#or am in the process of being evaluated for

[kirabug-tumbles]

I’m a UX designer - one of the jobs that is “being replaced” by chatGPT. My job is to talk to the product owners to get the business goals, talk to the end users to get the user goals, measure usage and feedback about current and future designs, make sure that every element on the page works the way users expect it to, make sure it’s accessible for people with disabilities, make sure it looks attractive and enticing and comfortable to use, etc. etc.

I’ve been told that LLMs can replace my job. They can tell you what roughly 80% of the people would say (but not for our specific people, just “people”) and they can design an interface based on what most of the interfaces they’ve been trained on would do.

Can they build an address form? Yeah, probably, for a standard US address that accepts any type of address.

Can they build an address form that works for retirees that have both international and US addresses because they “snowbird” to a different country every year, accept the dates for when they leave one address to go to the other and vice versa, reject PO Boxes, suggest address adjustments based on USPS standards, and compare international addresses against countries we’re not allowed to mail to? Hell no.

Can they handle error messaging? For one error yes but for the entire form validation process my developers are way better than the LLM and English is their second language.

The thing is, jobs are hard. They’re supposed to be hard. You wouldn’t be getting paid if they were easy.

And yes, there were a bunch of developers (and designers) in some FAANG* companies sitting on their hands getting paid for not doing a lot of work during COVID. That doesn’t mean their work was easy. It means they were under-utilized. And usually that’s more about bad management than the tech people.

To get where I am as a six-digit-salary UX designer I got a bachelor’s degree in English, a master’s degree in software engineering, seven years in customer support, and close to 20 years in UX design. I’m currently studying for my IAACP certification in accessibility. And yeah, there are a lot of things I don’t need to research anymore because I’ve done the work (or worked with amazing researchers) so many times that I’m probably going to guess right the first time.

But if someone called me tomorrow and asked me to do a user interview or a usability test, audit a content library, test a site for accessibility, do a heuristic evaluation of an interface, pick some colors for a brand, or debug vanilla JavaScript, I’ve done the work, I know both the concepts and the theory, and at worst I need to dust off my notes.

An LLM can tell you what Fitt’s Law is. It can even tell you when to use it. It can’t turn around and design an interface where it intentionally uses Fitt’s Law. It can’t look at a design and say “the problem here is these two controls are too far apart.”

That’s what humans are for.

As for what happens if you come in to our line of work and can’t do the work, well, either a company will see something in the business arrangement that makes it worth their while to train you up (unlikely) or they will let you go. And you will become one of thousands of people bitching in social media that you can’t find a way to break in to UX and that we’re gatekeeping.

Yeah, we’re gatekeeping on skill. You need to put in the work.

Why are you using chatgpt to get through college. Why are you spending so much time and money on something just to be functionally illiterate and have zero new skills at the end of it all. Literally shooting yourself in the foot. If you want to waste thirty grand you can always just buy a sportscar.

[literallypyro]

Good day my fellow tf2 enjoyer! Looks like im back again with another request. 👀🌈

Mercs reacting to "would you still love me if i was a worm?" 🥺❤️‍🔥

You are free to ignore me, but thank you again for indulging in my shenanigans 🫶

You have no idea how equipped I am to answer this request. I am not joking when I say I know exactly what to do. So sorry for the wait!

Hope you enjoy

The early bird gets the worm

Scout:

-Absolutely no hesitation "yeah, sure, why not?"

-It's like you asked him if he wanted to go to McDonald's. You could think he wasn't listening to you

-But then if you ask him what you said, he recites it word for word

-Pop quiz nobody knew he was prepared for

Soldier:

-You're kidding, right? The only thing that could make him not love you is if you were a communist

-Bro doesn't give a singular fuck outside of that. You could turn into a lamp for all he cares, and he'd lug you around wherever he goes

-He honestly doesn't give it much thought either. Some things are just simple facts. The sky is blue, snow is cold, honey bees pollinate, and he loves you. That's just how the world works

Pyro:

-Stares at you for a long moment. They're completely unreadable for a moment

-Muffled speech that sounds vaguely like "you're not going to start eating dirt, are you?"

-Yes, they would still love you, but they're mildly concerned now, believe it or not. Do you want to be a worm? What's going on here?

Demoman:

-Doesn't even process what you said at first. It's not that he doesn't understand or is too drunk. It's just that your question came WAYYYY out of left feild

-"Uh? Probably? I mean, you're still you, even if you can't show it, right?"

-Probably lies awake at night, wondering wtf possessed you to ask that

Heavy:

-Sandvich eating has been paused. He just kinda stops working for a second

-The look on your face tells him it was a genuine question, so he just sets his bewilderment aside and says yes

-He's not really sure why you asked that question, but something in his could sense it would affect your self-esteem in some way, and he'd rather die than hurt your feelings

Engineer:

-He actually knows what this is about, surprisingly. Bro's got more PhDs than most people have digits in their bank account. Did you really think how wouldn't immediately guess?

-He just hugs you like "I love you for who you are on the inside. I couldn't care less what you look like"

-Yeah, you're getting pampered for the rest of the day. He's not gonna let you be insecure. He's gonna do everything he can to make sure you love yourself as much as he loves you

Medic:

-Psych evaluation immediately (hypocrite)

-Once it finally clicks, he looks at you with an expression somewhere between pity and empathy. Now you simply have to tell him who made you think he wouldn't

-The next day, he's showing you these cool new organs that definitely don't belong to the last person who made you feel like you didn't deserve everything good

Sniper:

-Immediate and not ironic "yes." That's it. He knows what's going on cuz lowkey he would've asked the same thing if he didn't think he'd sound dumb

-Might not be super expressive, but you can tell he really cares and knows exactly how you feel. That's a big thing about being in a relationship with him, silent understanding

-He probably wakes up a little earlier than usual to make you a nice breakfast you haven't had in a while. He knows it's not directly related, but he wants to show you he values you so so so much

Spy:

-Doesn't understand whatsoever and refuses to answer

-Engie tells him what's up and suddenly Spy feels like a complete and total dipshit. He doesn't go find you immediately, however

-He waits because he has to set something up. A nice little private dinner for the two of you, fine wine, and an apology cheesier than France in the middle ages

[vacivusviscera]

Vanitas mental illness/nd headcanons except i do NOT explain ANYTHING you either get it or dont. like yesss that guy has debilitating anxiety bpd autism AND adhd and hes bipolar and NO he cannot catch a break.

[light-wrath-paradise]

Me showing DSAF to an acquaintance who has only heard of it like: "You will get depression due to this later. Anyway this is my primordial pet freak, he has killed hundreds of people and will kill again and I think he should be locked in a controlled environment forever. Oh no not for his crimes. It's because I want to study him like a bug forever. Perhaps break his bones one by one... Anyway when I draw him drawing is actually fun and doesn't feel like a stressful performance."

[hrrtshape]

why do people who don't believe in shifting or don't know about shifting still shift — how can i be one of them?

because belief is not the cause. awareness is not the cause. effort is not the cause.

conscious attention has never been the mechanism.

you shifting has nothing to do with what your conscious mind is doing. shifting is a default function of consciousness itself. it's like blinking. or breathing. or rerouting a dream. people who don't ‘believe’ in it or don't ‘know’ about it shift anyway because it has nothing to do with having the language or the framework. the human mind is always selecting realities. 99% of the time it just does it passively, via emotional assumption or unconscious focus.

those people shifted because their state of consciousness naturally entered a dominant assumption or immersive focus. no method, no faith, no affirmations. they just slipped, like how you can lucid dream without trying to. or how a child can dissociate so completely they form entire inner worlds with continuity. this is not evidence against shifting, it proves that it's innate. you do not need to know about shifting to do it. you just need to exit the state of monitoring it.

so. the reason so many people don't shift after learning about it is because now they're trying. now they're watching themselves. now they're adding thirty-step techniques and waiting to feel something specific. they've left the natural, permissive flow-state and replaced it with a checklist.

they've moved from consciousness to supervision.

and that's the disconnect.

people who shift accidentally aren't better or more special. they're just unbothered. they're not in the loop of: is it working? what does this mean? am i good enough yet? they don't audit every state like it's under border patrol review. they drift. they imagine. they believe something lightly or not at all, and it stabilises anyway, because consciousness doesn't gatekeep itself.

the more you analyse the process, the less you're inside it.

and it IS annoying. you already do shift. all the time. but you don't count it, because it doesn't match the scenario you planned. so you say: “i'm stuck.” when really, you're shifting to a version of you who believes they're stuck.

so what do you do now?

you stop tracking your stats like this is a loyalty card. you stop waiting for proof. you stop narrating “trying” like it's a process that builds up credit. shifting is not a job you get promoted at. it's a door you decide is already open.

here's what works:

law of assumption. or at least it worked for me, and i’ve shifted, so idk take this however you want.

not because it's cute or because it's easy. but because it's the only thing that matches the structure of reality as self-reflecting consciousness.

law of assumption = you experience what you assume is true.

it's not positive thinking. it's not wishful delusion. it's literally how reality renders, based on your internal state being mirrored outward.

your reality does not respond to your effort. it responds to your baseline conviction. not what you want to be true. not what you hope to manifest. what you accept as the structure of your life, your identity, your world.

