yeehaw outfit previously mentioned and EVERY CAP UNIFORM HE HAS WORN!  I love this fucking fandom.  

And now I just wonder where past Gamora went, because she came to the present and “present” Gamora died at Vormir so we have a Gamora alive now but she went MIA, or did she get snapped back when Tony snapped all the henchmen back?  Thor at the end joins the GOTG  or Asgardians of the Galaxy, so I can’t wait to see how they fair in I assume GOTG 3.  How will Falcon do as the new Cap?  What does Bucky do now??  He was the original ride or die for Cap until he became Winter Soldier, but Cap was very forgiving of him in all that.  Yet, his closure seems open for anything, he got no special stuff in the end so maybe more for him?  How is Spiderman and the whole teenage snap population going back to school when it is five years in the future but they are the same age?  Where did Valkyrie keep her Pegasus this entire time?  When Cap went back to Vormir, what was his reunion with Red Skull like?  And what did Thanos do with the stones before they were destroyed?  They said he used them again and that’s how they found him at the beginning but on what? Answer these questions for me please!  

If you made it this far, I love ya 3000 and I owe you cheeseburgers (oh God TONY!!!)

[rkmg]

〈★〉MGAS SEASON 4 - EPISODE EIGHT - TEAM PERFORMANCE                     ↳ team: rising star ( #4003, #4024, #4028, #4037, #4049 )                                ↳ song: “fxxk it” by bigbang bigstar - line distribution

Getting here was hard. He’s sure that statement doesn’t only apply to him, but for every single contestant still remaining on this show. They’ve all had to have worked their asses off, otherwise, they wouldn’t be here today. That’s definitely not insinuating that those that were eliminated didn’t work their asses off, however; some were luckier than others.

He’s forced himself to stop counting his losses. After nearly completely dropping out of the competition (he was a hair away from doing it... so close to quitting that he could practically taste failure on his tongue), he realized that something about his mindset was in dire need of changing. If he didn’t gather his thoughts and stop looking at every single downside instead of what he’s been given, this wasn’t going to work out. After all, he was still here. That’s more than most people that started on this show can say. He’s lucky; he’s grateful for this. He just wished that he wasn’t so insecure. Maybe if he viewed himself with a higher regard, ranking low every week wouldn’t get to him as badly as it did.

If he was truly not talented and not deserving of being here, then he wouldn’t be. Simple.

Let’s rewind back to the event that nearly pushed him to throw in the towel; it was another week where your rank from the previous round determined whether you’d get your pick of song. Before, he’d been lucky. There were few rappers left so he was practically guaranteed to land a spot in the song that he desired most. Now, there were even less rappers since both of his teammates had been eliminated (disregarding the fact that one of them wasn’t even a rapper, he just had very little choice about performing with them). Perhaps it wasn’t his fault, exactly. If it’d been those that had been dropped from the MGAs’ fault that he scored so terribly, then it made little sense to him. It was their fault, but now they’re gone and he has to suffer the consequences? It didn’t seem right. He’d much rather those in charge rank each contestant individually so things like this didn’t happen.

Now, he had the song that he wanted to do in mind, but he had very little hope that he would get it. And then... of course, obviously, he didn’t. MYNAME was one of his absolute ult groups and it would have meant the world to him if he’d had been able to perform it. He’d had the opportunity to learn dancing from Jun.Q when he participated in the NOVA dance classes. Mingyu just imagines how wonderful it would have been to be able to dance onstage to one of his songs, knowing that he was only doing so well because he’d had some help from him— his idol. It would have been an incredible moment, though it wasn’t one he was meant to live out.

Then, later, he found out that Won did manage to secure a place in performing it. After that, all he can imagine is how wonderful it would have been to finally be on stage with him. He’s happy to see his boyfriend doing so well on the show, that’s incredibly clear. He values him way more than he values himself, after all. Still, now he has this feeling in his chest and this voice in his head that is telling him that he would only hold the other back. He wishes he could feel like he was succeeding, too. He doesn’t want to be better than Won; to him, that isn’t even possible. He just desperately wants to feel like he truly deserves to stand next to him and for them to both achieve this dream together.

But, you know, his team wasn’t as bad as he convinced himself they’d be. He was bitter at first and didn’t want to open his eyes and accept his current place, though once he did, he felt rather content. Everyone was friendly enough and they all were able to joke together and bond to an extent. Weirdly enough, despite as long as he’s been on this show, he was meeting new faces every week. Well, they weren’t exactly new since he recognized them well enough, though he’d never actually been given the chance to get to know them up until now.

Mostly, he bonded the best with Taehyung. Very quickly did he warm to the other boy and he stuck to him like glue. He was friendly and bright, which was absolutely something that Mingyu needed to have in his life right now. The two of them even went shopping for coats together, which was a fun experience. Lately, he hasn’t had many chances to be normal and playful like he had been in the past, so it was a breath of fresh air when he was posing in ridiculous and dramatic outfits for pictures snapped by the other boy, laughing cheerfully once he no longer had to hold his position. They were instructed by Soojin to not wear anything that was a fashion crime, though they seemed to have differing opinions about what classified as such.

Practicing wasn’t as intense as he wanted it to be. This, once again, just made him think about how much he would have enjoyed performing ‘Tell Me’. There wasn’t much choreography in a song such as this one so he wasn’t going to be needing to practice much dancing. Rapping was already easy for him, and he wasn’t even tasked with writing his own lines or anything, so there wasn’t a lot for him to do this week. It was a lot more boring than some of his previous weeks, though he supposed he should enjoy this sort of free time. Especially considering he wouldn’t be given as many opportunities such as this one once he was actually signed to a company.

Relaxing wasn’t entirely easy, though. He had too many things on his mind to feel completely calm and he hated being by himself. He would try to cling to Taehyung during these moments, hoping that he would provide him with company and a proper distraction.

The week went by a lot slower than he hoped it would, so he was very happy once Friday rolled around. He was going to be participating in the hi touch after this performance, which both excited and disappointed him. His disappointment wasn’t intense, however. He was just nervous about waiting so long for the eliminations since he was extremely worried and nervous about the results. Just knowing that it would drag out for a while gave him a bit of anxiety, though he tried to push it away. In the end, meeting people who were excited to see him would be a wonderful experience. He didn’t know it just yet, but it was going to free him of many of his worries.

Once finally on stage, Mingyu introduced himself to the crowd and then braced himself for the performance.

난 씩씩하게 말을 걸어 넌 저기 시시한 여자와는 달리 틱틱 거려 칙칙하던 분위기에 한 줄기 빛 설렘 정도가 지나쳐 마치 사춘기

The lines weren’t too challenging, so he managed to complete his first verse with ease. Honestly, at this point, he was counting his blessings. He was thankful for what he was given. It’s never good to be discontent with your life when things aren’t even bad. He felt glad that he was here, performing on stage with the other survivors of the show. Also, he had a lot more lines than he would have if he was given his original choice. This was a good thing, he now thought. He wasn’t getting to perform with Won, but he had faith that he was going to debut with him. Then, they’d always get to perform together. This was just a small sacrifice for a huge win.

에라 모르겠다 에라 모르겠다

He would dance a little, or at least ensure that he didn’t look like as stiff as a statue onstage as the performance went on. He made sure that he was smiling and appearing carefree and confident. When he was onstage, that kind of thing never felt like a lie. After all, this is still where he felt comfortable. The nineteen-year-old always felt like he was in his element here.

뒤처리를 못해 피눈물 없는 로맨스 장단 없는 game 너는 오락가락하고 멜로디가 다른 알토와 소프라노 어차피 우리는 끊어질 거야 딱 잘라 말할게 타락해버린 꿈에 Eldorado

As he executed his second long verse, he made sure that he did so perfectly and effortlessly. Just looking out at the crowd and examining all of the eyes glued to him felt exhilarating. His heart rate picked up as the adrenaline pumped through his veins, eyes sparkling with determination and awe.

에라 모르겠다

The majority of his lines were over but the stage wasn’t finished just yet. He did his best to hype up the rest of his group as they did their lines, continuing to smile and move about in a way that didn’t make him appear as though he was made of stone, though he also didn’t want to look like his limbs were crafted from noodles (despite what Yerim seems to believe).

에라 모르겠다 I Love y’all 에라 모르겠다 에라 모르겠다

With each week spent on the MGAs, the easier this seemed to become. He briefly found himself wondering if this is what it felt like for idols. Did they get used to this kind of attention and schedule over time? Or, did they only get used to it for a while, before it begins to feel draining and tiring? He wouldn’t know until he was in that position... or until he has the opportunity to ask one for himself, though he doesn’t feel like they would answer truthfully either way.

Girl I wanna get down Girl I wanna get down

He was going back and forth with this line as the song began nearing an end. In just a little while he would be touching hands with those that wanted to meet him, then he would find out where he stood tonight. It was an intimidating and scary thought, but he couldn’t let it distract him until after this was completely finished and he was standing offstage somewhere.

에라 모르겠다 I Love y’all

And then, not long after, the music stopped. He stood there, chest once again rising and falling faster than usual, though also not as harshly as it would have been if he’d been exerting more of his energy into dancing. He felt pleased with their performance, hoping that it would be enough to get him to a rank that was higher than he’d placed before. If it didn’t, though, he wouldn’t let it get to him. As long as he survives tonight, he will feel grateful.

Mingyu really wants to be here; he really wants to succeed. He realizes that now.

[ofheroesandvillains]

Changing Gears

Tony Stark/Reader

Words: 3223

Warnings: None

Summary: What if there was another person with Tony since the very beginning? That’s where you come in. Despite his questionable ways, he was all you wanted and something you didn’t think you could ever have. When you reach your limit, will he finally show you that he can be a better man than you ever expected him to be? Probably going to have 2 more parts.

I own zero gifs :P

Tony Stark was not an easy man to live with.

Or negotiate with.

Or threaten apparently.

Tony Stark just wasn’t an easy man in general…unless you were a tall blonde with a great rack, if the sounds echoing through the Malibu home were anything to go by. In that case, he was a very easy man.

The annoyingly persistent blonde reporter he had picked up on his way home from the Apogee Award presentation in Vegas –Christine, if you recalled correctly- was making a racket. What the hell are they doing in there? Whatever it was, it didn’t sound healthy.

You tried to negotiate with Tony, insisting that he could do whatever he wanted with whomever he wanted, provided that it didn’t happen inside the house. But as per usual, he kept his word for a solid 5 minutes, before conviniently forgetting all about it as soon as something pretty in a skirt walked by.

Then you tried threatening him. In fact, it was his final warning. Unlike Tony, while you yourself were quite brilliant intellectually, you did try to get the recommended 8 hours of sleep that most sane people needed to function properly. So his constant disregard for your own needs had driven you to threatening him –either he started being more considerate, or you’d find somewhere else to live and do your work.

You didn’t want it to come to that, and part of you knew that it was an empty threat…and if you knew that, then so did Tony. Which was probably why he was currently making your ears bleed.

After wrapping a pillow around your head did nothing to muffle the sounds coming from down the hall, you did the only thing you could do. Escape downstairs into the workshop. It wasn’t the cosiest of places, but there was a comfy couch down there that looked like heaven itself as soon as you realised that absolutely no noise could be heard. Not a single sound.

It was perfect.

You loved Tony, you really did. He was your oldest friend, and the two of you were inseperable usually, to the point where he had even offered you a very high ranking position in Stark Industries. But one of the reasons you fit so well together, was because of your obvious differences.

Where he was brash and imuplsive, you were more methodical and cautious. Where he he was immature and arrogant, you were mature and humble. Your higher level of intellect was what bound you together. You were like two sides of the same coin, and even though he didn’t have some of the best qualities, you loved him all the same.

More than you should have.

You knew you saw him in a different way to how he saw you…you were just that same shy little girl he had met eons ago. He became the cool teenager already enrolled at MIT, while you were only 8 years old when your father passed and you were left on Howard's doorstep. It was only when you became a teenager yourself that you started seeing Tony in a different way. It was obviously a strange thought, but now in adulthood, the age difference didn’t really matter. At least it didn’t matter to you…Tony was a different story.

He never gave anything away, and you didn’t either. Tony hid any of his true feelings for anything and everything quite well, behind a strong mask of sarcasm and arrogance. Sure, he could jokingly flirt (and boy did he jokingly flirt) with you, but you knew not to take it too seriously, it wouldn’t end well if you did. You’d seen many a nameless one-night-stand do the walk of shame whenever Pepper came over to do Tony’s job for him, and that was not a look you were going to wear.

You cared about him too much, too much to risk losing him as a friend by admitting your feelings. No one knew you felt that way about him, most of the time you acted more like a mother than anything else, a role you shared with both Pepper and Rhodey.

You didn’t know where you’d be without them.

While Pepper took care of things from a business perspective, you were stuck making sure he stayed alive. Was he eating? Did he have enough water today? Did he actually end up getting sleep last night?

Most of the time he would roll his eyes in good humour, and a war of snarky words would ensue. That was something he really enjoyed –the fact that you could keep up with him. It was something that not many people could do, but your dry humour and blunt criticisms were music to his ears. His favourite habit was trying to get a rise out of you, it seemed. The fact that it was exceptionally hard to do so was what made him try even harder.