when you say “i am in my dr,” and then wait to feel something, that's not law of assumption, that's law of evaluation.

when you say “i'm going to shift soon,” and then search for signs, that's not law of assumption. that's law of limbo.

when you say “i hope this method works,” and treat it like a pass/fail exam, you're not assuming, you're surveilling, and worst of all, not understanding your full potential.

assumption is full saturation. it's not hopeful. it's done.

you shift when you decide that you already did. not when you “feel like it.” not when your body tingles. not when the method checks out.

you shift when the state becomes final.

you shift when the inner narration stops waiting for outer evidence.

you shift when the thought becomes law.

so here's how to shift:

declare it as done, not affirm like a question, affirm like a fact. “i'm in my dr. this is done.” no waiting. no checking. no conditions.

no “if this works,” “once i shift,” “after i shift,” “when it feels real.” drop the qualifiers. stop building futures that assume the present isn't it, you're either in or you're not.

sustain the state - not with force, but with the refusal to contradict it. if the thought “what if it's not working” shows up, ignore it. if you feel normal, say “ok, i feel normal in my dr.” stop letting your interpretations collapse your decision.

if you want to know how to set an assumption and make it come true, read here.

belief is acceptance. just let the truth sit. don't poke it. don't prove it. don't fix it.

law of assumption or shifting isn't a religion. it's not something to “have faith in.”

it's how consciousness works. it's not asking you to be worthy. it's not asking you to trust it. it's just asking you to pick something, and stay picked.

[bamsara]

trod au ramble u can ignore

when i say slowburn in an enemies to friends to lovers for Trod I mean slowburn. 300k before Narinder even openly admits he cares for the Lamb, and Lamb actually opens up more than just a shield of positivity and another 100k of character growth, drama, complicated intricacies of grief and anger to communication. The Lamb has boundaries and sticks by them constantly in trod, they're not a pushover, but they don't blow up and react in explosive anger the same way that Narinder does and they are mistaken for soft by him for it, when it's him having to be the one who is constantly re-evaluating his priorities and his behavior because the lamb isn't taking shit from him, despite patience and love, and he's put in this position where he's allowing the grief and the hurt to keep hurting himself and the Lamb in the process, until he risks losing them and Narinder makes the active decision to work on himself. They HAD a healthy, wonderful friendship before, he cared for them. He still does. He wishes he didn't but god he still does.

but i dislike when characters do one change or have one realization and suddenly they're super nice. no I want them to be continuously complex. I want their bad habits and miscommunication to not instantly or quickly disappear, I want continuous effort from the wronger. do you hear me. CONTINUOUS EFFORT. that means a character fucking up again and again and relasping and changing and cursing and being like well he doesn't need to be any different because its not his fault then going back and being like. no. it was my fault. i am wronged and I am the wronger. i need complexities. Let us not forget the definition of 'enemy' in the enemies to friends to lovers here. if they start off soft then where is the growth. Where is the room for growth I want. Where is it.

they get to the processing of emotions they haven't allowed themselves to feel properly for centuries to take this friendship gone sour by betrayal, plagued by anger and hurt to something slowly blooming back into trust and care and soft until eventually its this healthy love of these uberly overpowered pair of gods

Trod bad end is when Narinder just speed runs the 'rehabilitation' part of the rehabilitation of death' and it circles back to him going feral in the head. Still an asshole? okay your lamb is gone. regret your pride and ego because the patient love you were afforded is gone forever and the last memory you gave them was not the love you could have given them but it will be the love that destroys mortality to get them back.

amnesia au Narinder is just happy to be here. no betrayal, no angst. eventually when his memory does return and he gets caught pretending he doesn't remember just so he can be sweet to them without his pride in the way will force a conversation that will essentially fix the horrific communication these two have. speedrun trod x2

Current Trod Narinder is a emo angsty bastard who's rightfully hurt at being imprisoned and (in his heart) betrayed by someone he trusted dearly (again) while Post-Trod Narinder is still a feral bastard but with truly un-constipated, true equal love for the Lamb that wears a wedding ring made of his own blood to the tune of 'i miss my wife tails' and got a praise kink

but if its not absolute hell getting to that point then WHAT IS THE POINT

and all these are mostly about Narinder but don't even get me started on the Lamb's issues. That sheep thang is hiding shit.

Except I can't talk about the Lamb's hiding issues Too Much yet unless you've been in my art streams and have seen some of my comics, then IYKYK but aaaaaaaaaaUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHG

[adarkrainbow]

You might have noticed my posts have recently been centered around a same specific... wave? Circle? I don't know how to call this exactly, and I am not an expert of it all...

But there is this wave of authors and editors, a sort of loose group focusing on retelling, rewriting and twisting fairytales and folktales for a modern, adult audience, and that had their era from the 70s to the 90s. Angela Carter, Terri Windling and Tanith Lee, and all the others that came along (Jane Yolen, Charles de Lint, Neil Gaiman, Robin McKinley, Steven Brust)...

And what is truly fascinating, at least for me, is that this is where the thing we call today the "Grimmification" seems to come from. (At least within the English-speaking world)

Today the process of "Grmmification" (as TV Tropes named it) has earned a certain reputation for being a cheap and gratuitous way of offering in a superficial way an edgy, pseudo-anti-conformism, with just a desire to oppose Disney and not true appreciation and care for the original fairytales. You know, a reputation that was gathered by big blockbusters like "Snow White and the Huntsman" or "Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters", or by B-horror movies (the Asylum's fairytale horrors), or by massive pin-up comic publications (Grimm Fairy Tales)... Of course there's a lot of "grimmified" pieces that nuance this a lot by showing a lot of poetry, beauty and art in their harshness, trauma and gore (Pan's Labyrinth, Changeling the Lost) or by just being embraced by the Internet (Gretel and Hansel, Neverafter, The Grimm Variations). But still, you know what I am talking about. We are in an era re-embracing the romance, the humor and the epic within fairytales, a time of re-evaluating positively classic Disney movies and other childhood productions, a much more colorful, optimistic, un-edgy time compared to the boom of dark, edgy, "grimmification" of the 2000s and 2010s. Ended is the generation of McFarlane's Twisted Fairy Tales or of DeviantArt's Twisted Disney Princesses (sorry I forgot who the creator of this series was).

And so, in front of the... I'll say "soft backlash" against the Grimmification process, it is quite fascinating for me to see that the root of this unofficial movement, or the first modern manifestation of this "phenomenon" was the previously described wave/circle of authors. This women-driven wave of authors (Carter, Lee, Windling and Datlow clearly led the dance) who were the first to truly bring all of what we associate with "Grimmification" (making things darker, more violent, the tales more frightening or bloody, bringing Gothic horror or harsh realism to fairytales, sliding in more sexuality and eroticism, openly standing in opposition and rejection of Disney's pop culture version of fairytales)... But out of a movement that...

... stood up for the perpetuation of the art of fairytales ("modern fairytales")

... defended feminist principles (putting the female characters at the heart of the story, highlighting the trauma they had to go through, deconstructing harmful fairytale stereotypes and cliches for women)

... embraced the idea of fairytale as a product for adults (they were the leaders of complexifying and deepening fairytales into a true "fairytale fantasy")

... stood up with queerness (part of the eroticism and sexuality of these tales was also to include lesbianism, homosexuality and a much more open and honest look at sexuality)

... and encouraged research and exploration of the history of fairytales (exploration of Perrault's text versus Disney ; presentation of the alternate versions and uncensored versions of the Grimm's stories) and of other cultural folktales than those traditionally known (exploration of Asian, Russian, African tales...).

And all of these things, that are still thinks people are looking for today in fairytale retellings, came hand in hand with the blood and the gore, the vile and the rape, the dark and the disturbing. The "Grimmification".

I am not at all an expert on this time era or those publications, mind you - I am just beginning to dig into all this, and I speak from the point of view of a casual enjoyer and a researcher of "vintage" books and half-forgotten fictions. I am here doing broad generalizations and I might be dead wrong. But it is just the feeling I got - that the "Grimmification" process took root within these things... Somewhere in the dark psycho-sexual and folk-horror Gothic of the 70s, was the beginning of our modern "Grimmification".