With a glance at the clock ticking above one of the workbenches, you sighed in defeat. 4:27am. Obviously, you weren’t getting any sleep tonight, Tony and your rampaging thoughts made sure of that.

With that in mind, you kicked the blanket that you had dragged downstairs off of you, and headed back up to the bathroom to prepare for an early start.

“Oooh, serious face. Wish me luck, J.A.R.V.I.S.”

“I do believe Miss Y/L/N does not wish to be distur-” The smooth beep of the glass sliding door allowing Tony access into his own workshop, cut the AI off and if J.A.R.V.I.S had eyes, you could bet your ass that he’d be rolling them.

“Someone’s up early! Music, J.A.R.V.I.S.” Tony’s upbeat voice cut through the silent cocoon you had surrounded yourself with, and you sighed silently, unwilling to show any outward signs of annoyance when the AI did as it was told.

A lack of sleep usually left you cranky, today was already shaping up to be a bad day, and it was only 8:19 in the morning. One thing Tony knew well was that you had no trouble holding a grudge. It didn’t matter how much he begged or nagged you, the only person who decided when to let it go was you.

Noticing your lack of reply, the billionaire slowly came to a halt as he approached your work station, dark eyes assessing silently for a change.

“You seem mad. Are you mad? You’re mad, aren’t you?” He rattled off quickly with lightly furrowed brows.

He always made it look like he couldn’t tell, but Tony was too smart to not be able to pick up on a person’s mood as soon as he entered a room…especially someone he knew so well. You always just assumed that he found it easier to ask and make a joke out of it than actually have to directly address emotions. It was just how he was, and you were okay with that.

“No, Tony. I’m not mad.”

His eyes narrowed at your flat tone. You hadn’t even bothered to look up at him, hands still working away at the tiny device that was your latest project. The small disc-charges were intricate little things that required a steady hand, unless you wanted to feel the 30,000 volts of electricity first hand –and you really didn’t want that.

The idea was that they could be used to incapacitate targets quickly and efficiently. The small size allowed them to be easily concealed, and you were excited to be working on something on your own this time around. Designing military weaponry was better suited to Tony, you preferred the smaller gadgets designed to be used by the individual. You could easily convince yourself that what you were making was for self-defence that way, rather than a weapon of war that could wipe out thousands in the blink of an eye.

“You’re not?” Tony’s words were drawn out, his brows rising to show he wasn’t convinced.

Your eyes were still trained on the disc, and he would have at least quirked a smile at the comical size of your eye through the huge magnifying glass that Dum-E was holding for you as you tinkered with the disc-charge. But he didn’t laugh, and he didn’t smile, because you were mad…and he didn’t like that.

Never one to remain patient for very long, Tony quickly snatched the magnifying glass, ushering Dum-E away and ignoring your indignant ‘hey!’ of protest.

Tony held the handle in his right hand, tapping his left palm with the glass, while watching you glare up at him. He was completely unfazed, and that just made you crankier.

“So, you wanna tell me what’s got your feathers all ruffled?”

You refrained from rolling your eyes, but did roll your wheelie chair forward to take back the magnifying glass. He put up a fight, and a short game of tug-of-war ensued before he finally let go.

He took your silence as a display of rebelliousness, but in truth, you were just trying to figure out what to say.

Oh nothing, Tony. I’m just angry that I didn’t sleep a wink last night because you were busy going at it with yet another one-night-stand, which may or may not hurt to even think about because I love you but I can’t tell you that. But I’m not jealous, I’m completely fine. I’m great, you asshole. 

Yeah…maybe not.

That wasn’t just something you could blurt out. Maybe if Tony wasn’t Tony, and didn’t push away those who loved him romantically…maybe then you could admit it. But the truth of the matter was, that anyone who professed their love for him was likely never seen again. No, they weren’t killed or anything, he just avoided them like the plague.

“Alright, fine.”

You knew that tone, it was his ‘challenge accepted’ tone. A tone that had the potential to make or break someone. Never underestimate Tony Stark when he takes that tone.

“J.A.R.V.I.S, why is Y/N mad at me?”

“According to my observations, Miss Y/L/N’s current mood is a result of both a lack of sleep, and the volume of your fornication with Miss Everheart last night, sir.”

Tony grimaced, his shoulders slumping when you beckoned Dum-E back over and resumed your work. You always had a soft spot for Dum-E.

“Oh…you, uh, you heard that, huh?” He scratched the back of his neck uneasily. He didn’t know why that thought bothered him. It’s not like you didn’t know what he would be doing that night.

You were there in Vegas, granted you actually went to the Apogee Award presentation with Obidiah, instead of hitting the casinos with him. But there was a woman on his arm at every turn, and you even had to share a car with him and Katherine…Kirsty? Kerry? Whatever. She was just another pretty face that he’d already forgotten.

Still, it bothered him. It almost felt like he didn’t want you knowing about that, despite the fact that the whole world knew Tony Stark was a playboy.

“It was kinda hard not to. Right, J?”

He winced at the sarcastic tone, and made a mental note to tell Pepper to buy you something nice. He didn’t know how else to make you feel better. He’d bring in some new part, or maybe a new car? No, a plane! Yes, that was it. A plane…why did he feel like he was forgetting something?

“Indeed, madam. Had we any neighbours, I’m certain they too would share your current mood.”

‘Traitor’, Tony thought while he glared up at the ceiling, as if the AI was somehow embedded in it. He hated when they ganged up on him, and they always did. J.A.R.V.I.S never sided with him, and he had long ago suspected that you must have tampered with the AI’s protocols to make sure of it.

Before Tony could even attempt digging himself out of his current predicament, the loud ‘click-clack’ of heels could be heard making their way down the stairs, and he quickly made himself look busy. He almost groaned at the sight of Pepper, prim and proper, and ready to kick his ass because–

“You’re supposed to be halfway around the world right now.”

You felt the smile slip onto your face as soon as Tony’s music cut out and Pepper’s stern tone replaced it instead. Tony was meant to be presenting the Jericho missile in Afghanistan. Rhodey had specifically told him to not be late, if you recalled correctly, and yet here he was. If there was one thing that you didn’t like about Tony, it was how inconsiderate he could sometimes be to those who cared about him most.

You knew there was nothing wrong with his memory, in fact, he had an outstanding capacity to remember almost everything he saw with his own eyes or heard with his own ears. So you couldn’t understand why he didn’t care enough to do Rhodey this one favour and show up on time.

It left you wondering. Rhodey was his best friend, and there was little that Tony wouldn’t do for the man in all seriousness. But he almost always put his wants first, and it was frustrating to deal with when you were already in a bad mood. Sometimes –even though you’d never admit it- you wished he could behave a bit more like his father, at least where Stark Industries was involved.

His father had been best friends with your own, they were business partners much like you and Tony were now. The only difference was that you worked behind the scenes, you designed and created, but tried to lead as private of a live as possible considering you were both in the spotlight, and under the microscope at all times.

Tony, on the other hand, thrived in the spotlight. America loved Tony Stark, and his popularity and ability had led to him neglecting his responsibilities over the years. He was used to other people doing things for him –wanting to do things for him- even though he could do whatever it was far better himself.

Which is exactly what Pepper was ranting about right now. As her and Tony went toe-to-toe in a verbal sparring match so rapid it would make any sane man’s head spin, you continued your work silently. From priceless paintings and exhibitions, to MI commencement speeches, Pepper shot through it all in the space of a minute. Before the topic finally settled on something that didn’t lead to an argument. Pepper’s plans for the evening.

You knew she was going out for dinner with Happy, they had secretly decided to test the waters and you couldn’t be happier for either of them. They were both great people who had been in your life for a very long time, and deserved all the happiness in the world.  

“Hey, Y/N? It’s Pepper’s birthday.” The billionaire stated while pointing a wrench at the strawberry blonde, as if you hadn’t been in the same room the entire time listening.

“I’m aware…” Only then did you allow yourself to swivel around and offer Pepper a warm smile. “Happy birthday, Pepper. I hope you liked your present.”

She returned the smile gratefully.

“I did, thank you. It’s lovely and incredibly expensive…you shouldn’t have,” she gave you a look of disapproval that had you feeling like a little kid being reprimanded by a parent, but you just waved her off impatiently.

“Pepper, considering what you have to deal with everyday –or should I say who you have to deal with…” you glanced at Tony accusingly, and continued despite the mock look of offence he shot you. “…I don’t think anything I could buy you is expensive enough.”

“Hey!”

You both ignored him.

“Well I’m very grateful, thank you.” Pepper replied tactfully, as she always did. She was nothing if not graceful. You almost envied it, but then you remembered how much effort it would take and thought better of it.

By the time Pepper was ready to leave, she had already packed Tony’s bags and the billionaire had reluctantly left you alone for a little while.

You sighed wearily when he walked back upstairs. You didn’t like making him feel bad, and you knew that he did feel guilty whenever he noted your bad mood. But sometimes it was the only way to get him to see that you really meant it. Otherwise he’d just brush off your concerns like he always did with Rhodey, and you didn’t have the temper to deal with that.

You loved Tony as he was, but he was the smartest man you had ever met and you knew that he knew when he was in the wrong. He just didn’t care much for it at the moment, and you really hoped that he would eventually.

“Pepper’s tearing me a new ass hole, I gotta get going.”

You finally turned around to look over at Tony, and hadn’t even noticed that he had returned. But there he stood in his designer clothes, looking as good as ever. You offered him a small smile, and told yourself the spark in his eyes when he noticed it was just a figment of your imagination.

“Come here…” His voice was softer when he nodded you over.

You obliged, dropping the screwdriver in your hand onto the bench top gently, before letting him pull you into a rare hug. Your body melted into his own without permission, and your shoulders that were previously tensed in agitation, relaxed in his hold.

“I know I screwed up, and I promise you I’ll make up for it when I get back, okay?”

With his hands on either one of your shoulders, he pulled you back slightly so that you could see the sincerity in his gaze. Your lack of response left him nervous, and his eyes flickered between your own for reassurance.

“Okay? We’ll talk as soon as I land.” You nodded in acceptance, and had to fight to keep the smile off of your face as he continued. You failed.

“I’ll even bring you back a souvenir. Hm…you know what we could do? Me, you, private yacht, The Bahamas? I’ll even rub lotion on your back, of course you’d need to be naked- hey!” He jerked back to avoid the light smacks you were giving his shoulder, grinning happily when you laughed. “All I’m saying is that nobody likes tan lines…”

That pulled another chuckle out of you, and he joined in this time. You really were something, especially when you laughed.

“Tony!”

His smile dropped to a grimace real quick. Pepper was sometimes a little terrifying.

“Well, I better go.”

You smiled genuinely this time, and gave him a nod. “Yeah, good idea.”

“I’ll see ya soon, hold the fort ‘til I get back?”

You rolled your eyes in good humour. “Oh, please. I hold the fort when you’re here too.”

He nodded with a bittersweet look on his face. That was…that was true. “Right.”

“Hey, Tony?” He turned to look back just before he reached the stairs. “Be careful, yeah?”

The billionaire gave his usual million dollar smile.

“Always.”

[kendrixtermina]

Fakery FREE Fe Practice

So, as an INTP, or Ti user in general, you might be badgered to conform to social pleasantries or get crap over your lack of them. 

Even many online “How to Develop your functions” guides tell you to simply do the fakepleasantries,  & frame it as stopping to be stubborn & doing others a favor/ growing up which just sounds like one of those nightmares where you turn into your conservative parents or teachers and admit that they were always right. 

Personally, I ust could not reconcile it with not my pride but my conscience  to become complicit in something that caused me so much grief even if I were to luckily come by sufficient Fe over the ages; It’s a little thing but little things add up and it doesn’t change the principle of the thing or my inner feeling of dissonance... besides it’s not just words: If you make a claim, you’re taking responsibility for it. The other person may take it as true & make decisions based on it. I don’t want to make myself responsible for lying to people because I will be held accountable - 

For example, there’s so many songs & fiction & quotes about how harmful & heartbreaking it can be when someone says “I love you” and the person will be heartboken regardless of wether you meant to placate them or because they said it first, it’s simply true that it shouldn’t be said lightly/ unless you’re really sure, it’s not a matter of stubbornnes, saying things comes with obligations. Same for less drastic examples - if you indicate you’re fine & ready for socializing right now the person has no way to know you’re not & will make decisions based on that. If you act like you like someone they’ll think you may want to be friends & it just creates more awkward situations. It’s not like lying now will palways prevent hurt forever... Doing it to avoid trouble with a stranger is one thing, but if you actually care about the person lying won’t result in a good relationship. 

Plus, mechanically making the expected comments is just creepy & stilted and people will notice you’re always saying the same things. 

Like I’m not all... well, unmitigated-4-ish as I was when I was a teenager, but I still believe that the pressure to perform social pleasantries is bad and that society should become more tolerant of different expression styles, expressing unironic neutrality & reserving judgement. 

To begin with, it doesn’t make sense that in order to “get in touch with feelings” and “learn ethical/social judgements”, I should just disregard my very real feling that “Fakery is gross.” - That’s an actual feeling right there. Sure, it probably looks crude and unsophisticated to any actual FPs, IFs or even Fi tertiaries, but it at least fulfills the criterion of genuineness. 

At the same time, there’s nothing worse than a peson who only ever talks to complain and never appreciates. They suck, being around them wars you down, you do not wanna be one, and if you want the right to complain about them you have to make an effort not to be one. I was raised by such a person (incidentally an ISTJ) and it sucked ass! And was just destructive rather than helpful.  

I like to think that I am NOT that sort of caustic human but while my teenage self cried about beng misunderstood I now understand that i have at least a partial responsibility to accurately indicate that - if people are stupid & don’t wanna hear its not my fault but I should do my part to ensure that it truly isn’t. 

Plus it’s simply true that since many non-TPs use their Ti mainly for complaining (everyone shows Ti-style activity when pointing out a contradiction - just like everyone Se-s while playing fast paced video games and Fi-s while describe their creative products, that is, saying things like “my music”), they might associate that way of talking/reasoning with criticism and there’s a chance for TPs and/or ITs to be read as more “complaining” than we actually are, causing a need to counterbalace that.  

So, you don’t wanna say fakeness, but you don’t wanna be mistaken for the human equivalent of nitric acid. 

Besides, wether it’s Fe related or otherwise, you don’t want to miss crucial information or do counterproductive unstrategic things so it’s not like you can completely forget about Fe shit. 

So these are the options: 

a) Fake plesantries - But lies are unfair & create misunderstandings

b) Don’t complain - But problems need to be solved, 

Obviously this calls for a third option, as both of these suck unacceptably. 

Which would be the main point of this post: To contest the notion that you NEED to participate in fakery for basic adult human functioning. 

It’s a more productive thing to tell young TPs anyway, if you tell them “You HAVE to fake” they’re more likely to go “Well fuck you society” than to consider it.  Instead of sucking it up & resigning to put on the mask we should find a way to reconcile things. 

Fakery-Free Measures I have Taken

Don’t change what you say, but how you say it. There are multiple ways to say the same thing so it’s still corect and your audience may find of them more palatable than others. Incorporate their Pov to ‘lead’ them from it to yours. 

Pick your battles. No one should be afraid to say true things because of criticim or social norms, but if it’s not going to accomplish anything, you may as well save your energy. Think what will happen if you point something out -  If it’s not likely to lead to any constructive change, it’s not woth causing an argument. There may be a proper place for it elsewhere

This one is simple but super useful: When you notice something positive about what someone else does, make a point to say it. Make it a habtit. No lies or plastic pleasantries, just genuine observations. That will fill your “nice things” quota at least to an extent to make up for critcism or the lack of cookie cutter pleasantries and do something to prevent misconceptions/assumptions about yourself & what you think. 

This seems to do something as ppl’s reaction to me (that I still have very little of a sense for) seem to have gone from “instant dislike/ creeped out” to ppl occasionally thinking I am nice. Still surprises me tho, but apparently im better at this than I was in school without having to sell my effin soul for it or magically transform into a FJ and I’m not even trying to make friends so yeah. 

Be free to add further suggestions! 

[stellar-stag]

The Problem With Tech

Disclaimer: The opinions reflected in this essay are my own and do not represent LinkedIn, Inc. For any questions regarding LinkedIn, please direct inquiries to press@linkedin.com.

(don't wanna be sued or fired, so...)

Juicero is the hot new joke right now. A startup offering a $400 juicer (or juice bag squeezer, I suppose) that has an internet connection and QR scanner to keep you from drinking anything that's spoiled or recalled, with the distinct side effect of being legally unable to obtain your juice if the scanner breaks, your internet or Juicero's server goes down, someone hacks the juicer, etc etc. When a company has to issue a statement asking people to not manually squeeze their product despite it being both easy and the purpose of the product, something has gone horribly awry.

And we laugh and we mock, but underneath it all I feel that this is an issue that's perfectly representative of some of THE crucial issues in West Coast Tech right now (I would say Silicon Valley, but Seattle and Los Angeles companies are equally guilty). Some of you must be wondering how this could have possibly gotten through four rounds of investing, extensive design and user testing, and release before these issues came up.

It's not that they didn't know. It's that they didn't care.

There's a lot of factors that led us to this point, but I'm going to narrow it down to what I think are the four biggest: An idolization of "intelligence" as a supreme moral good, a conflation of success with intelligence, a lack of personal responsibility for consequence, and a widespread sense of complacency.

To start off: I am a software developer working for LinkedIn, and I currently live with three other software developers: two of them work for Google, one works for Facebook. Our broader local social circle consists almost exclusively of developers, mostly Google but also Uber, Infer, Palantir, and the like. And while I can't claim this is a universal attitude amongst tech, at least amongst this group, everything is an optimization problem. Playing board games, especially euro games, is an excruciating process where they can take upwards of twenty minutes to take a single turn, taking the time to analyze decision trees and modeling other players strategies and decisions. But they also seem to be completely ignorant of board games as a social function. My roommate who optimizes most is, as a direct result, very good at board games. But when players act against him to prevent him from winning because he always wins if we don't stage intervention, he protests. When someone makes a move he's deemed suboptimal, and it ends up being a benefit to them over what he thought was optimal because he didn’t anticipate it, he still couches it in language of "the wrong choice" or "what they should have done".

Because this group values optimization, efficiency, and intellect above all else. Obviously, this has a lot of issues, as "intelligence" as a quality has a long and storied history of being used to denigrate others and justify oppression, despite it being, just as anything is, a collection of unrelated skills that people can have varying amounts of practice at, and in practice far less important than dedication and willingness to practice and learn. Intelligence, as the public regards it, seems to mean "skill at mathematics, logic, memory, and reading comprehension, as well as rate of skill acquisition in these areas". But when you treat it as a general marker of value, we start getting problems.

This ties into the next point: Tech regards success as a marker of intellect, and therefore a moral good. When Elon Musk joined Trump's advisory board, there were arguments about whether or not it was good or bad, if it was lending legitimacy to Trump and cozying up versus an attempt at harm minimization. Regardless, people protested and boycotted, and I saw a former classmate respond that we "mustn't shame the smartest people in the country". And that really stuck with me. Putting aside the Tesla, which is admittedly a massive advancement towards renewable energy vehicles, and the advisory board debate, Musk has made some intensely strange causes as his goals, such as brain uploading and other transhumanist causes, which some might argue shows a disregard for accessibility or practicality, while simultaneously disincentivizing those who work in the Tesla manufacturing plants from unionizing by attempting to placate them with frozen yogurt. He also claimed that the unions were an unjust tyrant over a powerless oppressed company by likening it to the tale of David and Goliath. Panem et circenses, indeed.

In short, there is much about Musk to criticize. To claim he should receive immunity from this criticism by virtue of intellect is concerning to say the least, but it's an idea that's present in the tech community at large, from the rationalists at LessWrong.org to the Effective Altruism movement, and on down to the people who, in complete seriousness, advocate for Silicon Valley to lead the world, with Elon Musk as CEO of the United States. The form differs, but the underlying idea remains the same: the best thing one can be is smart, and since we are successful, we are the smartest and therefore the best.

However, despite feeling responsible enough for the well-being of the world to oh-so-magnanimously offer to take the reins and save the common masses from themselves, tech has a consistent problem with personal accountability. Facebook was, and remains, a prime means of spreading misinformation. But it took massive outcry for them to cop to their complicity in this matter or to take action. And this manifests in so, so many ways. One of my roommates refuses to act as though the rising costs of living in the Bay Area are detrimental, claiming that the influx of tech into SF is harmless because "cities are made to house people" and "tech has buses to get employees to work, so that lower income workers are driven further away from work isn't a problem" (ignoring the historical and cultural issues at play in gentrification, a rising sense of entitlement, and the fact that most tech companies only offer such luxurious benefits to their salaried and full time employees, not the contractors or part time workers, a.k.a. the workers who make the least, have the most trouble securing consistent transportation to work, and are most necessary to the upkeep of the offices and the benefits they provide while receiving the least respect and compensation. But hey, at least the buses have WiFi so you can work while you commute!)

And that's not the worst example. An acquaintance, who has thankfully moved very, very far away, once attended our weekly board game nights. He was a software engineer for Facebook. For those unaware, ad revenue is the prime, and essentially only, stream of revenue for Facebook. As part of compensation, workers receive ad credits, to be used for ads on Facebook. And this acquaintance once had an idea. He convinced his fellows to pool their credits together, and with it, he purchased an advertisement with the following stipulation: This ad would be served to all women in the Bay Area within the age range of roughly 23-30 or so. The content of the ad was simply his picture and the phrase "Date <acquaintance's name>" (at least, as he related it to me. I thankfully never witnessed the ad directly).

Now, given the fact that tech is incredibly male dominated and hostile to women, one would think this ad is at best tone-deaf and at worst horrifying. And yet, he related this to me in candor, treating this all as a joke that had gone awry. When I raised the possibility that this was literally harassment, regardless of any potential joking intent, I was met with blank stares and an insistence that it was hilarious and not serious (of which I remain unconvinced). Granted, one of the women targeted by the ad was his ex-girlfriend, who lodged a complaint, and the acquaintance was subsequently fired for his conduct after a massive scandal about the potential issues regarding the invasiveness of targeted advertising and how it contributes to a culture of exclusion.

Just kidding! There was a single local story about it where he was kept anonymous and he got a slap on the wrist and a book deal about his experiences dating in Silicon Valley as a software engineer. The book can be purchased on Amazon and while I haven't read it, nothing about the title, description, or author bio implies to me that he is even remotely repentant, beyond a vague sense that his missteps are due to being *socially awkward, but in an endearing way* as opposed to, you know, actively curating and supporting a toxic environment for women.

And it might seem as though these examples are simply bad eggs, but they really aren't. They're just symptoms of an industry that looks at a lack of diversity and, rather than seriously examine why women don't stay in industry and how the culture they so take pride in is complicit, decide that obviously it's just that being programmers didn't occur to women, so we've just got to make programming seem fun and feminine, right? Just lean in, women! Just grit your teeth, prepare yourself for an unending nightmare of disrespect and abuse, and lean in! And that's not even remotely approaching the severe underrepresentation of black and Latinx people in tech.

But I digress.

Where does this aversion to responsibility come from? There are so many possibilities. But the one most unique to West Coast Tech is the corporate culture, or perhaps, the lack thereof. It's a land of man-buns, flip flops, and company t-shirts. My roommate owns a combination bottle opener and USB drive, proudly emblazoned with Facebook’s logo. The brogrammer is alive and thriving. And to be completely fair, this culture is actually something I quite like about working in tech (The casual part, not the acting like a college freshman part). That I may be frank in my discussions with my co-workers, swear profusely and use emojis in email, and casually discuss my mental health with the man three steps above me in the corporate hierarchy (and two below the top) is quite refreshing. But it has drawbacks.

I attended a college that required a minor in the humanities, and had as its mission statement to educate people in STEM who would understand the impact of their work on society. But so many people just viewed those requirements as an obstacle, or just took economics and got the takeaway of how to best impact markets. And most colleges don't even pay lip service to such a goal. So I worry that "casual" is code for "unwilling to examine potential harm caused by one's actions". That the culture is why harassment can be seen as "just a joke". Why anyone who feels unwelcome is just "too uptight". Why people can be reasonably othered and rejected in interviews because of "a lack of culture fit". And without a willingness to accept responsibility for the consequences of actions, nothing will change.

This ties into the final point: the complacency. Everyone in tech wants to be seen as changing the world. But I'm also privy to the conversations we have in private, and you know what we care about more? Compensation. Its pretty rare that someone I know will come home from work and express that hey, their company is working on something that will legitimately help so many people. More often, we have discussions about who has the better offices, or the best snacks, or the best free meals. I like to think I'm a kind person, but is that really true? I may profess to be aware, but I still own no fewer than ten garments with LinkedIn's logo on them. I still take full benefit of all of the compensation, including free breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and great insurance, and a free gym. I still just used my ludicrous paycheck to purchase a condo instead of anything magnanimous or truly worthwhile. And my fellows are much the same. 

The irony that I wrote this entire essay, on company time, on a company device, because today is the Friday per month we get to devote to professional development and is discounted in work estimates because we are expected to do something other than our normal duties (read: not come to work) is not lost on me. 

I touched earlier on the Effective Altruism movement, which is comprised primarily of tech and tech-adjacent workers. I remain somewhat critical of the movement, for a number of reasons. Firstly, there is a focus on its own impact while simultaneously continuing the trend of disavowing consequences. One of the most notorious discussions in Effective Altruist groups is the avoidance of a theoretical AI that could eliminate humanity. This conversation seems to be staying in the wheelhouse of safety of testing of AIs that don’t seem to be anywhere close to a reality, rather than more concrete examples of how tech reinforces power imbalances, like, say, advertising algorithms that reinforce racist stereotypes. The second criticism I have is that for many of the metrics used by EA to measure the effectiveness of charities are purely monetary: how much of what goes in goes back out. This ignores other factors, such as raising awareness, operational costs at various sizes and scales, and a question of how directly does money even translate into benefit? The good done per dollar is not considered, merely dollar preservation from donor to donee. Furthermore, that the natural extension of Effective Altruism is that, in order to be a good person, the best thing one can do is obtain a high paying job (such as one in tech) and donate money, rather than donate time by volunteering, strikes me as convenient justification rather than honest analysis.