[a-d-nox]

pac/pap: your 2026 self's advice for 2025

take what resonates leave what doesn't - nothing is 100% for you because these aren't personalized so please no angry comments or dms about what i am saying not being a good fit for you or that you "don't claim" just keep scrolling if that is the case. be kind, self reflect, and have fun.

last pac/pap: creature feature: ghost - longing and lingering

return to the masterlist of pap/pac posts

paid reading options: astrology menu & cartomancy menu

enjoy my work? help me continue creating by tipping on ko-fi or paypal. your support keeps the magic alive!

pile one

allow yourself to be curious and have new beginnings. your 2026 self urges you to explore the opportunities that ignite your passion and creativity in 2025. trust the process and remain open to learning. small steps will set you up for big transformations.

focus on finding emotional fulfillment and building meaningful relationships. your 2026 self encourages you to cherish and nurture your connections in 2025 - this will be a year where love, family, and/or community brings you immense joy. don’t take any moments for granted...

celebrate your milestones, no matter how small. your future self reminds you that 2025 will bring accomplishments and reasons to feel proud. take time to acknowledge your hard work and enjoy life’s moments of stability and harmony. whether it’s a literal homecoming or a metaphorical one, find peace in your achievements.

let go of past disappointments. your future self acknowledges that 2025 will come with emotional challenges, but advises you to not dwell on losses/mistakes. look for the silver lining in difficult situations and shift your focus to what you can still build and/or salvage. healing is key to moving forward.

balance celebration with responsibility. your 2026 self may be warning against overindulgence or leaning too heavily on social distractions. evaluate your friendships and avoid gossip / superficial connections. focus on meaningful interactions and prioritize your personal growth.

pile two

prioritize balance and adaptability. your 2026 self reminds you that 2025 will be a year of juggling multiple responsibilities, whether in work, personal life, and/or both. time management and knowing when to set boundaries is crucial. stay flexible and focus on what truly matters - don’t stretch yourself too thin.

reconnect with your inner wisdom. your future self cautions that in 2025, you may feel disconnected from your intuition / inner truth. perhaps you’ll rely too much on external validation or suppress your instincts. make time for introspection and trust the quiet, subtle messages within you. avoid ignoring red flags, both in yourself and others.

break free from limiting beliefs. your 2026 self acknowledges that you may feel stuck or trapped in 2025, but reminds you that much of this is mental. the power to free yourself lies within - often you are the thing that stops you from feeling free. whether fear, self-doubt, and/or external pressures - and start taking steps to regain control. small acts of courage can dissolve large barriers.

seek structure and wisdom. your future self advises you to lean into tradition, mentorship, and/or a belief system in 2025 to ground yourself. perhaps this means returning to foundational practices, getting guidance from a teacher, and/or establishing a more disciplined approach to life. ensure you’re not blindly following authority either; question what aligns with your values.

embrace endings as a path to renewal. your 2026 self reminds you that while some parts of 2025 may feel difficult or final, these endings are paving the way for new beginnings. release what no longer serves you, even if it’s painful. trust that you’re shedding what’s necessary to step into a stronger, wiser version of yourself.

pile three

take control and stay determined. your 2026 self encourages you to approach 2025 with focus and willpower. even when obstacles arise, remind yourself of your goals and push forward. balance your emotions and logic to maintain control over your direction. success will come when you stay disciplined and driven.

reevaluate what truly makes you happy. your future self warns that in 2025, you may find yourself chasing goals that don’t align with your authentic desires. reflect on what “wish fulfillment” means to you and avoid settling for superficial happiness. true satisfaction comes from within, not from external validation.

proceed with caution and assess risks. your 2026 self advises you to be mindful of impulsive decisions in 2025. while new beginnings are on the horizon, take the time to plan and evaluate. avoid leaping into situations without considering potential consequences. trust in fresh starts but approach them with care.

let go of resistance to change. your future self sees that 2025 may challenge your ability to release old patterns or beliefs. if you find yourself feeling stuck, it’s likely because you’re resisting a necessary shift in perspective. surrender to the process, even if it feels uncomfortable. true growth comes from seeing things in a new light.

seize new opportunities for stability and growth. your 2026 self celebrates the tangible opportunities coming your way in 2025. whether it’s a career, financial, and/or personal project, there is a fresh start with the potential for long-term success. stay grounded, work hard, and nurture this new beginning - it has the power to flourish.

[dorkydegeneracy]

Let's get some things very straight (LOL) about that ICONIC Buddie argument last night.

Eddie WAS NOT the aggressor in this altercation. In fact, Buck was in a mood before Eddie even entered the kitchen. Eddie asked why Buck had gone grocery shopping when he had previously promised to do so himself. He was asking a question. Buck's whole demeanor suggested he was clearly bothered: "I was out. It's fine." Obviously a chippy response to which Eddie replied "It doesn't feel like it's fine." Because he knows Buck. And he obviously wasn't fine. Granted, Buck had reason to be upset: he was the last person to find out that Eddie had been offered the job in El Paso. Under normal circumstances, Buck would have been the first person to know.

However, these are obviously not normal circumstances. Bobby is dead. Eddie explains why he didn't tell Buck. His reasoning isn't because he believes Buck is selfish. Yes, Eddie is being petty here. It was kinda a shitty thing to say (although that might have been THE LINE of the year, so I am so glad that he said it), to which he later admits. However, his reasoning is a little deeper than that, and easy to discern if you listen to what he says: "You've been spiralling. Since the funeral. And no one knows how to talk to you about it."

This harkens back to Eddie's conversation with Hen and Karen earlier in the episode. Buck is presenting a façade that he is okay by trying to take care of everybody else, as Bobby requested of him. Asking weird ass grief questions. But the people who love him. The person who loves him, wants him to drop the act and actually process his own grief.

Add all of that, to the fact that Eddie is trying to process his own grief and one would understand Eddie's reaction to Buck stating (in an equally petty manner, I might add) "Sorry I'm sad that Bobby is dead." NO SHIT SHERLOCK! Note that in this instance, by saying that, Buck is explicitly thinking about his own feelings and not considering the feelings of his family who are also grieving. That is definitionally selfish. Eddie, rightly responds "You're not the only one that lost him! We all lost him." Because he is trying to let Buck know that the way to help is not through stupid psych evaluations; it is by talking about how each other is feeling.

Buck: "Yeah, I know."

Eddie: "Really? Because you never asked what it was like."

Eddie then proceeds to explain his emotions about Bobby's death.

And let's make it even more clear: Eddie WAS NEVER going to hit Buck. He would never hit Buck. He grabs his shoulder and points his little finger in his face. It's a call back to their grocery store altercation.

Unlike Buck, who puts up a façade as a way to avoid processing grief, Eddie's grief manifests as anger. That was the whole point of his street fighting plot line. He used fighting as a way to blow off steam. The problem with the street fighting wasn't that he was fighting: it was that he was doing so in an illegal underground ring. That story was never meant to characterize Eddie as a violent person. Because Eddie is not a violent person. He uses his passion for MMA as an outlet. Not everybody who knows MMA is a violent person. The opposite is actually true. Very few MMA fighters are violent people. It's an art. Just like dancing or figure skating.

Buck then apologizes to Eddie, acknowledging his TEMPORARY moment of selfishness. Eddie then expresses that he has yet to forgive himself for not being there.

"If I was there, could I have made a difference."

Buck misinterprets this statement as Eddie believing that Buck didn't do everything he could to save Bobby's life.

That's not what Eddie is saying at all. What he does say in response is

"I don't know Buck. I wasn't there."

Eddie hates that he wasn't there to save Bobby's life. Which is a large, and understandable, part of his grief.

The whole theme of this conversation is that these two are not communicating. Had they done so, they would not be upset at each other. Obviously, it is hard to effectively communicate during times of grief. So in reality, both Buck and Eddie are at fault here. Both have valid motivations behind their words and actions here. This is what grief does. It makes you act irrationally or out of character.

Yet, their miscommunication pre-existed Bobby's death: It started when Eddie decided to leave for El Paso. And the reason they were not communicating then is because neither of them understand or want to admit their feelings regarding the move. These feelings are that of love, which neither party is willing to admit yet. Yet.

Next week might be the first opportunity for either of them to voice those feelings.

[chanranghaeys]

📝 here, there, and everywhere

This journal belongs to: me. If found, please contact this number. (And please do not read it—unless you want to read the ramblings of a person who fails to deny their feelings for a certain someone.)

pairing: lee chan x gn!reader word count: 2.5k+ genre: fluff for (belated) happy chan day and carat day! rating: pg tags: college friends, they grew up, time skips between entries, mutual pining, happy (open) ending, stream of consciousness, excessive italics, please read the whole thing as if it were a private journal of sorts warnings: mentions of alcohol, death of a family member (brief mention, off the page)

a/n: this is a self-indulgent piece on my ultimate crush and the love of my (kpop) life, lee chan. i can’t keep denying you, so here we go. in an alternate universe, you would’ve been my best friend that i loved to hate and hated to love, until one of us finally gave in to our feelings and hoped for the best. happy birthday chan! you’ve given me nothing but color in my life ever since i became a carat. i wish you all the beautiful flower paths ahead ✨

. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁ masterlist . ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁

✎﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏

Dear Chan,

You must think me pathetic if you ever found one of these letters.

It sucks…this little crush I’ve discovered I have on you. And I am only saying this ONCE on the page. And to no one else. Because when you talk about a crush, it only grows, right?

So I'll just talk about it to myself.

I hate crushes because they are so unexplainable. They’re unexplainable feelings that latch on to you so hard and never let you go until you fumble and mess up and just make an utter fool of yourself.

I first found out I had a crush on you last month.

I had long admired you from afar through your dancing. You’re beautiful when you dance—in the zone, focused, bursting with energy. I’m genuinely jealous of how you can do the things you do with your body, how you tell such beautiful stories with every little move you make.

But it was that time during a production runthrough—the simultaneous evaluations—where you made that one mistake almost fatal to your team on that one sequence you spent weeks perfecting.

Yet there you were onstage, just laughing it off. So instead of your team being anxious or frustrated, they just laughed along with you.

It turned out to be the best performance of the night, your laughing played off as banter and camaraderie by the guest audiences.

That’s when I first felt the intense grip of this thing called feelings on my poor little heart.

Absolutely disgusting.

Anyway.

This “writing letters I'll never send to you” is all just for me to really process all these feelings I’ve discovered for you. No other reason aside from that. In my head, this is a form of acknowledgment so I can easily get over whatever this is.

So yeah. Feelings. A crush. On you—someone younger than me—of all people. I can’t believe it.

Yours truly,

Me

— ✐ᝰ.ᐟ —

Dear Chan,

We were crossing the street when you suddenly held my hand. You did that to pull me to the other side of the road farther from the direction of the car.

“Be careful,” you said.

I shouldn’t feel special. Maybe you do this with everyone else anyway.

I hate how I can’t help but feel just a teensy bit special. Indulge me on this.

Yours truly,

Me

— ✐ᝰ.ᐟ —

Dear Chan,

I hate how you’re so stubborn. I hate how you’re so passionate. I hate how you’re such an amazing dancer. If I didn’t know better, I’d be so goddamn jealous of you.

Well, maybe I already am.

But above all that, I feel so in awe of you.

I hate how amazing you are in everything you do.

I hate how you’re actually inspiring me to be a better person. Little by little.

You’re inspiring me to be more diligent, to work harder, to believe in myself and my artistry way more than I ever thought I could—even through the infinite doubts.

Because that’s what you do to me.

“You can do it!” you said. “I’ll be right in the audience cheering for you, too. Because you’re my number one supporter, I’ll also be your number one supporter.”

I hate how you’re right. Why do you always have to be right?

Yours truly,

Me

— ✐ᝰ.ᐟ —

Dear Chan,

I don’t get it. I really don’t.

I don’t understand why you would do such things to me and for me.

It was such a simple and offhand remark.

“Is that a new necklace?” you asked.

“Nah,” I replied.

“It’s pretty. I don’t usually see you wearing that necklace. Where's the other one? The silver one with the daisy pendants?”

It was only because that one—my favorite one—broke and I didn’t have the time to have it fixed yet. Too busy with org scheds.

And you know what you said?

“Give it to me. I’ll have it fixed.”

What in the actual—

You didn’t have to do it, Chan.

Yet there I was, handing over my most prized possession...to you, my...friend.

You better give it back to me fixed, or else.

Yours truly,

Me

— ✐ᝰ.ᐟ —

Dear Chan,

We’re in the library pretending to study for this godforsaken exam. I’ve practically given up on it.

(lol just kidding I can’t do that)

So we’re on a break. You’re sitting right in front of me, writing something down in your own notebook. Good thing the tables are a bit wide. I really wish that you won’t be able to see your name plastered on top of this page.

I never pegged you for someone who writes. In my head, I will take this as my own influence over you after my constant stories of how journaling and writing is such a simple thing that can heal you so easily and thoroughly.

Maybe my influence, and Seungkwan’s as well. At least he’s a good influence.

It was so funny, even, how you made a huge show of showcasing your little black notebook. When you opened it, I saw that it was already bookmarked at the halfway point.

So you do write. You have been writing.

Stop making my crush on you grow. Stop.

Yours truly,

Me

— ✐ᝰ.ᐟ —

Dear Chan,

You were so drunk last night. I don’t think you’ll remember any of it today.

But I remember everything crystal clear.

You’ve had how many bottles of soju at that point. You slung your arm around me and leaned your head on my shoulder. Never mind how fast my heart was beating at that point. Whether from alcohol, or you know what, I will never know.

You told me, “You’re my best friend. You know that, right?”

Your best friend.

A friend.

A stake to the heart would’ve hurt less, in my opinion.

But then again, better a best friend than nothing at all.

I wish I was as drunk as you were last night. Maybe I could forget that one sentence and just carry on living as if this thing between us is nothing.

As if us holding hands the entire night last night under the guise of you “needing a steady hand to hold so you wouldn't fall because you were drunk as hell” is no indication of any thing.

Whatever this thing is.

Sincerely,

Me

— ✐ᝰ.ᐟ —

Dear Chan,

I promised not to write anymore—believe me I tried. We’re best friends, right?

Best friends meet up for breakfast before going separate ways for the day, right?

Best friends make sure to ask if you’re home at the end of every day, right?

Best friends have random snacks or your go-to pick-me-up drink delivered to you when they know you’re having a terrible day, right?

Best friends do that, right?

Even if they’re both in separate relationships already?

I’m so confused. I shouldn’t be, but I can’t make it make sense.

Maybe it’s just me and these lingering and unresolved feelings. I hate them.

Yours truly,

Me

— ✐ᝰ.ᐟ —

Dear Chan,

Thank you for meeting me as soon as I called. Thank you for holding me as my world fell apart. Thank you for comforting me even as my tears fell. Thank you for being reliable. Thank you for giving me my comfort ice cream. Thank you for helping me through this breakup even though I know you’re on the brink of your own.

Thank you for being a friend—my friend.

Thank you for always catching me whenever I fall.

Yours truly,

Me

— ✐ᝰ.ᐟ —

Dear Chan,

I’m sorry about the breakup…or am I?

I’m not too sad about it, I’m sorry. I always knew they were a bit off for you. But I hope I’ve been the right kind of friend that you need right now.

Or however you need me. I'll be here for you, the same way you were for me. You know that right?

I know you held back a few tears when we were at the cafe earlier. You loved them, for sure. I know how far you go for love—that's how true your love is.

But you should've seen the look in your eyes. It tells me you’re not too too sad about it either.

Or maybe it’s just me.

Yeah, definitely just me.

Maybe it was more of me wanting to see the spark in your eyes again after you kept denying that it had been gone for so long.

Yours truly,

Me

— ✐ᝰ.ᐟ —

Dear Chan,

You should've seen your face earlier. It was so…

With all of your hip-hop and R&B playlists, I never pegged you to be one to appreciate any of the oldies.

“This is my favorite Beatles song,” I said.

You immediately stopped scrolling the phone hidden behind the book reading the book in your hand to listen to “Here, There, and Everywhere” playing from the cafe's tinny speakers, straining to make it out above the chatter of the establishment.

You said you'll pull up the lyrics to read, and as you did, the smile on your face grew ever so slowly with every word that your eyes traveled to. You started to slightly bob your head to the beat while mouthing some of the lyrics as the song continued on.

Okay, fine, I was watching you. You didn't notice anyway.

“It’s a great song,” you said. You looked up with this sense of meaning in your eyes. I feel like mine had a look of question marks in them.

Your fingers danced on your phone. I’m sure you added it to one of your playlists. Well, I hope.

Yours truly,

Me

— ✐ᝰ.ᐟ —

Dear Chan,

This is the last letter I’ll write. I promise.

It’s graduation tomorrow. If you give me nothing and nothing happens within the next month of tomorrow, I will stop this nonsense and maybe try to finally get over these feelings I seem to have for you.

Whatever it is.

I just…don’t think I can bring myself to do it first.

Yours truly,

Me

— ✐ᝰ.ᐟ —

Dear Chan,

This is so random but you just suddenly crossed my mind. And I remembered this notebook full of so-called "unsent letters to you."

I wonder how you are and if you're doing okay. I don't know why we grew apart after graduation. I just...I don't know. I can't even think about it without my head aching.

It does kind of feel like there's a hollow void in the shape of you somewhere in my body, particularly somewhere around my chest area.

(nope, I won't say it)

I hope you're doing alright.

Yours truly,

Me

— ✐ᝰ.ᐟ —

Dear Chan,

I can’t believe you came. It's been five years since we saw each other, three since we last spoke, yet you came—the person I least expected to see in the wake.

I never thought there'd be another letter but how could I not write anything?

I didn’t realize how painful and heavy it was to lose my grandfather until you hugged me. You were the first one to see my tears. You were the only one brave enough to hold my broken pieces without caring if you'd get cut by my sharp edges.

How you were able to do it even after all these years will forever be a mystery to me.

Thank you for catching me before I further shattered myself.

Yours truly,

Me

— ✐ᝰ.ᐟ —

Dear Chan,

I’m still reeling from recent events.

It was so nice to see you again last night, though. Thanks for dragging me out of my apartment. It’s been so long since we went out like that, just for some frozen yogurt, which naturally turned into a few drinks because after all, it’s still the two of us together.

But good lord help me, I’m still in a daze. How can I be normal when I just dropped the biggest truth bomb of my life thus far?

I told you, “Maybe I’ve always wondered what it would be like if we ever tried before.”

But you know what you said? You know what you frickin’ said?

“I wish you told me earlier. Why didn’t you?”

Well, why didn’t you??????

I swear I could’ve combusted on the spot if I could. I swear I just said that so I could finally let go of this weight from my chest.

But you know what you did?

You walked me home. You made sure I was safe.

And then you visited this morning with coffee and breakfast to nurse the drinks from last night.

You’re just outside my room right now, sitting on my small couch, playing Beatles songs from the speakers. You’re waiting for me to finish whatever I’m doing here because you’re taking me out to see this movie I told you I wanted to watch. Why?

“We have to make up for lost time,” you said.

Chan, what are you doing? Just tell me so I know what I should do.

What do I do with you now?

Yours truly,

Me

— ✐ᝰ.ᐟ —

Happy Chan Day!

I hate you.