This excellent article (which by and large inspired this one) touches on many of these issues, but I would like to highlight one statement in particular: “Solving these problems is hard, and made harder by the fact that the real fixes for longevity don’t have the glamour of digitally enabled immortality.” As Emily Dreyfuss points out, Silicon Valley has very little interest in actually bringing about progress. Silicon Valley is trying to sell you on the idea of progress. They want to peddle you a “The Jetsons”-style future, but instead of the post-scarcity society that has mastered space travel, they want you to buy Rosie the Robot Maid. Helpful? Sure. Revolutionary? Hardly.

It's perhaps unrealistic to expect tech to actually do the hard, thankless work to improve the world, but it's certainly not unfair to expect them to at least be honest. LinkedIn is more benign than most tech companies: it is, for all intents and purposes, a resume book masquerading as a social network. The adage goes that "if you're not the customer, you're the product" and that rings true in tech. In exchange for use of the site, people surrender their information to the company to be sold as potential customers to advertisers. At least with LinkedIn, that's the expectation and goal. People give LinkedIn their resume and employment information and LinkedIn, in turn, lets recruiters look for leads. But the users more or less expect and want this, because they joined for the express purpose of finding job opportunities. But that this is benign doesn't mean it is revolutionary or radical. It remains only useful to white collar employees. Blue collar workers have no use for LinkedIn, and we can hardly claim to be changing the world of employment when the people who need us most can't benefit from the services we offer.

Could I go and find a company that does nobler work, or enter academia to advance at least the collective knowledge of humanity in some way? Sure. Will I? No. I am selfish, and don't want to give up my cushy job, and cushy benefits. And I'm not the only one.

The most interesting thing to me about the Juicero debacle is how with even the slightest forethought, they could have actually done something impressive. Consider the As-Sold-On-TV devices you see sold: I mean, who really needs a one-handed spaghetti twirler, right? Well, people with motor control issues or disabilities, is who. People who struggle with tasks most consider trivial. But people don't care about that, they care about what can be marketed, so we instead act as though the world is simply excessively clumsy and hope that someone who really needs that extra help sees it.

So, consider the Juicero bag. Reporters have noted, laughingly, jokingly, that the bag is exceedingly easy to squeeze and thus remove juice from. It's so simple, it requires hardly any effort! Someone went through the process of designing a bag, meant to be able to dispense its contents far more easily than other bags, as well as a device to automate the squeezing. Now I don't have motor control issues or disabilities, but I'm willing to bet: someone who does? Or who can't easily get, say, orange juice cartons from the fridge, open the top, lift the heavy, irregular object at just such an angle in just such a location for just such a time, all to get themselves a cup of juice? Yeah, I bet someone, somewhere, saw this and thought, finally, I can actually get myself milk without needing help or preparation.

And Juicero made this device, slapped an internet connection, QR Codes and a $400 price tag onto it, and marketed it as being the future of juice, vulnerabilities and use cases be damned. And I want to scream.

Because in the end, they cared more about being successful than being helpful.

Unfortunately, identifying the issues is one problem, addressing them is another. I'm not sure how to even begin tackling these. But we have to. People in tech, myself included, need to take responsibility for our culture and creations. We have a moral duty to do better. To be better. The internet is, at its core, a wonderful tool for accessibility of information. But like all tools, it can and is misused, and we're the ones who let it happen. We need to fix this.

[ganymedesclock]

We Wayward Stars ch. 2

Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender

Summary: Altea burns, and in the way of burning things, not all of its ashes scatter in the same place. Centuries and galaxies later, the Garrison unearths a massive, unknown machine- and its frozen pilot.

This chapter: Lance makes friends and disregards boundaries. 

           Quintants pass. It’s hard to keep track of time because he doesn’t have a window, and humans keep time in unfamiliar units.

           Mostly, he sleeps. A lot of people want to talk to him, ask questions. After a while he can talk about Altea without losing his voice. Some of them leave disappointed- he’s able to recount, well enough, how a teludav works, or barrier crystals, but he couldn’t tell someone how to build one, or where to look for parts. He isn’t an engineer.

           Samuel Holt is easily the most persistent. The makeshift Fyllrue board gets a lot of use- other times, he brings paper and a pencil and asks about Altea’s culture. Takes notes. It leads to talking about writing- their spoken languages match up almost perfectly, which is one thing, but the writing is completely different. Picking up the letters isn’t that hard- their alphabet is only twenty-six characters- but the phonetic attachments stump him for a while. It’s some time before he can figure out how to spell his name in their letters.

           And they tell him about themselves, as well.

           Sam has two kids- he brings a picture of them, grinning, holding a creature he calls a “dog” between them. The dog looks less pleased with the arrangement. Lance tells him about Allura- recounts the time he went missing for a week trying to find flowers for her birthday that time he was eight.

           Sam is an all right guy, it turns out- he doesn’t mind, when Lance can’t finish that story.

           (Every time, he keeps thinking he’s done crying about it. Every time, he’s surprised)

           He sleeps less. Restlessness starts to set in, and he paces the length of the small apartment more than a few times. Gets in the habit of returning to his bed when he hears someone coming- the first time he’s caught, a nurse tuts at him disapprovingly.

           They still won’t let him see Blue. At this point, he’s more or less identified the one-eyed man who seems to be in charge- Iverson- and he’s skeptical when Lance points out that he’s feeling better.

           Fortunately, it would appear they’ve been seriously underestimating him.

           And he’s been paying attention.

           His quarters include a bathroom, and, after the last time he’d asked, a variety of hairties and clips. Braiding his hair again feels good, for reasons entirely outside of getting it out of his face. It’s a reminder that he’s finally getting down to business.  

           Eyeing his reflection, he contemplates. The silver hair is going to have to go. It’s showy, obvious- and looks great, but that’s entirely beyond the point right now. It’s one of the more coveted points of Altean beauty, and, as best as he’s been able to tell, has no earthly equivalent. His luminous patches, he can cover, they’re simple enough, and the bigger ones are already accounted for with the simple shirt and pants he’s wearing. Other than that, it’s mostly just the ears.

           Shifting is always an interesting feeling, of things settling in on themselves, cartilage and sinew reconfiguring. Relatively little of that, this time.

           He surveys his results- brown hair, shorter ears- he can’t completely get rid of the way the tips come to points, but he can get away with it. One pair of bandaids later, and he makes a decent looking human, if he says so himself.

           The door is locked- against outside intrusion. Tsk tsk, humans, they have been underestimating him. Or overestimating his injury.

           One flight of stairs later, he relents that he may have underestimated his injury just a little. But personal freedom is a surprisingly effective painkiller, and he’s back on his feet rapidly.

           The first thing that hits him stepping outside is the heat. A yellow sun presiding over a world mostly red and orange, sand and scrubland stretching as far as the eye can see out to canyons. Sam told him that most of this planet was water- but it’s a little hard to believe that, looking outward.

           The structure itself is bigger than he’d assumed. It looks like there’s several other wings, branching off an imposingly-sized central building.

           Is that where they’re keeping the Blue Lion? It’d certainly be big enough. And either way, he wants to find out what’s in there.

           Up hallways, down yet more stairs (his ribs don’t like that) he can tell he’s heading in the right direction because the place is definitely livelier than the halls he’s gotten behind. At first, it’s just guards, or people in the gray uniforms that he’s used to. But then he starts to see others- people in orange, people more his age, if he’s reading humans correctly at this point. The former, he hides from- but the latter, he musters the particular princely decorum that’s gotten him out of scrapes before- the walk of ‘yes sir I have every right to be here, nothing suspicious whatsoever, really you’d just look silly asking me for my qualifications’.

           It goes spectacularly, right up until he walks directly into someone. “Someone” who does an excellent impression of a roughly meaty wall in a uniform. Gray uniform.

           Lance’s heart skips a beat.

           “New?” The man asks, amiably. His dark hair is trimmed very close to his head, except for a single tuft overlooking his forehead. Even dark-eyed and strange-eared as humans are, he’s rather handsome. Which really just makes the situation worse.

           “Huh? Oh- yeah, absolutely. Brand new. How’d you tell?”

           “…Well, you’re walking around in your PJs.”

           A small nervous twitch installs itself under Lance’s eye. “…Casual fifth quintant?”

           (he doesn’t even know if it’s fifth quintant. He guesses. Assumes. Hopes.)

           The uniformed man’s other eyebrow raises to join the first.

           After a moment, he pats Lance on the shoulder lightly. “A lot of people forget their uniform first day. Don’t worry about it too much.”

           It’s a while after he’s gone that Lance allows himself to breathe. And considerably longer before he attempts a much more forced-casual saunter down a side hallway.

           All right, Lance. Think about this. He’s not going to find Blue just running into people. There’s something. Something…

           The quintessence of the Lion resonates with its paladin.

           He’s no paladin, obviously, but he connected with Blue once, right? That has to count for something. Maybe he can find her again.

           Meditation breathing had been drilled in him since he was practically old enough to sit up in the proper position. He could do it in his sleep at this point- eyes sliding closed, counting by fives, moving away from the crowded hallways let him focus just on the footsteps; just him and the person following him. And there was something… ahead. Below.

           Wait.

           He comes to a stop. Hands in his pockets. Trying to downplay his jangling nerves. “You know, normally when people are trying to shadow somebody, they’re actually stealthy about it?”

           “…Huh?”

           “Don’t huh me, you’ve been following me for the last three doboshes!”

           The stranger blinked. He was a full head taller than Lance, powerfully built, but his wide hands are gathered almost timidly in front of his chest. He’s another one of the orange uniform guys. “What? No, I was trying to… Okay, yeah, I was following you. I’m lost, okay? This campus is huge, and you looked like you knew where you were going.”

           Well, that was… an improvement over whipping out a luxite blade and trying to take his head off in Zarkon’s name. Not that that was… real likely. Right. This guy’s human, as far as he knows Lance is another ordinary human. They’re having a nice normal human conversation.

           …A conversation where Lance isn’t a scientific oddity.

           “…All right.” He scuffs his bare toes on the floor. “Sorry. I’m Lance.”

           “It’s… It’s Hunk, all right?”

           Lance smothers a chuckle, feeling bad for the look the other boy sends him.

           “Yeah, blame middle school. Shouldn’t we get going? I don’t wanna be late.”

           And he’s got a narrow window to operate on before they realize he’s missing, but that’s not something you can drop in casual conversation without raising a lot of awkward questions. He slides back into the breathing pattern.

           It’s tricky to hear with shortened ears- but something’s there. Faintly, he can hear Blue humming.

           “So… why are you here?”

           “I told you, I got lost. Or- oh, you mean that as more generally kind of ‘here’.”

           “Yeah, you don’t exactly look like most of the guys I’ve run into.”

           Hunk levels a vaguely affronted look at him. “Look, if you start playing with rocket fuel outside of a space exploration program, you get a lot of awkward calls from the government. This stuff is the literal cutting edge. You don’t get much newer than other planets.”

           That actually brings Lance to a stop, eyeing Hunk with newfound interest. “Other planets, huh?”

           Whatever he sees in that look seems to worry him. “…That’s… what I said, yeah.”

           “You’re gonna like this, then.” He hears something- down the hallway.

           “Oh, man, you can’t just say something like that. Is this hazing? Is that where this is going? Because-”

           “Shh!”

           Two guards pass by, walking abreast. Fortunately, they don’t turn down the hallway- the narrow alcove Lance shooed Hunk into has nothing to cover it from the front. No sooner have the footsteps faded that he’s on the move again- going down the hallway the direction the guards came from.

           “We’re really not supposed to be here, are we?” Credit to Hunk, he keeps his voice down, though he voices his concerns as soon as Lance stops to catch his breath. “Are- are you okay?”

           “Doing great-!” He straightens up, a little forcefully, and regrets that too.

           “You look like you’re gonna pass out.”

           “Probably because he has a broken rib and shouldn’t be out of bed at this point.”

           Iverson folds his arms.

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

           “I don’t think you realize the gravity of your current situation.”

           “I think I get the gravity just fine. I’m not just going to sit around here like a pet Juillrat.”

           “And the cadet that saw you?”

           “Correction, saw a perfectly normal human.” He’s still wearing the bandaids- but everything else is back to normal.

           Iverson sighs, deeply. “Right. That. When were you going to tell us you can do that?”

           He leans on his hand, a trace of smugness slipping through the irritation. “You didn’t ask.”

           “Don’t play games with me, boy.”

           There’s a smart remark on his lips, but something about Iverson’s tone quashes it. He works his jaw, wordlessly.

           “You recovered a lot faster than we’d estimated. Regardless of how you’ve set yourself back a week with this little escapade. That’s… on us. But if you want our help- and you need it at this point- you need to listen.”

           “…Sir,” it feels like a good place to start. “I know how to respect foreign dignitaries. And respectfully- if I’m staying here, we’re in danger. If Altea can’t stop Zarkon’s army, Earth doesn’t have a chance.” Altea might’ve won. They might’ve fought back. He wants to say that- but with the Blue Lion here? Without Voltron? When his father decided to abandon the planet and send the castle and Lions away?

           He doesn’t want to think about it- has been trying not to this entire time- but not thinking about it won’t fix anything. “I can’t just stay here and rest my feet up without knowing if they’re coming for me, or the Blue Lion.” Not knowing if anyone survived.

           Something softens in Iverson’s face. He rubs his temples, breathes into his hands for a moment.

           Silence between them. A clock in the hallway is ticking softly to itself. One of the guards standing outside of the door is fidgeting.

           “Can I trust that you’ll stay put for the rest of today? If-” he raises a hand as soon as Lance draws breath to protest- “what you say is true, there are people that need to hear this. And… we might be able to work something out. But that will take time. And I expect you to be able to follow instructions.”

           More waiting. He hates the sound of that.

           At the same time… He has a leg in the door here. More than just sitting in a room. And Iverson is right. He doesn’t have a lot of other options- and failing all else, those other options hinge on him being healthier than he is now. Which will take time anyway.

           “Do we have a deal?”

           Two-toned eyes meet a single dark one.

           “We have a deal.”

[januvatl]

Watashi to Kanojo no Synesthesia

Synopsis: https://januvatl.tumblr.com/synesthesia

"uu..."

Potsun Potsun.

Kotsun Kotsun.

The noise resounds about the room as though it is trying to cause disorder. (TL note: Cause of her synesthesia)

...I hate the rain.

I've always been bad with the rain.

The rhythm of the raindrops always gives me the feeling as though it is slowly blotting out and corroding my existence. I especially hate it when it is like this, with the sound excessively reverberating about the room.

“Nn...”

On days like this, I will burrow into a futon without fail. Shutting my eyes in the darkness and focusing on the fragrance of the pillow.

The thick futon cuts off the sound, shutting my eyes allows me to disregard the colours, and immersing myself in the smell causes my awareness of the synesthesia to slip away. (TL note: unsure here 匂いに没頭することで音色を意識から外す)

By taking refuge in this futon capsule, I can protect myself from decaying. I won’t survive otherwise.

“...nyafuu”

Lured by the comfort, I spontaneously leaked out a sigh.

…..aa, so warm naa…

Yielding myself to the warmth in an experienced manner, I was just about to properly indulge myself when I feel my body getting shaken from outside. This is obviously an attempt to hinder my sleep. And this hindrance comes with a loud voice as a bonus.

“What are you doing? Fugaku Kisara chan?”

“Why the full name, Rinne Kokone chan”

“No reason in particular. By the way Kisara chan, isn’t this my futon?”

Of course I know that, that’s why I’m enjoying it. My own smell isn’t interesting at all. That’s why Kokone’s is good.

Nevertheless, her voice is as fluffy and sweet as ever. When I hear her slow “orange voice”, I feel super sleepy…

“.....gu”

“Aan Kisara chaaan, please don’t fall asleep?!”

“Ha….This human lullaby music box!!”

“What does that mean!?”

Although I can’t see her face, her expression is bound to be one of extreme bewilderment right now.

Having known her for so long, I can tell this much even without seeing it myself. Yet for the same reason, I also end up knowing stuff I don’t wish to know.

“As for why I’m sleeping….that’s because Kokone is here….”

“Please don’t say such ambiguous words with that look on your face!”

“There’s no evidence of me making that look when I’m completely covered by the futon…”

“I’ve known you for such a long time, of course I can tell what look you have right now!”

Tch. It seems we share the same advantage. With her words and shaking intensifying, my sleepiness was driven away. Reluctantly, I crawled out of the futon.

As light illuminated the room and restored my vision, I grimaced.

“Aa----”

-----The world is so ‘gray’.

An alarm clock with the design of a character popular with girls nowadays, a wardrobe with dresses that are meaninglessly decorated with frills, a dresser littered with cosmetics and a contrastively neat study desk.

Anything and everything reflected upon my eyes are black and white, a monochrome world.

An unpleasant sight isn’t it.

Everything has been completely swallowed up by the rain.

The world before my eyes that’s been devastated by the colour of gray seems as though it is trying to break me apart.

“Good morninggg, Kisara chan”

In this world of gray, only Kokone has a vibrant colour.

Soft and full lips the colour of sakura, sleepy looking softly drooping blue eyes and a smile that gives off a fluffy feeling like cotton candy.

Her fluffy and wavy blond hair extends past her shoulders, and shakes with the tilting of her head as though it is dancing.

Good complexion, a gentle vibe, sufficiently bulging soft looking chest, and a cute dress with many frills.

From top to toe, a complete bishoujo. (TL note: pretty girl) Flawless beauty as though she is a well made french doll.

The girl before my eyes, fluffy and extremely adorable is completely different from me, with my pallid skin, nasty expression and flat chest.

The difference in girl power is evident. She stands on the opposite end of the spectrum, with her unmatched beauty.

Without any feeling of envy, I called out to her.

“Morning, Kokone….do you need something?”

“No no, that’s my line….why are you in my futon?”  (TL note: Kokone uses “boku” to refer to herself which is less feminine compared to “watashi” that Kisara and most girls use)

“I thought you knew but….I hate the rain. That’s why I was in your futon to block my sight, hearing and smell.”

“Somehow the last one seems new...ehehe”

Breaking out a smile like soft boiled eggs once again, Kokone laughed.  (TL note: Don’t ask me why orz 半熟の卵みたいな笑顔)

A sweet smile that seems to have plenty of sugar added in.  A warm orange-coloured laughter that sounds like birds chirping-----

“------upu”

“Kisara chan?”

“Sorry, I feel sick….”

“....again?”

Orange mixed with a little blue , the result of worry added to amazement.

Her “voice” paints over the gray colour, and it really does put me at ease. However, my mind can’t handle the sudden change to the world, making me nauseous.

…..A troublesome body, same as ever.

My legs got tangled but Kokone caught me and I somehow managed to avoid falling down.

In my current posture, while thinking to myself that the black hair that entered my field of vision looks so gloomy, I shake my head.

“Are you alright?”

“Un...thanks Kokone”

While wringing out a word of gratitude, a single word comes to mind.

…..’Synesthesia’

The triggering of a different sense organ in response to a stimulus. For example, seeing the colour red and getting the feeling pain. For example, eating something sweet and getting the feeling of a round shape. For example-----hearing the sound of rain and seeing the colour gray.

“.....too much gray”

Even amongst those with this condition, mine is special. Due to extreme sensitivity, it’s at the extent of overwhelming my very soul.

The sound of rain, the sound of thunder and even human voices-----they swallow up my heart, the sight before my eyes.

The type of synesthesia where sound invokes a colour is known as ‘Chromesthesia’, while it seems that many who suffer from this have perfect pitch, I do not have such an ability.

It’s just that I hear colours.

It’s just unpleasant.

It’s just that.

“Kokone…..speak, continue….let me hear your voice….?”

Imploring, entreating her.

The only one I can rely on now is her.

Even my own voice is a muddy blue----as though I’m drowning.

While gathering up Kokone’s soft, fluffy hair and fragrance as well as embracing her, I called out to her.

“Nee, Kokone...please….”

“U--n…..if you give out more sweetness, I’ll think about it ♪”

“Fuyu?!” (TL note: Probably short for fuyukai desu, Kyoukai no kanata’s Kuriyama Mirai catch phrase. It means unpleasant.)

“The current Kisara chan is so sweet….just a little more, okay..?”

“U,uu….”

I give up.

As seen, this is her shortcoming.

The current voice, a transparent orange colour----truthfully and seriously so.

I am feeding her synesthesia.

Kokone’s synesthesia is “Lexical-gustatory synesthesia” (TL note: sound to taste).

To her, all sounds are food.

Every sound is able to trigger her sense of taste.

In other words, to her, hearing is the equivalent of eating.

“....Kokone”

“Eeh~ The current voice is bitter~ Are you making fun of me, Kisara chan?”

Narrowing her deep blue eyes, her voice drops by one octave.

Even without relying on the colour of red I feel, it’s evident that she’s discontented.

“Y, you don’t have to get mad with that super red tone of voice! Don’t you normally like eating this voice as well?!”

Kokone and I differ in that she doesn’t have like nor dislike any sounds. She’ll eat all sounds with relish.

In comparison, I get sick from hearing stuff, with the exception of a certain range of sound.

One who’s a glutton for sound and one who’s weak to them. That’s how the two of us are like.

“Kisara chan’s normal voice has a tasty bitterness, the sound of rain has a sweet cider-like taste but….for now, I want to hear Kisara chan’s sweet voice…?”

“The rain has a cider taste….I imagined it to a more water-like taste though.”

“Ki~sa~ra~cha~n~?”

Changing the topic to delay things was my plan but it didn’t work.

The colour I feel from the voice has left from the red zone and has the colour of black mixed in.

That which I hate most, black sounds.

“Hik….”

“Ah...sorry, Kisara chan.”

“Th, this, glutton devil….baka….gusu…”

“Ah, this verbal abuse, the bittersweetness is delicious….”

“.....the worst”

I’m really frightened over here yet she’s in ecstasy over my voice. Really the worst.

But, this is why Kokone----there is a balance, and we are together like this.

Her gluttony is dangerous.

That’s why my existence is necessary.

I am terribly unstable.

That’s why her existence is necessary.

She will nibble at even screams and killing intent.

Should she feel inclined to-------the thought ’wanna eat’ entering her mind, she may end up hurting someone. Kokone stays true to her appetite, making her all the more dangerous.

In comparison, I dread both screams and killing intent.

Voices filled with negative emotions have always seemed to be like the pitch black colour of the bottom of wells.

Hence I act as Kokone’s restraints, and in compensation, I receive her pure-----transparent desire-filled voice.

This is our abnormal relationship.

Codependence----abnormal codependence.

Synesthesia----abnormal senses.

Duet---abnormal sonata.   (TL note: 共奏曲で――狂奏曲。 Help D:)

“....♪”

I hear a song.

While being embraced tightly by Kokone, I hear a humming next to my ears.

“Nn”

Her breath brushes against my ear----

“Ha, a…..”

-----The world is trembling with brilliance.

Her singing is adding colour to the world.

Painting out the gray, swallowing it completely.

The colours of the world are increasing, becoming vibrant.

“Nn...Kokone”

I called her.

My voice is a sakura colour mixed with blue.

Proof that this is the only way for me to get some peace of mind.

A colour that Kokone would feel sweet.

“....♪”

With sweetness acting as fuel, her humming got louder, releasing vivid colours.

Tempo changes and vibrato, every time ‘shakuri’ and ‘kobushi’ takes place, the scenery becomes ever more vivid and beautiful. A magic-like transformation.

(TL note: テンポの変化やビブラート、『しゃくり』や『こぶし』が起きるたびに、景色はより鮮やかに、美しくなる. Are shakuri 『しゃくり』 and kobushi 『こぶし』 musical terms?)

More.

I want to see more.

“Nn, Kokone….please, more----”

----Give me more of this beautiful world.

Fill my heart up with colours.

Since I will sate your appetite as well.

Let your voice resound more.

In this manner of painting out the rain, continue humming.

◇◆◇

“Nn….Kokone, I’m alright now…”

The sound of rain can still be heard.

While the sight of raindrops striking the window still brings about a feeling of depression, it is now way way better.

In front of the monochrome filter, I believe a beautiful world has spread out.

So I raise my head, in this grey world, for the sake of living.

“Ehh~ I still want a little more~?”

While shaking her hair and frills, Kokone tilted her head.

Truly a glutton, this troublesome girl.

“It’s fine to eat sounds, but you have to properly eat your meals as well.”

Synesthesia is after all just a sensory input.

While sound can stimulate her palate, it can neither fill up her stomach nor can it provide nourishment.

At the end of the day, her synesthesia is only just a linking of senses.

For the sake of living, she has to eat actual food.

My existence is also to ensure that she eats actual food that she is indifferent to.

“Che. Alright….It’s fine if I properly eat my meal righttt?

“Yeah. I understand that you dislike it….but you have to eat, okay?

The reason Kokone doesn’t like eating actual food is because of the sound of eating. Chewing, swallowing, and scraping of cutlery, the cacophony of such sounds evokes different tastes.

Even when she eats chocolate, the sound of chewing triggers a different taste due to synesthesia. This causes mayhem in her mind it seems.

Even so, she gave a nod to my words.

Despite the reluctance, she agreed with the movement of her head.

This is why I move for her sake.

In this colourless world.

“Ne….is there anything you wanna eat?”

For the sake of seeing her warm voice colours.

It might be unusual, but it’s mutual.

We, are together for the sake of sharing sounds.

◇◆◇

“Kisara chan, this tamagoyaki is salty…”  (TL note: rolled omelette that’s supposed to be sweet)

“....That’s because of the synesthesia. Eating something changes the taste.”