I wish you told me about your party earlier! I mean, even hours earlier, not like an hour or two right before.

Okay, I know it’s a spontaneous birthday party and all—I GET IT. But please tell your friends to at least invite your other friends beforehand? So we can also prep stuff for you, okay? I moved around so many schedules for this—for your party. How could I not?

So I hope you’ll forgive me for not preparing your gift yet. I was planning to get it in the coming days when my sched was relatively freer. Still, I’m really, truly sorry for not getting you a gift. I know you like getting gifts because you like giving them as well.

You know, it’s your birthday, yet you were the one who said something that was almost like a gift to me.

You said, “Don’t bother with the gift. As long as you’re here with me, I don’t really need anything else.”

Chan, I still hate you. I think.

Yours truly,

Me

— ✐ᝰ.ᐟ —

Dear Chan,

I’ve come to the harrowing realization that I’m in love with you.

No scratch that. I love you. Throughout all these years, I’ve always loved you.

How’s that for a hit-me-with-a-firetruck realization?

Yours truly (I wish),

Me

— ✐ᝰ.ᐟ —

Dear Chan,

Do not laugh at me. Do not be condescending. Do not dismiss me—your best friend. Do not leave me hanging. Just…do not.

When I show you this, just don’t.

Just read it.

Yours truly,

Me

— ✐ᝰ.ᐟ —

Hey, you.

If only you knew how many pages I’ve written about you. Glad to know I’m not the only one doing so.

It started on that day we were in the library. I’d already written about so many things, but that was the first time I ever wrote about you. I’ve never stopped writing since.

And even in pages full of you writing about me, I still write about you.

You’ve always been here, there, and everywhere to me.

Yours, truly and only yours,

Chan

✎﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏

NOW PLAYING: seventeen's playlist - song # 2

“To lead a better life / I need my love to be here // … // Will be there and everywhere / Here, there and everywhere”

[broooooo]

Revenge

What is it that makes a human will? Why is it that we try so hard to be something unique when the world is against us.

The world of drones has ... Expanded to say the least. I watch the willing and unwilling get stripped of all identity , to then be braced in a latex to act as a new skin, all the while their previous life is erased and a new programing is set, so they are obedient and horny, a perfect drone, the final stage is a perpetually hard cock, leaking black cum..

It's almost unreal to watch it happen. It's scary, yet intriguing.

I am no one special, I'm hunter, a skinny guy trying to make ends meet in a dingy small apartment, my so called family, who are rich and have power, kicked me out long ago, I have nothing to my name, while they relax in a big house. It angers me.. I'd do anything to watch them suffer..

I laugh at the thought.. but realize it's not so I realistic .. if I could send a drone to them.. I could watch them fall

I day dream over the idea, to watch them fall into a robotic obedient drones... Would be so funny.. but then a nock at the door wakes me from my say dream.

"Oh.... Ik thosr nocks, I thought I'd never get them"

I walk over to my door and peek though the spyhole , a black figure, shiny, muscular.. a drone..

I open the door, witnessing the mighty of this being, it's throbbing dick, it's muscles, I look at it's featureless black face.

"A drone... Hello"

*Greetings. Human, It is drone 6978 it has come to evaluate you*

"Oh i see.. well I before that.. I have a request for you and your hive"

*What might that be human?*

"My stuck up snobby rich family.. left me to rot , they wanted nothing to do with me. They live comfortably in a large house while I suffer here with a dead end job and worn rags as clothes,

I would do anything to see them fall, I want revenge" a fire in my eyes

The drone processes the Information I have given it

*Human.. your order has been processed. It will be done. But one has to repay the hive for this request*

I grin wickedly at the drones words

"Well.. I look forward to watching their overdue transformation, but please.. I want them to suffer.. I want them the lowest of the low...

Are there ranks to this hive?"

The drone processes my question

*Affirmative human. There are ranks., combatant is the lowest, what you ask is for your family to be combatants?*

"Perfect..." Grins evily

"Now.. as for my payment... " I look around my small apartment for a breaf moment.. taking in the mess, the clothes, remembering the struggle.. yeah I was done with it all"

"I take it the payment is my own transformation into. Drone? Well as long as I'm a higher rank than a combatant. I'll go with you"

The drone processes the information

*It understands, your order has been processed and complete, we must proceed with your payment*

The next few moments? It's felt like a eternity of pleasure. I let the drone fuck my ass with it's leaking latex hard cock., the pleasure was intense.. my cock was hard and leaking

"Assimilation begun, it will become a drone.."

Like a chant , a echo.. it's words ring in my head, the pleasure taking over, my body beging to expand. Mucles growing.. black latex spreading all over .. drone... Drone... Must .. obey... Obedient... , I can hear the mantra.. I repeat it.. it must repeat it...

Black boots form on my feet, my cock getting bigger and starting to leak black cum.. my face and head beeping covered in latex. Becoming smooth and shiny.

The reprogramming coming to an end. One was a drone. It was a drone. It must obey

*Assimilation almost done. Stand up drone*

I stand up gettingy bareings

*It's designation is drone 4576. , repeat repeat*

My cock throbbing and mind reshaping as the pleasure builds

"It is drone 4576, it is a drone. It must obey. It must serve. It must assimilate. It must cum.."

My mind reshapes and my cock explodes with black cum , and with perpetual leak of pre cum

*Assimilation complete , it is a hunter drone , one of us. We hunt for new humans to assimilate, we are a high rank ,repeat repeat*

"It is a hunter drone, it understands"

Both our cocks throb as my programming sets in as I get it's first order

**Assimilate a rich family into combatants**

Since it doesn't remember ones past life, it doesn't realize this is it's doing, but it must do the order.. it must obey

*Let's depart. Drone*

We walk away, two drones ready to hunt

"

I hope this is an alright story 😅 long time no see !

[nerdgirlnarrates]

Even though it's been months since I switched from neurosurgery to internal medicine, I still have a hard time not being angry about the training culture and particularly the sexism of neurosurgery. It wasn't the whole reason I switched, but truthfully it was a significant part of my decision.

I quickly got worn out by constantly being questioned over my family plans. Within minutes of meeting me, attendings and residents felt comfortable lecturing me on the difficulties of having children as a neurosurgeon. One attending even suggested I should ask my co-residents' permission before getting pregnant so as not to inconvenience them. I do not have children and have never indicated if I plan to have any. Truthfully, I do want children, but I would absolutely have foregone that to be a neurosurgeon. I wanted to be a neurosurgeon more than anything. But I was never asked: it was simply assumed that I would want to be a mother first. Purely because I'm a woman, my ambitions were constantly undermined, assumed to be lesser than those of my male peers. Women must want families, therefore women must be less committed. It was inconceivable that I might put my career first. It was impossible to disprove this assumption: what could I have done to demonstrate my commitment more than what I had already done by leading the interest group, taking a research year, doing a sub-I? My interest in neurosurgery would never be viewed the same way my male peers' was, no matter what I did. I would never be viewed as a neurosurgeon in the same way my male peers would be, because I, first and foremost, would be a mother. It turns out women don't even need to have children to be a mother: it is what you essentially are. You can't be allowed to pursue things that might interfere with your potential motherhood.

Furthermore, you are not trusted to know your own ambitions or what might interfere with your motherhood. I am an adult woman who has gone to medical school: I am well aware of what is required in reproduction, pregnancy, and residency, as much as one can be without experiencing it firsthand. And yet, it was always assumed that I had somehow shown up to a neurosurgery sub-I totally ignorant of the demands of the career and of pregnancy. I needed to be enlightened: always by men, often by childless men. Apparently, it was implausible that I could evaluate the situation on my own and come to a decision. I also couldn't be trusted to know what I wanted: if I said I wanted to be a neurosurgeon more than a mother, I was immediately reassured I could still have a family (an interesting flip from the dire warnings issued not five minutes earlier in the conversation). People could not understand my point, which was that I didn't care. I couldn't mean that, because women are fundamentally mothers. I needed to be guided back to my true role.

Because everyone was so confident in their sexist assumptions that I was less committed, I was not offered the same training, guidance, or opportunities as the men. I didn't have projects thrown my way, I didn't get check-ins or advice on my application process, I didn't get opportunities in the OR that my male peers got, I didn't get taught. I once went two whole days on my sub-I without anyone saying a word to me. I would come to work, avoid the senior resident I was warned hated trainees, figure out which OR to go to on my own, scrub in, watch a surgery in complete silence without even the opportunity to cut a knot, then move to the next surgery. How could I possibly become a surgeon in that environment? And this is all to say nothing of the rape jokes, the advice that the best way for a woman to match is to be as hot as possible, listening to my attending advise the male med students on how to get laid, etc.

At a certain point, it became clear it would be incredibly difficult for me to become a neurosurgeon. I wouldn't get research or leadership opportunities, I wouldn't get teaching or feedback, I wouldn't get mentorship, and I wouldn't get respect. I would have to fight tooth and nail for every single piece of my training, and the prospect was just exhausting. Especially when I also really enjoyed internal medicine, where absolutely none of this was happening and I even had attendings telling me I would be good at it (something that didn't happen in neurosurgery until I quit).