“Ueeeh~, really…?”

“Really. Really really….uwa, what’s this saltiness. Super nasty”

“It leaked out! Something incredible just leaked out!!”

----It seems the world I wish for is still quite far off.

[momtaku]

SnK Chapter 89 Poll Results

This poll closed with 770 entries. It was a lot to go through, but I appreciate the all the support. The poll was posted on Reddit and Tumblr, so I’m hopeful it’s a solid snapshot of how the fandom views the events of chapter 89.

What happened on the roof was too significant a moment for the characters to be completely unchanged by it. Anger, trust issues, grief were cited as factors. Interesting, many people saw the change as a potential positive.

My favorite positive comment:

Change, yes, but not necessarily damage.  Their relationships will grow from this just as they have through every other  arc.

This comment made me nod my head solemnly: 

I REALLY hope so. I hated the serumbowl,  but if it happened it might as well have some meaning and not have all the  drama be just outta the moment. I wanna believe the characters have a say in  where the story goes, and it's not just convenient so the plot can move to  where Isayama wants to. 

Many respondents noticed a general numbness in Levi’s demeanor. Several want to wait and see. But at this point, only 12.9% of respondents think Levi’s relationship with Eren and Mikasa is permanently damaged. 

 Levi doesn't seem to care about what's  happening around him anymore, i don't think he''ll care about his  relationships anymore. He looks like he's even starting to ignore his duties  as a soldier.

I was expecting a  more emotional response out of Levi but he's still hanging there. A lot of  fans think he's much more distant after losing his liege but I feel like this  sentiment is often what the fans want to see rather than what is happening?  Levi behaves pretty kind to the kids the past few chapters though, even  though they played a large part in his decision. Only time will tell I guess  but I do wonder about his mental state...       

Levi's rationality will help him cope with Erwin's loss in so many ways. On the other hand, his compassion will always make him understand what it's like to be in other people's shoes. After all the revelations, I'm pretty sure he has also considered Eren & Armin's time limit, and how Mikasa is taking it. He has always been that kind of person, rational and strong but never lacking in compassion.

To the mind of many, Hange is far less forgiving than Levi. 73% of respondents think her trust and faith in Eren and Mikasa is damaged, and 26.5% believe it’s permanent. 

“Bitter Hanji is my life source. I need her backstory like I need air.”

Despite Hange’s open disagreement with Levi over the serum, 89% of respondents think their relationship will be ok. I agree.

The good news: 70.8% do not think Hange’s being cruel. Hange is stressed, heartbroken and grieving, and that may be making them more short-tempered than normal, but their behavior is not unreasonable.

The bad news: 20% of the fandom think she is being cruel. As someone on Reddit suggested, maybe we should put a fence around them.

I'm sorry for Eren, but also Hanji is  really tired right now. She has a different position and has to face a lot of  problems and other high ranked heads of the military divisions and making  difficult decisions...and they just have not many time. 

I loved Hanje in that chapter, I think a lot of ppl don't realise how alone Hanje is in  this situation, their situation is even worse than Erwin imo. They have more enemies, less trusting comrades [Levi put his personal feelings 1st and reduce the chances of Humanity surviving...

she is being unreasonable, but i think it's a realistic  portrayal of how someone would behave after going through so much like idk  why people are acting like her behaviour is unfounded. like im not sayin  hanji acted reasonsably, she didnt like she shouldve tried reasoning with eren  instead but she obviously got frustrated because of the absolute shit  everyones going through right now 

From how she behaved during the actual serum bowl (tm) I think it's safe to say Hanji is a very empathetic, understanding and mature person.  The problem right now is she doesn't know what Eren is going through and why  he is behaving weirdly at this moment,in addition to being frustrated and not  being able to understand Levi's decision.

 I'm huffy about the Hanji hate... she's  so stressed and grieving, people need to cut her some slack

Isayama did good! Despite all our theories, it appears that Ymir was an ordinary girl who was given an extraordinary name. 84.5% of respondents were satisfied with her backstory.

That said, many people think there’s more to the story. Don’t rule out those mystical ties just yet!

 Well i know the People of Ymir share weird  connections that even surpasses time... That Ymir's dancing titan looked  hella like the Devil that gave Ymir Fritz powers.

 I'm still expecting more to be revealed.  Her past hasn't completely been showed to us and I still believe she's  somehow connected to THE Ymir.

About 2/3 of the fandom agree that Ymir is too important for an offscreen death. Big thumbs up from me on this one! For those who think she’s dead, they are side-eyeing the Quadrupedal Titan.

I believe Ymir was eaten to make the Quadrupedal Titan. The way they both stand on all fours makes me believe that. Also, Ymir's disappearance and The Quadrupedal Titan's appearance.

I sometimes think of these polls as an “ask the audience” test since usually the majority is right. That won’t work for the question of whether Reiss and Fritz are the same or a different bloodline. With almost 800 respondents, the fandom is equally divided on this point. 

32.6% do not think time travel will be a part of this story. 22.1% do. If time travel is a factor, 48% are ok with that if it’s well written. 30% will be disappointed.

My personal feeling align with this:

 I HATE TIME TRAVEL  WHY ISAYAMA  I TRUSTED YOU  Dammit

 I’m hopeful if the story goes this way, Yams will pull it off successfully.

Most people believe Eren Jaeger is the source of Kruger’s memory of Mikasa and Armin. The most popular write-in entry was Grisha. In retrospect, I should’ve added him as an option.

Past, present, and future exist simultaneously. Eldians are magically connected, so they can "leak" their memories/thoughts to each other across time. The Coordinate just make this process very efficient.

I’m happy to report that my favorite Commander Handsome is still loved and missed by the majority of the fandom, at least on Tumblr! I was told that most of the 25.7% who disregard him at this point are the Redditors who chimed in :)

 He would be 200% more stressed out, with  more weight on his shoulders and with 199 new ghosts judging him 24/7.

Because I personally favor the vets, I assume the majority of my tumblr followers do as well. This makes me wonder if the results of these polls are slanted in their favor. This month, however, this wasn’t the case. Fans of the 104th had a nearly equal voice.

Some Final comments

I can’t list them all, but here’s a sample of the final chapter thoughts:

“Reiner looked really handsome this  chapter. This is not important but appreciated.” 

“I really enjoyed the flashback! I feel like many other major series get boring after the underwhelming reveal (since fans just want to see the series finish after the theories parts are done) but I felt like snks "truth" lived up to its hype.”

“Nobody's talking about the men who venerated Ymir have the same clothes as the people from the wall cult ...”

“Eren aknowledged Mikasa's existence! Yay!!”

“Jean acting as Hanji's assistant--make Moblit proud man! You go Jean, let those leadership qualities shine! :P”

“I'm worried that Eren won't trust others with the information about Dina, and that withholding the information will have bad consequences :/”

“The utter lack of focus towards what happened between Armin and Bertholdt and Armin's new powers is so bizarre to me. Like really, Bert's death has been so poorly handled.”

“Where's Annie”

“pls let ymir be alive and gay”

“Recent reveals have been great, I hope the characters will start to take action with what they know soon.”

“More heart-break and intrigue, but this is Attack on Titan so what else is new, lol!”

“Mindblown since 5 chapters^tm, give me the Ackertalk and some love for Mikasa and Levi-they look both done af  and bring Ymir back”

“I'm so loving the latest chapters & these info reveals. So complex & cast may qs abt humanity's nature. Everyone can be right or wrong, evil or good depending on the perspective. I do strongly believe there's hope & the cycle will be broken. most likely, Eren would  sacrifice himself somehow.”

“I hope that Mikasa's weight loss isn't just a throw away line and that she gets treated more like a main character. Oh and that we finally get the Ackertalk!”

“Levi looks so done...”

“For the love of everything can we please have these characters talk to each other. Eren talk to Mikasa, Mikasa talk to Levi, Levi talk with Hanji just open up the thought chambers. Lord. We've been waiting on ackertalk for 84 years...”

[autumnsedai]

Self-diagnosing isn't bad and it isn't good.  The thing is people, especially women historically, get misdiagnosed all the time.  A lot of women's issues don't present the same as men's issues and therefore male doctors would often disregard and dismiss women's complaints as just that - women's complaints.  Something to be devalued, something that's "all in their heads," simple anxiety because women are, biologically apparently, prone to anxiety and therefore all issues are anxiety and therefore not important.

To be clear, anxiety in and of itself is an issue.  The fact that more people are talking about it and presenting with it doesn't make it less of an issue.  It makes it more of an issue than we previously realized and calls into question environments, not just weather but work, school, and personal environments, that may have led to the increase in anxiety.  Just because more people are saying they have anxiety doesn't mean they want attention.  Just because someone isn't completely in the grips of their anxiety 100% of their lives doesn't mean they don't have at least a minor case of anxiety.  Just because someone doesn't have YOUR version of anxiety doesn't mean they have NO anxiety.

I had migraines all throughout my young life and I decided for a long time that if you weren't on your floor gripping a trash can because you literally couldn't walk to the toilet on your own then you obviously didn't have a migraine.  If you could get up, go to work, drive, eat, function, look someone in the eye without falling down, then you didn’t have a migraine, stop faking, stop wasting my time, you have no idea what a real migraine is.  Now that I'm older, I know migraines present differently for different people.  You can have a stomach migraine.  You can have a completely visual migraine associated with absolutely no head pain.  However, even now that I'm older, even when I have a headache bad enough to cause nausea, photophobia, and/or sonophobia, I'm still reluctant to call it a migraine.  Though if someone else told me they had those symptoms, I would absolutely tell them they have a migraine.

I'm digressing.

After learning about history, medicine, and their treatment of women, a lot of people are turning to WebMD (and the internet in general) to self-diagnose.  Again, this is not a bad thing and it's not a good thing.  The fact of the matter is, if you go onto WebMD, there are a lot of symptoms for a lot of different issues, and you might have symptoms that you might not realize you have and therefore you might not have mentioned it to your doctor.  I’ve heard MS patients talk about how they had generalized fatigue for several years but thought nothing of it because they thought it was a stage or they thought they were working themselves too hard in certain areas of their lives (areas they couldn't stop working so hard in and therefore it was a constant and after a while, not really noticeable).  However, if they had researched their other symptoms, they might have come across the list of symptoms for MS and been like "Oh fatigue?  Yeah, I do actually have that, I just never realized..."  And then they go, "Shit.  Maybe I SHOULD see a doctor."

Doctors are people, too.  They make mistakes.  Your input is valuable because you know you better than anyone else.  Yes, doctors are going to be annoyed because they spent a ridiculous amount of money and time in earning their degrees.  They don't wanna be shown up.  But fuck them.  You're paying them a co-pay or hundreds of dollars towards your deductible.  You’re paying good money to your health insurance, who in turn pays the doctor a pretty penny for their thoughts.  Push for their time, push for their opinion, that's what you're paying them for.  (Hell, even if it’s a free clinic, you’re sick or feeling unwell, they decided to come there to treat you, not to make small talk and push you away with a temporary prescription of Valium.)  Make a list of your symptoms before the appointment, make a list of possible tests you might want, discuss them with your doctor, the pros and cons and costs, and if your doctor is a douche bag or completely waves away your concerns, find a new doctor and write a civil but unhappy yelp review.  (If you find yourself with twenty different primary care physicians within the course of a year, though, there might be a DIFFERENT problem than douche bag doctors and maybe you need a psychiatrist instead.  Look, there’s nothing wrong with seeing a psychiatrist, okay?)

A few years back, in college, there was a student who went to the on campus health facility.  He was sick.  The campus doctor diagnosed him as having a simple cold or flu, sent him home and told him to take it easy, rest up, drink lots of fluids and he’d be fine.  The next morning, his roommate found him dead.  He had meningitis.  Could the doctor have saved him?  Who knows.  Maybe the disease had already progressed far enough that he was going to die anyway.  But my point is that people get misdiagnosed all the time, your doctor is human and makes mistakes, and if you know for a fact (it’s YOUR body, after all) that something is wrong, fight until you figure it out.  Your literal life could be on the line.

But be educated about it.  You can't go onto the computer and start diagnosing yourself with all the things.  If you know you're a hypochondriac, take that into consideration before you hit the search button.  And be honest with yourself, okay?

Self-diagnosing isn't good because it's not a definite.  This is why you can't just call some antibiotics into the pharmacy for yourself when you are absolutely sure you have strep throat.  Because you might not.  Being diagnosed by a licensed professional means they've reviewed your symptoms and they are making an educated decision and they paid with blood, sweat, and tears for those degrees, they've earned that right.  And they all have damn good lawyers because suing for malpractice is rampant.  But they also don’t like spending money so they’d rather diagnose correctly than have to get their lawyer involved.

But self-diagnosing is not bad, not just because it means you're taking an active part in your own health, but also because knowing what you have is the first step to getting better.  Sometimes you can't get better.  Sometimes there is no cure.  So maybe you self-diagnosed yourself as having a panic attack.  What's your next search in google?  "How to stop a panic attack."  Maybe you diagnosed yourself as having anxiety.  What's your next google search?  "How to deal with anxiety."  And one of those results might snap you out of the panic attack, might help your next day or your next week just that much easier to get through.  

Don't listen to people on the internet who tell you not to self-diagnose or “what's the point in self-diagnosing, anyway”.  The internet is an infinite blob of gray, all right?  It's not all roses and rainbows.  It's not all doom and gloom.  Take everything with a grain of salt.  If someone tells you that your problems will be cured by spinning in a circle while wearing a tutu at 12:04 in the morning with the sprinkler on... well, one of the 'fixes' for pregnancy was jumping backwards a certain number of times.  They're called old wives' tales and used to be relayed to loved ones with complete sincerity and were wildly believed to be accurate.  So, someone telling you to focus on immediate details in your vicinity and vocalize them somehow in order to pull you out of a panic attack seems relatively harmless and possibly incredibly helpful.  

And there's a certain kind of relief you get from knowing WHAT is wrong with you instead of the constant vague haze of SOMETHING is wrong with you.

If you self-diagnose and then proceed through the steps of possible home made cures (if you do this, BE CAREFUL as some home remedies are actually quite dangerous, do LOTS of research before doing ANY home remedies) and still have no solutions, then you’ve performed what is called a scientific study.  You had a theory, tested it, it failed.  If you go to the doctor and say, “I thought I had anemia but I took iron supplements and it resulted in extreme gastrointestinal issues, so I stopped taking them” they’ll then know that you’re willing to take medicine, you’re willing to take your health into your own hands, and you’re willing to admit when you’re wrong.  They’ll still scold you because too much iron can be fatal relatively quickly but this is an extreme situation.  If you say you have increased fatigue so you bought a new pillow, tried exercising more to wear yourself out, took melatonin at night to help you sleep better, didn’t take melatonin because you thought it was making you groggy, went outside more often to try to get a little more vitamin D, discussed your sleep with your spouse but they claim you sleep like a log and don’t snore, but none of that helped, well, trust me, they’ll appreciate it.

TL:DR - Self-diagnosing is a slippery slope but as long as you wear good boots, there’s nothing wrong with making the trek and 100% advisable you followup with a licensed hiker at the end to make sure you didn’t catch or develop a hiking disease.

That metaphor got away from me really fast.

Anyway.  This has been a rant from me to you.  I hope you enjoyed.

[fandom-games]

by: @dan_howells_tongue

It was raining, and had been for a while now.

The droplets rolled down the window, colliding together into bigger and bigger drops and leaving watery pathways for the rest to follow. Every so often, lightning would flash, and a clap of thunder that faded into angry grumbling would sound.

Dan knew this because he was currently staring out of the aforementioned window, completely and utterly bored out of his mind.

The power had gone out for their entire street, and there was little more to do than sit around and think about rain.

Which was all fine and dandy, but not at all preferable compared to all the things Dan could be doing, like playing Mario Kart or starting that one anime that looked mildly interesting or literally anything else.

It was quite late at night, and the darkened street looked so foreign to Dan that he finally abandoned trying to sleep. Trying not to wake Phil, he had rolled out of bed and put on his slippers. His fucking slippers. Phil thought they looked ridiculous, but Dan quite loved them. They were comfy, no matter how odd they looked on the foot of a six-foot-three twenty-seven-year-old rather than an old grandmother.

Dan had dug some of his favorite candles out from the drawers they were kept in, and in attempt to make the stormy night peaceful, had lit some of them and distributed them all around the house. They hadn’t really done much except create a fire hazard, he supposed.

Dan was interrupted from his musings by the sound of someone shuffling along in the hallway. He turned his head in time to see Phil round the corner, scratching his neck and squinting at Dan--a piece of his hair was sticking straight up. Dan smiled fondly.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Phil inquired, yawning. “Neither can I, really.”

Dan sighed. “Do you ever get the feeling that everything is pointless and we’re all here for no reason? Do morals exist? Or is it pointless to try to remain a good person if a higher power doesn’t exist? I could walk down the street and murder someone, and the only punishment I would get would be physical. I would get locked in prison, obviously, but if there’s no hell does that just mean that death is a gaping void? Sometimes I think that desperate people just made up the idea of heaven and hell just so they didn’t have to fear the inescapable vacuum of emptiness that is death.”

Phil looked unfazed. “Oh, so it’s that kind of “can’t sleep.’”

“It wasn’t that kind of “can’t sleep” until about five minutes ago. Before that I was just bored.”

Phil said nothing, just opened his arms. Dan got to his feet and tucked his face into Phil’s shoulder, wrapping his arms loosely around Phil’s waist. Phil buried his nose in Dan’s hair, breathing in the scent of soap and shampoo and Dan.

They stood like that for quite a while, until a police siren went off in the distance and Dan jumped.

“Well, there goes the person who’s not afraid to murder someone, like I am,” Dan joked, squeezing Phil’s bum. Phil grinned down at him, brushing their noses together.

“What do you say I take you out to dinner tomorrow? There’s this new place that just opened up that I think you’d like,” Phil suggested, his voice barely more than a whisper.

“I’d like that very much,” Dan said, kissing Phil’s chin.

Phil brushed his lips against Dan’s forehead. “Then I reckon we should go back to bed, yeah?”

Dan nodded, and they walked together back down the hall and into their bed.

--

“Phil, you dumbass, leave room for me!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! If you knew how to move over properly, we wouldn’t have this problem!”

Dan and Phil were walking home, sharing an umbrella in the pouring rain. Or, well- trying to share an umbrella.

They were arguing quite a bit, too.

Dan’s hair and clothes were drenched, and Phil didn’t look any better off.

“Here, come with me,” Dan said, dragging Phil under a concrete overhang.

Phil closed the umbrella, shaking the water droplets off it.

“See, I told you we should have brought two umbrellas! You thought they would be too bulky in the restaurant, but now we’re both soaking wet and I’m freezing!”

Phil sighed. “Listen, Dan--I really am sorry, but can’t you just calm down?” It’s just a bit of water, isn’t it?”

Dan had just opened his mouth to retaliate when a high-pitched whimper cut through the air.

Phil looked very confused, and slightly worried. “Th- that wasn’t you was it?”

Dan snorted, all malice forgotten. “Did that sound like me?”

Phil shook his head. “No, but then… was it some sort of animal?”

Both seeming to realize something at the same time, they turned their heads as one to stare into the dark alley behind them.

There was a puppy.

There was a puppy in a cardboard box that was so wet it was almost disintegrated, with a faded pink collar around its neck and a soaking wet blanket underneath its paws.

Phil turned his head and stared at Dan, his mouth open.

Dan glanced at Phil, and then sprinted towards the box.

Phil followed, close on his heels, and almost tripped over Dan’s crouched form. It really was quite dark in that alley.

As Dan fumbled to read the dog’s tag, Phil interrogated him with helpful questions that were completely necessary and essential to .

“What’s her name? How old do you think she is? Is she okay?”

“I don’t bloody know! How do you know it’s a girl anyway?”

Phil reached out, touching the collar. “It’s pink, isn’t it?”

Dan frowned, disapproving. “God, Phil, just because something is a certain color isn’t a guarantee of someone’s gender! Can’t you be respectful?” He scratched under the dog’s chin. Phil rolled his eyes.

“Hello,” Dan cooed softly, stretching out the “o”. “Hello!”

Reaching out and grabbing the tag, Phil read out the only word that was on the collar.

“Erm… Chicken,” he said, frowning at the dog.

Dan looked up at Phil disbelievingly. “Chicken?” He repeated. Phil nodded.

“What kind of insane bloody psychopath would name a dog Chicken?”

“I dunno,” Phil shrugged, “but she’s already the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen in my life ever.”

Dan looked up at him, hopeful. “We are keeping her, right? We can talk to our landlord, can’t we?”

Phil nodded, stroking the puppy’s ears. “She can’t be more than a few months old, I think,” He commented, pushing back her mouth to look at her teeth. “She’s really docile for a stray puppy, isn’t she? That’s so awful of her owners to just abandon her like that.”

“Maybe we can change her name?” Dan suggested, still frowning at the tag as if it had magically changed in the last thirty seconds or so since he’d last looked at it.

“Yeah, probably,” Phil said, lifting Chicken out of its box and checking below its belly. “By the way, she is a girl,” he said, looking sideways at Dan, who rolled his eyes.

Chicken’s tail was still as she surveyed Dan and Phil with wide eyes. Phil tucked her under his arm, and attempted to pick to the soggy blanket. It was dripping with various liquids, and he quickly dropped it again.

Dan stared at her for a few seconds, then looked at Phil with an ernest expression on his face. “If anything happened to her I would kill everyone in the room and then myself,” he said, perhaps a bit too seriously. Phil laughed quietly, trying not to jolt the puppy.

“C’mon, do you wanna take her back to the flat, and then we can go out shopping for supplies later on?”

Dan nodded, unable to keep a smile off his face. Grabbing the umbrella where it had laid on the ground, forgotten, Dan and Phil walked back up towards their flat, not caring about the rain at all.

--

“Fuck, Dan, she’s got your slippers! Catch her- shit, she’s in the bedroom now! NO! NOT ON THE BED, CHICKEN, NO! NOT ON THE BED!”

As it turned out, teething puppies liked to chew. A lot.

Shoes, clothing items, books, belts, socks, even the legs of chairs.

Anything that even touched the floor for a second had the chance to be chewed to bits, which resulted in Dan and Phil doggie-proofing their flat completely within a few days of bringing her home.

“I didn’t know dogs could chew walls,” Dan had said at one point, exhausted.

It didn’t help that Chicken completely disregarded all the toys and expensive rawhide bones bought for her in favor for a pair of Dan’s favorite slippers. He would laugh at the total chiche-ness if he hadn’t already lost two pairs to her merciless chewing.

And, as it sounded, she was about to get the third (and last) pair of slippers. God, the people at Walmart were going to think he was crazy if he went back there for shoes again.

Tearing out of the office where he had been sitting, Dan raced down the hallway to the bedroom, where Phil was currently having a brutal tug-of-war with Chicken.

Dan grabbed her jaw and pushed her mouth open, forcing her to drop the soggy slipper.

Chicken growled playfully at him, and Dan growled back, grabbing both slippers and chucking them in the closet.

Phil left the room quickly and returned with her leash. “Maybe she just needs to get her energy out?” He asked, holding it out to Dan.

“Walkies?” Dan suggested to Chicken, who dropped her fierce facade and started tearing around the flat in her excitement.

“Guess that’s a yes,” Phil said, stepping into the hall in an effort to get the dog under control.

“Chick-chick, c’mere! You wanna go on walkies? C’mere, Chickie!”

As it turned out, Chicken was the only name the puppy would respond to, and so Dan had taken it upon himself to get as creative with the name as possible.

Chicken tore past Dan and into the living room, bounding onto the couch and leaping off of it immediately and racing into the kitchen.

Phil laughed, and called after her. “Chicken-dog, licken’dog, dic- I’m not gonna say that,” He muttered, flushing. Dan giggled.

Chicken proceeded to run laps around them, first onto the couch and then the armchair and then the kitchen and then down the hallway into the bedroom and back onto the couch. It really was quite exhausting to keep up with.

Dan crouched next to the couch, out of sight from the exuberant dog.

When she came tearing back into the living room, Dan tackled her, pinning her to the ground.

“I GOT HER,” he announced, clipping the leash onto her collar. Chicken seemed just as excited about this as he did, for she then proceeded to drag him around the flat mercilessly.

“Jesus Christ,” Phil muttered, “Imagine what she’ll be like when she’s fully-grown!”

“Don’t remind me,” Dan managed, planting his feet into the carpet and grabbing onto both Phil and the back of the couch for support. “If this is what she’s like now, I really don’t want to imagine what she’ll be like when she’s even stronger and heavier.”

Chicken seemed to calm down at last when she realized she wasn’t going anywhere for the time being. Panting heavily, she looked up at Dan expectantly.

“I think she’s ready for her “walkies,” now,” Phil said, a glimmer in his eye.

Dan screeched as Chicken started tearing around the flat again, dragging him behind her as if he was little more than a ragdoll.

Phil burst out laughing, doubling over and clutching the back of the couch.

Dan, struggling to get to his feet, glared at Phil menacingly. “You’re holding the leash for that,” he managed, gasping for breath.

“Who said I was even coming?”

Dan finally straightened up, staring directly into Phil’s eyes. “It was your idea, Philly,” he said, his voice soft but filled with malice. “You get to hold the leash.”

Phil shrugged. “Alright,” he said easily, transferring the leash into his own hands.

Chicken immediately stopped struggling and sat back on her haunches, staring up at Phil.

“Why the hell does she listen to you and not me?!” Dan shouted, as Phil grinned triumphantly.

“Guess she just likes me better,” Phil gloated, turning towards the door.