I've been told I should get over this, but I don't know how to. I don't know how to stop being mad about how thoroughly sidelined I was for being female. I don't know how to stop being bitter that my intelligence, commitment, and work ethic meant so much less because I'm a woman. I know I made the right decision to switch to internal medicine, and it probably would have been the right decision even if there weren't all these issues with the culture of neurosurgery, but I'm still so angry about how it happened.

[transmutationisms]

So, I’m becoming increasingly interested anti-psychiatry but there is one thing I’m really struggling with that I’m wondering if is something that you’ve ever struggled with/been bothered by or had to find some way to deal with. I have a brother who doesn’t believe in mental health. Like, the concept of mental well-being. He doesn’t believe in medication or therapy either. But, he also doesn’t believe in germ theory, or vaccinations, or frankly, most science. He isn’t explicitly a flat earther but he also argues that it hasn’t been proven either. For most of my life, I’ve argued with him about the mental health stuff because I’ve struggled with depression and adhd (or, I guess, the handbag of symptoms that gets called depression and adhd). I’ve had to insist “No, I can’t just go for a walk,” and “No, I don’t just need a planner.” So now here I am, learning about anti-psychiatry, finding a lot of it resonates with me, and also finding out a lot of what I have been told is scientifically proven, is not scientifically proven at all (like schizophrenia being genetic, for example). I guess what I’m asking is, is my brother right in this specific issue? Is the concept of mental health or mental well-being bullshit? And whether it is or isn’t, do you ever find it difficult to reconcile that being anti-psychiatry is going to make you look like an anti-scientific conspiracy theorist? I’ve had this same thing happen to me with fat-acceptance and still struggle with the fact that if I try to explain to anybody that the way we’ve been taught weight loss and weight gain work, and the way we perceive fat medically is largely false or unproven, people look at me like I said the moon-landing was faked. It’s especially difficult because I’m a teacher at a university and I feel like I have no choice but to just play along there when these things come up, or else my credibility as a teacher could be drawn into question.

right so this is rather precisely the problem with treating Science as intrinsically an arbiter of Objective Truth lol -- you can't just make metastructural rules about how to know when a scientific assertion is true, you do actually have to evaluate what is being argued & on what evidentiary basis. science is a human form of knowledge-production & it is fallible to the same biases and ideological commitments and weaknesses as any other human inquiry, & the scientific establishment can and sometimes does rally behind all kinds of nonsense -- like psychiatry. the difference between psychiatry and germ theory isn't that psychiatric claims are structured differently or are patently nonsense on the surface, it's that the underlying epistemological principles of psychiatry are circular, the evidence is consequently lacking & always will be, & its assertions continue to be clung to & defended because they are economically useful whereas germ theory has an extremely robust evidentiary base supporting assertions that are demonstrable & have borne out in both lab and real-world observations & trials. incidentally, treating germ theory like it must be true simply because Science Says So is imo not in fact good for scientific literacy & communication bc it results in many people having very little understanding of how to defend or evaluate it when it's on the ideological-hygienic chopping block. & it also leads many people to vastly misunderstand the incredibly slow & piecemeal process by which germ theory was even assimilated into mainstream scientific thinking in the first place: hygienists for decades after pasteur were perfectly capable of 'accepting germ theory' while in practice operating off a number of environmental-miasmatic principles, smth i would argue many people still do in practice today. im sorry i don't have a generically Im Pro Science answer for you here, i don't actually think science should be exempted from the same rigour & consideration we apply to literally any other form of inquiry and knowledge-production.

[solnerao]

Lena

"Lena Luthor?"

A man stood before Lena. He was in his 50s, balding, and wore a pair of thick spectacles. He was staring down at a clipboard.

"Here we go— Lena Luthor, born October 24, 1994," He said.

Lena looked around. She was standing in a featureless white void, nothing in sight except herself and the man in front of her.

"Where am I?"

"Where—" The man looked up at Lena. "Have I not given you the— hold on". He flipped a few pages on his clipboard and began reading in a dull monotone. "Welcome to the afterlife. Yes, you are dead. No, this is not heaven. No, this is not hell. I am a higher dimensional being here to help place you into an appropriate afterlife experience. No, I am not an angel. No, I am not a demon. Please hold all questions until the end." He flipped back to his previous clipboard page.

"If you're a higher dimensional being, why do you have a British accent?" Lena asked.

"Oh, we find this process goes faster if we present as someone you find slightly irritating." He said, "Fewer questions this way."

"Why does it matter how long it takes? Is time even real here?"

The man looked up from his clipboard in irritation.

"Okay fine, sorry. Continue"

"Thank you. Alright, let's see what you got up to." The man began mumbling off events in Lena's life one after another. "Moved to National City… saved the world from your mother… very good, very good… helped save the world that time as well… black Kryptonite, hmm…"

Lena stared incredulously at the being who would decide her fate.

"…then you trapped your soulmate in some sort of castle on the south pole…"

"Hold on, who says she's my soulmate?"

"…even though she was just trying to help you…"

"Do soulmates even exist?"

"Yes, they do." The man said factually, looking up. "Says she's your soulmate right here" He turned his clipboard around to face Lena. The page he had been reading from was completely unintelligible to human eyes, a mass of incomprehensible symbols and characters that swirled and shifted across its surface. The man turned the clipboard back around, apparently satisfied he had proven his point, and returned to mumbling his way through Lena's accomplishments.

"…attempted to reprogram the consciousness of everyone on earth… well, everyone needs a hobby I suppose but that wasn't very…"

"I was trying to help." Lena protested "Trying to fix humanity."

"That was your first mistake." The man said without looking up. "And then you were killed by a…" The man flipped to the next page. "Space laser. In a secret mountain hideout. Well, might as well go out with a bang."

"Is my life just a joke to you?" Lena was starting to raise her voice. "Who are you to judge me anyway?"

"It's my job." He said, still not looking up. He seemed completely unfazed by this outburst.

"It's easy for you, you don't know what it's like down there." Lena was yelling now. "I had nobody. My whole life, I was alone. The only person who ever stood up for me, ever believed in me at all was Kara, and I—"

Lena paused as her anger melted and settled into a pit in her stomach.

"—and I hurt her. The only person who was there for me."

She turned away from the man and stared off into the void.

"My soulmate."

Lena collapsed into a sitting position.

"Kara."

Noticing that Lena had finished talking, the man began to explain something about evaluation criteria. Lena had stopped listening. She considered taking off into the void, looking for some way back, some way to fix things. But she knew it was futile. She was dead. She was—

Lena's train of thought was cut off by the sound of a phone ringing. Lena looked up. An early 20th century wall telephone had materialized in midair next to the spectacled man. He didn't seem particularly surprised, but stopped talking and picked up the earpiece.

"Hello?" He said, still sounding bored. "Yes, she's here."

Lena stared up from what was either the floor or the ground, depending on if boundless voids counted as outside.

"What?" Now he was surprised. Irritated, even. "The Lazarus Pit? I thought we agreed to stop giving them ways to do this."

Lena tried not to enjoy his frustration.

"What do you mean grandfathered in?"

He sighed in exasperation at whatever his colleague was saying on the other end.

"Fine. But you're doing all the paperwork for this." He said finally, hanging up the earpiece with slightly more force than necessary.

"Alright." He said, looking back at Lena, "Some soulmate you've got there."

"What?"

"Off you go." Said the man, and clapped once. Everything went dark.

Lena opened her eyes. She was floating in cool water, staring up at iridescent blue light dancing across a dark cave ceiling. A pair of strong arms supported her floating body, holding her head out of the water.

"Lena?" Kara's concerned voice echoed around the cave.

"Kara." Lena tried to straighten up but found herself sitting in Kara's arms, looking up at her soulmate.

"Lena, are you okay?" Kara met Lena's gaze "I thought I lost you. I'm sorry—"

"No, I'm sorry." Said Lena, cutting Kara off. "For everything. Can we start over?"

"Of course we can." Kara said softly. "Just stay with me."

Lena rested her head against Kara's shoulder and breathed deeply. "Always." Lena promised.

[pzychojinx]

so, jinx in act one of season two. see, for three years i expected a full on descent into chaos and madness beyond any repair. i'd made peace with that, too. so i'm surprised - pleasantly, joyfully surprised.

very long analysis ahead on where they're taking her and how it speaks to me.

we first meet her again during silco's eulogy sequence - a beautiful sequence, halfway between dreamlike and real. "just like when vander shoved off", she says about his death. except it's not. after vander's death, after vi's perceived abandonment, everything jinx could feel was self-centered. she would say "she's not my sister anymore". she would devalue these people entirely. in fact, every single reaction to any action done by her loved ones would be self-centered and extreme. that is very much how her mental process works, how her trauma caused her to work. and more so: when silco would ask of her any work, any mission, she'd do the job purely for his sake, his affection, his approval, never caring about the cause.

in short, she was never able to get out of her own head for as much as a single minute. now, she starts the funeral off with "chembarons warring for control of the lanes. wannabe street thugs squabbling over scraps. just like when vander shoved off." and it's not about her abandonment anymore. it's not about being left alone. it's not about her. she's talking to silco about his city, his legacy, his world, his chembarons, his lanes. she's out of her own head, and it's the first time we ever see it.

"because someone put all those holes in you", she says then. and this is so interesting because there's obviously a dissociation here, as well as a very intense grief and sadness. we are obviously still dealing with someone who's deeply traumatized and unstable, but let's compare this with powder after the deaths of vander, mylo and claggor. powder had a full breakdown, both turned into a complete de-evaluation of vi as i was mentioning earlier and full desperation. "i only wanted to help, i only wanted to help, i only wanted to help".

this chaotic desperation is something jinx kept within herself throughout the entirety of s1 up until - the tea party. which i'm getting at, in a minute. point being, for now, that the jinx we see during silco's eulogy is grieving and lost and rootless and asking herself "what am i supposed to do with that?", but she lacks the chaotic full-on desperation that would lead her to acts of explosive destruction and/or self-destruction in s1. in fact, she's incredibly quieter. she's more grounded, more present in her movements, in the way she fights, in the way she talks.

in retrospect even her final action in s1, the infamous missile, already had the energy we're seeing now. it wasn't instinctive, driven by hallucinations or trauma or rage or an unrestrained trigger; it was silco's legacy and it was calculated. silco's death, i think now, left jinx as rootless as she's ever been, but it also left her with an acceptance of who she is. "don't cry, you're perfect". the tea party ends with her 'choosing' jinx and if you'd asked me before season two, i would have said with full certainty it meant she'd be going to be a loose cannon. entirely and with no possibility of ever being anything else. that's not what i think now.

i think she came to terms with who she is. i think now that the seat at the tea party wasn't a symbol of complete derailing, it was in a way a symbol of acceptance. "here's to the new us". she's fought her fight between powder and jinx and the tea party has permitted her to gain, in some way, a sense of closure. very importantly, having lost what she perceived as vi's acceptance, and having lost a father, she has also been able to shed the constant and desperate need to be in their favor.

during the 'sucker' sequence, we see her going through the lanes with a hood on her hair, very low-key. loose cannon jinx would have never, ever done that. loose cannon jinx would, quite simply, not have cared. she would have been extra, and explosive, and in everyone's faces. she's preserving herself not to be found, and that's new. again, i think she's still lost and rootless and grieving and really asking herself what she's supposed to do now that she's entirely autonomous and i also think there's definitely still a lot of bitterness and rage when it comes to vi which we obviously get to see during their fight and in no way is she magically ~healthy or anything like that - however.

she is still walking those streets in a way that indicates self-preservation. it would have been very, very easy for jinx to be captured by any of those goons and/or got herself killed. and for some reason, whether that be an apathetic, mourning state or mind, or whether that be some gained peace in who she is, or both - she didn't.

given all this, the new element that season two act one has introduced for her that truly moved me and made me feel... healed in a sort of way, is the introduction of human bonds for jinx that defy her historical, co-dependent mechanism of idolization and de-evaluation. ergo, sevika and isha. this is incredible for her and most of all, it's realistic. it's a chance at something, but it doesn't feel forced, nor fairytale-esque, nor does it resemble your usual ~redemption arc.

sevika and isha function as people who she's building some bond with, and since she's a little bit less in her own fucking head, and since she's not clinging to them as idealized protectors / saviours and neither is she refusing them as betrayers, and since she's not constantly fighting between what she perceives as her double identity anymore, she finally has the possibility to experience healthier bonds. sevika functions as somebody who still ties her to silco, possibly the closest thing she has right now to any root she might have left, and it works: reminiscing silco with her, gifting her the arm, doesn't leave her utterly alone but neither does it let her fall into the trap of clinging onto yet another figure from whom to fully depend.

and isha, very obviously, functions as the possibility of healing her inner child which is a goldmine for her storyline. her bond with isha could clearly have a narrative tie to jinx & silco, to jinx & vi, and most importantly to jinx and powder herself - this is all quite obvious but again, it's not executed in a way that feels like a forced 'redemption arc' or whatnot. the idea of this little street kid who just imprints on her like a lost little duckling, which is in no way jinx's decision, simply feels natural and heartwarming. does this mean i presume such healing of her inner child is going to come easy to her? no. but it's something. it's something very different from anything she's ever experienced before.

even through the loss, the rootlessness, the grief and confusion, the panic attack we see her experiencing through the lanes as a consequence of the moment she sees vi and caitlyn's enforcer squad, even through the brutality of the fight with vi, - and this is all to say, she's still a very traumatized individual, which is important because it would have just been senseless to have jinx somehow get fully stable like a switch had been flipped - we're seeing something new for jinx here. i've seen many posts related to "i'm glad it's you", and i might be unpopular here but while i do think jinx still has an element of suicidality, i also think she was at least half bluffing there. comparing her micro-expressions with the ones back on the bridge fight with ekko, i'm under the impression she was testing vi, at the very least partially. "poisoning us with gas?" is also an interesting line because even in her attack at her sister, she's less focused on her own trauma and more on something that we've hardly seen from her before - belonging to the lanes.

all of this to say, i'm loving the path they're taking for her. it's still very much jinx. it feels like jinx. but she's not just about to wreak senseless and desperate havoc in order to be seen by either her sister or her father, because there's no one to be seen by anymore. she's not fighting a desperate battle between her identities either, because she's accepted her place. she's not loud and erratic, she's quieter and coming to terms with herself. closure is truly the word that comes to mind, for me, in how i see her arc right now. closure, and unexpectedly, possibility.

[sewersewersewercouch]

Microphone and ADHD: yet another very rambly analysis

GUESS WHO’S WRITING LONG TUMBLR POSTS ABOUT MIC AGAIN!!!!

i’ve been trying to formulate this post in my brain for a while and i’m finally writing it. I should add a disclaimer here: while i’ve done my own research for this, i’m also mostly writing from my own experience, which a) obviously every case of adhd is different, and b) while adhd is my only diagnosis at present, there are various other things that i’m questioning and in the process of being evaluated for which might also bleed into my experiences with adhd. If there are any issues please feel free to point them out! Also i don’t want to imply that if you don’t have adhd you can’t relate to mic, i’m just discussing the things i personally am seeing in canon. Also also, if this is weird and disjointed and rambly, well, you signed up to read a very long post by someone from adhd about blorbo from their shows.

I think what first comes to mind with Mic and ADHD traits for me is her impulsivity. This is something we see trip her up again and again—for example, when she yells at Fan in Tri Your Best, not considering how the noise could boost him into the air and ahead of her, or in Mazed and Confused, when she calls after Knife in the maze without realizing that Test Tube is in there as well. (And yes, she didn’t hear Baseball say that Test Tube was in there, but if she’d thought before she’d acted she might have considered looking around to make sure there were no Bright Lights missing as well.) Hell, another example I noticed was that during Mine Your Own Business, when Taco and Knife are arguing, Mic physically shoves Knife into the gem, and like, not gently, either—he slams into it pretty hard. It’s been pretty well established at this point that Mic is very averse to physical violence, and she definitely wouldn’t do anything like that intentionally, but the fact of the matter is, when she’s stressed like that, she just kind of makes a snap action without using her head.

This also ties into my second point, her difficulties with emotional regulation, which is something that’s very common with ADHD. I kind of struggle to describe how this shows up in Mic, because honestly, a lot of her seemingly overblown reactions are more of a “straw that breaks the camel’s back” type of situation where she takes so much shit from her teammates that obviously, who wouldn’t be upset? However, I do think it’s fair to say that she’s someone who’s quite easily frustrated, and can have a tendency to lash out quite harshly when she’s in this state. For example, in A Kick In The Right Direction, she’s pissed off about being relegated to goalie, which is fair, but she takes this out on Dough, who wasn’t involved in this decision, just because he happens to be near her, and she’s, like…pretty mean about it, too? Like, when he says he’s bored she says “so am I but not enough to talk to you” and then later flat out tells him to jump off a bridge. Yes, this second one was after he was distracting her and the Bright Lights got a goal past her, but still, it does feel like a pretty dramatic reaction. Especially as in general, Mic’s demeanor is friendly and outgoing, she clearly is someone who cares a lot about others’ well-being, and she’s just a nice person all around, but when something gets under her skin she’s immediately on the defensive and says stuff like this.

Also, just in general, Mic is very outwardly emotional. It’s one of the ways the narrative contrasts her with Taco, who for much of the story is incapable of giving up her facade, whereas Microphone is incapable of not wearing her heart on her sleeve. You can usually at any given time tell from Mic’s expressions and tone exactly what she’s feeling. This is especially noticeable as she’s frequently in a position where she has to lie, and she is…not good at it. Some of the time she falls back on the aforementioned defensiveness—for example, in Alternate Reality Show, when Suitcase asks what she’s painting and she replies, “Uh, zilch! Why are you picking today to talk to me for the first time ever?” and when Knife immediately after asks why she was late, she says, “I got other places to be? What’s it to you?” A lot of the time, though, she just gets all nervous and awkward. Adorable, undeniably, but not helpful when she’s in the position she’s in. (I was very charmed to find that she keeps this trait even after the game, what with her telling Taco to act natural and then going “Heyyyyy!!!! I, uh, found someone! :))))” as if that’s at all acting natural. Never change.) Mic feels everything very strongly, and she can’t naturally hide that like Taco can.