(part 1 because Tumblr won’t let me submit all of it)

[rudydclapper-blog]

Trove Promo Codes

{But these factors also grant Code Trove to distinguish as well from almost every other vastly multi-participant money generator by analyzing developing all zones My personal beloved basis will be a re-expansion of Sauron's tower of Barad-d衩�Others appear to symbolize Mega Men tiers, while they need a it seems that infinite succession of timed jumps to obtain the player's medical concoction refill station or another facility bins. The nice thing about Code Trove is that lots of these kinds of products are manufactured by athletes themselves, developing the looting undertaking more rewarding of computing device might have been if Trion were being to blame for it by itself. |{Most of time was expended using the Pirate Captain, a minion category that could possibly chuck out a vast cannon or maybe a puppet that taunts enemies, all when his parrot friend bombards these having cannon of their very own. This, beyond developing, is exactly what Code Trove is approximately. Naturally, with several of the far better categories (exactly like the Dark chocolate Barbarian), they can be basically a tale. It's especially saddening on the grounds that MMOG designer Trion should not be a stranger to this type of stuff--while quite similar trouble seriously affected the business's discharge of ArcheAge this past twelve months--yet it is proof of Code Trove's craftsmanship the waits don't appear to have an impact on its popularity. Code Trove does its better to fulfill these gaps together with other ways, like questing various categories, making an effort to establish a dungeon worth addition holding approximately, or even amassing cosmetic products from person in charge eliminates, however for me, it can do not convey the level of MMO habit that transmits me on the way to laptop or computer to sneak up somewhat more enjoy upon all people otherwise is in bed. That's just enough to create Code Trove successful, which is fairly quickly news as well as arbitrary provided worlds help make just about every go to genuinely feel not the same as the last. Once you have because of personality invention I rapidly located me personally entering into a lowbie neighborhood for the purpose of tiers 1-3. You ought to be |conscientious despite the fact, criminals can push you approximately and resist does issues the surface so if you’re at the rainbow road at the horizon and then you mistakenly take the road an too much number of you will see an opening on your bee you skipped to push you reduce. In order that they tend to be real estate in Code Trove. This is actually the types of support services all MMOs would need to take for. Nevertheless randomly dialling out for serve when athletes are spread out in just about every individual instruction doesn’t give good results, persons often take a visit anyhow. People who do positioned riches towards the outdoor activity are recognized to do this but under no circumstances in a manner that creates them an unjust benefit on individuals who do not. Dim Gods. Beneath the mayhem is the remarkable cuboid landscapes of Minecraft, some spun into more recent |I looked in on Mojang’s time-defining money generator the initial time in a long while the next working week, knowning that i found myself smacked only because when sombre and outlandish it had been, how fully contra --populist it's despite the fact it is now the avatar of populism. appearing using If Minecraft is displaying us getting a bottomless package of conventional Lego bricks, Code Trove creates a in addition infinite bath tub of minifig feet and caps and rayguns and dragon wings. wands and face masks by hitting areas, I most likely could invest my earnings on making equipments that to construct other equipments or switch hinders with the other colors, I most likely could eventually grow my ‘Cornerstone’ relentless starting point to ensure that it could contain every one of these items, I most likely could hit areas attractive areas attractive areas, and Rather than an excess of in I most likely could media the total amount 2 and simply turn a bloody superior dragon approximately ten a few moments. It genuinely, has, obviously. It is working hard. guided for the Several them likewise have dialog that would be only one modest likewise youngster-on target with my personal taste (only because a number of them are certainly more definitely guided at children than the others) but it is repeatedly advisable for all nutritional requirements. This completely finish “adult” shtick may very well be fairly mindless and immature. It's not the goods of these kinds of actually being cartoons (in addition to that it is less costly and fewer serious to make sure they can be than some exhibits). |Whether or not it owned looked considerable-poly grimdark, it wouldn’t happen to be so properly disregarded such as a “kid’s game”. remarks. visually-communicating, is profoundly hideous only because it is a) a skeptical con of somebody else’s talent design devoid of visible guiding perception and b) wanting to are made up of complete just about every thing with the hope a lot of it draws nippers. I really do not enjoy any Trion tools a result of way they give good results. I talk about Meer’s All round frustration which the vastly multi-participant choose to look at Minecraft could so most importantly miss out on the actual good thing about the upfront while cashing on the way to lowest prevalent denominator by jamming the loot hook towards the frontal lobe and devising option to eternally reel. T’would happen to be in a healthy condition to maintain earned one more operate in a great money generator prior to the monstrously unappreciative factors of 20 or so-primarily century capitalism disbanded this right after superior place completely. close to impossible to Yup, adored this “Slow-action existential crisis” is a excellent details of Notch’s living as a open find. I dunno, with my undertaking assess sprang out to disorder lots of intention facts together with his thoughts. Allow me to restate it, not actually moaning, but a touch more much like the critic was referring Code Trove to Minecraft a tad an excess of. assess, except for when |Definitely not a review, only one Thoughts and opinions accompanied by a Dislike Speech. I enjoy lots of MMOs, Minecraft retains an identical attract me. Also, the hourly timed times which you could produce the currency (in a extremely low tumble level) to have a dragon actually change the tempo coming from a money generator. about it's no cost. What’s inappropriate using this? Oh yeah, and simply poking enjoyable at whomever claimed farmville was fairly P2W, about 80-90Percent Out of the money generator choices may very well be turned into certainly totally free and may even be in due course attained to individuals who spend some riches. He’s declaring which the outdoor activity is cynically and blatantly built to subconsciously attract teens and them taking (or wanting to invest) their parents’ riches. you're mindless? neglecting to try to remember Trion is really a Organisation? also, its many of the mothers and fathers there disorder, for those who have a strong youngster, like we where by, they under no circumstances bitch about ways to get stuff, say things like “mommy, mum i would personally like this” will certainly make my mothers and fathers basically just say “there is perhaps not that you need to want” conclude of conCode Troversy. forwards with the moment for those who have children and find that there is not this kind of variable as “a great youngster, like we where by, they under no circumstances bitch about ways to get stuff”. find Wanna own various colored wings? Just a beauty alter. You can actually max each one category within the working week, very easily. |Oh yeah, and demonstrate children that dumping lots of cash into an item no cost no longer causes it to be no cost, and usually is a fairly mindless view. Talk about things which the followers desire to discover, not your personal perception of what's childish. categorization to soul. primarily-guy prospective and redid the pictures to make sure they can be more blockish. I get it tho, Uber 6 Shadow Area and stuff is most probably waaaay way too hard for you personally. Might be, but basically just could be, when, utilize your mind and do your research before you choice out a despise talk that would be not sensible -.- Bottom line: it is really not that you just dont enjoy Code Trove, you merely can not. you have under no circumstances Also, as you descended to non-open, meaningless hits about Alec’s know-how as a gamer notifies me you do not genuinely have most things favourable to state. Which is used to do but bear in mind much like the Diablo line. It might seem like it isn't for your personal “target audience” regardless of if it's recognized. I'm willing to happily parse content articles in regards to a CS:GO tournament, the large conclude grognard tools, or basketball simulator notes and never have to be considered an natural participant, although not the DOTA-enjoys. |The new problems are pleasing.. conclude from using it. # 1 may very well be, in my view, the “visceral” Shotgun element of the new logo. Thrilled to listen for you’re weaned out of that habit, scared that point hasn't originate as yet in my view for me personally Young children? You just discussed the most beneficial money generator for a lot of mmo mature athletes, hehe. bashing Amazing for it is endless Bring shower area of quests and loot and incentives. |I that might take a look at from it. Is region the collective noun for commentards? > What did Trion do That’s elementary, they used up ArcheAge all the way down for limited duration make money. will certainly simultaneously enjoy Code Trove, on the grounds that I am as a result of personal preference between the two two basically identical tools which one has actually been up to date weekly. Mainly because the designer of Code Trove Toolbox, I have to admit, this game isn't mainly for teens neither could it be taking out the money at the wallets coming from a teens. I am 19 years of age now and I am actively playing because period of january with no need of changing into weary ONCE! So i highly recommend you, before you point out this as money generator a “kids game”, focus on it thoroughly. Christ. disagree using the Due to the fact each of them ways to get voxel and making doesnt necessarily suggest its a minecraft would-be. Nearly every mount Aside from the started out has 90 motions speed. You drag it approximately, plop it reduce, use its facilities, and anticipate that only a few other vagrants handle out of and mooch.Golf club worlds, but bear in mind, make a various undertaking. With a multitude of designs and merely a number of key designs, not merely will procuring |a satisfactory Inside of a a lot less stringent good sense, Code Trove isn't be charged-to-earn by any means. It is an item sign in to day after day, fulfill your superstar bar among thirty minutes, could be establish a modest, after which make prior to the next few moment. From the exact design as Minecraft, athletes can rest reduce the environment into companies and reuse these companies to construct not only for their own personal worlds and contains, but to craft supplies. Passive Retribution - Immediately after having issues prices the next few strike with extra ability. better, and Most significant Faeire Dancing - Summon 3 dancing and snapping shots staves to battle your opponents. Code Trove’s dynamically provided worlds are properly constructible and destructible, offering players a under no circumstances-ending arena of worlds where by they could experience, compose, and take a look at. capability to interpret more details about, craft and work out ventures in procedurally provided worlds which are properly buildable and destructible. To begin with brought out for Personal pc and Mac in 2015, Code Trove has entertained over 5 million athletes on the grounds that generate and forces the boundaries of region-delivered actually very happy with procedurally provided worlds which are properly buildable and destructible. additional a But resist and investigation are just a a natural part of what Code Trove creates. |{In case you are provided with sprinting dungeons, you can actually rest and work out that conservatory one has been longing for. I would recommend having fun with friends despite the fact. You can actually manage a sizeable, endgame dungeon, or tinker together with your homestead. {}If you have under no circumstances accomplished the Shovel Dim night-time line earlier than, we'll lightly rest reduce what things to expect. Along with swapping folks' sexes approximately, Yacht Golf club tools has witnessed fit and slim to get rid of the constraint in need of a person to particular the Shovel Dim night-time amiibo to enjoy co-op. many of the gems you can, even citizens in unseen aspects. It's almost everything you would like within your MMO the best of this from it is which the money generator is delivered in a manner that though it has resist it is made for all people! When I create my assess definitely what Code Trove is basically. the categories coming from a money generator. Arcanium Journey Package is made for athletes which are previously holding approximately and wish to acquire more from that. Even Rift and Defiance designer Trion Worlds can it, with no cost-to-enjoy on line experience RPG Code Trove. Consider Cube Planet, just with programmers that do not disappear for extended expands except if their employers make them aware to. had been able get.

[hollowsart]

I swear every time I hear the song “Super Psycho Love” I can’t help but think of Proton singing and talking about Ghost.

Let me elaborate:

Something lately drives me crazy Has to do with how you make me Struggle to get your attention Calling you brings apprehension Texts from you and sex from you Are things that are not so uncommon Flirt with you you're all about it Tell me why I feel unwanted?

Proton tries all he can to get Ghost’s attention and even forcefully gets his attention regardless of what Ghost wants. “texts from you and sex from you” basically Proton denying that he’s the one forcing it, trying to desperately have a false hope that Ghost likes him and wants him as much as he wants Ghost.

Dang, if you didn't want me back Why'd you have to act like that? It's confusing to the core 'Cause I know you want it Oh, and if you don't wanna be Something substantial with me Then why do you give me more? Babe I know you want it

Ghost purposefully on occasion will search out Proton while he’s drunk which leads to confusion and awkward moments. Ghost does this because he is drunk and not thinking right and has literally no filter when inebriated. Proton gets confused and will often take advantage of this. And obviously Proton denying yet again that Ghost doesn’t actually want this: “‘cause I know you want it”

Say that you want me every day That you want me every way That you need me Got me trippin' super psycho love Aim, pull the trigger Feel the pain getting bigger Go insane from the bitter feeling Trippin' super psycho love

Proton tries and tries to force Ghost into doing things he doesn’t want to do all because proton wants it. Admitting feelings for him and all that is not something he’ll ever do, and his feelings for him are questionably iffy at best, though mostly negative. He also know that Ghost wants to kill him for some of the terrible things he’s done to him and understands, he knows he’s done wrong, he knows he’ll never be redeemed. Even if he really wants to fix things between them... Ghost will never forgive him, and it’s a truth that hurts.

Pull me off to darkened corners Where all other eyes avoid us Tell me how I mesmerize you I love you and despise you Back to the crowd where you ignore me Bedroom eyes to those before me How am I supposed to handle Lit the fuse and missed the candle

Proton is dreaming of what could be, what he wants their relationship to be, but it will never be this. No matter how badly he wants this to be their relationship, it’s never going to happen. Not after all that’s happened. All that he has done.

Proton, along with having feelings for Ghost, hates him for his constant disrespect and backtalk. Ghost will sass out and smart-mouth Proton, flip him off, and so much more as a result of the terrible things Proton has done to him.

Ghost will no longer treat Proton as anyone deserving of his respect as Proton has proved time and time again that he does not respect Ghost. He disregards privacy, disregards personal space, he completely ignores Ghost’s tears and cries to stop and his constant strings of apologies. So.. why should Ghost respect him after all of that? Just because he’s an executive and Ghost is a grunt? Ghost couldn’t care less about ranks, honestly.