I also wanted to bring up Mic’s extreme sensitivity to negative feedback, or what’s often referred to as Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria—which, yes, I know that isn’t actually technically a diagnostic trait, but I would say it’s kind of an offshoot of emotional dysregulation combined with a response to being ostracised for being neurodivergent in a shitty ableist world. A lot of the time when Mic shows the traits I’ve mentioned here, and they trip her up, her teammates show her very little patience and compassion. (Baseball and Nickel are particularly guilty of this—Cheesy does it as well, but he also apologizes to her and it seems like they get along afterwards. Baseball, however, will be on thin ice until I hear a goddamn apology from him.) And while she tends to respond to their disparagement with anger externally, as mentioned above, it also clearly really upsets her in a deeper way. For all the amount she takes it out on others, she takes it out on herself tenfold: look at the words she uses to describe herself in her diary. “Annoying, harmful, random, useless, insignificant, loser.” This treatment, along with her previously mentioned sensitive emotions, make her very reactive to any form of perceived criticism or failure. Even in the finale, when she’s been through her own arc and had a while to heal from the toxic environment of the show, the image shown in the red line game shows that this is still what upsets her the most—the idea of being ignored and rejected by others.

I think this also goes the other way—she’s so sick of being disparaged that it turns into a desperation for approval and connection. This is kind of the foundation of her entire arc. I noticed this one moment in Mazed and Confused, where Taco offers to help her out and Mic says “Really? You would help me out?” as though she’s completely shocked by the idea of someone offering her help. Which makes sense—the only person who’s actually been there for her is Soap. And one could ask, why does Mic stay in her alliance with Taco? Clearly she realizes, deep down, that what she’s doing is unethical. Mic is someone who has a strong moral code that I think in most circumstances she’d care about more than the money. (Yes, I know, I know, the twist, but it’s been proven several times that contestants are more than capable of putting other things above the game. Look at Marshmallow, Clover, Lightbulb, and obviously, eventually Mic herself!) But I don’t think what keeps her pushing her cognitive dissonance down is actually anything about the money. It’s the approval she gets. Baseball, who as I’ve said is normally quite hard on her, compliments her when she does something right as a result of her cheating, and in so doing cements in her mind that cheating=people liking her. She also gets approval from Taco, which fuels this even more. And as this alliance goes on, it transforms into…well, I don’t know if I’d call it a friendship, per se, but it seems that Mic really does value Taco’s company and wants to connect with her on a more personal level, rather than just as a means to an end. This just muddies matters further, as Mic now has not only approval at stake, but also one of the few actual relationships she has in the game. It takes Taco killing two people in front of her for her to decide that’s not worth it.

I think I maybe got a little sidetracked from my point there, as I am very much wont to do, but I think this leads Mic to display some kinds of masking behavior. One facet of this is politeness/friendliness—and this is not to say that Mic isn’t genuinely an outgoing, friendly person. In my own experience, masking isn’t as cut and dry as “not acting like yourself”---rather, it’s often more putting certain, more socially acceptable aspects of one’s personality forward and suppressing the less acceptable ones. Her politeness also comes off as very stilted to me. For example, in Theft and Battery, where she says, “Guys, not to sound rude, but didn’t MePhone5S and 5C just try to kill MePhone4? Didn't this guy create them? Why would he support us if he just tried to kill us?” It seems like a weird thing to have to tack “not to sound rude” onto—it’s a completely valid and truthful point. But she’s so used to being perceived as rude that it seems she feels like she has to say that. There’s also another example I already talked about in a different post but will go back over here—in Mine Your Own Business, when Mic and Taco are trying to sneak past Knife, but Mic sneezes and then follows it up with “Sorry! ‘Scuse me!” Which, as Taco points out, isn’t something people normally do. And immediately Mic falls back on her other defense mechanism, lashing out. If you listen to what she’s saying when they’re arguing, it’s “What was I supposed to say, ‘bless me’ and bless myself? You’re the one who’s always trying to be proper, what’s your problem?” I think this moment says a lot about her—when she knows she’s messed up, she tries to cover for it with politeness, but she also doesn’t quite get the social rules right. It’s very much something that’s put on, not that comes naturally to her. (This is where I realized she has many parallels with my other favorite Cabby, but that’s a whole different can of worms.)

However, she also masks in kind of the other direction, that is, putting others down to boost herself up. The Grand Slams are not the healthiest of teams, to put it lightly, and Mic mimics the behavior she sees in others that brings them social success. For example, when she jokes to Baseball about not wanting to “pull a Balloon—” Balloon being unpopular as he is, she knows other people will find mocking him funny. And it works! Baseball laughs! She tries this again later, when she says to Knife “talk about emotional baggage” in regards to Suitcase, but this time he doesn’t respond well. Mic seems genuinely surprised at this—this method has worked for her before, so she’s put off by the fact that it doesn’t work this time. And I should say—this isn’t something Taco tells her to do. She does it entirely of her own volition.

Actually, looking at this more, it seems more like part of something she mostly does during her alliance with Taco—an unaffected, jokey front she tends to put on when she’s lying or messing with people, to…limited success, as discussed earlier, but I think she also uses it when she’s lying to herself, or trying to convince herself that what she or Taco is doing isn’t wrong. I had a few examples in mind. The first is in Kick the Bucket, right after the Nickel and Balloon double elimination, when she says, “Well, ha, what a lively experience! Well, not much to gain from sitting around and doing nothing. See ya!” It’s oddly nonchalant when clearly everyone around her is upset, and we see her look concerned for a second beforehand before she goes into this. I interpret that as her…kind of seeing that what just happened messed things up for a lot of people and that it was her fault, but she’s not ready to accept that truth yet. She also uses this affect throughout Mine Your Own Business—both with Taco, as an attempt to get her to open up, and with Knife, I think in some ways trying to mimic what Taco did to recruit her in order to do the same with him. Neither of these are successful. Knife being Knife, he’s someone who’s very able to see right through people (figuratively speaking, that is, because now people can literally see right through him! Get it? Because he’s a ghost? Please imagine the sound of Cheesy slapping his knee from somewhere in the distance). He plants seeds of doubt in Mic’s mind by telling her about Pickle—and she’s still not ready for those seeds to grow, but they certainly are there. In fact, the next time we see her use this behavior, it’s in Hatching the Plan, when she jokes that Taco will “inevitably drop me too or whatever.” She says it casually, but clearly what Knife said is still on her mind, and she’s trying to convince herself that what happened to Pickle won’t happen to her even though she doesn’t at all believe herself. I also think looking at this behavior has really clarified my view of her in the movie—at first I was frustrated at how she seemed much more calm and collected than I would have expected her to, both about the general horrors happening to everyone, and specifically about Taco. I talked about those criticisms in another post, and I do still stand by them to some extent, I would have written her differently. But I don’t think it’s as incongruent with her character as I did before—in fact, I think there’s plenty of precedent for her masking like that in situations of greatly conflicted emotion. (Oddly enough, I think it’s something she has in common with Taco, but Taco’s just better with it.) I kind of doubt she was quite mentally ready to reconnect with Taco yet, but in such a dire situation she doesn’t have time to process all that, so she just kind of shoves that to the back of her brain. Not to say that I don’t think she genuinely cares for Taco, but I do think there’s a lot of processing she hasn’t done yet about her that will hopefully be a topic of discussion later please please please AE please for me???? Anyways, I do think this is a response to her aforementioned emotional dysregulation tending to create problems for her, and it’s definitely a masking technique in my eyes.

I also want to touch briefly on Microphone and Soap’s friendship, because while it’s not evidence for my point exactly, per se, I do think it’s relevant. While unfortunately pretty stereotypical representation, I would say it’s generally considered true that Soap is coded as having OCD. Now I’m not going to say that all neurodivergent people can easily be friends with one another, I know that’s not true. However, looking at the scene we see with the two of them in Rain On Your Charade, it certainly plays a part in this specific friendship. Mic helps Soap cope with her compulsions, and Soap is the only person at this time who really values Mic and doesn’t see her as a burden just because she’s accident-prone.

One minor thing I also wanted to point out was how it’s pretty common for people with ADHD to struggle with controlling our voices, including the tone, speed, and…well, volume. I can’t count the amount of times I’ve had people tell me that I’m talking loudly and I didn’t even realize it. I trust I don’t have to explain how this point is relevant to Mic, and it does very much fit.

There was one specific line that inspired me to write this post, from Everything’s A-OJ: “I’m trying harder than anyone else, so why do I always lose?” One of the diagnostic traits for ADHD is described as making “careless mistakes” in activities, and I never have particularly loved that phrasing. It may look careless on the outside, because it’s often mistakes that other people can easily avoid, but when you have a disorder that affects your attention, impulse control, memory, executive function, et cetera et cetera et cetera, you doing your best might look like someone else half-assing it. Not to get too personal on my blorbo post, but I keep thinking about this one teacher I had in middle school who, when I messed something up in a class, said “oh, that’s such a Clonnie move!” I’m sure she doesn’t remember that, but I do, because when you hear over and over again that people associate you with making mistakes, that shit sticks with you, and eventually when nothing you do helps you start to feel like you’re the mistake. That’s why Mic as a character resonates with me so much. God willing AnimationEpic will bring my girl back because I would like to see how Mic heals from that mindset as time goes on and where she goes from here.